A couple of years ago Adam posted a story on this site that so entranced me that when I went to South Africa a bit over a year ago the location he described was top of my bucket list. That birding Mecca was the Sani Pass, and his article is all you need to read so rather than rehash it Ill just link to it. But I did visit it, and saw many of the incredible species he described, one of which, my major target of the day, was the Drakensberg Rockjumper.

Drakensberg Rockjumper

The Drakensberg Rockjumper is one of two species in the rockjumper family, one of those recent splits that came about when people realised that not everything in Africa could be lumped with known European families. They are closely related to the oddball Rockfowl of Western Africa, and live in family groups, led by a breeding pair, in Southern Africa.

Calling

There was about five of them in the small group we encountered on the bend in the road

Drakensberg Rockjumpers are also known as Orange-breasted Rockjumpers

A little preen

They live on rocks!

The view of the Sani Pass from where we saw the species

At the same place we saw a Drakensberg Siskin, and I got the distinct impression this was a big deal and I was not sufficiently appreciative.
 

         

                     ,  ,    ,       ,   .
Human civilization in danger as Fukushima Reactor No. 4 threatens to release lethal radiation

Silently lurking within the confines of Japan is one of the biggest threats to human civilization not many has probably even heard of  the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, warns that the facilitys Reactor No. 4 is on the verge of a catastrophic failure that could turn our planet into a dead zone. Read as he details the growing danger in Fukushima below:

The resulting releasing of radiation would turn North America into a dead zone for humans mutated (and failed) crops, radioactive groundwater, skyrocketing infant mortality, an explosion in cancer and infertility this is what could be unleashed at any moment from an earthquake in Japan. Such an event could result in the release of 85 times the Cesium-137 released by the Chernobyl catastrophe, say experts (see below). And the Chernobyl catastrophe made its surrounding regions uninhabitable by humans for centuries.

Yet, astonishingly, the usual suspects of deception are saying absolutely nothing about this problem. The mainstream media (the dying dinosaur media, actually) pretends theres no problem with Fukushima. President Obama says nothing about it. Federal regulators, including the NRC, are all but silent. Its as if they think their silence on the issue somehow makes it go away.

Perhaps these professional liars in the media and government have become so used to idea that they can simply spin their own reality (and get the public suckers to believe almost anything) that they now believe they can ignore the laws of physics. Thats why they have refused to cover the low-level radiation plume that continues to be emitted from Fukushima.

The fate of the world now rests on reactor No. 4

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No.4 reactor.  Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics

Mr. Muratas stunning statement should be front-page news everywhere around the world. Why? Because hes right. If reactor No. 4 suffers even a minor earthquake, it could set off a chain reaction of events that quickly lead to North America becoming uninhabitable by humans for centuries to come. Imagine California, Oregon and Washington states being inundated with radiation  up to 85 times the radiation release from Chernobyl. Were talking about the end of human life on the scale of continents.

The huge media cover-up

Adams points out that the mainstream media has always refused to acknowledge the threat of Reactor No. 4. He attributes this to the fact that the mainstream media is largely owned by General Electric, the company that designed the Fukushima reactors in the first place.

The executive branch and multiple federal agencies, agencies tasked with keeping the American public safe, did their best to hide and to cover-up information about a deadly radioactive plume and ensuing fallout that was headed for the West Coast of the United States from Japan, Tony Muga wrote in an article for The Intel Hub.

Muga then wrote, The evidence obtained in the FOIA request indicates that right from the start, the NRC had a clear idea of the significance of the disaster that was unfolding, but concealed the truth from the American public. The results of the plume and fallout can be measured in the rise of infant mortality rates: cells of unborn and newborn children are dividing at a much higher rate than those of a mature adult, thus the amount of damage is greatly increased and hence more detectable. Conservative estimates place the number of stillborn following the Fukushima accident at over 18,000.

The cover-up of the radioactive plumes still being emitted from Fukushima is now being called Plume-Gate.As Muga explains, It is this authors opinion that any media source not shouting about Plume-Gate as loud as they can are likely controlled by the powers-that-be.

Learn more about this cover-up and how to raise awareness on this life-threatening issue by visiting FukushimaWatch.com.

Source used:

NaturalNews.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

Submit a correction >>
Monsanto and Bill Gates are conspiring to take the worlds food supply hostage

A few years ago, news sources revealed that Bill Gates, the worlds richest man and founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, purchased 500,000 shares in Monsanto valued at $23 million, raising questions about the motivations of the charity and its sincerity in aiding poverty-stricken areas around the world. Yet, to people familiar with the Gates family, this move is just par for the course, continuing a strategy of holding the worlds food supply hostage in order to reduce humanitys population.

It runs in the family

In an interview with PBS Bill Moyers, Bill Gates admitted that his father, William H. Gates Sr., had been involved with the eugenics group Planned Parenthood, an offshoot and rebranding of the American Eugenics Society. His familys involvement in reproductive health issues has been extensive, and Gates referenced that he once adhered to the views of eugenicist Thomas Malthus, who believed that reproductive restrictions need to be in place to prevent an overpopulation disaster. It appears that even though Gates said that he had abandoned the theory, his foundation relies on a modified Malthusian approach that discreetly reduces populations through GMOs and vaccines. William H. Gates Sr. currently sits as the co-chair of the Gates Foundation, ensuring the eugenicist guides the vision and strategic direction of the organization.

Control the crops, control the world

By pretending to save the world, the Gates Foundation has managed to impose its enlightened choices on poor farmers in developing countries. It currently finances the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), having given at least $264.5 million in grant commitments to an organization forcing GMOs on African farmers. The Gates Foundation also reportedly hired Dr. Robert Horsch, a former Monsanto executive, to head AGRA in 2006.

A 2010 report by La Via Campesina, a global peasant movement representing small farmers, claims that 70 percent of AGRA grantees work directly with Monsanto and over $100 million in grants have been made to Kenyan organizations connected to Monsanto. In 2008, some 30 percent of the foundations agricultural development funds went to promoting or developing GM seed varieties.

The Foundation also pledged $880 million in April 2010 to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), a heavy promoter of GMOs. During the Haiti earthquake recovery, GAFSP provided $35 million in aid to be used for GMO systems and technology implementation.

GMOs and the coming agricultural apocalypse

Even though evidence is mounting that GMOs have destroyed native agricultural systems and driven poor farmers into crippling debt, Gates and Co. have instead embraced the promotion of corporate-owned and controlled agriculture that will further enslave the worlds poorest. Gates now has a direct interest in seeing Monsanto succeed in spreading GMOs and their poisons around the world, and whats disheartening is the fact that hes using the Gates Foundation to make inroads into poor countries in the guise of humanitarian relief.

Although Bill Gates might try to say that the Foundation is not linked to his business, all it proves is the opposite: most of their donations end up favoring the commercial investments of the tycoon, not really donating anything, but instead of paying taxes to state coffers, he invests his profits in where it is favorable to him economically, including propaganda from their supposed good intentions, wrote Silvia Ribeiro in the Mexican news source La Jornada back in 2010.

Unfortunately, poor African farmers have already taken the bait. Traditional seeds have now been replaced with Monsantos GM seeds, ensuring that developing countries will never lose their dependence  and that Monsanto will always turn a profit.

Sources used:

NaturalNews.com

TheGuardian.com

Submit a correction >>
Vigilance in a time of heightened concern over terrorism is important for improving security

(Bugout.news) In recent days we posted a story warning of the potential for dangerous criminal gangs to infiltrate the country from Latin America, due to the lax enforcement of our immigration laws by the current administration.

But there is another danger as well, and it comes from much further abroad: Terrorists intent on disrupting our lifestyle and livelihood. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security, in 2011, arrested a Pakistani human smuggler who was operating out of Quito, Ecuador, who stated he was more than willing to smuggle known members of terrorist organizations into the U.S.

As The Hill newspaper reported in December, Islamic extremists are planning to use U.S. refugee resettlement policies and programs to get inside the country, according to various intelligence officials who testified before the House Homeland Security Committee.

During the hearing committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, revealed portions of a classified letter from the National Counterterrorism Center which warned that the administrations resettlement program could be infiltrated by members of the Islamic State, for the purposes of conducting attacks on U.S. soil similar to those that occurred that month in San Bernardino.

The NCTC has identified individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria attempting to gain entry to the U.S. through the U.S. refugee program, the intelligence agency told McCaul in a letter.

The refugee system, like all immigration programs, is vulnerable to exploitation from extremist groups seeking to send operatives to the West, the agency added, noting that a small number of Iraqi refugees were arrested on terror charges in 2010.

Our president doesnt appear to share those concerns, however. He has repeatedly defended his plans to resettle tens of thousands of people displaced from the fighting in the Middle East, despite the warnings from his own intelligence community and despite the fact that the Islamic State has also said it would use the mass migration of humanity into Europe as cover for infiltrating its members to that continent.

I believe the state of our homeland is increasingly not secure, McCaul said in a speech to National Defense University.

I believe 2015 will be seen as a watershed year in this long war  the year when our enemies gained an upper hand and when the spread of terror once again awoke the West.

Why does any of this matter to ordinary Americans? Because the threat is real enough that elements of our intelligence community are spending no small amount of time and resources to study and track this situation. And whats more, there have already been arrests made of persons willing or attempting to smuggle terrorists into the country.

So the issue becomes one of how vigilant the citizenry wants to be.

You may recall that prior to the San Bernardino attacks, neighbors of the jihadi couple told news agencies they were suspicious of some activity that was occurring at the couples home, but were reluctant to inform authorities because they didnt want to be perceived as being bigots or racists.

We sat around lunch thinking, What were they doing around the neighborhood? one eyewitness to the activity told a local CBS affiliate, noting that he had discussed what was going on with some of his friends. Wed see them leave where theyre raiding the apartment.

If we want to keep our homes, families and neighborhoods safe from a terrorist threat many in our government believe is on the way or already hear, we have to adopt a much different mindset than that.

Its not that you have to or should call police for every minor anomaly, but you know your neighborhood or your neck of the woods well enough to know when there is a pattern of odd behavior. And that is what should trigger your suspicions.

Consider what happened recently in Missouri, as reported by NaturalNews:

A series of events and purchases throughout the state of Missouri has residents on edge and police and federal officials investigating the possibility that they may be related to terrorism.

Bulk purchases of cell phones  which can be used to remotely detonate IEDs (as our troops have discovered the hard way in places like Iraq and Afghanistan)  by what some witnesses described as Middle Eastern-looking men, as well as thefts of large numbers of propane tanks, were examples of unnatural events that caught the attention of local residents.

And because of that, they informed their local authorities, who then began to investigate and who also passed the information up the chain to state and federal authorities.

Vigilance pays, and in this day and age, it is imperative.

Things that qualify as suspicious behavior worthy of your attention include:

 Bulk purchases of electronic or explosive items, as mentioned above

 A number of vehicles suddenly coming and going from a house in your neighborhood, that lasts for more than a week

 Vehicles parked in odd places

 Packages or luggage left unattended in public buildings or even along the side of the road

 Doors that are usually closed found standing wide open

 Someone paying unusual attention to a building or other location, especially a public or government building and especially for several hours at a time

 Extending loitering at such places

 Excessive videotaping or picture taking of similar buildings, counting paces or sketching floor plans

An act of terror killed those 14 people in San Bernardino a couple of months ago, no question about it. But given the fact that neighbors were too intimidated by ridiculous political correctness to report what they knew to be suspicious activity at the shooters home likely led to the slaughter of innocents. In this day and age, we cant afford to let such concerns get in the way of protecting ourselves.

See also:

The Hill

WorldNetDaily

Freedom.news

NaturalNews

Bugout.news is part of the USA Features Media network of sites.

Submit a correction >>
The state health department announced it is streamlining the testing process for some Connecticut residents who suspect they have the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

In-state testing will allow us to obtain results faster so that pregnant women, women planning to become pregnant, their male partners and their physicians can either have peace of mind quicker or can take necessary precautions and steps to protect their health and their pregnancy, said Dr. Raul Pino, commissioner of the Department of Public Health.

However, most of those who request testing will still endure a lengthy process that involves having samples taken by the state, then sent to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for testing.

The Zika virus, primarily transmitted by mosquitoes (though some sexually transmitted cases have been reported), has swept through Brazil and more than 30 other countries, most of them in Central and South America. The virus has been linked to birth defects and developmental issues in children born to mothers infected with Zika.

This week, research was released linking Zika to Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause paralysis.

On Tuesday, the state Department of Public Health announced the Katherine A. Kelley State Public Health Laboratory in Rocky Hill will now be able to test for Zika.

More Information Zika facts Key stats on the Zika virus, and tips for avoiding the illness. In Connecticut, the state Department of Public Health reports 124 specimens have been sent for testing. Only eight results have been received so far and, to date, no one has tested positive for Zika. There have been 107 travel-associated cases of Zika in the United States, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week, and no cases where the illness was acquired locally from mosquitoes. In U.S. territories, there has been at least one case of travel-associated Zika virus, and 39 locally acquired cases, most of them in Puerto Rico. Pregnant women (and others) wishing to avoid infections should postpone travel to areas where the Zika virus is circulating among mosquitoes and adopt precautions to avoid mosquito bites if travel is necessary. Men who travel to affected areas should abstain from sex with a pregnant partner, or use condoms, for the duration of the pregnancy. See More Collapse

Testing loophole

But the new policy is only somewhat helpful, said Dr. Robert Stiller, chief of Bridgeport Hospitals section of maternal-fetal medicine. Thats because in-state testing would only be available to those who have symptoms of Zika and have traveled to a Zika-affected area within two weeks of the specimens collection. Testing of those without symptoms who have traveled to an area where Zika is prevalent will still be done at the CDC.

Thats unfortunate, Stiller said, because, the majority of patients weve seen fall into the asymptomatic group.

So far, he said, Bridgeport Hospital has sent 10 people for testing. Statewide, 124 specimens have been sent for testing. Only eight results have been received so far and, to date, no one has tested positive for Zika.

Zika remains a hot topic, particularly among pregnant women, Stiller said.

Theres a lot of questions still about Zika, he said. I had a patient who had just come back from Martinique, and she was very anxious because she thought she might have been bitten by a mosquito.

Stiller himself is worried about an upcoming trip hes taking to Mexico, which is affected by Zika, and said he plans to arm himself with lots of mosquito repellent.

In most cases, people infected with Zika have no symptoms at all. When there are symptoms, they are often mild  typically a fever, rash and weakness  and dissipate in about a week.

A new threat?

Most of the discussion about Zika has revolved around the risk to pregnant women and their unborn children, but the new information about Guillain-Barre makes the illness a little more worrisome, Stiller said.

Guillain-Barre is a neurological disorder in which the bodys immune system attacks the nervous system.

Symptoms include weakness or tingling in the legs, which can spread to the arms and upper body. Though most people recover, in some cases an almost-total paralysis can result, potentially disrupting the patients breathing and other bodily functions.

A study published in the medical journal The Lancet looked at blood samples from 42 patients diagnosed with Guillain-Barre during a Zika outbreak in French Polynesia, and provides the first evidence of a link between Zika and the disorder. Still, the study showed the risk of a Zika-infected person developing Guillain-Barre is minute  with less than one Guillain-Barre case per 1,000 Zika infections.

It seems to be something that is occurring related to the Zika virus, but its not very prevalent, said Dr. Michael Parry, director of infectious diseases at Stamford Hospital. Though its important to know about it, Guillain-Barre shouldnt be a major concern, Parry said.

So far, Parry said Stamford Hospital has sent 18 samples for testing for Zika virus.

But, unlike Stiller, he hasnt been getting a lot of questions about the illness.

The questions seem to have died down, he said. I think theres more education out there now. I think people are already getting the information they need.
Just shy of a year ago, the U.S. military veteran signed on with Better Deal Printing, founded in 2001 by Lawrence Curell, a disabled Army veteran. Initially started as a home-based, business-to-broker printing company, it has evolved over 15 years into a full-scale production operation that currently serves clients in 21 countries on four continents.

Image Credit: Better Deal Printing

Related: Graphics From SpeedPro Imaging Have Helped Revamp Cleveland

Curell's drive behind the business was to give back to the veteran community and help veterans become business owners in the high-growth area of print, promotional products and corporate apparel. The company offers reduced franchise fees for veterans and disabled veterans. It is competitive by offering lower royalty structures and by owning the manufacturing companies that produce a large portion of the products that the franchisees sell.

Better Deal Printing was officially franchised in 2015 and has been growing fast with plans to add another 50 franchises in the next five years to the system.

Below, Kingsbury describes just how perfect a fit this franchise was for him and his confidence of future growth within the company.

Name: Greg Kingsbury

Franchise owned: Better Deal Printing of Northern Arizona

Q: How long have you owned a franchise?

11 months

Q: Why franchising?

Being part of a franchise offers the benefit of a support system which is valuable to start of your new business and ongoing support throughout the life of your business. I was able to walk into a ready-made business with a proven concept, which makes it easier to get started.

Q: What were you doing before you became a franchise owner?

I have been managing multiple locations for another large franchise company for the past six years. Before that, I was a national marketing director for International Event Promotions Company.

Q: Why did you choose this particular franchise?

With my other position, I had the opportunity to work directly with Better Deal Printing (the production side) as a vendor to provide quality print products to my customers at very affordable pricing. My business relationship with Larry Curell evolved into an opportunity to move into owning my own business without going broke in the startup phase.

They really worked with me to make it affordable and easy to be able to own my own business. Beyond that, the support they offer is second to none. They are always available to me and are proactive and concerned with making sure I am successful.

Related: U.S. Air Force Veteran Makes Old Spaces Feel New Again at Kitchen Tune-Up

Q: How much would you estimate you spent before you were officially open for business?

$13,000 estimated. $10,000 of this expense was the franchise fee for buy-in to Better Deal Printing. The remaining $3,000 covered a new computer, software, business insurance and minimal office supplies and equipment to get going.

This is a work out of my home business, so the major things that typically eat at your finances (like a brick-and-mortar building) werent an issue here. My house and my car are my office.

Q: Where did you get most of your advice / do most of your research?

Having been a part of a major franchise for many years, my experience became my own advice.

Q: What were the most unexpected challenges of opening your franchise?

Taxes and paperwork. Although I managed other peoples businesses for most of my adult life, I had never owned one. I could not have imagined how important every piece of paperwork was going to be to create a solid paper trail with my finances. Better Deal Printing made it easier, as they have vendors and support in place with discounted pricing negotiated.

Q: What advice do you have for individuals who want to own their own franchise?

Research the company. Read and understand your contract -- there is a lot of legal stuff in there. Find a great accountant to get you set up correctly from day one. Make sure this is something you really want to do for a long time. You dont want to buy into something and find out you hate it. Thats what working for other people is for.

This is your business -- and you should love it! Overall, if you are wanting to be your own boss, this is a really inexpensive and safe (safe as owning a business can be) path to follow. Most of the ground work has already been done for you. You just have to put forth the effort to build strong relationships within your area, and good things will happen.

Related: Why This Air Force Veteran Decided to Become a Franchisee of a Brand She Loved as a Kid

Q: Whats next for you and your business?

Well, Ive brought on a new independent sales consultant to help me grow my local market and spread out a bit. Beyond that, I am hoping to open another location within the next three years and hopefully one more before I hit the five-year mark.

Grow, expand, enjoy. What else could I want?
Reports reaching us has it that 14 year old Ese Rita Oruru, the Bayelsa born girl child who was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow but ...

Reports reaching us has it that 14 year old Ese Rita Oruru, the Bayelsa born girl child who was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow but rescued by the Police in Kano, has been discovered to be about 5 months pregnant.It was gathered that the white Hijab dress she wore on her arrival from Kano on Tuesday, was used to cover the pregnancy even though her physical condition and looks created a suspicion.It was the condition in which Police authorities discovered about Ese that informed the IGP, Solomon Arase's directive that she should be handed over to the Gender and Child Protection Unit and later, a team from the Medical Department of the Force to carry out a comprehensive medical examination of the girl-child at the Police Medical Facility in Area 1, Garki.Upon certifying her medical status and emotional state, Vanguard gathered that the Inspector General of Police feeling uncomfortable with the transport arrangement of the mother that they return by road, cancelled the arrangement and directed that both Ese and her mother be flown to Yenegoa by air.Meanwhile, the IGP has directed the Bayelsa State Police Command to take over investigation in the child violence offense saga because according to sources, the offense was committed in Bayelsa which is the place of residence of the abductor, Yunusa Dahiru.Consequently, Yunusa will be moved to Yenegoa to face interrogation and prosecution for kidnapping and child abuse as well as violenceagainst a girl-child.
Police authorities in Abuja yesterday night said Ese Oruru, freed Monday, will now be officially handed over to her mother, Mrs. Oruru, ...

Police authorities in Abuja yesterday night said Ese Oruru, freed Monday, will now be officially handed over to her mother, Mrs. Oruru, today.14 years old Ese Rita Oruru was brought to Police headquarters at Louis Edet House at about 12. 55pm amid tight police protection.Her dad, Mr Charles Oruru, however disclosed that he has concluded plans to seek spiritual assistance from Lagos cleric, Pastor T.B. Joshua, founder of The Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). Ese would have been handed over to her mother yesterday, but for inability of the woman to arrive Abuja by 8.00p.m. last night as she travelled from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State by road. She was immediately ushered into the office of the Force Public Relations Officer, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Olabisi Kolawole, for what sources said was a debriefing exercise.Also arrested and brought to Abuja by a Special Police team from Zone 1 headquarters, Kano, led by an Assistant Commissioner of Police, was the abductor of Ese, Yunusa, alias Yellow. Both the abductor and the abductee were escorted by three representatives of the Emir of Kano to brief the police authorities about the roles the Emir and Kano Emirate Council played in getting Ese released. At exactly 1 25pm, the Force Public Relations Officer was seen leading the freed Ese Oruru to the office of the Inspector General of Police for further briefing.Attempts by newsmen to talk with Ese were rebuffed as the FPRO assured that as soon as Eses mother, who was being expected from Bayelsa arrived, the Police will brief the media on the matter by 4 pm. Recall that Ese was abducted by one Yinusa, from her mothers shop in Yenagoa Local Government Area of Bayelsa State on August 12, 2015, and whisked away to Kano State without the consent of her parents.She was rescued Monday night, following a directive by the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, to the Commissioner of Police, Kano State, Mohammed Katsina, to liaise with the states Emirate Council and relevant persons in the state.
Mr. Charles Oruru, father of abducted Ese, who regained freedom yesterday at his Opolo residence in Yenagoa, said he will seek spiritual...

Ese

Mr. Charles Oruru, father of abducted Ese, who regained freedom yesterday at his Opolo residence in Yenagoa, said he will seek spiritual help from Lagos cleric, Pastor T. B. Joshua of the Synagogue Church of All Nations.The decision to seek spiritual help, Oruru said, was informed by claims that his daughter,14 years old Ese, had declined to come home after being released into the custody of the Police, fearing she may have been hypnotised. According to him, the traumatic experience and release of their daughter was the Lords doing, adding that it would take prayers before she can return to normal. He said: We have decided to visit the T. B. Joshua for prayers and thanksgiving.When I heard that she is declining to come home, I see this as a spiritual problem that can only be countered by prayer.The mother of the teenager, it was gathered, was yesterday morning flown to Abuja to received the freed daughter in the custody of the Nigerian Police.
Mother of the abducted minor, Ese Oruru has expressed gratitude to the media and Nigerians for assisting in the rescue of her daughter. ...

Mother of the abducted minor, Ese Oruru has expressed gratitude to the media and Nigerians for assisting in the rescue of her daughter.Beaming with smiles during a brief chat with journalists on Wednesday at the force headquarters, Mrs. Oruru said she had been reunited with her daughter and they would be leaving for Yenagoa, Bayelsa today.The trader was reunited with her daughter last night at a hotel where they lodged.She had met with the IG earlier today before she met with the press.
The Turkish President, Recef Tayyip Erdoghan, is currently in a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari inside the Presidential ...

The Turkish President, Recef Tayyip Erdoghan, is currently in a closed door meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.Erdoghan arrived the forecourt of the President's office at about 11.53am where he was received by Buhari and some top government officials.He was honoured with 21-gun salute before he proceeded to inspect a guard of honour mounted by men of the Guards Brigade.After the meeting with Buhari, Erdoghan is expected to address a joint press conference with his host.More later.
london-has-fallen.jpg

Maybe it's time to postpone that vacation to London

(GRAMERCY)

Three years ago, there were two very similar movies coming out around just the same time.

In one, "White House Down," Channing Tatum did a kind of "Die Hard in D.C.," saving President Jamie Foxx from an all-out attack. It was dumb, but it knew it, and that made it kind of smart.

In the other, "Olympus Has Fallen," Gerard Butler was another lone operative, saving President Aaron Eckhart from an all-out attack. It was stupid, but proud of it - jingoistic and sadistic.

Guess which one was successful enough to spawn a sequel?

You got that right. And now we've got "London Has Fallen," in which Eckhart is again the president, and again in trouble, and the studly Butler is on hand to happily slaughter all the bad guys.

Imagine if he'd been around 40 years ago, to take out that rabid rabbit. Jimmy Carter might have even won a second term.

In the sequel, we're out of Washington and on to Great Britain, where the president has to attend a sudden state funeral. What he doesn't realize though, is that the survivor of a recent drone attack is waiting for him. And so are hundreds of the man's fanatical operatives.

Like the first film, it plays into - and frankly, exploits - a lot of lingering 9/11 anguish. You know those terrorists who attacked us? Well, here they are again.

And this time we're going to kill them, slowly.

The movie unapologetically embraces its own sadism, too, with Butler not only killing the attackers, but relishing it. In one scene, he slowly grinds a knife into a man's back - after first holding a phone up to his mouth, so the man's brother can hear his screams.

The first film was vicious too, but at least it had the competent Antoine Fuqua at the helm. For this even crasser sequel he's been replaced by director Babak Najafi, who thinks that if four people with assault weapons are good, than 40 are even better. And let's add some grenade-launchers, too. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Well, he succeeds in filling the screen with noise and fire, all right, but the action is indistinguishable; we can't even see who's shooting too, particularly when everything moves to a dark alley. (All the better to conceal that most of this isn't London at all, but Sofia, Bulgaria.)

Gerard Butler, fresh from "Gods of Egypt," is once again running around and sweating and grimacing and good at it, although to call him a comic-book hero is to insult comic books. As the president, all the chiseled-chin Eckhart does is make you marvel at how well Harvey Dent's last campaign must have gone.

But the film cheaps out on the rest of the cast, using a lot of economically unfamiliar people to play the English good guys and Middle Eastern bad guys. The supporting American stars - Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo among them - are all stuck back on a single set in D.C., in pointless, hastily shot scenes of them watching it all unfold on a giant video screen. I'm surprised none of them thought of changing to a different channel.

I sure did.



Ratings note: The film contains gory violence and strong language.




Anthony Venutolo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

The 13 most famous Italian restaurants in movies and TV

NJ.com is currently on a quest to determine the best Italian restaurant in New Jersey  a near-impossible task in a state so rich with great cuisine.

As our judge Pete Genovese continues to visit the 40 semifinalists, we decided to take a look at some of pop culture's famous moments inside of Italian eateries  a few of which are even located in New Jersey. Let us know in the comments if agree with our rankings or if we've left out any classics.

Don't Edit

No. 13 - MYSTIC PIZZA (1988)

The place: A charming neighborhood pizza joint in Mystic, Connecticut served as the homey inspiration for this coming-of-age drama where sisters Kate (Annabeth Gish) and Daisy (Julia Roberts), along with their friend JoJo (Lili Taylor) sling slices of pizza while preparing to escape the doldrums of their small town.

Real or fake: Real in name only. Although based on the famous real-life pizzeria, a meticulous movie set replicated its exact look.

Don't Edit

No. 12 - A BRONX TALE (1993)

The place: Gino's provides the backdrop for one of the scene's best moments: Mob boss Sonny (Chazz Palminteri) explains to his loyal protege Calogero (Lilo Brancato) why being feared is more important than being loved. And how does he prove it? By giving a beatdown to a motorcycle gang who stupidly invades Sonny's social club next door. A gangster movie scene classic...

Real or fake: Real. While the bulk of the scenes in the coming-of-age gangster drama "A Bronx Tale" were shot in Astoria and Jackson Heights, Queens, the now-closed Gino's Cafe in the Bronx provided the authenticity.

Don't Edit

No. 11 - DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

The place: Sal's Famous Pizzeria was practically a character in Spike Lee's classic Oscar-nominated drama with its old-world atmosphere and black and white photos of prominant Italians on the wall.

Real or fake: Fake. One of the few Italian eateries on our list built from scratch, it was constructed on an empty lot at Lexington and Stuyvesant Avenues in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn and torn down after shooting wrapped.

Don't Edit

No. 10 - FELLINI'S ROMA (1972)

The place: One of the most famous sequences in legendary Italian director Federico Felinni's episodic celebration of Rome follows the action along a promenade crowded with restaurants, where the food is copious and families bicker over what to order

Real or fake: Probably fake. Although based on many familiar Italian promenades, The Los Angeles Times explains, "Fellini found shooting on location hard to control and had elaborate re-creations of famous Roman monuments  Trevi Fountain, for instance  created at Cinecitta, the studios on the southern outskirts of the city that became virtually synonymous with him."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

No. 9 - THE LADY AND THE TRAMP (1955)

The place: Tony's Restaurant is the setting for the most romantic spaghetti share in movie history. Based on "Happy Dan, The Whistling Dog," the classic Disney feature centers on Cocker Spaniel Lady (voice of Barbara Luddy) who has several romantic misadventures with scrappy mutt Tramp (Larry Roberts).

Real or fake: While animated on film, a real eatery based on Tony's is located on Main Street at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Don't Edit

No. 8 - GOODFELLAS (1990)

The place: Big Apple eateries like Salerno's play a huge part in Martin Scorsese's gangster classic  especially here, in Henry Hill's (Ray Liotta) less-than-perfect courting of future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco).

Real or fake: Real. While the Italian restaurant went unnamed in the film, it was shot in the now-closed Salerno's Restaurant in Richmond Hill, Queens. It became an Indian restaurant called Tropicana Lounge, which is also closed.

Don't Edit

No. 7 - ROCKY BALBOA (2006)

The place: Widower Rocky Balboa copes with the loss of his loving wife by constructing a shrine to his long lost boxing career and naming it Adrian's.

Real or fake: Fake in name only. While Adrian's appears in both "Rocky Balboa" and last year's "Creed," the eatery is actually Di Stefano's Victor Cafe, located at 1303 Dickinson Street in Philadelphia and boasts live opera sung by its wait staff.

Don't Edit

No. 6. - MOONSTRUCK (1987)

The place: The Italian eatery Grand Ticino in Manhattan was used as one of the backdrops when Loretta Castorini (Cher) dines with fiance Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello). It's not long, however, before she meets his brooding brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) and forbidden romance ensues.

Real or fake: Real. In 2001, the Big Apple institution lost its lease and was forced to close.

Don't Edit

No. 5 - PRETTY WOMAN (1990)

The place: The famed Los Angeles Italian eatery Rex II Ristorante provided the setting for billionaire Richard Gere to show off glammed-up working girl Julia Roberts who fought those slimy snails ("slippery little suckers...").

Real or fake: Real. While Rex II is long closed, its now the hep, art-deco delight Cicada, also seen in "Bruce Almighty," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith " "Mad Men," and "The Artist."

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

No. 4 - THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW JERSEY (2009-present)

The place: LuNello, the upscale Italian eatery in Cedar Grove and NJ's Best Italian restaurant nominee, provided the episode backdrop for which angry housewife Teresa Giudice hears just one sarcastic quip too many from castmate and nemesis Danielle Staub. The result? A tete-a-tete with a dinner table. Moments after it aired, a reality star was born. Years later, it endures.

Real or fake: Real. The eatery is considered one of Essex County's premiere Italian eateries.

Don't Edit

No. 3 - THE SOPRANOS (1999-2007)

The place: Artie Bucco's (John Ventimiglia) was the co-owner and head chef of Vesuvio and Nuovo Vesuvio. The two Italian eateries served as both a dramatic backdrop for all of the underwood doings as well as a setting for day-to-day life for Tony Soprano and Co.

Real or fake: Fake. The bulk of "The Sopranos' interior scenes were shot at Silvercup Studios in Queens.

Don't Edit

No. 2 - BIG NIGHT (1996)

The Place: Set at the Jersey Shore in the '50s in the fictional Paradise Restaurant, this delightful comedy-drama centers on two Italian immigrant brothers  Primo and Segundo (Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub). In a last-ditch effort the get people in the door, they concoct a plan to get jazz singer Louis Prima to eat there.

Real or fake: Fake. Various locales and exteriors in Keyport were used for the film.

Don't Edit

No. 1 - THE GODFATHER (1972)

The place: Louie's is the setting for perhaps one of the most iconic scenes in film history where Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) seeks revenge for the attempt on his father's life and kills Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) and corrupt Capt. McCluskey (Montclair's Sterling Hayden)  the latter eating a giant 'ol plate of of pasta.

Real or fake: Fake in name. In reality, Louie's was Old Luna Restaurant, located on White Plains Road in the Bronx and closed ldown shortly after the shoot.
KEARNY -- Since winning the highly competitive Break Contest in 2014 -- as an atmospheric rock band amid a deluge of punk groups -- and performing on the main stage of the hefty Skate and Surf festival, Wyland has functioned with tireless focus.

The unsigned Kearny four-piece seems to simultaneously be listed on every decent local bill, while touring nationally in effort to become the next New Jersey act to leap from the local scene and onto the national consciousness.

Gigs across the country, including South By Southwest and Oklahoma's Center of the Universe, have provided the group a greater breadth of experiences, and led by commanding frontman Ryan Sloan, the band's new EP "In A Sea of Things Unsaid" is an enthusiastic lunge toward more prominent stages these tunes deserve.

Hear the seven-track release, and its crisp blend of piano pop and U2-inspired grandeur, below, in an exclusive first listen. The album officially drops Friday, and marks one of the strongest rock releases from a New Jersey band in 2016 so far, local or not.

"In A Sea of Things Unsaid" is a reflection of the band's unhindered emotional outpouring, of our experiences over the past year on a record," says guitarist Mauricio Salazar, whose array of effects pedals employs droning depth and mystery behind Sloan's keys-driven vocal hooks. "Its stylistic transition represents not only a musical departure from our previous efforts, but a genuine time stamp of our growth as collective individuals and musicians."

The band -- Sloan, Salazar, drummer Richard Joyce and bassist Zach Calidonna -- will celebrate its new album March 26 with an album release show at The Citizen in Jersey City, 332 2nd Street. Local acts Bounders (Asbury Park), Cold Weather Company (New Brunswick) and Hey Anna (Brooklyn) will play in support.

Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
3 sharpe15 LITUCHY

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, shown here in a 2008 file photo. A state chancery judge has upheld a fine of $25,500 against James for violating state campaign finance laws. (Scott Lituchy/The Star-Ledger)

NEWARK - Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James has once again been ordered to pay a hefty fine for illegally using $94,000 in campaign dollars to pay attorneys in the criminal case that ultimately put him behind bars.

In a Feb. 22 ruling, State Superior Court Judge Thomas Moore largely rejected James' arguments that state law allowed for campaign dollars to be used to respond to federal subpoenas at the time, and that he did so on the advice of his attorneys. He also argued that he spent more than $700,000 on legal counsel out of his private savings after being indicted.

Moore ultimately reduced a previous $30,000 penalty imposed by the state Election Law Enforcement Commission to $25,500.

In an interview Tuesday, James again claimed he had found himself the victim of inconsistencies in campaign finance law, citing ELEC's 2014 decision to allow Gov. Chris Christie's re-election campaign to use its funds to answer subpoenas related to the notorious "Bridgegate" lane closure scandal.

"It's a double standard," he said.

The argument has been a familiar one for the 80-year-old former mayor and state senator since the ELEC initially sued him over the violations in 2011, one year after he returned from 18 months in a Virginia federal prison on fraud charges related to his steering city land deals to a former mistress.

When a judge initially ordered him to repay the $94,004 in campaign funds the following year, he called it the result of a political witch hunt designed to "embarrass and bankrupt the James family spiritually and fiscally."

Four years later, the case's long and tortured history lives on.

Last week's hearing came more than a year after an appellate court rejected his Bridgegate argument, but ordered a reexamination of the original $30,000 fine. That court also upheld an order to have James and his former chief of staff and campaign treasurer, Cheryl Johnson, repay the $94,004 in attorney fees to his campaign account.

An attempt to challenge the latter decision before the state's Supreme Court also failed last year.

James' attorney, Angelo Genova, said he was "disappointed" in Moore's ruling and was evaluating whether or not to appeal the decision based on what he claims are clear inconsistencies by the state's campaign finance agency.

"I do believe there are disturbing differences between how this matter was addressed by the ELEC when contrasted with how it has treated others in like circumstances," he said.

Attempts to reach ELEC officials were not immediately successful Tuesday afternoon.

Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find
NEWARK - A veteran city firefighter was arrested after a fight with a co-worker ended in gunfire late Tuesday night, according to authorities.

Gamil Haidara, 42, has been suspended without pay after being charged with multiple weapons offenses, including discharging a firearm, following the dispute at the Clifton Avenue home.

According to Acting Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose, police were called to the home around 10:30 p.m.

After they arrived, the 42-year-old victim, also a Newark firefighter who lives in the same building, told them the two were arguing when Haidara pulled a gun and threatened him. He ran downstairs into his own home, while Haidara gave chase and allegedly fired a single shot through the victim's door.

Minutes later, two officers were riding through the area when they spotted Haidara running down the street, the gun still in his hand, according to Ambrose. He complied with orders to stop and drop the gun, and was taken to University Hospital with what authorities called "unspecified symptoms."

In a statement, Ambrose said Haidara was immediately suspended after the allegations came to light.

"I will not tolerate wrongdoing on the part of any member of the Department of Public Safety," he said. "When one of my employees acts improperly, they can expect swift disciplinary actions to be taken."

According to state pension records, Haidara joined the fire department in 2008, and earns an annual salary of $103,592.

Newark Firefighters Union President Chuck West said he had yet to be apprised of the charges against Haidara and declined comment.

The fire department's Arson Unit has opened an investigation into potential violations of department standards, Ambrose said. A criminal probe into the incident also remains active.

Anyone with information about this or any other crime is asked to contact the Newark Police Department's 24-hour confidential tip line at (877) NWK-TIPS (877-695-8477) or NWK-GUNS (877-695-4867).

Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
ga0616judges_Proudman

Judge Esther Salas ruled that Thomas Ambrosio, the attorney for alleged gang kingpin Farad Roland, must be dismissed from Roland's case over a conflict of interest. (Joe Proudman | The Star-Ledger)

NEWARK -- A judge in a federal death penalty case involving an alleged Newark gang leader has dismissed his lawyer from the case, ruling that the lawyer had a "serious" conflict of interest.

In an amended opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Esther Salas ruled that Thomas Ambrosio, the lawyer appointed to represent Farad Roland, had to step down. Salas said Ambrosio's previous representation of a witness who agreed to testify against Roland created the conflict.

Roland is facing rare federal death penalty charges for racketeering and murders he allegedly was involved in as part of the South Side Cartel, a wing of the Bloods street gang.

Roland was appointed in September to represent Ambrosio.

Over that period of time, Ambrosio said in an interview, they developed "a very trusting and productive relationship."

The conflict arose in March 21, 2014, when Ambrosio was tapped to represent an unnamed individual facing criminal charges in New Jersey. Ambrosio and the witness met five days later for him to sign an agreement that he would cooperate in upcoming federal cases. It was their only meeting, court records say.

Last September, Ambrosio was asked to represent Roland. At the time, government attorneys failed to note that Ambrosio had once represented one of their future trial witnesses, the cooperating witness.

Ambrosio said he couldn't have known at that time who the government would call as witnesses, so he could not have identified a potential conflict. Ambrosio, in any case, denied he had a conflict.

When prosecutors finally realized Ambrosio's work for the cooperating witness, they objected, saying he "has ethical obligations not to reveal client confidences from his representation of the cooperating witness, but on the other hand, he owes a duty to Roland to represent him vigilantly and zealously," according to Salas' opinion.

Ambrosio, court records show, submitted a sworn declaration that he had no discussions that crossed ethical lines with either the witness or Roland.

Roland wanted Ambrosio to remain as his attorney, but the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that defendants with court-appointed attorneys do not have the right to choose who will represent them, Salas' ruling said.

After several hearings earlier this year, Salas ruled that a conflict existed, and wrote that it occurs "when the attorney's representation of the defendant is impaired by loyalty owed to a prior client."

The ruling also says her finding at this point cannot be appealed.

Salas appointed a "very experienced" lawyer, Stephen Turano of Newark, to take over for Ambrosio. She also said the court will modify its schedule to give him at least three additional months to prepare for a trial that will begin sometime in 2017.

"It's a significant amount of information to process in a relatively compressed time," Turano said, adding that the court has been sensitive to the issue of making sure Roland has a fair defense.

Ambrosio said he believes he has an ethical responsibility to share what he has learned about the case with Turano, but is seeking legal guidance to avoid violating any court orders.

Prosecutors in 2015 told the court they intended to pursue a death penalty case against Roland, 31, for violations of the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, murder, kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, drug conspiracy and other violent acts.

Roland's is the second federal death penalty case to be tried in New Jersey and the first since 2007.

Tim Darragh may be reached at tdarragh@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @timdarragh. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- Police arrested a city man Tuesday in connection with a February 25 shooting that left on man shot in the leg and robbed, officials said.

Wali Muhammad was taken into custody by city and New Jersey State Police without incident at his home near the intersection of Pennsylvania and Gillette Street, announced Acting Newark Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose.

Muhammad now stands charged with aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon and other gun-related charges, officials said.

Muhammad was later transferred into custody at the Essex County Correctional Facility, where he remains on bail of $300,000, police officials said.

Muhammad was allegedly part of a group that participated in the shooting, which police say occurred in the 40's block of Hill Street, officials said. Police officers responding to a call of a person shot found a 43-year-old male suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the leg, officials said.

The victim reported that while in the area of Hill Street he was surrounded by a group of males who robbed and then shot him, officials said.

An investigation into the the incident is ongoing, officials said.

Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
NEWARK -- A state appellate panel on Monday overturned the 35-year state prison sentence of a man convicted of carjacking a woman's vehicle in 2011 and then sexually assaulting her inside the car.

The appeals court ordered a new sentence for Isaiah Greene, 26, formerly of Newark, in large part because Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin improperly cited two factors in sentencing Greene in 2014.

The judge's findings related to those "aggravating factors" are "not supported by competent evidence in the record," according to the appellate decision.

The incident began around 2 p.m. on Dec. 10, 2011 in the area of the South Orange train station, authorities said. The victim had got out of her car to go to a diner when Greene approached her and indicated he was carrying a gun, the decision states.

Greene stole the woman's iPhone and cash from her wallet, the decision states. He directed her to get into the car and he got in the passenger seat of the vehicle and ordered her to drive, the decision states.

As the woman was driving, Greene fondled her breast and also put his hand in her pants, the decision states. The victim later "testified that she felt violated and disgusted by defendant's conduct," the decision states.

While behind the wheel, the woman spotted an officer in a sheriff's vehicle, the decision states. In order to get the officer's attention, she crashed her car into the sheriff's vehicle and immediately jumped out, the decision states.

Greene fled the scene, but he was apprehended a few hours later after police traced the victim's cell phone to him, the decision states. The woman later identified Greene as the assailant, the decision states.

At his April 2013 trial, Greene was convicted of carjacking, robbery, criminal restraint and criminal sexual contact. Ravin sentenced Greene on Jan. 24, 2014.

Based on that sentence, Greene would have been eligible for parole in December 2039, according to the New Jersey Department of Corrections.

But in ordering that Greene be resentenced, the appellate panel found errors in how Ravin cited two particular factors when he handed down the sentence.

The first factor deals with an offense being committed in "an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner," and second factor deals with the victim being "particularly vulnerable or incapable of resistance," the decision states.

In sentencing Greene, Ravin applied that first factor to each of the crimes, but "the judge did not make specific findings of fact supporting the application of aggravating factor one to each of the crimes," according to the appellate decision.

"Thus, it is unclear whether the court scrupulously avoided double-counting an element of the charged crime in its application of aggravating factor one," the decision states.

As for the second factor, Ravin initially said there was no evidence to support that factor, the decision states. The judge changed his mind and cited the factor after the assistant prosecutor argued the victim "was unable to speak when she got out of the car that day" and he claimed she suffered "emotional trauma," the decision states.

But the appeals court ruled in its decision: "A statement by counsel at sentencing, however, is not evidence."

"Thus, there was no competent, credible evidence to support the finding of aggravating factor two," the decision states.

Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
WOODBURY -- A Philadelphia man was convicted of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute on Wednesday, the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office said.

Police stopped Jermina Lewis, 32, for speeding as he drove on Route 55 in Mantua on Aug. 5, 2013. Officers found about 3.4 ounces of cocaine in Lewis' backpack, the GCPO said, which an investigator testified in court was "more than a personal use amount." Furthermore, police said, Lewis was in possession of a scale, as well as nearly $5,000 in cash.

A jury deliberated for less than an hour after the two-day trial. Judge Robert P. Becker revoked Lewis' $50,000 bail, and scheduled sentencing for April 8.

Andy Polhamus may be reached at apolhamus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ajpolhamus. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.
WEST NEW YORK -- A 7-year-old girl's death from a widely publicized hit-and-run incident has deeply shaken her town, and left a special sadness at the nail salon where the girl's mother worked, where co-workers said the little girl was considered "family."

Yolanda Delcid, a manicurist at West New York's Bergen Nails, began to cry as she sat at her station Tuesday and recalled her coworker's little daughter, Shaila Pichardo.

The child had been such a frequent, talkative presence at the salon that Delcid said she believed she should have grown up to become an actress because of the fun stories she'd make up and share with customers.

Pichardo's mother Yeime Vital, who is also a manicurist who worked at the salon for several years, had not been back at work, but has been visited by the owner, said Delcid.

Vital would pick her up daughter, a P.S. 1 first grader, every day after school and the little girl would wait in the salon for an hour or so until her father picked her up, said Delcid.

"She's with God now. She was an angel," Delcid said, crying. She noted that the child was Vital's only daughter.

"I'm a mother. I have four kids. I thank God they are okay, but it's something you can't control," she added.

Margarita Batista, a customer of Vital's for the past six months, came into the shop Tuesday afternoon with her daughter to greet the workers and offer her condolences.

"I feel terrible. We just found out the news. Oh my God," said Batista, as she hugged the owner. "I saw the little girl here once in a while. Oh my God, that is so sad."

"She was always playing around," added Batista's daughter Vanessa.

The salon's owner, who declined to give her name, said she was too distraught to talk. She said that she received a phone call from her employee after it happened on Monday morning, and all she could hear was crying.

Pichardo was struck at about 8:20 a.m. Monday at 61st Street and VanBuren Place, said J.P. Escobar, the Hudson County Sheriff's Office spokesman, and she died after the strike. A determined search for the driver commenced immediately after, and a Newark couple was arrested in connection with the accident after an investigation, thanks to North Bergen security camera footage.

Fabian Rodriguez, 33, an unauthorized immigrant from Ecuador, was arrested for leaving the scene, and his girlfriend Joanna Rosas-Alvarez, 26, was arrested for hindering apprehension, officials said.

The girl's father, Javier Pichardo, spoke publicly after the arrests, saying he forgave the driver as he broke into tears. He said his wife was too distraught to speak.

Vital was taken to the hospital with minor leg injuries, and has been released, according to Escobar.

On Tuesday afternoon, after the press conference on the arrests, West New York Schools Superintendent Clara Brito-Herrera issued a statement, calling the accident "an unfathomable loss to the Pichardo family and our school community."

The district is providing counselors, social workers and school psychologists for students coping with the loss.

Several people walking in West New York shook their heads and offered their condolences to the family when asked about their feelings about the news.

Cesar Jiatz, a North Bergen resident who was walking on Bergenline Avenue and holding his tiny daughter's hand, said that the news of the hit and run was both upsetting and aggravating.

"My wife, as soon as she heard about it, she started crying," he said. "Every time we talk about it, she starts crying."

Note: An earlier version of this story included an incorrect spelling of Shaila Pichardo's name based on an earlier spelling given by authorities. Authorities confirmed the correct spelling on Wednesday.

Laura Herzog may be reached at lherzog@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LauraHerzogL. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
You have permission to edit this article.

Edit Close
Then-interim Police Chief Michael Harrison speaks in front of NOPD Headquarters about the shooting of Officer Jonathan Smith, who was shot several times while working a paid detail in front of a restaurant at Elysian Fields and St. Claude avenues on Sunday morning, Sept. 14, 2014. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn, NOLA.com l The Times-Picayune)
More money for special-needs students shouldn't mean less for others: Gregory Thompson
WASHINGTON (AP)  The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has issued a subpoena to Donald Trump. The nine-member panel sent a letter to the former president's lawyers on Friday, demanding his testimony under oath by mid-November and outlining a series of corresponding documents. The decision by lawmakers to exercise their subpoena power comes a week after the committee made its final case against the former president, who they say is the "central cause" of the multi-part effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It remains unclear how Trump and his legal team will respond to the subpoena, if at all.
New details were released Tuesday about a Treynor man facing charges for sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist.

Michael E. Krauth, 54, is accused of performing a sex act at various times on a then-29-year-old male client with developmental disabilities during August and September 2015 while providing in-home support services as an employee of Iowa Focus, according to court documents obtained Tuesday by The Daily Nonpareil. Iowa Focus provides community supports to people with disabilities.

Krauth also allegedly asked the client to perform the sex act on him, but the client declined. The client later told a health care worker, who reported the allegations to the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Krauth denied engaging in any sexual behavior with the client, court documents stated. He acknowledged that he had provided care to the client one night a week as an Iowa Focus employee and that the client lived alone at the time.

Krauth was hired by Iowa Focus in March 2015 after nothing suspicious showed up in a background check, according to Derek Laney, program director.

He had worked at the Glenwood Resource Center for about a decade and was a good referenced person, Laney said. Krauths employment with Iowa Focus was terminated on Sept. 15 for a completely unrelated incident.

These allegations didnt come to light until the last couple weeks, Laney said.

REM Iowa hired Krauth in late October 2015 when, once again, all background checks came back clean, said Sarah Magazine, a spokeswoman for the organization. Krauth passed administered by the Iowa Department of Human Services, including a child abuse registry check, a sex offender registry check, a vulnerable adult registry check and a nationwide check of criminal history databases prior to employment.

In February, REM Iowa was notified of an investigation related to an allegation of abuse during (Krauths) employment at another provider, Magazine said. REM Iowa placed this individual on office duty, and he did not have access to any individuals served. He is currently suspended pending the disposition of charges.

Krauth remains at the Pottawattamie County Jail Tuesday afternoon on $10,000 bond. He has requested a public defender. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for March 10.
Community

Its now easier than ever to connect and chat with others in your local area. You can connect with your community by asking general questions, give area updates and recommendations and even let your community know about local events that are taking place.
Ontario prides itself on being one of the worlds top places for mining, but a new ranking of the worlds top jurisdictions shows otherwise, at least according to the Fraser Institute.

Ontario prides itself on being one of the worlds top places for mining, but a new ranking of the worlds top jurisdictions shows otherwise, at least according to the Fraser Institute.



Released this week, Saskatchewan topped the institutes list as the most attractive jurisdiction for mining investment in Canada, followed by Quebec and then the Yukon.



Ontario ranked fourth place.



"While Saskatchewan is blessed with potash and uranium reserves, miners also appreciate its approach to mining policy, said Kenneth Green, Fraser Institutes survey director. Compared to other jurisdictions, the province is perceived to have a competitive tax regime, efficient permitting procedures and clarity around land claims."



Globally, Saskatchewan also ranked as the top Canadian jurisdiction for the second consecutive year, finishing second behind Western Australia.



On the international ranking, Ontario placed 15th, which may seem low but is actually eight spots higher than last year.



The full report contains submitted comments from mining executives on doing business in each jurisdiction.



The Ring of Fire factored into comments from two unnamed exploration company presidents, both of whom complained about the Ontario governments inertia in moving projects forward.



A company was attempting to permit an advanced exploration project in the James Bay lowlands, said one. The government took three years to grant the required permits. During this time the funding partner, frustrated with the time taken by the government, exited the project.



Government management of the Ring of Fire was a disaster, said another, echoing the first. It has been 12 years since the original discovery and no sign as to when a development might occur.



The Canadian rankings are as follows:

1. Saskatchewan

2. Quebec

3. Yukon

4. Ontario

5. British Columbia

6. Manitoba

7. Nunavut

8. Newfoundland and Labrador

9. Alberta

10. Northwest Territories

11. New Brunswick

12. Nova Scotia



The Fraser Institute is a Calgary-based public policy think-tank. Every year, it surveys mining executives in rating 109 jurisdictions around the world based on a combination of geology and policy attractiveness.
PET Scan fund now has $2.1M in the kitty

The Northern Cancer Foundation's Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund has received another substantial donation. The Dr. Fred Starr Branch 76 Royal Canadian Legion donated $20,000 from its Poppy Campaign to the cause.

The Dr. Fred Starr Branch 76 Royal Canadian Legion donated $20,000 from its Poppy Campaign to the Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund. Branch 76 president Dave Petrynchyn, left and Poppy Chair Jim Young, right, presented the cheque to members of the PET Scan committee. Supplied photo.

The Northern Cancer Foundation's Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund has received another substantial donation.



The Dr. Fred Starr Branch 76 Royal Canadian Legion donated $20,000 from its Poppy Campaign to the cause.



The proceeds from poppies are held in trust to assist veterans, but they can also be used to assist in the purchase of community medical equipment.



The campaign to bring a PET scanner to the city has now raised more than $2.1 million.



"The Sudbury community was very generous in its support of Branch 76's 2015 Poppy Campaign, said Jim Young, chair of the legion's Poppy Campaign.



I can't think of a better way to extend this public generosity to the community than a donation to the Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund. This donation from Poppy Funds will benefit the citizens of the City of Greater Sudbury including veterans and their extended families."



Were astonished by the generosity of Branch 76. Their support is much appreciated, said Brenda Tessaro of the Sam Bruno PET Scan Committee. Every dollar we receive puts us that much closer to our ultimate goal.



The PET Scan Committee is a freight train  nothing will slow them down until the PET Scanner is in place at Health Sciences North, said Tannys Laughren, executive director of the Northern Cancer Foundation. We cant thank Legion Branch 76 enough for their generous contribution to this worthy cause.



In December 2015, Ontario's health minister, Dr. Eric Hoskins, announced the province would provide $1.6 million per year to cover the operational costs for a PET scanner at Health Sciences North.



However, the province will not pay for the machine itself.



The machine's cost hovers in the $3.5 million range. However, Health Sciences North would have to invest around $1.5 million to build a space that can safely house the equipment, meaning at least $5 million needs to be raised.



The Sam Bruno PET Scan Fund is named after Sam Bruno, a Sudbury man who, before he passed away from colorectal cancer in 2010, advocated for PET scans to be covered by OHIP, and for one of the machines to be brought to Sudbury.
A Laurentian University student leader said he's very, very happy overall with a new grant providing upfront funds to cover the cost of tuition for low-income students, but warned they'll still pay a hefty bill.

A Laurentian University student leader said he's very, very happy overall with a new grant providing upfront funds to cover the cost of tuition for low-income students, but warned they'll still pay a hefty bill.



The new Ontario Student Grant  which doesn't come into effect for another 18 months  makes average college or university tuition free for students from families with incomes of $50,000 or less.



Johnny Humphrey, president of the Students' General Association (SGA), Laurentian's largest student association, said what's being offered by the province won't completely cover many students' tuition.



The government said it will cover the average cost of university tuition in Ontario, which they said is $6,160.



But a Maclean's Magazine article using data from Statistics Canada found average undergraduate tuition in Ontario is $7,868.



The government said it didn't include tuition costs for more expensive professional programs in determining its average, instead basing it on arts and science programs.



At Laurentian University  where tuition is the lowest in the province  most programs cost $6,101, said Humphrey.



But when you add on ancillary fees, which includes a bus pass and health insurance, Laurentian students who belong to the SGA pay $6,901. Ancillary fees aren't covered by the new grant.



At other, more expensive universities, the average cost of tuition and ancillary fees together is something more like $8,000, Humphrey said.



Students in professional programs pay even more  tuition for Laurentian engineering students is $7,744, and with ancillary fees, they pay $8,544.



And that doesn't include other expenses, such as residence, a meal plan and textbooks.



The student aid changes are part of a surprise budget announcement last week by the Wynne Liberal government.



The government said more than 50 per cent of students from families with incomes of $83,000 or less will receive non-repayable grants that will exceed average college or university tuition.



Ontario is also increasing access to interest-free and low-cost loans for middle and upper-income families.



To pay for the Ontario Student Grant, the government is cancelling a number of other education tax credits and grants.



But the province promised all students will be the same or better off as under the 30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant, introduced in 2012.



That grant has been criticized for largely excluding mature students, as it's available only to college and university students who moved to post-secondary education from high school within four years of graduating.



The 30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant is also available to students who come from households making less than $160,000 a year.



The revamped system is a lot more accessible and easy to understand, Humphrey said.



I think having students be able to access the funds when they need them really is a lot better than them having to wait until they'd be eligible for tax credits.



The student aid changes also got a thumbs-up from Rhaili Champaigne, president of the Students Administrative Council, Cambrian College's student association.



Knowing that students are going to leave with less debt or debt free is a really big deal, Champaigne said. Our students are now going to be overall walking away in a better standing, and not having as much financial stress on them.



Cambrian has many mature students who were not eligible for the 30-per-cent off grant that now have access to the new grant, she said.



Gabrielle Ross-Marquette, national executive representative of the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario, said her organization is celebrating the changes.



We do believe it's a victory for students who have been working for many, many years and have been fighting for more upfront needs-based grants, she said.



We've been advocating for years that programs such as the 30% off tuition grants or the tuition tax credits did not benefit those who needed it the most.



Ross-Marquette said she is disappointed the changes won't come into effect until the 2017-18 school year.



We would really love for students to be able to access this grant as soon as possible, she said. However, it's a good step in the right direction.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 23, 2016)  Leading U.S. and Canadian environmental groups urged their countries leaders to adopt a new climate test to ensure that proposed energy infrastructure projects and policies are evaluated for their climate impacts, and against the international goal to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius.

The groups unveiled the climate test and guiding principles as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares for his first official visit on March 10 to Washington, D.C. for a state dinner and discussions about energy and climate change with President Obama. Both leaders have expressed support for the idea of a climate test  with Obama citing climate leadership in his rejection of Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and Trudeau pledging to include impacts on climate in the new Environmental Assessment process.

The proposed climate test defines what this test should look like and how it can be applied so leaders can assess the viability of new energy infrastructure and policies to make sure they fit within the goals of the international climate agreement reached in Paris in December, which aspires to limit global warming to an increase of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

As advocates discussed on a telephone-based press conference this afternoon, the proposed climate test is the logical next step given the climate commitments both Obama and Trudeau made in the Paris climate agreement. It will use the latest climate science to evaluate all proposed energy policies and projects in light of the globally agreed goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Adopting this new climate test is a critical next step given the climate commitments Prime Minister Trudeau and President Obama made to the international community in Paris, as well as to strengthen their relationship after Obamas decision to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, said Anthony Swift, director of the Canada Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Evaluating energy projects and policies in light of their potential climate impacts can help Canada and the United States transition to cleaner energy as they meet their climate commitments.

With this proposed Climate Test, we are rejecting the fossil fuel fatalism that grips energy planners, said Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director, Oil Change International. We need to plan for climate success, and to stop listening to the oil industry that tells us we are all doomed to a catastrophic future.

In light of rapidly changing climate policy in Canada, the U.S., and globally, its essential Canada start measuring policies and investment opportunities against a path that leads to climate safety, said Dale Marshall, National Program Manager at Environmental Defence. Strengthened climate and clean energy collaboration between the United States and Canada presents an opportunity to ensure both countries invest in projects that support low carbon prosperity.

Canada should model energy scenarios that assess the impact of stronger climate policies at home and abroad, including carbon pricing and regulatory limits on emissions in the fossil fuel sector, like those that will soon exist in Alberta's oilsands, said Erin Flanagan, Director of Federal Policy at the Pembina Institute. As Canada and its provinces implement new climate policies, they should bet on others following suit.

The Keystone XL pipeline was rejected because it failed the climate test President Obama evaluated it on, said Lena Moffitt, Director of Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. In applying this test to all future energy infrastructure plans, the U.S. will speed up its transition to clean and renewable energy and begin to leave dirty fuels in the ground.

The climate test proposes that energy infrastructure and policies follow these principles:

Energy decisions should be guided by climate science so they fit within a climatesafe future.

Decision-makers should keep in mind international efforts to transition away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.

Environmental review processes should assess the need for energy projects and policies that are consistent with international goals to reduce climate change.

Environmental reviews should assess the impact on greenhouse gases from a proposed project or policy, and evaluate the impact on efforts to meet carbon pollution reduction targets.

RESOURCES:

For a recording of todays press briefing, contact Gabby Brown at gabby@newpartners.com
The city's budget director isn't planning for a nearly billion-dollar cut to the city's finances that was proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in January, a gamble by the mayor's office that the City Council isn't entirely comfortable with. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report.



Despite the threat of a nearly billion-dollar cut to the city in Governor Andrew Cuomo's budget, the city's budget director is not planning for it.



"We have not developed a contingency because I think we all do know the ramifications of $1 billion a year in this financial plan will be devastating in services," said City Budget Director Dean Fuleihan.



In January, Cuomo proposed cutting Medicaid and funding for the City University of New York by nearly $1 billion. He has since walked those comments back.



"It won't cost New York City a penny. But we will make joint streamlining, policy efficiency changes," Cuomo said in January.



Despite the olive branch, the city budget director told the City Council on Tuesday that city and state officials have yet to sit down and even talk about it.



"I have been told by the governor's staff they will be reaching out to me," Fuleihan said.



All of this is setting off alarms in the Council.



"It concerns me that we don't have a contingency plan or that those conversations have not even begun," said City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland of Queens.



"The governor gave a commitment on that. The mayor said he would hold the governor to that commitment. We see no reason that that won't happen," Fuleihan said.



When NY1 asked about the cuts, a spokeswoman for Cuomo sent us a statement that read, "We have been having conversations with our partners in government and will continue to do so. The governor is fully committed to developing reforms and efficiencies to reach the target savings number for both CUNY and Medicaid."



The de Blasio administration may not be planning for some major cuts from Albany, but it is asking individual agencies to find savings. In a letter to agency heads, the de Blasio administration ordered every department to find "savings" in their budgets.



City Hall is not holding these departments to a certain number nor can these cuts result in a reduction of services or layoffs.


Starting Monday, people who commit some minor offenses in Manhattan will no longer be subject to arrest. City officials hope the new policy will reduce the backlog of criminal cases. Our Michael Herzenberg explains.

Taking up more than one subway seat per person like this pair, won't get you arrested in Manhattan, nor will riding between subway cars  that's the same lady urinating behind the door.

And tracking her business back into the car.

But despite the gross factor, this will only get you a summons. The change by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is for how his office and the NYPD handle minor offenses that also include drinking in public and littering.

Those on the street have mixed opinions.

"I think the city has gotten dirtier and dirtier," said one man. "I don't agree."

"Sometimes you just have to go behind a truck," said another. "It's harder for women. I think it's great."

"I think that is way better, because it's less taxpayer dollars is going to nonsense," said one woman in Times Square.

The reason behind the alteration is to free up resources. Eliminating the backlog of court cases and allowing police to better focus on serious crimes.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton support the modification.

Police would still arrest you if you pose a threat to public safety and have an outstanding warrant but won't charge you with the additional offense. They will also take you to court if you have let a prior lower offense summons lapse.

"It doesn't represent any kind of significant change," said Robert Gangi.

The founder of the Police Reform Organizing Project, Gangi said he believes the problem remains unaddressed claiming the police unequally target low income, black and Hispanic communities.

"That's the kind of practice that inflicted serious harm on people it creates serious hardship for people," Gangi said.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office says police may will still throw you in jail for harassment. There is no change to misdemeanor penal code violations.

As for smoking on the subway it remains a summons worthy offense, unless you're smoking something illegal.

The change only affects Manhattan and starts on Monday.
A former city police officer who became a police officer in Texas has been killed in a shootout.

Police in Euless, Texas say 29-year-old David Hofer answered a call of shots being fired Tuesday afternoon.

When Hofer and other officers arrived on the scene, the gunman opened fire on them.

Hofer was shot and later died.

The shooter was killed by police.

Sources tell NY1 that Hofer was a member of the NYPD from 2009 to 2014 and worked out of the 9th Precinct on the Lower East Side.
American students are bored by math, science and engineering. They buy smartphones and tablets by the millions but dont pursue the skills necessary to build them. Engineers and physicists are often portrayed as clueless geeks on television, and despite the high pay and the importance of such jobs to the countrys future, the vast majority of high school graduates dont want to go after them.

Nearly 90 percent of high school graduates say theyre not interested in a career or a college major involving science, technology, engineering or math, known collectively as STEM, according to a survey of more than a million students who take the ACT test. The number of students who want to pursue engineering or computer science jobs is actually falling, precipitously, at just the moment when the need for those workers is soaring. (Within five years, there will be 2.4 million STEM job openings.)

One of the biggest reasons for that lack of interest is that students have been turned off to the subjects as they move from kindergarten to high school. Many are being taught by teachers who have no particular expertise in the subjects. They are following outdated curriculums and textbooks. They become convinced theyre no good at math, that math and science are only for nerds, and fall behind.

Thats because the American system of teaching these subjects is broken. For all the reform campaigns over the years, most schools continue to teach math and science in an off-putting way that appeals only to the most fervent students. The mathematical sequence has changed little since the Sputnik era: arithmetic, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and, for only 17 percent of students, calculus. Science is generally limited to the familiar trinity of biology, chemistry, physics and, occasionally, earth science.
On Super Tuesday, as in New Hampshire a few weeks ago, Donald Trump basically has the devils luck.

In the days before Tuesdays slew of primaries, there were signs that Trump might be pulling away, expanding his support beyond the rough one-third of the party thats backed him since last summer. One poll had him at 49 percent nationally, another at 40 percent in Virginia, another close to Ted Cruz in Texas. There was the Chris Christie endorsement, the Jeff Sessions endorsement  and yes, the K.K.K. business, but the Trump Is Inevitable drumbeat on cable news and Twitter sometimes seemed to drown that controversy out.

But in the end, Trumps numbers were impressive but not at all a race ender. The states in play were mostly up and down what you might call the Trump Belt  the swath of America, extending from the Deep South up through Appalachia and into New England, where his unusual coalition is strongest. Yet he won less than half the nights delegates, with vote totals still in the 35 percent range  peaking in Massachusetts and Alabama (an amazing combination), but falling into the 20s outside the Trump Belt (in Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota) and holding in the 30s elsewhere.

For a candidate who is not only opposed but feared as a race-baiting demagogue by almost the entire party establishment, who looks less electable than any of his rivals in the fall, who has prominent conservatives (including, this week, a sitting United States senator) lining up to swear theyll never vote for him, who is basically in undeclared war with the last Republican president and the last two party nominees  for such a candidate, 35 percent of the vote still does not seem like it should be enough to win through to the nomination.

Yet the Super Tuesday results did nothing, nothing, to clarify who exactly might win it instead. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are locked in a bizarre standoff, where each one has an entirely plausible claim to be the not-Trump candidate, and neither has a clear reason to depart the race.
CHICAGO  The state of the new music scene here is strong, if last weekend is anything to go by.

It was the climax of the first Frequency Festival, conceived by the writer Peter Margasak as an expansion of his Frequency Series, a Sunday-night feature heard regularly at the drink-and-listen space Constellation. Orbiting around Constellation but also taking in other spots around the city last week, the festival presented mostly local performers (some nationally prominent, others headed that way) in seven concerts, of which I caught three.

All were formidable, none more so than the Spektral Quartets free Sunday afternoon show at Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. The foursome of Austin Wulliman, Clara Lyon, Doyle Armbrust and Russell Rolen focuses on new music, but isnt beholden to it. Their latest, chirpy release on the Sono Luminus label, Serious Business, quizzically looks at musical humor through three works from the last two years, and a fourth by an up-and-comer named Franz Josef Haydn.

Straiter laces prevailed here for an engrossing program, Prismatic Memory. The quartet proved that they have everything: a supreme technical command that seems to come easily; a capacity to make complicated music clear; and, most notably on this occasion, an ability to cast a magic spell of silence over a restless, gallery-going audience.
The SheepOver is an unusual feel-good story. Theres the brief narrative itself, in which an orphan lamb named Sweet Pea falls sick and, in a double-whammy happy ending, not only recovers under the tender care of her animal friends, attentive farmer-owners and a country vet named Alison, but is allowed to have a fantastic sleepover party in the greenhouse. Theres also the lovely glimpse the story gives of an interconnected rural utopia, in which farm animals, people and even wild animals look out for one another. And theres the storys deeper emotional level: It strikingly calls to mind small children acting out a real-life drama with, say, stuffed animals.

Thats all aside from the almost miraculous story of the book itself: It was originally self-published by the Churchmans, who operate a small farm in Vermont and based The SheepOver on the true story of one of their own lambs. John Churchman is also a photographer, and he came up with a process to transform photos from the farm to accompany the narration. They brought the book to a local bookstore, whose owner loved it, and they soon found an agent and a fancy New York publisher, landing whats known in the business as a mid-six-figure deal for this book and several more about the creatures on their farm.

Creating a picture book seems something like splatter art: It looks like such a natural process that everyone thinks they can do it. But that is simply not true. This sort of story happens pretty much never, despite the many self-published picture books out there, and all the agents and publishers hunting for the next hit.

What separates The SheepOver from the self-published pack? A few things, I think. The story itself is perfectly paced and gently reassuring  two fail-safe qualities when it comes to holding the attention and interest of small children. The Churchmans seem to have come to them intuitively rather than through an apprenticeship in or study of childrens literature. There is a whiff of outsider art to the book  of not really caring, or perhaps not even knowing, what mainstream childrens books look like.
Despite being provided this opportunity to respond to the peer reviewers, the lawyers said, the defendants remained silent on this point, thereby misleading the NEJM.

Dr. Drazen confirmed that a peer reviewer, whose identities are kept confidential, had asked about such data, but said the editors had rephrased the question to ask whether such data was available throughout the course of the trial. Duke then answered no, he said.

The letters three authors, two from Duke and one affiliated with the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Duke.

Dr. Drazen questioned the value of comparing lab results taken at only two points during the trial, noting that peoples blood-clotting levels can vary greatly over time. Theres so much variation among people that it probably wouldnt be clinically informative, he said.

However, he said, the Duke researchers had since agreed to conduct an analysis of the lab data.

Dr. Drazen also said that the editors had not been in contact with either Johnson & Johnson or Bayer. A spokeswoman for Johnson & Johnson said the analysis by Duke was conducted independently of the company. Although a company employee serves on the trials executive committee, she said he recused himself from the conduct of the reanalysis, the drafting of the research letter, and provided no feedback before it was submitted. Bayer declined to comment.

In a previous statement, Duke said it had conducted its research separately from the two companies. But this fall, Bayer submitted an analysis to the European Medicines Agency that was nearly identical to the approach used by the Duke researchers, comparing the outcomes of patients who had specific medical conditions with outcomes of those who did not. And the legal document filed last week cites a document obtained from one of the companies that describes the peer-review process.

Some experts say this case is reminiscent of other instances in which drug companies concealed or altered drug-trial data in medical journals. In 2005, for example, The New England Journal of Medicine published a rare Expression of Concern after it learned that researchers had failed to include three heart attacks in a study of the painkiller Vioxx, made by Merck, which has since been withdrawn from the market. In that case, editors learned that data had been deleted from the trial manuscript two days before it was submitted to the journal.
Five years ago, the government adopted new rules allowing agencies to set aside specific contracts for bidding only by companies owned by women.

I think we can attribute the government meeting its goal directly to that being put in place, said Ann Sullivan, the head of government relations for Women Impacting Public Policy, a group that lobbied for the change. They werent going to meet it simply by wishing and hoping; there needed to be a program specifically designating some contracts.

A more recent change, made late last year, allows procurement officers to go a step further on some small contracts and award them directly to qualified companies, without competitive bidding.

Rebecca Boenigk, the chief executive and a co-founder of Neutral Posture, a furniture manufacturer, said her federal sales increased immediately after the change. She brought in $7 million last year from government contracts and expected that number to double or triple this year.

All of the sudden, were getting calls and interest from all over the place, she said.

Her company, in Bryan, Tex., employs about 100 people. It has been a government contractor for more than 20 years, but set-asides for businesses owned by women have been of little use to Ms. Boenigk because there are so few others in her industry for her to compete against.
Campari, the worlds sixth-largest premium spirits maker, reported better than expected sales for 2015 on Tuesday, driven by its top brands. The company is focusing on its higher-margin Campari, SKYY vodka, Wild Turkey whiskey, Aperol and Jamaica rum brands to lift revenue growth and improve its overall margins. It said total sales came in at 1.66 billion euros ($1.8 billion) last year, up 3 percent over a comparable period. The pace of sales growth for the five higher-margin brands nearly doubled in the second half of 2015. Shares of Campari were up more than 3 percent in Italy.
Olympus, the nations largest distributor of endoscopes and related equipment, will pay $646 million to resolve separate criminal and civil investigations into claims of kickbacks and foreign bribery, company and federal officials announced Tuesday. Olympus said its United States unit would pay $623.2 million plus interest to end a kickback case in New Jersey. The company also agreed to a corporate-integrity agreement and the appointment of a monitor. The firms Latin American medical business will pay $22.8 million to resolve a separate criminal case in which it was accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. As part of the agreement, other criminal charges were dropped. Over all, it is the largest total amount paid by a medical device company for violations involving the anti-kickback statute, federal officials said.
The Queens Library on Tuesday named Dennis M. Walcott, the former New York City schools chancellor and deputy mayor, as its president and chief executive officer. He joins the library system after its last president was dismissed amid political turmoil and questions about spending.

Mr. Walcott, 64, a Queens native whose career began as a kindergarten teacher, led the citys Department of Education from 2011 to 2013, and before that, he was a deputy mayor for education and community development under Michael R. Bloomberg.

We are confident that Dennis Walcott has exactly the right skills and depth of experience to lead the library through the challenging years ahead, Carl S. Koerner and Judith Bergtraum, trustees for the library who led the lengthy search, said in a statement.

Bridget Quinn-Carey, a former chief operating officer at the library, has been the systems interim president since Thomas W. Galante was ousted in 2014.
Activists have also noted that the footage the authorities have released so far is incomplete, offering the possibility that something happened to provoke the young women into a physical confrontation before the videos begin. Though State Police experts have been working to extract clearer audio from the recordings, viewers have noted that it is difficult to determine what is happening in the chaotic, noisy crowd depicted in the videos.

I walked away saying, I cant tell you what happened in that video; you havent shown me anything to confirm what these young women are saying, and I cant deny it either, because its just not clear to me, said Alice Green, a social justice activist and the director of the Center for Law and Justice, based in Albany. She was one of several community and university leaders whom the district attorney invited to review the evidence before charges were brought. But once you lodge charges against someone, she added, in the minds of most people, thats guilt.

To Ms. Agudios lawyer, Mark Mishler, public opinion had outstripped the available evidence.

The women have received death threats, he said, and their names have been paired on social media with images of nooses and references to lynching.

The vilification of these young women is quite disturbing and scary, Mr. Mishler said in an interview.

Many of their peers, however, saw the videos and charges as evidence of betrayal.

Its disappointing and saddening that somebody who seemed to be trying to help the movement would be the one to set it back, said Lauren Hospedales, a freshman, referring to Ms. Burwell. She said she was worried that itll be harder for people to believe and support minority women in similar situations in the future.

Yet, Ms. Hospedales added, We needed her to get that conversation started, so it wasnt a waste of time.

Sami Schalk, an assistant professor in the universitys English department, who has devoted class time since the bus episode to talking through the implications with her students, said she was concerned that the womens detractors had failed to consider the prejudice and racialized language the young women may have encountered on campus or before the bus ride that could have played a role in provoking the fight.
Police officers in Manhattan will no longer arrest most people who commit minor offenses like urinating in public and riding between subway cars under a policy shift announced on Tuesday that officials hope will help to reduce a backlog of cases pending in Criminal Court.

The joint decision by the Police Department and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will take effect on Monday. Under the new policy, officers will issue criminal summonses for such offenses rather than making arrests except when they determine an offender poses a threat to public safety.

The changes apply to minor offenses like drinking alcohol in public, taking up two seats on the subway or putting ones feet on the seats. Officials estimate the changes will result in about 10,000 fewer cases being prosecuted in Manhattan Criminal Court each year, freeing up police officers, prosecutors and the court to focus on more serious crimes.

Summonses are adjudicated by judges, who ask the recipient questions about the alleged violation or infraction before deciding whether to dismiss the ticket or impose a penalty, usually a fine. The process is typically simpler and faster than prosecuting an arrest, which requires officers and prosecutors to spend hours processing a suspect, filing paperwork, building a case and showing up for court appearances.
As many as 40 percent of students in New York City recommended for special-education services may not be getting them, the Education Department said in a report released on Monday.

But even more striking, the department said that its data systems were so unreliable that it was not exactly sure what percentage of students were not receiving the services.

The report, released to comply with a law passed by the City Council last year, said that major deficiencies in the design of the Special Education Student Information System, which is supposed to track students receiving special education, continue to affect the D.O.E.s ability to reliably report specific compliance metrics.

That for us is one of the biggest takeaways, said Maggie Moroff, the special-education policy coordinator at Advocates for Children, which helps at-risk students. The lack of reliable data is hugely important, she said, because you need the data to figure out where the holes in the service delivery are.
When the U.S. military trains fighter pilots, it uses a concept called the OODA loop. It stands for observe, orient, decide, act. The idea is that if your ability to observe, orient, decide and act in a dogfight at 30,000 feet is faster than the other pilots, youll shoot his plane out of the sky. If the other pilots OODA loop is faster, hell shoot you out of the sky. For a while now, its been obvious that our national OODA loop is broken  and it couldnt be happening at a worse time.

Our OODA loop is busted right when the three largest forces on the planet  technology, globalization and climate change  are in simultaneous nonlinear acceleration. Climate change is intensifying. Technology is making everything faster and amplifying every voice. And globalization is making the world more interdependent than ever, so we are impacted by others more than ever.

These accelerations are raising all the requirements for the American dream  they are raising the skill level and lifelong learning requirements for every good job; they are raising the bar on governance, the speed at which governments need to make decisions and the need for hybrid solutions that produce both stronger safety nets and more entrepreneurship to spawn more good jobs. They are also raising the bar on leadership, requiring leaders who can navigate this complexity and foster a resilient country.

My own view is that these three accelerations have begun blowing up weak countries  see parts of the Middle East and Africa  and theyre just beginning to blow up the politics of strong ones. You can see it in America, Britain and Europe. The challenges posed by these accelerations, and what will be required to produce resilient citizens and communities, are forcing a politics that is much more of a hybrid of left and right.
FROM the start, Bernie Sanders has insisted that his bid for president is more than just a bid for president. This campaign is not about electing Bernie Sanders for president, the campaign tweeted in August. It is about creating a grass-roots political movement in this country.

By that measure, the test of the political revolution Mr. Sanders has started wont just be the strength of his primary challenge, but also whether his movement can survive without him and help get other candidates elected.

Melissa Stevens, 33, hopes that it can. She is a Sanders supporter, a single mother of two and a first-time candidate for the Maine statehouse who frequently talks about struggling to support her family while working low-wage jobs. A lot of these big ideas and these big revolutions happen at a local and state level first, she said.

Ms. Stevens is part of a broader network of progressive activists who say that the movement that has coalesced around Mr. Sanders can bring change to state and local governments around the country, regardless of what happens with his presidential bid.
Fairfax, Va.  Forty or so members of George Masons College Republicans were gathered in a fluorescent-lit conference room to watch Super Tuesday election returns. They had everything they needed: chips, cookies, store-brand soda and Fox News Megyn Kelly, announcing results, projected on a screen.

We should do a straw poll! one student suggested.

Devon Flynn, a senior and chair of the group, obliged, taking a tally on a dry-erase board. In all, 17 of the groups members supported Senator Marco Rubio while just four supported Donald J. Trump.

That turned out to be a better showing than Mr. Rubio had elsewhere in Virginia.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Flynn had cast his own ballot for Mr. Rubio. And while Mr. Rubio put up a strong showing in the state  finishing in second with 32 percent of the vote  that was not enough for him to beat Mr. Trump. Still, Mr. Flynn was encouraged, noting that Virginia awards its delegates proportionally.

He added that he would not vote for Mr. Trump under any circumstances.

Donald Trump doesnt represent the Republicans at all, he said. His comments against Muslims  we have members in here that are Muslim  calling them all terrorists is not acceptable.
POLICE sergeants routinely tell their officers that their most important job is to make it home safely. And it is no wonder why they dispense this advice. With an estimated 350 million firearms in the United States, officers daily face the threat of gun violence, making this country far more dangerous for the police than countries with tight controls on guns.

Last Saturdays shooting of Ashley Guindon, a police officer in Prince William County in Virginia, is a reminder of how dangerous policing can be. She was shot dead while responding to a domestic violence call on her first day on patrol.

Unfortunately, this sense of ever-present danger has shaped police training, tactics and culture in ways that can lead to responses that are neither proportional nor necessary in situations that dont involve guns. We need to rethink our tactics in such circumstances.

Perhaps the best example is the so-called 21-foot rule. In many police departments, officers are trained to be prepared to shoot if they are within 21 feet of someone with a knife. This can lead to whats known among the police as a lawful but awful response.
The Justice Department has argued that Apple has a legal responsibility to help the government unlock iPhones that may contain evidence needed in criminal investigations. A federal judge in Brooklyn argues, persuasively, that the company is not obligated to do so.

In an order on Monday, Magistrate Judge James Orenstein rejected an effort by the Justice Department to force Apple to help it unlock an iPhone used by a Queens resident who has pleaded guilty to drug charges. The case raises some of the same issues before a federal court in California where the government wants Apple to remove an impediment to unlocking an iPhone that was used by one of the attackers who killed 14 people in San Bernardino. Apple is challenging a decision by the judge that it do so; a hearing is scheduled for March 22.

In the New York case, Judge Orenstein rejected the governments argument that the All Writs Act of 1789 can be used to compel people and businesses like Apple that are not involved in a crime to help the government unearth evidence in situations like this. The act can be used, the judge said, only when doing so is agreeable to the usages and principles of law. But Congress has considered and refused to adopt proposals that would require companies like Apple to help the government get access to data stored on phones and other devices.
The strength of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the Super Tuesday primary contests, evident before the first votes were cast, brings the 2016 presidential race to a point of reckoning. Not enough delegates were at stake to give either candidate a mathematical lock on a nomination, but voters can see the shape of the choice facing them in the general election.

The Republicans seem to be reeling, unable or unwilling to comprehend that a shady, bombastic liar is hardening the image of their party as a symbol of intolerance and division.

Last summer, as Mr. Trump began to rise in the polls, party leaders took umbrage at the idea that theyd have to do something to keep the nomination from the likes of him. They stood aside and said, let voters decide. Now voters are deciding. They are leaning, in unbelievable numbers, toward a man whose quest for the presidency revolves around targeting religious and racial minorities and people with disabilities, who flirts with white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, who ridicules and slanders those who disagree with him.

His opponents, meanwhile, have rushed to adopt his anger-filled message. Its small wonder that Republican leaders dont seem to know quite what to say.
Romantic, rebellious, strange, timeless, antique and unnatural  these are just a few of the ways Guido Palau describes the 27 unique hairstyles hes crafted for this fashion season. As the global creative director of Redken, Palau is one of the busiest men in beauty  particularly during fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris.

At Milan Fashion Week, which concluded on Monday, Palau was behind the tresses at Alberta Ferretti, Prada, Versace, Bottega Veneta and Dolce & Gabbana. Between shows, he strolled around the center of Milan, wandering into boutiques (the Prada store is a priority), patisseries and its grand basilica  and stayed at his home away from home, the Four Seasons. (He always stays in the same room and brings along a few creature comforts  a Cire Trudon Ernesto candle, granola from the Ranch in Los Angeles  to make it feel more like home.) Palau prefers having a swim and ordering minestrone and arugula salad from room service to nightly fashion dinners and parties  at the end of a day of testing and shows, he says, Ive had my fill of people.

Here, Palau shares with T snapshots from his time in Milan last week.
SAN FRANCISCO  Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch joined a parade of Obama administration officials to techs home turf on Tuesday. Their message: National security depends on the industrys cooperation.

The heavyweights from Washington arrived against the backdrop of Apples fight with the Federal Bureau of Investigation over access to an iPhone and a growing fissure between Washington and Silicon Valley.

The F.B.I. is trying to force Apple to write software to help it break into the phone of one of the gunmen in Decembers mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. The phone is protected by a security scheme that would wipe its data after a series of incorrect password attempts. Apple has so far refused to cooperate, and the company is fighting a court order requiring it to aid investigators.

In a speech Tuesday at the RSA Conference, arguably the worlds largest gathering of computer security experts, Ms. Lynch avoided directly addressing the fight with Apple, and emphasized the need to find middle ground.
A NEW DOWNTON ABBEY TOUR

Downton Abbey is coming to a close this Sunday, but fans have the chance to relive the show with the new Tribute to Downton Abbey Tour, a nine-day private trip through England and Scotland showcasing some of the most recognizable filming locations of the series. A private guided tour of Highclere Castle, the grand estate that served as Downton Abbey in the show, is a highlight; the itinerary also includes afternoon tea at the Ritz London, where Lady Edith and Lady Rosamund dine; a walking tour in London to see sites from the show such as Lady Rosamunds residence in Belgravia; visiting the village of Bampton in Oxfordshire where Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley were wed in Season Three; and a day at the 50,000-acre Inveraray Castle on the banks of Loch Fyne in Scotland, and the fictional location of Duneagle Castle, the home of the MacClare family and Lady Rose. Prices from $4,500 a person inclusive of accommodations, breakfast, private driver and guide throughout and tea at the Ritz.

AND A HOUSE OF CARDS HOTEL OFFER

The Jefferson, Washington, D.C., an upscale hotel in the heart of the city, has a new package timed to the launch of the fourth season of the Netflix series House of Cards, premiering March 4. Called Welcome to Our House (of Cards), it includes a two-night stay, in-room access to the first three seasons of the show, a barbecue breakfast of ribs, coleslaw and cornbread and a session with a trainer who will run with or can map out what is believed to be Claire Underwoods running route in the city; Ms. Underwood is a main character in the series and played by the actress Robin Wright Penn. Available until March 31. Prices from $706 for two people per night.

FOOD FESTIVAL, GOLDEN GATE VIEW

Its a food festival with views of the Golden Gate Bridge: From March 11 to 13, Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, Calif., will host the second annual 2016 Lexus Culinary Classic. The three-day festival includes six different events featuring prolific chefs and showcasing wines from 20 California vintners. Four chefs  Michelle Bernstein from the Thompson Miami, Mauricio Luna from XV Beacon in Boston, John Cox from Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur and Justin Everett from Cavallo Point  will prepare a multicourse menu for the opening night dinner; other events include a brunch paired with sparkling wine, a four-course dinner paired with classic American cocktails and a tasting on the final day of small bites and wines from the festivals chefs and winemakers. Tickets for the events may be purchased individually. Prices from $100.

A GULFSTREAM JET TO MIAMI  AND A HOTEL ON THE BEACH

A ride on a Gulfstream jet from New York City to Miami followed by a luxury hotel stay on the beach  thats the idea behind the Setai One-Click Miami Weekend, a collaboration between the aviation company Blade and the Setai, an upscale property in Floridas South Beach. Its bookable through the Blade smartphone app and available on weekends through April 15; included are a round-trip flight from Westchester County Airport to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport on a 12-seater Gulfstream jet where guests are served cuisine created by the chef Todd English, a two-night stay in a suite at the Setai, round-trip helicopter transfers to Westchester County Airport from Blades Manhattan lounge and airport transfers in a Bentley in Miami. Prices from $4,500.
The Super Tuesday results make it clear that Donald Trump can still be beaten, yet also make it seem less likely that his Republican rivals will ultimately bring him down.

He holds only 33 percent of the popular vote in the returns counted so far; 35 percent if you exclude Ted Cruzs home state, Texas. Its a low enough number to suggest he could still lose the nomination if the field ever narrowed to a one-on-one race.

But such a contest between Mr. Trump and anyone else now seems less likely to develop soon, particularly before the winner-take-all states on March 15. The results cement Mr. Trump as a very clear front-runner for the Republican nomination.
The police said an officer shot and killed a man after a two-hour standoff on Tuesday at a central Florida home. Palm Bay officers went to the home in the morning after receiving calls reporting a man making threats to three construction workers at a neighboring house. A man exited the home several times during the standoff but then went back inside. The police said the man finally came out around 11:30 a.m. carrying a firearm, and an officer fired a single shot, killing him. No names were released. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate the episode.
The Republican governor of South Dakota on Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have restricted bathroom access for transgender students and made the state the first to adopt such a measure.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard put out a statement late in the day saying that the bill did not address any pressing issue facing the state, and that it would have put schools in the difficult position of following state law while knowing it openly invites federal litigation.

The measure was pushed by conservative legislators who said it was an effort to protect the privacy of all students. But it appeared to conflict with the Obama administrations interpretation of federal civil rights law and seemed likely to be headed for a court challenge.

If and when these rare situations arise, I believe local school officials are best positioned to address them, Mr. Daugaard wrote in a letter to lawmakers announcing his decision. Instead of encouraging local solutions, this bill broadly regulates in a manner that invites conflict and litigation, diverting energy and resources from the education of the children of this state. State Representative Fred Deutsch, the Republican who introduced the South Dakota bill, said he would not seek an override. Mr. Deutsch has said he believed that the federal Education Department had overstepped in its interpretation of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, and that students biological sex should determine which restroom they use. Mr. Deutsch said he had spoken with Mr. Daugaard shortly before the veto statement was released.
Two ex-lawmakers who were forced out of office in a sex scandal appeared in court on misconduct charges Tuesday, with one, Todd Courser, calling the case baseless. A lawyer for the second ex-lawmaker, Cindy Gamrat, entered a not guilty plea on her behalf to avoid having the charges read in a courtroom, four days after felony charges were filed by Attorney General Bill Schuette. Mr. Courser appeared without a lawyer. Both Ms. Gamrat and Mr. Courser were released on bond. The charges against the two Republicans mostly relate to an effort to cover up their affair, either by using publicly paid staff or lying to investigators. They are also accused of telling staff members to forge their signatures on legislation. Asked if he had lied, Mr. Courser said: No, not to my recollection. I didnt intentionally deceive anyone.
Over four decades, at least 50 priests and other church employees molested hundreds of children in a small Roman Catholic diocese in central Pennsylvania, and in many cases their superiors knew of the abuses but did not remove the priests or notify law enforcement, according to a grand jury report released on Tuesday.

But none of the findings will result in prosecution, according to State Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, whose office led the investigation, because the statutes of limitations on all alleged crimes have expired.

The report names a dozen priests who admitted  to church officials, to the grand jury or both  that they had molested children, and other cases where church records made clear that their superiors believed they were guilty. None were taken to law enforcement, and in cases where police or prosecutors learned of allegations, the report says, church officials worked to hush them up.

They placed their desire to avoid public scandal over the well-being of innocent children, the report says.
They won delegates and, in some cases, primaries. But they did not win the night.

Now, with Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump out to clear leads in their parties nominating contests, their rivals are hatching plans to chase them down. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will set out to prove his campaign has the support and mettle to survive a winding primary calendar. (He has made clear that it has the money.) Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, meanwhile, are left to tussle anew in a bid to emerge as the chief alternative to Mr. Trump.

Here is how they all plan to forge ahead:

Ted Cruz

HOUSTON  A few months ago, Super Tuesday was billed as the night when Senator Ted Cruz would seize control of the Republican primary campaign with a string of Southern victories.

It did not quite happen that way.

By holding on to his home state of Texas and winning Oklahoma, Mr. Cruz was, as of 10 p.m. Tuesday, the only candidate who had beaten Mr. Trump, furthering his argument that no one else can.
Going into the nationwide contests, Mrs. Clinton held a delegate lead of 91 to 65 over Mr. Sanders. About 880 of the 4,765 total delegates were at stake on Tuesday; under party rules, they will be awarded proportionally based on vote tallies for each of the candidates, with Democratic-leaning congressional districts and areas assigned the most delegates.

Mrs. Clinton was set to win at least 150 more delegates than Mr. Sanders from Tuesdays states; the final delegate allocation will be determined in the coming days. That outcome would give Mrs. Clinton a bigger lead than Mr. Obama eventually established in 2008, which she was unable to overcome. The delegate haul resulted from a broad cross-section of support for Mrs. Clinton: In Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, blacks accounted for more than half the population in some districts, while Hispanics dominated many of the districts in Texas that allocated delegates on Tuesday. Mrs. Clinton had some of her best results in these regions, and also did well in largely white areas of the south.

Mrs. Clinton won about six in 10 white voters in Alabama and Arkansas, and she performed strongly in white rural parts of Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia  results that her advisers highlighted as evidence that she could do well with working-class white voters in Ohio, Michigan and other states. These voters were a key part of her base in 2008 but are now being targeted by Mr. Sanders as well as Mr. Trump.

We have the makings of a broad-based diverse coalition that could not just power her to the nomination but make for a winning coalition in a general election, said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman. But having said that, I think we have room to grow in certain areas.

Mrs. Clinton herself signaled that she would be more focused on the working-class white voters who have flocked to Mr. Trump. At her Miami rally, she vowed to help lift up struggling Rust Belt communities and small Appalachian towns that have been hollowed out by the loss of jobs and opportunities. Exit polls by Edison Research on Tuesday night showed that Mrs. Clinton performed strongly with blacks in Virginia and Hispanics in Texas, the most powerful Democratic forces in those states, and leading with men, women and white voters.

In 2008, by contrast, Mrs. Clinton did well with white voters and had success in some states with Hispanics, but she repeatedly lost the black vote to Mr. Obama and was never able to demonstrate that she could attract a winning coalition of racially and ethnically mixed voters nationwide.
Asked what they liked in Mr. Trump, his voters described attributes that his opponents have tried to paint as failings. His fierce and sometimes offensive comments on Mexican and Muslim immigrants, and on waterboarding and killing family members of Islamic State fighters, demonstrate, his voters said, a refreshing willingness to disregard political correctness.

Hes saying how the people really feel, said Janet Aguilar, 59, clad in a Red Sox jacket, who voted for Mr. Trump in Everett, Mass. Were all afraid to say it.

Where others see a twice-divorced ladies man now married to a much younger model, his fans saw the head of a successful family whose children, as Albert Banda, the cabdriver from Somerville, Mass., put it, are respectable and decent members of society who arent running around like Paris Hilton and dragging their bodies through the mud.

Mr. Trumps huge ego? Not necessarily a problem. He doesnt just want to be a president. He wants to be the greatest president, said Elizabeth Burns, the Virginia mother, who said she campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2008. That works in our favor because he doesnt want to fail. He sees himself as too big to fail.

Those supporting him did not always agree with everything he said, or the way he said it, and they were not even convinced that he would be able to follow through on all of his big, brash promises. But they were willing to give him their conditional support, drawn to him by his tough talk and bravado, as well as their own disappointment and even fatalism about the politicians they were used to seeing on the menu.
FAIRFAX, Va.  On the eve of Super Tuesday, as Hillary Clinton urged her supporters to turn out to vote, people on the sidelines of her campaign rally here seemed less revved up than resigned.

The time had come, several said, to end their romance with Bernie Sanders and settle down with Mrs. Clinton.

Bernie Sanderss odds of getting the nomination are maybe not that great, said Mitchell Westall, 19, of Suffolk, Va., who added that he had been intrigued by the Vermont senators vision. So Im looking at the other Democrat.

Mrs. Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state, is not used to being the other Democrat. But as voters cast ballots Tuesday in 11 states that could give her a prohibitive lead in the race for the partys presidential nomination, she seemed to be enjoying something of a homecoming: After eyeing, enjoying and encouraging Mr. Sanderss insurgency for months, Democrats seemed ready to restore to Mrs. Clinton and her candidacy the air of inevitability with which she began her campaign in April.
The cultural and ideological fissures opening in the party could take a generation to patch, according to Republican leaders, historians and strategists  and many are convinced that Mr. Trump will guarantee Democrats another four years in the White House. Nominating Donald Trump would be the best gift the Republican Party could give to Hillary Clinton, Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Democrats are now poised to exploit a fortuitous intersection of forces: an improving economy with low unemployment; a Democratic president with a nearly 50 percent approval rating; a Supreme Court battle in which Republicans are energizing liberal voters with vows of obstruction; and now, what is likely to be a relatively smooth nomination process that will give Mrs. Clinton a chance to bring together the partys disparate strands.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause. Learn more about our process.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton, should she prevail in the primary campaign, has plenty of repair work left to do: wooing the thousands of liberal supporters whose feelings of alienation with the Democratic establishment drew them to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. She began that effort on Tuesday night, in a victory speech that focused heavily on the Sanders campaign theme of economic justice. And there is little indication, so far, that these voters will spurn Mrs. Clinton for a Republican.

And Mrs. Clinton needs to navigate a series of potentially damning investigations into her use of a private email server that have raised enduring questions about her judgment and management. Those inquiries have introduced a level of unpredictability that her campaign can do little to control.

But officials in both parties acknowledge that Democrats are now better positioned to capture the presidency in November.The Democrats are having a loud squabble, but the party is broadly unified behind certain themes, said David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist. The Republicans are engaged in a full-out civil war, fundamentally riven by mistrust, and it is very hard to see how they put the pieces back together once this fight is done.
Voters from the Super Tuesday states explain, in their own words, what drew them to support the days big Democratic winner, Hillary Clinton.

_____

On foreign policy, shes stronger than Bernie would be. If Trump gets elected Ill have to move.

Elizabeth Maffei, 40

Chelsea, Mass.

_____

Ill vote for Hillary, but you can be sure Im dragging my toes. I just have this edge about a Clinton back in the White House. I liked Bill, but having another Clinton is not what America is about.

Sherri Williams, 60

Leesburg, Va.

_____

I love Hillary. I think what she needs is a strong dose of Bernie. I voted for Bernie  to push her more in the direction that we would both like her to go.
WOODBRIDGE, Va.  A police officer who was fatally shot on her first day on the job was remembered Tuesday as someone who helped in soup kitchens, at suicide prevention programs and at mortuary services for Marines killed overseas.

Thousands of people came to the Hylton Memorial Chapel here to honor the officer, Ashley Guindon, 28. Officer Guindon died Saturday when she and two other Prince William County police officers were investigating a domestic disturbance at a home in Woodbridge, about 20 miles south of Washington.

As the officers approached the front door of the house, a gunman opened fire, hitting all three, the police said. Officer Guindon later died at a hospital; the other two officers were treated for their wounds. The suspect, Ronald W. Hamilton, 32, who the police said also fatally shot his wife before they arrived, was arrested on murder charges.

Officer Guindon was the 11th officer in the nation to die by gunfire in the line of duty since Jan. 1, a significant increase from the same period a year ago, when one shooting death was recorded, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Another officer was killed Tuesday night in Euless, Tex., between Dallas and Fort Worth.
A legal battle by the Haitian victims of a cholera epidemic against the United Nations reached its highest level in an American court on Tuesday, as lawyers for the plaintiffs were permitted to argue before a federal appeals panel why they believe the United Nations is not entitled to immunity.

Based on the questions asked by the three judges hearing the arguments in a packed Manhattan federal courtroom, they appeared sympathetic to the victims.

The outcome of the case, in which United Nations peacekeepers are accused of having negligently brought cholera to Haiti after their deployment in 2010 following a disastrous earthquake, could have enormous implications for the United Nations. The global organization has asserted that a 1946 convention on privileges and immunities insulates it from such legal action  a defense that the appellate judges are now weighing.

Their decision is expected in the next several months, and if they agree with the cholera victims the case could be returned to a lower court for trial. If the judges deny the appeal, lawyers for the victims said, they would seek to bring the issue before the United States Supreme Court.
Stuart J. Beck, a lawyer and television executive, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 69.

His obituary might well have ended there if Mr. Beck, a veteran of Harvards Hasty Pudding Clubs burlesque theatricals, had not borrowed a page from the Cold War satire The Mouse That Roared to score an unconventional diplomatic coup: For a decade he was the ambassador to the United Nations from the remote Western Pacific island nation of Palau.

His wife, Tulik, whom he met in Palau in 1980 while on an environmental study mission, said he died of renal cancer.

Mr. Beck became not only an indefatigable advocate for Palaus 21,000 residents (a population barely three times as great as that of his suburban hometown, Bronxville, N.Y.) but also an honorary citizen. He took on the job as the islands $1-a-year ambassador to the United Nations after he had persuaded Palau (rhymes with allow), then a newly independent nation, to claim a seat in the General Assembly.

I said to them, Look, you dont produce anything, you dont manufacture anything, nobodys after your labor pool, you dont have anything that anyone wants, the U.S. already has defense and basing rights, so the only thing of value you have is your U.N. vote, Mr. Beck told The New York Times in 2005.
A gunman attacked and wounded a Saudi preacher and a diplomat from Saudi Arabias embassy late Tuesday before being killed by a police officer in the southern city of Zamboanga, the police said. The preacher, Aaidh al-Qarni, was about to leave Western Mindanao State University after delivering a lecture when he and the embassys religious attache, Turki Assaegh, were shot by the gunman, who darted out from a crowd, said a police spokeswoman, Senior Inspector Helen Limen Galvez. The two victims were treated at a hospital and declared out of danger, Inspector Galvez said. Two other people suspected in connection with the attack were arrested, she said. The motive for the attack was not immediately clear.
A United Nations Security Council vote on the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades was postponed until Wednesday at Russias request, the United States and France said Tuesday. The United States and China spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions, which include mandatory inspections of cargo ships leaving and entering North Korea, in response to the Norths latest nuclear test and rocket launching. Both are in defiance of previous Council resolutions. But Russia, which received the new draft on Thursday along with other Council members, asked for time to study the lengthy text and suggested changes.
An Egyptian forensics official has told the public prosecutors office that the autopsy he conducted on an Italian student showed that he was interrogated for up to seven days before he was killed, two prosecution sources said. The findings are the strongest indication yet that the student, Giulio Regeni, was killed by Egyptian security services because they point to interrogation methods, like burning with cigarettes in intervals over several days, that human rights groups say are a hallmark of the security services. A Interior Ministry spokesman said he knew nothing about the matter. The prosecution sources said Hisham Abdel Hamid, director of the Department of Forensic Medicine, told prosecutors last week that the wounds on the body occurred over different intervals of between 10 to 14 hours, an investigator in the prosecutors office said. Mr. Regeni, 28, disappeared on Jan. 25. He was researching the rise of independent labor unions and had written articles critical of Egypts government, the Italian newspaper that published them said. His body was found in a ditch on Feb. 3. Forensics and prosecution officials have said that his body showed signs of torture and that he had been killed by a blow to the head with a sharp object.
AMMAN, Jordan  Jordanian security forces killed several Islamist militants during a manhunt on Tuesday that involved hundreds of troops in the northern city of Irbid, near the border with Syria, security officials said. A police officer was also killed during the operation.

Riot police officers and special forces took part in the operation, which a security official described as one of the largest sweeps against sleeper cells of sympathizers of hard-line Islamist groups in recent years.

Another security official said the troops and helicopters were deployed mainly in a Palestinian refugee camp in the heart of the city where most of the wanted fugitives were holed up.

Jordan did not confirm the identity of the targets, but said that the security forces had killed a number of fugitive outlaws and wounded several others. At least three members of the security forces were wounded.
WASHINGTON  An elite American Special Operations force has captured a significant Islamic State operative in Iraq and is expected to apprehend and interrogate a number of others in coming months, ushering in a new and potentially fraught phase in the fight against the extremist Sunni militant group.

American defense officials described the capture as a crucial development in battling the Islamic State but said it also raised questions about handling what is likely to be a growing group of detainees.

Although American commandos have captured a handful of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria in discrete operations in recent years, the Pentagon is now faced with the prospect of detaining a larger group of captives and potentially reprising some of the darkest images of the war in Iraq, particularly the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

The American military has largely fought the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from the sky, and large numbers of Islamic State fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria by American airstrikes. The 200-member Special Operations team, made up of many Delta Force commandos, arrived in Iraq in recent weeks and is the first major American combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
Few spend 49 years working for the same company. And fewer still do so at an investment bank.

But Eric Dobkin, among the longest-serving partners at Goldman Sachs, achieved that distinction, as the company announced his retirement on Wednesday.

Mr. Dobkin, age 73, is known by many as the father of the modern-day initial public offering of stock. In 1985, he created the firms equity capital markets division, which changed the way I.P.O.s were conducted by focusing on mutual funds rather than individual investors. It was a pivot that put Goldman Sachs in the forefront of some landmark deals, including Britains largest privatizations and Microsofts initial offering.

Erics passion, creativity, market judgment and trusted advice have helped the firm and our clients tremendously, Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Gary D. Cohn, the banks president , said in a memo to the company on Wednesday.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, Mr. Dobkin joined Goldman Sachs in 1967 in the institutional sales group in Philadelphia. Seven years later, he was transferred to Chicago, and then to New York, and he made partner in 1982. When Goldman Sachs went public in 1999, Mr. Dobkin stayed at the company, despite the windfall of cash that the partners received at the time.
The companys problems were compounded by revelations that Mr. McClendon had taken a personal stake in Chesapeake wells and then used those investments as collateral for up to $1.1 billion in loans, used mostly to pay his share of the cost of drilling those wells.

Those revelations ignited a revolt by Chesapeakes board, and he was forced to leave the company three years ago.

When Mr. McClendon began quietly acquiring leases around 2005, most energy analysts thought the United States faced a future of gas shortages. Billions of dollars were invested in import terminals that would receive liquefied natural gas from Qatar and other gas-producing countries. But Mr. McClendons explorations were so successful that there was no longer any need for imports, and the terminals quickly became virtually unusable.

Now, in a once-unthinkable turnabout, some are being converted to export liquefied natural gas.

Mr. McClendons corporate pursuits reflected his eclectic interests. As the company grew from its origins in 1989, he developed a corporate campus in Oklahoma City that looked more like an Ivy League school than a piece of the oil patch, with a cafeteria that served international fare and a gymnasium outfitted like a spa.

Mr. McClendon dabbled in politics and personally appeared in television commercials promoting the benefits of natural gas as a replacement of coal burning for power. He unsuccessfully pushed for natural gas-fueled cars.

Aubrey Kerr McClendon, the son of Joe and Carole Kerr McClendon, was born July 14, 1959, in Oklahoma City into a family steeped in the oil industry. His father was a petroleum products salesman. Aubrey McClendons lineage also included Oklahoma notables, among them Robert S. Kerr, a former Oklahoma governor and senator and an oilman himself.
LONDON  Nigerian communities from the oil-rich Niger Delta initiated court action on Wednesday in London against the energy giant Royal Dutch Shell, in a case that may have far-reaching implications for whether companies can be sued in Britain for pollution and damages caused by their activities in other countries.

The case is based on accusations by farming and fishing communities that say they have suffered years of damage because of repeated large spills from oil pipelines in their home areas.

The law firm Leigh Day is bringing the claims against Shell and its Nigerian joint venture, the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria, in London on behalf of two communities in the swampy, oil-rich Niger Delta: the Ogale and the Bille.

On Wednesday, the claimants won a small victory when a judge ruled that the Nigerian venture could be included in the case, along with its parent company.
BRUSSELS  Facebook became the latest American technology company on Wednesday to face antitrust hurdles in Europe after the German competition authority opened an investigation into whether the company has abused its dominant position in social networking.

The move puts Facebook, which is used by many of Europes 500 million citizens, alongside other United States technology companies, like Google and Microsoft, which have also faced antitrust investigations into their activities across the region.

European officials have taken a tough stance on how American tech giants operate across the 28-member bloc, as many politicians here remain concerned that these companies often dominate many aspects of peoples digital lives, including social networking, online search and e-commerce.

As part of the new investigation, German authorities said they were looking into whether Facebook misused its position to collect peoples digital information. That included complicated terms and conditions that individuals had to sign to use the social network, and whether such contracts placed unfair constraints on the companys users.
The technology news site CNET is known for covering the latest digital products.

But this week, the site tried something different. On Wednesday, CNET published a 5,500-word story about a female social media guru in Silicon Valley who is kidnapped by a taco truck owner. The man handcuffs the woman in the back of his truck and forces her to create a social media campaign to promote his tacos.

If it sounds like satire, thats because it is. The Last Taco Truck in Silicon Valley is a short story by the novelist Michelle Richmond, and it starts CNETs venture into publishing fiction.

In an era when many general interest magazines have abandoned publishing short fiction, CNET is entering the literary arena with a new monthly series, Technically Literate, which will feature short stories about technology and how it shapes our lives. For its first stories, CNET has recruited several prominent Bay Area authors, including Ms. Richmond, the novelist Nayomi Munaweera; Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban; and Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno.

The fiction series grew out of an effort to attract new audiences to CNET, which has more than 33 million monthly visitors. When the site was introduced about 20 years ago, technology was still a niche subject. Now, technology saturates practically every facet of daily life and takes center stage in movies, television and fiction, including in the HBO show Silicon Valley and recent novels by Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen and Joshua Cohen.
In a sweeping overhaul of its leadership, Tribune Publishing announced on Wednesday that it was combining the role of editor and publisher across its portfolio of newspapers, which include The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune.

With the reorganization, Davan Maharaj, the editor of The Los Angeles Times, will become publisher and editor in chief of the newspaper, and Bruce Dold, who was named editor of The Chicago Tribune two weeks ago, will also take on dual responsibilities. Similar changes will occur at the companys other daily newspapers, including The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Hartford Courant.

The management changes are the latest under the Tribune Publishings new chairman, Michael Ferro, one week after the company abruptly replaced its chief executive, Jack Griffin.

By giving our newsroom leaders dual responsibilities, we are ensuring our local brands remain vital to the communities they serve with our journalists and creators producing premium, compelling content across all mediums, said Justin C. Dearborn, a close associate of Mr. Ferro, who succeeded Mr. Griffin as chief executive.
Born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1979, Ms. Ni Dhulchaointigh grew up on a farm, where her father, John, worked as a farmer, and her mother, Eilis, was a teacher. As a youngster, she had an artistic bent, making paintings and sculptures. She received a degree in fine art from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2001 and a masters degree in product design from the Royal College of Art in London in 2004.

Image A chicken struts with a Sugru leg. Credit... via Sugru

It was at college where she first started experimenting with clay, silicon sealants and other materials for sculpting. She would bring them home and soon started using them around the house  wrapping the putty around knife handles to get a better grip, using it to fix a leaky kitchen sink stopper, adding it as rubber feet to the bottom of a laptop and repairing a mug handle. Her boyfriend, James Carrigan, who is now her husband, noticed her clever repairs and suggested she try to market it.

When she showcased the prototype at a student product design exhibition in 2004, the response was overwhelming, she said. The top two questions were: How much is it and Where can I get it?  she said. She knew she had a potential hit.

With a $50,000 grant from Nesta, a British research firm, in 2005, and a $500,000 equity investment from Lacomp, a venture fund, in 2006, she dove in. She brought in a business partner, Roger Ashby, and hired two former Dow Corning scientists as consultants to help build the prototype. It took five years, 5,000 experiments and 8,000 lab hours to perfect and patent the formula.

At this point, the recession had hit and financing was almost nonexistent to market the product to retailers. We pitched to almost 100 investors without luck, she said. A private investor finally provided $150,000, far short of what was needed.

So, in 2009, she took the social media route, sending samples to dozens of technology bloggers, in the belief that if they saw its potential role in repairing information technology equipment, theyd promote it. The strategy worked. It went viral, she said. When the company introduced its website in December 2009, all 1,000 packages, which took two months to make by hand, sold out within six hours. An additional 2,000 were sold on back order. It was incredible; it changed everything.

Suddenly, investors were reading about us all over the Internet, and they started coming to us asking how they could help, she said. Time magazine listed Sugru, alongside the iPad, as one of the top 50 inventions of 2010.
FRANKFURT  Volkswagen acknowledged on Wednesday that its former chief executive was given a memo in May 2014 that contained information about irregularities in the emissions of its diesel cars, well over a year before the company publicly admitted cheating on pollution tests.

But in its first detailed chronology of the months leading up to that public admission last September, Volkswagen said it did not know whether Martin Winterkorn, the chief executive who resigned after the diesel scandal, had actually read the memo. The company said the memo was included in his extensive weekend reading in May 2014.

In offering that description of events, the company said in a news release on Wednesday that whether or not Mr. Winterkorn had read the document, senior Volkswagen management did not realize the gravity of the diesel emission problem and the potential financial impact until much later.
Fashion has always been a fan of the historical dress-up box.

The 60s and 70s, in particular, seem to have become something of a default inspiration, with keyhole maxi dresses and space-age minis popping up on runways almost every season. Increasingly, however, the 80s have been added to the mix  much to the dismay of some who lived through them  and the decade defined by the shoulder pad is being reassessed.

We got so trapped by the problems of the 80s, so petrified of the shoulder, so petrified of Lurex, so petrified of the excess, that we forget that some of the most interesting designers came from the 80s, said Jonathan Anderson, one of a new wave of designers who have embraced the decade. One of its members is Peter Dundas at Roberto Cavalli, whose debut spring collection was replete with acid-washed denim and bandage dresses, and Gareth Pugh and Alessandro Michele at Gucci, both of whom featured exaggerated shoulders in very different ways in their recent fall shows.

Gaultier, Westwood, Castelbajac; the creativity was nonstop. It was really one of the most influential times, Mr. Anderson added.
PARIS  Hedi Slimanes debut on Oct. 1, 2012, as the new creative and image director of Yves Saint Laurent, with a ready-to-wear collection hed rebranded months before as, simply, Saint Laurent, was the news event of that Paris season.

They came en masse: Kate Moss and Jamie Hince; Marc Jacobs and Diane von Furstenberg; Mario Testino; Valerie Trierweiler, Frances de facto first lady at the time; Azzedine Alaia; Pierre Berge, Saint Laurents partner and the guardian of his legacy; and Betty Catroux, among the most famous of the designers muses. Their anticipation was only heightened by the parallel debut of Raf Simons at Dior, whom the news media insisted on casting (to both mens evident dissatisfaction) as Mr. Slimanes foil and opposite.

All were curious to see what would come next for the man who in 2007 abruptly halted his career as the groundbreaking mens wear designer for Dior Homme  where his pin-thin tailoring was coveted by everyone from Karl Lagerfeld to Madonna  and spent the intervening years as a photographer, mostly in Los Angeles.

Seated front row, at least they could see. It was harder for those major-magazine and newspaper editors shunted to the back row or, in some cases, to the standing-room-only pen. Others, like Cathy Horyn, the fashion critic at the time for The New York Times, and Imran Amed, the founder of The Business of Fashion website, were explicitly not invited. (Mr. Amed sneaked in anyway, with a friends standing ticket.)
Openings and Events

On Thursday, the designer outlet Saks Off 5th will open its first New York City location. It will include a Gilt shop-in-shop (after the acquisition of the luxury flash-sale site by Saks Fifth Avenues parent organization, Hudson Bay Company) that will feature weekly flash sales, starting with Zadig & Voltaire. Snag pieces like a faux-fur hooded jacket ($298, originally $650) for up to 70 percent off while you can. At 125 East 57th Street.

Agnes b. is providing support to the EDM Anthems: French Touch on Film series showcasing films about or with soundtracks by French D.J.s and musicians at the French Institute Alliance Francaise. Grand Central, a Lea Seydoux film scored by the French artist Rob, is showing on Tuesday. Tickets are $3 for institute members (free at the door) and $14 for nonmembers at fiaf.org. At 22 East 60th Street.

The French theme continues on Wednesday when Pierre Henri Mattout, founder of the PHM Peres concept store in the St.-Germain neighborhood of Paris, will appear at a new pop-up shop at Bloomingdales 59th Street at 5:30 p.m. Stop by to meet the man and check out his curated selection of streetwear brands, including Spalwart and Hender Scheme, performance gear like an Arcteryx Veilance cotton-blend hooded jacket ($450) and designer fashion.

Hitting the Racks

See now, buy now is the new reality. Four looks from the Paco Rabanne fall collection, including a knit turtleneck ($1,650) and a padded nylon wrap skirt ($1,050), will be available to order on barneys.com on Thursday (for delivery this month)  a day after they walk down the runway.
There could be a bomb in your house, and you put it there.

In recent years, we have brought home a slew of new battery-powered devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, electronic cigarettes, electric cars, drones, hand-held vacuums and toys.

But while we celebrate how these devices have improved our lives, we havent realized that many are also capable of exploding because of battery malfunctions.

At first, it was just the odd gadget erupting into flames, an anomaly of a single battery that may have been defective. But as of late, such malfunctions seem to be happening every week or so.

Just scan the headlines from the last month. There was the man in Owensboro, Ky., who was at a gas station convenience store when an e-cigarette battery exploded in his pocket, causing severe burns along his right thigh.
The oldest, the 18-year-old Nesrine (Zita Hanrot, who won a Cesar for best new actress), is a struggling medical student, but her 15-year-old sister, Souad (Kenza-Noah Aiche), is an insolent brat. She despises Fatima, who begins to crumble under the stress of her labors and to question her decision to sacrifice everything for her children. Not the least of her challenges is dealing with the hostility of other Arab women in the neighborhood.

An equally tough-minded perspective on immigration is presented in Danielle Arbids Parisienne, set in the mid-90s. The central figure is a young Lebanese woman (Manal Issa), who flees the house of her sexually predatory uncle to pursue her university education and live by her wits with no fixed abode. Among the many obstacles she faces are the strict bureaucratic rules when the time comes to renew her residency permit.

A French film series that doesnt explore variations of love and sex is almost unimaginable, and this years Rendez-Vous has the usual quota of juicy warmblooded attractions. Maiwenns My King is the story of a heedless, 10-year amour fou that deservedly won Emmanuelle Bercot the best actress award in Cannes. Her character knowingly risks her mental stability to pursue her stormy passion for Georgio (Vincent Cassel), a feckless charmer who cant live with or without her. Ms. Bercot fearlessly takes her character to the brink of madness. The story flashes back and forth from a rehabilitation center, where she is recovering from a ski accident, to track the ups and downs of their volatile relationship.

Catherine Corsinis Summertime, set in 1971, is the story of a sizzling lesbian affair between Delphine (Izia Higelin), a farm girl from the Limoges area, and a Parisian feminist (Cecile de France) who abruptly leaves her boyfriend to live with Delphine in the homophobic rural community. The movie is as good as Todd Hayness Carol, which is saying a lot, and its love scenes are considerably more frank. Summertime will inevitably also be compared with Abdellatif Kechiches 2013 film, Blue Is the Warmest Color, which filtered lesbian desire through a prurient male gaze.
What we realized was, it has to be a systematic approach, of asking for diverse crews and artists, he said in an interview with Charles Duhigg, a reporter for The New York Times.

The Oscar issue was symptomatic of a problem; it wasnt the problem, Mr. Abrams added. The Oscars is the last stop on the train. The first stop is what gets made.
At first, the idea of closing Rikers seemed to appeal to people, Mr. Horn said, but when they realized it could mean building jails in their neighborhoods, the mood turned. A fierce grass-roots opposition led by local activist groups like Community in Unity and Green Workers Cooperatives came together to quash the proposal.

Image Martin F. Horn, a former commissioner of the New York City Correction Department, encountered significant opposition a decade ago to building new, smaller jails around the city to replace the worst jails on Rikers Island. Credit... Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

I was buzz-sawed, Mr. Horn said.

In recent weeks, the idea of closing Rikers Island, the sprawling jail complex in the middle of the East River, has once again become a central topic of public discourse, with both Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, arguing that it is the surest way to put an end to the brutality and dysfunction inside city jails. Supporters of the plan envision whittling down the citys inmate population, already at historical lows, and then dispersing the inmates still incarcerated, including those charged with the most serious crimes, to a constellation of modern neighborhood jails in easy proximity to families, lawyers and courthouses.

But can it actually be done this time? Skeptics, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, argue that while the idea is a noble one, in practice it is highly unlikely to be realized: to succeed would require years if not decades, billions of dollars and enormous political capital, while distracting from efforts to address immediate problems facing the jails.

City Hall officials have pointed out that it would not be the governor or the speaker who would bear most of the responsibility for pulling off such a daunting task; it would be the mayor.

Over the last two years, in the face of relentless scrutiny of conditions at Rikers by local and federal law enforcement agencies as well as the media, the mayor has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to improve conditions and reduce the violence. Early on, Mr. de Blasio appointed a correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, with a national reputation as a jail reformer. In October, the administration settled a federal lawsuit over brutality at the jails that among other things called for improved training of officers, thousands of additional surveillance cameras and oversight by a court-appointed monitor.
No ones goal is to have a strike here, he said. Everybody wants to try to work it out.

But Mr. Christie took a swipe at the rail unions before leaving the state to join Mr. Trump on the campaign trail on Tuesday, calling some of their demands outrageous. The governor emphasized that every extra dollar I give them would come from taxpayers and commuter fares.

Mr. Christie, who dropped out of the presidential race last month, has faced growing criticism in New Jersey that he is neglecting the states problems. On Tuesday night, several local newspapers posted an editorial urging him to resign.

David P. Redlawsk, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said it did not look good for the governor to be campaigning with Mr. Trump as anxieties rose over a possible strike and other pressing financial issues in the state.

The question in terms of the governor is to what extent is he laser-focused on whats going on in New Jersey, Professor Redlawsk said, and to what extent is he more focused on the dynamics of the presidential campaign, even though hes not in it.

A strike could begin as early as March 13, which is a Sunday. New Jersey Transit, the nations third-busiest commuter system, may rely on buses and ferries to get commuters to New York City, as it did after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
The inspection and beginning of any needed repairs are expected to take approximately six months, and the library will learn more as the work continues, an official statement dated June 16, 2014, said.

Image Anthony W. Marx, the president and chief executive of the library. Credit... Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

And here we are, in March 2016.

Anthony W. Marx, the president and chief executive of the library, said in an interview last month that safety was paramount. Until that could be guaranteed, there was no chance of allowing the public into the main reading room or the adjoining Bill Blass Public Catalog Room.

Both are to reopen in the fall, he said. This fall.

The reading room will reclaim the sumptuous sheen it acquired in the late 1990s, during a restoration financed in large part by a $15 million donation from the Frederick P. and Sandra P. Rose Foundation. (The reading rooms full formal name honors their children: Deborah, Jonathan F. P., Samuel Priest and Adam R. Rose.)

The catalog room will re-emerge looking better than it has in generations.

That is because the scaffolding needed to inspect both rooms, a platform almost two-thirds of an acre in area, has made it possible to replace a damaged and disfigured ceiling mural in the catalog room.

The mural had been badly redone, Mr. Marx said, and was even more horrifying close up.

The main reading room, an astonishingly generous 297-by-78-foot space, is the very image of a public library, and it has been since opening day in 1911. (Apologies to Patience and Fortitude.) It is approached through the catalog room, which contains the keys to the kingdom. Ceilings in both rooms were ornamented by James Wall Finn (1866-1913), a muralist and decorative artist, with lovely cloudscapes that invited researchers to raise weary eyes and contemplate a nebulous, ethereal infinity.
To the Editor:

Re Name a Supreme Court Pick Now (editorial, March 2):

I agree wholeheartedly with your call for President Obama to nominate a candidate to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

But I disagree completely with your assertion that the president is wasting his time consulting with the Senate leaders. There are two issues.

First, the president is constitutionally required to receive the advice of the Senate. To seek this advice before nominating a candidate makes good sense. If the senators fail to have advice about particular candidates, that is their loss.

Second, the president is treating the Senate with the respect that it deserves. Yes, even an obstructionist Senate deserves some respect.
Mr. Obamas strategy is more subtle. He aims to weave a web of economic and diplomatic ties that create self-interested reasons for Cuban leaders to change. As the president explained to Yahoo News, The more that they see the benefits of U.S. investment, the more that U.S. tourist dollars become woven into their economy, the more that telecommunications is opened up so that Cubans are getting information unfettered by censorship, the more you are laying the foundation for the bigger changes that are going to be coming over time. In the meantime, he says, Washington will continue to push, prod, nudge Cuban leaders to do better on human rights in the near term.

While critics denounce engagement as a betrayal of the Cuban people, the Cuban people themselves overwhelmingly support it. Anyone who was in Cuba, as I was, on Dec. 17, 2014, can testify to the jubilation with which they greeted the announcement. People applauded, hugged one another and cried. Church bells rang across Havana.

In April 2015, an independent poll on the island found that 97 percent of the 1,200 Cubans sampled thought better relations with the United States would be good for Cuba. And lest anyone think people were afraid to speak honestly, the poll also found that Mr. Obama was more popular than either Fidel or Raul Castro (80 percent positive and only 17 percent negative, as compared with 50 percent negative for Fidel and 48 percent negative for Raul). Mr. Obama can expect a warm welcome in Havana.

To be sure, some prominent Cuban dissidents have criticized his approach. Jorge Luis Garcia Perez  also known as Antunez  called the vision of promoting change through engagement a farce promoted by the Castro regime in order to perpetuate itself in power. The political activist Antonio Rodiles has argued that American sanctions failed because they were anemically imposed.

But the dissident community is not monolithic. Miriam Leiva, one of the founders of Ladies in White, a group of women related to jailed dissidents, applauded Mr. Obamas policy as a unique opportunity to assist the Cuban people. Elizardo Sanchez, who founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation and reports monthly about political arrests, also endorsed engagement, saying, Its better to resolve differences in this way, not to make war, either cold or hot.
RIO DE JANEIRO  Brazilian authorities released a Facebook executive from custody here on Wednesday after a judge overturned an order that led to his arrest one day earlier.

Diego Dzodan, a Facebook vice president based in Sao Paulo, was freed around midday, according to a court spokesman. He had been held overnight at a provisional detention center in Sao Paulo, awaiting transfer to the northeastern state of Sergipe.

On Tuesday, the Brazilian federal police arrested Mr. Dzodan, an Argentine, after the company did not hand over information from a WhatsApp messaging account. The information had been requested by a judge in Sergipe as part of a drug trafficking investigation.

The federal police said the arrest was made because Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, repeatedly failed to comply with judicial orders.
If youre looking for a sign of how widespread the debate between Apple and the F.B.I. about privacy has become, Tuesday delivered.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had their best shot yet to explore their views, addressing both the bureau and the company at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. Lawmakers at the hearing lobbed questions at two of the main figures in the debate: James B. Comey Jr., the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bruce Sewell, Apples general counsel.

And as Cecilia Kang and Eric Lichtblau reported, many lawmakers seemed torn over where to draw the line on privacy.

The big question for our country is how much privacy are we going to give up in the name of security, Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, told Mr. Comey, and theres no easy answer to that.
Jim Kimsey, a dot-com entrepreneur who helped turn a failed video game company into America Online, the giant dial-up service that helped bring the Internet to the masses, died on Tuesday at his home in McLean, Va. He was 76.

The cause was cancer, his son Mark said.

Long before Facebook or Twitter, Mr. Kimsey was a co-founder of AOL, connecting a nascent online audience with news and information as never before. Through its online chat rooms and email service, the company influenced a generation of Internet providers and left an imprint on popular American culture, the sound of a buzzing modem and its trademark Youve got mail! entering the national lexicon. (It was the title of a 1998 Nora Ephron film with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.)

Mr. Kimsey steered AOL through its early days as its founding chairman and chief executive, but he largely avoided the spotlight. In 1995, the year Mr. Kimsey stepped down as chairman, The Washington Post called him a behind-the-scenes power broker whose name might lead the average person to draw a blank.

Indeed, one of his best known acts at AOL was handing power to someone else. Mr. Kimsey, a sort of elder statesman for the company, groomed another co-founder, Steve Case, at the time a young Internet marketing expert, to take over.
The most idealistic thinkers see the plan as a way to foster the sort of quasi-utopian future weve only encountered in science fiction universes like that of Star Trek. As computers perform more of our work, wed all be free to become artists, scholars, entrepreneurs or otherwise engage our passions in a society no longer centered on the drudgery of daily labor.

Were talking about divorcing your basic needs from the need to work, said Albert Wenger, a venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures, a proponent who is working on a book about U.B.I. For a couple hundred years, weve constructed our entire world around the need to work. Now were talking about more than just a tweak to the economy  its as foundational a departure as when we went from an agrarian society to an industrial one.

Sam Altman, president of the tech incubator Y Combinator, recently proposed to fund research into U.B.I. The firm has received thousands of applications for research funding, Mr. Altman said; it plans to select winning recipients within a few weeks, and ultimately Y Combinator plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on research to answer some of the most basic questions about life under U.B.I.

Mr. Altman said these questions range from the most practical  how much U.B.I. would cost the country, and whether we could afford it  to deeper issues concerning peoples motivation and purpose in what you might call a postwork age.

When you give everyone free money, what do people do with their time? Do they goof off, or do they try to pursue more meaningful pursuits? Do they become more entrepreneurial? How would U.B.I. affect economic inequality? How would it alter peoples psychology and mood? Do we, as a species, need to be employed to feel fulfilled, or is that merely a legacy of postindustrial capitalism?

There is an urgency to the techies interest in U.B.I. They argue that machine intelligence reached an inflection point in the last couple of years, and that technological progress now looks destined to change how most of the world works.
Despite mistaken impressions, Mr. Trump and his recent relatives had nothing to do with the surname change.

Mr. Oliver himself was careful to refer to a prescient ancestor. Indeed, several centuries have passed since Drumpf evolved into Trump, according to Gwenda Blair, who wrote a biography of Mr. Trump and his family. The Drumpf name appears in tax logs dating to about 1600, and the Trump name first appeared among his ancestors in Germany later that century, she said.

By the time Mr. Trumps grandfather, Friedrich Trump, arrived in New York in 1885 at age 16 with a single suitcase and dreams of wealth, Trump was well-established as the family name, Ms. Blair said. In 1892, Friedrich Trump changed his name to Frederick Trump, a move toward Anglicization that was common among immigrants who hoped to accelerate their assimilation and fend off discrimination.

Immigrants in modern America, however, do not often change their names anymore. In June 2010, only about a half dozen of 500 applications for name changes in New York appeared to be Anglicizing their names, according to a New York Times analysis.

Name changes do remain popular among entertainers. For example, Jon Stewart, whose Daily Show is in some ways the parent of Mr. Olivers HBO program, was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. As Mr. Oliver noted, Mr. Trump once criticized Mr. Stewart for changing his name, tweeting that he should cherish his past  not run from it.
Alarmed by Donald J. Trumps victories in seven states on Super Tuesday, Republicans desperate to sink his presidential bid moved on Wednesday to battle him on two fronts, attacking him with millions of dollars in television ads in Florida while girding for what would be the partys first contested convention in 40 years.

The urgent new efforts, led by a group of corporate executives, financiers and Republican strategists, came as more party leaders expressed fear that Mr. Trumps nomination would taint the party with a stigma of bigotry and recklessness. Yet many also acknowledged that it was now all but impossible to defeat Mr. Trump outright during the primary season.

Still, the focus on Florida, which holds its primary on March 15  and where many of the anti-Trump forces also hope to see Senator Marco Rubio prevail, so he can continue in the presidential race  prompted fresh contributions to groups planning sustained attacks on Mr. Trump. In short order, three groups reserved $5 million of airtime in the state, a figure that is likely to grow.

In a preview aimed at sobering Republican voters, one of the groups, Our Principles PAC, released a web ad called Unelectable, presenting what it warned would be coming this fall from the Democratic Party if Mr. Trump was nominated: clips of journalists and entertainers seizing on a variety of Mr. Trumps statements as racist, of the white supremacist David Duke expressing support for Mr. Trump, and of Mr. Trump refusing to condemn Mr. Duke.
Hillary Clinton set out 10 months ago to inspire and energize the Democratic Party, hoping to bring together the rising American electorate of black, brown, young and female voters into a durable presidential coalition. But buried beneath Mrs. Clintons wide-ranging and commanding victories on Tuesday night were troubling signs of a party that has not yet rallied to her call.

Democratic turnout has fallen drastically since 2008, the last time the party had a contested primary, with roughly three million fewer Democrats voting in the 15 states that have held caucuses or primaries through Tuesday, according to unofficial election results tallied through Wednesday afternoon.

It declined in almost every state, dropping by roughly 50 percent in Texas and 40 percent in Tennessee. In Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, the number of Democrats voting decreased by between a quarter and a third.

The falloff in Democratic primary turnout  which often reveals whether a candidate is exciting voters and attracting them to the polls  reached deep into some of the core groups of voters Mrs. Clinton must not only win in November, but turn out in large numbers. It stands in sharp contrast to the flood of energized new voters showing up at the polls to vote for Donald J. Trump in the Republican contest.
SCRIPT: Applause - Ryan comes on stage VO HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN, THE CURRENT HEAD OF REPUBLICANS , WILL CHAIR THE PARTYS NATIONAL CONVENTION IN JULY. NAT - Ryan says Hey Hey BUT HIS VIEWS ARE ALMOST THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF THE FRONTRUNNER FOR THE NOMINATION, DONALD J. TRUMP. http://fox6now.com/2016/02/19/fox6-news-sits-down-one-on-one-with-house-speaker-paul-ryan/ NATS OF TRUMP AT RALLY VO AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS IN SAN BERNARDINO, MR. TRUMP CALLED FOR BARRING MUSLIMS FROM ENTERING THE UNITED STATES. MR. RYANS SWIFTLY REPUDIATED HIS REMARKS. SOT: Trump 37149 3714937149 we also have this in our system (man, English, 15 sec): Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. // SOT: Ryan 37165_1_paul-ryan-trump-muslims_wg What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and, more importantly, it is not what this country stands for.// Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islamic terror are Muslims. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority - of whom are peaceful, who believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights. VO AND JUST LAST WEEK, MR. TRUMP DEPARTED FROM THE REPUBLICAN PARTYS TRADITIONAL POSITION OF STRONG SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. SOT: Trump: MSNBC Thats probably the toughest deal in the world right now to make.// If I win... Let me be sort of a neutral guy, VO ON THE ISSUE OF ENTITLEMENTS, MR. TRUMP IS AGAINST CONSTRAINING SPENDING FOR SENIORS. MR. RYAN, ON THE OTHER HAND, IS THE ARCHITECT OF THE PARTYS PLAN TO REIGN IT IN. SOTS: Ryan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3VFuWqLBa8 Source Daniel Martinez via Youtube Social security...a cornerstone for many americans...is going bankrupt SOT: Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp-pY9y4VCg Dr.Gina Loudon via Youtube All other people want to cut the hell out of it, Im not going to cut it at all. Im going to bring the money in and I am going to save it // VO AND ON MATTERS OF FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS, MR. TRUMP IS PRESSING FOR AMERICAN ISOLATION WHILE MR. RYAN WANTS IS A KEY PROMOTER IN GLOBALIZATION. SOT: Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kihtDxtcZ54 NFAtoys via youtube (FOX BUSINESS) We lose a fortune on trade. The U.S. loses with everybody. We;re losing over 500 billion dollars in terms of imbalance with china. // SOT: Ryan 37075_1_paul-ryan-on-tpp_wg We have to engage, we have to lead. Only an active forward-leaning america can tear down barriers to american exports for our jobs. // SOT: Ryan: 37075_1_paul-ryan-on-tpp_wg If we want to create good jobs, we need to make more things in America and sell them overseas. Lets never forget 96% of the worlds people dont live in the US. THey live in other countries and we will not sell them as much as we could if we dont negotiate good trade agreements. VO AS DONALD TRUMPS LEAD STRENGTHENS IN THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WILL NEED TO FIGURE OUT A WAY TO RECONCILE THE DIFFERENCES. SOT: Trump: That was the end of that campaign, when they chose Ryan. // SOT: Ryan: Donald Trump makes comments about everybody. I dont take any of this stuff personally. END IT
Voters in 12 states solidified the standing of Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton as the front-runners in their parties nominating contests on Tuesday. But while the results seemed to clarify the Democratic race, the Republicans face some uncertainty in the weeks ahead as Mr. Trumps rivals seek a way forward.

Here are some takeaways from the biggest day of voting so far in the 2016 election:

Trump Can Win All Over

He took seven of 11 states  Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia  and broke the age-old political dictum that a gilded New Yorker could not win in the Deep South. He has now won a majority of the first 15 nominating contests, a point he will raise every time his critics, rivals and opponents suggest he has to be stopped.

With Super Tuesday behind him, Mr. Trump was looking ahead to the general election at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. The candidate, best known for scathing insults and divisive language, made his best attempt at magnanimity. Believe me, Im a unifier, Mr. Trump said.

Trumps Rivals Are Still Looking for a Path

Before Mr. Trumps victory lap, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida made the case  to voters, but also to the party  that they offered the best chance to stop Mr. Trump. Mr. Cruz used his victories, in Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas, to argue that the party should rally around him. Mr. Rubio, 44, is likely to cling to his first win, in Minnesota  a swing state where the electorate is hospitable to the young, fresh-faced Hispanic senator  as he heads toward the primary in his home state of Florida on March 15, where Mr. Trump is leading in the polls.
WASHINGTON  President Obama is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a federal appellate judge in Iowa, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, weighing a selection that could pose an awkward dilemma for her home-state senator Charles E. Grassley, who has pledged to block the president from filling the vacancy.

The F.B.I. has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obamas search to fill the opening created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The president is expected to make his selection in the next couple of weeks, a decision that could reshape the court for decades but faces heated opposition from Republicans in Congress.

Mr. Grassley is at the center of that fight as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, a post in which he alone can decide whether to hold confirmation hearings on a nominee. Like the panels other Republicans, he has vowed not to take any action until after the November election, arguing that the choice should be left to the next president.
Debris that washed up on the coast of Mozambique could be part of the wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished almost exactly two years ago, Malaysian officials said on Wednesday.

If the debris, which was discovered over the weekend, came from the plane  a Boeing 777 that was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  it would add to the theory that the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean. Airplane debris was found in July on Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. French investigators concluded with certitude that the debris  a piece of an aircraft wing known as a flaperon  came from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. No other Boeing 777 is known to be missing.

NBC News, citing unidentified sources, reported on Wednesday that the debris had washed up over the weekend on a sandbank of the Mozambique Channel  the body of water that separates the southeast African nation from Madagascar. Reunion is to the east of Madagascar, and it is roughly 1,500 miles from the Mozambique coast.

Image A piece of metal that washed up on the coast of Mozambique. Credit... Blaine Gibson/ATSB

NBC News reported that investigators in Malaysia, Australia and the United States were analyzing photographs of the object, which had the words no step on it and could be from the horizontal stabilizer, a winglike mechanism attached to the planes tail.
BEIJING  China has released new statistics indicating that it used less coal last year than in 2014, lending support to the view that the country, the worlds largest emitter of carbon dioxide, may have reached a peak in coal consumption.

That would be a boon for global efforts to limit climate change, since industrial coal burning is the primary source of greenhouse gases. The new data, released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, said coal consumption had fallen 3.7 percent in 2015 compared with the previous year. It was the second straight year of decline, according to the bureau, which said coal use had dropped 2.9 percent in 2014.

Much of the world is watching Chinas actions on carbon emissions, since it is responsible for about half of the worlds coal consumption. President Xi Jinping has said that China intends for its greenhouse gas emissions to stop growing around 2030. Some climate experts in China say the peak could come earlier, closer to 2025.
But if the last two characters of each line in the first headline are read together with the lower headline, what emerges seems more sinister, a possible lament for the fate of Chinas journalists under the partys tightening restraints:

The media whose surname is party

Its soul returns to the sea.

The usual mechanics of a suppressed political scandal have kicked into full gear, with the apparent hidden poem, a political tradition in China, coming at a time of ideological tension as the government expands its control. Tensions are also rising before the start of the annual National Peoples Congress in Beijing this week.

Posts appeared on Weibo highlighting the possible insult but were quickly deleted. Conversation swelled, in private because of the sensitivity of the subject. Finally, there was an apparent accounting at the newspaper, with a notice detailing dismissals, self-criticisms and demotions of journalists.

On Tuesday, a notice purportedly from the Communist Party committee of the papers owner, Nanfang Media Group, acknowledging a serious mistake, began circulating online. Several reporters at the paper said that they had not received it, but one said that he had spotted the same, or a similar, one on the newspapers internal website that day but could not download it. The reporters asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

The notice being distributed online said that the juxtaposition of the front-page headlines was a blunder, not a conspiracy. It criticized malicious interpretations on social media.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The departing commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. John F. Campbell, warned of challenging times ahead for the country and encouraged reforms in the Afghan security forces, which have struggled in fighting a resurgent Taliban without NATO combat support.

After 18 months in command during a period of military and political conflict, General Campbell handed off on Wednesday to Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. of the United States Army. The new commander, who leads a force of about 13,000, will oversee NATOs reduced mission of training and assisting the Afghan forces at a time when the Taliban insurgency has spread wider than at any point since the group was removed from power in 2001.

I know there are some very, very tough times ahead for the country of Afghanistan, General Campbell said. But I do see a resilient people, resilient security forces and theyre going to get through these challenges.

As the handoff ceremony concluded in Kabul, a squad of five suicide bombers attacked the Indian consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad. The attackers were killed by Afghan security forces before they could enter the compound, but the assault still left at least three people dead and 19 others wounded, according to Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the provincial government.
UNITED NATIONS  Exasperated with North Koreas defiant testing of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to severely toughen its penalties against the isolated country.

The development also reflected closer cooperation between the United States and China on a longstanding dispute. The 15-member Council approved a resolution, negotiated for weeks by American and Chinese officials, that called for inspecting all cargo going in and out of the country, banning all weapons trade and expanding the list of individuals facing sanctions.

Diplomats said the resolution contained the most stringent measures yet to undermine the Norths ability to raise money and secure technology and other resources for its nuclear weapons program. Much depends, however, on whether China  North Koreas leading trade partner and diplomatic shield  will enforce it. Samantha Power, the American ambassador to the United Nations, called the resolution comprehensive, robust and unyielding, and said enforcement must be as well.
KARACHI, Pakistan  The latest Academy Award for a filmmaker from Pakistan is focusing attention on so-called honor killings of women in the country, with the prime minister and other senior officials vowing to strengthen laws against the practice.

On Sunday, the filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, won the Oscar for best documentary short for her film A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, which depicts the survivor of an attempted honor killing who was forced to publicly forgive her family for trying to murder her.

Human rights activists in Pakistan have been pressing the state for decades to halt the attacks, in which family members believe they are restoring their honor by killing women who have eloped or had an unsanctioned relationship outside marriage. But such attacks have remained common, with more than 700 women killed in Pakistan in 2014 alone, according to statistics by the Aurat Foundation, a womens rights advocacy group.

Before traveling to the United States for the Academy Awards ceremony, Ms. Obaid-Chinoy screened A Girl in the River at the official residence of Pakistans prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. And, later, in congratulating her for the award, her second, Mr. Sharif announced that his government was in the process of legislating to stop such brutal and inhumane acts in the name of honor.
Though he did not specifically mention China on Wednesday, Admiral Harris said powerful countries were seeking to bully smaller nations through intimidation and coercion, and made the case that a broad naval collaboration was the best way to avert it.

Exercising together will lead to operating together, he said, before meetings with his Indian counterpart. By being ambitious, India, Japan, Australia and the United States and so many like-minded nations can aspire to operate anywhere in the high seas and the airspace above it.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office, India has ramped up naval cooperation with the United States. It reacted angrily in 2014 when a Chinese Peoples Liberation Army submarine docked in the Sri Lankan port of Colombo, and has warily watched the expansion of one of President Xi Jinpings priority projects, a maritime silk road with major ports in Gwadar, Pakistan, and Chittagong, Bangladesh. When President Obama visited India last year, the two countries issued a joint statement on the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region, something India had refused to do in the past.

Still, some of the American proposals smack of wishful thinking. India has not, to date, shown interest in carrying out joint patrols with the United States, even under the more neutral auspices of counterpiracy operations.
BRUSSELS  For the first time in its history, the European Union on Wednesday announced plans for an emergency aid package to alleviate large-scale suffering inside its borders, where tens of thousands of migrants are trapped in Greece as they seek asylum in northern Europe.

The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation, Adrian Edwards, a spokeswoman for the United Nations refugee agency said in a statement this week. Tensions have been building, fueling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers.

About 9,000 asylum seekers are stuck along the Greek-Macedonian border, according to monitoring groups. Migrants who have made it to Athens are crowded into camps and refugee centers that are either full or nearly so.

The spending proposal  700 million euros, or about $760 million, which the blocs member governments have yet to approve  is intended to help those migrants trapped in Greece and, if needed, in other countries on the front lines of the migration crisis, such as Bulgaria and Italy.
TEHRAN  Five days after national elections in Iran, the Interior Ministry has yet to release official detailed results, and some analysts are beginning to doubt that it ever will.

While the government and its supporters clearly won a sweeping victory in the capital, the picture in the rest of the country is much more diffuse and may remain that way for some time, if not permanently.

The Interior Ministry, which is overseeing the voting for the 290-seat Parliament and the clerical Assembly of Experts, announced on Tuesday the names of 222 parliamentary candidates who won nationwide. It also announced that there would be a second round of voting for 68 seats in several constituencies in April.

But there has been no official comment on the affiliation of the winning candidates, and there may never be, making it difficult to determine how many seats the various factions have won.
JAKARTA, Indonesia  A powerful earthquake struck Wednesday evening in the Indian Ocean southwest of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, prompting officials there and other nearby countries to post warnings of a possible tsunami. But the warnings were soon dropped when no signs of a tsunami were detected.

An official at the National Search and Rescue Agency said that contrary to earlier reports, there were no known deaths from the earthquake and no reports of significant damage.

President Joko Widodo of Indonesia was in Sumatra at the time of the earthquake and was safe, staying overnight at a hotel in Medan in the northern part of the island, The Associated Press said, citing officials on his staff. The quake was not felt in Medan, according to a resident interviewed by the news agency, but Indonesian officials told local television stations that it was felt in several other cities in Sumatra, and Twitter users reported feeling it as far away as Singapore.

The United States Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 7.8 for the earthquake, and said it had been centered about 500 miles offshore and about six miles below the surface. That is fairly shallow for a large quake, and shallow quakes tend to do the most damage, but the long distance from shore may have mitigated its effects.
This review is by Holland Cotter. Read Roberta Smiths take here.

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it would be taking an eight-year lease on the Marcel Breuer building left vacant by the Whitney Museums move downtown, the first question everyone asked was: Why?

A widely shared guess was that the Met would use the extra space for showing contemporary art, without which, the word is, no museum can now survive. My own hope was twofold: first, that the Met would seize the chance to deepen, complicate and correct the stories of historical art that it now paints with a broad, imprecise brush; and second, that it would integrate old art and new to demonstrate the centuries-spanning reality of globalism in a way that other museums in globalist New York are unable to do.

The Met Breuers two inaugural shows, which will open on March 18, manage to accomplish these hoped-for missions, though very cautiously, without setting off either fireworks or alarms. Of the two, a career survey of the contemporary Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) is the more venturesome, introducing a figure whose name will be new to many Met visitors, though the art-language she speaks, abstraction, will not. The second and larger show, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, is a classic Met product, updated: an old-master-style historical survey with fabulous loans, a scholarly theme and a new-master twist. Both exhibitions are stimulating experiences, and both would have fit in fine on Fifth Avenue. They leave hanging the question, Why the Breuer?
PARIS  They kept asking us to reconfirm we were coming because they said they had more requests than ever before, said Elizabeth von Guttman, an editor of System magazine, before the Anthony Vaccarello show.

Alexandre de Betak, the producer of the show, noticed the same thing. Are there more people here? he said. Yes, I think so. I could start it now, but they are still trying to get some of the audience sorted over there. He gestured down the glass-walled corridor of the Maison de la Radio, the site of Mr. Vaccarellos show, at some jostling on the benches. It was officially Day 1 of Paris Fashion Week.

Day 1 is traditionally a travel-and-get-settled day between Milan and Paris, populated by newer designers and their experimentalism. Which often looks a lot like older experimentalism: See the blown-out shoulders, one-dimensional geometries imposed on three-dimensional bodies, and a suit sliced on the diagonal, the two halves then tied back together, at Jacquemus, a 2015 LVMH prize winner.

This season, however, thanks to Mr. Vaccarello, Day 1 got a whole lot more attention.

Rumor has it that he is in the running to take over at Saint Laurent if the company parts ways with its creative director, Hedi Slimane. So a big chunk of the fashion crowd had pried themselves out of their hotel rooms to come check out Mr. Vaccarello  or rather his clothes.
Classics from the 1960s appear in coffee-stained fragments, their author still working out lines that generations of fans would come to know by heart. (You know somethings happening here but you, reads a scribbled early copy of Ballad of a Thin Man, omitting dont know what it is and the songs famous punch line: Do you, Mister Jones?) The range of hotel stationery suggests an obsessive self-editor in constant motion.

And while the archive is a further step in the canonization of Mr. Dylan, now 74, as not just a musical icon but also an American literary giant, the documents are tantalizing in what they do not reveal. A card from Barbra Streisand postmarked November 1978, for example, thanks Mr. Dylan for sending flowers and playfully suggests that they make a record together; there is no evidence of a response.

For longtime students, seeing the archive may conjure a familiar feeling of astonishment at just how deep the well of Dylanology goes. There is always far more beneath the surface than anyone could guess. One example of this phenomenon  and of how radically the material could change existing Dylan scholarship  is the Blood on the Tracks material.

The little red notebook, which by most accounts was stolen from Mr. Dylan at some point, circulated among collectors and is now held at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, with access severely restricted. But the existence of two more books shows how much raw material has been unavailable and unknown for study. The song Tangled Up in Blue, with its refracted scenes of a wanderer haunted by a broken relationship, gets a slightly more picaresque telling here, with a refrain absent from the finished recording: Wish I could lose, these dusty sweatbox blues. Even in songs that have been pored over for decades, new layers of meaning await discovery.
Ginasteras relative absence from concert halls today is striking given his strong presence in the United States a half-century ago. But as the musicologist Carol A. Hess has written in her recent book Representing the Good Neighbor, Ginasteras prominence was the result of political exchange between this country and Latin America during the Cold War. The composers turn from nationalist, folkloric music toward abstract serialism mirrored broader calls by stateside officials for Latin America to modernize. It was no coincidence that Ginasteras avant-garde opera Bomarzo was greeted in Washington by a 10-minute standing ovation at its 1967 premiere, from an audience comprising diplomats and officials including Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.

And as Ms. Hess writes, Ginasteras personal style, with his thick black glasses and business attire, was characteristic of the Cold Warrior. Observers described the composer as maintaining a tame exterior seemingly at odds with his fiery music: One reporter for The Times wrote that Ginastera looked about as Bohemian as the board chairman of the First National Bank in White Plains. But critics in America prized Ginasteras 1960s music for how it resonated with the mathematical complexity of ascendant figures such as Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt. His Cantata Para America Magica  an astonishing work for soprano and 53 percussion instruments, which Trinity is to present on March 17  was described by the critic Irving Lowens as the logical culmination of Ginasteras evolution from militant nationalist to citizen of the Western Hemisphere.

Those familiar with Ginastera primarily for his tonal music, strongly informed by Argentine themes  like the 1941 ballet suite Estancia  might be perplexed by the angular avant-gardism of his later work. The time for folklore has passed, Ginastera declared in 1962. It was a turn away from the style he had cultivated for the previous two decades, in dialogue with his close friend Aaron Copland. Ginasteras music of the 1940s resembles the Americana of his northern counterpart; works such as the tone poem Olantay are laden with the open intervals and nationalist mythos of Coplands Fanfare for the Common Man. In 1953, Ginastera wrote to Copland of his desire to be not a voice but the condensed voices of a whole country.

But as his music moved away from national topics, he experimented with dodecaphonic, microtonal and aleatoric methods. Unlike much serial music of the 1960s, whose scientific rigor can often feel dated today, Ginasteras late works sound remarkably fresh. His visceral orchestration and vivid use of extended techniques in works such as the Cello Concerto No. 1 are not unlike those of the recent music of Andrew Norman.
To the Editor:

The review of Lit Up (Feb. 21) suggests that David Denby leaves unanswered his central question about the future of literacy. But I contest the idea that social media will extinguish advanced literacy or lead to a civilization that has given up on books. To make these claims is to believe that the human condition has somehow undergone a complete transformation through the creation of recent technologies  even then, it disregards the newer forms of dystopian literature that directly respond to the fear of how such inventions will impact society. Inherently, the Western canon embodies ideas that are endlessly relatable and applicable to everyday life, despite the amount of time that has passed since their inception.

As a high school student currently enrolled in A.P. English literature and composition, I can attest that the excitement that accompanies understanding classics is alive and well in our classroom.

As we wrapped up our most recent unit  Hamlet and its afterlives  our discussion about Hamlet alongside Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Salman Rushdies Yorick ended with a collective aha moment: We came to the realization that Hamlet purposefully leaves the audience with unanswered questions to acknowledge the constant search for objective truth in a subjective world. Feeling triumphant in finally understanding the meaning behind the revered play, our class truly lit up.

MELISSA THORNTON

ATLANTA



To the Editor:

Lit Up reflects a romanticized view of the curriculum and teaching. Reading great literature, as David Denby advocates, has served him well, but it is irrelevant to the majority of high school students in todays digital age. Inspired teachers occasionally can succeed in overcoming youthful resistance, but they are engaged in a Sisyphean struggle.
In 15 novels, including Angels on Toast (1940) and A Time to Be Born (1942), Powell was a piercing observer  boozy but unbamboozleable  of the small-town Ohio life she left behind and the literary Manhattan where she struggled for decades. The diaries are suffused with her love for the beauty and sheer thrill of New York, along with fear of the cruelty with which the city sends its failures packing for the places they thought theyd left forever.

In 1920 she married an artistic advertising executive named Joseph Gousha, who might get obscenely drunk but still offered what she called continuing assurance of my value. Powell credibly described perpetual nagging as the basis of family life and insecurity as the basis for stable affections. She and Gousha sometimes hung on by their economic fingernails, bonded and harrowed by the physical and mental afflictions of their son, Jojo, who shifted between home and asylums. (Page notes that he probably suffered from a combination of cerebral palsy and schizophrenia.) The diaries alternate Powells false hopes for Jojo with angry, unblinking assessments of the familys reality: Its too horrible a life, waking up to the jabbering of a noisy maniac, a dreadful future for all of us to face  ten thousand days of hopeless work to pay for hopeless treatments.

A reader of the diaries goes through jaundice, pleurisy, anemia, mumps, high blood pressure and finally cancer with Powell, but the journals are more than anything else a record of those ten thousand days of work, which contain  amid the hopelessness  moments of fulfillment. When blocked on one novel, shell start right in on another. How wonderful to feel it again  the wheel beneath the hand, the chariot leave the ground. The books somehow keep coming, once in a while breaking through to a modest success, more often disappearing with little trace. In 1957, a year before Powell and Gousha are forced to vacate their apartment, she notes: Would be at end of rope if could afford rope.

Writers diaries have often functioned as notebooks, storehouses of the overheard remark that will later become a line of dialogue, the anecdote that will eventually attach itself to a plotline. Powells entries on occasion appear to conflate characters shes working on with real people, but her journals are less a cupboard of ingredients than a meal in themselves. She makes wonderful mincemeat of her eras literary personages and their productions: Reading Henry Miller is like observing somebody belch  now he feels better but it doesnt do you any good. She gives us her up-and-down relations with Edmund Wilson and a shattering account of the death of the cat she named for the editor Maxwell Perkins.

On Jan. 26, 1938, Powell declared that she hated this day as if it was a person  its wind, its insecurity, its flabbiness. . . .  But the diaries, and their authors life, are buoyed by a love of irony, paradox and aphorism: Friendship in youth represents sympathy without understanding; in age, understanding without sympathy. Powell offered her most important set of literary definitions in 1936: Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. Her preference was always for seeing things clearly and seeing things through: Gaiety should be brave, it should have stout legs of truth, not a gelatine base of dreams and wishes. If she had never composed those 15 novels, these diaries would still have made her a writer.
Donald Trump once had you physically removed from a news conference for asking questions about his proposed immigration policies. Now hes the front-runner for the Republican nomination. The only other time that has happened to me was with Fidel Castro in Guadalajara, Mexico.

As a member of the Spanish-speaking media, do you blame the mainstream media for Trumps rise? I hoped he would have been asked harder questions. How is he going to deport 11 million people in two years? That would require more than 30 jumbo-jet flights every day. How is he going to build a 1,900-mile wall? It will cost at least $20 billion. I spoke with former President Vicente Fox, and he clearly told me: Mexico is not going to pay for that wall.

I think white voters cant really imagine what its like to be the target of the sort of language that Trump uses when talking about illegal immigrants. Do Latino voters feel it more personally? Yes. President Obama has deported more than two million undocumented immigrants in seven years, more than any other U.S. president. Trump is talking about deporting 11 million. Ted Cruz said he wants to deport 12 million. For us, immigration is not something abstract. It is personal. Very, very personal.
What did you know about She Loves Me before you were cast in this production?

ZACHARY LEVI I was singing at a charity event. The musical director had said, Maybe you should sing She Loves Me or Tonight at Eight. But I knew nothing about the show, so I said no. Because I dont want to learn a new song.

GAVIN CREEL I played Kodaly in college. I think all of us, when we first start off, think we should play the lead  I wanted to be the lead in The King and I. I should be the lead in Dreamgirls!

LAURA BENANTI You should.

CREEL But it was fun to be a narcissist.

BENANTI I am a huge Barbara Cook fan. Shes one of my idols. My mom had the record of She Loves Me, and I wore that out. Ive never done the show, Ive never seen it, but Ive been listening to it since I was a little girl, and singing those songs.

JANE KRAKOWSKI My father played Kodaly in the community theater version at the Barn Theater [in Montville, N.J.]. My parents both worked on it  my mom did more backstage stuff. They couldnt afford a babysitter, so I went with them all the time. My whole musical-theater knowledge is based on the shows my parents were in or worked on at this theater.
It may seem odd that the poet Joseph Brodsky, a man who had little time for ballet  the art of better days, he called it in a 1975 poem  should have counted among his closest friends the Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. (The poem, in fact, was dedicated to him.) Brodsky was eight years older than Mr. Baryshnikov, and in his friends dancing he saw something more than ballet, something, as he told the Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov, closer to metaphysics.

Mr. Baryshnikov remembers first reading Brodskys poetry at 16, just arrived in Leningrad from Riga, Latvia, to study ballet. The magnetism was there, Mr. Baryshnikov said recently in a room at the Baryshnikov Arts Center lined with prints of St. Petersburg; his poetry respected mans brain and heart and dignity. This was a year after Brodskys trial, in 1964, for social parasitism, a Kafkaesque exercise. The trial transcript had circulated secretly, and Brodskys sang-froid on the stand turned him into a symbol of resistance and artistic freedom. (He was imprisoned, and spent a year and a half in internal exile.)

The two were introduced at a party in New York, soon after Brodskys forced departure from the Soviet Union (in 1972) and Baryshnikovs 1974 defection; they immediately became close. During their 22-year friendship  Brodsky died at 55 in 1996  they spoke often, opened a restaurant, drank and took walks along the Hudson.

Last year, Mr. Baryshnikov, who has made increasingly frequent forays into theater, teamed with the Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, director of New Riga Theater, for Brodsky/Baryshnikov, a one-man show, which opened in Riga in October and comes to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, starting Wednesday, March 9.
Never oil, never lemon, Pere Vehi said. I mean, do you put lemon on caviar? I had joined the opinionated owner of Bar Boia, a 70-year-old institution in Cadaques, a whitewashed fishing village on the Costa Brava, for a midmorning nosh of sea urchin. Mr. Vehi opened each urchin Cadaques-style, with a large, curved knife, bringing its blade to bear on the sea urchin as he rotated it in the palm of his free hand.

He tore off a piece of bread and used it to scoop out the tangerine-hued roe. Use your hands, never a knife, he said.

I had come to Spains northeast coast to feast on sea urchin. I was learning that there are right ways, and wrong ways, to do it.

Like many American sea urchin lovers, I had my first taste at a Japanese restaurant. Id eaten it in Japan too. From the first mouthful  a wild seesaw from saline sharpness to fatty roundness  I was entranced.
Sex

Sex Male 42% of voters Hillary Clinton 58 % 58 Bernie Sanders 41 % 41 Female 58% of voters Hillary Clinton 70 70 Bernie Sanders 30 30

Age

Age 17-29 16% of voters Hillary Clinton 30 30 Bernie Sanders 68 68 30-44 25% of voters Hillary Clinton 58 58 Bernie Sanders 42 42 45-64 37% of voters Hillary Clinton 73 73 Bernie Sanders 26 26 65 and over 22% of voters Hillary Clinton 85 85 Bernie Sanders 14 14

Race and ethnicity

Race and ethnicity White 63% of voters Hillary Clinton 58 58 Bernie Sanders 41 41 Black 26% of voters Hillary Clinton 84 84 Bernie Sanders 16 16 Hispanic/Latino 7% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Asian 2% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Other 3% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

College degree

College degree College graduate 64% of voters Hillary Clinton 65 65 Bernie Sanders 34 34 No college degree 36% of voters Hillary Clinton 63 63 Bernie Sanders 36 36

Income

Income Under $30,000 12% of voters Hillary Clinton 57 57 Bernie Sanders 43 43 $30,000 - $49,999 16% of voters Hillary Clinton 63 63 Bernie Sanders 37 37 $50,000 - $99,999 30% of voters Hillary Clinton 61 61 Bernie Sanders 37 37 $100,000 - $199,999 28% of voters Hillary Clinton 70 70 Bernie Sanders 30 30 $200,000 or more 14% of voters Hillary Clinton 70 70 Bernie Sanders 30 30

Region

Region D.C. suburbs 26% of voters Hillary Clinton 69 69 Bernie Sanders 30 30 Northern Virginia exurbs 14% of voters Hillary Clinton 59 59 Bernie Sanders 41 41 Central/West 13% of voters Hillary Clinton 56 56 Bernie Sanders 42 42 Richmond/East 26% of voters Hillary Clinton 65 65 Bernie Sanders 35 35 Tidewater 20% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 29 29

Urban, suburban, rural

Urban, suburban, rural City over 50,000 22% of voters Hillary Clinton 68 68 Bernie Sanders 31 31 Suburbs 52% of voters Hillary Clinton 62 62 Bernie Sanders 37 37 Small city and rural 25% of voters Hillary Clinton 68 68 Bernie Sanders 30 30

Political philosophy

Political philosophy Very liberal 29% of voters Hillary Clinton 58 58 Bernie Sanders 42 42 Somewhat liberal 39% of voters Hillary Clinton 63 63 Bernie Sanders 37 37 Moderate 29% of voters Hillary Clinton 69 69 Bernie Sanders 29 29 Conservative 3% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Party affiliation

Party affiliation Democrat 76% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 28 28 Republican 2% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Independent or something else 22% of voters Hillary Clinton 44 44 Bernie Sanders 56 56

Voted in a Democratic presidential primary

Voted in a Democratic presidential primary Yes 76% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 29 29 No 23% of voters Hillary Clinton 46 46 Bernie Sanders 52 52

Religious service attendance

Religious service attendance Weekly 33% of voters Hillary Clinton 75 75 Bernie Sanders 25 25 Occasionally 38% of voters Hillary Clinton 64 64 Bernie Sanders 35 35 Never 28% of voters Hillary Clinton 55 55 Bernie Sanders 45 45

Sex by race

Sex by race White men 27% of voters Hillary Clinton 50 50 Bernie Sanders 48 48 White women 36% of voters Hillary Clinton 64 64 Bernie Sanders 35 35 Black men 10% of voters Hillary Clinton 82 82 Bernie Sanders 18 18 Black women 16% of voters Hillary Clinton 85 85 Bernie Sanders 15 15 Latino men 3% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Latino women 4% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  All other races 4% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Education and race

Education and race White college graduates 46% of voters Hillary Clinton 61 61 Bernie Sanders 39 39 White without a college degree 18% of voters Hillary Clinton 51 51 Bernie Sanders 46 46 Nonwhite college graduates 18% of voters Hillary Clinton 77 77 Bernie Sanders 23 23 Nonwhite without a college degree 17% of voters Hillary Clinton 75 75 Bernie Sanders 25 25

Issue that matters most

Issue that matters most Health care 18% of voters Hillary Clinton 74 74 Bernie Sanders 26 26 Economy/jobs 40% of voters Hillary Clinton 68 68 Bernie Sanders 31 31 Terrorism 9% of voters Hillary Clinton 80 80 Bernie Sanders 20 20 Income inequality 30% of voters Hillary Clinton 49 49 Bernie Sanders 50 50

Feelings about the federal government

Feelings about the federal government Enthusiastic 7% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Satisfied 31% of voters Hillary Clinton 66 66 Bernie Sanders 34 34 Dissatisfied 47% of voters Hillary Clinton 65 65 Bernie Sanders 33 33 Angry 13% of voters Hillary Clinton 42 42 Bernie Sanders 58 58

Whom would you trust to handle an international crisis?

Whom would you trust to handle an international crisis? Only Clinton 46% of voters Hillary Clinton 98 98 Bernie Sanders 2 Only Sanders 10% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Both of them 40% of voters Hillary Clinton 43 43 Bernie Sanders 57 57 Neither of them 3% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

How have race relations changed in the last few years?

How have race relations changed in the last few years? Better than life today 13% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Stayed about the same 38% of voters Hillary Clinton 65 65 Bernie Sanders 35 35 Worse than life today 48% of voters Hillary Clinton 66 66 Bernie Sanders 33 33

Whom would you trust to handle race relations?

Whom would you trust to handle race relations? Only Clinton 25% of voters Hillary Clinton 98 98 Bernie Sanders 2 Only Sanders 16% of voters Hillary Clinton 9 Bernie Sanders 91 91 Both of them 55% of voters Hillary Clinton 66 66 Bernie Sanders 34 34 Neither of them 3% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

How worried are you about the direction of the nation's economy?

How worried are you about the direction of the nation's economy? Very or somewhat worried 78% of voters Hillary Clinton 61 61 Bernie Sanders 38 38 Not too or not at all worried 20% of voters Hillary Clinton 78 78 Bernie Sanders 21 21

Perception of the U.S. economic system

Perception of the U.S. economic system Favors the wealthy 85% of voters Hillary Clinton 63 63 Bernie Sanders 36 36 Is fair to most Americans 13% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Which candidate would best handle Supreme Court nominations?

Which candidate would best handle Supreme Court nominations? Only Clinton 67% of voters Hillary Clinton 92 92 Bernie Sanders 8 Only Sanders 29% of voters Hillary Clinton 5 Bernie Sanders 95 95

Candidate quality that matters most

Candidate quality that matters most Can win in November 16% of voters Hillary Clinton 86 86 Bernie Sanders 14 14 Cares about people like me 23% of voters Hillary Clinton 45 45 Bernie Sanders 55 55 Honest and trustworthy 24% of voters Hillary Clinton 22 22 Bernie Sanders 77 77 Has the right experience 36% of voters Hillary Clinton 95 95 Bernie Sanders 4

Who do you think is honest and trustworthy?

Who do you think is honest and trustworthy? Only Clinton 13% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Only Sanders 30% of voters Hillary Clinton 11 11 Bernie Sanders 89 89 Both of them 47% of voters Hillary Clinton 86 86 Bernie Sanders 13 13 Neither of them 6% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Would you like the next president to:

Would you like the next president to: Have experience in politics 84% of voters Hillary Clinton 72 72 Bernie Sanders 28 28 Be from outside the political establishment 13% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Should the next president's policies be:

Should the next president's policies be: Generally the same as President Obama's 61% of voters Hillary Clinton 82 82 Bernie Sanders 17 17 More liberal 30% of voters Hillary Clinton 37 37 Bernie Sanders 63 63 Less liberal 6% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Who shares your values?

Who shares your values? Only Clinton 19% of voters Hillary Clinton 100 100 Bernie Sanders  Only Sanders 17% of voters Hillary Clinton 2 Bernie Sanders 98 98 Both of them 58% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 28 28 Neither of them 4% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders 

Which candidate attacked the other unfairly?

Which candidate attacked the other unfairly? Only Clinton 13% of voters Hillary Clinton 18 18 Bernie Sanders 82 82 Only Sanders 4% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Both of them 15% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 29 29 Neither of them 62% of voters Hillary Clinton 71 71 Bernie Sanders 28 28

Hillary Clinton's positions on issues

Hillary Clinton's positions on issues Too liberal 5% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  Not liberal enough 26% of voters Hillary Clinton 26 26 Bernie Sanders 74 74 About right 67% of voters Hillary Clinton 82 82 Bernie Sanders 18 18

Bernie Sanders's positions on issues

Bernie Sanders's positions on issues Too liberal 32% of voters Hillary Clinton 92 92 Bernie Sanders 8 Not liberal enough 10% of voters Hillary Clinton  Bernie Sanders  About right 54% of voters Hillary Clinton 42 42 Bernie Sanders 57 57

Decided whom to support
Nursings leadership, public policy guidance, and advocacy deliver expansion possibilities to a proven model of care serving high-cost and high-need populations.

A new article A Case Exemplar for National Policy Leadership: Expanding Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE), in the March 2016 Journal of Gerontology, chronicles the beginnings of PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) and outlines its rise to nationwide acceptance. PACE is a viable and sustainable model of community-based long-term care that provides coordinated and comprehensive services with an interdisciplinary patient-centered team model that is paid for through Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurers.

Written by two nurse-leaders, Tara A. Cortes, PhD, RN, FAAN, and Eileen M. Sullivan-Marx, PhD, RN, FAAN, the article recognizes the advocates and leaders who have driven the model forward, describing the impact of nursing on the legislation and policy.

It also highlights the nurses, such as Drs. Cortes and Sullivan-Marx, who for decades worked in various key political, policy, and clinical leadership positions behind the scenes and out on the front lines with community advocates, policy makers, and legislative groups to advocate and demonstrate the viability of the program.

PACE provides coordinated acute, chronic care, and long-term services in an integrated seamless approach to healthcare by an interdisciplinary team across the care continuum, said Drs. Cortes and Sullivan-Marx. This integrated and holistic patient-centered approach, made possible using a capitated financing payment model, results in greater longevity, better health outcomes, and a better quality of life for patients and their caregivers enrolled in the program.

Most importantly, PACE has demonstrated that it can keep individuals in the community and delay admission to institutions for an average of two (2) years.

The program offers fully integrated Medicare and Medicaid services for dually eligible adults 55 and older who meet the criteria for nursing home level of care but are able to live in the community at the time they are enrolled, said Drs. Cortes and Sullivan-Marx.

In November 2015, President Obama signed into law, an expansion of PACE. The PACE Innovation Act (PIA) allows the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop pilot projects based on the successful PACE Model of Care.

The PIA allows CMS to bring the PACE model to more populations -- including younger individuals, people with multiple chronic conditions and disabilities, seniors who do not yet meet the nursing home level of care standard, and others, said Drs. Cortes and Sullivan-Marx. The goal being to improve the quality of health and life for adults 55 and younger and to reduce healthcare costs by maintaining individuals in, or returning them to, the community.

In the article, the authors take the reader through a brief historical overview of the PACE program, beginning with its genesis in the 1970s in San Franciscos Asian community, touching on legislative milestones along the way, which allowed the program to successfully expand nationally throughout the next four decades.

In its 2012 report to Congress, the Medicare payment Advisory Commission (MEDPAC), an independent Congressional agency established by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to advise the U.S. Congress on issues affecting the Medicare program, included recommendations to expand the PACE Model of Care.

Support for the legislation was built over the next three years through discussions and ownership from groups that would be needed to promote this expansion program to Congress. Organizations such as the National PACE Association, Alzheimers Association, March of Dimes, and some consumer advocacy groups became engaged as proponents of this expansion.

On November 5, 2015, with the stroke of the Presidential pen, PIA became law. Specifically, PIA amends title XI of the Social Security Act to authorize the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to waive applicable general and Medicaid requirements of PACE in section 11934 of the Social Security Act to conduct demonstration projects through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovations (CMMI) that involve PACE.

The PACE Innovation Act also encourages CMS to allow operational flexibilities that would not only support adaptation of the PACE model for new populations but also promote PACE growth, efficiency, and innovation, said Drs. Cortes and Sullivan-Marx. CMS now needs to use this broad authority to create PACE demonstration programs to establish the ability of this program to improve outcomes, enhance patient experience, and be cost-effective. This program offers new opportunities to existing PACE providers and other for-profit as well as non-profit providers to explore new ways of providing services to high-need, high-cost populations.

The article concludes with some visions for the PACE expansion, grounded in the tenants of providing access to the full continuum of preventative, primary, acute and long-term services, as well as short personal biographical vignettes highlighting a selection of nurse-leaders who paved the way for PACE, and now PIA, to become reality.

In 2006, the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) recognized the PACE Program, Living Independently For Elders (LIFE) at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing), as an Edge Runner program that meets its criteria for innovation of a nursing program that drives better care, better quality, and lower cost, said Antonia M. Villarruel, PhD, RN, FAAN, Penn Nursing Dean and Director, WHO Collaborating Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership. A dedicated team of nurse leaders, including Dr. Sullivan-Marx, was integral to the success of LIFE UPENN. Through their trailblazing efforts the program expanded and thrived. In fact, the teams success was recognized as an exemplar for the Institute of Medicine (2010) Future of Nursing Report as a nurse-driven model.

Nursing has been central to the PACE care model since its inception, and nursing leaders have been crucial in its development in both policy and operational expansion. The leadership of both Drs. Sullivan-Marx and Cortes contributed to the Congressional action culminating in the signing of the PACE Innovation Act.

About the Authors:

Dr. Cortes is Clinical Professor of Nursing, and Executive Director, The Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University College of Nursing. Dr. Cortes is also 2013-2015 Health and Aging Policy Fellow, Medicare/Medicaid Coordination Office, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Baltimore, Maryland.

Dr. Sullivan-Marx is Dean and Erline Perkins McGriff Professor, New York University College of Nursing. In 2010, Sullivan-Marx became a Health and Aging Policy Fellow (HAPF), under the American Political Science Associations Congressional Fellowship, for 2 years with CMS MMCO, an office established as part of the ACA. As a fellow, Sullivan-Marx, an expert in PACE programs, was appointed as a CMS Senior Advisor to update regulations, remove barriers to the growth of PACE models nationally, and assist Melanie Bella to advocate for PACE programs within CMS and Congress.

The authors have disclosed no potential conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.

About New York University College of Nursing

NYU College of Nursing is a global leader in nursing education, research, and practice. It offers a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, a Master of Science and Post-Masters Certificate Programs, a Doctor of Philosophy in Research Theory and Development, and a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree. For more information, visit https://nursing.nyu.edu/

About the University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is one of the worlds leading schools of nursing and is ranked the #1 graduate nursing school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. Penn Nursing is consistently among the nations top recipients of nursing research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Penn Nursing prepares nurse scientists and nurse leaders to meet the health needs of a global society through research, education, and practice.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential primaries in Alabama, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic presidential primaries in Alabama and Tennessee.

-----------------

7:39 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential primary in Georgia, taking home his first win in the group of contests known as Super Tuesday.

The Republican front-runner has already won three of the previous four nomination contests, putting him ahead of his rivals, particularly Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who many feel need a strong showing on Tuesday to keep their campaigns afloat.

Trump posted a message on Twitter reading "Thank you Georgia" moments after polls closed.

------------

Hillary Clinton claimed Super Tuesday victories in the Georgia and Virginia Democratic primaries, while rival Bernie Sanders carried his home state of Vermont. Republican races in those states were too close to call as polls closed.

Super Tuesday marked the busiest day of the 2016 primaries, with the biggest single-day delegate haul up for grabs. With elections in every region of the country, the contests put a spotlight on candidates' strengths and weaknesses with a broad swath of American voters.

For Clinton, as well as Republican front-runner Donald Trump, the voting marked an opportunity to begin pulling away from their rivals and charting a course toward the general election. Each entered Super Tuesday having won three of four early voting contests, and more strong showings could start putting the nominations out of reach for other contenders.

Clinton led in both Virginia and Georgia among both men and women, as well as black voters. Sanders continued to show strength with young voters, carrying the majority of those under the age of 30, according to early exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Democrats were voting in 11 states and American Samoa on, with 865 delegates up for grabs. Republicans were voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake.

The contests come at a turbulent time for the GOP, given Trump's strengths in the face of opposition from many party leaders. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched furious verbal attacks on the billionaire businessman in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Cruz once saw the Southern states that voted Tuesday as his opportunity to stake his claim to the nomination. Now his campaign's future hinges on a victory in his home state of Texas, the biggest prize of the day.

Rubio's goal was even more modest. He was seeking to stay competitive in the delegate count and hoping to pull off a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

Even before the first results started flowing in, Trump was calling on Rubio to give up if he didn't win anywhere on Tuesday.

"He has to get out," he told Fox News. "He hasn't won anything."

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, he's appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing broad support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states on Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump. Two-thirds of GOP voters in Texas, Virginia and Georgia, 7 in 10 in Tennessee, and nearly 8 in 10 in Alabama supported the proposal, according to the early exit polls.

Worries among Republicans appeared to grow after Trump briefly refused to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during a television interview. Trump later said he had not understood the interviewer who first raised the question about Duke, and he did repudiate him.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.

"When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country I will speak up. So today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games," Ryan said.

The disarray among Republicans comes as Clinton appears to be tightening her grip on the Democratic field. Her wins in Georgia and Virginia were the first of what her campaign hoped would be a sweep of the South, a region where large segments of the Democratic electorate are black.

In Georgia, just under half of Democratic voters on Tuesday were black, with 8 in 10 backing Clinton. About a quarter of Virginia's Democratic voters were black, and also overwhelmingly backed Clinton, according to exit polling.

Democratic voters were more likely to want a continuation of Obama's policies than switch to more liberal policies in eight of nine states where surveys were conducted.

Signaling her growing confidence, Clinton has increasingly turned her attention to Trump in recent days, casting herself as a civil alternative to the insults and bullying that have consumed the Republican race.

"What we can't let happen is the scapegoating, the flaming, the finger pointing that is going on the Republican side," she told voters in Springfield, Massachusetts. "It really undermines our fabric as a nation."

States holding voting contests in both parties were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. Republicans also vote in Alaska and Democrats in Colorado. Democrats also have a contest in American Samoa and for Democrats Abroad.

------

6:00p.m.

Donald Trump is keeping up his criticism on his closest Republican rivals in the hours before the first Super Tuesday polls close.

Trump, in Kentucky, said Tuesday that March Rubio was "a total lightweight" while Ted Cruz is "a basket case" and "a liar." However, he held his fire on Ben Carson, calling him a "nice guy" and he didn't provide any descriptions for John Kasich.

He said his dealing powers would force companies to keep jobs in America and coerce countries to release American prisoners.

The Louisville crowd cheered when Trump spotted a sign in the crowd and asked it to be fetched for him. He held up the sign  which read "Hispanics 4 Trump"  and waved it around, mouthing "thank you" toward the audience.

-------

5:45 p.m.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is backing Hillary Clinton, but he's not predicting she'll win Minnesota's caucuses.

Dayton tells The Associated Press that he thinks Clinton would win decisively if Tuesday's presidential preference vote was done as part of a primary. But it's not, and Dayton says caucuses "are such an unknown" because so many things can come up to keep people from attending.

Bernie Sanders is trailing Clinton but has invested a lot of time in Minnesota, where he says he can win if turnout is strong.

Dayton has been a longtime Clinton supporter and has pledged his support as a superdelegate to the national convention no matter how she does Tuesday. He says he expects her to have a good night around the country as Super Tuesday unfolds.

5:30 p.m.

Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin is reminding Hillary Clinton's campaign about state election laws after former President Bill Clinton greeted voters inside a polling location in Boston.

Clinton arrived at the Holy Name gymnasium, a polling place in the city's West Roxbury neighborhood where he met with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, one of his wife's supporters.

Bill Clinton spoke with voters outside the polling location before heading inside with Walsh. At one point, a woman asked for a photo and Clinton said, "as long as we're not violating any election laws."

According to state law, no one may solicit a person's vote within 150 feet of a polling location.

Galvin also said that Bill Clinton created a traffic jam outside a polling location in New Bedford later in the day when he addressed voters on the street. Galvin said the polling location never shut its doors, however.

___

5:25 p.m.

In eight of nine states where exit polls were conducted Tuesday, Democratic voters were more likely to want a continuation of President Barack Obama's policies than a switch to more liberal policies.

According to early results of the exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research, majorities of Democratic voters in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia want a continuation of Obama's policies, along with more than 4 in 10 voters in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Texas.

In each of those states, about a third of Democratic voters or less want a switch to more liberal policies.

In Vermont, about half of Democratic primary voters said they want the next president to change to more liberal policies.

___

5:20 p.m.

Large majorities of Republican primary voters across nine states have negative feelings toward the federal government.

But whether they're more dissatisfied or more angry varies by state.

According to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research, at least 8 in 10 GOP primary voters in each state feel down on the way the federal government is working.

The dissatisfied outnumbered the angry and accounted for a half or more of Republican voters in Virginia, Vermont and Massachusetts.

In Texas, half of GOP primary voters said they were angry.

In Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee, GOP voters were more evenly split between dissatisfaction and anger.

___

5:20 p.m.

White voters accounted for half of voters or less in three of nine Democratic primaries where exit polls were conducted on Super Tuesday.

According to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks, nearly half of Democratic primary voters in Alabama and Georgia were black.

In Texas, about 3 in 10 Democratic primary voters were Hispanic and a little under 2 in 10 were black.

In three other states, black voters accounted for about a quarter of Democratic primary voters. They are Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee.

___

5:15 p.m.

Large majorities of Republican primary voters in six states going to the polls on Super Tuesday said they support a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States.

Early results of exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks show two-thirds of GOP primary voters in Texas, Virginia and Georgia, 7 in 10 in Tennessee, and nearly 8 in 10 in Alabama support the proposal championed by GOP front-runner Donald Trump.

But Republican voters were more divided on another major immigration issue, whether to deport immigrants already in the country illegally or allow them to stay.

In just one of the seven states where the question was asked, Alabama, did a majority of Republicans support deportation. In two states, Virginia and Georgia, those who preferred legal status outnumbered those supporting deportation.

___

5:00 p.m.

Marco Rubio is ceremonially launching his campaign for the must-win primary in Florida, where Donald Trump sits comfortably ahead.

The Florida senator is telling reporters in Minnesota that he is looking ahead to the March 15 contest in his home state because he will have "a lot of delegates" after Super Tuesday balloting in 11 states holding Republican contests, even if he doesn't win any states. And he's predicting that the competition will become so fierce that it will become clear that Trump "has no chance" of ever winning enough delegates to capture the GOP presidential nomination.

Rubio also is setting high expectations for Ted Cruz's Super Tuesday finish. Cruz is doing well but not likely to win all 155 delegates offered by the contest in his home state of Texas.

Rubio says, "Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night."

___

4:45 p.m.

Donald Trump is trying to woo Kentucky voters at a rally in Louisville by criticizing President Barack Obama as having "decimated" the coal industry. Trump said if he becomes president, coal will "make a very big comeback."

His rally on Tuesday was interrupted several times by protesters. The billionaire businessman shouted at them from the stage, "out, out, out." He told the roaring crowd that the protesters wouldn't be there if the nation weren't so politically correct.

Trump, introduced by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, continued to hurl insults at his competitors. He took aim at Demoncratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and said she doesn't have the strength or stamina to be president.

___

4:38 p.m.

A judge has dismissed a claim that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz isn't eligible for the Illinois ballot because he was born in Canada.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Maureen Ward Kirby tossed the case on a technicality Tuesday.

Kirby says the suburban Chicago attorney who filed the complaint, Lawrence Joyce, failed to give a copy of it to Cruz or state electoral board members, as required by Illinois law. Instead, Joyce served only lawyers representing Cruz and the board.

Joyce says the Texas senator can't be president because he wasn't born in the U.S. Cruz and some legal experts say he's eligible because his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born.

Joyce backs Ben Carson but says he acted on his own.

Illinois' primary is March 15.

___

2:55 p.m.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blasting Donald Trump's "seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the KKK," joining House Speaker Paul Ryan's earlier call for the GOP presidential candidates to reject racism.

The two highest-ranking leaders of Congress spoke as voters in 11 states holding GOP contests went to the polls for the Super Tuesday contests. They never said Trump's name, but clearly were referring to a weekend interview on CNN in which Trump refused to denounce the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard or racist groups. Trump had disavowed them and did so again after facing criticism for wobbling. But the leaders of his party on Tuesday suggested that wasn't enough.

Ryan, the nation's highest-ranking Republican government official, earlier Tuesday said anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.

McConnell went next, saying, "Senate Republicans condemn David Duke, the KKK, and his racism."

Republicans are defending their congressional majorities in the November elections.

___

2:35 p.m.

A midlevel New York court has refused to throw out a fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump over his former school for real estate investors.

The Appellate Division on Tuesday unanimously rejected Trump's request to dismiss the 2013 suit.

The four justices also denied New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's request for an immediate judgment, saying there are material issues of fact.

Schneiderman alleges Trump University was unlicensed and promised lessons with real estate experts hand-picked by Trump, only one of whom had ever met him.

He says the school used "bait-and-switch" tactics. Its name was changed to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative before it closed in 2010.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

Trump's presidential opponents attacked him over the litigation during Thursday's GOP debate. The ruling comes as Super Tuesday primary voters head to the polls.

___

2:28 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is making her way through the Midtown Global market in downtown Minneapolis as Super Tuesday voters headed toward the polls.

The Democratic presidential front runner was confronted by a young woman who questioned her record on working with the Somali community and 1996 comments Clinton made calling young people who commit crimes "super predators."

At the time, the term was typically applied to young black men living in urban areas. Clinton made the remark while promoting her husband's 1994 crime bill  now repudiated by many, including the Clintons  during his re-election race. Aides confirmed the encounter, pointing out that Clinton met with Somali-Americans during a previous visit to the state and has support from many in the black community.

"Why don't you go run for something then," Clinton responded, after the woman kept questioning her record on racial issues.

Clinton is joined by Governor Mark Dayton and Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges. She flew nearly 1,300 miles from campaign events in Virginia on Monday to build support in the state during the final hours before tonight's caucuses and polls close in 12 other Super Tuesday contests.

___

2:20 p.m.

Marco Rubio is reminding an audience in Minnesota about what can happen when voters angry with the political establishment elect an outspoken celebrity.

In a ballroom in a northern Minneapolis suburb, Rubio asks, "How did that work out for Jesse Ventura?"

Rubio is referring to a flamboyant former professional wrestler elected governor of Minnesota for one term from 1999 to 2003.

Minnesota holds caucuses for the Republican presidential nomination Tuesday evening. Rubio is trying to catch Trump who leads in many of the 11 Super Tuesday states, and has taken to painting Trump as an unprincipled celebrity charlatan.

Rubio says: "Jesse Ventura was an embarrassment. Let me rephrase that. Jesse Ventura is an embarrassment."

Rubio is in Minnesota for the quick rally after blitzing over the past four days Southern states holding Super Tuesday primaries today.

He was in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas and Oklahoma Monday alone, making five stops and nearly losing his voice.

Rubio was planning to fly from Minnesota to his home in Miami Tuesday to await the results of voting in the 11 states holding primaries.

___

1:47 p.m.

Donald Trump is criticizing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during a campaign rally in Ohio.

He's telling a crowd of 4,000 in a hangar at Port Columbus International Airport that Clinton "Clinton does not have the strength of the stamina to be president."

Trump also repeated his attacks against GOP rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and vowed to win Ohio's primary in two weeks over GOP rival John Kasich, the state's governor.

Trump got his largest response when he spoke about building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, protecting gun rights and "saying Merry Christmas again."

___

1:35 p.m.

Hillary Clinton says Republicans aren't even talking about issues in their protracted race for the GOP presidential nomination.

She tells reporters in Minneapolis that the GOP candidates are "now running their campaigns based on insults. It's turned into a kind of one-upmanship on insulting."

The Democratic presidential front runner says she doesn't think it's appropriate.

She also says she is "disappointed" that Donald Trump did not disavow David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan in a weekend interview.

Clinton added that Trump "obviously" has done very well and "could be on the path" to the GOP nomination.

She spoke as voters in 11 states holding GOP contests went to the polls on Super Tuesday.

Trump has disavowed Duke, but did not do so when asked about the former KKK grand wizard in a CNN interview on Sunday. He subsequently did disavow Duke.

___

1:09 p.m.

Ted Cruz says any candidate who can't win his home state "has real problems" winning the GOP presidential nomination. But he's not saying he'll secure all 155 GOP presidential delegates in Texas on Tuesday.

He says, "For any candidate that wakes up tomorrow who has not won any states" it could be "time to start coming together and unifying" against Donald Trump.

Winning every Texas delegate means capturing a majority of the votes statewide and in all 36 congressional districts. Cruz has said that "polling suggests we aren't anywhere close to that threshold."

Still he said insisted Tuesday, "I hope and believe today is a good day."

___

12:32 p.m.

The New Hampshire newspaper that gave Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey one of his biggest boosts ahead of the state's primary now says it made a grave mistake.

New Hampshire Union Leader Publisher Joseph McQuaid says in an editorial, "Boy, were we wrong."

The editorial published online Monday night comes after Christie, who ended his bid after a disappointing finish in the state, threw his support behind Donald Trump, shocking many in the political word.

McQuaid says the paper offered its Christie endorsement "despite his baggage," because of his experience as a Republican governor in a Democratic state and thinking he had the best chance of taking on Trump.

He adds, "Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support."

___

12:05 p.m.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says rival Marco Rubio should drop out of the race if he doesn't win a single Super Tuesday state on Tuesday night.

Trump says on Fox News, "He has to get out. He hasn't won anything."

The GOP presidential frontrunner also is hitting Rubio for his sudden turn to negative campaigning.

While Trump is looking to rack up a long list of wins on Tuesday, Rubio's goal is more modest.

He's aiming to stay competitive in the delegate count to bide time ahead of the vote in Florida on March 15, which he hopes to win.

___

10:23 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.

Ryan made the tacit swipe at GOP front runner Donald Trump as voters in 11 states headed to the polls on Super Tuesday. Ryan told reporters Tuesday that the GOP is the party of President Abraham Lincoln and "this party does not prey on people's prejudices."

He bemoaned the current discourse in the GOP and said it was time to get back to focusing on how Republicans would solve the nation's problems.

Ryan was the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2012. He said he has tried to avoid commenting on the presidential race but felt a need to speak up.

___

7:30 a.m.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has voted in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont as Super Tuesday kicks off across 11 states.

Sanders tells reporters that if voter turnout is high "we are going to do well. If not, we're probably going to be struggling."

Sanders says "this is a campaign that is going to the Philadelphia convention in July."

He jokes that "Bernie Sanders here in Vermont got at least one vote. I was working on my wife," Jane. He says, "We're feeling pretty good."

___

7:10 a.m.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is showing weariness with repeated questions about when  and whether  he has disavowed any connection with David Duke, a onetime Ku Klux Klan leader.

Interviewed by phone on ABC's "Good Morning America" as voters went to the polls early Tuesday, Trump said once again that he had on several occasions disavowed Duke. He told the network at one point that "there's nobody who's done so much for equality as I have."

Trump also said he's bringing new people  even Democrats  into the Republican Party. He said, "We're getting people into the party that they've never had before" and said he was relishing the thought of taking on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election.

Trump said, "I can tell you the one person Hillary Clinton doesn't want to run against is me."
The Food Bank of East Alabama and the Junior League of Lee County are teaming up for a toothbrush drive throughout March.

"A toothbrush is a basic tool that is needed in the fight against tooth decay, but there are children in our community who do not have a toothbrush or are sharing a toothbrush with other family members," Food Bank of East Alabama Executive Director Martha Henk said in a press release. "We are asking people to donate new, individually wrapped, soft children's toothbrushes to benefit at-risk children in the Backpack Program. Our goal is to collect 600 toothbrushes to distribute to all the children in the backpack programs sponsored by the Food Bank."

The Backpack Program, a partnership between the Food Bank of East Alabama and the Junior League of Lee County, meets the needs of chronically hungry children by providing them with nutritious and easy-to-prepare food to take home on weekends and school vacations when other resources may not be available. Students are referred to the program by teachers and counselors. It serves some 350 children at 11elementary and middle schools.

Collection sites include the Food Bank of East Alabama, 375 Industry Drive, Auburn; Auburn Chamber of Commerce, 714 E. Glenn Ave.; Auburn Public Library, 749 E. Thach Ave.; and Opelika Chamber of Commerce, 601 Avenue A, Opelika.

For more information, contact Michelle Held, programs coordinator, Food Bank of East Alabama, 334-821-9006 or mheld@foodbankofeastalabama.com; or Erin Consuegra, Backpack Representative, Junior League of Lee County, carroej@gmail.com.
PATRICIA MOBLEY EATON BOSSIER CITY, LA - Patricia Mobley Eaton went to be with Jesus on February 29th at 3:30 PM with family by her side. The Funeral Services will be held at Hill Crest Funeral Home on Highway 80, Haughton, LA on Thursday, March 3rd at 2:30 PM, with visitation on Wednesday, March 2nd from 5:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Pastor Brad Jurkovich will officiate with music by Joe and Kathy Whitney. Patricia was born in Chambers County, Alabama in April 1942. Mrs. Eaton graduated from Camp Hill High School in Camp Hill, AL class of 1960. She attended a Business School in Montgomery, AL. She was a sales manager for J.C. Penny during a stay in Hawaii and later returned to the states and spent over 30 years as a multi-line insurance adjuster in Montgomery, AL. In 1995 she and classmate Billy Eaton were married and she moved to Bossier City, LA to be with him. They have been married for over 20 years. She was a member of First Baptist Bossier and enjoyed serving there. She also enjoyed making angels, prayer blankets and crosses to give to people in nursing homes and hospitals. Patricia is survived by her husband, Billy Eaton; one step-daughter, Elizabeth Griffin; one step-granddaughter, Deserea and husband Brett Dunn and two step-great-granddaughters, Jocelyn and Jillian Dunn; one aunt, LaFaye Fredericks and several cousins. She was preceded in death by her parents, Leo Wilson and Quincye Jennings Mobley We wish to thank all the doctors, nurses and staff of Promise Hospital ICU in Bossier City, LA for the super great care and concern for Patricia and the family they showed. Love them all. In lieu of flowers, memorial can be sent to First Baptist Bossier, 2810 East Texas St., Bossier City, LA 71111 or to the Shreveport Bossier Rescue Mission, 901 McNeil St, P.O.Box 3949, Shreveport, LA, 71101-2868. You may sign the on-line guest book by visiting www.hillcrestmemorialfh.com.
The owner of the Los Angeles Times, following a recent management shakeup, will still bid for the Register and The Press-Enterprise, Tribune Publishings new chief executive said Wednesday.

CEO Justin Dearborn told analysts on a conference call that the company still is actively working on a bid for the assets of Freedom Communications, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November. Freedoms two newspapers and related assets will be sold in a court-supervised auction this month. But Dearborn noted that there is a price where we would walk away from the Freedom bidding.

Dearborn, a former health care industry executive, became Tribune CEO last week, replacing Jack Griffin, who was ousted in a boardroom coup orchestrated by Chicago investor Michael Ferro. Griffin brought Ferro into Tribune Publishing early last month as its chairman and largest shareholder.

Tribunes earnings release and conference call on Wednesday offered the first glimpse into how the Ferro-Dearborn team will run Tribune, which has financial challenges like other newspaper companies. Tribune lost $2.7 million last year on $1.67 billion of revenue.

Among the first moves revealed was the decision to make the editor of each of the chains eight newspapers also the publisher. That meant a promotion for Davan Maharaj, who added publisher to his job as Los Angeles Times editor. Tim Ryan, the previous Times publisher, was promoted to Tribunes president of publishing. Jeff Light became editor-in-chief and publisher of Tribunes other Southern California newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Tribune wants to buy the Register and Press-Enterprise to boost its regional strategy of expanding its business base while cutting redundant costs among its newspapers. Tribune is expected to face a bidding contest at the auction for Freedoms assets from an investor group headed by Freedom CEO Rich Mirman as well as from Digital First Media, owner of the Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and other newspapers.

Contact the writer: jlansner@ocregister.com
Three of the five California candidates for U.S. Senate are siding with Apple in its fight with the FBI over accessing a terrorists iPhone, with only long-shot Republican Al Ramirez taking the governments side.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange, and Republicans Tom Del Beccaro and Duf Sundheim support Apples refusal to create FBI-requested software to unlock the iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in the Dec. 2 terrorist attack.

If we can order Apple to create a backdoor, what happens when China does the same? said Sanchez, adding that the requested software could be exploited by hackers, hostile governments and ISIS.

Front-runner Kamala Harris, the states Democratic attorney general, is remaining neutral in the high-profile legal battle. She said a middle ground is needed to balance security and privacy concerns.

Home to tech firms

The five candidates are vying for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, with the winner representing a state that is home not only to Apple but also to Facebook, Yahoo and Google, which are siding with Apple in the dispute.

The House Judiciary Committee launched hearings on the conflict Tuesday, and Sanchez said the complexity of Apples situation necessitates Congressional investigation. While Sanchez shares Harris concern with balancing competing interests, the congresswoman parts with Harris neutrality and says its not an issue for the courts to decide.

Courts do not have the investigative resources and the ability to consider all of the far-reaching potential implications of this problem, said Sanchez, a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, in a statement.

Del Beccaro and Sundheim similarly support Apple, although their reasoning is different.

Del Beccaro said Apple is a non-witness third party, innocent of misconduct, and it cannot be forced to comply.

Road to serfdom

The difference between volunteerism and being compelled is the difference between freedom and the road to serfdom, he wrote on Facebook.

Sundheim took a similar position to that of Sanchez, saying Congress should address the issue, not the courts.

New legislation should be enacted establishing the government has the burden to show that the action they are proposing is both urgent and limited in scope, he said.

Ramirez, a Santa Monica businessman and probably the least-familiar to voters of the five candidates, portrays himself as the most conservative contender and staunchly stands with the FBI in its request.

Apple has proven themselves to be a hostile corporation to the national interests of the U.S. in their myopic obsession over their brand, Ramirez said.

Like Sanchez and Sundheim, Harris indicated new, clearer legal guidelines may be needed to govern when authorities can make the kinds of demands now being placed on Apple.

What will the protocols be going forward? she told the Associated Press. Under what circumstances and conditions should there be access? We want law enforcement to have access to the material that we need to be able to save lives, but the issue is also what we are going to do in terms of policy going forward.

Contact the writer: mwisckol@ocregister.com
Escape games company comes to Anaheim

Escape rooms have become hot alternative outings in Los Angeles and Orange County, but a new business says its really upping the ante.

Crossroads Escape Games, which recently opened in Anaheim, isnt just a room where participants are locked in and left to find clues to get out. In the Hex Room, theres multiple rooms, theres a story line, theres film-quality sets.

Theres also secrets and hidden passageways, co-owner Madison Rhoades, 25, said. You get to live out a real, live movie situation instead of just watching one.

The ideal group size is six. Participants start with a quiz.

It helps us decide what cliche horror film character you are  jock, rebel, prom queen, virgin, nerd or detective, Rhoades said.

Players put on costumes and then each goes into their own room  the door is locked behind them. The back story is they were captured by a serial killer and need to solve riddles to get out in less than an hour. They can communicate with each other through one character, the detective, through openings such as windows and mail slots.

Its not easy. Only about 2 out of 10 escape.

Rhoades, a set designer, and her husband, Luke, a scenic carpenter, came up with their concept after trying other escape rooms.

You know when you just do something and you just see room for improvement? she said. We just thought we had all those tools because of our theater background to make the changes to escape rooms we thought needed to be made.

The couple live in Glendale but thought Anaheim was a great place to try the concept, plus its less saturated with escape room concepts compared to L.A., Rhoades said.

Theres a lot of things in Anaheim for kids to do and we just felt there needed to be something for an older crowd to do, she said.

The first-time business owners are excited with the feedback theyve been getting. Crossroads Escape Games had 22 reviews averaging five stars on Yelp, as of last week.

Its a completely unique experience. This was my 34th room. After doing so many, its really uncommon to come across anything different or surprising, but the Hex Room seriously delivered, said one Yelp reviewer.

At the end of March, CrossRoads plans to open an additional game called the Fun House. The circus-themed escape game will differ from the Hex Room because players stay with their group the entire time.

Taco shop coming to Brea

De Anda Tacos is coming to downtown Brea in March.

Its owned by Dennis Meade and Marcella De Anda, the youngest daughter of the De Anda family, which has been running taquerias (now 12) throughout the county for more than 30 years.

The Yorba Linda couple said they have been wanting to create their own off-shoot of the family legacy, bringing the authenticity of taqueria food with a hip, modern twist, Meade, 39, said. What were trying to do is bring very authentic tacos, from what youd see back in Mexico, to a different demographic.

Tortillas will be made in house and the al pastor is cooked the traditional way grilled on a spit.

The couple said they spent a year looking for a restaurant spot. De Anda Tacos will open at 120 S. Brea Blvd., in a former Daphnes Greek Cafe.

The Mexican eatery, which will be about 2,000 square feet, will serve beer and wine. Itll also have a patio with outside seating and fire pits.

Its kind of a dream for us, Meade said.

Send north Orange County business news and tips to jclay@ocregister.com.

Contact the writer: jclay@ocregister.com
CALAIS, France  More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued.

Thousands of migrants fleeing war and misery in their homelands use the port city of Calais as a springboard to try to get to Britain on the other side of the English Channel. However, authorities are moving to cut short that dream by closing a large swath of the slum camp in the port city of Calais.

In the stinging accusation at the close of the second day of a state-ordered mass eviction and demolition operation, the organizations charged that authorities have failed to respect their promise of a humane and progressive operation based on persuading migrants to vacate their tents and tarp-covered homes.

Refugees, under threats and disinformation, were given one hour to 10 minutes to leave their homes, a statement said. Police pulled out some who refused, making arrests in certain cases, while others were not allowed to gather their belongings or identity papers, the statement charged.

Migrants and pro-migrant activists protested the eviction Tuesday, some climbing onto shanty rooftops to briefly stall the tear-down, and others by starting a night fire.

Tents and tarp-covered lean-tos were also set afire Monday and earlier Tuesday.

The protesting organizations alleged police aimed flash-balls at the roof protesters, then clubbed them and made some arrests.

Tear gas, water cannons and other tactics have been used excessively, the statement charged.

The mass evictions from the southern sector of the camp were announced Feb. 12 with promises by Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve that there would be no brutality.
ROME  Italian lawmakers voted Tuesday to stiffen a legislative decree that Italian olive oil producers and other critics charged would decriminalize olive oil counterfeiting.

Commissions in both houses of Parliament approved the decree but recommended that the government ensure that criminal law prevail over administrative sanctions, such as simple fines, in cases of commercial fraud.

The decree will now return to the government, which must draft a final version. The recommendations of the commissions are not binding, but it is rare that the government does not act on them.

The decree is intended to regulate penalties for counterfeiting olive oil and its origins. One example of counterfeiting would be declaring that an oil was 100 percent Italian extra-virgin olive oil when, in fact, it contained olive oil from other countries.

As the measure had been written, olive oil producers, lobbyists and farming groups feared that it would leapfrog criminal procedures in favor of fines of up to 9,500 euros, or about $10,300, which they said were inadequate to discourage fraud that could generate millions of euros.

The entire olive oil industry was contrary to the decree as it had been drafted, said Colomba Mongiello, an Italian lawmaker who pushed for the changes in the decree.

Promoting authentic made in Italy is a priority of Prime Minister Matteo Renzis government, and it is not the moment to lower our guard on fraud and counterfeiting, Mongiello wrote in an email. It is important to punish anyone who damages the image of Italy abroad.

The commissions also voted in favor of stronger sanctions on false labeling and on a provision that would force repeat offenders to stop production for up to six months. Olive oil fraud increased sharply last year after a dismal harvest, an infestation of olive oil flies and olive tree disease.

At the same time, Italy has several expert investigative bodies tackling food fraud.

We do more controls than anywhere else in the world here, Mongiello said. We care about our products.

Alberto Grimelli, an agronomist and the editor of the website Teatro Naturale, said that in the end, the issue came down to safeguarding the reputation of products made in Italy.

The parliamentary commissions rightly understood that the credibility of Italian olive oil rested on this decree, he wrote, particularly abroad, and so they asked the government to modify the text so that fraudsters are seriously dealt with.
DUBLIN  The Real IRA veteran charged with murdering 29 people in Omagh walked free from prison Tuesday after prosecutors concluded that the evidence against him  particularly a witness supposed to place him in the Northern Ireland town that day  was too weak.

Seamus Daly had spent nearly two years in prison awaiting trial for the Aug.15, 1998, car bomb attack on a crowd of shoppers, workers and tourists. His case joined a string of failed prosecutions against the alleged Real IRA figures long blamed for the deadliest single bombing of the entire Northern Ireland conflict.

Daly, 45, did serve a brief prison sentence in the Republic of Ireland after pleading guilty in 2004 to membership in the Real IRA, one of several outlawed factions all styling themselves as the true Irish Republican Army. These small, feud-prone gangs reject the cease-fire observed since 1997 by the major group, the Provisional IRA.

The Real IRA planted a string of car bombs in Northern Ireland towns in 1998 in a bid to undermine support for that years Good Friday peace accord. Police prevented deaths in several other car bombings with swift evacuations.

But on that unusually sunny Saturday in Omagh, police responding to vague telephone warnings ordered people away from the towns hilltop courthouse down Market Street  and straight to the bomb, which was parked outside a shop selling school uniforms.

Most of those slain were women and children, including a mother who was 9months pregnant with twins.
LOS ANGELES  When Los Angeles police officers fire at suspects, their targets are disproportionately black or mentally ill, according to the most comprehensive data on the use of force ever compiled by the department and released to the public Tuesday.

Of the 223 people shot at by Los Angeles police from 2011 to 2015, 77 were black, according to the report. That means 35 percent of those shot at by police were black, while blacks make up just 9 percent of the citys population.

Meanwhile the number of mentally ill people shot by police increased from five in 2014 to 14 last year. The 14 mentally ill people represent 37 percent of all the people shot by Los Angeles police in 2015, according to the report, which the police department presented Tuesday to the citys police commission, a civilian oversight panel.

The report emphasizes that a vast majority of police interactions with the public do not involve use of force.

In 2015, for example, officers used force 1,924 times among more than 1.5 million contacts with members of the public, or 0.13 percent of the time, according to the report.

Police Chief Charlie Beck told the commission that he hopes the report informs discourse about police use of force.

This is the framework upon which we will build a discussion that I think needs to happen not only in L.A. but probably in the whole country, he said.

Capt. John McMahon told the commission its also important to look at crime and victim statistics for context when looking at the percentage of black people shot by police. For example, he said 42 percent of homicide victims in the city and 39 percent of those arrested for those crimes were black.

Hopefully that provides some type of backdrop as to why that number is the way it is, McMahon said of the percentage of black people shot at by police. Obviously that number being lower than overall crime figures  that may be perceived as a good thing, but this department wont rest until we get to zero.

As for the sharp increase in the number of mentally ill people shot by police last year, Beck said theres no one explanation but that overall, officers had more interactions with the mentally ill as the number of homeless people in the city has increased.

He said the department has stepped up training officers on how to handle the mentally ill and on less-than-lethal force options but added that its going to take a lot of time for every officer to get all the additional training needed.

Tuesdays commission meeting was disrupted for several minutes after two dozen protesters stood up when Beck began speaking. They angrily shouted about the death of Charly Africa Keunang, a homeless black man shot by Los Angeles police six times a year ago Tuesday.

The commission found the shooting was justified, and Beck has said Keunang grabbed for a rookie police officers gun after ignoring commands and becoming combative.

Protesters shouted Cant kill Africa! while one demonstrator yelled that officers have a shoot-to-kill policy.

The demonstration grew tense but remained peaceful. Protesters were escorted out of the meeting and no arrests were made.
The Irvine Unified School District will ask voters in June to approve a facilities bond measure that would raise money to improve aging school facilities.

The school board on Tuesday unanimously approved the formation of a school facilities improvement district encompassing 28 campuses and said it would seek $319 million in bond revenue to those schools.

Only voters within the district will get to cast a vote on the measure  and only campuses within it will get funds for improvements.

Residential and commercial property owners would pay a yearly tax of $29 per $100,000 of assessed value if the measure is approved. At least 55 percent of voters would need to be in favor.

Parents, teachers and staff who spoke in favor of the measure gave several examples of why it is needed: Classrooms at Brywood Elementary School need doors; a teacher at Lakeside Middle School expects to lose more ceiling tiles when it rains the next time; orchestra practice at Irvine High School takes practice in the computer lab.

The districts new schools and those currently under construction, such as Portola High School, in Great Park Neighborhoods, have state-of-the-art facilities.

If we dont do something, were going to become a community of the haves and have nots, board member Sharon Wallin said.

More than 20 people spoke at the meeting, most in favor of the measure.

However, Gil Nelsen, whose two grown children attended Irvine schools, said the district should find another way to cover its facilities needs.

Personally, Im not willing to pay without a fight the $350 that I figured out you folks are going to get out of me based on my home in Woodbridge, Nelsen said. Starting tonight the campaign to defeat this bond tax is underway.

He accused Irvine Unified of mismanaging funds.

I believe the district should have long ago created a major construction improvement fund, he said. I believe youre essentially creating a Mello-Roos tax for homeowners who moved into non-Mello-Roos boundary areas in Irvine.

Steve Harlow, an entrepreneur who owns properties in Irvine, also spoke in opposition, disagreeing with the premise that the older schools require immediate upgrades.

Theres a place called Harvard. Anybody ever heard of it? he said. A lot of the buildings are a couple hundred years old.

However, teacher Mary Thomas-Vallens, who has been at Brywood Elementary School since it opened, said the campus condition is detrimental to student learning.

Our school is almost 30 years old, she said. Ive been told some of our computers are older than our students.

Janelle Cranch, president of the districts chapter of the California School Employees Association, said the unions 1,600 members support the measure; the Irvine Teachers Association does, too.

Without additional facilities dollars we will not have sufficient funds to create equity in our schools, Cranch said. This will have a dire long-term implication on our district and on the entire community.

Irvine resident Kristi Smemoe, representing a group called Preserve Irvine Schools, said she agrees that local schools should get upgrades, but said the bond measure isnt fair to some homeowners in the facilities improvement district.

Students in some neighborhoods not included in the district will attend schools improved by the measure, she said.

We do want our aging facilties to be updated and improved, said Liz Reed, also with Preserve Irvine Schools. What we have an issue with is the equitableness of this bond.

The board did its best to make the bond measure as fair as possible, but there is no way to craft a perfect district, board president Paul Bokota said.

If voters back the measure, planning and design for facilities improvements would begin in 2017.

Contact the writer: sdecrescenzo@ocregister.com
RAMALLAH, West Bank  Two Israeli soldiers led astray by their smartphone navigation app accidentally wandered into an unruly area of the West Bank, provoking clashes and a gunbattle that left a Palestinian man dead.

The soldiers, from the armys canine unit, were following Waze, a navigation app, late Monday when they drove into an area bordering the Kalandia refugee camp, between Jerusalem and Ramallah.

The app is popular among Israelis, but soldiers are under standing orders not to use GPS services in areas with which they are not familiar, said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military.

They should be using maps, and they should know the route, he said.

Armed, in uniform and driving a clearly identifiable military vehicle, they were quickly attacked by Palestinians, who apparently suspected that the soldiers were part of a military raid.

The Palestinians hurled rocks and firebombs and set the vehicle ablaze, the military said Tuesday. The soldiers, who were on an administrative task, abandoned their vehicle and fled separately on foot.

One called for help from his cellphone and was rescued within 20 minutes, according to the military. His companion had left his phone in their sport utility vehicle. Out of contact, the military had feared he might have been abducted, prompting Israel to send more forces, including helicopters and surveillance drones into the area.

The missing soldier was eventually found in a valley between the refugee camp and a nearby Jewish settlement.

When Israeli troops came to retrieve the abandoned vehicle, clashes broke out between soldiers and local Palestinians, lasting until the early hours of the morning.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man, Iyad Sajadiyya, was shot and killed, according to Maan, a Palestinian news outlet. Moshe Yaalon, the Israeli defense minister, who was attending a technology conference Tuesday, said that Sajadiyya had been armed.

It was unclear why the soldiers were using Waze, a smartphone app developed in Israel and acquired by Google for more than $1 billion in 2013, to navigate in the West Bank.

Waze told Agence France-Presse in a statement that the soldiers must have veered off the route suggested by the application.

Wazes default setting does not provide navigation in areas of the West Bank considered dangerous for Israelis; the soldiers would have had to turn off the apps safe mode to use it around Kalandia.

Lerner said that the episode was under review, and that the military wanted to know, among other things, how they ended up there and what were their orders for getting from A to B.

Yaalon, the defense minister, warned against relying too much on technology to navigate potentially dangerous areas. Waze, which uses crowd-sourced information from its users to suggest the best routes, does not take into account all of the considerations, he said. At the same time, Yaalon acknowledged that, not a small amount of technology was involved in ultimately finding the soldiers.

Waze does not distinguish among the different areas of the West Banks political map once the safe mode is disabled, making it potentially perilous for Israelis and Palestinians who rely on it inside the territory.

The West Bank is a mosaic of Palestinian-ruled areas that Israelis may not enter without prior authorization, Jewish settlements where Palestinians are forbidden without permits, and Israeli military checkpoints and border crossings.

Waze also tends to confuse Palestinian and Israeli areas, which often have the same, or similar, names.

In June, two other Israeli soldiers who were using the app accidentally entered the Palestinian city of Tulkarm after they typed in Beit Lid, the name of a village near the Tulkarm area of the West Bank and the name of a road junction in Israel.
The biggest day  and night  of the 2016 presidential primary season is (mostly) in the books. Voters in 11 states, from Texas to Vermont, cast ballots with hundreds of delegates at stake on both sides. I watched, tweeted and jotted down some of the best and worst of the night that was.

Hillary Clinton: Its (close to) all over. The former secretary of state won convincingly in all of the big states on Super Tuesday  relegating Bernie Sanders to a handful of wins in states that award relatively few Democratic delegates (Vermont, Oklahoma). Clintons margins matter too; she won by wide spreads in the biggest delegate-awarding states like Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Like in South Carolina, Clinton dominated  and that may not even be a strong enough word  among black voters. In Georgia and Virginia, for example, Clinton won more than 80 percent of the black vote. And, its not just tonight that looks good for Clinton. Its hard to see where Sanders wins a bundle of states in a row somewhere later this month or next month (or the month after that.) Clinton now has a death-grip on the Democratic nomination. The only question is how and when she and her team negotiate a peace with Sanders. And, she knows it. Her victory speech Tuesday night in Florida was aimed directly at Trump  talking about why America is and always has been great and why we needed to break down, not build up walls. Expect lots more of that.

Donald Trump: What Super Tuesday proved is that, barring some sort of cataclysmic event, the real estate billionaire will end the primary process with the most delegates of any candidate in the field. The only question that remains is whether he can get over the 1,237 delegates he needs to cinch the GOP nomination. The breadth of Trumps wins  he won in Massachusetts and in Georgia, in Virginia and in Alabama  make it hard to cast him as a candidate limited by either geography or ideology. No Republican nominee has won the panoply of states that Trump now has. Yes, Trump would have liked to win Texas to close out Cruz and probably Oklahoma (which Cruz also won) too. But wins in eight or nine out of 11 voting states, which is what looks like Trumps haul will be after Super Tuesday, is pretty damn good. The two most likely paths for the race at this point are 1) A Trump delegate win or 2) A near-Trump win with the possibility of an open convention where the party establishment tries to take it from him. I like Trumps odds.

Ted Cruz: Combine the Texas senators wins in Texas and Oklahoma with Rubios inability to bring home a victory in Virginia and suddenly Cruz looks like the favorite to be the alternative to Trump. Thats, without question, the best-case scenario coming out of Super Tuesday for Cruz given that a loss in Texas would have effectively ended his campaign. Plus, the votes in between Tuesday and the March 15 primaries Louisiana, Kansas etc.  look like potential Cruz wins. Major problems exist for Cruz  most notably that he isnt dominating among evangelicals or in the South as he should and that the D.C. establishment loathes him so much its hard to see them uniting behind him to stop Trump. Still, all in all, a good night for Cruz  and one that keeps him in the race and viable for at least two more weeks. Our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten and can beat Donald Trump, Cruz said Tuesday night. Hard to argue with that.

Liberals: For years, liberal was a bad word. No longer. A majority of Democrats in every single state that voted on Super Tuesday called themselves liberals. Sanders may have lost on Tuesday night but the re-claiming of the word liberal for Democrats is a testament to his influence on this race.

Political junkies: The best (only?) hope of Republicans who want to stop Trump is to keep him under the 1,237 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination. That means an open convention, a fantasy that most political junkies thought would never come to pass, might, well, come to pass.

Marco Rubio: If you want to be the Republican nominee, you have to win things. Yes, thats an obvious point. But, it looks as though Rubio could be shut out on Super Tuesday (his last hope is the Minnesota caucuses, where he led early)  meaning that he could be 0-for-15 or 1-for-15 in the states that have voted so far in the Republican presidential primary process. You can try to spin that if you are for Rubio but the numbers are the numbers.

Bernie Sanders: Tuesdays results showed that Sanders simply didnt do enough to disrupt the race in the first four states. Clinton built momentum in Nevada, added to it on Saturday night in South Carolina and watched as it crested on Super Tuesday. It was telling that Sanders gave his victory speech at 7:30 p.m. Eastern before the vast majority of states voting on Super Tuesday had been called. It was also telling that nowhere in the speech did Sanders suggest where his campaign goes from here.

Sanders can and likely will remain in the race for the foreseeable future because he still has a rabid following and plenty of money. But, nothing that happened on Tuesday night alters the narrative of the Democratic race  that Clinton is on a steady march to the nomination.

Republican establishment: What happened Tuesday night looks like a worst-case scenario for the GOP establishment. Why? Because Trump kept up the pace he needs to come close or go over the 1,237 delegates he needs to be the nominee. And Cruz emerged as the most likely Trump alternative. Thats a rock and a hard place choice for establishment Republicans who fear Trump and hate Cruz. And it may be the only choice they have left.

Chris Christie: The New Jersey governor, who stunned the political world by endorsing Trump, is  not surprisingly  a terrible second fiddle. He looked awkward and uncomfortable standing rigid behind Trump after introducing the real estate mogul in Florida.
WHAT PROBABLY HAPPENED

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took big steps toward the general election, winning most of the delegates awarded in a Dixie-tinged Super Tuesday. In all, 12 states and a territory  including most of the Deep South  held presidential primaries or caucuses or, in the case of Alaska, a preference poll. Clinton and Trump each won at least seven states; Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders won four states and GOP Sen. Ted Cruz picked off two. Sen. Marco Rubio won one (Minnesota). With more than 30 primaries left, pundits predict a Clinton and Trump faceoff in November 

 UNLESS

Cruz can look as strong in upcoming primaries as he did in Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday. Or if Sanders can win in non-Southern states the way he did Tuesday in Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Vermont. Or if Rubio can pull off enough wins or strong showings to carry momentum into a potentially brokered GOP convention in July. Or if the growing number of GOP bigwigs who use the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump mount a third-party candidate.

NUMBERS OF NOTE

85

Percentage of Trump voters on Tuesday who favor a ban on Muslims entering the United States. (NBC News)

66

Percentage of Clinton voters on Tuesday who want to continue President Barack Obamas policies rather than a more liberal shift. (Associated Press).

DIXIE

Most of the Super Tuesday states are in the Deep South. That meant a disproportionate share of African American voters, who went for Clinton. For the GOP, it meant more Trump-leaning voters who describe themselves as either very conservative or Christian.

LOCAL RESPONSE

Tonights vote is setting up the next round of primaries in mid-March. Republican voters are starting to pay attention.  I dont think there is a clear path yet for any of the top-tier candidates.

 Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County

If Sanders is still in the race after mid-March, theres a chance (California) might still be in play in terms of picking the nominee.

 Henry Vandermeir, chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County
WASHINGTON  Hillary Clinton held on to older people and ate into Bernie Sanders support among the 30-to-44 crowd on Super Tuesday as her rival claimed a clear advantage with only one age group: his devoted under-30 followers.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump and his mad-as-hell message pulled in nearly two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House. Those more interested in a candidate with political experience? They split about evenly between first-term senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, according to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

Other highlights from the exit polls:

PORTRAIT OF A TRUMP VOTER

Nine in 10 of Trumps voters are looking for an outsider. Half are angry with the government. Nearly as many want a candidate willing to tell it like it is. Four in 10 said they were born again, cutting into Ted Cruzs efforts to claim the evangelical vote. Trump, who has professed mutual admiration with poorly educated voters, was favored by half of voters without a college degree. His followers are nothing if not loyal: Six in 10 of his voters made up their minds more than a month ago.

PORTRAIT OF A CLINTON VOTER

More than 90 percent of Clintons voters want an insider, and nearly half say experience is the quality they are looking for in a candidate. Two-thirds of her voters want to continue President Barack Obamas policies, rather than shift in a more liberal direction. And, just as with Trump, 60 percent of her backers made up their mind more than a month ago. Two-thirds of her supporters are women, and two-thirds are 45 or older.

SOUR ON WASHINGTON

GOP voters across the Super Tuesday primary states were in a sour mood toward Washington. If they werent angry, they were dissatisfied: At least 8 in 10 Republican primary voters had negative thoughts toward Washington. Democrats were not quite as critical: 60 percent had negative opinions about the federal government.

CLINTONS COALITON

Women, blacks and older voters all bolstered Clintons standing. She showed the same strength among African Americans that she did in South Carolina, supported by at least 80 percent of black voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas.

Black voters made up just about half of voters in Alabama and Georgia, 3 in 10 in Tennessee and about a quarter of Virginia and Arkansas.

Clinton made inroads on Super Tuesday with young-ish (30-44) voters, who divided their votes about evenly between the two Democratic candidates. Sanders, by contrast had led among all voters under age 45 in the first three contests of the year, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

OBAMA II?

Democrats in 8 of 9 states were more likely to want a continuation of President Barack Obamas policies than a shift in a more liberal direction, as advocated by Sanders.

Majorities of Democratic voters in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia said they want a continuation of Obamas policies, along with about 4 in 10 voters in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Texas.

In each of those states, about a third of Democratic voters or less want a switch to more liberal policies.

The outlier: Vermont, Sanders home state. About half of Democratic voters there said they want the next president to change to more liberal policies.

HONESTY v. EXPERIENCE

Democratic voters across each of the nine states had very different priorities as they chose between Clinton and Sanders.

Nearly half of Clintons voters said experience was the quality they were looking for, while only about a fifth or less selected electability, empathy or honesty.

Nearly half of Sanders voters said honesty was the most important quality and about a third said they were looking for someone who cares.

LatinoS

Latinos made up less than 15 percent of Democratic voters on Tuesday. In Texas, though, Latinos were nearly 3 in 10 voters and two-thirds voted for Clinton.

In the Texas Republican primary, 10 percent of voters were Latino. They divided their support closely among home state victor Cruz, Rubio and Trump.
The Register looks at the top players to watch this softball season (listed alphabetically).

Mackenzie Boesel, Orange Lutheran: The slick-fielding shortstop also owns one of the most-feared bats in the county. Boesel hit .462 as a junior and led Orange Lutheran in hits (42), RBI (37), homers (8) and posted a .566 on-base percentage. The South Carolina-commit struck out just twice in 113 plate appearances.

Hannah Boos, Pacifica: Expectations for the Mariners are high, largely, because of the way the junior right-hander developed and pitched in the second part of last season. Her two losses in Pacificas final 18 games came against Mission Viejo (the Division 2 runner-up) and Norco (Division 1 champs). Boos should cement her status as Pacificas next great ace this spring.



SOFTBALL PREVIEW



Ryan Denhart, Los Alamitos: She didnt see a ton of time in the circle in 2015, but the junior will be the Griffins go-to pitcher this spring. As a freshman, the hard-throwing righty guided the team to a 21-win season and an appearance in the Michelle Carew Classic final. Denhart should be back at that level this season.

Maddy Dwyer, Orange Lutheran: The Trinity Leagues co-pitcher of the year won 19 games, struck out 152 and posted a 1.66 ERA as a sophomore in 2015. She reportedly upped her velocity in the offseason. Dont overlook her production at the plate. She homered eight times a season ago and had an average of .439.

Jenna Holcomb, Los Alamitos: Speed is her calling card, and the center fielder has utilized that gift to become one of the areas top leadoff hitters and defensive outfielders. The reigning Sunset League MVP batted .444 as a junior and swiped 30 bases. She has signed with Tennessee.

Kristina Inouye, Huntington Beach: The shortstop is as reliable as they come, hitting better than .430 with at least 35 hits in each of her first three varsity campaigns. Opposing pitchers will find it difficult to pitch around Inouye because shell be surrounded by capable bats. She signed with Stanford.

Dejah Mulipola, Pacifica: There isnt a better defensive catcher around, and opposing teams know better than to test Mulipolas cannon of an arm. At the plate, the Arizona commit has made huge strides in power and average. She could wind up being the most productive bat in a loaded Pacifica lineup.

Jasmine Sievers, Capistrano Valley: Last season, no freshman in Orange County made a bigger impact for her ballclub than Sievers did. She was among the areas leaders in hits (55), average (.482), runs (31) and stolen bases (15). What will she do as a sophomore?

Camryn Ybarra, Mission Viejo: The third baseman hit behind Alyssa Palomino last season and finished her sophomore campaign with a .423 average, eight home runs and 41 hits, all tops among Mission Viejos returning players. Shell play an integral role for the Diablos as they try to reclaim their spot atop the Division 2 ranks.

Taryn Young, Canyon: The Comanches graduated as much talent as any program in Orange County, losing four Division I bats from last years Division 1 semifinalist. Young should soften the blow as Canyons top returner. The junior outfielder finished second on the team in RBI (23) and doubles (8) last year, was third in home runs (5) and batted .318.

Contact the writer: kconnolly@ocregister.com
In an attempt to combat the nations food wastage problem, Denmark has opened the worlds very first supermarket that sells expired or damaged products. Ever since the grand opening in Copenhagen last Monday, people have been lining up outside WeFood for a chance to purchase discounted items that would otherwise have ended up in the trash because of damaged packaging or very short use-by dates. Food, cosmetics, and other household items at WeFood are priced at least 30 to 50 percent lower than at regular stores.

WeFood is the first supermarket of its kind in Denmark and perhaps the world, as it is not just aimed at low-income shoppers but anyone who is concerned about the amount of food wastage produced in the country, said project head Per Bjerre. Many people see this as a positive and politically correct way to approach the issue. The grand inauguration was attended by Denmarks Princess Marie, and former minister for food and environment, Eva Kjer Hansen.

Its ridiculous that food is just thrown out or goes to waste, said Hansen, who was full of praise for the initiative. It is bad for the environment and it is money spent on absolutely nothing. A supermarket like WeFood makes so much sense and is an important step in the battle to combat food waste.

While Denmark alone is estimated to waste about 700,000 tons of food every year, the United Nations has stated that globally, food waste amounts to a whopping 1.3 billion tons. These are shocking figures, considering the fact that about 795 million people in the world are undernourished, according to the World Food Program. Denmark, however, has adopted several measures to clean up its act, wasting 25% less food than it did five years ago. One such initiative is The Food Bank, a local nonprofit that distributes surplus food to homeless shelters.

The WeFood project is a collaboration between The Food Bank and religious charity DanChurch Aid. Together they raised over 1 million kroner (nearly $150,000) over the past year, through crowdfunding. They also had to face many legislative obstacles while convincing the government to permit the sale of expired food. They were finally allowed to implement the project, and the store is now run exclusively by volunteers. Profits are used to fund DanChurch Aids other projects in developing nations like South Sudan and Bangladesh.

Provided WeFoods remains popular in the long term and if it is able to maintain its food deliveries, DanChurch Aid plans to open multiple branches across Denmark.

Photos: WeFood/Facebook

Sources: Quartz, RT
Chris Shigas

For any company, it's an honor to receive a visit from the President of the United States. Your brand story is about to be told through the megaphone of the White House press corps, backed by the credibility of the worlds most powerful office.

Amid the excitement and hoopla of this circus environment, its important to pause and think about issues management. A visit from a President in an election year has the potential to stir political debate. What if our clients brand becomes a pawn in partisan bickering? How do we prepare for unexpected, unintended consequences?

FWV Chairman & CEO Rick French shakes hands with President Obama. The President visited Saft America headquarters in Jacksonville, FL on February 26.

As one of the nations leading independently held public relations agencies, French|West|Vaughan was tasked by a client to prepare, manage and leverage a visit from the Commander in Chief. The client, Saft America, has the most advanced Lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in the world, located in Jacksonville, Florida. Saft batteries help power everything from satellites to remote power grids to state-of-the-art battlefield technology. President Obama is highlighting the renaissance of American manufacturing, and Saft is a leading example of success by providing good, high-paying jobs for American families.

Given the sheer quantity of event management tasks, a Presidential visit can consume any company. The Secret Service, press staff and advance team arrive days before the visit. There are a lot of details: run of show, security sweeps, employee background checks, protocol, designated safe rooms, work place disruptions and media requests.

Working with the White Houses media relations staff is a collaborative experience. The staff worked with our FWV PR team to make the event a joint venture. We had the freedom to invite media, distribute press releases and place branded product for the event photo ops. We engaged top national media outlets as well as industry trade publications.

However, as exciting as these opportunities can be, PR teams should always take steps to protect the clients brand by planning for potential negativity. Political challengers may use mainstream and social media to harass the President and embarrass your client. Dust off and refresh your crisis communication plan. Create media holding statements and review potential scenarios that could require your client to react.

On the ground at the event, there will be two distinct groups of media: local/industry media outlets and the White House press corps. The local and industry outlets will be in place a few hours before the President arrives. You will have time to provide them with press kits, as well as pitch angles and secure interviews. The White House press corps travels with the President on Air Force One and will arrive shortly before the event begins. In our case, we personally handed out company fact sheets to the press corps upon arrival and provided them with written quotes. Keep in mind, the White House press corps coverage is from the viewpoint of political beat writers. If your clients brand is going to be politicized, this is where it will happen.

When you encounter a reputation challenge, reinforce your brand promise. Your products and services make the world a better place. Be able to communicate: who you are, what you do and why that is important. For many executives, the answers to these questions are not as easy as they appear. But getting company leadership on the same page builds confidence, makes messaging strategic and protects your brand from reputation challenges.

In Saft Americas case, the company has built the most advanced Lithium-ion battery facility in the world, provided quality jobs for American families and is helping to power next-generation technology systems. It is something to be proud of, regardless of your politics.



* * *

Chris Shigas is Senior Vice President of French/West/Vaughan, and is also instructor at FWV's premier media training workshop, Media Academy.
Oakland, CA daily mainstay the Oakland Tribune will cease publication as part of a massive effort by publisher Bay Area News Group to reorganize its media properties. The daily newspaper, which was first published in 1874, will run its final edition on April 4.

Bay Area News Group will fold the Oakland Tribune into a forthcoming daily publication titled the East Bay Times. Three other Bay-area BANG publications  the Contra Costa Times, the Daily Review and the Argus  will also be consolidated into this new publication. The East Bay Times and its accompanying website, eastbaytimes.com, is slated to appear April 5.

BANG on Tuesday announced that it would also combine its South Bay properties, flagship paper the San Jose Mercury News  which was founded in 1851  with the San Mateo County Times. Those newspapers will be rebranded as new regional publication, Mercury News. That newspaper will also debut April 5.



Bay Area News Group, which remains the largest newspaper publisher in the San Francisco Bay Area, also publishes the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Marin Independent Journal, and 27 community newspapers throughout the South and East Bay region. The publisher in a statement said the rebranded media properties would focus on regional and community news, and that the consolidation effort is part of an ongoing transformation to make BANG more responsive to its print and digital audiences, streamlining production while improving news gathering and presentation to provide readers with news when they want it and where they want it.

Current subscribers to the Oakland Tribune, the Argus and the Daily Review will receive each Friday a weekly insert bearing the mastheads of those respective publications, whose content will focus solely on local news items.

Buyouts and layoffs are expected to accompany the rebrand. The SFGate reported Tuesday that the Bay Area News Group plans to slash approximately 20 percent of its newsroom staff, which currently numbers about 200. Buyouts will be offered to newsroom employees who have been with the publisher for at least 20 years, according to SFGate.

Bay Area News Group is owned by New York-based newspaper management company Digital First Media, which also owns the Denver Post, the New Haven Register, the Los Angeles Daily News, the Monterey County Herald, the Salt Lake Tribune, the (San Bernardino) Sun and the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly...
CHICAGO  Less-than-stellar holiday sales  despite extra-long hours and extra-steep discounts  may be a wake-up call to department stores that they need a new approach.

What shoppers are looking for from department stores today is an experience, services and brands they cant get other places. Theres an opportunity, but theyre not totally taking advantage of it yet, said Wendy Liebmann, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail, a retail consultancy in New York.

The holiday season at Sears was especially rough. Greg Melich, an Evercore ISI analyst covering Sears, warned in a report that the company is no longer viable as a retailer in its current form.

The department store chain, based in suburban Chicago, announced this month it planned to accelerate store closings and said it expected to write down the value of its iconic brand name by up to $200 million. In Nebraska, there are two Sears department stores in Omaha  at Crossroads Mall and Oak View Mall  and one each in Lincoln and Grand Island, plus a number of the spinoff Sears Hometown stores across the state.

Behind the scenes, Sears is working to proactively transform its business, spokesman Chris Brathwaite said. The retailer has aggressively invested in what it calls integrated retail services that combine the online and in-store shopping experience, where analysts said Sears is ahead of the curve. Customers can get free curbside pickup of items theyve ordered online or reserve clothes online to try on in-store, and the companys loyalty program allows more targeted and personalized marketing.

Liebmann and Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, another retail consultancy in New York, said Sears is in unusually dire straits.

They just cant compete, Davidowitz said.

But it just isnt a good time to be a department store, he said.

Department stores are the worst segment in retailing. The sector is not a good sector, Davidowitz said.

Sears Holdings this month said fourth-quarter sales at stores open at least a year fell 6.9 percent in Sears stores and 7.2 percent in Kmart stores, and fell 7.3 percent and 11.1 percent, respectively, for the full year. Macys reported a 4.7 percent drop in November and December sales at existing stores and has also announced plans to cut 40 stores. J.C. Penney Co. reported a 3.9 percent increase in sales over that period; analysts said its good performance came from fixing earlier mistakes.

Nordstrom lowered its forecasts for profit and sales after slower-than-expected third-quarter sales.

Retail sales were up by 0.2 percent in January, but department stores sales were down 0.8 percent, according to U.S. Commerce Department data released earlier this month.

Department stores are a high-cost operator, with lots of large stores in pricey mall real estate, Davidowitz said. That makes it tough to compete with stores like value-focused T.J. Maxx or fast fashion retailers and online sellers that offer similar items with a less-expensive business model.

People are watching their pennies, he said. The customer is trading down, and people in the extreme value business are booming.

E-commerce has been a challenge for all brick-and-mortar retailers, but some retail analysts said department stores may have been particularly hard-hit.

Online shoppers do less browsing than in-store customers, meaning retailers make less per sale, said Keith Jelinek, senior managing director with FTI Consulting. A customer hunting for a specific item online might not immediately think to look to a department store offering a wide range of items, said Neil Stern, senior partner at Chicago-based McMillanDoolittle.

Even wealthier customers who still like the department store experience just arent buying as many clothes, and both the department stores and the malls theyre often found in are still dependent on apparel sales, making both less of a draw, said Liebmann.

Post-recession, a lot of people are saying, How much more stuff do I need? There are other things Id prefer to spend my money on, she said.

Higher-end department stores have been introducing off-price stores to compete with those offering a better deal, including Nordstrom Rack, Macys Backstage and Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5th.

Most are now saying, this is where we can grow with price-conscious shoppers, Liebmann said. Theres a danger because it erodes who they are as a premium retailer, but it also brings in a whole new audience.

Liebmann said that meant off-price stores were unlikely to cut into their namesakes sales but could mean more competition for department stores targeting more budget-conscious customers, such as Penneys, Kohls and Sears.

Despite their challenges, there is a niche for department stores to fill going forward, said Steven Barr, PwCs U.S. retail and consumer sector leader, dismissing talk of their demise.

Alicia Terran, a Chicago wedding planner searching for a particular Michael Kors purse at Macys, agreed.

There are always going to be girls that love department stores, she said.

But that doesnt mean they dont need to evolve, analysts said.

With companies that started with e-commerce also trying to blend online and brick-and-mortar sales, McMillanDoolittles Stern said companies that already have a network of physical stores will have at least a short-term advantage. But he also said Sears online efforts wont matter if customers arent interested in the brand behind the tech.

You can be great at doing all this, but if the brands not compelling, youre still not drawing new eyeballs, Stern said.

Brathwaite said Sears is trying to be profitable and doubling down on relationships with current shoppers.

Others are trying to balance drawing in younger customers with keeping the brands legacy intact and trying to go back to what department stores were initially famous for: a destination outing, not just an errand, Barr and WSLs Liebmann said.

Desiree Perkins, shopping at a Chicago Nordstrom while in town on business, said she liked the stores products but was also impressed with the overall look and surprised to find a bar in the middle of the mens department. She estimates she does about half her shopping online but likes the full experience she gets in person.

Thats what brings me in, she said.

Many department stores now offer restaurants and coffee shops. Some have personal shoppers, spa services, parties for regular customers and pop-up shops spotlighting new products.

While higher-end department stores might invest in a smaller number of more upscale locations in major cities, midtier stores can still compete on experience by promising customers the thrill of getting a steal, Barr said.

The key to sticking around will be picking an identity and sticking to it, he said.

What department stores cant do is be something to everybody in all markets, Barr said.
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia says it is close to an international deal with OPEC countries to cap oil production, and a final decision will be made this month.

Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar floated an output cap last month with the aim of boosting oil prices, but it was conditional on other producers joining in. Iran has so far resisted, while Russia has agreed.

Addressing top state and private sector oil executives, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Energy Minister Alexander Novak is agreeing and practically has agreed with his partners in the global market to cap oil output.

Its about us not ramping up oil production this year, he said Tuesday in comments published on the Kremlin website.

The deal would cap Russian production at the level of January 2016, Putin said.

Novak was quoted by the Tass news agency as saying the deal mentioned by Putin was agreed to by 15 countries that together account for 73 percent of global production. Novak did not list the countries involved. Iran has so far not agreed because it wants to increase output after years of sanctions on its oil sector.

Its a critical mass of those countries who could reach a deal, Novak said. Even without Iran, a deal will be effective.

Novak struck a conciliatory tone, saying there could be an exemption allowing Iran to increase production from artificially low levels under sanctions. In my view, it could be approached individually, with a separate decision, he said.

Novak added that a meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC producers including Russia this month will produce a final decision.

Russias economy is in recession, and the states finances have been hammered by the recent plunge in the price of oil.
With 55 new and expanded corporate projects in 2015, the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area ranked No. 1 last year for U.S. cities in its population category, according to Site Selection magazine.

The Lincoln metro area, with 28 projects, ranked seventh in the same category, metro areas with a population of 200,000 to 1 million.

Adam Bruns, managing editor of Atlanta-based Site Selection, announced its findings Tuesday at the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerces downtown headquarters. Gov. Pete Ricketts, Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert and the mayors of Lincoln, Fremont and Louisville, among others, attended the event.

The Omaha areas 55 projects for the year ranked ahead of No. 2 Dayton, Ohio, with 43, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, with 39.

Among the nations largest metro areas (population 1 million or more), Chicago ranked first with 376 announced projects in 2015. Omaha-based ConAgra Foods announced in October that it was moving its headquarters to Chicago.

Benchmarks for the tally included projects with at least a $1 million investment; those involving at least 20,000 square feet of new space; or any creating at least 20 new jobs.

Among the Omaha-Council Bluffs projects announced in 2015:

 Green Plains: New headquarters facility in Aksarben Village

David Brown, the chambers president and chief executive, called Omahas award a result of the collaborative success of the chamber and the chamber-led Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership.

This ranking is the latest example of what it means to accomplish more together: Our partner counties collaborating across state lines, working with city leaders and Nebraska and Iowa Departments of Economic Development to grow our existing businesses, attract new companies and new jobs, and enhance our total quality of life.

Randy Thelen, the chambers senior vice president of economic development, said the team approach is proving its merit: Were continually seeing the value of our two-state, regional approach to economic development. Its how we offer the most options to companies that are interested in locating or expanding here  and the result is a healthy pipeline of projects.

Of ConAgra, Thelen said the loss hurts and will hurt for some time.

This award recognizes our economic development efforts. ... It shows we never pulled our foot off the gas pedal.

Added Thelen, Theres no one company that defines our area. Were a diverse economy. Weve had company after company make positive growth decisions for Omaha.

Site Selection also said Nebraska ranked second in its Governors Cup per capita award, which recognizes the state with the most qualifying new and expanded facilities per capita.

With 118 projects per capita, Nebraska ranked second in the nation. Iowa, with 92, ranked eighth, Site Selection said.

Ricketts said the awards recognize the folks ... who work so hard to help Nebraska expand.

In an interview following the event, Ricketts said he remains in contact with Cabelas, which has been targeted by activist investors. In the wake of ConAgras move, similar concerns have arisen that the Sidney-based company might move its headquarters out of state.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1142, janice.podsada@owh.com
The Nebraska Peace Foundation is asking Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to issue a report describing the risks it faces from climate change and the initiatives and goals relating to each risk issue identified.

The proposed report, up for a vote at the companys annual shareholder meeting April 30 in Omaha, is modeled after an 85-page report last year by the Bank of England on insurance risks from climate change, said Mark Vasina of Lincoln, treasurer of the foundation and past president of Nebraskans for Peace.

The foundation, which owns one Class A share of Berkshire stock, is a nonprofit organization that supports Nebraskans for Peace. The two groups have overlapping boards of directors, Vasina said.

Climate change is one of the groups causes because it is related to social instability that can lead to conflict, he said, citing, as an example, drought conditions that contributed to unrest and war in Syria.

The foundation made the proposal as a shareholder of Berkshire, the Omaha-based conglomerate headed by Chairman and Chief Executive Warren Buffett.

Buffett wrote about the climate change proposal in his recently published letter to Berkshire shareholders and in a draft of voting proxy materials to be sent to Berkshire shareholders. Berkshires directors recommend voting against the proposal.

In the letter and proxy draft, Buffett said it is highly likely that climate change poses a major problem for the planet. Even if theres only a slim chance of global disaster, he said, inaction now is foolhardy.

Said Buffett: Call this Noahs Law: If an ark may be essential for survival, begin building it today, no matter how cloudless the skies appear.

But although climate change may cause disasters, Buffett said, Berkshires property insurance operations do not risk significant losses from such disasters.

Thats because the companies would adjust their premiums and exposure to claims if climate change begins to cause more property damage, which hasnt happened yet, he said.

Vasina said Wednesday that he appreciates Buffetts comments about potential problems from climate change, but the group wants Berkshire to provide shareholders with more detailed information about what it is doing to avoid such losses.

Buffett is influential, Vasina said, and a Berkshire climate change report would add weight to calls for action to mitigate the risk of climate-related damage. Insurance companies can be leaders in evaluating and managing the impact of extreme weather, the shareholder proposal said.

Vasina said the proposed report is very modest. ... Were just asking Berkshire Hathaway to explain to us how theyre handling those risks.

The Omaha World-Herald is owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Contact the writer: 402-444-1080, steve.jordon@owh.com

Read more
The Spanish owner of the idled Nebraska ethanol plants in Ravenna and York that are the subject of bankruptcy filings is trying to get them restarted, while entertaining the prospect of selling them, according to a court hearing in Omaha on Tuesday.

Attorneys for the U.S. operations of Spanish energy giant Abengoa said the parent company of the Nebraska plants is attempting to secure a loan that will keep the Midwestern ethanol plants running in some capacity.

It will then be determined if the plants will be sold, said Craig Martin, an attorney for Abengoa, speaking in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Omaha.

The Ravenna plant was thrown into involuntary bankruptcy last month after Omaha grain trader Gavilon said it was owed about $2.3 million for grain sales, and Ravennas Farmers Cooperative is owed $362,000. That filing asked the court to authorize the sale of plant assets to pay the bills.

But things are changing fast in the case. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Saladino at the hearing Tuesday authorized that the case be converted from a liquidation to a reorganization. That will prevent creditors from securing a judges order authorizing the sale of assets and allow Abengoa to restart idled plants while restructuring its debts.

There are a lot of moving parts. At the top is Spanish parent Abengoa SA, which is in deep financial trouble, with about $10 billion of debt it has already told authorities in Europe it is having trouble paying.

Then there are the U.S. operations, which include ethanol and bioenergy plants in other states. A vast network of holding companies is involved, and the York plant is part of them and is already part of a Chapter 11 reorganization that bankruptcy Abengoa filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis.

As for Gavilon and Farmers Cooperative of Ravenna, their travel budgets to keep up with the case just increased. Saladino also authorized that the Ravenna case in his court be transferred and combined with the St. Louis proceeding.

The interests of justice demand this be done under one court, Saladino said Tuesday.

Attorneys for creditors Gavilon and Farmers Cooperative argued in court that the plant had been in operation for 14 years until being idled, did about $90 million of sales a year and was profitable for most of its life. The lawyers said the creditors are worried that any cash generated by the plants will be swept off to Europe or elsewhere and not used to pay their claims, but Saladino said the same protections for creditors owed money exist in Missouri as they do in Nebraska.

Contact the writer: 402-444-3197, russell.hubbard@owh.com
COUNCIL BLUFFS - After a year of investing in their own skills and development, the students in Abraham Lincoln High Schools journalism program are hoping for an investment from the community and area businesses to help take the Lincoln Pride television broadcasts, Echoes and Los Ecos newspapers and Crimson and Blue yearbook to the next level.

A group of 11 students are hoping to raise enough money to attend the National High School Journalism Conference in Los Angeles. They launched a Go Fund Me page that raised nearly $2,000 in the first 48 hours, but they still need to raise a total of about $9,000 more to make the trip this April.

Jessica Borwick, a senior at A.L. who is the newspaper co-editor and television executive producer, said the students began the school year learning to shoot video, how to write scripts, how to use different camera angles and other basic broadcasting skills.

Weve gotten to the point where we can go and do and we know what were doing, she said. Weve definitely improved.

Next year, the Council Bluffs Community School District is launching a new media academy program where, among other new offerings, students will be able to use the scoreboard at Gale Wickersham Stadium for sports highlights, community news spots and other programming during events.

Borwick, who plans to study at Iowa Western Community College next year before going to the University of Iowa to study communications and English education, said she hopes the Abraham Lincoln journalism program can improve from where its at this year as part of the new academy.

Making the trip to Los Angeles this spring would help the returning A.L. students by offering different perspectives and inspiration on how to improve all of its products. Borwick said it would also help her further cement bonds with the group, since she plans to return as an Iowa Western student to help her former classmates continue to grow Lynx journalism.

As a high school student who has done journalism all four years and wants to continue to do this as my career, when Im an adult, the experience and the skills that I have learned as a journalist will be really rewarding to me, Borwick said.

Fellow A.L. journalism student Calab Holder, the Echoes news editor, said the students would learn a lot of applicable skills if they get to travel to L.A.

We could use them every day in class, he said. I know some people are deciding to pursue journalism as a career. It could help them down the road.

Added sophomore Taylor Bever: This would be a great opportunity for us to learn skills that we could use for years. It would bond us being together for so long, learning things that we wouldnt learn being in this class.

At the conference, the students would be able to participate in sessions on reporting, photography, page design and other journalistic skills. Students from across the country bring their yearbooks and newspapers so others can look through them for inspiration. Friendships are also fostered, both among the A.L. students and among the participants from across the U.S.

Then we have a day set aside for sight-seeing, Borwick said.

Gerry Appel, the schools journalism adviser, said on the Go Fund Me page that A.L. has about half of its students living in poverty, based on a federal measure, and many students cant afford to attend the literally life-changing experience of a national journalism conference.

In addition to learning about journalism, students have the opportunity to visit an area of the country they otherwise may never see, and they form life-long friendships, Appel said.

Donations are also being sought from area businesses, the students said. They dont receive any support from the school, and they dont have an activity budget because they operate separately from the school so they can maintain their editorial independence.

The Lynx journalism program hopes to raise as much as possible toward their goal by Monday, March 14, the deadline for hotel and airfare to be booked, which essentially makes it the deadline for the students to commit to the trip.

More information and a link to make donations can be found at gofundme.com/ALtoLA.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. government calls it a "vicious guard dog" that hurts national security. Apple says its critical to protecting consumer privacy against increasingly sophisticated hackers.

As the debate over built-in iPhone encryption has deadlocked in the courts, law enforcement and the worlds second-largest cellphone maker agreed on one point Tuesday: Its now up to Congress to set boundaries in a long-simmering fight over who can legally access your digital life.

"Were asking Apple to take the vicious guard dog away and let us pick the lock," FBI Director James Comey told a House judiciary panel Tuesday, referring to a locked iPhone tied to the deadly December shooting in San Bernardino, California.

"The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products," Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell countered later that afternoon.

Tuesdays hearing shifted attention from the courts  where judges in the last month have issued significant but conflicting opinions  to Congress, where both sides say the broader policy debate belongs.

It also provided an extraordinary public forum for the Obama administration and Apple Inc. to stake out competing positions that could have sweeping ramifications. Apples recent opposition to bypassing security features for the government has pushed that dispute from tech circles into the mainstream.

The strong positions articulated Tuesday make clear the deep divide between Silicon Valley and the government, even as the administration advocates open dialogue and resolution.

"Is it the right thing to make our society overall less safe in order to solve crime?" Sewell asked. "Thats the issue that were wrestling with."

Monday, a federal judge in Brooklyn said the government couldnt force Apple to help it gain access to the phone in a drug case. U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said Justice Department attorneys were relying on the centuries-old All Writs Act to "produce impermissibly absurd results."

But two weeks ago, a different magistrate judge in California, Sheri Pym, directed the company to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone used by one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, which killed 14 people.

With those two conflicting rulings in mind, Congress needs to get involved to address the broader collision between privacy and public safety, Comey said.

The Obama administration last year decided against a legislative fix.

Now, though, "Congress must decide this issue," said Sewell, while also criticizing the U.S. government for simultaneously supporting encryption used by activists and journalists in countries with fewer free-speech rights.

The San Bernardino case involves an iPhone 5C owned by San Bernardino County and used by Syed Farook, who was a health inspector there. He and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, later died in a gun battle with police. The FBI wants specialized software that would bypass security protocols on the encrypted phone so investigators can test random passcode combinations in rapid sequence to access its data.

Should Apple create the specialized software to allow the FBI to hack the iPhone, Comey said it would take 26 minutes to do whats known as a brute force attack  testing multiple passcodes in quick succession.

Comey also acknowledged Tuesday there "was a mistake made" shortly after the San Bernardino attack, when the FBI asked the county  which owned the phone  to reset the password for Farooks iCloud account.

That data, stored on Apple servers, kept backups of his phone. Had the password not been reset, the phone may have made a fresh backup available to investigators for further examination. Still, Comey said, "The experts tell me theres no way we would have gotten everything off the phone from a backup."

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a critic of the administrations domestic surveillance practices, asked Comey whether the FBI had first asked Apple for the underlying iPhone software  called source code by developers  before trying to force the company to create its own digital workaround.

Issa suggested the FBI hadnt exhausted its own efforts before the government went to court. Comey said the government has tried hard to break into iPhones, like the one in California, but he seemed unaware if those methods were successful.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told the House panel Tuesday that there are 205 phones his investigators cant access in criminal investigations.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said technology is moving toward newer generations of encryption and security, and "were going to have to figure out a different way to help law enforcement."

Whatever emerges from debate as the legislative response to the controversy will "not change the fact that law enforcement is going to have to change the way it investigates and gathers evidence," said Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican.

Alex Abdo, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Unions speech, privacy and technology project, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the larger debate is "ultimately about whether we trust our devices."

"If the government prevails, then there is nothing to stop it from turning every major tech company into a tool of government surveillance," Abdo said. "Companies will be required to spy on, rather than secure, their customers."

Copyright 2016 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tamil Nadu polls 2016: DMK, DMDK inch closer to alliance

Chennai

oi-Shubham

Chennai, March 2: A significant breakthrough has been reached in the alliance talks between the DMK and DMDK and the tie-up could be sealed soon, top sources in the DMK said, according to a report in The News Minute.

[Why everybody wants to ally with Vijaykanth]

[After Congress-DMK alliance, BJP has a tough task in hand]

The DMK sources reportedly said the deal has almost been finalised and an announcement could be soon. Other sources said just a few more details needed to be addressed, said the report.

According to the DMK sources, the Vijaykanth-led party had sought 90 seats and they have almost agreed on between 54 to 59 seats, the News Minute report said.

The News Minute also confirmed from different sources that DMK leaders like MK Stalin and others besides media baron KalanidhKarui Maran also carried out the talks with Vijaykanth to resolve the issues. DMK sources said the presence of Maran was because there were a lot of common friends around.

The DMK and Congress have already entered into an alliance for the Assembly poll

"There are some specifics that are still being discussed. For now, we have agreed that the DMDK will not be part of the state government, if the DMK alliance wins. But they will be part of local bodies and will be given mayoral posts. The numbers are yet to be decided," The News Minute report quoted a DMK leader as saying.

The talks between the DMK and DMDK have been going on for some time now. Though the DMK appeared certain about the DMDK joining it, sources in the DMDK, however, did not confirm the same. Even last month, Vijaykanth said in a public event that he wouldn't join either of the two major Dravidian parties and would play the role of a king, not a kingmaker.

In 2011, the DMDK had contested the Assembly polls with the AIADMK and fielded candidates from 41 seats. But things worsened after the elections after Jayalalithaa's party earned a majority of its own.

On February 28, Vijaykanth had a meeting with Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and they spoke on the possibility of the DMDK joining the NDA. The former termed it as a "courtesy call" while Javadekar said he was meeting "all NDA colleagues."

The DMDK was a part of the NDA during the 2014 Lok Sabha election but later, along with the MDMK and PMK, ended the ties with the BJP-led alliance.
Apple launches iPhone 13 series, to be available in India from Sep 24: See price, specs, features and more

Apple, FBI face off over iPhone encryption

Feature

oi-Shradha

By Shradha

In what can be seen as a historic fight involving the multinational technology company Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the company's refusal to unlock an iPhone allegedly belonging to one of the suspects of a terrorist attack in San Bernardino in 2015- there is more to the debate than meets the eye.

The FBI had requested assistance from Apple in unlocking an iPhone obtained from one of the suspects of the rampage in San Bernardino in California that killed 14 people and injured several others, suspecting that the iPhone could reveal more information regarding the terrorists and any other similar plans to be executed on US soil in the future.

After the FBI failed to crack the phone's code two months into the investigation, federal prosecutors had filed a motion requesting Apple's help to decrypt the smartphone.

However, Apple's CEO Tim Cook has taken an unbending stance against the FBI's request, refusing to create a backdoor to the smartphones, warning it was "too dangerous".

What has the FBI sought from Apple?

A US magistrate had ordered Apple on to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the FBI in disabling an 'auto-erase feature' which after too many unsuccessful attempts locks the iPhone 5c.

However, media reports have said that the FBI is demanding a whole lot more than the data on a single phone. FBI has obtained a court order which has directed Apple to build custom surveillance software for the FBI dubbed as FBiOS by a computer security expert Dan Guido.

In simple terms, the FBI is asking Apple to create a "backdoor" that cracks the increasingly sophisticated encryption on consumers' phones- something that the government has pursued for more than a decade without favourable results.

Apple has state that it has received U.S. court orders under the authority of the "All Writs Act"- the same 1789 law the FBI is invoking in the San Bernardino case -seeking to get it to unlock 12 other devices.

What is the public opinion on Apple's stance?

At a time when the citizens of the United States are participating in the selection of their 45 President, another pressing issue involving privacy vs national security is drawing attention, not only within the States, but worldwide.

15 years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and three years after Edward Snowden's revelations about United States National Security Agency (NSA) mass surveillance of phone and internet data, Americans are divided on the whole debate.

While, opinion has been pouring in from all possible quarters, according to a Pew Research Report, there has been more support for the Justice Department than for Apple in the dispute.

Strongly contrasting views have been put across in the report which mentions:

"The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted Feb. 18-21 among 1,002 adults, finds that almost identical shares of Republicans (56%) and Democrats (55%) say that Apple should unlock the San Bernardino suspect's iPhone to aid the FBI's ongoing investigation. By contrast, independents are divided: 45% say Apple should unlock the iPhone, while about as many (42%) say they should not unlock the phone to ensure the security of their other users' information."

The differences in opinion on unlocking the iPhone varies across age groups too with adults over 30 and older opining that Apple should unlock the phone. Those in the 18-29 age bracket are divided over what Apple should do: 47% say the company should unlock the iPhone, while 43% say it should not, to ensure the privacy of its other users. The rest 18% do not offer a view.

Another report states that the Obama Administration, most Republicans and public opinion have turned against the tech company.

Apple scores major legal victory against FBI:

Apple won a major legal victory against the FBI yesterday when a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the government's request to order the tech company to help extract data from a locked iPhone in relation with a drug case.This has received the necessary impetus to boost Apple's morale, as it continues to resist FBI's repeated efforts to overcome security measures embedded in Apple's operating system.

Yesterday, lawmakers told FBI director James Comey that the Justice Department is on a "fool's errand" trying to force Apple to unlock the iPhone, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing into the question of encryption.

It was at this meeting that Comey for the first time admitted that "there was a mistake made" when the agency directed that the Apple ID password associated with the shooter's phone be changed.
Explained: Why has a public health emergency been declared in Puducherry's Karaikal

5-state assembly polls to be held in April-May, EC to announce dates soon

India

oi-Preeti

By Preeti

Bengaluru, March 2: As assembly elections are scheduled to be held in four states-West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and one Union Terrrotiry-- Puducherry, the Elections Commisssion of India is set to announce the much-awaited dates in next few days.

According to news reports, the elections will be spread across five-six phases, between mid-April and mid-May duration.

Before announcing the dates, the Election Commission is working out on the crucial deployment of Central-para military forces, for which it is holding consultations with the Home ministry.

On Tuesday, March 1, a meeting between EC and home ministry officials took place at Nirvachan Sadan in New Delhi.

The EC officials also held a final round of talks with the Chief Electoral Officers (CEOs) of all states-- CEO of West Bengal Sunil Gupta, CEO of Assam Sri Vijayendra, CEO of Kerala E K Majhi, CEO of Tamil Nadu Thiru. Rajesh Lakhoni and CEO of Puducherry V. Candavelou.

The model code of conduct will come into immediate force in all five states, once the poll dates are announced by the EC.

The term of the Tamil Nadu assembly ends on May 23 and Assam's assembly term ends on June 6.

In Trinamool Congress-ruled West Bengal, there will be total 77,246 polling booths, out of which 23,809 have been identified as 'sensitive' and 8,172 as 'highly sensitive'.

OneIndia News
Prashant Kishor claims Nitish Kumar in touch with BJP says don't be surprised if he joins hands with it again

No one can stop terrorism, till Islam exists in the world: BJP MP's controversial statement

India

oi-Avinash

Bengaluru, Mar 2: In what could be termed as an embarrassment to the BJP-led Modi Government, party's MP from Karnataka has made a controversial statement by associating terrorism with Islam.

BJP MP Ananth Kumar Hegde was quoted by ANI as saying, "Till the time Islam exists in the world, no one can stop terrorism. If we want to keep a place like Bhatkal peaceful, then we should throw Islam away from this world and we should shut Islam."

Hegde's controversial statement comes just days after the hate speech against the minority community members by Minister of State for Human Resource and Development (HRD) Ram Shankar Katheria at a condolence meet in Agra after the murder of a local VHP leader.

Katheria's speech at Agra where he called on the Hindu community to unite against Muslims, rocked the Parliament on Tuesday with both the Houses witnessing disruptions over the provocative speeches at the event.

Katheria, however, claimed that he had not targeted any community in his speech.

Earlier on Tuesday, a group of social activists held a protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar against alleged hate speech made by Katheria.

OneIndia News
Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai

Pan masala ads: Here's what Delhi Govt told actors' wives

India

oi-Mukul

New Delhi, Mar 2: Delhi Government has requested Bollywood actors' wives to encourage their husband not to endorse pan masala products.

Apparently, move was taken as actors continue doing advertisements of such products which contain areca nuts, a potential cancer causing agent.

Reportedly, Additional Director (Health), Delhi Government , Dr S K Arora has written to wives of all big Bollywood stars asking them to persuade their husband not to promote tobacco products in larger public interest.

The name of the celebrities who have been requested are Kajol, wife of actor Ajay Devgn, Gauri Khan, wife of Shah Rukh Khan, Malaika Arora Khan, wife of Arbaaz Khan and Suneeta Ahuja, wife of actor Govinda.

"Humble appeal to you for encouraging Mr Shah Rukh Khan not to participate in advertisements of pan masala in larger public health interest.

"Earlier, a letter was written to Mr Khan for not to participate in such advertisements in public interest. Nonetheless I have not received any response till date nor he has plugged doing such advertisements," Arora said in his letter to Gauri.

He further said even if these pan masalas do not contain tobacco or nicotine, they surely contain areca nuts (supari) and now there are a lot of scientific evidences which prove that supari causes cancer.

"A similar letter was sent to Ms Sunny Leone and I am delighted to inform that I have received an affirmative response with the assurance of not to indulge in such promotion in future. Moreover, she is consulting the companies for the terms and conditions of present contract to stop advertising pan masalas," Arora said.

Delhi government also urged the actors and their wives to join its anti-tobacco campaign to save the lives of lakhs of people who die due to oral cancer every year.

In January, the Health Department had written to six actors--Shah Rukh Khan, Govinda, Saif Ali Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Ajay Devgan and Sunny Leone--urging them not endorse pan masala products.

Arora had said that they (actors) were role model for youngsters and should not participate in pan masala or any other similar advertisements as these attract the vulnerable population, especially, children and women and are directly and indirectly responsible for the increasing trend of tobacco use.

Leone's husband Daniel Weber, had called up to say that she will not sign any contract for such advertisements in future.

According to experts, areca nut, the main ingredient in pan masala, is in the league of caffeine, tobacco and alcohol when it comes to addictive properties and also leads to a high number of cases of submucous fibrosis, which can easily turn cancerous.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from PTI)
Gap between rich and poor has widened, needs to be bridged: Gadkari

Cotton farmers plan march over non-payment of dues

India

oi-PTI

Nagpur, Mar 1: Demanding the clearance of dues owed to them by a ginning factory, around 400 cotton growers from Seloo in Wardha district are planning a march tomorrow to protest against the state government's failure to resolve the issue.

The cotton growers said they were hoping that RSS leaders here might be able to help them with the recovery of their dues from the ginning factory owner. The cotton cultivators had planned a march to the RSS headquarters here three days back, but were detained by police.

Afterwards the district guardian minister, Chandashekhar Bawankule, assured them of help in the matter. The farmers, who spent Sunday night in the open, are planning another march tomorrow with black flags to protest against the non-payment of their dues and the failure on the part of the government to resolve the issue.

"We were assured on behalf of the Chief Minister that cheques to nearly 400 cotton farmers totalling Rs 8 crore will be handed out," said one of the cotton farmers, Ram Narain Pathak.

The cotton growers said they had sold 20,000 quintals of cotton to the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) between November, 2014, and May, 2015, which in turn was acquired by the owner of a ginning and pressing factory who allegedly failed to make payments to the farmers.

The farmers are hoping that top RSS leaders can intervene in the dispute.

PTI
Fiscal discipline is of prime importance: Jaitley

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, March 2: In a post-Budget 2016-17 meeting with India Inc on Wednesday, March 2 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reiterated the need for fiscal discipline and said he was optimistic of the reform process moving ahead in parliament.

"Fiscal discipline is going to be very important, and I'm sure that if we keep to it, we'll be able to meet the targets set by Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian in the Economic Survey," Jaitley told representatives here of industry associations FICCI, CII and Assocham.

"I am also sure, if there is cooperation in the political sphere, that we will be able to go ahead with reforms," he added.

Presenting the budget in parliament on Monday, Jaitley said he had decided that prudence lies in adhering to fiscal targets, but while doing so, has also ensured that the development agenda is not compromised.

The government has targeted reducing the fiscal deficit to 3.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the current financial year, compared with four percent last year, and reduce it further to 3.5 percent in 2016-17.

The fiscal deficit for 2014-15 touched 4.1 percent of GDP.

The Economic Survey presented in parliament last week said "the coming year is expected to be a challenging one from the fiscal point of view because of challenges posed by a lower-than-projected nominal GDP growth" and "chances of India's growth rate in 2016-17 increasing significantly beyond 2015-16 levels are not very high, due to likelihood of persistence of global slowdown".

IANS
Former Himachal CM Virbhadra Singh to be cremated at Rampur on July 10 at 3 pm

HP CM Virbhadra Singh to reply on CBI plea against HP HC order

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday, March 2 sought response of HP Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on CBI's plea seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh High Court's interim order restraining the agency from arresting, interrogating or filing a charge sheet against him in a disproportionate assets case.

The agency moved the application before a bench of Justice Pratibha Rani, who issued a notice to Singh and posted the matter for hearing on April 4.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) P S Patwalia, appearing for CBI, told the bench that the agency is seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh HC's interim order of October 1, 2015.

"This application is for vacation of the interim order. A notice may kindly be issued," Patwalia told the bench. During the hearing on February 25 on Singh's plea seeking quashing of FIR lodged against him and others in the case, the CBI had told the bench that its investigation in the case was "held up" due to the interim order of Himachal Pradesh HC.

In his plea, Singh has claimed that CBI had overstepped its jurisdiction in filing the case and had also questioned how the agency could raid his premises when the case was already pending in the Delhi High Court, as also before the Income Tax Tribunal and other tax authorities, where all documents relating to his returns had been submitted.

CBI had earlier pleaded before the high court that it has jurisdiction to register and investigate the DA case.

The agency had also sought dismissal of Singh's plea to quash the FIR against him, alleging that his prayer was "frivolous and not maintainable".

The arguments on Singh's plea would continue on April 4. On November 5 last year, the Supreme Court had transfered Singh's plea from the Himachal Pradesh High Court to the Delhi High Court, saying it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the case but "simply" transferring the petition "in the interest of justice and to save the institution (judiciary) from any embarrassment".

CBI had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the case from the Himachal Pradesh HC to the Delhi High Court and setting aside of the interim order granting protection from arrest and other relief to Singh.

PTI
Woman, her two children mowed down by train; Suicide not ruled out

IOC official with ISIS links: NIA takes over probe

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 2: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the case relating to an Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) official who is alleged to be linked to the ISIS.

The official Mohammad Sirajuddin a resident of Karnataka was arrested in Jaipur, Rajasthan after the police found him to be involved with the ISIS.

The Central Government directed the NIA to take up the investigation of the case from the Rajasthan ATS.

A case was registered at Jaipur, on the allegation that one Mohammad Sirajuddin son of Mohammad Sarwar, hailing from Bangalore and presently employed in Sales division of Indian Oil Corporation in Jaipur, Rajasthan, is actively associated in promoting the ideology of ISIS.

He was also accused of inciting other persons to become member of ISIS through the use of online social media forums and exhorting them to indulge in terrorist and anti-national activities. He was arrested by Rajasthan Police on 10-12-2015.

NIA arrested 24 people for suspected links with ISIS

Considering the gravity of the offence, the Central Government has issued orders for investigation by NIA. An officer of the rank of Superintendent of Police has been appointed as the Chief Investigating Officer of the case.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 8:27 [IST]
Ishrat case: Lead investigator blames Parliament and 26/11 attack on Indian govt

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, March 2: Satish Verma, the CBI officer whose name is doing the rounds following allegations by a former under secretary in the Home Ministry had once said that the attack on Parliament and 26/11 were the job of the government of India.

Verma the lead investigator in the Ishrat Jahan case has been accused of torturing R V S Mani, the former under secretary who was told to draft the affidavits in the case.

According to a letter that Mani had written in June 2013, he said that he was told by Verma the CBI-SIT officer from the Gujarat cadre that the Parliament and 26/11 attacks were orchestrated by the government of India. [Govt accused of hatching 26/11, Parliament attacks]

Verma's conspiracy theory:

According to Mani's letter, both the attack on Parliament in 2001 and Mumbai in 2008 were orchestrated by the government. He explained that both the attacks were carried out with an objective of strengthening the counter terrorist legislation.

He narrated that 13.12.2001 was followed by POTA [Prevention of Terrorism Act] and 26.11.2008 was followed by amendment to UAPA [Unlawful Activities Prevention Act].

According to the letter, Verma made these allegations while attempting to debunk the Intelligence Bureau's inputs which labelled the three persons killed along with Ishrat Jahan as Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists.

It may be recalled when this letter had become public, several Pakistani news channels had picked this up. Pakistan which was already in denial mode about these attacks had played out this news stating that there was an Indian government hand in both these attacks.

The Express Tribune, while reporting this news had said, 'Startling revelations: Mumbai, Parliament attacks orchestrated.'

"In a shocking disclosure a former officer of the Indian Home Ministry has alleged that the Indian government had orchestrated the two high-profile terrorist attacks which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based militant groups."

Such allegations by the CBI officer and the handling of the Ishrat Jahan case had hurt relations with the Intelligence Bureau. The two agencies had stopped seeing eye to eye.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 15:10 [IST]
JNU row: Kanahaiya Kumar gets 6 months interim bail

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Delhi High Court today granted bail to JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar. Justice Prathibha Rani who heard the bail plea filed by Kumar granted interim bail for a period of six months.

The court also asked him to furnish a bail bond of Rs 10,000 and cooperate with the investigation.

Kumar was arrested by the Delhi police on sedition charges. He was accused of raising anti national slogans at an event held at the JNU on February 9. The event was held to commemorate the death anniversary of Afzal Guru.

The court observed that Sometimes students who misinterpret freedom of speech need to be cured. Whenever some infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure it by giving antibiotics orally.

If the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it becomes gangrene, amputation is the only treatment. During the period spent by the petitioner in judicial custody, he might have introspected about the events that had taken place.

To enable him to remain in the mainstream, at present I am inclined to opt for the conservative method of treatment," the court observed.

Further Kumar was also told to furnish a gurantee that he shall not take part in any anti national activity. He has been directed to appear before the investigating officer when requires.

During the hearing the Delhi Police opposed the bail. However, the police also said that they not have video evidence which suggested that Kumar had anti national slogans.

The police, however, said that there were eye witness accounts who testified before them that anti national slogans had been raised.

The Delhi government which also made submissions said that there was no evidence and they were not opposing the bail plea.

OneIndia News
Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai

With HC granting bail, JNU students await for Kanhaiya to lead the movement

India

oi-Shreyas

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Jawaharlal Nehru University certainly rose to delightful news in the evening hours of Wednesday, Mar 2 as High Court of Delhi decided to grant interim bail for six months to the JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar in the sedition case.

However it is learnt that campus has finally put up a smile of Azadi (freedom) and is all decked up to welcome its favourite student leader, who is the eye of JNU storm.

JNU row: Kanahaiya Kumar gets 6 months interim bail

JNUSU called for a victory march on Wednesday from Sarbarnmati dhaba to AD block at 9pm celebrating the release of Kumar.

A member of All India Students Federation (AISF), Om Prasad said the JNU welcomes the decision of the High Court for granting the bail. The JNU is all set to welcome its active leader to its campus back.

"The mood in the campus after listening to the news was so high and all are anticipating the arrival of Kanhaiya Kumar.

Another student from JNU, Santosh speaking to OneIndia said he is on his way to the campus to join his fellow mates to receive Kanhaiya Kumar. However he informed that Kanhaiya has not yet reached the campus till now.

On the other hand, the JNU Students Union too welcomed the decision of the High Court. In a statement issued by the JNU Students Union it said "JNSU welcomes the interim bail granted to Comrade Kanhaiya Kumar.

We are delighted to hear the news and waiting for him to come back to the campus and lead the movement to release of other Comrades and for the removal of fabricated charges from other comrades."

The statement was issued by Shehla, Vice President of JNUSU and Rama Naga General Secretary of JNUSU on behalf of the union.

OneIndia News
Kanhaiya Kumar to NHRC: My life is under threat

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, March 2: The jailed Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who is facing sedition charges, alleges that his life is under threat. He adds that there is also a threat on the lives of his family members.

In a detailed letter written by Kanhaiya to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the president of JNUSU says, "My life is under threat."

We are publishing the four-page letter written in Hindi by Kanhaiya to the NHRC.

In the letter, the student leader said that the Delhi Police arrested him from his hostel without any warrant or a notice. He also claimed to have been under extreme mental pressure.

"I was never physically manhandled by the police," clarifies Kanhaiya.

In the letter Kanhaiya narrated his harrowing experience. "Police took my personal belongings like purse, ATM card and even my email account and password," he writes. He says he was forced to share his Facebook and Twitter passwords with the police.

"When I appeared before the Patiala house court I was beaten by people in black coats, who looked like lawyers. The attack was preconceived and life threatening", Kanhaiya wrote in the letter.

The letter was written and signed on February 18.

OneIndia News
Army Chief to pay first visit to areas under northern army command, including Siachen

Mortal remains of porter recovered after 5 days of search in Siachen

India

oi-Oneindia

By OneIndia Defence Bureau

New Delhi, March 02: After five days of massive search operations, the mortal remains of a civilian porter Thukjay Gyasket (40) was recovered from a crevasse in Siachen on Wednesday.

Indian Army officials said that Gyasket had slipped and fell into a deep narrow crevasse while ferrying stores between forward Army posts in Northern Glacier area on February 27.

The deceased hails from Ayee village near Sasoma in Leh District of Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian Army says that soon after the incident, Specialised Rescue Teams from the Siachen Battle School were launched.

(Siachen: Facts you need to know about world's highest battlefield)

"The search teams were undertaking relentless efforts to locate and retrieve. After three days, his mortal remains were located about 130 feet inside the narrow crevasse. After locating the body, the rescue teams moved inside the crevasse and anchored it to the ice wall to prevent it from further slipping down," says an Army spokesperson in Srinagar.

According to him, the narrow crevasse was widened so as to retrieve the body intact.

"He was a very dedicated porter and a great human being. He was always available for us. We will miss the services of this experienced soul," says an official attached to Siachen Battle School.

The mortal remains have been brought down to Hunder near Parthapur and will be handed over to the next of kin after necessary formalities. Thukjay is survived by his mother, wife and two daughters.

Ever since, the February 3 massive avalanche strike that his one of the posts killing 10 soldiers, the rescue teams were working for extended hours.

Army Commander, Northern Command Lt General D S Hooda expressed his condolences to the family of the porter and assured all assistance to the family.

The Commander also complimented the unwavering commitment of the rescue team who braved freezing temperatures to locate and retrieve the mortal remains of the dedicated porter.

Since the beginning of this year, India lost 14 soldiers in Siachen, a figure tabled by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar in Rajya Sabha on March 1.

In a reply to a query, Parrikar said that the soldiers deployed at Siachen glacier are provided special winter clothing including extreme cold climate clothing which includes trousers, jackets, gloves and sun glasses to withstand extreme temperatures.

"There is a constant effort to provide more comfortable equipment to the troops based on the requirement felt and user feedback. Further, the soldiers deployed at Siachen are provided pre-fabricated insulated shelters (Fibre Reinforced Plastic) except at certain locations wherein due to terrain configuration and altitude, it is not possible to construct integrated shelters," Parrikar told Rajya Sabha in a written reply on Tuesday.

OneIndia News
Naming of new Karnataka Lokayukta now subject to SC scrutiny

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 2: The Supreme Court will hear a plea challenging the naming of Justice S R Nayak as the new Lokayukta of Karnataka.

Sanction to prosecute former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Rao sought

The petitioner has challenged the eligibility of Justice Nayak to take over as the new Lokayukta of Karnataka. The post of Lokayukta has been mired in controversy since corruption allegations had surfaced which forced Justice Bhaskar Rao to step down.

Since then there has been a delay in the appointment of a new Lokayukta. However with Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah naming Justice Nayak as the new Lokayukta it has now become a subject of judicial scrutiny.

The petitioner H Farooq has stated that Justice Nayak is not eligible for the post. He states in his petition that Section 24(3) of the Protection of Human Rights Act bars the chairperson from taking up any government employment.

Since Justice Nayak had served as the State Human Rights Commission Chairperson between 2007 and 2012, he is not eligible to take up the post of Lokayukta which is a government appointment.

OneIndia News
India will continue to get same number of H1B visas: Sitharaman

Nasscom, Tamil Nadu ink pact for startup warehouse

India

oi-PTI

Chennai, March 2: Nasscom and Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday, March 2 signed an agreement to set up the first 'startup warehouse' in the state.

The warehouse, to be spread over an area of 8,000 sq ft here, will accommodate upto 50 startups and provide various resources to the new companies. Information Technology Department and Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) officials exchanged documents in the presence of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa at the Secretariat here, an official release said.

The warehouse would be set up under the 'Nasscom 10,000 Startups' initiative, which is aimed at scaling up the startup ecosystem in the country and enabling incubation, funding and support for 10,000 technology startups over the next ten years.

The selection of startups for the warehouse here would be finalised by a selection committee comprising of stakeholders from the government and industry, the statement said.

"We have immense talent and enthusiasm here and wanted to further encourage and support the entrepreneurs through our 10,000 startups programme. The warehouse will nurture nearly 200 entrepreneurs to foster innovation under one roof," Nasscom 10,000 Startups' Vice-President Rajat Tandon said.

Startups utilising the warehouse space would get a host of facilities, including 10 Mbps broadband and other facilities, it said.

The initiative by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) aims to foster entrepreneurship and strengthen early stage support for tech startups.

PTI
Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai

News Flash: Indonesia lifts tsunami warning issued after earthquake

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, March 2: Get the latest national and international updates here:

11.23 pm: Gunfight on with Hizbul terrorists at Tral area of south Kashmir.

11.08 pm: Gujarat govt admits in the Legislative Assembly that as many as 68 posts of IAS officers were lying vacant (PTI).

10.10 pm: Kanhaiya is mentally very strong, he asked us all to be normal: Manikant, Kanhaiya's brother to NDTV.

10.00 pm: 'Dark & Ugly' secrets and conspiracies hatched by Cong are coming out in open: Meenakshi Lekhi, BJP on Rahul Gandhi's 'Fair & Lovely' remark.

9.37 pm: An Armyman was killed this morning in an accident involving speeding Audi car in Delhi Cantt.

9.33 pm: Indonesia lifts tsunami warning issued after powerful offshore earthquake.

8.20 pm: 7.9 magnitude earthquake strikes Indonesia, tsunami alert issued

7:30 pm: For that we'll have to sit down and discuss matter: Spl public prosecutor Anil Soni on being asked if they'll challenge Delhi HC's order in SC.

7:15 pm: Court only granted 6 months interim bail to Kanhaiya and said further probe to continue, says Anil Soni,Spl public prosecutor.

7:00 pm: He should not mislead the House, says Rajnath Singh on Rahul Gandhi's remarks about Naga accord.

6:45 pm: Kanhaiya Kumar granted interim bail for 6 months by Delhi High Court on JNU Row.

6:30 pm: Major 8.2 magnitude quake strikes southwest of Indonesia , says USGS

6:25 pm: Raising questions now is not correct, I reject all kinds of scepticism on the matter, says Former Special Director IB.

6:10 pm: Ghulam Nabi Azad,D Raja and Anand Sharma have given calling attention motion for tomorrow in Rajya Sabha on HRD MoS Ram Shankar Katheria issue.

6:09 pm: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah hands over watch (approx 70 lakh) to the Assembly Speaker.

6:00 pm: This is an act of desperation, we will give a befitting reply-Ajay Chandrakar,Chhattisgarh HM on Narayanpur incident

5:41 pm: BJP and AGP to fight elections together in Assam.

5:30 pm: They (Congress) are talking about terrorism, the whole country knows how the #IshratJahan case was handled-Prahlad Joshi,BJP in Lok Sabha.

5:20 pm: Don't know if Rahul ji was giving vote of thanks to President or speaking in a rally-Prahlad Joshi,BJP in Lok Sabha.

5:19 pm: Pak directly attacked this country in Mumbai (26/11). Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered, says Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha.

5:15 pm: Don't know if Rahul was giving vote of thanks to President or speaking in a rally, says Prahlad Joshi, BJP in Lok Sabha.

5:00 pm: PM didn't consult the armed forces, he didn't consult the officials, I don't think he even discussed with Sushma, says Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha.

4:56 pm: We learn and We do not claim to know everything, says Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha.

4:55 pm: I had heard Kanhaiya Kumar's whole speech, not a word in his speech was anti-national-Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha.

4:30 pm: Expensive 'gift' controversy: Siddaramaiah donates watch to Cabinet Hall.

4.18 pm: It was clear from day one that these outfits were related to terrorist groups, says AK Jain (Former Joint Secy-MHA) on IshratJaha.

3.59 pm: Delhi: Student groups protest against JNU Row and Rohith Vemula suicide case at Mandi House.

3.40 pm: BJP had promised fixing of Minimum Support Price, before elections, now they have backtracked. It was a 'jumla'-Ghulam Nabi Azad in RS.

3.27 pm: Nobody, absolutely nobody however powerful he is, will be spared, if found guilty, says FM Jaitley statement on Aircel-Maxis case in LS.

3.26 pm: As result of series of raid conducted by ED&Income tax Dept,lot of incriminating things have been seized, says FM stmnt on Aircel-Maxis case in LS.

3.24 pm: Govt declassified all available classified files related to Netaji SC Bose & transferred these files to NAI for permanent retention.

3.08 pm: Jalalabad blasts: All 4 terrorists killed, Mopping up operations being conducted

2:53 pm: Arun Jaitley to reply in Lok Sabha on Aircel-Maxis issue

2:18 pm: Centre blames Northeast states for non-completion of projects on time

2:13 pm: Six injured in the Jalalabad blast have been taken to hospital, says Afghan Media

2:05 pm: 23 Maoists who were active since 2004 surrender in Jagdalpur.

1:57 pm: ITBP men engage attackers in gunfire at Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

1:55 pm: Woman found dead in Gacchibowli area in Telangana. A case has been registered and investigation is underway.

1:33 pm: At least two explosions, gunfire heard near Indian, other foreign consulates in eastern Afghan city Jalalabad.

1.11 pm: Court orders State Govt to grant licenses to dance bars by March 15 in Maharashtra dance bar issue.

1.03 pm: Politics should not be played over sports, says Anurag Thakur, BCCI Secy on India- Pak match in Dharamshala T20WorldCup.

12.59 pm: Girl commits suicide by hanging self in Guna of MP, the student had to appear for class 10th board examination today. However, the Police investigation is on.

12.48 pm: Mortal remains of the porter were located 130 feet deep by the rescue team. The porter had fell in the crevasse on Feb 27, says Army on Siachen.

12.47 pm: Another case of shame is of GK Pillai, he took illegal orders from a Minister,he should be prosecuted, says RB Sreekumar.

12.28 pm: Shame that Mr. RVS Mani came under pressure to change affidavit then and is revealing it now-RB Sreekumar,Former Gujarat Intelligence Chief

9.54 am: I had done only about the antecedents of Ishrat Jahan, says RVS Mani, Former Under Secy( Internal Security, MHA).

9.53 am: I was not posted in 2004 in MHA, I came in 2005 or so, says RVS Mani, Former Under Secy( Internal Security, MHA).

9.52 am: If inquiry into cross fire or encounter was the only mandate of the SIT, why was I called for the investigation, says RVS Mani.

9.50 am: I have seen the file, will use the word "cross fire" not encounter, says RVS Mani.

9.42 am: Centre had filed an affidavit, why was affidavit changed? The then PM&HM needs to answer, says Venkaiah Naidu.

9.38 am: I did not give in to his (Satish Verma) pressures, says RVS Mani.

9.37 am: I said that is not the truth, I am competent. I don't require a IB Officer to walk in and say sign the affidavit, says RVS Mani.

9.36 am: Satish Verma kept on telling me that you say Rajendra Kumar brought the affidavit and you signed it, he kept harping on that, says RVS Mani.

9.35 am: After that he (Satish Verma) started narrating nonsense,became physical after 4. He had put cigarette butts on my thighs, says RVS Mani.

9.34 am: In 2013 I was hauled up and harassed.On 23rd,I drafted a note & sent it to my superiors.Immediate result was many fellows chased me, says RVS Mani.

9.25 am: Interrogation had started around 9 am,then IG Satish Verma joined interrogation at 10:30am, went upto 2:30-3 pm in polite manner, says RVS Mani.

9.24 am: Mr. Pillai is a an officer of high integrity. I have no reason to disbelieve what he has said, have much more reason to believe, says RVS Mani.

9.23 am: Cabinet meeting scheduled to take place in the Parliament at 6:00 PM, today.

9.22 am: I drafted the first affidavit, it was a clear & exact affidavit. It was based on documents we had on file, says RVS Mani.

8.50 am: Congress VP Rahul Gandhi to chair a meeting today in Delhi on 2017 Assembly polls in UP, Strategist Prashant Kishor to also attend the meet.

8.25 am: Ayutthaya:Buddhists from all over the world gathered in Thailand y'day to meet on how to promote values of Buddhism.

8.12 am: 8 persons injured as bus overturned at Eastern Express Highway (Mumbai) last night.

8.05 am: Its is not that these things have been revealed by Mani now. These were informed during UPA Govt's rule, says Kanwar BB Singh(RVS Mani's lawyer).

8.04 am: Mani had written to senior officers about torture by Satish Verma (CBI Officer) during investigation, says Kanwar BB Singh.

Mani had written to senior officers about torture by Satish Verma (CBI Officer) during investigation-Kanwar BB Singh pic.twitter.com/yZrPzCOIxP  ANI (@ANI_news) March 2, 2016

7.51 am: After 40 days of filing 1st affidavit, RVS Mani was asked to sign another affidavit & submit it before court, says RVS Mani's lawyer on Ishrat Jahan case.

7.50 am: He prepared draft (first affidavit filed in Aug 2009),it went to the minister, then it went to Law Ministry, approved, says RVS Mani's lawyer.

7.49 am: CBI officer Satish Verma used abusive language for RVS Mani, also called him names, alleges RVS Mani's lawyer.

7.48 am: In Ahmedabad, a CBI officer Satish Verma asked him so many questions and turned aggressive, says Kanwar BB Sing. lawyer of Verma in Ishrat Jahan case.
'Not only partiotism but also poverty drive youth to join army, was what I said': CM Press Advisor

India

oi-Shreyas

Bengaluru, Mar 2: From past four days, the 'Bhakts' have been constantly targeting Karnataka Chief Minister's Press Adviser, Dinesh Amin Mattu in social media for his remarks on soldiers.

The CM's secretary Mattu has recently made a statement, "it is not only patriotism, but also poverty that drive job seekers to get employed with the Indian Army". However a Kannada newspaper reported saying the CM secretary stated in a award function program at Udupi that "it is not patriotism, but penury leads youth to join the Army"

The CM secretary also questioned right wing outfits, mainly RSS and the VHP that allegedly behave as the custodian of patriotism and asked how many RSS and and VHP (without naming the any organisations) leaders send their children to protect the borders.

To understand the context of his statements, the OneIndia contacted Dinesh Mattu. In a brief interview Mattu explains why he has made such statement.

In the initial conversation Mattu contested the report published in a Kannada daily and said "my statement was misreported by a Kannada daily. I did make a remark on soldiers by not only invoking poverty but also including the aspect of patriotism." Mattu reiterated the statement made at Udupi and conveyed, "I said it is not only patriotism but also poverty that drive youth to join the army."

Mattu was quick take pot shots at the right wing affiliated groups, mainly RSS and VHP asking, how many so called custodian of patriotism send their children to army. "They want their kids to end up doing sophisticated jobs, while youth from the lower strata of the caste hierarchy protect the boarders."

Mattu also made above statement at Udupi in his speech as a continued part of his statement on soldiers. Mattu further said, in Udupi he we was mainly speaking on people who call for preservation of folklore. The folklore, for example Bhoota Kola (ritual in Dakshina Kannada ) is performed by Dalits and preserving the culture means Dalits should not give up the practice.

By this logic of those who campaign to preserve that culture, Dalit youths and successive generations have to continue the bygone practice, while people from other upper caste do sophisticated or white colored jobs? However it means the same. This is the modern way of keeping the caste system alive.

For how long Dalits have to go such ordeals? Even Dalits too possess aspirations to join the mainstream, Mattu informed this saying this is what he spoke in Udupi.

In this flow while speaking on Dalits and folklore, "I touched upon the aspect of soldiers, which is another domain where people from lower strata are more. I also questioned, with out naming RSS or VHP or BJP on how many children of these so called patriots end up joining the army," Mattu reiterated.

OneIndia News
Pathankot attack: NIA seeks details of 4 JeM terrorists from Pak

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, March 2: NIA, which is probing the terror strike on Pathankot IAF airbase in January, has sent Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking details of four Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists who had carried out the attack.

Ahead of the visit of Pakistani Special Investigating Team (SIT), likely to take place in the last week of this month, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) sent the Letters Rogatory, a legal document sent through the special court asking details about the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of carrying out the strike at the airbase of Indian Air Force on the intervening night of January 1 and 2.

In a related development, it appears that no terrorists were present at the Airmen billet. The elite National Security Guards had spent 48 hours clearing the area.

While NIA is officially tight-lipped on the issue and say that it was awaiting forensic report from CFSL Chandigarh, sources privy to the development said that no human remains or ammunition have been found from the airmen billet which has been extensively searched by sleuths of NIA and central intelligence agencies.

The initial input about the terrorists was four only which had been shared with NSG and army units. However, even the Intelligence Bureau was in for a shock when NSG, which was rattled by the death of its officer Lt Col Niranjan EK, claimed that there was gunfire from the billet and took another two days to clear it, the sources said.

In the meantime, the NIA, in its Letters Rogatory, have sought details about telephone numbers dialled by the terrorists before launching an attack on the IAF base.

The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with Jaish terror group including Mullah Dadullah and Kashif Jaan. The numbers shared belong the Pakistani telecom operators like Mobilink, Warid and Telenor.

The NIA has also sought details and picture of sons of Khayam Baber, whose son had was part of the suicide squad that carried out the attack.

Kashif Jaan, one of the key handlers of the attackers, had accompanied the terrorists till the border and returned to supervise the operations, the sources said. The bodies of four terrorists have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim.

Nasir was the one who had called his mother, Baber, in Bhawalpur from the phone snatched from jeweller friend of Superintendent of Police of Punjab Salwinder Singh. The NIA has also given details including the batch number of food packets used by the terrorists after infiltrating into India on December 30.

The terrorists had carefully buried the packets which had Pakistani markings and manufacturing dates of November and December 2015.

PTI
Golden intelligence rule: When your cover is blown, you are on your own

Spoke in Punjabi dialect, posed as Army men, the mystery behind the missing Innova

Pathankot mystery continues: Where are the two other terrorists?

India

oi-Vicky

Pathankot, Mar 2: There is more evidence that suggests the still presence of only 4 terrorists at the Pathankot attack which was attacked in January.

The National Investigation Agency has so far conducted nine rounds of search but have not been able to find any evidence about the two other terrorists.

It was stated originally that there were 6 terrorists who attacked the base. While evidence about the four is extremely clear and their bodies retrieved, there is still a mystery about the other two.

The charred mass at the spot where the two terrorists are believed to have been, was sent for forensic examination. So far no evidence has come through which suggests human remains.

No conclusion as yet:

An NIA official said that they are yet to receive any report from the forensic laboratory. We are still ascertaining the case and have not concluded anything as yet, the officer also informed OneIndia.

According to the original version, there were six terrorists. While four terrorists had been killed and their bodies too had been found.

In the second encounter that lasted 30 hours, it was said that two more terrorists had died. The bodies had not been recovered and it was said that only the charred remains had been found.

The NIA had managed to recover four AK-47 rifles and three pistols the weapons of the other two terrorists has not been recovered.

The question is whether the rifles had melted due to the fire. Highly unlikely since an iron cot was found intact.

Also read:[Pathankot Terror Attack: Revealed! How was it linked with Modi's surprise visit to Pakistan]

The investigations that are being conducted would suggest that the the recovery of weapons took place from the first encounter site.

That means investigators have managed to recover four assault rifles and three pistols from the four terrorists who were involved in the first half of the encounter.

There has been no recovery from the second encounter which according to the security forces had lasted over 24 hours.

There are questions that are being raised by the investigators in the wake of this.

What happened to the clothing of the two other terrorists. During the recovery bed sheets had been found, but the military clothing was missing.

OneIndia News
'Kantara' impact: 'Daiva Narthakas' above 60 years of age to get Rs 2,000 monthly allowance

Late actor Puneeth Rajkumar to be conferred with 'Karnataka Ratna' award on Nov 1

Karnataka to strengthen ATS and up the number of prisons

Popular Kannada TV actor Shruti commits suicide

India

oi-Reetu

New Delhi, Mar 2: In a shocking incident, popular Kannada television actress Shruthi reportedly committed suicide after a fight with her friend.

As per media reports, the TV star hanged herself at her friend's place in Kachohalli near Madanayakanahalli in Nelamangala taluk in Bengaluru on Tuesday. The 24-year-old was married to a businessman named Umesh and stayed with him in Harohalli on Kanakapura Road (Mysore).

According to a New Indian Express report, "Police said early on Tuesday when Shruthi had gone to her friend Shrikanth's house for a party. The two had been friends for years. At the party, Shruthi reportedly had a quarrel with Shrikanth over some issue. Upset, she locked herself up in a room where she hung herself from the ceiling.

Bengaluru: After breakup, girl commits suicide at boyfriend's house!

Shrikanth repeatedly knocked on the door. When there was no response, he, along with some his friends, broke open the door and found the body."

Shruthi's husband has filed a case against her friend Shrikanth on charges of abetting TV actor's suicide.

The police has sent Shruthi's body for autopsy and arrested Shrikanth.

Shruthi featured in Kannada TV serial 'Avanu Matthu Shravani'.

OneIndia News
Ready for discussion over Chidambaram issue: Naqvi

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 2: Heavy sloganeering by AIADMK members seeking action against P Chidambaram's son Karti on Aircel-Maxis issue and by Congress MPs over alleged Gujarat land scam led to two adjournments in Rajya Sabha, even as the government said it was ready to discuss the matter raised by AIADMK.

No sooner did the House meet for the day, AIADMK members, carrying copies of an English daily, trooped into the Well demanding action on Aircel-Maxis deal and raising slogans like "We want action".

At the same time, Congress members too were seen waving copies of another English daily and shouting slogans regarding an alleged scam related to land allocation in Gujarat in 2010 to partners of the Chief Minister's daughter.

The proceedings of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were virtually washed out due to the uproar by AIADMK. Amid loud slogans by both AIADMK and Congress members, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said if AIADMK members gave a notice for discussion, the government was ready to take up the issue relating to action against the former Union Minister and his son.

"We are ready for discussion on the issue of Chidambaram's known and un-known assets. The Minister will also give reply. Our opinion is that action should be taken on those found guilty," he said, adding that members of AIADMK and probably some from Congress want a discussion, leading to further protests by Congress MPs.

Deputy Chairman P J Kurien made futile attempts to pacify the agitating AIADMK members and adjourned the House first for ten minutes.

When the House met again, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the issue of alleged land scam in Gujarat and said the issue related to 2010 when the land was allotted in an eco-sensitive zone. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister then.

PTI
RS MPs concerned over fake letters containing bomb threats

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Mar 2: Members in Rajya Sabha today expressed concern over the lack of wherewithal to check cases of fake letters on bomb scare, with the Home Ministry saying it has issued an advisory to all states and UTs to get such cases professionally investigated and prosecuted.

The issue came up in the backdrop of at least two senior BJP leaders, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, having received threat letters purportedly from the Islamic State (IS) as recently as in January this year.

Replying to questions, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said such anonymous and pseudonymous letters are recieved by several departments and there were provisions under various sections of IPC to deal with such cases.

Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathaibhai Chaudhary said the Ministry has recently issued an advisory in this regard to all the state governments and Union Territory administrations to get such cases professionally investigated and prosecuted to curb such incidents.

Nominated member K T S Tulsi said despite such letters about fake bomb threats, the only method available before the post offices to identify them was through handwriting experts, which they do not have. "How is this menace going to be countered if it is handled in such an inept manner," Tulsi said.

Tarun Vijay (BJP) wanted to know whether any foreign country was involved behind such incidents. Chaudhary said the Centre keeps on issuing advisories in this regard with the latest being issued on February 26, while pointing out that the matter related to the states.

"There is punishment up to three years under section 505 of IPC and two years under section 507," he said. The minister appeared in agreement with the view that the postal department could find it hard to investigate such cases with 2.96 crore letters being handled by it in a day.

PTI
US did not share Osama bin Laden's location with Pakistan due to lack of trust

Shocking: Osama had left a secret will to support funding war on the west

India

oi-Pallavi

Washington, March 2: In a shocking revelation, Osama bin Laden left a secret will saying that he had left a fortune of $29 million in Sudan, with instructions to spend all of it in continuing the global terror campaign.

The documents were recovered from his compound in Abbottabad where he was killed by Navy SEALS in 2011.

Apart from the handwritten will, there were 112 other documents that were released by the office of the Director of National Intelligence. The letters include intimations to subordinates and messages from followers willing to carry out suicide attacks. He was also indifferent to the way his organization was looked down upon and how the CIA was on his hunt for decades. He had called on deputies to mount operations and fill positions even as they pleaded that they lacked capable recruits.

Although the letters refer to $29 million in Sudan, it is not clear where the money is kept, Bin Laden belonged to a well-to-do family that made a vast fortune in construction projects for the Saudi Royal family. He was later expelled from the country when he fled to Sudan.

He also appeals to his relatives who may claim the fortune that it be spent the ongoing war of jihad.

He goes on to make smaller arrangements of funds for his relatives and subordinates, which includes "200,000 riyals for my sisters Maryam, Iman, and Atidal."

It is however not clear what became of his funds although the US government tried to seize all his accounts accross the world.

Bin Laden is also seen predicting a costly war between United States and Iran. The undated documets says,"Its drums are beating in the east and west, about the third world war that the leader of the White House is threatening our region with, and he has specified Iran and its allies."

A DNI spokesperson said,"it is important that the documents collected at bin Laden's compound be made available to the public."

OneIndia News
Want to organise an event at JNU? It takes Rs 100 to do so, reveals students

India

oi-Reetu

New Delhi, Mar 2: Where on one hand the JNU row is taking a new turn everyday, students of the University have made a shocking revelation which may leave everyone surprised.

Ridiculing allegations of having received "foreign funding", the students charged with sedition in connection with a controversial event on Jawaharlal Nehru University campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru claimed that it takes only "Rs 100" to organise any programme at the varsity.

"Various theories are being applied to probe our 'terror links' and allegations are being made that we had received foreign funding and planned meticulously for the so called anti-national event.

JNU row: #ProtectJNU trends on Twitter as student groups protest at Mandi House

"The truth is that those who know the JNU culture are aware of the fact that it takes just Rs 100 to organise any event here and the same can be done without planning within an hour," said Anant Prakash Narayan, former JNUSU vice president, who is among those charged with sedition.

Ashutosh Kumar, former JNUSU President said, "Our names are being taken in court rooms and news studios. They are being screamed in Parliament. The entire country is looking at us as terrorists. But do they even know how things function in JNU and how routinely these affairs are handled.

"We do not need any funding from any terror group to have a debate on Afzal Guru. Any university needs that? We are students, we just wish to debate, question and express. The way the government and police have blown things out of proportion is an example of the intolerance in the country," he added.

JNU nurtures leadership quality says Kanhaiya Kumar's friend

Anant and Ashutosh, both PhD students at the varsity, are among the six students identified by the police for their alleged role in the February 9 during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

While the students union president Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on February 12, the duo along with three others - Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Rama Naga - had gone in hiding fearing "mob-lynching".

They resurfaced back on campus 10 days later. While Umar and Anirban surrendered before the police, the remaining three refused to do so but maintained that they are open to questioning by police as and when needed.

They are now leading the movement along with JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora against the alleged branding of university as "anti-national".

The six students were also academically debarred by the university administration after a preliminary inquiry report by the high-level committee found their involvement in the incident.

However, they have been allowed to stay in the university hostels as guests.

Meanwhile, a Delhi government-ordered forensic probe of a set of video clippings of the controversial JNU event has found that two videos were "manipulated" where voices of persons not present in the clips were added.

Out of seven videos sent by the Delhi government to the Hyderabad-based Truth Labs, two have been found to be tampered with while the rest were authentic, sources said.

OneIndia News

(With inputs from agencies)

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 17:44 [IST]
Karnataka to strengthen ATS and up the number of prisons

SpiceJet flight makes emergency landing in Kolkata after losing a tyre

India

oi-Jagriti

Kolkata, Mar 2: A SpiceJet flight made an emergency landing in Kolkata after it lost one of its tyre.

The pilot made a precautionary landing in Kolkata after he was informed that the aircraft with 204 passengers and seven crew members on board, 'dropped' one of its tyres while taking off from Bengaluru on Tuesday.

Fortunately the aircraft dropped was from the rear landing gear which has two sets each of as many tyres (one under each wing) and was able to land safely with one tyre less, reported the Times of India.

The debris of tyre was noticed by the maintenance personnel at the Bengaluru runway who later informed the ATC.

Hurry! SpiceJet comes up with Pre-Summer Sale', fares starts from Rs 599

"One of the rear tyres fell off or burst while our aircraft was taking off from Bengaluru. The pilot landed the aircraft safely at the destination and all passengers have disembarked safely," said SpiceJet spokesman.

A probe has been ordered in the matter.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 9:56 [IST]
Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai

UPA flirted with national security despite knowing how dangerous Ishrat module was

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 2: With the debate on the Ishrat Jahan encounter being thrown wide open following the startling revelations by former home secretary of India, G K Pillai, one must go deep into the case and understand why this operation was so crucial.

When India was hit hard in the form of the Parliament and 26/11 attacks, some within the government decided to change the narrative of the Ishrat Jahan encounter and now it is becoming clear that it was more to settle political scores.

Ishrat Jahan and three others were gunned down by the Gujarat police in an encounter in 2004. While it was a very successful operation thanks to actionable intelligence inputs, the government of the day decided to change the narrative.

While one affidavit claimed that these persons killed were indeed Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists, another filed exactly after a month stated the opposite.

This according to Pillai [Interview: Chidambaram should have guts to admit revising Ishrat affadavit and not hide- G K Pillai] was done by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram without consulting him or other senior officials in the IB or Home Ministry.

To understand how dangerous a module this was, one needs to visit an investigation that was conducted in Jammu and Kashmir. The Lashkar-e-Tayiba had unleashed three different modules into India. The three modules were to operate in Gujarat, Delhi and Srinagar.

Flirting with National Security:

On June 26 2004, the Jammu and Kashmir police arrested a Lashkar-e-Tayiba commander, Shahid Mehmood. This was 11 days after the Gujarat police carried out the encounter killing Ishrat and three others.

When Mehmood was questioned, he told the police that he was taking orders from Muzzamil Bhat, a commander of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba housed in Pakistan.

According to Mehmood, there were three modules. While one was to operate in Srinagar, the other two were dispatched to Delhi and Ahmedabad.

He however did not spell out clearly what the other modules were tasked with. This is only natural since terror groups who depute their foot soldiers ensure that they work on a need to know basis.

By this time there had been doubts that had been raised over the encounter carried out by the Gujarat police.

The narrative was being changed in New Delhi and the Gujarat police found themselves in a spot of bother.

Further a team of the Gujarat police upon realising that the module in Ahmedabad was linked with the one in Srinagar dispatched a team to that state.

However prior to them reaching the police in Jammu and Kashmir carried out an encounter in which Mehmood was killed along with his accomplice Zahid.

This came as a set back for the Gujarat police as these men could have identified those killed in the encounter at Gujarat.

Following this the Gujarat police sought the custody of the others who were arrested in connection with the same plot in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Gujarat police were however not allowed to take custody.

At the same time there were reports suggesting that four persons were arrested in Srinagar for sheltering Amjad Ali one of the terrorists killed along with Ishrat.

The Gujarat police was however allowed to question only three out of the four. These investigations clearly suggested that the module sent to Ahmedabad was clearly that of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba's.

OneIndia News
With Ishrat Jahan truth out, it is now over to the judiciary and home ministry

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Mar 2: It is over to the judiciary and the Home Ministry of India now. With it becoming clear that the UPA was on a witch hunt where the Ishrat Jahan encounter was concerned, it is time to set the narrative straight.

A lot would depend on both the judiciary and the Home Ministry now.

Even if one were to leave politics aside for a while, the narrative regarding the Ishrat Jahan encounter has to be set straight in the interest of national security.

With there not being an iota of doubt that the four persons gunned down by the Gujarat police in 2004 were Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) terrorists, both the Home Ministry and the Supreme Court will need to play a proactive role.

Morale booster:

Thanks to this Ishrat Jahan encounter, several officers of the Intelligence Bureau, Home Ministry and the Gujarat police were hounded. Rajinder Kumar, a senior Intelligence Bureau official was even told to change the narrative against the Gujarat police, but he refused to buckle. This resulted in the government unleashing the CBI on him. The case is same where the Gujarat police are concerned.

The home ministry has asked for the files for a re-look. At the same time there is a petition before the Supreme Court seeking a re-look of the entire case in the wake of the revelations made by former Home Secretary G K Pillai. Both the Home Ministry as well as the Supreme Court can order a re-look into this case now.

With new facts emerging, the case does deserve a re-investigation. This would go a long way as it would boost the morale of the Intelligence Bureau. In this case it was clear that the IB was hounded for a successful operation.

Home Ministry will present fresh facts on Ishrat Jahan case

Pillai himself claimed that it was a successful IB operation as they managed to track down Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists.

The other aspect regarding this case would be set the narrative straight on Ishrat Jahan too. Many have claimed that she was innocent although there is nothing on record to second that.

Why was she with the three others who have been confirmed as Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists? Why did she check in with terrorists as their wife. Why did the Lashkar-e-Tayiba magazine hail her as a martyr? Why did David Headley say thrice that she was a fidayeen with the Lashkar-e-Tayiba.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 9:39 [IST]
30 black students 'ejected' from Trump rally

International

oi-PTI

Washington, March 2: About 30 black students were ejected from Donald Trump's rally in the US state of Georgia, the latest controversy to hit the Republican presidential front-runner's campaign.

There are different accounts of who made the decision to eject approximately 30 black students who say they were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Trump's rally in Valdosta.

The group of students had been waiting to see the 69-year-old real estate tycoon at the Valdosta State University when they were told to leave the venue and then escorted out.

A Trump spokeswoman denied that the incident at Valdosta State University's campus on Monday was initiated "at the request of the candidate" or the presidential campaign, The USA Today reported.

A spokesman for the Secret Service contradicted the students' statements that federal agents led them out of the building, saying Trump staff and local law enforcement officials were in charge of handling protesters.

However, Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress was quoted as saying, "These folks were told to leave the PE complex by the Trump detail." The police chief said he thinks the Trump staff made the right call and it was not a racial issue.

Trump had rented the venue, so "he had the right to tell folks he didn't want to be there, that they had to leave. I'm not campaigning for anyone. That's not what I do. But in this case, I support them," Childress said. The sight of the students, who were visibly upset, being asked to leave the grounds, created a stir at the university that was a whites-only campus until 1963.

The young people said they had planned to sit in silent protest but were escorted out by security officials before the presidential candidate began speaking. "We didn't plan to do anything," said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was in the group of Valdosta State University students, many of whom were wearing all black.

"They said, 'This is Trump's property; it's a private event.' But I paid my tuition to be here," he told the the Des Moines Register. Brooke Gladney, a 22-year-old marketing and business management major, was quoted as saying, "The only reason we were given was that Mr Trump did not want us there."

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks was quoted as saying, "There is no truth to this whatsoever. The campaign had no knowledge of this incident."

Earlier on Monday, some black students at another Trump campaign rally, on the campus of Radford University in Virginia, were led out by security officers after they began chanting, "No more hate! No more hate! Let's be equal, let's be great!" The incident comes after furor over Trump's refusal to disavow Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader David Duke's support for him.

PTI
Are you awake?: EAM Jaishankar recalls when he got a call from PM Modi at midnight

Several Afghans on Germany's evacuation list have died

13th batch of medical assistance to Afghanistan delivered by India

Explosions, gunfire near Indian consulate in Afghanistan, 2 attackers killed

International

oi-Preeti

Kabul, March 2: Two loud explosions and several shots of gunfire were heard near Indian consulate in Jalalabad city of Afghanistan, on Wednesday, March 2 afternoon.

The fierce gunbattle left two attackers killed and fourteen people injured.

Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Manpreet Vohra told a news channel, "All officials in Indian Consulate, Jalalabad are safe. Reinforcements rushed in.'All Indian diplomats and consulate staff were safe, Afghan and Indian officials said. Authorities said the attack, which started around noon, ended a few hours later.

Security forces killed "a team of suicide bombers" who targeted the Indian consulate, Afghanistan's Khaama Press news agency said.

ToloNews quoted hospital sources to say that 14 people had been admitted with injuries. This included an unspecified number of children.

Khaama Press said at least two attackers opened fire after a loud boom was heard.

The security forces retaliated, gunning down the attackers "pretty soon". It added that all Indian diplomats and employees were safe.

The attack caused panic. Civilians fled from the site while security forces engaged the gunmen, police officers said.

Journalists at the site reported explosions and gunfire. Security forces moved in armoured vehicles.

A shopkeeper near the consulate told journalists that he saw several injured people lying on the ground after a massive blast shattered his windows.

The nature of the blast might have been a group attack, Xinhua news agency earlier reported.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack comes ahead of direct peace talks this week between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

OneIndia News

(With agency inputs)
Philippines: Mummified sailor found in an old yatch

International

oi-Pallavi

Philippines, March 2: Philippine police said on Tuesday that they were trying to identify a mummified body found in a yatch that was drifting in the Pacific Ocean. The Yatch was apparantly owned by a German adventurer.

Police Chief Inspector Dominador Plaza said that the gray decomposing remains of the man resembled a mummy, adding mystery to the death. The Yatch was found last week by Filipino fishermen off the southeastern province of Surigao del Sur. And the mummy was Manfred Fritz Bajorat, found near the radio in a slumped position.

There were no visible signs of a gun shot or stabbing wound, which ruled out all signs of foul play. Plaza said over the phone,"Initially, it looks to us that he died of natural causes, maybe a heart attack. And death appears to have come suddenly because he was still sitting by the table when he passed away."

Plaza said that initial estimates showed the man in a hot enclosed cabin for at least several days. But the authorities are awaiting an autopsy report due this week for a more accurate finding.

Meanwhile, documents that were recovered from the Yatch showed that it was apparently owned by a German adventurer identified as Manfred Fritz Bajorat. However, there was no way to determine whether the dead man was Bajorat. The daughter of Bajorat called police officials informing them that her family was travelling to Philippines to help investigators confirm whether the man was her father or not.

If the man was Bajorat, the family plans to have him cremated before bringing him back home.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Wednesday, March 2, 2016, 13:53 [IST]
US did not share Osama bin Laden's location with Pakistan due to lack of trust

Osama wanted to launch jihad against Pakistan: new Documents

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Mar 2: Slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had called for launching jihad against Pakistan and wanted to manipulate the tension between India and Pakistan to achieve this objective, according to newly declassified files seized from his hideout in Pakistan.

In a 42-page booklet originally in Arabic recovered from the Abbottabad compound of bin Laden during the raid by US commandoes in which he was killed, the al-Qaeda leader gives a detailed blueprint on how and where to launch the jihad against Pakistan and establish Islamic rule over the country.

In the booklet, which was released by the Office of Director of National Intelligence today, bin Laden alleged that India was planning to attack Pakistan as part of the larger American game plan to divide Pakistan.

And then he sets his eyes on the entire of South Asia arguing that it is the British colonial rulers who divided the region, which in fact is one country.

"India plans to attack Pakistan," is one of the chapters of the booklet 'Jihad in Pakistan'. In the booklet, bin Laden wrote, "India has embarked on many important initiatives, except that it is preparing for a decisive grand battle.

Among those initiatives are India's bid to purchase 134 fighter aircraft from all over the world, this will be the largest military deal in the history of the whole world." "India's military training with Britain on the highest fighting fronts, in the mountainous Siachen region on the Pakistani border.

America's grand steps in nuclear cooperation with India, through the purchase of an Indian nuclear reactor on Indian soil. India's convening the largest "Strategic War Games" in Hyderabad region.

The booklet referred to India's launch of an Israeli satellite to spy on Pakistan and its alleged announcement of increasing its force size by a million, compared to its current 1,300,000 million soldier force. "These giant steps predict an incoming storm.

Osama bin Laden funded Nawaz Sahrif's election, claims a new book

India has focused its attention on Pakistans internal situation. Military analysts interpreted these steps through their statements that India will attack Pakistan, sooner or later," the booklet said. Laying out his plan of action to wage a successful jihad against Pakistan, bin Laden proposed four-prong action plan.

"We have to launch raids against the Pakistani army that is deployed on the Indian border, because these are vast desert battlefields areas and it will be easy to target them.

By these operations, we will realise that these border armies will not come to the rescue of armies that are present in Sarhad and Baluchistan; on the contrary, they will focus their efforts on strengthening their positions in their areas, as they are sensitive areas from the point of view of Pakistans war with India," he wrote.

Therefore, every attack in these areas will constitute "an anchoring nail" in the foot of the army, impeding it from movement to these areas, he argued.

PTI
Here is how Trump celebrated his Super Tuesday; he didn't throw a party

International

oi-Shubham

Washington, March 2: Republican candidate Donald Trump swept Super Tuesday' of this presidential election year on March 1, but he decided to observe the occasion in a way that no presidential candidate has done for a long, long time.

Complete list of American presidential election primaries/caucuses schedules and results

What happened on Super Tuesday

Who won which state on Super Tuesday

There was no noisy celebration with supporters with drinks and balloons and Trump, who now looks a strong contender for the presidential nomination, opted to hold a press conference instead of a party at Palm Beach in Florida, said the Washington Post.

"But as Trump stood in front of a couple dozen friends and dozens of reporters from around the world on Tuesday night, he started talking like a Republican nominee focused on winning a general election instead of the next primary. His audience: The millions of potential voters sitting at home watching television or scrolling through the Web," the report said.

Trump, who won seven out of 11 states and was also leading in Alaska, shifted his focus to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who he might face in the final battle for the White House in November. He said the former secretary of state did little for the US all these years and that he would be disappointed to see her being nominated for the presidential election.

Stressing on issues like economic turnaround, illegal immigration, building the wall on Mexico border, improving the military might and others, Trump said he is "a unifier" who would like to see the Republican Party and everybody unify."

"And when we unify, there's nobody, nobody that's going to beat us," he said.

Trump has now won 10 out of 15 states in the primary season.
Cornered Trump accuses Obama administration of spying on his campaign

On Russia probes 1st anniversary, Trump brags about his administrations achhe din

Days before Putin summit, Trump in a spot over Russian spies indictment

Trump accuses China and Russia of meddling in US elections

Trumps election in 2016 was not an entertainment for many; in fact it was a trauma: Report

US presidential poll: Black students removed from Donald Trump rally

International

oi-Jagriti

Washington, Mar 2: A group of black students were removed from a rally of US presidential poll candidate Donald Trump at a university, media reported.

The incident took place at Valdosta State University in Georgia on Monday when a group of black students reached to attend his rally.

According to CNN report around 30 students were escorted out.

"We didn't plan to do anything," Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, told The Des Moines Register. "They said, 'This is Trump's property; it's a private event.' But I paid my tuition to be here."

Live updates: Trump wins 6th state; Rubio takes Minnesota

Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner won Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Tennessee on Super Tuesday on March 1. Thirteen states went on polling on Super Tuesday.

OneIndia News
Jaitley mocks Rahul Gandhi in Facebook post; questions his maturity level

New Delhi

oi-Shubham

New Delhi, March 2:Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took a dig at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in a Facebook post on Wednesday, in which he questioned the latter's level of maturity.

Taunting Rahul over his claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi hardly consults his senior ministers, Jaitley said: "If Shri Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then Smt. Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Shri Rajnath Singh was unware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unware of the Budget proposals."

"As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering "how much does he know - when will he know"," Jaitley wrote in his post which was liked by over 19,000 people and shared over 4,200 times at the time of writing this article.

How much does he know  when will he knowThe Congress Vice-President, Shri Rahul Gandhi, has claimed that the Prime... Posted by Arun Jaitley onWednesday, March 2, 2016

The Union finance minister said the prime minister is the natural leader of the party and government in the NDA but it was different when the UPA was in power.

"The Prime Minister is to lead by example. The present Prime Minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally. Each one of us, whether the External Affairs Minister, Home Minister or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each of one departments. We do not by-pass the Prime Minister who is always available for consultation and guidance. After hearing Shri Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the Prime Minister who leads the Government and a Prime Minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere," Jaitley's post said.

The senior BJP leader also lashed out at the Congress, saying it had evolved into "a crowd around a family" and the UPA model of governance saw a prime minister from outside the family reduced into a figurehead.

"Given a choice between a hands-on' Prime Minister or a nominal' head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former," he said.

Rahul had launched on a frontal attack on PM Modi during a debate in the Lok Sabha, saying the "The Prime Minister cannot run the country on only his opinion. The country is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the country."

Oneindia News
OK! Magazine 21 Oct 2022

Taylor Swift's new song 'Would've, Could've, Should've' might be about John Mayer  and fans are already warning him of the..
Branch President Anton Kinga of Papua New Guinea: Photo source : mormonnewsroompg.org

From Church Headquarters in Salt Lake City in the United States to the remote village of Rabaul on the island of East New Britain, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gather to worship each Sunday.Congregations in Papua New Guinea (PNG) meet in settings ranging from established brick chapels to small wooden open air constructions, similar to how members of the Church met in early days. Regardless of where they meet, Church members in PNG follow the admonition of Jesus Christ, recorded in the Book of Matthew 18:20, For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."One of the smaller congregations in PNG is located in Rabaul. Anton Kinga is the local leader who oversees this congregation.Four young missionaries assigned to Rabaul assist him in conducting Sunday worship services. During the week, the missionaries provide service work, in addition to preaching the gospel to those who express an interest in learning more about the Church.In preparation for the Sabbath day meetings on Rabaul, sand floors are carefully raked and chairs are placed in neat rows in the open-air bush chapel, which is constructed of bamboo posts and a thatched roof.Sunday worship services consist of singing hymns together, learning more about Jesus Christ and studying togther from the Bible, other sacred texts and Church manuals. Materials such as these are published in 120 different languages, and used throughout the world.Source: mormonsnewsroompg.org
The Allied Peoples Movement has rejected the ongoing election results being announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

The APM Campaign Director General said this on Sunday at the partys secretariat at Leme, Abeokuta.

Sarafa Ishola said the election was hijacked by hoodlums and unidentified uniformed men at the collation stageto favour the APC.

The APM had petitioned INEC in the state to investigate the infractions and stop announcement of results forthwith.

Despite the complaints, the INEC has started announcing the results.

The people of Ogun state has been raped, Akinlade declared, saying hey will seek all legal means to undo the injustice.

The APM is a splinter of the APC under the leadership of the state governor, Ibikunle Amosun.

The ruling party tottered into crisis during the primaries held last year when Amosuns candidate Abdulkadri Akinlade was rejected by a faction of the party whose candidate Dapo Abiodun was given the guber ticket.
Even the public media serves establishment politics. Last week's NPR newscaster reported the opening of five Clinton offices In MA .Two Clinton supporters followed. One echoed Clinton's pragmatic progressive slogan (sub-message, Sanders is impractical). A Planned Parenthood executive reinforced the Clinton for women message. Maintaining the facade of objective coverage, the report gave a nod to Sanders' UMASS rally. No testimonials. No emphatic support/opinion to insinuate into public consciousness, and no spokesperson's appeal to a voting group.

Media manipulation in the service of corporate ends is not news. But the failure of the Sanders' campaign to foresee and develop strategies to counteract the media's powerful influence reflects a core problem. The Sanders' campaign invokes political revolution but has instead conducted a non-revolutionary campaign directed by professional campaigners (all white men), organized in a hierarchy and operating with a one- way communication chain from the top --down.

I joined the Sanders' campaign because I viewed it as a vehicle for building social movements, a focal point for bringing people together to discuss, to plan, to organize for real change. Not because I thought he could win. Still when he said "political revolution," I felt elated; I was buoyed when he rebuked an audience chanting his name, reminding them that the revolution was them . Likewise when Sanders said he could get nothing done as President without the political revolution.

The crowds Sanders attracted shook my skepticism. I saw potential. But early on, I was troubled by campaign behaviors (domination by leaders, controlling behavior; no issue discussions; no concern for individual participation or for local base-building). Now seven months into the "game," on the eve of Super Tuesday, the political revolution has not advanced beyond rhetoric, and I fear that Bernie's "crusade to resurrect democracy" (Cornell West) will flounder and dissolve on the shores of defeat and disenchantment.

Sanders continues to invoke the emotionally resonating "political revolution." Yes, this references a public awakened and wanting big changes, but that's an ingredient, not the creation, of political revolution; the potential for, not the substance of, an organized political movement. I thought (and still think it an unrealized possibility) that a campaign could contribute to a political revolution, but that the political revolution, both conceptually and organizationally, must be the overriding force.

However, the campaign is calling the shots and determining directions, and, in my opinion, its ideas and its methods have prevented political revolution. The campaign mindset is limited to the narrow, short term goal of getting Bernie nominated and its tactics are correspondingly narrow and myopic. Neglected (though the words are used) has been the grass-roots organizing and empowerment to build the long-lasting social movements/groups of political revolution.

Here in Worcester, MA, a working class city with a substantial Black and Latino population, zero effort has been expended to outreach to and engage these potential voters. Bernie would need them, yet the campaign's leadership didn't appear to think so. Bernie's agenda speaks most concretely to them and in their forthright language. But Bernie supporters weren't directed into these communities which, despite their potential, are also most vulnerable to media manipulation and prone to disengagement. The campaign formed eight months before the primary. Little enough time to reach out and engage this at one time Democratic base, but the mindset didn't embrace this base building effort. Instead, it called for house parties, - intrinsically incapable of reaching the unengaged and disaffected. Or stand outs on street corners (not including these neighborhoods and communities), or Bernie events that attracted supporters but failed to empower and engage them other than urging participation in "the campaign."

For instance, one I attended in September brought out 50-60 locals; when they left, they went their individual ways. No discussion and idea sharing was encouraged. No strategy brainstorming (how to break through the media stronghold, for instance, or how to mobilize locally). The communication was one way; no channels opened for the (unsolicited) viewpoints and ideas of the attendees. Attention to crucial organizational details was not evident. The men who organized the event collected an email list. Many of us asked, and were assured, the list would be shared. It never was. Anyone who wanted to do base building, or media disruption events, or to anticipate and take the lead on defining the Hillary for women message could not reach out to those attendees who might have wanted to participate.

At another Bernie group, the leader (also a mediator with the campaign hierarchy) controlled the email list; he filtered everything that could go out, and actually sabotaged activities that didn't accord with "the campaign" directives. A recent post on the MA for Bernie website deplored that Sanders commanded only a 7% lead in MA. Agreed, and I think I have identified some reasons for this.

People without a voice, not encouraged to express their political concerns, to debate issues, or to clarify their politics do not constitute a political revolution. This is perhaps most tellingly reflected in the prevailing lack of clarity about what 'political revolution' means. Absence of specificity on this fundamental message of Bernie's campaign impacts even the short term objective. For instance, people rightfully question how Bernie will make the radical changes he proposes. They know congressional gridlock won't dissolve; they may also know that the corporate powers are not going to throw in the towel. Canvassing, I have often encountered this barrier. I say, "You're right,"" he can't do it the regular way, but only with you and me. Because it's us up to us. Sanders never says this so that it's understood (if he believes it). But I don't know any other answer, and the campaign has not engaged its troops in developing ways to address peoples' fear that Sanders is an ineffectual idealist (Hillary is pragmatic). Nor has Sanders emphatically articulated the related idea that the political revolution is long-term.

The failure to engage committed supporters, much less the unengaged popular base, in critical discussion, or to provide channels for those in the trenches to express and enrich the campaign with their viewpoints and their on- the- ground experiences contradicts the very power of the people that the term political revolution evokes and purports to serve. A particularly reactionary idea that prevails amongst Bernie supporters is one that muzzles and constrains criticism of Hillary Clinton. We can't expose her campaign lies/distortions, or examine her distinctly anti-progressive militarism, or say too specifically or boldly that Hillary Clinton's past policies, her neoliberal ideology, and her neocon American Exceptionalism can only fail the people. Why this suppression? The rationale is that if Sanders fails to be the nominee, then we need an untarnished Clinton to defeat the Republicans.

But Sanders himself has described the Clinton machine as the most powerful in Washington. A revolutionary analysis would perceive and resist the media's role in hiding Clinton's negatives. In the face of these monumental forces shielding Clinton from public scrutiny, are Bernie supporters to fight the world champion for the nomination with one hand tied behind their back? And is Hillary Clinton an acceptable option for a political revolutionary? Neither of these strategically critical questions could be answered without those discussions and debates that never happened.

From here-on-in, no matter what happens today, Super Tuesday, if there's any basis to Bernie Sanders' political revolution, he must dramatically change course. He must replace and /or supplement his leadership with men and women in touch with the issues, the needs, and the voices of those communities that he has neglected. He needs leadership that will organize and build coalitions with a myriad of progressive organizations and causes. If he doesn't win the nomination, he must not endorse Hillary Clinton, but, rather persist in building a powerful, organized counterforce to craft and back progressive demands at the Democratic Convention.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Hillary Clinton won a lot of states and a lot of delegates on Super Tuesday, further securing her status as the front runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton stacked up big wins in Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas, and she squeaked out a victory in Massachusetts.

It was a very good night for the former secretary of state. But Clinton was not going for a very good night. She was going for a sweep that would marginalize the insurgent candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. The Clinton campaign made an aggressive final push to win the states where Sanders was competitive, and even tried to close the gap in Vermont.

That did not happen. Despite the fact that prominent Vermont Democrats such as current Governor Peter Shumlin and former Governor Madeleine Kunin were actively campaigning for Clinton, Sanders won 86 percent of the vote to just 14 percent for the former senator from the neighboring state of New York. That was the biggest win of the night.

If Sanders had just won Vermont, however, it would not have been enough. The senator needed to show strength outside New England, where he had previously won New Hampshire. And so he did. Sanders won the primary in Oklahoma -- a state where his rallies in Tulsa and Oklahoma City drew huge crowds, and where he even visited the Woody Guthrie Center -- by a 10-point margin. He won big in Colorado, a key swing state where he beat Clinton by an overwhelming 59-40 margin. He won 62-38 in Minnesota, a state where Clinton has the enthusiastic backing of Senator Al Franken and her surrogates campaigned aggressively right up through Super Tuesday. And in Massachusetts, where Clinton had the support of top officials such as Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Attorney General Maura Healey, as well as the Boston Globe newspaper, he held the front runner to just 50.3 percent of the vote.

Click Here to Read Whole Article

Sanders won as many states from Clinton in the Democratic contests on Super Tuesday as the combined efforts of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio won from Donald Trump in the far more intensely covered Republican contests

That, to borrow a phrase from Sanders, was "pretty good" -- especially considering the fact that the Super Tuesday map was always seen as favoring Clinton. The results allowed the senator to tell his supporters in his Vermont victory speech that: "At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain. And let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states."

None of this diminishes Clinton's success. She comes out of Super Tuesday in a dominant position: the winner of the most states, the winner of the most delegates. She continues to attract overwhelming support from African-American voters, which contributed to her dramatic 4-1 victory in Alabama, as well as her solid wins in Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas. She went into Super Tuesday with a wide lead in the delegate count (thanks to her overwhelming advantage among super-delegates), and the results of the days's voting have given her a wider lead. By the CBS estimate, she's now ahead by roughly 600 delegates.



Clinton is running well for a reason. She is rising to the demands of the Democratic contest -- and to the broader demands of a 2016 race that is increasingly defined by concerns about the rise of Trump and Trumpism. Clinton closed her Super Tuesday campaign talking less about Sanders than about Trump -- appealing well and wisely to Democrats who are beginning to think more and more seriously about November match-ups.

Democrats get Clinton's point when she pushes back against Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan by declaring, "We know we've got work to do. But that work, that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole. We have to fill in, fill in what's been hollowed out."

Clinton has grown steadily more focused and effective in her messaging. She is delivering the best speeches of her campaign (picking up on many of the economic themes emphasized by Sanders, and adding her own calls for healing a divided nation). And she is displaying energy and drive -- traveling on Super Tuesday from Massachusetts to Minnesota to Florida (where Democrats will cast primary ballots March 15.)

Had her fierce final campaigning given Clinton the sweep she sought, Super Tuesday could have been every bit as definitional as many pundits imagined it would be for her. But Sanders held his own.

"The political establishment counted Bernie out before this contest even began. But tonight proves the race is on, and it will be a fight for delegates across all fifty states," said Dan Cantor, the executive director of the Working Families Party, which backs the Vermont senator. "Tonight, Senator Sanders will pick up hundreds of delegates on a night that sees many of Secretary Clinton's best states casting their votes. Meanwhile, Senator Sanders is coming off a historic fundraising month and picking up new endorsements, and in the weeks to come, the map improves for Sanders quickly."

All of that is true. Sanders raised $42 million in February from small donors who can -- and very probably will -- keep giving for as long as the senator keeps running. The Tuesdays to come could be more super for Sanders, as the race heads toward industrial states (Michigan and Ohio) where his appeal to blue-collar workers who oppose free-trade deals could gain traction, and toward states such as Wisconsin where polls actually give the Vermonter a narrow lead. And if the tens of thousands of young people who continue to show up for his rallies are any indication, his supporters are more than ready to fight on.

But Sanders will need more than "pretty good" nights.

The senator can still make a case that he has a path to the nomination, but it is an uphill path.
A Time Magazine photographer was slammed off a table onto the ground on Leap Day at a Donald Trump political event, in the middle of a Black Lives Matter protest. As he put it, he stepped 18 inches out of the "press pen," and was choked and slammed. He definitely was, you could hear the floor impact very clearly after he had bounced off the table.



This fellow, Chris Morris, must have thought he was actually allowed to do the job of the press, which is to relentlessly report the truth, and I have never yet heard that any member of the press restrained like this when he was obviously nowhere near the candidate. Correct me if I err: theoretically the Secret Service's job, and only job, there, is to protect the candidate.



We actually must hope that this is merely an isolated case of a Secret Service agent losing his cool. They are not perfect, but the USSS is usually a professional and competent bunch. The Trump campaign had nothing to do with the incident, which occurred in the midst of a Black Lives Matter protest that caused a temporary halt in the rally.



Wearing My Old Reporter's Hat

(Image by self) Details DMCA



However, this is truly frightening-- doesn't frighten me personally, I'm an unterrorized American-- but then, this is not a message meant for patriots. This sort of incident cannot but send a message to mainstream America.Trump and his rhetoric all work on people's fears and aggressions. Although Trump has gone as far as to indirectly threaten the prsee, for whom he has expressed outright contempt, even as they do his will by publicizing all he says and does, those who cheered the removal of the photographer rabidly are a bigger problem than Trump himself.From such people could certainly arise a Sturmabteilung (SA), though it might not be as hardboiled and outright murderous as the one led by veterans of trench warfare in Germany after WWI, during the rise of the Nazis.In Nazi Germany, Hitler, Goebbels and the crew manipulated the people into believing the palingenetic myth of Aryan superiority. In America, the mythos has degenerated into nothing more than American (and veiledly, European American) exceptionalism.Trump may say he doesn't know who David Duke is-- a baldfaced lie, he theoretically (his run was theoretical) disavowed Professor Duke in 2000. He may say he has to read a list and say who he would disavow.But Duke and unreconstructed White supremacists will take any disavowal lightly, because he's tailor-made for their type of activism.I haven't seen a black at any Trump appearance I have watched live or on video, except for a few cops doing their jobs, until this rally. I'm not sure all the blacks at this one were Black Lives Matter protesters, though certainly some of them were. But there may actually be a few black Americans caught up in the circus.I did see a couple of senior-citizen Orientals. However I haven't seen any Chinese-American or Vietnamese-American organizations coming out for him.But hey, Trump's going down, either before the primary season is done because his Mafia associations are now coming to light, or in the general election by a landslide to either Democrat still running. Especially Bernie, who will positively eviscerate him in the debates if it gets that far. Sanders will cut Trump every way but loose.However, stinkers like Les Moonves, the head of CBS, who says Trump may not be a good thing for America, but it's a damn good thing for CBS, because the money is rolling in from the circus, and therefore hopes he continues to thrive, should be called what they are for cheering on the degradation of the American democratic process: anti-American.Mr. Moonves becomes a Hall-of-Fame member of journalistic irresponsibility. His plaque can take its place next to a Portland, Oregon AP Bureau Chief named Hugh Van Swearingen I met back in 1986 while I was pursuing my journalism degree at Oregon/Eugene.This press high muck-a-muck of the era, who was at the university's Journalism School recruiting, told me over a beer at the local pub that it didn't matter to him if the government buried nuclear waste in a disastrously inappropriate location (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in Eddy County NM), because by the time the site is breached and the waste comes pouring out, he would be long gone.People like that make me feel proud not to have doggedly pursued a career in print journalism in the mainstream media.


Donald Trump Sr. at #FITN in Nashua, NH

(Image by Michael Vadon) Details DMCA



Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) March 2, 2016: Super Tuesday was super for Donald J. Trump. He rolled up impressive victories in the Republican primaries in several states. He is still the frontrunner to become the Republican Party's candidate in the 2016 presidential election.

However, for several weeks now, standard-issue Republican pundits and political commentators, all of whom imagine themselves to be respectable Americans, have acted strange about Trump's candidacy.

On the one hand, they have averred that Trump is not electable. I understand that much.

On the other hand, they have pretended that they do not understand where all his supporters in the Republican primaries have come from. Can you imagine that -- seemingly respectable Republicans, many of whom are in denial about climate change, are now also in denial about how the decades-old anti-60s rhetoric has given rise to Trump. In the anti-60s spirit, he makes a mockery of the spirit of political correctness that the 1960s gave birth to.

So after decades of using anti-60s rhetoric to rally rage-aholics to support Republican candidates and issues, the Republican presidential primary elections are being dominated by Trump and his grassroots rage-aholics.

President Obama is not to blame for Trump's victories in the Republican presidential primaries.

The Democratic Party is not to blame for Trump's victories in the Republican presidential primaries.

Only Republican anti-60s rage-aholics are to blame for the rise of Trump and his anti-60s rage-aholic supporters in the Republican presidential primaries.

Progressives and liberals should relish Trump's victories in the Republican presidential primaries.

Trump's mocking of the spirit of political correctness makes it abundantly clear what he and his rage-aholic supporters stand over against.

If Trump emerges as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016, the American voters should have no doubts about what he stands over against.

Now, if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to emerge as the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, then the presidential election would be great showdown about the spirit of the 1960s.

As everybody knows, her spouse, former President Bill Clinton, is a symbol of the libertinianism of the yeasty 1960s and 1970s that anti-60s rhetoric denounces. The anti-60s rage-aholics got President Clinton impeached because of his consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern.

Of course Hillary Clinton is a woman. As a woman, she is also a symbol of the women's movement in 1960s and 1970s and later. Besides that, she is a former Goldwater girl. So she's a turncoat from the Republican point of view -- a traitor to the radical conservative cause that former Republican presidential candidate Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona symbolized in the 1964 presidential election.

So a match-up of Donald J. Trump versus Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential election could generate a lot of excitement in Trump's rage-aholic supporters.

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 American Herald Tribune

Shocking as it may seem, Iran's recent elections compare favorably against the super-rich, warmongering auction that passes for American "democracy."

If reality-TV supremo Donald Trump ever makes it into the White House, he says that torture of terror suspects and shoot-to-kill of their family members will be turbo-charged under his command. The capricious demagoguery of this guy is truly sinister. And all the other gung-ho contenders are hardly any different.

Trump's brazen disregard for international law and gung-ho militarism has even alarmed former CIA director Michael Hayden. That's saying something when even a shady organization like the CIA is disconcerted by Trump.

But the fact is that Trump is only able to take a run at becoming US president because of his supposed vast individual wealth. His fortune was made from the kind of wheeler-dealer property capitalism that has bankrupted millions of American families and made Wall Street banks and financiers obscenely rich.

All other Republican presidential contenders are dependent on big business sponsorship. So either way, whether "independently" rich Trump or the other corporate clones, the electoral choice has been ring-fenced by billion-dollar elite interests determining how ordinary Americans exercise their "democratic right".

Meanwhile, Wall Street darling Hillary Clinton appears to be pushing Democrat rival Bernie Sander to the sidelines. Clinton has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years from giving paid speeches on behalf of such clients as Goldman Sachs.



Sanders' campaign is reportedly free from corporate "super PACs," relying instead on cash donations from rank-and-file citizens. Nevertheless, the unusual nature of the Vermont Senator being untainted by the excesses of corporate capitalism in his run for the US presidency reinforces the point that American "democracy" is largely an auction run by and for the rich and powerful.

The United States is for all intents and purposes a plutocracy, run by the money-mullahs of finance capitalism.

The irony is that it is common among Western politicians and media pundits to disparage the Islamic Republic of Iran as being a country "dominated by mullahs." The irony is that much of the contempt leveled at Iran is more fitting to the de facto plutocracy that exists in the US.

Iran just completed elections for its parliament and an Assembly of Experts. It was the tenth such parliamentary elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Nearly 5,000 candidates were vying for the 290-seat parliament. The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 elected seats. It is the assembly that will decide who is the next Supreme Leader of Iran after the current Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, who is 76 and is said to be in declining health. Note that because the Assembly of Experts has been elected in the first place, the electorate will have had an important say on who is Iran's next Supreme Leader.

It is true that Iranian leaders often excoriate the US as the "Great Satan" and in the past have called for "death to America and Israel." The latter injunction is accurately understood to be a rhetorical condemnation of America's imperialistic wars in the Middle East and of illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Neither Khamenei nor his predecessor have publicly endorsed torture as state policy, as Donald Trump and George W Bush before him have. Nor have Iranian leaders arrogated the right to assassinate people around the globe with aerial drones and Special Forces, as US President Obama has.

It is true that the nearly 5,000 Iranian parliamentary candidates were vetted by an unelected Guardian Council. The council was said to be in favor of religiously and politically conservative candidates. Out of this very extensive "shortlist," the Iranian elections this past week were conducted in a free and fair manner, where one-person votes were tallied from the some 55 million Iranian electorate (60% turnout).

As it turns out, the election results show big gains for candidates considered to be "reformists" and "moderates" who are allied with the current President Hassan Rouhani. He was elected in separate presidential elections in 2013. Rouhani's policy of engaging diplomatically with the West -- achieving the P5+1 nuclear deal last year and the lifting of harsh economic sanctions off Iran -- appears to have borne fruit electorally with the Iranian people. He now has a parliament supportive of his foreign policy of engagement, as well as embarking on more social and economic reforms domestically.

Iran is not a Western "liberal democracy." All candidates must swear allegiance to the Islamic Republic. Also, according to Iranian sources, the notion contrived in the West that the "reformers" are somehow "pro-West" is baseless. President Rouhani and his allies may be more willing to dialogue with Western powers, but at the same time they are still staunch opponents of Washington's interference in the region.

However, what seems indisputable is that Iran has a thriving, functioning democracy, where people can cast their votes to control the governance of their country.

The same cannot be said of America's plutocracy where "supreme leaders" are chosen by the money-mullahs on Wall Street to exercise absolute power.
One of them could do us all a great favor by holding broadcasters accountable in a way that We the People cannot...

Republican presidential contenders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are at war over what they charge to be false political ads against each other. It's one battle in this bizarre and contentious campaign year that could actually benefit us all.



Donald Trump Ted Cruz Dance

(Image by Goat4421) Details DMCA



The Cruz campaign has been running a series of attack ads about Trump's position on abortion, which Politifact reviewed and described as "flawed." In response to what he calls Cruz' "lying ads", Trump has threatened to file a suit charging that Cruz, who was born in Canada, may not be eligible for the presidency.

Meanwhile, a SuperPAC called the American Future Fund ran an attack ad against Cruz calling him "weak" on defense, which the group Fact Check reviewed and found to be "misleading." Cruz' response was to have his attorneys write a sternly worded letter to the TV stations running the ad against him, demanding they pull it, citing FCC public-interest obligations and more.

"Because this advertisement makes a flatly false factual claim for which your station is ultimately liable," the Cruz attorneys wrote, "we strongly urge you to exercise your discretion as a licensee to refuse to continue to broadcast this advertisement, and, because it is already airing, immediately pull the advertisement from your rotation."

In this case, the Cruz attorneys are right, at least in regard to the legal issues at stake...

Why is Cruz going after the TV stations, but Trump is going after Cruz personally? Trump can't sue Cruz over a "lying" campaign ad, because there's no law against candidates lying on air. Therefore, he's threatening litigation on the separate issue of Cruz' birthplace. (Whether we like it or not, any federal candidate who runs their own "I approve this message" ad on TV or radio is free to lie to the public as much as he or she likes. Broadcasters are legally not allowed to vet candidates' ads for fictitious statements, and stations are required to run those false ads over our public airwaves.)

This system works great, of course, for television stations, which are set to rake in an estimated $4.4 billion in political ad sales in 2016. But it's terrible for We the People, who, when making voting decisions, are clearly harmed by political ads that are lying to us, as aired by broadcasters licensed to "serve the public interest."

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).




As Trump walks away with a very decisive victory in the Super Tuesday primaries, and as his candidacy gathers further momentum, the foundations of the Republican Party are shaking, on the verge of crumbling. This is a party in disarray, caught up in a state of panic; its leaders watch as their worst nightmare becomes reality

In this bizarre GOP primary, as Trump rapidly ascends, the Republican Party continues to spiral downward. However, even though their party may be on life support, we can bet that its leaders are not giving up, not caving in the increasing power of Trump, at least not yet.

I'd say that the GOP leadership is burning the midnight oil, feverishly trying to come up with some effective way to take Trump down and out of this primary election process, and replace him with an Establishment candidate. Listen closely and you can hear the grinding and scraping of metal as the GOP sharpens the knives with which to cut Trump's candidacy into little pieces.

Trump is a huge, painful, thorn in the GOP's side, one that they just can't seem to remove. He's like a deadly plague that is spreading throughout this party and threatening its existence. He's like the uninvited guest that has worn out his welcome but won't go home. He's all of these things and a lot more.

There is no question that Trump can never be called a true conservative because he refuses to march to the beat of the Republican ideology. In fact the GOP is certain that he maintains strong ties to the Democratic Party and its ideology. Most political observers recognize that Trump is using this party as the means by which to become the next president and he has no real loyalty to it. And if and when he becomes president he will install his own agenda which will be starkly different from that of the GOP.

This question remains: how can the leadership of the GOP stop him from running away with the nomination? That's a massive dilemma, a conundrum of the highest degree. These leaders know in their hearts that, with the massive baggage that Trump carries with him, he will very likely be destroyed by the Democrats in the general election, and take the Republican Party down with him. But what to do?

What we are witnessing is an all-out war between the Republican Party and Trump and it's very evident that Trump is winning the battle quite handily. Right now he is calling the shots; he seems to be in control of this political party's destiny which does not bode well for its future.

How many options does the Republican Party have in finding some way to come up a truly conservative candidate that they believe can defeat the Democrats in the general election? Let's explore some of those they may have at their disposal.

First of all the members of the GOP hierarchy could just accept the inevitable; the fact that Trump is unstoppable and that it would be an exercise in futility to fight him. They could decide to get on board and support his agenda. But the danger in doing this would be that he would transform the GOP into something that the majority of its members could not tolerate.

Instead of embracing him, they could go after him with a vengeance by digging into his past and trying to discredit him by exposing his failures, questionable business practices, and likely indiscretions. They might find a massive amount of dirt that could label him as the hypocrite that he is. But if they do they risk turning this primary election into a bloody battle which would show the American people just how splintered this party is.

They can try to let the current scenario evolve and hope that Trump will not get enough delegates to win the nomination so they can orchestrate a "brokered convention", a process by which the party Establishment can initiate Trump's demise and install one of their own trusted members, most likely Marco Rubio.

In fact, the GOP is already planning their strategy to topple Trump in this convention. This article reports that "Mysterious outside groups are asking state parties for personal data on potential delegates, Republican campaigns are drawing up plans to send loyal representatives to obscure local conventions, and party officials are dusting off rule books to brush up on a process that hasn't mattered for decades."

To take Trump down at such a potential brokered convention is, of course a long shot but, in the event that it actually happens and Trump is rejected by the delegates, then it is highly likely that he will not hesitate to run in the general election as a 3rd Party independent. He will become the modern-day version of Ross Perot, accumulate a sizable % of the total vote, and the GOP will lose in a massive landslide; they won't know what hit them. Can you imagine the powerful attacks that Trump could launch against the Republican Party in the same way that he did against Jeb Bush, Rubio and Cruz?

How could one man have so much power to actually bring this powerful Establishment to its knees? Here we have one man who is going up against the massive power of the GOP political machine and winning at every turn. When in American history has anything like this ever happened?

Can you imagine what the Founding Fathers, those like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and others would think if they could see this bizarre spectacle of GOP debates take place with Trump hurling insults and engaging in character assassination; and as he does it his supporters clap and yell at the top of their voices in support of this egomaniac, narcissist, and misogynist. They are ecstatic; they are in a state of euphoria.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).


obama

(Image by ollesvensson) Details DMCA



It is now 60 years that I've been following American politics closely. Long enough to get surprised when the way things have always been change dramatically into something never seen before.

I have been surprised, for example, to see people who regard themselves as "conservative" readily support leaders who break well-established American precedent. Aren't conservatives the people who recognize that traditions are there for a reason -- that you respect established norms, not just trample on them?

How is it, for example, that our citizens on the conservative side are OK with the Republicans in the Senate refusing to do what every other Senate in American history has done--i.e., to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court by confirming a justice nominated by the president. In the past, the Senate has rejected one nominee or another for this reason or that. But never has a Senate declared itself unwilling to confirm any nominee.

(In recent times, less than a year before an election, Senates in which Democrats were the majority confirmed John Paul Stevens, William Rehnquist, and Anthony Kennedy after nominations made by Republican presidents.)

So the question arises: what accounts for the willingness of "conservatives" to countenance such a break from what is not only established tradition, but also the clear sense of what the Constitution says should happen?

Two answers have come to me.

First, it seems that, these days, a lot of people who call themselves conservatives don't really care much about conservative principles, but are more focused on attitude and posture. The rise of Donald Trump to frontrunner in this year's Republican race demonstrates this: antagonism trumps principle.

Second, it could be that the intense antagonism toward our current president goes a very long way to making any tactic to thwart him seem justifiable.

If President Obama is as terrible a president as many on the right apparently believe he is -- and polls have shown that a substantial number of Republicans think that Obama is the anti-Christ, that he is doing things like what Hitler did, that he wants the terrorists to win, etc. -- perhaps their abhorrence for him overwhelms any respect for the idea of the president's rightful role under the Constitution.

People who believe those things may want their leaders to do everything they can -- regardless of its violation of traditional American norms and ideals -- to prevent such a man from performing his constitutional responsibilities.

But that leads to yet another big surprise in our times: that such a monstrous image of Barack Obama could be held by millions of the citizens of a society in which people have free and almost unlimited access to information.

In closed societies, like the Soviet Union under Stalin and in Nazi Germany under Hitler, people can be closed off from facts and ideas that conflict with the party line being fed to everyone. But in a free society like ours, with an open "marketplace of ideas," our founders expected the true to prevail over the false.

I've no doubt that historians will find plenty to criticize in how Mr. Obama has conducted his presidency. (I myself have written such critiques since 2009.) But I feel equally certain that historians will note how extraordinary it was that it was possible in a society like ours to convince so many people to believe an image of this president that was so completely at odds with what was on display right in front of everyone's eyes.

Whatever Mr. Obama's shortcomings, as president he has been: 1) quite moderate, by the standards of advanced democracies generally and the American policy mainstream in particular; 2) eager to compromise -- and loath to engage in confrontation-- with his political opponents; and 3) devoted to reasonableness.

All of that is so readily demonstrated by information available to everyone, not to mention on clear display on the TV screens of every citizen, that I would never have guessed it possible for any political/media force to sell so many people on the right this image of a presidential monster.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Clinical Trials Imaging Market worth 981.53 Million USD by 2020

The report "Clinical Trials Imaging Market by Modality (CT, MRI, PET, Ultrasound, Echocardiography, X-rays), End User (Pharmaceutical Companies, CROs Medical device Manufacturers), Product (Services, software), and Region - Global Forecast to 2020", report provides a detailed overview of the major drivers, restraints, opportunities, challenges and trends impacting the global clinical trials imaging market along with the estimates and forecasts of the revenue and market share analysis.The global clinical trials imaging market is expected to reach USD 981.53 Million by 2020 from USD 724.87 Million in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 6.25%. Growth in pharmaceutical & biotechnology industries, increase in R&D funding and increasing number of CROs are the primary growth drivers for this market during the forecast period (20152020). However, high implementation cost of imaging systems may hinder the growth of this market.The global clinical trials imaging market is segmented on the basis of products, modality and end-users. On the basis of products, the market is segmented into services & software. Of these, the services product segment accounted for the largest share of the global clinical trials imaging market in 2015.By modality, the market is divided into CT, MRI, ultrasound, PET, X-rays, ECHO and other modalities. Of these, the CT accounted for the largest growing segment in the global clinical trials imaging market by 2020. On the other hand, PET accounted for the fastest growing segment in the global clinical trials imaging market. On the basis of end-users, the clinical trials imaging market is categorized into pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, medical device companies/manufacturers, CROs, academic & government research institutes & other end-users.The geographic segments included in this report are North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (RoW).The major players in this market include BioClinica, Inc. (U.S.), Biomedical Systems (U.S.), Cardiovascular Imaging Technologies (U.S.), ICON Public Limited Company (Ireland), Intrinsic Imaging, LLC (U.S.), IXICO, PLC (U.K.), PAREXEL International Corporation (U.S.), Radiant Sage, LLC (U.S.), VirtualScopic, Inc. (U.S.), and WorldCare Clinical, LLC (U.S.).The global clinical trials imaging market is expected to reach USD 981.53 Million by 2020 from USD 724.87 Million in 2015, growing at a CAGR of 6.25%.Markets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India
Access Control for Data Centres

www.MatrixSecuSol.com

Matrix offers a Data Centre solution whereby data racks get secured biometrically with records of every access along with its duration. Only authorised person can get access of specific rack for the stipulated time using biometric verification.Features: Centralized Biometric Authentication Pre-defined Rack Access Integration with video Surveillance Rack accessible for a defined time periodBenefits:From Data Centre point of view: Easy maintenance of diverse data Accurate record of access allowed/denied in the software No manual security required Easy data rack management of various companies in a single locationFrom Companies securing data at data centres: Complete security of company data Accurate records of who accessed data at what timeComponents Required: COSEC PANEL LITE V2 COSEC ARC DOOR LOCK COSEC DOOR CONTROLLER (Optional)Contact: MATRIX COMSEC394 GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara+91 93744 74302More@MatrixComSec.comAbout MatrixEstablished in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. An innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization; Matrix is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like Video Surveillance solutions, Access Control, Time-Attendance, IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, Terminals, Convergence solution, VoIP Gateways and GSM Gateways. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global foot-prints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 500 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.Matrix Comsec394 GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara
SABIC BROADENS COMPOSITES PORTFOLIO WITH ADDITION OF FIBER-REINFORCED THERMOPLASTIC TAPES IN ACQUISITION OF FIBRE REINFORCED THERMOPLASTICS B.V.

www.sabic.com

www.frt.sabic.com

SABIC - one of the worlds leading petrochemical companies - has expanded its growing portfolio of innovative material solutions with the recent acquisition of a majority stake in Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastics, B.V., which is based in Lelystad, The Netherlands.SABICs Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastics (FRT) business, specializes in the production of engineered thermoplastic, fiber-reinforced unidirectional (UD) tapes. The tapes can be used across a wide variety of industries, ranging from building and construction, to transportation and energy.This acquisition will enable SABIC to develop new thermoplastic products, processes and design solutions to help our customers take full advantage of the unique light weighting opportunities offered by composites, said Ernesto Occhiello, EVP Specialties, SABIC.At SABIC, we engage with our customers to develop advanced products that support their specific needs and help them realize their ambitions, said Andrey Turchin, Head of SABICs FRT business. Our innovative UDMAX composite tapes complement SABICs existing range of thermoplastic solutions for customers striving to build smaller, lighter and stronger components that meet stringent industry standards, he continued.UDMAX tapes are made using a unique proprietary HPFIT technology, which quickly and precisely enables the spread and combination of thousands of glass or carbon fibers with a polymer matrix. As a result, the tapes have a high density of fibers, high quality fiber impregnation in the resin matrix, minimal void content and fewer broken fibers.They can be used to form composite materials that can in turn be used to manufacture components with superior performance to alternative materials, such as laminates and molded parts.For further information please go toandSABIC will be exhibiting at the JEC in Paris, 8-10 March 2016. We looking forward to meeting you at our stand  Hall 5A, L 73.NOTES TO EDITORS SABIC and brands marked with  are trademarks of SABIC or its subsidiaries or affiliates. High-resolution photos are available upon request. SABIC should be written in every instance in all uppercase.ABOUT SABICSABIC is a global leader in diversified chemicals headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We manufacture on a global scale in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific, making distinctly different kinds of products: Chemicals, Plastics, Agri-Nutrients, Metals, and Specialties.We support our customers in identifying and developing opportunities in key end markets such as Construction, Medical Devices, Packaging, Agri-Nutrients, Electrical and Electronics, Transportation, and Clean Energy.SABIC recorded a net profit of SR 18.77 billion (US$ 5 billion) in 2015. Sales revenues for 2015 totaled SR 148.09 billion (US$ 39.49 billion). Total assets stood at SR 328.22 billion (US$ 87.53 billion) at the end of 2015.SABIC has more than 40,000 employees worldwide and operates in more than 50 countries. Fostering innovation and a spirit of ingenuity, we have filed more than 10,960 patents, and have significant research resources with innovation hubs in five key geographies  USA, Europe, Middle East, South East Asia and North East Asia.The Saudi Arabian government owns 70 percent of SABIC shares with the remaining 30 percent publicly traded on the Saudi stock exchange.At SABIC, we combine a rich track record of doing what others said couldnt be done, with a deep understanding of our customers. But our true impact is as a partner who can help our customers achieve their ambitions by finding solutions to their challenges. We call this Chemistry that Matters.Marketing SolutionsBox 62950KapellenBelgium0031164317012
How to Select the Ideal Portable DAQ System

Selecting a Professional Measurement System

www.DataLoggerInc.com

www.dataloggerinc.com

Measure Temperature, Current/Voltage and moreCHESTERLAND, OHFebruary 29, 2016Portable data acquisition systems are convenient solutions used to log data and monitor temperature and other values in industrial and laboratory applications. These compact devices perform Quality Control and Process Overview, and can often monitor multiple parameters in different tasks. However, selecting the most appropriate DAQ system for a project requires careful consideration. In this latest CAS DataLoggers White Paper, we examine the key factors to consider when deciding on a measurement system for your specific application.Asking the Right Questions:When selecting a portable data acquisition system for their needs, users face a bewildering choice of available manufacturers, models and specifications. Each system has its own configurations that make some units more suitable than others for certain applications. Anticipating your future projects needs now will save time and money on installation later.Data acquisition system designs range from the simple to the complex, with a related variety in performance, options, and cost. Fortunately for purchasers, this search can quickly be narrowed down by considering several important factors:Accuracy and Speed:Of course, the main function of data acquisition systems is their ability to accurately collect data, i.e. their accuracy specification. While there is a wide range of models in the market, field measurement accuracy is heavily based upon the particular sensors you plan to use. For most sensors calibrated in a laboratory and installed in the field, accuracies in the range of 0.01 % to 1% of full scale are typical, with many other sensors having less accuracy.The particular systems input types must match your project requirements. While you ensure that the data logger supports the specific sensors youll use to collect data, also check that the device has adequate memory and storage to support any and all of your specific projects. Likewise, the sampling speed of DAQ systems must also be taken into account when determining accuracy. Sampling rates are available in a wide variety from as low as once per day to higher than a million measurements per second! Regardless of its accuracy, the device must also acquire signals quickly enough to avoid any data loss. The necessary data acquisition speed is calculated by using Nyquists Sampling Theorem, which states that a signal must be sampled at twice the frequency of the spectral signal components of interest in order to accurately reconstruct the waveform.Signal Conditioning and Standalone Operation:Choosing a portable data acquisition system featuring internal signal conditioning capabilities can greatly improve system quality and performance. Different types of signal conditioning include amplification, attenuation, and filtering. As always, your specific application and sensor types will decide the type of signal conditioning required.For example to measure temperature, a device will probably need to use either thermocouples or thermistors. Thermocouples produce a voltage varying with the temperature, but connecting a thermocouple to a data acquisition system creates a cold junction point at the terminals that acts as a thermocouple itself. Signal conditioning is required to compensate for this, or else the recorded temperature which is taken from the total voltage will be altered by the additional voltage of the cold junction point.Signal conditioning can also be used for signal amplification to mitigate any noise distortion, and is also useful when a DAQ device is connected to other transducers such as strain gauges, accelerometers, etc.Next determine if you need a standalone solution (a system operating independent of a PC). These devices are powered by either a self-contained battery or a single DC power source, requiring no other connection to function other than the sensors being monitored. If instead you require PC connection, many data acquisition systems utilize a local co-processor to take the load off of the PC operating system and to help prevent OS crashes.For remote applications where access to a standard 120V AC power outlet isnt available, electric power to the system can be provided either through an internal battery pack, or the user can connect an external wire to a DC power supply. Additionally, in order to conserve power and avoid unnecessary processor loadup, users with minimal processing requirements can select a lower performance CPU and rely on a capable storage system.Surviving in the Field:DAQ systems represent a considerable investment of time and cost, so their protection should be paramount. Do you need a highly durable, ruggedized system? This depends on how often you plan on transporting the device. The ideal portable measurement system for most users is a lightweight, compact unit for easy installation in a test stand or within an industrial enclosure.Do you plan to install your system in a potentially hazardous environment such as a factory floor? If so, carefully consider any potentially damaging extremes including high temperature/humidity, shock and vibration. For example if liquids/dust are a concern, you should consider systems with a high IP (Ingress Protection) rating and/or use an enclosure.Portable data acquisition units also need to be able to survive in high shock and vibration environments such as the trunk of a car or onboard an airplane, including the occasional accident such as someone dropping it! Other sealing and packaging precautions such as watertight housing should also be considered for water and wastewater applications.Choose How You Communicate:For many users, Ethernet or USB are easy options for retrieving data, but if your system needs to log measurements in remote locations, it will need a wireless means of communication with your PC or wireless network.When designed to monitor remote unattended systems, suitable DAQ devices have communications capabilities utilizing telephone connections or wireless systems to download data to remote PCs. They also require ample built-in storage and user interfaces to enable setup and control. Advanced solutions use their own built-in test capabilities, allowing users to sit back as the system acquires the data.Software:While some systems include software in their price, many others require one or more software as an add-on cost. Be direct with your distributor regarding software costs and any applicable licensing fees. This same advice goes for a system featuring cloud data storage, which may require a subscription or monthly fees.When analyzing recorded data and exporting it to other formats for analysis, many users rate software primarily by how user-friendly it is. This often depends on the graphical interface style, menu navigation, and help tips. Continuing with the earlier example, the Delphin Expert Key series features ProfiSignal software for data storage, trend display, and analysis.Summary:Taking into account these important factors when choosing the right portable DAQ device is certainly an involved process, but one made much easier by keeping the needs of your present and future applications foremost in mind. With this initial consideration done, youll be in a strong position to search for the right system to match your needs.View several models of data acquisition systems for your application-specific needs on our DAQ System page, contact a CAS Data Logger Applications Specialist at (800) 956-4437, or visit our website atContact Information:CAS DataLoggers, Inc.8437 Mayfield Rd.Chesterland, Ohio 44026(440) 729-2570(800) 956-4437sales@dataloggerinc.com
Ten distinctive home plans available at Moody River Estates

www.drhorton.com/swfla

www.drhorton.com/swfla. Home

D.R. Hortons Southwest Florida division invites the public to tour the scenic community of Moody River Estates and its professionally decorated model. Quick move-in homes are now available in this waterfront community located near the historic River District of downtown Fort Myers and Cape Coral. Ten distinctive single-family home plans are available, starting in the mid-$200s and ranging from 1,804 to 3,461 square feet of living space.Moody River Estates is situated in an excellent location for commuters and boaters alike. Amenities in this gated North Fort Myers community include a resort-style heated swimming pool and spa, clubhouse and community room, billiards, fitness center and much more. A community boat launch provides easy access to the Caloosahatchee River and the Gulf of Mexico, with some homes offering direct water access.The decorated Hawthorne model is a roomy one-story home offering 2,583 square feet of living space with three bedrooms, den, three baths and three-car garage. An extended lanai with pool bath is available as an option.Moody River Estates is located on Hancock Bridge Parkway in North Fort Myers, within the Lee County School District. The model home is open seven days a week. For an appointment, call sales agent Kevin Baas at 239-462-5889 or visitfor more information.Founded in 1978 in Fort Worth, Texas, D.R. Horton has operations in 79 markets in 27 states in the East, Midwest, Southeast, South Central, Southwest, and West regions of the United States. D.R. Horton has been the largest builder in the United States by volume for fourteen consecutive years. For over 35 years, D.R. Horton has consistently delivered top-quality new homes to homebuyers across the nation. The livable floor plans, energy-efficient features, and robust new home warranty demonstrate our commitment to excellence in construction. D.R. Horton exhibits leadership in residential development through design innovation, superior craftsmanship, and responsiveness to the needs of its customers. The simple vision that began over 35 years ago represents years of value and security when you choose America's Builder to make your dreams come true. For more information, visit our website atand community information including pricing, included features, terms, availability, and amenities are subject to change and prior sale at any time without notice or obligation. Square footage dimensions are approximate. D.R. Horton is an equal housing opportunity builder.CONRIC PR7370 College Pkwy, Suite 206Fort Myers, FL 33907
New Excel Add-In: Get Your Work Done with Professor Excel Tools

Box of Professor Excel Tools

http://tools.professor-excel.com

http://tools.professor-excel.com

http://professor-excel.com/

The new Excel add-in Professor Excel Tools provides more than 60 features for getting the daily work done in Microsoft Excel. The functions are located on a new ribbon and are made for professionals who want to save time using Excel. To celebrate the new release, the code BestExcelAddIn grants a 50% introductory discount until the end of March 2016. A 31 days free trial version with no sign-up is available.Hamburg, Germany  February 29, 2016 - Most professionals who use Microsoft Excel know this problem: They spend too much time on formatting, setting workbook preferences and countless other tasks apart from working on the actual contents. Professor Excel Tools follows the idea to let Excel do the repetitive tasks so that the user can concentrate on the important parts.Professor Excel Tools contains more than 60 features which arent covered by Excel. The features are divided into 5 groups: The Copy & Paste group offers advanced pasting functions such as transpose and link to source at the same time, or pasting the exact formulas without adapting ranges. The Quick Cell Functions support the day-to-day work with features for comfortably formatting, inserting special formulas or wrapping IFERROR or ROUND formulas around existing cell content. Workbook Tools solve a variety of tasks such as creating tables of contents, breaking all workbook links and merging files. Display and Layout Tools offer options for defining the style of the whole workbook. The functions include hiding or unhiding columns, rows, sheets and gridlines, changing fonts or sorting worksheets. The Finalize features include tools for reducing the file size and one-click-sharing buttons for attaching single worksheets as PDF- or XLSX files to a new e-mail, or saving them to the hard drive.The user interface of the add-in is clearly arranged. The new ribbon contains all the functions without complex sub-menus. With a file size of under 1 MB, its a lightweight but comprehensive extension for Microsoft Excel. There is no installation but just an activation within Excel needed.Professor Excel Tools is developed by Henrik Schiffner, who is also responsible for the webpage professor-excel.com: I started creating the add-in for my own consulting projects. It helps me to save a lot of time every day so that I want to make the tools available for everybody.To celebrate the new release, Professor Excel Tools will be available with a 50% discount. The promotion code BestExcelAddIn is valid until 31st of March 2016. The add-in can be downloaded with a 31 days free trial period without any sign-up at. The regular one-off price for a single user license is 39,99 USD.Related LinksPress Kit: http://photerest.net/pressAdd-In Webpage:Webpage Professor Excel:Press release in HTML format: http://photerest.net/new-excel-add-in-get-your-work-done-with-professor-excel-toolsHenrik Schiffner a freelance consultant and the founder of Photerest Studios. Besides photography apps for iPhone and iPad, Photerest Studios creates the website professor-excel.com with a variety of services, downloads and apps for improving the work in Microsoft Excel.Photerest StudiosHenrik SchiffnerPhone: +49 176 97 40 73 14Email: press@photerest.netAm Lehmberg 322143 HamburgGermany
Advertising Strategies luncheon meeting registration opens

www.aboveboardchamber.com

www.aboveboardchamber.com

Above Board Chamber of Florida is pleased to present Advertising Strategies  Where Should You Spend Your Money? from 11:30 a.m.  1 p.m. on Thursday, March 10 at Harborside Event Center, 1375 Monroe Street in Fort Myers and on Monday, March 14 at the Hilton Naples, 5111 Tamiami Trail N. in Naples. Reservations are required atWhen it comes to allocating your advertising dollars your organization has more choices than ever before. From Facebook to Google Ad Words, digital, broadcast and print  where do you begin, how do you develop a sustainable budget and get the most bang for your buck? Join the Above Board Chamber at its March meeting and gain cutting-edge information from the Southwest Florida experts to help you tailor a sensible strategy and get results.The Fort Myers meeting will feature a panel including Amy Parrish, Digital Media Sales Manager at NBC2 and ABC7; Connie Ramos-Williams, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer for CONRIC PR & Marketing and President of CONRIC Publishing; Chris Spiro, CEO and Creative Director of Spiro & Associates; and Vince Modarelli, Advertising Sales Manager for South Lee / Collier The News-Press Media Group.The Naples meeting will feature a panel including Shelley Hobbs, Naples Publisher for Florida Weekly; Rob Wardlaw, Associate Publisher at Gulfshore Business; Connie Ramos-Williams, CEO and Chief Marketing Officer for CONRIC PR & Marketing and President of CONRIC Publishing; and Javier Fuller, Chief Engineer at Fuller Online Solutions.Both meetings will be emceed by Ingrid Fuller of Fuller Online Solutions. The Fort Myers meeting will be sponsored by Midwest Food Bank  Florida Division. The Naples meeting will be sponsored by Genesis Day Spa and Wellness in Naples with Pamela Campbell. Annual sponsors for the Above Board Chamber of Florida are CONRIC PR & Marketing and Fuller Online Solutions.Fort Myers lunch registrationRegistration on or before Thursday, March 3 will be $25 for members, $30 for guests. After March 3, registration will be $30 for members, $33 for guests.Naples lunch registrationRegistration on or before Thursday, March 10 will be $25 for members, $28 for guests. After March 10, registration will be $28 for members, $33 for guests.Non-members are encouraged to attend two meetings, then consider joining us to be part of the Above Board Chamber of Florida. To become a member of the Above Board Chamber, contact Jeanne Sweeney at 239.910.7426.The Above Board Chamber of Florida is dedicated to bringing people of all faiths together within the community, in the workplace and amongst one another. Their mission is to supply members with the tools that will allow them to take every aspect of their lives Above Board. For more information on the event or on how to become a member of the Above Board Chamber, contact Jeanne Sweeney at 239.910.7426 or visitCONRIC PR7370 College Pkwy, Suite 206Fort Myers, FL 33907
Trisotech and Process Renewal Group Team for Greater Client Success

http://www.trisotech.com

http://www.processrenewal.com

http://www.trisotech.com

Trisotech, the leading provider of highly visual and interactive software tools that help organizations innovate, transform and improve their operations, is pleased to announce that they have formed a partnership with Vancouver-based consulting and training services provider Process Renewal Group.Montreal, Quebec, Canada, February 22, 2016  Trisotech () announced today that they have formed a partnership with Process Renewal Consulting Group, Inc. (PRG), a consulting and training organization committed to helping its clients successfully manage business change. PRG is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.Roger Burlton, the founder and president of Process Renewal Group, says, The worlds of business process management, enterprise architecture, decision management and business design are expanding their boundaries into one anothers domains. This requires that multiple change perspectives must be tackled concurrently and one type of methodology and a single modeling approach are no longer sufficient. Flexible tools are essential. Our partnership with Trisotech will provide us with The Digital Enterprise Suite, a modeling environment that will enable us to apply its standards based tools in a unique way  right for our clients each and every time.Trisotech is proud to partner with PRG, says Trisotech CSO, George Barlow. Roger and his team have chaired over 40 BPM conferences globally starting in 1995 and are continuously sought after to lead the worlds most influential events.PRG claims the distinction of being the first BPM consultants in the world, having begun in 1993, and have conducted over 200 BPM projects in over 20 industries, continues Barlow, PRG has introduced pioneering concepts to BPM such as Stakeholder Analysis, Process Architecture, the Input, Output, Guide, Enabler (IGOE) modeling and analysis notation, the Burlton Hexagon capability implementation approach and others.These concepts, coupled with our Trisotech Digital Enterprise Suite, will provide PRG clients with powerful and comprehensive new ways to facilitate visualization, innovation, transformation and improvement through the Discovery Accelerator, Business Process Modeling, Case Management Modeling, Decision Management Modeling, and exciting data visualization via the Insight Analyzer  all powered by Trisotechs revolutionary Digital Enterprise Graph.About Process Renewal GroupProcess Renewal Group is a consulting and training organization committed to helping its clients successfully manage business change. By closely collaborating PRG helps clients achieve business performance and transformation goals. It facilitates strategy formulation and business architecture development, leads process renewal, improves business capabilities and implements cultural change. PRGs mission is to make a lasting difference in its clients effectiveness by helping them deliver creative and pragmatic business processes and capabilities.Website:About TrisotechTrisotech offers highly visual and interactive software tools that help organizations innovate, transform and improve their operations. We bring strategies, design and technology together to provide insight for business and IT in the digital enterprise age. Trisotech customers use The Digital Enterprise Suite to provide new and revolutionary ways for their knowledge workers to collaborate and succeed in an increasingly global, connected and competitive world. Trisotech products are providing visualization, innovation, transformation and continuous improvement help to manufacturing, financial, healthcare, insurance, energy, distribution, government, and many other types of organizations.Trisotech is a privately held company.Website:3100 Cote Vertu. B380Montreal, Quebec, CanadaH4R 2J8
The unique Nitech is now available with Easy Donning Technology

www.ronco.ca

The unique Nitech is now available with Easy Donning TechnologyPutting gloves on wet hands has never been easierConcord, Ontario Feb 22: Nitech, the innovative, exclusive glove from Ronco is now available in a NEW formula. This new formula makes the glove easier to don in wet, humid and moist conditions.Often workers have to resort to wearing powdered gloves in wet and moist conditions to overcome the difficulty of putting on gloves. However, powdered gloves lead to issues like powder contamination. Ronco, in keeping with the philosophy of innovation introduced a new technology  EDT (Easy Donning Technology) that solves this problem. Putting gloves on wet hands has never been easier!Mr. Ron Pecchioli, President, Ronco said, At Ronco, we listen to the industry and come up with solutions that make life easier and simpler for the users. Nitech with EDT will increase efficiency and at the end of day create more job satisfaction for users. It gives me great pride to see the strides Nitech has made in the disposable / exam glove industry.Nitech, originally introduced in 2007 is made of a patented blend of premium quality synthetic materials and has been the fastest growing disposable glove brand for Ronco. Over the past several years, Nitech has emerged as the glove of choice for a variety of industries including food, janitorial sanitation, hospitality and healthcare. The gloves are latex free and have been evaluated and accepted by CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) as a food grade glove for direct contact with food. The gloves also have a Health Canada Medical Device License making it the right choice for applications that require an exam grade glove.Available in sizes from Small to XX-Large, Nitech is available across North America through a network of authorized distributors. For more information, and to order free samples and experience the difference first hand, call Ronco at 905.660.6700 or send an email to info@ronco.ca. You may also visit Ronco online atAbout Ronco: Established in 1996, Ronco is a world class manufacturer of safety products. With a focus on consistent quality and outstanding customer service, RONCO has developed a strong presence across Canada for delivering Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) solutions for Hand, Head and Body, targeting the food, healthcare and industrial sectors.RONCO is the first glove manufacturer in North America to obtain ISO 22000 certification for Food Safety Management Systems.70 Planchet RoadConcord, Ontario, L4K 2C7Telephone: 905-660-6700Toll Free: 1-877-663-7735Fax: 905-660-6903Email: ronco@ronco.ca
Fzillion Goes 'VIRAL' with itsLatest Additions

Fzillion Women Dress

http://www.fzillion.com/

Both Quality and Quantity - How Fzillion has made it possibleThe world is known online retailer Fzillion is now showcasing the very best of the fashion world. Just recently the store has added the newest men and kids apparel to its extensive collection. Fzillion gives you a wide range of items, ranging from high prices to low prices, from winger collections to summer collections, from everyday casual wear to the most formal occasional wear. Fzillion not only promises its customers high-quality products but also delivers. This is the sole reason millions of online shoppers today have instilled their trust in Fzillion and made it their E-Store of choice. Fzillion is possibly one of the most extensive and convenient online stores right now.The entire store collection is branched into various categories making it easier than ever to browse through selected items for its online shopper. Fzillion's easy to use interface welcomes more than 200 online shoppers in 2015. Shopping at Fzillion is probably one of the most convenient shopping experiences both on and off-line. With the intelligent categorization and multiple search filters, Fzillion allows its customers ingression to the most extensive fashion collection online. Through high customer satisfaction feedbacks, it is probable that Fzillion might soon become a world favorite E-platform! The user-friendly interface of Fzillion attracts millions of customers worldwide!Exclusive discount deals, promotional offers, and editor picks can end up getting customers unbelievable deals on their favorite brands. These deals actually last for a considerable amount of time. Having the fanciest of deals is exactly whats helping Fzillion stand out amongst other online stores.Browse through the Fzillion store today to find out the most exclusive deals on your favorite brands.Fzillion prides itself on being one of the very few E-Stores that guarantee safe, secure and FREE world side shipping! The online retailor gives special importance to customer care and has put effort into establishing a dedicated customer care system. Since its acquisition by Amazon in 2006, the online retailer has seen a massive improvement, better customer access, and support.Originally like most, this retailer became quite popular because of authentic designer items for ladies. However, Fzillion has not restricted their reach to women like most online retailers. It has exercised the belief of diversity by providing an equal platform for Men and Kids. There are great selections and offers that can be experienced at East Dane; the mens store by Fzillion. This store provides extensive designer collections for men. Customers can select their favorite items and proceed to check out with a simple payment procedure. Fzillion is also one of the only online retail stores that accept almost every payment method and is used worldwide.Learn More:An unerring eye for what's next in fashion. A relentless drive to exceed expectations. For more than 100 years, Fzillion has worked to deliver the best possible shopping experience, helping customers possess stylenot just buy fashion.Fzillion, Inc. is a leading fashion specialty retailer offering compelling clothing, shoes, and accessories for men, women and children. Since 2000, we've been committed to providing our customers with the best possible serviceand to improving it every day.This commitment has taken us from a small Seattle shoe shop to the leading fashion specialty retailer we are today. We're proud to serve customers at 323 stores in 39 states and Canada. We also serve customers online in 96 countries through Fzillion.com.We believe fashion is a business of optimism, and in that spirit, we continue to grow and evolve. Free shipping and free returns, mobile shopping and exciting new retail partnerships offer us continued opportunities to serve more customers in more ways with a fresh, relevant shopping experience and inspiring style. Fashion changes. Shopping changes. Our commitment to happy customers doesn't.Fzillion, Inc. is publicly traded on the JLBP.3090 Hood Avenue, San Diego, CA 92111
HURRICANE GRILL & WINGS OPENS NEW RESTAURANT IN NEWBURGH

www.hurricanewings.com

https://www.facebook.com/HurricaneWings

http://www.hurricanefranchising.com/

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (February 29, 2016)  Hurricane Grill & Wings, a beach-themed full service restaurant franchise, is continuing its expansion in the state of New York with a location in the city of Newburgh. The family-friendly restaurant welcomes Orange County residents and visitors alike to Live with Flavor where they can choose from a variety of sizzling wings, crisp salads and a wide assortment of delicious entrees.The opening marks the third location for franchisees Angelo and Anthony Balbo, whose first restaurant launched in Poughkeepsie, NY three years ago. The Balbo family has been involved in restaurant operations for several decades prior to joining the Hurricane Grill & Wings brand.Hurricane Grill & Wings is known for its more than 35 signature flavors of award-winning, fresh jumbo wings. Flavors range from traditional Buffalo sauces to an array of unique options that include Raspberry Ice, Hot Teriyaki and Honey Garlic and can range in heat intensity from Calm Seas to Evacuation Route. Additionally, guests can customize their own burgers using the new Build-A-Burger menu feature, including a variety of savory toppings and delicious flavors. The location will also offer entrees such as seafood, salads and sandwiches which can be paired with sides like Crispy Sweet Potato Straws, Garlic N Parm Broccoli and Jumbo Onion Rings.Hurricane Grill & Wings latest Newburgh location features an indoor dining area that seats over 200 people and an outdoor patio that seats up to 60 people. Guests will also be able to choose from over 28 beers on tap and a variety of locally crafted beers brewed by Ithaca Brewing Co., Captain Lawrence Brewing Co., Coney Island Brewing Co. and more.Hurricane Grill & Wings Newburgh offers multiple opportunities for its guests looking for a tasty deal including Margarita Mondays, Kids Eat Free Tuesdays and All-You-can Eat Boneless Wing Wednesdays. The location has opened its doors to the public today, February 29.Newburgh is the perfect place for a Hurricane Grill & Wings because of its beautiful creek-side view that pairs seamlessly with the brands laid-back, beach-themed atmosphere, said franchisee Anthony Balbo. We look forward to bring Newburgh residents and visitors alike an escape from their day-to-day lives with a little taste of the Caribbean.The opening of Hurricane Grill & Wings 10th New York location epitomizes our dedication to bringing locals a Flavor Vacation through our expansive menu options, said Martin ODowd, president of Hurricane Grill & Wings. Our fresh, flavorful cuisine and laid-back, tropical atmosphere is sure to give guests a tropical paradise.Hurricane Grill & Wings is located on Route 17K, at 829 Broadway, Newburgh, NY 12550 and is open daily Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. For more information, please call (845) 562-8200 or visit. Follow Hurricane Grill & Wings on Twitter at @hurricaneflavor and on Facebook atFor Franchising Opportunities contact Kevin Kruse at (609) 731  2485, or visit our website atAbout Hurricane Grill & WingsWith over 80 restaurants open or under construction in 16 states and 5 European countries that include Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland and Switzerland, Florida-based Hurricane Grill & Wings is known for its jumbo, fresh wings, more than 35 signature sauces and rubs and tropical, laid-back vibe. Named by USA Today as one of 10 Great Places to Wing It, selected as one of the Future 50 by Restaurant Business and as one of Franchise Times Top 40 Fast and Serious, Hurricane Grill & Wings menu includes crave-able Hurricanes Garlic & Parm fries, tasty salads, seafood entrees and fresh  pound burgers. The concept offers an expansive bar featuring delicious tropical cocktails along with a wide selection of craft beers and wines. The original Hurricane Grill & Wings opened in Fort Pierce, Fla., in 1995 and has expanded to locations in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, as well as an international restaurant in Italy. There are additional restaurants planned both domestically and internationally. For more information, visit hurricanewings.com.Konnect PR888 S. Figueroa St. STE. 1000Los Angeles, CA 90017Kayla Hockmankhockman@konnect-pr.com
Annual Music Festival in Chicagoland Returns to Crystal Lake

Ellie Mannette and Gary Gibson Demonstrating Pan History at the Great Lakes Steelpan Festival

http://www.steelpanfestival.com

http://www.cultureartsmusic.org

http://www.steelpanfestival.com

The Largest Event of its Kind - April 9, 2016Local Chicago Music Award Winner welcomes acclaimed international performers to Crystal Lake on April 9, 2016. Artists will be traveling from Seattle (Gary Gibson), West Virginia (Dr. Ellie Mannette) and as far as Denmark (Gregory Boyd) to perform along side Chicago Music Award Winner Potts & Pans. At this one day only festival, attendees will have the opportunity to hear groups from across the midwest form a 60+ piece band to perform throughout the day with the featured artists. There is no other festival of this nature and magnitude in the area, and it only comes once a year.Crystal Lake, IL - April 9, 2016 -- Great Lakes Steelpan Festival is coming back to Hannah Beardsley Middle School in Crystal Lake, IL on April 9, 2016. The festival is open to all music lovers and starts with free performances at 9:00 am and concludes with an evening concert starting at 8:00 pm.GLSF16 is the only music festival in Chicagoland specializing in the steelpan, the musical instrument from the caribbean country of Trinidad and Tobago, also commonly called the steel drum. Throughout the day at GLSF16, attendees will hear music ranging from classical to calypso and even original compositions that were commissioned specifically for this festival. The event is hosted by the Woodstock based 501(c)(3) organization, Culture, Arts & Music ().The 2016 Great Lakes Steelpan Festival (GLSF16) will be bringing together performers and educators from 6 states across the US, Trinidad and Tobago, and Denmark. Guest artists include Dr. Ellie Mannette, Gary Gibson, Gregory Boyd, and Potts & Pans Steelband. GLSF16 is packed with free performances and educational workshops starting at 9 am and an evening concert starting at 8 pm.From steelpan aficionados to casual music lovers alike, GLSF16 is sure to deliver lasting memories and leave attendees yearning for next year. No matter what prior exposure audience members have had to the steelpan, GLSF16 will make every person in the room think a little differently about the instrument and what it is capable of. For more information about the festival, contact information or to purchase tickets at a reduced price, please visitGreat Lakes Steelpan Festival was created to fill the void in top level steelpan performances and educational events in the midwest. Imagined by two midwest panists, that decided to start GLSF in order to create a closer option for bands like theirs, after meeting in Virginia for a different festival.Culture, Arts & Music1039 Wanda LaneWoodstock, IL 60098815-245-3624mpotts@cultureartsmusic.orgMatt Potts
Kexxel Group: Negotiation Made Easy with Jim Thomas this May in Singapore!

http://kexxel.com/images/eventlist/brochures/nego16_sg_event.pdf

www.kexxel.com

Jim Thomas will be appearing in Singapore yet again in the middle of this year with his Negotiate to Win Masterclass. The 2006 Bestselling Author is set to make his appearance on the 12th and 13th May 2016.This workshop will bring many benefits the participants especially in regards to easily achieve win-win arguments consistently with emphasis on the negotiation preparation, strength and weakness assessments, defensive techniques in an argument and so much more.With over 35 years of experience in negotiating, Jim Thomas is the new face of the corporate world as he has frequently appeared on CNN, Channel News Asia, CBS News, ABC News and Fox News. More commonly known as the author of the 2006 International Bestseller, Negotiate to Win, Jim will be on his way to Singapore soon to train the participants of this master class to become a winner in negotiation.For further info, please refer to the link below:By the end of this course, you will able to: Achieve long-lasting, creative, mutually profitable, win-win agreements more easily, smoothly, and consistently Effectively prepare for your negotiations Assess the other sides negotiating strengths and weaknesses Use the full range of best negotiating practices  and how to defend against them Make concessions  and avoid unnecessary concessions Effectively select, manage, and use negotiating teams Establish and maintain a positive negotiating climate Negotiate more comfortably and successfully across cultural linesWho should attend: Chief Executive Officers Chairman Managing Directors Vice Presidents Directors Head of Sales & Marketing, Procurement, Logistics, Supply chain, Finance, Human Resource, Buyers, Legal, etc.For more information, kindly go to our website atKindly acknowledge that there is a special 3+1 package available for this course! If a company decides to register three delegates, they will be entitled to register a fourth delegate for FREE! We highly encourage you to take advantage of this special offer for your own benefit as an investment to your company.If you have more than 16 delegates and would be keen to conduct an In House Training in your own company for this topic or any other topic of interest for that matter, just give us a buzz or forward your enquires to iht@kexxel.com and we will definitely strive to present the best for you! Book now and save up to 50% on the whole cost of the event!Contact:Eliza YeoProject Manager International EventsKexxel GroupT: +603 2282 1688Fax: +603 2283 5088E: eliza.yeo@kexxel.comKexxel Group is a leading business intelligence company providing top level business learning & strategic networking platforms to Fortune 1000 & Blue chip companies in Asia, Africa & Middle East Region, through International Business Conferences, Hospitality Management, Corporate Trainings, In House Trainings & International Exhibitions.We strive to provide our clients with strategic insights that are imperative for them to not only sustain a competitive advantage, but also to emerge as successful global leaders in the corporate world.We envision ourselves in being forward thinking leaders in inspiring creativity & ingenuity in our clients through our innovative products & services.Kexxel Group,Menara UOA Bangsar,Kuala Lumpur
Kexxel Group: Bestselling Author of Negotiate to Win, Jim Thomas is appearing in KL to deliver a Masterclass this coming May.

http://kexxel.com/images/eventlist/brochures/nego16_kl_event.pdf

www.kexxel.com

Superstar Negotiator, Jim Thomas will be bringing over 35 years of experience in his Negotiate to Win Workshop to Kuala Lumpur on the 9th and 10th May 2016.This event focuses on educating the participants on how to easily achieve win-win arguments consistently with emphasis on the negotiation preparation, strength and weakness assessments, defensive techniques in an argument and so much more.Jim Thomas has dedicated 35 years of his life on negotiating. As the new face of the corporate world, he has been frequently broadcasted on CNN, Channel News Asia, CBS News, ABC News and Fox News. Also a well-known author of the International Bestseller in 2006, Negotiate to Win, Jim will be flying in all the way to Kuala Lumpur to share his knowledge and skills.For further info, please refer to the link below:By the end of this course, you will able to: Achieve long-lasting, creative, mutually profitable, win-win agreements more easily, smoothly, and consistently Effectively prepare for your negotiations Assess the other sides negotiating strengths and weaknesses Use the full range of best negotiating practices  and how to defend against them Make concessions  and avoid unnecessary concessions Effectively select, manage, and use negotiating teams Establish and maintain a positive negotiating climate Negotiate more comfortably and successfully across cultural linesWho should attend: Chief Executive Officers Chairman Managing Directors Vice Presidents Directors Head of Sales & Marketing, Procurement, Logistics, Supply chain, Finance, Human Resource, Buyers, Legal, etc.For more information, kindly go to our website atKindly acknowledge that there is a special 3+1 package available for this course! If a company decides to register three delegates, they will be entitled to register a fourth delegate for FREE! We highly encourage you to take advantage of this special offer for your own benefit as an investment to your company.If you have more than 16 delegates and would be keen to conduct an In House Training in your own company for this topic or any other topic of interest for that matter, just give us a buzz or forward your enquires to iht@kexxel.com and we will definitely strive to present the best for you! Book now and save up to 50% on the whole cost of the event!Contact:Eliza YeoProject Manager International EventsKexxel GroupT: +603 2282 1688Fax: +603 2283 5088E: eliza.yeo@kexxel.comKexxel Group is a leading business intelligence company providing top level business learning & strategic networking platforms to Fortune 1000 & Blue chip companies in Asia, Africa & Middle East Region, through International Business Conferences, Hospitality Management, Corporate Trainings, In House Trainings & International Exhibitions.We strive to provide our clients with strategic insights that are imperative for them to not only sustain a competitive advantage, but also to emerge as successful global leaders in the corporate world.We envision ourselves in being forward thinking leaders in inspiring creativity & ingenuity in our clients through our innovative products & services.Kexxel Group,Menara UOA, Bangsar
Kexxel Group: Sharpen your negotiating skills with Jim Thomass Negotiate to Win Masterclass in Dubai this coming May!

http://kexxel.com/images/eventlist/brochures/nego16_db_event.pdf

www.kexxel.com

Negotiate to Win Masterclass in Dubai this coming May!On the upcoming 15th and 16th May 2016, Jim Thomas, the world renowned superstar negotiator, is set to arrive in Dubai with his Negotiate to Win Masterclass.This workshop will be most beneficial to anyone who are seeking to improve his/her negotiation skills as it will expose the participants on how to easily achieve win-win arguments consistently with emphasis on the negotiation preparation, strength and weakness assessments, defensive techniques in an argument and so much more.Jim Thomas is the new face of the corporate world as he has frequently appeared on CNN, Channel News Asia, CBS News, ABC News and Fox News. With over 35 years of experience in negotiating, Jim Thomas most notable achievement was as a member of the United States negotiating team in the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) negotiations with the former Soviet Union. More commonly known as the author of the 2006 International Bestseller, Negotiate to Win, Jim will be on his way to Singapore soon to train the participants of this masterclass to become a winner in negotiation.For further info, please refer to the link below:By the end of this course, you will able to: Achieve long-lasting, creative, mutually profitable, win-win agreements more easily, smoothly, and consistently Effectively prepare for your negotiations Assess the other sides negotiating strengths and weaknesses Use the full range of best negotiating practices  and how to defend against them Make concessions  and avoid unnecessary concessions Effectively select, manage, and use negotiating teams Establish and maintain a positive negotiating climate Negotiate more comfortably and successfully across cultural linesWho should attend: Chief Executive Officers Chairman Managing Directors Vice Presidents Directors Head of Sales & Marketing, Procurement, Logistics, Supply chain, Finance, Human Resource, Buyers, Legal, etc.For more information, kindly go to our website atKindly acknowledge that there is a special 3+1 package available for this course! If a company decides to register three delegates, they will be entitled to register a fourth delegate for FREE! We highly encourage you to take advantage of this special offer for your own benefit as an investment to your company.If you have more than 16 delegates and would be keen to conduct an In House Training in your own company for this topic or any other topic of interest for that matter, just give us a buzz or forward your enquires to iht@kexxel.com and we will definitely strive to present the best for you! Book now and save up to 50% on the whole cost of the event!Contact:Eliza YeoProject Manager International EventsKexxel GroupT: +603 2282 1688Fax: +603 2283 5088E: eliza.yeo@kexxel.comKexxel Group is a leading business intelligence company providing top level business learning & strategic networking platforms to Fortune 1000 & Blue chip companies in Asia, Africa & Middle East Region, through International Business Conferences, Hospitality Management, Corporate Trainings, In House Trainings & International Exhibitions.We strive to provide our clients with strategic insights that are imperative for them to not only sustain a competitive advantage, but also to emerge as successful global leaders in the corporate world.We envision ourselves in being forward thinking leaders in inspiring creativity & ingenuity in our clients through our innovative products & services.Kexxel Group,Menara UOA, Bangsar,KL
Kexxel Group: Gain new perspectives in marketing with Lon Safko in his Innovative Marketing Masterclass this May in Kuala Lumpur!

http://kexxel.com/images/eventlist/brochures/mkt16_kl_event.pdf

www.kexxel.com

The author of the bestselling The Social Media Bible, Lon Safko is making his way to Kuala Lumpur this coming 18th and 19th May to facilitate the Innovative Marketing Masterclass.Participants of this Masterclass will be exposed to the concept of Fusion Marketing which combines traditional marketing, digital marketing and social media marketing into one tool. Moreover, Lon Safko will personally assist the participants to assess and take their own tools, campaigns, objectives and strategies into the practice of fusion marketing.Lon is an excellent author who has wrote nine innovative books in regards to marketing. His bestselling book The Social Media Bible is transforming businesses strategists to be more social-media friendly in order to take advantage of this new media. Lon is also a professional blogger for FastCompany, an ambassador for SCORE and one of the member of the USA Today CEO Advisory Board.For further info, please refer to the link below:By the end of this course, you will able to: Understand all of the available tools and knowing which ones to use the most effectively Understand terms such as the fundamental shift in power, link love, Google Juice &What the SEO advantages are to blogging? Use QR codes and mobile marketing, segmenting, and day parting to achieve a 35%email conversion rate Explore in-game advertising, virtual worlds, and video marketing Learn about Fusion Marketing as next generation of marketing that brings together traditional marketing, digital marketing tools and social media into one tool Understand Fusion Marketing as new concept of Interconnecting that it has been accepted by the United States Patent & Trademark Office as Patent Pending Look at all of your tools, campaigns, objectives, and conversion strategies first in two dimensions, then taking your entire marketing strategies into the world of three-dimensions using Fusion MarketingWho should attend: Marketing Professionals Marketing Consultants Business Owners Social Media Specialists SEO Specialists Sales ProfessionalsFor more information, kindly go to our website atKindly acknowledge that there is a special 3+1 package available for this course! If a company decides to register three delegates, they will be entitled to register a fourth delegate for FREE! We highly encourage you to take advantage of this special offer for your own benefit as an investment to your company.If you have more than 16 delegates and would be keen to conduct an In House Training in your own company for this topic or any other topic of interest for that matter, just give us a buzz or forward your enquires to iht@kexxel.com and we will definitely strive to present the best for you! Book now and save up to 50% on the whole cost of the event!Contact:Eliza YeoProject Manager International EventsKexxel GroupT: +603 2282 1688Fax: +603 2283 5088E: eliza.yeo@kexxel.comKexxel Group is a leading business intelligence company providing top level business learning & strategic networking platforms to Fortune 1000 & Blue chip companies in Asia, Africa & Middle East Region, through International Business Conferences, Hospitality Management, Corporate Trainings, In House Trainings & International Exhibitions.We strive to provide our clients with strategic insights that are imperative for them to not only sustain a competitive advantage, but also to emerge as successful global leaders in the corporate world.We envision ourselves in being forward thinking leaders in inspiring creativity & ingenuity in our clients through our innovative products & services.Kexxel Group,Menara UOA, Bangsar,KL
Montreal Long Distance Provider 1010103 Lowers Rates to Call Colombia, Denmark, Australia for 1.5

http://www.1010103.ca

1010 103, a Montreal, Canada, US and international long distance calling service provider, announced lower phone rates to call various countries worldwide, including Colombia, Denmark, Australia and more, for a lower rate of 1.5 cents a minute.Alejandro Bitar, the President of 10 10 103, explained, "With 10-10-10-3, customers don't have to sign a contract or use a telephone calling card to get great savings on all their long distance and international phone calls. 1010 103 offers the highest level of long distance phone calling service, quality, and reliability, along with the lowest calling rates possible. Just by dialing 10 10 103 first, callers will save money and the calls are simply added to their local phone bill at our lower calling rates."The recently announced lower international telephone calling rates include Colombia, Denmark, Australia and more, for a fixed rate of 1.5 cents a minute for landlines. These, along with many more reduced rates for other countries and varying cell number rates, are effective immediately.You can visit 1010 103 to get more information about their new low rates and various local and international long distance services.About Montreal 10-10-10-31010 103 is a Canada, US, and international long distance calling service company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 10 10 10 3 provides a 10 10 service which is a long distance service used by consumers on a casual calling basis. This type of long distance service allows the consumer to get amazing long distance rates without having to change their primary local telephone service provider and eliminates the use of a telephone calling card.For further information, please contact:Customer CareTel.: 1-866-650-0103E-mail: 1010103@convergia.net###10-10-10-3 is a Canada, US, and international long distance calling service company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 1010 103 provides a 10 10 service which is a long distance service used by consumers on a casual calling basis. This type of long distance service allows the consumer to get amazing long distance rates without having to change their primary local telephone service provider and eliminates the use of a telephone calling card.237 Hymus Blvd, Pointe-Claire, Quebec, Canada, H9R 1G4
Global Recruitment Market Report: 2016 Edition  New Report by Koncept Analytics

http://www.konceptanalytics.com/Researchreport/global-recruitment-market-report-2016-edition-270.aspx

http://www.konceptanalytics.com

http://www.konceptanalytics.com/Researchreport/global-recruitment-market-report-2016-edition-270.aspx

The report provides a comprehensive overview of the global staffing industry along with the coverage of major regional markets like North America (the U.S. and Canada), Europe (France, Germany, Italy, the UK,), and Asia Pacific (Australia and Japan).Recruitment is the process of attracting, screening, and selecting a qualified person (from within or outside of an organization) for a job opening. The global recruitment/staffing industry comprises of recruitment or employment agencies providing for services of recruiting staff/employees for various business enterprises in different sectors. Such companies hire these employment agencies to recruit personnel to carry out their business operations. The recruitment market can be segmented into temporary and permanent staffing markets on the basis of job duration.The temporary staffing market is cyclical in nature and establishes high correlation with the global GDP. Permanent staffing market also maintains a positive relation with economic conditions. Both permanent and temporary staffing markets have a positive relation with the deregulation of labor market. The staffing market varies considerably from one country to another with the U.S., Japan and the UK showing the highest degree of fragmentation. North America represented the single largest market measured in terms of revenues followed by Japan, the UK, France and Germany.Most of the mergers and acquisitions that took place in the IT & Healthcare segment and involved middle sized staffing firms as they proved to be attractive acquisition targets, offering geographic coverage and differentiated services. The staffing industry acquisition activities remain primarily driven by privately held strategic buyers, as the larger and better known public staffing companies accounts for only a limited number of transactions each year. People are increasingly using social media to network and identify employment opportunities.The report provides a comprehensive overview of the global staffing industry along with the coverage of major regional markets like North America (the U.S. and Canada), Europe (France, Germany, Italy, the UK,), and Asia Pacific (Australia and Japan), discussing the market size, segmentation, and employment/unemployment rates.By combining SPSS Inc.s data integration and analysis capabilities with our relevant findings, we have predicted the future growth of the industry. We employed various significant variables that have an impact on this industry and created regression models with SPSS Base to determine the future direction of the industry. Before deploying the regression model, the relationship between several independent or predictor variables and the dependent variable was analyzed using standard SPSS output, including charts, tables, and tests.List of ChartsDetailed Recruitment ProcessGlobal Recruitment Market by Value (2009-2014)Global Recruitment Market by Regions (2014)Global Recruitment Market by Services (2014)Global Recruitment Market by Employment Type (2014)Global Temporary Recruitment Market by Value (2009-2014)Global Temporary Recruitment Market by Regions (2014)The U.S. Recruitment/Staffing Market by Value (2005-2015E)The U.S. Staffing Market by Segments (2015E)The U.S. Temporary Staffing Market by Value (2010-2015E)The U.S. Annual Temporary & Contract Staffing Employment (2005/2014)The U.S. Annual Temporary & Contract Staffing Average Weekly Employment (2005-2014)The U.S. Temporary Staffing Market by Segment (2015E)The U.S. Staffing Employees Turnover and Tenure (2005-2014)The U.S Clerical and Industrial Staffing Market (2009-2015E)The U.S. Finance/Accounting and IT Staffing Market (2009-2015E)The U.S. Engineering/Design and Legal Staffing Market (2009-2015E)The U.S. Marketing/Creative & Clinical/Scientific Staffing Market (2009-2015E)The U.S. Healthcare Staffing Market (2009-2015E)The U.S. Permanent Staffing Market (2010-2015E)The U.S. Permanent Staffing Market by Types (2015E)Canadian Staffing Market by Value (2010-2015E)Canadian Staffing Market by Segments (2014)Canadian Temporary Staffing Market by Segments (2014)Canadian Temporary Workforce (2010-2015E)Annual Canadian GDP Growth and Unemployment (2005-2014)The U.K. Recruitment Market (2010-2015E)The U.K. Recruitment Market by Segment (2010-2015E)The U.K. Reed Job and Salary Index (2013-2015)The U.K. Annual GDP Growth and Unemployment (2005-2015E)Recruitment Market of France by Value (2012-2016E)French Temporary Market and Penetration Rates (2009-2014)Annual Average Change in Temp Staffing Volume, Billing Rate & Monthly Revenue (2010-2015)France Annual GDP Growth and Unemployment (2005-2014)German Staffing Market by Value (2012-2016E)German Temporary Staffing Volume (July-07/July-15)Germany Annual GDP Growth and Unemployment (2005-2014)The Staffing Market of Japan by Value (2012-2016E)Japans GDP Growth and Unemployment (2005-2017E)Australian Staffing Market by Value (2012-2016E)The U.S. Monthly Unemployment Rate (2005-2015)Global Temporary Staffing Penetration Rates (2002-2013)Strictness Employment Index of Temporary Contracts (1990/2014)Global Gross Domestic Product Growth (2009-2014)Most Effective Source of Quality Hires (2011-2015)Occupations Using Temporary Employees to High & Very High ExtentVMS and MSP Usage (2004-2015E)Recruiting Sources Cited by Employers (2001-2014)M&A Transaction Volume of Staffing Industry (2005-2015*)M&A Activity of Staffing Industry by Sectors (2015*)Reasons for Choosing Temporary Work (2014)The U.S. Monthly Labor Force Participation Rate (2005-2015*)The U.S. Labor Force by Age Distribution (2014/2024E)Global Staffing Market by Companies (2015E)The U.S. Staffing Market by Companies (2014)The U.S. Permanent Placement Companies Revenue Comparison (2013-2015)France Staffing Revenue Growth Comparison (2014*-2015*)Adecco Groups Revenue by Service Line (2014)Adecco Groups Revenue by Business Lines (2014)Adecco Groups Revenue & Net Income (2010-2014)Randstad Revenue by Business Segments (2013/2014)Randstad Revenue Share by Geography (2014)Randstad Revenue and Net Income (2010-2014)Manpower Groups Revenue by Geographical Segments (2014)Manpower Groups Revenue (2010-2014)Kelly Solutions Revenue by Segments (2015*/2014*)Kelly Services Inc. Revenue (2010-2014)Kelly Services Inc. Revenue (2014*/2015*)Global Recruitment Market Forecast (2014-2018E)List of TablesAdvantages/Disadvantages of Internal and External RecruitmentMost Used Social Networking Website for Recruitment (2015)Top Global Staffing Firms Revenue Comparison (2010-2014)Top U.S. Staffing Firms Revenue Comparison (2010-2014)The U.S. Fastest Growing Staffing Firms Ranked by CAGR (2014)Top Japanese Staffing Companies Revenue Comparison (2013/2014)Acquisition & Divestitures by Japanese Staffing Companies (2012-2015)Dependent and Independent VariablesCorrelation MatrixModel Summary  Coefficient of DeterminationRegression Coefficients OutputNote: Purchase by Section Also AvailableFor more Information:Koncept AnalyticsVikas Gupta(Business Development Manager)FFCS-36, Ansal PlazaVaishali, GhaziabadU.P - 201010Tele: +91-120-4130959Mobile: +91-9811715635Mail ID  vikas@konceptanalytics.comKoncept Analytics is a market research company. We are in the field of Market Research from last 10 Years. We do research in telecommunication, healthcare, pharmaceutical, financial services, energy, technology, real estate, logistics, food & beverages and media sectors. For more information:Koncept AnalyticsVikas Gupta(Business Development Manager)FFCS-36, Ansal PlazaVaishali, GhaziabadU.P - 201010Tele: +91-120-4130959Mobile: +91-9811715635Mail ID  vikas@konceptanalytics.com
CMI Limited announces the completion of the Acquisition of General Cables Energy India Pvt. Ltd., Baddi, a fully owned subsidiary of General Cable Corporation (GCC), a Fortune 500 company

CMI Limited, the leading BSE listed specialty cable manufacturing company, today announced the completion of the acquisition of General Cables Energy India Pvt. Ltd. (GCE) a fully owned subsidiary of General Cable Corporation (GCC), a Fortune 500 company. The company with its facility located at Baddi, in Himachal Pradesh, will now become a wholly owned subsidiary of CMI Limited.A total outlay of Rs.150 Crores has been earmarked for the project, which will be financed by a mix of Debt and Equity.CMI has also inherited GCCs international processes and systems for manufacturing specialized cables, through this acquisition. For us it is a win-win situation, wherein we are not buying just the facility but are also getting the best global standards in plant and machinery that goes with it, says Mr. Amit Jain, Managing Director, CMI Ltd. With this acquisition of GCE, CMI will exponentially increase its manufacturing capabilities.The GCE acquisition is now complete and the facility is likely to be operational by the first quarter of 2016-2017. With this acquisition, CMI is likely to be amongst the leading manufacturers in the country, in the areas in which it operates.General Cable (NYSE:BGC), an industry leader and innovator for 170 years, is today one of the largest wire and cable manufacturers in the world. GCC is a global leader in the development, design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of copper, aluminium and fibre optic wire and cable products for the energy, industrial, specialty, construction and communications markets.GCE facilities can manufacture all types of cables that are currently being manufactured by CMI. The new facility has the facilities to manufacture Extra High Voltage Cables, HT Aerial Bunched Cables, HT & LT Cables(EPR/XLPE/PVC),Signalling Cables, Air field Cables, PTFE , Balise Cables, Co-Axial Cables, LSZH/TPU Sheathed Control Cables, Railway Signalling & Power Cables, Indoor Signalling Cables, 0.9 & 1.4mm Conductor Axle, Counter Quad Cables for Railways, Jelly Filled Telecom Cables, Rubber Cables, Thermocouple Cables Individual/ Overall  Shielded/ Braided Instrumentation Cables, Fire Alarm/ Signal/ Control/ Screened Cables, Telecom/ Power Cables with FRLS/LSZH, House Wires, Fire Resistant/ Fire Survival Cables, FR/ FRLS/ LSZH/ HFFR Cables, Automobile Wiring, Welding Cables, Field Bus Cables, PCM Cables, Profibus, PIJF Telecom Cables, Data Cables, Telephone Cables, Submersible Cables, Antitheft Cables, Specialty Cables for SMART Cities, Shipboard Cables, Naval Ship Cables, Braided Cables, Mining Cables, DC Cables, Composite Cables, Underwater Cables, Solar Cables, Overhead Conductors  AAC, AAAC at the new facility at Baddi.GCE manufacturing facility is spread over an area of 80,000 sq meters. Its a certified Green Building with all the Modern and state of art manufacturing facilities and machineries to manufacture various types of cables. Plant is designed to reduce waste, pollution, and environmental degradation with an energy efficiency of 20-30% as compared to other plants of similar size.About CMI Limited:CMI Limited is a leading specialty cables manufacturing company. CMI Limited is listed on BSE (BSE Code: 517330) and closed the year 2014-15 with revenues of Rs. 137.28 Cr.CMI Limited, incorporated in 1967, is today a well known and reputed supplier of specialty cables to the whos who of the industry. The focus in the organization is on latest technologies leading to new product development.CMI is one of the few approved vendors for Railways, Space & Research, Defense, Telecommunication, Petrochemicals, Refineries, Power, Mining and various other Sectors.CMI Ltd. has an illustrious list of clients that includes Railways & its subsidiaries like IRCON. RITES, MRVC, Konkan Railways, DLW, DMRC & other metros; Oil & Refinery industries like IOCL, BPCL, BORL, GAIL, MRPL, HPCL, ONGC; Leading Government companies like EIL, ISRO, BHEL, NLC, NTPC, NPC, BSNL / MTNL and HEC; Private Sector EPC companies like L&T, Alstom, Siemens, Hitachi, Linde, Thales, Lurgi, Technip and ABB; Steel plants like Vishakhapatnam Steel Plant, etc. CMI has also exported cables to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh & Iran Railways.CMI manufactures a wide variety of specialty cables including Railway Quad cables, Signalling cables, Balise cable forTrain protection & warning system, Fire survival cables, LSZH / FRLS sheathed cables, Control & instrumentation cables, Cables with TPU sheath, PTFE cables, Special cables for multi object tracking radar, Fire alarm & communication cables, PIJF telecom cables, EPR/CSP/PCP insulated & sheathed Rubber cables, Linear Heat sensing cables, etc.Finese PR,181, (Ground Floor),Anand ViharPitampura,New Delhi 110034, India
Paint Protection Film Industry Trends, Analysis To 2022 by Grand View Research Inc.

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/paint-protection-film-market

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/paint-protection-film-market/request

http://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry/plastics-polymers-and-resins

The global paint protection film market is expected to reach USD 1.49 billion by 2022, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. Growth of automotive industry coupled with rising consumer awareness regarding car protection is expected to remain key factors driving growth.Increasing application scope across key end-use industries such as electrical & electronics and aerospace & defense is expected to further contribute towards industry growth. Changing lifestyle along with shift in preference towards look of the vehicle is also anticipated to positively influence growth.Increasing per capita disposable income in emerging economies of Asia Pacific and Latin America coupled with advent of technologies such as internet connected cars is expected to fuel automotive sales and in turn compliment paint protective film market growth.Automotive emerged as the leading application segment and accounted for over three quarters of total demand in 2014. It is also expected to witness highest CAGR of 6.4% from 2015 to 2022. Increasing demand from heavy-duty vehicles owing to longer shelf life of these films is expected to drive application segment growth.Browse to access In-depth research report on Global Paint Protection Film Market with detailed charts and figures:Further key findings from the report suggest: Global paint protection film market demand was 1,103.4 thousand sq. meters in 2014 and is expected to reach 1,659.5 thousand sq. meters by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 5.3% from 2015 to 2022. Aerospace & defense accounted for over 10% of total market volume in 2014. Increasing defense sector investment in countries such as China, India and Russia is expected to drive application segment growth at a CAGR of 2.9% from 2015 to 2022 Asia Pacific was the leading regional market and accounted for over one-third of the global demand in 2014. Automotive production growth and advent of China as the leading producer in the industry shall drive growth over the forecast period. Strong demand for premium passenger cars in India and Southeast Asia alike shall also aid in the regions development. The industry is characterized by strong scope for development in electronics sector. Though a niche segment currently, electronics such as mobile phones, tablets, and display screens are being applied with protection films in order to preserve their aesthetics and design integrity There is also considerable presence of integrated companies in the industry that are involved in TPU films manufacturing along with its downstream application as paint protection. A few such companies include DuPont, Lubrizol and Eastman Chemical Co. Global paint protection film market share is moderately fragmented among multinational corporations and small domestic companies. Major industry participants with global presence include 3M Company, Avery Denison, SunTek Films, XPEL, Solar Gard, Premier Protective Films International, Agrotec, PremiumShield and Vanzetti Engineering S.R.L.Request for free sample of this research report:Grand View Research has segmented the paint protection film market on the basis of application and region:Global Paint Protection Film Application Outlook (Volume, Thousand Square Meters; Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) Automotive Electrical & electronics Aerospace & defense OthersGlobal Paint Protection Film Regional Outlook (Volume, Thousand Square Meters; Revenue, USD Million, 2012 - 2022) North Americao U.S Europeo Germanyo Franceo UK Asia Pacifico Indiao Chinao Japan Central & South America Middle East and AfricaBrowse more reports of this category by Grand View Research:Grand View Research, Inc. is a U.S. based market research and consulting company, registered in the State of California and headquartered in San Francisco. The company provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. To help clients make informed business decisions, we offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a range of industries, from technology to chemicals, materials and healthcare.Sherry JamesCorporate Sales Specialist, USAGrand View Research, IncPhone: 1-415-349-0058Toll Free: 1-888-202-9519email: sales@grandviewresearch.comWeb: grandviewresearch.com
ShopWhere Brings Adaptable Self-Service Advertising to Businesses in Australia

ShopWhere advertising is designed to offer traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses, internet businesses, and licensed professionals an effective way to reach customers.ShopWhere advertisements are easy to create, and professional.Multimedia services are offered at an economical rate. Ads are easily shared on multiple social media platforms and web statistics are provided.Advertisements are created, saved, previewed, edited, and can be copied for use as the template for a new one. An advertisement can be paused for a period of time as long as its wholly within the advertising term. Businesses can have multiple advertisements live at once, and manage them all through one ShopWhere account.Advertisements are modifiable to adapt to changing market conditions that may occur during the advertising term.The website and phone apps are location sensitive.For marketing professionals, one ShopWhere account can be used to create and manage advertisements for multiple client businesses.Based in Sydney, the Managing Director and CEO of ShopWhere, Eric Hecht, said, "ShopWhere was developed to bring flexible, efficient, cost effective, shareable advertising to businesses, while making it simple for the public to find what they are looking for in one location.Our hope is that the public viewing an advertisement on ShopWhere, and the businesses that are advertising on ShopWhere, benefit from the ShopWhere website, ShopWhere phone apps, and ShopWhere advertising platform.We look forward to working hard in expanding the benefits of the ShopWhere platform through the use of technology and advertising methods."ShopWhere is a privately held business based in Sydney, Australia. ShopWhere is focused on providing its web based advertising platform to a wide range of businesses. Making it simple and easy for all types of businesses to create and share web advertisements is its number one driver. Through efficient delivery and operation, it aims to broaden its web footprint to become a recognisable brand in online advertising.Shop WhereUnit 21 / 54-56 Beach RoadBondi Beach, NSW 2026 Australia
Indication-Market Insights, Epidemiology and Market Forecast- 2010-2020, A DelveInsight Report

DelveInsight is a leading Business Consultant and Market Research Firm which has become the knowledge partner for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies by providing competitive intelligence information which aids them to strategize and discover the target areas & potential customers for their products.The database of DelveInsight currently has over 3000 reports which elaborate the domains of Indication Insight, Mechanism of Action, Drug Insights and API Insights. In addition to that, DelveInsight is providing Therapeutic intelligence to the companies with Strategic reports on Immuno-Oncology, Gene Therapy, Stem Cell Therapy, Antibody-Drug Conjugates and many more.Market insights, epidemiology and market forecasting reports provides an insight on the forecast of a indication over a period of time which helps an organization to better understand the business development strategies from present and futuristic point of view.DelveInsight expertise has expanded from an initial focus on Pipeline & Marketed Reports to Market Forecasting and Epidemiology Reports. With the dedicated analytical and forecasting team, DelveInsight has released 13 Reports on Market insights, epidemiology and market forecast Reports. These Reports will provide an insight on the forecast of the indication in seven major markets during 2010-2020. The epidemiological forecast for the diagnosed prevalence of the disease in 7MM is supported by the data which has been obtained from studies conducted in the respective countries.Therapeutic Areas Focused Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Hemophilia Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) Multiple Myeloma Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (NHL) Pancreatic Cancer Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) Respiratory Syncytial virus (RSV) Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) Short Bowel Syndrome Ulcerative Colitis (UC)The Indication- market insights, epidemiology and market forecast 2010-2020, provides clients the detailed insights into epidemiology of the indication in these countries. This report majorly includes: Country specific forecast for the indication during 2010-2020. The risk factors, co morbidities and global trends for the disease in the 7MM. High quality, elucidating, transparent and market-driven report, providing expert analysis of disease trends in the 7MM.This epidemiological analysis report will aid in the development of business strategies by providing a deep understanding of the trend shaping and driving the global insight market. Along with that, it quantifies the patient populations in the global indication market to improve product design, pricing, and launch plans.For more information on Indication - Market insights, Epidemiology and Market Forecast 2010-2020, email at info@delveInsight.comNote: These type of reports require 7-10 working days.About Us:DelveInsight is a leading Business Consulting and Market Research Firm. DelveInsight helps the clients to find answers relevant to their business, facilitating decision-making; identify potential market opportunities, competitor assessments and business environmental assessment. In addition to this DelveInsight also deals in providing custom research services in coherence with interest area of the clients.DelveInsight Business ResearchDwarka, Sector-7
Budget Reaction: Mr. Arun Nagpal, Co-Founder, Mrida Group, a Social Business Venture

http://www.mridagroup.com/

The budget has a very obvious rural development focus. The FM has shared his vision of providing socio economic security for the rural, farming community, poor and vulnerable. We believe that the focus on rural electrification, skill development schemes, farming focused interventions, farm to market connectivity, agriculture and farmer welfare schemes targeted at income generation and security will impact favourably on the rural community. The Government should be congratulated for taking these very aggressive and commendable steps and now the on-ground implementation and monitoring to ensure that targets are met will be the keyAbout MridaA Social Business Venture incorporated in February 2014, Mrida (Sanskrit for Soil) seeks to build sustainable and scalable, financially viable business models aimed at holistic rural development.Since its inception, Mrida has initiated innovative projects centred around solar micro grids and agricultural initiatives to provide energy access and facilitate education, womens empowerment and livelihood opportunities to remote rural areas in the Indian States of Rajasthan (Abu Road), Uttar Pradesh (Bareilly), Uttarakhand (Haridwar, Almora and Uttarkashi), and Jammu & Kashmir (Leh/Ladakh). The initial response and results have been encouraging and have demonstrated visible impact. The focus over the next 2-3 years would be to set up more such working models and proofs of concept in multiple villages/hamlets in different parts of the country - showcasing the potential of nominal interventions leading to sustainable and significant social impact as well as economic growth.Mrida has partnered with leading business houses in India like Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), Rockman Industries Ltd. (Hero Motors Group), and Mahindra & Mahindra for integrated Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, and is currently also engaged in active discussions with others in this regard.Mrida operates at the ground level, close to the soil. Its work is focused at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP)  Mridas core customers. The product offerings emanate, literally as well as figuratively, from the soil.The group comprises business entities working on financially viable business models designed to create win-win situations across the spectrum of their association. These include: Mrida Renergy & Development (P) Ltd.  Seeks to provide energy access to remote rural villages not connected to the electricity grid, and use this as a tool for sustainable rural development Mrida Greens & Organics Pvt. Ltd.  supports cultivation and collection of high value crops, plants and herbs, and promotes healthy products and traditional Indian medicine to the consumer, while ensuring remunerative prices and sustainable livelihoods for small and marginal rural communities Khoj  Journeys of Discovery - Mridas impact tourism venture showcases the tangible benefits and impact of small interventions at the Base of the Pyramid, while providing a unique opportunity to understand the ground realities of rural India in a relaxed, get-away environmentMrida represents financially viable business models that are sustainable and scalable  businesses that not only generate wealth, but disseminate it across the spectrum  Virtuous Circles that feed upon themselves, gaining momentum and becoming bigger and stronger as they go along.Mrida comprises a bunch of passionate individuals coming together to build a cohesive, empowered and self-motivated team. With wide-ranging, cross-functional experience in the corporate and non-government arenas, the team packs quite a punch when it comes to delivering results on the ground. For more information, please visit:181, Anand Vihar, Pitampura, New Delhi -34
Visa-Vietnam.org Proposes Discounted Visas for Frequent Members

http://www.visa-vietnam.org

http://www.visa-vietnam.org

One of the leading travel agents in Vietnam, Visa-Vietnam.org offers Vietnam visa at reasonable rates with their 'Frequently Member' program. Travellers who regularly apply for visas through their web service can claim up to 22% discount for the service fee displayed.Visa-Vietnam.org is renowned for their Visa on Arrival service by which the firm has developed a base of delighted customers. Notably, the agent provides visas at affordable rates with easy accessibility and faster processing times. The company asserts that travellers who apply for Vietnam visa through their website can be sure of receiving them stamped as they arrive at the airport.A spokesperson elaborated, "Our Frequently Member program is designed to express gratefulness to our customers who often applies for visas through us. With membership program, we offer 18% discount from 2nd order, 20% percent discount from 5th order and 22% discounts for 10th order and above. We are elated by the response and we couldn't thank them more for that."The company has also setup a separate program for corporate members. For customers enrolled in their 'Corporate Members' program, the firm provides visas with 26% discount. "It's not just about the discounted rates we offer, but the convenience of service being rewarded to our customers. Our service excludes the need for visiting and staying in long queues at embassy or consulate. And they don't have to wait any longer as our dedicated team will process their applications in a swift and steady manner," expressed the spokesperson.The firm is open for 24 hours, committed to offering their services for travellers. All their services are in compliance with the regulations as enforced by law. "We established from 2007 with service of arranging visa pre-approval letter for picking up visa on arrival at international airport of Vietnam. The visa pre-approval letter and visa issuing office at airports come from Vietnam Immigration for making travelers getting visa to Vietnam with less hassle, especially for travelers coming from country without embassy or consulate of Vietnam," revealed the spokesperson.Customer satisfaction is a top priority for the firm, which is evident from their refund policy. The firm explained that they would refund the entire expenses incurred for visa application if the customers are unsatisfied with their services.About Company:Visa-Vietnam.org is a travel agent established to offer Vietnam visas in fast, affordable and reliable manner. They process applications in less than 24 hours and offer them upon arrival at the airport for travellers. For more details, visitContact Name: Ta Hoai NamAddress:Room A2, 64 Nguyen Dinh Chieu Street,Dakao wardHo Chi MinhVietnam 70000Phone: + (00) 84966 56 99 56###Visa-Vietnam.org is one of the prominent travel agents offering Vietnam visa in a simple and affordable manner. They execute simple procedure and offers easy accessibility for visa applicants. VisitRoom A2, 64 Nguyen Dinh Chieu street, Dakao ward, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, 70000
Welcome to Best Bets, a weekly column in which the Oregonian's arts desk separates the wheat from the chaff of upcoming theater, classical music and dance performances and visual arts events. Here are our picks for March 4-10.

PERFORMING ARTS

'Moby Dick, Rehearsed,' Bag & Baggage

Bag & Baggage artistic director Scott Palmer directs this play (or plays?) within a play, as a theater company prepares for Lear, but is pushed instead to perform Herman Melville's epic about the great white whale. It's ambitious and storied theater, but this small-but-mighty company in Hillsboro is up to the task.

7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, through March 20, The Venetian Theatre, 235 E. Main St., Hillsboro, bagnbaggage.org

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion, White Bird

One might not expect a dance performance that features "The Quiet Dance" to also include music from Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. But, then, one shouldn't expect Kyle Abraham's dance company, Abraham.In.Motion, to conform to expectations. "When it works, it really works," declared The New York Times.

8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, March 10-12, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway, whitebird.org

'No Man's Land,' Action/Adventure Theatre

Brenan Dwyer's new play won Action/Adventure Theatre's second festival of new works in 2015, and so gets a fully produced, fully staged run in this comedic theater company's season. Dwyer also directs his play, set in a John Hughes-ian all-girls Catholic school.

8 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, March 10-April 3, Action/Adventure Theatre, 1050 S.E. Clinton St., action-adventure.squarespace.com

Koopman and Mathot Duo Harpsichord Recital, Portland Baroque Orchestra

Renowned Bach expert and harpsichordist Ton Koopman returns to Portland for a one-night performance with his wife and musical partner, Tini Mathot. Koopman, PBO's first artistic adviser, will reunite on stage with current artistic director Monica Huggett - their first time on stage together in more than 25 years - to perform Bach's fifth violin sonata.

7:30 p.m. Monday, March 7, First Baptist Church, 1110 S.W. Taylor St., pbo.org

'Bear/Skin," Portland Institute for Contemporary Art

San Francisco performer and choreographer Keith Hennessy offers this celebration/vilification of bears. The tag line - "Folk Dancing. Fake Healing. Real Magik" - not only doesn't make sense; it isn't even spelled correctly. And the confusion doesn't end there. Drawing on killer cops, virgin sacrifice, "The Rite of Spring," teddy bear shamanism, ritual bear dances, and other provocative inspirations, our curiosity has gotten the best of us - we have to see it.

8 p.m. Friday, March 5, and Saturday, March 6, Studio 2, 810 S.E. Belmont St., pica.org

'Heathers: The Musical,' Triangle Productions

Only Portland's experimental and fearless Triangle Productions would take something so ingrained in our collective '80s-loving memories and reimagine it for theater. With musical numbers. It's like a not-quite-contemporary "Sweeney Todd." And Salt & Straw will have ice cream in flavors chosen just for theatergoers after the opening night performance, March 10.

7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays, March 10-April 2, Triangle Productions, 1785 N.E. Sandy Blvd., trianglepro.org

Radio Happenings: Cage and Feldman, Third Angle

Pioneering composers John Cage and Morton Feldman recorded and broadcast hours of their conversations in the 1960s. Hear them in a new way, interspersed with Third Angle's performance of their music.

7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, and Friday, March 11, Studio 2, 810 S.E. Belmont St., thirdangle.org

VISUAL ARTS

'Dare I Call You Cousin,' Havurah Shalom

Portland poet Frances Payne Adler, Jerusalem photographer Michal Fattal and Tel Aviv videographer Yossi Yacov collaborate on this photography, video and poetry exhibit that is sympathetic to the disparate struggles of Israelis and Palestinians. "Dare I Call You Cousin" opened as part of First Thursday, with future events including a poetry reading at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8; video screening at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10 or 2 p.m. Sunday, March 13.

Havurah Shalom, 825 N.W. 18th Ave., havurahshalom.org

Exhibitions at Laura Russo Gallery

Betty Merken: "Illumination and Illusion" is so quiet you could hear a pin drop as you gaze at her monotypes and mixed-media prints, while Jackie K. Johnson: "New Paintings" is bold and pronounced. Both use color in profound and sophisticated ways, and both are on display at Laura Russo Gallery this month, offering pops of color - both quiet and not-so - to lure in spring.

Laura Russo Gallery, 805 N.W. 21st Ave., laurarusso.com
Prosecutors and a defense attorney clashed Tuesday over the role the stepson of a serial child killer played in the death of a Grants Pass man lured to Canby to be robbed his 15 pounds of marijuana in 2014. The stepson's trial began Tuesday.



Francis Weaver recruited his neighbor Michael Orren and friend Shannon Bettencourt to steal the drugs in February 2014 from the SUV of Edward Kelly Spangler, according to Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Jeremy Morrow. After being pressured by Weaver to commit the robbery following a few failed attempts, Orren shot Spangler while he was sitting in his vehicle. Weaver gave Orren the gun used to kill Spangler, the prosecutor said.



Weaver's attorney, Jack Bernstein, said his client planned to swipe the pot from Spangler alone, but later allowed Orren and Bettencourt to participate after they begged him to join in exchange for a small amount of the stolen drugs to sell. Weaver told them to steal the marijuana when Spangler was out of his SUV, avoid violence and didn't provide the murder weapon, according to the lawyer. He also claimed that Orren's wife, who drove her husband and Bettencourt on the day of the killing, told police that Orren, either alone or together with Bettencourt, went "rogue" when he killed Spangler, 43.



Weaver, 33, faces charges of murder, first- and second-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first- and second-degree robbery and felon in possession of a firearm. The trial could last two weeks.



Weaver is the stepson of Ward Weaver III, who is serving a life sentence for raping and killing two Oregon City girls in 2002. His step-grandfather, Ward Weaver Jr., was sentenced to death for killing a stranded motorist in California in 1981 and then raping, killing and burying the motorist's fiancee.



Orren, 29, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and first-degree robbery in February 2015. He was later sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison for the robbery charge and will be sentenced for aggravated murder after Weaver's trial.



Bettencourt, 34, and Orren's wife Brittany Endicott, 26, were convicted of first-degree robbery in December 2014 and also were sentenced to 7 years and 6 months in prison. They both agreed to testify against Weaver as part of their plea agreements.



Orren shot Spangler twice early February 2014 while he was parked outside the Canby apartments where Orren, Weaver and Endicott lived, prosecutors said. After being shot, Spangler hit several other cars in the complex parking lot while trying to escape and crashed into a sign at a park across the street. He later died from his wounds.



During opening statements Tuesday in Clackamas County Circuit Court, Morrow said on the morning before the killing Weaver texted Spangler, an acquaintance he met six months earlier through selling marijuana, and told him he knew someone willing buy pot. Weaver told Spangler to bring 10 to 15 pounds of the drug to Canby.



Spangler had a license to grow marijuana and sold some of it "when times got tough," Morrow said. He worked as a landscaper when he lived in California years before moving to Grants Pass, where his mother lived, and he and his wife needed money to help get back into landscaping.



"He saw this text message as a relief to his financial situation," Morrow said. "They were very hard up for money." Spangler and his wife left their home in Grants Pass at 10 p.m. to make the four-hour drive to Canby, leaving their 13-year-old son and 2-year-old son alone.

Weaver, who lived with his girlfriend, his mom and her husband, spent parts of the day on the phone with Orren, filling him in on his plans, Morrow said. Around midnight, Orren told Endicott that he needed to borrow her SUV to run errands with Weaver and his girlfriend to make money. Endicott, wary of letting her husband drive because he doesn't have a valid license, decided to drive him.



The quartet -- Weaver and his girlfriend in his truck and Endicott and Orren in the SUV -- drove to an Oregon City gas station for fuel, a 7-Eleven in Clackamas for snacks and later stopped at an apartment complex in Gresham, Morrow said. While there, Endicott told investigators that she saw Weaver run to a second-floor unit, leave with what she later learned was a shotgun under his coat, and put it in the back of her SUV. She claimed her husband soon put the shotgun in his lap as she was driving.



The prosecutor said Orren and Endicott followed Weaver to another home in Gresham that belonged to Weaver's friend whose marijuana grow was recently raided by police. Weaver took a .40 caliber handgun from under a couch cushion and left. They then went to Bettencourt's home in Portland, where Weaver handed the gun to Orren and said "this is in case anything goes wrong," the prosecutor said.



Around 2:30 a.m., Weaver discovered he had missed several calls and texts from Spangler, who had arrived in Canby and dropped off his wife at a motel in town. Weaver, Orren, Endicott and Bettencourt met Spangler at Weaver's apartment complex. After Weaver invited Spangler inside, he texted Orren to break Spangler's SUV window and steal the marijuana inside, but Orren said the vehicle had an alarm and suggested moving somewhere else.



The group left to go to a Denny's in Clackamas around 3:50 a.m. While Weaver and his girlfriend were inside eating with Spangler, Orren, Bettencourt and Endicott couldn't find the Grants Pass man's SUV in the parking lot, Morrow said.



They then went to two nearby motels as they searched for people that Weaver said wanted to buy marijuana. Orren and Bettencourt hid in the bushes during the first stop and waited for Spangler to get out, but they aborted the plan before he left his SUV, Morrow said. Spangler didn't get out of his vehicle at the second stop.



At each location, Weaver sent Orren several texts and calls about the planned smash and grab robbery, Morrow said.



Eventually, they all headed back to the Canby apartments. Orren ran up to Spangler's parked SUV, opened the driver's door and shot the Grants Pass man twice, Morrow said.



"Without question this would not have happened if not for Francis Weaver's involvement in this case. Period," the prosecutor said.



Bernstein, Weaver's attorney, said the .40 caliber gun used to kill Spangler was actually Bettencourt's firearm. Months before the shooting, Bettencourt sold the gun to Weaver who gave it the friend in Gresham as down payment to buy the friend's Volvo. The deal fell through and the friend returned the gun to Weaver, then Weaver gave the gun back to Bettencourt for $200 and a small motorbike.



Endicott told investigators that before the killing, Bettencourt had the gun. She said she didn't see it again until she saw her husband cleaning it after shooting Spangler, Bernstein said.



The defense attorney noted that Endicott gave several conflicting statements during her police interviews. At one point, she said Weaver put the shotgun in her SUV, and she first noticed it when her husband put it in his lap, but at another point claimed she first noticed the shotgun when she and Orren arrived at Bettencourt's home and Orren walked in with the shotgun.



She also told police at first that she knew the Gresham apartment complex where she claimed Weaver got the shotgun, but later told investigators that she couldn't remember where it was when they asked her to help them find it, Bernstein said. Investigators also found no trace of Weaver's DNA on the shotgun, the attorney said.



It was Orren who appeared to have violent intentions towards Spangler, Bernstein said. Endicott told investigators that after they left the first motel, Orren told Bettencourt that they should take Spangler to a rural area and tie him up. Endicott said she later saw Orren at Spangler's driver side door and Bettencourt holding open the passenger side door when the shooting occurred.



Spangler, who had a concealed handgun permit, was not armed, Bernstein said. His wife initially told police that she had no idea her husband was selling marijuana or why they drove from Grants Pass to Canby. She later said she had an idea that her husband was dealing drugs and that he claimed they were going to Canby to collect a debt that an acquaintance owed and that Weaver was going to pay for the acquaintance.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
crc rendering.JPG

A rendering of the proposed Columbia River Crossing. The project was shelved in 2014.

(Columbia River Crossing)

A bill that would expand TriMet's authority to help finance non-transit projects has, for some, revived the specter of the Columbia River Crossing.

Oregon shelved the controversial $2.8 billion bridge, freeway and light-rail project in 2014 after Washington state pulled out. To that point, the two states had already spent nearly $190 million in planning costs.

But critics of the suspended project say a bill before the Legislature could become a backdoor way to fund it.

A provision in Senate Bill 1510, now waiting for a vote in the Senate, would allow TriMet to spend bond and grant funds on non-transit projects.

The transit agency says that would let it bundle together bonds for transit projects with non-TriMet road projects. In doing so, the agencies involved could avoid duplicating overhead costs.

"It's just easier and cheaper for us to do it on behalf of the region," said Bernie Bottomly, TriMet's public affairs executive director. "We're offering this tool as something the region can use to support the region's needs."

It could also let TriMet package its major transit projects with road projects that have wide appeal, a strategy that led Seattle voters to pass a record $930 million transportation-funding levy.

In Oregon, the bill has reawakened critics of the Columbia River Crossing, including Joe Cortright, a Portland economist who has long opposed the bridge project.

"What the bill does is greatly expand TriMet's bonding authority, authorizing it to accept IOUs from other agencies and then use that authority to build freeways, if they choose," Cortright said. "My concern is that this could be a stealth funding plan for the Columbia River Crossing."

For its part, TriMet says it has no interest in taking on the Columbia River Crossing project, nor would it have the authority without participation from other agencies. General Manager Neil McFarlane wrote a letter to the Legislature's Joint Committee on Ways and Means directly addressing the issue.

"The bill and the CRC simply have nothing to do with each other," he said.

The bill limits TriMet to participating in projects in counties in which it operates, seemingly excluding the north half of the bridge project in Clark County, Washington.

But overcoming the hurdle would just be a matter of extending a bus line across the river, Cortright said. He said the bill should be amended to specify it only applies to projects in Oregon counties.

"If they're foreswearing any interest in doing that right now, they don't need to have this sort of implied guarantee of extra-territorial authority," he said.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
mcdonalds.JPG

McDonald's is introducing a Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurry in Australia.

(Associated Press)

Americans know March as the month McDonald's releases shakes with green dye and mint flavoring. The limited-time-only Shamrock Shake has a loyal following.

But, the chain might have just challenged the St. Patrick's Day mainstay. In Australia, McDonald's is offering a Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurry.

It comes with 54 grams of sugar per serving, according to Mashable. It probably should include a free trip to the dentist, too.

The McFlurry is already a hit Down Under. Could momentum bring the beloved Easter candy-ice cream mashup to the states?

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger
IMG_0694.jpg

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Director Dick Pedersen testifies at a hearing on Portland air pollution Tuesday, Feb. 23. Ian K. Kullgren/staff

(LC-)

Dick Pedersen, director of Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality, resigned Tuesday amid an ongoing air pollution scare that's drawn a massive outcry from residents and political leaders.

Pedersen said in a resignation letter that he would leave March 15. "I need to tend to some health concerns immediately," he wrote, saying it was time to retire. Joni Hammond, the agency's deputy director, will become the interim leader.

"Over his many years in state government, Dick has provided steady and dedicated leadership," Gov. Kate Brown said in a prepared statement. "I am grateful for his service to the people of Oregon, and I will miss him as a trusted colleague and friend."

His resignation was announced just an hour before an agency spokeswoman confirmed that David Monro, an air quality manager overseeing the Portland area, was also leaving the department for another job. Monro's departure was already planned before Pedersen's announcement, said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Flynt.

The departures come with the agency still trying to get in front of revelations that Southeast Portland's air is more toxic than anyone knew, nearly a month after the problem was announced.

The agency was slow to respond to questions, delayed releasing documents and maps showing how widespread potential pollution hotspots were and struggled to coordinate with other government agencies. Emails obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive on Friday revealed that Pedersen's agency failed to notify Portland Public Schools for a month about a soil test at Cleveland High School that found high levels of arsenic and lead contamination.

Since the Portland air pollution problem was revealed Feb. 3, Pedersen repeatedly shunned the spotlight. He didn't take the stage at a Feb. 9 community meeting where more than 750 worried Portland residents hurled criticism at his agency. Monro instead took the stage, leaving many key questions unanswered.

Pedersen also didn't appear at a Feb. 12 press conference announcing two glassmaking companies suspended using hexavalent chromium, a cancer-causing heavy metal made famous by the movie "Erin Brockovich."

It wasn't until a Feb. 18 meeting at Harriet Tubman Middle that Pedersen took the stage and offered a mea culpa. "We as an agency are not doing enough to prevent - to reduce or prevent - emissions from these kinds of industrial facilities," he said then. "We need to do more."

Pedersen had quickly faced pressure from Brown to respond to alarmed residents and document exactly what the agency knew - and when. But a timeline he submitted to the governor contained errors, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Friday. He told the governor his agency had learned about a potential toxic air hotspot at the center of the scare in May 2015.

It actually happened in November 2014, six months earlier.

Pedersen, a long-time department employee who became director in 2008, presided over an agency with little to show for an eight-year-long effort to clean up Portland's toxic air. While he repeatedly claimed that addressing air pollution sources like heavy metals and diesel soot were high priorities, his agency made little progress, repeatedly opting for voluntary steps over tougher regulation.

As California and Washington invested tens of millions in cleaning up dirty diesel engines, Oregon spent less than $1 million - and Pedersen never asked state lawmakers for more.

In response to the current crisis, Pedersen promised to begin tightening state rules that control industrial sources of toxic pollution, which go unregulated today. He said the state agency would aggressively protect public health - even though it already had the power to do so.

The agency's response was so tepid to a problem so long-standing that Portland Mayor Charlie Hales and Multnomah County Chairwoman Deborah Kafoury called for the creation of a local air pollution district that would usurp the state's authority to control Portland's air.

Many neighbors who live in the newly identified pollution hotspots had called for Pedersen to be fired, saying they'd lost faith in the Department of Environmental Quality.

But advocates and environmental leaders hadn't publicly called for Pedersen to be ousted, an acknowledgment that many of the criticisms facing the agency today long preceded him. He took the job in 2008 amid long-standing concerns about low morale, staff turnover and accusations the agency frequently kowtowed to industry.

Mary Peveto, president of Neighbors for Clean Air, a Portland advocacy group, said she worried Pedersen was being used as the fall guy for a problem far larger than one person. She said she was still waiting to see whether Brown and state lawmakers would work to overhaul an agency culture that allowed the problem to fester.

"We should be looking for his position to be replaced by someone with environmental health credentials," Peveto said. "That would be a huge shift of what that agency is going to prioritize."

-- Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
Bird Vincent loves to relate the story of how he found out what happened the morning that he was born in February, 1934.

At his mothers funeral in 1984 a neighbor lady approached him and told him that she was present in the Vincent household the morning he was born. She had been a teenager working for the Vincents at the time. The day was a biting 20 degrees below zero with the wind howling around the farmhouse. The dining room table was pulled up to the heating stove with his mother Florence in labor. Bird made his entrance into the world at six oclock in the morning, screaming at the top of his lungs.

His mother said, Its too loud. It cant be a girl.

Bird said, I was supposed to be a girl. After four sons, Mother wanted a girl.

Today, Bird lives in the farmhouse that he was born in. A Centennial Farm, it has been in the Vincent family since his grandfather Herbert Vincent purchased the land in 1883. He came to the Freeland area from Clarkston where the Bird, Vincent, Virgin and Bromfield families lived close to each other just as they had in Stockland, England. The land Herbert purchased was good farm land with a small house already on it. Originally a land grant, signed by President Buchanan, Herbert cleared the land, married Carrie Bird in 1890 and they moved into the little house on the farm. In 1896 a contractor was hired to build a barn and in 1901 contractors built the big house where four generations of Vincents have called it home.

Birds quest about his family roots began in 2005 when he looked up Stockland, England and finding a website he left a message and two ladies replied, Juliet New and Sue Shaw. From there Bird was introduced to others and soon he was corresponding with seven people. One said, Come over. In July of 2009 Bird went to England and met Chris Salter who took him around the Stockland area for several days. Bird said, In 1989 I was starting up a plant for Dow Corning Corp. just 40 miles from Stockland but I didnt know that was where my family came from

The story of the Vincent family and how they emigrated from England to America reads like a novel. Birds story begins with Benjamin and Tabitha (Lane) Vincent in Stockland, England. Benjamin was born in 1792. Tabitha was born in 1787. They married March 3, 1818 and had six children. In the census of 1841 he was a dairy farmer in Devon renting Ridge Farm from Josiah Anstice.

Their first child was a daughter named Mary born in 1819 who died the next year. She is buried in the graveyard at St. Michaels and All Angels Church in Stockland.

John, who would become Bird Vincents great-grandfather, was born April 27, 1821 in Stockland, England and died Feb. 15, 1906 in Freeland in the home that Bird lives in now.

Benjamin was next, born in 1823 followed by Henry born in 1827. George was born in 1831. Benjamin and Henry emigrated to America in 1849 aboard the Hendrik Hudson. George, the youngest son, secured passage on the City of Glasgow, an early propeller steamer with 480 passengers and crew. She left Liverpool March 1st 1854 disappearing without a trace in the Atlantic. The bow of the ship washed up in Scotland later. Newspaper accounts mentioned the heavy ice fields that were in the Atlantic at the time and it was assumed that the ship hit an iceberg, much like what happened later to the Titanic in 1912.

Birds great-grandparents, John Vincent and Isabella Bromfield, were married March 16, 1848 in St. Michael and All Angels Church in Stockland. John was a stable boy and Isabella was a chambermaid for the wealthy Thomas Wakely family. He gave John and Isabella a trunk as a wedding presents.

Isabella Bromfields family had owned mills in the Stockland area since the 18th century and she was born in the living quarters of one of those mills. South Mill stopped working in 1910 and in 2011 the mill was sold to a developer for $700,000.

Isabellas Uncle Thomas Bromfield is the great-great grandfather of Louis Bromfield, the American author and conservationist. A great friend of the movie star Humphrey Bogart, Bromfields Malabar Farm was where Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall.

The 1840s were a defining point in England with economic conditions abysmal and an epidemic of cholera in 1849 sealed the dissatisfaction for many. John and Isabella Bromfield Vincent had money enough to buy passage on a ship to come to America. In 1851 they booked passage on the New Brunswick and with their three sons embarked for America. John Howard was two years old, Benjamin was one year old and Henry Owen was one month old. Henry Owen died aboard the New Brunswick and was buried at sea.

John already had relatives in America but Isabella left behind her mother, three sisters, four brothers, her home, her church and the only village she had ever known when she emigrated to America.

In July of 2009 Bird attended a service at St. Michael and All Angels Church in Stockland where his great grandparents John and Isabella Bromfield Vincent were married in 1848. A pew map on one wall showed where the Vincents and the Bromfields had sat. A young minister gave the sermon, played the guitar and three small girls did some of the readings. Bird said, It was so modern but he had a good sermon.

(This ends Part I of the Vincent story. Part II will appear in two weeks.)

Part I Photo #1 South Mill in Devon, Stockland, England

This is the South Mill in Devon, Stockland, England dating back to the 18th century. Isabella Bromfield, Birds great grandmother, was born in the living quarters of this mill. It was sold in 2011 for $700,000 to a developer.

Part I Photo #2 This is St. Michael and All Angels Church in Stockland, England where Birds great-grandparents John Vincent and Isabella Bromfield were married on March 16, 1848. In July of 2009 Bird had the privilege of attending a church service in the church where so many or his ancestors had been baptized, married and buried.

Part I Photo #3 This 1875 photo taken in Clarkston, Michigan shows Isabella Bromfield Vincent (great grandmother), Herbert Vincent (Birds grandfather}, John Vincent (great grandfather holding the reins of a horse), and Hermon (son of John and Isabella)
An aging audio/video recording system in the Midland Countys 42nd Circuit Court Courtroom has forced Midland County Commissioners to approve replacement equipment.

Tuesday, commissioners unanimously approved spending $27,184 with Jefferson Audio Visual Systems to install the new equipment in Judge Stephen P. Carras courtroom, also known as the Historical Circuit Courtroom. Labor for the setup and installation will be $10,025.

A letter from Jefferson Audio Visual Systems, in January, informed the county that the company can no longer obtain key replacement parts for repair or replacement should the (existing) equipment fail, for the system.

During Tuesdays meeting, Commissioner Scott Noesen, R-7th District, inquired if the present equipment could be used through the end of 2016?

"If it breaks there are no parts, responded County Administrator/Controller Bridgette Gransden. They are not making replacement parts anymore. That is the reason we need to move now, because if something fails there would be no way to record in the courtroom.

The current audio/video system was purchased in 2010 for $55,225.75. At that time, the system was installed instead of replacing an employee that had retired. For the new system, the county will be able to use existing equipment, such as PAs, recorders and cameras to save money.

Funds for the project will be taken out of the Courthouse Preservation fund.

Commissioners also approved, by voice vote, the reappointment of Richard Ripke to the Midland County Emergency Medical Services Advisory Board as the Central Michigan AFL-CIO (Midland/Gladwin) Labor Councils representative. Ripkes term, which runs from Jan. 1, 2016 through Dec. 31, 2018, would be Ripkes eighth term.

The next meeting of the full board will be on Tuesday, when the board meets in executive meeting at 9 a.m. in the Midland County Services Building.
For the second week in a row, snow has caused havoc for drivers and gifted children with more days off from school.

The National Weather Service reports 8.5 inches of snow fell in Midland during an 18-hour period, according to a trained spotter two miles south of the city. At MBS International Airport, 12 inches of snow was recorded in the 24-hour period ending at 7 a.m. today.

Tuesdays storm roared across the county beginning with the morning commute.

The City of Midland responded with a full plow crew during the night. As of this morning, crews were just finishing up on major streets and readying to roll into residential streets with Thursdays refuse routes being first on the list, according to a Facebook update to residents.

Please be patient and give the plows room to do their jobs, the city stated. We will continue to work around the clock at full capacity until all the streets are plowed.

Midland Police also are asking residents who must travel to be extra cautious  slow down, allow other vehicles plenty of space and be prepared for slick intersections.

Officers responded to more than 20 traffic crashes during the snowfall yesterday, including one that shut down Airport Road between Dublin and Perrine roads about 3 p.m. The drivers suffered minor injuries after one lost control on the snow covered roadway and crossed the center line, colliding with the other.

Midland County sheriffs deputies responded to 12 snow-related driving incidents, mostly vehicles in ditches. None involved serious injuries.

School districts closed today included: Beaverton Schools, Bullock Creek Schools, Coleman Community Schools, Freeland Schools, Gladwin Community Schools, Meridian Public Schools, Merrill Schools, Midland Public Schools, Bay City Public Schools and Saginaw Public Schools.

Delta College was closed until noon today, with classes at the main campus and all three centers canceled and the offices closed.

Saginaw Valley State University has closed its main campus until 4 p.m. today because of the weather. Classes will resume at that time.

Today is expected to have decreasing clouds, with highs from 24 to 28 degrees, the National Weather Service reported. It said Thursday should see the clouds return, with highs from 26 to 30 degrees.
The following list includes reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department.

Monday, Feb. 29

10:08 a.m.  A trash can was reported stolen from an Edenville Township home.

12:24 p.m.  A plow truck damaged a Larkin Township homes driveway.

12:48 p.m.  A $55 trash can was stolen from a Jasper Township home.

12:53 p.m.  A deputy was sent to back up a state police trooper on a traffic stop at a home on Mashue Lane.

1:06 p.m.  A deputy responded to a Greendale Township home for a report of numerous traffic violations seen involving vehicles passing a school bus while loading and unloading children. Extra patrols will be conducted.

2:33 p.m.  A $55 trash can was stolen from an Edenville Township home.

3 p.m.  Edenville Township firefighters were sent to a home to extinguish a fire caused by a wood pellet stove. The residents arrived home as officials were at the scene.

3:59 p.m.  Police responded to an assault in the 3900 block of North Saginaw Road.

6:38 p.m.  Police investigated a case of fraud in the 2500 block of Waldo Avenue.

10:12 p.m.  A motorist was arrested at West Wackerly Street and Sturgeon Avenue for driving without a license.

11:39 p.m. A Saginaw woman, 26, was arrested in Greendale Township for driving on a suspended license and warned for speeding.
Robidoux Pass was a significant landmark on the Oregon Trail. In 1848, an Indian trader named Robidoux established a trading post near this natural landmark on the old Oregon Trail. In 1850, a shorter route was opened through Mitchell Pass, just south of the monument itself and much closer to the Platte River and eliminated the eight-mile swing south. This route fell into disuse after the opening of Mitchell Pass in 1851 and the buildings disappeared. The Robidoux Trading Post has been reconstructed based on archaeological evidence, as well as frequent accounts about it in traveler's diaries. The site was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961.





The second Tourism Cares site in 2016 will be in Chadron, Neb ., where volunteers will clear old railroad ties, build simple bridges, and do various other tasks along the Cowboy Trail in order prepare the trail the first 5 miles east of Chadron for further development. This project will help increase awareness in our community and the entire state about the importance of the Cowboy Trail, said Kristina Harter, Dawes County Tourism Director. We are eager to pull on our gloves on and begin cleaning up debris and building bridges from Chadron going east. This is just the beginning of a big project, but we are confident that the end result will attract a substantial number of visitors that will come to enjoy it. When completely finished, the Cowboy Trail will be the longest rails to trails system in the country. This service opportunity will take place June 10-11 (Friday & Saturday).

The Nebraska Tourism Commission has just announced their first two "Tourism Cares" voluntourism opportunities! This is a wonderful program, one that I have been trying to figure out how to do on my own for several years. I am so pleased that the state has taken this on as they have the systems in place to truly make it successful!So what are the first two projects?The first project will be the restoration of the historic Fort Robidoux Trading Post in Gering. Volunteers will help restore the historic site by removing the chinking (material between wooden frames) and replacing it with a longer-lasting, historically sound material. The Robidoux Trading Post sits at one of the most beautiful and historically significant sites in all of Nebraska, explained Karla Niedan-Streeks, Gering Convention & Visitors Bureau Executive Director. For anyone who volunteers on the project we can promise an amazing setting for their volunteer time, fun interaction with many local volunteers who were originally involved in the reconstruction of the Post, good food and an opportunity to be part of an effort that is a truly a community and statewide collaboration. This service opportunity will take place during National Tourism Week , on May 6-7 (Friday & Saturday).You can find out more information and access the downloadable volunteer application by clicking this link: Nebraska Tourism Commission - Tourism Cares We'll plan on taking our RV to at least one of these events, possibly both. I am so looking forward to this! Who's with me? Message me at nebraskaoutback@gmail.com or comment if you're interested. Or, just make you're own plans and we'll meet up at the event!
While enjoying a drive through the rolling Tennessee countryside with his wife, the shrill ring of his cell phone pierced through the tranquility of the moment. Maj. William D. Logan's daughter, Blair, managed to utter, "Zac has done something really bad."



Dread and confusion seeped in as she explained what had happened.



The now 35th Fighter Wing deputy wing chaplain's son had done the irreversible--he ended his life. An ordinary day had come crashing down in mere seconds. Nothing would be the same. After an argument with his girlfriend, Zac shot himself.



Despite the doctors' efforts to save him, Zac died before Logan reached the hospital.



"He called me one night to tell me he was going to enlist in the Air Force," said Logan as he recalled their conversation. "Things were going well. There was no indication [of suicide] and none of the classic signs. It was just an impulsive action."



Zac was one of two children Logan had from a previous marriage. Logan described him as smart, charming, social, funny and artistic. On the other hand, he wasn't known for making the best decisions.



"People would say Zac didn't have good friends or bad friends, just friends," said Logan. "He was also in a very volatile relationship with a young woman that drove me nuts. I told him several times to run."



Despite worrying about the company his son kept, Logan watched as Zac steadily worked toward his future. He had just moved closer to his mother in Montana and finished a year of college.



"It was a time of great hope for me," said Logan. "My wife, Beth, and I were expecting our first child and permanently changing station to Hawaii in 2003. Life was good."



So when Logan received news of Zac's death, the good times in his life became enveloped in darkness.



Then the questions came. Why did it happen? What could he have done better? Who was at fault?



"I felt tremendous loss and guilt," Logan revealed. "I saw disturbing images and had bad dreams so real I thought I'd wake up and see [Zac]."



Following the initial shock came secondary traumatization. Logan found few people contacted him in the aftermath due to the stigma associated with suicide.



"People don't know what to do with you," Logan said. "It's like something is wrong with you and you're contagious."



On top of that, Logan recalled most people who reached out to him tried to fix what had happened.



"Sometimes we're critical of each other's grieving process," he recognized. "If you're down and suffering a loss, people try and get you to come up. But if you're doing better, people question why you're happy when something bad has just happened."



Logan believes it's more healing for an individual who has gone through a loss to be in whatever emotional state they're in and not to pressure them to feel one way or another.



"It's not something you get over or forget," he said fervently. "I never want to forget my son. I want his memory to be lodged in my heart until I die and beyond."



During the recovery process, surviving the suicide of a loved one ultimately becomes part of who you are--Logan pulled from a number of different facets of his life to endure the healing process.



"I was mad at God," he admitted. "It'd be crazy not to be. But believing in something bigger than yourself and that there's a plan in use, was one thing that got me through."



Logan's wife, Beth Logan, said he never lost sight of the bigger picture. Even when faced with tragedy, he was thankful to have known Zac as long as he did.



Having the support from his wife, family and close friends, also carried him through this time of great adversity and brought him to where he is today.



"[Supporting someone] is about being there for them unconditionally," Beth said. "It's important to let them lead the grieving process and not judge whether they are crying enough. Instead, feel their pain, however it is expressed. Grieving people need to feel loved and supported--not abandoned."



In addition to his loved one's support, Logan expressed feeling blessed by the birth of his two newborn sons.



"[My sons] don't replace Zac, but they provided hope and a new start," he said.



Many people in emotional pain have lost hope, an aspect of life Logan highlighted as being especially important.



"Hope is a future vision, or a dream," he said. "It empowers you and when that hope is taken away, that power is gone in the present."



Logan found the courage to carry on after his son's death, and 18 months later, he became a trainer for a program called Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training.



He has since talked with more than 400 people in the last decade.



"If you have a loss and get broken, doing something for someone else is extremely redemptive and empowering," Logan recommended. "I'd trade most of that wisdom to have Zac back, but I wouldn't have gotten any of it had I not lost him."



Logan learned it's important to forfeit preconceived notions about who is and who isn't at risk for suicide and instead take the time to listen and understand each other more clearly.



By showing someone they're loved and cared for, they can achieve the courage needed to overcome any hardship, especially the death of a loved one.



"Someone once said, 'the test of sailors isn't when the sea is calm, but how well he does when there's a storm'," Logan said. "It's the storms of life that give you the opportunity to be strong."
During the first half of Cope North 16, Airmen with the 644th Combat Communications Squadron successfully provided support with the humanitarian assistance and disaster relief portion of the exercise Feb. 11-17.



The 644th CBCS worked alongside the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Royal Australian Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force, Royal New Zealand Air Force and the Philippine Air Force for CN16, a long-standing exercise designed to enhance multilateral air operations.



During this year's CN16, Airmen deployed from Guam to the nearby islands of Tinian and Rota for HA/DR exercise training missions. Rota was used as the hub location to support and provide relief to Tinian, which was impacted by a simulated earthquake and tsunami during the training scenario.



The 644th CBCS delivered world-class communications services to the HA/DR Command Center on Andersen Air Force Base, said Maj. Christopher Weaver, the 36th Mobility Response Squadron director of operations. This command center was the nexus of control for the activities simulating disaster relief operations on the islands of Rota and Tinian in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.



The command center housed the full spectrum of humanitarian assistance support agencies including aeromedical evacuation, airlift, intelligence, expeditionary medicine, U.S. Agency for International Development and Multi-national Coordination Center.



In order to provide comfortable and efficient working areas for the military members participating in the training scenario, Airmen from the 644th CBCS played a vital role in providing the equipment and tents.



We provided communications for ground to air radio for personnel in the planning cells to be able to talk to the aircrew, said Senior Airman Andrew Pope, 644th CBCS client systems technician. We also set up printers so they are able to print and read the maps to coordinate all the flights.



The 644th CBCS worked around the clock to ensure mission requirements were met and supported in the event communication equipment broke or is no longer functional. Not only did they support equipment belonging to the Air Force, but also those belonging to the partner nations.



With the influx of additional equipment and meeting more requests, it presented challenges, said Tech. Sgt. Andre Williams, 644th Combat Communications Squadron heating, ventilation and air conditioning technician. We ensured we put measures in place to prevent the circuits from overloading, so everything could continue to run smoothly.



While overcoming some obstacles during the HA/DR mission, the 644th CBCS Airmen have come to find many rewarding aspects and learning experiences from it.



This is my first time participating in a HA/DR mission, said Senior Airman Michael Eyres, 644th CBCS power production technician. Since our squadron is broken into different sections, its interesting to see how all the pieces fit together. Especially once all the foreign nationals arrived, everything was put into perspective.



Throughout the training, Airmen from the 644th CBCS gained insight into how the HA/DR mission functions, as well as adapting to any circumstances that came their way.



What I like about this mission is that it allows my guys to exercise their command and control capabilities, as well as the opportunity to practice with our partner nations, said Maj. Christopher Dauer, 644th Combat Communications Squadron director of operations. We have deployable communication equipment that is set up to do exactly what needs to be done for support. If we ever need to go out during a real-world response, we are able to do that quickly and effectively to meet requirements around the world.
The 51st Fighter Wing hosted Buddy Wing 16-2 here Feb. 22 to 25, 2016, showcasing U.S. Airmen from the 25th Fighter Squadron and Aircraft Maintenance Unit.

ROK air force pilots and maintainers from the 237th Fighter Squadron, Wonju Air Base, traveled to Osan in a continued effort to support the alliance.

The Buddy Wing exercise creates an opportunity to share knowledge, and discuss and improve processes that can be tactically developed by both ROKAF KA-1 and U.S. Air Force A-10 pilots, said Maj. Hwang, Jung-Hwan, a 237th FS pilot. This Buddy Wing will grant an opportunity for us to prepare and be ready to cope with unexpected situations we have never experienced in person by performing practical training where our ROKAF may lack.

Members participating in Buddy Wing 16-2 train to build relationships and broaden their knowledge of working in a joint environment with continued training operations aimed at deterring enemy aggression.

U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II fighter aircraft from the 25th FS integrated with ROK air force KA-1 Woongbi fighter aircraft from the 237th FS, to perform close air support missions.

Buddy Wing is conducted quarterly to integrate and conduct joint, combined missions, said 1st Lt. Samantha Latch, 25th FS A-10 pilot. As we fly and train together, not only are we getting to know them, but were increasing our capability to work together.

After 62 years, the ROK-U.S. Alliance continues to be one of the longest standing and successful alliances in modern history. Exercises such as Buddy Wing, along with other combined operations and training events, add to the continued success of the ROK-U.S. Alliance.

The exercise promotes mutual understanding and motivation to maintain a strong alliance between the ROK and U.S., Hwang said.

Buddy Wing 16-2 is the second in a series of joint training, combat exercises conducted this year across the peninsula. The previous Buddy Wing included U.S. Air Force 36th FS and Aircraft Maintenance Unit and the 121st FS held at Seosan Air Base, ROKAF.
BLOOMINGTON  To help their neighbors better understand their beliefs, Bloomington-Normal Hindus are opening their temple for a community visit.

An open house is planned from 3 to 5 p.m. March 19 at the Hindu Temple of Bloomington-Normal, 1815 Tullamore Ave., Bloomington.

"Attendees will have the opportunity to see the temple sanctum, learn about Sanatana Dharma Hinduism, and get a better sense about the Hindu way of life," said Chetan Desai, president of the temple's board of trustees.

The event is part of Not In Our Town's efforts to offer Twin City residents ways to learn about different beliefs through local interfaith programs and open houses.

A similar open house Feb. 6 at Masjid Ibrahim in Bloomington drew about 100 people wanting to learn more about Islam from their Muslim neighbors. Another 100 were turned away prior to the event because there wasn't enough room to accommodate such a large crowd.

More than 250 people attended a NIOT interfaith rally Dec. 16 in downtown Bloomington to show solidarity with the local Muslim community. It was a response to anti-Islamic rhetoric being heard in other parts of the country  and among some leading politicians  in the wake of the San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris terrorist attacks.

"It is a pleasure to help further this NIOT effort," said Desai.

As seating is limited, those wanting to attend the open house need to RSVP online at http://goo.gl/forms/qEZtKioea1.

The event will open with a Vedic chant in Sanskritam, organizers said. That will be followed by an overview at 3:20 p.m. of the philosophy of Sanatana Dharma  a code of conduct and value system that has spiritual freedom as its core, they said.

A question-and-answer session is slated 4:20 to 4:40 p.m., and refreshments will follow until 5 p.m.

The only restriction is a prohibition on attendees taking photographs or videos inside the temple.

For local Hindus, it is the first community event at their temple since its grand opening in April 2014. Prior to the temple's construction the area's Hindu population had to travel to Peoria or Chicago for formal worship.
Glatfelter to Locate New Manufacturing Facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas March 1, 2016 - Glatfelter, a global manufacturer of specialty papers and fiber-based engineered materials, today announced the company is locating a new manufacturing facility in Fort Smith, Arkansas, subject to the approval of the Fort Smith Board of Directors and closing on the purchase of the former Mitsubishi Power Systems building located in Chaffee Crossing. Glatfelter will create up to 83 highly-skilled manufacturing jobs at the new facility with a total capital investment of approximately $80 million. Glatfelter's new Fort Smith facility will supply products to a variety of customers, including those who support the broader wipes and hygiene markets. We are truly excited to partner with the people of Fort Smith and Arkansas because we know that investing here makes great business sense for our company, said Chris Astley, president of Glatfelter's Advanced Airlaid Materials Business Unit and a senior vice president of Glatfelter. Locating here benefits our business in a number of ways. It will enable us to expand our capacity to meet our customers' growing demand for our advanced airlaid products, provide us with closer proximity to key suppliers and customers, and link us to highly efficient transportation routes across the South. Equally important, it will allow us to tap into the area's high-quality workforce. In addition to the new Fort Smith facility, Glatfelter has 12 production facilities located across the United States, Canada, Germany, France, United Kingdom and the Philippines. The company, headquartered in York, Pennsylvania, employs more than 4,300 people worldwide. Gov. Asa Hutchinson joined local and company leaders at the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce for today's announcement. Glatfelter is a world-class company that is making a significant investment in Fort Smith while creating jobs that will improve the lives of many area families, said Gov. Hutchinson. We appreciate Glatfelter's decision to locate in Arkansas and are proud to add Glatfelter to the growing list of manufacturers that are choosing to do business in the state. Glatfelter's products range from highly technical substrates for products like tea bags, single-serve coffee filters, wipes applications, feminine hygiene products, nonwoven wallcoverings and energy storage, to repositionable notes, greeting cards, high-speed inkjet printing papers, high-quality book publishing papers and envelopes. Glatfelter's decision to join Fort Smith's corporate city is exciting news for this community. This will be the company's fifth North American manufacturing operation, and first U.S.- based operation for its Advanced Airlaid Materials Business Unit, said Tim Allen, President and CEO of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce. The cooperation between Glatfelter's leadership, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Mike Preston at the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and the City of Fort Smith was nothing short of spectacular. Companies with a global reach value Fort Smith's location and they want our talent and resources working for their customers. Glatfelter representatives will be meeting with local officials and educational institutions as it develops its hiring plans for the facility. Glatfelter looks forward to providing additional information over the next few months regarding the hiring process. It expects to bring the facility on line in late 2017. Glatfelter is a global supplier of specialty papers and fiber-based engineered materials. Headquartered in York, Pennsylvania (USA), the company serves customers in over 100 countries. U.S. operations include facilities in Pennsylvania and Ohio. International operations include facilities in Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Philippines, and sales and distribution offices in China and Russia. To learn more, please visit: www.glatfelter.com. SOURCE: Glatfelter
As Brad Pitt goes to London to film his latest movie, divorce rumors start to spread once more. OK! Magazine reports that Brad is planning to move out to his bachelor pad in London permanently.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's marriage have been the cover of many tabloids over the years, announcing of an imminent divorce taking place. Although the couple shows no evident signs of a divorce, they are still plagued with divorce rumors. This time, it involves Pitt moving out to his London bachelor pad for the long haul. However, Gossip Cop claims otherwise.

OK! Magazine continues to perpetuate divorce rumors by saying that an insider revealed intentions of Pitt to move out to London as he is tired of staying in hotels, according to International Business Times. The magazine added that the actor allegedly tried to convince his wife, thinking it might do their marriage good. However, the magazine claims that Jolie refused to rearrange her schedule.

The insider goes on to say that Pitt is now secretly looking for a possible house in England without Jolie's knowledge. The insider said that the time apart is what the couple actually needs.

Once again, Gossip Cop claims the reports to be false and baseless. They check with an actual source close to the couple and assured them that the "Moneyball" actor isn't looking on to purchase a bachelor pad. More so, he doesn't plan to stay away for good. They stated that reports from OK! Magazine were "ridiculous".

More so, they also claimed false reports of a divorce over sex and drugs confessions according to a report from National Enquirer said that Pitt was overcome with reminders of wife's past which includes heroin binges and kinky sex games. The source from National Enquirer said that Pitt can no longer take wife's past, especially the part about sex and drugs. Like the previous report, Gossip Cop has proven this wrong.

The couple has been spotted together on several occasions and has dismissed reports of divorce. They have been together for ten years.

Check out the interview with Jolie and Pitt by BBC last year in the video below:
Parents from across the country are employing a private K9 to check their children's room for drugs. The outcome shows that most of the parents' suspicions are correct.

Courier-Journal reports that the Last Chance K9 Service opened on East Spring Street in New Albany in September. It is led by Michael Davis, the owner of the company and the one who searches the house with his German Shepherd. He said that his team at TLC has searched over 50 homes already in Kentuckiana.

In some cases, they have found no drugs. On the other hand, almost 90 percent of the time, the result is affirmative wherein his dog found narcotics such as marijuana, methamphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine and heroin that are hidden in the children's rooms, cars owned by the teens or young adults who live with parents and bathrooms.

Parenting reports that one parent from Kentucky saw a billboard of Last Chance K9 Service that offered help for worried parents for $99. The message stated, "Our dogs find drugs!" The parent thought of hiring K9 because he noticed something odd to her 14-year-old daughter who has new friends and detected an unusual smell from her room.

"I'm not a snooping parent," he said. "I want my daughter to be able to trust me, but I gotta protect her. I know girls can be sneaky and hide things in places I wouldn't even think of."

So, the searching began when her daughter was at school. The trained German shepherd dog went to the teen's room and in just seconds, the dog found a glass pipe of marijuana concealed in an Altoids tin in the teen's makeup stand.

The parent was so discouraged and said that he had easily overlooked it.

Davis advised the parent on how to talk to his daughter. "Don't yell or scream at her," Davis said. "Just sit down and talk to her. Be stern, but be cool, calm and collected." So, the parent just did exactly what Davis said.

Then, he destroyed the pipe of marijuana and threw it in the trash while his teen looked on. He also told his daughter about his experimentation with marijuana during his younger years.

"What we do is help the family fix the issue," Davis concluded. "We're not a police."
Lady Gaga made an emotional performance at the Oscars 2016. While performing Oscar nominated song, "Till It Happens To You," she was joined by 50 sexual assault survivors wherein they exposed their arms with words "Not Your Fault," "Survivor," and "It Happened to Me."

Fans and spectators wondered on who the sexual assault survivors were, as they were inspired by their boldness to take a stand. Most of the sexual assault survivors appeared on CNN's documentary film, "The Hunting Ground," which tackles sexual assault in college campuses all throughout the United States. Huffington Post was able to get a glimpse on who the brave sexual assault survivors were.

Zerlina Maxwell

Maxwell made the headlines the moment she stood up as a sexual assault survivor. During her appearance on Sean Hannity's show in Fox News, she stood her ground in stating that arming women to defend their selves from sexual assault is not the solution. Instead, Maxwell stated that educating men not to rape is the solution.

Kamilah Willingham

Willingham was a sexual assault victim from Harvard Law school, wherein her story on "The Haunting Ground" were slammed by several critics. According to Jezebel, Kamilah Willingham's story was "unfairly attacked" by the documentary, wherein several Harvard Law professors took a stand in defending the attacker, Brandon Wilson stating that he didn't force Willingham as what the documentary claimed.

Kevin Kantor

Kevin Kantor is a renowned slam poet who shook the world with his beautifully written poem about sexual assault. His piece discussed his sentiments the moment his rapist appeared on his Facebook feed under "People You May Know."

Kantor empowered male sexual assault victims to speak up and make a stand. One of the lines that shook the male sexual assault victims was "No one comes running for boys who cry rape."

Nastassja Schmiedt and Lea Roth

Both Schmiedt and Roth were both sexual assault victims from Dartmouth College. The duo decided to take a stand against sexual assault by starting an activist group, "Spring Up." Aside from the group they started, they also wrote a book entitled "Millennial Sex Education."
There's still no definitive word on where Kate Middleton will be on Mother's Day. However, royal palace officials have cut down the possibilities to two.

An insider told Hello Online that the Duchess will most likely be at the royal couple's Norfolk residence on Sunday, where she would spend quality time with Prince William and their two kids. She might also travel to Berkshire to celebrate with her mother Carole and the rest of the Middleton Family.

Wherever she may end up on Mother's Day, which falls on March 6 this year in the UK, Kate won't have to worry about the hustle and bustle of public life. As the source put it, "The Duchess of Cambridge will be spending the day privately."

The royal couple has been criticized for using their kids as an excuse to skip their duties. Prince William retorted by saying that his greatest fear is not being a normal hands-on parent to Prince George and Princess Charlotte.

Meanwhile, Kate has reportedly driven a wedge between her husband and Prince Charles. The second-in-line to the throne prefers asking parenting advice from his father-in-law Michael Middleton than his own royal pa, as per Celeb Dirty Laundry.

Kate's parents have had a deep effect on Prince William's parenting style. He even calls Michael Middleton "Dad." Asked about his own father's parenting habits, Prince William alluded to the fact that Prince Charles can be very cold and distant.

"He's got an insurmountable amount of duty in him," said the 33-year-old monarch. "He's incredibly driven to do his duty and from a very young age that's been instilled into him."

After the Mother's Day break, Prince William and Duchess Kate will resume their royal duties in England and around the world. They will be heading to India for an official state visit in April. They will arrive in Mumbai on April 10.

Times of India reported that the royal couple will be involved in a variety of activities, including sports, entrepreneurship, courtesy calls and anti-poverty efforts. They will spend two days in Assam and will visit the Kaziranga National Park to honor the rural traditions of the area. Their last stop is Agra, where they will visit the majestic Taj Mahal.
Many people fear the Zika virus because it causes fever muscle and joint pain, headache, rashes and conjunctivitis. As for pregnant women, Zika virus has been linked to microcephaly in babies which involves the development of smaller head and brain deformities.

A new research suggests that Zika virus is also linked to a rare condition that can result into body paralysis and death, HEALTH reports. This disorder is called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

"The risk for a Zika-infected individual of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome is small-less than [one] case per 1,000 Zika infections," researcher and University of Glasgow neurology professor Dr. Hugh Willison told HEALTH. "So, individuals with acute Zika infection should not be greatly alarmed by the fear of developing of Guillain-Barre syndrome."

The research involved the study of the blood samples of more than 40 people who were diagnosed with the syndrome during the Zika virus outbreak. Despite the results of the research, a University of Western Australia professor David Smith said that the link between Zika virus and the development of Guillain-Barre syndrome is not yet definitive.

Smith noted that "it is difficult to conclusively prove Zika virus infection in all of these patients, because many also had been infected with the closely related dengue virus, which is common in French Polynesia. And interpretation of the antibody tests was difficult."

Guillain-Barre syndrome is considered an autoimmune disease because it involves the attack of a person's immune system on his own body, according to WebMD. Parts of the body attacked are the covering of different nerves which can cause paralysis and death. Some of the symptoms of the rare autoimmune disorder include muscle weakness, reduced reflexes, numbness and tingling sensations in the arms, face, legs and other body parts.

Aside from Zika virus infection, there are other types of virus and bacteria that can lead to Guillain-Barre syndrome. These infections include Campylobacter jejuni, Mycoplasma, Cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus and Varicella-zoster virus, according to WebMD.
Health experts fear that the Zika virus might be related to Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that weakens the muscles and causes debilitating paralysis. A new research showed that the rise of Zika cases is directly proportional to the increase of GBS patients.

Researchers looked into French Polynesian health documents and discovered that the Pacific Island already had 32,000 suspected Zika cases in April 2014. That's a full year before the mosquito-borne epidemic gained worldwide media attention when it hit South America.

According to CNN, researchers noticed that cases of GBS in French Polynesia also ballooned around the same time. They found that nearly 98 percent of GBS patients had Zika antibodies in their system.

Moreover, 88 percent of GBS patients reported that they experienced Zika symptoms a week before developing the neurological disorder. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, rashes, conjunctivitis and joint pains.

Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, a dean at Baylor College of Medicine, got hold of the paper and praised the researchers for their investigation. He said that on the surface, the figures "clearly shows a link between Zika and Guillain-Barre in Polynesia."

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden also applaud the research. He said, "Given the time course of clusters of Guillain-Barre after peak Zika virus infection, I think most epidemiologists would say it's certainly related."

Health Line reported that GBS is a rare albeit serious disorder that affects one in 100,000 Americans. It's a condition in which the immune system combats healthy nerve cells in the peripheral nervous system.

GBS leads to weakened muscles, numbness and paralysis. Patients feel tingling from their feet up though 10 percent of people say the disorder begins in the face or arms.

The medical community is still not sure what causes GBS. However, it is usually activated by an infectious illness like lung infection, stomach flu and apparently, the Zika virus.
Despite the warnings that come with every lawn mower purchase, children in the United States still suffer severe lawn mower-related injuries. It was also revealed during the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) that 53 percent of the total number of reported cases required amputation.

Researchers analyzed the data from the Pennsylvania Trauma Outcome Study which consist of 199 children between the ages 0 to 17 with an average age of 8, who were hospitalized for lawn mower-related injuries between 2002 and 2013.

According to medicalxpress.com, findings revealed that 81 percent of the cases involved boys, and 55 percent of the incidents were a result of riding a lawn mower. It was also discovered that 91 percent of the cases happened between April and September and the most common injured site is the lower extremity which accounted for 65 percent. Among the 199 children who were admitted in different trauma centers, 106 had to undergo amputation of the affected area.

US News reported that Dr. Douglas Armstrong, the senior study author and a professor of orthopedic surgery and division head of pediatric orthopedics at Penn State Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, warned people how dangerous lawn mowers are. "All lawn mowers have a tremendous amount of kinetic energy given off at the tip of the lawn mower blade. It's higher than a bullet leaving the muzzle of a 357 Magnum, which means that the injuries we see are not just lacerations, they're the result of something more like an explosion or blast injury," he explained.

The study also revealed that one child aged 1 was killed due to an incident involving ride-on lawn mower. "The vast majority of the injuries could have been prevented if safety guidelines had been followed," Armstrong said.

An advisory was issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommending that no child below the age of 16 should be allowed to operate a ride-on mower while powered or non-powered push mower should only be operated by children ages 12 and up. The advisory warned parents living on farmlands or in the suburbs to ensure that no child under the age of 6 are outdoors when mower is in operation. Kids shouldn't also be allowed to become passengers of mowers operated by adults.
Australia is the latest addition to countries that patronized medical marijuana. Last February, the Australian government agreed to lift the ban on medical marijuana.

The Stoner's Cookbook released an article which discussed the legalization of medical marijuana in Australia. The Australian amendment includes "amendment authorities state or territory government agencies to undertake and manage cultivation and production of cannabis and cannabis resin, for use in the manufacture of medicines and for scientific studies."

"This is an historic day for Australia and the many advocates who have fought long and hard to challenge the stigma around medicinal cannabis products so genuine patients are no longer treated as criminals," Susan Ley, the Minister of Health in Australia said.

According to Ley, the gesture to legalize medical marijuana in Australia paved way for medical advances, "This is the missing piece in a patient's treatment journey and will now see seamless access to locally-produced medicinal cannabis products from farm to pharmacy."

In addition to the update, the Australian Business Insider mentioned that the new national law passed by the Australian parliament in mid-February cited that people who suffer from severe pain and chronic illness can use medical marijuana. Though the legalization of medical cannabis is a huge leap for the government and medical advancement, it still has limitations. Using and cultivating pot for recreational use, however, is till prohibited and is still linked to criminal laws.

As per the latest federal scheme, those who are in need of medical marijuana would need to get a prescription. The medical marijuana should be acquired from a legit Australian manufacturer to ensure safety. The medical marijuana that patients should acquire should be the ones that are approved and authorized by the Therapeutic Goods Act. The latest changes in the law placed medical marijuana in the same category as morphine.

Though marijuana plans can now grow in Australian soil, it was still unclear as to when the medical marijuana prescription would take effect. There are no updates as to when medical marijuana dispensaries would open on the country.
A lot has happened to Jenelle Evans, Chelsea Houska, Kailyn Lowry and Leah Messer since "Teen Mom 2" concluded its sixth season last fall. MTV has just released the "Teen Mom 2" season 7 official trailer, giving fans a sneak peek into the drama where the previous season left things off.

By the end of "Teen Mom 2" season 6, Chelsea Houska and her boyfriend, Cole DeBoer, decide to take their relationship to the next level. Houska's boyfriend of one year moved in with Chelsea and her 6-year-old daughter Aubree, whose father is Adam Lind.

Things take a turn when Chelsea Houska says yes to DeBoer's proposal shortly after the two moved in, as reported by HNGN. "We're getting married," Houska was seen telling her fiance in the "Teen Mom 2" season 7 trailer.

Chelsea Houska Engaged To Boyfriend Cole Deboer See The  : https://t.co/cjENz7rca8 .,, pic.twitter.com/Y539uNSluh  Lucy Baker (@Lucy89Baker) February 8, 2016

Kailyn Lowry and husband Javi Marroquin openly gave fans a look into their troubled marriage in season 6. After being able to regain a stronger relationship, the two revealed in the "Teen Mom 2" trailer that they had recently gone through a miscarriage.

"You know how much I wanted that baby," Marroquin told Lowry, who reacts in shock. The United States Air Force member drops another bombshell when he says he's being deployed. "I can't believe I'm not gonna see you," he continued to tell his wife as the cameras caught the heartbreaking goodbye on video.

In other news, the "Teen Mom 2" stars recently got into a heated Twitter fight. According to MStars News, the fight resulted in Jenelle Evans threatening to leave the show, although that's unlikely.

"Teen Mom 2" returns to MTV for its seventh season on Monday, March 21 at 10/9PMc. Watch the promo below to see what's in store for Jenelle Evans, Chelsea Houska, Kailyn Lowry, and Leah Messer!
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions
Having a hard time crossing off the 10 beers we highlighted in our 10 Bucket List Beers post? Those brews are widely considered some of the best, and most difficult to find, beers on planet. But whats the fun in fantasizing about some beers that you may never get the opportunity to try? These kinds of lists are no good if you kick the bucket before checking all the boxes.

Here is a list that is both more approachable and more essential. Its comprised of beers that are the foundation of Americas ever-expanding craft beer industry, innovative products that influenced a developing beer culture, historically significant brands with devoted followings, and singular examples of the brewers artistic expressions. And they are beers that you can walk into a store and just buy (mostly). Depending on which breweries distribute where you live, you might have to make special arrangements for a couple of brews on this list, but nothing here will require an arm, a leg, or a first born child. With a little luck, your local bottle shop will have eight or nine of these sitting on the shelf.

Lets start with an easy one, a beer that you undoubtedly already know well: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It is nearly impossible to over-sell this primogenitor of todays craft beer industry, and Sierra Nevadas flagship Pale Ale is deserving of all praise leveled at it. An original that melds a traditional English style with new world ingredients and American ingenuity, it defines the American Pale Ale style. Even as the craft beer industry has evolved, and tastes have shifted towards even bolder, hoppier and more exciting brews, SNPA remains, 35 years after its initial development, one of the worlds best beers. The balance between subtly toasted malt, understated fruity esters, and the distinct citrus and pine punch of Cascade hops makes this Pale Ale as characterful as it is drinkable. If, somehow, youve never tasted this singular ale, it should be item number one on your beer bucket list (and frankly, your beer-geek status should be placed on hold until you remedy that delinquency.)

Before Ken Grossman opened Sierra Nevada Brewery, before even Jack McAuliffe opened Americas first modern craft brewery, New Albion Brewing Co. (founded in 1976), appliance magnate Fritz Maytag purchased a struggling San Francisco brewery with roots dating back to Californias gold rush. Maytag resisted the migration to light lager styles that had pushed Anchor to the brink of bankruptcy and continued to produce the flavorful style that Anchor was known for. Light and dry with a clean fermentation and the distinct woody flavors of Northern Brewer hops, Anchor Steam, and Maytags dedication to tradition, kept Anchor Brewing afloat. While the brewery has grown and changed in small ways, the flagship California Common that its best known for is a history lesson in a glass.

There is perhaps no other beer brand in America with a more fervent fan-base than Yuengling. The Pennsylvania based brewery is the oldest brewery in America and the largest thats still American-owned. The brewery is so renowned, that the Brewers Association had to alter how a craft brewery was defined to include Yuengling (previously it was disqualified because its flagship beer was brewed with flaked maize). The flagship lager is a time capsule in beer form, harking back to the era when German immigrants came to America and forever changed beer culture here. Officially Yuengling is only available in 18 states, and none west of the Mississippi, but the dedicated Yuengling fans in other areas support a shadowy grey market for the unassuming lager. Have a buddy from Philly? Ask them how they get their fix.

Did you catch Budweisers bombastic ad during the Super Bowl that proudly proclaimed that Bud is not for everyone? Stone Brewing has been singing that tune for nearly 20 years to sell their once flagship Arrogant Bastard Ale. The American strong ale is brewed bold and bitter, and way back in the early days of craft brewing it was a polarizing beer. These days over-sized flavor profiles are much more common, but the ol Bastard is still worth seeking out if youve never sipped it. Its a beer that Stones coast-to-coast empire was built on, and it was an early example of the, if you dont like it, then youre missing out sentiment that is prevalent in craft beer today. There are a few variants to choose from, including a higher ABV Double Bastard, the excellent Bourbon Barrel-Aged Arrogant Bastard. And a few other special release variations, and the base AB Ale is even getting canned by Stone in the near future.

While its the West Coast style IPAs, straw-pale and bone-dry, that have fueled the rise of the modern India pale ale as craft brewings favorite style, there is more than one way to formulate a deliciously hoppy IPA. Two Hearted features a more substantial malt presence than many of the top-rated IPAs, and instead of using a complex blend of hop varieties to create a veritable fruit-salad of hoppy aromas and flavors, Bells uses only a single variety of hops: Centennial. The intense citrus pith and pine resin character of the iconic variety takes the spotlight, and the hops character is complex and nuanced enough to star in the one-man show. Two Hearted is a beer that regularly lands near the top of best-of lists, and for good reason. It has a polish and refinement that is all too rare in todays craft beer offerings, and its the rare hop-centered brew that can win-over even those drinkers who think that they dont like IPAs.

Beer-geek quandaries about supporting Ballast Point in the post-buyout landscape aside, and ignoring for the moment the infamous price-point of this iconic San Diego IPA (regularly over $17 for a six pack, even in Southern California), Sculpin is maybe the best regular-production West Coast-style IPA on the market. A hop heads dream, Sculpin is brewed with five separate doses of hops so its as aromatic as it is bitter, with a lean body and enough alcohol to carry the pungent bite. The beers widespread popularity fueled Ballast Points fantastic growth, directly leading to the brewerys acquisition by Constellation Brands (for a billion dollars) late last year. This is literally a billion dollar brew, and as good as the flavored versions are (Grapefruit, Habanero, and now Pineapple) its the original Sculpin thats worth hunting down (and worth bending your only indie breweries! rule for).

This bottle might be tougher to track down than the rest of this list, but the bourbon barrel aged tripel from Maine is unique even in todays craft marketplace. A perfect blend of Belgian flavors and American techniques, the golden ale is dry and bursting with yeasty spice and undercut with the distinctive oaky-boozy character of bourbon barrels. Brewers keep the barrel contact time comparatively brief (just eight weeks) and blend the aged beer into a fresh batch of Tripel resulting in a level of subtlety and balance that isnt often seen in beers that spent long months in bourbon barrels. One of the early super-premium craft brews, Curieux remains largely unparalleled even as the industrys obsession with all things barrel aged deepens. While the 750ml cork-and-cage bottles are available in just 16 states, it isnt terribly difficult to find within the distribution territory.

The Boston Beer Company doesnt get a lot of love from the beer geek set, but the brewerys influence on the industry is undeniable. Even if you dont go for Boston Lager, Rebel IPA, or the myriad of seasonal and special releases, you have to respect what those beers have done to bring flavorful brews to the masses. Utopias is the most special of special releases from BBC, and even calling it beer stretches the definition. An extremely high gravity beer that seen extended aging time in oak barrels (the blend even includes some beer that has spent 19 years in oak), Utopias taste a bit like maple syrup flavored sherry. It is un-carbonated, fiercely flavorful, and over 20% ABV. The brewery only releases the brew kettle-shaped ceramic bottles occasionally, and in small quantities with a price to match that rarity. A bottle will set you back around $200, but there is no other beer like Utopias.

This one isnt an American craft beer, but its safe to say that without Pilsner Urquell there wouldnt be a craft beer industry as we know it today. The first golden lagers, from which Pilsner Urquell is directly descended, were developed in Bohemia in the mid-19th century, and they changed the brewing world forever. Its a sad fact that in todays craft beer culture the humble pilsner gets so little respect. A product of technological advancements in brewing and some of the best ingredients in Europe, the original pilsner was pale and brilliantly clear with a rounded flavor that balanced the bready malt with the unique zip of Saaz hops. Modern Pilsner Urquell is like a time machine in a glass, and the brewery goes to great lengths (perhaps more than any other European brewery) to ensure that their beer arrives in America in the best shape possible.

Another old world beer, St. Bernardus ABT 12 is a Belgian quadrupel that backdoored its way into our first Beer Bucket List post since it is so similar to the renowned, and rare Westvleteren 12. Were including ABT 12 here as a placeholder for any of the Trappist beers from Belgium, be it a Trippel from Westmalle, a double from Rochefort, a Chimay Grand Cru or the incomparable Orval. These breweries are the spiritual siblings to Americas craft breweries, producing beers that meld innovation with tradition and a focus firmly on flavor. Belgian beers, with their intense yeasty flavors, can be an acquired taste, so dont make the mistake of dismissing the whole Belgian brewing tradition before youve become comfortable with the distinctive qualities of these beers.
Dont let the incomprehensibly adorable little corgi who supplies Cheddar with its title fool you: this week, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is about something more substantial than cute puppies doing cute things, even though it is mostly about that. Cheddar is for the most part a fluff episode (no pun intended, though Cheddar is pretty fluffy), a charming one-off built around a single joke that it carries out to the best payoff possible. Its really only when we get to that payoff that we see that there is more to Cheddar, and that there has been the entire time.

Of course, if you know Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you know that a dog-chasing caper is never just a dog-chasing caper, and the hunt for a missing corgi is just an avenue to explore the shows character dramas. The big giveaway here is that Cheddar revolves around Kevins and Holts relationship; their separation has come up more than a few times as a source of stress on the poor, beset upon Captain, whether in The Cruise or The Swedes. That it comes up here yet again, and in such capacity as it does, quietly paints Cheddar as a more sober installment than Jakes bumbling attempts at retrieving his bosss absconded canine initially suggest.

Lets start at the beginning: Holt cant make the trip to see Kevin in Paris that hes been planning for ages because he has no one to dog sit for good ol Cheddar. In a move that surprises literally nobodynot us, not Amy, and not Boyle, who is temporarily vision-impaired thanks to Lasik surgery he has done after the pre-credits bitJake offers to look after Cheddar for Holt. This does not sit well at first with Amy, who, if youll recall from The 9-8, is okay with killing dogs severely allergic to dogs, but after tempting her with the promise of a binder, even though that binder is chock-full of detailed dog sitting information, he convinces her to join in his well-intentioned plan with Boyle in tow.

By now you have no doubt plugged in the variables, done the math, and solved for X, where X is the speed at which Jake screws up, Cheddar goes on a walkabout around New York City, and Jake, Amy, and Boyle summon forth the combined might of the 9-9Terry, Gina, Scully, Hitchcock, plus Rosa and Pimento, who are engaged in a flirting match that can only be described as sexy, but disturbingly soto bring their Captains dog back home. And thats it! There isnt a B-plot, or even a C-plot. There is just an A-plot (given that it focuses on a dog, could we call it a D-plot?), with every character in the regular cast involved in its moving parts, though Scully and Hitchcock are wisely benched for sampling some of Cheddars doggie treats.

Thats not to say that nothing unrelated to Cheddar happens in the margins: Cheddar circles back around to Rosa and Adrian multiple times, such that their courtship would serve as a functioning B-plot if they stayed back at the precinct. They are such aggressive, stolid, and in Adrians case frenzied, personalities that they cannot help but draw attention away from the search for Cheddar and place it onto themselves as they make innuendos and sex-eyes at each other over hole punches and wet ink. Its a little weird. Scratch that, its a lot weird. Convicted perverts, were told, have asked Terry to get them to stop doing whatever it is that theyre doing. But Rosas and Adrians weird is a good weird that keeps Cheddar from becoming one note, and which makes good on the promise of Adrian Pimento by letting Brooklyn Nine-Nines resident brooding badass go toe-to-toe with the new brooding badass in town. (And cmon, how fun is it seeing Terry play accidental Dutch uncle with Adrian, who misinterprets the Sarges interrupted reassurances to the most hilarious extreme possible?)

But Cheddar isnt about Rosa and Adrian. Its hardly about Jake and Amy, either, much less Boyle. Its really about Holt, who we know is too proud, too stoic, and too reserved to ever freely open up to his most trusted team members and confidants about the troubles he and Kevin are having. Again, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has kind of tipped its hat on that score; we know that all is not well in the Holt-Cozner household. Hearing it from Holt in his frank climactic exchange with Jake and Amy, though, still hits like a linebacker. Maybe Cheddar is intrinsically silly, and maybe it is impossible to divorce the episodes weightier revelations from its running gags; Jake repeatedly refers to the pooch as a slippery bastard, and each time he does, the camera cuts away to Cheddar gamboling around a park or lapping up a fallen ice cream cone. You cant not laugh at that. But you cant not feel great empathy for Holt, the heart of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, even after youve spent the better part of a half an hour laughing at his growing frustrations with his squads buffoonery.

Boston-based critic Andy Crump has been writing online about film since 2009, and has contributed to Paste Magazine since 2013. He also writes for Screen Rant, Movie Mezzanine, and Birth.Movies.Death. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected writing at his personal blog. He is composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
Last night, Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Bernie Sanders in the Massachusetts primary. According to the A.P., the final tally was 50.3 percent to 48.5 percentwith more than 1.1 million votes cast, Clintons margin of victory was 20,000 votes.

Theres an argument to be made that it was her most important win of the night. Eleven states held Democratic primaries or caucuses on Super Tuesday, and the schedule was heavily stacked in favor of the southeast. Six of the 11 contests were held in SEC country, and Clintons dominance in the southern black demographic meant she was going to score huge wins in all of them. Of the remaining five states, Sanders won fourOklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, and his home state of Vermont. If he had also won Massachusetts, he could have made a powerful claim that despite Clintons delegate lead, he was the one winning the blue states and swing states that will matter so much in the general election. Clintons victory in Massachusetts tempers that argumentits her first win in the northeast, and by planting a flag in Sanders backyard, she landed her biggest symbolic body blow of the night.

Elizabeth Warren is the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, and prior to taking office in 2013, she was a lawyer who frequently advised Congress and chaired the Congressional Oversight Panel after the economic crash of 2008. Shes an icon among progressives, and the Draft Warren movement was a serious effort to get her to run for president as an alternative to the significantly more conservative Hillary Clinton. When she opted not to run, Bernie Sanders filled that progressive void, and her constituency threw its weight behind the Senator from Vermont.

There will be very few absolute statements in this article, but there is one thing that I think we can declare without hesitation: If Warren had endorsed Sanders at a reasonable date before the Massachusetts primary, and spent the run-up campaigning for him and appearing at his rallies, Bernie Sanders would have won the state. I dont think theres much reasonable doubt there, especially when you consider the narrow final margin. Warren is beloved in her state, and by Democrats and progressives in general, and her influence is easily worth 20,000 votes. In that sense, she cost Sanders an important win.

Warren hasnt endorsed either candidate, and politically, thats probably a smart move. But who would she choose if there were no secondary considerations, and she could express her support without consequence?

She wont comment on that preference publicly, but there have been enough hints for us to make a reasonable guessnot the least of which is the absence of an endorsement for Hillary, which makes her unique among the 14 female Democrats in the Senate.

The best argument that she supports Clinton comes from a letter written by Barbara Boxer in early 2013 in which she urged Hillary to run. That letter was signed by every female Senator, including Warren. Heres what Boxer had to say on MSNBC:

SEN. BARBARA BOXER: Well, this is what I want to tell you. A couple of years ago, I organized a letter, every single Democratic female senator signed it, including Senator Warren. And it was urging Hillary to run. Urging her to run. Hillary is very thrilled that we all signed it. I think Elizabeth has her issues, and this is up to her. But I think people are really gravitating toward Hillary Clinton right now.

As far as evidence goes, thats pretty tepidit was a private letter long before the election, and nobody knew Bernie Sanders would mount a serious challenge three years later. Even while bringing it up, Boxer couldnt avoid the reality of Warrens issues.

So what about the argument for Sanders? Well, here you can simply point to the bulk of Warrens career, where she has routinely come down on the side of progressive causes, particularly on the economic front. But the truth is, we dont even need to delve deep into her political past to know that she has serious objections to Hillarys conservative economic approach. In an interview with Bill Moyers from 2004, she details exactly how Clinton let her down on bankruptcy legislation, and extrapolated from there to a larger point about the systemic corruption in American politics. In that anecdote, Clinton was the poster child for the routine sell-outs happening in D.C.:

More recently, just days before the Iowa caucuses, Warren took an indirect-but-still-pretty-direct shot at Clinton after a January debate in which Clinton told voters that universal health care was too difficult to be worth the effort:

"Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard, has crawled into bed with the billionaires." @SenWarrenpic.twitter.com/VB1Z13PH4a  Josh Smith (@joshsmith) January 22, 2016

She also skipped a fundraiser in December that was attended by each of the other 13 female Democratic Senators, and has spoken positively about Sanders, saying, Bernie is doing what Bernie always does  he's out there talking from the heart, raising the issues that he's raised for decades now, said Warren. That's just who he is.

And when Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said that Sanders' Wall Street criticism had created a dangerous environment, Warren struck back with a rousing defense:

He thinks it's fine to prosecute small business owners, it's fine to go hard after individuals who have no real resources, but don't criticize companies like Goldman Sachs and their very, very important CEO  that's what he's really saying.

The evidence doesn't stop there, but you get the pointit's overwhelming. From a political and philosophical standpoint, it's clear she aligns far more closely with Bernie Sanders than Hillary Clinton.

But that's not the same as an endorsement. Not even close.

Tulsi Gabbard, a Samoan-American congresswoman from Hawaii and a combat veteran who served in Iraq, quit her post as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday over objections that the organization was stacking the deck for Hillary Clinton. She endorsed Sanders on the basis that Clinton has shown a willingness to draw America into disastrous wars in the Middle Eastwars which she experienced firsthandand Sanders would exercise more sound judgment.

I cannot remain neutral any longer, she said in a video announcement. The stakes are just too high.

It's a principled stand, especially at a time when most analysts believe that Clinton will win the nomination. And it will come with serious consequencesthe Clintons are notoriously brutal on Democrats who break ranks, and in an interview with Brian Williams on MSNBC, Gabbard spoke about the warnings she received from fellow politicians (3:45 mark):

I'll be very honest with you, she said, a lot of people warned me against doing what I did. But this is a very serious issue, and what I did speaks to the high stakes that exist.

That's one approach to take, and as much as you might admire Gabbard, you have to understand that she may have just committed political suicide. Warren, who holds a place of esteem in the Senate, had opted for a different strategy. We can't see inside her head to know every detail, but a Politico piece that ran Monday, using sources close to Warren, gives us the clearest idea yet on how she's using her endorsement to consolidate and increase that power. Essentially, she seems to be holding out long enough to use her progressive bona fides as a bargaining chiptrading her cachet for power, with the goal of bringing the Sanders constituency back to Clinton for the general election at a time when many have vowed to stay at home.

If Clinton wins enough delegates by the end of March to become the presumptive Democratic nominee, Warren is expected to negotiate hard before giving her support to Clinton. In doing so, she could play a critical role helping to bring young, enthusiastic Sanders supporters into her fold.

Meanwhile, there was a sort of tacit truce at play in the state, with unspoken but serious terms: Hillary would keep the lines of communication open, and Warren wouldn't be punished with that famous Clinton vengefulness as long as she didn't endorse Sanders outright.

In politics, there are always calculations to be made. It's safe to say that Warren doesn't believe, in her heart of hearts, that Bernie Sanders has a chance to defeat Hillary Clinton and win the presidency. Therefore, alienating Clinton by endorsing her rival would only serve to diminish her own influence in the Senate, and by extension the whole progressive cause, with no tangible benefit. Instead, she's play the middle roadnot exactly backing Clinton, but staying close enough to avoid incurring her wrath, and in the process increasing her own value as one of the few Democrats who can credibly reach out to the progressive base on Clinton's behalf in November.

The day after Sanders' Massachusetts loss, there are plenty of understandable frustrations with Warren's tactic. But it's important, in the midst of the disappointment, to understand that politics is a long game, and Warren's approach isn't just about self-preservationthere's wisdom there too.

Let's be fair to both sides here. Warren wasn't wrong to play the system, but nor are Sanders supporters wrong to feel that in a critical momentwith an actual, real-life progressive fighting against ClintonWarren let them down. There's an incredible amount of passion behind Sanders, and among his core supporters, Warren approaches hero status. She's one of the few members of Congress who routinely fights for progressive causes with passion and a razor-like intelligence, and for many, she was the first choice for the role Sanders now occupies. In a system controlled by big money and corporate interests, she stood out for reliably fighting against the juggernaut. This timefacts are factsshe remained on the sideline.

So, sure, Sanders supporters have a right to be upset, and they have a right to be vocal. Predictably, they took to social media express this discontent, and even more predictably, Clinton supporters immediately tried to turn it into something sexistthat's pretty much their modus operandi. Before long, tweets like this one had begun to make the rounds:

At the link in question, there were 9,000 comments total when Brownworth posted, which means that for her claim to be true, all 9,000 would have to have been threats. Last night, I sorted for the top comments, and took a screen shot of the threats:

Those comments are intense, and impassioned, but they are not threats. Some of them are downright respectful, and the angry ones are only raising political points. For someone like Brownworth to use the word threats is the kind of deeply dishonest tactic that seems designed to divide the Democratic party along ideological lines and ensure that there will be no happy reunion after the nomination process.

Just now, to make sure I wasnt missing anything, I sorted by recent comments to see what was happening on that same post. The results:

Again, thats a lot of righteous anger. You might disagree with the logic behind some or all of the statements. But the words come from politically motivated Americans of both genders, and none of it falls to the level of harassment. Heres some more, using the previous comments button just above the most recent batch:

Again, nothing even approaching a threat. In fact, I havent seen even one example of sexism or harassment. I certainly have scrolled through thousands of comments, but Ive seen enough to know that if they exist, theyre unfortunate outliers, and not representative of the general tone, which is best described as disappointed or outraged.

Nevertheless, theres a budding movement to scold Sanders supporters for making their views public. Its almost as if the mere fact of their passion is offensive, and its nothing for people like Brownworthand so many othersto treat that passion as though it were actual offensive content.

But these are not threats. You know what they are? Examples of democracy, where people have the right to express political opinions. The truth is, Sanders supporters revere Elizabeth Warren. They even love her, because they know shes a fighter, and real fighters are in short demand. With the benefit of time, they may come to realize that she made the smart move in 2016, and actually helped the cause down the line. But for now, theyre disappointed, and this collective expression is actually beautiful, in its own wayits a sign that people care, and that at some level in this failing country, a passion for democracy still exists.

Warren is a smart politician, and theres wisdom in living to fight another day. I would urge all Sanders supporters to understand that. But I would urge everyone else to understand that they are not obliged to understand it. Not right now. Were not even 24 hours past the Massachusetts loss. This is the mourning period. This is the time for people to express sadness, and surprise, and yes, even anger.

Nobody can see the future, and progressive voters have good cause to mistrust notions of intangible gains waiting somewhere down the line. What they know right now is that they fought hard, and they came up short. And they know that in the midst of their battle, when they needed a powerful allywhen it would have made all the differenceElizabeth Warren was nowhere to be found.
ALCU's Anthony Romero tells CNN Money's Laurie Segall why they stand behind Apple in their fight against the FBI. "You have to think of the dissidents in China, the dissidents in Iran who rely upon the iPhone as a way to talk about human rights and democracy and the rule of law. And if the U.S. Government could force Apple to create a back door into the iPhone here then what's to stop the Chinese or Iranians requiring this very same backdoors so that they could hack into the iPhone's of their human rights activists. Those are the global implications."

In the bigger picture, China has already adopted new rules that could require Apple to build a back door in the future. So it's not only the U.S. that thinks a back door is needed in software. In January 2015, The New York Times reported that "The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars' worth of business in China."

It was also reported earlier today in Europe that "Brazil jails Facebook executive for refusing to share WhatsApp data." Facebook has called the arrest of its Latin America vice president "extreme and disproportionate". Diego Dzodan, an Argentine national, was detained after repeatedly refusing to comply with court orders to hand over data for use in a criminal investigation into drugs trafficking,

Judge Marcel Maia Montalvao has on two previous occasions issued fines against Facebook for refusing to release WhatsApp data. The information, he said, was needed as part 'secrete judicial investigations involving organised crime and drug trafficking."

So yes, the global implications are real. Yet at some point in time governments around the world could very realistically begin banning smartphones and apps form entering their country should they be designed in such a way that they can't be accessed by law enforcement through traditional court orders. Back in November we posted a report titled "New UK Law to Forbid Apple & Google from Creating Encryption that Can't be Opened for Law Enforcement or Spy Agencies."

The report noted that "Officially, measures in the new Investigatory Powers Bill will place in law a requirement on tech firms and service providers to be able to provide unencrypted communications to the police or spy agencies if requested through a warrant."

In the end, Apple is taking on the government and is gathering support from all corners of the country including Judge James Orenstein from New York's Eastern District who ruled against the DOJ's drug investigation that was trying to force Apple to open an iPhone. Yet at some point in time should international pressure lock out iPhones in the market place outside of the U.S., it's hard to see Apple allowing their business to be destroyed on principle alone. How far will Apple take this fight? Only time will tell.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 4am to 6pm PST and sporadically over the weekend.
Earlier today we posted a report titled "ALCU: The FBI vs. Apple Case has Global Implications." In that report we pointed to foreign governments stepping up their legislation to address the encryption issue. Since then we've learned that the extreme French Socialist MP Yann Galut has proposed an amendment to French law that - if passed - would see US tech companies like Apple and Google punished if they refuse to give French officials backdoor access to terrorists' phones.

In France last year, there were eight phones that were inaccessible to police - all tied in some way to terror attacks, reports Le Parisien. Galut said on Monday that companies like Apple and Google should be fined up to 1 million when they didn't cooperate in such cases.

Galut told the reporter that "We are faced with a legal vacuum when it comes to data encryption, and it's blocking judicial investigations. Only money will force these extremely powerful companies like Apple and Google to comply."

Galut added that Apple and Google are operating under "total bad faith. "They are hiding behind a supposed privacy protection, but they're quick to make commercial use of personal data that they're collecting," he said.

As all governments promise, Galut stressed that his proposed amendment would not affect the privacy of the common public, only those who are under investigation.

Apple Scores a Victory in the UK

Contrary to what France is considering, the UK has significantly backed off their stance against Apple. If you remember, back in December Apple's CEO called on the UK government to scale back snooper's charter, and it appears that for the time being at least, they've done just that.

On Tuesday, the revised Investigatory Powers Bill went to UK's House of Commons. In some ways, the bill will ease up on Apple and Google. A UK report states that "A Home Office source said: 'The Bill clarifies the Government's position on encryption, putting beyond doubt that companies can only be asked to remove encryption that they themselves have applied, and only where it is practicable for them to do so. This will make clear that the Government is not asking companies to weaken their security by undermining encryption."

The report further noted that "Prime Minister David Cameron said terrorists, paedophiles and criminals must not be allowed a 'safe space' online where they could hide with no fear that they would be hacked by the security services.

But after being persuaded about the important role encoding communications played in the protection of legitimate online activity such as banking, shopping and personal data, the Government is to clarify its position in the Investigatory Powers Bill."

A source within the government stated that "This is world-leading legislation, setting out in unprecedented detail the powers available to the police and security services to gather and access communications and communications data, subject to a robust regulatory regime.

'Terrorists and criminals are operating online and we need to ensure the police and security services can keep pace with the modern world and continue to protect the British public from the many serious threats we face.'"

At the end of the day, the UK backed off. This is likely due to Apple's CEO pointing out that online commerce services such as Apple Pay, which is now available in the UK, uses encryption to secure accounts. Without it, user accounts could be compromised causing real everyday havoc for local law enforcement.

About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 4am to 6pm PST and sporadically over the weekend.
Once again, yesterday we looked at a basic breakdown of the 350+ responses to a poll of Buddhists on the 2016 US Presidential Race. Today well look at some of the breakdowns coming from deeper analysis. As mentioned, due to a change in platforms, I could only export and analyse data from the final 269 submissions made on the Google Form. Those make up the basis for the analysis below.

(see my last post for analysis of race/ethnicity)

In this post well look at the data based on age and gender.

First, age.

Three respondents were under the age of 18 (two of them do not plan to vote in this election, but one does). All three of them selected Bernie Sanders.

Our 18  29 group has 40 respondents. Of those 40,

35 selected Bernie Sanders (87.5%)

2 selected Hillary Clinton (5%)

2 wrote in Jill Stein (5%)

1 selected Donald Trump (2.5%)

The 30  44 age group has 53 people in it, selecting (with one selecting none):

39 for Bernie Sanders (74%)

6 for Hillary Clinton (11%)

3 for Ted Cruz (6%)

2 for Jill Stein (4%)

1 for Marco Rubio (2%)

1 for Donald Trump (2%)

45  59 year old voters  88 in all  selected:

50 for Bernie Sanders (57%)

23 for Hillary Clinton (26%)

4 for Marco Rubio (5%)

2 for Jill Stein (2%)

2 for Donald Trump (2%)

2 for Ben Carson (2%)

1 for Ted Cruz (1%)

1 for Anarchist (1%) and 1 other wrote in TBD while a final respondent wrote in down ballot left radical

Eighty 60+ year old respondents selected:

41 for Bernie Sanders (51%)

34 for Hillary Clinton (42.5) one of them writing in Clinton, but with difficulty

2 for Marco Rubio (2%)

1 for Donald Trump (1%)  two others selected none

This strongly reinforces various reporting elsewhere that shows Bernie Sanders dominating the young vote.

~

And by gender.

As noted in yesterdays post and the earlier one today the poll data is heavily skewed toward white, middle class men. As mentioned, this is something I hope to work on and will hopefully get some help from friends on in future polls. The gender breakdown was: 92 Females, 169 Males, and 4 in the other category: 1 Genderqueer, 1 human, 1 Non-binary, and 1 trans.

The female respondents selected:

50 for Bernie Sanders (54%)

35 for Hillary Clinton (38%)

2 for Donald Trump (2%)

2 for Marco Rubio (2%)

1 for Ted Cruz (1%)

The male respondents selected:

116 for Bernie Sanders (69%)

29 for Hillary Clinton (17%)

5 for Jill Stein (all write-ins) (3%)

4 for Marco Rubio (2%)

3 for Donald Trump (2%)

3 for Ted Cruz (2%)

1 for John Kasich (1%)

The others gave two votes to Hillary Clinton (50%), one to Jill Stein (25%) and one to Bernie Sanders (25%)

Here we can see a very clear difference between male and female respondents, with Bernie Sanders getting selected by 15% more of the males who took the pole and Hillary Clinton getting over double the support (21%) from females in the poll. Also noteworthy were the five Jill Stein write-ins by male voters and the one from the other category. Stein will be added as an option in future polls.

I think Ill call it good with this data. Ive learned a lot (dont use SurveyMonkey) and will be asking for help on future surveys to get better responses from women and the Asian American Buddhist community. With larger Asian Buddhist turnout we should  as per Jeff Wilsons writing in our last post  see more responses in favor of Republican candidates. Hopefully this will allow us to chart how opinions shift as the field there thins. Similarly, despite Hillary Clintons strong turnout today, Bernie Sanders has vowed to stay in the primaries until all states have voted. That means well have plenty of time for his either gaining or losing support among Buddhists.

A friend suggested I add a cradle vs convert question and Im strongly considering this, as many Asian Buddhists (himself included) are in fact converts and do not align in general with cradle Buddhists such as those mentioned in Wilsons writing (Anti-Communism drives many such Buddhists into the Republican Party, as does similar views on traditional values, economic policy, patriotism, and other issues.). A third option here would be sympathizers or individuals who hold other religious affiliation but are influenced by Buddhism in thought and/or practice. Thoughts on this question would be welcome.

I also plan to ask respondents to select Asian, Black, Latin@, Mixed, Native American, and White. This is based on largest groupings of self-identified race/ethnicity on the recent poll. There will be an option to further elaborate on any or select other and fill in a precise self-identification.

There were a large number of Unitarian Universalists included in the other under religious affiliation, so that will also be added as a category.

Stay in touch with American Buddhist Perspectives on Facebook:
I majored in Political Science in college because I wanted to make a positive change in the world. As an atheist, I saw civic duty as my ultimate responsibility and politics as the highest realm of reality.

But even as an atheist, I was conflicted when I went to the voting booth. I was pro-life, based on the natural law argument against abortion. But I was also appalled when we went to war with Iraq under the flimsiest of pretenses. So, I ping ponged between parties as a young voter and eventually registered as an Independent when I became Catholic. Since the day I cast my first vote in high school, my heart has been conflicted.

Each election season that comes around, I feel unenthused at best. I still go out to vote. I consider voting to be the duty of anyone who is lucky enough to live in a country that recognizes the right. But I never walk away from the voting booth feeling excited or happy about my vote. This is especially the case now that I am a Catholic living in a country where both major parties fail to adequately represent the views of my faith.

Check out my list over at Aleteia: 5 Ways to Stay Sane During Election Season

If you have any of your own suggestions, please let me know. A reader had a good suggestion to do activities in nature.

And one other thing I have tried the past couple days to relieve election-related stress is to look at pictures of pugs.

See, it works!

I also highly recommend perusing Doug the Pugs Facebook page.
Patna: Functioning at the Patna University remained paralyzed on Thursday as the strike by the non-teaching staff entered into its third day with no sign of a let up in sight.

Staging a dharna outside the Patna University office, the protestors said the university administration had shown no empathy for their poor plight and instead, had chosen to ignore their long-standing demands ranging from pay regularization to building of clean toilets in the campus.

The strike, that has already forced the university administration to postpone exams affecting hundreds of college students, is expected to get a shot in the arm as other university employee unions gear up to extend their support to the ongoing stir.

Meanwhile, the students wing of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), in support of the strike, burnt tires and outside the university office and blocked the busy Ashok Rajpath for more than two hours. Demanding the resignation of PU Vice Chancellor Dr. Y. C. Simahadri, the agitators burnt his effigy to express their anger.
Patna: Former Chief Minister of Bihar Jitan Ram Manjhi, speaking at a daylong public convention of the farmers, dalits, mahadalits, backwards, and extreme backward castes at Sri Krishna Memorial Hall in Patna on Tuesday, accused the Nitish government of extreme corruption and demanded a CBI probe in the irregularities in the purchase of food-grains.

Manjhi, the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) chief, said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was hand in glove with middlemen and brokers resulting in the death of the farmers in Bihar.

"There are middlemen who are making a killing in commission with a portion of it being delivered to the Chief Minister's bungalow. Nitish Kumar also needs to learn some lessons from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in frugality. While Kejriwal is very thrifty in spending public money, Kumar acts like Bihar has unlimited source of money," the former CM said.

Manjhi also cast aspersions on Kumar's claim of good governance in Bihar.

"Crime numbers have never been higher in Bihar where Jungle Raj is prevailing once again. Corruption is at its extreme and the money meant for scholarship to SC/ST students are being pocketed by corrupt officials. Fake companies have been opened and money that belongs to the public is being siphoned into these fake accounts," he said.

Former Education Minister and JD-U leader Brishan Patel also echoed Manjhi's concerns.

"Since the Grand Alliance government has come into power, cases of rape, murder, and robbery have gone considerably up but the government continues to remain in an alternate world where everything is milk and honey," Patel said.
Iran President Calls For Privatization Of Car Industry, Foreign Partnerships

03/02/16

Source: RFE/RL

President Hassan Rohani has called for foreign partnerships to boost Iran's car industry, and said the sector must be privatized to improve its competitiveness.



Iranian president Hassan Rohani at ceremony to mark Saipa's entry to Iran's auto market

(photo by Islamic Republic News Agency)



Rohani made the comments at an international carmakers' conference in Tehran on March 1, after international sanctions against Iran were lifted in January in connection with a July nuclear deal with world powers.

Partnerships with prominent world carmakers will allow the sector to "reach to the optimum point in technology, protecting the environment, saving energy and safety," Rohani said.

The market should be "completely privatized and competitive," he added.

But Rohani warned that plan would mean removing protections for the domestic car market, saying that "government support cannot be everlasting."





(photo by ISNA)





The Iranian state currently controls about half of the car sector.

Last month, France's PSA Peugeot Citroen signed a joint venture agreement with automaker Iran Khodro to make 200,000 cars a year.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Cyberspace, Expanding Space for Iranians to Protest

03/02/16

By Siavosh Ahmadi (Qom) - Source: Radio Zamaneh

The February 2016 elections revealed once more that the openness of the internet defuses policies of censorship and repression to a certain degree. Iranians have used the internet as a tool in the service of social resistance since the elections of 2005.

Hamid, a 33-year-old seminarian from Qom Seminary, believes the use of cyberspace in the elections is amazing. He says all factions benefited from the space provided by the internet but he believes that for reformists as an opposition group, cyberspace has been of vital importance:

I believe for both factions and but especially for the one with the lesser opportunities, cyberspace was of vital importance. Simply by circulating the lists and video clips, they managed to consolidate their forces as a viable alternative. They used it to dissuade those who were thinking of boycotting the elections and also solidified their support. Without Telegram, the conservatives would not have suffered much; they have other tools that the reformists do not have. Reformists were not even allowed to publish (former reformist president) Mohammad Khatamis statements about the candidate lists in official media outlets.

Shahin, a 38-year-old English major who runs a small publishing house in Tehran, says one of the characteristics of the cyberspace news circulation during the elections was to provide a more organizational and party-oriented view of the elections:

I was mostly following the parties rather than individuals though the internet. Perhaps because of what I was getting through cyberspace, I was persuaded to go to the ballot box and vote for people I did not know but whose political affiliations were familiar to me.

Mehdi, a 30-year-old Azeri student living in Tehran who was also active in the reformist campaigns in 2013, says: Any event that happened in real space would only get to the people through cyberspace. A wave was created in cyberspace that brought back many who had turned their backs on the ballot box. We had nothing in real space to rally people to participate in the elections. Videos, images, news etc. all got to people through the internet. Even the list that we recommended to the people was sent to them through their mobiles. Voters mostly had their eyes on their mobiles in voting stations. All of the coordination efforts by campaign headquarters were done through Telegram.



The role of social media on Iran elections

cartoon by Ali Miraee, Shargh daily





Mahmoud, a sailor and labourer in Abadan, says:

If I had not found my preferred list in cyberspace, I would not have had any other access to it. To tell you the truth, at first I was not going to vote at all.

Mohsen, an independent journalist in Tehran, spoke at length about the influence of cyberspace on the current elections. He believes election campaigning started very early in cyberspace and many voters were persuaded to go to the ballots through cyberspace advertising.

People were afraid that their votes would not count and, like other times, despair and a lack of confidence were holding people back. Then the issue of disqualifications exacerbated the despair. It should not be forgotten that a significant portion of the public still did not vote. It is most noteworthy that cyberspace was exploited to draw the most advantageous result from the participants and the minimal number of favourable candidates. After the widespread disqualifications, creating focus and a sense of shared interests was fruitful. Reformists and their supporters managed to create waves of news and promos through cyberspace on social networking sites like Telegram to get the best results, and they managed to persuade and give hope to a large portion of the public in large cities.

From Cyberspace to Street Space

The use of cyberspace in Iranian election campaigns is not a new development and it probably dates back to the presidential election of 2005; however, it was in 2009 that the internet was pushed beyond election campaigning and was used as a tool to promote street protests, allowing election protesters to organize their protests more effectively and causing serious concern for the regime. This history was perhaps the reason why several government organizations were tasked with monitoring the activities of Iranian internet users in the months leading up to the latest elections, with repeated statements of concern regarding the use of the internet in election campaigns and possible protests.

Statistics regarding internet users in Iran are varied. Some sources indicate that by 2015, 40 percent of the population used the internet. Sources close to the Islamic Republic released some statistics regarding the impact of the internet on the elections, which indicated that 10 million Iranians maintained an active presence on the internet. In addition to administrative services, they use the internet to maintain an active presence in political, social and intellectual forums. The report maintains that the number of users went from two million in 2013 to 10 million in 2015.

The Internet at the Service of Protest and Resistance

These statistics reveal a tsunami of Iranians turning to the internet. With the popularity of smart phones increasing daily, there is no doubt that Iranians will be using the internet more and more.

Recent history shows that as more Iranians turn to using the internet, protesters and dissidents are provided with greater persuasive advertising tools to have a real impact on events such as the elections. Therefore, it would appear that the proven power of cyberspace to promote hope among the public to change the political situation of the country through political participation will cause the Islamic regime greater problems in dealing with cyberspace in future elections.
Campaign reports on Iranian women's advances in election

03/02/16

Source: Radio Zamaneh

The Campaign to Change the Masculine Face of Parliament ended its activities on Monday February 29 with a statement following the final election results. In its statement, the campaign restated its mission to influence the country's political atmosphere to the advantage of women.



source: Feminist School



The campaign pursued various strategies to "increase the presence of women in law-making bodies" and to inform candidates of women's demands in various strata of society.

The campaign also highlighted the report cards of former candidates who had shown sexist or anti-women tendencies to guide voters in their decisions.

The statement also reveals that the activists were often summoned by the authorities and questioned about their activities.

The campaign reports that the number of women who registered to run in the elections was five time greater than ever.

So far, 14 women have won seats in the next Parliament and that number may increase as eight other women move on to the second round of the election.

The highest number of women in the Islamic Republic Parliament has been 14, which was in the fifth Parliament.

Prior to the Revolution, the last Iranian Parliament had 20 female MPs.
SAN FRANCISCOAt the RSA Conference here, many luminaries of the security community have shown support for Apple as the FBI attempts to compel the company to bypass its own security features in order to gain access to an iPhone. But some of Apple's strongest support came from what at first might seem like an unlikely ally: Microsoft.

Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith took his time on the RSA Conference stage to talk about the importance of trust in the technology industry. But it didn't take long for Smith to link that discussion to Apple's legal fight. "We have a responsibility I believe to help keep the public safe," said Smith. "That's one of the points that Apple is trying to make in the courts today."

Smith went on to say that technology companies should "stand up for and stand with Apple in this new important case." The fiery remarks were met with applause from the audience of security technology pros.

Breaking down the FBI's request to Apple, Smith described the law at the center of the argumentThe All Writs Actas something "most lawyers seldom talk about." The law was originally written in 1789, and Smith said it was most recently updated in 1911.

"The most advanced computing device...sold in that era was an adding machine," said Smith, holding an antique adding machine before the audience. "We do not need our courts to define 21st century technology with laws that come from the era of the adding machine."

Smith also voiced support for strong encryption. "There is no technology more important than encryption," he said. The FBI, the U.S. Attorney General, and others have voiced increasing concern that encrypted systems impede law enforcement, allowing terrorists and criminals to hide their communications. Smith dismissed this notion.

"Despite the best of intention, the path to hell starts at the backdoor," he said. "We need to make sure encryption technology stays strong."

Doing Our Part

But Smith also pointed out that Microsoft (and, indeed Apple) has a long history of working with law enforcement. Microsoft has worked with domestic and international police to help bring down the Citadel botnet. Smith pointed to the days after the deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, saying the company received numerous legal requests from governments asking for information about the attackers. Smith proudly related how Microsoft was able to respond, determine if the orders were lawful, pull the content, and turn it over in under 30 minutes.

Despite that support, Smith was critical of the oblique manner in which the U.S. government sometimes operates. "We believe emphatically that when a government wants to investigate a business, they should go to the business and serve a warrant to the business and not go to the cloud service provider instead."

"Cloud computing should not change that balance, business should have a right to know."

A Better Way

Smith said that a balance needs to be struck between what can be done and what should be done in the cases of technology and privacy. "That balance should not be struck by those of us who are unelected, but by those who are. We need governments who strike the balance, but it needs to be a well-informed balance." In that light, Smith voiced support for efforts by Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and Sen. Mark Warner to create a board(Opens in a new window) of cryptography experts to advise Congress.

"Law, and especially technology law do not improve with age," said Smith. "The world is going to trust technology only if the law can catch up."

If you're concerned about security and surveillance, consider getting one of the best VPN services to protect your Web browsing.
SAN FRANCISCOAttorney General Loretta Lynch addressed the Apple-FBI controversy at the RSA Security Conference here, and while she was insightful and gracious, Lynch was unequivocal that Apple should comply with the request.

During a speech to the gathered audience and a hard-hitting discussion with Bloomberg West anchor Emily Chang, Lynch covered many subjects related to technology and law enforcement. Her early statements touched on the shared responsibility of government and industry to help prosecute criminals. She also highlighted several Department of Justice successes, like the destruction of the Dark0de cybercrime forum, and a newly announced initiative to help American companies comply with requests for information from U.K. law enforcement without exposing unnecessary information. But all of this was prelude to Lynch's comments on Apple's refusal to help the FBI unlock a phone used by the San Bernardino shooters.

"Going dark is a very real issue," said Lynch. She was referring to a concern held by government and law enforcement that the spread of strong, encrypted storage and communication systems prevents the interception or retrieval of information. She called the issue a "very real threat to law enforcement's mission to protect public safety and hold people accountable."

But at the same time, Lynch said that she is a proponent of strong encryption. "Encryption does make us safer. I support encryption, and have been someone who has been focused on that," she said, indicating that there doesn't need to be a trade-off between encryption and law enforcement's efforts. "I think we can have both."

She stressed throughout her time at RSA that what she wants first and foremost is ongoing discussion. "We don't have to be locked in perpetual and perfect agreement," she said. "But we do have to be engaged in open dialog so we can draw from each other's resources and hear each other's concerns."

But that did not stop her from dismissing Apple's response to the FBI request, which was built around a First and Fifth Amendment argument, the latter of which deals with a person's right to not present information that would incriminate themselves.

"Apple is not a target in this matter. We're not alleging that they have done anything wrong," explained Lynch. "There's no self incrimination involved."

As to the company's First Amendment argument, Lynch was a little more flexible. The question of whether or not code is free speech is a very interesting one, she said, and one that that will have to be addressed in the future. "Those are fascinating issues that drive this case, but they're not going to drive how we in law enforcement address these issues."

As to the argument that the FBI's use of the All Writs Act, a law which has its roots centuries ago, Lynch disagreed with the notion that the law was behind technology. "The law has a wonderful elastic quality to cover the issues that develop," she said. "We try to advance it in a way that keeps it current, keeps it relevant."

She also dismissed Apple CEO Tim Cook's assertion that the FBI's request would be like a cancer. "I don't think the older versions of iPhone were cancer," quipped Lynch. She went on to point out that previously, Apple had no problem fulfilling the requests of law enforcement and indeed, Apple has already assisted in this particular case by giving the FBI access to an older backup of the phone in question.

"I think Apple's a great company, and they do an excellent job of protecting data while also maintaining the ability to comply with court orders and use that data for their own purposes," said Lynch.

She also dismissed the notion that the court request Apple is fighting represents a slippery slope. The request, she said, was issued by a judge and targeted to a specific device. The FBI, she said, was only asking Apple to develop the tool to help the FBI open the device; not to open it themselves, nor keep the tool they used to unlock it in the first place.

"Our ability to go into devices has to be limited, has to be focused, and has to be specific...this is not a request to rummage around," said Lynch. "But I do think there are other obligations as well. With the ability to live in this country to make these beautiful things, comes the responsibility [to work under this framework of laws].

"Do we let one company decide all these issues for all of us? We don't do that in any other area."

The one theme Lynch returned to again and again throughout her time at RSA was dialog. "People have very strongly held beliefs and we have strongly held obligations." She concluded her talk by asking companies to continue to create, but to also be open to working with law enforcement.

"Keep talking to us because we want to talk with you," she said.

If you're concerned about security and surveillance, consider getting one of the best VPN services to protect your Web browsing.
French police are calling on parents to stop posting photos of their children on Facebook.

The authorities say that posting photos of their children to the world's largest social network could create a scenario in which their kids' privacy is violated or parents land in jail, according(Opens in a new window) to The Telegraph.

According to the report, the French police are particularly concerned about the possibility of pedophiles using Facebook to view photos of children online. However, the police have also said that the photos could be used for identity theft. And in the event children eventually don't like that their images are shared, they reserve the legal right to sue parents.

France has some of the most stringent policies in Europe related to data and personal privacy. They state that social-media users must have consent before posting photos or personal information about another person online which, according to The Telegraph, extends to children.

In its most recent warning on the topic, French police urged all parents to "protect your children." They also highlighted that French privacy laws allow for the possibility of facing one year in jail and a 45,000 euro fine (nearly $49,000) for each instance of sharing a person's information or photo without his or her consent.

For its part, Facebook has acknowledged that privacy is a real concern on its service and has worked over the last several years to simplify settings. With a few clicks, users can quickly hide their profiles, only allow certain people to see photos, and more. But Facebook told The Telegraph that it may establish a notification system in France alerting parents to the legal restraints they face there whenever they post pictures of their kids online.
A recent cyber attack on Ukraine's power utilities that plunged hundreds of cities into darkness could be replicated in the U.S., according to Obama administration officials. Investigators concluded that highly skilled hackers stole the credentials of system operators and learned how to switch off circuit breakers, the New York Times reports(Opens in a new window).

The Ukrainian government condemned the attacks, accusing the Russians of targeting their country's power grid as a form of political intimidation. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security report(Opens in a new window) issued on Feb. 25 does not mention Russian involvement, saying only that the Ukranian power companies had been infected with so-called BlackEnergy and KillDisk malware.

The report concludes that the hackers conducted extensive surveillance of the power companies' networks in order to gain access credentials. Then, in a series of coordinated attacks on three facilities less than 30 minutes of each other, they used remote control systems to turn off the circuit breakers, plunging 225,000 people into darkness.

It's a scenario that could easily happen in the U.S., and power companies have known for some time that their systems are vulnerable. Just a few days before the Dec. 23 attack in Ukraine, an Associated Press investigation(Opens in a new window) found hackers had infiltrated American power systems so extensively that they could set off massive power outages whenever they want to.

Part of the reason for this vulnerability is that U.S. power utilities are largely controlled by private investors who may have little incentive to beef up security, according to the AP. But government systems aren't immune either, as evidenced by a recent IRS data breach that involved multiple attempts to access taxpayer accounts.

That attack was much bigger than the IRS originally thought. An internal investigation(Opens in a new window) announced last week found that more than 390,000 taxpayer accounts were compromised in addition to those previously discovered, for a total of more than 700,000 affected taxpayers(Opens in a new window). That's in addition to an attempt to steal more than 400,000 Social Security numbers in order to generate e-file PINs, which the IRS also announced(Opens in a new window) last month.
Getting IT to work smoothly is a challenge even when all the parts are in-house, but thats nothing compared with the widely dispersed Internet of Things. Enter Red Hat and Eurotech, which on Tuesday announced a new partnership aimed at simplifying the integration of all those IoT pieces.

Italy-based Eurotech offers machine-to-machine platforms and other IoT products. Red Hat plans to combine its open-source Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss middleware with Eurotechs Everyware Software Framework and Eurotech Everyware Cloud to create an end-to-end architecture for IoT. This will let enterprises integrate operational data from computing equipment at the edge of the network with cloud-based back-end services.

Enterprise IoT needs computing capability at the edges of networks so companies dont have to ship masses of data to the cloud for real-time processing. Instead, data aggregation and transformation, plus data integration and routing, can take place close to the operational devices.

Promising better security, manageability and application support for IoT systems, the two companies will offer data, device and embedded application management services.

This is a logical move in the IoT as both these firms have strong open-source software strategies, said Alfonso Velosa III, a research vice president with Gartner.

Those strategies also are generally complementary, Velosa said, so this has the potential to help drive IoT solutions and some integration facilitation in the market.

However, for the foreseeable future, most IoT projects will be heavily customized, so vertical industry expertise will remain more critical than horizontal solutions, he said.

Red Hat and Eurotech will need to pick vertical markets and start to roll out solutions for them to make this as competitive as possible, he said. They will also need to ensure that the developer experience is as robust and easy to use as possible to encourage developers at system integrators, OEMs and other enterprises to use it.
The inventors of public key cryptography have won the 2015 Turing Award, just as a contentious debate kicks off in Washington over how much protection encryption should really provide.

The Association for Computing Machinery announced Tuesday that Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman received the ACM Turing Award for their contributions to cryptography.

The two are credited with the invention of public key cryptography, which is widely used to scramble data so it can be sent securely between users and websites, and to protect information on devices like smartphones and computer hard drives.

The ability for two parties to communicate privately over a secure channel is fundamental for billions of people around the world, ACM said in a statement.

By coincidence or design, the award was announced at almost the exact moment that a hearing on encryption got under way in Washington, D.C., before the House Judiciary Committee.

Lawmakers are hearing testimony on how they should balance the right to privacy with the needs of law enforcement to access encrypted data for national security reasons and to solve crimes.

Representatives from Apple and the FBI, who are battling in court over access to an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters, are testifying at the hearing.

Diffie was chief security officer at the former Sun Microsystems and Hellman is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University. Their paper from 1976, New Directions in Cryptography, introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the Internet today, the ACM noted.

In the system they invented, the public key is used to encrypt data, while the private key, which never leaves the receiving device, is used to decrypt it. The system is designed so that anyone who knows the public key cant calculate the private key, even though the two are linked.

The Turing Award is named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped crack the Enigma coding machine used by Germany in World War II, depicted in the film The Imitation Game.

The award comes with a $1 million prize. In a blog post Tuesday, Hellman said he would use his half of the money to further a project to curtail nuclear proliferation and conflict.

ACM didnt immediately reply to a question about the timing of the announcement. It also coincided with a panel at the RSA security show in San Francisco where Diffie and Hellman were speaking.
Theyre not the kind of thing you might expect to see on a battlefield, but a four-wheeled robot recently tested by the U.S. Marines could help make better soldiers.

The robots are a replacement for the paper targets typically used on military firing ranges and will trundle out from behind walls and buildings to provide a more realistic training environment.

John Baker/DOD Autonomous Robotic Human Type Targets make their way off of a firing range Feb. 18, 2016, at Camp Pendleton, California.

They look a little goofysomething like the upper half of a mannequin grafted onto a piece of construction machinerybut theyre more than that.

The robots use a GPS guidance system and laser-based obstacle avoidance system that can sense objects up to 25 meters away. The robots can be remotely controlled by an operator from a laptop and will even send back data on when and where they were hit by bullets.

John Baker/DOD Sgt. Thomas Sereika shoots at the Autonomous Robotic Human Type Target on Feb. 18, at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Marines from the 1st Marine Division tested them out recently at Camp Pendleton in California and the initial response was good.

The Department of Defense released video of the exercise, showing Marines shooting at the targets. The targets indicated when they had been hit by the upper body portion falling at an angle.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the robots is their endurance. The manufacturer says each robot can be shot thousands of times while still maintaining its structure.
AMDs stutter-stopping FreeSync display tech no longer requires DisplayPort, thanks to Samsungs new CF591 and CF390 monitors.

FreeSync works with AMD graphics cards to keep the displays refresh rate in sync with a games current framerate. This helps avoid the tearing effect that can occur with fixed refresh rate monitors, without the stuttering induced by V-Sync.

Until now, FreeSync has only worked with DisplayPort, which tends to appear on more expensive monitors. (Nvidias rival G-Sync technology has the same limitation.) But last December, AMD vowed to open up FreeSync to HDMI, while also bringing the tech to some gaming laptops.

Samsungs CF591 (27-inch) and CF390 (23.5 and 27 inches) monitors are the first to support FreeSync over HDMI. Both are curved 1080p panels, with 4ms response time, 250-nit brightness, 3000:1 contrast ratio, and an 1800 mm radius of curvature thats much tighter than Samsungs previous efforts. The CF591 also has built-in 5-watt speakers, a slicker silver-and-white design, and DisplayPort 1.2, while the CF390 is HDMI and D-Sub only.

Samsung hasnt yet said how much these monitors will cost, but plans to launch them this month in the United States, Europe, and Asia. FreeSync requires an AMD graphics card that supports the technology, and the new HDMI support should work just fine with existing FreeSync-compatible cards. Acer and LG also have FreeSync-over-HDMI displays in the works.

Why this matters: Freesync monitors were already less expensive than their G-Sync counterparts, as they dont require any special hardware modules like Nvidias tech does. With HDMI support, FreeSync should start heading to even cheaper monitors, making the elimination of stuttering and tearing a bit more accessibleat least for AMD graphics card owners.
Attorneys for Apple have filed a notice that could change who hears its Riverside federal court fight with the FBI.

The tech giant is fighting to stop an order for Apple to create software that will help federal investigators hack an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shooting.

A notice of objection filed on late deadline Tuesday under an abundance of caution, could take the case out of U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pyms court and before a federal district court judge. There was no immediate word if that might affect the March 22 hearing date Pym had scheduled.

In a hearing at which Apple attorneys were not present, Pym on Feb. 16 ordered Apple to aid the FBI in hacking the San Bernardino County-issued phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, a health inspector for the county who with wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 and wounded 22 in the massacre at the Inland Regional Center on Dec. 2.

Both died in a shootout with police a few hours later.

By formally objecting to Pyms order, Apple opens the way for a federal judge to consider the matter. Magistrate judges are hired by the jurists of the federal court district in which they serve. Federal judges are appointed for life after nomination by the president and confirmation of the U.S. Senate.

Apple last week filed a motion to vacate the order.

Apple attorneys also asked Pym to take judicial notice of the ruling earlier this week by another federal magistrate in Brooklyn who denied a similar FBI request for help in hacking an iPhone in a drug case.

In that ruling, the Brooklyn judge said the government had gone beyond the constitutional boundaries of the 1789 All Writs Act, which it used on both coasts to argue for the FBI to get Apples help.

Apple characterized the FBIs request in the Brooklyn case as a request far less burdensome than the order sought in the Riverside case.

Also Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Apple in its case against the FBI.

Law enforcement may not commandeer innocent third parties into becoming its undercover agents, its spies, or its hackers, the brief said.

The effect of the governments demands would be to conscript a private party with little connection to the governments criminal investigation into breaking the security of its own products and, thereby, weakening the security of all its users, the ACLU document said.

Two data-privacy advocate organizations, Access Now and Wickr Foundation, sought permission Wednesday to file briefs in the case, while U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym struck bids by the Electronic Frontier and Privacy International groups for failing to get authorization.

More than two dozen tech firms including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and Verizon are expected to either file or add their names to briefs defending Apples decision to fight Pyms order.

Private attorney Stephen Larson and San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos are also expected to file briefs backing the FBI, on behalf of the shooting victims and their families.

The deadline for the friend-of-the-court briefs is Thursday, March 3.

First document

NOTICE OF OBJECTIONS TO FEBRUARY 16, 2016 ORDER COMPELLING APPLE INC. TO ASSIST AGENTS IN SEARCH

Second document

NOTICE OF SUPPLEMENTAL AUTHORITY IN SUPPORT OF APPLE INC.S MOTION TO VACATE ORDER COMPELLING APPLE INC.

RELATED:

FBI, Apple feud hits Congress

Victims family supports Apples iPhone position

NY judge rules against FBI in similar case

Police Department to receive award for locating suspects

Apple says county, FBI at fault in iPhone case

Encryption is hardest question Ive seen, says FBIs Comey

Court action for victims and families will be filed next week

Q&A on the Apple vs. Justice Department court fight

Complete coverage of the San Bernardino shooting, aftermath
Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who briefly led the Republican presidential race before his campaign began an extended public implosion, will tell his supporters in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he does not see a path forward and will not attend Thursdays debate in Detroit, according to two Republicans familiar with his plans.

Carson, however, will not formally suspend his campaign. Instead, the Republicans said, he has decided to make a speech about his political future on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, just outside of Washington.

But the announcement will serve as an acknowledgement that Carsons candidacy is all but over following a disappointing showing in the 11 states that held contests on Tuesday.

The decision follows months of candidate stumbles, staff infighting and strategy shifts derailing what had once appeared to be an unstoppable journey to conservative superstardom. It also marks the coming departure of the only major the only major African-American candidate in the 2016 presidential race.

Carson, 64, burst onto the political scene in early 2013 when, addressing the typically nonpartisan National Prayer Breakfast, he spoke about the dangers of political correctness, put forward the idea of a flat tax and criticized President Barack Obamas health-care law. What made it stand out is that he did it right beside a steely-faced Obama.

That week, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial titled Ben Carson for President. By August of that year, there was a National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Before he launched his presidential bid in this past May, the group had raised close to $16 million, gotten a half-million signatures encouraging Carson to run and had 30,000 active volunteers across the country, according to organizers.

The media whirlwind was hardly his first brush with fame. Before he took the conservative world by storm, Carson was famous for an up-from-his-bootstraps life story, from impoverished childhood to a high-profile neurosurgery career. He was, at 33, the youngest major division director in Johns Hopkins Hospital history, and he was the first pediatric neurosurgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head. He wrote a best-selling book, Gifted Hands, about his life, which later became a television movie.

The same bluntness that catapulted him into contention in a year that favored plain-spoken insurgents and outsider candidates earned him criticism as well. He found himself in political hot water for calling the Affordable Care Act the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery, saying the current-day United States is very much like Nazi Germany and predicting that allowing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized bestiality.

Even his political team admitted from the start that perhaps he needed to work on his messaging. If I could create the Websters dictionary of words Dr. Carson could use in the campaign, there would be some words Id leave out, his former campaign chairman, Terry Giles, told The Washington Post before Carson officially jumped into the race in May. Later, when Donald Trump grabbed headlines, the usually mild-mannered Carson was urged to dial it up and take the mogul on more aggressively.

Carson resisted that advice as well. Until the end, he sought to offer himself to Republicans as a calm and steady hand, untouched by Washington.

Many people told me that this business is corrupt, that its evil, that its how itll always be, Carson said in a phone interview Monday. But I dont believe that we have to accept that. We should rail against that, fight against it, and get something thats decent and inspirational.

His performance may have played a role in his political undoing. Even as his politically incorrect style played well in places with staunchly conservative bases, his apparent unfamiliarity with many policy fundamentals, particularly on national security issues, made some voters wary.

His support dropped precipitously in the weeks after two high-profile terrorist attacks, bringing him from second place just behind Trump to fourth or fifth place in most national polls.

Unfortunately, Paris happened. San Bernardino happened, he told The Post earlier this year. Somehow the narrative has been projected that if youre soft-spoken and mild-mannered, there is no way you can deal with terrorism, with national security, that youre not a strong person.

It wasnt just Carsons often unfiltered and unseasoned approach that cost him; his advisers did as well, as internal feuds played out publicly, and candidate and campaign deficits were spotlighted in unusually detailed media admissions by some staffers and advisers.

Disagreements within the campaigns highest ranks broke out into the open on numerous occasions, highlighting a persistent and sharp division between Armstrong Williams  Carsons longtime business manager, who was not formally part of the campaign  and Barry Bennett, the Republican operative who led it.

As Carson fell from top-tier status, he publicly blamed campaign aides for his drop in the polls  calling some of them overpaid and ineffective  and vowed a staff shake-up in an interview arranged by Williams without Bennetts knowledge. Carson backtracked hours later, but within days, several of his most experienced campaign hands, including Bennett, had resigned.

A new campaign chairman was named: retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Dees  previously a Carson policy adviser who, like the candidate himself, had never before been involved in a political campaign.

The departure of a string of senior aides didnt end the behind-the-scenes drama. Within weeks, reporters were sent a list of the only staffers they were to contact for campaign comment and for candidate interview requests  a list that pointedly did not include Williams.

The Carson campaign war chest, which had been flush with cash after solid fundraising quarters earlier in the race, began shrinking dramatically amid questions about how the money was being spent. Carson made further sweeping changes last month, cutting staff salaries and shrinking his traveling entourage.

We had to get a much better check on the finances. I was appalled when I did a deep dive and saw what was going on. We saw that and stopped it, Carson said in the Monday interview.

The mild-mannered candidate soon lashed out at individuals he accused of sabotaging his presidential bid, including rival Ted Cruz of Texas, whose campaign falsely circulated the idea that Carson was going to quit the race on the night of the Iowa caucuses.

He followed up a distant fourth-place showing in Iowa with last-place showings in New Hampshire and in South Carolina, a state he had once said would be a special focus. He polled poorly again in the 11 GOP primaries and caucuses Tuesday night.

When asked Monday whether he would ever reenter politics if he left the race, Carson chuckled at the prospect.

Im certainly not looking for something to do, he said, adding that his plan after leaving medicine in 2013 was to retire to Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife.

Im not going to disappear, he said. But yes, if I didnt think the country needed what were doing, Id be there.
The city of Beaumont is serving Union Bank of California with legislative subpoenas this week to compel the bank to produce records detailing how millions of dollars in bond funds were spent by former city officials.

The Los Angeles bank acted as the trustee when the city issued more than $270 million worth of bonds to build waterworks, sewers, streets, and parks.

Union Bank has not produced the bond spending records the city has been seeking for months, said John Pinkney, Beaumonts city attorney.

Bank spokesman Dan Weidman said company officials are working to respond to the citys requests.

In fact, we have previously supplied the city with many documents related to the bond funds in question, said Weidman. We are committed to assisting them in this process again.

The citys move comes less than a year after district attorneys investigators, with the help of the FBI, seized thousands of pages of documents at Beaumont City Hall, the city managers home, and the offices of Urban Logic Consultants, a firm that for more than 20 years provided the citys economic development and public works directors as contract employees.

The city manager, Alan Kapanicas, and William Aylward, the citys longtime finance director, left City Hall shortly after last years raids. No charges have been filed in the case.

The state controllers office in November found that accounting controls in the city were effectively non-existent, making it impossible to know whether hundreds of millions of dollars were spent for their intended purposes.

Pinkney said city has been seeking bond-fund spending records from Union Bank since last summer, so the city can complete its own investigation into how the money was spent.

We need to complete an analysis of how these funds were spent  not just for internal accounting, but to be accountable to the community.

As bond trustee, the bank is responsible for maintaining records and making them available to the city,Pinkney said.

It is unacceptable that we havent received many of these records, he said.

The subpoenas require Union Bank to provide the records to the city manager by March 10 or the City Council during its March 15 meeting.

If the bank does not produce the records, the citys next step will to be take the matter to court, Pinkney said.

The City Council on Tuesday, March 1, gave Pinkney approval to issue the subpoenas.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9471 or ddanelski@pressenterprise.com
At lunchtime on Monday, Feb. 29, Elaine Dean and three other members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles landed at San Jacinto Healthcare, a nursing facility in Hemet, to deliver 22 hand-sewn bibs to its residents.

It was the latest community service project for the nonprofit organizations Hemet Lodge 405.

It makes us feel good, Dean said. Our motto is People helping people, and thats what we try to do.

Sewing bibs was the directive of Sandra Jones, auxiliary president of the organizations California chapter.

She asked all of the lodges if we would make them and donate them to any charities we wanted to, explained Tifney Dean, Elaines daughter, who helped distribute the bibs. We try to keep all of our donations in town.

Elaine Dean took the directive to heart. In one month, she sewed the 22 bibs out of materials donated by fellow Eagles. Most are pink or yellow and adorned with stitched butterflies and a pocket containing a white napkin.

Eagles Vera Bailey and Stephanie Hart joined the mother-daughter team on Monday to hand out the bibs.

They light up, Tifney Dean said. Thats what makes us keep doing this.

Over the course of her 35 years as an Eagle, Elaine Dean said the lodge has made lap robes, wheelchair bags, baby blankets, infant caps and all kinds of different things for various causes.

In addition to sewing and knitting projects, the Eagles help needy families at Christmastime.

We get what we can afford for their Christmas wish lists, Dean said. We get them their dinner, everything from a salad to pumpkin pie.

Hemet Lodge 405, which Dean said has about 500 members, raises money for community service projects through lunches, bake sales and bingo.

The lodges latest fundraising project is a big one. Its trying to help buy a new dog for the Hemet Police Departments K-9 unit.

Bailey said they hope to raise at least $10,000 toward the roughly $20,000 cost of purchasing a dog and training it and its handler.

If they succeed, she said, they get naming rights. Theyve chosen Aerie, the name given to an eagles nest.

Contact the writer: community@pressenterprise.com
The three San Bernardino County sheriffs deputies accused of assault by a peace offer all pleaded not guilty on Tuesday, March 1, at their rearraignment in San Bernardino Superior Court.

A new hearing in the felony case was set for April 13.

Nick Downey, Charles Foster and Michael Phelps are accused of using excessive force in arresting Francis Jared Pusok after a three-hour pursuit through the High Desert on April 9, 2015. A video shot by a KNBC-4 news helicopter showed 10 deputies  seven who were not charged  hitting and kicking Pusok.

Pusok had fled in a car, then on foot, and then on a horse that was reported stolen before falling off and being surrounded by deputies.

The deputies attorneys argued at a preliminary hearing that the rugged, rocky, sloped conditions the arrest occurred in and the danger Pusok posed to the deputies made their actions reasonable. But Judge Katrina West ordered the men held for trial.

Pusok is due in court Wednesday to answer to charges related to the pursuit.
World War II veteran Bill Harrison of Hemet got some love, Hollywood-style, during Oscars week  getting kisses from The Pointer Sisters; hanging with Oscar winner Margaret OBrien; and posing for pictures with Goodfellas star Paul Sorvino.

The 94-year-old Navy vet was in Hollywood to help promote the upcoming filming of his survival at sea in 1945, captured in his book, 6 Days on a Raft, written with Forrest Haggerty of Temecula. Producers expect to start shooting the $30-million movie in late September.

I had the time of my life, Harrison said by phone Tuesday, of the Oscars week celebration.

Two of The Pointer Sisters kissed him after hearing his story while he signed copies of his book in an Oscars gifting suite late last week, writer/producer/director Tim Lowry said.

On Sunday, host Roger Neal told Harrisons survival story to celebrities at his Oscar viewing dinner fundraiser. Harrison stood in a new tux bought for the occasion, then smiled and waved to applause.

He later met OBrien, a banquet guest of honor who won an Academy Juvenile Award for starring with Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis at age 7 in 1944. OBrien and Harrison talked at length. She promised to read his book.

It was almost like a dream come true for him, Lowry said.

In April, Harrison kicks off a nationwide speaking tour to promote the upcoming movie. The retired general contractor will start the road tour at some of the 53 West Coast churches he built and is expected to visit up to 750 others until the film is released.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch challenged Apple Inc.s refusal to comply with a judges order that it help unlock a dead terrorists iPhone, bluntly questioning the companys insistence that it has the right to refuse to cooperate.

Do we let one company decide this issue for all of us? Lynch said Tuesday in San Francisco. Do we want one company to say this is how investigations are going to be conducted and no other way?

Lynch made her most expansive comments to date on the governments battle with Apple during a discussion with Emily Chang of Bloomberg Television at a cybersecurity conference. The company says complying with the FBIs demand in the investigation of the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack would threaten privacy rights of millions of people, and it has argued in U.S. district court that the federal government is overstepping its authority.

Its a great company that makes beautiful products, Lynch said of Apple. But so much more than just one company and how theyve chosen to build a certain set of devices is at stake.

Lynch said that the government is only asking the company to do something it has done for a long time, before Apple built stronger encryption into its operating system.

This has been going on for years and we have not had the parade of horribles that Apple is now asserting, she said.

The top U.S. law enforcement official addressed the encryption controversy a day after Apple notched a win in New York, where a U.S. magistrate judge denied the governments bid to force the company to help it gain access to another iPhone, one that belonged to a drug dealer.

Lynch said she was disappointed in the decision Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein and that prosecutors planned to resubmit their request for access to the drug suspects device.

At a House hearing Tuesday in Washington, Apples General Counsel Bruce Sewell said complying with the government in the San Bernardino case would create a risk for everybody who owns an iPhone that their data could be compromised.

Apple argues that the dispute over access to encrypted content should be settled by Congress through legislation, as did Orenstein. Lynch disagreed in an interview with Bloomberg Television, saying the middle ground will be found by the courts.

It really is about how we access evidence anywhere, she said, comparing law enforcement requests to how officials with a search warrant might seek to access a home in search of criminal evidence.

On the San Bernardino investigation, Lynch said, This is not a request to rummage around and hope that we find something, she said. The FBIs request is limited to the specific issues of the inquiry.

Rejecting Apples contention that forcing it to comply would violate the companys Fifth Amendment rights, Lynch said, Apples not a target in this matter. We are not alleging that they have done anything wrong.

Asked how the dispute with the iPhone and iPad maker could be resolved, Lynch said They could do whats been asked by them.
The clash of cymbals. The rumble of a sweet bass line. An expertly strummed chord on an electric guitar.

Thats the curriculum at School of Rock, a music school that opened late last year in a shopping center at the corner of Margarita and Rancho California roads in Temecula.

Students not only receive one-on-one instruction during lessons, they also can team up with fellow students and jam in a band setting, which helps them build up their confidence and learn how to operate in a group dynamic.

At the end of each season, which is basically the schools equivalent of a semester, the children put on a show, unleashing their rock god alter egos for friends and family.

You can see their growth in smiles from ear to ear, said Kristin Kidd, regional manager for the Temecula franchisee, who also runs a school in Tustin and is opening a school in Rancho Santa Margarita in a couple of weeks.

The company, founded by Philadelphia music teacher Paul Green in 2002, has more than 145 locations in the U.S. and more than a dozen international locations.

But this is not the School of Rock, the movie with Jack Black, which has since spawned an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. That reportedly was inspired by a documentary on the Langley Schools Music Project in British Columbia.

Green, who was featured in the 2005 documentary Rock School, has said he considered litigation following the release of the movie but eventually decided to embrace the film as a commercial for his enterprise.

The Temecula location is the first School of Rock to open in the Inland region.

Kidd said the city was selected after company executives visited the region and studied up on Temeculas demographics, which includes a large number of Orange County transplants and people who drive into Orange County for work.

We kind of fell in love with the area, she said, referring to it as a family-oriented pocket of the county.

Although rock is in the name of the school, the company offers students the chance to dabble in musical genres such as country and R&B.

Students join the theme of their choice, Kidd said.

Logan Sawhill-Delmar, an 11-year-old guitar student from Menifee, picked two themes for this season, which is just underway. One is focused on the music of the Los Angeles rock scene, and the other features the music of Nirvana and Green Day.

I know were going to play Metallica, he said, visibly excited about the chance to step into Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammetts shoes.

Logan has played guitar for five years  he knows all the chords  but signed up with School of Rock to get experience playing with other musicians in a band setting, which is notoriously difficult to sustain in a suburban setting.

I get to practice and talk to my friends and meet new friends, he said.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9698 or aclaverie@pressenterprise.com
Hillary Clinton claimed Super Tuesday victories in the Georgia and Virginia Democratic primaries, while rival Bernie Sanders carried his home state of Vermont. Republican races in those states were too close to call as polls closed.

Super Tuesday marked the busiest day of the 2016 primaries, with the biggest single-day delegate haul up for grabs. With elections in every region of the country, the contests put a spotlight on candidates strengths and weaknesses with a broad swath of American voters.

For Clinton, as well as Republican front-runner Donald Trump, the voting marked an opportunity to begin pulling away from their rivals and charting a course toward the general election. Each entered Super Tuesday having won three of four early voting contests, and more strong showings could start putting the nominations out of reach for other contenders.

Clinton led in both Virginia and Georgia among both men and women, as well as black voters. Sanders continued to show strength with young voters, carrying the majority of those under the age of 30, according to early exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Democrats were voting in 11 states and American Samoa on, with 865 delegates up for grabs. Republicans were voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake.

The contests come at a turbulent time for the GOP, given Trumps strengths in the face of opposition from many party leaders. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched furious verbal attacks on the billionaire businessman in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Cruz once saw the Southern states that voted Tuesday as his opportunity to stake his claim to the nomination. Now his campaigns future hinges on a victory in his home state of Texas, the biggest prize of the day.

Rubios goal was even more modest. He was seeking to stay competitive in the delegate count and hoping to pull off a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

Even before the first results started flowing in, Trump was calling on Rubio to give up if he didnt win anywhere on Tuesday.

He has to get out, he told Fox News. He hasnt won anything.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, hes appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing broad support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states on Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump. Two-thirds of GOP voters in Texas, Virginia and Georgia, 7 in 10 in Tennessee, and nearly 8 in 10 in Alabama supported the proposal, according to the early exit polls.

Worries among Republicans appeared to grow after Trump briefly refused to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during a television interview. Trump later said he had not understood the interviewer who first raised the question about Duke, and he did repudiate him.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.

When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country I will speak up. So today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games, Ryan said.

The disarray among Republicans comes as Clinton appears to be tightening her grip on the Democratic field. Her wins in Georgia and Virginia were the first of what her campaign hoped would be a sweep of the South, a region where large segments of the Democratic electorate are black.

In Georgia, just under half of Democratic voters on Tuesday were black, with 8 in 10 backing Clinton. About a quarter of Virginias Democratic voters were black, and also overwhelmingly backed Clinton, according to exit polling.

Democratic voters were more likely to want a continuation of Obamas policies than switch to more liberal policies in eight of nine states where surveys were conducted.

Signaling her growing confidence, Clinton has increasingly turned her attention to Trump in recent days, casting herself as a civil alternative to the insults and bullying that have consumed the Republican race.

What we cant let happen is the scapegoating, the flaming, the finger pointing that is going on the Republican side, she told voters in Springfield, Massachusetts. It really undermines our fabric as a nation.

States holding voting contests in both parties were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. Republicans also vote in Alaska and Democrats in Colorado. Democrats also have a contest in American Samoa and for Democrats Abroad.

Colvin reported from Valdosta, Georgia. AP writers Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.
Although Californians wont cast their presidential primary ballots until June 7, many Inland voters were paying close attention to the Super Tuesday results.

Mike Conway of Riverside is a big supporter of Republican front-runner Donald Trump. He was glad to see the real estate mogul moving closer to securing his partys nomination by capturing victories in several states.

This is the turning point for this country, said Conway, a firearms safety instructor at Bullseye Guns & Ammo in Riverside. Were either headed toward socialism or were going to go back to our core values.

Conway, 74, likes Trumps business background and believes he wont be beholden to special interests.

I think hes got a lot of good ideas that need to be implemented, Conway said. He tries to apply common sense to complex situations.

Lenoris Bellamy of Moreno Valley planned to watch election returns after spending Tuesday afternoon with her grandson at the Galleria at Tyler shopping mall in Riverside.

Shes leaning toward former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because shes a fan of her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Theres one candidate she wont vote for under any circumstances  and she wouldnt even say his name: Trump.

I have a bad feeling whos going to win, said Bellamy, 72, who acknowledged she was referring to Trump. I think our nation might be in trouble.

Prayer is the only answer to a Trump presidency, she said, adding that if he wins, its because the Lord allowed it to happen.

While Trump claimed strong wins in several states on Super Tuesday, his second-place finish to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is good news for Inland voters hoping Californias June 7 primary could play a major role in choosing both parties nominees, political observers said.

Given the results tonight, we can still look to the March 15 primaries to have a firm idea as to whether California will play a pivotal role in the election, said Brian Janiskee, chairman of the political science department at Cal State San Bernardino.

Five states are up for grabs March 15, including Florida, Sen. Marco Rubios home state.

He has to win not only Florida, but one or two additional states to claim a credible path to the nomination, Janiskee said of Rubio.

Despite trailing in the race, Cruz and Rubio have no incentive to drop out, said Jennifer Merolla, a political science professor at UC Riverside.

That will make it hard for primary voters to coalesce around an alternative to Trump, Merolla said.

On the Democratic side, Clintons path to the nomination appears smooth, said Renee Van Vechten, associate professor of political science at the University of Redlands.

Bernie Sanders generates a lot of excitement among younger voters and people who are disillusioned with the system, Van Vechten said. But they tend to be people who dont vote. And older voters are terrified of a self-proclaimed democratic socialist.

Danny Gaspar of Rancho Cucamonga said he supports Sanders because of his pledge to help working class voters.

We shouldnt be benefiting the top 5 or 10 percent while other people are going hungry and starving, said Gaspar, 20.

After Tuesday, Trump is well on pace to get the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination, said Andrew Howe, chairman of the history, politics and sociology department at La Sierra University in Riverside.

The question is: Will everyone else drop out? he said.

Howe said he saw signs of a more moderate stance appearing in Trumps and Clintons victory speeches.

Trump called himself a unifier, a change from his previous harsh rhetoric, while Clinton said the country belongs to all of us, Howe noted.

They are starting to use vocabulary thats more suited to the general election, he said. They know they have to pivot more toward the center if they want to become president.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 or swall@pressenterprise.com
In a strongly worded editorial out tonight, the Wall Street Journal describes Apple as having the better argument and concludes, Mr. Comey should appeal to Congress to change the law, rather than insist that the courts should resolve a major policy dispute in his favor.

Wall Street Journal | Editorial

Apple Is Right on Encryption

http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-is-right-on-encryption-1456877827?mod=yahoo_hs

The Apple encryption conflict has turned nasty, as the Obama Administration, most Republicans and public opinion turn against the tech company. But, lo, Apple won its first court test on Monday, and its legal briefs against the court order to unlock an iPhone used by the San Bernardino jihadists show it has a better argument than the government.

The FBI is attempting to extract information on Syed Rizwan Farooks device but has been frustrated by Apples encryption. So a California magistrate ordered the company to design a custom version of its operating software that will disable certain security features and permit the FBI to break the password. Apple has cooperated with the probe but argues that forcing it to write new code is illegal.

One confusion promoted by the FBI is that its order is merely a run-of-the-mill search warrant. This is false. The FBI is invoking the 1789 All Writs Act, an otherwise unremarkable law that grants judges the authority to enforce their orders as necessary or appropriate. The problem is that the All Writs Act is not a catch-all license for anything judges want to do. They can only exercise powers that Congress has granted them.

Congress knows how to require private companies to serve public needs. The law obligates telecoms, for example, to assist with surveillance collection. But Congress has never said the courts can commandeer companies to provide digital forensics or devise programs it would be theoretically useful for the FBI to haveeven if they are necessary for a search.

Congress could instruct tech makers from now on to build back doors into their devices for law-enforcement use, for better or more likely worse. But this back-door debate has raged for two years. In the absence of congressional action, the courts cant now appoint themselves as a super legislature to commandeer innocent third parties ex post facto.

What makes the FBIs request so extraordinary is that the iPhone encryption and security methods were legal when they were created and still are. Apple has no more connection to the data on Farooks phone than Ford does to a bank robber who uses an F-150 as a getaway vehicle.

If the government can compel a manufacturer to invent intellectual property that does not exist in order to invade its own lawful products, then there is no limiting legal principle. Could the FBI require a tech maker, for example, to send a malware worm to a users device in the form of a routine update?

The other myth is that Apple is merely being asked to crack one phone in the entire world, as Marco Rubio puts it. This is also false. The Justice Department is beseeching Apple to provide software retrofits in at least a dozen public cases, and state and local prosecutors have stacks of backlogged iPhones they want unlocked too. In the New York case Apple won this week, prosecutors want Apple to unlock an iPhone even though the owner has pleaded guilty.

If Apple now writes the program the G-men desire, then the technique will be used in investigations that have nothing to do with terrorism as other prosecutors use the same argument. This is the back door by degrees that Apple CEO Tim Cook describes.

FBI director James Comey told Congress last week that the Apple case was unlikely to be a trailblazer and that it also would be instructive for other courts. Well, which is it? This contradiction isnt the only reason to wonder if Mr. Comey prefers an encryption legal precedent over Farooks actual data.

One question is why the phone wasnt immediately shipped in a faraday bag to Fort Meade. The National Security Agency has a formidable decryption unit, and U.S. spooks probably have the ability to hack Farooks phone without Apples services, especially because it is an older, less sophisticated model.

We bow to no one in defense of antiterror programs whose political popularity waxes and wanes, especially on surveillance. But this case isnt about privacy. This is about engineering security and its implications for the security of all Americans.

Back doors are engineering vulnerabilities that make devices less secure. But terrorists and criminals will always be able to find some underground encrypted communication channel, so regulating back doors into legal devices achieves little national-security benefit. To borrow a line from James Burnham, if theres no alternative, theres no problem.

If Congress is really going to outlaw stronger encryption for law-abiding Americans, well, the political class has the right to make mistakes. But it would be a far more dangerous precedent for the courts to do so without guidance from Capitol Hill.

Mr. Comey may be leading the government to defeat, which makes the White Houses incoherencebacking this unnecessary showdown while claiming to oppose back doorsall the stranger. If this debate really is critical to protecting public safety, then Mr. Comey should appeal to Congress to change the law, rather than insist that the courts should resolve a major policy dispute in his favor.
Today in Canberra, a huge, progressive, very goddamn important and overdue conversation went down about drugs  particularly Australias attitude to them, and our policies around them.

The Parliamentary Drug Summit was co-convened by Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Labors Melissa Parke, and Liberal MP Dr Sharman Stone. Great, right? The idea of a bunch of progress-lovin politicians sitting about chatting about why our current drug policies arent fkn working was at one point described as someone as a wet dream.

Richard di Natale prefaced the summit with a really passionate article published by The Guardian, in which he explains that Australia was once a progressive frontrunner on the issue of harm minimisation with drugs, particularly with our clean needle/syringe programs to minimise HIV: Back then, there was courage and vision among our politicians and policymakers to try a new way, and police worked with health officials to make it a reality. And it worked.

There are three immediate steps that governments can take in partnership with non-government organisations, police and health authorities to save lives. The first is to enable a trial of pill testing at public events such as music festivals. The second is to remove drug sniffer dogs from public events because we know that they frighten people into taking their drugs in one hit and are contributing to overdoses rather than preventing them. The third is in recognition that police and other government agencies hold data and information on the composition of street drugs gained through seizure and hospital presentations.

Pill-testing was heavily discussed, which included hugely inspiring input from Dr Alex Wodak, the president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation (and the guy who said #ParlDrugSummit was his wet dream, just FYI). Wodak is the excellent human being who has announced that he and David Caldicott will be doing a privately-funded pill-testing trial, with or without the Baird governments approval:

I am prepared to break the law to save young peoples lives, Wodak told Fairfax earlier in the week. Today, he spoke of pill-testing being the first step towards minimising fatalities and harm from drugs by regulating the industry:

Alex Wodak: Pill testing is just one step, an important one, towards regulating as much as possible of the drug market #ParlDrugSummit  David Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeMLC) March 2, 2016

He will conduct pill-testing at an Aussie festival (its looking likely to be Stereosonic, who have publicly backed it), in order to show drug-takers whether their drugs are talcum powder or highly toxic. What a badass, right? Well, its not his first bloody rodeo: in 1986, he and his team introduced the first needle syringe program. In 1999, he actioned this countrys first medically supervised injecting centre after thousands of deaths due to heroin. Premier Bob Carr said supporting it was one of his highest career achievements despite originally opposing it. Wodak just gets shit done.

However, the panel also discussed the fact that many international and Aussie police officers agree with pill-testing, and have openly spoken of their support for it. The panel included former officer Frank Hansen, and his public support for pill-testing was met with praise from current members of the force on social media:

Former police officer Frank Hansen and @davidcaldicott discussing pill testing to reduce harm #ParlDrugSummit pic.twitter.com/Ywg95Dznv0  Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) March 2, 2016

As an ex-police offficer, Ive seen first hand that arrest/conviction DOES NOT WORK #HarmReduction #ParlDrugSummit @LEAHNetwork  Melissa Jardine (@majardine) March 2, 2016

Police need to step up and influence scared politicians that the current approach doesnt work #ParlDrugSummit @LEAHNetwork #HarmReduction  Melissa Jardine (@majardine) March 2, 2016

Another active voice in the panels discussion was (SHOCK HORROR) someone who actually takes drugs. While their name hasnt been published yet, their statement about the stigma and lack of care for peoples welfare struck us deeply. Di Natale also acknowledged how important it was that these discussions include drug users, because they are the greatest resource to the conversation:

Panelist representing drug users: We are not just collateral damage in the war on drugs. Hear hear. #ParlDrugSummit  cappuccino mike (@michaelrdw) March 2, 2016

People who use drugs are one of the biggest resources we have to dealing with drug issues. #ParlDrugSummit  Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) March 2, 2016

According to polls conducted by the National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) found that a sub-total of people who supported decriminalised actions such as health support and warnings for drug users ranged from 64%  88%, depending on the drug in question:

The realistic expectations of the panel was truly outstanding, with most participants openly stating or acknowledging that people will always take drugs, and suggesting that people just stop it is a redundant thing to suggest as a solution:

Annie Madden: drug use is not going away. Lets encourage drug users to be part of solution #ParlDrugSummit pic.twitter.com/BfWYzztmyA  Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) March 2, 2016

But our favourite part about this summit was the focus on peoples welfare. You can clearly see that the speakers at this event, particularly executive officer of the Australian Injecting & Illicit Drug Users League (AIVL), Annie Madden, cared deeply for the wellbeing of Aussie citizens who happen to take drugs. It shouldnt be about punishment, our governments primary focus should be on the health and wellbeing of citizens:

We are your family members, your friends, your colleagues, your citizens  not some collateral damage says Annie Madden #ParlDrugSummit  Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) March 2, 2016

Applause:Annie Madden stigma and discrimination r powerful influences inhibiting the voice of drug users. Care for advocates #ParlDrugSummit  Lyn Morgain (@MsLynM) March 2, 2016

While the entire summit was not televised, you can watch the press conference led by Richard di Natale on Periscope: www.periscope.tv/w/1lPJqjERlXbxb

And, you can see more info and discussion via the summits official hashtag, #ParlDrugSummit on Twitter: twitter.com/hashtag/parldrugsummit

Source: Twitter / NDARC / SMH.

Photo: Periscope.
The ongoing royal commission is the only inquest with the power to make an official conclusion on Cardinal Pells potential cover-up of child sex abuse within the Catholic system. That doesnt mean his comments cant be scrutinised by the rest of the planet, and bloody hell, todays outpourings are certainly worthy of judgment.

One snippet, delivered from Rome via videolink, is particularly damning for the embattled Cardinal. After being grilled about his knowledge of Christian Brother Ted Dowlans alleged sex offences in Ballarat and Dowlans subsequent retrenchments, Pell told the royal commission he didnt investigate the unfortunate rumours about his activity with young people.

Those rumours turned out to be true. Dowlan abused kids at four other schools after that point. And Pell was the head honcho of Catholic education in the diocese at the time, but the police werent informed before Dowlans moves.

Pell also appeared to palm off responsibility for the matter to other Christian Brothers, and he said he assumed they would be dealing adequately with the matter. He also, stunningly, presumed when they shifted him, they would have arranged for some appropriate help.

Wondering what help would be? Well, were sure any conventional definition of the word doesnt include shuffling a child abuser between posts, but here we are. The Cardinal also said he regretted not telling the Bishop more at that point, but maintained his belief the Christian Brothers system would have sorted the issue out.

Of course, all of this comes after he said other rumours of abuse didnt really interest him that much.

Cardinal George Pell: it wasnt of much interest to me The moment survivors of childhood sexual abuse heard Cardinal George Pell say rumours of abuse wasnt of much interest to me Full story: http://gu.com/p/4h6zm/au Posted by Guardian Australia on Monday, 29 February 2016

The group of survivors gathered in Rome are pushing for a private audience with Pope Francis once Pells questioning ends. We imagine the abuse may be of interest to him.

Source: The Guardian.

Photo: Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses Into Child Abuse / The Guardian.




Prom fashion can change at the drop of a hat, and it's up to stores to change stock as quickly as boys and girls change outfits.

Jon Smith, one of the owners of Renaissance Bridals in York, knows how fickle teenagers can be when it comes to dressing up. Part of his job takes him to fashion shows around the country to keep up with the latest trends. But Smith also knows that the next time a Kardashian posts what she's wearing to Instagram, it could mean that girls will visit his store the next day with very different expectations.

But, as of Monday, Smith thinks he's got a good idea of what this year's proms will look like.

For girls, it's crop tops, which is a two-piece gown that shows off the midriff, he said. Black's a popular choice this year, but there are some teenagers who have gone for bold, dominant colors such as red and burgundy.

"It's all the fashion," he said. "These young ladies are seeing it on all the social media, from Instagram to last night's Oscars. A lot of stars and starlets are being pictured in crop tops."

Floral print dresses are also making a comeback, Smith said.

The dresses at Renaissance Bridals can run anywhere from between $350 to $800, he said. Two of the store's most popular brands are Sherri Hill and Jovani.

Since many of their dresses have the "sheer illusion that the top is just jewels all around the neck," Smith said that girls have done away with necklaces. Instead, they've gone for bigger, bolder chandelier earrings, which range from $29 to $59.

"If they want to go for this whole glam look, they want high heels or sparkly shoes," he adds.

Guys have gone for navy and gray suits this year which, based on what Smith's seen, will probably be paired with bow ties and suspenders. The cost of renting one of their suits range anywhere from between $79 to $129.

If he had to give a ballpark figure, Smith said that girls spend about $500 and guys fork over about $150 on average at his store for prom.

"We start selling literally in the fall," he said. "Christmas break (is when) it kicks into full swing for us, and we've already seen thousands of girls... we see girls, because of where we're located, from Baltimore, Washington, Philly and, I heard the other day, from New Jersey."

Over at David's Bridal in Harrisburg, store manager Eileen Creedon said it's the cut-out dresses that have flown off the shelves.

The popular colors for that kind of dress are bright blue and red, though pastel colors have had a strong showing as well. Most of these dresses also have their own embellishments and beading.

"It's sexy but still offers coverage," she said.

Those selections at David's Bridal can run anywhere from $149 up to $349.

Creedon doesn't see necklaces being a big sell this year because most of their popular dresses have illusion necklines, which are see-through. Instead, girls have chosen to accessorize with bracelets, earrings and shoes for prom.

Some of the more popular items include smaller and heavily-embellished bracelets or wider ones with rhinestones. Girls have also opted for stud earrings more so than dangling ones. Most of these accessories can run from $10 to $40.

For shoes, Creedon said that girls have often gone with sequined or metallic ones.

Creedon has been working at David's Bridal for the last eight years. With proms coming up, she sees anywhere from 30 to 40 girls a day over the weekend and 15 to 20 every other day. One of the biggest differences she's seen in prom fashion over the last few years is how much more in tune girls are with the latest fashion.

Smith said that's because teenagers are always glued to their phones.

"That isn't the way this industry used to be, but it's gotten to the point where I have to find a lot more merchandise and the hottest trends and what these girls are looking for," Smith said. "(It's) a year-round of planning, purchasing, buying and then selling."

Smith's already booked through September for fashion shows throughout the country, and he's already getting started on next year's travel plans. But if he had to guess, he said that prom fashion will move away from the sparkles toward a sleeker look.

"I certainly see that trend coming of, like when you watched the Oscars, of the very elegant, very old Hollywood look," he said.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, in Madison, Ala.

(AP Photo/John Bazemore)

LEESBURG, Va. (AP) -- The final-days sprint to Super Tuesday has erupted into a feud over a white supremacist as Donald Trump's Republican rivals scramble to stop the billionaire businessman from becoming an "unstoppable" force in the 2016 presidential contest.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio continued to hammer the GOP front-runner's character and lack of policy specifics in a series of attacks Sunday while courting voters across the South. But it was Trump's refusal to denounce an implicit endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke that dominated the narrative less than two days before Republican voters across 11 states head to the polls.

The new focus comes as Trump's rivals acknowledge that time is running out to prevent the former reality television host from becoming the Republican Party's presumptive nominee. He took a new step in that direction by earning the endorsement of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a would-be Cruz ally who backed Trump instead.

"There is no doubt that if Donald steam rolls through Super Tuesday, wins everywhere with big margins, that he may well be unstoppable," Cruz said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Trump was asked Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" whether he rejected support from the former KKK Grand Dragon and other white supremacists after Duke told his radio followers this week that a vote against Trump was equivalent to "treason to your heritage."

"Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke. OK?" Trump told host Jake Tapper. "I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists."

Cruz soon responded on Twitter, telling Trump: "You're better than this. We should all agree, racism is wrong, KKK is abhorrent."

Rubio went further in a message to thousands of supporters in Leesburg, Virginia: "We cannot be a party who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan," Rubio said. "Not only is that wrong, it makes him unelectable. How are we going to grow the party if we nominate someone who doesn't repudiate the Ku Klux Klan?"

Trump was asked Friday by journalists how he felt about Duke's support. He said he didn't know anything about it and curtly said: "All right, I disavow, ok?"

As I stated at the press conference on Friday regarding David Duke- I disavow. pic.twitter.com/OIXFKPUlz2  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2016

He hasn't always claimed ignorance on Duke's history. In 2000, he wrote a New York Times op-ed explaining why he abandoned the possibility of running for president on the Reform Party ticket. He wrote of an "underside" and "fringe element" of the party, concluding, "I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani. That is not company I wish to keep."

Trump has won three of four early voting states, roiling a party divided over the prospect of the brash billionaire becoming its nominee. Late Sunday, Nebraska's Ben Sasse became the first sitting Republican senator to say explicitly that he would not back Trump if he does win the nomination.

"If Trump becomes the Republican nominee my expectation is that I'll look for some 3rd candidate -- a conservative option, a constitutionalist," Sasse wrote on Twitter.

The Duke debate seeped into the Democratic contest, as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also lashed out on Twitter: "America's first black president cannot and will not be succeeded by a hatemonger who refuses to condemn the KKK."

Asked about the issue on Monday, Trump said he had disavowed Duke and asked, "How many times do I have to continue to disavow people."

In a phone-in interview with NBC's "Today" show, the real estate mogul was asked about earlier remarks in interviews where he had seemed to stop short of disavowing Duke.

He said the questioner in the earlier interview had asked about Duke and various "other groups," saying he had difficulty with an earpiece he was wearing for the phone-in interview and didn't want to disavow groups whose identity he didn't know. Trump also said he had clearly made separation with Duke over the weekend in posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Hillary Clinton re-tweeted Sanders' message. She scored a lopsided victory in South Carolina the day before, fueled by a huge advantage among African-Americans, a key Democratic constituency that will also play a dominant role in several Super Tuesday states.

The latest shake up in the GOP race comes as attention shifts to the South, where the region will dominate on Super Tuesday -- March 1 -- and the weeks beyond.

Trump holds commanding leads across the region, with the exception of Cruz's home state of Texas, a dynamic that puts tremendous pressure on Rubio and Cruz as they try to outlast each other and derail Trump.

Trump mocked the Republican establishment and his flailing rivals. "It's amazing what's going on," he told NBC, calling his campaign a "movement."
39 religious leaders

Don't Edit

Photo of Bishop Adamec provided by the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown.

What happened?

A grand jury's investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese revealed decades of abuse and cover-up.

What follows are details of how each father, monsignor and bishop named in the report were involved in the systemic abuse.

Don't Edit

Msgr. Harold J. Burkhardt

While pastoring a a church in Altoona, Pa., Burkhardt allegedly sexually abused a 9-year old boy. The victim recalled being fondled through his clothes and being forced to suck Burkhardt's penis. On subsequent occasions, Burkhardt would pull down the victim's pants and insert a finger into his anus. According to the victim, Burkhardt once asked, "what do you think God would say?" The victim didn't respond. Burkhardt said, "God approved".

Don't Edit

Bishop James Hogan

Hogan was a powerful figure within both the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and civil life in Johnstown. The Grand Jury concluded he was integral in covering up evidence of sexual abuse within the diocese. Hogan would send priests accused of molesting children to unlicensed catholic treatment facilities then, in many case, return those individuals to ministry within the diocese.

Don't Edit

Fr. Leonard Inman

The Grand Jury found that Inman raped at least one child and paid other young men for sex while he served at the Cathedral of Blessed Sacrament from 1971 to 1986. One victim described how the priest would assault him in a storage room where Christmas decorations were kept and once in a "long black funeral-like car". The victim also stated that the priest took pictures of him with a polaroid camera.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Msgr. Francis B. McCaa

"Father Francis McCaa was a monster," the Grand Jury's report noted. The Grand Jury found that between 1961 to 1985, while serving as parish priest in Ebensburg, Pa., McCaa groped and fondled the genitals of countless children  perhaps hundreds. One victim reported having his gentials fondled while in confession, another boy reported that McCaa grabbed the boy's penis in front of other victims and said, "if you ever use this I'm going to rip it off". Sometimes McCaa would push his finger into the anuses of boys before sending them off to engage in church functions. The Grand Jury noted, "the number of victims of Francis McCaa may never be known".

Don't Edit

Msgr. Francis Ackerson

Monsignor Francis Ackerson is alleged to have victimized a 15-year old boy between 1955 and 1956. The victim recalled an occasion where Monsignor Ackerson, then a parish priest in Cresson, Pa., got into his bed and played with the child's penis. Ackerson then took the child's hand and forced him to touch his penis before performing oral sex on the boy. On another occasion Ackerson is alleged to have attempted to anally rape the boy.

Don't Edit

Msgr. Joseph D. Maurizio

Maurizio was convicted in 2015 for travelling from Pennsylvania to abuse minor boys in Honduras between 1999 to 2009. Maurizio would visit an orphanage where he would offer children candy or money before engaging in unlawful sexual activities. Maurizio was also convicted for possession of child pornography.

Don't Edit

Fr. Elwood Figurelle

In 2003, Figurelle was the subject of a federal investigation and arrest for possession of child pornography. In an FBI interview, Figurelle admitted to being "fascinated with male genitalia" and admitted he had viewed materials depicting nude prepubescent boys on several hundred occasions. Figuerelle served 15 months in federal prison.

Don't Edit

Msgr. Anthony M. Little

Little is alleged to have sexually abused a male minor multiple times prior to being placed on restricted ministry in 2013. The Grand Jury concluded that "Little is a master manipulator" who attempted to seperate the victim from his family and friends. Witnesses recall Little whispering into the victim's ears during family gatherings and visits.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Fr. Joseph Bender

The Grand Jury concluded that Bender was a serial child predator who actively offended throughout the majority of his ministry within the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. The age range of Bender's victims spanned from 8 to 13 years of age. One victim reported being kissed on the lips and touched, another reported that Bender ejaculated on the child after fondling the child's genitals and anus. On another occasion, a victim reported being molested while in bed with Bender. Victims reported that Bender often made their bodies contact his erect penis.

Don't Edit

Fr. Francis E. Luddy

The Grand Jury found that between 1969 and 1984 Luddy molested, groped, masturbated, sodomized, and performed oral sex on at least 10 children between the ages of 10 and 17. The Grand Jury's report noted, "it is not a stretch of the mind or reality to state that if Francis Luddy was having contact with children, they were in danger of becoming victims of child sex abuse."

Don't Edit

Fr. Peter Bodenschatz

"Don't cry. That's ok. What a sweet child you are." Those are the words that Bodenshatz is alleged to have uttered as he unzipped an eight grade boy's pants and fondled his penis. Bodenshatz is alleged to have repeatedly abused and exposed his penis to the boy.

Don't Edit

Fr. Martin McCamley

McCamley allegedly sexually abused multiple boys. In 2001, a victim reported that, when the victim was 13-years old, McCamley would spend the night at his home and put his hands down the victim's pant as they watched television. McCamly is also alleged to have touched another boy's thighs and body but was rebuffed after attempted to put his hand into the victim's pants.

Don't Edit

Fr Charles Bodziak

Bodziak, then a parish priest in Lock Haven, Pa., is accused of repeatedly engaging in sexual intercourse with a 16-year old girl while she was in foster care. Bodziak would pick up the victim in his car and take her to local places where teenagers "made out". She was removed from foster care and blamed for having a "love affair" with a priest.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Fr. Joseph Strittmatter

The Grand Jury found that Strittmatter fondled and touched a 6-year old girl in the 1960s while he was a parish priest in Lock Haven, Pa. Strittmatter would also force her head into his lap. It is believed the abuse continued into the child's teens. Strittmatter also allegedly abused an 8-year old girl. In an interview with other church leaders, Strittmatter reportedly said, "I can't remember individual acts. But I was trying to learn about sex.".

Don't Edit

Fr. John Boyle

The Grand Jury found evidence of a long string of sexual abuse by Boyle. Between 1958 and 1960, Boyle engaged in fondling, masturbation, and oral intercourse with a 10 or 11-year old boy. In 1971, Boyle allegedly groped the genitals of a 15-year old boy in a church basement in Barnesboro, Pa., on numerous occasions. Boyle also allegedly kissed the boy and performed oral sex on him. In another case, between 1973 and 1975, Boyle allegedly anally rapped a boy after plying him with alcohol and rendering him unconscious. He also raped the boy repeatedly in a church rectory in Beaverdale, Pa. In yet another case, Boyle allegedly molested a 16-year old boy in 1982 and forced him to perform oral sex. The Grand Jury found that the sexual abuse continued for a year and evolved to include anal intercourse.

Don't Edit

Rebecca Jones | rjones@pennlive.com

Fr. Benedict Wolfe

The Grand Jury found that Wolfe sexually molested a 17-year old girl who was visiting family friends in the area of McConnellsburg, Pa. in 1979. Wolfe gave the girl a private room for "privacy" in the church's rectory. He would visit her daily during her stay and sexually assault her. The victim recalled Wolfe stating that her breasts were "the rosebuds of her youth".

Don't Edit

Fr. James Bunn

Bunn is alleged to have engaged in sexual intercourse with a child on multiple occasions during a six month to one year period between the child's 10th and 13th birthdays. Bunn allegedly sodomized the victim on numerous occasions while staying with the victim's family.

Don't Edit

Fr. James F. Skupien

The Grand Jury concluded that Skupien had engaged in a "long-term oral sex-for-cash arrangement" after hiring a disadvantaged 18-year old to work for him. Skupien would pay the victim for oral sex at the rectory of St Joseph's Church in Williamsburg, Pa. and at various "make out" locations.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Ft. Thomas Carroll

In 1971, the Grand Jury found Carroll used alcohol to render a 12 to 13-year old boy compliant to his will. Carroll then fondled the boy and anally raped him. One of Carroll's fellow priests testified before the Grand Jury that it was common knowledge that Carroll was molesting children.

Don't Edit

Fr. Gerard Ream

The Grand Jury found that while serving as a religious teacher in Bishop Carroll Catholic High School he engaged in regular sexual meetings with a teenage girl. When the girl went to college and fell in love with a boy, Ream became possessive and attempted to manipulate her into continuing a relationship with him. Ream began harrassing her, often calling in the middle of the night.

Don't Edit

Fr. Martin Cingle

The Grand Jury found that Cingle groped the genitals of a child in 1979 while the child slept next to him on a cot in his underwear. Cingle stopped fondling the boy's penis when the boy awoke and struck him.

Don't Edit

Fr. William Rosensteel

The Grand Jury found that Rosensteel sexually abused a long list of victims. In one case in the 1970s, when Rosensteel was a parish priest in Johnstown, he abused a nine year old and continued abusing him for another six years. Rosensteel would ask the victim to accompany him to rectory and then hug, kiss, grope him, and force his hand down the victim's pants. In another case, Rosensteel took young boys on trips to Canada and Pittsburgh where he would kiss them and fondle their genitals.

Don't Edit

Fr. Dennis Coleman

In the 1970s, Coleman, allegedly rubbed his penis against a 10-year old boy's feet and asked to take pictures of the child in his underwear. In 1982, Coleman was moved to a church in Johnstown, Pa., where he allegedly molested at least three 13-year old boys. The Grand Jury found that Coleman would take boys camping and attempt to "hypnotize" them.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Fr. John Palko

The Grand Jury found that Palko groomed a 16-year old girl before kissing, fondling her and penetrating her with his penis. The victim reported that at the time she felt it was consenual but in hindsight realizes she was only a 16-year old girl and he was an adult.

Don't Edit

Fr. James B. Coveney

The Grand Jury found that Coveney fondled the genitals of a 10-year old boy while seriving as a parish priest in Portage, Pa. in 1986. Conveney also allegedly fondled the genitals of approximately five 7th grade boys in 1988. The boys described the contact with their gentials as being "pulled" or "grabbed".

Don't Edit

Fr. Daniel F. O'Friel

The Grand Jury found that O'Friel, while principal at Bishop Carroll Catholic High School, sexually abused a 16-year old student. O'Friel gave the student rides home from school each day and asked questions about a girl the boy was dating. O'Friel asked questions like, "did you undo her bra?" or "did you kiss?" while he and the student touched each others genitals. O'Friel joked with the victim that the conduct was an "easy way to go to confession". O'Friel allegedly abused two more victims. One of those victims, a 15-year old, was molested in a confession booth. The victim recalled throwing up in the bathroom and having O'Friel's semen on his hands.

Don't Edit

Fr. William Crouse

The Grand Jury found that Crouse sodomized a 14-year old boy while serving at a church in New Jersey. The victim recalled lying on his stomach in pain, begging Crouse to stop raping him. The victim also recalled other times where Crouse would take him fishing and give him alcohol until he passed out. The victim would wake with severe pain in his "bowels" and find blood in his stool.

Don't Edit

Fr. George Koharchik

Citing an FBI report, the Grand Jury found that Koharchick groomed children and eventually gained a level of trust that allowed him to shower with them and apply soap to their bodies.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Fr. Mario Fabbri

The Grand Jury found that Fabbri took a ninth grade boy to a bed in 1950 in a church in Johnstown, Pa. Fabbri started to pet the boy and told him he loved him before anally raping him. Fabbri convinced the boy's parents to let him take their son on a trip to Canada. The boy was raped in New York, Quebec, and Montreal. Fabbri allegedly abused the boy until Fabbri was transferred from the church. He once told the victim, "you are not as cooperative as the others".

Don't Edit

Rebecca Jones | rjones@pennlive.com

Fr. Regis Myers

The Grand Jury found that Myers invited a 15-year-old boy to sleep in his bed and shower with him.

Don't Edit

Fr. Joseph Gaborek

The Grand Jury found that during the summer of 1982 Gaborek invited a 16-year old boy to stay overnight at the rectory of St. Mary's Church in Pocahontas, Pa. Gaborek sexually violated the boy and on other occasions molested the boy in the parish itself.

Don't Edit

Msgr. Thomas Mabon

Mabon returned to active ministry in 2003 after he recieved "treatement" following an allegation that he molested an altar boy while a parish priest in Hollidaysburg, Pa. In 2005, the Grand Jury found, Mabon groped and sexually abused a teenage girl. Mabon would rub himself against the girl's front and back and ejaculate in his pants. On at least one occasion, Mabon asked her to touch his penis, which she did. Mabon allegedly told her, "if you tell, everyone would believe you instigated it and that's your fault."

Don't Edit

Fr. Bernard Grattan

The Grand Jury found that Grattan molested numerous young males over his 25 years as a priest with the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. In one case, Grattan took a 13 to 15-year old child into his parish in Newry, Pa., unclothed him and fondled the boy's genitals until he ejaculated onto Grattan's hands. Grattan than licked the ejaculate off his hands.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Msgr. Michael Servinsky

Servinsky served as Flinn's assistant and was involved in multiple investigations of child sex abuse within the diocese. The Grand Jury notes that Servinsky was given the opportunity in December, 2015 to explain his role in those investigations. Servinsky declined to explain, exercising his right against providing testimony that may be incriminating.

Don't Edit

Fr. David Arsenault

The Grand Jury found that Arsenault, then a priest in Renovo, Pa., attempted to sexually abuse a 17-year old boy. During counselling sessions, Arsenault allegedly placed his hands on the boy's legs and thighs and, on at least one occasion, attempted to grab the boy's penis. When he was 18, during a trip to Washington D.C., the victim fell asleep and woke to find Arsenault grinding his penis into his body and kissing him. The victim forced Arsenault out of the room but remained awake all night, fearing his return.

Don't Edit

Bishop Joseph Adamec

The Grand Jury concluded that Adamec was aware of evidence of mutliple cases of sexual abuse within the diocese and went to great lengths to cover up that abuse.

Adamec has since released a statement about the report.

Don't Edit

Fr. Robert Kelly

The Grand Jury found that between 1975 to 1977, Kelly sexual abused a 12 to 13-year old boy. Kelly would kiss the boy and touch his body and reach into his pants on more than one occasion.

Don't Edit

Msgr. George Flinn

Flinn operated as the primary "investigator" within the diocese of allegations of child sexual abuse. The Grand Jury concluded that despite Flinn's assurances to victims that their claims would be "addressed" he acted as an arm of the Bishop to cover-up those allegations.

Don't Edit

Don't Edit

Fr. William Kovach

Kovach allegedly molested a minor male around 1982. The Grand Jury concluded Kovach was a child predator and had been enabled by the Diocese.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane Tuesday morning released the report from a statewide grand jury investigation into allegations of systemic sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and a cover-up by church officials.

The report details sexual abuse of hundreds of children by individual priests and religious leaders in the diocese over four decades.

The grand jury found that Bishops James Hogan and Joseph Adamec never reported the allegations of abuse to law enforcement. The bishops also never removed predator priests from their jobs. Rather, investigators found, Hogan and Adamec shielded the priests in order to protect the church and themselves from scandal.

Bishop Adamec released the following response to the report Tuesday evening:

Public Statement of Bishop Joseph Adamec RE: Grand Jury Report

Bishop Joseph Adamec

"Bishop Adamec expresses his deepest sympathies to all victims of abuse and deeply regrets any harm that has come to children who were victimized. This is a position, contrary to the tenor of the Grand Jury Report, that he adhered to while in Office and his full, historical record while Bishop of the Diocese reflects it. The Bishop's full record includes his having suspended a number of priests from public ministry and having requested laicization of others.

"Bishop Adamec's full record is described in some detail by his Response to the Report and was formulated based on the access he was granted to only pages 106-112 of the Report. He is grateful to Judge Krumenacker for having provided him the opportunity to file such a Response. Before passing judgment about him based on the Grand Jury's Report, the Bishop encourages a reading of the Response that he has made and asks observers to keep in mind that he did not have the opportunity to respond to allegations made in the Report other than those on pages 106-112 to which he was granted access."
bus.jpg

(File photo)

Dauphin and Lebanon counties may soon be under one bus service.

Dauphin County Board of Commissioners approved the first steps to explore creating a new entity by combining with Lebanon Transit into one bus transit service. Lebanon County is expected to approve a similar resolution Thursday.

The ultimate plan, as outlined by a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation study, would combine bus service in Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Frankin, Lebanon, Perry and York counties. Berks and Lancaster counties, part of the original study, have already merged to form the South Central Transit Authority.

Dauphin County commissioners noted they would like to merge with South Central Transit at a later date.

A study completed in December found that a single regional transit service would save an estimated $2.3 million in operating expenses a year. Combine with the Lancaster and Berks counties, consolidation could save up to $5 million.

Part of the savings would come from a reduction of administrative costs and a five-year waiver of local matching funds paid by counties for local transit.

The matching funds waiver basically offsets the match with savings from consolidation. Any leftover funds could be used to invest in transit.

In the current fiscal year, the local matching funds for the CAT, Lebanon Transit and York Area Transportation Authority services, total nearly $1.5 million. Dauphin County estimates savings of $1.7 million over a five-year period. Lebanon County would save $485,405 over the same period.

Berks and Lancaster counties are expected to save $2.8 million and $1.7 million respectively over the next five years thanks to their merger.

"It's clear that that consolidation there seems to be working really well," said Dauphin County Chief Clerk Chad Saylor.

Any merger won't come without some pains. Layoffs will be likely as transit services combine administrations.

Berks and Lancaster each eliminated positions, including an administrative assistant, finance director, two customer service workers, marketing and planning, as well as having only one executive director. Unions did not agree to a complete merger.

However, services were not affected and actually expanded under the merger, according to officials.

Cumberland County approved a resolution of support last week in support of regionalization.

York County also approved a resolution to move forward with the regionalization plan.

Rabbittransit in York previously merged with Adams County in 2011, and provides ride share services with Cumberland and Columbia counties, with Franklin County expected to join in April, according to the York Daily Record.

Correction: This post has been updated to include that Capital Area Transit is not involved with the possible merger between Dauphin and Lebanon counties.
The Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape is calling for removal of the statute of limitation in sexual assault cases.



The Enola-based organization issued the call Tuesday after a grand jury alleged that priests and church leaders in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese sexually abused hundreds of children in incidents dating back to the 1950s.



"It is exasperating and maddening to know that people who have sexually abused children--children they were trusted to protect --will go unpunished because of outdated and ineffective legislation," said Delilah Rumburg of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. "We have had enough. Too many children and families have had their lives, health, education, relationships and faith damaged. Pennsylvania cannot continue to keep laws on the books that allow institutions the ability to cover up crimes and leave children in the care of people known to hurt them."



According to the coalition, victims of sexual assault over the age of 18 have 12 years to report sexual assault in Pennsylvania. Victims under the age of 18 who were born before August 27, 2002 have 12 years after their 18th birthday to file criminal charges. Sexual assault victims under the age of 18 who were born after August 27, 2002 have 32 years after their 18th birthday to file criminal charges.



The organization said sexual abuse leaves victims confused, scared and humiliated, and it is therefore normal for them to wait years or decades before telling anyone.



The organization further said, "Sexual violence is a serious and common problem, with significant costs to people, families and communities. Prevention is possible, and removing the statute of limitations is one step toward creating an environment that respects the real nature the crime and its impact on victims. It is time that we demand the removal of the statute of limitations for sexual assault."
pn_20100910165701-1.jpg

One of Chesapeake Energy's Marcellus Shale wells sits high on a bluff over the Susquehanna River in Windham Township, Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, in September 2010.

(File photo)

Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest drillers in the Marcellus Shale fields of Pennsylvania, is cooperating with a federal investigation into its leasing practices under former CEO Aubrey McClendon.

The U.S. Department of Justice made public Tuesday evening an indictment that charged McClendon with rigging bid prices to buy oil and gas leases in northwest Oklahoma.

It's a scheme that continued from December 2007 to March 2012 while McClendon was Chesapeake's CEO, according to the Justice Department.

The Oklahoma-based company has been cooperating with federal investigators "for some time," complying with laws and regulations, spokesman Gordon Pennoyer said.

"Chesapeake does not expect to face criminal prosecution or fines relating to this matter," he said.
ALTOONA -- Confronted with revelations of widespread child abuse by clergy in the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, church members and residents in this community, described as staunchly religious by some, reacted with shock and disgust, as well as silence and disbelief on Tuesday.

One couple, asked by a PennLive reporter for their reaction to a damning grand jury report released on the matter that morning, said, simply, "We don't want to talk about that" before hurrying off toward their car located across a downtown Altoona parking lot.

At the St. John's Catholic School on Lotz Avenue in the city, a man who answered the door declined comment saying, "we're tight lipped about it."

Others were more forthcoming in describing a deep-seated internal conflict involving their affiliation with the church and moral aversion to the acts reportedly committed by some of its leaders. Those acts, according to the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General which announced the findings of its grand jury investigation on Tuesday, included hundreds of child victims abused by as many as 50 diocesan priests over a period of 40 years.

Pat Rickabaugh, a practicing Catholic from Altoona, said she was "glad" the abuse had been exposed, adding "Those children suffered enough just to have to talk about it."

Rickabaugh also chided law enforcement for not acting sooner.

Many others in the city asked that their names not be used in print, saying they weren't comfortable speaking out against the church. It's a stark reminder of how large the church looms in communities like this one.

One of them, a woman who identified herself as a practicing Catholic, said she was "disgusted" and would no longer be donating to the church, fearful that her contributions were being used for hush money to cover-up allegations of sexual abuse.

The Attorney General's office said the diocese paid millions of dollars to keep allegations of abuse hidden from public view through the years, keeping track of the cases in a "secret archive" and even creating a pay scale which spelled out the amounts to be paid in response to certain claims. Sodomy represented the highest amount, officials explained.

The revelations were jarring although not entirely unexpected in Altoona, a declining industrial city of about 46,000, where allegations of misconduct by diocesan priests have been slowly filtering out for years.

But the scale of the problem was never really clear, locals say, until now.

Diocese parishioner and Penn State Altoona student, Jesse Ickes, visibly recoiled when informed of the number of offending priests and victims as quoted by the state's Attorney General. Ickes said that while it's important to remember that not every priest or monsignor within the church is committing such acts, "It's a sad situation and not appropriate in any manner," or to any extent.

In the shadow of Altoona's Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, the largest cathedral of its kind between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh and a place where at least one instance of abuse reportedly occurred, Jean Johnstone, executive director of the Diocese's Catholic Charities branch said, "We're still reeling from it (the news) and as a church we're hurting but we continue to do good things."

Johnstone added, "We're all devastated, but there's still a lot of good the church does."

She said further comment would have to wait for approval from church officials, who were unavailable to hear those requests on Tuesday.

The Cathedral, meanwhile, was empty inside, and no church officials were available in an adjacent office space to talk.

Outside, Courtney Beason, an Altoona native, said she supported attorney general Kathleen Kane's call for the elimination of statutes of limitation for child sex crimes so that offenders might still be prosecuted even years after the abuse takes place.

Kane said for many involved in this case, one spanning nearly half-a-century, the grand jury investigation represented their first-ever contact with law enforcement.

"That's just hard to believe," said a man walking in downtown Altoona on Tuesday afternoon who declined to be identified for this article.

Another who similarly declined to provide his name said the scandal won't stop him from going to church, because he believes the church is working on addressing its issues. He stopped short, however, of endorsing changes that would allow priests to marry or women to wear the cloth.

"The church wanted to cover it up, and you can't blame them (as an organization) but unfortunately a lot of people got hurt," the man said.

In Tuesday's press conference, Kane said the offending priests "desecrated a sacred trust."

Lois Metzger of Altoona went a step further, calling the abuse of children by church officials the greatest betrayal of all.

"We were supposed to be able to look up to the clergy and they took advantage of their position," Metzger said.

To the victims, many of whom are now grown, Metzger said she knows of someone who was similarly abused and who was able to go on to live a happy and fulfilling life. She said victims like them cannot blame themselves or be afraid to come forward adding, "no matter if you're ashamed, just remember it's not your fault."
An opposing point of view will be offered Saturday to those celebrating the inaugural Confederate Flag Day at Gettysburg National Military Park.

Scott Hancock (right), with others on the square in Gettysburg in summer 2015 during protest of Confederate flag.

Scott Hancock, associate professor for history and Africana studies at Gettysburg College, said he has received a permit to gather with signs offering a countering view to the Private J. W. Culp Camp Sons of the Confederate Veterans, who are holding the Confederate Flag Day event.

Gary Casteel of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, said the intent of the event is education, as well as to honor ancestors who served in the Civil War.

"I would argue their form of education is a narrow, sanitized and revisionist form of history," Hancock said. "I'd like to provide a more complete history of what the Confederate flag is connected to and symbolized." He said he expects at least a dozen people to join him.

"As a historian, I find most of the supporters of the Confederate flag present a history that's just bad history. It leaves things out, it's a selective history. I think it's important to educate the public," Hancock said.

The Sons of the Confederate Veterans requested the permit for the Confederate Flag Day under the First Amendment of the Constitution, and the National Park Service approved the request. The event will be from 2-4 p.m. at the Eternal Light Peace Memorial off Route 30 at the western edge of the battlefield.

This isn't Hancock's first protest of the Confederate flag. Last July 4, following the Charleston shooting in June, the Confederate flag was displayed on the square in Gettysburg. At a subsequent display during bike week in Gettysburg, Hancock said he and others made signs to show a counter point of view.

"I got fed up with the supporters of the Confederate flag monopolizing the public space. It was time for someone to speak back locally," he said.

The Rev. Dave Hunter of the Unitarian Universalists of Gettysburg said he also has concerns about the Confederate flag event.

"My view of the flag is it stands for slavery," Hunter said, and is counter to efforts toward greater equality and better race relations. "I'm curious about why people still want to display the Confederate flag or celebrate it - it doesn't make sense to me," Hunter said.

Another group of protestors are planning to meet at 1 p.m. at the Lincoln statue between Stevens and Lincoln streets in Gettysburg, and will be marching to the Peace Light.

UPDATE: Information was added March 4 on an additional protest.
Aubrey McClendon

Aubrey McClendon, the former CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was indicted Tuesday for rigging bids to buy oil and gas leases.

(Associated Press)

Aubrey McClendon, the former CEO of Chesapeake Energy, was indicted Tuesday for rigging bids to buy oil and gas leases.

The scheme occurred in northwest Oklahoma from December 2007 to March 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Justice Department said McClendon's indictment is "the first case resulting from an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the oil and natural gas industry."

McClendon, who is also the co-owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder, is accused of leading the conspiracy between two large energy companies, deciding ahead of time which one would win the bids. The winner would then allocate part of the leases to the other company, according to the indictment.

When landowners signs leases with an oil and gas company, they give permission for drillers to extract oil and gas on their properties for a certain period of time.

In Pennsylvania, the leases are usually good for several years, and many state residents accused Chesapeake of fraud, claiming they were being shortchanged on royalty payments.

State law requires a minimum 12.5 percent royalty payment, but landowners said they were being charged too much for post-production costs and other fees.

Former Gov. Tom Corbett, who received nearly $500,000 in campaign contributions from McClendon, asked Attorney General Kathleen Kane in February 2014 to investigate the allegations.

A spokesman for her office on Tuesday night said he could not immediately comment on the matter but expects to have more information Wednesday.

This story is developing. Check PennLive for more updates.
Rasheeda Pullin first met Asher Potts when he was in ninth grade.

Her kids and Potts participated in ROTC together. They were friends. Potts helped them with homework, even attempting to teach them some of the languages he spoke.

Potts came to Pullin's house to stay when he left what she thought were his foster parents. He'd been living with Pullin and her family since about October.

He didn't even watch TV, Pullin said, spending most of his time studying and learning.

"He's a really nice guy, respectful, smart," Pullin said. "We love him. He's everything you want an American to be."

And Pullin's view of Potts hasn't changed since it was revealed that the 18-year-old Potts was a 23-year-old Ukrainian national named Artur Samarin, according to police.

Samarin, she said, is as much a victim as he is to blame for the strange case of false identity.

"We don't believe this young man was a mastermind in all of this," said Pullin's husband Waleed McClintock. "He was from another country; he's just a kid. I just don't understand how all of the onus has been placed on him."

Last week, Samarin was arrested and charged with multiple felonies in connection to his false identity and the tampering of public records. He was also charged with two sex crimes: statutory sexual assault and corruption of minors. Police say Samarin had sex with a 15-year-old girl in 2014 when he was 22 years old.

On Monday, he was charged with two misdemeanors for, police said, using his false identity to enroll in a citizens' police academy. Samarin remains in jail in lieu of $240,000 bond as of Tuesday.

A tipster alerted police to Samarin's true identity in December, according to police.

When Pullin and her family met Samarin they believed he was a high school freshman. In reality, police say, he was 20, had graduated from high school and completed two years of college.

He remained in the U.S. after his work and travel visas expired in 2013, living under a fake identity, police have said.

According to police, Michael Potts and Stephayne McClure-Potts helped Samarin enroll in school in 2012 using a birthdate of Sept. 3, 1997. They told family members they'd adopted him.

On Sept. 17, 2014, McClure-Potts also helped Samarin obtain his Pennsylvania driver's license in the name of Asher Potts, police said.

It's unclear whether the couple knowingly helped Samarin circumvent the law or whether they were duped by the young man.

Carolyn Potts, Michael Potts' mother, told PennLive she was suspicious of the situation that lead her son and daughter-in-law to adopt what she thought was a teenage immigrant.

She said Samarin originally came to the U.S. to work at the Hershey Company in a warehouse. She said it was possible her son and daughter-in-law may not have had a clear picture of who Samarin was.

"I like the boy," Carolyn Potts told PennLive. "But I've always felt a little bit suspicious. It seems too easy."

Pullin and McClintock aren't sure Samarin was behind the plan to create a false identity or that he fooled his supposed parents. How could a young man from another county have the knowledge or means to create a new identity? McClintock asked. To McClintock, being even 23 still made Samarin a kid.

"We were just shocked that it even took so long for people to think he could do this on his own," McClintock said.

In a jailhouse interview with abc27, Samarin admitted he abused the system and was guilty but added, "It was not my idea. I just want to let you know it was not my idea."

He also said he felt that the Michael and Stephanye Potts held the situation over his head:

"Everything they ask of me I could not tell them no," he told ABC27. "If I say no, they gonna call immigration and send me back, which I did not want. I was afraid of that, so I was cleaning the toilet, I was cooking for them, I was doing everything in [the] house. Stephayne was taking classes in HACC and I was doing homework for her. Pretty much like a slave driver system, but I didn't mind as long as I'm going to school," he said.

Stephayne and Michael Potts could not be reached for comment. No charges have been filed against them by police.

Pullin believes that Samarin's relationship with the Potts couple was the only negative in his life.

According to Pullin, Samarin was often at her house after quarreling with his supposed parents, and came to stay with her when he left home. McClintock said the family tried to provide a safe space to help Samarin. He even rearranged his schedule to help take Samarin to school.

Stephayne McClure-Potts was adamant that people call Samarin "Asher," though Pullin and her family called him by his real name, "Artur."

Pullin said she wasn't sure she would have let Samarin stay with her kids if she knew his real age, which she blames his "adoptive parents" for concealing, although knowing the truth doesn't change her opinion of Samarin.

She and McClintock both said they support him.

Pullin admits he abused the system, but she doesn't believe he was a master manipulator or deserves as much blame as he's getting.

"He was definitely a victim in this," Pullin said. "It seemed like he might of thought he had no other way out."

Even though the foundation of his identity wasn't true, McClintock said Samarin worked harder and wanted to achieve more than many other people. Now he's being treated like a criminal.

"We simply want him back here home," McClintock said. "Whatever his true age is, then he can start over. He can still achieve his dreams."
Oil Trains Cities

AP Photo

((AP Photo/Matt Rourke))

A county judge was correct in dismissing a lawsuit filed by the family of a 7-year-old girl who was hit and severely injured by a train, a state Superior Court panel ruled this week.

The state judges found there is no evidence the train crew was negligent, or could have avoided hitting Destiny Gresart as she walked along the tracks in Johnsonburg, Elk County, on the afternoon of Aug. 18, 2004.

In fact, Judge Paula Francisco Ott wrote in the state court opinion, the crew took vigorous measures to try to stop the train and shoo Destiny out of danger before she was struck by a snowplow mounted on the locomotive.

The state judges reviewed the case after the girl's mother, Dedra Gresart appealed an Elk County judges ruling that dismissed her negligence suit against the Buffalo & Pittsburg Railroad.

According to Ott, Destiny was home with her two teenage sisters while her mother was at work. One sister fell asleep and the other went to a store across the railroad tracks from the family home. Destiny left the house to find that sister.

Court records state that while Destiny was walking by the tracks, a freight train approached going under the 25 mph speed limit. The train slowed down and the crew sounded its horn. Then the crew member saw Destiny 250 feet ahead, walking on the west side of the tracks. She was on the railroad ties and moving toward the train.

The engineer and conductor blew the train's horn and applied the emergency brake, records state. The conductor ran to the front of the locomotive and yelled at the child to get out of the way.

In suing the railroad, Dedra Gresart argued that the train tracks presented an "attractive nuisance. She claimed, too, that the crew was negligent and should have seen Destiny in time to stop the train.

Ott wrote that her court agreed with the county judge that the negligence claim falls short. In the legal sense, Destiny was a "trespasser" on the tracks, she noted, and Dedra Gresart didn't present convincing evidence that the train crew had exhibited "willful or wanton disregard" for her daughter's safety.
FILE- In this Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016 file photo, Shiite and Sunni clerics listen to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as he speaks via a video link, during a ceremony to honer fallen Hezbollah leaders, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. A Saudi-led bloc of six Gulf Arab nations formally branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization on Wednesday, ramping up the pressure on the Lebanese militant group fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad in Syria. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
2015 Ecopetrol's proven reserves down to 1,849 mboe



Colombia's Ecopetrol says reserves down 11 pct in 2015 to 1.849 bln barrels





CARACAS

Petroleumworld.com 03 02 2016

Ecopetrol announced today an 11% lower proven hydrocarbons reserves (1P, according to the international designation) of crude oil, condensate and natural gas owned by the company, including its interest in affiliates and subsidiaries, as of December 31, 2015.

The reserves were estimated based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) standards and methodology. 99% of them were audited by two well-known specialized independent companies (Ryder Scott Company and DeGolyer and MacNaughton).

Ecopetrol's Proven net hydrocarbon reserves were 1,849 million barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe) at the close of 2015, an 11% reduction compared with 2,084 mmboe at the end of 2014. The reserve replacement ratio was 6%, and the reserves/production ratio (average life of reserves) was 7.4 years.

Ecopetrols proven reserves as of December 31 of 2015

Proved Reserves (1P) Oil Equivalent (mmboe) Proved Reserves as of Dec 31 of 2014 2,084 Revisions of previous estimates -25 Purchases of minerals in place 0 Improved recovery 16 Extensions and discoveries 24 Sales of minerals in place 0 Production -251 Proved Reserves as of Dec 31 of 2015 1,849

The average reserve life is equivalent to 7.4 years

The reduction in proved reserves was mainly driven by the plunge of hydrocarbon prices. In 2015, SEC price for Brent was US$55.57 per barrel compared to US$101.80 per barrel in 2014.

Ecopetrol estimates that the price effect implies a decrease of 404 mmboe in reserves during 2015 compared with those from the end of 2014. This decrease was largely offset by the addition of 275 mmboe, attributable to cost optimizations and higher efficiencies achieved by the Company as well as by the addition of 67 mmboe as a result of the new drilling campaigns in Castilla and Rubiales fields, and the positive revisions of some fields like Chichimene, due to good production performance. Another positive effect came from the inclusion of natural gas self-consumption on proved reserves (+47 mmboe).

The highest contributions to the reserve balance were from Castilla and Chichimene fields, both directly operated by Ecopetrol, and from Rubiales field, which will be operated by Ecopetrol as of July 2016 .

95% of our proved reserves belong to Ecopetrol S.A., while Hocol, Ecopetrol America and the participation in Equion and Savia Peru contributes with 5%.






French drugmaker Ipsen has picked up rights to Exelixis lead oncology drug cabozantinib in deal worth up to $855 million plus potential royalties.

The deal sees Ipsen gain exclusive commercialisation rights for current and potential future cabozantinib indications outside the US, Canada and Japan, including Cometriq, which is cleared in the EU for the treatment of adult patients with progressive, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic medullary thyroid cancer.

In return, Exelixis gets a $200 million upfront payment and stands to receive regulatory milestones, including a $60 million milestone upon approval of cabozantinib in Europe for advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), and $50 million upon the drugs filing and approval in the region for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), as well as additional regulatory milestones for potential further indications.

The agreement also includes up to $545 million of potential commercial milestones and provides for Exelixis to receive tiered royalties up to 26% on Ipsens net sales of cabozantinib in its territories.

Cabozantinib has the potential to become a key oncology product, said Marc de Garidel, Ipsens chairman and chief executive, explaining the firms interest in the deal. This transaction will help Ipsen accelerate the growth of the company and strengthen its oncology footprint in Europe.

The immediate priority for the drug is on advanced RCC, but the firms said they are also committed to exploring and potentially developing cabozantinib in a variety of cancer settings. The drug suffered a high profile failure in a Phase III prostate cancer trial back in 2014, but has been making a comeback ever since.
REPUBLICANS now want to "Dump the Trump"? Come on.

Too late, dudes. Shoulda listened when you had a chance.

Last August, I wrote that if party leaders didn't want Trump, they needed to act, put together a deal to winnow the field with promises of future rewards and settle on a pair that could win in November.

I even noted that a GOP ticket able to take Florida and (especially) Ohio can snag enough Electoral College votes to win the general election.

Know the last Republican elected president without winning Ohio?

There isn't one. Never has been.

Yet, faced with the chance of dealing a duo of, say, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, with either at the top, Republican leadership opted instead to see no Trump, hear no Trump, and sit on its hands.

It gaped as Trump gathered strength to grab the prize.

Even after months of indisputable evidence that Trump can say anything and not lose support, nobody in the "Party of Lincoln" could find a way to banish The Donald.

Now as Trump climbs higher in national polls (CNN polling this week puts him at 49 percent; nobody else is out of the teens), everybody wants to pull him down.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, the GOP 2012 veep candidate, calls out Trump for appearing not to denounce the KKK:

"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party there can be no evasion and no games."

This is laughable on its face. The nominee of either party gets to be the nominee through evasion and games.

Ryan, by the way, presides at the GOP convention in July; any last-ditch, stop-Trump effort unfolds under his gavel, if not his name.

Mitt Romney, the party's 2012 presidential candidate, suggests there's a "bombshell" in Trump's tax returns.

This is the guy who, to be kind, didn't run the best presidential campaign, and set off his own bombshell: "47 percent" of Americans will vote for Obama "no matter what" to protect their government entitlements.

(Ironically, Romney got 47 percent. Obama got 51 percent.)

Trump's closest GOP rival, Rubio, evidently now believes that to beat Trump, you must act like Trump. So Rubio calls Trump a small-handed "con man" sporting a spray tan.

Ah, the rarely used triple-insult, referring to penis size, cheating, and vanity.

Yes. Such is the tone and civility of today's national politics.

Oh, and if Trump survives put-downs and the convention and is the nominee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans will drop him "like a hot rock" and run ads against him to get or keep their Senate seats.

The parade of newly awakened social-justice advocates, political pragmatists, and copycat Trump attackers is impressive only in a better-late-than-never sense.

The exception, of course, is Gov. Christie, who, after calling Trump a "carnival barker" during his run for the nomination, now endorses him for president.

This brave, selfless act (and chance to be VP or attorney general) is a guaranteed gold-medal winner in the 2016 Opportunists Olympics.

Trump has survived calling Mexicans rapists, banning Muslims, his wall, drive-by misogyny, a New York Times "secret tape," various 9/11 theories, fraud allegations at Trump University, cozying up to David Duke, and calling Pope Francis "a pawn."

All while GOP turnout, because of him, sets records as Democratic turnout lags.

Super Tuesday was no different. Nobody did as well as Donald.

The Trump phenomenon is born of bad wars and worse economies, D.C. waste, tea party elements, and a political system that isolates itself from average folks in every way.

After creating an environment in which people without power feel lied to, betrayed, and ignored by their leaders, creators of that environment shouldn't complain about its product.

GOP efforts to stop Trump in his tracks or at the convention amount to a national party invalidating its own voters.

The Trump thing is years in the making - and "IT'S ALIVE!"

baerj@phillynews.com

Blog: ph.ly/BaerGrowls

Columns: ph.ly/JohnBaer
Entertainment / Shows

by Arts Correspondent

Miss Zimbabwe-USA 2016 organisers have called for entries for the pageant's next edition, which has been slated for May 28, in California, Los Angeles.Organisers said Miss Zimbabwe-USA 2016 seeks to crown a young Zimbabwean woman endowed with beauty, intelligence and purpose.The winner should be willing to support uplift and assist the Zimbabwean community in the American diaspora and fellow Zimbabweans back home."The pageant, inaugurated in 2000, has become the most prestigious, most looked forward to and respected event on the calendars of Zimbabweans living in the USA," a statement from Zim Expo said.Reigning Miss Zimbabwe USA, Wadzanai Thembani, will be representing Zimbabwe in the Miss United Nations Pageant in 2017.Wadzanai attended Dominican Convent School in Harare, before moving to Dallas, Texas, in 2010."Winning Miss Zimbabwe USA, has enabled me to be more involved in my community here in Dallas TX as well as staying involved with my community back home in Zimbabwe," said Wadzanai."Initially I was one of the nominees for the Zimbabwe Achievement Awards where I was nominated in three categories and managed to take home one award."This crown has given me privileges and opportunities, I have had the chance to meet several ambassadors from around the world through the United Nations pageant system."I also had the opportunity to get featured in Tiara magazine."Miss Zimbabwe-USA has provided a platform for the past 15 years to groom young women to become inspirational role models, in the different countries where their pageants are held.Some of the previous winners of Miss Zimbabwe-USA are Makho Ndlovu, Sandra Nduna, Farai Moyo, Farai Gundani, Kaya Chipungu, Elizabeth Chitseko, Busi Mlambo,Sibongile Mlambo and Thandekile Mellissa Rhoades.Organisers said entries should be sent to missziminternational@gmail.com.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

The matter in which a police officer allegedly shot a student nurse in the suburb of Goreangab in February last year, resulting in the nurse later dying, was remanded to April 1 to enable the accused to enlist the services of a government-funded lawyer.The New Era reported that George Ndemoongela, 24, made his third appearance in the Regional Court in Katutura on Friday where his case was remanded to enable him to obtain legal representation. The matter was referred to the Regional Court in December.Martha Ilonga, 20, a student nurse was allegedly shot on February 12 last year by members of the police force, in what appears to be a police operation gone wrong.The police allegedly shot Ilonga  who was studying at the Namibia Health Training Centre in Windhoek  in the head while she was seated in the backseat of a Toyota Corolla sedan. The student nurse was being driven home to Goreangab in Katutura, where she rented a room, family members told New Era after the incident.The driver of the ill-fated vehicle, Titus Shuuveni, said afterwards that he was escorting Ilonga home with his friend when the friend received a phonecall from someone who wanted them to drive to where he was."We went there immediately before dropping off Martha. While driving, my friend told me to stop and then he went towards a white Polo Vivo that was parked alongside the road," Shuuveni recalled. "My friend told me to get out and go to the Polo also," Shuuveni told New Era last year. He said a police officer emerged suddenly out of nowhere and handcuffed his friend and ordered them (Shuuveni and Ilonga) to drive off. The police had apparently been lying in ambush in what seemed like a police trap, whereby the Polo Vivo had been used to bait his friend, according to Shuuveni. Apparently, one officer had mistakenly assumed the Corolla was speeding away from the police. The police claim the shooting was not intentional and that the bullet that struck Ilonga in the head was aimed at the sedan's tyre.Magistrate Sarel Jacobs presided over the hearing, while Samantha Diergaardt represented the State
Out and About Audio Article Atascosa County Anti-Bullying Rally Oct. 19 Poteet Strawberry Festival grounds, main pavilion, 6-8 p.m. Guest speaker Batman & Co. and...

JISD Supt. McAllister announces retirement Audio Article The retirement of Jourdanton ISD Superintendent Theresa McAllister was announced at the meeting of the school board held on Oct....
News / Africa

by AFP

Cairo - An Egyptian man has been beheaded and his teenage son shot dead in the Sinai, officials said Tuesday of the peninsula where Islamic State group jihadists are spearheading an insurgency.The man and his 17-year-old son were killed late on Monday in the North Sinai provincial town of El-Arish, security officials and medics said.No militant group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.In the past, jihadists from the Egyptian affiliate of ISIS have beheaded several people and posted gruesome pictures online after accusing them of spying for the army in the Sinai."The man's decapitated body and his son's body were brought to hospital on Monday night. His son was shot in the head," a medic said.The killings come weeks after Egypt's ISIS affiliate posted pictures online of two men it said were killed for spying for the military in the Sinai.The ISIS affiliate - "Sinai Province" - is waging an insurgency in the restive peninsula that has killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.The group also claimed the October 31 downing of a Russian airliner carrying tourists over Sinai that killed all 224 people on board.IS said it had smuggled a bomb onto the plane at an airport in the south of the peninsula.The Sinai jihadists pledged allegiance in November 2014 to ISIS, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria and also has a presence in conflict-ridden Libya.
News / Africa

by Sibongile Mashaba

CHILDREN must stay away from schools because the devil has taken over these institutions, following a deal it made with former president Nelson Mandela.This was the submission made by the Angel Ministries brothers to the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities in Port Elizabeth yesterday.Banele Mancoba, one of the seven brothers from the ministry, some consider to be a cult, based in Ngcobo, Eastern Cape, said Mandela had made a deal with Satan to take over schools."The devil has taken over the schools. The devil was allowed by Nelson Mandela Rholihlahla. As Angel Ministries we say that as angels who sit on the Father's right hand, we call on children not to go to schools because the devil has taken over school," she said.Last month, police and social workers rescued 21 children from the church. The children did not attend school because the church is against it.Mancoba said Mandela had meeting with the devil while he was in prison and sold out the world."Mandela was enforcing that children be sent to school when he knew very well that he had sacrificed them," Mancoba said.He said the church did not recognise the country's constitution because it was driven by the devil."The devil breathed on the constitution. We will not turn back; the South African constitution and education are dead. People must not listen to the constitution because it is driven by the devil. It is the devil's spirit."He told the commission that the constitution allowed witches to practise freely."The South African constitution allows men to marry each other. We have come to Earth to fix those things," said Mancoba.He did not deny that there were church members who had cashed in their pensions, resigned from work and sold property and given their money to the church.He said there were nearly 200 people living on the church premises, adding that money donated by members was used to buy food and clothes.The commission is investigating the church for abusing people's belief systems.Mancoba said he and his brothers were angels and descended from heaven to find Satan on Earth. He said they had encounters with Satan, with the last meeting having taken place on Saturday. He said in the flesh, they were born in South Africa and had identity documents and birth certificates.Outside the hearing, he told Sowetan that they had not captured Satan because they wanted people to repent first."He has many people around him. A lot of people will die if we do that," Mancoba said
BlogNews Weekly: Phil Ivey's $1 Million Cooler and How To Join Team PokerStars Online

March 01, 2016 Jason Glatzer Editor

Each week, PokerNews brings you insight into the happenings at the major poker sites. Featuring the most popular blog posts, BlogNews Weekly is your one-stop shop for all your poker blog highlights.

This week, BlogNews Weekly brings you highlights from the latest PokerStars, Full Tilt, and partypoker blogs.

Learn How To Join Team PokerStars Pro Online

Luka "LukaSteel" Kovac answers a question on the minds of many poker players about the path to becoming a Team PokerStars Pro Online member in a blog aptly titled How To Make Team PokerStars Pro Online.

The Slovanian poker player starts off by discussing how he became a member of this exclusive team by applying during Team Pro Online week and being selected among the 500 applicants. He believes he was chosen due to Slovenia not being represented on the team and the fact that he plays mostly limit hold'em, a poker variant not widely played by other team members.

The timing of Kovac's story isn't coincidental, as Team Pro Online week will be taking place later in the month with many exciting promotions. This is also your chance on PokerStars to apply to potentially become the next member of Team PokerStars Pro Online if you are a supernova or higher.

Read more on the PokerStars Blog about Kovac's path to Team PokerStars Pro Online and how you can potentially become a member.

$1.1 Million Cooler for Phil Ivey

About six years ago in the Full Tilt Million Dollar Cash Game, poker legends Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan were involved in a huge hand where both players had a straight on the turn. The action began with Dwan raising preflop with the from the button and Ivey making a fairly large three-bet with the , which Dwan called.

With the pot already at $49,500, Ivey led the action by betting $35,000 on a flop of giving both players a gutshot straight draw. Dwan called, and here is where the action really got hot and heavy when the appeared on the turn to give both players a straight.

After some raising and reraising, Ivey was all in for a massive pot slightly over $1.1 million. Ivey was drawing dead, shipping a seven-figure pot to Dwan and a huge cooler to Ivey.

Head to the Full Tilt Blog to learn more about how this hand unfolded.

How To Survive When You're Card Dead

Sometimes a poker tournament is easy pickings when all the cards come your way. However, most of the time this isn't the case and learning how to react when you are card dead is important to learn in order to be successful in the long term.

Partypoker blogger Paul Seaton shares on a blog titled Seven Ways To Survive When You're Card Dead some things you should think when this situation arises.

A couple of the more important tips are being patient and using a tight image to your advantage. Image is important in poker, because if you are perceived as a tight player, you may be able to get away with some light three-bets to collect chips instead of just folding and watching your stack dwindle.

Discover on the partypoker Blog seven great tips on how to survive when you are card dead.

Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
Germany Discussing a Liberalized Online Gaming Regime

March 01, 2016 Jason Glatzer Editor

Last month, the Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) ruled against the Germany's restrictive online gaming laws, which will likely require a complete overhaul of the country's gaming legislation. It appears many key players are already reacting to this news, as last week in Berlin the topic was discussed in detail at the German Association of Internet Businesses symposium.

According to GamingLaw.eu, the event was attended by a vast array of stakeholders, including industry and media representatives, legal experts, politicians, and academics.

Most of the stakeholders agreed that a complete overhaul was necessary with many favoring a proposal by Hesse Minister-President Peter Beuth, which includes a reasonable tax rate on gross gaming revenues and a removal of restrictions on the amount of licenses. The proposal is believed to be similar to the gaming regime in Germany's northern-state of Schleswig-Holstein, which has been approved by the European Union.

Despite many agreeing that Beuth's proposal makes sense, it could take some time before we see any progress, as is often the case with any political process. To complicate matters further, some stakeholders believe legislation should be led by the national government, while others, including former Minister President of Schleswig-Holstein, Peter-Harry Carstensen, believes the 16 German states should be taking the lead.

Some believe, however, we could see a liberalized online gaming regime in place in Germany sooner rather than later, including Parliamentary Secretary of the Christian Democratic Union in Schleswig-Holstein Hans-Jorn Arp, who stated, "2016 will be a year of discussion, and 2017 a year of decision."

Lead image courtesy of deviantart.net.

Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
Sunday Briefing: Kenny LoneHixx Hicks Wins Sunday Million; Weisner Wins Sunday 500

March 01, 2016 Matthew Pitt Editor

There was a familiar name at the top of the PokerStars Sunday Million results page this weekend, as Kenny "LoneHixx" Hicks outlasted a tough field of 5,727 to get his hands a six-figure prize.

Hicks emerged triumphant in the early hours of Monday morning, doing so with $133,405.67 to show for his victory. His prize could have been more substantial, but a deal was struck with four players remaining in the $215 buy-in event.

The deal involved, in the order they were eliminated, Sweden"s slayertompa" ($100,420.20), Norway's "JanekJorgman" ($135,141.73), and Russia's "_m0ney2_89" ($97,384.80).

Amazingly, Hicks went on to finish second in the Sunday Kickoff on PokerStars for an additional $21,612 to make it an even more amazing weekend for him.

Germany's "XingsMaster" also had a profitable Sunday thanks to taking down the Sunday Warm-Up on PokerStars for a cool $74,828.91, while Canada's "StackedOff" secured a $39,217.50 payday by winning the Sunday Rebuy, also on PokerStars.

There were more Canadian flags at the top of several other PokerStars Sunday majors, with "ctecstron'my" winning the Bigger $109 for $37,920 and Melanie "Callisto 5" Weisner walking away with $53,148.75, after a heads-up chop, in the Sunday 500. Both of those events were also part of the PokerStars offering.

Other big PokerStars wins included:

"Busyman919" who won the Sunday Kickoff for $28,816.65

who won the Sunday Kickoff for $28,816.65 "Elay99" who won the Bigger $162 for $23,400

who won the for $23,400 "EvnomiYa" who won the Sunday 2nd Chance for $37,404

who won the for $37,404 "bah23" who won the Sunday 6-Max for $20,655.18

who won the for $20,655.18 Jonathan "MONSTER_DONG" Karamalikis who won the Sunday Supersonic for $47,385.42

FTOPS Continues on Full Tilt

Over at Full Tilt, the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) continued with two more high-stakes tournaments.

FTOPS Event #16 was a $250 buy-in, $125,000 guaranteed affair attracting 596 entries. Topping them all, after a three-way chop, was "ll LIKE A G6 ll" of the Czech Republic who scooped $20,736.57. Also part of that chop were Peter "Belabacsi" Traply ($21,965.34) and the UK's "Rikki MacK" ($12,914.72).

FTOPS Event #17, a $100 buy-in, one-rebuy, one-add on turbo six-max tournament saw its $30,000 guarantee almost doubled, with the lion's share of the prize pool, $13,969.17 to be exact, now nestled in the Full Tilt account of Ireland's "Cumin At Me Bro."

Diotte Has Himself a Party

As Hicks did earlier at PokerStars, Anthony "muchofkingusto" Diotte helped himself to a major win and final table at partypoker. First, Diotte won Powerfest #39, a $50,000 guaranteed tournament, for $8,000. He then followed that up with a sixth-place finish in the $150,000 Guaranteed Main Event for an additional $6,460.

"oops86" took down the Main Event for a welcome addition of $27,420.80 to his bankroll.

A similar-sized score was had by "TheRepoMan86" in the $150,000 Guaranteed High Roller, winning $28,057.80.

"JohnyK91" Wins the Baby Whale

Completing the Sunday Briefing for another week are the biggest results from 888poker, where Greece's "JohnyK91" won the $100,000 Baby Whale for $26,334 after beating the UK's Mat "checktrap11" Cuthbertson heads-up. Cuthbertson received $19,404.

Russia's "Mr_Yuve" claimed top honors in the $120,000 Mega Deep, capturing $27,304.80, with "IWant2Gamble" adding $12,616.20 to his lifetime winnings courtesy of a victory in the $50,000 Turbo Mega Deep.

Last, but not least, a mention of Sweden's "Eljseijs" for his victory in the $100,000 Sunday Challenge for a $20,476.30 score.

Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us both Facebook and Google+!
Hundreds gathered in streets of a Raleigh neighborhood Monday night to protest a fatal police shooting. (Photo: Screen shot from News & Observer video)

An angry, anxious crowd gathered at the scene of a police shooting just south of downtown Raleigh, NC, Monday evening, decrying police violence against African-Americans, but the gathering remained peaceful.

More than 300 people stood outside of PJs Grill & Groceries on Bragg Street, where shortly after noon police were trying to arrest a black man on a felony drug charge when an officer shot him, said Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown. Speaking at an afternoon press conference, Deck-Brown did not provide many details, saying only that the officer was chasing the man on foot when the man was shot and killed by the officer.

After the shooting, Deck-Brown said, a firearm was located within close proximity of the deceased suspect.

Deck-Brown did not name the suspect who was shot, the Raleigh News & Observer reports. But Rolanda Byrd said she received a call from her cousin who told her that a police officer had shot and killed her 24-year-old son, Akiel Denkins. She said the cousin told her Denkins was shot in the back while he was running away from the officer.

Although Denkins had over a dozen arrests, he has three misdeameanor criminal convictions. Many of his arrests resulted in cases being dismissed in court.

Denkins was arrested in October and charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute it, according to court records. He was charged with failing to show up for court in the case on Feb. 2.

The State Bureau of Investigation will investigate the shooting, as will the Raleigh Police Departments internal affairs office. The SBI will report its findings to the Wake County District Attorneys Office. Deck-Brown said she will provide a written report about the shooting to the City Council within five days.
Roanoke County police used this side-by-side comparison to show how realistic the BB gun carried by Kionte DeShaun Spencer appeared to officers. (Photo: Roanoke County PD)

An 18-year-old man was shot and killed Friday night by Roanoke County, VA, police after a series of interactions that ended when police said he turned toward officers with what turned out to be a BB gun in his hand.

Authorities received a 911 call that a black male, wearing a bandana and hoodie and carrying a backpack, was waving a gun in the parking lot, WTVR TV reports.

Kionte DeShaun Spencer, 18, was walking northbound on Electric Road, toward a Walgreens, when police said they asked him to stop. Police said they then twice deployed their Tasers, but neither deployment was effective.

Based on the information they have now, the Roanoke County police chief said Spencer turned toward police, and the two officers then fired shots mortally wounding him. The weapon was still in Spencers hand when he was shot, according to the preliminary investigation.

The handgun that police recovered at the scene was a BB gun, which police said they were not aware of at that time.
On March 22, individuals with a vested interest in the reliability, affordability, and innovative uses of mobile Internet connectivity, will gather at the Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Summit + Demo at the Las Vegas Convention Center to discuss new models for spectrum utilization.

The event will be held in conjunction with IWCE 2016, which is scheduled to take place March 21-25, 2016.

The Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Summit + Demo will feature new models for spectrum utilization. It will focus on business models, enabling technologies, and regulatory challenges to a more flexible spectrum ecosystem that preserves the spectrum licensing system and provides for innovative uses and utilization of spectrum for mobile communications, services, and applications.

Dr. William Chappell, Director, Micro Technology Office, DARPA will deliver the keynote presentation on "The Approaching Spectrum Demand."

The conference program will include sessions on sharing spectrum and dynamic access for mission-critical networks, alternative carriers and MVNOs, commercializing the 3.5Ghz CBRS band; and enterprise and IoT opportunities, delivered by industry leaders including:

Declan Ganley, CEO, Rivada Networks

Juan Santiago, Director of Product Management, Small Cells, Ruckus Wireless

Declan Byrne, Executive Director, Wimax Forum

Preston Marshall, Ph.D., Principal Wireless Architect, Spectrum Access Technology, Google

To register to attend the Dynamic Spectrum Sharing Summit + Demo, visit iwceexpo.com/register.
Law enforcement agencies have many choices when it comes to vehicles designed to propel officers from call to call. Depending on your daily duties and where you perform them, you might need something out of the ordinary to do your job effectively. Thankfully, most companies are more than happy to customize vehicles to an agency's or special unit's specifications. Here's a look at a range of modes of transportation available to you for traversing land, water, and air on duty.

PATROL VEHICLES

Here's a look at 2016 cars and utility vehicles for patrol and other details.

Chevrolet

Chevy's law enforcement lineup for 2016 includes the newly redesigned Tahoe SUV, now available as an automatic four-wheel-drive PPV; the Caprice; the efficient front-wheel-drive Impala; and the Silverado Special Service WT and LS.

Technology features found in the 2016 models include Bluetooth hands-free connectivity, standard on Tahoe PPV and Caprice PPV and available on Silverado; an auxiliary battery on Tahoe PPV; and a rear vision camera, standard on Tahoe PPV, Silverado SSV, and available on Caprice PPV.

Chevrolet Tahoe

Chevrolet has been making a police pursuit-rated version of the Tahoe for more than a decade. And it is the only full-size SUV to be certified as a police pursuit-rated vehicle. It's also Chevy's best-selling law enforcement vehicle. The Tahoe PPV's 5.3L V-8 Flex Fuel engine with direct injection and active fuel management generates 355 horsepower and 383 foot-pounds of torque. Also available are the 2WD PPV and 4x4 Special Service Vehicle (SSV) models.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' lineup of law enforcement vehicles includes the Dodge Charger Pursuit, Ram Special Service, and Dodge Durango Special Service. Each features the company's Electronic Stability Control (ESC) system and advanced multistage air bags.

New for 2016, the Charger Pursuit is available with a 12.1-inch in-dash touchscreen, freeing up interior room by eliminating the center tray and relocating the laptop into the trunk. Other features include the available AWD as well as rear-wheel-drive engineering, choice of two powerplants and high-strength steel Unibody, and high-performance brakes.

Dodge Charger

The Charger Pursuit V-8 and V-8 all-wheel-drive (AWD) models deliver 370 horsepower, and the Charger can get up to an EPA estimated 26 miles per gallon (mpg) highway with the aluminum 3.6-liter Pentastar V-6 engine with 292 horsepower, 260 lb.-ft. of torque, and available E-85 flex-fuel capability

Ford

Ford Police Interceptor Utility

Ford's 2016 model year law enforcement offerings include the Police Interceptor Sedan, Police Interceptor Utility, and Expedition Special Service Vehicle.

Just as it was in the patrol sedan market for many years, Ford is the undisputed sales champion in the pursuit-rated SUV market. In fact, the company's midsize Ford Police Interceptor Utility, which is based on the Ford Explorer SUV, is the best-selling vehicle in American law enforcement.

Ford introduced an updated Police Interceptor Utility for the 2016 model year with a more rugged, truck-like look and new features including a new front and rear design, new headlamps, a new instrument panel, and an enhanced electrical system to distribute electrical loads more efficiently. Ford also added a standard rear-view camera and a lift-gate release switch that's accessible to occupants in the front that allows the rear lift-gate to remain unlocked for 45 seconds to allow officers to access the cargo area.

The base model of the Police Interceptor Utility is powered by a 3.7-liter V-6 engine that generates 304 horsepower and 279 foot-pounds of torque. Buyers can also opt for a twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6 that produces 365 horsepower and 350 foot-pounds of torque.

Patrol Vehicles:

Chevrolet/GM

http://www.gmfleet.com/overview/police.html

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles

https://www.fleet.chrysler.com/FleetHome/Pages/Specialty.aspx?SpecialtyID=lawenforcement

Ford

http://www.fleet.ford.com/showroom/police-vehicles/

FEWER THAN 4 WHEELS

Motor officers rely on their duty bikes for high maneuverability. Here's a look at 2016 models for law enforcement.

BMW Motorrad USA's police motorcycle models include the BMW G 650 GS-P offered in three suspension versions; F 800 GT-P, designed to provide sport-bike handling and performance; and the new 2016 R 1200 RT-P. The R 1200 RT-P has a new boxer air/water-cooled engine producing 125 bhp and 92 lb/ft of torque, wet clutch, e-gas electronic throttle control, and integrated lighting system.

Designed as an alternative to a motorcycle, BRP's three-wheeled Can-Am Spyder F3-P features a cruising riding position, a lower center of gravity, and a distinctive Y-frame. Officers can customize their bike's fit with the UFIT system of adjustable foot peg positions and alternative handlebars.

Harley-Davidson offers three 2016 police models: Electra Glide, Road King, and XL 883L. Reflex Linked Brakes with ABS come standard on all 2016 Police Road King and Electra Glide motorcycle models, which feature brighter lighting at 1,570 and 915 lumens, respectively. The XL 883L features a redesigned seat for increased comfort, new front suspension, and adjustable rear shocks.

Victory Police Motorcycles offers four models: Victory Commander 1, Victory Commander II, Stealth Commander 1, and Victory Vision. All are delivered fully equipped. The Victory Vision features an electronically adjustable windshield, heated seat and grips, and lower air deflectors for officers that cover large areas.

Zero Motorcycles are electric vehicles available in three police models: FXP for going off road at parks and beaches, DSP versatile dual sport model for on- and off-road use, and SP for city and suburban use. The 100% electric powertrain is nearly silent and exhaust free. All 2016 police models benefit from the more efficient Z-Force IPM motor and Z-Force power packs, which allow for extended range.

Fewer Than 4 Wheels:

BMW Motorrad

www.bmwmc.net

BRP

http://lawenforcement.brp.com

Harley-Davidson

www.harley-davidson.com

Victory Motorcycles

http://victorypolicemotorcycles.com/

Zero Motorcycles

www.zeromotorcycles.com

AIRCRAFT

Aerial views from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters aid in search and rescue, surveillance, and speed enforcement. These airborne vehicles can also of course transport officers and even prisoners.

AgustaWestland's AW139 was developed to exceed the rigorous standards of federal, state, and local airborne law enforcement authorities. The AW139 law enforcement helicopter achieves this by utilizing efficient, proven, and advanced technologies and design criteria to achieve a very cost-effective helicopter. The integrated avionic system provides the basis for managing the sensors and comprehensive communications suite required for the law enforcement role.

The Beechcraft G58 Baron ISR provides the combination of a state-of-the-art surveillance camera and data link with multi-engine safety and 4- to 6-hour mission persistence. The Beechcraft Baron is certified for flight into known icing and comes standard with a full avionics package for IFR flight including radar.

The Delaware State Police aviation section operate the first Bell 429 configured for helicopter emergency services, search and rescue, and airborne law enforcement. The aircraft are used throughout the state for a variety of parapublic missions with a strong focus on EMS. The Bell 429 is distinctive in that it is a light twin-engine helicopter with true two-litter capability, featuring enough cabin space for two medical attendants and two crewmembers. The Bell 429 also features a fully integrated glass cockpit, advanced drive system, WAAS navigation, and IFR capability.

Robinson Helicopter Company produces two helicopters for law enforcement: R44 Raven II Police Helicopter and the R66 Turbine Police Helicopter. Both arrive with specialized equipment including infrared imaging system, searchlight, monitor, and dual audio controller for police radios, already installed and FAA-approved. While retaining many of the features of the R44 Police Helicopter including a two-bladed rotor system and open cabin configuration, the R66 Turbine Police Helicopter provides additional seating and cargo capacity, increased reserved power, and improved altitude performance.

Aircraft:

AgustaWestland

www.agustawestland.com

Beechcraft

http://beechcraft.txtav.com

Bell Helicopter

www.bellhelicopter.com

Robinson Helicopter Company

http://robinsonheli.com

DUI VEHICLES

While patrol officers are always on the lookout for unsafe drivers, DUI task forces, saturation patrols, and DUI checkpoints are more focused ways of getting inebriated drivers off the road. For these operations, vehicles specially equipped with everything needed to test for intoxication as well as process and even hold offenders can be immensely helpful.

Comlabs' vehicle division recently delivered a B.A.T. (Blood Alcohol Testing) vehicle to the Providence (RI) Police Department. Built on a Freightliner chassis, this unit features two jail cells, workstations, breathalyzers, fingerprinting, VoIP phones, a cellular modem, and video monitoring. Comlabs also builds a variety of other custom trucks and trailers. All vehicle production is done in-house and all systems are integrated onsite.

Farber Specialty Vehicles custom builds mobile units to the exact specifications of its customers in a broad range of styles featuring the latest and most advanced technologies for DUI and blood alcohol testing (BAT) vehicles, in addition to vehicles for other specialized units. Customers have the option of providing the operating systems, or Farber Specialty will provide a "turn-key" vehicle, fully operational upon delivery of the vehicle.

Sirchie's series of Mobile DUI Enforcement Vehicles allow for easy deployment and setup of sobriety checkpoints. Equipped with a holding cell of the same molded fiberglass construction as the company's prisoner transport vehicles, these vehicles can securely and safely house detainees while testing of other suspects is ongoing. The DUI100M is effective as both a deterrent and an enforcement tool. Also available are the company's Breath Alcohol Testing Vehicle and Freightliner-Based DUI Enforcement Vehicle.

DUI Vehicles:

Comlabs

www.comlabsvehicles.com

Farber

www.farberspecialty.com

Sirchie

http://www.sirchie.com/vehicles/alcohol-enforcement-dui-dwi.html

BOATS

Any jurisdiction situated in and around waterways can benefit from a vessel customized for law enforcement. They come in handy for everything from monitoring recreational boating and fishing to conducting search and rescue missions.

FSI North America offers a complete range of pneumatic white water, transom, and center console transom rescue boats with thick 1.2mm fabric. FSI boats are designed to turn and corner aggressively and get up on plane immediately. FSI offers multiple towing 'O' and 'D' rings and rescue ropesall intended to aid in police and rescue operations.

Intrepid builds custom boats for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies as well as Homeland Security and Border Patrol. The company's model line includes boats between 24 and 47 feet long. Options include dive doors, custom gun mounts, bow ladders, and folding tops for access under low bridges.

RIBCraft manufactures professional-grade rigid inflatable boats (RIBs) for law enforcement and military agencies starting at 15 feet in length. These rescue boats featuring heavy-duty inflatable tubes are used for search and rescue and maritime interdiction, among other uses.

Silver Ships Inc. manufactures custom aluminum boats ranging in size from 21 to 65 feet long for the military, municipalities, and commercial users. Its Freedom Series vessels come in lengths of 21, 25, and 36 feet and are constructed of all-welded marine grade aluminum, featuring an ergonomically designed platform for single-officer operation.

Willard Marine develops watercraft for the military, Department of Homeland Security, and law enforcement agencies. It is also the exclusive builder of vessels originally designed by SeaArk Marine and Crystaliner. Willards more contemporary 33-foot Crystaliner design includes new electronic systems and upgraded hull construction.

Boats:

FSI North America

www.fsinorth.com

Intrepid Powerboats

http://www.intrepidboats.com/

RibCraft

www.ribcraftusa.com

Silver Ships

www.silverships.com

Willard Marine

www.willardmarine.com
Photo: National Shooting Sports Foundation

The 2016 version of the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor trade (SHOT) show was held last month in Las Vegas, and it revealed once again that law enforcement and personal defense products have taken primacy at the world's largest gun show more than ever before.

You really had to look hard to find hunting gear at this year's show. But there were plenty of new law enforcement products, many of which were not the traditional SHOT Show items of ammo, firearms, firearms accessories, and holsters. Here's a quick look at some of the products that caught our attention at this year's show.

AmmoSeveral companies announced the availability of rifle ammunition for law enforcement applications in sizes beyond the usual LE standbys of 5.56mm and .308, including .300 Blackout and .300 Winchester Magnum. Company reps say law enforcement agencies are interested in these rounds for tactical operations because more individuals are barricading themselves behind heavier barriers. Companies also announced new formulations of typical LE ammo. For example, Hornady showed a new 75-grain 5.56 NATO TAP (Tactical Application Police) round specifically designed for use with short-barreled rifles. The new 5.56 TAP SBR minimizes muzzle flash and exceeds FBI accuracy standards. Liberty Ammunition debuted its Animal Instinct .308 round. With a velocity of 3,500 feet per second, the company says this 100-grain bullet is the fastest on the market. For shotgun users, Aguila Ammunition introduced its complete line of shotshells, including 12-, 16-, and 20-gauge and .410 caliber. The shells are available in shot, slug, and buckshot.

On the handgun side, one of the more interesting offerings was a new polymer coated target round from American Eagle (Vista Outdoor). American Eagle's Syntech target ammo line was developed to eliminate metal fouling in the barrel. Snake River Shooting Products showed its new Team Never Quit line of frangible ammo for training and duty use. The ammo line includes rifle and pistol calibers.

Apparel, Bags, and BootsThere was no shortage of companies showing law enforcement apparel and footwear at this year's show. 5.11 Tactical showed new shooting apparel for women, including a range shirt for female trainers. The Spitfire Shooting Shirt is constructed of a lightweight canvas and is finished with Teflon for stain resistance. Dickies brought a complete line of tactical wear to this year's SHOT, including tactical pants and polos for both men and women. Tru-Spec introduced a new line of professional wear branded as Urban Force TRU that includes a uniform shirt and pant and a  zip combat shirt. Vertx showed a concealed carry pant that does not scream "tactical." The new Delta Stretch Pants have a casual four-pocket style with concealed carry details such as leather-trimmed tool pockets and knife notch pockets.

Bags are always a big presence at SHOT. 5.11 brought its new Havoc 30-inch backpack, which features quick access waist belt magazine pockets and plenty of other storage for mags and other gear. Vertx showed a new piece of luggage for operators who have to travel with suits. The Professional Rifle Garment Bag is essentially an overnight suiter that gives the user rapid access to a stock-collapsed full-size M4.

Each year the latest LE boots debut at SHOT. Ridge brought its new Nighthawk line of "aggressively priced, entry-level" LE boots to SHOT. The Nighthawks are available in Oxford, 6-inch, and 8-inch versions. Thorogood showed new side-zip boots for both men and women that feature the company's ThoroDri waterproof membrane.

ArmorNew and innovative body armor was announced at this year's SHOT from a variety of different companies.

Angel Armor unveiled its new concealable armor system called Rise in NIJ Level II and Level IIIA. The lightweight armor is designed to fit the company's new Truth Snap lightweight magnetic trauma plate system, which is designed to offer all-day protection from rifle rounds.

Armor Express showed its new Gen2 Razor concealable armor in NIJ Level II and Level IIIA. The Level II vest is extremely lightweight at .67 pounds per square foot (PSF). The Level IIIA vest is .93 PSF.

Point Blank showed its latest version of its Alpha Elite line of lightweight, high-performance vests. The company says Alpha Elite Black is so innovative that it passes FBI Special Threat testing and is even lighter than Alpha Elite at .79 PSF in an NIJ Level II.

Survival Armor showed its new lightweight armor that it calls the Paladin. It's available in NIJ Level II and Level IIIA with special threat rating.

FirearmsConcealable handguns have become a huge draw at SHOT Show as the public has embraced concealed carry. This show's concealed carry handgun debuts included a uniquely designed .380 from Taurus called the Curve, which is available with lights and lasers, and Kimber's first revolver.

From a law enforcement perspective, the most important handgun announcements at SHOT came from Glock. The Austrian handgun maker released two new optics-ready pistols in its Modular Optic System (MOS) series, the G17 Gen4 in MOS and the G19 Gen4 in MOS.

Ruger showed its new American Pistol. The full-size duty weapon meets the latest military standards and is available in 9mm and .45 ACP.

Rifles were in abundance at this year's SHOT, with some of the more popular models being offered in uncommon calibers. Savage (Vista Outdoor) showed two versions of its BA Stealth precision rifle in .308 Winchester, 6.5mm Creedmoor, .300 Winchester Magnum, and .338 Lapua. Kel-Tec offered a new modification of its bullpup RFB, the RDB. The RDB features a rotary bolt with a spring-loaded ejector and an extractor facing down so that spent casings are ejected down. Advantages of this design are gravity-assisted ejection, higher bolt energy at feeding, and a slower rate of fire in select fire versions. FN showed a new line of famous military weapons, including a semi-auto M249 SAW and AR-15 variants. IWI US introduced its newest rifle, the Tavor X95 semi-auto bullpup. The X95 semi-auto is available in 5.56 NATO and .300 Blackout.

HolstersWith more and more firearms manufacturers offering optics-ready pistols, holster companies are starting to offer products that can accommodate a pistol with an optic. For example, DeSantis showed a new Quick-Chek Scabbard model holster that can accommodate pistols fitted with reflex sights or standard sights. The new holster features DeSantis' Redi-Lok retention system.

Optics and SightsAimpoint debuted a new line of magnifier modules at this year's SHOT. Available in 3X and 6X, the magnifier modules increase the capability of Aimpoint's reflex sights for long-range shots and observation.

March Optics showed its complete line of precision rifle scopes, including a new 1-4.5x24mm service rifle scope. The new scope features  MOA click adjustment and an illuminated dot reticle.

Meprolight brought its new reflex sight and three new pistol fiber-optic/tritium sights. The Mepro Tru-Dot RDS Pro is an electro-optical red dot sight that's compatible with night vision. The new pistol fiber-optic/tritium sights are offered in one-dot, two-dot, and circle dot configurations. The circle dot is a rear sight only for quick acquisition.

Trijicon introduced its new Miniature Rifle Optic (MRO) reflex sight. The MRO has a large objective lens for a greater field of view.

Truglo showed its new Brite-Site TFX Pro tritium plus fiber-optic handgun sights. The sights feature a contrasting colored front sight ring and a U-notch design for quick and accurate targeting.

Attendance Strong at SHOT Show Law Enforcement Training

A three-day session of law enforcement-specific coursesthe Law enforcement Education Program (LEEP)co-sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and POLICE Magazine was a huge success at last month's SHOT Show with high attendance and strong evaluations for all programs.

The LEEP courses included a series of seminars from the National Tactical Officers Association and a collection of classes sponsored by some of the leading vendors of law enforcement weapons, equipment, and services.

NTOA's LEEP track focused on protection measures and tactical execution. Seminars covered active shooter response, the 2015 NTOA tactical response and operations standard, law enforcement response to suicidal persons, and tactical tips and truths.

The law enforcement weapons and equipment track included a tactical optics class by Trijicon, patrol rifle classes by Daniel Defense and DoubleStar, a seminar on silencer use and its benefits for law enforcement by SilencerCo, a session on use of the modern ballistic shield by Condor, a course on shooting range acoustics by Troy Acoustics, a class on K-9 operations by K2 Solutions, and a seminar on sniper engagement by Magpul.

LEEP participants received a certificate of attendance that can be used to document the training.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

To the surprise of no one, Sen. Bernie Sanders was quickly projected to be the winner of the Vermont primary.

Vermont was one of the five states that the Sanders campaign was expecting to win on Super Tuesday.

Sanders is absolutely beloved in Vermont. In 2015, Sanders was voted the most popular senator in the United States, A Morning Consult poll of 75,000 voters in all 50 states found that Sanders has the highest approval rating with his constituents of any senator in the country. Sanders has an 83% approval rating in Vermont. The second most popular senator was moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine (78%). Third was John Barasso of Wyoming (73%), and fourth was Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont (71%).

In 2011, Sanders was voted as the third most popular senator in the country, A 2011 PPP poll found that Sanders was the countrys third most popular senator with a 67% approval rating. In the years since, Sanders has become even more beloved by voters in Vermont.

The popularity of Bernie Sanders is no fluke. Sen. Sanders has been popular for years. The only reason he flew under the radar until he ran for president was the bias within the corporate press that causes them to ignore popular liberals and progressives. The media has been conditioned to reject liberals by decades of conservative badgering about media bias.

Sanders is a national political star now, and he can add a victory in Vermont to his win in the New Hampshire primary in 2016.
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

THE undressed woman flying through the air scared not only the residents - but also the cops!Daily Sun reported that residents from L section in KwaMashu, north of Durban said they heard loud footsteps on their roofs.They claim they saw an unknown undressed woman flying from rooftop to rooftop on a broom!When the residents tried to stop her apparently she just laughed at them and they called the cops - but police didn't do so well either.One of the residents, Nosipho Ngcongo (35) said they had never seen anything like this before.Nosipho said when the cops arrived, the woman allegedly pulled a woman cop out of the van and sat down on the seat."She shouted at the driver to get out. The male cop became scared and jumped out of the van."The woman moved into the driver's seat. The next thing we saw her driving away," said Nosipho.But the attempted escape in the cop van didn't go well."She drove into a water meter and the van stopped."It was a struggle but residents helped the cops and eventually they got the woman into the back of the van," she said. Major Thulani Zwane confirmed that cops attended the scene. No case has been opened yet.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton swept through the South with wins in Alabama and Tennessee, building on her earlier wins in Georgia and Virginia this evening as well as her earlier South Carolina win.

Clintons Tennessee win was expected, as an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed her winning by 60% to Senator Bernie Sanders 34% margin. The same poll showed Trump the top choice of 40% of likely Tennessee Republican primary voters.

The former Democratic Senator was also polling well in Alabama, with a Monmouth University Poll finding Hillary Clinton having a comfortable lead in Alabama, with Bernie Sanders having a slight edge in Oklahoma. The same poll showed Trump leading in both Alabama and Oklahoma.

In anticipating a big win for Clinton in Alabama, Five-Thirty-Eight explained that the majority of the electorate in Alabama will probably be African-American. Also, more of the states Democratic voters identified as conservative than very liberal in the 2008 primary, which is bad news for Sanders.

Hillary Clintons domination in the south is about several factors, not just her majority support from African-American voters. Clinton is also a familiar face to southern voters, as the wife of a former Governor of Arkansas who also just happened to be president. Yes, Hillary Clinton was the First Lady of Arkansas.

Being married to a legitimate southerner like Bill Clinton is a big deal in the south, where outsiders are viewed with suspicion. Clintons domination in the South could prove very interesting if she wins the Democratic nomination and Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Donald Trump beat establishment favorite Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA) in Virginia this Super Tuesday. Virginia is the state that houses many establishment Republicans whose votes, it was hoped, would save Rubio and thus save the Republican party.

If the Republican party cant pull a win out of Virginia for its establishment favorite, the take-over of the party by the Trump faction (which is also the Bush-forever faction, the Palin faction, etc), their days of falsely selling themselves as moderates are over.

What we are witnessing this Super Tuesday is 30-40 years of Republican southern strategy coming home to roost. Years of selling financial platforms that harm the voters by playing up racism and bigotry have brought Republicans to Donald Trump.

This should surprise no one, but it will because Republicans dont do reality. It is denial that has brought Republicans here  not actual failures, but denials of those failures.

It will take years for the ramifications of Donald Trump beating the second establishment favorite to make themselves known. Rubio wasnt even the first establishment favorite, he was a Hail Mary hope that was wobbly from the outset. The first had to drop out because even Jeb Bush couldnt override the rage driving the Trump faction of the Republican party to toss a match onto the gasoline of destruction.

Update: Rubio might not get any delegates if he cant meet the 20% threshold:

Rubio's current %s in states w/ 20% thresholds: 15.7% in AL, 21.9% in GA, 19.5% in TN, 18.8% in TX, 19.6% in VT. Ouch!!  Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) March 2, 2016
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Today the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case brought by evangelical Republicans and their Vatican facilitators to put an end to womens choice across the nation. Regular readers of this column are likely used to reading that all of the attacks on women, and gays for that matter, are borne of neo-American Christians belief their dog-given duty is regulating the rest of the population. One of the things that boggle the mind are myriad polls, research and surveys revealing that the majority of Americans, including Christians, support womens choice whether it is to terminate a pregnancy or use contraceptives. However, if that is really the case there is a dearth of pushback against the evangelical fanatics, religious Republicans, and Vatican acolytes by all those real Christians; until now.

Over this past weekend religious leaders across the country came together to guide their congregations prayers toward protecting a womans right to access an abortion. That is right: 80 religious leaders representing 20 denominations executed a concerted effort to protect women three days before the Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments regarding a religious Republican law in Texas to restrict virtually all access to abortion. What happened certainly verified the myriad polls, research, and surveys showing real Christians and Jews and Muslims do indeed support womens reproductive rights because the reception to the religious leaders efforts was only positive, and entirely organic.

The well-planned unified weekend of prayer was organized by a religious organization, the Religious Institute that advocates for reproductive health in faith communities. The religious organization also drafted an amicus brief with 1,300 signatories from various religious groups leaders that adamantly oppose the Texas religious law the Supreme Court is hearing. The Religious Institutes president, Debra Haffner said the weekends religious support for womens reproductive health rights is vital in altering the skewed public belief about how religious groups view abortion in particular and womens reproductive rights in general.

Haffner said, I fear that once again the media stories will leave the impression that those who would deny women access to abortion services have a monopoly on faith; nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, she said, the majority of religious Americans support abortion rights but complained that a few radical religious groups drown out that fact with their non-stop and increasing attacks on womens health. The 80 religious leaders involved in organizing and participating in the weekend prayer said it is their duty and intent to finally shatter that belief.

Haffners sentiments were echoed by Leanne Gale from the National Council of Jewish Women. She said, Theres (sic) a few reasons this is important to me. But a big one is that lawmakers need to know that we exist. We are a majority. Gale said she received the loudest prayers from participants when she focused on a womans right to abortion access with many women thanking her after the services.

Gale acknowledged that her work for womens rights is only a small part of a much larger movement

Connecting her with strong, multi-denominational communities. For communities of faith, we come to this issue from a commitment to justice. The fact that restrictions on abortion access disproportionately impact women struggling to make ends meet, women of color, and immigrant women flies in the face of what we understand as justice.

One of those communities in the stronger multi-denominational group is the leader of the Light of Reform mosque in Washington D.C., Imam Daayiee Abdullah. The Imam said,

In some instances, religious people are so adamant that they know whats right and whats wrong that they become authoritarian. But in reality, the only true authority is the creator. If someone doesnt agree with an idea, they have to take it up with God. Its not their call. This is more about individuality and the respect of others free will than religious belief. Its not a decision taken lightly, which we must respect.

Abdullah focused his sermon on the difference between religious beliefs and the law, and reiterated that the abortion is not and should not be a deeply religious one.

A Denver preacher, Reverend Mitulski, actually concentrated on religion as the main focus of his pro-choice Sunday sermon. Reverend Mitulski said, Were religious people, were not allowed to surrender our religion to take away womens rights. Religion is the heart of the issue. The Denver preachers congregation boasts a high percentage of gay men, and the reverend used history to inspire solidarity in a demographic that is not affected by womens reproductive health laws. He said,

I reminded them how women were here for them during the AIDS epidemic, how they prayed and fought for them when they needed it the most. Now its time for them to help women in a time of crisis.

Mitulski then exposed a rash of religious bills being proposed in Colorado that mirror the profane Texas anti-women laws. We know its important for women to tell their stories about abortion, but it shouldnt stop there. Allies also need to tell their stories of solidarity. I wish it wasnt needed, but women shouldnt have to face this alone.

It is an incredibly encouraging sign that the 80 religious leaders representing 20 denominations came together to shine a light on the atrocity of a tiny minority of evangelical and Vatican fanatics and their Republican facilitators barbarism towards women in the name of religion; something that is forbidden in America. It is disappointing, though, that for all the religious leaders efforts the mainstream media were too busy giving all their attention to Republican presidential candidates who, as a group, advocate for, and promise to increase, using religion to assault women in general and their reproductive health in particular.

What this group effectively did was violate, in grand fashion, the unwritten law that no American dare cite religion as the basis for each and every religious Republican attack on American women; persistent attacks that women should never have to face alone. If the media would spend a fraction of the time reporting that most religious Americans oppose the attacks on women as they do deifying religious Republicans, no woman would have to face these never-ending religious Republican attacks again.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Ben Carson appears to have dropped out of the Republican race for president, but with a statement that sounded like he was dropping out, but didnt go as far as actually quitting, Carson has stayed true to his brand of vague crazy until the very end.

In a statement, Dr. Carson said:



I have decided not to attend the Fox News GOP Presidential Debate tomorrow night in Detroit. Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America. I do not see a political path forward in light of last evenings Super Tuesday primary results. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of We the People will continue. Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for President, I remain committed to Saving America for Future Generations. We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our Founders intended for this exceptional nation.

I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America. Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances; rather by what is in the best interests of the American people.

I will discuss more about the future of this movement during my speech on Friday at CPAC in Washington, D.C.

Ben Carson was riding the Republican insurgent wave along with Donald Trump until the terrorist attack in Paris revealed that he knew less than nothing about foreign policy. During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Carson was asked about the Paris attacks and answered with a lecture on brain sizes that ended with him supporting a shooting war with Russia. The de facto end of his campaign came a few days later when Carsons own advisers admitted that he knew nothing about foreign policy, and even worse, the intense tutoring that he was getting wasnt helping.

Shortly after, Carsons fundraising dried up, his poll numbers plunged, and his airtime during the Republican debates vanished. Nobody had a worse performance on Super Tuesday than Ben Carson, who was in contention to win zero states. Carson finished in fourth or fifth place in every contest. Dr. Carson is still beloved by a segment of the Republican base, but his confusing statement on the Republican race is the most perfectly Ben Carsony way that he could have dropped out of the Republican field.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

More good news for Hillary Clinton after she swept the South during Super Tuesday, giving her 544 delegates to Bernie Sanders 349 as she has her best grassroots fundraising month of the campaign.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not only brought in $30 million in February, but she had the best grassroots fundraising month of her campaign with more than 50% of the $30 million coming from online donations and the average donation was less than $50, according to a press release from Hillary for America.

The campaign says it has now received 2 million contributions from more than 850,000 people.

We continue to beat every fundraising goal and, more importantly, make smart and efficient investments, said Hillary for America Campaign Manager Robby Mook. Grassroots support is truly powering this campaign as the majority of our fundraising came from online donations. That support has helped Hillary Clinton gain momentum by winning three out of four contests in February, and eight on Super Tuesday. We move forward with a commanding pledged delegate lead and the resources we need to run a competitive race.

Clintons primary opponent Senator Bernie Sanders raised $42.7 million in February, with small donors giving him more than $21 million, according to the Sanders campaign.

Clinton begins March with a reported $31 million on hand.
Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Email

Print

Trump has made a mess of his embrace of and then disavowals to white nationalists, but his actions speak louder than words. White nationalist secessionist radio host James Edwards of The Political Cesspool, a self-identified pro-white program, and author of Racism Schmacism: How Liberals Use the R World to Push the Obama Agenda, received media credentials from the Trump campaign.

Edwards supports holocaust deniers and even people like David Duke, the guy Trump just lied about not knowing and then blaming his ear piece before finally  and unconvincingly  disavowing.

David Duke, by the way, says Trump will save us from Zionists and the Jewish tribal extremists. If that isnt appalling enough, Media Matters for America explains that Edwards says Martin Luther King Jr.s dream is our nightmare, interracial sex is white genocide, and slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to African-Americans.

According to Edwards on his blog Tuesday, he attended a Donald Trump rally in Memphis on Saturday night as a fully credentialed member of the media and enjoyed the unique experience of being able to air a live broadcast of The Political Cesspool Radio Program from inside the press pen while the event was in full swing.

You might say, fine, hes media, Trump welcomes all media to his events. But youd be wrong. As Media Matters for America pointed out,

The Trump Campaign Gave Press Credentials To The White Nationalist Political Cesspool But Denied Passes To Legitimate Outlets. Trumps campaign has denied press credentials to several media outlets, including the Huffington Post, Des Moines Register, and Fusion. [CNN.com, 9/21/15; Fusion.net, 10/23/15]

Trump has shown he is perfectly capable to blocking media credentials when he wishes to do so. The only possible conclusion is that Trump wanted Edwards at his event.

For Edwards, the advent of Trump is a religious experience, and he even categorized the event as inspirational:

I must admit that this rally lived up to my expectations. Ive been saying for years on the radio that the majority of Americans fundamentally agree with us on the issues and that the neocons were generals of a phantom army. I am being proven right. Our people just needed a viable candidate and theyve identified Trump as that man. There is no doubt that Trumps populism and nationalism is galvanizing our nation and may change the course of American history for the better right before our very eyes.



After getting my start in politics with Pat Buchanan in 2000, Donald Trump will be the first Republican nominee that I have ever voted for. Buchanan was a man ahead of the times and Trump is his vindicator. With family men like myself, it can be argued that Trump is now growing the party because there isnt a chance that I would have ever considered voting for any of the other cuckservatives that made bids for the White House under the GOP banner this year. I also predict hell do better with minorities than either Mitt Romney and John McCain, as results in states live Nevada have already suggested.



A fellow traveler remarked to me in private that the ingredient in Trumps historic rise that makes it so delicious is that its nuclear powered. It is unstoppable. It is impervious to foot-shuffling, complaints, whining, hysterical cries of racism and so-called white supremacism. Trump supporters dont care and there is something undeniably infectious about Trumps masculine attitude. He is a prototypical alpha male.



We dont have to agree with everything Trump says and he doesnt need to agree with everything we say. I firmly believe that everything for which I stand is both natural and healthy, but it wouldnt bother me if Donald Trump himself denounced me and all of my friends. He can denounce me until the cows come home so long as he follows through on his pledge to build a wall and ensures that the aliens self deport. I am supporting him because immigration is the single biggest problem that our nation needs to solve. Demographics is destiny. He doesnt need to support me.



The bottom line is that Trump is the only candidate who gives us a chance at having a fighter who will put America first. Hes the only candidate who isnt owned and operated by special interests. With Trump, America has a chance to regain her identity.



A new day is dawning and its a beautiful sight to behold.

We are promised that Next Saturdays show [March 5] will feature a previously taped 20-minute interview with Donald Trump, Jr.

Edwards site explains that The Political Cesspool Radio Program stands for the The Dispossessed Majority. We represent a philosophy that is pro-White and are against political centralization that is Pro-Christian (God), Pro-White (Family), Pro-South (Republic).

Because the Semitic God of the Old Testament and the Semitic Messiah of the New, apparently hates black people and wants the South to be free of the Federal government.

Trump claims he has a good relationship with the blacks and that blacks like him better than Obama. But all the denials in the world dont speak as loud as Trumps appalling words and deeds (including the removal of black students from his Georgia rally Monday), and by credentialing white nationalist James Edwards of The Political Cesspool he has shown where his true loyalties lie.
News / International

by Staff Reporter

A Zimbabwean delegation is in the Hague, Netherlands where it is expected to present the country's wildlife position to the world.The delegation is led by the Minister of Environment, Water and Climate, Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri.In response to escalating wildlife related crimes, the delegation is expected to discuss wildlife trafficking issues and how to combat the vice.Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority Director General, Edson Chidziya, said the meeting is focusing on eradication of markets and ensuring effective legal framework and deterrent measures.Mr Chidziva added that Zimbabwe has concluded an Elephant Management Plan, which is going to be rolled out to manage the flagship species and mobilise resources for conservation.The theme of the Hague wildlife meeting is 'Act Now or Game Over,' which emphasises the precarious position the world is facing in fighting illicit wildlife trade.Zimbabwe has the largest elephant population in the world after Botswana and its rhino population ranks 4th in the world.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) has complained of an incident where a private maternity hospital in Harare detained a woman and a four-day-old baby delivered through an emergency cesarean.The woman was released several hours later after the intervention of ZimRights."The patient was failing to immediately settle in cash a $300 shortfall on her health cover. The hospital on the western side of Harare turned down her initial offer for a payment plan, leading to an unfortunate impasse that violated the new mother's constitutional right to liberty," ZimRights said.Section 49 of the Constitution outlaws the imprisonment of citizens merely on the grounds of inability to fulfil contractual obligations.According to ZimRights, the woman, only identified as Nonsikelelo, was supposed to give birth at Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo next month where she was booked. But she had to be ferried to Harare due to complications, where she had to undergo an immediate caesarean operation after developing high blood pressure which threatened her life.
Portfolio English Edition's premium content is available only for subscribers

Learn about the hottest news of the day, along with immediate follow-up analyses and 1000's of exclusive articles with full access to the premium content.

Register and apply for a 14 days free trial period.
News / Local

by Stephen Jakes

The Zimbabwe Peace Project has reported that some members of the opposition MDC-T in Marondera clashed at a funeral with the Zanu PF member who went to the same funeral wearing party regalia."On 3 January 2016, at a funeral of an MDC-T member in Marondera West, Ward 14 MDC-T supporters wearing their party regalia and chanting slogans got into an altercation with a relative who was wearing Zanu-PF regalia," ZPP reported. "The two sides exchanged harsh words until the intervention of some elders who calmed the situation."The developments come at a time when cases of political violence have been reported in various parts of the country.
Ronald "Bill" Leroy Beighley died unexpectedly at his Rochester home on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, at age 76.

Ron was born on Jan. 19, 1940, in Albert Lea, Minn., the son of Warren and Sadie Beighley. He grew up on a farm with five brothers and one sister in Elgin, and graduated from Elgin High School. After high school, he joined the U.S. Air Force in 1961, working as a medic and living in Japan for several years before his honorable discharge in 1967. He received medals of conduct and the Air Force Longevity Service Award.

Ron married Carole Ann (Kline) of Faribault, Minn., in 1968, living in Rochester and then Oronoco. They had three children. He worked steadily at the AMPI Dairy as a laboratory technician for more than 20 years, but his true work passion was as an IRS enrolled agent, tax accountant, which he did for 47 years. He and Carole later divorced.

He married Alice Marie (Gommels) at Christ Lutheran Church in Byron on July 23, 1994, and they made their home in Rochester. She came to the marriage with two adult children. During that time, he continued to work as a tax accountant, priding himself as a traveling consultant with the slogan, "The Tax Man, have calculator, will travel." They were happily married 21 years until his death.

Ron will be remembered for his love of his work, for which he took his greatest pride. Throughout his lifetime, he enjoyed beekeeping, winemaking, listening to Elvis, playing poker, walking, reading the Bible, doing puzzles, bird-watching, traveling (yearly to Vegas), fishing, spending time with family and friends, and attending his many grandchildren's events. He also took pride in his greater than 200 blood donations.

Ron was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in early 2015, and then retired from his accounting practice. He continued to enjoy many hobbies, but missed his work immensely.

Ron is survived by his wife, Alice Beighley; daughters, Anne Beighley (Mike Fritsche), of Rochester; Jen Beighley (Alan Domnick), of Rochester; and Julie Zierath (Greg) of Kasson; sons, Chris Beighley (Tricia) of Rochester; and Greg Gommels (Brandy) of Winona; brothers, Roy Beighley (Ellen), of Blountville, Tenn.; Dennis Beighley of Custer, S.D.; Warren Craig Beighley, of Elgin; sister, Kim Beighley, of Spearfish, S.D.; 22 grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his parents and two brothers, Robert "Bob" Beighley and Phillip Beighley.

He will be fondly remembered by friends, family, and clients for his gentle spirit, his smile and generosity, being "The Tax Man," and being always "better than I deserve."

Per Ron's request, his body was donated to the University of Minnesota Anatomy Bequest Program.

A celebration of life, officiated by Pastor Nathan Brand, will be held at Berean Community Church, 3157 Kenosha Drive NW, Rochester, at 11 a.m. Saturday, March 5, with a light luncheon following. Friends and family are invited to call at 10 a.m., prior to the service.
As the contest for the GOP presidential nomination continues after last night, Donald Trump will continue to dish out his carefully crafted insults to Ted Cruz (Liar) and Marco Rubio (Little Marco), and Senators Cruz and Rubio will be hitting back. Trump slammed Rubio in the course of his victorious press conference last night; Cruz and Rubio both slammed Trump in the course of their remarks as well.

The insults dont make an edifying theme. They dont figure to taper any time soon. Moreover, the candidates followers have found inspiration to follow their leaders. Lloyd Grove, for example, documents the abuse sustained by commentators criticizing Trump.

We seek to understand the present in the light of the past. I have asked myself: when has so much rancor emerged among Republicans in the course of a presidential campaign?

One could advert to the 1964 campaign, when liberal Republicans such as Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton and George Romney recoiled from the ascendance of Barry Goldwater. Goldwaters forces took over the Republican Party and transformed it into the conservatives party. George Will argued that Goldwater lost 44 states but won the future.

Whereas Richard Nixon had found it necessary to enter into the so-called Treaty of Fifth Avenue in 1960, in 1964 liberal Republicans proved themselves a spent force. They came away with nothing as the partys center of gravity shifted south and west. Goldwater of course lost massively to LBJ, but he transformed the party and no Republican was going to win the election a year after the assassination of JFK anyway. It simply wasnt in the cards.

One could advert to the Ford-Reagan contest of 1976. Goldwaters most notable supporter in 1964, Reagan came close to taking the nomination from the incumbent Republican president. Yet Reagan kept the challenge to Ford focused on the issues. His challenge was never personal.

I dont think 2016 is comparable either to 1964 or 1976. To say the least, Hillary Clinton is vulnerable. She should be beaten. The prospect, however, grows dimmer every day, and personal animus has come to define the contest for the GOP nomination.

I may be mistaken, but in the spirt of inquiry I suggest that the intraparty hostility of the 1912 campaign makes a closer parallel. The circumstances and the issues are vastly different. William Howard Taft was Theodore Roosevelts hand-picked successor and the incumbent president; Roosevelt was the two-term former president. When Roosevelt came out of his restive retirement to challenge Taft for the nomination, the fur flew.

Lewis Gould took a look back in his 2008 Smithsonian article on the 1912 convention (and in his book on the 1912 election). I am reliably informed that the book to read on the 1912 election is the one by Sidney Milkis. The last chapter of Jean Yarbroughs book on TR provides an invaluable guide to TRs thought at the time.

Taft and Roosevelt had serious differences over important issues, but the differences descended to personal abuse. Gould recalls:

Taft dominated the Republican Party machinery in many states, but a few state primaries gave the voters a chance to express themselves. The president and his former friend took to the hustings, and across the country in the spring of 1912 the campaign rhetoric escalated. Roosevelt described Taft as a puzzlewit, while the president labeled Roosevelt a honeyfugler. Driven to distraction under Roosevelts attacks, Taft said in Massachusetts, I was a man of straw; but I have been a man of straw long enough; every man who has blood in his body and who has been misrepresented as I have is forced to fight. A delighted Roosevelt supporter commented that Taft certainly made a great mistake when he began to fight back. He has too big a paunch to have much of a punch, while a free-for-all, slap-bang, kick-him-in-the-belly, is just nuts for the chief.

I can say this for the insults of 1912: they have expanded my vocabulary. Puzzlewit and honeyfugler were new to me, but I love them. Im sure Ill find them of use before long.

The convention failed to unite the party. Indeed, it led to Roosevelts walkout. Gould notes:

Roosevelt won all the Republican primaries against Taft except in Massachusetts. Taft dominated the caucuses that sent delegates to the state conventions. When the voting was done, neither man had the 540 delegates needed to win. Roosevelt had 411, Taft had 367 and minor candidates had 46, leaving 254 up for grabs. The Republican National Committee, dominated by the Taft forces, awarded 235 delegates to the president and 19 to Roosevelt, thereby ensuring Tafts renomination. Roosevelt believed himself entitled to 72 delegates from Arizona, California, Texas and Washington that had been given to Taft. Firm in his conviction that the nomination was being stolen from him, Roosevelt decided to break the precedent that kept the candidates away from the national convention and lead his forces to Chicago in person. The night before the proceedings Roosevelt told cheering supporters that there was a great moral issue at stake and he should have sixty to eighty lawfully elected delegates added to his total. Otherwise, he said, the contested delegates should not vote. Roosevelt ended his speech declaring: Fearless of the future; unheeding of our individual fates; with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord! The convention was not Armageddon, but to observers it seemed a close second. Shouts of liar and cries of steamroller punctuated the proceedings. One pro-Taft observer said that a tension pervaded the Coliseum breathing the general feeling that a parting of the ways was imminent. William Allen White, the famous Kansas editor, looked down from the press tables into the human caldron that was boiling all around me.

Having a lost a key procedural vote in advance of the first ballot, Roosevelt bolted the Republican Party. He moved on to run as the candidate of the Progressive Party. Doing so, he handed the election to Woodrow Wilson, the first president expressly to have disparaged the United States Constitution. Gould makes a different point, but his conclusion (as Paul Mirengoff intimates) stands: That outcome would resonate for decades.
News / Local

by S Zhou

The City of Bulawayo would like to advise members of the public that there was an electrical fault at the Ncema Water Treatment station which has affected the pumping of treated water from Ncema to Tuli Reservoir.All areas supplied by Tuli Reservoir in the Eastern and Northern suburbs namely, Riverside North, Marklands, Sunninghill, Glencoe, Romney Park, Killarney , Mahatshula , Selbourne Park, Holiday Inn, Suburbs, Kingsdale , Fortune's Gate , Queens Park, Jacaranda, Woodville, Montgomery, Matsheumhlophe, Lochview, Mqabuko Heights , Willsgrove, Manningdale, Lakeside, Waterford, Douglasdale , Southdale, Glengarry, Northlea, Waterlea will experience temporary water supply interruptions over the next 72 hours.Bulawayo City Council Engineers and Technicians are working on the fault and normal water supplies may resume earlier than 72 hours.Council wishes to apologise to its valued consumers for any inconvenience likely to be caused. Members of the public are encouraged to bear with council and also conserve water in those areas not affected during this period.S ZHOUACTING TOWN CLERK
The power grid we rely on can stop delivering electricity for a myriad of reasons. Whether it is a rodent chewing on cables, or the first known successful cyber intrusion to knock a power grid offline in Ukraine in December of 2015, anything is possible. The power outage that took place on February 23rd in Santa Monica, California, wasn't as exotic as a high-tech cyberattack, but it nevertheless disrupted 3,255 Southern California Edison (News - Alert) (SCE) customers, including Santa Monica College (SMC) and other public and private organizations.

According to Sebastian Marquez-Mayorga of the thecorsaironline.com, the outage was caused by a malfunctioning overhead transformer, which lasted for about 50 minutes. During the 50 minutes, an individual was trapped in an elevator in SMC and several building on campus were without power.

Bruce Wyban, Chief Director of Facilities at Santa Monica College, told Marquez-Mayorga, "The #3 Parking structure, Admissions, Business, and Drescher building were all affected as a result of the outage which was localized primarily to the north side of the campus."

The facilities that were affected outside of SMC include the Santa Monica Courthouse, Santa Monica High School and some hotels.

This incident and many others like it point out power outages take place without warning day or night. If you are not prepared for the potential disruption of power, whether you are a large organization or an individual, at the very least it will be a great inconvenience and at worst cost you dearly.

Since we live in a connected world, the vast majority of people and organization rely on computers. If your computer, servers and other hardware are not adequately protected, a power outage, and subsequent surge when power is restored can literally fry all of your equipment. But the damage also extends to the data in said computing devices.

If a computer is not powered down properly, there is a chance everything you happen to be working on at the time of the outage, as well as other information, may be lost forever. Minuteman manufactures single and three phase UPS products, surge protectors, power distribution units and remote power management systems to stop this from happening.

The company's SentryHD monitoring and management software allows users to monitor the devices that are protected with Minuteman's equipment. In addition to ensuring your computer will not be fried, SentryHD also automatically saves and shuts down applications that are not finished on your computer, whether you are there or not.

Edited by Rory J. Thompson
Ebuka Onyeji

Despite calls by some civil society groups under the aegis of Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria, CAFON, urging Nigerians to boycott banking activities on Tuesday to protest excessive charges by commercial banks, most banks in Abuja and environs went about their normal businesses.

CAFON had circulated information mostly through various social media platforms urging bank users to join in the No Banking Day protest scheduled for March 1.

The leader of the group, Sola Salako, said through the groups website that the protest was to register the anger of customers against exploitation by most banks in the country.

We have endured for too long excessive charges, illegal fees and unfair contracts that only protect the banks, Mr. Salako said. Banks debit our accounts at will for charges we never agreed to or aware of; they charge us for every little service.

We pay for getting our statements; introduction letters; and now, some banks are charging N200 for the use of deposit and transfer forms.

He said under the current management at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, fees that were abolished in the past have been reintroduced.

For instance, he said cash withdrawals on automated teller machines, ATMs, that was free now cost N65 on third withdrawals, while customers are made to pay about N1000 for debit card issuance and renewals and N105 for every online transfer.

Similarly, about N105 is charged as Annual Debit Card Maintenance, with the recent introduction of a new Stamp Duty charge of N50 on every credit of over N1000.

This is unacceptable! The fact is, consumers are being exploited by all the banks and CBN appears to be encouraging the exploitations by looking the other way. We cannot continue to endure these exploitations forever, Mr. Salako said.

A PREMIUM TIMES reporter who monitored the response of bank customers to the call observed that most banks in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT and environs still had their full attending to customers without any disruptions by the protesters.

At one of the commercial banks located near Wuse market in Abuja, a staff who spoke with our reporter on condition of anonymity as she was authorized to speak on the issue, said although the bank management was aware of the calls by some NGOs urging customers to boycott banking activities, normal services to customers were still on.

A businessman, Nonso Okonkwo, told PREMIUM TIMES although he could not heed the call to boycott the banks, because of his business, the grievances of most Nigerians concerning excessive charges were real, excessive and unfair to customers.

Another bank customer, Dickson Okpara, said the protest over excessive bank charges was long overdue, urging Nigerians to continue to support the protest to pressurize government to intervene to save the poor masses from undue exploitation.

CAFON said they demand that bank charges be reviewed downwards.

Other demands include that the CBN must review the new Stamp Duty charge, account maintenance charge and Debit Card Maintenance Fees.

Cost of transaction, COT that was supposed to have ended finally in 2016 is now being reintroduced as one percent of every withdrawal and renamed monthly current account maintenance fees! Mr. Salako said.
Failure of Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC , to ensure environmental protection by maintaining and protecting oil pipelines may leave it vulnerable to pay series of compensation claims from several communities in the Niger Delta, Amnesty International said in London.

The group made this observation as a London law firm, Leigh Day, announced two more lawsuits instituted against Royal Dutch Shell on behalf of Bille and Ogale, two communities in the Niger Delta region devastated by oil pollution.

In its investor briefing, titled Shells growing liabilities in the Niger Delta: Lessons from the Bodo court case, Amnesty International warned Shells investors that failures in the way the oil giant inspects and reports on oil spills, could mask the scale of potential financial liability arising for Shell.

Shell has already paid out 55 million to the Bodo community after settling its claim out of court in January 2015.

Court documents from that case show that Shell admitted that it had underestimated the volume of oil spills in the region.

Shell had repeatedly asserted that the volume of oil spills was about 4,000 barrels of oil affecting the Bodo community, while expert evidence put the volume of oil spilt in the region of 500,000 oil barrels.

Court documents also revealed that internal emails and reports showed that senior Shell employees had expressed concern as far back as in 2001 on the need to replace oil pipelines in the Niger Delta, describing some sections as containing major risks and hazard.

Amnesty Internationals UK Economic Affairs Programme Director, Peter Frankental, said Shell has an appalling record of obfuscation and misinformation with regard to its dealings in the Niger Delta. Our briefing reveals just how irresponsible Shell has been in its operations in the region.

Its disgraceful that Shell has to be dragged to the courts to address these issues. Surely time, money and the health, livelihoods and emotional anguish of the affected communities could have been spared had Shell simply accepted responsibility and cleaned up the oil spills quickly and thoroughly.

Mr. Frankental expressed the hope that the Bodo case in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State and the latest lawsuit would spur Shell on to accept its responsibilities by cleaning up the oil spills and compensating those in the Niger Delta whose lives have been devastated by them.

Amnesty Internationals report in November 2015 said Ogale community was still being affected by pollution from a spill that occurred in 2009.

The report said when Amnesty International researchers visited the site of a 2009 oil spill in Ogale, they saw farmland and swamp heavily polluted, with black patches covering the ground, and a strong smell of oil.

Shell has failed to properly clean up the site, despite the fact that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported heavy pollution there  including high groundwater contamination  in its landmark 2011 report, the report said.
The Group Board of the United Ban for Africa, UBA, on Tuesday announced the appointment of Kennedy Uzoka to succeed Phillips Oduoza as its new Group Managing Director.

Mr. Uzokas appointment, which is subject to the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBNs approval, is to take effect from August 1, 2016, as Mr. Oduozas retires on July 31 after two terms.

A statement by the banks head of media, UBA, Ramon Nasir, said Mr. Uzoka has been leading the transformation of the bank for some time, after completing the Advanced Management Programme of Harvard Business School.

The new GMD of the bank

Prior to his sabbatical at Harvard, Mr. Uzoka, who has over two and half decades of experience in commercial banking, strategy and business transformation, served as Deputy Managing Director, UBA Group.

He was also the CEO of UBA Africa, responsible for the Groups operations in 18 countries across Africa.

A graduate of Mechanical Engineering from University of Benin, Mr. Uzoka is also a holder of a Masters Degree in Business Administration from University of Lagos.

In another appointment, Victor Osadolor was named the Deputy Managing Director, UBA Group. Mr. Osadolor brings a strong finance and risk background, having previously served as the Executive Director, Risk and Finance at UBA.

Holder of a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Accountants of Nigeria, Mr. Osadolor also held the position of Chief Strategy Officer at Ecobank Transnational Incorporation.

He also holds the Advanced Management Programme Certificate from the Harvard Business School.

The Chairman of UBA Group, Tony Elumelu, said Kennedy brings an extremely strong skill set and is ideally positioned to lead UBA in its next phase of growth.

Mr. Elumelu said Mr. Uzokas most recent experience of managing the Groups increasingly important African business, is particularly relevant, as the bank work to build one of the leading financial services franchises in Africa.

I have no doubt that both he and Victor with their expertise and depth of business experience will ensure that the Bank is best positioned to deliver on its strategic ambition, Mr. Elumelu said.
Three Nigerian oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) companies were among seven prospective bidders shortlisted to participate in the maiden oil licensing bid round for oil blocks approved by the Ugandan government.

The Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development said it received bids from interested investors for the seven blocks located in the countrys Albertine Graben area.

The three Nigerian firms include WalterSmith Petroman Oil Limited; Oranto Petroleum International Limited, and Niger Delta Petroleum Resources Limited.

The trio would be competing against two Australian firms, namely Armour Energy Limited and Swala Energy Limited. Other bidders include Rift Energy Corporation of Canada and Glint Energy LLC of USA.

All the applicants, who were among 16 potential bidders issued with the bidding documents on October 1, 2015, had met the February 26, 2016 deadline for the final submission of their bids for approval the ministry said.

The bidding document comprised the Request for Proposal, Model Production Sharing Agreement 2015 (MPSA), Model Confidentiality Agreement for sale of data, Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) (Data Sale) Regulations 2014 and Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) (Data Sale) (Amendment), Regulations 2015.

The six oil blocks on offer comprise of the Ngassa, measuring about 410 square kilometres, located in the Hoima District; Taitai & Karuka (565 Km2) in Buliisa District; Ngaji (895 Km2) in Rukungiri & Kanungu Districts; Mvule (344 Km2) in Moyo and Yumbe Districts, together with Turaco (425 Km2) and Kanywantaba (344 Km2) in Ntoroko District.

Permanent Secretary of the Ugandan Ministry of Energy & Mineral Development (MEMD), F.A Kabagambe-Kaliisa, said that the attraction of the seven bidders was significant taking into consideration the current low global crude oil and gas prices.

Mr. Kabagambe-Kaliisa said evaluation of the bids was based primarily on the proposed work programme, technical and financial capability, national content, health, safety and environment, proposed royalty and signature bonus.

Government will conclude the licensing round by negotiating with successful bidders, sign Production Sharing Agreements and award Exploration licenses by the end of June 2016, the Permanent secretary said.

Ugandas first licensing round is guided by the National Oil and Gas Policy for Uganda (2008) and the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Act 2013.

The planned allocation of oil blocks appears to be against the recommendation of over 60 non-governmental organisations and tourist groups, which issued a joint statement in January 2016 calling for an agreement between Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, to prevent drilling in the area.

Regardless, while commending Ugandan government for publishing the list of bidders for the licencing round, Global Witness expressed concerns about environmental risks posed by oil exploration to the Virunga World Heritage site, and the credentials of some of the shortlisted oil companies.

George Boden of Global Witness said the Ugandan government must carefully check out the background of each bidding company and publish the details of all of their real owners to ensure they possess the technical and financial capacity to develop the oil resources without any conflict of interest.

Mr. Boden drew attention to the Ngaji block, which he said was of particular concern because of its expanse through half of Lake Edward and a large part of Queen Elizabeth National Park, which forms part of Virunga region, Africas oldest national park.
Splinter groups from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, have proposed a new party to be called Peoples Mega Party.

The development follows a leadership crisis in Nigerias main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party.

The new political group, PMP, which held its maiden meeting in Abuja Tuesday, unanimously adopted Perry Opara as its interim chairman.

The group will soon approach the Independent National Electoral Commission for its registration, and will focus on youth in its membership drive, Mr. Opara said.

Mr. Opara is a top associate of Ahmed Gulak, a former political adviser to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan.

Mr. Gulak, who is believed to be the key initiator of PMP, has recently been embroiled in a row with PDP leaders over his ambition to become the chairman of the party.

Mr. Gulak recently secured a court order mandating him or another PDP member from Nigerias north east to become the partys national chairman, as a replacement for Uche Secondus.

While Mr. Secondus left office as the court ruled, Mr. Gulak was denied the position. A former Borno State governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, was later appointed the partys chairman.

In his remarks at the proposed new partys meeting, Mr. Opara said the leadership crisis within the PDP served as a factor for the formation of PMP.

The major people who are in the party are former members of the PDP who are disenchanted by the high level of corruption, high level of impunity and high-handedness in the PDP, he said.

They have decided to form something very new and they are of the opinion that they should hand over the party to younger elements who are less corrupt and who can fight for the interest of the people.

It does not mean that it is only people from the PDP, we have APGA chairmen from many states of Nigeria identifying with the new party, people from Labour Party, LP, and the Accord Party, AP.

There are also disenchanted people from the APC that feel that they want a new place and that is what it is. Today marks the birth of this new party.

He said the PMP had adopted the picture of a human being as its logo and Forward Nigeria as its slogan.
News / National

by Staff Reporter

Zimbabwe's controversial artist Owen Maseko is currently in neighbouring South Africa where he is exhibiting his "controversial" graffiti dubbed "Sibathontisele" in IsiNdebele, which translates to 'We dripped on them' in English.The art work which depicts the Matabeleland and Midlands massacres by the fifth brigade landed Maseko in police cells in 2010 after he exhibited it.Three years later efforts to have Maseko's exhibit cleared for exhibition flopped when the High Court ruled that the graffiti be not exhibited anywhere in Zimbabwe as it undermines the authority of president Robert Mugabe.The same ruling was reversed by the Supreme Court last year.The ongoing exhibition is sponsored by the Open Society of Southern Africa, better known as Osisa and began on February 25 this month and is expected to end on March 3 next month.
The teenage girl abducted from Bayelsa State, into a forced marriage and conversion to Islam in Kano, is to undergo a medical examination before being reunited with her family, the police said Wednesday.

Fourteen-year-old Ese Oruru arrived Abuja from Kano Tuesday, escorted by a police team.

Her family arrived the federal capital from Bayelsa later in the evening.

A planned news conference at the police headquarters was rescheduled for Wednesday because of the late arrival, the police said.

Ese did not appear before journalists at the Force Head quarters on Wednesday.

Her mother, Rose Oruru, who was in the company of an unnamed relative, acknowledged the efforts of the police and the media in the rescue of her daughter.

Speaking in pidgin English, Mrs. Oruru said she was ready to return to Bayelsa with her daughter.

Ese was taken without her parents consent to Kano by Yunusa Dahiru Ado, also known as Yunusa Yellow, man who lived in Bayelsa.

Her case created a media firestorm after a report by PUNCH newspaper detailed how her parents tried unsuccessfully for months to get their daughter back.

The Emir of Kano, Lamido Sanusi, said he instructed the girl be returned to Bayelsa as she was an underaged.

In a statement Wednesday, the spokesperson for the force, Olabisi Kolawole, said despite the intervention of the emir, Ese was still kept hostage by Yunusa Yellow.

The statement said Ese was currently being given psychological and emotional support by officers of the gender and child support unit of the force.

The police said the girls abductor and all those involved in her kidnap, will be brought to justice.
The President of the Nigerian Senate, Bukola Saraki, has formally replied a letter ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote to the National Assembly on January 13, accusing the countrys federal lawmakers of corruption, greed, lawlessness and impunity.

In his reply, dated January 29, and exclusively obtained by PREMIUM TIMES Mr. Saraki responded to Mr. Obasanjos concern, saying the 8th National Assembly under his leadership was already taking deliberate steps to strengthen the countrys democratic institutions and ensure prudent management of resources.

This is to ensure that we plug all leakages and minimize waste across our expenditure systems, the Senate president said in the two-page letter.

Likewise, the 8th National Assembly has made the issue of plugging leakages and cutting wastages in our public expenditure system a major priority that should not be toyed with. This may have happened in the past but it will not happen with us.

The former president had in his letter, addressed to Mr. Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, accused the lawmakers of fixing and earning salaries and allowances far above what the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission approved for them.

He also alleged that most of the 109 senators and 369 members of the House of Representatives were receiving constituency allowances without maintaining constituency offices as the laws required of them.

He faulted the plans by the lawmakers to acquire new exotic cars for themselves, saying, Whatever name it is disguised as, it is unnecessary and insensitive.

He advised that 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, Mr. Obasanjo said. That was why they were abolished. Bringing them back is inimical to the interest of Nigeria and Nigerians.

But in his response, Mr. Saraki told the former president that the lawmakers were fully aware of the challenges the nation was facing, saying, As leaders with a duty, we will not disappoint Nigerians in their yearnings for a more transparent public expenditure system.

On corruption, Mr. Saraki said the National Assembly was working with President Muhammadu Buhari to stem the menace in the country.

According to him, the legislature was already overhauling its oversight functions to make it more effective in exposing corruption in federal ministries, departments and agencies.

We are hand in glove with the president on this matter and this is why we are overhauling our oversight functions to make it more effective in exposing corruption in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies, the senate president said.

We recognize the hard work our anti-corruption agencies are putting into this fight.

The Senate is resolved to support them to perform their duty effectively by providing them with adequate funding where necessary, as their work in integral to our oversight responsibility.

Mr. Obasanjo had written the National Assembly to amplify widespread concerns that federal lawmakers were insensitive to the economic hardship facing their country, and had continued to live in opulence at taxpayers expense.

Even as the Senate Presidents letter travelled to Mr. Obasanjo, the federal lawmakers were taking delivery of exotic cars for themselves even when the nations monetisation policy forbids them from doing so.

The acquisition of the cars was also done in disregard of the advice of the former president urging the lawmakers to discard the plan.

The National Assembly is yet to make details of its 2016 budget public despite widespread calls on them to emulate the other arms of government  the executive and the judiciary  and do so.

See Mr. Sarakis letter below.
The National Judicial Council, under the chairmanship of Justice Mahmud Mohammed, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, has barred Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia of the federal High Court from being elevated to the Court of Appeal, or any higher judicial body till her retirement.

Mrs. Ofili-Ajumogobia was also placed on the councils watch-list for the next four years.

The judge was sanctioned for misconduct and alleged injustice.

The judicial council took the decision at its meetings on February 24 and 25, a statement signed by its acting director of information, Soji Oye, said.

The Hon. Judge will also not be considered for any elevation to the Court of Appeal or any Ad-hoc Judicial appointment till her retirement from the Bench, the council said.

The decision was sequel to the petition written against her by Victoria Ayeni alleging misconduct and injustice on the part of Mrs. Ofili-Ajumogobia for failing to deliver judgment in Suit No FHC/AB/CS/31/2011, a pre-election matter between Victoria A. A. Ayeni and Olusola Sonuga and two others.

The judge was also alleged to have adjourned the pre-election matter repeatedly until the termination of the life span of the Ogun State House of Assembly.

The decision of the council on Justice Ofili-Ajumogobia is with immediate effect, the statement by Mr. Oye said.
The Nigerian Army Council has recommended the release from jail and demotion of Enitan Ransome-Kuti, the former Commander of the Multi National Joint Task Force, who was convicted by a military court and sentenced to six months imprisonment.

The council also recommended that Mr. Ransome-Kuti be reabsorbed into service and deployed, Saharareporters reported Wednesday, citing a confidential army memo.

Mr. Ransome-Kuti, a Brigadier  General, was sentenced by a Special Court Martial on October 15, 2015, for alleged offences during the war against Boko Haram.

He was punished for cowardly behaviour and for failure to perform military duties after Boko Haram militants overran a heavily fortified military base in Baga, north eastern Nigeria, on January 3, 2015.

Mr. Ransome-Kuti was also found guilty of miscellaneous offences relating to service property.

After his conviction and imprisonment, his lawyer, Femi Falana, requested Mr. Ransome-Kutis release pending the determination of his appeal, a request that was turned down by the military authorities.

On Monday, Mr. Falana petitioned the Army authorities demanding his freedom, saying his client was still held in prison custody despite completing his jail term.

He insisted Mr. Ransome-Kuti was unjustly convicted by the court martial.

As the findings of the Special Court Martial are subject to the confirmation of the appropriate authority we made a strong representation to the Army Council on behalf of our client, Mr. Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, stated in the petition dated February 26.

By letter dated 19 October, 2015, we also requested the Authorities of the Nigerian Army to release our client from military custody pending the determination of the appeal which he intended to file against the unjust findings of the Special Court Martial which convicted him of war related crimes and sentenced him to 6-month imprisonment and dismissal from the Nigerian Army.

Mr. Falana said the armys refusal to release his client was a violation of Section 160 of the Armed Forces Act (Cap A20) Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.

Thus, you caused our client to serve the 6-month prison term without the confirmation of the findings of the Special Court Martial by the Army Council, he said.

As if that was not enough, you have ignored our demand for the release of our client since he completed the 6-month prison term on February 15, 2016.

It was not clear whether the recommendations of the council would be upheld. The army spokesperson could not immediately be reached.
The father of Yunusa Yellow, the alleged abductor of Bayelsa teenager, Ese Oruru, on Wednesday gave details of how his son met and took the teenager to Kano in 2015.

Dahiru Bala, 55, told PREMIUM TIMES in his Tofa village home in Kura Local Government Area of Kano State that sometime in 2015 his son called to inform him about his plan to come with Miss Oruru from Bayelsa State.

When he told me about the plan to come with a girl from Bayelsa to Kano, I asked him not to, the man said.

But he insisted that Aisha had become a Muslim, fell in love with him and wanted to marry him. I still warned him against coming with her, he said.

Mr. Yunusas father said his son, being the domestic servant of the Orurus, fell in love with their daughter and that both agreed to travel to Kano.

Yunusa ran errands for Aishas family and at the same time riding commercial motorcycle to earn a living. They fell in love in the house and eloped to Kano, he said.

Mr. Bala said while he had strictly opposed his sons decision to come to Kano with Miss Oruru, his son informed him that the girl had threatened to commit suicide if she was not allowed to travel with Yunusa to Kano.

He said Ese decided to travel because he was afraid Yunusa was getting married to another person in Kano.

Still, I warned him against coming with her, the father said.

Surprisingly, the boy called me the following day to announce his arrival with Aisha, saying they were on their way to my house.

On hearing this, I then quickly rushed to our village head to inform him about the development.

The village head then said I should take them to his house immediately after arrival. They arrived late at night, so she passed the night in my house.

The following day, we went together to the village head of Tofa, who then led us to the house of his superior, the district head of Kura.

On arrival at Kura, the district head studied the case and ordered that we be taken to the emirs palace in the city.

When we arrived at the palace, the emir was away in Saudi Arabia, but the Wambai of Kano [a senior councillor in the palace], directed a palace guard to take us to Shariah commission office. Aisha was then taken into custody by the Shariah office.

From that day, the officials kept calling to draw our attention that she cried every day that she wanted to see my son.

On Thursday same week, the family of Ese arrived from Bayelsa and on Friday the Emir came back from Saudi Arabia. Emir looked at the complication of the case and after interviewing the family of Ese, who told him that she was still 14 years old and she could not decide for herself, and since Ese was crying that her family might kill her because she converted to Islam, the Emir ordered that we were taken to the police office [Zone 1 Police Headquarters, Kano].

At the police office, and before Eses family, the girl cried that her life was in danger and that she rather died than go back with her family. In sympathy, the police said Aisha should be taken back to Kura.

Back in the village, I took her to the house of the district head. I refused to let them stay together in my house since they were not married.

The district head then enrolled her in both Western and Islamic schools, Mr. Bala said.

According to him, Miss Oruru accepted Islam in the house of the district head.

Miss Oruru was reunited with her family on Wednesday, following the intervention of the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, who ordered that she should be taken to Abuja, Nigerias capital where her mother joined her from Bayelsa.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, on Tuesday, admitted more exhibits against a former Director- General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Patrick Akpobolokemi, and five others.

Mr. Akpobolokemi is standing trial, alongside five others, on a 13- count charge bordering on conspiracy, stealing and fraudulent conversion of funds, to the tune of N687, 294, 680 (Six Hundred and Eighty Seven Million, Two Hundred and Ninety Four Thousand, Six Hundred and Eighty Naira).

His co-accused persons are Captain Ezekiel Bala Agaba; Ekene Nwakuche; Governor Amechee Juan; Vincent Udoye, Captain Ade Sahib Olopoenia and Gama Marine Nigeria Limited.

At the resumed hearing of the matter on Tuesday, prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, presented one of the three witnesses he earlier brought before the court.

The witness: Olamide Ogunsanya, an Assistant Director in NIMASA disclosed to the court how the sum of N795,200,000( Seven Hundred and Ninety Five Million, Two Hundred Thousand Naira only) was paid into the International Shipping and Port Safety, ISPS, account and how same was disbursed. The witness told the court that approval for the disbursement of the money came from the office of Mr. Akpobolokemi.

The document conveying the presidential approval through the office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, was identified by the witness and same was admitted as exhibit P22.

On the document, Ms. Ogunsanya identified the endorsement of the first accused person, Mr. Akpobolokemi.

Also tendered through the witness are letters from NIMASA to the Accountant General of Federation and approval from the Accountant Generals office. The documents were eventually admitted as exhibits P24 and P25 respectively.

The witness also identified the third accused person, Ekene Nwakuche, as the first beneficiary in the disbursement of the N795,200,000.

She told the court that between September 16, 2014 and November 6, 2014, Mr. Nwakuche received N3,000,000 each, on eight occasions, from the ISPS account totalling N28,000,000 (Twenty Eight Million Naira Only).

Other beneficiaries are Avant Guard Securities, N94,000,000; Extreme Vertex Limited, N318,000,000; Suco Global, N15,000,000; O2 Services Limited, N21,200,000 and N16,000,000; and Aroward Consulting, N70,000,000.

At the end of the day, the witness said there was a balance of N198, 635 (One Hundred and Ninety Eight Thousand, Six Hundred and Thirty Five Naira Only) left in the account.

While explaining the procedure for receiving and disbursing money in NIMASA, Ms. Ogunsanya said a request would be made to the presidency through the NSAs office and when approved, the DG would then asked the executive director to implement.

From the executive directors office, an internal memo is raised and directed to the Director, Financial Services Department where payment instructions would be issued.

The witness further disclosed that on March 20, 2014, the sum of N447, 000,000 was paid into the ISPS account and same was disbursed following the same procedure, with a slight change in the beneficiaries.

In this instance, new beneficiaries were included. They are: Green Lemon Limited and Seabulk.

Mr. Oyedepo asked the witness about the procedure for the award of contracts in NIMASA and she said the agency has different threshold in terms of contracts award as stipulated by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPE).

She said the DG has approval limit of N5,000,000.

For contracts that exceeds N5,000,000 to anything below N50,000,000 it falls into the threshold of parastatals tenders board. Contracts that are between N50,000,000 to below N100,000,000, falls under the threshold of ministerial tenders board and any contract above N100,000,000 falls within the presidential or Federal Executive Councils threshold.

The N318,000,000 payment to Extreme Vertex Limited was sighted as example of violation of BPEs stipulated threshold by the former leadership of NIMASA.

Ms. Ogunsanya said that though the normal procedure for awarding contract was always followed, she never met or saw any representative from any of the companies that were alleged to have been awarded the purported contracts.

During cross examination, the witness admitted that she was one of the signatories to the ISPS account but when she was asked whether she was aware of the 2013/14 National Assemblys budgetary appropriation for

the sum of N447,000,000, Ms. Ogunsanya said she had to look at the budget to be able to answer the question.

Counsel to Mr. Akpobolokemi, Joseph Nwobike, SAN, prayed the court for an adjournment in order to effectively cross examine the witness.

Justice Buba adjourned the matter to Wednesday, March 2 for continuation of trial.
Afenifere chieftain and former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Olu Falae, narrowly escaped bullets from policemen on Tuesday while traveling to Ile Ife, in Osun State to pay homage to the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Ogunwusi.

The national leader of the Social Democratic Party, who narrated his ordeal to journalists in Ife, said he was traveling to join other Afenifere members for a meeting with the Ooni, when the incident occurred.

He said policemen who were escorting a bullion van shot at his car at Ile-Oluji junction.

I was first kidnapped, now they want to kill me, Mr. Falae said, as he expressed amazement at repeated attempts on his life.

I was coming from Akure approaching Ilesa. I saw some vehicles ahead of me.

There was a bullion van in front. The vehicles ahead of us were overtaking the bullion van and we too followed.

I nearly passed them when I heard a shot and I heard a bang on my car. We stopped and we saw that they have fired at our car.

They didnt stop. We stopped at Erin-Ijesa and complained to the police at the check-point that we were fired at by some police following a bullion van at Ile-Oluji junction.

I dont know why I was kidnapped recently, why I was arrested in 1997 and locked up for two years.

When contacted on telephone, the Police Public Relations Officer in Osun, Folashade Odoro, said the state command was yet to receive any report from Mr. Falae.

She said the elder statesman should have reported at Ile Oluji police station so as to aid the identification of those involved.
A 31-year old suspected drug trafficker bolted through a glass door at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, to evade arrest after he was caught with banned narcotics.

Michael Nwobodo, a technician, was found with 81 pellets of hard drugs that tested positive for cocaine with a total weight of 1.350 kilogramme, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency said in a statement Tuesday.

He concealed 81 wraps of cocaine in Parker Whisky packs along with boxes of chocolates inside a duty free bag, the NDLEA said in the statement signed by Mitchell Ofoyeju, its Spokesperson.

The seizure was made during screening of passengers on an Emirates airline flight from Dubai.

Hamisu Lawan, NDLEA commander at the Abuja airport, said the suspect was taken to the hospital for further medical test on Tuesday.

Though the suspect was treated for the injuries he sustained while attempting to escape on Monday, we had to take him for medical examination again, Mr. Lawan said.

This is to ensure that he is strong and medically fit to undergo trial. Investigation has commenced into the case.

The suspect told investigators that he ran away because he was afraid of arrest.

I am not under the influence of drugs, Mr. Nwobodo, who hails from Enugu State, said.

I was only scared of arrest. I live and work in Dubai. I came to Nigeria for my fathers burial but decided to bring the drugs because I needed money for the burial rite.

When the drug was discovered, I felt so disappointed and confused. I was ashamed of myself and never wanted to be associated with drug trafficking that was why I had to run.

Muhammad Abdallah, the NDLEA Chairman, assured stakeholders that no criminal will escape justice.

The agency will continue to work very hard in ensuring that drug traffickers are arrested and prosecuted, said Mr. Abdallah, a retired colonel.

As we advance the frontiers of the war against drug cartels, we are prepared to adopt new and sophisticated strategies in winning this important fight.

I am pleased with this arrest and I thank the officers and members of the airport community for their support.

The suspect will be charged to court soon, the NDLEA said.
A coalition, Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC), has sent a petition to the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urging the court to investigate, arrest and prosecute persons connected with the gruesome murders, grievous bodily harm and assault of indigenes of Rivers State during the 2015 general election in the state.

In a petition signed by its chairman, Olanrewaju Suraju, the coalition stated that the Nigerian Government had consistently failed to carry out its constitutional role in unravelling criminal mysteries and ensuring that criminals are adequately punished, hence the need for the petition to the court.

While stating that the defection of former Governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Amaechi, and several other citizens of Rivers State from the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to All Progressives Congress (APC) which was the then opposition party, triggered unprecedented threats, aggressions and breakdown of law and order, days leading to the election from both parties, the network stressed that federal might was deployed to deal severely and ruthlessly with people considered to be in opposition.

The wife of former president, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, was fingered in misuse of state apparatus and abuse of power during campaigns, resulting in the wanton killings and infliction of grievous bodily harm on several citizens in Rivers State, CSNAC stated in the petition.

Journalists on professional assignment were not spared in a wanton destruction of properties, disruption of campaigns and attack on human persons.

The various criminal acts were perpetrated with alleged support of Dame Patience Jonathan, wife of the former president. The said onslaught was allegedly coordinated by AIG Mbu Joseph Mbu, the Assistant Inspector General of Police, (then Commissioner of Police in charge of Rivers State Command) and Deputy Commissioner of Police John Amadi now posted to Nigerian Railways Corporation, Lagos (then the Deputy Commissioner in charge of Operations in Rivers State).

Besides the aforementioned, several other persons were also alleged to have instigated and induced the politically motivated killings and violence against innocent citizens and known opposition members and in some instances directly procured and financed the execution of the crimes.

CSNAC noted that in the mayhem, over hundred people were brutally murdered. Some were inflicted with grievous bodily harm while others were unlawfully arrested and detained by the Nigerian Police in collusion with the perpetrators of these crimes.

The group listed Felix Amaechi Obuah, State Chairman of the PDP; Chris Onyiri; Henry Ogiri, Executive Director Finance, Niger Delta Development Commission; Tammy Danagogo, former Minster of Sports; Olaka Johnson Nwogu, senator representing Rivers South East, among others as perpetrators of the crimes.

Others listed are:

1. Ejor Ejor of OnneEleme

2. Betty Apiafi, member House of Representatives

3. Evans Bipi, member, Rivers State House of Assembly

4. Mashall Uwom, member, Rivers State House of Assembly

5. Monday Ngbor

6. Jack Rowland Sekibo

7. Austin Opara, Former Speaker-House of Representatives

8. Ibiba Walter

9. Kenneth Kobani, now Secretary to Rivers State Government

10. Ateke Tom

11. Soboma Jackress, member, Rivers State House of Assembly

12. EjimaIgwedibia aka Don Wanni

13. Chi  Boy

14. Bright Ernest Ake

15. Nkasi alias Italian Soldier or Italian, aka Isiokpo Italian

16. Omono  a Oliver aka DoinDoin

17. BomaDaobu

18. SeniboWoah

19. Samuel Nwanosike alias Ishi

20. Sunny Bekanwa

21. Solomon Ndigbara

22. Barile Jack

23. Israel Mgboele, Rivers State House of Assembly

Similarly, the group listed names of victims of political violence who lost their lives pre, during and post-election assassinations as compiled and published by the State Chapter of All Progressives Congress. They include the followings:

1. KingsleyEmenike

2. Corporal IfeanyiOkorie

3. Charles Eruku

4. Mr. MebakaOpuogoliya

5. Chief John Adube

6. Joy Adube

7. Mr. Lucky Adube

8. Mr. EbukaMbamalu

9. Mr. IkechukwuOgarebe

10. Mr. Ezekiel

11. Mr. Sampson Chinnah

12. Mr. KerianWobodo

13. Mr. Charles Wobodo amongst others.

Sadly, the Nigerian government has displayed nonchalant commitment to seeking redress for the victims and, punishment for the perpetrators of the crimes. More than 10 months after the election, no individual or group has been reportedly investigated, arrested or prosecuted for these grievous crimes.

CSNAC is by this petition requesting that your office conducts a thorough investigation into these alleged crimes against humanity as well as prosecute persons found culpable.

The Nigerian Government has consistently failed to carry out its constitutional role in unravelling criminal mysteries and ensuring that criminals are adequately punished.

Nigerias highest court recently affirmed the outcomes of flawed election. Local and international observers of the Rivers elections severally confirmed the unimaginable rate of violence visited on the electorate.

The Supreme Courts judgment is tantamount to legitimizing electoral violence, anarchy and abuse of power. Rule of law and justice is sacrosanct to the establishment of a peaceful and sane society. Therefore, allowing these crimes go unpunished will plunge the society into anarchy and doom.

We urge your office to take appropriate action to forestall an ugly situation. This request is in the line of your promise, via a statement issued days leading to the 2015 election, promising to bring perpetrators of violence or any other act covered in the Rome Statute to justice under the ICC, the CSNAC stated.
A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has fixed Thursday, March 3, for a ruling on the bail application filed by former interior Minister, Abba Moro.

Mr. Moro and four others are facing an 11-count charge of money laundering committed during a deadly recruitment exercise in 2014.

Justice Anwuli Chikere, who presided over the case, ordered that Mr. Morro be returned to Kuje prison pending the determination of his bail application.

At the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. Moros lawyer, Akinolu Kehinde, asked the court to grant his client bail, stressing that the charge against him, was bail-able.

He cited the relevant sections of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, to support his argument.

Counsels to other defendants also canvassed the same argument, urging the court to grant their clients bail.

The counsel to the EFCC, Aliyu Yusuf, however opposed the bail applications on the grounds that the accused persons would evade justice if granted bail.

Justice Aliyu however adjourned the case following a controversy over the name of the company contracted for the recruitment.

According to the charge sheet, the name of the company was Drexel Technical Nigeria Limited, while Drexel Global Nigeria Limited was written in the reply brief submitted to Mr. Moros lawyer by the prosecution.

The company had no representative at Wednesdays hearing.

While Mr. Moro was ordered to return to Kuje prison, Anastasia Daniel-Nwobia, a former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Interior, was permitted to continue her administrative bail.

Mr. Moro, along with his co-accused persons, are accused of defrauding 676, 675 applicants of the sum of N676, 675, 000.

The amount was the aggregate of N1000 paid by each applicant to Drexel ahead of the recruitment.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

The ZimRights has indicated that through its intervantion a 16-year old school girl, who had her Ordinary Level (O' Level) results withheld by a high school in the city of Masvingo on account of outstanding learning fees, managed to finally see her impressive school results.The girl who scooped 10 A's at a High School located in Masvingo had her results kept secret by the school for failing to pay an amount of US $ 750.00 that remained outstanding on her school fees.The girl's father, Jerimanos* approached ZimRights, which through its legal division wrote a letter of demand to the school dated 22 February 2016."Our client further advised us that he made a payment of US$800 on the 19th of February 2016 and requested for a payment plan with regards to the remaining US$750 to which you turned a deaf ear," the letter read in part."We find this act on your part unlawful and unconstitutional. The issue of the illegality of withholding pupils' results so as to force their parents or guardians to pay School fees is unquestionable and cannot be subject to debate."It is common cause that the issue of tuition or levy is an issue between the School and the parent as there exists a contract between yourselves and Jerimanos  being the parent for payment of fees."After the intervention in the form of the letter copied to the District Education officer and Provincial Education Officer, the school agreed to a payment plan of two to three months that the parent had initially proposed.ZimRights had notified the school of its willingness to further legal action were the school authorities to ignore its communication.Most parents are struggling with the effects of the economic challenges, making it hard for them to readily pay their children's school fees although they desire a quality education for their children.The school released the results on the same day, which showed that the girl qualified to proceed with her Advanced Level (A-Level) studies at the same school.Children below the age of 18 are regarded as minors in Zimbabwe, who cannot enter into legally binding contractual agreements.ZimRights has always contended that school pupils must not be held liable for failure by their parents to meet their part the fees agreement with schools.Jerimanos's surname and name of school have been omitted.
The principal of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School, Ikorodu, Olaoluwa Adeyemi, on Wednesday said the gunmen who seized three students of the school on Monday gain entry after destroying a part of the schools security fence.

He spoke while taking the Deputy Governor of the state, Idiat Adebule, and other state government officials who visited the school round the premises.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that gunmen, on Monday night, around 8:30 p.m, abducted three female students of the school, owned by the Lagos Anglican Diocese at Agunfoye-Lugbusi in Ikorodu, Lagos State.

Mr. Adeyemi said the gunmen, on gaining entry from the back, started shooting sporadically to scare the students and teachers away.

He said all efforts by the management to rescue the abducted pupils from their abductors were not successful as the gunmen overpowered them with sophisticated guns and other weapons.

They came with sophisticated guns and weapons and started shooting sporadically to frustrate us from rescuing our pupils they had abducted as everybody was running for safety.

I got the governor on phone about three hours later and he contacted the Commissioner of Police and other top security agencies.

They were all here immediately and ever since then, they have been working tirelessly to ensure that we secure our pupils.

We are trusting God; we place our hope in Him that these children would return back to this school safely, he said.

Also speaking, Michael Fape, Bishop of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Remo Diocese, expressed concern on the security situation in the country.

Mr. Fape urged the government at all levels to prioritise security and provide employment for youth so as to engage them more positively.

He commended Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, for their quick response.

He said the police commissioner personally led the search operation and expressed optimism that with the efforts put on ground by the government and various security operatives, the pupils would soon be released to the school.

The deputy governor, who led the government delegation on behalf of the governor, said the visit was to express governments sympathy to the parents of the affected pupils and the management of the school.

She said the state government along with various security operatives in the state had swung into action since the sad occurrence on Monday night.

The visit became necessary as a responsible government to express sympathy with the parents of the victims and to share in the pains that the absence of their children would have caused them.

We assure you that the state government is working tirelessly with other security agencies to ensure the safety and early rescue of the pupils.

We are very confident that in no distant time, these girls will be rescued and returned back to their parents, she said.

(NAN)
The All Progressives Congress in Rivers state has responded to Governor Nyesom Wikes allegation that the APC was planning to rig the March 19 rerun elections in the state.

The APC said the governors accusation was a smokescreen.

Mr. Wike, while receiving the Vice Chancellor, University of Port Harcourt, Ndowa Lale, who visited him on Tuesday, accused the APC of having a list of compromised returning officers for the Senate, House of Representatives and state assembly elections in the state.

Mr. Wike is reported to have specifically mentioned the APC candidate for the Akuku-Toru/Asari-Toru Federal Constituency, Dawari George, as being behind the list which he (Wike) said contained names of UNIPORT lecturers.

The APC in a statement issued on Wednesday said of Wikes accusation, To say the least, this is the most callous and mischievous lie of the century.

It is important that we reveal here that this is a smokescreen by the governor to conceal his attempts to repeat what he did in 2015 which he is trying so hard to repeat without success so far and the APC is monitoring his antics closely.

The party said its members would never be involved in any action that could compromise the forthcoming elections.

It said Mr. George, its candidate for Akuku-Toru/Asari-Toru Federal Constituency, does not work in the Independent National Electoral Commission.

The APC notes with consternation that Gov. Nyesom Wike is suddenly picking on any and every imaginable persons and institutions for bashing because of the March 19 rerun elections, said the statement which was signed by the party Publicity Secretary in the state, Chris Finebone.

Yesterday it was INEC, next was security agents especially the Nigerian Army. Today it is the University of Port Harcourt. Tomorrow it may be market women that will come under the hammer of the governor, who knows.

The All Progressives Congress would like to advise Gov. Nyesom Wike to strive to overcome the things that habit his subconscious as a result of what he did in the past to gain power, and if he does, he will discover that he need not look to the stars for the solution to his problems.

He is the architect of his own fears.
The most important tasks of July's NATO summit in Warsaw include bringing Alliance forces into Central and Eastern Europe, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday.

President Duda was attending a meeting of national security advisers to the presidents of nine countries from NATO's eastern flank who came to Warsaw to discuss their official position for the alliance's July summit.

The summit should have three main goals, according to Andrzej Duda: it has to comprehensively cover security issues in the east and the south, it should look to the future anticipating possible threats, and it should end in concrete decisions.

"To me, above all this means the necessity to strengthen NATO's present in Central and Eastern Europe", the Polish president underlined, adding that NATO needed to show it was going to defend the order established after World War II and the inviolable borders drawn at that time and then during the transformations in Europe in 1989-1991.

"We need a strengthened NATO military presence in our part of Europe, to show that it is not worth confronting or attacking NATO countries, that any military operations aggressive towards NATO member countries will meet with a firm and efficient response from all the member states", president Duda said.

"The question is to what degree we would manage to strengthen this presence," the president continued. "If a permanent rotational presence instead of permanent bases is to be better for the alliance's modern development, then it could be rotational," Andrzej Duda added.

It is very important for Poland to have bases with NATO infrastructure, namely weapons, according to President Duda, who underlined that these should be defensive weapons which would guarantee security and could also be used for military exercises by NATO and Polish troops.

Andrzej Duda pointed out that Russia was very active militarily "in a way that is hard to call peaceful", both in this part of Europe and in Syria. "If someone today uses military forces to threaten free European countries, there is no doubt that they are acting, in a sense, towards restoring a state of cold war", the Polish president said.

"Today the proper peaceful response is strengthening our defence potential. I think this is the only road to truly calming down the situation in our part of Europe", he continued.

The meeting in Warsaw brought together presidential security advisers and national security council secretaries from the four Visegrad Group countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia), three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) as well as Bulgaria and Romania. (PAP)
WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton swept through the South on Super Tuesday, claiming victory in their parties primaries in delegate-rich Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia. The front-runners appeared ever more likely to end up in a general election showdown.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, the nights single biggest prize, as well as neighboring Oklahoma. Democrat Bernie Sanders picked up a home-state win as well, in Vermont, and won in Oklahoma, too.

Still, the night belonged to Trump and Clinton, who turned the busiest day of the 2016 primaries into a showcase of their strength with a wide swath of American voters.

Signaling her confidence, Clinton set her sights on Trump as she addressed supporters during a victory rally.

Its clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower, she said.

Trump, too, had his eye on a general election match-up with the former secretary of state, casting her as part of a political establishment that has failed Americans.

Shes been there for so long, Trump said at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. If she hasnt straightened it out by now, shes not going to straighten it out in the next four years.

Trumps dominance has rattled Republican leaders, who fear hes unelectable against Clinton in November. Even as Trump professed to have good relationships with his partys elite, he issued a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who declared earlier in the day that this party does not prey on peoples prejudices. Trump said that if the two dont get along, hes going to have to pay a big price.

But all efforts to stop Trump have failed, including an aggressive campaign by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to discredit the billionaire businessman.

For Rubio, Super Tuesday turned into a bitter disappointment. While many Republican officeholders have rallied around him in recent days, his first victory remained elusive.

With an eye on Floridas March 15 primary, Rubio vowed to keep up efforts to unmask the true nature of the front-runner in this race.

Cruz desperately needed his win in Texas in order to stay in the race. Hes the only Republican to beat Trump this primary season, a fact he wielded as he called on Rubio and other candidates to step aside.

I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, united, Cruz said.

With results still coming in, Trump had won at least 139 Super Tuesday delegates, while Cruz picked up at least 52. Overall, Trump leads the Republican field with 221.

Sanders wins did little to help him make up ground in his delegate race with Clinton. She was assured of winning at least 334 of the 865 at stake on Super Tuesday. Thats compared to Sanders, who had at least 145 delegates.

Clinton also picked up wins in Arkansas, and Texas, while Trump carried the GOP contests in Arkansas and Massachusetts.

Trumps wins in the South were a major blow to Cruz, who once saw the region as his opportunity to stake a claim to the nomination. Instead, hes watched Trump, a brash New York real estate mogul, display surprising strength with evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming his populist appeal would fizzle. Instead, hes appeared to grow stronger, drawing broad support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states on Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump. Nine in 10 of Trumps voters were looking for an outsider, and half were angry with the government, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

In the Democratic race, Clinton has steadied herself after an unexpectedly strong early challenge from Sanders. The Vermont senator did carry his home state decisively, and told the crowd at a raucous victory party that he was so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country.

Sanders, who has energized supporters with his calls for a political revolution, has struggled to expand his base beyond young people and liberals. His weakness with black voters, a core part of the Democratic constituency, was underscored anew.

Clinton was supported by at least 80 percent of black voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. She was also bolstered by women and older voters.

More than 90 percent of Clintons voters wanted an insider, according to exit polls, and nearly half said experience was the top quality they were looking for in a candidate.

___

Colvin reported from Palm Beach, Florida. AP writers Julie Bykowicz in Washington and Ken Thomas in Burlington, Vermont, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Julie Pace and Jill Colvin on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and http://twitter.com/colvinj
Wildwoods Quebec Motel was so intent on drawing visitors from that Canadian province that at its grand opening in 1963, one of the dignitaries was the mayor of Quebec City. And a radio reporter from Quebec spent that July and August at the motel, calling in weather reports back home.

The motels current owner, Lester Katsanis, says French-Canadian visitors are still a key to his bottom line, as they are to motels and businesses all over the Wildwoods, to campgrounds on the Cape May County mainland and to more restaurants and shops nearby.

But the owners of many of those businesses are worried about the growing weakness of the Canadian dollar.

For Canadians traveling in the United States, their dollar was worth just 73 cents here Friday  and just three years after their money was strong enough to buy a bit of a bonus in the U.S. That exchange rate has local businesses concerned that French-Canadians may not make their traditional trip south this summer, so they are starting to offer discounts to draw them back.

Business owners are saying, Were willing to meet you halfway. We appreciate your business, and patronizing our business is very important to us, said Diane Wieland, Cape May Countys tourism director, a veteran of 40 years of dealing with the Canadian market.

She recently sent a note on a Canadian incentive program to about 500 businesses around the county, and were seeing 10 to 15 percent discounts that some are starting to offer, she said.

In Wildwood, Katsanis says he has given these discounts before as the exchange rate has swung against the Canadian loonie, and hell do it again.

What weve been doing in the past is giving a discount especially for repeat customers, he says, adding that some of the Quebec visitors are so loyal, hes now seeing the third generations of families come to a motel that he has owned since 1985.

But theres a difference we have to recognize, he added. With the Internet, you put your price up and your room goes, and you dont know whos at the other end.

So Canadian travelers have to contact the Quebec directly to get their discounts. But in one brochure Wieland put together, many of the businesses give special online codes, including le Canadian 10 at the Biscayne Family Resort in Wildwood Crest and le code special 2016SweetDeal at the Lotus Inn, in the same town.

The owners of the Holly Shores Camping Resort, on the Lower Township mainland, have their own discount, and went to a camping show in Quebec to promote it. The business even has a French option on their telephone answering system.

About 90 percent of my business in the summer is French-Canadian, says Dave Robinson, who owns Holly Shores with his wife, Maggy.

Many of those visits still come in the traditional times of late July and early August  when an official construction holiday used to shut down most work in Quebec. But Maggy, 60, who grew up in the local campground business, says those visitors are extending their seasons from June to October.

Still, while Cape May County is compiling these offers, and promoting them heavily in French around Quebec, officials arent taking the traditional French-Canadian migration for granted this summer.

We just want our businesses ... to realize this is going to be a different year, and we dont see any end in sight, Wieland said.

One analyst told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. last month that he sees the loonie diving to 59 cents against the U.S. dollar, an all-time low.

David Doyle, of Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd., also projected that the Canadian dollar wont be worth more than 65 cents in this country until the end of 2018, at the earliest, mostly as a result of low oil prices on the world market.

So Wieland adds that some of merchants are looking at bigger discounts.

And some are saying that their loyal customers booked (for this year) before they left last summer, but theyre not seeing any new Canadian visitors, she added.

To increase interest in the discount offers, Wielands pitch noted that Quebec residents accounted for almost 215,000 visits and more than 558,000 room nights  or campsite nights  last year.

About 75 percent of Quebec residents who came to New Jersey went all the way to Cape May County, and they spent almost $55 million, in U.S. dollars, Wieland added.

The county even used to have its own office in Montreal, until about 20 years ago. But they still have a public-relations consultant there, and officials from the county recently were back for an outdoor travel show in Montreal.

They found a little good news in the exchange rate: Their trip to Canada was much cheaper than normal. And with the stronger U.S. dollar, Wieland said, her Canadian advertising budget buys about 35 percent more than it did just a few years ago.

Contact: 609-272-7237
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

ROHR Zimbabwe (Restoration of Human Rights) has said Zanu PF is its own enemy considering the purging of its members on factional grounds." A Government so introspective that it ignores the plight of the general population, food supplies, human rights, rule of law, etc, etc," ROHR said."Zanu-PF is its own biggest threat. Its constitution is unclear about how to select a new party leader, and by extension president, if Mugabe becomes incapacitated or dies in office. That the party will not countenance open debate on this has led to incessant backroom political jockeying and unprecedented turmoil."The organisation said in December 2014, then Vice President Joice Mujuru was purged and her rival, Emmerson Mnangagwa, elevated."Since then, over 140 top national and provincial party officials linked to Mujuru have been suspended or expelled from the party, including nine of ten provincial chairpersons and senior cabinet and politburo members. Posited as necessary to end party factionalism, this instead opened a new chapter of division, as those whose interests had converged around Mujuru's removal sought advantage over each other," ROHR said.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

The Zimbabwe Peace Project has claimed that the emergency of the former Vice President Joice Mujuru led Zimbabwe People First was a serious threat to the survival of the ruling Zanu PF."Apparently so threatening to Zanu-PF is the emergence of People First that this month's report tells of repeated warnings the ruling party is meting out to its membership in meetings against the "folly" of joining People First lest they be left out of distributions for food aid and input assistance," reported ZPP."In more pronounced instances, in Hwedza a group of suspected state agents were deployed to the area in order to monitor People First movements and progress."ZPP reports also indicate a coming together to collaborate between ProgressiveDemocrats Party (PDP) and People First, with the former joining hands with the latter, something which PDP leader Tendai Biti confirmed to ZPP."Exorcising Mujuru's 'ghost' is proving to be seizing the ruling party as seen by the report from Manicaland where Mutare City Council management was targeted wholesale allegedly on suspicion that they are 'gamatox' remnants. ('Gamatox' are those suspected to be sympathetic to Mujuru.)" said ZPP."As Zanu-PF stands itself ready to fend off the People First threat, the 'traditional enemy, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) is not forgotten as relentless discrimination against its members continues amidst partisan distribution of food aid and input. Against a backdrop of hard hitting El Nino drought which has resulted in three million facing starvation and scores of livestock dying, hunger is wreaking havoc in the country. With millions of people facing starvation there is more need for diligent and equitable distribution of food aid. Sadly this is not so in a number of areas across the country."ZPP said in order to ensure that discrimination against members of the opposition is maintained Zanu-PF leadership at local levels in a number of areas have taken to displacing and replacing gatekeepers in distributions of food aid and agricultural inputs."In a number of instances reported for January, opposition councillors as well as village heads who did not comply with partisan distribution of the aid were either pushed out of their positions or relieved of the distribution function of their duties. This was seen in Matabeleland, among a few other areas," reported ZPP."January saw a total of 208 reported politically motivated violations, a majority of which were allegedly perpetrated by Zanu-PF (82.3%). For its part, the MDC-T was also accused of perpetrating violent acts including a report from Mukarakate Village in Murehwa South, where a member of the democratic movement defected to the Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe (RDZ) had his house set onfire."ZPP said violence continues to be traded from all quarters albeit with some parties being more violent than others. On this score, the political landscape remains grim.
R Sridharan, president of AIPIMA and Vimal Mehra, past-president of AIPIMA, in this interaction, say, the association is doing all it can to...
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.




News / National

by Nyemudzai Kakore

Chitungwiza Municipality has reduced the annual operating licence for kombi operators from $100 to $57,50 following skirmishes that rocked the town recently.Commuter omnibus operators in Chitungwiza met council bosses last month seeking a reduction of the fee, which they claimed was too high.The reduction, according to the minutes of the Finance Committee, came after realising that there were no previous consultations over the operating licenses as commuter operators were only advised."Having taken into cognisance the demonstration, a meeting with the commuter operators' executive was called on the 11th of January in order to resolve the issue and map a way forward.During the discussions, the commuter operators highlighted a number of charges which they pay to City of Harare, Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development and other payments towards running their businesses," reads the minutes."They indicated that the $100 over and above the monthly rank disc of $17.50 was not sustainable and they suggested a $57, 50 charge. After deliberations, the two parties agreed that commuter operators pay $57,50 inclusive of VAT."According to the minutes, the Deputy Mayor, Godwell Mushangwe, wanted to know if council would reimburse those who had already paid $100 to which finance director Mrs Evangelista Machona, said their balances would be channelled towards rank discs.During the skirmishes that erupted on January 5, commuter omnibus crews together with vendors protested the introduction of the fee, resulting in property worth thousands of dollars being destroyed.The dormitory town was temporarily turned into a war zone and more than 40 people have since appeared in court at Chitungwiza Magistrates' Court charged with public violence.Chitungwiza Commuter Omnibus Operators' Association spokesperson, Mr Farai Muza, said after reaching an agreement, they expected council to improve its services in terms of erecting toilets, shelters, benches as well as install lights at bus stops for the safety of customers."We met with council and agreed on the new operating license tariff after the municipality said the money will be used to improve service delivery such as repairing roads which are filled with potholes," he said.
News / National

by Thandeka Moyo and Fungai Lupande

OTHER than murder and rape, it was the most heinous crime a 24-year-old girl could be accused of: using a syringe to draw her own HIV infected blood and injecting a two-year-old boy, the son of her new boyfriend with another woman.In an instant, Harare model Tafadzwa Mushunje's life was turned upside down after she was arrested and charged with deliberately transmitting HIV to the toddler and assault for allegedly making the boy drink her urine.Her face was plastered on the front pages of newspapers and sent around the world on the internet.Except it was all not true! Yesterday, Mushunje left the Harare Magistrates Court a free woman after the Prosecutor General's Office withdrew charges following the release of medical tests showing that neither she nor the child was HIV positive.Mushunje was arrested after the boy's mother, Sihle Tracy Harry, went to the police claiming that she had left the tot with its father, Colin Kanonge, who was in the company of Mushunje. The boy had been returned to her with "strange marks".She told investigators that she had received information from a friend, pointing her to a link on a notorious and highly defamatory sex and sleaze website called Musvo Zimbabwe, which claimed that "Mushunje assaulted the child whenever his father left the minor with her."The website added: "When the father was away, Mushunje drew HIV infected blood and injected the child She beats the child saying return to your mother and makes him drink her urine."It was after reading these claims, said prosecutors, that Harry - who describes herself on the internet as "a Nyasarand (someone originally from Malawi) and not a mukharadi (mixed race)" - linked the report to the marks on the child.Astonishingly, police went on to arrest Mushunje even before they could establish if indeed she was HIV positive, and that she had indeed infected the child with the virus that causes AIDS.No other evidence, including the syringe allegedly used, or injection marks on the child, was produced for prosecutors before charges were filed.The Prosecutor General's Office could still have declined to lay charges, but the case went to court where it collapsed spectacularly yesterday with Mushunje being left to pick up the pieces - her name and reputation well and truly in the dump.Top Harare lawyer Jonathan Samkange last night told The Chronicle that Mushunje was entitled to sue the girl's mother for malicious prosecution to repair her reputation. "She has a right to sue for damages that will compensate her for the mental torture she went through before she was acquitted," Samkange said."Stories which have been generated about her must have forced her colleagues, family, friends and relatives to look at her with horror thus she is entitled to psychological and psychiatric treatment fees."Samkange said the case was not a prima facie - accepted as guilty until proved otherwise - and Mushunje could now sue whoever initiated the prosecution."Somehow, the police and the prosecutor can't be sued as they're not experts or judges to have stopped the matter from going into court," the lawyer added.
DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cmz7xk/european_market) has announced the addition of the "European Market for Flame Retardant Chemicals Segmented by Application, Composition and Geography (2015-2020)" report to their offering.

The European market for flame-retardant chemicals is expected to grow at a healthy pace of 5.3% from $1.56 billion in 2013 to over $2.1 billion during the forecast period. Europe is the third largest global market for flame-retardants, occupying 22% of the global market share.

Flame-retardants can be divided into sectors by their application: electronic and electrical appliances, construction, wire & cable, automotive, textiles and others. The largest two sectors are construction and electronic & electrical appliances, together occupying more than 45% of the total market.

Electronic & electrical appliances along with wire & cable are the fastest growing markets; this growth can be credited to the rise in consumer electronics goods. Stringent fire safety standards and legislations in Europe also act as a growth driver for the use of flame-retardants.

Chlorinated flame-retardants that occupy a major part of the European market share are facing a reduced dependence and a gradual phasing. This is due to their unfavorable health effects and emergence of alternative raw materials including metal hydroxides. In Europe, the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and the EU Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) has banned several halogenated compounds and other materials from use as additives in plastics.

Reasons for Buying this Report:

Have valuable insights on trends and prospects.

Gain an exhaustive understanding of the worldwide market.

Recognize industry players and possess key industrial financial information.

Have an in-depth understanding on the factors driving and restraining the market.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Key Findings of the Study

3. Market Overview

4. Market Dynamics

5. Technology Overview

6. Market Analysis & Forecast

Companies Mentioned:

BASF SE

Akzo Nobel N.V.

Clariant AG

Chemtura Corporation

Albemarle Corporation

DuPont

Sherwin-Williams Co.

Tosoh Corp.

Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL-IP)

Arkema S.A.

Chemtura Corporation

AMCOL International Corp.

TOR Minerals International Inc.

Interplastic Corporation

DAIHACHI Chemical Industry Co., Lt

Lanxess AG

DIC Corporation

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cmz7xk/european_market

Media Contact:

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

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lzrp9d/growth) has announced the addition of the "Growth Opportunities in Epoxy Curing Agents in the Global Composites Industry 2015-2020: Trends, Forecasts and Opportunity Analysis" report to their offering.

The epoxy curing agent in the global composites industry is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 5.5% by value from 2015 to 2020. The major drivers of growth for this market are growth of end-use industries and increasing use of high-performance epoxy-based composite materials.

In this market, aliphatic, cycloaliphatic, aromatic, dicyandiamide, and anhydride are the major products used as curing agents in the global composites industry. Aliphatic is the largest product segment and is expected to remain the same during the forecast period. The author predicts that the demand for aromatic is expected to experience the highest growth rate in the forecast period supported by growing demand for high performance composites in aerospace applications.

Asia Pacific is expected to remain the largest market due to growth of composites industry. North America is expected to show above average growth during the forecast period due to increasing demand for high-performance epoxy-based composites in the aerospace, wind energy, and other end use industries.

For market expansion, the report suggests innovation and new product development, where the unique characteristics of epoxy curing agent can be capitalized. Some of the innovation areas in epoxy curing agent could be in the lowering of curing time, increasing pot life, and lowering the heat of exothermic reaction. Emerging trends, which have a direct impact on the dynamics of the industry, include development of epoxy curing agents which are less hazardous to human health and have faster cure, and improved performance characteristics.

Air Products, BASF SE, Huntsman, Momentive, and Dow Chemicals are among the major players of epoxy curing agent in the global composites industry.

By end use application type [Value ($M) and Volume (M lbs) shipment analysis for 2009 - 2020]:

- Wind Energy

- Pipe and Tank

- Aerospace

- Others

By product type [Value ($M) and Volume (M lbs) shipment analysis for 2009 - 2020]:

- Aliphatic Amines

- Cycloaliphatic Amines

- Aromatic Amines

- Dicyandiamide

- Anhydride

- Catalyst

- Others

This report answers following 11 key questions:

Q.1. What are some of the most promising, high-growth opportunities for epoxy curing agent in global composites industry by product type and region?

Q.2.Which product segments will grow at a faster pace and why?

Q.3.Which region will grow at a faster pace and why?

Q.4.What are the key factors affecting market dynamics? What are the drivers and challenges in the market?

Q.5.What are the business risks and competitive threats in this market?

Q.6.What are emerging trends in this market and reasons behind them?

Q.7.What are some changing requirements and demands of customers in the market?

Q.8.What are the new developments in the market and which companies are leading these developments?

Q.9.Who are the major players in this market? What strategic initiatives are being taken by key companies for business growth?

Q.10. What are some of the competitive products and processes in this area and how big of a threat do they pose for loss of market share via materials / product substitution?

Q.11. What M & A activities have transpired in the last 5 years in this market and describe their impact on the industry?

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

2. Industry Background and Classifications

3. Market Trend and Forecast Analysis

4. Competitor Analysis

5. Growth Opportunity & Strategic Analysis

6. Company Profiles of Leading Players

- Air Products

- BASF SE

- Dow Chemicals

- Huntsman

- Momentive

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lzrp9d/growth

Media Contact:

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

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
BASINGSTOKE, United Kingdom, Mar. 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Infortrend Technology, Inc. (TWSE: 2495) has announced its joint presence with Starline Computer at CeBIT 2016 from the 14th to 18th of March in Hannover, Germany, where they will introduce their newest storage "EonStor DS 4000 Gen2".

EonStor DS 4000 Gen2 was one of the world's first storage systems to integrate Intel Xeon processor D-1500, which, combined with its optimized hardware, delivers 20% higher performance than any previous EonStor DS systems. This integration, along with 256GB memory, dual host board controller, all-around 12Gb/s SAS support, and SSD optimization features, enables it to deliver 11,000MB/s read, 5,500MB/s write throughput and end-to-end 600K IOPS, making it the ideal solution for throughput and IOPS intensive applications such as cloud computing, VDI and media.

Starline Computer's Product Manager Timo Fietz commented: "We have partnered with Infortrend since 1994 and are proud to be showcasing their outstanding storage system as part of our product lineup at CeBIT this year. I am sure it will be a successful event for all of us involved."

"This year is shaping up to be an exciting one for Infortrend, with a range of great new products entering the market. We are showcasing our latest and most powerful storage solution - the EonStor DS 4000 Gen2 at CeBIT 2016. Come to see our technology for a preview of what's to come this year," commented Teddy Lin, General Manager of Infortrend Europe.

Visit us

Find more information about EonStor DS 4000 Gen2 at stand B53, Hall 2, Hannover Exhibition Grounds.

As the leading event for digital business in Europe, CeBIT defines the latest IT trends as well as product innovations from all over the world. For all event details please visit www.cebit.de

About Infortrend

Infortrend (TWSE: 2495) has been developing and manufacturing storage solutions since 1993. With a strong emphasis on in-house design, testing, and manufacturing, Infortrend storage delivers performance and scalability with the latest standards, user friendly data services, personal after-sales support, and unrivaled value. For more Information, please visit www.infortrend.com

About Starline

Starline Computer has more than 30 years of professional experience with data storage systems - having been in the storage and server business since 1982. We are one of the first companies to completely dedicate ourselves to storage and server solutions. This guarantees our partners a maximum of competence.



Starline provides complete virtualization and storage solutions such as SAN, RAID, NAS, IP storage, servers, tape libraries and autoloaders, RAID controllers, FC switches, backup software, HBAs and more. For more information, please visit www.starline.de

Infortrend, EonStor, EonNAS, and ESVA are trademarks or registered trademarks of Infortrend Technology, Inc., other trademarks property of their respective owners.

Infortrend Europe Ltd.

Agnieszka Wesolowska

Tel:+44-1256-305-220

E-mail: marketing.eu@infortrend.com

Related Links

http://www.infortrend.com



SOURCE Infortrend Technology, Inc.
DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g23x5h/injector_nozzle) has announced the addition of the "Injector Nozzle Market - Global Forecast to 2020" report to their offering.

The global injector nozzle market is projected to grow from $3.95 billion in 2015 to $5.33 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 6.2% from 2015 to 2020. The increasing demand for automobiles, necessity for fuel-efficient vehicles, and stringent emission standards are major factors influencing the growth of the global injector nozzle market.

The passenger cars segment is the largest vehicle type segment with 75.3% share in the total vehicle production, in 2014. This growth in the passenger cars segment is mainly attributed to the increase in disposable income owing to industrialization, easy availability of finances, and changing buyer preferences towards self-owned luxury transport, among others.

The passenger cars segment is projected to grow at a high CAGR over the next five years. On the other hand, industrialization & construction activities and increase in mining & other industrial activities have influenced the demand for commercial vehicles. Countries in the Asia-Oceania region, especially China and India are projected to witness a substantial growth in the commercial vehicles segment. All these factors have equally contributed to the growth of the injector nozzle market.

Asia-Oceania is the leading region in the injector nozzle market, owing to growth in the manufacturing sector in this region. In addition to this, low production cost in the Asia-Oceania region as compared to western countries, easy availability of economic labor, and lenient emission & safety regulations are also propelling the growth of the injector nozzle market.

Companies Mentioned:

Continental Ag

Delphi Automotive Plc

Denso Corporation

Infineon Technologies Ag

Keihin Corporation

Magneti Marelli S.P.A.

Robert Bosch Gmbh

Key Topics Covered:

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Market Overview

5 By Fuel Type

6 By Vehicle Type

7 By Technology

8 By Geography

9 Competitive Landscape

10 Company Profiles

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/g23x5h/injector_nozzle

Media Contact:

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

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com



SOURCE Research and Markets
BARCELONA, Spain, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Researchers at the University of Barcelona have found evidence that hominids may have entered Europe through the southern Iberian Peninsula between 900,000 and 850,000 years ago. The Journal of Human Evolution has published a study based on new dating of human and African primate fossil remains found in Cueva Victoria (Cartagena, Murcia), in Spain. The results suggest humans arrived from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. "Until now, the dominant theory was that humans dispersed from Africa to Europe northwards around the Mediterranean and entered the peninsula through the Pyrenees; but our work, as well as other previous studies, suggest that hominids entered from the south on different occasions," explains Lluis Gibert, a researcher in the Faculty of Geology at the University of Barcelona and director of the study that included collaboration with the experts Carles Ferrandez and Maria Leria.



(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338614 )



Cueva Victoria, an early Pleistocene hyena den with three kilometres of tunnels, was key in the research. Some ninety species of vertebrates, including a human phalanx and the remains of Theropithecus oswaldi, an African primate similar to the modern baboon, were found. "These are the only remains of Theropithecus that have been found in Europe. Their presence in North Africa during the Pleistocene, together with their absence at other European sites, is the first indication of hominid dispersal across the strait," explains Carles Ferrandez. The phalanx and primate remains are about 900,000 years old, the same age as a hand axe found at the Cueva Negra site in the Quipar River gorge, 50 kilometres from Cueva Victoria. "These are the first remains of Acheulean technology found in Europe, a form of lithic culture that appeared in Africa 1.6 million years ago and which, until the Cueva Negra dating, was not thought to have arrived on this continent until 600,000 years ago," says Lluis Gibert.

The experts say that previous studies on hominid discoveries at sites in Orce (the Baza basin, Granada) already suggested that a dispersal through the south-east of the Iberian Peninsula had taken place about 1.3 million years ago "independently of the fact other humans were trying to go around the Mediterranean," explains Lluis Gibert.

About the University of Barcelona

The University of Barcelona is the leading public university in Catalonia in terms of the size of its student body, which is made up of approximately 66,000 students, as well as the number of study programmes it offers. It is the top university in the country in scientific output, which makes it the leading university research centre in Spain and one of the major players in Europe, both with regard to the number of research programmes it has and to the excellence it has achieved in this arena.

The University of Barcelona is the leading higher education institution in Spain in the primary international rankings: It is the only Spanish university to feature among the 200 best universities in the world in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), better known as the Shanghai ranking. In the 2014-2015 QS World University Rankings, it was also the top Spanish university and one of the 200 best in the world. Additionally, according to the 2014 QS World University Rankings by Subject, it is the only university in the country to enjoy a position on the elite list of the 200 best universities in the world in 27 of the 30 different knowledge areas.

A member of the most significant university of excellence networks on an international scale, such as the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the University of Barcelona has been chosen to lead a new knowledge and innovation community in Spain focusing on healthy living and active ageing: EIT Health. The University of Barcelona has 301 consolidated research groups and, according to a report by BiGGAR Economics commissioned by LERU, it has an impact worth 1.4 billion euros in gross value added (GVA) in Catalonia, which represents 72% of the Catalan total, and has a direct impact in the form of 21,870 jobs (2014 data).

http://www.ub.edu

University of Barcelona Expert Guide: http://www.ub.edu/experts/en

SOURCE University of Barcelona. Communication Office
NEW YORK, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/  NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. (NYSE: NRE) ("NorthStar Realty Europe") today announced the results of an appraisal of its real estate portfolio by Cushman & Wakefield LLP, an independent third-party valuer. Cushman & Wakefield LLP provided an estimated real estate portfolio aggregate value of approximately $2.6 billion for the NorthStar Realty Europe real estate portfolio (acquired over the last 18 months), which represents an approximate 11%1 increase over the original purchase price allocation and implies a net asset value ("NAV") of approximately $1.1 billion or $18 per share, as of December 31, 2015. This independent third-party appraisal was prepared by Cushman & Wakefield LLP in accordance with the current U.K. and Global edition of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (RICS) Valuation  Professional Standards (the "Red Book") on the basis of "Fair Value," which is widely recognized within Europe as the leading professional standards for independent valuation professionals.2

Mahbod Nia, chief executive officer, commented, "We are pleased at the implied NAV per share of $18 supported by the recent independent third-party appraisal of our real estate portfolio. This implied NAV represents a significant premium to NorthStar Realty Europe's current value ascribed by the public market and we will continue to evaluate all strategies to unlock embedded value for our stockholders."

In December 2015, NorthStar Realty Europe sold three non-core real estate properties and committed to sell one additional non-core real estate property. The combined sale price of approximately $26 million represents an approximate 29%1 premium to NorthStar Realty Europe's original purchase price allocation. These assets were originally acquired as part of the Trias portfolio, which closed in April, 2015. Net proceeds from the sale are expected to be used for general corporate purposes, common stock repurchases and reduction of corporate debt. The results of the aforementioned appraisal exclude these non-core real estate properties.

About NorthStar Realty Europe Corp.

NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. (NYSE: NRE) is a European-focused commercial real estate company with predominantly high quality office properties in the United Kingdom, Germany and France, organized as a REIT and managed by an affiliate of NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc. (NYSE: NSAM), a global asset management firm. For more information about NorthStar Realty Europe Corp., please visit www.nrecorp.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain items in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements, which can be identified by words like "expect," "will," "intends" and similar expressions. These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to a number of trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements; NorthStar Realty Europe can give no assurance that its expectations will be attained, including any expectation regarding whether the properties under contract to sell will close and the use of proceeds from the sale of any non-core properties. The calculation of NAV is subject to numerous assumptions and may not be the best metric to use in evaluating the value of NorthStar Realty Europe and thus investors should not unduly rely on it as an indicator of value or otherwise. Forward-looking statements are necessarily speculative in nature, and it can be expected that some or all of the assumptions underlying any forward-looking statements will not materialize or will vary significantly from actual results. Variations of assumptions and results may be material. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from NorthStar Realty Europe's expectations include, but are not limited to, NorthStar Realty Europe's liquidity and financial flexibility; NorthStar Realty Europe's future cash available for distribution; NorthStar Realty Europe's use of leverage; and the anticipated strength and growth of NorthStar Realty Europe's business. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are specified in NorthStar Realty's Registration Statement on Form S-11 (333-20544) and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. NorthStar Realty Europe expressly disclaims any obligation to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any statement is based.

Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

NAV is a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) measure calculated as the value of total assets less the value of total liabilities divided by the total number of shares of common stock outstanding (common stock, long term incentive plan (LTIPs) and restricted stock unites (RSUs) not subject to performance hurdles, outstanding) as at a specific date. The term NAV does not have any standardized meaning according to GAAP and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. There is no comparable GAAP measure presented in NorthStar Realty Europe's consolidated financial statements and thus no applicable quantitative reconciliation for such non-GAAP financial measure.

Disclaimer

As an opinion, appraisals are not a measure of realizable value and may not reflect the amount that would be received if the property in question were sold. Real estate valuation is inherently subjective due to, among other factors, the individual nature of each property, its location, the expected future rental revenues from that particular property and the valuation methodology adopted. Real estate valuations are subject to a large degree of uncertainty and are made on the basis of assumptions and methodologies that may not prove to be accurate, particularly in periods of volatility, low transaction flow or restricted debt availability in the commercial or residential real estate markets. For example, in the appraisal, a number of the properties were valued using the special assumption that such properties would be purchased through a tax-efficient special purpose vehicle, and is therefore subject to lower purchaser transaction expenses. If one or more assumptions are incorrect, the value may be materially lower than the appraised value.

1 Excluding foreign currency adjustments.

2 Each property is classified as an investment and has been valued on the basis of Fair Value adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board. This is the equivalent to the Red Book definition of Market Value. The Red Book defines Market Value as the estimated amount for which an asset or liability should exchange on the valuation date between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arm's-length transaction after proper marketing where the parties had each acted knowledgably, prudently and without compulsion. The Cushman & Wakefield LLP appraisal assumes that certain of the properties would be purchased through market accepted structures resulting in lower purchaser transaction expenses (taxes, duties, and similar costs).

Related Links

http://www.nrecorp.com



SOURCE NorthStar Realty Europe Corp.
Two-Day Conference Draws Cardiac Electrophysiology Experts From Across the Globe

AUSTIN, Texas, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On March 3 and 4, 2016, the Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute (TCAI) at St. David's Medical Center will host its third international symposium on complex arrhythmias, EP Live 2016. EP Live is an intensive, two-day educational meeting for practicing clinical cardiac electrophysiologists, electrophysiologist fellows and general cardiologists who have an interest in treating complex arrhythmias, a condition in which the heart beats with an irregular or abnormal rhythm. The primary teaching tool is live cases broadcast from the state-of-the-art laboratories at St. David's Medical Center, with expert commentary.

"This year, we're expecting nearly 150 leaders in the field of electrophysiology from Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as experts from across the United States," Andrea Natale, M.D., F.H.R.S., F.A.C.C., F.E.S.C., cardiac electrophysiologist and executive medical director of TCAI and EP Live course director, said. "Over the years, advances in interventional cardiac electrophysiology have impacted physician practices and patient care. This event is a way for physicians to come together to learn the full scope of EP procedures, ultimately improving patient care across the globe."

Arrhythmias are caused by problems with the heart's electrical system. Many cardiac arrhythmias are treated using modern ablation procedures, which involve burning, freezing or neutralizing portions of the heart muscle where abnormal electrical pulses set off the irregular heartbeats. EP Live is designed to help attendees gain a better understanding of techniques used to treat atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, implant complex devices and extract malfunctioning devices.

EP Live consists of four sections: Atrial Fibrillation (AF) ablation, Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) ablation, Devices and New Technologies. The sessions consist of a combination of live and recorded cases from some of the premier centers of the world: TCAI, Mayo Clinic, Stanford University Medical Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, UCLA Health System, the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Loyola University, Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Lancaster General Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Cases include procedures to treat endocardial and epicardial VT ablation, AF ablation, AF Rotors and post-AF arrhythmias; balloon cases; Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy implants; lead extraction and venoplasty.

EP Live will also feature new technologies, including the latest generation of the EpiAccess System to access the pericardial cavity of the heart during an epicardial ablation.

The conference will also focus on a variety of objectives, including:

Evaluating techniques used to map and ablate atrial and ventricular arrhythmias;

Identifying processes to reduce complications and promote safety measures for the patient during ablation of AF and ventricular arrhythmias;

Applying interventional approaches learned in ablation of complex ventricular arrhythmias;

Demonstrating an understanding of the latest evidence and guidelines in arrhythmia management and treatment with new technology; and

Applying interventional approaches that best utilize the new technologies demonstrated to maximize clinical outcomes.

In addition to demonstrations by Dr. Natale, EP Live will feature presentations by a number of TCAI physicians, including course co-director, Amin Al-Ahmad, M.D., as well as Rodney Horton, M.D.; Patrick Hranitzky, M.D.; Robert Canby, M.D.; Joseph Gallinghouse, M.D.; Shane Bailey, M.D.; Javier Sanchez, M.D.; David Burkhardt, M.D. and Jason Zagrodsky, M.D.

Physicians will receive a maximum of 16 American Medical Association (AMA) Physician's Recognition Award (PRA) Category 1 Credit hours at the conference.

The Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute at St. David's Medical Center (TCAI) is one of the world's preeminent centers dedicated to the latest treatment advances for correcting arrhythmias. The center is led by Dr. Natale, who is at the forefront of advancing treatment for A Fib, leading numerous clinical trials, and participating in the development of new technologies and procedures.

For more information, visit EPLiveSymposium.com.

Media Contacts:

Erin Ochoa and Kristin Marcum

Elizabeth Christian Public Relations

+1.512.472.9599

SOURCE Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia Institute (TCAI) at St. David's Medical Center
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On March 18 and 19, 2016, the Arizona Myeloma Network (AzMN) www.azmyelonanetwork.org will collaborate with the local and national medical community to host its 10th Annual Myeloma Research Roundtable: Next Generation Immunotherapy & Launching Moon Shot for Cancer and its Annual Living with Myeloma Conference Immunotherapy I MoonShot I Cure at the Chaparral Suites Ballroom located at 5001 N. Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339724

The research roundtable draws in over 100 attendees each year including renowned clinicians, researchers, scientists, pharmacists, bioscience professionals and myeloma specialists. It is designed to present the latest research and discoveries surrounding myeloma. Attendees will leave with an increased understanding of the value, benefits and risks of clinic trial participation by myeloma patients, as well as explore new strategies to innovate and collaborate with others within the myeloma arena. A total of five CME/CEU credits are available concluding the event for healthcare professionals.

The roundtable, moderated by Joan Koerber-Walker, President and Founder of the Az BioIndustry Association, will provide attendees the opportunity to learn from faculty speakers: Dr. Joseph Mikhael of Mayo Clinic Scottsdale, Dr. Robert Kyle of Mayo Clinic Rochester, Dr. Bart Barlogie of Mount Sinai New York, Dr. Ken Anderson of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Jonathan Keats, PhD of TGen, and participate in a panel discussion.

"Collaboration is key when it comes to creating life-changing and life-saving innovations, and using them to make life better for patients and the people who love them. The 10th Annual Arizona Myeloma Network Myeloma Research Roundtable brings together renowned clinicians, researchers, scientists, pharmacists, bio-science professionals, and myeloma advocates committed to doing just that," stated Joan Koerber-Walker, president and founder of the AZ BioIndustry Association, of why she proudly supports the event.

Registration for the event begins at 11:30am. The Research Roundtable will start promptly at noon with a special message from AzMN Founder and President, Barbara Kavanagh, and conclude at 5:30pm. A cocktail networking reception follows from 6 to 8pm at the Chaparral Suites Courtyard to meet the country's top doctors and medical community.

Then on Saturday, March 19th, the Arizona Myeloma Network presents its 10th Annual Living with Myeloma Conference specifically designed with the patient, caregiver and families in mind. Each year, over 300 participants attend this dynamic conference, which provides cutting edge information about the latest myeloma research and the newest and most exciting therapies for myeloma cancer patients. Faculty members from March 18th's research roundtable are scheduled to present, as well as other leading cancer groups and resources.

"We are excited to be partnering with outstanding businesses and researchers to bring a wealth of information and support resources to patients and families," says Barbara Kavanagh, Founder and President of the Arizona Myeloma Network. "Our myeloma conferences continue to be a place for those affected by myeloma to learn about this rare form of blood cancer and feel less alone."

"There have been tremendous advances in the study and treatment of myeloma over the course of the past decade. I am pleased to share the latest treatment and clinical trial options with participants of the Arizona Myeloma Network conference," said Dr. Joe Mikhael, Hematologist, Professor of Medicine of Mayo Clinic of Scottsdale, and a featured speaker at the conference.

Registration begins at 8am on Saturday, March 19th and the event concludes at 4:30pm. All Myeloma patients, caregivers and families are welcome to attend this free event which also includes a continental breakfast, buffet luncheon and resource fair.

For more information or to register for this year's conference, visit http://www.azmyelomanetwork.org or contact 623-466-6246.

About the Arizona Myeloma Network

Multiple myeloma is a complex and often misdiagnosed cancer of the bone marrow that affects plasma cells, which comprise the immune system and bone. Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, the Arizona Myeloma Network (AzMN) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity organization that conducts outreach events and education programs, with special consideration for the underserved. AzMN seeks to promote promote collaboration, awareness, education and advocacy for improved treatment and quality of life for multiple myeloma patients, their families and ALL cancer. To learn more, visit www.azmyelomanetwork.org.

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE The Arizona Myeloma Network

Related Links

http://www.azmyelomanetwork.org


News / National

by Elizabeth Tsuro

A THIEF who escaped from a police station will spend the next six months in jail.Everisto Sungwa of Village Chamisa in Chirumhanzu had pleaded not guilty to escaping from lawful custody when he appeared before Gweru magistrate, Musaiona Shotgame.Sungwa told the court he bribed a cop to gain freedom."I didn't escape from the police. I was freed by a police officer who demanded a $20 bribe. Please let me go home to take care of my disabled wife and five children," he said.The magistrate said Sungwa committed a serious offence which deserved a deterrent sentence."Your crime caused police officers to lose their jobs. If we give you community service you will escape again," he said."I hereby sentence you to 12 months imprisonment of which six months is suspended for five years on condition you do not commit a similar offence."
NEW YORK, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cancer is the most frequently discussed health condition when consumers are discussing Obamacare online according to a data analysis released today by Treato, the single largest source of online consumer insights on healthcare. Obamacare continues to be popular among Americans as, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 12.7 million Americans signed up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also commonly known as Obamacare, this year. When discussing Obamacare online, consumers are discussing cancer 2.5 times more frequently than any other health condition. Within cancer, consumers are most frequently discussing breast, lung and colon cancers. Online discussions about Obamacare generally skewed negative among cancer patients, but those that were positive expressed extreme gratitude.

Treato's Obamacare Data Analysis

Among patients and caregivers talking on cancer-centered forums, 20 percent of online commenters expressed gratitude and 48 percent had various criticisms. Conversations regarding the downside of Obamacare's cancer coverage generally fell into two categories: dissatisfaction with current coverage and frustration with the lack of plan options to select from. Consumers discussed the challenges of deciphering insurance rules in order to get the coverage they desired, as well as confusion about subsidies, exclusions, inclusions and co-pays. Consumers are also expressing intense frustration that they felt certain groups were gaining more from Obamacare. The strongest criticisms were about women having access to more preventative screenings and more coverage for conditions such as for breast cancer, and the poor getting "free" coverage. Consumers were also critical of cancer coverage being favored as they felt that other health conditions received less coverage.

In addition to being unhappy with their current insurance plans, in online discussions consumers were discussing being displeased because they felt they lost good private insurance plans because of Obamacare and are paying more out of pocket for cancer treatment than before. Many expressed that Medicare and Medicaid are simpler to access and easier to understand.

When positively discussing Obamacare and cancer online, consumers were most frequently expressing gratitude. Most commonly they were discussing how they are appreciative of the inclusion of preventative screenings, the accessibility of coverage while having pre-existing conditions, removal of lifetime limits on coverage and the affordability of coverage.

"Many consumers feel that their health insurance needs aren't being addressed, despite that Obamacare has allowed them to obtain insurance coverage they might not have had before," says Ido Hadari, CEO of Treato "This is an education opportunity for insurance providers to improve their customer service and potentially drive additional plan enrollment."

Find out more about Treato's Obamacare data analysis.

Methodology:

TreatoVoice is a unique data asset that continuously collects and analyzes more than two and a half billion patient and caregiver conversations happening across the Internet in real-time to understand what patients are saying about their experiences with their conditions and treatments. For this analysis Treato analyzed more than 32,000 Obamacare online discussions across more than 90 online health forums.

About Treato:

Treato, the leading source of health insights from millions of real health consumers, uses patented analytics and big data technology to turn billions of disparate online conversations into meaningful social intelligence. With more than two billion posts analyzed and continuously expanding, Treato has partnered with 9 out of the world's top 10 pharma companies as well as numerous other multi-national pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations. Treato.com, its consumer website, helps millions of visitors each month. Treato is privately held with offices in Israel, New York and Princeton, NJ. Investors include Reed Elsevier Ventures, OrbiMed Partners and New Leaf Venture Partners, among others. For more information please visit https://treato.com/

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160301/339357-INFO

SOURCE Treato

Related Links

https://treato.com


HOLLYWOOD, Fla., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Fish Consulting, LLC, a full-service national communications firm specializing in franchise public relations and marketing, announced today that it has added four new employees and promoted two current team members. The new additions are part of the agency's growth plans following a successful 2015 that included impressive expansion of Fish's portfolio with clients such as The Dwyer Group, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Captain D's, AAMCO Transmissions, i9 Sports, Chicken Salad Chick and more.

"To support Fish's rapidly growing client roster, we rewarded two team members and further expanded with new hires who bring strong traditional public relations and social media experience to our team," said Lorne Fisher, CFE, CEO and managing partner, Fish Consulting, LLC. "After a strong 2015, we look forward to continuing to serve our clients with communications strategies to help them reach their business goals while also expanding the agency."

Ellie Mannix and Samantha Russo were promoted to account managers from their prior positions as account executives at Fish. Both have excelled at delivering impactful national and local media placements for many of Fish's franchise clients.

Ashley Reynolds, social media manager, Sloane Fistel, account executive, Tiffany Trilli, account coordinator, and Alexya Williams, social media coordinator, are the agency's newest team members.

Ashley Reynolds brings over five years of integrated social media experience to Fish and will lead the social media division. Alexya Williams brings over two years of experience and will support Ashley Reynolds in creative content development, reporting and monitoring for various social media accounts. As account executive, Sloane Fistel will handle national and local media relations for several franchise development and consumer accounts. Tiffany Trilli is a recent graduate of the University of Central Florida and will support media relations, social media and reporting activities for several accounts at the firm.

Fish recently celebrated its 11th anniversary and has experienced significant growth over the past several years. In 2015, Fish was named for the second consecutive year to the Inc. 5000, Inc. Magazine's ranking of the fastest growing privately held companies in America. Additionally, PRWeek and the South Florida Business Journal have named Fish a "Best Places to Work" in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

About Fish Consulting

Fish is proud to leverage its experience in franchising to serve some of the industry's leading concepts including The Melting Pot, Dunkin' Donuts, Orangetheory Fitness, The Dwyer Group and Tropical Smoothie Cafe, among others. The agency's support for franchise clients range from brand building, franchisee recruitment and internal communications to crisis communications, cause marketing, local/national media relations and social media management. Fish is based in Hollywood, FL, with operations in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York and London. For more information call 954-893-9150 or visit www.fish-consulting.com. For additional franchise insights follow Fish on Twitter @fishconsulting or Facebook.

Contact:

Sloane Fistel

[email protected]

954-893-9150

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141205/162649LOGO

SOURCE Fish Consulting

Related Links

http://www.fish-consulting.com


LOS ANGELES, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- LeVar Burton's RRKidz, Inc., home of the beloved children's brand, Reading Rainbow releases a new educational digital library especially for early elementary school students and their educators. Delivering on the promise made in its record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, the company introduces Reading Rainbow Skybrary School as an effective tool to close the reading gap among children in this country, and to deliver a single platform of resources that helps develop life-long learners everywhere.

Skybrary School offers a rich multimedia resource filled with close to 1,000 fiction and non-fiction books, newly produced video field trips hosted by LeVar Burton, and standards aligned themed lesson plans developed by educational specialists specifically for Skybrary School. This Netflix-like learning service is based on Reading Rainbow's award-winning Skybrary Family digital library, yet features a powerful new teacher dashboard, Common Core aligned content and easy to use management tools.

"Teachers devote their lives to giving students the tools needed to succeed in reading and we want to make sure we are doing the same for them," said LeVar Burton. "With Reading Rainbow's Skybrary Family and now Skybrary School, we are offering a comprehensive solution to assist both educators and parents in providing engaging and relevant content to develop children's literacy and learning skills."

Working with acclaimed publishers such as National Geographic, Britannica, and Teacher Created Materials, Skybrary School's digital collection of children's literature enables students to discover books that meet their interests and reading level. Each book supports emerging to fluent readers by offering audio narration from acclaimed professional actors under Burton's personal supervision, bringing the stories to life in the true Reading Rainbow tradition.

In addition, the service features over 200 educational video field trips hosted by Burton. Here, students join Burton at exciting destinations such as inside The White House, peeking inside the Mars Rover at NASA, all the way to Israel, behind the scenes at Cirque Du Soleil, and in the Grand Canyon. These newly produced videos connect the stories students read with real life experiences, and introduce them to the world in a way that only Burton and Reading Rainbow can.

Skybrary School further extends the learning with 40 standards aligned, themed lesson plans inspired by the books and videos in the library. The supplemental lessons enhance any instructional program with flexible online and offline activities. For example, "Big Thinker Questions" that follow each book are open-ended, allowing students to respond with their interpretation of the content or to discuss differing points of view. The program's blended learning approach builds student's knowledge and develops their vocabulary, comprehension, critical thinking and writing skills.

Skybrary School is available as an easy-to-use web-based subscription service with on demand access to read and learn anytime, anywhere. The added bonus of serving as the ideal school-to-home platform enables parents, siblings, or friends to join in the experience. In addition, the library grows with exciting new books and videos added to the service every week.

Thanks to the legions of fans that contributed to the Kickstarter campaign, RRKidz, Inc. is giving Skybrary School to 10,000 classrooms nationwide for free.

"For more than three decades, LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow have encouraged a passion for reading and provided opportunities for children to engage their curiosity," said Mark Wolfe, RRKidz, Inc. co-founder and CEO. "In 2012 we brought the same trusted curation of children's content to the digital generation with Skybrary Family, and since then more than 35 million books and videos have been enjoyed by kids. With Skybrary School, we are offering educators, home school parents and after-school programs our service tailored just for them."

For additional information on Skybrary School and Reading Rainbow, please visit www.ReadingRainbow.com.

About RRKidz, Inc. and Reading Rainbow

The multi-award-winning Reading Rainbow children's launched in 1983 to encourage kids to read, by bringing books to the television screen. Over the next 26 years, actor/director LeVar Burton (also known for iconic TV roles as Kunta Kinte on "Roots" and Geordi La Forge on "Star Trek: The Next Generation) hosted all 155 episodes, inspired millions of people to love reading, and dedicated his life to promoting literacy and the love of learning in children everywhere.

In 2012, RRKidz, Inc. reimagined the iconic brand for today's digital families and launched the enormously successful Reading Rainbow App. RRKidz, Inc. has since launched numerous enriching products to children and their parents, including LeVar's first children's book, The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm. The mission of RRKidz, Inc. is to instill a passion for learning in "Every Child, Everywhere"- at home and in the classroom. Reading Rainbow and its logo are registered trademarks of Western New York Public Broadcasting Association (WNED-Buffalo) and used with permission. 2015 RRKidz, Inc.

SOURCE RRKidz

Related Links

http://www.ReadingRainbow.com


WASHINGTON, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Tuesday after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. They landed in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time).

Joining their return trip aboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft was Sergey Volkov, also of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who arrived on the station Sept. 4, 2015. The crew touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan.

NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Tuesday after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. They landed in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time).

"Scott Kelly's one-year mission aboard the International Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America's Journey to Mars," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Scott has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space, and in so doing, helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars."

During the record-setting One-Year mission, the station crew conducted almost 400 investigations to advance NASA's mission and benefit all of humanity. Kelly and Kornienko specifically participated in a number of studies to inform NASA's Journey to Mars, including research into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly's identical twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated in parallel twin studies on Earth to help scientists compare the effects of space on the body and mind down to the cellular level.

One particular research project examined fluid shifts that occur when bodily fluids move into the upper body during weightlessness. These shifts may be associated with visual changes and a possible increase in intracranial pressure, which are significant challenges that must be understood before humans expand exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The study uses the Russian Chibis device to draw fluids back into the legs while the subject's eyes are measured to track any changes. NASA and Roscosmos already are looking at continuing the Fluid Shifts investigation with future space station crews.

The crew took advantage of the unique vantage point of the space station, with an orbital path that covers more than 90 percent of Earth's population, to monitor and capture images of our planet. They also welcomed the arrival of a new instrument to study the signature of dark matter and conducted technology demonstrations that continue to drive innovation, including a test of network capabilities for operating swarms of spacecraft.

Kelly and Kornienko saw the arrival of six resupply spacecraft during their mission. Kelly was involved in the robotic capture of two NASA-contracted cargo flights -- SpaceX's Dragon during the company's sixth commercial resupply mission and Orbital ATK's Cygnus during the company's fourth commercial resupply mission. A Japanese cargo craft and three Russian resupply ships also delivered several tons of supplies to the station.

Kelly ventured outside the confines of the space station for three spacewalks during his mission. The first included a variety of station upgrade and maintenance tasks, including routing cables to prepare for new docking ports for U.S. commercial crew spacecraft. On a second spacewalk, he assisted in the successful reconfiguration of an ammonia cooling system and restoration of the station to full solar power-generating capability. The third spacewalk was to restore functionality to the station's Mobile Transporter system.

Including crewmate Gennady Padalka, with whom Kelly and Kornienko launched on March 27, 2015, 10 astronauts and cosmonauts representing six different nations (the United States, Russia, Japan, Denmark, Kazakhstan and England) lived aboard the space station during the yearlong mission.

With the end of this mission, Kelly now has spent 520 days in space, the most among U.S. astronauts. Kornienko has accumulated 516 days across two flights, and Volkov has 548 days on three flights.

Expedition 47 continues operating the station, with NASA astronaut Tim Kopra in command. Kopra, Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos will operate the station until the arrival of three new crew members in about two weeks. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on March 18.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000 and, since then, has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

For more information about the one-year mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/oneyear

For more information about the International Space Station and its crews, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339541

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ("GES") today announced that its affiliates has established GES South Africa as a Black Economic Empowerment Firm to support the advancement and employment South Africans. GES expects GES South Africa to have a BEE Rating of 2, which will allow the Firm to conduct business with State Owned Enterprises, Municipalities and large industrial firms, which rely upon doing business with BEE qualified firms.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339774LOGO

GES is First Mover for Integrated Africa Logistics and Risk Mitigation aggressively expanding its commercial business lines across the African Continent.

GES business divisions currently include Power Generation and Infrastructure, Maritime, Aviation, Ground Logistics & Security, Emergency Medical Services, and Wildlife Management.

About NEAH GES

NEAH GES (GES) provides comprehensive logistics, power generation and security management for global energy and critical infrastructure assets. GES utilizes extensive experience within the African and Middle Eastern regions to effectively wrap energy and infrastructure assets with sophisticated physical and financial risk mitigation protocols ("GES WRAP"). GES is an authorized vendor for the U.S. Department of State, United Nations, USAID, and other global governmental agencies. GES expertise provides commercial and governmental organizations comprehensive risk mitigation solutions unparalleled in the global marketplace.

Contact:

Aaron Williamson

Email

+27 (0)12 663 3366

SOURCE NEAH GES Dubai
MILWAUKEE, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Northwestern Mutual celebrates the 159th anniversary of its founding with an appreciation of its past and a renewed vision of the future. Founded by a transplanted New Yorker in what was then the "northwestern" region of the United States, Northwestern Mutual is proud to be among the strongest and most admired companies in its industry.1

Sharing our success with policyowners has been a consistent tradition. We have made a dividend payout every year since 1872. Financial security requires balance. We take a "whole picture" approach to planning -- helping clients grow wealth with investments while protecting what they have with insurance.

"While life for our clients has changed dramatically since 1857, our commitment to their financial security has been unwavering," said John Schlifske, chairman and chief executive officer of Northwestern Mutual. "We will continue to use our strong foundation to innovate and help our clients and their families secure their futures."

To mark our anniversary, we offer insight into five principles that have stood the test of time:

Commitment . Guided by the vision of our early leaders to create a company whose "aim is to rank first in benefits to policyowners rather than first in size," we remain firmly committed to mutuality. Sharing our success with policyowners has been a consistent tradition, and we have made a dividend payout every year since 1872.

. Guided by the vision of our early leaders to create a company whose "aim is to rank first in benefits to policyowners rather than first in size," we remain firmly committed to mutuality. Sharing our success with policyowners has been a consistent tradition, and we have made a dividend payout every year since 1872. Conviction. Our financial representatives and advisors are committed partners who work with clients to map their unique journeys to financial security. And our leadership is dedicated to recruiting, training and supporting the industry's finest field force.

Our financial representatives and advisors are committed partners who work with clients to map their unique journeys to financial security. And our leadership is dedicated to recruiting, training and supporting the industry's finest field force. Comprehensive approach. Today more than ever, financial security requires balance. We take a "whole picture" approach to planning -- helping clients grow wealth with investments while protecting what they have with insurance.

Today more than ever, financial security requires balance. We take a "whole picture" approach to planning -- helping clients grow wealth with investments while protecting what they have with insurance. Consistency. People need to know their financial partner will be there when they need them most. This is our biggest responsibility, and we are proud to have received the highest financial strength ratings of any life insurer by all four of the major rating agencies. 2

People need to know their financial partner will be there when they need them most. This is our biggest responsibility, and we are proud to have received the highest financial strength ratings of any life insurer by all four of the major rating agencies. Community. We feel fortunate that the work we do every single day builds stronger and better communities. Whether we are helping families work toward a more financially secure future, or improving the lives of families in need, we are proud to be a good corporate citizen.

"People today are working harder than ever, and as we celebrate our anniversary, I am proud of the dedication of the Northwestern Mutual family to help give our clients the confidence to live life differently," said Schlifske.

About Northwestern Mutual

Northwestern Mutual has been helping families and businesses achieve financial security for nearly 160 years. Our financial representatives build relationships with clients through a distinctive planning approach that integrates risk management with wealth accumulation, preservation and distribution. With $238.5 billion in assets, $27.9 billion in revenues and more than $1.6 trillion worth of life insurance protection in force, Northwestern Mutual delivers financial security to more than 4.3 million people who rely on us for insurance and investment solutions, including life, disability income and long-term care insurance; annuities; trust services; mutual funds; and investment advisory products and services. Northwestern Mutual is recognized by FORTUNE magazine as one of the "World's Most Admired" life insurance companies in 2016.

Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, WI, and its subsidiaries.

Northwestern Mutual and its subsidiaries offer a comprehensive approach to financial security solutions including: life insurance, long-term care insurance, disability income insurance, annuities, Iife insurance with long-term care benefits, investment products, and advisory products and services. Subsidiaries include Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS), broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, member FINRA and SIPC; the Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company (NMWMC), federal savings bank; and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company (NLTC).

1 2016 Fortune's Most Admired Rankings

2 A.M. Best Company A++ (highest), 5/2015; Fitch Ratings AAA (highest), 9/2015; Moody's Investors Service Aaa (highest), 1/2016; and Standard & Poor's AA+ (second highest), 5/2015. Ratings are for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339615

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339616



SOURCE Northwestern Mutual

Related Links

http://www.northwesternmutual.com


NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations' Technology & Maintenance Council honored several industry professionals with a variety of awards for their important service to the council and the industry.

The awards were presented during the Council's 2016 Annual Meeting and Transportation Technology Exhibition.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight.Trucking Moves America Forward.

These awards included:

Richard Winters , fleet manager, Verizon Fleet Operations, New Freedom, Pa. , who was honored with the Peggy Fisher Study Group Leadership Award;

, fleet manager, Verizon Fleet Operations, , who was honored with the Peggy Fisher Study Group Leadership Award; Jason Gagnon , shop manager, Transport America, North Jackson, Ohio , who was honored with the Excellence in Maintenance Award;

, shop manager, Transport America, , who was honored with the Excellence in Maintenance Award; Anita Byrne , national sales manager, Mobile InnerSpace, Wapakoneta, Ohio , Todd Cross , sales manager, Delco Remy , Pendleton, Ind. , and Rob Nissen , national service manager, SAF-Holland USA , Muskegon, Mich. , who were honored as Recognized Associates; and

, national sales manager, Mobile InnerSpace, , , sales manager, , , and , national service manager, SAF-Holland , , who were honored as Recognized Associates; and Alex Knight , market segmentation manager, Class C Solutions Group, Independence, Ohio , who was honored with the Study Group Secretary Award.

"For 60 years, TMC has worked to set and improve the standards for commercial vehicle maintenance and equipment," said Carl Kirk, ATA vice president of maintenance, information technology & logistics and TMC executive director, "and these individuals exemplify that in their work every day. Congratulations to them and to all our hard-working TMC members who are setting the bar for our industry."

The Peggy Fisher Study Group Leadership Award, established in 1986 and named after its first recipient, honors excellence in management of TMC study group activity. To earn this award, candidates must demonstrate distinguished service as a study group chairman for three years, earn the respect of their peers, and demonstrate leadership in the creation of new recommended practices and organizing technical programs. Since 1986, only 17 individuals have received the honor.

Winters, a TMC member since 2005, has been active in the S.14 Light- & Medium-Duty Trucks and S.15 Specialty Trucks Study Groups and Corrosion Control Action Committee for many years, serving as S.14 chairman since 2009. He has overseen the development or update of numerous recommended practices in S.14/S.15 and oversaw the merger of the two study groups. He has chaired or moderated numerous technical sessions and chaired several task forces, including CCAC's Hydraulic Brake Systems Corrosion Control and S.14 RP Updates. He is a recipient of TMC's Silver Spark Plug, the Council's highest award.

The Excellence in Maintenance Supervision Award honors a front-line supervisor for excellent performance in maintenance supervision. Continuing a maintenance career that began in the United States Marine Corps, Gagnon has held positions from technician to shop manager at Transport America for nearly 15 years.

"Jason's strong leadership presence combined with his interpersonal strength has earned him the respect of his team and his peers," said Sam Broyles, regional maintenance leader for Transport America. "This has also cleared the path for positive process improvements and reduced the time necessary for successful implementation of productivity enhancing changes in his shop."

Over the past year, Jason's team delivered a 51% increase in warranty dollars recovered as compared to the previous year. This was 53% over the expected target totaling more than $430,000.

The Recognized Associates award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the improvement of equipment, its maintenance and support of TMC activities.

Byrne, a TMC member since 2009, received the TMC Study Group Secretary Award in 2015 and has served on the Member Outreach and Secretary Committees. She currently serves as Study Group Secretary for the Corrosion Control Action Committee and has served as secretary for several task forces.

Cross, a TMC member since 1995, has served on the Meeting Mechanic and Sergeant-at-Arms Committees. He has been active in the S.1 Electrical Study Group and currently is chairman of the S.1 RP Updates Task Force.

Nissen, a TMC member since 1994, received TMC's Silver Spark Plug award in 2015. He has served on the Mentor and Member Contact Committees. He has been active in the S.6 Chassis and Brake Systems and S.7 Trailers, Bodies and Material Handling Study Groups, having chaired several task forces.

Knight, a TMC member since 2005, has contributed to the recommended practice development process and assisted in organizing technical sessions as secretary of the S.14 Light- & Medium-Duty/Specialty Trucks Study Group. In addition to her role as study group secretary, she serves as secretary for all eight of S.14's active task forces.

Deryk Powell, president of Velociti, presented special prizes to the schools of the top three winners of TMCFutureTech 2015, who were:

1st Place Daniel Hanna, Forsyth Technical Community College

2nd Place  Jonathan Kelly , Southside Virginia Community College , and;

, , and; 3rd Place was Karl Kerutis , WyoTech Blairsville

TMCFutureTech is sponsored by Velociti.

Mr. Powell presented Leonard Kiser, dean of engineering, of Forsyth Technical Community College, with:

$2500.00 of Mac Tools in the form of a gift certificate to be redeemed by the school

of in the form of a gift certificate to be redeemed by the school One Eaton Fuller Reman Transmission,

A year of access to Cengage Learning's ASE Truck Technician Test Prep for their diesel tech students from Cengage Learning, and;

A Mini Dream Shop from Reliance Supply, which retails for $2000 .

The schools' whose students placed 2nd and 3rd also received a year of access to Cengage Learning's ASE Truck Technician Test Prep for their diesel tech students from Cengage Learning.

Accepting the prizes for Southside were Jonathan Kelly and Bryan Lewis, and accepting for WyoTech was Duane Tegels.

TMC is America's premier technical society for truck equipment technology and maintenance professionals. TMC features a diverse membership of equipment managers, service-dealers, owner-operators, industry suppliers and manufacturers, educators, academia and others that support the trucking industry. TMC member fleets represent the broad range of industry vocations, including truckload, less-than-truckload, municipal, private, on/off-highway, construction and other operations. Find out more about TMC online at http://tmc.trucking.org.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140523/90962

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

http://www.trucking.org


News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

MDC-T top official Job Sikhala has rubbished off claims that the emergency of Joice Mujuru led Zimbabwe People First has rattled the the Tsvangirai led party.Sikhala said MDC-T is unmoved as it has been in the trances for far too long.He said "There is nothing at all that the MDC will be diverted by Joyce Mujuru ' s launch of her party as my friend Brighton Musonza is trying to portray."MDC has been in trenches for years. We have seen it all. We have gone through many trials and tribulations in politics. Morgan Tsvangirai is a seasoned campaigner who minds his party business" he said on his Facebook wall."Trying desperately to portray MDC fear of the emergency of Joyce Mujuru is losing the plot. I don't think Mujuru formed her party to rival Tsvangirai and protect her former benefactors. "Our business is to continue fighting ZANU PF until we reach our destination. And so we shall under whatever difficult situations we go through. "At present the MDC is stronger than never before. We are doing our business quietly and results shall show.It is arrogant of the highest order of a party that has announced itself today to start making unsubstantiated accusations that we care about their business. We are hitting the road running."
News / National

by Thobekile Zhou

A member of Joyce Mujuru led Zimbabwe People First media department has lashed out at the state run Chronicle for racking up a 19 year ago issue involving Mujuru and the late vice president Joshua Nkomo.According to the article published today, Mujuru was warned by a descendant of King Lobengula, Prince Zwidekalanga Khumalo,that her past would not be easily forgotten - especially in Matabeleland.In 1997, Mujuru, then the Information, Posts and Telecommunications Minister, committed a grave political sin' the paper said by defying instructions from the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo before questioning his sanity.Said Mujuru then, "Dr Nkomo is ageing and doesn't always understand or remember things as well as he used to," she said.Methuseli Moyo, a member of ZPF's media and publicity team said the story headlined "Mujuru haunted by Nkomo slur" cannot go unchallenged."For the record, we do not expect any kindness nor fairness from the state media on our party and leadership."The fact that the Chronicle and their handlers are resorting to digging up graves speaks for itself. It is public knowledge that Dr Mujuru at the time clarified herself and sought apology from the Nkomo family and the nation at large, and the apology was given by the rightful people. And this was 19 years ago," said Moyo.He added "In any case, what Dr Mujuru said and apologised for is nowhere near the worst insults that have been said about Nkomo and the people of Matabeleland."If you want to find the worst insults about Nkomo and the people of Matabeleland you have to look at President Mugabe, who said Nkomo was the head of a cobra that must be crashed.Moyo said President Mugabe has the best vocabulary for insults."If Nkomo was the head of the snake, who were the snake? Mugabe, not Mujuru, has the best vocabulary when it comes to insults on the people of Matabeleland. That is a fact which no sane person can dispute."For the record, Dr Mujuru's conscience is at peace with regards to the legacy of Dr Nkomo , and the people of Matabeleland. If there is anyone who is haunted it must be Mugabe and Zanu-PF. ZPF is firmly on the ground nationally, and that includes Matabeleland. No amount propaganda and crudity, especially from discredited quarters, can change the tide".
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
New Delhi, Feb 26 : India could experience export gains of more than $500 billion per year, or 60 percent increase, from joining an expanded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or participating in a comprehensive Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) and the country's national income would expand by 4 percent, or $200 billion, said the Economic Survey 2015-16.

The Survey, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in parliament on Friday, cited experts to say that India is most competitive in services trade and reduction of trade barriers in services among TPP members will result in growth in India's services exports.

"The possible risks of not joining the TPP are difficult to quantify, but some of the research has highlighted the possibility of trade diversion and raised concerns about erosion of India's share in exports to the US and Europe," it said.

The TPP is a US-led trade agreement involving twelve Pacific Rim countries and concerning a variety of matters of trade and economic policy, on which consensus was reached in October last year after seven years of negotiations.

"The TPP is expected to make around 11,000 tariff lines duty free for its members, which may result in loss of competitiveness of Indian exports in these markets," it added.

Noting TPP economies on average are more open than the Indian economy, the survey said the service trade restriction index of the World Bank indicates that the TPP economies are less stringent about entry of services than India.

Last month, Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman sought to reassure Indian industry that there would be no adverse impact of entering into the TPP agreement.

"There is nothing to worry about the adverse impact of TPP on India. We have taken necessary steps to boost India's trade and investment in the wake of emerging new trade architecture," she said in her address at the Confederation of Indian Industry's annual partnership summit here.

Sitharaman also said the real implementation of TPP has a long way to go as till date, not a single TPP member has got it passed through their parliament.
Santiago, Feb 28 : Six years after a devastating earthquake shook Chile on February 27, 2010 and claimed over 500 lives, the Chilean government is close to completing reconstruction of infrastructure essential for restoring public life.

The government said the final stage of reconstruction, set to be finished in 2018, will involve an investment of about $224 million in the country's southern and central regions, Xinhua reported.

"In total, 91.7 percent of the budget assigned for rebuilding work has been spent. The final 8.3 percent will be used over the 2016-2017 period," said a release from the Ministry of Public Works.

President Michelle Bachelet will embark on a trip around all six quake-affected regions, including the capital Santiago.

She will also meet affected families who have still not received new housing, and inspect those already re-housed.

The region of Biobio was one of the worst-hit. While it was not hit by the tsunami, structural damage was serious there.

The authorities expressed satisfaction with the reconstruction, with only the repairing of the Bicentenario bridge yet to be completed.

Alvaro Ortiz, mayor of capital city Concepcion, said: "The reconstruction is practically finished."

Luisa Villegas, who lost her home in the village of Santa Clara de Talcahuano, said she received "a nice house after two years".

The municipality of Constitucion lies in the region of Maule, which took the brunt of the tsunami. Over 250 houses were given for free to those who had lost theirs in the quake.

However, Carlos Valenzuela, mayor of Constitucion, criticised the slow progress of the rebuilding plan for the area.

New evacuation routes were planned in the event of new earthquakes and tsunamis, but Valenzuela said only 40 percent has been completed.
London, Feb 29 : A Sikh group in Britain has urged the media and politicians to stop describing the Rotherham grooming gang, which was handed combined sentence of more than 100 years for sexual assault on women, as "Asian".

Sikh Federation UK said the use of term "Asian" for the Rotherham gang is too vague and "besmirches" other communities, The Independent reported on Sunday.

Rotherham gang is a group in Britain, including four Pakistani men and two British women who groomed, raped, prostituted and abused teenage girls in Rotherham town of England and were handed combined prison sentences of 103 years on Friday.

It was found that at least 1,400 girls had been sexually exploited in Rotherham over a 16-year period.

Bhai Amrik Singh, chairman of the Sikh Federation UK said he hoped their combined prison sentences of more than 100 years would give a measure of justice to "victims that have endured more than a decade of violence and horrific sexual abuse".

"One of the demands in the Sikh Manifesto that we published a year ago before the General Election was that the government should encourage public bodies and the media to abandon the use of the term 'Asian' when describing perpetrators for reasons of political correctness," Singh was quoted as saying.

"If the four men that have been found guilty and carried out the abuse were Pakistani Muslims, this is how they should be described and not called Asian," he added.

The term "Asian" was earlier criticised in December 2013, when Sikh and Hindu groups started a petition against the use of the word for the gang.

In a joint statement, the Hindu Council UK, the Network of Sikh Organisations, Sikh Media Monitoring Group and the Sikh Awareness Society had said: "Communities who themselves fall victim of this emerging pattern of criminality, should not be besmirched by the vague terminology 'Asian' ... in order to help find a solution to the problem, we need to be clear on the identity of those involved."

The petition closed with 1,859 signatures calling for the word "Asian" not to be used in grooming and sex abuse cases.
Kannur (Kerala) : Kannur (Kerala) Feb 29 (IANS) The first trial operations at Kerala's fourth international airport Kannur on Monday were successful when an IAF aircraft landed at the airport that will open for commercial operations in September.

The Rs.1,892 crore airport is billed as one which will be the fastest completed airport in the country. Monday's operations were conducted two years after commencement of the construction work.

The 10-seater IAF Dornier aircraft flew in from Bengaluru. It was piloted by Air Marshal R. Nambiar, who along with his team and other officials, was received at the tarmac by Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his senior cabinet colleagues.

Earlier, Chandy and his team arrived on a helicopter.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation had given clearance for Monday's inaugural trial-run and the Chandy government, which had promised to the state that they would see this airport completed as per the time-table, made it a reality.

Kannur airport is located at Mattanur in Kannur district and, when ready, this would be the biggest airport in Kerala, beating the ones at Kochi, Kozhikode, and Thiruvananthapuram.

To start with, the airport will have a 3,400-metre runway that will be extended to 4,000 metres in the second phase.

The Chandy government had emphasised they would ensure completion of the flagship projects of his government -- Vizhinjam Port, where the work has already been launched; Kochi Metro, where the trial-run has already been conducted; and the first phase of the Kochi Smart City project which has already been opened.

The Left opposition supporters were protesting outside the venue, saying it was just a show only as the work is not over and this function was meant with an eye to the upcoming assembly polls.
Washington, Feb 29 : Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have forged far ahead of their rivals nationally in the Republican and Democratic parties in the US presidential race before Super Tuesday's nomination contests in a dozen states.

Capturing the support of nearly half of Republican voters, real estate mogul Trump tops all his four remaining opponents combined, while Clinton leads self-styled Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders by nearly 20 points, according to a new nationwide CNN/ORC poll.

Backed by 49 percent, Trump tops his nearest competitor Florida Senator Marco Rubio (16 percent) by more than 30 points. Only 15 percent back Texas Senator Ted Cruz, 10 percent back retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and 6 percent support Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Trump's supporters are incredibly enthusiastic about the coming election, and largely committed in their support for him.

Trump is widely viewed as the candidate in the field who would be most effective at solving the country's problems. The billionaire is also seen as the one who best understands the problems facing people.

On the Democratic side, Clinton tops Sanders 55 percent to 38 percent in the new poll, a slightly wider margin than she held in late January before any primaries or caucuses were held.

There are sharper demographic splits among the Democratic electorate than on the Republican side.

Men, younger voters, independents and liberals are all about evenly split between Clinton and Sanders, while Clinton's lead rests on large advantages among women, older voters, Democrats and moderates.

Democrats are more apt than Republicans to say they would support either of the remaining top candidates should they become the nominee. Just 15 percent each say they wouldn't back Clinton or Sanders, the poll found.

Clinton tops Sanders handily as the candidate who would be more effective at solving the country's problems and can better handle the responsibilities of being commander-in-chief, but Sanders fares better than Clinton on honesty.

Meanwhile, with Trump leading in all the states going to the polls Tuesday except Texas, the New York Times said Trump has an opportunity to amass more delegates and put much more distance between him and Rubio and Cruz.

As for the Democrats, Sanders is looking to rebound after a deeply lopsided loss to Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary, where more than half the voters were African-American, it said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

Mthwakazi Republic Party spokesperson Mbonisi Gumbo has said President Robert Mugabe is now too old and many Zimbabweans are eagerly waiting to see if he will make it to the 2018 elections."Robert Mugabe (Zanu Pf)- The man is very old! Everyone is waiting to see if he will be around in 2018! But then again there is a possibility that me and you might die before him! With so many opposition parties, there is no need for Mugabe to rig the next election," Gumbo said.He said Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T leader)- can still be a political powerhouse, able to mount a credible challenge against Mugabe."He has done it before he can do it again! He needs to surround himself with strategist and revive his party structures to 2008 levels. But Yekela AmaNkazana," he said. "Joice Mujuru ( ZPF)- A female candidate might appeal to some who are tired of the male dominated politics. Having been in Zanu PF for almost all her adult life ,she knows her opponent very well.. The problem with her is that she is not believable""After shouting down with Britain, down with sellouts , hondo yeminda etc...for some funny reason i feel embarrassed when Mujuru starts talking about Democracy, Rule of Law, Human Rights, huhh seriously Mujuru saying all these nice words!! She is not doing herself any favour by always hanging around with the same tired faces of Didymus Mutasa , Rugare Gumbo etc She has to reach out at new technocrats, young people who have excelled in their trades."He said Tendai Biti ( People's Democratic Party)  needs lessons in Branding ! orange is just a Mickey & Minnie Colour"They should have gone for any of the colours on the Zimbabwean flag!The good thing about them is that most of their members are young, educated and ambitious .. The problem is that they are an opposition to the opposition! I suspect they secretly hope that Tsvangirai defeats Mugabe so that they in turn will defeat Tsvangirai!! Morgan is their favourite punching bag," he said."Simba Makoni- Go to Mujuru before their congress, who knows you might get a position. Dumiso Dabengwa (Zapu)  Awu Dabengwa bakithi lokhu kwehlula uNkomo, hlala phansi bayekele laba abeSozibeli (You can go back to Zambezi Water or set up a Zapu/Zipra Resource Centre). Welshman Ncube( MDC)  ubuzangena emzileni kulunge kodwa usulahle uMzila awuselaNetwork! Izathelelwa ngani iGreen komile kangaka??"
New Delhi, March 1 : A notice to bring a privilege motion against Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani was submitted to Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari on Tuesday, a day after a similar notice was submitted in the Lok Sabha.

"We have given a privilege motion against the HRD minister. The other day, HRD minister misled the house while discussing matters related to Hyderabad university. The minister has misled the nation through this parliament so we have moved a privilege against her," Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the opposition had no response to the HRD minister's reply.

"I want to tell the leader of opposition, the discussion that happened, the reply was given with facts. You have no answer to that. You do not have any valid arguments so you ar giving invalid arguments," Naqvi said.

Azad was backed by other opposition members, and Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav said: "This is a serious issue, and we support it."

Rajya Sabha's Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien then said the notice is under consideration of Chairman Ansari.

"The notice has been received. It is under the consideration of honourable chairman," said the deputy chairman.

Naqvi hit out at the opposition saying: "It is not right that you are trying to suppress someone's voice through privilege (motion)."

The opposition members wanted to debate the issue, but the chair pointed out that it cannot be done unless the notice is admitted.

With AIADMK members protesting near the chairman's podium over former finance minister P.Chidambaram's son Karti, the house was soon after adjourned till 3 p.m.
Geneva, March 2 : The office of the Special Envoy for Syria on Tuesday said that Staffan de Mistura plans to resume intra-Syrian talks on March 9.

"In order to allow adequate time to address logistical and practical matters, the Special Envoy will now resume the talks on March 9, 2016," Xinhua quoted a statement as saying.

The diplomat had initially hoped to resume talks on March 7 after UN-led talks seeking to broker a political solution between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and opposition forces came to a premature standstill on February 3 after parties failed to see eye to eye on a number of issues.
Damascus, March 2 : Artillery fire from the Turkish side has wounded a group of foreign journalists in northern Syria near the Turkish borders on Tuesday.

A group of 33 foreign journalists from Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, the US, China, Russia and Canada was targeted by artillery fire during their tour in the recently-captured town of Kansaba, which was the last bastion of the Turkey-backed rebels and fell to the army in mid-January, Xinhua cited news agency SANA as saying.

Citing a military source, SANA said targeting Kanasaba is a violation of the recently established cessation of hostilities in Syria.

"It is a violation to the ceasefire agreement and another evidence on the involvement of the Turkish side in backing the terrorist groups which are trying to thwart the ceasefire," the military source said.

The source said the attack led to the injury of four journalists, a Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian and Canadian, who were covering the cessation of hostilities in northern Latakia.

The cessation of hostilities, which has been in place since the weekend, is still holding in its fourth day on Tuesday.

The cessation of hostilities agreement was reached by Russia and the US. The Syrian government as well as nearly 100 opposition groups announced their agreement.
Washington, March 2 : The US State Department on Tuesday said that there has been no significant violation of a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria in the last 24 hours.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been appraised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," Xinhua quoted State Department spokesman John Kirby as saying.

"We have seen a notable reduction in violence in Syria, and certainly there has been a reduction, there is no doubt about it," Kirby said.

"It is a very fluid environment and we are just going to keep monitoring as closely as we can," Kirby added.

The US and Russia agreed on a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria that has begun on February 27.

The cessation of hostilities was largely envisaged in Munich on February 12 during a meeting of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG), which is co-chaired by the US and Russia.

The group comprises the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries including China.

Although violence in Syria has been reduced, Kirby said that the US will remain concerned about "continued reports of violations" of the ceasefire.
New York, March 2 : The Supreme Court of Ohio in the US has declined to accept an Indian-origin man's appeal in a sexual assault case.

Upholding the February 2015 conviction by a Logan County Common Pleas jury in Ohio for kidnapping and gross sexual imposition, the court refused to accept the plea of Gurwinder Singh, 28, who is serving a nine-year sentence for sexual assault on a woman, examiner.org reported on Tuesday.

The assault occurred at the Valero gas station in Stokes Township in Ohio on February 25, 2013 where he worked at the time. He was labelled a Tier-II sex offender requiring him to register with authorities for 25 years.

He had entered a guilty plea to rape in 2013 and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Singh took the case to trial in February 2015. He was found guilty of both charges and given a nine-year sentence. He is also facing deportation.
Abu Dhabi, March 2 : The annual International Property Show to be held in April in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will see a strong Indian participation, the event organisers, Strategic Marketing & Exhibitions, have said.

A total of 15 Indian companies, double the figure compared to last year, will be showcasing their projects and targeting the large Indian expatriate community of five million at the International Property Show to be held from April 11 to 13, Khaleej Times reported on Tuesday.

According to the organisers, Indians top foreign investments in Dubai's property market.

Between 2006 and 2015, Indian investments ballooned to over 120 billion Dirhams ($32.6 billion) through more than 57,000 transactions surpassing the largest investor groups - British and Pakistani investors - both in value and number of transactions.

"The close relations between the UAE and Indian governments have created an ideal investment climate that boosts flow of funds in both directions, especially in real estate," Dawood Al Shezawi, the president of Strategic Marketing & Exhibitions, said.

He said the Indian investors have a strong inclination to buy property in the UAE.

Meanwhile, Anurag Bhushan, Consul General of India in Dubai, said, "A total of about 26,000 Indian companies are operating in the UAE, and more than 20 of India's leading banks and financial institutions have established offices in the Dubai International Financial Center."
Washington, March 2 : With at least seven victories each in Super Tuesday's nomination contests across 12 states, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton tightened their respective grips on the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations.

But the brash billionaire's two main rivals managed to keep their hopes alive with Texas senator Ted Cruz winning his home state with the largest number of delegates and Oklahoma and Florida senator Marco Rubio landing his first win in Minnesota.

By midnight, Trump had won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont, while Clinton took Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Bernie Sanders, Clinton's self-styled Democratic Socialist rival, captured Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont.

"This has been an amazing night," said a triumphant Trump in a victory speech in Florida with his Tuesday's win stretching his lead in the Republican White House battle and underscoring his growing support across all sectors of the party.

Trump also predicted that he would win the Florida primary in two weeks against Rubio, who he called the state's "little senator" and a "lightweight".

Cruz cited his victories in Texas and Oklahoma coupled with his victory in the Iowa caucuses as proof that only he can actually beat Trump.

"After tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump," he told supporters.

However, after notching his first win of the 2016 campaign in Minnesota, establishment favourite Rubio told CNN that he will move forward and doesn't believe Trump will win the nomination.

"This is the fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party," he said. "I will go through all 50 states before we stop fighting to save the Republican Party from someone like that."

"What a Super Tuesday," Clinton said at a Tuesday night rally after victories in the South demonstrated her strength among African-American voters that could make it extremely difficult for Sanders to win the nomination.

But Sanders hoped to halt the Clinton tide with his four victories. "This campaign is not just about electing a president," he said at a rally on Tuesday night in Vermont. "It is about transforming America."

A total of 595 Republican delegates of the 1,237 needed to clinch the Republican nomination were up for grabs on Tuesday. Sanders and Clinton faced off for 865 of the 2,383 delegates needed to win the Democratic race.

Looking at Trump's triumphant run, the New York Times which has endorsed Clinton said: "The Republicans seem to be reeling, unable or unwilling to comprehend that a shady, bombastic liar is hardening the image of their party as a symbol of intolerance and division.

"The Republican Party is taking a big step towards becoming the party of Trump," it said suggesting that his main challengers Cruz and Rubio are "embracing the same game of exclusion, bigotry and character assassination."

The Washington Post also suggested that as "Trump rampaged through the Super Tuesday states", the Republicans "were adjusting to a new reality".

The disagreement between the Republican conservatives is not so much about whether Trump is acceptable, the Post said.

"It's whether he can be contained by being defeated, or whether he can be contained by being influenced as the party nominee who has brought an army of new, disgruntled voters to the polls."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Mumbai, March 2 : Actor-producer John Abraham, who is currently shooting in Abu Dhabi for "Dishoom" will return to Mumbai especially to promote "Rocky Handsome".

A source close to the actor told IANS: "John is extremely committed to this film. He has been shooting for 'Dishoom' in Abu Dhabi and he will be landing on March 4 especially for the trailer launch of 'Rocky Handsome'. Being the actor and producer of this film, John is giving special attention to this film."

Directed by Nishikant Kamat, "Rocky Handsome" features John with Shruti Hassan in the lead. John also took training for martial arts in Thailand for the action-packed film.
New Delhi : With a 14-percent rise in funding for the programme run under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the 2016-17 Budget, the world's largest state-run jobs plan, after a decade of operation, continues to be India's top poverty alleviation programme.

MGNREGA, which guarantees 100 days of work to unskilled labourers in villages of India, will employ at least 52 million people and provide livelihoods to their families. That means about 260 million (considering an average family of five) will depend on it over the next 20 years, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

NREGA funding has risen 18 percent over three years. Unlike last year, though, when the programme exhausted its money by December, it is unclear what might happen this year when -- which is more likely than if -- the money runs out.

In 2015-16, there was a buffer of Rs.5,000 crore in case the ministry finished its money, but New Delhi released only Rs.2,000 crore of that money, according to Aruna Nikhil Roy of the People's Action for Employment Guarantee, a Delhi-based NGO.

More Indians are still poor than population of Indonesia. The absolute number of poor as well as the proportion of poor below the poverty line (according to the Tendulkar poverty line) has been declining over two decades, as we reported.

But about 270 million are still below the poverty line, more than the population of Indonesia (255 million), the world's fifth-most populated country. The poverty line is the ability to spend Rs.47 per day per person in urban areas and Rs 32 in rural areas.

MGNREGA is being lauded for its achievements in the past decade. There are 277.9 million registered workers under the scheme, and 98.3 million of them are active workers. The programme covers all adults from rural households who seek employment.

The "work" under MGNREGA covers "unskilled manual labour", providing an opportunity to every person who needs employment. Without skills, young Indians in rural areas will need MGNREGA.

To calculate how many Indians will need employment in the coming years, IndiaSpend looked at the illiterate rural population, according to the 2011 census. There are 51.7 million illiterate people aged 16 to 30.

Since they will not benefit from the Right to Education, which guarantees free and compulsory elementary education till age 14, this population will not be a part of India's skilled labour force.

Skills, according to this International Labour Organisation definition, require at least five years of schooling. So, for at least 20 years, MGNREGA will likely need to support this group of Indians.

A word of caution: This 52 million (rounded-off) population includes only illiterates from the Census 2011 data. There are many among the literate population who have basic reading and writing skills but are not skilled enough to work in industry.

MGNREGA critics contend that the scheme does not help pare poverty because of corruption and poor implementation. "From a policy point of view, we should be interested in the efficiency of transferring incomes to the poor," economist Surjit Bhalla wrote in a column recently.

With no cost-benefit assessment of MGNREGA work and no technical support, the programme struggles to create assets or infrastructure in rural areas, which it should, Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) economics professor Reetika Khera, wrote in a recent column.

MGNREGA is short of funds -- 17 percent of its budget went into paying wages and material from the previous financial year, according to a letter from Ministry of Rural Development to the Ministry of Finance.

The actual allocation for MGNREGA this year is around Rs.29,000 crore ($4.6 billion).

This fund squeeze for MGNREGA is not new and has been evident under both the United Progressive Alliance II and the National Democratic Alliance regimes. Ending the year with pending liabilities, which effectively means workers' wages are unpaid, has been a consistent trend.

As much as 95 percent of the budgetary allocation for the current financial year (2015-16) was exhausted by December 30, 2015. Further, as per the Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Finance calculations, state governments require at least an additional Rs.6,300 crore to pay wages and other expenses.

The drought-affected states of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh will provide 150 days of employment-against the normal 100-but there is no extra money evident, from Delhi or in their budgets.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's budget for MGNREGA may not be enough. Under the devolution recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, India's states have been given more money, and hence more powers, to decide how they want to finance social welfare.

The erstwhile Planning Commission had 66 centrally sponsored schemes, reduced to 30 under the NITI Aayog, the body that has replaced the Planning Commission. MGNREGA is one of these 30.

Even though the central government has transferred social welfare to the states through "devolution" (transfer of powers-fiscal or administrative-from higher level of government to lower level of government), it will pay for important programmes, such as NREGA and rural roads.

Jaitley said in his budget speech: "In spite of the consequential reduced fiscal space for the Centre, the government has decided to continue supporting important national priorities such as agriculture, education, health, MGNREGA, and rural infrastructure including roads."

(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform, where Prachi Salve and Saumya Tewari are policy analysts. The views expressed are those of India Spend. The authors can be contacted at respond@indiaspend.org)
New Delhi, March 2 : The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the decks for the issuance of dance bar licences to hotels and restaurants in Mumbai as it modified the conditions for the permit and excluded installation of CCTV from restaurants and dance performance place.

Giving three days' time to the owners of the hotels and restaurants to comply with the modified conditions, the apex court bench, comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, said competent authorities would issue licences in 10 days and thereafter.

"We are certain that competent authorities will not conceive of anything to stall the grant of licence," the court said and added that the authorities will "comply with the command of this court and not venture to defy it".

The court order came after the Maharashtra government watered down some of the conditions for the grant of dance bar licences.

The petitioner Indian Hotels and Restaurant Association had told the court on February 24 that some of the conditions being imposed for the grant of licence were unreasonable.

On February 24, the court had asked the Maharashtra government to revisit the conditions.
News / Religion

by Ihechukwu Njoku



Ihechukwu Njoku is a freelance Nigerian journalist...

In a shocking turnaround, the Lagos State High Court has admitted that the coroner's inquest which indicted the engineers and contractors of The Synagogue, Church Of All Nations (SCOAN) guesthouse that collapsed is at fault.According to an exclusive report leaked online, Justice K.O. Alogba of the High Court of Lagos State, Ikeja Division stated that the coroner lacked the powers to recommend the prosecution of the contractors.While delivering his ruling on the application for judicial review filed by the lawyers to the Registered Trustees of The SCOAN on Wednesday 2nd March 2016, Alogba equally faulted the conclusion of the coroner which stated the tragic collapse of the building was due to structural failure.The trial into collapse of the guesthouse which resulted in the deaths of 115 people has been fraught with controversy from its onset.In its verdict of July 8, 2015, the coroner headed by Justice Oyetade Komolafe had recommended the prosecution of the contractors that handled the construction of the collapsed building, a ruling that has faced immense legal challenges ever since.The SCOAN immediately claimed the ruling was 'biased' and 'one-sided', maintaining that external forces sabotaged the building and the collapse was the result of an 'attack', not any structural defect.Justice Alogba had earlier refused the prayer of the Lagos State Government, urging the court to strike out the application for judicial review.Alogba submitted that the application was legally viable as it was filed within the three months period stipulated.The new ruling from Justice Alogba has effectively halted the recommendation by the coroner that the contractors should be prosecuted.
New Delhi, March 2 : Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Wednesday attended the last rites of his wife Gauri Khan's father Ramesh Chandra Chibber here.

Chibber, a retired Colonel from the Indian Army, breathed his last on Tuesday night, and Shah Rukh and Gauri took a flight from Mumbai to the national capital upon hearing the news, a source close to the actor told IANS.

The couple attended the cremation -- looking visibly upset but standing strong by Gauri's mother's side -- at the Lodhi Road crematorium. Also accompanying them was their close friend and filmmaker Karan Johar.

"Death is the only reminder of life," Karan tweeted on Wednesday.

Shah Rukh is said to have put the shooting of a new project on hold to be with his family at this time of personal loss.
Chandigarh, March 2 : The Haryana government on Wednesday said state government employees would now be able to avail loans through scheduled banks at the same rate of interest as is admissible through the government.

"Haryana government employees will have win-win situation as far as the facility of loans for housing, vehicles, computers and marriage etc. are concerned. Also, now they will not have to wait for days to get their applications processed," a government spokesman said here.

The decision was taken in a meeting of the state cabinet here on Wednesday.

"The cabinet decided to shift its portfolio to the banks. The state government would sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with banks, which would ensure quick release of loans when required," the spokesman said.

The rate of interest charged by the state government on loans to employees is lesser than the prevailing market rate of bank loans.

"It was also observed that the beneficial rate at which the loan is provided to the employees is linked to the rate of interest applicable on public provident fund and is revised by the state government from time to time," the spokesman pointed out.

"The budgetary allocation made annually by the government does not suffice the need of all the employees," he said.

"Therefore, there is discontent amongst the employees. To cater to the need, the employees line-up to avail the discretionary quota of the finance minister allocated on year to year basis."

"The decision to shift the portfolio of the state government to the banks would overcome the discontent amongst the employees as all of them would be able to avail this facility and amount of loan presently given would be available with the government for diversification towards the developmental works," a cabinet note pointed out.

"Also, this shift would increase the clients of the banks and enhance their priority sector lending," it said.

As per the new proposal, the state government would have to make budgetary allocation only to the tune of a maximum of three percent of the existing allocated budget on account of interest subvention to be paid to the banks to overcome the difference in rate of interest changed by the bank and the one offered to government employees.

There are over 2.74 lakh government employees, out of which only 24,507 employees have availed housing loan and 9,757 took vehicle loan.

As many as 7,144 employees have taken computer loan and 16,887 have availed marriage loan from the government till March 31, 2014, the spokesman added.
New Delhi, March 2 : Connectivity can impart new momentum to the Saarc region and help in more cooperation among the bloc's nations, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said on Wednesday.

"Looking beyond our borders, there is little doubt that connectivity can impart that new momentum to Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) and propel it to a higher orbit of cooperation," Jaishankar said during his keynote speech at the Raisina Dialogue here, a three-day global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics.

"This is happening even as we speak, some of it through Saarc mechanisms, others through sub-regional solutions like BBIN (Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal), and the rest through bilateral or trilateral arrangements," he said.

With the theme of "Connecting Asia" this year, the flagship conference called Raisina Dialogue 2016, organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation, is designed to explore and examine the prospects and opportunities for Asian integration as well as Asia's integration with the larger world.

Over 450 participants from around 40 countries are participating in this year's conference.

Jaishankar said that today the outcome of interactions among the south Asian neighbours was "replete with examples of road and rail building, power generation and transmission, waterway usage and shipping and so on".

"More than the achievements themselves, they represent a change in mindset. For us, in India, if there is a lesson, it is to be strategic and outcome-driven," he said.

The foreign secretary said that India's first effort to go beyond the region was expressed as a Look East policy aimed at the southeast Asian region.

"The intensity with which we now address South East Asia is sought to be captured in the new terminology of 'Act East'," he said.

"Efforts to build physical connectivity should close the gap with economic and security linkages that have raced far ahead. The next goal is to go beyond Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Region) to the Asia Pacific."

Jaishankar said if connectivity on the eastern front was building upon longstanding policy, that with the Gulf region in India's west, home to around seven million expatriate Indians, was "relatively more recent conceptually".

"Our energy dependence on the region was also dictated more by markets than by policy," he said.

Stating that India was no longer content to be passive recipient of outcomes, he said "the combination of human and energy connectivity offers immense opportunities, magnified by the prospect that this region can serve as a bridge to nations further beyond".

"I can confidently predict that 'Act East' would be matched with 'Think West'," he said.

The foreign secretary said if there were visible obstructions to growing connectivity, it was primarily on India's northwest.

"The absence of transit rights there is an impediment to trade, energy flows and economic integration," he aid.

"Normalisation of the situation in Iran is, therefore, particularly welcome. We are working to invest in the Chahbahar port, join the Ashgabat Agreement and participate in the International North South Transport Corridor," he said, adding that these could be game changers in Central Asia.

Turning to maritime connectivity, Jaishankar said that the Indian Ocean was increasingly being seen as a connectivity pathway.

"Much of the world's trade passes through it, as does that of India. Its economic potential spans a wide arc that goes well beyond its littoral limits," he said.

"These waters must not only get better connected but remain free from non-traditional and traditional threats that could impede the seamless movement of goods, people and ideas."

He called for the need to meet the twin objectives of addressing common threats while unlocking the potential of these waters.

"India therefore supports a range of activities to that end, which extend from building coastal surveillance and off shore patrolling capabilities to offering hydrographic services and monitoring white shipping," he said.

Jaishankar also said that if one sought a multi-polar world, the right way to begin would be to create a multi-polar Asia.
New Delhi, March 2 : Finance Minister Arun Jaitey on Wednesday said investigation into the alleged Aircel-Maxis scam was at a "critical stage" but refused to divulge more details about the possible money laundering case involving Congress leader P. Chidambaram's son Karti's firms.

He also slammed those accusing the government of going slow in the probe. "We have no holy cows to protect. Accusing us of going slow in the probe is incorrect," Jaitley told the Lok Sabha.

Denying that there was any political vendetta involved in the probe, Jaitley said the government was not influenced by the opposition's stance over the issue that stalled parliament proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

"Nobody, however powerful he is, will be spared, if found guilty."

He said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had "already filed a charge-sheet into the case and that procedures were being followed in strict compliance with the law".

"As result of series of raid conducted by Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax Department, a lot of incriminating things have been seized," he informed the members during a debate over the issue.

Let the case details go to the court and then "all the documents will become public", he said.

Raids by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and other investigating agencies were conducted in the Aircel-Maxis case, especially in Chennai, he said.

AIADMK members raised the issue against Karti in the parliament, displaying copies of an English daily which claimed that, as per investigations by the ED and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises, he had invested in real estate across the world.

The proceedings of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were virtually washed out due to the uproar by AIADMK on Wednesday.

Following the uproar, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that the government was ready to debate the issue relating to action against the former union minister and his son.

"We are ready for discussion on the issue of Chidambaram's known and un-known assets. The minister will also give reply. Our opinion is that action should be taken on those found guilty," he said.
New Delhi, March 2 : Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien on Wednesday said he will not file any complaint over an incident on February 27 at Kottayam in Kerala where he was reportedly gheraoed and shown black flags.

The flags were reportedly shown to Kurien by BJP's Yuva Morcha reportedly for allegedly cutting short HRD Minister Smriti Irani's speech in the house.

"It was not an attack (on me). It happened due to some misunderstanding," he told the upper house when some members expressed concern over the incident saying.

As the members raised concern over it, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi stood up and said he came to know about the incident through media reports and would certainly take the required action.

"I read about it in the newspapers. Some of our colleagues have also told me about it. I condemn it and will look into the issue," Naqvi told the house.

Kurien, who seemed satisfied over the minister's statement on the issue, said that had there been anything serious, he would have filed a complaint with the Kerala government then and there but he did not as it happened "due to misunderstanding".

The Rajya Sabha deputy chairman also said that since Naqvi has condemned it, there was nothing more left to do about it.
Ranchi, March 2 : A delegation of opposition parties on Wednesday met Governor Draupadi Murmu and sought her intervention in the alleged irregularities in the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) main examination results last week.

The delegation included former chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Hemant Soren, state Congress president Sukhdeo Bhagat and other opposition parties.

One of the objections of the opposition was that the candidature of 618 of the 2,085 who appeared in the mains examination was rejected on "technical grounds".

The opposition claimed that only a particular series of the roll numbers were declared successful. Besides, only those candidates who opted for the same subject and also belonged to a particular institute were selected. The cut-off marks of the mains were declare Before the interviews.

"What is the guarantee that the question papers were not leaked," the opposition asked.

"We have requested the governor to intervene in the issue. This is issue of students of the state," Sukhdeo Bhagat of the Congress told reporters.

The issue was raised by the opposition parties on Wednesday in the state assembly, and its working disrupted for the fourth day.

The opposition members have demanded cancellation of the JPSC results and a probe by CBI.

"Why government is not handing over the probe to CBI?" Hemant Soren said, while talking to reporters.

The opposition also alleged that candidates belonging to other states were selected for the higher posts by the JPSC.

The state government has made it clear that the issue is pending in the Jharkhand High Court and the government would accept the court verdict.

The students who were rejected in the mains examination on "technical grounds" are also protesting.

On Tuesday, they were baton-charged in Ranchi.

The students demonstrated near Raj Bhavan on Wednesday.
Mumbai, March 2 : The bull run on Indian stock markets continued for the second straight day on Wednesday, with the mood lifted by perception that the national budget has some reforms push, as also by strong showing in other Asian markets and overnight gains in US and Europe.

The opening itself was quite strong with the sensitive index (Sensex) of the BSE debuting above the 24,000-point mark at 24,044.96 points, against the previous close at 23,779.35 points. The 30-share index eventually ended the day at 24,242.98 points, up 463.63 points, or 1.95 percent.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader Nifty opened at 7,321.70 points, against the previous close at 7,222.30 points. It closed then day at 7,368.85 points, up 146.55 or 2.03 percent.

A look at the Sensex basket showed that out of its 30 shares, as many as 23 ended in the green, while in the case of Nifty 40 of them out of the 50 staged a rally. In fact, out of 19 sector-specific indices of BSE only one -- that for fast-moving consumer goods -- ended lower.

On Tuesday, the Sensex had ended 777.35 points or 3.38 percent higher, while the Nifty was up 235.25 points, or 3.37 percent.

Analysts said the sentiments were also boosted by signs of a surprise rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), given that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has decided to adhere to fiscal deficit target of 3.9 percent for this fiscal, and lowering it to 3.5 percent for the next.

In fact, some more accolades came Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's way for the budget.

"In the backdrop of the headwinds both on the global and domestic front, the government has tried to address a wider spectrum of themes in the Budget while adhering to the fiscal consolidation roadmap," said Dun and Bradstreet Information Services.

"This should provide comfort to the investors and rating agencies from the macrostability perspective. This should provide comfort to the investors and rating agencies from the macrostability perspective."

"Market had taken faith in the budget and believes that the worst is over. Investors expect a positive direction for the market this month aided by European Central Bank and Fed policy meet. A sign of recovery in global market is adding optimism among the participants," said Vinod Nair, head - fundamental research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

The banking stocks were particularly sought after the central bank said it will be accommodative towards them in meeting their capital adequacy norms. The banking index of the BSE was up 4.92 percent, and each of the 10 scrips that go into it ending with gains.

Sector-wise, S&P BSE realty index gained by 5.05 percent, finance index got augmented by 4.03 percent and basic materials index went up by 2.70 percent.

Within the Sensex, State Bank of India was the main gainer, up 11.50 percent at Rs.180, followed by ICICI Bank, up 7.36 percent at Rs.220.20, Adani Ports, up 5.96 percent at Rs.218.80 and Hero MotoCorp, up 5.28 percent at Rs.2,807.75.

Mahindra and Mahindra led the losers, down 5.31 percent at Rs.1,199.05, followed by Coal India, down 1.97 percent at Rs.311.45 and Sun Pharma, down 1.75 percent at Rs.852.30.

In Asian markets, Nikkei closed 4.11 percent up and Hong Kong's Hang Sang closed 3.07 percent up and China's Shanghai Composite index closed 4.24 percent higher.

In Europe, London's FTSE 100 was down by 0.12 percent, while Germany's DAX Index was higher by 0.04 percent and France's CAC 40 up by 0.28 percent.
New Delhi, March 2 : Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday tore into Narendra Modi's Pakistan approach and said the prime minister let that country "out of the little cage" it had been put in after the dastardly Mumbai terror attacks.

Gandhi lashed out at the prime minister for not listening to anyone, including his External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

He said the United Progress Alliance government led by the Congress had scored a diplomatic victory over Pakistan and "destroyed their reputation" after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

"Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. They trained and sent killers into Mumbai. And what does the PM do? He decides to have to go to Pakistan and have a cup of tea with (Pakistan Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif, without any vision," Gandhi said in a fiery speech in the Lok Sabha.

He said Modi "did not bother to ask anyone" before making a sudden trip to Lahore December 25 last.

"He didn't ask Sushma ji even. He just went there as if only his opinion matters," the Congress leader said amid frequent thumping of desks by his party colleagues.

"He destroyed six years of our hard work. He gifted them (Pakistan) a status and put them out of the cage we had put them in. He disrespected the national flag, the oath, those who died in Mumbai."

The Congress leader took a jibe at the prime minister for allegedly refusing to consult others on issues pertaining to the country.

"The PM has to listen to others. Listen to Rajnath Singh ji, Sushma Swaraj ji, Advani jiAListen to your MPs. We don't hate you. Listen to your own people, listen to the voice of next generation," Gandhi said, addressing Modi who was not in the house.
New Delhi, March 2 : Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Wednesday expressed her disappointment over certain remarks made by agitating Congress members questioning her impartiality.

"This is not good, whatever you have done today. I am sorry to say but I am allowing you to speak with a heavy heart as you have troubled me a lot. Some members raised slogans against me," Mahajan said.

She made these remarks when Congress members trooped near the speaker's podium, asking her to move the party's privilege motion notice against Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

During the sloganeering, some Congress members accused her of "partisan" conduct.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu also objected to the remarks.

"You want to dictate; you want to question the speaker also; let us respect the speaker," Naidu said.
Kabul, March 2 : A policeman and two civilians were killed when militants targeted the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city on Wednesday, triggering a fierce gun battle that left all five attackers also dead, officials said. All Indian diplomats were safe.

Nineteen other civilians were injured in the mayhem and admitted to a hospital, Afghan news reports said. Officials said all diplomats and staff at the Indian consulate were safe.

Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, is often targeted by Taliban militants.

The consulate was attacked earlier in 2013 too by the Taliban. But no one claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack which involved a team of militants armed with weapons and explosives.

The dramatic attack began around noon when a suicide bomber came up to the front gate of the consulate and suddenly detonated his explosives-laden vest, stunning the guards and civilians there.

The aim was to pave the way for the other militants to storm the building, police officer Fazel Ahmad Shirzad told TOLO News.

The explosion, which was heard in a wide area, left two civilians and a policeman dead -- and triggered a massive fight as security forces rushed to the area in their armoured vehicles.

Panic gripped the area, also home to the Pakistani and Iranian missions. Civilians fled from the spot.

Journalists reported explosions and gunfire. A shopkeeper near the consulate told journalists that he saw several injured people lying on the ground after a massive blast shattered his windows.

"Four other attackers were killed after half an hour of clashes with the security forces," the police officer said.

In January, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the first major attack by the group in an Afghan city.

The attack comes ahead of direct peace talks this week between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

In January, a gun battle took place near the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad in which at least seven Afghan security personnel were killed.

The Afghan government has been battling the Taliban for over a decade. The Taliban have launched several high-profile attacks in recent months.

In September, the Taliban briefly overran the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in one of their biggest victories since they were ousted from power in 2001.
News / Religion

by HWPL

London, England - On the evening of Wednesday 24th February 2016, the UK branch of HWPL (Heavenly Culture World Peace Restoration of Light, Chairman Man Hee Lee) hosted a World Alliance of Religions' Peace (WARP) office scripture dialogue at St. Brides Foundation. Religious leaders from five religions (Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Quaker and Hindu) gathered together with young adults from across London.HWPL WARP office is the fruit of the World Alliance of Religions' Peace (WARP) Summit held in South Korea in September, 2014. During the Summit, over 680 religious leaders from 120 countries agreed to sign the Unity of Religion Agreement initiated by Mr. Man Hee Lee and declared an intention to realise world peace through the unity of religions. In less than two years HWPL has established 115 WARP offices in 61 countries around the world, making the religious leaders' promise a reality. Every month, leaders of various faiths gather together at WARP offices to examine each other's religious scripture for the unity of religions.This time, the dialogue was held under the theme of "The role of interfaith in achieving peace and justice". Through the dialogue, leaders gained understanding about each other's religious beliefs and discussed what religions can do for the achievement of peace in the UK and the world.Gretchen Castle, Quaker leader, shared "I'm always amazed at how I tend to hear similarities more than the differences - how we are all for peace, and... we all want the best for the human family." It was her first time attending the dialogue.Having attended the dialogue previously, Mr. Satya Minhas representing Hinduism emphasised the important role of scriptures in the achievement of global harmony. He said, "Scriptures are very important to resolve all issues and achieve world peace," and adding, "Some scriptures can be misinterpreted in a way that doesn't support this goal."There was a performance by Jon Barker of his song 'Lay Down your Guns', a song testifying to the futility of war and violence in the world. He hoped it would support the work of HWPL and inspire young people to unite for the purpose of ending all conflict.After the dialogue, participants handprinted the word 'PEACE' signifying their willingness to achieve this common goal.A staff member of the HWPL UK branch said, "HWPL is working to achieve world peace with two primary initiatives  unity of religions and enactment of the Convention on the Renunciation and Cessation of War and International Armed Conflicts." He continued, "If people around the world unite in strength and religious leaders take the lead, this goal will surely be achieved. The dialogue today is the reality," urging religious leaders to work together for global harmony.Besides operating WARP offices, HWPL is working with former and current presidents as well as international experts to enact the Convention on the Renunciation and Cessation of War and International Armed Conflicts. Furthermore, HWPL is building a global network within groups of media, women, and youth to make the world a better place for future generations.
New Delhi, March 2 : CPI-M leader Mohammed Salim on Wednesday hit out at the central government in the Lok Sabha for curtailing freedom of speech and expression, citing the Patiala House court violence and action in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"When this government came to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about maximum governance, minimum government. But what happened in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was maximum government. And what happened in Patiala house court was minimum government," he said.

"Freedom of speech and expression was curtailed to the hilt. The laws and the rules were crushed by this government."

He, however, also had some words of praise for the government.

"Earlier, they had completely rejected the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). Finally, in the budget the BJP-led government has acknowledged its importance. Good sense has finally prevailed," he said.
Mumbai, March 2 : Footage from Kumar Gaurav-starrer 1981 film "Love Story" has been used in the upcoming movie "1982 - A Love Marriage". The latter's lead actor Amit Kumar says he is extremely grateful to the yesteryear actor who allowed the filmmakers to use the footage free of cost.

"'Love Story' had created a sensation in 1981. It had also set a trend in the society of love marriage. Our film's character Prem watches the film in 1981, and after that, his mind changes and he doesn't want to do an arranged marriage," Amit told IANS.

Talking about how the team convinced Kumar Gaurav to allow use of footage, Amit said: "We met Kumar Gaurav and his secretary and told them about it. After going through our script, without any cost and without posing any obstacle, they said that if we need 'Love Story' footage so much, and if it is that important, we could use it in our film."

Amit is "extremely thankful to Kumar Gaurav" for trusting them.

"1982 - A Love Marriage" is a breezy love story with comic elements created due to the conflict between a love marriage and arranged marriage. Directed by Prashant M. Gorey, the film is produced by ShivKumar Sharma and is releasing on March 11.
Kabul, March 2 : Pakistan Army chief General Raheel Sharif made a brief stopover here on Wednesday and attended the Change of Command Ceremony for the Resolute Support Mission and met top Afghan leadership, the military's wing reported.

Gen. Sharif discussed regional security and border management in meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Joseph Dunford, Genersal Lloyd J. Austin, Commander of the US Central Command (Centcom), and Resolute Support Mission Commander General Nicholson, Inter-Services Public Relations director general Asim Bajwa tweeted.

The meetings focused on checking cross-border movement of terrorists and coordination regarding the Pakistan Army's Shawal offensive.

Sharif reiterated Pakistan's support to the Afghan leadership, who acknowledged the Pakistan Army's efforts and achievements in the war against terrorism and its role in regional stability and peace.

Sharif was on his way back to Pakistan after a day-long visit to Tajikistan, where he met Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and discussed challenges of fighting terrorism and the Afghan peace process.
Ghaziabad, March 2 : The parents of a Class 11 girl student on Wednesday filed a police complaint against a male teacher at a public school in Ghaziabad for slapping her, police said.

Police said teacher Aadil slapped the girl student of Dayawati Higher Secondary Memorial Public School, Sahibabad, for commenting on two of her classmates.

After returning from school, she told her parents, who met the school principal.

The parents said they approached police after the principal did not act on their complaint against the teacher.

"We have received a complaint and investigation is on," said Sahibabad police officer Hardayal Singh Yadav.
Kathmandu, March 2 : Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar arrived in Kathmandu on Wednesday afternoon to take part in the 13th general convention of the Nepali Congress.

The grand old party of Nepal will hold its third general assembly from Thursday, which will also choose its new leadership.

Leaders from various other political parties from other countries, including India, China, Bangladesh, will attend the convention of Nepal's oldest democratic party.

Nitish Kumar will participate in the general convention on Thursday. He is also scheduled to address the NC's programme.

Nitish Kumar was welcomed by leaders of the NC's foreign department and Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae upon his arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport here.

Nitish Kumar was scheduled to meet Nepal Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli on Wednesday as well as President Bidhya Devi Bhandari during his stay in Kathmandu.

Sources said the chief minister will also meet Madhesi leaders in a five-star hotel at Dwarika.
New Delhi, March 2 : Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was on Wednesday at his sarcastic best as he attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a host of issues ranging from his policies on Pakistan and black money to the JNU row and the Nagaland accord.

Speaking amid thumping of desks by Congress MPs and incessant booing from the treasury benches, Gandhi spoke both in Hindi and English to accuse Modi of disrespecting Indian interests by going to Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif without consulting even his ministers.

"Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. They trained and sent killers into Mumbai. And what does the PM do? He decides to go to Pakistan and have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif, without any vision," Gandhi said in a 31-minute speech in the Lok Sabha punctuated with witty remarks.

Modi, Gandhi alleged, let Pakistan "out of the little cage" it had been put in after the Mumbai terror attack of 2008 which left 166 Indians and foreigners dead.

"He destroyed six years of our hard work. He gifted them (Pakistan) a status and put them out of the cage we had put them in," Gandhi said. "He disrespected the national flag, those who died in Mumbai, those who died in Pathankot, the talent of our bureaucrats (whom he did not consult)."

Looking at the BJP benches, Gandhi said Modi did not share his Lahore visit of December 25 with even External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The remark drew loud protests from BJP MPs.

Gandhi went on: "The PM has to listen to others. Listen to Rajnath Singhji, Sushma Swarajji, AdvanijiA Listen to your MPs. We don't hate you. Listen to your own people, listen to the voice of next generation."

The prime minister was not in the house when Gandhi spoke.

The Congress vice president appeared unruffled despite the repeated attempts to interrupt him. At one stage, he looked at the BJP MPs, smiled and said: "Bolne do bhai."

Gandhi accused Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley of going back on their election pledge and helping the rich to convert their black money into white.

"Nobody who has black money will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme," he said, sparking laughter. "All those who have black money can make it white under this scheme."

Gandhi, taking part in a discussion on the motion of thanks to the President's address to parliament, was referring to Jaitley's amnesty scheme on black money.

Pointing out that Modi had in 2014 vowed to jail those with black money, he said Modi had also failed to bring back black money stashed abroad.

Gandhi pulled up Modi for not speaking to the mother of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula after his suicide in Hyderabad -- and his silence on the issue as well as the attacks on JNU students and journalists at a Delhi court last month.

Gandhi said he heard the entire speech of now jailed JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar. "Not a word was anti-national."

The Congress leader also attacked Modi for signing a peace pact with the NSCN without consulting Home Minister Rajnath Singh and chief ministers of Nagaland and neighbouring states.

Where is the accord now, Gandhi asked. "It has vanished into thin air."

When BJP members interrupted him, Gandhi hit back saying he made mistakes "because I am not from the RSS".

"I don't know everything. I listen to the people, then speak."

In contrast, he alleged, that those with the RSS do not bother about others' views. "The country is not the PM, the PM is not the country," he added.
New Delhi, March 2 : The demand for a special status for Goa was not feasible, Union minister of State for Home Haribhai Chaudhary told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

Chaudhary's written reply came on a question by Congress MP Shantaram Naik, who asked if the central government was considering special provisions for Goa under the Indian Constitution.

"The matter was examined and was not considered feasible," the minister said.

For the last few years, the demand for a special status for Goa has been made in political and social circles in the state, which has been facing challenges stemming from rapid in-migration, shrinking land resource and a resultant dilution of identity of the local populace.

The Goa government in 2013 wrote to the union home ministry requesting for a special status on the lines of that granted to Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand under Article 371 or other provisions of the Constitution so as to conserve the state's land resources and identity.
Kolkata, March 2 : The condition of ailing All India Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh, who has been on ventilator support, worsened on Wednesday, doctors here said.

Ghosh, 94, the senior-most Left Front leader in West Bengal, was on February 2 rushed to a hospital following lower respiratory tract infection.

"Ghosh remains critically ill and the prognosis is poor. He continues to be on full ventilator support. His urine output is grossly inadequate," hospital superintendent Partho Bhattacharya said.

Ghosh's condition improved briefly in February, making the doctors temporarily withdraw the ventilator support.

For decades, Ghosh has been the West Bengal unit secretary of the party founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Beijing, March 2 : China on Wednesday sought to allay the fears of doing business in the country, saying it believes in protecting the interests of foreign investors.

It also said that efforts were on to paint a grim picture of China but that would not deter foreign companies from doing business as the country had favourable policies for investors.

Talking on the eve of the 4th Session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee (CPCCC), its spokesperson Wang Guoqing said the Chinese policy of attracting foreign investors "will not change".

"Business activities in China are not getting worse but better. Last year, from January to November, the number of foreign companies coming to China increased by 11 percent," Wang said.

The world's second largest economy witnessed the slowest growth last year since 2009. The stock market crash and devaluation of the yuan in 2015 made matters worse, triggering fear in the global market.

"China will remain the favourable destination of foreign investors," Wang asserted at the Great Hall.

The CPCCC is the country's top political advisory. The meeting comes before the session of the National People's Conference (NPC) -- parliament -- begins on March 5.

The 13th Five Year Plan will be discussed by around 3,000 members of the country's legislative body.

Economic development and worsening pollution are some of the likely issues to be discussed.
Kolkata, March 2 : To ensure the smooth conduct of the West Bengal assembly polls, the Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday said poll day complaints would be addressed immediately and action taken report made available online.

"The Samadhan app will work as a multiple mode of receiving complaints where besides in writing, video clips can also be uploaded for the purpose of registering a complaint," said Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dibyendu Sarkar during a media workshop.

"There are provisions to forward a complaint immediately to a flying squad, and complaints regarding votes on the polling day will be attended within 30 minutes," Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dibyendu Sarkar said during a media workshop.

"In case of poll day complaints regarding voting issues, a flying squad will be immediately dispatched to the area concerned to take photo and video evidence and act accordingly," he said.

Through the Samadhan, the complainant will also be able to track the status of complaints and the action taken report will also be made available online.

Conceding that the app may be used for making false or frivolous complaints, the EC official said there are checks and balances to ensure that the platform is not misused repeatedly.

While Samadhan will act as a citizen interface, the political parties and candidates can avail the 'Suvidha' single window permission system for holding public meetings, rallies, use of a helicopter, making of a helipad etc.

Talking about the Model Code of Conduct, the EC official said the political parties have been instructed to back their promises made in the manifesto with data.

"For ensuring the credibility of promises, the parties have been instructed to indicate the ways and means to meet the financial requirement for them. For example, if a party promises a certain number of jobs, then it has to specify the quantum and the source of funds that would be used for the purpose," said Sarkar.
Opinion / Columnist

INITIALLY we were disturbed by the number of Zimbabweans resident outside the country but now we think it is a blessing.It now makes our financial freedom crusade attainable with "Zimbos", by "Zimbos" for "Zimbos". That is financial democracy and financial territorial integrity.If there was any point in time when the Diaspora and the locally based needed each other it is now. They do complete the Zimbabwean economic puzzle perfectly. This scenario is now playing to Zimbabwe's advantage in a big and unprecedented manner.Our initial curse is turning into a blessing that needs cultivating and nurturing for it to realise its maximum potential. Potential alone is nothing if it is not realised because it remains just that without tangible benefits.What needs to be understood are vital roles that each of the two have to play in this crucial emancipation period.Zimbabweans are all over and this now makes it easy to conquer the world as we are everywhere and thus we can be felt globally.The network is there already, the world culture is now ours because we are universal like that.Both parties have different roles to complete the picture in a complementary manner just each needs to understand their crucial role and play it to their full potential.What does Zim Diaspora bring to the table?There is acquired expertise from working abroad. Zimbabwe has just been introduced to the best practice way of doing business and no one understands that better than Zimbabwean Diaspora. The rich experience works well with the locals in cementing knowledge base for business to tap from.They bring partnerships that could usher in capital. This is competitive long cost effective capital that most industries are crying for.They bring in that trust between want to be investors and the local businesses due to years and years of being out there in the world.They also bring with them a certain culture of doing business that we are still to grasp from our years and years of distorted economic fundamentals.Assuming they are knowledgeable, we could tap into their take on business. Their savings are a source of capital. This becomes a source of competitive capital, which could be turned into cost effective debt/equity for businesses trying to come out of economic doldrums.The Diaspora community understands the Zimbabwean way and the international way of doing business, thus bridging the knowledge gap. They now have that exposure to potential capital foreign markets to Zimbabwe, which aides in our exportation drive. They also intimately know these markets and their culture.And these are our sons and daughters who can be trusted to bring us solutions not headaches. It's easier to trust kith and kin than total strangers. It makes even signing of MoUs easier and user friendly than it would normally happen with international business deals.Patriotic locals' roleThey have the industries, land that can be tapped into. These are ripe and ready for takeover through capital injection or equity injection. Suffice to say these are at a discount as at present. They understand the local landscape better and so are accustomed to local culture which is vital for effective productivity and service provision.They need to be good, willing people and capable to embrace integration with what the Diaspora brings to table.Locals provide a good and correct state of affairs of business on the Zimbabwean landscape with all the vital statistics for the other parties to make informed decisions.They have minimal infrastructure ready for smart partnerships to flourish with the Diaspora.Zim  Zim partnership seems to be based on integrity given it's one people. Locals also know their way around in terms of business requirements to expedite the process of commencing business in Zimbabwe.The role of governmentAll the government needs to do is create a very conducive environment for these two partnerships to thrive and bear fruits. The government has to bring down all the barriers to make this a success story. We have elaborated these before and we just need to move with one goal to sustain these two parties.The government needs to understand bringing its own citizenry together is not an easy task due to complexes among family as it were. It has to try hard to convince both parties that it is committed to seeing these joint ventures succeed through carefully delicate cultivation of meeting the demands of these parties and meeting their business demands in full not just piecemeal mediocre solutions. Above all listen to both their concerns and address them as they arise.These investments have to be protected to increase trust. The need to safeguard such investments assures more to follow once one or two are successfully implemented.Create an environment that is user-friendly, cost effective, and efficient and simple to the business people and their businesses in line with international standards.These three partners need to negotiate with integrity to bring about the necessary change to the Zimbabwe landscape. The need for trust for all parties can never be overemphasised.Once these arrangements are done there is need for continual engagement to sustain these partnerships as at times it involves non Zimbabwean citizenry. The need appreciate that we do not operate in a vacuum as FDIs (whether Zim Diaspora or otherwise) are looking for a secure home for their capital whether financial or otherwise.Proudly Zimbabwean and having a strategic mind on future generations should be the guiding principle as we ask the man in the mirror to bring this tri-partite rendezvous to fruitful progression.God bless Zimbabwe !!If you live in Bulawayo please conserve waterIf you live in Zimbabwe please use electricity sparingly: SOS (switch off switches)If you live on planet earth please preserve the environment---------------Morris Mpala is managing director MoB Capital (Pvt) Limited, a microfinance institution offering loans, micro-insurance and advisory services to small to medium enterprises as well as individuals.
Washington, March 2 : Donald Trump 'trumpled' through and Hillary Clinton cruised to commanding wins in seven states each in Super Tuesday's nomination contests across 12 states, but their rivals vowed to stay on in the US presidential race.

Handily winning seven states, from the liberal northeast to conservative south, the brash billionaire demonstrated broad appeal for his anti-establishment movement among the Republicans, while Democrat Clinton showed her strength with minorities in the South.

But the "most consequential night of voting so far in the presidential campaign demonstrated remarkably divergent fortunes of the two major parties vying for the White House: Democrats are falling in line. Republicans are falling apart," as the New York Times put it.

"This has been an amazing night," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He vowed to be a "unifier" and to go after Clinton with a singular focus once he wins the Republican nomination.

"I'm a unifier," Trump said, seeming to pivot his message for the presidential election on November 8. "I know people are going to find that hard to believe but I'm a unifier."

But Trump's Republican rival vowed to fight on after Texas Senator Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, the biggest single prize of the night, and added Oklahoma and Alaska, while Rubio finally landed his first win in the Minnesota Republican caucuses.

Pointing to his three victories combined with his win in the Iowa caucuses, as proof that only he can actually beat Trump, Cruz suggested that Rubio and others "prayerfully" consider exiting the race to unite the party.

But Rubio called it a "fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party," and vowed to "go through all 50 states before we stop fighting to save the Republican Party from someone like that (Trump)".

"The complicated delegate math meant that Trump's various competitors combined could yet prevent him from reaching the threshold needed to win the nomination," said Time magazine.

"But the path forward for the anti-Trump wing of the GOP looks increasingly tricky - and ugly," it said.

After her southern sweep in the Democratic race, Clinton declared at her victory rally in Florida: "What a Super Tuesday."

And setting her sight on the November elections, she took aim at Trump by asserting that America was already great, despite his campaign mantra, and vowing to make the country "whole again".

Clinton's self-styled Democratic Socialist rival Bernie Sanders, backed by an army of small donors and grass-roots appeal, also vowed to stay in the race after victories in his own state, Vermont, along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

"This campaign is not just about electing a president," Sanders said at a rally Tuesday night in Vermont. "It is about transforming America."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
New Delhi, March 2 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted six-month interim bail to JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested for sedition, but imposed restrictions on him.

Justice Pratibha Rani ordered the bail after asking the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president to furnish a surety of Rs.10,000.

The judge said Kanhaiya Kumar -- arrested on February 12 on charges of shouting anti-national slogans, a charge he has denied -- should not take part in any "anti-national activity" actively or passively.

And as head of the JNUSU, "he will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus", she added.

The bail order triggered wild celebrations in JNU campus where hundreds of students, dominantly from leftist groups, celebrated, shouting slogans hailing Kanhaiya Kumar.

"We are happy, we are happy," a group of students said loudly.

Lawyer Vrinda Grover said she was happy with the bail order but said the surety would be provided only on Thursday when Kanhaiya Kumar is expected to walk out of Tihar Central Jail.

Special Public Prosecutor Shailendra Babbar told journalists that police would decide the next line of action after seeing the bail order.

"The order cleared one thing that we have some evidence to prove the charges framed against Kanhaiya," he said.

"If there had been no ground in our evidence, Kanhaiya would have been given a proper bail instead of an interim bail."

In Kanhaiya Kumar's hometown Begusarai in Bihar, family members and supporters burst crackers and hailed the court order. They also distributed sweets to residents.

On Monday, Delhi Police had opposed the bail plea, saying if Kanhaiya Kumar was released, incidents of the kind he has been accused of would get a boost.

The police had been claiming for weeks that they had irrefutable evidence of Kanhaiya Kumar raising anti-India slogans but failed to provide this to the court.

In the meantime, at least two of the seven video clips on the basis of which sedition charges were slapped against him were found to be doctored after the Delhi government sent them for forensic tests.

Kanhaiya Kumar's case led to a bitter war between the government and the opposition, particularly after he was beaten up on February 15 and 17 when he was taken to the Patiala House Court.

Also on February 15, many JNU students and journalists, including an IANS reporter, were thrashed by a section of lawyers.

Police have also arrested two other JNU students on charges of sedition for having raised supposedly anti-national slogans at a meeting in the JNU campus to mark the execution of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

Kanhaiya Kumar is the first JNUSU president from the CPI-affiliated All India Students Federation (AISF).
Bengaluru, March 2 : High drama prevailed in the Karnataka assembly on Wednesday when Chief Minister Siddaramaiah handed over a controversial luxury watch to Speaker K. Thimmappa for preserving it as a gift to the state.

"Being a law-abiding citizen, I have paid gift tax in advance on the watch and handing it over to you (speaker) with a request to preserve it as a state asset in the cabinet hall here (secretariat)," Siddaramaiah told Thimmappa amid furore from opposition lawmakers.

The speaker, in turn, handed over the diamond-studded Hublot Swiss watch to Chief Secretary Arvind Jadav on the floor of the house to be kept in the cabinet hall at Vidhan Soudha in the city centre.

Siddaramaiah, however, did not disclose the amount he paid as gift tax on the watch, which, as per his calculation was Rs.14 lakh and not Rs.70 lakh, alleged by JD-S lawmaker and former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.

As the opposition BJP and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) members insisted on the chief minister producing a receipt for the watch his Dubai-based friend (Girish Chandra Varma) had 'gifted' him in July 2015, the speaker adjourned the house for the second day without a discussion on the governor's address.

The legislature is on a month-long budget session since Monday when Governor Vajubhai R. Vala addressed the joint session of the assembly and council.

Though BJP leader Jagadish Shettar on Tuesday moved an adjournment motion of thanks to discuss the watch issue, the speaker disallowed it and advised the members to speak on the governor's address.

"We want a CBI probe into the watch scam as it is reported to be an expensive gift to Siddaramaiah in violation of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) as he did not include it in his income tax returns or disclose to the state Lokayuktha (ombudsman) as part of his personal assets," Shettar said.

The watch row broke out after Kumaraswamy alleged that Siddaramaiah was fond of possessing, wearing and sporting luxury goods like watches and rings though he claimed to be a socialist and believed in simple living.

"If Siddaramaiah claims the watch is a gift from his old friend (Verma), let him or Verma give an affidavit that it was so (gift) in good faith. Was it a quid pro quo for any favour by the chief minister?" Kumaraswamy dared him to respond.

Verma, a cardiologist, is a friend of Siddaramaiah since 1984 and is known to bring gifts to the latter on his visits to the city over three decades.

"When I admired the watch Verma was wearing during his last visit to the city, he took it off from his hand and tied it to my wrist to keep it as a personal gift. I wore it till November and kept away as it is bit heavy," Siddaramaiah recalled.

Questioning the "double standard" of the government, Shettar said the state government had appealed in the Supreme Court against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa considering her undeclared gifts as illegal wealth in the disproportionate assets' case and questioned why no similar yardstick was being followed against Siddaramaiah.
New Delhi, March 2 : The Delhi government has suspended a Public Works Department chief engineer for alleged misuse of power, an official statement said here on Wednesday.

An inquiry was ordered over the allegations against a chief engineer that he awarded a contract to a close relative. "Prima facie, the case was established and the chief engineer was put under suspension," the statement said without naming the official.

The government has taken a serious note of the matter and major penalty proceedings will be initiated against him, the statement added.
New Delhi, March 2 : Amid demands by some non-Congress opposition parties for detailed probe into the Aircel-Maxis issue and accusations of "disproportionate assets" against Karti Chidambaram, the government said on Wednesday it has "no holy cows to protect" and action will be taken against the guilty.

Replying to a debate in the Lok Sabha on the alleged money laundering case involving Aircel-Maxis deal, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the NDA government was not influenced by the stance of the erstwhile UPA government in the case, and that the investigative agencies were free to take action if someone is found prima facie guilty.

Jaitley said the probe into the alleged Aircel-Maxis scam was at a "critical stage".

The minister said while probing the 2G and Aircel-maxis cases, different agencies of the government obtained some other information also.

He said raids were conducted by the investigative department of income tax department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) but for reasons of "law and propriety" he cannot part with more information.

"As a result of searches by Enforcement Directorate and investigating wing of Income Tax department, a lot of incriminating material has been seized," he said.

Jaitley said the documents are being analysed and details of assets in India and abroad are obtained.

He said letters rogatory have been sent by the ED to several countries and the required procedures are being followed.

The minister said once investigation is completed, necessary action would be taken under law.

"The investigations will be taken to their logical conclusion," he said, adding no one, however important he may be, will be spared if found guilty.

AIADMK members raised the issue against Karti in parliament, displaying copies of an English daily which claimed that, as per investigations by the ED and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises, he has invested in real estate across the world.

Karti is son of former home minister P. Chidambaram.

The proceedings of both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha were impacted by the uproar by AIADMK members on Wednesday.

During the discussion on the Aircel-Maxis issue in the Lok Sabha, AIADMK and the Biju Janata Dal members accused the government and the main opposition party Congress of a "match fixing" and demanded a detailed probe into the matter.

The Congress, the Left and the Rahtriya Janata Dal (RJD) members staged a walkout on the issue.

Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi earlier said the government was ready to debate the issue.
New Delhi, March 2 : The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday gave its approval to wind up the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) with immediate effect.

An official release said the CCEA gave its approval to winding up of the NMCC as the council "has fulfilled the mandate for which it was constituted".

The NMCC was established in 2004 to provide a continuing forum for policy dialogue to energise and sustain the growth of manufacturing industry.

It was set up as an autonomous organisation with its chairman in the rank of a cabinet minister and members drawn from government and industry.

The release said NMCC chairman V. Krishnamurthy resigned from his post in May 2014 and Ajay Shankar demitted office as member-secretary of the council upon expiry of his tenure in November 2014.

"In the absence of a chairman and no fresh constitution, the NMCC has become non-functional," the statement said.

It said NMCC conducted various studies independently in consultation with several ministries/departments and also industry associations during the decade of its functioning.
Hyderabad, March 2 : Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) on Wednesday celebrated 58th anniversary of its revival with party lader Akbaruddin Owaisi hoisting the party flag at Darussalam, the party headquarters here.

With MIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi busy in Delhi attending the Parliament session, his younger brother and party leader in the Telangana assembly did the honours in the presence of party legislators, leaders and workers.

Speaking on the occasion, Akbaruddin recalled how his grandfather Maulvi Abdul Wahed Owaisi, a lawyer, strove hard to protect the rights of minorities enshrined in the Indian Constitution by reviving the party on this day in 1958 with a new party constitution.

Undeterred by the prevailing atmosphere of fear and misery among the Muslims in the aftermath of the Hyderabad Police Action that took place earlier, Abdul Wahed Owaisi took up the onerous task of organising the community, he noted.

Abdul Wahed Owaisi was also imprisoned for 11 months by the then Andhra Pradesh government.

Under the leadership of Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, MIM grew stronger. The party, which strongly believes in the nation's secular democracy, strove to protect and enhance its quality by effective representation from local to national level.

Recalling numerous achievements under the leadership of Asaduddin Owaisi, Akbaruddin said Muslims should get equal rights on par with the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

Referring to the work done by MIM in the field of professional education, healthcare and cooperative banking in Hyderabad, he said the party would replicate the same in other states.

He said the party would also fight for the rights of people of Kashmir, which is an integral part of India.

The MIM legislator said attempts were made to divide the country on religious lines when Babri Masjid was demolished by Sangh goons. "I want to ask why sedition charges were not made against them. Today they filed sedition charges against Kanhaiya and others," said Akbaruddin.

"Majlis is not against any religion but we are against Hindutva and we will continue our fight against communal forces in a democratic and constitutional way," he added.
Chennai, March 2 : Deciding to release all seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday asked the central government's view on the issue.

In a letter to union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, Tamil Nadu chief secretary K. Gnanadesikan said the state government has received petitions from the seven convicts requesting their release as they have spent over 24 years in jail.

The seven convicts are V.Sriharan alais Murugan, T.Suthendraraja alais Santhan, A.G. Perarivalan, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini Sriharan, wife of Sriharan alias Murugan.

Gnanadesikan said the death sentence imposed on Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan was commuted to life sentence on the orders of Supreme Court.

All seven have been in prison since 1991, the year a woman Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blew up former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai.

Gnanadesikan said the state government had proposed to remit the life sentence and release all the seven convicts and had written to the central government to indicate its views on February 19, 2014.

However, the central government approached the apex court against Tamil Nadu's decision.

Gnanadesikan said a three-member bench of the Supreme Court framed seven constitutional/legal questions for consideration of a five-judge bench.

According to Tamil Nadu's chief secretary, the apex court five-member bench answered the questions and the writ petition filed by the central government was directed to be posted to the three-member bench.

Gnanadesikan said the case is yet to be listed before the three-member bench.

He said in view of the circumstances it has become necessary to request the central government to communicate its views on the Tamil Nadu government's decision to release all the seven convicts.

Gnanadesikan also said his letter was sent to the central government without prejudice to the Tamil Nadu government's right to move the Supreme Court to review its judgment dated December 2, 2015, where it had held the term `consultation' under Section 435 of the Criminal Procedure Code means `concurrence' of the central government.

The Supreme Court on December 2, 2015, ruled that the Tamil Nadu government could grant remission and release the convicts only in consultation with the central government in cases investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
New Delhi, March 2 : The National Humnan Rights Commission on Wednesday issued a notice to the Central Bank of India for not recommending monetary relief of Rs.1 lakh to a beneficiary of education loan, who was wrongfully tagged as a defaulter because of wrong data entry.

According to the commission, one of the bank's branches in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu displayed the student as well as her father's photographs captioning them wrongly as 'missing' and 'defaulters'.

"Due to erroneous data entry in the system, the victim's loan account was wrongly classified as 'Non-Performing Asset' (NPA)," said the commission.

"It was also found that the publication of her as well as her father's photographs was against the advice issued by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, to all the banks that names and photographs of the students, who are unable to repay education loan or where there is a delay in the repayment thereof, should not be published," added the commission.

A reply has been sought within four weeks.
Washington, March 2 : Describing India as "a politico-economic opportunity" for the Asia Pacific, India's Ambassador to the US Arun Singh has said it could play an important role for growth, development and stability of the region.

India's participation in the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum could also help consolidate India's quest to speed up growth and to integrate closer with its neighbouring Asia-Pacific economies, he said here on Tuesday.

"India represents a politico-economic opportunity for APEC," Singh said during a discussion at the Indian embassy on "India and the APEC Opportunity" over a new report brought out by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI).

The envoy noted that India was a G20 country and member of the East Asia Summit and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), "whose economic and political weight is bound to increase in the coming years".

"We believe that India could play an important role within APEC for growth, development and stability of the region," he said.

"In turn, membership of APEC would help India in integrating further with economies of the region, resulting in a win-win situation for all," Singh said.

"It can also help India become familiar and more involved with the sweeping changes taking place in the region towards reducing transaction costs, improving connectivity and supply chain linkages, strengthening human capital development, and building sustainable and inclusive communities," he said.

"Today Asia is witnessing a consolidation of competing mega regional trade agreements," Singh said, citing the US led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the RCEP, and APEC promoted Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).

"While India is part of RCEP, it is not involved in TPP or FTAAP. Yet, India has already become a 'strategic partner' of several APEC member countries and all, but four, APEC member countries already have or are pursuing trade agreements with India bilaterally or multilaterally, including China."

"India joining the APEC forum can bring India's economic integration with the region to a level-matching its strategic partnership with the APEC members and groups like ASEAN," he said.

In its new report, "India's Future in Asia: The APEC Opportunity", the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) highlights the significant benefits that would accrue to India, APEC members, and the region as a result of India joining the forum.

It also outlines the obstacles that stand in the way of Indian membership and the potential steps that India and APEC could take to address these impediments.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
LOS ANGELESJoining Inside the Industry host James Bartholet and co-host Lauren Phillips this week will be some of the cast and the director from the new Beauty & The Beast XXX parody from Harry Sparks Films and Exquisite.

The show airs 7-9 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, on LATalkRadio.com and InsideTheIndustry.net.

Joining the show will be Harry Sparks, Lea Lexis, Allison Moore, Evan Stone and more. They will discuss the movie and other projects, as well as take calls from listeners. Fans can call in to the show at (323) 203-0815. Listeners can also join the conversation in the chat room at the Inside The Industry site, or on the AdultDVDTalk.com site.

Inside The Industry is brought to you every week by Streamates, AVN, 1amdollusa.com, Pipedream Products, Adam & Eve and Black Tie Limousines.

Fans can enter to win the weekly contest giveaways that include DVDs or an autographed 8 x 10 from the ladies. You can win by emailing James at [email protected]

Inside the Industry is also available on iTunes.

Production companies who would like to send information to be discussed on the air, performers who want to be booked as guests on the program, or companies that wish to advertise on the program, can email the Inside the Industry production office at [email protected]
Thiruvananthapuram, March 2 : With just days left for the assembly poll dates to be announced, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Wednesday sought to highlight the work done by his government, urging public to make its decision considering it.

Chandy made a brief presentation at the Tagore Theatre here and asked the people to decide.

"When we took over the governance with just a two-seat majority, we were given less than six months, but we have gone the full distance and it's not because of our merits but because the unity with which we worked and the support we got from the people," he said.

"We have done our best and now let the people decide," he said while making a passionate appeal.

The chief minister said the Left opposition had only one agenda -- to waylay him.

"One-third of my tenure I was waylaid by the Left opposition and I was even stoned, which caused an injury on my chest. I asked my party not to organise a shutdown, which is a common practise here," Chandy said.

"The Left opposition survived on raising baseless allegations and they never had anything to substantiate it," he said.

"No government in Kerala had to face so much of these allegations, but we did our job and the biggest joy that I have is we have been able to prove that if we Keralites want to make a success story, we can do it and we were able to bring huge development projects including Vizhinjam port, Kochi Metro, Smart City and Kannur airport," said Chandy.

He said one of his joyful experiences was when in his first 100 days in office he launched a free cochlear implant programme for all children with impaired hearing.

"After successfully doing this implant on 100 children, they later came for a meeting and everyone was left teary-eyed when these children sang the welcome song," he recalled.

"At the end of our term, so far 600 children have undergone this implant free of cost, which the state government has borne. Also the other similar programmes that we did for the weak and downtrodden also has given me tremendous personal happiness. Now we are going before the people and in a democracy, it's the people's will that works and we submit before them to decide on us," said Chandy.

Chandy is set to become the first Congress chief minister after K. Karunakaran (1982-87) to have completed the full five-year term in office.
Gurgaon, March 2 : The Haryana government on Wednesday launched an online service for redressal of grievances and one-time dispute settlement mechanism for long-pending issues related to industries, an official spokesperson said.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal launched the service at a press conference here on 'Happening Haryana Global Investors Summit', scheduled to be held in Gurgaon on March 7 and 8.

On the online grievances redress system for existing industrial units that aims to make the process speedy, easier and effective, Industries Department Principal Secretary Devender Singh said a three-tier system at the district, state and apex Levels had been set up.

The government has decided to make the grievance redress system functional through e-biz portal i.e www.investharyana.nic.in.

The industrial units will register and submit their grievances on the portal which will be resolved at the district level by a committee led by deputy commissioner within prescribed time limit, at the state level by a panel headed by Principal Secretary, Industries.
New Delhi, March 2 : Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday hit back at Rahul Gandhi over his dig that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not consult even his ministers, saying that Congress vice president's views "lacked maturity".

In an article 'How much does he know - when will he know' posted on the Bharatiya Janata Party's website, Jaitley said Modi was a "hands-on" prime minister. Jaitley's reaction came within hours of Gandhi's attack on Modi in the Lok Sabha.

"The (Congress-led) UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the prime minister, he should be reduced to being a figurehead," Jaitley said.

"Rahul Gandhi's views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a 'crowd around a family'," the minister added.

Rahul Gandhi, in his speech in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks to the president's address, took digs at Modi as also Jaitley.

Putting wit and sarcasm to good use, Gandhi attacked Modi on a host of issues ranging from his policies on Pakistan and black money to the Jawaharlal Nehru University row and the Nagaland peace accord.

Rahul Gandhi claimed that the prime minister hardly consults his senior ministers.

"If Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then (External Affairs Minister) Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Rajnath Singh was unaware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unaware of the budget proposals."

"As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know - when will he know," Jaitley said.

The BJP leader said the prime minister should be the natural leader of the party and the government.

"In the NDA it is so. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was quite different. The prime minister is to lead by example. The present prime minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally," the finance minister said.

"Each one of us, whether the external affairs or home ministers or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each one of the departments. We do not bypass the prime minister who is always available for consultation and guidance."

"After hearing Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the prime minister who leads the government and a prime minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere," he said.

"Given a choice between a 'hands-on' prime minister or a 'nominal' head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former," Jaitley said.
Washington, March 2 : In an unusually candid admission, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's adviser for foreign affairs, has said that Islamabad has considerable influence over the Taliban because its leaders live in the country.

"We have some influence over them because their leadership is in Pakistan and they get some medical facilities. Their families are here," Aziz said.

"We can use those levers to pressurise them to say, 'Come to the table'. But we can't negotiate on behalf of the Afghan government because we cannot offer them what the Afghan government can offer them," an online gandhara.rferl on Wednesday quoted Aziz as saying.

Aziz made the comments at Washington's Council on Foreign Relations think tank on March 1. He added that Islamabad pressurised Afghan Taliban leaders to participate in the first-ever direct talks with the Afghan government on July 7, 2015.

"We have to use these levers and (have) restricted their movements, restricted their access to hospitals and other facilities, and threatened them that 'If you don't come forward and talk, we will at least expel you'," he said of the tough message Islamabad sent to Taliban leaders, most of whom are believed to be operating out of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan Province.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US, and China last week agreed on a road map to end the Afghan war through negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban.

Taliban representatives are expected to join Afghan officials in the first round of peace talks in Pakistan during the next few weeks.

Aziz, however, took pains to convince Washington's audience that Islamabad has abandoned its support for the Islamist militant groups.

"After our government came into power in 2013, there has been a significant change in our policy. We are now moving against all terrorists without discrimination," he said.
New Delhi, March 2 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted six-month interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, but imposed restrictions on him. He was arrested for sedition.

The court held that Kanhaiya's presence at the spot on the day of incident when the alleged anti-national event was organised, "is not disputed".

Justice Pratibha Rani, however, said the thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of the JNU, who organised and participated in that programme, "cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression".

"I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering, which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic," the court said.

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters carrying photographs of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt," the court said.

It said the faculty of the JNU also "has to play its role in guiding them to the right path".

The court ordered the bail after asking the JNUSU president to furnish a personal bond of Rs.10,000 with one surety.

The court said "he (Kanhaiya) can be required to furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national".

"Apart from that, as president of JNU Students Union, he will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus," said the court.

Kanhaiya shall not leave the country without the permission of the court, it added.

In the 23-page order, Justice Rani said as a union president, Kanhaiya was "expected to be responsible and accountable for any anti-national event organised in the campus."

"Freedom of speech guaranteed to the citizens of this country under the Constitution of India has enough room for every citizen to follow his own ideology or political affiliation within the framework of our Constitution," said the court.

The court said "it has to be kept in mind by all concerned that they are enjoying this freedom only because our borders are guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces".

"Our forces are protecting our frontiers in the most difficult terrain in the world i.e. Siachen Glacier or Rann of Kutch," Justice Rani said.

"Suffice it to note that such persons enjoy the freedom to raise such slogans in the comfort of university campus but without realising that they are in this safe environment because our forces are there at the battle field situated at the highest altitude of the world where even the oxygen is so scarce that those who are shouting anti-national slogans holding posters of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt close to their chest honouring their martyrdom, may not be even able to withstand those conditions for an hour even," the court said.

The kind of slogans raised may have "demoralising effect" on the family of those martyrs who returned home in coffin draped in tricolor, Justice Rani stated in her order.

Saying that the kind of slogans raised by some of the students in JNU campus cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression, the court termed it as "infection" from which such students are suffering and which needs to be cured before it becomes an epidemic.

"The petitioner belongs to an intellectual class pursuing Ph.d. ...he may have any political affiliation or ideology. He has every right to pursue that but it can be only within the framework of our Constitution," the court said.

Saying that "India is a living example of unity in diversity", the court said the "freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution".

Justice Rani began the order with lyrics of a patriotic song from film 'Upkaar' which, she said: "Rang hara Hari Singh Nalve se, Rang laal hai Lal Bahadur se, Rang bana basanti Bhagat Singh, Rang aman ka veer Jawahar se. Mere Desh ki Dharti sona ugle Ugle heere-moti mere desh ki dharti."

Security was beefed up inside and outside the court room for the case. The entry to the courtroom of Justice Rani was restricted to lawyers involved in the case and a few media persons.

The bail order triggered wild celebrations in JNU campus where hundreds of students, dominantly from Left groups, celebrated, raising slogans to hail Kanhaiya Kumar, who was arrested on February 12.
Kolkata, March 2 : While a formal tie-up is yet to materialise, the CPI-M and the Congress on Wednesday launched a united attack on West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress over the multi-crore-rupee Saradha scam.

Under the banner of Chit Fund Sufferers Unity Forum, CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty and Congress leader Abdul Mannan alleged a conspiracy between the Trinamool and the BJP to thwart the CBI probe in the Saradha scam and called for building up a mass movement to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Leaders from both the parties also insisted the talks on the proposed tie-up were on track while Congress and Marxist activists and supporters on the day painted joint symbols of the parties and took rallies in several parts of the state.

"The fight to get justice is challenging, especially when the BJP government at the Centre and the Trinamool government have been conspiring to thwart the probe," said Mannan.

Mannan, who played an instrumental role in the Supreme Court ordering the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the Saradha scam, said he will be moving the court again seeking a status report of the probe.

Probing the scam, the CBI had interrogated and arrested several leaders of the Trinamool, including former minister Madan Mitra.

Calling for indemnifying all the investors ruined by the scam, Chakraborty demanded punishment for the "big fishes", including those "sitting in the Nabanna" (the state secretariat).

Chakraborty also sought to play down Left Front partner Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) state secretary Kshiti Goswami's recent comments that Congress was a "communal party".

"I don't think RSP considers Congress as a communal party. So far as we are concerned, even during the Emergency, when our leaders were in jail, we did not call the Congress communal," said Chakraboty.

Mannan said the process for the alliance is on and in adue course of time everything will be clear'.
Kolkata, March 2 : Enraged over bursting of crackers, a police officer in West Bengal's East Midnapore district allegedly opened fire at a mob on Wednesday, leaving a man injured.

The incident occurred in Egra early Wednesday when an argument over bursting of crackers during a puja led to a heated argument between the locals and sub divisional police officer (SDPO) Manoranjan Ghosh.

While the residents alleged it was Ghosh who fired at the mob, police said a probe has been ordered in the incident.

Confirming that firing has taken place, Superintendent of Police Alok Rajoria said a mob tried to attack Ghosh's house.

"A mob had gathered here and the broken window panes suggest they might have tried to attack the house. A probe has been ordered as to what actually happened and what led to the firing," said Rajoria.

Tapan Shaw who sustained a bullet injury in his leg has been admitted to a hospital.
Lucknow, March 2 : Uttar Pradesh Police on Wednesday claimed to have cracked murder case of the Ritz restaurant's owner Bobby Khanna, with the arrest of two sharpshooters from Azamgarh.

Senior Superintendent of the Special Task Force (STF) Amit Pathak said the killing was executed over a sum of Rs.57 lakh.

The conspiracy was hatched by a city dentist who is now being interrogated.

The STF has also stumbled upon many trails, suggesting shady deals of the slain restaurant owner.

According to Pathak, Khanna had purchased a bungalow in Mahanagar worth Rs.8 crore from a dentist Naimish Trivedi. He had not paid him remaining sum of Rs.57 lakh for which he conspired and hired two sharpshooters from Azamgarh, Subhash and Saif and got Bobby Khanna, owner of a prominent restaurant of Lucknow, killed on January 1.
Seoul, March 3 : South Korea on Wednesday hailed the adoption of a new UN Security Council resolution on North Korea, calling it the toughest and most effective in UN history.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a government statement that it was a resolution including tougher-than-ever sanctions against Pyongyang, expressing a perfect welcome and support toward it, Xinhua reported.

Calling the North Korea's nuclear test and rocket launch as "intolerable", the statement said the new UN resolution was an expression of the international community's firm will to change the DPRK's "wrong calculations" by making Pyongyang pay a harsh price for its reckless provocations that came in defiance of previous UN resolutions and the international society.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the new sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6 and went ahead with a long-range rocket launch on February 7.

South Korea vowed to make all necessary efforts, including cooperation with all UN member states, to make the resolution enforced without any setbacks, saying the country will strengthen international cooperation further to encourage Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear programme "completely, verifiably and irreversibly."

Seoul urged Pyongyang to come to a road to denuclearisation as early as possible by accepting calls from the international society as seen in the fresh resolution, warning that Pyongyang would face more severe consequences if it conducts more extreme provocations.

Seoul said new sanctions against Pyongyang would eliminate loopholes in previous resolutions to focus on cutting off resources to finance North Korea's nuclear programmes.
Tokyo/Berlin/London, March 3 : Japan, Germany and Britain governments hailed early on Thursday the adoption of a new UN resolution on North Korea over its recent nuclear bomb test and rocket launch.

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed his support to the resolution immediately after the adoption and he strongly urged North Korea not to conduct further nuclear tests and rocket launches, Xinhua reported.

The prime minister also called for close international coordination so as to resolve the nuke and rocket issues, as well as the abduction issue lingering between Japan and North Korea.

Meanwhile, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also welcomed the UN resolution, saying the adoption expressed the international community's resolute attitude toward the issues.

German government also welcomes the resolution.

"The new sanctions are a necessary and logical response as well as an important signal to those in power in Pyongyang following the unacceptable provocations, the conduction of a nuclear test and the launch of a rocket using ballistic technology," a spokesman of the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

With a unanimous decision, noted the spokesman, the international community demonstrates that it does not accept "the blatant violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and the threat to regional security and world peace."

Britain also hailed the UN resolution on Pyongyang

"The fact that this Resolution was passed unanimously demonstrates that the international community is prepared to take tough measures in response to such violations," Philip Hammond ,British Foreign Secretary ,said in a statement.

Pyongyang "must put a stop to these provocations and take tangible steps to re-engage constructively with the international community, " he said, adding "If it is willing to change its approach and take concrete steps towards re-engagement, it will find that the international community will respond positively."

The UN Security Council on Wednesday adopted a new sanctions resolution against the DPRK with stricter measures in response to the country's fourth nuclear test in January and a rocket launch last month.
SITGES, SPAINVerotel, the payment facilitator based in Amsterdam, Netherlands, announced today during the European Summit in Sitges, Spain, that it will start distributing Virtual Reality cardboard headsets to customers of its merchants who offer VR content. The Verotel cardboard headsets can be used in conjunction with a smart phone to view recorded or live VR content. Since these headsets are neutrally branded and shipped in discreet packaging, they allow a larger audience access to adult VR content and create a higher revenue stream for the merchants.

Since its introduction in 2014, VR Cardboard headsets have found few practical uses because of the classic chicken-or-the-egg problem. The lack of availability of VR headsets has reduced the prospective growth of VR content production. Now that high-resolution smart phones are more widely available, more and more people are able to consume VR content with the help of a simple cardboard box. Increasing the availability of these headsets will boost the VR content production industry.

For centuries, man has imagined other worlds. From legends and tales, to movies or video games and we have tried to bring ourselves to other realities, says Mike Kovalsky of the website virtualrealporn.com. We believe that VR is a revolution in the world of entertainment because it is the first time that video really makes you feel like you're in another place. This is a totally new, immersive and spectacular experience.

Until now, the process of getting those VR headsets to consumers was often discouraging. In order to deliver the cardboard boxes to the consumers door, online merchants needed to develop a specific ordering and shipping process or send their visitors to an external website. This dramatically affects conversion and profitability. With Verotels seamless integration within the order page, all of its merchants are able to deliver the VR headsets in a non-intrusive way, improving the further demand for VR content. The management of vrsexperience.com quotes: "VR is a game changer for the adult industry. It takes only seconds to realize how different and immersive it is. By shipping VR headsets directly to my customers, Verotel makes it simple and discreet for everyone to access VR content."

The new VR headset distribution service is available from today for all Verotel merchants offering VR content. As an extra incentive, Verotel also invites VR-only merchants to join its VR Pioneer Program and benefit from free cardboard distribution for all of their customers. As a first-day supporter of VR technology, Verotel is betting that the widespread distribution of VR headsets will have a positive effect on the industry as a whole.
Growth in commercial property rents across London fuelled average total return of 18.1% from investments in the capital during 2015, new research shows.

The London markets analysis report by Levy Real Estate and MSCI examined more than 30 billion of assets across 20 key submarkets and found that rental growth increased year on year from 7.8% in 2014 to an average uplift of 8.5% last year.

The strongest rental growth was registered by the Camden/Kings Cross submarket where the continued success of the Kings Cross Central development saw the prevailing level of rents grow on average by 17%.

High occupier demand and a lack of space in other submarkets is also driving rents, the report says, adding that Mayfair, for example, where the continued conversion of office property to residential has limited the supply of new space saw rental growth of 11.9% last year.

The latest research shows a market which still has significant momentum. Returns are now increasingly being driven by a growth in rents and this suggests that Londons commercial property investment sector can expect further sustainable growth in values, said Levy Real Estate Investment Partner, Simon Heilpern

The progressive rents in and around Kings Cross also meant that the Camden/Kings Cross showed the highest total return for a single submarket of 27.3%. It was followed in the total return rankings by the Eastern Fringe at 24.7% and Marylebone and Euston at 23.1%.

Overall, Mayfair retained its position as the submarket with the most keenly valued property: the average equivalent yield for its property was just 3.7%. The area has also seen a continued conversion of office property to residential which has contributed to an upward shift in rents, the report points out.

The biggest inward yield shift during 2015 was in the Western Fringe locations of Clerkenwell, Smithfield and Farringdon where average equivalent yields moved in 80 basis points to 5.2%. However, the general picture is a slowing down in yield shift which illustrates the growing importance of rental growth.

The London investment market had another good year in 2015, with strong returns on the back of healthy rental value growth across the commercial property market. As in 2014, fringe markets outperformed last year with locations such as Camden/Kings Cross and the Eastern Fringe remaining attractive to both occupiers and investors, said Colm Lauder, MSCI vice president.

Pricing in the London market also strengthened further during the course of 2015, but the rate of yield compression has slowed as key market locations begin to reach record yield levels which question price fundamentals, he explained.

This has resulted in rental growth taking over as the main performance driver, as confident, and expansionary, businesses compete for space, he added.
One in six tenants in the UK have rented out part or all of their property to someone who isnt on the lease agreement, new research has found.

Some 25% who sub-let their property didnt check the terms of their lease to see if it was permitted, while 34% had not informed their landlord of the decision, according to the survey by landlord insurance provider Direct Line for Business.



Of the sub-letters who did not inform their landlord, 23% got found out in the end anyway and the firm points out that the consequences when landlords catch tenants sub-letting can be severe.

Indeed, some 11% of cases the tenants named on the lease were evicted with 6% losing their deposit in the process. Other repercussions include landlords increasing rental charges which happened in 22% of cases, 14% were fined and 8% given a formal warning.

In spite of this, Direct Line for Businesss research reveals that 2016 could see an increase in the number of people sub-letting their properties. Some 15% claim they are thinking about sub-letting part or all of their rented property by advertising on property letting websites such as Airbnb.



The average monthly rent across the UK currently stands at 739. This means on average, approximately a third of peoples income goes towards accommodation. With the market having seen a five per cent increase in average rents in the last year, it seems that a larger number of renters are tempted to offset this expense by sub-letting their properties, said Nick Breton, head of Direct Line for Business .

Over the last two years, Landlord Action, a firm that represents landlords, said it has seen an 18% increase in the number of instructions from from landlords with sub-letting cases.

Sub-letting is fast becoming one of the leading grounds for eviction, alongside rent arrears and Section 21 for possession only. This has been fuelled by sky high rents preventing some tenants from being able to afford even single-unit accommodation, forcing many to resort to bedsits or shared accommodation, said founder Paul Shamplina.

Organised sub-letting scams are also becoming more prevalent, where tenants, or sometimes even fake tenants, advertise properties and rooms on holiday/accommodation websites in order to cream a profit without the landlords consent, he added.

The research also found that 28% of tenants who had sub-let had done so to friends or people recommended to them. Family members accounted for 21% while 19% of renters have sub-let to strangers responding to an advert.



Sub-letting is most common in the North West and West Midlands with 27% of private tenants say that have sub-let their properties. In London it was 23%, it was 9% in the South East 7% in Northern Ireland.

There could be some serious consequences for tenants who sub-let, but landlords need to be aware that in these circumstances there could also be insurance implications. Sub-letting is not covered under most insurance policies, so its really important that landlords make their tenants fully aware of the restrictions on the lease and maintain that communication that can help prevent any future breaches, Breton pointed out.


We congratulate Burwood Group on becoming a Platinum Solution Advisor. Through this achievement, the Burwood team has demonstrated its investment in the providing the most effective, transformative solutions to its customers.

Burwood Group, a leading consulting firm that bridges business strategy and technology solutions, announced today that it has become a Citrix Platinum Solution Advisor, the highest level of partnership awarded by the software vendor. As a Platinum Solution Advisor, Burwood Group has demonstrated the highest level of expertise and commitment to the entire Citrix portfolio of products as a core part of its business and has proven its ability to create a well-established Citrix practice, working closely with Citrix on sales, implementation and consulting engagements.

As a longstanding Citrix partner, Burwood Group has consistently shown our commitment to deliver the right solutions to customers through the deep technical capabilities and industry knowledge of our solution architects and consultants, said Greg Bueltmann, Senior Director of Sales and Marketing at Burwood Group. Achieving the Platinum Solution Advisor status is a testament to our dedication and continued effort to help clients overcome their specific technical challenges. We are extremely proud to receive this recognition.

Customers want trusted advisors on their side who understand their business needs and can confidently implement tailor-made solution designs, said Rafael Garzon, Managing Director, Americas Channel at Citrix. We congratulate Burwood Group on becoming a Platinum Solution Advisor. Through this achievement, the Burwood team has demonstrated its investment in the providing the most effective, transformative solutions to its customers.

The Citrix Solution Advisor designation offers channel partners a wide range of marketing, sales and technology tools to build partners technical and sales expertise, win a larger share of the market and surpass the competition. As a Solution Advisor, partners work side-by-side with customers to plan, design, implement and maintain Citrix solutions which power business mobility through secure, mobile workspaces that provide people with instant access to apps, desktops, data and communications on any device, over any network and cloud. Membership in the program is the best way for partners to help customers transition to software-defining the workplace, uniting virtualization, mobility management, networking, and SaaS solutions to enable new ways for businesses and people to work better.

About Burwood Group

Burwood Group is a systems integrator, helping forward-thinking IT leaders deliver knowledge to the end-user within the organizations unique business context to increase profitability, reduce risk and enhance customer loyalty. We partner with leading technology and service organizations to provide tailored product and industry solutions. We work to ensure an optimal fit for each individual client. Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Burwood Group serves local, national and international clients. We pride ourselves in being trusted business advisors to clients by providing smarter solutions that deliver better outcomes. Visit http://www.burwood.com.
Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port Wins 5th Consecutive SSL White Glove Award We are very proud to receive the White Glove Award for cleanliness, friendliness and outstanding customer service for the 5th consecutive year!

Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port, a budget-friendly, full-service hotel in Hollywood, Florida near Port Everglades cruise port and the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport (FLL), has received the prestigious 2015 White Glove Award for the fifth consecutive year.

The White Glove Award is a yearly award given to superior small lodging hotels that offer an exceptional level of service and amenities to their guests. Every year since 2010, the Superior Small Lodging Association (SSL) has recognized this Hollywood hotel for exceptional cleanliness, organization and customer service.

"We are very proud to receive the White Glove Award yet again," stated Izzy Fintz, General Manager at Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port. "To be given this prestigious award five years in a row is a testament to our friendly, hardworking staff and exceptional services. We are continuing to go above and beyond for our guests, and continue to provide superior services and amenities that our visitors have come to expect."

The Superior Small Lodging Association (SSL) is a non-profit organization comprised of small hotels, inns, bed & breakfasts and cottages.

About Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port

Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port is a budget-friendly, full-service pet-friendly Hollywood, Florida hotel in close proximity to popular South Florida tourist destinations such as Hollywood Beaches, Sawgrass Mills shopping center, Fort Lauderdale's Port Everglades cruise port and the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport (FLL). Located right on Hollywood Blvd, just minutes from the beach, this Hollywood hotel is a perfect destination for families and cruise vacationers. Guest services include complimentary hot breakfast, heated outdoor pool, whirlpool tub suites and Wi-Fi. Shuttle transportation to the airport and cruise port and long-term cruise parking are also available. For more information, visit http://www.hotelhollywoodfl.com or follow the hotel on Facebook. For best deals and optimal service, please book directly with the hotel. Quality Inn & Suites - Hollywood Blvd & Port Everglades Cruise Port is a member of Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH).
PMD-200: Medasense's objective pain monitoring system. Objective and accurate pain assessment can support clinicians to optimize and personalize pain management, helping improve patient outcomes at hospitals, clinics, and at home.

Medasense Biometrics Ltd., developer of a proprietary objective pain monitoring technology, announced today the closing of an $8 million Series B financing round. The financing was led by Benslie International Ltd. and joined by existing investors and a strategic investor  a leading global medical technology corporation.

We are excited by the support provided by our investors commented Galit Zuckerman, Medasenses CEO and founder. Despite the prevalence of pain, there are currently no clinically accepted tools to objectively assess pain. Objective and accurate pain assessment can support clinicians to optimize and personalize pain management, helping improve patient outcomes at hospitals, clinics, and at home.

Medasense will use the new funding to accelerate commercialization of its flagship product PMD-200: An objective pain monitoring system for operating rooms and critical care, where patients under general anesthesia are unable to communicate their pain.

The system consists of a non-invasive finger probe that records multiple pain-related physiological signals, and the PMD-200 monitor, which uses a composite algorithm to determine an individuals real-time, pain level index  NoL.

Considering the complex nature of pain, Medasense technology uses a unique multi-parametric approach and advanced statistical modeling to convert complicated data into a patient's Signature of Pain. The validation of the technology was achieved in the ultimate setting of patients undergoing surgery in world-class renowned hospitals in Europe, Israel, the US and Canada. Key results from the clinical studies, published and cited in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, indicate the NoL index outperforms currently used parameters and methods.

"We are very excited to partner with Medasense and we believe its novel technology will make a real difference in pain management. Medasense represents that rare combination of cutting-edge technology, huge market potential, and strong leadership," observed Alejandro Weinstein, managing partner at Benslie.

About Medasense Biometrics

Medasense Biometrics Ltd. is a medical device company that has developed an innovative, platform technology that can objectively assess and monitor changes in a patients pain level by processing multiple physiological parameters affected by pain and by analgesic administration. Better assessment of pain can optimize pain management, improve patient outcomes, and reduce adverse events and associated costs. Please visit http://www.medasense.com for more information.

About Benslie International Ltd.

Benslie International Ltd. is led by Mr. Alejandro Weinstein Manieu. Mr. Weinstein has extensive industry experience. He transformed a local Chilean pharmaceutical company, CFR Pharmaceuticals, into a global pharmaceutical powerhouse, eventually selling it in 2014. Mr. Weinstein has served as a board member for various pharmaceutical companies in Latin America, Europe, and South East Asia, and of several social initiatives such as Educa UC, Fundacion Genomika, and Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina.
Management compliance with ISO standards is becoming increasingly important for corporations in North America, as their environmental practices and business activities often have an impact far beyond their borders.

Responding to the long-awaited release of ISO 14001:2015 (September 2015), STP is issuing a completely revised edition of its comprehensive implementation guide, now titled ISO 14001:2015 Environmental Management Systems: A Complete Implementation Guide.

The new edition, available online only, is being provided in a new full-size, fully searchable, linked, and bookmarked format. New and updated clause-by-clause explanations of the requirements are followed by practice-based recommended approaches to implementation. Task Lists, offering a highly efficient summary of key compliance activities in checklist format, are provided at the end of relevant chapters, and can also be opened separately via the Checklists button in STP Online.

A revised Gap Analysis tool for ISO 14001:2015 will be available as a separate product, employing STPs audit protocol format and functionality.

Important Changes in ISO 14001:2015

Organizations that are certified to ISO 14001:2004 have three years (until September 2018) to adjust to the significant changes and transition their environmental management system (EMS) to conform to the 2015 edition of the standard.

The standard itself has been fully reorganized to fit the common structure for ISO management system standards. More importantly, ISO 14001:2015 emphasizes integration of environmental management into the core business management processes and increases focus on risks and opportunities, sustainability, lifecycle thinking, and leadership by top management. External communication is now required, not optional. The management representative has been eliminated, and top management is now directly accountable for the success of the EMS.

New Edition of the STP Guide

The new, completely reorganized, reviewed, updated, and retitled edition of this guide is being issued in four installments, incorporating the changes in ISO 14001:2015.



Installment 1: Introduction, ISO 14001 Overview, Getting Started, Leadership [already issued]

Installment 2: Planning, Support [expected end of February 2016]

Installment 3: Operation, Performance Evaluation, Improvement [expected mid-March 2016]

Installment 4: Certification, Beyond ISO 14001 [expected in April 2016]

First Installment

The first installment has already been released, providing revised and/or new Introduction and Chapters 1 through 5, offering an overview of the new standard, guidance on how to get started, and discussions of the clauses on organizational context and leadership. These are important clauses representing a significant shift in the required approach. Highlights are outlined below.

Introduction: The revised Introduction to this guide provides a comprehensive table that compares the structures of ISO 14001:2015 ISO and 14001:2004. This table also lists the chapter of the guide that covers each set of ISO 14001:2015 clauses.

Chapter 1, ISO 14001 Overview: The 2015 edition of ISO 14001 places more emphasis on enhancing environmental performance through sustainable practices and a life-cycle perspective. Chapter 1 of the guide identifies key changes in ISO 14001:2015, and discusses the relationship between the ISO 14001 standard and other standards such as ISO 14031, the Environmental Performance Evaluation guideline, and ISO 14044, the Life Cycle Assessment requirements and guidelines.

Chapter 2, Getting Started: This chapter addresses how to get started with planning your EMSfiguring out where your organization stands in terms of existing processes and current environmental performance. Whether you are starting to design an EMS for the first time, or are looking to transition your existing EMS to meet the new requirements of the 2015 edition of ISO 14001, this chapter outlines a process you can use to identify gaps that need to be addressed. This chapter also describes the new structure and organization of the standard.

Chapter 3, Context of the Organization: This chapter focuses on the new requirement to understand the context of the organizationidentifying those internal and external issues that can affect the way the organization manages its operations. This chapter also covers the requirement to develop an understanding of the needs and expectations of interested parties, either internal or external, and the requirement to define the scope of the EMS.

Chapter 4, Leadership: The 2015 edition of ISO 14001 eliminates the requirement for top management to appoint a specific representative. Instead, top management is now directly responsible for ensuring that the EMS achieves its intended outcomes. This chapter discusses how to engage top management as well as how to define and communicate other EMS-related roles and responsibilities throughout the organization.

Chapter 5, Environmental Policy: The 2015 edition of ISO 14001 adds new commitments that must be included in the environmental policy. This chapter discusses how to craft a policy statement that will not only meet the requirements of the standard, but will also be consistent with other commitments and guiding principles your organization may have already adopted.

To download a sample click here.

"Management compliance with ISO standards is becoming increasingly important for corporations in North America, as their environmental practices and business activities often have an impact far beyond their borders. I recommend this comprehensively revised publication for companies both large and small as the ideal business tool to bring themselves up to date with this vital international management standard." Steve Britten, President, Specialty Technical Publishers

About Lead Contributor Barbara Jo Ruble

Barbara Jo Ruble, QEP, CPEA, is President of Specialty Technical Consultants (STC). She has more than 30 years of experience helping corporations to develop, assess, and improve their EH&S management systems and compliance programs. She is both a Qualified Environmental Professional (QEP) and a Certified Professional Environmental Auditor (CPEA) for Management Systems, EMS ISO 14001, and Environmental compliance.

Ms. Ruble has assisted clients in a variety of industries to implement ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001 management systems and obtain certification. She has developed comprehensive EHS guidance manuals, training programs, and multi-media auditing protocols for various industrial clients, and has performed hundreds of EHS compliance audits or management systems assessments of industrial facilities worldwide. She has also provided independent review of corporate EHS auditing programs and performed special-issue audits such as product liability assessments and emergency preparedness reviews. Ms. Ruble has been a member of The Auditing Roundtable since 1989 and is a past president of the organization.

About Specialty Technical Consultants

Specialty Technical Consultants, Inc. (STC) is a specialized management consulting firm working to enhance environmental health and safety (EHS) performance. Through its consulting services, STC partners with clients to strengthen management systems design and implementation, identifying needs and implementing solutions to meet business objectives. Services provided include: EHS compliance support; risk assessment; EHS auditing; corporate responsibility and sustainability; EHS management systems development and implementation; EHS regulatory information tools; and EHS training.

STC is certified as a Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and the Supplier Clearinghouse for the California Public Utilities Commission, and as a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Program.

About Specialty Technical Publishers

Specialty Technical Publishers produces technical resource guides covering environmental, health & safety, transportation and business practices, standards and laws, offering comprehensive guidance on key compliance and regulatory issues. STP is a division of Glacier Media Inc., a Canadian information communications company that provides primary and essential information in print, electronic and online media.

Glaciers Business and Professional Information Group publishes directories, technical manuals, research and development materials, medical education, electronic databases, investment information and specialty websites.
Express Kitchens built and delivered a custom Universal Design kitchen for The Hartford.

The Hartford Center for Mature Market Excellence creates innovative business solutions for the mature market. Staffed by gerontologists, the center is uniquely positioned to apply knowledge of aging to develop one-of-a-kind products and services for The Hartfords customers, and specialized training for The Hartfords employees.

The center conducts original research in partnership with academic institutions and produces public education programs on safety, mobility and independence. The Hartford has had this in-house expertise since 1984, guiding The Hartford to unparalleled success in understanding and serving the mature market.

When approached early the week of February 8 to design, build and deliver a unique kitchen for the companys new Center for Mature Market Excellence Museum in The Hartfords corporate headquarters, Express Kitchens rose to the task and delivered. Local competitors could not meet the deadline at hand. The Hartford Spokesman William Cruz said my special thanks for the wonderful job you and your team accomplished in such a short time. Our business partners, the gerontology team, were delighted with the design and especially appreciated your universal design recommendations. The extra time and effort you put in were certainly worthwhile. It is a joy for me to work with people who are so dedicated. 

Congratulations to The Hartford for bringing Universal Design to the forefront in their beautiful, new venue, featuring, in part, changes in the kitchen for the aging boomer demographic as well as other state-of-the-art exhibits to engage that segment of the population to what is currently on the market.

Universal Design, also referred to as Livable Design or Better Design, means creating an environment thats easy for everyone to useregardless of age, size or ability. It emphasizes convenience, simplicity, flexibility and adaptability. And it goes beyond accessibility to include appealing and stylish features that are widely available today. By incorporating this type of design into remodeling projects for two of the most important rooms of your houseyour kitchen and bathroomyou will help ensure that you can live safely and independently even as your needs change.

Besides the beautiful cabinetry and countertop, this custom kitchen showcases the following design features to integrate design ideas that will allow customers to live comfortably in their homes for a lifetime

 Drawer peg board system for easy lift;

 Drawer mounted cutting board, pull out work surface;

 Double tier cutlery tray to maximize storage;

 Door mounted easy wire pull-out shelves with soft-close tracks;

 Base cabinet with built in easy reach microwave;

 Modified cabinet for wheel chair access;

 Illuminated Lazy Susan for easy find;

 Double trash and recycle bin with easy close tracks;

 Soft-close doors and drawers on all cabinetry;

 Easy pull down faucet sprayer;

 Easy access cabinet hardware for all doors and drawers.

Known for its large inventory of cabinets as well as in-house laminate and granite countertop facilities, Express Kitchens serves both the retail and commercial markets and is the largest kitchen manufacturer-direct company in Connecticut. To emphasize why Express is part of our name, our timeline for the design approval on this project was Wednesday February 10th, production was Thursday the 11th, the delivery was Friday the 12th and installation was Saturday the 13th. Thats four days to complete the job!

To view a short video of the display please visit: http://expresskitchen.net/frmCommercial_Customer.aspx

Express Kitchens, growing, growing, growing!
HCTec Partners and HIMS Consulting Group are now HCTec This is a very exciting opportunity for HCTec to grow exponentially. Adding the HIMS organization to the HCTec team will allow us to better serve our clients, enhance efficiencies, and create innovative solutions. -William Bartholomew, CEO

HCTec Partners (HCTec), a healthcare IT and health information management staffing and consulting company headquartered in Franklin, TN, announced that it has acquired Steamboat Springs, CO-based HIMS Consulting Group (HIMS). This acquisition strategically aligns two industry-leading organizations to offer collaborative solutions that meet the needs of customers and consultants in an ever-changing healthcare market.

The acquisition of HIMS expands HCTecs presence in the western part of the United States and grows its base of consultants and service capabilities. The newly combined organization will leverage a powerful nationwide network of hospitals, hospital systems, and industry leaders to deepen current partnerships in order for customers and consultants to realize their professional and business objectives.

HCTec CEO William Bartholomew said: This is a very exciting opportunity for our company to grow exponentially. The combination of HIMS and HCTec will allow us to better serve our clients, enhance efficiencies, and create innovative solutions.

Erich Strotbeck, general manager of HIMS, added: "HIMS and HCTec will combine their best practices to help our customers achieve their HIT initiatives, so they in turn can better serve their patients."

The combined company will operate under the HCTec brand, however the successful strategies of both companies will continue, providing their employees, customers, and consultants with the best service and experience available.

About HCTec

HCTecs mission is to discover, develop, and deliver dynamic people and innovative solutions to enhance healthcare services and patient care. We provide HIT and HIM resources and solutions that fit our customers specific needs and produce measurable results.

Our services include staffing (contract placements, temp-to-perm placements, and permanent placements), strategic services, managed services, and project work. HCTecs HIT team specializes in application, integration and data, and infrastructure throughout the IT lifecycle - from implementation and go-lives, to optimization, training, and support, to sun setting legacy applications. HCTecs HIM team provides coding and auditing, interim management, clinical documentation improvement (CDI), case management, and payer services (HEDIS reviews). HCTec is headquartered in Franklin, TN and has regional offices in Cincinnati, OH and Tampa, FL. To learn more, visit http://www.hctecpartners.com

About HIMS Consulting Group:

HIMS Consulting Group, Inc. is a healthcare IT professional services firm based in Steamboat Springs, CO. With over 30 years of combined workforce management experience and proprietary development of professional consulting resources, HIMS' systematic approach delivers complete EMR solutions addressing the complex demands of IT resource planning ensuring successful project implementations.

Founded in 2004 by industry experts, HIMS Consulting Group identifies and develops many of the industrys leading Healthcare IT experts. HIMS network of consultants are dedicated to delivering value, guidance, and vision to any clinical, financial, and information system implementation, upgrade, or conversion.
2016 Alaska Airmen Raffle Cub This aircraft will raise the bar for any certified plane to come, by combing the latest in aviation technology with lightweight, high performing, bush style performance. Drew Haag, Above Alaska Aviation

The Alaska Airmen Association Piper Super Cub refurbishing project is on its way to being finished. This years Piper PA-18-150 is being rebuilt by Above Alaska Aviation of Talkeetna, Alaska.

This is another specially built Alaska-style aircraft. For the 15th year the Alaska Airmen Association is raffling off an aircraft to support the non-profit aviation organization.

The custom painted Super Cub could be yours for a $60 raffle ticket or $275 for a group of five chances. Only 7,500 tickets will be sold. The drawing is at 4:45p.m. on May 1, 2016 at the Great Alaska Aviation Gathering, Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. This years second prize is a set of donated Airglas, Inc. GLH3000 composite / carbon hydraulic wheel skis.

The venue for the raffle drawing is the 19th Annual Great Alaska Aviation Gathering (previously known as the Alaska State Aviation Trade Show and Conference). The show is the largest community outreach event sponsored by the Alaska Airmen.

This program is so popular, that aircraft manufacturers donate new components and certified parts to support the raffle with an aircraft that will prove the quality and innovation of todays bush Cub.

Above Alaska says the performance of this Piper Super Cub aircraft could be up to: Takeoff Distance -100 feet, Landing Distance -150 feet, Stall Speed  30 mph, Rate of Climb -1500 fpm, Fuel consumption-10 gph, Cruise Speed  120 mph.

This ultimate Alaska bush flying machine is equipped with a 160 horsepower engine from Custom Aircraft Engines, an MT Reversible propeller by Professional Pilots Inc, and Flight Resource, Sky-Tech starter, B&C lightweight alternator, Whelen LED navigation, landing and strobe lights, beacon, Alpha Omega Suspension System, Atlee Dodge extended gear, carbon fiber floorboards and tank covers from Carbon Concepts, under seat battery box, extended baggage, removable rear seat cross bar, Electronics International CGR-30P engine analyzer, Garmin ADS-B, radio, GPS, and transponder, Alpha Systems AOA, and Spidertracks, all on 31-inch Tundra tires.

The fuselage is by Univair/Atlee Dodge-Alaska with an avionics and instrument panel is a design by Drew Haag, and treated by Advanced Powder Coating. The panel is laser engraved by Alaska Laminated Signs. A Dakota Cubs High Capacity gascolator, headerless fuel system and brake master cylinders, Micro Aerodynamics Vortex Generators,Hooker lnertial Reel Shoulder Harnesses Front and Back Seats, 406 MHz ELT almost complete this unique Alaska airplane.

This raffle Cub is covered with Polyfiber fabric and paint product generously donated by Polyfiber, Inc. This years Cub will also have a special paint scheme designed by contest winner Curt Holler. Graphic design by Scheme Designers of New Jersey, and stencils provided by Moody Aero-Graphics. Custom built and embroidered seats are being donated by Busters Upholstery, and will showcase the paint scheme design as well.

Additionally David Clark Company has donated two K10 Helmet Kits to go with the airplane for the winner of the raffle plane and its passenger. For a complete list of donations, visit the Above Alaska Aviation website at http://www.abovealaska.com.

For more information on how to purchase tickets, email: supercub2016(at)alaskaairmen(dot)org. To purchase tickets directly, call the Alaska Airmen at (907) 245-1251 or 1- 800-464-7030.

The Alaska Airmen Association is a general aviation organization that represents over 2200 members statewide. Our mission is to promote general aviation in Alaska. Membership includes pilots, mechanics, aircraft owners and anyone that has an interest in aviation, http://www.alaskaairmen.org.
Adding two new HIPs represents another step forward in the Yingliu Groups drive to attain a leading position providing a wide range of advanced products and services to the aerospace and nuclear industries.

Quintus Technologies will supply two additional Hot Isostatic Presses (HIPs) to Chinas Anhui Yingliu Group. Coming less than three months after Anhui Yingliu inaugurated the world's largest 2000-bar HIP, also manufactured by Quintus, the order marks another step forward in the Yingliu Groups drive to attain a leading position providing a wide range of advanced products and services to the aerospace and nuclear industries.

A proven technology for heat treatment, consolidation of powder, and removal of porosity from castings,Hot Isostatic Pressing can be applied to metals, ceramics, composites, and plastics. Quintus HIPs achieve 100% of maximum theoretical density and improve the ductility and fatigue resistance of critical, high-performance materials, while offering unmatched productivity.

The interest in Hot Isostatic Pressing is continuously increasing, and when a well-known company like Anhui Yingliu Group combines its broad material competence with the most advanced and productive way of processing materials, it is a recipe for success, comments Jan Soderstrom, CEO of Quintus Technologies.

The presses on order will be equipped with Quintus patented Uniform Rapid Cooling (URC) technology for simultaneous heat treatment, assuring efficient and cost-effective production without compromising quality--a requirement that extends from demanding premium suppliers to similarly exacting customers in the aerospace, nuclear power, and oil and gas sectors.

Anhui Yinglius initial Quintus press features a work zone of 1600 mm (63 inches) in diameter and 2500 mm (98 inches) in height, making it the worlds largest in its pressure and temperature class. Commissioned in early December 2015, it is ideal for the production of large aircraft engine casings and other critical core components. The two new pressesmodels QIH 173 L and QIH 48feature work zones of 800 mm (32 inches) by 2500 mm (98 inches) and 375 mm (15 inches) by 1200 mm (47 inches), respectively. Adding the smaller scale presses significantly boosts total foundry capacity while extending capabilities in material and process development and offering pressing opportunities for multiple applications with an array of materials.

Anhui Yingliu also signed a Service Level agreement with Quintus Technologies to ensure highest availability and robust operations. The presses will be installed at the companys foundry in Huoshan County, Anhui province.

There is no question that Anhui Yingliu is leading the way and setting the stage for the future growth for Hot Isostatic Pressing and Advanced Material Processing, not only in China but throughout Asia, concludes Peter Henning, Business Unit Director, Advanced Material Densification, at Quintus.

Read more about the Yingliu Group: http://www.yingliugroup.com/yljten/article/?1/

Read more about Quintus Technologies: http://www.quintustechnologies.com

About Quintus Technologies

Quintus Technologies specializes in the design, manufacture, installation, and support of high pressure systems for sheet metal forming and densification of advanced materials and critical industrial components. Headquartered in Vasteras, Sweden, and represented in 35 countries worldwide, the company is the world leader in high pressure technology and has delivered more than 1,800 systems to customers across the globe within industries such as aerospace, automotive, energy, and medical implants.
I couldnt be more excited about 2016 for our firm." said Lisa Brantley, President and Founder of LSG

LSG, a Houston-based boutique professional services firm, sees a great opportunity to increase the organizations service offerings and capabilities in the complex business environment for their clients changing needs.

I couldnt be more excited about 2016 for our firm. I have commonly referred to this year as LSG 2.0 and am thrilled that Kristin Daniels and Ali Survant have joined our team. Both talented professionals bring enthusiasm and diverse industry experience to LSG, which will support our expanding efforts. said Lisa Brantley, Founder and President of LSG.

Kristin will focus on sourcing talent for LSGs Executive Placement and Project Consulting practice area. She understands the commitment required to create a successful client/candidate partnership, and Kristin is dedicated to providing the highest quality service to both entities. She has served as a Senior Consultant for Deloitte and Touche, LLP, in their ERS Practice, where she managed engagements for clients ranging from middle market to not-for-profit to Fortune 500 companies. She also provided training in the areas of compliance, fraud risk, and financial controls. Kristin graduated from Texas A&M University with a BA degree in Journalism.

Ali Survant will focus on business development for LSGs Executive Placement and Project Consulting practice areas, serving clients in the oil and gas, consulting, financial services and private equity industries. Alis career has involved all aspects of hiring as well as training development and early identification programs for key talent. Ali began her career with Accenture in Chicago, where she led marketing, recruiting and hiring efforts for the region, including on-boarding and staffing consultants. Her experience in consulting led her to Wells Fargo Bank, where she recruited and trained financial analysts in corporate banking roles. Ali brings a strong business acumen coupled with a desire to bring value to executive leaders. Ali graduated from Texas A&M University with a BA degree in Journalism.

Leaderships Solutions Group, LLC (LSG) helps organizations increase profitability by providing specialized talent management programs and services. The company creates customized business solutions for clients through Executive Placement and Project Consulting. The experienced team focuses on roles where the new hire will have a significant impact on company performance and where time, complexity, and confidentiality are critical.

http://www.leadershipsg.com
Ross Gay, winner of Claremont Graduate University's Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award In this accomplished third volume of poetry, we hear a voice that is fresh, exploratory, and curious about a wide range of subjects

Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is pleased to announce that Ross Gay, of Bloomington, Indiana, has won the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (University of Pittsburgh Press). The award, given annually to a mid-career poet, is among the worlds most generous and distinguished prizes for a book of poetry.

Danez Smith, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has won the $10,000 Kate Tufts Discovery Award for their book [insert] boy (YesYes Books). The Kate Tufts Discovery Award is given annually for a first book by a poet of genuine promise.

A ceremony for this year's winners will be held on April 7, 2016 at 5 pm at Rose Hills Theater, Smith Campus Center (170 E. 6th Street, Claremont).

Gay, the author of three collections of poetry, teaches at Indiana University. His previous two collections are Bringing the Shovel Down (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and Against Which (CavanKerry Press, 2006). His past honors include fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute.

Chief Judge Chase Twichell said the jury was impressed by Gays ability to conjure profound and genuine epiphanies out of ordinary things.

In this accomplished third volume of poetry, we hear a voice that is fresh, exploratory, and curious about a wide range of subjects, Twichell said. Although modest and unpretentious, Ross has an authority that allows him to speak directly into the ear of the reader with a disarming intimacy, one that makes us feel that each poem turns directly toward us as we read. It's hard to describe, but trust me, it's a rare quality.

Smith is a MFA candidate at the University of Michigan and teaches with InsideOut Detroit. They are a 2014 Ruth Lilly - Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, a Cave Canem and VONA alum, and recipient of a McKnight Foundation Fellowship. Smith is also a two-time Individual World Poetry Slam finalist, placing 2nd in 2014, and a founding member of the Dark Noise Collective.

Twichell praised Smiths [insert] boy as remarkable for its nervy, surprising, morally urgent poems.

Although at times rough, raw, and sometimes angry, particularly in regard to issues of race and gender, there is always an underlying tenderness that holds the poems open to the reader and invites him in, Twichell said. Structurally inventive, vividly imaginative, and wholly original, [Insert] boy is an unforgettable debut. I can think of no other recent first book of American poetry that packs a punch of this force.

The Kingsley Tufts award, now in its 24th year, was established at Claremont Graduate University by Kate Tufts to honor the memory of her husband, who held executive positions in the Los Angeles Shipyards and wrote poetry as his avocation. The award is given annually to honor a poet at mid-career, providing resources that allow the artist to continue working toward the pinnacle of their craft.

The Kate Tufts Discovery Award was initiated at CGU in 1993 and is presented annually for a first book by a poet of genuine promise.

Finalists for the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award were Kyle Dargan for Honest Engine (University of Georgia Press); Amy Gerstler for Scattered at Sea (Penguin); Fred Moten for The Little Edges (Wesleyan); and Jennifer Moxley for The Open Secret (Flood Editions).

Finalists for the 2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award were Meg Day for Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street); Bethany Schultz Hurst for Miss Lost Nation (Anhinga Press); Michael Morse for Void and Compensation (Canarium); and Henry Walters for Field Guide A Tempo (Hobblebush Books).

Final judges were Stephen Burt, literary critic and English professor at Harvard University; Elena Karina Byrne, poet and poetry curator/moderator for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books; Brian Kim Stefans, poet and professor of English at University of California, Los Angeles; Don Share, poet and editor of POETRY Magazine; and Chase Twichell, chair of the judging committee and past winner of the Kingsley Tufts award.

Past winners of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award include Robert Wrigley, Tom Sleigh, Matthea Harvey, Yusef Komunyakaa, Timothy Donnelly, Marianne Boruch, Afaa Michael Weaver, and Angie Estes.

About Claremont Graduate University

Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is the graduate university of the Claremont Colleges. Our five academic schools conduct leading-edge research and award masters and doctoral degrees in 24 disciplines. Because the worlds problems are not simple or easily defined, diverse faculty and students research and study across traditional academic boundaries to create new and practical solutions.
INUPATHY (inupathy.com) is the worlds first wearable mental visualizer for dogs based on heart rate monitoring. By analyzing heart rate variability (HRV), the empathy device can deduce excitement, relaxation, happiness and concentration, and show pet owners these emotions using colored lights. In addition, INUPATHY logs daily health data using HRV and can detect any changes over time.

Developed by HACKist, HAKUHODO i-studio's digital creative lab, INUPATHY is currently available for pre-order on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. It is also one of six IoT prototypes exhibiting at HACKist's booth at the SXSW Trade Show from March 13 to March 16.

Another exhibiting prototype available for pre-order is POSTIE, an IoT device that delivers hand-written messages on paper to friends and family who live far away, bypassing traditional postal systems. POSTIE's Indiegogo page is now live as well.

Find out more on HACKist's page: http://www.hackist.jp/SXSW2016/

The six exhibiting prototypes at the HACKist SXSW booth are:

1) INUPATHY: The worlds first dog mental visualizer based on heart rate monitoring (inupathy.com)

2) Dig-Log: IoT device that gamifies snow shoveling and turns it into an enjoyable experience (youtu.be/6iwd3smmkgg)

3) POSTIE: Messenger device to deliver simple yet meaningful handwritten paper messages, stickers and photos anytime, anywhere. (postie.tokyo/en/)

4) TREK TRACK: System that can locate the whereabouts of mountain climbers using their phones even when they have no reception, allowing climbers to be found and rescued faster in the event of an emergency. (trektrack.jp/)

5) HELLO WORLD!: What if inanimate objects can talk? HELLO WORLD! Is a magic table that brings to life any object the user places on its surface. (youtu.be/CSl9f5ev-hw)

6) PLAN-NET: A table clock that turns the regular calendar schedule into a work of art to help people visualize their time. (youtu.be/mbUnMbE35JI)

HACKists participation in SXSW Trade Show 2016

HACKist is a digital creative lab under HAKUHODO i-studio that designs and creates interactive devices to change the way people go about their daily lives using technology.

The creative labs prototypes are developed based what HACKist calls Metamorphic Prototyping, which is the modification of prototypes to suit various needs and issues of Sei-katsu-sha, meaning living person. This stands in contrast to the word Japanese marketers typically use for consumers, Sho-hi-sha, because HACKist aims to create new lifestyles with their products, not just sell.

With the growth of IoT, SXSW has gained widespread attention even in Japan. HACKist has taken the initiative to exhibit prototypes based on their Metamorphic Prototyping concept since SXSW 2014. Being the first Japanese company to do so, these prototypes have received high acclaim from the worlds media and SXSW attendees.

For their third SXSW entry, HACKist has been expanding their field of research with the aim to start crowdfunding initiatives and business with high-tech companies worldwide. Including INUPATHY, they will have six IoT prototypes in their exhibit this year.

Event Details

Event Name: South by Southwest (SXSW) 2016

Venue: Austin Convention Center (Texas, USA)

Organizer: SXSW, LLC.

Exhibition Dates: March 13-16 2016

Booth location: Stand 1827, 1829, 1831

About INUPATHY

Company Name: INUPATHY Inc.

Address: FUJISOFT Building 12F, 3 Kanda-neribeicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0022, Japan

CEO: Joji Yamaguchi

Established: March 2015

About HACKist

HACKist is a creative lab created by HAKUHODO i-studios designers and engineers who volunteer their time to create prototypes that provide value and solutions in everyday life by fusing art, technology and communication ideas together.

HACKist creates devices by combining original platforms and sensors, then developing apps that link to these devices. Some of HACKists other activities include creating new advertising models, creating event experiences and developing products using technologies such as WebGL, openFrameworks and UNITY.

About HAKUHODO i-studio

HAKUHODO i-studio is a digital production company under HAKUHODO DY Group, the seventh largest advertising group in the world and the second largest in Japan. HAKUHODO i-studio provides high quality and one-stop support in planning and developing corporate, promotion and campaign websites as well as consulting, PDCA management and localization services to clients in Japan, China and ASEAN countries.

Additionally, HAKUHODO i-studio develops and provides solutions in areas such as smartphone services and apps, online video marketing, social media, O2O and cloud services.

Company Information

Company Name: HAKUHODO i-studio, Inc.

Address: Yurakucho Building 5F, 1-10-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0006, Japan

Website: http://www.i-studio.co.jp/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hakuhodoistudio.pr

President and CEO: Seiichi Hirabayashi

Established: July 2000

Capital: 260 million yen

Business Scope: Interactive and creative businesses, systems development business, CRM business
Investor Management Services, LLC, a technology company offering a complete suite of tools aimed at helping commercial real estate owners manage their projects and investors, announced today the opening of a new sales office in Dallas, Texas. Dan Parks will head the office and lead the companys sales efforts in the Dallas metro area.

Dan has more than eight years of sales experience, including four years as an account executive with a leading provider of on-demand SaaS software products and services for the rental housing industry, and has worked directly with a number of owners and operators in the Midwest region. Dan also has a background in energy management for residential and multifamily housing. He takes a consultative sales approach and is always looking for ways to positively affect his clients bottom line.

Robert J. Finlay, CEO of Investor Management Services, said, Dans years of sales experience and foundation in commercial real estate are exactly what we were looking for in Dallas. He brings a customer-focused approach to the job, and we are very fortunate to have someone of Dans caliber representing us in the Dallas area.

Investor Management Services new office is located at 100 Crescent Court, Suite 700, Dallas, TX 75201. Contact the office at (214) 846-2825 or dparks(at)imscre(dot)com.

About Investor Management Services

Investor Management Services, LLC is a member of the QuietStream Financial family of commercial real estate services and technology companies. Investor Management Services offers cutting-edge software that helps commercial real estate owners attract, engage and manage their investors and projects. The platform features investor dashboards, document management, investor communications, electronic document execution, and live customer service with more features and enhancements on the way. Learn more at http://www.investormanagementservices.com.
The war that started 15 years ago is not over. Our nations more than 3 million military family members continue to deal with family separation, frequent moves, and uncertainty...

The National Military Family Association(NMFA), a nonprofit that works to strengthen and protect military families, has announced their 2016 Legislative Priorities. Recently approved by NMFAs Board of Governors, these priorities hone in on six key areas vital to strengthening and supporting our nations military families.

The war that started 15 years ago is not over. Our nations more than 3 million military family members continue to deal with family separation, frequent moves, and uncertainty over future missions and the level of support that will be available to them, said NMFA Executive Director, Joyce Wessel Raezer. These families deserve access to quality health care and better employment opportunities. They need assurance military pay will keep pace with increases in the private sector. Systems of supportfrom commissaries to the schools educating military childrenmust remain strong.

Here are the six key areas NMFA will focus on in conversations with lawmakers about military families:



Health care  Now is the time for military health system reform that tackles current problems with TRICARE with an understanding of the needs of special populations within the military community.

Pay  Troops should receive fair annual pay raises tied to the rate of private sector increases.

Spouse Employment  To meet the growing need for mental health providers, we are working to obtain student loan debt forgiveness and repayment for spouses pursuing mental health careers.

Childrens Education  NMFA seeks enhanced support for quality education in civilian schools educating military kids through increased funding for Impact Aid and the continuation of the DoDEA grant program, which will end in 2016 unless Congress acts.

Commissaries  Military families, many relying on a single income, must be assured the savings they receive by shopping at the commissary wont decrease.

Veterans Affairs  Reproductive assistance for wounded veterans should be available through the Veterans Affairs Department.

Transitional Benefits  Military families whose retirement-eligible service member is convicted of a crime shouldnt experience an immediate loss of benefits.

While NMFA will continue our legacy of leading the charge to ensure military families have the full range of resources they need to remain strong, said Raezer, we can never forget the unique issues facing the most vulnerable families in our community. Thats why we added reproductive assistance for wounded veterans to our priority list. Families of our wounded veterans who have sacrificed so much shouldnt have to miss out on the joys of parenthood.

To read more about NMFAs 2016 priorities, click here.

About the National Military Family Association

The National Military Family Association is the leading nonprofit dedicated to serving the families who stand behind the uniform. Since 1969, NMFA has worked to strengthen and protect millions of families through its advocacy and programs. They provide spouse scholarships, camps for military kids, and retreats for families reconnecting after deployment and for the families of the wounded, ill, or injured. NMFA serves the families of the currently serving, retired, wounded or fallen members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Commissioned Corps of the USPHS and NOAA. To get involved or to learn more, visit http://www.MilitaryFamily.org.
Sensiba San Filippo LLP (SSF), a leading Northern California-based CPA and business-consulting firm, is proud to announce that Senior Manager, Suki Mann, will be among the 37 executive women honored at the 2016 Tribute to Women Awards on May 12, 2016 at The Fairmont San Jose.

This is the 32nd anniversary of YWCA Silicon Valley and local employers coming together to honor outstanding executive women. Mann will join the more than 1,200 executive women recognized for their outstanding influence within their workplace and communities. The women honored represent a broad range of industries and all exemplify the YWCAs mission of empowering women and eliminating racism.

I am so delighted to see Suki recognized as an influential woman in the community, says John Sensiba, Managing Partner of Sensiba San Filippo. She is widely respected as a mentor and source of empowerment to the women and men that she leads. She fosters a culture of determination, excellence, and above all, she exemplifies the greatest values of the firm and inspires those values in all of those around her. We are so proud to have her as a part of our team.

As a Senior Manager, Mann not only directs and supports staff on client engagements, but also serves as a mentor and trainer of the audit team. She works with privately held companies on audit and assurance and is responsible for some of the firms largest client engagements. She works extensively with the 401k Benefit Plan Audit team, as well as the Business Process Assurance Group. She received her Bachelors Degree in Accounting from California State University, Chico and is a licensed CPA in the State of California.

About Sensiba San Filippo

With over 35 years of experience, Sensiba San Filippo LLP (SSF) ranks among the regions top 20 public accounting firms. Offering comprehensive assurance, tax and consulting services, the firm has a regional focus with global expertise. As a member of Morison KSI, SSF is a part of an international association of affiliated accounting firms that supports their clients global business needs in over 88 countries. Headquartered in Pleasanton, the firm has offices in Oakland, San Mateo, San Jose, Morgan Hill and San Francisco. For more information, visit http://www.ssfllp.com.
Painting by Tun Ki

Aljoya Thornton Place, an Era Living retirement community, is hosting an art exhibition and gala on March 16 from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The public is welcome to enjoy the art show and complimentary hors doeuvres, beverages, and a performance of traditional music and dance by the Seattle area Karen Community.

The show, curated by June Sekiguchi, features art by Tun Kyi and Ann Leda Shapiro.

Tun Kyi was born in Burma in a small village in the Karen state. He left Burma in 1994, escaping economic desperation and ethnic prejudice. He went to a refugee camp clinic in Thailand near the border of Burma where he became a medic. His paintings reflect his situation, shared by so many others that have had to flee their country. He sells his paintings to foreign visitors in hopes that his paintings will remind people around the world of the plight of people in Burma.

Ann Leda Shapiro grew up in New York City. The paintings presented in this exhibit are inspired by the Museum of Natural History of New York, near her childhood home, that fed her curiosity and interest in science and culture. Ann now lives on Vashon Island in Washington State where she practices as an acupuncturist and pursues her art. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and two of her paintings were recently purchased for the collection of the Seattle Art Museum.

If you are interested in attending the gala, it is recommended that you RSVP to (206) 306-7920 by March 14. Aljoya Thornton Place is located at 450 NE 100th Street, Seattle, WA 98125.

Aljoya Thornton Place, one of Era Livings eight premier retirement communities, offers the perfect blend of village charm and urban lifestyle set in one of the most desirable continuing care retirement communities anywhere. For more information, please visit http://www.eraliving.com
DentalWorks, with an extensive network of locations throughout the U.S., has added another dental practice to their network  DentalWorks of Glen Ellyn. DentalWorks of Glen Ellyn will have their leading team members practicing at this location. The Glen Ellyn team is excited about the opportunity to practice at this new location that boasts of a modern, state-of-the-art technology in a large, spacious facility. The team will offer the highest level of dental care possible in a convenient, efficient and caring manner while focusing on the people of the Glen Ellyn community.

To celebrate their grand opening, doctors and staff will be offering patients a Sonic Toothbrush for just $1*. New patients can also receive exam and X-rays for just $59**. The new facility will be honored with a ribbon cutting hosted by the Mayor of Glen Ellyn on Wednesday, March 2nd at noon. Residents are welcome to share in the event by touring the new facilities and enjoying light refreshments. DentalWorks of Glen Ellyn will open its doors to patients on Thursday, March 3rd. The new DentalWorks is located at: 701 Roosevelt Road, Glen Ellyn, Illinois 60137.

*$1 toothbrush with completion of comprehensive exam, cleaning and X-rays. Children 12 and under receive an age-appropriate toothbrush. $1 toothbrushes are limited to first 100 new patients. Limit one per household (up to $179 value). Offer expires 4/4/2016. See practice for details. May not be combined with any other offer. ** $59 Exam and X-rays are a limited time new patient offer valid only for appointments completed on or before 6/30/2016. May not be combined with Dental HMO, PPO, other discounts or any other offer (a $192 value). Additional charges may apply if gum disease is present.

DentalWorks is one of the nations largest networks of dental practices delivering great care and providing progressive treatment options at reasonable prices. DentalWorks affiliated dentists are preferred providers with many major dental insurance plans. For those without insurance, ask us about our Discount Plan, which provides access to discounts on a wide variety of dental care needs. To learn more, visit http://www.dentalworks.com or http://www.mydentalworks.com/GlenEllyn.

Dr. Zasso & Associates (Glen Ellyn), Ltd.

For more information, contact:

Cris Burns

DentalOne Partners, Inc.

Communications & Public Relations Manager

972-755-0811
For nearly 35 years, International Dehydrated Foods, Inc. (IDF) has provided chefs real ingredients from real food. IDF is excited to demonstrate our most recent flavors at the RCA Conference, because they have the potential to make a huge impact on food and flavor trends in 2016.

International Dehydrated Foods, Inc. (IDF) announced recently it will sponsor the 2016 RCA Conference & Culinology Expo, held March 8 to 11. IDF will showcase several tasty chicken broths and launch new IDF products that cater to recent and upcoming food trends.

IDF can be found at booth 406 and will showcase several concentrated chicken broth products by way of a Broth Bar, including IDFs newly branded Umami Gold Frozen Chicken Broth. Umami Gold broth is our most popular chicken broth because it uniquely delivers a rich, clean umami chicken flavor. We feel this new brand captures why IDF customers and chefs love and trust this product, said Stephanie Lynch, IDF VP Technology, Sales and Marketing. We believe attendees are going to enjoy the versatility we will display with our Broth Bar and the use of savory chicken broth as a fun and sippable beverage, said IDF Marketing and Communications Manager Erin Danastasio. Our own Chef Rob developed these fun and trendy broth flavor profiles that are really inspiring for new applications. Besides the Broth Bar, IDF will be showing samples of two new products crafted from natural chicken ingredients: Fondation, a new concentrated chicken broth product that delivers a delicious and fast way to achieve a rich savory flavor, without the time as well as IDF Chicken Butter, which is IDFs classic chicken fat that features a characteristic golden color and buttery flavor.

Danastasio went on to explain why the RCA Conference & Culinology Expo is a favorite event for IDF year after year. Were always excited to showcase our culinary expertise by demonstrating our most recent flavors and ideas because they have the potential to make a huge impact on food and flavor trends, she said.

This years RCA Annual Conference and Culinology Expo will be held at the Colorado Convention Center on 700 14th Street in Denver from March 8 to 11.

For more information about IDFs naturally complete ingredients, visit idf.com or contact Erin Danastasio at edanastasio(at)idf(dot)com. For additional details on the 2016 RCA Annual Conference, visit culinology.org.
Because of the variety of investment options among competing 529 plans, many college savers are not able to easily compare performance when shopping for a plan

In Savingforcollege.coms newly-released 529 Composite Performance Rankings, Californias ScholarShare College Savings Plan ranked first among 53 direct-sold 529 plans for the one-year period ended December 1, 2015, demonstrating strong investment returns relative to other 529 savings plans across the country.

The ScholarShare plan is managed by TIAA-CREF and is available to college savers across the country, regardless of where they live. Maines NextGen College Investing Plan, also available to residents of any state, ranked in the top six plans for all time periods shown, showing consistent competitive performance.

Other 529 savings plans are available without broker fees only to residents of the state sponsoring the plan. Plans from District of Columbia, South Carolina, and Louisiana fall into this category and delivered notable performance for the residents of those states, according to Savingforcollege.coms rankings.

The top-10 finishers in each measurement period are detailed below.

In producing its quarterly rankings, Savingforcollege.com compares the reported investment performance of a subset of portfolios from 529 savings plans in every state. Portfolios are selected based on their mix of stocks, bonds, and money-market funds, aiming for an apples-to-apples comparison in seven different asset-allocation categories.

Because of the variety of investment options among competing 529 plans, many college savers are not able to easily compare performance when shopping for a plan, commented Joseph Hurley, founder of Savingforcollege.com. They may find our rankings to be helpful in that process.

Hurley cautions, however, that past performance does not guarantee future returns, and that a plan currently ranking high will not necessarily outperform its peers in the future. "We see some movement in the rankings every quarter, most particularly in one-year performance," he said.

The full reports showing rankings for all direct-sold 529 plans can be viewed at http://www.savingforcollege.com/articles/2015-plan-performance-rankings-q4-330. Savingforcollege.com also produces, for its premium subscribers, separate rankings for advisor-sold 529 plans and for RIA-channel 529 plans, along with the investment data and scoring used in all ranking reports. Please visit http://www.savingforcollege.com/subscriptions/ to sign up for a free trial subscription. Rankings are updated each quarter.

One-year Composite Performance Rankings (53 plans ranked)

1. California: The ScholarShare College Savings Plan (multiple fund families)

2. District of Columbia: DC 529 College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (Calvert funds)

3. Illinois: Bright Start College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (multiple fund families)

4. West Virginia: SMART529 WV Direct College Savings Plan (mostly Vanguard funds)

5. South Carolina: Future Scholar 529 College Savings Plan (Direct-sold) (multiple fund families)

6. Maine: NextGen College Investing Plan - Client Direct Series (multiple fund families)

7. Michigan: Michigan Education Savings Program (TIAA-CREF funds)

8. Minnesota: Minnesota College Savings Plan (TIAA-CREF funds)

9. Utah: Utah Educational Savings Plan (UESP) (mostly Vanguard funds)

10. Nebraska: Nebraska Education Savings Trust  Direct College Savings Plan

Three-year Composite Performance Rankings (52 plans ranked)

1. District of Columbia: DC 529 College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (Calvert funds)

2. New York: New Yorks 529 College Savings Program  Direct Plan (Vanguard funds)

3. Maine: NextGen College Investing Plan - Client Direct Series (multiple fund families)

4. California: The ScholarShare College Savings Plan (multiple fund families)

5. Tennessee: TNStars College Savings 529 Program (multiple fund families)

6. Florida: Florida 529 Savings Plan

7. Utah: Utah Educational Savings Plan (UESP) (mostly Vanguard funds)

8. New Jersey: NJBEST 529 College Savings Plan (Franklin Templeton funds)

9. South Carolina: Future Scholar 529 College Savings Plan (Direct-sold) (multiple fund families)

10. Ohio: Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Savings Plan (mostly Vanguard funds)

Five-year Composite Performance Rankings (46 plans ranked)

1. District of Columbia: DC 529 College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (Calvert funds)

2. New York: New Yorks 529 College Savings Program  Direct Plan (Vanguard funds)

3. Maine: NextGen College Investing Plan - Client Direct Series (multiple fund families)

4. Utah: Utah Educational Savings Plan (UESP) (mostly Vanguard funds)

5. Alaska: University of Alaska College Savings Plan (T. Rowe Price funds)

6. Florida: Florida 529 Savings Plan (multiple money managers)

7. Illinois: Bright Start College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (multiple fund families)

8. Michigan: Michigan Education Savings Program (TIAA-CREF funds)

9. New Mexico: The Education Plans College Savings Program (multiple fund families)

10. Ohio: Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Savings Plan (mostly Vanguard funds)

Ten-year Composite Performance Rankings (30 plans ranked)

1. Utah: Utah Educational Savings Plan (UESP) Trust (mostly Vanguard funds)

2. Louisiana: START Saving Program (mostly Vanguard funds)

3. New York: New Yorks 529 College Savings Program  Direct Plan (Vanguard funds)

4. Florida: Florida 529 Savings Plan (multiple money managers)

5. Alaska: University of Alaska College Savings Plan (T. Rowe Price funds)

6. District of Columbia: DC 529 College Savings Program (Direct-sold) (Calvert funds)

7. Ohio: Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Savings Plan (mostly Vanguard funds)

8. Alaska: T. Rowe Price College Savings Plan (T. Rowe Price funds)

9. South Carolina: Future Scholar 529 College Savings Plan (Direct-sold) (multiple fund families)

10. Iowa: College Savings Iowa (Vanguard funds)
Brian Svejsoe | ProV President in the Nordics Were working very hard to shake things up, so youll hear a lot more about us over the next year.

ProV International (http://www.provintl.com) continues to expand its offering to clients with the appointment of new executive talent. CEO and Founder Ajit Nair says ProV has hired Brian Svejsoe as their new Regional President in the Nordics and Eric Louttit as their new Vice-President of Sales in North America.

Danish-born Brian Svejsoe comes to ProV after serving as CIO at the Scandinavian oil giant, Maersk. While there, he led the companys global IT strategy, services, and operations. Svejsoe will continue to lead the growth and profitability of ProVs client base across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland while optimizing the alignment and effectiveness of IT changes with business strategy.

Business expert Eric Louttit arrived at ProV after a successful track record in multinational technology companies including IBM, Oracle, and Wipro. Louttit has over 15 years experience in Information Technology and has helped lead growth in digital transformation and customer engagement improvement: At ProV were committed to becoming a thought leader in the IT Solutions game. Were working very hard to shake things up, so youll hear a lot more about us over the next year.

After a successful decade in the IT Solutions market, the Tampa-based company is undergoing a period of extensive growth and development.

Part of the commitment at ProV is investing in world class talent. These hires come at a time of renewed energy for us, said Nair. These are exciting times at ProV as we continue to build a strong team with diverse backgrounds and capabilities."

About ProV Company

ProV International is a global enterprise consulting and system integration company specialized in software development, application management, big data, and managed support services  for clients across various markets. They work with some of the leading software companies including IBM, Oracle, SAP, IFS Applications, SugarCRM, and Microsoft. Founded in 2003 and with 15 country locations across 4 continents, ProV actively serves more than 100 companies around the world. For more information, visit http://www.provintl.com
As part of a major promotion to showcase its premier pepperoni, Liguria Foods is giving away 500 pounds of pepperoni every day at the annual Pizza Expo in Las Vegas. To have the chance to win the quarter ton of pepperoni each day, pizzeria operators and owners will just have to visit the Liguria Foods booth and sign up for the company newsletter.

Liguria Foods, which makes a variety of pepperoni and other pizza toppings, is giving away the pepperoni as a thank you to all its customers, as well as a chance to introduce its premier brand to new customers.

Pepperoni is the No. 1 selling pizza topping in the country and we are excited about the chance to attract new customers to taste our high quality, consistently-produced products, said Joe Henry, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Liguria Foods. The contest is our way of getting people to try our product while doing something a little different. We manufacture pepperonis that are flavorful, smokey, spicy and all-natural.

There are no restrictions to enter the contest. All a customer has to do is stop by the Liguria Foods Booth #2213 at the Pizza Expo, which is being held at the Las Vegas Convention Center March 7-10. Liguria will have a daily drawing at the end of each day and then contact the winner.

Liguria Foods, Inc. provides premium quality dry sausage toppings, including what many consider to be the markets best-tasting pepperoni. Since its founding in 1974, Liguria Foods has been dedicated to the foundation of recipe formulation. The classic recipe combines distinctive spices, enticing color, and a consistent blend of meats, providing customers with the same performance and flavor every day. The dedicated production process merges the best modern technology with traditional touches like a redwood drying room, resulting in consistently delicious products. For more than 40 years, Liguria Foods has provided pizza lovers with enjoyable, memorable dining experiences, sharing a passion for the best-tasting pepperoni and Italian meat products.

At Liguria Foods, we produce high quality pepperoni that makes every pizza taste better.
"We are proud to host this annual event which provides an opportunity for hundreds of women to engage and connect with the most dynamic and influential women in our field says Joyce Brocaglia, Founder of the EWF and CEO of Alta Associates.

The Executive Womens Forum (EWF) on Information Security, Risk Management and Privacy, founded by Alta Associates, the leading executive search firm specializing in Cybersecurity, will host their annual EWF Meet & Greet at the RSA Conference 2016 in San Francisco, CA. The meet and greet sponsored by Accenture will take place on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016, at 1pm in the Moscone West Room 2002.

The EWF invites all women attending the RSA Conference as well as the men who champion their success to meet & greet each other at a peer exchange. We are proud to host this annual event which provides an opportunity for hundreds of women to engage and connect with the most dynamic and influential women in our field says Joyce Brocaglia, Founder of the EWF and CEO of Alta Associates. The EWF Meet & Greet fosters the building of relationships and provides an opportunity for women to learn from their peers and industry experts.

At the Meet and Greet, the Executive Womens Forum will announce the establishment of the EWFs Voice Privacy Industry Group, a consortium of Industry experts who have come together to develop high level guiding principles for voice privacy. Version 1 of the guiding principles will be publicized at the Meet and Greet. The Voice Privacy Industry Group will help voice technology innovation by providing good guidance to avoid common security, privacy and general risk issues as well as awareness and education to the public.

Where: RSA Conference 2016, Moscone Center, Room 2002

When: Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at 1 PM

How: This event is free to attend. All attendees must please submit their registration at: http://www.ewf-usa.com/event/rsa2016

In addition the EWF Meet and Greet, attendees of RSA Conference are welcome to visit the EWF booth #3118 and the Alta booth #3116.

###

About The Executive Womens Forum on Information Security Risk Management & Privacy

Founded in 2002, The Executive Womens Forum on Information Security, Risk Management & Privacy (EWF) is the largest member organization serving women leaders as well as the most prominent and influential women in Information Security, Cybersecurity, IT Risk Management, Governance Risk & Compliance and Privacy. The EWFs mission is to advance women in our field through leadership development, education and the creation of trusted relationships. The EWF achieves this goal by facilitating programs and events throughout the year including a National Conference, regional meetings, leadership development programs and interaction with global thought leaders through an online community. For more information visit, http://www.ewf-usa.com.

About Alta Associates, Inc.

Founded in 1986 Alta Associates is widely acknowledged as the leading boutique executive search firm specializing in Information Security, Cybersecurity and IT Risk Management. Alta is recognized for their deep understanding of the information security industry and the drivers that shape it. Having successfully partnered with global enterprises for 30 years, Alta has filled many of the most high profile Chief Information Security Officer roles and built world class Information Security, Cybersecurity and IT Risk organizations. Alta is well known for their ability to attract and deliver top tier executives and the teams that support them and is named as one of the top 50 executive search firms in the United States. For more information visit, http://www.altaassociates.com or call 908-806-8442.
All of the 2016 Top Military Friendly Online Colleges extend a variety of means of support...in an effort to provide affordable, accessible online education for servicemembers and veterans.

SR Education Group, an education research publisher founded in 2004, just launched the 2016 Top Military Friendly Online Colleges on GuideToOnlineSchools.com. The resource provides a list of 78 online schools that provide exceptional support for military students, as well as a ranking of 15 schools that offer unlimited funding through the Yellow Ribbon Program. All schools included are fully accredited, offer at least 10 online degrees, and provide ample support to military personnel and veterans across several categories.

For the development of the 2016 Top Military Friendly Online Colleges, data was collected from KMI Media Group, who conducts an annual Military Advanced Education & Transition survey of schools. SR Education Group considered four specific factors for the Top Military Friendly Online Colleges: military culture, online support, financial aid, and flexibility. Schools were evaluated on each of these factors and given a score based on a weighted average, and all schools included in the list scored at least 70 points out of 100. Over 500 online schools were evaluated, and 78 made the cut.

With the 2016 Top Yellow Ribbon Online Schools ranking, a new factor was introduced to highlight schools with even stronger financial support for military members. As part of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, the Yellow Ribbon Program allows schools to elect to support a certain number of veterans with additional funds, which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs agrees to match. All ranked schools support an unlimited number of students and have unlimited maximum contribution amounts per student. After meeting the Yellow Ribbon Program qualification, schools were ranked based on their scores determined by the four military friendly factors. The resulting 15 Top Yellow Ribbon Online Schools all had a weighted average score of 85 points or more, with Columbia College earning the #1 spot with an impressive 100 points in both military culture and online support.

With the 2016 Top Military Friendly Online Colleges, we wanted to highlight online schools offering great support to servicemembers and veterans in a variety of ways, explained Sung Rhee, CEO of SR Education Group. The 15 Top Yellow Ribbon Online Schools deserve to be especially commended, because along with providing exceptional online support and military culture, these schools are going above and beyond for military students through their level of participation in the Yellow Ribbon Program.

SR Education Groups new launch compiles extensive military education research into a concise resource that showcases schools that prioritize military support and offer the flexibility of online education. All of the 2016 Top Military Friendly Online Colleges extend a variety of means of support, such as awarding credit for military experience and offering military-specific scholarships, in an effort to provide affordable, accessible online education for servicemembers and veterans. The full list and ranking methodology can be viewed here: http://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-schools/military-friendly

About SR Education Group

Headquartered in Kirkland, WA, SR Education Group was founded in 2004 by CEO Sung Rhee. The companys mission is to create authoritative online resources for students seeking an online education program that best suits their budget and career aspirations. SR Education Group is passionate about making quality education attainable for everyone and believes that objective information about education, careers, and educational financing should be free and easily accessible. For more information, please visit http://www.sreducationgroup.org/.
icanmakeitbetter provides online customer insight communities that make it easy to research, innovate and get feedback  anytime, anywhere, from anyone. "The partnership with ISA and LRW will allow our leading platform to scale globally and further empower the voice of the customer to engage with business and create better outcomes for all parties." - Paul Janowitz, Founder and CEO

LRW (Lieberman Research Worldwide), a leading market research and data analytics company, announced that its sister company, ISA, has acquired icanmakeitbetter, a leading communities platform and its parent company Sentient Services. Both LRW and ISA will offer online communities to their clients, which include major global brands and research companies, respectively.

Dave Sackman, Chairman and CEO of LRW said, LRWs goal is to meet the changing needs of CMOs and their marketing organizations. Marketers need insight at the speed of the market to help them survive and thrive in our fast paced, hyper-competitive world. The icanmakeitbetter software platform delivers against that need with what we believe is the most advanced and sophisticated communities platform in the industry.

This is just the first in a planned series of acquisitions that the LRW group of companies will make related to its decision mid-2015 to partner with and take on growth capital from Tailwind Capital Partners. This is part of LRWs commitment to becoming the leading "integrated analytics" company in what some are calling the new MR space, utilizing and integrating diverse streams of consumer and customer data to provide better "so what?" impact for its clients. LRW's overarching goal is to provide more sophisticated, consultative answers for its clients who have increasingly complex business and marketing issues by integrating survey, social media, digital, geo-demographic, as well as other data types and sources to their analytical frameworks and consulting practice.

Paul Janowitz, Founder and CEO, said Were very excited about joining the ISA group of companies and working alongside SoapBoxSample to expand our respective capabilities. Today is truly an exciting day and a triumph for innovation and customer collaboration in the research and insights industry. The partnership with ISA and LRW will allow our leading platform to scale globally and further empower the voice of the customer to engage with business and create better outcomes for all parties. With this partnership we are able to greatly expand and enhance our client services offerings, grow globally and continue to focus on creating an amazing software platform and delighting our clients. Janowitz and the current management team will continue on in their current roles at Sentient.

###

About Sentient Services and icanmakeitbetter:

icanmakeitbetter (http://www.icanmakeitbetter.com) provides online customer insight communities that make it easy to research, innovate and get feedback  anytime, anywhere, from anyone. The icanmakeitbetter platform delivers more than research, it drives conversations that matter on a human scale that improve an organizations products, services and experiences through the power of customer engagement and listening. Founded in 2003, the company is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

About ISA:

Since 1982, ISA has been a leading provider of data collection, processing and multicultural services to and for the market research industry. Headquartered in Van Nuys California, ISA and its two divisions, SoapBoxSample and Q-insights, remain at the forefront of the data gathering process. Global clients rely on the ISA group of companies for online, mobile, telephone, in-person, IVR, and focus groups, all in a variety of languages.

About Lieberman Research Worldwide (LRW):

LRW is recognized as one of the ten most innovative firms in its industry and is one of the 25 largest market research firms in the world. Since 1973, LRW has been providing its data-driven consulting services to management teams of top global brands on issues such as strategy, branding, communications, new product development, and customer experience. LRW leverages its unique so what? consulting model, sophisticated marketing science capabilities and recent innovations in Pragmatic Brain Science to deliver real business impact across a wide range of industries. LRW is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in London, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Orange County.

For more information, contact Joan Cassidy at jcassidy(at)LRWonline(dot)com or Jacqueline Rosales at jrosales(at)soapboxsample(dot)com.
The winning entrants took their point of departure from the horrific story of the Khojaly Massacre Todays exhibition is taking place very close to the commemoration of the Khojaly Massacre that took place back in 1992. This was ignored by the world and sadly none of the perpetrators have been brought to justice.

On 24 February, the horrific slaughter of the Khojaly Massacre was remembered in the UK Parliament through the medium of art with the presentation of the inaugural Khojaly Peace Prize. The evening showcased a range of artworks submitted by UK-based students and young artists, inspired by the challenge of harnessing the power of the image to promote peaceful resolution of the ongoing ArmenianAzerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and other wars, together with stimulating international empathy with the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). The competition and exhibition, organised within the Justice for Khojaly campaign, commemorated the victims of the Khojaly Massacre on 26 February 1992.

This was the worst single atrocity of the ArmeniaAzerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and claimed the lives of 613 civilian victims in 1992. The death toll included 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly people.

Taking place in the Strangers Dining Room in the UK Parliament, the event was attended by around 150 people, including Lady Fiona Hodgson; Sir David Amess MP; Bob Blackman MP, Chair, Azerbaijan All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG); Mark Menzies MP, Vice-Chair of the APPG; members of the Azerbaijani and Turkish diaspora; friends of Azerbaijan and art aficionados. The judging panel included Sabina Rakcheyeva, violinist and Arts and Cultural Advisor, The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS), who was the first Azerbaijani graduate from the Juilliard School in New York and Bob Blackman MP.

Bob Blackman MP said: Todays exhibition is taking place very close to the commemoration of the Khojaly Massacre that took place back in 1992. This was ignored by the world and sadly none of the perpetrators have been brought to justice. As we approach the anniversary, I am tabling an Early Day Motion (EDM) in Parliament recognising the anniversary. It requests the implementation of the four UN Security Council Resolutions against Armenia and that justice is sought.

Also sitting on the judging panel was Lionel Zetter, Director, TEAS, who commented: Bob Blackman has now visited Azerbaijan three times and has met many of the survivors of the Khojaly Massacre. We were hugely impressed by the volume and quality of the entries for the art peace prize. Khojaly remains an event that is little-known worldwide. It took place during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when there were many conflicts and border disputes, and Nagorno-Karabakh did not command the attention of the worlds media. This competition was thrown open to anyone who was living or studying in the UK and was inspired by the tragic events of that night. Its purpose was to sympathise with those who survived but suffered terribly, and also with those who lost loved ones. Also, of course, to try and ensure that such horrific events are not repeated.

Mark Menzies MP remarked: As someone who is a friend of Azerbaijan and a visitor to the country, I understand some of the problems and issues that it has to face, including the Khojaly Massacre. Todays event focuses on some of these issues via the medium of art. I am delighted that so many art students from across the UK have participated.

The third prize was awarded to South Korean art student Seungjo Jeong for his artwork Interface, where a drain cover represents the geopolitical, economic and diplomatic barriers inhibiting the movement of IDPs and refugees, and yellow leaf represents fragile human nature and the lives of those on the contact line.

Second place was awarded to Eileen Anderson for her piece Birds of Paradise. She was inspired by artworks created by IDPs and refugees around the world, laying them together and printing them on acetate. One of these was an artwork by a child who had drawn many brightly coloured birds, from which she appropriated her own title.

First place was given to Gordon Berger, which features a traditional Paisley-Buta design, Azerbaijani flats, flags and dances. It is a reminder of the importance and growing together, and seeks to remind viewers of the importance of recognising our commonality and shared humanity.

Despite the passing of four UN Security Council resolutions against the invasion, Armenia continues to occupy Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts to this day. Currently nearly 20 per cent of Azerbaijani territory remains occupied, and approximately one million refugees and IDPs are spread across Azerbaijan. The evening was dedicated to the memory of the Khojaly victims and those Azerbaijanis who have only one wish  to return home.
Whether youre looking to make sales, raise funds or start your own business, concessions can help you reach your goals.

Concession food industry leader Gold Medal Products Co. will host two days of product demonstrations, market-focused education and cooking up delicious fun food favorites.

Gold Medal  Chicago branch manager, Matt Loew extends the invitation: Whether youre looking to make sales, raise funds or start your own business, concessions can help you reach your goals. Let us show you how easy it is to earn profits of 70-80%.

National Caramel Corn Day will be held on March 8. Theres no better way to experience gourmet popcorn! Simple to make and extremely profitable, it is one of the fastest growing snack food trends. Guests will not only participate in hands-on demonstrations, they will be able to sample a variety of tasty and popular flavors. From full-service sweet shops to stand-alone kiosks, a complete line of equipment set-ups is available to suit any-sized customers needs.

On March 9, Gold Medal will celebrate its annual Factory Super Sale. Guests will enjoy a carnival-like atmosphere featuring popcorn, cotton candy, Sno-Kones, funnel cakes, hot dogs, pretzels, nachos and more. This is the only way to see all of this equipment in action in one location. The best and most experienced team in the industry will be on-hand to consult with attendees. Plus, Gold Medal will be offering its best savings of the year with special discounted pricing on both equipment and supplies.

Both events will be hosted at the Midwest Convention Center located at 401 W Lake Street in Northlake, Illinois. To register, please visit gmpopcorn.com.
Nerium International continues to broaden its global footprint and establish itself as one of the top leaders in the direct sales industry around the world! After opening its business in the Korean market in August 2015, the company will celebrate its full launch with a monumental Grand Opening in KINTEX, Ilsan March 5.

Nerium International Founder and CEO Jeff Olson, other members of Neriums executive team and top executives from Signum Biosciences and Cosmax are scheduled to deliver key company announcements at the event.

The historic event will include the announcement of additions to Neriums revolutionary product line in Korea, expanding the companys well- established international product portfolio.

Nerium will also offer attendees a chance to purchase brand new tools, gear and marketing materials at the Nerium Store on site, making the Grand Opening Event the first time the Korean Brand Partners have access to the Nerium store.

As part of Nerium Internationals commitment to global philanthropy, its executives will announce its plans to expand its Nerium Ripple Foundation to Korea.

With this historic event just weeks away, its clear Nerium is committed to continuing its remarkable success in markets across the world.

About Nerium International:

Based in Addison, TX, Nerium International is a global relationship marketing company with Age-Defying products created in cutting-edge research and science. Founded in 2011, Nerium International has shattered industry records for sales while developing a strong customer base in both the North American and Asian markets. This unprecedented success has allowed Nerium to generate $1 billion in sales after just four years. Nerium was recognized for its historic growth by ranking No.1 on the 2015 Inc. 500 List of fastest-growing private US companies in consumer products and services and No. 40 on the 2015 Direct Selling News Global 100 List. Led by an executive team with more than 220 combined years of experience, Nerium International is committed to distributing an excellent product line based in real science and providing its Brand Partners with a life-changing and outstanding business opportunity through relationship marketing.

###
Jun Liu, 2016 Alatis Award winner. It was Juns work that galvanized the nonnative English speakers community in the TESOL association and originally drew attention to their issues.

TESOL International Association announces that Jun Liu, PhD is the 2016 recipient of the James E. Alatis Award for Service to TESOL. The award honors outstanding and extended service by TESOL members at international, regional, and local levels. Liu will be honored for the award at the James E. Alatis Plenary during the 2016 TESOL International Convention & English Language Expo in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Describing Lius impact on the association, former TESOL Board Member Mary Romney noted that Juns vision of what TESOL can be is based on inclusiveness and the value of diversity. It was Juns work that galvanized the nonnative English speakers community in the TESOL association and originally drew attention to their issues. In 2006, Liu became the first Asian and nonnative-English-speaking president of TESOL International Association. He has served TESOL in numerous capacities for more than two decades, notably as the co-founder of the NNEST Caucus, a member of the TESOL Board of Directors, and a member of more than 30 TESOL committees.

In addition to his longstanding service to TESOL, Liu is a well-respected teacher, researcher, and scholar in the field. He is Vice Provost for Global Affairs and Dean of International Academic Programs and Services with the academic appointment of Professor of Linguistics at State University of New York, Stony Brook. Liu is currently on the Board of Trustees of The International Research Foundation of English Language Education, and the Board of the Association of International Education Administrators. Liu is also known in the field of teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages and has served since 2009 as vice president of the International Society of Chinese Language Teaching. He has published extensively in the area of intercultural communication, communicative competence, and language education. A dynamic and motivating speaker, Liu has given more than 100 plenary and invited speeches since 2000 in more than 30 countries.

The James E. Alatis Award for Service to TESOL originated in 1987 to honor James E. Alatis for his 21 years of devoted service as TESOL's first executive director. Alatis was a charter member of TESOL International Association and dean emeritus of the School of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University. Alatis passed away in February 2015.

About TESOL International Association

Founded in 1966, TESOL International Association is a professional community of educators, researchers, administrators, and students committed to advancing excellence in English language teaching for speakers of other languages worldwide. With more than 12,000 members representing over 150 countries, TESOL fosters the exchange of ideas, research, and peer-to-peer knowledge, and provides expertise, resources, and a powerful voice on issues affecting the profession. Through professional development programs, its international conference, special interest groups, and publications, TESOL engages tens of thousands of professionals to collaborate globally and create a world of opportunity for millions of people of all ages who want to learn English. For more information, please visit http://www.tesol.org.
"If we don't welcome American Muslims, ISIS will," warn UMD researchers Gelfand and Lyons-Padilla.

Recent acts of terrorism have fueled concern both about Muslim immigrants becoming radicalized in the West and about the possibility of terrorists entering new home nations via refugee routes. As a result of the political backlash, many Muslims in Europe or the United States feel harassed and isolated.

New research from the University of Maryland shows that making Muslims feel like they dont belong in the West can actually bolster support for radical movements. The study, Belonging Nowhere: Marginalization and Radicalization Risk Among Muslim Immigrants appears in Behavioral Science and Policy and was written by former Ph.D. student Sarah Lyons-Padilla, now a Research Scientist at Stanford University, and Professor of Psychology Michele J. Gelfand.

The researchers asked hundreds of Muslims in the United States to discuss their experiences as religious and cultural minorities, including their feelings of being excluded or discriminated against on the basis of their religion. Participants were also asked how they manage their different identities and how they feel about radical groups and causes.

Most Muslims in the study did not support Islamist extremism. However, some people felt marginalized and identified with neither American culture nor their culture of heritagein other words, culturally homeless.

According to Lyons-Padilla and Gelfand, people can feel culturally homeless when they dont practice the same customs or share the same values as others in their adopted culture, but also feel different from other people of their heritage. The researchers found that the more people were torn between cultures, the more they felt a lack of meaning in their lives. This, in turn, was related to greater support for radicalism.

Muslims who feel culturally homeless are targets for established extremists, Lyons-Padilla and Gelfand said. Radical religious groups offer these people a sense of certainty, purpose and structure.

The study finds that people who had been excluded or discriminated against on the basis of their religious identity also experienced this threat to their sense of purpose. But discrimination was the most damaging for people who already felt culturally homeless. The results suggest that cultivating anti-immigrant or anti-Islamic sentiment is deeply counterproductive.

Anti-immigrant discourse is likely to fuel support for extremism, not squelch it, Lyons-Padilla said. This means many Western policies that aim to prevent terrorism may actually be causing it.

To decrease the risk of homegrown radicalization, Lyons-Padilla and Gelfand and their coauthors recommend working to improve integration of Muslim immigrants, not further isolate them.

According to our data, most Muslims in the United States want to blend their two cultures. But it is difficult to do this if either side pressures them to choose, Gelfand said.

The good news is that people who did feel well integrated were more inoculated against radicalization. The authors caution policymakers and laypeople in individual communities against confusing integration with assimilation. Assimilation means pressuring immigrants to completely adopt their new culture at the expense of abandoning their own heritage culture. Integration, on the other hand, means encouraging immigrants to call themselves American and to also take pride in their own cultural and religious heritage. The data suggest that policies allowing immigrants to embrace both their American and cultural identities may help reduce radicalization.

Our findings point to a strategy for reducing homegrown radicalization: encouraging immigrants to participate in both of their cultures plus curbing discrimination against Muslims. This strategy is better for both immigrants well-being and adopted cultures political stability. Communities can make it harder for terrorists to recruit by helping the culturally homeless feel more at home, Lyons-Padilla said.

Read an op-ed by Lyons-Padilla and Gelfand about the study.

**Interested members of the media may contact the research team directly at mjgelfand(at)gmail.com or sarahlp(at)stanford.edu.

Lyons-Padilla and Gelfands co-authors are Hedieh Mirahmadi and Mehreen Farooq of the World Organization for Resource Development and Education in Washington, D.C., and Marieke van Egmond of Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen, Germany.
Megan Smith is literally changing the face of the tech industry and we are proud to hear from her at our event, said Jim Deters, CEO of Galvanize.

Galvanize, today announced that Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, will attend and speak at the first-ever Tech Inclusion: Austin on March 13, 2016 at Atlassian located at 303 Colorado St #1600.

Smith was previously a vice president of Google[x] and vice president of business development at Google. She previously served on the boards of MIT and Vital Voices and was appointed U.S. Chief Technology Officer in September 2014.

"Diversity in technology is essential  not just for fairness but for the economy. Through the '80s women used to be 40 percent of the computer science industry at all the early companies. But now it has dropped to the teens. Smith said. There are millions of open jobs, high paying jobs, and we need to train people to take and excel in those fields. So we have to work with not just those who hire but those who train and educate  to make sure we have a robust and rich talent pipeline.

As technology continues to affect every sector of business and innovation, theres a growing concern for the lack of inclusion across the tech ecosystem. Thats why Galvanize, Tech Inclusion, and the Clinton Foundations No Ceilings initiative have come together to create Tech Inclusion; Austin. The event will feature a full day of solutions-focused programming on providing more opportunities in tech for women, underrepresented minorities, people who identify as LGBTQIA, veterans, and people with disabilities. This unique experience of panel conversations, solo talks, and networking opportunities will break down barriers and help move the tech industry toward true inclusion.

The event will culminate with a networking social where local entrepreneurs and technical talent will be able to meet with leaders from tech organizations, policymakers, and tech media.

Smith will be joined at Tech Inclusion: Austin by more than 20 leaders from tech industry companies and organizations who will share their views on building a stronger, more inclusive and diverse tech sector. A full roster of speakers is here. Those participating include:



Tracy Chou, Software Engineer, Pinterest

Young Bang, veteran and VP at Booz Allen Hamilton

Isis Anchalee, Founder of #ilooklikeanengineer

Marlon Nichols, General Partner, Cross Culture Ventures

Megan Smith is literally changing the face of the tech industry and we are proud to hear from her at our event, said Jim Deters, CEO of Galvanize. At Galvanize, we are honored to help create a culture where everyone can not just experience technology but be part of it.

More than 25 speakers and hundreds of attendees are expected to participate in sessions on creating more inclusive cultures, eliminating unconscious biases, and more. This is Galvanizes second time hosting a Tech Inclusion conference. The first sold-out event at Galvanizes San Francisco campus had nearly 500 attendees, more than 100 speakers, and more than 60 volunteers.

Registration for Tech Inclusion: Austin on March 13, 2016 is now open at: galvanize.com/inclusion. Employers, job seekers, and anyone who wants to learn from leading organizations about how to create a more inclusive culture in tech is encouraged to attend.

About Galvanize

Galvanize is a tech education company that blends the lines between learning and working. We believe in creating easy access for anyone who has the drive and determination to jump into the tech world, especially in entrepreneurship, engineering, and data science. Our campuses are home to students, startups, investors, mentors, and other people who are engaged and excited to level up their skills. To learn more about Galvanize, visit http://galvanize.com or like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GalvanizeHQ or follow us on Twitter @Galvanize

About Tech Inclusion

Tech Inclusion is an initiative of Change Catalyst exploring and developing innovative solutions to tech diversity and inclusion. We partner with the tech community to solve diversity and inclusion together through conferences, career fairs, strategic consulting and training. Our work spans the full tech ecosystem, including: Education, Workplace, Entrepreneurship and Policy. To learn more about Tech Inclusion and other Change Catalyst programs, visit http://changecatalyst.co

About No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project

No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project is an initiative of the Clinton Foundation to advance the full participation of girls and women throughout the world. No Ceilings brings together partner organizations to evaluate and share the progress girls and women have made in the 20 years since the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing to help chart the path forward to accelerate full participation of girls and women in the 21st century. For more information, visit http://noceilings.org/
e-Spirit Inc., a leading supplier of content management solutions, today announced that LOreal Luxe, owner of the world's main leading luxury beauty brands, has selected the FirstSpirit CMS to improve rich content management within editorial sections on e-commerce sites managed by Demandware. Using FirstSpirit allows LOreal Luxe to easily create and share content across multiple country websites and to launch online Beauty Magazines that offer make-up tutorials, articles and styling tips, among other rich media content. The implementation is currently live in France, Canada, United States, China and Mexico and will be rolling out to Italy, Spain, Middle East in the coming months.

During initial discussions, LOreal Luxe highlighted the need for a Web content management system that could power the Beauty Magazines of its brands. These magazines feature beauty blog articles, make-up tutorials and how-to videos. One of the many features of FirstSpirit that LOreal Luxe appreciated was how easy it is for the internal content creators to post content throughout its global network of websites.

Many of the features that FirstSpirit delivers, including simplified workflows and intuitive graphical user interfaces, helped us realize that FirstSpirit was the best solution for our needs, said Jean-Claude Cohen, global digital platform director, LOreal Luxe. But what really sold us on using FirstSpirit was its usability and seamless integration with Demandware.

At LOreal Luxe, FirstSpirit allows content creators, such as non-technical editors and journalists, to easily publish news articles around the world without any technical assistance. Internal validation of content to ensure global consistency of LOreal Luxes brands is now fast and easy through the use of workflows tailored to the luxury brands requirements. LOreal Luxe also takes advantage of the tight integration with Demandware to create smart links between content created within the CMS and product catalogs maintained within the e-commerce system. By implementing a centralized system for creating and validating content, LOreal Luxe has essentially developed a corporate content cloud for storing and publishing content through multiple channels on a global basis.

One of the most effective ways to extend a successful e-commerce site is through content marketing. This often represents a significant content management challenge that is beyond the scope of whats possible within an e-commerce platform alone, particularly when you have multiple geographies and brands involved, said Robert Bredlau, worldwide partner manager for e-Spirit. As a Demandware partner, e-Spirit is ideally positioned to help brands take their e-commerce sites to the next level and are excited to be working with LOreal Luxe on this effort.

About e-Spirit

e-Spirit is a leader in enabling companies to unlock the value of digital content and transform the way they communicate with customers and employees. Using the FirstSpirit content management system, organizations can create a Corporate Content Cloud connecting all their people, systems and applications to the centralized, real-time data, assets and information necessary to publish content with total accuracy and relevancy across all channels and devices. Founded in 1999, e-Spirit operates in 16 locations in the United States and Europe. Clients include Lancome, Airbus, BASF, Bosch, Santander Bank, Urban Decay, Olympus, Barbri, Nord Drive Systems and WellDyne.

e-Spirit Inc.

One Cranberry Hill, Suite 100

Lexington, MA 02421, USA

+1 (781) 862-5511

PR(at)e-Spirit(dot)com

http://www.e-spirit.com

Media contact for e-Spirit:

Rob Goodman

McKenzie Worldwide

+1 (503) 380-2441

robg(at)mckenzieworldwide(dot)com
CandyWarehouse.com East - Charlotte, North Carolina The new warehouse makes it possible for us to get our unique candy to people fasterand cheaperthan ever before.

CandyWarehouse announced this week it is now offering 2-day ground shipping to 80% of the contiguous United States, drastically reducing the cost of its overall shipping for customers across the country. This development coincides with the online candy retailers acquisition of a new warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, expanding its coverage from coast to coast, with its original Los Angeles area warehouse continuing to handle shipments for the western USA. The new warehouse is temperature and humidity controlled, which is important for keeping the candy at its freshest until ready to ship. CandyWarehouse does not use third-party drop shippers like some of their competitors; they control the process from the manufacturer to the customers doorstep.

We knew we wanted to make shipping easier on our customers, said Murray Slenn, Director of Operations. We were excited to find a location in Charlotte. Its a wonderful city and a great place to do business. With a distribution center on each coast, were able to ship candy almost anywhere in just two days. That means our customers can get their candy right when they need it, without paying extra for expedited shipping. This will save them a lot of money at checkout.

Shoppers have continued to flock to CandyWarehouse.com since it was founded back in 1998. Drawn to its expansive selection of candy productsover 7,000 items in totalcustomers are able to shop by color, brand, theme, and more. Their exclusive candy calculator makes it easy to figure out exactly how much candy to order for a specific candy dish or treat bag. All photography is produced in house, capturing the texture, size, and color of each product in exceptional detail. With 2-day ground shipping, CandyWarehouse now offers some of the fastest delivery times in the industry, rivaling if not outperforming the likes of Amazon, Oriental Trading, and Party City while providing a much wider selection of everyday and seasonal candy products.

We never just wanted to sell candy, said Christopher Pratt, founder and CEO, who began the company eighteen years ago. We wanted to become the candy experts, and weve spent the last eighteen years earning that reputation. We have one-of-a-kind products you wont find anywhere else, along with classics like M&Ms and Hersheys Kisses, all in a huge variety of colors. The new warehouse makes it possible for us to get our unique candy to people fasterand cheaperthan ever before.

The faster shipping times will be especially important as the weather starts to warm up. Many of the companys heat-sensitive items like chocolate bars and gummy bears require fast delivery to prevent melting. The new 2 day ground shipping will ensure these items never remain in transit long enough to melt, even when they are shipped using standard ground.

This should be good news for party and event planners who are already planning their candy buffets and dessert tables," says Pratt. A lot of them are already shopping for spring weddings and summer parties. Now well be able to provide them with all the candy they need, right when they need it.

As of today, the new warehouse is fully staffed, operational and shipping to the entire eastern United States, extending the companys 2-day shipping to candy shoppers across the country.
Xerox, Lear Corporation, American Cancer Society to Share Success Stories; Early Bird Registration Date Ends March 7 Representing 65 percent of the Fortune 500, our customers are leading the transformation in the way we work and how we maximize talent. - Bill Donoghue, Skillsoft CEO

Skillsoft, the global leader in eLearning, today announced the customer spotlight sessions for its annual user conference for Skillsoft and SumTotal customers, taking place from May 9-12 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV. More than a thousand business leaders from around the world will learn how Skillsoft and SumTotal have helped organizations achieve outstanding business results. Confirmed speakers include Xerox, Johnson & Johnson, P.F. Changs, PwC, Eaton Corporation, and BAE Systems. Keynote speakers Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, one of Fortune Magazines The Worlds 50 Greatest Leaders and motivational psychologist Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson will discuss how to foster innovation and build an inspirational organizational culture. The 2016 Innovation Awards will recognize customers for their visionary work in talent, learning and workforce management.

Im really excited to welcome so many customers to understand our vision for the future of eLearning. I believe Perspectives will provide an excellent opportunity for business leaders to hear best practice, exchange ideas and develop strategies to incorporate into their organizations, said Skillsoft CEO Bill Donoghue. Representing 65 percent of the Fortune 500, our customers are leading the transformation in the way we work and how we maximize talent. Our speakers will demonstrate the real world application of our solutions and how they contribute to performance improvements and, ultimately, the Self-Developing Organization.

More than 50 organizations will talk about their experiences in talent, learning, workforce and payroll challenges, initiatives and results. Featured customer sessions include:



Xerox Moves Learning to Learners: Attendees will hear how Xerox is integrating learning with work to empower people to take responsibility for their own development and will see examples of learning practices that accelerate a culture of learning and workforce performance.

Lear Corporations Cultural Revolution:  Over the past 36 months, Lear has been through a corporate cultural revolution, transforming from bankruptcy to a leading Fortune 200 company. Attendees will learn how Lear uses their performance management process and leadership development model to drive cultural change.

American Cancer Society's Journey to Becoming a Self-Developing Organization: American Cancer Society provided learners with the content and technology needed to drive their own learning experience, reduce their skills gaps and enhance their performance. Attendees will discover the methodology American Cancer Society is using to become a Self-Developing Organization and how they can adopt these practices in their organizations.

University of California  How Modern Talent Management Practices Help Build an Adaptable Compliance Program: Addressing an issue of national importance, the University of Californias president issued a call to action for UC to become the national leader in prevention and response to sexual violence and assault. During this session attendees will learn how their organization can connect talent management and compliance practices to engage a workforce that adapts to emerging issues and trends.

During the conference, business leaders can meet executives and product experts to talk about future product roadmaps and innovations and participate in hands-on labs that span the range of solutions across talent, workforce, learning, leadership development and compliance.

Register before March 7 to get the early-bird rate and save $300. To learn more about 2016 Global Skillsoft Perspectives visit http://ow.ly/YO1ap.

Tweet this: Xerox, Lear, American Cancer Society, to present at @Skillsofts #Perspectives16 http://ow.ly/YWZ0x

About Skillsoft

Skillsoft is a pioneer in the fields of learning and talent management with a long history of innovation. Skillsoft provides cloud-based learning solutions for its customers worldwide, ranging from global enterprises, government, and education to mid-sized and small businesses. Skillsoft's customer support teams draw on a wealth of in-house experience, flexible delivery platforms and a comprehensive learning e-library to develop off-the-shelf and custom learning programs tailored to cost-effectively meet customer needs. Skillsoft's courses, books and videos have been developed by industry leading learning experts to ensure that they maximize business skills, performance, and talent development.

Skillsoft currently serves over 6,700 customers and more than 45 million learners around the world. Skillsoft is on the web at http://www.Skillsoft.com.

About SumTotal Systems

SumTotal Systems, LLC, a Skillsoft company and a leading provider of integrated HR solutions, is increasing the performance of some of the worlds most successful organizations. SumTotals people-focused Talent Expansion applications, available on premise and in the cloud, enable contextual, just-in-time development designed to help organizations discover, develop and unleash the hidden potential within their workforce and business ecosystem. Today, more than 3,500 organizations, including several of Fortunes Best Places to Work, rely on SumTotals award winning solutions to empower their employees. Follow @SumTotalSystems at twitter.com/sumtotalsystems and on Facebook at facebook.com/SumTotal.Systems for more learning and talent management tips and perspectives.

Skillsoft, the Skillsoft logo, Skillport, SkillChoice, Books24x7, and learning-centric Talent Expansion are a partial listing of the trademarks or registered trademarks of Skillsoft Ireland Limited in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
In an exclusive interview with Atlantic Information Services, Inc.s (AIS) Report on Research Compliance (RRC), Michael Lauer, the new deputy director for extramural research and the director of the Office of Extramural Research (OER) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said the agency needs to move to a model of making funding decisions that is based more on evidence. The interview appears in RRCs new March 2016 issue.

It has been estimated that less than 1% of all federal government policies or programs are based on any reasonable degree of scientifically analyzed evidence. And we are working on changing that at NIH, Lauer said. He also said NIH plans to address unconscious bias that can creep into its funding decisions and discussed the imperative for researchers to publish results of clinical trials.

[F]or a university or a scientist to receive money, do work with that money and then never reveal to the world whatever happened with that and never say what they found or didnt find is not an acceptable state of affairs, Lauer said, adding that NIH will be adopting several new policies designed to bring research findings to light in a timely manner.

Lauer, the seventh OER director in NIHs history but the first physician to hold the job, spoke to RRC in mid-February, four months after he was named to the post by NIH Director Francis Collins. OER oversees about $25 billion in extramural research and activities, as it consumes 83% of NIHs total budget.

Visit https://aishealth.com/archive/nrrc0316-01 to read the article in its entirety, which also details Lauers statement confirming that NIH plans to require the use of a single institutional review board (IRB) of record in multisite human subject research it funds.

About Report on Research Compliance

Report on Research Compliance is the only news source on research compliance created and written especially for college and university research administrators, and provides the best information there is to help institutions avoid the negative publicity, financial setbacks and management problems that compliance requirements can create. With offices located in downtown Washington, D.C., RRC is well-placed to track news from NIH, NSF and other agencies, Capitol Hill, and elsewhere. It addresses the issues of greatest concern to research compliance administrators, in critical areas such as security and biosafety, financial compliance, human subjects and scientific misconduct.

Editor Theresa Defino is well-versed in the ethical and compliance issues facing researchers and institutions, having worked for an academic medical center affiliated with a major Midwestern university and having written hundreds of articles based on research studies. A veteran health care journalist and writer, Theresa has been based in Washington, D.C., since 1989.

About AIS

Atlantic Information Services, Inc. (AIS) is a publishing and information company that has been serving the health care industry for nearly 30 years. It develops highly targeted news, data and strategic information for managers in hospitals and health systems, health insurance companies, medical group practices, purchasers of health insurance, pharmaceutical companies and other health care organizations. AIS products include print and electronic newsletters, databases, websites, looseleafs, strategic reports, directories, webinars and virtual conferences. Learn more at http://AISHealth.com.
Helen Scott, Managing Director Growth in the house-building sector has played a significant part in AV Danzer's growth this year.

The Langley Mill- based modular building constructor achieved a 29 percent growth in profit in the year to September 2015, with turnover up to 5.38m.

The family-owned company, which creates modular buildings for schools, colleges and offices, expects further growth this year after receiving orders worth 1.12m in an eight-day period last month.

It has recruited six more staff to work across its office, health and safety, and manufacturing functions, taking the total staff to 46 from just 24 in 2014.

Director Helen Scott said: "Growth in the house-building sector has certainly played a significant part in Danzer's recent achievements.

"We work with clients including Taylor Wimpey, Barratt, David Wilson Homes and Jones Homes, providing steel anti-vandal accommodation units for use on development sites across the country.

"In addition, the UK's construction boom has also seen an increase in orders from construction firms such as BAM, St James and Bouygues.

"Anticipating this growth, we invested 1.3m in a new steel production facility in 2014 and have also recruited people into the roles of health and safety manager, production manager and new computer-aided design technicians, as well as fabricators and welders on the production side."

Danzer is due to create new offices for itself in Langley Mill later this year.
It is an honor to once again be named a Top 100 Global Franchise by Franchise Direct

The Vanguard Cleaning Systems brand was again named to Franchise Directs Top 100 Global Franchise list. Ranked number 48, this marks the eighth consecutive year that the Vanguard franchise has been named to the Franchise Direct list.

It is an honor to once again be named a Top 100 Global Franchise by Franchise Direct, said Steve McConnell, VP Marketing for Vanguard Cleaning Systems, Inc. It is a tribute to the Master Franchisees and their Janitorial Franchises.

The Top 100 Global Franchises

Franchise Direct's Top 100 Global Franchises list is a research based ranking of the world's top 100 franchises. The ranking is compiled by considering a host of criteria, including number of franchise units, system revenue, stability and growth, years of operation, market expansion, as well as demonstration of best practices for franchisee support, and established environmental policy.

About the Vanguard Cleaning Systems Brand

Founded in 1984, the Vanguard Cleaning Systems organization is built upon over 3,000 independently owned and operated franchised commercial cleaning businesses, which are licensed and supported by a Master Franchise network of 56 independent regional offices throughout North America. Vanguard franchised commercial cleaning businesses service more than 15,000 businesses, healthcare companies, educational facilities, and non-profit organizations.

The Vanguard brand has been included among the top 50 franchises of Entrepreneur magazines annual Franchise 500 list for eight consecutive years. You can learn more about the Vanguard Cleaning Systems franchise organization at http://www.vanguardcleaning.com.
PayScale, Inc., the world's leading provider of on-demand compensation data and software, today announced the publication of its Tech Employers Compared 2016.

Using PayScale.com's compensation database, PayScale examined the characteristics of the following large/well-known tech companies: Adobe Systems Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Apple Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., eBay Inc., Facebook, Inc., Google, Hewlett-Packard Company, International Business Machines (IBM) Corp., Intel Corp., LinkedIn Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Salesforce.com, inc., Samsung Group, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Corp., and Tesla Motors, Inc. Data was obtained from 33,500 workers in the tech industry (non-retail or sales) who took the PayScale Salary Survey in the last two years. These characteristics include:



Job Details: typical pay, typical tenure at the company, and typical years of experience within a career/field.

Demographics: typical age and gender breakdown.

Job Soft Features: shares of employees reporting high job satisfaction, high job meaning, and high job stress.

In examining the characteristics of these companies, we eliminated retail workers from the sample:

Some of the large tech companies examined have a substantial retail presence (e.g., Apple, Microsoft, etc.). For this reason, we eliminated retail workers and retail managers from our sample to keep the data focused on corporate employees. But we did not only limit the sample to just IT workers; it takes more than IT to make a business run, so we included workers in job types such as marketing, administration, finance, etc.

The full report can be found here: http://www.payscale.com/data-packages/top-tech-companies-compared

The benefits of working for a tech firm are not just relegated to high pay and free soda. Depending on the firm, workers may experience ample opportunities for learning and development (e.g., Google and Apple), believe they are making the world a better place (e.g., SpaceX and Tesla), or experience very high job satisfaction (e.g., Facebook). The opportunities for these qualitative benefits are spread across employees at these firms and not just reserved for tech employees, said Katie Bardaro, Lead Economist, PayScale.

The report's highlights include:

Workers at tech companies are overwhelmingly young and male. Seven of the 18 companies we compared have a median employee age of 30 or younger, and ten have workforces with less than 30 percent female employees.

Although the employees at Elon Musks companies (SpaceX and Tesla) are among the lowest paid and most stressed out in the tech industry, they believe, much more than employees at other tech companies in this report, that their job has meaning. Ninety-two percent of tech employees at SpaceX believe their job makes the world a better place, followed by 89 percent at Tesla. On average, 57% of employees employed by the companies in this report believe their job has meaning.

The employees at Facebook are among the best paid in the tech industry, with both early and mid-career employees earning over 100K. Almost all employees report high job satisfaction (96 percent), and about three quarters (78 percent) report that their job has meaning. The stress levels at Facebook are the lowest among all the tech companies in our report, with only 44 percent reporting high job stress.

The highest-paid early career employees (0-5 years experience) do work at Facebook, but experienced (10 or more years) employees at LinkedIn earn the highest overall median salaries ($159,600).

Oracle, Hewlett Packard, QualComm and IBM employ the most experienced employees (9.0, 7.7, 7.7, and 7.4 years respectively).

Employees at the more established tech companies report longer tenures with their current employers  IBM, HP, Oracle, and Intel are the only companies where the median employee tenure is five years or more.

Companies at which the typical employee has spent two years or less, like Facebook (1.1 years), Tesla (1.6 years), Salesforce (1.8 years), Google (2.0 years) and Amazon (2.0 years) are also those that have grown most rapidly in recent years.

Adds Bardaro: When it comes to wages at tech firms, they are not only some of the highest among professional workers, but also have experienced some of the strongest wage growth in recent years. As the demand for tech employees surges in our economy, this wage growth is not likely to slow down anytime soon.

About PayScale

Cloud software, crowd sourced data and unique algorithms power the worlds largest real-time database of rich salary profiles giving PayScale the unique ability to provide employees and employers alike immediate visibility into the right pay for any position. PayScales cloud compensation software is used by more than 3,000 customers including Bloomberg BNA, Cummins, Warby Parker, Clemson University and Signature HealthCARE.
This training will help iManage administrators and information governance professionals implement best practices and solve some of the most pressing business challenges their firms are facing.

Prosperoware, a leading enterprise software company delivering innovative technology that connects the business with the practice of legal and professional services, announces that registration is now open for its next two-day Milan Core Administration Training course. Designed for new or even experienced Milan users, the two day intensive will be held March 29-30 at the Kraft Kennedy Training Room in Manhattan. Attendees will gain valuable skills that will help them drive further adoption of their iManage systems while implementing robust information governance processes.

Prosperowares Milan family of products enables firms to better organize digital matter files, drive adoption of their DMS, and properly govern their content. The Milan InfoGov platform delivers the industrys most comprehensive ethical wall and confidentiality management solution on the market, providing an intuitive and powerful interface for risk teams and matter owners alike. Milans iManage Add-ons set the industry gold standard for firms seeking to optimize their investment in iManage and looking to drive adoption of their DMS and digital matter files.

A spate of recent legislation in the U.S., E.U., and elsewhere has led clients to implement more stringent information governance policies, including a fundament shift from the share everything security of the past to new need-to-know policies. Firms are seeking comprehensive solutions which will drive adoption of the software they already own  such as iManage, close the gap between digital and physical files within the firm, and enable information governance processes, risk management, and security requirements without causing problems of workflow implosion.

The Milan family of products delivers the enhanced administrative capabilities required in todays environment while allowing firms to distribute functions at a granular level, truly comply with ISO 27001, and satisfy their clients sophisticated requirements for data privacy and security.

The two-day Milan Core Administration Training course will combine quick reviews and deep dives into Milan functionality to build the skills attendees need to bring back to their firms and optimize their individual environments. Attendees can select single day or two day options to attend; the Milan training sessions will cover:

Day1: Workspace and Folder Management



Billing to Milan

Folder template management

On demand folders

On demand workspace generation

Using the Provisioning service

Service Center

Day 2: Milan Confidentiality Management, Self-Service, and Server-Side Refiling



Setting up official walls (for lateral hires or client requested walls)

Setting up matter teams and unofficial walls

Setting up self-service rules and best practices

Setting up server-side refiling with Milan

Sheetal Jain, CTO of Prosperoware comments, We are pleased to provide this type of valuable training for our Milan customers. This training will help iManage administrators and information governance professionals implement best practices and solve some of the most pressing business challenges their firms are facing. We are looking forward to a highly engaged training class and, even more, the mutually beneficial results from delivering maximum value to our customers."

To register for the Milan two-day training course, click here. Follow on Twitter @Prosperoware #MilanCore.

About Prosperoware

Prosperoware is an enterprise software company focused on law firms, corporate legal departments, and professional services firms. Our customers include half of the G20 and AmLaw 100 firms as well as large global corporations and Big Four accounting firms. Our innovative software transforms how professionals work and enables firms to deliver more value to clients while protecting profitability. We empower firms to reduce costs, improve profitability, and better compete by:

Improving relationships with clients by delivering predictable fees and beneficial insight into work performed

Empowering professionals to price and budget while leveraging modern profitability metrics

Evolving to a need to know security model without impacting workflow

Simplifying iManage administration and improving user adoption of electronic files

Our teams work primarily from offices in London, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Our more than 255 customers range in size from small firms with just a handful of users to those with more than 14,000.

Prosperoware customers include: Akin Gump, Goodwin Procter, Baker Botts, Hill Dickinson, Berwin Leighton Paisner, DLA Piper, Duane Morris, Hughes Hubbard & Reed, Sheppard Mullin, Comcast, and NBCUniversal.
If you can come in every day with heart, still touched and affected by what you do, whom you see, then this is where you should be.

One day 22 years ago, Venus Perez came home from work in sobs. Not because she didnt enjoy the skilled nursing career shed recently begun, but because shed witnessed something shes never forgotten: an elderly woman waiting excitedly for her family to pick her up for Thanksgiving dinner. They never came.

That was back in the day, said Perez, new director of nursing at GreenFields Briarwood Healthcare Center in Geneva. But I realized then and there that seniors need a friend, an advocate, and Ive never looked back. GreenFields, a continuous care retirement community (CCRC, where residents can remain on the same campus if and when their care needs change), manifests a philosophy Perez believes in passionately.

I love the concept of a CCRC, where residents can age in place, maintain friendships, and not have to transfer into a whole new situation. Perez, who joined the Briarwood neighborhood late last year, would like the same for herself as a staff member. I want to set my roots here, she said. GreenFields is a Friendship Senior Options community and thus part of a very personable organization. They want to know every employee, and they foster an environment of teamwork and support, where every discipline is helping our residents and one another.

Encompassing independent living, assisted living, memory care, rehabilitation and skilled nursing, GreenFields is not the last place to go before you die, stresses Perez. Its a place where lives can be enrichednot just medically, but socially and psychologically, too. With the primary goal of getting residents back to independent living, Perez says she is committed to hands-on care. Motivating residents to go out and experience all there is to see and do in their surroundings is what keeps her engaged and in love with her work.

After working in cost accounting, Perez began her nursing career as a floor nurse, then a night supervisor, then director of nursing at two prior care communities. At Briarwood, she manages the entire nursing staff and oversees the care of all residents. I appreciate that my position allows me to effect change. I never thought Id go into nursing care, but my heart is completely in it, she said. It has to be. If people go into nursing for something other than genuine love and care for people, they should find something else to do. If you can come in every day with heart, still touched and affected by what you do, whom you see, then this is where you should be.

The mother of three daughters, one who is entering the health field, Perez remarked that her girls never had to be coerced into maintaining regular contact with their grandmother. They did it all on their own; it was just natural for them to reach out to her, said Perez. Clearly, the apples didnt fall far from the tree. I love what I do and where I am. The only reason I would leave GreenFields is if my husband and I moved somewhere warm!

GreenFields is an exceptional LifeCare community offering an ideal location, a wonderful retirement lifestyle. GreenFields offers independent living, assisted living, memory support, rehabilitation and skilled nursing, with the most comprehensive plan available for long-term care if ever needed. For additional information, visit http://www.GreenFieldsOfGeneva.org.
Kendall Ademu-John, HR Specialist - Diversity Outreach at PSEG, presenting resume writing skills to veterans at the PSEG Training Center in Edison, NJ

Dozens of military veterans were given a unique opportunity to receive job searching assistance from high level employees at the Military Veterans Skills and Career Workshop this past week in Edison, NJ.

GI Go Fund partnered with PSEG to give veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan an opportunity to meet with fellow veterans who serve in management positions at each of these companies to learn more about finding employment. The workshop showed veterans how they can translate their military experience into a civilian career, provided assistance with veterans looking to improve their resumes, and gave veterans the chance to share their transition stories with other veterans who have successfully transferred their military background into steady employment.

We are very excited to have the chance to give these veterans the tools they need from the best of the best, said GI Go Fund Executive Director Jack Fanous. Our priority is finding veterans great jobs for the new age economy, and there is no better way than to work with companies like PSEG who, thanks to leaders like Diana Drysdale and Sally Nadler, have done amazing things for veterans. We want to make sure we not only help veterans translate their skills, but do so in a way that will attract them to the top companies, and we will continue to find new pathways to get veterans into the jobs of the next generation.

For the veterans that were part of this event, they will have the opportunity to utilize the skills they have learned at the GI Go Funds upcoming Newark Job Fair at NJPAC on April 12, where they will have the opportunity to speak with over 50 employers from all across the region who are looking to hire veterans.

GI Go Fund is committed to linking veterans to the best employment opportunities and support to find them a steady, solid career. Workshops like these have been a staple of the organizations efforts to help veterans better prepare for the job hunt, working with other corporate leaders like Johnson & Johnson, Ernst & Young, Citi, and Prudential to provide resume writing and job interview assistance to young vets transitioning home, and will continue to hold these workshops numerous times throughout the year.

Special thanks to Diana Drysdale, President of Renewables at PSEG, Sally Nadler, Manager Workforce Development, and Kendall Ademu-John, HR Specialist - Diversity Outreach, for making this event a success.

About GI Go Fund

GI Go Fund is an organization on the cutting edge of offering support to veterans, providing veterans with innovative ways of finding employment, securing their educational and health benefits, as well as providing aid and assistance to low income and homeless veterans. Since their founding, the organization has helped tens of thousands of veterans improve their lives and give them the capacity to provide and care for their loved ones. For more information, visit http://www.gigofund.org.
Accern Vigilant Platform My investment strategy uses fundamental analysis, but Accern makes it much easier to pick the right times to enter and exit positions, as well as to predict (and thus manage) volatility, says Igor Rivin, Managing Director of Samsara Investment Partners.

Accern, a NYC-based financial technology startup, today announced the launch of an intuitive and advanced visual social analytic platform called Accern Vigilant. Aimed to disrupt institutional investing and research, Vigilant is the first of its kind which uses a combination of proprietary and 3rd party language processing technologies to scan over 20 million news and blog sites in real-time, and actively alerts users on critical situations that could affect their portfolio. As a visual analytics platform with interactive charts, such as word cloud, heat map, sentiment trends etc., and sophisticated visual filtering capabilities, Vigilant help users drill down into stories that matter. Accern has partnered with text analytics leader Lexalytics to provide investor sentiment trends and insights on social data related to US public equities. Vigilant is the third product in Accerns portfolio, which already has Alpha Stream, a real-time institutional data feed, and Alpha One, an aggregated daily feed for retail traders.

Many portfolio managers are astonished by the intuitiveness of the platform. The ability to search, aggregate and visualize information from millions of articles gives enormous power to investors seeking to conduct research and make investment decisions, says Kumesh Aroomoogan, Co-Founder and CEO of Accern. From big data architecture and analytics to interface design, we have made significant technological advancements and packaged it into one platform -- Vigilant. We provide institutional investors and equity researchers the ability to seamlessly interact with millions of articles coming from all over the web, and generate trading insights and opportunities.

Vigilant comes with a suite of analytics, monitoring and research features. Allowing the users to create portfolios, and alerts based on financial events, media sources, market sentiment, exposure of information etc., Vigilant will attract investors who want to stay updated about every news piece, blog post or even a Wall Street rumor.

My investment strategy uses fundamental analysis, but Accerns data makes it much easier to pick the right times to enter and exit positions, as well as to predict (and thus manage) volatility, says Igor Rivin, Managing Director of Samsara Investment Partners.

Utilizing social analytics in investment strategies has received a lot of attention in recent years. However, investors often fear about the excessive amount of spam and irrelevant information on the web, and basing trading decisions on this. Finding relevant and actionable information from millions of real-time streaming social data is one of the major issues institutional investors are currently facing.

Accern has deep experience and expertise in Machine Learning, said Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics. We are thrilled to partner with their team and provide sentiment analysis processing to uncover trends and insights so that institutional investors can maximize their opportunities and make informed decisions.

We have built an extensive filtering mechanism that helps cancel out 99% of the spams our systems are exposed to, says Anshul Vikram Pandey, Co-Founder and CTO of Accern. Talking about the details of Accerns filtering mechanism, he adds, To provide our clients with only actionable information, we use a range of machine learning models using ensemble learning, over 100+ noise patterns, semantic analysis, relevancy determination, and our proprietary finance-focused dictionary. As these components are dynamic, they improve with new data they are exposed to, forming one of the worlds most sophisticated filtering mechanisms for finance.

Another major problem that institutional investors have is determining how reliable the information coming from social media or a public news and blog sites are. There are many instances where false rumors have been released on the web which cost institutional investors major losses.

Accern has built the worlds first social ranking algorithm which determines the reliability of a source or an author based on how fast they can release certain types of stories, and how contextually similar stories get republished by other media outlets  essentially showing a sign of reliability.

Other key metrics that Accern provides include saturation and impact, which predict the exposure of certain information on the web, along with probable impact that story may have on the stock prices of the mentioned companies.

About Accern

Accern provides social analytics solutions to the financial service industry to support trading, investment, and research. With the industrys most comprehensive collection of 20 million news and blog sites, Accern utilizes a combination of both proprietary and 3rd party natural language processing and machine-learning algorithms to derive feature-rich analytics in real-time. Accern has developed one of the worlds most sophisticated machine learning based filters for finance to provide institutional investors and researchers information that matters. Accern is headquartered on 110 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005. For more information, please visit http://www.accern.com, email info(at)accern(dot)com or call 1-347-256-8460. Follow Accern on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Lexalytics

Processing billions of unstructured documents every day globally, Lexalytics is the industry leader in translating text into profitable decisions. Lexalytics deploys state-of the-art cloud and on-prem text and sentiment analysis technologies that transform customers thoughts and conversations into actionable insights. The on-premise Salience and SaaS Semantria platforms are implemented in a variety of industries for social media monitoring, reputation management and voice of the customer programs. Based in Boston, MA, Lexalytics has offices in the US and Canada. For more information, please visit http://www.lexalytics.com, email sales(at)lexalytics(dot)com or call 1-617-249-1049. Follow Lexalytics on Twitter and LinkedIn.
"Closing the funding gap for early-stage startups is critical, and CRV is an important step in that direction.

Hatteras Venture Partners and Carolina Research Ventures, LLC (CRV) announced today the selection of Hatteras as the manager of CRVs investment fund. CRV is an early stage venture investment fund created to support companies sourced at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Under the agreement, Hatteras will invest up to $10 million in companies and projects derived from resources of UNC-Chapel Hill. These investments will be separate from other Hatteras funds although they will have co-investors that include Hatteras as well as other venture firms from across the country.

After a thorough selection process involving many applicants, the Carolina Research Ventures board is very pleased to announce the selection of Hatteras Venture Partners as our partner for managing investments from the CRV, said Sallie Shuping-Russell, Chair of CRV. Hatteras has a long-standing and successful track record investing in early stage companies such as G1 Therapeutics, GeneCentric Diagnostics, Spyryx, and Viamet that are based upon outstanding science coming from the University.

Under the agreement, Hatteras will allocate dedicated resources to managing the investments. In particular, Mike Dial, Ph.D., a Principal at Hatteras will be the day-to-day manager for the CRV investment effort. He will be assisted by Christy Shaffer, Ph.D., and Clay Thorp, General Partners at Hatteras. Dr. Shaffer and Mr. Thorp will both serve on the investment committee for the CRV fund with Dr. Dial.

UNC-Chapel Hill is committed to accelerating its research into improved quality of life and economic development for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond. Closing the funding gap for early-stage startups is critical, and CRV is an important step in that direction, said Matt Fajack, UNC-Chapel Hill Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and CRV Board member.

We are delighted to strengthen our outstanding relationship with UNC-Chapel Hill," said Christy Shaffer, Ph.D., General Partner of Hatteras. Mike Dial is a key member of the Hatteras team and has been integral to the success of Hatteras Discovery. Given his experience in company formation and scientific training from UNC-CH, we felt he would be an ideal manager of our effort with Carolina.

Investments from CRV will be made in companies involving UNC-CH technology or the use of UNC-CH resources or personnel. While some investments will be made alongside Hatterass funds, others will be made independently. In addition to involving Drs. Dial and Shaffer and Mr. Thorp, Hatteras will work with the CRV Advisory Board, which will involve venture capitalists and other advisors from across the country in a wide range of disciplines, including health care, IT, computer science and material sciences.

I am thrilled to take on the challenge of creating value from UNC-CH technology with the CRV, said Mike Dial. The University has the powerful combination of significant federal funding as the 6th largest recipient of federal grants in the nation alongside a rich heritage of entrepreneurship. We have already identified a robust pipeline of opportunities for CRV.

About Hatteras Venture Partners

Hatteras Venture Partners is a venture capital firm based in Research Triangle Park, NC with a focus on seed and early stage opportunities. The firm has approximately $350 million under management in five venture capital funds. Hatteras is led by a seasoned team of entrepreneurs and operators and has a long and successful track record of seed and early stage investing and company formation. To learn more about Hatteras Venture Partners, please visit http://www.hatterasvp.com.
Heidi Holquist Team Heidi is a seasoned professional with experience in business development, marketing and communications in the Charlotte area, and were excited to welcome her to the team, said David H. Conaway.

Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP (SLK-Law.com), a full-service business law firm with five offices including Charlotte, recently welcomed Heidi Holquist Team as the chief business development officer.

Holquist Team brings over 22 years of experience in the marketing and communications industry to Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick. In her new role, she will help support the firms community contributions and partnerships, clients and 35 attorneys in business development initiatives within their various practice groups.

Heidi is a seasoned professional with experience in business development, marketing and communications in the Charlotte area, and were excited to welcome her to the team, said David H. Conaway, co-chair of the firms business development and marketing committee in the Charlotte office. We are confident she will be a key factor in our continued growth across all of our practice groups.

Most recently, Holquist Team worked as a regional business development manager within a professional services firm supporting partners across four offices within the firms largest industry practice.

She was a 2012 recipient of the Charlotte Business Journals Charlotte 40 Under 40 Award. Holquist Team served on the board of the Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Charlotte for three years and is a past participant of Cystic Fibrosis Foundations Xtreme Hike. She received her bachelors degree in corporate communication from the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y.

About Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP

Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP is a full-service business law firm with more than 245 lawyers, 60 paralegals and 500 employees in five offices: Toledo and Columbus, Ohio; Tampa and Sarasota, Fla.; and Charlotte, N.C. In each of its markets, Shumaker is the premier provider of quality legal services to individuals, small businesses, healthcare providers, nonprofits and Fortune 500 and international corporations. Whether it's commitment to clients or work in the community, involvement lies at the core of all Shumaker, Loop & Kendricks initiatives. For more information, call 704-375-0057 or visit SLK-Law.com.
Kelly Dobbs Bunting, Nataliya Rymer, and Rick L. Shackelford from global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP will participate in the Philly Chef Conference, presented by Drexel Universitys Center for Sport and Hospitality Management, March 7, 2016.

Bunting, Rymer, and Shackelford will take part in a panel titled, A Recipe for Disaster: Crises that Can Arise in the Restaurant Industry and How to Respond. The panel will also include Rob Keddie, Executive Vice President, Chief Development Officer, and General Counsel of Garces Group and Mustafa Rashed, Managing Partner of Fallbridge Advisors. The conference is an annual event designed to connect the regional food community and showcase the latest food and beverage ideas through educational lectures and demonstrations.

Bunting, a Labor & Employment shareholder, focuses her practice on class and collective actions involving claims under federal and state law for wage and hour violations, misclassification, overtime, minimum wage issues, and off-the-clock work. She has represented employers in numerous U.S. Department of Labor audits and investigations around the country, in addition to handling federal and state mediations and administrative agency complaints. She also counsels clients on handbook and policy issues, and provides training on a variety of issues, including avoiding harassment, discrimination, and retaliation claims, best practices for managers, HR fundamentals, and anti-bribery law compliance.

Rymer, a Business Immigration & Compliance of counsel, represents clients in a wide range of employment-based immigrant and non-immigrant matters, including professionals, managers and executives, artists and entertainers, treaty traders and investors, immigrant investors, and persons of extraordinary ability. Additionally, she counsels and provides training to clients in connection with matters of I-9 and immigration compliance.

Shackelford, a shareholder in the Los Angeles office, serves as co-chair of the firms Los Angeles Litigation Practice and co-chair of the firms Class Action Litigation Practice. He focuses his practice on complex litigation in numerous fields, including consumer class actions, product liability, and false advertising. Shackelford has successfully defended three major juice companies in federal jury trials in cases brought by competitors alleging false advertising in violation of the Lanham Act. He has also represented several other food and juice makers in consumer class actions alleging deceptive trade practices and false advertising, including challenges to nutrition, ingredient, and health claims made in a variety of media. Shackelford has also defended clients in consumer product liability cases, including Proposition 65 claims.

Tara K. Gorman, shareholder in the firms Washington, D.C. office, also serves as a Drexel University board member.

About Greenberg Traurig Philadelphia

Founded in 1997, Greenberg Traurigs Philadelphia office is home to 31 attorneys and 12 practices including Business Reorganization & Financial Restructuring, Corporate & Securities, Emerging Technology, Environmental, Gaming, Business Immigration & Compliance, Investment Regulation, Labor & Employment, Litigation, Public Finance, Real Estate, and Tax. The Philadelphia office represents clients in the manufacturing, health care, real estate, energy, financial, and insurance industries, state and local governments, professional service, and energy firms, and individuals.

About Greenberg Traurigs Food & Beverage Group

Named a Law360 2016 Food & Beverage Group of the Year, Greenberg Traurigs Food & Beverage team represents a multidisciplinary practice in which members leverage deep experience in the industry to advise clients on transactional, litigation, and regulatory matters. Transactional areas range from product development and distribution, to M&A deals and commercial contracts, as well as import and export agreements. Clients regularly turn to Greenberg Traurig to lead them through bet-the-product and bet-the-company litigation, including claims involving false advertising, consumer protection violations or class actions, and intellectual property disputes. The team also assists clients to avoid investigations or regulatory penalties from the FDA, with advice on compliance for product labeling, safety, recalls, and advertising and marketing reviews.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, multi-practice law firm with approximately 1900 attorneys serving clients from 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. The firm is No 1. on the 2015 Law360 Most Charitable Firms list, third largest in the U.S. on the 2015 Law360 400, Top 20 on the 2015 Am Law Global 100, and among the 2015 BTI Brand Elite. More information at: http://www.gtlaw.com.
OATI is pleased to announce the successful completion of OATI webCARES WEQ-012 Business Practice Standards compliance audit. OATIs third-party auditing firm, Schellman & Company, LLC (SCLLC), an affiliate of BrightLine, examined OATI webCARES for compliance with the NAESB WEQ PKI for ACA standards and the NAESB Accreditation Requirements for Authorized Certification Authorities Business Practice Standards. After a thorough examination, conducted in accordance with Attestation Standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, SCLLC concluded that OATI webCARES is in compliance with the WEQ-012 Business Practice Standards.

The WEQ-012 Business Standards were developed with the input of multiple industry participants through the NAESB standards drafting process in order to establish PKI cyber security standards for use in commercial transactions. The WEQ-012 Business Practice Standards set forth specific qualifications that must be met in order to be recognized as an ACA that is qualified by NAESB to provide PKI services.

OATI is proud to be one of only three NAESB-certified ACAs, said Dr. Sasan Mokhtari, President and CEO of OATI. This certification demonstrates our continued commitment to the highest cyber security standards in the industry.

About OATI

OATI provides innovative software solutions that simplify, streamline, and empower the operational tasks required in todays energy commerce and Smart Grid. With more than 1,600 customers in North America, OATI successfully deploys large, complicated, and diverse mission-critical applications committed to industry standards and stringent NERC CIP guidelines.

OATI (http://www.oati.com) is a leading provider of Smart Grid, Energy Trading and Risk Management, Transmission Scheduling, Congestion Management, and Market Management products and services. OATI is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with an office in Redwood City, California. For more information, please contact sales(at)oati.net.
On Wednesday, March 9, 2016, Pearson is hosting the Ready for Work: Focus on Employability 2016 Summit, at SXSWedu. The summit will support educators and institutions as they develop new strategies for ensuring that students develop the workforce readiness skills requisite for success in todays world of work.

The skills gap is real. Across the world, 290 million young people are out of work and yet, at the same time, almost 40 percent of employers say they cant fill their vacancies. Part of the challenge may be the gap between education and the workplace. According to a Gallup study, while 96 percent of college and university Chief Academic Officers rate their institutions as either very or somewhat effective at preparing students for the world of work, only 11 percent of business leaders strongly agree graduating students have the skills and competencies that their business needs.

Participants will learn more about best practices for creating successful career strategies and networks and cultivating ones personal brand as well as about future trends for discovering their ideal career pathways. The summit will also explore the skills that millennials need to lead the businesses of the future as well as ways to hone a personal pitch for job interviews and career success. In addition, corporate leaders from IBM, LinkedIn and Walmart will share their companies innovative initiatives for helping employees build successful career paths.

Expert presenters include Robyn Bagley, founder and director of Career Path High, an innovative blended learning early college high school; Jaime Fall, director of the Aspen Institutes UpSkill America; Jodi Glickman, CEO, Great on the Job; Sean Kavanagh, CEO, The Ariel Group; Mike Marriner, co-founder, Roadtrip Nation; and best-selling author and award-winning columnist, Jeff Selingo.

In addition, during the networking session, Anisha Srivastava, winner of Pearsons Student Coding Contest and University of Texas-Austin student, will present her winning app, Lightpath; UpSkill Americas Jaime Fall will present highlights from the report Developing Americas Frontline Workers and Pearsons Jodi McPherson will discuss the paper, On Track: Redefining Readiness in Education and the Workplace.

Participation in the summit is included with SXSWedu registration.

WHAT: Ready for Work: Focus on Employability 2016 Summit at SXSWedu.

WHEN: March 9, 2016, 1-5 p.m.

WHERE: JW Marriott Salon 4, 110 East 2nd Street

WHAT: The Summit agenda follows:

1-2 pm: Best Practices for Creating Successful Career Strategies

Panel: Moderator - Jaime Fall, Director, UpSkill America, Aspen Institute; Ron Nash, LinkedIn Author, Founder Jumpstart Academy; Kyle Poll, LinkedIn Education Vertical team; Mike Marriner, Co-founder, Roadtrip Nation

2:15-3 pm: Improving Career Readiness for 21st Century Learners

Presenters: Jeffrey Selingo, bestselling author of College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, and former editor, The Chronicle of Higher Education; Robyn Bagley, founder and principal, Career Path High

3:15-4 pm: Getting the Job: Pitching with Presence

Presenters: Kate Nugent, director of product and training, The Ariel Group

Sean Kavanagh, CEO, The Ariel Group; Jodi Glickman, CEO, Great on the Job

4:15-5 pm: What Employers Are Doing to Help Employees Make Meaningful Progress in Their Lives

Presenters: David Leaser, Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives, IBM Global Skills Initiative; Peter Janzow, Senior Director of Business Development, Pearson Acclaim; Brian Poland, Director, Lifelong Learning & Talent Development, Walmart

5-7 pm: Network With Leading Employability Experts/Poster Sessions

For more information on Pearsons commitment to employability, visit pearsoned.com/employability.

About Pearson

Pearson is the world's learning company, with 36,000 employees in more than 70 countries working to help people of all ages to make measurable progress in their lives through learning. For more information about Pearson, visit http://www.pearsoned.com.

Media Contact: Scott Overland, scott(dot)overland(at)pearson(dot)com, 202-909-4528
Noble Systems We anticipate the advanced inbound call routing and workforce management technologies to be especially impactful for the productivity of our patient-facing customer care, IT solution center and financial services teams. Past News Releases RSS Noble Systems Brings Gamification...

Noble Systems Brings Customer...

Noble Systems Introduces...

Noble Systems Corporation, a global leader in unified contact center technology, reports that Florida Hospital, one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare providers in the US, has expanded the coverage of its Noble Enterprise deployment to include the hospitals customer care, scheduling, imaging, and internal IT support departments.

Florida Hospitals patient financial services department has been employing the use of Nobles inbound and outbound contact management solutions since 2004. The healthcare provider is not only extending the blended contact technology platform to more departments as part of the new deployment, but also adding advanced Noble tools to increase the capabilities of its communication programs  including Noble IVR, allowing patients to navigate self-service voice menus to schedule appointments and make payments, and Noble ShiftTrack WFM, enabling the hospital to generate inbound call forecasts and optimize agent scheduling.

Carlos Escobar, Vice-President, Information Systems at Florida Hospital, said Noble has been a trusted partner of Florida Hospital for over 10 years, supporting our patient financial services programs with the Noble Enterprise platform. We are beyond excited to broaden the scope of our involvement with Noble, adding extra agent support for our patient and internal communications across multiple departments. We anticipate the advanced inbound call routing and workforce management technologies to be especially impactful for the productivity of our patient-facing customer care, IT solution center and financial services teams.

Noble is a leading provider of revenue cycle management solutions for the healthcare industry, and Florida Hospital is setting an example for how to embrace the use of our technologies and increase the capabilities of team members in different departments, with distinct responsibilities, said Chris Hodges, Senior Vice-President, Sales and Marketing at Noble Systems. We are excited to advance the deep relationship that Florida Hospital and Noble Systems have developed.

About Noble Systems

Noble Systems Corporation is a global leader in the customer communications industry, providing innovative solutions for Unified Communications, Business Process Management and Analytics. Tens of thousands of agents at 4,000+ client installations worldwide use Noble platforms to manage millions of customer contacts each day. Noble offers a unified suite of multi-channel inbound, outbound and blended contact processing, strategy planning, and resource management tools for companies of all sizes. Our premise, cloud and innovative premise/cloud hybrid platforms include ACD, predictive dialing, blended processing, recording and monitoring, IVR, messaging, interaction analytics and workforce management. For more information, contact Lee Allum at 1.888.8NOBLE8 or visit http://www.noblesystems.com.

About Florida Hospital

Florida Hospital is one of the countrys largest not-for-profit health care providers with 22 campuses serving communities throughout Florida. Being a not for profit hospital means we are here for something much more important: you. For more than 100 years, we have been profoundly committed to those who seek our care. Weve become known the world over for the expert, compassionate, individualized attention given to the millions who have already passed through our doors, and the million plus patients who visit us each year.

Florida Hospital, a 2,247-bed acute-care medical facility, is a member of Adventist Health System. We serve as a community hospital for Greater Orlando and as a major tertiary referral hospital for Central Florida and much of the Southeast, the Caribbean and Latin America. Adventist Health System operates 44 hospitals in ten states making it the largest not-for-profit protestant health care system in the United States. Visit http://www.floridahospital.com to learn more.
New City, a Gardant affordable assisted living community, is hosting a St. Patricks Day Celebration from 1:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on March 17.

The community, which is located in the historic Goldblatts Department Store at Ashland and 47th, serves low-income older adults, including those on Medicaid, who need some help to maintain their independence.

During the celebration, guests can enjoy music, St. Patrick's Day-themed games and a lunch of corned beef and cabbage.

This event is open to the public; there is no charge to attend.

New City Supportive Living is certified to operate through the Illinois Supportive Living program and operated by Gardant Management Solutions, the largest provider of assisted living in Illinois.

"We provide older adults with a wonderful alternative to a nursing home or to struggling alone at home," said Aisha Burke, Director of Marketing at New City.

The community, which was remodeled and opened last year, combines residential apartment-home living and the availability of personal assistance, help with medications and a variety of convenience and support services.

Residents live in private apartments that feature a kitchenette, spacious bathroom with shower and grab bars, individually-controlled heating and air conditioning, and an emergency alert system.

Certified nursing assistants, working under the direction of a licensed nurse, are on-duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All three meals each day, housekeeping and laundry are among the included services.

"Residents also benefit from all of the opportunities that are available to socialize with friends and neighbors and to participate in activities and special programs," says Burke.

Based in Bradley, Illinois, Gardant Management Solutions operates more than 40 assisted living, senior living and memory care communities that together house nearly 4,000 homes and apartments.

"Our focus," says Rod Burkett, President and CEO of Gardant, "is to provide New City residents with the love, compassion and dignity that they deserve and the help and assistance that they need. Our emphasis is on helping each resident to achieve and maintain as much independence as possible for as long as possible."

Communities managed by Gardant include the Heritage Woods affordable assisted living community in Batavia, Bolingbrook, Chicago, Gurnee. Manteno, McHenry, Plainfield and Yorkville, Illinois.

Gardant, formerly BMA Management, also manages the Heritage Woods assisted living community in Huntley and the St. Anthony affordable assisted living community for older adults in Lansing, Illinois and the Deer Path affordable assisted living community for physically disabled adults in Huntley.

For more information on Gardant Management Solutions and the assisted living, senior living and memory care communities that the company operates, visit http://www.gardant.com or call 1-877-882-1495 toll-free.
security protection for their virtual environments without requiring additional hardware

Bandura, LLC, Secure YOUR World, today announced it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. Members of the TAP program collaborate with VMware to deliver innovative solutions for virtualization and cloud computing. The diversity and depth of the TAP ecosystem provides customers with the flexibility to choose a partner with the right expertise to satisfy their unique needs.

We welcome Bandura, LLC as a valued member of the VMware TAP program, said Howard Hall, senior director, Global Technology Partnering Organization, VMware. This membership means customers can take full advantage of a streamlined virtualization and cloud infrastructure experience. VMware provides an online marketplace, VMware Solution Exchange (VSX), where customers can learn more about Bandura, LLCs collaboration with VMware and our continued goal of developing breakthrough technologies that can transform businesses.

Many companies have virtualized their application environments for cloud deployment, yet their security systems are still tied to hardware, said Dave Maestas, chief technology officer, Bandura, LLC. Through the VMware Technology Alliance Partner program, Bandura will optimize its security products for cloud deployments, providing customers with Bandura's security protection for their virtual environments without requiring additional hardware."

The VSX is an online virtualization and cloud infrastructure marketplace that provides customers with a single point of entry to discover, evaluate, and rate business solutions.

Bandura, LLC product information, collateral and other assets are listed within the online VMware Solution Exchange at https://solutionexchange.vmware.com/store/companies/bandura-llc.

With thousands of members worldwide, the VMware TAP program includes best-of-breed technology partners with the shared commitment to bring the best expertise and business solutions for each unique customer environment.

About Bandura, LLC

Bandura is a cyber security software company, maker of the patented PoliWall security platform, the Firewalls Firewall. The PoliWall platform, using ProACT software, aggregates and risk-scores multiple sources of threat intelligence, feeds into the PoliWall platform and then takes auto-action in real time on over 100 million threats ahead of the firewallreal-time blocking bi-directionally. Bandura, with parent company is the industry leader and innovator of automated and simplified security technologies which significantly reduces cyber risk, saves time and resources. Bandura was established to commercialize security technology developed in part with the U.S. Department of Defense and Banduras parent company, TechGuard Security LLC. Visit http://www.bandurasystems.com and follow us @bandurasystems.

# # #

Bandura Trademarks include Bandura, PoliWall, ProACT, Secure YOUR World Parent Company's Trademark, TechGuard Security

VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word partner or partnership does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.
Hulet hopes his book becomes a childrens classic because of the good, clean fun it features throughout its rhyming story.

While hiking the mountains of Utah, author Paul Hulet came face-to-face with nature  specifically, moose. This experience inspired him to write a poem that later became his first full-length childrens rhyme, Bruce the Moose Is on the Loose (published by AuthorHouse). This year Hulets book is being promoted to a wider reading audience with a new press campaign.

Bruce the Moose lives at the zoo. One day, he goes missing, unbeknownst to the Zoo Keeper, who is supposed to keep tabs on all the animals. The Zoo Keepers friend, a boy who loves animals, joins the Zoo Keeper in a fun adventure through the park and other parts of town.

Hulet wrote Bruce the Moose Is on the Loose to teach children that reading can be fun and educational at the same time. One of the parents who bought his book told Hulet she had to take the book away from her 6-year-old daughter because it became such a bookshelf favorite.

Hulet hopes his book becomes a childrens classic because of the good, clean fun it features throughout its rhyming story.

Bruce the Moose Is on the Loose

By Paul Hulet

Softcover | 8.5 x 8.5 in | 36 pages | ISBN 9781420802122

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Paul Hulet was born in Wendell, Idaho, and grew up on a farm learning the value of hard work and good, clean fun. He received an associate degree from Ricks College. He spent two years in Japan on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Shortly after graduating college, he worked various labor jobs before returning to college to complete his bachelors degree in business administration from Weber State University. In 1985 he started working for Hill Air Force Base, from which he has recently retired after 31 years of service. In 2004 he earned his MBA. His son, Scott, created the illustrations for Bruce the Moose Is on the Loose, Hulets first book.

AuthorHouse, an Author Solutions, LLC self-publishing imprint, is a leading provider of book publishing, marketing, and bookselling services for authors around the globe and offers the industrys only suite of Hollywood book-to-film services. Committed to providing the highest level of customer service, AuthorHouse assigns each author personal publishing and marketing consultants who provide guidance throughout the process. For more information or to publish a book, visit authorhouse.com or call 1-888-519-5121. For the latest, follow @authorhouse on Twitter.
"Providing both sales and marketing teams the best tools to help them succeed is very important to Mailjet" says Stephen Bauer, Director of Business Development at Mailjet

Lead Liaison, the leading provider of sales and marketing automation software to the mid-market, and Mailjet, the all-in-one email service provider, announced a technology partnership to offer customers more choices when delivering their email marketing campaigns. The partnership provides mutual customers with a comprehensive sales and marketing automation front-end platform combined with a robust email deliverability engine.

By integrating the two technologies, customers can connect a multitude of sales and marketing features offered in Lead Liaisons Revenue Generation Platform with Mailjets suite of tools to deliver, track and optimize email sending. Lead nurturing, lead qualification, lead distribution, extensive website visitor tracking, and website conversion and engagement are just a few of the many tools included in Lead Liaisons software - all of which work together in harmony. With the integration of Mailjets all-in-one email deliverability platform with Lead Liaisons front end, customers can create sophisticated, intelligent, automated workflows and target high potential customers worldwide with email. Connect your Mailjet account to Lead Liaison and use Mailjet to track your email campaign statistics and boost your chances of landing in the inbox. Mailjets solution caters to both large and small businesses, SMEs and startups, adapting to each companys mailing volume and characteristics.

Theres also a subtle, yet incredibly unique feature that gives customers a high degree of flexibility with their marketing campaigns. Now companies can deliver marketing automation emails through Mailjet, on a campaign-by-campaign basis. This level of flexibility is unparalleled in the market. Theres no other marketing automation provider that gives customers the flexibility of delivering email through different SMTP relay providers, on a campaign-level. This is important as customers might have strong relationships or accounts with SMTP providers, such as Mailjet, and want to sustain that relationship. It also gives customers the flexibility they need to vary email delivery based on campaign type, resulting in more choice and freedom, instead of being restricted to a marketing automation vendors internal email delivery system.

The integration also supports and strengthens Lead Liaisons accelerated growth in european markets. Mailjet has a strong market presence in Europe and surrounding countries. Mailjet is the European leader in email deliverability and offers user interfaces, documentation and 24/7 follow-the-sun customer support in 4 languages (English, French, Spanish, German). With EU-based servers, Mailjet simultaneously complies with data privacy regulations in Europe, North America and abroad.

Providing both sales and marketing teams the best tools to help them succeed is very important to Mailjet. says Stephen Bauer, Director of Business Development at Mailjet. This is why we are very excited to provide Mailjet as an integrated email deliverability platform on Lead Liaison, a leading provider of sales and marketing automation software.

For more details on the integration reference the Lead Liaison and Mailjet partner page.

About Mailjet:

Mailjet is a powerful all-in-one email service provider that not only enables customers to send transactional and marketing email to their contacts but also better understand them, email after email. Mailjets intuitive tools and powerful APIs give senders the right amount of analytics to get the most value from each contact, for each campaign, and to reach each inbox. Founded in France in 2010, Mailjet is a market leader for sending marketing and transactional emails and serves more than 32,000 customers globally.

About Lead Liaison:

Lead Liaison is a cloud-based sales and marketing automation solution that helps businesses accelerate sales by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and additional website engagement tools to boost sales effectiveness. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).
In addition to lending our support to the off-road community and the causes it champions, this provides our locally-based engineers the opportunity to do research and development in a real world off-road environment.

Transamerican Manufacturing Group (TMG) will be represented with a significant presence when the 54th annual Tierra Del Sol Desert Safari (TDS) kicks off this Friday. The TDS Desert Safari happens March 4-6 in Thermal, California with trucks, Jeeps and 4x4s camping, running trails, raising funds for off-roading causes and awarding over $100,000 in prizes. TMG brands including Poison Spyder, Smittybilt and Pro Comp will join vendors in donating multiple products to support the annual raffle held over the weekend.

Presented by the Tierra Del Sol 4 Wheel Drive Club of San Diego, this years event is moving the location to private land overseen by the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian reservation. TMG will have vehicles on display including the popular race Jeep known to fans as Crispy. Last month, Crispy earned the distinction of becoming the first full-bodied Jeep JK to complete the grueling King of Hammers off-road race. Poison Spyder will have substantial visibility as the sponsor of Saturday nights fireworks show in addition to their contribution of over $3,000 in parts for the events raffle.

The raffle begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday March 5, with entrants vying to win parts and accessories for their Jeep 4x4 s, trucks, pre-runners, quads and ATVs. Attendees will be participating on trail runs ranging from wild to mild including hilly, rocky and sandy stretches of terrain and narrow sections ideal for side by sides. The family-friendly event welcomes children with camping, fireworks and kids activities.

The TDS Desert Safari is a chance for adventurous enthusiasts to explore picturesque scenery behind the wheels of their 4x4s, says Chloe Eady, TMG Brands Marketing Manager. In addition to lending our support to the off-road community and the causes it champions, this provides our locally-based engineers the opportunity to do research and development in a real world off-road environment.

A new headquarters location for the popular event has been established this year in response to temporary environmental issues on State Parks lands. The Southwest has been a lightning rod for recreational land use issues with huge swaths of mostly desert terrain in contention, including the recent designation of 1.8 million acres of California and Nevada desert as National Monuments by President Obama.

About the Tierra Del Sol Four Wheel Drive Club of San Diego

As a not-for-profit, the Tierra Del Sol weekend is the clubs marquee annual event. The clubs origins stretch back to desert Search and Rescue teams working in the area approximately 100 miles east of San Diego. The Tierra Del Sol Club was formed in the 1940s and dedicated to exploration and adventure. Today, the club works to raise money for its events, to protect off-roading areas and maintain local trails.

About Transamerican Manufacturing Group

Transamerican Manufacturing Group (TMG) brands include Smittybilt, Pro Comp, Rubicon Express, Poison Spyder, G2 Axle & Gear, Trail Master Suspension and LRG Rims. As manufacturers of innovative aftermarket truck parts and Jeep accessories for four-wheel drive vehicles, TMG brand products are popular with off-road enthusiasts. To learn more about TMG brands, please visit transamericanautoparts.com.
Donald Trump Scores Huge Wins On Super Tuesday

Trending News: America Just Made Donald Trump A Really, Really, Happy Man

Why Is This Important?

Because all the other GOP candidates got Drumpfed.

Long Story Short

Donald J. Trump, and his new sidekick Chris Christie, have gotta be doing a little jig after winning the majority of voting primaries on Super Tuesday, but Ted Cruz's domination of Texas is a rainstorm on their parade. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton did well enough to solidify her frontrunner status for the Democrats.

Long Story

A stupid number of candidates, epic fails and inappropriate disses and here we are, Super Tuesday 2016, the biggest night on the presidential primary calendar with the most delegates up for grabs and we have a winner, but not a sure-fire nominee, yet. Donald Trump pulled in major victories in Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts, Alabama, Arkansas, Vermont and Georgia, effectively making people against him completely and utterly terrified that he might actually become president.

However, Trump didn't get the clean sweep he wanted. Ted Cruz' wins in the delegate-rich state of Texas and in Oklahoma mean that the fat lady hasn't yet sung.

Without the sweep, who was there to cheer up ol' Donnie J? Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and the new Robin to Trump's Batman who recently threw his support behind the sensitive billionaire. But while Christie has put his backed Trump with his words, his face tells a different story.

There's just one question on Chris Christie's mind. #SuperTuesday pic.twitter.com/sSDnCXgxBE  The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 2, 2016

Marco Rubio is still around. The robot > Terminator poked his head in the competition just enough to make this a three-headed monster of a nomination race by winning in Minnesota, but he's still an outside shot.

Alaska was the only state not called by 12:30 E.S.T

As for the Democrats, with a whopping 80%+ win for its resident senator, Vermont wet all in for Bernie Sanders, but the 74-year-old can't be waking up on Wednesday too ecstatic about his chances at the nomination. Despite claiming additional wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Oklahoma, Sanders significantly trails Hillary Clinton in the number of delegates following Super Tuesday, particularly after losing a heartbreakingly close contest in Massachusetts. Clinton also won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia solidifying her bid for a new job at the White House.

America never stopped being great. Our mission is to make America whole.https://t.co/bV85jaRoCO  Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 2, 2016

We're almost out of the primary woods and into the terrifying badlands of the election, folks! The next states to vote will do so on March 5.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Do Cruz and Rubio have anymore juice in the tank for one last push to stop Donald Trump?

Disrupt Your Feed

It ain't over till the fat guy sings (that wasn't a diss against this protestor, we can't all be as rude as Trump).

Drop This Fact

Even though Trump got roughly 40% of the delegates on Super Tuesday, Cruz and Rubio got over 50% combined, according to Sean Davis of The Federalist.
RenegadePBX by VoIP Supply Allowing them to choose a product that is fully customize-able and has been manufactured within the United States offers them the security and dependability of a quality product.

VoIP Supply, LLC. North Americas leading online VoIP solutions provider, has released RenegadePBX by VoIP Supply, their newly branded line of PBX appliances. Offering three open-source models with multi-platform compatibility, VoIP Supply maintains its position as the leading VoIP solutions provider.

In early 2015, CEO Ben Sayers saw a need in the current VoIP market for a simple, universal, and unique appliance that would meet the demands of a growing industry. "With our RenegadePBX lineup, we are able to provide our customers with an affordable solution for VoIP that allows them the freedom to choose the model that best fits their needs." said Ben Sayers, Founder and CEO of VoIP Supply. "Allowing them to choose a product that is fully customizable and has been manufactured within the United States offers them the security and dependability of a quality product."

With three open-source models, the RenegadePBX mini, 1U, and Pro, VoIP Supply has manufactured these "made in the U.S.A." appliances to meet the complex needs of businesses ranging from SMB to Enterprise.

Along with the recent launch of the CloudSpan MarketPlace, the RenegadePBX series of appliances now completes VoIP Supply's vision of continuing to incorporate quality VoIP hardware with integration into the VoIP cloud market place.

For more information about the RenegadePBX appliance line, please call 800-398-8647 or visit VoIP Supply online today.

About VoIP Supply

VoIP Supply, LLC (http://www.voipsupply.com) is your trusted source for everything VoIP; from our large selection of name-brand hardware to our CloudSpan Marketplace. VoIP Supply provides you with a fully staffed inbound call center with licensed, certified and highly trained VoIP experts that can help you with any problem you might have. Whether you are a home user, business, reseller or service provider, VoIP Supply has the products, experience and expertise to make your deployment a success.

VoIP Supply is a three-time Inc. 500/5000 honoree, listed by Business First as one of WNYs Most Admired Companies, as well as being consistently ranked one of Western New York's Best Places to Work. VoIP Supply is also the first Certified B Corporation in Western New York.
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.
Its too early to say where it will end, but for now it appears that an Illinois third party has begun to jimmy the lock the major parties have on Illinois election process.

A federal judge Monday threw out an 84-year-old law, and the only one like it in the nation, requiring that Illinois third parties must field a full slate of candidates before any of its candidates can be on the ballot.

U.S. District Judge Andrea Woods order permanently barring Illinois from enforcing an unconstitutional law is worth celebrating. Though wed urge ballot access proponents to refrain from doing cartwheels just yet. Those in power with an interest in staying there are almost certain to appeal the Chicago-based jurists ruling.

Even so, her 12-page opinion in the 2012 lawsuit by the Libertarian Party in Illinois represents significant legal progress in the effort to pry open the virtual lock Democrat and Republican leaders have clamped on Illinois election ballots. Only those in power would argue that the duopoly theyve created by law, rule and court precedent has led to better government.

Why full-slate is unconstitutional

Judge Wood attacked both the fundamental unfairness of the full slate requirement and raised concerns that the Illinois Election Code places a burden on the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of new parties, their candidates, and their supporters which is not shared by established parties, their candidates and their supporters.

The burden of fielding a full slate of candidates is particularly onerous for small parties, who must not only find a candidate for, say, a county board seat, but for every other office. As Judge Wood noted, fielding a full slate can be difficult even for established parties, as the empty slots in a number of Democrat and Republican Party March 15 primary races in our own community illustrate.

Judge Wood also warned against unintended consequences of the law. For example, she wrote, Requiring a new political party to field candidates for each and every position so that it can appear on the ballot for even one position could encourage new parties to enlist strawmen candidates -- who may be uninterested or unqualified to run for their designated positions -- just to fill empty slots. It would do more than encourage, it would seem to require it given how onerous the burden of filling the ballot would be on new parties.

The judge acknowledged, as we do, that it shouldnt be too easy to get on the ballot or voters would be confronted by hundreds of names at the polls. But the standard for access should be fair for all. Under this law -- and a number of others in Illinois, including draconian signature requirements for candidates and ballot issues -- it is not.

What this ruling means

The ruling initially could mean that more names and parties will appear on county ballots in November, plaintiffs attorney David Schoen says. The hope, however, is that the full-slate ruling will have a broader and deeper impact since Judge Wood appeared to be taking a stand against a nationwide tendency of established parties to erect barriers against small ones.

I think (her ruling) is clearly intended to send a message that these are fundamentally important rights, the Associated Press quoted him as saying. The little guys should not always get shut out by the Democrats and Republicans.

Yet, nowhere in our constitutions, state or federal, is politics limited to Democrats or Republicans. Nor is that what government is supposed to be about.

As John Adams, warned in 1789, There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

Despite such apprehension, the two-party system HAS often served us well. These days, however, that duopoly is under fire around the nation.

The reasons are many and varied, but we are convinced one of the major ones is the belief by those in power that they have the right to choose who governs, not the voters.
A rich cheese sauce, studded with classic partners ham and peas, coats pasta in a way that's sure to please. A wine with a refreshing profile is what you'll want to wash it down.

Make this

Cheese tortellini with ham and peas

Cook 3 packages (9 ounces each) cheese tortellini in plenty of well-salted boiling water. Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add 2 chopped shallots; cook 1 minute. Stir in 1 1/2 tablespoons flour; cook, stirring, 1 minute. Add 2 cups warm milk; cook, stirring, until mixture is slightly reduced and thickened, 10 minutes. Add 10 ounces frozen peas, 3/4 pound cubed cooked ham, 3/4 cup grated Parmesan, 1/2 cup chopped parsley, and salt and red pepper flakes to taste. Drain pasta; stir into the sauce. Makes: 6 servings

Drink this

Pairings by sommelier Ryan Arnold of Lettuce Entertain You restaurants, as told to Michael Austin:

2014 Bisci Verdicchio di Matelica, Marche, Italy: Verdicchio is one of the most underrated white grapes in Italy, and this wine is from a largely unexplored region. It is dry, crisp and medium-bodied with aromas of spring flowers, green apple and quince. For the rich, cheesy pasta, this Verdicchio delivers the freshness and balance needed.

2014 Massican Annia, Napa Valley, California: A blend of the three notable grapes in Italy's Friuli region: tocai friulano, chardonnay and ribolla gialla. Annia carries aromas of lemon peel, dried herbs and green almond, which will match the peas and chopped parsley in the dish. The chardonnay brings weight, which will match the texture of the dairy, and the tocai friulano brings acidity, which adds freshness.

2012 Vietti Barbera d'Alba, Tre Vigne, Piedmont, Italy: Barbera from Piedmont has an abundance of bright red fruits, cherry and strawberry, which are all balanced with refreshingly high acidity. This light-to-medium-bodied version is bright and lively, which will help balance the richness of the cheese sauce.
A GoFundMe page has been created to raise money for a Davenport family who lost their 3-year-old son in a crash Sunday.

By Tuesday evening, more than 500 donations had poured in to the crowdfunding website -- gofundme.com/mtswdynw -- to surpass the initial goal of $20,000 to support the family of Braddock R. Shovlain. The page, which included a photo of the smiling, blond-haired boy, had been shared more than two million times by Tuesday evening.

Authorities said the 3-year-old was hit by a vehicle about 3 p.m. Sunday while playing in the parking lot of All Saints Catholic School, 1926 Marquette St., Davenport. At the time, the boy was with a group of children from All Saints and St. Pauls Catholic School, school officials said.

The child was declared dead upon arrival at Genesis Medical Center East, Davenport.

Police have said the only person in the Chevy Silverado was its driver, but they have not released the driver's name or said whether charges will be filed.

Commenters on the GoFundMe page expressed condolences and offered messages of support to the family, whose children attend St. Paul's Catholic School. "Know that your Wildcat family has their arms around all of you," one comment read.

The page was created to help the family pay for their son's funeral expenses. According to one post on the page, Braddock Shovlain was "a sweet little boy with so much energy," the youngest of four boys and known as "baby doc."

All Saints Principal Jeanne VonFeldt said students were told in simple detail what had happened, with counseling services offered to those who wanted extra support. Arrangements for Braddock Shovlain are pending at Halligan-McCabe-DeVries Funeral Home, Davenport.
A 15-year-old from Rock Island has been charged with attempted murder in connection with a Monday night shooting in Davenport that left a woman in critical condition, according to a news release from the Davenport Police Department.

Police responded at 9:40 p.m. on Monday to the area of Clark Street and Central Park Avenue, near Peterson Park, to a report of a woman in the street with a possible gunshot wound, according to an earlier release from the department. The female victim was transported to Genesis East with life-threatening injuries.

The woman remained in critical condition Tuesday afternoon, according to police.

Detectives still are investigating the incident, according to police. The name of the charged teenager has not been released, and no other information was available late Tuesday night.
Aldo Brown was convicted in October of excessive force. He testified at his trial that he began throwing punches at Jecque Howard only after he realized Howard had a handgun in his back pocket.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall told Brown Wednesday, "We can't have a police community where it's us v. them." She also said his testimony was not believable, but Brown insisted he never lied.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports Brown's attorney, Daniel Herbert, said his shouldn't spend any time in prison and should be commended for a career patrolling a neighborhood wracked by violence.
CHICAGO  When the dash-cam video of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times was made public last fall, many questioned why a Taser wasnt used instead. In fact, radio dispatch exchanges subsequently released revealed that officers had put in a request for someone equipped with a Taser prior to Officer Jason Van Dyke pulling out his gun.

The Taser option makes sense on its face  a painful but theoretically nonlethal way for law enforcement to deal with an erratic person who is refusing to be reasoned with, weaving in and out of traffic and armed with a knife.

And yet filmmaker Nick Berardini is skeptical that a Taser would have actually been used in this case. The reality surrounding the use of Tasers in the field, and how the company that makes them shapes that reality, informs his documentary Killing Them Safely.

Its extraordinarily rare that an officer would use a Taser in the Laquan McDonald scenario, Berardini said by phone. Would it have been a good time to use the Taser? Probably. But it doesnt happen nearly as often as when it is used on the person who is passively resisting or wont sign the back of the traffic ticket.

As Berardinis film notes, in a small number of cases, people have died after being tased. Thats not a possibility police officers are told about when they are trained  they are actually told the opposite. And that training comes directly from Taser International. The film is less an indictment of the technology than of the company itself, specifically its sales and marketing philosophy, which, according to Berardini, has allowed Tasers to serve as an easy shortcut for law enforcement agencies that are none the wiser.

He saw how a Taser death can unfold while working at a TV station in Columbia, Mo.

I was a senior in college at the University of Missouri and a broadcast journalism major, said Berardini, who grew up in Lake Forest, Ill. I had to finish up all these TV classes, where you go and work for an NBC affiliate in Columbia and you do 10- or 12-hour shifts.

And I was at the station when a kid, Stanley Harlan, who was 23, died after being tased during a traffic stop in Moberly, which is about 30 miles north. I was working the overnight shift when he died. We got a call from his mom, who was racing to the hospital and screaming about how the police had killed her son, and that was the start.

We see Harlans death  one of nearly 1,000 Taser-related deaths in North America documented on truthnottasers.blogspot.com  unfold on a dash cam video.

Another notable case spotlighted is that of Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who, after flying to Vancouver in 2007, became disoriented and agitated when he found himself lost in the airport and, because he did not speak English, unable to communicate. The Mounties who responded tased him five times (all of it caught on video by a bystander). He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Berardini includes footage from the subsequent court case. An officer is on the stand, justifying his use of the Taser on Dziekanski, explaining that the man in question was holding a stapler in a combative stance. The testimony is cringe-inducing. A stapler. Can you picture it? Ping, ping, ping, as he fires off staples. It would be comical if the story werent so tragic.

Berardini said police officers are being misled about the amount of danger involved in using a Taser on a person. If thats true, you can understand why officers might reach for their Tasers as an efficient way to do their jobs. Its a lot faster than waiting for an interpreter to arrive.

Interestingly enough, Taser International consented to an on-camera interview, and this makes the film that much stronger. The beauty of being that young, said Berardini, was that I was really unassuming when I contacted the company, and I think thats why they agreed to do it.

Steve Tuttle, the Taser representative with whom he speaks, has an almost gee-whiz demeanor. He is never once defensive. And he makes good arguments. Theres got to be a better way to let technology incapacitate someone without causing death, he says. To the outside observer, were using electricity. That scares people.

(Tuttle, like the companys founders, brothers Patrick and Thomas Smith, has a weird habit of wearing clothing emblazoned with the companys name on it; even the collar of the dress shirt Tuttle wears during his interview has TASER stitched down one side.)

But a police psychologist who testified in the Vancouver case sees the companys marketing as a problem. Taser International has put forward a different model of policing. Now theyre telling police that the best way to police is at the end of a 35-foot wire.

Heres why: Only 2 percent of all arrests are going to use any kind of use of force, said Berardini. Taser knew that they had to control that 2 percent  they had to beat pepper spray, they had to beat batons. Because if officers werent using the Tasers in those 2 percent of circumstances, then there was no way for the company to make money, because the weapons (which can cost up to $1,500 apiece) were so expensive. Theyve always been more expensive than guns.

So what happens is, in order for a department to justify spending so much money on them, they have to be able to be used ubiquitously. And what happened was, the weapons were so effective that they became tools of escalation. They would be used in scenarios that didnt seem appropriate because the officers had been trained by the company  who controls all the training  that they should control the situation first, because there is zero risk.

The film is straightforwardly shot but Berardini has uncovered some terrific footage of police officers using Tasers on one another in an effort to prove that the technology is harmless.

In the beginning, Taser would go to departments, show them how it worked, shock them for half a second, the guy would drop and everybody would laugh, he said. That mentality is why the weapon doesnt seem dangerous. The perception is that they were sort of a comedy gag. The reality is, if misused  especially if used for a long period of time  not only are they dangerous but they are incredibly painful.

And some departments, including one in Michigan, have decided to do away with their use altogether. As one officer puts it: I was a cop before Tasers, and I was just fine. Certainly an idea worth chewing over as the Chicago Police Department gears up to have as many as 1,400 officers equipped with Tasers by June. According to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, every beat car will have one.
CHICAGO  A Cook County judge on Tuesday threw out a petition seeking to knock Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz off the Illinois ballot because the Texas senator wasnt born in the United States.

Lawrence J. Joyce, of Poplar Grove, petitioned the Illinois State Board of Elections in January to have Cruzs name removed from the March 15 primary ballot, arguing Cruz is not eligible to run for president because he is not a natural-born citizen, as required by the U.S. Constitution. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.

Cruzs lawyer, Sharee Langenstein, countered that the senator indeed is a natural-born citizen because American citizenship was conferred upon him at birth by his mother. Langenstein said it is customary for children born to Americans outside the country to receive American citizenship, citing the examples of Arizona Sen. John McCain and late Michigan Gov. George Romney. McCain was born to American parents in Panama and Romney was born to American parents in Mexico.

Ted Cruz became a natural-born citizen at the moment of his birth because it was not necessary to become a citizen through the naturalization process at some point after birth, hearing officer James Tenuto wrote in his analysis. The election board endorsed Tenutos ruling in early February and overruled Joyces objection.

Joyce appealed the election boards decision to the Cook County Circuit Court.

But a Tuesday afternoon hearing before Circuit Court Judge Maureen Ward Kirby never addressed those issues because lawyers for Cruz and the election board successfully argued that Joyce did not fulfill the requirements of election law in filing his request for judicial review.

Specifically, Ward Kirby said Joyce did not properly serve Cruz or the members of the election board with copies of his petition before the court. Ward Kirby said failing to satisfy any of the Illinois Election Code requirements meant she had no legal standing to review his complaint.

Joyce said he was not sure whether he would appeal that decision. Joyce, a supporter of Ben Carson, said his main aim was to keep Cruz from securing the Republican nomination, which may prove a moot point after the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses.

My concern is that if Ted Cruz is the nominee of the party, Congressman Alan Grayson will go ahead with his threat, along with several other Democrats, to keep Ted Cruz off the ballot, Joyce said. Fundraising for Ted Cruz would dry up, his standing in the polls would plummet, he may be forced to resign the nomination.

Had the judge been able to review the case, Langenstein said, she felt confident in their standing about Cruzs citizenship. She criticized Joyces tactics, saying his petition unfairly tried to stymie Cruzs campaign.

This lawsuit was merely a misguided attempt to distract the voters away from the candidate whos the most qualified candidate we have for president, and thats Sen. Ted Cruz, Langenstein said.
BETTENDORF -- Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad on Tuesday said he was disappointed a state panel last week did not advance a new mental health facility in the Quad-Cities.

During a review of the state's economic strength, Gov. Branstad noted a 2-2 vote by the five-member Iowa Health Facilities Council on Feb. 24 that nixed a $14 million, 72-bed, for-profit hospital proposed in Bettendorf by Tennessee-based Strategic Behavioral Health.

One of the council's five members did not attend the meeting.

While Scott County officials supported the facility, representatives from Genesis Health Systems in Iowa and UnityPoint Health-Trinity's Robert Young Center in Illinois opposed SBH's request for a certificate of need to let the company's project advance.

"I know some of the hospitals look at this as competition, but I don't think competition is necessarily bad in this area where mental health is such a huge, important issue," Gov. Branstad said.

"I see this as a critical need," he said. "I am concerned about the fact that, oftentimes during the certificate of need process, the incumbent health care providers are just concerned about competition."

Gov. Branstad said he would like to study eliminating certificate of need requirements for such facilities.

"The idea (of a certificate of need) was to try and control the costs of health care, to prevent maybe expensive investments that aren't necessary," he said. "What it has become, oftentimes, is a situation where incumbent facilities lobby against competition. So a number of states have terminated it (certificate of need)."

Gov. Branstad also noted Tuesday that Iowa's current unemployment rate is the lowest since 2001 and the sixth lowest in the nation. Speaking to business and civic leaders at the Quad-Cities Waterfront Convention Center, the governor said more Iowans are employed now than at any time in the state's history.

He noted, when he took office in January 2011, Scott County's unemployment rate was 7.3 percent. Today, it is 4.7 percent.

"We have really focused on economic development," Gov. Branstad said. There are still challenges facing Iowa's roughly $7 billion budget, he said, including a need for the state to prioritize programs that will add jobs.

He said employers report they can't find enough people with the right skills to fill available jobs. His office's Future Ready Iowa initiative, he said, will focus on aligning education, workforce and economic development efforts with a goal of 70 percent of the state's workforce having education and training beyond high school by 2025.

Gov. Branstad also said Iowa has had great success in renewable energy. The state now produces more ethanol than it consumes in gasoline, he said, and is a leader in biodiesel production with 12 plants.

Iowa also is a leader in wind energy, he said, becoming the first state to generate more than 30 percent of its electricity from wind and projected it will generate more than 40 percent of its energy from wind within five years.
Things are looking up for Mercer County this year when it concerns the budget.

Bruce DeLashmit, with Bellwether Consulting, predicts the county will finish the fiscal year with a surplus.

If the budget follows all the way through, the county will be about $50,000 in the black at the end of the year, he said. Its too early to tell what the end number will be, but were very optimistic.

Mr. DeLashmit said the county was in the red considerably last year, so its a significant change to project the small margin to be left over. He said, Everybody just needs to be accountable for their department  and well come out of this OK.

The board amended the 2016 budget and appropriations on a 6-3 vote. Voting no were Brian Anseeuw-R, Lori Sindelar-R, and Ted Pappas-R.

Questions were raised about an amendment to the budget raising per diem charges from $10,000 to $30,000.

You have to budget for it -- doesnt mean its going to be spent, Chairman Joe Vann-R said.

Mr. Anseeuw said, I know as Republicans we made a promise to the voters we were not taking any per diem, which we havent. Does that still apply at this point?

Mr. Vann said he hasnt taken any per diem and doesnt plan to but will take the board chairman's annual $8,960 salary.

Treasurer Bev Lower said the county had to draw $79,000 on the line of credit to make payroll. She said the first tax distribution will come in June. The board passed an ordinance to allow the transferring of money from the IMRF and Social Security funds to the general fund to avoid using the line of credit and paying interest should the need arise again.

This is not a budget issue we are borrowing against, it is a cash-flow issue, Mr. DeLashmit said. The county does not currently owe to the IMRF or Social Security funds.

The board approved renewing the animal control contract with Joy for another year, to February 2017.

When asked about recent animal control concerns from the village of Sherrard, Mr. Vann said, Weve smoothed over things with Sherrard a bit. He said Sherrard Mayor Delbert Henry and board members attended the last animal control meeting, and we came to an amicable solution; they were happy when they left.

The board also:

- Heard from Jack Boccarossa, Republican candidate for U.S. House, 17th District.

- Approved Joy Road Phase II and III preliminary and construction engineering agreements with Willett/Hoffman.

- Approved Ohio Grove formal contract township bridge

- Approved ordinance to rezone 2.36 acres from agriculture to commercial for Eric Skinner.

- Appointed Dr. Crystal SImpson, DDS, to Mercer County Board of Health.

- Appointed Phyllis Bewley to be the IMRF authorized agent.
EAST MOLINE -- Illinois is still without a state budget, but that didn't stop Gov. Bruce Rauner from calling for increased education spending at Glenview Middle School on Tuesday.

The governor used a tour of the school to say it was time to fund 100 percent of the state aid "foundation level" for schools and eventually to go above that amount.

The foundation level, which has been set at $6,119 per student, is an amount determined by the state that's viewed as necessary to provide an adequate education to students.

However, because of the state's fiscal problems, the state has not met the foundation level for seven years, according to Gov. Rauner. The governor's proposed budget for the 2017 fiscal year would fund the foundation level at 100 percent, but the budget has gone nowhere since it was offered in February.

East Moline School District Superintendent Kristin Humphries said, during the last five years, the state has funded the foundation level at about $5,700, The resulting shortfall to the district is about $5 million, he said.

"It's devastated us," Mr. Humphries said.

About 80 percent of the students in the East Moline School District receive free or reduced lunches, and 25 percent of the students are learning English as a second language, the superintendent noted.

Mr. Humphries said he was "heartened" by the governor's interest in the education system.

I appreciate the governors commitment to fully fund education in his budget proposal, but that does very little to acknowledge the flaws in the way that the state funds education," he said in a statement.

Schools in Illinois are "funded by an outdated formula that creates a system of winners and losers," Mr. Humphries added.

He supports reforms proposed by state Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, that would change state aid funding formulas to give more money to poorer school districts.

"We need a weighted, balanced school funding formula that takes into account local ability to pay," Mr. Humphries said. "I would encourage the governor to get behind the plan and work with legislators in Springfield to implement a new, needbased school funding formula.

But speaking to reporters at Glenview, Gov. Rauner said it would be a "mistake" to move money from some school districts to others, creating new "losers" in the process.

The governor suggested education funding could be increased in Illinois without any new taxes.

"We have $33 billion," he said, referring to all the revenue the state collects. "We've got the money."

The governor gave no indication that a ceasefire is close in his ongoing battle with Democrats in Springfield and particularly Speaker Mike Madigan.

The state has been unable to agree on a budget for the fiscal year that began last July 1, partly because of the governor's insistence that any agreement include anti-union measures that Democrats oppose.

East Moline Mayor John Thodos toured Glenview with the governor and afterwards spoke about how the budget impasse is hurting his city, which now is owed $400,000 from the state for water and sewer bills for the East Moline Correctional Center.

The governor faced some of his toughest question from the middle school students at Glenview. He ducked several questions about Donald Trump, saying he didn't want to comment on individual candidates for president.

One student asked, "They said you're a billionaire, is that true?"

The governor, who is a former chairman of a private equity firm, said he had made "a lot of money" and was proud of that, adding he didn't "inherit any money."

Asked by another student if he supported gay marriage, the governor responded, "That's the law, and I support the law."

Gov. Rauner also said he wanted to provide more support to teachers and talked about how he had worked on investing teachers' pensions during his career in private equity.

"I've been honored as a businessman to work primarily for teachers in my business career," said the governor. "I invested teachers' pension money here in Illinois and around America, generated more than double the stock market returns, for 32 years, so our teachers could have a lot better retirement. I'm very proud of that."
U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-East Moline, is seeking artwork from high school students in Illinois 17th Congressional District for the annual Congressional Art Competition. Submissions will be accepted through March 31, and there is a limit of one entry per student.

There are so many talented young artists across our region, and I highly encourage Illinois high school students to participate in this years art competition, Rep. Bustos said in a news release Tuesday.

This is a tremendous opportunity for students work to be displayed for thousands of Americans to see. Im honored to help feature the work of a young Illinois artist in the U.S. Capitol and look forward to seeing all of the entries," she said.

The Congressional Art Competition, first held in 1982, is sponsored by the U.S. House of Representatives to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of young constituents. One winning piece of art from each House district will be chosen to be displayed for one year in the Cannon Tunnel, which leads from the Cannon House Office Building to the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington. Winners also get two airline tickets to Washington, D.C., to attend a June reception in their honor.

Typically, nearly all the 435 districts participate in the contest. Since 1982, more than 650,000 high school students have been involved with the nationwide competition.

The artwork of 17th District runnersup will be displayed in Rep. Bustos' four offices, including one in Rock Island.

The 2015 winner in her district was Tiernan Smith from Galesburg High School; the 2014 winner was Kamryn Gryp from Pekin Community High School.

To enter, students must submit a digital form through Rep. Bustos website, bustos.house.gov/art-competition, and also send a digital version of their art to Artwork.Bustos@mail.house.gov. All entries will be posted online for the public to vote for the eventual winner.

Accepted art media includes paintings, drawings (pastels, colored pencil, pencil, charcoal, ink and markers), two-dimensional collages, prints (including lithographs and silkscreen), mixed media, computer-generated art and photography.

Each entry must be original in concept, design and execution and may not violate any U.S. copyright laws, including no entries that copy from an existing photo, painting, graphic, advertisement or any other work produced by another person.

Work entered must be in the original medium (that is, not a scanned reproduction of a painting), and it may be up to 28 inches by 28 inches by 4 inches deep, including the frame. Entries do not need to be framed and cannot weigh more than 15 pounds.

Entries must be sent to Artwork.Bustos@mail.house.gov by March 31.
Today is Wednesday, March 2, the 62nd day of 2016. There are 304 days left in the year.

1866 -- 150 years ago: Our city would be almost wholly free of debt now, were it not for the money borrowed to build four bridges across Rock River and one to the Island.

1891 -- 125 years ago: Switch engine No. 6 of the Rock Island lines backed through a broken switch at the foot of 12th Street this morning.

1916 -- 100 years ago: Rock Island voters next summer will be given an opportunity to express approval of the city park and boulevard system, if plans endorsed by the municipal commission materialize.

1941 -- 75 years ago: After hunting 23 days, the cause of a broken water main in the Rock Island waterworks was found. The leak was in a six-inch line that passed through a sewer manhole at 12th Avenue and 45th Street.

1966 -- 50 years ago: Earl Hanson, Rock Island superintendent of schools, was honored at a testimonial dinner last night at the Black Hawk Hotel as the Quad City Man of the Year.

1991 -- 25 years ago: East Moline is asking for gifts. Cash would be nice. The money would go for the items that will make East Molines portion of the Great River Trail more than an asphalt stripe along the Mississippi. Gifts to the city can be put into a fund that can be matched by a state grant. Every dollar donated enables us to get another dollar from the state.
Twenty-six-year-old Jessie Sturm was taken into custody without incident Tuesday morning. Authorities say Sturm had kicked his way through a cell ceiling at the Clark County Jail in Kahoka and eventually walked out the jail's front door late Monday night. It's believed he stole the pickup he was driving when spotted and then chased by Hamilton, Illinois, police, early Tuesday.

The Illinois officers pursued Sturm onto the Hamilton-Keokuk Bridge, which the Keokuk officers had blocked during the morning commute.

He'd been jailed while awaiting a hearing on an eluding charge filed after his September 2015 arrest for a Clark County chase.
Sensing a window closing fast, GOP leaders and elder statesmen toggled through a menu of scenarios but landed on none. Some amplified calls to rally around a Trump alternative, even if that alternative is Ted Cruz, a prickly conservative with few friends in the party.

Others laid out still-hazy plans for a brokered national convention, an option likely to smack of the backroom dealing Trump fans despise. Some floated more extreme measures, talking of breaking from the party and starting anew.

"It's all a play to stall it or try to deny him the nomination," said Neil Newhouse, a GOP pollster. "And the problem with that is no one has the best scenario for how to do that."

The scrambling came as the billionaire candidate racked up commanding victories in seven of eleven Super Tuesday primary contests, and the path to victory for his rivals narrowed. Trump's strength  which stretched from the Deep South to New England  exposed the depths of the divisions within the party, no matter who becomes the nominee in this election.

As Republicans surveyed the wreckage from Trump's surge, some argued there was still a chance to stop him. He was not yet on track to claim the nomination before the party's national gathering in July, according to an Associated Press delegate count. He has won 46 percent of the delegates awarded so far, and he would have to increase that to 51 percent in the remaining primaries.

"Trump had a good night, but he left the door open," said David Winston, a Republican pollster.

The GOP mayhem contrasted sharply with a clearer picture on the Democratic side, where Hillary Clinton on Tuesday locked down solid victories in seven states and was on the path to regaining her status as the inevitable nominee. Rival Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to keep up the fight, campaigning in Maine on Wednesday.

Sanders, a fierce opponent of big money in politics, quoted director and screenwriter Adam McKay, winner of this year's Oscar for "The Big Short" adapted screenplay, who warned about candidates who take major contributions from "weirdo billionaires."

Republicans, meanwhile, looked for a wise man to calm the jitters and point the way.

Mitt Romney, their nominee four years ago, suggested he might try to fill that role. The former Massachusetts governor announced plans to speak on the "state of the 2016 presidential race" Thursday in Utah. Romney has moved aggressively to take on Trump in recent days, saying the billionaire's unreleased tax returns might contain "bombshells." But he was not expected to endorse a candidate or announce a late entry into the race himself.

Some Republican officials have said they would not support a Trump nomination, including Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, but neither offered another alternative.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been approached by "a mixture of people" about being part of a third-party bid, said Jeff Miller, who managed Perry's failed GOP presidential campaign. But Miller said Perry found the idea "ludicrous."

The Associated Press has asked Republican governors and senators if they would support Trump if he becomes the party's nominee. Of the 59 respondents, slightly less than half could not commit to backing him in November.

While his party looked for ways to stop him, Trump was trying to soften hard feelings. House Speaker Paul Ryan's office said the Trump campaign had reached out but the two men had not connected. It noted the speaker also planned to be in touch with other candidates.

If there is a chance of derailing Trump, who did not campaign Wednesday, it increasingly appears to rest with Cruz. The Texas senator came in just 25 delegates behind Trump Tuesday night, although he faces less favorable contests as the race presses on.

Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich also hold out hope they could catch fire in upcoming contests. Each must each win his home state primary on March 15 in order for that approach to have even a sliver of credibility. Rubio trails by double digits in most polls in Florida.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson all but ended his bid Wednesday, saying on his campaign website: "I do not see a political path forward."

Another approach to blocking Trump involves keeping the field crowded through the spring in order to keep his vote totals down. Even if he's winning states, he might be kept short of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination. That could allow Republican leaders to argue at a contested convention that the majority of GOP voters want someone else.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that idea has the most support among those working for opponents' campaigns. Others in the party express concern about the image of the GOP establishment using arcane rules to thwart the will of voters.

There's also little consensus around the party's goals in a contested convention, beyond stopping Trump.

"The goal is this: Let's get to the convention in Cleveland and figure it out there," said Former New Hampshire Gov. John H. Sununu.

Other prominent Republicans called for more drastic measures.

"It may be necessary for men and women of principle within the party to set the self-detonation sequence as they escape the ship to a new party," wrote conservative blogger Erick Erickson.
State Rep. Ken Dunkin, a Chicago Democrat, and state Sen. Sam McCann, a Springfield Republican, face high-stake challenges, primarily for their votes on union-related issues. The races are seen as indicators of the consequences lawmakers can expect when they defy the wishes of their party leaders  House Speaker Michael Madigan and Gov. Bruce Rauner, respectively.

Over three decades in power, Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, has built a reputation for running a disciplined majority that rarely deviates from what he wants by being a prolific fundraiser who rewards loyalty. Rauner, a suburban Chicago Republican, is a political newcomer and former venture capitalist who has vowed to use his wealth to help politicians who support his pro-business agenda, which includes restricting the power of unions in the state.

The races are viewed as a test of Madigan and Rauner's relative strength during their battle over the budget that has left the state without a spending blueprint eight months into the fiscal year.

If Dunkin and McCann lose, "it will make other members of the Legislature less likely to deviate from the party line," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

But if they win, other lawmakers may be more willing to push back against party leadership.

"Here's what I see," Dunkin said recently at a Chicago campaign event, "after we're successful March 15, you're going to see other Democratic members standing up for their constituents by doing what's right for citizens across the state and in their district. They're going to say, 'Oh, wow, Dunkin survived the Mike Madigan wrath.'"

McCann said he knows of Republicans in both chambers who are not voting the way they want.

"They're afraid of the backlash," he said.

Party unity has played a particularly important role during the state's budget stalemate. Dunkin has been the spoiler for Democrats on several key votes affecting union allies, either by being absent or voting against party-led attempts to weaken Rauner's position in negotiations with the state workers' union. McCann has upset Rauner and some other Republicans by voting in favor of that bill, citing the wishes of state workers in his district, which includes Springfield and Jacksonville.

Dunkin's race has practical implications for House Democrats, whose 71-47 advantage over Republicans gives them the power to override gubernatorial vetoes  provided they all stick together.

Dunkin's isolation from his party was evident last month when President Barack Obama gave a speech about collaboration to state lawmakers in Springfield. Obama, who served with Dunkin in the Legislature, said voting with political counterparts doesn't make someone a sellout.

Dunkin shouted, "Yeah!"

"Well, we'll talk later, Dunkin," the president responded, drawing cheers and applause from Democrats. "You just sit down."

Amid this backdrop, money has poured into both Dunkin's and McCann's primaries, and unusual alliances have been formed.

The Illinois Opportunity Project, a GOP-backed group, gave Dunkin $500,000  a staggering amount considering he has received a total of $686,300 in donations. Contributions from organized labor make up a large portion of the $337,550 in donations McCann has received.

Their opponents also are well-funded. McCann's challenger, Republican Bryce Benton, an Illinois state trooper, has received $1.3 million from Liberty Principles PAC, a group with financial support from Rauner. The Madigan-aligned unions are funding most of Julia Stratton's campaign against Dunkin. Stratton, a safety expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has received almost $900,000 in contributions.

"I'm a Democrat. He used to be a Democrat," Stratton said at a recent campaign event.

Some of the money in support of Stratton has been used for negative ads, including television spots critical of Dunkin.

Factoring in expenditures from groups that can't coordinate with the candidates, the Dunkin-Stratton race is poised to become one of the most expensive state legislative primaries in Illinois history, with a total of $2.2 million in contributions, according to figures compiled by Aldertrack.com.

"This is absolutely outside the norm," said Sarah Brune, executive director at the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.
Press release submitted by Moline Public Library

Moline Public Library Receives Second State of Illinois Project Next Generation Grant

For the second straight year, the Moline Public Library has been awarded a Project Next Generation (PNG) Grant. Project Next Generation is an educational technology initiative of Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian Jesse White. The PNG program was established to help provide hands-on advanced technology education to students in grades 5  12, empowering students to succeed academically and eventually as independent, contributing members of society. The value of this training is evidenced through increased confidence of students as they achieve success through project based learning, reinforced abilities and learning as libraries offer technology based experiences for participating students who might not otherwise have access, the enhanced ability of students to deal with life experiences and the future, and ultimately, the coupling of technology education with safe and friendly environments that foster communication with positive role models.

To carry out this mission, the PNG program offers grant funding to libraries to establish relevant after-school training programs that not only provide access to computers, software and various technology devices, but also hire mentors who are crucial to helping students develop self-confidence and pride in their newly acquired skills. Through its Technology Learning Club, the Moline Public Library will use PNG funding to offer sessions on a variety of technology-related subjects throughout the months of March, April, May and June. Students will be able to explore new equipment and technologies and receive training to engage with technology in a meaningful manner to improve digital literacy and help combat the growing digital divide, said Jan LaRoche, PNG Program Organizer for the Moline Public Library. This is especially important in light of the growing number of jobs and careers in the science, engineering, and technology fields. Local area agencies including the Chamber of Commerce, Deere and Company, Western Illinois University and the City of Moline have placed emphasis on the need for a workforce well trained in STEM and problem solving skills. The workshop series will serve to address this need through activities and programs that are both entertaining and educational.

The following is a list of programs offered and their corresponding dates.

Beginner LEGO Robotics will teach students how to assemble and program motorized LEGO robots using LEGO Mindstorm kits. Sessions will take place on Mondays from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on March 7, 14, 21, & 28. Attendance at all four sessions is recommended. No experience is necessary.

Advanced LEGO Robotics offers a chance to learn advanced techniques for LEGO robotics. Sessions will take place on Mondays from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. on April 4, 11, 18, & 25. Attendance at all four sessions is recommended. Previous experience with LEGO robotics is strongly encouraged.

The Renewable Energy workshop teaches students about energy supply, transfer, accumulation, conversion and consumption using LEGO science sets. Sessions will take place on Mondays from 6:00 to 7:30 on May 2, 9, 16, and 23. Attendance at all four sessions is recommended. No experience is necessary.

A Makey Makey workshop will allow students the chance to explore creative ways to use everyday objects in computer programs. Play games, make music, and much more. Sessions will take place on Thursdays at 6:00 on April 7, May 5, and June 2. No experience is necessary.

By Land! By Air! By Sea! is a hands-on chance for students to make vehicles that travel on land, air, and water. Sessions will take place on Saturdays from 3:00 to 4:00 on June 4, 11, & 18. No experience is necessary.

All Project Next Generation Technology Learning Club programming is free and open to students in grades 5  12. Space is limited and registration is required for all workshops. Bus passes will be available to registered participants. For more information, or to register for the program, contact Jan LaRoche at jlaroche@molinelibrary.org or by calling 309-524-2470.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Hiding in Pakistan, an increasingly paranoid Osama bin Laden suspected Iran of implanting a tracking device in his wife's mouth and drafted a will directing much of his $29 million fortune to be spent on jihad after his death.

The details about the al-Qaida leader's life were released Tuesday in a second batch of letters and other documents seized in a May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden at his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The letters detail his rift with militants who later broke off from al-Qaida and formed the Islamic State, as well as plans for a media blitz to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Other correspondence resonates with suspicion and fear.

In a letter to one of his wives who lived in Iran, bin Laden expressed worry that her dental appointment could have allowed Iranians to implant a tracking device under her skin.

"My dear wife," he began. "I was told that you went to a dentist in Iran, and you were concerned about a filling she put in for you. Please let me know in detail ... any suspicions that any of the brothers may have about chips planted in any way."

The Iranian dentist might have used a slightly enlarged syringe to make such an implant, bin Laden wrote in the undated letter.

"The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli," bin Laden said. He asked her to recall the exact date of her dental work, "also about any surgery you had, even if it was only a quick pinch."

In another letter, bin Laden warned about using safe methods for moving money.

"It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip inside it," he wrote.

He said that funds should be shuttled by vehicle but only on cloudy days  an apparent reference to avoiding a U.S. drone strike.

One document is a signed, handwritten will that intelligence officials suspect was written before bin Laden's departure from Sudan in 1996. He claimed he had about $29 million that he planned to divide among some relatives, but the bulk was to be used "on jihad, for the sake of Allah."

It was not clear if bin Laden actually had access to so much money, if he shared the will with anyone, and if his instructions were carried out. Bin Laden's father ran a successful construction company in Saudi Arabia, and the will noted that $12 million of the total was from his brother on behalf of the Bin Laden Co.

The newly released materials reveal an al-Qaida network that was sometimes disorganized behind the scenes and struggling to keep its fighters unified, according to two senior intelligence officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on the documents.

The officials said they portray a leader who was aware of his group's hardships in the field, yet appeared not to fully understand what his organization could actually accomplish.

Abu al-Faraj, head of the medical unit for al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, wrote to bin Laden complaining about medics, who only received a one-month training courses at jihad posts.

"Note the great shortage of specialists, which in some cases makes recovery time longer ... and in some cases, injuries that normally would not be fatal, become fatal to the mujahidin."

There is no mention in the documents to indicate how bin Laden got to the compound in Abbottabad, but one hints that he was clearly tired of living there.

"I say that the latest time we can stay with our present companion brothers is the tenth anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington, after a few months from now; or at the end of this year, 2011."

He was killed before the anniversary was reached.

Al-Qaida was planning a media blitz to mark the anniversary. The group proposed reaching out to certain media outlets to arrange media coverage, but there was no discussion of a planned attack for that day.

Several documents detail a running disagreement between bin Laden and al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq, which morphed into the Islamic State.

Bin Laden disagreed with the level of brutality, such as beheadings, that the affiliate was using and was opposed IS leaders' bent on declaring an Islamic State  something bin Laden argued would fail because it did not have enough popular support and could not shoulder the burdens of governance.

"It is a must to stop any reason that might lead to the spilling of Muslim blood," he pleaded with his brethren. "We must not get overwhelmed by the war, its atmosphere, conditions, hatreds and revenge that might mislead us."
Meng Brings NASA Astronaut To Queens On October 17, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) brought NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim to Queens where he met and spoke with students at Francis...

Celebrating Columbus The Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Queens (FIAO) held their annual Columbus Day parade in Astoria, on Saturday, October 8, during Italian Heritage Month. The...

Russo-Elling Mourned More than 300 first responders lined up on Thursday night to honor FDNY EMT Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, as her body was placed into a waiting...
Novas Fitzy & Wippa landed in the jungle over the weekend for Tens Im A Celebrity, and the long story short Fitzy left Wippa behind to fend for himself. Wippa aint a happy camper.

Novas evolving story arc has you following their adventures to South Africa. From the sheer terror on Wippas face getting on a small plane as they head to the camp, to the challenges he has faced but we reckon the edits of Wippas whinging kind of nail it.

Montage of Wippa whinging in the jungle The best of Wippas whinges Im not even a celebrity! CC: Im A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here Australia Posted by Fitzy & Wippa on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Wippas wife Lisa also called into the show this morning. Hear how it went down as Wippa is still trapped in the camp.
Just after a year being dumped by Nine, Emma Freedman is making a return to the network.

This time its not the Today Show and weather, Its Nine Wide World of Sport for their Sunday morning show.

Emma tweeted the news:

In some news Im excited to be rejoining the team at @WWOS9 & am looking forward to being back hosting on Sunday mornings with the team  Emma Freedman (@emma_freedman) March 1, 2016

Emma re-signed with SCA early last month is currently co-hosting the Hit 30 and Take 40 with SCA Australia wide. As her media profile continues to build, could she one-day land a prime shift in her home base of Sydney?
Her credentials, Olympic Gold, World Record holder  undisputed golden girl of Australian swimming. Nova 106.9s Ash, Kip & Luttsy on the hand?

Susie ONeil was back in the pool for a one-off race against Ash, Kip & the Ginger Slug.

It was a 200m relay to launch The March Charge, a fundraising initiative from The Cancer Council.

Catch the video here and some great commentary by Ray Warren (or is it?).

{youtube}6x-mcPrfh4I{/youtube}
Norfolk Southerns 22-state eastern U.S. network consists of 10 operating divisions spread across three larger operating regionsEastern, Western, and Northern. Effective March 15, 2016, the three regions will transform into two, Northern and Southern. This is one strategy that NS is employing in an attempt to end the increasingly uncivil war in which its engaged with Canadian Pacific and its activist shareholder, Bill Ackman, and their efforts to force a merger.

Meanwhile, CP reiterated its threat to undertake legal action in response to what it claims are recent actions by a number of major U.S. railroads [that] have stated publicly they are working collectively to block  a combination with Norfolk Southern. And it also filed a petition with the STB seeking an expedited declaratory order for its proposed voting trust.

Under NSs revised structure, the Northern Region will include the Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Dearborn, Lake, and Illinois divisions. Greg Comstock, a 41-year veteran of NS operations, will be the regions general manager. The regions chief engineers will be Eddie Otey, Maintenance of Way and Structures, and Mick Ireton, Communications and Signals. The Southern Region will include the Piedmont, Alabama, Georgia, Central, and Pocahontas divisions. Todd Reynolds, a 22-year NS veteran, will be the regions general manager. The regions chief engineers will be Lucious Bobbitt, Maintenance of Way and Structures, and Randall Smith, Communications and Signals. Each of the two consolidated regions will support approximately 1,000 daily crew starts for long-haul train operations.

On Feb. 1, NS streamlined division operations by combining the former Virginia and Pocahontas divisions into a larger Pocahontas Division. This followed other key strategic initiatives including the reduction from three corporate office locations to two, restructuring of the Triple Crown Services subsidiary, integration of the D&H South Line to increase options for shippers, and idling of certain parts of the West Virginia Secondary line, NS said.

The decision to further streamline railroad operations is part of the companys ongoing execution of its five-year strategic plan, announced in December 2015, to enhance operating efficiencies, reduce costs, drive profitability, and accelerate growth, said Executive Vice president and Chief Operating Officer Mike Wheeler. As previously announced, NS is targeting annual expense savings of $650 million by 2020. We are committed to aggressively controlling costs while delivering the high levels of superior service that our customers value. Consolidating our operating regions will generate productivity savings, not only through right-sizing, but also by leveraging advancements in train dispatching technologies that support more fluid and efficient movement of freight across the network. As we continue to execute on our five-year strategic plan, we are confident that these steps will make Norfolk Southern a faster, lower-cost, and more profitable railroad.

In the ongoing saga of CPs attempt to acquire NS, CP announced once again that it is considering all of its legal options in response to recent actions by a number of major U.S. railroads [that] have stated publicly they are working collectively to block CPs efforts to pursue a pro-customer, competition-enhancing combination with Norfolk Southern Corp. It is unfortunate that CP must consider the use of litigation to ensure a level playing field and protect its rights, but the company has concluded that the actions of those competitors should not be allowed to block the creation of a railroad that offers unparalleled customer service and competitive rates that will support the success of the shippers, the industries it serves and the broader economy.

But as Railway Age Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner points out in his blog, CP-NS: Government advocacy is protected speech, CPs threatened litigation has little or no basis: A 1961 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight, 365 U.S. 127), established that bona fide joint activities of competitors to influence public officials do not violate antitrust laws, and that the Sherman Act was not intended to embrace political action, the right of free association, or the right to petition government for redress of grievances. This decision was expanded in a second Supreme Court case in 1965 (United Mine Workers v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657) to embrace bona fide joint activity aimed at public officials and intended to eliminate competition. Ruled the Court once again: Joint efforts to influence public officials do not violate the antitrust laws even though intended to eliminate competition. These judicial edicts have come to be known as the Noerr-Pennington doctrine. CP says the Noerr-Pennington doctrine does not apply to this situation. The Supreme Court did subsequently hold in 1972 that antitrust liability may attach, but only if a groups activities prove to be a sham whose intent is to bar competitors from meaningful access to administrative agencies (California Motor Transport v. Trucking Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508).

If in fact other railroads, as CP states, are working collectively to block a merger, their activities have not prevented CP from gaining meaningful access to administrative agencies. CP on March 2 filed with the Surface Transportation Board a petition seeking an expedited declaratory order confirming the viability of the voting trust structure that CP has suggested as part of its proposed merger with Norfolk Southern. A PDF of the petition can be downloaded from the link below.

Yet even that may go nowhere, as Wilner points out: There is no time limit on the STB having to rule on the request for a declaratory order or provide one. While there is a requirement for public comment and replies to actual merger applications, there is no such requirement for a request seeking a declaratory order. There are other factors in play, as Wilner details in his commentary on the declaratory order:

The thinking from outside the STB is that the STB likely will respond with the general principles that have been stated in STB letters to members of Congress that are posted on the STB website. If the STB does not provide a definitive answer as to whether the voting trust is independent and can be imposed, should CP manage to convince NS stockholders to tender their shares, then CP is back where it started before seeking the declaratory order.

What CP must overcome are allegations that the voting trust it envisions is a sham to put CP in control of NS pending a merger application and decision, which is contrary to the purpose of an independent voting trust. How the CP request is worded and how the STB views it are, of course, all that matter.

If the STB rules against the voting trust framework as proposed by CP, there is not much CP can do, as it is most rare that a federal court overturns an expert regulatory agency decisionespecially where, as in this case, the STB has discretion in the matter rather than a clear mandate in the statute. Numerous Supreme Court decisions have solidified the sanctity of expert regulatory agency decisions, which generally can be overturned only for arbitrary and capricious intent on the part of the regulators.

With regard to the timing of an STB decision on a voting trust declaratory order, it can be expected that U.S.-based railroads will wish to have a say re: the downstream effects; and certainly shippers and other stakeholders (DOJ, DOT, DOA) will wish to have a say. So, the process of considering CPs request for a declaratory could morph into two rounds of comment and analysis and even an oral argument. That becomes time-consuming.

If the Board chooses to entertain the request rather than deny it outright, there is the matter of who votes and when. Republican Begeman is said to wish to return to the Senate, and she currently is in her holdover year. She could depart at any time. With two new seats created by S. 808, and a strong likelihood that nominations and confirmations will not occur until at least mid-2017, there could be three empty seats on the board and just two board members eligible to vote until then. Do they choose to slow things down as there is no time clock on their decisionmaking here? Would only two choose to vote given that there would be three empty seats? Congress, which controls the STB budget, surely has not telegraphed any interest in this merger and most likely wouldnt complain were there to be no movement on the petition.

And if the STB waits for the three new board members, expect all 4 major U.S.-based railroads (and maybe even Kansas City Southern) to be lobbying with all their PACs, political IOUs and abilities to influence nominations of individuals they are confident will oppose a CP-NS combinationand, by extension, approval of a voting trust. And there likely will not be any congressional opposition to such a result.

Further, says Wilner, STB rules permit replies to petitions for declaratory order within 20 days, unless the STB sets another date. A party can ask for more time, but that requires asking the petitioner (CP in this case) to consent to an extension (which I doubt CP would agree to). However, the STB can, on its own, order an extension of time beyond 20 days. How much beyond is conjecture. If no extension is granted, replies to the CP petition would be due March 22 (20 days from March 2). Thus the STB could, in theory, rule by May 6 as requested by CPagreeing to a voting trust or denying a voting trust. Another option for the STB is to decline to institute a declaratory proceeding, which would require an explanation by the STB as to why it declined. The STBs discretion is broad (click HERE for a related article), meaning judicial review of whatever it does is limited and most unlikely.

Another option for the STB is to decline to institute a proceeding, but provide comments such as, for example, that the law is clear and no declaratory order is needed; or that the law does not permit what CP proposes. The ICC and the STB have never approved such a voting trust arrangement whereby the acquiring railroad is placed in trust (as opposed to the railroad to be acquired) and the CEO of the acquiring railroad departs to become CEO of the railroad to be acquired. Expect NS attorneys to call this a contrivance intended to circumvent the statute. CP may cite the CN-IC example, but it is not the same, as Hunter Harrison left IC to go to CN, and CN was the acquiring railroad.
Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here.

OK
As we see a surge in inflation globally, it is now critical that everyone is aware of the implications this will have along every step of the insurance and reinsurance value chain.
The European project was always bound to fail. Europe is a continent riven by geographic barriers. It has spent two millennia not only indulging in massive and constant internal wars, but also keeping written records of them, informing each generation of all the times their forebears were wronged. Over the centuries, great empires have risen and fallen, leaving behind distinct groups of people with different histories, languages and cultures. Any project attempting to fuse these disparate cultures into one monolithic state over the course of just 70 years was by its very nature doomed. It would inevitably encounter insurmountable levels of nationalistic resistance, and eventually the project would stall. That is the point at which we now find ourselves.

Crises abound, and though they all have different facades, each stems from the same underlying issue: Citizens ultimately prize their national and regional identities over the supranational dream. The sovereign debt crisis and repeating Grexit scares, born of the introduction of the euro in 1999, have exposed Northern Europe's unwillingness to subsidize the south. The Brexit referendum, scheduled for June, can trace its roots to the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, and the ensuing wave of Polish migration to the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, amid the ongoing immigration crisis, national leaders are appeasing their populations by bypassing European rules and re-erecting border controls to stem the flow of refugees across their territory. In all of these situations, the same factors are at work: The driving forces within Europe are national in nature, and countries will ultimately put their own interests first.

Today's problems were both predictable and predicted. The next step, however, is harder to foresee. Having identified a system's inherent flaw, one can very well state that it is unsustainable, but unfortunately the flaw provides no guide as to the exact circumstances of the system's end. There are still many different ways that the demise of the European Union's current form could come about. For example, the project could unravel via market forces, as it nearly did in 2012 when investors tested the commitment of the core to save the periphery and found it to be (barely) willing to do so. Or a disaffected populace could elect a nationalist party such as France's National Front, which could either lead the country out of the European Union or make the bloc so unmanageable that it ceases to function. Perhaps the most likely scenario at this point would be for the European Union to survive as a ghost of its former self, with its laws ignored and stripped back to the extent that it holds only a loose grip on its members.

Where Integration Will Persist

The exact circumstances of the European project's end are not yet clear, but there are certain fixed, underlying truths that are sure to outlast the European Union's current form. With them, a forecast can still be made of the shape of things to come. These fundamental realities stem from deeper, unchanging forces that will bring countries together according to their most basic goals; they are the same forces that limited the European project's lifespan in the first place. By looking at these underlying factors, one can predict which countries will emerge from a weakened or collapsed European Union with close ties, and which are likely to drift apart in pursuit of their own interests once they are freed from the binding force of the European Union and its integrationist ideals.

The best place to start is the Benelux region. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have long played a key role in European geopolitics, situated as they are on the flat and traversable land between Europe's two great Continental powers, France and Germany. Indeed, it was in the Benelux region that the European project began. Belgium and Luxembourg formed an economic union in 1921, and talks began for a customs union with the Netherlands in 1944, before the end of World War II. But it was World War II itself that really gave birth to the European Union as the Benelux countries combined with their two flanking giants and Italy to create a bloc that would prevent a reoccurrence of such destructive conflict. In the 70 years that had elapsed since German unification, France had endured three invasions, and all the members of the fledgling union suffered greatly as a result. Today, 70 years later and without a reoccurrence of catastrophic conflict, their strategy appears to have worked.

Thus the Benelux, France and Germany will be motivated to continue their integration efforts. Caught between two economic powers, the Benelux will want to secure their friendship. Meanwhile, France and Germany's rivalry will also draw them together. However, the fateful fact here is that the Franco-German relationship has been one of the major fault lines in the current European Union, meaning that a smaller version of the bloc will be similarly flawed.
When Chancellor Angela Merkel announced in fall 2015 that Germany would adopt an open-door policy toward refugees fleeing the war in Syria, she didn't inform her Christian Democratic Union party or her coalition partners. Nor did she inform the European Commission, the EU's executive, or her neighbors-except her Austrian counterpart, Chancellor Werner Faymann.

Austria, along with Germany and Sweden, has been taking in an unprecedented number of refugees since 2014. But now, with no end in sight to the war in Syria and with the rise of populism in Austria, Vienna has had enough. Austria has introduced border controls and limits on the number of refugees allowed into the country. That was a blow to the EU and to Merkel. Member states are going their own way.

The migrants continue to pass through Turkey, reaching Greece by boat and then trying to make their way up through the Western Balkans to other EU countries, primarily Austria and Germany. This is despite the fact that the EU has offered Turkey 3 billion ($3.3 billion) to deal with the refugee crisis and has promised progress on the country's EU accession negotiations and the prospect of a visa liberalization agreement if Ankara imposes strict controls on its borders with the EU.

So far, there has been little progress. More than 110,000 people have arrived in Greece and Italy in the first two months of 2016 alone. That is in addition to the 1 million asylum seekers who entered the EU in 2015, most of whom ended up in Germany.

Austria's decision to impose limits hasn't stemmed the flow of refugees and migrants either. The country's border has been only half closed. Refugees can still make their way to Germany.

The result is that the strain on Greece and other Western Balkan countries has become intolerable. There are over 12,000 migrants stranded in Greece, a country that is simply unable to cope financially, politically, or socially with the influx. To make matters worse for Greece, its neighbor Macedonia has closed its border. Other countries in the region have built fences on their frontiers because EU member states cannot agree on a common refugee and asylum policy.

Above all, many of these countries now blame Merkel for her open-door policy. Because she will not impose any limits on those entering Germany, it is to Germany that most of the refugees and migrants are heading. And as the majority of refugees make their way across the Western Balkan route, the ability of the under-resourced countries in the region to cope has reached breaking point-which in turn has added more misery for those seeking safety and shelter.

To alleviate some of the pressure, ministers from Austria and nine Balkan countries met in Vienna on February 24 to discuss ways to control the region's borders and check the identities of people seeking refuge. The aim was to make it as difficult as possible for those reaching Greece to leave the country.

Astonishingly, Greece was not invited to the meeting. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was furious, and rightly so. "Greece will no longer agree to any deal if the burdens and responsibilities are not shared proportionally," he told the Greek parliament. "We will not allow our country to turn into a warehouse of souls."

The Vienna meeting showed the helplessness of the EU in its attempts to persuade member states to share the burden of refugees. Indeed, the EU's future ability to implement any kind of burden sharing was dealt another blow.

On the same day as the Vienna meeting, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced he would hold a referendum on the European Commission's plans to introduce quotas for relocating migrants throughout the EU. Hungary was the first EU member to build a high razor-wire fence along its border to prevent any refugees from entering the country. Since then, Hungary and other EU states have refused to implement the commission's burden-sharing measures. Several countries have introduced border controls that are undermining the EU's Schengen system of passport-free travel.

"Nobody has asked the European people so far whether they support, accept, or reject the mandatory migrant quotas," Orban said. "The government is responding to public sentiment now: we Hungarians think introducing resettlement quotas for migrants without the backing of the people equals an abuse of power," he added.

It wouldn't be surprising if Orban's decision to hold a referendum were copied by Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, whose leaders want little or nothing to do with the refugees. If Hungarians vote to oppose burden sharing, it will further weaken the EU's ability to forge any kind of common policy to cope with the refugee crisis.

Merkel, in the meantime, is still betting on Turkey's cooperation. But it would be naive if she and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, and Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, which brings together EU leaders, believed a partial solution to the refugee crisis could be found at an EU summit with Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoA?an in early March.

What all this means is that it falls to Merkel to make a decision on how to move forward in the refugee crisis. Were she to impose limits on the number of refugees and migrants entering Germany, this could relieve the pressure on the Western Balkans and Greece. Were the EU to really step up its efforts to help Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan take care of the refugees, this could make a difference too.

But ultimately, the refugee crisis will abate only once the war in Syria ends. Of that, there is no sign. Unless there is a major change of heart among all 28 EU member states toward sharing the burden, the EU will further unravel, and as Carnegie Europe's Stefan Lehne suggested in a recent article, it could become "an ever-looser union." The EU is already heading in that direction.

(AP photo)
Over the past decade and a half, Russian President Vladimir Putin has enjoyed consistently high rankings and the continued support of the majority of his country's population, as well as that of the country's military, political, and economic elites. There are straightforward explanations for such strong support. His government's control of practically all major media outlets; the crafting of an image that shows him as a virile and masculine figure; his success in silencing and marginalizing practically all opposition; and other factors like his successful exploitation of the patriotism rooted in the Russian psyche have helped sustain his success. But many in the West have struggled to comprehend why Russian people, whose lives and livelihoods seem to have taken a turn for the much worse since the imposition of Western sanctions in 2015, love their leader.

Russian political commentator Ilya Konstantivov, writing in the Svobodnaya Pressa (Free Press), took a more personal look at the support Russian people give to Putin, and how the attitude points back to the days of President Boris Yeltsin, the man who nominated Putin to the nation's highest post on Dec. 31, 1999.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, following the attempted Soviet political and economic reforms dubbed perestroika and glasnost, Yeltsin, who was elected as the first Russian President in June 1991, cut a dashing figure for Russians tired of cookie-cutter Soviet leaders, Konstantinos writes:

"The masses fell in love with him at first sight, loved him as only a woman can love: fervently, recklessly and with all their hearts. And he was quite the man, too -- tall, barrel-chested, with a commanding posture and an intense stare. That he did not seem too intelligent was probably for the better -- people understood him well, he seemed close and familiar."

Konstantinov writes about a dinner meeting Yeltsin once attended in the spring of 1990, prior to the breakup of the USSR, when he was asked what leadership qualities the man who leads modern Russia should possess. Yeltsin, the writer relates, was already tipsy from several shots of vodka, when he stammered out: "He must be a strong politician and a strong man." With the word "strong," Boris slammed his fist on the table so that all the dishes rang. Such a man, Yeltsin continued, needs to understand the aspirations of the Russian people. But most importantly -- "he must be a strong man with strong policies!"

Konstantinov then recalled why Yeltsin drank tall glasses of vodka - to demonstrate his power. "I remembered this little episode not to expose the Russian president's drunkenness," writes Konstantinov. "Yes -- he loved to drink. But his real illness was not alcoholism [which was highlighted throughout Yeltsin's presidency], but an unbridled love of power, from which he got drunk more than from alcohol. And behind the image of a reckless drunkard stood an experienced, shrewd and ruthless beast."

Russia in the 1990s, headed by Boris Yelstin, went through numerous economic, political, and socio-cultural upheavals. Old norms, principles, and practices were dismantled, and new democratic habits did not evenly or successfully replace the old ones. Many Russians today rue that decade. They view it with mixed emotions at best, and at worst as a painful period in their lives. Konstantinov describes people's attitudes by comparing Russia and its people to a woman in a marriage:

"This often happens in life: the first marriage based on passionate love is unhappy. The beloved husband, a handsome man, drinks, beats his wife, often does not bring money to the family, and may even cheat. ... Russian women are able to tolerate such behavior for a long time, even when love turns into hate -- but following a divorce, they sometimes look for a life partner who is the opposite of the first experience. If the first husband was tall, burly, and prominent, then the second will be small, lean, and rather unsightly. If the first husband drank, the second will be totally sober. If the first was a partier, then the second will be a quiet one. If the first had a great head of hair, the second will be balding..."

He continues by saying that "Yeltsin abused Russia thoroughly: stole everything from home, left the country battered and naked. ... The people hated it. And the country would never accept his successor if he did not seem the antithesis of the retired master,' not only in appearance. ... (Putin) does not drink, does not fall off bridges, does not attempt to conduct orchestras -- he behaves well.

"This is happens a lot -- first, you get used to something, then you grow to love it. ... Slowly, gradually the country begun to respect, and then fell in love with Putin."

While this point of view may effectively illustrate a more personal view of Putn's popularity with the Russian people, it is obvious that not everyone is happy with such a so-called marriage, no matter how stable if may seem. Street protests by the still-active Russian opposition, even in the wake of murders of major political figures such as Anna Politkovskaya and Boris Nemtsov, as well as a continued brain drain, underscore many people's unhappiness with the way things are going in their country.

Konstantinov's personal take on Putin centers on the worst of Yeltsin's years, when the economy seemed to have been partitioned among powerful interest groups, giving rise to the oligarch class, a rising criminality that threatened the once-stable Russian society, and the eventual control by pro-government elites of the nation's economic output. Yet in those years there were positive developments as well, such as the emergence of a vibrant and free press, and the freedom to travel overseas following decades of Iron Curtain rules that locked the Soviet population within the borders of the USSR.

The writer does end on an interesting note -- that after the past two and a half decades of major changes under Yelstin and Putin, the country may not survive the economic, political, and social upheavals that could follow should Putin leave his post without nominating a successor who appeals to the population and elites. Time will tell how this will play out -- for now, any talk about Putin's successor is pure speculation.

(AP photo)
Property details:

Villa Swanson is a simply decorated 1 bedroom villa with a large great room for entertaining. The main living area has comfortable furnishing and a flat screen TV which can be used to stream from a computer. The fully equipped kitchen is ready for preparing meals and even has a juicer if requested. The master bedroom has a queen size bed. Costa Rican art works and paintings adorn the walls of the villa. Villa Swanson has fast and free internet service like all the villas at Osa Mountain. It is c...

Price: $ 40,400 Seller State of Residence: California Property Address: Villa #19A or 19B State/Province: Osa Mountain Village, Costa Rica City: Balsar Zip/Postal Code: 60502 Number of Bedrooms: 1 Number of Bathrooms: 1 Property Type: Villa Sale Type: Existing Homes Setting: Mountain Year Built: 2012 For Sale by: Owner Location: 913**, Granada Hills, California

You will be redirected to eBay



Nearby Owner
Hulk Hogan's sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker is heading to trial Monday, nearly four years after the media company posted the video on their website.

ADVERTISEMENT

With jury selection starting this week, Hogan's attorney Charles Harder spoke with CNN about how the former reality TV star and WWE Superstar compares to sportscaster Erin Andrews who went through her own trial over nude recordings.

"What's interesting is that I get this sense that the public and media are so in favor of Erin Andrews," Harder said.

"But for some reason, Hulk Hogan gets treated a different way."

Hogan, real name Terry Bollea, brought on the $100 million lawsuit against Gawker after they published parts of a video of him having sex with the wife of his former friend, radio host Bubba "the Love Sponge" Clem in 2012.

The trial will feature testimony from defendants Gawker Media founder Nick Denton and former Gawker.com editor-in-chief A.J. Daulerio, as the company lean on First Amendment Rights during its defense.

"Gawker is allowed to join that very public conversation without getting sued for tens of millions of dollars simply because Hogan didn't like the way Gawker did so," Gawker attorney Seth Berlin said to CNN.

"Public figures and celebrities don't get to use the court system to punish speech about them that they don't like. That's just not the country we live in."

FOLLOW REALITY TV WORLD ON THE ALL-NEW GOOGLE NEWS!

Reality TV World is now available on the all-new Google News app and website. Click here to visit our Google News page, and then click FOLLOW to add us as a news source!

Back in July, WWE cut ties with Hogan after The National Enquirer obtained the sex-tape and revealed that the television personality had used racial slurs to describe daughter Brooke Hogan 's boyfriend.

Hogan and his team blamed Gawker for the leak and filed a compliant in August.

"WWE is committed to embracing and celebrating individuals from all backgrounds as demonstrated by the diversity of our employees, performers and fans worldwide," the organization said at the time.

The trial was originally scheduled for July 6, 2015 but was pushed back until March from its original October postponement date to allow for the hunt for possible leaks from Gawker to the Enquirer.
,



We're sorry, this article is not currently available
Vice President Joe Biden's brother, James Biden Jr., is selling his Keeywaydin Island home for $5.995 million. According to Miami Currbed, the 4,000-square-foot property was purchased by the Vice President's brother and sister-in-law Sara in 2013 for $2.5 million. The Old Florida-style vacation home sits on five acres of beach front property, and it has a total of six bedrooms and seven bathrooms.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the property which is located on Keewaydin Island, a barrier island off the coast of Naples, is accessible only by boat. It was reportedly purchased as a family vacation home. The Vice President was also seen visiting the property for a few weeks during the holidays accompanied by his Secret Service detail.

Originally built in the 1990s, the property also has a private dock for boat and fishing and also a Tiki Bar. Aside from the main residence, it also has a guesthouse. Talking to the media outlet, Sara revealed that they decided to sell the place because they wanted to have vacations somewhere closer to their home this time. She also said that the place will be memorable for the family since they have spent a lot of vacations there. She revealed that they want to move to the Chesapeake Bay for their new vacation home.

The property is under Naples real estate broker Lori Young of Young Realty Group, who revealed that the inside of the house is wrapped in dark wood paneling. Although it has a private dock, the place has no swimming pool inside.

After his son died last year because of brain cancer, Joe Biden revealed that he will not run for the highest position in the country. He was last seen in this year's Oscars where he gave a speech about fighting sexual abuse.
Here's a look at the top five hotels that were previously featured in movies.

According to Elle Decor, The Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo was featured in the 2003 film "Lost in Translation." The publication revealed that one suite from the hotel was used over the course of 27 days to film scenes at both Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte's (Scarlett Johanssen) rooms. Charlotte's room was actually filmed in the suite's bedroom area, while Bob's room was filmed in the seating area.

In 2011, the film "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" used The Dolder Grand as the setting for the film. The name of the hotel was also mentioned by a receptionist who welcomed Lisbeth (Rooney Mara) into the hotel. Some scenes in the movie were also shot in the hotel's Masina suite.

Meanwhile, the 2006 film "The Devil Wears Prada" saw Andrew (Anne Hathaway) meeting up with a writer at The St. Regis New York's King Cole Bar.

"Aside from being one of the fashion's cheekiest film moments, this bar also is believed to be the originator of the Bloody Mary and is still a New York City staple for after work drinks and one of the best versions of the brunch cocktail," the publication noted.

Additionally, "Midnight In Paris" 2011 was shot at the Le Meurice for its two scenes featuring Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson.

Lastly, the 2015 film "Entourage" featured the Montage Beverly Hills.

"This film revival of the acclaimed HBO series best known for featuring tourist attractions, hidden gems and hot spots in and around Los Angeles had Vince, Eric, Johnny Drama and Turtle frequenting Montage Beverly Hills throughout the film," the site said.

The fact is, there are still several other hotels in different parts of the world that might have been featured in some Hollywood film. If you're watching one anytime soon, be more conscious to spot which hotels these are.
Voters check in at Greenfield High School on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Voters check in at Greenfield High School on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Voters cast their ballots at Greenfield High School on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Franktinus Stuitje, of Greenfield, and John Bailey, of Greenfield, cross the intersection of Bank Row and Main Street in Greenfield on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Janet Langdon, of Putney, Vermont was on the corner of Federal and Main Streets in Greenfield showing her support for Bernie Sanders sporting Bernie earings, Tuesday March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Frank Carliell, 8, of Greenfield, interviews Elise Paffrath, of Bellows Falls, Vermont, and Janet Langdon, of Putney, Vermont, for a homeschool project on politics and government, on the corner of Federal and Main Streets in Greenfield, on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Supporters of Hillary Clinton stand with signs outside Greenfield High School as voters come and go from the polls for the Massachusetts presidential primary, Tuesday, March 1. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt

Rachael Kashner and Staci Miner, both of Greenfield, chant in support of Bernie Sanders and wave to passersby on the corner of Silver Street and Lenox Avenue as they come and go from Greenfield High School to vote in the Massachusetts presidential primary, Tuesday. Kashner and Miner were accompanied by Skyler Craig, 13, and Chris Miner, and call themselves the "Bernettes." Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt

Voters cast their ballots at Greenfield High School on Tuesday, March 1, the date of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt Matt

Elise Paffrath, of Bellows Falls, Vermont, and Janet Langdon, of Putney, Vermont, show their support for Bernie Sanders on the corner of Federal and Main Streets in Greenfield, Tuesday, March 1, the day of the Massachusetts presidential primary. Recorder Staff/Matt Burkhartt

GREENFIELD  Many Greenfield voters were apparently feeling the Bern as citizens went to the polls Tuesday afternoon. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was overwhelmingly the most common answer from those whod just finished slipping their ballots into the box, voters said in interviews with The Recorder.

Kathy Scappace said the Vermont senators run inspired her to switch her party affiliation from unenrolled to Democrat this election.

I wanted to vote for Bernie, she said. I like Hillary (Clinton), dont get me wrong. But the thing Bernie cares about is people.

Scappace said she also drawn to Sanders because of his decision to draw his campaign funding from small donors and his opposition to the Citizens United ruling in the Supreme Court, which held that the First Amendment bars the government from restricting political spending bycorporations and other large organizations.

There should be changes and growth in the purposes of the government, and I think hell be the candidate to start that, she said. I wont see it in my lifetime, but hes our best hope for that.

By 1 p.m., Town Clerk Deborah Tuttle said about 17 percent of Greenfields 11,314 registered voters had turned out to the polls. Campaign signs for Sanders, Trump and Clinton stuck into the grass welcomed residents to the high school, where a steady stream of voters filed in and out.

Jason King was also a strong Sanders supporter.

Theres a million reasons, he said of his choice. Hes the first political leader who matches my views one for one, top to bottom. This was my first vote that wasnt for the lesser of two evils.

Kings top issue this season is the economy, he said. Hes broke, he noted. And with $50,000 in student loans, he doesnt ever expected to climb out of that hole.

Bernies the only one with a solution to that problem, he said, referring to the candidates proposal to introduce a free college tuition program.

Tess Gadwa, who owns Yes, Exactly, a small web design business in town, said she voted for Sanders because his policies and ideas stand the best chance of improving conditions for small businesses, specifically through redistribution of wealth to the people who patronize them.

The divide between the rich and the poor in this country is seeing people lose their shot at a better life, she said. Losing out on equal opportunity leads to a whole host of other problems  gun violence, addiction, people tuning out. I think Bernies platform is the best hope for small business.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew her share of support, too.

Kris Weaver said he cast his vote for the former First Lady, U.S. Senator and secretary of state specifically because she had held so many different roles in government and in the White House.

"I think she just has more experience in government and foreign affairs than any other candidate, he said. I just dont see Bernie as president, and Trump is a loser with too much money and radical ideas.

Richard Shortell found himself turning out in support of Republican frontrunner Donald J. Trump, who has been performing well in polls across the state. He counted himself among those who have become fed up with establishment candidates and the federal government.

"I would say we need a definite change. No more Clintons, no more Bushes. I'm so digusted with Washington, I'm willing to throw (chance) on the roulette wheel, he said. Trump is a diamond in the rough and he'll get polished once he's in office."

Still, other voters said they found themselves crossing party lines to boost the candidate theyd most rather see from the opposing side.

Christine Forgey, the town's former and first mayor, said shes an unenrolled voter who, for the first time, voted as a Republican in the primary.

She wouldnt disclose which of the GOP candidates she cast her ballot for, but said that she chose the one she felt was the most moderate because she wouldnt mind seeing either Democrat in office.

Im not too worried about (them), theyre both viable, she said. The piece I put the most thought into was Who would be the best challenger?

Reporter Domenic Poli contributed to this report.

You can reach Tom Relihan at:

trelihan@recorder.com

or 413-772-0261, ext. 264

On Twitter, follow @RecorderTom


Franklin County area Democrats leaned way left to put their shoulders behind the Bernie Sanders bandwagon in Tuesdays presidential primary.

At press time, Sanders had garnered more than twice Hillary Clintons total in the Franklin County, North Quabbin region, with 22 towns reporting overwhelmingly backing the Vermont senator  along with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump  by large margins. In the region, Sanders was winning with 10,944 votes to Clintons 4,606 as of 10:30.

Margins were as wide as nearly 3 to 1.

In Greenfield, the county's largest town, Sanders beat Clinton nearly 3 to 1, with 3,003 votes to 1,142. Turnout was running as high as 62 percent, a high number even for hotly contested presidential primaries like this one, which the Hawley town clerk said brought out many new young voters, even in one of the states smallest towns. The local trend differed from the statewide early results, which saw the two Democrats seesawing for the lead throught night after polls closed at 8 p.m. With half the states results in, Clinton was pulling ahead.

GOP frontrunner Donald Trump cruised to an easy victory in Massachusetts as Clinton and Sanders battled for delegates. In a number of Pioneer Valley towns, Ohio Gov. John Kasich managed a second place showing. At press time, on the Republican side in the county, Trump, with 2,421 votes, was followed by Kasich with 1,239, and Marco Rubio with 1018. While Clinton had much of the party establishment behind her, Sanders banked on strong support from the state's college-age voters to help keep his candidacy afloat.

Republican voters gave Trump the win over fellow Republican candidates Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Kasich, who were hoping for strong second place finishes.

Local voices

Susan Triolo, a lifelong progressive and a retired schoolteacher who spent the day working for Sanders in her hometown of Sunderland, was thrilled Tuesday night to hear her candidate led there 635-272.

Weve worked really hard for Bernie here in Franklin County. We have a really solid group of people, she said in a telephone interview from a gathering at Taylors Tavern in Greenfield. I support Bernie because he is the only person who is going to move the progressive agenda forward in the United States.

Regardless how the county goes, Greenfield resident TJ Strahan said he looks forward to the presidential race coming down to Clinton (his preferred candidate) and businessman Donald Trump.

Its going to be very interesting, he said, adding that he supports the former first lady because, I think shes the most qualified candidate running. She started her career out of college helping people. She has always been there to help the general public. Shes devoted her life to making changes in our country and to helping people.

Greenfield resident Jim Bates was pleasantly surprised that Trump was winning here.

I think he can make some changes that the government needs. Hes not status quo. Hes pretty much an independent, Bates said. There are a lot of intelligent voters in Massachusetts and, at least on the Republican side, they made the right choice.

Bates said he supports Trump because the billionaire has proven himself to be a job creator. He also criticized people who say they want a Washington outsider, only to vote for someone else when the opportunity arises.

For Republicans, Massachusetts has 42 delegates awarded on a proportional basis. That means multiple candidates will likely receive delegates. For Democrats the process is a bit trickier. Massachusetts has 116 Democratic delegates. Of those, 25 are superdelegates free to back whichever candidate they want. At least 17 already have pledged support to Clinton and one is backing Sanders, according to an Associated Press survey. The remaining 91 delegates are awarded on a proportional basis  rather than winner-take-all.
Recorder Staff

BERNARDSTON  Do you need to brush up on your history?

Head out to the Full Circle School on Friday at 5:30 p.m. for the annual History of Science and Technology Fair and witness historical figures come to life. Talk with light bulb inventor Thomas Edison, physicist Albert Einstein and many other life-changing individuals who will share how they overcame obstacles to accomplish goals that will never be forgotten.

These characters, however, might be a little younger and shorter than expected since they will be portrayed by all 23 students enrolled at the school. The school offers a personalized curriculum for each student enrolled in kindergarten through sixth grade. Co-Director John Friends said the history fair was developed by the school founders about three decades ago with the purpose of having a rotating historical theme every year for six years allowing each student the chance to learn about a variety of historical figures in categories such as art history and music history. The students thoroughly researched their historic individual throughout the entire month of February in preparation for the event.

Each student, dressed in his or her historic attire, will present at least 30 seconds of biographical information to the visitors. The night will conclude with a schoolwide 10-minute choreographed routine full of movement and songs representative of each characters era.

Its an opportunity to celebrate history and really have the kids be excited to learn about history and make it fun, Friends said, adding that the event is also a good way for each child to present themselves in an open public forum.

The school is located at 21 Parmenter Road.
GREENFIELD  Attention, cave dwellers: There are presidential primary elections on Tuesday.

Twelve states and one territory (American Samoa) will hold primaries or caucuses, making for such an epic election season day it is unofficially called Super Tuesday. Massachusetts is one of the states that will hold contests for the Republican and Democratic candidates vying for their partys presidential nomination. The buzz is all around Franklin County and there is no shortage of enthusiasm for the Democratic candidates in the Bay State.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a senator from neighboring Vermont and the former mayor of Burlington, appears to be a popular candidate among voters in Franklin County, a traditionally left-leaning area in an already blue state.

When driving throughout western Massachusetts, it isnt uncommon to see Feel The Bern bumper stickers or hear residents talking about the political revolution that Sanders promises.

The senators campaign has taken him to UMass Amherst at least twice, where he was greeted by large crowds of supporters. Promises of increasing the minimum wage and providing free college to all, appear to appeal to liberal voters in the area. The self-identifying democratic socialist promises to enact change in the country and voters seem to be listening to his message.

A passionate Sanders supporter, Doug Mayo, chairman of the Greenfield Democratic Town Committee believes in the senators message. He gives fresh, new ideas and I think he can do something. Its just refreshing to hear him speak, Mayo said immediately before the Greenfield Democratic Town Committee caucus at the Greenfield Housing Authority on Saturday. Not since we had Robert Reich running for governor here in Massachusetts have I heard that kind of fresh ideas and some thought behind it and some wisdom behind it, too.

Mayo hesitates to call Sanders an anti-establishment candidate, but said the man offers something special.

Mayo said he is confident Sanders will fare well in the Northeast, but worries the senators message will be lost in the south, where people are less likely to vote for an extreme leftist. The chairman said, however, he would support Hillary Clinton if she got the nomination.

Currently, Im a Bernie supporter but first and foremost Im a Democrat. So whoever is the nominee, I am going to be behind 100 percent, he said. I just like the message that Bernie is bringing and my hope is that if Bernie doesnt make it, he is able to shift things more to the left.

Danielle Letourneau, who attended Saturdays Democratic Town Committee caucus, said she is a Clinton supporter because Clinton has spent her career fighting for women and children and for abortion rights.

Letourneau said Bill Clinton was the first president she ever voted for and she marveled at how Hillary transformed the first lady role before moving on to elected office.

I am excited because I feel like she is the best qualified candidate that Ive ever been able to vote for. If you look at everything shes done from the beginning of her career  shes been secretary of state, shes been a senator of a huge state (New York)  I just feel like Ive never been able to vote for anybody so qualified, Letourneau said.

She was quick to say she wouldnt vote Republican even if Hillary fails to get the Democratic nomination.

Ive got nothing but love for Bernie Sanders. I just think Hillary Clinton is the best choice for me, Letourneau said.

The big surprise in this election season for many Americans is the growing strength of Donald Trumps campaign. The billionaire real estate mogul announced his candidacy in June 2015 and has created a firestorm of controversy for his politically incorrect rhetoric and inflammatory statements.

Support for Trump in Franklin County is sparse, but existent. The Recorder identified a handful of supporters but all asked to not be named in the newspaper. One of these individuals is a 38-year-old Turners Falls man who said Trump is his top choice.

I want to go back to how it was in 2002, when if you had a two-page resume and 10 years of experience, you could actually get a job, he said. Im a hardcore old-school American. Im very pro-American. The people who are in charge right now arent necessarily pro-American.

(Trump) is a multi-billionaire. He is monstrously successful. He has nothing to gain here, said the Turners Falls man. Hes doing this because he wants to see real change.

The Turners Falls man said he has been harassed and has lost several Facebook friends for his support of the candidate many call The Donald.

Oddly enough, he said Bernie Sanders is his favorite candidate after Trump. Republican voters will also have the chance to vote for candidates Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz or John Kasich. Nearly half of the Republican candidates have dropped out of the race. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie dropped out of the race and recently endorsed Donald Trump. After his popularity plummeted in the polls, Jeb Bush also dropped from the race.

Polls throughout Franklin County will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Tuesday night. First-time voters in a Massachusetts election must show identification. Those who would like to request an absentee ballot, may submit an application or a signed letter to their local election official, typically the clerk in the area municipal building.

All Greenfield residents can cast their ballots in the Greenfield High School gymnasium on Barr Avenue. Other voters can find the correct polling location by visiting wheredoivotema.com/bal/MyElectionInfo.aspx.

You can reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-77-0261, ext. 257 On Twitter, follow @DomenicPoli
MIAMI  Hillary Clinton widened her lead over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders as black voters helped her secure key victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia in the Super Tuesday contests.

Republican Donald Trump won Massachusetts and joined Clinton in sweeping through the South on Super Tuesday, with the front-runners claiming victory in their parties primaries in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee. Clinton also picked up wins in Virginia and Arkansas.

Super Tuesday marked the busiest day of the 2016 primaries, with the biggest single-day delegate haul up for grabs. With elections in every region of the country, the contests put a spotlight on candidates strengths and weaknesses with a broad swath of American voters.

For Clinton and Trump, the voting marked an opportunity to begin pulling away from their rivals and charting a course toward the general election. Each entered Super Tuesday having won three of four early voting contests, and more strong showings could start putting the nominations out of reach for other contenders.

As Trumps victories piled up, he fired off thank you Twitter notes to the states that landed in his win column. The billionaire businessman scheduled a nighttime news conference at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, eschewing the traditional election night rally.

Clinton aims for a sweep of Southern states in the delegate-heavy series of primaries and caucuses Tuesday. Sanders could bank only on the home-state win and both campaigns were vying for support in Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

As polls closed, Clinton spoke to a forum of black women hosted by the television network BET at the St. Regis hotel in Miami.

Im thinking about how we can elevate the political dialogue away from the insults and really mean-spirited language, she said.

Clinton and her allies have already shifted some attention to Donald Trump, casting the Republican front-runner as divisive and unprepared to lead the country. The Republican contest, said Clinton, has turned into a kind of one-upsmanship on insulting.

All told, Clinton and Sanders were competing for 865 delegates in 11 states and American Samoa on Tuesday, the biggest single-day prize of the 2016 campaign.

Clinton is now assured of winning at least 175 delegates on Tuesday. Sanders will receive at least 71.

According to the APs count, Clinton now has at least 723 delegates, including super delegates  the party leaders and members of Congress who can support any candidate. Sanders has received at least 158. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.

Black voters powered Clinton to victory in South Carolina last weekend and were expected to give her a huge advantage throughout the South.

Nearly half of Democratic primary voters in Alabama and Georgia were black, according to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks. In Texas, about 3 in 10 Democratic primary voters were Hispanic and a little fewer than 2 in 10 were black.

Greta Lewis voted with her mother at the Central Christian Church in Memphis. Both women are black and chose Clinton.

She has been the one who has stepped out to at least try to identify with most of the minorities, whether theyre women, black, Asian, Hispanic, said Lewis, a 31-year-old receptionist at her mothers dental office.

Exit polling also showed voters pushing to continue President Barack Obamas policies rather than the kind of leftward shift championed by Sanders.

Clinton visited Minnesota before heading to Miami, foreshadowing the importance of Florida for the general election.

Sanders decamped to his home in Burlington, Vermont. He has vowed to stay in the race until the partys convention  and he showed no signs of retreating as he addressed a raucous rally of supporters after the Vermont polls closed.

Thirty-five states remain and let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace, to every one of those states. Sanders said.

The event had the feel of a valedictory for Sanders, who said he was so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country.

Despite his obstacles, the Vermont senator has little incentive to fold. He reported raising more than $42 million in February, a sign that he will have the money to go deep into the spring.
The Athens-Clarke County Commission approved the purchase of land to move Athens-Clarke County Fire Station No. 2 to a new location on Cleveland Road this month, less than two miles from its original location on Atlanta Highway.

The plan to move has been years in the making but has not been without controversy.
Georgia voters from all corners showed up at the many precincts in the Athens area for the 2016 Georgia primaries. The line at the Whit Davis Elementary School stretched to the street with supporters from all sides. Shot in Athens, Georgia, on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (Photo/Henry Taylor)
Volunteers from the Bernie Sanders campaign office on Prince Avenue demonstrated at the Arch at the University of Georgia on Tuesday, holding signs and showing support for the candidate on Super Tuesday, the day of the presidential primaries in Georgia and 10 other states.
Mayers Memorial Hospital

SHARE

By Amber Sandhu of the Redding Record Searchlight

Mayers Memorial Hospital District, once in danger of shutting down and relocating patients, is set to receive a funding boost from a healthcare financing plan that passed the Legislature on Monday.

In a prepared statement, Assemblyman Brian Dahle stated that the Managed Care Organization Financing Reform Plan will help keep open six rural skilled nursing facilities in his district and also allocate funds toward programs for the developmentally disabled, such as Redding's Far Northern Regional Center.

"We negotiated with the government to bring back federal dollars back to California," he said. "It's a huge win for my district."

In 2011, Medi-Cal reimbursement rates were cut to balance the state budget. At the time, Assembly Bill 97 decreased Medi-Cal reimbursement by 25 percent, and many California skilled nursing homes took a hard hit for it.

The new plan is like a loan forgiveness program, Dahle said. The collective facilities in Dahle's district would have been required to pay approximately $12 million back to the state. Mayers faced paying back $3.2 million. Mayers was ordered to pay back the money retroactively, but the California Hospital Association filed an injunction to stop the cuts.

Had that not happened, they would have had to shut their doors, said Valerie Lakey, public relations director at Mayers.

"In a small rural area, we are what's here," she said. "These facilities don't have the money."

Other skilled nursing facilities affected by the 2011 legislation were Eastern Plumas Health Care in Plumas, Modoc Medical Center in Alturas, Seneca Healthcare District in Chester, Surprise Valley Community Hospital in Cedarville and Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee.

Mayers has facilities in Burney and Fall River Mills, which are collectively licensed for 99 beds. They currently house more than 75 people, and the majority of them are on Medi-Cal. Lakey said if they would have relocated patients, they would have gone at least 100 miles away from home, which would have been hard on their families.

"A lot of our people are very deep rooted in the community," she said.

In 2013, Mayers began a letter-writing campaign to Sacramento asking the Department of Health Care Services to reverse the cuts. "The community stepped in. It was a huge grass-roots effort to save our facility," Lakey said.

Lakey said knowing that they don't have to return the $3.2 million is a huge relief, and the hospital can now focus on expanding the facility to meet seismic requirements, work that needs to be completed by 2020.
This photo provided by Bethany Woolman shows Taylor Victor in Lathrop, Calif., on Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016. A central California school district has settled a free speech lawsuit brought by Taylor, a high school junior, who was sent home for refusing to change out of a T-shirt that read, "Nobody Knows I'm A Lesbian." The deal approved Tuesday night requires the Manteca Unified School District, which serves the cities of Stockton, Lathrop and Manteca, to adopt a policy clarifying that students may wear clothing with statements celebrating their or their classmates cultural identities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. (AP Photo/Bethany Woolman)

SHARE

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  A central California school district settled a free speech lawsuit brought by a high school junior who was sent home for refusing to change out of a T-shirt that read, "Nobody Knows I'm a Lesbian."

The deal approved requires the Manteca Unified School District, which serves the cities of Stockton, Lathrop and Manteca, to adopt a policy clarifying that students may wear clothing with statements celebrating their or their classmates' cultural identities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The case is the latest in a long line of legal disputes over the clothing messages that school and college officials may prohibit for the stated purpose of maintaining discipline.

Taylor Victor, 16, and her mother sued two Sierra High School administrators who told the girl in August that her shirt was an improper display of sexuality that violated the school's dress code and might be disruptive. A teacher had her called to the office when she showed up in the shirt, according to court documents.

"The law on this is very clear: Public schools can't censor the personal beliefs of students," ACLU attorney Linnea Nelson said. "The message of Taylor's T-shirt expresses the most fundamental type of speech already protected by the First Amendment, the California Constitution and the California education code."

Under the terms of the settlement, school administrators deny violating Victor's free speech rights and they and the district deny any wrongdoing. The school board approved the required dress code updates Tuesday night, spokeswoman Victoria Brunn said.

"Students continue to be supported in their right for self-expression in all of our high schools," Brunn said in a statement. "Our number one priority continues to be the ability to keep our kids safe physically and emotionally."

Victor, who was open at school about identifying as a lesbian, said she had reviewed the district's dress code before deciding to wear the shirt. Not finding any rules prohibiting pro-gay messages, she says she chose to go home instead of change.

"I knew that rule did not exist, and I knew that was my free speech right to wear that shirt to school," Victor said in an interview.

A high school senior in South Carolina was suspended in September for also refusing to change out of a T-shirt with the same phrase as Victor's. The school district ended up overturning the punishment, saying the shirt bothered some adults but wasn't a problem for other students.

In other recent cases, Ohio University last year agreed to revise its student conduct code and pay $32,000 to a student who sued after a campus group was told not to wear T-shirts bearing a sexually suggestive double entendre.

In 2013, a Connecticut school district agreed to let a high school student wear a T-shirt with a slash mark through a gay pride rainbow after facing the threat of legal action from the ACLU.

But federal courts have allowed some limits on student speech.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that an Alaska school acted within its discretion to discourage illegal drug use when it suspended a student who displayed a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" at an Olympic torch relay.

And the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in 2014 that administrators at a Northern California high school plagued by racial strife lawfully banned T-shirts bearing the American flag while the campus commemorated "Mexican Heritage Day."

With the central California settlement in the works last week, Taylor was given the go-ahead to wear the disputed T-shirt.

"I wore the shirt on the first day I was allowed to," she said. "My mom bought me the same shirt in a different color, and she bought me a sweat shirt that says 'Dare to be Different' in rainbow colors."
Jim Schultz/Record Searchlight Johnny Paul Bass, left, is shown Tuesday in Shasta County Superior Court with Redding defense attorney Michael Borges.

SHARE

By Jim Schultz of the Redding Record Searchlight

A 53-year-old Redding man who twice fended off a 2013 murder case, saw his sentencing on drug and weapon charges delayed on Tuesday in Shasta County Superior Court because he needs surgery.

Johnny Paul Bass had his sentencing delayed in July when he had one of his feet amputated due to complications from diabetes. Now he needs to have his right toe removed, defense attorney Michael Borges told a Superior Court judge on Tuesday.

Bass, set to have that toe amputated later this month, is scheduled to return to Superior Court on April 18 for sentencing.

Bass pleaded no-contest in June to manufacture of a controlled substance and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He faces six years, eight months in prison under the terms of his plea bargain.

But prosecutors have said Bass, who has a lengthy narcotics-related history, violated the conditions of his release from jail while out of custody by picking up a misdemeanor methamphetamine possession arrest.

As such, Bass is now facing a 10-year, eight-month prison sentence.

In January 2015 a judge threw out a murder case against Bass for a second time in little more than a year. At that time, Superior Court Judge Dan Flynn ruled there was insufficient evidence to order Bass to stand trial for murder in the 2013 shooting death of Milton Roy Sherwood Jr., 48, of Shasta Lake.

Flynn made his ruling at the end of a preliminary hearing for Bass, saying a Nov. 1, 2013, shooting to thwart an apparent armed robbery attempt, which included the throwing of rocks at Bass's Cowgill Lane house off Lake Boulevard and threats of physical harm to its occupants, including Bass, was a reasonable act of self-defense.

His ruling came after an earlier decision in 2013 by then-Superior Court Judge Bradley Boeckman, who dismissed the original murder case, saying prosecutors failed to provide adequate evidence identifying Bass as the gunman in the shooting.

Even though Flynn determined there was insufficient evidence to order Bass, who has denied shooting Sherwood or even being present when the shooting occurred, to stand trial for murder, he ordered him to stand trial on a series of related drug and weapons charges.

Those charges arose in connection with the murder case as sheriff's deputies searched his home and found a loaded handgun, a large amount of marijuana "shake" and other items associated with the cultivation of marijuana and the manufacture of hashish oil.

Prosecutors and law enforcement officials have said a loaded revolver found at the home was not the weapon used to kill Sherwood. That weapon was not recovered.
SHARE

By Jenny Espino of the Redding Record Searchlight

A plan to look at Housing First as a possible model to move people from the streets was gutted Tuesday night at a Redding City Council meeting.

The council split 3-2 on a motion that gets the city to participate in an implementation team that looks at housing alternatives for the homeless. But it will not include Housing First, a blow to Mayor Missy McArthur's pledge to house five chronically homeless people by July 1.

That measure went through several changes to try and get buy-in from council members Gary Cadd, Francie Sullivan and Brent Weaver, who expressed reservation about committing the city to a Housing First pilot program.

"I don't want to throw out a good idea because we are so focused on one solution," Councilwoman Kristen Schreder said.

Cadd offered the swing vote, keeping parts of Schreder's efforts alive to have the city be a partner in coming up with housing solutions. McArthur voted with the majority, while Sullivan and Weaver dissented.

At the center of the 90-minute debate is whether Housing First is the right fit for the community and whether the city should lead the push to house the homeless. Under the model, chronically homeless people are put into housing with few strings attached. They pay minimal rent, but they're not required to have a job, be clean and sober or participate in programs to stay in housing.

McArthur had made the commitment last month while at a presentation by housing expert Lloyd Pendleton, who led Utah in nearly eliminating the chronically homeless population.

Weaver, who has ties to Salt Lake City, said most of what Redding has heard about housing first has been through Utah but there are differences. He noted how that state's finances are in better shape than California's. Its four seasons are more conducive to people seeking shelter and the Mormon church plays a major role in supporting the model.

Schreder, who has been the council's leading voice on the issue, proposes following a timetable that includes involvement from the city, which could offer the housing, and Shasta County and other private-sector agencies that could offer the supportive services for a program to succeed.

She took a dig at Sullivan, who in her opening comments, was concerned about the possibility of tapping into the general fund to cover the $69,500 price tag to house five people for a year.

Schreder said the city already spends general fund dollars to haul away trash when cleanups are done at homeless camps. "We are not reinventing any wheels," she said. "I'm choosing to focus on solutions."

Later in the discussion, Sullivan hit back that good intentions do not pay the bills.

The council heard from Dean Germano and Dr. Doug McMullin of Shasta Community Health Center, who urged the council's support.

Germano told the council he had spoken to Donnell Ewert at Shasta County about four housing case managers who will be starting to work.

McMullin told the council chipping in $30,000 for five people was nothing. He argued five people on the street probably cost between $100,000 and $200,000 for emergency services and officers standing by for five to six hours at a hospital. "It's just bad usage," he said.

Nick Cutler of Hill Country Clinic pledged to sponsor one of the five future tenants of a housing first pilot program and offered to provide the case management too.

In a 13-minute talk to his colleagues, Weaver said he would not support the motion and reasoned how the private sector would do a better job and for a lesser amount.

He also said he could not support a program that provides no accountability.

He urged Schreder to partner with people in the business community who have proven to get things done and have not just been in committees.

He said he thought the community could continue attacking homelessness from every front, such as through those providers who are on the front lines and the city's partnerships for existing housing projects.

He also gave as an example two personal "Housing First" cases in which he tried to assist people in need, but his efforts backfired.

In one case, he ended up with 12 to 15 people living in two of his housing units, which he had leased to a couple and their family. There were drugs involved, appliances were removed and sold and a domestic dispute ended with one of the spouses in jail.

In the other case, he had to get law enforcement involved.

"I don't want to throw a wet blanket and walk away," he said.

But he said the city is not staffed and equipped to run a pilot program and he did not want to see government grow.

"Government exists to offer services," he said. "It is a more expensive way to solve (issues) that can be carried out by the private sector."

Weaver drew a comparison between Schreder's efforts and the State of Jefferson movement, saying she did not need the city's blessing to move forward.

Schreder fought back during the debate.

"Let's be clear that this is not about growing government but making government work better," she said.

In other business, the council voted:

4-1 to file a lawsuit against the Downtown Redding Business Association for breach of contract. The city argues the DRBA failed to provide and cooperate in a timely manner with its financial audit. The vote came after a closed session.

The former president of the DRBA, Vint Stevenson, last week said the group has complied with the audit and the reason officials are going after it is because funds were used to pay for legal representation against the city.

The DRBA administered the funds that were collected from about 300 business owners in the Downtown Redding Business Improvement District. The council last year disestablished the BID.

Schreder, following the meeting, countered this case is about accountability.

"We impose the requirements to pay the fees. ... Hopefully we get some energy toward resolving this," she said. "It would be nice if we didn't have to spend the money, but we owe it to the people who paid those fees."

Cadd dissented.

4-0 to authorize staff to file a preliminary $20 million grant application and execute non-binding letter of intent with K2 Development related to its proposal raze the former Dicker's department store building and build a four-story mixed-used building.

Weaver recused himself from the vote.

The $37 million project could change the face of downtown and be a catalyst for development in the downtown. But it also could wipe away the city's housing resources and future allocations over the next five years. The city's commitment is $4.8 million, which means the city would not be able to contribute to any other major project during that time.

5-0 to approve a license agreement and permit with PenAir. Flight service to Portland, Oregon would begin next month.

5-0 to allow the city to join the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, a newly formed group that would provide water rights advocacy and protection.
Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight U.S. Forest Service staff show students from an environmental science class at Weed High School how they conduct a snow survey on Tuesday at Sand Flat on Mt. Shasta.

SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Weed High School senior Amari Traylor, right, helps U.S. Forest Service Engine Captain Lonny Hagedon prepare a snow depth reading Tuesday during a snow survey at Sand Flat on Mt. Shasta. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight U.S. Forest Service staff show students from an environmental science class at Weed High School how they conduct a snow survey on Tuesday at Sand Flat on Mt. Shasta.

By Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight

Richard Rivera and his fellow Weed High School students stood out in more than 6 feet of snow on Mt. Shasta on Tuesday and got a lesson in California water policy.

The students helped gather snow survey information used by the California Department of Water Resources to take a monthly snapshot of snowfall.

Rivera said he had never collected snow survey data, but he grasped its importance.

"I guess it's pretty helpful to all those business guys who need all the water," said the 16-year-old student in Weed High's environmental science class.

At least there was snow to measure this year. Over the past few years snowpack in the mountains of the North State and the Sierra Nevada has been dismal.

Californians depend on snowfall in the mountains to melt and fill reservoirs. That runoff accounts for a third of the state's water. The snow course survey at Sand Flat, at about 6,500 feet on the slopes of Mt. Shasta, is one of 96 survey stations statewide where crews collect snow depth readings monthly during the winter.

The students, along with a two-person crew from the U.S. Forest Service, consistently measured snow depths at about 79 inches Tuesday.

Marcus Nova, assistant resource officer for the Mount Shasta Ranger District who led the survey, said the normal for the area is between 90 and 100 inches.

"I think overall we're doing great. I think we're back on track. We're looking at something more normal," Nova said.

He said he would still need to tabulate all the results, but because of the lack of snow the past four weeks he expected to see snow levels down slightly from readings taken at the end of January and the beginning of February, which were 128 percent of normal.

"We're going to be maybe showing a little bit below average," he said. "We'll still be leaps and bounds better than what we were before."

As of Monday, the snowpack was 80 percent to 90 percent of normal for Northern California, according to the Department of Water Resources. The Central Sierra was 76 percent to 87 percent of normal and the Southern Sierra was 63 percent to 74 percent of normal.

Snow began falling Tuesday while the students were out doing the survey, which consists of shoving a hollow aluminum tube into the snow to measure the depth. The tube is then weighed to also measure the water content in the snow.

Nova explained to the students that the snow on Mt. Shasta melts and flows into the Sacramento River and eventually into Lake Shasta. Some of that water eventually makes its way hundreds of miles to the south and is used to irrigate farms or to provide drinking water for residents in Southern California.

Weed High teacher Rebekah Sluss said Tuesday's expedition gave the kids a look at the big picture of how Californians get their water.

"Water is so important to life in California," she said.

"This is such an important activity that's done statewide, and since we've been in a drought for so many years, all these kids remember of their recent history is the drought," Sluss said.

"And I love the idea of helping take part in collecting real data that's actually going to be used," she said.
SHARE

By Sophie Quinton, Stateline.org

Prairie View Elementary School doesnt usually have trouble attracting new teachers. Its one of the more affluent schools in rural Enid, Okla., housed in the districts newest building.

When I started having trouble hiring teachers  I can only imagine what the other principals are doing, said Prairie Views principal, Clark Koepping.

Schools nationwide are reporting teacher shortages that go beyond the chronic struggle to fill positions at low-income schools and in subjects such as science and special education. Oklahoma, where education funding has been slashed, may be the hardest-hit state.

Like many of her counterparts, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin has focused on one solution: giving teachers a raise. Her latest budget proposal included money for teacher pay increases despite declining revenue and a projected $1.3 billion deficit for fiscal 2017.

In South Dakota this past week, the House approved Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaards plan to raise the state sales tax to fund teacher pay increases. Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez proposed raising entry-level teacher salaries and expanding student loan repayment and scholarships. Democratic Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee has also called for higher pay for teachers.

Raising teacher pay is a simple policy lever for lawmakers to pull. Most states have increased elementary and secondary school spending in recent years, including more money for teacher compensation. But there are other things states can do to close the gap, such as establishing residency programs, like to those for young doctors, to give new teachers more support.

The solution is to improve the job, said Richard Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Some approaches, such as raising teacher salaries and reducing class sizes, cost a lot of money. Others, such as giving teachers a bigger role in how classrooms are run, do not.

When this school year started, about 1,000 teaching positions across Oklahoma werent yet filled. Schools there have canceled courses, crammed more children into classrooms, and hired more teachers on emergency licenses as the shortage has worsened over the past few years.

Enids hiring problems now go beyond a longtime difficulty finding math, science, foreign language and special education teachers, said Amber Graham Fitzgerald, director of human resources for the school district.

To Shawn Hime, head of the Oklahoma State School Boards Association, the reason is clear: Oklahoma teachers havent had a pay raise since 2008. Oklahoma teachers new to the profession earn about $31,600 a year, less than they could earn in cities in neighboring states.

Although $31,600 is higher than the average private-sector salary for a new college graduate in Oklahoma, private-sector workers earn 37 percent more after 10 years than teachers do, according to an analysis commissioned by the School Boards Association and the Oklahoma Business and Education Coalition.

Fallins budget would spend $178 million to raise every teachers salary by $3,000 a year. The education of our students remains my biggest priority in my budget, even in fiscal climates like this, she said in her State of the State address this month.

State legislators have also proposed wats to raise teacher pay. Meanwhile, David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma and a former Democratic governor and U.S. senator, is leading a drive for a ballot initiative that would raise money for schools (including teacher salaries) through a 1 cent sales-tax increase.

The ballot initiative could also provide more money for highly skilled teachers and science, technology, engineering and math teachers, Boren says.

Many Oklahoma teachers are already eligible for additional compensation in the form of federal loan forgiveness for working in a designated shortage area. Last year, the Legislature passed bills that allow districts to offer one-time bonus payments to attract rookie teachers.

Low pay may not be Oklahomas only problem, however. Teacher shortages involve many factors, including teacher retirements, a growing school-age population, and efforts to reduce class sizes. Educators, advocates and researchers nationwide have different theories about why schools may have trouble recruiting qualified teachers.

Koepping, the elementary school principal, said he thinks theres a supply problem: Fewer young people are getting bachelors degrees in education. Nationally, college education programs are producing fewer graduates than they used to, and its not clear why.

But Ingersoll says that focusing on college graduates misses the point. Public schools hire teachers of all ages, including people who enter the profession through an alternate route, such as the Teach for America program. In any case, students will return to education programs once the economy improves and teacher hiring picks up, he said.

The problem isnt shortages, so much as it is too much turnover, he said. The latest federal survey data shows that 17 percent of new teachers leave the profession within five years.

New teachers are more likely to stay in the profession if theyre connected with mentors and additional training, Ingersoll said. As of 2012, a majority of states required such a program; Oklahoma suspended its statewide mentoring program in 2010 but reinstated it in 2014.

In California, a Senate bill would put a twist on the idea by giving money to districts, counties and charter school operators to establish a residency program for trainee teachers working toward their teaching credentials.

Lawmakers also are removing regulatory barriers that keep out some qualified teachers. In Oklahoma, a 2015 law made it easier for teachers certified elsewhere to work in the state. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow retired teachers to return to the classroom and earn $18,000 a year without losing their retirement benefits.

Lawmakers can also consider scaling back the bureaucratic rules and paperwork that teachers find frustrating once theyre in the classroom. The latest federal K-12 education law, which gives states more control over their schools, could provide an opportunity for rethinking requirements placed on teachers, Hime said.

Schools and districts can also take steps to address local teacher shortages. Enid matched new teachers with mentors even when the state didnt require it. The high school offers a teaching career training course. A partnership with a local university helps get student teachers into Enids pre-K classrooms.

But all those efforts are up against years of education funding cuts. Since 2008, Oklahoma has cut per-pupil education funding by 24 percent, the deepest reduction in the country, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Enid school district anticipates a 15 to 18 percent reduction this year, and eliminated 20 positions last year to get ready. The crisis that were facing is so large  its hard to be prepared for it, Fitzgerald said.

With schools under so much stress, teacher salary increases arent enough, education advocates say. The ballot initiative in Oklahoma would create a constitutionally protected education fund for schools, higher education, career education and early childhood education. According to organizers, the proposal would raise about $615 million per year.

Further funding cuts arent inevitable, said Republican state Sen. David Holt. He has proposed raising teacher pay by $10,000 over several years, by eliminating tax breaks and funneling new revenue into education once the state budget recovers.

Oklahoma lawmakers have to find a way to protect education funding and deal with teacher pay, Holt said. If we dont figure out this issue this year, even with the budget shortfall, I think Republicans will pay a political price  and deservedly so.



2016 Stateline.org

Visit Stateline.org at www.stateline.org

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Jeremy Purcell, PhD., left, and Brenda Rapp, PhD., right, are co-authors of a paper published in the journal Brain about stroke patients and spelling. They are looking at a model of a human brain in the cognitive science department at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore on February 8, 2016. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun/TNS)

SHARE

By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun

BALTIMORE  Many people may consider themselves poor spellers, but for stroke survivors, spelling can be particularly challenging, because damage to the brain can cause such radical errors as spelling L-I-O-N as T-I-G-E-R.

By studying the brains of these stroke survivors, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have pinpointed the parts of the brain that control spelling. They hope their discovery, published in December in the journal Brain, will lead to better treatments to teach stroke survivors to spell again.

Spelling is a relatively new development in human evolution, so theres no one part of the brain that controls it. And while much is known about how the brain reads, less is known about how it spells. But humans generally get pretty good at spelling, even if they didnt evolve to do it, said Brenda Rapp, a professor in Hopkins department of cognitive sciences and lead author of the study.

But how does the brain do that? Does it just kind of shove it in anywhere, wherever theres room it puts in spelling? Or is it putting it in very systematic places? Rapp said. Well, it turns out that there are very systematic places that are really similar across individuals.

Rapp and the other researchers examined the cases of 33 people who had spelling problems  known as dysgraphia  after a stroke or other brain damage. Most were stroke victims, but a couple had suffered brain damage from having tumors removed.

They found that spelling difficulties were split in two types: those involving what is known as working memory, and others involving long-term memory. Twenty seven of the people studied had problems with either working or long-term memory, while six people had issues with both.

In a stroke, blood is cut off to part of a persons brain, damaging that area. By studying the locations of those brain lesions in stroke survivors who had dysgraphia, the researchers were able to pinpoint the regions of the brain that control spelling.

Though many people may make common mistakes in spelling and think nothing of it  particularly with the availability of spell-check and auto-correct on computers and other personal devices to spare them embarrassment  stroke survivors spelling problems are much more severe and debilitating.

The researchers studied MRI scans of the stroke victims brains while asking them to spell words. To spell a word, a person must visualize the word in their head  a task involving long-term memory  and then place the letters in the correct order  which uses working memory. Both working and long-term memory are essential for spelling, the researchers found.

When long-term memory is damaged, stroke survivors can spell simple words, but words with a less predictable spelling may be misspelled. For example, sauce may be spelled as soss, the researchers wrote in their paper. Instead of lion, the spellers would use other words, such as lint, pseudo-words such as lonp, or even errors such as tiger.

When working memory is damaged, letters dont go in the correct order or are missing entirely, so lion might be spelled as liot, lin or liont.

The long-term memory problems were found after damage to the left posterior inferior frontal region, which is usually assumed to be involved in spoken language, or the left ventral temporal cortex, which handles visual processing. Working memory deficits were seen in people who had damage to their left parietal cortex, which directs the brains attention to spatial locations.

The research clarifies our understanding of the regions of the brain that are critical for spelling, said Pelagie M. Beeson, a professor and the head of the speech, language and hearing sciences department at the University of Arizona.

Its not inconsistent with what we may have thought based on our knowledge so far, said Beeson, who was not involved in the Hopkins study. But its a really nice demonstration that clarifies it.

Beeson said it makes sense that parts of the brain involved in processing vision would be involved in spelling.

When youre going to write a word you have to hold it in your mind and you have to hold it in your mind long enough to get all the letters correct and in the correct order, Beeson said.

Some of the patients involved in the study were Italian, and were gathered by two Italian researchers who contributed to the report. They found that similar mechanisms were involved in spelling despite the language difference.

Rapp and Jeremy Purcell, a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins and a co-author on the study, are now using a functional MRI machine, in which people perform tasks while their brain is scanned, to try to see how the stroke survivors recover. The researchers first scan the patients brains while they spell and then try to train them to improve their spelling. Their brains then are scanned again to see if anything in the brain has changed.

To the untrained eye, one might say that they have a spelling problem, Purcell said. So now we can actually look at their spelling patterns.  We want to see: Do they recover in the same way? Do they rely on different brain structures to recover?

When people who havent had a stroke struggle to spell certain words, it may be because they didnt store the spelling properly in their long-term memory, or because they made a working memory error, Rapp said.

New technology reduces the pressure to spell perfectly, she said.

Spell-check is probably reducing pressure to really store things in long-term memory, and when you make working memory mistakes it corrects them for you also, Rapp said. But probably the biggest thing is its reducing the pressure to make these really good long-term memory representations.

Rapp was previously a special education teacher in Prince Georges County and in Spain. She said she was inspired to pursue her doctorate after dealing with children who had difficulty learning to spell.

She and a colleague are working again with children who struggle with spelling to learn more about what may be going wrong in the brain at the formative stage of spelling. The researchers used their experience working with adults to hone techniques they hope to use with children.

I really knew that I didnt understand what was happening in the brain well enough, Rapp said. We can now bring what weve learned about the adult state and bring it to these kids that are having problems.



2016 The Baltimore Sun

Visit The Baltimore Sun at www.baltimoresun.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The "Super Tuesday" primaries may be a turning point for America - and quite possibly a turn for the worse. After seven long years of domestic disasters and increasing international dangers, the next President of the United States will need extraordinary wisdom, maturity, depth of knowledge and personal character to rescue America.

Instead, if the polls are an indication, what we may get is someone with the opposite of all these things, a glib egomaniac with a checkered record in business and no track record at all in government - Donald Trump.

If so, the downward trajectory of America over the past seven years may well continue on into the future, to the point of no return.

Democrat Susan Estrich says that it is "fun" watching Donald Trump. She may be able to enjoy the spectacle because Trump is Hillary Clinton's best chance of winning the general election in November. Even if the FBI's investigation leads them to recommend an indictment, the Obama administration is not likely to indict Hillary.

No doubt "The Donald" is entertaining, and he has ridden a wave of Republican voter anger against the Republican establishment, which has repeatedly betrayed them, especially on illegal immigration.

But these political problems are a sideshow, in a world where Iran is guaranteed to get nuclear weapons and North Korea, which already has them, is developing long-range missiles that can reach American cities. Iran is also developing long-range missiles.

Then there are the international terrorist organizations from the Middle East - many sponsored by Iran - whose agents have had easy access to the United States across our open border with Mexico.

We will need the cooperation of nations around the world to keep us informed of these terrorist organizations' activities, and to help disrupt the international money flows to terrorists.

Those nations know that helping the United States makes them targets of terrorism. So they have to weigh how much they can rely on America, before they risk their own national survival by cooperating with us against the terrorists.

Is Donald Trump someone who would inspire such confidence among leaders of other countries? Already Trump's irresponsible rhetoric has caused a backlash in Mexico and there has also been an attempt in Britain to ban him from setting foot on British soil.

We need all the allies we can get, from countries around the world, including Muslim allies in the Middle East. The last thing we can afford, at this crucial juncture in history is a president who alienates allies we have to have in a war against international terrorists.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump's theatrical talents, including his bluster and bombast, may be enough to conceal his shallow understanding of very deep problems. But that will not cut it in the White House, where you cannot clown or con your way out of problems, and where the stakes are matters of life and death.

Trump's acting like a bull in a china shop may appeal to some voters but, in the world as it is, he may well cost us our last chance to recover from the great dangers into which the Obama administration has gotten this nation.

We already have an ego-driven, know-it-all president who will not listen to military or intelligence agency experts. Do we need to tempt fate by having two in a row?

Despite Donald Trump's string of primary vote victories, he has not yet gotten a majority of the Republican votes anywhere. But although most Republican votes are being cast against him, the scattering of that vote among so many other candidates leaves Trump with a good chance to get the nomination.

Everyone understands that the best chance for stopping Trump is for that fractured majority vote to consolidate behind one candidate opposed to him. But who will step aside for the good of the country?

When we think of American military heroes who have fallen on enemy hand grenades to save those around them, at the cost of their own lives, is it really too much to ask candidates - especially those who present themselves as patriots - to give up their one political chance in a zillion this year for the sake of the country?

Voters have a responsibility too. They might well ask themselves: Do I plan to use my vote to vent my emotions or to try to help save this country?

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
Donald Trump claimed seven Republican victories on Super Tuesday as the New York businessman extended his dominance in the 2016 primary.

At the same time, the GOP leaders' search for any viable alternative to Trump suffered a fresh setback, with both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio vowing to fight on despite underwhelming performances on the biggest day of voting so far. Cruz avoided disaster by winning his home state of Texas, neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska, while Rubio scored a lone victory in Minnesota.

Advertisement

Shrugging off a racially charged feud from earlier in the week, a confident Trump looked ahead to the general election in a victory speech at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: "We're going to be more inclusive," he declared. "We're going to be more unified."

Trump scored victories in Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont and Massachusetts, tightening his grasp on his party's nomination on a Super Tuesday marked by panic from Republican leaders.

Advertisement

Fearing Trump may build an insurmountable delegate lead, top Republican officials lashed out at the billionaire businessman's command of the issues and "seeming ambivalence" over white supremacists as voting began.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 63 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to the media during a campaign event on March 1, 2016, in Palm Beach, Florida, following "Super Tuesday" poll results. (Gaston de Cardenas, AFP/Getty Images)

Trump's aggressive plans for Muslims and immigrants have resonated with Tuesday's Republican electorate, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks. Large majorities of Republican primary voters in six states, for example, said they support Trump's proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States.

The results followed a wild prelude to Super Tuesday that featured extraordinary criticism from several Republican governors and senators who refused to say whether they would support their party's front-runner should Trump win the nomination.

Trump's strong performance across much of the South was a blow to Cruz, who had long expected the South to be his firewall.

Yet Cruz seized on Rubio's struggles, calling on the GOP to unify behind his candidacy, "the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump."

With a win in Minnesota, Rubio hoped to stay competitive in the delegate count while eyeing a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

A defiant Rubio told a hometown crowd in Miami that he had only begun to attack Trump: "You see, just five days ago we began to unmask the true nature of the front-runner so far in this race," he said, calling the GOP front-runner "a con artist."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson remain in the race, but neither is expected to be a major factor on Super Tuesday.

Advertisement

Trump won at least 139 Super Tuesday delegates, while Ted Cruz has won at least 52.

There are 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states. Rubio won at least 25 delegates and John Kasich has won at least 13. So far, Ben Carson has picked up two delegates in Virginia

Overall, Trump leads with 221 delegates. Cruz has 69, Rubio has 41, Kasich has 19 and Carson has seven. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Envisioning a Trump White House, the front-runner said he would get along "great with Congress," despite Tuesday criticism from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who condemned his Sunday refusal to disavow the backing of a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Trump has since disavowed the nod.

"Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him," Trump said. "And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, OK?"

Associated Press
The drama, the competition, the colorful personalities, the controversy. Elections have "turn me into a movie" written all over them.



Rather than try to round up all the ones that have ever been made, let's focus on a few notable ones streaming right now on Netflix, in case you haven't seen them or it's been a while. Happy watching/voting/shouting at your TV.

"Bulworth" (1998)

Hmm, can you think of a current candidate who makes campaign finance reform a priority and has seen success from throwing conventional political approaches aside in favor of impassioned speeches about socialized medicine and the rich getting richer? Before Bernie Sanders there was Jay Bulworth (director/co-writer Warren Beatty), who's so exhausted by politics as usual that his campaign for Senate re-election becomes an unhinged series of unexpected declarations in the form of very basic raps. "As long as you can pay, I'm going to do it all your way," he says in reference to the incentive for candidates to support the interests of their biggest donors. The love story with Nina (Halle Berry) might not be convincing, but his willingness to call out politicians who ignore the black community is great and important. Bonus points for telling Hollywood execs that too many of their movies stink.

Advertisement



"Election" (1999)

Aside from all the lying and cheating and resentment, "Election" provides some arguably reasonable advice when it comes to the election process, even at the high school level. Determined high achiever Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) gives out free sticks of Juicy Fruit while soliciting signatures (people love free stuff); Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) advertises for himself with posters calling him a "Paul-itician" (people often respond positively to even obvious puns); Paul's sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell), only running for student council president out of spite, asks, "Who cares about this stupid election?" and "Do you think it's going to change anything around here?" in her speech, and the disaffected crowd eats it up. Director/co-writer Alexander Payne's ("Nebraska") movie is also a reminder that even though it may not seem like it, or that they're pressured not to behave as such, politicians and the people involved behind the scenes are human. And nobody's perfect.

"In the Loop" (2009)

Advertisement

OK, this hysterical British political satire from the creator of "Veep" isn't about an election, but it's worth including here because A) it's ridiculously funny and clever, and B) it contains biting insight about the miscommunication and bungled agendas that can derail not just any organization but the operations of the high-powered and overwhelmed. The British minister for international development (Tom Hollander of "Mission: ImpossibleRogue Nation") gets in over his head by calling war "unforeseeable," then constantly digs deeper as he tries to navigate D.C. political tactics and the media. In an election year, it's easy to forget about all of the people who factor into decisions besides for the president, and "In the Loop" (and its exceptional supporting turn from Peter "Doctor Who" Capaldi) is the funniest, most foul-mouthed kind of strategic smack to the forehead.

@mattpais | mpais@redeyechicago.com

Want to learn how to stock the best at-home bar and also make some killer cocktails? Teach yoself here.
Afghan policemen take position during an attack near the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan on Wednesday. Photograph: Parwiz/ Reuters.

In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistans Jalalabad city on Wednesday, killing nine persons -- including an Afghan security personnel -- and causing damage to the chancery.

External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four were killed by the Afghan National Police.

Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire. One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan securitymen, MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.

He also said that the Consulate was damaged in the attack. The ministry has received an initial report of the attack and subsequent developments by the Afghan Army.

Eight civilians have been killed in the crossfire, the Indian security sources said based on primary reports from the attack site. They said there were as many as 1,320 explosions including bomb and grenade blasts during a nearly two-hour gunbattle.

The initial onslaught was countered by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police which was later joined by the Afghan securitymen.

According to Provincial Police Chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad, one suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the front gate of the Consulate to open the way for other attackers.

Four other attackers were killed after half an hour clashes with the security forces, he was quoted as saying by the TOLO news.

Wednesdays attack is the fourth in the series of terror strikes on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. It was attacked twice by hand grenades in 2007 and in 2013, it was attacked by three suicide bombers.

In 2015, an attack on it was thwarted by the Afghan security forces.

Two months ago, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan forces.

Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.
Jawaharlal Nehru University Student Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested in a sedition case, was on Wednesday granted interim conditional bail for six months by the Delhi high court, which said he will "not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national".

The high court also enjoined on him, as president of JNU students union, that he "will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus."

"Taking into consideration the facts and circumstances, I am inclined to release the petitioner on interim bail for a period of six months," Justice Pratibha Rani said, while making it clear that the accused will have to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and present himself before the investigators, as and when required.

The judge also considered the family background of Kanhaiya, whose mother is an Anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3,000 on which the entire family survives, and ordered that he be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of like amount.

Soon after he was granted bail, Kumars parents and brother expressed much a sigh of relief, reports M I Khan/Rediff.com.

Hum sabhi khush hain, akhirkar jamanat mil gayee. Nyaya ki jeet hui (We are all very happy, in the end he got bail. Justice has prevailed), Kanhaiyas mother Meena Devi told Rediff.com.

Meena said she was restless earlier but is hopeful that her son will get justice. I was waiting to hear this good news. I am relieved now, Meena said.

"My son is not a terrorist and the world will know it soon. I have faith in him, he will fight the opponents who have framed him. For every mother her child is great, if he has committed mistake punish him but do not call him a terrorist. He is not one, he never will be," Devi added.

Kanhaiyas father Jaishankar Singh, who is paralysed, said, This isnt merely our victory; this is a victory for the whole nation. Thousands upon thousands of people were on the streets demanding his release. We are extremely happy.

Kanhaiyas younger brother Prince Kumar said that hours before TV news channel break this news, hundreds of people have gathered at their house. My house is full of people now, our family, relatives, neighbours, villagers and people from nearby villages have gathered to show support for us.

The last few days have been very stressful for us but his bail has come as a big relief. We hope things will be sorted soon and he will come out clean, Prince added.

Prince told Rediff.com that no grand celebrations would follow Kanhaiyas release. We are simple people expressing our joy in the simplest of ways. Ma-Babuji are the happiest Ive ever seen them, he stated.

Our parents will be able to speak with Kanhaiya on Thursday once he is released from Tihar Jail, Prince said.

Whilst granting Kanhaiya bail the judge directed that the accused surety, Should also be either a member of the faculty or a person related to him in a manner that he exercises control on him not only with respect to appearance before the court but also to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner."

While giving monetary concession for furnishing the bond for release, the high court said Kanhaiya has to "furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national."

In the 23-page order, the judge said, Kanhaiya would not leave the country without the permission of the trial court and the person standing surety for him shall also furnish an undertaking on the lines similar to that of the accused.

The judge also observed that "during the period spent by petitioner in judicial custody, he might have introspected about the events that had taken place. To enable him to remain in the mainstream at present, I am inclined to provide conservative method of treatment."

The judge said, "Once the decision of releasing the petitioner on interim bail is taken, now the question comes as to what should be the amount for monetary security. In his speech dated February 11, 2016, the petitioner has claimed that his mother works as Anganwadi worker and earns Rs 3,000 per month on which the entire family survives.

"If this aspect is considered, then the amount required to be filled in the personal bond and surety bond cannot be so high as to put him in a position that he cannot avail the interim bail," the judge said.

"The time is ripe that while giving some concession to the petitioner on monetary aspect for purpose of furnishing the bond, he can be required to furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national.

"Apart from that, as President of JNU Students Union, he will make all efforts within his power to control anti- national activities in the campus," the high court said.

While laying down the conditions for Kanhaiya's release on interim bail, the high court said that the personal bond of Rs 10,000 and an undertaking with surety, who should preferably be a faculty member of JNU, will be to the satisfaction of concerned Metropolitan magistrate or the link magistrate with the condition that "he shall not leave the country without the permission of the court".

The high court took strong exception to the manner in which slogans were raised and protest staged by the students on the campus carrying photographs and posters of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, mastermind of hijacking of a passenger airline to Lahore in 1971 who was hanged in 1984.

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters, carrying photographs, of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat," the judge said.

The high court noted that Kanhaiya belongs to an intellectual class pursuing PhD from International School of Studies, JNU, which is considered as hub of intellectuals. The court said that his political ideology or affiliation has to be pursued within the framework of Indian Constitution as freedom of speech and expression is subject to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.

"He may have any political affiliation or ideology. He has every right to pursue that but it can only be within the framework of our Constitution. India is a living example of unity in diversity. Freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution," the judge said.

The high court said that the faculty of JNU has to play its role in guiding them to the right path so that they can contribute to the growth of the nation and to achieve the object and vision for which the university was established.

"The reason behind anti-national views in the mind of students who raised slogans on death anniversiry of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for attack on our Parliament, which led to this situation have not only to be found by them but remedial steps are also required to be taken in this regard by those managing the affairs of the JNU so that there is no recurrence of such incident," the judge said.

The high court also made strong remarks on the slogans raised by the accused students, saying they cannot claim protection under fundamental right to speech and expression particularly in view of the fact that the investigation into the case was at nascent stage.

It considered the entire incident "as a kind of infection" from which such students are suffering and needs to be cured "before becoming epidemic" and "surgical intervention" is required when the first line of treatment fails.

"The investigation in this case is at nascent stage. The thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of JNU who organised and participated in that programme cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to free speech and expression. I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic, the judge said.

Whenever such infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical intervention also. However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it may become gangrene, amputation is the only treatment, the judge said.

-- With inputs from PTI
With new charges against former minister P Chidambaram's son Karti surfacing over Aircel-Maxis deal, the government on Wednesday asserted in Lok Sabha that there are "no holy cows" to protect and action will be taken against those found guilty, "howsoever important" one may be.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the ED and investigative wing of the income tax department, during recent searches in connection with the Aircel-Maxis deal, have recovered several "incriminating" documents which are being scrutinised and charge sheets will be filed.

Replying to a short duration discussion on Aircel-Maxis deal in the wake of vociferous demand for action by the AIADMK which has been disrupting the House since on Tuesday, Jaitley said the matter is being probed by three investigating agencies and it would be taken to the logical conclusion.

"No one will be spared. We have no holy cows to protect. The government is going to the root of each one of these cases," said Jaitley, who also holds Corporate Affairs portfolio.

Refuting allegations that the government was going slow in the 2G and Aircel-Maxis cases as "absolutely incorrect", he said in all these cases, "where the CBI has come to a prima facie opinion that an offence has been committed, charge-sheets have been filed and the trials are going on".

Jaitley said, "Whatever was the stand of the earlier government, we have not been influenced by that stand at all. The investigative agencies have absolute freedom to professionally record the entire evidence and if they come to an opinion that some people prima facie guilty, the investigating agencies are free to take actions."

For the second day today, Parliament proceedings have been disrupted by AIADMK members who were demanding action against Karti Chidambaram following reports that he has invested huge sums of money in various countries based on searches conducted at his premises and other related companies.

Jaitley said the government is completely committed to absolute probity.

"... it all started with the infamous 2G case. Then, the extension of the case was... it led to the Aircel-Maxis issue which has now further led to a third category of cases," the finance minister said.

Responding to queries by certain members on whether an FIR have been filed in these cases, he said under the law, there is no need to file the FIR and only charge sheets are filed once the investigations are completed.

"All I can say is that whatever action has to be taken under the law, under different provisions, once the violation is detected, investigations will be taken to their logical conclusion," he said.

"... all facts, including facts in relation to certain entities which have been named, I am not consciously using those names because these matters are under investigation," Jaitley noted.

Jaitley said on January 8, 2016, a charge-sheet and a compliant has been filed in court by the ED and on February 27, the court took congnisance of that charge sheet.

"Notices have gone to the various accused who will now be tried in the Aircel-Maxis case and they will have to face trial and (it is) eventually for the court now to decide," the minister said.

According to him, a "lot of incriminating" material has been seized and details of assets held by certain entities in India and abroad have also been obtained.

"Pursuant to that entire information, witnesses are being recorded, those documents are being analysed, letters Rogatory have been sent by the ED to several countries," he noted. In these cases, he said the three Acts involved are related to Income Tax, Foreign Exchange Management Act, and Prevention of Money Laundering.

Jaitley said in the course of investigations, a series of raids were conducted by the income tax department and ED against several companies, more particularly in Chennai. This was followed up by raids against other companies also, he added.

"I must straightaway at this stage place a particular limitation on myself and that limitation is on account of two factors. There is a provision in the Income Tax Act, as also in the PMLA, under which I cannot make public the details of the investigation.

"Secondly based on another very important principle that if investigations are at a crucial stage and third set of cases has reached a very critical stage, then disclosure of that investigation material publicly may actually prejudice the investigation.

"So I am therefore both in law and at the matter of propriety constrained from placing the details of those investigations," Jaitley noted.
Notwithstanding the political slug fest over the alleged fake encounter case of Ishrat Jahan, its trial is stuck for last two years in Central Bureau of Investigation court in Ahmedabad for want of sanction from the Centre to prosecute Intelligence Bureau officers who have been chargesheeted by the probe agency.

The CBI filed two charge-sheets in the encounter case of Ishrat Jahan and three others.

The first charge sheet filed in July 2013 was against seven police officers, including IPS officers P P Pandey, D G Vanzara and G L Singhal. In the charge sheet, the CBI had said that the encounter was fake and a joint operation between the Gujarat police and the Intelligence Bureau.

In the second charge sheet filed in February 2014, the CBI had charged Special Director of the IB, Rajendra Kumar, with murder (Indian penal Code section 302), criminal conspiracy (120 {B}), kidnapping in order to murder (364), wrongful confinement (346, 364 and 368) and under sections 3, 25 (A) and 29 of the Arms Act.

Three other IB officers who were part of Kumar's team -- P Mittal, M K Sinha and Rajiv Wankhed -- were also charged in the case.

Both the charge-sheets were filed in the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate H S Kuthwad. However, the CBI had not obtained permission of the central law ministry to prosecute the four IB officers named in the second charge-sheet.

"As the CBI had not obtained permission of the Union government, the court had not taken cognisance of the charge sheet against the IB officers," said Vinod Gajjar, advocate for accused D G Vanzara and others.

"The court had taken cognisance of the first charge-sheet against seven police officers and case against them was committed for trial," he said.

"However, as permission was not obtained to prosecute officers named in the second charge sheet which is mandatory, the hearing in the case has not started so far," Gajjar said.

Ishrat, 19, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an alleged fake encounter on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

The Gujarat police had then claimed that the four, with links to Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba, had come to the city to kill the then state Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Notably, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a plea seeking quashing of criminal prosecution, suspension and other actions taken against Gujarat cops in the 2004 alleged fake encounter killing of Ishrat Jahan, in view of the recent testimony of jailed Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley.

While testifying recently before a Mumbai court in connection with the 26/11 terror attack, Headley had said that Ishrat was an operative of the LeT.
With the DMK formalising its alliance with the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League, and the AIADMK not allowing the BJP anywhere near it, if the DMDK too goes with the DMK then the only option left for the BJP is to explore going with the PMK. In that case it has to endorse Dr Ramadoss as its chief minister candidate, says R Ramasubramanian.

It seems the ruling Bharathiya Janata Party at the Centre has lost its plot in Tamil Nadu even before the election process has begun.

Tamil Nadu will go to the assembly polls along with West Bengal, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry in April-May this year, and the BJP is moving heaven and earth to cobble together a strong alliance. The saffron party had its run of luck just two years back when it stitched together what can be described as though not a good alliance, but surely not a bad one. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections the BJP was successful in bringing Vaikos Marumalarchi DMK, Dr Ramadoss-led Pattali Makkal Katchi or PMK, and actor turned politician Vijayakanths Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam or DMDK, besides a few smaller outfits under the National Democratic Alliance umbrella.

Though the AIADMK won 37 out of 39 seats in the state, the BJP was able to win Kanyakumari where Pon Radhakrishan defeated his Congress rival with a wafer-thin margin. The PMK won Dharmapuri with former Union health minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss able to sail through despite the Amma wave.

But today the situation is totally different. Vaiko left the NDA a long time ago and the PMK has been on the streets for the past one year and more campaigning with Dr Ramadoss as its chief ministerial candidate and proclaiming that it is the true alternative to both the DMK and the AIADMK. So the sole choice left for the BJP is the DMDK but Vijayakanth, or Captain as he is affectionately called by his cadres, is putting up some tough demands before the saffron party.

Insiders say he is demanding not less than 130 seats (TN has 234 assembly seats) and wants to be announced as the CM candidate. Plus, insiders say, the DMDK wants a couple of Rajya Sabha seats for those close to his family.

On February 28, Union Minister and BJPs TN in-charge Prakash Javadekar was in Chennai, when he called on Vijayakanth at his home. The meeting went on for nearly an hour after which, while briefing the media, Javadekar said the DMDK was very much a part of the NDA and added that he will come to Chennai again by March 2 for another round of talks. Soon after he left Vijayakanths home, the DMDK issued a press statement describing the meeting as a courtesy call.

Seasoned political opinion in the state is that this statement by the DMDK even before Javadekars convoy could turn the corner from Captains house was a signal to the DMK. Captain wants to assuage the anxiety of the DMK which is perturbed by Javadekar visiting Vijayakanths house. Captain is negotiating hard with the DMK and wants to ensure that the meeting with Javadekar should not be construed as his going with the saffron party but at the same time he is using it cleverly to increase his bargaining power with the DMK, says a source in the BJP.

Its unclear still as to what the BJP will do and what will be its strategy in the state. Even small things are messed up by the local leaders. Take, for example, the visit of Javadekar on February 27 to actor Sharad Kumars residence in Chennai. Sharad Kumar, who heads a small political outfit, was with the AIADMK alliance till a few days ago. In fact, he won the 2011 assembly elections in alliance with the AIADMK, contesting it on its two-leaves symbol. But a few days back he jettisoned the AIADMK and is looking for greener pastures. Javadekar made a secret visit to Sharad Kumars residence after 10 pm, but one national daily smelt it out and broke the story with photographs.

This angered Vijayakanth. BJP sources say that in fact, Captain raised this issue with Javadekar when the latter met him. But there were no convincing answers from the BJP leader about his visit to Sharad Kumars house. The simple logic while cobbling together multi-party alliances is that first you have to convince and bring into your fold the bigger parties and then touch the smaller once. But here the BJP is doing it the other way round, by knocking on the doors of small and sundry parties first and then approaching the bigger ones. This is ridiculous. They dont know how to handle their partners or their potential partners and in the process they mess up the whole thing, says a middle level BJP leader with an RSS background to Rediff.com.

The Tamil Nadu assembly elections are indeed a big challenge for the BJP leadership, especially for its president Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It may be an irony of sorts that Amit Shah, while welcoming former Union minister of state from the DMK and actor turned politician D Napoleon to the BJP on December 21, 2014, had said, The BJP will head an alliance in the 2016 assembly elections in Tamil Nadu and the party will announce its chief minister candidate and get a mandate from the people. (http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-former-union-minister-of-state-and-dmk-leader-d-napoleon-joins-bjp-2045876)

This was in December 2014. But today the BJP, leave alone announcing its chief minister candidate, is not even able to get a single political party with a decent vote bank in its fold as alliance partner. After the heavy drubbing in the Delhi and Bihar elections, this indeed is a tough challenge for the Shah-Modi duo. The BJP opened its account in the state assembly in 1996, and won four seats in the 2001 assembly elections thanks to its alliance with the DMK at that time. But in the 2006 and 2011 assembly elections it ended up with zero.

Absolute lack of focus and total disconnect with local sentiments and issues are taking a huge toll on the saffron party in the state. While on the one hand the partys national secretary L Ganesan was saying that talks were going on with the AIADMK for an alliance, the partys state president Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan was saying that there was no talks with the ruling party.

Apart from this, speeches by another senior leader from the state BJP, H Raja, are adding fuel to the already existing animosity the party faces in the state. Raja, who is considered a motor-mouth, is constantly criticising rationalist leader the late Periyar. Observers say this proves that the saffron party is totally directionless in the state. There are holy cows in every state. You should not touch them at least for one simple reason, which is vote bank politics. Here in Tamil Nadu H Raja is badmouthing Periyar consistently and using all sorts of epithets to denigrate the rationalist leader who enjoys great respect cutting across castes and religions, says a senior journalist from a national daily who is covering the BJP beat.

Javadekar cancelled his visit to Chennai on March 2, proving the worsening situation for the saffron party in the state. Meanwhile, strong rumors are going round that the DMK had indeed clinched a deal with Vijayakanth and the DMDK has been allotted 59 seats. DMK sources, while confirming this, say that Vijayakanth will formally announce this on March 7 or 9, days considered by him to be auspicious. But there is no independent confirmation of this so far.

Meanwhile, the BJP cadre is totally clueless, unable to gauge which side the wind will blow. Already the DMK has formalised its alliance with the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League. The AIADMK will not allow the BJP anywhere near it. If the DMDK goes with the DMK, then the only option left for the BJP is to explore going with the PMK. In that case it has to endorse Dr Ramadoss as its chief minister candidate.

Lack of quality leaders and bad strategies are taking a toll on the saffron partys prospects in the state and it does seem to have lost the plot well before the election dates have been announced.
Amid the see-sawing developments of dialogue between India and Pakistan, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said on Wednesday that New Delhi's priority would be action over talks in the aftermath of the deadly Pathankot terror attack.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, a joint initiative of the ministry of external affairs, which kicked-off in Delhi, Jaishankar indicated that action took priority over talks given the present circumstances.

"After the Pathankot attack, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch through the National Security Advisers and me and my counterpart. The picture you see is of parallel processes. In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue, then the answer is obvious," he said.

Asserting that every Indian prime minister has tried to maintain peace with Pakistan, he said the two nations must not remain isolated from each other.

"It takes two hands to clap. Indians would like to have same relations with Pakistan as other neighbours," Jaishankar said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz said that talks with India are likely to resume after a team visits Pathankot in the upcoming days, to investigate into the terror attack on the Indian Air Force base.

"Sharif called the Indian prime minister (Narendra Modi) immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. The NSAs are maintaining frequent contacts," Aziz said during the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary John Kerry.

"A case has been registered and the special investigation team is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," he added.

Aziz also asserted that Pakistan's decision to 'reach out' to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of Islamabad's strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring nations.

"We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues -- including the Kashmir dispute -- is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," he said.

Soon after the Pathankot terror attack, Pakistan set up a six-member special investigation team to follow up on the leads which India had provided.
A piece of wreckage from a Boeing 777, likely from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished nearly two years ago with 239 people, was found washed ashore on the coast of Mozambique, a media report on Wednesday quoted a US official as saying.

The newly discovered debris, found over the weekend, is on its way to Malaysia for further examination. The wreckage is a piece of horizontal stabilizer skin, CNN reported, quoting an unnamed US official as saying.

A second aviation source told the network that there is no record of any Boeing 777 missing other than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, including five Indians.

But Malaysia Airlines called the identification "speculative." "It is too speculative at this point for MAS to comment," the airline said, using its initials.

The mystery of what happened to the plane remains unsolved. The search has turned up some aircraft debris, but also false leads. In September, French investigators confirmed that aircraft debris found on ReunionIsland in July was from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Debris found in Thailand in mid-January turned out not to be from MH370. The disappearance of MH370 remains one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

The Beijing-bound flight took off from Kuala LumpurInternationalAirport in Malaysia early in the morning. At 1:19 a.m., as the plane was flying over the South China Sea, Malaysian air traffic controllers radioed the crew to contact controllers in Ho Chi Minh City for the onward flight through Vietnamese airspace.

Shortly afterward, air traffic controllers in Malaysia lost contact with the plane somewhere over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The aircraft's transponder, which identifies the plane and relays details like altitude and speed to controllers, stopped transmitting and Flight MH370 seemingly disappeared without a trace.

Malaysian authorities revealed later that military radar had tracked the plane as it turned back to the west and flew across the MalaysianPeninsula, up the Strait of Malacca, before flying out of radar range at 2:14 a.m. and vanishing once again over southern Indian Ocean.

Last week, next-of-kin of some passengers filed a slew of lawsuits over the plane's disappearance, with some hopeful that court scrutiny will help reveal answers about what befell the ill-fated plane.

Investigators believe the plane was diverted and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but neither a crash site nor cause have been found so far though millions of dollars have been spent to scour the seas to recover the wreckage.
The National Investigation Agency, which is probing the terror strike on Pathankot airbase, has sent Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking details of four Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists who had carried out the attack.

Ahead of the visit of Pakistani Special Investigating Team, likely to take place in the last week of this month, the NIA sent the Letters Rogatory, a legal document sent through the special court asking details about the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of carrying out the strike at the airbase of the Indian Air Force on the intervening night of January 1 and 2.

In a related development, it appears that no terrorists were present at the airmen billet.

The elite National Security Guards had spent 48 hours clearing the area.

While the NIA is officially tightlipped on the issue and says that it is awaiting forensic report from Central Forensic Science Laboratory Chandigarh, sources privy to the development said that no human remains or ammunition have been found from the airmen billet which has been extensively searched by sleuths of the NIA and central intelligence agencies.

The initial input about the terrorists says they were only four in number which had been shared with the NSG and army units. However, even the Intelligence Bureau was in for a shock when the NSG, which was rattled by the death of its officer Lt Col Niranjan E K, claimed that there was gunfire from the billet and took another two days to clear it, the sources said.

In the meantime, the NIA, in its Letters Rogatory, have sought details about telephone numbers dialled by the terrorists before launching the attack.

The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with JeM, including Mullah Dadullah and Kashif Jaan. The numbers shared belong to the Pakistani telecom operators like Mobilink, Warid and Telenor.

The NIA has also sought details and picture of sons of Khayam Baber, whose son was a part of the suicide squad that carried out the attack.

Kashif Jaan, one of the key handlers of the attackers, had accompanied the terrorists till the border and returned to supervise the operations, the sources said.

The bodies of four terrorists have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim.

Nasir was the one who had called his mother, Baber, in Bhawalpur from the phone snatched from jeweller friend of superintendent of police of Punjab Salwinder Singh.

The NIA has also given details including the batch number of food packets used by the terrorists after infiltrating into India on December 30. The terrorists had carefully buried the packets which had Pakistani markings and manufacturing dates of November and December 2015.
Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have both won the most states in the biggest day of the race for the US presidential nomination.

Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump waves goodbye after speaking about the results of Super Tuesday primary in Florida. Photograph: Scott Audette/Reuters

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on Wednesday surged ahead in the 2016 US presidential polls by posting emphatic wins in the crucial 'Super Tuesday' primaries as an epic face-off between the two front-runners seemed likely after the biggest day of the race for nominations.

Coming within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee, Trump, who has faced intense attack from other contenders for his radical views, notched up victories in seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

Clinton, who is the Democratic Party front-runner and is aspiring to be America's first woman president, also clinched seven states in the 'Super Tuesday' primaries -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts,

Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. She won big among African-American voters and reversed a 2008 primary loss in Virginia to President Barack Obama.

However, both Clinton and Trump were denied a clean sweep which many poll pundits had predicted on Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of nominating contests.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz claimed the day's biggest prize -- Texas -- along with Oklahoma and Alaska while Marco Rubio landed his first win of the 2016 campaign in Minnesota.

On the Democrat side, Clinton's main rival Bernie Sanders registered victories in four states. Sanders captured Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont.

Trump, 69, emerged from the contests closer than ever to the nomination and was acting more and more like a general election candidate eager to take on Clinton.

US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addresses supporters at her Super Tuesday primary night party in Miami. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

"This has been an amazing night," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He vowed to be a "unifier" and to go after Clinton with a singular focus once the Republican race eventually winds up.

"Once we get all of this finished, I'm going to go after one person, and that's Hillary Clinton," he said, adding, "I think that's frankly going to be an easy race."

"What a Super Tuesday," Clinton, the former secretary of state, declared at her victory rally in Florida, taking aim at Trump by asserting that America was already great, despite his campaign mantra, and vowing to make the country "whole again."

"America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole," Clinton, who has built up a delegate cushion over her insurgent rival Bernie Sanders, said.

Trump, on the other hand, asserted that he is "unifier" in the party and is bringing a cross-section of the society to the Republican Party.

"I am a unifier. I would love to see the Republican party and everybody get together and unify. And there is no one who is going to beat us," Trump said.

"I think we're going to be more inclusive...more unified, and I think we're going to be a much bigger party..," he said.

"We have to rebuild our country. Our country is going to hell...and Hillary Clinton doesn't have a clue," Trump said.

Referring to Clinton's email scandal, he said: "I don't know if she'll be allowed to run. What she did was criminal. If she is allowed to run it will be a sad day for this country because what she did is wrong."

"And other people have done far less than her and they paid a very, very high price," he added.

Supporters of Republican US presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio at the Super Tuesday primary rally. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

The Democratic race is guaranteed to go on for months, however, because the party's system of proportionally awarding delegates means no candidate is yet close to reaching the magic number of 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.

Clinton is projected so far to win 492 delegates on Super Tuesday, compared to 330 for Sanders. That gives Clinton a grand total of 1,055 delegates -- including super delegates, who are leading party officials and lawmakers who have endorsed her campaign. Sanders has 418 delegates so far in the race, CNN reported.

Clinton, who also won the Democratic caucuses in the territory of American Samoa, said, "We have to make strong the broken places, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our country."

"Now it might be unusual, as I've said before, for a presidential candidate to say this, but I'm going to keep saying it, 'I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness," she said.

"Because you know what? It works. Instead of building walls we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential, because then and only then can America live up to its full potential too," she said in an apparent swipe at Trump who has vowed to build a wall at the Mexico border.

Sanders, in his victory speech, said, "We started off the night winning Vermont, then we won Oklahoma and Colorado, and moments ago they called Minnesota for us as well. Four big victories for our political revolution tonight."

US Democratic presidential candidate and US Senator Bernie Sanders is joined onstage by his wife Jane after winning in Vermont. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

Trump had already won three primaries and came second in Iowa behind Cruz.

Ahead of 'Super Tuesday', Clinton had also secured three wins in the first four early-voting states and has led significantly among blocs of black voters there.

Trump has stunned the Republican establishment to become the party's front-runner. Despite his controversial policies on immigration, the former reality TV star has been consistently polling well above his rivals -- Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
From sharks circling a lagoon to a bear hunting in a Russian river, the Underwater Photographer of the Year Contest pictures capture some of the worlds most breathtaking underwater scenes.



The winner Davide Lopresti beat entrants from 54 different countries with his portrait of a spiny seahorse taken in Trieste, Italy.

These are some of Rediff.coms favourites from all 80 award-winning photos.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES FOR LARGER VIEW

Gold by Davide Lopresti (Italy)

This image of a spiny seahorse taken in Trieste, Italy won photographer of the year award. The photographer said: 'For this shot in particular, I used a long time exposure, to give dynamism to the image, combining the ambient light with artificial light with the aid of a snoot, freezing my main subject from the rest of the scene giving a sense of grace and strength at the same time. Photograph: UPY/Davide Lopresti

Underwater fisherman by Mike Korostelev (Russia)

The image of a bear fishing underwater earned Mike Korostelev the award in the wide angle category. The photographer said that he built himself a protective cage to capture the fishing behaviour of the bear. Photograph: UPY/Mike Korostelev

Lagoon by Greg Lecoeur (France)

Lecoeur says, French Polynesia is an amazing place for nature lovers. In the lagoon of Moorea I was snorkeling with an abundance of marine life, most notably these black tip sharks. The topography of the mountains in the background inspired me to realize this half and half photo. This photo won the third place in the International Wide Angle category. Photograph: UPY/Greg Lecoeur

Rozi tugboat by Trevor Rees (UK)

The Rozi tugboat wreck at Cirkewwa in Malta lies on a sandy sea bed at a depth of 30 metres. It was a deliberately sunk wreck created as a diver attraction and as such is nicely intact boat sitting upright on the sea bed. Photograph: UPY/Trevor Rees

Bass by Oliver Anlauf (Germany)

This image of a bassist underwater was Highly Commended in the Up & Coming category. Photograph: UPY/Oliver Anlauf

Three Pillars - Practice, Patience & Luck! by Pier Mane (South Africa)

I wanted sun rays, dramatic foreground, background perspective, and - the cherry on top - to capture the 'master of the house' in all of its mystique. The three sponges were well-positioned to set the scene beneath the boat and it took countless shots to balance the elements I wanted; but perseverance, patience and practice all paid off, said the photographer on his award winning photograph in the Up and Coming category. Photograph: UPY/Pier Mane

Green Turtle with remora fish by Barathieu Gabriel (France)

Green turtle on the reef flat to the beach N'Gouja. Photograph: UPY/Barathieu Gabriel

Icebreaker by Tobias Friedrich (Deutschland)

The photographer said: We planned to dive in April in Greenland to specifically photograph icebergs. The water is about -2C, but at the sight of the ice during the dive, the icy temperature was quickly forgotten. The structure of this giant shimmers blue-greenish in the strong sunlight. Photograph: UPY/Tobias Friedrich

The Tank by Saeed Rashid (United Kingdom)

The Tank as it's called is in fact an anti-aircraft US-built M42 Duster. Sunk in the 1980s by the now King of Jordan as an artificial reef. This unusual wreck sits in about 7m making it perfect for snorkeling and is often visited at the end or beginning of reef dives and easily accessed from the beach. Photograph: UPY/Saeed Rashid

A Family Affair by Thomas Heckmann (Germany)

This photo won the award in the wrecks category. The photographer says, I was unable to descend because I had to take care of Maja, my five year old daughter who is unable to snorkel by herself. So my only possibility was a shot from the surface. It was too rough for a normal over/under shot. I decided to try a wave and wreck shot with the island of Curacao in the background. All taken while swimming together with my daughter. I needed several tries to compose the wreck, the wave, and the island in one shot. But at the end I got this real over/under shot with a total view of the famous wreck. Photograph: UPY/Thomas Heckmann

Safe haven by Cathy Lewis (UK)

Photographing the highly reflective silver fry was a frustrating challenge, but I have never seen so many fish crammed into such small jellies so I knew I was witnessing something rather special, says the photographer. Photograph: UPY/Cathy Lewis

Pilot Whales by Greg Lecoeur (France)

During a day sailing the Mediterranean Sea, I was very lucky to find a big pod of Pilot whales that accept me in the blue water. They were turning around me, it was an amazing experience and a great opportunity to photograph them. Photograph: UPY/Greg Lecoeur

Part of the Illusion by Marcus Blatchford (UK)

The National Dive & Activity Centre is the deepest inland dive center in the UK. The day the photo was taken, the dive plan was to explore the deep end, a dive we had done many times before but this time I dived "un-plugged" (without my strobes). With the exception of this change to my camera technique, there were no planned shots either my buddy or I wanted to achieve - just a fun dive with ad-hoc photos along the way. Shortly after this photo was captured, in 6 degree water and 2 hours of decompression ahead of us, we turned and started the long ascent back to the surface. Photograph: UPY/Marcus Blatchford

Scilly Seal! by Nic Faulks (UK)

The seals acrobatics as he swam close, then flipped away, were quite an amazing sight. My patience paid off, for it was the final encounter when I managed to get this shot, following which he disappeared out of sight. Photograph: UPY/Nic Faulks

Lighting the Cockpit by Spencer Burrows (UK)

I wanted to capture an image that was a little different to that usually seen from this site and an original composition. I used an off camera strobe to internally light the cockpit and didnt opt for a head on composition. I opted for a side on profile at a diagonal angle as it suited lighting the internal part of the cockpit. Photograph: UPY/Spencer Burrows

Battle at the Nine by Ralph Pace (USA)

The photographer describing the image says, Nine miles off the coast of San Diego, is a high spot called the Nine Mile Bank. A great area to encounter pelagic animals in blue water. With much of the bait having moved north due to the warmer water El Nino regime, The Nine has been very different this year.



As we were driving along we saw birds and a commotion at the surface. We quickly realised it was a sea lion eating a mola, not a sea lions common fare. It was an incredible scene. We watched for 45 minutes as the mola tried to evade the sea lion. The sea lion was able to finally penetrate the molas tough skin and feed on the molas caloric rich inners. Here, as they look eye to eye in all the chaos, the mola seems to plead for its life. Photograph: UPY/Ralph Pace
US astronaut Scott Kelly flashes the victory sign shortly after landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. Photograph: Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool/Reuters

National Aeronautics and Space Administration astronaut Scott Kelly has landed back on Earth after spending nearly a year on the International Space Station.

The 52-year-old and two Russian cosmonauts touched down in Kazakhstan after a three-hour flight from the International Space Station.

It was a textbook landing for Kelly and his crew, with the Soyuz spacecraft landing vertically as planned.

Kelly was seen clambering out of the capsule with the help of search and rescue teams and punched the air as he breathed fresh air for the first time since early 2015.

He looked in fine form and was on the phone just minutes later, perhaps to his family, two daughters or his girlfriend, who works for NASA.

Kelly and his crewmates Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov will be taken for medical tests before they meet their loves ones.

Ground personnel help astronaut Scott Kelly to get out of a Soyuz capsule shortly after landing. Photograph: Kirill Kudryavtsev/Pool/Reuters



Kelly shared an emotion farewell with his crew this afternoon after posting a picture of his final sunrise on Twitter, telling his 925,000 followers: Rise and shine! My last #sunrise from space then I gotta go!



During his Year in Space, Kelly has done a little bit of everything, from science experiments and spacewalks, to watching movies and celebrating talking with US President Obama. And hes shared it all with the world on social media.



Kelly has spent 340 consecutive days aloft, a US record. The world record is 438 days, set by a Russian cosmonaut in the 1990s.

Even that will pale in comparison to a Mars expedition, expected to last two to three years round trip.

Scientists hope to learn much from Kellys mission to pave the way to Mars in another two decades; they also will collect data from his Russian roommate for the year, Mikhail Kornienko.

#Thanks for following our #YearInSpace The journey isn't over. Follow me as I rediscover #Earth! See you down below! the astronaut tweeted before his return to Earth. Photograph: @StationCDRKelly/Twitter

Along with Kornienko, Kelly will check out of the space station on Thursday, riding a Russian capsule back to the planet to end NASAs longest space flight. They will land in Kazakhstan. Then Kelly will be hustled home to Houston.

The 52-year-old astronaut said he cant wait to jump in his pool and dine at a real table with friends and family.

Kelly rocketed away last March on a research-packed mission, leaving behind two daughters and his girlfriend.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a stinging attack in the Lok Sabha on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of releasing Pakistan from a small "cage" in which it was put after the 26/11 attacks by his sudden visit to Lahore and bringing a 'fair and lovely' scheme to launder black money.

He also rapped Modi's silence on the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, especially the attack on journalists and teachers in the court. In acerbic remarks on his style of functioning, he said Modi did not listen to anyone's opinion, including his ministers and party members of Parliament, on issues like his visit to Pakistan and the Naga accord.

Missed the speech? Here is the video:

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a stinging attack in the Lok Sabha on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of releasing Pakistan from a small cage in which it was put after the 26/11 attacks by his sudden visit to Lahore and bringing a fair and lovely scheme to launder black money.

He also rapped Modis silence on the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, especially the attack on journalists and teachers in the court. In acerbic remarks on his style of functioning, he said Modi did not listen to anyones opinion, including his ministers and party MPs, on issues like his visit to Pakistan and the Naga accord.

Appealing to the prime minister to reach out to the Opposition, Gandhi made it clear that the Opposition does not consider the government as an enemy and does not hate you.

Taking the floor in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the motion of thanks to Presidents address, Rahul, in a speech that was often interrupted by the Bharatiya Janata Party members accused Modi of single handedly destroying six years of United Progressive Alliance work to put Pakistan into a small cage after 26/11 terror strikes, by visiting Pakistan.

He charged the prime minister with releasing Pakistan from a cage for which the UPA had invested thousands of hours of hard work and all-round consultations.

The work done by the UPA has made us all proud. We conducted Panchayat elections, created self-help groups, which generated employment. We had broken the back of insurgency in Kashmir completely.

And what did the prime minister do? He decided to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif without any vision. He decided to take a detour to Pakistan. Just like the Naga Accord. He did not bother to consult anyone...the people in intelligence, the diplomats.

Perhaps he did not even talk to (External Affairs Minister) Sushmaji (Swaraj). Only his opinion matters. He single handedly destroyed the six years of work done by the UPA, Gandhi said.

Insisting that the then UPA government had put Pakistan into a small cage after 26/11, Gandhi said this was achieved by UPA by investing by working tirelessly and in taking account of diverse opinion ranging from opposition leaders, diplomats, armed forces and intelligence officers.

With such Herculean efforts, he said, India managed to isolate Pakistan internationally, turn it into a pariah nation and succeeded in projecting it as a global supporter of terrorism.

Picking on the one-time compliance window announced in the Budget as a Fair and Lovely scheme, Gandhi said this was nothing but a move to turn the black money into white.

The finance minister has announced a new scheme-Fair and Lovely scheme. In this scheme, any thief of the country can convert his black money into white. If anyone indulges in corruption, he can convert his black money into white using the Fair and Lovely scheme, Gandhi said.

Another highlight of Gandhis nearly 30-minute speech was his telling the PM that he should also reach out to the opposition for the greater good of the country.

Listen to us. We are not your enemy, we do not hate you, Gandhi told the PM.

Earlier he claimed that the PM does not consult anybody even in the government.

PM does not listen to anybody; Even the home minister was not aware of Naga Accord which PM signed, Gandhi added.

On the issue of JNU, he faulted Modi for not speaking a word on the row.

Why didnt PM utter a word when teachers and media were attacked, the Congress vice-president asked while referring to the raging row over the JNU episode.

Gandhi said the when the security forces were battling the terrorists, the then Gujarat Chief Minister (Modi) came to the attack site to make headlines.

There is only one truth in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. One truth in the universe -- your own. Nobody elses opinion matters in entire universe. This is all you have shown in last two years. PM cannot run the country with his opinion. Country is not PM. PM is not country, he said

Insisting that the national flag is much more than cloth, he noted that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and and Pakistan President Yahya Khan used to salute their flags but ultimately ended in breaking their nations.

Yahya Khan did not listen to the sentiments among the Bengalis and Punjabis, he said.

Gandhi claimed that when the PM contacted the opposition leaders intimating them about the government solving the Naga problem by signing an accord, none in the state governments or the central government knew.

He said although the issue had huge ramifications, neither the chief minister of Nagaland, nor that of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh knew a word of it.

The home ministry and the intelligence agency. Even the home minister had no idea. Fascinating. Now it (the accord) has vanished in thin air. Gone with the wind. Bye Bye accord.

Is it not an insult to the institutions, not an insult of the Indian flag and people of these states? he said.

On the JNU row, Gandhi asserted that Kanhaiya Kumar had not uttered a single word which was against the law but still he was being bars while real culprits are still roaming free. He also accused the government of crushing the voice of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

What is JNU? Sixty per cent of the students belong to Dalits, minorities and OBCs. Forty per cent of them come from a poor background. Why are you behind the JNU? Because Dalits and adivasis study there and you dont want them to grow. But we will not let this happen. You cannot crush the JNU, he said.

Seeking to take a dig at the BJP, he posed the question as to which religion has said that teachers and the media should be beaten up, in reference to the attack on the JNU issue. He wondered as to why the PM has not spoken a single word about the incident. Gandhi told the PM that the country was gently trying to give him a message and that he should listen to the countrymen.

Listen to all those around you. Rajnathji, Advaniji, Sushma Swaraj, he said.

Suggesting that the Congress and the BJP believed in contrasting ideologies, he said, we believe in Gandhi and you believe in (V D) Savarkar.

Taking a jibe at the BJP, he said, I am not the RSS. I dont know everything. So I make mistakes, the Congress vice-president said.

Gandhi also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the rising prices of dal and the benefits of falling crude oil not being passed to anyone.

Seeking to puncture the governments claims on the Make in India initiative, the Congress vice-president questioned on how much jobs the programme created.

The finance minister told me that MGNREGA is the best scheme but I tell him that he should convey this to his boss (the PM), Gandhi said, on the UPAs flagship scheme being allocated a sizable funds.

Gandhi said when the PM let Pakistan out of the little cage we had forced them into, he gifted them a status equal to ours.

When he stopped over at Pakistan without talking to the professionals in our government, the PM disrespected our flag. He disrespected those who died in Mumbai and Pathankot, he said.

Besides, he said, You cannot defend the Indian flag by destroying the relationships between Indians. You are not defending the flag when you frighten your own people into silence.

At another point, he asked whose opinion does the PM respect except his own?

You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is only one truth - Yours.

Turning to the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes, Gandhi said then the government of India begged the then CM of Gujarat again and again not to go to Mumbai because he would disturb the operation.

Did he care? No. He went right ahead to Mumbai -- to the Oberoi hotel itself and disturbed the entire operation. He grabbed his headlines while our people died.

Image: Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi speaks in the Lok Sabha in New Delhi. Photograph: TV GRAB/PTI
Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani was again in the line of fire in the Lok Sabha with opposition members forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to allow them to speak on their notice for the privilege motion against the minister.

The Congress and Left members accused Irani of using the House to "mislead" the nation with her "totally blatant untruth" during her reply last week on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide in the Hyderabad Central University.

Their attack on the minister, who was not present in the House, came after an upset Speaker vented her anguish over the relentless slogan-shouting by the opposition members.

She said slogans were raised against her as well.

"You raise slogans against the Speaker... Whatever you have done today is not good," said an anguished Mahajan as she allowed them to speak. At the same time, she said this should not be seen as a precedent.

The Speaker relented after Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandhyopadhyaya urged her to allow the Congress members to speak on the matter.

Congress leader K C Venugopal referred to Irani's statement in which she had said that no doctor was allowed near Vemula after his suicide attempt. He cited the subsequent response of the Hyderabad health official to claim that she made "false" comments.

He added that a book which Irani said was allowed by the then HRD Minister Kapil Sibal was discontinued in 2001, long before he became a minister under the United Progressive Alliance government.

CPI-M leader Mohammad Salim said, "What the minister said was totally blatant untruth. Will you allow the House to be used to mislead the nation?"

Congress's Ranjit Ranjan accused Irani of referring to her in a "threatening" manner and said this is the difference between an "elected member" and a "selected member", an apparent jibe at the HRD minister who lost in the last Lok Sabha polls from Amethi and is a member of the Rajya Sabha now.

TMC leader Saugata Roy said that it is a custom that when ministers reply they are responsible but Irani was not.

BJP MP Arjun Ram Meghwal defended Irani, saying she had quoted a police report to make her points.

The House, however, witnessed uproarious scenes when Leader of Congress Mallikarjun Kharge raised the issue of Union Minister Ram Shankar Katheria's controversial remarks made at a public meeting in Agra allegedly directed at Muslims.

As soon as he raised the issue, Speaker disallowed him amid protests by treasury benches.
The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday said it has decided to remit the sentence of life imprisonment of all the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assasination case and release them and sought the Centre's views on the move.

In a letter to Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi on Wednesday, Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan said the state government has received petitions from the seven convicts requesting it to release them as they had spent more than 20 years in prison.

The convicts are V Sriharan alias Murugan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan, A G Perarivalan alias Arivu, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini.

"Nalini has also filed a writ plea in Madras high court requesting the government of Tamil Nadu to release her," he said.

"The government of Tamil Nadu after taking into consideration the petitions of the seven convicts has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and to release the seven persons since all of them have already served imprisonment for 24 years," he said.

Out of the seven convicts, V Sriharan, T Suthendraraja, Jayakumar and Robert Payas are Sri Lankans. Gnanadesikan recalled how the Centre had gone to Supreme Court after Tamil Nadu decided on February 19, 2014 to grant remission to them and also referred to the matter pending in court now.

"The then government instead of expressing their views on the remission of life imprisonment hastened to file a writ plea in Supreme Court against Tamil Nadu's decision.

"In view of the circumstances stated above, it has become necessary for us to request you to communicate your views under Section 435 CrPc on the decision of the government of Tamil Nadu," he said.

"We would like to clarify that this communication is being sent to you without prejudice to our right to move the Supreme Court to review its judgement dated December 2, 2015 wherein the Constitution Bench had taken the view that the word 'consultation' used in Section 435 of CrPc means 'concurrence' and without prejudice to our rights and contentions in the writ plea," he said.

All the seven were convicted by a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court for their role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 during an election rally at Sriperumbudur.
IMAGE: Parijata Bhardwaj during her stint in Chhattisgarh.

'In the districts of Jagdalpur and Dantewada, the only time the accused walked out of jail was when they were acquitted. There is no concept of bail.'

'The women were very clear -- they had to fight. Remaining silent any longer was not an option.'

Jyoti Punwani speaks to Parijata Bhardwaj.

From the comfortable environs of Symbiosis, Pune, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, to the depressing courtrooms of Jagdalpur and Dantewada in Chhattisgarh was quite a change.

Yet Parijata Bhardwaj, 27, was keen to go back to those courtrooms after her sojourn in Mumbai where she had come to brush up her legal skills.

She was to have left last week, but before she could, the lawyers with whom she was working were booted out of town. Chhattisgarh had once again become a 'no-activists-land.'

Parijata is part of the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JAGLAG) that has been handling cases of Adivasis jailed for years in Chhattisgarh.

The group of three lawyers, two from Delhi and one from Mumbai, started working there in 2013. Their clients: Adivasis who had been in jail the longest, who could not afford lawyers, and were behind bars for Naxal prakaran (activities), a special category in Chhattisgarh's Maoist stronghold.

What took Parijata to Jagdalpur?

As a law student in Symbiosis, she was sometimes tempted by the pay package that awaited her if she chose to join a law firm. She knew she wanted to work for the poor; but she could choose to first earn some money and then devote herself to low-paid legal work.

"But I had seen too many of my seniors doing this and then being unable to wrench themselves out of the lifestyle they had got used to," says Parijata.

She decided to join TISS instead, to do her masters in social work, hoping the two years there would help her decide.

By the time she graduated from TISS, the torture of Adivasi activist Soni Sori was making news, and Chhattisgarh's jails were overcrowded with Adivasis picked up as Naxalite supporters. There was a need for lawyers there. Senior lawyers and Delhi's Human Rights Law Network were willing to fund them.

"I knew this was what I wanted," says Parijata. "If I'd let this opportunity go, I'd have always regretted it."

Her mother, a former teacher, was apprehensive. Surprisingly, her father, an ex-armyman, understood. "He knew what happened to populations in conflict areas; he knew there could be excesses by security forces," she says.

The two years she spent in Chhattisgarh opened her eyes to the manner in which the law can become an instrument that denies justice instead of giving it -- a concept her TISS teachers had taught her.

The JAGLAG activists spent their first six months filing Right to Information applications to get to know what they had to deal with -- how many prisoners, what charges, how many undertrials, convictions and acquittals.

Three startling statistics emerged. In Dantewada, there were hardly any normal Indian Penal Code cases. The Adivasis seemed to be free of crimes such as theft, robbery, sexual assault, rape, which were common elsewhere.

Here, the charges were all unlawful assembly with attempt to murder or murder, and the Arms Act.

Second, 95.8 per cent of the Naxal cases ended in acquittal. But whereas in 2005, the acquittals came within six months, after 2010, they were taking as long as six years.

Finally, was the shocking absence of bail.

Everywhere else, most accused walked out of custody on bail. Acquittal came much later. But in the districts of Jagdalpur and Dantewada, the only time the accused walked out of jail was when they were acquitted.

The judges knew the cases were weak, but they would allow the legal system to play out to the fullest. So years would go by as witnesses -- mostly policemen -- would not turn up. Defence lawyers would protest half-heartedly.

These long periods of detention were themselves a show of strength by the State, says Parijata. By the time the accused walked out of jail, they had lost touch with their families, who were too poor to keep visiting from their remote villages.

She remembers one accused pleading with the judge that he would lose his family if he remained in jail longer. The judge's reply: 'If you have no one left, you may as well stay on in jail.'

Another judge, urged to pass an urgent order for a medical examination of a tortured Adivasi, before the marks of torture disappeared, took off his shoes to display a scar on his foot. 'See this? I injured myself three weeks back, the mark is still there. Don't worry, his marks will remain too.'

Yet another judge told JAGLAG that it was the presence of iron in Bastar's water that made Adivasis so hot-headed.

Some lawyers charged their Adivasi clients so exorbitantly that they had to mortgage their land. Others represented them as part of legal aid offered by the State, so they had no interest in the cases at all and were quite happy to let JAGLAG work for them.

At first, JAGLAG was appreciated for working for the 'poor, simple Adivasis.'

But in the second year, as cases taken up by these lawyers started moving faster, with public prosecutors sometimes even getting pulled up, and witnesses being forced to appear, a resolution was passed by the Jagdalpur Bar that lawyers from outside would not be allowed. JAGLAG had to go to the state bar to get a stay.

In her limited interaction with Adivasis in their villages, Parijata found they weren't all that simple.

"The women were very clear -- they had to fight. Remaining silent any longer was not an option, they said. They would organise the rest to protest. The youngsters were the post-Salwa Judum generation, one or both of their parents had been killed by the Judum, they had to leave their villages."

Parijata and her colleagues, Shalini Gera and Esha Khandelwal, became an object of curiosity in the small towns of Jagdalpur and Dantewada. Parijata remembers shocked comments when they went to the local cinema house without dupattas, but overall, they were left alone. In fact, their landlord's family soon accepted them as their own. Ironically, it was their landlord who was pressurised by the police to terminate their contract.

Back home after the Supreme Court granted her bail, Soni Sori was becoming a nuisance. Thanks to her, Adivasis were protesting outside police stations, forcing police to set up inquiries. An official documentation of abuses by the State was being generated. That could not be tolerated.

The lawyers working with her had also become a nuisance -- Adivasis would contact them when in trouble. The lawyers' networks would quickly flash news of police atrocities across the country, to the National Human Rights Commission and even to Amnesty International. They too had to go.

Till last week, Parijata was getting calls from her clients saying: 'Didi, when are you coming back?' Last week, a client told her: 'First you left and now all the others have gone.'

What happens now to the Adivasis? Parijata points to the mega projects announced for the region soon after Narendra Modi came to power, which means more displacement for the Adivasis. "Until there's a strong local movement supporting the Adivasis, outsiders can do only so much," she says in frustration.
'The minister is not concerned about our daughters' well-being.'

'Just when the sex ratio for girls is showing an improvement across every district, the minister wants the onus to be on the women knowing very well that decision making in India is in the hands of the male.'

Rashme Sehgal reports on Woman and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi's call for mandatory tests to determine the sex of an unborn child.

IMAGE: Volunteers at a campaign to save the girl child. Dr Ganesh Rakh, a Pune doctor who delivers firl children free of charge, says every doctor should deliver one girl free of charge at least once a month.

In the last 25 years, India has lost over 15 million girls to female foeticide. The United Nations Children's Emergency Fund has dubbed it the biggest genocide in history.

Female sex ratios in Haryana, Punjab and Maharashtra declined to unprecedented lows. In some districts of Haryana, female sex ratios dipped to 780 girls against 1,000 boys.

It took two decades of struggle to get the Pre-Conception Pre-Natal Diagnostic Treatment Act of 2000 passed and to end the horrifying practice by doctors in Hisar, Haryana, of exhibiting female foetuses in glass jars to encourage female foeticide.

All this stands to be reversed with Woman and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi's statement calling for mandatory tests to be held to determine the sex of an unborn child.

Instead of prosecuting doctors indulging in sex selection, the onus of responsibility of ensuring the birth of a female child must be placed on the woman.

Gandhi believes it would be more effective if the sex of a foetus is recorded and then monitor its progress till the time of the pregnancy.

'How long are we going to keep making criminals out of people? How long are we going to put the onus on sonographers?' Gandhi stated last month. 'My view is, why not change the present policy?'

'Every pregnant woman should be compulsorily told whether it is a boy or girl, the minister said. 'When a woman becomes pregnant it should be registered and in that way you will be able to monitor right until the end whether she gave birth or no and what happened.'

Her remark evoked widespread criticism from women activists.

In the last two decades, only 3,000 cases have been filed against sonographers and doctors out of which there have been 50 convictions.

Varsha Deshpande, who runs the Lek Ladki Abhiyan in Maharashtra and has spearheaded a campaign against sex determination of the unborn child for almost three decades, believes Gandhi's statement was made under pressure from the doctors' lobby.

"The minister is not concerned about our daughters' well-being, but is more concerned about the doctors' well-being. The reason for this is obvious. Each test in western Maharashtra costs Rs 30,000. Doctors stand to earn a lot of money."

"In 2011, Beed district had a girl child ratio of 807 which has increased today to 905. This has happened because we have been regularly conducting sting operations against both diagnostic centres and maternity homes. We have succeeded in getting 18 doctors convicted in the lower court while another five are behind bars," says Deshpande.

"Our biggest breakthrough came when we got Dr Sudam Munde of Beed arrested in 2012. Dr Munde was carrying out around 35 abortions every day," Deshpande says, attributing the success of the decoy operations to the inclusion of Section 24 of the PCPNDT Act which allowed them to use pregnant women as decoys as Section 34 ensured these women would not get arrested.

"In all, over 600 cases were filed in Rajasthan and another 600 in Maharashtra. Just when the sex ratio for girls is showing an improvement across every district, the minister wants the onus to be on the women knowing very well that decision making in India is in the hands of the male," adds Deshpande.

"Instead of prosecuting the doctor committing the crime, you catch the woman who is already under pressure from her family," Sabu George, a member of the National Inspection and Monitoring Committee of the PCPNDT Act, points out. "She will now be under pressure both from her family and also from the State."

George, who has toured the country extensively to keep a tab on female sex ratios, cites the example of how sex selection tests have dropped 30 points in Pilibhit constituency, from where Maneka Gandhi won the 2014 general election in the last decade.

"Gandhi has done little to reverse the existing female sex ratio of 910 girls to 1,000 boys in Pilibhit despite having represented this constituency for several terms," says George.

He fears that if the example of sex selection in Punjab and Haryana were to be emulated by larger states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where one in three Indian girls is born, "We are set to lose millions of girls in the coming years."

Professor Mohan Rao of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health asks why the government is giving a thrust to the use of ultrasound technology in pregnancies.

"Around the globe, the medical fraternity is emphasising that ultrasounds are not warranted in normal pregnancy," says Professor Rao. "In India, if the government makes it mandatory for three ultrasounds in every pregnancy, under the pretext of tracking the sex of the child, this work out to over 42 million ultrasounds being conducted every year."

"They will see an exponential increase in the earnings of doctors," he adds. "India has the largest and least regulated medical sector in the world."

Supreme Court advocate Kirti Singh finds the minister's suggestion "outrageous and biased."

"Her statement will have a tremendous backlash. It is obvious that doctors do not want to be regulated. The most frightening aspect of this suggestion is that a change of the Act will see an unprecedented increase of violence against women."

"At present, India has 55,000 pre-natal diagnostic clinics," Singh points out, "but these are expected to see a substantive increase with the pressure from the doctors."

Dr Puneet Bedi, a gynaecologist at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in New Delhi, believes the "minister is being an apologist for the medical fraternity."

Dr Bedi feels the minister could well have made this statement under pressure from some of her ministerial colleagues, who are doctors.

Agreeing with this viewpoint, Dr Jashodhra Dasgupta, who heads the NGO Sahayog, believes Gandhi is expressing the viewpoint of one of the BJP's core constituencies.

"The medical providers and diagnostic facilities are a prime constituency of the BJP. This is a very right-wing party which is uncomfortable with abortion. So changing the PCPNDT will see a control of abortions," says Dr Dasgupta.

Thirty organisations have sent Gandhi a letter expressing 'astonishment at such a proposal emerging from the women and child development ministry which will severely curtail women's rights to bodily autonomy and ability to access essential maternal healthcare, such as safe and legal abortion services or post-abortion care.'

'Many women who need an ultrasound or a safe abortion apart from sex selection would find themselves being denied these services. The minister must be aware that unsafe abortions significantly contribute to the very high maternal deaths in India, and such rules will contribute to further maternal deaths,' the letter said.

A 2011 Lancet study found that 12 million girls had been highlighted in the last three decades in India. The 1991 Census showed 941 girls to 1,000 boys. The 2011 Census shows the figure has come down to 933, vindicating the findings of the PCPNDT Act.

Instead of ensuring more stringent implementation of the present Act, the government seems to be moving in the opposite direction without understanding the adverse consequences of such a move.
UNHCR warns of imminent humanitarian crisis in Greece amid disarray in Europe over asylum

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR warns of imminent humanitarian crisis in Greece amid disarray in Europe over asylum , 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d690a64.html [accessed 22 October 2022]

UNHCR is warning today that Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis. This is in light of a rapid build-up of people in an already struggling Greece, with governments not working together despite having already reached agreements in a number of areas, and country after country imposing new border restrictions. Inconsistent practices are causing unnecessary suffering and risk being at variance with EU and international law standards.

As of last night (Monday), the number of refugees and migrants in Greece and needing accommodation had soared to 24,000. Around 8,500 of these were at Eidomeni, near the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. At least 1,500 had spent the previous night in the open. The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. Tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers.

The Greek authorities have responded with the military setting up two camps near Eidomeni with a projected capacity of 12,500 and a nearby third site already under construction. With our partners UNHCR continues to supplement the Greek response effort. We have provided rub halls, tents and refugee housing units, other core relief, plus additional staff and specialists, including protection and technical staff.

Overall Mediterranean arrivals have slowed over the winter but remain relatively high. Data as of this morning shows that 131,724 people made the journey during January and February (122,637 of these landing in Greece). This approaches the total for the first six months of 2015 (147,209). This year so far, 410 lives have been lost.

Solving Europe's refugees and migrants situation and preventing a new crisis in Greece requires a number of clear actions. Among the most urgent of these when it comes to Greece is the need for better contingency planning, with increased accommodation capacity and other support. The authorities are trying to respond now to prevent a further deterioration of conditions throughout Greece. But, more resources and better coordination are critical for averting wider suffering and chaos.

UNHCR is continuing to support the response operation: We have set up field offices in 8 locations, and deployed additional staff including mobile emergency teams who quickly move to wherever the changing situation demands. However, with increasing border restrictions across the Balkans, we are concerned that the situation could escalate into a humanitarian crisis similar to that on the Greek islands last autumn.

UNHCR is urging the Greek authorities with the support of the European Asylum Support Office and EU Member States to strongly reinforce its capacity to register and process asylum seekers through the national asylum procedure, as well as through the European relocation scheme.

Greece cannot manage this situation alone. It remains absolutely vital therefore that the relocation efforts that Europe agreed to in 2015 are prioritized and implemented. It should concern everyone that despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, States have so far only pledged 1,539 spaces, and only 325 actual relocations have occurred.

Increased regular pathways for admission of refugees from countries neighbouring Syria will also help in the overall management of this situation. More resettlement and humanitarian admission, family reunification, private sponsorship, and humanitarian and refugee student and work visas all serve to reduce demand for people smuggling, onward movements, and dangerous boat journeys. They thus save lives. UNHCR will convene an important conference on this topic in Geneva on 30 March and hopes for concrete offers in this regard.

UNHCR is urging Greece and States along the Balkans route to act quickly to avert a disaster and approach this emergency in a spirit of solidarity and sharing of responsibility. Safe access to asylum, shelter and basic assistance, and treating people with dignity and respect must remain essential elements of the response.
Investors Warned: Shell faces further lawsuits for Nigeria oil spills

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 March 2016 Cite as Amnesty International, Investors Warned: Shell faces further lawsuits for Nigeria oil spills, 2 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a0bc4.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Shell's failure to maintain and protect pipelines may leave it liable to a raft of compensation claims from dozens of Niger Delta communities, said Amnesty International today as London law firm Leigh Day announced two more lawsuits against Royal Dutch Shell.

The latest cases were filed today on behalf of two communities in the Niger Delta who have been affected by oil pollution, Bille and Ogale.

In its investor briefing, Shell's growing liabilities in the Niger Delta: Lessons from the Bodo court case, Amnesty International warns Shell's investors that failures in the way the oil giant inspects and reports on oil spills could mask the scale of potential financial liability arising for Shell.

Shell has already paid out 55 million to the Bodo community after settling its claim out of court in January 2015. Court documents from that case show that Shell admitted that it had underestimated the volume of oil spills in the region. Shell had repeatedly asserted that the volume of oil spills was 4,000 barrels of oil affecting the Bodo community, while expert evidence put the volume of oil spilt in the region of 500,000 oil barrels.

Court documents also revealed that internal emails and reports showed that senior Shell employees had expressed concern as far back as in 2001 of the need to replace oil pipelines in the Niger Delta, describing some sections as containing "major risk and hazard".

"Shell has an appalling record of obfuscation and misinformation with regard to its dealings in the Niger Delta. Our briefing reveals just how irresponsible Shell has been in its operations in the region," said Amnesty International's UK Economic Affairs Programme Director Peter Frankental.

"It's disgraceful that Shell has to be dragged to the courts to address these issues. Surely time, money and the health, livelihoods and emotional anguish of the affected communities could have been spared had Shell simply accepted responsibility and cleaned up the oil spills quickly and thoroughly.

"We hope that the Bodo case and this new lawsuit will spur Shell on to accept its responsibilities by cleaning up the oil spills and compensating those in the Niger Delta whose lives have been devastated by them."

Ogale is still affected by oil pollution from a spill that occurred in 2009, according to a report issued by Amnesty International in November 2015. When Amnesty international researchers visited the site of a 2009 oil spill in Ogale they saw farmland and swamp heavily polluted, with black patches covering the ground, and a strong smell of oil. Shell has failed to properly clean up the site, despite the fact that the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reported heavy pollution there - including high groundwater contamination - in its landmark 2011 report.

Background: One community has already received compensation

In January 2015, approximately 15,600 Bodo farmers and fishermen were to receive around 2000 each as part of Shell's 55m pay-out for pollution caused by two oil spills in 2008 and 2009, which devastated the environment surrounding the community of Bodo, in Gokana Local Government Area, Rivers State, Nigeria.

Last January's compensation package was the result of a three-year legal battle between the Bodo community represented by Leigh Day, and Shell.

Amnesty International's briefing Shell's growing liabilities in the Niger Delta: Lessons from the Bodo court case outlines findings of the preliminary judgement from the Bodo court case, and key contents of the documents filed in the UK court prior to the settlement.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
EU/Balkans/Greece: Border Curbs Threaten Rights

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, EU/Balkans/Greece: Border Curbs Threaten Rights, 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a19e4.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The chaos and violence unfolding on the Greece-Macedonia border are a direct result of discriminatory border closures and Austria's unilateral cap on asylum seekers. Thousands of asylum seekers and migrants are effectively trapped in Greece as a result of the border closures, and they face an ever-deepening humanitarian crisis.

"Trapping asylum seekers in Greece is an unconscionable and short-sighted non-solution that is causing suffering and violence" said Eva Cosse, Greece specialist at Human Rights Watch. "It demonstrates once again the EU's utter failure to respond collectively and compassionately to refugee flows."

On the morning of February 29, 2016, Macedonian police fired teargas and stun grenades after asylum seekers and migrants stormed a gate on the border. The humanitarian non-governmental organization Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF) told Human Rights Watch that it treated 22 people following the clashes, including 18 with respiratory problems from the teargas and 4 hit by rubber bullets and sticks. They said that ten children, including some under age five, were among the injured.

Human Rights Watch was unable to determine whether the use of force by police in this incident was justified. However, Human Rights Watch has documented past instances of excessive police violence by Macedonian officers against asylum seekers and migrants at the border with Greece, including the excessive use of tear gas and stun grenades. Police should not use force unless strictly necessary, and should exercise restraint if the lawful use of force is unavoidable, Human Rights Watch said.

About 7,000 people, including families with children, are stranded at Idomeni, on the Greek side of the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with hundreds more stuck inside Balkan countries. With the official camp in Idomeni designed for only 2,500 people, many people there are living in squalid conditions around the camp and along the route from Polycastro village to the border, with little food or shelter.

The clampdown on onward movement to the north comes in the wake of Austria's introduction of a daily cap of 80 asylum applications as of February 19, and a subsequent restriction by Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia, on the number of asylum seekers and migrants allowed to enter each country's territory, to 500 people a day. Austria has also capped at 3,200 per day the number of non-EU citizen migrants and asylum seekers allowed to cross into its territory across external borders. Police chiefs from all five countries agreed on February 18 to joint measures to restrict movement, including imposing stringent requirements for proving nationality, denying entry to those who may have spent time in a third country, requiring a new travel document that can only be issued in Macedonia, and considering daily quotas.

Since November 2015, Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia have restricted passage across their borders, only allowing asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan to cross. On February 19, they imposed additional restrictions by banning people from Afghanistan from entering their territories. In practice, the five governments are allowing only small numbers of Syrians and Iraqis to cross borders. Afghans, the second-largest national group reaching Greece from Turkey via the Aegean Sea, are unable to leave Greece to travel north. Greek authorities have periodically bused Afghans from the border back to Athens, most recently on February 23.

Blocking someone from lodging an asylum claim based on their nationality is a violation of international law. This discrimination violates the right to seek asylum as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right to asylum under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Human Rights Watch said. In addition, the European Commission has condemned Austria's cap on asylum applications, calling it "plainly incompatible" with EU and international law. Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and Macedonia should swiftly put an end to these policies, Human Rights Watch said.

According to Greece's migration minister, an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 migrants and asylum seekers are currently in the country - not only on the islands, but also in Athens. In the country's capital, a humanitarian crisis is unfolding, with the authorities unable to provide for basic needs such as food, water and medical care. With temporary shelters and transit centers already full, thousands of people sleep in the open at the port in Piraeus, waiting to be transferred to a shelter, or until they make their way to Idomeni. With an average of 2,000 to 3,000 people arriving every day by boat from Turkey, the Greek government has asked ferry companies to delay crossings from the Aegean islands to the mainland.

The dramatic increase in arrivals in 2015 exacerbated chronic deficiencies in Greece's asylum system where, despite reforms, people face severe obstacles to applying for asylum, inadequate reception conditions for asylum seekers, and hurdles to integration. The Greek Asylum Service has set up a system for appointments almost exclusively through Skype, while a shortage of staff and interpreters and technical difficulties mean people often must try for weeks before even getting an appointment to lodge an asylum application. Without adequate access to asylum registration, asylum seekers remain at risk of detention and deportation as irregular migrants.

In recognition of the strain on Greece, still suffering a deep economic crisis, other EU countries agreed to relocate 66,400 asylum seekers from Greece over the next two years. As of February 24, almost six months after the plan was agreed upon, only 295 people had been relocated.

At the same time, the European Commission is pushing Greece to take sufficient steps to enable returns of asylum seekers to Greece under the European Union's Dublin Regulation. Under Dublin, the EU country of first arrival should be responsible for processing an asylum claim and other EU countries can return asylum seekers to the country of first arrival. These returns have been all but suspended since the European Court of Human Rights ruled in January 2011 that conditions for asylum seekers in Greece amounted to degrading treatment.

EU countries should move swiftly to fulfill their commitments under the relocation plan to alleviate the burden on Greece, Human Rights Watch said. That should include giving people who arrive in Greece more incentives to participate through better information and speedier processing, making places available for the relocation of asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other EU countries, and ensuring proper functioning of "hot spots" created for faster and better processing and screening to respect migrants' rights fully. The Dublin system should be replaced with a more equitable mechanism for determining the member state responsible for examining any particular application for international protection.

"It's ludicrous to see on one hand a relocation plan designed to alleviate the strain on Greece, and on the other hand efforts by some member states that risk turning the country into a massive refugee camp," Cosse said. "But above all, governments are not taking into account the real risk of suffering for hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who won't have a meaningful chance of getting the protection they need."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Colombia: Journalist seeks justice

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 29 February 2016 Cite as Article 19, Colombia: Journalist seeks justice, 29 February 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a2e7a.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Tomorrow, journalist, Claudia Duque, will testify in proceedings brought against former agents of the Colombian security services who stand accused of using psychological torture.

On 1 March, in open-court proceedings, the public will hear journalist Claudia Duque testify how, over the past 12 years, she has been subjected to threats, psychological torture, and even abduction at the hands of former agents of the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) - the now defunct Colombian security service. The hearing will continue until 3 March 2016.

"I've been waiting for this moment for more than 12 years: to tell my story before a judge in a public hearing, to say exactly what it has meant to me, to my family, to Colombian journalism and to the defence of human rights in this country to have torture inflicted on me by the DAS and to be silenced," said Duque in an open letter.

Tomorrow's depositions are part of proceedings being brought against eight former DAS members, three of whom are already imprisoned, and five remain free. The former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and the former DAS director Jorge Noguera are also suspected of involvement in the crimes, but investigations into this have been halted.

Duque has suffered persecution for many years, which began as a result of her investigation into the murder of comedian Jaime Garzon in 1999. She believes that DAS agents were involved in the case.

Out of fear of reprisal, Duque has sought to mobilise media and human rights organisations worldwide to draw attention to her case, and to demand expedited investigations and a neutral judicial process. She has also asked supporters to attend the hearing to support her, given the possibility she may be accused of intentionally victimising herself, as she has been accused before.

ARTICLE 19 has followed the case of Claudia Duque and urges the Colombian state to ensure Duque's safety so that she can testify freely. ARTICLE 19 calls on Colombia to bring to justice all those who are responsible for attacks against journalists and human rights defenders.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Myanmar: Imprisoning Than Than Maw worsens gender-based violation of free expression

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 26 February 2016 Cite as Article 19, Myanmar: Imprisoning Than Than Maw worsens gender-based violation of free expression, 26 February 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a3864.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

ARTICLE 19 condemns the extended trial, and illegitimate sentencing, of Than Than Maw who, after meeting with journalists, has been imprisoned for four months, together with her baby, under a law on protesting without permission.

"It is clear that Than Than Maw has faced a completely disproportionate trial and been given an illegitimate sentence, simply as a way to spread fear among human rights defenders and activists like herself and her husband, who is also serving an 11-year term for peaceful protest," said Thomas Hughes, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19.

"This sentence instils a worse chilling effect on Myanmar women, deterring them from speaking out in future for fear that any children they have will in effect be punished alongside them. International standards are clear that handing down prison sentences to women with children for non-violent 'crimes' is not acceptable," he added.

Than Than Maw was charged on 16 October 2014 under Article 18 of the 'Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act' for meeting with journalists in downtown Yangon on 10 October, while holding a photo of her well-known husband, stating that she had been denied permission to meet him.

Than Than Maw was sentenced to four months imprisonment on 22 February at Kyautdadar Township Court after an extended trial, lasting more than one-year, which included 16 appearances in court, purportedly delayed because of her responsibilities for her one-year old child, who is now accompanying her in prison.

In cases of non-violent crimes, international standards state that prosecutors and judges should seek non-custodial sentences for women that are pregnant or caring for small children or babies in order not to punish them disproportionately and not to violate the rights of their child.[1] As a party to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), Myanmar is also obligated to prevent gender-based violence, including by the state.

Than Than Maw's husband, Ko Htin Kyaw, is a well-known leader of the Movement for Democracy Current Force (MDCF) and is currently serving a prison sentence of 11 years and four months, handed down to him in 2014 under the same Article 18 for protesting without permission, and Penal Code Article 505(b) for intent to cause 'fear or alarm to the public ... whereby any person may be induced to commit an offence against the state'.

Article 18 and Article 505(b) are still regularly used in Myanmar to punish human rights defenders, political activists, and often general members of the public without any affiliation, for protesting against corruption or injustice. ARTICLE 19 calls on the government to replace these Articles requiring protests to request permission with a notification regime in line with international law.

Than Than Maw's lawyer, Kyi Thar Phone Myint, is concerned that this decision broadens the definition of 'protest' to include anyone simply meeting with the media.

"This case is different to other Article 18 cases as normally the defendant has a chance to state whether they were protesting or not, but Than Than Maw was clear that she was only meeting journalists ... unfortunately however the court ruled that she was protesting on the basis of photographic evidence showing her holding up a photo of her husband when meeting the journalists," said Kyi Thar Phone Myint. He added "We should re-think whether or not the purpose of Article 18 [which requires people to gain permission to protest] meets a real need."

ARTICLE 19 urges the government to amend laws regulating protest and revise sentencing guidelines to make them more proportionate and equitable.

[1] United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders [Bangkok Rules], reproduced in E.S.C. Res. 2010/16, Annex, U.N. Doc. E/RES/2010/16 (July 22, 2010). See also Recommendation (f), Report of the Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention in Africa, Presented by Hon. Commissioner Med S.K Kaggwa at the 52nd Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire, 9 - 22 October 2012. Also see the Gomel Declaration on the Execution of Punishments for Women (2007). Also see Penal Reform International, Briefing No.3 on Women in Prison. See also: UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment, 9 December 1988, A/RES/43/173. Also see UN Handbook on Women and Imprisonment, 2014.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
Idlib's Courts of Arbitration

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Sonia al-Ali Publication Date 23 February 2016 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Idlib's Courts of Arbitration, 23 February 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a43d4.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

After Samia Abdin's marriage broke down and ended in divorce, she tried to seek custody of her only son. The 28 year-old took her case to Maarat al-Numan's Sharia court, but after five months they were no nearer a solution. She turned instead to a court of arbitration and within ten days, after just two sessions, the issue had been decided and she was granted custody.

This alternative system is helping take the pressure off Idlib's overloaded courts, struggling to function in an area often under fire.

"Public courts in liberated areas have been forced to close their doors to the general public, as they have consistently been targeted by government airstrikes. This has created a vacuum in the legal system," Mohammad al-Mahlul, head of Maarat al-Numan's arbitration court, told Damascus Bureau.

He said that this need for an additional means to solve civil and commercial disputes drove the Free Syrian Lawyers Association (FSLA) to establish a dedicated court of arbitration to serve the Idlib governorate.

Al-Mahlul, along with a team of judges, lawyers, and legal advisers, attended training courses delivered by the FSLA in Turkey.

On June 1, 2015 the court opened its doors to the general public, operating from nine in the morning until ten in the evening.

It has conducted training sessions for lawyers in Idlib to explain the need for arbitration and the basics of its implementation, as well as opening offices in a number of villages and towns in the province.

All services provided by the arbitration court and its branches are free of charge. Court employees receive a monthly salary of 300 US dollars from the FSLA.

SAVING TIME, EFFORT AND MONEY

The arbitrator is tasked with settling disputes to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Resolutions are recognised by all courts and public entities in the region.

"Officially the arbitrator has the same role as a judge," the court's deputy head Abdul Salam Salum told Damascus Bureau. "He resolves financial, commercial, civil and social disputes, then issues a final judgment. This system saves time, effort, and money."

Salum said the court tried to raise awareness of the services it offered through meetings with community leaders in rural parts of Idlib. It is willing to undertake all kinds of disputes, except those between different armed factions.

Each month the court of arbitration receives an average of 50 cases. According to its public relations officer Zakaria al-Hiraki, the feedback from those seeking its services has been very positive.

Al-Hiraki attributes this to the extensive experience and patience of the arbitrators in addition to the judicial system practised, which is a combination of law and Sharia principles.

"There is no doubt that Sharia courts filled a vacuum during the revolution," said al-Hiraki, "But with all due respect, they lack experience and clarity, which has led to the loss of some rights. The process followed in arbitration is clear and concise, therefore some disputes are resolved within a few days or even a few hours. So far, it has not taken us more than one month to resolve a dispute. Such cases could take years to resolve in Sharia courts."

Among the main obstacles to the work of the judicial system are the continuing government airstrikes on court buildings. However, court staff remain committed to their work, striving to help people reconcile their differences.

One such case is that of Sabah Arabo, whose brothers wished to avenge their father after his alleged murder. Fearing more violence, the 25 year-old turned to the court of arbitration.

"Thanks to the intervention of the arbitrators, the case was settled," she said. "The accused paid our family eight million Syrian pounds in blood money in accordance with Sharia law, and my brothers dropped the case against them. The services were free of charge, and we avoided further bloodshed."

The court is also involved in settling family disputes, such as that brought before them by one local woman, Umm Ahmad.

"In my village, people follow old-fashioned customs which deprive women of their inheritance," she said. "When my father died my brothers wished to do this, so I took my case to the court of arbitration."

Much to Umm Ahmad's relief, the arbitrator distributed the inheritance amongst all siblings in line with Sharia law.

"I received my rightful share in no time, and all parties were satisfied," she said.

Clarifying the court's principles and goals, al-Mahlul said, "Arbitration is not a new system, it was in practice even before the revolution, though on a limited scale.

"However, the government used to favour the rulings of traditional courts of law, which were mostly corrupt. Ridding the country of injustice, bribery and corruption is one of the reasons our revolution erupted."

Al-Mahlul and his colleagues hope that promoting law and justice will lead to peace and stability.

"We are committed to training more arbitrators in liberated rural areas," he continued. "We shall work hand in hand with honest people to bring justice to the oppressed, and shall stand up to tyranny, no matter how powerful it is in order to restore our rights".

Sonia al-Ali is the pseudonym of a Damascus Bureau contributor from Idlib Countryside, Syria.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Ban says Europe's border restrictions not in line with international law 'or human decency'

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Ban says Europe's border restrictions not in line with international law 'or human decency', 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a54c0.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

1 March 2016 - In Spain this evening, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the country's efforts to address some of the most urgent issues on the international agenda, including the plight of asylum seekers fleeing across the Mediterranean, and the devastating war in Syria.

At a press conference in Madrid alongside Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, the Secretary-General said that so far, the cessation of hostilities in Syria endorsed late last week by the UN Security Council is by and large holding, despite some incidents.

I call on all parties to continue to keep their promises and demonstrate their good faith, particularly to allow the delivery of vital humanitarian aid to besieged areas, said the UN chief, noting that some people in those areas have not received aid for months or even years. Many people may have starved to death, or died from a lack of routine healthcare, he explained.

Expressing his appreciation of the work of the Task Force on the Cessation of Hostilities and the leadership demonstrated by the members of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG) and particularly as co-Chairs, the United States and Russia, Mr. Ban called on everyone involved to build on the cessation of hostilities and prepare the groundwork for the resumption of talks on 9 March.

Earlier in the day, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, announced that intra-Syrian peace talks he has been mediating in Geneva will resume next Wednesday.

The announcement of the resumption of the discussions comes just days after the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the joint statement announced last week by US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as co-chairs of the ISSG Ceasefire Taskforce, on the terms of a nationwide cessation of hostilities, which has been in effect since Saturday, 27 February. The ISSG is comprised of the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries, including the United States and Russia, who have been seeking a path forward for several months.

At the press conference in the Spanish capital, Mr. Ban noted that the country is currently serving on the Security Council and he urge it to continue its constructive role, calling Spain a steadfast contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, and a strong supporter of conflict prevention and mediation.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (right) meets with Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain, in Madrid. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) meets with Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain, in Madrid. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left) addresses a joint press conference with Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Spain, in Madrid. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

 

As a member of the Friends of Western Sahara, Spain is an integral part of United Nations efforts to resolve that complex situation. I will be visiting the region in the next few days and I thank the Spanish Government for its support of this mission, stated the Secretary-General.

Turning to the plight of refugees and asylum-seekers fleeing across the Mediterranean, Mr. Ban said that in his talks with the Foreign Minister, he had expressed concern over the border restrictions that are being imposed along land routes.

These restrictions are not in line with international law or with common human decency. Every asylum seeker has the right to have his or her application considered individually, underscored the Secretary-General adding that he is grateful for Spain's support for the principle of responsibility-sharing, and calling on other European countries to act in the same spirit.

This would be a key theme at the Summit on large movements of refugees and migrants, to be held on 19 September in New York this year. He also noted that The World Humanitarian Summit, to be held 23-24 May in Istanbul, would be an opportunity to agree on ways to better protect people, prepare for crises and ensure the funding we need to help all those caught up in natural and man- made disasters.
UN Casualty Figures for Iraq for the Month of February 2016

Publisher UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), UN Casualty Figures for Iraq for the Month of February 2016, 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a6504.html [accessed 22 October 2022]

Baghdad, 01 March 2016 - A total of 670 Iraqis were killed and another 1,290 were injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in February 2016*, according to casualty figures verified by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

The number of civilians killed in February was 410 (including 11 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department), and the number of civilians injured was 1,050 (including 34 federal police, Sahwa civil defence, Personal Security Details, facilities protection police, fire department).

A total of 260 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga, SWAT and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army but excluding Anbar Operations) were killed and 240 were injured.

Although the overall casualty figures were a drop from the 849 killed and 1,450 injured in January which UNAMI was able to verify, the month of February was marked by the viciousness of some of the attacks, which included suicide bombers against places of worship, a market and a funeral.

The Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Jan Kubis, lamented the continuing loss of life and the injuries as a result of the violence in Iraq.

"This conflict continues to exact a heavy toll on the population. Civilians account for about two-thirds of the overall death toll and for most of the injuries in February. This is deeply worrying and disheartening. Civilians should not pay the price in this conflict," he added.

The figures showed that Baghdad Governorate was the worst affected, with 1,115 civilian casualties (277 killed, 838 injured), Diyala 40 killed and 43 injured, Ninewa 42 killed and 5 injured, while Kirkuk had 29 killed and 28 injured, Salahadin 11 killed and 6 injured, and Babil 5 killed and 4 injured.

According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Directorate in Anbar, in February 2016 the Governorate suffered a total of 130 civilian casualties (04 killed and 126 injured).

*CAVEATS: In general, UNAMI has been hindered in effectively verifying casualties in conflict areas. Figures for casualties from Anbar Governorate are provided by the Health Directorate. Casualty figures obtained from the Anbar Health Directorate might not fully reflect the real number of casualties in those areas due to the increased volatility of the situation on the ground and the disruption of services. In some cases, UNAMI could only partially verify certain incidents. UNAMI has also received, without being able to verify, reports of large numbers of casualties along with unknown numbers of persons who have died from secondary effects of violence after having fled their homes due to exposure to the elements, lack of water, food, medicines and health care. For these reasons, the figures reported have to be considered as the absolute minimum.

Additional Info
UN warns of imminent humanitarian crisis in Greece amid disarry in Europe over asylum

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as UN News Service, UN warns of imminent humanitarian crisis in Greece amid disarry in Europe over asylum, 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a72f40b.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

1 March 2016 - Europe faces an imminent humanitarian crisis, largely of its own making, following a rapid build-up of people in already over-stretched Greece, the United Nations refugee agency warned today.

"With governments not working together despite having already reached agreements in a number of areas, and country after country imposing new border restrictions, inconsistent practices are causing unnecessary suffering and risk being at variance with EU and international law standards," Adrian Edwards, Spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a press briefing in Geneva.

Mr. Edwards added that as of last night, the number of refugees and migrants in Greece in need of accommodation has soared to 24,000. Around 8,500 people are at Eidomeni, near the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

"At least 1,500 had spent the previous night in the open. The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. Tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers," Mr. Edwards stressed.

The Greek authorities have responded with the military setting up two camps near Eidomeni with a projected capacity of 12,500 and a nearby third site already under construction. UNHCR is supplementing the Greek response effort.

"We have provided rub halls, tents and refugee housing units, other core relief, plus additional staff and specialists, including protection and technical staff," the spokesperson added.

According to the agency, overall Mediterranean arrivals have slowed over the winter but remain relatively high. Data as of this morning shows that 131,724 people made the journey during January and February, with 122,637 individuals landing in Greece. This is approaching the total for the first half of 2015 (147,209). So far, 410 lives have reportedly been lost.

Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR's Regional Refugee Coordinator for the Refugee Crisis in Europe, called for Europe to implement burden-sharing agreements reached last year, warning there is "no plan B."

Afghanistan refugees sit huddled under blankets in very cold, wet weather conditions as they wait for permission to cross the border to Serbia from the Tabanovce in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where border changes in the Balkan region have created confusion and chaos. Photo: UNICEF/UN010680/Georgiev

"Greece needs a safety valve. It is time for Europe to wake up, either we have a massive orderly relocation from Greece or a repeat of what we saw last year, more chaos and confusion," he told the briefing in answer to questions on the current situation on the ground.

He added that some 55 per cent of refugees from Syria currently arriving in Greece are women and children and many are from the north where fighting has recently taken place.

Meanwhile, UNHCR has reiterated its overall position that solving Europe's refugees and migrants' situation and preventing a new crisis in Greece requires a number of clear actions.

Among the most urgent of these when it comes to Greece is the need for better contingency planning, with increased accommodation capacity and other support.

"The authorities are trying to respond now to prevent a further deterioration of conditions throughout Greece. But, more resources and better coordination are critical for averting wider suffering and chaos," Mr. Edwards stressed.

UNHCR is continuing to support the response operation and has set up field offices in eight locations and deployed additional staff including mobile emergency teams who quickly move to wherever the changing situation demands.

However, with increasing border restrictions across the Balkans, the agency says it is concerned that the situation could escalate into a humanitarian crisis similar to that on the Greek islands last autumn.

UNHCR is urging the Greek authorities with the support of the European Asylum Support Office and EU Member States to strongly reinforce its capacity to register and process asylum seekers through the national asylum procedure, as well as through the European relocation scheme.

"Greece cannot manage this situation alone. It remains absolutely vital therefore that the relocation efforts that Europe agreed to in 2015 are prioritized and implemented. It should concern everyone that despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, states have so far only pledged 1,539 spaces, and only 325 actual relocations have occurred," Mr. Edwards detailed.

Increased regular pathways for admission of refugees from countries neighbouring Syria will also help in the overall management of this situation, UNHCR underlined. More resettlement and humanitarian admission, family reunification, private sponsorship, and humanitarian and refugee student and work visas all serve to reduce demand for people smuggling, onward movements, and dangerous boat journeys, the agency added.

UNHCR is convening a conference on this topic in Geneva on 30 March.
Post-election wave of arbitrary arrests of journalists

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 1 March 2016 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Post-election wave of arbitrary arrests of journalists, 1 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56d6a7b140b.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is concerned to learn that at least 14 journalists were briefly arrested and manhandled by the police in the course of their reporting in the past few days, in the wake of the 18 February general election.

Their only crime was trying to cover the opposition and its defeated presidential candidate Kizza Besigye. Six journalists were arrested for "security reasons" outside Besigye's home on 27 February and were placed in a police van before being released.

All six - Abubaker Muhamed Zirabamuzaale, Abubaker Lubowa and Mukiibi Eriasa Sserunjogi of the Daily Monitor, Nicholas Bumulanzeeki of the Observer, Mugerwa Gerald of Delta TV and Suhair Boss Mugabi of NTV - said they were beaten while in the van.

Six other journalists - Elijah Turyagumanawe and Dean Saava Lubowa of NBS TV, Kiwanuka Stephen and Nakiwala Faridah of BBS TV, Sendegeya Mohammed of CBS TV and Mukose Arnold of Salt Radio - were briefly arrested yesterday near the home of Besigye and were accused of "inciting violence."

Although under house arrest, Besigye had been planning to attend a meeting of his party, the Forum for Democratic Change, at the time.

Two other reporters, Abubaker Muwonge, the correspondent of China Central Television (CCTV), and Francis Ociti of the Red Pepper tabloid newspaper, were also arrested yesterday while covering a protest outside the presidential palace in Kampala by opposition demonstrators, who released pigs wearing the T-shirts of the ruling National Resistance Movement. Muwonge and Ociti were charged with "criminal trespass."

"The media continue to the targets of unacceptable harassment that is a direct continuation of the systematic intimidation seen during the election campaign," said Clea Kahn-Sriber, the head of RSF's Africa desk. "We call on the authorities to give their men clear orders to respect the work of journalists and stop being the tools of government censorship."

RSF previously condemned a pepper spray attack on photo-journalist Isaac Kasamani on 22 February and many violations of freedom of information in the run-up to the elections.

Uganda is ranked 97th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2015 World Press Freedom Index.

 ISAAC KASAMANI / AFP
Tshiyombo v. The Members of the Appeal Board et al.

Publisher South Africa: High Court Publication Date 10 November 2015 Citation / Document Symbol 13131/2015 Cite as Tshiyombo v. The Members of the Appeal Board et al., 13131/2015, South Africa: High Court, 10 November 2015, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,ZAF_HC,56d6b5574.html [accessed 22 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA

(WESTERN CAPE DIVISION, CAPE TOWN)

Case number: 13131/2015

Before: The Hon. Mr Justice Binns-Ward

Hearing: 10 November 2015

Judgment delivered: 18 November 2015

In the matter between:

KENNEDY TSHIYOMBO Applicant

and

THE MEMBERS OF THE REFUGEE

APPEAL BOARD First to Fourth Respondents

AND FOUR OTHERS Fifth to Eighth Respondents

JUDGMENT

BINNS-WARD J:

[1] The applicant has applied, in terms of Part B of his notice of motion, for orders reviewing and setting aside the decision by the refugee status determination officer rejecting his application for refugee status as unfounded and the subsequent decision of the Refugee Appeal Board refusing his appeal against that determination. He also seeks consequential relief by way of an order declaring that he is a refugee who is entitled to asylum in the Republic of South Africa, as contemplated by s 3 of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998 ('the Act'), together with a direction to the acting manager of the Cape Town refugee reception office (the sixth respondent) to issue to him a written recognition of refugee status in terms of s 27(a) of the Act,[1] read with regulation 15(1) of the general regulations made thereunder.[2] The relief applied for in terms of Part B of the notice of motion follows on that sought earlier, on grounds of urgency, in terms of Part A thereof. Pursuant to the hearing of the application for urgent relief before Dlodlo J on 5 August 2015, certain interim relief was granted to the applicant. The interim relief included a direction to the sixth respondent to issue a temporary asylum seeker permit to the applicant that would permit him to remain lawfully in this country pending the determination of the relief sought in terms of Part B of the notice of motion.

[2] The order made by Dlodlo J also provided a timetable for the further conduct of the matter concerning the judicial review sought by the applicant in terms of Part B of the application. The respondents were, in addition, directed (in terms of paragraph (a) of the order) to file the administrative record of proceedings in terms of rule 53(1)(b) of the Uniform Rules by 31 August 2015[3] and to deliver their answering affidavits, if any, on or before 28 September 2015. According to the tenor of the order, it was made after hearing counsel for the applicant and 'by agreement between the parties'. The implication was that notwithstanding that the respondents had not delivered a notice of opposition in terms of rule 6(5)(d), they were party to obtaining the order as if they had done so.

[3] As matters transpired, the respondents failed to comply with those agreed procedural directions. There was no indication on file that the order had been served on the respondents, but service was probably, quite reasonably in the circumstances, considered unnecessary in the context of their legal representative having agreed to it, and no doubt being in possession of a copy. If they had subsequently decided on reflection, as they were entitled to, not to deliver opposing papers, or to abide the decision of the court, it would have been an act of basic courtesy in the circumstances described to have caused an appropriate notice to that effect to be delivered. However, when the review application came before me on 10 November 2015 pursuant to the relevant provision in the order made by Dlodlo J, there had been no movement in the court file whatsoever, save for the filing of heads of argument by the applicant's counsel.

[4] The absence of any supplementary founding affidavit by the applicant in terms of rule 53(4) suggested on the face of the matter that the respondents had also failed to file the record of proceedings, as directed in the order made by Dlodlo J. That the record was material for the purposes of the applicant's review application followed from various averments in his founding affidavit. So, for example, he had complained that the respondents had 'refused to supply [his] legal representatives with copies of [his] B1-1590 applications',[4] and that the refugee status determination officer (the fifth respondent) 'had refused to supply [his] legal representatives with his interview notes',[5] and that '[t]he first to fourth respondents unfairly had regard to documents which had been requested by [his] legal representative, but which were withheld by them'.[6] It was confirmed at the hearing, in circumstances to be described presently, that the respondents had indeed failed to comply with paragraph (a) of the order made by Dlodlo J.

[5] The relief sought in terms of Part A of the application had not concerned the members of the Refugee Appeal Board, who had been cited as the first to fourth respondents, respectively. It was not apparent from the court file whether service had been effected on them; nor was it apparent whether the respondents had been legally represented when the order made by Dlodlo J was taken 'by agreement between the parties'. Upon enquiry at the commencement of the hearing, I was informed by Ms Harvey, who appeared for the applicant, that Mr Kondlo, the assistant state attorney, had appeared on behalf of the respondents at the hearing before Dlodlo J. As mentioned, there was nothing in the file to indicate that the State Attorney's office had come on record for the respondents. There was also nothing to show that the State Attorney, having first appeared for the respondents, had subsequently withdrawn as their representative. In circumstances in which it therefore fell reasonably to be inferred that the State Attorney continued to represent the respondents it was entirely unsatisfactory that no-one had been instructed by that office to appear for them - if only to explain the prima facie contemptuous non-compliance with paragraph (a) of the order by Dlodlo J, to which the assistant state attorney, presumably upon the instructions of his clients, had agreed. I therefore stood the matter down so that Mr Kondlo could be called to appear to account for the situation. I was also loath to proceed with the matter in the unexplained absence of the respondents' legal representative after I had ascertained that they were indeed represented.

[6] Before the matter was stood down I had remarked to Ms Harvey that it was my prima facie view that the absence of the administrative record might well prejudice the applicant's ability to obtain the substitutive determination by the court of his refugee status that he was seeking by way of consequential relief. Whereas it has been observed that the provision of the administrative record in the judicial review process is a procedure designed primarily for the benefit of applicants, and thus something that may be waived by them,[7] it has also been recognised that the absence of the record can, depending on the circumstances, prejudice an applicant's ability to obtain the particular relief that it seeks.[8] I would suggest that the absence of a record might be particularly prejudicial when a substitutive decision is sought from the court consequent upon the exercise by it of its review powers. Questions such as bias, incompetence, foregone conclusion and the like, which are often pivotal to deciding whether to grant such exceptional relief, are matters on which a court would often be reluctant to reach a conclusion without insight into the relevant parts of the administrative record. Quite apart from that consideration, in the current case, as I have described, it was in fact part of the applicant's case in the review that he had been prejudicially deprived of access to documentation that was relevant to the preparation of his case. The decision by his legal representatives not to have insisted on compliance by the respondents with rule 53(1)(b) was on the face of it therefore somewhat puzzling. It was, however, put in a more understandable light by the further information provided in the circumstances I shall now describe.

[7] The applicant's attorney, who is attached to the Refugee Rights Clinic at the University of Cape Town, took advantage of the standing down of the matter to await Mr Kondlo's attendance to depose to an affidavit to address the concern I had expressed about service on the first to fourth respondents and to confirm the advices I had received from counsel from the bar that the respondents had indeed been legally represented when the order was taken before Dlodlo J.

[8] The further information provided by the applicant's attorney in respect of service was not entirely satisfactory. It appeared from the sheriff's return that the application had been served on an employee of the Refugee Appeal Board at the Board's office in Pretoria on 4 August 2015. There had been no service on the first to fourth respondents individually. Indeed, the sheriff's return was especially endorsed to indicate that only one set of papers had been provided for service on the first to fourth respondents. It also bears mention that the applicant's papers were somewhat inconsistent in respect of the joinder of the Appeal Board: The Appeal Board was cited as the first respondent in the header to the founding documents, while its chairperson was named individually as the first respondent in the body of the founding affidavit. I was nevertheless willing to accept that effective service on the members of the Appeal Board had occurred because Mr Kondlo confirmed that he acted for all of the respondents. (As all of the respondents are state functionaries cited in their capacities as such, the applicant would, in fact, have been well advised to have utilised the provisions of rule 4(9) of the Uniform Rules and served the papers on the State Attorney. Papers were actually served on the State Attorney by the applicant's attorney on 14 July 2015, but according to her affidavit of service that had been only for the purpose of service on the seventh and eighth respondents.[9] A copy of the papers was also served by the applicant's attorney on the provincial manager of the Department of Home Affairs at Cape Town on 14 July and on the procedural line manager for the Cape Town Refugee Office - the person allegedly responsible for 'the control and supervision of the fifth respondent' - on 20 July 2015.)

[9] In dealing with my query concerning the respondents' legal representation, the applicant's attorney reiterated counsel's advices that Mr Kondlo had been present at the hearing before Dlodlo J on 5 August 2015 and had confirmed, when agreeing to the order made on that date, that he represented all of the respondents. Addressing the respondents' failure to have complied with paragraph (a) of the order or to have delivered answering papers, the applicant's attorney averred that she had written to Mr Kondlo in that connection on 12 October - in the form of an email to which a letter, dated 9 October, had been attached - and again on 3 November. She stated that Mr Kondlo had not replied in writing, but had informed her telephonically that the respondents had failed to respond to his requests for instructions. When he eventually appeared, Mr Kondlo confirmed that this had been the position. He was unable to explain, however, why he had not formally withdrawn as attorney, as perhaps he would have been advised to have done in such circumstances. That would have enabled the applicant's attorneys to deal directly with the respondents in respect of the non-production of the record. It would also have made it understandable to the court why no-one had appeared for the respondents when the matter was called. It is not acceptable for an attorney to appear for a client at a hearing and then simply not arrive at the resumption without giving notice to the court and the other parties of his withdrawal.[10] Attorneys in the office of the State Attorney are in no different position to their colleagues in private practice in this respect. Mr Kondlo appeared to recognise as much and apologised for his failure to comply with his duty.

[10] It seems that it is also necessary to point out that when the State Attorney's office receives instructions to act in any instituted proceedings, it must formally place itself on record in terms of the applicable rule of court by delivering the appropriate notice. As noted, the papers had been served at the State Attorney's office three weeks before the hearing before Dlodlo J on 5 August, so there had been ample time for the State Attorney to deliver such notice. Undocumented 'guest appearances' are not only impermissible; they are also unprofessional.

[11] The correspondence addressed by the applicant's attorney to the State Attorney was illuminating, even if depressing. Her letter dated 9 October was a lengthy missive; its length probably a reflection of considerable frustration. It is convenient for present purposes to quote the first one and a half pages:

Dear Sir

As you know, we represent Mr Tshiyombo. You will recall that on 5 August 2015 we took a Court Order by agreement, in terms of which Mr Tshiyombo was granted a temporary asylum seeker permit pending the outcome of judicial review.

The further terms of the Order, which we stress was taken by agreement, set out a timetable for the further conduct of the matter.

The Respondents have still not filed the Rule 53 Record, which has effectively caused the matter to come to a standstill, the dates for the filing of further pleadings having passed as a result.

It is our experience that the Respondents' conduct in this regard is a strategy designed to frustrate and defeat our efforts to assist our clients and to exhaust our financial and personal resources. The pattern is as follows:

1. The Refugee Office Manager refuses to issue a temporary asylum seeker permit to the refugee whose case is going on judicial review without an Order of Court and a letter from the State Attorney;

2. The law clinic is accordingly compelled to incur considerable expense in bringing an urgent application to the Western Cape High Court for a temporary asylum seeker permit, pending the outcome of the review;

3. The asylum seeker is, as a consequence, forced to endure a period of weeks or even months during which his or her personal security, and that of his or her family, are unnecessarily placed in jeopardy, because, being undocumented pending the outcome of the urgent application, he or she is vulnerable to arrest and cannot legally continue in employment;

4. On the day of the urgent application the State Attorney invariably asks that the matter be settled and we take a Court Order by agreement, often without the Respondents tendering costs;

5. The State Attorney also usually agrees to a timetable for the further conduct of the matter, encompassing extended time periods which are advantageous to the Respondents (because they contemplate longer periods than those provided for in the Rules of Court) for the filing of the Record and further papers;

6. The Respondents then fail to file the Record, the State Attorney appears unable to persuade them to do so, and progress in the matter is accordingly blocked;

7. The law clinic then spends considerable time and resources attempting to persuade the State Attorney to progress the matter, contempt of court proceedings are expensive and have in any case proven ineffective.

In a few review applications the law clinic has followed the Rule 6 application procedure, and has not called upon the Respondents to file the Rule 53 Record. The thinking in those cases was that the refugee could attach available papers which, in our experience, constitute the Record that is habitually kept by the Department of Home Affairs, to his founding affidavit and that the Respondents could provide further relevant papers when they answer. This approach has been criticised in some cases by counsel for the Respondents who express the view that the law clinic is obliged to follow the Rule 53 procedure in judicial review proceedings. At the same time, the Refugee Office has become less willing to supply the law clinic with the contents of the refugee's file, making it difficult to properly articulate the review grounds in the founding affidavit.

Mr Tshiyombo's judicial review has been set down for argument, by agreement with the State Attorney representing the Respondents, on 10 November 2015. Despite our emails (copies attached) there has been no compliance with the Timetable set out in the Court Order. Our client is prejudiced by any further delay in the finalisation of this matter.

[12] I enquired of Mr Kondlo whether he would seek an opportunity to respond to the applicant's attorney's affidavit. He informed me that he would not. I know from experience that, as its name signifies, the UCT Refugee Rights Clinic acts for the applicants in a great many cases of this type, which come before the court regularly. It all too frequently happens in these matters that the respondents in the relevant section of the Department of Home Affairs do not comply with their aforementioned obligation in terms rule 53(1)(b) to produce the record; note, for example the remark by Bozalek J in Katsshingu v Chairperson of Standing Committee for Refugees Affairs and Others [2011] ZAWCHC 480 (2 November 2011) at p.13 'secondly a perusal of the brief record eventually prised out of the respondents reveals' (my underlining). Earlier in the judgment, the learned judge had made the following observations and remarks, which have a familiar ring in the context of the difficulties in the current case:

Set down at the same time as this [review] application, was a related application for contempt arising out of the respondents' failure to furnish the record of proceedings timeously in terms of Rule of Court 53. Those proceedings have, however, been postponed. The main application was launched in early September 2010. Notwithstanding this and the respondents' ongoing opposition, by the time the matter was argued on 25 October 2011, the respondents had failed to file any heads of argument or any opposing affidavits, with the result that the issues fall to be determined on the applicant's version alone.

The only explanation offered for this somewhat extraordinary state of affairs is that all along the said respondents had not opposed the primary relief sought on behalf of the applicant, which is still not opposed. However, this statement is belied by the notice of opposition and furthermore, there is no explanation why this alleged concession by the respondents to most of the relief sought by the applicant is nowhere reflected in the papers.

This situation in which no opposing affidavits are filed, despite the application being opposed, is one which this court has previously encountered in matters in which the third respondent [the Minister of Home Affairs] and officials of that department were brought to court. It reflects, in my view, a disturbing tendency to oppose litigation up till the door of the court, but without ever putting a version before the court. The implications of such an approach, particularly as regards the use of public funds and the office of the state attorney, are a matter of concern and indicate the need of the courts to be vigilant to ensure that such action does not become a norm and go unchecked.

[13] In Radjabu v Chairperson of the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs and Others [2015] 1 All SA 100 (WCC), a matter in which the respondents opposed in part the relief sought by the applicant on review, the record was produced only after the court (in the circumstances described in para 16 of the judgment) insisted on its production. The respondents' failure to comply with rule 53(1)(b) in that matter was subsequently addressed by the then acting manager of the Cape Town Refugee Reception Office - the predecessor in office of the sixth respondent in the current matter - in an affidavit. The explanation offered was dealt with by the court at para 29-30 of the judgment as follows:

[29] He [the acting manager] explained the failure of the respondents to timeously produce the administrative record as required in terms of rule 53. It would appear that the Department's officials are reliant on prompting from the State Attorney in this regard. The implication in the answering affidavit is that the attorney in the State Attorney's office dealing with the current matter had been under the misapprehension that an extract from the administrative record provided to the applicant's legal representatives before the institution of the judicial review proceedings had comprised the entire record. Mr Mathebula's affidavit was supported by a confirmatory affidavit from an attorney in the office of the State Attorney, Cape Town. I must say that there is no excuse for any such misapprehension by the attorney of record of the respondents because it was obvious that the documents provided by some unknown person before the institution of proceedings could not have comprised the entire record. The failure to provide the full record timeously is to be deprecated. According to the applicant's attorney, who is engaged in many similar cases, it has been a commonly encountered omission in such matters. So much so, that the University of Cape Town Law Clinic has taken to instituting review applications in matters such as this availing of rule 6, rather than the ordinarily indicated rule 53.

[30] I have taken note of Mr Mathebula's explanation. He was not the incumbent of his current position during the period that non-compliance by his office with its obligations to provide the administrative records for judicial review purposes appears to have been endemic. He has given the court to understand that the problem will not continue under his management of the Cape Town office. It is to be hoped that this undertaking will be reflected in reality. It does not seem to me that the reaction to the historic problem by the Law Clinic in the use of rule 6 instead of rule 53 is well-advised. A court will in most cases be severely handicapped from dealing properly with the judicial review of an administrative decision in the absence of the administrative record of decision. In the event that the failure by an administrative authority to produce such records when required is an entrenched course of conduct, it is a matter that should be addressed by obtaining appropriate directions from the court and by reporting the conduct to the Public Protector and the Public Service Commission.

[14] If I had the time to look for them I could probably find other judgments in which similar remarks were made.[11] It is plain that there is a systematic dysfunctionality in the relevant branch of the Department of Home Affairs, which has resulted in its persistent failure or inability over a period of several years, and notwithstanding repeated judicial admonitions, to comply with its legal obligations in matters in which its decisions are taken on judicial review. The consequences prejudice not only the proper administration of justice, but also the effective administration of the Refugees Act. Courts are frequently called upon to make, and it would appear from the cases cited to me by Ms Harvey,[12] frequently do make substitutive decisions determining the refugee status of applicants in judicial review matters. This might be just and equitable in given cases, but it is far from ideal.

[15] The Act contemplates a system in which applications for refugee status are vetted inquisitorially. Refugee reception officers are permitted, indeed expected, to ensure that the allegations that an applicant relies on in support of the application are adequately set out, and may carry out such enquiry as they deem necessary in order to verify the information in the application.[13] Refugee status determination officers may request further information and, where appropriate, consult with or seek information from a UNHCR[14] representative.[15] The statutory appellate tribunals, namely the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs and the Refugee Appeal Board, have similar powers and responsibilities of enquiry, including the power to request input from a UNHCR representative. Appropriate investigation and enquiry in any given case might well expose an apparently plausible application for refugee status to actually be unmeritorious, or vice versa. The on-going influx of refugees into this country is of such magnitude that it would be logistically impossible to thoroughly investigate every application, but one would imagine that persons whose work it is to deal with such applications daily would develop a knack of identifying the matters that warrant digging into. The inquisitorial, investigative and consultative amenities of which the statutory functionaries are expected to avail in determining the position of an applicant for refugee status are not available to the courts, which decide judicial review applications in an adversarial process on the evidence which the parties see fit to adduce. A failure to place the administrative record before the court could easily result in a court inappropriately giving substitutive relief.

[16] So, in Radjabu, for example, it was only when the record was, as my brother Bozalek aptly expressed, 'prised out' of the Department, that various inconsistencies in the applicant's statements in support of his application for refugee status came to light, which the court was not equipped to resolve, and which it therefore recognised required further investigation before a decision on the status application could properly be made. It accordingly declined to make the substitutive order pressed for by the applicant's counsel. Without the administrative record the court might have been persuaded to make a substitutive decision according the applicant refugee status when he might actually not have been entitled to it.

[17] The point I seek to illustrate is that the Department's systemic failure to comply with its procedural obligations in judicial review applications of this nature is liable to subvert the proper administration of the Act. And it is a matter for serious concern that the subversion is being perpetrated by the very functionaries who are employed to administer it.

[18] The respondents' failure to comply with rule 53(1)(b) prejudices the administration of justice because it tends to impinge adversely on the applicants' constitutional right to a determination of their suits by the application of law in a fair hearing. More prosaically, it tends also to increase the cost of litigation - in many cases at the expense of the taxpayer and thus, society as a whole. In the current case the failure by the respondents to comply with their obligation in terms of the rules of court and the order made on 5 August 2015 necessitated the applicant's attorney attending, albeit to no effect, on the aforementioned correspondence and telephone calls with the State Attorney's office. It also resulted in the matter unnecessarily being heard in the Fourth Division of this court (in which unopposed matters are heard only exceptionally). Had the respondents timeously indicated through their attorney that it was not their intention to oppose the application, as their failure to deliver answering affidavits is liable to suggest, the applicant could have arranged with the Judge President, as is customary in unopposed review applications in which the papers are not voluminous, for the matter to have been heard in the Third Division (the unopposed matters motion court). Quite apart from the costs considerations, to which I shall come next, the hearing of the matter in the Fourth Division in the circumstances described has meant that an effectively unopposed matter has taken up a day slot on the Fourth Division roll that could have been allocated to other litigants waiting in the queue for setdown dates for the hearing of their bona fide opposed matters.

[19] Counsel appearing in matters in the Fourth Division are reserved by the day. They are also required to file heads of argument (10 days before the hearing for applicants and five days for respondents). Counsel appearing in matters in the Third Division are not ordinarily reserved for the day, and there is no prescribed requirement that they file heads of argument. There is thus ordinarily a significant margin between the preparation and appearance fees entailed in a matter heard in the Fourth Division and one disposed of in the Third Division. On the face of it the additional costs have been incurred as a consequence of the delinquency of the respondents, or at least some of them,[16] in disregarding their obligations in terms of the rules of court and the terms of a court order to which they agreed, and by ignoring requests by their appointed legal representative for instructions. It seems to me prima facie that the guilty parties should be individually liable to pay the additional costs that have been incurred in consequence of the aforementioned misconduct. An order will therefore be made that will afford the first to sixth respondents an opportunity to show cause why they should not be ordered to pay the additional costs occasioned by the hearing of the application in the Fourth Division de bonis propriis and on the scale as between attorney and client.

[20] I apprehend, however, that penalising individual functionaries, while it might be appropriate in the particular case, will not address the systemic problem of which this case is but another instance. Previous judgments have warned that the virtually institutionalised disregard for the rules and practices of the court by functionaries in these refugee status decision judicial reviews cannot be allowed to become the norm. Undertakings have been given that the problems will be addressed. All to no effect thus far. The prejudicial effects of this dysfunctionality have been described. Something more effective needs to be done to deal with it. Chapter 9 of the Constitution, and more particularly ss 181 and 182, provides for a Public Protector, who has the power, as regulated by national legislation,[17] amongst other matters, to investigate any conduct in the public administration that is alleged to be improper or to result in any impropriety or prejudice, to report thereon, and to take appropriate remedial action. The orders to be made might thus also incorporate a direction to the Registrar to refer a copy of this judgment to the Public Protector for her to consider an investigation, which might conduce more effectively than the courts' admonitions to appropriate remedial action. I shall defer a decision in that respect until the respondents have been afforded an opportunity to make any representations they may wish to make in that regard.

[21] Turning now to address the substantive issues in the review. The applicant has been in South Africa since 2006 or 2007 (the precise date of his entry into the country is not disclosed on the papers).[18] According to his evidence, which is uncontroverted, he came here as a refugee from the violent and disorderly conditions prevailing in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He described having been kidnapped and forcibly inducted into military forces in rebellion against the internationally recognised government of his country. Having been witness to atrocities carried out by those forces on the inhabitants of a village it had overrun, the applicant made his escape and managed, with the assistance of unspecified 'human rights organisations', to get himself to the capital, Kinshasa. He had not been there long when he was arrested for having been a member of the rebel force. It is not apparent on the papers how he came to be identified as such. He was held for a few days in a prison in Kinshasa before being transferred to the Kasapa Prison in Lumbumbashi in the south of the country near its border with Zambia. The applicant testified that '[i]t is well known that prisoners at Kasapa are tortured and killed using various methods'.[19] The applicant had been born in Lumbumbashi and had lived there until he completed his education, when he had moved to live with relatives on the maternal side of his family in the South Kivu Province in the east of the country. Having originated from that part of the country, he discovered that certain of the guards at the prison were acquaintances of his. They helped him to escape and he then made his way over the border into Zambia, whence he found transport on a truck headed through Zimbabwe to South Africa.

[22] The applicant was issued with a transit permit at the South African border post at Beit Bridge and travelled on to Johannesburg. After a few days in Johannesburg, he was advised by a friend to come to Cape Town to make application for asylum. He described the conditions at the refugee reception office here as 'chaotic and dangerous'.[20] After some months of waiting to obtain attention at the refugee reception office, he and a number of other applicants for refugee status were loaded onto busses and taken to the offices of the Department of Home Affairs in Barrack Street, where, with the help of another Congolese national whom he encountered there, he completed an application form and was issued with an asylum seeker permit in terms of s 22 of the Act. He says that he did not receive any official assistance despite the fact that he did not have any English and was able to speak only Swahili and French and that he was not given a copy of the application form that he had filled in.

[23] It would appear that the applicant thereafter stayed in Cape Town for several years. He was reunited with his wife, who also seems to have made her way to Cape Town at about the same time. The couple have since had two children, the first born in 2007 and the second in 2013. No information has been given in the papers about the residence status of the applicant's wife.

[24] The applicant's asylum seeker permit was renewed from time to time. He was then requested to complete a fresh application for refugee status. Having done so, he was interviewed by a refugee status determination officer in terms of s 24 of the Act. His application was rejected as 'unfounded' in terms of s 24(3)(c) of the Act. The only record of the rejection of his application that the applicant has been able to tender is a copy of a torn scrap of paper, which, by its appearance, was part of a letter addressed to him by the Refugee Affairs section of the Department of Home Affairs' Cape Town office on 27 October 2008. According to the document, the applicant had lodged his application for asylum on 22 October 2008. It is evident from the remnant of the letter, attached as annexure KT4 to his founding affidavit, that the Department provided reasons for the rejection of the application. The reasons are not discernible however because that part of the letter has been torn off. The applicant has not explained in his founding affidavit why only part of the Department's letter has been attached to his papers. He also has not provided any indication of the nature of the reasons that were provided. One has to bear in mind, however, that the letter was in English, which the applicant did not speak.

[25] The applicant averred that he approached the UCT law clinic, which provided him with a letter to take to the refugee reception office. He thinks this may have been a 'letter of appeal'. A copy of the 'letter of appeal' was not included in the papers, and the failure to put the appeal document - if such it was - before the court was not explained. Whatever the position, he continued to renew his asylum seeker permit periodically until, in 2014, he was required to sign an unspecified document, apparently to confirm (the applicant used the word 'prove') that he had submitted an appeal. An appeal hearing followed in October 2014. An appeal in terms of s 26 of the Act is an appeal in the wide sense and allows a complete rehearing of the appellant's application for refugee status. The applicant was legally represented at the appeal hearing. The applicant's appeal was dismissed and reasons were provided.

[26] A copy of the Refugee Appeal Board's reasons was attached to the applicant's founding papers. They refer in terms to 'Appellant's Notice of Appeal', dated 28 February 2014. The applicant has not disavowed in his affidavit having filed such a notice of appeal. It would presumably have been in the form prescribed in the Refugee Appeal Board Rules, 2013,[21] which provide expressly for the notice of appeal to be accompanied by an affidavit by the appellant setting out the reasons for the appeal. A copy of the notice of appeal and any accompanying affidavit was not placed before the court. Those documents would obviously have been part of the administrative record that should have been produced by the respondents. One would have thought though that the applicant's legal representative would have retained a copy.

[27] The summary of the applicant's claim given in the Appeal Board's reasons document is essentially consistent with that which he has given in his founding papers in the review application. The Board's reasons record, correctly, that the burden of proof was on the applicant to show that he is entitled to refugee status. They also state in that connection that '[t]he appellant in casu needs to show that he/she (sic) left his/her (sic) country for specifically politically motivated reasons, should the appellant fail to show this, appellant's refugee claim will be rejected. Taking into account that refugee law is essentially a means of preventing the sending back of an individual to a state in which a risk of persecution on political grounds or opinion exists'. Suffice it to say that insofar as the drafter of the Appeal Board's reasons was purporting to summarise the import of s 3(a) of the Act in regard to the qualifications for refugee status, the summary gives a misdirectedly narrow scope to the provision. It actually provides for refugee status to be afforded to any person who has a well-founded fear of persecution 'by reason of his or her race, tribe, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group'.

[28] Section 3 of the Act falls to be read with s 2, which incorporates the international law principle of non-refoulement.[22] Both provisions are to be construed generously in favour of persons seeking to qualify for asylum. That much follows from the statute's long title and preamble. The long title describes the statute as an Act to 'give effect within the Republic of South Africa to the relevant international legal instruments, principles and standards relating to refugees; to provide for the reception into South Africa of asylum seekers; to regulate applications for and recognition of refugee status; to provide for the rights and obligations flowing from such status; and to provide for matters connected therewith'. The preamble records that 'South Africa has acceded to the 1951 Convention Relating to Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa as well as other human rights instruments, and has in so doing, assumed certain obligations to receive and treat in its territory refugees in accordance with the standards and principles established in international law'. As noted in Radjabu supra, at para 4, s 2 of the Act is manifestly premised on the expressions of the non-refoulement principle in Article 33 of the 1951 Convention and the 1969 OAU Convention.[23] Section 6(1) of the Act expressly enjoins that the statute be interpreted and applied with due regard to various international instruments including the 1951 Convention and the 1969 OAU Convention.

[29] It is evident from the applicant's version of the facts that he fears persecution on account of his perceived association with the Nkundla rebel group. In my view, taking the generous approach to the interpretation of the legislation that is indicated, the perceived association could reasonably be characterised as either based on political opinion or membership of a particular social group. In its context, the term 'particular social group' seems to me to denote a section of society that is identifiable by the common characteristics of the persons comprising it or of the basis for their mutual coherence.[24] A rebel group would qualify as such. The basis for the existence of a group in rebellion against the established government of a country would in any event ordinarily be some form of dissenting political opinion. It would defeat the object of the statute were an applicant for asylum to be held to be disqualified because his well-founded fear of persecution was founded on his perceived political opinion or his perceived membership of a particular social group rather than his actual opinion or actual membership. Thus it did not matter for the purpose of his asylum application that the applicant did not share the political opinions of the rebel group or had not voluntarily been a member of it.

[30] Notwithstanding its flawed summary of the import of s 3(a) of the Act, the Appeal Board assumed in the applicant's favour on his version of the facts that he could notionally have qualified under the provision. It rejected his appeal on the basis of a number of adverse credibility findings and inferential conclusions. These were set out in the reasons document as follows:

FINDING:

[12] In reaching its decision the Board has thoroughly assessed the appellant's claim and has had due regard to the objective background information on the appellant's country of origin. Human Rights Watch says Laurent Nkunda's troops have been implicated in numerous killings, torture and rapes.

[13] In Principles of International Refugee Law the learned author Guy S. Goodwin-Gill states the following: "one of the hardest tasks in refugee determination, and one that is central to the process, is assessing the credibility of the applicant.The decision maker must assess not only the credibility of the applicant, but also the credibility of the story in itself" This means that the Board must be convinced that the appellant is telling the truth before it can consider the principal issues.

CREDIBILITY

The Appeal Board accordingly assessed the credibility of the appellant's story and makes the following remarks in passing.

[14] The Board would have given the appellant the benefit of the doubt if his case stopped where he managed to escape from the Kakwakunde village to Kinshasa. It was the appellant's case that he joined the soldiers under duress & that he discovered the wrongfulness of the soldiers conduct when he saw the soldiers raping people.

[15] The fact that appellant was arrested in Kinshasa & subsequently transferred to a prison in Lubumbashi by virtue of being accused of being a Nkunda rebel means that the arresting authority had concrete evidence to secure appellant's arrest in Kinshasa. It is therefore highly improbable as alleged that appellant merely received training for a period of three months & that appellant was only involved in the once-off fighting in Kakwakunde village as alleged. A more probable inference to be drawn is that appellant was by choice a Nkunda rebel & that under the emblem of the Laurent Nkunda he was involved in gross human rights violations. The Board therefore rejects appellant's submission that he has a well-founded fear of being persecuted based on his membership of a particular group, meaning being considered a rebel.

[16] The Board also fails to understand why appellant did not remain to face a military trial whereby on his version he would've been given indemnity for his role in the attack on Kakwakunde village. Appellant was an adult at all material times.

[31] The basis for the inference by the Appeal Board that the applicant's arrest in Kinshasa and subsequent detention in Lumbumbashi meant that the arresting authority had 'concrete evidence' against him is not explained in the reasons. It was not in issue on the applicant's version that he had been a member of the Nkunda forces, albeit involuntarily. That would have been sufficient, by itself, to explain his arrest. The leap in the Appeal Board's reasoning by inferring from the mere fact of the applicant's arrest that it was 'highly improbablethat [he] merely received training for a period of three months [and] that [he] was only involved in the once-off fighting in Kakwakunde village' is illogical. Its illogicality is compounded by the further determination that his arrest made it more probable that he had been a willing member of the rebel group and involved in 'gross human rights violations'.

[32] If there were reason to believe that the applicant had been involved in gross human rights violations, he would be excluded from obtaining asylum in terms of s 4(1)(a) and/or (c) of the Act. Any relevant authority wishing on one of the exclusionary grounds in s 4 of the Act to deny refugee status to a person who would otherwise qualify for asylum must have a rational basis for believing that the exclusionary ground applies in the given case. It is apparent from the Appeal Board's reasons that it found that there was reason to believe - 'probable', as the Board put it - that the appellant was excluded from qualification in terms of s 4.[25] That conclusion appears to have been entirely speculative. There were no inherent probabilities to support the Board's finding and no indication that it was possessed of any information to contradict the applicant's version of the facts, which is irreconcilable with its finding. As it was, the Board expressed its conclusion without any reference to s 4; it recorded that it rejected the applicant's claim to have a well-founded fear of persecution because he had been a willing member of the rebel group and had probably participated in gross human rights violations. That, of course, is a non-sequitur in the context of the applicant's uncontroverted version of events.

[33] The statement in paragraph [16] of the Board's reasons is also difficult to understand. It suggests that the appellant might reasonably have expected to have his version accepted in a fair judicial process in his home country. It ignores completely the applicant's evidence that he was detained in conditions in which he was subjected to gratuitous physical abuse and in a prison that was said to be notorious for the torture and killing of its inmates.

[34] In paragraph [18] of the reasons document the Appeal Board considered whether the applicant had shown that he had qualified for refugee status in terms of s 3(b) of the Act and concluded that he had not. It is not readily apparent why the Board undertook that exercise because his claim more evidently fell to be considered with reference to s 3(a), but it may be that his legal representative made submissions in support of the application on the basis of s 3(b) in the alternative. This might have been apparent had the record of proceedings been available. Section 3(b) provides for refugee status to be afforded to a person who 'owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing or disrupting public order in either a part or the whole of his or her country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his or her place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge elsewhere'.

[35] Paragraph [18] of the Appeal Board's reasons document goes as follows:

[18] The Board having rejected appellant's version in terms of S3(a) of Act, 130 of 1998, will now proceed to deal with averments in terms of S3(b) ; more specifically that appellant's habitual residence is Sud-Kivu. Appellant & his legal representative failed to acknowledge Lumbumbashi as appellant's habitual residence and appellant & his legal representative failed to address the Board as to what prevents appellant from returning to Lumbumbashi as appellant was not compelled to leave Lumbumbashi; appellant unilaterally decided to leave Lumbumbashi to live by his uncle in Sud-Kivu. The Board finds that Lumbumbashi is relatively stable & that nothing prevents appellant from returning to Lumbumbashi. Appellant by choosing to flee his country instead of remaining and facing a military trial cannot use this arrest to justify not being able to return to Lumbumbashi and or Kinshasa.

[36] The content of paragraph [18] of the Board's reasons would indicate that the Board assessed the applicant's connection with Lumbumbashi without due regard to his evidence. According to the evidence noted in the Board's reasons, the applicant had left Lumbumbashi in 1998 or 1999 to live in South Kivu Province. He was returned there several years later by the DRC authorities only for the purpose of detention in the Kasapa Prison. As mentioned, his description of the circumstances of his detention was not consistent with any reasonable expectation of a fair trial. The notion that he should reasonably be expected to have returned from South Africa to Lumbumbashi is risible in the context of his version of the facts. If the Board was possessed of information that would cast doubt on the applicant's version, it did not disclose it in its reasons and, as described, there are no opposing affidavits.

[37] It is apparent from the Appeal Board's reasons - certainly when they are considered, as I have been obliged to, without reference to the record - that it approached the applicant's application sceptically. That is not the proper approach in such matters. In Tantoush v Refugee Appeal Board and Others [2007] ZAGPHC 191; 2008 (1) SA 232 (T), at para 196-197, Murphy J gave the following summary, premised on the guidelines in the UNHCR Handbook, of the manner in which the Appeal Board should proceed:

196. Thus, while the burden of proof in principle rests on the applicant, the duty to ascertain and evaluate all the relevant facts is shared between the applicant and the examiner. Indeed in some cases, it may be for the examiner to use all the means at his disposal to produce the necessary evidence in support of the application. Even such independent research may not, however, always be successful and there may be statements that are not susceptible of proof. In such cases, if the applicant's account appears credible, he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

197. The requirement of evidence should thus not be too strictly applied in view of the difficulty of proof inherent in the special situation in which an applicant for refugee status finds himself. Allowance for such possible lack of evidence does not, however, mean that unsupported statements must necessarily be accepted as true if they are inconsistent with the general account put forward by the applicant.

[38] Moreover, according to the uncontroverted allegations in the founding affidavit, the aforementioned inferences drawn by the Appeal Board were based on unfounded assumptions and opinions that were not put to the applicant or his legal representative during the appeal hearing. Accepting the correctness of these allegations, as I must in the circumstances, enjoins the conclusion that the conduct of the appeal hearing was procedurally unfair.

[39] It follows that the applicant has succeeded in establishing a case for the review and setting aside of the Appeal Board's decision in terms of s 6(2)(c), 6(2)(f)(ii)(cc) and 6(2)(h) of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act 3 of 2000 ('PAJA'). He has done so mainly on the basis of the Appeal Board's reasons rather than his own averments concerning the conduct of the appeal hearing, in which regard his founding affidavit was distinctly lacking. For example, his allegation that '[t]first to fourth respondents unfairly had regard to documents which had been requested by my legal representative, but which were withheld by them' was of little evidential value absent any identification of the nature of the documents concerned, details of the time and manner in which their production had been requested and the circumstances in which they had been withheld.

[40] The applicant also applied for the review and setting aside of the adverse determination made by the refugee status determination officer (the fifth respondent). Ms Harvey conceded that this was inappropriate, as the decision had been overtaken by the decision of the Appeal Board, which had occurred in the context of the required exhaustion by the applicant of his internal remedies. The question remains, however, whether the applicant is entitled to a declaration that the refugee status determination's decision or conduct had been inconsistent with the Constitution; see s 172 of the Constitution. In my judgment he is not. The relevant allegations by the applicant in his founding affidavit are bald and amount to little more than a statement of conclusions. The applicant appears to almost to have realised as much, pointing to the disadvantage he laboured under without access to the record and purporting to 'reserve [his] right to make further submissions', presumably after the administrative record had been produced. He chose to proceed with the application without availing of the mechanisms in the rules of court to enforce compliance by the respondents with their obligation to produce the record. In the result his case in this respect was inadequate.

[41] As mentioned the applicant has sought substitutive relief by way of an order declaring him to be 'a refugee who entitled to asylum in South Africa as contemplated by section 3 of the Refugees Act'.[26] That course, as s 8(1)(c)(ii)(aa) of PAJA confirms, is indicated only in exceptional circumstances. The prudent and proper course when an administrative decision is set aside on review is almost always to remit it to the administrative functionary for determination afresh. The relevant principles in determining whether the exceptional remedy of a judicially made substitutive determination should be granted were summarised, with reference to earlier authority, in Gauteng Gambling Board v Silverstar Development Ltd and Others 2005 (4) SA 67 (SCA), at para 28-29, and discussed more extensively in the recent judgment of the Constitutional Court in Trencon Construction (Pty) Limited v Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa Limited and Another [2015] ZACC 22 (26 June 2015), at para 34-55.

[42] The Constitutional Court emphasised that the term 'exceptional circumstances' in s 8(1) of PAJA must be read contextually with the words 'just and equitable' in the opening words of the subsection.[27] As Khampepe J stated at para 35, 'Simply put, an exceptional circumstances enquiry must take place in the context of what is just and equitable in the circumstances'. The notion of justness and equitability incorporates a notable degree of flexibility.[28]

[43] In the current matter I consider that the following characteristics of the case make it just and equitable that the exceptional remedy sought by the applicant be considered. The processing of his application for refugee status has taken an inordinate length of time. He had been in the country on an asylum seeker's permit for seven and a half years before the determination of his appeal. A delay of that length cannot be ascribed to the ordinary vicissitudes of litigation or bureaucracy. The respondents have put nothing before the court to explain or justify it. Constitutional principles enjoin administrative efficiency; not as an abstract norm, but for the benefit and protection of all of us who are unavoidably affected by various forms of administrative action to a greater or lesser degree. The principle is reflected in the preamble to PAJA itself, in acknowledgement of the prescript in s 33(3)(c) of the Constitution.[29] It is also implicit in the basic values and principles governing public administration set forth in s 195 of the Constitution.

[44] The implications of the delay are that it was long enough for the applicant to establish roots in the country. Two children have been born to him and his wife during that period. The administration of the Refugees Act falls, according to its own precepts, to be imbued with a humanitarian approach. The adverse effect on the applicant's family's sense of security of further extending the delay in respect of determining their right to live here is obvious. The holder of an asylum seeker permit furthermore does not enjoy the access that a refugee does to travel documentation, health and education benefits and eventual qualification for permanent residence. In these circumstances it would be just and equitable for a substitutive order to be made if the requirements for granting such exceptional relief have been met. In short, an 'exceptional circumstances enquiry' is merited.

[45] At para 43-46 of its judgment in Trencon Construction the Constitutional Court reiterated the contextual pertinence of the separation of powers in terms of the Constitution and the concomitant duty on courts engaged in the consideration of a substitutive order in terms of s 8(1) of PAJA to have due regard to the principle of judicial deference to administrators in the sense explained in Bato Star Fishing (Pty) Ltd v Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and Others [2004] ZACC 15; 2004 (4) SA 490 (CC), 2004 (7) BCLR 687 at para 46-48. In Bato Star loc. cit. the Court endorsed the approval by Schutz JA in the appeal court of the view expressed by Professor Cora Hoexter that that type of judicial deference 'is perfectly consistent with a concern for individual rights and a refusal to tolerate corruption and maladministration. It ought to be shaped not by an unwillingness to scrutinise administrative action, but by a careful weighing up of the need for - and the consequences of - judicial intervention. Above all, it ought to be shaped by a conscious determination not to usurp the functions of administrative agencies; not to cross over from review to appeal'.[30] As Schutz JA explained, judicial deference in the relevant sense 'does not imply judicial timidity or an unreadiness to perform the judicial function'.[31] It thus does not mean, as the Constitutional Court indeed confirmed in Trencon Construction, that when a review court is in as good a position as the administrator to make the decision and the nature of the decision that should be made in the given circumstances is a foregone conclusion it should refrain from taking the exceptional step of making a substitutive order if it is just and equitable in the circumstances to do so.

[46] The decision entailed in the current matter falls to be made by testing a given set of facts against the qualifying criteria prescribed in the Act. The court is as well qualified as the administrator to do that. The respondents have not availed of the opportunity to oppose the application and have not given any indication of the existence of any information that might give reason for further investigation of the applicant's version, or indeed of any wish to enquire into the matter further. In that respect the application is significantly different from many other similar matters in which the review is conceded, but a substitutive order is opposed.[32] On the basis of the uncontroverted version of the applicant it is a foregone conclusion that he should be given refugee status. In the peculiar circumstances, more particularly those discussed in paragraphs [43] and [44], above, as well as the nature of the entirely misdirected approach to the applicant's asylum application by the Appeal Board, it would not be fair to the applicant to remit the matter for reconsideration. In the event that the applicant's version should subsequently be shown to be false in any material respect, the Standing Committee established in terms of s 9 of the Refugees Act is empowered in terms of s 36 of the Act to withdraw his refugee status. A substitutive order thus holds no prejudice to the state.

[47] The following orders are made:

a) The decision of the Refugee Appeal Board dated 28 January 2015 dismissing the applicant's appeal against the decision by the fifth respondent in terms of section 24(3)(c) of the Refugees Act 130 of 1998 to reject the applicant's application for refugee status as 'unfounded' is reviewed and set aside.

b) In terms of section 8(1)(c)(ii)(aa) of the Promotion of Administration of Justice Act 3 of 2000, the aforementioned decision of the Refugee Appeal Board is hereby substituted with a decision setting aside the decision of the fifth respondent and substituting it with a decision in terms of section 24(3)(a) of the Refugees Act granting asylum to the applicant.

c) The sixth respondent is directed to issue the applicant with a formal written recognition of refugee status as provided in section 27(a) of the Refugees Act read with the provisions of regulation 15 of the Refugee Regulations (Forms and Procedure), 2000 published in GN R366 in GG 21075 of 6 April 2000, as amended by GN R938 in GG 21573 of 15 September 2000, within 10 days of the service upon her of this Order.

d) The costs of the application shall stand over for determination on the return date of the orders set out in paragraphs (e) and (f), below.

e) The first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth respondents are hereby given notice to show cause on Thursday, 10 December 2015 at 10h00, or as soon thereafter as the matter be heard, why an order should not issue holding them, or any one or more of them, personally liable, on the scale as between attorney and client, for the additional costs incurred by the applicant as a consequence of this matter having had to be heard in the opposed motion court rather than in the unopposed motion court in the circumstances described in paragraphs [2]-[19] of the judgment, and they are directed to deliver any affidavits they may make in that regard before noon on Monday, 7 December 2015.

f) The respondents are hereby given notice to show cause on Thursday, 10 December 2015 at 10h00, or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard, why the Registrar should not be directed to forward a copy of this judgment to the Public Protector for possible investigation as foreshadowed in paragraph [20] of the judgment, and they are directed to deliver any affidavits they may make in that regard before noon on Monday, 7 December 2015.

A.G. BINNS-WARD

Judge of the High Court

[1] Section 27(a) of the Act provides: 'A refugee-

(a) is entitled to a formal written recognition of refugee status in the prescribed form'.

[2] Published under GN R366 in Government Gazette 21075 of 6 April 2000, as amended by GN R938 published in Government Gazette 21573 of 15 September 2000. Regulation 15 provides for a system in terms of which a refugee's status as such falls to be reconsidered at two year intervals unless it is determined by the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs established in terms of s 9 of the Act that the refugee will remain a refugee for the foreseeable future, in which case the refugee becomes entitled to apply for an immigration permit.

[3] In Jockey Club of South Africa v Forbes [1992] ZASCA 237; 1993 (1) SA 649 (A), at 660F, Kriegler AJA observed that when an applicant institutes review proceedings by availing of the provisions of rule 53, the relevant functionary is 'obliged [in terms of rule 53(1)(b)] to forward the record to the Registrar'. (My underlining.) In the current case the obligation was buttressed by the terms of a court order.

[4] Para 46 of the founding affidavit. A B1-1590 form is the document that is completed at the stage that an applicant for asylum is interviewed by a refugee reception officer, as provided in terms of s 21 of the Act. The refugee reception officer is required in terms of s 21(2)(d) of the Act to submit the form, which makes up part of the application for refugee status, to the refugee status determination officer.

[5] Para 47 of the founding affidavit.

[6] Para 48 of the founding affidavit.

[7] See Mothaung v Mukubela and Another, NNO; Motaung v Mothiba, NO 1975 (1) SA 618 (O), at 625-626.

[8] See SACCAWU and Others v President, Industrial Tribunal, and Another [2000] ZASCA 163; 2001 (2) SA 277 (SCA), at para 7.

[9] The seventh and eighth respondents were the Minister of Home Affairs and the Director-General of the Department of Home Affairs, respectively.

[10] The failure by attorneys to properly comply with this duty has been described in a number of reported judgments as a 'gross discourtesy and a neglect of their duties as officers of the court'; see S v Ndima 1977 (3) SA 1095 (N), at 1097B-D, and MacDonald t/a Happy Days Cafe v Neethling 1990 (4) SA 30 (N), the latter judgment having been referred to with approval in Makuwa v Poslson 2007 (3) SA 84 (T), at para 11. See also Transorient Freight Transporters Corporation v Eurocargo Co-Ordinators (Pty) Ltd 1984 (3) SA 542 (W), at 546B, where in the context of emphasising the need for attorneys who withdraw during proceedings to comply punctiliously with rule 16, Flemming J remarked 'The position of an attorney clearly creates obligations not only towards his own client but also towards the Court and to some extent to the opposite party'.

[11] Radjabu was a judgment that I gave in September 2014 and the judgment in Katsshingu came to my notice having been cited in Ms Harvey's heads of argument in another connection. Another judgment in point that I stumbled upon in the course of preparing this judgment is Mubala v Chairperson of the Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs and Others [2013] ZAWCHC 208 (8 November 2013). The problem is not confined to the Western Cape; cf. Bolanga v Refugee Status Determination Officer and others [2015] ZAKZDHC 13 (24 February 2015) (another case cited in the applicant's heads of argument), at para 5-7 and 54.

[12] Bolanga v Refugee Status Determination Officer and others supra, Harerimana v Chairperson, Refugee Appeal Board and Others 2014 (5) SA 550 (WCC), Katsshingu v Chairperson of Standing Committee for Refugees Affairs and Others [2011] ZAWCHC 480 (2 November 2011) and Katabana v Chairperson of Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs and Others [2012] ZAGPPHC 362 (14 December 2012). See further the other judgments mentioned in note 4 and at para 34 of Radjabu supra.

[13] See s 21(2) of the Act.

[14] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

[15] See s 24(1) of the Act.

[16] It is not clear at this stage who is to blame, as it would appear from the information given by Mr Kondlo from the bar that he dealt through an intermediary at the Department of Home Affairs, one Ms Banjamme, for the purpose of taking and requesting instructions. He did, however, also say that certain members of the Appeal Board and the sixth respondent had been furnished with copies of the order made on 5 August 2015.

[17] The Public Protector Act 23 of 1994, as amended.

[18] The reasons furnished by the Refugee Appeal Board, which are discussed below, state that the applicant arrived in South Africa 'during January 2007'.

[19] The court has no judicial knowledge of Kasapa Prison or the conditions there, but the first to fifth respondents, who, as described above, have investigative powers and the opportunity to consult with UNHCR representatives to obtain information, have seen fit not to challenge the evidence.

[20] The challenging conditions at the refugee reception offices in Cape Town from time to time at the various addresses at which it has been housed over the years have been described in a number of judgments of this court; see Kiliko and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others 2006 (4) SA 114 (C); Intercape Ferreira Mainliner (Pty) Ltd and Others v Minister of Home Affairs and Others 2010 (5) SA 367 (WCC) and 410 Voortrekker Road Property Holdings CC v Minister of Home Affairs and Others 2010 (8) BCLR 785 (WCC), [2010] 4 All SA 414.

[21] Form RAB (01).

[22] Section 2 provides:

General prohibition of refusal of entry, expulsion, extradition or return to other country in certain circumstances

Notwithstanding any provision of this Act or any other law to the contrary, no person may be refused entry into the Republic, expelled, extradited or returned to any other country or be subject to any similar measure, if as a result of such refusal, expulsion, extradition, return or other measure, such person is compelled to return to or remain in a country where-

(a) he or she may be subjected to persecution on account of his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group; or

(b) his or her life, physical safety or freedom would be threatened on account of external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or other events seriously disturbing or disrupting public order in either part or the whole of that country.

[23] Article 33 of the 1951 Convention provides: 'No Contracting State shall expel or return ('refouler') a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion'. Article 11(3) pf the 1969 OAU Convention provides: 'No person shall be subjected by a Member State to measures such as rejection at the frontier, return or expulsion, which would compel him to return to or remain in a territory where his life, physical integrity or liberty would be threatened for the reasons set out in Article I, paragraphs 1 and 2'. Paragraph 2 of Article I of the OAU Convention provides: 'The term "refugee" shall also apply to every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality'.

[24] In Mayemba v Chairperson of Standing Committee for Refugee Affairs and Others [2015] ZAWCHC 86 (10 June 2015), it was argued that all young men in South Kivu who were vulnerable to forced recruitment into armed forces comprised 'a particular social group' within the meaning of the provision (see para 35-37 of the judgment). That argument strikes me as ambitious because it seems to involve equating innate vulnerability to forced recruitment by virtue of age and gender with 'persecution' within the meaning of s 3(a) of the Act, which I find problematic. I would have thought that young men who felt compelled to leave their homes due to such circumstances would find surer succour in s 3(b). Rogers J, however, found it unnecessary to decide the point in the context of his conclusion that the merits of that particular case fell to be assessed in a fresh application for refugee status, which he directed the applicant to submit for determination by a different refugee status determination officer.

[25] Section 4 of the Act provides:

(1) A person does not qualify for refugee status for the purposes of this Act if there is reason to believe that he or she-

(a) has committed a crime against peace, a war crime or a crime against humanity, as defined in any international legal instrument dealing with any such crimes; or

(b) has committed a crime which is not of a political nature and which, if committed in the Republic, would be punishable by imprisonment; or

(c) has been guilty of acts contrary to the objects and principles of the United Nations Organisation or the Organisation of African Unity; or

(d) enjoys the protection of any other country in which he or she has taken residence.

[26] Para 3 of Part B of the notice of motion.

[27] The relevant provisions of s 8(1) of PAJA read as follows:

(1) The court or tribunal, in proceedings for judicial review in terms of section 6 (1), may grant any order that is just and equitable, including orders-

(a) directing the administrator-

(i) .; or

(ii) .;

(b) .;

(c) setting aside the administrative action and-

(i) remitting the matter for reconsideration by the administrator, with or without directions; or

(ii) in exceptional cases-

(aa) substituting or varying the administrative action or correcting a defect resulting from the administrative action;

[28] Trencon Construction supra, at para 55.

[29] Section 33(3)(c) of the Constitution requires the enactment of legislation to give effect to the rights to just administrative action in terms of s 33(1) and (2) and which must 'promote an efficient administration'.

[30] Hoexter, The Future of Judicial Review in South African Administrative Law (2000) 117 SALJ 484 at 501-2.

[31] Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and others v Phambili Fisheries (Pty) Ltd and another [2003] 2 All SA 616 (SCA), at para 47-50.

[32] Cf. e.g. Radjabu supra and Mayemba supra.
Senator Bob Corker announced on Tuesday that Micah Johnson will return to his office to serve on his senior management team as communications director.

Micah is one of the most conscientious and dedicated people that I have ever been around and someone who works relentlessly to serve Tennesseans, said Senator Corker. She is a true communications professional, and we are fortunate she is returning to our office to help us continue our work for the people of Tennessee and our efforts to address the big issues facing our country.

It is an overwhelming honor to return to Senator Corker's office in this new capacity and work again alongside his outstanding team, said Ms. Johnson. Senator Corker wakes up every day trying to find a way to move our country forward, and I am excited to communicate that work to the people of my home state.

Ms. Johnson, who first worked for Senator Corker as an intern and most recently as his press secretary, will oversee communications and media strategy for his senate office and the majority office of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

She replaces Tara DiJulio who will leave the Senate after nearly a decade to join General Electric. Chuck Harper will continue serving as press secretary and a spokesperson for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Tara DiJulio has been a tremendous asset to our office and helped build an outstanding and professional communications operation for both our personal office and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Senator Corker. We will miss her greatly, but we are excited for her as she begins a new chapter in her career.

A native of Sevier County, Tn., Ms. Johnson graduated from the University of Tennessee (UT) in 2010 with a degree in marketing and international business. As an undergraduate, Ms. Johnson was named a Torchbearer, the highest honor bestowed on UT graduates by the university. She serves as a member of the universitys alumni board of directors and president of UTs Young Alumni Council. Ms. Johnson was elected by her peers to serve on the executive board of the Senate Press Secretaries Association for three consecutive years. She assumes her position as communications director on March 7.
A gift of $25,259 was presented to the city of Red Bank at the Tuesday night commission meeting. Board members of the Red Bank and Soddy Daisy Charitable Foundation, Patricia Baker, Becky Browder and Virgil Adams, made the donation on behalf of the foundation for the purpose of increasing the parking area of the dog park in White Oak Park. It was felt that this project will benefit all citizens in the city as well as encouraging use of the park.

The foundation, which benefits both Red Bank and Soddy Daisy, was started around 25 years ago with money that came from the sale of a hospital. Since that time, over a half million dollars has been given to Red Bank. City Manager Randall Smith said during his tenure other projects have been made possible due to the foundation. Welcome signs placed at the main entrances to the city were paid for with money from the foundation. An extension of the Stringers Ridge Trail is now moving forward thanks to the contributions, and an electronic sign has been placed in front of what will become the new city hall building on Dayton Boulevard.

Lynn Bodine and Matthew Green from Matthew Green Construction received approval from the commissioners Tuesday night for a zoning change for two properties that the company wants to develop. The zoning change had previously been recommended by the planning commission subject to certain conditions. On the first reading, approval was given for dividing a 100-foot-wide lot into two 50-foot lots at 3714 Redding Road and allowing a zoning change for the property from R-1 Single Family Residential to RZ-1 Zero Lot Line Residential Zone. This will let the company build two single-family houses at that location. Each will be 1,800 square feet and have finishes such as granite countertops and Hardie board siding. They are expected to sell for $235,000.

The second project at 2416 Lyndon Ave., also garnered approval. This lot will be rezoned from R-1 Residential Zone to R-TZ Residential Townhouse/Zero Lot Line Zone. This development was also recommended by the planning commission subject to certain conditions. Five townhouses, each 1,600 square feet, are planned for this site.

The rezoning for both properties will require a second reading for final approval.

In the last election citizens of Red Bank voted to allow wine sales in grocery stores. At the commission meeting Tuesday night, a representative from Food City at 3901 Dayton Blvd. notified the city that the store is implementing the new law. City Attorney Arnold Stulce told the commissioners that the issuance of the permit is a function of the state of Tennessee, not of Red Bank. The citys responsibility is just to determine if all conditions comply with the city codes. The commission approved the resolution to issue a certificate of compliance to sell wine starting July 1, 2016.

An ordinance was approved on second and final reading that amends the 2015 budget to appropriate additional funding for the purchase of vehicles for both the police and public works departments.
With each receiving about 30 percent of the votes Tuesday, Taylor County Precinct 3 commissioner candidates Brad Birchum and Dale Morrison will face each other in a runoff May 24.

Morrison, a land developer, slid ahead of Birchum, a lieutenant with the Taylor County Sheriff's Office, with 190 more votes. Birchum received 2,335 votes, or 31.2 percent, while Morrison received 2,525 votes, or 33.7 percent, according to final vote tallies.

The victor in May will replace retiring Commissioner Stan Egger, who held the post for 24 years. No Democrats filed for the race.

Morrison, who had a stroke last month, said he believed God had delivered for him in not just good health but in making it to a runoff Tuesday night. He fully has recovered from the stroke without any memory loss or brain damage, he said.

"People had been praying for us," Morrison said of himself and his family after his stroke. "God has something special for us to do."

Morrison said it was his Christian values that spoke to voters, but he said all four candidates who ran for the post were "quality men and experts in their own fields." He said he looked forward to campaigning for the next three months.

Birchum said he was humbled by the support he received Tuesday and that he intended to work hard for the next three months to make his supporters proud. Birchum is the lieutenant in charge of criminal investigations at the Sheriff's Office.

"This is important to me, and I have to win it," he said. "I just hope to win over all Precinct 3 voters."

The other contenders in the race  Gary Young and Elvin "Pete" Wheeler  did not receive enough votes to qualify for the May runoff.

Young, chief of the Elm Creek Citizens Association Volunteer Fire Department, garnered 19.9 percent of the vote. Wheeler, a Precinct 3 county employee, won 15.2 percent of the vote.

Twitter: BrookeCrum_ARN
Coach Valentine's legacy honored with park rededication Friday

Under new policies adopted in December by the city's parks board, the name change will stand for at least 50 years.
Michael Bob Starr enjoyed a lead for hours Tuesday night, but that was before election results for the 19th Congressional District began coming in from the Lubbock area.

Starr, the former Dyess Air Force Base commander, surged to the front after early voting results were posted for Taylor County and, due to slow reporting elsewhere, held that lead until about 10 p.m.

However, as more results came in, Starr slipped to third place and eventually missed a runoff in the eight-candidate field in the Republican primary.

Even when complete results from Lubbock County were not yet known late in the evening it seemed to be a race between Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson and former Texas Tech University administrator Jodey Arrington.

"I'm going to get up in the morning and hit it twice as hard," Robertson said. "It is incumbent that Jodey and I get out to Abilene and tell folks who we are. Abilene is an important as any city in this district."

Said Arrington, "I am awfully grateful and feel blessed. This is exactly where we want to be, essentially a dead heat. There is a lot of Big Country freed up and we hope to get people behind us. I like my chances."

Both candidates praised Starr, Robertson calling his opponent a "good man." Robertson was criticized by both Starr and Arrington for what they believed was negative campaigning close to primary election day.

"I didn't view them as attack ads but as informational," Robertson said.

Arrington late Tuesday said Robertson made "false claims and distorted the truth. Did it help him in the short term? Yeah, negative campaigning can be effective but not in the long term. I think that will come back to bite him."

With 280 of 285 precinct reporting, Robertson had polled the most votes, unofficially taking about 27 percent of the vote. Second went to Arrington, who now runs a health care company and is also from Lubbock. He had roughly 26 percent, compared to about 20 percent for Starr.

Robertson, also a warehouse operator and rancher, and Arrington will square off in a runoff May 24. One will succeed retiring Randy Neugebauer as representative from the 29-county district. There is no Democratic opponent in the November general election.

"I don't have any regrets at all," said Starr just after midnight. He ended his 23-year career in the Air Force early to run in this race. He said he would call a media conference for Wednesday.

Starr took 53 percent of the early vote in Taylor County, unofficially 4,943 of 9,157 votes cast. Robertson was second and Arrington fourth.

Total early voting results from the district unofficially went to Robertson (13,590) over Arrington (11,772) and Starr (11,492).

Overall in Taylor County, his home base, Starr won just over 50 percent of the vote, unofficially 7,500 of 14,876 votes cast. Robertson was second and Arrington third.

However, among the other 11 Big Country counties in the district, Arrington won six (Fisher, Haskell, Nolan, Scurry, Shackelford and Throckmorton counties), Robertson four (Howard, Kent, Stephens and Stonewall counties) and Starr only Jones County, but only by 45 votes unofficially over Robertson. Haskell was the tightest race, with Arrington getting 60, Starr 59 and Robertson 58 votes, unofficially.

Starr spent election night at the home of Larry and Shea Hall, near Potosi. While supporters gathered in a cowboyed-up barn, Starr shuttled back and forth to the Halls' home, where he could get Internet service and communicate with staff and supporters in Lubbock.

A whoop went up at about 7:45 p.m. when Taylor County early voting results were announced to put Starr in the lead. He still was ahead when his wife, Kim, who has a sinus infection, exited about 9:40 p.m. She had campaigned all day with her husband. He thanked her with a vase of roses and a kiss.

The candidate field, which numbered nine before cotton farmer Don Parrish withdrew, also included farmer/oil field consultant Jason Corley, bank president and Realtor Greg Garrett, veterinarian Dr. John Key, retired eye doctor Donald May and registered nurse/medical administrator DeRenda Warren.
In a tight race, James Hicks edged out co-worker Joel Wilks to win the Republican nomination Tuesday for Taylor County district attorney.

Hicks, 59, and Wilks, 45, both assistant district attorney, battled closely till the end. Hicks garnered 9,507 votes, winning 51 percent, over Wilks' 9,054 votes, according to complete but unofficial vote tallies.

Without a Democratic opponent in the November general election, Hicks is in line to succeed District Attorney James Eidson, who ran unopposed for 42nd District Court judge.

"I'm just looking forward to being able to serve Taylor County," Hicks said. "I enjoyed being an assistant with them for 16 years. And I think it's time to give back to the community  I'm excited about getting started."

Early voting results about 8 p.m. had Wilks with 50.3 percent over Hicks' 49.7 percent.

"I think the early voting was predictable," Hicks said. "The momentum gain was predictable. I just thought it was unfolding the way it was supposed to."

Despite the close campaign for Taylor County DA, Hicks said nothing will change between him and Wilks.

"I think we'll remain friends and I think we'll still have a good working relationship when this is all said and done," he said. "My thought process is the same as it was when I started this election. James Eidson has given us tremendous leadership in the last three decades and I hope to fill those shoes and move forward and keep up with the growing crime rate that we have."

For Wilks, election night ended with him feeling "disappointed" and "a little sad."

He told the Reporter-News, "When we saw the first numbers we were hopeful. And whenever they got the other returns, it started looking not as good. It's been a tough night, especially with the delays. It was kind of hard hanging on."

But Wilks said all is not lost even though he came up short against his colleague.

"I had a blast," he said. "This was the most enjoyable three months of that I have spent. (The voters) have been very supportive. They have been tireless in their efforts. And I'm just overwhelmed with the loyalty and effort they put out for this. This wasn't easy."

Wilks said he spoke with Hicks after the final tally and told him, "Congratulations" and said he "ran a great campaign."

As far as what his role will be with Hicks as DA, Wilks said he's ready to do what is asked of him

"That's up to him; he's in charge of the office now," Wilks said.

Twitter: ARN_Titus
UPDATE

Susan King and Dawn Buckingham will face each other May 24 in a runoff for District 24 State Senate.

They were the two top vote-getters in Tuesday's Republican primary, according to complete unofficial results.

King led the six-person race with 32,431 votes (27 percent) to Buckinghams 24,509 (25 percent). Their closest competitor was Jon Cobb, with 24,309 votes, 20 percent of the final total. Rounding out the field were Brent Mayes with 19,176 votes (16 percent), Reed Williams with 8,353 votes (7 percent) and Ryan Downton with 5,345 (4 percent).

King won the most votes in Bandera, Blanco, Brown, Callahan, Comanche, Hamilton, Kerr, Mills, and Taylor Counties.

Buckingham won in Bell, Burnet, Gillespie, Lampasas, Llano and Travis Counties, while Cobb captured the most votes in Coryell and San Saba but was competitive in many counties.

Sen. Troy Fraser announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election to his long-held District 24 seat, creating a flurry of interest.

District 24 extends from Taylor County in the north to Bandera County in the south, a distance of about 225 miles, and includes a small part of western Travis County.

The cities of Killeen and Abilene are the largest in the district, but the Killeen-Temple-Belton area is the most populous. The district includes Dyess Air Force Base and Fort Hood.

King, currently representing District 71 in the state House, announced her candidacy in mid-December.

ORIGINAL STORY

State Rep. Susan King was leading five opponents for Texas Senate District 24 late Tuesday, but only a third of the district's votes had been counted.

If the percentages remain the same, she would secure one of two slots in a May 24 runoff.

However, most of the precincts not reporting were in Travis County and Bell County, the home base for her opponents.

King's supporters thronged Cypress Street Station, sharing pizza, drinks and appetizers while watching results slowly trickle in on three televisions. Others huddled around computer screens for the latest numbers.

King didn't declare victory - as of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday only 174 of 475 precincts had been counted on the Texas secretary of state's website.

Districtwide results showed King with 30.23 percent of the vote, with Austin physician Dawn Buckingham getting 22.24 percent of the vote at that point.

In Taylor County, 55.4 percent of voters chose King. Buckingham was her closest opponent here, capturing 15.8 percent of the vote.

The runoff election will be May 24. The Republican nominee will face Democrat Virginia "Jennie Lou" Leeder, who didn't have an opponent in the primary, in the November general election.

"My team is always telling me, 'you're on a need-to-know basis,'" King joked when asked how she felt about the incomplete results.

"If it's good news, I'm happy about that," she said. "I don't know what the trends are or what's going on specifically. But I've heard that some good things are happening."

King said she wanted voters to know how much she appreciated their confidence and support.

King said it is admittedly "quite a task" to learn about the needs of constituents in the 16 counties other than Taylor that make up District 24. The district includes five Big Country counties, including three-quarters of Taylor County.

Sen. Troy Fraser announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election, creating a flurry of interest in the District 24 seat.

King, currently representing District 71 in the state House, announced her candidacy in mid-December, making her the sixth candidate to seek Fraser's chair.

In addition to Buckingham, others seeking the seat are Jon Cobb, of Bee Cave; Ryan Downton, of Salado; Dr. Brent Mayes, of Fredericksburg; and Reed Williams, of Gatesville.

Tuesday night, King said she wanted tell voters that she had "worked really hard" in two counties other than Taylor - Nolan and Jones - in her role as state representative.

"I will do the same for them," she said of the counties in District 24. "A senator must be as accessible as a House member. And I think Troy Fraser did a great job. But I commit to being even more accessible, more face-to-face ."

Texans deserve to have a "strong representative in both chambers" of state government, she said.

"I've had a really good start at doing that, traveling and meeting people," she said.

But King said she knew she would have to do much more of that before taking office, an opportunity presented by a runoff election.

In previous stories, King has said the most important issues facing Texas, and the ones she wants to "put my stamp on," are illegal immigration, public education, future water supply, and veterans and military affairs.
The Hamilton County Democratic Party will host its Democratic Party County Delegate Convention on Saturday at the I.B.E.W., 3922 Volunteer Dr. # 9 in Chattanooga to select the delegates from each county to the District Convention. The doors open at 11 a.m. and the event is open to all registered voters in the County, supporters of the Democratic Party, and those who agree to support the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2016 Presidential election. The doors will be locked at 1 p.m."The party welcomes all who wish to participate in selecting Tennessees delegates to the Democratic Presidential Convention to attend.We will be selecting Senator Sanders and Secretary Clintons delegates from Chattanooga who will go on to represent us at the district, state, and national levels," officials said.Information about becoming a DNC delegate and the rules governing the DNC DelegateSelection Process may be obtained from tndp.org or from the Tennessee Democratic Party, 1900 Church St, Suite 203, Nashville, Tn. 37203, 615-327-9779.
WASHINGTON  Have you completed the third grade?

If so, this may be why you are having trouble understanding the appeal of Donald Trump.

At Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, Ben Carson delivered an opening statement about 'the abyss of destruction.' An analysis shows he was communicating at the level of a 10th-grader's comprehension. Marco Rubio, who spoke of 'the identity of America in the 21st century,' was also at the high-school level. Ted Cruz and John Kasich were at middle-school comprehension levels.

And then there was Trump  at a third-grade level:

'We don't win anymore ... We're going to make a great country again. We're going to start winning again. We're going to win a lot. It's going to be a big difference, believe me.'

This was no anomaly. Some noticed Trump's peculiarly prosaic prose early in the campaign, but it has become even more pronounced: Simple words. Simple sentences. Simple concepts.

See Donald. See Donald run. See Donald win.

This would appear to confirm polling that indicates Trump draws much of his support from less-educated Americans; 'I love the poorly educated,' he said after his Nevada victory. This doesn't mean all Trump supporters are dumb. But he is communicating at a much more rudimentary level than any other candidate in either party.

'He says five things,' Rubio taunted Thursday night. 'Everyone's dumb, he's gonna make America great again, we're going to win, win, win, he's winning in the polls ... '

But, on some primal level, it works. Americans  particularly those who are angry and anxious, as Trump's followers are  wish to be told that they will be OK, that there are simple answers. There is an obvious appeal to Trump's declarative statement on the Middle East  'I am totally pro-Israel'  rather than Cruz's Princetonian version: 'The notion of neutrality is based upon the left buying into this moral relativism that is often pitched in the media.'

One language gauge, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Index measures sophistication by syllables per word and words per sentence. This is meant for written language, but applied to campaign speeches and debates, it gives a rough sense of the relative levels of candidates' rhetoric.

In speeches the night of the South Carolina primary, Cruz was at a ninth-grade level, Rubio at an eighth-grade level  and Trump at a fifth-grade level. In speeches after Nevada caucuses, Cruz and Democrat Bernie Sanders were at a ninth-grade level, Hillary Clinton was at seventh grade. And Trump? second grade:

'Oh boy.'

'We love Nevada.'

'Soon the country is going to start winning, winning, winning.'

'Now we're going to get greedy for the United States. We're going to grab and grab and grab.'

'We're going to bring in so much money and so much everything.'

'We're going to build the wall. You know that. Going to build the wall.'

'You're going to be proud of your president. And you're going to be even prouder of your country. OK?'

This is campaigning at the level of Captain Underpants, Geronimo Stilton and Rainbow Magic fairies. And it appears to be more effective among this season's Republican voters than, say, Carson, who spoke Thursday night about selecting judges by 'the fruit salad of their life.'

By contrast, there is no puzzling over Trump's meaning when he calls Cruz a 'crazy zealot' or tells Rubio, 'You don't know a thing about business  you lose on everything.' Trump, asked for details of his budget plan, said, 'We will cut so much your head will spin.' His response to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt when pressed at the debate about releasing tax returns: 'First of all, very few people listen to your radio show  that's the good news.'

Trump only rarely left the primary grades the entire debate. On illegal immigration he was in fifth grade. His views on Mitt Romney and on polling of Hispanics: fourth grade. His record as an employer? Third grade. Through it all, his vocabulary would have suited Dr. Seuss: 'They will go out. They will come back. Some will come back. ... The wall just got 10 feet taller. ... We're going to make many cuts. ... We're going to get rid of so many different things.'

And he ended where he began  in third grade. 'I will get it done,' he said. 'Politicians will never, ever get it done. And we will make America great again. Thank you.'

Win, Donald, win. Grab, Donald, grab. See Donald make America great again.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

This just in...
The relatives of prominent Chinese rights activist Guo Feixiong have finally managed to visit him in jail, where he is serving a six-year sentence for public order offenses, they told RFA.



Guo, also known by his birth name Yang Maodong, received a visit from his sister Yang Maoping in Yangchun Prison in southern Chinas Guangdong Province, where he has been transferred after being sentenced last November for "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" and "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order."



"He was transferred from the detention center in the Tianhe [district of the provincial capital Guangzhou] on Feb. 20 or thereabouts," Yang said. "The new place is very far away, and there's not much transportation."



"It took me the whole day to get there," she said. "You have to take small roads and paths through the mountains, some of which aren't even finished yet."



She said Guo, 50, is eating slightly better food than he was provided in the detention center, and sleeps in a cell along with more than a dozen other people.



"There are a lot of people in his cell ... and he's not getting much sleep; he barely gets three hours' sleep a night," she said. "He's probably doing worse than he was in the Tianhe Detention Center."



During his sentencing hearing, Guo shouted in protest at his treatment while in police custody, where he was held in solitary confinement in a dark cell and denied permission to exercise outdoors since August 2013, a situation his wife has said is a form of torture.



Health concerns



Yang said there are now serious concerns for Guo's health.



"He told me himself that he is having severe health problems," she said. "I spoke with the guards there and suggested he get a medical checkup, and I have written a letter asking them to perform an abdominal CT scan."



She said health checks carried out at the time of Guo's sentencing were largely superficial.



"His health is very poor, which is the result of being locked up for more than two years," Yang said, adding that there are also concerns that Guo may be vulnerable to further torture or mistreatment.



"The surveillance camera in his cell isn't working, which is very important from a safety point of view," she said. "[My brother's] safety isn't a top priority for others, but it is for his relatives."



"Our family would implode if anything happened to him [in there]," Yang said. "They used to beat him when he was in Meizhou Prison, which was a horrific place."



Fellow activist Yan Xiuying told RFA that Guo is a political prisoner and worthy of public support.



"Of course, [people like him] are prisoners of conscience," Yan said. "If regular folk like us don't support him, then who would we support?"



"That's what the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party is doing now; locking people up, but at least we have the ability to call for their release, because they are our conscience," he said.



Chinese activist Sun Desheng after his release from prison, Feb. 29, 2016. Photo courtesy of Sun Desheng Co-defendant released



Meanwhile, Guo's co-defendant Sun Desheng was released on Monday after his time served in pretrial detention was taken into account.



In Guo's case, the prosecution added an extra charge at the last minute, effectively resetting the clock and forcing him to serve the entire six years from scratch.



Sun, who stood trial alongside Guo at Guangzhou's Intermediate People's Court on Nov. 28, 2014, told RFA he is "very angry" about the treatment meted out to Guo, and called for his immediate release.



According to the indictment at the trial, the initial charge against Guo was based on his participation in anti-censorship demonstrations outside the cutting-edge Southern Weekend newspaper offices in Guangzhou in early 2013, where he held up a placard and made a speech in favor of press freedom.



In January 2013, activists, journalists and academics faced off with the authorities after the Southern Weekend newspaper was forced to change a New Years editorial calling for political reform into a tribute praising Communist Party rule.



Guo's placards called on officials to publicly disclose their assets and for the Chinese government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it signed in 1998.



Last September, Guo's wife Zhang Qing and daughter Yang Tianjiao received the 2015 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk in Dublin on his behalf.



"Guo Feixiong has defended farmers illegally evicted from their land, Falun Gong practitioners persecuted for their beliefs and journalists who dared to speak out," award presenter Sebastian Barry told the ceremony.



"He is a symbol of the endurance of the human spirit, of the will to survive and of the human need for the free air of ideas, to make life worth living," he said.



Guo is considered at risk because his "memory, speech and mental awareness all showed signs of damage," the statement said, citing Guo's lawyers.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
An editor at a cutting-edge newspaper in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong was fired and another slapped with an official warning for "political problems" after a recent edition of the paper ran two coinciding headlines that spelled out an anti-propaganda message, sources told RFA.



The offending front page appeared in the Shenzhen edition of the Southern Metropolis Daily on Feb. 20, the day after a high-profile visit by President Xi Jinping to media organizations controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist party.



One headline proclaimed: "At the front-line of propaganda work, state media belongs to the party."



The second, linked to a separate story about a shipboard ashes-scattering ceremony, made a second, vertical sentence, adding the words: "Soul returns to the sea."



As Chinese grammar depends on context, the two sentences could be combined to mean "If the media belongs to the party, its soul will be scattered at sea."

Political insensitivity

According to an internal document leaked online by someone at the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper in Guangzhou, page editor Liu Yuxia was issued with an "administrative dismissal" over the blunder, while deputy editor-in-chief Wang Haijun was sanctioned for "political insensitivity," with a black mark on his record.



Former Southern Metropolis reporter Shi Yu confirmed the report, saying that the paper was in dire need of a scapegoat when the scandal broke.



"I know all of the leadership team personally," Shi said. "This was a mistake, and now they need somebody to take the blame."



She said Liu would have been working under Wang as page editor on the night of Feb. 19.



"They have received different levels of punishment," Shi said. "This sort of thing has happened before, but I think that the punishment was too harsh this time."



Shi said it wasn't clear that the headline snafu was the result of "political errors" at all.



"I don't think that's clear at all, and the punishments were pretty harsh based on the existing rules," she said. "They're afraid that people will read more meaning into it, so they have overreacted."

Daily directives

China's state media receive daily directives from the country's propaganda ministry and from propaganda departments at lower levels of government, journalists have told RFA.



The secret orders are often received by phone, although many find their way onto the Internet via social media, and can include instructions from party leadership to boost propaganda on certain topics.



Xi's Feb. 19 tour of state broadcaster CCTV, the People's Daily and Xinhua news agency would have been designated a top story at the highest level, and the Southern Metropolis headline acrostic is unlikely to have gone unnoticed in Beijing.



The paper is no stranger to subtle acts of subversion, and its reporting is considered daring in China's tightly controlled news environment.



Last September, the advertising department printed a full-page black rectangle on its A24 page, prompting some to wonder if the ad was making a sly reference to a lack of democracy in China.



Commentators took to popular Twitter-like service Sina Weibo to speculate over the motivation behind the page, with some pointing out that Sept. 15 is the International Day of Democracy.

Unintentional error



Guangzhou-based online writer Ye Du said he didn't believe the headline acrostic was intentional, however, as most of the journalists still working at the paper wouldn't dare to push back against the government.



"We have had several years of crackdowns on the Chinese media, and they started with the Southern Metropolis Daily," Ye said, adding that the most outspoken journalists had been weeded out following a 2013 strike and protest sparked by the rewriting of a New Year front page editorial in the Southern Weekend newspaper, a stable-mate of the Southern Metropolis Daily.



"A large number of people left the Southern media group back then, and those who were left were meek little things who would never dare to protest," he said.



Independent political commentator Zhang Enguang said Xi's tour of party media outlets is further evidence that he is taking China ever closer to a situation that resembles the Cultural Revolution

(1966-1976).



"Before [Xi came to power], I would have said that there was no way China was going to go any further to the left," Zhang said. "But the crackdowns on political dissidents, including rights lawyer and NGOs ... show that he is busy centralizing power."



"And when he has got all of the power, then we'll find out the meaning of the phrase 'power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely,'" Zhang said.



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.
The United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed to dramatically tighten sanctions on North Korea today as the international community aims to punish Pyongyang for a recent nuclear test and a missile launch.

Not only does the resolution take aim at North Koreas ability to build up its nuclear and rocket programs, but it also attacks the one-party states conventional forces, its supply lines as well as its leaders ability to buy luxury items like expensive watches and fancy snowmobiles.

"Nearly all North Korean resources are channeled into its reckless nuclear program," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power told the council after the vote. "The government of North Korea would rather grow its nuclear program than grow its own children."

President Obama hailed the resolution as "a firm, united, and appropriate response" by the international community.

"Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people," Obama said in a statement.

North Korea carried out its fourth nuclear test on January 6, which was followed by the launch on February 7 of a satellite-bearing rocket that the world viewed as a disguised ballistic missile test.

China's play

Wednesday's vote comes after seven weeks of negotiations between the U.S. and China which is North Koreas staunchest ally.

This resolution demonstrates the seriousness of the international community, said Chinese Ambassador to the U.N. Liu Jieyi after the vote.

On Wednesday, North Korean officials said that the South is not the intended target for its nuclear weapons as So Se Pyong, North Koreas ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, took the floor at the Conference on Disarmament to rail against the United States.

"We have already made clear that the [Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea's] nuclear deterrent is not directed to harm the fellow countryman but to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula and security in the region from the U.S.vicious nuclear war scenario," So said, according to an AFP report.

In New York, South Korean U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon accused the North of paranoia.

Why would the strongest military power in the world threaten a small country far across the Pacific? he said. There is no threat. It is a figment of your imagination.

He urged North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons for the sake of all Koreans.

The only people who will suffer from what you are doing are your own people, and they are also my people and our people as well, he said. So please wake up. Open your eyes. Look out at what is happening in the world. Give up the nukes. Join the rest of us in the world.

While the resolution requires United Nations members to prevent the transfer of any item that could contribute to North Koreas nuclear or ballistic missile programs and updates a list of banned chemical and biological weapons materials, it also subjects North Korea to a full arms embargo including small arms and light weapons.

The ban covers the transfer to North Korea of any item that could directly contribute to the operational capabilities of the countrys armed forces, such as trucks that could be modified for military purposes.

Cargo inspection mandate

In an unprecedented move the resolution requires the inspection of all cargo to and from North Korea and bars vessels suspected of carrying illegal goods to and from North Korean ports.

The new cargo inspection requirement closes a loophole that North Korea has been using to sail a bulk-container ship through, as it can be difficult to track ocean shipping and some countries refuse to uphold U.S. sanctions unless the targeted company has also broken local laws.

Most goods heading to North Korea do so by sea as they come through Southeast Asian transshipment hubs. Cargo lists are not publicly available, and inspections are generally conducted only when there is intelligence to suggest a breach of international sanctions.

In an annex to the resolution, the Security Council singles out Ocean Maritime Management by blacklisting the North Korean shipping companys ships from any port.

The measure provides for a ban on exports of coal, iron and iron ore from North Korea, except if that revenue is used for "livelihood purposes" and not to fund Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

It also ban sales of gold, titanium and rare earth minerals from North Korea and would prohibit the supply of aviation fuel including rocket fuel to the reclusive country.

Banking restrictions are tightened and governments would be required to ban flights of any plane suspected of carrying contraband destined for North Korea.

The resolution adds 16 individuals and 12 entities to the UN sanctions blacklist including North Korea's NADA space agency and its intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

Even though the sanctions are the toughest levied, there are still questions about their ability to stop the North Korean nuclear program.

The resolution carries no effective sanctions preventing the booming trade across the relatively porous 870-mile border between North Korea and its biggest trading partner China. While trade between the two nations is a lifeline not only for the impoverished North Korean people, it is also a source of cash for Pyongyang. It also lacks a requirement to cut of oil exports to North Korea.

The resolutions also does nothing about the tens of thousands of North Korean workers in factories, construction sites and logging camps in China, Russia, Africa and the Middle East who send home $200 million to $300 million a year, most of which human rights groups contend ends up in the hands of Norths leader, Kim Jong-un.

An estimated 75 percent of North Koreas foreign trade, including almost all of its oil imports, is with China, providing Beijing with unique economic leverage. The two-way trade amounted to $5.5 billion last year, according to figures from Chinese customs authorities.

While Beijing reportedly balked at trade sanctions that affect only its relationship with North Korea, the Chinese decision to negotiate a deal marks a change.

THAAD questions

That doesnt mean that Beijing doesnt have concerns as the Chinese envoy Liu Jieyi expressed his countrys concern over the possible deployment of the U.S.-made THAAD anti-missile system.

Deployment of the THAAD will seriously undermine the effort of the international community to see the political solution to the question of the Korean peninsula, he said.

While there has been much debate over the sanctions, Liu Jieyi cautioned that the vote was unlikely to end North Koreas program.

Sanctions are not an end in themselves, he said. Todays resolution should be a new starting point and a paving stone for a political settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.
Senator David Perdue spoke on the Senate floor about his decision to not consider a nominee to the Supreme Court before the next president is sworn into office.

Here is the transcript of Senator Perdue's remarks:

I believe the Senate should not hold hearings or schedule a vote on any Supreme Court nominee offered by President Obama until the American people choose our next president this November.

The American people are reacting to our global security and debt crises when they go to the polls, and this upcoming election will not only determine the direction of our country, but it also serves as a referendum on the Presidency and Congress, and now the Supreme Court balance.



The last seven years have shown that the President has sought to exceed the Constitutional bounds of his office by assuming powers that were delegated to this body.



For instance, in January of 2013, the President attempted to recess appoint nominees to the National Labor Relations Board in direct violation of the Senates will. Of course, the Supreme Court later intervened and struck down those appointments.



As well, my colleagues across the aisle have repeatedly shown a willingness to aid this administration in making unprecedented power grabs including employing the nuclear option on judicial nominees.



The American people were outraged at these events, as was I. So while I acknowledge the Presidents position on insisting the Senate consider a nominee, it is vital that the people get their say on this lifetime position.



It is the role of the Senate to rise above current political theatre. It is about upholding this principle and not about the individual. The Senate simply should not consider a nominee at this time and let the people have their say.



I should also point out that my position, and the position of many of my colleagues is not a novel idea.



For instance: It was then-Senator Obama who filibustered Justice Alitos nomination in 2006. It was then-Senator Biden who in 1992 pre-emptively said that President George H.W. Bush should avoid a Supreme Court nomination until after that years election.



As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, then-Senator Biden also made the same point we are today when he came to the floor of the Senate and said, quote: It is my view that if a Supreme Court justice resigns tomorrow or within the next several weeks, or resigns at the end of the summer, President Bush should consider following the practice of a majority of his predecessors and not  and not  name a nominee until after the November election is completed.



The balance of the Supreme Court is in serious jeopardy. We must ensure that balance remains as a check against efforts by government to bypass the will of the people.



As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I stand with Chairman Grassley and other members in saying that we will not consider a nominee to the Supreme Court before the next president is sworn into office. We are already in the midst of a political campaign season, so any nominee will be seen through the lens of partisan politics. It is disingenuous for the minority party to say otherwise, and this is to the point that then-Senator Biden was speaking in 1992.



As we said in our letter last week, we intend to exercise the Constitutional power granted to the United States Senate under Article II, Section 2. While the President shall nominate judges to the Supreme Court, the power to grant or withhold consent of such nominees rests solely with this body.



At a time when the stakes are so high, the American people deserve the opportunity to engage in a full and robust debate over the type of jurist they wish to decide some of the most critical issues of our time for the next generation.



Not since 1932 has the Senate confirmed a Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year to a vacancy arising in that year. And it is necessary to go even further back  to 1888  to find an election year nominee who was both nominated and confirmed under divided government, as we have now.



Today, the American people are presented with an exceedingly rare opportunity to decide the direction the Court will take over the next generation.



The people should have this opportunity.


Police in northern Myanmar have questioned nine leaders of antidrug campaign groups about recent violent attacks by local opium poppy farmers in war-torn northern Kachin state that injured nearly three dozen people, an official from one of the organizations said Wednesday.



Kachin state police interrogated them about the assaults and fires that occurred on Feb. 25 as members of the groups attempted to destroy poppy fields in Waingmaw township, Gi Fone Dant, chair of community-based drug eradication network Pat Jasan told RFAs Myanmar Service.



They asked about the attack regardless of whether the person in question was a leader or just a witness, he said. They questioned how the incident happened, who attacked them and who was attacked. If someone was not involved in the incidents or had not witnessed the attacks, they let him go without any problem.



Some of those the police summoned for questioning were out of town, Gi Fone Dant said.



He also said police would question those who were hospitalized following the attack.



Assisted by police, about 26 teams of locals and members of the Christian, antidrug Pat Jasan group were clearing fields in the Kanpaiktee and Sadon areas as part of a poppy eradication campaign unpopular among those who profit from the multibillion-dollar trade, when they were ambushed, Lagan Zai Jung, a lawmaker representing Waingmaw constituency, told RFA last week.



About 37 people were injured, several motorbikes and homes destroyed, and cars set ablaze during the attack by assailants armed with semiautomatic guns, machetes, grenades and slingshots, according to Pat Jasan activists and other locals. Most of those who were injured in the attack were taken to a local hospital for treatment.



Local militia forces?



Tu Raw, a leader of the Pat Jasan group, suggested last week that the attackers were members of government or local militia forces who had access to semi-automatic weapons and remote-controlled mines.



After the incident, the Kachin state parliament formed a commission led by the state police chief to investigate the attack, local authorities said.



The Pat Jasan group, formed two years ago and made up of mostly ethnic Kachin members with ties to the Kachin Baptist Church, received permission to resume its drug eradication campaign in the Waingmaw area on Feb. 23, after a weeklong standoff with state authorities over security concerns.



Farmers, local militias and corrupt government officials who profit from opium and heroin sales oppose the groups activities.



On the day of the attack, Myanmars lower house parliament passed an emergency motion for the government to support Pat Jasan and other public groups who carry out drug eradication campaigns.



Myanmar is the worlds second-biggest producer of opium after Afghanistan, and most of its poppies, which are used for opium and heroin, are grown in Kachin and Shan states.



Reported by Zarni Htun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A suicide attack targeted India's diplomatic compound in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on March 2, with explosions and gunfire rattling the diplomatic district.

RFE/RL's correspondent in Jalalabad reports that a suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-filled vehicle outside the entrance gates of the Indian consulate compound at about noon (local time) on March 2.

Smaller explosions and gunfire followed as other militants attempted to storm into the compound after the initial blast.

RFE/RL's correspondent reported seeing the bodies of four dead gunmen on the ground outside the compound walls after their battle with security forces ended.

Authorities said later that five gunmen and the suicide car bomber were killed.

They said two civilians were killed in the violence and 19 were injured.

In New Delhi, India's Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the "consulate has been targeted but everyone is safe" within the compound, which is in a neighborhood that also includes diplomatic offices of other countries.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but both the Taliban and rival Islamic State (IS) militants have a strong presence in the area.

In fact, IS militants have had a growing presence in Nangarhar Province during the past year and are challenging the Taliban there.

The diplomatic quarter in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province, has been repeatedly attacked in recent months.

In January, IS militants claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Pakistan's consulate in Jalalabad -- the first major IS attack in the city.

India helped overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is the largest regional provider of humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Afghanistan.

But New Delhi's presence in Afghanistan has irked Islamabad, which has previously alleged that India's intelligence agency works undercover in the country to undermine Pakistan.

India's embassy in Kabul was targeted by a suicide car bomber in July 2008 in an attack that killed 58 people.

U.S. intelligence officials suggested Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency played a role in the attack  an allegation that Islamabad strongly denies.

The March 2 attack in Jalalabad came as U.S. Army General John Nicholson formally took over command of NATO-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Nicholson replaced the outgoing General John Campbell, who told reporters in Kabul that there "is still much work to be done" in Afghanistan.

Campbell said Afghan security forces have "come far, but they still need" NATO's help.

Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the United States, and Pakistan said after meeting in Kabul last week that direct peace talks between the Taliban and the government in Kabul were expected to start in Islamabad during the first week of March.

But since that announcement, Taliban militants have increased their attacks across Afghanistan -- prompting President Ashraf Ghani to say that his government would not negotiate with extremists who kill innocent Afghan civilians.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP


European Union President Donald Tusk traveled to Balkan capitals on March 2 to discuss recent restrictions they imposed on migrants at their borders.

He is visiting the Croatian capital of Zagreb and the Macedonian capital of Skopje, where leaders recently announced they are considering even more drastic measures to shut down the so-called Balkan route traveled by migrants to get from the Middle East to northern Europe.

His trip comes as the United Nations refugee agency warned that the EU is on the "cusp of a self-induced" humanitarian crisis if governments fail to work together.

The border restrictions imposed by Macedonia and other Balkan countries as well as Austria have contravened advice and policies advanced by the EU.

They have also had the effect of creating a "domino-like" buildup of tens of thousands of refugees left stranded in Greece.

After visiting the Balkans, Tusk on March 3 and 4 will travel to Turkey, where most of the refugees from Iraq and Syria pass through on their way to Europe.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP
Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and poverty have journeyed through the Balkans to reach Western Europe in the past year. Now the route is being choked off, leaving it unclear where the migrant crisis goes next.

Here are five things to consider.

1. End Of The Road

The Balkan route is being choked off as Austria and four Balkan states (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Macedonia) have set up their own quota system for how many asylum seekers and economic migrants will be allowed to move north from Greece deeper into Europe.

Vienna took the lead by deciding in February to admit only 80 asylum seekers a day, to accept a maximum of 37,500 this year, and to limit the number of people transiting through Austria to Germany and elsewhere to 3,200.

The four Balkan states followed suit by limiting the number of migrants entering their territory to 580 a day. They justified the limits by arguing that thousands of migrants, prevented from passing to other states, would become stranded on their territory.

Austria and the four Balkan states coordinated their actions through a meeting of their police chiefs, creating a unilateral response to Europe's migrant crisis rather than waiting for an EU-wide solution.

2. Migrants Left Stranded

The choking off of the Balkan route leaves some 22,000 migrants backed up in Greece, with 2,000 more traveling across the Mediterranean daily.

Greece is furious with the unilateral decision by Austria and the four Balkan states, saying it deliberately turns the migrant crisis into a "Greek problem."

INFOGRAPHIC: Map Of Alternative Refugee Routes

Greece, whose economy is struggling amid a continuing debt crisis, is among the European Union's worst-equipped for dealing with thousands of refugees.

That means the migrants need to move on. The question is to where, and how.

3. Detours To Schengen

The choking off of the Balkan route could send thousands of migrants looking for new routes into Europe.

One possible new route would be across the Greek border to Albania, then across the Adriatic to Italy. Albanian criminal groups regularly smuggle contraband across the water to Italy; now they could turn to people trafficking.

Another route could focus on Romania. Migrants could move by land from Turkey through Bulgaria to Romania, or go by boat from Turkey directly to Romania via the Black Sea. The goal in both cases would be to reach Hungary and enter the Schengen Area.

A third possible new route is across the Caucasus and then through Russia and Belarus to Poland. Poland, too, is in the Schengen zone.

4. Brussels In A Bind

The European Union has been left flat-footed by Austria and the four Balkan states' unilateral choking off of the Balkan route.

The measure comes as the EU seeks a unified solution to the migrant crisis that focuses on persuading Turkey to reduce the movement of people across the Mediterranean.

Under a deal struck between Brussels and Turkey in November, the European Union has pledged to provide an initial 3 billion euros to Turkey to help it house and care for the some 2 million refugees in the country. In exchange, Turkey is increasing patrols in the Aegean Sea with support from NATO and has agreed, starting this year, to take back migrants whose asylum claims are denied by EU states.

As tensions over the migrant crisis have risen, however, many EU states have simply set their own policies rather than wait for Brussels.

Austria's decision to limit its number of asylum seekers has drawn stinging criticism from Brussels, but Austria is hardly the first. Hungary took unilateral action last year in building fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia; more recently, Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered the country's defense and interior ministries to begin preparing defenses on its border with Romania, too. And an EU effort to get all its member states to share the refugee burden through a relocation system was undermined by the refusal of four Central European states to participate.

5. European Attitudes Harden

During 2015, more than 1 million migrants, including from the Middle East and Africa, entered Europe. This year, the numbers are expected to increase. During the first two months of this year, 131,724 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea, nearly as many as in the entire first half of 2015.

As the migrant influx has continued, Western European states that are the main destinations have said they cannot continue to absorb such numbers of people. They have vowed tougher screening of asylum seekers to separate them from economic migrants.

Germany, which has received the bulk of the migrants, has expanded the list of "safe" countries to which rejected applicants can be returned home. Sweden has said about half of the migrants it received last year will be repatriated, while Finland has said it will do the same for two-thirds. Several Central European countries have said they do not welcome migrants or, in the case of Hungary and Slovakia, prefer only Christians.

Yet Europe also wants to remain a place of refuge for people fleeing their home countries out of fear of persecution or threats to their lives. The question now is how Europe will balance its desire to help refugees with its fear of too many migrants.

So far, no answer is in sight.
WASHINGTON -- A former U.S. congressman has resigned as chairman of a central player in the multimillion-dollar Azerbaijani lobbying effort to court American support for the ex-Soviet republic's authoritarian government, saying he has not been paid for his services "in a year."

Former U.S. Representative Dan Burton (Republican-Indiana) this week resigned from the Azerbaijan America Alliance, a group founded by tycoon Anar Mammadov, son of the oil-rich Caucasus nations transport minister, that has paid U.S. lobbyists more than $12 million since 2011.



"As I have not heard from you or Anar, and have not been paid for a year, please consider this e-mail as a letter of resignation as Chairman of the Azerbaijan American Alliance," Burton wrote in a March 1 e-mail to James Fabiani, whose Washington-based firm lobbies for the group in the United States. The e-mail was seen by RFE/RL.



Fabiani did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment or to a voicemail left with his office, and no one answered the phone at the number listed on the Azerbaijan America Alliances website.



Mammadov, a recent business partner of U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for the construction of a 33-floor, sail-shaped luxury hotel in Baku, did not respond to a Facebook message, and no one answered the phone at the number listed on his website.



Burtons resignation follows months of speculation about the fate of the Azerbaijan America Alliance, a prominent pillar of a broader Azerbaijani lobbying campaign in the United States to portray Azerbaijan as a stable energy and security partner for the West. The lobby involves both private and state money.



Baku's detractors accuse President Ilham Aliyev's government and its proxies of trying to paper over an abysmal human rights record with "caviar diplomacy," using gifts, vacations, and other expensive incentives to gain friends and curry favor with foreign officials.



Aliyev recently removed broad powers from the Transport Ministry, overseen by Mammadovs father, suggesting the familys influence in the government is waning.



Several reports in the Azerbaijani media since August have cited unidentified sources as saying that Mammadov planned to shutter the Azerbaijan America Alliance due to financial difficulties amid the broader economic crisis Azerbaijan is grappling with due to plunging energy prices.



Burtons predecessor as the groups chairman, Azerbaijani businessman Khayal Sharifzadeh, denied those reports, saying the organization "continues its activity as usual and even in a larger scale."



Wining And Dining



Over the past five years, the Azerbaijan America Alliance has poured a total of $12.3 million into U.S. lobbying efforts, according to the public-interest website Opensecrets.org, having wined and dined Washington's elite and pushed Bakus interests in meetings with senior members of Congress.



Fabiani & Companys work for the group has made the Top 10 list of priciest U.S. lobbying contracts every year since the organizations launch in 2011, according to rankings compiled by Opensecrets.org.



The organization, which is not formally affiliated with the Azerbaijani state but has hewn closely to the Aliyev governments line, has continued this spending, paying $1.46 million for U.S. lobbying services in 2015, most of which went to Fabiani & Company, according to public lobbying disclosures.



Precisely how that money is being spent remains unclear. The groups public activities appear to have ground to a halt. It has not updated its social media accounts or the news feed on its website since November, and it did not stage its lavish annual gala dinner in 2015 as it had the previous three years.

The group spent $430,000 for its 2012 dinner, which was attended by then-House of Representatives speaker John Boehner (pictured with Mammadov at left) and 15 other members of Congress, including Burton, according to a 2013 filing under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).



In 2013, the Azerbaijan America Alliance terminated its FARA registration, which had required it to provide detailed accounts of its expenditures and contacts with government officials, journalists, and other individuals while lobbying.



Its spending is now reported under the U.S. Lobbying Disclosure Act, which requires a far less detailed account of a lobbying activities than FARA. Fabiani & Companys filings reporting its work for the Azerbaijan America Alliance in each quarter of 2015 indicate only that contacts were made with the U.S. State Department and both houses of Congress.



I Didnt Want To Be Involved Anymore



Burton was named chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance in February 2013, a month after he left office after a 30-year career in Congress. He told RFE/RL this week that Fabiani introduced him to Mammadov, chairman of Garant Holding, a conglomerate with interests that include construction firms, hotels, and insurance companies.



Investigations by RFE/RL have previously revealed that Anar Mammadov's business interests are tied to the ministry overseen by his father, Ziya Mammadov.



Burton said that he did not engage in lobbying during his time with the Azerbaijan America Alliance, but that he would occasionally invite members of Congress to social functions staged by the group.

He also published opinion articles supporting the Azerbaijani government. One such piece in The Washington Times was singled out by Washington Post media reporter Erik Wemple, who noted that it failed to mention Burtons affiliation with the Azerbaijan America Alliance.



In his resignation e-mail, Burton said that while he believes "it is very important that there be a strong business and government relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan, I still must resign" due to nonpayment.

He declined to say how much he was paid as the organization's chairman.

He told RFE/RL that he has not been paid for his services since February 2015.



I hope they dont have my name still as chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance. I told them that I didnt want to be involved anymore, he said in a March 1 telephone interview.



As of March 2, Burton was still listed as chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance on the organization's website.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service
A large part of Moldova's military equipment dates back to Soviet times and is in urgent need of replacement, Defense Minister Anatolie Nosatii told RFE/RL, adding that the money allocated by the government for defense amounts to a small sum but is still important for its badly underfunded and underequipped army.

Moldova, one of Europe's poorest countries, was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, when it declared independence. It has a long border with Ukraine and has been hosting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees since the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has some 1,500 troops in Moldova's Moscow-backed separatist region of Transdniester, a sliver of land sandwiched between Moldova proper and Ukraine.

"Some 90 percent [of our military equipment] is of Soviet origin and dates back to the 1960s to the 1980s.... You cannot modernize a ZIL-131 [military truck] or an antiaircraft system made in the 1970s," Nosatii said.

The pro-European government of President Maia Sandu accelerated its EU bid after Russia invaded Ukraine and in June was given candidate status alongside Ukraine.

Moldova's armed forces consists of 6,500 professional personnel, while 2,000 conscripts are being recruited annually for compulsory military service. The military also employs 2,000 civilians as auxiliary personnel.

Nosatii told RFE/RL that the 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product allocated for defense by the government -- roughly $25.5 million -- while small, is still very important for the implementation of modernization projects.

Nosatii also spoke about the equipment shortages that the Moldovan military faces because of insufficient funding.

The Defense Ministry covers only partially the contents of the so-called "emergency backpack" that contract soldiers, who account for the bulk of Moldova's armed forces, must have at the ready for unexpected situations, Nosatii said.

Nosatii, who was appointed in August last year as defense minister in Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita's reformist government, told RFE/RL that his ministry's current priority is to provide every member of the armed forces with one of these individual first-aid medical kits.

Moldova has been cooperating with foreign partners, including NATO, in its efforts to supply the first-aid kits to its military personnel, Nosatii said.

Besides the first-aid kit, the emergency backpack must also include personal items such as underwear, socks, gloves, a woolly hat, food, and a flashlight, Nosatii said, adding that the state can only partially cover the cost of such equipment.

"For example," Nosatii told RFE/RL, "if the state provides four T-shirts [for daily usage] but the backpack has to cover seven days of deployment, the remainder of three or more T-shirts must be bought by the soldier."

Nosatii said that supplying Moldova's small military with equipment has been a permanent underlying problem but that the ministry has obtained aid from Moldova's external partners.

"You can't demand that a soldier perform his duties when he doesn't have what he needs, when he's cold, lacks military equipment, or is forced to buy it himself," Nosatii said.

Military equipment donated by Moldova's Western partners this year consists of protective gear such as helmets, flak jackets, and waterproof and winter clothing.

Earlier this month, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht visited Moldova and said Berlin is prepared to provide drones and other military equipment to Chisinau.

Lambrecht also said the German Army is ready to provide military training to Moldova.

She said Berlin also realizes the importance of supporting Moldova in the wake of energy shortages stemming from the war in Ukraine.
A Spanish hotel operator says it plans to open what is described as Iran's first foreign-branded seaside hotel as early as next year.

Melia Hotels International said on March 2 that the five-star property would be built in a 130-meter tower on the Caspian Sea.

The Gran Melia Ghoo hotel, which is to feature swimming pools, bars, and a spa, will form part of a new district being built in the resort of Salman Shahr.

The property is set to be the first luxury hotel operated by a foreign company in Iran since the Islamic revolution forced overseas brands to flee in 1979.

The announcement comes after international sanctions against Iran were lifted in January in connection with a July nuclear deal with world powers.

In October, Iran got its first foreign-branded hotels in decades when French operator Accor opened a Novotel and an Ibis near Tehrans international airport.

Based on reporting by Bloomberg and expansion.com


Iranian Vice President Shahindokht Molaverdi has come under fire for claiming that the entire male population of a village in restive Sistan-Baluchistan Province has been executed on drug-related offenses.



Molaverdi made the claim in a February 23 interview with the semiofficial Mehr news agency, without specifying the name of the village or the number of people executed.



"We have a village in Sistan-Baluchistan where every single man has been executed," Molaverdi said.

The province is used as a route by drug traffickers due to its proximity to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Molaverdi warned that "the survivors are potential drug dealers, as they would want to seek revenge for their fathers and also provide for their families."



The shocking claim, which made headlines in Persian-language and Western media, has angered local officials, who accuse Molaverdi of spreading lies and damaging the province.



Sistan-Baluchistan's deputy chief justice, Mohammad Ali Hamidian, said on March 2 that a legal complaint has been launched against Molaverdi because, he said, her claim constituted "spreading lies and defamation" about the judicial system.



Hamidian was quoted by local news sites as saying that Molaverdi has linked "the failure" of the executive branch to solve the problems of Sistan-Baluchistan -- one of Iran's poorest regions -- to the judiciary.



Another local official, Hassan Razavidust, also blasted Molaverdi, while dismissing her claim as a "pure lie."



"Since the claim is false, the vice president should be held [legally] responsible and apologize to the people in the province," Razavidust, a deputy prosecutor for the region's capital, Zahedan, was quoted by domestic media as saying.



Several lawmakers also criticized Molaverdi while suggesting that such a village does not exist. Among them is Zahedan's representative to the parliament, who said the issue will be pursued through the parliament and other bodies.



"This interview destroyed the reputation of Sistan-Baluchistan," the lawmaker, Hosseinali Shahriari, said. He added: "Many people contact us and ask about the basis for this claim."



Shahriari said he personally had no information about such a village.



Mohammad Javad Larijani, head of the Iranian judiciary's Human Rights Council, told CNN on March 1 that he is looking into the issue.



He suggested that the number of those executed in the village was small.

"[As for] what the vice president said, I think we should be aware that a village which has only five families living in it...the male population of that -- five or six [men] -- could be involved in the drug-trafficking incident," Larijani told CNN in an interview from Geneva.



Molaverdi has yet to react publicly to the wave of criticism.



She was quoted by a local website as saying that she does not plan to give any interviews on the matter.

Iran has one the highest execution rates in the world. According to figures released by Amnesty International, Iran executed nearly 700 people in the first half of 2015.

Most of those were hanged after being convicted of drug-related offenses, including drug trafficking.
Iraq has signed a deal with a European company to repair and maintain the Mosul Dam in the north of the country.

Government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said the contract -- worth $296 million -- was signed with Italy's Trevi Group on March 2.

Hadithi didnt give a specific time frame for when the work would start but said it needs to be "as quickly as possible."

The Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed the contract had been signed.

Iraqs largest dam, located outside the Islamic State-held city of Mosul, has recently made headlines amid concerns it could collapse.

The hydroelectric dam was built in the early 1980s on an unstable foundation that is constantly eroding, and a lapse in maintenance after the IS group briefly seized it in 2014 has weakened the already flawed structure.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters


The New York Times reports that U.S. special operations forces have captured a significant Islamic State (IS) operative in Iraq.

The newspaper quoted unidentified U.S. defense officials as saying American interrogators are with the detainee, who is not identified, at a temporary detention facility in Irbil in northern Iraq.

The officials declined to identify the detainee.

The Pentagon declined to confirm the report, but said any detention would be "short-term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities."

Iraqi and Kurdish military spokesmen declined immediate comment.

The Times says 200 members of U.S. special operations forces have deployed to Iraq in recent weeks.

Some 3,900 other U.S. troops are in the country on a mission to train and support Iraqi forces fighting the IS group.

Based on reporting by The New York Times, Reuters, and AFP
A pivotal day in African-American history occurred on one Sunday afternoon in November 1786, when a group of congregants led by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones would stage the first African-American mass demonstration in American history as they filed out of St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Pa. in direct opposition to discrimination in the church-place as black congregants had been forced to sit in the gallery section and were denied the right to openly pray and worship despite being full-fledged members of the church.

This sparked a movement across the nation as African-Americans formally protested segregated houses of worship and laid the foundation for the Free African Society in April 1787, which was America's first civil rights organization. The work undertaken by this group would later evolve into what would become known as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. It's notable to think that as these momentous events occurred that the Constitutional Convention had just finished convening in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, Allen, Jones, and the early AME congregants would begin building Bethel AME Church in Philadelphia in 1793, pausing briefly to assist in the Great Yellow Fever epidemic that spread throughout the city that year, and completed this work in 1794.

Women such as Allen's wife Sarah would also play a significant role in the founding of the AME Church by assisting the minister's in their official duties and church upkeep, including stitching the ministers often worn and ragged garments, promoted reading and literacy at a time when it was illegal to do so, and were active participants in the Underground Railroad. Today the church's Women's Missionary Society remains committed and dedicated to much of this work. Despite all of these progressive societal accomplishments, disputes between the early AME founders and St. George's Methodist Church were steadily persistent because technically the black congregants were still governed under the same ecclesiastical rules and regulations, and in fact at one point the AME founders would have to repurchase their property for over $10,000 after it was auctioned, which was a small fortune in the early 1800's. In the face of these seemingly insurmountable odds and obstructionism, the AME Church formally organized as a national body by 1816, with Richard Allen serving as it's first Bishop.



Recently, the nation and world became re-acclimated to the history of Emanuel AME church, located in Charleston, SC. One of the earliest persons who helped to place a church in Charleston was the Rev. Morris Brown, and coincidentally enough, another part of Brown's endearing legacy would be the AME church's long affiliation with institutions of higher learning such as Morris Brown in Atlanta and Wilberforce in Ohio. Emanuel AME is also notable for being home of the oldest black congregation in the South and once counted Denmark Vesey, an early civil rights activist and abolitionist who led slave uprising in 1822, as one of it's earliest congregants. Mr. Vesey, along with three dozen others, would be tried and executed for their stand and the church would be burned before being rebuilt in 1834. Ironically, on June 17, 2015, an armed assailant would enter the church during Wednesday prayer service and shoot nine of the congregants, including the church's minister and South Carolina State Senator Clementa C. Pinckney.

On June 26, 2015, the General Conference of the AME Church and several national dignitaries, including a eulogy by President Barack Obama, would mourn their loss. The aftermath of this horrific event would lead to a call to take down the confederate flag from the state capitol grounds. For their courage, steadfastness, and noble action which followed in the best of Christian traditions during this tragedy, in February of 2016, the congregation of Emanuel AME was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.



Throughout 2016, the AME Church will celebrate its 200th anniversary. This Bicentennial celebration will culminate with events in Philadelphia, Pa. from July 3-13, including the 50th Quadrennial Session of the General Conference from July 6-133, which will also include the unveiling of memorials for Richard and Sarah Allen, and a memorial torch run.

Likewise, the United States Postal Service recently announced that it will issue an official stamp for Bishop Allen, which will be the 39th in the Postal Service's black heritage stamp series.

Today the AME Church has nearly three-million members in five countries and across three continents. In the vicinity of Philadelphia, there are several memorials and a park dedicated to Allen and the AME founders, and fittingly enough, he and wife Sarah are entombed in the lower dwellings of Mother Bethel AME Church.
U.S. authorities charged the head of an international metals company with exporting to Iran a potentially dangerous metallic powder used for space and nuclear activities, including missile production.

The U.S. Justice Department charges on March 1 against Erdal Kuyumcu, 44, chief executive of Global Metallurgy LLC, carry up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Kuyumcu exported cobalt-nickel metallic powder to Iran twice, shipping it first through an intermediary in Turkey to hide its final destination, the department said.

The powder is used as a thermal spray to protect surfaces against corrosion at high temperatures. Kuyumcu allegedly attempted to send more than a thousand pounds of the substance in total.

Under U.S. law, exporting such a powder to Iran is illegal without a license from the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

"Those who seek to evade the scrutiny of the regulatory agencies by operating in the shadows present a danger to our national security and our allies abroad," said U.S. Attorney Robert Capers of the Eastern District of New York.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP


NATO's top commander warned that Russia and Syria have turned the refugee crisis into a "weapon" against the West at a time when it lacks resources to counter a "resurgent, aggressive" Russia.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who commands the 28-member military alliance, said the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants from war-torn Syria into Europe has had a destabilizing effect throughout Europe, from the Balkans to Scandinavia, and that has worked to Moscow's advantage.

"Together, Russia and [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve," Breedlove told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on March 1.

Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians, including through Russia's indiscriminate bombing of opposition targets and the Syrian leader's use of barrel bombs in civilian areas.

"These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can't find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem," said Breedlove, who is also the commander of U.S. troops in Europe.

"This is putting great pressure on the nations of Europe," he said.

Potential Trojan Horses

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin dismissed Breedlove's accusations. "Shifting the blame: the specialist on bombing Afghan weddings has accused us of 'non-precise bombing'," Rogozin wrote on his Facebook page on March 2.

Breedlove said the massive flow of refugees is also bringing with it potential Trojan horses in the form of criminals and terrorists -- some of them Europeans who got training in Syria and may be planning attacks on the West.

"This criminality, the terrorists, and the returning foreign fighters are clearly a daily part of the refugee flow in Europe," Breedlove said.

The Islamic State group is "spreading like a cancer" within the flow of migrants, "taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations," he said.

In addition to the dangers posed by terrorists, Breedlove warned that opposition to the large influx of migrants among nationalists in Europe could lead to violence.

NATO last month got involved in the refugee crisis for the first time through a new mission to patrol the Aegean Sea and stop people smugglers who have been ferrying migrants from Turkey to Greece.

'Existential Threat'

The four-star general reaffirmed the assessment of other Pentagon top brass that Russia poses a growing threat to the United States itself.

"Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies and partners," Breedlove said.

"Russia is eager to exert unquestioned influence over its neighboring states in its buffer zone... so has used military force to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia, and others, like Moldova."

He said the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the last week had gotten reports of 450 attacks along the front lines in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists are fighting with government forces.

"The report from the ambassador is there are several disturbing trends in those attacks, and that is that some of them are now happening in places that were heretofore quiet," Breedlove said.

He said Russia has put "well above" 1,000 pieces of military hardware into Ukraine in the past year, including armored personnel carriers and artillery.

Breedlove said Russia has been increasingly aggressive in the Arctic as well, militarizing the region. It has been testing sophisticated submarines in the Atlantic between Britain, Iceland, and Greenland, he said.

Breedlove was in Washington partly to lobby for support for a proposed sharp increase in money available to U.S. forces in Europe to counter the Russian threat.

U.S. President Barack Obama proposed quadrupling the coming year's budget to $3.4 billion to carry out NATO's European Reassurance Initiative.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP


MOSCOW -- A Russian man could be jailed over an Internet exchange in which he said that God doesn't exist.



Viktor Krasnov, 38, was in court in the southern city of Stavropol on March 2. He could be sentenced to a year in prison if convicted under 2013 legislation that made it a crime to insult the religious convictions or feelings of citizens.



A lawyer representing Krasnov, Andrei Sabinin, said that Krasnov's accusers told the court during the closed-door hearing that they want him punished "for his remarks about God."

A prominent activist group said it is Krasnov whose freedom of conscience is being violated.



The controversial legislation was adopted following the high-profile jailing of members of the band Pussy Riot over a protest in which they burst into Russias main cathedral and performed a punk prayer urging the Virgin Mary to rid the country of President Vladimir Putin.



Putin has frequently touted what he calls traditional values and has held out the dominant Russian Orthodox Church as a moral authority for the country during his third presidential term.



Passage of the legislation deepened the concerns of liberals, Kremlin opponents, rights activists, and representatives of other religions who fear relations between church and state are too tight. Russias constitution says it is a secular state.



The charges brought against Krasnov last year relate to comments he made on an online discussion thread on the social network VKontakte in October 2014. The thread featured a discussion about the hierarchy and structure of the family unit.



After two young men, Dmitry Burnyashev and Aleksandr Kravstov, promoted what they portrayed as a traditional Christian vision of the family, Krasnov wrote: There is no God, but misspelled the word "God."

Krasnov also denounced the Bible with a crude epithet, called it a collection of Jewish fairy tales, and appeared to conflate Orthodox Christian holidays with Jewish ones while using wording that is widely seen as denigrating Jews.



Following the discussion, Kravtsov and Buryashev both appealed to the police. The Stavropol branch of Russias Investigative Committee found his comments to be of an offensive character against a religion and aimed at insulting the religious feelings of believers, and opened a criminal case.

Krasnov told RFE/RLs Russian Service that he had been threatened by Orthodox Christian fundamentalists who have warned that they will get me, my family, and do all sorts of bad things.



He said he has appealed to the police over death threats that he began receiving after the criminal case was launched.



The Sova Center, a Moscow-based group that monitors the use and abuse of extremism legislation, wrote in a 2015 report that it regard[s] the prosecution against Krasnov as a violation of his right to freedom of conscience.



Sova head Aleksandr Verkhovsky told RFE/RL that the remarks Krasnov made online do not constitute legal grounds for prosecution under the religious feelings law.



"This is the first time that accusations [involving this article] have reached court which we believe are not lawful, he said. Before this case, the instances of this article being used involved hooliganism in churches and so on."



The discussion thread is still online, although comments from Burnyashev and Kravtsov have been deleted.



Krasnov has said the comments that were deleted were offensive.



Krasnov's lawyer told the Russian legal news agency Rapsi that the Stavropol court on March 2 approved the defense's appeal to ask VKontakte to provide the full text of the conversation that took place between Krasnov, Kravtsov, and Buryashev on the social network.



According to Rapsi, which cited Krasnov's lawyer, the two plaintiffs had to be brought to court by bailiffs after failing to turn up for previously scheduled court sessions.



Krasnov said he is innocent and called the case against him nonsense, but was gloomy about his chances in court.

Knowing our Russian reality, I cant say how this will end, he told RFE/RL's Russian Service. If we take into account that courts are required to come out with guilty verdicts 99 percent of the time, theres nothing I can say.



The next hearing is scheduled for March 15.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Russian Service, rapsinews.ru, AFP, and life.ru
Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has called for early parliamentary elections on April 24, halfway through his term, and said he will seek support for joining the European Union.

"It will be a referendum on whether Serbia wants to be a modern European country in 2020, whether it wants the future or the past," Vucic said in an announcement on Serbian state TV channel RTS on March 1.

With the opposition fragmented, Vucic's Progressive Party is the overwhelming favorite and is striving for a two-thirds majority, which it narrowly missed in the last elections in 2014 when it won 158 of 250 parliamentary seats.

The elections will come two years early, as they had been scheduled for the spring of 2018.

Vucic said he needs a full four-year term for reforms that will put Serbia firmly on the path to EU membership.

"I will tell you what I want to achieve in the next four years. I want our education and health system to reach a modern European level. I want every person in Serbia to have a decent job so we can eradicate poverty and offer families a higher living standard. We have to continue our fight against corruption and establish our country with one rule of law for all.

"These are all very big challenges. They are not easy but if we all stay united together we can deliver on that," he said.

Vucic hopes to build on improving economic conditions. Serbia exited a recession last year but grew at an anemic 0.8 percent annual rate -- a rate that is expected to pick up significantly this year. Its official unemployment rate stands at 16.7 percent, down from 20.9 percent in 2014.

And he also can boast about improving business conditions. The World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business" index showed that Serbia made a significant jump in the last two years from 91st to 59th place.

"The hard work is starting to pay off and there is room for optimism," Mr. Vucic said. "2016 will be better for citizens, and 2017 even better, with dynamic growth as a result of the reforms and of even more in foreign investment."

Vucic was a far-right, anti-Western nationalist during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, but he moved toward the center after that. In recent years he became a fervent advocate of joining the European Union, and he now aims for EU entry by 2020.

With reporting by dpa and CBS8.com


State television in Turkmenistan has reported that President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has appointed a new national security chief.

The report on March 2 said National Security Minister Guichgeldy Khodjaberdiev resigned for "health reasons," and was replaced by Dovrangeldy Bairamov, who previously headed Turkmenistan's state customs service.

Berdymukhammedov has been reshuffling his government in recent months as Turkmenistan struggles with an economic crisis linked to low prices on the global oil market.

In February, the former chief of the presidential administration, Palvan Taganov, was fired.

Berdymukhammedov listed corruption and discipline issues as the reasons for his dismissal.

Khodjaberdiev had taken over the national security ministers post in October.

He previously had been the head of Berdymukhammedov's personal security team.

Based on reporting by AFP, TTV, and Turkmen State News Agency
BRUSSELS -- European Union ambassadors have decided to extend an asset freeze against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and 15 of his close associates for at least one additional year.

The restrictive measures were first put in place in March 2014 after Yanukovych fled Ukraine during the Euromaidan protests against his government.

Other prominent figures on the EU blacklist for the alleged misappropriation of Ukrainian state funds include two former prime ministers, Mykola Azarov and Serhiy Arbuzov, and the former head of Yanukovych's presidential administration, Andriy Kliuiev.

EU officials say Ukraine's former Health Minister Raisa Bohatyriova was removed from the blacklist because she has returned stolen assets to the Ukrainian authorities.

EU ministers meeting in Brussels on March 4 are expected to approve the extension of the sanctions at a meeting in Brussels.

If approved, the extension would become official when it is published in the EU's official journal on March 5.

Based on reporting by Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels
Kyiv is considering stripping a major thoroughfare of the name Moskovsky Prospekt, or Moscow Avenue, and renaming it after late Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera -- a move that would be certain to anger Russia.

The possible change is part of a push to rid Ukraine of Soviet-era symbols under decommunization laws that were passed last year after ties with Russia were torn apart by Moscows seizure of Crimea and support for separatists in the east.



The Kyiv City Hall commission that deals with name changes has approved the proposal, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, the director of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance (UINR), said on his Facebook page on March 2. He said the UINR had made the proposal.

Vyatrovych said a day earlier that the commission has asked Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko to put the proposal to public debate in the capital. Such a debate, if Klitschko decides to initiate it, could take up to two months.

Under legislation adopted in May 2015, the communist government that ruled between 1917 and 1991 is condemned as a criminal regime.



Its symbols and propaganda are banned -- a measure that requires the removal of all communist monuments not related to World War II and the renaming of public places and landmarks bearing Soviet names.



The legislation applies the same treatment to the Nazi German regime, which occupied and controlled much of Ukraine during World War II.



Bandera, a nationalist resistance leader who fought against both Soviet and Nazi forces, is a deeply divisive figure seven decades after the war.



He is hailed as a freedom fighter by many Ukrainians, particularly in the west, but is considered a Nazi collaborator by Russia and by some in eastern Ukraine.



In 2010, outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine, but the move was condemned by the European Parliament as well as Russian, Jewish, and Polish organizations, and was declared illegal by President Viktor Yanukovych, whose ties with Moscow were far warmer than Yushchenkos. The award was officially annulled in January 2011.



Since Yanukovych was pushed from power by the Euromaidan protests in February 2014 and fled to Russia, Moscow has repeatedly referred to the pro-Western leaders who replaced him as Banderovtsy," which in Russia is used as a derogatory term to describe Ukrainian nationalists.



Relations between Kyiv and Moscow have been badly damaged by Russias military-backed takeover of Crimea in March 2014 and its ongoing support for separatists in a war that has killed more than 9,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.



Anger over Russias aggression has given much greater impetus to Ukraines efforts to break with its Soviet past. Under the decommunization laws, dozens of statues of Lenin have been toppled and streets renamed.

Written by Eugen Tomiuc based on reporting by RFE/RLs Ukrainian Service
The Kremlin has confirmed that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will attend a meeting in Paris on March 3 to discuss the implementation a peace plan for Ukraine under the Minsk accords of February 2015.

The meeting was also expected to be attended by the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Ukraine.

The Minsk peace accord of February 2015 was intended to put an end to fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatists.

Kyiv claims Russia is violating the Minsk agreement by sending troops and weapons to back up pro-Russia separatists in the east.

But Ukraine has so far failed in its pledge to enact reforms that would increase autonomy for Ukraine's eastern regions and allow local elections there.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on February 23 that infighting among political parties in Ukraine's governing coalition cannot be allowed to prevent Kyiv from carrying out its reform obligations under the Minsk accords.

Based on reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax


Imagine all the people, living for today. And ditching their Soviet past.

The 6,000 residents of Kalyny, in western Ukraine, hope to do just that. They have renamed Vladimir Lenin Street after the late Beatle John Lennon.

Hennadiy Moskal, head of the Zakarpattia state administration, signed a decree renaming a total of 10 streets in the oblast, citing the so-called decommunization laws that have been enacted amid an effort to further spurn an era and imagery that Kyiv fears Moscow is using to promote self-serving myths while seizing territory and orchestrating unrest in neighboring Ukraine.

Moskal announced the move on March 2, saying local authorities and residents had failed to comply in time with legal obligations to rename streets and landmarks bearing Soviet names. Local communities proposed some of the new titles, Moskal said, while he chose others himself -- Lennon Street, for instance.

Other renamed streets announced by Moskal include one named after a fallen Ukrainian serviceman (Artem Markus), another dedicated to 20th-century Ukrainian political activist Edmund Bachynskyy, and one named after founding Czechoslovak President Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.

His announcement called the decree "the first of its kind not just in Zakarpattia but in the whole of Ukraine."

Moskal may be a dreamer, but he's not the only one.

The Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance has reportedly proposed renaming Moscow Avenue in the capital, Kyiv, after controversial Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera.

The so-called decommunization of Ukraine edged forward on February 4 as parliament approved scrapping the names of 175 towns, villages, and districts across the country and replacing them with non-Soviet alternatives.

Many Ukrainians oppose the renaming, arguing that not everything that's part of the country's Soviet legacy should be destroyed or forgotten.

But the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, Volodymyr Vyatrovych, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service recently that "thanks to decommunization, for the first time in 25 years of Ukrainian independence, society has gotten a chance to discuss its past. To understand what was good and what was bad."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a package of decommunization laws in May, ordering the removal of all communist monuments not related to World War II and renaming public places and landmarks bearing Soviet names.
Russia's prosecutor has called for a 23-year prison term for Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who has been accused by Russian authorities of involvement in the deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine.

The call came as closing arguments in the trial began on March 2. A verdict is expected soon after closing arguments are completed.

Savchenko was fighting in a volunteer battalion against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine when she was captured in June 2014.

She has accused the separatists of kidnapping her and taking her into Russia where she was jailed and charged.

Kyiv says the charges against her are trumped up and that she should be treated as a prisoner of war.

Savchenko has been refusing food while on trial in Russia and has threatened to go on full hunger strike  including a refusal to drink -- unless she is returned to Ukraine within 10 days of the verdict.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, TASS, and Interfax


U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth on March 2 after spending almost a year in space.

The astronauts parachuted onto the barren, frozen Kazakhstan steppes after a 3 1/2 hour flight home piloted by Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov.

Kelly and Kornienko had circled the Earth 5,440 times and travelled 143 million miles during the 340days they spent in space.

Their ground-breaking long visit to the International Space Station, the longest for any American, was designed to test human reactions to being in space for prolonged periods in preparation for a manned mission to Mars in coming years.

Kelly was also part of an experiment comparing his development and changes in space with his identical twin brother -- Mark -- back on Earth.

Kelly captured imaginations worldwide by posting stunning views of Earth from space on his Instagram page and tweeting regularly to nearly a million followers.

Russia continues hold the world record for duration in space of 438 days.

Based on reporting by AFP and AP


The head of the U.S. National Security Agency has warned that hackers will inevitably attack U.S. infrastructure in an attempt to cause a power failure like the one in Ukraine last year.

Admiral Michael Rogers told a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that it is a "matter of when, not if" a foreign state launches a cyberattack on U.S. targets.

"An actor penetrated the Ukrainian power grid and brought large segments of it offline in a very well-crafted attack that both focused on knocking the system down but also focused on how was the provider likely to respond to that outage," Rogers said.

"Seven weeks ago, it was Ukraine. That isn't the last we are going to see of this, and that worries me."

Rogers said he is also worried about potential cyberthreats by terrorist groups such as Islamic State.

The U.S. government last week confirmed that a December 23 blackout in Ukraine that affected 225,000 customers was the result of a cyberattack.

Private researchers have linked the incident to a Russian hacking group known as "Sandworm."

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP
CHARLOTTESVILLE  Jesse L. Matthew Jr. pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree murder and abduction with the intent to defile in the killings of Virginia college students Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington.

The plea agreement includes four life sentences, to be served consecutively with no chance of parole. It allows Matthew to avoid the death penalty, but it guarantees he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the cases having to go to trial.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I know it takes one to bury a child, Gil Harrington, Morgans mother, told reporters shortly after Matthew pleaded guilty in Albemarle Circuit Court.

Harrington said the plea agreement has the full backing of the parents of both victims, partly because it guarantees Matthew will never be able to victimize another woman.

Statements of facts filed with Matthews plea agreement said autopsies determined that Graham had a broken nose and likely died of suffocation or strangulation, while Harrington suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and a skull fracture.

Matthew, 34, already is serving three life terms in a 2005 abduction, sexual assault and attempted murder in Fairfax. He was sentenced in that case last year.

In a news release, Albemarle County Commonwealths Attorney Robert Tracci said the plea deal is consistent with the wishes of the Graham and Harrington families and provides a measure of legal finality in the cases, instead of what could have been indefinite appeals.

According to the terms of the plea deal, Matthew waived his right to seek early, conditional or geriatric release or any parole. Matthew also waived his right to appeal the decision or withdraw the plea. The commonwealth can re-indict Matthew for capital murder if he fails to abide by any terms of the plea agreement.

Matthew showed no emotion during the hearing, looking directly at family members but casting his eyes downward when they discussed the brutality of the murders. He said through his attorney that he is very sorry, and he loves his family very much.

Harringtons father, Daniel Harrington, said in court: We cannot comprehend the selfish and inhumane action that took place that evening, and we anguish over the suffering Morgan experienced that night.

Grahams mother, Susan Graham, said her daughter accomplished great things, but in a way that people never wouldve imagined  she enabled law enforcement to apprehend a serial rapist who had been hiding in plain sight in Charlottesville for years.

She is a heroine, Grahams mother said.

Matthew, who was a taxi driver before going to work at the University of Virginia hospital, also had been accused of raping students in 2002 and 2003 at Liberty University and Christopher Newport University, where he had played football. But those cases were dropped when the women declined to press charges.

Graham and Harrington vanished in Charlottesville five years apart.

Harrington, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student, disappeared in 2009 after she stepped out of a University of Virginia arena during a Metallica concert and was unable to get back in.

Graham, an 18-year-old U.Va. student, vanished after having dinner and attending parties off-campus in 2014. She was captured on surveillance video walking unsteadily, and sometimes running, past a service station and a restaurant. She texted a friend that she was lost.

Additional video showed Graham crossing Charlottesvilles Downtown Mall, then leaving a restaurant with Matthew, his arm wrapped around her.

Grahams disappearance, which came at a time of rising national concern about sexual assaults and other crimes on college campuses, prompted a massive search. Her body was found five weeks later on abandoned property in Albemarle, about 12 miles from the Charlottesville campus and 6 miles from a hayfield where Harringtons remains had been found in January 2010.

After police named Matthew a person of interest in Grahams disappearance, he fled and was later apprehended on a beach in southeast Texas. He was charged with abduction with intent to defile, a felony that empowered police to swab his cheek for a DNA sample. That sample connected Matthew to the 2005 Fairfax case, according to authorities.

The DNA evidence in the Fairfax sexual assault, in turn, linked Matthew to the Harrington case, authorities have said.

Had the case gone to trial, prosecutors would have presented evidence and testimony that Harrington was intoxicated and had been seen by multiple witnesses attempting to hitchhike after leaving the concert; at one point, she was spotted standing on a bridge with her thumb out.

Authorities later recovered the shirt Harrington was wearing the night she disappeared; the shirt had human hair on it that matched DNA connected with the 2005 sexual assault case in Fairfax, according to the statement of facts about Harringtons killing.

In addition to the human hair that ultimately helped authorities connect Matthew to both the 2005 case and the death of Graham, investigators found a dog hair on Harringtons shirt, which tests revealed likely belonged to Matthews dog, Popcorn.

Witnesses would have testified that a man matching Matthews description was working as a taxi driver the night that Harrington went missing, and a dispatcher for the taxi company that Matthew worked for would have testified that Matthew was extremely difficult to reach that night.

The night before, Matthew told a customer that the taxi fare could be paid with sex acts instead of money, according to the statement of facts.

Graham was also murdered during a state of vulnerability, having been drinking heavily the night of her disappearance, witnesses would have testified.

That night, Matthew had been at bars in Charlottesville making sexual comments  and unwanted sexual advances  toward multiple women.

Shortly after 1 a.m., Matthew walked past Graham, who appeared unsteady and was heading in the opposite direction of Matthew, who then changed directions and followed her, the court document states.

Witnesses later saw Matthew ordering alcohol for himself and Graham before the two were later seen walking arm-in-arm. Graham separated from him at some point, but Matthew caught up to her.

Both sets of parents praised the work of prosecutors and law enforcement in the case and also thanked the public for their support.

Gil Harrington referring to the publics support as kindness and compassion you have lavished on our family.

We are so blessed, Gil Harrington said. We could not have survived the murder of our daughter, Morgan, without you.

Please, I ask all of you to continue to participate actively in your community. Know your neighbors. Look out for one another. Together we can help save the next girl.

In an interview Wednesday, Gil Harrington said she had mixed emotions but was particularly feeling relief. She said she and her husband have spent most of their energy in the years since her daughters death trying to get justice, but Wednesdays plea deal will now allow her and her husband to spend energy on other things, including grieving their daughter.

After the hearing, the Matthew family broke its 1 years of silence, sending Matthews uncle, the Rev. Louie Carr, to the microphone at a news conference. Carr expressed the familys sorrow for the victims families and said its hard to understand how a gentle soul could commit such crimes.

Tracci said prosecutors were able to get the plea deal as a result of the professionalism and dedication of law enforcement personnel and the thousands of volunteers who searched for the victims. He also thanked Harringtons and Grahams parents for their courage and determination.

Seeking justice for their daughters, (the Graham and Harrington parents) have shown determination and resolve in the face of unspeakable loss, Tracci said.

Grahams, Harringtons share feelings of grief, gratitude Its been nearly 18 months since John and Sue Graham last heard from their only daughter. Fo
Tuesday may have ended the nomination contests in both parties. History will decide whether the results rate as super. Virginia gave us a GOP glimmer yet overall we are dismayed and cannot pretend otherwise. Things fall apart.

Hillary Clintons victory in the Democratic sweepstakes has become inevitable. Her inauguration may be inevitable, too. Bernie Sanders never had much of a chance, but energetic crowds earned considerable attention. He received an endorsement from The Nation, and ran as the unofficial candidate of MSNBC. Millennials and youngsters rallied to him. Sanders forced Clinton to the left. She even came out against the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiated during her years as secretary of state. Her husbands third way seems a distant memory. Her ties to Wall Street hurt her among true believers. Minority voters proved her salvation, and there is much good in that. Republicans should strive to make that observation apply to them. Commemorating Confederates will not help. The Trump surge will not restore the Lincoln legacy.

Six months ago Donald Trumps nomination appeared preposterous. He lacked political experience and the conservative commitments the GOPs base prefers. He tapped anger and resentment, however. His crusade against illegal immigration struck a chord previously struck by David Brat in his astonishing 2014 upset of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Trumps cruel disdain of John McCains heroism would have disqualified other pretenders.

Much of what Trump proposes will not come to pass, either. He promises what he cant deliver. Cynicism is his currency. Mexico is not going to pay for an impregnable security fence across the southern border of the United States. Congress is not going to bar the immigration of Muslims. Vladimir Putin is not going to become a statesman, although he considers Trump a man of renown. Trump himself resembles the guy at the bar who has had it with them  whoever them happen to be. Let us now praise infamous men.

Virginia formed a firewall for Clinton. The Republican results gave early hope. Marco Rubio did well in the Old Dominion but he needs to score better elsewhere. A string of seconds is not good enough. He may have emerged as the mainstream alternative to Trump, but his shot still is long. Time is running out. The coarseness of his recent attacks on Trump does not help. He did not impress at James River High School. John Kasich may be the most elevated of the GOP candidates. Dignity has lost its worth. The gutter attracts a crowd. Cheering spectators share the blame.
MIAMI (AP)  Donald Trump claimed seven Republican victories on Super Tuesday as the New York businessman extended his dominance in the 2016 primary.

At the same time, the GOP leaders' search for any viable alternative to Trump suffered a fresh setback, with both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio vowing to fight on despite underwhelming performances on the biggest day of voting so far. Cruz avoided disaster by winning his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, while Rubio scored a lone victory in Minnesota.

Shrugging off a racially charged feud from earlier in the week, a confident Trump looked ahead to the general election in a victory speech at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: "We're going to be more inclusive," he declared. "We're going to be more unified."

Voting continued in Alaska.

Trump scored victories in Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Vermont, tightening his grasp on his party's nomination on a Super Tuesday marked by panic from Republican leaders.

Fearing Trump may build an insurmountable delegate lead, top Republican officials lashed out at the billionaire businessman's command of the issues and "seeming ambivalence" over white supremacists as voting began.

Trump's aggressive plans for Muslims and immigrants have resonated with Tuesday's Republican electorate, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks. Large majorities of Republican primary voters in six states, for example, said they support Trump's proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States.

The results followed a wild prelude to Super Tuesday that featured extraordinary criticism from several Republican governors and senators who refused to say whether they would support their party's front-runner should Trump win the nomination.

Trump's strong performance across much of the South was a blow to Cruz, who had long expected the South to be his firewall.

Yet Cruz seized on Rubio's struggles, calling on the GOP to unify behind his candidacy, "the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump."

With a win in Minnesota, Rubio hoped to stay competitive in the delegate count while eyeing a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

A defiant Rubio told a hometown crowd in Miami that he had only begun to attack Trump: "You see, just five days ago we began to unmask the true nature of the front-runner so far in this race," he said, calling the GOP front-runner "a con artist."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson remain in the race, but neither is expected to be a major factor on Super Tuesday.

Trump won at least 192 delegates in Tuesday's contests. Cruz collected at least 132 and Rubio picked up at least 66. John Kasich has won at least 19 delegates and Ben Carson has won at least three.

Overall, Trump leads with 274 delegates. Cruz has 148, Rubio has 82, Kasich has 25 and Carson has eight.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

Envisioning a Trump White House, the front-runner said he would get along "great with Congress," despite Tuesday criticism from House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who condemned his Sunday refusal to disavow the backing of a former Ku Klux Klan leader. Trump has since disavowed the nod.
MIAMI (AP)  Hillary Clinton widened her lead over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders as minority voters helped her secure key victories in seven states in the Super Tuesday contests. Sanders won four states and pledged to stay in the race, but failed to broaden his appeal beyond whites.

Clinton carried Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Massachusetts while Sanders won his home state of Vermont as well as Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.

Clinton had aimed for a sweep of Southern states in the delegate-heavy series of primaries and caucuses Tuesday before losing Oklahoma.

"We will need all of you to keep volunteering, doing everything you can, talking to your friends and neighbors, because this country belongs to all of us," Clinton told supporters in Miami as the results arrived.

Clinton and her allies have already shifted some attention to Donald Trump, casting the Republican front-runner as divisive and unprepared to lead the country. "It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," she said.

Hillary Clinton has won a majority of Super Tuesday delegates.

Her wins in seven states earned her at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake for the evening. Sanders is on track to win at least 286.

The Democratic contests award delegates in proportion to the vote, meaning that even the loser wins some. Votes are still being tallied to determine the final margins of victory in several states.

Including superdelegates, Clinton now has at least 1,005 delegates in the overall AP delegate count. Sanders has at least 373. It takes 2,382 delegates to win.

Black voters gave Clinton a huge advantage throughout the South.

Of the seven Southern states that voted Tuesday, Clinton got more than 8 in 10 black votes everywhere but Oklahoma, where three-quarters of blacks backed her. Blacks made up made up more than a quarter of the votes overall. But that ranged from nearly half in Alabama and Georgia to about 15 percent in Oklahoma and Texas.

Greta Lewis voted with her mother at the Central Christian Church in Memphis. Both women are black and chose Clinton.

"She has been the one who has stepped out to at least try to identify with most of the minorities, whether they're women, black, Asian, Hispanic," said Lewis, a 31-year-old receptionist at her mother's dental office.

Clinton also expanded her base. She made inroads on Super Tuesday with voters between 30 and 44 years old, a group that was about evenly split between the two candidates. Sanders had led among all voters under age 45 in the first three contests of the year, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Exit polling showed voters pushing to continue President Barack Obama's policies rather than the kind of leftward shift championed by Sanders.

Sanders decamped to his home in Burlington, Vermont. He has vowed to stay in the race until the party's convention  and he showed no signs of retreating as he addressed a raucous rally of supporters.

"Thirty-five states remain and let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace, to every one of those states." Sanders said.
What Im feeling for the GOP is a kind of disinterested sympathy, punctuated with schadenfreude, the disinterest arising from never having been a Republican, the sympathy from the GOP identification of a plurality of my close friends  uniformly horrified by what is happening  and the schadenfreude from the abrupt collapse of three-plus decades of pharisaical social conservatism. Turns out that eventually enough of the electorate whose resentment youve been stoking figures out that its a waste of time and fastens on to something else, something that matches their actual resentments a lot more closely.

What happens next, and what to do? I suggest that the comforting American monomyth about great national trials producing great leaders may be disproved by near-future events. Even the most strenuous attempt at imposing an ex post facto narrative will find no analog to (the wartime) FDR or Lincoln or Washington in what Strauss and Howe predicted as the Crisis of 2020, that being the turmoil we began experiencing in 2008, which seems to have hit an inflection point around 2011 and is likely to tip into complete global chaos sometime in the next 2-5 years.

As for this year, its easy to predict that neither of the two candidates who did best yesterday will allow a loss in November, even by an apparently wide margin, to go uncontested. Their methods of contesting it and their accusations of conspiracy will be differently styled, of course, but semantically identical. The boundaries between geographically adjacent jurisdictions controlled by opposing sets of supporters may get pretty lively.

Longer-term, expect and plan for failure: institutional collapse, attempts at secession, show trials/purges, interfamilial betrayals, you name it. Nihilism ascendant, exactly as described by Gurri. All in combination with national-security negative risk events, as we say in project management, far deadlier than 9/11.

As always, however, I do not bid you despair  but to ponder the truth in these words. There are those who will respond by going into hiding. I vociferously disagree and counsel the exact opposite: greater engagement; superlative commitment to your country and its civilization, even if your country is divided against itself and its civilization is gravely attenuated by self-doubt; deliberate acquisition and cultivation of skills tailored toward the common defense, post-traumatic recovery  and not to overlook the obvious, peacemaking.

FDR et al are looking at you out of a mirror.
Awful Peoria Yard Cutouts Depict Man Shooting Another Man In A Turban

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Mar 1, 2016 10:24PM

An East Peoria man has stirred up controversy in his town by decorating his lawn with Islamophobic yard cutouts. The disturbing cutouts depict the silhouette of a man with a shotgun aimed at another man wearing a turban, according to a local WEEK report.

Dennis Murdy, who lives on Bloomington Road, told WEEK that he is exercising his freedom of speech, that "not one neighbor has complained," and that he was motivated to put up the brutal lawn decorations by his prejudice against Muslims.



"The Muslims and Islam is one of the most violent cults there is. It is not a religion. It's a cult. Their Qur'an says nothing but violence. You can see what Isis is doing. They are spreading across the country and this is biblical," Dennis Murdy commented. Murdy doesn't think all Muslims are violent. But he blames the peaceful ones for not stopping it. He also thinks Muslims should not be welcomed in the country. "That was intended to show my feelings on what's happening to our country and other parts of the country," Murdy continued.

Naturally, neighbors and local Islamic organizations are very concerned about the cutouts:

"Free speech should not be mixed with hate speech. It's extremely important and we have to draw that line. If Islamophobia is going to be acceptable, by the same token, anti-semitism and racism would be acceptable. That is wrong," said Imam Kamil Mufti with the Islamic Foundation of Peoria.
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

Search for: Search
RICHMOND  If you closed your eyes, it could have been 1956.

Youd hear lawmakers rhetorically grappling during the Virginia Senate floor session, discussing the need to keep certain books out of school, while others decry censorship.

Instead it was 2016  and the historic chamber became the battleground for a culture war over what role parents and public schools should play in determining which books their children are taught.

The Republican majority backed House Bill 516, which would require school divisions to notify parents of the use of instructional material that contains sexually explicit content. The measure would also let parents review the material, and require schools to provide non-explicit instructional material to students if parents wish to opt out.

The bill, sponsored by Del. Steven Landes, R-Augusta, sailed out of the House on a unanimous vote. It was promoted as legislation that would give parents notification and choice when it comes to teaching materials that contain explicit content.

The legislation grew out of an unsuccessful 2013 objection by a Fairfax County mother to the Toni Morrison novel, Beloved, because the womans son objected to the sexually explicit content in the post-Civil War novel that included descriptions of rape, sex and bestiality.

But Democrats began digging into the language, and concluded that the measure could be used as a first step toward banning of certain books, many of them classics taught in schools.

They said their concern is that a teacher would not be able to do two different lesson plans, which would make it much less likely that they would choose literature that drew objections from parents.

This makes it much more less likely that theyd be willing to even attempt to use these great works of literature  or even just scientifically or historically accurate science or history lessons, said Del. Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington.

At the end of the day, this is back door censorship.

On Tuesday the issue provoked pointed exchanges between parties  and even among members of the same party  over what is appropriate in literature, public education, the Bible and even the Senate floor speeches.

Hopefully we see this bill as a notification review and alternative view and not anything beyond that, said Sen. Stephen Newman, R-Lynchburg, speaking on behalf of the measure.

But Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, said it was not necessary because local school boards already address the issue and a number already notify parents if their children will be taught controversial content.

Schools can already do this, he said, calling it the wrong path to start down.

Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, said the legislation  which would make Virginia the first state to pass a law requiring schools to notify parents, according to the American Library Association  would hurt Virginias reputation as a progressive state open to new investment. She pointed out that Morrisions works have won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize.

Lets just make ourselves look ridiculous, she said sarcastically.

But to Sen. Bill Carrico, R-Grayson, youre dealing with young, influential minds, that can be adversely impacted by inappropriate texts.

Evil is a seed that grows, he said, switching metaphors to describe it as a kitten. You feed that evil and it grows and grows ... its going to grow into a lion and then it eats you, he said.

Is this the road we are going down? asked Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, who is an educator. Commenting on the expansiveness of the legislation and what she called its potential to lead to censorship in other disciplines, Locke said the bill, not the educational materials, is the kitten that is being morphed into the lion.

Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax City, said great works of art like Michelangelos David, or the Venus de Milo, could be called into question. Then he struck a nerve among conservatives when he said that the Bible includes references that could be considered sexually explicit content.

That brought perhaps the chambers most conservative lawmaker to his feet. Sen. Richard Black, R-Loudoun, delivered a condemnation of public education and American culture, which he said has gotten beyond good and decent.

We need to respect our parents and clean up our schools, he continued, saying that they are moving in a very dark direction in many respects.

In an effort to make a point in support of the bill, Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham, editing himself, rose and began reading part of an explicit passage from Morrisons book, before fellow Republican senators rose to cut him off.

The snippet of text Garrett read infuriated Sen. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, who decried it as one of the worst soliloquies ever heard on [this] floor.

The amended bill passed 22-17, with the support of all 21 Republicans and the vote of Democrat Lynwood Lewis, D-Accomack. It now heads back to the House.
Chicago Has Its First Confirmed Case Of The Zika Virus

By Rachel Cromidas in News on Mar 1, 2016 8:48PM



(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A Lakeview hospital has confirmed the first case of the Zika virus in Chicago, hospital officials say.

The unusual virus, which has been linked to birth defects in children born to mothers who have been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne disease, has prompted the Center for Disease Control to issue a public health alert, particularly for international travelers. There are been 5 confirmed cases in Illinois so far, according to ABC7. Brazil in particular has been facing a tragic health epidemic in recent months as more and more cases are diagnosed.

Dr. Roberta Luskin-Hawk, of Presence St. Joseph Hospital told ABC7 that a woman in her 30s who recently traveled to Colombia appears to have the virus.

The woman was ill after returning to the U.S. in late January and sought treatment, but her test results only found she is positive for the Zika virus this week. She made a full recovery, the doctor said, and thankfully, "We do not anticipate any long-lasting complications from this infection."

"She's not currently pregnant and does not appear to need any additional medical follow-up," Luskin-Hawk said.
Harry Carter Fisher Jr., 91, passed away February 29, 2016, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center Hospital following a long period of failing health. He was predeceased by his parents, Harry and Louise Fisher of Warrenton, Va.He is survived by his wife of nearly 66 years, Barbara Kays Fisher. Also surviving are his daughter, Nancy Chewning and her husband, Tim, of Roanoke; two grandsons, Christopher Chewning of Fairfax and Tyler Chewning of Roanoke; a sister, Harriet Gordon of Roanoke; a niece, Susan Thews and her husband, Marvin, of Roanoke; a nephew, Paul Gordon of Nokesville, Va.; a brother-in-law, William Kays of Ashburn, Va.; a niece, Amy Holt of Sterling, Va.; and a nephew, Todd Kays of Philadelphia, Pa.; and many great-nieces and great-nephews.Carter left high school to join the Navy in 1943. He served on the Battleship Arkansas (BB33), the oldest battleship in active duty in World War II, having been built in World War I. On June 6, 1944, they were in the Battle of Normandy off Omaha Beach and later in the Battle of Southern France. They arrived in the Pacific in time for the Battle of Iwo Jima where they saw the flag raised on Mt. Surabachi. After the war he went to Chicago to electrical school. He worked for VEPCO and later for the Civil Service Administration as a civilian electrician at Dulles Airport, Vint Hill Farms Army base and Quantico Marine Base from where he retired. He was a volunteer fireman from his teenage years and an antique car and fire truck enthusiast until his passing. He helped organize the first volunteer rescue squad in Warrenton. After moving to Roanoke, he became a volunteer tour guide at the D-Day Memorial and remained an avid supporter of it until his death. He enjoyed spending time with the Sampson Air Force Group and the Roanoke 8th Air Force Fellowship. He was a dedicated member of Bonsack Baptist Church.At his request he will be buried at sea by a Navy ship out of Portsmouth, Va. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions be made to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, P.O. Box 77, Bedford, VA 24523. Visitation will be 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, at Simpson Funeral Home. A memorial service will be held 2 p.m. Thursday, March 3, 2016 at Bonsack Baptist Church. Arrangements by Simpson Funeral Home, 540-366-0707.
Two Airplanes Just Slid Off The Runways At O'Hare

By Mae Rice in News on Mar 1, 2016 9:13PM



Photo via sumsinnow on Flickr

After two forecasted blizzards that didnt hit Chicago, it actually started snowing! Perhaps relatedly, two airplanes slid off two separate runways at OHare International Airport on Tuesday afternoon, just 21 minutes apart, according to ABC7.

Chicago fire officials told ABC7 that no one was injured.

The first plane, operated by American Airlineswhich was departing for Newarkneeded to be towed to the terminal after sliding on its taxiway.

The second plane, operated by private airline NetJets, slid off the end of its runway upon landing. (The runway was still closed as of 1 p.m., according to WGN.)

The first plane had 64 passengers; the second one had two.
Obamas actions are on hold under court order until the Supreme Court decides the case before the end of the term, most likely in June  in the heat of a presidential campaign season. Oral arguments have not yet been scheduled but are expected in April.

The new brief argues in large part that the presidents actions are an extension of a well-established principle that the federal government cant possibly deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.

Instead, the government is using discretion to defer deportation for undocumented immigrant parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents, under a program known as DAPA. The actions would also expand a similar program, called DACA, for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
Negative Trump Ads Begin Running In Illinois, Courtesy Of The Ricketts

By aaroncynic in News on Mar 2, 2016 5:46PM



Protesters march at Trump Tower with a doll that looks like Donald Trump. By Aaron Cynic/Chicagoist Ricketts-funded Our Principles PAC began running its first negative Trump ad in Illinois this week, as the real estate mogul-turned-carnival-barking politician swept victory in seven states on Super Tuesday.

Donald Trump made millions while hard-working Americans got scammed, says the ad, which focuses on Trump University. The so-called real estate school has faced several lawsuits by people who have accused it of bait and switch schemes and fraud that cost students thousands of dollars. Donald Trump belongs at 3:00 a.m. infomercials, not here, the voiceover says as the ad closes on a photo of the White House.

Trump took a shot in late February at Marlene Ricketts for the super PAC, tweeting that They better be careful, they have a lot to hide! According to the Tribune, Tom Ricketts told reporters "It's a little surreal when Donald Trump threatens your mom." Marlene has put $3 million so far into the PAC.

The Republican frontrunner, who last week had a tough time deciding whether or not to disavow an endorsement by former KKK grand dragon and horrible racist David Duke, is causing a stir between some Illinois Republicans. The Herald and Review reports a handful of downstate Republicans who say they currently support Marco Rubio said theyd support a Trump nomination with all the enthusiasm of New Jersey Governor Chris Christies face during Trumps super Tuesday victory speech.

Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger of Channahon criticized Trumps fitness as President, saying though hed like to support him, I just don't see how I get there right now.
Zimbabwes High Court has issued an order forcing Harare to allow Mbada Diamonds access to its diamonds and equipment in Marange pending determination of the dispute between Grandwell Holdings and the government.

Mines minister Walter Chidhakwa said government would appeal the court ruling.

Mbada Diamonds was a 50-50 joint venture between Grandwell Holdings and the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) through Marange Resources.

Glandwell chairperson David Kassel had argued that Harare's decision to evict the diamond miners was "unlawful".

"Government respondents have embarked upon an unlawful scheme which is designed to facilitate the nationalisation and/or expropriation of Mbada's assets," he was quoted as saying by New Zimbabwe.

Chidhakwa last week ordered Marange diamond firms to seize operations giving them 90 days to withdraw their equipment.

He accused the companies of resisting government plans to consolidate operations into one state-dominated mining company.

The companies were said to have also failed to renew their licences some which expired in 2011.

However, Glandwell denied allegations it failed to renew its mining permit, arguing that under the joint partnership deal with the government-owned Marange Resources, the latter undertook to facilitate the renewal of the grants on behalf of the joint venture company.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have returned to Earth after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station.

They, together with Russian crew member Sergey Volkov aboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft, touched down safely southeast of the remote Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan at 10:26 a.m. local time Wednesday (11:26 p.m. EST Tuesday).

"Scott Kelly's one-year mission aboard the International Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America's Journey to Mars," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.

Scott Kelly, who was also Expedition 46 Commander, has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space. With the end of this mission, Kelly now has spent 520 cumulative days in space over four flights, the most among U.S. astronauts. Kornienko has accumulated 516 days across two flights, and Volkov has 548 days on three flights.

During the record-setting One-Year mission, the station crew conducted almost 400 investigations. Kelly and Kornienko specifically participated in a number of studies to inform NASA's Journey to Mars, including research into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly's identical twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated in parallel twin studies on Earth to help scientists compare the effects of space on the body and mind down to the cellular level.

One particular research project examined fluid shifts that occur when bodily fluids move into the upper body during weightlessness.

The crew took advantage of the unique vantage point of the space station, with an orbital path that covers more than 90 percent of Earth's population, to monitor and capture images of earth.

Kelly ventured outside the confines of the space station for three spacewalks during his mission.

Including crewmate Gennady Padalka, with whom Kelly and Kornienko launched on March 27, 2015, 10 astronauts representing six nations lived aboard the space station during the yearlong mission.

Meanwhile, Expedition 47 continues operating the station, with NASA astronaut Tim Kopra in command. Kopra, Tim Peake of European Space Agency and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos will operate the station until the arrival of three new crew members in about two weeks. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on March 18.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, and human innovation aimed to make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000, and has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
While many in the Republican establishment are wringing their hands over the possibility of Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has argued GOP lawmakers spent years laying the groundwork for the rise of the real estate tycoon.

In remarks from the Senate floor on Wednesday, Reid described Trump as the ultimate fulfillment of the Republican Party's legacy of obstruction and resentment.

"Donald Trump is the standard bearer for the Republican Party," Reid said. "Republicans created him by spending seven years appealing to some of the darkest forces in America."

He added, "Now, it is up to Republicans to try and undo what they have done by denouncing Donald Trump. It's time for Republicans to stop the Frankenstein they created."

Reid accused the Republican establishment of feigning outrage over Trump's inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants when the GOP has spent years telling Latinos and immigrants they are not welcome in America.

The Nevada senator suggested the establishment should not be surprised Republican voters are flocking to Trump when GOP Congressional leaders continue to support him.

"Even as the establishment condemns the things Donald Trump says and does, Republican leadership is still supporting him," Reid said.

"The Speaker of the House yesterday affirmed that he will vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee for President," he added. "The Senate Republican Leader has not said he won't support Trump if he is the nominee."

Reid's remarks came after Trump's strong showing in the Super Tuesday contests, which political observers say puts the billionaire on the verge of becoming the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Saudi airstrikes kill four in Taiz





TAIZ, Feb. 25 (Saba) - The Saudi war jets launched on Thursday two air raids on Demnat Khader district in Taiz province, killing four people.



Four other people were wounded in the raids in addition to damaging several houses and private and public facilities, a local official said.



Concurrently, drones launched sorties on al-Kunaiya area in the province, leaving serious damage to many private and public properties in the area, the official said.



Meanwhile, the Saudi warplanes waged four airstrikes on Haifan district in Taiz as well as three more airstrikes on al-Shuraijah area between Taiz and Lahj provinces, he added.



HA/AF

Saba

Facebook Facebook

Twitter Twitter

Whatsapp Whatsapp

Telegram Telegram

Email Email

Print Print

[25/February/2016]
Actor Wu Xiubo and actress Tang Wei - the main cast of the new Chinese romantic comedy "Finding Mr. Right 2" meet with the media in Beijing to promote the new film on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The principals of the new Chinese romantic comedy "Finding Mr. Right 2" have met with the media in Beijing to promote the new film.

Director Xue Xiaolu, along with actor Wu Xiubo and actress Tang Wei, has taken part in the event.

Director Xue Xiaolu says despite the name, "Finding Mr. Right 2" is not a follow-up to the original film released in 2013.

Lead actor Wu Xiubo says audiences are going to like the story in the new film.

"If we say that "Finding Mr. Right" revolves around a love story, then this movie tells the origin of love and why humans need love."

This is the first time actress Tang Wei has been in the public since announcing she was pregnant on Friday.

The previous romance "Finding Mr. Right" raked in over 500 million yuan when it hit theaters in 2013.

"Finding Mr. Right 2" opens in China on April 29th.
"China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors" exhibition opened in Chicago on Tuesday, featuring artifacts and antiques from China's Qin Dynasty more than 2000 years ago.

The exhibition, scheduled for 10 months at the Field MuseumAbout, aims to introduce visitors to Qin Dynasty, when China's first Emperor Qin Shihuang established a unified state and built an army to last an eternity.

The largest terracotta warrior exhibition held in North America in recent years showcases more than 170 objects including bronze artifacts, weaponry, and 10 famed terracotta figures.

About 30 students from Lincoln Hall Middle School in Lincolnwood were lucky enough to become the first batch of visitors to this wonder-of-the-world exhibition.

Though Qin Shihuang's reign was relatively short, his innovations have left treasures in China. He built the "Great Wall" to protect his empire, constructed new roads and canals, and introduced a single currency, a standard form of writing and a standardized system of weights and measures.

Visitors can have a glimpse of these innovations from the pottery, bronze weapons and utensils, gold artifacts, jade handicrafts, coins, inscribed weights, stone armor, and certainly the terracotta warriors displayed at the exhibition.

The highlight of the exhibition is the 10 terracotta warriors. Unknown to most people, the terracotta army was not exclusively warriors, but also contained civil officials and acrobats, said Zhou Kuiying, deputy director general of Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, who added that the First Emperor created a whole kingdom to rule in the afterlife.

The figures of a civil official and an acrobat are also at the exhibition.

A terracotta general is especially eye-catching as he is the tallest figure in the terracotta army, close to a foot (0.3 meters) taller than the average man at the time. A kneeling archer displayed here is also rare.

There are altogether seven terracotta generals unearthed at the Emperor's final resting place, and all of them have a unique appearance.

Gary Feinman, MacAuthur curator of anthropology/integrative research center, marveled at the exquisiteness of a small golden tiger and a necklace made of jade and agate from the Spring and Autumn Period.

"It is extremely rich culture and extremely great history," he told Xinhua.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, President and CEO of Field Museum Richard Lariviere said: "It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience that we are proud to share with you."

China Consul General Zhao Weiping said the terracotta warriors not only represent the splendid Chinese ancient civilization, but also reflect the great wisdom and artistic talent of mankind 2000 years ago.

This is not the first time for the Field Museum to host a terracotta warriors exhibition. The museum exhibited several terracotta warriors from China in 1980.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

I dont know if perfect is attainable, especially considering weve got the world of options when it comes to modern vehicles. Were spoiled and, as such, we have very specific needs and wants. Driving-wise, the 2022 Acura MDX is one of my favourite ...
By Redefine International

Mike Watters, Redefine International group CEO



Redefine International plc (RI plc) and Wichford P.L.C. (Wichford) have reached agreement on the terms of the proposed merger of the two companies.

Wichford has made an offer to RI plc shareholders to acquire all of the RI plc shares in return for shares in Wichford on the basis of an exchange ratio of 7.2 Wichford shares for every one RI plc share held.

Redefine Properties International Limited (RI Ltd) currently owns approximately 82% of the shares in issue, and if the offer is accepted and the proposed merger is implemented, the company will dispose of its entire shareholding in RI plc in return for a shareholding of approximately 66% in Wichford.

Redefine International group CEO Mike Watters says Wichford will hold 100% of the issued shares of RI plc, creating an enlarged group, which will change its name to Redefine International P.L.C. and will trade on the Main Market for listed securities of the London Stock Exchange.

Wichfords offer, and therefore the proposed merger, is subject to approval of 90% of the RI plc shareholders, of which RI Ltd holds 82%.

Watters says the merger will create an enlarged, income-focused property company with a diversified investment property portfolio of 184 properties valued at approximately GBP1.1 billion with an effective GLA of 7.9 million square feet.

We believe the proposed merger represents a clear and strong strategic fit, and will create a company with a strengthened financial position.

The enlarged Wichford group will have an improved capital structure benefiting from RI plcs attractive long term debt facilities as well as the commitment from RI Ltd and its holding company, Redefine Properties Limited (Redefine), to support the proposed capital raising, he says.

Following the successful implementation of the merger, the company is expected to seek to raise equity capital to improve the gearing of the group and to assist with refinancing of Wichfords existing debt maturities in October 2012.
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
Scientists warned that low level coral bleaching are occurring on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. [Photo/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies]

Scientists warned that low level coral bleaching are occurring on Australia's Great Barrier Reef due to high sea surface temperatures, and it could be exacerbated if the area continues to experience still and calm conditions for the next few weeks.

"Current reports of coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef do not equate to a mass bleaching event, but we are concerned about a growing incidence of minor to moderate bleaching at multiple locations along the Reef as the peak of summer approaches," explained Prof. Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.

Coral bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as heightened sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, called "zooxanthellae". The loss of these colorful algae causes the corals to turn white, and "bleach". Bleached corals can recover if the temperature drops and zooxanthellae are able to recolonise them, otherwise the coral may die.

"The latest Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) forecasts suggest that we could see significant above average temperatures through the month of March, which may mean more bleaching ahead for corals on the Great Barrier Reef unless we get some windy and cloudy weather soon," said Dr Janice Lough, senior principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and member of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L, front) is welcomed by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif upon his arrival in Islamabad, Pakistan, April 20, 2015. [Xinhua]

The historical experiences of many foreign diplomats during the years of their employment career describe China's progress and development as a reason of the dedication and the hard work of the country's leadership and the leaders' farsighted prudence.

China's President Xi Jinping was recently paid tribute during the launch ceremony of a special report accenting his policies for regional peace and prosperity. The 100-page Special Report prepared by the Pakistan Observer news group asserted President Xi Jinping as Statesman of the Year for 2015. The report highlights the leader's contributions to global peace and development. His resounding foreign policy has significantly created the highest reputation for China in the international arena.

The tribute was an outcome of the one and half-month long nation-wide open-ended survey carried out in Pakistan. Notably, 84.3 percent of the respondents declared President Xi as the "Role Model Statesman of the Year 2015."

The changing geopolitical environment has demanded a further enhancement of the ties between China and Pakistan. The strong bond of friendship based on trust and mutual benefit highlights the goals envisioned as future prospects of the relationship between the two friendly countries. The visit of President Xi Jinping to Pakistan in 2015 was a landmark of the historic relationship between the two countries. It was, in fact, a reflection of President Xi's vows for a further strengthening of the bond between China and Pakistan.

The Belt and Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping reflects his vision and commitment to achieving the greater goals of regional peace, progress and development. The initiative effectively connects more than 60 countries and the project prospectively includes the building of road networks by connecting Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar through the BCIM-Economic Corridor, linking it with the Silk Road and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The projects effectively connect the whole region and will ultimately yield immense prosperity for the region and bring people closer to each other.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
Brian Malarkey & Chris Puffer

March 2, 2016

Slated for an April debut in San Diego's Little Italy, Herb & Wood is the exciting new concept from celebrity chef Brian Malarkey and his business partner Chris Puffer. The dual concept restaurant, marketplace and fast casual eatery will feature a menu that captures the flavor of a custom wood-fired oven and simple, rustic preparations that rely on the quality, seasonality and of the vegetables, proteins and local provisions it features.Executing in the kitchen alongside Chef Malarkey is co-chef and partner, Shane McIntyre - a kitchen visionary who has worked for Chef Malarkey for over five years at several of his most prominent restaurants. McIntyre began his culinary path with Malarkey as the Chef de Cuisine at the original Searsucker and then became corporate chef a year later, opening various locations across the country. In the summer of 2015 he started overseeing the kitchens of both Green Acre properties as well as the newly opened Farmer and the Seahorse.Shane has shared my passion for all things culinary since we methe has cooked with me, taught me and inspired me, as he does with everyone in the kitchens he has worked," said Malarkey. "We are thrilled to push each other out of our comfort zones of styles and flavors and move in a new challenging direction with simply prepared dishes that focus on subtleties.A signature dish of Chef McIntyres at Herb & Wood will be stuffed branzino with Meyer lemon, parsley, chives, and chervil, wrapped in prosciutto and roasted, with chili tapenade made with Castelvatrano olives, Calabrian chilis, shallot and garlic. Other menu items will include local tuna & uni crudo with apple, shallot, herb relish and cucumber citrus broth; wood fire King Trumpet mushrooms with lemon verbena and house churned butter; pastas made in-house like triagoli with smoked rabbit sausage, burrata, Meyer lemon and pistachios; and grilled swordfish with yogurt, farro, pea sprouts and charred carrots in a curry vinaigrette. The wood fire oven will also churn out pizzas that host an array of delectable toppings, from seasonal veggies, to house-made sausage and salumi. The pizza dough will be made in-house and be aged for 48 hours prior to cooking. Breads will be baked daily and simple desserts will complement the cuisine.It's a celebrated chef, an experienced GM and a collection of friends and family whose dream is to open a culinary institution in Little Italy, says partner and General Manager Christopher Puffer.Anchoring the ambitious pastry and baking program, which will include house-made pizza dough, a selection of breads, and desserts is Executive Pastry Chef Adrian Mendoza. Mendoza will create desserts that complement the cuisine, including blueberry souffle with whipped buttermilk and blueberry compote. Mendoza worked alongside Chef Malarkey as Executive Pastry Chef at Herringbone and Searsucker and previously worked at Spago in Beverly Hills, the Michelin two-star restaurant.A new comer to the Herb & Wood team will be bartender Willem Van Leuven. Van Leuven, the San Diego chapter president of the United States Bartenders Guild, most recently ran the bar programs at Puesto and Prohibition. Willem has a passion for agave spirits, seen by his frequent travels throughout Mexico, especially Jalisco and Tijuana.Rounding out the talented team is Mark Yost, Assistant General Manager who honed his skills at the Herringbone in West Hollywood and Searsucker San Diego. Yost is also curating the wine list, which he describes as, Old world with rustic charmrefreshingly bright and spicy, with a soft undertone of femininity. Alisha Stoun, a longtime confidant and resource for Puffer and Malarkey, will help guide logistics. Stoun has opened nine restaurants with Puffer and Malarkey over the last six years. Her contributions include creative culture and bringing the team together under one common mission: to create a positive and resonant experience for our customers, our co-workers, and our community.Herb & Wood will be open for dinner nightly and then add brunch on the weekends. The restaurant will be open first followed by the more casual eatery with its grab-and-go area, called Herb and Eatery.Herb & Wood is located at 2210 Kettner Boulevard in Little Italy. For more information, visit herbandwood.com
Zhangjiajie Global Geopark is located in the mountainous area of the western region of Hunan Province, China, with a subtropical humid mansoon climate. The outstanding landscape is dominated with more than 3000 peaks and pillars of quartz sandstone, which are rare in the world for their large number, height and fairly pure composition. In the long Chinese history, it has been honored as "the most fantastic mountain under heaven" and "a living Chinese landscape painting." [China.org.cn/Photo by Han Bo]

1 2 3 4 Next




Country

United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
 Flash

Afghan security forces under the command of first vice president General Abdul Rashid Dostum have made advances in the northern region and cleaned up vast areas from Taliban insurgents in the northern Faryab and Jauzjan provinces over the past three days.

The security forces in their latest achievement against Taliban outfit have killed 70 militants and captured Taliban bastion in Faryab province on Tuesday.

"Finally the security forces were able to overrun Taliban bastion in Khawja Namusi area of Pashtun Kot district on Tuesday and Taliban group after losing 70 fighters reiterated from the area," an army spokesman in the province, captain Sakhi Dad told Xinhua.

"Khawja Namusi, the bastion of Taliban in Pashtun Kot district, is in full control of government forces today," the official asserted.

Three government security men have been killed and 11 others injured for the control of Khawja Namusi over the past three days, Dad confirmed.

Khawja Namusi had served as main Taliban base in the northern Faryab province with Maimana as its capital, 425 km northwest of Kabul over the past one year.

Dostum, who is leading the military operations in Faryab province, has said that the major parts of Khawaja Sabz Posh and Pashtun Kot districts had been cleansed of Taliban militants over the past couple of days.

In another blow to Taliban outfit amid Taliban desperate attempt to overrun Maimana city, the capital of northern Faryab province 425 km northwest of the national capital of Kabul city, 130 Taliban fighters renounced violence and gave up fighting in the province on Sunday.

Welcoming the former militants, Faryab governor Sayyed Anwar Saadat called upon other Taliban fighters to follow the step and give up fighting in Faryab and adjoining provinces.

Qoshtipa district in the neighboring Jauzjan province was cleaned up of militants few days ago.

Taliban militants who are fighting the government forces in several provinces have vowed to defend their positions in Faryab province.
Stamford, CT -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2016 -- Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill, located at 135 Bedford St, in Stamford, Connecticut, is pleased to announce that they will be hosting a Bubbles & Brunch event every Sunday from now until further notice. Their Bubbles & Brunch event begins when the restaurant opens at 11:00 AM, and ends at 4:00 PM. For $15 and the purchase of a brunch entree, guests will be able to enjoy bottomless mimosas and sangrias. Not only will guests get to eat and drink for a great price, but the restaurant will have a live DJ starting at noon. Reservations are encouraged, and those who would like to make them can dial 203-674-5652, or email info@cantinastamford.com.



Aside from announcing their Bubbles & Brunch event, Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill would also like to let everyone know that they are officially open for lunch, and have some great weekly specials available. On Monday's, the restaurant offers half-priced margaritas from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Not only are $3 tacos available on Tuesdays from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM, but so are $4 Corona Light drafts. On "Wine Down Wednesdays" they offer half-priced pitchers of sangria from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM, and Thursday is ladies night where they offer 2 for 1 drinks from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Last, but not least, those who get to the bar by 4:00 PM on Fridaysbut no later than 7:00 PM, will be able to sip on $4 beers, $5 sangrias, and $6 margaritas.



Those who visit Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill will discover that they always have something going on for their guests. Individuals who would like to learn more about the restaurant, view their menus, or see what special events they have coming up, can visit their website, or follow them on Facebook.



About Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill

Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill, located in downtown Stamford, blends traditional Mexican flavor with a modern-day approach. Guests will find an extensive menu filled with contemporary-styled Mexican dishes, along with delicious drinks and a comfortable atmosphere that can be enjoyed by all. Cantina Tequila Bar & Southwest Grill blends fun and energy, bringing life back to the downtown Stamford restaurant scene.



For more information, please visit http://www.cantinastamford.com/.
Zaandam, Netherlands -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2016 -- Dutch communications company, ECCOM, in partnership with EncroChat, has launched a new security platform product to combat against surveillance and state 'snooping' following the accessing of secure emails on Blackberry devices by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) with the assistance of a private software company.



Blackberry handsets were previously regarded as the most secure handsets available to corporate and private individuals largely due to their content protection feature which could be used to send encrypted PGP messages.



The investigation by the NFI had an 85% success rate in retrieving and decrypting emails from a blackberry handset [1]. Additionally, it is believed that at least one private security company has 'cracked' blackberries devices and is reported to assist law enforcement agencies across 100 countries in investigations [2].



In the wake of the investigation ECCOM had discontinued its sale of Blackberry handsets stating "We have examined the evidence and conclude we cannot sell BlackBerry PGP phones to our clients anymore."



Commenting on the initial move to discontinue the sale of Blackberries earlier this month, CEO of ECCOM said:



"Recent events have called the credibility of Blackberry PGP devices into question. We simply cannot sell insecure devices to our clients. Citizens should expect privacy, especially in the wake of last year's discovery of NSA spying in Europe on a mass scale."



ECCOM's new security offering EncroChat is expected to replace the Blackberry as the most secure device available to private citizens on the market, according to the founder of ECCOM.



"We felt we needed to move fast to ensure the security and privacy of our clients. We've tried and tested EncroChat and it can stand up to the strictest of security probing and forensic investigation techniques. We are more than happy to recommend it as a credible alternative to Blackberry devices and we are encouraging any sellers or buyers of Blackberry devices to get in contact with us so we can demonstrate its effectiveness."



Some of the many security features of EncroChat include:



EncroChat Messaging Protocol - The electronic equivalent of a regular conversation between two people in an empty room.



Guaranteed Anonymity ensures no EncroChat device or SIM card can be linked to a customer account



Self-destructing messaging allows the client to force wipe their own messages from another user's device using a timer countdown.



Panic wipe features offers clients the ability to instantly wipe their device data with a PIN code.



Other features include a customized Android OS, Dual Operating System, secure Over-The-Air (OTA) updates, simplified verification, secure boot, tamper proofing, field factory restore, global service password wipe and many more.



EncroChat is available to purchase now at http://www.encrochatsure.com.



For additional information contact:

Johan Dijk on behalf of Team EncroChat

Encrypted Cell Phone Communications

T: +31 20-8950047

E: info@encrochatsure.com

PGP: team@encromail.ch

www.encrochatsure.com



References:

[1] http://www.geek.com/mobile/dutch-police-say-they-can-crack-pgp-encrypted-blackberry-devices-1644376/

[2] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/cops-say-they-can-access-encrypted-emails-on-so-called-pgp-blackberrys

[3] http://www.misdaadnieuws.com/amsterdam-00053.html
Lewes, DE -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2016 -- A continuing increase of overall economic activity will help to boost total household spending in Egypt throughout 2016. After the terrorist attacks in 2015, the country's tourism sector will suffer from a short-term decline in tourist inflows. However, improvements in the labour market will lead to higher household revenues and spending. Large retailers, such as LuLu Group and MAF Group, will continue their push into the country as its MGR sector modernises rapidly.



Key Views And Developments



- Dubai-based shopping centre developer Majid Al Futtaim Group has announced the plan to build the third City Centre mall in Egypt at an investment of above USD500mn. The new shopping centre will have 103,500 square metres (sq m) of retail area and is planned to open in Q1 2019.



- LuLu Group, an Abu Dhabi-based hypermarket operator, is moving forward with a plan to open 10 new LuLu hypermarkets in 2016-2017. The expansion will cost the retailer USD300mn.



- Saudi Arabia's Abdullah Al-Othaim Markets Company, is a large player in the MGR segment and is investing USD38mn in Egypt to open retail and wholesale stores in the country.



For more information Visit at: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/business-monitor-international/egypt-retail-report-q2-2016



In 2015, Malaysia's retail market suffered from the rapid depreciation of ringgit as well as the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax, which significantly dented sales, particularly in the second half of the year. While these factors will remain in play during the first quarters of 2016, we believe the country's retail sales will recover in 2016 on account of sustained Malaysia's economic growth, rising household incomes and accommodative monetary policy. That said, we note that precipitous household debt levels pose a downside risk to our forecasts, especially over the medium term.



Latest Updates & Developments



- CJ O Shopping Co, a home shopping unit of CJ Group, in a joint venture with Media Prima TV Networks, will launch a new shopping channel in Malaysia in the first half of 2016.



- In early 2016, GCH Retail, Dairy Farm's subsidiary in Malaysia, said it will open six new hypermarkets in 2016 and renew 28 stores. The new outlets will be situated in Setapak (Kuala Lumpur), ICangar (Kedah), Kota Baru (Kelantan) and Jeneh (Terenggam), with the final two locations yet to be announced.



For more information Visit at: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/business-monitor-international/malaysia-retail-report-q2-2016



In the long term, the outlook is good for Vietnam's retail sector. Modern retail has made significant inroads into the largest cities, and as incomes rise and infrastructure improves, more people should be able to access modern retail opportunities. The government is welcoming of foreign investment into the retail industry, and those firms already in the market stand to benefit as mergers and acquisitions become more commonplace. However, the population is still largely rural, with little appetite for significant retail spending, and incomes are generally low, meaning that opportunities for retailers in non-essential segments are limited.



We forecast strong economic growth, with real GDP growth estimated at 6.4% in 2015, rising to 6.6% in 2016 before falling back slightly over our forecast period, to reach 6.2% in 2020. Increasingly strong trade links, such as the ASEAN Economic Community and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, should provide growth opportunities in coming years, and make the business environment more supportive of foreign investment. The country has seen a significant amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) from international retailers as demand for Western-style retail experiences has increased. Mass grocery retailer (MGR) has been an attractive segment of international expansion.



For more information Visit at: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/business-monitor-international/vietnam-retail-report-q2-2016



About Market Research Reports, Inc.

Market Research Reports, Inc. is the world's leading source for market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest market research reports on global markets, key industries, leading companies, new products and latest industry analysis & trends.



Yearly/Quarterly Report Subscription: http://www.marketresearchreports.com/subscriptions
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2016 -- Global and China Smartphone Market 2016-2021 Market Research Report



Complete report With TOC available: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-chinese-smartphone-market-2016-industry-trends.html



The report on the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry meticulously addresses the various drivers, restraints, and opportunities that exist in this space. Compiled by a team of expert analysts, the report offers an overview of the all the key performance indicators of the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry.



Get Free Sample: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/report/53157#request-sample



The study analyzes the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry in terms of revenue and volume, where applicable. By doing so, the team of authors working on this report have been able to offer a complete and realistic picture of the future course that the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 is expected to adopt.



All internal and external factors influencing the growth trajectory of the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry are taken into account. With a firm focus on the companies that compete for a share of revenues within the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry, the report is a valuable resource that supports competition mapping and strategy development.



Furthermore, the report takes into consideration all the major stakeholders in the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry and analyzes their standing in the grander picture over the forecast period. For instance, it strives to offer an understanding of the bargaining power of buyers based on the degree of competition as well as the availability of options in the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry.



The Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry report also maps the technological landscape to understand where the Industry is headed in terms of innovation. This allows clients to foresee imminent shifts in the regulatory, demand, as well as competitive landscape in the Global and China Smartphone Market 2016 Industry. Overall, this Industry research report is poised to answer all critical questions that a business faces in a bid to sustain and fortify its Industry standing.



Read more: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/report/53157#report-details



Contact Us:

Joel John

3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138

Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442

United States

Toll Free: +1-855-465-4651 FREE (USA-CANADA)

Tel: +1-386-310-3803 FREE

Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com

Website: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/



Inquiry For Buying: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/report/53157#inquiry-for-buying
 Flash

The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) has documented an estimated 66 civilian casualties this year due to hostilities across Libya, a UN spokesman told reporters Tuesday.

The majority of 28 deaths and 38 injuries were caused by shelling, including mortars, artillery and other indirect weapons, while the next leading cause was gun shots, explosive remnants of war, aerial bombardments and suicide attacks, said deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq at a daily news briefing.

Due to limited access and the engagement of multiple parties in the conflict, who have not taken responsibility for any incidents, it has been unable to determine which party caused these civilian casualties, according to the mission.

Libya has been suffering a political crisis with two rival parliaments and governments battling for legitimacy amid a state of insecurity and anarchy years after the downfall of the late leader Muammar Gaddafi. At present, the North African country is being haunted by escalating violence and growing militant extremism.

The United Nations has sponsored dialogue sessions between Libyan rivals since September 2014, in and outside Libya, in order to end the country's political division.
Coatesville, PA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/02/2016 -- TriState Forestry Equipment of West Chester continues to satisfy their customers through consistent quality service and one of the best inventories of forestry trucks and equipment in Southeast Pennsylvania. For those in search of chipper, forestry and rear mount bucket or log grapple trucks, skid loaders, stump grinders or brush chippers should look no further than to Tristate Forestry Equipment.



In the forestry industry, durability cannot be compromised. Clients from all fifty states and abroad turn to the forestry equipment company to ensure receiving products only of the highest caliber.



For potential customers who are not close to the West Chester or Philadelphia areas, TriState Forestry Equipment goes into detail online, offering a full list of specifications and pictures of each item for clients to easily view. Their selection of new and refurbished equipment means that there are products available for virtually all budgets on the market. Customers who want to see pictures of their refurbished trucks and equipment can log onto their website and take a look at their 2005 Ford F750 grapple truck, 2007 Ford F750 seventy-five foot Altec LRV Elevator bucket truck, or any of their other items that are currently available for purchase.



TriState Forestry Equipment is also reminding their customers that shipping is always free, so distant arborists in need do not need to worry about logistical issues and hefty fees. Anyone who is interested in purchasing forestry equipment can visit Tristate Forestry Equipment's website to see their selection, and call 877-519-5864 to speak with a knowledgeable staff member.



About TriState Forestry Equipment

TriState Forestry Equipment is a distributor of used forestry equipment for the arborist industry. The company is located in West Chester, PA, and ships to all 50 states.



For more information visit http://www.tristateforestryequipment.com/.
[MANILA] A coalition of health experts is pressing governments in the Asia-Pacific to endorse the global strategy of the WHO to fight viral hepatitis to reduce its threat.

The disease is endemic in the region but awareness is low, and only less than one per cent of people who need treatment receive it, according to the Singapore-based nonprofit Coalition to Eradicate Viral Hepatitis in Asia Pacific (CEVHAP) which organised a symposium on 24 February in Tokyo, Japan.

In the Asia-Pacific alone, one million people die from viral hepatitis each year, three times the mortality rate of HIV/AIDS. In 2015, there were 6 to 10 million new cases of chronic hepatitis, says CEVHAP.

Chronic hepatitis B is most prevalent among the general adult population aged over 25 because they were born before the introduction of the hepatitis B vaccine to national immunisation programmes.

If the 2030 global hepatitis targets proposed by the WHO are achieved, it is possible to eliminate hepatitis by 2030. By Stephen Locarnini, co-chair of CEVHAP

The proposed WHO strategy will come to a vote in May at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, the WHOs decision-making body which is attended by delegations from all WHO member states.

The strategy offers a set of priority actions for governments and the WHO to stop hepatitis transmission and increase accessible care. One notable target is for governments to achieve 90 per cent diagnosis by 2030, up from the current level of less than five per cent.

While viral hepatitis has featured high on the agenda at many of the WHOs annual regional meetings since the inaugural World Hepatitis Summit held in September 2015 in Glasgow, Scotland, its prioritisation has been mixed.

Last October in Guam, the WHO Western Pacific committee approved a regional action plan to fight hepatitis and has started to implement it in high-burden countries such as Vietnam. This plan is aligned with the WHOs proposed global strategy.

But hepatitis failed to make it on the agenda of the WHOs South-East Asia regional committee meeting in September 2015 in Timor-Leste.

If the 2030 global hepatitis targets proposed by the WHO are achieved, it is possible to eliminate hepatitis by 2030, Stephen Locarnini, co-chair of CEVHAP and head of research and development at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory in Australia, tells SciDev.Net. Failure to keep to the targets proposed by the draft strategy will result in a significant setback.

Locarnini says people of all ages, ethnic groups and genders can be at risk of hepatitis C when receiving unsafe healthcare services, such as contaminated blood transfusion. Low-income populations and indigenous people are particularly vulnerable as they are more likely to be exposed to unsafe practices.

Kenji Shibuya, a global health professor at the University of Tokyo, tells SciDev.Net that to get more attention on hepatitis, it would be useful to link with and learn from experts involved in fighting other diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS.

They did very well and were very successful in putting that agenda into health system development and financing, Shibuya notes.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk.
Laura Rodrigues, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, is studying mothers and babies affected by the mosquito-borne Zika virus in Brazil. She talks about her work on the front-line of the Zika crisis and her investigation into possible links between the disease and babies born with abnormally small heads, a condition known as microcephaly, and underdeveloped brains.



Where are you at the moment?

Im in the city of Recife, on the eastern tip of Brazil. Its the capital of Pernambuco, the state at the centre of the Zika epidemic.



Was anyone prepared for this?

Not at all. It came as a surprise to the world! Across Pernambuco, there used to be nine cases of microcephaly a year. Since the beginning of August 2015, more than 1,400 suspected cases have been noted. And the Zika season is likely to start again. The rainy season brings water, and the mosquitoes lay their eggs in any little bit of water they can find.



What is your research trying to find?

Weve got three studies under way. The first is examining the causes of microcephaly  the strongest hypothesis is Zika infection, but we need to be completely sure. The second is to identify the exact risks to women in terms of the stage of pregnancy they are at when exposed to Zika. And the third is to see how the babies develop.



How do the trials work?

Were in very close contact with maternity hospitals across the state. So for the first study, when a baby with microcephaly is born, well interview the mother about Zika exposure during pregnancy and collect blood samples, when possible from the umbilical cord. We measure the head circumference and get CT scans of the babys brain. We also follow the same process for a control sample of similar babies born without microcephaly and we study some babies who were born with microcephaly before the Zika outbreak.



For the second study, were recruiting pregnant women who get the kind of rash associated with Zika. We investigate them for Zika, dengue and chikungunya, which are all spread by the Aedes mosquito. Then we follow them to establish what proportion will have a miscarriage or a stillbirth, and what proportion have a baby with microcephaly or other malformations. That will tell us how common microcephaly really is and how it is affected by the trimester in which the mother becomes infected.



For the third study, we want to track the babies developmental delays, looking at things like whether they have convulsions and how they interact or make eye contact.



How did you get involved?

Im the lead for collaborations with Brazil at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Im Brazilian myself: I trained here, went to London for postgraduate studies and returned here to continue my career. When the epidemic started, the government asked a group of epidemiologists in Pernambuco to think about research projects. The Brazilian Ministry of Health invited me to come. The government gave us enough money for one of the studies, and were raising money for the others.



Who are you working with?

Our group is based at the local branch of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, which is a large research institute funded by the government. We have ten professionals in our group and 14 health visitors who go out to hospitals or take a van to visit women at home, although two of these workers are off sick with Zika at the moment. Were working very closely with local hospitals.

What are you hoping to achieve?

Whats the mood like?

I think the key thing is finding out when people are most vulnerable to Zika, and what proportion of babies are affected. If it turns out that 90 per cent of women who get infected with Zika at a particular, critical stage of pregnancy have an affected baby, as happens with rubella, then theres good reason to start thinking about a treatment as well as a vaccine  or maybe the option for women to have access to a legal termination. The other aspect in those decisions is how severe the childrens disabilities are going to be.

When I was first here in November, it felt a little like Europe during the plague: there was this very scary new health trend, and people didnt really know what was causing it. The government has done a good job getting information out there, but theres a lot of concern. Families are very worried. The state has set up centres for pregnant women to self report for investigation and notification: over 1,000 presented in the last two months. But there is no treatment. Abortions are illegal in Brazil, so once a person is pregnant and infected, theres nothing that can be done. In our team, were obviously very sad for the mothers and the kids, but this gives our work a sense of urgency.

View the Wellcome Trust's new video on Zika:

The Wellcome Trust provided initial funding for Rodriguess work.



This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on the Wellcome Trust blog. It is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licence.
One afternoon a couple of years ago, I found myself sat in the site office of one of Delhis incineration plants and having tea with the manager. The plant was under construction near a landfill, and I was there with my colleague Ranjit Devraj to take some photographs for our story on the Indian citys waste management system.

The light was gone by the time we left the building so the pictures had to wait for another day. But the meeting sprang to mind vividly last week as I listened to discussions about the informal private sector at an international conference on the subject held in London, United Kingdom, by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The Delhi manager, an ex-military man, was courteous and well-versed in environmental sustainability. He explained how the company had learned from the citys incineration failures and was making sure the plants technology was appropriate for the job. The three of us exchanged jovial conversation around an enormous desk.

But there was another person in the room who got little say in the conversation. It was one of the leaders of the association of rag pickers who lives and works nearby. He joined us to visit the plant that day  because the story of Delhis waste management system cannot be told without the waste pickers.



When the three of us were whisked into the managers office for a chat, he took a seat well behind us, away from the main desk. No one blinked.

His place in that room, it occurred to me last week, is something of a metaphor for the place of informal workers  those unregulated or protected by the state  in development planning and discourse. But this isnt just about marginalisation. There is plenty to suggest that informal work matters for development more widely.

Global economic impact

The first striking message that came through last weeks meeting was how much the world depends on informal work. We heard that in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, invisible production due to illegal logging means that formal data can miss as much as 90 per cent of the forest economy; that in Latin America, every other job created was informal even in years of growth; and that a monitoring study of street vendors in ten cities around the world found informal work made up about 80 per cent of household income. [1]

So few would have been surprised that keynote speaker Marty Chen, cofounder of WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) in the United States, called informal workers the broad base of the economy. Chen used waste pickers as an example to make the case for their contribution to green growth. While there isnt enough data to know whether other groups of informal workers contribute to such environmentally sustainable economic development, we know that the carbon footprint of waste pickers is smaller than that of formal waste collection services.

When Peter Poschen of the UNs International Labour Organization took the floor, he said agriculture is an even more compelling example of informal work: one billion people depend on farming for income and 1-in-3 work in the sector.

 The first thing that struck me was a distinction made by participants between what is and what should be: that the aim should not be to decide what we want the sector to be, but to help improve peoples lives wherever they are along the continuum from formality to informality.  Anita Makri

We also heard about agricultures central role in the Peruvian Amazon: 80 per cent of deforestation there happens in plots smaller than a hectare, according to Alejandro Guarin of the German Development Institute. And in these tiny pockets of deforestation, smallholders provide value through ecosystem services and by feeding nearby communities. Controversially he suggested that although their incomes may be relatively low, they may in fact be key players in green growth.

Legal invisibility

But there was also plenty to be said about the invisibility of these key players in global conversations around development and economic growth. Emily Benson of the Green Economy Coalition noted that, although informality features prominently in major reports and some national development plans, most are basic references and fail to discuss how to work with the sector.

However, a bigger problem is invisibility in policies and laws, and the fraught day-to-day reality of people in different types of informal work. Waste pickers get harassed, street vendors get evicted, farmers trade in markets without toilets or clean water. There is little chance of social protections such as health insurance or pensions.



Unsurprisingly, women fare worse. WIEGOs Sally Roever presented a gender breakdown of the informal economy pyramid, where pay rises and risk decreases as you move up. Men tend to be at the top (more often as employers) and women at the bottom (more often as family workers).

And while big business might hire workers informally, it also attacks unfair competition from such workers.

A place at the table

So is the solution to formalise these activities by integrating them into the formal sector or to let them be? There was a melange of views about what to do and ideas about how to do it. And the first thing that struck me was a distinction made by participants between what is and what should be: that the aim should not be to decide what we want the sector to be, but to help improve peoples lives wherever they are along the continuum from formality to informality.



Many argued for governments to regulate and manage informal work in a way thats not chaotic or punitive. Informal workers want a balance of regulation and support such as pensions and other social protections, WIEGOs Chen said. Their ability to use their work to climb out of poverty depends on this  thats why integration into economic planning matters.

What could integration look like? Waste pickers in Bogota, Colombia, went through a 25-year process that involved legal battles against the privatisation taking hold in the sector before finally gaining recognition in 2013  a story that chimes with the experiences of waste pickers in Delhi. It depends on officials seeing the big picture about how informal work is interwoven into formal sectors.

Another success story kept coming back into the conversation: Brazil formalised 5.5 million entrepreneurial businesses in the past five years through a support package that includes access to business development and social protections. The idea here is to create an enabling environment that suits each sector  such packages will look very different for farmers than they will for street vendors.

In his concluding remarks, IIEDs Steve Bass named the big opportunity for inclusion on the global stage: the Sustainable Development Goals. And Chen put it simply: the world has a choice between staying as an island of prosperity surrounded by despair, or integrating the informal sector into development planning.



Thinking about the rag pickers I met and my experience in that Delhi office, the reality of that choice is clear.

Anita Makri is opinion and special features editor at SciDev.Net. @anita_makri
 Flash

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, Tuesday announced that intra-Syrian peace talks he has been mediating in Geneva will resume next Wednesday, 9 March.

According to a press statement from Mr. de Mistura's Office, while 7 March had initially been set as the target date, the Special Envoy will now resume the talks two days later, allowing "adequate time to address logistical and practical matters."

Mr. de Mistura had been mediating the Geneva-based talks, which officially kicked off last month, but on 3 February called for a pause following differences between Government and opposition delegations on the priority of humanitarian issues.

The announcement of the resumption of the intra-Syrian talks comes just days after the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the joint statement announced last week by United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as co-chairs of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) Ceasefire Taskforce, on the terms of a nationwide cessation of hostilities, which has been in effect since Saturday, 27 February.

Adopting a new resolution, the Council also demanded that all parties involved in the cessation of hostilities fulfil their commitments, and urged all Member States, especially ISSG members  the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries, including the United States and Russia, who have been seeking a path forward for several months  to use their influence with the parties to ensure fulfilment of those commitments and support efforts "to create conditions for a durable and lasting ceasefire."

The Council also demanded the "full and immediate" implementation of its resolution 2254 (2015) to facilitate a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition in order to end the conflict, stressing once again that the nation's people "will decide the future of Syria." That text, unanimously adopted in December, gave the UN an enhanced role in shepherding the opposing sides to talks for a political transition, endorsing a timetable for a ceasefire, a new constitution and elections.

Today, the statement from Mr. de Mistura's office said that he is looking forward to Syrian participants' engagement in serious discussions with a view to implementing resolution 2254 (2015).

Earlier today, as part of his official visit to Geneva, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon inaugurated the newly renovated Russian Salon at the Palais des Nations, at an event attended by Foreign Minister Lavrov. After the event, Mr. Ban held a meeting and the two agreed on the importance of urgently moving forward simultaneously on implementing the cessation of hostilities agreement, providing vital humanitarian assistance to civilians, and returning to political negotiations.
 Flash

China and the UK should cooperate on conflict prevention despite their differences in the understandings of and solutions to this issue, according to the latest report released by Saferworld, an independent international organization working to prevent violent conflict and build safer lives, on Feb. 29 in Beijing.

A seminar on conflict prevention is co-hosted by the Charhar Institute and Saferworld on Feb. 29 in Beijing. [Photo/The Charhar Institute]

Partnership between the two countries should be created in a wide range of areas, such as countering extremism and radicalization, cyber security, tackling transnational organized crime, intelligence-sharing, global health, crisis response and defense production, revealed the report on Conflict Prevention in the 21st Century: China and the UK, which was released at a seminar co-hosted by the Charhar Institute and Saferworld.

Lyu Fengding, co-chairman of the Charhar Institute's International Advisory Committee, delivered a speech at the seminar. He noted the importance of conflict prevention as he had witnessed many conflicts in Nigeria when he served as China's ambassador there.

China and the UK should enhance bilateral cooperation, multilateral cooperation and people-to-people exchange to create a partnership in conflict prevention, and the cooperation must be flexible and reliable, said Bernardo Mariani, head of Saferworld's China Program.

Charlotte Jago, an official of the British Embassy in Beijing, said that China has become increasingly important in the world, so China and the UK should cooperate to prevent conflicts.

The seminar attracted many Chinese and foreign scholars on conflict prevention, professionals in safety and the security field and government officials.They discussed conflict prevention methods, cooperation between China and the UK, as well as the use of soft power in conflict prevention.

International cooperation on conflict prevention has become inevitable now, as all countries need to cope with the current international situation where traditional and non-traditional safety risks co-exist, the scholars said.

The discussions were chaired separately by Huang Youyi, secretary-general of the Charhar Institute's International Advisory Committee and former vice president and editor-in-chief of the China International Publishing Group, Zhang Chun, deputy director of the Center for West Asian & African Studies at Shanghai Institutes for International Studies and David Nyheim, chief executive, Europe Conflict and Security Consulting (ECAS) Ltd.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
The agreement would require all UN member states to inspect cargoes leaving from or heading to North Korea. As well as searching for concealed weapons shipments, contraband under the new agreement includes exports of coal, iron, iron ore, gold, titanium and rare earth minerals from the country, the proceeds from which, the US believes, fund the DPRK's missile programme. Imports of aviation fuel, including rocket fuel, would also be banned.

The vote was originally to take place yesterday, but was blocked for 24 hours by Russia after its council members asked for more time to read the text.

The move, part of a new round of sanctions against the nation in response to recent nuclear test activity, affects some 114 vessels known to be operating under the North Korean flag. One such vessel, Chong Chon Gang, pictured, was detained in Panama in August 2013 after it was found to be carrying a shipment of two anti-air defence systems, missile components, two MiG-21 aircraft and 15 Russian-built aircraft engines, hidden in a cargo of sugar from Cuba.

"Today in response to the DPRKs recent nuclear test and subsequent proscribed ballistic missile launch, the US tabled a draft resolution that if adopted would represent the strongest sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council in more than two decades, said US United Nations ambassador Samantha Power. All cargo going in or out of the DPRK would be subjected to mandatory inspection suspicious vessels carrying illicit items would be denied access to ports.
While the US nuclear plants become unmoving,China is moving forward with its plan of creating a floating power plat.

China Atomic Energy Authority chairman Xu Dazhe says that China is looking to doble the country's atomic capacity before the year 2020 and is now currently planning to have marine floating power stations operation in the next years.

According to a senior corporate executive, China is starting to construct a floating nuclear power station and plans to finish it by the end of the year.

Report has claimed that the facility will be designed to power gas drilling and offshore oil, remote areas and island development. According to the board chairman of the National Nuclear Corporation, the said facility was planned to be operated and implemented on 2019.

During the opening of the recently concluded annual legislative session, chairman of the board said their company National Nuclear Corporation already had the intellectual property rights of the floating nuclear power station reactor that was planned to be built.

Currently, China has 30 nuclear power generating stations in operation and another 24 units that are still under construction.

China, despite its financial status right now, is trying to hit back on other areas such as expanding its global reach in a different way and not by conquering lands, for sure. China is building islands in areas and thus, improving it by plans of building the floating nuclear power plants as a portable energy source for China's generation.
Press Release

March 2, 2016 CHIZ EYES DRUG-FREE BUREAUCRACY UNDER 'GOBYERNONG MAY PUSO' Vice-presidential frontrunner Sen. Francis "Chiz" Escudero will push for mandatory drug testing among civil servants--from president down to the lowest clerk--should he and his presidential running mate Sen. Grace Poe get elected in May, as he warned that all state workers involved in illegal drugs will be dealt with severely under the law. Escudero said the compulsory drug testing of all public officials and employees, especially those seeking elective positions, will ensure that government agencies are drug-free zones. "Hindi dapat random lang 'yan. Kung tatakbo at magsilbi ka sa pamahalaan, dapat lamang na sumailalim ka sa mandatory drug testing at simulan natin 'yan sa pinakamataas na opisyal hanggang sa pinakamababa," Escudero told a recent radio interview in Tuguegarao City. Fighting drugs is high on the agenda of Poe and Escudero, who are both running under the banner "Gobyerno may Puso," and both have publicly stated that they intend to declare illegal drugs a threat to national security threat. They were particularly alarmed by recent drug statistics showing that some 1.8 million Filipinos were considered drug dependents, as well the seizure of dangerous drugs, controlled precursors and essential chemicals and non-drug evidence worth P6.18 billion by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) in 2014. According to Escudero, they will involve all government agencies in the fight against drug abuse and drug trafficking "Itinuturing namin na threat to national security ang problema sa illegal drugs. Kami lang yata ni Sen. Grace ang nagsasabi niyan at kailangan namin ng tulong ng lahat ng ahensya ng pamahalaan para masolusyunan ito," Escudero said. The veteran lawmaker said they will begin the intensified anti-illegal drug campaign in government workplace by weeding out public officials and employees who are involved in drugs. He said they plan to establish a drug-free government, and that drug addicts and drug traffickers will not be tolerated in public offices. "Ang mga empleyado ng gobyerno na nasasangkot sa iligal na droga ang uunahin naming sampulan sakaling mahalal kami ni Sen. Grace," Escudero said. "Hindi lamang sila dapat matanggal at maparusahan, dapat bawiin din ang kanilang mga ari-arian kung mapatunayang galing ito sa illegal drugs," he added. Escudero said the Poe administration will also tap the barangays in the fight against illegal drugs by strengthening the Barangay Anti-Drug Abuse Council or BADAC. The Philippines has one of the highest rates of methamphetamine use in Asia, with an estimated 960,000 or about 2 percent of the adult population using the drug popularly known as "shabu," data from the UN Transnational Crime Report in 2013. According to PDEA, around 20 percent or 8,400 of the country's 42,000 barangay are drug-affected, meaning they host a user, pusher, producer or cultivator or other drug personality.
Press Release

March 2, 2016 Cayetano joins fun run, calls for passage of 100-day maternity leave bill Senator Pia Cayetano led Senate officials and employees in a 3-kilomenter fun run Tuesday, March 1 even as she called for the passage of the 100-day maternity leave bill. "This is a part of our year-long centennial celebration. It's also the first day of Women's Month. I, along with the Senate staff and the members of the Gender and Development (GAD) Focal Point, ran for the passage of the 100-day maternity leave bill which we already passed in the Senate." Cayetano, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, said the Philippines is lagging behind other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries in terms of maternity leave duration. She said the current allowable number of maternity leave in the country is actually less than the 98-day maternity leave minimum requirement of the International Labor Organization (ILO). Cayetano has sponsored the Expanded Maternity Leave bill. "The expansion of the maternity leave period shall not in any way diminish the existing maternity benefits granted by the employer. It shall not affect the female employee's security of tenure", Cayetano stressed. "Through policies like this, we aim to institutionalize standards that promote the rights of working women and protect them from discrimination based on maternity. Join us in continually fighting for the rights of women," Cayetano said. GAD Focal Point chairperson Ma. Valentina Cruz said the fun run is the first activity in the month-long celebration of the 2016 Women's Month with a theme of "Kapakanan ni Juana Isama sa Agenda." Officials of the Philippine Commission on Women (PCW) said this year's national theme calls for gender-balance in leadership and decision making positions both in public and private sector, the inclusion of women's concerns in leadership platforms and the government's development agenda as well as the capacitating and preparing of women and girls to reach their ambitions. Other activities in the Senate for this month's celebration include baking and meat process seminars, yoga classes, film showing, Magna Carta of Women exhibit, outreach program, logo making contest and the inauguration of the Senate GAD Center. (Apple Buenaventura)
Press Release

March 2, 2016 Senate celebrates Women's Month Showcasing local films The Philippine Senate-Gender and Development Focal Point (GAD) will be showing a series of films focusing on gender and gender equality as part of the Senate's year-long centennial celebration (October 2015- October 2016). Senate Legal Counsel and GAD chairperson Ma. Valentine Cruz said the films, which will be shown from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on March 3, 10 and 30 at the Senator Recto Room, also coincide with the Women's Month celebration held every March. This year's theme resonates the call for gender-balance in leadership and decision making positions both in public and private sector; inclusion of women's concerns in leadership platforms and the government's development agenda as well as the capacitating and preparing of women and girls to reach their ambitions. Cruz said one of the films, "Mga Munting Tinig," applauds the fight of educators in an environment that is often times in direct opposition to the basic tenets of learning. The film, which stars Alessandra de Rossi and directed by Gil Portes and Adolfo Alix, Jr., won 11 awards and was nominated for 11 other awards including Gawad Urian Awards. It is the only Filipino film to be released by Warner Bros. Pictures. "The reason I recommended "Mga Munting Tinig" is because the film is multi-awarded. It shows a teacher who was inspirational, because in her small way she was able to encourage the youth from a rural area to compete in a singing contest even though they had no funds, to show them that they can overcome their poverty. " Cruz said. "I suggested the film to show that as a woman, you can do something to improve the lot of people around you," Cruz added. Other films lined up include "Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros," a 2005 Filipino coming-of-age film about a gay teen who is torn between his love for a young cop and his loyalty to his family. "Thy Womb," starring Nora Aunor, is the story of a midwife, Shaleha (Aunor), who cannot have children. The film follows her and her husband, Bangas, in their search for a second wife to provide them with the family they crave. "Bata, Bata, Paano ka Ginawa?" Is a film based on Lualhati Bautista's novel of the same title. Vilma Santos takes the role of the character Lea, a working mother who has two children and whom she brought up with her own effort. She is a woman of courage who strongly believes that for every problem there is always a solution. Lea represents the society's view of women, how it is to be a mother, and how a mother executes this role through modern-day concepts of parenthood. "We are showcasing locally made films to promote our local film industry and since this is women's month, we want to show films with themes of women empowerment, those which will be interesting to people in the Senate, especially to the female employees," Cruz said. (Yvonne Almiranez)
Press Release

March 2, 2016 Recto to gov't: Release P1B LGU share from fire fees, pay registration of volunteer firetrucks To thank them for their services, government should waive vehicle registration fees of volunteer-owned firetrucks and place the brave men manning them under PhilHealth insurance, Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto proposed today. This, as Recto called on the national government to speed up the release of P1 billion it owes to local governments as the latter's share from Fire Code fees collected from 2010 to 2014. At present, no incentives, "except perhaps for the token plaque of appreciation," are given to volunteer firemen who put their lives on the line to save lives and property. Recto made the proposal as the nation marks Fire Prevention Month with fires destroying almost P6.8 billion worth of property annually, the average from 2010 to 2013. The damage would have been greater if not for volunteer firetrucks which in Metro Manila and in other big cities today outnumber the fleet operated by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP), Recto said. At the beginning of 2014, there were only 1,574 operational BFP firetrucks, leaving a shortage of 1,538 units, an official audit report revealed. A third or 426 out of 1,489 towns also had no fire stations. Recto said government can tap Fire Code fees collections in paying for the motor vehicle registration of volunteer-owned firetrucks and health insurance of volunteer firemen. This year, Fire Code fees collections are expected to reach P1.36 billion, mostly from: One-tenth of 1 percent of the verified estimated value of buildings to be erected but not exceeding P50,000

1/100th of 1 percent of the assessed value of buildings upon payment of real estate tax, except on structures used as single family dwellings

2 percent of gross sales of companies selling firefighting equipment or devices, including hazard detection and warning systems Recto said "subsidies, grants and financial aid to individuals and groups" are allowed under the law. A ten-wheeler truck pays about P8,000 in Road User's Tax annually, while the premium for PhilHealth coverage is about P2,400 annually per person. "It is small compared to the average P388,000 in annual total personal services (PS) cost per BFP employee last year," he said. In its audit report on the BFP for 2014, which is the latest, the Commission on Audit (COA) said the 20-percent share of local governments from fire inspection fees from 2010 to 2014 have not been released. Under Republic Act 9514, or the Fire Code of the Philippines, 80 percent of all revenues collected by the BFP shall be used for its modernization, while 20 percent will be plowed back to the LGU where such was collected. From 2010 to 2014, collections reached P4.75 billion, of P949 million should have been released to local governments, the COA said. "This should be released soon to help augment the fire prevention capacity of the BFP," said Recto.
Brittany Maynard is the human face of the proposition that Americans who are threatened by a terminal illness should have more freedom to choose the time, place and manner of their own deaths.

In April 2014, Maynard was diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, and given only six months to live. With no hope for a cure, she began to prepare to die. By October, she announced that she had checked off the last item on her bucket list, a visit to the Grand Canyon.

Death by brain cancer is often a prolonged, painful and undignified experience, so Maynard moved, with her family, from California to Oregon, one of three states with death with dignity laws that permit a physician to assist a terminal patient end her life.

Which is what Maynard did, on Nov. 1, 2014. In her final Facebook post, Maynard said goodbye to family and friends and then: Today is the day I have chosen to pass away with dignity in the face of my terminal illness, this terrible brain cancer that has taken so much from me  but would have taken so much more.

Maynards story is a sad one. She was young  only 29  and she appears to have been the type of person who would have made the best of her life. But she was nearly out of choices. So she made the best choice  in her mind  that she could, sparing herself and her family a prolonged, painful death.

Not everyone agrees, and laws that permit physician-assisted suicide are still a very hard sell in the United States. This is understandable. Brittany Maynards story strongly supports more choice in dying, but what about the case of Jeffrey Spector?

Last May, Spector, 54, travelled from his home in Britain to Zurich, where he had a last meal with his family, and then checked into the clinic of an organization called Dignitas and had himself put to death, against the wishes of his wife and three young daughters.

Spector wasnt terminally ill, but he had lived for six years with an inoperable tumor that had wrapped itself around his spinal cord and threatened him at any time with quadriplegia, a state of helplessness that this active man believed would have been insufferable. Instead, he chose to die.

Euthanasias slippery slope gets treacherous quickly. Last week HBOs Vice reported on the liberal assisted-suicide laws in the Netherlands, which dont require a terminal diagnosis.

Thus we find ourselves inside the cozy, bookshelf-lined home of a pleasant, cheerful Dutch woman in her 60s, on the day before her death. She was not physically ill, but, contrary to appearances, she had suffered from irresolvable depression for decades. Her children are grown and on their own. She simply no longer wanted to live. The next day, the laws of the Netherlands accommodated her.

It can get even more complicated: Last week, Charles Lane, writing in the Washington Post, reported on the case of a Dutch psychiatric patient known as 2014-77. As a child he suffered from neglect and abuse and by age 10 had been diagnosed with autism. His life was miserable for two decades and he attempted suicide repeatedly. More treatment was attempted, but finally doctors complied with his request to end his life.

Perhaps we can distill some principles out of all this complexity:

The clarity and humanity of a case like Brittany Maynards shouldnt obscure the moral and ethical dangers of assisted suicide.

Europeans deserve credit for attempting to deal realistically with the hopelessness, helplessness and desperation that many feel at the end of life.

Society has an obligation to spend resources to mitigate the psychological and physical distress that causes nearly 120 Americans to commit suicide every day.

Physical illness is not the only condition that makes life seem no longer worth living.

And while others have a stake in our choices, a dearly held right should be the privilege of deciding not only how we live, but how we die.
UC Berkeley officials announced Tuesday three cases of norovirus on campus, warning students, faculty and staff members to stay home if theyre sick and to diligently wash their hands.

The situation points to a possible norovirus outbreak at the university as three on-campus cases have been confirmed and 29 other people have reported similar symptoms.

We had three confirmed cases of norovirus last week, and of the 29 patients seen here at our health center with noro-like symptoms, there wasn't one location, event or eating establishment that ties them all together, said Kim LaPean, a spokeswoman with the campus health center.

Norovirus is on the rise in the state this season, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Officials released a statement Dec. 23 announcing the increase, saying outbreaks far exceed the number reported at this time in 2014.

The highly contagious virus results in gastroenteritis  which usually involves vomiting and diarrhea  and causes around 20 million illnesses and 570 to 800 reported deaths each year. It spreads quickly in closed, crowded settings like schools, hospitals and restaurants.

Symptoms start 12 to 48 hours after exposure and can last one to three days. Other signs of infection include nausea, stomach cramps, low-grade fever, headache and body aches.

Officials warn norovirus is very easy to catch, whether through direct contact with an infected person, eating food or drinking liquids contaminated with the virus, or touching your mouth after touching tainted surfaces or objects.

UC Berkeley officials opened an investigation with the City of Berkeley Public Health department into the cases. People who do business on campus are asked to stay at home if ill and avoid preparing food when sick. Officials are also advising everyone to carefully wash their hands after using the bathroom and before eating.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
Geary, Shea, O'Donnel, Graton &

A decomposed body found washed ashore near Bodega Dunes has been positively identified as that of a missing Santa Rosa attorney, authorities announced Tuesday.

The body of Steven Mitchell, 56, was discovered by a jogger around 8:15 a.m. Monday on the shoreline south of Salmon Creek. The Sonoma County Coroners Office conducted an examination to determine the badly decomposed body was Mitchell, said Sgt. Cecile Focha, a sheriffs office spokeswoman.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

As police chief, San Franciscos crusading District Attorney George Gascon was plenty close with the police union he now criticizes as obstructionist and was largely unconcerned about Police Department diversity  and even made a few racially disparaging remarks during a booze-fueled night out with union leaders.

Those are some of the assertions in a sworn declaration submitted by Gary Delagnes, the former president of the Police Officers Association, to a blue-ribbon task force that Gascon set up to look into allegations of racism and homophobia in the department.

Delagnes submitted his declaration on Tuesday, eight days after Gascons Feb. 22 appearance before the panel, where he testified that the police union influences the ability for a chief of police or frankly even a Police Commission to effectuate reform  and not for the better.

Delagnes spent 25 years on the force and was POA president for nine years before retiring in 2013. He was known for throwing verbal punches, and in his declaration he saves the haymaker for the end.

He recounts a 2010 dinner with Gascon, current POA President Martin Halloran and another union representative in Cambridge, Mass., where the group was attending a police union leadership forum organized by Harvard Law School.

During that dinner, Chief Gascon, who was drinking heavily, began reminiscing on his time with the Los Angeles Police Department, Delagnes said. He made multiple statements that disparaged minorities. He became so loud and animated that an African American patron approached Chief Gascon and asked him to restrain himself because his behavior was offending his family.

Gabrielle Lurie/Special to The Chronicle

In an interview, Halloran backed up Delagnes account. But Delagnes doesnt give specifics, and Halloran wouldnt, either.

The declaration speaks for itself, Halloran said.

Delagnes told us, If called as a witness by Gascons blue-ribbon panel, I will testify in more detail about those statements.

When provided a copy of the sworn declaration, spokesman Alex Bastian of the district attorneys office didnt directly respond to Delagnes charge or any other assertions in the document. Bastian said only, What he (Delagnes) lacks in credibility, he makes up for in imagination.

In his statement, Delagnes said he had decided to speak up after reading that Gascon told the blue-ribbon panel that he was much more worried today about the state of the Police Department than when he was chief from 2009 to 2011.

Delagnes said that as far as he could see, Gascon had few issues with the rank and file or the leaders of its union when he ran the department.

According to Delagnes, he and the chief routinely met or spoke on the phone two or three times a week.

These meetings and conversations concerned all aspects of the Police Department, not just POA matters, Delagnes said. The conversations were always candid, no holds barred. They were very productive.

We eventually had dinner several times and met for coffee on Tuesdays, said Delagnes, who was even invited to the chiefs wedding.

Throughout his tenure, and often at our dinner meetings, Chief Gascon and I resolved the vast majority of outstanding disciplinary actions involving police officers, Delagnes said. He could not have been more fair. He never criticized the discipline system, or the POAs approach to it, to me.

Delagnes added, Not once during all of our candid conversations did Chief Gascon ever state that he believed racial, gender, sexual orientation or other bias afflicted the SFPD. Nor did I ever hear of him expressing such a belief or perception to anyone else. Nor do I recall him undertaking any initiatives to improve diversity at any level within the SFPD.

His testimony and public comments now are at odds with how he conducted himself when he served as chief, Delagnes said.

And although Gascon told the blue-ribbon panel that most of the command staff were born and raised in the city, something that created a really tight-knit structure that precluded an objective look into the organization, Delagnes said the former chief had contributed to that.

Gascon complains about an old boys network  yet his promotions to the command staff were almost invariably graduates of San Francisco Catholic high schools or Lowell, Delagnes said.

And, in a parting shot, Delagnes recalled a lunch with Gascon in spring 2011 in which the newly named D.A. said he was going to oppose Greg Suhrs pending appointment as police chief.

I told him that his opposition to Greg Suhr was not supported by the POA and, if he objected, the POA would likely not endorse his re-election as district attorney, Delagnes said. Chief Gascon then told me he would not oppose Greg Suhr.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross
An 18-wheeler carrying a load of dirt crashed into a San Carlos home and overturned, luckily while the homeowners were away on vacation, California Highway Patrol said Tuesday.

The big rig was traveling downhill on Torino Drive toward Winding Way when the driver lost control about 1 p.m. on Monday and went straight through a stop sign at the intersection, said CHP Officer Art Montiel.

The truck plowed through a guardrail, a metal fence post and a power pole before it hit the two-story home in a residential area and overturned its load, Montiel said. More than 140 people were left without power for about three hours in the aftermath of the crash.

When officers arrived they found the driver, 29-year-old Ulysses Gonzales of San Jose, sitting on the corner of Torino Drive and Winding Way. He escaped from the truck with several cuts and taken to Stanford Medical Center with minor injuries. He was released the same day, Montiel said.

There was no one else in the truck, and the house was unoccupied because the family was on vacation. Half of their home was destroyed, and a portion of the load spilled into the house, officials said.

They were called last night and said they were going to be heading back, Montiel said of the homeowners. Apparently, its the second time a vehicle drove through their house.

It took crews hours to remove the big rig and trailer from the home.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials were called out to restore power, Montiel said.

Jason King, a spokesman for PG&E, said the initial outage from the crash occurred around 1:11 p.m. and took down two power lines. All 142 customers except the home that was crashed into had power restored by 4 p.m. Crews worked quickly and safely to restore power, he said.

An investigation into the crash is under way. Drugs or alcohol do not appear to be factors, Montiel said.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A string of downpours converging on the Bay Area will also unleash as much as three feet of snow in three days on the Lake Tahoe region, forecasters said Wednesday.

If one more powerful storm arrives in March after this system departs, resort officials say, the Sierra mountains could easily see the best spring ski conditions since 2011. And that spells good news for Californias parched reservoirs, too.

This new pattern is just going to open up the storm door for us this weekend, said Bryan Allegretto, a snowboarder who writes forecasts for the Lake Tahoe region on the website OpenSnow. Theres nothing to stop this storm. Theres nothing to weaken this storm.

More for you Rain Expected As Early As Today, Heaviest Amount On Saturday

Showers will begin early Thursday morning in the Bay Area, but the bulk of powder farther northeast wont arrive until Saturday evening. Above 7,500 feet, anywhere between one and three feet of snow will fall from Saturday to Monday, said Tony Fuentes, a National Weather Service meteorologist. Snow will also drop down to the lake level.

The atmospheric river sweeping into California will release rainstorms punctuated by weaker periods and several respites over at least 10 days. The snowstorm headed for the Sierra mountains will start out relatively warm but develop into a colder front by Saturday night.

"This could be that one-two punch that takes us over the top," said Kevin Cooper, a spokesman for Heavenly and Kirkwood resorts. "I would describe it as a miracle March."

The system, brewing in the north-central Pacific, is a welcome sign for skiers and state water officials alike.

Over the 10-day period starting Wednesday, the median inflow prediction for the states largest reservoir, Lake Shasta, is 475,000 acre feet of water, according to Peter Fickenscher, a hydrologist with California Nevada River Forecast Center. The second-largest, Lake Oroville, is expected to get 300,000 acre feet and Folsom Lake, near Sacramento, is looking at 250,000 acre feet. One acre foot is equal to about 325,900 gallons.

Theres a lot of uncertainty. Storm patterns shift  they go north, they go south, Fickenscher said. But after a dry February, this is a very welcome change in the weather pattern.

Inflows do not represent the total amount by which reservoirs will rise, since regulations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers require reservoir officials to release water if it reaches a designated threshold in order to avoid flooding. Folsom Lake, for instance, must stay 40 percent empty.

In the last few weeks at Folsom, outflows needed to increase from 3,000 cubic feet per second to 7,200, according to Louis Moore, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a federal agency that oversees water resource management.

The storm system is also expected to boost snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada, but its too early to tell by how much, forecasters said Wednesday. The average water content of snow in the state on Wednesday fell to 82 percent of the historical average for this time of year  down from 114 percent one month ago.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
IntercontinentalExchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, said Tuesday that it is considering making a competing offer for the London Stock Exchange Group.

The announcement came a week after the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borse said they were discussing a possible all-share merger, the third time the two big European exchanges have contemplated such a deal since 2000. It also followed news reports Monday that the IntercontinentalExchange might be considering a competing bid.

It did not provide details Tuesday of what it might be willing to pay for the London Stock Exchange, saying it had yet to approach the exchanges board.

No decision has yet been made as to whether to pursue such an offer, the IntercontintalExchange said. There can be no certainty that any offer will be made, nor as to the terms on which any offer will be made.

Hachette

buys Perseus

Two years after a planned deal fell through, Hachette Book Group is purchasing the Perseus Books Group, bringing together two of the countrys largest publishers.

The companies issued separate statements Tuesday. They announced that Hachette had acquired Perseus publishing division, an extensive network of imprints that includes Basic Books, PublicAffairs and Running Press.

In 2014, Hachette and Perseus called off a complex, three-way transaction that would have had Hachette buying Perseus publishing and distribution divisions, then selling the distribution arm to Ingram Content Group. Perseus is still hoping to sell its distribution business, which works with many of the countrys independent publishers.

Honeywell

drops merger

Honeywell abandoned a bid worth more than $90 billion for rival United Technologies, saying it did not want to force a deal with an unwilling partner.

United Technologies rejected the offer last week, saying a merger of the two industrial conglomerates would never be approved by antitrust regulators.

Honeywell said it disagreed, but that it would not go any further if United Technologies was not willing.

The two companies had held talks for some time before those negotiations became public. United Technologies had brought up the possibility of combining the companies in 2011 and 2015, Honeywell said.

During a meeting last month, Honeywell said it was told by United Technology executives that such a combination would be fabulous and that they would take it very seriously.

At some point the mood soured however, and Honeywell says United Technologies has since been unwilling to engage in negotiations.

United Technologies said Tuesday that Honeywells retreat is the appropriate outcome given the strong regulatory obstacles.

Both companies are big players in the aerospace sector. Honeywell, based in Morris Plains, N.J., also makes thermostats and security systems. United Technologies, of Farmington, Conn., also makes elevators and fire alarms.

Economy

Construction

spending up

Construction spending increased in January by the largest amount in eight months as weakness in home building was offset by a solid rebound in nonresidential activity.

The Commerce Department said construction spending increased 1.5 percent in January, the biggest gain since May, following a 0.6 percent increase in December. The advance pushed total spending to a seasonally adjusted $1.14 trillion in January, the highest level in more than eight years.

Economists are optimistic that construction will continue to show solid gains this year, helping to boost overall economic growth.

For January, home building activity showed no gain, but spending on nonresidential projects rose 1 percent following two months of declines. Spending on government projects increased 4.5 percent with state and local and federal spending both showing gains.

Manufacturing

activity falls

Factory activity in the United States and China  the worlds top two economies  slowed in February, reflecting and contributing to worldwide economic weakness.

The Institute for Supply Management said Tuesday that its U.S. manufacturing index rose to 49.5 last month from 48.2 in January. But anything below 50 signals a decline. Manufacturing has contracted in the United States for five straight months.

However, the report said that new orders and production increased in February.

Two Chinese surveys of manufacturing activity released separately Tuesday showed deterioration in February.

The global economy has been lackluster, partly because the Chinese growth has decelerated sharply. Internationally, manufacturers have endured much of the fallout from sluggish worldwide growth.

Chronicle News Services
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Saratoga Springs

A decade of mergers and acquisitions preceded two separate Saratoga Springs advertising agencies announcing within 10 days of one another that they would leave the Capital Region.

Redspring Communications in Saratoga Springs was acquired by Phoenix-based McMurry in 2006, which merged with TMG in 2013. Manifest Digital combined with McMurry/TMG in July to form Manifest, which said Monday that it would close its Saratoga Springs office.

In 2006, Palio Communications was acquired by inVentiv Health, which was sold to a Boston private equity firm in 2010. Palio merged with Ignite, which was also under the inVentiv roof, a few years later. That company said in late February that it planned to close its Saratoga Springs office.

Each company had shrunk its operations in Saratoga Springs prior to these announcements, according to area marketing and business leaders, and both companies, when explaining the decision, said they wanted to consolidate operations to their larger hubs.

"The decision is part of Manifest's strategy around geographic centers of excellence. We're aligning our resources with our clients and growing our footprint in key marketplaces, including NYC," Manifest spokeswoman Kennon Reinard said in an email when asked if the decision to close the Saratoga Springs office was connected to the decade of mergers and acquisitions.

Palio did not respond to a question about this connection.

As growth is a natural goal of new companies, Saratoga Springs must work hard to keep operations in the city amid acquisitions, Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce president Todd Shimkus said Tuesday. These include supporting technological infrastructure and working with business on permits and regulations, he said.

Shimkus said Manifest had 14 employees listed in the chamber's database, but that members do not always list every employee. In February, he said Palio had between 25 and 30 employees.

In general, marketing agency acquisitions can come with a culture change that can "hugely" disrupt employees, said Ed Mitzen, the founder of Fingerpaint who co-founded Palio in 1999.

"They underestimate how important it is to keep the people and the culture really supported and nurtured," he said. "Otherwise, you're killing the very aspect that made it so successful that you wanted to buy it in the first place."

The news of these closures is "unfortunate but not shocking," Mitzen said. He noted that the impact on the community will be "relatively minor" because both companies are smaller now than they were in their heyday.

Mitzen said he does not "have any desire" to sell Fingerpaint, which employs more than 100 people. "We're very committed to Saratoga," he said.

Michael Myers, another Palio co-founder, said employees and work culture differentiate firms. "The people are the product," he said.

News of these closures was "disappointing" to Myers, who left Palio shortly after it merged with Ignite. "These were two strong firms in the area," he said.

Myers said that former Palio employees work at various agencies in the region.

Shimkus said that Saratoga Springs's digital marketing and advertising sectors are still "robust." Both large and small firms compete in local and global markets, he said.

Amanda Magee, the principal for business development at Glens Falls-based Trampoline Advertising and Design Co., characterized the region's industry as supportive.

"Certainly there is competition, because we're all vying for audience attention, but I think in many ways the more of us there are, the better the creative communication is," she said. The Albany Ad Club Association of Professional Communicators will host an awards event on March 11, choosing winners from more than 200 businesses and agencies working in the area.

Manifest spokeswoman Kennon Reinard said Monday that Manifest planned to add 50 people in New York City and 100 companywide in the coming year. She said on Tuesday that the HR department could not confirm the number of Saratoga Springs employees or when that office would close.

Late in February, Palio spokeswoman Lori Goodale said some Saratoga Springs employees will continue to work with the company, including some who would relocate to the New York City office. She did not respond to a request for how many would relocate to New York City by deadline.

lellis@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @lindsayaellis
A baggage handler at Oakland International Airport who used his credentials to help put nine pounds of methamphetamine on a flight was sentenced to more than nine years in prison, authorities announced Tuesday.

Siosiua Fihaki, 32, of Hayward was sentenced to 112 months in prison Tuesday, according to Acting United States Attorney Brian Stretch and Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent in Charge John J. Martin.

On Dec. 15, 2015, Fihaki pleaded guilty to one count of distributing meth after he helped transport a duffel bag of the substance to Honolulu on May 29, 2014.

Officials said Fihaki confessed he carried the bag into the belly of the plane with other checked luggage, using his employee credentials to go through a secure door at Oakland International Airport.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Honolulu seized the bag, finding nine pounds of methamphetamine inside.

Fihakis sentence includes a three-year period of supervised release.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
As the Chippewa Valleys baby boomers turn into the aging boomers, the assisted living and specialty care business has seen a boom of its own. As that industry has matured over the past few decades, it has made great strides in improving the options for older adults who have often difficult needs.

Experts say the only problem now is keeping up with the boom  both in terms of finding enough trained workers to support all the growth, and a model to pay them.

Jennifer Owen, director of the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Eau Claire County, spends most of her days providing information to aging people and their families about their options as they enter their golden years.

As a local one-stop shop for adults transitioning into care facilities, Owen and her staff of 26 have seen first-hand the increase in not only people in need of care, but people in need of care beyond what a traditional nursing home can provide.

We highly encourage people to come to the resource center before they are in need, said Owen, who is in her seventh year with Eau Claire County. We really want to help educate people early about the resources and benefits in the community so they can make a smart decision and choose the type of living situation they want to be in.

People are more likely to make poor decisions when they are faced with crisis.

According to its recently-issued annual report, in 2014 the ADRC assisted 10,742 people with information and counseling, helped serve 7,847 meals through its Meals on Wheels program, and made arrangements for more than 24,000 trips for people with specialized transportation needs.

Much of the ADRCs $2.7 million operating budget comes from state and federal grants, and last year the center was one of six to be awarded a Dementia Care Specialist grant. Having to balance that tight of a budget with providing so many services is emblematic of the issues many other care and care-related facilities in the area face, and ultimately contributes to a serious labor shortage because of low wages in the field.

According to Continuum magazine, a Wisconsin-based publication focusing on long-term care, some 77.6 million Americans already receive or will be considering long-term, specialized care in the coming years. Continuum also reports a median wage of $12.39 per hour for Wisconsins nearly 66,000 caregivers, with many starting wages at or below $10 per hour.

I think one of the most difficult things facing Eau Claire County is going to be having enough employees in the profession to care for the number of older adults in the community, Owen said. Were already starting to see a hiring crisis within the care agencies.

Fortunately all of the providers in Eau Claire County are really aware of this issue and are working together to come up with a solution.

Riding the wave

Like the demographics in many places around the state and the country, Eau Claire and its surrounding counties are faced with a large number of aging adults. And with age comes a variety of special care needs, from memory care to assisted living and rehabilitation.

As that wave crests for those surpassing the age of 60, local care facilities have poured resources into new facilities and specialized training  meaning older adults have more options now than ever.

Tony Manzella, community mentor/administrator at Neighbors of Dunn County, said the number of traditional nursing homes have been topped by those with specialized care offerings.

The main thing here is that were not seeing any magic treatments to cure this stuff, he said, referring to Alzheimers disease and dementia. The demographics show that were going to see more and more of this down the road. So as an administrator I hear about new memory care facilities going up all the time, and thats because there is a need.

There gets to be a time when its very difficult for families to watch their mom or dad in that situation, and they need help. Theyre sort of at the end of their rope. Facilities help those people socialize and live happier and safer  than at home without proper care.

Neighbors of Dunn County is a government-run care facility that employs nearly 200 and stretches across a new 24-acre campus in Menomonie. The grounds are unique in that they are built on the small home model, which includes nine total houses with 13-16 residents in each.

The homes are divided into three care units for memory care, some of which are typical nursing homes, some memory care and others for short-term rehabilitation. Some of those homes include ceiling lifts, which aid staff with those residents who have mobility issues. Other homes like memory care require staff with extensive training and additional security for difficult situations.

All of those costs make it difficult for nonprofits and government agencies to stand on their own two feet, and for the for-profit facilities to make a buck. However, the real hurdle at this point is the reimbursement allowances for the vast majority of elderly who are on Medicaid.

Manzella said it costs the agency an average of $95,000 per year, or $250 per day, to house and care for residents. Medicaid reimbursements dont always cover the costs.

There are times when the county nursing home takes care of residents that some other facilities either are not prepared to take care of or prefer not to take care of  either because the resident has physical or emotional problems that they may not be ready to care for, Manzella said. So sometimes we get residents that I would say are maybe a little harder to care for than the private facilities.

But people with memory care issues need caregivers who understand that these are still people. Theyre still individuals who have every right to have a full and enjoyable life even though they dont know what day it is. Or what time it is. Or who the president is.

Manzella has worked in care facilities for 23 years, and a full decade with Dunn County. Throughout his career he has run the gamut in the nature of the facilities he has served, from for-profit to government.

Though his organization, which moved to its new facility in 2013, has remained financially viable and received high marks for service on resident surveys, the role of government in providing those services has been controversial. While some believe the government should leave care up to the private sector, others see it as fundamental to county residents quality of life.

At one point our county board was mixed on whether or not to build a new facility. Some supervisors felt the private sector should handle it, Manzella said. Other people felt this was a needed service in the community that has traditionally been provided for well over 110 years and we shouldnt stop providing that.

Reimbursement rates

Though for-profit care facilities can provide the frills in its facilities that the non-profits cannot, whether through private investment or revenue from other services, they are also having trouble staying in the black due to inadequate reimbursement from government insurance providers.

Jeremy Kiley, regional director of operations at Dove Healthcare, says the business loses $52 per day per Medicaid patient. Like Neighbors of Dunn County, Dove provides memory care and assisted living services. Doves 800 local employees provide those types of care for around 360 residents at any one time, and work out of two facilities in Eau Claire and one in Chippewa Falls.

The training costs are a factor, but when you think about it in general, the costs are going up because the way our industry is funded is confusing, Kiley said. We run our business based on case  and because from 65 to 75 percent of our patients are funded by Medicaid, we have to offset that loss by doing more rehab, doing more specialty care or charging the private pay person more.

Despite narrow margins, Dove is rising to meet the need by building new facilities in Rice Lake this summer and Bloomer in 2016.

People are looking for community-based facilities, Kiley said. The growth in assisted living over the past 10 years has been amazing. Theres far more assisted living facilities now than there is nursing homes.

Now hiring

The growth of the specialized care industry seems like it would be a boon for local jobs. But with system overload in Medicaid and the high cost of doing business, Kiley echoed Owens sentiment that it will be a challenge to find as many skilled caregivers as the industry needs.

The biggest issue were facing is the caregiver shortage that is in front of us, especially now that the baby boomer explosion is on the way, he said. It is a really big issue for us in all settings. As a society we need to wrap our head around that issue, because all aspects of care are going to have problems.

And its a big problem that were just beginning to see the front end of, and its a big problem not just here in the state but also probably nationwide.

Though the shortage has been identified, administrators are still unsure of a proper fix and are putting their heads together to find one as quickly as possible.

I wish I had the magic answer, Owen said. In my opinion there must be a way to incentivize, to pique the interest of young adults and encourage them to enter the nursing or care field. But unfortunately, as long as the pay rates remain the same, that is going to be difficult.
A serial robber charged with hitting four San Francisco banks has pleaded guilty to the crimes, authorities announced Tuesday.

Richard Laurence Stewart, 52, of San Francisco, known as the straw-hat bandit, was charged with four counts of bank robbery or attempted bank robbery on Oct. 27.

United States Attorney Brian J. Stretch and FBI Special Agent in Charge David J. Johnson announced the plea Tuesday.

Stewart was charged with taking $7,100 from a Bank of America branch on May 13, $316 from a US Bank on Oct. 14, and $6,760 from a California Bank & Trust branch on Oct. 16, and with attempting to rob a Chase Bank branch on May 12.

He was arrested Oct. 18 after a witness saw him leave one of the robberies in a taxi and authorities were able to connect him to the ride, officials said.

Stewart wore different disguises during his burglaries, including glasses, hats, a black curly wig, a fake beard and mustache, and a single surgical glove. He donned a tan fedora in one of the holdups, which resulted in the straw-hat bandit moniker.

Authorities discovered the hat during a search of his apartment, along with a note reading, This is a robbery. Remain calm and discreet, according to an FBI affidavit.

The FBI has been investigating similar robberies since October 2014. He had apparently robbed eight additional banks in San Francisco between October 27, 2014 and February 27, 2015, officials said.

Stewart could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison with a $250,000 fine on each bank robbery count.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
Dear Abby: Im 39 and seven months pregnant with my husbands only child. Since becoming pregnant, I have become somewhat withdrawn due to depression. My doctor prescribed Paxil, but my husband wont allow me to take it. I dont leave the house unless I absolutely need to because he accuses me of cheating on him daily. Two nights ago he took a single female friend out to dinner, and they were gone for five hours. It hurt my feelings because in my view it was disrespectful on both their parts. When they got back, I was sitting outside and she wouldnt even come to say goodbye to me. When I asked my husband why I hadnt been invited, he said, Neither of us wanted you there. In his eyes he has done nothing wrong. He tells me Im crazy and I need mental help. Am I wrong for being so upset?

Not Crazy in Texas

Dear Not Crazy: Not at all. It appears you are married to a controlling, emotionally abusive man who may be cheating on you. One of the hallmarks of philanderers is that they will accuse the innocent partner of cheating. Feeling depressed during a pregnancy under these circumstances isnt surprising. (If you felt any other way, you wouldnt be normal.) That your doctor would prescribe an antidepressant and your husband would not allow you to take it is alarming. If you have close friends and family, I urge you to tell them whats going on. And while youre at it, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline (www.thehotline.org)  the phone number is (800) 799-7233  because you may need help to get safely away.

Dear Abby: My husband, our two kids and I share a home with my parents, two sisters and younger brother. Sometimes it seems crowded because there is no privacy and a lack of respect. Lately I am having a problem with my sister. Despite the fact that she and my family share the upstairs level of the home, she continues to walk around nude or in her undergarments throughout the day because she hates wearing clothes. At various times my family members and I have had uncomfortable encounters with her over this. I have talked to her about it repeatedly, but she refuses to cooperate. I think its rude, inconsiderate and inappropriate, not to mention a completely avoidable problem. What do you think? Am I wrong for being upset that her behavior doesnt change and the message doesnt seem to get through to her?

Clothes-Minded

Dear Clothes-Minded: I agree that your sisters behavior is inappropriate. She should not be parading around in a state of undress in front of your husband and children. Because she has chosen to ignore your requests, enlist the help of your parents to get the message across to her. Its their roof shes under, and perhaps they will have better luck.
If for nothing else, the Norwegian drama The Wave would be notable as a disaster picture on a human scale. But theres more to it: some genuinely suspenseful moments and characters worth caring about.

Another plus is that you wont leave the theater feeling thrashed by the megabuck special effects obligatory in Hollywoods current blockbusters. The CGI tsunami in The Wave is modest in scale (and no doubt in cost), but its effective.

You may not know (I didnt) that Norway has a history of aquatic disasters caused by huge rockslides creating immense waves in fjords. As The Wave opens, scientists are monitoring a particular mountain, hoping for advance notice of a collapse that could result in an 80-meter wave engulfing a small tourist town.

A geologist (an affable Kristoffer Joner) whos a bit more on the ball than some of his colleagues becomes convinced that something bad is about to happen to the mountain. When it does, he has to push them hard to sound the warning siren. Then he goes into hyperdrive to rescue his wife (Ane Dahl Torp) and two children, whom weve already encountered in a couple of enjoyable scenes of home life.

When it comes, the wave  as crisply rendered as the rest of the movie  is good and scary. Some of the pro forma scenes, like the residents abandoning their cars to try to outrun the wall of water, are dispatched quickly and with enough unexpected turns to feel fresh.

But some arent, which keeps this film from a top rating. And while in most respects the work by director Roar Uthaug is highly capable, he does seem to have picked a few of the secondary characters from the catalog of disaster movie cliches.

The Wave, however, transcends these issues. Its a brisk and suspenseful account of a decent person struggling to save his family from a deadly force of nature  one of the timeless stories that we go to the movies to see.

Walter Addiego is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: waddiego@sfchronicle.com

The Wave

Thriller. Starring Kristoffer Joner, Ane Dahl Torp. Directed by Roar Uthaug. In Norwegian with English subtitles. (R. 104 minutes.)

To see a trailer, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIe8YLzWXuY.
Over the past few months, a 5-year-old California girl was suffering from a horrific runny nose. Green, smelly gunk dripped from her nostrils.

Khloe Russell of Hemet was told by three doctors that she had a sinus infection, according to UPI.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Hillary Clintons presidential campaign rolled through the South on Tuesday in the biggest night of the primary season, an election sweep that significantly narrows Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders path to the Democratic nomination.

What a super Tuesday! Clinton told supporters at her victory party in Miami. All across our country today, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together.

But Sanders was far from shut out. He trampled Clinton in his home state of Vermont, beat her in Oklahoma and easily won caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota.

The race is far from over, he told a large and raucous crowd of adoring supporters in Vermont.

At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain, he said. And let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace, to every one of those states.

Sanders peaks early

But it wasnt a coincidence that Sanders made his victory speech about a half hour after the polls closed on his 6-to-1 home-state win and before the results were released in a number of Clinton-friendly states.

It looks like Clinton is really racking it up tonight, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst and professor at the University of Southern California. But one of the reasons shes doing so well is that she owes a lot to African American voters.

Southern states, with plenty of pro-Clinton black Democrats, have always been considered her campaigns firewall, protecting her from the unexpectedly tough challenge from Sanders. Thats the way it turned out Tuesday, with Clinton winning more than 60 percent of the vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

CNN exit polls, for example, found Clinton winning 83 percent of the African American vote in Georgia and a startling 93 percent in Alabama. Even in Oklahoma, where Sanders won and 74 percent of the voters are white, Clinton took 71 percent of the black vote.

Those numbers mean Sanders will face continuing questions about his ability to win in states with heavy minority populations.

Clinton went into Super Tuesday with a big lead in pledged delegates and ended the evening with an even wider margin, pulling big numbers in such delegate-rich states as Texas, Massachusetts, Georgia and Virginia.

But the future looks even bleaker for Sanders and his insurgent band of progressives and young voters. Since Democrats award their delegates on a proportional basis, that means the senator not only has to win more states than Clinton, but he also has to win them big.

And with Clinton holding double-digit leads in the polls of huge future primary states like California, New York, Florida and Ohio, its hard to see just where Sanders can get the victories he needs to keep Clinton from the nomination.

The road only gets tougher for Bernie, Jeffe said. Its not really about winning now. Its about pushing Hillary farther to the left and having a voice in the partys future direction.

Pledging to bring Vermont values to the rest of the country, Sanders on Tuesday didnt sound like a man headed anywhere but to Julys Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

This campaign is not just about electing a president. Its about transforming America, he said. Its about dealing with unpleasant truths that exist in American today and having the guts to confront those truths.

Theres no real reason for Sanders to go anywhere, even with his chances for the nomination fading. He collected more than $42 million for his campaign in February alone, leaving him with all the cash he needs to continue his run.

In her victory speech, Clinton stole some of Sanders most popular  and populist  applause lines, arguing that this country belongs to all of us, not just those at the top, and that too many of those with the most wealth and the most power in this country today have forgotten that workers and the middle class also count.

Focus on Republicans

But Clinton also revealed a growing confidence that she has a clear road to the nomination. She pivoted from any attacks on Sanders, whom she praised for his strong showing and campaigning, and focused instead on the Republicans she could face in the fall.

Its clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower, the former secretary of state said. Trying to divide the country between us and them is wrong, and were not going to let it work.

She also took her shot at GOP front-runner Donald Trump, mocking his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.

Instead of building walls, were going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential, she said.

Her choice of Miami for her Super Tuesday victory party also was a carefully planned jab at the Republican presidential hopefuls. Florida holds its primary on March 15, and both Trump, who has made the state his second home, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio also were in South Florida for their own Tuesday events.

After tonight, Clinton can be more comfortable about turning away from Sanders and focusing more on Trump and the other Republicans, Jeffe said.

Clinton and Sanders will meet Sunday for a debate in Flint, Mich.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
MONROE, Wash.  Eight years ago, when Noel Caldellis began serving time for killing a university student, his main objective was to make 20-plus years in prison pass as quickly as possible: work out, walk circles in the yard with inmates and watch TV.

A few years into his sentence at the Monroe Correctional Complex, Caldellis discovered he could spend his time developing his mind as well as his body, moving from the weight room to the classroom.
Donald Trump is really happening.

Trump  the billionaire developer who has never held public office  took a major step toward becoming the Republican nominee for president by tapping into angry white voters from Massachusetts to Alabama to dominate the Super Tuesday contests.

By snagging the vast majority of delegates across the 11 states where Republican voters cast ballots, Trump not only showed he could attract support in different parts of the country, he left his challengers little hope of intercepting him en route to the nomination. The nights results also showed hed survived the past five days of aggressive attacks on him as a con man who could destroy the party.

Even Sen. Ted Cruzs winning the nights biggest delegate prize  his home state of Texas, as well as neighboring Oklahoma  was good news for Trump. So was the fact that his other rivals, Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have enough money and hubris to stick around longer, too, despite trailing badly.

The best thing to happen to Trump is that Cruz won his home state because that means hes going to stay in the race, said Dave Brady, a professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. And as long as there are five people in the race, that means he can continue to win without winning a majority of the voters.

And time is running out for everyone but Trump: By the end of March, Republicans will have chosen 64 percent of their delegates.

But Brady, who has been studying the attitudes of the same 3,000 voters since last June for the online site YouGov, said, Make no mistake: The Trump phenomenon is real. There are a lot of pissed-off white voters out there. Theyre angry and theyre unhappy.

Trump started to assume a general election posture during his acceptance speech at his glitzy Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Standing in front of 10 American flags, Trump was introduced by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who recently endorsed him after previously ripping Trump with such shots as: We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief. Showmanship is fun, but its not the type of leadership that will truly change America.

But Tuesday, Christie said Trump was leading a movement.

Aside from insulting Rubio as a lightweight, Trump appeared to tone down his rhetoric, even predicting that he would behave differently after the primary season ended.

I would like to see the Republican Party unify, and when we unify theres nobody who can beat us, Trump said.

Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama who was watching the speech, tweeted: Hes already sanding off the rough edges, moderating the tone, and focusing on economic populism. Watch out, people.

Heres what else we learned from Super Tuesday:

Trump is winning in unusual places. Places like Massachusetts and Virginia, that have been won by moderate Republicans  the people who voted for (2012 GOP nominee Mitt) Romney or (former President) George W. Bush, said Jeremi Suri, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Its showing that they are not revolted by him. Hes not verboten, Suri said. Theyre not embarrassed by him. And that might even be more striking.

Rubio finally wins something, but is it too little too late? Perhaps only Warriors guard Steph Curry would be encouraged to keep shooting after an 0-13 skid. But Rubio won the Minnesota caucus Tuesday night, which inspired him to tell Fox News that not only is he not leaving the race, but that Ill campaign in all 50 states even if I have to get in my pickup.

Thats unlikely.

If he doesnt win his home state of Florida, hes done, said Barbara A. Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginias Presidential Center. I just dont see how Rubio can come back from this.

Trump spent the least on ads  and still won. Cruz had two wins, but his campaign and the super PACs and other outside groups supporting him spent $6.2 million in TV advertising in Super Tuesday states. Rubio and his supporters shelled out $3.5 million while Trump spent only $1.1 million.

Evangelicals are leaving Cruzs choir. Cruzs path to victory was supposed to be gilded by evangelical Christian support through the Deep South, including many of the states that went for Trump Tuesday. Expectations are way down, Brady said.  He thought hed be able to sweep seven or eight states, because of evangelicals.

Voters want something that (almost) only Trump can give them. Across the Super Tuesday landscape, voters loudly told exit pollsters that they wanted an outsider. Only Trump  with zero political experience  can offer them that now that Carsons campaign has tanked.

Paging Dr. Carson to end the nastiness. As the votes were being counted Tuesday, Carsons campaign said that he had reached out to his rivals and asked them to meet before Thursdays debate in Michigan in the hope of tamping down a campaign that has taken on a nastier, sophomoric edge in the past five days.

Dont bank on it, Dr. Carson  Rubio is going to stay nasty. Speaking to supporters in his home state Tuesday, Rubio boasted that just five days ago, we began to unmask the true nature of the front-runner of this race. And in just five days we have seen the impact it has had. The party of Lincoln and Reagan will never be held by a con artist.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter @joegarofoli
LANSING, Mich.  The state of Michigan restricted Flint from switching water sources last April unless it got approval from Gov. Rick Snyders administration under the terms of a $7 million loan needed to help the city emerge from state management, according to a document released Wednesday.

By the time the loan agreement was in place, complaints about Flints water quality were growing louder, but officials had not yet discovered that improperly treated Flint River water had caused lead to leach from aging pipes.
Workers looking for careers with a future would do well to consider health care, based on projections for western Wisconsin.

According to Scott Hodek, west-central region economist for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the aging baby boomer population is creating a perfect storm in the demand for health care workers. On one hand, aging baby boomers will require more health care services.

Youve got a case of skyrocketing demand and its a high-skilled job, Hodek said.

In addition, many of those retiring baby boomers will be leaving jobs in the health care industry, depleting the ranks of doctors, nurses and other health care workers. In the DWDs latest employment projections for 2010-2020, west-central Wisconsin is expected to need 845 new registered nurses and more than 1,000 new home health aides.

If youre a skilled nurse, you can pretty much find a job anywhere, Hodek said.

The DWDs Fall 2014 survey of employers in the region ranked registered nurse as the hardest position to fill. Certified nursing assistant (CNA) made the top five. Physician assistant and physician were also in the top 10.

Nursing No. 1 at CVTC

It comes as no surprise, then, that health care programs at the Chippewa Valleys higher education institutions are filled to capacity trying to meet the demand.

Nursing is the biggest program offered at Chippewa Valley Technical College, with 200 graduates per year earning associate degrees and more than 400 earning nursing assistant certificates. CVTCs dean of health and emergency services, Shelly Olson, said that demand for those graduates is high.

While its not the boom that it was in 2004 where we couldnt put out enough fast enough, its always going to be there, Olson said. Health care is a necessity and the workers in health care are a necessity.

She added that, depending on the field, some employers have more part-time opportunities than full-time ones, but for the most part, placement for health care graduates is excellent. Graduates often report between 90- and 100-percent employment within six months, depending on the program.

There is a year-and-a-half wait to get into CVTCs nursing program. Adding capacity is not as simple as hiring more faculty. Olson said they are limited by the number of clinical placements available with area hospitals and nursing homes.

Students who do make it into the nursing program can expect to work hard, both in school and in their chosen field.

Its not an easy profession. Theres compassion fatigue. There are long hours. Its stressful, Olson said.

More than just nursing

While most everyone is familiar with nursing, she said those looking for careers in health care should remember there are many other fields in demand.

Respiratory therapists are usually hired before they even graduate, Olson said. You dont know what a respiratory therapist does until you have a relative or yourself who is in a hospital needing either breathing treaments or CPR, life-saving measures. The program is much smaller than nursing, graduating between 11-16 respiratory therapists each year.

If theres a safe bet for those looking to enter the health care workforce, Olson said it is nursing assistant.

Almost anywhere you point your compass, youll find an opening, she said. CNAs need only take a three-credit, one-semester course and then pass a state test. The entry-level job has high turnover  the starting wage was $11.56 an hour for 2013-2014 CVTC graduates  but CNAs will often continue their education and work their way up the pay scale.

Lindy Clark of Chippewa Falls is one of those students with a step-by-step plan. Having completed her first year in pre-nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, she is taking a CNA course at CVTC this summer. Clark plans to work as a nursing assistant to help pay for her bachelors degree. Once she is a registered nurse, she can work in that role while she pursues a graduate degree.

My ultimate goal is to be a midwife. To get to that point, I have to start at the nursing level, Clark said. After that, shell need to earn a masters degree and then complete a post-graduate certified nurse midwife program. Its a long road, but as a certified nurse midwife, she can expect a starting salary around $74,000 in Eau Claire County.

Not just for women

If the professions still bring to mind an exclusively female image, it is time to update that view, according to Deb Kjelstad, CVTCs director of radiography.

One-fourth of our graduates are male, she said. I think weve got the word out that it isnt just for females anymore.

Kjelstad believes increased awareness and new technologies are attracting more men to the field. With mobile MRI and CT units installed in semi trailers, one new job description would put both a radiography degree and a commercial drivers license to work.

They could scan and drive truck at the same time, Kjelstad said.

While an associate degree will prepare a student to work as a registered nurse, Dr. Linda Young, dean of the College of Nursing and Health Science at UW-Eau Claire, said there is a growing demand for nurses with bachelors degrees.

The employment picture for all RNs is good  about 94 percent of graduates are either employed or continuing their education (85 percent find work right in Eau Claire)  but many area employers now require RNs to go on to earn their Bachelor of Science in nursing if they did not already have the degree when hired.

Competitive landscape

Entry into nursing programs is competitive. UWEC only has room for about 50 percent of the qualified nursing applicants on the Eau Claire campus each year. Young says funding for the College of Nursing and faculty positions is an issue given the state budget, but there is also a shortage of nursing faculty in Wisconsin and nationwide.

The mean age of nursing faculty in Wisconsin is 58. With the economy improving, many of those who delayed retirement will likely do so soon. Young said Wisconsin has a growing need for nurses with PhDs and doctor of nursing practice degrees (DNP). Nurse practitioners provide primary care, including diagnosing and treating patients and writing prescriptions. It can be hard to convince DNP-prepared nurses to go into teaching when they can earn more in clinical practice.

PhD- and DNP-prepared nursing faculty may start out as assistant professors with a salary of around $70,000, Young said. On the other hand, if you have been working for a number of years as a nurse practitioner with a masters or doctoral degree, your salary may start around $105,000 in clinical practice.

A state grant called Nurses for WI has helped address the faculty shortage in Wisconsin, Young said. More than 55 awardees received funding or loan forgiveness toward their PhD, DNP or post-doctorate studies in return for their commitment to teach in a UW System nursing program for three years. That initiative ended June 30.

Therapy jobs on the rise

Dr. Julie Anderson, director of UWECs Health Careers Center, said those looking into health care careers can find opportunity beyond the familiar choices of physician and nurse, but not all professions are on the rise.

Physical therapy, occupational therapy and physician assistant, those have become hot markets, Anderson said. Pharmacy was really big with UWEC students 10 years ago, but in the past two years student interest, at least on our campus, has declined.

A 2011 Wisconsin Hospital Association report predicted a shortage of 2,000 doctors in the state by 2030. Rural areas are particularly hard hit.

The state of Wisconsin announced a $750,000 grant last December to help Mayo Clinic Health System train more family-care doctors in northwest Wisconsin. Dr. Randall Linton, president and CEO of Mayos northwest Wisconsin region, said the family medicine residency program will ramp up to training five doctors per year, and experience shows that training them here may keep them here.

The more they understand the great opportunities that exist in this area and have their training experience here, there is a much higher likelihood that they will stay here for their practice at the end of that time, Linton said.

The Medical College of Wisconsin will open new campuses in Green Bay this fall and Wausau in 2016 to address both the shortage of rural doctors and a dearth of mental health professionals in the state.

Not all health care careers involve direct patient care. Dr. Mel Kantor, chairman of UWECs Institute of Health Sciences, said a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental public health prepares a person to work as an environmental health specialist, or registered sanitarian as the job is known in Wisconsin. Those workers can find jobs inspecting restaurants and monitoring water quality in municipal swimming pools, lakes and water reclamation areas. Public health agencies focus on the big picture, treating the whole community.

There are cancer registries and surveillance systems that monitor certain diseases to see if there are going to be flareups, Kantor said. Professionals in that field typically have masters degrees.

Job growth and salaries vary, but with an aging population and many workers retiring, health care should offer plenty of career opportunities for the foreseeable future.
State Patrol Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson described the damage as significant and said he expected it to be a significant long-term event, though he didnt know how long it would be.
In-N-Out burgers have a cult following in California, and soon, they'll garner even more fans.

The mini chain, which has locations around the Western United States and Texas, has announced that it is planning to make the switch to beef not treated with antibiotics.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A once-illustrious San Francisco Internet entrepreneur  convicted of domestic violence and ousted from his company  was ordered to pay his former chauffeur nearly half a million dollars in unpaid wages.

The California Labor Commissioner ordered Gurbaksh Chahal, 33, to pay Khabib Lutfiyev $480,727.81 for nearly a years worth of work, according to a Feb. 11 decision.

Chahal first hired Lutfiyev as his private limo driver and bodyguard for his 30th birthday celebration in Bodrum, Turkey, and eventually asked that Lutfiyev start working full time when they got back to California, Stephanie Barrett, a hearing officer for the labor commission, wrote in the order.

Lutfiyev agreed to take the gig on condition that his family be moved to the Bay Area  a deal he worked out through the owner of the limo company he worked for.

The family soon moved to Brisbane on Chahals dime while Lutfiyev began his new job, his attorney, Katherine Fiester of the Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center, said in an interview Tuesday.

But very quickly, the business arrangement turned sour.

Chahal downloaded an app on Lutfiyevs phone called Ping Me that tracked his phone in real time and required him to be available 24/7, Barrett wrote.

Being his personal limo driver literally translated into a few hours of sleep a night, Fiester said. And ultimately he wasnt being paid at all.

Chahal had negotiated to pay Lutfiyev $7,000 a month, but anytime the discussion of a paycheck came up, Chahal would say, Do you want your family evicted? Fiester said.

I would drive his Rolls-Royce and his Ferrari and people would think I get paid a good salary, Lutfiyev said in an interview Tuesday. He told me I have to park in front of night clubs and strip clubs and tell them Thats Gurbakshs car.

Chahals relationship with the limo company  and eventually with Lutfiyev  fell apart in June of 2013. The labor commission found Chahal owed Lutfiyev $270,816 in unpaid wages, $71,425 in damages, $92,452 in interest and $46,003 in penalties.

Chahal was once described as one of Americas most eligible bachelors and was former CEO of the San Francisco online advertising company RadiumOne.

He pleaded guilty in April 2014 to misdemeanor charges of battery and domestic violence battery, stemming from an August 2013 assault of his girlfriend at his Rincon Hill home.

The RadiumOne board of directors decided to fire Chahal as CEO later that month.

Before becoming chief executive of that company, Chahal founded and sold two Internet companies for more than $300 million.

When you see an employer like Mr. Chahal not paying their employee, a lot of times its about manipulation and control and taking advantage, Fiester said.

Chahals attorney, James Lassart, was not available for comment Tuesday. Calls to Chahal were not immediately returned.

Chahal has until Wednesday to appeal the order.

Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky
India's Rising Dengue Fever Outbreak Causes Concern Gospel for Asia Distributes More Than 250,000 Mosquito Nets to Poor Families



Contact: 434-426-5310,

pressrelations@gfa.org



DELHI, India, March 1, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- Gospel for Asia (www.gfa.org) has been working with Believers Church in India to distribute more than 250,000 mosquito nets to poor families across the country. The effort is one way to combat an outbreak of mosquito-transmitted dengue fever, which health officials say has been one of the worst in the past six years.



Photo: Indian women at a Believers Church in Delhi receive some of the 250,000 mosquito nets distributed by Gospel for Asia. The ministry is responding to the current dengue fever outbreak, which has been most prevalent in Delhi.



The Union Health Ministry in India reported almost 28,000 cases of dengue fever as of last quarter 2015. In Delhi alone, at least 25 people died from dengue fever last year, compared with only three in 2014.



"This dengue fever outbreak is alarming and preventable," said Dr. K. P. Yohannan, founder and international director of Gospel for Asia. "By God's grace, we've engaged in a proactive response to help protect people all year long from further contracting this disease."



Gospel for Asia-supported Believers Churches throughout India has distributed mosquito nets to some of the country's poorest and neediest families. Believers Church leaders also have provided public health education to residents.



In Bhubaneswar, Mayor Shri Ananta Narayana Jena had praise for the work of Believers Church. "What Believers Church is doing for the people by providing education and health and hygiene awareness is really admirable," Jena said. "The usage of mosquito nets is an important means that will help protect people against many diseases."



Dengue fever is common in tropical regions, where mosquitoes transmit the disease. Also called "breakbone fever," dengue is similar to malaria. Victims initially have symptoms that include fever, headaches, and joint and muscle pain. The worse cases are terminal.



Communicable diseases like dengue fever continue to be a major public-health problem in India, according to a National Health Profile report.



"Let us pray for the Lord's healing for all those who are suffering from the fever right now," Yohannan said. "Let's also pray the Lord would enable us to demonstrate His love by providing even more mosquito nets in the days to come."



More information is available at www.gfa.org.



GOSPEL FOR ASIA has  for more than 30 years  provided humanitarian assistance and spiritual hope to millions across South Asia, especially among those who have yet to hear the Good News. Last year, this included more than 75,000 sponsored children, free medical services for more than 180,000 people, 6,000 wells drilled, 11,000 water filters installed, Christmas presents for more than 400,000 needy families, and spiritual teaching available in 110 languages in 14 nations through radio ministry.



To schedule an interview with a Gospel for Asia representative, contact pressrelations@gfa.org.

Share Tweet
The United States is sharply divided when it comes to politics, but there's one thing that seems to bring us all together: porn.

The adult website Pornhub took a look at the most-searched terms in the first month of this year in all 50 states and found that Americans overwhelmingly love lesbians.
For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

On March 1  this Tuesday  astronaut Scott Kelly returns to Earth after a year spent aboard the International Space Station.

Fans have seen his breathtaking pictures of the blue planet for the past year now, as well as watched him cope with being away from his friends and family.

All things considered it appears that hes been having a ball.

Back in August he wrote that one of the things he missed the most was weather, simply feeling the wind or the sun on his skin. Thats impossible to do in space.

FRUIT JUGGLING & LONG-DISTANCE FLOWERS: Highlights from Scott Kelly's first six months

"Something people don't recognize is that being on the space station is probably a lot like being in some kind of confinement  like isolation," he said in a video interview with the Associated Press late last year.

"Not having the ability to leave is ... an all-present feeling."

THE BEAUTY BELOW: Scott Kelly's most beautiful photos of Earth

Kellys 340-day mission and the studies that he has carried out will hopefully tell NASA scientists more about how the human body copes with long periods in space and inform protocol that future astronauts follow. His genetics are being compared with those of his twin brother Mark Kelly back here on Earth.Remember, science needs to figure out well send a group of astronauts into space for a 1,000-day mission to and from Mars. Kellys mission is beginning of what will be years of research.

Kelly will land in Kazakhstan at 11:27 p.m. on March and he will arrive at Houstons Ellington Field on March 2, according to a NASA press release.

After landing in Kazakhstan, Kelly will hold the record among American astronauts for cumulative time in space, with 520 days.

But what should he do when he returns to gravity?

We asked Houston Chronicle readers what they would do once they took that first breath of fresh air back home on Earth.

Its not a surprise that most people would gain 20 pounds eating all of the foods that werent available in space. Kellys improvised burgers and tacos made a lot of us earth-bound eaters feel very fortunate.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A judge has dismissed a claim that Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz isn't eligible for the Illinois ballot because he was born in Canada.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Maureen Ward Kirby tossed the case on a technicality Tuesday.

Kirby says the suburban Chicago attorney who filed the complaint, Lawrence Joyce, failed to give a copy of it to Cruz or state electoral board members, as required by Illinois law. Instead, Joyce served only lawyers representing Cruz and the board.

Joyce says the Texas senator can't be president because he wasn't born in the U.S. Cruz and some legal experts say he's eligible because his mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born.

"Ted Cruz was born in Canada," Joyce said in an earlier post on 888 Web Today, a conservative, Christian site to which he contributes columns. "His mother was a U.S. citizen at the time. Under statute, Ted Cruz became a citizen at birth . . . but citizenship by statute is not natural-born citizenship."

Polls heading into Super Tuesday showed Cruz with comfortable lead in his home state of Texas, but Donald Trump held the early lead in a number of other states.

Joyce backs Ben Carson but says he acted on his own.
Regarding Nature wins (Letters, March 1): For weeks, Ive been trying to think how to word my letter to you about the continued press of city administrators to build more housing in San Francisco. That letter helped me. Must we continue to tear down buildings and parking structures to build ever higher and higher skyscrapers to house more and more people? Isnt there such a thing as sorry, full? Just as the planet is becoming full, San Francisco is already full. Streets and public transportation are jammed.

Neva Dyer, San Francisco

Hollywoods stance

Regarding Rock commands the spotlight (Feb. 29): David Wiegand drones on and on about the importance of diversity in the film industry and how the Academy Awards must make greater efforts to see that there is more diversity both in front of and behind the cameras. But Wiegand doesnt go into the why of this. Thats because there is no why. The argument that gender diversity and ethnic diversity are important has no intellectual foundation. But there is a diversity that is important. And that is diversity of thought. Chris Rock and Mark Ruffalo were quite happy to promote the notion that everyone in the film industry is a liberal. This begs the question: Why arent there more conservatives in front of and behind the cameras? Are they being intentionally excluded? It certainly appears that way. Has any conservative, other than Clint Eastwood, been nominated in the past 10 years? Liberals in Hollywood, like the radical left-wing students at Cal State Los Angeles who shouted down Ben Shapiro, are the true opponents of diversity.

Bill McGregor, Berkeley

Appalling policy

Having started my teaching career in 1960 as a student teacher and then three wonderful years as a long-term substitute at Aptos Junior High School, I find the recent San Francisco Unified School District condom policy to be an absolutely degrading and destructive action against the young people in the district. Unfortunately, the act with former President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office seemingly set the example for young persons that performing fellatio is not sex, according to Clinton. So it really is no surprise, the recent SFUSD policy of providing condoms in a city where liberalism has run rampant. Parents and right-thinking taxpayers should be appalled with the policy as they fully expect the schools in the district to provide a foundation education for their children for leading to higher levels of training and good jobs.

Bernard Ames, San Carlos

Essential schools

The university divide grows (Editorial, Feb. 29) clearly and succinctly profiles the challenges, successes and resources of our two leading universities in the Bay Area, Stanford and UC Berkeley. We are fortunate to have those preeminent universities as part of the intellectual and cultural landscape of the Bay Area. As part of that assessment, I would respectfully add the extent to which those institutions fulfill the necessary mission of contributing to educational opportunity, which is vital to a democratic society. In that regard, UC Berkeley has produced outstanding results over the years, educating more first time college-bound students than most other comparable institutions and for which it merits great commendation. Despite its challenges as were so aptly described in the editorial, UC Berkeley has distinguished itself as an engine of essential socioeconomic mobility.

Curtis Mallegni, San Francisco

No difference

It is the height of hypocrisy to hear Republican congressional leaders rebuke Donald Trump for not disavowing the endorsement of Klansman David Duke, claiming that the GOP does not play on peoples prejudices. Nonsense! Thats exactly what the GOP has done for decades, particularly during the last seven years of the Obama presidency. How is Donald Trumps hesitation to disavow David Duke any different from Sen. Mitch McConnell looking the other way at the birther movement?

John Brooks, Fairfax

Price jump

Regarding Average drug price has doubled, AARP reports (Business, March 1): How sad! Our government in protecting us with Medicare has made prescriptions affordable by merely lining the pockets of Big Pharma, which has then doubled the price to the consumer.

Doris Mendell, Oakland

McGovern cartoon

Thanks to Joel Pett for his editorial cartoon equating Sen. Bernie Sanders with former presidential candidate and Sen. George McGovern (Letters, March 1). I fear many young people have never heard of McGovern or what happened in 1972. He was a true liberal and the only presidential candidate I ever voted for with enthusiasm. And he got clobbered in the election. We ended up with another four-year term for former President Richard Nixon and former Vice President Spiro Agnew. Perhaps Hillary Clintons campaign slogan should be Dont Get Berned.

Les Girouard, Berkeley

Three Stooges

I love Catherine Rampells Trump, Cruz and Rubio  much like 3 peas in a pod (Feb. 29). I had not realized they are such birds of a feather, sort of the Three Stooges of politics. Of course Trump is the most entertaining of the three. If any of them win, I am moving to Siberia.

Elizabeth Larson, San Francisco
SACRAMENTO  Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Tuesday to expand a tax on the health insurance industry so that the state doesnt lose $1 billion in federal funding.

Under the expansion, managed-care organizations  such as Blue Shield, Cigna and Aetna  will have to pay the state tax regardless of whether they serve Medi-Cal patients. Previously, only those serving Medi-Cal patients had to pay the tax and received federal matching funds to offset it. The newly added health plans will get a break on their corporate and insurance taxes so they dont raise patients premiums.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates  A Saudi-led bloc of six Persian Gulf Arab nations formally branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization on Wednesday, ramping up the pressure on the Lebanese militant group fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The move by the Gulf Cooperation Council comes less than two weeks after Saudi Arabia announced it was cutting $4 billion in aid to Lebanese security forces. The kingdom and other gulf states followed up that move by urging their citizens to leave Lebanon, dealing a blow to the tiny nations tourism industry.
1 Tibet protest: A Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire and died in a protest against Chinese rule, in the first such action of its kind this year, a U.S. government-funded radio station said Wednesday. Kalsang Wangdu self-immolated Monday afternoon near the Retsokha monastery in western Sichuan provinces traditionally Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Kardze, Radio Free Asia reported. Tibetan exile sources say at least 114 monks and laypeople have self-immolated over the past five years, with most of them dying. Radio Free Asia puts the number of self-immolations at 144 since 2009.

2 Missing plane: Debris that washed up on the coast of Mozambique over the weekend could be part of the wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished almost exactly two years ago, NBC and CNN reported Wednesday. If the newly discovered debris did come from the plane, a Boeing 777 that was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, it could contribute to the theory that the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean.
IDOMENI, Greece  Hassan Rasheeds papers have been cleared, but the Iraqi refugee has spent days freezing in a tent with no tarp on the ground and flaps that dont close, one of 10,000 migrants stuck at a muddy camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia.

Theyre hoping for a breakthrough in Europes troubled negotiations on how to handle the deepening crisis. But there was little sign of that Tuesday.

Austrias chancellor insisted he would not to let his country become a waiting room for Germany, while authorities from four ex-Yugoslav countries on the refugee route vowed closer cooperation to keep people out.

Ive been at Idomeni for 10 days, and its the fourth day Ive been waiting to cross over, the 27-year-old Rasheed said. Conditions are very bad. There are many ill children who are coughing, and we spent the night in this tent under heavy rain.

The heavily policed border, marked by a twin fence and coils of razor wire, remained closed a day after refugees attempted to push through the barriers and were forced back by Macedonian riot police using tear gas and stun grenades. Before that, sporadic closures since Feb. 19 had slowed the number allowed through to just dozens a day.

Overnight, rain soaked many families, who hung up clothing to dry Tuesday on the border fence.

More exhausted refugee families continued to reach the burgeoning tent city in this Greek border town on foot or by taxi. Many walked up to 18 miles along Greeces northern highways.

Ahmed Majid, a 26-year-old Iraqi, was traveling with his wife and two young children.

We have been walking for 3 kilometers. Police stopped our taxi on the highway, which is why we are going through the fields, he said.

About 2,000 refugees are still reaching Greek islands from nearby Turkey every day, despite the recent deployment of NATO ships in the east Aegean Sea.

European Council President Donald Tusk was in Austria on Tuesday to try to persuade Chancellor Werner Faymann to change his mind about the countrys decision to accept no more than 80 asylum requests a day at Austrias southern frontier with Slovenia.

In Athens, the government said it has requested $520 million in aid for the refugee crisis from the European Union, under an emergency plan to cope with as many as 100,000 stranded refugees  roughly three times the number now stuck inside Greece.
BELGRADE, Serbia  Tensions simmered one night inside the smoky Belgrade City cafe in a rough neighborhood near the train station. The price of a human being was being decided.

Dozens of young Middle Eastern and African men dressed in track suits and woolen caps were frantically negotiating with a Serbian smuggler on the costs of illegal trips over Balkan borders that are rapidly closing to them. The refugees, desperate to escape war and poverty in their homelands, needed help to get closer to their dream destination  Western Europe.

I cannot do it for less than 5,000 (euros) for that group, the smuggler told a Moroccan middleman in English, who relayed the sum in Arabic on his cell phone to others. There was a short pause.

Thats too much for those people, they dont have that money, the Moroccan said.

Then, no deal, the Serb smuggler replied. Taking a deep cigarette puff and a sip of whiskey, he turned to other potential clients who were lined up along the dimly lit bar covered with fading photos of Paris and other European capitals.

Human trafficking is back in a big way in the Serbian capital and elsewhere along the Balkan refugee corridor  a veritable growth industry for locals as European Union nations slam their borders shut in a domino effect, leaving thousands of refugees stuck at Greeces northern border.

Refugee entry restrictions and tighter transit rules imposed recently by Austria and several Balkan states have stalled but not stopped the flow of refugees across Europe  fueling a boom time for the regions ruthless smuggling gangs.

Refugees are being packed into car trunks or squeezed into secret compartments on trucks or buses, then driven along the same illegal smuggling routes used by drug traffickers. Other refugees may be taken through regular border crossings where guards or custom officers are being bribed to turn a blind eye.

Still others are driven to the borders by small-time freelance traffickers, mostly taxi drivers, and left to cross the fences on their own in the pitch dark. If the refugees are lucky, they will be picked up again by another smuggler on the other side of the border after walking through forests or across frozen rivers. If not, they will be caught by border patrols.

Either way, their cash is gone, straight into the pockets of smugglers.

Sometimes the refugees are risking not only their money, but their lives. In August, Austrian authorities found 71 refugees, from 10 months to 56 years old, who suffocated in the air-tight cargo of a truck that left Serbia, traveling via Hungary to Austria.
New Zealand new vehicle sales rose to a record for a second consecutive month in February, driven by demand for commercial models.

Registrations increased 4.4 percent to 10,313 in February, compared with the year-earlier month, eclipsing February 1984 as the highest level ever recorded for the month, according to the Lower Hutt-based Motor Industry Association. Commercial vehicle registrations rose 11 percent to 3,121, the highest for a February month, while passenger vehicle registrations gained 1.9 percent to 7,192.

New Zealand vehicle sales have hit annual records for the past two years, in the face of record migration and tourism. The first two months of this year have hit new records even though the MIA had predicted sales would slow this year in line with weaker growth in the domestic economy.

"The anticipated slowdown in new vehicle registrations has yet to materialise as businesses and consumers continued to purchase new vehicles at unprecedented rates in February," said MIA chief executive David Crawford. "Strong net immigration, a healthy tourism sector and a competitive market are helping to drive new vehicle sales which is already year to date 3 percent (662 units) ahead of this time last year."

Japanese car maker Toyota was the top selling brand in February, with 15 percent market share, followed by Ford with 12 percent, and Holden on 9 percent.

The three top-selling models for February were all light commercial vehicles, led by the Ford Ranger with a 6 percent market share, followed by the Toyota Hilux with a 4 percent share and the Mitsubishi Triton with a 3 percent share.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update

VCT - Operational performance for the 3 months ended 30 Sept 2022

NZL - Forestry Estate Acquisition

October 21st Morning Report

Air New Zealand Limited Retail Bond Offer Books Close

Spark welcomes C-band spectrum allocation

AIA - 2022 Annual Meeting Chair & Chief Executive Addresses

MOVE Completes Purchase of Vessel for Trans-Tasman Service


Global forestry group Rayonier Inc posted a 28 percent drop in earnings from its New Zealand division as softer Chinese demand kept a lid on export prices, and returns from domestic sales were eroded by a weaker kiwi dollar.

Rayonier manages Matariki Forestry Group, the country's third-biggest forestry company with 13,000 hectares of plantations across New Zealand. Last month the Jacksonville, Florida-based company said its New Zealand division reported adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of US$33 million in calendar 2015, down from US$46 million a year earlier. Revenue dropped 11 percent to US$161.6 million, even as total sales volumes edged up 2.2 percent to 2.41 million tons.

Of that, volumes of domestic saw timber sold rose 6.2 percent to 682,000 tons and domestic pulpwood was up 23 percent to 434,000 tons, while export saw timber sold jumped 19 percent to 982,000 tons and export pulpwood was up 17 percent to 83,000 tons.

Rayonier received lower prices in both domestic and export markets from the New Zealand division, with domestic saw timber down 18 percent selling at US$64.05 a ton, domestic pulpwood prices falling 15 percent to US$32/ton, and export saw timber dropping 21 percent to US$88.59/ton.

Since the start of 2016, New Zealand log export prices have been benefiting from cheap oil providing lower shipping costs, offsetting the muted demand from China.

Rayonier expects its New Zealand division's harvest will be down by about 10 percent in 2016 due to the age variation across its plantations, with prices broadly in line with 2015. It forecasts adjusted earnings of between US$23 million and US$28 million in the year.

The group added another 1,800 hectares of forestry rights in 2015 at a cost of US$9.9 million.

Last year, Rayonier injected NZ$242 million of capital into Matariki to increase its stake to 77 percent from 65 percent. Phaunos Timber Fund is the other partner in the Matariki joint venture.

Rayonier's group profit more than halved to US$46.2 million in calendar 2015, with the year earlier result bolstered from discontinued operations. Sales fell 9.7 percent to US$544.9 million.

The New York Stock Exchange-listed shares last traded at US$22.18, and has edged down 0.1 percent so far this year, outperforming the 3.2 percent decline in the Standard & Poor's 500 index over the same period.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update

VCT - Operational performance for the 3 months ended 30 Sept 2022

NZL - Forestry Estate Acquisition

October 21st Morning Report

Air New Zealand Limited Retail Bond Offer Books Close

Spark welcomes C-band spectrum allocation

AIA - 2022 Annual Meeting Chair & Chief Executive Addresses

MOVE Completes Purchase of Vessel for Trans-Tasman Service


Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges said hes keen to develop new national targets to improve the countrys progress on energy efficiency.

The country already has a 90 percent renewable generation target for electricity by 2025, 10 percent above what is currently achieved, but electricity makes up only a quarter of New Zealands total energy demand.

We need to broaden our renewable energy use beyond electricity and increase its use in the transport and industrial heat sectors, he said. This is another area Im considering setting a target.

The targets, due to be implemented by the end of the year, will help businesses with capital investment decisions and help align research and development with government priorities, without comprising the ongoing need to ensure security of supply, he said.

Bridges is also looking to replace the existing New Zealand Energy and Efficiency Strategy next year.

While the country is making good progress on energy efficiency, it can do more and we also need to improve our energy intensity  the measure of energy used per dollar of gross domestic product, Bridges said.

Setting an ambitious energy intensity target is one option Im considering. Improving energy intensity will lead to decreased costs and improve our business competitiveness.

Bridges said New Zealands greatest potential to reduce carbon lies in the process heat and transport sectors which both have a much larger proportion of non-renewable energy than electricity and are significant emitters.

He pointed to Maori-owned dairy processor Miraka as a good example of an innovative use of process heat. It uses renewable geothermal energy to make milk products and is looking to double production in the next five years.

Another example was Taupo-based wood products processor Tenon which uses direct-heat geothermal energy to heat nine timber drying kilns and supply eco-certified products to a range of distributors.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

Comments from our readers

No comments yet

Add your comment:

Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process.

Related News:

Mainfreight Investor Day / Market Update

GFI - Greenfern - Offer closes 27th Oct

MCY - Quarterly Operational Update

VCT - Operational performance for the 3 months ended 30 Sept 2022

NZL - Forestry Estate Acquisition

October 21st Morning Report

Air New Zealand Limited Retail Bond Offer Books Close

Spark welcomes C-band spectrum allocation

AIA - 2022 Annual Meeting Chair & Chief Executive Addresses

MOVE Completes Purchase of Vessel for Trans-Tasman Service


WASHINGTON, MAR 1: American companies, either having a foothold or planning to set foot in India, are bullish on the latest Budget presented by the Modi government, business advocacy group USIBC has said.

We talked to some of our members on the feedback and they have been bullish about the Budget itself. I feel that its investment in infrastructure, in trying to provide ease of doing business and providing certain tax certainties is good for the US investors, Mukesh Aghi, President, US India Business Council (USIBC), told PTI in an interview yesterday.

Aghi said the annual Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley maintains the fiscal deficit at 3.5 per cent from 3.9 per cent and gives international investors an assurance that India can provide discipline among the emerging markets.

Referring to the fact that foreign direct investment (FDI) in India is up by 40 per cent, Aghi, who was recently in India for the Make in India summit in Mumbai, said the move sent a positive signal to the global market.

The sentiment (on India among US companies) is on the positive side, Aghi said in response to a question hoping that this would bring much greater American investment to India.

US companies have made FDI worth $15 billion in India in the last 18 months and are expected to invest another $27 billion this fiscal, he said, adding that with the latest budget, this figure is expected to go up.

The infrastructure sector and food retail provide a lot of opportunities for investment, he said. Allowing 100 per cent FDI in the marketing of food produced in India will likely bring in new investors who will provide the needed manufacturing and retailing jobs, he said.

This will help farmers increase sales, spur investment in cold chain and storage infrastructure to make sure food is better preserved, and bring new and diverse food products to a larger percentage of the Indian population than ever before, Aghi said.

Read Also:

Top 5 Smart Facts about Tax Saving Fixed Deposit

Be Familiar with Tax Saving Fixed Deposits in 5 Points
BENGALURU: Some universities in India have been making huge noise due to their in-campus placements, relatively; IITs and IIMs have recorded the highest placement packages. But some of the other reputed universities are also in the high-package bandwagon and now its time for Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) of Delhi University to show off in style.

The latest news as reported by ET say that a student of FMS is Picked up by a multinational company, and will be paid of Rs 1.02 crore annually, the placement is now a new record of highest placement of the body.

This year, the FMS saw a significant rise in the placement pay packages and also recorded a 100 percent job appointment in this academic year. The average pay package is marked at 20 lakh per annum, which is 20 percent rise compared to the previous one.

As confirmed by the FMS, the big names in the industry like EY Consulting, Accenture Strategy, Star India and ITC visited the institutions to hire students and a total number of 210 students took part in the event.

Read Also: Expedition 46 Astronauts Return To Earth, Key Mars Research On

Mumbai Airport Ranks Best In World in 25-40 mn Category
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- With Staten Island's St. Patrick's Parade around the corner, green beer is soon to be a-pourin' and Bailey's Irish Cream a-flowin'.

We're here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way: You can enjoy the craft of classic cocktails, no food dye included, while still celebrating Irish heritage.

For some tips, we turned to Danny Ippolito of Bin 5 restaurant in Rosebank, one of the borough's most passionate cocktail-makers. He thought of a few recipes that put an Irish spin on some classic cocktail recipes, like the always-in-style Old Fashioned and the timeless Manhattan.

These recipes come just in time for St. Patrick's Parade this Sunday in West Brighton. If you're not in the crafty mood, there are plenty of places along Forest Avenue to hang out at during the parade on March 6. If you are, well have we got some recipes for you.

THE IRISH JIG

1.5 oz Irish Whiskey

3/4 oz Yellow Chartreuse

3/4 oz Fresh lemon juice

10-15 Basil leaves

Ippolito learned this one from Jim Meehan of Manhattan's Please Don't Tell. It's a refreshing and aromatic shaken drink sure to wake your taste buds up after a long (but pretty mild) winter.

For this one, Ippolito uses Jameson Black Barrel -- he advises going for the good stuff with cocktails like these -- but any Irish whiskey will do. It's also best to have some fresh basil on hand, since that's what will smell the best.

Here's how it's made:
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Sharissa Turk, the eight-month pregnant woman found dead in her apartment Tuesday, was just a few days away from a special baby shower to celebrate the arrival of her little girl.

"She was excited about the shower," said Turk's longtime friend, who only wished to be identified as Tiffany. "Me and a couple of her other girlfriends were all going to get together for the first time in 10 years."

Turk, 25, had posted the baby sonogram photo with the hashtags #BaybeeLOVE #cantwaittomeetYOU on Facebook.

She was found by her boyfriend Tuesday afternoon lying unconscious and unresponsive with no signs of trauma in the hallway of their apartment at 535 Jefferson Blvd. in Annadale, a law enforcement source said.



EMS pronounced Turk dead on the scene.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death, but multiple sources said officials are investigating it as a suspected overdose after drugs were found in the apartment.

Turk earned a degree of Internet notoriety in 2013 when she danced as the "blue fairy" in a YouTube music video about prescription drug abuse on Staten Island.

Watch the video here. (Warning, vulgar content.)

"She had been struggling with addiction for a few years," Tiffany said.

The two women grew up together and have known each other for 18 years. They both attended Susan Wagner High School, Tiffany said.

"She was loving, caring and always smiling," she said. "And a little ditsy and dumb."

The women had lost touch when Turk began dating her boyfriend two years ago.

NEW APARTMENT

The couple had just moved into the Annadale apartment about a month ago, Turk's landlord said.

"A couple of days ago, I saw her up close for the first time," said the landlord's daughter. "She was smoking at the curb and was petting my dog. She looked out of it."

Turk, the neighbor said, told her she was scared about having a kid.

"We would tell her not to smoke during her pregnancy and take care of her health, and she would say, 'thank you,'" the landlord said.

Turk's best friend, Tanya Abood, 29, said the expectant mother had appeared normal on Friday, which was the last time she had seen her before she died.

"She was happy. The baby shower was going to be on the 19th. She was really excited to see everyone," said Abood, noting that Turk had asked her to be the child's godmother.

"She always wanted to be a mother and she finally got it -- she couldn't wait," Abood added.

Police officers were still at the house Wednesday afternoon, and had roped off the apartment entrance with yellow crime scene tape.

In April, Turk shared an eerie video about heroin addiction on her Facebook page. The woman in the video claims her heart stopped several times before doctors were able to save her. The video also highlights Staten Island's heroin epidemic compared to the rest of New York City.

Shortly after the YouTube video surfaced in 2013, Turk was arrested for allegedly selling oxycodone to an undercover officer on three separate occasions.

Three weeks later, prosecutors said she pleaded guilty to felony drug sale and was to participate in a drug-treatment program for at least one year, undergo drug tests five days per week and have a 6 p.m. curfew.

She graduated from the program, the plea was vacated and that case was dismissed and sealed in April of 2014.

Under the new Overdose Response Initiative announced last week by the NYPD and District Attorney Michael E. McMahon, if authorities do indeed suspect her death was drug related, it would be investigated by cops and McMahon's office.

A spokesman for McMahon said office policy prohibits them from discussing investigations.

"She was an outgoing person," Tiffany said. "She had a big heart and always wanted to talk to people."

--Advance staff writer Ryan Lavis contributed to this report.
CTY SANDY AERIALS

Due to New York State's high tax burden, a new study found it's the worst place n the country to retire.

(Bill Lyons/Staten Island Advance)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Due to New York State's high tax burden and cost of living, a new study found it's the worst place in the country to retire.

Bankrate.com's study examined six key factors: cost of living, taxes, healthcare, weather, crime and residents' overall well-being.

While New York ranked the worst place to retire, the study found the No. 1 place for retirees is Wyoming.

"There are a lot of factors that go into how well retirees will do in a state," said Claes Bell, a senior analyst at Bankrate.com.

"While features like pleasant weather and nearby amenities are important, nuts-and-bolts considerations like cost of living and the local tax burden may have a bigger impact on your overall quality of life. Many retirees live on a fixed income, and it's hard to have a pleasant retirement if you're constantly under financial pressure," he said.

FLEEING TO THE SOUTH

Staten Island Realtors say many retirees on Staten Island often sell their homes and leave the state.

"Many retirees are downsizing. But they aren't doing it on Staten Island . ...They don't want to pay the high city and state taxes," said Claire Bisignano Chesnoff, broker/owner of the New Dorp-based Claire Properties, and president of the Staten Island Board of Realtors.

"They are moving to Texas. Austin and Dallas are the new best places to move. They sell their home here, buy a small home in cash there, and they have the opportunity to get a part-time job there. And they don't have to worry about running out of money," she added.

OTHER STATE RANKINGS



Wyoming's neighbors South Dakota, Colorado and Utah rank second, third and fourth, respectively on the best places to retire list. The region offers a low cost of living and below-average crime, according to the study.



In addition to New York, West Virginia, Oregon, Arkansas and Louisiana comprise the rest of the study's bottom five.



Among traditional retirement hot spots, Arizona fared the best at No. 9. Florida came in 28th and Hawaii 45th -- largely because it has the nation's highest cost of living.



While many people think of beaches when they think about retirement, only one of Bankrate's 10 best states for retirement touches the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico (Virginia, at No. 5). Nine of the 12 worst states are coastal states.



What do you think about retiring in New York State? Please tell us in the comment section below.

FOLLOW Tracey Porpora on
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police have arrested and charged a man in connection with the theft of more than $2,000 worth of Victoria's Secret underwear from the Staten Island Mall.

Police released these surveillance images of individuals sought for questioning in the underwear thefts.

Anthony Ellsion, 28, of Park Avenue in Port Richmond, was arrested Tuesday in connection with the theft of 200 pairs of underwear from the women's clothing store, according to an NYPD spokesman.

Police said that on Jan. 1 at 12:15 p.m., a female acted as a lookout as a suspect removed 80 pairs of underwear valued at $1,000 from inside the location and left without paying, according to an NYPD release at the time.

The suspects struck again Jan. 16, at 12:30 p.m., this time removing 120 pairs of underwear valued at $1,500 before leaving the location, according to the NYPD statement.



Ellsion was charged by police with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

Police have yet to locate the female sought in connection with the theft.
Anthony Santoro, Vito Badano, Ernest Aiello

Defendants, from left, Anthony Santoro, of Great Kills, Vito Badano and Ernest Aiello listen during their arraignment proceedings in New York Tuesday, July 9, 2013. Nine reputed members of the Bonanno crime family were charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with what prosecutors called old-school mob activity: gambling, loan sharking, extortion and drugs. (AP Photo/Bethan McKernan)

(Bethan McKernan)

MANHATTAN, N.Y.-- A self-proclaimed mob associate ratted out a neighborhood buddy by alleging the man was "straightened out," that is, inducted, by the mob.

Anthony Zoccolillo, a witness for the prosecution in the Bonnano organized crime trial, detailed his lawless lifestyle before he turned informant for the federal government "out of the goodness of (his) heart" during his testimony Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

"I felt it was the right thing to do," he said about his decision to testify.

Four alleged Bonanno crime family members - Anthony "Skinny" Santoro, 52, of Great Kills, Nicholas Santora, 73, Vito Badamo, 53, and Ernest Aiello, 36 - are charged with enterprise corruption, including gambling and loansharking.

Zoccolillo claims Aiello, who he was tight with back in their days in the Bronx, was "straightened out," referring to mafia slang for being inducted into a crime family.

"He was promoted in the organization," he testified regarding Aiello.

Zoccolillo claims he's had hundreds of conversations with Aiello, and testified the defendant was one of the people who taught him how to package marijuana and sent him money for pot.

He also claimed he and the defendant had managed several illegal betting sheets, and identified Aiello on audio recordings discussing illegal gambling activities.

Aiello, the witness claimed, bought several scrambled cellphones from Canada that were unable to be tapped or traced because he feared being caught.

"He was paranoid about law enforcement," Zoccolillo said.

In February 2013, Zoccolillo was arrested by the FBI and charged with distributing marijuana, running an illegal gambling operation and selling and distributing oxycodone.

He pleaded guilty and immediately decided to cooperate with the government, he said. He was facing a mandatory minimum of 30 years, but was released on time served, which was about 17 months.

"I wore a wire and put my life on the line every day," he testified. "I cooperated because of the stress of my life, the people I was hanging around with and the possibility of getting killed."

He went into witness protection, and the feds helped him relocate and changed his identity, he said. He and his mother still receive aid from the government, officials said.

But, the defense claims, he's more like a wannabe mobster.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Stacey Richman sought to shred his credibility, and portrayed him as a schemer, liar and opportunist who was only looking to help himself.

In the early 2000's, Zoccolillo went to Amsterdam and secured 20,000 oxycodone pills before he was busted at Newark Airport, the defense said. He pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 33 months. As part of his plea, he signed a release that he wouldn't be involved in other illegal activities.

But his crime spree continued, the defense alleges.

Zoccolillo then went to California to open a mortgage business, but when it failed he and two others ran a rental scam, the defense claims. He put up fake online ads and took money from renters, he admitted.

After returning to the Bronx, the defense attorney said, he sold marijuana and pills to a violent Albanian gang.

"Your word is no good with the court," Richman said. "You lied to innocent people to get what you wanted."

The defendants were busted in July 2013 when authorities sought to dismantle the nine-man Bonanno family crew.

The state claims Santora, the crime family's alleged ringleader, was in charge of an Internet gambling site, sold prescription drugs, such as oxycodone and Viagra, on the black market, and the other three defendants were his associates.

Santora, who entered the courtroom in a wheelchair, inspired the character played by the late Bruno Kirby in the 1997 film "Donnie Brasco."

Testimony resumes Wednesday morning.

The trial began in early February and is expected to last until at least April.
By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent.

Agree
This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Best Canadian Blog

2004, 2005, 2006, 2007

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!



Katewerk Art

Support SDA

I am not a registered charity. I cannot issue tax receipts.



Reconnaissance Man

Economics for the Disinterested

...a fast-paced polar

bear attack thriller!



Want lies?

Hire a regular consultant.

Want truth?

Hire an asshole.



Weather Shop

Click to inquire about rates.

Dow Jones

What They Say About SDA

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

"I got so much traffic after your post my web host asked me to buy a larger traffic allowance." Dr.Ross McKitrick

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

"Go back to collecting your welfare livelihood."Michael E. Zilkowsky

Intelliweather

Seismic Map

Comments Policy

Read this

Best Of SDA

Hide The Decline

The Bottle Genie

(ClimateGate links)

You Might Be A Liberal

Uncrossing The Line

Bob Fife: Knuckledragger

A Modest Proposal (NP)

Settled Science Series

Y2Kyoto Series

SDA: Reader Occupation Survey

Brett Lamb Sheltered Workshop

Flakes On A Plane

All Your Weather Are Belong To Us

Song Of The Sled

The Raise A Flag Debacle

(Now on Youtube!)

(.mwv Video)

Abuse Ruins Life Of Girl

Trudeaupiate

Kleptocrat Jeans

Child Labour

I Concede

Small Dead Feminist

Protein Hoser: THK Interview

The Werewolf Extinction

Dear Laura (VRWC)

We Wait

Blogging The Oscars

Jackson Converts To Islam

Just Shut The HELL Up

Manipulating Condi

Gay Equality Rights


Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal.

Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account.



We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription.



A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much!
Arthur Alliband had spent barely a few hours outside prison walls before he allegedly sexually assaulted another teenage girl.

The convicted sex offender was on his way from prison on Monday afternoon, after being granted parole, when he befriended a 16-year-old girl on a train.

It will be alleged Alliband went with the girl to Best Road Reserve in Seven Hills in Sydney's west, buying her alcohol from a bottle shop along the way.

Alliband, 26, is accused of having sexual intercourse with the teen without her consent, grabbing her breast and rubbing his fingers on the front of her underwear.
A man arrested over a commercial-grade drug lab uncovered in Canberra's south has pleaded guilty to manufacturing ecstasy.

Stanley Hou, 36, was due to fight charges related to the clandestine operation at a Hume warehouse in an ACT Supreme Court trial this week.

Stanley Hou has admitted manufacturing and trafficking the drug ecstasy. Credit:Jamila Toderas

But that trial was abandoned when Hou pleaded guilty on Wednesday to manufacturing MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy, trafficking 71 grams of the drug and possessing 32 litres of precursor chemical nitromethane.

The laboratory was discovered when neighbours reported chemical odours coming from Hou's unit to an ACTEW Water trade waste officer, who was investigating a possible chemical spill at the property in August 2014.
My recent piece on the conviction of British atomic spy and former German communist Klaus Fuchs in 1950 prompted a phone call from one of my favourite Canberrans, Doreen Godtschalk.

Doreen, for those who came in late, is one of Canberra's last surviving World War I widows. Her late husband, Charles, a New Zealander, was wounded on the Western Front and ended up serving in the Indian Army during the latter part of the war.

The Queen and Prince Philip on the day of her coronation.

He liked life under the Raj, staying on for more than a decade and taking part in the Afghan war in 1919 which saw British aircraft bomb Kabul.

Doreen, who was born in Melbourne in 1928 and is now 88, was much younger than Charles, whom she married in the 1950s.
Aubrey McClendon, who built a fortune in shale gas by buying up fields across the United States, was killed Wednesday when his car ran off a highway into a bridge in Oklahoma, authorities said. His death, at 56, came a day after he was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to suppress prices paid for oil and natural gas leases.

McClendon, the former chief executive of Chesapeake Energy, was to appear in court later in the day.

Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, had ridden more wild ups and downs in America's energy patch than just about anyone. Credit:AP

The Oklahoma City police said the crash occurred at high speed. "He pretty much drove straight into the wall," Capt. Paco Balderrama said.

The car was found engulfed in flames.
BHP Billiton may emerge from the Samarco dam disaster with lower penalties than first thought, under the terms of an agreement struck with state and federal governments in Brazil on Thursday.

Samarco, which is jointly owned by BHP and Brazilian miner Vale, will pay no more than 9.2 billion Brazilian real ($3.23 billion) over the next six years, well below the 20 billion real demanded by the Brazilian government in November.

How much am I getting? BHP chief executive Andrew Mackenzie. Credit:Stefan Postles

The agreement covers most of the large civil actions that state and federal governments had raised against the Samarco partners in the wake of the dam spill, which killed at least 17 people.

Samarco will pay the foundation the equivalent of $683 million this year, the equivalent of $409 million in 2017 and the equivalent of $409 million in 2018, with those payments being made in Brazilian currency.
Indonesian Trade Minister Thomas Lembong will visit Australia this month as both countries prioritise a free-trade deal that had stalled amid diplomatic tensions and a climate of economic protectionism.

Former Australian trade minister Andrew Robb surprised many when he announced late last year that Australia and Indonesia would restart talks on a bilateral trade agreement, which he believed could be finalised within 12 months.

"Mr Lembong's upcoming visit to Australia certainly underscores the importance both countries have placed on progressing the trade agreement as soon as possible, and agreeing to work on some low-hanging fruit will lock in our strong commitment to the process even further," Mr Robb told Fairfax Media.

Negotiations on the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement started in Jakarta in 2012.
A couple of weeks back, when the Daily Telegraph described attendees at her underground H2O Bar as "incredibly well-hydrated communists", it made artist Janet Laurence dance with delight.

Well-hydrated communists. Fantastic. It wasn't meant as a compliment, of course, or even constructive criticism. It was a small but pointed attack on people who care enough about water to make art out of it, and on the City of Sydney for funding that enterprise. But Laurence's eyes sparkled all the same, at the depths to which the anti-art, anti-environment, anti-city push had finally sunk.

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

For me, this was triply fascinating. I was bemused that "inner-city elitists" could also be "communists". Slightly shocked that water  far from being pH neutral  is now so politicised as to justify that derision. And reminded that, again and again, the big things  the things that Australia needs most desperately to do well  are what we put most aggression into doing really, really badly. Like water.

Water is our dreaming. It is our collective unconscious  and not only because this is the driest continent. That's just the surface story of a deeper, subtler reality.
So please, no grandiose schemes proposed by greedy developers and enthusiastically supported by a Chief Minister who appears to be out of touch with the locals of this area. Margaret Simmonds, Forrest I share Jack Waterford's outrage about the apparent approach to the Manuka Oval precinct development proposal ("Secret deal taints Barr's regime", Forum, February 19, p1) . An approach, whereby one major real estate developer, Grocon and its partner the Greater Sydney AFL team offer to "refurbish and improve the stadium 'free"' in exchange for the effective appropriation of ACT public land worth hundreds of millions and development rights. This has echoes of the very fast rain proposal. Why should two entities, in partnership, be given the inside running on a development proposal of this magnitude. Where is the competition? What happened to testing the market? Is this a good deal for the ACT ratepayers? What options have been considered or are we looking at some sort of sweetheart deal? At present there seems to be no transparency around this approach, which is totally unsatisfactory. If this proposal involves land development rights as it appears to, and if the government is not going to develop the land, then I agree with Waterford that there should be at least an open tender or auction of the rights to ensure value for money.

Irene Davies, Campbell Lunchtime speedsters? It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the actual time of day when the alleged speeding in school zones occurred ("Speeding drivers risk lives near schools", February 29, p3). Obviously no one disputes the danger of speeding in school zones. But to my mind the ACT school crossings system of a blanket restriction to 40km/h from 8am to 4pm on weekdays is more likely to lead to motorists being caught for speeding in the middle hours of the day when there is nary a child to be seen for hours at a time. In other states including NSW, the speed restriction applies more sensibly to the limited times when children and carers are arriving at or leaving school. Many of these crossings are also illuminated by a flashing 40km/h sign at the gazetted times which is very difficult to miss. Natasha Boddy's article claims that some motorists have been clocked at 30 to 45km/h above the limit. This is obviously unacceptable but I am sure this would become a rare occurrence if ACT crossings adopted the NSW system of more rational time frames partnered with flashing illuminated 40 signs. Robert Henderson, Jerrabomberra, NSW

Clearly drivers who speed through school zones when children are arriving or leaving school are irresponsible and should be punished. However, the figures do not show how many of these offences occurred outside the morning and afternoon arrival/departure periods to which other jurisdictions like NSW limit the operation of their school zones. Jenny Harper (Letters, February 29) raises some legitimate questions that have also crossed my mind. Since August last year, I have been asking the ACT government for evidence that the ACT all day school zone system provides better results that the NSW morning and afternoon system. To date I have received nothing so I assume they have no such evidence. They have been able to tell me that in the past five years there have been no crashes involving children in ACT school zones between 9.30am and 2.30pm. From my personal observations over the past 18 months, this would be because the likelihood of encountering children in a school zone between 9.30am and 2.30pm is virtually zero. I too wonder if the main reason that the AFP is enforcing school zone speed limits between 9.30am and 2.30pm is because it is, to quote the inimitable Arthur Daley, "a nice little earner". Jim Derrick, Florey

Did CSIRO get it wrong? Eric French (Letters, February 29) is another who seeks to paint all Indigenous people with the same broad brush of inadequacy and lack of endeavour. If his tale of the CSIRO and Aboriginal researchers who left to go off to a harvest is even partly true, here's a possible variation. Presumably the "harvest" was an annual event, so shouldn't good CSIRO management have anticipated what might have been a yearly commitment by the families concerned and been able to plan for both sets of needs. Moreover, why was the research "wasted" as French states? Again, if the story is true, surely a lack of planning and good management by CSIRO was the root cause of this aspect. As for Stan Grant's achievements, I ask Mr French, did every white kid in his class, including him, all take advantage of every opportunity available to them? If not, stop asserting that every Indigenous child can  and worse, according to the likes of Mr French, that it's automatically their fault if they don't. Eric Hunter, Cook Cardinal Pell shows little emotion or empathy for abuse survivors

It defies belief to see Cardinal Pell sitting like an obdurate cane toad in Rome on day two of the Royal Commission into the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat during his tenure there. Buoyed by the Pope's support, Pell has shown not a shred of empathy, compassion, feeling, or discomfort about what victims of the paedophile Gerald Ridsale suffered in the 1970s and 1980s. He even said stonily, "It wasn't of much interest to me". The only emotion Pell showed was when he left his car on arrival at the inquiry in Rome, saying with a smile that he had the support of the Pope. If Pell couldn't ask the committee why Ridsdale was being frequently moved like a toxic parcel from one parish to another, it says very little about his emotional intelligence. Didn't he have any real interest or curiosity about what was happening in his parish? It must have been a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil or else it was a very malign form of disinterest. Judy Kelly, Aranda Cardinal Pell is showing us that he went to the Mikado School of Priesthood. He agrees with everyone that the child abuse which went on all around him was terrible, but insists that he knew nothing of it, despite being in senior management positions at relevant times.

And there was no reason for him to be concerned anyway  the activities of Gerald Ridsdale weren't of much interest to him, for instance. So there is simply nothing to worry about. As we read in the first act of The Mikado, "I am right, and you are right, and everything is quite correct!" If the audience is not amused, that is the audience's own fault. G.T.W. Agnew, Coopers Plains, Qld Senate voting Amanda Vanstone's article "Shorten's miscalculation" (Times2, February 21, p1) was politically inspired nonsense. The people most upset at current Senate voting arrangements are major-party supporters who missed out on additional seats because so many people did not vote for their parties. The micro-party voters realistically did not expect that their chosen candidates would win. Their realistic aim was that their votes would help to deny seats to major parties, and they were successful in this. It is a "fair bet" that those voters were very happy with the result.

It is probably also "a fair bet" that many major-party voters were incensed that under Vanstone's preferred system Gary Gray had to vote in accordance with his party's wishes and that the Prime Minister they voted for was deposed in a coup. Vanstone stated that a joint parliamentary committee recommended change. What a farce that process was. In effect a group of politicians belonging to major parties recommended a change to how voters could vote for micro parties (their aim was to ensure that no candidates from micro parties could be elected). Since the committee was dealing only with the method of voting for micro parties, perhaps the committee should have comprised only politicians from the micro parties. Ross Gittins' excellent article "Senate change a boost for lobbyists" (BusinessDay, February 31, p12) shames Vanstone's drivel. Bob Salmond, Melba Election preferences

There are a number of points in Richard Denniss' article 'Senate Bill Needs Scrutiny' (Forum, February 27, p7) that I take issue with. Denniss claims that "almost no one understands how preferences work" ignore the fact that the Australian Electoral Commission website has a simple explanation. He goes on, "if the candidate you give your first preference to fails to win a seat your vote is transferred at full value to your second favourite". That is the House of Representatives system. In the Senate system surplus votes from candidates who have secured a "quota" are distributed to other candidates. Only if this process is exhausted without a sufficient number of senators being elected are the votes from the lowest ranked candidate distributed to higher ranked, but not yet elected, candidates. If this distribution results in another candidate being elected that candidate's surplus votes are distributed. The process continues until a sufficient number of candidates have been elected. The important point is that normally a sufficient number of candidates will be elected before all low ranking candidate's votes are distributed. Which leads to the next issue. He claims that "under the preferential voting system we have you can never 'waste' your vote". As discussed above there will normally be a number of low ranking candidates who were neither elected nor were their votes distributed, ie, votes for them are "wasted". This is because the quota is the lowest possible number, resulting in almost a "quota" of votes being wasted.

The major parties are the beneficiaries of the low quota which provides more surplus votes from their first preference candidate to cascade down to their lower candidates. The losers are voters for candidates who don't get a quota but whose votes are not distributed. Revising the quota formula to provide the highest practical quota number and thus distributing almost all votes would be a more democratic process. Bryce French, Weetangera Effects of immigration When I criticised Geoff Davies' exposition of Jane O'Sullivan's theories on the effects of immigration, I addressed their claims concerning physical capital and infrastructure (Letters, February 26). Davies did not mention environmental costs. Colin Samundsett now somewhat unfairly claims that my arguments were "fallacious" because I did not extend the scope of the discussion to include these issues (Letters, March 1). If I had tried to cover every base to his satisfaction, my letter would have been of unpublishable length. The simple points were (1) that past immigrations had not necessarily led to economic disaster, often the reverse, and (2) Davies had ignored the benefits of immigration. I did say that our current level of migration was too high and I agree that we should take account of environmental factors when setting its level. But I prefer to avoid sweeping claims that we are near "bankruptcy".

David Roth, Kambah Case for talc causing cancer overstated Few members of trial juries are equipped by education or other experience to assess the statistical significance of highly technical evidence competently and without bias. So we shouldn't be surprised that a Missouri jury has awarded $US70million against Johnson and Johnson in regard to its popular talcum powder. From birth to death almost all of us are exposed to finely divided talc. It's used in or on many manufactured products, including condoms. So besides using it as hygienic talcum powder we may get it on our fingers and swallow it, or take it as a component of medicines and pills, inject it with heroin, or breathe it in from the powdered skin of babies or intimate lovers. It may even get part way up the female genital tract via intercourse, and by all these routes minute amounts may get into the blood circulation and end up in body organs and tissues, including cancerous ones. So reports that talc particles have been found in human ovarian cancers do not necessarily mean that they got there via the female reproductive tracts or that they caused the cancers. Indeed, WHO rates talc to be no more carcinogenic than coffee.

The evidence claimed to show that talc may cause cancer has involved exposing experimental animals for long periods to extreme concentrations that would never occur in humans, such as making rats breathe in heavy concentrations of talc dust five hours a day, five days a week for 115 weeks, at the end of which some had little lumps in their lungs. This won't happen to you. So don't be afraid of powdering your babies or of course yourselves, and preferably doing the latter with swansdown powder puffs. Ron Wells, MD, Mawson Pollies mess up So our pollies were just squawking about reform and now they are making a mess in the cage. Naughty pollies. Time to clear the cage and get a new lot? Tom Middlemiss, Deakin

TO THE POINT FICKLE CROWD It feels like only a few weeks ago we were happy to have a Prime Minister who didn't do stupid things. Now we expect him to do brave and clever things. Mobile vulgus indeed! H. Simon, Watson CLASS ACTION BY RIVAL

We read that Maurice Blackburn is to launch a class action on behalf of the shareholders of Slater & Gordon. Dog eats dog? Alan N. Cowan, Yarralumla LACK OF WARNING SIGNS Someone decided it would be a good idea to block off the right-hand turn from Old Well Station Road (behind EPIC) on to the Federal Highway at the weekend. It's a pity they didn't think to put any warning signs up in the preceding two-kilometre stretch! What it was supposed to achieve, other than annoyance and frustration, is beyond me! Barb Mitchell, Ngunnawal

SHOW TOO EXPENSIVE I fully empathise with Anthony Sirr (Letters, March 1) for refusing to return to the Royal Canberra Show after paying $100 for parking, entry, a showbag and eight minutes of rides. I guess that, like too few of us, Mr Shirr is vibrancy challenged. Bill Deane, Chapman IMAGE FAR-FETCHED More bleating from the light-rail haters, this time on the differences between Canberra and Tucson (Letters, February 29). The image of the car-hating, environmentally conscious citizens of Tucson emerging from their cramped, densely packed dwellings to flock to light rail certainly is imaginative.

Do Peter Robinson and Roger Brown really think that Canberrans will believe this? John Mason, Latham EU'S DEMISE HASTENED Au contraire, Richard Ogier ("Merkel: principled, pragmatic and now at risk", Times2, February 29, p5). "Mutti" Merkel, by offering an open-door policy to Syrian refugees and non-Syrians taking advantage of the offer, has probably hastened a "Brexit" despite David Cameron's best efforts and, ultimately, intensified Vladimir Putin's long-term strategy of breaking up the EU. Christina Faulk, Swinger Hill
David J. K. Roche AM (1930-2013) is not a household name in Australian art circles.

Described as an intensely private man, he belonged to an Adelaide-based family of property developers and started collecting antiques as a teenager.

A British ebony and gilt-mounted writing table attributed to Robert Hume the Younger, from around 1815.

It was a passion that never left him and one to which he devoted much of his life, constantly buying, then trading in and improving his collection.

By the time he died, he had one of the finest and most extensive private collections of British Regency and French Empire furniture and antiques in the country, with more than 3000 items, some with direct personal connections to such historic figures as Napoleon and Josephine, or Empress Catherine the Great of Russia. It is a collection valued in the many tens of millions of dollars.
In Triple 9, directed by Australian filmmaker John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road), we are plunged into the lives of a criminal outfit made up of crooked cops and ex-soldiers who find themselves in over their heads dealing with the Russian mafia. Affleck's character knows nothing about these men and their activities; he plays a police officer called Chris, a tough, motivated cop, newly assigned to work on gang crime and determined to make a difference. "It was the black-and-white nature of his world that was appealing to me," Affleck says. "I looked forward to playing someone I could simplify as much as possible, could keep consistent.

Casey Affleck is an actor generally drawn to characters defined by ambiguity, complexity, darkness. But for his new film, Triple 9  a fast-paced crime drama with a grim vision of the world  it was a different story. This time, he says, he was happy to be playing a good guy.

"I know it's the opposite of how many people describe what they try to do to a character, which is to have him change, be more complicated. But I really wanted him to be consistent and simple ... extreme in his single-mindedness, his focus, his dogged nature."

Researching Chris' circumstances, he spent a good deal of time with an Atlanta police unit that specialises in gang crime. It's an intriguing kind of policing, he says. "It's stressful and dangerous", but it's not straightforward investigation of crime. "The ultimate objective is to prevent kids from getting involved in gangs and bring down the level of gang violence in the city, and there's a million ways to go about that. And in some sense, each of these guys is on their own. That was one of the things that really struck me the most."

In addition to this kind of research, he had to construct a back story for Chris, a process that "gives a certain texture the movie might not otherwise have. It informs the way scenes are played, and makes people seem like real people, with thoughts that have roots  even with imaginary histories, those things have to work."

When it comes to the performance itself, Affleck says, finding the right intensity and pitch from scene to scene can be tricky. "It is one of the most fun and challenging aspects of doing a movie, because most are shot out of order, and it's so hard to know where you are and how to calibrate. Because you really don't know what's going to work best in that moment  it's like playing a note in isolation and then trying to assemble the song."

Having a director who makes the most of this challenge is something he appreciates. "You think that a scene could be five different ways, so why don't we just try them all. I do that all the time. And John was fantastic about it, he's a very inclusive collaborator, and a great, easy-going, imaginative guy."
Four years ago Caroline Bowditch allowed herself a year to fall in love with Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.

Beginning in a studio in Nottingham, she devoured every piece of information about the 20th century artist's life  her paintings, feminism, relationships, orchestrated image and life-long physical disabilities after being impaled by a steel handrail in a bus accident at age 18.

Caroline Bowditch says her performance Falling in Love with Frida is about the "reclaiming of a disabled artist". Credit:Steven Siewert

Bowditch, an experienced theatre-maker based in Glasgow, was stirred to create a stage work about a woman she felt an impassioned affinity with.

"What's interesting is that I did know about her before," she says. "But, when I saw her exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in 2001, I didn't find the work particularly interesting.
Perhaps it's a by-product of living through the original O.J. Simpson murder trial, or perhaps it's a by-product of watching the countless sketch comedies that followed.

Either way, it takes a moment for The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (Ten, Sundays, 8.30pm) to come fully into focus. Or not seem like it might, at any moment, turn into a comedy sketch. This comes with a rock solid pedigree  Jeffrey Toobin's book, The Run of His Life  but still, there are moments, there really are.

The key elements of the story are well-told, particularly if you're of an age to have lived through it. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman were murdered in 1994. Simpson, after a spectacular televised freeway chase, was arrested and charged with the crime. Did he do it? The answer to that question was, for a time, a hotly debated topic.

Given the extent to which the case was covered  all 134 days of the trial were televised in the United States, and covered heavily on international news services  you might wonder why on earth there is any value in returning to the story and attempting to re-create it, given that channels such as Court TV seemed to do so effectively the first time around.
"The BLT" are a very unusual family - consisting of a bear, a lion and a tiger.

The three were rescued in a drug raid 15 years ago, and have been inseparable ever since.

"The BLT" are a very unusual family - consisting of a bear, a lion and a tiger. The three were rescued in a drug raid 15 years ago, and have been inseparable ever since. Credit:Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary/Facebook

They live together at the Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary in Georgia, US.

Baloo the American black bear, Leo the African lion and Shere Khan the Bengal tiger were all rescued when they were less than one year old.
Coal mining in Sydney's water catchment is placing at risk sensitive and endangered swamplands that once damaged, can never be repaired, according to an independent hydrologist.

Philip Pells, who reviewed highland peat swamps above the Springvale coal mine for the Colong Foundation for Wilderness, also challenged claims made by owner Centennial Coal that impacts from past mining had been "negligible".

A healthy wet branch of the East Wolgan gully.

"You've got a very fragile system up there that can be upset by very small changes and you can't predict them," Dr Pells said.

"Swamps are the canaries in the coal mine  it's the first thing you can tell something is going wrong."
A new report from Australia's law reform commission is a "wake-up call" about the state of the country's rights and freedoms, a legal advocacy group says.

Attorney-General George Brandis released on Wednesday the Australian Law Reform Commission's final report on Australian laws which encroach on traditional rights and freedoms.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and Attorney-General Senator George Brandis. Credit:Janie Barrett

The wide-ranging, two-year long inquiry covered hundreds of laws which affect "traditional" freedoms such as freedom of speech, movement and association.

The report highlighted the country's counter-terrorism and national security laws as those which should be subject "ongoing and careful review".
Patrick Dodson tells the story of his grandfather Paddy Djiagween, who met the Queen in Broome in 1963 and asked: ''Why can't we have the same rights as the white man?"

The Queen, apparently unshaken by the break with formalities, said he should enjoy those rights.

Soon after when Mr Djiagween ordered a beer at the Continental Hotel across the road, he was refused because he was black. But one of the Queen's helpers intervened to ensure her wishes were met, and the old man got his drink.
Nervous Coalition backbenchers may be close to scoring a win on negative gearing, with the Turnbull government reportedly dumping plans to rein in the controversial policy.

Senior government sources have told The Australian Financial Review that a proposal to cap negative gearing deductions at $20,000 a year had been assessed but rejected, with an announcement on the decision due within weeks.

Treasurer Scott Morrison refused to confirm or deny the report on Thursday morning but abandoned his earlier talk of "excesses" around negative gearing in favour of warning of the dangers of altering the policy, as well as spruiking a report critical of Labor's proposed changes.
A key Senate crossbencher has accused the Coalition of being "virtually in caretaker mode" and others say the government has not been talking to them about legislation crucial to passing its childcare reforms.

With only four sitting days left before the pre-budget break - and speculation Malcolm Turnbull will call an election the day after budget is handed down on May 10 - Parliament has a narrowing window to pass the childcare package, a centrepiece of the 2015 budget.

The childcare package was one of the government's key measures in the 2015 budget. Credit:Peter Braig

But the $3 billion package can't be delivered without cuts to family tax benefits, which the Coalition is struggling to find support for. Both Labor and the Greens are opposed and crossbenchers are undecided or sceptical.

Senators Glenn Lazarus, John Madigan, Zhenya Wang and Ricky Muir all report that they have had no recent discussions with the government on the family tax benefit changes. Independent Nick Xenophon said he had not had any "in detail" talks and was still undecided.
Time for me to call it a day. What happened?

the day began and ended with tax ;

; the government has been spruiking a report warning against changes to negative gearing ;

has been spruiking a warning against changes to ; even if the report was not based on the opposition's policy and contains a couple of errors such as getting Australia's GDP wrong;

was not based on the and contains a couple of errors such as getting Australia's GDP wrong; Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has denied reports that he will make no changes to negative gearing saying the government is still engaged in careful policy consideration; and

has denied reports that he will make no changes to saying the government is still engaged in careful policy consideration; and Papua New Guinea's prime minister Peter O'Neill has said the Manus Island detention centre is a problem which the Australian government needs to fix.

My thanks to the magnificent Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen for their work and to you for reading and keeping us company.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Alex, Andrew and I will be back - with Parliament - on March 15. We hope to see you then. Until we do - go well.
Caitlyn, the transgender woman formerly known as Bruce Jenner, 66, revealed on her reality E! show, I Am Cait: "I don't see myself dating women in the future. I've been there, done that, got three ex-wives."

Momager Kris Jenner is "confused" that her ex Caitlyn Jenner now wants to date men after the ex-Olympian told Diane Sawyer she was attracted to women.

One ex-wife, Kris, mother of Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Robert Kardashian and Kendall and Kylie Jenner, appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres show on Monday to say she is baffled that she has changed her preference when it comes to a potential partner's sex.

Kris Jenner is "confused" ex Caitlyn Jenner now wants to date men. Credit:Kevin Mazur

"It's confusing because for a while she was not saying whether she was going to date women or men, and now apparently she has said that she's going to date men. How does that feel for you?" Ellen asked.

"I'm not quite sure  confusing for sure," Kris started out.

"It's confusing because for as long as you know and anyone knows he was only with women and now she wants to be with men," Ellen added.
One of the largest schools in NSW has suffered another blow after the federal government announced it would give four other Islamic schools more time to show they deserved to remain open but stood behind its decision to revoke funding to Malek Fahd in Sydney's west.

In February, Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced that he would strip Malek Fahd of $19 million in taxpayer funding after it was found to be operating for profit.

Fairfax Media has since revealed that basic services such as air conditioning were not paid for while some board members allegedly took out six figure loans from school funding.

The school now has less than a month before its funding dries up in April and before its 2400 students could be forced to look elsewhere for their education. Hundreds of students and parents protested about the school's administrators in February, demanding that the board resign.
The Catholic Education Office in Victoria and the former Archbishop of Melbourne Frank Little covered up serious sex claims against a priest, Cardinal George Pell has told a royal commission.

In his third day of evidence he accused the school administrators and the Archbishop of deceiving him about alleged paedophile priest Peter Searson.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses in to Child Sexual Abuse heard the Sunbury parish priest killed a bird in front of children, showed them a dead body in a coffin, held a gun to the heads of parishioners, threatened to stab a child in a church and repeatedly molested youngsters.
Cardinal George Pell said it was a "mistake" to accompany notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale to court but he believed the action might result in a lesser sentence for the former priest.

In his fourth day of testimony to the royal commission, the Cardinal was cross examined on why he supported Ridsdale at his 1993 appearance at Melbourne Magistrate's Court.

Speaking by video link from Rome, Cardinal Pell told the commission that he attended court at the suggestion of Ridsdale's lawyer.

"I said, 'Yes'. I now realise that was a mistake."
If Dr Google was a real human, he would have all the gravitas of a used-car salesman: often used, but seldom trusted.

A national survey on sources of child health information has shown that while most parents used websites, online forums and blogs, very few had any faith in such sites.

Their most trusted source of information was their general practitioner, who was also the person they were most likely to consult, the Australian Child Health Poll found.

They were next most likely to consult their family and friends, pharmacist or websites, even though they did not trust the information provided by these sources.
The 24-hour strike, part of a continuing dispute over wages and conditions, will be preceded by strikes by public servants at the Tax Office, Medicare, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Senator Michaelia Cash says strike action can cause harm to the public and involves a loss of pay for employees. Credit:Graham Tidy

Senator Cash, who also holds the public service portfolio, says plans for ABF and other Immigration Department officials to walk off the job for 24 hours on Easter Thursday have the potential to hurt the travelling public.

Upcoming strikes by Border Force officials and other public servants have been condemned as "unfortunate, ill-conceived" and "counterproductive" by Employment Minister Michaelia Cash.

But the planned action may not go ahead if Immigration bosses achieve a hoped-for yes-vote in the ballot of the department's 13,500 public servants currently underway. The last ballot, in September 2015, ended in a crushing no-vote.

An Immigration spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the main workplace union had not yet lodged the necessary paperwork with the Fair Work Commission to secure legal protection for its planned Easter action.

Bureaucrats at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Bureau of Statistics are also planning to join in the 24-hour strike on Monday, March 21, in what will be the most comprehensive industrial action seen so far in the dispute.

The Community and Public Sector Union, representing the Border Force officials and other public servants, says the action could escalate further with a three-week campaign of rolling airport strikes over the Easter school holidays being considered.

Unions and Labor seized on a narrow rejection on Wednesday of a wage proposal at the giant Defence Department to call for the government's bargaining stance to be dropped, but the Employment Minister was unwavering.
Ballarat clergy abuse survivors have agreed to meet with Cardinal George Pell on Thursday (Rome time) but are still pushing to meet Pope Francis.

Survivors will also meet a member of the Pontifical Commission for Protection on Minors, an institution which deals with the rampant sexual abuse of children at the hands of Catholic clergy on Thursday morning, Rome time.

It comes after Cardinal Pell announced he would meet with survivors of clergy sexual abuse but victims said they have lost all faith in Australia's most senior Catholic cleric.

Ballarat survivor Philip Nagle said on Wednesday victims had grown increasingly frustrated by Cardinal Pell's failure to accept any responsibility for the sexual abuse of children at the hands of clergy and their preference was to meet the world's most senior Catholic.
Not all eyes have been on Cardinal George Pell this week as he revisited his early years as a Ballarat priest. They have also been on the woman tasked with taking him there.

Gail Furness, SC, has worked full-time as counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse since it was established in 2012, and played a key role in helping commissioners decide how to approach their broad terms of reference.

Gail Furness has worked as counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse since it was established in 2012. Credit:Warren Clarke

The Sydney barrister has travelled with commissioners all over Australia since then to investigate schools, churches, and after-school groups' collective failures to protect children from sexual abuse.

She has heard first-hand the stories of thousands of survivors, including those from Ballarat who are in Rome to watch this week's hearing.
A baker accused of raping a young female job seeker looking for work in his Sydney business and indecently assaulting another, has waived his right to a committal hearing and will face trial.

Accused: Baker Habibullah Afghan-Baig. Credit:Christopher Pearce

Habibullah Afghan-Baig, 38, who owns and runs the Afghan and Arab Bakery in Fairfield, has pleaded not guilty to three counts of sexual intercourse without consent and five counts of indecent assault.

Police say his two alleged victims had replied to a job advertisement posted on the Gumtree classifieds website and met Mr Afghan-Baig at his new, unopened business in Lakemba last year.
Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery has dismissed as "nonsense" Deputy Premier Troy Grant's claim pill testers could be charged with manslaughter.

Mr Grant doubled down on the NSW government's strident opposition to the initiative on Monday, saying pill-testers risked prosecution for drug possession and supply as well as manslaughter charges if they proceeded with a plan to trial the measure at NSW venues.

"[T]hese people are putting themselves in a lot of legal jeopardy that they are going to most likely end up possessing and potentially supplying these pills back, and if these pills go wrong and kill someone they may well be vulnerable to manslaughter charges," Mr Grant told 2UE radio.

Premier Mike Baird joined his deputy in condemning the proposal on Wednesday, saying his government would not use "taxpayer funded dollars" to "support illegal drug dealers".

A spokeswoman for Mr Grant on Wednesday said that the government's current legal advice was that NSW legislation provided police with the power to take action against pill testers at music festivals. "As in all police investigations, each case would need to be investigated according to its circumstances," the spokeswoman said.
The Sydney truck driver at the centre of a 2013 Mona Vale crash that killed two people has been found guilty of negligent driving occasioning death.

Just 10 days after a jury acquitted Shane Anthony Day of the more serious charge of dangerous driving occasioning death, a judge convicted him of the negligent driving charge on Wednesday and he now faces the possibility of jail.

Cootes tanker driver Shane Day has been found guilty of negligent driving occasioning death. Credit:Emma Partridge

Day, 47, had been transporting almost 40,000 litres of petrol just after 3.30pm on October 1, 2013, when his Cootes tanker clipped a roundabout, struck a power pole, flipped and skidded into oncoming traffic.

The tanker exploded into a fireball, killing Peter Wem, 73, and a passenger in his car, Graham Holtfreter, 71, and leaving another man, Neil Donaldson, with horrific burns.
A woman allegedly murdered by her boyfriend had told friends in the weeks before her death that she feared for her life, a jury has heard.

Marika Ninness, 35, died in hospital 13 days after she suffered severe head injuries when she was allegedly punched to the ground by her war veteran boyfriend in an East Maitland car park following an argument.

Ross Merrick and Marika Ninness. Credit:Facebook

Ross Albert Merrick, now aged 32, has pleaded not guilty to murdering his girlfriend of eight months, arguing he had not meant to strike Ms Ninness with his elbow but that the action was a "conditioned response" to his military training after she had confronted him.

In his opening address in the Supreme Court trial in Newcastle, Crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell told the jury that they would hear evidence of a volatile relationship where Mr Merrick was "verbally and physically violent to her as well as controlling and possessive" and which culminated in the car park argument late on December 8, 2013.
NSW Premier Mike Baird has reaffirmed the government's opposition to pill testing at NSW music festivals, one day after Stereosonic became the first major festival to welcome on-site testing in a bid to prevent overdoses and deaths.

Describing the initiative as tantamount to condoning illegal drugs, Mr Baird refuted the measure's purported safety objectives and instead advocated abstinence from drugs as the only way to ensure safety.

No testing: NSW Premier Mike Baird. Credit:Wolter Peeters

"What they are asking us to do is to allow illegal drugs," he told Channel Seven's Sunrise program.
A Sydney dance teacher sent a series of explicit text messages to students as young as 11, asking them for "sexy pics", a royal commission has heard.

Grant Davies, a former director of RG Dance who pleaded guilty to 47 child sex offences in 2015, is one subject of an inquiry into abuse at performing arts schools.

Former dance teacher Grant Davies abused multiple students from his school, RG Dance.

In an opening address to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, counsel assisting David Lloyd SC said the hearing would examine how Davies groomed students and their parents.
Analysis

It's no wonder Mike Baird's government is encouraging people to catch the train to the airport.

The government is set to reap more than $100 million in just two years from the exorbitant fares charged on the privately owned rail line to Sydney Airport.

The increasing flow of money has reignited calls for the government to slash the $17 fare for a one-way trip from the CBD to the airport, which makes it the most expensive stretch of rail track for passengers in Sydney.
Asylum-seeker advocates have picketed the office of federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton as part of an ongoing campaign against offshore detention fuelled by the baby Asha case.

The Nepalese family has been in community detention for more than a week after being released from Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital, where medical staff engaged in a 10-day stand-off until Mr Dutton insisted she was always going to be sent into community housing, not immediately sent back to Nauru.

He has since repeatedly signalled they will be returned to the island eventually.

The group of protesters, many of whom had also maintained a rally outside the hospital in support of the staff's strong stance, gathered outside Mr Dutton's electoral office at Strathpine, north of Brisbane, on Wednesday.
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk has gone on the defensive following revelations his council approved the $3.3 million sale of Brisbane City Council land to a Liberal National Party donor without going to public tender, as was usually required.

Fairfax Media understands the matter has been referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission after the ABC revealed late Tuesday that LNP donor Tan Boon Seng had entered into a deal to buy an 8521 square metre parcel of land next to his Nundah business, East Coast Car Rentals.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk has been forced to defend his council's decision to sell a $3.3 million parcel of land to an LNP donor. Credit:Chris Hyde

Dr Tan, and companies linked with the businessman, donated almost $60,000 to the LNP in 2014-15.

He was named the Lord Mayor's Multicultural Businessperson of the Year in 2013.
Labor lord mayoral candidate Rod Harding has promised his administration would not accept donations from businesses with proposals before council should he be elected later this month.

But while Mr Harding's commitment drew fire from both the Liberal National Party and Greens campaigns, his promise to disclose all Labor donations prior to the March 19 election looked to have shored up Greens preferences.

Brisbane kingmaker? Greens lord mayoral candidate Ben Pennings says they will likely preference Labor in the council election. Credit:Michelle Smith

Greens lord mayoral candidate Ben Pennings told Fairfax Media their how-to-vote cards were set to go to the printer on Thursday and it it was now likely they would preference Labor ahead of the LNP.

Mr Pennings had indicated earlier in the campaign the Greens would preference whichever major party committed to disclosing all political donations prior to election day, which left open the possibilities of a "just vote 1" strategy, or even preferencing the LNP.
A worker has been taken to hospital after a possible electric shock at the Commonwealth Games village worksite on the Gold Coast.

A spokeswoman for Queensland Ambulance said the man was taken to hospital with head pain after an electric shock that occurred earlier in the day at Southport.

A man working on the Commonwealth Games village has been taken to hospital. Credit:Virginia Star

A spokesman for Grocon, the construction company building the village, confirmed a subcontractor on the site has been taken to hospital.

"The cause of the injury is uncertain and we are in the process of identifying that cause with Workplace Health and Safety," he said.
One of Queensland's most important heritage buildings  named in honour of Queen Victoria - still has not been repaired 15 months after it was lashed in the November 2014 hailstorm.

Queensland is still waiting for federal government approval before repairs can start on Victoria Barracks on Petrie Terrace in inner Brisbane.

Victoria Barracks and the damage caused by storms in November 2014. Some windows are now boarded up.

Now Queensland's Environment Minister Steven Miles has lost patience with the Defence Department and written to Defence Minister Marise Payne asking for an explanation.

"There is considerable community concern in my electorate about the future of this prominent site, so I've written to the Federal Defence Minister in a bid to get some answers," Dr Miles said.
There are two celestial events worth seeing this March, but sadly for one you'll need to travel to Indonesia. Many people will do that, from around the globe, to be there on March 9 when it occurs. It's an awe-inspiring natural event  a total eclipse of the sun. There's nothing else like it. The centre line passes through Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi. The rest of us can view it online  do a Google search.

What we will be able to see from all over Australia is Jupiter's opposition. It returns blazingly into our evening skies, majestically outshining everything else except the moon. Coincidently, it will reach peak brightness on the same date as the eclipse, but it will be a more languid and relaxed phenomenon, lasting considerably longer than the four minutes during which the moon totally covers the sun.

On March 9, with a pair of binoculars, both Jupiter and its moon Ganymede will be visible. Credit:Ben Long

The term 'opposition' comes from the fact that on the date in question Jupiter is "opposite" the sun in our sky. If you have clear horizons, watch the sun set on that evening, then do a complete 180-degree turn and face the east, to see Jupiter rising.

It also means Earth and Jupiter will be at their closest for the year, separated by about 660 million kilometres. Because of this relative proximity, mighty Jove also looks its largest and brightest.Both planets are on the same side of the sun.
A new website helps you figure out how common your name is in different parts of the world, where it may have come from and where you may be most likely to find long lost relatives.

Geographers at the University College of London are researching the links between surnames and geographical locations. The website is a "quirky" offshoot of that work, Professor Paul Longley said. There are 8 million unique surnames and 5 million unique forenames among 300 million people in 26 countries of the world, collected from telephone books and electoral roles.

Results of a worldnames search on the surname Turnbull. Credit:worldnames.publicprofiler.org

Entering your name turns up a "heat map" of its frequency per million people around the world from low to high. Worldnames shows Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's surname, for example, has spread from its Scottish roots to become more concentrated in Australia (frequency 458 per million people) than in the United Kingdom (348 per million).
A Catholic school has cancelled a speaking visit from an award-winning gay author of young adult books because his new book - which includes a gay character - has been deemed "not appropriate".

Will Kostakis, 26, came out as gay on his blog last week after an ex-boyfriend of his was diagnosed with cancer.

Young adult author Will Kostakis. Credit:Nic Walker

Just days later he received a cancellation email from a teacher at De La Salle College in Revesby Heights, in Sydney, where he had done a successful speaking visit last year.

"We have a concern about promoting your new book at our school as it is a Catholic school," the email reads.
Poor Cardinal Pell, always the victim of such appalling deception and lies by those he should have been able to trust.

If only he had known the truth about goings on in Ballarat and Doveton with abusive priests Gerald Ridsdale and Peter Searson, matters would have been so different.

That was the line Cardinal Pell ran consistently before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Wednesday, and he held it in the face of obvious incredulity by commission chairman Justice Peter McClellan and senior counsel Gail Furness, who frankly told him his evidence was implausible and designed to deflect blame from himself.

Cardinal Pell replied: "Counsel, I can only tell you the truth, the whole story of Searson is implausible and the cover-up is equally implausible. I can only tell you the way it was."
A man who went to police to confess to sexually abusing his foster child has been spared jail, partly because the case would never have reached the courts had he not admitted his wrongdoing.

The 42-year-old on Wednesday pleaded guilty to three counts of committing an indecent act against a child under 16. The child, who was eight at the time and the sexual offending occurred between April last year and January.

Magistrate Joanne Metcalf said the offending was serious but acknowledged the man - who cannot be named, so as not to identify his victim - would not have appeared before her had he not confessed to his partner, before police were contacted. The child had never disclosed the abuse, she said.

"This is an unusual case in that the only reason we are here is that you, for whatever reason, realised you were doing the wrong thing," Ms Metcalf told Melbourne Magistrates Court.

"You are here because you confessed to it and you have taken responsibility for it."
There has only ever been one suspect in the death of 10-month-old Chloe Murphy, a Victorian inquest has heard.

Chloe Murphy's life support was switched off in December 2010, two days after was left in Ketapat Jenkins' care at the babysitter's home in Kensington.

Police say Ketapat Jenkins has been the 'only suspect' for the death of Chloe Murphy. Credit:Jason South

The lead investigator into her death has told the Victorian Coroners Court medical evidence points to Chloe being critically injured when she was with Mrs Jenkins.

"It became clear that the injuries sustained occurred during Ketapat Jenkins watching over the child," Detective Leading Senior Constable Justin Tippett said on Wednesday.
The fate of Etihad Stadium could be decided this year with the AFL weighing up whether to take ownership ahead of the 2025 contract date and senior planners eyeing the site for redevelopment.

Potential new stadium sites being discussed include the North Melbourne site of the planned Metro Rail Arden train station south of Arden Street and land at Ron Barassi Snr Park near the Bolte Bridge.

Under Eddie McGuire's plan, Etihad Stadium would be demolished. Credit:Emily Godfrey

A spokesman for the AFL said it would only consider purchasing Etihad Stadium early "if the price was right and the positives of doing so significantly outweighed waiting for the current deal to expire in 2025".

He said the AFL was not considering moving the stadium and playing matches at other Melbourne venues such as Whitten Oval and Ikon Park "isn't in the AFL's current plans".
Kabul: Afghan forces have pulled back from strongpoints in the southern province of Uruzgan, continuing a withdrawal which began last month when they abandoned two districts in the neighbouring province of Helmand to the Taliban, officials said.

The Uruzgan withdrawal comes after many years of work and much blood shed by Australian troops to maintain peace and stability in the province, before the last Australians left in 2014.

Normal business will resume ... a shopkeeper looks out from his workplace after a suicide bomb in Kabul. Credit:AP

Australian troops were stationed in Uruzgan, operating from the Tarin Kowt military base, for 13 years. As many as 41 Australian troops were killed and many others injured in what was known as Operation Slipper  including the first Australian combat deaths since the Vietnam War.

Now some of that hard-won ground will be handed back to the Taliban. Uruzgan, which shares a border with the insurgent heartlands of Helmand and Kandahar, is a poor and largely mountainous region, which Dutch and Australian troops struggled to stabilise after the Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces in 2001.
Bogota: A group of Guatemalan women used as sex slaves by two former military officers during the country's civil war are seeking $US3 million ($4.1 million) in compensation following a historic trial, their lawyers said.

On Friday, a Guatemalan court convicted a retired army officer and a former paramilitary for holding 11 indigenous women as sex slaves at a military base, for murder and forced disappearances dating back to the early 1980s.

Victims of sexual violence hide their faces during the trial against former military officer and a former paramilitary fighter convicted of sexual violence against indigenous women during Guatemala's civil war, in Guatemala City. Credit:AP

The defendants - Esteelmer Giron, a lieutenant colonel and former commander of the Sepur Zarco base and Heriberto Asij, a civilian with links to the army - were sentenced to a total of 360 years in prison.

Both deny wrongdoing and will appeal, their lawyers said.
Amsterdam: An Islamist fighter caused irreparable damage to Africa's cultural heritage by destroying religious sites in the ancient city of Timbuktu during the 2012 conflict in Mali, prosecutors said in the International Criminal Court's first prosecution for the crime of destroying cultural monuments.

Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a former trainee teacher, led and had personally taken part in the attacks on nine mausoleums and mosques in the city with pick-axes and crowbars, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Tuesday.

Women and girls wearing veils to comply with the dictates of Islamist group Ansar Dine wait to see the public lashing of a member of the Islamic Police found guilty of adultery in Timbuktu, Mali, in 2012. Credit:AP

Mahdi - an ethnic Tuareg - belonged to the Ansar Dine militant group, an ally of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, prosecutors said.
Bangkok: Chinese vessels have been accused of taking over another traditional Filipino fishing ground in the flashpoint waters of the South China Sea, forcing local fishermen from the area.

The arrival of at least four vessels at Quirino or Jackson Atoll comes as US Defence Secretary Ash Carter warned China against what he called "aggressive" actions in the South China Sea, including the placement of surface-to-air missiles.

Protest leader Elly Pamatong at a demonstration in Manila on Monday to condemn recent island-building and alleged militarisation by China in the South China Sea. Credit:AP

"China must not pursue militarisation in the South China Sea," Mr Carter said in a speech in San Francisco on Tuesday.
"We're not scared of these people," she told me. A protester holds up a sign as he disrupts a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Credit:AP Another young woman with a similar sign began chanting her message after her friends were escorted out, until a man wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap who must have been twice her size lunged over and tore the sign out of her hands. As they scuffled and the crowd laughed, another young man, wearing a high-vis T-shirt that read "Trust Jesus", sprang between them. A protester is escorted out of a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Louisville, Kentucky. Credit:AP

All the while Trump rambled from the stage using the vaudeville rhetoric that marks all his public appearances. "Who is going to build the wall?" he asked. "Mexico" the crowd hollered back. The audience cheered punchlines obediently and booed joyously when Trump enemies were mentioned by name. As if often the case at Trump events, many were simply there for the spectacle.

Jane Emke, a sprightly 75-year-old, climbed up on temporary fencing to get a better look. She plans to vote for Hillary Clinton, but wanted to see Trump in action. And she agrees with some of what he says. She thinks that maybe if German Jews had been better armed before World War II, more might have survived the Holocaust. One young man in shorts and cowboy boots and an American flag-shirt torn off at the sleeves parades around yelling Trump slogans, but when asked says he would never vote for him. "I don't want to see my country burn," the 21-year-old political science major says. But most are there because they back Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party. Stephen Sims comes from a family of liberals, but the 19-year-old will vote for Trump on Super Tuesday because he believes a wall should be built along the US border, and that Trump is the man to rebuild the American economy. And like most people you speak to at Trump rallies, he loves that Trump is funding his own campaign.

"We got to get Wall Street out of politics," he says. This message has blindsided the Republican Party, which appeared not to realise how angry the working-class cultural conservatives it has come to rely upon have become. Trump is expected to win 10 of the 11 states expected to report results today, losing only to Ted Cruz in his home state of Texas. Should that be the case it will still be conceivable that he can be beaten, but only just. So confident is he on Tuesday that he began the day in Ohio and is to end it in Florida, states that are not going to the polls on Super Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Marco Rubio, the man being cast as the most viable alternative to Trump, is not expected to win any states. So grim are his prospects that Rubio staff held a briefing for donors to warn them of how poorly they expected to perform, but arguing they could still secure the nomination at the Republican convention in July, Politico reported. "It was a presentation that defied reality," one Rubio backer said. "They said their convention strategy was not contingent on winning any states ... Even if you go to the [second ballot] why would anyone say Marco Rubio is the guy to give it to?" Meanwhile, party elders are left in the confounding position of trying to distance themselves from the ugly racist air thickening around the Trump campaign  he refused to disavow support from a former Ku Klux Klan leader this week  while insisting they would support him if he became the nominee. Republican Congressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have been trying to that line this week.
As New Jersey governor and vanquished foe Chris Christie nodded and smiled wanly behind him, Trump ignored his Republican rivals and moved straight to making his case against Clinton. Look into those eyes and try to deny that Chris Christie has seen something. Credit:AP "People in the middle-income groups are making less money than they were 12 years ago," he said. "And in her speech, [Hillary Clinton] said 'they're making less money'. Well, she's been there with Obama for a long period of time. Why hasn't she done anything about it?" In the same vein, Clinton's focus during her own victory speech in Miami was on Trump, rather than her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders with wife Jane Sanders during a Super Tuesday rally in Essex Junction, Vermont. Sanders raised $US42 million in February. Credit:Bloomberg

With an eye to Trump's angry and divisive campaign, Clinton declared that America is in need of more "love and kindness". "We know we've got work to do. But that work is not to make America great again," she said. "America never stopped being great. We need to make America whole again." Hillary Clinton could sweep up enough delegates on Super Tuesday to give her an all-but-insurmountable lead for the Democratic presidential nomination over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Credit:Bloomberg By early on Wednesday morning, Clinton and Trump had won seven states each, with Sanders taking four, Ted Cruz two and Marco Rubio one. The fragmented Republican contest continues to serve the Trump campaign.

This is his life now. Credit:AP Yet the man in second place, Ted Cruz, is overwhelmingly loathed by party officials as self-serving and intransigent. Though Cruz has enjoyed far more victories in early contests than Rubio, many within the party are still trying to cast the Florida senator as their saviour, as is Rubio himself. Audience listens to Bernie Sanders in Essex Junction. Credit:Bloomberg "We will not allow the party of Lincoln and Reagan to fall into the hands of a con artist," he said in reference to Trump on Tuesday night.

Cruz's victories in his home state of Texas as well as Oklahoma last night make Rubio's case harder to defend. Supporters wave American flags during a Super Tuesday rally for Hillary Clinton. Credit:Bloomberg This point was being debated within the party even before all the votes were counted. "Bottom line: there is no way someone can seriously contend that Trump must be defeated at all costs and still refuse to call upon the others to leave the race. In addition to winning states and having the second most delegates, Cruz is the only one who can win back enough of the conservative voters Trump is winning," a commentator wrote in the Conservative Review on Tuesday night. During his own victory speech in Texas, Cruz described Trump as "profane and vulgar" and called upon other candidates to "prayerfully consider coming together". Or in other words, to get out of his way.

That seems unlikely, in the coming days at least. Rubio is hoping that with Jeb Bush's endorsement he can overcome Trump's lead and win in Florida later this month. Florida is not only Rubio's home state, but one in which the winner takes all delegates. Similarly John Kasich, trailing fourth in the delegate count, is hoping to win the state for which he is a popular governor, Ohio, another winner-take-all state which goes to the polls later this month. Nor is there any evidence that Bernie Sanders is planning on quitting his race for the Democratic nomination. He won his home state of Vermont, but would have been disappointed to lose neighbouring Massachusetts. But he also picked up Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma. Though it is now hard to see how he can win, he has an argument for continuing his campaign and plenty of money left to spend. What is even more clear after Tuesday's races, though, is that though the gulf between the Democratic Party and the grass roots insurgency  or between Clinton and Sanders  is real, it is not overwhelming.
PHILIPSBURG:---- As a party that believes in and supports the creation of our state institutions, our first reaction to the prospects of a national bank was, "Oh, good, our own".

The DP sees our own state institutions as a deliberate part of nation building, which we believe is an indispensable path to our future development.

In fact, it can be stated here that the aspect of nation building for the Democratic Party following the transition to country in 2010, is Priority # 1. Nation building from our perspective is one of stimulating national unity, a national identity and social cohesion, and in this context there is no place for divisiveness.

However,we are extremely concerned about developments in the regional banking sector, of which we are part and parcel.

We have already in Parliament raised the issue of the FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act) and will continue to monitor this.

However, the more ominous issue of the so-called "de-risking" by the correspondent banks of local and regional banks is real and quite unsettling.

In essence, several correspondent banks are refusing business from local and regional banks.

Just imagine the effects of these actions by correspondent banks in the USA and Europe. With our open economy, this could have disastrous effects for every citizen!

CARICOM has mobilized all its forces to address this matter at the highest levels.

In this environment, we believe a national bank should be put on the back burner.

Note as well, that we have to "clean up" some of our acts, to restore confidence in our country. Again, the over-used words of transparency and integrity come to mind, because a lot has to do with the image of our country, real or perceived.

An all-together other matter is the establishment of a national DEVELOPMENT bank. While this is nothing new and there are different ideas for its seed funding, we are yet to come to concrete action in this regard. I advise government to make some serious efforts to break this cycle of inaction, due to differences not on the topic of a development bank, but rather on the approach.

By the way, I think it is as far back as 2012/2013 that the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten proposed draft articles of incorporation for a development bank for St. Maarten.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Honorable Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Silveria Jacobs congratulates team Antigua, the winners of the 44th Annual Leeward Islands Debating Competition which was held on St. Maarten for the first time.

Minister Jacobs also congratulates team St. Maarten, the sub-champions of competition who defeated the defending champions from Anguilla to qualify for the final round. The St. Maarten team consisted of debaters: Kamilah Gumbs, Harsha Parchani, Alexandria Baly Stanford, Hailey Greaux, D shnay Mathew York and Dwayne P. Griffith who won best speaker of the debate. The debate teams staff sponsor was Ms. Majorie Cortico Ramiez.

During the final round, St. Maarten faced Antigua, debating the moot: The marginalization of men has led to the breakdown of Caribbean society. While the proposition and opposition both confidently defended their stance on the issue, team Antigua won the overall debate.

Both teams from Antigua and St. Maarten will be given the opportunity to travel to New York City in April and receive a college tour of Medgar Evers College CUNY which has the distinction of being the youngest of the four-year senior colleges in The City University of New York.

Debate is an important activity that everyone needs to get the chance to do. It is the perfect opportunity to help our students develop their leadership skills and their communication skills. Its what makes the youth learn more about their potential and should be encouraged and supported on St. Maarten.

Becoming an effective leader is a journey. Leadership skills must not only be acquired, but opportunities must be available for youth to use their skills to make a difference in their own lives and in the lives of others.

I hope that the success of team St. Maarten not only motivates others to set the debating bar higher, but inspires their peers to partake in debating as well.
MP Silvio Matser, Eddie Fleming, Rogelio Koieman arrested --- Investigators did not get authorization from the courts to search MP Matster home and to arrest him --- Court grants Prosecution warrant to search MP Matser house and confirms arrest.

PHILIPSBURG:--- The budget debate that was scheduled to continue in parliament of St. Maarten had to be posponed on Wednesday morning because the current coalition got a 'monkey wrinch" thrown at them when the National Detectives and other law enforcement agencies conducted several house searches on Wednesday morning and arrested MP Silvio Matser. The detectives wanted to search the home of MP Silvio Matser, but MP Matser refused to allow the detectives to search his home because they did not get authorization from the courts to do so. However, the detectives arrested the Member of Parliament and afterwards they pursued the courts for authorization to search Matser's home. The home of Eddie Fleming which is ocated in Dutch Quarter was searched and the home of Rogelio Koieman located in Simpson Bay and they too were arrested. MP Silvio Matser was arrested on the suspicion of election fraud Fleming and Koieman are are suspected accomplices.

The Court of First of Instance confirmed the arrest of Member of Parliament Silvio Matser just after 3pm on Wednesday and also granted the prosecution the authorization to search the home of the Member of Parliament and his office. Press Officer for the Attorney General confirmed to SMN News shortly after 4pm on Wednesday that the Prosecution and detectives were on thier way to execute the searches while the detectives will begin interrogating MP Matser. Serphos said that Matser will be confronted with the information the prosecution has and he could be in custody for the next 48 hours or more. He stressed that the Octopus investigation will be treated like every other case and not differently. Serphos also indicated that the prosecution lost time on Wednesday because of the court proceedings that had to take place on Wednesday in order for them to proceed with the investigation. He again stressed that other arrests and searches should not be excluded.

The spokeman for the office of the Attorney General Norman Serphos confirmed the house searches which he said is related to the Octopus investigation. Serphos said the Octopus investigation started in October 2014 when a complaint was filed that indicated that persons on St. Maarten were paid to vote for MP Matser. He said in October 2014 the Attorney General started a fact finding investigation which was elevated to a criminal investigation in May 2015, which led to the arrests of the three suspects Serphos identified the suspects as S.M, E.F and R.K. Later Serphos said the detectives went to Matser's home to conduct the search without obtaining authorization from the court. He also said they also went to MP Matser home to arrest him. Serphos made clear that there might be more arrests and house searches later today. SMN News will bring you more information on the ongoing house searches and arrests. Due to the arrest of of MP Matser, the budget debate had to be postponed for four days due to a lack of quorom. Right now the Marlin coalition is in limbo since one of the members of the coalition is behind bars and is accused of election fraud. The Minister of Justice of St. Maarten Edison Kirindongo was only informed of the house searches and arrests early Wednesday morning, something Chief Prosecutor Ton Maan would have to fully explain to the Minister of Justice.

Already there are indications that the move on Wednesday by the Attorney General seems to be more political and that the Attorney General seems to be working for a particular set of politicians in the Netherlands instead of the country. If the country do not have an approved budget by a certain time frame then this open the door for the Netherlands to march in and take over the country.

Questions are also now being raised as to why the national detectives and the Attorney General waited until the last day of the 2016 budget debate to throw a 'monkey wrinch' in the process. Several persons contacted SMN News and stated that the Masbango investigation took almost four years before it was taken to court and was thrown out by a judge who stated in his verdict that there seems to be class justice on St. Maarten because the politician that benefitted from the vote buying in that case was never charged or even arrested. Instead the late civil servant along with the three police officers and Roy Heyliger the person that was manning the UPP election office had to appear in court.

In the case of Matser (Octopus Investigation), it took the national detectives nine months to make the arrests, and while being in a hurry to trap the country they failed to follow proper legal procedures and obtain authorization from the courts to search the home of an MP.

Criminal investigation surrounding vote buying during Parliamentary Elections 2014

House search and arrests in case "Octopus"

PHILIPSBURG:--- As a result of information obtained by the Public Prosecutor's Office that Member of Parliament S.M. would have bribed people to vote for him, a fact finding investigation by order of the Attorney-General was launched in October 2014 by the National Detectives.

The results of this investigation warranted a criminal investigation in the month of May 2015. This investigation carries the code name "Octopus". In this case 3 arrests were made Wednesday morning. They are S.M., E.F. and R.K. They are suspected of election fraud and acting as an accomplice. During one of the house search at the home of E.F. drugs were found. In this case the female D.F. was arrested. At the home of R.K. one luxury car and jewelry was confiscated. This in a separate investigation.

In the case of S.M. house searches are still being planned for today. Both at his home and office. Both location are frozen pending a warrant for the prosecution of S.M. by the Court. The Court must give on Sint Maarten approval when the suspect is a politician.

This investigation is led by the Public Prosecutor's Office St. Maarten. The investigation is ongoing. More arrests are not excluded. The police force of Sint Maarten (KPSM) and the RST agencies rendered assistance during the searches and arrest.

No further comment will be given until further notice.

Strafrechtelijk onderzoek naar verkiezingsfraude Statenverkiezing 2014

Huiszoekingen en aanhoudingen in zaak "Octopus"

PHILIPSBURG - Naar aanleiding van informatie verkregen door het Openbaar Ministerie dat Statenlid S.M. rond de Statenverkiezing van augustus 2014 mensen zou hebben omgekocht om op hem te stemmen, is op last van de Procureur-generaal (PG) in oktober 2014 een feitenonderzoek gestart door de Landsrecherche. De resultaten van dit feitenonderzoek gaven aanleiding om in mei 2015 een Strafrechtelijk onderzoek te gelasten. In het kader van dit onderzoek onder de codenaam "Octopus" zijn 3 personen aangehouden, te weten de man S.M., de man E.F. en de man R.K. Tijdens het onderzoek zijn in de woning van E.F. softdrugs aangetroffen en in verband hiermee is de vrouw D.F. aangehouden. Bij R.K. zijn sieraden en een luxe auto in beslag genomen

in ene separaat onderzoek.

In verband met de zaak tegen S.M. moeten nog twee huiszoekingen worden verricht. Namelijk in de woning en diens kantoor in het Parlement. Beide locaties zijn bevroren in afwachting van een bevel tot vervolging van het S.M. te geven door het Hof. Het Hof moet namelijk op Sint Maarten een bevel vervolging geven als de verdachte een politicus is.

Dit onderzoek wordt geleid door het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) Sint Maarten. Meer aanhoudingen worden niet uitgesloten. Binnen het kader van de samenwerking kreeg de Landsrecherche vanmorgen ondersteuning van het Korps Politie Sint Maarten (KPSM) en de Recherchesamenwerkingsteam (RST) bij de doorzoekingen en aanhoudingen.

Tot nader orde wordt geen nadere mededelingen gedaan.

Press Release from Office of the Attorney General
A team of Caribbean and European experts, headed by Professor Adele Jones from the University of Huddersfield, in partnership with The Sweet Water Foundation of Grenada, has been awarded 400,000 euros from the European Union to implement a new project on preventing domestic violence in the region. Data will be used to develop interactive, role-playing computer games designed to empower victims and change attitudes that have been linked to aggressive and violent behaviours. It is often claimed that computer games encourage violence, therefore the idea is to create computer games that can be used in schools to reduce negative attitudes developed in childhood and which can fuel domestic violence in later relationships.

Prof Jones said: There is enough evidence to tell us that computer games can generate violence, so what we want to do is look at how we can create an educational tool that might begin to generate empathy  or non-violence.

The project has been named None-in-Three, derived from the finding that one in three women and girls experience violence in their lives. Thats a fairly global statistic but domestic violence is identified as being particularly entrenched in the Caribbean, said Prof Jones.

None in Three will be implemented in Barbados and Grenada and will be launched on March 8th 2016, in celebration of International Womens Day. The project will run for two years.

EU Ambassador Mikael Barfod said: "If the numbers we see in domestic violence were applied to other forms of crime, to gang violence or terrorism, the entire region, even the world, would be up in arms, and it would be the lead story on the news all the time."

The computer games will be just one aspect of the initiative, which has been designed to complement existing domestic violence prevention programmes in Barbados and Grenada, where the project is to be implemented. None in Three will also include research with victims in especially vulnerable circumstances (such as disabled women, pregnant women, women living with HIV, women who are trafficked and women from sexual minorities) with the aim of improving access to services and justice for these groups.

Prof Jones added: We will also engage with men and youth to find out their perspectives. Though the majority of victims are females, we need to acknowledge that males are also subject to violence and we need a clear take on their views about what are its causes and what can be done.

Another aspect of the project will be the design of training programmes based on the research findings which will be made widely available to stakeholders and frontline professionals. The aim is to reach people right across society. A Social Media Campaign will be launched to encourage people to become spokespersons against violence in the home.

According to Ambassador Barfod: "There are far too many silent sufferers. If we are to fight discrimination and injustice against women, we must start from every home, for if a woman cannot be safe in her own house, then she cannot be expected to feel safe anywhere. These crimes are everywhere and can take place behind any door and barely elicit much more than a shrug of shoulders and superficial dismay."

Prof Jones added: "Domestic violence doesnt happen in particular kinds of households, it is societal - its in my home, your home; our brothers and sisters homes; it happens among the well-educated and the poorly educated; the rich and the poor; the professional worker and the street worker; the Church goer and the Church leader; the young and the less young; sometimes we know about it but most often we dont. For these reasons we hope to generate widespread support and to engage people from all walks of life as None in Three Representatives, people willing to take a stand against domestic violence, in all its forms and wherever it happens.
Instead of working for their salaries they chose to support the Politicians of the Netherlands that are hell bent on bringing St. Maarten on its knees.

PHILIPSBURG:--- Members of Parliament that are now sitting in the opposition benches of Parliament should tell the people of St. Maarten where is the Independence they have been talking about. Most of these politicians who many believe have a mind of their own and would work in the interest of the country basically betrayed the country and the people that voted for them during the 2014 parliamentary elections.

On Wednesday when the MPs that are sitting on the opposition benches walked into the house of Parliament they refused to give the current coalition a quorum so they could continue with the peoples business and pass the 2016 budget in order to keep the politicians in the Netherlands in their own country.

It is clear that the Attorney General who said openly that everyone on St. Maarten are corrupt planned the arrest of MP Silvio Matser in such a way to put the country on its knees if there is no approved budget for the year 2016, something St. Maarten did not have for years.

The current Minister of Finance did his best to comply with every rule and produced a lean and mean budget and already got indications that the CFT will approve the budget if certain things were added to it. Since the Netherlands will not have their way if St. Maarten pays off its debts as instructed and produced a balanced budget for three consecutive years then the CFT board that was installed by the Netherlands would have to take marching orders so that St. Maarten could establish its own CFT board. That of course seems too good for a young country so in order to ensure the Netherlands have the last word they chose to destabilize the government since they know the politicians on St. Maarten are divided and selfish.

Many of the UPP MPs said openly that they preferred independence, during the parliament meetings on the establishment of the integrity chamber Member of Parliament Franklin Meyers said he preferred to die standing rather than living on his knees. One would expect that at least MP Meyers would have step up to the plate and represent and protect the people that elected him instead of rejoicing over the arrests of one of his colleagues.

The office of the Attorney General said a number of times on Wednesday that more house searches and arrests should not be excluded from the Octopus investigation, so while some of the MP's are rejoicing, they should all be prepared to see at whose doors would the detectives will show up next.
Miles Technology Inc. Announces Amalgamation Transaction With APTN Property Development Corp.

Posted by Publisher Internet

TORONTO, ONTARIO  (Marketwired)  03/01/16  Miles Technology Inc. (Miles) is pleased to announce that, effective March 1, 2016, Miles, APTN Property Development Corp. (APTN), and 2497302 Ontario Inc. (Miles Subco), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Miles, have completed a three-cornered amalgamation transaction (the Transaction) under the Business Corporations Act (Ontario), whereby shareholders of APTN were issued shares of Miles, and Miles Subco and APTN amalgamated to form a new entity named APTN Property Development Corp. (Amalco), which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Miles, all in accordance with an amalgamation agreement (the Amalgamation Agreement) dated as of February 29, 2016 among Miles, APTN, and Miles Subco.

Pursuant to the terms of the Amalgamation Agreement, each shareholder of APTN received one (1) common share of Miles (a Miles Share) issued from treasury for every one (1) common share of APTN held by such shareholder. Immediately prior to the Transaction becoming effective, APTN had outstanding 1,700,200 common shares, and no convertible or other securities outstanding. After completion of the Transaction an aggregate of 2,795,200 Miles Shares are now issued and outstanding with former shareholders of APTN holding 1,700,200 Miles Shares, representing approximately 60.8% of the outstanding Miles Shares, and the original shareholders of Miles holding 1,095,000 Miles Shares, representing approximately 39.2% of the outstanding Miles Shares.

In addition AireSurf Networks Holdings Inc., a shareholder of Miles holding 1,010,000 Miles Shares has agreed to sell an aggregate of 750,000 Miles Shares, including an aggregate of 725,000 to be held directly or indirectly, or over which control or direction is to be held, by existing shareholders of APTN.

The board of directors of each of the companies approved the Transaction and the Transaction was also approved by the shareholders of each of APTN and Miles Subco.

Miles Management

Each of the four (4) directors of Miles and each of its officers has resigned, and the following three (3) nominees of APTN have been appointed to the board and to the following management positions:

Paolo Abate, President  Chief Executive Officer and Director

Nick Tsimidis  Chief Financial Officer, Secretary and Director

Vince Abate  Director

Early Warning Requirement

Pursuant to the Transaction, Paolo Abate (address c/o APTN Property Development Corp., 1-71 Marycroft Avenue Vaughan, Ontario, L4L 5Y6) the new Chief Executive Officer and a director of the Company, has acquired a combination of registered ownership and control or direction over an aggregate 850,100 Miles Shares, and also has the right to acquire control or direction over an additional 375,000 Miles Shares, representing approximately 43.8% in the aggregate of the outstanding Miles Shares. Nick Tsimidis (address c/o APTN Property Development Corp., 1-71 Marycroft Avenue Vaughan, Ontario, L4L 5Y6), the new Chief Financial Officer, Secretary and a director of the Company, has become the registered holder of 850,100 Miles Shares, and also has the right to acquire indirect ownership over an additional 350,000 Miles Shares, representing approximately 42.9% in the aggregate of the outstanding Miles Shares.

For the purposes of National Instrument 62-103 early warning reporting, the Miles Shares were acquired as a result of the Transaction and the Miles Shares are held for investment purposes and the holder may, from time to time, acquire additional securities of the Company or dispose of such securities as it may deem appropriate. A copy of the applicable early warning reports can be obtained under the Companys profile on SEDAR at .

About APTN Property Development Corp.

Amalco is a holding company amalgamated under the laws of the Province of Ontario. It is currently reviewing various venture opportunities for possible investment and or acquisition.

Shares Outstanding: 2,795,200

This news release contains certain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward looking information is frequently characterized by words such as plan, expect, project, intend, believe, anticipate, estimate, may, will, would, potential, proposed and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions may or will occur. These statements are only predictions. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the information is provided, and is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing Miles and its business and affairs, readers should refer to Miless Managements Discussion and Analysis. Miles undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or managements estimates or opinions should change, unless required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Contacts:

Miles Technologies Inc.

Nick Tsimidis

CFO & Secretary

Telephone: 289.371.3080

Email:
Yorktel Proves Time Travel to the Next Generation Workplace Is Possible at Enterprise Connect(R) 2016 in Orlando

EATONTOWN, NJ  (Marketwired)  03/02/16  Yorktel (), the worldwide leader in cloud, UC&C and video managed services today announced that it will present its vision of the Next Generation Workplace (NGW) at Enterprise Connect, March 7-10, 2016 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, FL. Yorktel is exhibiting at booth 529.

As one of the top three managed video conferencing providers in the world, Yorktel has served as the trusted partner of Fortune 500 businesses and governments for 30 years. Today, Yorktels Professional Services team provides them with the strategic counsel and guidance to assess their current situation, then build and execute a roadmap that aligns future goals with vision, people and processes. For services and technology to have real business value, they not only must solve collaboration and usage challenges, but also keep pace with how the workplace is changing.

Yorktel defines the Next Gen Workplace as an environment that enables agile user experiences by fostering productivity, efficiency and optimal growth potential. In Finding Agility: The Next Generation Workplace, a new whitepaper, Yorktel provides an in-depth examination of how the overarching concept of work and workplace is changing from a brick and mortar presence to a highly fluid activity.

As more Millennials enter the workforce, companies must adopt a corporate culture that inspires community building, is transparent and allows for a healthy balance between work and quality of life, said Vishal Brown, VP of professional services, Yorktel. Accommodating flexible work schedules, as well as policies like bring your own device (BYOD), telecommuting and workshifting is critical for companies to recruit and retain top talent.

Next gen workspaces trade siloes for more open, team-oriented layouts. Designed specifically for agility and collaboration, huddle rooms have supplanted corporate boardrooms, and are equipped with technologies like video communications as-a-service that eliminate complexity and cost, and leverage standards-based protocols to solve interoperability.

Proper execution of the Next Gen Workplace strategy increases productivity by connecting onsite and remote employees to each other and providing them with secure access to business resources from anywhere, at anytime on any device. Agility breeds productivity, and healthy organizations are able to stay nimble without sacrificing performance by leveraging real-time collaboration tools that are as functional as they are simple, added Vishal Brown.

Univago, Yorktels new cloud video communications as-a-service platform, solves interoperability and quality of service (QoS) problems that prevent BYOD, remote collaboration and other policies to flourish. Easily accessible through a web portal from which enterprises can provision and manage accounts for their end users, Univago Meeting Rooms (URooms) offer a full featured meeting environment for existing conference room systems, web, PC, mobile and audio. URooms can accommodate up to 30 participants in a single meeting, and offer 720PHD video, screen sharing for live presentations and collaboration.

In addition to live video managed services environments, conference attendees who visit Yorktels booth (529) will get a firsthand look at how Univago natively facilitates communication between existing conference rooms and the most widely used telecommunications platforms such as SIP, H.323, Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business, WebRTC and the public telephone network. Mobile and PC client solutions are included as part of the service, expanding usability.

The Univago Enterprise Gateway solves the many any to any interoperability issues that plague users trying to connect between their Microsoft Lync deployments and existing SIP or H.323 conference rooms and infrastructure.

Native support for various disparate technologies makes the Enterprise Gateway a powerful yet simple solution to a complicated problem, said John Vitale, SVP of product development, Yorktel.

Residing within the existing Yorktel VideoCloud, Univago supports a variety of deployment architectures and drastically reduces bandwidth consumption and bottlenecking which in a business setting, has devastating implications. As a self-service, subscription based solution, Univago allows customers to control costs and scale at their own pace, alleviating them from the burden of capital expenditures in hardware that will soon be obsolete.

Organizations everywhere must accommodate employees connecting from various devices operating systems in settings not always conducive to secure communications, added John Vitale. Univago was developed specifically to help the many enterprises currently unable to reap the benefits of video communications because their existing infrastructure is not built to overcome complexities.

Univago offers a choice of either using the Public Internet, or establishing a private secure connection to Yorktels global data centers to access the service. A third option is to deploy Univago within the enterprise network to fully maximize the performance and experience of the service.

John Vitale will join Wainhouse Research Senior Partner and Analyst, Andrew Davis for the executive panel, , during which the worlds foremost video collaboration experts will examine the business case for private cloud, weigh risk versus reward, and share best practices.

Live support from Yorktels 24/7 helpdesk is included with all subscriptions, whereas other providers charge a premium for related, often inferior services.

Yorktel enjoys continuous success by keeping its finger on the pulse of what customers need, both today and in the future, and the many challenges they face daily, said Ron Gaboury, Yorktel CEO. The ingenuity, dedication and spirit of our team are why Yorktel remains the preferred cloud, UC&C and video managed services provider across the globe.

Yorktel is a leading global provider of UC&C, cloud, and video managed services for large enterprise and federal government customers. Founded in 1985 and headquartered in New Jersey, with offices across the US, UK, and France, Yorktel enables customers to successfully integrate video into their operations  from video conferencing to video event production; on premise or in the cloud. Yorktel designs, integrates, and manages enterprise-wide unified communications solutions.

For more information, visit Yorktel online at or email . Follow Yorktel on Twitter: @yorktelcorp

Enterprise Connect is the leading conference and exhibition in North America for enterprise communications and collaboration systems, software and services. Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industrys suppliers, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise communications and collaboration networks. Enterprise Connect owns and produces No Jitter, (), providing daily blogging and analysis of enterprise communications, and it also serves the community with a weekly email newsletter, a Webinar Series and Virtual Events. For more information, visit .

Mostafa Razzak

JMRConnect (for Yorktel)

202.904.2048
BlueCrew Upgrades On-Demand Staffing Platform to Drive Greater Transparency in Hiring and Performance Evaluation

SAN FRANCISCO, CA  (Marketwired)  03/02/16  , the on-demand, data-driven staffing platform for blue-collar jobs, today announced a significant technology upgrade and major growth since its April 2015 launch. BlueCrews breakthrough solution automates the screening and matching of job candidates so employers get the most qualified and trusted workers for the right jobs. The new enhancements to its staffing platform makes it even easier for BlueCrews corporate customers to track the performance of its workers, creating a transparent relationship that rewards the hardest working and most experienced.

BlueCrew is an ideal staffing platform for companies looking for temporary or seasonal workers for jobs including movers, drivers, forklift operators, warehouse staff, data entry personnel, and customer service reps; the market for temporary workers in these sectors totals approximately $35 billion, according to research. Using algorithms that factor in skills, experience and employer performance ratings, the BlueCrew staffing platform screens and identifies the most qualified candidates for specific positions. These candidates, who are classified as BlueCrew W2 employees and thus eligible for insurance benefits, are then sent job requests through the BlueCrew mobile app on behalf of employers when they need to fill relevant positions. By combining smart staffing algorithms with mobile applications, BlueCrew cuts the time to fill open positions from days to minutes.

In response to customer requests, BlueCrew has added new features to its platform including:

A mobile management app that gives shift managers easy access to information on the performance of BlueCrew workers including on-time record, shifts worked and other performance metrics;

A new GPS timecard solution so workers can automatically clock in and out directly from the BlueCrew mobile app on their smartphones. This ensures complete transparency between employer and worker on the reliability and location of any worker at any time.

Since it first started connecting employers and workers last April, BlueCrew has experienced significant growth including:

30% average month-over-month increase in revenue in 2015.

Added over 1,000 full- and part-time workers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Filled over 12,000 work shifts since inception.

BlueCrew has changed the way we fill temporary positions, particularly during our peak times of business, said Dan Lucht, General Manager, Zephyr Express, a California-based fine wine storage and delivery service. During the Super Bowl week, BlueCrew workers played a critical role in helping us meet the high demand for wine deliveries. We now use them to address last minute staffing requirements and they always answer the call with experienced and skilled people. The new BlueCrew platform features, particularly the GPS timecard, will make it even easier for us to transparently communicate with and manage temporary workers. BlueCrew is the ideal model for the on-demand staffing industry.

BlueCrews mission is to make it dramatically easier and faster for companies to identify and select the most talented and experienced workers in a wide variety of roles, said Gino Rooney, co-founder and CEO of BlueCrew. In our first ten months, we have gained a lot of traction with our data-driven approach to staffing. BlueCrew is changing the way companies staff and empowering workers in the gig economy to move from contract work to opportunities with a clear career path.

BlueCrews on-demand staffing platform automates the screening and matching of the most qualified and trusted candidates to the right jobs. BlueCrews algorithms empower employers to cut through the clutter of thousands of temporary job candidates to hire top temporary talent at the click of a button for positions including movers, drivers, forklift operators, warehouse staff, data entry personnel, and customer service reps. Located in San Francisco, BlueCrew has received $3 million in initial funding from investors including Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Sound Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and Stanford StartX and can be reached at .

Merrill Freund

415-577-8637
Eastenders Episode Guide  Tuesday 8th March

SPOILER ALERT!

Denise is left reeling from Jordans bombshell and soon comes to a shocking realisation. Jordan begs her to come with him to get Lucas but they are interrupted by Libby who senses all is not well. Denise assures Libby everything is fine but as she leaves for the family meal, Denise secretly sticks a note on to her bag telling her of Jordans plan but Libby fails to notice. Alone, Denise agrees to leave with Jordan but he soon realises shes just stalling. With his plan to reunite the family falling apart, Jordan snaps. Worried, Denise stands her ground and warns him not to get caught up with Lucas but will Jordan listen?



Claudette reels from her actions but is this the end of Gavin? Vincent soon arrives forcing Claudette to cover but he quickly clocks on that there is much more to her story and he begins to question his mother. As the shocking truth comes out, all hell breaks loose.



Mick and Linda rush upstairs to learn that Ollies highchair was knocked over in the fight but he seems fine. As Linda and Mick reflect on the incident, Mick wonders if it means the pair will stop their fighting but his hopes are thwarted when Lee and Nancy start again. Fuming, Mick snaps and after smashing a chair on the floor, throws the pair out of The Vic. Elsewhere, Ronnie spends mothers day with Honey but after Honey touches a nerve, Ronnie storms off. Back home, Tim, Joels brother, arrives and gives something he says Joel would want her to have.
Solar Novus Today Has Been Integrated

With Novus Light Technologies Today

Visit Novus Light Technologies Today to see all the cutting-edge stories and products that you have come to enjoy on Solar Novus Today. In addition, you will find more information on related light-based technologies.



Get the latest solar and renewable energy news delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for the Green Technologies newsletter





CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR GREEN TECHNOLOGIES NEWSLETTER






























What you need to know about Powerball and the $580 million jackpot

News
Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city.

Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea
Aerial photo of LIGO Livingston, Louisiana, showing all of one 2.5-mile-long (4 kilometers) arm and part of the other (off to the right). The visible arms are concrete structures that protect the vacuum tubes from the elements.

India is on track to join the international effort to find ripples in the fabric of space-time.

On Feb. 17, the Indian Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, granted "in-principle approval" for the country to start building a gravitational-wave detector that will work in concert with the two detectors currently operating in the United States and a third detector set to come online in Italy. Scientists associated with the project said it is feasible that the project could come online as soon as 2023.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history on Feb. 11, when scientists with the project announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, or ripples in the fabric of space. With LIGO-India assisting in the hunt, the instruments will be more sensitive to gravitational waves, and will be better equipped to pinpoint the location of the events that cause the gravitational waves, according to LIGO scientists. [Watch the LIGO documentary "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding"]

Gravitational waves are ripples in space, first predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 and created by cataclysmic cosmic events, like two black holes colliding. Directly detecting gravitational waves for the first time was a watershed moment for physics and astrophysics. These ripples move through space itself, and cannot be blocked by interstellar dust or other physical barriers, unlike light. This property of gravitational waves means they can carry information from places that scientists cannot probe with traditional instruments, like the inside of two black holes or the interior of an exploding star.

The U.S. LIGO facilities detected gravitational waves from two black holes colliding in space. The facility was about to pinpoint the location of the event to within a 600 square degree area of the sky. (The full moon takes up about half a degree on the sky.) The VIRGO facility, located in Italy, will soon provide additional gravitational-wave data that will combine with LIGO's data to reduce that area significantly, and an additional facility in India would further improve on that, according to a statement from the California Institute of Technology, which operates LIGO together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

LIGO must make extremely precise measurements in order to detect gravitational waves. Each of the U.S. facilities consists of two 2.5-mile-long (4 kilometers) "arms," and scientists look for the changes in the length of those arms caused by a passing gravitational wave stretching or compressing space itself. The change in distance is less than the diameter of a single atom. If the scientists were measuring the distance between the sun and the next nearest star  Alpha Centauri, about 4.3 light-years away  they would be measuring a change in distance of only about 4 microns, which is less than the width of a human hair, according to the statement.

Because LIGO measures such tiny variations in the length of the two arms, it's helpful for scientists to compare the detections of the two facilities. A signal detected at one facility should also be detected at the other facility. Adding a detector in India will further confirm the detection of gravitational waves, LIGO scientists said at the Feb. 11 announcement. In addition, the scientists said they can also learn more about space-time ripples by measuring how long it takes for a gravitational wave to travel the distance between different facilities.

Significant work has already been done to make the LIGO-India project a reality, the statement said. LIGO scientists "have made dozens of trips to India to work with Indian colleagues." The three Indian institutes that would have "primary responsibility for construction and operation of LIGO India" are the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), and the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR). The project is managed by India's Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology. The U.S. LIGO project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Fleming Crim, assistant director for mathematical and physical sciences at NSF, said in the statement, "Because the science reward is so strong, NSF enthusiastically endorses the decision of the Indian government to proceed with authorizing funding for the LIGO-India project."

The LIGO-India instrument will share its design with the U.S. LIGO facilities.

"We have built an exact copy of that instrument that can be used in the LIGO-India Observatory, ensuring that the new detector can both quickly come up to speed and match the U.S. detector performance," David Shoemaker, leader of the Advanced LIGO Project and director of the MIT LIGO Lab, said in the statement. [The Search for Gravitational Waves (Gallery)]

Fred Raab, head of the LIGO Hanford Observatory and LIGO Laboratory liaison for LIGO-India, said in the statement, "Together, we have identified an excellent site for the facilities and have transferred detailed LIGO drawings of the facilities and vacuum system to IPR, after adapting them for conditions in India."

In addition to helping LIGO pinpoint the location of gravitational-wave sources and confirming their detection, it could open up unexpected new avenues of gravitational-wave science, said David Reitze, executive director of LIGO and a Caltech research professor.

"Anytime you turn on some new type of telescope or microscope, you discover things you couldn't anticipate," Reitze said. "So, while there will be certain sources of gravitational waves that we expect to see, the really exciting part is what we did not predict and what we did not expect to see."
A new documentary takes viewers inside the International Space Station to experience a year in space alongside NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is just finishing his stay on the orbiting complex.

The hourlong PBS-Time Magazine documentary, "A Year in Space," airs on PBS at 8 p.m. EST Wednesday (March 2), the day after Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth to wrap up their landmark 340-day space mission. Check local listings for the exact time in your area.

The film covers Kelly's journey from launch to landing day. Incorporating footage from the astronaut's return to Earth will be no easy feat; Kelly and Kornienko are landing in a remote area of Kazakhstan, after all. But the filmmakers have experience with time crunches; they were able to include near-real-time footage of the July 2015 Pluto flyby by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, and the landing of Europe's Philae probe on a comet in November 2014. [Welcome Home! Landing Photos for 1-Year Astronaut Scott Kelly]

"But this is really in some ways different because it is the completion of a chronicle that we've been telling for a long time," PBS producer Bill Margol told Space.com.

A unique collaboration

The PBS-Time collaboration began when Margol got wind of Time's plan for the one-year mission, which is aimed at collecting data that will help pave the way for crewed missions to Mars.

The magazine planned to do a series of digital shorts with several staff members, including Jeffrey Kluger, an editor and writer at Time who is perhaps best known for co-writing the book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) with Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell.

"When Scott Kelly originally signed up to do this mission, our editors and writers at the time were very interested [in covering it]," Ian Orefice, senior executive producer of Time Inc. Video, told Space.com.

Initially, the plan was to do a one-off video story on Kelly, but when the producers visited Kelly and saw the interaction with his own family, "we realized there was a much bigger opportunity," Orefice said. Time committed to do a series of digital shorts, and PBS then signed on to bring a two-part documentary to a television audience.

An insider's look

The documentary that premieres Wednesday night is the first installment of this two-part series. Part one features Kelly's time on the space station, showing footage that even obsessive followers of NASA TV haven't seen.

For example, there are several moments of video showing Kelly's spacecraft catching up to the International Space Station. Inside the spacecraft, Kelly, Kornienko and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka joke about how long the mission will be. "Don't remind me," one spaceflyer moans in Russian.

There also are long camera shots showing astronauts floating through the different modules of the station, which has been continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000. Kelly does interviews with the camera, occasionally pausing for a crewmember to go by to do his or her work.

Several television interviews with Kelly are shown on camera, and Kelly also provides some exclusive narration for the documentary that he recorded before and after he left the ground. Also participating are his long-time partner, NASA public affairs officer Amiko Kauderer; Kelly's two daughters; his identical twin, Mark, himself a former NASA astronaut (who is participating in the year-in-space mission as a genetic control for Scott); and Mark Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, (a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona).

"It's the longest long-distance relationship in the history of mankind," Orefice said of Kelly's relationship to his family. Throughout the mission, Scott Kelly has stayed in touch through phone calls. Kauderer records videos of the things Kelly misses on Earth, such as rainstorms.

"It's pushing the boundaries of manned exploration," Orefice added, "and whether we could go to Mars. We just thought it was an amazing digital opportunity for a documentary."

The second part of the documentary, which is scheduled to air in 2017, will focus on Scott Kelly's recovery, as well as the science gathered during his time in space.

"A Year in Space" will air at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT on PBS on March 2. To learn more about the documentary, visit: http://www.pbs.org/a-year-in-space/home/.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com
This view of the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon was taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.

The moon shines in high-definition imagery in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Visitors can enjoy a display of 61 large prints taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) in an exhibit that is called "A New Moon Rises," which started Feb. 26. The pictures show off recent impact craters and volcanic activity on the moon, as well as crust buckling as the interior shrinks.

"Most people do not realize that the moon is still a very active place, and that it has breathtaking landscapes that are both familiar and alien," Tom Watters, senior scientist at the museums Center for Earth and Planetary Studies and curator of the exhibition, said in a NASA statement.

This photo from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera shows lava flows that spread across the floor of a large, collapsed area. The flows have few impact craters and steep sides, suggesting the eruptions were recent. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

With thousands of images to choose from in LROC's mission  it's been orbiting the moon since 2009  the exhibit's producers narrowed down the selection by sorting the images into six themes. The themes are Global Views, Exploration Sites, Discoveries, Vistas, Topography and Craters.

For more recent pictures, visitors can also check out LROC images projected onto a large screen. These pictures will be updated daily. The exhibit will also show off spare cameras and a large, 3D model of a young lunar crater.

"To me the LROC images reveal the moon to be a mysterious and beautiful place  a whole world just three days away," Mark Robinson, LROC instrument principal investigator at Arizona State University, said in the same statement. "It is my hope that visitors will walk away from the show excited about the moon."

LROC's discoveries not only include pretty pictures. The spacecraft has also found that lunar hydrogen is more prevalent on pole-facing slopes, suggesting that these might be good locations for colonists to mine water. LROC has also tested out laser communications technology, which is far faster than traditional radio.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly smiles after returning to Earth to end a 340-day mission to the International Space Station, ending his nearly yearlong mission. He and two Russian crewmates landed in a remote part of Kazakhstan on March 2, 2016 (Kazakh time).

After zipping around Earth for nearly a year, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly must now get used to living on the planet's surface again.

Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth with a landing on the steppes of Kazakhstan late Tuesday (March 1), ending their unprecedented 340-day stay aboard the International Space Station.

Shortly after landing, both spaceflyers  along with cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, who also came home, but after the typical, 5.5-month station mission  were taken out of their Soyuz spacecraft, placed in chairs near the landing site and taken into a medical tent for an hour-long "field test" to assess their general condition. [Welcome Home! Landing Photos for 1-Year Astronaut Scott Kelly]

NASA astronaut Mark Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are taking the ultimate space trip: one year in space on the International Space Station. See how their epic yearlong space station mission works in this infographic (Image credit: By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist)

That test consists of a variety of experiments, Kelly said late last month in his final conversation from the space station with reporters.

"Some are physical  kind of like even an obstacle course, where you run around obstacles and stand up from a sitting position, and jump and stand," he said.

The spaceflyers then went their separate ways, with Kornienko and Volkov headed to Moscow and Kelly to Houston, where NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) is located.

NASA astronauts just back from an ISS mission undergo several hours of medical tests at JSC, Kelly said. They then generally complete a 45-day "reconditioning period," to build up bone mass and muscle strength lost in the microgravity environment of space, said Stevan Gilmore, the lead flight surgeon for Kelly's one-year mission.

"There are daily workouts and exercises to make sure that we return the crewmember back to the same kind of functioning that they had before the mission started," Gilmore said last month during a NASA TV interview with NASA spokesman Dan Huot.

Even though Kelly stayed aboard the International Space Station for twice as long as crewmembers usually do, the current plan is to put him through the standard 45-day reconditioning program, Gilmore added.

"We do have the latitude, in the case that a little bit more time is required for the rehab process  we can extend that if necessary," Gilmore said. "But I anticipate that it'll look in many ways similar to the six-month experiences that most of the station astronauts have."

The main goal of Kelly and Kornienko's mission  a joint effort involving the United States and Russia is to better understand how astronauts cope physiologically and psychologically with long-duration spaceflight. This information should help mission planners map out future crewed journeys to Mars, NASA officials have said. (The space agency aims to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet in the 2030s.)

Kelly and Kornienko are participating in 17 different experiments related to the one-year mission, said John Charles, the chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program. And those experiments aren't over just because the spaceflyers have landed.

Indeed, Charles said, many of the duo's blood samples won't even come down to Earth until next month, when the samples are scheduled to land aboard SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo capsule. Furthermore, researchers will be tracking Kelly and Kornienko's progress for a while even after that happens.

"There's months and months of post-flight data collection," Charles told NASA spokesman Gary Jordan during an interview on NASA TV last month.

"In some cases, up to nine months after landing, we're still acquiring samples of the astronauts  perhaps even longer, as they return to their normal duties and we acquire data from their annual physicals and so forth," Charles added. "And then the data analysis really begins."

Some of this analysis involves comparing Scott Kelly to his identical twin brother, Mark, himself a former NASA astronaut. Mark stayed on the ground during the yearlong mission and serves as a control, to help researchers identify any genetic changes spaceflight induced in Scott.

Scott Kelly said during his last in-space news conference that he has been experiencing some issues with his vision, a common occurrence among astronauts. However, while scientists will ultimately have the last word on how the 340-day mission affected Kelly, the astronaut said he's doing all right.

"Physically, I feel pretty good," Kelly said.

The nearly yearlong mission, while unprecedented for the ISS, did not set the record for most time spent in space continuously. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov earned that distinction, living aboard Russia's Mir space station for more than 437 days, in 1994-95.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Allison Bolton, Alicia Breuer, Aleta Luther and Baylee Hogge plate their quinoa curry during the HUNCH Culinary Challenge pre-competition tasting at NASA's Langley Research Center on Feb. 16, 2016. Teammate Marshay Moore is visible in the background.

Last month, high-school students from around the country came to NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia for the second High School Students United with NASA to Create Hardware (HUNCH) space-food challenge .

The Feb. 16 competition saw 21 high-school teams competing for spots in the semifinals, during which 10 teams will travel to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a tasting at the facility's Space Food Systems Laboratory. The ultimate winning team will have its entree processed and sent to the International Space Station (ISS), NASA officials said.

This year's HUNCH challenge involves developing a vegetable entree that's amenable to processing for flight and consumption in microgravity, and also meets the following guidelines:

300-500 calories

Total calories from fat under 30 percent; total calories from saturated fat 10 percent or less

300 milligrams or less of sodium per serving

8 grams of sugar or less per serving

3 grams of fiber or more per serving

The panel of judges at the Langley event included a former restaurant owner, a slew of Langley administrators and former NASA astronaut Charlie Camarda, who flew to the ISS on the STS-114 mission of space shuttle Discovery in 2005.

New Horizons Culinary Instructor Tonya Ward, left, and HUNCH founder and Program Manager Stacy Hale talk to the team that made the baked penne about their dish, on Feb. 16, 2016, at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. (Image credit: NASA/David C. Bowman)

"The icing on the cake today was for them to actually meet an astronaut," said Tonya Ward, culinary instructor at the New Horizons Regional Education Center in Newport News, Virginia, who worked with two teams competing at the Langley HUNCH tasting.

Camarda gave mostly positive feedback.

"It's very good, very tasty," he said of the quinoa made by one of the teams. "I can definitely feel the kick. It's got a little bit of heat, and that's a good thing, especially up on orbit."

Although Camarda said he also enjoyed the pasta made by another team, he had concerns about whether or not it was durable enough to make the journey all the way up to the ISS.

"The flavor is fantastic, and the texture is fantastic," he said. "I like it. But I wonder how it will turn out with the cheese  can it reconstitute well?"

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico identified the first repeating FRBs, millisecond-long bursts of energy that appear in the sky thousands of time each day.

Powerful explosions of radio waves known as fast radio bursts explode in the sky like a flash from a camera  a single, great release of energy. But astronomers recently spotted an FRB that looks more like a strobe light  the event released multiple bright bursts of radio waves.

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, were only discovered in 2007, and while astronomers estimate that thousands of these bursts take place every day, this is only the 18th FRB ever identified. Why haven't any of the other FRBs shown this repeat behavior?

"It's possible that so far we've only seen the brightest FRB bursts," lead author Jason W. T. Hessels, associate scientist at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, told Space.com in an email. Hessels led a team that used the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico to locate a collection of 11 repeating bursts from the same source. "Because of Arecibo's much higher sensitivity, we can see much weaker pulses, and hence the chances of detecting repeats is higher." [The Top 10 Strangest Things in Space]

A "fantastic observation"

Every day, an estimated 10,000 FRBs flash across the sky. In their brief, millisecond-long appearance, they release as much sun as the sun emits in 10,000 years. But their short duration and unpredictable arrival makes observing them a challenge. All of the previously identified FRB's have only been single-flash events; this is the only multi-flash event ever discovered, according to a statement from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

The largest and most sensitive radio telescope on the planet, Arecibo has about 15 times the sensitivity of the Parkes telescope in Australia, where most FRBs have been detected. Originally spotted in 2012 by a survey of the sky conducted by Arecibo, the newly-discovered, repeating burst showed no signs of activity during follow-up observations by the telescope. But a review of the archived observations of the telescope revealed an additional 10 bursts consistent with the first.

But the rapid-fire bursts aren't particularly regular, according to Hessels. In one case, which he calls a "fantastic observation," six bright pulses occur over a 15-minute period.

"We also have plenty of hour-long observations that show nothing," he said.

The source of FRBs has remained a mystery in the decade since they were first spotted. One potential cause of the terrific explosions is a cataclysmic collision between two powerful objects, which would destroy both. However, the repeating nature of the new observations suggests that at least some are born from events that preserve their sources to burst another day.

According to Hessels, the reconfiguration of the magnetic field of a magnetar could explain the explosions. When a star explodes in a supernova, it leaves behind an extremely dense core known as a neutron star. A magnetar is a super-magnetized version of this core.

"No FRB has been definitively identified as a cataclysmic event," Hessels said. A study published last week in the journal Nature claims to have tracked an FRB back to a host galaxy for the first time, but the exact source has not been confirmed.

However, Hessels cited research from last December that argued a newly discovered FRB could stem from a young neutron star shrouded in dust, saying that the findings complement his team's discovery.

In the future, the team hopes to identify the galaxy that could host the repeating FRBs. By combining the powerful Arecibo telescope with other telescopes in Europe, they hope to have enough precision to more accurately identify where the bursts originate. From there, highly sensitive optical or infrared data could identify the host galaxy.

The research was published online today (March 2) in the journal Nature Letters (opens in new tab).

Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly left, talks with NASA flight surgeon Steve Gilmore onboard a Russian MI-8 helicopter at Zhezkazgan Airport in Kazakhstan after Kelly and cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko landed on March 1, 2016.

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly has mixed emotions about being back on Earth after nearly a year in space.

Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko touched down on the steppe of Kazakhstan late Tuesday (March 1), wrapping up their unprecedented 340-day stay aboard the International Space Station. (Cosmonaut Sergey Volkov came home with them, but his space station mission had been the typical 5.5-month stint.) In a newly released NASA postlanding video, Kelly said he's glad to be home  but his feelings are more complicated than that.

"Leaving the space station was bittersweet," Kelly said. "I'd been there a long time, so I looked forward to leaving. But at the same time, it's a magnificent place, and I'm going to miss it. So, mixed emotions, I guess."

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly left, talks with NASA flight surgeon Steve Gilmore onboard a Russian MI-8 helicopter at Zhezkazgan Airport in Kazakhstan after Kelly and cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko landed on March 1, 2016. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The main goal of the 340-day mission is to help lay the foundation for crewed journeys to Mars. Researchers are studying how Kelly and Kornienko coped psychologically and physiologically with their extended stay in space, gathering information that could help keep astronauts safer and healthier during the long trip to the Red Planet.

The early returns in this regard are promising, at least based on how Kelly feels.

"I'm definitely encouraged on our ability to go even longer," Kelly said. "Even though I looked forward to coming home, and there's things that I miss, I felt like, if it was for the right reason, I clearly could've stayed however long it took."

While the spaceflight aspect of the one-year mission is now over, the research side will continue for quite some time. Scientists and doctors will continue to monitor Kelly and Kornienko, and analyze blood samples and other data collected on the space station, for months to come.

Part of this analysis involves Scott Kelly's identical twin brother Mark, a former NASA astronaut who stayed on the ground and will allow genetic comparisons to be made. (Scientists will examine both brothers to see if long-duration spaceflight induced any genetic changes in Scott.)

The one-year crewmates have now gone their separate ways. Shortly after touching down, Kornienko and Volkov headed for Moscow, while Kelly started the long trip back to the United States. Kelly is scheduled to arrive in Houston, where NASA's Johnson Space Center is located, late tonight (March 2), space agency officials said.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
520-million-year-old fossilized nervous system is most detailed example yet found



by Staff Writers



Cambridge, UK (SPX) Mar 01, 2016



Complete specimen of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba biota of South China. Image courtesy Jie Yang (Yunnan University, China). For a larger version of this image please go here

Researchers have found one of the oldest and most detailed fossils of the central nervous system yet identified, from a crustacean-like animal that lived more than 500 million years ago. The fossil, from southern China, has been so well preserved that individual nerves are visible, the first time this level of detail has been observed in a fossil of this age.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are helping researchers understand how the nervous system of arthropods - creepy crawlies with jointed legs - evolved. Finding any fossilised soft tissue is rare, but this particular find, by researchers in the UK, China and Germany, represents the most detailed example of a preserved nervous system yet discovered.

The animal, called Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, lived during the Cambrian 'explosion', a period of rapid evolutionary development about half a billion years ago when most major animal groups first appear in the fossil record. C. kunmingensis belongs to a group of animals called fuxianhuiids, and was an early ancestor of modern arthropods - the diverse group that includes insects, spiders and crustaceans.

"This is a unique glimpse into what the ancestral nervous system looked like," said study co-author Dr Javier Ortega-Hernandez, of the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology. "It's the most complete example of a central nervous system from the Cambrian period."

Over the past five years, researchers have identified partially-fossilised nervous systems in several different species from the period, but these have mostly been fossilised brains. And in most of those specimens, the fossils only preserved details of the profile of the brain, meaning the amount of information available has been limited.

C. kunmingensis looked like a sort of crustacean, with a broad, almost heart-shaped head shield, and a long body with pairs of legs of varying sizes. Through careful preparation of the fossils, which involved chipping away the surrounding rock with a fine needle, the researchers were able to view not only the hard parts of the body, but fossilised soft tissue as well.

The vast majority of fossils we have are mostly bone and other hard body parts such as teeth or exoskeletons. Since the nervous system and soft tissues are essentially made of fatty-like substances, finding them preserved as fossils is extremely rare. The researchers behind this study first identified a fossilised central nervous system in 2013, but the new material has allowed them to investigate the significance of these finding in much greater depth.

The central nervous system coordinates all neural and motor functions. In vertebrates, it consists of the brain and spinal cord, but in arthropods it consists of a condensed brain and a chain-like series of interconnected masses of nervous tissue called ganglia that resemble a string of beads.

Like modern arthropods, C. kunmingensis had a nerve cord - which is analogous to a spinal cord in vertebrates - running throughout its body, with each one of the bead-like ganglia controlling a single pair of walking legs.

Closer examination of the exceptionally preserved ganglia revealed dozens of spindly fibres, each measuring about five thousandths of a millimetre in length. "These delicate fibres displayed a highly regular distribution pattern, and so we wanted to figure out if they were made of the same material as the ganglia that form the nerve cord," said Ortega-Hernandez.

"Using fluorescence microscopy, we confirmed that the fibres were in fact individual nerves, fossilised as carbon films, offering an unprecedented level of detail. These fossils greatly improve our understanding of how the nervous system evolved."

For Ortega-Hernandez and his colleagues, a key question is what this discovery tells us about the evolution of early animals, since the nervous system contains so much information. Further analysis revealed that some aspects of the nervous system in C. kunmingensis appear to be structured similar to that of modern priapulids (penis worms) and onychophorans (velvet worms), with regularly-spaced nerves coming out from the ventral nerve cord.

In contrast, these dozens of nerves have been lost independently in the tardigrades (water bears) and modern arthropods, suggesting that simplification played an important role in the evolution of the nervous system.

Possibly one of the most striking implications of the study is that the exceptionally preserved nerve cord of C. kunmingensis represents a unique structure that is otherwise unknown in living organisms. The specimen demonstrates the unique contribution of the fossil record towards understanding the early evolution of animals during the Cambrian period. "The more of these fossils we find, the more we will be able to understand how the nervous system - and how early animals - evolved," said Ortega-Hernandez.
Optimization

Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should?

Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools.
SPIEGEL: The idea of taking a predetermined number of refugees from Turkey is Merkel's plan, but we are speaking with you at the moment.

Seehofer: Quotas are nothing other than ceilings. Nobody can say that ceilings won't work, but quotas will.

SPIEGEL: That's what Merkel says.

Seehofer: We'll see what it looks like when it becomes more concrete.

SPIEGEL: Why are you so irritable?

Seehofer: I find it absurd that I am constantly having to justify myself for standing up for law and order.

SPIEGEL: We are not trying to put you on trial here. We would just like to know how your plan is supposed to work.

Seehofer: And afterwards you will ask me why I travel to Putin or speak with Orban.

SPIEGEL: We'll get to that.

Seehofer: See! I am constantly being attacked in the media. Among the general public, I have very high approval ratings for my position, even phenomenal ratings in Bavaria, whereas the approval ratings for the SPD are at rock-bottom.

SPIEGEL: But right now we are asking you about your party's plan to close the borders. Merkel says this cannot be done because it would create a backup along the entire Balkan Route that 

Seehofer:  you've already given expression to the first error in logic.

SPIEGEL: How so?

Seehofer: Because sending the signal that we have limitations will have an effect. If a refugee says to a police officer on New Year's Eve in Cologne: "You can't do anything to me because the chancellor invited me," it spreads incredibly quickly on the social networks. It will spread just as quickly if Germany says: So, that's it, we cannot take in more than 15,000 people per month. What is so difficult about that?

SPIEGEL: It will hardly be possible to completely control the more than 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) of Germany's border.

Seehofer: That is also one of those phony debates. Of course you can never totally prevent a few refugees from making it across the border. But the vast majority of countries on earth try to secure their borders and are successful in doing so. We won't be able to avoid doing the same. The issue of immigration will occupy us for the next 15 years. The global population is exploding in the developing countries and they will be the source of additional migration. We need an answer to that issue that is both systematic and rules based. I view it as self-evident that we must also fight the causes of flight to a greater degree than we are now.

SPIEGEL: But that spells an end to the European system of open borders.

Seehofer: No. That means: Those who say they want to limit immigration at the EU's external borders must deliver. We have to finally achieve that goal. Otherwise, only national measures are left.

SPIEGEL: It is, however, a weighty argument when Bavarian business leaders say: We don't want border controls because it inhibits trade.

Seehofer: I know.

SPIEGEL: Do you not understand that point of view?

Seehofer: Of course I do. But if we allow another million refugees to come this year, we will reach the limits of our capacities. How does border-free travel without any kind of controls help me if the state implodes because it is unable to cope with the task it has been presented? For business, that is much more serious.

SPIEGEL: In the past, you have often praised Merkel's acumen. If the problems are so pressing, why is she not listening to you?

Seehofer: Not all questions must be answered.

SPIEGEL: But you have surely thought about it. After all, Merkel's political career is at stake.

Seehofer: At the moment, several political careers are at stake.

SPIEGEL: You have requested a meeting of party leaders in Germany prior to the next EU summit. Why?

Seehofer: I want to know exactly what agreements have already been reached at the European level and which ones will continue to be pursued.

SPIEGEL: Merkel allegedly isn't interested in meeting with you at the moment.

Seehofer: That would be a first. Seriously: We all have extremely full schedules at the moment. But we will nevertheless find a time to meet.

SPIEGEL: How might a meeting right now between Merkel and Seehofer look?

Seehofer: Normal. We speak honestly with each other. Angela Merkel has her appraisal of international options. She cannot, of course, guarantee that negotiations with Turkey will be successful. But she is fighting for it. And I wish her success.

SPIEGEL: The recent months of conflict haven't changed your relationship?

Seehofer: No. We work well together.

SPIEGEL: Do you think that Merkel would say the same?

Seehofer: That is not a question I lose sleep over.

SPIEGEL: If Merkel runs for reelection, will your party support her if she stays true to her refugee policies?

Seehofer: Next question.

SPIEGEL: Is there an alternative to Merkel?

Seehofer: I don't see one.

SPIEGEL: Last October, you threatened to haul the German federal government before the Constitutional Court on account of Merkel's refugee policies. In retrospect, was that a good idea?

Seehofer: Yes. The idea, after all, came from me. But of course our priority is a political solution.

SPIEGEL: Even former Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio, who wrote an expert opinion for the Bavarian state government, says that Berlin has a degree of discretion on border policy that is only "narrowly litigable."

Seehofer: It is the federal government's obligation to protect the borders. It is allowed to transfer this obligation to Europe. But when protection of the external borders isn't working, then it must take place on the national level.

SPIEGEL: Why haven't you submitted your complaint to the court yet?

Seehofer: Because political solutions have priority. Only if these efforts are unsuccessful will the complaint be filed.

SPIEGEL: What will you do when the 200,000 ceiling is reached in March?

Seehofer: There are several possibilities. But it makes no sense for me to share them with you, otherwise we will be accused of threats, ultimatums, etc. and Berlin pundits will feel called upon to attack us Bavarians.

SPIEGEL: Many in your party believe that Merkel wants to use her policies to change the country. Do you believe that too?

Seehofer: The country has already changed. But I don't believe that this is what Angela Merkel intended.

SPIEGEL: What changes do you mean?

Seehofer: The country is divided. People are unsettled and polarization has increased. Europe is stressed and disunited. Every politician should be alarmed. I am, at least. What is happening in Saxony is unacceptable, there is no question. But we also have to ask ourselves if political leaders can do something so that the radicalization begins to wane again.

SPIEGEL: Merkel has pushed the CDU to the left to a greater degree than any of her predecessors. Has this helped to make the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) stronger?

Seehofer: That is a very superficial analysis. The specter of the AfD will disappear when the public believes the issue of immigration is under control. I recently read a poll showing that 19 percent of Germans would vote for the CSU if it could run nationally. It showed the CDU getting 23 percent.

SPIEGEL: Is that an argument for expanding the CSU to the national level?

Seehofer: I do not want to do that, not even as a last resort.

SPIEGEL: At the moment, AfD's growing strength is actually helping your CSU and Merkel's CDU because it makes left-leaning majorities in state parliaments close to impossible.

Seehofer: That's a dangerous fallacy. Just look at France, where the Front National is stronger than ever before. Or at Austria, where polls show the FPO (eds. note: the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria) ahead of the OVP (the Christian Democratic Austrian People's Party) and SPO (the Social Democratic Party of Austria) in regional polls. That is why every CSU chairman since Franz Josef Strauss has fought so decisively against the creation of a democratically legitimate party to the right of the CDU and CSU.

SPIEGEL: Is Merkel the first head of the CDU not to have followed this maxim?

Seehofer: Angela Merkel is, like me, of the opinion that multicultural and parallel societies in no way contribute to solving the issue of integration. That can be found in a paper written by the party chairs of the CDU and the CSU on Nov. 1, 2015. That also means that the political and societal identity of our country shall be preserved. I carry the paper with me each day like a marriage contract.

SPIEGEL: Let's shift the conversation to another issue: the foreign policy of the state of Bavaria. You paid a visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin three weeks ago and praised his noble attitude regarding the German refugee issue. Can you please tell us how Putin earned this compliment?

Seehofer: During my visit in Moscow, Putin said: I am not meddling in your discussion about the German refugee policies. I then told journalists that I found it noble that he did not comment on the chancellor's policies in her absence.

SPIEGEL: Why did Putin receive you?

Seehofer: What I can tell you is why I traveled there. For one thing, there are important Bavarian firms that are active in Russia. For another, the issue of the European sanctions against Russia obviously plays a role because they also have repercussions for our state.

SPIEGEL: In contrast to Ms. Merkel, you want to lift the sanctions. Doesn't it bother you that Putin uses them to drive a wedge in the German government?

Seehofer: Why are you criticizing the fact that one is talking to statesmen about solutions to problems? Angela Merkel speaks with Putin, too. Look, when I speak to sensible, educated people about my thoughts and the talks with Putin, I am met with enthusiastic approval. This happened most recently in February before the Economic Council of the CDU in Baden-Wurttemberg.

SPIEGEL: It's truly remarkable that German industry is supportive of the idea of sanctions being lifted.

Seehofer: The German people see it the same way. Even when I just say that you can't have an influence on anything unless you talk to each other, they applaud. Of course, it is also important that the conditions for the lifting of the sanctions are fulfilled.

SPIEGEL: No one has a problem with you speaking to Putin. Angela Merkel does that as well. But you are engaging in a shadow foreign policy that counteracts the government's position.

Seehofer: That is simply incorrect. I spoke with Angela Merkel prior to the trip and also with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. I am now traveling (Eds. note: on March 4) to Hungary to meet with Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Then I will travel to Kiev to visit with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and then again to Russian with a large business delegation. We are strengthening our Eastern Europe strategy. That is very important and necessary right now. The fact that I am rooted firmly in the Western alliance should not be called into question.

SPIEGEL: Why are you once again meeting with Orban? He already visited you this fall in Bavaria.

Seehofer: I am not playing the democracy pedant, like you seem to enjoy doing.

SPIEGEL: You claimed recently there is a rule of injustice in Germany and at the same time you are paying court to someone who has stripped his constitutional court of power and introduced curbs on the freedom of speech. We think there is need for explanation.

Seehofer: Why are you spreading an incorrect story that was created by a journalist in Bavaria? I never said that Ms. Merkel is leading an unjust regime. I never drew any parallels to East Germany. I did not say anything other than what I am saying in this interview now, namely that established law is no longer being applied in the refugee crisis.

SPIEGEL: But there is a difference when a person says that the law is being partially broken and when they say that there is a "rule of injustice."

Seehofer: I have nothing more to say about that.

SPIEGEL: Why have you recently taken to blaming the media when something goes wrong?

Seehofer: Because the media have a problem , especially the public broadcasters. To exaggerate it a bit: If they didn't do live broadcasts, they wouldn't have much by way of programming that represents real life. Public broadcaster ZDF was forced to express its regret over its coverage of Cologne (Eds. note: He is referring to the mass sexual assaults and thefts perpetrated by migrants in the city on New Year's Eve). And ARD explained that, yes, it is true that we have shown many women and children refugees, but not a comparable number of men, of whom there are many more coming to Germany. Some of the coverage had very little to do with reality.

SPIEGEL: Our media landscape is a very pluralistic one. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, for example, one of the country's most important newspapers, has reported very critically about Ms. Merkel's policies from the very beginning.

Seehofer: What does that change?

SPIEGEL: It means that it is nonsense to talk about a uniform media landscape in Germany. Media freedom and media diversity in Germany does not mean that a person will find his views of things reflected in every single media.

Seehofer: In my view, the personal conviction of the writer too often serves as the measure for the coverage. Last week's story in SPIEGEL about me also affirmed my opinion.

SPIEGEL: Among other things reported in the story was that you are not ruling out the possibility of running again to become party chairman of the CSU and governor of Bavaria. Was that incorrect?

Seehofer: That is not an issue right now.

SPIEGEL: Your finance minister in Bavaria, Markus Soder, would actually like to become your successor as head of the party before the next national election in 2017.

Seehofer: There is nothing new to talk about there either.

SPIEGEL: Do you want to prevent Soder from becoming your successor?

Seehofer: I want for us to go into the election with the person who stands the best chance.

SPIEGEL: As a last resort, will you have to run again?

Seehofer: We will stick with the plan that I consider to be better. That is why we do not need to be discussing any second-best solutions right now.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Seehofer, we thank you for this interview.
On Tuesday, the head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented is coming for a visit. If Barack Obama is our friend, then we really don't need to be terribly worried about our enemies.

It is embarrassing: Barack Obama will be arriving in Berlin for only the second time, but his visit is coming just as we are learning that the US president is a snoop on a colossal scale. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that she will speak to the president about the surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, and the Berlin Interior Ministry has sent a set of 16 questions to the US Embassy. But Obama need not be afraid. German Interior Minister Hans Peter Friedrich, to be sure, did say: "That's not how you treat friends." But he wasn't referring to the fact that our trans-Atlantic friends were spying on us . Rather, he meant the criticism of that spying.
Deportations to Afghanistan are morally dubious, laborious and costly. But the interior minister doesn't see any alternative. In 2015, three times as many Afghans applied for asylum than in 2014. In total, 154,000 refugees came from the Hindu Kush. A further 18,099 were registered by the authorities this January. For that reason, measures like the one taken last Wednesday are mostly meant to have a symbolic effect. De Maiziere is hoping that the news will spread around Afghanistan that the generous times have passed. The welcome mat has been rolled up.

Since the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force's (ISAF) protective troops in 2013, the security situation in the country has deteriorated dramatically. "There are safe provinces and there are less safe provinces," de Maiziere said during his visit in early February -- an optimistic description. A Western diplomat in Kabul expresses it this way: "There are unsafe and less unsafe provinces."

In practice, the Interior Ministry is already well aware of this. Each week the officials of the Group 22 in the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) compile an Afghanistan briefing based on the most up-to-date information available. It is a litany of horrors: military clashes, suicide bombings, kidnappings, assassinations. According to the latest statistics released by the UN's Afghanistan mission, the number of civilians injured or killed last year -- 11,002 -- is the highest since the toppling of the Taliban.

In order to determine the level of security in a province, the German Federal Administrative Court has developed a macabre "body count" calculus. If the ratio of civilian victims to overall inhabitants is lower than 1:800, then the risk to life is too low to receive protection in Germany.

The last thorough situation analysis by the German Foreign Ministry and the BND foreign intelligence service makes for grim reading. It describes a "downward spiral." The "performance, reliability and operational morale" of the Afghan army is sinking and after the Taliban's brief conquest of Kunduz in September 2015, the militants see themselves "justifiably in a position of strength against the government." In addition to the Taliban, the Islamic State terror militia is also gaining a foothold in some provinces.

For the BAMF and the German administrative courts, the situation is has become rather chaotic, with officials left to answer some very tough questions. Is someone who flees from the Taliban in Kunduz safe in Kabul? Does a man have a right to asylum in Germany if he is supposedly being forced to fight by two opposing militias and he'd rather stay neutral? Can a feud between two rival clans be a justification for asylum? Or a planned forced marriage?

According to an internal report by the German Foreign Ministry about the "situation pertaining to asylum and deportation" the status of women has improved since the end of Taliban rule, but their human rights are "still frequently violated" by way of abuse, forced marriages, sexual assaults or murder. Children have been forcibly recruited, sexually abused and afterwards sometimes killed. "Within the ranks of army and police in particular," it claims, the sexual abuse of children and youths is a "large problem."

New Guidelines in Germany

Still, the German Foreign Ministry has picked out individual regions in which "the situation is comparatively stable despite selective security incidents." In the view of the German government, rejected asylum applicants can be sent to these provinces.

BAMF is now expected to investigate more thoroughly whether "domestic refuge alternatives" are feasible -- ie. whether it is imaginable that a person could stay afloat in one of the country's safe regions. They are considering young men who are fit to work, who are neither pursued by the Taliban nor persecuted for their religion, and merely made the journey to Europe with the hope of a better future.

Members of the German government believe the new guidelines will lead to a decrease in the number of Afghan applicants ultimately granted asylum status. But it's unclear whether the calculation will pay off. The administrative courts have the final word in decisions. These courts can also be soft in their rulings.

It's 9 a.m. on Feb. 23 in a Berlin court. A young Afghan stands in front of Administrative Judge Claudia Perlitius. With its green carpet and gray chairs, the environment has an aura of bureaucratic sadness. The Afghan's application for asylum has been rejected by BAMF, and now he is taking legal action against it. The man grew up in Iran, which isn't rare: About 1 million Afghans have fled to their neighboring country.

The judge explains clearly that the man has no right to asylum in Germany because he is not being persecuted in Afghanistan. And the so-called subsidiary protection as a refugee from civil war doesn't apply to him. But during questioning, it becomes clear that the man doesn't have any contact with his relatives in Afghanistan. The judge decides it is untenable to send a man to Afghanistan who has no network of family there to provide him with support. The judge lifts the deportation and orders that the man can stay in Germany.

After Syria, Iraq and Eritrea, it is Afghans who are most frequently granted asylum status in Germany. And even a rejected application doesn't necessarily result in deportation. Obstacles could include medical treatment that cannot be interrupted, or a missing passport. Of the approximately 200,000 foreigners who are set to be deported in Germany, the orders have been dropped in almost 150,000 of those instances.

News of that fact has also spread in Afghanistan. Reports on social media suggest that Afghans have little to worry about in terms of getting deported back to the Hindu Kush, an internal Foreign Ministry memo states. This, in turn, has spurred the refugee smuggling business in the country, where market forces appear to be alive and well. High demand has created a wide array of offerings, sophisticated infrastructure and sinking prices in trafficking.

One and a half years ago, migration expert Hayatullah Jawad explains, his uncle had to pay $15,000 to get his relatives to Vienna. Their trip took three months. Now an entire family can come to Europe via Iran or Turkey in only 12 days for the same price.

'Have You Thought About It?'

That's what Hussain Saydi wants. The electrical engineer is a member of the Shiite Hazara minority. He comes from the Qarabagh district in the eastern part of the country. Now he's sitting in the living room of a friend in Kabul. Saydi is waiting for his passport, and next week he wants to leave -- for Germany.

As an employee at a human right's organization, the 28-year-old once wrote an article about the "double standard" of men who believe themselves to be good Muslims because they attended the mosque, but don't allow their wives or daughters to leave the house or go to school. After it came out, the Qarabagh ulama, the local council of Muslim clerics, summoned him, at which point Saydi says he was threatened. Now he's planning his escape together his wife, who studied business administration.

It's expected to cost $10,000, with each smuggler immediately receiving a portion after performing his part of the service. Arrival in Germany is guaranteed.

None of this is good news for Thomas de Maiziere. That's why the German government is now testing a Facebook campaign to try to deter young Afghans from fleeing to Germany. Large signs in Pashtu and Dari read: "Leaving Afghanistan? Have you given this careful consideration?" It sounds rather discursive and many people wouldn't consider that much of a deterrent. The Australians, for example, air ads on Afghan television that dispel any illusions. They show a grim officer in a uniform: "If you travel by boat without a visa, you will not make Australia home. There are no exceptions!"
The survey, carried out by the Royal Agricultural Society of England ahead of the biennial British Pig & Poultry Fair, revealed that another top reason for attending is to see the latest technology and innovations. We know from the 2014 event that 93% of visitors say the Fair is valuable to their business, said Fair Organiser Alice Bell. Some 62% of visitors came to see new products, while 72% planned to make changes to their business as a result.

One of those was Dorset pig farmer Robert Lasseter, who changed the design of his new free farrowing buildings following a visit to the Fair. Its the first place I saw the 360 farrowing pen and weve now got them on the farm - its transformed what were doing here, he said.

Of the selection of top pig producers interviewed, many cited their pregnancy scanner and performance recording software as their most valuable pieces of technology. And on the wish-lists were a CCTV system to monitor pig health and identify those in need of attention; effective robotic power washers, and fixed price contracts to guarantee a margin for the next five years.

Although most respondents said the immediate outlook for the pig industry was pretty grim, they remained optimistic of a brighter future, with two-thirds planning major investments in new units and technology. And the best piece of advice for new entrants? Make your farm as efficient as it can be and dont spend too much time worrying about things you cant control, said Devon pig farmer Andrew Freemantle. Concentrate on those you can.

Of the poultry producers interviewed, many were planning to invest in expansion, with others upgrading processing facilities and branching into renewable energy production. Changing our heating system to indirect biomass heating has reduced humidity and increased the air quality, said free-range chicken producer Les Heywood. Im now looking for an automated water treatment system which Im hoping to find at the Fair.
Farmec, which is based in Dunree Co Meath, first started selling Twoses range of rollers, reach arms and farming implements back in 1991, and is one of Twoses most successful export partners.

Farmec sales manager Gary Daly said: Twose is respected across Ireland for its robust high-quality agricultural products which have made it a favourite with farmers all over the country. Weve enjoyed great support from Twose over the past 25 years and hope to continue for many years to come.

Now part of the giant Alamo group, Twose specialises in the production of hedge cutters and arable gang rollers as well as a comprehensive range of agricultural machinery. Twose machinery is exported to markets all around the world.

Twose Hedge Cutters are manufactured at the groups production facility in Ludlow, Shropshire, which has a long and successful history of producing some of the worlds premier hedgecutter brands including the Twose range.

The range of Twose Hedge Cutters includes everything from compact machines suitable for tractors up to 45hp to the flagship TP625T model - a heavy duty, genuine 6.25 meter reach machine with telescopic arm, parallel arm linkage and fully independent hydraulic system with high power cast iron pumps and motors.
Julie Sedgewick, who has led the northern region of the National Sheep Association (NSA) for 25 years, has stepped down from her role as Manager. The end of her stay in office was marked by the NSA at the Northern Region AGM, when the association presented her with a beautifully engraved glass tablet in thanks for the work she has done promoting the Association and the industry.

In addition at the Northern Region AGM Julie was presented with the T I Allinson Memorial Award which is awarded to a person for lifetime achievement to the northern sheep industry. The award was presented by Greg Dalton current Chairman of NSA Northern Region.

Julie took on the role of NSA Northern Region Secretary in 1989 when her son Tim was only four months old. Her first NSA North Sheep event was held in 1990 at East Fourstones, Hexham, followed by a further 12 successful NSA North Sheep events around the region.

Greg Dalton, NSA Northern Region Chairman, said:

For many years Julie has been a stalwart for the northern region, the sheep industry and the North Sheep event. Julie works incredibly hard and she just gets it done. Everything we do now, and have done from the very beginning has evolved as a result of Julies hard work, culminating with last years fantastic record breaking event held at Millstone Moor Farm, near Cockermouth. She will be such a huge miss, which may make it difficult to follow in her footsteps! Anyone who has worked for her would say the same thing.

Julie is sad to be going, but feels the time has come for her to stand down and let someone else contribute their ideas. She says:

I think one of our greatest achievements in the many years I have been working for the NSA in the north of England has been raising the profile of our specialist sheep events, run by the NSA for sheep farmers, sheep breed societies and the trade. They were originally initiated to promote the newly formed sheep breed societies that were being formed in the UK in the 80s and 90s. There was usually a farm tour, with perhaps 500 local farmers attending; now they are key occasions attended by thousands of people from across the UK.
The forecast maps will be updated daily to track changes in risk throughout the spring and early summer and include treatment and management advice.

The online risk forecast has been developed by SCOPS (Sustainable Control of Parasites in Sheep) and researchers at the University of Bristols School of Veterinary Sciences to predict when Nematodirus eggs will hatch and when outbreaks are likely to happen.

Nematodirosis, caused by the gutworm Nematodirus battus, is a deadly disease affecting young lambs. Eggs deposited on pasture by lambs the previous year hatch together in spring, triggered by a period of chilling over winter followed by warmer weather. Young lambs take in large numbers of larvae as they graze, which damage their gut leading to foetid black diarrhoea (black scour) and death.

Predicting when outbreaks might happen is becoming increasingly difficult due to variation in spring temperatures from year to year. Farmers can no longer rely on a standard timetable of treatments to avoid disease. As the damage is done by the larvae, faecal egg counts are of little use in detecting and controlling Nematodirus in young lambs.

The forecast takes advantage of the temperature-driven synchronised hatching of the Nematodirus larvae and uses weather data from 140 weather stations provided by the Met Office and Forecast.io. The interactive Google map allows farmers and advisers to select the nearest or most representative weather station and provides advice on how to relate the predicted risk to their particular farm and treatment options.
The flashing orange and black screens with antiquated user interfaces, arduous keyboard shortcuts and sky-high price tags  also known as the Bloomberg Terminal  have been synonymous with the detailed financial information industry since the 1980s.

Money.Net, a three-year-old Manhattan-based startup, is hoping to interrupt that industry in part by infiltrating the Greenwich market, according to former Bloomberg executive and Money.Net CEO Morgan Downey.

Greenwich is kind of a financial hub in the United States, and really globally, particularly in the hedge funds and asset management space, Downey said. Wed like to be the system that is integrated into all aspects of Greenwich life, and the second thing is that we want to make sure that any young people that are coming through as part of their education process, we want them to see Money.Net before they see Bloomberg or Reuters, because theyre almost off-putting as a first touch point for the world of finance. Its not the clunky old software from 40 years ago. ... We want it to be a good experience for anyone thinking about the world of finance.

The Greenwich Library has added a Money.Net terminal to its array of public services  which include a Bloomberg Terminal  for investors and business researchers. The terminal is installed as a stand-alone desktop application and ready for use by reservation, and a training session by Money.Net Director of Sales Andy Bodrog will take place March 11.

More Information Patrons can sign up to use the Money.Net or Bloomberg terminals in at the main reference desk, or in advance by calling 203-622-7910. Reservations can be made on the same day or one day ahead and are limited to one hour per day, per user, beginning on the hour. The Money.Net training session will take place from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. March 11 in the Library Meeting Room and registration is not required. See More Collapse

Downey, a native of Ireland, developed Money.Net in 2014 after a lengthy career in the financial industry, first as a commodities trader at Citibank and later as global head of commodities at Bloomberg from 2008 to 2013.

Downey said there are a number of factors that set Money.Net apart from the Bloomberg Terminal  most notably the cost and a modern user interface.

Bloomberg Terminals cost upwards of $25,000 per year per terminal (the Greenwich Library terminal was donated and made possible by the Peterson Foundation) compared to roughly $1,200 for an annual Money.Net subscription.

Evan as Bloombergs user growth for the terminals has stagnated over the past six years, it takes in nearly 40 percent of the $30 billion in annual revenue garnered by the financial information industry. Reuters is reported to make up another 40 percent of the market, while the rest is occupied by smaller companies like Money.Net.

Theres been no competition in the space for a very long time, Downey said. We have no legacy code to support, yet you have the same tools as if you were sitting at a trading desk at Goldman Sachs.

In addition to the price differential, Downey said Money.Net offers a more intuitive user interface with mouse-based navigation rather than the cumbersome keyboard shortcuts associated with the Bloomberg machines. Eliminating the specialty keyboard and navigation tools has also allowed Money.Net to go mobile, untethering the data that has long been accessible only from the desk. Additionally, a robust news aggregator, which includes original content from Money.Net, is intended to help users stay up to date on market news and analysis.

Money.net is an excellent addition to our digital business services collection, said Stephen Schmidt, resources management librarian at the Greenwich Library. It enables our patrons to get streaming live real-time financial data, news on equities, commodities, companies and a variety of other business services. It pulls from a wide range of sources to offer a rather complete picture of the financial world at any given moment. Its nice to have multiple options here at the library for those folks interested and engaged in the financial world.

Despite his desire to upset the industry and Bloomberg, Downey acknowledges the value of his former employer and its impact in leading him to develop Money.Net.

The most important thing I learned was the business of news, Downey said. I was a consumer of news, but it taught me how news organizations work, and I found it kind of fascinating how that whole system and process worked. I also found out how technology is used by news organizations.

KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-625-4411; Twitter: @kaitlynkrasselt
Avangrid (NYSE: AGR) and its Connecticut utilities, the United Illuminating Co., The Southern Connecticut Gas Co. and Connecticut Natural Gas Corp., announced Wednesday that eligible customers will receive a one-time bill credit during the month of March, which will vary by utility company as well as type of customer. For residential customers, the one-time credit will range from about $20 to $24. The company is crediting a total of $20 million to its customers.

Distribution rates for UI customers are frozen through Jan. 1, 2017; customers of CNG and SCG will have rates frozen through Jan. 1, 2018. Avangrid said the credits were a result of last years merger between the former UIL Holdings Corp. and Iberdrola USA, now Avangrid.
Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. gets bothered by a lot of things.

He doesnt worry about the big issues, such as global peace and climate control. He knows if he started fixating on important issues, he would probably go insane.

No, Wood, 37, prefers to analyze the world we walk through everyday. And on stage he tends to get really angry about all the wrong things.

Now, take for example, a trip to your local movie theater. Why in this society, do we still employ people to rip our tickets? Im not saying fire the guy ... but cant we move him to popcorn (sales). Cant we just use a turnstile?

If we are expected to find our gate at the airport (amid chaos), arent we capable of finding our movie in an eight-door hallway?

Wood, known for his stand-up, radio and television work, brings his zany observational humor to Comix theater at Mohegan Sun for four shows Friday and Saturday, March 4 and 5, at 8 and 10:30 p.m. (The 10:30 p.m. Saturday performance is described as a Nasty Show, in which lines will be crossed and common decency should be left at the door, Comix officials said.

More Information Mogegan Sun, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville. Friday and Saturday, March 4-5, 8 and 10:30 p.m. $60-$25, with a $10 drink/food minimum. 860-862-7000, mohegansun.com See More Collapse

Described as the breakout star of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Woods position as correspondent takes him all over the country to report on the fly on whatever issues have caught the ear of show writers. Working without a script doesnt scare him at all, he said. The Birmingham, Ala., native is a graduate of Florida A&M University, with a degree in broadcast journalism.

Can you imagine a more ideal job?

Wood said he got into radio as a comic personality while in college. And he still loves the medium, but is happy to be on the stand-up circuit.

Lets put it this way: Stand-up comedy will always be my wife; radio will always be my mistress. Literally, I will be doing this to my last breath: I love being my own boss.

Along with a host of talk- and comedy-show appearances and a CD (2013s Things I Think, I Think), fans mayremember Wood was also a regular guest star on the TBS comedy Sullivan & Son, in which he portrayed the best friend of Pittsburgh bar owner Steve Byrne.

He intends to remain in comedy for a long time, as its essential to his well-being, he said.

For me, the opportunity to share my thoughts with a stranger is a great experience. When Im on stage, nothing else matters. Its always wonderful to go on a journey with audiences. And where else can you drink on the job?

pasboros@ctpost.com; Twitter: PhyllisASBoros
I always have been at home in restaurants.

It began during the 1970s with trips to my grandfathers place, Risolis Steakhouse in Harrison, N.Y., where I would sneak behind the bar to fool around with the soda gun or gobble up maraschino cherries until I was high on sugar.

As a child growing up in Fairfield, there were family celebrations and holidays spent at Dogwoods (later Sidetracks) and the Golden House in Westport, and weekend afternoons at the Center in downtown Fairfield and the Villanova in the Southport section of Fairfield, where my fathers softball team would gather after games.

As a teen, I lolled about at Howard Johnsons, lingering over cheap bowls of ice cream and coffee refills so that I could justify occupying the booth. I only hope I left a decent tip. Not long after, I began waitressing at Friendlys in Southport, after an unsuccessful attempt at the Pie Plate. When I was legal, Id hang out at Als Place and the Lemon Tree Lounge in Southport. I wish I had made it to Ottavios (for the Candy Man alone), but I managed to visit the Driftwood Lounge before it closed, a young persons bucket-list item. One might say it was the kind of bar that time forgot, but time did catch up with it, as well as the other restaurants mentioned here.

Restaurants are more than the building or decor. They become beloved because of who is in the kitchen or behind the bar, setting down your meal or sitting in the seat beside you. Patti Woods, a fellow 1988 Fairfield High School alum, recently wrote The Lost Restaurants of Fairfield (Arcadia Publishing, $21.99). My stroll down memory lane began with her advice: This is just a start. Your personal stories and memories complete the picture. Use this book as a tool. Ask your friends what they remember, what their favorite restaurant was and what dish they really wish they could have just one more time. You might be surprised just how long the conversation lasts.

Here are a few excerpts:

The apple (pie)

in the towns eyes

With its yellow and brown decor; big, shiny globe light bulbs and glass display cases, the Pie Plate restaurant (operated by former baker and owner Art Green) was the place to get dessert from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. Set in a strip mall near The Circle, the Pie Plate was more than just pies. The large menu offered diners everything from soup and sandwiches to full meals. But of course, it was the pie that attracted people.

We were always busy, said Beth Herde, a waitress at the Pie Plate from 1977 to 1980. I can remember times when the line was out the door.

On the regular menu, there was apple, of course, and other fruit pies such as blueberry, peach, strawberry rhubarb, apricot, pineapple and cherry. For a short time in the summer, fresh strawberry pies were available. .... Then there were the cream and custard pies: banana, banana fudge, chocolate, black bottom, pineapple, coconut, apple, blueberry and cherry. Then there were the prize pies pecan, mince, pumpkin, cream cheese with fruit, lemon meringue, chocolate nut chiffon, strawberry chiffon and coconut custard. Pie was served by the slice, and for an extra 20 cents, you could have your pie in true New England style and add a slice of Swiss or cheddar cheese. People really liked the Dutch apple pie, said Herde.

Glitz and glamour

On May 27, 1963, what had once been a supermarket ... reopened as the towns ritziest banquet hall  Ottavios, named after (owner Otto) Veglios father. After a remodeling job that cost over $100,000, the former grocery store (where Circle Diner sits today) was converted into a 12,000-foot red-carpeted facility with accommodations for up to 700 diners.

Ottavios was decked out in a Mediterranean theme, and fold away partitions divided the dining area into four separate rooms. Each meal would start with hors doeuvres, followed by manicotti or antipasto, sherbet and an entree: lobster tails, surf and turf, roast beef, prime rib, filet mignon, boneless stuffed chicken, poulet au champagne, chicken Francaise, veal Milanase, veal Francaise or veal cordon bleu. We did everything New York style, said Veglio. Fairfield never saw a Venetian table until I brought it in. In addition to a spread of desserts, another option for parties was the Candy Man  a waiter who would offer lemon ice and a cart full of candy while Sammy Davis Jr.s The Candy Man played over the speakers.

The end of an era

Fairfields downtown had two working-class neighborhood bars that achieved local legendary status (before both closing in 2006). Als Place had been a bar since 1935. The Driftwood opened in 1967.

(The Driftwood) was far from fancy. The wood-paneled room had a bar and a few tables. A coat rack was available to hang your jacket, and photos and beer signs lined the walls. Behind the bar, bottles were lined up, along with American flags and a sign that said, I can only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow doesnt look good either. If you wanted a beer or a Canadian Club and water, this might be your place. A glass of wine or a fancy martini? Youd best move along.

Behind the bar, Millie Larsen poured drinks from day one. In the 1950s, she worked down the street as a bartender at Rudys (now Geronimo Tequila Bar and Southwest Grill). She settled into the Driftwood, where her regular patrons called her Mom. On Sundays, she would cook a buffet, which she would serve up for free to patrons so they wouldnt drink on empty stomachs. It was the kind of place where, instead of playing pool or darts, youd sit and shoot the breeze.

One of the things that made this such a good bar was that we did not have that many fist fights, she was quoted as saying in the Connecticut Post. I mean, there were a few, but there was always somebody here whod break it up.

Reprinted with permission from The Lost Restaurants of Fairfield, by Patti Woods. www.arcadiapublishing.com.

chennessy@hearstmediact.com;

Twitter: @xtinahennessy
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

STAMFORD  Nearly a year since the stunning stabbing murder outside the downtown McDonalds, attorneys for both sides appear no closer to finding a resolution.

Marquest Hall, 16, and his co-defendant, James McLamb, 23, appeared briefly Wednesday before Judge Gary White at the Stamford courthouse and had their cases continued to April 6. Halls attorney Ryan ONeill expects there will be a meaningful pretrial hearing on that day with prosecutor Paul Ferencek and Judge Richard Comerford.

Hall, wearing a tan jumpsuit, smiled as he walked into the courtroom Wednesday when he saw his mother Charlene sitting in the gallery.

Hall has been charged with the stabbing death of Antonio Muralles, 52, who was walking around town when he stopped into McDonalds on Bedford Street about 8:15 p.m. on March 11, 2015.

The Guatemala native inadvertently bumped and spilled some of his coffee on Hall, who was 15 at the time, as he left McDonalds, police said.

Police said the 5-foot-4, 140-pound Hall reacted by spitting in Muralles face and asked him, Do you want to die now?

A witness said Muralles lunged at the teen, who pulled out a knife and stabbed the man in the torso, police said. A ventricle was cut in Muralles heart and he died four hours later at Stamford Hospital.

Halls attorney said outside the courtroom Wednesday they are finally at the stage where meaningful negotiations could begin in hopes of reaching a plea agreement.

ONeill said he did not know what expectations the prosecution had for settling the case.

After Hall pleaded not guilty last May to the murder charge, his other attorney, Mark Sherman, said the defense team was looking for a psychiatrist to examine their client.

But ONeill said he could not discuss if the team ever found a psychiatrist.

We are looking to understand who he (Hall) is and his ability to perceive things and think through events as they happen, ONeill said, before adding that they are continuing to consult with medical and psychiatric professionals.

Ferencek could not comment on the pending case and would only say he has remained in contact with Muralles family.

New sentencing regulations for juvenile offenders in Connecticut could dramatically reduce the time Hall would spend in jail if hes convicted.

The Supreme Court found in Miller v. Alabama that teenagers are more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more lacking in foresight than adults, and as a result, it has prohibited mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles.

As a result, Hall would be eligible for parole after serving 12 years in jail if convicted.
N o one has the courage to say it but perhaps the greatest economic benefit to the UK from being in the European Union is immigration, and nowhere is this more obvious than in London. The city has become a melting pot.

The constant flow of people in and out has made it one of the most dynamic and creative places on the planet. And Londons prosperity is the countrys prosperity. The dynamism of the capital and the South-East drives the whole of Britain.

This City has been transformed in the last 30 years. It began in the Eighties as a dowdy place where the shortage of money showed through in dirty streets, dull shops and lack of variety in everything from theatres to restaurants.

A generation later, it has become one of the worlds most dynamic metropolitan centres with a growth rate that beats New York and matches the Eastern powerhouses of Singapore and Hong Kong.

EU referendum: Should the UK vote to stay or leave?

It is the influx of talent that has made the difference. In 1971, 15% of the people living in London were not born here; today the figure is 38%.

A report published today by business services group Deloitte hammers this home. In a comparison of London with the other six contenders for global city status  New York, Paris, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Hong Kong  it found the capital powering ahead in the creation of the high-value, knowledge-based jobs that are the growth engine of the modern economy.

In just three years from the beginning of 2013 to 2016, Londons growth has outstripped all others. Paris fell back, Hong Kong and Tokyo stood still, New York and Singapore expanded by 4.6% and 6.6% respectively  but London powered ahead by 16%.

The total number of people employed in knowledge-based industries in London is now 1.7 million, which is an increase of 235,000 in just three years. This is more than twice the 728,000 employed in New York.

London has created one third as many new knowledge-based jobs as actually exist in New York in total, which is a quite staggering statistic.

Deloitte also estimates that to continue at this pace, London will need an influx of between 100,000 and 150,000 people with high knowledge-based skills every year. This is massively more that the UK on its own can supply  indeed Deloitte says we will have to scour the world for talent if we wish to hold on to our number one position.

London also has as many knowledge-based jobs as Paris, Frankfurt, Berlin and Milan added together. Again according to Deloitte, the capital ranks as either first or second in 17 out of the key 22 sectors that define the modern economy, putting it in a league of its own as a global city.

The numbers also emphasise how London has become the business centre of Europe and underline the insanity of even thinking about turning our back on it.

The city is home to more than one third of all European Fortune 500 firms and attracts three times more corporate headquarters than any other city in Europe. They are not here in anticipation of a post-Brexit world where success is measure by our signing a free trade agreement with Fiji.

"The capitals current stellar success is not something the British could sustain on our own."

The point about Londons success is that it is intrinsically bound up with diversity. In the first edition of his soon-to-be-republished book The Flat White Economy, economist Douglas McWilliams estimates that about 40% of the people working in the hi-tech sectors of London around Old Street, Shoreditch and the like were born elsewhere in the EU.

The Deloitte study goes further and argues that it is precisely this diversity which sparks the energy and creativity that makes it work. Diversity of talent in the educational and cultural melting pot of London sparks creativity to a level that is just unmatched anywhere else.

But the point is that it is the diversity which is key because that is what stimulates different ways of thinking and innovation.

In Deloittes words: The more diverse the backgrounds and skills of people drawn to a city, the hotter the melting pot of opportunity. This underlines that the capitals current stellar success is not something the British could sustain on our own.

As the world economy becomes more knowledge-based, it is cities rather than countries that become the more important as drivers of growth because cities have the ability to attract talented people. The long-term economic success of global cities will depend on much more than their location and their industrial legacy.

It will also rest on what Deloitte calls their soft power  which is precisely their ability to attract, retain and subsequently export talent.

In future, cities will rise and fall  in economic terms  on the strength that comes from the diversity and creativity of their workforce, from the partnerships formed between their innovative growing businesses and their agile higher education institutions, from the flexibility of their immigration and working practices and from the way the leaders of today nurture the leaders of tomorrow.

Deloittes conclusion is blunt: Cities which are not able to provide such a hot melting pot of opportunity are likely to lose their influence on the world stage.

Londons success is not guaranteed. Cut off the flow of talent from Europe, and to a lesser extent from elsewhere, and we could so easily blow it.
B arclays decision to sell out of Africa has brought a welter of attacks on new boss Jes Staley in the past 24 hours.

Its natural for our hearts to tell us its wrong for a national champ to desert its historic African ambitions, but Staleys decision was not based on any misunderstanding of the importance of that continent to Barclays past and present.

He would have stayed had it not been for the new rules on banking, which make it prohibitively expensive.

Foreign ownership laws in South Africa require a significant portion of the business to be locally owned, meaning Barclays only owns 63% of the equity.

Yet the global financial services regulations brought in over the past eight years mean Barclays must account for 100% of the risk of the business on its balance sheet. So, of the 17% returns it generates, Barclays only sees 8.7%, which is short of the 10% cost of the banks equity.

Standard Chartered has identical issues in Indonesia, though being an Asia-focused specialist it chose to stay. HSBC has had to make similar tough calls.

The capital regulations were intended to protect the countries from a collapse of systemically important banks. In practice, theyve forced western banks to quit lending in these developing countries altogether. That can only hinder local businesses from leading them out of poverty.

In short, blame the rules, not Barclays.
D ark clouds are gathering over the masts of BT, creating a perfect storm for Gavin Pattersons group this year.

Thats the verdict of number-crunchers at Deutsche Bank, who cut their target price to 410p for the group, which provides phone, broadband, TV, and now mobile services after its 12.5 billion takeover of EE.

The analysts already had a Sell rating, but are now even gloomier on BTs outlook for this year. Shares fell 6.1p to 489.9p today.

Among the multiple headwinds conspiring are Virgin Medias speedy roll-out of its cable network, Skys impending entry into mobile, TalkTalks ramp-up of mobile, and Vodafones fixed-line broadband.

Worse still, Ofcom is pushing for BT to improve its Openreach service. The only glimmer of hope for BT is EE, but even that could take a hit if O2s tie-up with rival operator Three gets the green light, according to Deutsche.

The FTSE 100s steady gains continued as the top hundred stocks rose 20.45 to 6173.33.

Pearson was among the fallers, down 16p at 854.5p as Goldman Sachs downgraded the education publisher to Sell. The heavyweight broker called the former FT owners 800 million operating profit target for 2018 unrealistic.

Intertek, the products-testing group, was the biggest casualty on the blue-chip table, tumbling 117p to 2887p  a 4% fall triggered by the oil and gas industrys woes, which forced it to write down the value of acquisitions by 577 million.

Solid annual results from Costain convinced investors that the engineering solutions group was on steady ground.

The shares were 12p firmer at 370p after revenues increased from 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion and pre-tax profits climbed to 26 million.

Amec Foster Wheeler, 18.9p better off at 408.1p, inspired confidence as it successfully refinanced its debt despite a turbulent time for oilfield services firms, with banks queuing up to replace its existing facility.

On the junior market, Telit Communications slumped 23.8p, or more than 10%, to 209.2p as Berenberg  the Israeli wireless technology firms house broker  cut its rating to Hold ahead of next weeks annual results, citing order book uncertainty in the US.

Churchill Mining was 1.1p down at 15.9p as it revealed it was eyeing funding options to deal with higher costs related to a long-running dispute in Indonesia over the ownership of vast coal reserves.

Shareholders feared a severely discounted equity raise.
S ABMiller said that the $1.6 billion sale (1.2 billion) of its stake in a Chinese brewery will help clear the way for its 71 billion takeover by rival AB InBev.

A sale of SABMillers 49% interest in China Resources Snow Breweries to 51%-shareholder China Resources Beer, is the latest move to resolve concerns among competition regulators over the planned acquisition.

Alan Clark, boss of SABMiller, said the joint venture was established in 1994 and the Snow brand was developed the same year.

Since then, Snow has grown to become the worlds largest beer brand by volume, selling more than 100 million hectolitres last year, Clark said.

The conditional sale comes shortly after Japanese brewer Asahi said last month it had agreed to buy SABMillers Peroni and Grolsch brands.

On completion of the takeover  expected in the second half of this year  the combined business will be a powerhouse that would be responsible for one in three beers sold around the world.

SABMiller agreed to the record-breaking merger in October after Belgian brewing giant AB InBev increased its offer for a fifth time.

The two sides shook hands on an unprecedented $3 billion break fee  payable by AB InBev if the deal fails to close.
A typical London high street. You know the scene: gum-pocked pavements, D-locked bicycles missing front wheels, chicken bones, freesheets, mothers wrestling pushchairs. A male youth strolls in stage left, sucking the last drops from a can of energy drink before tossing it onto the street. There is an overflowing bin three feet away.

Enter Queen Elizabeth II. Shes out for one of her regular constitutionals, high-fiving her subjects, as her family have done for hundreds of years. But the discarded can stops her in her tracks. How could someone do this to ones sceptred isle? she cries. Why would they treat ones demi-paradise as a muckpit? The youth feels the force of his shame. Im so sorry, your Majesty. I didnt realise it was you. And he throws herself upon her mercy.

These scenes are precisely what Boris Johnson wants to avoid. So the Mayor of London and leader of the Brexit campaign has taken time away from railing against expensive, unaccountable, outdated power structures to tell us to Clean for the Queen! Its her 90th birthday in April, you see, and he wants the place to look nice for her. Vacuum your villages! Spruce up your cities! he implores. And if youre going to vomit, do it in a bin. Ta.

Now before you accuse me of cynicism, let me stress that I welcome any efforts to beautify this lovely country. No one likes litter, do they, and I remember how bad Londons rubbish problems were in the Eighties. Living on a high street, as I do, my feeling is that collective standards are falling. As per the well-established broken windows theory, the worse an area looks the worse people tend to behave.

So Im all for outrageous fines for litter bugs, community-led clean-ups and  a personal crusade this  destroying dog-owners who let their animals defecate on the street. Im also for restoring street-cleaning budgets that have been cut by an average of 16 per cent since the Conservatives entered government in 2010; I dont think its all due to a want of deference.

But this leads me to wonder who this irony-free parody of the Keep Calm and Carry On poster is supposed to inspire, and how? Perhaps it will play well in the shires  I can imagine the reality show now, Britains Tidiest Village? In London, coming so soon after Crossrail was renamed the Elizabeth line, this second invocation of the monarchy is a bit more jarring. It seems calculated to miss the very people who actually drop the most litter (young urban males). And considering Michael Gove, an ally in the Brexit campaign, is also telling us to Clean for the Queen, I fear theyre hinting at the feudal utopia that might await us post-EU. It feels a bit like the Sheriff of Nottingham telling the peasantry to look lively: King John is on his way!

Dont clean your streets for your own benefit, they seem to be saying. You barely deserve it! Do it for a woman who is worth 340million and costs taxpayers around 40million per year. Who only agreed to pay the living wage to Buckingham Palace staff  the people who literally Clean for the Queen  after they threatened to strike. Do it for no other reason than these symptoms of breakdown are aesthetically displeasing to your social betters. Its sort of... rude, dont you think?

March of the bookmakers leaves an unpleasant smell

Hands up whos surprised Paddy Power encouraged a problem gambler to continue gambling until hed lost five jobs, his home and access to his children. Nope? Thought so. The Irish bookmaker has been fined 280,000 for this oversight. Really, the senior staff who waved away concerns were acting as we might expect them to, in other words with all the moral discernment of a crystal meth dealer.

This is why the gambling industry is booming. After last years successful merger with Betfair, Paddy Power is now on the brink of entry to the FTSE 100, and can probably afford the odd fine  but only as long as it secures new customers after theyve bled the last lot dry. This is also why its naive to expect the industry to regulate itself. The Government must come down hard.

Fallon cant seem to resist showing a wicked side

During last years election, Michael Fallon said Ed Milibands treatment of his brother meant he would stab the UK in the back in any deal with the SNP over our nuclear deterrent. So no surprise, then, that it is Fallon again who alleges that Sadiq Khan is unfit to be London Mayor as he speaks alongside dangerous extremists and, well, his names Khan innit? Bloody sounds like a terrorist, doesnt he?

Forgive me if I fail to discern anything more than mendacious Islamophobia in these allegations. If even a figure as blandly personable as Khan finds himself accused of extremism, what hope is there for any aspiring Muslim politician? I mean, imagine if we had a spiteful hothead whod literally say anything as Defence Secretary  then youd really worry about national security.

* Dick Bradsell may not be feted outside cocktailing circles but few Londoners can have spread so much happiness. The debonair bartender of the Colony Rooms, Dicks Bar and the Pink Chihuahua died at the weekend after four decades of mixing drinks.

He did the most to revive classic formulas, passing them on to younger bartenders such as Tony Conigliaro and Nick Strangeway. He also invented more classics than anyone of recent vintage, such as the Espresso Martini. Its like coming up with a standard we all want to sing at karaoke.
Review at a glance









B otticelli Reimagined is in three sections. Mysteriously, as you walk through the first one, Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands by Bob Dylan can be heard. The first image you encounter is Eric Idles face on a film screen, looking awestruck as Uma Thurman enacts The Birth of Venus. This scene from Terry Gilliams movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen segues into the famous moment from Dr No, when Ursula Andress emerges from the waves in sexy Nordic splendour. As she coos to some seashells shes just fished up, she merges back into Uma Thurman.

Perhaps it is appropriate, considering the shows aims, that Botticellis most famous painting should be conjured up via mildly enjoyable filmic hallucinations on a mechanical loop.

Its a fair enough idea that Botticelli, like any artist of the past, can only really be approached from the perspective of ones own time, as the curators maintain. Its not necessarily important to literalise the idea but theyve done it anyway. An exhibition of present-day artworks referring to Botticelli comes first. Then you pass into an exhibition devoted to his rediscovery, following centuries of obscurity, by 19th-century aesthetes. Its only in the final exhibition that you see a Botticelli show as such.

The whole thing deserves five stars for provoking thought  especially the catalogue. Here hes looked at from all sorts of angles, and were plunged into a vivid and interesting world: art history but also meta-art history  how art history is made. In mostly really well-written essays we learn how his career might have developed, what shape his life probably took, how he was regarded after he died, what factors contributed to the revival of his reputation and then to its decline once again, and revival again.

Engrossing: Mystic Nativity, 1501 by Sandro Botticelli The National Gallery, London / The National Gallery, London

Unfortunately, even two stars for any kind of aesthetic substance would be generous for the first section of the show, which matches out-of-control facetious rambling with some of the less plausible writing in the catalogue. The V&A should experiment as much as it likes and I recognise the hard work that went into this show. But theres definitely a problem with it.

An award for most revolting effort ought to go to Arnold Bocklin, who depicts Venus as a human glow worm

Giddy thinking leading to foggy trips is perhaps something Dylan could have put into words in the Sixties. Its amply demonstrated by the wall label for Rineke Dijkstras early-Nineties photos of adolescent girls posing awkwardly in their swimsuits by the sea. The Dutch artist did not intend to reference Botticellis Venus, it reads, unpromisingly, and continues, pathetically, but the resemblance of the subjects poses to this picture suggests how it has pervaded popular consciousness. Sharp observation by Dijkstra is made vague and bland by this curatorial gloss.

Incidentally, while the god Mercury appears in Botticellis Primavera, it is the god Zephyr who appears in The Birth of Venus. So even Dylan singing about your mercury mouth in Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands fails to chime with the goddess of love on the foamy waves  the song was built into a multimedia artwork featuring her, it turns out.

Its displayed here in a large alcove devoted to feminist revisions of Botticelli. Film of Ulrike Rosenbachs own self-caressing nude body is projected over the Botticelli image, to the mournful strains of Bobs harmonica. A wall label says: Bob Dylans ballad alludes to Botticellis melancholy female types. As theres no mention of Botticelli in the song its anyones guess how this works. While Rosenbach has every right to suggest a connection as an artistic idea its a different thing for the curators to state it as a fact.

Stunning: La Ghirlandata, 1873 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti Scala, Florence/Heritage Images / Scala, Florence/Heritage Images

French performance artist Orlan disrobes in a series of photos arranged in a grid, transforming herself sensationally from a draped Madonna to a naked goddess whose final poses  despite distracting hairiness  mimic Botticellis Venus. Next to that, Valie Exports image of herself holding a vacuum cleaner partially covering a Botticelli Madonna, indicating the demeaning role of women in social reality contrasting with their elevated role in idealised art, is mild but still clever.

These mid-Seventies feminist visual commentaries are funny, to the point and daft in equal measure. By contrast, entirely shallow, lurid and foolishly porny works by David LaChappelle and Joel-Peter Witkin, which also happen to feature direct reference to The Birth of Venus, are a depressing rather than challenging sight. The visual idiotic crassness of some artists included is not the same as the subtle moving around of accepted ideas of what constitutes skill and visual appeal that others go in for. Works here by Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol are visually flabby, and only included because they fit the bill of featuring Botticellis Venus. That theyre not as intellectually void as Yin Xins painting of Venus with Chinese features instead of European sadly doesnt say much.

The tone in the rediscovery (middle) section is of course much more dignified. Works by fervent Pre-Raphaelites are a relief after so much inane irony. One stunner is Rossettis La Ghirlandata, for which William Morriss daughter modelled. Although an award for most revolting effort in Botticelli Reimagined ought to go to Arnold Bocklin, in this section, who depicts Venus as a sort of human glow worm.

The final pay-off section lacks great hits such as the Birth of Venus. Nevertheless, its extremely powerful and you can forget the junk youve had to endure to get here. One work, the Mystic Nativity, from 1500, the only painting by Botticelli in existence that bears his signature, is worth anyones journey and price of admission. (In fact it can usually be seen for free in the National Gallery, but here its in an excitingly fresh context among pictures by him never seen before in this country.) Beautiful symmetrical divisions match a narrative theme of birth and death, ends and beginnings, all manifesting simultaneously.

It was painted about 15 years after the Birth of Venus. It could be  no one is sure  that hed come under the influence of the preacher Savonarola, who called for a cleansing of secular culture. In that case Venuses would be far from Botticellis mind by now and replaced by apocalyptic concerns. Drawings illustrating Dantes Inferno are also on show. For a long time no one knew Botticelli did anything else. One shows Botticellis name, written by him on a sign held by angels in paradise, not to advertise authorship but as an invocation to God to redeem him.

Botticelli Reimagined is at the V&A, SW7 (020 7942 2000, vam.ac.uk) from Saturday until July 3

Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout
The look: Bourgeois bling. Made up of a series of artist spaces, sketch is more than a restaurant. Design is at the forefront of this social environment. David Shrigley is the latest artist to have transformed The Gallery, following Martin Creed's commision in 2012. The walls are lined with 239 of Shrigley's works, forming the largest group of original drawings he has ever exhibited. Touching on the grand themes of life, death and beyond, visitors enjoy a show and a tasty dinner.

Pink walls and velvet-covered custom-made furniture add to the bespoke element. Even the ceramic tableware, manufactured by British heritage brand Caverswall, was created in line with Shrigleys drawings and texts. Fashion designer Richard Nicoll is responsible for the uniforms. Meanwhile, the upstairs Lecture Room and Library offer a Michelin starred gastronomic experience.

Who's behind it? David Shrigleys project was curated by RSC Contemporary and Christopher Huynh. Paris based architect and designer India Mah- davi has created the backdrop for Shrigleys artwork. The Library was created by leading interior designer Gahban OKeeffe with tasting and a la carte menus by French Master Chef Pierre Gagnaire.

What should I try? Visit The Glade bar for one of the signature cocktails, Evil Genius. The fiery tequila and Gin blend will kick-start the evening. For an exquisite dining experience head to the Lecture Room and try The Perigold Truffle dish, generously accompanied by fine truffle to create a mix of sumptuous flavours. The Australian Wagyu ribeye is a tasty and tender steak and leave space for Pierre Gagnaires Grand Dessert.

Go there if: You want Michelin food in an unconventional setting.

Cheque out: Expect to pay around 130 per head for dinner and a glass of wine.

How do I book? Call 020 7659 4500 or visit sketch.london.

Follow Amira Hashish on Twitter @amiranews and Instagram @thedesigneditor
S oft cubes of paneer, Indian cheese, nestling in a tomato cream with peas, may look like its the result of hours of labour. But this recipe is a quick fix that will hit a spot mid-week, as well as impress guests at the weekend.

Malai is usually used to describe a dish with cream in Indian food. Ive used cashews, yoghurt and milk instead to give the dish the necessary creamy texture without the heavy feeling you get after cream. Serve this with a stash of rotis, or a dal and some steaming hot Basmati rice.

Ingredients (feeds 4)

 Kasoori methi or garam masala

 1 tbsp tomato puree

 8 cashewnuts

 3 tbsp Greek-style natural yoghurt

 2 tbsp whole milk

 225-250gm paneer

 2 fat cloves garlic

 1 tbsp oil

 1 tsp mild chilli/Kashmiri chilli powder

 Half tsp turmeric powder

 Handful of peas (frozen is just fine)

 Salt to taste

Method

If using Kasoori methi, soak a pinch in a tablespoon of warm water. This is fenugreek and it balances the tomato beautifully.

Next, blitz the tomato puree, cashewnuts, milk and yoghurt together in a hand blender or small smoothie maker until you get a silky paste.

Chop the paneer into even bite-sized pieces. Now bring the oil to heat on medium in a saute pan or large frying pan. Gently fry the paneer pieces on two opposite sides to seal it. It will hiss and spit, so loosely cover the pan with the lid and be careful. When done, remove them with a slotted spoon.

Now, peel and finely grate or chop the garlic and stir it through the same oil the paneer was fried in. As it turns golden, mix through the chilli powder and turmeric. Then pour in the tomato cream.

The tomato cream will split and this is perfectly normal, it will reconstitute and give the dish its lovely texture and look. As oil oozes through the pores in a couple of minutes, stir through the paneer and the peas. Cover and simmer for a minute. You can add half a cup of water if you want more curry.

Now stir through the kasoori methi with the water its been soaking in, if using. If not, half a teaspoon of garam masala will do the job too.

Add salt to you taste to finish.

Mallika Basu is a London-based food writer, cookbook author and cookery personality; quickindiancooking.com. Follow her on Twitter@MallikaBasu_ and find more of her recipes for the Evening Standard here.

Follow us on Twitter @eslifeandstyle and sign up to our newsletter here
R osie ONeill and Josh Resnick are a powerfully sweet couple, in every sense. The pair, she a former marketing executive for Barbie and he a video game creator, met on Match.com in 2010 and on their third date  to see the 1971 classic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory  roughed out plans for the upmarket confectionery company that now consumes their professional and personal lives, and that comes to Harvey Nichols this week.

Sugarfina, a luxury candy brand for adults, launched in 2012 in California and already has 15 stores in North America and a thriving online business, selling 140 different posh sweets including Dom Perignon gummy bears, maple bourbon caramels and martini olive almonds. Celebrity fans include Justin Bieber (who picked up two parking tickets outside the Beverly Hills branch), Jessica Alba, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio. My hope was [Leo] would take a box of Sugarfina onstage and include us in his list of thank-yous, saying thats what got him through The Revenant, deadpans Resnick, 49.

Sugarfina lands at a strange time in London, when attitudes to sugar are polarised  from unashamed kidults wallowing in the Cereal Killer Cafe and rainbow bagels to puritan advocates of clean eating and a sugar tax.

Sugarfina will land in London this year / Shay Cochrane

We actually see our brand as perfectly suited to this [clean eating] trend as we are all about very small portions and having an occasional treat, in moderation and of the very best quality, says ONeill, 36. Josh and I are both very healthy people but we have a little bit of candy every day. Sugar is one of the great pleasures of life and I dont think that you should deprive yourself of it.

Both have gleamingly pristine American teeth, as well as a gleamingly pristine belief that London will instantly embrace the Sugarfina concept.

London is such a great trendsetting city, with a great sense of humour, says ONeill. For a brand that is focused on adults but has a bit of a wink to it, its a perfect fit.

London's best: salty sweets 1 /6 London's best: salty sweets Artisan du Chocolat Salted Caramels.jpg 1. Artisan du Chocolat No 1 Salted Caramels Original These little balls dusted with dark chocolate are filled with what I imagine liquid gold might taste like. Heaven. 13.50, Artisan du Chocolat shops in Chelsea and Notting Hill (artisanduchocolat.com) Fortnum & Mason salted caramel nougat.jpg 2. Fortnum & Mason salted caramel nougat You cant just tear off one piece of this  you need to buy a whole stash and keep it to yourself. 7.50/100g sliced at the counter at Fortnum & Mason, 181 Piccadilly, W1 (fortnumandmason.com) Joe & Sephs salty caramel popcorn.jpg 3. Joe & Sephs salty caramel popcorn Eating this after lunch will take you from the dreaded afternoon sugar low to a total sugary, salty high. Standard bag, 2.99 from Whole Foods Market, Picturehouse cinemas and independent shops, snack pack 1.75 from Whistle Stop and Birleys sandwich bars. (joeandsephs.co.uk) Amelia Rope pale lime and sea salt chocolate.jpg 4. Amelia Rope pale lime and sea salt chocolate First the chocolate massages your tongue, then the salt hits in and takes the whole experience up a notch. The more you eat, the better you feel. 5.60 from Adnams Cellar & Kitchen Store in Bloomsbury and Smash Bang Wallop in Crystal Palace (ameliarope.com) lakrids coffee liquorice.jpg 5. Lakrids coffee and dark chocolate coated liquorice These converted someone who officially hates liquorice and dislikes coffee. Each ball is chewy, crunchy, salty and gooey all at once. 8.95/tub from Harvey Nichols (lakrids.nu)

It was ONeill who reached out to Resnick  who has three children from a previous relationship  on Match.com, after both of them had been searching for love for three months. She was kind of out of my league, and still is, he says. At the time, ONeill was toying with leaving her beloved job with Barbie and of starting her own company: she had downsized to a tiny apartment and was living on $100 a week in training for the vicissitudes of a start-up. However Resnick, who has both a nerds enthusiasm and a businessmans nous for gaming, had recently sold his firm Pandemic to EA Games for a reported $860 million.

He was planning to take a year off but the Wonka screening made them both wonder why candy in the States [had] become so junk-y. They loved high-quality American dark chocolate, which is serious, while delicious: we were looking for something of that level of quality but a lot more fun in confectionery. So, ONeill having said bye-bye to Barbie, they started researching high-end candy as a hobby project, travelling the world sampling sweets as they went, from Morocco to Germany to Greece.

The hobby project soon became serious; Sugarfina began importing candy otherwise unavailable in the US. Resnick funded the company on his own in the early days, but backers, including some celebrity fans, soon came on board. Their stores in the US are designed around Instagram, with bright lighting and eye-catching displays, and look more like jewellers than candy shops. Resnick and ONeill still test every new line themselves, biting each candy in half and sharing it.

Today, as well as importing, Josh and I get to play Willy Wonka, dream up our own crazy ideas and have them made, ONeill says. She sings the praises of Peach Bellini Gummies, while Resnick favours their new dark chocolates with real single malt whisky inside. Both will be available in Harvey Nichols as part of Sugarfinas Vice collection, which assembles flavours of dark chocolate, bacon and booze. The sweets are assembled in bento-style boxes that in the UK will start from 17.50.

It sounds like heaven, travelling the world with your loved one, tasting sweets, but both Resnick and ONeill have worked 100-hour weeks since starting the company. We havent found time to get married, says Resnick. We will get round to it, insists ONeill, adding that the ceremony will be pretty over the top, sweet-wise.

Most weddings have a free bar. Theirs, she says, will have a candy bar to end all candy bars.

Follow Nick Curtis on Twitter: @nickcurtis

sugarfina.com
A Guinness heiress who repeatedly battered her 65-year-old mother with the victims own handbag as she lay in bed has been issued with a restraining order.

Emma Irby was left lying in her blood-soaked sheets after being attacked by daughter Eliza at her 1.7 million west London home.

Mrs Irby was so terrified that she thought she was dead, Hammersmith magistrates were told.

They ordered Eliza, 35, not to contact her mother, except via telephone and email, and not to go to her mothers five-bedroom home in Fulham, where the attack took place last November.

The assailant, a descendant of the Guinness brewing dynasty, was also told to carry out a community order after being convicted earlier of common assault.

Prosecutor Kate Shilton said: On November 9 the victim went to bed alone in her bedroom and at 4am she was woken up by her daughter hitting her very hard with her handbag.

Eliza had picked it up and had whacked her with it  the victim said approximately eight times. Mrs Irby said she was so scared that she thought she was dead.

Ms Shilton said the victims bedsheets and pyjamas were covered in blood after the attack.

This was a repeated and sustained assault on a vulnerable victim in her own home, she added. The court heard that Mrs Irby had taken the matter to court because she was desperate for her daughter to receive help with her mental health issues.

She said in a statement: This is not the first time I have been attacked by Eliza. I dont believe she is a horrid person but she needs help with her mental health.

Elizas father, Old Etonian banker Paul Aschan, is descended from the Guinness brewers.

Lawyer Andrew Moxon said in miti- gation: There have been problems between my client and her mother for some time.

She wants the restraining order in place because she says she doesnt want her mother in her life.

She is adamant that this assault did not happen but she accepts the decision of the court. Bench chairwoman Janet Smith told Eliza: We have decided the offence is serious enough for a community payback order. It will focus on improving your ability to understand and regulate your emotion.

Under the restraining order you may not contact Mrs Emma Irby, except by telephone or email. The defendant will serve the order in West Lothian, Scotland, where she lives.

It is not the first time the family have found themselves in court.

In 2009 Elizas sister Clare was acquitted of being drunk on a flight from India to Heathrow.

Mrs Irby refused to discuss Elizas community order. She said at the door of her home in Fulham: I am not willing to talk about the case  I want her to get help.
P olice are appealing for information after a mass knife fight at a car boot sale in west London.

A large number of men armed with knives and other weapons started brawling in the car park of Hounslow Heath car boot sale in Hounslow at about 7am on Sunday, police said.

Detectives said one man was deliberately run over during the melee and suffered a fractured skull, a broken leg and a stab wound.

More fighting then ensued after three cars crashed just outside the boot sale in Staines Road.

Another man was stabbed and several others suffered injuries, police said.

Detective Sergeant Dean Purvis, from Hounslow CID, said: We believe that the incident started in the car park of the car boot sale whereby a fight took place before a person was run over deliberately, suffering serious injuries in the form of a broken leg, a fractured skull and a stab wound.

Shortly after, three vehicles were involved in a road traffic collision on Staines Road, Hounslow.

The occupants of the vehicles then engaged in a fight whereby a number of weapons were used.

During the fight a male suffered a serious wound to his arm, another male suffered minor stab wounds and an unknown male suffered a facial injury."

Seven people have been arrested so far, including six for violent disorder and one for assisting an offender.

Two have been charged, three were bailed pending further enquiries, and two remain under arrest in hospital.

Anyone with information should call Hounslow CID on 020 8247 6160 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A young man who was thrown out of The Ritz after drunkenly attacking his girlfriend when she refused him sex on Valentine's Day today walked free from court.

Rhys Weatherburn, 20, assaulted his partner Shannon Fidge inside a room at the exclusive London hotel, which he booked as a romantic gesture.

He had lost his temper after Ms Fidge refused to sleep with him following an argument over her ex-boyfriend at dinner, Westminster Magistrates Court heard.

He shook her aggressively and started yelling at her in their suite, the court was told.

Weatherburn then pushed her onto the bed and Ms Fidge's screams for help became so loud that guests in nearby rooms contacted the hotel reception.

Prosecutor Robert Simpson told the court: "They had argued about some contact that the complainant had had with her ex-boyfriend.

"The defendant became jealous."

Mr Simpson said the couple then went out into central London for drinks.

But when they returned to the hotel, another argument ensued when Ms Fidge said she did not want to have sex because she was tired.

Hotel row: Rhys Weatherburn, 20, assaulted his partner Shannon Fidge / Facebook

"He [Weatherburn] pushed her onto the bed and began to hold her by the arms and shook her aggressively," Mr Simpson told the court.

"She was frightened and scared."

As Weatherburn was removed from the hotel by security, he kicked a glass panel causing it to smash.

Ms Fidge was not in court for today's hearing.

Valentine's stay: the couple argued at The Ritz Hotel / Rex

Weatherburn, who was dressed in a dark blue suit and tie and represented himself, told the bench: "I have been very open and honest about all of the facts in this case.

"I am very, very sorry for what I've done and the trouble I have caused everybody.

"I just hope that you can take my openness and honesty into account."

Chairman of the bench, Spyro Elia, said: "This is a very, very serious crime which the courts take very seriously.

"It doesn't matter whether it's Valentine's, you have absolutely no God given right to sex whether you want it or not."

Weatherburn, of Sheephurst Lane, Tonbridge, Kent, pleaded guilty to one count of common assault and one count of criminal damage at an earlier hearing.

He was sentenced to a community order including 48 days of rehabilitation working with local alcohol specialists.

Weatherburn was also fined 200 and ordered to pay 85 prosecution costs, 100 victim compensation and a 60 victim surcharge.
W eapons including a sword and a machete were today seized by police during a drugs raid at a home in south-east London.

The objects, along with a can of CS gas, were found in an electrical cupboard at an address in St Mary's Cray, Bromley after a search just before 5am, police say.

Officers in Bromley executed two search warrants in the area, simultaneously, following concerns about drugs.

Sergeant Paul Law tweeted: When people question why police enter a property aggressively, fast and loud when executing warrants - this is why.

Also found by the front door when the @MPSBromley task force executed a warrant this morning was this can if CS gas.

Police said a 23-year-old man and a 33-year-old man were arrested following the raids.

The younger man, whose home the weapons were discovered in, was arrested on suspicion of possession with intent to supply and conspiracy to cultivate cannabis.

The weapons were also seized.

The older man was arrested on suspicion of possession, conspiracy to cultivate cannabis and concerned in the supply of a class B drug.

Sergeant Law told the Standard: "This was an intelligence led operation and is a really good result for us. We have got weapons and drugs off the street.

"It just goes to show we do listen to members of the public and act on their concerns."
A man arrested in connection with Stephen Lawrences murder has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply drugs worth about 4 million.

Neil Stuart, also known as Neil Acourt, 40, from Eltham, admitted the offence at Kingston Crown Court.

He sat in the dock wearing a grey tracksuit and spoke only to enter a guilty plea when the charge - relating to the supply of Class B drug cannabis resin - was read out to him.

Acourt was one of five youths arrested over the racist murder of Stephen, 18, at a bus stop in Eltham, in 1993.

Jack Vose, 62, of Backworth, Newcastle, and Daniel Thompson, 27, of South Shields, Northumbria, were in the dock with Acourt and also pleaded guilty to the drugs offence.

The trio were accused of conspiring with others to supply the Class B drug between January 1, 2014 and February 2 this year.

They were charged after police seized approximately 100kg of cannabis, Scotland Yard said.

A sentencing date has yet to be set.

Acourt was arrested in connection with the murder of Mr Lawrence, but while committal proceedings were scheduled for him, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) formally discontinued the prosecution following a meeting with the senior investigating officer.

The Lawrence family began a private prosecution against Acourt and others but it collapsed in April 1996 after identification evidence was ruled inadmissible and they were acquitted.

In September 2002, Acourt and David Norris  who was later convicted of Mr Lawrences murder - were jailed for 18 months for a racist attack on off-duty black policeman Gareth Reid.

Norris had thrown a drink at the officer from a car and shouted a racist remark while Acourt drove the vehicle at him during the attack in May the previous year in Eltham - less than a mile from where Mr Lawrence was murdered.
T he family of a care worker bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by a volatile mental health patient called for lessons to be learned from the tragedy as the killer was jailed for life.

Michael Meanza, 47, battered Jenny Foote, 38, repeatedly over the head and face after she had objected to him playing The Doors music at full volume at 3am.

Ms Foote had threatened to evict Mr Meanza from the mental health accommodation in Acton, west London, and said he would be stopped from seeing his girlfriend.

Meanza was convicted by an Old Bailey jury today of murder and sentenced to at least 24 years of a life sentence.

Speaking outside the court, Ms Footes brother Michael criticised the authorities who decided to house Meanza at the Collette House hostel.

"It's quite clear lessons need to be learned, he said.

"They knew what he was capable of and we also know from the evidence which was given he knew how to play the system.

Jailed for life: Michael Meanza / Metropolitan Police

"So maybe he should have been in a more secure environment, given the way he was put in Collette House."

Meanza has 16 previous convictions for 79 offences including attacking a member of hospital staff and an assault on a female patient on a psychiatric ward.

He was first admitted for psychiatric treatment in 1990 and was made the subject of two hospital orders during that decade. He was released into the community in 2001 but recalled to hospital in 2009 and again in December 2013 after threatening to kill his psychiatrist and a psychiatric nurse.

The patient was then freed in April last year after a mental health tribunal panel deemed him well enough to be conditionally discharged.

Judge John Bevan QC branded Meanza an ongoing danger to the public and warned that the parole board would have to think long and hard before considering him for release once his sentence has been served.

The judge also acknowledged that Ms Foote had been put in an extremely vulnerable position when dealing with the volatile Meanza.

Ms Foote was attacked in her office at the hostel after a confrontation with Meanza over his music disturbing other residents.

Describing the incident, Meanza told his trial: She said you wont be able to see your girlfriend now, you will be evicted.

I pushed her on the floor, I turned around and the fire extinguisher was there and I started to use it.

When he was arrested, he told officers: I know Im guilty, and added: "I have some regrets in my life but then again too few to list..."

He claimed he had developed techniques to control his anger, including listening to The Beatles music, and denied he struggles to control his temper.

Bernard Richmond QC, defending, said: "It would be easy to demonise Mr Meanza and label him as Mr Angry. That would be too simplistic.

"Whether Collette House was the appropriate place for a man with his difficulties is a question others will have to ask themselves.

"The reality was a woman who should not have had to deal with a man like Mr Meanza alone was in a position where she had to do just that."

Mr Foote, a retired policeman, said his family were very pleased with the verdict, and added: In my 30 years as a police officer, investigating a number of homicides, I have never been fully prepared for a situation like this and it is tragic that someone who is working in the health care profession should be put in such a difficult position. It could have been anybody.

"She was beautiful, very caring, very loving.

"She was an inspiration to us as the first of six children who obtained a university degree, and that kindness that she had was rewarded in providing support for other people less fortunate than ourselves."

As he was led away to the cells, Meanza shouted out: "God is my judge. Put me down. Eternal damnation is yours."
A former Scotland Yard anti-terrorism chief had a case to answer for misconduct after meeting an undercover officer accused of snooping on the Stephen Lawrence family, the police watchdog said today.

Commander Richard Walton, who retired before misconduct proceedings could take place, met the undercover officer known as N81 while the Macpherson inquiry into the teenagers murder was taking place in 1998.

The 18-year-old student was stabbed to death by racist white youths in Eltham in 1993 and the inquiry was launched into failures in the police investigation.

Today the Independent Police Complaints Commission said the Mets reputation could have suffered immense damage had the meeting become public knowledge.

Stabbed to death: Stephen Lawrence / Metropolitan Police/Getty

It said Mr Walton had a case to answer for discreditable conduct for actions that could have brought the force into disrepute.

However, the IPCC also concluded there was no evidence that N81 passed information about the Lawrence family or their campaign to Mr Walton at the meeting, nor that Met submissions to the inquiry were altered as a result of the meeting.

The Met said in a statement it rejected the IPCC findings saying there was no evidence that Mr Waltons intentions in arranging the meeting were improper.

The force added : The IPCC findings acknowledge the meeting may have been legitimate and that the evidence suggests Mr. Walton had been asked to attend by a senior officer.

They give these as reasons why Mr. Walton does not have a case to answer for gross misconduct. We believe that if the evidence points towards the meeting being legitimate or there is insufficient evidence that it was not legitimate then there could be no finding of misconduct, gross or otherwise.
A woman has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a man was found dead at a home in south west London this morning.

Police and the London Ambulance Service were called at 1.20am to a residential property on New Malden High Street after reports a man had collapsed.

The man, believed to be in his late 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene, although what caused his death is not currently known.

Police arrested a woman, aged in her 40s, on suspicion of his murder.

Anyone with information should call the Met Police incident room on 020 8721 4054 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
A company is to become the UKs first to introduce a 'period policy allowing women time off work during their menstrual cycle.

Bristol community and arts centre, Coexist, plans to permit female employees to stay at home if they are suffering discomfort during their period without having to make excuses or produce a sick note.

The companys initiative would mean the time off would not be classed as sick leave and employees would be expected to make it up.

Coexist is hosting a seminar on March 15 to discuss the idea with other employers and organisations before asking its own staff how they want the policy to operate.

Bex Baxter, Coexist's director, said it would allow women to take advantage of their natural cycles rather than fighting against them.

The 40-year-old said: "During your period is winter but afterwards is spring when you have the energy of three women if you have only taken time out when you are menstruating."

TODO: define component type apester

Ms Baxter added: "I have seen women at work who are bent over double because of the pain caused by their periods.

"We want a policy which recognises and allows women to take time for their body's natural cycle without putting this under the label of 'illness'."
A motorcyclist was killed after losing control of his powerful bike and crashing on a busy road near Battersea Park.

Witnesses said the 49-year-old victim was thrown several feet through the air after his motorbike was sent spinning as he passed a van on the inside.

A university student and an undercover police officer were among those who raced to comfort the biker, in dark leathers, following the crash at 1.45pm yesterday in Battersea Park Road.

Motorcycle accidents have risen in London

Others helped redirect cars and a Transport for London worker used his van to steer traffic away from the black and silver bike, which had three steel panniers, which was lying in the road.

Paramedics battled for more than an hour, performing surgery in the street, in a desperate attempt to save his life.

John Mumford, 40, a special effects technician for the Natural History Museum, told the Standard: The bike tilted to the left and then span around. He was thrown with enough force to send the seat flying to the other side of the road. His watch was broken on the floor.

He was struggling to get up but we told him to stay still and a plain-clothes police officer came over. Its so sad.

Toneyann, 24, a satellite and TV engineer from Battersea, spoke to a student who had comforted the man as he lay in the road.

She said: The motorcyclist was telling him he was in pain.

The man who comforted him said he could feel his pain and couldnt get his face out of his mind.

He was really upset. The police were hugging him.

For him to be there at his last words  thats a lot to take in. He wasnt trying to be a hero  he was genuine.

Simon Nana, 25, a security officer who lives nearby, said: When I left the scene he was still alive but when I came back an hour later police said hed passed away. Its a sad day.

Police believe they know the riders identity and are appealing for witnesses to the fatal crash.

A Met spokesman said: Enquiries are ongoing to establish how the rider of the motorcycle came to lose control of his machine. There has been no arrest.

It happened as Transport for London launched an operation aimed at reducing motorcycle fatalities in the capital after the number of deaths on motorbikes and scooters hit 36 last year - up from 27 in 2014.

Witnesses should call the Collision Investigation Unit at Merton on 0208 543 5157.
N obel Peace Prize laureate and former leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev today praises Evening Standard readers for their amazing response to the Give to GOSH appeal and announces a donation of 50,000 to Great Ormond Street Hospital from the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, named after his late wife.

Mr Gorbachev is the latest big name to back Give to GOSH, which has raised more than 3.5 million for sick children and is the most successful seasonal appeal in this newspapers history.

On his 85th birthday, Mr Gorbachev is also donating 50,000 to the Raisa Gorbachev Memorial Institute for Childrens Haematology and Transplantation in St Petersburg.

Give to GOSH followed staff, patients and families for three months before officially drawing to a close on Valentines Day, GOSHs birthday. Other high-profile endorsements came from the Queen, Sir Paul McCartney, David Beckham and Adele.

Readers donated hundreds of thousands of pounds while corporations also gave generously, with large donations from Morgan Stanley, Prudential and Deloitte among others.

One of the most important endorsements came from the Treasury, which agreed to match-fund the campaign up to 1.5 million using money recouped from the Libor-rigging scandal.

While the day-to-day running of Great Ormond Street is covered by the NHS, the hospital relies on charitable donations to maintain world-class standards.

Give to GOSH will help fund treatment and research, as well as support the Louis Dundas Centre for Childrens Palliative Care.
A cyclist has spoken of his terror after a near miss with a bus which left his bicycle crushed under the wheels.

Photographer Pedro Montalvo, 42, said he was forced to jump from his bicycle after becoming too close to a route 225 bus in Surrey Canal Road, at the junction with Trundleys Road, in Lewisham.

He told the Standard the horrifying incident unfolded as he attempted to distance himself from a van.

Mr Montalvo said the bicycle clipped the bus before it was dragged underneath the wheels, leaving it completely mangled.

He said: A van that was coming the opposite way got too close to me so I moved towards the bus and my bicycle clipped the flank.

I had to jump from my bicycle before it was eaten by the bus. It was completely destroyed.

It was really scary but I was lucky I didnt have a scratch. Someone who was at the scene said I could have lost my leg."

Transport for London confirmed that an investigation has been launched into the collision just before 5.30pm on January 26.
G enerous theatregoers have raised thousands of pounds for a homeless hostel after a direct appeal by musician and writer Mona Golabek to audiences at her one-woman show.

The American performer helped raise more than 18,000 during her sell-out five-week run at St James Theatre in The Pianist of Willesden Lane, which is inspired by the true story of her mother who arrived in London on the Kindertransport which carried thousands of Jewish children fleeing the Nazis to safety in Britain.

The money will go to the nearby Cardinal Hume Centre, which works with homeless young people and families with housing problems.

Ms Golabek, whose mother Lisa Jura fled her native Vienna in 1938 and spent the war years in a hostel in Willesden Lane with other young refugees while pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist, ended every show by telling the audience about the work the centre does.

She said: It has been the greatest privilege to perform at the St James Theatre and share the story of my mother.

What has made it even more meaningful is having the opportunity to tell the audience about the Cardinal Hume Centre, ironically a centre just like where my mother, as a young frightened teenage refugee, found herself upon arriving in London prior to the start of World War Two.

I am proud to speak about this centre to the world, a place that provides so much precious help... Now more than ever, we must never forget our humanity, and the Cardinal Hume Centre is such a shining example of that humanity.

Cathy Corcoran, the CEO of the centre, currently home to eight unaccompanied child refugees, said: It is testament to the fact the story of people forced to flee their country of birth to find safety is as relevant today as it was in the Thirties.

Ms Golabeks mother won a place at the Royal Academy of Music after seeing a notice in the Evening Standard before emigrating to Los Angeles where she raised her family.
E ast London's "biggest" street food market has been fined 25,000 and banned from selling alcohol after allegedly making neighbours' lives a misery.

Pump Shoreditch, which describes itself as east Londons biggest and best street food market, has been a popular late-night hangout since opening in the former Texaco petrol station in Shoreditch High Street in May 2014.

But the venue, which has 11 food huts and a bar, has now been ordered to stop serving drinks after a court ruled it did not have the proper licence.

Drinks were sold inside the former petrol station shop, which was only licensed for off-sales, and then consumed in the courtyard.

Hackney council eventually revoked the licence - and Thames magistrates court has now upheld that decision after the business appealed.

District judge Angus Hamilton said the venue had clearly demonstrated contempt for the laws and regulations that govern the transformation of a petrol station and minimarket into a bar and eating place, selling up to 5,000-worth of alcohol a day".

The council had previously rejected two applications for a new licence, with a spokeswoman saying: "Despite this, the venue launched regardless whilst attempting to comply with the off-sales of alcohol requirement by selling it from the former minimarket for consumption on the forecourt."

Cllr Sophie Linden, Hackneys deputy mayor, said: Residents living near the Pump and Boneyard had been subjected to months of noise and anti-social behaviour that was having a very real effect on their lives.

We are pleased that the judge dismissed the appeal and upheld the decision to take away the venues licence."

Pump Shoreditch could not be reached for comment.
L ondoners should stop handing cash out to beggars, a homelessness charity boss has warned, after figures showed only one in five homeless people in the UK is actually living rough.

Jeremy Swain, chief executive of London charity Thames Reach, claimed begging is linked to alcohol and drug abuse rather than homelessness and people should stop confusing the two.

The charitys London Street Rescue Service estimate 80 per cent of beggars are doing it to support an addiction to drugs like crack cocaine and heroin.

And the most recent police evidence from last July showed that fewer than one in five people arrested for begging in England and Wales the previous year was actually homeless.

Mr Swain told The Sun: The evidence is indisputable that the overwhelming majority of people begging on the streets spend their begging money on crack cocaine, heroin and super-strength booze.

Most people asking for your money have accommodation and are caught up in a desperate cycle of begging, scoring and taking drugs.

Handing money to people in the street is not a benign act.

In fact it could have fatal consequences for them, and the cash will often end up in the pockets of despicable drug dealers.

The charity also points out that hostels for homeless people are free of charge, so begging is unnecessary.

Thames Reach has urged the public to buy food for people living on the streets or make a donation to charity rather than handing over money.
D emocrats in the UK are on course to give Bernie Sanders their approval to be their partys candidate to run for US president.

So far the outsider has won the backing of 66 per cent of those who voted in the UK compared to 34 per cent who want Hillary Clinton.

Democrats in London and each of the three other voting centres also backed Mr Sanders over Ms Clinton.

Eric Lee, the London-based representative of the Sanders campaign, said: Americans living abroad are far more likely to welcome ideas like single-payer health care or tuition-free higher education, and are not scared by Sanders use of the word democratic socialist.

Super Tuesday voting saw ballots take place across the United States but also for Americans living overseas.

US Democratic hopeful: Bernie Sanders / Getty

Democrats Abroad began their week-long global primary with voting centres across the world.

Unofficial tallies of the UKs 4 voting centres saw 387 London voters back Mr Sanders compared to 243 who backed Ms Clinton.

The split in Edinburgh was 231 to 62, in Oxford - where Mr Sanders' brother Larry has been a Green politician - 85 to 49 and in Cambridge, 82 to 48.

TODO: define component type apester

Voting continues in the global primary until early next week.
A Labour shadow cabinet minister attacked Zac Goldsmith over his tax affairs today, saying he had a dark cloud hanging over his head.

Seema Malhotra, Labours chief secretary to the Treasury, claimed the Tory mayoral hopeful would struggle to deal with the City and big business because of his own tax arrangements.

She said he would fail to convince business he could handle matters like tax and transparency until he came clean about his former non-dom status.

The Tory mayoral hopeful released his tax return to the Standard last month after coming under pressure over his finances.

It showed he had made more than 10 million in income and capital gains since being elected an MP, and paid more than 4.5 million in tax.

But Labour claim the Richmond MP did not fully address the issues surrounding his period as a non-dom  a status he inherited from his father Sir James Goldsmith in 1997 and gave up in 2009 before entering Parliament.

Ms Malhotra suggested Mr Goldsmiths previous tax arrangements could be compared to Googles, which reached a 130 million settlement with the British taxman in January following a row over tax avoidance. She urged Mr Goldsmith to reveal how much tax he avoided in the years he was non-dom.

She said: If hes got nothing to hide why didnt he come clean when he had the chance? How can he hope to deal with big issues facing the City with such a dark cloud hanging over his head? Sadiq Khans Labour campaign team see the Tory MPs former tax status as a weakness that will strike a chord with Londoners angry with multinationals which have avoided paying full tax in the UK.

Mr Goldsmiths tax return showed he paid a rate equivalent to 46 per cent. His taxable income totalled just over 6 million, the vast majority from a family trust set up by his billionaire father.

A spokesman for Mr Goldsmith said: Zac has delivered on his transparency commitment. Its truly pathetic that someone who sits at the top of the Labour Party  that wants to take back control of the Bank of England, abolish the City of London and put up taxes  should try to lecture anyone about being taken seriously by the City.
O ne of Londons fastest growing technology firms has raised 39 million to finance its next stage of expansion and boost its presence in Silicon Valley.

The sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia led backing for Blippar, an app that lets smartphone users find information on the internet about objects they see simply by aiming the camera at them.

Blippar, which was launched in 2011 and is based at London Bridge, has 60 engineers in San Francisco and Mountain View in California and more than 300 employees around the world.
T he family of Tory activist Elliott Johnson today came face to face with one of the men accused of bullying him before his death.

Elliott, 21, was found dead on railway tracks in Bedfordshire last September, just weeks after accusing senior figures in the partys youth wing of bullying.

In a note left for his parents, he named so-called Tatler Tory Mark Clarke as a bully and accused lobby journalist Andre Walker of betraying him.

His parents Ray and Alison today sat opposite Mr Walker at the coroners court in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, during a pre-inquest review of Elliotts death.

Senior coroner Thomas Osborne ad- monished them for publicly saying Mr Walker was not welcome at the hearing and likening him to the murderer returning to the scene of the crime.

Elliott Johnson's parents were admonished by the coroner for describing lobby journalist Andre Walker as like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime / Jeremy Selwyn

The couple wanted the coroner to expand the inquests scope to explore the culture within the Conservative Party at the time of their sons death.

Mr and Mrs Johnson believe bullying was endemic and the party leadership did not do enough to stop it. They have made public the letter their son left.

He wrote: I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker. I had to wrongly turn my back on my friends. Now all my political bridges are burnt. Where can I even go from here?

Mr Clarke, nicknamed Tatler Tory after appearing in the magazine as a potential future Conservative minister, has been expelled by the party in the wake of the scandal.

The Tories hired the ex-Conservative Future movement chairman to run RoadTrip 2015 at the last General Election, taking young activists around the country to campaign in target seats.

Anguish: Elliott Johnsons parents, Ray and Alison, arrive at the inquest in Bedfordshire today / Jeremy Selwyn

But it is claimed he was at the centre of a bullying culture that targeted junior members of the team.

The Unilever marketing analyst was not at todays hearing but is expected to give evidence to the full inquest. He denies any wrongdoing.

The scandal has led to the resignation of ex-Tory chairman Grant Shapps after it was revealed he failed to act on earlier claims that Mr Clarke was a bully.

Pressure has also mounted on current chairman Lord Feldman, who appro- ved the RoadTrip 2015 project and is accused of knowing of a Tory youth wing bullying culture, a claim he denies.

Ahead of todays hearing, Ray Johnson condemned Mr Walker for planning to show up at the coroners court, saying: It will serve as an act of intimidation. We do not wish for him to be there and he will not be welcome.

The coroner said he had been shown a press report in which a family member indicated that a certain person should not be in attendance  that it was rather like the murderer returning to the scene of the crime. He added Its unacceptable. Everybody with an interest in this is entitled to attend.

Heather Williams, QC, for the Johnsons, urged the coroner to investigate the alleged Tory Party bullying culture. She said: Elliotts family believe his death was directly linked to a series of events in the last few weeks of his life.

In particular these involved bullying he experienced by Mr Clarke and those acting with him and the action he faced in consequence, in particular the loss of his employment with his dismissal from Conservative Way Forward.

The third element was the pressure put on him to withdraw a complaint about Mr Clarkes behaviour which had been forwarded to Conservative HQ.

Elliott was in a cleft stick, experiencing pressure from Mr Clarke to withdraw the complaint and from Tory HQ and others in the party to support it.

Mr Walker says he was in a relationship with Elliott and had nothing to do with his death. The hearing continues.
S ir Ranulph Fiennes said leaving the European Union would be "utterly stupid and pathetic" after revealing he turned down an offer to campaign for Brexit.

The 71-year-old explorer, once named a Ukip patron, echoed Prime Minister David Cameron by saying a move to leave would be a "leap into the dark".

He said: "I got a letter from the Out people saying 'would I help them?' and I wrote back saying 'No, but if the In people want help I would try it'.

"I can think of nothing more utterly stupid and pathetic than leaving the European Union or Scotland leaving Britain. The EU is a vast market. OK, it's got things about it - everything's got wrong things about it - but for little England to step outside the market because they think things are going to get better - to leap into the dark - is utterly stupid."

One of the greatest adventurers in British history and once described by the Guinness Book of Records as "the world's greatest living explorer", Sir Ranulph does not believe voting out is the patriotic thing to do.

"We'll have a lot less power and a lot less influence and be 'little' Britain," he said.

"Therefore if you're nationalistic like me, you want to stick the Union Jack everywhere, you don't want to have the Scottish bit removed from the Union Jack, and you don't want us to be removed from a huge market."

The explorer was named a Ukip patron in 2004 but has since distanced himself over the issue of Britain's membership of the EU - despite still enjoying a long-standing friendship with the party's key financier Paul Sykes.

"I'm not a supporter of Ukip but there is a person who is involved with starting Ukip who helps us hugely with our charities.

"He is a wonderful helper but started Ukip whereas I desperately want to stay in the European Union, so we don't talk about that particular matter," he said.
A id agencies blasted the French police today for the violent destruction of Calais Jungle camp as officers insisted they were the ones being attacked.

The charity groups rounded on police for deliberately firing tear gas canisters at those trying to stop the demolition of the south section of the camp.

As the operation entered its third day, 14 groups including Migrants Shelter and Catholic Help released a statement reading: Refugees were threatened and given false information before being given between 10 minutes and one hour to leave their homes.

They then suffered tear gas and water cannon attacks, while flash balls [rubber projectiles] were fired at those sitting on top of their makeshift huts.

Riot police in turn said they had been attacked by migrants and anarchists. It is alleged tents were set on fire by No Borders, a group of around 150 protesters, many of them British. Three of its activists were arrested on Monday.

There are only about 20 demolition workers on site, guarded by up to 500 officers. A police commander said: Our priority is to make sure they can carry out their work in safety. We are being hit by projectiles every day.

When the evictions were announced last week, interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve insisted that there would be no brutality. The operation is expected to take at least three weeks.

The migrants have been offered accommodation in refitted containers near the camp but many are reluctant to move due to a lack of communal spaces. They have also been offered places in reception centres around France, but all want to travel to the UK.
A n Emirates plane has touched down in New Zealand after completing what is believed to be the worlds longest direct flight.

The Emirates Airbus A380 covered 8,824 miles when it flew from Dubai to Auckland.

According to industry website airwaysnews.com, the previous longest non-stop flight was Qantas Sydney to Dallas route, which covers 13,800km.

The flight is also thought to be the longest in duration with passengers set to spend 17 hours and 15 minutes in the air on the return leg from Auckland to Dubai.

But that record could be broken when Emirates launches its Dubai to Panama City route later this month, which will take 17 hours and 35 minutes.

Emirates described it as one of the longest air routes in the world by distance.

The company told Agence France-Presse: But with the assistance of clever technology and good planning, passengers will get to their destination in the shortest possible time.

Emirates will be using flexible routes, which can vary by day, taking advantage of tail winds and avoiding head winds to reduce the time in the air.

The inaugural Dubai to Auckland flight was made by an A380 but the regular service will be carried out using the Boeing 777.
A nanny who claimed Allah ordered her to murder a four-year-old girl before carrying her head through the street was not acting alone, prosecutors say.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a 38-year-old from Uzbekistan, told reporters on the way into a Moscow courtroom today that Allah had told her to do it. She also replied "yes" when asked if she accepted her guilt.

Bobokulova is accused of murdering the girl before carrying her severed head outside Moscow Metro station on Monday.

Before the court sanctioned her arrest for two months today, prosecutors told the court they believe that people who "incited" her to carry out the slaying are still at large.

Yawning: Gulchekhra Bobokulova at the hearing Reuters/Maxim Shemetov / Reuters/Maxim Shemetov

Investigators said the woman, who was the child's nanny, appeared to be mentally unstable.

In memory of the little girl who was killed, Moscow residents have been placing flowers and children's toys outside the subway station.
A production on the lighter side, Boeing, Boeing, will be held at the Western Nebraska Community Colleges Little Theater on March 4, 5, and 6.

Audiences can expect to be immersed in the experience of swinging bachelor Bernard, who is engaged to three stewardesses. Each of the three stewardesses are from a different country and each one doesnt know about the other two. The story is set in Paris in the 1960s and takes place on the day when all three women show up at Bernards apartment. Bernard has to keep everything intact and all the lies straight with the help of his friend, Robert.

Robert Thompson Jr., theater director at WNCC, said that he personally believes that this is Roberts story.

Robert for me is the one who this story is happening to. As the audience, we identify with Robert and collectively become Robert, said Thompson.

This is the second production Thompson has directed as the theater director at WNCC. Thompson said there was a bit of a learning curve last time and he was the one who was in charge of a lot of the production. This time he learned how to delegate a lot of the tasks.

Boeing, Boeing has a set and production crew of 15 people.

The play is set to delight audiences in a variety of ways, as a comedy farce the whole purpose is to put a normal person in an insane situation.

Thompson wanted to show a piece that is comedic in the middle of winter and said that its always fun to do a nice comedy to remember what its like to laugh. The audience will see the warmth and joy even when its winter.

Its a collective experience where we will all laugh, we will all share in the joy and triumph of the characters emphatically, said Thompson.

The people in the play will be in highly exaggerated situations and the play has a lot of physical comedy. Thompson said there will be a lot of movement as the characters are constantly reacting to their situation.

I think its good for the students too, to do something that is as physically demanding as all of this so they can develop their sense of rhythm, tempo and comedic timing, said Thompson.

Marisa Plummer, sophomore theater major at WNCC, is going to portray Gloria in Boeing Boeing. Plummer described Gloria as having a very bubbly personality. Someone who has a lot of energy and spunk.

Finding the character of Gloria was really difficult, and then to throw in some switches was just another layer of that challenge for me, said Plummer.

Rachel Karpen, also a sophomore theater major, is going to play Gretchen, who she described as being a dominant German.

Shes tough but she is also go-with-the-flow, flighty, hippie flower-child in different areas, said Karpen.

Karpen said that the German accent was hard to pull off at first.

You hear the stereotypical German accent but thats not always accurate, trying to be accurate with it was hard, said Karpen.

Thompson has been pushing for the students to create the characters to have a mask and contra-mask, where there are differences in personalities from one scene to another. Thompson said that is part of the humor as there is this polarizing attribute to the scenes.

Thompson said there is some cliche in the archetypes but there is more character than one might assume.

We pull out the archetypes because we identify with that quickly in comedy, said Thompson.

The other stewardess is Gabriella, who is a homemaker and really nice on one side, but is also very intimidating. Brandelynn Mendoza, vocal performance major, received this part. Six people make up the cast: Marisa Plummer, Josh Harnish, Lisa Betz-Marquez, Nick McDaniel, Rachel Karpen and Brandelynn Mendoza. Four are WNCC students and two are community members.

Tickets can be purchased at the door one hour prior to the performance. They cost $5 for general audience members and free for WNCC students, staff and faculty members. The production starts at 7:30 p.m. March 4 and 5, then 2 p.m. on March 6.
This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for:

Enter Search Term(s):

Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL.

Thank you for visiting state.gov.
Countries & Areas

Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe
Wednesday, 02 March 2016 16:41:30 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

According to the data issued by Ukrainian association of metal producers Metallurgprom, in January 2016, Ukraine s domestic iron ore shipments decreased by 80,000 mt month on month to 2.05 million mt, including 390,000 mt of sinter ore, 680,000 mt of concentrate, 290,000 of agglomerate and 690,000 mt of pellets.





Import deliveries of iron ore from Russia to the Ukrainian market increased in January by 100,000 mt month on month to 310,000 mt, while iron ore exports from Ukraine amounted to 2.8 million mt in January 2016. In January, Ukraine s domestic coal shipments totaled 560,000 mt, while coal imports amounted to 950,000 mt, up 180,000 mt month on month.





In the given month, Ukraine s scrap supplies to the domestic market totaled to 160,000 mt down 100,000 mt month on month, which is equivalent to 60 percent of total consumption capacity of Ukrainian steel producing enterprises.




Wednesday, 02 March 2016 16:26:29 (GMT+3) | Istanbul

The rise seen in raw material prices has reflected in all finished steel quotations in Turkey, and so domestic prices in the Turkish merchant bar market have increased during the past week. Following the upward trend recorded in domestic merchant bar prices, demand has also indicated a sharp improvement in the local market and is now at medium levels.



In the local Turkish market, merchant bar prices depending on size, thickness and region are at the following levels:



Equal Angle Prices:

Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 24.02.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,200-1,220 (408-415$/mt)  60 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,130-1,150 (384-391$/mt)  55 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,090-1,110 (371-378$/mt)  60 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,170-1,190 (398-405$/mt)  60

Flat Bar Prices:

Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 24.02.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,230-1,250 (418-425$/mt)  60 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,160-1,180 (395-401$/mt)  55 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,120-1,140 (381-388$/mt)  60 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,200-1,220 (408-415$/mt)  60

NPI-NPU Prices:

Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 24.02.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,200-1,220 (408-415$/mt)  60 Karabuk Region (30-100 mm) 1,130-1,150 (384-391$/mt)  55 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,090-1,110 (371-378$/mt)  60 Izmir Region (30-50 mm) 1,170-1,190 (398-405$/mt)  60

All prices are ex-works, on actual weight basis, for February shipment and excluding VAT.



It should be considered that offers below the prices ranges in question may be available, depending on the buyer and on the method of payment.



$1 = TRY 2.94
By MARK EVANS mevans@stegenherald.com During last Thursdays county commission meeting, the topic of tourism came up. First District Commissioner Karen Stuppy reported on the Tourism Advisory Council and Tourism Tax Commissions joint meeting earlier that week, at which a task force was formed. She said that the tourism department has an $89,548 budget, with $45,000-50,000
Mackinac Island The weather has been up and down this past week. We had some very nice days, and other were cold,...

Outdoors This Week in the Eastern U.P. I know its fall, but, for some reason, the white stuff has started falling already and frost is covering my...

West Mackinac Thats all folks, the fall fashion show is over and Mother Natures winter wardrobe is waiting in the wings. In...
A mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), headed by the new chief for Romania, Reza Baqir, will pay a visit to Romania, March 2 - 15, 2016, for an annual review of the Romanian economy, shows a statement of the IMF Resident Representative in Romania and Bulgaria Guillermo Tolosa.

"The IMF mission headed by Reza Baqir will be in Bucharest, March 2 - 15, to conduct an annual review of the Romanian economy, under Article IV consultations," the statement says.The IMF mission will meet representatives of Romanian authorities, political parties, trade unions, business associations, academic environment and banking system.The regular consultations provided for by Article IV of the IMS' Articles of Agreement are a surveillance exercise mandatory for all member states. During an Article IV consultation, an IMF team of economists visits a country to assess economic and financial developments and discuss the country's economic and financial policies with government and central bank officials.There is currently no undergoing arrangement between Romania and the IMF. AGERPRES
Updated at 3:57 p.m. Wednesday

OKLAHOMA CITY  Aubrey McClendon, a brash risk-taker who led Chesapeake Energy Corp. to become one of the world's biggest natural gas producers, died in a single-car crash on Wednesday one day after being charged with breaking federal antitrust laws, police said. He was 56.

The U.S. Department of Justice indicted McClendon on Tuesday for allegedly colluding to rig bids for oil and gas acreage while he was at Chesapeake, a central player in the U.S. fracking revolution of the past decade. He denied the charges.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred when McClendon was driving his 2013 Chevy Tahoe. Police said the vehicle was so badly burned in the crash they were unable to tell if McClendon was wearing his seat belt.

CNBC reported police said McClendon was not wearing a seat belt.

Police said they had been contacted by McClendon's company, American Energy Partners.

"They contacted us, and said, We know you guys are working on a wreck and Mr. McClendon is missing," said Captain Paco Balderrama of the Oklahoma City police department. "They just knew their boss was missing."

McClendon, who was revered in oil and gas circles as a visionary, resigned from Chesapeake in 2013 after a corporate governance crisis and investor concerns over his heavy spending.

Tuesday's indictment followed a nearly four-year federal antitrust probe that began after a 2012 Reuters investigation found that Chesapeake had discussed with a rival how to suppress land lease prices in Michigan during a shale-drilling boom. Although the Michigan case was subsequently closed, investigators uncovered evidence of alleged bid-rigging in Oklahoma.

After leaving Chesapeake, McClendon went on to start American Energy Partners and, with the help of private equity funds, made billions of dollars in bets on vast tracts of oil and gas land around the United States and Australia.

'VISION AND PASSION'

A native of Oklahoma, McClendon attended Duke University before starting Chesapeake with his friend Tom Ward, who went on to lead SandRidge Energy Inc. for a time.

"Aubrey's tremendous leadership, vision and passion for the energy industry had an impact on the community, the country and the world. We are tremendously proud of his legacy," American Energy Partners said in a statement.

McClendon was known for his high tolerance for risk and debt and for his lavish lifestyle, which included the purchase of high-end homes, antique boats and an extensive wine cellar.

On his watch, Chesapeake leased a fleet of planes that shuttled executives to oil and gas fields  and the McClendon family to far-off holiday destinations.

Closer to home, McClendon pursued other passions, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, the National Basketball Association franchise in which he had a minority stake.

He was one of the foremost leaders of a U.S. energy boom that lifted output to the highest levels in years, reduced reliance on foreign oil and mobilized new pools of investment capital for wildcat drillers.

"I've known Aubrey McClendon for nearly 25 years. He was a major player in leading the stunning energy renaissance in America," Texas energy investor T. Boone Pickens said in a statement.

Chesapeake, which had recently sued McClendon's AEP on accusations of stealing trade secrets, offered condolences.

"Chesapeake is deeply saddened by the news that we have heard today and our thoughts and prayers are with the McClendon family during this difficult time," the company said in a statement.

Additional reporting by Liz Hampton, Jessica Resnick Ault and Ernest Scheyder.

_____

Our earlier story, which moved at 9:31 p.m. Tuesday

WASHINGTON  Aubrey McClendon, former chief executive officer of Chesapeake Energy Corp. and a legend in the U.S. energy industry, was charged on Tuesday with conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in Oklahoma, the Justice Department said.

The indictment follows a nearly four-year federal antitrust probe that began after a 2012 Reuters investigation found that Chesapeake had discussed with a rival how to suppress land lease prices in Michigan during a shale-drilling boom. Although the Michigan case was subsequently closed, investigators uncovered evidence of alleged bid-rigging in Oklahoma.

In addition to the federal probe, the Michigan attorney general brought criminal charges against Chesapeake, which the company settled in 2015 by agreeing to pay $25 million into a compensation fund for land owners.

The Justice Department indictment paves the way for what may be one of the highest-profile criminal antitrust cases against a well-known U.S. CEO in decades, and could thrust McClendon, a controversial figure whose aggressive leasing tactics are legendary in the energy industry, into the highest-stakes legal battle of a decades-long career.

Oklahoma-based McClendon is a shale drilling evangelist who was once among the highest paid U.S. CEOs. He co-founded Chesapeake with fellow Oklahoma oilman Tom Ward in 1989. In 2013, McClendon stepped down from the helm of Chesapeake amid a liquidity crunch and corporate governance concerns. Ward left Chesapeake in 2006 and founded competitor SandRidge Energy Inc the same year.

McClendon, who is now with American Energy Partners (AEP), was charged with one count of conspiracy to rig bids, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Justice Department said.

"The charge that has been filed against me today is wrong and unprecedented," McClendon said in statement. "I have been singled out as the only person in the oil and gas industry in over 110 years since the Sherman Act became law to have been accused of this crime in relation to joint bidding on leasehold."

Chesapeake itself is unlikely to face criminal prosecution, the company said.

"Chesapeake has been actively cooperating for some time with a criminal antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice regarding past land leasing practices," said Chesapeake Energy spokesman Gordon Pennoyer. "Chesapeake does not expect to face criminal prosecution or fines relating to this matter."

Chesapeake shares declined 3.6 percent in after-hours trading to $2.66

The seven-page indictment alleges that McClendon set up a conspiracy of two energy companies which agreed not to bid against each other in purchasing oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma from 2007 to 2012. The indictment did not name either company.

The indictment comes at a time when energy executives across America are already facing considerable distress. Oil and gas companies like Chesapeake, SandRidge, and McClendon's new venture AEP, have struggled as the price of oil plummeted by 70 percent since late 2014.

Both Chesapeake and SandRidge, once storied firms in Oklahoma's oil industry, have recently engaged restructuring experts as they scramble to pay off billions in debt and avoid potential bankruptcy. Chesapeake's stock price has tumbled more than 80 percent in the last year. SandRidge was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in January, and closed Tuesday at 4 cents per share.

Much of the companies' debt was accrued in the period from 2007 through 2012 when McClendon was allegedly engaged in an antitrust conspiracy, a time when Chesapeake was snapping up millions of acres of land leases nationwide to expand its shale drilling.

McClendon has also been embroiled in a lawsuit with Chesapeake which alleged that he took sensitive company data from his former company to build his new business.

The Justice Department said that McClendon's indictment was the first case in an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anti-competitive conduct in the oil and natural gas industry.

"His actions put company profits ahead of the interests of leaseholders entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights on their land. Executives who abuse their positions as leaders of major corporations to organize criminal activity must be held accountable for their actions," said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, head of Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Chesapeake, SandRidge, and McClendon had previously disclosed in securities filings that they were being investigated by the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Additional reporting by Joshua Schneyer in New York.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Commerce Department has found that several companies violated anti-dumping law over cold rolled steel flat products, issuing preliminary findings in its probe of seven countries accused of distorting the market with artificially low prices.

The department's International Trade Administration, in a fact sheet released on Tuesday, said a half-dozen U.S. steel companies had requested the investigation into certain steel products from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

In its findings, the department said several foreign steel companies did not respond to its requests for information.

Still, it issued preliminary dumping margins in the case, with the following margins applicable to most exporters from the listed countries:

 Brazil: 38.93 percent

 China: 265.79 percent

 India: 6.78 percent

 Japan: 71.35 percent

 Korea: 4.53 percent

 Russia: 14.76 percent

*UK: 28.03 percent

The U.S.-based companies that called for the investigation included AK Steel Corp., Nucor Corp., Steel Dynamics Inc., United States Steel Corp., and ArcelorMittal USA LLC, a unit of ArcelorMittal SA,according the statement.

Following its findings, the Commerce Department said it would call on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency "to require cash deposits based on these preliminary rates."

Additionally, the department said it found "critical circumstances" regarding certain exporters from China, Japan, and Russia and that border agents will impose retroactive measures, but gave no other details.

United Steelworkers International President Leo W. Gerard says more than 12,000 steelworkers are either on layoff or threatened by layoffs from the mushrooming steel import crisis. In December, U.S. Steel began idling steel mill Granite City Works, which will result in the layoff of about 2,000 people.

Todays decision comes as welcome news to the steelworkers at American steel mills who produce cold-rolled flat steel products," Gerard said in a press release. "It is one step forward in the fight by USW-represented members and the companies to make our nations trade policies work better for working Americans.

In a statement, Madison County Chairman Alan J. Dunstan said Wednesday's decision reinforces the message representatives from the county and USW delivered on Capitol Hill last week in support of workers laid-off from Granite City Works.

The Post-Dispatch contributed to this report
UPDATED at 1:05 p.m. Wednesday with mugshots

A Jennings woman working for Vantage Credit Union has been charged with identify theft after she allegedly helped a man steal thousands of dollars from accounts that had been tampered with at the credit union.

St. Louis County prosecutors last Wednesday charged Tiara Franklin, 28, with identity theft, and Jerry E. Parker III, 22, with receiving stolen property. A third defendant, Brittany Trinell Young, 21, was charged with felony stealing and resisting arrest.

The three are co-defendants in the case. Ed Magee, a spokesman for the St. Louis County prosecutor's office, said one other person was arrested but not charged.

St. Louis County police said Wednesday that they did not have a mugshot of Young.

Police say Franklin worked at a call center for the credit union at 11654 West Florissant Avenue in north St. Louis County. The credit union launched an internal investigation after it heard about unauthorized transfers.

The credit union determined that $29,600 was transferred from three accounts to three other accounts over two days in late July 2014, police say.

The account holders all had spoken to Franklin about their accounts. After the conversations, Franklin had either changed an online password for those clients or enrolled them in online banking without their permission.

Police say Franklin admitted she gave the account and password information of at least one of the customers to a friend. She knew the friend would use the information to get money from the account, police say.

Bail for Franklin was set at $30,000. She lives in the 8300 block of Mayfair Place in Jennings.

Police say one of the unauthorized transfers put $4,600 into the account of Parker on July 31, 2014. Police arrested him several months later. Police say he admitted he withdrew the money and spent his share on clothing.

Parker told police that it all began when an ex-girlfriend called and asked if he wanted to make some money. She put him in touch with another woman, who told him to open an account with Vantage Credit Union. She told him there would be a wire transfer of money into his account. He split the $4,600 with the woman. Court records don't identify that woman.

Parker lives in the 12500 block of Evening Shade Drive in Black Jack. His bail was set at $15,000.

Young, who lives in the 8600 block of Old Bonhomme Road in University City, received more money than Parker, police say. Police say $9,000 from a credit union customer's account was transferred into Young's account; Young made two withdrawals that day of $3,000 each. She went to two different branches of the credit union to withdraw the money.

The next day, there was an attempt to transfer another $7,000 into Young's account  but the credit union froze the account because it had learned of the fraud, police say.

When police went to arrest Young on an unrelated stealing warrant, she climbed out a rear window of her apartment and tried to run. Police arrested her at her car, after a struggle. Young confessed to taking money from her account, even though she knew it had been transferred there illegally, police say. She said the money was transferred there by a friend who works at the credit union.

Young's bail was set at $30,000.
The Missouri Supreme Court does not have the authority to order consolidation of St. Louis Countys myriad municipal courts, a working group assigned to study municipal court reform said Tuesday in a long-awaited report.

Consolidating the courts was one of the recommendations from the Ferguson Commission appointed by Gov. Jay Nixon to study ways to heal rifts in the community after the shooting death of Michael Brown on Aug. 9, 2014.

It was also urged by activists and lawyers who have driven some of the reform debate.

But the working group, appointed in May 2015 to study measures beyond last falls sweeping municipal court reform legislation, said consolidation is simply beyond the scope of the top courts powers.

It said recent legal settlements and the new state law may, in fact, have gone too far in meddling with court procedures and local governance.

The ultimate responsibility for the working policies and day-to-day operational practices adopted by any given municipal court must always remain with the voters of that municipality who can elect or remove officials from office, the group wrote.

The report suggested restoring some power to municipalities to help them ensure tickets are paid, which drew praise from a north St. Louis County mayor but scorn from the lawyer who has arguably fought the hardest to limit that power.

What I like about this report is that it creates a mechanism for oversight of the courts but protected municipalities ability to prosecute people who are openly defiant about breaking laws and skipping court, said Normandy Mayor Patrick Green.

The report said a new state law created confusion about whether someone could be jailed for nonpayment or failure to show in court. Jail should be an option for people who are found to be in contempt, the group said. Cash bail, when used appropriately to ensure someones court appearance, is consistent with the state constitution and necessary.

Thomas Harvey, co-founder and executive director of ArchCity Defenders, said he hopes the Supreme Court doesnt place much weight on the report.

It is a political document that I think genuinely expresses a fundamental misunderstanding of the basic issues raised by our pending federal litigation alleging that several St. Louis County communities run debtors prisons, he said.

The report took issue with the city of Jennings settlement with ArchCity Defenders, saying it would appear that the municipal court gives up any claim to having the authority to issue warrants in the event of nonpayment and nonappearance ... 

Harvey said the comment was an astoundingly disconnected statement that could only emanate from a middle-class white guy who has never considered a possibility that he might not have the money to secure his freedom.

The report did seek to dispel any notion that municipal courts in St. Louis County have been unfair targets of criticism.

Based on its review, the group wrote, the most serious concerns, operational deficiencies, and resulting loss of public confidence in Missouris municipal court system, are largely limited to certain municipal courts in St. Louis County.

The high court said in a statement it would give the report careful study but offered no timetable for potential changes. Judge Karl DeMarce, an associate court judge in Scotland County and member of the working group, would oversee any reforms.

Reforms proposed by the working group that it said were within the courts power include:

Barring municipal judges from practicing law in other municipal courts in the same circuit.

Barring attorneys from working as municipal prosecutors and defense attorneys in the same circuit.

Studying the cost of having all municipal court proceedings recorded to encourage proper behavior by judges, court personnel, attorneys and others.

Requiring municipal courts to maintain open records and proceedings and minimizing the need for in-court appearances to resolve tickets.

Ensuring that the presiding judge of the state court circuit monitors the municipal courts.

Creating two new positions in St. Louis County to supervise the municipal courts, which could include frequent scheduled and unannounced visits.

Requiring municipal courts to dismiss failure to appear cases.

Requiring municipalities that exceeded revenue caps set by state law to dismiss cases and warrants that predate January 2014, unless the prosecutor finds the case has merit.

Subjecting judges to retention votes or direct election in courts where revenue limits have been exceeded or other serious problems have been observed.

The areas municipalities have been under fire for abusive ticketing and court practices that disproportionately penalize low-income and African-American people.

An ongoing Post-Dispatch investigation showed the disparity in how people with money and connections are treated compared to poor people unable to hire lawyers, and conflicts of interest in the municipal courts that thrive in an atmosphere of secrecy.

The working group held several public hearings, including one that drew about 70 people in St. Louis in November. Most who spoke were familiar faces in the reform movement, urging a massive overhaul of the fragmented system of 80 courts for 90 municipalities.

The report said some suggestions may have been well-intended, but were political solutions, not legal ones.

The group acknowledged if it had to design a municipal court system from scratch, it might have done things differently. But it placed much of the reform responsibility on the state Legislature, which it noted, already made significant changes  most prominently, a tighter cap on what can be raised in traffic revenue. Lawmakers are studying further measures, such as applying the revenue limits to code violations too.

Our recommendations proceed from the belief that if the economic incentives for courts ... are removed, some of the more far-reaching recommendations of the other groups may not be necessary, the group wrote.

Similarly, the report noted, eliminating a judges ability to also work as a prosecutor or defense attorney, or be directly hired by the municipality, reduces conflicts of interest and remove(s) them from the need to respond to a citys revenue needs.

Working group member Kimberly Norwood, a Washington University law professor, dissented by saying the report doesnt go nearly far enough to address the problems in St. Louis County.
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court vacancy is about to become the subject of an advertising salvo in Missouri.

A political action committee that has donated to Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander says it will launch this week $130,000 in television advertising in St. Louis and Kansas City critical of Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Blunt agrees with other Senate Republicans that the choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia should be delayed until after a new president is elected in November.

President Barack Obama has promised to come up with a nominee in the coming days, despite Senate Republicans' vows to not even have a hearing on the nominee.

The ad will be paid for a liberal PAC, End Citizens United. It asks people to call Blunt and "tell him to stop protecting his job, and start doing it."

Blunt told the Post-Dispatch last month that "this is a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land," and that voters in the November election "should help determine the next member of the Supreme Court."

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., disagreed, saying "there is a vacancy  we should do our job and fill it."

End Citizens United, whose name comes from a controversial Supreme Court decision opening federal elections to corporate donations, reported raising $6.8 million through December for the 2016 election. The group has donated to many Democrat House and Senate candidates, including $9,500 to Kander.

On Thursday, an alliance of liberal groups plans a "day of action" designed to put pressure on senators to consider a nominee. The groups say they will deliver petitions and hold meetings around the country.
Chuck Raasch Chuck Raasch is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Chuck Raasch Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

WASHINGTON  Democrats are holding a civilized Chautauqua. Republicans are having a demolition derby.

Keep that distinction between the 19th-century talk circuit and the 20th-century car-crash spectacle in mind as the March 15 presidential primaries in Missouri and Illinois come into focus. In a rarity, these two primaries will count  big time  in choosing the next president.

Neither Democrat Hillary Clinton nor Republican Donald Trump will be able to mathematically clinch the nomination on that date. But convincing victories in a majority of the five big and diverse states that day  Missouri, Illinois, Florida, Ohio and North Carolina  could lengthen delegate leads and create such momentum that both front-runners would be virtually impossible to stop without some unknowable intervening event.

Conversely, losses in a majority of these big states could burst momentums bubble for both. Democratic challenger Bernie Sanders survived Super Tuesday with victories in four of a dozen states. In the Republican primary, where Trump has sent hands wringing across the GOP establishment, significant wins by someone other than the billionaire businessman on March 15 could prolong the acerbic, personal and occasionally sophomoric presidential debate.

Despite what you may have read about the historic rhetorical depths this campaign has plumbed, American politics has never been immune to degrading and offensive personal attacks.

In the election of 1860, a Democratic politician named Edwin M. Stanton called Republican Abraham Lincoln a long-armed ape. Lincoln, who once proclaimed that when any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him, later brought Stanton in as his secretary of war and stalwart member of Lincolns Civil War Cabinet. After the assassinated Lincoln died on a borrowed bed across the street from Fords Theater, it was Stanton at Lincolns bedside who uttered the enduring line, Now he belongs to the ages.

Its difficult to see Trump and rivals Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz ever coming to that degree of rapprochement following this campaign, one that last week saw Trump ridiculing Rubios perspiration and Rubio responding with commentary on Trumps small hands. But this is politics, after all.

So with that in mind, here are two points to remember as you listen to the advertising and stump speeches of the presidential candidates in the next dozen days:

 Up is down, and down is up.

Normally, Democrats have the untidiest nomination process, one that shakes the status quo and challenges conventional wisdom. Exhibit A: President Barack Obama, who defied the Democratic Partys conventional wisdom in 2008 to defeat the establishment candidate Clinton.

Theres a reason Will Rogers said that I am not a member of any organized party  I am a Democrat.

But in 2016, its the Republicans who are nominating in a storm. Trumps appeal has grown or solidified with every establishment pronouncement that he is unworthy or about to stumble. Of 17 Republicans who initially ran for president, only one remotely associated with the GOP establishment has won a primary or caucus so far. Rubio won Minnesotas caucus Tuesday night.

The other 14 contests so far have been swept either by Trump, who flaunts his beholden-to-no-one status, and Sen. Cruz of Texas, who says its a badge of honor that his filibusters and frequent blasts at the leadership of his own party have made him the least-liked man in the Senate.

 Irony and hypocrisy abound.

In 2016, candidates routinely denounce things they, themselves, have done. Two slices from the Tuesday night victory speeches of Trump and Clinton were good illustrations.

Trump scolded Rubio for getting nasty and personal in recent campaign events. But during the course of the campaign, Trump has offended major ethnic groups (Hispanics) and commented on others bodily functions (Hillary Clintons bathroom habits). In exit polls and in anecdotal interviews on the campaign trail, many say they believe Trump is merely hitting back at a hypersensitivity toward political correctness and the suddenly ubiquitous claims that the world is a minefield of micro-aggressions. Trump is the get-over-it candidate  except when he is personally attacked.

In her victory speech, Clinton recalled the original tea parties in Boston, and what they would make of corporations that seem to have absolutely no loyalty to the country that gave them so much.

Left unsaid was what those same tea partiers would think of an aspirant for the highest office in the land giving more than 50 private speeches to said corporations or their associations over 15 months, at a quarter-million dollars a pop.
CLAYTON  St. Louis County on Tuesday became the first jurisdiction in Missouri to enact a program aimed at monitoring the sale of prescription drugs, specifically the opioids experts call the entry point to heroin abuse.

The unanimous County Council vote came hours after the Missouri House gave initial approval to a bill that would establish a statewide database to track the dispensing of some prescription painkillers.

The state legislation, which still faces a final House vote, is expected to die in the Senate. Missouri is the only state in the nation without a program to monitor distribution of prescription medicine.

The lack of a statewide monitoring is terrible for Missouri, said County Councilman Sam Page, an anesthesiologist and the sponsor of the local legislation. Were the drugstore for America, where drug dealers come to get prescriptions filled because we have nothing in place to monitor them, he said.

The sponsor of the House bill, Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, said the absence of a database has turned Missouri into a haven for doctor-shopping  patients seeking out multiple doctors for the same prescriptions.

Leapfrogging the state, St. Louis County plans to have the pharmacies within its boundaries enrolled in its database within 180 days. The county estimates an initial start-up cost of about $100,000.

County Executive Steve Stenger will sign the legislation into law at a ceremony Wednesday morning.

Page and Stenger said the county may soon expand the program in partnerships with jurisdictions regionally and across the state. The identity of one the partners is expected to be announced Wednesday.

I believe, but I cant mention specific jurisdictions at this point, but we have received word from some of the larger jurisdictions surrounding us that they are considering passage of their own bill and will either utilize our database or have their own database, Stenger said. But there will certainly be linkage with some of our regional partners.

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., announced last week that she is sponsoring an amendment to a Senate drug deterrence bill that could support the county effort with federal grant funds.

Denouncing Jefferson Citys inaction on the issue, McCaskill, in a statement, said: I applaud St. Louis County leaders for working to fill the void, and Im eager to get them the resources they need to do so.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the use of opioid painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin has quadrupled during a 17-year study period that shows a leveling-off of medical conditions causing chronic pain. A 2015 report from the Missouri Hospital Association said that hospital stays due to painkiller misuse have increased 139 percent over the last decade.

A National Institute on Drug Abuse analysis found a 2.8-fold increase in deaths attributed to prescription pill abuse from 2001-2014. Heroin overdoses, meanwhile, jumped sixfold over the same time period.

Mitch Stenger, 23, became part of the statistical framework when he died of a heroin overdose a month after his uncle was elected St. Louis County executive in 2014. A bottle of OxyContin, Page said, has a street value of between $5,000-$7,000. Opioids secured from family medicine cabinets additionally get in the hands of teens who share them at pill parties.

Rep. Cloria Brown, R-south St. Louis County, predicted Rehders bill would reduce access to drugs for young people.

Brown said when her mother fell ill she took on the task of tracking her mothers prescriptions. I was my mothers database, Brown said. I kept track of all her meds. Fortunately I did, because whenever she was in the hospital  and she was there often  when she would leave, they would say these are your meds and I would say, No, she already takes that.

Had I not been there, then she mightve taken multiple drugs, because she was in a lot of pain, said Brown, an advocate of the legislation.

Opponents of the House legislation view a statewide monitoring system as an infringement on personal liberty.

Still, Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, said Missourians not suspected of any crime shouldnt have their medical histories tracked. I think there are two questions, said Barnes. One is: Will it work? And two is: Even if it might work, is this the sort of thing that is consistent with our values as a free society?

Unlike the county ordinance, the state bill would exempt children 16 and younger from the database.

A state law, if enacted, would supersede the county legislation.

Stenger said he would welcome a statewide program. But he sees little inclination on the part of lawmakers to implement a system that studies show has reduced overdose deaths in Florida (50 percent) and New York (55 percent). Im not optimistic, Stenger said. But this is a huge step for our county, a huge step for our region and the opportunity for a huge step by our state.
If the execution is carried out, it too will leave a grieving family, in addition to having lost a little boy who might have survived if he could have gotten to the hospital in time.
Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading.

Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy
LONDON MARKET CLOSE: FTSE 100 ends higher; Mordaunt makes UK PM tilt

Friday, October 21, 2022 - 17:22

The pound regained some poise on Friday afternoon but remained in precarious territory, after falling below the $1.11 mark in afternoon trade.

The pound was quoted at $1.1203 at the close on Friday, down versus $1.1294 at the London equities close on Thursday. It hit an intraday low of $1.1063 not long after midday.

Sterling was hurt by continued political uncertainty. Speculation about who will join Penny Mordaunt in throwing their hats in the ring in the race for Number 10 continues. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, one-time neighbours at Number 10 and 11 Downing Street - but now bitter rivals - have pockets of support from Tory MPs.

Adding to the pressure on sterling, disappointing UK retail sales data showed a bigger-than-expected decline in September, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Retail sales fell 6.9% annually in September, with the decline accelerating from a 5.6% fall in August. It also was worse than FXStreet-cited market consensus, which had expected a fall of just 5%.

The pound had initially found some support on Thursday after Liz Truss called an end to her disastrous tenure as prime minister - poking above $1.13 - but has since been dragged lower.

The FTSE 100 index closed up 25.82 points, or 0.4%, at 6,969.73 - closing out the week up 1.6%.

The FTSE 250 lost 182.38 points, or 1.1%, at 17,206.55, but still managed to gain 1.0% this week, and the AIM All-Share ended down 1.04 points, or 0.1% at 785.40 - but advanced 0.8% over the past five days.

The Cboe UK 100 closed up 0.4% at 696.31, the Cboe UK 250 ended down 1.0% at 14,694.15, and the Cboe Small Companies lost 0.3% at 12,240.46.

In European equities on Friday, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.9%, while the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.3%.

The Tories have begun to declare their allegiances in the party's second leadership contest of the year as speculation mounts over who will seek to replace Truss at the helm of the party.

Supporters of Johnson are backing the former prime minister to make an extraordinary political comeback, while ex-chancellor Sunak and Commons Leader Mordaunt also have the public support of several MPs.

Mordaunt become the first to declare her candidacy, with a pledge to re-unite the bitterly divided party.

The leader of the House  who finished third in the last leadership election  said she had been encouraged by the support she had received from fellow Conservative MPs.

There has also been no declaration yet from Sunak, who did not answer questions from reporters as he left his home on Friday morning.

Whoever does win will face an immediate test, choosing whether to go ahead with the planned Halloween statement setting out how the government intends to get the public finances back on track, Downing Street has said.

Work is continuing in Whitehall, led by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, in preparation for the medium-term fiscal plan to be announced on October 31 along with an updated set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

However, a Number 10 spokeswoman said it would be up to Liz Truss's successor to decide whether to proceed with that approach and with the same timetable.

In London, blue chip miners helped push FTSE 100 higher. Glencore gained 3.6%, Anglo American 3.1%, Antofagasta 2.7%, and Rio Tinto added 1.6%.

Retailers, however, were showing weakness after the disappointing UK retail sales data. A profit warning from Adidas did nothing to help the mood either.

JD Sports closed down 6.1%, Frasers 4.0%, Burberry 2.2%, and Next shed 2.9%.

On Thursday, Adidas lowered annual guidance as it struggles with "deteriorating traffic" in China and high inventory levels.

The sports apparel maker said it has needed to turn to "higher clearance activity" to try and shift stock.

It lost 9.0% in Frankfurt.

Deliveroo gained 3.6%.

The London-based online food delivery service said gross transaction values rose 8.3% annually in the third quarter to 1.70 billion from 1.57 billion, though orders fell by 1.1% to 72.8 million from 73.6 million.

Deliveroo said the decline in orders was due to a difficult consumer environment. With economic data on Friday showing that UK consumer confidence remains near record lows, this seems unlikely to change anytime soon.

InterContinental Hotels gave back 2.2% but reported strong revenue growth in the third quarter to September 30, saying that high global employment levels are boosting occupancy levels.

Revenue per available room, or RevPAR, rose 28% year-on-year and now exceeds its pre-pandemic level, being up 2.7% on the third quarter of 2019.

In the third quarter of 2022, the average daily rate increased by 13% compared to a year ago and was up 11% on 2019.

Chief Financial Officer & Head of Strategy Paul Edgecliffe-Johnson will leave the company in six months time to become CFO of Flutter Entertainment in the first half of 2023.

IHG has started the process of finding a new CFO.

The euro stood at $0.9802 Friday evening, down against $0.9822 at the close on Thursday.

Against the yen, the dollar was trading at JP148.03, compared to JP149.77 late Thursday. The yen was staging a fightback after the open on Wall Street, after nearly hitting JP152 during the Asia session.

Stocks in New York opened higher on Friday, with the DJIA up 1.1%, the S&P 500 index up 0.9%, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.6% higher.

Brent oil was quoted at $92.84 a barrel late Friday, down from $93.29 late Thursday. Gold was quoted at $1,643.70 an ounce Friday, up against $1,641.90 from Thursday.

In the international economics events calendar next week, Monday will be dominated by a slew of composite PMIs, with Japan overnight followed by Germany, eurozone and the UK in the morning then the US in the afternoon. A quiet Tuesday will be headlined by a US house price index.

On Wednesday, there is Chinese GDP, retail sales and industrial production overnight, then on Thursday attention will be on the European Central Bank interest rate decision at 1315 BST. Friday will be headlined by a Bank of Japan rate decision.

In the local corporate calendar on Monday, there are half-year results from Dr Martens, while education publishing firm Pearson will issue a third quarter update.

Copyright 2022 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
An Indian firm (Mahindra) and BAE (a major British arms manufacturer) have agreed to jointing produce 145 M777 howitzers for the Indian Army. It was only in mid-2015 that India and BAE finally settled all their contract differences and confirmed the M777 sale. One of the conditions was BAE finding an Indian firm to assemble the howitzers in India. The Mahindra M777 facility will begin production in late 2018.

India first approached BAE about buying the M777 in early 2010. Selling weapons to India is a very complicated process, made more complex since 2006 because of an escalating Indian crackdown in corruption in weapons procurement. Thus Indian procurement bureaucrats became even more troublesome and obstinate than usual. The M777 deal was almost completed in 2013 but more problems kept showing up. All those have been worked out. This sale went through the BAE American subsidiary, which because of its size, ownership and track record basically operates as an American defense firm.

With this purchase India is joining the United States, Canada and Australia in using the M777 towed 155mm howitzer. India is buying the lightweight (3.4 ton) M777 howitzers for about $5 million each. India is particularly attracted by the fact that the M777 can be moved slung under a helicopter, and thus quickly moved to inaccessible areas near the Pakistani and Chinese borders.

The M777 is a British design and, at four tons (for the standard version), is the lightest 155mm towed howitzer ever fielded. M777 fire control is handled by computerized system that allows faster response time and more accurate shooting. The M777 can use all current 155mm ammunition, including the Swedish/American Excalibur GPS guided shell. The guided round cuts ammo use enormously. India already uses a similar Russian guided shell called Krasnopol. The helicopter is the preferred method of moving the M777 across rough terrain. An M777 on a mountain top, with a few dozen Excalibur or Krasnopol rounds, provides precision fire support for troops within a 30-40 kilometer radius. Indian land borders are largely mountainous, and difficult to reach by land routes, especially for artillery that could not be flown in. The M-777 changes that.

The M777 is also the first new artillery for the Indian Army since the late 1980s. Currently most Indian artillery is either obsolete or soon to be. All these guns are also quite worn and less reliable as a result. Decades of pleas to parliament to speed up acquisition of new weapons. Until 2010 nothing much happened, but since then public pressure and the rapidly deteriorating (and publicized) state of Indian artillery led to some action.
Christians in the Middle East and Africa are dismayed to discover that the increasing anti-Christian violence by local Islamic conservatives and terrorists is largely being ignored in the West. One of the worst examples is Nigeria where, since 2004 over a million Christians living in the Moslem majority north of the country have been chased from their homes and over 10,000 of them killed by Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. Nearly all the Moslems killed in the north are victims of Boko Haram and most of the few Moslems killed by northern Christians are Boko Haram men killed by self-defense militias protecting their homes and families.

Boko Haram literally means Western education is forbidden and to many Islamic terrorists nothing is more Western and forbidden than Christianity. This despite the fact that Christianity has been around a lot longer than Islam. Often, as in Nigeria, the first invaders were Moslems not Christians. In Nigeria the south is largely Christian while the north is largely Moslem. But for over a century Moslem tribes from the north have been moving south looking for more grazing lands and consider it an economic and religious duty to chase out any Christian tribes in the way.

While Moslems like to think of themselves as the victims of anti-Moslem Western aggression the reality is quite the opposite. Islam is, in reality, a region of intolerance and hypocrisy. In the West this is obvious, but in the Moslem world it is not. Consider the fact that Moslems demand that others be tolerant of their customs but refuse to respect the customs (or religions) of others. Thus Moslems are free to practice their religion in the West while in many Moslem countries others are not. Saudi Arabia does not even allow any religious buildings that are not Moslem. Thus there are no Christian churches, Hindu temples, Jewish synagogues or any non-Moslem house of worship in Saudi Arabia. It is against the law there. In many Moslem countries it is illegal to convert a Moslem to another religion. In some Moslem countries (like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan) the penalty for any Moslem converting is death. There is a reason for all this.

The word Islam derives from the Arabic word istaslama which means, literally, submission. What is implied, for most Moslems, is that non-Moslems must submit as well, whether they want to or not. Refusal to submit is a sign of intolerance, religious bigotry, racism and blasphemy and most definitely against Islamic scripture and practice. For Islamic conservatives, clergy and scholars there can be no other interpretation. Westerners have had a hard time understanding this crucial cultural difference, but now it is becoming violently obvious to Moslems and non-Moslems alike, especially in countries where lots of Moslems live next to largely Christian populations..

Moslems in the West expect the locals to accommodate their religion and customs, even though some of those customs (genital mutilation, honor killings, mandatory arranged marriages, and much more) are illegal in the West. Yet Moslems have no intention of being accommodating to Westerners. Most Moslems dont care if Westerners see Islam as a religion of intolerance, of all take and no give. To Moslems it is natural to demand submission from those with other religious beliefs and not to reciprocate or show tolerance (unless forced to).

Moslems are now being forced to confront their long history of violent intolerance. This flawed view of Islamic terrorism has lots of nasty side effects. Take, for example, the growing anti-Christian violence among Moslems. Christians in countries with Moslem majorities, or large minorities, are having a difficult time getting the rest of the world to recognize that most (as in about 80 percent) of the religious violence (not counting Islamic terrorism) in the world is carried out against Christians and most of the violence is committed by Moslems. This is because the Islamic world, while unable to do much in terms of economic, scientific, or cultural progress, or even govern themselves effectively, have proven quite adept at convincing leaders and media organizations in the West that Islam is not the aggressor and is actually the victim. For those who have spent any time living among Moslems, this all seems absurd. But this delusion is real among many Moslems.

The effort to eliminate the religion angle when it comes to Islamic terrorism is also present in the United States. For example, its official policy in the U.S. military to eliminate any mention of a war between Islam and the West. This policy is enforced despite the fact that Islam, at least according to many Moslems, is definitely at war with the West. The U.S. has officially maintained this illusion since shortly after September 11, 2001, despite the fact that many Islamic clerics and government officials in Moslem nations, openly and frequently agree with the "Islam is at war with the West" idea. But many Western leaders prefer to believe that by insisting that such hostile religious attitudes are not widespread in Moslem countries, the hostility will diminish. To that end the U.S. government has, for years, been removing any reference to "Islam" and "terrorism" in official documents. This comes as a shock to military or civilian personnel who have spent time in Moslem countries. The "Islam is at war with the West" angle is alive and well among Moslems and when you look at media in Moslem countries it is all pretty explicit.

There is plenty of other evidence. For example, twenty nations account for over 95 percent of terrorism activity in the world. Of these twenty (Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Uganda, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Palestinian Territories, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, Algeria, Thailand, Philippines, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Burundi, India, Nigeria, and Israel) all but four of them (Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Colombia, and Burundi) involve Islamic terrorism. In terms of terrorism fatalities the top four nations (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia) accounted for 75 percent of the world total of terrorism related deaths. All of these were the result of Islamic radicalism, often directed at other Moslems and not just non-Moslems (infidels).

In Asia we have religion based tension between India and Pakistan. Inside India many Moslem communities remain and feelings aren't always neighborly. Indonesia and the Philippines suffer growing strife between Moslems and non-Moslems. Malaysia has fanatical Moslems persecuting more laid-back ones and non-Moslems in general. China has a large Moslem community that generates an increasing amount of violence. Russia and America have formed a curious partnership to deal with Islamic-based terrorism coming out of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Chechnya Russia faced Islamic-inspired violence all alone in the 1990s.

Africa has long had problems with Islam, especially south of the semi-arid Sahel region. Many African nations are split by increasingly sensitive religious differences. The Moslems are in the north, Christians and animists in the south. Nigeria, Egypt, and Sudan are among the more violent hot spots at the moment. When the Moslem Somalis stop fighting each other they will return to raiding their Christian and animist neighbors to the south.

The Middle East still contains many non-Moslems. None have their own country, except for Israel. But Egypt contains six million Copts, native Christians who did not convert to Islam. Similar small Christian communities exist throughout the Middle East and growing hostility from Moslem neighbors causes many to migrate or get killed.

Moslems are particularly vicious when they turn their righteous wrath on dissident Moslem sects. The Druze and Alawites are considered by many Moslems as pagans pretending to be Moslems. Similarly, the Shias of Iran and neighboring areas are considered less orthodox, not just for their admitted differences but because many adherents openly practice customs of the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian religion. These differences are less frequently overlooked today. To survive, many Druze have allied with Israel and most of the current Syrian leadership are Alawites who pretend to be more Shia than they really are.

Even Europe has local problems with Islam. The Moslems in the Balkans (Albanians and Bosnians) have been a constant source of strife for the last decade. Moslem migrants in Europe face even more persecution because of all the Islamic violence elsewhere, and this makes it easier for radical groups to recruit and carry out their crusade against Christians. In many European cities with Moslem minorities there are neighborhoods non-Moslems are advised to stay out of.

But the Islamic religious strife is often about more than religion. A lot of it is politics. One of the reasons Islam ran out of steam centuries ago was that the Moslem areas never embraced democracy and intellectual progress. Until the 20th century most Moslems lived as part of some foreign empire, under local totalitarian monarchs or Western colonial administrators. The foreign empires disappeared early in the 20th century but democracy has had a hard time taking hold. The dictatorships are still there. And the people are restless.

Radical Islam arose as an alternative to all the other forms of government that never seemed to work. In theory, establishing "Islamic Republics" would solve all problems. People could vote but only Moslems in good standing could be candidates for office. A committee of Moslem holy men would have veto power over political decisions. Islamic law would be used. It was simple and it makes sense to a lot of Moslems in nations ruled by thugs and thieves, especially if the people are largely uneducated and illiterate.

The problem with this is that Islamic Republics don't work. The only one that has been established (not counting others that say they are but aren't) is in Iran. The major problems were twofold. First, the radicals had too much power. Radical religious types are no fun and you can't argue with them because they are on a mission from God. Most people tire of this in short order. To speed the disillusionment many of the once-poor and now-powerful religious leaders became corrupt. This eventually sends your popularity ratings straight to hell.

It will take a generation or so for everyone in the Moslem world to figure out where all this is going. This is already happening in Iran, where moderates are getting stronger every day but everyone is trying to avoid a civil war. While the radicals are a minority they are a determined bunch. The constant flow of Islamic radical propaganda does more than generate recruits and contributions in Moslem countries, it also energizes Moslem minorities (both migrants and converts) in Western countries to acts of terrorism. In the United States you find such Moslems regularly getting arrested for attempting to carry out religious violence.

Radicals throughout the Moslem world continue to take advantage of dissatisfaction among the people and recruit terrorists and supporters. To help this process along they invoke the ancient grudges popular among many Moslems. Most of these legends involve Christians beating on Moslems. To most radicals it makes sense to get people agitated over faraway foreigners rather than some strongman nearby.

Most radicals lack the skills, money, or ability to carry their struggle to far-off places. So most of the agitation takes place among Moslem populations. Any violent attitudes generated are easily directed at available non-Moslems. Thus we have all that violence against non-Moslems. But the more violence you have against non-Moslems the more really fanatical fighters are developed. These are the people who are willing to travel to foreign lands to confront the non-believers and kill them for the cause. We call it terrorism, the fanatics call it doing what has to be done.

Not surprisingly, Moslems get motivated to do something about Islamic radicalism when the violence is literally next door. That's why terror attacks in the West are so popular. The infidels are being attacked, without any risk to those living in Moslem countries. Iraq changed all that, and during the course of that war (2004-7) the popularity of Islamic terrorism, in Moslem countries, declined sharply because the terrorists were killing so many Moslems. That, in the end, is what has killed, for a while, most Islamic terrorism in Iraq. Worldwide, al Qaeda never recovered the popularity (in the Moslem world) it enjoyed after September 11, 2001. It would also be nice if the Moslem world got their act together and expunged this malevolent tendency once and for all. The Arab Spring was supposed to help but so far it hasnt. Change is coming but don't hold your breath waiting for it to suddenly appear.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are increasing their joint efforts to track down and kill members of the growing local branch of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). This group is attracting many of the most fanatic Islamic terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is believed to have as many as 3,000 members in Afghanistan. These men are attracted to the ISIL view of the world. For example ISIL insists that the Pakistani military controls the Afghan Taliban as well as Islamic terrorist groups based in Pakistan that mainly operate inside India. These accusations are nothing new but they are the reason ISIL considers Pakistan un-Islamic and worthy of some lethal retribution delivered by ISIL. To underscore that ISIL has been carrying out suicide bomber attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So far there have been few such attacks because ISIL is under attack by Afghan and Pakistani security forces as well as rival Islamic terrorist groups. For most of 2015 ISIL has been trying to establish a base area in eastern Afghanistan (mainly Nangarhar Province) but that has led to constant skirmishing with Pakistani Taliban hiding out there. The local tribes are also largely hostile to ISIL and all this has provided better intel for the security forces on what ISIL is up to and exactly where they are. This has led to more effective and frequent American air strikes and raids by Afghan troops and American commandos. ISIL is hanging on but not growing rapidly. There are some ISIL members operating in Pakistan, which is an even more hostile environment for them because of widespread hostility towards ISIL tactics by most Pakistanis. Since ISIL considers all other Islamic terror groups enemies the group has to become large enough to crush the local Islamic terrorist competition before it can become a major threat. So far that is not happening.

What makes Afghanistan such a difficult situation to follow is the fact that there are several wars going on at once that often, but not always, intertwine. First there is the centuries old hostility between major tribes. The most visible aspect of this is the efforts by the Pushtun tribes (the largest minority) to dominate the other tribes (who actually are 60 percent of the population.) Up to the 1970s there was an agreement that largely kept the peace. In this deal Afghanistan was a constitutional monarchy presided over by a Pushtun king who largely dealt with foreigners and left the tribes to negotiate their differences. At that point Afghanistan was still largely medieval as far as cultural norms and economic activity were concerned. But the 20th century was making an impression and the educated urban minority was calling for radical change. This was tempting to many leading Afghans but the vast majority of Afghans were still in the countryside ruled by tribal leaders. Most of these opposed any radical change. The reform factions (mainly the pro-communist ones) got violent, tried to overthrow the monarchy, failed and in 1979 Russia intervened to rescue their fellow communists. That led to a civil war that is still going on. The Russians left in frustration (not defeat) in 1989 and continued to supply the communist (or at least pro-Soviet) Afghan government with weapons and cash until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. By 1993 the pro-Russian government was gone and the violence evolved into a multi-faction civil war. Pakistan then created the Taliban to establish a pro-Pakistan religious dictatorship which lasted September 2001. At that point the U.S. intervened on the side of the non-Pushtun tribes that were still fighting the Taliban. Even then the Taliban had antagonized most Afghans and by the end of 2001 the Taliban government was gone.

While the non-Pushtun tribes were able to organize a working coalition with the Pushtun tribes there was a new complication. During the 1980s the heroin production business was driven out of Pakistan (where it was, and still is not welcome) into nearby southern (Pushtun) Afghanistan. There it remains, centered on Helmand province, which is right next to Kandahar province, where the founders of the Taliban came from. In 2002 the defeated Taliban got a sanctuary across the border in Pakistan (in an area bordering Helmand and Kandahar). The sanctuary remains active although Pakistan never admitted it.

What most Westerners dont notice is that one thing all the tribes in Afghanistan, along with most everyone in Pakistan, Iran and other neighbors, is that the opium/heroin gangs are bad. While most of these drugs are exported the production in Helmand (where over 80 percent of the world supply of opium and heroin comes from) has made cheap drugs available throughout the region creating over five million addicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran alone. The drug business provides income for about ten percent of Afghans and large fortunes for a few hundred families, but for most people the drugs are a curse. But money buys weapons, politicians and unemployed country boys seeking a gun and a job. Since the 1990s the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups have financed their operations by working with the drug gangs. That arrangement continues and has proven very difficult to overcome.

All this is nothing new. Similar situations existed in the Golden Triangle (centered on Burma and the China border) the original source of most opium in the world as well as Colombia, the source of most cocaine. In the Golden Triangle the alliance is between tribal rebels and the drug gangs while in Colombia it is between leftist rebels and the drug gangs. There were successful campaigns against the alliances in Burma and Colombia, although the drug trade persisted. Heroin production was forced to move from Burma to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. Cocaine can move to nations neighboring Colombia, but in both these cases the drug gang coalition never came as close to conquering an entire nation as it has in Afghanistan. While much is made about the Islamic terrorist angle and religion in general it is mainly about money and power. This is how it has always been in Afghanistan, where Islam has been for over a thousand years but wealth and tribal politics have existed for far longer.

The drug gangs are willing to subsidize the Taliban in order to keep the cash coming. Heroin is the most lucrative thing to happen to Afghanistan since the Silk Road disappeared 500 years ago. Because of that, heroin is worth dying for. The Silk Road was an ancient trade route between China, the Middle East and India which ran through western Afghanistan. When it disappeared so did interest in Afghanistan. Iranian and Indian empires used to control large parts of Afghanistan but after the Silk Road money was gone so were the foreigners. Now the foreigners are back, but only as long as the drug trade exists and enough Afghans have a financial interest in that to keep the violence going. You can see how this works today in Helmand where the government is having a major problem with police and soldiers being bought with drug money. So far these traitors are being sought, caught and killed or imprisoned. Afghan leaders, even those receiving drug money, know that long-term the drug gangs will keep the country in turmoil and must eventually be suppressed. There is general agreement on that goal but no easy method for achieving it. Nevertheless the anti-drug forces are often succeeding, even in drug strongholds like Helmand and Kandahar where Afghan intelligence finds lots of locals willing to inform on the drug gangs.

For most Afghans the primary impact of the drug gangs and Taliban is the chaos the two groups create and sustain. This hurts the economy nationwide and this has been a growing problem since the drug gangs and Taliban started their effort to regain control of the country in 2014. The withdrawal of most Western troops by late 2014 caused panic inside Afghanistan and that crippled economic growth (which went from 14 percent in 2012 to less than two percent in 2014.) Most Afghan military and police commanders believe that more (as in two or three times more) Western air power would do tremendous damage to the enemy. The reason is that the Taliban and drug gangs always believed that the bad guys would triumph once the foreign troops were gone. It didnt exactly work out that way and the Taliban have become sloppy. The enemy no longer fears and respects aerial reconnaissance as they once did and now more much more freely. An increase in air power would initially kill a lot of Taliban and force the enemy to move more slowly and cautiously. Taliban attacks would not be as massive and bold. All that air power made a huge difference and both sides know it. Foreign troops had a peak strength of 140,000 in 2010 versus 10,000 now. But the Afghans dont want a lot of foreign combat troops, just lots of aircraft and support forces. The Western powers, especially the United States, is now in agreement with this and more air power and support forces have been arriving.

Afghanistan now has problems with two Taliban organizations. The Pakistan Taliban continue to make attacks in Pakistan and most of these efforts can be traced back to bases in eastern Afghanistan. These attacks tend to take place in the tribal territories of the northwest and southwest but not across the border in Waziristan, where Pakistani troops are still involved in a major anti-terrorist campaign they began in mid-2014 and wont officially complete until late 2016. The Pakistani Taliban are not as numerous as their Afghan counterparts and that is largely because the Pakistani Taliban do not have as much money. While Pakistani Taliban make some money from providing security for drug smuggling they have to depend on a lot of other criminal activities to maintain operations. Both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are also suffering internal problem and both have broken up into mutually hostile factions. The rise of ISIL in the region is part of this. The drug gangs dont really care as long as their hired guns protect the drug production and smuggling.

March 1, 2016: In the north (Faryab province) the army continues its offensive against Taliban forces, killing over a hundred in the past few days and capturing or wounding even more. The Taliban have been a major threat in this area since early 2015 as part of a major effort to make the north safer for smuggling heroin out of the country. An effort to seize the city of Kunduz in September 2015 was unusual, because it was an expensive operation that got a lot of Taliban fighters killed or captured and was soon undone once the security forces sent enough reinforcements to the city. It got worse when several more similar attacks failed to get into the city. Such spectacular attacks are mainly for terrorizing the local population, especially politicians and business owners, into being more cooperative. The basic problem for the Taliban and the drug gangs they work for is that they dont want to run the country but do need free access to keep the drug business going. This is especially true of the north, where the locals have always been more anti-drugs and hostile to the Talban.

February 29, 2016: China announced it will provide Afghanistan with $70 million in military aid. This is a continuation of increasingly close relations with China. For example in early 2015 Afghanistan admitted that it had an arrangement with China whereby Afghanistan would seize and turn over to China any Chinese Moslems (especially Turkic Uighurs) found in Afghanistan. In return China increased the diplomatic and economic pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting Islamic terrorists attacking Afghanistan. China is the largest foreign investor in Pakistan as well as the main source of modern weapons, so when China talks Pakistan must listen and at least pretend to act. China is also becoming a major source of foreign aid and military assistance for Afghanistan.

February 28, 2016: In the east (Paktika province) a U.S. UAV used missiles to kill seven Islamic terrorists including several wanted ISIL leaders. In the last 90 days the U.S. has carried out at least twenty airstrikes against ISIL targets in this area.

In the north (Faryab province) 130 local Taliban surrendered and accepted amnesty. Only a third of them turned in their weapons, or had weapons to surrender. Over 10,000 Afghan men have accepted the amnesty program since 2010. Many were simply let go by the Taliban, which often has to downsize when money is short or because strategy has changed and it does not need as many people in a region. The Taliban prefer to recruit locally because local men know the languages, customs and terrain. The Taliban will also seek to get local tribal leaders on the payroll as well so as not to get into feuds with local tribes. Another problem is the presence of Pushtun tribes in the north. The Taliban is largely a Pushtun operation and was founded by Pushtin from Kandahar in the south. Pushtun are 40 percent of the population and most live in the south. In other parts of the country the non-Pushtun tribes are often quite hostile to the Taliban, drugs and Pushtun in general. In areas like the north, where the Pushtun are a minority, it is more expensive and politically difficult for the Taliban to maintain large numbers of gunmen. The heavy fighting in the north since early 2015 have not gone well for the Taliban and surrenders like this indicate that they are turning their attention elsewhere, like the south where the Taliban has had more success in driving security forces out of key drug producing areas.

February 26, 2016: In the east (Paktika province) a U.S. UAV used missiles to kill three al Qaeda Islamic terrorists who were riding motorcycles. Afghan special operations forces provided the location. Al Qaeda and Haqqani Network are active in Paktika province and both are prime targets for U.S. and Afghan forces.

February 24, 2016: In the east (Nangarhar Province) ten ISIL members surrendered and accused Pakistan of supplying ISIL forces in Afghanistan with weapons. Pakistan denies such charges but then Pakistan has long denied any connections with the Afghan Taliban despite the ample evidence that ISI (the Pakistani CIA) created the Taliban in the early 1990s and Pakistan has been supporting Islamic terrorism since the late 1970s. Since 2001 more and more evidence of this Pakistani perfidy has come to light. For example, officially Pakistan still denies that they sheltered Osama bin Laden, but its no secret that Pakistan still tolerates sanctuaries for all manner of Islamic terrorists who operate inside Afghanistan. So even if Pakistan is not supporting ISIL, a lot of people on both sides of the border have no problem believing otherwise.

February 23, 2016: In the east (Nangarhar Province) American UAVs missile attacks and Afghan security forces have killed at least 43 ISIL fighters in the last two days. At least half the dead were victims of UAV missiles.

February 22, 2016: In the east (Nangarhar Province) Taliban gunmen shot dead an ISIL suicide bomber who was trying to reach and kill a local Taliban commander. Some of his followers spotted the ISIL man, noted he was wearing an explosive vest and shot the bomber dead before he could detonate.
Six-show tour will feature a live-to-screen fiber optic workflow incorporating Blackmagic's studio cameras, ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K and HyperDeck Studio Pro

Page 1

Blackmagic Design has today announced that Mumford and Sons six show tour of South Africa, directed by Steve Price, featured a live to screen fiber optic workflow incorporating Blackmagics studio cameras, ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K and HyperDeck Studio Pro.

For the bands first ever tour of South Africa, promoter Hilltop Live approached local specialists Militia Broadcast, with nearly 150 live shows under their belt, about supplying the IMAG projection, PPU, camera packages and crew during the bands Cape Town, Durban and Pretoria gigs.

Armed with the tours technical rider, Eban Olivier and the Militia Broadcast team specced out the tours production requirements. We spoke with Steve Price, the live show director, via Skype and ran through our workflow using a wall to wall Blackmagic solution, which reassured him that it would deliver on all his expectations, including tally, program return for monitoring in camera and remote shading to address any shifts in color when using pyrotechnics, explains Olivier.

Coverage of the shows consisted of five ground positions, including two Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K with 400mm and 600mm long lenses, two 24-105mm pit cameras on dollies as well as an interchangeable, shoulder mounted stage camera for capturing any down the line shots and pick ups. A Micro Studio 4K was also used to capture a reverse shot of the piano, alongside two Pocket Cinema Cameras on the drum kits.

Militia Broadcast ran optical fiber feeds back into the eight channel ATEM Studio Converter and then split each ISO signal to its own HyperDeck Studio Pro for recording while also routing them to the ATEM switcher, where Price produced the live feed for the two big screens, flanking either side of the stage. A pair of 17 inch SmartView 4Ks were used for monitoring, whilst shading ran through the ATEMs Software Control on a laptop. S1 Sennheiser Aviator Headsets were used for program audio and show calling.

The all in one modular approach of Blackmagics studio cameras means they are pure utopia for a traveling tour such as this. You simply drop down one fiber cable per channel and that gives you camera control, tally and talkback as well as shading, explains Olivier. The cameras themselves are robust, take up a fraction of the storage space and can effectively become any shot you want, at any given time.

Militia Broadcast was confident from the outset that a Blackmagic multicam workflow would meet the rigors and demands of a six date tour in South Africa. Ebans confidence and enthusiasm helped to allay any initial concerns I had coming into this leg of the tour, explains Price. He went out of his way to ensure that I had everything I needed to do my job well, and unimpeded.

Having never worked with Blackmagics ATEM switchers before, I found it simple and intuitive to operate, while the camera crew supplied by Eban were all first rate, concludes Price. Regardless of the camera system you use, it will only ever be as good as the crew you have operating them, and these guys were good.



About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the worlds highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Designs DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the companys Emmy award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.
A worker checks the valve of an oil pipe at the Lukoil company owned Imilorskoye oil field outside the West Siberian city of Kogalym, Russia, January 25, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices ended up for a third straight day on Wednesday as buyers shrugged off record high U.S. crude stockpiles to focus on an OPEC plan to freeze production, keeping alive the notion that market has bottomed from a near two-year selloff.

OPEC member Venezuela said a total of 15 oil producing countries will attend a meeting planned later this month on freezing output at January's highs.

Diplomatic activity between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major producers to address the supply glut by freezing output has helped feed a 25 percent price gain in the last 2-1/2 weeks from 12-year lows.

Oil prices briefly dipped on U.S. government data that showed crude stockpiles at record highs for the third consecutive week after rising 10.4 million barrels to 518 million barrels last week. [EIA/S]

Brent futures settled up 12 cents at $36.93 a barrel. They have risen more than $1.80, or 5 percent, since Friday's close.

U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished up 26 cents at $34.66 a barrel. Only in mid-February, WTI fell to a 2003 low of $26.05.

"It seems more likely that $26 is in the rear view mirror at the moment," Anthony Headrick, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging, a commodities broker in Saint Paul, Minnesota, said.

"Fundamentals remain bearish but prospects of OPEC freeze and downward cycle in U.S. output will likely limit a retest of the recent lows."

Other analysts were confident that the market has bottomed out.

"We believe prices will see modest gains over the course of the year and we have likely seen the worst of price declines, unless the global economy actually moves into recession," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, who helps manage some $125 billion.

Some traders were less bullish, saying the selloff will likely return as crude inventories build further from the U.S. refinery spring maintenance season.

"We could be in store for another large move down over the next few weeks," said Tariq Zahir at Tyche Capital Advisors who bets nearby WTI contracts will weaken against forwards.

(Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London; Editing by Susan Fenton, David Gregorio, Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)
HANGZHOU, CN -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- 8.club, along with 24 other two-number domain names, including 11.club., 44.club, 55.club, 99.club and more, are set to go to auction on 4.CN, China's leading domain auction platform and the largest domain marketplace in the country. Bidding will open on March 7th, 2016 at 5pm in China (4am Eastern) and the auctions will have staggered end dates from March 21 through 24th. All of the names will be offered with no reserve, so all 25 domains being auctioned are expected to be sold.

Over the past year, China has emerged as the world's largest buyer of domain names, resulting in what is likely the biggest story in domain-name investing since the gold rush when the Internet began. .CLUB, which is currently a best-selling and the most used new domain extension on the Internet today, has seen a significant spike in registrations from China with more than 420,000 of its domains having been registered in China and more than US$2 Million in .CLUB premium name sales to Chinese investors in just the past few months. For example, 5.club sold for more than US$58,000 to a Chinese investor at an auction in December.

This portfolio of .CLUB domains in the 4.cn auction is expected to generate a great deal of interest, as numbers have significant cultural meaning in China, with repeating numbers seen as very lucky. The word for "eight" sounds similar to the word that means "prosper" or "wealth" and carries a meaning of success and fortune. Coupling numbers with short, recognizable and meaningful extensions like .CLUB brings high value, as the word "club" is recognized, used and has meaning across the world, including throughout China.

"The strong demand we've been experiencing in China, especially for short numeric domain names, should make this auction on 4.cn very exciting," said Colin Campbell, founder and CEO of .CLUB Domains. "Investors see these names as more than domains. They are a valuable and increasingly liquid currency, and they are in limited supply. We are also honored that 4.cn has selected .CLUB to be the first ever dedicated new domain extension to have its own auction on 4.cn."

Participation in the auction is easy in either English or Chinese as 4.cn is a fully bi-lingual platform. To register in English, click here.

The complete list of names that will be offered in the 4.cn .CLUB auction:

8.Club 13.Club 11.Club 17.Club 19.Club 67.Club 25.Club 71.Club 35.Club 73.Club 44.Club 78.Club 45.Club 83.Club 47.Club 86.Club 52.Club 87.Club 55.Club 91.Club 56.Club 94.Club 59.Club 99.Club 62.Club

For times and other details about the auction please visit www.nic.club/auction

About .Club Domains, LLC

Led by Internet entrepreneur Colin Campbell, whose prior successes include Tucows Interactive and Hostopia.com, .Club Domains, LLC was formed for the purpose of becoming the .CLUB gTLD registry. The company also launched Startup.club to support entrepreneurs building businesses around a .CLUB domain name. With more than 720,000 domain names sold to date .CLUB leads the pack of new domain extensions in sales and usage. More information and links to register .CLUB domains are available now at http://www.get.club.

For more information, please contact: Bridgette King.Club Domains Public [email protected]

Source: .CLUB
KARANGASEM, Indonesia--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- East Bali Cashews (EBC) was awarded the 2015 US Secretary of States Award for Corporate Excellence (ACE) on March 1, 2016, for its outstanding societal impact by a small or medium enterprise. Founder and CEO Aaron Fishman received the award in a ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the US Department of State.

EBC was nominated by US Ambassador to Indonesia Robert Blake.

Joining Mr. Fishman at the event were Nyoman Sudiarta, EBC General Manager and Made Sudarma, EBC Head of Purchasing.

The Secretary of State has awarded the ACE each year since 1999 to recognize American companies that are leaders in responsible business conduct worldwide. The companies considered for the award must make important contributions to the growth and sustainable development of the local economies in which they operate.

It has been a true honor to receive the Secretary of States award and be recognized for our efforts, said EBC Founder and CEO Aaron Fishman. It has been our mission to enhance the lives of people within the Desa Ban community by creating a business that creates jobs where few had existed. We have been able to create a profitable business that empowers women through employment and education, helps farmers maximize their production, all while keeping the environment in mind.

EBC uses sustainable, eco-friendly business practices to process unshelled cashews, package and sell them to the domestic and international markets. The company is based in the rural village of Desa Ban, creating employment opportunities to the community where per capita income was US$2 per day. The company employs approximately 350 people, 85% of whom are previously unemployed women who have never before had an opportunity to earn a steady income.

In addition to its core cashew processing business, EBC has extended its brand to include an early learning center for young villagers and has launched a development platform that enables farmers to collect more products to generate greater income, thus providing them with an increased opportunity to rise out of poverty. The State Department noted that EBC has improved the quality of local agricultural production, modernized its methods and expanded services to address the health and education needs of over 800 children of company employees.

Members of KKRs private equity teams from Sydney and Singapore and the regional Public Affairs team volunteered their time and offered their expertise by developing EBCs financial model and business plan. As a direct result, EBC was able to raise $900,000 in 2013 and $1.5 million in 2014 in new financing, enabling it to build a second factory, purchase 30 additional cutting machines and 4 state-of-the-art processors, triple the size of its warehouse, hire 250 new employees, and commence exporting.

At its core, East Bali Cashews is similar to businesses in which KKR has invested  of course on a much smaller scale. It offers a great product to domestic and international markets while using sustainable and eco-friendly business practices. What makes them unique is that they do this as a start-up while focusing on creating employment and supporting education where it is most needed  an impoverished village in Bali where the average income is less than $2 per day, said Joseph Y. Bae, Member and Managing Partner of KKR Asia.

We are immensely grateful to our partners KKR and Impact Investment Exchange in Asia for first providing us with the support which put EBC on the path to sustainable business growth while generating greater social impact, said Mr. Fishman.

Without KKRs support and guidance, we would never have raised the capital at the pace we have done so. They completely accelerated our growth, added Mr. Fishman.

In 2014, EBC began exporting to Singapore, the companys first and most important export market in South-East Asia. EBC has subsequently opened sales channels in the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and New Zealand. East Bali Cashews can be purchased in the US on Amazon.

About East Bali Cashews

We're nuts about cashews. Our top-quality local, fresh and natural cashews are always gluten-free and vegan with zero cholesterol. When you eat them, you are enjoying more than a healthy superfood. You are helping us improve the social, economic and agricultural conditions of our home, Desa Ban, Indonesia, a village in the mountains of East Bali, a region which suffers from staggering poverty, lack of education and unforgiving terrain.

We are a young, energetic company who are revolutionizing the cashew trade by doing things differently. We built our factory in a central location with one purpose: to provide you with the freshest, most ethically sourced cashews possible while lifting up our community. We buy directly from local small-holder farmers and process the cashews in the village where they are grown before shipping them off for you to enjoy. We educate and empower farmers and their families, produce our own energy using cashew shell biomass, and we're launching new initiatives all the time to find new ways to grow together. We now employ 350 people in the region, 90% of whom are women who had few to no opportunities before we opened our doors.

Sustainability in all its forms and community empowerment is fundamental to our philosophy. Our commitment to a triple bottom line means that people and planet come first, and profit sustains and supports each. Together with our Ban family, we've worked hard to make it so that when you choose East Bali Cashews, you are receiving the highest quality, freshest cashews, made with natural ingredients and pure love. No Preservatives. No artificial ingredients. No BS. Just what we think are the best cashews in the world.

For additional information, please visit East Bali Cashews website at www.eastbalicashews.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160301007182/en/

East Bali Cashews

Jasper Franznick, (+62) 0361-7445164

[email protected]



Source: East Bali Cashews
SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE: TEL) today announced an increase in its share repurchase program and the election of Mr. Terrence Curtin, Mr. John Davidson and Mr. Mark Trudeau to its Board of Directors.

The company's Board of Directors has authorized an increase in its share repurchase program by an additional $1.0 billion. Any repurchases by the company will be made in accordance with applicable securities laws in the open market or in private transactions. The repurchase program is subject to business and market conditions, and may be commenced, suspended or discontinued at any time or from time to time without prior notice.

Additionally, shareholders approved the election of Mr. Terrence Curtin, Mr. John Davidson and Mr. Mark Trudeau to its Board of Directors during the TE Connectivity 2016 Annual General Meeting held on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

Mr. Curtin was appointed President of TE Connectivity (TE) in March 2015 as part of the Board of Director's succession planning. In his role as President, Mr. Curtin has responsibility for all of the company's Connectivity and Sensor businesses and mergers and acquisitions activities. Prior to his current role, Mr. Curtin served as President, Industrial Solutions segment which includes TE's Aerospace, Defense, Oil and Gas business; Energy business; and Industrial and Medical businesses. Prior to that he served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of TE and led the financial aspects of the company's separation from Tyco International, and subsequently led all financial aspects of TE Connectivity. Prior to TE, Curtin was the Vice President and Controller of the Electronics segment of Tyco International. Mr. Curtin is also a Certified Public Accountant. Mr. Curtin has a Bachelor's of Science degree in Accounting from Albright College, Pennsylvania, U.S., and is a member of its Board of Trustees.

Mr. Davidson is a Certified Public Accountant, with more than 30 years of leadership experience across multiple industries. Mr. Davidson's experience with complex accounting and financial issues combined with his knowledge of public reporting requirements and processes bring accounting and financial management insight to the Board.

Mr. Davidson held a variety of leadership roles at Tyco International Ltd. and Dell Inc. and financial leadership roles at Eastman Kodak Company. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation which oversees financial accounting and reporting standards setting processes for the United States. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Mr. Davidson meets the SEC definition of audit committee financial expert and would bring five years of public company directorship experience to the Board. Mr. Davidson holds a Bachelor's of Science degree in Accounting from St. John Fisher College and a MBA in Finance from the University of Rochester. Mr. Davidson is a director of DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc., Legg Mason, Inc. and Pentair plc.

Mr. Trudeau is the President, Chief Executive Officer and director of Mallinckrodt plc, a global specialty biopharmaceutical and imaging business that develops, manufactures, markets and distributes specialty pharmaceutical products and imaging agents. Mr. Trudeau held executive leadership positions at Covidien plc, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals LLC USA, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Abbott Laboratories. Mr. Trudeau brings experience as a public company executive officer and director, along with a record of executive leadership and global business expertise in many areas including strategy, operations and management. Mr. Trudeau holds a Bachelor's of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a MBA, both from the University of Michigan.

ABOUT TE CONNECTIVITY TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) is a $12 billion global technology leader. Our connectivity and sensor solutions are essential in today's increasingly connected world. We collaborate with engineers to transform their concepts into creations  redefining what's possible using intelligent, efficient and high-performing TE products and solutions proven in harsh environments. Our 72,000 people, including over 7,000 engineers, partner with customers in close to 150 countries across a wide range of industries. We believe EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS  www.TE.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110310/PH62357LOGO

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/te-connectivity-board-approves-additional-10-billion-share-repurchase-300229872.html

SOURCE TE Connectivity
Tropical Storm Roslyn to strengthen to hurricane near Mexican resorts MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Roslyn is expected to strengthen into a hurricane on Friday as it crawls toward tourist resorts on Mexico's Pacific coast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. Roslyn is expected to be a hurricane when it makes landfall by Saturday night or Sunday morning, the NHC said in its latest report. The storm, now some 180 miles (290 km) south-southwest of the Mexican port city Manzanillo, is... (continue reading...)



Mexican craft beer to gain ground despite soaring costs, says trade group MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's craft beer industry should grow by over 10% this year, the country's brewing association ACERMEX said on Friday, even as it faces sky-rocketing costs and competition from European-owned heavyweights. "The effects of the pandemic, added to the war between Russia and Ukraine ... have caused costs to skyrocket," ACERMEX official Jose Rosas told Reuters. "Most of the supplies for independent beer producers are... (continue reading...)



Facebook threatens to block news content over Canada's revenue-sharing bill By Ismail Shakil OTTAWA (Reuters) - Facebook warned on Friday that it may block sharing of news content on its platform in Canada over concerns about legislation that would compel digital platforms to pay news publishers. The Online News Act, introduced in April, laid out rules to force platforms like Meta's Facebook and Alphabet's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content, in a move similar to a... (continue reading...)



Gold Fields acquisition target Yamana assets valued at $6-$8 billion - CIBC By Nelson Banya (Reuters) - An independent evaluation has put Yamana Gold's mineral assets at between $6 billion and $8 billion, in line with South Africa's Gold Fields' initial offer price for the Canadian miner, circulars issued late Friday showed. Gold Fields announced a deal to acquire Yamana in an all-share transaction that valued the Canadian company at $6.7 billion on May 31. But investor concerns that the deal was... (continue reading...)



Sandy Hook families seek steep punitive damages after $1 billion Alex Jones verdict By Jack Queen (Reuters) -Families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting on Friday asked a Connecticut judge to order Alex Jones to pay hefty punitive damages on top of nearly $1 billion a jury said the conspiracy theorist owes them for falsely claiming the massacre was a hoax. The families said in the filing that the "historic" scale of Jones' wrongdoing in the case, his "utter lack of repentance" and clear intention to continue... (continue reading...)



More Reuters
Visitors talk outside a Boeing booth during the opening day of the Singapore Airshow at Changi Exhibition Center February 16, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Boeing Co (NYSE: BA) is studying options for an aircraft in the middle of the jet market, but faces a "tough business case," Marketing Vice President Randy Tinseth said.

Speaking at the Istat Americas air finance conference, he ruled out reviving the out-of-production 757 with new engines because of the previously high production cost.

The middle of the jet market is widely seen as a "grey space" sitting between workhorse narrow-body jets like the Boeing 737 or the larger and more capable wide-body jets.

Ron Bauer, vice president for fleet planning at United Airlines (NYSE: UAL), predicted demand for an aircraft with longer range than the 1980s-vintage 757, a narrow-body jet which has been popular with airlines for its high performance.

"We look at it as a 757 on steroids," he told the gathering of aircraft financiers.

Boeing is exploring whether to build a new plane, which industry sources say could be a small twin-aisle plane, rejig an existing model or do nothing.

"We are looking at a number of options...but as you look at those you have to have a business case that works," Tinseth said, adding "it is a tough business case".

Jeffrey Knittel, president of lessor CIT Transportation (NYSE: CIT), said he saw potential demand for 1-2,000 such jets, which could connect New York to secondary European destinations like Barcelona.

But industry experts are debating whether it is a market sweet spot.

"You are at risk that this airplane will start cannibalizing other segments," said Bert Van Leeuwen, a managing director at Germany's DVB Bank.

Airbus claims most of the market's needs can be met by demand for its single-aisle A321. Its own A310 twin-aisle jet in the 1980s was considered a flop.

"There isn't a clear target," said Bob Lange, senior vice president for market and product strategy.

As development costs soar, Boeing is looking for a design that can be built affordably and sold at the right price.

"If those things come together you have a business case that works and go forward. We are far from that point now," Tinseth said.

Experts say expanding the already revamped 737 would require costly engine and structural changes. Putting new engines on the wide-body 767 would compete in size terms with the very jet that was developed at huge cost to replace it, the 787.

Tinseth sought to reassure the industry any project would not clash with a busy slate of developments including new versions of the 737, 787 and 777 in the next 4-5 years.

"We have a lot of things on our plate which means that an airplane like this would come later rather than sooner."

(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Adrian Croft and Michale Perry)
By Nicolas Misculin and Jeb Blount

BUENOS AIRES/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Argentina's Pampa Energia SA offered Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA about $1.2 billion to buy its 67.2 percent stake in Petrobras Argentina SA, a source with direct knowledge of the bid said on Wednesday.

The board of Petrobras , as the Brazilian company is known, has approved exclusive talks with Pampa (NYSE: PAM) for up to 60 days. The discussions were announced earlier on Wednesday in a Brazilian securities filing.

Petrobras Argentina (NYSE: PER) is among the four largest producers of oil and gas in the South American country and has extensive downstream operations, including refining, petrochemicals and electricity generation.

A final deal should be complete within two months, said the source, who requested anonymity because a final accord has not been signed.

"There is an agreement on the figure," the source said. "I don't see anything cumbersome to work out. Now it's the work of lawyers."

Petrobras preferred shares rose 2.82 percent in Sao Paulo in afternoon trading to 5.46 reais, on track for its highest close in seven weeks. Pampa fell 3.94 percent, in Buenos Aires, its biggest one-day drop in six weeks, and Petrobras Argentina rose 2.55 percent.

The proposed transaction comes at a key time for Petrobras and Pampa. If completed, the sale will be one of the first major deals in Petrobras' eight-month old plan to sell $15.1 billion of assets by the end of 2016.

Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Aldemir Bendine has said the company needs to sell the assets to shore up its troubled finances and pay debt of about $130 billion, the world oil industry's largest.

For its part, Pampa would widen its range of energy assets, including natural gas and oil rights. It is the largest integrated power company in Argentina, generating about 8 percent of the nation's electricity.

The talks come only months after the election of Argentine President Mauricio Macri, who promised to open the country to international trade and investment after more than a decade of increasing state control. This has raised expectations that investment in Argentina's overstretched and underdeveloped energy industry will increase.

Pampa controls Transener, which operates Argentina's largest high-tension power transmission line, and also has a stake in Edenor, the nation's largest power distributor.

In a separate filing, Petrobras said its board had also approved a competitive process to sell rights to a group of onshore oil fields, and related assets, in Brazil.

(Additional reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Brad Haynes, and Priscila Jordao in Sao Paulo; Writing by Jeb Blount; Editing by W Simon and Lisa Von Ahn)
A labourer works at an assembly line in a factory of China Resources Snow Breweries Co., Ltd. in Lanzhou, Gansu province August 25, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer

By Donny Kwok and Martinne Geller

HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) - China Resources Beer has agreed to buy SABMiller's (NYSE: SAB) stake in their CR Snow venture for a less-than-expected $1.6 billion, removing another regulatory obstacle to the London-based brewer's takeover by Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: ABI).

Investors in China Resources Beer (Holdings) Co Ltd <0291.HK> toasted its bargain price for control of the world's No. 1-selling beer by volume, with shares in the Chinese state-backed company rising 25 percent to a five-year high.

Wednesday's deal to sell SABMiller's 49 percent CR Snow stake was widely anticipated but came sooner than expected for some. It is the latest in a series of divestments aimed at getting approval for SABMiller's $100 billion-plus takeover by AB InBev, the largest deal in consumer goods history.

AB InBev has already struck deals to sell SABMiller's stake in U.S. joint venture MillerCoors to Molson Coors Brewing (NYSE: TAP) and its Peroni and Grolsch brands to Japan's Asahi Group Holdings <2502.T>.

While the Snow divestiture shows AB InBev's determination to push ahead with its mega-deal, it came at a cost, analysts said.

"We think that the 49 percent stake could have attracted a higher price if offered to other brewers on the open market, but assume that ABI's negotiations with the Chinese regulators ... ended up precluding this course of action," Canaccord Genuity analysts, who had valued the stake at around $5 billion, said.

Jeremy Yeo, an analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia, said the deal was positive for CR Beer's shareholders as he had been expecting a price tag of $3 billion to $3.5 billion.

The deal, which would give China Resources full control of the largest brewer in China with a 30 percent market share, is contingent on the closing of the AB InBev-SABMiller deal, which is expected later this year.

China Resources plans to use a combination of funding options including debt and/or equity financing to pay cash.

Shares in China Resources lost ground this year after the stock was dropped from the main constituents in the Hang Seng Index following a regular review.

China Resources accounted for 23.3 percent of the beer market in China in 2014, with Tsingtao Brewery <600600.SS> <0168.HK> second at 18.4 percent, according to Euromonitor International.

China Resources Beer changed its name from China Resources Enterprise after it announced a plan in April to sell all its non-beer assets to controlling shareholder China Resources (Holdings) Co for $3.6 billion.

CR Snow had a net asset value of HK$27.2 billion ($3.5 billion) at the end of last year, the statement said. Its net profit fell 21 percent to HK$1.51 billion in 2014 from a year earlier.

Shares in AB InBev and SABMiller were little changed.

($1 = 7.7744 Hong Kong dollars)

(Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Alexander Smith)
Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addresses his supporters during a public appearance at a religious procession to mark Ashura in Beirut's southern suburbs October 24, 2015. REUTERS/Aziz Taher

By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hezbollah said on Tuesday that Lebanon had been pushed into a new phase of political conflict by Saudi Arabia but was not on the brink of civil war and its government of national unity should survive.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iranian-backed group, also stepped up criticism of Saudi Arabia, accusing it of directing car bombings in Lebanon, an arena for sectarian-tinged Iranian-Saudi rivalry that is escalating across the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia had no immediate response to the accusation.

Relations between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia have been plunged into crisis since Riyadh halted $3 billion in aid to the Lebanese army - a response to the Beirut government's failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

The row has raised concern for Lebanon's political and economic stability by exacerbating tensions between its Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and prompting concerns about the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese expatriates the Gulf.

Tensions spilled into the streets on Saturday night when a Saudi-owned TV station aired a show mocking Nasrallah that led the group's supporters to block roads with burning tires.

"It is clear that since ... the announcement to halt grants and other Saudi measures we have entered a new phase of political and media struggle which Saudi Arabia has escalated," Nasrallah said.

The aim of Saudi policy was to force Lebanese to confront Hezbollah to force it to retreat "even if this leads to strife in Lebanon, the collapse of the government in Lebanon, to a civil war in Lebanon", Nasrallah said. "Saudi doesn't care."

"We see that the continuation of the government is a national interest and we do not intend to resign from it."

Sunni-led Saudi Arabia wields big influence in Lebanon through its backing for Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri, a former prime minister who said on Tuesday that "riots, road blocking and tire burning" were attempts to provoke "chaos and discord". "We should not be dragged to any attempt of this sort," he said.

Tension between Hezbollah and Hariri spilled into armed conflict as recently as 2008, when a political dispute fueled by Saudi-Iranian rivalry triggered a brief civil war. Nasrallah said there would be no repeat of that conflict.

"We don't want to turn the table on anyone. We want this table to remain," he said in reference to dialogue between Hezbollah and Hariri's Future Movement. He said Hezbollah had nothing to do with recent street protests, telling his supporters there was "no need to go into the streets".

"I ask you not to go out," he said.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have advised citizens against travel to Beirut. Riyadh last week blacklisted four companies and three Lebanese men for having links to Hezbollah.

"REAL JIHAD"

Yemen's Gulf-backed government has accused Hezbollah of training and fighting alongside Houthi forces in that country's war and of planning attacks in Saudi Arabia. Iran and Hezbollah deny accusations they have provided military aid to the Houthis.

Even with regional upheaval, Lebanon has so far avoided the kind of all-out war under way in Yemen or Syria, where Hezbollah is fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. But political conflict has paralyzed the Lebanese government and the country has been without a head of state for nearly two years.

Underlining the depth of hostilities, Nasrallah described an anti-Saudi speech he gave last year after the start of its military intervention in Yemen as the "most honorable thing I have done in my life ...

"I feel this is the real jihad," he said, calling it "greater than the July war" - a reference to Hezbollah's month-long conflict with Israel in 2006.

He also accused Saudi Arabia of overseeing car bomb attacks in the predominantly Shi'ite southern suburbs of Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon. The last such attack in the southern suburbs was in November and claimed by Islamic State militants.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Security forces killed eight suspected Maoist militants, including five women, in a raid on a rebel training camp in central India on Tuesday, police said, breaking a six-month-long lull in violence linked to an insurgency that has raged for years.

Operating across a vast swath of eastern and central India, the guerrillas say they are fighting for the rights of peasants and landless.

Police raided the camp in the forests of Sukna, 250 miles from Raipur, the state capital of Chhattisgarh. The guerrillas opened fire and eight of them were killed in the ensuing two-hour gunbattle, police officer Santosh Singh told Reuters.

A rebel leader with a 500,000 rupee ($7,300) bounty on his head was among those killed. The militant leader was wanted for planting explosive devices in schools and government buildings, police said.

There were no police casualties. Over 500 policemen have been killed in the last five years in guerrilla attacks, government data shows.

(Reporting by Rupam Jain, Jatindra Das; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Dana Halawi

BEIRUT (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Syrian refugee Fatmeh fled to safety in Lebanon in 2011 after militants raided the family home, beat her up and tried to rape her. But her problems were far from over.

Two months after the attack Fatmeh - then aged about 12 - developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). "Her mental illness became obvious when she started walking down the streets while screaming and beating herself," said Lebanese psychotherapist Charelle Ghazal.

"She had regular nightmares of someone trying to rape her. She put knives under her pillow to protect herself. She was awake all night and slept during the day when her family was awake."

More than a million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the start of the conflict five years ago, placing a huge strain on health services in the small Mediterranean country.

Up to one fifth of refugees may be suffering from mental health disorders, but gaps in Lebanon's mostly private mental health services and a major shortage of mental health professionals mean many refugees' needs are not being met.

"The public health system in Lebanon is under tremendous pressure and the specialized services that are currently offered for Syrians in need of mental healthcare are not enough," said Rabih Chammay, head of Lebanon's mental health program at the Ministry of Public Health.

There is no data on the number of Syrian refugees with mental health problems, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 15 to 20 percent of people in a humanitarian crisis suffer mild or moderate disorders, suggesting 200,000 Syrians in Lebanon could be affected.

REPERCUSSIONS

Witnessing atrocities and losing one's loved ones, home, livelihood, friends, community and social standing can all create or worsen mental health problems.

The daily stresses of living as a refugee - lack of access to basic necessities and limited work and education opportunities - add to the pressure.

Common symptoms include anxiety, depression, withdrawal, insomnia, nightmares, tearfulness and despair.

Experts warned that a failure to address mental health problems would have social and economic repercussions for both Lebanon and Syria.

"If mental health conditions in children and adolescents are left untreated this will lead to a 'lost generation' which would have a longterm impact on Syria's future after the war," said Mohamed Elshazly, a regional mental health consultant.

The International Medical Corps (IMC), which provides psychosocial support for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, said people with untreated mental health issues could gradually lose their ability to function in society.

Children may drop out of school and fail to acquire skills needed to prosper in life. Adults may find it difficult to hold down a job, form healthy relationships or care for their children. This puts a strain on not only the individual but also the family.

If problems remain unaddressed, people's lives can spiral out of control, resulting in homelessness and increasing the risk of physical health problems, injury, violence and abuse, the IMC said.

FEAR OF STIGMA

Mental health services in Lebanon are mostly private so refugees rely heavily on NGOs for mental health care.

The government is now overhauling mental health care and integrating it into primary health care. Chammay said this would allow general medical doctors to offer mental health services and refer complex cases to specialists.

The Health Ministry, the WHO and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF have set up a taskforce of some 60 agencies which is training doctors, nurses and social workers to provide refugees with mental health services.

Psychotherapist Anne Marie Ghossain said one problem facing NGOs is that many refugees do not ask for help because they do not realize they need it. Others may be reluctant to do so when they have no money and are struggling to feed their families.

Ghossain cited the case of Mohamed, a seven-year-old Syrian who was having serious problems adjusting to life as a refugee, and was therefore failing at school. Therapy was helping, but his family stopped his treatment because they could not afford transport to the clinic.

Psychotherapists working with NGOs tend to treat refugees by focusing on changing troublesome behaviors, feelings and thoughts. But Ghossain said some refugees need longterm psychoanalytic therapy, which is difficult to provide given the shortage of specialists and the fact refugees often move around.

The stigma surrounding mental health is another hurdle. Many people are reluctant to attend mental health centers for fear of being seen as "mad". This is one reason why integrating such services into general health provision is important.

In Fatmeh's case, her parents initially took her to religious leaders to read Koranic verses for her. This is a common response in some communities where beliefs that mental illnesses have supernatural causes lead people to seek help from religious or traditional healers.

"When we offered our support, they resisted at first because they feared that their daughter would be seen by others as crazy if she takes pills," said psychotherapist Ghazal.

But Elshazly, the IMC's former regional mental health adviser, said the scale of suffering among Syrian refugees was reducing the stigma around mental health issues.

"Since so many people are affected, these problems have been voiced more and more. This is why there is a gradual change in attitudes," he added.

"For example, we are seeing people from rural areas of Syria who would not previously have admitted to mental health problems and who are now seeking help."

He said it was also widely recognized that humanitarian crises created an opportunity to push policy makers to focus resources and attention on improving mental health services.

Although Lebanon was already addressing gaps in its mental health services before the refugee influx, the crisis has accelerated reforms.

"Because disasters and conflicts lead to an increased incidence of mental health disorders, and because they expose the weak mental health systems in these countries, we get what we call a 'policy window'," Elshazly said.

"People tend to listen more when you talk about mental health during disasters and conflicts."

(Additional reporting by Emma Batha, editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
Uganda's President and ruling party National Resistance Movement (NRM) presidential candidate Yoweri Museveni addresses a campaign rally ahead of the February 18 presidential election, in the capital Kampala in this February 11, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/J

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) - One of the candidates who sought to end Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's thirty years in power in last month's presidential vote filed a petition on Tuesday seeking to nullify Museveni's victory due to widespread irregularities.

Museveni, 71, who came to power in 1986 and is one of Africa's longest-serving rulers, won the Feb. 18 vote with 60 percent of the votes.

Former prime minister Amama Mbabazi, Museveni's ally-turned-challenger, won less than two percent of the vote, but has accused Uganda's security services of intimidating candidates and has questioned how the votes were tallied.

Opposition candidate Kizza Besigye, who won 35 percent of the vote but has dismissed the tally as fraudulent, missed Tuesday's deadline, with officials from his party saying Besigye's repeated detentions had made it impossible to mount a challenge.

Mbabazi's lawyer, Severino Twinobusingye said that delays in getting ballot material to constituencies, which delayed the voting process for hours in some places, improper supervision of voting, and voter-bribery had all tainted the results.

"The offences committed and the non-compliance with the law substantially affected the result," he said, adding the court should annul the results and hold "another election."

The European Union's observer mission said the vote had been conducted in an "intimidating" atmosphere, while the United States has voiced concerns about Besigye's frequent detentions.

Under Uganda's electoral laws, a loser in a presidential election has ten days from the day the results are announced to lodge a challenge in Uganda's Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Registrar, Tom Chemutai, confirmed that Mbabazi had filed a petition, and said the chief justice would form a panel to hear the petition and give a verdict within 30 days.

Deputy government spokesperson, Shaban Bantariza said they welcomed Mbabazi's court challenge but did not comment on the specific assertions.

Francis Mwijukye, a senior official from Besigye's party, said that Ugandan security personnel had repeatedly blocked Besigye from leaving his home or receiving visits from lawyers and party officials in recent days, impeding the party's ability to build its challenge.

"We were failed by the state... We couldn't take a petition to the supreme court," he said.

Besigye, who has challenged Museveni and lost in three previous elections, also challenged the election results in 2001 and 2006. Although justices agreed that there had been vote rigging, they said it had not been enough to affect the overall result.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Edith Honan and Richard Balmforth)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's finance minister will miss a Wednesday deadline set by police to answer questions on his role in the setting up of a spy unit at the revenue service because he was busy preparing the country's budget, his lawyers said.

South Africa's rand currency fell nearly 4 percent, its biggest daily loss since 2011, after the minister, Pravin Gordhan, said on Friday there were attempts to discredit him and the integrity of the Treasury through the probe.

The rand fell further after South African media speculated that Gordhan had fallen out of favor with President Jacob Zuma. The president on Monday rejected claims that he was at war with Gordhan, helping the currency to recover.

In a letter from his lawyers, Gordhan said he had received the questions from the elite police unit Hawks at a time when he was preparing his budget speech, which he delivered on Feb. 24.

The police are investigating the spy unit at the South African Revenue Service (SARS) for conducting illegal surveillance on taxpayers. Gordhan headed SARS when the unit was set up but says he has no case to answer.

Asked in parliament whether he was feuding with Zuma, Gordhan said there was no conflict with the president.

"How do you have a war with your employer? We talk every day, work every day," Gordhan said.

"I'm still here and the key is to ensure that we create the right climate ... in order that we can say to the 55 million people in South Africa that we are working for their interests."

The letter from his lawyers said Gordhan would respond to the police questions at a later date, "once he has properly examined the questions and ascertained what information ... he is able to provide".

"On what authority do you rely on directing these questions to the Honourable Minister? Are you investigating any offence? If so, what is it?" the letter asked.

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko told reporters on Wednesday that the questions put to Gordhan did not mean the finance minister was under investigation for any crime or that he would be charged.

(Reporting by Mfuneko Toyana in Johannesburg and Wendell Roelf in Cape Town and; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Gareth Jones)
A sign is seen in front of the Exxonmobil Baton Rouge Refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, November 6, 2015. REUTERS/Lee Celano

OSLO (Reuters) - Oil majors Statoil (NYSE: STL) and ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) have been awarded six options to search for oil and gas offshore Ireland in the country's latest licensing round, Statoil said on Wednesday.

The two firms each hold 50-percent stakes in all the acreage. Statoil will have four operatorships, while ExxonMobil will have the remaining two.

Work on the licenses is for the time being limited to carrying out seismic surveys during 2016 and 2017, with the option to drill at a later stage depending on the analysis of the data, Statoil said.

"This supports Statoil's exploration strategy of early access at scale and enables us to apply the exploration knowledge and experience we have gained globally and specifically on the conjugate margin offshore Newfoundland," the company added.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche)
An employee works under a Toyota Motor Corp logo at the company's showroom in Tokyo, Japan February 5, 2016. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T>(NYSE: TM) said on Wednesday it is expanding by 331,200 cars worldwide its recall involving potentially defective Takata Corp <7312.T> air bag parts.

Toyota earlier on Wednesday said the new recalls totaled 356,000 globally but later lowered the figure.

An estimated 29 million Takata air bag inflators have been recalled in the United States in more than 19 million vehicles because the inflators can activate with too much force, sending potentially deadly metal shards into the passenger compartment.

All the vehicle Toyota added to the recalls are equipped with a Takata-made dual-stage front passenger air bag inflator.

Toyota said the new recalls increased the number of Toyota vehicles with Takata air bags worldwide to 15,314,000, including 3,156,000 in the United States.

U.S.-registered vehicles account for 198,000 of the freshly recalled vehicles. The total in North America is 231,000 vehicles.

The new recall in the United States will include the 2008 Corolla and Corolla Matrix models as well as 2008 to 2010 model years Lexus SC 430 vehicles.

In Europe, 86,000 vehicles will be added to the existing recalls of Avensis and Lexus SC430 models. Model years were not available.

Added recalls in Japan number 3,000 and include Avensis and Lexus SC 430 models made from May 2007 to July 2010.

There will be another 220 vehicles recalled in Asia.

In other regions, Toyota is adding another 11,000 vehicles to the recalls, including Avensis, Corolla, Corolla Matrix and Lexus SC 430 models.

Reuters has reported that U.S. auto safety regulators are examining whether an additional 70 million to 90 million Takata air bag inflators should be recalled.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Trott)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A World Food Programme (WFP) ship carrying humanitarian aid offloaded its cargo in Yemen on Wednesday, the United Nations said, after it was diverted to Saudi Arabia last month because it was carrying communications equipment.

Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition in a war against Iran-allied Houthi rebels and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in an effort to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.

The Mainport Cedar, which the United Nations said was carrying a cargo of humanitarian relief supplies bound for the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida, was diverted by the coalition to the Saudi port of Jizan on Feb. 11.

"The World Food Programme confirms that the Mainport Cedar has offloaded its cargo at Yemen's Hodeida port today," said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.

"The vessel was carrying interagency cargo that includes canned tuna and medical supplies. It had also been carrying information technology equipment that was left behind in Jizan to complete paperwork to allow it into Aden for the U.N. humanitarian hub," Haq said.

Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, the Saudi-led coalition's spokesman, said in February that the communications equipment was similar to that used by the Houthis and had not been declared by the WFP.

Yemen relies almost solely on imports, but the conflict has slowed shipments to a trickle after Saudi Arabia imposed a naval blockade to stop weapons being imported.

United Nations aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the U.N. Security Council earlier this month that a U.N. verification and inspection mechanism for shipments had now been launched in a bid to boost commercial imports. O'Brien is due to address the council again on Yemen on Thursday.

More than 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians, in Yemen since Saudi-led forces began military operations in March last year after the Houthis advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden.

(This version of the story was corrected throughout to show that the ship was diverted in February, not earlier this month.)

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by G Crosse)
UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549





FORM 8-K





Current Report

Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934

Date of Report (Date of earliest event reported) March 1, 2016





Lakeland Financial Corporation

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)





Commission File Number: 000-11487









Indiana 35-1559596

(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) (I.R.S. Employer Identification Number)





202 East Center Street

Warsaw, Indiana 46581-1387

(Address of principal executive offices, including zip code)





(574) 267-6144

(Registrant's telephone number, including area code)





N/A

(Former name or former address, if changed since last report)





Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions ( see General Instruction A.2 below):





Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425)

Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12)

Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange

Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b))

Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange

Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c))





Item 5.02 Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.

Adoption of Change in Control Agreements.

The Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors of the Company approved a revised form Change in Control Agreement (the Form Agreement) effective March 1, 2016, which was entered into between the Company and each of David M. Findlay, Kevin L. Deardorff, Eric H. Ottinger, Michael E. Gavin, Lisa M. ONeill, and Kristin L. Pruitt (the Executives). The Form Agreement contains the terms described below. The Form Agreement supersedes all previous agreements providing for the payment of benefits upon a change in control between the Company and the Executives.

Pursuant to the terms of the Form Agreement, in the event of a termination of an Executives employment with the Company, which occurs within the 6 months prior to or the 24 months following a change in control, by the Company other than for cause, death, or disability, or by the Executive for good reason, the Executive will be eligible to receive the following benefits:

1. A lump sum severance payment in the amount of 200% times the sum of: (i) the greater of the Executives then-current annual base salary or the Executives annual base salary as of the date one day prior to the change in control, and (ii) the greater of Executives then-current target annual performance bonus or the amount of the average annual performance bonus paid (or payable) to Executive for the most recently completed three fiscal years of the Company.

2. Continuation of medical, dental and vision benefits at the Companys cost, to the extent the Executive (or any of the Executives dependents) is eligible for, and elects, continued coverage under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), for a period not to exceed the Executives eligibility for continuation of coverage under COBRA.

All payments and benefits provided under the Form Agreement are strictly conditioned upon the execution of a general release and waiver of all claims against the Company.

In exchange for the payments and benefits provided under the Form Agreement, each Executive has agreed to be bound by a one year restrictive covenant, which will be effective throughout the geographic area within a 60-mile radius from the location of any office of the Company operating at the time of the Executives termination. The restrictive covenant will prohibit the Executive from competing, in any way, with the Company for the one year period following the Executives termination of employment.

The foregoing description of the Form Agreement is qualified in its entirety by reference to the full text of the Form Agreement, a copy of which is attached as Exhibit 10.1 (Form of Change in Control Agreement) to this Current Report on Form 8-K and is incorporated herein by reference.

Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits.

(d) Exhibits . The following exhibits are filed herewith:

10.1 Form of Change in Control Agreements









SIGNATURES





Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized.









Lakeland Financial Corporation









Dated: March 1, 2016 By: /s/ David M. Findlay

David M. Findlay

President and Chief Executive Officer









LAKELAND FINANCIAL CORPORATION

Change in Control Agreement

This Change in Control Agreement ( Agreement ) is made and entered into as of March 1, 2016 (the  Effective Date ), by and between LAKELAND FINANCIAL CORPORATION (together with any successor thereto, the  Company ) and [__________] (the  Executive , and together with the Company, the  Parties ).

RECITALS

A. The Board of Directors of the Company (the  Board ) has determined that it is in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders to assure that the Company and its Affiliates (defined below) will have the continued dedication of the Executive, notwithstanding the possibility, threat or occurrence of a Change in Control (as defined below) of the Company.

B. The Executive is currently serving as an Executive of the Company or one of its Affiliates.

C. The Company desires to continue to employ the Executive as an Executive of the Company or one of its Affiliates and the Executive is willing to continue such employment.

D. The Company recognizes that circumstances may arise in which a change of control of the Company through acquisition or otherwise may occur thereby causing uncertainty of employment without regard to the competence or past contributions of the Executive, which uncertainty may result in the loss of valuable services of the Executive, and the Company and the Executive wish to provide reasonable security to the Executive against changes in the employment relationship in the event of any such change in control.

AGREEMENTS

In consideration of the foregoing and the mutual promises and covenants of the Parties set forth in this Agreement, and for other good and valuable consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby acknowledged, the Parties, intending to be legally bound, hereby expressly covenant and agree as follows:

1. Term . The term of this Agreement shall commence on the Effective Date and shall continue for a period of twenty four (24) months (the  Term ). This Agreement shall automatically extend for twelve (12) months on first anniversary of the Effective Date and each anniversary thereafter, unless terminated by either Party by written notice to that effect delivered to the other not fewer than three (3) months prior to such anniversary date; provided, however, that if timely notice of termination of this Agreement is given but a Change in Control occurs at any time prior to the date that is six (6) months after the expiration of the Term, then such notice of termination of this Agreement shall be considered ineffective. Notwithstanding any provision of this Agreement to the contrary, if a Change in Control occurs during the Term (or within twelve (12) months after the end of the Term, as described above), this Agreement shall remain in effect for the twenty four (24) months immediately following the Change in Control and shall then terminate.

2. Payment of Severance Amount . If the Executive incurs a Termination (defined below) within the Covered Period (defined below), then the Company shall provide the Executive the following benefits:

(a) On the first Company payroll date that occurs on or following the sixtieth (60th) day following the Termination Date, the Executive shall receive the Severance Amount, with such amount to be paid in a single lumps sum; provided however, that if the Termination Date is more than 60 days prior to the end of the then current calendar year, then such payment shall be made on the first Company payroll date that occurs on or following the eighth (8 th ) day following the Companys receipt of executed Release (without a subsequent revocation).

(b) On the first Company payroll date that occurs on or following the Executives Termination, the Company shall pay the Executive a lump sum payment in an amount equal to the Minimum Benefits (defined below).

(c) The Executives rights following a termination of employment with the Company and its Affiliates for any reason with respect to any benefits, incentives or awards provided to the Executive pursuant to the terms of any plan, program or arrangement sponsored or maintained by the Company or an Affiliate, whether tax-qualified or not, which are not specifically addressed herein, shall be subject to the terms of such plan, program or arrangement, and this Agreement shall have no effect upon such terms except as specifically provided herein.

(d) Except as specifically provided herein, the Company shall have no further obligations to the Executive under this Agreement following the Executives termination of employment for any reason.

3. Medical, Dental and Vision Benefits . If the Executive incurs a Termination within the Covered Period, then to the extent that the Executive or any of the Executives dependents may be covered under the terms of any medical, dental or vision plans of the Company (or any Affiliate) for active employees immediately prior to the Termination, then, for as long as Executive is eligible for and elects coverage under the health care continuation rules of COBRA (defined below), the Company shall provide at the Companys cost, the Executive and those dependents with coverage equivalent to the coverage received while the Executive was employed with the Company; provided , however , that such coverage shall be provided only to the extent that it does not result in any additional tax or other penalty being imposed on the Company or any Affiliate for failing to comply with applicable federal rules. The coverages under this Section 3 may be procured directly by the Company (or any Affiliate, if appropriate) apart from and outside of the terms of the respective plans, provided that the Executive and the Executives dependents comply with all of the terms of the substitute medical, dental or vision plans, and provided , further , that the cost to the Company shall not exceed the cost for continued COBRA coverage. In the event the Executive or any of the Executives dependents is or becomes eligible for coverage under the terms of any other medical and/or dental and/or vision plan of a subsequent employer with plan benefits that are comparable to Company (or any Affiliate) plan benefits, the Companys obligations under this Section 3 shall cease with respect to the eligible Executive and/or dependents. The Executive and the Executives dependents must notify the Company (or any Affiliate) of any subsequent employment and provide information regarding medical and/or dental and/or vision coverage available.

2

4. Release . Notwithstanding any provision of this Agreement to the contrary, no payments or benefits shall be owed to the Executive under Section 2 or 3 ( except for payments and benefits described in Section 2(b) and 2(c) ) unless the Executive executes and delivers to the Company a Release (defined below) within forty-five (45) days following the Termination Date, and any applicable revocation period has expired prior to the sixtieth (60th) day following the Termination Date.

5. Golden Parachute Payment Adjustment .

(a) If the value of any payment or other benefit the Executive would receive from the Company or otherwise in connection with a Change in Control (the  Benefit ) would (i) constitute a parachute payment within the meaning of Section 280G of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the  Code ), and (ii) but for this sentence, be subject to the excise tax imposed by Section 4999 of the Code (the  Excise Tax ), then the Benefit shall be reduced to the Reduced Amount. The  Reduced Amount  shall be either (i) the largest portion of the Benefit that would result in no portion of the Benefit being subject to the Excise Tax or (ii) the largest portion, up to and including the total, of the Benefit, whichever amount, after taking into account all applicable federal, state and local employment taxes, income taxes and the Excise Tax (all computed at the highest applicable marginal rate), results in the Executives receipt, on an after-tax basis, of the greater amount of the Benefit notwithstanding that all or some portion of the Benefit may be subject to the Excise Tax. If a reduction in payments or benefits constituting parachute payments is necessary so that the Benefit equals the Reduced Amount, reduction shall occur in the following order unless the Executive elects in writing a different order (provided, however, that such election shall be subject to the Companys approval if made on or after the date on which the event that triggers the Benefit occurs and to the extent that such election does not violate Section 409A): reduction of cash payments; cancellation of accelerated vesting of stock awards; reduction of employee benefits. In the event that accelerated vesting of stock awards is to be reduced, such accelerated vesting shall be cancelled in the reverse order of the grant date of the Executives stock awards unless the Executive elects in writing a different order for cancellation.

(b) The accounting firm engaged by the Company for general audit purposes as of the day prior to the effective date of the Change in Control shall perform any calculations necessary in connection with this Section 5 . If the accounting firm so engaged by the Company is serving as accountant or auditor for the individual, entity or group effecting the Change in Control, the Company shall appoint a nationally recognized accounting firm to make the determinations required hereunder. The Company shall bear all expenses with respect to the determinations by such accounting firm required to be made hereunder.

(c) The accounting firm engaged to make the determinations hereunder shall provide its calculations, together with detailed supporting documentation, to the Executive and the Company within fifteen (15) calendar days after the date on which the Executives right to a Benefit is triggered (if requested at that time by the Executive or the Company) or such other time as requested by the Executive or the Company. If the accounting firm determines that no Excise Tax is payable with respect to a Benefit, it shall furnish the Executive and the Company with an opinion reasonably acceptable to the Executive that no Excise Tax will be imposed with respect to such Benefit. Any good faith determinations of the accounting firm made hereunder shall be final, binding and conclusive upon the Executive and the Company, except as set forth below.

3

(d) If, notwithstanding any reduction described in this Section 5 , the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (the  IRS ) determines that the Executive is liable for the Excise Tax as a result of the receipt of the payment of benefits as described above, then the Executive shall be obligated to pay back to the Company, within thirty (30) days after a final IRS determination, or, in the event the Executive challenges the final IRS determination, within thirty (30) days after a final judicial determination, a portion of the payment equal to the Repayment Amount. The  Repayment Amount  with respect to the payment of benefits shall be the smallest amount, if any, required to be paid to the Company so that the Executives net after-tax proceeds with respect to any payment of benefits (after taking into account the payment of the Excise Tax and all other applicable taxes imposed on such payment) are maximized. The Repayment Amount with respect to the payment of benefits shall be zero dollars ($0) if a Repayment Amount of more than zero dollars ($0) would not result in the Executives net after-tax proceeds with respect to the payment of such benefits being maximized. If the Excise Tax is not eliminated pursuant to this Section 5 , the Executive shall pay the Excise Tax.

(e) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Section 5 , if (i) there is a reduction in the payment of benefits as described in this Section 5 , (ii) the IRS later determines that the Executive is liable for the Excise Tax, the payment of which would result in the maximization of the Executives net after-tax proceeds (calculated as if the Executives benefits had not previously been reduced), and (iii) the Executive pays the Excise Tax, then the Company shall pay to the Executive those benefits that were reduced pursuant to Section 5 contemporaneously or as soon as administratively possible after the Executive pays the Excise Tax so that the Executives net after-tax proceeds with respect to the payment of benefits is maximized.

(f) The Parties hereby recognize that the restrictive covenants under Section 6 have value that is equivalent in amount to some or all of the Severance Amount (and potentially other termination benefits) and that such value shall be recognized in the Code Section 280G calculations contemplated hereunder. The Independent Advisor shall make the determination of the actual fair market value of the restrictive covenants under Section 6 at the time of the Change in Control.

6. Restrictive Covenants .

(a) Confidential Information . The Executive acknowledges that, during the course of the Executives employment with the Company, the Executive may produce and have access to confidential and/or proprietary, non-public information concerning the Company or its Affiliates, including marketing materials, financial and other information concerning customers and prospective customers, customer lists, records, data, trade secrets, proprietary business information, pricing and profitability information and policies, strategic planning, commitments, plans, procedures, litigation, pending litigation and other information not generally available to the public (collectively,  Confidential Information ). The Executive shall not directly or indirectly use, disclose, copy or make lists of Confidential Information for the benefit of anyone other than the Company, either during or after the Executives employment with the Company, except to the extent that such information is or thereafter becomes lawfully available from public sources, or such disclosure is authorized in writing by the Company, required by law or any competent administrative agency or judicial authority, or otherwise as reasonably necessary or appropriate in connection with the performance by the Executive of the Executives duties to the Company or an Affiliate. If the Executive receives a subpoena or other court order or is otherwise required by law to provide information to a governmental authority or other person concerning the activities of the Company or any of its Affiliates, or the Executives activities in connection with the business of the Company or any of its Affiliates, the Executive shall immediately notify the Company of such subpoena, court order or other requirement and deliver forthwith to the Company a copy thereof and any attachments and non-privileged correspondence related thereto. The Executive shall take reasonable precautions to protect against the inadvertent disclosure of Confidential Information. The Executive shall abide by the Companys reasonable policies, as in effect from time to time, respecting avoidance of interests conflicting with those of the Company and its Affiliates. In this regard, the Executive shall not directly or indirectly render services to any person or entity where the Executives service would involve the use or disclosure of Confidential Information.

4

(b) Documents and Property .

(i) All records, files, documents and other materials or copies thereof relating to the business of the Company or its Affiliates that the Executive prepares, receives or uses shall be and remain the sole property of the Company and, other than in connection with the performance by the Executive of the Executives duties to the Company or an Affiliate, shall not be removed from the premises of the Company or any of its Affiliates without the Companys prior written connect, and shall be promptly returned to the Company upon the Executives termination of employment for any reason, together with all copies (including copies or recordings in electronic form), abstracts, notes or reproductions of any kind made from or about the records, files, documents or other materials.

(ii) The Executive acknowledges that the Executives access to and permission to use the Companys and any Affiliates computer systems, networks and equipment, and all Company and Affiliate information contained therein, is restricted to legitimate business purposes on behalf of the Company. Any other access to or use of such systems, network, equipment and information is without authorization and is prohibited except that Executive may use a Company-provided computer for reasonable personal use in accordance with the Companys technology use policies, as may be in effect from time to time. The restrictions contained in this Section 6 (b) extend to any personal computers or other electronic devices of the Executive that are used for business purposes relating to the Company or any Affiliate. The Executive shall not transfer any Company or Affiliate information to any personal computer or other electronic device that is not otherwise used for any business purpose relating to the Company. Upon the termination of the Executives employment with the Company for any reason, the Executives authorization to access and permission to use the Companys and any Affiliates computer systems, networks and equipment, and any Company and Affiliate information contained therein, shall cease.

(c) Non-Competition and Non-Solicitation . The Parties have agreed that the primary service area of the Companys lending and deposit taking functions in which the Executive will actively participate extends separately to an area that encompasses a sixty (60)-mile radius from the location of any office of the Company operating at the time of the termination of the Executives employment (the  Restrictive Area ). Therefore, as an essential ingredient of and in consideration of this Agreement and the Executives employment with the Company and any Affiliate, the Executive shall not, during the Executives employment with the Company and any Affiliate and for a period of twelve (12) months immediately following the termination of the Executives employment for any reason, provided that such termination results in the Executives receipt of the Severance Amount hereunder (the  Restrictive Period ), shall not directly or indirectly do any of the following (all of which are collectively referred to in this Agreement as the  Restrictive Covenant ):

5

(i) Engage or invest in, own, manage, operate, finance, control, participate in the ownership, management, operation or control of, be employed by, associated with or in any manner connected with, serve as a director, officer or consultant to, lend the Executives name or any similar name to, lend the Executives credit to or render services or advice to, in each case in the capacity that the Executive provided services to the Company or any Affiliate, any person, firm, partnership, corporation or trust that owns, operates or is in the process of forming a Financial Institution (defined below) with an office located, or to be located at an address identified in a filing with any regulatory authority, within the Restrictive Area; provided , however , that the ownership by the Executive of shares of the capital stock of any Financial Institution, which shares are listed on a securities exchange or quoted on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System and which do not represent more than five (5) percent (5%) of the institutions outstanding capital stock, shall not violate any terms of this Agreement;

(ii) Either for the Executive or any Financial Institution: (A) induce or attempt to induce any employee of the Company or any of its Affiliates with whom the Executive had significant contact to leave the employ of the Company or any of its Affiliates; (B) in any way interfere with the relationship between the Company or any of its Affiliates and any employee of the Company or any of its Affiliates with whom the Executive had significant contact; or (C) induce or attempt to induce any customer, supplier, licensee or business relation of the Company or any of its Affiliates with whom the Executive had significant contact to cease doing business with the Company or any of its Affiliates or in any way interfere with the relationship between the Company or any of its Affiliates and their respective customers, suppliers, licensees or business relations with whom the Executive had significant contact; or

(iii) Either for the Executive or any Financial Institution, solicit the business of any person or entity known to the Executive to be a customer of the Company or any of its Affiliates, where the Executive had significant contact with such person or entity, with respect to products, activities or services that compete in whole or in part with the products, activities or services of the Company or any of its Affiliates.

(d) Works Made for Hire Provisions . The Parties acknowledge that all work performed by the Executive for the Company or any of its Affiliates shall be deemed a work made for hire. The Company shall at all times own and have exclusive right, title and interest in and to all Confidential Information and Inventions (defined below), and the Company shall retain the exclusive right to license, sell, transfer and otherwise use and dispose of the same. Any and all enhancements of the technology of the Company or any of its Affiliates that are developed by the Executive shall be the exclusive property of the Company. The Executive hereby assigns to the Company any right, title and interest in and to all Inventions that the Executive may have, by law or equity, without additional consideration of any kind whatsoever from the Company or any of its Affiliates. The Executive shall execute and deliver any instruments or documents and do all other things (including the giving of testimony) requested by the Company (both during and after the termination of the Executives employment with the Company) in order to vest more fully in the Company or any of its Affiliates all ownership rights in the Inventions (including obtaining patent, copyright or trademark protection therefore in the United States and/or foreign countries).

6

(e) Remedies for Breach of Restrictive Covenant . The Executive has reviewed the provisions of this Agreement with legal counsel, or has been given adequate opportunity to seek such counsel, and the Executive acknowledges that the covenants contained in this Section 6 are reasonable with respect to their duration, geographical area and scope. The Executive further acknowledges that the restrictions contained in this Section 6 are reasonable and necessary for the protection of the legitimate business interests of the Company, that they create no undue hardships, that any violation of these restrictions would cause substantial injury to the Company and such interests, and that such restrictions were a material inducement to the Company to enter into this Agreement. In the event of any violation or threatened violation of these restrictions, the Company, in addition to and not in limitation of, any other rights, remedies or damages available to the Company under this Agreement or otherwise at law or in equity, shall be entitled to preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to prevent or restrain any such violation by the Executive and any and all persons directly or indirectly acting for or with the Executive, as the case may be. If the Executive violates the Restrictive Covenant and the Company brings legal action for injunctive or other relief, the Company shall not, as a result of the time involved in obtaining such relief, be deprived of the benefit of the full period of the Restrictive Covenant. Accordingly, the Restrictive Covenant shall be deemed to have the duration specified herein computed from the date the relief is granted but reduced by the time between the period when the Restrictive Period began to run and the date of the first violation of the Restrictive Covenant by the Executive.

(f) Other Agreements . In the event of the existence of another agreement between the Parties that (i) is in effect during the Restrictive Period, and (ii) contains restrictive covenants that conflict with any of the provisions of this Section 6 , then the more restrictive of such provisions from the two (2) agreements shall control for the period during which both agreements would otherwise be in effect.

7. Removal from any Boards and Positions . Unless otherwise agreed to in writing by the Parties at the time of Termination, upon a Termination, Employee shall be deemed to resign (i) if a member, from the Board and the board of directors of any Affiliate and any other board to which Employee has been appointed or nominated by or on behalf of Employer or an Affiliate, (ii) from each position with Employer and any Affiliate, including as an officer of Employer or an Affiliate and (iii) as a fiduciary of any employee benefit plan of Employer and any Affiliate.

8. Notices . Notices and all other communications under this Agreement shall be in writing and shall be deemed given when mailed by United States registered or certified mail, return receipt requested, postage prepaid, addressed as follows:

If to the Company:

Lakeland Financial Corporation

Attention: Chairman of the Board

202 East Center Street

P.O. Box 1387

Warsaw, IN 46580





If to the Executive: the Executives address on file with the Company





7

or to such other address as either Party may furnish to the other in writing, except that notices of changes of address shall be effective only upon receipt.

9. Applicable Law . All questions concerning the construction, validity and interpretation of this Agreement and the performance of the obligations imposed by this Agreement shall be governed by the internal laws of the State of Indiana applicable to agreements made and wholly to be performed in such state without regard to conflicts of law provisions of any jurisdiction, and any court action commenced to enforce this Agreement shall have as its sole and exclusive venue the County of Kosciusko, Indiana.

10. Entire Agreement . This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the Parties concerning the subject matter hereof, and supersedes all prior negotiations, undertakings, agreements and arrangements with respect thereto, whether written or oral. If a court of competent jurisdiction determines that any provision of this Agreement is invalid or unenforceable, then the invalidity or unenforceability of that provision shall not affect the validity or enforceability of any other provision of this Agreement and all other provisions shall remain in full force and effect. The various covenants and provisions of this Agreement are intended to be severable and to constitute independent and distinct binding obligations. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, if the scope of any covenant contained in this Agreement is too broad to permit enforcement to its full extent, such covenant shall be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law, and such scope may be judicially modified accordingly.

11. Withholding of Taxes . The Company may withhold from any benefits payable under this Agreement all federal, state, city and other taxes as may be required pursuant to any law, governmental regulation or ruling.

12. Not an Employment Agreement . Nothing in this Agreement shall give the Executive any rights (or impose any obligations) to continued employment by the Company or any Affiliate, nor shall it give the Company any rights (or impose any obligations) for the continued performance of duties by the Executive for the Company or any Affiliate.

13. No Assignment . The Executives rights to receive benefits under this Agreement shall not be assignable or transferable whether by pledge, creation of a security interest or otherwise, other than a transfer by will or by the laws of descent or distribution. In the event of any attempted assignment or transfer contrary to this Section 13 , the Company shall have no liability to pay any amount so attempted to be assigned or transferred. This Agreement shall inure to the benefit of and be enforceable by the Executives personal or legal representatives, executors, administrators, successors, heirs, distributees, devisees and legatees.

14. Successors . This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the Company, its successors and assigns. The Company shall not affect the sale or other disposition of all or substantially all of its assets unless either (a) the person or entity acquiring the assets, or a substantial portion of the assets, expressly assumes by an instrument in writing all duties and obligations of the Company under this Agreement, or (b) the Company provides, through the establishment of a separate reserve, for the payment in full of all amounts that are or may reasonably be expected to become payable to the Executive under this Agreement.

15. Legal Fees . All reasonable legal fees and related expenses (including the costs of experts, evidence and counsel) paid or incurred by the Executive pursuant to any dispute or question of interpretation relating to this Agreement shall be paid or reimbursed by the Company if the Executive is successful on the merits pursuant to a legal judgment or arbitration.

8

16. Amendment . This Agreement may not be amended or modified except by written agreement signed by the Parties.

17. Code Section 409A .

(a) To the extent any provision of this Agreement or action by the Company would subject the Executive to liability for interest or additional taxes under Code Section 409A, it shall be deemed null and void, to the extent permitted by law and deemed advisable by the Company. It is intended that this Agreement will comply with, or be exempt from, Code Section 409A, and this Agreement shall be administered accordingly and interpreted and construed on a basis consistent with such intent. Notwithstanding any provision of this Agreement to the contrary, no termination or similar payments or benefits shall be payable hereunder on account of the Executives termination of employment unless such termination constitutes a separation from service within the meaning of Code Section 409A. For purposes of Code Section 409A, all installment payments of deferred compensation made hereunder, or pursuant to another plan or arrangement, shall be deemed to be separate payments. To the extent any reimbursements or in-kind benefit payments under this Agreement are subject to Code Section 409A, such reimbursements and in-kind benefit payments shall be made in accordance with Treasury Regulation Section 1.409A-3(i)(1)(iv). This Agreement may be amended to the extent necessary (including retroactively) by the Company to avoid the application of taxes or interest under Code Section 409A, while maintaining to the maximum extent practicable the original intent of this Agreement. This Section 17 shall not be construed as a guarantee of any particular tax effect for the Executives benefits under this Agreement and the Company does not guarantee that any such benefits will satisfy the provisions of Code Section 409A or any other provision of the Code.

(b) Notwithstanding any provision of this Agreement to the contrary, if the Executive is determined to be a Specified Employee (defined below) as of the Termination Date, then, to the extent required pursuant to Code Section 409A, payments due under this Agreement that are deemed to be deferred compensation shall be subject to a six (6)-month delay following the Termination Date; and all delayed payments shall be accumulated and paid in a lump-sum payment as of the first day of the seventh month following the Termination Date (or, if earlier, as of the Executives death), with all such delayed payments being credited with interest (compounded monthly) for this period of delay equal to the prime rate in effect on the first day of such six (6)-month period. Any portion of the benefits hereunder that were not otherwise due to be paid during the six (6)-month period following the Termination Date shall be paid to the Executive in accordance with the payment schedule established herein.

18. Construction . In this Agreement, unless otherwise stated, the following uses apply: (a) references to a statute shall refer to the statute and any amendments and any successor statutes, and to all regulations promulgated under or implementing the statute, as amended, or its successors, as in effect at the relevant time; (b) in computing periods from a specified date to a later specified date, the words from and commencing on (and the like) mean from and including,  and the words to, until and ending on (and the like) mean to, but excluding; (c) references to a governmental or quasi-governmental agency, authority or instrumentality shall also refer to a regulatory body that succeeds to the functions of the agency, authority or instrumentality; (d) indications of time of day shall be based upon the time applicable to the location of the principal headquarters of the Company; (e) the words include, includes and including means include, without limitation, includes, without limitation and including, without limitation, respectively; (f) all references to preambles, recitals, sections and exhibits are to preambles, recitals, sections and exhibits in or to this Agreement unless otherwise specified; (g) the words hereof, herein, hereto, hereby, hereunder, and other words of similar import refer to this Agreement as a whole (including exhibits); (h) any reference to a document or set of documents, and the rights and obligations of the parties under any such documents, means such document or documents as amended from time to time, and any and all modifications, extensions, renewals, substitutions or replacements thereof; (i) all words used shall be construed to be of such gender or number as the circumstances and context require; (j) the captions and headings of preambles, recitals, sections and exhibits appearing in or attached to this Agreement have been inserted solely for convenience of reference and shall not be considered a part of this Agreement, nor shall any of them affect the meaning or interpretation of this Agreement or any of its provisions; and (k) all accounting terms not specifically defined herein shall be construed in accordance with GAAP.

9

19. Definitions . As used throughout this Agreement, the terms defined in this Section 19 have the meanings given below.

(a)  Affiliate  means each company, corporation, partnership, Financial Institution or other entity that, directly or indirectly, is controlled by, controls, or is under common control with, the Company, where control means (i) the ownership of fifty-one percent (51%) or more of the Voting Securities or other voting or equity interests of any corporation, partnership, joint venture or other business entity or (ii) the possession, directly or indirectly, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of such corporation, partnership, joint venture or other business entity.

(b)  Agreement  means this Change in Control Agreement, made and entered into as of the Effective Date, by and between the Parties.

(c)  Base Compensation  means the amount equal to the sum of (i) the greater of Executives then-current annual salary or the Executives annual salary as of the date one (1) day prior to the Change in Control and (ii) the greater of Executives target annual performance bonus or the amount of the average annual performance bonus paid (or payable) to Executive for the most recently completed three fiscal years of the Company.

(d)  Board  means the Board of Directors of the Company.

(e)  Change in Control  means:

(i) The date of the consummation of the acquisition by any person (as such term is defined in Section 13(d) and 14(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended ( 1934 Act )) of beneficial ownership (within the meaning of Rule 13d-3 promulgated under the 1934 Act) of fifty percent (50%) or more of the combined voting power of the then outstanding voting securities of Company; or

(ii) During any twelve (12) month period, the individuals who are members of the board of directors of the Company (the  Company Board ) cease for any reason to constitute a majority of the Company Board, unless the election, or nomination for election by the Company stockholders, of a new Company director was approved by a vote of a majority of the Company Board, and such new director shall, for purposes of this Plan, be considered as a member of the Company Board; or

10

(iii) The date of the consummation by the Company of (i) a merger or consolidation of the Company, if the Company stockholders immediately before such merger or consolidation, do not, as a result of such merger or consolidation, own directly or indirectly, more than fifty percent (50%) of the combined voting power of the then outstanding voting securities of the entity resulting from such merger or consolidation, in substantially the same proportion as their ownership of the combined voting power of the voting securities of the Company outstanding immediately before such merger or consolidation or (ii) a complete liquidation or dissolution or an agreement for the sale or other disposition of all or substantially all of the assets of the Company.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, a Change in Control shall not be deemed to occur solely because fifty percent (50%) or more of the combined voting power of the then outstanding securities of the Company is acquired by (i) a trustee or other fiduciary holding securities under one or more employee benefit plans maintained for employees of the entity or (ii) any corporation which, immediately prior to such acquisition, is owned directly or indirectly by the stockholders of the Company in substantially the same proportion as their ownership of stock of the Company immediately prior to such acquisition.

In the event that any benefit under the Plan constitutes Deferred Compensation (as defined in Section 409A) and the settlement of or distribution of benefits under this Plan is to be triggered by a Change in Control, then such settlement or distribution shall be subject to the event constituting the Change in Control also constituting a change in control event permitted under Section 409A.

(f)  COBRA  means the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.

(g)  Code  means the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

(h)  Company  means Lakeland Financial Corporation.

(i)  Confidential Information  has the meaning set forth in Section 6(a) .

(j)  Covered Period  means the period beginning six (6) months prior to a Change in Control and ending twenty four (24) months after the Change in Control.

(k)  Effective Date  has the meaning set forth in the preamble hereto.

(l)  Executive  has the meaning set forth in the preamble hereto.

(m)  Financial Institution  means a bank, savings bank, savings and loan association, credit union or similar financial institution.

(n)  Good Reason  means the occurrence of any one (1) of the following events, unless the Executive agrees in writing that such event shall not constitute Good Reason:

11

(i) an adverse change in the nature, scope or status of the Executives position, authorities or duties from those in effect immediately following the Effective Date, or if applicable and greater, immediately prior to the Change in Control; provided that, in the event that the Company is a publicly traded company immediately prior to the Change in Control, and the Executive does not have similar public company duties following the Change in Control with the successor company (e.g., no longer the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, general counsel, etc., of a public company), then such change shall constitute an adverse change in duties;

(ii) a reduction in the Executives base annual salary or bonus opportunity, or a material reduction in the Executives aggregate benefits or other compensation plans in effect immediately following the Effective Date, or if applicable and greater, immediately prior to the Change in Control;

(iii) a relocation of the Executives primary place of employment of more than twenty-five (25) miles from the Executives primary place of employment immediately following the Effective Date, or if applicable, immediately prior to the Change in Control or a requirement that the Executive engage in travel that is materially greater than immediately following the Effective Date, or if applicable, immediately prior to the Change In Control;

(iv) failure by an acquirer to assume this Agreement at the time of the Change in Control; or

(v) a material breach by the Company of this Agreement.

Notwithstanding any provision in this definition to the contrary, prior to the Executives Termination for Good Reason, the Executive must give the Company written notice of the existence of any condition set forth in clause (i)  (v) immediately above within ninety (90) days of its initial existence and the Company shall have thirty (30) days from the date of such notice in which to cure the condition giving rise to Good Reason, if curable. If, during such thirty (30)-day period, the Company cures the condition giving rise to Good Reason, the condition shall not constitute Good Reason. Further notwithstanding any provision in this definition to the contrary, in order to constitute a Termination for Good Reason, such Termination must occur within twenty-four (24) months of the initial existence of the applicable condition.

(o)  Inventions  means all systems, procedures, techniques, manuals, databases, plans, lists, inventions, trade secrets, copyrights, patents, trademarks, discoveries, innovations, concepts, ideas and software conceived, compiled or developed by the Executive in the course of the Executives employment with the Company or any of its Affiliates and/or comprised, in whole or part, of Confidential Information. Notwithstanding the foregoing sentence, Inventions shall not include: (i) any inventions independently developed by the Executive and not derived, in whole or part, from any Confidential Information or (ii) any invention made by the Executive prior to the Executives exposure to any Confidential Information.

(p)  Minimum Benefits  means, as applicable, the following:

(i) Executives earned but unpaid annual salary for the period ending on the Termination Date;

12

(ii) Executives earned but unpaid annual performance bonus, if any, for any completed fiscal year preceding the Termination Date; provided , however , that Executive shall not be entitled to any Incentive Bonus in the event of a Termination for Cause.

(iii) Executives accrued but unpaid vacation pay for the period ending on the Termination Date;

(iv) Executives unreimbursed business expenses and all other items earned and owed to Executive by the Company through and including the Termination Date, provided that all required submissions for expense reimbursement are made in accordance with the Companys expense reimbursement policy and within fifteen (15) days following the Termination Date; and

(q)  Parties  means the Company and the Executive.

(r)  Release  means a general release and waiver substantially in the form attached hereto as Exhibit A.

(s)  Restrictive Area  has the meaning set forth in Section 6(c) .

(t)  Restrictive Covenant  has the meaning set forth in Section 6(c) .

(u)  Restrictive Period  has the meaning set forth in Section 6(c) .

(v)  Severance Amount  means an amount equal to two hundred percent 200% of the Executives Base Compensation.

(w)  Specified Employee  means any person who is a key employee (as defined in Code Section 416(i) without regard to paragraph (5) thereof), as determined by the Company based upon the twelve (12)-month period ending on each December 31st (such twelve (12)-month period is referred to below as the identification period). If the Executive is determined to be a key employee, the Executive shall be treated as a Specified Employee for purposes of this Agreement during the twelve (12)-month period that begins on the April 1 following the close of the identification period. For purposes of determining whether the Executive is a key employee, compensation means Executives W-2 compensation as reported by the Company for a particular calendar year.

(x)  Term  has the meaning set forth in Section 1 .

(y)  Termination  means termination of the Executives employment with the Company during the Term either:

(i) by the Company, other than a Termination for Cause or a termination as a result of the Executives death or disability; or

(ii) by the Executive for Good Reason.

(z)  Termination Date  means the date of termination of the Executives employment with the Company and all of its Affiliates.

13

(aa)  Termination for Cause  means only a termination by the Company as a result of:

(i) the Executives fraud, misappropriation of or intentional material damage to the property or business of the Company,

(ii) a willful and material failure by the Executive that is not remedied within thirty (30) days after receipt of written notice of such failure from the Board to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of Executives regular position;

(iii) a material failure by the Executive to comply with the Companys policies, rules, or regulations; provided that such policies, rules, or regulations are uniformly applied and enforced; or.

(iv) The Executives conviction of, or plea of nolo contendere to, a crime of embezzlement or fraud , or any felony under the laws of the United States or any state thereof .

Any determination of Cause under this Agreement shall be made by resolution adopted by a vote of the Board at a meeting called and held for that purpose. The Executive shall be provided with reasonable notice of such meeting and shall be given the opportunity to be heard, with the presence of counsel, prior to the vote being taken by the Board.

20. Survival . If the Company elects not to extend the Term of this Agreement pursuant to Section 1 , the provisions of Section 6 shall not survive the termination of this Agreement. In the case of any other termination of this Agreement, the provisions of Section 6 shall survive the termination of this Agreement.





(remainder of page intentionally left blank)

14

IN WITNESS WHEREOF , the Parties have executed this Agreement as of the Effective Date.

Lakeland Financial Corporation [ _________ ]

By:

(Signature)

Name: (Address)

Its:

(Address)





15

EXHIBIT A

Release and Waiver of Claims

This Release and Waiver of Claims ( Agreement ) is made and entered into by and between Lakeland Financial Corporation (the  Employer ), and [______________] ( Employee , and together with the Employer, the  Parties ).

Recitals

A. The Parties desire to settle fully and amicably all issues between them, including any issues arising out of Employees employment with the Employer and the termination of that employment.

B. Employee and the Employer are parties to that certain Change in Control Agreement, made and entered into on March 1, 2016, as amended (the  Change in Control Agreement ).

Agreements

For and in consideration of the mutual promises contained herein, and for other good and sufficient consideration, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, the Parties, intending to be legally bound, hereby agree as follows:

1. Termination of Employment. Employees employment with the Employer shall be terminated effective as of the close of business on [_______________] (the  Termination Date ).

2. Compensation and Benefits. Subject to the terms of this Agreement, the Employer shall compensate Employee under this Agreement as follows (collectively, the  Severance Payments ):

(a) Severance Amount . [_______________].

(b) Accrued Salary and Vacation . Employee shall be entitled to a lump sum payment in an amount equal to Employees earned but unpaid annual base salary and accrued but unused vacation pay for the period ending on the Termination Date, with such payment to be made on the first payroll date following the Termination Date.

(c) COBRA Benefits . Employee and Employees qualified beneficiaries, as applicable, shall be entitled to continuation of group health coverage following the Termination Date under the Employers group health plan, to the extent required under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986, at Employers cost as described in Section 4 of the Change in Control Agreement.

(d) Employee Acknowledgement . Employee acknowledges that, subject to fulfillment of all obligations provided for herein, Employee has been fully compensated by the Employer, including under all applicable laws, and that nothing further is owed to Employee with respect to wages, bonuses, severance, other compensation, or benefits. Employee further acknowledges that the Severance Payments (other than (b) and (c) immediately above) are consideration for Employees promises contained in this Agreement, and that the Severance Payments are above and beyond any wages, bonuses, severance, other compensation, or benefits to which Employee is entitled from the Employer under the terms of Employees employment or under any other contract or law that Employee would be entitled to absent execution of this Agreement.

A-1

(e) Withholding . The Severance Payments shall be subject to all taxes and other payroll deductions required by law.

3. Termination of Benefits. Except as provided in Section 2 above or as may be required by law, Employees participation in all employee benefit (pension and welfare) and compensation plans of the Employer shall cease as of the Termination Date. Nothing contained herein shall limit or otherwise impair Employees right to receive pension or similar benefit payments that are vested as of the Termination Date under any applicable tax-qualified pension or other plans, pursuant to the terms of the applicable plan.

4. Release of Claims and Waiver of Rights. Employee, on Employees own behalf and that of Employees heirs, executors, attorneys, administrators, successors, and assigns, fully and forever releases and discharges the Employer, its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, and assigns, and its and their directors, officers, trustees, employees, agents, and shareholders, both in their individual and official capacities, and the current and former trustees and administrators of each retirement and other benefit plan applicable to the employees and former employees of the Employer, both in their official and individual capacities (the  Releasees ), from all liability, claims, demands, actions, and causes of action Employee now has, may have had, or may ever have, whether currently known or unknown, relating to acts or omissions as of or prior to Employees execution of this Agreement (the  Release and Waiver ), including liability, claims, demands, actions, and causes of action:

(a) Relating to Employees employment or other association with the Employer, or the termination of such employment;

(b) Relating to wages, bonuses, other compensation, or benefits;

(c) Relating to any employment or change in control contract;

(d) Relating to any employment law, including

(i) The United States and State of Minnesota Constitutions,

(ii) The Indiana Civil Rights Act,

(iii) The Civil Rights Act of 1964,

(iv) The Civil Rights Act of 1991,

(v) The Equal Pay Act,

(vi) The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974,

(vii) The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (the  ADEA ),

(viii) The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act,

(ix) The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act,

(x) The Americans with Disabilities Act,

(xi) The Family and Medical Leave Act,

(xii) The Occupational Safety and Health Act,

(xiii) The Fair Labor Standards Act,

(xiv) The National Labor Relations Act,

(xv) The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act,

(xvi) The Rehabilitation Act,

(xvii) The Fair Credit Reporting Act,

(xviii) Executive Order 11246,

(xix) Executive Order 11141, and

(xx) Each other federal, state, and local statute, ordinance, and regulation relating to employment;

(e) Relating to any right of payment for disability;

A-2

(f) Relating to any statutory or contractual right of payment; and

(g) For relief on the basis of any alleged tort or breach of contract under the common law of the State of Indiana or any other state, including defamation, intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, promissory estoppel, and negligence.

Employee acknowledges that statutes exist that render null and void releases and waivers of any claims, rights, demands, liabilities, actions, and causes of action that are unknown to the releasing or waiving party at the time of execution of the release and waiver. Employee waives, surrenders, and shall forego any protection to which Employee would otherwise be entitled by virtue of the existence of any such statutes in any jurisdiction, including the State of Indiana.

5. Exclusions from General Release. Excluded from the Release and Waiver are any claims or rights arising pursuant to this Agreement and any claims or rights that cannot be waived by law, as well as Employees right to file a charge with an administrative agency or participate in any agency investigation, including with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employee is, however, waiving the right to recover any money in connection with a charge or investigation and the right to recover any money in connection with a charge filed by any other individual or by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or any other federal or state agency, except where such waivers are prohibited by law.

6. Covenant Not to Sue.

(a) A covenant not to sue is a legal term that means Employee promises not to file a lawsuit in court. It is different from the Release and Waiver. Besides waiving and releasing the claims covered by Section 4 above, Employee shall never sue the Releasees in any forum for any reason covered by the Release and Waiver. Notwithstanding this covenant not to sue, Employee may bring a claim against the Employer to enforce this Agreement or to challenge the validity of this Agreement under the ADEA. If Employee sues any of the Releasees in violation of this Agreement, Employee shall be liable to them for their reasonable attorneys fees and costs (including the costs of experts, evidence, and counsel) and other litigation costs incurred in defending against Employees suit. In addition, if Employee sues any of the Releasees in violation of this Agreement, the Employer can require Employee to return all but a sum of $100 of the Severance Payments, which sum is, by itself, adequate consideration for the promises and covenants in this Agreement. In that event, the Employer shall have no obligation to make any further Severance Payments.

(b) If Employee has previously filed any lawsuit against any of the Releasees, Employee shall immediately take all necessary steps and execute all necessary documents to withdraw or dismiss such lawsuit to the extent Employees agreement to withdraw, dismiss, or not file a lawsuit would not be a violation of any applicable law or regulation.

7. Restrictive Covenants. Section 6 of the Change in Control Agreement (entitled Restrictive Covenants), shall continue in full force and effect as if fully restated herein.

8. No Admissions. The Employer denies that any of the Releasees have taken any improper action against Employee, and this Agreement shall not be admissible in any proceeding as evidence of improper action by any of the Releasees.

9. Confidentiality of Agreement. Employee shall keep the existence and the terms of this Agreement confidential, except for Employees immediate family members and Employees legal and tax advisors in connection with services related hereto and except as may be required by law or in connection with the preparation of tax returns.

A-3

10. Non-Waiver. The Employers waiver of a breach of this Agreement by Employee shall not be construed or operate as a waiver of any subsequent breach by Employee of the same or of any other provision of this Agreement.

11. Governing Law. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed under the laws of the State of Indiana, without regard to principles of conflict of laws (whether in the State of Indiana or any other jurisdiction) that would cause the application of the laws of any jurisdiction other than the State of Indiana.

12. Entire Agreement. This Agreement sets forth the entire agreement of the Parties regarding the subject matter hereof, and shall be final and binding as to all claims that have been or could have been advanced on behalf of Employee pursuant to any claim arising out of or related in any way to Employees employment with the Employer and the termination of that employment. This Agreement may not be amended, modified, altered, or changed except by express written consent of the Parties.

13. Counterparts. This Agreement may be executed in any number of counterparts, each of which shall be deemed an original, but all of which together shall constitute one and the same Agreement.

14. Successors. This Agreement shall be binding upon and inure to the benefit of the Employer, its successors and assigns.

15. Enforcement. The provisions of this Agreement shall be regarded as divisible and separable and if any provision should be declared invalid or unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions shall not be affected thereby. If the scope of any restriction or requirement contained in this Agreement is too broad to permit enforcement of such restriction or requirement to its full extent, then such restriction or requirement shall be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law, and Employee hereby consents that any court of competent jurisdiction may so modify such scope in any proceeding brought to enforce such restriction or requirement. In addition, Employee stipulates that breach by Employee of restrictions and requirements under this Agreement will cause irreparable damage to the Releasees in the case of Employees breach and that the Employer would not have entered into this Agreement without Employee binding Employee to these restrictions and requirements. In the event of Employees breach of this Agreement, in addition to any other remedies the Employer may have, and without bond and without prejudice to any other rights and remedies that the Employer may have for Employees breach of this Agreement, the Employer shall be relieved of any obligation to provide Severance Payments and shall be entitled to an injunction to prevent or restrain any such violation by Employee and all persons directly or indirectly acting for or with Employee.

16. Construction. In this Agreement, unless otherwise stated, the following uses apply: (a) references to a statute or law refer to the statute or law and any amendments and any successor statutes or laws, and to all regulations promulgated under or implementing the statute or law, as amended, or its successors, as in effect at the relevant time; (b) in computing periods from a specified date to a later specified date, the words from and commencing on (and the like) mean from and including,  and the words to, until, and ending on (and the like) mean to, and including; (c) references to a governmental or quasi-governmental agency, authority, or instrumentality also refer to a regulatory body that succeeds to the functions of the agency, authority, or instrumentality; (d) the words include, includes, and including (and the like) mean include, without limitation, includes, without limitation, and including, without limitation, (and the like) respectively; (e) the words hereof, herein, hereto, hereby, (and the like) refer to this Agreement as a whole; (f) any reference to a document or set of documents, and the rights and obligations of the parties under any such documents, means such document or documents as amended from time to time, and all modifications, extensions, renewals, substitutions, or replacements thereof; (g) all words used shall be construed to be of such gender or number as the circumstances and context require; and (h) the captions and headings of preambles, recitals, sections, and exhibits appearing in or attached to this Agreement have been inserted solely for convenience of reference and shall not be considered a part of this Agreement, nor shall any of them affect the meaning or interpretation of this Agreement or any of its provisions.

A-4

17. Representations by Employee. Employee acknowledges each of the following:

(a) Employee is aware that this Agreement includes a release of all known and unknown claims.

(b) Employee is legally competent to execute this Agreement and Employee has not relied on any statements or explanations made by the Employer or its attorneys not otherwise set forth herein.

(c) Any modifications, material or otherwise, made to this Agreement shall not restart or affect in any manner the original 21-day consideration period.

(d) Employee has been offered at least 21 days to consider this Agreement.

(e) Employee has been afforded the opportunity to be advised by legal counsel regarding the terms of this Agreement, including the Release and Waiver, and to negotiate such terms.

(f) Employee, without coercion of any kind, freely, knowingly, and voluntarily enters into this Agreement.

(g) Employee has the right to rescind the Release and Waiver by written notice to the Employer within 15 calendar days after Employee has signed this Agreement, and the Release and Waiver shall not become effective or enforceable until 15 calendar days after Employee has signed this Agreement, as evidenced by the date set forth below Employees signature on the signature page hereto. Any such rescission must be in writing and delivered by hand, or sent by U.S. Mail within such 15-day period, to the attention of [_______________]. If delivered by U.S. Mail, the rescission must be: (i) postmarked within the 15-day period and (ii) sent by certified mail, return receipt requested.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Parties have executed this Agreement as of dates set forth below their respective signatures below.

Lakeland Financial Corporation Employee By: [Name] [Title] Date: [Name] Date:












Three armed men confronted the shopkeeper in the carpark outside the Sharland Liquor Centre in Manurewa on Sunday night.

Two teens have been arrested in relation to the aggravated robbery of a liquor store in South Auckland where a man was stabbed in the back on Sunday.

On Thursday police said a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, both males, have been jointly charged with aggravated robbery, aggravated injury and theft.

A 19-year-old was arrested on the same charges shortly after the incident.

Police were called to the Sharland Liquor Centre in Manurewa about 9.50pm on Sunday, after three armed men confronted the shopkeeper in the carpark outside his store.

READ MORE:

* Manurewa liquor store owner stabbed in back during South Auckland robbery

* Boot fall woman dies from injuries

* Attempted murder charge after Auckland stabbing

The trio pulled out knives and chased him, before stabbing him in the back. He was taken to Middlemore Hospital hospital with moderate injuries.

A small amount of alcohol was stolen from the store.

Acting Detective Inspector Fa'a Va'aelua said he hoped the arrests would offer some degree of comfort to the victim of this crime who remains in hospital in a stable condition and is recovering well from his stab wound.

At the liquor store on Sharland Ave, locals have been leaving flowers and asking after stabbed shopkeeper Sarabjit Singh all week.



Singh's brother Paramjit said the family had received "heaps" of support.



"We really appreciate the community and we really appreciate the people across the road [who chased away the offenders]. We're very lucky."



Paramjit Singh said his brother had developed a lung infection following the incident but that was now clearing and he was doing well.
Prices have risen at the latest global dairy auction, but may not have a big impact on Fonterra's farmgate milk price, with a revised figure expected next week.

World dairy prices rose at auction overnight, ending a series of price drops, and there may be more gains ahead.

Prices at the GlobalDairyTrade auction were up 1.4 per cent to an average of US$2253 a tonne, after four consecutive falls including a 2.8 per cent slip at the last auction two weeks ago.

"This auction has broken a series of ducks. In the next little while the auction volume is declining as we come to the end of the season," ASB analyst Nathan Penny said.

GLOBALDAIRYTRADE The 1.4 per cent increase ends a series of price drops.

"Chinese import volumes are better, their inventories are running down so that should support prices."

READ MORE:

* Dairy farmers under pressure as prices fall again

* Too much milk, too little thought - expert

* How low can dairy go?

New Zealand's major export, whole milk powder (WMP), rose 5.5 per cent to US$1974.

AgriHQ dairy analyst Susan Kilsby said a sustained price recovery was some way off. Global milk production was still expanding and stocks of dairy commodities were building.

"China is currently a bright spot, as this market is expected to import a little more milk powder this year as imported product is substantially cheaper than producing milk in China.

"But China alone is unlikely to soak up all the excess milk that will become available this year - hence a sustained price recovery is not expected to happen quickly," Kilsby said.

Based on the result, the AgriHQ farmgate milk price lifted 9c to $4.14 per kilogram of milksolids, almost on a par with Fonterra's price set in January of $4.15.

Fonterra is due to set a revised price next week.

Penny said ASB was still picking a price of $3.90, rising to $6 in 2016-17.

Federated Farmers dairy chairman Andrew Hoggard said he did not think today's result would have much of a positive impact on the farmgate price.

Asked whether he was concerned Rabobank was reported on Tuesday as saying it would not support all farmers through the downturn, Hoggard said banks also had businesses to run.

"Even at an $8.40 payout some people were making very little profit," he said.

His concern was with younger people such as sharemilkers, who were the future of the industry.

"Banks need to consider that these people are the stars of the future," Hoggard said.

He criticised some of the lending that had gone on in recent years. Some banks had failed to carry out checks and balances and believed that capital value would save farmers.

"When people bought properties, they needed to check if there was enough water, how new environmental rules would impact, whether there was an effluent pond - the whole sustainable bit," Hoggard said.

In the next two weeks Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers were touring the country putting on a series of seminars to help farmers.

Prices for milk fat-based products dropped. The price index for anhydrous milkfat (AMF) dropped by 8.3 per cent while the butter price index lost 0.5 per cent. Cheddar prices were also weaker with its index down 0.7 per cent.

There were 160 bidders trading 21,880 metric tonnes of product.
Hayes Common owners Brent and Lisa Quarrie say they want to work with residents to find a compromise over the eatery's opening hours.

An eatery on the corner of a residential street has riled neighbours who are concerned about sleep.

Riverside cafe Hydro in Jellicoe Drive, Hamilton East, has been transformed into Hayes Common, a restaurant, bar and cafe. It is due to open on March 11.

But neighbours have raised concerns about how the business will impact their quiet street.

KELLY HODEL/FAIRFAX NZ Hayes Common, a new bar and cafe, in Jellicoe Dr is opening soon and some neighbours have expressed concern about the potential problems about noise noise.

A community meeting was held on Tuesday night at the premises and about 50 people attended.

Read more: Hydro Cafe in Hamilton reimagined

Owners Brent and Lisa Quarrie, who also own The Riverside Kitchen in Victoria St, called the meeting to address the issues residents had.

It was the second meeting that has been held about the eatery.

Trouble began when the Quarries applied for a liquor licence. The hours that were initially applied for, 8am to 1am, caused concern that a pub was going on the corner where a cafe has been operating.

There have been 13 formal objections to the liquor licence.

Jellicoe Dr resident Brad Izorsum, who has lived in the street all his life, did not formally object to the licence but is not happy about the restaurant near his home.

Izorsum said the last time the site operated as a bar, more than 10 years ago, it was bad and he fears the new business will be a lot worse.

"I've already experienced what it's like  the real issue is that this a quiet neighbourhood and when that place first opened up  the noise. These are old houses, the noise rises.

"There's just constant noise all day and all night."

Izorsum is a shift worker and suffered from sleep deprivation.

There were also issues about parking, with customers choosing to park in front of residents' driveways, he said.

He battled with the business owners in 2003. He said he complained to the council about the noise and the parking but nothing was ever done.

He resorted to what he described as "psychological warfare".

"I tried to make it look like a gang house."

He painted his gates camouflage and painted his own broken yellow lines in front of his home.

If noise from the new business got that bad he would consider doing something similar, he said.

Lisa Quarrie said there had been some misconception around what they were actually planning to do with site, with some people thinking the emphasis was on the bar.

The plan is to operate a more up-market community eatery, Lisa Quarrie said; they weren't marketing to rowdy students.

They had been trying to work with those residents who had expressed concern and wished to find a compromise.

Opening hours had been shortened as had the liquor licence hours they had applied for.

The reason behind applying for a liquor licence until 1am was to allow for flexibility if a special event was held on the odd occasion, Lisa Quarrie said.

The goal was to find a compromise, she said.

The hours they have applied for are: Sunday to Thursday, 8am to 11pm and Friday and Saturday, 8am to midnight.

There will be procedures in place about how staff will deal with loud customers to ensure as little disturbance to neighbours as possible, she said.

They would aim to close the kitchen around 10pm.

"We've poured our heart and soul into this place and it's important that it is successful and beneficial to the neighbourhood."

The bar will open with a three-month temporary licence.
An elderly man's body has been found at St Paul's Apartments in Mulgrave St, in Thorndon, central Wellington.

A building manager concerned about odour knocked on the door of an upmarket Wellington apartment, got no answer, and opened the door to find an elderly man's "badly decomposed" body.

Police believe the man may have lain dead for almost two months.

The discovery at the St Paul's apartment complex in Mulgrave St, near Parliament, was made on Wednesday after another resident concerned about a smell raised the alarm with the building's body corporate.

Do you know more about this? Email newstips@stuff.co.nz

Body corporate chairman Tim Truebridge said: "They identified which apartment it had been coming from and, after receiving no response from knocking on the door, the manager opened the door and found what they found."

READ MORE:

* Decomposed body the second found in Wellington council flat

* Body lay in flat for months

* Neighbour tried to convince wife to give up husband's body

Wellington police confirmed the man, 78, may have died in early January.

Senior Sergeant Jason McCarthy said the man's body was found "badly decomposed". Police were not treating the death as suspicious.

Officers were trying to notify next of kin. "At this stage, police have not been able to find any."

Truebridge said it was extremely sad that the man's death had gone unnoticed for so long.

"It's ironic, isn't it, that we live closer together than ever, but we know less. I think it's unfortunate, but that's the world we live in."

He did not know who the man was, and was unsure what would happen next to his apartment.

One resident believed she'd met the dead man, who had a New Zealand accent, and would greet him briefly.

He appeared fragile and had pins in his legs, but was able to walk. They would chat briefly when collecting mail.

"It's very sad," she said.

The complex has previously been home to several politicians, including former Cabinet minister Tim Groser.

The four-building complex, which houses 114 apartments, was designed by the late architect Ian Athfield.

It is across the road from Old St Paul's Cathedral in Mulgrave St, and is also accessible from Pipitea St.

A man who lived in an apartment off the complex's Pipitea St entrance said many units were not occupied year-round. Some were serviced apartments for short-term guests.

He said many residents seemed not to know one another, and at a recent fire drill surprisingly few people were present.

There were very few elderly people in the complex. The dead man probably lived in one of the apartments near the Mulgrave St entrance, he said.

"He must've lived a pretty independent life," a woman visiting a friend at the apartment said.

National MP Nikki Kaye was visiting the apartments about 10.45am on Wednesday and said a police officer was stationed at the building's door.

She did not know what had happened, but someone mentioned to her that they had seen an ambulance nearby.

Alistair Gillespie, a member of the building's management, said they did not wish to comment on when and how the death was discovered.

"Our empathy is with the family," he said.

The building was subject to a $20 million leaky building claim battle that began in 2011.

There have been several recent cases of people's deaths in their homes going unnoticed for weeks or even years in Wellington.

In August last year a man, thought to be Debiprasad Majumdar, lay dead for weeks in his Titahi Bay flat. The smell finally forced neighbours to call police, who found him on August 30.

In March last year, Dean Stewart's body was found in Wellington City Council flats in Berhampore. His body had been there about eight months.

Wiremu Whakaue had earlier died in the same flat in which Stewart was found. Whakaue was thought to have died about June 2009, though his body was not discovered until March 2010.

Pensioner Michael Clarke, 88, lay dead in his Newtown unit for more than a year without neighbours or the council noticing, until his body was discovered in 2011.
An American man left hospitalised in a crash that killed his wife has been charged over her death.

Danna Gendall Korell, 59, died in the passenger seat of the couple's rental car after it crossed the centreline and collided with another vehicle on a rural road near Putaruru on February 22.

Her husband William Charles Korell, who was allegedly driving the car, was critically injured and airlifted to Waikato Hospital with a shattered spine where he underwent surgery.

SUPPLIED The rental car and another vehicle collided on the rural road near Putaruru.

Police have since charged the 65-year-old, from a small town in South Carolina, with careless driving causing death.

READ MORE: Three Americans killed in violent Waikato collision

The Korells were holidaying in New Zealand and had picked up the rented Toyota Corolla from Auckland prior to the crash.

SUPPLIED William and Danna Korell with sons Ryan and Jake.

As they travelled west along Waotu Rd at 5.30pm police said the car came around a slight bend and crossed the centreline, colliding with an oncoming Land Cruiser.

The collision happened less than 100 metres from the intersection of Old Taupo Rd.

In the couple's hometown of Mountain Park in Marietta, South Carolina, the shocked community were mourning the loss of an "inspiring woman".

"She was an inspiration to all of us - always smiling and bubbly," posted friend Sue Hooker.

"She overcame more challenges than most of us, and it didn't stop her from climbing mountains and nurturing friendships and playing hard!

"Prayers for Bill's healing and this great loss for he and their two sons, and all the family. We love you Danna!"

In a tribute on Facebook, Danna's sister Carin said the couple were having the time of their lives on a holiday to New Zealand and Australia.

"With a heavy heart I must share that my beautiful and beloved sister, Danna Korell has died in a traffic accident far away in New Zealand.

"Our family is in shock and mourning. We don't know much about the accident except that Danna died at the scene and her husband Bill was airlifted to a hospital with serious injuries where he remains.

"The entire Gendell clan is heartbroken, but we are especially heartbroken for Bill, and for Danna's two wonderful sons, Ryan and Jake. This news has left all of us reeling from shock and the despair that it happened so far from home."

Danna had overcome a life threatening illness a few years ago and was set to celebrate her 60th birthday in July, she said.

"Being only a year apart in school, we've travelled through life together and supported each other through thick and thin. My high school friends will remember my bubbly and outgoing red-headed sister because we were so often together.

"Danna was the glue that held together her friends and family, sharing her warmth and compassion with everyone. She always lived life to the fullest. I will forever miss my best friend through life."

The incident bears similarities to one in March 2015 when an overseas holiday was shattered for two American couples after three of the four were killed in a collision with a truck en route to visit Temple View, southwest of Hamilton.

Utah woman Ruth-Ann Peterson, 49, and her husband, Mitchell Peterson, 50, from Monroe, died in the crash, as did Tamara Garlick Barnett from Richfield, Utah, police said.

Tamara Barnett's husband, Richard Barnett, 56, who was driving the car, survived the crash but pleaded guilty to careless driving.

He was disqualified from driving in New Zealand for 12 months and ordered to pay the truck driver $1500 for emotional harm.

Barnett was also ordered to pay a fine of $3000 - $1000 for each charge, and the costs of flying those who died back to America.
Hamilton Operatic Society chairwoman Fiona Bradley inside Founders Theatre. The society's production of Mary Poppins is in doubt after the council closed the venue on Tuesday.

One of Waikato's biggest arts events of the year is without a home after Hamilton's Founders Theatre was shut.

Hamilton Operatic Society is set to hold urgent talks with the city council on possible venues for its upcoming production of Mary Poppins.

The council closed the 54-year-old theatre on Tuesday after an independent assessment of the venue's flying system indicated it was at risk of failure.

The Hamilton City Council is debating what to do about Founders Theatre, but in the meantime has ruled it unsafe and has shut it.

About 25 shows are affected by the closure, including the society's performance of Mary Poppins in May.

Mary Poppins has a cast and production crew of more than 70 people and will feature a cameo performance by Dame Malvina Major.

Society chairwoman Fiona Bradley said Founders was the ideal venue to host its main show of the year.

The show follows on from the society's successful performances of Evita, Mamma Mia! and The Phantom of the Opera.

"It's our blockbuster of the year and already it has created such a buzz. At the moment, it's all up in the air and we're just waiting to talk to council," Bradley said.

"Founders is such a wonderful venue because it's big enough to hold a show of this kind. We had plans to have Mary fly through Founders. It was going to be 'practically perfect', as they would say in Mary Poppins."

Council chief executive Richard Briggs has asked staff to explore options for the 1250-seat venue, including the possibility of reopening Founders on a limited use basis.

Last year, elected members voted to spend $13.8 million renovating Founders Theatre, starting in 2021.

A council staff report will be presented to councillors in late March, outlining options for the venue and potential costs.

Briggs said new health and safety legislation did not prompt his decision to close Founders.

"I take my role as chief executive extremely seriously around health and safety and the well-being of staff, the public and users of our venues," he said.

"The new legislation tidies things up, but doesn't change my actual obligations as a chief executive."

Council is receiving advice on the potential legal fallout from closing Founders and could be liable for costs associated with bookings.

In 2014, the council completed a review of the city's theatres. As a result, it gifted the Meteor and Clarence Street theatres to community arts groups.

Briggs said the council would work closely with Hamilton's arts groups and theatre-users regarding the future of Founders.

"Founders is an important city asset, but the theatre community is bigger than Hamilton City Council," Briggs said.

"There are various theatres and venues in the city, such as Clarence Street, the Performing Arts Centre at the university, Riverlea Theatre and even Claudelands."

Bradley said Claudelands could possibly host Mary Poppins, though noted it is not a theatre environment.

"The question is can we make the shift in the time that's left. Perhaps with the goodwill of council, maybe we can fashion a really good theatre out of it."

Clarence Street Theatre general manager Jason Wade said Founders holds treasured memories for many performers and residents, but the council must also consider the future needs of the city.

Wade, who is working as production manager on Mary Poppins, said he was in two minds whether Founders should be renovated or replaced, but either way, a decision had to be made.

"For a long time Founders has been a hot potato and there have been several theatre reviews over the last 10 to 15 years and they've all said pretty much the same thing about Founders. It's an expensive beast and it's a horrible situation we are in and there are a lot of devastated people," he said.

"It's just unfathomable to think New Zealand's fourth-largest city doesn't have a premier arts venue."
A Blenheim man's launch has been forfeited after he was caught with 133 undersized scallops on board.

A Blenheim man's boat has been seized after he was caught with undersized scallops in the Marlborough Sounds.

Recreational fisherman Colin James McKinney, 69, had been fishing in the outer Pelorus Sound when he was stopped by fishery officers in 2014.

Two bins of scallops were found on board with a total of 259 scallops, including 133 which were undersized.

SUPPLIED It is illegal to keep undersized scallops.

McKinney was charged with failing to immediately return undersize shellfish.

READ MORE:

* Illegal crayfisher could lose boat

* Public dob in fish seller

* Blue cod rules confusing to anglers

His 10.8 metre launch was forfeited to the Crown and McKinney was fined $1000 at the Nelson District Court last week.

McKinney said in court the undersize scallops were sorted into a bin while travelling and he intended to return them to the water.

His boat was stopped about two kilometres from the scallop bed where he was dredging.

In a written decision, Judge David Ruth said McKinney's evidence was "unlikely, nonsensical and unrealistic".

It was highly likely the undersize scallops "had been specifically cleaned and were ready for consumption by the defendant and others", Judge Ruth said.

McKinney said on Wednesday the scallops were being sorted for size on board the launch opposite Post Office Point, in Ketu Bay.

"We saw the fishery officers about 10 minutes beforehand," he said.

"If we had anything to hide you would expect we would throw the scallops over board before they arrived.

"The officers refused to acknowledge we were already sorting them."

McKinney said he had been a honorary fisheries officer, and a wildlife and conservation officer, and had fished in the Marlborough Sounds for 40 years.

"We defended the charge because we believed we were innocent."

McKinney said it was opening day of the scallop season.

"We expected to be checked because it was the start of the season."

He said the fishery officers who boarded the launch were unable to pinpoint exactly where the boat was because no GPS reading was taken.

He disputed the launch was 2km from where the scallops were taken as the fishery officers stated.

"They were on board for an hour, and the launch had drifted 2 to 3km during that time."

He said the conviction was a "disappointing result."

"The charge was for not immediately returning the scallops to the water from where they had come from, it was not about taking undersized scallops."

McKinney said he would not appeal the decision.

"It's been pretty horrendous already.

"I'm retired and and we can't afford more legal costs."

The $50,000 launch, which he had owned for seven years, was up for sale at the time of the offence, and was eventually sold two months later, he said.

He was later advised the boat was under a forfeiture bond.

McKinney said he would apply to the court for a redemption order to recover the launch on behalf of the new owners.

The new owners were unable to use the launch, which was moored in the North Island, until a decision was reached.

Ministry for Primary Industries district compliance manager Ian Bright said the Marlborough Sounds scallop fishery was at a low point, and illegal activity threatened a resource that was highly valued by the community.

Bright said it was important to return scallops to the area from which they were taken.

"Scallops can't survive in any old place.

"They live in defined beds and it is important undersize scallops are returned to the area they were taken [from] to ensure they have the best chance of survival.

"Returning undersize scallops to where and when it suits the skipper is not good enough."

Bright said size limits were important to protect spawning stock and ensure scallops could reproduce before they were harvested.

People are encouraged to report any suspicious fishing activity to 0800 4 POACHER (0800 476 224). All calls are confidential.
The Government and the Auckland Council have put together $2.5 million in funding to house at least 120 people a year in emergency accommodation.

A $2.5 million funding boost for Auckland's emergency housing services will give 30 vulnerable individuals or families a roof over their heads "well before winter", Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett says.

Bennett said specialist provider Emerge Aotearoa had been given $2 million from the Government to help those who urgently needed housing in the city, which has a dire shortage of emergency houses.

The Government announced the funding last September, but came under fire in February when it was revealed the money had still not been allocated, while the Ministry of Social Development was putting people up in motels.

Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett said boosting the supply of affordable housing in Auckland was the Government's "number one priority".

Emerge Aotearoa would provide 30 places for a stay of up to 12 weeks, housing at least 120 people each year, while also developing plans to help people move into suitable housing after their stay.

READ MORE:

* Extra emergency housing places for Auckland

* Len Brown welcomes funding boost

* Homeless in motels as $2m for emergency housing awaits release

"A big part of this service is linking people up to other social services, like ensuring they are receiving the right welfare support, addiction counselling, and access to education and training."

Auckland Council had put aside $500,000 to support the emergency housing service, Bennett said, bringing the total funding to $2.5 million.

The service would be in place "well before winter", with 17 of the new places available from March 14, and the remaining 13 places available from mid-May.

Bennett said the support would continue for up to three months after they left, to help them settle into their new property and adjust to living independently.

The emergency housing service would run for two years, with further announcements about a long-term funding model for emergency housing across the country to come in the first half of 2016.

The Government's "number one priority" was to increase the supply of social and affordable housing in Auckland, Bennett said.

Auckland Mayor Len Brown said he welcomed the new emergency housing, which would ensure Aucklanders "get the help they need".

"I'm aware there is still more to be done and that the government is working on a new funding model for emergency housing. I look forward to further announcements on this later in the year."
New Plymouth's Joanne Taylor, who is an Australian citizen but has lived in New Zealand for 30 years, is pleased St John has cancelled a surprise $800 ambulance bill.

A New Plymouth woman left horrified after getting an $800 bill from St John is grateful the service has waived the fee.

Joanne Taylor, 36 required the ambulance after having a seizure at Jetts Fitness, near the Clocktower on Devon St West, on February 3.

She was taken to Taranaki Base Hospital and later billed $800, which she thought was a typo.

The round trip, from the hospital to the gym and back, is less than six kilometres meaning Taylor was charged about $133 for each kilometre the ambulance travelled.

"I thought you have got to be joking me," she said.

Taylor was born in Australia but moved to New Zealand when she was six, where she lives permanently, she is married and has two children aged five and 10.

"I've worked my whole life in New Zealand and have always paid my taxes, it's ridiculous, it feels like a slap in the face."

Under Ministry of Health guidelines Australian visitors are not entitled to publicly funded emergency transport however Australian citizens who have lived in New Zealand for two years or more have the same entitlements to publicly funded emergency transport by ambulance as New Zealand citizens.

A New Zealander would have had to pay $88 for the ambulance which is what Taylor expected to be billed.

A St John spokeswoman confirmed Taylor was eligible to have the cost reduced and her application was being processed.

Taylor had provided St John with an Inland Revenue statement showing her income tax details dating back to 2006, a letter from her current employer showing she has worked for the company for about two years, New Zealand bank account details and a copy of her Australian Passport.

She then received a second request for the same information and believed her application to have the charge reduced had been declined.

"It just made me feel like an overstayer and like I was not entitled to be here and receive the same services as a Kiwi."

The St John spokeswoman said Taylor's application to have the bill reduced had not been declined.

"However, we did not immediately recognise the necessary documentation had already been supplied and requested it twice," she said.

"We understand this second request created some confusion and concern for Joanne and her family, and as a gesture of goodwill we will also be waiving the $88, so she will not be charged for the ambulance transport."

She said the ambulance part charge provided essential funding for the service, but the organisation always aimed to use common sense when applying charges.

Taylor said she was pleased with the outcome.

"It's all that I wanted to start with, to receive the service that I was entitled to."
Emirates, which once held the title, uses A380 superjumbos on its slightly shorter service between Dubai and Auckland.

Welcome aboard Emirates EK448 and congratulations, you're on the world's longest passenger flight.

Weary but happy passengers at Auckland International Airport on Wednesday said they found out at the last minute they were on the world's first 16 hour-plus flight, from Dubai.

Palmerston North expat New Zealander Cameron White said he got a message from his brother breaking the news he was on Emirates' 14,000 kilometre debut.

FAIRFAX NZ Emirates flew its flagship A380 double-decker super jumbo to Auckland to celebrate its first direct flight from Dubai. (File photo)

"It was long but comfortable, it's a modern plane with wi-fi so it makes it a lot easier," he said.



READ MORE

* Kiwi pilot will fly first Boeing 777 service from Auckland to Dubai

* Emirates, Qatar Air in for the long haul as flights top 17 hours

* Emirates releases Auckland to Dubai pricing

* Emirates to fly Auckland to Dubai direct

* Flight test: Auckland to Dubai

Emirates' regular jumbo on the Dubai-Auckland route will be a long range 777, but to celebrate its inaugural flight, the airline went large and used its flagship A380 double-decker super jumbo.

Auckland Airport provided a fire truck water cannon guard of honour welcoming through the A380.

An Emirates spokesman said "clever technology" and planning has enabled the airline to offer the longest-haul service.

Emirates operations support vice president Geoff Hounsell said preparing for the 14,000km flight took "an enormous amount of planning".

Flying on the "big bird' was no trouble for UK traveller James Patrick, who would "definitely" fly it again.

"We didn't find out until we were aboard it was going to be such a long flight until we were in the air. It was great, service was fantastic, lovely aircraft."

Passenger Christine Willis had a pre-flight scare. The elderly UK jetsetter transferred at Dubai and had to rush, almost missing the Auckland leg of her journey.

Once aboard she "couldn't fault" the service and appreciated the new direct journey.

"I've always preferred to have short a stopover and get here as quickly as possible."

However, the Auckland-Dubai route will only hold a fleeting record: Emirates' Dubai-Panama route, scheduled to begin at the end of March, will last an eyewatering 17 hours and 35 minutes.
An Australian yacht skipper who hid fruit, vegetables and meat all over her vessel instead of declaring it has been fined $3000.

Dianne Margaret Joy Young, 64, pleaded guilty to possessing unauthorised goods and providing a false statement to a quarantine officer in Kaikohe District Court this week.
Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett has today announced details of the Governments $2 million contribution to increasing the emergency housing supply in Auckland.

Specialist provider Emerge Aotearoa will provide 30 places for individuals or families, for a stay of up to 12 weeks.

This means we can house at least a further 120 people each year, including parents with children, on top of the emergency housing that is already available with other community organisations, says Mrs Bennett.

Homelessness is a complex issue, with the actual accommodation being only one piece of the broader puzzle of a vulnerable persons needs.

A big part of this service is linking people up to other social services, like ensuring they are receiving the right welfare support, addiction counselling, and access to education or training.

Emerge will also develop a plan to help them move into suitable, sustainable housing after their stay.

The support continues when they leave with social support providers working with them for up to three months to help them settle into their new property and adjust to independence, Mrs Bennett says.

While this announcement will make a real difference for those who find themselves without a home, the Governments number one priority remains to increase the supply of social and affordable housing in Auckland.

The emergency housing boost is being implemented in partnership with Auckland Council which has set aside $250,000 in each of the next two years for emergency housing providers, bringing the joint contribution to $2.5 million.

The service will be in place well before winter, with 17 of the new places available from March 14 and the further 13 available from mid-May.

It will run for two years, and further announcements about a more long-term funding model for the emergency housing sector nationwide will be made in the next few months.

Todays announcement is another boost for the emergency housing sector with $500,000 granted last year to 16 emergency housing providers across New Zealand, eight of which deliver services in Auckland.

Source: Office of Paula Bennett.
New Zealanders have supported the Governments call for new and bold ways to address family violence, Justice Minister Amy Adams says.

Ms Adams today released a summary of the submissions received during a public consultation about the Governments comprehensive review of family violence laws.

The summary details the range and strength of views on the ideas the public discussion document released last August, as well as additional ideas raised in the submissions.

The discussion document included a range of innovative ideas to stir debate and kick-start a national conversation around how we deal with family violence, Ms Adams says.

While the legal framework is only one part of the family violence system, all of which is being reviewed as part of our all-of-government work programme, the laws that apply to family violence underpin how agencies, organisations and institutions respond to victims and perpetrators, so we need to make sure the laws are effective and work well together.

The topics that received the most comments were:

updating the definition of domestic violence

making protection orders more accessible and effective

removing barriers to safety faced by specific population groups

improving information sharing in family violence cases

creating an additional pathway for victims, perpetrators and whanau who want help to stop violence, but dont want to go to court.

Ms Adams says overall, people who had their say were broadly supportive of the ideas for potential change, and the consultation confirmed that the discussion document identified the key issues.

As an example, many of the submitters who commented on information sharing between agencies agreed that safety trumps privacy in cases of family violence. People who had a say on protection orders and other legal tools thought they should be easier to get, and the consequences for breaching them should be swift and certain.

The discussion document garnered a strong response, with almost 500 detailed submissions received from individuals, groups and organisations.

I want to thank people for taking the time to share their personal stories, observations, frontline expertise, advice and research. All submissions have been read and analysed, and are providing a valuable source of information and insight as we develop options for change.

Decisions about specific proposals for law changes will be announced in upcoming months, with a view to introducing a Bill later in the year.

The summary of submissions is available at https://consultations.justice.govt.nz/policy/family-violence-law

Source: Office of Amy Adams.
Counties Manukau Police are continuing to investigate an incident in Papatoetoe yesterday evening where a female has reportedly jumped out of a moving vehicle on Huia Road.

The incident happened at around 7pm about 100 metres south of the intersection of Huia and East Tamaki Roads.

The victim was restrained and her mouth was gagged.

She was assisted by members of the public who called an ambulance, who then notified Police.

Police are seeking the publics assistance to help identify the victim.

She is described as Asian, aged between 35 and 55 and of small build.

She has two tattoos, one of a dolphin on her left shoulder (pictured) and one of an angel on the inside of her left ankle.

The scene at Huia Road was examined overnight and this will continue today.

Counties Manukau Crime Manager Detective Inspector Dave Lynch says an investigation team has worked through the night to examine the scene and speak with a number of witnesses.

We want to assure the public we are doing everything we can to locate the person or persons involved in this crime.

However, we still need members of the public who saw anything they think may be relevant to contact us.

We are still making enquiries to identify the car used in the incident and at this stage believe it was a late model silver sedan.

If anyone saw a vehicle fitting this description in the surrounding area acting suspiciously then we ask them to contact Police.

We encourage the community of Papatoetoe to continue going about their business.

At this stage we have no evidence to suggest there is any risk to members of the public.

If anyone has information that can assist the Operation Sisal team they can call 0508 422 443.

Anyone who wishes to speak with a Thai speaking officer can call Constable Peter Siriphong on 021 191 0864 and for Chinese members of our community you can contact Justin Zeng on 09 263 2781.

Alternatively you contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.

Source: New Zealand Police.
Most people dont realise that Tauranga was the first place in New Zealand to have electricity reticulated to houses, and that in an environment where a downturn in some parts of the energy sector, Trustpower is continuing to look for opportunities for growth.

For example, its currently in final commercial negotiations for an investment at its Arnold hydro scheme on the West Coast, designed to improve the civil safety of the dam along with generation capacity and longevity of the station. This project will have welcome and enduring economic benefits for that region.

Trustpowers willingness to move into and help stimulate the Tauranga CBD, the design of its new building, and the incorporation into that building of a move to a workplace model most commonly seen internationally at leading edge commercial operations and educational institutions, is a great example for other New Zealand businesses to follow, says Simon.

Trustpower is New Zealands fifth largest electricity generator and retailer, having broken the New Zealand energy mould by expanding into multi-product offerings including telephone, internet, and gas.

Rapid expansion over more than two years has seen Trustpower outgrow its former head office facility, located at Te Maunga.

That, combined with a desire to move to a new activity based working model, which Trustpower calls Synergy New Ways of Working, has seen 525 staff move to the new purpose-built facility on Durham Street in the Tauranga CBD.

The new building will house functions ranging from the 24/7 control centre for Trustpowers generation facilities, which include 38 New Zealand and three Australian hydro facilities, two New Zealand and three Australian wind farms, and a small diesel generation array near Marsden Point - which provides increased security of supply and pricing stability for the Northland and Far North areas of New Zealand, to Customer Service, Generation Support, IT, Finance, Marketing and Community Relations.

Trustpower Chief Executive Vince Hawksworth, says the companys welcome to the CBD by other businesses has been outstanding.

We never expected such a welcome, with businesses putting up Welcome to the neighbourhood Trustpower signs, putting on welcome events, and providing purchasing offers for our staff.

Vince says Trustpowers staff are well overdue for a new modern and more efficient workplace, and he expects that, along with efficiencies gained from the new work environment, will help alleviate the pressures of coping with a business that has been, and looks to continue, rapidly expanding.

In addition to its new Tauranga head office, Trustpower has a large customer service centre in Oamaru, offices housing commercial account managers in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, generation maintenance and engineering teams located at regional hydro power stations, owns Energy direct which houses its retail function in Whanganui, and has generation development staff based in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.

Trustpower is majority owned by New Zealand infrastructure investment company Infratil 50.6 per cent, and the Tauranga Energy Consumer Trust 26.6 per cent, with the majority of the remainder of its shares being held by New Zealand institutions and investment funds, and members of the public  giving it the largest New Zealand ownership of the five largest New Zealand electricity companies, at more than 98 per cent.

Trustpower recently proposed, with the support of its major shareholders, to undertake a demerger  which would see its retail business and New Zealand and Australian hydro schemes retained in Trustpower, and its existing and proposed new windfarms owned and operated by a new company, presently referred to as Newco.

Vince says the demerger proposal recognises Trustpowers reputation and proven expertise relating to building commercially, environmentally and socially successful wind farms, most recently in Australia where it now has a significant pipeline of new wind development projects.

Our Snowtown wind farm is not only the second largest in Australasia and the largest in South Australia, which is the wind farm capital of that country, but it has been built and continues to operate with total support from the local community - delivering world class output and making a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from alternative generation.

In addition, it has allowed Trustpower to use its intellect and capability to import wealth to New Zealand. We are really proud of that.
The growing issues of childhood obesity has health officials discussing the best ways of how to tackle the issue.

More than 10 per cent of New Zealands children are considered obese, and this number doubles amongst Maori children, Pacific children, and children from poorer homes says managing director of Nga Mataapuna Oranga Janice Kuka.
Attribute to Superintendent Richard Chambers  District Commander, Auckland City District

Police in Auckland City District have concluded the investigation into the actions of some TV3/MediaWorks staff involved in the purchase of a firearm for a television report broadcast in October 2015.

Police became involved as a result of those staff seeking to surrender a firearm that had been illegally purchased from a licensed Auckland firearms dealer.

The Police investigation focussed on the actions of staff members in the creation of a forged document and the use of the document to obtain a firearm.

Having completed a thorough investigation, an independent review of the case has been undertaken by a Detective Superintendent.

Police have now issued formal warnings to three TV3/MediaWorks staff.

In reaching this decision, the Solicitor-General Prosecution Guidelines were considered, together with independent legal advice.

Police are satisfied that in this instance, there is no evidence that the acquisition of the firearm was for a sinister purpose, a factor which was taken into consideration in reaching this decision.

Police is aware of some commentary suggesting that the television report was in the public interest and should not have been investigated.

Police would like to make it clear that for any investigation, public interest considerations are applied at the conclusion of an investigation and in accordance with the Solicitor-General Prosecution Guidelines, when prosecution is being considered.

The public interest test does not determine whether Police should commence a criminal investigation or not.

Police view this case as no different to any other matter where criminal offending is disclosed.

The circumstances of individual cases are routinely assessed to ensure that an appropriate investigation is initiated.

We would also like to be clear that the freedom of journalists to report on any matter is fully accepted without question by Police.

The law, however, applies equally to everyone, including members of the media and Police do not accept that it is appropriate to commit a criminal offence purely to publicise the ease with which something can be done.

The outcome of the investigation has been communicated to the individuals involved and to TV3/MediaWorks, which brings this matter to a conclusion.

Source: New Zealand Police.
Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment Minister Steven Joyce today announced four Ministerial appointments to the Council of the new tertiary education institution that brings together the Waiariki Institute of Technology and the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic.

I am pleased to welcome Catherine (Cathy) Cooney as Chair of the new Council. I have also appointed Ian Turner as Deputy Chair and Rahera Ohia QSM and Ngaroma Tahana as members, Mr Joyce said.

Ms Ohia and Mr Turner are members of the current Bay of Plenty Polytechnic Council and Mr Turner is the Chair. Ms Tahana is a member of the Council of the Waiariki Institute of Technology. They will retain those positions until the disestablishment of those two councils on 1 May 2016. I want to acknowledge the important contribution that these three council members have made in bringing together the two institutions, said Mr Joyce.

All four of the new appointments are effective immediately. The appointment of members from the existing councils provide continuity and the new Chair will bring fresh insights.

As Minister, I may appoint four council members for up to four years. I have staggered the terms of appointment for the new council and, so that I may review two appointments after completion of ongoing consultation with iwi of the region, I have appointed Ms Ohia and Ms Tahana for one year each.

The next stage in the process of creating the new institution is the appointment of the remaining council members by these four Ministerial appointees. The council will then appoint the Chief Executive for the new institution.

With strong governance and leadership in place, I am confident that the new institution will be well positioned to meet the needs of the wider Bay of Plenty region for tertiary education well into the future, Mr Joyce said.

Biographies:

Catherine COONEY has a background in professional and corporate leadership, executive level health management, workforce development, quality systems and accreditation, nursing and community development. She has 40 years experience in the health sector and from 20012012 was the Chief Executive of Lakes District Health Board. Ms Cooney is Director of Kowhai Health Associates and Joint-Chair of Healthy Families Rotorua. She is a justice of the peace (JP) and former President of the Rotorua and Districts JP Association.

Ian TURNER is a Ministerial appointee and Chair of the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic. He is Managing Director of New Zealand Educational Tours Ltd, a Tauranga based company. Mr Turner is a Chartered Accountant, past president of Tauranga Chamber of Commerce and has 28 years board experience, 18 of which he has spent as Chair.

Rahera OHIA QSM is a Ministerial appointee to the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic council. She is of Ngati Pukenga, Ngai Te Rangi, Waitaha, Ngati Raukawa and Ngati Mahanga descent. Ms Ohia is the Lead Negotiator for Ngati Pukengas Treaty settlements. Earlier in her career, her social work experience and knowledge allowed her to transition into policy development in the public sector where she worked for 17 years in a number of departments and roles. Ms Ohia was named as one of Unlimited Magazines Top 25 Business Influencers for 2012 and her QSM was awarded in 2014 for services to Maori.

Ngaroma TAHANA LLB BMS is a Ministerial appointee to the Waiariki Institute of Technology Council. In 2010, Ms Tahana returned to her home town and joined Gordon & Pilditch, Rotorua. Before that she was an Associate at Simpson Grierson in Auckland, where she had over five years experience covering environmental litigation, resource management, public law, Maori issues and local government. Ms Tahanas governance experience includes co-president of Te Hunga Roia Maori o Aotearoa (the National Maori Law Society), Chair of Te Runanga O Ngati Pikiao and elected member to the Rotoma No.1 Incorporation Committee of Management.

SOURCE: Office of Steven Joyce


The 50-year-old Thai woman at the centre of a kidnapping incident has died overnight in Middlemore Hospital.

A post-mortem will be carried out later this morning.

Police would like to thank the public and media for the information provided to the Operation Sisal team.

"However, we continue to seek any sightings of a late model silver vehicle in the Papatoetoe and surrounding areas on March 1 at around 7pm.

"It is likely we will release the victims name this afternoon pending notification of all next-of-kin.

"Media are reminded that the family has asked for privacy and do not want to be contacted.

"Police are satisfied that the incident is not domestic related.

"We are keeping an open mind as to the motivation behind her kidnapping however an obvious line of inquiry will involve links to organised crime."

Source: New Zealand Police.
On Saturday, February 27, at around 10.45pm a red vehicle was observed knocking over two mailboxes on the Winton-Lorneville Highway near Wilsonss Crossing Road after it left the road, ending up in some flax bushes.

The vehicle then left the scene heading south towards Invercargill.

Police would like to hear from anybody who may have witnessed or have any information in relation to this incident and would ask that they call Constable Jacob GARRETT of the Invercargill Police on (03) 211 0400.

Alternatively they may provide the information anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111

Source: New Zealand Police.
First announced three years ago, The 13 hotel features almost exclusively bespoke design details, including elaborate Baroque scroll-work, sculptures, fabrics, wall coverings, furniture and tableware.

Perhaps the hotels most outstanding feature is Villa du Comte, a split-level, one-bedroom villa complete with private elevator lobby, butler service, ornate marble-clad roman bathroom, and king-size velvet-canopied bed with an elaborately carved and gilded Baroque headboard.

As the business and the brand have developed, we felt that the name The 13 most accurately reflected our Macau hotels combination of Baroque inspiration and contemporary accents, explains Stephen Hung, billionaire co-chairman of Louis XIII Holdings Company, which owns the hotel.

Our brand represents a unique vision of a global luxury lifestyle based on strong bespoke traditions while embracing modern elements that enhance these traditions. 13 is my lucky number and the new name along with the new logo fit perfectly with my vision. There is a hint of tradition while also suggesting a chic and fun edginess.

As an extra touch of luxury, on arrival and departure, all hotel guests receive complimentary transfers to and from Macau transportation hubs via the hotels fleet of bespoke, extended wheel base Rolls-Royce Phantoms.

The hotel is said to have cost a total of 1.4 billion to build.
Free pancakes are on the menu for IHOPs 11th annual National Pancake Day Tuesday. (FILE)

SHARE Truffle macaroni and cheese is one of the most popular items on Starbucks Evenings menu. (Kelly Tyko/Treasure Coast Newspapers) The Starbucks Evenings program features wine and craft beer. (Kelly Tyko/Treasure Coast Newspapers) While the pancakes are free, IHOP hopes customers will make a donation to Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals and other charities. (Kelly Tyko/Treasure Coast Newspapers) Related Coverage BARGAINISTA: Starbucks changing reward program

By Kelly Tyko of TCPalm

IHOP is giving away free pancakes Tuesday for its 11th annual National Pancake Day.

From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 8, International House of Pancakes restaurants are giving away free short stacks or three buttermilk pancakes. A short stack usually costs about $4.79.

Although the pancakes are free, IHOP hopes customers will make a donation to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and other charities. The goal of the 11th annual National Pancake Day fundraiser is to raise $3.5 million.

IHOP has raised $20 million to support charities since the first National Pancake Day in 2006, according to a news release. Last year, IHOP served 6.6 million pancakes for National Pancake Day, enough to have created a stack nearly 19 miles high.

There is a limit of one free short stack per guest and this dine-in only offer is available while supplies last.

Go to www.ihoppancakeday.com to find your closest IHOP and to learn how to donate online.

You might want to call IHOP before heading out to make sure they have any pancakes left.

FREE WINE, BEER

After your free pancakes, head over to the Palm City Starbucks at 3036 S.W. Martin Downs Blvd.

At 4 p.m. Tuesday, the Treasure Coast's newest Starbucks will have wine, craft beer and small plate samples to debut its "Starbucks Evenings" program.

After March 8, the new food offerings, which include truffle macaroni and cheese, flatbreads, chicken skewers, meatballs with tomato basil sauce, will be available all day, according to a store handout. Wine and beer selections will be available at 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and at noon on Saturday and Sunday.

Last weekend, I visited two Broward County Starbucks with the Evenings program.

Employees told me the most popular dishes were the mac and cheese, the flatbreads and spinach artichoke dip. I tried the truffle mac and cheese at $5.95 and a small bottle of Prosecco sparkling wine for $8.

I didn't notice other customers having alcohol during my late Sunday afternoon visits and wondered if perhaps the locations weren't the best suited for lingering over adult beverages. One was near a Super Target and the other was near a furniture store.

I also learned that although you can redeem earned Starbucks rewards on food, you can't on an alcoholic beverage. You can still earn stars on the alcohol.

Starbucks officials say there are about 250 U.S. locations and 30 in Florida with the Evenings menu. With so few offering the program  there's only three current locations in Palm Beach County  it's surprising the Treasure Coast is getting one so soon.
Shrimp are being raised at Florida Organic Aquaculture in Fellsmere. (FILE PHOTO)

By News Release

The Indian River County Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Office announced that Parabel, a producer of plant-based protein, is constructing a $10 million production facility in Fellsmere in northwest Indian River County. The Indian River County Commission unanimously approved the company's Local Jobs Grant application at its Tuesday meeting.

The company has signed a lease for 450 acres in Fellsmere, where it plans to build a facility to produce water-lentil-based proteins. Based on the company's anticipated job creation numbers and proposed wages for the new hires, Parabel is eligible for up to $177,000 in Jobs Grant incentives. Parabel anticipates creating 43 new jobs by third quarter of 2016, their first phase of operation. The majority of the new positions will pay an average wage of about $40,000 per year, greater than the county's average annual wage of $37,882. The Jobs Grant is a performance-based program, meaning that it is paid out over a three-year period after the jobs are in place.

Parabel manufactures Lentein, a sustainable plant-based non-GMO protein used in the health-food industry. The company is based in Melbourne, with operations in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and in Africa. Company executives anticipate hiring a total of about 170 employees once they are fully operational.

Indian River County Commissioner Peter O'Bryan, who serves as economic development liaison to the Board, expressed how impressed he is with the company's commitment to the environment as it relates to processing locally harvested duckweed. "Not only will we see new good-paying jobs for our local residents, but their process is very eco-friendly. All the water used is completely recycled back into the production system."

David Schechtmann, business development and community outreach director with Parabel, said, "Parabel is overly thrilled to have received this generous grant that will only enhance our company's presence and positive impact in the Fellsmere area. The relationship between the community and our company is vital to our success, and today was an important step in forging a fruitful relationship that will only continue to grow. We would like to specifically thank the City of Fellsmere and County Commission for their vision and support in approving this grant and look forward to continued collaboration in the future as we continue to develop our facility."

Fellsmere City Manager Jason Nunemaker agrees with Schechtmann, adding, "The City of Fellsmere is deeply appreciative of the economic development partnership we have with Indian River County. The Jobs grant awarded to Parabel is illustrative of this partnership and demonstrates our shared commitment to creating a sustainable future for agriculture in our community."

The Chamber's Economic Development Office worked with Fellsmere city officials and company executives to discuss plans and facilitate their Jobs Grant application.

"We are excited to add yet another innovative ag-based firm to our business community. Fellsmere is the perfect location, based on its rich agricultural history as well as from a distribution aspect," said Helene Caseltine, the chamber's economic development director.

Representatives from CareerSource Research Coast and Indian River State College were also brought in to assist Parabel with their employee recruiting and hiring needs.
A rendering of the Zaxby's under construction in Jensen Beach. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY ZAXBY'S)

SHARE The Kickin Chicken Sandwich is one of Zaxby's most popular meals. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO BY ZAXBY'S)

By Kelly Tyko of TCPalm

JENSEN BEACH  A popular chicken restaurant is coming to roost on the Treasure Coast.

Zaxby's, the Athens, Georgia-based restaurant chain known for chicken fingers and wings, will open March 21 at 4200 N.W. U.S. 1 in Jensen Beach.

The restaurant is south of the Westmoreland Boulevard intersection, in front of BJ's Wholesale Club and next to the new Aldi grocery store.

"I call it a higher-end Chick-fil-A with better quality products, a wider variety of salads and sandwiches," said Martin County resident Spiro Laskaris, the franchisee. "Their tenders are phenomenal."

Laskaris is opening the Zaxby's where his Greek restaurant Olympic Taverna operated for more than six years. He closed the restaurant in November and opened a new Greek restaurant, Spiro's Taverna, in Vero Beach.

He also owns and operates Olympic Diner in Palm City, Spiro's Taverna in St. Lucie West, the Hurricane Grill & Wings in Palm City and Flamingo Diner in Stuart.

Last year, Zaxby's was the No. 9 fastest-growing chain in the Nation's Restaurant News Top 100 list. Entrepreneur magazine also has ranked Zaxby's as one of the fastest-growing franchises and as a Top 500 franchise.

Laskaris said he plans in the future to open a second Martin County Zaxby's in Stuart.

The fast-casual chain has more than 700 locations in 16 states including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Popular items include hand-breaded Chicken Fingerz and traditional or boneless wings, smothered in a choice of nine sauces with names like Wimpy, Tongue Torch, Nuclear and Insane.

The menu also has salads that are called "Zalads," and "Zappetizers" such as tater chips, spicy fried mushrooms and fried white cheddar bites. Laskaris said the restaurant will have a drive-thru, online ordering and a catering menu.

The first 100 adults who line up at the March 21 grand opening will receive a Zaxby's "Deck of Cards" with 52 coupons, each good for a select free menu item each week for 52 weeks, Laskaris said.

ZAXBY'S

Address: 4200 N.W. U.S. 1, Jensen Beach

Opening: March 21

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday; 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Online: Zaxbys.com

Social media: Facebook page




St. Lucie County felony arrests: March 1, 2016

Erick Numa, 21, Davie; possession of a controlled substance (Xanax) without a prescription; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Adrian Ramjit, 29, 100 block of El Sito Court, Port St. Lucie; possession of marijuana over 20 grams; possession of marijuana with intent to sell, manufacture or deliver; warrant for violation of probation, possession of marijuana with intent to sell or deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia.

Joyce Johnson, 44, 1200 block of Curry Street, Port St. Lucie; warrant for battery.

Henry Reed, 52, 1600 block of 13th Street, North; warrant for resisting an officer with violence.

Samuel Massucci, 19, 100 block of Placita Court, Port St. Lucie; possession of marijuana over 20 grams.

Tangela Rivers, 46, 100 block of Bethany Court, Fort Pierce; warrant for aggravated battery with deadly weapon.

Erik Clark, 44, 100 block of Acorn Way, Fort Pierce; warrant for violation of probation, giving false information to a pawnbroker, dealing in stolen property.

Roger Lawrence, 40, no address; sexual assault by custodian/sexual battery on a victim over 12 and under 18; lewd/lascivious behavior on a victim, 12 to 16, by offender 18 or older.

Willie Riles, 33, 600 block of Avenue B, Fort Pierce; warrant for battery on an elderly person.

Ric Leclerc, 46, 1800 block of Gehoro Terrace, Port St. Lucie; possession of a controlled substance (cocaine). Arrested in Indian River County.

Elizabeth Pensis, 44, 7200 block of Donlon Road, Fort Pierce; out-of-county warrant, Pinellas County, failure to appear, battery.

Scott Edwards, 30, 1500 block of 24th Avenue, Vero Beach; readmit, use or possession of drug paraphernalia; out-of-county warrant, Indian River County, grand theft, resisting merchant.

Denley Heff, 60, 1700 block of Pelican Drive, Fort Pierce; warrant for court order for pretrial detention and termination of pretrial supervision, DUI.

Frances Riney, 62, 400 block of Row Rico Terrace, Port St. Lucie; warrant for violation of probation, DUI impairment.

Rodolfo Ortiz-galeana, 32, Melbourne; readmit, driving while license suspended. Netgyne Morancy, 19, 200 block of Southland Drive, Fort Pierce; readmit, corruption by threat, battery on an officer, resisting an officer with violence, disruption of educational institutions.

Richard Platt, 48, 2600 block of Heathcote Drive, Fort Pierce; hold for DOC, grand theft/sexual battery by an adult/ victim less than 12.
Houses at Southeast Coral Reef Street (left to right foreground) and Southeast West Virginia Drive (center) will be affected for the construction of Port St. Lucie's Crosstown Parkway Bridge. The new bridge crossing the North Fork of the St. Lucie River will link West Virginia Drive to Southeast Village Green Drive. (FILE PHOTO)

SHARE

By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

Environmentalists are taking their effort to block construction of Port St. Lucie's Crosstown Parkway bridge to a higher court.

This week the Conservation Alliance of St. Lucie County and the Indian Riverkeeper asked the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their case claiming the proposed bridge across the North Fork of the St. Lucie River illegally affects protected wetlands.

In November, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Middlebrooks ruled the Federal Highway Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation chose the best route and gave careful consideration to the environment during the decision-making process.

The bridge is a critical component of the Crosstown Parkway, which would be Port St. Lucie's third east-west thoroughfare.

The environmental groups' appeal argues federal law requires "special effort should be made to preserve the natural beauty of the countryside and public park and recreation lands, wildlife and waterfowl refuges and historic sites." The chosen route for the bridge, they say, would cut through about 15 acres of park and conservation land and directly affect about 11 acres of wetlands and about four acres of upland forested habitat.

Middlebrooks dismissed the environmentalists' proposed route because it would displace 18 more homes and 10 more businesses than the route proposed by the feds and the city of Port St. Lucie.

The $150 million Crosstown Parkway would link Interstate 95 and U.S. 1, carrying drivers from Manth Lane on Southeast West Virginia Drive across the river to Village Green Drive at U.S. 1.
By Tyler Treadway of TCPalm

Editor's note: This article has been updated from its original version.

Businesses in Martin and St. Lucie counties can now tell the state how Lake Okeechobee discharges have affected them.

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity set up an online survey Wednesday for business owners to fill out to determine the extent of the economic damages caused by the discharges and which emergency support programs could aid recovery efforts.

Several relief programs are available if local and state officials determine there is a need, said agency spokesman Morgan L. McCord.

Follow our Lake Okeechobee discharge meter for daily updates.

The departments most common program is an emergency bridge loan, which McCord said provides temporary financial assistance to businesses after a disaster until they can get back on their feet.

The 90- to 180-day loans up to $25,000 are available to small business owners with two to 100 employees.

The survey also notes federal Small Business Administration Economic Injury Disaster Loans up to $2 million are available for small businesses that sustain economic injury as a direct result of a disaster.

How's the water in your area?

The department also offers training assistance grants for employees affected by a disaster, and redevelopment planning guidance to promote long-term recovery efforts.

If President Obama were to declare a national disaster, McCord said, funds may be made available to local communities through block grants.

The move follows Gov. Rick Scotts Feb. 26 state of emergency declaration for Martin and St. Lucie counties because of the discharges.

Businesses hurt

Several hundred billions of gallons of water have poured into the St. Lucie River estuary during a historically wet winter, which should be South Floridas dry season. The deluge includes about 67.5 billion gallons from Lake O since Jan. 30.

Besides causing environmental damage to the St. Lucie and southern Indian River Lagoon, the discharges are hurting water-related businesses such as bait shops, fishing guides, river- and lagoon-front motels and marinas. About 200 people, many of them small-business owners and employees, gathered on the downtown Stuart waterfront Friday to call for an end to the discharges.

Tourists spend $435 million in Martin County each year and contribute $33.5 million annually in local and state taxes, according to the countys tourism and marketing office.

Many local businesses near the coast may be adversely affected by the Lake Okeechobee releases, said DEO Executive Director Cissy Proctor. Small businesses are the backbone of Floridas thriving economy, and it is critical that they have access to resources during and after a disaster to quickly recover. DEO is committed to assisting businesses with recovery needs.

Dike repair

Scott again called on the Obama administration to fully fund the needed repairs to the Herbert Hoover Dike, saying the improvements would allow Lake O to safely hold enough water to prevent the discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries.

Also on Wednesday, U.S. Reps. Patrick Murphy, D-Jupiter, and Curt Clawson, R-Bonita Springs, introduced legislation calling for an emergency appropriation of $800 million to speed repairs to the dike. Joining in introducing the legislation were U.S. Reps. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Miramar, and Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key. The bill also is supported by the Everglades Foundation.

Damaged by discharges?

Heres how to fill out the business damage assessment survey:

Go to http://flvbeoc.org/index.php?action=bda

Under Event/Incident select Lake Okeechobee Discharge
ERIC HASERT/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS Alan Weierman (background), Director of the Southeastern Military Academy in Port St. Lucie, reacts while seated with his attorney Bob Stone as they listen to a Department of Children and Families witness give testimony Wednesday during a hearing before 19th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Robert Belanger at the St. Lucie County Courthouse in Fort Pierce. DCF is seeking to shut down the Southeastern Military Academy claiming it is operating as an unlicensed facility.

SHARE

By Melissa E. Holsman of TCPalm

FORT PIERCE ? A boot camp-styled program for troubled boys in Port St. Lucie has until June 2014 to come into compliance with state laws regulating the license required to operate a boarding school, a judge ordered Thursday.

The ruling followed two days of hearings in which the Florida Department of Children and Families accused the Southeastern Military Academy, formerly known as Victory Forge Military Academy, and its commanding officer Alan Weierman of operating for three years without the proper accreditation or state license.

State law gives boarding schools and residential group homes three years to become properly accredited and licensed by the state.

In announcing his ruling, St. Lucie Circuit Judge Robert Belanger noted this was the second time DCF had filed a petition seeking to close Weierman's academy, which has been investigated dozens of times for allegations of child abuse.

Belanger noted, too, that in March 2011, Circuit Judge Dan Vaughn ruled in favor of the school, and ordered that it comply with state law by becoming accredited in "a timely manner."

Belanger told Weierman and his Fort Pierce attorney Robert E. Stone that while he's giving Weierman time to complete the process, it's up to Weierman to make it happen.

"I can't run interference for you. If you run into problems, you run into problems," Belanger added. "But after that date, at some point ... I don't think it's the intent of the Legislature that this should drag on for half a decade."

State records show since 1994, DCF officials have investigated 35 prior child abuse allegations against the private school for troubled boys at 638 S.W. Biltmore St.

Wednesday in court, several DCF officials testified that the agency had investigated three incidents since 2011 allegedly involving a child suffering a broken arm at an Osceola County camp operated by Weierman, and another child who was shackled for hours after running away.

After court Thursday, DCF attorney Laurel Hopper said the agency would meet to determine whether to appeal Belanger's ruling.

On the witness stand Thursday, Weierman said the accreditation process stalled in the fall when he learned for the first time the academy needed two accreditations, for academics and residential, to be licensed by the state.

Weierman said he thought he only needed the academic accreditation, a process he began in 2009.

He later called Belanger's ruling "the right thing to do."

"We're certainly happy that he ruled in our favor," he said. "We expected it all along ... because we believe in our judicial system."

Weierman insisted the academy will be fully accredited by the 2014 deadline. He also said he's not sure whether Thursday's ruling means the child protection agency will ease up on its scrutiny of the school, which houses about 18 boys.

"I have no control of what DCF does," he said. "I don't see them saying all of a sudden that I'm a great guy, but I could be wrong."
Workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation March 29, 2013, outside Rifle, in western Colorado. A bill that would regulate fracking and do away with local bans is likely dead after it was withdrawn from consideration Tuesday during its second chance before the same committee that had rejected it.

SHARE

By Arek Sarkissian, Naples Daily News/Tribune Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- A bill that would regulate fracking and do away with local bans is likely dead after it was withdrawn from consideration Tuesday during its second chance before the same committee that had rejected it.

The bill sponsored by Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, had already failed to pass the Senate Appropriations Committee with a vote of 10-9, but it was given a chance for reconsideration and placed on Tuesday's committee agenda. Richter spent the weekend trying to change two of the 10 opposing committee votes, but he was unsuccessful.

"I didn't have the votes," Richter said after the Tuesday meeting. "I worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday trying to convince my colleagues and I didn't have the votes."

Richter was unable to sway Sens. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, and Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, in favor of the bill. Negron said he heard plenty of opposition from constituents around the Treasure Coast. He also was not convinced the bill would protect the environment.

"I've got some concerns about how we're balancing the regulation with the way that we're protecting the environment," Negron said.

Opponents of the bill, from local elected leaders to environmental groups, quietly celebrated after Richter withdrew it. Kim Ross, president of ReThink Energy Florida, said overwhelming opposition from cities and counties influenced the vote.

"They got what they wanted," Ross said of the cities and counties. "They did not want fracking in their backyards."

Richter's bill called on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to carry out a yearlong, $1 million study of the environmental impact of fracking. DEP would have used the results from the study to create regulations that required ratification from the Legislature. The bill would also override more than 70 bans passed by cities and counties across the state over the past year.

Lee County communities Bonita Springs and Estero were among the first to pass bans. Bonita Springs City Manager Carl Schwing said he appreciated the study included in the bill, but regulation should be left up to local governments.

"We're very pleased that a bill that ignored what cities really wanted did not pass the Legislature," Schwing said.

Richter's withdrawal of the bill left little chance for its House companion to survive. HB 191, by Rep. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, cleared the House in January with a vote of 73-45.

Rodrigues said the likely death of Richter's bill left the state without any specific regulation of the oil drilling method.

"I'm proud to have worked with (Richter) on these important issues and disappointed in the results," Rodrigues said.

The most common form of the drilling process blasts rock with water to release oil and gas below ground. Another process - perhaps the most controversial - uses an acid mixture to eat into the rock. The issue surfaced in Collier County in December 2013 when the Dan H. Hughes Co. fracked about 1,000 feet from homes on the edge of the Everglades. The company refused to heed DEP's requests to stop. Hughes eventually ceased drilling, and the company was fined $20,000 for a work order violation. It also was ordered to install groundwater monitors around the site.

The majority of the Collier County Commission were in support of Richter's bill. Commissioner Tim Nance said the bill was not perfect, but it provided DEP with some groundwork to stop companies such as Hughes from ignoring state orders.

"It was by no means perfect but it was a start to lay out some ground rules," Nance said. "I definitely, like a lot of other people, had problems with the loss of home rule, but it was clear we had to do something."
Donald Trump

By Bartholomew Sullivan, bartholomew.sullivan@tcpalm.com

WASHINGTON  All eyes are now focused on Florida, the most diverse and competitive of the upcoming party primaries, Florida experts trying to make sense of Super Tuesday's results said Wednesday.

MORE | 5 takeways from Super Tuesday

Native son and Sen. Marco Rubio, who won only Minnesota and came in second in Virginia Tuesday night, has vowed to derail Donald Trump in the Sunshine State and deny the nomination to what he calls "a con artist." But recent polls show Trump, who won another seven states Tuesday night, could hand Rubio a second-place finish.

"It does come down to Florida now," said University of South Florida politics and mass communications professor Susan A. MacManus. "There's a lot of pressure on (Rubio) to do well here and also a lot of pressure on Republicans in Florida to get behind him. An endorsement by Jeb Bush would go a long way."

Former Florida Republican Party Chairwoman and Indian River County Tax Collector Carole Jean Jordan said she's sure all of the major candidates are seeking Bush's endorsement but declined to say whether she thinks Rubio will receive it. A Bush supporter who knocked on doors in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Jordan said the former governor's suspension of his campaign "kind of broke my heart." She has not declared support for the other contenders, she said in a phone call from Tallahassee.

MacManus, who watched the first-of-the-season Iowa caucuses up close last month, said Republicans in Florida have a lot at stake if they want to maintain their clout in national party politics. But Democrats also have their eyes on both the primary and the general election in November and the possibility of picking up Rubio's Senate seat.

And for all the breathless coverage of an inevitable Trump sweep in the weeks ahead, MacManus likes to point out Trump has won less than one-quarter of the delegates to win the party's nomination. The media present a "false impression" that winning more states than other candidates means a lot when those states' delegates are awarded proportionately until mid-March. The impression actually harms the other candidates, she said.

"Even after this perceived slam dunk, the reality is Trump has just 23 percent of the needed delegates to win the nomination," she said.

FLORIDA BUZZ

Democrat and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won seven states and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won four Tuesday night in what is seen as a steady pulling away by Clinton and an eventual nomination.

Treasure Coast residents can expect to see a raft of candidates making their pitches in the days ahead. Some are already there. Clinton and Rubio made their Tuesday night speeches from Miami and Trump from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

March 15 is not only Florida's primary but also Ohio's, where Gov. John Kasich remains in the GOP field and hopes to make a showing. In between, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine hold contests Saturday and Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi are up for grabs next Tuesday. MacManus said she'll be watching Michigan to see if Trump can add organized labor to his suite of constituencies.

Martin County Republican Party Chairman Donald Pickard said Rubio's "path forward" looks tough but he expects Florida's junior senator to stay in the race through March 15 because "he has the backing of a lot of folks with money."

But Pickard said Florida looms as a major challenge to all four candidates not named Trump because, "if he were to win Florida, I think he's inevitable." Pickard sees Trump already "quieting his rhetoric" in advance of the contest.

GOP FIELD

As for Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Pickard couldn't explain early Wednesday why they were still involved, unless they were angling for a vice presidential invitation or thought staying in would increase their future speaking fees, he said. Carson later Wednesday announced he saw "no path forward."

St. Lucie County GOP Chairman Bill Paterson said Rubio's decision to attack Trump with "juvenile comments" was probably a bad idea, and may have helped Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

"His attempt at ridicule may have backfired," Paterson said, harming both Rubio's reputation and Trump's standing. He said he doesn't think it's time for Rubio to quit the field yet.

"But it's getting close to the time if he doesn't pull off a Hail Mary on March 15," he said.

Rubio might not get much bang from a Bush endorsement, considering how badly the former Florida governor did before dropping out Feb. 20 after a humiliating defeat in South Carolina, said former Lee County Republican Chairman Terry Miller, a political consultant.

Miller predicts Rubio will come in second in Florida  behind Trump  and Cruz will come in third, so one of them needs to get out of the race, he said.

"Those two need to sit down and do the math and make personal sacrifices  put egos on the shelf: what is in the best interest of their party and of the future of our country?" Miller said. "If they both agree that Donald Trump's not the right guy, they need to agree on which one of those two should take him on."

If it appears likely Trump will walk away with all 99 delegates in Florida's winner-take-all contest, making that decision needs to come soon, he said.

Bartholomew Sullivan, a veteran Washington reporter, heads Treasure Coast Newspapers' D.C. news bureau.
Views of the Indian River Lagoon and John's Island Creek at Indian River Shores looking northwest in Indian River County. (ERIC HASERT/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

SHARE

By Colleen Wixon of TCPalm

INDIAN RIVER SHORES -- The town this week got the direction it wanted to begin evicting Vero Beach electric after the utility's 30-year franchise agreement with the town ends in November, town officials said.

Shores officials now will ask the state's permission to move forward with kicking Vero electric -- and all its facilities and equipment -- out of town.

The town claims it has the constitutional right to prohibit Vero Beach, and any other electric service, from using the town's property without compensation or permission, said town electric attorney Bruce May. But the Shores was unclear on whether to take its claims to court or to the state Public Service Commission.

On Tuesday, the commission unanimously approved its staff recommendation giving itself jurisdiction over electric territories, May said.

"That's what we needed to hear," May said.

Indian River Shores is trying to cut its ties with Vero Beach electric. About 3,500 Indian River Shores residents are Vero Beach electric customers, but the town wants Vero to sell the Shores portion of the system to Florida Power & Light Co. Last month, the town asked the Public Service Commission for clarification on whether to seek relief from the courts or the commission.

May told the commission on Tuesday that Vero received Indian River Shores' "temporary consent" in 1968 with a written contract to establish electric services. In 1986, the two municipalities signed a 30-year franchise agreement, allowing Vero Beach to use the Shores' rights of way and roads to set up electric infrastructure, May said.

"The city's electric utility is extracting unregulated monopoly profits from the town, diverting the unregulated monopoly profits to Vero Beach's general fund and thus is forcing the town and its residents to subsidize the city's own municipal operations," May told the commission. "Vero Beach is running its city on the backs of the town's residents."

Vero Beach had expected the commission's ruling, City Manager Jim O'Connor said.
Port St. Lucie City Hall

By Nicole Rodriguez of TCPalm

PORT ST. LUCIE -- A search firm has begun scouring the state for a replacement for fired City Attorney Pam Booker.

The search will last about three months and cost the city $24,250, according to city documents.

Booker was fired Feb. 16 by a unanimous City Council, which cited her poor performance in court, bad legal advice and poor communications skills.

The city last week hired Colin Baenziger & Associates, of Daytona Beach Shores, to find Booker's successor. The firm also is assisting the city of Fort Pierce in its city-attorney search.

Its representatives have met with City Council members to draft a recruitment profile for prospective candidates, city documents show. The profile is to be advertised by March 18, and sent to more than 12,600 local-government professionals. Application deadline is April 8.

For Vice Mayor Linda Bartz, the ideal candidate would have a deep knowledge of local government, she said Wednesday.

"I'm looking for someone who's got background with government (and) multiple years practicing law in Florida," Bartz said. "However, I believe that the search firm needs to pick the best candidates, because I trust them to know and be able to report back to us."

Candidate screening would begin April 11 and the pool would be narrowed to six to 10 semifinalists. Three to six candidates would be recommended to the City Council, with finalist interviews beginning by May 16, documents show.

The firm anticipates the new city attorney would be hired by May 23.

City Manager Jeff Bremer, who called the firm's price "reasonable," said interviews will be conducted publicly.

"Pursuant to Florida's broad public-records/Sunshine laws, applications and resumes are subject to public disclosure," Bremer said in an email Tuesday.

In firing Booker, the council specifically cited her handling of the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida case.

Booker has rejected a severance package, which she initially had negotiated into her contract. That agreement would have barred her from speaking badly of the city. Nevertheless, she left with a $183,360.88 payout, which includes 20 weeks of regular pay and unused sick and vacation time.
Discharged water from Lake Okeechobee that flows through the St. Lucie River mixes into the Indian River Lagoon on Feb. 11 near the St. Lucie Inlet. The discharges are not factored into the states annual BMAP report. The state claims in the report that it is ahead of its 2018 goal to reduce nitrogen in the St. Lucie River. (LEAH VOSS/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS)

SHARE

By Editorial Board

Is the St. Lucie River getting cleaner?

The question seems ludicrous in light of recent discharges from Lake Okeechobee that have raised environmental concerns regionally and nationally.

Yet the state of Florida says efforts to reduce river pollution, as set forth in the 2013 "Basin Management Action Plan," are actually ahead of schedule; the river is in better shape than officials projected it would be at this point.

And that's great news  if, in fact, it's true.

Problem is, we can't be sure it is.

As detailed in Lucas Daprile's recent Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation, the state's annual progress report on the 2013 cleanup plan paints a relatively rosy picture of the state of the St. Lucie.

We suspect the assessment is far too optimistic. The report takes polluters at their word, gives them credit for actions they can't prove actually reduced pollution and ignores major factors like the Lake Okeechobee discharges.

For example, farmers who sign a document saying they intend to implement "best management practices"  which are designed to reduce polluted runoff  are given full credit for compliance. The progress report assumes 100 percent of farmers who sign on the dotted line comply with all the guidelines and reduce runoff by a specified amount.

Then there's the 9,388 pounds of nitrogen the state credits Port St. Lucie for keeping out of the river each year. How did the state measure this? It didn't  rather, Port St. Lucie banned summer fertilizers and created an education program that includes a website and brochures. Computer models then estimated how much nitrogen the efforts were likely to keep out of the river.

Even if these assumptions turned out to be correct, what of the pollutants dumped into the river by the discharges? That information isn't factored into the equation, as Department of Environmental Protection officials say they don't want to make local farmers and others responsible for pollution generated upstream.

How can any legitimate assessment of the health of the river overlook such a huge factor?

The state defends its approach, saying the data is peer-reviewed and coupled with actual measurements. But how many actual measurements are used? That's another problem  we don't know.

In the original 2013 cleanup plan, the state lists the locations and capabilities of 98 water quality monitors. But only one water quality measurement is explicitly mentioned in the 2015 annual report: a water-sampling station at the Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart. DEP could not provide another specific example of where water quality measurements were used.

Experts interviewed by Treasure Coast Newspapers note that while computer modeling can provide good estimates, there's no substitute for actual, measured data. And that data does exist; in a written critique of the state report, Stuart environmental engineer Gary Goforth noted it's available via a South Florida Water Management District database. Utilizing that information to calculate nutrient loads and concentrations for any reporting period, Goforth wrote, "allows an annual assessment of actual water quality conditions  not simulated/projected conditions as done in the Progress Report."

And it may result in a better assessment of progress toward the 2028 goal.

An accurate, legitimate assessment is vital. The optimistic progress report could be used to inform state policy and fiscal decisions; a determination that the river is "cleaner" than it actually is could influence decisions on which water projects the state will prioritize. For after all  if the St. Lucie is doing so "well," perhaps other projects in other regions have a greater need for available funds.

Officials at DEP say that in future reports, they're open to specifying which data is derived from actual measurements versus computer models. That's a start. Another important step would be to make a point of utilizing as much actual data as possible.

Ultimately, an assessment that's 100 percent accurate may be impossible. Every progress report is destined to be an educated guess.

But for everyone's sake, it needs to be the best educated guess possible.
We have been hearing sneering references to "political correctness" by Republican presidential candidates in the televised debates and news interviews.

Is political correctness so bad? Not necessarily.

Billionaire real-estate developer Donald Trump, defending his demeaning references to women, said, "I have no time for political correctness."

Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, denounced President Barack Obama for declining to use the term "Islamic terrorism" and said, "Political correctness is killing people."

Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida, said political correctness has put "free speech under assault."

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who believes a Muslim should not be elected president of the U.S., said political correctness is "destroying our country."

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said, "Political correctness is now choking candid conversation."

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said, "The political correctness of our country needs to be shattered."

Other than keeping former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from winning the White House, abolishing political correctness may be the only issue over which these current or former candidates don't argue.

What is political correctness, anyway?

Often abbreviated as PC, it means avoiding language that puts down a group that is or has been at a disadvantage in our society, such as women, African-Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, the physically or mentally disabled and members of a religious faith.

In the 1970s, the New Left began using the term "politically correct" as an ironic warning against strict orthodoxy in its efforts on behalf of civil rights and feminism.

The satirical "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories," by James Finn Garner, reverses the roles of heroes and villains in familiar fairy tales. The woodsman is seen by Little Red Riding Hood as a "sexist" and "speciesist" for presuming that he must rescue a girl from a wolf.

Conservatives picked up the term "political correctness" to mock liberals for supporting any segment of society that sees itself as oppressed, especially by heterosexual, white males.

To be sure, those who favor political correctness can go to extremes, such as when some Yale University students demanded their professors issue "trigger warnings" before saying anything in class that might hurt someone's feelings.

Or when the University of New Hampshire issued a list of terms usually considered innocuous but now deemed inappropriate. They included "American" for a U.S. citizen (because other countries are in the Americas) and "elderly" (should be "people of advanced age").

These examples are ridiculous. But it is not ridiculous to oppose bigotry and meanness in public discourse.

Is it OK for Trump to call a woman a "bimbo"? I don't think so.

Was Fiorina angry when Trump poked fun at her looks? Yes. She did not excuse it as "candid conversation."

Is Carson offended if African-Americans are called the N-word? I bet he is.

If you are Jewish, do you find the K-word offensive? I bet you do.

If a friend or member of your family is a gay male or a lesbian, do you find the Q-word offensive? I bet you do.

So can we all agree that under certain circumstances "political correctness" is  well  correct?

Paul Janensch a seasonal resident of Vero Beach, was a newspaper editor and taught journalism at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. His "Treasure Coast Essay" can be heard on WQCS, 88.9 FM, and at wqcs.org. Email address: paul.janensch@quinnipiac.edu.
As springtime approaches and flowers begin to bloom, the dark clouds of tax time begin to gather.

Whether you owe money or are expecting a refund, most people dread gathering all of the paperwork and sitting down to prepare their taxes.

The task can seem daunting, but don't fret. The AARP Foundation is once again providing free tax preparation assistance for low- to moderate-income taxpayers.

The foundation has been providing free tax assistance for 48 years through their Tax-Aide program, which is offered in conjunction with the IRS.

Malcolm Sanderson, Tax-Aid district coordinator, has been volunteering with the program for six years.

After retiring, he was looking for some way to give back when he saw an advertisement asking for volunteers to help with tax preparation.

'I was in the industrial chemical business working in Canada, the United States and Mexico before retiring. Then I lived on a sailboat and cruised up and down the U.S. coastline, to the Bahamas and across the Atlantic Ocean before settling in Fort Pierce,' said Sanderson.

'I didn't have any experience with taxes but I love playing with numbers. The challenge of learning tax law and helping people is really what it's about.'

Opportunities

Sanderson recently presented Ralph Hill with a 25-year certificate. Hill started volunteering in Vero back when they did everything by hand on paper.

'We have many people that have longterm service here,' says Sanderson.

'Joan Elwell has been helping out for 19 years,' said Sanderson. 'If you are good with computers and numbers, and you like helping people, it's a fabulous opportunity.'

Louise is the greeter today. According to Sanderson she came in last year to have her taxes done and never left.

'She told me 'You are having trouble keeping order at the door. I can do that.'' Sanderson recalls.

The 80-something-year-old welcomes clients, gets them signed in and makes sure they have the proper paperwork.

'Do you have a government approved photo identification, social security card and all your tax documents?' she asks customer after customer.

There are no appointments and service is on a first-come, first-served basis. People start lining up an hour before the doors open.

More than 75 percent of the clients are retired and can't do their taxes themselves and can't afford to pay to have them done by professionals.

Experts

Volunteers are trained and IRS-certified each year to ensure their knowledge of revisions to the U.S. tax code.

'The biggest challenge we face right now are the changes in the Affordable Care Act and understanding some of the nuances of the (it),' said Sanderson. 'There have been some changes from last year. It can be complicated for those that are not on Medicare or have not had health coverage for the last 365 days.'

Last year, taxpayers who used the AARP Foundation Tax-Aide received $1.3 billion in income tax refunds and more than $250 million in Earned Income Tax Credits, nationwide.

More than 3,000 volunteers in Florida helped about 245,000 people file their returns last year. The program is offered throughout the state.

Most of the Vero Beach clients get returns according to Sanderson.

'We see about 1,200 people in Indian River County each year and our clients got close to $100,000 in returns last year, and earned income credits over and above that,' he said.

If you walk in with all of your tax documents, you should be able to leave within an hour of sitting down with a tax counselor.

Sanderson suggests anyone with brokerage statements wait until mid-March to visit, because they need their final brokerage statements and not the preliminary ones sent out in January.

Tax services will be available until April 13. In Vero Beach, free tax assistance is available at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, located at 2555 58th Ave., Monday through Wednesday from 9 a.m to 3 p.m. You must be signed in before 2 p.m. to receive service.

There is also a location in Sebastian at the North County Library on Tuesdays from 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

The program is open to everyone and recipients do not need to be a member of AARP.

For more information on documents to bring or to locate an AARP Foundation Tax-Aide site, visit AARP.org/findtaxhelp or call 1-888-AARPNOW (1-888-227-7669).
Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Tuesday attempted to clarify his position regarding Apples conflict with the FBI, telling Bloomberg he was disappointed that his earlier comments had been construed as taking sides with the government.

Apple has sparked a public debate through itsresistance to a court order to unscramble the data on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.

The FBI has sought to access the data in the course of its investigation, but Apple has argued that unlocking it could jeopardize the privacy of millions of people.

Gates on Monday appeared to discount Apples position in an interview with the Financial Times, noting that the governments request was specific to one case, and that it was not seeking a means for general access. He compared it to obtaining phone or bank records to aid specific investigations.

However, Gates had more to say on the subject a day later, when he acknowledged that the government had a history of overstepping its bounds.

Still, with the right safeguards in place, he told Bloomberg, government should be able to access information to perform valuable services for citizens, such as fighting terrorism.

The government shouldnt have to be completely blind, Gates said.

Dubious Privacy Issue

Gates is absolutely right, maintained Al Berman, president ofDRI International.

Its a very specific case. It doesnt extend beyond this phone in the possession of the FBI, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Its a one-off, and its such a specific one-off that I think were trying to make it bigger than it is, Berman added.

Apple should cooperate with the FBI, said Darren Oved, a partner inOved & Oved.

The facts of this case are very favorable to the government, he told the E-Commerce Times.

What we have is a dead murderers alleged right to privacy versus a very real right to protect the citizens of San Bernardino, the state of California and the United States from any potential real harm, Oved contended.

When you weigh those two against each other, he reasoned, I think Apple should do what the FBI wants it to do.

Further, the data on the iPhone doesnt need Apples protection to ensure the privacy of the phones operator, Oved maintained.

The device in question here belongs to San Bernardino County. The law is undisputed that any information on a device that belongs to an employer is the employers, he explained.

Since San Bernardino County is a public organization, the government can make a very compelling argument that the information contained on the phone is part of the public record, and we should be allowed to see it, Oved added.

Need to Hunt Terror Cells

Apple should help the FBI find more terrorists, noted Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder of the Israel Law Center.

The FBI needs Apples help because there are other terrorist cells that the FBI needs to hunt down before [those cells] harm others, she told the E-Commerce Times.

Theres no reason to believe that the FBI will reuse this one-time case to create a broad precedent for more and more subpoenas, Darshan-Leitner said.

Bill Gates realized that, and thats why he said what he said, she added.

Slippery Slope

Gates is out of touch with the industry he helped create, opined Michael Harris, chief marketing officer withGuidance Software.

Gates doesnt understand the real issue. He sounds like a guy who hasnt moved forward in 20 years in terms of what technology can do and how it works, he told the E-Commerce Times.

The analogy between what the FBI was asking of Apple and searching bank records is misguided, Harris contended.

They want Apple to write custom code, he said. Once you do that, thats not at all the same as supplying records from a database.

If Apple does what the FBI wants done, it will set a dangerous precedent, maintained Nathan Leamer, policy analyst at theR Street Institute.

Youre compelling a company to create out of thin air an FBI OS to enable access to a phone. Im not sure how you limit that, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Upsetting Delicate Balance

The San Bernardino case  however its resolved  could have a significant ripple effect.

There are 15 other cases where the FBI wants Apples help to break into other iPhones, observed Amit Sethi, principal consultant for mobile security atCigital.

If Apple helps in this one case, it will have to help in those 15 cases as well. Then what about other law enforcement agencies and foreign governments? he asked.

Its a bad precedent, Sethi told the E-Commerce Times, because while it may seem like a one-off case, its really not.

Forcing Apple to cooperate with the FBI could upset a delicate balance in society, noted Suzanne Nossel, executive director of thePEN American Center.

Were concerned that the careful balance between security and liberty plays out differently when a counterterrorism investigation is involved, she told the E-Commerce Times.Our concern is that by complying with this request, Apple is going to compromise the privacy not just of these individuals who are associated with this terrible crime but the privacy of millions of others.
BT and Intel Security today announced a strategic agreement to create new solutions to help organisations improve security and prevent cyber-attacks. The companies will also work together in a joint cyber partnership to further develop their common vision of creating next generation security services. RSA Conference attendees can visit BT Security booth 7.07 for a demo at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.

These new solutions will bring together key elements of both companies technology platforms and address current shortcomings of traditional point security products by avoiding the operational silos that widen the gap between detection and response. They are designed to simplify management and support, close many of the expertise gaps in the market and improve speed of response.

In the face of an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, organisations need continuous innovation to help them protect their critical data and applications wherever they choose to host them; on their premises, in the cloud or a hybrid of both. BT and Intel Security are focused on integrated, open security systems with cloud-first technology designed to empower organizations to resolve threats faster and with fewer resources.

Together, BT and Intel Security will work to address these threats with a single ecosystem that can handle multiple security controls. This means that the controls within both companies platforms will talk and interact with each other. This may provide considerable cost benefits for customers as the same controls can be delivered often with less hardware, less configuration and less management overhead.

Mark Hughes, CEO of BT Security, said,At BT, we are determined to stay ahead of the security game. We are collaborating with Intel to bring together BTs security intelligence with Intels advanced security tools in real time. We believe that our combined proposition will be an industry first in terms of the scope and ambition. Intels cutting edge security technology and our knowhow in service design and delivery can help make our customers safer.

Raj Samani, EMEA chief technology officer, Intel Security, said, Our goal is to enable businesses around the globe to more aggressively and effectively defend against data security incidents and targeted attacks. Together with BT, we plan to close the gaps between detection and remediation by creating and managing a security ecosystem designed to enable real-time communication, intelligence exchange and response across security tools.

Technuter.com News Service
EMC Corporation and VMware today announced the new VCE VxRail Appliance family, the only integrated and jointly engineered hyper-converged infrastructure appliances (HCIA) for VMware environments. The VxRail Appliance family brings together the best of EMC and VMware including EMC rich data services and leading systems management capabilities with VMwares leading hyper-converged software that includes VMware vSphere, vCenter Server and VMware Virtual SAN, the simple, powerful, efficient software defined storage natively integrated with vSphere  all in a single product family with one point of support. Hybrid storage or all-flash VxRail Appliances extend and simplify VMware customer environments and deliver key performance and capacity advantages in a simple, turnkey and easily scalable HCIA.

IT organizations tasked with supporting growing business demands for new applications and services with limited budgets and resources dont want to waste time constantly evaluating and integrating hardware, software, and networking solutions, nor do they have time to learn new operational tools and processes. The new hyper-converged VCE VxRail Appliances extend the hallmark benefits of VCE converged infrastructure  increased agility, simplified operations and lower risk  to small businesses, medium-sized enterprises, and department or regional offices for virtualization and end-user computing use cases.

The jointly engineered VCE VxRail Appliances tightly integrate virtualization, compute, storage and data protection in one system with a single point of support. Organizations can start small, with a couple of virtual machines (VMs), and easily and non-disruptively scale to thousands of VMs with a predictable, pay-as-you-grow approach. VxRail Appliances are available in a broad set of configurations and scale points right from Entry systems for small and medium businesses and remote offices to options for performance intensive workloads have more than 76 TB of flash  over 2X more flash than any other hyper-converged appliance.

VxRail Appliances are fully loaded with integrated EMC mission-critical data services including replication, backup and cloud tiering at no additional charge. EMC RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines provides per-VM replication and automated disaster recovery for critical workloads. Virtual SAN active-active stretch clusters provide site level, zero data loss protection. Integrated vSphere Data Protection provides backup and recovery using existing tools and can optionally backup to EMC Data Domain for centralized storage and management. VCE VxRail Manager provides deep hardware awareness with up-to-the-minute holistic notifications about the state of applications, VMs, and appliance leveraging VMware Log Insight capturing events. VxRail Appliances leverage EMC cloud tiering to seamlessly extend to more than 20 public clouds such as VMware vCloud Air, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and very shortly Virtustream, to more securely expand storage capacity without limits, providing an additional 10TB of on-demand cloud storage per appliance.

EMC and VMware uniquely simplify the infrastructure lifecycle by eliminating constant evaluation cycles and testing with continuous integration of advancements in x86 technologies and implementation of the latest enhancements to VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual SAN delivering leading efficiency with data reduction technologies  deduplication, compression and erasure coding. The net result: IT organizations can focus more on innovation by creating an automated, dynamic infrastructure that adapts to their business demands.

Customers get a familiar experience with management through VMware vCenter Server. VxRail Appliances also seamlessly integrate with the broader VMware vSphere ecosystem, fully supporting existing management, automation, monitoring, and availability tools from VMware to dramatically simplify IT operations, while enabling lower costs. Additionally VxRail Appliances integrate with VMwares cloud management platform and end-user computing solutions, including VMware vRealize Operations and VMware Horizon Air.

As IT organizations standardize on converged infrastructure as the foundation for their next generation data centers, EMC is extending its leading converged infrastructure to smaller business and the enterprise edge with VxRail Appliances. EMCs broad converged infrastructure portfolio helps customers deliver world-class cloud and mobile ready IT services to their business, including the only portfolio that can natively replicate between core data center infrastructure such as VCEs Vblock, VxBlock and VxRack Systems, and edge solutions such as the VxRail Appliance for seamless, consistent operations. VCE Vision Intelligent Operations software includes VxRail appliances in a complete view of all VCE resources from the core data center to remote and distributed locations.

The new VCE VxRail Appliance family puts IT organizations on a path to eliminating complexity and collapsing cost structures with hyper-converged infrastructure while leveraging their existing VMware investments. The VxRail Appliance completes our broad portfolio of Vblock, VxBlock and VxRack Systems to provide customers with a converged infrastructure that meets nearly every workload from the edge to the core regardless of size, said Rajesh Ramnani, Regional Director at VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment Company.

The new VCE VxRail Appliance family, powered by VMwares hyper-converged software, will help Indian IT organizations with a solution that is easy to use and help them drive innovation for the business. Our joint engineering efforts with EMC allows us to bring innovations in the software stack and appliances to our customers and offer the best HCI experience, said BS Nagarajan, Senior Director  Systems Engineering, VMware India. Our customers are very excited about the immediate value the new VCE VxRail Appliance family offers them, he added.

Technuter.com News Service
Bengaluru, India, March 2, 2016: Intel today announced the appointment of Ms. Nivruti Rai as Intel India Site General Manager. Ms. Rai succeeds Ms. Kumud Srinivasan who is relocating to the U.S. after the completion of her assignment in India.

Ms. Rai has been with Intel for over 20 years and has held several technical and business management positions across different functions both in the US and India. Based in Bengaluru, Ms. Rai is Vice President and Director of R&D, in Platform Engineering Group (PEG), Intel Corporation.

Intel India has been witnessing remarkable growth over the last few years. Today, it is a key design site for Intel with state-of-the-art facilities in Bengaluru and Pune involving advanced engineering capabilities across the computing spectrum from servers to IoT and wearables. India also presents us with opportunity to innovate and design relevant products and solutions to grow technology adoption in the country. Having worked here at Intel India over the last ten years, I am excited about the opportunities for Intel to lead and redefine the boundaries of technology to make new amazing experiences possible, said Ms. Rai.

Ms. Rai holds a Master of Sciences degree from the University of Lucknow, India, and a MS Degree in Electrical Engineering from Oregon State University (OSU), Oregon, US.

Ms. Srinivasan plans to relocate to the U.S. Ive had the privilege of leading Intel India for the past three years. I have seen the site grow, innovate and contribute significantly to Intels success worldwide. We are fortunate to have a strong and stable leadership team at the site with a vision for innovation and growth. I am confident that under Nivrutis leadership, Intel India will attain its next level of growth, said Ms. Srinivasan

Ms. Rai will partner closely with Ms. Debjani Ghosh, Vice President Sales & Marketing Group, Managing Director, South Asia to represent Intel in India. Ms. Ghosh will continue to be responsible for establishing new growth areas for Intel in the South Asian region. Ms. Ghosh will continue leading strategic engagements with governments and industry in these countries to establish policies and initiatives that help accelerate the adoption of technology in the region, especially as an enabler of inclusive growth and development.

With over 7,500 employees, Intel India is Intels largest non-manufacturing site outside the US and the presence of two senior leaders at the helm in the country reiterates Intel Indias strategic importance to Intel Corporation.

Technuter.com News Service
New Delhi, India, March 2, 2016: LeEcos recent success with its flagship killer Le1s reiterates the brands image of bringing disruptive technology to global markets. The Le1s as a market disruptor, has sold record breaking units since launch. The Superphone which comes at a sustainable price of INR 10,999 re-defines the value segment. Stunning design, best-in-class technology, compelling features, first of its kind content integration  all of this make Le1s a winner hands down!

Design

Le1s has a trendy full-metal body  it is one of the few brands in the market worldwide to have so. It is no wonder that Le1s has been the top seller in China since its release last October  having sold more than 2 million units in just two months. Le1ss is breathtakingly sturdy and made for perfection with aircraft grade aluminium, which make it solid and reliable. The CNC processing duration of 3300s is designed to provide a seamless experience as a whole. The Le Superphones are possibly the worlds only all- metal body devices that feature a screw-less industrial design with no visible trace of industrial assembling on the body. The metal design also not only provides full signal but also strengthens it.

Compared to Redmi Note 3, the Le 1S is thinner, measuring just 7.5mm, as against 8.65mm on Redmi Note 3.

Specifications

Like its unique hidden button design, only by LeEco, Le1s comes with many firsts in the category. At a highly competitive price over the Redmi Note 3 (Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor), Le1s brings the Dual SIM on a 4G Wi-Fi band that is available only on the HTC One M9+ at a difference of INR 30,000! The Le1s is a budget powerhouse and heavy gamers are sure to inhabit the Le1s for a stunningly smooth gaming experience. The phone is also crammed with 3GB of RAM offering the joy of multitasking.

A comparative analysis of Le1s with Xiaomi Redmi Note 3

Product Name LeEco Le 1S Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Price in INR 10999 NA SIM / Band Dual Sim, Dual 4G, Wi-Fi Dual Sim, Dual 4G, Wi-Fi Processor Octa-core, 2.2 GHz, Helio X10 Turbo Qualcomm MSM8956 Snapdragon 650 RAM / ROM 3 GB RAM, 32 GB inbuilt 2 GB RAM, 16 GB inbuilt 3 GB RAM, 32 GB inbuilt Display 5.5 inches, FHD 1920 x 1080 pixels, IPS 5.5 inches, FHD 1920 x 1080 pixels, IPS OS Android v5.0.2 eUI Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, MiUi 7 Body Type Aluminium All Metal Fingerprint Sensor Yes Yes Glass Protection Gorilla Glass 3 NA IR Blaster YES YES

Thats not all! The Le1s features the revolutionary Type C charger, which makes charging quick  just 5 minutes of charge gets you 3.5 hours of talktime! The reversible USB Type-C connector is technologically advanced than its competitors in many ways such as it has an additional sealing and PTC protection in-between wires, which is an industry first. For tech enthusiasts, the Le1s offers two charging paths, 24W charger, 3A Data Cable, and high-density superfast charging battery supporting the Type C connector.

Not to forget the content ecosystem that Le Superphones flaunt, which none of its competitors offer, clearly sets apart the Le 1s which not only offers consumers a fantastic smartphone but a truly redefining comprehensive experience.

Technuter.com News Service
Brussels, Belgium, March 02, 2016: ZTE Corporation has announced that it has demonstrated its GSM-R outdoor macro Base Station (BS), ZXG10 B8900, and its LTE for Railway solution at the 12th UIC ERTMS (European Railway Traffic Management System) Conference in Brussels, Belgium. ZTE is the only provider offering the highly-reliable solution with multi-level and system-wide redundancy in the GSM-R field.

ZTEs new-generation GSM-R outdoor macro BS, ZXG10 B8900 is based on advanced SDR technology. The ZXG10 B8900 integrates power supply and transmission functions, supports IP Abis and GPRS service and supports a seamless upgrade to LTE for Railway. In addition to meeting the requirements of railway radio communications, the ZXG10 B8900, like other ZTE GSM-R BS products, has the advantages of redundancy of the BS main control board and hot standby of the RF (radio frequency) module, further improving the reliability of the equipment and system and reducing the maintenance cost. In view of the difficulties in land acquisition in Europe, the ZTE GSM-R outdoor macro BS measures less than one cubic meter and therefore can be flexibly deployed along railways for easy maintenance and management. Due to the IP55 protection level, it can operate stably and reliably in a variety of harsh environments.

ZTE cooperated with Beijing Jiaotong University and mainstream signal manufacturers during the research and testing of the next-generation railway mobile communications system. They have jointly committed to providing more services and better experiences for the users of the next-generation railway system.

During the exhibition, ZTE launched and demonstrated the LTE for Railway solution. In view of the increasing demand for vehicle broadband data services, ZTEs solution can provide users with greater bandwidth, richer services, and more intelligent operation and maintenance.

Having entered the rail transportation sector in 1999, ZTE has continually invested in this field. By the end of 2015, ZTE had won the bids for multiple projects in the GSM-R market in China covering a total distance of more than 5,600 km. The fourteen railway lines include the Liuzhou-Nanning dedicated passenger railway, the Nanning-Qinzhou railway, the Qinzhou-Fangcheng railway, and the Qinzhou-Beihai railway, and have operated for years, providing strong support for local economic development. ZTE has long focused on the railway communications market and made great efforts to bring successful project experience at home and abroad to more regions in the world. ZTE will continue to provide advanced communications solutions and products for European railway administrators and travelers.

Technuter.com News Service
I started TechPinas in 2008 and back then, Nokia was still the world's leading handset manufacturer and vendor by a clear mile

For hardcore Nokia fans or regular Pinoy consumers who believe that 'Nokia phones are an investment because they last forever', Nokia 230 Dual SIM currently sells for Php 2,790

2 MP front cam also with soft LED flash for selfies - one of its distinguishing features

Of course, long battery life is one of the legendary selling points of Nokia handsets even back in the day

I saw this phone model at Games and Gadgets store! Kudos to them for not letting go of Nokia through all these years! That's unquestionable brand loyalty and true faith!

Ah, writing this post makes me feel nostalgic.









you might also like

That said, I know that many of my longtime readers and followers happen to be big fans of this legendary company. And I'm sure that even with the current dominance of iPhone and Android smartphones, a lot of you guys are still rooting for the Tech Titan that was Nokia.Anyway, last weekend, while walking at the CyberZone of SM City San Lazaro, I chanced upon this cool and currently-rare feature phone in a store shelf! It was the! I couldn't believe my eyes!Following the dissolution of Nokia Philippines and Microsoft's take over of the company, sales of basic Nokia handsets plummeted and many of the Finnish brand's local retailers stopped carrying the devices in favor of cheaper Android smartphones. So I found it really surprising to see new Nokia releases courtesy of Microsoft being offered to the public.For that amount, you get a pocket-friendly-clad feature phone that flaunts a 2.8-inch 240 x 320 pixels TFT display, 2 MegaPixel main camera with LED flash, another, a VGA video recorder, and a 1,200 mAh battery pack delivering up to a whopping 22 days of Standby and a whole day of Talk Time.Frankly, I'm tempted to purchase a unit if only to include it in my gadget collection.I remember the times when I traveled the world with the amazing-- filled with very smart and very talented individuals. Aww.The Finnish Giant gave me my very first trip abroad and - more importantly - trusted me even when I was but a budding, inexperienced tech blogger. And that's something that I will never forget.
Nvidia has launched a new set of GeForce WHQL-certified graphics card drivers, version 362.00, that bring support for a couple of games that are just about to hit PC.

The biggest game to be supported in these drivers is Far Cry Primal, which was released today on PC after hitting the consoles last week. The GeForce 362.00 drivers support all the necessary optimizations for a good gaming experience, including an SLI profile.

These new drivers also bring performance optimizations for Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, which also launched today on PC. As a remaster of the original Gears of War, this game brings new graphical effects, such as Nvidia HBAO+ and support for 4K resolutions. Ultimate Edition is built using DirectX 12, so it requires Windows 10, and Nvidia suggests a GTX 980 Ti to play at 4K.

The 362.00 drivers include optimizations for the latest Dying Light update as well. This update introduces a new Nvidia-specific graphical effect called Percentage Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS), which has already been used in games like Grand Theft Auto V. Grabbing this new driver ensures that gameplay remains smooth while PCSS is enabled.

As usual, you can download the latest Nvidia drivers automatically through GeForce Experience, or alternatively you can grab a manual installer from our driver download section here.
The US isn't the only country in the middle of a 'privacy vs national security' debate right now. In Brazil, authorities are going a step further than their American counterparts; police in Sao Paulo have just detained Facebook's regional vice president, Diego Dzodan, for failing to provide information related to a WhatsApp account.

"In the face of repeated non-compliance, the judge Marcel Maia ordered the arrest of a representative of the company in Brazil, Mr Diego Dzodan for obstructing the police investigation," a court spokesman wrote in a statement.

Facebook, the owner of WhatsApp, had been ordered for over a month to release data in connection with a drug trafficking investigation that Brazilian authorities are conducting.

While precise details of the case are unclear, court officials say that the arrest was a last resort after the judge issued fines of 1 million reais ($250,000) to compel Facebook to provide the WhatsApp information.

WhatsApp has already felt the consequences of not following the country's judicial demands; in December, the messaging app was banned for 48 hours in Brazil at the behest of a Sao Bernardo do Campo judge for failing to comply with two court orders to share information. The suspension lasted about 12 hours before the ban was overturned by an appeals court.

Facebook says that WhatsApp operates independently from the social media company and it doesn't even have any staff in Brazil, so Dzodan should not be held responsible. The only Facebook office in the country is a sales office, which has no access to WhatsApp user information.

WhatsApp says that as it does not store users' messages, it cannot give Brazilian authorities data it doesn't have. Moreover, CEO Jan Koum said earlier this year that the company is working on end-to-end encryption tools to increase user security.

Facebook is understandably upset by the authorities' actions. "We're disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook," a spokesman said. "Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."
A New York federal judge ruled on Monday that the government lacks clear legal right to compel Apple to give assistance in bypassing a locked iPhone linked to a drug case.

Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said in his decision that the government has no authority in using the All Writs Act of 1789 to oblige Apple, or any company, to break its security protocols and hack into a specific device.

"The government essentially argues that having reaped the benefits of being an American company, it cannot claim to be burdened by being seen to assist the government," Orenstein writes in his 50-page decision. "Such argument reflects poorly on a government that exists in part to safeguard the freedom of its citizens ... to make autonomous choices about how best to balance societal and private interests in going about their lives and their businesses."

Back in 2014, warrants were issued to carry out a search to residences of Jun Feng, an alleged drug trafficker, and his associates. Feng's iPhone 5s, which runs iOS 7, was among the many mobile handsets the Drug Enforcement Agency recovered during the search.

In October 2015, the government filed a motion compelling Apple to bypassing the passcode of the suspected drug trafficker in order to check the data saved on it, which could be significant in the case.

Do note that this particular case is different from that against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which involves an Apple 5c used by Syed Farook, one of the suspects in the San Bernardino shooting last December 2015.

While this is a separate case, the ruling may help Apple in its argument that it does not need to cooperate with the court order issued last Feb. 16 to help the FBI in hacking into Farook's iPhone.

Apple believes that the demand of the government to hack into the terrorist's iPhone, running its most recent mobile operating system iOS 9, will create a "back door" into every iPhone. Should the company give in to the government's demand, Apple boss Tim Cooks says it would set a "dangerous precedent."

The FBI, in the meantime, is convinced that accessing the saved information in Farook's iPhone will be essential in ensuring national security and preventing similar terrorist attacks in the future.

Previously, the Cupertino-based company already opposed an order that would require it to provide its assistance to the FBI in hacking into the iPhone of Farook, saying that it is a violation of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice expressed its disappointment on the court's decision in New York.

"As our prior court filings make clear, Apple expressly agreed to assist the government in accessing the data on this iPhone  as it had many times before in similar circumstances  and only changed course when the government's application for assistance was made public by the court," says a DOJ spokesperson. "This phone may contain evidence that will assist us in an active criminal investigation."

Greg Boyd, a lawyer who specializes in privacy and data security, in the meantime, believes that the case serves as a reminder that the California case isnt just about the San Bernardino shooters iPhone, but is about gaining access to phones "whenever it is in the government's interest to do so."

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
By looking at stroke data spanning a decade, Finnish researchers have found a link between daylight saving time and a short-lived increase in some people's risk for stroke.

Although the findings of the study, which is to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Vancouver, Canada in April, do not prove that the changing clock is to blame for increased incidence of stroke, Turku University Hospital neurologist Jori Ruuskanen said that it is difficult to imagine other factors that can explain the pattern.

Ruuskanen also said that there is already a known association between stroke risk and the disruption of the circadian rhythm, the shift on the biological processes of the body over a period of 24 hours in response to light and darkness so they wanted to know if daylight saving time may be putting people at risk for ischemic stroke.

Ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blood clot in an artery that supplies the brain, accounts for 85 percent of all stroke cases, according to figures from the American Stroke Association.

Ruuskanen and colleagues looked at the incidence of stroke in more than 3,000 individuals who were admitted to the hospital during the week after a daylight saving time transition and the incidence of stroke in a group of nearly 12,000 people who suffered from stroke two weeks prior to or two weeks following the week of transition.

They found that the overall rate of ischemic stroke was up by 8 percent during the first two days following a daylight saving time transition albeit no difference was found after two days.

The study likewise found that cancer patients had 25 percent increased odds of having a stroke after daylight saving time than during another period. Older adults who were over 65 years old and above also saw a 25 percent increased risk for stroke right after the transition.

Experts said that some planning may help people reduce sleep disruptions, which are known to cause an array of unwanted health conditions.

"It may be generally helpful to adjust gradually to daylight saving time rather than all at once," said Andrew Lim, from the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, in Toronto.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Facebook VP in Latin America Diego Dzodan was arrested by the Brazilian federal police on Tuesday for not handing over details contained in a certain WhatsApp account involved in a drug-trafficking case.

The authorities in the country took the executive into custody, detaining him in what they call a "preventive prison." The term usually lasts one week, but it could be extended, according to the law enforcers.

In an official statement, the federal police says that the fault of Dzodan is a "repeated non-compliance with court orders," an excerpt translated from Portuguese.

A spokesperson of the Sergipe court says (translated) that this most recent matter is a separate case, noting that Facebook has already received three opportunities to comply with the authorities' request in similar events in the past.

Tussles with government bodies are becoming increasingly common for tech companies nowadays, as Apple is also facing a run-in with the law over an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooters, an incident that took the lives of 14 people back in December.

Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft have expressed their support for the Cupertino brand, backing the company up in court.

These tech companies are determined to not yield to such demands for the sake of user privacy, where they have the responsibility to keep their users' personal information from falling into the wrong hands.

However, there is a big difference between the legal kerfuffle of Apple and the case of WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned company isn't capable of providing what the Brazilian federal police wants, as it doesn't retain user messages as a protective measure. New encryption updates only made the situation worse, leading to the arrest of Dzodan.

It's also worth mentioning that WhatsApp was shut down in Brazil about three months ago, but an appeals court revoked the order soon after.

Of course, Facebook is not happy with what the Brazilian authorities did to one of its executives, condemning their actions.

"[We're] disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp. Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have," a Facebook spokesperson says.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The ongoing battle between Apple and the federal government over the issue of encryption has now reached Congress as lawmakers look into the impact of technology in deterring criminal and counterterrorism investigations.

During a hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said that a final court ruling compelling Apple to provide the government with data from the iPhone of one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attacks could potentially serve as a precedent for other similar cases in the future.

He said that it can be used as a reference in such incidents where the FBI might need the help of technology companies in its investigation.

Comey's statements were slightly different from his earlier remarks where he said that the court order forcing Apple to unlock the gunman's iPhone was "unlikely to be a trailblazer" as far as serving as a precedent for future cases goes.

A federal court in California issued an order on Feb. 16 that compels Apple to develop special software that would effectively unlock the iPhone believed to be owned by Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers in the San Bernardino shootings. The smartphone maker, however, is contesting the court order.

Bruce Sewell, the general counsel for Apple, was also present at the congressional hearing to provide insight on the company's side of the argument.

Despite Comey's claims that the tool they need would only work on Farook's smartphone, Sewell said that software they were asked to develop would be usable with other iPhones as well.

Sewell argued that the issue is not about the San Bernardino investigation, but rather it deals with the safety and security of every Apple smartphone that is presently in use.

Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and other committee members asked Comey to expound on his remarks that the case could serve as a legal precedent that would allow the FBI to access any encrypted gadget.

"Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?" Conyers said.

Comey pointed out that the FBI was not seeking to expand the authority of the government for surveillance, but rather for the agency to be allowed to obtain valuable electronic information through existing legal authorities.

Photo: Ron Cogswell | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Researchers from the U.S. Army have revealed that they are close to developing laser-based weaponry that can be used to shoot down airborne threats such as military drones, missiles and artillery rounds in flight.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Mary J. Miller, from the Army for Research and Technology, told members of the House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities that the research team is on pace in creating laser weapons for the Armed Forces branch, which could be deployed in battle as early as 2023.

Miller said that while some of the weapons are still undergoing stringent testing before they can be used in the field, less-powerful versions have already been developed and will be released "relatively soon."

This is to allow American soldiers to gain experience in using the new technology before letting them handle the more powerful laser weapons.

"Lasers have been promised for a long time, but they've never held up and delivered what was asked for," Miller pointed out.

"[S]o the operators are rightfully skeptical, which is why you see the [armed] services taking the lasers out in operational environments and letting them be used by operators so they can understand what the capabilities are," she said.

Laser Weaponry

The laser program being developed by the U.S. Army is designed to bolster the Armed Forces' Indirect Fire Protection Capability (IFPC), which is a defense system meant to shoot down any missiles, rockets, artillery, mortars, or drones that can pose a threat to soldiers and civilians alike.

The program currently in place to do the above mentioned functions uses missiles. One example of such a defense system is the Iron Dome of Israel, which uses missiles to intercept any unguided rockets that may threaten the country's cities.

The technology has been proven effective, but operating it comes at a steep price. One pair of the interceptor missiles the Iron Dome uses could cost Israel as much as $50,000. This is 50 to 100 times more costly compared to the price of the cheap rockets that missiles were designed to intercept.

Laser weapons are pricier to develop compared to missiles, but they are relatively much more affordable to use and maintain in the long run. One blast from a laser-based weapon can cost only about $1 per shot. This is why countries are looking to the technology as a cheaper way to help protect their advanced military vehicles from attacks.

Israel has already started investing in a new laser component that will be included in its Iron Dome defense system.

Meanwhile, other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces have set their sights on testing their own version of laser weaponry. The Marine Corps is planning to test its anti-drone laser on a truck, while the Navy has just wrapped up its field test of a laser-based weapon placed on a ship in the Persian Gulf. The Air Force is trying to get lasers placed on its aircraft by 2022.

Army researchers have successfully tested weaker lasers in 2013. They are now looking to test functional laser weapons by 2023.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
In many situations, love and affection shows strong power over health problems. In one study, for instance, researchers have found that people suffering from cancer who have partners are more likely to live longer than those who are single.

In the study by researchers at the Queensland University of Technology and Cancer Council Queensland have found that single cancer patients may face death sooner than those who have partners. They are more likely to die within 10 years of cancer diagnosis.

The researchers looked at 176,050 cases of 10 leading cancer diagnoses in Queensland between 1996 and 2012. The study aims to shed light on the survival benefits of having a partner for individual cancer types since previous knowledge focused more on all cancers in general.

In the study, to be published in the International Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Detection and Prevention in April, the researchers used flexible parametric competing-risks models to predict and estimate cause-specific factors of death among cancer patients.

Likelihood Of Death Among Single Cancer Patients

The researchers have found that the possibility of death was 26 percent higher for single men than those with partners across all cancers. In single women, the likelihood of death was 20 percent higher compared to those who have partners.

Though the exact reasons are still unclear, the researchers said that it is important to better understand the benefits of having a partner following a cancer diagnosis. This will help improve cancer management for all patients suffering from cancer.

Notably, males without partners had a 46 percent increased risk of cancer-specific death, 18 percent higher risk of death from other cancers and 44 percent increased risk of death from non-cancer death. Women experienced a similar pattern with higher mortality risk persisted after adjustment for stage.

"Patients without a partner were not only at increased risk of death from their diagnosed cancer, but also from other causes of death," said Professor Jeff Dunn, Cancer Council Queensland chief executive.

"This pattern was consistent across the 10 leading cancers examined in Queensland, and independent of cancer stage," he added.

Possible Link

There are likely several reasons why patients in relationships lived longer than those who are single. Professor Dunn said that having a partner is linked to the practice of a healthier lifestyle, better financial stability and increased social support during treatment procedures.

"Support from a partner can also influence treatment choices and increase social support to help manage the psychosocial effects of cancer," Prof. Dunn said.

The study shows how health practitioners should modify treatment options and approach to single patients suffering from cancer. These patients should receive adequate support from family and friends. This may improve cancer survival rates and prognosis.

Importance Of Social Support Among Cancer Patients

The American Cancer Society said that family members or friends helping patients diagnosed with cancer should give emotional and spiritual support.

Though a cancer diagnoses in a member of the family changes the relationship as a whole, the family should cope through communicating openly and sharing feelings with one another.

Cancer treatment also includes care of the patient and the family, not just the disease. The help of a mental health professional is also needed to help both the patient and family members to adjust to the changes that might happen during and after cancer treatment.

This can help cancer patients accept the diagnosis, cope with cancer treatment and think positively toward health outcomes.

Photo: Rafael Castillo | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
An immunotherapy trial to test a new terminal cancer vaccine will begin soon in the United Kingdom. The trial will determine if the vaccine can effectively stimulate the body's immune system to kill unhealthy cells.

The Surrey Cancer Research Institute-led team are currently looking for cancer patients with solid tumors who have not responded to previous treatments. As the vaccine is based on key cancer protein fragments, patients with solid tumors could potentially benefit from the immunotherapy, regardless of cancer type.

"We know that the immune system in patients with advanced cancer is suppressed, so it's unable to recognize and kill cancer cells," said Professor Hardev Pandha, who is leading the UK trial at the Surrey Cancer Research Institute.

Early last month, U.S. experts reported "extraordinary" results in previous trials concerning terminally ill blood cancer patients. The immunotherapy trial involves the administration of a vaccine plus application of cream on the injection area. The cream stimulates immunity, which improves the vaccine's activity.

The patients who will join the trial will be given low-dose chemotherapy tablets while others will take the anti-inflammatory, non-steroidal drug celecoxib.

"This trial is pushing new boundaries for potential cancer treatments, and brings new hope for patients in the fight against cancer," said life sciences minister George Freeman.

The immunotherapy trial in London and Guildford will run for two years. Two patients already received the new vaccine.

Thirty-five-year-old Kelly Potter from Beckenham, Kent became one of the first few cancer patients to receive the vaccine. Potter's diagnosis of advanced cervical cancer came in July 2015.

Potter shared that the disease has already spread to other parts of her body, particularly to her lungs and liver. At the Guy's Hospital in London, she was informed that she's eligible for the immunotherapy trial.

"To be part of this trial has changed my life for the better. It's been a very positive experience and really interesting," shared Potter, who feels honored to be involved in the trial.

Potter received her first vaccine on Feb. 9. She will visit the hospital seven more times to complete the trial treatment. The doctors said she might experience flu-like symptoms but Potter said she has not experienced any symptoms to date.

She mentioned that she's getting the best treatment at Guy's but it is also "fantastic" that she is part of a trial that could be groundbreaking.

Photo: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tesco Ireland on Monday ordered the recall of some of its butter products over concerns that they are contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a bug that could make people ill.

On a notice posted on Food Safety Authority of Ireland's (FSAI) website, the supermarket giant said it is withdrawing all the batches of its Roast Garlic & Herb Butter Product, as well as two varieties of its flavored butter discs as a "precautionary measure."

"We have been made aware that some Tesco butters may potentially have low levels of Listeria monocytogenes present," a spokesperson for Tesco said.

The supermarket's brand butters are sold in 100g packs. Its 10g complimentary discs are given out at the fish and meat counters.

If the products indeed contained Listeria, it can cause food poisoning. Children, pregnant women, anyone whose immune system is reduced, newborn and unborn babies, and people aged 60 and above are most at risk of contracting the infection.

The following 100g packs of Tesco butters are being withdrawn:

- Roast Garlic & Herb Butter

- Three Peppercorn Butter

- Red Chilli & Lemon Butter

- Chocolate Chip & Maple Syrup Butter

Tesco advises customers to discard the following 10g complimentary butter discs:

- Counters Peppercorn Butter Discs

- Counters Chilli Butter Discs

- Counters Roast Garlic & Herb Butter Discs

A spokesperson from the FSAI said that customers who return products to stores will be given a full refund, and no receipt is needed. No other products from Tesco are reportedly affected.

"Tesco apologizes to our customers for any inconvenience caused," Tesco said in a statement.

Listeriosis is mild in most people. It typically causes symptoms such as vomiting, high temperature and diarrhea. These symptoms often pass after three days without the need for treatment.

However, in rare cases of the infection, the symptoms can be more severe. The bacterium can infect other parts of the body and can lead to serious complications such as meningitis.

Anyone with concerns about the recall can contact Tesco's Customer Services directly on 0800 505 555.

Photo: Gordon Joly | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A freshly surfaced leak seemingly confirms the One M10 name of HTC's next flagship, while also offering a camera sample to show what the handset can allegedly do.

The camera sample in question shows a photo of a slimy keyboard, complete with some EXIF data to detail the smartphone shooter that took it.

This leak follows HTC's own teaser for the photographic capabilities of its upcoming One M10, touting that it will offer a "very compelling camera experience." Those comments came from HTC CFO Chialin Chang, who briefly discussed the matter with CNET in light of the Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, and LG G5 launch.

All of these three newly launched flagships come with strong cameras, which indicate that HTC has some big plans for its next-generation One M10. And judging by its waning market share, it truly does need a hit product.

The new camera sample that Dutch site TechTastic now shows doesn't really reveal a breathtaking camera performance, but it does show plenty of detail for that dusty, dirty keyboard.

The EXIF data of the photo, meanwhile, lists an f/1.9 aperture for the lens. For the record, that's wider than the f/2.2 aperture of the HTC One M9, but less impressive than the f/1.7 aperture of the Galaxy S7 or the f/1.8 aperture of the LG G5. Head over to TechTastic to see the EXIF (photo 4/4).

The EXIF further shows an image resolution of 2,250 x 4,000 pixels in a 16:9 format. As GSM Arena points out, if it were taken in a 4:3 format, it would have translated to a 3,000 x 4,000 pixel resolution, i.e. a 12-megapixel shooter. Previous rumors indicated as much, while also claiming the HTC One M10's camera would feature optical image stabilization (OIS) and laser autofocus.

It remains to be seen what other specs and features the HTC One M10 will bring to the table, but one thing's for sure: HTC currently lags notably behind rivals, and not presenting any flagship at the MWC 2016 may not have helped its case too much. Alas, the One M10 is expected to make its official debut on April 11, and we'll keep you up to date as soon as we learn more.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Huawei Watch will get Android Wear 1.4 software update, which will get a number of new features to the smartwatch.

There are some confusions regarding the rollout of Android Wear's software update for the Huawei wearable. Initially, the company confirmed that the Huawei Watch will start getting a software update on Tuesday.

"The Huawei Watch update will be version 6.0, release MEC23L. This will be an OTA due for release beginning today," says Huawei.

However, the Huawei later confirmed that the update will not roll out on Tuesday.

"While the latest Android Wear update is expected in the near future, it will not begin its rollout today as previously posted. We apologize for the confusion. We're just as excited as you are for the new features that are coming to the Huawei Watch," says Huawei.

The Huawei Watch is the company's first smartwatch that was announced at the 2015 Mobile World Congress (MWC). The wearable hit the shelves in September 2015 and comes pre-installed with Android Wear and a software update will bring more features.

Here are some features that Huawei Watch owners will get following the software update:

New Gestures

Huawei Watch owners will be able to get some new gestures for navigating the smartwatch. Owners can just flick their wrist for scrolling up or down a card stream.

"You can also expand a card, bring up your apps, or return home to your watch face with a push, lift or shake. You'll be able to stay connected to what's important, while keeping your phone (or other hand) in your pocket," says Android.

Voice control

Huawei Watch users will be able to send messages with voice instructions. With the software update, users will be able to send message via Google Hangouts, WeChat, Nextplus, Viber and Telegram.

Speaker Support

The Huawei Watch has in-built speakers but the initial version of Android Wear does not support them. With the latest Android Wear 1.4, users will be able to utilize the in-built speakers of the Huawei smartwatch for making calls and listening to voice messages.

Users will also be able to take or make calls over Bluetooth following the software update.

Others

Huawei Watch owners should also notice battery improvement in the smartwatch after installing Android Wear 1.4.

The software update will also bring support for a number of languages including Thai, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, Cantonese and Mandarin.

Huawei Watch owners will have to wait for some more time before a software update has been rolled out for the wearable.

Photo: Maurizio Pesce | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
While the final count from Super Tuesday is far from over, it looks like GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump has surged ahead in the polls, declaring victory in most of the Southern bloc, nabbing Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, as well as New England states Massachusetts and Vermont.

As of now, Trump has amassed a total of 315 delegates (233 gained last night) out of the 1,237 to win the primary thus far, leaving contenders Ted Cruz with 188 and Marco Rubio with 90. As you've probably figured out, a Trump victory seems imminent  which is why some Americans have taken to planning on leaving on a permanent vacation to Canada.

Google data editor Simon Rogers noted the uptick in a tweet sent out on Tuesday night: by midnight, the search had surged to 1,150 percent before tempering off and nestling in at about 500 percent.

Searches for "how can I move to Canada" on Google have spiked +350% in the past four hours #SuperTuesday  Simon Rogers (@smfrogers) March 2, 2016

As Mashable noted, the state with the most Google queries during the peak of the search term's popularity pointed to Massachusetts, where, at the time, Trump (or, as he is known by John Oliver fans as, Drumpf) had recently seized his win count at 49 percent. Following states were Washington, Texas, New York and California.

So many American citizens were searching for more emigration information, in fact, that they more or less crashed the Canadian government's official site, which read at 12:06 a.m. EST : "You may experience delays while using the website. We are working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience."

The main draw of the site? It has a tool that measures how eligible you are to successfully move to/become a citizen of Canada. With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's strides toward immigration reform  like repealing Bill C-24, which makes it illegal to revoke citizenship from those convicted of terrorism or treason, as well as other major policy overhauls  you might want to consider it if you're not a fan of the man who might be the last GOP candidate standing.

Source: Google Trends

Photo: Thank you for visiting my... | Flickr

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Nintendo fans will learn Thursday what new games they can expect from the company this spring and summer.

The company announced that its next Nintendo Direct online broadcast will air at 5 p.m. EST on the Nintendo Direct official website.

The website notes that the broadcast will cover spring and summer releases of games for both the Wii U and 3DS. Nintendo Europe President Satoru Shibata and Nintendo Europe European Publisher Business Department representative Ed Valiente will host the event.

However, there is some disappointing news for Nintendo fans, too: don't expect to learn anything about the NX console or Nintendo's first smartphone app. Thursday's special online broadcast will feature all things Wii U and 3DS. Nintendo should make announcements about NX and mobile, though, later this year (likely at this year's E3 presentation).

Watch a #NintendoDirectNA about games launching through this summer on 3/3 at 2 p.m. PT. https://t.co/M7Omi1z2OG pic.twitter.com/FMmswF82Ug  Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) March 2, 2016

This Nintendo Direct broadcast comes just a week after a Pokemon Direct that not only celebrated Pokemon's 20th anniversary, but also served as an announcement for the Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon video games, which will launch on the 3DS during the 2016 holiday season. Those two games will support nine languages, including Chinese for the first time.

Some games that will probably get a mention during Thursday's presentation include Pokken Tournament, Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Star Fox Zero and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. Those Wii U titles will release this spring. For 3DS, expect to learn more about Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation and Hyrule Warriors Legends.

Many fans hope that Nintendo will finally reveal details on a new Zelda game, but it's likely that the company will hold off on any announcements about that title until E3, because that is one of the big cards up the company's sleeve. It's also at the top of the list of games for Nintendo players, so expect the company to make a bigger deal about that with a larger presentation.

But will Thursday's Direct contain other surprises? The only way to know for sure is to tune in.

The presentation will also stream live via Twitch.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Younger people might be more adept at learning new smartphone technologies than older people, but will senior citizens be the first to ride the wave of self-driving cars?

A report from Bloomberg seems to think so, highlighting the oldest woman to ever ride in an autonomous vehicle.

At 94-years-old, Florence Swanson was the oldest person to ride in Google's self-driving car, after she won a spot in the Paint The Town contest  sponsored by the world's most-valuable company  for her painting of a guitar player.

"You haven't lived until you get in one of those cars," Swanson told Bloomberg of her 30-minute experience in Google's self-driving car. "I couldn't believe that the car could talk. I felt completely safe."

John Krafcik, CEO of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, actually featured Swanson during a January presentation in Detroit, according to Bloomberg. He believes that the company's self-driving cars, and the overall autonomous driving technology, could aid senior citizens like Swanson and his own 96-year-old mother, giving them extended freedom to move around and get things they need.

"A fully self-driving car has the potential to have a huge impact on people like Florence and my mom," Krafcik told Bloomberg. "Mobility should be open to the millions around the world who don't have the privilege of holding a driver's license."

Joseph Coughlin, director of MIT's AgeLab, even sees the phenomenal possibility of senior citizens adopting self-driving technology quicker than younger people.

"For the first time in history, older people are going to be the lifestyle leaders of a new technology," Coughlin told Bloomberg. "Younger people may have had smartphones in their hands first, but it's the 50-plus consumers who will be first with smart cars."

In addition to Google, automakers like Ford and Toyota  who are each working on a self-driving vehicle  also see the benefits of autonomous cars with the elderly.

Ford's futurist Sheryl Connelly told Bloomberg that the company views autonomous driving "as a way to strategically address an aging population," while Gill Pratt, the head of the Toyota Research Institute, added that self-driving vehicles will give older people "the ability to decide for themselves where they want to move, when they want to move."

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Fans have anxiously been awaiting the release date for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Blu-ray, but so far, Disney has been tight-lipped on when it will arrive. A preorder listing on Amazon initially stated an April 5 release before being removed, and since then, it's been all speculation.

Disney, of course, probably wants to make a major announcement about when the Blu-ray will release, but it looks like it's been beaten to the punch. All the speculation about the home release of the film can finally come to an end, as the Duracell bunny has answered fan prayers.

A display stand featuring Duracell batteries with Star Wars characters on the boxes seems to have revealed the official release date for The Force Awakens Blu-ray. The ad also features the pink Duracell bunny wielding a blue lightsaber, though something tells us the mascot might be closer to that of a Sith Lord.

According to the ad, fans will be able to pick up their Blu-ray or DVD copy on April 18, at least in the U.K. The image comes from Adrian Hill (via Gamesradar), an SFX magazine writer who spotted the ad while at a local Tesco supermarket. Needless to say, Disney is likely not pleased with Duracell, and the company can probably expect an angry email or phone call.

Not that it's really Duracell's fault. It seems like somebody simply put up the advertisement early, which is hardly in Duracell's control. Maybe the person responsible didn't know? Maybe they didn't care? Either way, whoever is responsible better make themselves scarce.

It's unclear if the film will be releasing on the same date globally, but it's certainly possible. As for when exactly the film will be released digitally? That's still a mystery. Bluray.com stated the film will appear on iTunes on March 15, but that has yet to be made official.

So far, it's not exactly known what will be included on the Blu-ray release. Deleted scenes are a given, and fans already know a number of them will likely appear on the physical release of the film. As for other goodies, we'll just have to wait and see.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
France to penalize Apple 1M for each iPhone it refuses to decrypt

France is looking to put in place a fine of one million Euros ($1.08 million USD) for each iPhone, if they refused to hack into smartphones belonging to terrorists. This move is similar to the one where Apple is involved in a legal battle with the US government wherein the latter is demanding that Apple unlock the encrypted iPhone of a gunman in the deadly San Bernardino shootings.

However, Apple could potentially get away with this, thanks to a recent in a different case, in which Apple was cleared by a judge who said that Apple did not have to unlock the iPhone. Apples recent court victory suggests it is slowly but surely winning its battle to maintain iPhone privacy in the U.S.

On Monday, French Socialist MP Yann Galut proposed an amendment to French law that  if passed  would see the US companies (Apple, Google and other tech companies) punished if they didnt give French officials backdoor access to terrorists phones that are encrypted. His Apple amendment covers all manufacturers of communications devices, internet providers and telecommunications operators. French politicians are looking to implement a fine to provide a good reason for the companies to comply.

In France last year, there were eight phones that were inaccessible to police  all tied in some way to terror attacks, reports Le Parisien.

Speaking to Le Parisien, Galut was quoted as saying, We are faced with a legal vacuum when it comes to data encryption, and its blocking judicial investigations. Only money will force these extremely powerful companies like Apple and Google to comply. They are hiding behind a supposed privacy protection, but theyre quick to make commercial use of personal data that theyre collecting.

He stressed that his proposed amendment would not affect the privacy of the common public, only those who are under investigation.

Many tech companies have come out in support of Apple. At a tech conference in Paris last week, Google chief Sundar Pichai expressed his support for Apple in its standoff with the FBI, warning that creating so-called backdoors into encrypted communications could have bad consequences.

We want to take a very strong stance against any form of backdoor whatsoever, Pichai said during the conference at the Sciences Po university.

When you create backdooors it leads to very, very bad consequences which always ends up harming users.

Apples fight against the US government also saw the support of a number of Silicon Valley firms, with Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg saying Monday that he was pretty sympathetic with Apples predicament.

While it remains to be seen if this proposed change to the law will be approved, however, there is no doubt that the way the case is resolved in the US will influence how other countries and governments might approach the issue.
Apple vs. FBI : Apple wins round one of the battle as Court denies US access to iPhone data

Federal magistrate denies the US governments request that would compel Apple to extract data from an iPhone that was seized in a drug case

While the case of FBIs request to make an iPhone hackable which was seized during San Bernardino shooting, is getting great attention all around the world; A decision on a similar case has strengthened Apples stance on user privacy.

James Orenstein, the magistrate judge, questioned the use of All Writs Act which forms a base for this case as well as other similar cases in which Apple and some other companies are being asked to unlock devices. He said that government was inflating its authority by using the All Writs Act to force Apple to extract data from an iPhone seized in connection with a drug case.

The same act was invoked in the FBI vs Apple case which had publicly pitted Apple against the government. Apples chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, has refused to comply with a federal court order to help break into the phone, saying that he needs to protect the data of all customers.

Its important that a judge for the first time recognizes the All Writs Act doesnt provide the lawful authority the government has been claiming in these cases, said Esha Bhandari, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U., which supports Apples position. It demonstrates that when the governments arguments are put to the test, a federal court has decided they were not actually right.

The Justice Department said, in response to the order, that they would ask the judge to review the decision. Apple had previously agreed to help open up the iPhone in the drug case, and has complied with past All Writs Act orders, the Justice Department said.

This phone may contain evidence that will assist us in an active criminal investigation, and we will continue to use the judicial system in our attempt to obtain it, the Justice Department said.

An Apple executive has said that the ruling makes clear that helping to open up an iPhone is a constitutional issue that should be taken into consideration by Congress. Both F.B.I. and Apple have asked the Congress to interfere in this issue.

The case started in last October, when federal prosecutors applied for a court order to force Apple to unlock an iPhone 5s seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration in a 2014 drug case, according to court documents.

After federal prosecutors requested the order, Judge Orenstein argued in an 11-page memo last October that prosecutors were misusing the All Writs Act. The judge asked Apple to weigh in, and the company filed a brief that same month. In addition to agreeing with the judge, the company also said the request could create an undue burden and threatened to substantially tarnish the Apple brand.

This reputational harm could have a longer-term economic impact beyond the mere cost of performing the single extraction at issue, Apple said in a brief.

The government then called Apples decision to side with the judge a stunning reversal. Saritha Komatireddy, a Brooklyn federal prosecutor, said the governments application in this case was just a simple routine request for assistance in carrying out a valid search warrant issued by a federal court, as Apple has done so many times before.

During the case, Judge Orenstein said he found it puzzling that Apple had not previously resisted the use of the All Writs Act, including in other cases where Apple had complied with the order.

You have had apparently 70 prior instances where you have not taken the steps available to you, Judge Orenstein said to Apples lawyers during a hearing.

Ultimately, Judge Orenstein argued that the government couldnt use the All Writs Act to ask Apple to help extract information from a device just because a different law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or Calea, addresses the issue and does not include an information services company like Apple. Congress has been debating whether to amend Calea to include tech companies such as Apple, Facebook and Alphabets Google.

Still, the decision is not binding for the San Bernardino case, said Eric A. Berg, a litigation lawyer and special counsel with Foley & Lardner, who is a former Justice Department lawyer.

From a technical, legal standpoint, it doesnt really have much of an effect in the California districts, Mr. Berg said. But if you start with public opinion, this is going to be viewed as a victory for the privacy lobby and a defeat for the government in that battle over privacy.
Apple may have been handed a boost this week in its ongoing tete a tete with the Feds over user privacy, but the precedent is far from settled.

U.S. magistrate judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn ruled this week that the tech giant is under no compulsion to hand the Justice Department access to the contents of an iPhone belonging to a drug dealer.

Although the owner has already pleaded guilty, the FBI has argued that evidence on the device will assist us in an active criminal investigation. Apple has counter-argued that complying with the request could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand, according to court records, especially now that the FBI has their man.

The judge ruled that the All Writs Act of 1789 couldnt be used to demand circumvention of the security of the device, which was recovered during a drug raid.

"The implications of the government's position are so far-reaching  both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about Congressional intent in 1789  as to produce impermissibly absurd results, said judge Orenstein.

The broader implications of the case are noteworthy, as the FBI continues to seek access to the iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, who attacked a California center for the disabled in December, killing 14 and injuring more in a terror-motivated attack.

In that case, a court order issued by a California magistrate has asked Apple to create a new custom iOS version to install on the device  an iPhone 5C running iOS9  which will allow the FBI to brute force the passcode of the gunmans phone. Apple has bluntly refused, saying that it would not sanction the creation of software with the potential to unlock anyones iPhone. In turn, this is leading up to a courtroom showdown.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor, explained Apple CEO Tim Cook. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

In this case, too, the Justice Department is trying to use the All Writs Act, and while the California judge will not be bound by the Brooklyn decision, it could be offered as precedent.

Although Apple has complied in the past with scores of court orders based on the All Writs Act, since October, it has either rejected or is seeking additional information in 12 separate cases in which the FBI is trying to use the 1789 law to get around iOS security.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has noted: The implications of the governments demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyones device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phones microphone or camera without your knowledge.

In the Brooklyn case, the DoJ said that it was disappointed by the ruling and will look to appeal to a higher court.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi
Alzheimers disease could be definitively diagnosed for the first time after scientists proved brain scans can pick up the condition in its earliest stages.

Currently the only way to determine whether Alzheimers is present is to look at the brain of a patient after death.

For patients who are still alive, doctors usually use special cognitive tests which monitor memory and everyday skills such as washing and dressing.

"It can take months, and sometimes years, for some people to get diagnosed with Alzheimers and so a definitive way to diagnose the disease would be a big leap forward." Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at Alzheimer's Society

But now researchers at theUniversity of California have proven that it is possible to spot the sticky amyloid plaques and tau protein tangles which cause the disease and pinpoint the moment that they trigger Alzheimers disease.

The US scientists were able to track the progressive stages of Alzheimers disease, even in adults who showed no symptoms. It means that people at risk from the condition  such as one in five of the population who carry the APOE gene variant  could be regularly screened.

And it could reassure people who are suffering mild memory problems that they do not have the disease.
Ahead of the EU referendum on June 23, campaigns have formed on both sides of the argument.

The Electoral Commission has designated Vote Leave as the "lead" campaign representing those wanting to leave the EU. The election watchdog said it based its decision base on a range of criteria such as the level of cross-party support, campaign tactics and organisational capacity.

Who are the groups wanting to leave the EU?

Vote Leave

Vote Leave is a cross-party campaign with support from all the main parties but based on Business for Britain, a pre-existing campaign group. Senior figures include Lord Lawson, the former Conservative chancellor. It is backed by senior politicians - including five Cabinet ministers - and is hoping to be named the official campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Douglas Carswell , Steve Baker, Bernard Jenkin are also among the senior politicians behind the campaign. It also has the backing of Labour Leave, which is headed by Labour donor John Mills.

Political strategists Matthew Elliott (who ran the campaign against the AV voting system) and Dominic Cummings, a former Conservative adviser, are occupying key backroom roles.

Grassroots Out

Vote Leave's main rival to be the official voice of the out campaign was Grassroots Out. The umbrella group sprang up early this year in response to the growing hostilities between Vote Leave and Leave.EU, another Out group largely supported by Ukip donor Arron Banks and Ukip supporters. It was started in January by Conservative MPs Peter Bone and Tom Pursglove and prominent Labour eurosceptic Kate Hoey MP.
Since June last year, one of the most popular topics for queries has been how expats and people who own property in EU countries might be affected by Brexit.

Now, that Article 50 has been triggered, here's everything we know so far about the position for expats.

How many British expats are there in the EU?

Just over 4.5 million Britons live abroad, with approximately 1.3 million of them in Europe, according to the United Nations.

Which countries do they live in?

The top destinations for British expats in the EU are Spain (host to around 319,000), Ireland (249,000) and France (171,000). Expats were able to vote in the EU Referendum (as long as they hadn't lived abroad for more than 15 years).
Mother's Day, the celebration of mums far and wide, is here, with children presenting flowers, cards and chocolates to their maternal figures as a thank you for all they do.

While the occasion has become heavily commercialised in recent years and we now typically associate the day with buying gifts and making breakfast in bed for our mums, it has not always been linked to honouring motherhood.

From the history behind the calendar date to the traditions and its Americanisation, here is the story of Mother's Day.

When is Mother's Day?

This year, Mother's Day, otherwise known as Mothering Sunday, falls on Sunday, March 31.

The date changes every year, but always takes place on the fourth Sunday of Lent, exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday and usually in the second half of March or early April.

Mothering Sunday is a celebration of mothers and the maternal bond, a chance for us all to show love, gratitude and appreciation to our wonderful mums.

Children commonly give flowers, gifts, cards and other acts of kindness to their mothers, as well as their other special maternal figures including grandmothers, stepmothers and mothers-in-law.
Haiti's diplomat Rodrigue welcomed the imposition of sanctions, although he stressed that more measures are needed to restore security in his country. | Read More
Maha Govt gives nod for construction of barrages

Hyderabad, March 2 (INN): The Maharashtra Government has given nod to Telangana Government for the construction of five barrages on Godavari River, Pranahita and Penganga.



Both the Chief Ministers, K. Chandrashekar Rao (Telangana) and Devender Fadnavis (Maharashtra), will sign the agreement on this n March 8. The Maharashtra CM called up his Telangana counterpart on Wednesday invited him to Mumbai to sign agreement on construction of barrages on three rivers. He made it clear that the Maharashtra Government would never oppose anything any project that benefits farmers of both the States.



KCR accepted the invitation extended by Fadnavis and decided to lead a delegation to Mumbai on March 7. The delegation will comprise of Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao and senior officials. The next day, both the Chief Ministers will sign agreement for construction of five barrages.









News Posted: 2 March, 2016








Sudhir Commission to meet today

Hyderabad, March 2 (INN): The Sudhir Commission of Inquiry, which has been constituted to study the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in Telangana, will conduct a review meeting at Hyderabad Collectorate on Thursday.



The meeting, to be chaired by Commission Chairman G Sudhir, will review the status of implementation of various schemes for the welfare of Muslim community. Hyderabad Collector Rahul Bojja has directed the officials of different department to participate in the meeting with complete details.









News Posted: 2 March, 2016








Coffee exports from Vietnam, the biggest producer of robusta beans, may fall to the lowest in six years as farmers hold out for higher prices amid a forecast global supply shortage, according to the nations largest shipper.

Shipments are forecast at 1.1 million to 1.2 million metric tons this year, Do Ha Nam, the chief executive officer of Intimex Group, said in an interview last week. That would be the lowest level since 2010, according to customs data.

Robusta futures, which slumped 20 percent in 2015, may rebound this year because of concerns over global supply, said Nam, who is also the vice chairman of Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association. Rabobank International and Olam International Ltd. are also anticipating gains in the coffee markets.

Prices are still on a down trend so farmers are not intending to sell, especially as prices are approaching their cost of production, Nam said. A crisis of global shortage could happen in April and May as there will be little supply from Indonesia and Vietnam.

Robusta, used by companies including Nestle SA, gained 3.4 percent to $1,413 a ton on ICE Futures Europe on Monday, trimming their decline for the year to 7.7 percent.

Vietnam differentials

Should prices remain at those levels, the premium for farmers in Vietnam will climb to $50 a ton or more, Nam said. The current domestic premium of about $30 hasnt attracted farmers to sell stockpiled beans, he said in the interview from Ho Chi Minh City on February 26.

Total production in Vietnam in 2015-16 will not be more than last seasons 1.5 million tons because of impact from El Nino, Nam said. Production in the 2016-17 harvest will continue to be limited as low prices have reduced replanting. Growers are replacing old coffee trees with pepper or fruit crops. The total planted are is forecast to drop to 600,000 hectares this year from 650,000 hectares last year. Green bean exports will also drop due to more investment in instant coffee production, Nam added.

Intimexs coffee exports in 2016 are forecast to rise to 400,000 tons from 350,000 tons last year as the company markets higher-quality products, he said.

Coffee prices are set to increase as certified stockpiles are drawing down at an alarming rate, Olam CEO Sunny Verghese said Monday. Robusta futures may gain as much as $200 a ton in coming months as exports from Brazil and Indonesia are set to fall after dry weather curbed yields and farmers in Vietnam may decide to continue withholding beans, Carlos Mera Arzeno, an analyst at Rabobank, said earlier this month.
Dang Trieu Phu, 23, seized at a police station in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City on March 1, 2016. Photo credit: VnExpress

The Ho Chi Minh City police arrested two people for allegedly snatching phones from women tourists in separate robberies in District 1 on Tuesday.

Nguyen Van Dang, 17, was seized by a patrolling officer after chasing him around alleys off Pham Ngu Lao Street in the backpacker area that afternoon, police said.

The shoeshine boy had snatched an iPhone 6 from a Korean walking on the street.

The teenager told the police that he only pretended to shine shoes to case tourism hotspots and look for potential victims.

Hours earlier officers in the same district arrested Dang Trieu Phu, 23, who allegedly snatched a phone on Nguyen Hue Street.

Phu rode a motorbike up to his victim and grabbed the phone before speeding away.

A group of patrolling police officers chased after him and knocked him off his motorbike near the Notre-Dame Cathedral, one of the most famous tourist attractions in the city.

Phu has two previous convictions for robbery.

The cell phones were returned to their owners later.
Sorry, the page you requested may have been moved or deleted. You may click here to come back your homepage.
Tony Abbott has already denied being the source of the leaked sections of the Defence white paper. The journalist who received the leak, a friend of Abbott's, has also denied it came from the former prime minister.

Taking them both at their word, the mere fact that Abbott agreed to be quoted at length for the story  a very favourable story to him but an attempted damning of Malcolm Turnbull  tacitly condoned the leak of what Fairfax Media has been told were "highly classified" documents.

That alone is a breathtaking breach of basic responsibility for a former prime minister and member of the national security committee of cabinet. Abbott should and will now be the subject of a grilling by the Australian Federal Police, as will his former defence minister and ally Kevin Andrews, who also gave a somewhat vague denial he was the leaker.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has been drawn into a police investigation into leaked defence department documents amid a stoush over claims his successor has delayed the acquisition of Australia's new submarine fleet.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told Parliament on Thursday that the head of the Defence Department, Dennis Richardson, had ordered an investigation into the leak, which formed the basis of a report in The Australian newspaper that extensively quoted Mr Abbott.

The revelations intensify the leadership tensions that continue to simmer six months after Mr Turnbull deposed Mr Abbott as prime minister. Mr Abbott has sought to cast differences between himself and Mr Turnbull on a range of issues, chief among which has been national security.
A mega-merger is on the cosmic cards. In roughly four billion years, our home galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide, and join forces, with its nearest large galactic neighbour, Andromeda, scientists say.

Like the Milky Way, Andromeda is a spiral galaxy  although it's bigger than our creamy coterie of suns and contains as many as a trillion or so stars.

Viewed almost edge-on from the northern hemisphere, Andromeda appears as a fuzzy, oval patch of starlight that can just be made out on a clear night. Right now, it is 2.4 million light years away  and closing.

Gravity is pulling the two galaxies together at about 400,000 kilometres an hour. By the time you finish reading this sentence, Andromeda will be something like 200 kilometres closer to us.
Terror hoaxers the Jalals have backed an online petition calling on Victoria Police to drop strict bail conditions which are stopping them from making more of their provocative videos.

Max and Arman Jalal, along with a 16-year-old boy who cannot be named for legal reasons, have attracted controversy in recent months over their videos which depict fake terrorist shootings and bombings.

Last week, Victoria Police counter-terrorism officers charged the South Morang trio with a string of offences over the videos, which have been viewed millions of times online.

The three later confessed in a TV interview that a controversial video of the brothers firing a fake AK-47 at a young girl from a car was "all staged" and that everyone involved was acting.
Tags graffitied on a vacant property in Melbourne's east where its caretaker was savagely set upon form part of a police investigation trying to capture his two attackers.

Paul Cenci was bitten, bashed and almost run-over after he disturbed the pair graffitiing inside the vacant property - which is marked for development - in Fitzsimons Lane, Templestowe, last month.

Paul Cenci shows a photo of himself in hospital with the horrific injuries he suffered in a savage attack last month. Credit:Jason South

The 50-year-old said he was doing maintenance on the property during the afternoon of Monday, February 15 when he heard a thud on the ground.

He said he turned to find a young man behind him and a tussle between the pair ensued, where Mr Cenci managed to grab a hold of the young man's backpack full of spray cans.
A company linked to allegations of trying to buy the influence of public servants to win the Ultranet tender has won a $105 million IT contract with the education department.

The publicly-listed ASG Group announced on Sunday that it had signed a $105 million contract to deliver services for the department's "business critical systems".

ASG Group chief executive Geoff Lewis was questioned at an anti-corruption hearing last month. Credit:James Davies

ASG Group's chief executive, Geoff Lewis, was questioned at an anti-corruption hearing last month about a $400,000 payment his company made to a consultancy firm owned by Frank Aloisio, a former teacher who had "strong relationships" with top education department officials.

Counsel assisting the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission, Ian Hill, QC, asked Mr Lewis whether ASG would have bid for the education department's Ultranet tender if it did not have the "Aloisio expertise".
Pressure is mounting on state governments to allow drug-testing trials of illicit substances at public events after a federal parliamentary group declared they were a "matter of priority".

On Wednesday, experts from Australia, New Zealand and the US addressed cross-party MPs on the latest strategies for dealing with illicit drugs.

A group of cross-party MPs wants to trial voluntary drug testing of illicit substances at public events. Credit:Angela Wylie

The event culminated in a draft declaration, which included support for drug checking (also known as pill testing) and moving away from "failed punitive enforcement".

"Drug checking presents as a potentially valuable option for reducing harm at public events and governments should enable trials to be implemented as a matter of priority," the declaration said.
Ramallah, West Bank: It is not the first time a smartphone navigation app has led people astray, but this time the consequences were far more serious.

Two Israeli soldiers following the Waze app's directions accidentally wandered into a bitterly contested area of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, provoking clashes and a gunbattle that left a Palestinian man dead.

A Palestinian woman cries during the funeral of Eyad Sajadiyeh, 22, who was killed during an Israeli army raid in the West Bank refugee camp of Qalandia. Credit:AP

The soldiers, from the army's canine unit drove into an area bordering the Qalandia refugee camp, between Jerusalem and Ramallah, late on Monday.

The app is popular among Israelis, but soldiers are under standing orders not to use GPS services in areas with which they are not familiar, said Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military.
First we had activism. Then came its lazier cousin, slacktivism. Now thanks to a new campaign placing casually sexist retorts on takeaway coffee cups, we have snacktivism.

From next Tuesday, your morning brew could come in a paper cup emblazoned with what its creators say is everyday language which minimises and condones violence against women.

Jessica Klobucar and Jolene Mifsud with one of the takeaway coffee cups. Credit:Jay Cronan

More than 50 Canberra cafes will swap their ordinary takeaway cups for ones sloganed with refrains women commonly hear, like "why doesn't she just leave", "boys will be boys" or "it's just a joke".

"This language promotes victim blaming as it focuses on women's responses to violence, not the choice men make in using it," campaign co-ordinator and founder of advocacy organisation, This is Not a 'Wife Beater', Alisa Draskovic said.
Consumers should have confidence that free range eggs have come from chickens living in humane conditions, Canberra egg producers and Consumer Affairs Minister Shane Rattenbury said on Wednesday.

Consumer group Choice hosted a breakfast for farmers and politicians at Parliament House, offering the chance for participants to "fry" the egg industry's marketing slogans and claims about free range standards.

Majura Valley Free Range Eggs owner Nick Weber agrees with a push for a national standard on free range eggs. Credit:Jay Cronan

Mr Rattenbury will meet with other state and territory ministers this month to discuss the issue. He said a nationally mandated definition for free range eggs was needed in Australia, to give consumers confidence in their purchase. Federal legislation was also required to replace a voluntary industry code.

"There is high consumer demand for free range eggs, but consumers want to be sure that the eggs they are buying are from hens that are actually kept in humane conditions.
"Stuart Flats has a bad reputation, which personally, I don't think is warranted," he said.

It was only in the last three to four months that trouble had escalated at the complex, he said.

Another resident, Adam Cox, said everyone in his block knew each other and looked out for each other, but mainly kept to themselves.

He said he had lived there for six years, and the problems seemed to be due to outsiders who came in to the property.

That was echoed by another long-term resident, who asked not to be named. He said the Stuart Flats residents were left saddened by what had happened on Monday afternoon.
It's hard to credit that a decade has passed since one of the greatest adventurers this century has produced claimed the record for the longest powered flight without refuelling.

Media throughout the world were reporting the successful conclusion of Steve Fossett's epic flight in the Virgin Global Flyer on this day, March 3, 2005.

Steve Fossett, 21st-century adventurer.

He landed the remarkable aircraft, which acted as a testbed for a wide range of technologies that has been incorporated into everything from military jets to unmanned drones, at 1950 hours, Greenwich Mean Time, in Salina, Kansas.

Fossett, who had become the first man to single-handedly fly a balloon around the world in 2002, had taken off from the same airport just 67 hours previously.
Have you ever heard of students sending their principal to an office?

That's exactly what Radford College Junior School students did on Wednesday.

Radford College staff, Principal Fiona Godfrey, Head of Junior School Paul Southwell and Head of Secondary School Phillip O'Regan begin their walk from Radford to Parliament House. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Radford College principal, Mrs Fiona Godfrey, joined her deputies Paul Southwell and Phillip O'Regan on a two-hour walk from their school to Parliament House. The catch? They were dressed in Dr Seuss attire that would likely be more comfortable on a winter's day than in 34-degree heat.

Watching authority trot off in amusing costumes was a well-deserved reward for the 560 students who earned more than 50,000 points in the annual summer holiday Reading and Writing Challenge.
West Coast coach Adam Simpson says he's not fretting about the fitness of Luke Shuey or Sharrod Wellingham heading into the start of the AFL season.

Shuey and Wellingham will miss their second straight pre-season game when West Coast host Gold Coast in Joondalup on Thursday.

Luke Shuey will miss the Eagles NAB Challenge match against the Gold Coast Suns due to injury. Credit:Getty Images.

Wellingham was nursing a cut foot during the summer, before copping a recent knock at training.

Shuey received a knock to his knee during a recent intra-club match.
The ANZ Group's latest series of Game of Thrones has come to an end the bank's new boss, Shayne Elliott, insisted after he simplified its approach to wealth management on Wednesday by putting its wealth boss, Joyce Phillips, to the sword.

"As part of simplifying the approach to wealth management  [Phillips] will be leaving ANZ to pursue her successful financial services career."

By that, the bank means she will be pursuing her "successful financial services career" elsewhere  as in, somewhere the bank no longer has any interest. Asia maybe.

At least her departure will help create a bit of room in the executive pay pool for the new hire it announced on Tuesday, Google's local boss, Maile Carnegie.
If investors are waiting for some movement on the tectonic plates of media ownership in response to proposed changes to media ownership laws on reach and concentration  they could be headed for disappointment.

The media moguls probably won't be drawing up battlelines around who can bid for what. Why would they, when the regulatory ownership changes relate to traditional media assets that are largely in structural decline and whose appeal has largely diminished during the past 10 years?

Neither of the big media moguls, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes, were lobbying for a relaxation of media ownership laws, which suggests they have no plans to take advantage of any changes.

Thus it is hard to imagine how investment bankers, who love asset sales, will be in a lather over potential media deals.
A further 92 jobs could be lost from the Australian coal industry, with Yancoal deciding to put its Donaldson mine on "care and maintenance".

The closure of the mine near Newcastle was blamed on the same "ongoing market challenges" that have led to thousands of other Australian coal jobs lost during the past four years.

Bleak future: Another coal mine has closed in NSW Credit:Bloomberg

The Donaldson complex employs 103 people, and will probably need only 11 by the time it has transitioned its operations to care and maintenance.

Yancoal hopes the job losses will be fewer than the 92 fewer workers needed at Donaldson, and it will try to redeploy as many as possible to its continuing mines at Ashton and Austar.
The Australian Taxation Office has dropped its case against a Russian oligarch it alleged owed $34 million in unpaid taxes after resolving the dispute.

The Federal Court on Monday set aside a freezing order over $116 million worth of Australian shares owned by Vladimir Iorich's Swiss-based Pala Investments that was originally issued on the request of the ATO's Project Wickenby team.

A Senate estimates hearing into the bungled tax office roll out in 2010 heard taxpayers were with issued tax debts when they were owed refunds because the supercomputer could not cope with negative figures. Credit:Louie Douvis

Outside of mining and taxation circles, Mr Iorich is best known for accusing former NSW premier Nick Greiner of bid-rigging while he was chairman of Bradken Resources.

Fairfax Media revealed earlier this year that the ATO had launched legal action against Mr Iorich's Pala Investments alleging it had accrued the massive tax liability between 2009 and 2011.
Dozens of overseas workers have been underpaid a total of $92,381 over 11 months at a mushroom farm in the Hunter Valley.

A Fairwork Ombudsman investigation has revealed that 52 workers from China and Taiwan, most of whom could not speak English, were paid a flat hourly rate of $16.37 to pick, weigh and pack mushrooms. The correct hourly rate was around $21 and up to $37.95 on public holidays.

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says three quarters of court actions taken by the regulator to recoup back pay involve visa-holders. Credit:Jesse Marlow

The workers were allegedly underpaid at the mushroom farm in Singleton between September 2013 and August 2014. The largest underpayment to an individual was alleged to be $6938.

The Fair Work Ombudsman said the farm outsourced its work to a labour hire company at a rate which did not allow the contractor to pay minimum lawful entitlements under the Horticulture Award.
Hillary Clinton is misguided. Her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership is based on "misinformation". Malcolm Turnbull's new trade minister says so.

Within hours of being sworn two weeks ago, Steven Ciobo eschewed the traditional approach of getting up to speed and consulting widely, and blundered into the US presidential race.

"I am not surprised that the trade union movement and, of course, the political arm of the Australian Labor Party is on a similar platform to, for example, Hillary Clinton," he told the Financial Review. "They both derive their key support from the union movement."

The woman most likely to be the next US president, the former secretary of state who ran America's missions abroad, the woman who criss-crossed the world pressing flesh about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, knows less about it than Steven Ciobo.
The likelihood of Donald Trump becoming the Republican party's 2016 presidential nominee  a prospect the GOP's establishment and millions of liberal-minded Americans regard with something approaching dread  firmed considerably on Tuesday. With 11 states and just on a quarter of Republican delegates in play, Mr Trump won all but Texas, Oklahoma and Minnesota. Ted Cruz, considered another GOP outsider by virtue of his ideologically conservative background, won his home state of Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma. In the only result likely to have pleased mainstream Republicans, Florida's Marco Rubio won in Minnesota.

The Democrats' Super Tuesday results were less contentious insofar as Hillary Clinton did as expected, winning solidly in delegate-rich states like Texas, Georgia and Massachusetts. Bernie Sanders won in Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont, and though the plucky New Englander has vowed to fight on to convention day in Philadelphia, Ms Clinton appears to have the nomination all but locked up. It's not a prospect that pleases all Democratic party supporters  Ms Clinton's campaigning and rhetoric has been leaden and uninspiring, she is regarded as uncomfortably beholden to corporate and establishment interests, and she's seen as carrying more baggage than a travelling potentate.

Mr Trump's momentum is now such that it's hard to conceive of any of his opponents paring back his lead. Some commentators suggest Senator Rubio is best placed to deny the New Yorker the nomination, but that this would only occur if Republican wheelers and dealers brokered a deal at the national convention in July, an undemocratic outcome that hasn't occurred in decades.

If fact, more and more Republican leaders appear to be resigning themselves to a Trump nomination, if reluctantly. Before Tuesday's results were posted, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House speaker Paul Ryan said they would back Mr Trump as the GOP's nominee, even though they criticised him for not distancing himself from former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.
I have been following with a heavy heart the testimony being given by Cardinal George Pell before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The questions being asked and the experiences being discussed have taken me back to 10 years ago when I was representing a courageous woman who reported suffering a life of serious sexual abuse by members of the clergy, and other organisations in the Ballarat region.

George Pell, by John Spooner.

Annie Jarmyn is a name that may be familiar to some. Her name will always be linked with the demise of our governor-general at the time, Peter Hollingworth.

I first met Annie in 2002. I had just started with Shine Lawyers as a new solicitor during a time when the firm was heavily involved in representing survivors of sexual abuse as they struggled to obtain some sort of justice for what had happened to them many years ago.
This week federal parliamentarians will discuss with world experts ways to minimise harm caused by illicit drugs. At a national drug summit, legislators will also be reminded of the sobering reality that Australians consume illegal drugs at concerning levels. A 2014 United Nations report found, for example, Australians lead the world in ecstasy use.

The so-called war on drugs has failed, here and in every nation that embraced it. Former Victorian police commissioner and head of the National Ice Taskforce Ken Lay last year encapsulated the views of many informed people when he said "we can't arrest our way out of this". Former UN chief Kofi Annan made the same case in these pages only last Sunday.

A 2014 UN report found Australians lead the world in ecstasy use. Credit:Viki Yemettas

Associated with all this, experts argue the use of police sniffer dogs at music festivals illustrates how a severe approach can result in greater harm; the dogs can create panic and scare attendees into rapidly and potentially fatally consuming all the drugs they have with them, rather than risk being apprehended.

We need an inclusive, informed community discussion about how we deal with drugs that are available on the black market and thus effectively beyond the control of authorities. Ultimately, that means destroying the black market by decriminalising and regulating these substances, and by putting people with problems into the health system, not the criminal justice system.
In police code, "999" means "officer down". This is the basis for an audacious plan hatched by an Atlanta gang consisting of corrupt members of the force and Iraq black ops veterans like Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Shoot a cop deliberately, and fellow officers will flow to the crime scene like water down a drain, freeing the rest of the gang to carry out a heist elsewhere.

The Australian director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) has a complex relationship with violence: he gets a kick out of the spectacle, but also wants to confront us with its moral ugliness. In the new crime thriller Triple 9, first-time screenwriter Matt Cook probably had little in mind beyond fitting together the pieces of the tricky plot. But Hillcoat makes the final product seem almost apocalyptic: a social panorama with a functioning society nowhere in sight.

The cop marked for death is Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), who's new to the job and has no reason to suspect the treachery of his partner Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie). The closest thing the film has to a leading man, Affleck is logical casting as a fall guy: he has the jawline of a determined hero, but also a recessive quality that suggests he might not make it to the end of the movie (in this, he shares something with Guy Pearce, a favourite Hillcoat actor absent here).

As Chris has doom hanging over his head, Marcus has guilt over the planned killing. But there's too much going on in Triple 9 for their dynamic to register as more than one subplot among many  none of them developed enough to be involving beyond a tense set piece or two. The cast is absurdly crammed with familiar faces, including Aaron Paul and Norman Reedus as other gang members, Kate Winslet as a Russian mob boss who operates out of a kosher slaughterhouse, and Woody Harrelson doing his usual brand of laid-back showboating as the irascible police chief.

After a while it all blurs together. Hillcoat shoots with a jittery hand-held camera and has as much of the action as possible take place after dark, with the actors sometimes bathed in hellish red light. To a degree, the feeling of congestion appears to be the point: one of the most memorable images is an overhead shot of a stack interchange, with highways twined round each other like a nest of snakes.
If an exclusive weekend celebrating fine music, food and wine sounds enticing, read on.

All three are pitched in perfect harmony at the exclusive Margaret River Weekend of Music in the region in early April.

The Australian String Quartet will play a series of concerts at Margaret River wineries. Credit:David Mariuz

The Australian String Quartet will team up with some of Margaret River's most renowned chefs and wineries for four thrilling performances over the April 8-10 weekend.

Set in the picturesque surrounds of Cape Lodge, Fraser Gallop Estate, Vasse Felix and Voyager Estate, the weekend winery concerts give foodies a rare chance to experience premium local produce and flagship wines with some of Australia's finest music exports playing the world's great symphonys.
The company building the national broadband network has quietly trialled a new, low-cost fibre-to-the-premises technology that could achieve the speed and reliability of an all-fibre system to the home, as originally intended by Labor, but at a reduced construction price.

But despite the promising results, NBN Co has so far declined to release them, as the government defends its preferred model, which relies principally on copper phone connections for the final link from the neighbourhood cabinet - or node - to the premises.

The revelation has been described by Labor as an "extraordinary leak", which shows the government is deliberately overstating the costs of the full-fibre option, when it knows it can be done cheaper.
"Perhaps stupidly, I thought people would be quite pleased to hear that I'd hung up my hat to raise 10M for Garvan, but I've actually been scolded a fair bit," the actor wrote.

The Secret Life of Us actor posted on the Facebook page of his cancer charity, Love Your Sister, to say that he was surprised people had taken his decision to focus on raising funds for Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research trivially.

Samuel Johnson has received little support for his decision to quit acting in order to focus on raising $10 million for breast cancer research, the actor revealed on Tuesday.

He added that Molly Meldrum, whom the actor portrayed in the Channel Seven miniseries Molly last month, was "very upset" with his decision to leave showbiz to focus on his charity work, which he announced on Facebook last week. Meldrum reportedly told Johnson, "You can do both, idiot."

Samuel Johnson is all smiles at the MKR launch party in Brisbane in January. Credit:Getty Images

According to Johnson, who raised over $1.4 million for cancer research over the summer of 2013-4 his agent's response was, "Um... okay then."

But, Johnson has denied his sister Connie (who has been battling various forms of cancer since childhood, but was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer aged 33) was seriously upset about his announcement, saying she was "just pretending to be a little cross" when she published an outraged post on the charity's Facebook page.

"Did you think about this? Were you drunk? There's no rule against you talking to me before you make such a big decision." Connie wrote on the charity's Facebook page on Sunday, offering her brother a bar of soap to wash his mouth out after swearing in his announcement.
Iconic Parisian fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier has pulled out of his much-anticipated trip to Melbourne's fashion festival because of sickness.

Gaultier was due to arrive in five days to launch his collection for Target of over 100 pieces of women's, men's, kids' and infant clothing as well as a large collection of homewares. The runway show is scheduled for March 9, with Gaultier also billed to appear the next day in the Bourke Street store.

Jean Paul Gaultier won't be coming to Melbourne to launch his collection. Credit:Getty Images

But Target released a statement saying he was too sick to travel the long-haul flight from France "due to current health concerns", which were not explained further.

In the statement Gaultier says he is sad about missing the Melbourne launch and hopes it will be well received.
Cardinal George Pell regrets not doing more to protect young boys from a paedophile Christian Brother working at a Catholic school in Ballarat in the 1970s, a royal commission has heard.

In the third day of his testimony, Cardinal Pell admitted he had heard about "problems" at St Patrick's College from one or two students.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard the "problems" related to Brother Edward Dowlan, who was later convicted of multiple sexual offences against boys between 1971 and 1986.
Two doctors planning to test illicit drugs at Sydney music festivals have vowed to continue their campaign despite threats of arrest and condemnation from NSW Premier Mike Baird.

Dr David Caldicott, a Canberra-based emergency medicine specialist, said the trial was a common sense precaution and the government's resistance to pill testing had become "a laughing stock overseas".

Dr David Caldicott has vowed to continue with pill testing at the Stereosonic music festival despite the threat of arrest. Credit:Melissa Adams

NSW Premier Mike Baird reaffirmed the government's opposition to pill testing at NSW music festivals on Wednesday, one day after Stereosonic became the first major festival to welcome on-site testing in a bid to prevent overdoses and deaths.

Describing the initiative as tantamount to condoning illegal drugs, Mr Baird refuted the measure's purported safety objectives and instead advocated abstinence from drugs as the only way to ensure safety.
Queensland police are investigating the assault of a 48-year-old tow truck driver, which has been captured on camera.

A south-east Queensland tow truck company and the Queensland Police Service have released images of the incident on the Bruce Highway at Caboolture, north of Brisbane, about 1.50pm on February 8.

The alleged attack occurred at Caboolture on February 8. Credit:Clayton's Towing/Facebook

The white car and the tow truck were both taking the Caboolture exit before both vehicles pulled over to the side of the road.

"The male driver of the car exited his vehicle and punched the front window of the truck, as well as kicking at the driver's side door several times, before throwing punches at the driver," police said in a statement.
Investigations are continuing into the alleged torture and abduction of a man who broke free of ropes and walked through bushland north of Cairns to safety.

Four men on Tuesday appeared in the Cairns Magistrate Court charged with offences relating to the alleged abduction ordeal, lasting more than 36 hours, of local resident Maitland Shannon Chitty.

Marc Veronese leaves Cairns Watch House with lawyer Stephen O'Reilly Credit:7 Local News Cairns

Two of the men accused of abducting the man, tying him to a tree and stabbing him, denied any knowledge of the victim's two-night ordeal.

Aaron Lions, 25, and Melchor Garcia, 32, were accused of trying to murder Maitland Shannon Chitty, who was found incoherent at a crocodile farm on Monday morning.
One of two men accused of the alleged one-punch death of young Brisbane athlete Cole Miller has moved to distance himself from the man who allegedly threw the fatal punch, as he makes a fresh bid for freedom.

Daniel Jermaine Lee Maxwell, 21, said he is not naturally a violent person, rarely drinks alcohol and has difficulty explaining his actions the night Mr Miller, 18, suffered fatal head injuries in the early morning assault in Fortitude Valley's Chinatown Mall on January 3.

Cole Miller died after a one-punch attack in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley on January 3, 2016.

Mr Maxwell failed in his first bail application in the Brisbane Magistrates Court in late January and has now applied to the Supreme Court, where his application is due to be heard on Thursday morning.

The rugby-playing apprentice barber, a New Zealand national, has been in custody since he and co-accused Armstrong Renata were arrested hours after the alleged attack, as Mr Miller lay in Royal Brisbane Hospital on life support.
The multibillion-dollar sale of Melbourne's container port has again been thrown into doubt, with Nationals leader Peter Walsh saying Treasurer Tim Pallas had "bullshitted too much".

The Coalition has refused to sign on off on the eleventh hour amendments from last week, with further changes to the bill requested.

Following talks with officials on Wednesday shadow treasurer Michael O'Brien said further changes to the legislation would need to be considered by the party room and shadow cabinet.

Mr Walsh was reported in The Weekly Times saying Mr Pallas had "bullshitted too much" in the port negotiation process.
The two Perth women who drowned in a pool at a Cairns resort last week have been identified as close friends Anh Hoang and Nga Dinh.

The pair, originally from Vietnam, were on a family holiday to the tropical destination when the tragedy occurred early Thursday morning.

At about 7.30am, the two women were pulled from the pool unconscious by staff at the Trinity Links Resort.

The relatives of one of the women made the difficult decision to switch off her life support at the weekend, while the second woman died on Tuesday.
A South Perth woman says she has been "entombed" by an apartment block that is being built centimetres from her balcony - in the latest example of a series of planning fights taking place in the area.

Hellen Barnaby's apartment balcony on the Mill Point Peninsula used to look out towards the Perth CBD but now her view is of a blank wall, she told Nine News.

Both Ms Barnaby's property and the development progressing next door appear to have been built right on the boundary, with no space whatsoever left in between.

"I don't own the view and I don't expect to own the view but I am being entombed," she said.
Dublin: The case against the only remaining suspect facing criminal charges in the killing of 29 people in a bombing in Omagh in 1998, the deadliest attack during three decades of bloody conflict in Northern Ireland, has collapsed after the state prosecutor unexpectedly dropped the matter.

Seamus Daly, 45, who was detained pending trial after he was charged with the killings in April 2014, was was released from the high-security Maghaberry prison near Belfast later on Tuesday.

Seamus Daly leaves Maghaberry prison, in Ballinderry, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, March, 1, 2016. The Real IRA veteran accused of murdering 29 people in Omagh had all charges against him dropped. Credit:AP

The Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland, Barra McGrory, said the state had withdrawn the charges because of concerns about the reliability of the evidence provided by the main witness.

The prosecution had built its case around evidence connected to a mobile phone. The witness, Denis O'Connor, owner of a construction company, had told the authorities that Mr Daly had called him about an unrelated matter on a phone that the police had identified as being near the scene of the attack about 20 minutes after it took place.
"We are going to campaign in all 50 states and we are going to do whatever it takes to ensure that I am not only the nominee, but the Republican Party does not fall in the hands of someone like Donald Trump," Rubio said in a Fox News interview distributed by his campaign. Unbowed: Senator Marco Rubio. Credit:AP Neither Ohio Governor John Kasich nor retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson offered any indication they'd budge, either, to allow the field to consolidate. Many party stalwarts are loath to back Cruz, an unpopular senator who forced a federal government shutdown in 2013 and then irritated leaders by threatening to do it again. But even some of them began publicly entertaining the idea as Trump's Super Tuesday rout became clear. Donald Trump. Credit:Ty Wright

"Ted Cruz is not my favourite by any means," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told CBS on Tuesday night. "But we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump." Anti-Trump playbook Trump is 'shaking the very foundations of the political world'. The conservative Our Principles PAC said it would expand an ad campaign in upcoming states including Illinois and Michigan and hire new opposition researchers to examine the real estate mogul's past. The group on Tuesday night unveiled a YouTube clip featuring several television personalities decrying Trump as a racist. Among the new hires is Tim Miller, the communications director to Jeb Bush's shuttered presidential campaign. "Donald's general election campaign will fail worse than Trump Mortgage and Trump Steaks did and Hillary Clinton will destroy him even if she's campaigning from jail," Miller said in a statement, vowing the group would "fight until the last delegate is counted to stop that from happening".

Trump's competitors also pitched themselves as the last, best alternative to preventing Trump from earning the nomination  while encouraging each other to exit the race. "So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely," Cruz said during a victory rally at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Texas. "And that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation." Paired with an emerging Democratic playbook  to accuse Trump of being anti-women, intolerant, and too hotheaded to have his finger on the nuclear button  it would be the first concerted effort to convince voters that Trump isn't fit to be president. Super Tuesday results Trump won seven state contests, giving him a 90-delegate advantage over Cruz, who won Oklahoma and Alaska in addition to Texas. Behind them trails Rubio, who won Minnesota to claim his first victory of the race.

While Cruz won his home state, it wasn't an impressive victory by historical standards. His 43.8 per cent in Texas was the lowest support ever recorded by a Republican presidential candidate in a home-state primary victory out of more than five dozen such efforts since 1912, according to the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton strengthened her lead with seven state wins, though rival Senator Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, vowed to take his campaign to the party convention in July. He won four states on Tuesday. "We do not think the calendar ahead looks nearly as good as yesterday" for Clinton, Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Sanders, said at a media briefing on Wednesday. Clinton is now where Democrats expected her to be, on the cusp of the nomination she was denied in 2008 by Obama. After an early scare, Clinton has relegated Sanders mostly to wins in liberal strongholds like Minnesota and his home state of Vermont. "It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," Clinton said at a victory rally on Tuesday night in Miami, previewing an anticipated general-election showdown between her and Trump. "Trying to divide America between 'us and them' is wrong, and we're not going to let it work."
Kabul: Women and girls in Afghan jails are frequently subjected to forced virginity tests, advocates from Afghanistan's human rights commission declared, calling for an end to a practice considered invasive and degrading.

A report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, based on interviews with 53 female detainees across 12 of the country's 34 provinces, found that 48 of them, including girls as young as 13, had been sent for virginity tests. While the practice itself is scientifically questionable, the report found that it was often conducted by medical workers not trained in conducting forensic medicine. The detainees had no privacy, and sometimes had to go through the test in the presence of many people, in an invasive manner that could amount to rape or torture, the report said.

Afghan women wearing burqas in Badakhshan province in 2014. Credit:AP

President Ashraf Ghani, who had not been briefed on the findings, was "deeply saddened" by reports of the practice, and had asked the human rights commission for a full review, said presidential spokesman Sayed Zafar Hashemi.
SANTA MONICA, Calif., March 1, 2016; Nissen Davis, Chairman of the Hall of Fame Selection Committee, announced today the 2016 inductees into the California Aviation Hall of Fame. They are Major James L. "Jim" Brooks, Steve Hinton, Lt. Col. Skip Holm, and Seymour "Si" Robin as chosen by the nine member selection committee.

The event will be held at the Museum of Flying on Wednesday, March 23rd with a reception beginning at 11:30 am followed by a Luncheon and Induction Ceremony.

Major James L. "Jim" Brooks  Major Brooks is a decorated World War II combat fighter pilot who achieved 13.5 aerial victories during the war and later served as a test pilot for the USAF and North American Aviation.

Lt. Col. Skip Holm  Colonel Holm is a high time Viet Nam Combat pilot with 1,172 combat hours flying F-105's and F-4's, a test pilot on the Lockheed F-117 stealth fighter, and a multiple National Air Racing Champion.

Steve Hinton  Mr. Hinton has performed in air shows worldwide for more than 35 years and has flown more than 150 different types of aircraft, holds world speed records, and is a National Air Race Champion.

Seymour "Si" Robin  Mr. Robin is an aviation innovator who has designed aircraft antennas and other airborne communications systems for many years. Si is an accomplished pilot who has owned and flown a number of historic aircraft throughout his career.

Tickets for the event are $150 per person and a table of ten persons is $1,250 and a portion of the ticket price is tax deductible. Tickets may be purchased via the Museum of Flying website or in person at the Museum. The Museum of Flying and the California Aviation Hall of Fame are 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.

MuseumofFlying.org 310-398-2500
2017 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Convertible and AMG C 43 Convertible Unveiled Ahead of Geneva Auto Show

By Henny Hemmes

Senior European Editor

The Auto Channel

GENEVA - February 29, 2016: It is night in the Swiss town along Lac Leman, but quite some people are still busy. For many car manufacturers it is media night, the opportunity to present one or more cars or concepts to invited guests from the media before they will make their official world debut at the Geneva Auto Show tomorrow.

This time, I joined Mercedes-Benz, that took the wraps of the 2016 C-Class Cabriolet and AMG C 43 Cabrio models. Both convertibles were joined on stage by Tobias Moers, Mercedes-AMGs Chairman of the Management Board. The sympathetic boss of the high-performance division talked about the technology of the youngest AMG-model and was happy to be able to look back to a very successful 2015 with nearly 69,000 units sold.

It is the first time the C-Class gets a convertible and with the AMG C 43, Mercedes hopes to attract the younger buyers who are looking at open air fun. As the topless model seats four, they can share the experience. And you may well expect a drive or a ride with the open C43 to be quite an experience. Under the hood sits the 3.0-liter V6 biturbo AMG engine, producing 270 kW/367 hp and 520 Nm/384 lb-ft. of torque. The power plant is teamed to the 9G-Tronic automatic transmission and the new model comes standard with AMG Performance 4Matic all-wheel drive. The regular C-Class Cabriolet comes standard with the ZF 6-speed manual and can be equipped with the 9G-Tronic as an option. There is a choice between two-wheel and four-wheel drive depending on the motorization.

After the official part of the evening, I spoke with Christian Fruh, the C-Classs development director. He said that the usual measures have been taken to strengthen the structure and the front axle for the roofless model. As the former C-class has no convertible, Mr. Fruh can only compare the new model with the CLK: this structure is some 8-10 per cent stiffer.

But also with regard to aerodynamics, a lot of work has been accomplished, which resulted in a low Cd-value of 0.28. The chrome list topping the body all around the cabin, an integrated rear deflector are details, just like the new type of pyrotechnical rollover bars.

The are similar to those of the new SL, Mr. Fruh said.

The convertible has new seats and, of course, the air scarves are integrated into the head rests for optimal comfort when needed. The latter have been improved for better heating energy and have 3 levels, so it is easy to get the right amount of warm air around the neck and head.

The Convertible comes standard with a black soft top that consists of 3 layers. Customers can order the so-called acoustic roof that reduces noises in the cabin when the top is closed. It also comes in different colors, also in black. According to mr. Fruh the option will be reasonably priced at some 250 euro, and it can also be executed in black. The soft top can be opened in 18 seconds and closed in just one count more and while driving up to 50 km/h, or 31 mph.

The C-Class Cabriolet does not offer only seating for four, there is also reasonable trunk space to carry goods. Luggage space is efficiently laid out and measures 360 liter/12.7 cu.ft., which is 10 per cent less than in the Coupe. With the soft top folded there is still a volume of 280 liter/9.89 cu-ft.

It will not be long until we go to a sunny region for the first test drives in May. But before that event, you will love the other model that we are going to present at the New York International Auto Show, Mr. Moers said with a broad smile. He means the AMG C 63 Convertible with the V8 engine. Please stay tuned!
2016 MAZDA CX-9 IN CONTEXT 1997-Present Specs, Prices, Comparisons, Video, Images

2016 MAZDA CX-9 IN CONTEXT All SUV's Ranked By Combined MPG

- Torquey, Turbocharged and Efficient SKYACTIV Engine Contributes to CX-9's 8.3 L/100 km NRCan-Estimated Highway Rating -

RICHMOND HILL, ON, March 2, 2016- Mazda Canada Inc. (MCI) today released Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) estimated fuel economy figures for its all-new 2016 Mazda CX-9 midsize, three-row crossover SUV. Certified at 10.5 city/8.3 highway/9.5 combined L/100 km, when equipped with front-wheel drive, the 2016 CX-9 is among the most-efficient vehicles of its sizeand achieves those numbers without having to use an extra-cost hybrid or diesel powertrain.

With a dramatic 35-percent improvement in efficiency, CX-9 follows in the footsteps of Mazda's entire new-generation line-up of 2016 cars and crossovers that have adopted efficient, lightweight SKYACTIV Technology. Like the 2016 MX-5 with its 25-percent improvement in combined fuel economy versus its predecessor, CX-9 benefits from added amenities and more agile handling dynamics, thanks to its nearly 150 kg weight loss.

"The all-new CX-9 three-row crossover brings the best of our SKYACTIV Technology to the table, and elevates it with refined style and elegant interior appointments, while also providing a dramatic increase in fuel efficiency versus the outgoing model," said Vincent Reboul, Director, Marketing. "And although it has the practical capabilities to be an excellent everyday family/utility vehicle, it still maintains the distinctively Mazda driving feel which will set it apart from the segment and appeal to the inner driver."

At the heart of the 2016 CX-9 is the new SKYACTIV-G 2.5T engine, which produces the power of a V-6 engine without the fuel-efficiency penalty. It uses a dual-valve Dynamic Pressure Turbo to quickly generate power and a cooled exhaust gas recirculation system (EGR) to lower engine temperatures without having to add extra fuel as many turbocharged engines do. Uncommon in turbocharged, gasoline-powered engines, a cooled EGR doesn't affect NRCan's fuel-economy test numbers, but it does help achieve improved real-world efficiency versus turbocharged engines without cooled EGRs.

CX-9's engine makes a hearty 310 lb-ft of torque from just 2,000 rpm and 227 horsepower at 5,000 rpm using 87-octane gasoline (250 horsepower with 93-octane). It comes paired with a six-speed SKYACTIV-Drive automatic transmission. Front-wheel drive is standard, and Mazda's predictive i-ACTIV all-wheel drive is optionally available, delivering confidence in any road conditions. i-ACTIV all-wheel drive sends power where it's needed before the driver can sense a loss in traction by measuring road and vehicle conditions more than 200 times per second via 27 sensors.

Due to its lightweight design, i-ACTIV all-wheel drive adds little mechanical friction, leading to its stellar fuel-economy numbers. Ratings are as follows:



NRCan-Estimated L/100 km

City Highway Combined FWD 10.5 8.3 9.5 AWD 11.2 8.8 10.1

The 2016 Mazda CX-9 is scheduled to arrive in Canadian Mazda dealerships by June. Final packaging and pricing will be announced closer to its on-sale date.

Mazda Canada Inc. is responsible for the sales and marketing, customer service and parts support of Mazda vehicles in Canada. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Mazda Canada has a nationwide network of 165 dealerships. For additional information visit Mazda Canada's media website at www.media.mazda.ca.

Note: NRCan-estimated fuel economy is based on a standard five-cycle test. Actual fuel economy will vary.

The Most In-Depth Mazda Vehicle Shopper's Research - Anywhere!
2016 MAZDA CX-9 IN CONTEXT 1997-Present Specs, Prices, Comparisons, Video, Images

2016 MAZDA CX-9 IN CONTEXT All SUV's Ranked By Combined MPG

IRVINE, Calif., March 2, 2016 -- Mazda North American Operations today released EPA-estimated fuel economy figures for its all-new 2016 Mazda CX-9.

Certified at an EPA-estimated 22 mpg city/28 mpg highway/25 mpg combined, when equipped with front-wheel drive, the 2016 CX-9 achieves best-in-class1 city and combined fuel economy ratings for a non-hybrid, midsize, three-row crossover SUV and class-leading highway fuel economy.

The second-generation CX-9's efficiency improves a dramatic 32-percent compared to its predecessor. Like Mazda's entire lineup of 2016 cars and crossovers the 2016 CX-9 has adopted efficient, lightweight SKYACTIV Technology. Similar to the 2016 MX-5 Miata with its 29-percent improvement in EPA-estimated fuel economy versus its predecessor2, CX-9 benefits from a drastic weight reduction, yet it adds amenities and provides more agile handling dynamics and improved performance.

"SKYACTIV Technology once again demonstrates there's no need to compromise between driving enjoyment and frugalityeven when it comes to hauling around your family," said Robert Davis, senior vice president, U.S. Operations, MNAO. "CX-9 elevates our brand with a host of new, advanced technology and luxury features but stays true to our company principles: lightweight, fun to drive, stylish and purposeful."

At the heart of the 2016 CX-9 is its new SKYACTIV-G 2.5T engine, which produces the power of a V-6 engine without the fuel-efficiency penalty. It uses a dual-valve Dynamic Pressure Turbo to quickly generate power and a cooled exhaust gas recirculation system (EGR) to lower engine temperatures without having to add extra fuel as many turbocharged engines do. Uncommon in a turbocharged, gasoline-powered engine, a cooled EGR doesn't affect EPA fuel-economy numbers, but it does help achieve improved real-world efficiency versus turbocharged engines without cooled EGRs.

CX-9's engine makes a hearty 310 lb-ft of torque from just 2,000 rpm and 250 horsepower at 5,000 rpm using 93-octane gasoline (227 horsepower with 87-octane). It comes paired with a six-speed SKYACTIV-Drive automatic transmission. Front-wheel drive is standard, and Mazda's predictive i-ACTIV all-wheel drive is optionally available, delivering confidence in any road conditions. i-ACTIV all-wheel drive sends power where it's needed before the driver can sense a loss in traction by measuring road and vehicle conditions more than 200 times per second via 27 sensors.

Due to its lightweight design, i-ACTIV all-wheel drive adds little mechanical friction, leading to its stellar fuel-economy numbers.

Ratings for both the front- and all-wheel-drive 2016 CX-9 are as follows:



EPA-Estimated MPG

City Highway Combined FWD 22 28 25 AWD 21 27 23

The 2016 Mazda CX-9 will go on sale in late spring 2016. Final packaging and pricing will be announced closer to its on-sale date.

Mazda North American Operations is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and oversees the sales, marketing, parts and customer service support of Mazda vehicles in the United States and Mexico through nearly 700 dealers. Operations in Mexico are managed by Mazda Motor de Mexico in Mexico City. For more information on Mazda vehicles, including photography and B-roll, please visit the online Mazda media center at www.mazdausamedia.com.

Note: EPA-estimated fuel economy is based on a standard five-cycle test. Actual fuel economy will vary.

1 The class is defined as all 2016 model year midsize, three-row, non-hybrid crossover sport utility vehicles available for sale in the United States.

2 Based on EPA-estimated highway fuel economy for most-efficient drivetrain options.

The Most In-Depth Mazda Vehicle Shopper's Research - Anywhere!
Toyota City, Japan, March 2, 2016In keeping with its overarching goal of making ever-better cars by promoting the continued development of a talented workforce, Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) will make substantial changes to its structure in order to streamline work processes on a company-wide basis. The changes will take effect starting this April.

To date, TMC has already implemented major structural changes in its efforts to make ever-better cars, enhancing the strength and autonomy of regional operations, and emphasizing the importance of genchi-genbutsu (on-site learning and problem-solving) in training personnel. Specifically, in 2011 TMC reorganized its structure with the aim of promoting autonomous region-based management, and in 2013 the company split a significant portion of its automotive operations into four business units. Despite these structural changes, however, TMC still relies greatly on individual efforts made by its own team members and stakeholders due to its present structure and work processes, and in many cases, cross-functional coordination has been found to consume a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

As such, the fundamental goal of this overhaul is to create a company built around product-based organizations, rather than function-based organizations. Doing so will enable the dissolution of barriers within the company and eliminate unnecessary coordination work, thus helping to ensure that all team members' efforts will be leveraged toward the purpose of making ever-better cars and developing a talented workforce.

TMC is confident that significant value can be added through this new management structure, in which nine product- and region-based business units will compete with and learn from one another, while operating alongside TMC's Head Office (responsible for corporate functions).

"This structural change may not be the ultimate solution, but it is certainly an opportunity," said TMC President Akio Toyoda. "I would like to make this an opportunity to strengthen our workforce and further promote making ever-better cars. Whether or not this structural change turns out to be the right solution or not is in our hands," he added.

Details of these and other organizational and executive changes can be found below. The executive changes will take effect on April 1, while the organizational changes and personnel changes will be effective from April 18.
2016 Geneva Motor Show - TOYOTA C-HR Crossover Debuts

TOYOTA C-HR

Toyotas Fresh New Take on the Crossover

2016 Toyota Motorshow Geneva; The Toyota C-HRs unique character demonstrates the flexibility that the TNGA (Toyota New Global Architecture) gives to vehicle developers in the three key areas of design, powertrain and dynamics, enabling them to deliver a new and fresh take on the increasingly commoditized crossover segment.

As a result, the Toyota C-HR remains remarkably true to the general features of the concept-cars that attracted so much public attention in Paris in 2014 and in Frankfurt in 2015. Its coupe-like lines are a testimony to the resolve of its designers to create a style that stands out in the Toyota range, and to establish a new direction amongst mid-sized crossovers.

The Toyota C-HR also brings innovation to its segment through the introduction of a hybrid powertrain. Using Toyotas very latest 1.8 hybrid system, the C-HRs driving experience is perfectly aligned with modern urban life, and matched to a level of efficiency previously unseen in the crossover segment.

Finally, guided by Chief Engineer Hiroyuki Kobas vision Response, Linearity and Consistency the C-HRs driving dynamics have been deliberately benchmarked on the precision and control experienced at the wheel of a modern C-segment hatchback, thanks to the meticulous refinement of Toyotas most recent platform and its low centre of gravity. The aim was to allow the C-HR to carry its speed through corners, with excellent body control and steering fluidity, making it enjoyable not only when flowing through busy city traffic but also on the open road independent of the surface condition, in a way that exceeds the current standards for a crossover.



Stand Out With Passion

Aware of the already crowded crossover market, the development team decided from the start on a very targeted approach, centred on a clear and singular customer image.

He is a driver who is predominantly driven by emotional considerations. He wants to stand out, and wants to be the first to try new experiences and products. He chooses style over outright practicality, and he sees his car as an extension of his personality. He looks for quality in anything that he buys, and he enjoys a spirited drive. And, since he lives in the city, his car needs to be able to keep up with him as he weaves in and out of rush hour traffic.



A Coupe-like Design

In response to the tastes and requirements of this target customer, the Toyota C-HR introduces a distinctive styling that brings newfound dynamism and sensuality to the crossover market. The production car remains remarkably true to the concept car which was first shown at the Paris Motorshow in 2014, and which registered extremely well with the target customer.

Featuring a body with a diamond architectural theme with wheel arches projecting prominently at all four corners to emphasise the new crossovers strength and rigidity, the C-HRs modulated structure combines the powerful lower body and raised ground clearance with the slim and sleek cabin profile of a coupe.

Viewed from any angle, the C-HRs combination of facetted gemstone-like shapes with fluid surfaces and elegantly integrated detailing create a delicate balance of precision and sensuality.

The front represents a further development of Toyotas Under Priority and Keen Look design identity. The slender upper grille flows from Toyota mark into the sleek, aggressive wing extremities of the headlamp clusters and wraps fully around the front corners of the vehicle.

The lamp clusters incorporate full LED lighting with light guides and sequential turn signals, giving the C-HR its own unique visual signature.

Below, the enhanced three-dimensionality of the bumper thats integrated with the wheel flairs and the trapezoidal lower grille architecture reinforce the C-HRs wide, firmly planted stance.

The movement of the blacked out rocker panel towards the front and rear wheel, along with the shoulder axis that runs through to the front and rear emphasize the fast-looking, lift-up feel of the thin body. The C-HRs coupe-like styling is further enhanced by disguised rear door handles integrated within the C pillar, and the powerful projection of the sweeping roofline into a large, skeletal frame rear spoiler.

To the rear, the strongly tapered cabin integrates the back door while securing luggage space. This contrasts with the pronounced flaring of the wheel arches to give the new crossover a wide and extremely powerful stance. Standing proud of the tapering body work, prominent rear light clusters may also be equipped with LED lamp technology to give the rear view of the C-HR an equally expressive visual signature.

This car is the result of a global cooperation between our design centers on 3 continents and was managed by PCD (Project Chief Designer) Kazuhiko Isawa at headquarters. The original exterior design was created by Calty, our design studio in California.



Responsive and Frugal Powertrains

The Toyota C-HR will be equipped with an engine-range that is designed to deliver exactly the fluent driving behaviour that its customers are looking for. This finds its full expression at the wheel of the hybrid version, the intrinsic characteristics of which guarantee a smooth, jolt-free ride. Fitted with the latest-generation hybrid power plant, the C-HR has CO2 emissions of less than 90 g/km, unrivalled within its segment.

Delivering 122 DIN hp, this new hybrid powertrain is more efficient and lighter, and offers sharper performance than the previous system. Detailed design changes to the engine have resulted in a thermal efficiency of 40%  a world-beating performance for a petrol unit. Other hybrid system components have been made lighter and smaller, and have been repositioned for optimum packaging, further contributing to the cars lower centre of gravity.

Alternatively, the Toyota C-HR is available with the new 115 DIN hp/85 kW 1.2 litre turbo engine, which debuted in the Auris. It comes with the choice of a 6-speed manual gearbox or a Continuously Variable automatic Transmission system, which is developed to meet expectations in response & direct feel for European people familiar with manual and automatic gearboxes. The CVT is available in front-wheel or 4-wheel drive versions.

And finally, a 2-litre CVT-only model will be available for certain markets.



Dynamics that Belie a Crossover

The design and development of the Toyota C-HR chassis has received the full attention of the Chief Engineer Hiroyuki Koba, himself a keen driver. From the very outset of the project, he travelled thousands of kilometres along European roads in order to understand not only the requirements of the road network, but also the way that Europeans drive.

I have noticed, for example, that Europeans have a much more fluid driving style, based on a more acute observation of traffic observes Hiroyuki Koba. They avoid obstacles simply by adapting their trajectory and speed and will focus to carry on speed aiming for efficient progress, while elsewhere in the world the preferred approach is very often to stop. This has prompted us to work with our European team on driving precision in all aspects of the vehicle. We wanted to achieve performance on a par with a good C-segment hatchback.

With its low centre of gravity and multi-link rear suspension, the new TNGA-based platform has formed an ideal starting point from which to ensure that all of the features of the chassis could be designed to obtain an immediate and natural response to the drivers actions. Chief Engineer Hiroyuki Koba has been engaged in each key dynamic assessment and decision, assuring that his vision Response, Linearity and Consistency fully came to life.

In particular, steering has been designed to be perfectly linear which, together with the optimum limitation of rolling motion, gives the Toyota C-HR remarkable driving precision for a crossover. Limiting body movement, which generally affects tall cars in particular, also has a direct influence on comfort. Even on European often battered roads, the car remains remarkably composed and accurate, adding to the confidence and joy of driving.



Advanced Safety Equipment as Standard

In line with Toyotas strategy to democratise advanced safety equipment, the C-HR will be equipped with technology usually reserved for higher segments. The Toyota Safety Sense system that will be offered as standard on C-HR includes a Pre-Collision system, Lane Departure Alert, Road Sign Assist and Automatic Highbeam, as well as Pedestrian Detection and Adaptive Cruise Control.



Production

The Toyota C-HR will be built at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Turkey (TMMT) in Sakarya, Turkey. This marks the first time a hybrid-powered vehicle has been produced in the country, and falls within the scope of Toyota Motor Europes Greater Europe manufacturing and sales operations.

This will be TMEs third hybrid vehicle production plant in Europe, together with Toyota Motor Manufacturing France (Yaris Hybrid) and Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK in Burnaston, Derbyshire (Auris Hybrid and Auris Hybrid

Touring Sport). The hybrid engine is to be produced at Toyota Motor Manufacturing UKs engine plant in Deeside, Wales.
Airline to launch direct flights to Luxembourg

AIRLINE Flybe is to launch a new service between Manchester and Luxembourg from September 1.

The new service opens up a destination which until this announcement was accessible from the UK only via London.

It will operate twice daily from Monday to Friday and once a day at weekends.

Flights from have been timed to make day returns to this often overlooked destination a real possibility, leaving Manchester at 7.30am allowing a full 10 hours in Luxembourg before touching down back in the North of England at 8.35pm.

Luxembourg Airport is five miles from the centre of Luxembourg City, allowing plenty of time to explore the capital city and its picturesque medieval buildings and enough time to try one of its many four Michelin-starred restaurants.

Vincent Hodder, Flybe chief revenue officer said: We are opening up yet another key business and tourist destination to travellers outside of the M25 corridor and look forward to welcoming all our new customers on board in September.
Did Donald Trump just lock up the NASCAR vote?

Mr. Trump is changing American politics forever, and his leadership and strength are desperately needed, Brian France, chairman and CEO of the family-owned stock car racing association, said in a statement released by the Trump campaign on Monday. He has had an incredible career and achieved tremendous success. This is what we need for our country.

Frances endorsement of the Republican presidential frontrunner coincided with several NASCAR drivers throwing their support behind the candidate whose ties to NASCAR go back decades. France joined Trump onstage during a rally in Valdosta, Georgia, on Monday to sing the real-estate moguls praises.

France has donated to Republican politicians before, including Trumps rivals Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorina, and has been described as an inquisitive news junkie in a Los Angeles Times profile on how he is keeping NASCAR relevant in the 21st century.

If the people that like and watch NASCAR vote for Donald Trump, they can cancel the election right now, Trump said at Mondays campaign event. Nobody [else] can win.

The Trump campaign wasnt satisfied to merely consider this an endorsement from a few professional drivers and a wealthy CEOTrump himself announced this as the endorsement of the iconic brand, according to his campaigns statement. (A NASCAR spokesman later said that France was not speaking for NASCAR, but had made a private, personal decision to publicly support Trump.)

And its the perception, within and without the Trump presidential campaign, that this is NASCARs endorsement of the former Apprentice star that has the CEO of one of NASCARs biggest sponsors a little bit pissed.

If you are a business leader, you should not use [your] platform to discuss your political views  or your religious views, Marcus Lemonis, chairman and CEO of Camping World, told The Daily Beast. You serve at pleasure of your employees and the customers  [Brian] does not have that right to lay the blanket over an entire sport that is funded by people who write big checks to support him  He is crossing the line by using [for his Trump endorsement] the NASCAR backdrop that I spend millions of dollars on.

This is what Lemonis (who also stars on the CNBC show The Profit) tweeted shortly after hearing about the NASCAR CEOs Trump endorsement and rally appearance:

In 2009, Camping World became the title sponsor for the NASCAR Truck Series. In 2014, NASCAR and the Kentucky-based RV and camping company announced that they had extended their partnership through 2022. The seven-year extension was estimated to be worth at least $35 million.

This isnt the first time that Camping World and the 2016 Trump campaign have been in the news at the same time. Shortly after Trump announced his White House run early in the summer, Lemonis wrote a letter to France expressing outrage at Trumps comments about undocumented immigrants and Mexican rapists.

Last year, our NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Awards Ceremony was held at the Trump National Doral in Miami, and due to recent and ongoing blatantly bigoted and racist comments from Donald Trump in regards to immigrants of the United States, I would like to inform you that I will not, nor will any representative of Camping World, participate or attend in the ceremonial event if it is held at any Trump property, Lemonis, himself an immigrant, wrote, as reported in July.

Our company will not stand to support any person or organization that associates with such beliefs and we feel strongly about distancing ourselves from any negative and discriminatory comments made against any gender, ethnicity, age group or so forth, he continued. I would hope that the entire NASCAR organization would agree with my sentiments.

At the time, at least, it appeared that France and NASCAR were distancing themselves from Trump and his inflammatory political statements. The racing association subsequently decided not to hold its season-ending ceremony at the Trump National Doral in Miami.

Trump, for his part, fired back with a characteristically Trump-ish statement, saying that he got to keep NASCARs very substantial deposit, and that NASCAR has already apologized to me.

Trump has told his side of this story many times on the campaign trail, typically as a set-up and applause line for his adoring crowds. This week, Trumps declaration of victory in the whole NASCAR kerfuffle over the summer seems to be, well, vindicated.

Lemonis is now saying that his objection would be similar if France had held a pep rally, as Lemonis described it, with any of the other 2016 candidates. However, when asked to name his biggest political turn-offs, Lemonis will list lying and mistreating peopleand theres only one presidential contender this cycle whose comments Lemonis has called out as bigoted. (Furthermore, in January 2014, Lemonis tweeted that things may not be perfect in this country but its still the best in the world. Having Trump even run [for president] is a joke.)

Im a big believer in freedom of speech, he told The Daily Beast. It allows my big mouth to fight for small business. Thats what I do on [my] show  and Im blessed by that platform. But what Im worried about is anyone dividing people, in an environment which is hard enough  What I am not for is the undermining of anyones culture, or anyones ethnicity  Im not in favor of anybody dissing other people. There are plenty of other candidates who act in the same nonsense, its not just [Trump.]

Lemonis, who once ran for the Florida House of Representatives when he was 22, says he will not be endorsing or openly supporting any candidate this election. He has been asked, on social media and elsewhere, if Frances support for Trump would cause him to reevaluate his business ties to NASCAR. Despite his harsh words for Frances decision, Lemonis is not pulling the plug on the sponsorship.

Brian has made his decision, and I have a personal opinion on it, he said. I would not give Brian the satisfaction of thinking that his poor decision to do this would affect my support of a sport that I love. At the end of the day, I support a sport, and the people who watch it and the people who participate in it. The sport is bigger than any one man.

A NASCAR spokesman and the Trump campaign did not respond to The Daily Beasts requests for comment.
HONG KONG  Ren Zhiqiang is a retired real estate, banking and insurance tycoon who, until the last week of February, had a huge following on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging site similar to Twitter. As a member of the Chinese Communist Party with substantial personal wealth, as a controversial commentator and a supposed paragon of success (yes, some people make analogies with Donald Trump in that sense), he wielded incredible influence over his 37 million online followers, even when he bluntly declared the poor dont warrant any consideration.

That was all fine with the Party, it seemed, until last week, when Rens words were called a vile influence by Chinese government officials. They said he was spreading illegal information on his Weibo account, which damaged the Partys image, and, indeed, accused him of advocating the overthrow of the Chinese Communist Party. A government notice from Beijing on March 1 said Ren will be seriously dealt with according to the CCPs disciplinary regulations.

Chinese officials did not highlight the posts that triggered their actions against Ren, whose social media accounts were shut down. However, in mid-February, Ren published posts that questioned Chinese President Xi Jinpings push for Chinese media to serve the Party. When did the Peoples Government become the Partys Government? he wrote. Does it run on party dues?

Other major Weibo personalities and commentators, many of whom are aligned with the CCP and basically work as the Partys propagandists, began to pick apart Rens online celebrity status. They said he opposed the CCP and was in the pocket of hostile foreign forces, or painted him as a villain bent on destroying the Party and its unity with the masses.

Xinhua, Global Times, and other state media organs painted crosshairs on Rens back, and rolled out a series of hit pieces attacking him. They said Ren had vicious motives and sinister intentions, and called him the shame of over 80 million Party members. They asked questions like, Where does Ren Zhiqiang get the nerve to oppose the Party? Some have speculated that the absence of the title comrade in references to Ren means he will be kicked out of the CCP altogether.

Chinese state mediawhich should really be called Party mediaalready acts as Beijings mouthpiece with a mandate to shape public opinion, but Xi wants to push it further by using those instruments, which include outlets like CCTV America and CCTV Africa, to promote the the CCPs agenda on a global scale.

According to Xi, other forms of media, such as full-page spreads in foreign newspapers, books by China apologists, and even Hollywood productions should promote the Partys message, or at least a warm and fuzzy image of those in power in the Peoples Republic.

Ren Zhiqiangs character has contained a streak of rebelliousness since his youth. Before he slipped into a business suit, Ren wore the uniform of the Peoples Liberation Army for 11 years. As a soldier, he routinely disregarded directives from superior officers. However, he was still seen as a capable member of the PLA, and climbed its ranks.

Ren has also been charged with corruption in the past. This happened in 1985, after Ren, with permission from his bosses, issued bonuses to himself and the employees of the real estate company where they worked. Ren was in detention for 14 months, but the charge was dropped and he was released.

Ren Zhiqiangs tribulations are not new in China. The Big Vs of Weiboverified users with huge followingshave faced harassment and crackdowns for years. In 2013, a real estate billionaire, Pan Shiyi, who had 16 million followers, appeared on state television. He talked about the need to publish online posts responsibly, though he looked incredibly uncomfortable as the words crawled out of his mouth.

Others who were outspoken about their radical views were arrested, paraded in handcuffs, and even made to confess their crimes on television. Some of their accounts were deleted. That same year, to combat what the Party called malicious rumor-mongering, and squash those whose influence on public opinion may have overshadowed even that of state media outlets, the Supreme Peoples Court issued a guideline: Defamatory posts with over 5,000 views or forwarded more than 500 times could be deemed severe. The punishment is a prison sentence of up to three years.

Ren is, or was, a close friend of Xis anti-corruption chief, Wang Qishan, one of the most powerful men in China. Last year, in an interview with Bloomberg, Ren said the two shared regular phone calls and got together several times a year. As the Party focuses its wrath on Ren, it also sends a message to Chinas elite: their connections are worthless now. Even they can be brought down if they dont toe the presidents line.

In fact, the latest round of purging on social media goes beyond Ren. China Digital Times reported that 580 social media accounts, including some that belonged to Big Vs, were shut down by the Cyberspace Administration of China at about the same time as Rens, claiming that their operators misled the public or violated regulations.

Xi is demanding complete prostration from allthe public, the media, Chinese corporations, and the Communist Party. In the past two years, he has made big moves to plug dissent. Chinese police made sweeping arrests of human rights lawyers, and were likely part of cross-border kidnappings of booksellers based in Hong Kong. Business tycoons have disappeared for various lengths of time.

One of Xis major projects is the ongoing anti-corruption purges within the CCP. The Chinese president is reshaping the landscape not only within the Party and not only within the country, but also in cyberspace. He is developing himself, and possibly future Chinese leaders, as not only the heart of the Party, but also as the center of the CCPs vision of the entire Chinese nation.
The film the Norwegian tourism board cant possibly want anyone to see, The Wave delivers the sort of expert disaster thrills that are sure to dissuade many from ever wanting to visit the picturesque countyor, at least, any of its small hamlets nestled between its imposing mountain ranges. A hit at last years Fantastic Fest and Toronto International Film Festival, as well as Norways submission for this years Academy Awards, Roar Uthaugs intense import is a wholly fictional affair, albeit one couched in the authentic reality that his nations 300-odd mountains are slowly but surely contracting. And as a result, at some point theres bound to be an avalanche that, when the rock slide hits the watery fjord below, creates a tidal wave of historically destructive proportions. As the films closing text makes clear, the question isnt if this will happenits when.

By rooting the proceedings in a believable real-world context, Uthaug does much to amplify the what-if horror of The Wave, which spends its first thirty minutes establishing both its setting and its scientific circumstances.

In the town of Geiranger, which sits at the base of Akerneset mountain, geologist Kristian (Kristoffer Joner) is preparing to relocate his familywife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp), son Sondre (Jonas Hoff Oftebro), and daughter Julia (Edith Haagenrud-Sande)to the big city, where a new job with an oil company awaits. That move means not only packing up their house and dealing with Sondres disappointment at having to depart this tranquil, gorgeous area, but also saying goodbye to his coworkers at the local station that monitors rockslides where, he discovers, strange readings seem to indicate that somethings happened to the cables used to detect changes in the mountains.

Uthaugs characters are a rather formulaic bunch, but his cast personifies them with enough everyperson likability to make their impending nightmare tense, and the director does an assured job slowly building anticipation for his cataclysm. Unwilling to listen to his former boss and drop his suspicions that something is amiss, Kristian realizesduring an amusing epiphany sparked by his sons Jenga-like smartphone gamethat Akernesets cables must have been severed, thus causing him to irresponsibly abandon his kids in a car for hours while he descends into a mountain crevasse to confirm his fears. Alas, even the proof he finds isnt enough to motivate his superiors to sound the regional alarm, meaning that he and Julia are soon spending one last night at their largely empty house, while Idun works a final shift at the local hotel and Sondre, preferring not to be around his neglectful dad, skateboards in the hotel basement with his headphones cranked to eleventhe better, for storytellings sake, to not hear the forthcoming warnings to evacuate.

The Waves breathtaking vistas of Akernesets peaks, often shrouded in misty clouds, lend the action a you-are-there visual splendor that contributes to its scenarios plausibilityand, in the process, helps overshadow the fact that, at heart, Uthaugs film is playing by a very familiar Hollywood blockbuster rulebook. With its protagonists splintered between separate locales, theres double the madness when the mountain finally falls, begetting a gargantuan rush of water that rushes down the narrow inlet with rampaging speed and apocalyptic force. While working on a budget that clearly doesnt afford the sort of AAA-grade CGI as your average big-studio work, The Wave does a serviceable job visualizing this natural monstrosity, climaxing with a shot of it barreling down on Kristian as he attempts to carry an injured woman past a row of log-jammed cars to a safe elevation, and of it charging into the hotel where Idun and Sondre haveout of sheer necessitytaken shelter in a basement room.

To say a lot of this has been done before would be true, but that rarely gets in the way of the films ability to manipulate ones nerves. The Wave confirms that old tricks are still viable when perpetrated by skilled tricksters, and in fact, that what separates the good disaster films from the poor isnt necessarily grand narrative ingenuityin the end, all such genre efforts are required to pit largely helpless humans against Mother Natures callous wrathbut clever cinematic execution. Even when it has Kristian survive a jaw-dropping predicament, straining credulity in the process, Uthaugs film manages to survive thanks to its directors ability to modulate dramatic tone and rhythm just enough to sell the impossible as, if not wholly plausible, at least within the general realm of possibility.

Much of that is also due to a lead performance by Joner that never devolves into oversized superheroism. While there may be no more compelling global action star than Dwayne Johnson, his Rock-sized proportions and He-Man attitude were part of the reason last summers San Andreas was a flat disaster-show. When dialed to cartoonish levels, these films invariably come off as merely digital effects showcases divorced from any sense of real humanitya problem that, consequently, renders the calamity itself emotionally uninvolving. Resembling a scruffier, longer-haired Nordic version of Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead), Joner roots his turn in unfussy agitated glances and harried reactions. He never makes Kristian seem destined for ultimate triumph, which is no small feat given that anyone acquainted with such big-screen endeavors knows that his protagonists fate isnt apt to involve a watery grave.

This isnt to claim that The Wave is a titanic departure from its domestic forefathers; on the contrary, part of what makes it so entertaining is that it clearly loves the conventions and cliches of the disaster film genre, duplicating them with both a fanboys glee and a shrewd storytellers belief in their enduring power to entertain. Refusing to temper (or apologize for) its enthusiasm for its material with wink-wink meta gestures, it merely delivers the destructive goods with irony-free craftsmanship. Its every slow zoom through a hallway and every close-up of a terrified countenance is designed only for ominous suspense and heart-racing terrorboth of which it ably supplies, and in quantities all-too-rarely found these days in its Hollywood counterparts.
The line could have been for one of the polls in 13 states on Super Tuesday, but this line in Virginia stretched far longer and was not of voters, but of mourners.

It led not to a ballot but to the flag-covered coffin of a Prince William County cop who had been killed during her very first shift.

And the name that mattered inside the Hylton Memorial Chapel in Woodbridge was not Donald Trump or Sen. Marco Rubio or Sen. Ted Cruz or Gov. John Kasich or Dr. Ben Carson or Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders, but Police Officer Ashley Guindon.

All politics became just politics as the funeral commenced for this 28-year-old rookie who had been shot to death responding to a report of a domestic disturbance on Saturday.

The stark fact of her untimely death and the poignant details of her brief life offered actual truths that by comparison show the blatherings of the campaigns to be self-serving sacrilege. She leaves us with an example that is more worthy of following than those who strive so strenuously to lead us.

Ashley Guindon had herself stood by a flag-covered coffin back in 2004, when she was a junior in high school. Her father, Air National Guard Sgt. David Guindon, had committed suicide one day after he returned from being deployed to Iraq. He had previously served in the Navy and the Marine Corps Reserves. He had hoped to go into law enforcement but had been injured in a car accident. He was still able to sign on with the Air National Guard. He had been 48 when he headed off to war.

The father had always been upbeat and engaging but is said to have become withdrawn during the months of driving in harrowing convoys through the Sunni Triangle amid IEDs and RPGs and automatic weapons fire. He may have felt the stress all the more because most of those with whom he served were much younger and instinctively looked to him for a steadying presence. He once said he was not so much afraid of dying as of missing his only childs graduation.

The father had seemed restored to his old self as he and his fellow airmen returned to a joyous welcome at an airfield in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was back in the embrace of his wife and daughter.

It feels fantastic, he exulted to a reporter that day. Its hard to explain itit feels so good. Im just going to take today slow, wake up tomorrow and see what its like to be back in a normal place.

Perhaps waking in normal Merrimack, New Hampshire, caused him to feel all at once how un-normal combat had been and how changed he had been despite the appearances otherwise. Or maybe he was suffering the side effects of anti-malaria medication.

Whatever it was, he was so overwhelmed that he sought to end it by shooting himself. He was given a military funeral, and everybody with any sense considered him a casualty of war.

Ashley Guindon graduated the following year from Merrimack High School without her father. Her yearbook read, Mom, thanks for everythingItll be a long road but we can manage, and it will only make us strongerAs I take flight, it only makes me closer to you, Daddy.

She inscribed her personal motto as Live for something rather than die for nothing.

She proceeded to follow her father into the Marine Corps Reserves. She volunteered to assist in the Marine Corps Mortuary Affairs Office, which handles the remains of the fallen. She also worked a suicide hotline, hoping to help save others from her fathers fate. She pitched in at a soup kitchen.

After earning a masters degree in forensic science at George Washington University, she fulfilled her fathers dream of going into law enforcement. She settled in Virginia and entered the police academy in Prince William County. She was sworn in on Feb. 26. The department tweeted a photo of her and another new cop.

Welcome Officers Steven Kendall & Ashley Guindon who were sworn in today & begin their shifts this weekend. Be safe!

Guindon reported for her first tour of field training the next day. She and her training officer, Jesse Hempen, responded to an address where a woman had called 911 to report that her husband had turned physically abusive. Domestic disputes are statistically the most dangerous situations for a cop.

Guindon and Hempen arrived at the address along with Officer David McKeowan. They there encountered 32-year-old Ronald Hamilton, a 6-foot-2, 260-pound active duty Army sergeant assigned to the Pentagon. Hamilton is the son of a retired Charlestown, South Carolina, police supervisor. He had been deployed twice to Iraq, in 2003 and in 2005, though he may not have seen combat.

When officers arrived on the scene they were met by the accused at the front door, court papers say of Saturdays encounter. The accused fired a rifle from the area of the front door striking three officers.

All three officers were shot. Guindon was fatally wounded. Hamilton and McKeowan had survivable injuries.

More cops arrived and showed professional restraint as they subdued a man alleged to have just shot three of their own, killing one.

On searching the house, police found the suspects 29-year-old wife, Crystal Hamilton, in a bedroom. Her husband had become increasingly controlling and possessive. He was unreasonably jealous about the men with whom she necessarily worked as a recovery care coordinator with the Marines Wounded Warriors Regiment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. One co-worker decided that Crystal Hamiltons devotion as a mother to her only son helped make her so effective, particularly with disabled Marines who had no family there to assist them. Her husband may have resented those connections, perhaps all the more so if he had not been in combat himself.

The husband had put a tracking device on his wifes car and had once burst into a restaurant, dragging her away from friends with whom she was having dinner. She is said to have planned to go to a movie on Saturday night. She now instead lay dead with a gunshot wound.

The accused made statements to law enforcement officers stating that he shot his wife and the police officers, the court papers further report.

Along with calling 911, Crystal Hamilton had used her final moments to tell the couples 11-year-old son to flee. The youngster had bolted from the house in a T-shirt and basketball shorts and dashed down the street, looking back over his shoulder on hearing gunshots.

On Monday night, county residents of all backgrounds and persuasions solemnly stood along the roads as more police vehicles than seemed possible escorted Guindons body in a procession starting from the Mountcastle Funeral Home. Emergency lights flashed into the darkness as the radio cars and motorcycles looped around the police station and continued on to Hylton Memorial Chapel. The sight as filmed from above was transfixingly beautiful and absolutely heartbreaking.

On Super Tuesday, voters were lined up at the Virginia polls where the big names were Trump and Clinton. That other, far longer line formed where the only name was Guindon. A constant stream of mourners filed through the chapel for the viewing beginning at 10 a.m. More than 3,000 crowded inside for the noon funeral. The flag covering the coffin was replaced by the white pall of the church, and Rev. Gerard Creeden stepped up.

Sworn in February 26, Creeden intoned to the gathering. Killed February 27, the line of duty.

Creeden said Guindon had loved creation in all its forms; the air, dogs, birds, loved to dance, loved to read, travel.

The priest spoke of this present season not as the time of primaries but as the time of Lent, when believers seek the desert, the wilderness, the place of the wild beast, to struggle with God and Gods purposes.

He said Guindon had been very clear about her own purpose.

She sought the life of a peacemakerShe sought to resolve a conflict. In her name, let us all study the ways and the method of conflict resolution.

He went on, Would that her death might signal an end to the violence, would that it might silence the sound of gunfire in our neighborhoods and nation.

He reiterated, She was a police woman and a peace officer. May we all learn in her name to wage peace.

He marveled at the steadiness of the fallen officers mother, Sharon Guindon, who had lost a husband and now her only daughter.

Sharon is looking not to her own hurt but to the dignity and the joy that is Ashley, he said. Let us all stand today with a small measure of that faith and courage.

The mourners had been given a program that included a biography of Ashley Guindon prepared by the police department. One detail was sure to stay with everybody who read it.

The only thing that rivaled her fascination of birds and nature was her love for her furry best friend, her pet pug, Scout.

The coffin was covered with the flag again before it was carried into the sunshine, where a pair of fire department ladder trucks had raised a far bigger flag. Thousands of officers saluted and citizens stood in silent respect in this one place on Super Tuesday where there were no divisions, where we were all simply us, the U.S.A.

The coffin was transported to her fathers original hometown and resting place, West Springfield, Massachusetts. A family funeral will be held there on Sunday.

On Monday, Police Officer Ashley Guindon will be buried beside her father. She will remain an example for us to follow, no matter who becomes our next leader.
Does Super Tuesday change anything on the Democratic side? Bernie Sanders got enough wins, and delegates, to keep at it. So that wont changeand I want to say clearly that it should not change. But this is what should change: From here on in, Sanders ought to lay off the attacks on Hillary Clinton, the Goldman Sachs speeches and all the rest. Eventually, hes going to lose. Shes going to win. He can do it in a way that burnishes his standing in the party hes decided to be a member of and that makes him a pivotally powerful senator during a potential Clinton presidency. Or he can do it in a way that damages her reputation and ultimately his own.

Most of the individual results, for all the hype, dont really mean that much. Sanders won Vermont. Given. Sanders won Minnesota and Colorado, which are both important states, but theyre weird caucuses. Oklahoma was an interesting win, but the black percentage of the vote is small there compared to Deep South states, and anyway its as red as a state gets. Wesley Clark won Oklahoma in 2004.

A number of Clintons wins dont really matter much either, again, because theyre red general election states. Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas; who cares how much she won by? Georgia is a slightly different story, because Georgia is inching its way toward purple-dom, and she can at least make Donald Trump spend money there this fall.

But two Clinton wins matter. First, Massachusetts matters some, because its New England. Its a very different state from Vermont, of course; its a machine Democratic state. But its one Sanders was really hoping for.

But the big one is Virginia. Its an indisputably important November state, one that if the Democrat wins, she or he probably will not lose the election. The kind of state where a candidate needs to be able to make the case: I can carry this state. And she didnt merely win Virginia. She just smothered him there, 65 to 35 percent.

Here are the county and city results. She won 2-to-1 in Alexandria city. Better than 2-to-1 in Arlington County. Nearly 2-to-1 in Fairfax and Prince William counties. In Loudon County, 59-41. In Richmond city, 60-40. As far as I can see, the only place where Sanders beat her where there was any critical mass of votes was in Charlottesville, the home of UVA.

In other words, in all the counties and cities a Democrat needs to carry to win the state in November, she rolled, put together the kind of coalition that can win in November. And turnout numbers were competitive. More Democrats than Republicans voted in Fairfax, and nearly as many in Loudon, despite the fact that the Republican race was much more competitive.

Its Virginia where the handwriting of where this is headed was splashed on the wall. Sanders had little appeal beyond the college campus. Now, of course hell still win states. This Saturday, in fact, hell probably take two out of threehe should win caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska, while Clinton will take the primary in Louisiana. Then on Sunday, he may win the Maine caucuses. Tuesday, March 8, brings Michigan and Mississippi. Those ought to be Clinton wins.

And then on March 15, unless something weird happens, the hammer comes down. Florida, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri. Big, delegate-rich states, every one of them, and every one of them potentially winnable in November (yes, even Missouri, which Barack Obama lost only by a whisker in 2008, although the circumstances would have to be just right). Its nearly impossible to see Sanders winning any one of those states. I remember when Bill Clinton basically sealed the deal in 1992. It was in Illinois, on March 17, in the lobby of the Palmer House Hilton, to be precise. I remember because I was there. If I were Clinton, Id want to be back at the Palmer House on March 15, for symbolism purposes.

Sanders should keep running. He has the money, so why not? He draws the crowds. And his presence keeps Clinton on her toes, keeps her from sail-trimming and tacking back to the center too early. So he should stay in as long as he wants to stay and keep up the pressure on the issues.

But its time to start pulling back on the food fight. Sanders got into this race thinking: Im not gonna win, but Im gonna push this party to the populist-left and put issues on the table that I want to see put on the table. You could tell this way back when he said enough with the damn emails. Then he came oh-so-close in Iowa and rolled in New Hampshire, and thats when he started to think he might actually win this thingto the astonishing extent that he reportedly didnt even write a concession speech in Nevada.

Now he ought to have landed back on Earth. Theres no point in trying to attack Clinton at this point. There is a point in amassing delegates, securing his position as the leader (or the co-leader, with Elizabeth Warren) of the left-populist, keep-her-honest wing of the Democratic Party. Thats a really important role. A guy who got 36 percent of Democrats in Fairfax County, Virginia isnt going to be president. But he can be important if he decides he wants to be.
Incumbent Kyle Kacal will keep his District 12 seat in the Texas House after receiving 78 percent of the vote in Tuesdays primary, more than triple the amount earned by his opponents Timothy Delasandro and Michael Stanford combined.

Kacal received 5,474 votes, compared to Delasandros 765 and Stanfords 704, or 11 and 10 percent, respectively. Those percentages barely budged from early voting results, where Kacal raked in 2,023 votes, or 79 percent, while Delasandro came away with 283 and Stanford finished with 247.

Im feeling good  we put in a lot of hard work, and Im very thankful that our constituents have spoken so resoundingly, Kacal said Tuesday night from his ranch in College Station, where he celebrated with friends and family.

Kacal, 46, was first elected in 2012 to the district composed of Falls, Limestone and Robertson counties and includes parts of Brazos and McLennan counties. Hes a member of the House Natural Resources Committee and the Rules and Regulations Committee.

This is the third time Delasandro has lost a race for the seat  he also ran unsuccessfully in 2012 and 2014. Delasandro, a 47-year-old College Station resident, said he was disappointed with the outcome of the race and wished Kacal well, declining any further comment.

Stanford, Kacals other challenger, could not be reached for comment. Stanford, 49, is the owner of an auto body shop in Mexia. He ran as an independent in 2012 for the District 17 seat in the U.S. House. Kacal said he was pleasantly surprised by the high voter turnout. In total, 33,062 people cast votes in the Brazos County primary elections.

The lines in Brazos County were phenomenal, Kacal said. When its 7 p.m. and polls are closed and lines are out the doors at the most popular locations, its a good sign. This is what were all about here in America  democracy and people having the opportunity to vote. Its nice to see folks exercising their right.

In regards to his own campaign, he said the results reflect a vote of confidence in his record. District 12 residents know that we are there for them, Kacal said.

Kacal said that even though he won Tuesday  no Democrat is seeking the post, meaning his primary victory wins him the seat  theres no time to rest. Kacal said hes been working on issues with constituents during the last few days of the campaign, and today will be no different.

Hes getting back to work with a staff meeting this morning before continuing to work on the big three issues facing his district  water, infrastructure and transportation.
A Texas A&M University student who was involved in a recent incident of racial harassment is no longer enrolled in the university, officials said Wednesday morning. The announcement comes as Texas A&M released the findings of an investigation into the Feb. 9 incident, in which racial slurs were directed at high school students touring the campus.

President Michael K. Young said the university conducted two investigations into the incident. Details of the individuals involved, as well as the student who is no longer enrolled, are not being released due to federal privacy laws, the statement said.

All information regarding the incident has been given to the Brazos County attorney's office for review. "We have been informed that the county attorney has declined to pursue any action related to the case," Youngs statement says. "I have asked that the information associated with the police investigation be made publicly available."

"As we reflect on the various events on our campus, and those around the country over the past few month, it is impossible to ignore the importance of inclusion and diversity," Young said in the statement.

The incident drew widespread attention after two black students from Uplift Hampton Preparatory charter school in Dallas were approached by A&M students and subjected to racial slurs before campus police stepped in.

The universitys swift condemnation of the incident, which came within hours of the event, drew praise from both the Anti-Defamation Leagues regional office as well as the Texas Charter Schools Association.

Young's full statement can be read below:

I want to share with the university community the status of the investigations into the racial incident on February 9, 2016, by the Dean of Student Life and University Police Department (UPD). I also want to communicate some of our recent and future actions to further advance and deepen diversity and inclusion on our campus.

The two separate investigations began immediately and included as extensive interviews as we were able to conduct with students, bystanders and witnesses and a review of all information that was made available to the University. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) limits what information we are legally allowed to release. The law does not permit us to publicly disclose information associated with the Dean of Student Life investigation other than to say that one of the many students interviewed is no longer associated with Texas A&M University. The case has concluded. However, if additional information comes to our attention we will further investigate and take any appropriate action.

The police investigation was concluded and all information was turned over to the Brazos County attorney's office for review. We have been informed that the county attorney has declined to pursue any action related to the case. I have asked that the information associated with the police investigation be made publicly available, in accordance with both open records and privacy laws, through appropriate channels.

Previously, the media had reported that there was a video of the actual incident. We are not aware of any such video, nor has anyone provided us with any video. I have asked UPD to review and reopen the investigation as appropriate if additional information is brought to our attention. I also would like to repeat from my earlier message to campus that Texas A&M has the website stophate.tamu.edu available for the reporting of racially based incidents and other hateful biased-based incidents.

Focusing on diversity and inclusion

I would like to mention some previous actions that have taken place in this regard, as well as highlight some future initiatives we will undertake. Texas A&M significantly revised our overall diversity plan in 2010, which has been recently featured for its multidimensional approach to engaging diversity on campus. This periodic revision is an important part of our plan, though we well understand we have so much more to accomplish in order to truly make a systemic change at Texas A&M.

I am engaging University and community leaders, including faculty administrators, staff, and students, in a "call to action" to review current initiatives and measures and to propose new ones, in areas such as recruitment, retention, climate assessment and course and curricular change. Here is a list of some of the activities planned, as well as those already being undertaken. I'm particularly pleased that many of these were recommended to us by various student groups and we are delighted to work with everyone to implement them.

Moving our STOPHATE desktop website to a mobile platform to allow easier and more timely reporting by students and the community. This should be completed in April of 2016.

Implementing mandatory "Community of Respect" seminars for all students at New Student Conferences, beginning the summer of 2016, as well as other cultural competency training that is grounded in theory and has proven success.

The Faculty Senate has scheduled an open forum on March 2 and 3 to hear ideas on responding to in-class incidents and how to make the required International and Cultural Diversity classes more applicable and purposeful.

Created permanent funding for our Aggies to Aggies Diversity Peer Education Program, starting this fall.

Created a mandatory Effective Communication Module, which will be required for two or more officers of every student organization to assist in them in conducting effective dialogues and meaningful conflict resolution starting in April 2016

Working together to build a dynamic campus

As we all reflect on the various events on our campus, and those around the country over the past few months, it is impossible to ignore the importance of the principles of inclusion and diversity. But despite all the headlines, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of just why it is so important to all of us here at Texas A&M.

As a leading institution of higher education, we are the vanguard in affecting positive change in the attitudes and actions of future generations. We are called upon to lead our communities and make a difference because the consequences of such acts are intolerable. This change is essential in our ability to thrive and grow as our world diversifies. We are launching our students into a world where they will need to work with everyone to be successful in addressing the great societal challenges that we, as a country, face.

As your President, I hope I am always open to that which challenges me and makes me uncomfortable, but that I always respond with the essential core value of respect in all that I do. I hope all of you do so as well and join me in embedding all of the Aggie core values in all that we do. In this way, we can eliminate fear and lead with hope in an effort to build a nurturing and respectful environment.

Michael K. Young
A College Station man was arrested Monday in connection with a December robbery of a man who was selling 100 Xanax bars, police said.

According to College Station police, officers were contacted on Dec. 13 by a man who said he had been assaulted while selling 100 bars of the drug Xanax to unfamiliar customers. Police said the mans family had taken him to the hospital, where he was treated for multiple bruises and cuts requiring stitches. The man told police he was attacked from behind by unknown men while making the drug exchange. The attackers made off with the Xanax.

Christian Laron Sheppard, 19, of College Station, admitted to officers he was one of several people involved in the robbery, according to police reports. He told police he and the others divided the Xanax among themselves.

Sheppard is charged with robbery, a second degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in jail and $10,000 in fines. He was released from the Brazos County Detention Center on $10,000 bond.

Authorities say the investigation is continuing, with more charges possible.
Morris Solon May July 10, 1926 - February 25, 2016 Benjamin Franklin declared, "You will find the key to success under the alarm clock." Indeed, Morris May was a man who understood this principle and wasn't afraid to wake up early, then work all day to achieve his goals. Morris died Thursday, February 25, 2016, at age 89, with his passing marked by a host of family and friends. Born on July 10, 1926, in Winfield, Alabama, Morris was the youngest of eight children welcomed by William Louis "Bud" May and Chessie Lillian Taylor May, whose entire family were farmers. Six of his siblingsArlie, Jalia, Reuben, Lomax, Voncille, and Floypreceded him in death, with only his brother Glen surviving him. After Morris' mother died when he was five years old, his siblings and father raised him together, and when his father eventually remarried (during Morris' early teens) and moved into town, Morris and Glen were left behind to work the farm themselves. By then, Morris could fix anything that needed repair. His father took the contract for driving the rural school bus, and Morris drove the school bus from age 16 until he left school to join the military. Morris enlisted in the Navy towards the end of World War II, serving as a typist on board a ship that was stationed near Australia, New Guinea and the Philippines. (At one point, all of the May boys were serving their country simultaneously, throughout the world.) Morris and Helen "Maxine" Ehl dated during high school. After he returned from the war they eloped on April 5, 1947; their marriage lasted 68 years. Morris and Maxine had four children who now survive their father: Patricia May Walton (and husband Thomas Stephen), Gary May, Daniel May (and wife Robyn) and Randal May (and wife Robin). Though a disciplinarian, Morris also retained a healthy sense of fun. He loved telling stories to anyone who would listenespecially young people, he often said, since they had "no clue how easy" their lives were. Morris enjoyed road trips to visit family, making regular journeys to Alabama to see extended family, and California, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, and even Alaska to visit their children. He loved the outdoors; he liked camping, hunting (deer and upland game birds) and fishing, both saltwater and freshwater. Faith in God was the most important thing in Morris' life. He loved to sing with the church and with his family. He served as a preacher at the church of Christ in Yakima, Washington for over 50 years. He often said that, apart from his wedding day, the best day in his life was the day he was baptized. Morris worked construction until he was hired as a millwright at the Hanford nuclear site in Richland, Washington. He worked there until he retired in 1988. Morris continued to preach until 2006, when he moved to College Station. His family remembers him as a hardworking, godly man who loved his family and enjoyed being with people. He often had a grin on his face that he would have described as being like "a mule eating briars." In addition to his brother Glen, his wife Maxine, and their four children, Morris is survived by his nine grandchildren: Nathanael May (wife Misty), Megan May, Mindy Anderson (husband Daniel), Tiffany Spaulding (husband George), Heather Traficonte (husband Matt), Schuylor Walton, Taylor Walton, Chandlor Walton, and Maggie May, his eight great-grandchildren: Ezekiel, Atticus, Caleb, Chloe, Gavin, Asher, Brighton and Reese, and numerous nieces and nephews who loved him. The Life Celebration of Morris May will be held 2 p.m. on Friday, March 4th, 2016 at Hillier Funeral Home of Bryan with burial following at College Station Memorial Cemetery. A time for the family to receive friends will be held 5p.m.-7p.m. on Thursday at Hillier Funeral Home of Bryan. Please share condolences and view life tribute at www.hillierfuneralhome.com
The latest issue of the Radio Times must be making anti-culling badger people spitting mad.

An article by Terry Payne titled 'An Unlikely Star' is advertising a programme, in the 'Land of Hope and Glory' series to be broadcast by BBC2 this Friday 4th March at 9 pm.

By her own admission, Jane Treay's film has set out to make a very partisan case for culling badgers. As quoted by Payne, she says: "There is a massacre of our dairy herds going on and it is not being covered".

The 'massacre' is the number of cattle being slaughtered because of bovine TB - around 30,000 a year (not all of which have bTB). What is never mentioned is the greater 'massacre' of cattle slaughtered for other reasons. For example, in 2008 75,000 were slaughtered because they were infertile.

Nor can Treays claim that the issue of bTB in cattle is not being covered. It constantly appears in the Western Region media, and other media outlets, in farming programmes on radio and TV and papers devoted to farming.

As Mark Jones, veterinarian and policy manager of the Born Free Foundation comments: "The article paints a wholly inaccurate and biased picture of the situation facing cattle farmers affected by bovine tuberculosis."

And far more space is granted to the NFU and farmers wanting to cull badgers than is given to those people trying to argue on scientific grounds that badger culls won't help the farmers or their cattle.

The real 'reservoir' of bTB is the cattle themselves

The 'unlikely star' of Treays' film is Somerset farmer Maurice Durbin who has had TB on his farm since 2010. Faced with that information, Jan Bayley of the Animal Welfare Group commented: "To have continuous incidents suggests that TB is endemic in his herd."

One wonders whether the vets and Defra inspectors constantly visiting his farm had ever suggested as much. Mark Jones agrees: "Bovine TB is a significant problem for our cattle industry. This problem has been exacerbated in recent years because of cattle farming and trading practices which are not focussed on disease control, and by successive governments which took their eye off the ball, particularly during the BSE and FMD crises. So much so, that in some parts of the west and south west the disease has effectively become endemic."

In fact, the strong possibility of endemic bTB in herds is something that should be taken very seriously, studied and acted upon. Durbin has lost a third of his 320-strong pedigree Guernsey herd to the disease which, so the article says, is "often transmitted in the urine of badgers." And note, not badgers possibly infected with bTB, just badgers. There are theories as to how transmission between cattle and badgers takes place, but nothing is proven.
Kailo Bontulan sat in front of a cluster of thatched bamboo huts next to a humble Protestant church in Davao, a city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. About 700 members of his indigenous community fled there almost a year ago following deadly attacks by paramilitary groups.

In the camp I feel safe. The army can't abduct me that easy, like back home where I can disappear without a trace, said the community leader. Here we are together and strong, and able to tell the world what is done to us by the army.

Bontulan spoke too soon. Weeks later, on 24 February, unidentified men set the makeshift camp on fire, burning two buildings to the ground and injuring five people.

This is but one of many incidents triggered by the massive militarisation in these areas to protect foreign mining interests where the Lumads live.

The Philippines has an estimated $840 billion worth of untapped mineral resources, according to the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Philippines which is responsible for giving permits to mining companies to do exploration of mining areas and to commence operation. Several Canadian companies operate where the Lumad live and in other parts of the Philippines.

The United Church of Christ in the Philippines said in a statement that Lumads, a collective term for the numerous indigenous peoples of Mindanao, continued to be harassed even after fleeing their villages. In December, the displaced community camping around the church received threats that their temporary dwellings would be burned down.

The threats have been executed, and, once again, the Lumads have been harmed, the church said.

The Lumads find themselves caught in the middle of a violent struggle between an array of armed groups. The Philippine Army is battling the New Peoples Army, which has waged a Maoist guerrilla struggle since 1969. The government army has allegedly drawn on indigenous communities to form paramilitary groups, which are accused of some of the worst abuses.

After a 1 September attack allegedly committed by the Magahat-Bagani paramilitary group that killed three indigenous leaders in the town of Lianga in Surigao del Sur, the provinces outspoken governor Johnny Pimentel said in a statement: The military created a monster.

The UN special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons, Chaloka Beyani, has expressed concern about links between the army and paramilitaries. The Philippine human rights group Karapatan says it has documented the relationship between the military and the Alamara, another Mindanao paramilitary group, going back to 2002.

But the circumstantial evidence is so strong that former justice secretary Leila de Lima announced last September an investigation into violence against Lumads and promised to probe the role of paramilitary groups, which are by definition connected to the army.

Since that statement, however, the ministry has released no further information about the investigation, and de Lima was replaced in January. Officials at the Justice Ministry did not respond to phone calls or emails.

There is an economic element to the plight of Mindanaos indigenous peoples. The area is rich in minerals and the province of Surigao del Sur has been designated by the government as the mining capital of the Philippines, Human Rights Watch has noted.

After Wednesdays arson attack, the church said: The Lumads live in mineral rich areas coveted by foreign mining companies. There is massive militarisation in these areas to protect foreign mining interests.

It is a common enough allegation, but its hard to prove a direct connection between the individual acts of violence and mining interests.

However, anti-mining activists like Bontulan often receive death threats from members of the military. They told a family member they would skin me alive if they ever saw me again in the village, he told IRIN.

Bontulan takes the warning seriously. Targeted killings are common in Mindanao, and although the assailants are rarely prosecuted, the victims are disproportionately Lumads and often involved in anti-mining activities.

On 9 February, two Lumads were killed and others wounded in Compostela Valley Province, where the Compostela Farmers Association has opposed mining. The human rights group Karapatan said one of the victims killed by an unknown assailant was the sister of a CFA activist, while the second person was killed when the army bombarded the village of Sitio Diat.

Local media quoted an army spokesman saying the bombardment occurred during a battle with the NPA, but Karapatan denied that NPA elements were in the area at the time and accused the army of indiscriminately bombing the village. IRIN requested comment from the army on this incident and its alleged support for paramilitaries, but a spokesman did not reply before publication.

Karapatan also documented the extrajudicial killings of four people in Compostela Valley and Davao del Sur provinces in January.

Despite the continuous attacks, indigenous leaders say they will not be driven from their lands.

Indigenous anti-mining activist Sabello "Tatay Bello" Tindasan at his home in Compostela Valley Province

Sabello "Tatay Bello" Tindasan, a CFA member, fled to Davao after a soldier shot at his son-in-law in November but missed. That followed a hail of bullets on his home from a nearby army base after he participated in a roadblock last June to prevent a mining company from bringing heavy equipment into the area.

In January, Tindasan decided to return home despite the risks. Standing by his house, which is still pockmarked by gunfire, he told IRIN: This is my ancestral land. It belonged to my father and it will belong to my son. I have no other choice than to stay and defend it.
The leaders of Boones Mill took a chance, and now it looks like it will pay off.

In 2011, four years after the 2007 closing of the factory on the North American Homes property, the decision makers in Boones Mill looked around and saw that no new developers had designs on the property, as it was in disrepair and blighted. So thats when the leaders of Boones Mill took out a loan and bought the 63-acre piece of land, with the ultimate goal being to fix the place up and attract new business.

It looks like it worked.

On Monday, it was announced that the Town of Boones Mill will receive $600,000 from state Industrial Revitalization Fund for the renovation of the Boones Mill Industrial Park, according to Town Manager Matt Lawless.

On Monday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe made a surprise announcement of more than $1.9 million in grant funds for industrial revitalization, and the Town of Boones Mill was one of four localities selected, along with Bedford County, Warrenton and Lynchburg.

The money will go toward renovating the former housing factory, once the towns largest employer.

In 2015, the town adopted a comprehensive plan dedicated to diversified redevelopment and the gradual growth of new small businesses consistent with local culture and the natural environment.

The grant award enables the renovation of a two-story, 54,000 square-foot masonry building. The other funding source is the Tobacco Indemnification Commission, which matched $275,000.

Two tenants are confirmed for the lower level: $1.95 Cleaners will have a machine shop, and Titan Trains will build 1/8 scale locomotives and cars. The renovated ground floor will be ready for new businesses early in 2017.

In short, the plan, hatched in 2011 to take advantage of a situation four years in the making, seems to be working.

And people in high places, like Richmond, have taken notice, hence the $600,000 grant heading this way.

We are ecstatic that Gov. McAuliffe and the state of Virginia have chosen to recognize the importance of our endeavors toward the further revitalization of our little town, Boones Mill Mayor Ben Flora said in a press release. We, in Boones Mill and in Franklin County, are immensely grateful for this catalytic assistance in all that we wish to become.

In this area, industrial revitalization is a key phrase. There are plenty of properties in this county and beyond like the North American Homes property. Once leaders realize how to best use these assets to move forward, each community is better for it.

In Boones Mill, the die is cast and improvement will soon follow.
The Town of Boones Mill will receive $600,000 from state Industrial Revitalization Fund for the renovation of the Boones Mill Industrial Park, according to Town Manager Matt Lawless.

On Monday, Gov. Terry McAuliffe made a surprise announcement of more than $1.9 million in grant funds for industrial revitalization, and the Town of Boones Mill was one of four localities selected, along with Bedford County, Warrenton and Lynchburg.

Boones Mills award will go toward renovating a blighted factory building on the former North American Housing property.

The factory, which was the towns largest employer, closed in 2007. In 2011, with no private redevelopment on the horizon, the town took a loan to buy the 63-acre property.

Several light industrial tenants brought the town a trickle of revenue, but the largest buildings fell into disrepair, according to Lawless. In 2015, the town adopted a comprehensive plan dedicated to diversified redevelopment and the gradual growth of new small businesses consistent with local culture and the natural environment.

The grant will fund the renovation of a two-story, 54,000 square-foot masonry building. The other funding source is the Tobacco Indemnification Commission, which matched $275,000.

Two tenants are confirmed for the lower level: $1.95 Cleaners will have a machine shop, and Titan Trains will build 1/8 scale locomotives and cars. The renovated ground floor will be ready for new businesses early in 2017.

Franklin County provided a key letter of support to show Richmond a shared commitment, Lawless said.

We are ecstatic that Gov. McAuliffe and the state of Virginia have chosen to recognize the importance of our endeavors toward the further revitalization of our little town, Boones Mill Mayor Ben Flora said in a press release. We, in Boones Mill and in Franklin County, are immensely grateful for this catalytic assistance in all that we wish to become.

Franklin County was proud to support the towns application for funding, and we look forward to working with Boones Mill to market its facilities to new and expanding businesses as the property is revitalized, said Franklin County Economic Development Director Michael Burnette.

Boones Mill has a strategic vision and strong fundamentals for growth, and its encouraging to see state-level investment matching our local commitment and the efforts of local entrepreneurs, said Lawless.

The maximum award was $600,000 per project, and the state received 13 applications.

According to a release from the Governors office, since the inception of the program in 2012, the Industrial Revitalization Fund has invested more than $7.7 million in blighted structures throughout the state. The funding has leveraged more than $46.6 million in additional funding from both private and public entities, and more than 170 jobs are being created from these projects.
Over the weekend, just days before he was to stand trial first-degree murder, a Ferrum man struck an agreement with prosecutors in the shooting death of his close friend and was sentenced to serve 7 years in prison.

Randall Neil Hodges, 49, pleaded guilty to one count of voluntary manslaughter and one count of unlawful wounding. He received 15 years with half of that time suspended.

Hodges impromptu hearing was held Sunday evening in Franklin County Circuit Court. His two-day jury trial had been slated to begin Thursday morning.

Although he was later indicted on one count of first-degree murder, Hodges was initially charged last year with second-degree murder in the death of his friend, Kevin Scott Smith, 42. Deputies were called May 14 to Smiths home on Holley Drive a little after 8 p.m. They found Smiths body in the yard and Hodges nearby with a small-caliber handgun.

They were described as best friends by some, good friends by others, Aaron Houchens said Sunday. We would submit this was a crime that occurred in the heat of passion.

He said he and his co-counsel, Holland Perdue, had planned to argue self-defense at trial, but would not discuss the specific circumstances of the incident itself. Franklin County Commonwealths Attorney A.J. Dudley also declined to talk about the case, except to say that the victims family approved of the resolution.

The attorneys said the agreement came together quickly Sunday afternoon.

Given the overall risk that our client faced, we believe this was a fantastic result, Houchens said.

First-degree murder carries punishments raging from 20 years to life in prison. Voluntary manslaughter, defined as an unpremeditated killing, typically carried out in the heat of passion, can bring between one and 10 years behind bars.
The aerial photos depict scorched earth and the ruins of two houses destroyed one morning by the fireball that followed the corroded pipelines rupture.

An investigation by a federal agency reported that the burn zone was about 1,125 feet in diameter after the failure of a section of the buried 30-inch diameter Transcontinental pipeline near Appomattox in September 2008.

Franklin County residents Anne and Steve Bernard have seen the photos and have found them haunting.

The Bernards face the prospect of someday living and working within a few hundred feet of the Mountain Valley Pipeline  a 42-inch-diameter buried pipeline that would move natural gas at high pressure from West Virginia to Pittsylvania County.

Federal agencies and industry groups emphasize that significant incidents with natural gas transmission pipelines are rare given the pipelines relative ubiquity.

According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, in 2014 there were more than 301,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines in the United States. Administration statistics show that there had been 1,308 significant incidents with natural gas transmission pipelines from 1996 to 2015 and a total of 46 fatalities associated with those events.

Eight of those deaths occurred in September 2010 after the rupture in San Bruno, California, of a 30-inch diameter natural gas transmission pipeline. The resulting fire also destroyed 38 homes. The cause was attributed to a poorly welded section of pipe.

Sara Gosman, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, serves also as vice president of the board for Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit pipeline watchdog organization.

Gosman said that even though the probability of serious ruptures of natural gas transmission pipelines is low, when they do occur they tend to have high consequences.

Which is one reason the Bernards neighbors off Grassy Hill Road, Derek and Marion Hanes, describe a gnawing unease, a feeling described by many others facing the prospect of living close to the proposed pipelines 301-mile route.

We havent let it consume our lives, but it is a great source of stress, Derek Hanes said.

Which leads him to wonder why some people not directly affected by the pipeline seem unable to grasp the projects potential effect on neighbors and friends. Some people readily dismiss pipeline opponents as not-in-my-backyard types without bothering to understand the full story, he said.

They really dont feel the pain, he said. They really dont want to talk to me about it. What I keep thinking about, more than anything else, is the lack of compassion for people who are going through this.

Yet he acknowledged that he might have taken little interest in the pipeline project if it had not affected him directly.

As an interstate pipeline, the Mountain Valley project needs a green light from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before construction can begin.

On Oct. 23, Mountain Valley submitted an application to FERC, a filing of about 11,000 pages, seeking the certificate it needs to move forward. FERC staff is working on a draft environmental impact statement for the project.

Mike Carter, a merchant in Rocky Mount and a pipeline opponent whose elderly parents live not far from the Bernards, emailed the Bernards an image from the October filing that detailed the pipeline route and related work in the vicinity of their home and studio.

Anne Bernard recalled her reaction.

It was abject horror, she said.

From survey stakes, the Bernards had anticipated that the pipeline would travel nearby. But the image Carter sent provided other details too, including a plan by Mountain Valley to use the Bernards driveway, which features a modest but expensive bridge the couple paid to have built, as a permanent access road to the pipeline.

I felt violated, Steve Bernard said.

In a nearby section of Franklin County, Mavis Boone, 91, and her son, Blair, have successfully resisted to date efforts by contractors working for Mountain Valley to survey their family farm for a pipeline route. Yet Blair Boone knows that the project could still burrow through bottomland the family owns and rents to farmers along the Blackwater River.

Which means that he feels compassion for the Bernards and what they face.

Anne and Steve will be devastated if the pipeline takes its currently mapped course, Boone said. It will hurt us, but it will destroy them. I dont think MVP could damage their property and quality of life any more if they tried.

Natalie Cox, a spokeswoman for Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC, said the joint venture does what it can to avoid routing the pipeline near residences.

Cox said there are times when we are limited to how and where adjustments can be made.

But she emphasized that Mountain Valley will work with landowners and communities to discuss sensitivities and potential minor route adjustments until a final route is approved by FERC.

At FERCs direction, Mountain Valley included in its application justification for routes or work areas that would be close to homes. In one instance in West Virginia, Mountain Valley said it will buy a hunting cabin that would be directly in the pipelines path because avoiding it was impossible due to terrain constraints.

Mountain Valley also filed with FERC a chart that identified at least 26 occupied residences within 50 feet of the construction work area for the currently proposed route.

Mountain Valley has said the temporary construction right-of-way will be about 125 feet wide, dropping to 50 feet in most places for the permanent right-of-way.

Potential impact radius

The Bernards, both visual artists, work in a studio built by Steve behind their home. The interior walls display samples of their lifes work, paintings and drawings ranging from realistic to abstract. Easels set up along one long wall serve students Anne teaches during weekly art classes. The Bernards grimly speculate that a pipeline rupture like the one in Appomattox would likely take their lives in a flash and incinerate their work.

Natural gas in transmission pipelines typically lacks the odorant added when the gas moves into distribution networks. A leak might not be detected before something provides an ignition source.

According to an investigation of the Appomattox rupture by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a section of the Transcontinental pipeline failed around 7:44 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2008, and an undetermined amount of natural gas was released.

The fireball that resulted left a crater that was 37 feet wide and 15 feet deep. A company hired to investigate the rupture determined that the failure occurred solely as a result of wall thinning caused by external corrosion of the pipe. Five people were injured.

The pipeline route in the Bernards vicinity would travel close to Teel Creek. They and the Haneses say that the land along Teel Creek has a high water table. They believe the buried steel pipe essentially will be submerged in water during much of the year, a condition they fear could corrode the pipe or push it closer to the surface.

If they dig down two feet, theyll be in water, Derek said.

Mountain Valley informed FERC that in places where the groundwater level is at or near the ground surface the pipeline might be concrete coated or weighted with aggregate filled sacks to overcome buoyancy in the flooded trench.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responding to the routes proximity to Teel Creek, asked Mountain Valley to justify this large impact to waters of the U.S.

Todd Miller, Norfolk district regulatory project manager for the Corps, said his review of pipeline route maps suggested the comparatively large footprint of construction and the pipeline route planned along Teel Creek led the Corps to seek more information.

Mountain Valleys response cited the presence of a farm house and art studio  the Bernards property  and a barn being used for goat farming, which belongs to the Haneses, as factors that limited moving the pipe farther from Teel Creek.

The Haneses built the barn themselves, using oak, cherry and pine they cut and milled on their property.

Like many other rural homeowners along the route of the Mountain Valley project, the Bernards and Haneses worry how the presence of a natural gas pipeline will affect the value of their property.

FERCs environmental impact statement for the Constitution pipeline project, a 30-inch diameter natural gas transmission pipeline the commission approved in 2014, cited studies that indicated the presence of pipelines had no significant impact on residential property values.

But the Bernards and Haneses are not alone in believing that common sense would suggest that the presence of a 42-inch diameter pipeline transporting natural gas at high pressure could dampen the enthusiasm of a potential buyer.

Damon Hill, a spokesman for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, has calculated that the potential impact radius of the 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline at its maximum allowable operating pressure would be about 1,115 feet.

He said the radius is meant to describe the radius of a circle within which the potential failure of a pipeline could have a significant impact on people or property.

Anne Bernard realizes that pipeline ruptures like the ones that occurred at Appomattox and San Bruno are rare.

Yet sometimes she finds herself imagining an exhausted welder who becomes careless at the end of a long week. Mountain Valley has said pipeline construction will likely occur six days a week, 10 hours a day.

Its just horrifying to think about, she said.
SHARE

By Erin Schmitt of The Gleaner

Registered Republicans can vote in Kentucky's first presidential caucus Saturday.

The Henderson caucus will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Henderson County High School.

Kentucky is a closed primary state, so only registered Republicans may vote in the party's election, and only those registered before Dec. 31 will be eligible to vote in the caucus.

"This is the first time in my lifetime that Republicans will be relevant to choosing the Republican candidate for president because of it being in March rather than May when most of the rest of the country has already voted," said Henderson County Republican Party President Richard Shoulders.

Normally the Republican voters would first hit the polls at the May primary to select a presidential candidate. By that time, it's almost a formality.

Shoulders said he's always wished Kentucky Republicans could participate much sooner, adding "it feels more like our votes count that way."

The following presidential candidates have filed for the Kentucky caucus: Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.

Trump, Cruz, Carson, Rubio and Kasich are the only candidates still in the race. Should one of the other candidates win the caucus, he or she would not receive Kentucky's delegate votes.

"If people vote for other candidates, that's really wasting their vote," Shoulders said. "We hope people won't do that."

Representatives for each presidential candidate will be available to speak to and provide additional information before voters hit the polls. The candidates may also show up, though Shoulders said he has received no confirmation about anyone being there in person.

The voting process will be similar to a typical Kentucky election, according to the Republican Party of Kentucky website, rpk.org. Voters will show identification, sign in, and vote by secret ballot.

Acceptable forms of voter identification are: personal acquaintance, motor vehicle operator's license, Social Security card, credit card, or identification card with picture and signature.

Shoulders advises voters to be patient. There is one caucus location for Henderson County, which covers all 45 precincts.

"Depending on voter turnout, it could be quite a few people there at any one time," he said. "Just be patient we will get them signed in so they can vote and get out as soon as possible."

To cut down on the wait time, the party plans to divide up the registration book alphabetically into five sections. There will also be multiple sign-in stations.

Webster County Republicans can vote in the caucus at Poole Volunteer Fire Department, located at 9110 U.S. 41-A North in Sebree.

Union County Republicans can vote in the caucus at Grace Fellowship Church, located at 523 U.S. 60 in Morganfield.
SHARE

Gleaner staff

A Tennessee man has been jailed after an investigation which began when a suspected methamphetamine lab exploded in Henderson County.

The Kentucky State Police charged Shane Kirkman, 47, Adamsville, Tennessee, with one count of manufacturing methamphetamine, unlawful possession of a meth precursor, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The investigation began on Feb. 18 after Kirkman went to Methodist Hospital Union County for treatment for injuries allegedly suffered during the explosion of a meth lab, authorities said.

Further investigation revealed that a lab did explode at a residence in the 13000 block of Gebhart Latta Road in Henderson County, the state police said.

Arrest warrants were obtained from Kirkman, and he was arrested Monday without incident.

Kirkman is being held at the Henderson County Detention Center on a $10,000 full-cash bond.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Most food books are cookbooks, but there are others that are about food, not cooking. I get a good deal of pleasure in reading about food or enjoying a book where food plays a major role. Stepping back from cooking and recipes gives a broader perspective and, for me, enhances all my eating experiences. Wine writers too, continue to expound about their interests and update us on the latest trends.

Here are a few food and wine-centric books I've enjoyed lately:

"The Diamond Caper"" by Peter Mayle

Mayle is an expat Englishman who fled the dreary climate of London for the sunny south of France and has been writing about it ever since. His first book, the hugely successful "A Year in Provence," was based on the travails of moving to France, adapting to the culture, renovating a house, and finding friends.

Lately, he's turned to fiction, writing a series of Caper books. The most recent, "The Diamond Caper," is set in and around Marseilles on France's Mediterranean coast. It's a detective yarn about a jewel thief pursued by an American insurance investigator and her fixer boyfriend who straddles the blurry line between tediously legal and elegantly crooked.

But the book is really about the good life in Provence. Our heroes live with their millionaire friend on a large estate with a personal chef. The book begins with the crime and ends, predictably, with the villain's capture. But in between, they mostly go to lunch at very good restaurants and drink wine. Every chapter seems to involve a stylish repast, a bottle of rose, and an incremental advancement of the story. Occasionally for variety, they stay at a very nice hotel or enjoy a lunch on the terrace of their host's villa cooked by his chef, Alphonse.

Although pretty silly, the book is a charming escape to the south of France, ideal for a mid-winter read. The perfect climate, delicious wine, great food, and the lifestyle of the rich are like a vacation from our gray snow and frozen ground. I wish that they had taken longer to solve the crime, so I could have been included in a few more of their leisurely seaside lunches.

"Best Food Writing of 2015" edited by Holly Hughes

Food writing in magazines, newspapers, and on blogs has exploded in recent years. An anthology is the answer to this bountiful smorgasbord of material.

The Best Food Writing series has been going on for some years now. The latest edition usually finds its way into my Christmas stocking. There's no way I can keep up with today's hundreds of food writing outlets. Fortunately, Hughes culls through them and presents an eclectic selection of her favorites. Humorous, serious, personal, or on public policy, all are engaging, informative, and comfortably brief. Feel free to open it at random and dip in for a few entertaining minutes. I keep mine on the bedside table.

"The Hungry Ear, Poems of Food and Drink" edited by Kevin Young

Poets have always examined the human condition from the perspective of the table. This essential anthology of food poetry can be kept by the dinner table for a quick meal-time poetry fix or beside the bed for a poem to feed your dreams.

The menu of chapter headings includes topics like: First Harvest; Churning and Preserving; Meat and Potatoes; Pig Out; Down the Hatch; Dinner for Two; and Forbidden Fruit. The hundreds of poets selected include Elizabeth Alexander, Billy Collins, Robert Frost, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, and Gertrude Stein. Some will make you smile, and some will make you sad. Whether you get hungry or have a sharp recollection, I'm sure you'll find pleasure and fun in this collection.

"Wine Folly," the essential guide to wine by Madeline Puckett and Justin Hammack

Another book about wine? Who needs it? What's left to be said? We already have learned tomes, beginner's guides, in-depth analyses and glossy photo books. Yet this book, which covers the basics, has a unique approach. Graphics-driven, the text is concise and minimal, making room for clear illustrations, informative charts, diagrams of flavor pairings, and elaborate maps of wine relationships.

If you're a visual learner like me, this handy book will be a basic guide to your everyday wine drinking. A glance at the double page spread for any wine type will clue you in on its typical flavors as well as likely secondary tastes, where it grows, the wine's history, and common wine making styles. It's a quick and helpful leg up in unfamiliar territory. Organized by fundamentals, styles of wine, and wine regions, the book's clear presentation and crisp writing are ideal for quick reference.

Reading about food and wine adds a little relish to my life at the table. I'm always eager to hear another opinion, get a little history, or learn something new. I just ordered a new book titled, "New England Pie," history under a crust. Sounds like fun to me. I'll let you know how it was.

Frank Whitman's Not Bread Alone runs Thursdays in The Hour. He may be reached at notbreadalonefw@gmail.com
STAMFORD  With six releases under her belt since 1996's hit record "Between the 1 and the 9", singer and multi-instrumentalist Patti Rothberg continues to write and record prolifically.

"By the end of the summer, I'll probably have like nine albums," Rothberg told The Hour.

Rothberg, who will perform a solo acoustic set at The Fez on March 3, said her setlist for the gig will draw selections from her entire oeuvre, including her latest, "Ulterior Motives", which was released Jan. 8.

Thursday's setlist will be "like a time machine," Rothberg said, adding that she'll be amenable to requests as well. "I often just let other people pick the songs, because I'm not married to any of them." When she plays with her trio, Wet Paint, Rothberg often delegates the task of making a setlist to one of her bandmates.

A guitar player from age 12, Rothberg had initially intended to pursue a career as a visual artist. She wrote the songs that would become "Between the 1 and the 9" while studying painting at the Paris campus of Parsons School of Design.

After returning to New York City, Rothberg met a cab driver named Creepy while busking in the subway. Creepy offered Rothberg the opportunity to take over her spot in a "crazy all-girl tribal-industrial-punk band" called Thrust. Rothberg played in the band for about a year before running into Dave Greenberg, an acquaintance from the National Guitar Workshop, in a guitar store.

Greenberg recorded a demo for Rothberg, which was heard over the phone by publicist and producer Alicia Gelernt. An unexpected bidding war to Rothberg ensued, with Rothberg eventually choosing to sign with EMI, the now-defunct British mega-label.

"I was in a real psychedelic hippie mindset," Rothberg told The Hour. "I didn't really know I was going to get a record deal. I didn't know what I was getting into!"

The resultant album, "Between the 1 and the 9", produced the hits "Inside" and "Treat Me Like Dirt" and led to television appearances and international tours supporting well-known acts like Midnight Oil, Chris Isaak and the Black Crowes.

"I was like the last of the big kind of record deals, where they actually paid for stuff," Rothberg said, adding that her record was accompanied by a substantial promotional push from EMI. Some 20 years later, she is still approached on the street for autographs, especially in Germany, where "Treat Me Like Dirt" was a sensation.

After the flurry of activity following the album's release, however, Rothberg took a break from the road and didn't issue another record until 2001's "Candelabra Cadabra", which she describes as "kind of glitzy-glam," a la Kate Bush.

"I sort of got on a local train instead of an express one day, and I just started looking around," Rothberg said of the period between the two albums.

Though she continues to write songs, Rothberg's main focus of late is on her paintings, which she sells from her website. She also recently released a book, "Extra Awesome", in collaboration with photographer Richard Carroll.

Patti Rothberg will perform at The Fez in Stamford on Thursday, March 3, at 8 p.m.
NORWALK  While 32 states currently recognize post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a workers compensation-eligible condition for first responders, Connecticut is not one of them.

To add Connecticut to that list of states, and to express their support for proposed legislation that will include PTSD in workers compensation benefits, Norwalk Police Department Union President Sgt. David Orr and NPD Officer Carl Williams joined state legislators and police union representatives from around the state at the Capitol in Hartford on Monday.

The stated purpose of the proposed State Senate bill in question is: To expand workers' compensation coverage to individuals suffering from a severe mental or emotional impairment as a direct result of witnessing the death or maiming of another human being whose death or maiming was caused by an act of violence of another human being.

Excluding PTSD from workers compensation is wrong on every level, Orr said in his address on Monday. Severe emotional trauma is an injury that should be compensible. Currently 32 states include PTSD under workers compensation and that includes every state from New Jersey to Maine ... More and more police are given no choice but to continue working when they have PTSD because they have no safety net at all. Working with PTSD is a financial and emotional struggle that no emergency responder should have to bear ... In a socially progressive state such as Connecticut, its unfortunate that this coverage is still excluded for first responders. If members of our state legislature care at all about the men and women that serve our citizens, and I think they do, they will act now and pass this law. To do anything less, would be a disservice to those who serve the most.

The proposed Senate bill took its first step toward passage on Tuesday with an eight-to-five vote by the Labor and Public Employees Committee in favor of the bill.

To use Sandy Hook as an example, the initial responders there had to use their regular contractual leave and sick days to take the time to heal their mental wounds. There were investigators who stayed on scene for days collecting evidence, Orr said. The Sandy Hook Relief Fund donated money to help the first responders there once they had exhausted their contractual leave. Those first responders needed time to recuperate, they may need up to a few months off.

The criteria of the proposed bill will cover any police officer, firefighter or ambulance worker who is diagnosed by a psychiatrist or psychologist with PTSD, which originates from any of those first responders witnessing the death or maiming, or visually witnessing the immediate aftermath of such death or maiming, of one or more human beings, and whose death or maiming is caused by an act of another human being ... and was causally connected with the first responders employment.

The Workers Compensation Research Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts, shows that there are 32 states that currently cover PTSD for workers compensation for emergency responders, Orr said. Connecticut is the only state in the northeast that does not have this coverage.

Orr cited the emotional and financial toll PTSD takes on police officers.

Its cost effective to treat the officer and have them return to work, Orr said. The high cost of leaving this untreated could be shown in the fact that police officers, second only to those in the military, have the highest suicide and divorce rates.

State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff expressed his support for the PTSD bill.

Im very much in favor of passage of this bill, Duff said. First responders see things that most of never see or would want to see and its up to us to support them.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

NORWALK -- In advance of replacing the Walk Bridge, the Connecticut Department of Transportation (ConnDOT) will open an office in South Norwalk to help residents and businesses navigate the impacts of the massive project.

"They're going to open up an office -- probably on Washington Street -- and they're going to put a website up the end of this month special for this," said Norwalk Director of Public Works Bruce J. Chimento after meeting with ConnDOT Commissioner James P. Redeker and other officials in Norwalk on Tuesday.

ConnDOT spokesman Judd Everhart said afterward that the department is scouting locations in South Norwalk for a street-level office for walk-in traffic from the public regarding the Walk Bridge replacement.

"My understanding is that there will be fact sheets and other handouts, displays, and staff to answer questions," Everhart said. "The goal is to keep the public informed and minimize impacts on the neighborhood and local businesses."

ConnDOT hopes to put the Walk Bridge replacement -- an estimated $500 million project -- out to bid by the end of this year and start construction early next year.

On Tuesday morning, Redeker and ConnDOT engineers met with Chimento, Mayor Harry W. Rilling, state Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-25, state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-26, state Rep. Fred Wilms, R-142, Westport First Selectman Jim Marpe and others to provide updates on the Walk Bridge replacement, Yankee Doodle Bridge rehabilitation and other upcoming local projects.

"We'll be ready for a full public information meeting within the next six to eight weeks on the projects involving Norwalk," Rilling said. "The main discussion will surround the Walk Bridge but there are other projects that are going to tie into this and impact Norwalk at the same time. They want to make sure that they talk about all the impacts on Norwalk -- just not the Walk Bridge but other things as well."

Rilling said he told ConnDOT officials that Norwalk representatives "need to be involved at every step."

The meeting was part of a series of ongoing discussions between ConnDOT and local officials aimed at keeping Norwalk up to date on the projects and minimizing impacts on local residents, businesses and traffic.

Redeker afterward reiterated the need to replace the 118-year-old Walk Bridge while acknowledging local concerns about the impacts of the massive project.

"The new Walk Bridge will provide more reliable rail service and is a necessary component of our transportation system and critical to the region's economy," Redeker said. "Coordination with the rail and maritime users, neighbors and other stakeholders and the additional planned projects in the area will be a priority to minimize traffic and business disruption."

The Walk Bridge failed twice in 2014, disrupting traffic along the Metro-North Railroad's New Haven Line and the Northeast Corridor used by Amtrak.
To the Editor:

On Wednesday, March 2, at 7 pm the Third Taxing District Commissioners, at their planned Annual Meeting, will present the "Master Plan" for the East Norwalk Association Library with the Plan, too, being posted on the TTD website, www.ttd.gov.

The Plan was prepared by the Consultant selected by the Commissioners Alex Cohen, of Aaron Cohen Associates.

There is very little in that Plan that I can subscribe to. Knowing the East Norwalk Association Library, its constituents, and the East Norwalk community at large having been the Executive Director of the Library for the past 8 years there are two statements contained in the Plan that I must expose as being inflammatory, personally abhorrent, defaming of character and false to wit:

1 - "The appreciation for the Library staff and volunteers was apparent throughout the study. However, we must note that the Execut! ive Director reduced the value that our team could provide: by either not participating or by resisting any and all suggestions."

2 - "You have good staffBut it is time to find employees with the requisite skills and attitude to disrupt the ENA's traditional model. That is our recommendation."

Again, these statements, contained within the Plan, are false, plain and simple. And worse, not only were these falsehoods contained within the published Plan, this defamation was reported in the media.

As to my "qualification" to challenge these statements, in particular, and the gist of the Plan itself, I have been, and am, deeply steeped in the City of Norwalk, and State of Connecticut library world for more than the past 10 years. I was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Norwalk Public Library in 2004 and was subsequently awarded "Trustee of the Year" by the Association of Connecticut Library Boards. I served the Norwalk Public Librar! y Board as a member, then as its Secretary, and had been its President for the past 6 years.

I was an active member of the Connecticut Library Association and served on its Membership Committee. I served, too, as President of the Association of Connecticut Library Boards and as a liaison member of the Friends of Connecticut Libraries. I, presently, serve as a member of the Connecticut State Library Advisory Council for Library Planning and Development representing small Connecticut libraries from our area.

As to the Consultant's statement in his Plan that I reduced the value by either not participating or by resisting any and all suggestions. Quite the contrary when asked, I answered, although, plainly, my "answers" did not fit the predetermination of what "our" Library should be compared to the preconceived model the Plan was built upon. And the premise that our staff who I am privileged to oversee -- as stated in the Plan: "it is time to fi! nd employees with the requisite skills and attitude to disrupt the ENA's traditional model. That is our recommendation."

This recommendation states that the Library's "traditional model" needs to be disrupted. In other words, throw out the "baby" with the "bathwater" even though there is no case that can be made that the East Norwalk Association Library has not, does not and cannot serve its community despite its 100-year history of doing so. And we have many cardholder/user/community surveys that prove our usefulness and adaptability to changing needs.

Short of taking this aggrandizement to legal action I bow to the power of the press to expose these false, misleading, unprofessional, harmful statements let alone the value of the Plan itself which cost the Electors $20,000 (not counting the time spent by the Commissioner's, Library Planning Committee members, Library staff, and others).

Stanley M. Siegel

Executive Director

East Norwalk Association / East Norwalk Association Library
Let me tell you the story about Accelerated Math 6, which highlights several good things happening in the Wilton Public Schools. The accelerated math course was presented to the Board of Education at our meeting last week by Mrs. Julie Wojciechowski, who is our K-8 curriculum leader for math and science.

In her position, which was created last year, Mrs. Wojciechowski is able to take a macro view of math instruction from Miller-Driscoll through Middlebrook, which allows her to assess (a) what is working in current math instruction; (b) areas that need improvement and (c) tools available to help us improve math instruction. Mrs. Wojciechowski assumed her new position at a time when the Wilton Schools were transitioning to a new math program. Beginning with the 2011-2-12 school year, we replaced Chicago Math, with the Common Core-aligned Math in Focus, also known as Singapore Math.

If you have students in our schools, you probably know that the transition to Singapore Math has been somewhat dramatic. Singapore Math calls for a more traditional way of thinking about math where concept mastery is expected before moving on to new material. Under the Chicago Math program students were introduced to concepts but not expected to master them until some point in the future. The initial impact of our transition was evident in part in our districts less-than-stellar SBAC and MAP scores that were reported last fall. We have also seen an uptick in the number of students in need of extra help.

We responded to that need last year, with the addition of a math interventionist at Middlebrook, who has been effective at offering assistance to students. We also added a math coach, who works one-on-one with teachers to help them more effectively deliver curriculum concepts.

Through this extra scrutiny, it became clear that our current sixth-grade math program was not addressing the needs of our students. Mrs. Wojciechowski, drawing on her prior experience as a 5th grade classroom teacher, worked closely with our Middlebrook math teachers to drill down and identify areas in which our sixth-grade students could be better-served through a restructuring of our course offerings. After an extensive period of discussion, evaluation and review of options, a recommendation was made to provide students entering sixth grade with a third option for math placement.

Currently students are placed in either Math 6 or Advanced Math 6.

 Math 6 (now Math in Focus Course 1) provides students with grade-level Common Core-aligned skills.

 Advanced Math 6 (now Math in Focus, Course 2) is a pre-algebra course for advanced students, and doesnt include any instruction on 6th grade Math in Focus Course 1 skills.

As a result of the transition, we have been seeing an increase in the number of students struggling in Advanced Math 6 (Math in Focus, Course 2) because they were never introduced to many of the necessary skills learned in Math in Focus, Course 1 (they were effectively jumping an entire grade in math without much support). This is fine for some of our more gifted learners but for the majority it left them disliking math when we want them to love it.

By introducing the Accelerated Math course, we will be able to better serve our advanced learners, who need a rigorous math curriculum, without expecting them to skip an entire grade of math instruction in the process.

Students will be recommended by their 5th grade teacher for the appropriate course. Mrs. Wojciechowski will train 5th grade teachers so they are fully aware of the new course options. Evaluations will be based in large part on a students mathematical performance, including classroom aptitude, unit test scores (i.e. multiplication and division, fraction addition and subtraction, algebra and ratios) and placement test scores.

In other words, student placement will be based on math skills performance and not subjective recommendations. We expect that roughly 10 percent of students will be enrolled in Advanced Math, with 45 percent in Accelerated Math and 45 percent in Math 6.

We also believe the Math 6 restructuring will have three key benefits:

 Ensure every student is in a highly-rigorous course that challenges their capabilities;

 Ensure every Middlebrook student has the foundational skills from which to build upon in subsequent years; and

 Ensure every student is on track for success both at Middlebrook and in Wilton High School.

So the story of Accelerated Math 6 has many interesting lessons.

 For one thing, it demonstrates the concern our faculty has for our students, in working diligently to address what became an obvious flaw in our Math 6 program.

 It affirms that every Wilton student will be individually-assessed, with care taken to ensure that the right tools are in place to ensure a highly rigorous and challenging academic experience.

 And finally, it reaffirms our districts decision to invest in our curriculum leaders and coaches. Without Mrs. Wojiechowskis singular focus on our district math curriculum, it is likely that the problems with 6th grade math would not have been addressed with nearly the same speed and depth.

The board will give this course proposal final consideration at our March 10 meeting. With the new course in place, I believe this story will have a happy ending for our sixth-graders, and should make all of us feel good about the care and good work taking place within the Wilton Public Schools.

Bruce Likly is chairman of the Wilton Board of Education.
BROKEN BOW  A Chapman man charged with the theft of cattle and animal cruelty and neglect was bound over to Custer County District Court on Monday.

Zackery R. Husmann, 31, is charged with abandoning or cruelly neglecting an animal leading to injury or death, which is a Class 4 felony, and with theft involving the unlawful taking of property worth more than $5,000. The latter is a Class 2-A felony. Husmann is also charged with leaving a Nebraska brand area without inspection, which is a Class 2 misdemeanor.

The theft charge involves cattle belonging to Timothy Jones.

Court documents accuse Husmann of moving cattle from one point within a brand inspection area to a point outside the brand inspection area without first having the cattle brand inspected on or about Oct. 1, 2015.

Husmann appeared on Monday in Custer County Court in front of Judge Tami Schendt for a preliminary hearing on those charges. He was represented by Charles Brewster. Deputy Custer County Attorney Glenn Clark appeared for the state.

Husmann will appear in district court at 9:30 a.m. March 31.
Gelato, smoothies, pizza and more: Check out the newest in Bucks' eats

These new Bucks County dining spots are serving up everything from gelato, pastries and pizza to green smoothies, cold-pressed juices and acai bowls.
The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) is introducing a bachelors program in environmental sciences to begin fall 2016.

There is strong demand for environmental scientists as public interest in the hazards facing the environment has grown dramatically, said Zhi-Qing Lin, PhD and director of the environmental sciences program. The increasing pressure placed on the environment and natural resources due to population growth is also expected to spur the need for environmental scientists and specialists.

Students of the new interdisciplinary program may choose a concentration in the areas of environmental health, environmental toxicology and environmental management. Students perspectives on environmental issues will be cultivated. The program will provide students with refined knowledge of environmental issues at the local, regional and global levels.

The curriculum will increase students technical competence in addressing these environmental issues, their origins, ramifications and resolutions. The program will promote experiential learning, professional education and prepare students for career opportunities in a wide variety of workplaces.

Students in environmental sciences have various opportunities to conduct research with faculty on diverse, multidisciplinary and cutting-edge research topics in the fields of environmental biology, chemistry, toxicology, technology and environmental policy, said Bill Retzlaff, PhD and CAS associate dean. Students are also encouraged to gain professional experience through community service, internships and other hands-on learning opportunities during their undergraduate careers.

SIUEs environmental sciences program is one of few in southern Illinois providing students with interdisciplinary and hands-on learning opportunities in the discipline. Giving undergraduate students the opportunity to work closely with faculty, who are at the top of their field in environmental sciences, sets our program apart and provides the kind of quality academic preparation that todays students demand, said Greg Budzban, PhD and dean of CAS.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, employment of environmental scientists and specialists is projected to grow 11 percent during the decade ending in 2024, which is faster than the average for all occupations in the U.S. The median annual wage for environmental scientists and specialists was $66,250 in May 2014.

For further information about the bachelors in environmental sciences program at SIUE, please contact the CAS Academic Advising Office 618-650-5525, or Lin at 618-650-2650 or zhlin@siue.edu.

Central to SIUEs exceptional and comprehensive education, the College of Arts and Sciences has 19 departments and 85 areas of study. More than 300 full-time faculty/instructors deliver classes to more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Faculty help students explore diverse ideas and experiences, while learning to think and live as fulfilled, productive members of the global community. Study abroad, service-learning, internships, and other experiential learning opportunities better prepare SIUE students not only to succeed in our region's workplaces, but also to become valuable leaders who make important contributions to our communities.
Breanna D. Maldonado was 18 years old when she plunged a 10-inch kitchen knife into the chest of 20-year-old Kaitlin Juenger of Collinsville.

Juenger died shortly afterward, and Maldonado was charged by the Madison County States Attorneys Office with first-degree murder.

The incident happened at 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 6, 2013 in the parking lot of the Quik Trip store in the 2700 block of Nameoki Road in Granite City.

The stabbing followed a bottle-throwing brawl in the parking lot during which another man was also stabbed.

The trial began Wednesday at the Madison County Criminal Justice Center.

Jurors heard testimony from the Quik Trip store manager who called 911 and from the Madison County Sheriffs deputy who was on patrol that morning and stopped Maldonados Mini Cooper about 11 blocks from the scene.

During her arrest, Maldonado admitted to police that she stabbed Juenger but only after Juenger tried to punch her.

Her attorney, Chad Oliver, said that one of the men who was involved in the fight was equally to blame for the stabbing.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Banda Aceh Prosecutor's Office held a public caning on Tuesday to punish 18 people for having violated Aceh's Islamic bylaws, locally known as Qanun.



The 10 convicts who had been caught gambling received a sentence of eight strokes, previously reduced by two strokes due to a detention period, six convicts received 40 strokes for consuming liquor and two were punished for dating. The latter two, a 21-year old and a 19-year old, both university students, received 10 strokes after a two strokes reduction had been granted due to a period of detention.



The convicts had all been accused of violating articles listed in the Qanun, as issued in 2014, Antara news agency reported.



Punishments were applied across all regions of Aceh, said Banda Aceh Mayor Illiza Saaduddin Djamal



"This punishment is a form of learning. People who witness the caning should be encouraged not to commit the same crime as those who have been found guilty of violating Islamic sharia," Illiza said.



During the public punishment, Illiza told students who had been waiting to view the caning to go back to school, allowing them to return to watch if their teacher met with her first and only if their teacher stayed to accompany them.



Both the police and Public Order Agency officers guarded the public caning centered at Musala Gampong Rukoh complex, Syiah Kuala District, Banda Aceh.



Among the onlookers were Illiza, Banda Aceh Prosecutor's Office head Husni Thamrin, Banda Aceh city administration officials, and thousands of other local residents. (afr/bbn)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani and Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama will be allowed to carry out his job even as he runs for reelection, as long as he refrains from campaign activities.



The Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPUD) has given Ahok the green light to stay on the job until the February 2017 polling day, after he promised he would not engage in any campaign activities.



Ahok said he would run for a second term, but would refrain from campaigning and would instead 'focus on working'. Thus, he said, he would not need to take a leave of absence or tender his resignation.



'I think I do not need to take leave, because I work every day. Do I still need to campaign?' he asked.



Ahok said he did not consider it unethical not to take leave or resign during the campaign period, and emphasized that his decision to continue his duties as governor despite running for a second term was not prone to abuse of power.



'If [Deputy Governor] Djarot Saiful Hidayat is my running mate, how could both of us take leave?' he said, adding that the city administration would be in chaos if both he and Djarot were replaced while they campaigned. Ahok also hinted that he did not need to campaign, as he was confident that Jakarta residents recognized his performance.



Ahok has said he wants Djarot to be his running mate.



KPUD chief Sumarno said if Ahok did not intend to campaign, there was no need for him to take leave. 'The leave of absence is mandated for those campaigning. If Pak Ahok does not want to conduct a campaign, he does not need to take a leave,' Sumarno said recently.



Sumarno said incumbent regional leaders seeking a second term in office had to request a leave of absence if they sought campaign, as it would prevent them from doing their job.



Regulations on incumbents in the central government contradict one another. For example, Article 7 of Law No. 8/2015 on regional elections stipulates that incumbent candidates must resign from their position once they are officially announced as candidates, since candidates must not have a status of governor, regent or mayor.



However, a ruling by the Constitutional Court last year stated that the article had no legal basis and was therefore invalid.



By contrast, KPU Regulation No. 12/2015 states that incumbents must resign from their position, while KPU Regulation No. 7/2015 states that a governor and deputy governor, regent and deputy regent, mayor and deputy mayor or other state or regional officials may campaign by applying for a leave of absence.



The conflicting regulations leave room for multiple interpretations.



Sumarno said the registration of governor and deputy governor candidates would be open from July onward, with the KPUD to announce the official candidates who have passed the verification process in late October and the campaign period beginning in November. The elections, he said, would be held on Feb. 15.



Parahyangan Catholic University (Unpar) legal and political expert Asep Warlan Yusuf said that ideally, incumbents seeking a second term should step down from their position before proceeding with a campaign to prevent abuse of power.



For example, Asep said, were an incumbent to carry out an official visit, they could easily insert a hidden agenda of campaigning. Those who were proven to be campaigning as incumbents using government facilities, he said, could be prosecuted.



He said that the current regulations, under which incumbents are only mandated to take a leave of absence, gave incumbents a head start.



'An incumbent must clarify his or her position as a candidate or an incumbent. It is not ideal to hold both positions; therefore, it is best that an incumbent resign before campaigning,' Asep opined.



City councilors have accused Ahok of campaigning during official visits to launch child-friendly integrated public spaces (RPTRA) across the city. During the launch of RPTRAs, which are often located in the heart of neighborhoods, Ahok has the chance to meet and speak to residents, often taking the time to take pictures with them.



In January, he launched three RPTRAs and in February six.



'To be honest, a lot of people have accused me of campaigning when I open a new RPTRA. I only have one message: If you find someone better than me, someone more diligent and honest, then don't vote for me. Choose someone who is better, but only if they are proven to be better,' Ahok told residents while launching an RPTRA in Kebon Pala, East Jakarta, in January.

___________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post)  Wed, March 2, 2016

Major Indonesian airlines plan to streamline their services amid the affects of low season on the industry, as seen in recent flight cancellations.



National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia's president director Arif Wibowo said the airline had adjusted its aircraft capacity for routes connecting major cities, such as Surabaya in East Java and Medan in North Sumatra.



'We use the wide-body aircraft for those routes. But the flight slots did decrease in number,' Arif said on Tuesday.



He said the airline would focus on managing its aircraft to ensure they still flew in accordance with its schedule.



Garuda low-cost subsidiary Citilink reportedly canceled four of its flights at Hang Nadim Airport in Batam, Riau, while the country's largest low-cost carrier Lion Air reportedly had seven flight cancellations recently.



'We are really seeing the impact of this year's low season,' Citilink commercial director Hans

Nugroho said.

__________________________________



'We are really seeing the impact of this year's low season [...] It has recently improved, nearing March, and we hope it will continue that way.'



He cited that the load factor had fallen below 80 percent in January and February this year, to 78 percent.



'It has recently improved, nearing March, and we hope it will continue that way,' he said.



The number of Citilink passengers reached almost a million by February this year, a 26 percent increase from the same period last year, according to a statement by president director Albert Burhan.



The airline adjusted to low season by moving passengers to other flight slots to accommodate the decreased demand.



It expected to see an additional eight Airbus A320 this year to make a total of around 49 planes. It welcomed its 37th aircraft on Tuesday.



Citilink targets to see a 30 percent growth in passenger numbers this year.



Voicing similar concerns, Lion Air general director Edward Sirait said the airline had seen flight cancellations countrywide.



'Sometimes we just decrease the flights on some days, but not permanently,' he said, adding that the situation could worsen in March and April.



However, Edward said that the airline's load factor was still around 80 percent.



Both Arif and Hans concurred that fierce competition following the decreased ceiling price for airfares had added to the current pressure.



The Transportation Ministry recently cut the airfare ceiling price for economy class by 5 percent, following a decline in aviation fuel prices.



'Airlines want to keep their market share even though the prices are under pressure,' Hans said.



Meanwhile, low-cost carrier AirAsia Indonesia said the airline had not cancelled flights during this year's low season.



AirAsia Indonesia president director Sunu Widyatmoko said the company's load factor still stood at 80 percent.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Indonesian Al-Alzhar Egypt Alumni Forum (FAAMI) reported a Facebook user to the Jakarta Police on Tuesday for allegedly defaming the grand imam of Egypt's Al Azhar University, Muhamamd Ahmad Al Thayyib.



The Facebook user, named Abu Aqila, allegedly posted a status on Feb. 26 at 9:15 p.m. accusing Grand Imam Ahmad of being a "fake Syaikhul Azhar" and "Pope of Al Azhar", FAAMI chairman Ali Mashar said. Abu allegedly also uploaded an edited photo, which FAAMI considered inappropriate, of Ahmad kissing Pope Francis.



"That is defamation, there's no two ways about it," Ali said as quoted by Antara news agency on Tuesday.



"It's unacceptable that the grand imam's visit to Indonesia has been greeted with profanity, slander and insults."



FAAMI reported Abu to the police under the 2008 law on electronic information and transactions (ITE).



The grand imam, Ali said, was a religious symbol and the highest leader of a historical Islamic education that had produced millions of Muslim intellectuals from countries around the world.



Islamic teachings value diversity of opinion but forbid insulting other people, he said, adding that as a state visitor, Ahmad must be welcomed with respect, in accordance with Islamic teachings.



"[Ahmad] stresses the unity of all Muslims and to respect differences, not to insult or declare other people infidels," he said.



Ahmad is on a six-day visit to Indonesia, meeting with President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to strengthen cooperation between Egypt and Indonesia in religious teachings, education and culture. (afr/rin)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Mary Clare Jalonick (The Jakarta Post) Washington  Wed, March 2, 2016

A Senate panel on Tuesday approved a bill that would block state labeling requirements for genetically modified foods.

The Senate Agriculture Committee voted 14-6 to prevent the labeling on packages of foods that include genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Vermont is set to require such labels this summer, and other states are considering similar laws.

Senators have said they want to find a compromise on the labeling issue before Vermont's law kicks in. Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the panel, said a patchwork of state laws could be costly for agriculture, food companies and ultimately consumers.

"Now is not the time for Congress to make food more expensive for anybody," Roberts said.

The bill would create voluntary labels for companies that want to use them on food packages that contain genetically modified ingredients.

Genetically modified seeds are engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, like resistance to herbicides. The majority of the country's corn and soybean crop is now genetically modified, with much of that going to animal feed. Corn and soybeans are also made into popular processed food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch and soybean oil.

The food industry says about 75 percent to 80 percent of foods contain genetically modified ingredients.

While the Food and Drug Administration says there is little scientific concern about the safety of those GMOs on the market, advocates for labeling say not enough is known about their risks

The legislation approved Tuesday is similar to a bill the House passed last year. The food industry has backed both bills, saying GMOs are safe.

Labeling advocates have been fighting state-by-state to enact the labeling, with the eventual goal of a national standard.

Passage won't be as easy in the Senate, where 60 votes will be needed to overcome a certain filibuster. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Nany Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Although Indonesian Military (TNI) chief Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo has involved the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) in eradicating drugs in his institution, BNN said on Tuesday that it still needed permission to conduct drug raids on barracks or military housing complexes.



'We can raid military barracks and housing complexes based on a request from the military and we will carry out the raid together,' BNN spokesperson Sr. Comr Slamet Pribadi told The Jakarta Post.



However, military personnel can be arrested without permission if they are caught in possession of drugs.



BNN arrested last Sunday a military officer, identified only as JS, at Kalibata City apartments, in South Jakarta, on allegations of drug possession. BNN handed over JS, who is a major-rank officer, to the military police.



Slamet said BNN had received many requests from TNI to hold joint raids or conduct urine tests on military personnel.



'BNN has equipment the military doesn't have. BNN also has many drug experts,' Slamet added.



He also said that military personnel and civilians were treated differently on account of existing regulations.



BNN is also obliged to hand over the military suspect to the military police for further investigation and punishment.



'They have their own court and we should respect it. But this is good cooperation [in eradicating drugs] after long communication between BNN and TNI,' Slamet added.



Previously, BNN head Budi Waseso rejected the accusation that his institution had experienced difficulties in dealing with security personnel with regard to drugs. Budi said that his institution had received full support from the TNI chief to combat drugs in the institution.



'The military commander has authorized us. We can penetrate the military camp anytime to crack down on suspects,' Budi said.



He also revealed that the TNI commander would impose severe punishment if personnel were caught by BNN.



The number of military personnel caught using drugs has been on the rise. Based on TNI data in 2014, there were 161 drug cases in 2012, with the number increasing to 235 in 2013. The drug suspects were not only low-ranking soldiers but also high or middle-ranking officers.



Gatot reaffirmed on Tuesday his plan to eradicate drugs from institution by June 2016.



'I order all commanders to clean their internal divisions until June 2016. However, if the commanders find his men with drugs after June, the commanders will also receive severe punishment and be dismissed from the institution,' Gatot said during troop inspection for the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit security.



Gatot acknowledged that it was difficult to discover drug networks involving security officers.



'This is the reason why I decided to clean [the institution] by myself. TNI will ask for urine test equipment from BNN, not for [BNN] to conduct the urine tests [ at TNI barracks],' Gatot said.



The intelligence units of the Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) conducted last week a series of raids in the Kostrad housing complex. From the raid, they arrested 33 drug suspects; 19 suspects from the military, five suspects from the police and nine civilians, including a lawmaker for a prominent political party.



Last year, BNN also arrested two military personnel, identified only as WW and SI, for allegedly supplying drugs to nightclubs in Jakarta. BNN confiscated 1,000 ecstasy pills, one FN pistol, one soft gun and one military bayonet.

________________________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) warned the government to anticipate an influx of foreign workers following a drastic increase in January.



BPS recorded the arrival of 25,238 foreign part-time employees, representing a 73.46 percent increase compared to December figures. There were 14,907 part-time foreign employee arrivals in January, 2015.



The part-time foreign employee, as defined by BPS, is a self-employed person staying in the country for a short period of time in order to provide services such as the installation of equipment, repair, consultancy, and so forth.



'The government needs to anticipate an influx. This is basic data that can be linked [to the implementation] of the ASEAN Economic Community,' BPS head Suryamin said on Tuesday.



Suryamin said his agency would cooperate with the Tourism Ministry and other related institutions in order to expand research in connection with the status of foreign workers living in Indonesia.



The agency did not mention the origin countries of the employees. 'We still have no details about their nationalities. What we have is just the raw material,' he said. (sha/bbn)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) has been criticized for issuing a circular to broadcasting institutions prohibiting the appearance of 'feminine men', particularly on television shows.



"The basis of the letter is just patriarchy. The psychological subtext is an accusation that women's bodies are a nest of sin and women are the root of all evil," Rocky Gerung, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Indonesia, said at a press conference on Wednesday.



The letter demonstrated the KPI's tendency to only follow the majority opinion rather than defend the Constitution, he said, adding that it violated the Constitution, which protects freedom of expression.



The KPI is now acting like it has the right to limit the public's rights by prohibiting feminine-acting by men, when at the core of the Constitution is the equality of rights of all citizens, he said.



"The KPI should understand the arts of feminism and democracy and equality between genders. The KPI doesn't seem to understand those," Rocky said.



Viewed from any angle, be it morality, academia or culture, the warning letter was unjustifiable, said Rocky. Gender recognition in South Sulawesi, he noted, acknowledged five genders: men, women, feminine men, masculine women and the neutral gender, considered a godly quality.



"That is Indonesian culture. The KPI, however, doesn't comprehend," Rocky said.



Meanwhile, the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has responded saying also that the circular violated freedom of expression.



"The letter interferes with freedom of expression, which is a fundamental right, as [what they are banning] doesn't involve child pornography or hate speech with a risk of triggering terrorism, illegal activity or racism," Komnas Perempuan chairwoman Yunianti Chuzaifah said.



She also said that the circular would be hard to implement because its objectives were unclear.



"Male puppeteers in puppet shows often imitate women's voices. On the haj pilgrimage men often wear identity bracelets. Will those things be prohibited too?" Yunianti asked. (bbn)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Rod McGuirk (The Jakarta Post) Canberra  Wed, March 2, 2016

The lawyer for an Australian inquiry into child sex abuse suggested on Wednesday that one of Pope Francis' top advisers was lying when he denied knowledge of criminal allegations swirling around two notorious pedophile priests decades ago.

Australian Cardinal George Pell insisted he was telling the truth, testifying to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he had changed a culture of "crimes and cover-ups" within the Catholic Church.

Pell, the pope's chief financial adviser, told the royal commission in three days of evidence this week that he was deceived twice by church authorities about child abuse allegations against priests Gerald Ridsdale and Peter Searson.

Pell said that as an assistant priest in the Australian city of Ballarat in the 1970s, Bishop Ronald Mulkearns had not told him that Ridsdale was repeatedly moved within the diocese because of pedophilia allegations.

Pell also said that as an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne in the early 1990s, the Catholic Education Office and Archbishop Frank Little had concealed from him accusations of pedophilia against Searson.

Commission chairman Peter McClellan told Pell that his evidence of a Catholic Education Office cover-up "makes no sense at all," because the office reported to the archbishop.

The lead counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, told Pell the same evidence was "completely implausible."

Pell's evidence that he was deceived by church authorities in both Ballarat and Melbourne was an "extraordinary position," Furness said.

"Counsel, this was an extraordinary world. A world of crimes and cover-ups and people did not want the status quo to be disturbed," Pell told the inquiry in Sydney via videolink from a Rome hotel.

"I not only disturbed the status quo, but when I became archbishop, I turned the situation right around so that the Melbourne Response procedures were light years ahead of all this obfuscation and prevarication and deception," he added, referring a program he initiated in 1996 to pay compensation to clergy-abuse victims.

Furness put to Pell that he had known about allegations against Ridsdale and that he had been properly briefed by the Catholic Education Office about allegations against Searson. Pell denied both propositions.

Furness accuses the 74-year-old cleric of denying knowledge about the pedophiles as an explanation for his lack of action.

The royal commission ' which is Australia's highest form of investigation ' is investigating how Pell dealt with abuse allegations as a priest, educator and adviser to Mulkearns, as well as how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as auxiliary bishop.

Mulkearns is dying and is too ill to testify to the royal commission. Little died in 2008.

Ridsdale is in prison on convictions of abusing more than 50 children. The church substantiated four complaints of child sexual abuse against Searson, who died in 2009.

Pell said he accepted that there had been failure of process in handling complaints against Searson.

Pell said he was only "tangentially, marginally" responsible for that failure "because as an auxiliary, you are not part of the official procedures."

"I regret that, even at this stage, I wasn't a bit more vigorous in my questioning or commenting," Pell said.

Wednesday was Pell's third day of testifying to the inquiry, which is investigating decades of abuse within churches and a variety of other organizations.

Two dozen Australian abuse victims and their companions traveled across the globe to witness Pell's testimony in a hotel conference room, a significant show of accountability in the church's long-running abuse saga.

"George Pell has consistently pointed the blame elsewhere, accused everybody of being a liar and deceit. If he is telling the truth, that would make him an extraordinarily ignorant man," David Ridsdale, who was abused for years by his uncle Gerald Ridsdale, told reporters outside the hearing in Rome.

The victims said Wednesday that they had requested a meeting with the pope before they return to Australia on Friday. Pell will testify for a fourth day on Thursday. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The city administration will fix potholes and other damaged roads to welcome the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit set to take place in Jakarta on March 6-7.



The repairs will focus on city thoroughfares such as Jl. Sudirman, Jl. M. H. Thamrin and Jl. Rasuna Said, Jakarta Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat told journalists on Tuesday.



"Those roads need to be repaired immediately as the members of the [OIC] summit will pass through these roads," Djarot said.



The deputy governor said the work was expected to be finished within two days.



In order to minimize the impact of heavy rain, Djarot said the city administration would continuously clean up the city's drainage systems.



The City Water Management Agency is now monitoring the city's waterways, Djarot said. Djarot added that the agency had discovered piles of cables in the waterways near the Presidential Palace last week.



Meanwhile, the city administration will conceal the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project along Jl. M.H. Thamrin and Jl. Sudirman with welcoming banners.



The deputy governor stressed that 90 percent of the welcoming preparations had been finished, including the security aspect. "We are prepared for the worst," Djarot said. (bbn)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

With 12 US states headed to the polls on Tuesday, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are most likely to come out leading as potential candidates from their respective parties, experts have said.

"Super Tuesday results will draw a clearer picture for potential candidates, although more so for the Democratic Party than the Republican Party," US Embassy to Indonesia deputy chief of mission Brian McFeeters told reporters during a press briefing in Jakarta on Tuesday.

In observance of the primaries and caucus that have been held thus far, McFeeters said that Clinton already had a strong lead and had garnered support from a large number of delegates, including a total of 505 pledged super delegates, compared to the 71 for Bernie Sanders.

Following in the trend, the results from Tuesday's votes would likely reinforce Clinton's position, McFeeters further said.

Meanwhile, McFeeters said that there was much more of a contest occurring on the Republican side. Even though Donald Trump had been leading in the polls, he is yet to garner support from a majority of delegates, the US diplomat said.

However, there is no doubt that Trump has been getting strong support among certain groups of people, he went on.

"It's still the primaries. It's the Republicans determining their candidate, which is not the same as the nation determining who the President can be," McFeeters said.

He went on to say that despite his controversial statements, Trump's appeal lay in his ability to tap into the frustration of the public with relation to the current system.

"He's getting the kind of outsider [...] people who don't believe in the system are sympathetic to him," McFeeters said.

Meanwhile, the US Embassy Deputy Political Counselor Siriana Nair said that Trump's campaign demonstrated the US commitment to the value of free speech.

At the beginning, people did not expect his campaign to go as far as it had, Nair added. Trump was saying something that was appealing to the voter population and it was clear that there was growing segment of the Republican population who believed he could be the person to bring about change, she further said.

"But in the general elections, in order for a candidate to be successful and to be elected, they need to be able to appeal to not just a small group of people, they need to appeal to the whole country," said Nair.

At this stage, she further said, there was still a lot of uncertainty within the American public as the people were still making up their minds. Overall, the candidates in the election this year reflect the diversity in the US, Nair said.

"We're bringing people into a leadership position that maybe not always traditional," she added. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Jakarta Police will press ahead with their probe into Jessica Kumala Wongso in the murder of her friend Wayan Mirna Salihin, after the Central Jakarta District Court rejected her pretrial motion in a hearing on Tuesday.



Judge I Wayan Merta said that the police had followed proper legal procedures in naming Jessica a suspect in the murder case and then detaining her during the investigation.



The judge cited the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP), saying that police could make an arrest and detain someone if they believed that the suspect may escape, destroy evidence or repeat their crime.



'The judge disagrees with the petitioner's claim that a suspect should be detained based on the evidence. The judge, therefore, will not look into whether the police had sufficient evidence to detain the suspect ,' Wayan said.



Jessica filed a petition with the court to challenge her suspect status and detention, claiming that the police proceeded with her case without sufficient evidence and carried out an improper investigation.



As the pretrial petition has been rejected, the Jakarta Police will march on with their investigation.



Previously, the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office returned Jessica's dossier to the police as it was considered incomplete.



The office's head, Sudung Situmorang, said the investigators had yet to provide material evidence showing the chronology of the cyanide being put into Mirna's coffee.



Jessica, who may face the death penalty for allegedly masterminding Mirna's murder, has been charged under Article 340 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on premeditated murder.



Police general crimes chief Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti, who is leading the investigation, said the police would find additional evidence to support the case.



Commenting on the pretrial decision, Krishna said that it meant the judge believed that the investigation was 'on the right track', and emphasized that more evidence would be submitted to the prosecutor's office in the near future.



'This is not about who is the winner or loser in the case. It is about the law enforcement and our duty to find who is responsible in a criminal case. We will meet the requirements to complete the dossier,' Krishna said after the decision was announced.



Jessica, through her lawyer Yudi Wibowo, maintained her innocence, insisting that the police had no solid evidence that she poisoned Mirna.



Yudi said the police did not have a CCTV recording or witnesses that could show or indicate that Jessica laced Mirna's coffee with cyanide.



'The alleged act cannot be proven and Jessica will show up at the trial to prove that,' he said.



Mirna died on Jan. 6 after sipping cyanide-laced coffee at an upscale restaurant in Central Jakarta. The coffee was reportedly ordered and paid for by Jessica, who arrived 40 minutes early to meet Mirna and another friend, Hani.



After three weeks of investigation, the police named Jessica a suspect.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Citilink, the low-cost arm of national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, aims to be removed from the EU ban list by June, in its bid to improve the company's image for future cooperation.



'With the EU ban lifted, it will make it easier for our company to work with other airlines, because foreign airlines usually ask about the EU ban and IOSA [IATA Operational Safety Audit] certification,' Citilink president director Albert Burhan told the press on Tuesday.



He said that the EU counterpart would conduct a final audit on the company in April, followed by a meeting in June. Garuda Indonesia had its ban lifted in July 2009, enabling the airline to fly to the continent.



The EU previously banned all 51 Indonesian airlines from landing in its airports in 2007, citing concerns over their safety standards after a string of major passenger-jet crashes in the same year.



Albert said that the EU ban removal attempt would be followed by an attempt to get IOSA certification.



However, Albert said that the company did not have any plans to expand to Europe anytime soon.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Wed, March 2, 2016

The ghost of New Order has haunted this nation ever since pro-democracy movements made a mark back in 1998. Slowly but surely, the anti-democratic style of the past regime has shown signs of resurrection. We have seen numerous crackdowns on citizens exercising their freedom of speech over the last few months.



Sadly, the state often perpetrates, or sponsors, these practices, exemplified recently by the raid and attempted banning of the Belok Kiri (Turn left) Cultural Festival at Ismail Marzuki arts center in Central Jakarta over the weekend. Organizers of the event were forced to relocate the festival to the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation building .



The police said they had banned the cultural event in its planned location because the organizers had failed to inform the authorities of the activity. This explanation is disingenuous. Clearly, the main reason the police shut down the event was connected to the purpose of the festival, which was to stimulate thought about leftist history in Indonesia. The security authorities took the action following a protest from various groups.



Not only have the police, representing the state, failed in their basic responsibility and duty to protect their fellow citizens from possible intimidation, but they have also blown the issue out of all sensible proportion. The raid simply demonstrated the tendency of the police to side with the blind will of the majority against the minority.



There is nothing wrong about a meeting of minds to critically review the history related to the 1965 mass killings that followed an aborted coup allegedly orchestrated by the Indonesian Communist Party. Fostering discussion was all that the organizers of the Turn Left festival wanted to do. Such intellectual exercises have been encouraged since the beginning of Reform Era, although the official version of this dark episode in Indonesia's history, inherited from the New Order, remains in place.



There should be no impediment to attempts to straighten out the history, either by finding new evidence or hearing testimony from witnesses and victims of the tragedy. Who can claim that the existing version of truth is the only form of truth, and that alternatives perspectives should be viewed as a threat?



There is no need to fear an event like the Turn Left cultural festival morphing into a movement and bringing communism back into the country. The so-called leftist way of thinking simply reflects opposition to the establishment and its expression may vary in form.



If any effort to promote critical thinking is curtailed for security reasons, as in the case of the Turn Left festival, we can no longer reasonably claim to be the third largest democracy in the world. Frequent restrictions on freedom of speech, which occurred on 20 occasions throughout 2015 alone according to the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (ELSAM), should send a warning that Indonesia is moving toward becoming one of the world's largest anti-democratic nations.



Worse still, oppression will keep us from innovation, which the nation badly needs in order to survive the future of global competition.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

PT Adira Dinamika Multi Finance, PT Bussan Auto Finance, PT Bank Commonwealth and PT Nissan Financial Services Indonesia, have agreed to become members of PT Pefindo Biro Kredit (PBK) credit bureau as a requirement of the Financial Services Authority (OJK).



Adira finance director I Dewa Made Susila said these multifinance companies chose to join the credit bureau because it fulfilled the authority's obligation that all financing companies should be members of the credit

bureau.



According to the regulation, financing companies are required to become a member of the Credit Information and Management Bureau (LPIP).



PBK, a subsidiary of rating company PT Pemeringkat Efek Indonesia (Pefindo), which obtained a permit earlier this year to become one of the credit watch companies.



A number of companies presently provide credit information, such as Fitch Ratings, Moody's Investor Service, Standard and Poor's, PT Fitch Ratings Indonesia, PT ICRA Indonesia and Pefindo.



Multifinance companies first have to become a member of the Indonesian Association of Financing Firms (APPI) in order to be able to sign up to a credit bureau, which provides individual and corporate credit information.



As a member of a credit bureau, a financing company will be able to access various information on borrowings including the bill-paying habits of both individual and corporate borrowers which is important for them to assess financial risks.



PBK president director Ronald T. Andi Kasim said the APPI currently had 200 members, but so far only four had registered as members of his credit bureau.



Each multifinance company that joined PBK has to pay Rp 120 million (US$8,972) per year. In addition, a member also had to pay an inquiry fee of Rp 12,000 every time they want to access credit information, Juni Henry, PBK's corporate secretary said.



In return, PBK provides multifinance companies with credit-risk profiles of their potential debtors in order to avoid non-performing loans.



PBK uses the principal of the FICO score to measure the creditworthiness of a person, which will show the character of debtors based on their credit usage behavior, not their wealth.



For instance, the debtors might be rich, but if they do not fulfill their obligations to pay their credit, their scores will be low, Ronald said. (win)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Christopher Bodeen (The Jakarta Post) Beijing  Wed, March 2, 2016

A Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire and died in a protest against Chinese rule, in the first such action of its kind this year, a U.S. government-funded radio station said Wednesday.

Kalsang Wangdu self-immolated Monday afternoon near the Retsokha monastery in western Sichuan province's traditionally Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Kardze, Radio Free Asia reported. It said the monk called out for Tibetan independence while he burned, then died on the way to a hospital in the provincial capital of Chengdu.

Tibetan exile sources say at least 114 monks and laypeople have self-immolated over the past five years, with most of them dying. Radio Free Asia puts the number of self-immolations at 144 since 2009.

Information from the region, which is largely cut off from the rest of the province by security checkpoints, is extremely hard to obtain, and local officials are reportedly under orders to remain silent about self-immolations. An officer who answered the phone Wednesday at Kardze police headquarters and gave his surname as Li said no such incident had been reported.

"We are now in a period of preserving stability. If such a thing happens, we will make it known to the public," Li said by telephone.

Radio Free Asia and other groups also reported that a 16-year-old Tibetan living in India set himself on fire on Monday as a protest, but that he survived.

The protests are seen as an extreme expression of the anger and frustration felt by many Tibetans living under heavy-handed Chinese rule. Many protesters also call for the return of the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese forces who had occupied the Himalayan region a decade earlier.

Tibetan monks and nuns are among the most active opponents of Chinese rule in the region and the strongest proponents of Tibet's independent identity, prompting the authorities to subject them to some of the harshest and most intrusive restrictions.

Patriotism

Last year, Tibet's Communist Party chief, Chen Quanguo, demanded that Buddhist monasteries display the national flag as part of efforts to shore up Chinese patriotism.

Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and others for inciting the immolations and says it has made vast investments to develop the region's economy and improve quality of life. The Dalai Lama says he is against all violence.

The previous self-immolation, of a Buddhist nun also in Kardze, took place in November. The woman, who reportedly cried out "Tibet needs freedom" and "Let His Holiness (the Dalai Lama) return to Tibet," was believed to have died.

With the Dalai Lama now 80 years old, Beijing is increasingly focusing its attention on Tibetan Buddhism's second-ranking figure, the Panchen Lama, whom it has carefully groomed since he was a young boy.

China has rejected the Dalai Lama's choice for the next Panchen, a 6-year-old who hasn't been seen since, replacing him with its own selection, now 26-year-old Gyaican Norbu. The young man resides largely in Beijing and is a member of the official government advisory body, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress, which holds its annual session starting Thursday.

In a meeting with the Panchen on Tuesday, the ruling Communist Party's top official for outreach to nonparty groups urged him to "keep in mind the exhortations of (President and party leader) Xi Jinping," state media reported.

"Continue the inherited traditions of Panchen loving the party and the faith, consciously make contributions toward safeguarding national unification and the unity of all ethnic groups," head of the United Front Work Department Sun Chunlan was quoted as telling him.

The Panchen responded by saying he would "bear in mind (Xi's) earnest instructions," the report said. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Raras Cahyafitri and Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The government is considering allocating money from the state budget to establish a petroleum fund to stockpile oil in times of need.



Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said said the state budget allocation was expected to be included in an upcoming proposal for the revised 2016 state budget. The plan follows President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's request for oil funding to support energy security in the future.



'We expect that the allocation can be implemented in the revised state budget this year and the President has mentioned the need to purchase stocks for strategic reserves,' Sudirman said.



Indonesia, which recently reactivated its membership in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has been suffering amid huge imports of crude oil and petroleum products to meet rising domestic demand.



With immediate moves considered necessary, and boosting domestic oil production seen as taking too much time, President Jokowi's administration has been encouraging the development of refineries and storage facilities to secure energy.



Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro confirmed that a state budget allocation for the petroleum fund was being discussed.



'This is a discourse in which a scheme must be established. The fund is aimed at purchasing crude oil when the price is low. An allocation in the revised state budget will be necessary if this is already in the program,' Bambang said.



Global oil prices have lost a third of their value from 2014, falling to a low of US$26 per barrel recently amid a global supply glut following the US shale oil boom.



The price recently rebounded to over $30 on expectations that the glut would subside after Saudi Arabia and Russia announced a cut in production to stabilize prices.



The discourse on the establishment of a fund designated to secure the domestic oil supply is not a first, after the cancellation of a plan late last year to pool a small part of consumers' fuel costs for an 'energy security fund', a similar idea to develop energy infrastructure and renewable energy projects.



The plan fell through after various criticism, including on an improper legal framework for collecting funds from consumers.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Raras Cahyafitri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Observers say that an internal Cabinet rift involving two ministers over the fate of an important gas block has stained the government's credibility and cast doubt on its ability to effectively run the country as heated and impolite exchanges between the two have gone online to a wide public.



Following harsh comments from Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry Sudirman Said regarding a 'Cabinet colleague' that has frequently tried to stymie reform in the energy sector, an apparent retaliatory strike was delivered by Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli.



Rizal uploaded a 'meme' on his Twitter account quoting Sudirman's words: 'The one who lies, who claims to know best, who wants to change Masela's [gas block] investors, please stop telling lies to the people. One day your bad intentions will be uncovered.'



Rizal commented: 'Well, Well, well. Look who's busy analyzing his own behavior. So funny.' The comment takes Sudirman and Rizal's rift to the next level over the development of gas-rich Masela block.



Sudirman, along with the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Task Force (SKKMigas), defended the proposal from the block's contractors, Japan's Inpex and Shell, for an offshore development scheme. Rizal, supported by a team from the Institut Teknologi Bandung, said an onshore scheme would be more beneficial for local

development.



'This is so indecent and inappropriate. The President has to decide. If he cannot curb the situation, it is either reshuffle one of them or both,' said public policy expert Agus Pambagyo.



Tony Prasetiantono, an economist from Gadjah Mada University, said the current situation was repelling investors because the government could not provide certainty to their businesses in such a febrile environment.



'A credible Cabinet is a Cabinet that keeps noise away and when it is in public domain, the Cabinet's voice is united. It's good to have debate so that good decisions are made and qualified decisions on strategic issues can be taken. However, it should all be kept within the internal Cabinet and should not sprawl out into the public sphere,' Tony added.



Many think that the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister ' established under President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's administration in part to meet his ambition of transforming Indonesia into a global maritime power ' has backfired and has only added to the Cabinet's problems.



In the previous government, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry coordinated with the Coordinating Economic Minister on issues related to state revenues or royalties paid to the government.



'From the very beginning, we can only guess what the maritime concept is about and what we are going to do about it. This is the price that we have to pay when we step in into unclear territory,' Tony said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The government's move to postpone the discussion of the 2002 Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law revision in a bid to increase its chances of introducing the law amendment came too late, a lawmaker has said.

'The government has claimed it will keep pushing the KPK Law revision by arranging a string of activities to introduce the draft revision to the public. Under the current context, it's too late,' House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon said on Tuesday after he had attended a meeting with representatives from several universities at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta.

President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and House leaders agreed to postpone the discussion of the KPK Law revision during a meeting on Feb.22, saying that postponement was aimed at increasing its chance of introducing four key points of the law amendment to the public.

The four key revision points include wiretapping, the establishment of a KPK monitoring council, rules on KPK investigators and the KPK's authority to issue investigation termination warrants (SP3).

During the meeting, Jokowi said he wanted to collect further input and to create more room to inform the public on the importance of the KPK Law amendment. The plan to revise the 2002 law must be thoroughly studied and introduced to the public, Jokowi said.

Meanwhile, a law professor at Andalas University, Saldi Isra, has viewed the government's move to postpone the discussion of the KPK Law revision as 'soft language' indicating not to continue the law amendment process.

"In this regard, the public can't blame the House for the postponement because a law is jointly produced by the House and the government," Saldi said.

Seven out of 10 House factions led by Jokowi's supporting party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) have pushed for the revision. The six other parties are the National Awakening Party (PKB), the Golkar Party, the NasDem Party, the United Development Party (PPP), the National Mandate Party (PAN) and the Hanura Party.

Those political party factions opposing the revision are the Gerindra Party, the Democratic Party and the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS).

As of March 1, the House had continued to retain the KPK Law amendment in the 2016 National Legislation Program (Prolegnas).

The KPK Law draft revision was initially listed as a priority law alongside 39 other bills the House had aimed to complete this year. (ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post)  Wed, March 2, 2016

The foreign providers of over-the-top (OTT) applications running on Indonesia's local network must prepare additional investment as a new regulation is being written, obliging them to register as a local entity with sole ownership or through a joint-venture with local partners.



Information and Technology Minister Rudiantara said there were four aspects that would be covered in the upcoming regulation, namely customer service, costumer protection, compliance and a level playing field. With the establishment of a legal entity in Indonesia, it would be easier to handle any disputes or infringements that might appear in the future.



"The government doesn't't want Indonesia to left behind in technology and investment, but at the same time we want to protect Indonesian consumers. Remember, Indonesia is not the only one asking for this. It also applied in Europe," he told thejakartapost.com on Tuesday, adding that the rule was expected to be issued this month.



In Feb. 24, France asked for EUR 1.6 billion in unpaid taxes from Google. Previously in January, Italy requested around EUR 2.27 billion in tax from Google as well. In 2012, France pressed Amazon for around US$2.52 billion.



Rudiantara further said that President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo had informed major information and technology companies of the plan during his visit to Silicon Valley, the US.



Some OTT services such as LINE and Blackberry had already responded positively to the measure, he said. Indonesia is the largest market of Korean-owned LINE, with 30 million users, while Blackberry's service has long been well received in Indonesia.



"Digital advertising reached $800 million last year. It is really big. Why should the government tax the locals but let the foreigners eat a free lunch?" Rudiantara argued.



The minister, he continued, must ensure that there was a level playing field for both foreign and local OTT service providers. Several local OTT services were planning their launch shortly, and they would be working with the operators. (ags)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Tangerang  Wed, March 2, 2016

Inspired by the clearing of Jakarta's oldest red-light district Kalijodo in North and West Jakarta, authorities in Tangerang Regency, Banten, have allocated Rp 10 billion (US$750,000) to dismantle the Dadap Cheng In brothel village in Kosambi.



Tangerang Regent Ahmed Zaki Iskandar said on Tuesday that the clearing would be conducted on May 26, expressing his hope that it would go as smoothly as the action by the Jakarta city administration in Kalijodo.



'We have allocated Rp 10 billion to the operation as well as for shutting down the prostitution business in Dadap Cheng In,' he said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.



Zaki said the funds would not only be used to dismantle the buildings, but also to examine the residents' health and to provide job training for the evictees.



Zaki said his administration would focus on shutting down and dismantling cafes and karaoke parlors as well as educating the prostitutes.



Dadap is a red-light district aimed at low-income customers. The site came under the spotlight when the police found signs of child trafficking in the area last year.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Jakarta administration is registering its contract workers and cleaners with the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) to provide them with health and life insurance coverage.



Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said the administration would soon provide 40,000 contract workers and cleaners with health insurance policies in addition to their 13 monthly salaries, as it had signed an agreement with BPJS several days ago.



He said the plan was to allow the workers to receive health care services as well as to provide their families with compensation after they passed away.



'If they pass away, the families can receive a settlement at Rp 136 million [US$10,197] to Rp 137 million,' Ahok said on Tuesday, adding that the workers to receive health insurance included all contract workers, including contract cleaners and public order officers.



He further said that the administration was using its own budget funds to pay for the workers' insurance premiums of around Rp 23,000 per person.



He said in the future the administration would require all workers in Jakarta, both in the formal and informal sector, to have health and life insurance.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Actress Prisia Nasution has some unique ways of spending spare time.



In contrast to the many women who like to dine and shop with friends, the 31-year-old has confessed that she prefers climbing to shopping.



Prisia said she just climbed Mount Ceremai in West Java with eight friends.



'I have been hiking since I was in junior high school,' Prisia said, as quoted by kompas.com on Monday night.



However, the winner of best leading actress at the 2011 Indonesian Film Festival said she had never conquered mountains outside of Java.



'There are so many mountains in Indonesia that I want to climb. [Maybe] later when I have spare time,' she thought out loud.



In terms of preparation, Prisia said she did not do much, as she always used porters to help carry her things.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The struggle of Jakarta's residents who oppose water privatization is back to square one after the Jakarta High Court overturned the lower court's decision and granted the central government's appeal to continue the privatization.



Arief Maulana, the lawyer of the residents grouped in the Coalition of Jakarta Residents Opposing Water Privatization (KMMSAJ), said in a press conference on Tuesday that the ruling, issued on Feb. 19, annulled the decision of the Central Jakarta District Court, which ordered the administration to end privatization early last year.



Arief said the verdict stated two reasons, but neither touched the lawsuit's substance.



'The first one is the judges consider the power of attorney from residents to the lawyers as not in accordance with the legal formal procedure,' he said.



He added that the second reason was the lawsuit filed by the KMMSAJ could not be included as a citizen lawsuit because it included two private entities.



'Both reasons are mainly technicalities where the judges did not see the substance of the case,' he said,



He said the reasons were also baseless because the lawsuit was valid enough to be processed in court in the first place.



Arief said that he regretted the verdict, adding that the decision would legitimize the 'unconstitutional action' of the government in handing over the water distribution to private entities.



The KMMSAJ filed a citizen lawsuit against the city administration in November 2013, demanding that the court annul a 1997 agreement between city-owned water operator PAM Jaya and two private water operators ' PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya (Palyja) and PT Aetra Air Jakarta (Aetra).



It said the cooperation had failed to guarantee an adequate supply of clean, potable water in the capital.



After two years, the panel of judges at the Central Jakarta District Court approved the lawsuit, citing that the defendants had been negligent in fulfilling the human right to water for Jakarta's residents and that they also breached the law by handing over the city's water operation to private firms. The cooperation will end in 2023.



In their 18 years of operation, both companies combined have only fulfilled around 50 percent of the clean water needs of Jakarta's 10 million population. The residents who miss out rely on groundwater or water vendors to fulfill their daily needs. The excessive exploitation of groundwater is one of the biggest contributing factors to 40 percent of the Jakarta area being under sea level and becoming flood prone.



The cooperation also has caused PAM Jaya to suffer losses of Rp 1.17 trillion (US$87.75 million) since it began in 1997 in the form of water charges.



Unlike the city administration and PAM Jaya, other defendants ' the central government, including the President, Vice President, the Finance Ministry, the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry, as well as two private companies who became codefendants ' filed an appeal.



Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono had said the reason for the appeal was not because the central government wanted the water privatization but because it objected to the plaintiffs' accusation of negligence.



KMMSAJ's Arief said that his team would immediately file a cassation to the Supreme Court. 'It will not be over. We will keep fighting to end the privatization,' he said.



Nur Hidayah, a member of the KMMSAJ, conveyed her disappointment over the verdict, saying that the decision would make the residents, including herself as a resident of North Jakarta, suffer even more as they cannot access clean water easily.



'Fulfilling the rights to water is the obligation of the government,' she said.



Aetra corporate secretary Pratama S. Adi said that he had not heard about the verdict. 'We will coordinate with our internal team before giving comment,' he said.



Meanwhile, Palyja could not be reached for comment.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The House Of Representatives is set to allow former convicts to run in local elections through an amendment to the Regional Elections (Pilkada) Law.



House Commission II chairman Rambe Kamarulzaman said former convicts should be permitted to contest regional elections as long as they complied with a regulation that obligated them to publicly announce their criminal records.



'Their right has to be restored on the condition that they show remorse and promise to not repeat the crimes they've committed in their public announcement,' the Golkar Party politician told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.



The government has submitted an amendment to the Pilkada Law. Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo conveyed on Monday to Commission II overseeing home affairs several key points in the revision proposal, including a provision that would allow former convicts to run in elections without serving a five-year probation period.



The Constitutional Court approved the provision in a judicial review of the law in July.



The court ruling, which ordered ex-convicts and suspects to publicly announce their criminal history is adapted in Article 7 of the draft bill, a copy of which was recently obtained by the Post.



Commission II deputy chairman Ahmad Riza Patria said that apart from ex-convicts, he also hoped suspects would be given the right to run in regional elections.



'As he or she has not been convicted, why should we restrict them from taking part in an election, as stipulated in our Constitution?' said the Gerindra Party politician on Tuesday.



Association for Elections and Democracy (Perludem) executive director Titi Anggraini criticized the ruling for not mentioning the full definition of the term 'convict'.



'The new law should stipulate the complete definition of 'convict', is it a person who is on parole or have they been fully freed by a correctional institution?' she said.



Several ex-convicts and suspects, most of them implicated in graft cases, ran and won elections in their respective areas during the simultaneous regional elections in December.



In a bid to contest the Semarang mayoral election, former mayor Soemarmo announced in a local newspaper his corruption conviction, which had forced him to relinquish his mayoral post in 2012 to serve 18 months in prison, as a prerequisite stipulated in the Constitutional Court ruling.



However, Soemarmo, who ran on a ticket with Zuber Safawi, lost to candidate pair Hendrar Prihadi and Hevearita Gunaryanti, nominated by the Indonesian Democratic Party Of Struggle (PDI-P), Democratic Party and NasDem Party.



Marten Luther Dira Tome won the election in Sabu Raijua regency, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), despite the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) having named him a suspect in a case surrounding the misappropriation of Rp 59 billion in education funds at the NTT Education and Culture Agency in 2007.



In Natuna, Riau Islands, candidate pair Hamid Rizal and Ngesti Yuni Suprapti, nominated by Golkar, Gerindra and the National Mandate Party (PAN), won the local election. In 2010, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Hamid to three years in prison in a graft case concerning oil and gas profits in 2004, which caused around Rp 77 billion (US$5.5 million) in state losses. (mos)

_____________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

A bribery scandal is ravaging the House Commission V overseeing infrastructure and transportation as the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) continues to call up more of the commission's members for questioning.



The KPK questioned Lazarus on Tuesday in relation to a series of kickbacks allegedly given by a businessman to secure infrastructure projects in Maluku.



The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician is the seventh lawmaker from the commission that the agency has questioned following the arrest of Damayanti Wisnu Putranti, another PDI-P lawmaker and member of the commission, who was caught red-handed accepting S$99,000 from PT Windhu Tunggal Utama (PT WTU) president director Abdul Khoir.



Although Damayanti is so far the only legislator suspected in the case, Abdul is accused of having distributed Rp 41 billion in bribes to 24 commission members.



KPK deputy chairman Laode Muhammad Syarif said KPK investigators were closely examining evidence garnered from witnesses. After analyzing the evidence, the KPK would then move to name other suspects in the case.



'[The legislators'] involvement is still being examined. It is probably tomorrow [that we will announce new suspects in the case],' the KPK commissioner said without revealing the to soon-to-be-named suspects.



Before becoming ensnared in the case, Damayanti also allegedly received Rp 1 billion during the 2014 legislative elections and Rp 3.2 billion in November from Abdul. It is also alleged that Damayanti did not enjoy the money alone.



KPK spokesman Priharsa Nugraha refused to confirm or deny whether the KPK investigation had found evidence confirming that Lazarus was one of the recipients of Abdul's bribes.



But he revealed that Budi Supriyanto of the Golkar party, a Commission V member earlier questioned as a witness, had returned US$305,000 from Abdul during the investigation.



The KPK slapped a travel ban on Budi and raided his office at the House complex last month. It is alleged that Abdul funneled a total of $404,000 to Budi.



'Although the money was returned, the investigation will continue,' Priharsa said.



In addition to the PDI-P and the Golkar Party, the National Awakening Party (PKB) has so far seen four of its legislators from Commission V questioned in the case.



The four legislators are Fathan, Alamuddin Dimyati Rois, Mohammad Toha and Musa Zainuddin.



Abdul reportedly channeled a total of Rp 8 billion to Musa and it remains unclear whether Musa shared the money with other PKB lawmakers at Commission V. (wnd)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

In apparent alignment with the public's concern for the potential return of the 'old guard', the House of Representatives signaled on Tuesday its disapproval of extra powers sought by the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) to summon and question terrorism suspects.



According to House Commission I overseeing defense and foreign affairs, if the spy agency wants to gain information about terrorism suspects, it can just coordinate with the National Police.



Commission I deputy chairman TB Hasanuddin of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) said on Tuesday it could be dangerous if the regulation granted the agency the requested authority as it could lead to an abuse of power.



Currently, the agency works covertly to gain information about potential acts of terrorism without directly handling the suspects and, in performing this duty, has to cooperate with the National Police in accordance with Article 34 of the 2011 State Intelligence Law.



The same article stipulates that BIN can only gain information by gathering data and needed material from relevant ministries, non-ministerial government institutions or other institutions based on capacity.



'The police and other law enforcement agencies have their own regulations and standard operating procedures for directly handling terrorism suspects, but BIN is supposed to work covertly. I can't imagine it having the authority to arbitrarily drag people in for interrogation without letting them know what it is about,' Hasanuddin said.



Golkar lawmaker Tantowi Yahya shared the same anxiety about the potential abuse of power by the spy agency, saying that such a move would require careful consideration.



'There is no need for such authority as we already have the police to do that,' Tantowi said.



On Monday, BIN chief Sutiyoso claimed during a hearing with the commission that his intelligence officers needed the power to summon and question terrorism suspects in order to better explore evidence, thus, he demanded, that authority had to be included in the amendment of the Terrorism Law.



According to the amendment bill on terrorism, a copy of which was made available to The Jakarta Post, the revision contains 17 provisions proposed by the government but does not mention BIN being granted greater power.



Article 10A of the bill extends the categories of terrorist offenses to include the sale of chemical, biological, radiological, microorganism, nuclear and radioactive weapons. Article 28 grants the police the authority to extend the detention period for terrorism suspects by up to one month.



Under Article 31 of the bill, the police would also be allowed to wiretap people suspected to be connected to acts of terrorism, but only on the condition that they report their actions to the Communications and Information Ministry.



Furthermore, Article 43A of the bill allows investigators and prosecutors to place terrorism suspects, defendants and ex-terrorists along with their families in rehabilitation and de-radicalization programs for six months as a preventive measure.



The House will soon establish an inquiry committee from Commission I and Commission III, which oversees human rights and security and legal affairs, and plans to kick off deliberation after the House recess period from March 21 to 31.



Commission III member Arsul Sani of the United Development Party (PPP) said several points of the revision looked problematic and opened the potential for human-rights abuses.



'The extended detention period needs to be criticized as it's too long. Also ['] the rehabilitation program still has no clear purpose,' Arsul said.



However, the commission's deputy chairman, Trimedya Panjaitan from the PDI-P, said the draft contained no problematic provisions as long as there was also a supervisory body to strictly control and monitor the revised law's implementation.



'The public mostly worries about human-rights abuses. Therefore, we should discuss a monitoring system so that the government and law enforcers can't be repressive,' Trimedya said.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Kathy Ganon (The Jakarta Post) Karachi  Wed, March 2, 2016

Trying to lure him into the Islamic State group, the would-be recruiter told Pakistani journalist Hasan Abdullah, "Brother, you could be such an asset to the Ummah"' the Islamic community. Abdullah replied that he was enjoying life and had no plans to join the jihadis.



"The enjoyment of this life is short-lived. You should work for the Akhira" ' the Afterlife, the recruiter pressed.



IS had its eye on Abdullah not because he adheres to any extremist ideology but because, as a journalist, the group believed he could be a boon to its propaganda machine, Abdullah told The Associated Press, recounting his meeting with the recruiter.



His encounter was a sign of how the Islamic State group is looking for sophisticated skills as it builds its foothold in new territory: Pakistan. It is courting university students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and businessmen, and using women's groups for fundraising.

It is also wading into fierce competition with the country's numerous other militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida in the Subcontinent, the new branch created by the veteran terror network.



Here in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, IS loyalists have set up their strongest presence, carrying out multiple attacks in the past year and setting up networks.



The port city of some 20 million people on the Arabian Sea has always been a favorite for militants to operate. Wealthy districts running on the city's profitable commerce hold potential for fundraising, while the crowded, cramped poorer districts that have spread around the city provide recruits and places to hide. It also gives recruiters links to other parts of the country, since its population is full of people who have migrated from tribal regions or Afghanistan, looking for work.



The Karachi police's top counterterrorism official, Raja Umer Khitab, warns that IS has great potential to grow in Pakistan, not only because of its large reservoir of Sunni extremists but also because of the virulent anti-Shiite sentiment among their ranks.

Hatred of Shiites and attacks against them are a keystone of the Islamic State group's ideology and one source of its appeal among some hard-line Sunnis as it set up its self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.



IS first announced its presence in Pakistan with a bloody attack in May in Karachi in which gunmen boarded a bus carrying Shiites, ordered them to bow their heads, then opened fire, killing 45. The gunmen left behind a tattered piece of paper proclaiming, "Beware ... We have entered the battlefield for retribution and the implementation of Shariah."



Since then, it has killed more than 35 policemen in targeted attacks, attacked two schools and killed rights activist Sabeen Mehmud, who was gunned down in her car with her mother at her side.



IS was able to expand into two tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan ' Bajour and Orakzai ' when Taliban leaders there switched allegiance to the Islamic State group. The IS branch in neighboring Afghanistan is also aggressively trying to expand its presence, putting it in direct competition with the Taliban.



The number of IS loyalists in Pakistan is not known. Government officials only recently admitted that they have a presence and insist loyalists here have no known operational links to the IS leadership in Iraq and Syria.

Still, in one of the first warnings by an official about IS, intelligence chief Aftab Sultan told a Senate committee earlier this month that hundreds of Pakistanis have gone to fight in Syria, and some are now coming home to Pakistan to recruit.

Women role



One way IS militants are trying to recruit and build is through women. One academy for women in Karachi's Baloch Colony neighborhood recruited women by playing IS videos in the classrooms, Khitab told the AP. The 20 female students then reached out to middle-class and wealthy Karachi women, urging them to donate their religious tithes to the IS cause of establishing a caliphate.



Several women were detained, including the wife of a suspected IS operative, and were released after questioning, Khitab said.



IS recruiters have been stalking university campuses. For example, the suspected mastermind in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.



A professor at the Institute, Huma Baqai, said there are radicalized professors teaching in some of the country's top universities. They "are using the classrooms to mold (students') minds," she said. "There is no scrutiny in what happens in the classroom."



An intelligence official told the AP that security officials have interrogated several university professors suspected of supporting IS and trying to recruit students. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to the press.



"Finding people who are willing to strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves up is easy. There are hundreds, thousands," said Abdullah, the journalist. But the educated are a bigger prize. He said he knows two other journalists whom IS tried to enlist. Abdullah said IS probably sought him because he was known from his work writing on extremism in the region and has met many militants personally.



Abdullah said his courtship by IS began when he received a message on social media from someone offering information for him for a story. Abdullah didn't hear from him again until weeks later, when a man using the same name approached Abdullah as he had lunch in a park outside his office.

The man told Abdullah he closely followed his writings ' then said he was from the Islamic State group. Abdullah quizzed him about militants he knew to verify his claims. Near the end of the conversation, the man noted that many professionals were joining IS.



"This was basically his invitation to me to join their rank," Abdullah said. And the man made his pitch.



Professionals can hold leadership posts or be involved in the group's prolific and powerful propaganda machine, which includes sophisticated videos produced with the latest technology and vigorous use of social media.



Al-Qaida in particular is pursuing a similar caliber of recruits. Khitab said it isn't clear who is winning the competition but there are known instances of al-Qaida militants in Pakistan crossing over to IS. Most notably, Khitab said, al-Qaida operatives Abdullah Yusuf and Tayyab Minhas defected to IS and are believed to have orchestrated much of the group's violence in Karachi.



The past stereotype of a militant as a tribesman from the mountains in traditional garb with bandoliers of ammo slung over his shoulder has been replaced, said analyst Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.



The new generation comes from "well-educated, cosmopolitan, university educated Pakistanis from middle-class backgrounds who can navigate our globalized space whether virtually or physically with facility and confidence." They can use social media, cross borders and fit "seamlessly into global societies."



"They are the new force multipliers of terrorist groups," he said. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Semarang  Wed, March 2, 2016

The National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) has invited academics and universities in Central Java to collaborate on preventing the spread of terrorism.



'The targets of radicalism and terrorism are often young people, including those studying in universities. To avoid this we want universities to become the first line of defense to prevent radicalism,' BNPT head Saud Usman Nasution said during a dialogue on radicalism prevention at Diponegoro University.



A lot of young people have reportedly joined the Islamic State (IS) organization, and some were involved in the terrorist attack in Jakarta in January.



In Central Java, terrorist networks usually recruit new members, mostly youths, from Boyolali, Pekalongan, Cilacap, Sukoharjo and Kudus, to name a few.



Saud said that capturing and killing terrorists alone was not enough to root out terrorism from Indonesia.



'Dialogue between academics in universities can build a strong foundation to fight radicalism and terrorism.'
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post)  Wed, March 2, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has demanded that all regions surrounding Lake Toba in North Sumatra cooperate in an effort to boost the development of Lake Toba.



Jokowi held a meeting with local authorities in North Sumatra on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the development of Lake Toba. The central government has pushed for the acceleration of development in the Lake Toba area.



"The meeting was called "United for Lake Toba" because it was held in conjunction with the seven regencies associated with the lake. If there is no unity and no agreement, it will be hard for the central government," he said in a press statement on Wednesday.



The North Sumatra administration and seven regents have agreed to cooperate for the development, with help from the central government. The establishment of the Lake Toba Authority Body was also approved during the meeting. The body is expected to oversee licenses for the 500 hectare tourism area, Jokowi said.



The expansion of Silangit Airport, closest to Lake Toba, was discussed and is has been agreed that expansion shall commence in April, with an aim to complete the project in September.



State-owned airport operator Angkasa Pura II (AP II) president director Budi Karya Sumadi had previously said that the modernization of Silangit Airport would be complete before Lake Toba Festival event held in Berastagi, North Sumatra, on Nov 19-22, 2015.



The current of 2400 x 30 meter runway will be expanded to 2650 x 45 meters with a 140x300 square-meter apron.



"It will be able to accommodate large aircraft such as the Boeing 737-800 in order enable tourists to fly directly to Lake Toba," he said.



The government has also promised to build accommodation and better facilities in the Lake Toba Area.



"With better positioning and better promotion, we believe Lake Toba will be a better tourism area," Jokowi said.



Lake Toba is one of Indonesia's 10 priority tourism destinations in 2016, listed alongside Borobudur, Mandalika, Labuan Bajo, Bromo-Tengger-Semeru, Thousand Islands, Wakatobi, Tanjung Lesung, Morotai, and Tanjung Kelayang. (rin)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Bambang Nurbianto (The Jakarta Post)  Mon, March 21, 2016

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo officiated on Wednesday the launch of the renovated-Rembele Airport in Aceh, which was expanded in a bid to boost tourist arrivals to the Gayo highlands.

Rembele airport is located in Bener Meriah district in the most western province of Aceh at a height of about 1,400 meters above sea level.

Before the extension of the airports runaway, only Fokker 50 or CN 235 aircraft could land at the Rembele airport, while reaching the area via land takes six hours from Banda Aceh and eight hours from Medan.

The upgrade of the Rembele airport facilities was carried out in 2014 and 2015.

The improvement of the airport facilities include an extension of its runway from the previous size of 30 x 1,400 meters to 30 x 2,250 meters and the expansion of the apron from 80 x 106 meters to 95 x 150 meters.

Now, Rembele airport is able to accommodate big aircraft such as the Boeing 737-series.

After the ceremony, Jokowi will return to Kualanamu airport in North Sumatra to continue his official tour of the province.

In North Sumatra, Jokowi will inspect the construction of the Medan - Kuala Namu - Tebing Tinggi highway and the revitalization of the 80-km trans Sumatra railway linking Binjai and Besitang.

He will also attend the groundbreaking of an elevated railway project in Medan comprising an 8-kilometer track linking Medan station to Bandar Khalipah station, the presidential office reported. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Jakarta Police have detained lawmaker Fanny Afriansyah, better known as Ivan Haz, for allegedly abusing his child's nanny.



In reaction to the arrest, Ivan's party, the United Development Party (PPP), stated it would not impose any sanctions on Ivan and would instead provide legal support for him.



Ivan, a member of the House of Representatives Commission IV, is the son of former vice president Hamzah Haz. He and his wife Anna Susilowati were reported to police last October by their domestic helper, 20-year-old Toipah, after she had fled from their house suffering from injuries.



Senior PPP politician Hasrul Azwar said the party would not punish Ivan until he was proven guilty. The PPP, he said, would also provide legal support for Ivan during investigations and in court.



'We can't punish him; there is still an ongoing legal process. In the legal system, there is a right to defense,' Hasrul told reporters on Tuesday, adding that the party would respect the ongoing legal process against its member.



Surahman Hidayat, the head of the House's ethics council (MKD), said the MKD had formed a panel to look into Ivan's case.



'If he is found to have conducted a minor ethical violation, he will be admonished. However, if we find serious violations he will be fired from the House,' Surahman said at the Jakarta Police Tuesday.



Ivan was arrested late on Monday after a nine-hour grilling at Jakarta Police headquarters in South Jakarta. Jakarta Police general crimes chief Sr. Comr Krishna Murti said Ivan would be under arrest for 20 days starting on Feb. 29 to prevent him from going into hiding during the investigation.



Krishna said Ivan may be charged under Articles 44 and 45 of 2004 law on the elimination of domestic violence, with a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail and Rp 30 million (US$2,249) in fines.



'[Ivan] has confessed to his actions, and we have detained him based on the articles in the law, and the evidence is sufficient. We were also worried that he would destroy evidence, repeat his actions or go into hiding,' Krishna told reporters on Tuesday.



He said the police had obtained sufficient evidence according to Article 184 of Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP), which stipulates that valid evidence in a criminal case include witness testimony, expert testimony, letters, clues and testimony from the accused.



Ivan's wife, he said, was thus far still a witness.



Krishna said the police would continue its investigations to determine a motive and complete its documents to submit the dossier to the prosecutor's office.



Ivan was previously implicated in a drug case that is still under investigation after his name appeared on a list of alleged drug buyers found during a raid at the Tanah Kusir Army Strategic Reserves Command (Kostrad) in South Jakarta.



Ivan's lawyer Tito Hananta said he would demand a suspension of detention for his client with the Jakarta Police and would seek an out-of-court settlement with the victim.



'There was a recent abuse case that was settled out of court, and so we also seek reconciliation with the victim,' Tito said, referring to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) member Masinton Pasaribu, who was accused of assaulting female aide Dita Aditia Ismawati.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Elly Burhaini Faizal (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, March 21, 2016

The House of Representatives has ratified defense agreements between the Indonesian government and the Chinese and Germany governments, passing two bills into law on Tuesday.

Defense cooperation is needed to keep our sovereignty, to build our country and to allow us to participate in the creation of the world order, said deputy chairman of the Houses Commission I overseeing defense and foreign affairs Asril Hamzah Tandjung during a plenary meeting at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday.

One of the new laws ratifies a defense agreement previously achieved between the government of former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and its Chinese counterpart in Beijing on Nov.27, 2007. The other law ratifies a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Indonesia-Germany defense cooperation signed in Berlin by Defense Deputy Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin and Germanys State Secretary at the Defense Ministry Rudiger Wolf in February 2012.

The defense cooperation between Indonesia and Germany would include military training, research and development, disaster management, military logistics, healthcare and peacekeeping missions, Sjafrie said as quoted by Antara.

In December 2013, as a follow up the defense agreement achieved by Indonesia and China in 2007, then Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro and Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan met to discuss defense-related matters. After the meeting, Purnomo had said Indonesia and China would launch a joint special forces exercise and that China would help Indonesia to strengthen its defense capacity through a military technology transfer.

We will also talk about the procurement of the SU-27 and SU-35 Sukhoi aircraft made by China for the Indonesian Air Force, said Purnomo during the meeting as quoted by Tempo.

In June 2014, then presidential candidate Joko Jokowi Widodo said during his election campaign that he aimed to triple Indonesias defense and security budget to improve the professionalism of the Indonesian Military (TNI) and the National Police.

If Indonesias economic growth stands at least at 7 percent, to improve our national security system, I aim to allocate up to 1.5 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] for defense, he said.

With the approval of the two bills, there is henceforth a legal protection for the defense cooperation between Indonesia and those two countries, said Defense Minister Ryamizad Ryacudu at the plenary meeting. (vps/ebf)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Mon, March 21, 2016

Another round of hilarious brawling between two ministers has played out, with Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Rizal Ramli poking fun at Energy and Natural Resources Minister Sudirman Said via his Twitter account.

After openly criticizing Saids indecision on Freeports operating permit last year, and his granting of an export permit extension despite Freeports failure to meet government requirements, Rizal launched a new satire attack against Sudirman over the Masela block development plan.

The outspoken Rizal made his move on Feb. 23 by announcing that the government had decided to go with the onshore scheme for the block. The claim was then refuted by President Joko Jokowi Widodos spokesperson Johan Budi a day later.

"Do not start polemics. You, who pretend to strive for the people, who deceive, who claim to know best, who want to change the minds of Masela's investors, stop fooling the public because one day your filthy intentions will be uncovered," Sudirman told journalists on Feb. 27.

Sudirman did not explicitly mention the person he was attacking. However, the news came to Rizal when his Tweeter account was mentioned in his follower's tweet which linked to a news reporting Sudirman's statement. Rizal then posted a meme depicting Sudirman's face along with his "Do not start polemics..." statement.

The caption read: "My Oh my... Busy analyzing your own behavior? Very funny."

The clash over the development plan happened while Jokowis administration cautiously mulled its decision on the block. Rizals team believed that the nations biggest deep-water gas block should be developed via an onshore scheme, as it would provide a greater multiplier effect for local communities.

Sudirman, in contrast, tended to agree with the block developer  a cooperation between Japans Inpex and the Netherlands' Shell  that proposed an offshore development. Inpex currently holds a 65 percent share in Masela and Shell a 35 percent share.

While Jokowis administration was split on the issue, public opinion, though divided, tends to agree that both schemes are feasible. The issue now focuses on the politicians' decision regarding the block development, a decision in which some wealthy politicians may have vested interests.

Same result

There have been a lot of feasibility studies conducted on the block development by various institutions. Shell, for instance, ran a study two years ago. Consulting firm Poten and Partners, appointed by the upstream oil and gas regulatory special task force (SKK Migas), disclosed the results of another study in December 2015.

Both studies showed that the offshore scheme was a cheaper one, but both were refuted by Rizal who said that Shell had understated the costs involved.

The government then appointed Economic and Social Research from the University of Indonesia (LPEM-UI) to do a review. The result showed that the offshore scheme would lead to higher GDP growth, but the onshore would likely make a greater contribution to household income and employment.

The Institute for the Development of Economics and Finance (INDEF) urged the government to speed up decision making on the block as industries needed more gas supply, while the developers have waited for the government's decision for decades.

"They already spent a lot of money to explore and study. The results of the studies are quite similar. If additional technical research is conducted, I believe it will not lead to different results," INDEF economist Berly Martawardaya said.

Assuming the Masela block development is agreed on in 2016, SKK Migas predicts the production phase of Masela will start in 2018 at the earliest, since preparations would need at least two years.

"It will take two years. One-and-a-half years for detail engineering and the tender process will take up to 6 months," SKKMigas spokesperson Ketut Budiarta said.

A member of the House of Representatives Commission VII overseeing energy, Satya Yudha, argued that the option eventually chosen for the development was not really an issue, as long as it maintained a commitment to support local industries.

He pointed out the failure of onshore Tangguh LNG facilities to provide maximum benefits to local industries such as electricity, fertilizer industries, petrochemical manufacturing, etc.

"The block should support the local industries. It doesnt really matter whether it's offshore or onshore. Look at Tangguh LNG, built during Suharto's era. It's an onshore [project], but they dedicate most of the product to export. The local industries don't enjoy the benefits much," he said.

Though the ministers have clashed publicly, the decision is not in their hands. It is the President who has the ultimate authority to decide on Masela block. However, he should be aware that the longer the delay the more opportunity to utilize the block in the near future is lost, and the country needs more energy.

Time, indeed, is money. And its ticking, Pak Jokowi... (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Kusumasari Ayuningtyas, Severianus Endi and Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Klaten/Pontianak/Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The Klaten Health Agency has involved the local branch of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) in national polio immunization week in the regency, scheduled for March 8-15, to convince Muslims that the vaccine is halal.



The move was made to help achieve the target of reaching 95 percent of children aged below 5 years old in the regency's program.



The agency's acting head, Cahyono Widodo, said his office was relying on MUI to help convince those who considered the content of the vaccine to be haram otherwise.



'We really hope to see a decrease in the percentage of parents who refuse to have their kids immunized,' Cahyo said on Monday.



Cahyo said that the 95 percent target was set by the central government. Indonesia received a polio-free certificate from the WHO in 2014. The government also aims to enter the polio eradication stage by 2020, he added.



The last polio cases in the country were recorded in 2006, during which two cases were recorded.



Around 85,000 children under the age of 5 are targeted to take part in polio immunization week in Klaten. The local health agency will deploy 9,032 personnel to conduct immunizations in the regency's 401 subdistricts.



The regency administration is optimistic the 95 percent target will be met and assures that the region is polio-free and has entered the elimination stage.



Head of the agency's disease control and prevention division, Herry Martanta, confirmed that no polio cases had been reported in the regency since 2006.



'We have told people to fill out a report if they notice symptoms of polio in their babies,' Herry said.



Meanwhile in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, the city administration is preparing 610 posts for polio immunization week, during which it aims to reach 57,343 children in the region.



Pontianak Health Agency head Sidiq Handanu said the municipal administration had coordinated with stakeholders for the realization of the program including NGOs, integrated post services, bus terminals and seaports.



Sidiq said the vaccination posts would also be located in crowded areas to reach more families.



Yet, Sidiq anticipates that there will be parents who refuse to have their children immunized.



'The city doesn't have the authority to ask parents to sign a statement saying that they refuse to have their children vaccinated. This is different from immunizations during extraordinary occurrence status,' he said.



Meanwhile, the West Kalimantan administration has prepared 5,590 posts for immunization week in its 14 regencies/cities, targeting 505,000 under 5-year-old children in the province.



The Health Ministry's public nutrition director, Doddy Izwardy, said on Tuesday that the government planned to change the current oral vaccine for polio to vaccines that are directly injected.



'Traces of oral vaccines can be found in feces and thus the vaccine could make their way back into our bodies,' Doddy said.



'Injectable vaccines, on the other hand, die inside our bodies,' he added.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin M. Nur Djuli (The Jakarta Post) Banda Aceh, Aceh  Wed, March 2, 2016

Last week, a delegation consisting of 16 members from four Karen ethnic resistance groups visited Aceh. The Karen are one among eight ethnic groups in Myanmar, out of a total 16, to have signed the National Ceasefire Agreement with Yangon.



This is not the first time Myanmar ethnic groups have included Aceh in their 'lessons learned' tour itinerary. Several ethnic group representatives, government officials and military officers have come to Aceh in order to study the post-conflict peace management.



I have been to Myanmar several times and met with both the leadership and the grassroots levels of several ethnic resistance groups. At first, it had seemed to me that there were hardly any similarities between them and Aceh.



Yet, when we discussed problems up close, I could not help but see similarities and in turn have come to realize that study tours like this one are indeed very valuable.



Organized by the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS), based in Siem Reap, Cambodia, the delegation was received in Aceh by the International Center for

Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies (ICAIOS), an inter-university center in Banda Aceh. The visitors were so impressed with what they saw in Aceh that they asked the tour organizers to arrange for a return visit as soon as possible, in order that they may learn how they could emulate the peace process in Aceh.



Since the end of World War II, Myanmar and Indonesia have been undergoing parallel political development, with the former seeming to follow one step behind. Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, Myanmar in 1948. Both countries started off with very democratic parliamentary systems of government.



When I look at Myanmar now, I cannot help feeling a sense of dAjA vu. Both countries achieved independence through a great struggle against imperialism and colonialism. Indonesian people suffered severe poverty while their leaders concentrated on international issues, followed by a period of relative prosperity in conjunction with the degradation of democratic practices and human rights under military dictatorship, bloody suppression of popular upheavals and finally the return to democracy and a recognition of the rights of the many minority ethnic groups through decentralization.



Like Indonesia, before independence Myanmar was fooled by the Japanese promise to help free the country from Western colonialism. But while the British granted independence to Myanmar, then Burma, through a process of negotiations, rather than showing brutal opposition as did the Dutch to Indonesia, the Burmese still came to hate colonialists and refused to join the British Commonwealth, aligning itself to the leadership of the Non-Aligned countries.



Myanmar was once known as 'the rice bowl' of Southeast Asia. However, when the constitutionally guaranteed autonomy did not materialize, widespread unrest occurred and in 1958 the army took over under General Ne Win. He purged 'communist sympathizers' and began to suppress the minorities with military force.



Elections in 1960 brought U Nu back as Prime Minister, but Ne Win staged a coup in 1962 and the country's decline under military dictatorship began in earnest. As if emulating Indonesia, Myanmar nationalized all major industries without compensation.



In September 1987 a 'demonetization' measure left the people severely impoverished. The elder generation of Indonesians would remember how, many years ago, Sukarno had done the same. In 1988, driven by economic desperation, the people of Myanmar revolted. On Aug. 8 that year, troops began firing into the crowds, eventually killing over 3,000 people.



Still, the resistance continued and forged alliances with ethnic resistance movements. In Rangoon (now Yangon), the daughter of founding father Aung San, Suu Kyi, was approached to join the burgeoning democratic movement. Her incredible persistence and patience finally paid off and, as it had done the first time its leadership had been quashed by the military, her party won the election, in a landslide victory. The rest is not yet history.



The question now is whether the Myanmar military, guaranteed under the new constitution to hold 25 percent of seats in the parliament (as in Indonesia until 2004), will follow the example of the Indonesian generals and relinquish political privilege. Indeed, one of the most important questions asked by a general at a seminar organized by the Habibie Center in Jakarta a couple of years ago was how the Indonesian senior generals convinced their younger troops to give up their political privileges.



It seems that the old Myanmar generals have started to realize that their time is up, but they do not know how to stop riding the fat tigers that control the wealth of the country, especially jade trade with China. This is not overly different from the problem faced by Indonesian military big brass who control vast business interests all over the country.



Myanmar is indeed at a crossroads. Will it continue to follow in the footsteps of big brother Indonesia? Indonesian leaders, through ASEAN, could and should play a stronger role in persuading Myanmar's rulers to quickly emulate Indonesia. With its vast natural resources, Myanmar has the potential to rise rapidly and join its more prosperous neighbors. However, like Indonesia, it has to set its house in order first.

_______________________________________

The writer is an independent international consultant on conflict resolution and post-conflict peace management, a former Free Aceh Movement negotiator in Helsinki, a leader of the Aceh National Party (PNA) and was 2011-2012 Weatherhead fellow for international affairs, Harvard University.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Indah Setiawati (The Jakarta Post)  Wed, March 2, 2016

Documentary photographer Romi Perbawa followed the lives of child jockeys in West Nusa Tenggara from 2010 to 2014, capturing their fragility in terms of education and injury risk in his photo book The Riders of Destiny.



First published by Galeri Foto Jurnalistik Antara in 2014, the book received enthusiastic reviews from local and international media. Its second edition, published by Afterhours Books in 2015, was released during the Frankfurt Book Fair last year, where Indonesia was the guest country of honor.



Born in Kutoarjo, Central Java, in 1971, Romi, who now lives in Surabaya, East Java, believes it is never too late to pursue a passion in photography.



The photographer has a special interest in educational issues, which also reflects in the photo story he is currently working on.



'My ongoing project is about children of migrant workers. I went to Flores [East Nusa Tenggara] and met the family of a 75-year-old grandmother who lives there with six grandchildren. Her five children work as fishermen, and only one of them has gone to school, because their parents were illegal migrant workers,' Romi said.



Like a photojournalist, Romi needs to interact with the locals to get intimate shots. While creating his photo stories, he likes the convenience of using his mobile phone to take down information and keep interview notes.

__________________________________

iPhone 5





I use my iPhone to record interviews, make phone calls, send emails and check my Facebook account. I am not a Twitter user. My Twitter account was in fact created by my kid.



I often use the notes feature on my mobile phone to type information I get from the interviews when I go out to take pictures. My notes are safe, because I use the iCloud service.



Although I still take handwritten notes as well, I am more comfortable having the notes on my mobile phone, as it can prevent my sources from getting distracted during the interview. Manually taking notes during an interview seems to create a serious atmosphere.



I am a loyal iPhone user ' from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5. I just have no money yet to buy the iPhone 6. I use the camera in the phone to shoot food, but I very rarely use it for my serious work. I don't even take selfie pictures with the smartphone because I am not into that.

MacBook Pro





I store pictures I have taken on my laptop so I can select them. Sometimes I also need it to create a short photo story (on the device). I rarely edit my pictures. The pictures in my photo book were edited by someone else, and I only assisted the editor.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

A number of Golkar Party politicians have expressed their belief that a recently concluded legal process will not hamper the party's commitment to ongoing reconciliation efforts.



The Supreme Court (MA) rejected a cassation plea to overturn a North Jakarta District Court ruling that legitimized the party's leadership under incumbent chairman Aburizal Bakrie, who was renamed chairman during a disputed congress in Bali in 2014.



The plea, lodged by the faction of former rival Agung Laksono, was rejected by a panel of cassation judges on Monday, possibly throwing off the long-awaited plan to unite the warring camps.



Both Aburizal and Agung have since announced that they would not compete in the upcoming congress, a decision that was further strengthened by the Law and Human Rights Ministry's recent decree to restore Golkar's 2009 management roster.



Airlangga Hartarto, one of the many candidate hopefuls running for the position of chairmanship in the upcoming extraordinary national congress (Munaslub), said he believed that incumbent chairman Aburizal Bakrie would forego the opportunity to reclaim the party reigns through the placement of his supporters on the organizing committee (OC).



'The Law and Human Rights Ministry has decided to restore the Riau management roster until July, and I believe that the spirit of reconciliation has set in,' he told reporters on Tuesday.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

A new online marketplace for budget accommodation is now available in Indonesia.



After beginning its operations last month, e-commerce company Tinggal announced on Tuesday that it had raised US$1 million from several investors, including Mangrove Capital Partners and Simile Venture Partners, and was planning to expand to all major cities in Indonesia over the next 12 months.



The company currently has over 50 partner hotels in Jakarta, Bali, Bandung in West Java and Malang in East Java. The hotels are said to provide a complimentary breakfast and Wi-Fi at a starting price of Rp 199,000 (US$15).



Tinggal co-founder Arjun Chopra said that getting a clean and safe hotel at a reasonable price was still a challenge in Indonesia.



"At Tinggal, we ensure that our customers can get a clean room with air-conditioning, Wi-Fi and breakfast at reasonable rates. With a stringent screening process, all our hotels are carefully selected and frequently audited to ensure a good customer experience," said Chopra in a press release on Tuesday.



A mobile application is reportedly in the works and will be available in the coming months.



The company's website is www.tinggal.com. (kes)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

A politically charged disciple of the old guard at the tax office was inaugurated on Tuesday to lead the powerful agency, which is set to point its gun at wealthy individuals to meet its arduous tax collection target.



Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro swore in career tax official Ken Dwijugiasteadi as the new director general of taxation three months after previous tax chief Sigit Pramudito resigned after failing to increase tax revenue by the targeted 30 percent.



Ken vowed after the inauguration that his leadership would be defined by the forcing of wealthy individuals to comply with tax regulations as instructed by the ministry, which sought to at least double the Rp 9 trillion (US$676 million) in income tax collected from individuals last year.



He reasoned that only 27 million people payed taxes out of 129 million people categorized as middle and upper class, and that income taxes from individuals currently accounted for less than 1 percent of total tax revenue.



'We already know the identity of the wealthy individuals. We will send warning letters and provide them with enough time to pay their dues,' he said.



'We will also check their banking records, and match them with their wealth as reported [to the tax office]. If we find discrepancies, we will summon them,' said Ken when questioned on his policy for tracking down the recalcitrant taxpayers.



Minister Bambang instructed the tax office and its 32,000 personnel to bank on the compliance of individual taxpayers to help it meet the target of Rp 1.36 quadrillion in tax revenue this year, 13 percent higher than last year's total.



The tax target accounts for around 70 percent of total state revenue.



'There should be stern action from the tax office to improve revenue from such taxpayers,' said Bambang, adding that taxes from wealthy individuals could help offset the decline in taxes paid by companies due to the slowing economy.



'I instruct Pak Ken once again to direct his personnel at every level to go after individual taxpayers to expand our tax ratio,' he said.



Indonesia's tax ratio stands at 11 percent, lower than the 13 or 14 percent recorded by its ASEAN peers Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.



The instruction to go on the offensive is likely to spook many parties, particularly when Ken is not unstained by controversy.



In 2006, then tax chief Darmin Nasution, now coordinating economic minister, assigned Ken to the less prestigious job of head of the East Kalimantan tax office after finding masses of fictitious tax registration numbers (NPWP) on record at the office's information and IT division where Ken was in charge at the time.



In a hearing with legislators in September 2006, Darmin said that of the 10 million NPWP reported by his predecessor Hadi Poernomo to then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2005, only 3.6 million NPWP could be verified.



In 2010, Ken was back in the spotlight after Surabaya Police in East Java nabbed five officials at his office for tax fraud that caused Rp 350 billion in state losses.



In his defense, Ken said at the time that the officials had committed an ordinary crime not a tax crime and their actions were thus outside of his supervision.



Ken, who reported Rp 3.25 billion in personal wealth to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in 2013, is known by many tax officials to have many friends in high places.



As a disciple of Hadi Poernomo, Ken has close ties with many politicians of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), with State Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno and with senior Golkar politician and House Speaker Ade Komarudin.



Hadi served as tax chief between 2001 and 2006, under former president Megawati Soekarnoputri and during the first two years of Yudhoyono.



During his leadership, Hadi was the subject of intense criticism and was blamed for taking the tax office into the 'dark ages' in terms of integrity.



His rule was ended by the reform-minded then-finance minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who launched an overhaul of the agency.



Last year, Hadi was named a graft suspect by the KPK in connection with alleged tax crime involving Bank Central Asia (BCA), Indonesia's biggest private lender. However, the South Jakarta District Court ruled in Hadi's favor. The KPK is still awaiting the outcome of an appeal against the verdict at the Supreme Court.



Ken refused to comment on his past and his legion of powerful friends.

______________________



Date/place of birth: Nov. 8, 1957/Malang, East Java



Education: 1983: Bachelor of Economics from Brawijawa University

1991: Masters of Science in Tax Auditing at Opleidings Institute Financien, the Netherlands



Career:



Dec. 2015-Feb. 2016: Acting tax chief

July 2015: Finance minister expert staff for tax regulation and law enforcement

Nov. 2009: Chief of East Java regional tax office I

2006: Chief of East Kalimantan regional tax office

2003: Director for tax information and IT division

2000: Head of income tax for expatriates I

2000: Head of Bojonegoro tax office

1997: Head of tax inspection for Pekanbaru tax office

1992: Section head for individual tax payers at the Directorate General of Taxation

1989: Sub head for personnel division at Directorate General of Taxation

_______________________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post Geneva  Wed, March 2, 2016

North Korea will "never, ever be bound" by international resolutions that criticize its human rights record, its foreign minister declared Tuesday, ripping into deadly gun violence in the United States and highlighting alleged rights violations against refugees who are pouring into Europe to flee violence at home.



Ri Su Yong took a strong message from a country known for powerful state propaganda to the U.N.-sponsored Human Rights Council on Tuesday, saying that any resolutions against North Korea will only be "proof of partiality and double standards."



Ri's sharp comments came before the 47-member body in Geneva was set to discuss North Korea's record on March 14 as part of a regular review. That review will consider a sharply critical report from the U.N. human rights office's rapporteur on North Korea issued last month.



"We shall no longer participate in international sessions singling out the human rights situation of the DPRK for mere political attack," the minister said, using an abbreviation for the country's formal name. His comment appeared to raise the prospect that North Korea would not exercise its right to respond.



Japan and the European Union are expected to present a resolution during the session that condemns human rights violations in North Korea and would extend by another year an investigative mission into its rights record. Over the years, North Korea has blown hot and cold with the HRC. Last year, Ri was the first North Korean minister to attend a session.



U.N. human rights expert on North Korea, Marzuki Darusman, said in a report last month he wanted supreme leader Kim Jong Un to know he and other top North Korean officials could be held accountable if they are found responsible for crimes against humanity committed under their leadership.



Darusman was on a U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea that in 2014 published a key report that laid out widespread abuses like a harsh system of political prison camps holding up to 120,000 people. The commission urged the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court over its human rights record.



Ri said the council has not given enough attention ' or none at all ' to "systematic racial discrimination" in the United States, and cited "deplorable human rights violations" linked to gun violence in the U.S. He also cited refugees who had been "drowned in the sea or choked to death in a sealed lorry as in the case of Europe."



Separately, the United States has asked the Security Council to schedule a vote on a resolution that would impose tough new sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Jim Gomez (The Jakarta Post) Manila  Wed, March 2, 2016

Chinese coast guard ships were sighted two weeks ago at a disputed South China Sea atoll, sparking fears Beijing may take control of it, but they were gone when the Philippine government checked on Wednesday, the country's top diplomat said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Ministry of Transportation dispatched ships to salvage a fishing vessel that had run aground near Jackson Atoll in late 2015 and which posed a risk to navigation.

During the operation, Chinese ships "persuaded fishing boats to leave the waters in an effort to ensure safety conditions for normal navigation," Hong told reporters, adding the Chinese vessels returned home after completing their work.

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said it's uncertain if the Chinese ships would return, adding Philippine defense authorities were monitoring the disputed region. "They might be back tomorrow, they may not," del Rosario told reporters.

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., who heads a Philippine-claimed region in the Spratly Islands, said he also saw the Chinese ships at the atoll for two straight days last week while flying in a plane over the uninhabited, ring-shaped reef, which the Philippines calls Quirino.

Jackson Atoll lies several kilometers from the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef, which China occupied in 1995 and has developed into an island.

A Philippine security official said an air force surveillance plane did not see Chinese vessels on a flight Wednesday. Still, the mere sighting of the Chinese vessels has set off concerns.

"I'm alarmed because we frequently pass by that atoll on our way to Pag-asa," Bito-onon told The Associated Press by telephone, using the Filipino name for Thitu Island in the Spratlys where a small Filipino fishing community and troops stay.

Filipino, Vietnamese and Malaysian fishing boats have gone to Jackson's vast fishing lagoon for years, Bito-onon said.

In another concern, Bito-onon said Philippine planes landing and taking off at Thitu have been warned frequently to stay away by Chinese forces based at the nearby Subi Reef, one of seven disputed Spratly reefs that China have built into islands. The plane that he was on last week flew to Thitu and was shooed away by the Chinese too, he said.

"When you take off or land, you'll hear their warning: 'You are flying within our security zone, please leave immediately to avoid miscalculation,'" Bito-onon said.

Those Chinese warnings are an act of intimidation and show the threat to freedom of overflight in the region, he said.

The United States and Asian governments have expressed alarm over China's island construction, saying it raises tensions, threatens regional stability and could violate freedom of navigation and overflight.

In New Delhi, US Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris Jr. expressed his admiration for India's peaceful approach to conflict resolution but cited how "some countries seek to bully smaller nations," without naming China.

"Freedom of navigation on the high seas and the air space above them ... are not privileges of rich and powerful countries," Harris told a conference on Asian geopolitics. "They are fundamental rights of all nations."

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also lay claim to the Spratlys' strategic waters.

___

Associated Press writers Christopher Bodeen in Beijing and Rishabh R. Jain in New Delhi contributed to this report.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The government expects the newly renovated Rembele Airport in Aceh to help bolster the mobility of people and products as it will shorten for many the journey from Aceh to Medan in the neighboring province of North Sumatra, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo said on Wednesday.



Jokowi inaugurated the renovated airport on Wednesday morning, expecting that from now on tourist arrivals to the province would also increase.

The airport in Bener Meriah will also help locals travel from the western part of Aceh to Medan, which only takes about 45 minutes by plane, compared to 12 hours by land previously, Jokowi said at the inauguration event at the airport.



Indonesia is in the middle of a global competition that calls for speed in economic activity, Jokowi said. "Thus, only countries that speed up their development can win the competition."



"I want our country to win the competition, and our cities and districts to win the competition," the President said in a press statement.



Connectivity among cities throughout the country, from Sabang in Aceh to Merauke in Papua, will be the driver of Indonesia's development. XXXsounds like a quoteXXX



Jokowi expects that people from Rembele will soon be able to fly directly to Wamena in Papua, on the other side of the country.



"From Aceh to Raja Ampat," Jokowi said, citing Papua's most prominent tourist destination.



Rembele Airport will not only be beneficial for local people, it will also support travelers coming from neighboring countries like Singapore and Malaysia.



Jokowi called for local administrations to boost tourism promotion by cooperating with other provinces and the Tourism Ministry.



Well-managed facilities and destinations will be useless without promotions, he said.



The renovation of the airport included a runway extension that allows Boeing 737 airplanes to land. Previously the airport could only accommodate small aircraft like Fokker 50s or CN 235s.



Transportation Minister Ignatius Jonan added that Rembele Airport, located in a mountainous area, would also form a base airport for disaster situations. (rin)(+)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

South Korean electronics giant Samsung seeks to strengthen its footing on virtual reality (VR) technology in Indonesia by collaborating with local mobile application developers to create content for the globally growing VR service.



Following the Indonesian launch of the technology ' which simulates physical presence in the real or imaginative world ' Samsung said on Tuesday that it would start searching for local developers later this year to create local content for the domestic market.



Indonesian developers working with Samsung will mostly be responsible for creating content, and not the ecosystem, which will be done by the technology giant, said Samsung Electronics Indonesia product marketing manager Seto Anggoro.



'We will work with the Indonesian Samsung Research and Development Institute [SRIN] to cast an open net for all local developers who wish to work with us to develop local content for Indonesia's VR system,' Seto said.



'However, the fate of VR development in Indonesia would later depend on the pace of the developers,' he added.



Samsung's VR service essentially works as a built-in app within Samsung's Galaxy smartphone and Galaxy Note range, and its software is supported by virtual reality company Oculus VR. There are now about 1,500 apps available in the Oculus Share content store.



The VR business is growing globally, with market analysts CCS Insight estimating 13 million VR headsets will have been sold by the end of this year, a figure that is projected to rise to 97 million by 2020.



VR also took center stage at the high-profile Mobile World Congress, which ended on Feb. 25, with Taiwanese HTC launching its HTC Vive VR headset to join the likes of Facebook's Oculus Rift, Samsung, Sony and Microsoft's Hololens in becoming the market leader in the growing VR sector, Reuters reported.



In Indonesia, Samsung launched its Samsung Gear VR for sale in February at Samsung Experience stores throughout the country. The existing VR gear on sale in Indonesia is a third generation device, because it is not compatible with first and second generation VR gear.



Samsung Electronics Indonesia IT and mobile marketing director Vebby Kaunang said the company would gradually roll out all of its technological innovations to the Indonesian market this year once it felt the time was right.



Other technologies the company plans to launch include the Gear 360 camera and more features regarding the internet of things (IoT).



Its mobile payment service, Samsung Pay, will also see an eventual Indonesian launch but still has a long way to go as it still needs to establish partnerships with banks and the government.



President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo played ping pong in virtual reality in February with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a short visit to Silicon Valley as he highlighted the nation's openness to new technology, including investment in the sector.



'The innovations that we will roll out will always be the ones that are relevant to our consumer's needs. More will come throughout this year,' Vebby said.



The company released its newest smartphone, the Galaxy S7, in Indonesia on Tuesday.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Vladimir Isachenkov (The Jakarta Post) Kinsibba  Wed, March 2, 2016

Artillery shells struck near the main street of a Syrian village controlled by the government on Tuesday, sending international reporters diving for cover and highlighting the fragility of a partial cease-fire that both sides in the civil war say has been repeatedly violated.



The blasts that shook Kinsibba, near the Turkish border, came as the journalists were touring the village under Russian military escort. No one was wounded by the artillery, but some suffered minor cuts as they ran for cover or threw themselves to the ground.



Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, who was on the trip, said the shells came from positions held by the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, which along with the Islamic State group is excluded from the cease-fire that began Saturday.



The U.S. and Russian-brokered "cessation of hostilities" has brought the first wide-scale reduction in violence seen in Syria's five-year civil war, but has been rattled by alleged violations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that any faction that repeatedly violates the cease-fire can be attacked.



The cease-fire is intended to pave the way for the resumption of peace talks to end the conflict, which has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced half the country's population.



The office of the U.N. envoy for Syria said he has pushed back the planned resumption of talks between the government and the opposition to March 9 for "logistical and practical" reasons. Staffan de Mistura had earlier said the talks -- which last broke down in early February after just a few days -- would resume March 7.



Syrian President Bashar Assad meanwhile told Germany's ARD television that moderate rebels who lay down their arms can expect "full amnesty." But it was unclear whether any rebels would take him up on such an offer after years of civil war, mass detentions and widespread allegations of severe human rights violations by his government.



Assad also said convoys from Turkey have been supplying weapons to the insurgents. Turkey is one of the leading backers of those fighting to end the Assad family's four-decade rule. The Syrian government has received crucial support from both Russia and Iran.



In Kinsibba, which was seized in a recent government offensive, the reporters were talking to local residents when the first shell struck a hillside a few hundred meters (yards) away. Russian officers yelled at the journalists to lie down, and they ducked as the shelling drew closer with a series of loud thuds. A Russian armored personnel carrier rushed forward to screen the reporters from direct hits.



The head of Russia's coordination center for the Syrian crisis, Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying eight shells hit and that four journalists, from Russia, Canada, China and Bulgaria, sustained light injuries.



More shells landed in the area just after the reporters left, killing three Syrian troops and wounding eight others, said Konashenkov, the Russian military spokesman.

Food aid

He said Russia has delivered around 580 tons of food aid to government-held areas in recent weeks. He also said that the Russian coordination center and a similar U.S. center in Amman, Jordan, have been in close contact, with the Russians calling the Americans several times a day to exchange information about the cease-fire.



The cease-fire has remained fragile, however, with violations reported in many areas and the government and opposition trading blame. Russia's Defense Ministry said Tuesday the cease-fire has been violated 15 times in the past 24 hours.



Also Tuesday, Syrian state news agency SANA said insurgents fired seven shells at government-held neighborhoods and the airport in the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising began in March 2011.



The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, opposition groups that monitor the conflict, said government forces shelled rebel-held parts of the city.



The Observatory and other opposition activists also said five people were killed and more than 15 wounded when rockets slammed into two villages in the rebel-held northern province of Idlib.



Earlier in the day, the reporters had visited the northern village of Ghunaymiyah, near Kinsibba, where residents recently began returning to their homes after government forces drove out Nusra Front fighters last month. Most of the buildings were concrete shells, with windows and doors missing.



One resident, Musa Magardish, stood in shock in front of his ruined home. "I don't have any money for rebuilding my house, and I have no idea how I can do it," he said.



"Everything is broken, everything is burned," said 66-year-old Araksi Sarko, who said the Nusra fighters who had until recently occupied the city were "animals."



At a village church damaged in the fighting, a few people gathered to clean up shards of glass and pieces of concrete littering the floor. Then they prayed.



One of the parishioners, Farah Arijan, said Nusra Front militants badly damaged the church when they captured the village in 2012. "They also killed many of our people," he said. "One woman was killed when she was trying to flee." (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post) Palembang  Wed, March 2, 2016

Local diversified conglomerate Sinar Mas is set to commence the operation of one of the world's largest pulp mills, expected to help boost Indonesia's economy and push up the country's position in the sector.



The company's two new pulp and paper mills will occupy 1,700 hectares of land in a downtown area of Ogan Komering Ilir (OKI), which is a two-hour speedboat ride from South Sumatra's capital city of Palembang.



Sinar Mas managing director G. Sulistiyanto said on Tuesday that the new mills, which will be operated by its pulp and paper unit PT OKI Pulp and Paper, would provide jobs for some 3,500 people.



'They are also expected to provide foreign exchange reserves for the country as most of the products will be exported,' he said during a visit from Industry Minister Saleh Husin to the project site.



Saleh told reporters that the government aimed to up its ranking as the ninth biggest paper producer to the sixth biggest, and from the sixth largest pulp producer to the third.



'I hope we can achieve the target sometime next year with OKI's operations this year,' the minister said at the pulp mill, which is situated near an industrial plantation.



OKI director Suhendra Wiriadinata said his firm would begin operating the pulp mill in October and would later start constructing the paper mill and a seaport.



'We'll operate a 700-ha pulp mill in the first phase. We'll then develop a 1,000-ha tissue plant and the port, which will be close to the Bangka Strait,' he said.



Suhendra said total investment from the project was estimated to hit around Rp 40 trillion (US$3 billion), with investments for the paper mill and port estimated to stand at $600 million and $200 million, respectively.



The pulp mill is set to produce 2 million tons of pulp annually, 80 percent of which is to be exported. The paper mill is expected to produce 500,000 tons of tissue a year, with 95 percent intended for export. Exports of both products are forecast to hit $1.5 billion a year.



Suhendra said his firm would increase the pulp mill's capacity to 2.8 million tons when everything was on track.



Once both mills are operational and the port is established, OKI will be able to transport its products globally through international ports such as in Singapore or Malaysia.



OKI itself has been granted a tax holiday by the government, allowing the company an exemption from paying taxes for eight years once it commercially operates its pulp mill.



Indonesia's pulp and paper industry is currently under the international spotlight as environmental activists have claimed that some of the country's pulp and paper conglomerates were responsible for recent forest fires that affected not only Indonesia but also neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.



A number of Singapore's retail chains have stopped selling products of another Sinar Mas subsidiary, Singapore-based Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), after some environmental groups claimed that the company was involved in the forest fires.



Saleh and Sulistiyanto said, meanwhile, that APP was a scapegoat as other global paper giants were worried about stiff competition with the company.



APP is currently the world's third largest pulp and paper firm and it competes fiercely with Singapore-based Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

The city administration evicted dozens of families living in makeshift houses under the Pluit toll road in North Jakarta on Tuesday, one day after the administration demolished buildings in the Kalijodo red-light district in West and North Jakarta.

"We will finish all buildings under the Pluit toll road today," Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama told journalists on Tuesday.

The administration had sent warning letters to the squatters so that they could make preparations, the governor said, adding that many of the squatters were newcomers that had only arrived in the area a month ago.

"Why should we be polite with those newcomers?' Ahok said.

The city administration had prepared 650 low-cost apartments for people who had Jakarta identity cards, he added.

Any buildings occupying green spaces in the capital city faced demolition by the city administration after the squatters received three warning letters, Ahok added. (bbn)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

Efforts to combat chronic and widespread malnutrition have started to bear fruit as the percentage of children under five who suffer from stunted growth experienced the first decline in five years.



Recent data from the Health Ministry show that the national stunting prevalence for children under five fell to 29.5 percent in 2015, after reaching 35.6 percent in 2010 and rising to 37.2 percent in 2013.



'It's a decline of more than 7 percentage points,' the ministry's public nutrition director, Doddy Izwardy, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.



He said the government was on the right track with aggressive multi-sectoral intervention in the field.



First, the government targeted mothers, as stunting may occur during pregnancy and only show once the child is 2 years old.



Optimized infant growth depends on proper nutrition during the first 1,000 days of infants' development, including during gestation. During those 1,000 days, infants' brains grow 95 percent and the trunk of their bodies grows faster than anytime afterwards.



Therefore, the best way to prevent stunted growth is to ensure proper nutrition of the mother during pregnancy and of the child after birth.



'There has been progress in the field, and we measure the progress we make by monitoring mothers who breast-feed their babies in the first six months,' Doddy said.



The government has also been running an iron supplement (TTD) program, under which pregnant women are given tablets containing 60 mg of iron and 400 micro grams of folic acid aimed to prevent and alleviate anemia.



Doddy said the high prevalence of stunting in Indonesia also correlated with a high prevalence of anemia among pregnant women, with one in four pregnant women suffering from the condition.



Anemia during pregnancy can affect the growth of the fetus, which will lead to a low birth weight and bleeding during childbirth and is a risk factor for maternal and infant mortality.



'If a mother already chronically lacks energy [KEK] and is anemic, we can't let her child be stunted as well,' said Doddy.



After addressing the problems in the early stages of infancy, the government targeted malnutrition occurring after the babies are born, he explained.



In 2013, the government launched the national Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which brings together a whole variety of key stakeholders ' from the government, civil society, donors, private companies, researchers and the UN ' in a collective effort to improve nutrition.



Nutritionist Marzuki Iskandar said the movement had significantly increased awareness among mothers on the importance of feeding their children nutritious food.



'So it's understandable that the stunting rate in Indonesia declined as public awareness increased,' he told the Post.



Doddy said the growing number of community health care posts, or Pos Pelayanan Terpadu (Posyandu), also contributed to the decline.



Doddy also pointed to initiatives that had helped improve the quality of Posyandu in Indonesia, citing a recently launched smartphone app called mPosyandu as an example.



The app allows Posyandu cadre to efficiently record health data of their communities.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Wed, March 2, 2016

A Supreme Court verdict has brought an end to a lengthy land-acquisition dispute, which has hampered the development of a mega power plant in Batang, Central Java.



The Supreme Court voted to reject a cassation request from Batang locals who sought to overturn a previous Semarang State Administrative Court (PTUN) decision to uphold a Central Java gubernatorial decree allowing a 125,146-square-meter site to be used for 2x1,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired power plants.



'The cassation cannot be accepted,' the verdict read on the Supreme Court's official website on Tuesday.



The construction of the power plant, touted as the largest in Southeast Asia, is part of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's administration's ambitious five-year plan to add 35,000 MW to the electricity grid by building multiple power plants.



Last August, Jokowi officiated the groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of the Batang power plant development on 226 ha of land, considered crucial for avoiding an electricity crisis Java.



However, residents, supported by environmental activists, continually refused to release their land even though a year earlier the government had given PLN the authority to step in and enforce Law No. 2/2012 on land acquisition, which lets the government seize people's land in the name of public interest.



Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) executive director Fabby Tumiwa said that the Supreme Court's verdict was a positive sign for investors as it was reassurance that the construction would soon be underway.



'The cassation is the final step so this will convey a positive signal,' he said, adding that if construction started in the middle of this year, they could possibly complete the first unit by the end of 2020.



However, Fabby recommended that the government reevaluate their compensation method as many locals refused to give up their land for financial compensation because they needed the land for agriculture purposes. He warned that lengthy legal processes similar to the Batang power plant case could be repeated when the government attempted to acquire other locations for its 35,000 MW plan.



'Currently, there are no similarly large cases. However, the 35,000 MW project continues and similar cases may appear,' he said.



The power plant is the first project to be developed under a public-private partnership scheme with Bhimasena Power Indonesia (BPI), a consortium consisting of Jakarta-listed PT Adaro Energy, J-Power Electric Power Development Co. Ltd. and Itochu Corp., which won the tender for the Batang project in 2011.



The project is estimated to cost US$4 billion and the electricity will be sold to PLN under a 25-year contract. The first stage of commercial operations was initially scheduled for 2016. However, the target became unfeasible partly because BPI, in mid-2014, declared force majeure on the project as it was unable to acquire the remaining plots of land it needed.



BPI eventually asked for an extension on the deadline for the financial closure ' which marks when all conditions for financial agreements have been fulfilled ' until March this year from the original October 2015 deadline.



Meanwhile, Jarman, the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry's director general for electricity, said that the Supreme Court's decision allowed for the land acquisition to be quickly concluded.



'As soon as the land [acquisition] is completed, financial closure can be reached,' he said.

___________________________________________

Timeline of Batang land dispute



* Sept. 19, 2011: Batang regent issues a bylaw that contradicts other regulations. The bylaw allowed the power plant to be built on land in Karanggeneng subdistrict in Kandeman, Batang, and at sea in Ujungnegoro-Roban waters. The Ujungnegoro-Roban coastal area was declared a local marine-tourism site under Government Regulation No. 26/2008. According to Central Java Bylaw No 6/2010 on spatial planning, part of the project's site at sea also infringes upon a protected area.



* Oct 13, 2011: State-owned PT Penjaminan Infrastructure Indonesia (Indonesia Infrastructure Guarantee, IIG) guarantees the first public-private partnership project ' the $3.2 billion coal-fired power plant in Batang, Central Java, with an installed capacity of 2,000 MW.



* Mar 13, 2012: The Central Java Environment Agency (BLH) suggests the project be moved to Tanjung Celong in Kedawung subdistrict, Subah district, Batang.



* Sept. 3, 2012: Thousands of residents of Ujungngegoro beach in Batang, Central Java, protest against the construction of a coal-fired power plant (PLTU) in the area, insisting that it would harm the environment and threaten their livelihoods.



* April 25, 2014: In an update on the power plant's development at his office, Coordinating Economic Minister Hatta Rajasa says 29 ha of land are still in question from the 226 ha needed for the megaproject.



* Aug. 6, 2014: Coordinating Economic Minister Chairul Tanjung says the government may move forward with the Batang power plant project, but that doing so would take extra time to acquire the necessary land.



* Mar 24, 2015: President Jokowi stakes his reputation on delivering the Batang plant via a public-private partnership after telling businesspeople in Tokyo that construction could start the following month.



* Mar 31, 2015: Batang residents and Greenpeace Indonesia activists protest a statement made by President Jokowi in which he claimed that obstacles hampering the construction of the Batang coal-fired power plant (PLTU) had been overcome.



* Aug. 28, 2015: Jokowi officiates the ground-breaking ceremony for the 2x1,000 megawatt (MW) project in Batang, Central Java. According to Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Ferry Mursyidan Baldan, only around 11.1 ha of land had yet to be settled on after three more families agreed to give up their land for compensation.



* Dec 22, 2015: During a meeting with executives of state-owned electricity firm PLN and numerous independent power producers (IPPs) at the State Palace, Jokowi pushes investors to commit to speeding up the power plant development.



* Feb 16, 2016: Environmental activists stage a rally in Mega Kuningan, Jakarta, to oppose the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Batang, an agricultural area in Central Java.



Source: The Jakarta Post

____________________________________

To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News.

For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin The Jakarta Post  Wed, March 2, 2016

Your comments on Wahid Institute's recent survey that shows an increasing trend of violence against minority groups and on the government's acknowledgement that it faced difficulties in promoting religious tolerance.

The government should impeach itself ' if they still have any dignity left ' for failure to govern the people.

Jose Christie



The government said that it was facing difficulties in promoting religious tolerance. What is the government really doing? Radical religious groups systematically and violently storm every event that doesn't follow their ideas with complete impunity, while the police turn a blind eye and always show up after the fact.



And the government wonders why it's facing difficulties.



Phippe Marland



Difficulties in promoting religious tolerance are mainly caused by our religiously based schools, instead of having scientifically based education. This is in fact the very cause of the difficulties in adhering to the uniting principles of our Pancasila and Bhineka Tunggal Eka.



Yet we all realize our vast archipelago territory is in need of sincere unity. Science-based education is necessary to induce tolerance and enhance 'peoples' unity'.



Moeljono Adikoesoemo



Indonesia is at risk of becoming a Stone-Age state. Intolerance of anything and everything, which has built up over the years because of unchecked religious fervor emanating from the Middle East, has created an atmosphere of extreme conservatism.



The discourse is now dominated by those who consider themselves messengers of God in their determination of what is right or wrong. They invade the private space of other individuals. Their latest victims are LGBT people.



Tifatul, former minister under president SBY, should be jailed for his hateful comments promoting the murder of LGBT people in the name of Islam. I kind of get it now why intolerance bloomed under SBY. Look at his choice of a minister.



Humanist

Well, of course! How can this government, which is itself so intolerant to anyone and anything not an exact clone of its members, such as Achmadi, Shiites, Christians, Gafatar and LGBT people, promote tolerance?



Hadi

_______________________________________

Topic of the day

RI as role model in counterterrorism



Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung said recently that Indonesia was a role model for other countries with regard to successful counterterrorism efforts, indicated by the rapid response from the authorities in handling the Jan. 14 terrorist attack in Jakarta for which the Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility. What do you think?



Send your thoughts by email, SMS, Twitter or Facebook. Include your name and city.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Zarar Khan & Asif Shahzad (The Jakarta Post) Rawalpindi  Wed, March 2, 2016

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis chanting anti-government slogans on Tuesday attended the funeral of a police officer executed the day before for assassinating a secular governor in 2011 over accusations of blasphemy.

As a precaution against violence, authorities closed all schools and stepped up security in Islamabad and the adjacent city of Rawalpindi, where the funeral of Mumtaz Qadri was held. Roads around key government buildings and diplomatic compounds were also closed off, said police official Ashfaq Tarar.

Qadri's supporters threw rose petals at the ambulance carrying his coffin through Rawalpindi and he was given a martyr's funeral before being buried in Islamabad. Earlier, authorities put a gag order on local media covering the funeral, warning outlets in a letter that they would face closure if their reporting "glorifies extremism."

In response to the gag order, some stick-wielding supporters beat up a local media crew in Rawalpindi, breaking at least one video camera.

Footage posted on social media showed Qadri's supporters jeering Pakistan's Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid at the Karachi airport. One threw a shoe at the minister, who ducked to avoid it.

Qadri's hanging on Monday triggered street protests in several Pakistani cities. A number of prominent religious leaders, politicians and militant groups in Pakistan had defended his actions.

He was executed for killing secular Gov. Salman Taseer, who had called for reforms of the country's harsh blasphemy laws. Qadri said he killed Taseer because the governor had allegedly committed blasphemy by campaigning to change the laws and by supporting a jailed Christian woman accused of desecrating Islam's holy book, the Quran.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws allow for anyone convicted of insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad to be sentenced to death, though people often take the law into their own hands.

The January 2011 assassination horrified Pakistan's relatively small liberal elite. However, many Pakistanis, including some in the religious establishment and in legal circles, praised Qadri.

Tens of thousands of Qadri's supporters walked for miles to reach the funeral venue as police had blocked most of the roads for traffic, said police official Mohsin Abbas.

Many chanted in support of Qadri while others carried posters with photographs of the former officer. Ahmad Nadeem wore a shirt reading: "I'm Mumtaz Qadri."

"I wouldn't hesitate to do the same," he said.

Pakistan is deeply conservative, and for decades the government tolerated and even encouraged certain Islamic militant groups, viewing them as a bulwark against archrival India. Perceived affronts to Islam can ignite street protests and lynchings.

In recent years, the government has moved to counter Islamic extremism as it has battled a homegrown insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people. Pakistan lifted a moratorium on the death penalty after a Taliban attack on a school in December 2014 and has executed over 300 convicts since then.

The government has also introduced a ban on hate speech and a media blackout on militant groups. It has promised to improve security for religious minorities -- who are often targeted by extremists -- and strengthen legislation on individual rights and women's rights. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura  Wed, March 2, 2016

Papua Governor Lukas Enembe called on residents on Tuesday to maintain tolerance and respect following a demand from a group of churches to ban the construction of a mosque in Jayawijaya regency.



'In Papua, we have 250 [local] languages. There are different religions, but we can maintain peace and avoid conflict. Religious conflict in Tolikara was settled properly,' Lukas said during a meeting of the Regional Leadership Communication Forum at the Papua Police headquarters.



The meeting was attended by Papua Police chief Isp. Gen. Paulus Waterpauw, Cendrawasih Military Commander Maj. Gen. Hinsa Siburian, chairman of the Papua Religious Harmony Forum (FKUB) Bishop Leo Laba Ladjar, Jayawijaya Regent John Wempi Wetipo, chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama Jayapura Kahar Yelipele, chairman of the Jayawijaya Churches Communion (PGGJ) Abraham Ungirwalu and other Christian and Muslim leaders.



The meeting discussed a statement from PGGJ asking the regency to, among other things, stop the construction of the Baiturrahman grand mosque, ban the use of loudspeakers in mosques and ban the wearing of Muslim head scarfs in public spaces.



PGGJ issued the statement on Feb. 25 after a circulating text message stated that Muslims were building a four-story mosque with a 70-meter tall minaret that would be taller than the Jesus Christ statue in front of the regency office.



The statement was responded to by a statement from the Papua Central Mountains Muslim Forum that called PGGJ an illegal organization and urged the police to arrest Christian priests who had signed the statement calling for a ban on the mosque.



Jayawijaya Regent Wempi Wetipo said he gave a permit because it was a renovation instead of a new mosque building. A new mosque needs an approval from FKUB.



Kahar Yelipele added the mosque was renovated into two stories, not four stories, with a 20-meter minaret.



'So, it's not right to say that the minaret will be 70-meters tall and the mosque will be four stories,' he said.



The meeting agreed that both PGGJ and the Muslim groups would retract their statements and would not extend the matter into a legal process.



After the meeting, Bishop Leo said the construction of houses of worship should be conducted according to the existing regulation that was based on a joint decree from the Home Ministry and the Religious Affairs Ministry.



However, Leo called on religious leaders to consider local customs before constructing houses of worship in order to avoid conflict.



He argued religious conflict had also contributed to economic disparities between local people and outsiders.



'Many outsiders who are Muslims control the economy. Kiosks belong to Muslims and there is the loud call to prayer. There is a feeling that this valley [in Papua] is dominated by Muslims. So, it's important to consider [local] sensibilities to maintain religious tolerance,' Leo said.



Papua made headlines due to a religious-based riot in Tolikara last year. On July 17, hundreds of people confronted and pelted stones at a group of Muslims performing Idul Fitri prayers using loudspeakers in Karubaga, Tolikara. This forced the worshippers, who are a minority group in the area, to flee to a nearby local military office for protection.



The mob set a fire that burned down more than 50 kiosks and houses and a prayer room. Police released shots into the crowd, killing one of the protesters and injuring 11 others during the unrest.



On Feb. 18, the Jayapura District Court sentenced Jundi Wanimbo and Arianto Kogoya to two months and 26 days in jail for inciting the riot.
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Aya Batrawy (The Jakarta Post) Dubai  Wed, March 2, 2016

A judge in the United Arab Emirates has approved a medical forensic examination of two detained Libyan Americans to see whether or not they were tortured at the hands of UAE state security officers, their U.S.-based lawyer said Tuesday.

Kamal Eldarat, 59, and his son Mohammed Eldarat, 34, were arrested in August 2014 in the UAE, where they are longtime residents and successful businessmen.

Their U.S. lawyer Greg Craig said it wasn't until almost 18 months later, in January 2016, that they were formally charged with supporting terrorist groups in Libya based on confessions made during interrogation.

A group of U.N. human rights experts recently said they received credible information that the detainees were tortured and forced to sign confessions, and were allegedly held incommunicado in secret locations and in solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time.

When contacted by The Associated Press, the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that U.S. consular officials have been allowed to attend the trial, which began Jan. 18, and the defendants have been allowed to contact their lawyers, diplomatic representatives and families.

Prosecutors charged them with knowingly financing two Libyan rebel groups: The February 17th Brigade and Libya Dawn, which are affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood group.

The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, considers the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. The Islamists are viewed as a threat to the ruling systems of the region.

Speaking by telephone from the U.S., Craig said his clients deny the charges and have not had any connection with groups that support terrorism or the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, Craig says his clients did support the National Transitional Council, which headed the internationally-backed Libyan opposition to longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi during the 2011 uprising and then governed Libya after he was killed and before elections were held.

The older Eldarat fled Libya with his family years before the uprising and moved to the U.S., where they were granted political asylum. They moved to the UAE in 1997.

Amal Eldarat told the AP her father was arrested by plain-clothed officers who came to their house in Dubai the day after media reports emerged of the UAE leading airstrikes against Islamist rebel groups in Libya's city of Misrata, where her family originally comes from. Her brother was detained two days later.

Craig said the case against them is political and stems out of a greater "fear of jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood."

The two are being tried under a counterterrorism law that was passed after they were arrested, he said. Their trial includes two other Libyan co-defendants, including a Canadian dual-national.

Two other Libyans are facing a separate trial in the UAE on similar charges. (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Jill Lawless (The Jakarta Post) London  Wed, March 2, 2016

The British government says it has amended a proposed Internet surveillance law to strengthen privacy protections after criticism from lawmakers. But critics say the legislation gives police unprecedented power to look at the Internet browsing history of everyone in Britain.



Home Secretary Theresa May published the Investigatory Powers Bill on Tuesday, saying she hoped it would get parliamentary approval and become law by the end of the year.



The bill is intended to replace a patchwork of existing laws and define the scope and limits of surveillance in the digital age. It gives police and spies broad powers to obtain browsing records and requires telecommunications companies to keep records of customers' Web histories for up to a year.



The legislation has been revised after scrutiny by committees of lawmakers, who recommended changes to protect privacy and spell out authorities' powers more clearly.



Internet companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo also raised concerns that the bill could weaken encryption, which is key to ensuring online shopping and other activities can be conducted securely.



The new version of the bill says Internet companies can only be asked to remove encryption that they have applied, and only when it is "practicable."



It also says police forces can access Internet connection records ' a list of websites, apps and messaging services someone has visited, though not the individual pages they looked at or the messages they sent ' in pursuit of "investigative leads."



Earlier versions of the bill gave police the power to see only limited parts of the records, such as illegal websites people had visited. The revised bill also allows authorities to hack into phones and computers in life-threatening situations ' such as missing-person hunts ' as well as to investigate or prevent serious crime.



May said she and her department "have strengthened safeguards, enhanced privacy protections and bolstered oversight arrangements."



But Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights organization Liberty, said the changes amounted to "minor Botox." And Amnesty International U.K. director Kate Allen accused the government of a "snooping power-grab." (ags)
Share this article Whatsapp

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin Edith M. Lederer (The Jakarta Post) United Nations  Wed, March 2, 2016

The UN Security Council votes Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades.

The US and North Korea's traditional ally China spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions, which include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by sea or air, in response to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch. Both are in defiance of previous council resolutions.

The US, its Western allies and Japan pressed for new sanctions that went beyond the North's nuclear and missile programs but China, Pyongyang's neighbor, was reluctant to impose measures that could threaten the stability of North Korea and cause its economy to collapse.

The final draft, obtained by The Associated Press, would eliminate loopholes in previous sanctions resolutions and impose new ones. But it stresses that the new measures are not intended to have "adverse humanitarian consequences" for civilians, the majority who face economic hardships and food shortages.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday that the US administration knows the North Korean people "have suffered for far too long" because of decisions from their government. "And that's why this sanctions regime is targeted more specifically at the North Korean elite."

For the first time, the draft resolution would require the 192 other UN member states to inspect all cargo from North Korea or heading to the country for illicit goods, ban any sale or transfer of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang, and require all countries to expel diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

It would also for the first time impose significant sanctions on broad sections of the North Korean economy.

The draft resolution would ban the export of coal, iron and iron ore that is being used to fund North Korea's nuclear or ballistic missile programs ' and it would prohibit all exports of gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth minerals. It would also ban aviation fuel exports to the country, including "kerosene-type rocket fuel."

In the financial and banking sector, countries would be required to freeze the assets of companies and other entities linked to Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. Under a previous resolution, they were encouraged to do so.

The draft would also prohibit all countries from opening new branches, subsidiaries and representative offices of North Korean banks, and ban financial institutions from establishing new joint ventures or establishing or maintaining correspondent relationships with these banks. It would also order countries to close all North Korean banks and terminate all banking relationships within 90 days.

North Korea is already subject to four rounds of UN sanctions imposed since the country's first nuclear test in 2006.

Under those resolutions, it is banned from importing or exporting nuclear or missile items and technology as well as luxury goods. The new draft would expand the list of banned items ' adding luxury items such as expensive watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and lead crystal.

It would also add 16 individuals, 12 "entities" including the National Aerospace Development Agency which was responsible for February's rocket launch, and 31 ships owned by the North Korean shipping firm Ocean Maritime Management Company to the sanctions blacklist. That requires the freezing of assets and, in the case of individuals, a travel ban as well.

The draft resolution would ban Pyongyang from chartering vessels or aircraft, and call on countries to "de-register" any vessel owned, operated or crewed by the North.

As with previous resolutions, the test will be whether UN member states enforce the sanctions. A UN panel of experts monitoring the sanctions has repeatedly pointed out that enforcement in a significant number of cases has been weak.

North Korea has ignored many demands, and tried to circumvent others.

It started off the new year with what it claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6 and followed up with the launch of a satellite on a rocket on Feb. 7. It was condemned by much of the world as a test of banned missile technology.

The draft resolution calls for a resumption of six-party talks leading to the goal of "the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner." North Korea withdrew from the talks in 2008.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking in Washington and Cara Anna in New York contributed to this report.
Happening Today: Community Board 3s economic development committee meets at 6:30 p.m. in the Village View Community Room, 175 East 4th St. Board members will discuss drafting a statement making retail diversity a factor in the public benefit requirement of liquor licenses.

The Metrograph, a new independent cinema on Ludlow Street, opens to the common people on Friday. Its already been hosting VIP events this week. The creative team sat down for interviews with Indie Wire and Hyperallergic.

China Daily has more on China Vanke Co Ltd, the large real estate firm that has snatched up the former Rivington House nursing home for a luxury housing development. Kai-yan Lee, Vanke Holdings managing director said of the Lower East Side, You see a lot of younger people moving into the neighborhood, generally improving the living conditions with more amenities such as hip restaurants and artisan-type stores.

After Barbara Shaums death last fall, her leather goods shop has now closed, reports EV Grieve.
The 23rd June is D-Day for Britain in Europe, with the country set to take to the polls to answer 2016s most important question: should we stay or should we go?

--- Sponsored by The Economist, who would like to give away to The National Student readers a special subscription package : for 12 only get a 12-week print and/or digital subscription as well as Bluetooth speakers or a Phone Charger. ---

If the EU referendum does see Britain voting to leave a bloc that it has been part of for over 40 years, its likely that the map of Europe will be rewritten  economically, at least.

With seven of his 29 cabinet ministers campaigning to leave  including Justice Secretary Michael Gove, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, Commons Leader Chris Grayling and London Mayor Boris Johnson - David Cameron has got a fight on his hands to stay part of the European Union.

Here are a few things that could happen if that fight doesnt pay off...

The EU will decide on the terms of our exit

If Britain decides that leaving is the way to go, an application to withdraw will need to be made under article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The article states that a new agreement between Britain and the EU will be negotiated over two years - the crux, though, is that Britain wouldnt actually have a say in these negotiations.

Leaving in itself is a fairly hostile move, and certainly isnt one that the EU wants to see repeated by other powerful members  so it is likely that terms imposed wouldnt be all that favourable to Britain. Making leaving look like the easy choice is hardly something theyll want to encourage.

Well probably get a new Prime Minister

After pouring everything into staying in Europe, as he is now expected to do, its unlikely that David Cameron will stick around for an ego-kicking should the country vote to leave. With it recently revealed that hell be campaigning for a Brexit, is it time we started saying  hello, Boris?

...And possibly a new Chancellor

George Osborne is sticking by his PM in the in camp, warning that an exit from the EU would be a dangerous move for Britain. With the shift in economic stance that would inevitably come about in the case of a Brexit, it seems likely that he will also jump ship.

Scotland will go to the polls again

Scotland wants to stay in Europe, so if Britain decides to leave its likely that a referendum on Scottish independence will follow. A potential redrawing of the United Kingdom would be on the cards if the result of this was positive. According to the Economist Northern Ireland, too, has been vocal about wanting Britain to stay in Europe, so the long, long conversation about Home Rule could threaten to rise again.

EU citizens living elsewhere wouldnt be forced to relocate

MigrationWatch UK has suggested that any alteration of visa rules and/or immigration laws would not adversely affect either the two million British expats living abroad, or EU citizens currently living in Britain. MigrationWatch UK has cited the Vienna Convention, under which withdrawal from a treaty releases the parties from any future obligation to each other but does not affect any rights or obligations acquired under it before withdrawal as its basis.

Migration into Britain would fall

A big part of the out campaign focuses on control of Britains borders and the imposing of strict limits on migration. Lower migration into Britain may do damage to the economy, though, because overall immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.

A study carried out by MigrationWatch UK predicts that if Britain was to leave to EU migration into the country could be cut by 100,000 per year, with limits imposed through the introduction of visas and the ability to only receive skilled workers. It is low-skilled workers from Eastern Europe that are most likely to be blocked from entering Britain, in this case.

There would be a changed position for Europe on the world stage

Britain is the most significant country in Europe in terms of foreign policy and is the continents biggest military power, so an exit would be a huge blow for the EU both on the world stage and with regards to defence. Europe would lose the big tie that it currently has with America (Obama is very much pro an in vote) and its overall position, shadowed by Russia (pro Brexit), the Middle East and Africa, would be weakened in terms of defence.

The effect on the economy (the big one)

Studies from the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have predicted the economy to suffer if Britain chooses to leave, with suggestions that the value of the pound would fall and that being part of the EU has been beneficial for the British economy overall. A poll of more than 100 economists, carried out by the Financial Times in January, found that three quarters thought leaving would harm Britains economic prospects.

The vital issue of trade has been at the heart of much of the in/out discussion. The EU is the worlds biggest single market, and with half of Britains exports going into it  the fastest growing is financial services - its one that its essential Britain can continue to access.

As detailed on The Economist Britain could still do this through membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), a la Norway and Iceland  but as these countries have demonstrated this would come with terms: payments into the EU budget and free movement of EU migrants are still required of the former. Switzerland, not part of the EEA, has similar terms; asking for limits on migration could halt their trade agreements.

Meanwhile, the EU has or is negotiating 53 trade deals with non-EU countries  from which Britain would be excluded. Countries such as China, the US, India and South Korea are likely to stick with the EU, rather than negotiating deals with Britain alone.

The G20s finance ministers, including George Osborne, have unanimously agreed that leaving the EU would shock the worlds economy. Speaking in Shanghai last week, Osborne laid out what the effect on the global economy could mean for peoples lives in Britain: "This isn't some amusing adventure into the unknown. A British exit would hurt people's jobs, livelihoods and living standards - it's deadly serious.

He continued: "It's my responsibility as Chancellor to make it clear to people what the economic risks are - and that we are stronger, safer and better off remaining in a reformed EU."

Will you vote in or out in the EU referendum? Let us know...

Subscribe to The Economist and get 12 issues for 12, plus a choice of free gifts, including a Bluetooth speaker.
Tentang Situs Slot Online Resmi MGS88 Nama Situs  MGS88 Minimal Deposit  Rp. 10.000,- (Sepuluh Ribu Rupiah) Proses Deposit   2 Menit Metode Deposit  Bank Transfer,  Pulsa,  E-Wallet Judi Online Terbaik  Slot Online,  Judi Bola,  Casino Online,  Togel Online,  Tembak Ikan Provider Slot Gacor Mudah Maxwin  Pragmatic Play,  PGSoft,  MicroGaming,  Habanero Slot Gacor Gampang Menang  Gates of Olympus,  Sweet Bonanza,  Wild West Gold,  Starlight Princess Win Rate 98%

RTP Live Slot Gacor Tertinggi Hari Ini Terbaru Terlengkap

Selamat datang di halaman RTP live dan informasi soal slot gacor hari ini dari situs MGS88 yang setiap hari selalu update. Berdasarkan RTP Live MGS88, Anda bisa mendapatkan informasi tentang slot online yang saat ini yang sedang Gacor atau onfire dengan persentase yang terbukti akurat, ini bisa menjadi rekomendasi anda sebelum memilih permainan slot online di situs MGS88. Cek RTP Slot sekarang juga bosku

Klik Provider Slot Untuk Mengetahui RTP Slot Secara Real Time

Selamat datang bagi kalian yang sedang mencari situs RTP Live terlengkap dan terkini hari ini. Sangat sesuai jika Anda mengunjungi website MGS88 RTP live untuk informasi tentang permainan slot yang lagi gacor dengan slot RTP yang terupdate. Persentase kemenangan yang kami berikan tentunya diambil dengan data yang sangat valid dan hanya untuk permainan slot yang tersedia di situs MGS88. RTP yang tersedia juga akan selalu diperbarui setiap hari berdasarkan level kemenangan yang diberikan kepada member kami.

Memang sih untuk bermain slot itu tergantung hoki dari setiap pemain, Namun RTP live atau bocoran slot dari yang kami sediakan ini adalah data autentik dari banyaknya pemain yang telah bermain dan mencapai kemenangan tinggi. Sederhananya, kalau banyak pemain yang menang di dalam 1 permainan slot, karena itu permainan slot tersebut akan mempunyai persentase RTP yang sangat tinggi.

Namun kami tegaskan sekali lagi, ini bukan sebuah paksaan kami situs MGS88 untuk anda bermain di game slot yang mana. Ini bisa dijadikan sebagai referensi atau tolok ukur, boleh dicoba kalau anda mempunyai feel yang kuat dalam memainkan permainan game slot. Anda dapat mengakses kapan saja dan di mana saja selama anda siap bermain. Jangan ragu untuk bertanya ya seputar pola putaran terhadap kami, sebab kami juga menyediakannya loh.

Apa itu RTP Live?

RTP Live ialah informasi mengenai persentase tertinggi saat ini dari hasil RTP Live dengan bocoran kemenangan pemain saat ini. RTP Live merupakan singkatan dari Return To Play atau bisa juga diartikan sebagai Return to Player. Karena itu, para pemain slot sekarang jika ingin mengetahui seberapa besar kemenangannya, bisa dengan memainkan permainan yang akan dimainkannya dan bisa untung dengan mudah dan tentunya maksimal.

Apa itu RTP Slot?

RTP Slot juga dikenal sebagai return to player atau pengembalian ke Pemain. RTP slot ialah persentase dari nilai pengembalian semua uang yang dipertaruhkan pemain dari waktu ke waktu. Dengan kata lain, RTP juga dianggap sebagai salah satu fitur slot yang mengembalikan uang pemain saat pemain kalah.

Persentase digunakan untuk menghitung RTP dalam permainan slot. Misalnya, jika slot memiliki RTP 97%, itu berarti untuk setiap 100.000 koin yang hilang di slot, slot dapat mengembalikan 97.000. Jika Anda mengetahui RTP sebuah permainan slot, Anda dapat memutuskan permainan slot mana yang akan dimainkan tanpa kerugian besar.

Apakah Angka Persentase RTP Slot Itu Penting?

Biasanya pemain slot itu tidak memperhatikan RTP dalam permainan yang akan dimainkan, biasanya setelah anda mengisi saldo utama anda akan langsung buru-buru memainkannya. Yang terakhir 90-96% mempengaruhi jumlah kemenangan. Semakin tinggi jumlah RTP yang digunakan, semakin luas peluang untuk mendapatkan keuntungan.

Akan namun itu segala tak secara 100% menjamin kemenangan kau dalam bermain, RTP itu cuma sebagai kalkulasi pengeluaran anda saja selama bermain slot.Dengan adanya RTP, kau dapat mengerjakan pengaturan atas uang yang akan kau pertaruhkan nanti pada ketika bermain.Untuk itu pada ketika kau bermain slot dan telah mengalami banyak kekalahan di satu permainan, direkomendasikan kau pindah ke permainan slot lainnya yang RTP nya lebih tinggi dari permainan yang tadi kau mainkan.

Keuntungan Menggunakan Bocoran RTP Slot Hari Ini

Situs MGS88 Akan dengan senang hati akan beberapa keuntungan yang didapatkan jika anda bermain slot dengan menggunakan RTP Live yang telah disediakan. Berikut Keuntungannya :

Peluang Kemenangan Meningkat Tentu saja, saat bermain slot online, menang adalah hal yang paling penting. Di sinilah RTP berperan sebagai metode atau metode baru yang akan membantu Anda memilih permainan slot persentase tinggi. Mendapat variasi dalam Memainkan Game Slot Pastinya banyak pemain slot online yang hanya memainkan 3-5 permainan slot saja. Namun dengan RTP Live slot akan memberikan banyak game slot lain yang bisa anda coba. Tentunya semua permainan slot memiliki potensi kemenangan yang besar, jadi jangan hanya mengandalkan beberapa permainan saja. Menambah Pengalaman Dalam Bermain Slot Keuntungan terakhir adalah Anda tentu saja menambah pengalaman dan keahlian dalam permainan slot online. Dengan berbagai macam permainan slot yang dimainkan, Anda pasti mengetahui karakteristik dari setiap permainan slot yang Anda mainkan. Akibatnya, Anda pasti bisa dianggap sebagai pemain slot yang andal, yang pasti akan meningkatkan peluang Anda untuk menang besar menggunakan RTP.

Daftar 8 Situs Dengan RTP Slot Live Tertinggi Hari Ini

Ada banyak penyedia mesin slot online di internet. Tetapi tidak semuanya memiliki peluang tinggi atau RTP Live Slot yang sangat tinggi. Tapi jangan khawatir, berikut ini adalah situs slot gacor yang akan memberikan bocoran slot dengan RTP Live Tertinggi:

RTP Live Slot Pragmatic Play (RTP Slot 97.85%) RTP Live Slot PG Soft (RTP Live 96.15%) RTP Live Slot Habanero (RTP Slot 95.89%) RTP Live Slot CQ9 (RTP Live 98.83%) RTP Live Slot Spade Gaming (RTP Live 94.99%) RTP Live Slot Micro Gaming (RTP Slot 95.39%) RTP Slot Live Top Trend Gaming (RTP Live 96.14%) RTP Slot Live JOKER123 (RTP Live 97.45%)

Itulah Daftar 8 Provider Slot Gacor dengan RTP Live teratas diatas tentunya kami analisa terlebih dahulu. Anda bisa membuktikannya langsung dengan mengklik banner atau meprovider game slot yang sudah tersedia di atas. Saran kami yaitu Anda harus memainkan semua penyedia slot di atas untuk mencapai peluang kemenangan terbaik.

Daftar Slot RTP Live Tertinggi Sering Kasih Jackpot

Selain mempertimbangkan RTP Slot Gacor yang ada, sebenarnya ada banyak faktor penting untuk menang dalam permainan judi online. Sebab ada banyak game yang memiliki fitur dan mekanisme unik dan bisa membantu anda meraih Jackpot yang sangat besar.

Berikut ini akan kami ulas daftar 5 game slot paling populer karena sering memberikan jackpot:

RTP Live Gates of Olympus Gates of Olympus adalah game slot teraneh dan terbaik di Indonesia. Karena permainan mesin slot ini paling populer karena kakek Zeus dapat mengizinkan pengganda x500. Selain itu, fitur dan mekanik Gates of Olympus juga sangat menguntungkan untuk memenangkan Grand Jackpot. Secara teoritis, RTP slot langsung Gates of Olympus bernilai 96,50%, yang berarti peluang Anda untuk memenangkan MaxWin cukup tinggi. RTP live Sweet Bonanza Sweet Bonanza adalah permainan slot terpopuler kedua. Game slot bertema buah dan permen yang lezat ini sepertinya akan menarik banyak perhatian karena tergolong slot gacor yang mudah menang. Secara teoritis, slot Sweet Bonanza RTP bernilai 96,48%, yang berarti peluang Anda cukup tinggi untuk memenangkan jackpot. RTP Live Wild West Gold Wild West Gold adalah permainan slot bertema koboi yang juga populer di kalangan penggemar konspirasi. Permainan slot Wild West Gold sendiri kerap menawarkan kejutan jackpot bagi para pemainnya. Selain itu, nilai RTP Live Slot menunjukkan indeks tertinggi hari ini, yang berarti sangat layak dan sangat direkomendasikan. RTP Live Starlight Princess Slot Starlight Princess ini memiliki gaya dan fitur yang mirip dengan Gates of Olympus. Perbedaannya hanya pada desain dan karakter gamenya saja, karena memiliki fitur dan mekanik yang sama tentunya RTP slot teoritis pada game slot ini sama yaitu 96,50%. RTP Live Cash Elevator Mungkin sebagian dari Anda baru mengenal slot Cash Elevator. Namun dari data benchmark yang diungkap, ternyata banyak sekali yang menikmati permainan slot ini. Dengan fitur dan mekanisme unik seperti Lift up and down asli, slot ini juga memiliki slot RTP Live dasar 96,64% yang juga memiliki mekanisme yang sangat menguntungkan untuk memperlancar tingkat kemenangan besar.

Bocoran Jam Main Slot Gacor Hari Ini

Dalam bermain permainan slot online itu tidak bisa dilakukan dengan sembarangan yah. Jadi, Jika anda bermain pada waktu tertentu seperti yang akan kita bahas sesaat lagi, ada kemungkinan anda untuk mendapatkan kemenangan lebih tinggi. Jam RTP Slot Gacor merupakan bocoran jam main slot yang akan memberikan anda kapan waktu yang pas dalam bermain game slot.

Tentu saja seluruh provider slot online memiliki jam tertentu dalam memberikan peluang kepada para pemainnya untuk mendapatkan kemenangan. Disini kami akan memberikan anda Bocoran Jam Slot Gacor yang Paling Akurat Hari ini:

Jam Slot Gacor Pragmatic Play 02:30 WIB - Jam 05:25 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Habanero 14:26 WIB - Jam 17:38 WIB Jam Slot Gacor CQ9 00:45 WIB - Jam 05:53 WIB Jam Slot Gacor PG SOFT 14:25 WIB - Jam 17:35 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Joker123 17:41 WIB - Jam 20:42 WIB Jam Slot Gacor Microgaming 22:30 WIB - Jam 00:35 WIB

MGS88: Situs Judi Slot Online Gacor Pay4D Resmi dan Terpercaya

MGS88 adalah situs game slot online Gacor terbaru yang bermitra dengan Pay4D, Pay4D sendiri merupakan daftar situs game slot online terpercaya dengan berbagai macam permainan judi yang mudah dimenangkan seperti Game Bola, Casino Online, Slot Pay4D, Tembak Ikan dan Pay4D Online Permainan togel seperti Singapura, Hongkong, Sydney dan lain-lain. Tujuan utama kami adalah menjadi situs judi online Pay4D yang menyediakan layanan judi online terbaik di Indonesia.

Kami juga salah satu situs resmi PAY4D di Indonesia yang pasti akan membayarkan semua kemenangan kepada semua member kami, karena kepercayaan dari semua member kami adalah prioritas utama kami sebagai mesin slot 4d Asia terbaik di Asia, khususnya di Indonesia.

Dalam melakukan sistem transaksi sistem simpanan dapat dilakukan dengan mudah melalui mobile banking dan electronic banking berupa bank BCA, BSI, BRI, BNI, Cimb Niaga, Permata dan Mandiri. Selain itu, transaksi e-wallet juga tersedia melalui Dana, Gopay, LinkAja dan Ovo serta dapat digunakan untuk pulsa tanpa dipotong.

Untuk mempermudah dan kenyamanan dalam melakukan registrasi atau melakukan setiap transaksi, MGS88 menyediakan layanan live chat dan Whatsapp terhubung langsung dengan customer service online 24 jam.

Mengenal Istilah Dalam RTP SLOT

Di slot RTP Live Anda akan melihat berbagai fitur yang mungkin tidak Anda pahami masing-masing. Namun jangan khawatir, disini sebagai situs slot gacor MGS88 kami akan memberikan penjelasan lengkap mengenai tentang istilah yang ada di RTP SLOT dibawah ini.
ACT ups heat on Sorayuth

BANGKOK: The Anti-Corruption Organisation of Thailand (ACT) has vowed to push for sanctions against Channel 3 and Sorayuth Suthasanajinda unless they heed growing calls to show responsibility after a court ruling to jail the embattled TV news anchor.

crime

By Bangkok Post

Wednesday 2 March 2016, 09:07AM

TV news anchor Sorayuth Suthasanajinda defied mounting calls for him to show responsibility by appearing on his morning news programme yesterday (Mar 1), the day after the Criminal Court sentenced him to 13 years and four months in prison for fraud. (Photo by Patipat Janthong)

ACT chairman Pramon Suthivong said yesterday (Mar 1) that social sanctions will be brought against the channel and Sorayuth if they fail to take any action.

Sorayuth should show some remorse and step down from his role following the court ruling, Mr Pramon said.

Mr Pramon said the anti-graft advocacy group will campaign to ask its network of private sector companies to stop sponsoring the channel and Sorayuths Rai Som Company. He added that seeking a boycott from viewers is also on the cards.

ACTs members and allies include the Board of Trade, the Federation of Thai Industries, the Thai Bankers Association, the Thai Institute of Directors and the Federation of Thai Capital Market Organisations consisting of the Thai Listed Companies Association and the Association of Thai Securities Companies.

Despite mounting calls by media professionals for him to quit his screen role, Sorayuth appeared on his morning news programme as well as his evening news talk show as usual yesterday, while Channel 3 executives also decided to allow Sorayuth to continue hosting his programmes.

If Mr Sorayuth were a state official, he would already be suspended from work, Mr Pramon said, drawing attention to corruption cases probed by the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC).

The state sector has disciplinary measures against officials found guilty of fraud or malfeasance charges. However, the private sector can only rely on the views and expectations of the public, Mr Pramon added.

Phakdee Photisiri, a former NACC member in charge of the probe into the Sorayuth case, compared it to those involving state officials that do not require a court ruling to suspend officials from work.

Once the NACC forwards its investigation report to the relevant agencies asking for sanctions to be considered against the parties found to have committed wrongdoing, they must take action within 30 days or face a charge of dereliction of duty.

Corruption charges are considered as severe misconduct and a breach of duty, he said, arguing that the penalty should be him being taken off the air.

On his morning show, Sorayuth, who was sentenced to 13 years and four months in prison and was released on bail, said he respected the court and its decision, but confirmed he would appeal.

Sorayuth and his company Rai Som were found guilty of cheating the Mass Communications Organisation of Thailand (MCOT) out of more than B138 million in advertising revenue during his news talk programme on Channel 9 in 2005 and 2006 by bribing an MCOT employee to conceal records of extra advertising.

The executives of BEC World Plc, which runs Channel 3, decided to keep Sorayuth and his popular programmes for the time being, explaining that the incident occurred before Sorayuth started work with Channel 3, and that the case was not yet finalised.

They said the company knew Sorayuth well as they had worked together for 12 years. However, the company also stated they would monitor public sentiment regarding the issue.

Representatives of the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association, the Thai Journalists Association and the communication arts faculty of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce on Monday afternoon (Feb 29) called on Sorayuth to step down as a news anchor in order to show responsibility and uphold professional ethics.

In a joint statement issued yesterday, the News Broadcasting Council of Thailand and the Thai Broadcast Journalists Association called on Channel 3 management to review the role of Sorayuth to set ethical standards for the Thai media.

They said that Channel 3s decision to allow Sorayuth to remain on air has affected not only the credibility and image of the channel, but that of the Thai media as a whole.

Although Sorayuths case is pending the appeal process, the ruling of the Court of First Instance has proved that there is enough evidence pointing to Sorayuths involvement in fraud, the statement said.

The case is a criminal offence as well as an ethical issue. Therefore, the public expects Channel 3 to demonstrate responsibility and set an ethical example by stopping Sorayuth from appearing on air temporarily until the case is finalised, said the statement.

A National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission subcommittee on television programme scheduling and content held a meeting yesterday to discuss Sorayuths case.

After the meeting, Phaisal Kuwalairat, a subcommittee member, said the meeting had not yet reached any conclusions on the issue.

The subcommittee will ask representatives of Channel 3 to explain the matter on March 7, Mr Phaisal said, adding that the subcommittee has no authority to ask Sorayuth to stop appearing on his programmes.

Wannee Rattanapol, Media Agency Association of Thailand president, said that companies which have placed advertising on Sorayuths programme have started talking about their advertising plans. Some have decided to withdraw advertising from his shows.

However, she said the reaction would largely depend on the decision of Channel 3. If Sorayuth is banned, then much of the advertising would definitely be withdrawn, Ms Wannee said.

Read original story here.
Phuket developer files police complaint after Rawai sea gypsies stave off workers

PHUKET: Representatives of Baron World Trade Co Ltd have filed a complaint with the Chalong Police, calling for Rawai sea gypsies to be arrested for interfering with their workers.

landpropertyconstructionculturemarine

By Darawan Naknakhon

Wednesday 2 March 2016, 08:51AM

The sign posted by Baron World Trade Co Ltd identified the numbers of the four Chanote title deeds used to claim the land and warned 'Absolutely no trespassing. Failure to comply will result in legal action'. Photo: Darawan Naknakhon

Chatri Mardsatul and Chana Chowna filed their complaint at Chalong Police Station yesterday afternoon (Mar 1), alleging that Rawai sea gypsies had trespassed on their land and prevented workers from building a wall at the disputed site.

They presented as evidence photos of villagers sitting on bricks and preventing the workers from working.

Workers brought bricks to the site to build a wall in the area that the company owns, but villagers were upset and stopped the men from working, Mr Chana said.

At least 10 villagers were involved in disrupting the work progress of the company and the company wants the police to press charges against them, he added.

Mr Chana also pointed out that Baron World Trade Co Ltd about a week ago had also posted a sign that identified the numbers of the four Chanote title deeds used to claim the land and plainly warned, Absolutely no trespassing. Failure to comply will result in legal action.

More than 200 villagers gathered near the sea gypsies Balai shrine yesterday morning after 10 workers arrived with bricks and cement.

The workers attempted to mark out where the wall was to be built, but villagers prevented them from doing so and the workers refuse to leave.

Chalong police and defense volunteers were called to the scene as many were afraid that the confrontation would escalate into violence.

Officers from the Chalong Police were presented from 8am, with Chalong Police Chief Nopadon Thiraprawat yesterday pointing out that in total at least 60 law-enforcement officials were at the site to prevent any outbreaks of violence. (See story here.)

By 2pm, more than 30 officials were on site and the company agreed to temporarily stop any attempt of developing the area, but still villagers refused to disperse.

The developer wanted to build a wall and block off the walkway to our Balai shrine, but we wont allow that to happen, said sea gypsy Sanit Shairshoa.

The Phuket Governor asked them to allow us to walk through this area to the Balai shrine and they did temporarily let us walk through, but now they want to build a wall to stop us.

We will stay here and will not allow the company to build a wall and block us off from our place of worship, he said.
Gov. Noem will host veterans fundraiser instead of going to SDPB debate

While Rep. Jamie Smith and Libertarian Tracey Quint will be attending the South Dakota Public Broadcasting gubernatorial debate, Gov. Kristi Noem will be hosting a fundraiser for veterans.
Hamed Shafia was the adored spawn of his parents.

Eldest son among seven children, mini-me patriarch of the Afghan family, groomed as a teenager to take his place in the fathers various businesses and occasionally sent overseas as dads emissary. The brother who, according to statements made by his sisters, would punish them emotionally and physically, during their fathers frequent absences, for violations of the familys strict code of behaviour  removing their hijabs, consorting with boys, missing curfews, acting like Canadian girls.

These were the three sisters  Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13  whose bodies were discovered June 30, 2009, inside a car resting at the bottom of the Rideau Canal locks in Kingston, Ont., along with their aunt, Rona Amir Mohammad, who was in fact their fathers first wife in a polygamous marriage, passed off as a relative and employee when the clan immigrated to Canada.

It was for Hamed that his mother, Tooba, after seven hours of questioning by a detective, changed her initial story of what happened that night the four females disappeared when the family was returning to Montreal from a vacation to Niagara Falls. Tooba, second wife of Mohammad Shafia and mother to all the children, maintained that she was standing on the side of the road near the locks with Hamed  her husband having driven off in one of the familys two vehicles  when they heard a splash. Rushing over to the canal, they saw the second car, a Nissan, in the water, at which point she fainted and could remember nothing else besides Shafia and Hamed driving her to an area motel.

Next morning, Tooba recanted that version, saying the detective had implied Hamed would be tortured  put under freezing water, which was actually an error in translation  until the boy came to his senses and told the truth the family was hiding. With the police inspector claiming certainty that at least one of Hamed or Mohammad was guilty of murdering the women, Tooba later said shed invented a story to exculpate her son and implicate her husband in a planned and methodical honour killing.

Hamed himself later told an undercover private investigator he was present when the car carrying the victims went into the canal, had witnessed what he described as a tragic accident, but didnt call police at the time.

Mohammad, Tooba and Hamed Shafia were ultimately all found guilty of first-degree murder, receiving a mandatory life sentence  25 years before parole eligibility.

First-degree murder also carries an automatic right of appeal. That appeal, brought forward collectively by the three convicted Shafias, will be heard in Toronto on Thursday. But, likely before the appellate court listens to legal arguments on the convictions, the judges have agreed to hear a fresh-evidence motion from Hamed Shafias lawyer that their client was only 17 at the time of the murders  not 18 as everyone had agreed, and to which no one objected during the 45-day trial four years ago.

The collective appeal was originally scheduled for last December, but was put over after the surprising claim disputing Hameds age. If Hamed was indeed 17 when he murdered his sisters and aunt, it would significantly alter both his sentence and parole eligibility. Hamed was tried as an adult, alongside his mother and father. If convicted in youth court and sentenced as a youth  under the principle of diminished moral blameworthiness or culpability provided to those younger than 18 in the Youth Criminal Justice Act  Hamed would be eligible for parole much sooner, perhaps in as little as five years, calculated from the date of his July 2009 arrest.

This may be the first case in Canada where a killer is seeking to prove he was underage after conviction as an adult.

The Crown for the appeal agreed that the appellate judges could read and digest the factum from Hameds lawyers before the hearing, which should limit the time required to present arguments, allowing the collective hearing to proceed immediately thereafter.

It is unusual for an appellate court to consider fresh evidence. Generally, appeals are based on matters of law, perhaps errors allegedly made by the trial judge. Appeals are not intended to retry a case in pursuit of a different outcome. But these are exceptional circumstances, at least as the applicants see it: the belated emergence of documents they say should persuade the court that Hamed was underage (though he could still have been tried as an adult, if the Crown makes a convincing case to the judge.)

Again, it must be stressed that Hamed Shafias trial lawyer never raised the defendants age as a potential issue, and he would fully have understood the significance. Only after the verdict did Hamed and his father allege that the son had been born Dec. 31, 1991, rather than Dec. 31, 1990.

The evidence assembled to support that claim is flimsy, based, the respondent (Crown) argues in its factum, not on personal knowledge but rather on hearsay statements contained in three documents of uncertain and dubious provenance.

To wit: 1) A tazkira, the identity document issued by Afghanistan to some of its citizens, its date of issue May 26, 1995, printed on lightweight paper with no security features, containing two possible dates of birth. Appended is a hand-written note certified by the neighbourhood representative that Hameds date of birth was 10 Jaddi 1370 thirteen seventy, under the Afghan calendar, which would correspond to Dec. 31, 1991; 2) A Census General Presidency form that translates information in the tazkira but which makes no reference to the addendum; and 3) a Certificate of Live Birth from the Public Health Ministry, undated and incomplete. The current Afghan government takes the position that these certificates are not valid for identification purposes.

The Crown will argue the documents are hearsay, their chain of custody is fractured and uncertain, their sudden recovery relies entirely on the evidence of Mohammad Shafia, and, in any event, none of it meets the admissibility criteria for exception to the hearsay rules. The person who purportedly obtained the documents for Mohammad is identified only as Ashmaduallah, allegedly one of his long-term employees from when the family lived in Kabul, but with no address or phone number provided.

Most crucially, the Crown will point to Toobas statement to police that Hamed was 18 when his sisters died, the Afghan passport issued to Tooba in 1996, which included her children and the years of their birth, birth certificates issued by the Afghan embassy while the family was living in Dubai and declarations made by Mohammed in his 2006 immigration application to Canada.

Thats a whole lot of sworn testimony to reverse now, particularly since none of it would go towards the underlying merits of Hameds conviction. Even if the court accepts that Hamed was 17 and should have been severed from his parents at trial, the after-the-fact discovery does not invalidate the proceedings, establish a miscarriage of justice or amount to a Charter violation, the factum declares, adding: The failure to provide the applicant with the protections of the YCJA would not have changed the substance of the trial up to the point the verdict was delivered.

But, if so, Hamed could get out of prison far sooner.

Tomorrow: The crux of the Shafia collective appeal  the trial judge permitting the Crown to call opinion evidence from an academic on the subject of honour killings.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

SHARE:
HOUSTONCNN had an announcement. Donald Trump had won Alabama, one of Americas most conservative states. And Donald Trump had won Massachusetts, one of Americas most liberal states.

Hes winning everywhere. Trump obliterated his rivals around the country on 11-state Super Tuesday, demonstrating a broad national appeal among Republicans seeking radical change. He is now likely one good day away from winning the nomination of a party whose elites generally see him as odious, unelectable or both.

And his opposition remains deeply fractured. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, falling far short of expectations he had set for himself, won only two of the first 10 states to report results. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio won only one.

Related: Super Tuesday, in photos

Cruz urged his rivals to drop out and consolidate behind him, but they are unlikely to do so. Trump will likely benefit from a divided field through the Florida and Ohio primaries of March 15, which may well be the last chance to stop him.

There were more signs of the intraparty tension that has many Republican observers predicting a historic schism. Trump has divided the party into three camps: enthusiastic backers, critics who will say they will never cast a vote for him even against the reviled Hillary Clinton, and wary fence-sitters attempting to simultaneously save their careers and prevent the party from imploding.

Andrea Peterson, a Hillary Clinton supporter, waits for voters to arrive outside Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., on March 1.







The official party statement on the Super Tuesday results didnt even mention Trumps name. The governor of New Mexico refused to commit to supporting him if he were the nominee. Trump, in a typically unusual post-victory appearance at his opulent private club in Florida, threatened Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan while also proclaiming himself a unifier.

Trump, though, also appeared to be trying to position himself for the general election. Speaking more softly than usual, he praised Cruz for his hard work winning Texas, praised the work of Planned Parenthood at length, and previewed his line of attack against Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.

"She's been there for so long, he said, framed presidentially by a wall of flags. If she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years. He added: Politicians are all talk, no action.

The Democratic race, once nearly as dramatic as the Republican race, has now become predictable. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton earned a stranglehold on the party nomination, winning fewer Super Tuesday victories than Trump but by far larger margins.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders needed to keep the outcome at least moderately close in southern states with large black populations. Instead, he got smoked again. In Alabama, Clinton was leading about 80 per cent to 20 per cent as of 11 p.m.; in Texas, the state with the most delegates to earn, she was up 66 per cent to 31 per cent.

Clinton won Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Massachusetts and, according to the New York Times, Alaska. Sanders won his home state and three others that are also heavily white: Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma. But his margins of victory were not nearly large enough to compensate for his failures to make inroads with ethnic minorities in the south.

All across our country today, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together, Clinton told a raucous crowd in Miami.

America prospers when we all prosper, she said, turning her attention to Trump. America is strong when we're all strong. And we know we've got work to do. But that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole. We have to fill in what's been hollowed.

Sanders vowed to stay in the race for the long haul, noting that 35 states had not voted yet.

Let me assure you, we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace, to every one of those states, he said.

Trump, like Clinton, won in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Massachusetts. He added Vermont. Cruz won a do-or-die race in his native Texas, plus religious Oklahoma. Rubio won his first victory of the entire campaign in the Minnesota caucuses.

That triumph was little solace to a Republican establishment that had hoped Rubio would be either leading or the clear non-Trump alternative by now. He failed to win Virginia, where he was strong in the wealthy suburbs of Washington, D.C., and he was uncompetitive in Massachusetts, which has a history of electing traditional Republicans. In other states, including massive Texas, he appeared to miss the 20 per cent threshold required to amass any delegates at all.

He hasn't won anything, Trump said in his post-victory appearance. And he's not going to win much."

Cruzs Texas and Oklahoma wins gave him the leeway to remain the race. But Trump beat him everywhere else in the region he had long considered crucial. As late as Monday night, he called Super Tuesday the single most important day of the campaign.

Trump has now won in almost every part of the country, and he has prevailed on every voting day except for the first in Iowa. His latest triumphs came after a wild week of vicious campaigning and intraparty strife.

Trump earned his first major endorsement from the Republican elite when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie backed him. But numerous Republican activists and officials publicly declared they would not vote for him in a general election. And Trump drew widespread condemnation, including from Ryan, for refusing to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and its former leader, David Duke.

His supporters, as usual, didnt care about the feelings of party grandees. In exit polls, more than half of Republican voters in Southern states said they felt betrayed by the party. In some states, three-quarters of Republican voters said they supported Trumps proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from the country.

Rubio, the preferred candidate of the partys traditional power structure, did not see appreciable results from his dramatic change in tactics over the past week. Once running as a sunny optimist, he had turned himself into a kind of quasi-Trump, savagely attacking the businessman on everything from his appearance to his branded ties to his failed university.

Do not give in to the fear, do not give in to anger, do not give in to sham artists and con artists who try to take advantage of your suffering, he said Tuesday.

Exit polls suggested he did relatively well with voters who decided their vote late in the race. But many of Trumps supporters have been decided for weeks.

Read more about:

SHARE:
American Express (AXP) has lost nearly 30% of its market value since announcing the end of a 16-year relationship with wholesale retailer Costco (COST) , but not the confidence of its biggest investor: Warren Buffett.

Buffett, who made his reputation and fortune while leading investing powerhouse Berkshire HathawayBRK.A (BRK.B) , told investors Saturday that the company's stake in American Express -- already one of its four biggest holdings -- grew by almost a percentage point last year, thanks to stock repurchases.

All four of the companies, which also include Coca-Cola, IBM and Wells Fargo, are "excellent businesses and are run by managers who are both talented and shareholder-oriented," Buffett said. "We much prefer owning a non-controlling but substantial portion of a wonderful company to owning 100% of a so-so business. It's better to have a partial interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone."

Berkshire now holds 15.6% of American Express's stock, valued at about $10.5 billion at the end of last year.

"The earnings our investees retain are often used for repurchases of their own stock," he noted, "a move that increases Berkshire's share of future earnings without requiring us to lay out a dime."

Buffett's faith in American Express may be rewarded as the company moves on from Costco.

With Citigroup and Visa set to issue Costco's branded cards starting this year, AmEx agreed Monday to sell the existing card portfolio, valued at about $13.9 billion, to Citigroup as well. While the companies didn't disclose the deal's terms, American Express had previously predicted a $1 billion gain on the sale.

Losing Costco has pressured American Express stock because the relationship accounted for as much as 8% of total cardholder spending volume in 2015, or about $83.2 billion, according to an annual regulatory filing.

Such "billed business," as American Express calls it, totaled $1.04 trillion, helping determine the size of the company's largest revenue source: fees charged to merchants when cardholders make purchases. Other card issuers typically rely on interest from high credit-card balances.

Recouping the lost revenue won't happen overnight, American Express has noted, and the New York-based company expects to cut $1 billion in expenses this year to bolster profit margins. That will "take some time," CFO Jeffrey Campbell said on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call.

The company noted that relying on fee revenue poses risks, especially since competitors such as Visa or MasterCard may lower their rates, forcing American Express to do likewise.

"As merchants consolidate and become even larger, we may have to increase the amount of incentives and/or concessions we provide to certain merchants, which could materially and adversely affect our results of operations," American Express said in its annual filing.

American Express also ended its co-branding deal with airline JetBlue and expects to sell that $1.1 billion portfolio by the end of this month.

On the upside, it struck a deal with Costco competitor Sam's Club to start accepting AmEx cards last year and solidified co-branded deals with Charles Schwab, Delta Air Lines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, and Starwood Hotels and Resorts.

American Express also negotiated payment deals with tech and digital companies, Facebook, Apple, and Airbnb, and has won a degree of confidence from analysts. About 24% of analysts following the company have a "buy" rating on the stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, and another 59% have a "hold" recommendation.

Exclusive Look Inside: Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS owns Wells Fargo and Bank of America in its portfolio. Want to be alerted before he buys or sells? Learn more now.

American Express appears well-positioned to cope with the loss of both JetBlue and Costco, said David Hilder, a banking analyst at Drexel Hamilton.

"Overtime, I have a lot of confidence in the American Express management's ability to find new customers and introduce new products to replace those earnings," he said.

Buffett, meanwhile, assured Berkshire's investors that they'll continue to benefit both from the company's non-ownership stakes as well as its acquisitions.

"Our willingness to invest large sums passively in non-controlled businesses gives us a significant edge over companies that limit themselves to acquisitions they will operate," he wrote. "Woody Allen once explained that the advantage of being bi-sexual is that it doubles your chance of finding a date on Saturday night. In like manner -- well, not exactly like manner -- our appetite for either operating businesses or passive investments doubles our chances of finding sensible uses for Berkshire's endless gusher of cash."
Billboards are a boring staple of advertising but an initiative by billboard giant Clear Channel Outdoors America (CCO) may help change the perception that they're quaint and ineffective in a world of whiz-bang digital marketing technology.

Clear Channel Outdoor Radar will help advertisers track key information about consumers. That includes where they are driving and visits to retailers (that is, which billboards they are likely to see and how effective they might be). Perhaps most importantly, the program may help brands and their agencies to correlate a driver's route to sales.

Clear Channel launched Radar Feb. 29 and will initially target 11 major markets, including Los Angeles and New York. The company will widen its focus throughout the U.S. over the rest of 2016. Clear Channel Radar is partnering with three companies that offer services related to tracking individuals' locations and buying babits. The company can map a consumer's travel and shopping patterns against the location of billboards. For example, the Radar system can theoretically help a brand determine if someone has bought an item after passing a billboard that advertised it.

But the technology is already raising issues of privacy. Privacy advocates have compared Radar to Big Brother, the fictional watchdog from George Orwall's novel 1984. The advocates have said that an individual should have a right to privacy in certain public areas. The same argument prompted some municipalities to eliminate cameras that catch drivers who've run red lights or are speeding.

Clear Channel said that it is doing nothing beyond what mobile advertisers have been doing for years to pinpoint consumer behavior. A company spokesperson toldNational Public Radio that the company would only view aggregated data to determine trends, not collect information about individuals. Mobile advertisers and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have been using data about consumer behavior to help create more effective marketing campaigns.

But that trend has not applied much to so-called Out-of-Home advertising, which covers billboards and smaller displays in public areas. Clear Channel, a public subsidiary of iHeart Media, is the oldest outdoor advertising company in the U.S. and remains among its largest. Its holdings including not only billboards but mall, airport and transit advertising of various sizes. In an interview with Media Village, Clear Channel Senior Vice President of Research and Insights Andy Stevens said that he saw Radar as a way of translating digital insights to the "out of home" space.

AT&T Data Patterns, a unit of mobile carrier AT&T, gathers location data from subscribers. Place IQ and Placed. PlaceIQ uses location data from apps to help understand consumer behavior while Placed pays consumers to track their movements. Placed uses this data to link exposure to ads to store visits. The three companies insist that the data they collect is anonymous and and aggregated and that they respect consumers' privacy.

The Radar program will allow companies to see trends, including the number of people who pass billboards, their average age and gender. That will enable brands and their agencies to pinpoint their campaigns so that they are more engaging. The use of technology offers follows a pattern of out of home advertisers looking for ways to help customers understand consumers and reach them. In recent years, a number of them have mounted cameras to observe passersby. But the Clear Channel program is meant to provide more in-depth analysis.

A Radar test program in Orlando, Fla. with the philanthropic shoe manufacturer TOMS showed promise. It found that individuals who

were exposed to the TOMS' Radar campaign were 25% more aware of TOMS' social mission. They were 122% more likely to speak about the TOM's brand with friends and 44% more likely to purchase TOMS' shoes or other products.

Clear Channel has struggled to find ways of growing its business at a time when an increasing share of advertising is moving online. The company's share price has dropped 60% in the past year. In the past quarterly earnings statement, revenues fell 3.2% and the company sold off some of its assets to a competitor, Lamar Advertising.

Clear Channel is banking that out of home advertising is still relevant, and there is evidence to support this. Arbitron's 2013 outdoor advertising study reports that people spend an average of 20 hours a week on the road.

The study found that:

46% of drivers look at billboards all the time or most of the time

one in four people who viewed a billboard in the past month visited the ad's associated website

In addition, new developments in billboard technology are allowing advertisers to change ads frequently or swap them out for others. But that depends on understanding ads' effectiveness.

TOMS VP Business Development Jordan Glassberg said that the Radar campaign helped his company see what was working in greater detail.

"Using state of the art digital measurement, Clear Channel was not only able to show that OOH ad recall was among the highest of any media channel, but also proved that the OOH drove significant increases in awareness of TOMS' social mission, which was the primary campaign goal," Glassberg said. "For us, the supporting data reinforced the power of our creative on the outdoor canvas and helped validate our media strategy."

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Who will be the next vice president?

Super Tuesday, a one-day glut of primary voting for a dozen states, has come and gone and it looks increasingly like we'll see the GOP nominate Donald Trump and that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. On the Republican side, Trump led the pack ahead of a second place Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio was a distant third. Meanwhile, the Democrats saw Hillary Clinton hang on to her lead over Bernie Sanders, but not by a wide enough margin to shut down the insurgent campaign.

There are still five real candidates in this race, and thats where the running mates come in.

Ever since the vice presidency became a joint ticket, instead of the runner up in the Presidential election, candidates have used the position to address their own weaknesses. Whether its George W. Bush borrowing Dick Cheneys aura of experience or John F. Kennedy riding on Lyndon Johnsons Southern credentials, a President picks the VP who brings something to the table that he or she lacks. So what do this years presumptive candidates need?

Bernie Sanders

Going into Super Tuesday, many analysts had written the Sanders campaign off, but the senator from Vermont managed to keep the primary competitive by taking four states over the course of the evening.

Sanders has insisted that hes not going anywhere and theres no reason not to take him at his word, given the amount of money he has raised. So, what should he look for in a running mate? Candidates pick a vice president who addresses some issue or demographic that they need to reach, political consultant Steve Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell Research & Communications explained. For Sanders, that issue has consistently been pragmatism and electability.

Sanders economic plans have been the centerpiece of his campaign, and while issues such as universal health care and free tuition electrify his largely-youthful base, outside of the faithful hes struggled to convince audiences that he can turn those dreams into reality.

Criticized by voices from the Boston Globe to the enormously influential Paul Krugman, Sanders still hasnt connected with the establishment and moderate figures hed need on his side in a general election. (This is not entirely by chance given the candidates frequent criticism of establishment politics.) Whats more, he turns voters off the older they get, losing those over 45 to Clinton, even during his New Hampshire landslide.



Sanders on Super Tuesday.

These critics generally repeat the same concerns: that Sanders is a socialist with a vague political roadmap. Even NPR (hardly a bastion of left wing squishes) pointed out that [i]ts easy to see a GOP candidate hitting Sanders with this in a general-election debate: Even liberal economists have doubts about your program.

In picking his running mate, Mitchell said, Sanders will need to find someone who can help show that the candidate is capable of effectively governing what is still a center-right country. The big question is, who can do that?

According to reporting last year by The Hill, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro is an early favorite, along with Senator Elizabeth Warren and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Sanders has dropped hints that he might tap Warren for the position. While she is a populist figure in her own right, Warren also enjoys solid approval ratings nationwide which could help with outreach among new voters. At the same time, Castro and Vilsack are both established executive branch figures, two Secretaries who would bring experience as well as ties back to the Obama Administration. With Castros history as Mayor of San Antonio, he could also bring southern roots as well as a connection to the Hispanic community. Sanders has frequently and unashamedly positioned himself on the far left of his party. As a presidential candidate, expect him to reach out to someone who can help build bridges back to the center.

Hillary Clinton

I think shes looking for somebody whos going to offset her age, offset her gender and excite young voters, Mitchell said.

Democrats need the youth vote in order to win elections he said, but How do they get these idealistic young people to turn out to vote when Sanders loses?

Young voters have supported Sanders overwhelmingly but theyre also a highly challenging demographic. Voters under the age of 30 are the least likely to show up on Election Day, and participation has been falling. Yet voter participation among the young noticeably improves when the parties offer someone who inspires them; the 2008 election prompted enormous youth-voter turnout and Sanders has managed to tap into that energy once again. Given that Democrats often depend on their dominance in this demographic, the Clinton campaign needs to be concerned about its catch-22 path to the White House: Clinton might have trouble winning the election without Sanders supporters. But to get the nomination she has to crush their hero.

Warren has played this kind of inspirational figure in the past, setting the Democrats on fire with the same tough-talk and unashamed liberalism that has propelled Sanders today. However Berkeley political science Professor Terri Bimes doesnt expect the Clinton camp to break in that direction.

On the Democratic side, there will be some pressure on Hillary Clinton to pick a Latino or African-American running mate, she wrote in an e-mail. It is more likely she will pick a male running candidate, giving Elizabeth Warren a low probability of being selected. And I think she will pick someone younger than herself--not Bernie Sanders. I think Julian Castro would be a good selection.



Clinton on Super Tuesday.

At the same time, she cautioned against getting carried away with demographic selections and losing sight of other dimensions that matter, namely experience in governing.

Mitchell echoed Bimes sentiments, suggesting also that Clinton cannot nominate another woman to the ticket without losing some voters. The ones who want a woman in office will already choose her, he said, while an all-female ticket risks turning off some others (whether theyd admit it or not).

Clinton has responded to the Sanders phenomenon by steadily moving to the left on several issues including Wall Street and trade. While making her pick the former Secretary of State will have to pay attention to several factors, such as acceptability to the party, gender and her own age. Yet expect her to take advantage of the symbolic opportunity this offers her as well. This will be a good chance for Clinton to reach out to the Sanders wing of her party in advance of Novembers election. Candidates like Castro or Ohios Sherrod Brown have been discussed as good potential nominees, and would fit with what Clinton has to accomplish.

Or, perhaps Sanders could be the pick

Republicans

One potential nominee merits exceptional consideration for the Republican ticket in 2016, regardless of which of the three front runners heads it.

Each of the partys likely candidates has specific and individual weaknesses which must be addressed in a VP pick. Rubio is increasingly seen as an empty suit, a robot. With Trump there are a range of concerns, from ignorance on basic issues of national defense to backhanded endorsements of authoritarian policies. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz has been the mascot for some of the campaigns that have most damaged the Republican brand over the past several years, including a government shutdown and debt-ceiling crises. As a candidate he and Trump would face similar charges of extremism, if from different records.



Cruz on Super Tuesday.

Predicting Trump as the nominee, Mitchell nevertheless said that no matter who wins the primary I cant see how anybody...whose going to be the nominee would not select [John] Kasich.

In terms of the Republican Party ticket, Kasich is the only logical candidate, he said, adding that the Ohio governor is the strongest candidate with experience at the executive level both as a politician and a [governor].

Kasich, who has so far managed to avoid getting into a major conflict with any of the remaining candidates, would address many of the concerns that each candidate will have to address with his nomination.

As a public servant with over 30 years of experience, Kasich would bring the kind of experience that Rubio famously lacks. His nomination would allow the campaign to keep its themes of youth and energy, while adopting a Bush-like concept of the senior advisor in the background. This would be very valuable for a candidate who increasingly has struggled with the perception that he is too young and inexperienced for the job.



Rubio on Super Tuesday.

At the same time, Kasichs modern reinvention of himself as the reasonable man in the room could help Trump or Cruz dilute their own brands, often defined in the minds of many voters as extremist.

Marco Rubio reminds me of many politicians Ive known, tweetedNew York Times columnist Nick Kristof back in November. Ted Cruz reminds me of many warlords Ive known. A few months later Donald Trump would retweet approvingly a quote from Mussolini.

The two candidates risk driving away voters in droves, a fear that has already begun to haunt Trump as CNN reported Tuesday that his remarks on the KKK already began costing him votes. In need of a moderate, expect the two candidates to at least consider seriously Kasich as someone who can balance the ticket and reassure independents.

While Mitchell also put great value in Kasichs perceived ability to deliver Ohio, a crucial swing state, Bimes was less convinced.

Examining the home states of vice-presidential picks since the 2000 election reveals that Presidents for the most part (exception maybe 2012) were not picking their vice presidents based on their home state being a battleground state, she said.

In addition to Kasich, political junkies should keep an eye out for Niki Haley who delivered the Republicans 2016 response to the State of the Union. Particularly as a potential running mate for the increasingly unlikely Rubio campaign, Haley could drive home the image of a new, more diverse, Republican Party.

Also dont entirely discount the possibility of Rubio himself. While there has been no credible discussion of a vice presidential bid for him, his performance on Super Tuesday makes it look increasingly unlikely that he'll be the nominee. Voters should keep an eye out for signs of an alliance between Rubio and Cruz, particularly, Bimes noted, in the event of a brokered convention.

Donald Trump's vice-president selection will be more difficult, Bimes said. It will be hard to be second to Trump.



Trump on Super Tuesday with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has endorsed him, looking on.
While larger and better-known Chinese social media stocks hog the limelight, investors are overlooking one of the most exciting plays on the country's ascendant and tech-savvy middle class.

The financial press last year was all abuzz when Chinese online and mobile commerce giant Alibaba Group completed its $3.9 billion purchase of Chinese video site Youku Tudou. Alibaba already owned 18% of Youku, often called "The YouTube of China." When it comes to Chinese social media stocks, Alibaba still tends to get all the attention.

But here's an under-the-radar opportunity you shouldn't miss:

While global markets seesaw and China grapples with financial turmoil, SINA Corp. (SINA) is on track for robust double-digit gains this year. SINA is among a class of investments that will "beat the bear" in what promises to be an otherwise dismal year for investors.



SINA data by YCharts



SINA is scheduled to report fourth-quarter 2015 results on Wednesday, March 2. The consensus earnings per share (EPS) forecast for the quarter is $0.11. The reported EPS for the same quarter last year was $0.10.

Last quarter, SINA posted a positive earnings surprise of 87.50%. If SINA surprises again on March 2, expect the stock to take off.

With headquarters in Shanghai, SINA's business model is straightforward: The company sells space on SINA.com to advertisers, which produces about 75% of revenue.

As China's middle class grows more affluent and technologically proficient, among the biggest beneficiaries will be SINA and its microblogging service Sina Weibo, which was launched in August 2009.

SINA generates revenue from fee-based, value-added services on its Sina Weibo platform. The number of Sina Weibo's registered accounts exceeds 500 million. Resembling an amalgam of Twitter and Facebook, Sina Weibo is a huge cultural phenomenon in a country that's given to crazed fads. But unlike many ephemeral "happenings" in the world's most populous country, SINA's offerings have staying power.

SINA also provides corporate e-mail services and operates a gaming portal that gives users downloads and access to popular online games.

U.S.-based Twitter is banned by the Chinese government, which keeps a tight leash on news. The subsequent social media vacuum gives Sina Weibo a gigantic opportunity. Sina Weibo is provided more leeway by the central government because it's indigenous and regulators impose stringent guidelines on its content. Sina Weibo is smart enough to apply self-censorship, while at the same time allowing slightly "edgy" content that won't run afoul of censors.

Alibaba recently paid $586 million for a nearly 20% stake in Sina Weibo, a deal that secured the microblogging service's lead over its competitors.

SINA is tailoring its content to young, Internet-obsessed consumers in rural territories. China's accelerating rural-to-urban migration represents one of the most significant demographic transformations in history. At the same time, China's economic policymakers are spending large sums to enhance the country's Internet infrastructure, which facilitates the growth of companies such as SINA.

SINA's trailing 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is 36.37, cheap compared to the trailing P/E of 44.96 for its industry. The stock now trades at about $43. The median analyst one-year price target for SINA shares is $57, for a gain of 32.5%. On the high end, the one-year target is $70, for a gain of 62.7%. With a market cap of $3.01 billion and scant debt on its balance sheet, SINA offers market-beating growth over the long haul.

85% Accurate Trader gives his personal guarantee. He turned $50,000 into $5 million trading this way and for a limited time, he's guaranteeing you at least $67,548 per year in profitable trades if you follow this simple step-by-step process. Click here to see how easy it is to collect thousands of dollars in "Free Money" every month.

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.
Remember when Ben Carson was polling so well he was placed center stage next to Donald Trump at the Republican presidential debate? Oh, how times have changed.

The retired neurosurgeon told supporters in a statement on Wednesday he has decided not to attend Thursday's presidential debate in Detroit, having decided he does not see a "political path forward" in the wake of his poor showing in Super Tuesday voting. He pledged to continue with his "grassroots movement on behalf of 'We the People'" and said he will discuss more about the future of the movement during his speech on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Carson's campaign had been flailing for quite some time since he surged in the polls last fall. He came in a disappointing fourth place in the Iowa caucus, bringing in just over 9% of the vote in a state where he had the best prospects to make a dent, and it was all downhill from there.

While Carson's wasn't the winningest campaign, it was among the most intriguing and, at times, puzzling. Poised alongside Trump as a Washington outsider, Carson's rookie status often showed, whether through his inability to differentiate the pronunciation between Hamas and hummus, his repeated gaffes on basic foreign policy issues, or the simple inability to walk onto the debate stage.

Unless he is pegged as frontrunner Trump's running mate --

which a recent poll indicates voters would like to see

-- we may have seen the last of Carson in the political sphere. (Luckily, the good doctor has

book deals

and

speaking engagements

to fall back on.)

Here's a look at seven of Carson's most interesting, albeit at times bizarre, moments on the campaign trail. Maybe now that it's over, he'll finally come clean about whether or not he actually stabbed someone as a teen. And squeeze in a nap.

1. The Book Tour Timeout

Back in October, Carson decided to take a time out from campaigning to sell books. ABC News reported the doctor would put his public campaign events on hold for two weeks to go on a book tour for A More Perfect Union and catch up on fundraising events, of which more than 20 were scheduled.

"It's a question of co-mingling from the corporate standpoint to the Federal Election Commission standpoint so it's just better to avoid any bad appearance," spokesman Doug Watts told the outlet at the time.

But almost as soon as the news broke, the Carson camp appeared to reverse course, telling CNNseparately that he would not be suspending campaigning.

"Dr. Carson does have a book out that he's talking about on the campaign trail, but he's also talking about issues. He's talking about his policies. It's a very delicate situation but Dr. Carson has not suspended [his campaign]," said Armstrong Williams, Carson's business manager.

2. The Laundry Pit Stop

Carson appears to have an aversion to dry cleaners in Iowa -- or he's just not great at making up excuses. On the day of the Iowa caucus, the retired neurosurgeon announced that after voting concluded in the Hawkeye State he would head home to Florida for a while to rest and "get some fresh clothes."

Carson's campaign was quick to clarify that his pit stop didn't signify the end of his campaign, but it still led to an enormous debacle.

Ted Cruz's camp used the announcement to spread a false rumor that Carson was suspending his bid, citing a

CNN

report that the

outlet has denied

. Carson

accused

the Texas senator's team of sabotage and playing a "dirty trick" to get a leg up, but the damage was already done.

The internet had a fun time with Carson clothes jokes as well.

3. Carson Makes a Funny

Carson has admitted to falling asleep while driving on more than one occasion, and he appeared to fall asleep on the campaign trail at time as well. His subdued manner and reduced energy became a running joke among onlookers, and Carson decided it was better to laugh with people than to be laughed at by them.

"I'm very happy to get a question early on. I was going to ask you up when the time came," he cracked in response to his first question from Fox Business Network moderators at a January GOP debate.

4. Carson Can't Figure Out to Take the Debate Stage

The first step of any good debate is getting all of the candidates onto the stage, and for Carson, making it to the podium was a struggle at the February 6 showdown in New Hampshire.

The retired neurosurgeon appeared to have missed his cue when introduced by moderators and instead remained patiently -- and awkwardly -- planted backstage as Cruz, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush passed him by.

Trump stayed behind along with Carson, and the moderators forgot to call out John Kasich until Chris Christie reminded them of the error.

5. The Campaign Shakeup

Just ahead of the New Year, three of Carson's top aides walked away from his campaign. Campaign manager Barry Bennett, communications director Doug Watts and deputy campaign manager Lisa Coen left the doctor's White House bid.

According to The Des Moines Register, Bennett and Watts quit because of tensions with Armstrong Williams, a conservative radio personality and longtime friend of Carson's who had been advising him. Coen followed them because she was "deeply concerned about the campaign's ability to move forward successfully" without their involvement.

Carson explained away the shakeup, saying in an interview days later that his campaign was in a "different ballgame" and that the leadership he had in place was unable to execute.

"We have had very good people that had very good ideas and no one predicted that we would even be in the hunt," he said. "It really is quite spectacular what we were able to do. But the fact of the matter is now we're in a different ballgame and we need the ability to execute and not just have good ideas."

6. The Secret Closet Meeting with Cruz

Cruz's dirty tricks in Iowa caused a rift between the senator and the neurosurgeon, and in February, the two held a private meeting to chat it out. The location: a closet. Really.

According to The Daily Beast, the pair huddled in a storage closet for 20-to-25 minutes as Carson's Secret Service detail stood outside the evening before the Conservative Review convention in South Carolina. Carson's campaign confirmed the meeting, which was supposed to be short and off-the-record, and blamed Cruz for leaking its occurrence in an attempt to rectify his public image.

"We weren't going to comment to the press on it, but it seems pretty clear that the other party involved had a different agenda," Jason Osborne, senior communications strategist for Carson's campaign, told the publication. "How else could we perceive that to be?"

He also clarified that the meeting "did not go well."

7. "Putin is a one-horse country -- oil and energy."

That was one of Carson's lines from the January 28 Republican debate. It pretty much speaks for itself.
What on earth has gotten into Jamie Dimon?

The chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) landed on the cover of the newly designed Bloomberg Markets magazine on Tuesday, expounding on everything from the markets in China to his bank's purported focus on customers.

If you were hoping to hear from the belligerent banker who mocked former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and railed that U.S. regulations might drive business overseas, the Q&A with Bloomberg's editor-in-chief may disappoint.

Here's Dimon talking to Bloomberg about regulation:

"I completely understand that society has a perfectly legitimate right to put in structures and regulations and rules that make it fairer, better, cleaner."

Sounds reasonable enough to me. But would it have sounded reasonable to the guy who said in January 2015 that beleaguered banks were "under assault" by regulators?

That guy would be a considerably more combative Dimon, who told reporters on a conference call that banks were coming under siege by as many as six regulators each time an "issue" arose.

He punctuated his point with a Dimon classic:

"You all should ask the question about how American that is. And how fair that is. And how complex that is for companies."

I'd guess that a bunch of regulators piling on is plenty complex for companies. I'd also guess that the prospect of six regulators breathing down your neck would be a compelling incentive to consider a business strategy of playing by the rules.

But I'm not always such a good guesser.

Joe Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, said his boss's comments in the Bloomberg story "were consistent with views he expressed in his past four or five shareholder letters." Those letters "provide a lot more context than some of the soundbites you may be referring to," he said.

Irrespective of his shareholder missives, the Dimon whom we've watched in exchanges with the media has moved from bellicose regulatory combatant to a more measured executive. For now, at least.

JPMorgan has paid $36 billion in settlements since the financial crisis, including fines in complex cases related to manipulating foreign currency rates and ignoring red flags in the accounts of a very special customer named Bernie Madoff.

Along with four other banks, JPMorgan pleaded guilty to the former. That one cost J.P. Morgan $550 million. In the Madoff case, the bank paid $2 billion to resolve criminal charges.

In the interview published Tuesday, the refashioned Dimon dodged a question about whether it was a negative that fewer people with financial and banking experience were finding their way into regulatory jobs.

(Some of us categorize these career moves from Wall Street to Washington -- and back -- as examples of the regulatory "revolving door" that puts finance stars in charge of regulating their cronies. Passionate criticism of the practice, post-financial crisis, has made it more uncomfortable for politicians to tap financiers for government positions).

"I'm not going to say that, because then I'll get in trouble," Dimon told his interviewer.

Now there's a new one. Dimon, afraid he'll get in trouble? Is this the same guy who once told Fox News that the Volcker Rule would put bankers in a position where they would "have to have a lawyer, a compliance officer, a doctor to see what their testosterone levels are, and a shrink"?

I don't want to pry, but could somebody check to see if everything is OK over there at 270 Park Avenue?

Old Jamie Dimon testified before the Senate Banking Committee in June 2012 on his fear that the Volcker Rule would drive business overseas: "I don't want to be sitting here in 20 years trying to figure out why it's elsewhere," he said.

New Jamie Dimon on March 1, told Bloomberg, "From my point of view, the American financial system -- including banks and investment banks -- is far safer because of capital and liquidity requirements. Despite all the turbulence so far this year, I don't think anyone's questioning our system."

Okay, so he's a big-shot CEO with a powerful company to protect. None of us should be shocked that he would tweak his public persona as it became clear that nobody was buying his nonsense that defenseless banks were being bullied by regulators.

But I must say that there's one thing in Dimon's 5,000-word interview that's tough to swallow no matter what the political climate. Customers come first, the CEO told Bloomberg. In fact, JPMorgan is so aligned with its customers' interest that sometimes "because we want to help them, we have to say no" when they're looking for a credit card or a loan, he said.

Before you get all choked up over the bank's noble intentions, consider some recent history.

On Dec. 18, JPMorgan agreed to pay $267 million and admit wrongdoing in a case where the Securities and Exchange Commission said it had failed to disclose conflicts of interest to its money management customers.

The SEC said the firm didn't tell clients that it was favoring expensive, firm-managed, mutual funds over cheaper alternatives. The firm said the oversights were not intentional.

Customers come first? Apparently not all the time. Whether you're hearing from Dimon the fighter or Dimon the statesman, it's worth keeping in mind that at least part of the message may be fiction.
Hillary Clinton won the majority of delegates on Super Tuesday, but Bernie Sanders' campaign is hardly finished -- and young Latino voters might be his key to keeping it going.

Sanders won primaries or caucuses in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont, more than some pundits expected from the Vermont senator. In fact, four wins is exactly what his campaign forecasted. He continues to poll particularly well among people under 30 years of age.

Clinton countered with runaway victories in Texas and across the South: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. She also won a squeaker in Massachusetts, thanks largely to that state's high proportion of voters over 45 years of age. Clinton does especially well with women over 45, as polling within Massachusetts confirmed.

In Texas, Clinton showed her institutional strength, and the power of decades of outreach to African-Americans and Latinos, recording a resounding 32 percentage point advantage over Sanders. That gap speaks volumes about her ability to win in states with more moderate bases of Democratic voters.

Not including Super Delegates, Clinton holds a 544 to 349 lead over Sanders. But when the party leaders and operatives are included in the delegate total, Clinton's lead grows to 1,001 to 371.

Looking ahead two weeks to primaries in Florida, Illinois, North Carolin and Ohio, Sanders needs to get a boost from the increasing role of young Latinos in his campaign. As much as Sanders profile among Latinos is growing and improving, Clinton continues to get the lion's share of their support, said Sylvia Manzano, a principal at Latino Decisions, a policy and polling firm.

"His approval rating has been going up, but when it comes time to choose a candidate, a larger number of Latinos still choose Hillary Clinton," Manzano said in an interview from Houston. "They're more familiar with her, especially in the West, where she's visited these cities for years and years."

A similar story played out in 2008 when Barack Obama faced Clinton. The more Latinos got to know Obama, Manzano said, the more they liked him. But when it came time to vote, they went with Clinton.

In Texas, exit polls revealed that Clinton's support came from all demographic segments except those under 30 years old. Latinos, meanwhile, comprised about 28% of the Democratic turnout in Texas, of which Clinton captured 66%. That's a two-to-one lead over Sanders among Latinos. If Sanders can flip that, he can win some big primary prices in the coming weeks.

Going forward, Sanders will need strong support from young Latinos, both those who can vote and the so-called "Dreamers," who arrived in the U.S. as undocumented children and seek a route to citizenship, said Xavier Medina Vidal, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas' Blair Center for Southern Politics and Society.

For these young people, the issue of deportation is a crucial subject. Both Sanders and Clinton have enthusiastically backed Obama's 2012 executive orders aimed at giving the Dreamers and their parents a respite from the fear that they of their parents could be deported. The backdrop is that deportations under Obama are actually larger than under former President George W. Bush.

"Hillary is saying most of the right things on immigration," he added. "But when she aligns herself generally with Obama, she has to be careful. A lot of Latinos have been disappointed by Obama's record on deportations."

As president, Obama has deported more than 2.5 million people, a 23% increase above Bush's eight years in office, earning him the monicker of "Deporter-in-Chief."

In an effort to win Latino support and clarify implementation of existing immigration law, Obama issued the executive orders known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, aimed at providing temporary relief from deportation for about five million undocumented immigrants.

Texas and 25 other states sued to stop portions of both DACA and DAPA. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of those orders in June. In the meantime, young undocumented Sanders supporters offer his campaign a bevy of campaign workers, but they can't vote.

"We're talking about a large number of college-age people who have become polically engaged except that they don't have the ability to vote," Medina added. "That enthusiasm is great but it's only great if it mobilizes those who can actually vote and can vote for Bernie Sanders."

The backdrop to Latino organizing, of course, is the issue of immigration reform and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump's call to build a 1,000 mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and prevent Muslims from entering the country. Both Sanders and Clinton stand to benefit politically, Manzano said.

As a result, immigration has moved from being an issue about policy to a touchstone about ethnicity and place within U.S. society. Trump's heated rhetoric is already fueling a surge in voter registration and citizenship efforts.

"Its not just immigration but it's the xenophobia around it," she said. "There's an ugliness about it, a sense of being under attack that has never been so white hot. That gives Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that they're on their side of this issue, and then to talk about other things. It certainly raises the stakes if Trump is the nominee."
Consumer review Web site Angie's List (ANGI) came to an agreement with activist investor TCS Capital Management, paving a smoother road for a sale. Angie's List said Tuesday it will add three dissident-backed directors to the board.

TCS Capital's president and founder, Eric Semler, and industry veterans George Bell and Tom Evans are joining the board while John Biddinger is retiring. With the additions and the retirement, the Indianapolis-based consumer review site is expanding the board to 11 from nine members.

The settlement also includes a standstill agreement with the activist and will allow New York-based TCS Capital to purchase up to 12.75% of Angie's List outstanding shares. It currently has a 9.6% stake in the Internet company.

TCS first arrived on the Angie's List scene more than six months ago but The Deal reported in December the company had started holding preliminary discussions with the activist investor that could result in adding a minority slate of the directors of the activist's choice.

The agreement with its activist investor comes just about two weeks before Angie's List's deadline for director nominations.

TCS Capital launched its campaign in July when it revealed that it planned to have talks with Angie's List about exploring a sale. In October, the activist pitched a tax-free merger between Angie's List and IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (IACI) HomeAdvisor.

The following month, IAC came to the the table by offering to purchase Angie's List for $8.75 per share, or $512 million based on the target's 58.52 million outstanding shares. Less than a week after Barry Diller's media empire made its proposal public, Angie's List rejected the bid and argued that the $8.75-per-share offer undervalued it.

Since then, Angie's List has caught the attention of another activist, Vajra Asset Management, that disclosed its 9.1% stake in the company last week and revealed that it may consider having talks with management about exploring strategic options, among others. Vajra represents yet another voice of support for TCS Capital's campaign at Angie's List, around which other activist funds have started to circle, The Deal reported Monday.

"Now that TCS has three board seats, it could make the [sale] process more smooth," said Kerry Rice, managing director of equity research at Needham & Co, via phone. Rice added the standstill doesn't preclude a sale and that a bid of $10 per share, or $585.2 million, from a prospective buyer would be a "palatable" offer price for Angie's List.

At the same time, Angie's List may not need to take actions immediately as it appears to be taking steps in the right direction under the leadership of new CEO, Scott Durchslag, he added. "I think they will give him more time to make an impact," Rice explained.



Company followers have said while growth has slowed down for Angie's List, it still has a strong brand name and could garner interest from a wide range of strategics such as Comcast (CMCSA) , Yelp (YELP) , Groupon (GRPN) and Pricelineundefined , among others.

For its part, IAC asserted during its Feb. 3 fourth-quarter earnings call with investors that the company is currently focused on operating its own business though its chief executive did refer to its Angie's List overture.

"We put an offer on the table. We attempted to engage with them. They had no interest," said IAC CEO Joseph Levin of Angie's List. "In the meantime, things have changed. Markets moved. We have a lot going on ourselves. We have a business to run and we have a ton of opportunity in our business."

Shares of Angie's List closed Tuesday at $8.45, giving the company a market cap of around $498.56 million. The stock is down about 9.6% for the year to date.

Officials with TCS and Angie's List declined to comment while those with IAC did not return requests for comment Tuesday.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Monsanto (MON) stock is tumbling 7.78% to $85.29 in morning trading on Wednesday after slashing its earnings forecast for the year as the dollar has strengthened and seed prices have fallen.

The agricultural products provider now expects that full-year adjusted earnings will range between $4.40 and $5.10 per share, down from its previous projection for earnings between $5.10 and $5.60 per share.

"They preannounced an ugly number way worse than I thought," TheStreet's Jim Cramer said on CNBC's Squawk on the Street this morning.

At the same time, however, Bernstein has published a note arguing that the agricultural cycle has bottomed, and rival agricultural company Dow Chemical (DOW) expects its numbers to go higher, Cramer pointed out.

"Do you decide that Monsanto is an outsider?" he wondered.

Cramer doesn't believe that it is. The company will be influenced primarily by broader factors such as herbicide prices rather than more specific factors such as opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Monsanto is the world's biggest GMO seed-maker.

He urges investors not to read too much into the situation and think that anti-GMO millennials have finally gotten to the company.

"I think it should be bought on weakness," Cramer stated.

In the above video, Cramer also warns against selling Dow Chemical stock on Monsanto's weakness. "I think that's wrong," he said. "Dow is the buy, we own it for Action Alerts PLUS."

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "hold" with a ratings score of C+.

Monsanto's strengths such as its notable return on equity, good cash flow from operations and expanding profit margins are countered by weaknesses including a generally disappointing performance in the stock itself, deteriorating net income and generally higher debt management risk.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: MON

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 article's author.

MON

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of CSX Corp. (CSX) are increasing by 1.22% to $24.94 on Wednesday morning, as the company reportedly turned down Canadian Pacific Railway's (CP) approach to combine.

The Canadian transcontinental railway operator, which is pursuing an unsolicited takeover bid for Norfolk Southern Corp. (NSC), recently revived a more than $20 billion attempt to merge with CSX, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

The Jacksonville, FL-based rail service transportation company was approached by Canadian Pacific again in January, according to Canadian Pacific CEO Hunter Harrison and sources cited by the Journal.

It is unclear why CSX rejected the offer.

Although the new approach was turned down, Canadian Pacific is still interested. The Calgary-based company made its first unsuccessful bid to purchase CSX in 2014, the Journal noted.

Canadian Pacific sees the benefit of merging with either CSX or Norfolk Southern because of the stronghold each has in the eastern U.S.

The company continues to be committed to buying Norfolk Southern for about $30 billion, but is also determined to build a transnational railway and want to keep its options open, Harrison said, according to the Journal.

"We've said all along that if we looked at the synergies between the two eastern carriers, right now both of them would work for us," he said.

Shares of Canadian Pacific are declining 1.05% to $121.67 in mid-morning trading on Wednesday.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Buy" rating with a score of B- on the stock.

This is driven by some important positives, which should have a greater impact than any weaknesses, and should give investors a better performance opportunity than most stocks covered. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, attractive valuation levels and expanding profit margins. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows weak operating cash flow.

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: CSX

CSX

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX) are increasing by 1.66% to $13.49 on Wednesday morning, as gold prices trade in the green.

For April delivery, gold is up by 0.74% to $1,239.90 per ounce on the COMEX this morning.

The price of the precious metal is advancing today as global equities moved lower after oil prices declined, Reuters reports.

Gold is often seen as a safer asset during periods of financial volatility.

"We are still in the phase of investors filling their boots and that means the retracement we are seeing in gold is likely to be used as a buying opportunity," Saxo Bank senior manager Ole Hansen told Reuters.

The metal began the day lower, but a retreat in stocks and oil prices boosted demand for gold.

So far this year, gold has gained by about 16% amid financial instability and concerns about a slowing global economy, Reuters noted.

Barrick Gold is a Toronto-based gold mining company.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D on the stock.

This is driven by multiple weaknesses, 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.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its disappointing return on equity, poor profit margins and generally high debt management risk.

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: ABX

ABX

data by

YCharts
The race for the presidential nominations isn't over yet, even with strong Super Tuesday showings for Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

"On the Republican side it was a good night for Donald Trump but not as good of a night as he was hoping to have one or two weeks ago," said Avik Roy, opinion editor at Forbes.

"One thing that's important to note: there was some erosion in his support over the last week," Roy said.

Trump won the contests in seven states, but Ted Cruz won three states and Rubio won one, Minnesota.

Today, the question about Trump remains the same.

"Is this Trump train inevitable?" asked Eliza Collins, a reporter at Politico. By the numbers, it's not yet clear. According to the latest tally of delegates from the Associated Press, Trump has 316. Cruz is in second place with 226, and Rubio has 106.

"If you're Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio right now, there's a decent size push among some influential conservatives to try to get them together on a ticket, maybe as a way to consolidated their votes against Trump," said Jim Tankersley, a correspondent at the Washington Post. "That's the sort of strategic pairing you might actually see a lot more pressure on in the next couple of weeks."

John Kasich and Ben Carson remain far behind in the race for delegates.

On the Democratic side, Clinton has racked up 1,034 delegates to Sanders' 408.

"It's not over yet for Hillary Clinton, but she's made it really hard for Bernie Sanders," said Tankersley. "All the momentum, if you will, is in her favor."

Sanders would need a big comeback to get the nomination, and to do that, he'd have to broaden his base of supporters.

"We're going to watch with the Democratic side how Bernie Sanders is doing with minority voters. It's shown so far that Hillary Clinton is doing so much than he is," said Collins.
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. (PBR.A) shares are getting a lift 3.16% to $2.78 on Wednesday as the Brazil-based oil and gas giant is negotiations to sell is Argentina assets to Pampa Energia (PZE).

While the transaction is still subject to approvals of the terms and final conditions of its board, management and market regulators, the board has just approved the start of exclusive talks for a period of 30 days that could be extended for another 30 days, according to Reuters.

Petrobras was exploring this idea earlier this year as it looks to divest at least $15 billion in assets to meet debt obligations.

In a separate filing, the board also approved the start of a plan to sell rights to explore and develop a group of onshore oil fields, Reuters added.

Additionally, higher oil prices are giving Petrobras stock some support today.

Crude oil (WTI) is rising 0.29% to $34.50 per barrel and Brent crude is gaining 0.14% to $36.86 per barrel.

TheStreet ratings currently has a "Sell" rating on the stock with a letter grade of D.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and generally high debt management risk.

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: PBR.A

PBR.A

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Yamana Gold (AUY) stock is gaining 2.57% to $2.79 in early afternoon trading on Wednesday after weaker equities drove gold prices up.

Gold for April delivery was increasing 0.73% to $1,239.80 per ounce on the COMEX this afternoon.

Prices for gold have gained about 16% so far this year as investors see the precious metal as a safe haven because of volatile global markets and concerns over worldwide economic growth, Reuters reports.

"Elevated uncertainty among market participants is usually positive for gold, which is seen as a safe haven," Commerzbank analyst Daniel Briesemann told Reuters. "Gold is definitely well supported by ETF inflows...as long as these continue, then gold should be in demand and the gold price could easily gain more ground."

Yamana Gold is a Canadian gold mining company with operations in several countries, including Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

(Yamana Gold is held in the Stocks Under $10 portfolio. See all of the holdings with a free trial.)

Separately, Yamana Gold has a "sell" rating and a letter grade of D at TheStreet Ratings because of the company's feeble earnings per share growth and generally disappointing stock performance.

You can view the full analysis from the report here: AUY

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.

AUY

data by

YCharts
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of AK Steel Holding Corp. (AKS) are soaring by 16.67% to $3.43 on heavy trading volume on Wednesday afternoon, after the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed taxes of up to 266% on cold-rolled steel imports.

The West Chester, OH-based steelmaker is among U.S. producers in line for relief from a spike of imports that weighed down domestic prices to six-year lows, Bloomberg reports.

The tariffs will impact imports from China, and goods from Brazil, India, South Korea, Russia, Japan and the U.K.

The U.S. government determined that steel was unfairly priced, Bloomberg noted.

JPMorgan called the steel tariffs "a win" for U.S. steel stocks in an analyst note late yesterday.

"With steel prices rebounding off of a bottom and the companies clearly demonstrating they have enough liquidity, we believe these stocks should continue to outperform as shorts find it difficult to portray a possibility of near-term bankruptcies," the firm said.

About 8.49 million of the company's shares were traded by this afternoon compared to its average volume of 5.21 million shares per day.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "sell" rating with a score of D on the stock.

This is driven by multiple weaknesses, 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.

The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, poor profit margins, weak operating cash flow, generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself and feeble growth in its earnings per share.

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: AK

AKS

data by

YCharts
Aubrey McClendon, the deposed CEO of troubled oil and gas explorer Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) , died in a car accident Wednesday morning after being indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury for bid rigging on oil and gas leases. McClendon was 56.

Police said initial indications were that McClendon's car was traveling well in excess of the 40 mph speed limit at the time of the accident and that he had ample room to avert the wall but failed to do so.

According to the indictment, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, McClendon--as CEO of Chesapeake--divvied up oil and gas leases in northwestern Oklahoma between two unnamed companies between December 2007 and March 2012 in an effort to keep a lid on increasing prices being paid for oil and gas leases.

"McClendon instructed his subordinates to execute the conspiratorial agreement, which included, among other things, withdrawing bids for certain leases and agreeing on the allocation of interests in the leases between the conspiring companies," the department said in a statement.

Bill Baer, assistant attorney general and head of the DOJ's antitrust division, said McClendon's actions put company profits ahead of the interests of leaseholders entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights on their land. "Executives who abuse their positions as leaders of major corporations to organize criminal activity must be held accountable for their actions," he said.

If found guilty, the 56-year-old faced up to a $1 million fine and 10 years in prison.

McClendon denied the charge, claiming in a statement that it's "wrong and unprecedented" and that he's being "singled out" as the only person in the oil and gas industry to have been accused of a crime related to gas leasing activity in more than 110 years since the Sherman Act became law.

"All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans," he said. "I am proud of my track record in this industry and I will fight to prove my innocence and to clear my name."

His lead lawyers were Abbe Lowell of Chadbourne & Parke LLP and Emmet Flood at Williams & Connolly LLP. Lowell has defended business and political figures, including convicted savings and loan executive Charles Keating and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton as part of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Flood was special counsel in the George W. Bush administration.

A Chesapeake spokesman said the company is cooperating with investigators but doesn't expect to be charged.

Last year Chesapeake paid $25 million to Michigan to settle similar charges that it conspired with Canada's Encana Corp. to rig auctions for drilling rights.

McClendon founded Chesapeake in 1989 and pioneered the use of horizontal drilling for shale wells, building it up through acquisitions into a multi-billion-dollar company. He was later accused of acquiring stakes in company wells with money he borrowed using the wells as collateral and tapping company resources for personal use. He was forced out in 2013 part of a shareholder revolt led by billionaire activist Carl Icahn.

Soon thereafter McClendon launched American Energy Partners LP, which formed companies to buy up oil and gas assets around the country with $10 billion raised from Energy & Minerals Group and First Reserve and bank loans.

Energy & Minerals didn't respond to a request for comment about how the situation would affect their investments. But Energy & Minerals Group owns more than 70% of American Energy--Permian Basin LLC and American Energy--Woodford LLC, both of which receive management services from American Energy Partners, a source said in January. First Reserve is an investor in American Energy-Permian Basin, the source added.

Energy & Minerals is not an investor in American Energy Partners' recently announced joint venture with Argentina's YPF SA to explore for oil and gas in the Vaca Muerta shale area with a combined investment of $500 million, the source said.

First Reserve spokeswoman Julie Oakes of Joele Frank said the firm is aware of the recent allegations concerning McClendon but they are related to businesses and activities that have no connection to First Reserve or its portfolio companies. "First Reserve remains focused on executing our strategic priorities on behalf of our investors," she said.

Chesapeake has struggled since McClendon's departure, and its performance only worsened after the summer of 2014 when oil prices began to slide. Last month the company hired Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Evercore to advise it on a possible restructuring.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 44F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 44F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Hospital acquires new surgical robotics technology Burke Health announced the purchase of new robotics technology for use during spine surgical procedures last week. The Globus ExcelsiusGPS is a revolutionary robotic navigation platform system designed to be intuitive and streamline the surgical workflow. Real-time tracking of instruments and implants, along with audible, visual and tactile feedback, enables...

County center wins senior trike Local seniors now have access to an adult tricycle. Director Kimberly Mathis attended the Move Augusta Senior Expo and Bike Rodeo sponsored by Augusta Urban Ministries October 8. The event, held at The Salvation Army Kroc Center, was aimed at people over 50 years old, and included resources and health...

4-H Food Challenge Team takes State For the first time, Burke County 4-H decided to put together a junior food challenge team this summer. Teams are compromised of 2-4 students in the 6th-8th grades. This competition is very competitive and teams must advance to state after the district competition. Our team started practicing weekly in July...

County rehashes trash problem I am bringing up the trash again, Commissioner Evans Martin said during the October 11 meeting. We have to do something about the trash. Martin asked that the record show that he wants to do something about the countys dumpster sites. He made a suggestion that eliminating 10 sites would...
[COMMUNICATED CONTENT]

By Dovid Grossman

Rabbi Tzion Menachem, a world renowned Mekubal from Eretz Yisroel, will be arriving in New York to meet with people who are seeking guidance and assistance in numerous matters. He meets people facing all sorts of difficulties and gives them chizuk, strengthening them and thus enabling them to face challenges. Whether it is children who are off-the-derech, issues of marriage or parnassa, Rav Menachem seems to give consistent and solid direction and advice that many people understand as truly miraculous.

Aside from being a Mekubal, Rav Menachem is a Rav in Elad where he has a shul and a Kollel Choshain Mishpat where his students study to be dayanim. Rav Menachem is an extraordinary Talmic Chachom as well as a great Mekubal and Tzaddik.

Rav Menachem has also authored a commentary on shaar ruach hakodesh of Rav Chaim Vitals classic Kabbalistic work entitled Etz Chaim. Rav Menachem had studied under the great Kabbalistic luminaries of our generation, HaRav Yoseph Dayan ztl and HaRav Mordechai Sharabi ztl.

It is said that virtually everyone who merits to see him and receives his advice, whether it has to do with medical issues, business issues, family matters or anything else  is so impressed that they recommend Rav Menachem to ten friends.

The following is a typical letter and experience. It was written by the son of a very famous Askan:

Around two years ago my bas yechidah began experiencing discomfort with her legs. I wont go into detail but we constantly visited doctors to no avail. As time went on her condition worsened. At the end of last year her legs began buckling. This became a regular occurrence and she got used to it happening.

This is when my story begins; In mid May 2015 on a Sunday when my daughter stumbled into our house crying. A heaviness had crept into her legs and by the time she got home she lost sensation in some parts and had little in the rest. I hurriedly took her to the doctor. After countless hours we knew she needed the hospital.

She spent 15 hours undergoing tests with no results. There was nothing visibly wrong with her and the doctors said it was probably a one time thing.

Fast forward. The next day my daughter buckled and she fell down a large ight of stairs. I knew she couldnt go on like this and hurried to another hospital. We spent a week there. In the beginning it was nerve racking knowing that my daughter might have a serious illness. But I knew that it wasnt in my hands.

After the rst few days we all breathed a sigh of relief when all serious issues were ruled out, however we were still anxious about the fact that her legs were still numb and developed a numbness in her arm. At the end of a long week with no answers, we had only one more test which would be done as an outpatient.

My daughter left the hospital in a wheelchair. Thats when my father-in-law called me to ask for my daughters full name. About a half hour after we came home my father-in-law called me again. He had spoken to Rav Tzion Menachem shlita, a Rav and Rosh Kollel from Elad, a city in Eretz Yisroel.

He told us that we had closed a window in our home 2 years ago and that is what caused all the problems. With shock we recalled that most certainly we had left a hole in the wall but we had stuccoed on our home two years ago and sure enough the hole which once was, was no longer.

With bated breath I quickly called someone down to drill a hole in my wall. Unbelievably very soon after the hole was drilled my daughter started gasping and crying as the sensation began returning to her legs. With tears streaming down our faces I together with my family watched her stand up and walk on her own.

The gratitude and feelings of shevach vhodaah to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for sending us such a shaliach are indescribable.

Rabbi Tzion Menachem Shlita will be available in New York between February 28th and March 9th. For an appointment please call: 347  585  1846.
Shas party leader Aryeh Deri on Monday 20 Adar-I addressed the egalitarian prayer area near the Kosel. Deri feels Kosel Rav Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz Shlita should have consulted more with Chief Rabbis of Israel Rabbi Dovid Lau Shlita and Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef Shlita on the matter. Deri feels Rabbi Rabinowitz should have also consulted with Jerusalems Chief Rabbis.

During a weekly Shas faction meeting the matter of the Kosel area was discussed. Deri told his colleagues that if Rabinowitz had done so, the handling of the matter would have been smoother.

He added that the cabinet is trying to make Shas the Shabbos goy, telling faction members this will not happen as Minister of Religious Services David Azoulai will not sign off on the cabinet decision, a signature that is required to give the decision legal backing.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
MK Menachem Eliezer Moses addressed the controversy in the IDF surrounding beards and the new Manpower Branch regulation prohibiting it. Moses stated that today it is clear the gedolei hador throughout the generations were correct, and one should not enter the IDF, which he views as a melting pot for Israeli society which makes it easier for one to become more secular.

Moses added that three months ago, during a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, he spoke to Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon on this very matter. He explains that Yaalon promised him that anyone with a beard for religious reasons will be permitted to continue sporting a beard, stating that he relies on Yaalon to keep his word for he has always done so in the past.

Moses adds that while the new regulation will impact dati leumi soldiers more than chareidi soldiers, he nevertheless decries the decision to place responsibility for the beards in the hands of the adjutancy instead of the IDF Rabbinate as it has been.

There is confusion surrounding the regulation. Some reports indicate the implementation, which was to have been on Tuesday, 21 Adar-I (March 1st) is being pushed off for three months. Other reports state the implementation moves ahead as scheduled but those soldiers who have yet to request permission or have requested and not received a response, they may continue sporting a beard until the matter is clarified. There is no explanation regarding those soldiers who have a beard for religious reasons and whose requests were turned down.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

A special plenum memorial session was held in Knesset to mark two years since the death of former PM, Ariel Sharon, who was the architect behind the so-called Disengagement Plan, the expulsion of Jews and uprooting of communities from Gaza and areas of the N. Shomron. Politicians continue to use the term disengagement in an effort to sanitize the operation that literally resulted in uprooting thousands of Jews from their homes, communities, cemeteries, shuls and batei medrashim, many still unsettle today, over a decade later.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recalled Sharons heroism in the battlefield during his career as an officer as well as mentioning the serious mistake of the disengagement.

Unlike Mr. Netanyahu, opposition leader Yitzchak Herzog reflected back on the disengagement as an achievement, not an error, citing the demographic dangers facing Israel and the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the correct decision to cut Israel off from them.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Senior Egged officials were summoned by police for questioning in connection with the recent number 402 bus accident on Highway 1 that led to six deaths and the injuring of others. Killed in the accident were

 Yaakov Meir Cheshin, 27

 Yisroel Weinberg, 26

 Aharon Mordecai Cohen, 18

 Mrs. Leah Melamed, 60

 Levi Yitzchak Amdari, 18

 Mrs. Chana Pesha Frankel, 23

According to the Channel 2 News report, four Egged officials are being probed by police and they may face charges of causing death by negligence. Officials includes the Jerusalem district director, a senior human resources officials and safety officer.

Police are aware of the drivers earlier accident, the fact they he was suspended from the line and reinstated, as well as an evaluation that documents he poses a danger to the public, yet he continued at the wheel. Police also wish to determine who made the decision to return the driver, Chaim Biton, to the wheel of the 402 line.

In a related matter, the family of victim Sara bas Dina Sperling continues to ask the tzibur to be mispallel for their daughter, a kallah who was very seriously injured as doctors continue to fight to save a badly injured hand and leg.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
North Korea will never, ever be bound by international resolutions that criticize its human rights record, its foreign minister declared Tuesday, ripping into deadly gun violence in the United States and highlighting alleged rights violations against refugees who are pouring into Europe to flee violence at home.

Ri Su Yong took a strong message from a country known for powerful state propaganda to the U.N.-sponsored Human Rights Council on Tuesday, saying that any resolutions against North Korea will only be proof of partiality and double standards.

Ris sharp comments came before the 47-member body in Geneva was set to discuss North Koreas record on March 14 as part of a regular review. That review will consider a sharply critical report from the U.N. human rights offices rapporteur on North Korea issued last month.

We shall no longer participate in international sessions singling out the human rights situation of the DPRK for mere political attack, the minister said, using an abbreviation for the countrys formal name. His comment appeared to raise the prospect that North Korea would not exercise its right to respond.

Japan and the European Union are expected to present a resolution during the session that condemns human rights violations in North Korea and would extend by another year an investigative mission into its rights record. Over the years, North Korea has blown hot and cold with the HRC. Last year, Ri was the first North Korean minister to attend a session.

U.N. human rights expert on North Korea, Marzuki Darusman, said in a report last month he wanted supreme leader Kim Jong Un to know he and other top North Korean officials could be held accountable if they are found responsible for crimes against humanity committed under their leadership.

Darusman was on a U.N. Commission of Inquiry on North Korea that in 2014 published a key report that laid out widespread abuses like a harsh system of political prison camps holding up to 120,000 people. The commission urged the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court over its human rights record.

Ri said the council has not given enough attention  or none at all  to systematic racial discrimination in the United States, and cited deplorable human rights violations linked to gun violence in the U.S. He also cited refugees who had been drowned in the sea or choked to death in a sealed lorry as in the case of Europe.

Separately, the United States has asked the Security Council to schedule a vote on a resolution that would impose tough new sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyangs latest nuclear test and rocket launch.

(AP)
Twelve states in all cast votes for presidential nominees on March 1, also known as Super Tuesday, the biggest single-day delegate haul of the nomination contests. Republicans are voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake. Democrats are casting ballots in 11 states, too, plus American Samoa, with 865 delegates up for grabs.

Heres a look at what some voters had to say as they went to the polls Tuesday:



Retired Marine Corps. Gen. Bill Weise joined about a dozen people waiting patiently in line at the Greenspring precinct in Fairfax County, which traditionally has the highest turnout in Virginia. The precinct is made up entirely of voters from the sprawling Greenspring retirement community.

The 86-year-old Weise says seven months of agonizing over who hed vote for came down to the final 10 seconds before he filled in the bubble next to Ted Cruzs name. Ben Carson was his favorite candidate, but he concluded Carson wasnt viable. In sorting through the other GOP candidates, Weise felt Cruz would make better decisions than Trump.

Ive read Cruzs autobiography, he said. Hes not perfect. But show me somebody who is. The ideal candidate does not exist.



Michael Kernyat of Chesterfield County, Virginia, voted for Ohios Republican Gov. John Kasich even though he thinks he probably just threw his vote away.

The 60-year-old retired computer consultant said Kasich is the most reasonable person running but probably has no chance of beating Donald Trump.

Nobody is going to stop that freight train, Kernyat said. I think its going to come down between him and Hillary.

He said people seem to be rallying behind Trump because theyre tired of politics as usual, but he prefers the moderate positions of Kasich.

The only one who really scares me in this election is Bernie, Kernyat said.



Nicole Freed, a disabled 32-year-old Army veteran who served in Iraq, describes herself a moderate Democrat but she voted in Virginias GOP primary, choosing Marco Rubio, with the aim of knocking Trump off the ballot in November.

I cant let Trump win, Freed said.

As for her November vote, shes conflicted.

Im probably going to end up voting for Hillary Clinton in the General Election just because  well, I dont really like her that much either but there arent any good choices.

Freed called Bernie Sanders tax plan ludicrous and said her preference for president would either be Ohio Republican John Kasich or Vice President Joe Biden, who decided against running.

Though shes against Trump, she said shes not against all of his ideas, and likes his stance on immigration.

Some things I like about him, Freed said. But I feel like hes going to get us into a war with somebody whos going to beat us. I dont think we can fight the entire Muslim world.



Tyler Murphy, a 26-year-old Boston resident who works as a project manager for a construction company, voted for Trump on Tuesday even though he thinks the billionaire businessman is undeniably wrong on a lot of things.

For better or worse, he said, the controversial candidate is the wake-up call the country needs.

Ultimately, if we have to elect someone who is borderline crazy to get people to understand whats going on, then thats what we have to do, Murphy said.

An independent, he voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Barack Obama in 2008 and said hes donated to both parties in the past.

Murphy said that if Trump had not become such a viable candidate, he would likely have voted for Hillary Clinton.

I just dont think shes going to be the person to shake people out of their seats, he said. Shes not what the country needs right now.



Karen Williams, a lifelong Democrat from Duluth, Georgia, said she voted for Hillary Clinton. But the 55-year-old voter mostly has her eyes on Trump, whom she wants to stop from gaining the White House.

I cant see him talking to dignitaries from other countries, insulting people, she said. A lot of countries dont take kindly to insults.

Williams is so concerned about the campaign seasons childish behavior in the face of very real challenges for the country that she said a prayer before going in to vote Tuesday.

I prayed, she said. I prayed for this nation. I really did. Im really concerned.

(AP)
The two top Republican leaders in Congress denounced Donald Trump on Tuesday for his slow-moving disavowal of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Trumps seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the KKK as Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., warned that anyone who wants the Republican president nomination must reject racism.

The rebuke of Trump came as GOP voters went to the polls in 11 states in a Super Tuesday of balloting that many Republicans fear could give the combative and controversial New Yorker unstoppable momentum toward claiming the GOP presidential nod.

This party does not prey on peoples prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the Party of Lincoln, Ryan told reporters as voters in 11 states holding GOP contests headed to the polls on Super Tuesday.

At the same time, Ryan reiterated that he will support the eventual GOP presidential nominee.

Never mentioning Trumps name, Ryan and McConnell were clearly referring to the billionaire businessmans appearance Sunday on CNN when he declined to disavow the support of Duke and other white supremacists.

Let me make it perfectly clear: Senate Republicans condemn David Duke, the KKK, and his racism, McConnell said.

When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country I will speak up. So today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry, Ryan said.

Last year, Ryan and McConnell disavowed Trumps plan to block Muslims from entering the U.S. Otherwise, theyve tried to stay clear of commenting on the race.

Trump subsequently disavowed Duke, blaming his interview performance Sunday on a bad earpiece.

His two top rivals  Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas  criticized Trump and said the GOP must condemn white supremacists.

But House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi argued that Trumps radical agenda reflects the House Republican conference. Pelosi said that while some in the GOP are distancing themselves from Trump, Republicans refused to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds and have blocked renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

The reality is, Donald Trump is just being more candid about the agenda of discrimination House Republicans have been advancing for years, Pelosi said in a statement.

Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada noted that both GOP leaders say they expect to support the eventual nominee.

Republicans say they theyll support a man who refuses to denounce the KKK so until they withdraw their support, talk is really cheap, Reid said.

On Tuesday, USA Today reported that a group of about 30 African-American students from Valdosta State University were kicked out of a Trump rally by law enforcement officials.

The only reason we were given was that Mr. Trump did not want us there, 22-year-old senior Brooke Gladney told the newspaper. The campaign denied any role in their ouster from the event.

Ryan, the GOPs 2012 vice presidential nominee, bemoaned the current discourse in the GOP and said it was time to get back to focusing on how Republicans would solve the nations problems.

We believe all people are created in the eyes of God and our government. This is fundamental. And if someone wants to be our nominee they must understand this, said the Wisconsin congressman.

He said he has tried to avoid commenting on the presidential race but felt a need to speak up.

I try to stay out of the day-to-day ups and downs of the primary, Ryan said. But Ive said when I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country I will speak up.

Many Washington Republicans are increasingly open about their dismay at the prospect of Trump winning the GOP nomination. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., an advocate of updating U.S. immigration law, said the prospect of voting for Trump is not a pleasant thought at all . Im still holding out hope we dont have that choice.

Last month, Trump took a swipe at Ryan, saying the GOP lost the White House in 2012 because the vice presidential candidate was synonymous with a budget that targeted Social Security. That, according to Trump, cost Republicans with seniors.

Ryan rejected that argument on Tuesday, saying he and Mitt Romney won the senior vote by 12 percentage points, the best performance a Republican ticket has had since 1984 when Ronald Reagan had a landslide election.

(AP)
Bayit Yehudi party leader Education Minister Naftali Bennett commented on the near fatal lynch of two IDF soldiers who took a wrong turn and found themselves in Kalandia. Speaking with the dati leumi Srugim website, Bennett acknowledged the severity of that incident, which Bchasdei Hashem did not end with the loss of life or serious injury to the intended victims. There were a number of border policemen injured however, one in moderate condition.

Bennett explains this latest incident shows once again, any Jew who enters an Arab village is in life-threatening danger. He explains that PA (Palestinian Authority) incitement continues and there is an Israeli murdered weekly, mentioning Mrs. Dafna Meir, Shlumit Kreigman of Beit Choron and Sgt. Yinai Weissman at Rami Levi, as well as Major Eliav Gellman last week at Gush Etzion Junction. Bennett laments these events continue and it is as if there is no response.

Bennett Explains:

Terrorism is not new. It has been taking place for 120 years. What is new is the type of terror which is the result of intensive incitement leading to them to then murdering Jews. We must deal with this on three fronts.

1. To prevent the incident. To close radio and television stations and to stop imams from inciting. I am pushing this and there is progress and I will continue pushing.

2. We must change the deterrence equation. What is happening today is the lone terrorist says to himself I will die and get virgins in paradise. My family will receive a pension for the rest of their lives and I will be considered a hero. Not a bad deal so what do we have to do to change this equation? (a) to bury the terrorists anonymously in the south or the Galil, without a proper kever; (b) to raze all illegal homes in the terrorists village and punish his surroundings that support and back him; (c) the same village should be closed or a curfew set in place until the village is more aggressively cleaned and (d) to prevent the money from reaching the family. This would be like the State of Israel giving money to the family of a Jew who murdered an Arab. This is simply unacceptable.

3. The other thing is the element of defense. I will not go into this in depth, but we must prevent movement that can endanger Jews on roads that are particularly dangerous.

From all of the above-mentioned, nothing is being done. People see Jews being killed each week and citizens do not see a response. I think this is half correct for in Jerusalem we responded and we see attacks have stopped since we acted. These attacks in the capital are not by residents of the city.

Throughout Yehuda and Shomron we have not done these things and I am pushing the cabinet to act but at the end we are only two fingers in the cabinet and doing our best.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
A recent Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) report stated Rabbi Binyamin Atias of the Petach Tikvah Religious Council refuses to marry couples from the Ethiopian community, as YWN-ISRAEL reported. The rabbi of the Petach Tikvah Ethiopian community, Rabbi Adiel Alov, explains this is not a one-time occurrence, but a policy, concurring with the Galei Tzahal report. Rav Alov explains the Petach Tikvah religious council does not accept converts signed off by Rabbi Chaim Druckman Shlita despite the fact Rabbi Druckman ran the state giyur program. Marriage candidates are compelled to bring additional documentation attesting to their adherence to a religious lifestyle.

There has recently been a meeting between representatives of Israels Ethiopian Jewish community and Chief Rabbi of Israel Dovid Lau Shlita during which the spelled out the difficulties encountered by couples wishing to get married. The explain that Rabbi Atias in particular appears to be boycotting them and refuses to meet with community representatives in the hope of finding a solution.

Srugim News quotes Rabbi Lau explaining that he lacks the authority to act against Rabbi Atias or to fire him. Rabbi Lau was secretly recorded during the meeting, stating I cant pull him by the ear to come and meet with you. I have invited him to meet with me but he does not come. [Rishon LTzion] Rabbi Yitzchak [Yosef] has also incited him but he does not come. We have no legal authorityI do not employ him. He is employed by the Ministry of Religious Services, Rabbi Lau stated.

Srugim adds Rabbi Atias preferred not to respond. However, Paltiel Eisenthal, who heads the Petach Tikvah Religious Council did comment. He prompted us to write all those who come to open a marriage file including Ethiopians, and this was done. Regarding who is Rabbi Atias employer, since he is also av beis din in Petach Tikvah, he receives his entire salary from the Ministry of Justice and therefore, we do not employ him but the Justice Ministry does.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
[EARLIER UPDATES IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]

12:41AM ET: Donald Trump has built a sizeable lead in the race for delegates by winning at least seven states on Super Tuesday.

Trump won at least 186 delegates in Tuesdays presidential primary contests. Ted Cruz collected at least 125 delegates and Marco Rubio picked up at least 62.

John Kasich won at least 18 delegates and Ben Carson has won at least three.

There were 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states.

Overall, Trump leads with 268 delegates. Cruz has 142, Rubio has 78, Kasich has 24 and Carson has eight.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

12:15AM ET: Hillary Clinton has won a majority of Super Tuesday delegates.

Her wins in seven states have now earned her 441 of the 865 delegates at stake for the evening. Sanders is on track to win at least 262.

The Democratic contests award delegates in proportion to the vote, meaning that even the loser wins some. Votes are still being tallied to determine the final margins of victory in several states.

Including superdelegates, Clinton now has at least 989 delegates in the overall AP delegate count. Sanders has at least 349.

11:55PM ET: Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential primary in Vermont, claiming his latest victory in the string of nomination contests known as Super Tuesday.

His win in Vermont places him well-ahead of his rivals who significantly trail him in delegates. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won contests in Oklahoma and Texas Tuesday, and Sen. Marco Rubio scored his first win in Minnesota. Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson have not won any of the races since the nomination contest began a month ago.

11:20PM ET: Democrat Bernie Sanders has earned his latest win in the Super Tuesday nomination contest, this time in Minnesota. The Vermont senator won the states caucuses, beating rival Hillary Clinton in his fourth win of the night. He also won contests in Colorado, Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont.

11:15PM ET: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has won the Republican presidential caucuses in Minnesota, earning his first victory in the 2016 race for the White House.

Rubio won second place in Nevada and South Carolina but still trails rivals Donald Trump and fellow Sen. Ted Cruz in the much-needed delegates needed to win his partys nomination.

But Rubio has won overwhelming support from members of Congress and governors who see him as the most viable alternative to the billionaire businessman, who holds a commanding lead in delegates a month into the contest.

10:40PM ET: Fox News projects Hillary Clinton winning the Massachusetts Democratic primary.

10:21PM ET: Donald Trump wins the Republican presidential primary in Arkansas.

10:07PM ET: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is insisting that he has expanded the Republican party, claiming that he is responsible for higher voter turnout in the primary states.

Despite heightened efforts by the GOP establishment to stop him, Trump says he is a unifier who soon wanted to put internal Republican squabbles behind him to focus on Hillary Clinton.

He criticized Clintons track record said she isnt going to straight it out over the next four years if elected president.

But he also did could not resist taking swipes at Marco Rubio, who he dubbed the little senator. He mocked Rubio for not having won a single state.

He is paying tribute to Ted Cruz who captured Texas and Oklahoma.

Trump was victorious in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Tennessee.

9:57PM ET: Donald Trump is marking his several victories on Super Tuesday and is looking forward to a general election fight against Hillary Clinton. Trump, speaking at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, was introduced by former rival New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who endorsed him last week. Trump won Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. Ted Cruz has captured Texas and Oklahoma.

Trump, who has a commanding lead in delegates, mocked Marco Rubio for having a tough night because he did not win any states.

And he said that Clintons call earlier in the night to make America whole again  itself a rebuttal to Trumps Make America Great Again rallying cry  was an inferior slogan.

9:44PM ET: Bernie Sanders isnt making up much ground in delegates after his win in Oklahoma. With 38 delegates at stake, Sanders will gain at least 20 delegates in that state. Clinton will get at least 11. In all, Clinton has won six states including Texas as well as the American Samoa, overtaking Sanders victories in smaller states such as Vermont and Oklahoma. Clinton is now assured of winning at least 334 of the 865 delegates at stake on Super Tuesday. Thats compared to Sanders, who at least 145.

Including superdelegates, Clinton now has at least 882 delegates. Sanders has at least 232. It takes 2,383 delegates to win.

9:41PM ET: Donald Trump has won at least 139 Super Tuesday delegates, while Ted Cruz has won at least 52.

There are 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states.

Marco Rubio has won at least 25 delegates and John Kasich has won at least 13. So far, Ben Carson has picked up two delegates in Virginia.

Overall, Trump leads with 221 delegates. Cruz has 69, Rubio has 41, Kasich has 19 and Carson has seven.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

9:16PMET: Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic presidential primary in Oklahoma. He also captured his home state of Vermont. Sanders also won New Hampshire earlier this campaign.

His opponent, Hillary Clinton, racked up several victories during the string of contests known as Super Tuesday. She also won Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas.

9:15PM ET: Marco Rubio, speaking at a Super Tuesday rally at his hometown in Miami, is criticizing the nights big winner among Republicans: Donald Trump. Rubio said that over the last five days he has begun to unmask the true nature of Trump, whom he called a con artist.

He said his recent attacks on Trump have given his campaign momentum and said that Trump did not represent the legacy of the party of Reagan.

Trump has won several states on Tuesday: Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Ted Cruz has captured Oklahoma and his home state of Texas. Rubio has yet to win a state, but his upbeat speech was full of promises to continue fighting and vowing to win his home state of Florida later this month.

9:11PM ET: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has won another Republican primary  this time in Oklahoma. Cruz topped his rivals in Oklahoma, having just won in his home state of Texas. Republican front-runner Donald Trump has already won the Republican races in Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Massachusetts and Tennessee.

9:00PM ET: Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democrat Hillary Clinton have won the presidential primaries in Texas. This is the first win for Cruz during the group of Super Tuesday contests and his second win since the leadoff Iowa caucuses.

Clinton earned her latest win in the string of contests known as Super Tuesday. She has also won the Democratic primaries in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, putting her ahead of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has won the race in his home state of Vermont.

Texas is home to the largest number of delegates up for grabs in both parties on Super Tuesday.

8:58PM ET: Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential primary in Virginia, adding to his Super Tuesday victories in Massachusetts, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. He is adding to his wins earlier this campaign in Nevada, South Carolina and New Hampshire. The win was a blow to Marco Rubio, who competed hard in Virginia.

Rubio has yet to win a primary. Ted Cruz has captured Iowa.

8:49PM ET: Its a win for Hillary Clinton in American Samoa. The South Pacific island chain held its caucus Tuesday. Clinton won 73 percent of 223 votes cast to earn four of the six delegates at stake. Bernie Sanders picked up two delegates. American Samoa is one of five U.S. territories that cast votes in primaries and caucuses to decide the Democratic presidential nominee, even though those residents arent eligible to vote in the November general election.

The island chain has a population of 54,000 and is about a six hour flight from Hawaii.

8:40PM ET: Donald Trump has jumped to a big lead in the Super Tuesday delegates with victories in Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Virginia. Trump has won 100 delegates so far. Marco Rubio has won 12 and Ted Cruz has won five. There are 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states. Overall, Trump leads with 182 delegates. Rubio has 28, Cruz has 22, John Kasich has six and Ben Carson has five.

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.

8:30PM ET: CNN is projecting that Hillary Clinton has won Arkansas. She now has won five states on Super Tuesday.

8:06PM ET: Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have won the presidential primaries in Alabama.

Trump has also finished on top in the Republican primary in Massachusetts.

Trump and Clinton have also won their party primaries in Tennessee.

These latest wins put the two candidates ahead of their rivals in the group of contests known as Super Tuesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump and Clinton won the primaries in Georgia. Clinton also won the Democratic primary in Virginia, while her rival, Bernie Sanders, won the contest in his home state of Vermont.

8:00PM: CNN projecting that Donald Trump has won Alabama, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. Hillarry Clinton is projected to win Alabama and Tennessee.

7:52PM ET: Super Tuesday primary polls are closing at 8PM ET in Alabama, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and at 8:30PM ET in Arkansas. Stay with YWN as we continue bringing you the latest news in live time..

7:43PM ET: In six states (Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas), large majorities of Republican primary voters expressed support for temporarily banning all non-citizen Muslims from entering the U.S., a Trump proposal, according to early results of exit polls.

But Republican voters were more divided on another of his contentious ideas, to deport all people who are in the U.S. illegally. The proposal won majority support only in Alabama, among seven states where that question was asked of GOP voters.

7:20PM ET: Hillary Clinton has sprinted to an early delegate lead on Super Tuesday. Her victories in Georgia and Virginia are giving her an early advantage over Bernie Sanders, who won big in his home state of Vermont.

At stake in those three states are 213 delegates.

She is assured of at least 108, while Sanders will receive at least 57. Forty-eight remain to be allocated in those three states.

In all, 865 delegates are up for grabs in 11 states and American Samoa on Super Tuesday.

Going into Super Tuesday, Clinton held a 26-delegate advantage based on wins from primaries and caucuses.

7:19PM ET: Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic presidential primaries in Virginia and Georgia, while Bernie Sanders wins in his home state of Vermont.

According to early results of the exit poll conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press and Television Networks, Clinton led in both Virginia and Georgia among both men and women. Sanders led among voters under 30 and Clinton held a commanding lead among those 45 and over.

In Vermont, Bernie Sanders was supported by overwhelming majorities of both men and women, and huge majorities of voters across all age groups.

Half of Vermont Democrats said they want the next presidents policies to be more liberal than those of President Barack Obama.

7:04PM ET: NBC And Fox News are projecting that Donald Trump has won Georgia. Donald Trump is in close races with Marco Rubio in Virginia and John Kasich in Vermont, according to exit polls.

7:03PM ET: CNN projecting that Hillary Clinton has won Georgia and Virginia. Bernie Sanders has won his home state of Vermont.

7:00PM ET: Both parties held contests in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. As well, Republicans voted in Alaska and Democrats in Colorado. Democrats also had a contest in American Samoa and for Democrats abroad.

Polls close, EST: 7 p.m. in Virginia, Georgia and Vermont; 8 p.m. in Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee and Massachusetts; 8:30 p.m. in Arkansas; 9 p.m. in Texas, Colorado and Minnesota; midnight in Alaska.

REFRESH FOR UPDATES

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC / AP)
Hillary Clinton held on to older people and ate into Bernie Sanders support among the 30-to-44 crowd on Super Tuesday as her rival claimed a clear advantage with only one age group: his devoted under-30 followers.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump and his mad-as-hell message pulled in nearly two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House. Those more interested in a candidate with political experience? They split about evenly between first-term senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, according to early results of exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

Other highlights from the exit polls:

___

PORTRAIT OF A TRUMP VOTER

Nine in 10 of Trumps voters are looking for an outsider. Half are angry with the government. Nearly as many want a candidate willing to tell it like it is. Four in 10 said they were born again, cutting into Ted Cruzs efforts to claim the evangelical vote. Trump, who has professed mutual admiration with poorly educated voters, was favored by half of voters without a college degree. His followers are nothing if not loyal: Six in 10 of his voters made up their minds more than a month ago.

___

PORTRAIT OF CLINTON VOTER

More than 90 percent of Clintons voters want an insider, and nearly half say experience is the quality they are looking for in a candidate. Two-thirds of her voters want to continue President Barack Obamas policies, rather than shift in a more liberal direction. And, just as with Trump, 60 percent of her backers made up their mind more than a month ago. Two-thirds of her supporters are women, and two-thirds are 45 or older.

___

SOUR ON WASHINGTON

GOP voters across the nine Super Tuesday primary states were in a sour mood toward Washington. If they werent angry, they were dissatisfied: At least 8 in 10 Republican primary voters had negative thoughts toward Washington. Democrats were not quite as critical: 60 percent had negative opinions about the federal government.

___

CLINTONS COALITON

Women, blacks and older voters all bolstered Clintons standing. She showed the same strength among African-Americans that she did in South Carolina, supported by at least 80 percent of black voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Black voters made up just about half of voters in Alabama and Georgia, 3 in 10 in Tennessee and about a quarter of Virginia and Arkansas.

Clinton made inroads on Super Tuesday with young-ish (30-44) voters, who divided their votes about evenly between the two Democratic candidates. Sanders, by contrast had led among all voters under age 45 in the first three contests of the year, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

___

OBAMA II?

Democrats in 8 of 9 states were more likely to want a continuation of President Barack Obamas policies than a shift in a more liberal direction, as advocated by Sanders.

Majorities of Democratic voters in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia said they want a continuation of Obamas policies, along with about 4 in 10 voters in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Texas. In each of those states, about a third of Democratic voters or less want a switch to more liberal policies.

The outlier: Vermont, Sanders home state. About half of Democratic voters there said they want the next president to change to more liberal policies.

___

HONESTY v. EXPERIENCE

Democratic voters across each of the nine states had very different priorities as they chose between Clinton and Sanders.

Nearly half of Clintons voters said experience was the quality they were looking for, while only about a fifth or less selected electability, empathy or honesty.

Nearly half of Sanders voters said honesty was the most important quality and about a third said they were looking for someone who cares.

___

HISPANICS

Hispanics made up less than 15 percent of Democratic voters on Tuesday. In Texas, though, Hispanics were nearly 3 in 10 voters and two-thirds voted for Clinton.

In the Texas Republican primary, 10 percent of voters were Hispanic. They divided their support closely among home state victor Cruz, Rubio and Trump.

___

The surveys were conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research as voters left their polling places at 20 to 40 randomly selected sites in nine states holding primary elections Tuesday. Preliminary results include interviews with 806 to 1,491 Democratic primary voters and 536 to 1,821 Republicans primary voters in each state contest. In Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, the results also include telephone interviews early and absentee voters. The results among all those voting in each contest have a margin of sampling error ranging from plus or minus 4 percentage points to plus or minus 5 percentage points.

(AP)
Two terrorists infiltrated into Yishuv Eli early Wednesday morning, 22 Adar-I, close to sunrise. They were shot dead but not before that succeeded in stabbing a policeman, who is listed in light condition in the emergency room of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Yerushalayim.

Details of the attack to follow.

UPDATE: Two terrorists infiltrated into the yishuv, into the Yovel neighborhood in the eastern area of the community, which numbers about 900 families. The neighborhood is relatively isolated.

Bchasdei Hashem an IDF force noticed the break in the security fence and they responded along with police in Eli. The terrorists were armed with knives. The terrorists were shot dead and one resident was stabbed, BH only sustaining light injuries.

The wounded resident is an officer in the IDF reserves. He was awakened by noise, apparently the terrorists trying to enter their home. He battled with the terrorists and BH was only lightly wounded. He is married and the father of five.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photos: Media Resource Group)
[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] At about 5:30AM, the security officer of Yishuv Eli was notified that terrorists attacked a resident of Givat HaYovel, a secluded neighborhood in Yishuv Eli, in the eastern yishuv, atop a mountain about 850 meters high. Two terrorists, 18, from the nearby PA (Palestinian Authority) village of Kariyut, were eliminated by security forces. They were armed with a knife, pocketknife, wooden clubs and a makeshift gun. Bchasdei Hashem there was no loss of life among intended victims. One resident, a company commander in the IDF reserves, Roi Harel, sustained light stab wounds and was transported to Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

The terrorists arrived in the neighborhood during the predawn hours, an easy walk from their village across the lone access road to the area. This particular hilltop in the community, Eli, which today is home to over 900 families, a yeshiva and kollel, is not gated. The IDF is working on establishing a high-tech alert barrier in the area.

The terrorists according to several reports smashed a number of car windows, apparently to get residents to come out of their homes so they could attack them. One of these residents was IDF reservist Roi Harel, who lives in that community. He was dressed in uniform as he was heading out to reserve duty. As he left his home the terrorists attacked him. Bchasdei Hashem he managed to slam the door to his home, saving his wife and five children from harm. He fought with all his might and they fled. It is still unclear if Roi had his pistol with him. Since he was reporting for reserve duty, he had not yet signed out his automatic weapon.

His wife called the security officer and an alert was sounded with the IDF and residents were alerted by the automated phone system, sending messages to remain indoors do to a security incident to their phones.

By now another resident of the hilltop, Yesha Council Director Shilo Adler, a battalion commander in the reserves was out and hunting for the terrorists along with arriving IDF soldiers who arrived. Shots were heard and they ran towards the mikve and saw soldier eliminated one of the terrorists as the second ran towards a vehicle. He too was shot and killed. The only person injured is Harel.

Residents then explained the gadlus of the miracle, for the children on this hilltop meet at 5:50am in the shul for chavrusa in mishnayos and clearly they would have been easy targets had the terrorists detected them. The area, Givat HaYovel, is known as Givat HaAlmanot (Widows Hill) for residents include Mrs. Roi Klein HYD and Mrs. Eliraz Peretz HYD.

Roi Klein was killed during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 when he ran towards a grenade in Bint Jbeil while screaming Shema Yisrael, thereby saving the lives of his troops. Major Eliraz Peretz was killed in an encounter with terrorists in Gaza in 2010.

Many others residents in the community serve in the standing army and were not home this morning, highlighting the magnitude of the miracle that the few men present heard the noise, responded, and had the Siyata Dishmaya to neutralize the threat.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
In the waning hours of Super Tuesday, the American public took note of a few key developments:

Donald Trump was projected to win in at least seven states.

Chris Christie, who endorsed Trump last week, was shown standing behind the Republican presidential frontrunner wearing an expression of unmasked horror.

And, the government of Canadas immigration website was experiencing delays.

Coincidence? The Internet didnt think so.

By the end of the night, Trump had secured victories in seven states, well ahead of his competitors. But his popularity wasnt apparent on Facebook and Twitter, where users lamented the billionaire real estate moguls rise and contemplated fleeing the country.

Long ignored and called derogatory names like Americas hat, Canada  that vast expanse of snow and maple trees  became the Promised Land.

This newfound recognition wasnt achieved overnight.

The first rumblings of a northern migration were heard after Trump announced his presidential run. They intensified after the candidate proposed a total ban on Muslims entering the U.S. And on Tuesday, as Trumps nomination became an ever-looming reality, the desperation reached a fever pitch.

(Actually, people dont get fevers in Canada. Frostbite is more likely.)

According to Google trends, searches for How to move to Canada surged as Tuesdays results came in. Simon Rogers, a data editor at Google, noted that the phrases search popularity had increased by 350 percent between 8 p.m. and midnight ET.

At midnight, the spike reached 1500 percent. To quote Trump himself, Just look at the numbers, way up!

The American people are looking for a solution. That solution now appears to be the Canadian immigration system.

For America its becoming a reality that Trump and Clinton are going to be the final two

Norm Kelly, a city council member in Toronto, noted that many of his American followers were tweeting at him. Heres the link, he responded, giving them the immigration web page.

Canadas promise is contained in more than its geographic convenience. As The Posts Ishaan Tharoor has pointed out, Canadas newly-elected prime minister Justin Trudeau is in many ways the anti-Trump.

Whereas Trump revels in name-calling, Trudeau recently posed in a pink T-shirt to proclaim: Kindness is one size that fits all.

Whereas Trump has said he is not a believer in climate change, Trudeau has been determined to change Canadas spotty record on environmental policy.

And there can be no greater contrast between the two than their respective approaches to the Syrian refugee crisis. Aside from Trumps call to ban all Muslims coming into the U.S., he has also said that any refugees who have arrived as part of this mass migration will be sent back to the war-torn country if he is elected.

Last December, Trudeau personally welcomed the first batch of migrants as part of a pledge to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees  a campaign promise that the government said it has achieved this week.

If all this sounds too good to be true, theres more: an invitation has already been extended by Canadians to aspiring Canadians south of the border.

A website created by radio host Rob Calabrese shares the splendors (in Canada, that would be splendours) of his native Cape Breton Island, a picturesque locale in the maritime province of Nova Scotia.

If you have a baby, you get paid leave for almost a year, Calabrese told the CBC. If you cut your hand, you can go to the doctor and get stitched up for free.

To top it off, the island also enjoys warmer climates than the rest of the country.

While Calabrese initially had only comedic intentions for the site, he told the CBC that he has since received several serious inquiries, including one from a Cornell University professor.

Theyre asking genuine questions about things like the immigration process, the economics, he said. Its been taken seriously by some people, which is great and not intended, but Im going to help them out as best I can.

Spoken like a true Canadian.

Not all Trump detractors are contemplating escape, however. A number of patriots have implored their fellow countrymen to resist taking the easy way out by heading north.

All this (expletive) happening and youre going to say that to me? Ive heard this before, comedian Hari Kondabolu said in prescient stand-up routine four years ago. If Bush wins again, Im moving to Canada. Youre not moving to Canada! No ones moving to Canada. I hate to break this to you, but Canada doesnt have a special visa for American liberal cowards.

Kondabolu is right. As of Wednesday morning, no such visa exists.

In fact, it may soon become a lot harder for Americans to reach Canada, thanks to the border wall idea popularized by Trump.

Its time to build a wall  the higher the better  along our 8,891-kilometer border with the United States,  declared the editorial staff of the Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, in August of last year. Let us build the Great Wall of Canada.



(c) 2016, The Washington Post  Yanan Wang
Iranian moderates and reformers secured unprecedented wins last week in the first national elections since the nuclear deal was struck. But in Congress, many of the pacts staunchest opponents say the results dont count for anything.

The political system in Irans a joke, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., adding that the significance of the moderates sweep in Tehran and other apparent wins across the country count for zero, zip.

There are no moderates in Iran, Graham added. Thats a fiction I dont buy.

For months, opponents of the Iran nuclear deal  effectively approved by Congress last fall  argued that lifting international sanctions in exchange for Irans surrendering its nuclear capabilities would fuel terrorism, other malign activities, and ultimately strengthen the position of hardliners already in charge.

Now, President Barack Obamas team looks prescient for arguing that the deal was essential for any hope of bringing about a moderate shift in the Islamic Republic.

Allies of moderate President Hassan Rouhani and other reformers managed to sweep the available seats in Tehran in the recent contests, while securing a majority in the Iranian parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that will choose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei successor. Meanwhile, some of the countrys most unbending hardliners lost their seats during the election.

But many of the nuclear deals staunchest critics denounced the Iranian elections even before they took place, based on a culling of candidates that barred many of the most moderate and reform-minded contestants from running.

As long as the Ayatollah Khamenei is in charge, it doesnt matter, the elections, said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., another vocal opponent of the nuclear deal.

I wouldnt call the people who swept moderates,' added Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho. The election shows no change.

Iran has hardly acted like a saint since the deal was signed last July. The pacts opponents are quick to point to recent ballistic missile tests and the detention of U.S. soldiers as part of the deals legacy.

But a few of the deals opponents are celebrating the results as a sign of change.

Am I glad that more moderate people, it would appear, are elected? Yes. I really am, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn. The question is, will having more moderate people involved just put a more moderate face on Iran, or are policies going to change?

Even some of the deals supporters are also throwing water on the budding enthusiasm over the election results.

In many ways, the list of regime-approved candidates told us more about Irans intentions than the election results, said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who called himself deeply skeptical that the moderates wins would bring about any progress.

Ever since the nuclear deal was approved, its critics  many of them Republicans  have vowed to crack down on Tehran in other ways. But the timeline has lagged.

The Senate is currently overdue to release and consider a slate of Iran-related bills that key members said would be brought up last month. The measures were expected to address everything from Irans recent ballistic missile tests to human rights violations, and include a reauthorization of the soon-expiring Iran Sanctions Act (ISA). The ISA encompasses a variety of trade, energy, defense and banking sanctions over Irans nuclear and missile activities, as well as its support for terrorist groups.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who also opposed the nuclear deal and downplayed the significance of the moderates win in Iran, said last week that he expects to introduce his Iran bills soon.

Absent such actions, there is little Congress can do to influence political events in Iran but watch how things, like the recent elections, play out.

Im never going to complain when it looks like more moderate elements are having a voice, but weve seen the kind of games that Iran plays. So Ill wait and see, said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C. Id love to see a difference in behavior from the people who are running the country; I doubt seriously it will happen. I hope Im wrong.

The Washington Post  Karoun Demirjian
Donald Trump won GOP primaries in seven states, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took three in a Super Tuesday rebound, sparking renewed calls from some Republicans to unify around a single Trump rival as the billionaire tightened his hold as the front-runner.

The contests in 11 states showcased Trumps dominance over a crowded GOP field. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was the winner in one state: Minnesota, his first victory of the 2016 primary season.

Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. In several states, his lead was in double digits, and his share of the GOP vote neared 50 percent. With those wins, Trump has more than doubled his victory total in this GOP primary season.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is now on a path toward a long lead among delegates that will be hard for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to surmount. Although Sanders held his own by winning four of 11 states Tuesday, Clintons performance dramatically widened her lead as she tries to put to rest any lingering doubts over her shaky start in the 2016 voting.

At this point, both Trump and Clinton have substantially more delegates than their opponents. Trump has 316 to Cruzs 226 and Rubios 106, while Clinton has amassed 1,001 delegates to Sanderss 371.

The turnout results from Tuesday showed a sharp disparity between the two parties. There was an overall 70 percent increase in Republican turnout since 2008 across the states holding primaries and caucuses Tuesday, according to Edison Media Research, but Democratic turnout declined 28 percent compared with 2008.

While part of the shift stemmed from changes in the election schedule, since Texas and Virginia voted this year when the contest remained competitive, it also showed that GOP voters are energized by the current battle over control of the party after having a Democrat in the White House for more than seven years.

Even as Trump basked in his Super Tuesday romp, a well-funded super PAC was ramping up its effort to discredit the New York businessman with a new television advertisement that portrays him as a predatory huckster who scammed working- and middle-class Americans.

The 60-second ad, which will begin airing Wednesday on stations across the country at a cost of more than $1 million, centers on Trump University, the billionaire moguls for-profit enterprise that promised to teach students the tricks of the real estate trade and is now defunct and the subject of a fraud suit.

The attack echoes themes that Rubio, who is trying to unite the GOPs anti-Trump forces under his own banner, has advanced as he has addressed swelling crowds in suburban areas. Trump had mocked him for not winning any states before the latest contests, and while Rubio did manage to secure one Tuesday, the night was an overall disappointment.

He had attacked Trump sharply in the past few days and shifted some late-deciding voters into his camp. But outside of Minnesota, it wasnt enough.

Speaking to Fox News Channel on Wednesday morning, Rubio  who has cited several media reports while blasting Trump over the past week  criticized journalists for taking a pass when it comes to the front-runner.

I had hoped it would take its own course, he said, but he concluded he needed to launch a frontal assault. If this were any other front-runner, Rubio added, we would have people saying, Lets all rally around the front-runner. That will never happen with Donald Trump.

Rubio also expressed confidence that he will win when his home state, which will deliver 99 delegates in a winner-take-all primary, votes on March 15. Its going to be close, no doubt about it, but we know how to win in Florida, and we will.

Cruz won Alaska, Oklahoma and his home state of Texas just after 9 p.m. They were the second, third and fourth states Cruz has won in this race; he also won the first contest, the Iowa caucuses. The win in Texas, in particular, was vital: It saved Cruz from a humiliating home-state defeat and gave him part of the largest slate of delegates that was up for grabs Tuesday.

But this was not the Super Tuesday that Cruz had hoped for months ago. He had campaigned hard in Southern states, hoping to dominate among evangelicals and very conservative voters. Instead, in state after state, he saw those voters flock to Trump.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich came in a close second to Trump in Vermont.

The worry among the party establishment  which has put its last hopes on Rubio  was strong and growing after Trumps Tuesday victories.

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an outspoken critic of Cruz, said to CBSs Charlie Rose on Tuesday night, Well, I think were about ready to lose to the most dishonest politician in America, Hillary Clinton, and how could you do that?

I made a joke about Ted, but we may be in a position to have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and Im not so sure that would work, he said, adding that when it came to that prospect, I cant believe I would say yes, but yes.

Cruz, R-Texas, addressed his supporters at a venue called the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, a Houston suburb. He sought not so subtly to persuade Rubio to drop out of the race, saying that a divided field was allowing Trump to succeed.

So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trumps path to the nomination remains more likely. And that would be a disaster . . . for conservatives, and for the nation. And after tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump, Cruz said. He spoke to primary voters in future states: We must come together.

Rubio, the establishment candidate who had sharply attacked Trump in the past few days, ran close to Trump in Virginia, boosted by support among college-educated voters and Republicans in the D.C., suburbs. But he fell short, with Trump piling up large margins in the states rural South and West.

Still, exit polls showed some good news for Rubio: In several states, he did well among voters who decided late, according to media reports. That could be taken as proof that Rubios late attacks on Trump worked  and it could encourage Rubio to continue them, hoping to win more primaries in the coming weeks.

Rubios campaign has sought to position him as the top alternative to Trump: the one who would be waiting and ready when voters  or delegates, at a fractious GOP convention  finally turned on the front-runner. But Tuesdays results showed that was not exactly true. In fact, Rubio came in third in eight states, and placed second only in Virginia and Georgia.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., took to the chamber floor Wednesday to decry Trumps rise, which he blamed on Republican leaders in Washington.

Donald Trump is the ultimate fulfillment of the Republican Partys legacy of obstruction and resentment, he said. The reality is Republican leaders are reaping what theyve sown.

And while Reid described the New York billionaire as the standard-bearer for the Republican Party, he said candidates including Cruz and Rubio have been equally disparaging of minorities and immigrants. Their message, he said, may be a little more subtle, but theyre saying the same thing.

Trump, for his part, spoke to supporters in an ornate ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He mocked Rubio, calling him the little senator and reminding his crowd that [Rubio] didnt win anything. He hasnt won anything, period.

Trump also called his campaign a movement, and sought to look ahead to a general election contest against Clinton.

I am a unifier. When we get all of this finished, Im going to go after one person, Hillary Clinton, Trump said. He rejected suggestions that his comments  about Mexican immigrants, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and a ban on Muslim foreigners entering the country  had divided his party.

We are going to be a much finer party. Were going to be a unified party, Trump said. I mean, to be honest with you. And we are going to be a much bigger party. Our party is expanding.

In a wide-ranging news conference that followed Trumps speech, he issued a kind of threat to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who  before Trump came on the scene  had a claim to being the most popular figure in the GOP.

Paul Ryan, I dont know him well, but Im sure Im going to get along great with him, Trump said. And if I dont, hes going to have to pay a big price, okay?

It seemed possible, given Tuesdays results, that Rubio, Cruz and Kasich could find a reason to remain in the race. So even where Trump lost Tuesday night, he may have won  reaping the benefits of a crowded field of candidates and splitting the anti-Trump vote into pieces.

Former pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who has failed to win a single primary or caucus so far, told supporters he was dismayed with the state of the nations political system and not prepared to quit the race yet.

It is rotten; it is rotten to the core, Carson told a crowd of supporters in Baltimore. Im not ready to quit untangling it quite yet.

Carson has called on the five remaining candidates to meet privately in Detroit in advance of Thursdays GOP debate on the Fox News Channel. He has asked them to take a pledge to talk about the many serious problems facing our country, instead of personally attacking each other.

In the Democratic race, with nearly all the votes counted,Clinton won the Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia Democratic primaries as she looks to dramatically widen her lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination over Sanders.

Sanders chalked up four victories: his home state of Vermont, as well as in Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.

Speaking to supporters in Miami on Tuesday night, Clinton seemed to assume the mantle of presumptive nominee, speaking only briefly of Sanders and instead looking ahead to the general election  and taking jabs at the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, without mentioning his name.

America prospers when we all prosper. America is strong when were all strong, she said. We know weve got work to do, but that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole; we have to fill in whats been hollowed out.

That play on Trumps signature line gave a strong hint about the thrust of Clintons argument in a head-to-head contest: She would say the country needs to unite and build on what she calls Obamas accomplishments, and she would seek to turn Trumps bitter rhetoric against him.

(c) 2016, The Washington Post  David Fahrenthold, Philip Rucker, Juliet Eilperin
The Following is VIA BaltimoreJewishLife.com

Its proximity to Washington, D.C., gives the Baltimore Jewish community a front row seat to national politics, but now the political spotlight has turned on an upcoming local election. Community activist and small business owner Isaac Yitzy Schleifer has launched his candidacy for city council; this could be a watershed election for Baltimores Orthodox community which, for the first time, has a very credible opportunity to put a frum Jew in City Hall. Outside of New York, Orthodox communities are less organized in the political arena, but this race has attracted the involvement of New York State Assemblyman Phil Goldfeder who came to Baltimore recently to help Schleifer campaign and to host a fundraiser at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Azman.

Goldfeder explained, I hope my involvement in Baltimore will show how critical it is for Orthodox communities to unite behind its candidate, organize strong grassroots efforts, and offer fundraising support. While this is common in New York, we should be showing our strength as a political bloc in vibrant Orthodox communities all over the country.

I am honored that Assemblyman Goldfeder understands how critical this race is. I hope his efforts in Baltimore will really encourage every member of our community to register and turn out to vote, said Schleifer.

Ezra Friedlander, CEO of a public policy consultation firm, said, There is no question of the benefits of an elected official who actually lives in the community, shops in the same stores, and sends their children to the same local schools as you. They will have an enhanced understanding of the issues that affect you daily and be able to work harder for you.

Friedlander reflected on how New York State Senator Simcha Felder got school transportation for yeshiva students finishing their school day later than local public schools. Only as someone who understood the ebb and flow of the community could he take the appropriate actions to provide thousands of yeshiva students with needed transportation. And before Senator Felder took office, Local frum families had to borrow thousands of dollars to sue the Board of Education to get reimbursed for the services the local government was supposed to provide for their special needs children. Today, Felder has established collaboration with the Mayors office, alleviating financial hardship.

Ari Mandelbaum, a frum city councilman in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan, noted the importance of electing frum leaders. Frum communities around the country have more needs as they grow, including social services, safety concerns, and city programming. Usually frum candidates have been volunteers within their shuls and community organizations and want to help on a larger scale. Communities must rally behind them to have a voice that truly understands their needs. Having someone in elected office, rather than just outside advocates, helps in the early stages of drafting legislation to ensure that frum communities have a part in making decisions that will affect them.

With thousands of frum voters in Baltimore City, Schleifer is focusing on taxes and crime. Baltimore residents pays the highest property taxes in the entire state of Maryland, hurting frum families who are already burdened with tuition, private school transportation costs, mortgages, and daily household needs.

He also points to the crime wave that has targeted the frum community with dozens of home and car break-ins recently. Baltimore has the second-highest murder rate in the country; criminals know that police are tied up with homicides and cant put enough resources to protect the frum neighborhoods. When we find thugs in our homes, we have to step up and make sure our families are safe. This helped propel me into the race, said Schleifer.

Every Vote Matters

Baltimore voters must be registered Democrats to vote in a Democrat Primary, so Schleifer is working to help frum Jews registered as Independents or Republicans switch party affiliation. His campaign is also challenged by the election being held on Chol Hamoed Pesach, when many frum voters may be busy or out of town.

Friedlander emphasized, Its an abomination for any member of our community not to vote! If you do not vote, you have abdicated your right to question anything the government does. He encouraged parents to take their kids to the polls before going on Chol Hamoed trips for an important educational experience.

Yonason Schenker, a New York based consultant who has worked as a political advisor to various city, state and federal campaigns, agrees that if the frum community fails to vote, they only have themselves to blame if they fall short by a small margin. A Pesach election is problematic. As a campaign strategist, I would encourage the Baltimore Rabbonim to have their congregants utilize absentee ballots and Early Voting. The community needs to understand the importance of having one of their own working within the City Council.

Schenker noted, Unfortunately, many frum Jews dont vote, but every single vote makes a difference. I have seen candidates lose by a handful of votes. Assemblyman Goldfeder told us about a frum city council candidate in New York who lost by 79 votes. What if that happens here?

Mandelbaum agreed. Unfortunately, some people dont believe that their vote will make a difference for a frum candidate; this is simply not true. And when they are involved in the process, it shows that the community cares about the city they live in and want to make it better. Voting shows they do not want the status quo.

Mr. Friedlander pointed out that We have a unique responsibility to vote because historically the Jewish people were discriminated against in countries where we resided and did not have equal rights. Additionally, because frum Jews proportionately are few in numbers, in places like Baltimore where we can determine the outcome of the election we must. If our voting rights were taken away, suddenly every person would want to vote. Only a few decades ago, Africa-Americans were denied their basic rights to vote in many parts of the South. Let us remember: voting is both a sacred right and responsibility.

Added Schenker, The frum community should be encouraged by the opportunity to make history this year in Baltimore.
Honda has pumped an additional 200 million into its facility in Swindon after confirming next years new Civic family car will be produced there for the global market and not just Europe for the very first time.

The brand, which claims to have already invested a total 2 billion into the Wiltshire factory, said the move demonstrated its long-term commitment to manufacturing in the UK.

The Japanese carmaker previewed the new five-door hatchback with a racey looking Civic prototype at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show on Tuesday, a car the brand hopes will appeal to a younger market.

Racey: The tenth generation Honda Civic will be built in Britain and exported to the world - including Japan and USA

For the first time, the five-door hatchback built in the UK will also go on sale in the US.

Currently, the American market has a three-door coupe and five-door sedan version of the popular medium-size car, but under new global plans the five-door hatchback, usually reserved for the European market, will also test the waters across the Atlantic.

In the official statement released on Tuesday, Jason Smith, the director of Honda of the UK Manufacturing (HUM) facility, said securing production for the global market was a big coup for the brand and those working at the Swindon plant.

By establishing HUM as a global production facility for the all-new Civic hatchback, Honda is demonstrating its long-term commitment to manufacturing in the UK and Europe, he said.

This is incredibly important for HUM and is a reward for the commitment and effort put in by Honda associates in recent years.

As a global production facility for the Civic hatchback we look forward to making the most of the opportunity to export this model not only to our European customers, but also to key global markets.

Finishing touches: Workers at the Honda UK plant in Swindon. The Japanese carmaker has invested a further 200m into the facility

Prudent: Philip Crossman, managing director for Honda UK, said the company is waiting for the result of the EU referendum before planning for the future

The decision comes in light of the uncertainty around the UKs future position within Europe, with other carmakers with British production hubs warning of the potential consequences for UK manufacturing if the Brexit campaign is a success.

In an interview Philip Crossman, managing director for Honda UK, said the brand is waiting for an outcome on the decision to stay in Europe before planning for the future, but intends to follow through with the new investment at Swindon no matter the result.

We wont make a comment on it as an organisation until a decision is made. We have a huge investment in the UK and I cant see that being dissipated, he said.

What the consequences might be two or three years down the line, we just dont know yet.

Hopefully the 200 million investment will secure jobs in Swindon and if the five-door Civic takes off in America it could see Swindon working at full capacity.

Like the prototype shown in Geneva, the new 10th generation Civic will be lower and wider than before to improve handling but also have a longer wheelbase to increase rear passenger space

The sporty looks signals what the next generation Civic Type R could look like, but Honda refused to confirm if there'll be a hot hatch version of its new family hatch. Based on the success of the current Type R, we imagine there'll be one

Phil Webb, head of cars in the UK, added: Weve made a decision on the global production run of Civic in Swindon and theres no reason to believe that is going to change.

According to Honda UK officials, pre-production of the new car has already began for the US market at the Swindon plant, with full production due to kick off in the summer.

High hopes: Daisuke Tsutamori, project leader for 10th generation Civic

The car, which was officially unveiled in Genenva on Tuesday afternoon, is longer, wider and lower than the outgoing model in a bid to improve dynamics and attract a younger audience.

If the concept shown this week is anything to go by, it should certainly appeal to a more youthful age group, with a low-slung body kit, rear spoiler and twin exhausts not too dissimilar to those featured on the current Civic Type R hot hatch.

The previous two generations of Civic, probably together with the customer, had become older in appearance  in our eyes it had become a little bit conservative, Daisuke Tsutamori, the project leader for Civic, said.

What we definitely wanted to realise for the new Civic is to make the design more desirable for younger customers, and thats why theres quite a radical change with the appearance.

The production-ready five-door model will be unveiled at the Paris Motor Show later this year and arrive in dealerships next January.
Sources say it could lead to industrial workers being able to claim earlier

Review to examine the idea of linking pension payments to life expectancy

White collar staff may be forced to wait longer for their pensions than manual workers.

A review is to examine the idea of linking payments to variations in life expectancy

Sources said this could lead to industrial workers, who have shorter lifespans, being allowed to claim their pensions earlier.

An official review is to examine the idea of linking pension payments to life expectancy but sources warn it could lead to industrial workers, who have shorter lifespans, being able to claim earlier than office workers

Under one scenario, those who start work at 16 would qualify for a pension at a lower age than graduates who join the labour force in their 20s.

Another possibility would be to favour people living in areas of low life expectancy because they are unlikely to claim for as long as residents in more affluent areas.

John Cridland, the former head of the CBI, was appointed by ministers to lead a 12-month review, aimed at delivering 'fairness' while being 'affordable in the long term'.

No decisions have been made about changes to the standard pension age, according to pensions minister Baroness Altman. But figures from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility suggest it will have to rise to 70 by 2050 to keep pace with longer lifespans.

Tom McPhail, of financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'We fully expect state pension ages to go up faster than currently planned, and those joining the workforce today are likely to find themselves waiting until their mid-70s to get a payout from the state system.

'This is simply a function of the big jumps we continue to see in life expectancy, which the state pension can't hope to support without costs spiralling out of control.'

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith (pictured) warned that the review will worry British workers planning for retiremen

Paul Green of Saga urged ministers to learn from the 'mistakes' of rapid increases in the women's state pension age that have left many from the 'mistakes' of rapid increases in the women's state pension age that have left many women in their fifties short-changed.

'Reviews to the state pension age are understandably very emotive,' he said. 'We urge the pensions minister not to repeat past mistakes and promise that any changes will not affect those within ten years of the current expected retirement age to give both men and women a fair amount of time to properly plan.'

The state pension age for women is already rising from 60 to 65 in line with men. It will then rise to 66 for both men and women in 2020  a move forecast to save the Treasury more than 5 billion a year.

The pension age is due to rise to 67 from 2026 and is set to hit 68 by 2044

Reforms already in the pipeline are due to slash 30 billion from the forecast pension bill by 2050.

But without further reforms, the cost of providing state pensions to Britain's ageing population will rise from 5.5 per cent of GDP to almost nine per cent by the 2060s.

Even raising the pension age to 70 by that point would only reduce the bill to a little under eight per cent of GDP.

Increases to the state pension age are highly controversial, with critics warning that variations in life expectancy mean that some people will die before claiming pensions that others will enjoy for years.

Ministers are also keen to examine ways of encouraging older people to remain in the workplace for longer.

The study will look at whether the state pension age could be replaced by an age range, allowing some people to retire relatively early on a lower pension, while others stay working for longer in return for a more generous pension a few years later.

Pensions minister Baroness Altmann (left) has appointed former CBI chief John Cridland (right) to lead the first independent 12-month review of the state pension age, which is aimed at delivering 'fairness'

Those forced out of the workplace early by medical problems could qualify for a lower 'ill-health pension'.

Ministers have ruled out setting a higher pension age for women, even though they have longer life expectancy. A Government source said the move would be 'politically unacceptable', and probably illegal under equality laws.

Owen Smith, shadow work and pensions secretary, said: 'People are right to worry that the terms of this review may suggest that the Tory Government is set to speed up rises in the state pension age, throwing into chaos the retirement plans of millions of British workers.'

The Department for Work and Pensions said that the existing timetable for raising the pension age to 67 would not be accelerated as part of the review.
MBABANE  A deputy sheriff has been ordered to attach and sell by public auction movable goods belonging to Senate President Gelane Zwane to recover a loan she took from SwaziBank



The bank is demanding that she pay a sum of about E65 000.

The attachment of her property comes after the court issued a writ of execution, subsequent to a summary judgment the bank obtained against her.

You are directed to attach and take into execution the movable goods of the above named defendant (Gelane Thokozile Zwane), of Plot 220, Dalriach, and of the same cause to be realised by public auction the sum of E64 181.40, together with interest thereon at the rate of nine per cent per day calculated from July 8, to date of final payment plus costs of suit to be taxed by the Taxing Master, reads part of the writ of execution issued by the High Court.



The money which the bank is now demanding from Zwane, is in respect of a balance outstanding from a personal loan of E336 000 the senate president entered into with the bank on or about May 29, 2013. Interest was payable at the rate of seven percent per annum.

The loan was granted under the banks Personal Loan Scheme for Members of Parliament.



Zwane failed to pay the loan amount in full. According to the combined summons, the Senate president is in breach of the loan agreement.

On November 13, 2013, Zwane is alleged to have only made a part payment of E122 097. However, between November 14, 2013 and April 2, 2014 no payment was allegedly made towards the outstanding balance.



On April 3, 2014 she had allegedly paid E325 788.45 instead of the outstanding balance. The veracity of the allegations is still to be tested in a court of law.
MBABANE  The Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) has rejected the salary review report, amid fears that government doctored it.



SNAT is, in fact, calling for the release of the original report.

In an analysis of the report, which will be presented during a general council today, SNAT noted with dismay that there was a discrepancy in Page 164 (Annexure 6). Many pages of the report have not been numbered and the LCC logo is not printed on these unnumbered pages.



The organisation further noted that the writing style used, up to Page 164 was Times New Roman, while the one used on the unnumbered pages was Calibri. In their analysis, the organisation further stated that from Page 165, the writing style goes back to Times New Roman.



This raises questions regarding the authenticity of this document. The report was released to government more than four months ago. The question that comes into our minds is why has government been reluctant to release the report to unions?



This brought the association to the conclusion to dismiss the document as an original document that was produced by the consultancy. The teachers union further demanded the release of the original report with immediate effect.



The salary review report was released by government to the unions about a week ago. However, SNAT alleged that the document was released to government by the consultancy in September 2015.



As unions we have been fighting tirelessly for the release of the report to us and further the tabling of same on the negotiation table. This never happened until public sector workers engaged in protests and petition delivery activities on a weekly basis to demand that the report be handed to unions, the SNAT report stated.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

By Merle Exit

Two actors take on 13 roles in a comedic mix of murder, mayhem and music in Queens Theatres next production Murder for Two.

Murder for Two is the story of Officer Marcus trying to solve the murder of famed novelist Arthur Whitney before the real detective shows up at the scene of the crime, performer and co-author Joe Kinosian said. But poor Marcus keeps getting distracted by the wacky suspects who care little for the victim and the fact that he died. The audience should know that this show is first and foremost a comedy, a fun, freewheeling farce, that happens to take place around a murder mystery.

Ian Lowe plays Marcus to Kinosians 12 suspects  and both men play the piano throughout the 90-minute show.

The piano is played live throughout the entire duration of Murder for Two, Kinosian said. There is no prerecording whatsoever for either of the two roles. The music is live, the voices are live, and youre seeing it all happen right in front of you in real time.

Kinosian co-wrote the show with Keller Blair and has been portraying the slate of suspects since the shows beginning at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in 2011. He pops in and out of the touring production and will be in the Flushing version.

Kinosians favorite theater job was being cast in a live stage version of the movie Clue.

My part involved playing the piano as well as playing the roles of all the victims, he said. I grew up loving that movie and it was such a blast to get to do it on stage.

Lowe started out understudying the role of Marcus for part of the off-Broadway run at New World Stages in 2014.

I love playing Detective Marcus and I think the role suits me very well, Lowe said. I have so much admiration for Joe and all the other actors Ive seen do The Suspects successfully.

Besides his current stint as Marcus, Lowe has played other roles in regional theater companies around the country, including Leo Bloom in the Mel Brooks musical The Producers.

Murder for Two is definitely one of my favorite career experiences thus far, Lowe said.

And while the story involves a murder, Kinosian wants to stress the comedic aspect of the show.

The mystery is there and is real and really gets solved but priority No. 1 is the comedy, he said. So expect to laugh and have a great time.

If you go

Murder for Two

When: March 4  March 6

Where: Queens Theatre, 14 United Nations Ave. South, Flushing Meadows Corona Park

Cost: $25-$42

Contact: (718) 760-0064

Website: www.queen sthea tre.org

Murder For Two will have four performances beginning Friday, March 4 at 2pm. Other performances are: Saturday, March 5, 2 pm and 8pm, Sunday, March 6, 3pm.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

By Gabriel Rom

State Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) introduced a bill last week that would prohibit lawmakers convicted of felonies from receiving pensions for the time they served after having committed those crimes.

According to recent opinion polls, Avellas legislation has considerable popular backing.

In a Quinnipiac University poll from March 2015, 76 percent of voters in New York state agreed that elected officials should lose their pensions if convicted of a felony.

Allowing convicted felons to collect five- or six-figure pensions at the expense of the state ruins the very integrity of this legislative body, Avella said in a statement.

In October, Avella introduced a bill to ban state legislators from collecting salary and a pension at the same timealso known as double dippingwhich officials who are at least 65 years old and were elected before 1995 are eligible to do. The bill was subsequently rejected by the Assembly.

In hope of side-stepping previous legislative hurdles, Avellas bill includes a provision that would allow lawmakers to still collect the pension that accrued until the point of their committed felony. Calling the provision a penalty proportionate to the crime, officials would not be stripped of the pension earned while acting in full faith of the law.

Let this be the year that ethical pension reform passes both the Senate and Assembly, Avella said. Let this be the year that we as lawmakers prove that we can hold ourselves and our colleagues to a high standard and not allow those have acted with impropriety to continue to benefit off the taxpayer,

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has also expressed support for a constitutional amendment that would strip pensions from elected officials convicted of official misconduct. The governor said it adds insult to injury that taxpayers are forced to pay for pensions for elected officials convicted of corruption, including those of former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Skelos annual state pensions is $95,831, while Silvers is $79,222 respectively.

My bill, which is part of my ethics reform package, fixes this oversight and I think very fairly draws a line in the sand: If youve committed a felony, the pension which you have accumulated since youve broken the law becomes forfeit, Avella concluded.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

By Patrick Donachie

An education non-profit that advocates for New York City charter schools is accusing Mayor Bill de Blasio of fudging the numbers on safety in New York Citys public schools.

Parents and community leaders joined representatives from Families for Excellent Schools on the steps of City Hall last week to tout the release of the organizations new report on violence in the citys public schools and bemoan what they say is a failure on the part of the de Blasio administration to curtail that violence.

In the mayors 2016 State of the City address, he boasted that crime in city schools had dropped 29 percent since 2011-2012. However, 2014-2015 was the most violent year on record for schoolchildren in city public schools, according to recently released state data that Families for Excellent Schools cites in its report.

Families for Excellent Schools procured its data from the School Violence Index, a statewide record of all violent and disruptive incidents in public schools. The report states that the number of violent incidents in public schools rose from 12,978 in 2013-2014 to 15,934 in 2014-2015, a 22.7 percent increase. According to Jeremiah Kitteredge, CEO of Families for Excellent Schools, the mayors numbers are too low to be believed and the states count of 15,934 is more accurate than the citys count of 6,875 school safety incidents.

The states data immediately calls into question the mayors credibility on school safety, and should trigger a review of his school discipline reforms, he said. The mayor is deceiving parents by touting statistics that hide how dangerous city schools really are.

The Department of Education asserts, however, that the data sets in the state and city reports are substantially different from each other, and that the citys numbers paint a more accurate picture of how safe New Yorks public schools truly are.

This data is misleading. The total number of incidents at New York City public schools decreased nearly 8 percent last school year to historic lows and crime, arrests and summonses are down across the board, Toya Holness, the DOEs deputy press secretary, wrote in an email responding to the information in the report. Our top priority is to provide a safe and supportive environment for every student, and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to keep our students safe.

The state began collecting school violence data after the passage of the Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act of 2000, which required that all school districts in the state record all violent incidents that occur in their schools. In contrast, the city only records incidents in which the NYPD becomes involved. The DOE contends the states definition of violent incidents is to broad to represent the actual level of violence in public schools.

Families for Excellent Schools and the de Blasio administration have maintained a fraught relationship since the mayors inauguration. The organization is a charter-school advocacy firm, which lobbies state and city officials to increase the number and power of charter schools in the city, and it regularly criticizes the mayor and the DOE. Last year, Families for Excellent Schools spent $3.4 million lobbying Albany officials on behalf of charter schools, according to a recent investigation by Politico New York.
October Fun Calendar: Plenty to do this month in Beaver County
Torin Halsey/Times Record News Midwestern State University nursing student Blessey Abraham (left) teaches Doraldine Besteiro how to perform the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim during the 2015 MSU Community Health Fair. This years fair will be March 3 at D.L. Ligon Coliseum.

SHARE

Retired teachers group to meet

The Wichita-Archer Retired Teachers Association will meet at 2 p.m. March 2 at Dinsmore Elementary School in Electra.

Scott Hogue, superintendent of Electra ISD, will speak about the current challenges of operating public schools. Refreshments will be served. All retired school personnel are welcome.

MSU health fair coming up March 3

The 16th annual Community Health Fair at Midwestern State University on March 3 will feature free health screenings and activities that teach health promotion, and disease and injury prevention for participants of all ages. Hours are from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Don Flatt Gym at D.L. Ligon Coliseum.

Although the fair is a screening session for various health conditions, it is also the culmination of a semester of hard work by students at MSU's Gunn College of Health Sciences and Human Services, and a chance to educate the public that affordable health care begins with prevention.

Free screenings include blood glucose, oxygen saturation, body mass index, hearing, height and weight, vision, HIV, STDs, lung cancer and blood pressure readings. Educational information will be available about Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, diabetes, hypertension, testicular cancer, asthma and allergies, cardiovascular disease, and other conditions. Other material related to breast and testicular self-exams, reading food labels, portion control, choking prevention, preventing spread of diseases, drunken driving simulation, fire safety, exercise, vaping/e-cigarettes, assault/rape prevention, stress reduction, dental/oral care, and more will be available.

Betty Bowles, assistant professor of nursing at MSU's Wilson School of Nursing, said the fair has evolved into an assignment for the senior nursing students in the community nursing class, where they learn that nursing goes beyond the clinical setting in offices or hospitals. "The fair brings the community to the campus, and it teaches students to communicate with the public," Bowles said. "This works with our goal of moving toward prevention and getting people to work for a healthier lifestyle, rather than treatment." Social work, psychology, dental hygiene, radiologic sciences, and respiratory therapy students also are involved with screenings and exhibits on living healthy.

Information: 397-4048.

Iromuanya next for MSU Hoggard Series

The second event in the James Hoggard Reading Series will feature acclaimed author Dr. Julie Iromuanya, of Arizona State University. Iromuanya will appear at 6 p.m. March 3 in the J.S. Bridwell Auditorium at Dillard College of Business Administration.

Iromuanya is assistant professor of English and Africana literature and author the novel "Mr. and Mrs. Doctor," which has been shortlisted for the 2016 PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction Award. It also made the longlist for the 2015 National Book Critics' Circle John Leonard Debut Fiction Award.

Iromuanya was born and raised in the American Midwest and is the daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants. Her creative writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Passages North, Cream City Review, and the Tampa Review, among other journals. Her most recent scholarly work appears in Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern Diaspora (Carolina Academic Press).

This event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Bryan L. Lawrence Endowment; the Prothro-Yeager College of Humanities & Social Sciences; the MSU Department of English, Humanities, & Philosophy; and the African Students Organization. For more information, contact Dr. John Schulze at john.schulze@mwsu.edu.

Program to address dementia behaviors

Upsetting behaviors evolve during the course of dementia. To help caregivers decipher behaviors and determine how best to respond, the North Central Texas Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association will offer the Behaviors and Their Triggers program.

This free presentation will be presented at 2 p.m. March 3 in the First Floor Conference Room at the Alzheimer's Association Regional Office, 901 Indiana St.

Through practical information, resources, and interviews with experts, this program will help caregivers address the challenges of dementia-related behavior.

Information: Sue Gross, 767-8800 or 800-272-3900.

Burk Library sets annual book sale

The Friends of the Burkburnett Library will hold its annual used book sale fundraiser March 3-5 at the Burkburnett Community Center at Kramer Road and Davey Drive in Burkburnett. Hours will be 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 3-4, and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 5.

The sale will include gently used hardback and paperback books, audio books, DVDs, CDs, puzzles and games, as well as a silent auction.

Admission is free. All proceeds will go to support the Burkburnett Library.

Consignors invited to JBF family sale

The Just Between Friends Wichita Falls community consignment sale will be March 4-6 at the MPEC J.S. Bridwell Agricultural Center.

JBF is run by local families to give themselves and their neighbors a chance to "turn clutter into cash." Families sell new and gently used children's and maternity items to other families who wish to save money on purchases. Sellers earn 60 percent of the sale price, and event organizers earn the rest. Consignors can earn an additional 10 percent by working as volunteers at the event.

Sale hours will be 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. March 4, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. March 5 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 6. Admission is $3 on the first day, $2 on the second and $1 on the final day, when all items are sold at half the original price.

Information: Carrie Bloom, 237-6833.

Easter eggs hidden in Jalonick Park

The Kemp Sunnyside Center will hold its fourth annual Easter egg hunt from 1-3 p.m. March 5 at 405 Walnut St. at Jalonick Park.

In addition to egg hunting, the event will include bounce houses, prizes and refreshments. In case of rain, call Yolanda Henderson-Robinson at 224-4148.

WFHS class of 1962 working on reunion

The Wichita Falls High School class of 1962 will have a planning meeting for its 55-year reunion at 5:15 p.m. March 8 at the Catfish Grill on Southwest Parkway.

Anyone wanting to attend should contact Doug Lincoln at 696-5203 or Gloria (Rush) Jenkins at 851-8182.

Master Naturalists plan training class

The Rolling Plains Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists will hold its spring training class starting March 8 at the Midwestern State University Bolin Science Hall. The program is designed for those who love nature and the outdoors and want to learn more about our native community.

Training sessions will be held Tuesday and Thursday nights from March 8 to May 5. Classes will be led by local instructors and will allow participants to learn about local ecology, geology, meteorology, native plants, wildlife and much more. The class costs $100. Deadline to register is March 4.

The Texas Master Naturalist program is sponsored by Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and Texas A&M Agrilife Extension. Members of the Rolling Plains Chapter, along with other Texas Master Naturalist chapters, have donated more than a million volunteer hours to conservation, educational and environmental projects. The local chapter partners with Wild Bird Rescue, River Bend Nature Works and Lake Arrowhead State Park.

To register or for more information on the class, contact Robert Mauk, inland fisheries biologist with Texas Parks & Wildlife Department at 766-2383 or visit txmn.org/rollingplains.

Educator to talk at Criterion meeting

Educator Anne Gavin Patterson, a native of Wichita Falls, will be the speaker March 8 when the Criterion Club meets at the Wichita Falls Country Club. Coffee will be served at 10 a.m. and the program will be at 10:30 a.m.

Patterson is a graduate of Notre Dame School and the University of Texas. She holds a master's degree in teacher leadership from Lamar University. She was a social studies teacher at Rider High School for 24 years and eventually served as department chair before leaving in 2009 to become a U.S. history and Advanced Placement human geography teacher with Highland Park High School in Dallas. She was HPHS's Teacher of the Year in 2013.

Patterson will speak about the American political scene and the 2016 election.

Entries sought for student art contest

The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department is now accepting entries in the Texas State-Fish Art Contest for school aged artists.

The contest is open to any student in public, private or home schools in grades kindergarten through 12. Students must draw or paint any recognized state fish and write an essay about it. Complete contest details and entry forms can be found at tpwd.texas.gov/fishart.

Teachers who would like to incorporate the contest into their classroom activities can download the free State-Fish Art Contest Lesson Plan at statefishart.com. The interdisciplinary curriculum includes lessons and activities, a species identification section profiling each state fish, a glossary and student work sheets.

Entry deadline is March 31. Cash prizes are presented to the top three winners in each of four age categories, with a top prize of $1,000. A travel allowance is also provided for first-place winners to attend the national awards ceremony.

Information: Zoe Ann Stinchcomb, contest coordinator
Associated Press Vidalia onions can be used in plenty of delicious recipes, including Double Cheese and Tomato Vidalia Pie and Georgia Hash.

SHARE

By Judith McGinnis

BEST ONIONS EVER: The Maskat Shrine has returned to one of its most popular fundraisers -- the Vidalia onion sale.

Donors get 10 pounds of the sweet Georgia onions for $10.

Pre-ordering has begun; call 940-766-4511. Orders arrive May 1, and delivery is free.

As a courtesy and to motivate donors, Shrine member Elvin Dudley shared some great recipes.

DOUBLE CHEESE AND TOMATO VIDALIA PIE

Makes 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 sliced Vidalia onions

4 tomatoes, peeled and sliced

10 fresh basil leaves

1 9-inch deep dish pie shell, baked

1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

1 cup mayonnaise

- salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put tomatoes in colander (or mesh strainer) in a single layer; sprinkle with salt. Drain 10 minutes.

2 Layer tomato slices, basil and onion in pie shell. Season with salt and pepper. Combine grated mozzarella and cheddar cheeses and mayonnaise; spread over tomatoes.

3 Bake 30 minutes or until lightly brown. Cool 15 minutes, slice and serve warm.

SAVANNAH'S FAMOUS PIRATE HOUSE ONIONS AU GRATIN

Makes 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

5 cups Vidalia onions, chopped

5 cups grated cheddar cheese

1/2 cup self-rising flour

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter

DIRECTIONS

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use nonstick spray on a 2-quart casserole dish.

2 In a large saucepan, cover onions with water and cook until just tender. Drain.

3 Mix onions with 4 cups cheese and remaining ingredients. Pour into prepared baking dish and sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Serve warm.

GEORGIA HASH

Makes 10 servings

INGREDIENTS

1 pound ground beef

3 large Vidalia onions, sliced or chopped

1 large green pepper, chopped

1 16-ounce can stewed tomatoes

1/2 cup uncooked rice

1-2 teaspoons chili powder

2 teaspoons salt

- pinch black pepper

DIRECTIONS

1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, onion and pepper until meat is brown and vegetables are tender. Drain fat.

2 Stir in tomatoes, rice, chili powder and seasonings. Heat through.

3 Pour into an ungreased 2-quart baking dish. Bake, covered, for 1 hour.
Racist City Employees Are on Notice, and 9 Other Greater Cincinnati News Stories You May Have Missed This Week

Catch up on local government, politics, sports, celeb sightings and Halloween fun.
Carter Aviation misses multi-million dollar payment to city

The president of Carter Aviation says his company will soon have a lot of money but right now cant pay the city of Wichita Falls.
McNiel Junior High seventh-grade students formed two lines Tuesday afternoon in the schools mock presidential primary.

SHARE photos by CHRISTOPHER WALKER/TIMES RECORD NEWS McNiel Junior High Assistant Principal Jackie McCartney (left) helps seventh-grade student Austin Flores participate in a campuswide mock presidential primary vote. About 600 students  369 Republicans and 224 Democrats, voted.

By Lana Sweeten-Shults of the Times Record News

They may not have been superdelegates. But just ask around, and they likely will tell you they were super voters.

They were, at least, at McNiel Junior High School, where about 600 seventh- and eighth-graders cast their vote on Super Tuesday in the school's first mock presidential primary election.

If McNiel were in charge of things, Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination with 71 percent of the school's vote, while Hillary Clinton was a distant second with 27 percent. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz would be the Republican nominee. Thirty-three percent of the school's voters chose him over Donald Trump (25 percent of the vote) and Marco Rubio (18 percent).

And if you're wondering if McNiel skews Democrat or Republican, the junior high touts more voters who voted in the Republican mock primary - 369 of the voters - while 224 chose to vote in the Democratic mock primary.

During their social studies classes Tuesday, students lined up in the library, checked in as a Democrat or a Republican, then made their way to tables of Google Chromebooks, where they cast their vote for their party's representative for the next president of the United States.

"We tried to make it as realistic as possible. We've got the Republican side and the Democrat side," McNiel Assistant Principal Jackie McCartney said as he monitored the lines of young voters, though this mock election was strictly for president and didn't include candidates, say, for Texas Railroad Commissioner.

"We want to do this again in November so that it's an exact duplicate of the ballot."

For the past couple of weeks students have been talking about the election process in class and have been discussing everything from the difference between political parties to some of the important issues.

"In the student center, we set up information areas and students were able to look at that for two weeks," McCartney said, then showed a photograph he took of students scouring those informational charts. " ... The kids were dragging their friends over to their side," he added with a laugh.

Students also went to the website I Side With (www.isidewith.com) to gather information on candidates and to take a survey that would tell them, based on their answers, what party they lean toward.

"So we wanted them to be informed voters," McCartney said.

Eighth-grader Kaitlyn Holliday said that before the mock election, she had been paying attention to the presidential candidates. She watches the news every morning.

Not that she didn't also learn something she didn't know since engaging in the mock election. She learned a little more about taxes, for one.

"And I didn't know what socialism was until this year," she said.

Fellow eighth-grader Cruz Wilkinson said he decided to go with Donald Trump, "but not because it was a joke or anything." He added that when it comes to immigration that immigrants are welcome to enter the country but through a legal route.

"He has good points," Wilkinson said of Trump.

McCartney said one goal of the mock election is to get students thinking about what it is they actually believe.

What will be interesting, he said, is finding out how the McNiel vote might compare with the outcomes of the real election and if the students match up with the rest of Wichita Falls voters.

The value of this exercise, he added, is helping develop young people, their sense of self and who they want to be.

"Junior high, you know, is that place of discovery. ... We want them to start building their own views."
Times Record News file photo The entrance to the Canyon Trail housing addition is seen in Wichita Falls.

SHARE

By Claire Kowalick of the Times Record News

After more than six months of negotiations among a developer, residents and city staff, Wichita Falls City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday concerning the Canyon Trails Planned Unit Development.

City Planner Loren Shapiro presented to the council a manifestation of the plan that's significantly different than when the idea was first presented in January.

The ordinance approved includes adoption of a master plan for Canyon Trails and rezoning of 134.73 acres of the Planned Unit Development (PUD) for single-family houses and zero-lot line houses that meet certain design element requirements. Tract A, which includes all of the PUD currently inhabited, will remain zoned for single-family, estate property, and open space. Commercial/non-residential use was removed from the entire PUD.

No one chose to speak during the required public hearing on the issue.

After presentation of the ordinance, it was approved 6-1, with Councilor Tim Ingle voting against it.

Councilor Stephen Santellana said after many months and countless hours of work by city staff, he was glad to see the Canyon Trails issue put to rest.

Land developer Gary Mehan said he is pleased with the outcome and will begin construction as soon as possible.

In other council matters:

- An ordinance was approved to appropriate $77,000 for purchase of ground baggage-handling equipment and restaurant tables for the Wichita Falls Regional Airport. Transportation and Aviation Director John Burrus said their current baggage-handling company, Envoy, is choosing to no longer offer service for charter flights at the airport. The airport has about 12 charter flights each year. Burrus said they will use about $63,000 to purchase baggage carts, belt loaders and other equipment necessary for city staff to handle baggage for future charter flights. The remainder of the funds will be used to purchase more tables for Gourmet on the Fly, the newly opened restaurant at the airport. Burrus said the eatery is doing even better than expected and needs larger tables to seat more customers.

- An ordinance and resolution for a memorandum of understanding was approved to remove the Arts Commission and allow the newly formed Wichita Falls Alliance for Arts and Culture to oversee grant allocation through the Hotel Occupancy Tax funding.

- A resolution was approved to award a bid for three one-ton service trucks from Wichita Falls Ford-Lincoln Inc. for a total of $118,212.41.

- A resolution was approved to award the annual asphalt road work project to Freeman Paving LLC for $1,455,927.88. Public Works Director Russell Schreiber said base repair and asphalt overlap work should begin on several roads in the city in about 60 days. Roads affected will be Brazos Street off Tanglewood Drive; Fairway Boulevard from Johnson Road to Seymour Highway; a portion of road in Riverside Cemetery; McNeil from Pool to Kell Blvd.; Rhea Road between Southwest Parkway and Boren; a small of Midwestern Parkway at Holliday Creek; Crow Trace at Lake Arrowhead; the project also includes spot repair of a section of Call Field west of McNeil.

- A resolution was approved for $463,000 for the GuideIT project (see accompanying story).

- A resolution was approved for a continued agreement between the City of Wichita Falls and North Central Texas Medical Foundation for medical service at the Wichita County Public Health District.

- A resolution was approved to purchase 64 computers from Global Assets and 64 Microsoft Office licenses from SHI/Government Solutions for $63,844.
TRN file photo Wichita County Judge Woody Gossom talks with Cody Brock, grandmother Pat Norriss,and his mom, Robin Norriss at a special presentation for Absolutely Incredible Kid Day. The annual event March 15 asks adults to write letters of encouragement to children.

SHARE

Parents, grandparents, teachers and executives will put pen to paper for Camp Fire's annual Absolutely Incredible Kid Day. The event gives adults a chance to let children know how much they are appreciated.

"Lives are changed by this simple act of kindness," said Bettye Ricks, Camp Fire executive director.

"We know about Mother's Day, Father's Day, special days when we celebrate adults. Why not youth? We ask every adult to take five minutes and write a letter to a child, tell them they matter and they always will."

Reading the letters, Ricks says, gives kids a chance to "hear it enough and believe it," an opportunity to prepare children to face the complicated issues that confront them every day.

Absolutely Incredible Kid Day is March 15. Camp Fire North Texas will provide anything writers need to send a letter or card to a child or children in their lives. Letters can be generic, written to all children or to a specific child.

Some of the letters will be submitted to the Times Record News for publication.

To pick up stationary, envelopes or cards, as well examples of letters, go by the Camp Fire office at 2414 Ninth St.
Blood donors being monitored for Zika virus. TRN file photo

SHARE

According to Wichita County/Wichita Falls Health District Director Lou Kreidler, its not a matter of if, but when the Zika virus will make its way to Wichita Falls.

The Center for Disease Control will tell you the best way to avoid Zika is to not get bitten by a mosquito, Kriedler told the Wichita Falls City Council during their meeting Tuesday morning.

Councilor-At-Large Michael Smith asked Kreidler what the latest news was about Zika spreading to the United States.

She assured council that the city has an integrated pest-management program in place which includes spraying for mosquitoes all over the city and on-going testing of standing water for mosquitoes.

Kreidler said the center knows what types of mosquitoes are common in our area and they are on the lookout for the species that is known to carry Zika.

Home owners need to be vigilant as well in cleaning out gutters and checking yards for standing water.

As little as a soda-cap full of water can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes, she said.

Unlike other mosquitoes the Zika carriers, species Aedes aegypti, are aggressive day-time biters so she recommends if people are going outdoors to use insect repellent, wear light-colored long sleeve shirts and pants.

The major cause for concern with Zika is the connection to birth defects or miscarriage so women of child-bearing age are warned to possibly reconsider travel to portions of the world where Zika is prevalent.

An increase in Zika virus cases was seen in parts of South America in recent months. The disease is known to spread through the bite of a mosquito carrying the virus or sexual contact with a person infected with Zika.

Symptoms of Zika include fever, joint pain, rash, conjunctivitis (pink eye), headache, muscle pain or eye pain.

Its just about being aware of the situation. Its not a matter of if, but when it comes here. It only takes one individual to bring it to us, Kreidler said.
SHARE

By Lynn Walker of the Times Record News

Wichita County joined the rest of Texas in giving the state's junior senator, Ted Cruz, a victory in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Final totals in the county show Cruz winning 40 percent percent of the vote in the county, with Donald Trump coming in second with 28 percent and Marco Rubio taking third place with 20 percent.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton breezed to a victory over Bernie Sanders in the county, picking up 51 percent of the vote to Sanders' 48 percent.

Wichita County Clerk Lori Bohannon called the vote turnout heavy, with 19,397 of the county's 71,339 registered voters - about 27 percent - going to the polls.

Although there were only a couple of contested races in the county - all on the Republican ballot - one resulted in an incumbent county commissioner being voted out. Ray Gonzalez, Pct. 1 commissioner, lost his re-election bid to Mark Beauchamp, the traffic superintendent for the city of Wichita Falls. Beauchamp won 55 percent to 45 percent, but faces a Democratic opponent in November.

The county tax assessor-collector, Tommy Smyth, easily beat a challenge from Mike Pollard, a former staffer in the tax office.

In the race for Pct. 3 Constable, David Blackerby defeated Alton Yeakly handily.

Stories on the races for county commissioner and tax assessor-collect may be found on this page.

RELATED: View a full tally of votes for every primary race, Democratic Referendum and Republican Proposition on the 2016 Texas Primary Ballot below.

Election 2016: Wichita County Final Vote Tally
SHARE Howard photo H&V

Olen "Hill" Howard Jr., age 90 of Wichita Falls, passed away Sunday, February 28, 2016.

Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at Wesley United Methodist Church with Rev. Cheryl Murray officiating. Interment will follow in Crestview Memorial Park under the direction of Hampton Vaughan Funeral Home. Visitation will be held at Hampton Vaughan Funeral Home from 6:00  8:00 in the evening on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

Olen "Hill" Howard was born March 5, 1925 in Wortham, Texas to Olen Hill Howard, Sr. and Clara (Bounds) Howard. He graduated from Wortham High School and then volunteered and served honorably in the U.S. Army as a S/Sgt, Co. B-8th Infantry where he saw combat in Normandy, France during the D-Day Invasion, Northern France and Rhineland before being wounded in action. His military decorations and citations include: American Theatre Medal, Victory Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, EAME Theatre Medal with three Bronze Service Stars, Bronze Star and The Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster. Upon his return, he attended Baylor University and graduated in 1948. On January 17, 1953, he married the love of his life, Alice Lee French. They were married for 60 years. She preceded him in death on October 20, 2013. Hill worked in Civil Service at S.A.F.B for 37 years where he was an aerospace guidance and navigation instructor for the 3750 Technical Training School. He retired in 1985. He loved keeping busy by doing woodworking, construction work, and "fixing" things. He could fix just about anything as long as he had some baling wire, and a toothpick. He also loved spending time outside, whether that was at home or at the lake cabin he built by himself. He loved all these things but most of all he loved his Lord and Savior Jesus Crist. He served him for years at Wesley United Methodist Church. He served on the Administrative Council, Board of Trustees, Building Committee, was a Sunday school Teacher, member of the Methodist Men and the Crusaders Sunday school class. He was a Life Member of the Disabled American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Military Order of the Purple Heart Chapter 618, where he served as vice commander and service officer.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his wife; and his stepson: Brian Ballard.

He is survived by his six children: Jerry Howard and wife Mary of Granbury, Tx. Anita Howard of Cincinnati, Oh., Michael Howard of Cincinnati, Oh., Julie Howard Black of Wichita Falls, Mark Howard and wife Leslie of Roanoke, Tx. and Terri Howard Metcalf and husband Martin of Houston, Tx.; seven grandchildren: Chad Howard, Cullen Black and wife Gabby, Harrison, Hamilton, and Hulen Howard, Mallory Metcalf and Macy Metcalf Watson and husband Alex; and three great-grandchildren: Bailey and Jackson Black and Case Watson.

Memorials may be made to Hospice of Wichita Falls, Wesley United Methodist Church, Interfaith Ministries of Wichita Falls or Meals on Wheels of Wichita Falls.
SHARE

I love shoes. For those of you who have seen my closet, you'll attest to the fact that I have my shoes neatly (most of the time) on shelves in back of my closet. I am so lucky - to have so many shoes and also to have that wonderful closet and spaces for my shoes. I am grateful.

I think back to when I didn't have many shoes. Barefoot was the shoe of the summer when I was growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, and my three other siblings and I spent every spare minute on the creek or in the hedgerow where our "fort" kept us busy for long, lazy summer days. Funny, I don't remember stickers or feet hurting, I just remember the fun.

We always got a new pair of Sunday shoes for Easter. One time "before Easter" I talked my mom into wearing my new white patent leather shoes on a jaunt to the other Wichita - Wichita, Kansas - where we were going to see my mom's favorite cousin. As kids do, we headed with our distant cousins to the creek, where we sat on a swinging bridge and dangled our feet over the side. Yes - one of my white patent shoes went floating down that fast-moving water, and we were all smart enough then to not try to tangle with that water to retrieve the shoe. I don't remember what I wore that Easter. I just remember there was not a replacement for the Easter shoes that year.

As a young mother of two boys aged 5 and 3 and a newborn daughter, I was getting the children ready for a church event. As I got them all ready, my 3-year-old son said, "Mama, when are you going to get dressed up for church?" I looked down at my attire and my shoes and told my wee one that mama was dressed up. His reply, "Well, your shoes don't look like it." Out of the mouth of babes. Those shoes had multiple duties in that time in my life - and they were the best I had.

In a cold and wintry season in Rock Springs, Wyoming, I had to return to a much warmer Oklahoma for a grandparent's funeral. I was now a working mom and had a bit more expendable income. Before I left a pre-spring Oklahoma, I went shopping and bought a pair of red high heels. Imagine snow boots, sloppy wet floors from melting snow, and me changing from those snow boots into my new red heels when I got to my desk. The administrative office folks with whom I worked stopped and stared at my feet. Red heels in the still wintry spring days in Rock Springs, Wyoming. My co-workers labeled them "Teresa's Ruby Slippers." To this day I always have red shoes in my closet.

I was always told and took it to heart that when you meet someone, consider the following:

People look at your eyes.

People look next at your feet (shoes).

People remember your handshake.

People look to the right as they shake your hand, so wear that name tag on the right shoulder.

I believe that still today. Eyes give unspoken assurance; feet in shoes lead to new paths; handshakes offer acceptance and cooperation; and a name is important!

How many shoes do you remember that have led you into the adventures of your life? Do you look at people's shoes when you meet them for the first time? How many people aren't fortunate enough to have more than bare feet or one pair of shoes to lead them in all they do?

Walk a mile in someone else's shoes to gather an understanding and appreciation for his/her path. At the Wichita Falls Area Community Foundation, many different shoes are in our offices as new charitable works are initiated. How grateful I am to be in the role of president of this organization so I can see the eyes and shoes, feel the handshakes of new ventures, and remember the names of those making a difference in so many lives in this area! I am grateful!

Want to know more about the Wichita Falls Area Community Foundation? Walk those shoes into our offices at 807 8th Street, Suite 750, call us at 940-766-0829 or email tpontiuscaves@wfacf.org.
Patrick Johnston/Times Record News Modern, open baggage carousels are one of the amenities touted at the new Wichita Falls Regional Airport. The new facility, which is more than twice the size of the old one, was made possible in part by the Military Airports Program, which fast-tracks construction of facilities near military bases, such as Sheppard Air Force Base.

SHARE Richard Cleaver/Special to the Times Record News Air service has come of age in Wichita Falls with the construction of a new air terminal, complete with sky bridges, and the switch by American Eagle Airlines from prop planes to small jetliners. Claire Kowalick/Times Record News Savings on original construction cost estimates allowed the addition of amenities such at the restaurant Gourmet on the Fly at the new Wichita Falls Regional Airport terminal. City Transportation Director John Burrus calls restaurant operator Sally Harlow, seen here, an artist.

By Lynn Walker of the Times Record News

Except for some odds and ends, the new Wichita Falls Regional Airport is finished.

The next steps for city transportation leaders is to repair the road that leads to the airport and to look into bringing one or more new airlines to the city.

The $32 million facility opened in December 2014 and John Burrus, the city's transportation director, said the airport brings a "much more positive image" to Wichita Falls.

Burrus said when the city involved the Federal Aviation Administration in planning for the new facility, FAA representatives visited here.

"They said we had the worst terminal building they had seen in their five-state region," Burrus said.

The terminal project, which centered on a new terminal building, improved aprons and new parking, was largely paid for with FAA money. The city floated bonds to pay for the work and the FAA is reimbursing a portion of it. The city chipped in about $8 million toward the funding, using money from fees collected on airline tickets, a tax on rental cars at the airport, airport operating revenue and funding from the city's 4A and 4B tax boards. Savings on costs enabled the city to add the amenities of a rental car facility and a restaurant in the terminal.

The new terminal is almost 50,000 square feet, compared to about 17,000 square feet for the old facility. Other amenities include sky bridges that give passengers sheltered boarding and exiting, unlike walking across the open tarmac that was necessary in the old facility.

Burrus described public response to the new terminal as "overwhelmingly positive."

He said he has received only one complaint from a traveler since the building opened and said the complaint was minor and the issue was addressed. The new facility has allowed staff to change its philosophy.

"We concentrate on customer service. We try to be an advocate for our customers. We have real faces available to them and we address their problems," Burrus said.

Passenger traffic has increased to about 52,000 annually from 36,000 before the terminal opened, but Burrus said its real value is indirect - creating a positive image for visitors who might bring more business and industry to the city.

He also believes it is a safe bet that Wichita Falls will continue to have airline service, pointing out the resident carrier, American Eagle, gets about $20 million in revenue annually from the city. An important part of that business is student airmen at nearby Sheppard Air Force Base.

While American Eagle serves the city well, Burrus said the city may look at attracting additional airline service. Any additional service would likely be contingent on the city offering some kind of financial incentive.

"That is something the City Council will have to look at and decide," he said.

The city has had discussions with United and Delta airlines about providing service to Dallas Love Field and has considered other destinations such as Denver, Chicago or Saint Louis. He has also had discussions with Southwest Airlines, but the company - which operates no feeder air service and relies on large Boeing 737 jets - would have to have far more boardings to make it profitable than Wichita Falls currently offers.

The city will also consider having work done on Armstrong Drive, which leads to the terminal. The road was damaged by heavy vehicles during construction of the terminal.

Now in the third year of paying off 20 years of bond indebtedness, Wichita Falls will own its new airport free and clear in 17 years.
Uncredited

"Legend": Tom Hardy plays both Reggie and Ronnie Kray, twin gangsters who were the kingpins of organized crime in the East End of London during the 1960s. These guys rose to such criminal prominence that they even attracted the attention of crime bosses in Las Vegas. The story progresses through the rise and fall of the brothers. Director Brian Helgeland's pacing at times is a bit flat-footed, but his script is superbly crafted to show the transformation in the characters. Slowly through the movie, Ronnie's calm and collected style begins to show signs of the insanity that is so much the trademark of his twin brother.

"The Night Before": This holiday film about three best buddies looking for one last major Christmas Eve bash manages to be crass, rude and foul-mouthed while also being very sweet. It all comes together to make "The Night Before" a fun hybrid of a raunchy buddy comedy and a sweet holiday movie. Seth Rogen stars.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Albany

The heroin antidote naloxone will be made available for sale without a prescription in pharmacies across Albany County, the county executive said Tuesday night to applause.

County Executive Dan McCoy said making available the antidote best known by its brand name of Narcan will allow people to save lives when someone has overdosed on heroin or another opioid.

"Anyone who is concerned that one day they may find a loved one collapsed and not breathing may now purchase this medication, and with a simple injection or nasal spray, reverse the effects of an overdose and save a life," McCoy said.

The initiative was announced by McCoy during his fifth State of the County address. He said the county would be among the first counties to take this step, citing New York City and Erie County as examples where a similar program is in effect.

County Health Commissioner Dr. Elizabeth Warren will issue an order to direct the drug being available without prescription at participating pharmacies.

"Now, family members and friends of those who are struggling with opioid addiction have the power to buy this lifesaving medication at their neighborhood pharmacy," McCoy said.

"By issuing a standing order for naloxone, we have put into place a proven methodology for saving lives and reducing deaths," the county executive said.

Heroin use and addiction have cut a broad path through the nation's cities, suburbs and rural areas.

Sheriff Craig Apple said the program is a good idea, but fighting and treating addiction is paramount.Apple has been outspoken on the need to confront the heroin epidemic.

Assemblyman John T. McDonald III, D-Cohoes, said his pharmacy, Marra's, would participate.

McCoy also stressed that his administration would adopt an "Equity Agenda" to more effectively provide social and humans services to benefit county residents.

The county will work with the Center for Human Services Research at the University at Albany to assess how the county delivers services. "We will look at how we can best deliver county services through the prism of an Equity Agenda so as to best deal with issues of poverty, inequality, racism, discrimination and social and environmental justice," McCoy said.

McCoy said the county will use work done by King County in Washington state as a blueprint.

kcrowe@timesunion.com  518-454-5084  @KennethCrowe
So how does an East Greenbush-based band go from selling its own tickets to get on the bill at Bogie's to opening for 5 Seconds of Summer in the popular pop-rock band's native Australia, to a rabid audience of 20,000 people?

"It's still kind of a mystery to me," laughed Derek DiScanio, Averill Park graduate and frontman for State Champs, an increasingly popular pop-punk act.

This Sunday, State Champs is closing out the final leg of a world tour that saw stops in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada and spanned the breadth of the United States with a homecoming show at Upstate Concert Hall. DiScanio and the band eagerly anticipate closing up the act's most successful phase yet with a raucous show close to home.

"2016 has been our busiest year so far, and that's only going to continue," said DiScanio. "We like touring and being away from home, but at the same time we like where we're from.

More Information If you go State Champs and Neck Deep with Knuckle Puck and Like Pacific When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 13 Where: Upstate Concert Hall, 1208 Route 146, Clifton Park Info: 371-0012 www.upstateconcerthall.com See More Collapse

"Clifton Park is such a good homecoming to end the tour," he continued. "It's a weird thing; I can remember using friends' old IDs to get in (to shows at Upstate Concert Hall). It's such a long way from there to now. The show's going to be sticky, sweaty and a lot of fun."

Headlining a near-sold out show at Upstate Concert Hall, much less recent gigs for thousands in major markets like Chicago, wasn't even on the radar for State Champs six years ago. That's when DiScanio, a freshman graphic design major at SUNY Purchase, started the band with guitarist and Columbia High grad Tyler Szalkowski.

"It was kind of a hobby at first, something that we started for fun in our garage," DiScanio recalled. "We'd beg local promoters to play and tell them we'd sell our own tickets to the show to get on it."

The group developed strong word-of-mouth locally and began to get out-of-town gigs and grow its presence online. From there came the pursuit of a record deal.

"We've tried to build ourselves online as much as we could; it's such a strong contributing factor to our growth," DiScanio explained. "Everything (the band's rise) happened very fast and then we just started punishing labels with emails to get a deal."

The persistence paid off, and in 2012 State Champs signed a record deal with California-based Pure Noise. Next up were shows opening for pop-punk stalwarts New Found Glory and Yellowcard.

In conjunction with steady touring under major genre acts, the release of 2013's "The Finer Things" and 2015's "Around the World and Back" helped solidify and grow the band's following from the Albany club scene to a burgeoning international following, culminating in State Champ's status as a band on the ascent.

"We did so many support tours, playing 30-minute opening sets and building our brand," DiScanio said. "This tour has been a big test, to show we can do our own tour.

"It took a lot of growing, but it's a real exciting time to be doing what we're doing."

The band's well-received eight-show stint opening for 5 Seconds of Summer, an experience that has left the band on what DiScanio called "a high horse" has laid the foundation for further tours in the Land Down Under. The U.K. and Japanese legs of the tour has left the group satisfied, but looking ahead to what's next. It's that forward-thinking that DiScanio says helps keep the band anticipating its future.

"We're always pushing ourselves for more. We don't want to get to a point where it doesn't feel exciting and fun," DiScanio said. "There's still lots left to see, and we continually ask ourselves, 'What's the ultimate goal? Where do we go?'

"Now that we've played the U.K., we'd love to play the rest of Europe. We want to help bring these (fellow pop-punk) bands and rock music back to the radio. We can't wait to see where it goes from here."

James H. Shahen is a frequent contributor to the Times Union,
Petersburgh

The levels of a toxic chemical discovered in the well water at a plastics company in Petersburgh in 2004 were once as high as 152,000 parts per trillion, far above the 400-ppt threshold recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for short-term human exposure to the contaminant.

More recent tests, conducted in 2013, showed that the well water under the Route 22 plant had dropped significantly in the nine years since the contaminant PFOA was first discovered there. But the tests conducted in January 2013, from samples taken two months earlier, showed the levels of the contaminant in the unfiltered well water at the plant were still high  7,500 ppt  but reduced to 420 ppt after the "finished" water was put through carbon filters.

A one-page summary sheet containing information that the company, Taconic, provided to state regulators recently was released by the state Department of Environmental Conservation late Tuesday in response to a request from the Times Union. The state said it took immediate action last month.

"On Feb. 10, DEC and (Department of Health) met with company officials when the company shared historical testing data that showed elevated levels of PFOA," said Emily DeSantis, a DEC spokeswoman. "Within days, the state Department of Health performed additional testing at the Taconic facility and in Petersburgh. As soon as those results were known, the state secured bottled water for residents."

The document released by the state shows Taconic began testing its underground wells for the hazardous man-made chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, in November 2004. That was four months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a widely publicized administrative action against DuPont, one of the manufacturers of PFOA, and accused the company of covering up information about the potential toxicity of the chemical. Taconic and several other specialty plants in Rensselaer County and southern Vermont have used PFOA in their manufacturing processes dating back decades.

It's unclear whether workers at the Taconic plant have ingested the tainted water, filtered or otherwise, and if so for how long. Taconic was founded in 1961, according to the company's website.

The company has told the state it provided alternative water or purchased carbon filters a decade ago for residents who live near the plant and have private wells. The company also told the state it has been making bottled water available to its employees for the same amount of time.

Taconic, like many other manufacturing plants that used PFOA, apparently became aware of the chemical's toxic capabilities after the EPA's administrative action 12 years ago accused DuPont of violating federal regulations for failing to report the substantial risk of injury to human health and the environment from PFOA between 1981 and 2001. The chemical is used to made non-stick and heat-resistant products ranging from airplane wiring to Teflon-coated cookware.

Taconic's plant near the Little Hoosic River makes specialty products including silicone-coated fabrics and tapes.

In 2006, the EPA reached an agreement with DuPont and other manufacturers to stop producing or using PFOA, although DuPont continued producing PFOA because the agreement did not call for the end of production of the chemical until 2015. The EPA settlement with DuPont came less than a year after DuPont agreed to pay $10.25 million in civil penalties to settle the complaint brought by the EPA regarding the company's PFOA pollution in the Midwest. At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty ever obtained by the EPA under federal environmental statutes.

The 152,000 ppt level of PFOA found in the water at Taconic's plant in 2004 may be the highest ever reported for a drinking water source, according to Robert A. Bilott, an Ohio attorney helping to represent an estimated 3,500 people in a class-action lawsuit against DuPont.

Bilott said, however, he is not familiar with the situation at Taconic and was speaking in general terms.

In January 2009, the EPA set its advisory for short-term exposure to PFOA at no more than 400 ppt. Last month, the agency set a long-term exposure limit of 100 ppt that applies to regular residential water use.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

Taconic officials met privately with state regulators late last month following recent heightened interest in the chemical after it was discovered in the Hoosick Falls village water system at levels the EPA said are not safe for human consumption.

Despite concerns about the potential toxicity of PFOA, the discovery of PFOA in the wells at Taconic's plant in 2004 did not trigger any public notification or environmental investigation when the DEC was notified about the situation that year, according to state officials. At the time, PFOA was not a regulated contaminant.

The focus on PFOA contamination in this region began quietly unfolding in August 2014 when a Hoosick Falls resident, Michael Hickey, had samples of the village's water tested for the chemical. The results showed levels of PFOA in the village's water system that exceeded the EPA advisory for short-term exposure. Hickey, an insurance underwriter, began researching contaminants in the village water because he was concerned about what he believed was a high rate of cancer in the community.

His father, John, died of kidney cancer in 2013 after working for decades at the Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics plant on McCaffrey Street, which has been the focus of water contamination in the village.

A Saint-Gobain spokesperson said the company ceased all use of PFOA at its McCaffrey Street plant in December 2014, the same month the village notified the company about the pollution discovered in the municipal well system, which is a few hundred yards from the Saint-Gobain plant. Saint-Gobain tested the groundwater under its plant last year and found levels as high as 18,000 parts per trillion.

In recent weeks, traces of the chemical have been found in private wells and public water supplies in the town of Hoosick, well outside the village, and in North Bennington, Vt., where Saint-Gobain also had a manufacturing plant that closed in 2002.

blyons@timesunion.com  518-454-5547  @brendan_lyonstu
Albany

Twyla Tharp, the renowned American choreographer and one of the single greatest influences on modern dance in the last half-century, is happy to do her part for the Capital Region creative economy. Anything that brings dance to the people, she said, is good for dancers and people both.

"I have no problem with commerce. I believe in commerce. I don't see it as selling out. I see it as selling in," said Tharp, speaking at a news event announcing new details in "Pathways to Dance," an eight-county, 10-venue initiative funded with a $90,000 state grant from the Regional Economic Development Council.

"I believe that the arts are a huge part of our economy, and if they're not recognized as such, they will languish, not only because we don't eat but because the populace does not interface with its better self," she said. "In the case of dance, it does not acknowledge its own container. Hello? That's all of you."

The dance legend, a small, wiry woman with a clear voice and a sharp wit, addressed a small group in the recital hall at the Performing Arts Center of the University at Albany  one of several participating institutions in the "Pathways" initiative. Others include the Catskill Mountain Foundation in Hunter, which will host Tharp and her company for a six-week residency to develop a new work, and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where the work will be performed at 8 p.m. Thursday, June 30, as part of the venue's 50th anniversary celebration.

Tharp said the work being planned for SPAC, "Three Dances," will incorporate two earlier pieces  "Country Dances" from 1976 and "Brahms Paganini" from 1980  as well as the new creation. Not yet named, it will be set to two movements of Beethoven's Op. 130 (his String Quartet No. 13) and Op. 133 (the final movement of same, known as the "Grosse Fuge" or "Great Fugue"). She had few specifics to reveal beyond the music. "About that one, at this point in time, all I can say is: Time will tell," she said.

Among the other events being planned: lecture-demonstrations in Troy and Cambridge; an event yet to be determined at the Basilica Hudson; a showcase of works-in-progress set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 16, at the CMF's performance space in Tannersville; and additional CMF events, including lecture-demonstrations and open rehearsals.

"The Capital Region happens to be blessed with probably more dance than anywhere else in upstate New York," said Proctors CEO Philip Morris, ticking off SPAC, the Egg and UAlbany. "But you know, we weren't happy with that. We wanted more."

Added CMF program director Pam Weisberg, citing the Foundation's 16-year history promoting dance: the goal is "to make our part of the Capital Region an international destination for dance  that is our profound dream."

Also scheduled  but no times yet  are a Saturday, April 2, daytime workshop and evening performance of Tharp's "The One Hundreds" at the Schenectady YMCA. Co-presented by the Y and Proctors, the 1969 piece was created on a farm in Chenango County ("I don't know what I was thinking ... I had a few cows") and requires 100 bodies on stage.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter.

The workshop and performance will be open to the community, Tharp said. "It's an opportunity for 100 of you to come and be with us. Everyone has the opportunity to learn an 11-second segment of movement of which there are 100, and they're all different. And everyone performs in the evening."

SPAC president and CEO Marcia White, quoting Winston Churchill ("art ... invites us and requires us to be curious about our full human potential"), talked up the impact of the arts on people and economies both.

So did Tharp. "I'm a firm believer," she said, "that those who deal honorably with their own bodies do not kill, they do not maim, they are honest. ... Obviously, this is why we all work, because we want to make a difference  in people's lives, and in our art form."

abiancolli@timesunion.com  518-454-5439  @AmyBiancolli
Mise Ros Cre 1916 is a local committee formed to organise commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Members of our community had expressed interest in not letting this historical year pass without paying tribute to those heroic Men and Women who believed in, fought for and died for Irish Freedom.

Our Commemoration events are a once in a century invitation to stand together to remember, reflect and reimagine the Rising.

Our committee members have worked tirelessly over the last few months to organise these events which are all inclusive and will allow us to come together as a community to mark this occasion in a pleasant and peaceful manner.

We are delighted to have all local schools in and around the Roscrea area participate. The students of Colaiste Phobal have taken on the task of showcasing the involvement of women in the rising and seven primary schools have been given a signatory of the proclamation to base a storyboard on. These storyboards will be placed in shops around the town to showcase all the hard work these pupils have put into contributing to the commemoration.

In addition to these the younger pupils have been given pictures of iconic local landmarks to colour in which will also be placed in shop windows.

The first half of our events taking place on Sunday (March 6th) will be situated on Main Street: this street will be closed to traffic (AIB - Maddens old bookshop) from 12 noon -6pm approximately.

In the event of 'A Drop of Rain' in the forecast the events planned on the Main Street will relocate to the Abbey Hall. In the event of an emergency we will have a designated first aid office located on Main St beside O'Donnell's jewellers.

Members of Roscrea Cardiac Responders and Order of Malta will be present in this office for the duration of the days events. There will be a visible presence of Stewards in and around the town and each of these stewards will have information on contact numbers in case of emergency. We would like to remind all proprietors of shops/organisations in Roscrea that there will be a prize for the best dressed window highlighting our commemoration. Not only will this add to the atmosphere on the day but will also enhance our town leading up to the St Patrick's day parade.Mise Ros Cre 1916 commemoration committee, Bri Greene (Chairwoman) Michael Donovan (Vice-Chair) Pamela Aitken (Secretary) Pauline Simmons, Martina Phelan (Joint Treasurer) Tommy Murphy, James Byrne (School Liaison) Brian Kirwan, Warren Dunne and Derek Russell. We the committee would like to thank everyone who has helped in anyway towards organising this event. Taking on this event has made us aware of the community spirit that is alive and well in our town. Go raibh mile maith agat!
[March 02, 2016] Beanstream Introduces sproutPOS

VICTORIA, March 2, 2016 /CNW/ - Beanstream, a Bambora Company, today announced the official launch of the sproutPOS platform for the Canadian market. sproutPOS is one of the first mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solutions with Europay, Visa and MasterCard (EMV) chip and PIN technology that enables merchants to process payments with Interac debit, MasterCard, Visa and AMEX using their smartphones and tablets. With sproutPOS, independent business owners in Canada can process mobile payments anywhere their business takes them. The sproutPOS payment terminal connects through Bluetooth to the free sproutPOS app supported on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. This all-in-one solution includes everything Canadian independent retailers need to manage their business and to get up and running processing payments immediately. The platform is highly secure with point-to-point encryption, credit and debit card tokenization, compliance with PCI data security standards and secure sockets layer SSL) encryption.



"Canadian merchants are increasingly focused on omni-channel retailing, which incorporates seamless consumer interactions across all retail channels," said Grant Storry, Beanstream, A Bambora Company's Director of Mobile Products. "Mobile POS is a critical component in a successful omni-channel retailing experience. The sproutPOS platform offers small-to-midsized Canadian merchants the necessary foundation to support their omni-channel strategy." A cornerstone of the sproutPOS platform is Beanstream's sproutPOS EMV software development kit (SDK) that enables developers to fully integrate sproutPOS payment processing technology into their apps and software. An integration can be completed in a matter of days and gives developers access to a fully EMV certified mobile payment solution integrated right into their app experience.

"Hundreds of merchants across Canada signed up for sproutPOS while it was in a closed pilot," commented Grant, "we are seeing pent-up demand in Canadian retail for a greater variety of mobile point of sale options." About Beanstream, A Bambora Company

Since 2000, Beanstream has provided payment, risk management and authentication solutions to some of North America's leading companies and institutions. Beanstream was recently acquired by Bambora on October 1, 2015. Beanstream has forged relationships with major financial institutions, built a network of more than 700 partners and 22,000 merchants, and provides white label solutions for First Data Canada, TD Bank and Sage Payroll. Customers include online and brick-and-mortar merchants, governments, and financial and higher education institutions. Beanstream is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. SOURCE Beanstream

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] More Georgia Counties Choose Tyler's New World Public Safety Suite to Replace Existing Systems

Tyler Technologies (News - Alert), Inc. (NYSE: TYL) has signed an agreement with Habersham County, Georgia, for Tyler's New World public safety solution suite. Habersham County joins several other Georgia counties in choosing to invest in the modern New World solution rather than spending taxpayer dollars to upgrade a legacy computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records management system that was no longer effectively supported by the vendor. Habersham County wanted a highly functional solution that could support investigations and officer reporting, and one that would easily interface with state and federal agencies. With Tyler, counties not only receive state-of-the-art technology, but they also partner with a company that is operationally consistent, financially strong, and known for solid service and support. "Our business is one that can't afford to be down, so you always want a vendor you can depend on. In picking Tyler's New World solution, we looked at everything well beyond the demos, including the longevity of the company, service calls, call-back time, references and how they handle things that go right, wrong or indifferent. My employees and I are very pleased with our choice," said Habersham County 911/Emergency Management Agency Director Lynn Smith. "We had money budgeted for a system upgrade, but we felt that would leave us with the same challenges we have today and wouldn't take Habersham County into the future like we wanted. You never want to go backwards, you want to progress, and we feel the New World software is a better fit for us." Habersham County is unique among Georgia counties for the extension of its dispatch responsibilities. Nestled in the northeast Georgia mountains bordering South Carolina, the county has seven municipalities, and Smith's public safety staff provides dispatch service for all police, fire and sheriff's departments as well as EMS and other public safety resources in those seven municipalities. Tyler's New World suite allows clients like Habersham County to integrate dispatch, records, investigations and patrol across jurisdictions, meaning more mission-critical data is quickly shared with first esponders who can more efficiently handle reporting and other operational processes.



In addition to her role with Habersham County, Smith serves as Georgia APCO board and co-chair of the APCO/NENA Conference known as the GECC (Georgia Emergency Communications Conference), which gives her a unique perspective and the chance to work with her peers across Georgia. "I'm on several state boards and have the opportunity to talk with lots of public safety people in Georgia and beyond, and they're all looking for a stable system that they can add on to, and a vendor that can grow with them," Smith said. "In Georgia, I think the counties are all headed the same direction in wanting the right public safety technology so we can do our jobs like the citizens expect us to. Ultimately, the counties could build off what each other is doing and have more of a statewide network."

The New World software suite supports public safety by creating operational efficiencies and by making data available across multiple public safety groups. In addition, the system's powerful reporting capabilities and data analytics reveal trends that can be addressed tactically and strategically to effect near real-time policing and emergency services. "We are pleased to welcome Habersham County to our rapidly growing group of public safety clients in Georgia where we believe New World will strongly position first responders and their supporting staffs to deliver the type of service that Georgia residents expect," said Greg Sebastian, president of Tyler's Public Safety Division. "We believe that Tyler is an excellent partner for public safety officials, not only because Tyler delivers the performance, reliability, service and support our clients expect, but because Tyler also has a long track record of successfully serving the public sector. We continue to invest in the New World public safety suite to ensure it keeps pace with the ever-evolving demands of public safety." Habersham County joins other Georgia counties in selecting Tyler's New World solution; Barrow, Bartow, Camden, Laurens, Macon-Bibb and Murray counties all chose the New World solution in the past 24 months. The New World public safety solution became part of Tyler's public safety product suite via Tyler's acquisition of New World Systems Corporation in 2015. Tyler Technologies will be exhibiting and sponsoring the Georgia Emergency Communications Conference (GECC) in Columbus, Georgia, March 7-10 in booth #9. For information about GECC 2016, please visit www.ga911.com. About Tyler Technologies, Inc. Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) is a leading provider of end-to-end information management solutions and services for local governments. Tyler partners with clients to empower the public sector - cities, counties, schools and other government entities - to become more efficient, more accessible and more responsive to the needs of citizens. Tyler's client base includes more than 14,000 local government offices in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom and other international locations. Forbes has named Tyler one of "America's Best Small Companies" eight times and the company has been included six times on the Barron's 400 Index, a measure of the most promising companies in America. More information about Tyler Technologies, headquartered in Plano, Texas, can be found at www.tylertech.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005426/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] Norsk Titanium Expands European Operations with Groundbreaking of Rapid Plasma Deposition Machine Assembly and Test Facility

Norsk Titanium AS, the world's leading provider of aerospace-grade, titanium additive manufacturing technology, today announced the groundbreaking of a new European assembly and test center outside Oslo, Norway. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005420/en/ Norsk Titanium Chief Commercial Officer Chet Fuller, Chief Executive Officer Warren M. Boley Jr., and Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann break ground on the company's new Oslo Norway facility. (Photo: Business Wire) Norsk Titanium Chief Commercial Officer Chet Fuller, Chief Executive Officer Warren M. Boley Jr., andSenior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann were on hand to kick off construction of the new facility, which is scheduled to be completed October 2016.



"Customer demand for our additive manufacturing technology is growing to the point where we need significantly more space to assemble and test our MERKE IV RPD machines prior to worldwide shipment," said Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann. "This new factory will enable us to better serve our manufacturing partners and aerospace customers while expanding our footprint in this innovative region of Norway." Norsk Titanium also plans to install the world's first end-to-end aerospace Ultra Lean Manufacturing line in the facility. A MERKE IV Rapid Plasma Deposition machine paired with a heat treating oven and a multi-axis CNC machining center will demonstrate the conversion of titanium wire into finished aerospace parts in a production line length of approximately 30 meters.

"The new Ultra Lean Manufacturing line allows our customers to do hands-on development of new part programs on the same campus as our worldwide technology center," said CEO Warren M. Boley Jr. "Titanium wire comes in one end, the CAD drawing is input, and finished aerospace parts that are fully tested, heat treated and ready for installation are produced in a matter of days. RPD truly is a game-changer in terms of cost reduction, speed to market and production line efficiency." About Norsk Titanium AS Norsk Titanium AS is the world's pioneering supplier of aerospace-grade, additive manufactured, structural titanium components. The company is distinguished in the aviation industry by its patented Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) process that transforms titanium wire into complex components suitable for structural and safety-critical applications. The Norsk Titanium research and development team is committed to displacing the inefficient forging process with a precision wire deposition technology embodying substantial savings for aerospace, defense and commercial applications. www.norsktitanium.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005420/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] Abila Honors Partners for Top Performance and Excellence with the 2016 Abila President's Circle Awards

AUSTIN, Texas, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Abila, the leading provider of software and services to nonprofits, associations, and governmental entities, today announced the five recipients of its 2016 Abila President's Circle Awards: NonProfit Technologies, [email protected], JMT Consulting, NP Solutions, and Wipfli Consulting. The President's Circle Awards recipients will be honored this week at Abila's annual conference, AUDC 2016, in Austin, Texas. "Congratulations to all the members of the 2016 President's Circle," said Krista Endsley, chief execuive officer for Abila. "Their hard work and dedication to supporting nonprofits is truly something to be celebrated. Our Business Partners are not only a key part of our success, they are also vital to the growth of our clients, enabling them to further their missions every day."



Abila Business Partners are authorized to resell and implement one or more Abila products, including Abila MIP Fund Accounting, Abila Elevate, Abila Fundraising 50, and Abila Fundraising Online. These value-added resellers provide a wealth of experience in the accounting and nonprofit industries, and are rigorously recertified on Abila software each year to ensure their expertise is kept up-to-date. Business Partners are a key part of the Abila Partner Ecosystem that delivers services and products that strengthen Abila's core offering. To learn more about the Abila Partner Ecosystem and Marketplace, visit: marketplace.abila.com.

About Abila

Abila is the leading provider of software and services to associations and nonprofit organizations that help them improve decision making, execute with greater precision, increase engagement, and generate more revenue. With Abila solutions, association and nonprofit professionals can use data and personal insight to make better financial and strategic decisions, enhance member and donor engagement and value, operate more efficiently and effectively, and increase revenue to better activate their mission. Abila combines decades of industry insight with technology know-how to serve nearly 8,000 customers across North America. For more information, please visit www.abila.com. Media Contact:

Jenna Overbeck

[email protected]

512.861.3248 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150901/262646LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/abila-honors-partners-for-top-performance-and-excellence-with-the-2016-abila-presidents-circle-awards-300229144.html SOURCE Abila

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] RO Innovation Acquires Boulder Logic

DENVER, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RO Innovation, the world's leading provider of customer reference management and sales enablement solutions, announces the closing of $1 million capital funding in order to support the acquisition of leading competitor Boulder Logic and other growth plans. The acquisition brings together the leaders in customer reference management and allows RO to build on its mission to help B2B enterprises accelerate growth through faster and more efficient sales cycles. "This acquisition enables RO Innovation to further empower B2B salespeople and marketers to increasingly leverage the voice of the customer in the sales cycle," said James Mooney, CEO and Founder of RO Innovation. "We are very excited about the increased capacity and talent this strategic purchase of a well-managed and successful company provides." Both organizations share a history of success helping B2B organizations close deals faster during sales and marketing cycles. The acquisition merges the marketplace's best tools that strategically activate and amplify the Voice of the Customer to accelerate revenue in the B2B sales prcess. This acquisition empowers RO Innovation's software to further act as the critical link between happy customers, sales activity and closing new prospects.



It is quickly becoming universally understood that modern B2B marketing must strategically leverage the voice of the customer in its outreach to buyers and current customers, which is where RO Innovation's solutions come in to play. As noted in SiriusDecision's 2015 Study on Customer Advocacy and Engagement, 83 percent of B2B companies say references are critical or valuable to the sales cycle. RO Innovation's client roster touts over 100 world class companies that cross dozens of business channels in the United States and internationally, including brands like:

EMC

VMware

Jive

VCE, Inc.

Ceridian

New Relic

Marketo "Last year was a fantastic year of growth for our sales force and as a result of the company's expansion, our organization required a new and effective way to bring each member on board and up-to-speed. RO Innovation's incredible platform connected our entire sales staff to the materials and content they need to hit the ground running; it was just what our team required. We are excited to work with the RO Innovation team and look forward to a long standing relationship with them," said David Resnic, Global Customer Success Program Lead, VCE, Inc. In order to maintain its commitment to customer service while offering the very best industry solutions, RO Innovation will retain all Boulder Logic employees and existing services while developing a roadmap that allows customers to benefit from the combined organizations. "I have always had deep respect for Jim Mooney and RO Innovation," said Joshua Horwitz, President and Founder of Boulder Logic. "As we learned more about each other's vision, it quickly became clear that combining the two organizations could generate a truly powerful force in customer marketing." About RO Innovation RO Innovation activates the voice of your happy customers to accelerate revenue in the B2B sales process. Operating as the critical link between customer advocates, buyer needs and sales activity, RO's platform drives new revenue through the critical marriage of Customer Reference Management and Sales Enablement. RO Innovation is a privately held company headquartered in Denver, Colo. Learn more at www.ROInnovation.com or follow us on Twitter @ROInnovation. About Boulder Logic Founded in 2003, Boulder Logic offers an easy to use, web-based tool to streamline customer reference management. Backed by a team of experts, the company provides strategic guidance and program execution to help start or grow enterprise customer reference programs. Learn more at www.boulderlogic.com. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ro-innovation-acquires-boulder-logic-300229277.html SOURCE RO Innovation

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016]

General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems Awarded Gun Barrel Production Contract from Smith & Wesson

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems has been awarded a multi-year contract by Smith & Wesson to produce hammer forged, military grade gun barrels. The barrels produced under this contract will be used in Smith & Wesson's M&P pistol, which is being offered for the U.S. Army's XM17 Modular Handgun System (MHS) competition.

"With 32 years of experience in producing military grade, hammer forged barrels, General Dynamics brings additional cost-effective manufacturing capability to Smith & Wesson for the Army's XM17 Modular Handgun System competition," said Tim McAuliffe, vice president and general manager of medium caliber ammunition and weapons for General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems. "We believe our combined capabilities will provide the Army with the most advantageous MHS solution while expanding our global strategic partnership."

James Debney, President and CEO, Smith & Wesson, sad, "A key initiative within our strategic plan has been the continual development of our flexible manufacturing model through added component outsourcing. That approach has served us well by providing a solid and highly adaptable manufacturing platform for growth. Our contract with General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems represents an enhancement of that initiative and demonstrates the evolution of our partnership. Together, we believe we are well positioned to compete for the Army's XM17MHS program, for which we recently submitted our proposal."







More information on General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), is available at www.gd-ots.com .

More information on Smith & Wesson (NASDAQ Global Select: SWHC) is available at www.smith-wesson.com.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140428/81320

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-ordnance-and-tactical-systems-awarded-gun-barrel-production-contract-from-smith--wesson-300229599.html

SOURCE General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems
[March 02, 2016] Communicorp Recognized as No. 1 Print Provider in Georgia

COLUMBUS, Ga., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Communicorp, a subsidiary of Aflac and award-winning print and marketing solutions provider, has been named the No. 1 print provider in Georgia on the 2015 Printing Impressions 400 list. This recent ranking supports the company's marketing strategy as Georgia's "best kept secret" for premier print, promotional marketing, and creative and digital services. Each year, Printing Impressions 400 unveils the industry's most comprehensive listing of print companies in the United States and Canada ranked by annual sales volume. This year, Communicorp achieved the No. 1 ranking statewide and landed in the top 10 across the Southeast region, as No. 7 of 43 companies. "It is extremely rewarding to be recognized by Printing Impressions as the No. 1 print provider in Georgia for our innovative print and digital marketing services," said Eric Seldon, Communicorp president and Aflac senior vice president of Business Services. "Our entire team works extremely hard at maintaining high-quality standards, visual consistency, and a seamless production workflow to ensure our customers are continuously satisfied with our work. Being honored by this prestigious organization truly inspires us to continue reaching for the highest standards of excellence."



USA and The Ritz-Carlton, Communicorp provides customers a meaningful range of end-to-end solutions, including print, promotional products, fulfillment solutions, marketing strategy, campaign development and digital services. Through these technology offerings, customers enjoy solutions like Clickable print to better engage audiences by connecting mobile devices to interactive video, animation and online offers. Customers also enjoy innovative eCommerce and Web-to-print solutions, allowing their teams to customize and order marketing materials on the fly or order incentives using a convenient online storefront. Keeping customers at the core of their organization, Communicorp delivers a unique See What More You Can Do approach, helping customers explore innovative solutions to better reach their marketing goals. To learn more about Communicorp, visit communicorp.com.

About Communicorp

Communicorp, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Aflac, is one of the largest marketing solutions providers in the U.S. Southeast region, serving major brands and leading corporations since 1981. Known for its excellence in print, design and marketing innovation, Communicorp has received numerous accolades from the graphics and communications industry  including American Advertising Awards (ADDY), The Premier Print Awards, Printing Impressions Magazine's Gold Ink Awards and Printing Industries of America's (PIA) Best of the Best Award. For the past decade, the company has also consistently earned the Best Workplace in the Americas honor from PIA. Media Contacts:

Amanda Bass, Communicorp, Inc., 706-660-7883, [email protected]

Jon Sullivan, Aflac, 706-763-4813, [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/communicorp-recognized-as-no-1-print-provider-in-georgia-300229614.html SOURCE Communicorp

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] Hung Le joined Exar as Senior Vice President of IC Engineering

FREMONT, Calif., March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Exar Corporation (NYSE: EXAR), a leading supplier of analog mixed-signal products serving the industrial, high-end consumer and infrastructure markets, named Hung Le to the position of Senior Vice President of IC Engineering, which includes product, test, layout, technology, CAD and digital design. Mr. Le has over 35 years of experience in a variety of technology and IC design and manufacturing roles. He most recently served as Senior Director of Operations for Integrated Device Technology where his focus was on new product introductions. Prior to joining IDT, he held various engineering management positions at Exar, PMC-Sierra, Zoran and Trilogy Corporation. He began his career in the semiconductor industry at Texas Instruments, after receiving his BSEE and MSEE from MIT. He was awarded ten patents in the field of process technology, semiconductor device and circuit design. "We are delighted to have Hung back at Exar in engineering," said Richard L. Leza, Exar's Interim Chief Executive Officr. "He is an exceptionally qualified and highly regarded technology executive. We look forward to his contribution on day one and his help in improving productivity with his unique semiconductor industry experience."



With the addition of Hung Le, Exar announced today that Dimitry Goder will continue to serve as Senior Vice President of Research and Development. Dimitry's focus is on front-end engineering that includes design and applications. About Exar

Exar Corporation designs, develops and markets analog mixed-signal products for the industrial and embedded systems communications, high-end consumer and infrastructure markets. Exar's broad product portfolio includes power management, signal conditioning, interface, display, data management and video processing solutions. Exar has locations worldwide providing real-time customer support. For more information, visit www.exar.com. Exar, XR, the Exar logo are registered trademarks and PowerArchitect is a trademark of Exar Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Press Contacts: Rhoeda Farolan

Senior Manager, Corporate Marketing

510-668-7000

[email protected] Bob Jones or Derek Rye

North America: 408-786-5151

Europe: +44 1225 470000

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hung-le-joined-exar-as-senior-vice-president-of-ic-engineering-300229933.html SOURCE Exar Corporation

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
What you need to know about Powerball and the $580 million jackpot
Volunteer walks in honor of her husband Thousand Oaks resident Joan Hull will be among those participating in this years Conejo Valley Walk to End Alzheimers at 9 a.m. Sat., Oct. 22 at the Westlake Promenade. Hull...

Overpass could get protective fencing A substantial safety upgrade for the areas most notorious overpass is finally getting some Caltrans considerationbut dont expect changes any time soon. At the Sept. 21 Moorpark City Council meeting,...

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...
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has implemented paperless renewals and license verification. Renewals will now be processed online, and license verification will be electronic through the License Lookup application. The online renewal system will streamline the process and create savings in postage and printing costs. Instead of paper postcard reminders, licensees will receive electronic license reminder notifications.

Related, emailed paper reminders for license plate renewals have been stopped as a cost-saving measure, and many people have missed the deadline and had to pay late fees. A proposal is before the Legislature to suspend the fines until a budget plan is passed. For professional licenses, the IL DFPR has indicated that they are "moving through [the new initiative] with leniency."

Read more
Releases from NASA, NASA's Galex, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, HubbleSite, Spitzer, Cassini, ESO, ESA, NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory, Royal Astronomical Society, NRAO, Astronomy Picture of the Day, Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Gemini Observatory, Subaru Telescope, W. M. Keck Observatory, Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, JPL-Caltech, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, ICRAR, etc
Gearing up to embark on national tour throughout March, local rock n roll legend Ruby Boots stopped by RTRFM in Perth to be a party of the latest edition of the stations View From Here series.

The Perth alt-country star was captured playing on the hallowed stage of the stunning Perth Concert Hall. Backed by a drummer Elliot Smith, bassist Belle Harvey and guitarist Lee Jones, the clip sees Ruby and co. perform 16 minutes of intimate, country-tinged Americana in front of the stunning expanse of one of the most iconic performance spaces in Western Australia.

Captured by local filmmaker, animator and producer Sam Price and produced by RTRFM, the series was recently nominated for Excellence in Digital Media in the 2015 Community Broadcasting Association of Australias Community Radio Awards.

The View From Here short film series launched in November 2014 with support from the Department of Culture and the Arts, and aims to showcase the wellspring of talent in Western Australias music scene, across a variety of genres and locations.

If you like what youre seeing visit rtrfm.com.au/theviewfromhere for more info.
Community radio music directors often have an encyclopaedic knowledge of local music and an insatiable thirst to keep their ears ahead of the curve. So in this new Tone Deaf series the Australian Music Radio Airplay Project (Amrap) will invite music directors to highlight new Aussie tunes that you might have missed.

Simon Winkler from Melbournes Triple R (3RRR) kicks off the series with a selection of tracks currently making their way to community radio through Amraps music distribution service AirIt.



Check out Simons selections below and if youre a musician you can at apply at www.airit.org.au to have your music distributed for free to community radio on Amraps AirIt.

Alice Ivy  Touch (feat. Georgia Van Etten)

Alice Ivy is the recording project of Melbourne-based musician and producer Annika Schmarsel. It took a second, or maybe slightly less, to know I loved this song when I first heard it played one morning on Triple R.

It struck me from the start and held my attention throughout as the composition gently and insistently developed. A faint familiarity seems to pervade the individual elements of the track, tape-worn strings, cinematic samples, an analogue warmth to the recording and a sense of space to lose yourself in. The vocals, instruments, effects and beats all work together leading the listener deeper into a rabbithole of sound.

Loose Tooth  Bites Will Bleed

Loose Tooth is the excellent garage guitar-pop trio comprising Etta Curry, Nellie Jackson and Luc Dawson. I first heard their music last year via the anthemic Everything Changes single and became an instant fan.

Bites Will Bleed offers all the requisite elements of a harmonious hit: hazy rock melodies, soaring vocals, purposeful drums and bass all placed in reverb heavy recording.

Sampa The Great  Blue Boss

The Great Mixtape was absolutely one of my favourite releases of 2015, and seeing Sampa The Great perform live several times were all highlights of the year.

Blue Boss follows from Sampas debut with characteristic charisma and inimitable style.

Theres the shuffling percussive track, Sampas unique phrasing, some dense jazz passages and laid-back breaks. The result is deceptively complex and effortlessly cool.

Coup Detat  Utopia

Coup Detat is a formidable combination of talents.

Kane Ikin and Harvey Sutherland are leading figures in modern electronic and dance music with international followings in their respective spheres.

Long-term friends, this collaboration is inspired by their shared love of dark synth wave, the eerie electronic soundtracks of artists like Giorgio Moroder, and deep dub techno sounds of the early millennium. It sounds a little like this and a lot like nothing else youve heard.

An immersive and transporting listening experience.

Nearly Oratorio  Tin

Simon Lam is a musical wunderkind well known for his work with groups such as Kllo and Ills  not to mention his production and engineering work for other artists.

His Nearly Oratorio side project quietly started life several years ago, and is making a very welcome return in 2016.

Tin is captivating: a mesmerising electronic ballad that starts softly and builds into a richly detailed work of art. The detuned synths and melancholic analogue sounds recall the early BBC Radiophonic workshop songs of artists like Delia Derbyshire and the more modern interpretations of groups like Broadcast.

In the end though Tin is resolutely and undeniably the sound of Simon Lam continuing his personal exploration of songcraft, tracing the past through to future possibilities.

NO ZU  Spirit Beat

Note: Also a special mention to the Statue Reconstruction Mix.

Spirit Beat is one of many highlights from the Melbourne groups latest record Afterlife, filled with heavy percussion, urgent vocals and multi-layered instrumental arrangements.

NO ZU are globally known for their signature Heat Beat style, a powerful and unique hybrid of polyrhythmic post-punk and contemplative club chaos. Heat Beat covers history, geography and spirituality; a fully developed manifesto that commands the imagination and demands movement.

Special mention here goes to Tom Goulds reconstruction as Statue, transforming the original into an early morning hazy dub rave anthem.





Smile  Boundless Plains to Share

Melbourne four-piece Smile return with their second album in March, and Boundless Plains to Share was the impressive first single released last year.

Propelled by a purposeful rhythm and melodic guitar refrains the song conveys a clear sense of focus but an expansiveness too, a vastness that echoes the title. Reverb heavy vocals drift in and out of the multi-layered arrangement.

A deeper meaning lies in the lyrics, a commentary on the political situation surrounding refugees and their search for a new home.

Good Morning  The Great Start

Melbourne duo Good Morning have a great skill for songcraft and sound design. Their tracks often reveal something new each time you hear.

Here the plaintive beauty of the melodies is underlined by the tape-worn weariness of the production. Stefan Blair and Liam Parsons are also very good at conveying a deep melancholy that is comforting or uplifting somehow. In fact theres a balance of many apparent contradictions in their music, dark or obscured humour finding space amid sadness, which makes it all the more interesting and elusive.

Lazertits  Very Berry Milkshake

Heres a powerful anthem thats at least partially about how to make a berry milkshake alternative for a vegan friend. Its taken from Aubergine Dreams, the debut EP from Melbourne five-piece Lazertits whove already developed a strong following in the live arena for their playful punk rock with a poignant pop edge.
How anyone could view the situation surrounding Sydneys lockout laws as a success is beyond us, but apparently the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has renewed calls for the NT government to enact the controversial legislation.

Ultimately it is surgeons and other medical professionals who see first-hand the extent of the problem, the colleges trauma committee chair John Crozier told NT News. In an election year I encourage both the Government and the opposition to consult the evidence base.

It is increasingly showing that earlier closing times consistently reduce assaults and emergency department attendances, and are a crucial part of managing alcohol-related violence, Crozier added.

Australian and international research demonstrates that for every additional hour of trading after midnight, there is a 16-20 per cent increase in assaults. Conversely, for every hour of reduced trading there is a 20 percent reduction in assaults.

If the NT government did indeed decide to introduce lockout laws, it would make them just the latest in a string of cities to enact the divisive laws, which are currently active in Sydney and were recently passed in Queensland.

However, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons has faced opposition in their quest for earlier lockout and last drinks times. The NT branch of the Australian Hotels Association says a more nuanced approach is required in the state.

AHA Chief Executive Des Crowe told the NT News a staggered approach had been effective in Darwin. The NT capital has a 3am lockout in place for the four venues allowed to trade past 2am and a closing time of 4am.

We have a lockout in use in Darwin and were not strictly opposed to that, he said. However, Crowe suggested that areas of the Northern Territory and a nightlife hub like Sydneys Kings Cross are not comparable.

We wouldnt think the environment in Alice Springs would demand any form of lockout, he said, calling the situation in the Northern Territory a completely different scenario to that of the Cross.
Greece and other Balkan states will receive over 500 million euros to avert a humanitarian crisis

The European Commission is preparing an emergency plan for Greece and other countries on the Balkan corridor, in order to avert a humanitarian crisis. According to the Athens-Macedonia News Agency, the plan is expected be approved on Wednesday and will have a budget over 500 million euros.

EC spokesperson Mina Andreeva explained that the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker requested such a plan after meeting with Greek PM Alexis Tsipras in Brussels, in late February.

Mrs. Andreeva added that the emergency plan will address the current and future needs of Greece and other countries on the Balkan corridor, in relation to receiving refugees, human resources, financial and material support.

A report in Belgian newspaper De Standaard also reveals that the European Commission will provide funding to the UNHCR, which in turn will use them to set up refugee camps in selected parts of Greece.

The Minister of Migration Policy Yannis Mouzalas commented that the Greek government is taking all precautions, as if the borders have been shut down indefinitely. Mr. Mouzalas noted that 450 million euros have been requested to accommodate the refugees who are expected to be trapped in Greece.

Emergency humanitarian aid

The EU is proposing increased humanitarian aid for Greece, where more than 20,000 refugees and migrants are stuck after borders were tightened along the Balkans.

The EU executive's aid and crisis management commissioner will put forward a plan on Wednesday that officials said would allocate 300 million euros this year to helping any EU state, not only Greece, deal with humanitarian crises, and a total of 700 million over the three years to end-2018.

Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who oversees annual foreign aid spending of 1.1 billion euros, will propose funding the new scheme through transfers within the EU's existing multi-year budget, officials said, without touching funds earmarked for humanitarian relief outside the 28-nation bloc.

Beyond 2018, the scheme would continue with further funding. A European Commission spokesman told reporters the new plan was needed "to prevent humanitarian suffering as a result of an unprecedented number of people arriving in the EU".

Margaritis Schinas said the Commission was very concerned at violence on the Greek-Macedonian border. He spoke as the bloc is gearing up for a summit on Monday with Turkey, the point of departure for the vast majority of people heading to Europe.

Joint European plan

More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year - mostly via Turkey to Greece - and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016. Overwhelmed, Greece and other countries along the main migration route have tended to wave the people through and the influx has brought Europe's Schengen zone of free travel to the verge of collapse.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker talked to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk will visit Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey this week.

Brussels and Berlin, which are battling to make a joint European plan to alleviate the migration crisis work, are banking on Turkey to sharply reduce the number of people embarking for Europe, many of whom have fled the war in Syria.

But a growing number of EU states are resorting to unilaterally tightening their own borders, seeking to control the flow of people and prevent a spike in the arrivals many expect later in March as the weather improves.

Austria, the last stop for refugees and migrants heading to their top destination Germany, infuriated Athens, Berlin and Brussels last month by announcing daily caps on the number of people it processes.

Chancellor Werner Faymann defended the step, saying Austria cannot become a waiting room for Germany. Tusk, in Vienna on the first leg of his pre-summit tour along the Balkans migration route, said after talks with Faymann: "We must face together the consequences of our decisions. The country that we must support in particular is Greece."

The best possible solution

Greece has also asked the EU for 480 million euros ($534 million) in emergency funds to help shelter 100,000 refugees, the government said Tuesday, warning that the migrant influx threatened to overwhelm its crisis-hit resources.

"Greece has submitted an emergency plan to the European Commission .. corresponding to around 100,000 refugees," government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili told reporters.

"We cannot bear the strain of all the refugees coming here... these are temporary measures, there needs to be a permanent solution on where the refugees will be relocated," she added.

"Greece has made it clear that it will use every diplomatic means available to find the best possible solution," Gerovassili said.

With Austria and Balkan states capping the numbers of migrants entering their soil, there has been a build-up along the Greek border with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

25,000 migrants and refugees

Athens had previously warned that it could be stuck with up to 70,000 people trapped on its territory.

Gerovassili said there were 25,000 migrants and refugees currently in the country and that FYROM was only allowing "a few dozen" through every day.

Over 7,000 people  many of them stranded in near the Idomeni border crossing for days  spent a freezing night and awoke under wet canvas among sodden wheat fields.

Greek news agency ANA said another 6,000 people were waiting to cross to the mainland after landing on islands in the Aegean from neighbouring Turkey.

The spokeswoman said the Greek army was helping feed some 10,000 people.

Thousands more are fed by aid and church groups and the government has put out a call for private donations of food, medicine and health supplies.

Gerovassili added that migration flows from Turkey showed no sign of slowing down despite the recent deployment of NATO warships to help the Turkish coastguard tackle people-smugglers sending migrants to Greece.

"There has not been a significant reduction in the flow...today there were just over 1,000 (new arrivals) which is considered ordinary," she said.

Sources: Reuters/AFP/ANA-MPA

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
Diplomatic sources report that Turkey has little to no interest in taking back refugees rescued in the operations

Even though NATO has deployed a number of navy vessels in the Aegean Sea, in order to control the human trafficking of refugees from Turkey to Greece, Turkey has refused to allow the navy vessels from entering its territorial waters acording to the French news agency.

The agency cites diplomatic sources from Brussels who reveal that Turkish authorities have rejected the requests for deployment made by the German command of the NATO mission in the Aegean while this claim has been confirmed by a second diplomatic source.

The first source underlined that this problem was known from the start and further revealed that Turkey requests the German commander, Rear Admiral Jorg Klein to travel to Ankara and outline the area where the NATO vessels will be deployed.

Moreover, the same source confirms that in spite of the assurances of Greek and German officials, Turkey appears to have little to no interest in receiving refugees rescued by NATO during the operations.

Germany: If Defense Min wanted to visit NATO mission, she would not need Turkish permission

In the meanwhile, the spokesperson of Germanys Defense Minister Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen denied the reports that claimed her request to land on Mytilene as part of her scheduled visit to NATO mission in the Aegean Sea was rejected by Turkey.

As he said, if the minister wanted to visit the German frigate Bonn, she would not need to get Turkeys permission.

He also stressed that no scheduled visit was canceled, since the minister planned to visit the ship when the mission would begin. There were many (possible) dates. Sunday is only one of them he clarified

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
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,

This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768.
Kuwaiti developer Homes Real Estate will be exhibiting for the first time at the Gulf Property Show, the annual boutique showcase for real estate and property development, to be held in Bahrain from April 26 to 28.



A key regional event being organised by Bahrain-based Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE), the Gulf Property Show is being held under the patronage of HRH Shaikh Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Center.



At the event, the Kuwaiti real estate company will showcase properties in some of Turkeys major cities - Istanbul, Bursa, Trabzon and Kusadasi as well as providing investment opportunities in the United Kingdom.



On her inaugural appearance, CEO Manal Ramsey said: "The Gulf Property Show provides us with opportunities as international and regional realtors, a window to promote our first class investment opportunities."



"We will be featuring our Angel Gate project located in the UK and the Beverly Hills project in Turkey during Gulf Property Show 2016," she stated.



The Angel Gate project is situated in the heart of the city of Manchester. The development consists of 344 units featuring high-end modern interiors designed to compliment the rich industrial architecture of the area.



Beverly Hills project is Homes Real Estates' top development in Turkey. It offers luxury living and high investment returns of 16 per cent, allowing the customers to own the unit, ensuring a monthly rent with guaranteed resale in case the client decides to sell the unit by the end of the investment with a return of at least 20 per cent of its price.



According to Ramsey, the project guarantees customers ownership of the property along with high investment value.



Homes Real Estates participation at Gulf Property Show provides exciting new real estate investment opportunities to the visitors at Gulf Property Show, remarked Ahmed Suleiman, the exhibitions director of the organisers HCE.



Gulf Property Show is sponsored by Manara Developments and Diyar Al Muharraq in association with Bapda.



The event runs alongside HCE's other major exhibitions Gulf BID and Gulf Interiors ensuring the continued success of the biggest integrated business-to-business platform for the construction, interiors and property in the Northern Gulf.-TradeArabia News Service
Haji Hassan, a Bahrain-headquartered construction-focused group, has for the second successive year signed up as a strategic sponsor of gulfBID exhibition, to be held in the kingdom in April.



gulfBID 2016 is the annual specialist construction and building material exhibition targeting Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar.



The show is held under the patronage of the Prime Minister of Bahrain, HRH Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, and runs from April 26 to 28 at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre.



Adel Hassan Al A'Ali, director of the Haji Hassan Group, said: Our strategic sponsorship support for gulfBID delivers two goals for the company. Firstly, we look to promote the world-class capabilities of Haji Hassan which has been built over 60 years of expertise and investment in our facilities; and second, we see gulfBID as an important showcase to present Bahrain as a leader in quality building materials."



Haji Hassan Group, which has joint venture partnerships across the GCC, is a conglomeration of complementary businesses which have been serving the construction and industrial services sectors in Bahrain and the region since 1952.



The company manufactures building materials, precast concrete, ready-mix concrete, plastic and sewage pipes, construction chemicals, concrete blocks, steel reinforcement, rubber and mechanical engineering spare parts, all of which are essential for the construction sector.



The group has an impressive track record of high-profile construction projects in Bahrain. This includes the Sitra Causeway; Durrat Al Bahrain; the North Manama Causeway; runway upgrades and new apron stands at Bahrain International Airport; and the Sofitel Bahrain luxury resort hotel.



Bahrain has been a pioneer in the building materials sector, not only because of the standards set by the private sector but also because of the stringent specifications imposed by the government through the Ministry of Works," said Jubran Abdulrahman, managing director of the event organiser HCE.



The participation of Haji Hassan provides visitors an insight into an iconic company involved in the development of the building materials sector in the GCC who have developed products to meet the the ongoing requirements of the GCC construction sector, added Abdulrahaman.



A regular exhibitor at gulfBID, Haji Hassan will be showcasing products and services from its portfolio of joint venture partners and divisions, including Bahrain Precast Concrete, Bahrain Blocks, Haji Hassan Readymix, Arabian Chemical Industries (Isola), Haji Hassan Reinforcement, Arabian Parts Company and Bahrain Pipes.



gulfBID takes place alongside two other major exhibitions - the Gulf Property Show and gulf Interiors - thus ensuring the continued success of the biggest integrated business-to-business showcase for the construction, interiors and property sectors in the Northern Gulf.- TradeArabia News Service
Iran has signed a partnership agreement with Singapore, aiming to develop a tanker service for shipping oil products and petrochemicals between East Asia and West Africa, a report said.



The agreement was signed between the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) and Singapores Pacific International Lines (PIL), reported The Iran Project.



The deal will boost Irans government revenues as well as expand the capabilities of East Asian shipping services, IRISL chief Mohammad Saeidi was quoted as saying.



The agreement calls for the establishment of feeder lines in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and the Black Sea, the report cited other Iranian media reports.
Iran and South Korea have announced the signing of three agreements worth about $1.6 billion, towards setting up of a steel mill, power plant, and a desalination facility in Iran, during Iran-Korea Business Forum in Tehran, said a report.



The agreements included one memorandum of understanding (MoU) and two memorandums of agreement (MoA.



Among the agreements, one of the MoAs was inked between Korean steel maker Posco and Iranian steelmaker Pars Kohan Diar Parsian Steel (PKP), to jointly build a steel mill in Iran's Chabahar Free Trade-Industrial Zone, added the Tehran Times report.



The steel mill will be built based on Poscos Finex technology, touted to be more environmentally-friendly and cost-efficient compared to other steelmaking methods.



Additionally, during the event the companys electricity-generating affiliate, Posco Energy, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PKP to build a 500 megawatt power plant fed by excess gas generated by the envisioned steel mill, said the Korea Times.



Also, in cooperation with Korea Electric Power Corp (Kepco), Posco Energy will construct a desalination facility in the same area with a desalination capacity of 60,000 tonnes of seawater per day.



Another MoA was inked between the Korean Doosan Heavy Industry and Construction and the Iranian Negin Mokran Development Company (NMDC).



South Korean steel makers controlled more than half the Iranian market before the Western sanctions were imposed, according to Poscos research centre, added the report.
Iran still faces constraints on oil exports as buyers are cautious about boosting trade immediately because of banking and ship insurance difficulties, a senior Iranian oil official said, despite seeing a "tangible" rise in shipments this month.



Iran emerged from years of economic isolation in January when world powers led by the United States and the European Union lifted crippling sanctions against Opec's No.3 oil producer in return for curbs on Tehran's nuclear ambitions.



The sanctions had cut Iranian crude exports from a peak of 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) before 2011 to just over 1 million bpd in recent years.



Iran is working to regain market share after sanctions relief and exports had already risen by 500,000 bpd in February, Mohsen Ghamsari, director of international affairs at National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC), told Reuters on Tuesday.



But the country's crude shipments, particularly to Europe, have been complicated by a lack of clarity on ship insurance, dollar clearance and European banks' letters of credit.



"For March, definitely our volumes are going to be higher than February ... but it depends on the logistics situation and the banking channels. Still, some shipping companies are somehow reluctant to come and banks also," he said in a telephone interview from Tehran.



"If everything goes well, definitely the volumes for March are going to be higher than February. The difference between March and February is going to be quite tangible. The main or biggest portion of these additional cargoes is going to be destined for Europe," he added.



Litasco, the trading arm of Russia's Lukoil, Spanish refiner Cepsa and France's Total have become the first buyers in Europe since the lifting of sanctions, trading sources told Reuters.



Ghamsari said those cargoes were trial shipments and NIOC had started negotiations for term contracts with potential buyers.



"Definitely in March you are going to see some good news for additional barrels or cargoes destined to Europe," he said.



MAXIMIZING MARKET SHARE



Tehran has said it would boost output immediately by 500,000 bpd and by another 500,000 bpd within a year, ultimately reaching pre-sanction production levels of around 4 million bpd seen in 2010-2011.



Ghamsari said it was difficult to give an exact number for Iran's oil exports but the plan was to raise shipments by roughly an additional 500,000 bpd to reach 2 million bpd this year, depending on market conditions.



"We believe within this year we have to maximise our share ... our goal is to have it within this year," he said.



"But it is a plan and it is a desire. How much it is successful depends on the market and the negotiations with the customers," he said.



Even a gradual increase in Iran's exports would come at a time of global oversupply, with producers around the world pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels every day in excess of demand. Oil prices are near 11-year lows at around $37 a barrel.



Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and non-Opec Russia agreed last month to freeze output at January levels in the first global oil pact in 15 years.



Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said last week the freeze was "laughable". Iranian sources say the country would be prepared to discuss a production pact once its output had reached pre-sanctions levels.



Ghamsari said Iran would not offer further discounts but could consider a pricing improvement for its crude sales to Europe by selling some spot cargoes at the dated Brent benchmark, though it was sticking with Brent Weighted Average (BWAVE) for its term contracts.



"Maybe for some small cargoes we would be able or looking to price (them) based on dated Brent but the term contract will be based on BWAVE," he said.



Other than Europe, NIOC's main targets for increased oil sales in Asia are China, India and South Korea, he said.  Reuters
Oil fell further below $37 a barrel on Wednesday as US crude stockpiles rose to a new record, underlining the extent of a supply glut and countering support from producer efforts to tackle it.



Crude inventories rose by 10.4 million barrels, the US government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its weekly report released at 1530 GMT, much more than analysts had expected.



Global benchmark Brent crude was down 45 cents at $36.36 a barrel by 1548 GMT. On Tuesday, it reached $37.25, the highest in almost two months. US crude, also known as WTI, was down 55 cents at $33.85.



"Today's EIA data will do very little to help oil's recent bounce," said Chris Jarvis, analyst at Caprock Risk Management in Frederick, Maryland.



"In short, it's difficult to make a bullish case. Signs that the glut in oil and reversal of the building trend will subside any time soon seems distant."



The inventory rise was even larger than the 9.9 million-barrel increase reported on Tuesday by industry group the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API report had weighed on prices earlier in the session.



Brent has risen 34 percent from a 12-year low of $27.10 hit on Jan. 20, adding to expectations that further declines may not be on the cards. An analyst at the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday prices appeared to have bottomed.

Meanwhile, in another development, Russia's Rosneft, the world's biggest listed oil producer by volume, has started floating the idea of a domestic production cut to balance the global market as the firm faces a natural decline this year, two industry sources said.



It was not immediately clear whether Rosneft was proposing that its own output be reduced or that production across all Russian energy firms go down.



A reduction in Rosneft's output alone would be offset by growth at other producers. According to Russian Energy Ministry data, Gazprom Neft, Bashneft and Tatneft showed growth in February.



Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela reached a preliminary agreement last month in Doha to freeze oil production for this year at levels reached in January, in a move to curb surplus supply on the global oil market.



Following a meeting on Tuesday with the heads of Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, Bashneft, Surgutneftegas and others in the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that they agreed to stick to the Doha deal.



But in opening remarks on Tuesday, Putin said "some had more radical proposals". He did not elaborate.



Rosneft's proposal would go further than the freeze already agreed. The two industry sources told Reuters that Rosneft was proposing a cut in production as it will face a natural decline this year in any case.



"This is not something new for the market - everyone has heard this and everyone is discussing this," a source at a major oil producer said.-Reuters
Qatar-based Al Meera Consumer Goods Company (QSC) has posted a record-breaking QR2.45 billion ($672 million) in retail sales for 2015, marking an increase of 12.5 per cent over 2014.



The retail segments net profit grew 33.3 per cent during the same period, reaching QR149.3 million compared to QR112 million in 2014.



"The Companys QR44.5 million leasing segment net profit also shows a 20.6 per cent increase over the previous years QR36.9 million, said Dr Mohammed Nasser Al Qahtani, Al Meera deputy chief executive officer.



Meanwhile, the Group posted net profit attributable to owners of the company of QR162.1 million in 2015 and Al Meera's Board of Directors has recommended distributing a cash dividend of QR9 per share, which is equivalent to 90 per cent of the nominal share value."



Al Meera's latest financial results are released as its expansion plans continue to serve all areas of Qatar, with the establishment and provision of 10 brand new branches that were opened across the country in 2015, a statement said.



"2015 was the year of celebrating the tenth anniversary of the companys founding, since which Al Meera has managed to strengthen its position as one of the main pillars of the national economy. Al Meeras status and leadership have been translated into a slew of awards and certificates that it reaped in 2015; a year that, in this regard, can be described as the year of harvest, Dr Al Qahtani said.



"The application of the companys Your Favourite Neighbourhood Retailer slogan required renovation, development, and expansion plans that resulted in the operation of nine new shopping centres located in different regions across the country, in addition to Al Meeras Gulf Mall branch entering into the operation phase.



The company is also working to add 14 new shopping centres in the coming period. We here refer to the progress made in execution works in five there of that are due to be completed in 2016. 2016 will also see the opening of a shopping center in Al Muzn Mall in Oman, he added.



Al Meera has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Lusail Real Estate Development Company for the operation and management of two shopping centres in Jabal Thuaileb and the Districts Northern residential villas.  TradeArabia News Service
"...king of the hate left..."--

"As my friend Capper -- the best Wisconsin blogger ever -- says, there will be more. There's always more." - karoli

"...the psychiatrically attuned Capper..."--

"This is really great of you! I'm so proud to know someone like you"--

"Capper, a reasonable (and maybe even likeable) Lefty..."--

"capper, the Sidney Freedman of the hate left..."--

"I love capper because, well, what's not to love. But I also hate capper for alerting me to nonsense like this."---

"Capper, you really have a knack for this kind of writing. Really."--

"Crap. I agree with capper. Can Armageddon be far behind?"--

"capper is right. OMG, did I actually say that?"--
COLUMBUS  A 32-year-old man was arrested at a local convenience store Monday evening, hours after he is accused of carjacking a vehicle at gunpoint in Norfolk and forcing the driver who was sleeping in the vehicle to accompany him to Columbus.

Eric Kluthe, of Norfolk, was scheduled to appear Wednesday in Platte County Court on a charge of felony possession of a weapon in connection with the incident that began Monday morning in Norfolk and ended with his arrest by Columbus Police shortly after 8 p.m. in Columbus.

Kluthe, who is a convicted felon, remained in custody at the Platte County Detention Facility on Wednesday morning.

According to Columbus Police, the 31-year-old victim was sleeping in a 2006 GMC Yukon SUV outside his Norfolk residence when Kluthe approached him, put a 9 mm pistol to his head and commandeered the vehicle.

Police said the suspect, victim and a third man, who the suspect later picked up while in Norfolk, eventually drove to Columbus. Kluthe and the third man, who was not arrested in the incident, dropped the victim off in Columbus and departed with the stolen SUV.

Police said the victim, whose name was not released, then called local authorities and reported the carjacking.

The stolen vehicle was spotted at a convenience store at the intersection of Eighth Street and 33rd Avenue and the suspect was arrested, police said.

Columbus and Norfolk police are cooperating on the investigation of the case.
News Oct 21st, 2022 at 12:40

Spending on IT this year by the UK travel sector is projected to hit 1.98 billion, the highest level seen in data analysed covering the last 15 years...
India  Accentuating Thailand as the key exhibition platform of ASEAN and a gateway to the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS), the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau or TCEB is conducting a road show to spearhead its aggressive strategy aimed at securing a greater share of the Indian exhibition market. The centrepiece of Thailands lucrative proposition are the extra benefits offered under the countrys new global marketing communication initiative; Thailand Extra Exhibition.



(TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - March 2nd, 2016 -

Mrs. Jaruwan Suwannasat, Director of Exhibitions and Events, TCEB revealed, India is developing as one of Thailands most important exhibition markets and has always been among our top ten exhibitions source countries. The vibrant growth of the Indian market offers tremendous potential for Thailands exhibitions industry.

India is already Thailands active trade partner, indeed the countrys Look East policy and Thailands Look West policy have been complementary in consolidating bilateral relations including economic and commercial linkages. The two-way trade in 2014 totalled 8.65 billion USD, with about 5.62 billion USD in Thai exports to India and 3.04 billion USD in Indian exports to Thailand. India was Thailand 15th largest trading partner and Thailands ranks as Indias fourth largest trading partner in ASEAN. The growing ties between the two countries will further expand through the integration of AEC. Indian business professionals can fully participate in the development of the ASEAN dynamic community, and benefit from the ASEAN-India FTA, via Thailand.

TCEBs India Road Show aims to expand the trade value between India and Thailand through the vibrant exhibition platform. In 2015, Thailand hosted 103 international trade exhibitions, including many trade fairs focussed on industries ranging from food, to agriculture, automotive, healthcare, infrastructure and more. In addition we aim to build awareness within India of Thailands potential as an exhibition platform of ASEAN and a gateway to Greater Mekong Sub-region in line with Thailands new marketing communication initiative; Thailand Extra ExhibitionExpanding Your Business Opportunities in ASEAN, said Jaruwan.

The Thailand Extra Exhibition features the country's strengths and privileges through a number of core new initiatives and will be implemented throughout the year to emphasise Thailand's value in the next stage of ASEAN connectivity, while showcasing the wide spectrum of TCEBs support and services. Thailand offers huge potential as a marketplace for exhibitions and with that, unrivalled business opportunities. Today, with the expanding economic community that surrounds it and the connectivity and opportunity that this brings, Thailand is set to capitalise on an unprecedented wave of growth.

The roadshow brings together the expertise of seven international organisers from Thailand who can offer business potential via their exhibition platforms. The professional exhibition organisers include Impact Exhibition Management Co.,Ltd, N.C.C. Exhibition Organiser (NEO), N.C.C. Management & Development Co.,Ltd, Nishio Rent All (Thailand) Co.,Ltd., VNU Exhibitions Asia Pacific Co.,Ltd, Asia Exhibition Services Ltd and the Asian-International Trade and Investment Association, all of whom have conducted qualified trade shows in key sectors including; Beyond Beauty Bangkok, LED Expo Thailand 2016, EcoTech Asia 2016, HoreCa Asia, Bus & Truck 2016, VIV Asia, Thailand Lab 2016, SmartRail & Infrastructure Asia, ACIEC 2016

To achieve TCEBs aim to see a further increase in Indian visitors, this year the bureau will tap the Indian market with the Sub-City Penetration Strategy by expanding our marketing programme to second-tier city such as Hyderabad, Gujarat and other potential cities to build more awareness on the rising opportunities offered by Thailands exhibition industry.

TCEB also plans to attract International trade shows from India to establish themselves in Thailand by targeting potential professional exhibition organisers. Last year the first edition of Asia Cold Chain reported with a great outcome, resulted in establishing the office  the first Indian professional exhibition organiser  in Thailand. With the benefit of AEC and ASEAN+6 with India, we see many more opportunities to increase the number of trade shows from India, Jaruwan added.

During the event, TCEB is also set to launch the new government support scheme Connect Businesses, which is part of the Thailand Exhibition Extra Advantage Programme under its new global marketing campaign Thailand Extra Exhibition, which is aimed at offering extra benefits to Indian businesses. Connect Businesses isTCEBs exclusive promotion for matchmaking at exhibitions in Thailand, and offers USD 100 for each trade visitor achieving three business-matching meetings during their visit.

In 2015, exhibitions in Thailand reached new heights, and this year the country expects to welcome 190,400 international exhibition delegates, generating a total of 17 billion baht. With the Thailand Extra Exhibition and the Exhibition Extra Advantage Programme, we hope the number will grow another 15 percent in the next year, and will draw the interest of business parties in India, concluded Jaruwan.

Contact TCEB or find out more about trade shows being held in Thailand at www.businesseventsthailand.com

# # #

For more information, please contact

Marketing & Support  Exhibitions & Events Department of TCEB

Ms. Siriwan Kamonwichian | Tel: +662 694 6038 | Email: Siriwan_k@tceb.or.th

Ms. Nattinee Chuansanit | Tel: +662 694 6093 | Email: Nattinee_c@tceb.or.th

Mr. Techadhorn Vilaiwan | Tel: +662 694 6039 | Email: Techadhorn_v@tceb.or.th

###
In June 2016, a team of ambitious adventure travellers will make the first commercial summit attempts on two unclimbed Mongolian peaks, led by UK-based expedition company, Secret Compass.



(TRAVPR.COM) UK - March 2nd, 2016 - This June 2016, a team of ambitious adventure travellers will make the first commercial summit attempts on two unclimbed Mongolian peaks, led by Secret Compass.

The part of Mongolia were exploring is not generally visited due to its remoteness and the challenges posed by its mountain peaks, said Tom Bodkin, director of Secret Compass.

Our team aims to summit the previously unclimbed peak of Nariin Ekhin (3,952m) and an unnamed peak at 3,907m, located deep inside Mongolias UNESCO-nominated Siilkhem National Park.

If conditions allow, the team will explore further new routes as the teams strong leadership team includes one of Mongolias top mountaineers alongside our professional guides, said Bodkin.

As a Guardian Top Adventure for 2016, we hope this pioneering foray into remote western Mongolia lives up to its name, and look forward to meeting the team on the ground in Ulaanbaatar.

Mongolia: Expedition highlights

Be part of the first commercial team to summit Nariin Ekhin (3,952m)

Trek at altitude at the juncture of Mongolia, China, Russia and Kazakhstan

Cross rivers, traverse valleys and trek on glaciers above 2,900m

Climb to exposed ridge lines with phenomenal views north to Russia

Look out for elusive eagles and snow leopards spotted in the Park

Communications director Kerry ONeill said, While we welcome applications from those with mountaineering experience  and have some impressive people on board so far  this expedition is also for anyone whos fit and happy to learn the basics of ice axe and crampon use in situ.

Secret Compass has long sought to stage an original expedition in Mongolia. Our inspiration includes Tim Copes book, On the Trail of Genghis Khan, and the BBCs Human Planet footage of eagle hunters in near Bayan Olgii, the region our team will head to at the outset of this adventure.

ONeill concluded, The unclimbed mountains of Siilkhem National Park jumped out to us as the perfect place in which to attempt something pioneering, something that no other adventure travel company offers.

Expedition fact box

Name: First Ascents in the Mongolian Altai

Dates: 5  19 Jun 2016 (14 nights)

Cost: 2,999pp all inc. except international flights (from 576 return with Turkish Airlines)

Expedition destinations for 2016 and 2017

With its military background, expedition company Secret Compass is renowned for offering expeditions and adventure travel to countries eschewed by most operators due to their remoteness, post-conflict reputations or inaccessibility.

Upcoming destinations include Afghanistan, Armenia, Burma, Ethiopia, Gabon, Iran, Iraqi Kurdistan, Kyrgyzstan, Madagascar, North Korea, Panama, Siberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Chad and southern Sinai.

Expedition styles range from mixed-terrain trekking and minimalist desert traverses to mountain-biking, rafting and horseback expeditions. Secret Compass welcomes applications from anyone with a good level of fitness whos keen to achieve the extraordinary in the worlds wildest places.

For further press information contact communications director Kerry ONeill on 0207 096 8428 or via email on info@secretcompass.com.

------- ends -------

Notes for editors

Secret Compass

Secret Compass redefines what is possible by creating pioneering projects in the world's wildest places. Secret Compass is built around a team of trusted experts who combine a passion for exploration with industry-leading professionalism. Secret Compass reignites your primal need for adventure, providing the catalyst for you to come alive and achieve the extraordinary.

Secret Compass for TV, film and brand projects

Secret Compass is trusted by production companies and brands to create and capture the extraordinary in remote and wild regions thanks to its unrivalled location and risk-management expertise. Credits include location-managing Channel 4s Walking the Nile and Walking the Himalayas series, alongside projects for the BBC, National Geographic, Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel. Brand clients to date include Mitsubishi, Sony, Nespresso, Giro, Xbox and Jagermeister.

www.secretcompass.com

info@secretcompass.com

Press enquiries: Kerry on +44 (0)207 096 8428

www.facebook.com/secretcompass

www.twitter.com/Secret_Compass

###
Detention Center

The inmate count at the Platte County Detention Facility on Tuesday was 80, with 45 from Platte County and 35 from out of county.

Police Department

Jan. 7

1:26 a.m.  At 2508 13th St., Eva Hernandez, 40, 2511 10th St., was cited for theft-shoplifting.

Feb. 11

11:41 a.m.  At 753 13th Ave., Jordan Miller, 19, 753 13th Ave., was cited for criminal mischief and attempted theft.

Feb. 26

5:39 a.m.  In Columbus, Hector Ayon, 18, South Sioux City, was cited for possession of stolen property and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.

Feb. 28

8:21 p.m.  At 573 12th Ave., Kimberly Galvan-Vasquez, 19, 573 12th Ave., was cited for disorderly conduct and attempted third-degree assault of a police officer.

Sheriff

Feb. 29

1:34 a.m.  Traffic violation north of the intersection of 310th Avenue and U.S. Highway 81, Malu De La Cruz of Columbus cited for speeding.

9:13 a.m.  Theft at the junction of Highways 91 and 45, $1,500 loss.

11:19 a.m.  Theft at the junction of Highways 91 and 45, $800 loss.

Fire

Feb. 24

10:05 a.m.  In the 4500 block of 38th Street, medical.

5:31 p.m.  In the 1200 block of 27th Avenue, medical.

8:59 p.m.  In the 2400 block of 33rd Avenue, medical.

Feb. 25

3:01 a.m.  In the 3000 block of 39th Street, medical.

10:04 a.m.  In the 1600 block of 15th Street, medical.

1:48 p.m.  In the 3700 block of 33rd Avenue, medical.

6:43 p.m.  In the 4800 block of Howard Boulevard, medical.

8:18 p.m.  In the 3200 block of 12th Avenue, medical.

9:21 p.m.  In the 18000 block of 265th Avenue, medical.

Feb. 26

1:51 a.m.  In the 3700 block of 27th Street, medical.

10:02 a.m.  In the 1600 block of 40th Avenue, medical.

11:27 a.m.  In the 2100 block of 44th Avenue, medical.

2:28 p.m.  Accident in the 1400 block of 23rd Street.

7:03 p.m.  In the 3000 block of 17th Avenue, medical.

7:15 p.m.  In the 2100 block of 27th Avenue, medical.

7:48 p.m.  In the 2900 block of Ninth Street, medical.

11:32 p.m.  In the 3100 block of Eagle Lane, medical.

Feb. 27

2:59 p.m.  In the 4400 block of Solar Place, medical.

3:53 p.m.  Grass fire at 3801 SE Seventh St., burning without a permit.

10:06 p.m.  In the 2200 block of 23rd Street, medical.

11:24 p.m.  In the 1500 block of First Street, medical.

Feb. 29

8:10 a.m.  On Center Road, medical.

11:40 a.m.  In the 2000 block of Ninth Street, medical.

4:52 p.m.  In the 3000 block of 39th Avenue, medical.

March 1

6 a.m.  In the 4900 block of 32nd Street, medical.
When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site.
The statistics are getting repetitive, but they bear repeating ad nauseum: 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten, equaling on average more than 20 pounds of food waste per person every month. Americans throw out the equivalent of $165 billion each year; the impact is staggering.

Much of it has to do with a wildly inefficient food system, but we consumers are to blame as well. The average American consumer wastes 10 times as much food as someone in Southeast Asia; we waste more than half of that we did in the 1970s. Were spoiled, we need to pay more attention. And one of the things we can do is not be so squeamish about imperfect food.

Dana Gunders, a scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and author of the report from which the above figures were gathered, wrote a great book called "Waste-Free Kitchen Handbook" Amazon $15. In it, she outlines how to tell if food is safe to eat  the following tips were built upon her advice.

Browning Skins and Peels

Skin on produce protects the inside, but when the flesh of some items is exposed to air, it oxidizes and turns brown. It may not be pretty, but there is no harm in eating it and taste will not be affected. Douse the exposed surface immediately in lemon juice to slow down browning if the look of it turns you off.

Bruised Fruits and Vegetables

Something gets bumped or jostled, it gets bruised  cell structure is damaged and softening and browning set in. Light bruising does not make food inedible; just remove the bruised section as the texture may be affected and more importantly, they may create an entry point for microbes.

Sour or Curdled Milk

As long as the milk is pasteurized, sour or curdled milk will likely not sicken you  in fact, as milk ages and becomes more acidic, it creates an environment that is not welcoming to the microbes that cause illness. That said, you may not like the flavor ... and most people dont exactly savor curds floating in their coffee. But not to fear, there is a surprising array of ways to put old milk to good use.

This tip only applies to pasteurized milk.

Important note: Unpasteurized milk and milk with mold are a different story, proceed with extreme caution in those scenarios.

Brown or Pink Lettuce

It may be unsettling to see lettuce with brown ends, brown stains, or a pink center  but this doesnt mean the greens are diseased. Leaves can become brown from growing conditions or exposure to oxygen. And pink lettuce? This can occur when the middle rib is exposed to higher temperatures. Its all perfectly safe to eat. You may not want to showcase it in a centerpiece salad, but tossed in chopped salads and tucked into sandwiches will hide a multitude of sins. Some heartier lettuces are great sauteed, too  romaine hearts can even be put straight on the grill for a charred Caesar salad that goes far in camouflaging imperfections.

Fading or Darkening Meat

It may be disconcerting to see meat that is bright fleshy red in the middle and dull brown on the exterior  but its not a safety issue. Meats color pigments naturally change upon exposure to light and air  it is not a sign of spoilage. Proceed as normal. Bonus: If you have removed meat from the freezer to thaw, it can be frozen again.

Warning If meat smells off or exhibits a slimy or sticky surface, do not eat it. These are signs that it has spoiled.

Rotting Vegetables

Human instinct will likely nudge you away from wanting to eat rotting vegetables, but Gunders explains that vegetables get soft rot, which is the result of bacteria attacking their tissue. While rotted vegetables are not something youll want to eat, the bacteria involved are not the same ones as those that lead to food poisoning, she says. Rotted portions should be removed, and parts that are not affected can still be eaten. Fruits, however, tend to be attacked more by yeasts and mold, which can be more toxic.

Stale Baked Goods

The pleasure factor in eating baked goods, chips, and crackers is deeply diminished when said items are stale  so much about these things is in the texture. But that doesnt mean they are a risk to eat or that they're without remedy. Most of these items can be fixed by a brief toasting in the oven. And you can prevent staleness from happening in the first place by storing baked goods in the freezer  once thawed, they are virtually exactly the same as the minute you froze them.

Wilting Vegetables

Wilted greens, limp carrots, wrinkled peppers or tomatoes  these are all signs that the product has lost moisture and cant keep its structure. (I know the feeling.) But there is no safety issue with these items, and a 10-minute ice water bath can do wonders to revitalize them.

Expired Eggs

Eggs are famous for delivering salmonella, so people are understandably squeamish about them  but in terms of age, they are hardier than we imagine. Illinois Department of Agriculture explains that "sell by" or expiration codes indicate freshness, not necessarily wholesomeness. Since egg quality deteriorates over time, "sell by" dates are used to ensure the grade specified on the label is accurate. If stored properly, eggs may be safely consumed several weeks beyond the expiration date.

Most sources say that eggs are good up to five weeks from the sell by date. The trick to knowing if your egg is ok? Crack it open, take a whiff  your nose will tell you.

Crystalized Honey

To see honeys golden ooziness transformed into rough crystals is sad, but its what honey does and it is not a sign of spoilage  in fact honey is famous for its mind-boggling durability. To make your honey flow again, follow these instructions from White Lake Farms:

 Heat a pan of water with low heat.

 Remove the pan from the stove and place your honey jar (with lid removed) inside.

 Let the honey sit until it softens.

 Once the honey has come to a liquid state, put the lid back on and shake the jar.

 Its just as important to cool your honey slowly as it is to heat it slowly, so place the honey back in the warm water.

 Let the water and the honey cool together.

Hardened Brown Sugar

Its inevitable. Unless you are a master of the air-tight container, your brown sugar will eventually become a hardened rock. But this does not mean that it cant be saved. Most suggestions recommend placing a slice of bread or apple slices in the container for a day or two; the moisture from the added item is absorbed by the sugar and returns it to a supple crumble. But then you have a slice of bread or apple to throw away, and the whole point of this whole shebang is to avoid food waste. So, use something youd throw away anyway, like a citrus peel. Place a three-inch long sliver of orange or lemon peel right in there with your brown sugar and the world will be right again.
LINCOLN  An effort to enshrine farming and ranching rights in the Nebraska Constitution hit a major roadblock Tuesday when a legislative committee rejected a measure to place it on the November general election ballot.

The proposed constitutional amendment failed to muster enough support to advance out of the Agriculture Committee, with some senators raising concerns that the measure was too broad.

Sen. Jerry Johnson of Wahoo, the committee chairman, said lawmakers need more time to study the issue and he doesn't plan to allow another vote on it this year.

The proposal would have guaranteed the right to "engage in farming and ranching practices" and prevented the Legislature from passing new regulations without a compelling state interest. North Dakota voters approved a similar measure in 2012, followed by Missouri in 2014. Oklahoma voters will consider a right-to-farm amendment in the November general election.

Committee members voted 2-2 to advance the measure for debate in the full Legislature, while three other senators abstained. They then voted on whether to kill the proposal, but only mustered two votes to do so, while four senators voted against the motion to indefinitely postpone it and one abstained.

Critics said the measure could have prevented lawmakers from even defining what constitutes farming and ranching. Animal welfare groups argued that the measure might be construed to apply to puppy mill owners and cockfighting ring organizers who want to shield themselves from regulations.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, a well-known animal welfare advocate, said he would have mounted a filibuster against the proposal had it made it to the floor.

"This is one of the nuttiest things I've ever seen," Chambers said.

The proposal by Sen. John Kuehn of Heartwell comes four years after Nebraska voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to enshrine hunting, fishing and animal-harvesting rights in the state constitution. The farming and ranching ballot measure had 15 co-sponsors in the Legislature, nearly all from rural districts.

Kuehn said he introduced the measure to protect the industry from what he sees as emotionally charged campaigns against modern agriculture. Kuehn said it could ensure that no one tries to outlaw genetically modified organisms, antibiotics for farm animals, pesticides for crops, and other common farming practices.

But Johnson said producers are already protected by Nebraska's farm and ranch lobbying groups as well as We Support Agriculture, an industry coalition created to fight out-of-state animal welfare groups.

"Nebraska has done a pretty good job building a wall to protect agriculture," Johnson said.

Nebraska already has a right-to-farm policy in state law, but supporters of the amendment said placing it in the state constitution would make it harder to overturn.
Ruchika M. Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 2

Chandigarh-based engineering procurement and construction company, Hartek Power is betting big on the new thrust being given to solar power generation across the country. The company is eyeing new projects besides setting up global footprint.

Hartek Singh, CMD, Hartek Power, said the company was growing at 40% on year-on-year basis by taking a major chunk of projects being executed in Punjab, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

In Punjab, the company has connected 72 MW of solar power to the grid, out of the states total installed capacity of around 245 MW.

The CMD said they would execute power projects of around 265 MW by March 2016. Our aim is to execute over 500 MW of power projects by March 2017. We are targeting 40% growth in the next year too and a turnover of Rs 200 crore by March 2017, he said. Last year, the companys turnover was Rs 112 crore.

Seeing a huge opportunity in the rooftop solar power projects, he said they were gearing up to set up small rooftop power projects. We will come out with customised rooftop solar kits, he added.

Though the company is executing projects in eight states now, Hartek says by 2017-18, they plan to go global. We have been in talks with players in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya for setting up solar power projects and within a year, we should be ready to take up these projects.
Rifat Mohidin

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, February 29

People in the Valley have expressed disappointment over the Union Budget, saying it has no political or economic relief for the people of the state.

Locals said they had high political and economic expectations from the Budget but there was no mention of any new project in the state, which has been suffering economically for the past two decades.

For Kashmir, which is without a government at present, the Budget carried political expectations. It could have made the way easy for the PDP and the BJP. There is nothing for the state. We have been left high and dry, said Insha Bhat, a student.

The Budget has also dashed the economic expectations of the people as they were hoping for a special economic package.

We were expecting that there would relief in the form of special economic packages to upgrade the infrastructure in Kashmir, but there is only disappointment, said Asiya Raheem, a local.

Many people said the Central government had so far failed to take economic initiatives in Kashmir.

We had no hopes from the Budget as we knew what was coming. There is nothing for the middle class in the Budget. There is nothing much even for the youth, said Aquib Javaid, an employee of a private company.

I am not impressed. In the past, there used to be a specific mention of Kashmir to boost tourism, handicraft or other business sectors of Kashmir. However, this time, we did not hear any direct reference of concessions in the Budget that would boost our economy, said Abdul Rauf, a shopkeeper.
Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, March 2

In a significant development, the state government has decided to expedite the process of vacating of land by the Army. This is an indication to parties to form a government in Jammu and Kashmir, which is under Governors rule at present.

Highly placed sources said the state government had directed Home Secretary RK Goyal to expedite the process of return of certain pockets in possession of the Army, which was agreed upon in the Civil-Military Liaison (CML) conference that was held in Srinagar on September 29 last year.

The Governor, who recently addressed the Union Defence Minister regarding enhancement in rental compensation for land under the Armys occupation, would shortly review the return of certain pockets of land, with the Army at present, a Raj Bhawan spokesperson said here today.

The government, administered by the Governor, had taken all possible measures to restore peoples confidence in the administrative set-up as it vigorously followed decisions taken by the previous political dispensation headed by late Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, who died on January 7.

The Governors resolve to review the return of certain pockets of land, in possession of the Army at present, was a sequel to the decision taken during the first CML conference of the previous PDP-BJP government held last year.

The follow-up of major policy decisions was a part of the Governors efforts for early restoration of a popular elected government in the state. So far, he had sought the response of the PDP

and BJP, the two largest political parties, on government formation twice.

Referring to the Agenda of Alliance of the PDP-BJP government during the CML conference, Mufti had asked the Army to expedite vacating of Tattoo Ground at Batmaloo in the heart of Srinagar. He had said, It will enable the government to develop basic facilities at Tattoo Ground in the interest of the public.

On November 3 last year, the then Chief Minister laid the foundation stone of a citizens park at Tattoo Ground. It was for the first time that the Army had agreed to part with a chunk of land for development of a citizens park.

Issues pertaining to vacating of land by the Army in Gulmarg, High Ground in Anantnag, Tattoo Ground in Srinagar, Lower Khurbathang in Kargil, Jammu airport and Jammu University campus in a time-bound manner were discussed.

The Agenda of Alliance, which was the framework for governance of the PDP-BJP government, stated, All land other than that given to security forces on the basis of lease, licence and acquisition under the provision of the Land Acquisition Act shall be returned to rightful legal owners, except in a situation where retaining the land is absolutely imperative in view of a specific security requirement. In any case, monetary remuneration, be it in the form of rent or compensation, should be made fairly at market rates.

The state government constituted a high-level panel on January 29 to oversee the process of taking possession of land from the Army and security forces.
Manpriya Singh

Bad days, upset stomach and countless other teething problems could not prevent a lasting and deep relationship with the country she calls her second home. Author Elisabeth J Singhs marriage to an Indian (Punjabi at that) might have ended after six years but her love affair with India was all too sincere and intense. Sometimes, its my first home. No wonder, I have travelled, experienced and known this country for 42 years, she speaks in fluent Hindi with a Punjabi accent, before introducing her 23rd book, Oh India!

A collection of 12 short stories presented in a highly personalized way. There were so many things in my head and heart about India. It has so many angles to it, they all had to be put down and shared, adds the Norwegian writer, publisher and visual artist.

Insiders take

Having been born in a village by the Oslo fiord, back in Norway, learning Hindi, fluent at that, was an experience, she describes as, As difficult as rewarding. You see, till the time you dont learn the language, you can never have an insiders perspective on the culture.

All of which, both insiders and outsiders perspectives, she had to finally put in the book only to share with the readers. They are true stories but they have been fictionalized so that there is no betrayal of anybodys trust and confidentiality. I understand that in Indian society, things can travel and people cant share their secrets with others. For instance, The Inheritance of Love, a sad love story from a village in Madhya Pradesh. Or the Unholy Holy, A story depicting the not-so-holy picture of the festival and other things that go on in the festivals name.

In between the incidents, comes the humour that perhaps only an Indian can appreciate. In India, you get used to everything and learn to survive. What a journey its been, a life filled with interesting tales and social adventures. She laughs, I have a tendency to get into the middle of things. So, I have gotten as central as getting to experience holi in Chandni Chowk and a night spent at a makeshift hotel-cum-brothel in Lucknow. While shuttling between Norway and Delhi, shes currently on a Punjab tour, promoting her book. I feel, Punjab is where the real tehzeeb is.
New Delhi, March 2

To meet the countrys growing needs, the government plans to set up nuclear power plants in Bihar, Haryana and Punjab, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

The government aims to increase nuclear power generation capacity by three times in ten years. If it is 4,780 MW today, the same would go up to 13,480 MW, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said during Question Hour in the Lok Sabha.

He said new places are being explored for setting up plants to generate nuclear power which would be a big source for meeting the growing energy needs.

With regard to nuclear power programme, Singh, the Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office, said the government is considering setting up new plants in areas not covered before.

A site has been identified for a nuclear plant in Razauli in Bihars Nawada district in the last 18-19 months of the current government, he said.

There has been a delay there due to water shortage since the current level of water available is not sufficient for the project, he said, adding that discussions are going on with the state government in this regard and work will start as soon as this problem is sorted out.

He also listed out places such as Patiala (Punjab), Dehradun (Uttarakhand) and Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh). In Patiala, there are issues related to Defence land, he said, adding that areas are also being explored in Haryana.

In the last two years, one nuclear power project ie.

Gorakhpur Haryana Anu Vidyut Pariyojna Units - 1 & 2 (GHAVP 1&2 -- 2 x 700 MW) was accorded financial sanction and administrative approval, Singh said.

Currently, two public sector enterprisesNuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Ltd (BHAVINI) sets up nuclear power plants in the country.

About the Kudankulam nuclear power project in Tamil Nadu, Singh said the second unit is going to be functional in May.

The first unit became operational in January.  PTI
Washington, March 2

With US elections entering a critical phase, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton surged ahead in the presidential race on Wednesday after posting big wins in Super Tuesday primaries as an epic face-off between them seemed likely after the multi-state vote.

Coming within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee, Trump, who has faced intense attack from other contenders for his radical views, notched up victories in seven statesAlabama, Arkansas Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

68-year-old Clinton, who is the Democratic Party front-runner and is aspiring to be Americas first woman president, also clinched seven states in the Super Tuesday primariesAlabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

However, both Clinton and Trump were denied a clean sweep which many poll pundits had predicted.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz claimed Super Tuesdays biggest prizeTexasalong with Oklahoma and Marco Rubio landed his first win of the 2016 campaign in Minnesota, while on the Democrat side Clintons main rival Bernie Sanders registered victories in four states.

Sanders captured Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont.

Trump, 69, emerged from the contests closer than ever to the nomination and was acting more and more like a general election candidate eager to take on Clinton.

Once we get all of this finished, Im going to go after one person, and thats Hillary Clinton, he said in Florida.

I think thats frankly going to be an easy race.

Speaking in Miami after notching several wins, Clinton also seemed to look beyond Sanderstaking implicit shots at Trumps Make America Great Again campaign slogan.

America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole, Clinton said.

Trump, on the other hand, asserted that he is unifier in the party and is bringing a cross-section of society to the Republican Party.

I am a unifier. I would love to see the Republican party and everybody get together and unify. And there is no one who is going to beat us, Trump said.

I think were going to be more inclusive...more unified, and I think were going to be a much bigger party. (The GOP) has become more dynamic. Its become more diverse. Were taking from the Democrats. I mean, look at South Carolina, he said.

In terms of delegates, Clinton had won 873, while Sanders had secured 296. For Democrats, 1,839 delegates are needed to clinch the nomination.

On the Republican side, 1,237 delegates were needed to clinch a nomination. Trump has secured 251 delegates, while Cruz has 114.

This has been amazing evening...I want to congratulate (Cruz) on winning Texas, that was an excellent win. We are going to make America great again, folks, Trump said, as he used the occasion to slam Clinton.

We have to rebuild our country. Our country is going to hell... and Hillary Clinton doesnt have a clue, Trump said.

Referring to Clintons email scandal, he said: I dont know if shell be allowed to run. What she did was criminal.

If she is allowed to run it will be a sad day for this country because what she did is wrong.

And other people have done far less than her and they paid a very, very high price, he added.

Trump also spoke about his desire to be inclusive of women and minorities.

Were going to do great with African-Americans...Im going to be really good for women. Im going to be good for womens health issues, he said.

Clinton, who also won the Democratic caucuses in the territory of American Samoa, said, We have to make strong the broken places, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our country.

Now it might be unusual, as Ive said before, for a presidential candidate to say this, but Im going to keep saying it, I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness, she said.

Because you know what? It works. Instead of building walls were going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential, because then and only then can America live up to its full potential too, she said in an apparent swipe at Trump who has vowed to build a wall at the Mexico border.

Sanders, in his victory speech, said, We started off the night winning Vermont, then we won Oklahoma and Colorado, and moments ago they called Minnesota for us as well. Four big victories for our political revolution tonight. Trump had already won three primaries and came second in Iowa behind Cruz.

Ahead of Super Tuesday, Clinton had also secured three wins in the first four early-voting states and has led significantly among blocs of black voters there.

Trump has stunned the Republican establishment to become the partys front-runner. Despite his controversial policies on immigration, the former reality TV star has been consistently polling well above his rivalsCruz, Rubio, Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

Both Senators Cruz and Rubio have ramped up their anti-Trump rhetoric over the past week, in a bid to halt his commanding lead in the race.  PTI
Amman, March 2

Jordan said today that a raid near its border with Syria that killed seven suspected jihadists had foiled attacks being plotted by the Islamic State group in the kingdom.

IS had planned "attacks against civilian and military sites in order to destabilise national security," Jordan's intelligence services said in a statement.

An officer in the security forces was also killed in the raid on a building in Irbid, 80 kilometres north of Amman, that sparked several hours of fighting until dawn today, officials said.

"The terrorists refused to surrender and put up strong resistance using automatic weapons," the statement said, adding that the dead jihadists were wearing suicide vests.

Thirteen people linked to the cell were arrested and automatic weapons and explosives were seized, it added. Irbid is just a few kilometres from the Syrian border where Jordanian security forces regularly detain drug traffickers and jihadists attempting to join extremist groups in Syria.

Jordan is part of a US-led military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS in Syria and Iraq.  AFP
Washington, March 2

A piece of wreckage from a Boeing 777, likely from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished nearly two years ago with 239 people, was found washed ashore on the coast of Mozambique, a media report today quoted a US official as saying.

The newly discovered debris, found over the weekend, is on its way to Malaysia for further examination. The wreckage is a piece of horizontal stabilizer skin, CNN reported, quoting an unnamed US official as saying.

A second aviation source told the network that there is no record of any Boeing 777 missing other than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, including five Indians.

But Malaysia Airlines called the identification "speculative." "It is too speculative at this point for MAS to comment," the airline said, using its initials.

The mystery of what happened to the plane remains unsolved. The search has turned up some aircraft debris, but also false leads. In September, French investigators confirmed that aircraft debris found on Reunion Island in July was from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Debris found in Thailand in mid-January turned out not to be from MH370. The disappearance of MH370 remains one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Last week, next-of-kin of some passengers filed a slew of lawsuits over the plane's disappearance, with some hopeful that court scrutiny will help reveal answers about what befell the ill-fated plane.  PTI
Jalalabad/New Delhi, March 2

In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, today struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, killing nine persons, including an Afghan security personnel, and causing damage to the chancery.

External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four militants were killed by the Afghan National Police.

"Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire.

"One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan securitymen," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.

He also said the Consulate was damaged in the attack. The ministry has received an initial report of the attack and subsequent developments by the Afghan Army.

Eight civilians have been killed in the crossfire, the Indian security sources said based on primary reports from the attack site. They said there were as many as 1,320 explosions, including bomb and grenade blasts during a nearly two-hour gunbattle.

The initial onslaught was countered by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) which was later joined by the Afghan securitymen.

According to Provincial Police Chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad, one suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the front gate of the Consulate to open the way for other attackers.

Four other attackers were killed after half-an-hour clashes with the security forces, he was quoted as saying by the TOLO news.

Today's attack is fourth in the series of terror strikes on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. It was attacked twice by hand grenades in 2007 and in 2013, it was attacked by three suicide bombers. In 2015, an attack on it was thwarted by the Afghan security forces.

Two months ago, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan forces.

Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.  PTI
The world faces the greatest movement of people since World War II, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Turkey has become a major refugee-hosting country owing to an unpredicted influx of Syrian refugees forced to flee from the civil war (UNHCR, 2014). Syrian refugees are still considered as guests (a word chosen over refugees) in Turkey, but their displacement will not be resolved in the near future and will continue to be defined as protracted and unresolved. According to the UNHCR, 4 603 363 registered refugees have been forced to leave Syria, with most moving to Turkey (2 503 549), Lebanon (1 069 111) and Jordan (635 324) since 2011 (UNHCR, 2016).



When the civil war began in 2011, the Turkish government declared an open-door policy and welcomed the Syrian refugees. It predicted that the conflict would end swiftly and allow Syrian guests to return home, precluding any need to plan for their long-term or permanent stay in Turkey (Icduygu, 2015). Five years later, more than two million refugees have crossed the Turkish border and thousands are risking their lives attempting to travel to Europe.

When Syrian refugees began arriving in Turkey, the Turkish government set up emergency camps which were increased to 25 camps providing shelters, education, health and other services. Although the camps are strongly praised by the international community, they house only 280 000 refugees while the majority have chosen, and to some extent were forced, to spread over the country in the hope of finding decent living and working conditions. However this posed new challenges, particularly for women refugees in urban settings. Half of the Syrian refugee community are women and children, who are widely exposed to exploitation and sexual harassment. There is growing concern about underage Syrian girls being forced into marriage, as well as fears that a recent Constitutional Court ruling decriminalising religious weddings without civil marriage would lead to a spread of polygamy involving Syrian women and girls (Kirisci and Ferris, 2015).



The strain of hosting the refugees has gradually become apparent. Turkish communities have become increasingly critical, particularly with regard to competition over jobs, rising rents, cultural differences, and pressure on municipal services, health services and infrastructure. Surveys show contradictory feelings and attitudes towards Syrian refugees: Turkish communities recognise the humanitarian side of the crisis and have been generous to refugees, owing to religious fellowship and ethnic similarities, but they are also deeply concerned about the economic and social consequences of the protracted presence of refugees in their communities (Erdogan, 2014).



Legislative Framework for Syrians in Turkey

Syrians do not have refugee status because Turkey maintains the geographical limitation' to the 1951 Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which restricts that status to individuals from European countries. Therefore, to respond to the crisis and to meet the emergency protection needs arising from the mass influx of Syrian refugees, the Turkish government adopted the Temporary Protection Regulation in October 2014. The regulation defines temporary protection as a protection status granted to foreigners, who were forced to leave their country, cannot return to the country they left, arrived at or crossed our borders in masses or individually during a period of mass influx to seek emergency and temporary protection, and whose international protection requests cannot be taken under individual assessment.



The Temporary Protection Regulation also allows Syrian refugees to get work permits under certain conditions, which is considered a very positive step by the international community. The regulation was welcomed by trade unions and employers organisations, with some reservations relating to the protection of local labour markets and the local labour force.



Employment of Syrian Refugees

Although the regulation on work permits has only recently been adopted by the Government, Syrian refugees are already in the labour market. They are mainly concentrated in the informal sector - where core labour and social rights are not respected - and in seasonal agricultural work, construction, manufacturing, textiles, waste picking and begging. According to the ILO, local level consultations show that wages and fees have dropped to one-fifth of their previous levels, causing the working conditions of the most vulnerable groups from both communities to deteriorate, including children not in school (ILO, 2015:7). It was found that 56% of Turkish respondents felt that Syrians take our jobs and that between 40% and 100% of those who lost their jobs attributed it to the presence of Syrian refugees and increased competition in the labour market (Orsam 2015). However, the full impact of the Syrian refugees on the labour market has yet to be analysed and there is no reliable data proving these concerns.



New regulations on work permits for people under the Temporary Protection regime were adopted on 15 January 2016 by the Council of Ministers. According to these regulations, foreigners may obtain work permits in the provinces where they are permitted to reside (mostly in south-eastern Turkey) six months after registering for temporary protection, and they cannot be paid less than the minimum wage. In addition, a much-debated article is that foreigners cannot exceed 10% of the number of Turkish citizens employed at work place.



Although the impact of the recently adopted regulations remains to be seen, trade unions have an important responsibility to promote and protect the rights of Syrian workers. In response to the Syrian refugee influx, some trade unions raised concerns about the potentially negative impact on the labour market, while some have called for improved living standards and decent work for Syrians. Progressive unions played an active role in the international arena to promote the human rights of Syrian refugees as well as providing humanitarian assistance to the refugees in Turkey.

At a local level, many different community based organisations, international NGOs and trade unions have been providing humanitarian assistance and organising local charity initiatives. However, trade unions interventions have mainly focussed on influencing government policy and promotion of human rights. As the Syrian refugees are mostly employed informally, it is not yet legally possible to organise them in trade unions. Although the employment of Syrian refugees will be formalised with the recent changes regarding work permits, it will be technically difficult for trade unions to organise them for the time being, owing to legal limitations, uncertainties in the application of work permits, and language barriers. It might be early to expect trade unions to organise Syrian workers, but they can nevertheless play an important role in preventing discriminatory and hostile practices.



Conclusion

The unexpected wave of refugees travelling to Europe has drawn the world's attention to the Syrian refugee crisis and made world leaders reconsider how to create an international response to this dramatic humanitarian crisis. While the world and particularly European leaders are still negotiating different ways of responding to the crisis, Syrian refugees continue to move from one city to another and from one country to another seeking safer living conditions and better life opportunities.



What is clear is that, even if the political circumstances permitted, Syrian refugees may not be able to return to Syria because the destruction in the country, both in economic and physical terms, is unimaginable (Kirisci and Ferris, 2015). It is obvious that Syrian refugees are not guests any more. Their stay will be much longer than expected and they are already a part of Turkish society. The question is how far they will be integrated into Turkish society. The integration of Syrian refugees can only be realised by progressive public policies and programmes. This is a serious matter which should not, and cannot, be solved solely through the hospitality of the Turkish people and the initiative of Turkish communities. Therefore, there is an urgent need for government to shift from short-term emergency responses to long-term planning and the development of progressive, holistic, inclusive and transparent integration policies for Syrian refugees at both a national and international Level.
Is that bumper a Canadian- or American-spec? It could be either. Photo: Tom Berg

Stronger rear impact guards will soon be required by federal government regulators, but its not a big deal to trailer makers or users because they're already out there. These are Canadian-sped guards, or bumpers, which a lot of people still call them.

Trailer manufacturers have made Canadian-style bumpers standard on vans and reefers for quite a while because many of them travel into Canada, where theyre required. Theyre also safer, and folks in trucking care about that.

Canadian guards are designed to absorb impacts of up to 35 mph, while American-style guards are engineered to withstand 30-mph impacts. Thirty-five miles per hour is what the feds want.

You might think 5 mph is not much of a difference, but the static-test forces involved in that 5-mph increment are almost double  a little over 78,000 pounds for the Canadian bumper vs. 44,000 pounds for the American spec, says Charlie Fetz, Great Dane Trailers chief engineer.

He was among the active participants in a task force meeting discussing a recommended practice for repairing rear underride guards. Led by Gary Fenton of Stoughton Trailers, it was one of many sessions during this weeks Technology & Maintenance Council meeting in Nashville, Tenn.

Until this session I thought that Canadian bumpers were easy to spot. They have two extra vertical posts, one at each end, right? Wrong, Fetz and Fenton told me. Those posts are there primarily to keep a guys foot from slipping sideways and off the horizontal member as hes climbing into a trailer.

The horizontal bar  the actual bumper, in most peoples eyes  is also a handy step, and most are made with non-slip surfaces on their upper face. And usually theres a grab handle on the trailers rear door sill to aid the climber. Canadian bumpers are stronger because their supporting braces and the rear of the trailers structure are beefier.

Theres nothing simple about the impact guards, the two engineers said. Every trailer builder must design them to absorb specified impact forces in certain types of rear-end collisions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allows manufacturers to self-certify their testing results, while Canadian authorities require proof of satisfactory testing.

Although considerably stronger, the Canadian bumpers dont cost much more to build and buy, which is one reason fleet managers havent complained like their predecessors did when NHTSA demanded stronger bumpers back in the 1990s.

As I recall, some big-fleet managers howled at the prospect of spending several hundred dollars per trailer vs. the cost of the simple types then in use. They each had 1,000 or more trailers and a few bucks added up to big bucks. Now that kind of money is not much because overall prices have climbed a great deal.

Also, people today seem more sympathetic to the injuries and deaths suffered by motorists who rear-end trailers, even if they are to blame. And law suits by the errant motorists and their survivors are far more expensive than what the equipment costs.

As Ive written in past articles, my best buddy in college was killed when he rear-ended a trailer on a dark, rainy night, so Im one who takes this bumper business seriously.
From left, George Arrants, Kenneth Calhoun, Dave Williams, and moderator Lou Stumpp from Navistar. Photos: Deborah Lockridge

NASHVILLE  Trucking needs to do more to get the technicians of tomorrow educated and into truck shops. That was the message of a standing-room only panel discussion Tuesday morning at the Technology & Maintenance Councils annual meeting.

George Arrants with Wheeltime suggested that the we may not quite as short of technicians as we think.

The Department of Labor projects that between 2014 and 2024, 76,900 bus and truck mechanics and diesel engine specialists will be needed for both growth and replacement.

If youre looking for experienced techs, that number is telling us they dont exist, Arrants said. Stop looking for them.

However, he said, looking at private and public schools, his research determined annual graduates from diesel technician programs add up to more than 10,000, which theoretically should be more than enough to make up that number.

We graduate 10,738 medium and heavy truck technicians every year in this country, he noted. Where are they going?

There are three reasons these technicians arent ending up in our shops, he said:

1. These schools arent teaching what our industry needs. And this is our fault, he said. If youre not involved with your local schools, youre part of the problem.

2. We expect these graduates to be productive on the first day. Thats unrealistic, Arrants said. We need to mentor this generation.

3. Someone else is stealing them from us. Arrant contends we need to get schools to stop marketing these programs as diesel technicians and focus on medium-heavy trucks. Industries like wind [power] generation are grabbing our technicians, he said.

Do we have a technician shortage, or are we not taking care of the resources we are provided?

In short, he said, Do we have a technician shortage, or are we not taking care of the resources we are provided?

The new generation

Arrants struck a chord with the audience in talking about the challenge with getting young people today into a technician career:



We created this generation. Weve been giving them a trophy for last place since they were 6 years old when we should have said pick another sport, he said, generating applause. 40% of millennials dont eat cereal because they have to clean the bowl! Weve been sending them to school with Lunchables for the last 12 years. And were expecting them to understand the way we think? We need to understand the way they think.



While salary is important, he said, the younger generation wants a clean shop, a safe shop  but the most important thing is, I want to feel part of the family, I want to feel needed; I want you to pat me on the back back and say Youre doing a good job. Because weve been giving them participation trophies forever.

Promoting the career

The industry needs to do a better job of promoting being a technician as a career, Arrants and other panelists emphasized, both to kids and parents who think going to college is the only path to a lucrative and satisfying career.

Kenneth Calhoun of Truck Centers of Arkansas asked the audience how many started on the floor in the shop, and there were a large number of hands raised Today youre directors, vice presidents, presidents, he pointed out. He followed up with the question, How many of you dearly love what you do? When a large number of hands were raised again, he asked, Why dont we say that?

As Arrants noted, We are a career that does not have a career ladder. Every one of us in this room represents that career ladder, but were the best kept secret out there.

The "Oh No! We're Out of Technicians" technical session drew a large crowd.

Dave Williams, a retired TMC Silver Spark Plug honoree who previously oversaw Verizons fleet operations, pointed out that in many high schools, there are no longer shop classes. Young people arent learning basic hands-on skills like welding.

Arrants said many of these high school programs would not go away if they had an active local business and industry advisory committee, putting resources into the programs and hiring graduates.

And in a world where STEM is the new buzzword for student enrichment, we may be seeing a perfect opportunity. We are STEM, Calhoun said. Everything on [the TMC] show floor has to do with science, technology, education and math.

Programs to help

Calhoun said he recently spoke to two classes of eighth graders as part of a program called Career connect, a joint effort with the North Little Rock school district and the local Chamber of Commerce. When he gave them a salary range (that happened to be that of technicians) and asked them what kind of careers they thought could earn that kind of money, the answers were doctor, lawyer, engineer.

There is no concept that there are such lucrative opportunities in our world," said Calhoun, who will be hosting several eight-grade students in his facility for a week of shadowing technicians.

Another program Calhoun gave as an example was Be Pro, Be Proud. This new workforce initiative in Arkansas, spearheaded by the state Chamber of Commerce, is designed to draw more educational interest in the trucking industry and other skilled trade professions.

His dealership is also working with Arkansas State Universitys diesel technology program. The company recently provided a modern Freightliner Cascadia for students to learn on and will replace it with newer model in two years.

While these initiatives are new, Calhoun gave as an example an apprentice program his dealership started in 2009, called High Gear, with the tag line, Put Your Career in High Gear.

Graduates of that program now represent more than 50% of my technician force at our headquarters in North Little Rock, he said.

I asked myself, are you going to complain or are you going to do something? Calhoun said.

Its also important to make sure technician trainees are being taught the skills the industry needs.

More students just means more bodies  it doesnt mean capable bodies, Arrants said. Ideally more schools would be certified by NACEF, he said, but at the minimum, students should take NACEF certification tests. They can do it right online in their schools, even if the school isnt accredited. One thing trucking can do is work with those local schools to make this happen.

More importantly we have to become a single entity in industry and education.

Starting early

How early should you start? Why not at the age when they are still playing with toy trucks rather than waiting till high school? We have to engage, and we have to engage early, Calhoun said.

Arrant pointed out that we take Cub Scouts to police stations and fire stations  why not to truck garages? At that age we have to include Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, merit badge counselors, let them do merit badges in your place of business and expose them to non traditional occupations. Everybody else is doing it, why arent we?
Photo: Lauren Fletcher

Mitsubishi Fuso showed off a prototype battery-electric Canter FE-Series medium-duty cabover that has been in testing in Europe for a year. The company previewed the vehicle this week at the NTEA Work Truck Show.

The company conducted a field trial using eight prototype vehicles with varied flatbed, stake body and dry van bodies installed. The trucks were operated in Europe where the vehicles were put into routine service. While in use, Mitsubishi Fuso engineers monitored the vehicles' performance and use profiles for a full year.

Based on diesel fuel pricing and electricity costs in the European locations where the trucks were operated, over the period of the testing, the E-Cell trucks produced a cost savings of 64%. The vehicles also demonstrated a 37% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to diesel powered trucks after accounting for emissions generated by the power plants creating the electricity needed to recharge the batteries.

"In testing we were consistently able to get more than 60 miles per charge with a payload of 4,400 pounds, said Christopher Burdett, engineer at Fuso global hybrid center. This truck will do very well in tight urban areas.

The vehicles were also evaluated for practicality and suitability for their specific operating requirements and their ease of use. Types of service included express package delivery, freight forwarding in urban environments, municipal refuse, public works service, forestry service equipment hauling, and debris hauling.

This is the future, said Jecka Glasman, Mitsubishi Fuso Truck of America president & CEO.

The company expects the all-electric truck to enter the Japanese market next year before eventually entering the North American market.
WASHINGTON  Hiding in Pakistan, an increasingly paranoid Osama bin Laden suspected Iran of implanting a tracking device in his wifes mouth and drafted a will directing much of his $29 million fortune to be spent on jihad after his death.

The details about the al-Qaida leaders life were released Tuesday in a second batch of letters and other documents seized in a May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden at his secret compound in Pakistan.

The letters detail his rift with militants who later broke off from al-Qaida and formed the Islamic State, as well as plans for a media blitz to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Other correspondence resonates with suspicion and fear.

In a letter to one of his wives who lived in Iran, bin Laden expressed worry that her dental appointment could have allowed Iranians to implant a tracking device under her skin.

My dear wife, he began. I was told that you went to a dentist in Iran, and you were concerned about a filling she put in for you. Please let me know in detail ... any suspicions that any of the brothers may have about chips planted in any way.

The Iranian dentist might have used a slightly enlarged syringe to make such an implant, bin Laden wrote in the undated letter.

The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli, bin Laden said. He asked her to recall the exact date of her dental work, also about any surgery you had, even if it was only a quick pinch.

In another letter, bin Laden warned about using safe methods for moving money.

It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip inside it, he wrote.

He said that funds should be shuttled by vehicle but only on cloudy days  an apparent reference to avoiding a U.S. drone strike.

One document is a signed, handwritten will that intelligence officials suspect was written before bin Ladens departure from Sudan in 1996. He claimed he had about $29 million that he planned to divide among some relatives, but the bulk was to be used on jihad, for the sake of Allah.

It was not clear if bin Laden actually had access to so much money, if he shared the will with anyone, and if his instructions were carried out. Bin Ladens father ran a successful construction company in Saudi Arabia, and the will noted that $12 million of the total was from his brother on behalf of the Bin Laden Co.

The newly released materials reveal an al-Qaida network that was sometimes disorganized behind the scenes and struggling to keep its fighters unified, according to two senior intelligence officials, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to brief reporters on the documents.

The officials said they portray a leader who was aware of his groups hardships in the field, yet appeared not to fully understand what his organization could actually accomplish.

Abu al-Faraj, head of the medical unit for al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, wrote to bin Laden complaining about medics, who only received a one-month training courses at jihad posts.

Note the great shortage of specialists, which in some cases makes recovery time longer ... and in some cases, injuries that normally would not be fatal, become fatal to the mujahidin.

There is no mention in the documents to indicate how bin Laden got to the compound in Abbottabad, but one hints that he was clearly tired of living there.

I say that the latest time we can stay with our present companion brothers is the tenth anniversary of the attack on New York and Washington, after a few months from now; or at the end of this year, 2011.

He was killed before the anniversary was reached.

Al-Qaida was planning a media blitz to mark the anniversary. The group proposed reaching out to certain media outlets to arrange coverage, but there was no discussion of a planned attack for that day.

Several documents detail a running disagreement between bin Laden and al-Qaidas affiliate in Iraq, which became the Islamic State.Bin Laden disagreed with the level of brutality, such as beheadings, that the affiliate was using and was opposed IS leaders bent on declaring an Islamic State  something bin Laden argued would fail because it did not have enough popular support and could not shoulder the burdens of governance.

It is a must to stop any reason that might lead to the spilling of Muslim blood, he pleaded with his brethren. We must not get overwhelmed by the war, its atmosphere, conditions, hatreds and revenge that might mislead us.
The impact of the Great Depression was most severe on the elderly and the young. For instance, while one-third of the nation was ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished, 42 percent of all poverty-stricken Americans were under 16 years of age.

In Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters From Children of the Great Depression, Robert Cohen compiled thousands of letters that Eleanor Roosevelt received from despondent children and teens writing to ask for shoes, clothing, books, and transportation they so badly needed to attend school.

The letters underscore that the economic crisis of the Depression was wrapped around an educational crisis that threatened the very fabric of our country. Diminishing tax revenues closed some 20,000 schools in rural America in 1934 and shortened school terms.

President Franklin Roosevelts conviction that a just society affords allnot just the affluentaccess to education was the reason that from 1933 to 1939 New Deal funds assisted 70 percent of all new school construction and prevented tens of thousands of school closures by providing emergency funding to pay teachers. By the end of the Depression, needy students had received more than a billion free school lunches.

In February, Superintendent Hofmeister and the State Board of Education proposed changes to the Administrative Rules relating to Mandatory Annexation. Many Oklahomans believed that rural schools avoided forced consolidation for this legislative term. However, with these changes, ALL public schools are at risk of being closed by the State Board of Education simply because the state Legislature fails to properly fund public education.

The threats in the new rules appear in Rule 210:1-3-2 (b)(1) and allow the State Board to bypass local school districts and force the consolidation of school districts when a school is 1) determined to be in need of improvement, 2) is nonaccredited by the State Board, 3) is unable to commence a school year, except for a normal delay beyond the control of the school, 4) is financially unable to keep the school open for the entire year, or 5) the subject of an audit finding that some person associated with the school mismanaged funds.

Oklahomas public schools have weathered hostile consolidation legislation this year. Parents and teachers across the state banded together to protect the local control of their students education. Now, not only are public school parents and students still faced with the harmful effect of voucher legislation, if these rules become effective, anti-public school legislators will be capable of placing public schools at risk of consolidation merely by failing to properly fund them.

This aint no new deal, its more of the same.

If you are concerned about protecting public education, you may make comments on these proposed rule changes by email to rules@sde.ok.gov or by fax to the Legal Services Office at 405-521-6256. Comments must be received by 4:30 p.m. on March 17, 2016. A public hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 17, at the Hodge Education Building, State Board Room  Room 1-20, 2500 N. Lincoln Boulevard, Oklahoma City, OK. Persons wishing to speak must sign in at the door of the State Board Room prior to the start of the hearing and time limitations may be imposed to ensure that all persons who wish to speak will have an opportunity to do so.

Questions and comments are welcome. David.Perryman@okhouse.gov or 405-557-7401.

(Representative Perryman is a Chickasha Democrat.)
The construction team on the new Stoney Creek Hotel and Conference Center came to the City of Broken Arrow on Tuesday night once it found itself between a rock and a hard place -- literally.

Cost over runs total $680,000 for the new facility due to the fact there was a lot more rock to excavate than originally estimated.

Under General Council business, the council was asked to execute a Second Amendment to Economic Development agreement by and among the Broken Arrow Economic Development Authority, the City of BA and Stoney Creek Hospitality Corporation.

The council approved funds to help offset the cost paid out with available Vision 2025 money. However, the Council made it clear this would be the last time to cover such extra expenses.

In other Council business, 261 units at Indian Springs Apartments will be acquired and rehabilitated. The City will support the plan for a Low Income Housing Tax Credit under the Oklahoma Affordable Housing Tax Credit Program by the new developer.

A representative from the developer told it will cost $63,000 to re-do each unit with an overall price tag of $5.2 million. The city will be out no money in this project....

--A notice of hearing for a 60-day suspension of low-point beer City license issued to Rooster Corner, located at 1535 S. Main St., pursuant to Chapter 4, Section 4-96 of the BA Code of ordinances for repeated violations of selling beer to minors.

The hearing will take place at the March 15 Council meeting...

--The City will pay a $5,625 fine for release of wastewater during a Sept. 15 breakdown. The fine comes from the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, Water Quality Division. The ODEQ also set up a timeline to remedy the problem. The City expects to make repairs within the deadline....

--Larry Pennington, Pablo Aguirre, Archer Honea, Jeremy Rote and Tom Chatterhorn were appointed as lay members to the Judicial Nominating Committee. Robert Stubblefield will act as attorney....

--A slew of rezoning ordinance changes were also approved. And, officially resetting the City's Organizational chart to reflect the changes made by the City Manager....

--In Executive session, the possible purchase of real property at 4014 W. Pittsburg was nixed....

In comments made outside the agenda, City Manager Michael Spurgeon told that some items from recently purchased Assembly of God Church on Main Street would be sold to interested individuals. There has been interest in items as big as a pew and as small as a brick.

Spurgeon said those details would be worked out at a later date.




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.
OKLAHOMA CITY  A bill requiring public high schools to incorporate an anti-abortion message into their curricula passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives 64-12 on Tuesday, with one-fourth of the members skipping the vote.

House Bill 2797, by Rep. Ann Coody, creates a special revolving fund that can be used only to promote the humanity of the unborn and oppose abortion. The bill specifically requires those messages become part of high school instruction, and allows for production of promotional materials for general distribution.

The proposed law states as a matter of public policy that abortion kills a living human being.

Coody. R-Lawton, said the bill would have little immediate impact because no money would be allocated to the fund this year, or until the state digs out of its budget crisis.

However, Rep. Cannaday, D-Porum, said it is his understanding the curriculum part of the bill could be implemented at no cost.

This led to questions from Cannaday and Rep. Emily Virgin, D-Norman, about why the bill creates a revolving fund at all. Their questions were not directly answered.

Proponents of the bill predicted it would reduce not only abortion but child abuse, and linked the introduction of legal abortion to what they said has been an increase in the mistreatment of children.

Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, disputed that, saying child abuse is more thoroughly investigated and reported now than in the 1970s, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion legal in most circumstances.

Virgins amendment to require sex education as part of the anti-abortion curriculum  something specifically excluded by the current language  was quickly tabled. The same happened with an amendment by Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, to include contraception in the bill.

I hear you say this has nothing to do with sex education, Dunnington said. But children who are in the womb are there because people have sex. It doesnt make sense not to include that.

In an apparent dig at education savings accounts  a proposal working its way through the Legislature that would allow the use of state education funds for private schools  Dunnington suggested the creation of contraception savings accounts for teens whose parents hold them out of the anti-abortion instruction.

Rep. Kevin Calvey, R-Oklahoma City, said HB 2797 does not exclude sex education altogether, any more than teaching agriculture or oil and gas.

Also Tuesday, the House passed a measure targeting the Humane Society USA for what some say was deceptive fundraising following the Moore tornadoes of 2013.

HSUSA denies the allegations and has sued Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for harassment over the matter.

HB 2250, by Rep. Brian Renegar, D-McAlester, would ban any animal rights charitable organization from soliciting funds in the state for use outside the state, or for any political purposes inside or outside the state.

The bill is part of a larger dispute involving HSUSA, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Pruitt and former Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who is representing HSUSA.

The Farm Bureau is advocating a right to farm constitutional amendment that is in response to HSUSA and other animal rights groups opposed to some intensive feeding operations and other common agriculture practices.
Tulsa Police Sgt. Vic Regalado claimed victory Tuesday night in the Republican Tulsa County sheriff's primary.

Regalado, supervisor of the TPD gang unit, was bringing about 41 percent of the vote Tuesday, while three other candidates were splitting the majority of the remaining votes.

I stand before you truly grateful, Regalado told the crowd at a watch party at the Tulsa Press Club.

Regalado promised to bring leadership, integrity and professionalism to the Sheriffs Office.

(Voters) want a leader and not a politician, he said.

Results posted for absentee ballots and 251 of 262 precincts showed:

Regalado: 31,740

Luke Sherman: 12,546

John Fitzpatrick: 11,661

Tom Helm: 10,100

Jason Jackson: 3,784

Dan Miller: 2,685

Randy Pierce: 2,628

Brandon Hendrix: 2,382

Bill Reaves:810

The special election is to fill the remainder of former Sheriff Stanley Glanz's term, which will expire Dec. 31. A grand jury's two misdemeanor indictments and eight-allegation accusation for ouster nudged Glanz into resigning in the fall.

The Republican primary winner Tuesday night will face Democrat Rex Berry in the special general election on April 5. Berry doesn't have a Democratic challenger, so he wasn't on the ballot Tuesday.

Cruz, Sanders win Oklahoma primaries

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz leveraged frequent visits to Oklahoma and support from evangelicals in the state to notch a Super Tuesday victory in the Sooner State, while Vermont Sen. Bernie knocked off Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic primary.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New York businessman Donald Trump were locked in a fight for second place in the GOP primary, according to preliminary returns.

Cruz, Rubio and Trump all hoped a flurry of last-minute campaign stops in Oklahoma would translate to a victory in the state Republicans like to boast is the "reddest of the red."

"I was really undecided until today," said Shalene Hutcheson, a 40-year-old realtor from Moore who cast her ballot for Cruz at the Southmoore Baptist Church. "He's a decent person, and I think there's not a lot of that decency anymore."

Exit poll interviews with voters leaving their polling places in Oklahoma showed a large majority of Republicans identified as born-again Christians, and Cruz fared well among that group. About three-quarter of voters polled Tuesday said they're born-again Christians, and of those almost 4 in 10 voted for Cruz, while Rubio and Trump each picked up about one in four, according to preliminary results of the survey conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Among Democrats, Sanders returned to Oklahoma last weekend for his second rally in as many weeks, hoping to take advantage of registered independents allowed to vote in the Democratic primary for the first time in state history to notch a win over fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Registered independents have previously been unable to vote in primary elections, which traditionally have been closed except to registered members of each party. That changed last year, when the Oklahoma Democratic Party changed its rules to allow registered independents to vote in their primaries in 2016 and 2017, hoping to give the fastest growing segment of the electorate more of a say in narrowing the field of candidates.

Democratic primary voters said the economy is the top issue facing the country, followed by health care and income inequality, according to preliminary results of the exit survey.

Austin Madden, 27, said he switched his registration from Republican to Democrat to vote for Sanders because he believes Sanders' message of protecting the middle- and working-class resonates with him.

"Mainly, he speaks to our generation and the values we hold, like helping fellow mankind," said Madden, who stopped by his polling station between jobs as an accountant and a pharmacy technician.

Sanders has placed an emphasis on winning Oklahoma, hitting the airwaves with a barrage of advertising and packing about 6,000 enthusiastic supporters into rallies last week in Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Unlike many of the southern states in Super Tuesday's election, Oklahoma has a smaller percentage of African-American voters, who have overwhelmingly favored Clinton.

In Oklahoma City, David Bohanon, 49, said he voted for Clinton because of her background in the U.S. Senate and as secretary of state.

"Basically she's got experience whereas Bernie Sanders has great ideas, but I'm afraid he's not capable of executing on his ideals," said Bohanon, an attorney and commercial real estate developer and broker.

Rubio also returned to Oklahoma the night before Oklahoma's primary election, hitting a campaign stop in Oklahoma City with former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and touting the endorsement of former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican maverick who resigned from the Senate in 2014, but remains tremendously popular in Oklahoma.

In Sapulpa, restaurant manager Jeff Douglass, 62, said he waffled between voting for Rubio and Cruz but ultimately cast his ballot for Rubio. He said the Florida senator was his pick because he said Rubio would be able to work with both parties in Washington.

"You got a Democrat president and a Republican Congress that don't do nothing," he said.

National races: Clinton, Trump sweeping to victories in South; Cruz wins Texas

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton swept through the South on Super Tuesday, with the front-runners claiming victory in their parties' primaries in delegate-rich Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. Clinton also carried Texas, the night's biggest prize.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Democratic race in his home state.

"What a Super Tuesday," Clinton exclaimed during a victory rally.

The Democrat also picked up a win in Arkansas, while Trump carried the GOP contest in Massachusetts.

Super Tuesday marked the busiest day of the 2016 primaries, with the biggest single-day delegate haul up for grabs. With elections in every region of the country, the contests put a spotlight on candidates' strengths and weaknesses with a broad swath of American voters.

For Clinton and Trump, the voting provided an opportunity to begin pulling away from their rivals and charting a course toward the general election. Each entered Super Tuesday having won three of four early voting contests, and more strong showings could start putting the nominations out of reach for other contenders.

As Trump's victories piled up, he fired off "thank you" Twitter notes to the states that landed in his win column. The billionaire businessman scheduled a nighttime news conference at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, eschewing the traditional election night rally.

Clinton was steadying herself after an unexpectedly strong challenge from Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator did carry his home state decisively on Tuesday, and told the crowd at a raucous victory party that he was "so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country."

Early exit polls underscored Sanders' continued weaknesses with black voters, a core part of the Democratic constituency. Clinton led with African-Americans, as well as both men and women, in Georgia and Virginia, according to surveys conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

Sanders continued to show strength with young voters, carrying the majority of those under the age of 30.

Democrats were voting in 11 states and American Samoa, with 865 delegates up for grabs. Republicans were voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake.

The contests come at a turbulent time for the GOP, given Trump's strengths in the face of opposition from many party leaders. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz launched furious verbal attacks on the billionaire businessman in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Trump's wins in the South were a blow to Cruz, who once saw the region as his opportunity to stake a claim to the nomination. Now Cruz's future hinges on a victory in his home state of Texas, the biggest prize of the day.

Rubio's goal was even more modest. He was seeking to stay competitive in the delegate count and hoping to pull off a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

In a fundraising email to supporters, Rubio's campaign said the senator "is not going to give up this fight  he'll do whatever it takes to stop Trump."

However, Rubio was expected to face quick calls from Trump to drop out of the race if he failed to pick up any wins.

"He has to get out," Trump told Fox News earlier in the day. "He hasn't won anything."

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, he's appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing broad support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states on Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump. Two-thirds of GOP voters in Texas, Virginia and Georgia, 7 in 10 in Tennessee, and nearly 8 in 10 in Alabama supported the proposal, according to the early exit polls.

Worries among Republicans appeared to grow after Trump briefly refused to disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during a television interview. Trump later said he had not understood the interviewer who first raised the question about Duke, and he did repudiate him.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject any racist group or individual.

"When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country I will speak up. So today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games," Ryan said.

The disarray among Republicans comes as Clinton appears to be tightening her grip on the Democratic field. In a sign of her growing confidence, the former secretary of state has increasingly turned her attention to Trump in recent days, casting herself as a civil alternative to the insults and bullying that have consumed the Republican race.

"What we can't let happen is the scapegoating, the flaming, the finger pointing that is going on the Republican side," she told voters in Springfield, Massachusetts, Monday. "It really undermines our fabric as a nation."

States holding voting contests in both parties were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. Republicans also vote in Alaska and Democrats in Colorado. Democrats also have a contest in American Samoa and for Democrats Abroad.
OKLAHOMA CITY  The Oklahoma Senate on Tuesday passed a measure that could lead to the sale of strong, cold beer and wine in grocery and convenience stores.

Senate Joint Resolution 68 passed by a vote of 28-16 and heads to the House for consideration. It takes 25 votes for a bill to pass the Senate.

The measure would let voters decide whether to modernize the states alcohol laws by amending the state constitution. A companion measure, Senate Bill 383, would make statutory changes needed to modernize state laws on beer and wine sales.

The reality is, Oklahomans want to see change, said Sen. Stephanie Bice, R-Edmond, who worked on the measure with Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond.

Residents of the state are tired of living under the current system, Bice said.

Senate Joint Resolution 68 gives voters the ability to vote on what they have been clamoring for for years  the right to purchase the products they want, to purchase wine and single-strength beer in grocery and convenience stores, Jolley said.

He said the measure would give craft beer makers greater access to the market, allowing them a better chance to thrive as a small industry in the state.

It also would allow liquor stores to sell items currently not allowed, such as corkscrews and limes, as long as they do not comprise more than 20 percent of sales, Jolley said. In addition, it would give liquor stores greater flexibility on hours, he said.

Anheuser-Busch dropped its opposition to the bill after a section affecting its business model was altered. Eric James, director of sales and marketing for Anheuser-Busch Sales of Oklahoma, said the objectionable provision would have made the company sell its beer distributorships in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

Senators voting against the measure were: Don Barrington, R-Lawton; Randy Bass, D-Lawton; Larry Boggs, R-Red Oak; Josh Brecheen, R-Coalgate; Bill Brown, R-Broken Arrow; Nathan Dahm, R-Broken Arrow; J.J. Dossett, D-Owasso; Kay Floyd, D-Oklahoma City; Earl Garrison, D-Muskogee; Susan Paddack, D-Ada; Anastasia Pittman, D-Oklahoma City; Mike Schulz, R-Altus; Wayne Shaw, R-Grove; John Sparks, D-Norman; Anthony Sykes, R-Moore; and Charles Wyrick, D-Fairland.

Wyrick said he was concerned the measure would negatively affect mom-and-pop stores.

Dossett echoed that concern, but also was worried that it could lead to more youth access to alcohol and underage drinking.

Barrington said he didnt think the measure had been fully vetted with all the parties involved in it.

Senators excused from the vote were: Jack Fry, R-Midwest City; Kevin Matthews, D-Tulsa; Joseph Silk, R-Broken Bow; and Jason Smalley, R-Stroud.
OOLOGAH  All issues have been resolved with a gas leak that caused Oologah-Talala Public Schools to close its doors for several days, and classes will resume at the high school Wednesday.

Officials discovered the leak Feb. 21, prompting the district to cancel classes at its two elementary schools, middle school and high school.

The lower and upper elementary schools and middle school reopened Monday. The high school remained closed as crews with Oklahoma Natural Gas worked to install a new gas line to the building.

In total, the two elementary schools and the middle school missed five days. The high school ended up with seven school days lost.

The district operates on an hours schedule, meaning that, as opposed to solely tacking on extra days, the district could add extra time to regular school days to make up for the lost time.

Administration officials have not yet discussed what actions the district will take, Superintendent Max Tanner said.

I know that we will be making up every day that we can before testing, he said.

The cost of the repairs will come out of the districts general fund. Tanner wasnt sure on the initial estimates.

Over the past few days, Tanner has spoken with a few high school students who were eager to get back to business, he said.

I think theyre excited to be back, he said.
As Oklahomans of voting age hit the polls Tuesday, some of their younger counterparts had their own election experiences at school.

Tulsa Public Schools Hale High School and Edison Preparatory Academy held mock elections Tuesday for some of their students to introduce them to the voting process.

Emily Durbin, a history teacher at Hale, organized her schools event.

Were teaching them how to make an educated vote, Durbin said.

Social studies students at Hale voted in the mock election after spending part of last week researching the candidates. Ballots were cast on paper and placed in a ballot box in the cafeteria.

Durbin said she talked to her students about the importance of voting for someone who shares their beliefs rather than simply voting for someone because theyre cool on the Internet.

The idea for the mock election started last week when Durbin realized several students who were old enough to vote had not registered because they were not familiar with the process.

We want them to be aware by November, she said.

Durbin said getting high school students educated about the voting process is important because such a low percentage of young people vote.

We need to start them young so they understand the importance of civic engagement, she said.

Jose Jimenez, a junior at Hale taking Durbins advanced placement U.S. history class, said the mock election process was helpful for him because it taught him how to look at each candidate and see how they feel about the issues.

It shows us when you actually want to vote you should actually do your job and do research on the candidates, he said. Dont just vote on their personality.

Ariel Frank, also a junior at Hale, said she voted for Bernie Sanders in the mock election.

He stands out to me, she said. He speaks his mind about what he wants to do for our country.

Frank is 18, but didnt vote Tuesday because she is not registered. She plans to vote in the general election Nov. 8. She said the mock voting process was fast and easy.

More people should speak their mind, because its our country, she said about the need to vote. More people should be interested in whats going on.

Kenyatta Williams, a senior at Hale, volunteered to work the voting station and count ballots.

Williams is 18 and said Tuesday would be her first time to really cast a ballot, which she was excited about.

I feel like my vote actually counts, she said.

She said she volunteered to help with the mock election because she wanted younger students to have the opportunity to feel like they were making an impact.

At Edison, all middle school students participated in the mock election.

Matthew McAfee, who teaches pre-AP U.S. history, organized the event.

I believe in citizenship and in students understanding why we should go and vote, he said.

More than 900 students participated in the mock election at Edison, and McAfee said he heard students saying they enjoyed the experience and liked being able to pick their candidates.

McAfee said students held debates in the classroom last week and did research on the candidates so they could make an informed decision Tuesday.

At Edison, students voted on computers in the library using a Google form McAfee created.

McAfee said it wasnt difficult to get the students engaged in the process, despite the fact that they wont be able to vote for several years.

When they connected the person running for president with the issues they care about, that got them engaged, he said.

At both Hale and Edison, Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primary. On the Republican side, Donald Trump took the votes at Hale and Marco Rubio won at Edison.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to include a statement from the Oklahoma Farm Bureau.

An Oklahoma lawmaker joined an environmental advocacy group and two others Tuesday to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state question that is to be put to a public vote in November.

Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, sued the Oklahoma State Election Board and Attorney General Scott Pruitt over State Question 777, also known as the Right to Farm and Ranch Amendment. He joined Ed Brocksmith, a landowner within the Illinois River watershed, and farmer John Leonard in filing the suit, which requests an injunction that would prevent the state from placing the question on the Nov. 8 ballot.

State Question 777, if it receives a majority vote, would add citizens guaranteed right to farm or ranch to the Oklahoma Constitutions Bill of Rights. It would bar the Legislature and local governments from passing laws that interfere with those rights unless there is a compelling state interest in doing so.

The state question says agriculture is a vital sector of the states economy that provides multiple benefits to Oklahomans, and it seeks to protect farmers and ranchers rights to use agricultural technology, among others.

Critics say the amendment could lead to animal abuse and pollution.

A news release announcing the lawsuit alleges the state question amounts to a massive giveaway to corporate agriculture in a truly unprecedented way.

Oklahomans have a right to clean water, clean air and food safety. This Right to Harm amendment strips them of those rights in favor of an industry that cares only about its own bottom line, said Denise Deason-Toyne, president of Save the Illinois River, which also is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Former Attorney General Drew Edmondson, with the Oklahoma Stewardship Council, has been an outspoken critic of the proposal, along with multiple advocacy organizations. Speaking on behalf of the council, he said last fall that the measure would benefit corporate agricultural operations, such as poultry and swine, at the expense of small family farmers.

Supporters of the question include the Oklahoma Cattlemens Association, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, the Oklahoma Pork Council, and American Farmers and Ranchers.

The lawsuit says the state question violates the Oklahoma Constitutions due process clause because the language throughout the measure is facially unconstitutionally vague. The news release says that if the state question is approved, corporations and courts will set agricultural policy in Oklahoma rather than voters and their representatives.

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting are only a fraction of Oklahomas gross domestic product and provide less than 1 percent of all jobs in the state, according to an Oklahoma Employment Security Commission report published in January.

Dunnington voted against the measure when it came before the Legislature last year, saying he believed it would impermissibly infringe on the rights of future lawmakers to be able to solve unforeseeable problems posed by industrialized factory farms and yet-to-be-invented agricultural technology, the lawsuit states.

A spokesman for the Election Board declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Lincoln Ferguson, a spokesman for Pruitts office, said the department was still in the process of studying the contents of the lawsuit as of Tuesday afternoon.

I ran for office to improve the lives of Oklahoma citizens, Dunnington said in a statement. I voted against State Question 777 on the House floor because I believe it will prevent legislators from doing their job to protect Oklahomans in the future. Our citizens deserve better.
History is a set of lies agreed upon. The Dude
Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

The tiny, bellicose nation of Israel has problems with its neighbor, Iran, but it doesnt intend to commit its armed forces. Instead, it plans on getting its big buddy, the United States, to bomb Iran and, if necessary, send in four or five divisions to quell the Iranian troublemakers.

Something similar took place in Iraq when a combination of Israeli urging and misstatements by the U. S government resulted in America waging war in Iraq for about a decade, and ending with results that were not all that spectacular.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus flimsy argument is that Iran is a menace to the U.S., not just to Israel. The fact is that Iran in no way threatens the U.S. It is difficult to conceive the Iranian army invading Florida. Even if it had the bomb, it would not be stupid enough to drop it on either Israel or the U.S. because of the rain of hydrogen bombs that would immediately be dropped on the Iranian homeland.

In addition, Iran would hesitate to try to shut down the Gulf of Hormuz because it realizes that the U.S. Navy has the capability to dispose of this threat quickly.

Let Israel settle its own difficulties with Iran, and not involve the U.S.

John T. Corson, Crowder
It's Divali time so at TV6 over the next few days, we bring you some of the interesting aspe
Tonight Inside Story hears exclusive interviews with some of the 23 Australian survivors of the Costa Concordia 2012 disaster in the Mediterranean.

The story covers what they saw and the actions of Captain Francesco Schettino -later sentenced to 16 years in prison for the manslaughter of 32 passengers.

On the night of January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia is cruising the Mediterranean. Its all carefree and romantic, with fine food, wine and lots of fun. Then theres a sickening crash. The lights go out, the ship shudders, and the lies begin.

On board the Costa Concordia its pandemonium. Every man, woman and child for themselves. Among them are 23 Australians, all fighting for their lives. Through perseverance, bravery and sheer good luck, most of the passengers escape in the lifeboats. But hundreds did get trapped onboard, and theres another act of bastardry from the captain still to come.

7:30pm tonight on Nine (Melb / Ade / Per).
Production is underway on a third season of History channels Coast Australia, presented by Neil Oliver.

This season, to air in early 2017, will include Port Lincoln, Botany Bay, Portland, Esperance, King Island, Newcastle, Far North Queensland and North Kimberley.

Professor Tim Flannery, historian Dr Alice Garner, marine ecologist Professor Emma Johnston and landscape architect Brendan Moar will return, joined by Australian marine scientist, journalist, filmmaker and global adventurer, Dr Dean Miller.

Dr. Miller has travelled the world extensively through his work as a marine scientist, from researching fur seals in the Antarctic, to polar bears in the Russian Arctic and tiger sharks in the Great Barrier Reef.

Foxtels General Manager of Factual Channels, Jim Buchan said Its a real thrill to bring a third series of Coast Australia to our History audience, whove demonstrated how much they love their history to be presented in this contemporary, colourful way. The show gives viewers a fantastic opportunity to experience parts of our rich, diverse continent they may not have seen before.

Each episode of season three will showcase a different strip of Australias spectacular coastline over eight x one hour episodes, as Neil Oliver and his team of co-presenters gather stories about the history, the people, the archaeology, the geography and the marine life, investigating interesting and little-known facts along the way.

Throughout the series, Neil will again be joined by some of Australias leading experts in their field: palaeontologist Professor Tim Flannery, historian Dr Alice Garner, marine ecologist Professor Emma Johnston and landscape architect Brendan Moar, as they set out to capture the incredible diversity around the edge of a young nation built on an ancient land.

The first two seasons of Coast Australia achieved record ratings for the History channel  the launch episode was the second-highest rating (non-sports) program on Foxtel in 2013, and season two was the highest-rating factual series on Foxtel in 2015.

Coast Australia is commissioned by Foxtel and produced by Great Southern Film and Television, with the format licensed from BBC Worldwide ANZ. It is based on the BAFTA Award-winning BBC series Coast, which has been broadcast in the UK and internationally for the past ten years.

The first two seasons of Coast Australia aired on BBC2 in the UK to great success.
V8 Supercars coverage of the Clipsal 500 begins on TEN on Friday.

Matt White will lead the commentary joined by Mark Larkham, Rick Kelly, Grant Denyer, Kate Peck and Mark Howard.

With just days to go until the Clipsal 500 returns to television screens around the country on TEN and TEN HD, teams and drivers are preparing for the highly anticipated season opening round of the V8 Supercars.

All eyes will be on the grid when the masters of Australian motor racing take to the Adelaide Parklands Street Circuit for 500km of wheel to wheel racing. Can 2015 champion Mark Winterbottom kick start the year with a win or will six-time champion Jamie Whincup take the limelight?

Begins Friday, 4 March at 12.00pm AEDT and continues all weekend.
23 May 2022

- Understand the French healthcare system, how you access it and how you are reimbursed - Useful if you are new to the French healthcare system or want a more in-depth understanding - Reader question and answer section Aimed at non-French nationals living here, the guide gives an overview of what you are (and are not) covered for. There is also information for second-home owners and regular visitors.
8:22 a.m., March 2, 2016--The University of Delaware Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity is seeking nominations for the newly established Mary Custis Straughn Excellence in Higher Education Disability Advocacy Award.

Straughn, who received her bachelors degree in 1955 and her masters degree in 1961, both from the College of Arts and Sciences, developed multiple sclerosis at age 38. She advocated for the rights of people with disabilities and created educational opportunities for them.

Her legacy has endured through the Mary Custis Straughn Endowment for Disabled Students at UD. For 25 years, the endowment has supported a variety of disability support services on campus. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law on July 26, 1990.

The award will recognize a member of the University community whose advocacy, leadership, research, teaching, or service promotes access and excellence for people with disabilities in higher education, and contributes to the creation of a University culture that engages and embraces disability within its vision for diversity.

The nomination form is available online. The deadline for nominations is March 15.

The University will honor the award recipient at a special event on April 14 at 3:30 p.m. The event will feature guest speaker Lydia Brown, a disability rights advocate, law student and chairperson of the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council. A reception will follow the event.

For more information on the Mary Custis Straughn Excellence in Higher Education Disability Advocacy Award, or any of the other award programs coordinated by the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity, contact vpd@udel.edu.
8:24 a.m., March 2, 2016--The University of Delaware School of Educations colloquium series continues in March with presentations by Sandra L. Calvert, professor of psychology and director of the Childrens Digital Media Center at Georgetown University, and Bridget Dalton, associate professor of literacy studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

On Monday, March 7, Calverts presentation, Childrens Early STEM Learning: Lessons from Media Characters, will discuss how children learn from their favorite media characters. Children often develop parasocial relationships or close one-way relationships with specific characters.

Calvert will discuss how these parasocial relationships can improve childrens learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts with a focus on mathematics.

She will also consider implications for childrens learning from intelligent, personalized, interactive media characters and the role of teachers and parents in this process. She will demonstrate a new prototype of an intelligent character: Dora from Dora the Explorer. The Dora prototype uses a game to teach preschool-aged children the add-one concept. Calvert and her team are currently using a Wizard of Oz paradigm, in which an experimenter is concealed behind a curtain to provide replies to childrens responses.

On Wednesday, March 9, Daltons presentation, Multimodal Composition: Developing New Literacies and Research Methods, will discuss how students write and design with images, sound, movement and text to create multimodal ensembles for specific audiences and varied purposes. Traditional writing, Dalton will argue, is no longer the primary mode for composition and publication.

Dalton will share research on the complexity of student design processes and students intentional use of different modes of composition and digital tools. After discussing student processes, products, and perspectives, Dalton will discuss instruction in the classroom for students with diverse needs and interests. She will offer a critical examination of the Digital Composers Workshop model.

Both presentations will begin at 1 p.m. in Room 207 of the Willard Hall Education Building, and a discussion will follow at 2.

Students, faculty and community members with interests in educational psychology, STEM, English, composition, literacy, and education are encouraged to attend. This event is free, and no advance registration or RSVP is required.

For more information about the colloquium series and upcoming speakers, visit the School of Education colloquium series webpage.

About the speakers:

Sandra L. Calvert is professor of psychology and director of the Childrens Digital Media Center at Georgetown University. Her research activities focus on the impact of information technologies, such as television and computers, on children's attention, comprehension, and social behavior.

Calvert's current research at the center is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Stuart Family Foundation. With her colleagues and students, she is examining the influence of identity and interactivity on children's learning, how very young children learn to read screen media, and how to use interactive media to reduce the childhood obesity epidemic.

Bridget Dalton is associate professor of literacy studies in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on the design and use of scaffolded digital literacy environments, with special attention to the needs and interests of students who are experiencing literacy difficulties.

Her research has appeared in the Journal of Literacy Research, Reading and Writing Quarterly, Reading and Writing, and Remedial and Special Education. She received the IRA research on computers and reading award and is co-author of the award-winning software program, Thinking Reader, published by Tom Snyder Productions, Scholastic.

Dalton earned her doctorate in reading, language, and learning disabilities at Harvard University.

Article by Jessica Henderson
HONY's Brandon Stanton: My goal is to get as good as possible at telling the story of the person in front of me at any given moment.

2:51 p.m., March 2, 2016--The first Humans of New York (HONY) photo Brandon Stanton ever posted  of two boys on a subway, looking up at the ceiling with a shared quizzical expression  got no Facebook likes. The single comment came from Stantons former college quizbowl teammate.

Racial harmony, his friend wrote of the caption-free photo posted on Jan. 18, 2010. I like it!

That reaction was a far departure from the buzz kicked up by Stantons posts today  where hundreds of thousands of likes and comments are the norm  but the picture still has that classic HONY slice-of-life approach to photojournalism.

And it still stands as an example of why Stanton  photographer, cultural observer, social media phenomenon  has built his knack for capturing the beauty of our shared humanity in a site followed by more than 17 million around the globe.

Sharing this photo with a sold-out crowd of 800-plus students on Feb. 29, Stanton discussed the evolution of his blog, starting with this picture and how he had been too reluctant to talk to the boys mothers at the time, but how he had also felt a sense of accomplishment at snapping the image.

Its tough to go up to people and talk to them, he knew. But if I can get over that fear, continuously, in a systematic way, I could produce photography thats interesting to the world.

It was almost two years later  on Dec. 11, 2011  before he saw that vision actualized by a smiling, gray-haired lady, dressed head-to-toe in green.

I used to go through different stages, she told Stanton. But then I found that I was happiest when I was green, so Ive been green for 15 years.

He threw the quote on top of the image. Today it has nearly half a million likes, more than 41,000 shares and 23,444 comments.

The growth chart went nuts once I started telling stories, he said.

But storytelling was never the initial goal for the former bond trader, who began the HONY site in November 2010, shortly after losing his job.

I started it with a commitment to myself: to make just enough money to control my time; to control what I do, what I think about.

And his original quest  a photographic census of the city through images of 10,000 New Yorkers  evolved shortly after the lady in green.

Im not the best photographer, and Im not the best journalist, Stanton soon realized. But maybe I could become the best at approaching strangers. And once I got over that hump, doesnt it make sense to find out who that person is? And if I get over that fear, why not introduce them to people who might not be able to approach them themselves?

So began the idea that would become Humans of New York, as most know it today: A site with more than 17 million that has spawned two (three if you count the kids book) bestsellers, and taken Stanton to Pakistan, Uganda, Iraq, inner-city schools, federal prisons and twice to the White House.

His interviews last anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours, and he begins most with the same standard list of questions: Whats the saddest or happiest moment of your life? What do you feel most guilty of? How did life turn out differently than you expected? Whats your biggest challenge?

He is most fascinated with how relationships go wrong and quotes Tolstoy (All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). There are no commonalities that the storytelling blogger has found, except, perhaps, the loss of communication.

It seems poetic for a man who has conversations, not interviews, and calls the best ones those where he and the other person are just profusely thanking each other at the end.

People are quite approachable and surprisingly honest, he knows, as long as they questions are asked with sincerity.

And for Stanton, the ultimate goal is this: What can this person tell me that the other 10,000 have not?

About SCPAB

Stantons talk was sponsored by the Student Centers Programming Advisory Board, which works side by side with the University Student Centers at the University of Delaware to bring the best events to the campus. Offering a broad assortment of events, SCPABs objective is to provide quality programming for everyone on campus.

Article by Artika Rangan Casini

Photos by Andrew Kuczmarski
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
The armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine has already killed 9,000 people and injured 20,000 people.

Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin said this while delivering his speech at the 31st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the press service of the Ministry reports.

"The Russian aggression against Ukraine has led to the death of 9,000 people. Over 20,000 people have been injured and nearly two million people have been displaced. During these two years of aggression in Donbas, the powerful army of 40,000 people has been created, which is funded, equipped and supported by Russia under the command of Russian officers," Klimkin said.

According to him, Russia "came to the Ukrainian land with arms and soldiers as it had happened in Georgia in 2008."

ol
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.
Turkey, a member of NATO, and Ukraine can cooperate in repairing NATO vessels.

General Manager of Smart Maritime Group PLC, deputy of Kherson regional council Vasyl Fedin told local officials during their visit to the Kherson shipyard and the state-owned plant "Pallada", Ukrinform reports.

"Deputy Defense Minister of Turkey came to visit me and we considered the issues of cooperation for repairing NATO ships at our facilities," said Fedin.

As a background note - Smart Maritime Group PLC consists of two shipbuilding companies  the Kherson shipyard and the Chornomorsky shipyard.
The daily volume of gas imports from the European Union as of the morning on March 2 has reached 11.5 cubic meters. Compared to February, natural gas imports has decreased by 400 percent, according to data published on Ukrtransgaz site.

"According to current data released by the central control department, as of this morning the daily regime of importing natural gas from the EU totals 11.5 million cubic meters," a statement said.

Meanwhile, in February of this year the daily gas imports from Europe reached 44.3 million cubic meters. Gas imports volume in February totaled 1.252 billion cubic meters, of which 90 percent was imported from the Slovakia gas pipeline corridor.

Overall, according to Ukrtransgaz, this year Ukraine has imported 2.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

"In the two months this year, for the needs of domestic consumers 2.1 billion cubic meters of natural gas were imported that corresponds to the imports volumes from Europe last year," Ukrtransgaz informs.
The EU is awaiting the implementation by Ukraine in the first quarter of all obligations in order to submit a legislative motion on the liberalization of visa requirements for Ukrainian nationals.

Deputy Secretary General for the External Action Service Helga Schmid told a closing session of the "Week of Ukraine" in the European Parliament, the Ukrinforms own correspondent in Brussels reports.

"We are nearing the completion of the visa liberalization road. The steps taken this year are now being reviewed, and the European Commission is preparing a legislative proposal," said the senior diplomat of the EU.

She noted the progress made by the Ukrainian leadership as to its commitments for visa liberalization. However, Schmid reminded several issues on combating corruption remain unaddressed.
Russia has encroached on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and violated international law. Now Russia has occupied Crimea and the rights of the Crimean Tatars are being violated.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said in his speech at a sitting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday, the Polish Press Agency PAP reports.

Recently we have witnessed gross violations of the international law and the territorial integrity of a sovereign state in the neighborhood with my country... It has affected the situation with human rights of certain groups, such as Tatars in the illegally occupied by the Russian Federation Crimea, Waszczykowski said.

In addition, he also said that human rights are being violated in eastern Ukraine because of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

iy
facebook like button Tweet tweet button for twitter

Published March 2, 2016

MONROE, La.  For only the third time in the past forty years, the Louisiana Political Science Association (LPSA) held its annual conference at the University of Louisiana Monroe on February 19-20, 2016.

Faculty and students in ULMs Political Science department, as well as students in the new Masters in Public Administration (MPA) program, presented papers and led discussions related to their research.

MPA graduate student Ashley Lawrence of Warren, Arkansas presented her paper, It Takes a Village: Community Sustainability and the Effects of Hidden Rules. Lawrence commented, I have been working on this paper for the past three years and the comments from other students and especially professors has been very encouraging.

Political Science major Joshua Dean of Lafayette presented his paper, Potential Climate Change in Developing Countries. Dean said, This paper was the result of a group project in Dr. Sutherlins Foreign Policy class. He thought we did enough research and had enough content to present our findings at the conference.

Political Science associate professor Josh Stockley led a round table discussion on Louisiana politics, budgets and elections. In an election year like we just had and a budget session like we are having, the hard part was limiting our discussion to an hour and a half. This is what makes my job so much fun, remarked Dr. Stockley.

Fellow Political Scientist professor John W. Sutherlin discussed Iran, China and Russia in an international panel. Dr. Sutherlin remarked, I am not sure that I added any clarity to these issues, but the discussion with other political scientists was enlightening.

Sterlington Mayor Vern Breland was the featured speaker for the event. Breland discussed how Sterlington has managed so much growth. "The Mayors determination for community success is an inspiration, stated Lawrence. It is encouraging for students to hear local leaders discussing the triumphs of communities in the state."

Dr. Sutherlin, who was the Vice-President of the LPSA, was elected President. The next LPSA conference will be held next year at Northwestern State University.
All the latest Uttoxeter news

Story Saved

You can find this story in My Bookmarks.

Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.
JavaScript is disabled on your browser.

CORDIS website requires JavaScript enabled in order to work properly. Please enable JavaScript.
Liz Byrd Collection Accessible at UW

Liz Byrd teaches at a Cheyenne elementary school in 1967. (American Heritage Center Photo)

Documents and photos of Harriett Elizabeth Liz Byrd, the first African-American to serve in the Wyoming State Legislature, are now accessible online through the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center (AHC).

The AHC has digitized and made accessible online 795 photographs and documents from the Harriett Elizabeth Byrd family papers. The collection consists of files, photographs, awards, certificates and other memorabilia relating to Byrd's legislative and educational careers as well as her family.

Born in Cheyenne in 1926, Byrd graduated from Cheyenne High School in 1944. After graduating with a B.S. degree in education (1949) at West Virginia State College, Byrd returned to Wyoming and worked and taught at Fort F.E. Warren AFB for 10 years before gaining a teaching position with Laramie County School District 1. She taught elementary school for the next 27 years in Cheyenne and also earned a masters degree in education from UW in 1976.

In 1980, Byrd was elected to the Wyoming State House of Representatives, the first African-American woman to ever serve in the Wyoming State Legislature. After serving eight years, she ran for and won election to the Wyoming State Senate in 1988, where she served four years.

Byrd was the prime sponsor of legislation to create Martin Luther King Jr./Wyoming Equality Day. After retiring from the Legislature, she remained active in the Cheyenne community along with her husband, James Jim W. Byrd, who was Cheyennes first African-American police chief.

Select material from this collection was digitized as part of a Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund Grant project to digitize materials that provide information about women in Wyoming government and politics.

Links to digitized items and additional information about the Harriett Elizabeth Byrd family papers can be found in the online finding aid at: http://rmoa.unm.edu/docviewer.php?docId=wyu-ah10443.xml.

For more information, email jgreene@uwyo.edu or call (307) 766-3704.

The AHC is the university's repository of manuscripts, rare books and the university archives. It is among the largest and most prominent non-governmental repositories in the United States. The center contains the papers of many prominent elected officials in Wyoming's history.
UW Religion Today: The Alphabet: The Heritage of the Canaanites

By Paul V.M. Flesher

When Christians think about the Canaanites, it is usually to recall their supposed disappearance after the Israelites conquered their land in the 13th century B.C. The Canaanites were supposedly one of the many small peoples of the Mediterranean world who vanished without a trace during the great movements of peoples at this time.

There are two things wrong with this picture. First, the Canaanites did not disappear, but instead became one of the dominant nations of the time. Second, they amalgamated into the Roman Empire many centuries later and left a legacy that remains with us today: namely, the alphabet.

The Canaanites lived along the eastern Mediterranean shore for most of the second millennium B.C. The strip of land they occupied extended about 25 miles inland, to the northern end of the Great Rift Valley through which the Jordan River runs. The territorys southern end reached nearly to Egypt, while its northern end stretched across the land today known as Lebanon. The Israelites and the Philistines occupied only the southern end of this territory in the 13th century.

In what would become the 20th century nation of Lebanon, the Canaanites became expert seafarers and traders. The great east-west trade route of the age ran through their land. This group of mobile Canaanites became known by another name, that of Phoenicians. They traded along the Mediterranean coast and sailed out into the islands, where they came into contact with Greek civilization, and to the west where they established Carthage -- Romes first major opponent. It was through this trading empire that the Phoenicians spread their greatest intellectual achievement: namely, the alphabet.

In the middle of the second millennium B.C., the Phoenicians created the first alphabet -- before the appearance of the Israelites in the southern portion of their territory. The importance of this achievement lies not merely in the creation of a writing system of 22 letters, but in the idea of an alphabet as a way to represent speech in a written form.

Prior to the Phoenician achievement, all writing had been done by syllabaries. A syllabary is a collection of signs that represent each different syllable of a language. For example, to represent English syllabically, imagine a sign (i.e., a letter) for each combination of consonant plus vowel. This would result in different signs for ba, be, bo, ca, ce, co, etc. In the end, there would be hundreds of different letter signs that writers and readers would need to memorize. This kind of awkward writing system was in use by the great empires up to this time: Sumer and Akkad in Mesopotamia (i.e., modern Iraq) and Egypt along the Nile.

The Canaanites realized that it was possible to divide speech into sound units smaller than syllables. They identified 22 sounds, nearly all of them consonants, for their language.

The Canaanite/Phoenician alphabet spread initially in two directions. First, it was adopted by the peoples in and near Canaanite territory, both present and past. So, the Israelites, the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites and so on all had adopted the Phoenician alphabet by the time of their earliest written remains -- from the early first millennium B.C.

Second, the alphabet was adopted by the Aramaic-speaking tribes from the north. Since Aramaic became the language for the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires, the alphabet spread across them and even into Egypt. Centuries later, a cursive form of Aramaic script would become the basis for written Arabic, while other forms spread even farther east to India.

As the Phoenicians traveled west, they passed their alphabet on to the Greeks. Greek writers adopted it and adapted it for their language, adding a few more signs to indicate vowels left out in the Phoenician version. The Greeks then passed it on to the Etruscans, the first major power in the Italian peninsula, who, in turn, passed it on to the Romans, who adapted it for Latin.

So, despite the disappearance of the Canaanites and the Phoenicians many centuries ago, their legacy lives on in their simple yet powerful invention, the alphabet. That alphabet became the basis for writing languages across the world.

Flesher is a professor in the University of Wyomings Religious Studies Department. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds. To comment on this column, visit http://religion-today.blogspot.com.
Court Marriage Nikah Online On Phone Lawyer. Nikah Online is Law visions Modern online service, through which we provide Nikah facility to our clients, even if they are at their home. Shadi / Nikah On Phone/Online is just like Ordinary Marriage. It is valid under Shariat and Legal in all respects if it is done through Law vision. lawvisionpk@gmail.com

Call Now: 03024077416

Law vision (Pvt) Ltd. is a Prestigious Lawyer Company Providing Legal Consultancy and Pleading Services for all areas of Practice Law since, 1989. Apart From Conducting Litigation in Civil, Criminal, Family Matters including Nikah, Divorce, and Maintenance Allowance etc. in Pakistani Courts We provide Nikah facility to our clients, even if they are at their home. Shadi / Nikah On Phone/Online is just like Court / Ordinary Marriage. It is valid under Shariat and Legal in all respects if it is done through Law vision (Pvt.) Ltd.

Procedure of Court Marriage Nikah is Very Simple and of Days not of Weeks or Months. Our Nikah Registrars are Dully appointed by the Govt. having Sanctioned Nikah Registers and Official Seal. Nikah will be registered according to the Pakistan Islamic Laws. We would like to clarify just for information of our clients that when Nikah is registered during Court Marriage even when it is done on phone or on Internet, the Nikah Nama which will be Provided by Us will be just like Nikah Nama of arranged marriage. Legal and Shari in all respects.

To Start with Our Procedure, You have only to contact us. And provide the following Documents Scanned Copies by E-Mail or Photo Copies on Our Courier address :

 ID Cards of both Sides

 Photos of Both sides

Cell Numbers of both the parties.

 Permanent Address of the Both

 Present Address of the Both.

 Appointment of Wakil Letter

 Expenses of Nikah





After receiving Documents we will settle Date and Time of Nikah with your Consultation, at which time Our Nikah Registerar, Nikah Khawan, Our Staff Member, Bride and Groom will appear or be online on Conference Call, in which Nikah will be Held. After Nikah, Nikah Registrar will Complete all 4 Nikah Namas , all the Parties i.e. Bride, Groom and / or their Wakils, Wittnesses, Nikah Registerar and Nikah Khawan will Sign the Nikah Namas and the same will be Complete, Valid and Shari Nikah Nama of the Parties. In case any Party of Nikah is not present at the time of Nikah, we will send all the 4 Nikah Namas for Signatures of Bride or Groom by Courier.

We are the Sole Court Marriage Law Firm in Pakistan, providing Court Marriage/Nikah on line/Nikah on phone services. Hundred of Couples through out the World, mostly from Pakistan, UAE, USA, Canada, UK, Saudia Arabia, Indonasia, Malasia, Germany, India, Kuwait, and in many more countries enjoying their Happy Family lives after availing our Court Marriage Nikah.

Immediate Contacts:
A charge injection device (CID) has been created to help people boost more chances of finding earth-like planets. This new type of astronomical camera that can spot dim objects even behind Sirius, the brightest star in our galaxy was developed by researchers at the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT).

Scientists keep bustling their minds in the great quest to find another Earth-like planet to sustain lives. One of the top requirements for such planet is that it needs to be orbiting near a star like our sun. This is where the challenge goes up to the next level. Based on the information from Planet Magazine, using regular telescope, images of planets orbiting near to a host star are usually "drowned" by the glare of the stars.

Daniel Batcheldor, Head of Physics at the Florida Institute of Technology compared this quest to 'looking for a candle in the distance that has been put next to a lighthouse, which in reality is 'thousands of times worse'. He added, "Current instrument technology is very complex and expensive and still a way off from achieving direct images of Earth-like planets."

According to Daily Mail, a camera that was first developed in 1970 called CID (Charge Injection Device) may help to solve this problem. CID cameras consist of arrays of photosensitive pixels. Each individual pixel in the devices works individually and employs a special indexing system. Bright pixels are recognized rapidly while the fainter ones are permitted to bear on assembling more lights. This implies such gadgets can be utilized to recognize exoplanets alongside brilliant stars.

Science Daily informs that with an endowment from the American Astronomical Society, Batcheldor and several graduate students in the Physics and Space Sciences Department conducted the study using a CID on Florida Tech's 0.8-metre Ortega telescope. They could select any object 70 million times fainter through the glare of Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky.

The way that a dim object could be precisely identified through the not-as-much-as-perfect thick Florida atmosphere adds more excitement to the observations made by the CID.

Batcheldor arranged to test the CID at a telescope on the Canary Islands and a model for a CID is booked to be tried on the International Space Station (ISS) in the not so distant future this year.

One incredible thing about the procedure is how cheap it is compared to other solutions on how to find exoplanets. Batcheldor said, "Personally, I like very simple, straightforward solutions, especially when there is a complex problem. The CID is able to look at a very bright source next to a very faint source and not experience much of the image degradation you would normally experience with a typical camera."

This technology can be added to future space missions. Hopefully, it can help us know more about our earth location in the universe.
After winning the approval from Hong Kong's stock exchange for an initial public offering, lender China Zheshang Bank Co. decided to postpone the gauging demand for a $1 billion Hong Kong initial public offering. This happened after some stock buyers stated trouble in shifting cash out of mainland China.

Based on the information from Daily News, the deal arrangers were informed by potential major investors that they couldn't get timely regulatory approval to send cash throughout the border. The lender, based inside the eastern Chinese metropolis of Hangzhou, had initially planned to begin on Monday what is referred to as the pre-marketing of the deal.

According to Bloomberg, any barrier on cash outflows may hurt the Hong Kong market, in which the amount raised from first-time share sales rose 13 percent last year to $33.9 billion. Many corporations listed in Hong Kong allocate greater than half their IPO shares for chiefly Chinese major investors, who usually conform to keep on to their stock for six months in exchange for early and warranted allocation.

Philippe Espinasse, the previous head of Asia equity capital markets at Nomura Holdings Inc., said, "If the market stays unstable and Chinese cash can't get out, this means that it's going to be hard to get any widespread IPO executed." The writer of "IPO: A worldwide manual" also added that "A large proportion of the cornerstone buyers for Hong Kong IPOs in recent times are Chinese investors."

During the final 12 months, the three Chinese banks that went public in Hong Kong bet on mainland China major investors and their associates for an average 44 percent of their IPO size. The latest info stated that Zheshang bank hasn't set a brand new timetable for its offering, according to sources.

A Hong Kong-based external spokeswoman for Zheshang financial institution said she wasn't able to immediately respond about the delay. At the same time, representatives for China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange didn't answer right away phone calls searching for comment.

People acquainted with the matter said last month that China is narrowing early purchases of foreign currency for overseas investments, and regulators have requested a few banks to strengthen their control of foreign-exchange operations.
Google has announced on Monday offering 24/7 phone and email customer support for businesses. The support will be offered even to those who are not paying to use Google apps like Gmail and Docs. The announcement appears just after releasing a video demonstrating Chromecast Audio Capabilities, a Google effort to describe the audio app operations.

Chrome for Work Assist, the new program is a contacting feature. Neither the Google blog-post has announced the news nor does its website promote pricing information, according to a report published in VentureBeat.

The new feature provides Chrome browser support to non-Google apps customers who choose Chrome as their standard workplace web browser. To deploy and manage the Chrome aiming to enjoy the benefits of Chrome for Work Assist, requires to perform some steps furnished in the website of Google Support.
Joyce Phillips, head of Australia & New Zealand Banking Group's wealth management business, is stepping down from the bank after a restructure of wealth business. Under the restructuring strategy, the bank will combine the wealth distribution arm in Australia and wealth management business in New Zealand and Asia with the retail sectors. A new division named Australia Wealth will manage the insurance, investment and pension products in Australia.

Shayne Elliott, chief executive officer of ANZ, has shuffled the senior executives' team in the bank since he expects to increase returns amid growing money requirements among Australian lenders. Last year, National Australia Bank, one of ANZ's peer in the country, sold 80% of the stock in its life insurance arm to Nippon Life Insurance.

T.S. Lim, a financial expert at Bell Potter Securities, said Bloomberg that this move by the bank signifies that its wealth distribution arm system matches its peers. He added that shifting of wealth arm into the retail sector will help the bank to preserve cash. Alexis George, managing director of the insurance sector, will lead the new Australia Wealth division. The current restructure strategy disassembles the modifications introduced in 2012.

Meanwhile, the bank has named Maile Carnegie, chief of Google Australia, as the group chief for digital banking. In this new position, Carnegie will be responsible for innovation, maintaining tactical relationships with the fintech division and digital projects. Elliot said that the wealth division performed well under Joyce Phillips. The wealth division reported a net income of $601 million in the year 2015, up 11% from the previous year. However, the wealth arm paid less than 10% to the bank's profit.

According to the sources, this restructure move in the bank's wealth division signals a possible sale in the following 12 months. In 2015, ANZ sold its Esanda dealer finance division for $8.2 billion to Macquarie Group, as reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.

According to FINANCIAL REVIEW, the wealth division accounted for nearly 10% of ANZ's capital with 40% in commercial and retail and 50% in Asia Pacifica and institutional. The move is welcomed by the bank's shareholders who expect an intense result from this shuffling. In 2009, the bank purchased 51% stake in wealth joint venture with the ING for $1.8 billion.

According to Elliot, this change in the wealth business system will reduce expenses and also boost the monetary efficiency of the bank. The shares of the bank increased 2.7% to A$23.69 in the Sydney stock exchange. The bank will appoint a new chief financial officer shortly.

The restructure of wealth management sector will aid the bank to reduce costs and improve returns and capital. Many experts believe that this move will enable the bank to maintain its position as Australia's fourth largest lender.
As Costco announced to replace its Amex card with Citigroup, American Express is predicted to lose its place as the leader in credit card sales. Chase will replace Amex in its place.

Since last year, Costco has introduced Citigroup and Visa as its new credit card partner. Costco's partnership with American Express will expire this year, and Costco decided to not renew the partnership. USA Today reported that American Express will sell its Costco-branded portfolio to Citigroup.

Citigroup was supposed to take over American Express card on April 1, but delayed due to some conditions into some time in June. At that time, all members of Costco will not be able to pay with American Express

Although an exact time is still waiting for official announcement, but according to American Express spokeswoman Elizabeth Crosta, American Express Costco cards will no longer valid once the transition is official. However, card rewards is still be available for the cardholders and the 2015 annual reward will also be paid out.

Costco is American retailer which provide a membership-only warehouse club. It is the largest membership-only warehouse club in the United States and provide a wide selection of merchandise. Its U.S. stores are located in 474 location, and also operated in Canada, UK, Australia, Mexico, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan,and Spain.

American Express was a leader in credit card in the U.S., and it market is shrinking along with declining popularity of its premium card nicknamed Black Card, or known formally as Centurion Card.

As Costco will leave Amex, according to Business Insider, Chase will take over as a leader in credit card sales volume. Partnership with Costco has given a $572 billion transaction for Amex, after the end of partnership, Amex will loss $80 billion to $492 billion. While Chase had $496 billion in sales volume.

In its quarterly report released in January, American Express reported a fell of profit by 39.2% and its stock stumbled 32% for the last 12-months. Afterward, the company announced $1 billion cost cutting plan.

Chief Industry Analyst at CreditCards.com Matt Schulz told Fox Business, "American Express used to be the undisputed champ of upscale credit cards for a long time. Now, there's a lot of competition coming after that crown."

End of multi-year-long partnership with Costco also followed by other partners. JetBlue decided to switch to Barclaycard and Mastercard after ten years of partnership with Amex. While partnership with Starwood Hotels is also at risk following the acquisition of Marriott in partnership with Chase.

In June, Costco will replace American Express to Citibank as its partner. The end of partnership will bring down American Express sales volume and Chase will take over Amex as leader in sales.
The historic acquisition of EMC Corp for $59 billion is on its way ahead, with the voting set this spring. Dell's Michael Dell said the deal would be completed according to the stipulated schedule. Dell may file an updated SEC proxy statement ahead of EMC shareholders vote in May.

According to the latest memo from Michael Dell, the management structure after the acquisition will be changed. David Goulden, Executive of EMC will be the in-charge of Enterprise Systems Group. Dell's Jeff Clarke, however, will remain in charge of the PC business. Another Dell executive, Marius Haas, will be the President and Chief Commercial Officer (CCO).

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that the deal needs to be approved in 16 jurisdictions. China and other countries still have to approve the deal. Dell has recently received antitrust clearance from the US and European Union (EU), and it is expecting another one from other nations soon. EMC shareholders' voting is likely to take place in May.

Dell said "The transaction is on schedule under the original timetable and the original terms. We recently received antitrust clearance from the United States and European Union and are starting to see other countries provide approvals as well."

BBC adds the European regulators approved Dell's acquisition. EU's approval is the last major regulatory hurdle for Dell to overcome all the hassles on the way to acquire EMC. After the acquisition, Dell will be in a position to compete with IBM, Cisco Systems and Hewlett-Packard in cloud computing and cyber security segments.



Jason Pompeii, a senior director with Fitch Ratings, said "We continue to expect the deal to proceed. Clearing the regulatory hurdles they cleared this week is the most recent step. And the fact that credit markets seem to have calmed slightly is probably helpful."

Financial Times reports that EMC shareholders are expected to get $24.05 in cash plus shares tied to the value of VMware, an EMC-run company engaged in data centre software development. This comes to a total of $33.15 per share giving a valuation of $67 billion to the company.

VMware share price dropped 8.1 percent to $72.27 on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), while EMC's stock rose 1.8 percent to $28.35.



As of late, credit markets are improving and this is givinga leeway for Dell's bankers to line up investors funding for tens of billions of dollars. Dell's bankers are in the process of mobilizing debt for funding the huge $59-billion acquisition.
SpaceX has scrubbed its plan to launch the Falcon 9 rocket for the fourth time. After three times cancelled due to failure in fuel, the Tuesday plan to launch the rocket was once again scrubbed due to wind shear. The fifth attempt to launch Falcon 9 rocket is set to be Friday.

"Pushing launch to Friday due to extreme high altitude wind shear. Hits like a sledgehammer when going up supersonic," SpaceX founder and CEO tweeted. The first two attempts to launch the rocket was scrubbed due to failure in the liquid oxygen fuel, which the company had taken care of before the next attempt.

The third attempt last Sunday was first delayed because a boat strayed too close to the danger zone where the rocket's booster is supposed to land. After the zone is cleared 35 minutes later, SpaceX faces another unexpected technical failure on its fuel, likely caused by the delay. Other than that, SpaceX reported that the rocket is in a good condition. Business Insider noted that SpaceX is simply being extra careful to make sure everything goes smoothly once the rocket lifts off the ground.

The fourth launch attempt to launch the rocket took place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. According to Click Orlando, the launch window will open slightly earlier compared to the previous three attempts, giving them a better chance to avoid upper-level winds.

FloridaToday reported that a launch forecast revealed by the 45th Weather Squadron had described conditions as 80 percent favorable for a launch attempt. A spokesperson for SpaceX Philip Larson elaborated the condition that had forced them to abort the mission. "Unfortunately, upper-level winds continue to exceed acceptable limits and are expected to get worse as we approach tonight's launch window, so we are forgoing today's launch attempt. Winds are forecast to exceed acceptable limits through Thursday," Larson said. He also noted that the team will continue working with the Air Force's Launch Weather Officer to evaluate the best available opportunity for flight. A forecast for Friday has not yet been released.

SpaceX acknowledged that it has low expectations of success on the planned booster landing. The ultimate goal of the Falcon 9 rocket is to reuse the booster after it's landed on a specific platform, making spaceflights more affordable. However, they want to make sure that they are being careful and thoughtful on the attempts. The Falcon 9 rocket will carry the Boeing-made SES-9 communication satellite owned by Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES.

SpaceX decided to abort its fourth attempt to launch the Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday. After clearing technical difficulties that had caused them to scrub the previous attempts, now the team was faced with an extreme weather condition. SpaceX plans to go for another attempt on Friday.
Bank of Nova Scotia has reported a strong profit growth as banking activity in domestic and international operations rose encouragingly, recording its biggest one-day gain in over seven years. The Canadian bank has increased provision for bad loans in the oil and gas sector, and is expanding in Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru.

Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia's robust banking operations set off fears about rising loan losses in the global banking sector. The encouraging growth in international banking strengthened Scotiabank's topline.

The Globe And Mail reports that the focus on four-nation Pacific Alliance trading bloc comprising Mexico, Chile, Columbia and Peru has been successful for the bank. Leveraging on a positive currency translation, the profit rose 21 percent. But, the loans and deposits also rose in double-digit numbers.



Brian Porter, Scotiabank's chief executive officer, said "These economies are going to grow anywhere from 2.5 per cent to 4 per cent. We can operate very good banks in that type of environment."

Bank of Nova Scotia is the third largest bank in Canada. Scotiabank recorded profit surged 5.1 percent to $1.8 billion during the first quarter of the fiscal. The Canadian bank has also raised dividend by two cents to 72 cents per share, according to BNN (Business News Network).



Bank's net income rose following the increase of 21 percent in international banking operations taking the volume to $505 million. The weaker Canadian currency also helped boost global banking in Latin America. Quarterly net income rose to $1.81 billion from $1.73 billion.

Scotiabank has downgraded about 10 percent of its energy portfolio during the quarter. The bank expects adverse conditions in the exploration and production operations. About five percent of energy portfolio is on the bank's watchlist. Porter said "We expect there to be additional provisions for some of our loans in the energy sector."

Reuters further adds that Scotiabank has set aside more funds for bad loans in the oil and gas sector. The Canadian bank sees worst scenario in the coming days in the wake of cheaper oil prices hitting all the players in the industry. Other banks that have major exposure to the oil industry are Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. All these banks have reported surging bad loan provisions in the first quarter numbers.



Developing markets are more vulnerable to slump in commodities markets and changes in the US monetary policy as well. The provision for credit losses was increased by 16 percent to $539 million for the first quarter ending January 2016. The bank has made higher provisions in the oil and gas sector and in the Canadian retail portfolio as well.
Last week, Google announced to invest $30 million to 128 news organizations in Europe. This investment is a part of the Google's Digital News Initiative (DNI) plan.

Speaking in Paris Institute of Political Studies on February 24, Google CEO Sundhar Pichai remarked, "We are committed to ongoing discussion between the tech and news sectors," as quoted by Phys.Org. "To promote innovation in digital journalism. And play our part in building a more sustainable news ecosystem."

Google aimed to stimulate digital journalism with the investment through its Digital News Initiative. The initiative is a partnership between Google and news publishers in Europe to support high quality journalism through technology and innovation. The Mountain View, California-based company set a specific goal of DNI to encourage a more sustainable news ecosystem, promote innovation in digital journalism through ongoing collaboration and dialogue between the tech and news sectors.

For the initiative itself, Google has prepared $163 million fund and cooperate with 160 news publishers across Europe. Head of Google's DNI Innovation Fund for News & Publishers Ludovic Blecher told The Daily Telegraph regarding stimulating digital journalism in Europe, "This includes disruptive products for new ways to tell stories, or new ways to consume news."

The awarded projects were selected from a pool of 1200 applications from 30 countries. Other media companies which also won the are Telegraph and Le Monde, among with other individual or small news startups. As Blecher said, "It's really about diversity in news, in terms of applicants and type of project and country."

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is among one of the 128 selected news organizations. Google selected AFP because of its platform of interactive graphics.

One company which become the highlight in the funding is a Spanish news site El Diario. The news site is using a crowdfunding model to create a new journalism funding system. As Tech Crunch reported how it worked which at first, El Diario will identify niche groups of audiences, and invite them to fund a specific story or top up the financial gap in an important coverage.

Another interesting one is a German startup Spectrm. The company build an artificial intelligence engine that help publishers to communicate directly with their readers. Spectrm also provide a push mechanism of news content to individual people using instant messaging apps.

Google and its Digital News Initiative has launched its first step by investing $30 million to news organization all across Europe. The investment were spread to 23 different European countries. With the largest project investments were placed in Germany, United Kingdom, Spain, France and Belgium.
Blippar company has raised $55 million in Series D funding for developing a 'visual browser'. The company is best known for its augmented reality app that integrates digital information with the user's surrounding in real time.

According to Business Insider, Blippar is resorting to a bigger round of funds in order to reach its aspiring vision. Khazanah Nasional Berhad led the round, which is Malaysian government strategic investment fund. It also has prior investments in technology firms which include Alibaba and Skyscanner, a site for British travel search.

Blippar's present investors are also encompassed in the round that delivers the New York-based and 5-year-old London firm's total funding to $100 million. Blippar CEO Ambarish Mitra declined to comment on the company's valuation. He said that Khazanah Nasional Berhad are suitable with Blippar and described them with 'long-term vision' who has the capability of helping the company to make a strong connection to the Asian market.

In 2011, the company was created and was founded by Ambarish Mitra. He said that Yahoo and Google are not the end means where you discover information. The app created by Blippar gives any information about any objects just by pointing the smart device at it. Just like when you point it at a cup of coffee, the app will provide you with information on where is the nearest coffee shop, as reported by CNBC.

"People are getting more and more curious about the world yet a lot lot of their curiosity remains unanswered. As digital people we think we've made it and you think Google or Yahoo is the answer but there is still a big gap in the market. You still can't point at everything in the world and describe it and get to know more about it," Mitra told CNBC in a phone interview.

The company claims that it has 60 engineers in its San Francisco and Mountain View offices and is developing its machine-learning and artificial intelligence team not so long ago. There are a total of 300 employees scattered in its 14 offices around the world, Venture Beat reports.

With the said funds, Blippar will be able to broaden its augmented reality app. Way back October, Blippar unveiled a new R&D arm where the first Blippar Lab-branded product was Cardio VR intended for Google Cardboard which is designed for children to learn human anatomy through virtual reality.
SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO David Sasek

By Kathleen Wilson of the Ventura County Star

County water chief David Sasek has been promoted to director of the Ventura County General Services Agency, which manages the county government's plant.

Sasek, 50, of Camarillo, was chosen after a monthslong national search to succeed Paul Grossgold, who retired Monday.

County Executive Officer Mike Powers selected Sasek late Monday from five finalists. More than 100 candidates from across the nation applied for the position, officials said.

Sasek has the depth of experience to handle the "enormous scope of responsibilities in the agency," Powers said in a statement.

The General Services Agency supports services and programs in almost all of the 26 departments in the county government, Powers said.

It is responsible for procurement, development and maintenance of county facilities, the county fleet of vehicles and parks.

Sasek joined the county government in 2014 as director of county water and sanitation operations. He previously served as director of facilities services at Pepperdine University and had a 26-year career in the Navy.

What the General Services Agency does "is very similar to what I did for so many years in the Navy," Sasek said Tuesday.

He served three years as chief staff officer at Naval Base Ventura County, where he led a staff of more than 1,000 people responsible for an array of duties. Included were facilities management, information technology, health and recreational services, police and fire protection, and airfield and port operations.

His military experience includes a stint as executive officer for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command for Europe, Africa and Southwest Asia. He also was commanding officer at a construction battalion in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Sasek will begin his new duties early this month at a salary of $186,796.

A national search will be conducted to fill Sasek's post as director of water and sanitation. He will perform both jobs for now.
JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Camarillo artist Eileen Maloney stands next to her painting at the 33rd Annual California Strawberry Festival official poster contest at Yolanda's Mexican Cafe in Oxnard. Maloney is a watercolorist who had submitted her work for the past five years before winning this year's purse of $2,000.

SHARE JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Camarillo artist Eileen Maloney points out the details of her painting before signing it at the 33rd Annual California Strawberry Festival official poster contest at Yolanda's Mexican Cafe in Oxnard. Maloney is a watercolorist who had submitted her work for the past five years before winning this year's purse of $2,000. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Camarillo artist Eileen Maloney signs her painting at the 33rd Annual California Strawberry Festival official poster contest at Yolanda's Mexican Cafe in Oxnard. Maloney is a watercolorist who had submitted her work for the past five years before winning this year's purse of $2,000. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Camarillo artist Eileen Maloney signs her painting at the 33rd Annual California Strawberry Festival official poster contest at Yolanda's Mexican Cafe in Oxnard. Maloney is a watercolorist who had submitted her work for the past five years before winning this year's purse of $2,000. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Camarillo artist Eileen Maloney talks about her painting at the 33rd Annual California Strawberry Festival official poster contest at Yolanda's Mexican Cafe in Oxnard. Maloney is a watercolorist who had submitted her work for the past five years before winning this year's purse of $2,000.

By Anne Kallas, Special to The Star

In each of the paintings submitted to the California Strawberry Festival poster contest over the years by Eileen Maloney of Camarillo, there has been a chocolate-covered strawberry.

This year  her sixth time entering the contest  Maloney's colorful painting was declared the winner, earning the watercolorist a $2,000 prize.

"I just love eating chocolate-covered strawberries, and they gave my painting some variety," she said. "The chocolate-covered strawberries are always the biggest, and they have those beautiful long stems."

Maloney said the painting of a palette of different-colored strawberries that seem to have been transformed by paintbrushes into big, red berries riding on a rainbow was inspired by the Christmas presents she received this year.

"My inspiration was the ornaments my friends, who are artists, sent me," she said. "Many of them had artists' palettes on them."

The design will be used to promote the 33rd California Strawberry Festival, which will take place May 21 and 22 at College Park in Oxnard. The park is renamed Strawberry Meadows for the festival.

The annual poster unveiling kicks off the popular festival, which attracts more than 50,000 over the weekend, many of them out-of-towners.

This year's Strawberry Festival chairwoman, Kim Gibas, said one of this year's goals is to attract more local visitors.

"I'm excited about the festival because I love giving back to my community," she said. "I know it sounds corny, but it's how I feel."

Over the years, the California Strawberry Festival has awarded more than $4.5 million to local charities, including scholarships to children of farmworkers.

This year there will be regular free shuttles from five locations around Oxnard and Camarillo to Strawberry Meadows at 3250 S. Rose Ave. Last year more than 35,000 people took advantage of the convenient alternative to paying $10 parking at the congested site.

Tickets are $12 for general admission; $8 for seniors 62 and older; $5 for children ages 5-12; and free for children 4 and younger.

For information call 888-288-9242 or go online to the newly redesigned California Strawberry Festival website at http://strawberry-fest.org/.
TROY HARVEY/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Construction crews work on a 571-space parking structure next to the new Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. The structure is scheduled to be completed in July.

SHARE TROY HARVEY/SPECIAL TO THE STAR From left, Jose Gutierrez and Ruben Castruita work on spacing deck panels on a parking structure located next to the new Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura. TROY HARVEY/SPECIAL TO THE STAR Cars are seen parked along Venturas Brent Street and an alley near the construction site of a five-level parking structure. TROY HARVEY/SPECIAL TO THE STAR From left, Ricky Sillas and Danny Renderos work on the top floor of a parking structure being built in midtown Ventura.

By Tom Kisken of the Ventura County Star

As a legal battle over a midtown Ventura parking structure rolls on in appellate court, officials say the five-level facility could be finished in July.

The 571-space structure is being built in a partnership. The city of Ventura provided land and the nonprofit health system that operates Community Memorial Hospital pays for the $12.5 million construction costs.

The structure is linked to Community Memorial's $275 million new hospital, expected to be completed in about a year.

Nearly one-third of the new spaces will be used to replace parking consumed by construction of the garage. A little more than a third will be used by the hospital. The balance will be available - at a cost - to new businesses and other development in the neighborhood.

In October, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Glen Reiser ruled against a lawsuit challenging the partnership between the city and the Community Memorial Health System. But leaders of Ventura Realty & Investment Company, which owns nearby property, appealed the ruling. They asserted a partnership reached in a "backroom deal," and excluding other impacted parties, violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

"Judge Reiser made several factual and legal errors that warrant a reversal," said James B. Devine, who represents Ventura Realty.

If the appellate court rules in favor of Ventura Realty, the contract between the city and hospital would have to be voided, said Devine. He did not dismiss the possibility the structure would have to be torn down.

City officials said the earlier ruling was clear-cut. They noted Reiser turned down an attempt to halt construction in June.

"Is it a theoretical possibility? Yes," said Diaz of demolition. "Is it a probability? No ... We are extremely confident in the city's case."

The garage encompasses 180,500 square feet, stretching alongside an alley behind Main Street. Hospital officials said they hope the structure will not only be finished but open to the public in July.

Businesses on Main Street that have watched the hospital and parking structure work take away existing parking say they need the structure ASAP.

"Yesterday," said Moe Tahir of Carpet Galleria. "It's too crowded here."

Others noted the new hospital was once projected to open last year. Now, officials expect the construction to be completed by year's end with the facility opening in 2017.

Adam Thunell, the hospital's chief operating officer, said different components of the project have taken longer than expected. He said speculation the delays have dramatically inflated the project's total cost are wrong.

The construction will cost about $185 million with close to another $100 million needed in equipment and other costs, he said.

Blocks away from Community Memorial, a $305 million wing is being built at Ventura County Medical Center.

The projects are keys the plan to revitalize midtown Ventura, said Jeff Lambert, the city's community development director.

The parking structure is vital too, he said, noting the city didn't have the money to build a structure alone. It will include nearly 400 spaces beyond what the hospital needs.

"That's a big deal," he said.
SHARE

Here, Republicans, is how your party's likely nominee, Donald Trump, spends his Sunday morning.

At 6:13 a.m., he retweets a quote by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini: "It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep." When confronted later with its provenance, Trump says: "What difference does it make whether it's Mussolini or somebody else? It's certainly a very interesting quote."

At 9:08 a.m. he is on CNN, where he repeatedly declines to disavow the support he has been getting from white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan, saying he would need to "do research" before taking a position on hate groups' support for him.

At 9:14 a.m. he is seen on NBC stations telling "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd that a judge in a case against Trump may need to be removed - because the judge is Hispanic. The judge can't be fair to Trump "because of the wall and because of everything that's going on with Mexico and all of that," the candidate says.

By late morning, Stuart Stevens, a top adviser to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012, had heard enough. "It's becoming obvious that supporting or not supporting (Trump) isn't a political choice," he tweeted. "It's a moral choice. The man is evil.

"To support Trump is to support the hate and racism he embodies. That is simply an intolerable moral position for any political party," Stevens elaborated Monday in the Daily Beast. "If Trump wins the nomination, politicians who support him will be acquiescing to, if not actively aiding, his hate."

The Republican strategist said losing the presidential election wouldn't be as bad as "the shame of pretending that an evil man was not evil and a hater really didn't mean what he said. We hold elections every two years, and there is always the chance to regain lost offices. But there is no mechanism to regain one's dignity and sense of decency once squandered. That defeat is permanent. To support Trump is to support a bigot. It's really that simple."

As Trump continues his march to the nomination, Republican politicians, operatives, donors and voters face a time of choosing: Will they support the nominee? Or will they support decency? Stevens is correct: It's a moral choice. Those who would support Trump can't deny they are tolerating and supporting his bigotry.

Stevens tells me he wants to see a third-party challenge that would give conservatives an alternative to Trump. "When people are playing the race card like Trump is playing, it's not complicated to see it," said Stevens, a Mississippian.

I have for months urged Republicans to call Trump the bigot and racist he is, and I've noted his similarities in style and substance to Mussolini. But Republicans failed to unify against Trump when it could have made a difference. Now they have a likely nominee who approvingly quotes Mussolini, tries to discredit a federal judge by invoking ethnicity, reacts to a demonstrator by saying "I'd like to punch him in the face," taunts other protesters by asking "Are you from Mexico?" declares he is going to change free-speech laws to make it easier for him to sue news organizations, and refuses requests by the Anti-Defamation League and others to distance himself from white supremacists. (After declining Jake Tapper's invitations to do that on CNN Sunday, Trump issued a tweet repeating an earlier disavowal of David Duke, but he said nothing about the hate groups supporting him.)

Now it's time for Republican leaders to take sides - and the divisions are telling.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, chose one side Sunday, becoming the first senator to endorse Trump. No surprise: Sessions is an immigration hard-liner, and he came to the Senate after his nomination to be a federal judge had been voted down over accusations of racism and hostility to the Voting Rights Act.

Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, a young, conservative, freshman senator, took the other side. He posted a letter to Trump supporters Sunday night on Facebook decrying Trump's "relentless focus" on "dividing Americans" and saying a candidate who "refuses to condemn the KKK cannot lead a conservative movement in America." Sasse wrote that if "Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option."

Such a third-party candidacy wouldn't succeed. But it could accelerate the demise of Trump, whose hate-filled campaign would be doomed in a general election anyway. And it would provide Republicans with something valuable: an alternative to bigotry.

Email Dana Milbank at dana.milbank@washpost.com and follow him on Twitter, @Milbank.
SHARE

Donald Trump's distinctive rhetorical style - think of a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" under water - poses an almost insuperable challenge to people whose painful duty is to try to extract clarity from his effusions.

For example, last week, during a long stream of semiconsciousness in Fort Worth, this man who as president would nominate members of the federal judiciary vowed to "open up" libel laws to make it easier to sue - to intimidate and punish - people who write "negative" things. Well.

Trump, the thin-skinned tough guy, resembles a campus crybaby who has wandered out of his "safe space." It is not news that he has neither respect for nor knowledge of the Constitution, and he probably is unaware that he would have to "open up" many Supreme Court First Amendment rulings in order to achieve his aim.

His obvious aim is to chill free speech, for the comfort of the political class, of which he is now a gaudy ornament.

But at least Trump has, at last, found one thing to admire from the era of America's Founding. Unfortunately, but predictably, it is one of the worst things done then - the Sedition Act of 1798. The act made it a crime to "write, print, utter or publish, or cause it to be done, or assist in it, any false, scandalous, and malicious writing against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or the President, with intent to defame, or bring either into contempt or disrepute, or to excite against either the hatred of the people."

Now, 215 years after the Sedition Act expired in 1801, Trump vows to use litigiousness to improve the accuracy and decorousness of public discourse.

The night before his promise to make America great again through censorship, Trump, during the Houston debate, said that his sister, a federal judge, "(signed) a certain bill" and that (Supreme Court) Justice Samuel Alito also "signed that bill."

So the leading Republican candidate, the breadth of whose ignorance is the eighth wonder of the world, actually thinks that judges "sign bills." Trump is a presidential aspirant who would flunk an eighth-grade civics exam.

More than anything Marco Rubio said about Trump in Houston, it was Rubio's laughter at Trump that galled the perhaps bogus billionaire. Like all bullies, Trump is a coward, and like all those who feel the need to boast about being strong and tough, he is neither.

Unfortunately, Rubio recognized reality and found his voice 254 days after Trump's scabrous announcement of his candidacy to rescue America from Mexican rapists.

And 222 days after Trump disparaged John McCain's war service ("I like people that weren't captured").

And 95 days after Trump said that maybe a protester at his rally "should have been roughed up."

And 95 days after Trump retweeted that 81 percent of white murder victims are killed by blacks. (Eighty-two percent are killed by whites.) And 94 days after Trump said he supports torture "even if it doesn't work." And 79 days after Trump said he might have approved the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

And 72 days after Trump proved that he does not know the nuclear triad from the Nutcracker ballet.

And 70 days after Trump, having been praised by Vladimir Putin, reciprocated by praising the Russian murderer and dictator.

And so on.

Rubio's epiphany - announcing the obvious with a sense of triumphant discovery - about Trump being a "con man" and a "clown act" is better eight months late than never. If, however, it is too late to rescue Rubio from a Trump nomination, this will be condign punishment for him and the rest of the Republican Party's coalition of the timid.

"Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,/In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side." So begins James Russell Lowell's 1845 poem protesting America's war with Mexico. The Republicans' moment is here.

We are about to learn much about Republican officeholders who are now deciding whether to come to terms with Trump, and with the shattering of their party as a vessel of conservatism.

Trump's collaborators, like the remarkably plastic Chris Christie - "I don't think (Trump's) temperament is suited for (the presidency)" - will find that nothing will redeem the reputations they will ruin by placing their opportunism in the service of his demagogic cynicism and anti-constitutional authoritarianism.

George Will's email address is georgewill@washpost.com.
SHARE

The California Legislature this week passed a $1 billion-plus tax package that even on a good day Gov. Jerry Brown  who championed the idea  joked "couldn't explain it to you if I wanted."

The legislation, which the governor has been pushing since he created a special concurrent legislative session last year to deal with the issue, alters the California tax structure to meet federal guidelines and assure the continuation of more than $1.1 billion in federal funding for the state's health care program.

To do that, the state had to extend the tax it levied on managed care organizations to include all health insurance companies. Simply adding that tax, all agreed, would have created a burden on California ratepayers as the insurance companies would have simply passed along the additional charge.

So some creative legislators and administration staff members came up with this plan. Health insurers would all be taxed through a complicated tier system based largely on the number of Medi-Cal and non-Medi-Cal patients they serve.

The bill comes with a healthy dose of tax relief for the corporate and gross premium taxes, which is assumed to balance out the increases. In fact, insurers are expected to see an overall cut of $100 million in taxes.

That means, we are told, that there is really no additional revenue coming in, so nothing is going to passed along to us. At least that's what we are told.

Because this had to be emergency legislation to take effect before the federal deadline of July 1, it needed a two-thirds approval. In the current Legislature, that meant some Republicans had to step up and vote for a bill that could be seen as a tax increase.

To sweeten the attraction for the GOP, the authors created a package of three bills that included some items on the Republican wish list. They were $300 million for services for the developmentally disabled, $120 million for some nursing facilities to offset five-year-old cuts, $240 million for paying off state debt for retired public employee health care and $173 million to pay off a transportation loan.

We'd like to be able to tell you whether we think this was a good deal or not.

Certainly the state needed to do something to assure the $1 billion in federal matching money for health care did not get turned off. This does that.

Beyond that, we simply aren't sure if this is the best route to take. We do know it makes an already complicated health care funding process that much more dense and unintelligible.

We remain strong advocates for the idea of the Affordable Health Care Act and what it brings to this nation in terms of broadening access to health care for all citizens.

But this legislation is one more reminder that while we have revolutionized access to health care, we have not addressed the bigger issue of health care costs or payments. Until we are willing to bring the private health care insurance and service businesses to the table and get them to deal with these costs, we will not truly be able to say that we are managing health care in this country.
SHARE

Re: your Feb. 28 editorial, Value of Girl Scouts:

As the CEO of Girl Scouts of Californias Central Coast, one of 112 Girl Scout councils across the United States, I wish to thank the editorial board for the editorial in response to the Catholic archbishop of St Louis decision to disband the Catholic Committee on Girl Scouts in his diocese.

You can imagine our disappointment about this turn of events after Girl Scouts and the Catholic Church have enjoyed a history of cooperation for almost 100 years. Although Girl Scouts is a secular organization promoting values and leadership development for girls ages 5 through 18, Girl Scouts as an organization always has partnered with religious organizations because of the recognition of the importance of faith formation in a girls life.

Girl Scouts of the USA understands how faith formation opportunities complement the leadership programs we provide and supports Girl Scouts in developing courage, confidence and character, which make the world a better place. I am so honored to be part of an organization that does not discriminate or recruit based on race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or national origin, and welcomes members of all abilities.

For more information on what we stand for, visit www.girlscoutsccc.org. Thank you, editorial board, for recognizing the importance of what we offer girls.

Gina Jaeger, Ventura
Camarillo, Calif., March 2, 2016  While serving as Artist-in-Residence at Joshua Tree National Park and roaming the mountains around Southern California, CSU Channel Islands (CI) Associate Professor of Art Luke Matjas has created his first-ever solo exhibition called That Great Rock Mass is Called the Earth.



The exhibit will be on display at Oxnards Carnegie Art Museum from March 13 to May 22 with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, March 12 at the museum.



The 30-piece collection consists of colorful, large-scale digital prints along with a series of intricate graphite drawings. The work is his interpretation of what we see in the relative wilds of Southern California, and what Matjas saw each day during his time in Joshua Tree.



Its safe to say these arent traditional portrayals of the local landscape said Matjas, who is also Chair of the Art and Performing Arts programs. Theres a level of realism, but its more like a cross between a natural history museum and your local Home Depot.



Matjas considers the work to be a more realistic portrait of our surroundings  one that combines the natural with the unnatural. His work stood out from the 150 applications for the six Artist-in-Residence (AIR) spots available each year, according to Joshua Tree Lead Park Ranger and AIR Program Liaison Caryn Davidson.



Luke was an outstanding candidate, so it was easy for the jury to come to a consensus on his project proposal, Davidson said.



While in Joshua Tree, Matjas would watch the sun rise over the jagged mountains while sipping coffee in the 1930s mining cabin where he stayed. It was so quiet, he could almost hear the spiders move, Or maybe they were just really big, he said.



Im a big trail runner, so I would go for a trail run, Matjas said. I covered 172 miles of park.



His artists eye took in lizards, rabbits, desert scrub, rattlesnakes and bighorn sheep drinking from secluded ponds.



But in Joshua Tree, and tucked in the flora and fauna of Southern California, he also saw discarded coolers, lawn chairs, sprinklers, traffic cones and poorly-concealed cell phone towers.



Guests at Matjas show will recognize familiar Ventura County landscapes, as well tributes to Condor #358, the California condor who died after being entangled in a recreational rope atop Tar Creek Falls in the Los Padres National Forest. Theres also a depiction of P-18, a local mountain lion struck on the 101 freeway.



Matjas hopes his larger-than-life work leaves the audience with a humorous yet poignant ecological message. Realistically what I want people to do is to have a greater appreciation of their own surroundings, however mundane they may be, he said.



Carnegie Art Museum Members can attend the reception for free; non-members cost $5. For more information, visit www.carnegieam.org. For additional details about CIs Art Program, visit www.csuci.edu/academics/art.htm.
Via The Guardian: Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1m people. Click or tap through for the full report and a video. Excerpt:

Iraqi engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse than reported.

They pointed out that pressure on the dams compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir, bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to relieve that pressure were jammed shut.

The Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held the dam means that the chasms in the porous rock under the dam were getting bigger and more dangerous every day. A contract with an Italian construction firm for carrying out urgent repairs has yet to be signed, but behind-the-scenes negotiations with Baghdad continue.

The engineers warned that potential loss of life from a sudden catastrophic collapse of the Mosul dam could be even greater than the 500,000 officially estimated, as they said many people could die in the resulting mass panic, with a 20-metre-high flood wave hitting the city of Mosul and then rolling on down the Tigris valley through Tikrit and Samarra to Baghdad.

One of the Iraqi engineers, now living in Europe, described as ridiculous the Iraqi governments emergency policy of telling local people to move 6km (3.5 miles) from the river banks.

Nasrat Adamo, the dams former chief engineer who spent most of his professional career shoring it up in the face of fundamental flaws in its construction, said that the structure would only survive with round-the-clock work with teams filling in holes in the porous bedrock under the structure, a process known as grouting. But that level of maintenance, dating back to just after the dams construction in 1984, evaporated after the Isis occupation.

We used to have 300 people working 24 hours in three shifts but very few of these workers have come back. There are perhaps 30 people there now, Adamo said in a telephone interview from Sweden, where he works as a consultant.

The machines for grouting have been looted. There is no cement supply. They can do nothing. It is going from bad to worse, and it is urgent. All we can do is hold our hearts.


Time still remains to help Opportunity Village defend the World Santa Challenge title as thousands of red-suited supporters flood the streets of Town Square Las Vegas for the Las Vegas Great Santa Run on Saturday, December 1. In the midst of a closely heated competition between cities worldwide including Liverpool and Osaka, Japan, Opportunity Village urges Las Vegans to register online for the 5K run or one-mile Kris Kringle Jingle.

Highlights of the eighth annual Las Vegas Great Santa Run at Town Square on December 1 include:

Entertainment: JERSEY BOY Jeff Leibow will commence the ceremonies with a rendition of the national anthem. World-famous dance crew, Jabbawockeez, will pump up the crowd by sharing some of their hottest holiday moves before opening their brand new headlining show at Luxor next spring. Lorena Peril will lead the girls of Fantasy as they join in the festive spirit performing All I Want For Christmas Is You and Let It Snow. Additionally, Las Vegas Extreme Sky Diving and Maverick Helicopters will send multiple Santa Clauses parachuting through the skies. Creator of the Great Santa Run song, George Dare, will get the thousands of Santas ready to run. Additional entertainment will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

JERSEY BOY Jeff Leibow will commence the ceremonies with a rendition of the national anthem. World-famous dance crew, Jabbawockeez, will pump up the crowd by sharing some of their hottest holiday moves before opening their brand new headlining show at Luxor next spring. Lorena Peril will lead the girls of Fantasy as they join in the festive spirit performing All I Want For Christmas Is You and Let It Snow. Additionally, Las Vegas Extreme Sky Diving and Maverick Helicopters will send multiple Santa Clauses parachuting through the skies. Creator of the Great Santa Run song, George Dare, will get the thousands of Santas ready to run. Additional entertainment will be announced in the upcoming weeks. Food: After burning all those calories, participants can embrace their inner Santa by enjoying food from ten of Vegas favorite food trucks, including Chi Town Hustler, Slidin Thru, Fat Daddys Ice Cream and Treats, Great BAO, Sauced, Lola Ds, Grouchy Johns Coffee and more.

After burning all those calories, participants can embrace their inner Santa by enjoying food from ten of Vegas favorite food trucks, including Chi Town Hustler, Slidin Thru, Fat Daddys Ice Cream and Treats, Great BAO, Sauced, Lola Ds, Grouchy Johns Coffee and more. Masters of Ceremony: Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman will lead the opening festivities along with Honorary Chair Robin Leach, The Mirage headliner Terry Fator as Grand Marshal, Commissioner Steve Sisolak as Honorary Great Santa, and FOX 5 MOREs co-anchors Monica Jackson and Jason Feinberg as emcees.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman will lead the opening festivities along with Honorary Chair Robin Leach, The Mirage headliner Terry Fator as Grand Marshal, Commissioner Steve Sisolak as Honorary Great Santa, and FOX 5 MOREs co-anchors Monica Jackson and Jason Feinberg as emcees. A Great Santa Salute: Las Vegans will be joined by our troops in Afghanistan as the countrys finest suit up in Santa gear for a 5K on the other side of the world. The run in Kabul will occur one week prior to the Las Vegas Great Santa Run with all proceeds benefitting Opportunity Village.

The Las Vegas Great Santa Run serves as a fundraising effort to benefit Opportunity Village. Pre-registration is $40 for individuals, $35 for team members (team pricing applies to groups of five or more) and $25 for children 12 and under; day-of registration is $50 for adults and $35 for children. The participation fee includes a five-piece Santa suit and gifts, with proceeds going to Opportunity Village. Registration begins at 8 a.m. at Town Square in the front parking lot; the 5K run and the one-mile Kris Kringle Jingle start at 10 a.m. Interested participants can sign up at www.LasVegasSantaRun.org.

Sponsors for the event include Circle K Convenience Stores, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, KVVU FOX 5, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Tommy Hilfiger and Town Square Las Vegas.


Shahs of Sunset starlet and entrepreneur, Lilly Ghalichi, will host a sexy launch party for the recently remodeled Posh Boutique Nightclub on Saturday, June 8.

The lawyer turned designer released her own swimwear line, Have Faith Swimgerie, and has recently launched her line of faux eyelashes, Lilly Lashes. Ghalichi put herself on Hollywoods radar when she joined the most recent cast of Bravos hit television show Shahs of Sunset as the self-proclaimed Persian Barbie.

Guests can join the brunette bombshell in style with the clubs complimentary admission and limo service, pending availability, by calling 702-673-1700.
Via The Guardian: Refugee crisis: European leaders demand urgent support for Greece. Excerpt:

Aid agencies and NGOs have said Europes unconscionable response to the refugee crisis is courting humanitarian disaster, as Brussels scrambled to prepare emergency summits and desperate scenes unfolded across the continent, from Greeces border with Macedonia to a makeshift camp outside Calais.

With the EU entering what many see as a make-or-break phase in tackling the crisis, the blocs most senior leaders called for urgent action to support Greece as at least 8,500 refugees and migrants remained trapped without permanent shelter on the countrys closed northern border with Macedonia.

Frontex, the EUs border control agency, said 30 times as many migrants entered Europe in January and February as in the same two months of last year, and the UNs refugee agency announced that 131,724 people had crossed the Mediterranean  the vast majority of them reaching Greece  so far in 2016, almost as many as made the journey in the first six months of 2015.

The UNHCR said the continent stood on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis, with governments not working together despite agreements  and country after country imposing new border restrictions.

In a scathing statement, Human Rights Watch condemned the EUs utter failure to respond collectively and compassionately to refugee flows.
Mohd Nur Khalid Hj Ilias (L), Managing Director of Sahamada Corporation Sdn Bhd and Domalux, General Director of Halal Vietnam Trading Construction Import Export Company Limited after signing the Memorandum of Agreement. - Picture: Courtesy of Abdul Rashyid Hj Osman

With the signing of the MoA, IMEX will become the distributor for Sahamada's different chili sauces and crackers under the brand of CINTA' in Viet Nam for three years.

In an interview with The Brunei Times, Mohd Nur Khalid Hj Ilias, Managing Director of Sahamada, said they decided to explore the opportunity of penetrating the market in Viet Nam due to the potential of a high demand for their products and a higher chance of them going into other markets from Viet Nam.

"Vietnam is growing in terms of industry and it's also easier to penetrate the market around the region. From Viet Nam, the company can bring its products to the neighbouring countries like Laos and Myanmar," he said. Sahamada will start exporting its products to Viet Nam sometime in April, starting out with one container, equivalent to 30,000 bottles of chili sauce and this supply will increase in the following months depending on market demand.

Mohd Nur Khalid said that while they plan to export to Japan in the future, they need to work on upgrading their packaging and producing more innovative products in order to compete with the market in Japan. "We're now in discussions with a company in Indonesia, we hope to be able to start exports in the near future but we're still sorting out the details. It seems like a viable market because of the population size and the food is quite similar to ours," he said.

Abdullah Abdul Rahman, Director of Syariah at IMEX said that they hope the signing of the MoA will motivate other SMEs in the country to tap the market in Viet Nam as there is a huge demand of Halal products.

"Even non-Muslims prefer Halal products now because of the cleanliness that it guarantees," he said. Signing the MoA between Sahamada and IMEX was Mohd Nur Khalid Hj Ilias, Managing Director of Sahamada and Domalux, General Director of IMEX, witnessed by Siti Norhamidah Hj Ilias, Marketing Director of Sahamada.

A second MoA was signed between Sahamada and Golden Corporation Sdn Bhd, under which Golden Corporation will supply raw materials such as blue shrimps and fish for the production of different flavours of crackers to be sold in Vietnam under the brand CINTA'.

The Golden Corporation was represented by Chuang His San, Managing Director and witnessed by Karen Yap.
Migrants sit near a fire near the Greek village of Idomeni. (AFP/Sakis Mitrolidis)

ATHENS: Greece has asked the EU for nearly half a billion euros in emergency funds to help shelter 100,000 refugees, the government said on Tuesday, warning that the migrant influx threatens to overwhelm its crisis-hit resources.

"Greece has submitted an emergency plan to the European Commission ... corresponding to around 100,000 refugees," government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili told reporters, with the requested aid totalling 480 million (US$534 million).

"We cannot bear the strain of all the refugees coming here," Gerovassili added. "These are temporary measures - there needs to be a permanent solution on where the refugees will be relocated," she said, vowing that Greece would use "every diplomatic means available to find the best possible solution".

With Austria and Balkan states capping the numbers of migrants entering their soil, there has been a swift build-up along the Greece-Macedonia border as boats full of refugees continue to arrive on Greek beaches from Turkey.

Athens warned last week that it could be stuck with up to 70,000 people trapped on its territory. Gerovassili said there were 25,000 migrants and refugees currently in Greece and that Macedonia was only allowing "a few dozen" through every day.

Over 7,000 people - many of them stranded in near the Idomeni border crossing for days - spent a freezing night and awoke under wet canvas among sodden wheat fields. The UN refugee agency said at least 1,500 people had spent the previous night in the open and that tensions in the Idomeni camp were running high.

"The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. Tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers," the UNHCR said.

It added that Greek authorities had set up two additional camps near Idomeni for 12,500 people with the assistance of the army, and were building a third.

Greek news agency ANA said another 6,000 people were waiting to cross to the mainland after landing on islands in the Aegean from neighbouring Turkey. Gerovassili said the Greek army was helping feed some 10,000 people.

Thousands more are fed by aid and church groups and the cash-strapped government, which received a third huge international bailout last year, has put out a call for private donations of food, medicine and health supplies.

Gerovassili warned that arrivals from Turkey showed no sign of slowing down despite the recent deployment of NATO warships to help the Turkish coastguard tackle people-smugglers sending migrants to Greece.

"There has not been a significant reduction in the flow," she said. "Today there were just over 1,000 (new arrivals) which is considered ordinary."

Despite pledges to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, EU states have so far only pledged 1,539 spaces, and only 325 actual relocations have occurred, the UNHCR said.
A made-in-Viet Nam plastics processing machine, or injection moulding machine. - Photo baocongthuong.com.vn

The Viet Nam Competition Authority said on February 29 that the decision was made by India's Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) after finding that they were being sold low cost machines. Viet Nam will be levied duties at 23.15 per cent, while Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan will be taxed at 44.74 per cent, 30.85 per cent and 27.98 per cent, respectively.

DGAD said they did not receive detailed answers for their questions from exporters in Viet Nam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Therefore, they used available data to identify violation levels for the businesses.

There were two Taiwan-based manufacturers who enjoyed a favourable tariff from 0 per cent to 6.06 per cent for submitting complete financial information to prove their cases.

DGAD's investigation was conducted from April 2013 to March 2014 after it received complaints from the Plastics Machinery Manufacturers Association of India, saying that the mentioned countries and territories had exported low cost plastic processing machines to India, causing considerable damage to the Indian industrial sector.

The damage to India's domestic machinery industry due to dumped imports from Asian manufacturers was counted in the period between 2010 and 2014.
All K+ subscribers will be able to register for myK+ for free. Currently, myK+, available on Android and iOS, allows subscribers to watch four K+ channels: K+1, K+PM, K+PC, K+NS and nine national VTV channels. K+ will continue to expand the number of channels broadcasted on MyK+ and other utilities.

The application also allows customers to manage their account and renew their subscription package online.

Also, from March 1, K+ will offer only one service package - Premium+ at a monthly subscription fee of VND125,000 ($5.6), down from VND230,000. Premium+ allows subscribers to enjoy up to 130 SD and HD TV channels including quality local and international channels and especially the four exclusive channels  K+1, K+PM, K+PC and K+NS.

Starting mid-January 2016, during the launching by K+ of its life-time promotion, many subscribers have upgraded to Premium+ to enjoy the monthly subscription fee of VND125,000 ($5.6).

Service quality is K+s top priority in order to maintain our constant and sustainable development. With the new price, we guarantee the best service package in the market for customers, said Le Chi Cong, general director of Vietnam Satellite Television (VSTV), adding that VSTV was target at 1 million subscribers.

Established in May 2009, Vietnam Satellite Digital Television (VSTV) Co., Ltd is a joint venture between state-owned broadcaster VTV and CANAL/Canal+ Overseas, the foreign distribution arm of Canal+ Group, which operates seven satellite platforms covering five continents with millions of subscribers around the world. K+ is the trademark of VSTV.


The SBVs draft proposal to tighten bank loans is an effort to curb the risk of a property bubble, however, it has been widely criticised

According to this draft, loans pouring into the real estate sector are expected to be tightened so as to prevent the sectors robust growth from turning into a real estate market bubble.

A draft document issued by the central bank (SBV) stated that the risk index of receivable lending for real estate and securities would be raised from 150 per cent (the lowest level), as stipulated in the existing Circular No.36/2014/TT-NHNN on limits and ratios to ensure safety in operation of credit institutions and foreign banks branches, to 250 per cent. The maximum ratio of short-term funds used for medium- and long-term loans would also be adjusted down to 40 per cent, from the current 60 per cent.

The Vietnam Real Estate Association (VREA) has warned that this draft document, if realised, could derail the smooth recovery of the real estate market.

A VREA representative noted that hard lessons were learned in the past when certain adjustments negatively impacted the real estate market. These adjustments also upset investors and buyers, and created stockpiles in the market.

Pham Sy Liem, former Deputy Minister of Construction said that the adjustment of the risk index should be carefully considered. Some segments of real estate market such as residential, hospitality, and second-homes currently have high consumption rates. So, why should we tighten credit to these areas?

According to Phuoc Vo, director of valuation & research at Cushman & Wakefield Vietnam, if this draft circular is approved, it would immediately have an impact on the real estate market for 2016 and subsequent years for all involved in the sector.

On the positive side, the SBV will manage the credit flow to minimise the risk of a real estate bubble and reduce the fever of the current market, as well as preserve a healthy financial status for the market. For these reasons, only prestigious developers will be given access to financial resources, Phuoc said.

This adjustment, Phuoc added, would unfortunately halt the majority of real estate developers (who are implementing their projects with the use of loans) due to a lack of capital flow. Therefore many projects might have to extend their schedule or more seriously  might have to halt their projects entirely. Buyers will also face greater difficulty in obtaining loans to purchase properties.

The risk index should be applied differently to each segment of the real estate market, as each segment has its own level of risks, he added.

David Blackhall, managing director of real estate company VinaCapital, also argued that any restriction on bank lending to the real estate sector during 2016 would significantly slow the rate of recovery that the real estate market experiences, which has only just begun to yield returns for buyers and developers.

If liquidity is limited, then this will hinder growth and there will be a loss of confidence in the market. Real estate investment and growth are the key factors for overall economic growth, and the real estate, construction, and construction material sectors are some of the largest employers of liquidity, Blackhall told VIR.

Meanwhile, Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, requested that the implementation of the draft be delayed. Chau claimed that the real estate market was currently in a healthy position with high liquidity and stable development.

The risk of a real estate bubble is unsubstantiated as yet, so we should maintain our current market condition to allow the real estate sector to continue developing, Chau said.

To counteract speculation, which could cause a real estate bubble, the government should take effective measures such as taxation against speculative activities, financial and credit tools, and other housing development plans in order to ensure that the market remains stable, Chau added.

Banking expert Nguyen Tri Hieu, however, supported the central banks proposal. I personally supported the lowering of the ratio of short-term capital used for medium- and long-term lending, at the ratio of 30 per cent as before.

A year ago, when the SBV decided to lift the ratio from 30 to 60 per cent, I was not in agreement with it because bank liquidity is very important. Banks that have used up to 60 per cent of their short-term capital for medium- and long-term loans may hurt their liquidity. This is very dangerous. So I think trimming down the ratio is appropriate, Hieu added.

The Ministry of Constructions Department of Housing and Real Estate Market Management reported that as of November 2015, outstanding loans invested in the real estate market were as high as VND375 trillion ($16.67 billion), a surge of 20 per cent compared to the same figure in December 2014. This is a result of Circular No. 36 which came into effect on February 1, 2015.
Migrant workers from Myanmar stand on a fishing boat as it arrives at the port in the southern Thai city of Pattani on June 18, 2014 AFP/Tuwaedaniya Meringing

BANGKOK: A Thai tuna processing factory has agreed to pay its staff more than US$1 million (S$1.3 million) in compensation for a series of labour abuse cases, Thai officials said on Tuesday (Mar 1).

Hundreds of employees at Golden Prize Tuna Canning had been seeking compensation for exploitative working conditions. The dispute arose from a backlog of unpaid wages and alleged abuse of workers.

The workers had organised a series of labour strikes and months of negotiations before the employees reached an agreement on compensation.

Golden Prize Tuna's products (Photo Screengrab: Golden Prize tuna website)

A strike last week involving almost 1,500 workers, was believed to have been the final straw which led to negotiations with company representatives. Military officers, government officials and migrant worker leaders also joined negotiations, reaching an agreement late Monday evening.

"The company began paying 1,100 workers last night," said Boonlue Sartpetch, head of the province's labour department. He added that 700 workers had been paid, with the rest expected to receive compensation Tuesday. The company employs nearly 2,000 workers, most of them from Myanmar.

Andy Hall, a British labour activist who has been assisting the Myanmar workers at Golden Prize Tuna, said he suspected that the spectre of massive trade sanctions was finally forcing the Thai government to act.

"To get a dispute like this that involves so much money and actually have it settled is very unprecedented," he told AFP, adding that the tuna company and local labour department have dodged the workers' complaints for nearly a year.

In the past some Thai factories have responded to rights abuse allegations by filing defamation lawsuits, which Mr Hall is currently facing for highlighting exploitation at a Thai fruit company.

Thailand is the world's third-largest seafood exporter, but the European Union is currently mulling a ban on the countrys fishing products. The United States also recently passed a bill outlawing products made from forced labour.

If Thailand's products are banned, or if sanctions are imposed, the countrys thriving seafood industry could be crippled.
The local telecommunications market is the scene of fierce 3G competition

The prime minister last week gave in-principle approval to FPT Group and FPT Telecom being strategic investors of EVN Telecom.

EVN Telecom will this month announce its strategic investors after its negotiations with FPT and its affiliate FPT Telecom are finalised.

An EVN Telecom source revealed that the stake to be sold to FPT and FPT Telecom would be more than 50 per cent.

FPT Telecom was already licenced to be a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) and is piloting LTE TDD technology.

Mobile business is what we want in our business portfolio and we are enthusiastic in our negotiations with partners. Our investment capital will be 10-times the amount we previously planned to invest in EVN Telecom, said FPT deputy general director Phan Duc Trung Trung.

FPT previously planned to invest VND400 billion ($21 million) in EVN Telecom as the former wanted to use the latters facility to provide mobile service.

The upcoming involvement of FPT and FPT Telecom in EVN Telecom means there would be no chance for foreign entities to be the mobile operators strategic partners.

Previously, EVN Telecom, which is expected to be the first mobile operator to be equitised in Vietnam, announced its plan to sell a 30 per cent stake to a foreign strategic investor. Details of the plan were not revealed then, except that the strategic investor would be a Singaporean or Malaysian firm.

EVN Telecom then also said the foreign strategic investors name would be made public after the company completed its equitisation process in September, this year.

Meanwhile, MobiFones long-awaited equitisation has seen many delays. The company was converted into a one-member company in early July and is still waiting for new government directions. The company planned to sell a 30 per cent stake to investors, including 15 per cent to strategic partners.

Viettel Telecom does not have a clear equitisation plan, as it is trying to complete a restructuring proposal by expanding into other business segments such as mobile handset production.

The long-awaited VinaPhone equitisation is still distant, as VNPT Groups restructuring proposal has not yet been approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications.
She then had to withdraw her appointment decision following the reprimand.

Bui Van Su, chief of office at Thanh Hoa Provinces Department of Finance, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday that departmental director Dinh Cam Van had nullified the appointment.

Van named her daughter, Le Cam Nhung, deputy head of her departments Business Finance and Economic Development Policy Division on February 2.

Nhung had been working as a specialist at the IT Budget Management and Financial Statistics Division prior to the promotion, which immediately met with public objection.

Many deemed it questionable, as it went against previous directions from the chairman of the Peoples Committee of Thanh Hoa.

On July 27, 2015, Chairman Nguyen Dinh Xung signed a fiat halting all new recruitments and promotions of deputies within the province. The document is still in effect now.

Special cases must be submitted for approval to the chairman before any appointment is made, according to the document.

The Business Finance and Economic Development Policy Division is suffering from a lack of personnel, according to chief of office Su.

Its head is retiring soon so there is a need to promote new officials for replacements, he added.

The promotion of Nhung seemed to conform to existing procedures, having undergone a confidence vote and internal review, Su said.

However, upon referring to documents issued by the provincial Peoples Committee, the director decided to pass a new decision scrapping the promotion on February 5, as it lacked written approval from Chairman Xung.

Nhung would still be working as a specialist at the IT Budget Management and Financial Statistics Division, according to the new decision.

Director Van has admitted her fault and pledged to draw a lesson from that, while taking criticism from the chairman.


remaining of

Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading.
At a public market in front of the Kampong Speu market, a stall selling organic vegetables attracts dozens of housewives and passers by. Many stop to buy the locally grown vegetables, which are here thanks to a new program established by the Cambodian Center for Study and Development in Agriculture.

The goal is to promote organic products locally and to cater to a growing base of consumers who want to eat healthier. For buyers like Sok Srey Oun, 30, that also means supporting local farmers.

Local, organic vegetables are not sprayed with chemicals to survive long transports, and they taste better too, she says. Prices stay competitive, and local farmers improve their income. Now that were just selling the vegetables right after cultivation, the quality is ensured, she said.

A growing number of consumers is becoming more health conscious about eating. Some say they experience nausea or fatigue from contaminated vegetables; some blame that on vegetables that are imported from neighboring countries. An estimated 50 percent of produce consumed in Cambodia is not grown in the country. Of locally grown produce, only about 5 percent is organic, CEDAC says.

The new market in Kampong Speu is meant to help provide access to local, clean produce, which can improve health and prevent disease. CEDAC is putting similar markets in the provinces of Tbaung Khmom, Kompong Thom, Siem Reap, Kompong Cham and Prey Veng. It runs eight such markets in Phnom Penh.

CEDAC coordinator Ung Vuthy says many Cambodians who now seek out organic products understand their health benefits. Thats a change from years past, he said. I believe that from one day to another, there will be more people coming, he said.

Meanwhile, agricultural experts are trying to establish standards for organic products, to prevent fraud.

Kiem Makarady, director of CEDACs environment and health department, told VOA Khmer that NGOs in agriculture are working together to create standards for organic cultivation and markets. This could lead to a national policy, he said.

We are trying to form a model that says organic products are feasible in Cambodia, for farmers to make gains, as well as consumers, in terms of food safety, he said. Thus, civil society should endorse the standards and support production of safe food. This will also help policymakers have a better understanding.

Hean Vanhorn, deputy director general of the Ministry of Agricultures general department of agriculture, said the agencys officials are working on a standard already, alongside other ASEAN officials. Certification by non-governmental groups does not have government endorsement, he added.

The government budget provides $46 million to the Ministry of Agriculture to enhance growth in the agricultural sector, and, according to the Supreme National Economic Council, expects to spend $20 million on rice and vegetable cultivation between 2016 and 2018.

But these initiatives come at a difficult time for farmers, some of whom are experiencing water shortages and drought. Vegetable farmer Ton Son, who works in Kampong Speus Samroang Tong district, said she hopes the government will help build a reservoir to hold more water. If theres sufficient water, we can cultivate organic vegetables well, from one year to another, she said.
China's military chief General Fang Fenghui is in the Afghan capital, Kabul, talking to the Afghan leadership about a four-nation regional alliance against terrorism.

China's proposed anti-terror plan includes China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The three countries in the proposed alliance share borders with the western regions of China, where anti-Beijing sentiment is prevalent in the Muslim Uighur ethnic group.

The Turkic ethnic group living in Xinjiang province has been looking since the early 1990s for greater political and religious autonomy. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan to some extent have been plagued by religious militancy for decades.

Chinese Uighurs are believed to be operating inside China from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas.

Speaking to VOA, Sayed Zafar Hashemi  deputy spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani  said the Chinese military chief asked for Afghanistan's participation in the Chinese-proposed anti-terrorism mechanism with Pakistan and Tajikistan. "President Ghani has endorsed the proposal," he said.

Hashemi added that Ghani told Fang that no distinction should be made between "good and bad terrorists."

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of targeting only those who are involved in terrorist activities inside Pakistan, and turning a blind eye to those operating out of Pakistan and fighting inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan denies these claims and points to terrorism activities with alleged roots to groups inside Afghanistan.

US reaction

In response to a question by VOA, a spokesperson for the State Department said the United States would support any role that China or other nations can play in bringing long-term stability to Afghanistan.

"China's a neighbor, and they have an interest in a strong, stable, terrorism-free Afghanistan, the spokesperson said. And so we certainly  I mean, I'm not in a position to comment specifically about this proposal, since, as I understand it, it's just recently been set forth. And I understand President Ghani had some positive things to say about it. Again, we'd welcome any effort by the international community and members of the international community that would lead to a strong, prosperous, stable Afghanistan in the future. "

New mechanism

Not many details have been revealed about the new anti-terrorism mechanism.

The four countries are concerned about the existence and spread of terrorism in the region. The concerns are further exacerbated by the withdrawal of international combat forces from Afghanistan.

Afghan political analyst Matiullah Abbasin sees the security situation in the Chinese province of Xinjiang as the main reason behind China's push for a regional anti-terror alliance.

"Taliban is not the only concern in Afghanistan. We [also] have ISIS, and their target is Central Asia, Abbasin said, using an acronym for Islamic State. This worries China, and that's the reason they are trying to combat terrorism at the regional level."

Peace negotiations with Afghan insurgent groups are expected to resume sometime this week in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The U.S., China, Afghanistan and Pakistan are part of the peace negotiations.
After 340 days in orbit, American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko have returned safely to Earth.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying Kelly and Kornienko and a second Russian cosmonaut, Sergey Volkov, made a soft landing on the frozen steppes of Kazakhstan early Wednesday morning, three hours after separating from the International Space Station. Volkov is back after spending the last six months aboard the ISS, the typical mission length for space station crews.

Kelly now holds the American record for the longest continuous time in space, as he and Kornienko circled the world 5,440 times aboard the ISS, covering 144 million miles and witnessing 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets.

The duo's mission was designed to measure how a long-term stay in a microgravity environment impacts the human body and mind, with an eye toward planning for future multi-year missions that will be necessary to take crews to Mars or other places in the solar system.



WATCH: Video footage of return to Earth

Picking Kelly as a pioneer provided an additional unique advantage: His identical twin, Mark Kelly, himself a former astronaut, offered himself as a test subject so researchers could compare his Earth-bound physical condition to that of his brother's after nearly a year in space.

A Russian doctor continues to hold the overall record for consecutive days in space with 438, which was set in the mid-1990s.
Two Nigerian communities were given the go-ahead Wednesday to pursue compensation claims against oil giant Shell through the British courts. They claim leaks from pipelines have devastated the local environment in the Niger Delta.



The Ogale people living in the Niger Delta claim oil spills since 1989 from Shell pipelines have ruined their coastal fisheries and water supply.



The nearby Bille community is also suing Shell for allegedly failing to protect the pipelines from damage caused by people trying to steal the oil  so-called "bunkering."



Martyn Day  lawyer for the Ogale and Bille claimants  says it is Shells responsibility to prevent the thefts.



In any other part of the world, there would be a heck of a lot more done by an oil company to try to prevent it happening. And when it does happen to make sure firstly, you know as soon as its happened, so some good early warning systems. And secondly that you immediately close down the pipeline to make sure that any leakage is very, very minimal," said Day.

Shell declined an interview  but issued a statement saying that the areas are heavily impacted by crude oil theft, pipeline sabotage and illegal refining which remain the main sources of pollution.



Shell also highlighted that it has produced no oil or gas in Ogoniland  which includes the Ogale area - since 1993. That is irrelevant, says Day.



Shells pipelines pass though both Ogale and Bille. And it has been leaks from those pipes that have caused the damage. So the fact that Shell is no longer actually extracting oil from the ground under those areas is really neither here nor there. In the end it is their oil that has caused the damage," he said.



Last year, British courts ruled Shell had to pay $77 million in compensation to the Bodo community in the delta, whose land had also been hit by oil spills.



Shell says it has already agreed to an 18-month cleanup plan with local communities and the United Nations  and is expected to argue that the cases should be heard in Nigeria. A date for the next hearing in London is yet to be decided.
Debates leading up to general elections for Sikyong (prime minister) and representatives of the 16th Tibetan Parliament-in-exile continued Tuesday in Dharamsala, India.

The March 20 polls represent a historic milestone for an estimated 128,000 Tibetans in exile, all of whom are eligible to cast votes.

VOAs broadcast on Wednesday of the first debate between incumbent Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay and Penpa Tsering, speaker of the exile Tibetan Parliament, comes just days after Dicki Chhoyang, minister of the Department of Information and International Relations, abruptly resigned the cabinet post she'd held since 2011. The entire Tibetan language broadcast can be viewed here.

While Chhoyang did not provide details about her decision to step down, her resignation spurred speculation that she might support Tsering, the sole opponent of Sangay, whose administration she had served for five years.

A lifelong Tibetan activist, Chhoyang was among seven ministers comprising the first democratically-elected Tibetan cabinet after the Dalai Lama devolved his political powers in 2011.

"With a sad heart, I resigned today as Kalon [Minister] for the Department of Information and International Relations (DIIR) for the Central Tibetan Administration," she said in a statement issued to numerous news organizations. "My decision was made with careful deliberation, bearing in mind our collective interest and the significant challenged that lie ahead."

On Sunday, Prime Minister Sangay responded to her departure, saying only that Chhoyang resigned to participate in public debates of the ongoing Tibetan general election, in which government ministers aren't allowed to participate.

According to Reuters, Tsering chose not to comment on her resignation, allowing only that he didn't want to "fish in trouble waters."

"One can always imagine why a minister, just a few months before completing her term, resigns," said Tsering. "There are obviously other reasons ... so let her speak. I don't want to bring this politics in our campaign. It is for the public to judge."

Upcoming polls will decide who leads the unicameral body, the highest legislative organ of the Central Tibetan administration, which is based in Dharamsala.

According to electoral rules, ten parliamentarians are elected from each of Tibet's three traditional provinces  U-Tsang, Do-tod and Do-med  "while the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the traditional Bon faith elect two members each."

Four members are elected by Tibetans in the west: two from Europe, one from North America and one from Canada.

Tibet's Parliament-in-exile is headed by a Speaker and Deputy Speaker, both of whom are elected by sitting parliamentarians.

China has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since Communist troops took over the region in 1950. Beijing regards the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959, as a dangerous separatist who wants an independent Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has repeatedly refuted those claims and has advocated greater autonomy for Tibet within China through dialogue with Beijing.
China has stationed up to five ships around a disputed atoll in the South China Sea, preventing Filipino fishermen from accessing traditional fishing grounds, media in the Philippines reported Wednesday.

The Philippine Star newspaper, quoting an unnamed Filipino fishing operator, said China began deploying ships to Quirino Atoll, also known as Jackson Atoll, after a fishing vessel recently ran aground in the area.

Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., the mayor of nearby Kalayaan in the Spratly Islands, told the newspaper the ships had been based at the atoll for more than a month. "They have many ships there," he said.

Another unnamed fisherman was quoted as saying Chinese boats chased them away when they tried to enter the area last week.

"These gray and white Chinese ships, around four of them inside the lagoon, prevented us from entering our traditional fishing ground," he said.

The Philippines military said they received reports about the presence of Chinese ships in the area.

"We are still verifying these reports," Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla, a Philippines military spokesman, told Reuters. "We know there are Chinese ships moving around the Spratly area. There are also ships around Second Thomas Shoal, so we want to make sure if the presence is permanent.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims on the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

The Philippines is awaiting a ruling by an arbitration court in The Hague on the territorial dispute.
The Council of Europe told Georgia on Tuesday to improve its anti-discrimination policies and legislation, saying it was worried by an increase in cases of hate speech and violence against religious and sexual minority groups.

The criticism from the pan-European human rights body comes at a sensitive time for Georgia as it seeks to move closer to NATO and the European Union following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

"Despite certain progress achieved by Georgia on anti-discrimination policies and legislation, hate speech and violence against some ethnic and religious minorities, as well as LGBT persons have increased over the past years, and the authorities' response has not been sufficient," Christian Ahlund of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance said in a report.

The ECRI welcomed positive developments such as amendments to the criminal code making racist motivation an aggravating circumstance, the passage of a law on eliminating all forms of discrimination and the adoption of a national human rights strategy.

"However, not all sorts of manifestations of and support for racism are criminalized in Georgia, and there is no legislation to suppress the public financing of, or to ban or dissolve, racist political parties or organizations," the report said. "The authorities' response has not been adequate and there is not an effective system for monitoring hate speech."

According to the report there is "a general homo- and transphobic climate in Georgian society and LGBT groups were attacked repeatedly".

Authorities have also failed to enforce the law to safeguard the rights of religious minorities in several cases, it said.

The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, France, promotes human rights and democracy in Europe and has 47 member states.
"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."

Oswaldo Jose Paya Sardinas (2002)
China's struggling economy has prompted credit ratings agency Moody's to lower its outlook on the government's fiscal health from stable to negative Tuesday.

The New York-based agency said it downgraded Beijing's sovereign bonds due to increasing government debt, which jumped to an estimated 40.6 percent of gross domestic product at the end of 2015, compared to 32.5 percent of GDP in 2012.

Another factor in Moody's downgrade was China's declining foreign exchange reserves, which have lost about $762 billion since June 2014. The agency also expressed doubt about Chinese policymakers' ability and commitment to fully implement economic reforms.

But Moody's retained Beijing's current credit rating of Aa3, the fourth-highest investment grade. It cited a series of buffers against an economic downturn, including a moderate level of government debt, high domestic savings and the countrys substantial foreign exchange reserves, which are still the world's largest at $3.2 trillion.

The agency warned it could downgrade China's rating if the pace of reforms needed to sustain economic growth slows.

Challenging transition

The world's second-largest economy is struggling to transition from an export-driven economy to one sustained by consumer demand. The economy grew at an annual rate of 6.9 percent in 2015, its slowest pace in 25 years, because of manufacturing overcapacity and falling domestic and export orders.

Officials announced Tuesday that the Purchasing Manager's Index, which tracks activity in factories, dropped to 49.0 in February, down from the 49.4 figure posted the month before.

The recent news could spur policymakers in Beijing to launch another round of stimulus spending and boosting the money supply. The People's Bank of China late Monday announced it was cutting the amount of cash that banks must hold as reserves by as much as 50 basis points. The PBOC also injected an estimated $100 billion in cash into the banking system to spur new lending.

About credit ratings agencies
Cuba says it has detected the first case of Zika virus on the island.

Health ministry officials say that a 28-year-old Venezuelan medical student is under quarantine at a hospital in the capital, Havana.

Officials say the student arrived in Cuba on February 21 and reported a fever shortly after. She was diagnosed with Zika on Monday.

A statement says her husband contracted Zika two months ago and that her brother had come down with symptoms shortly before her trip.

Health officials say they are monitoring other medical students who also reported symptoms.

The World Health Organization has warned that the mosquito-borne virus is spreading rapidly through the Americas and could affect as many as four million people.



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.

Cuban President Raul Castro has said some 9,000 soldiers will be sent around the country to spray for insects.

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.
East African Community (EAC) leaders are meeting Wednesday in Arusha, Tanzania. The community, comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda has been involved in mediating Burundis peace talks under the leadership of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But those talks have so far failed to yield practical results.

Will President Nkurunziza attend?

The East African leaders are likely to get a report from President Museveni on how his mediation efforts have been going. But the key question about Wednesdays Arusha summit is whether Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza will attend.

Burundian Foreign Minister Alain Nyamitwe would only tell VOA his country will be highly represented by the countrys second vice president.

I believe that President Nkurunziza will be well represented at the summit, but I can confirm that it is rather the second vice president of the republic of Burundi who will be sitting for him.

South Africa and Burundi

The Burundian government said last month it would welcome any offer by South Africa to facilitate the ongoing inter-Burundian dialogue. Foreign Minister Nyamitwe said South Africa played a critical role in the Burundian peace process in the late 1990s and early 2000.

He said if South Africa offers to facilitate the dialogue, its role would not be incompatible, but rather complementary to whats being done by President Museveni and the East Africa Community.

South African President Jacob Zuma led the African Union delegation that visited Burundi last week.

A promise to Ban Ki-moon

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also visited Bujumbura and held meetings with all stakeholders in the Burundian crisis. He said President Nkurunziza had promised to engage in inclusive dialogue with the opposition to end the Burundis months-long political crisis.

Foreign Minister Nyamitwe played down expectations that the summit will focus on the Burundian crisis.

The summit could receive a report from President Museveni on how the facilitation role has been done so far. But I think there is no particular issue on the agenda. Now, it could be raised by one head of state or another. But I dont think that Burundi will dominate the summit, Nyamitwe said.

But Nyamitwe said if Burundi comes up during the summit, his government will listen to what the other partners will have to say.

Military advisers to Burundi

The African Union said on Monday that it will send 200 military advisers and human rights observers to Burundi,

Nyamitwe said his government is working out the details for the arrival of proposed African Union military advisers and human rights monitors.

Admission of South Sudan and Somalia to the EAC

Among other issues, the Arusha summit is expected to consider is the admission of South Sudan into the East African Community.

The summit is also expected to deliberate on a report on the admission of Somalia into the EAC.

The East African leaders are also expected to discuss the Modalities for Promotion of Motor Vehicle Assembly in the region and Reduction of the Importation of Used Motor Vehicles from Outside the Community, and; the Promotion of the Textile and Leather Industries in the region, and stopping importation of Used Clothes, Shoes and Other Leather Products from outside the region, according to a release from the EAC secretariat.
It is 2016, a presidential election year in the United States, and that means its time for Americans to research about and threaten to move to Canada.

Whether its a Democrat or Republican in the White House seeking another term, or an open race like this one, each cycle brings at least one candidate whose potential election inspires aversion  and talk about moving away to avoid four years under that persons leadership.

Since 2004, Google searches for the term "moving to Canada" and other related word combinations have spiked in the United States around Election Day. It happened when Barack Obama first was elected as president in 2008 and again when he won a second term in 2012.

But the search for information about joining their neighbors to the north has never been more popular than when President George W. Bush earned a second term in 2004.

The 2016 election is still eight months away, but Americans are getting a head start. The search term "moving to Canada" spiked on Google in late June, just after businessman Donald Trump officially joined the race for the Republican Party nomination.

The searches have been steadily gaining volume in the past month, including an uptick Tuesday night as Trump won nominating contests in seven states. Three of those states  Georgia, Virginia and Massachusetts  were among the top sources of Canada relocation queries.

So, will roads and flights into Canada be packed with Americans come November? Probably not. The searches and dramatic statements on social media do not lead to a mass migration every four years.

Statistics from the Canadian government show that about 8,500 U.S. citizens have gone to Canada as permanent residents each year in the past decade, with no real trend during or after presidential elections. Nearly five times as many people moved to Canada from the Philippines in 2014.
The European Union has proposed an emergency fund of $760 million to help Greece and other member states that are struggling with the migrant crisis.

The European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management, Christos Stylianides, said Wednesday that $325 million would be provided immediately and the rest for the next two years.

"Through this new instrument, the commission will provide 700 million euros over the next three years," he said. "For this year, we will actually propose to European Parliament and to the Council a dedicated budget, an initial amount of 300 million euros will be needed to be supplemented by 200 million euros for the next year and 200 million euros for the year after. This



Funds in addition to current programs

Stylianides said that the aid package would be in addition to funds already being spent on hot spots and other programs to help countries deal with the crisis and migrant needs.

"This fund will provide emergency assistance to refugees in Greece," he added. "This fund is complimentary, it is in addition to already existing funding for hot spots, reallocation, social inclusion, cohesion, reconstruction as well as other types of funding provided by the EU."

The proposal needs the approval of the European Parliament and member states.

The EU also wants migrant flow from Turkey to drop below 1,000 a day.

European Council President Donald Tusk said before departing for Ankara Wednesday that he will press for a more intensive engagement with Turkey to implement the deal signed with the EU in November to curb the stream of refugees.



Tusk is touring the Balkan states and Turkey, the main departure point for refugees.

Meanwhile, Turkey has offered to sign readmission agreements with 14 countries, which would enable Ankara to quickly take back migrants rejected by the EU, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

A crucial EU-Turkey summit to address the migrant crisis is scheduled for March 7.
Two years after the start of the Ukraine conflict, Ukrainians are coming under pressure from the West and Russia to comply with the Minsk agreements, and many here doubt the country will be able to enact the overdue constitutional reforms required to implement the peace deal.

Politicians and analysts say Ukraine is being cornered by both Russia and the West to implement the deal, which requires granting greater autonomy to the separatist-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk regions and take other actions they believe will eventually lead to the eventual loss of more territory.

The West says we have to implement this Minsk agreement, which for Ukraine is poison, Alexey Arestovich, a former Ukrainian intelligence officer and military analyst, told VOA. It is not supported by society and is just not possible.

Ukraine accuses Russia of failing to provide the necessary security conditions to implement the peace deal, especially as Russian-backed separatists intensify their attacks in the countrys east. Holding regional elections, as mandated by the peace deal, they say, is impossible as the fighting continues.

Ongoing war

The Minsk deal  signed in September 2014 under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)  calls for the decentralization of power and Ukraines adoption of laws providing for self-governance in some districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk, regions currently controlled by Russian-backed separatists.

Politicians warn that enacting reforms to allow autonomy to the regions will result in upheaval.

You cannot do the peace talks and [create a] political situation to give more autonomy to some other region while other regions will say, wait a second, why these guys took [up] weapons and secured more money, more power, and their own militias, while our guys are dying there for their having more power, Alex Ryabchyn, a member of Parliament from Donetsk, told VOA.

There is concern here that the European Union may not renew Russian sanctions this year if Ukraine does not implement Minsk. Ukraine worries that complying may ultimately result in loss of more territory and political turmoil.

Meanwhile, Russia points to Ukraines failure to enact the constitutional reforms as a sign Kyiv is not doing its share to meet the deal.

Western ambivalence

U.S. leaders watched with concern last month as the government led by reformist, pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko nearly collapsed as his Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament.

The United States has urged Ukraines leaders to do more to combat lingering corruption and has provided support for those efforts.

But analysts in Kyiv accuse the West and especially the United States of not having a clear strategy on Ukraine.

It seems they dont know whether they want to consider Ukraine as part of the West or not, said Arestovich expressing long-standing complaints about the Obama administrations refusal to provide weaponry to the country.

Ukrainian leaders are worried that the rest of the world may be forgetting about the conflict in their country and see the pressure to comply with Minsk as a sign of impatience among E.U. members, especially Germany and France, as they contemplate lifting sanctions on Russia.

Ryabchyn said he will not support elections in Donetsk as long as Russian-backed forces are there to intimidate any candidate who is not pro-Russian.

The question is what does the West want, elections according to past democratic standards or just resolve this election just to forget about Ukraine to do some kind of election, some kind of electoral process and just to forget about Ukraine,  the lawmaker said.

Ukrainian officials say their government agreed to the Minsk protocols only as a result of pressure from the U.S. and the European Union.

Maidan anniversary

Kyiv last month marked the second anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters two years ago by former President Viktor Yanukovyhs forces during the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, which was largely about self-determination.

Maidan demonstrator Mykola Andrievsky returned to the square in central Kyiv on Tuesday, remembering how he helped carry away the corpses of his fallen comrades. He reflected on the pressure that Ukraine is now facing from both the West and Russia to act, some believe, against its national interests.

Its true the cost we have paid is enormous. Many lives were lost, he told VOA. Now, after two years from Maidan, it is difficult to say if these young men and women gave their lives in vain.
When Filipinos head to the polls in May to pick a new president, foreign business leaders in the country say they will be watching with keen interest.

Members of the Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines expressed concern that nagging issues that have kept more multinationals from entering the country may not be immediately addressed.

On Tuesday, the Chambers heard from representatives of the top five presidential candidates, who were invited to present what the group called bold ideas for the next decade. In the Philippines, presidential terms last six years and leaders are limited to one term.

The business leaders are looking for solutions that they said would help create jobs, alleviate poverty and make the Philippines more globally competitive.

The Joint Foreign Chambers have long contended the countrys laws have hindered foreign direct investment, placing the Philippines far behind other countries in Southeast Asia that have similar economies.

Canadian Chamber President Julian Payne said he was not satisfied with some answers regarding easing certain restrictions.

Those issues on the Foreign Investment Negative List that can be removed without constitutional amendment and that vast array of protectionist restrictions in regulations by the government and other regulatory agencies, he said. I think thats where this huge potential to immediately ease restrictions is.

Some of the items on the Philippines Negative List that are not written into the constitution include a limit to 40 percent ownership of condominiums and 40 percent of contracts for supplies and goods to government entities.

Limits on business ownership



But the main sticking point is constitutional limits on business ownership to 60 percent local and 40 percent foreign. In 2014, President Benigno Aquino signed a law allowing 100 percent foreign ownership of banks to open the country up to more international investment.

For decades, multinationals have expressed trepidation about investing millions of dollars here for companies they would not be able to own fully. Furthermore, Payne said, changing the constitution can be a long drawn-out process.

Analysts have said that Aquino has consistently had a tepid response to changing the 1987 constitution with the restrictions on foreign ownership because it was put in place by his mother's administration. President Corazon Aquino took office in 1986 after the country's citizens ousted then dictator Ferdinand Marcos and implemented multiple protections for Philippine interests. Also, observers said, inaction partially stems from a fear of political backlash.

Australia-New Zealand Chamber Executive Director Ryan Evangelista said the candidate representatives raised the same issues and solutions that had been presented in the past.

What wed like to hear from them is how do we get there? Assuming that there are differences in the way our party system works, how legislative and different relationships within the judiciary and executive departments are managed [under their potential administrations], said Evangelista.

Lagging investments

In the last two years, the joint foreign chambers said the Philippines averaged more than $6 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI). That is a 500 percent increase over 2010. The chambers goal is to double the average over the next 10 years.

But the group pointed out that $6 billion still falls far short of similar economies among the Philippines neighbors in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). According to the chambers report, Vietnam had $14.5 billion in FDI last year, while Indonesia received $16.9 billion in the first three quarters of last year.

American Chamber senior adviser John Forbes said those figures translate into employment.

So the Philippines has 174 million people projected by 2050. Thats 72 million more people than today, said Forbes. Are those people going to work in Thailand outside the country, as maids? Or are they going to work from decent jobs here? Thats the question for the next decade.

Progress, but still a long way to go



Cielito Habito, a Philippine economist and head of the Trade-Related Assistance for Development project of USAID said there has been a lot of progress in the past five years.

But like I said, theres a lot more homework that needs to be done by the next administration as far as investment is concerned. And clearly it points to clearing those remaining bottlenecks, including legal restrictions in our constitution, he said.

Habito said the next administration will also have to facilitate trade to ensure the gains of the past six years continue. He said being in the free trade agreement with ASEAN and its partner countries has been a stimulant to the Philippines manufacturing sector, whose growth has nearly tripled since 2010.

We are actually all trading in products that get turned into further products. And so in short various countries are part of a cross-border value chain. That makes the trade complimentary and the significant thing about this is that it makes trade protectionism irrelevant, said Habito.

He said in order for the Philippines to maintain its economic growth of 6-7 percent during the past five years, the next administration will have to break through the bottlenecks in foreign limits and remove remaining vestiges of restrictions in regional and international trade.
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council announced Wednesday it has labeled the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani said the move is linked to Hezbollah's attempts to recruit young people in GCC countries to carry out terrorist acts, smuggle weapons and explosives, and incite disorder and violence.

He said Hezbollah actions in Syria, Yemen and Iraq are not compatible with moral and humanitarian values and pose a threat to Arab national security.

The GCC is made up of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

The group previously imposed sanctions on Hezbollah for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and sending militants into Syria to fight alongside the army.

Iran is Hezbollah's main backer and is on opposite sides of the conflicts in Syria and Yemen from its regional rival Saudi Arabia.

The United States has long considered Hezbollah a terrorist group, and the European Union added the designation to Hezbollah's military wing in 2013.
The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday unanimously passed two resolutions to increase pressure on the Obama administration to do more to stop Islamic State terrorists and to help the people of Syria.

The first resolution accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, singling out Russia and Iran, of committing war crimes against Syrian civilians. It contends that the vast majority of the civilians who have died in the Syrian conflict have been killed by the government of Syria and its allies, specifically the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Irans terrorist proxies including Hezbollah.

The war crimes resolution calls on President Barack Obama to direct his U.N. ambassador to support creation of an international war crimes tribunal to prosecute anyone guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.

It says the Syrian government has engaged in widespread torture and rape, employed starvation as a weapon of war and massacred civilians, including through the use of chemical weapons, cluster munitions and barrel bombs.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, a California Republican, said the establishment of an international tribunal would send a strong signal to the Syrian people that they are not alone. About 425,000 Syrians have been killed, and four million others are living in exile.

The sponsor of the resolution, Republican Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, cited similar war crimes tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, saying they were effective in bringing perpetrators to justice.

The war crimes resolution says Russia has not only enabled Assad but also "has committed its own violations of international law by leading deliberate bombing campaigns on civilian targets including bakeries, hospitals, markets and schools."

The committee also passed a second resolution, which expresses the sense of Congress that the atrocities committed by Islamic State against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. That resolution already has 200 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors.

Kerry under pressure

A number of lawmakers from both parties have joined with religious freedom and human rights advocates to demand that the State Department label Islamic State crimes genocide.

At three hearings on Capitol Hill last week, Secretary of State John Kerry came under pressure from Republican lawmakers to declare IS guilty of genocide. Kerry expressed revulsion at the slaughter of innocents but said the State Department has to carefully review the legal standards that constitute genocide.

Lawmakers point to the killings of thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority in Iraq, starting in 2014. In most cases, IS fighters kill the men and take women and girls as slaves. Some lawmakers are demanding that it also be recognized that IS propaganda calls for the targeting of Christians, and they cite the brutal beheadings by IS of Christians from Ethiopia and Egypt.

In a major spending bill, Congress gave Kerry until March 17 to make a determination declaring IS acts against religious minorities genocide.
Several mass executions by the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq suggest the terror group is encountering more dissent or at least fears losing its grip on the territory it controls.

In Iraq, the jihadists have released a list of names of more than 1,000 people they have executed during the past few months in the city of Mosul, posting the list on the walls of the groups religious court.

Hundreds of residents have been checking the names for missing relatives, say local anti-IS activists. Most of the victims were accused of spying or helping Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Beheading

IS beheaded a Belgian jihadist who was convicted of high treason for trying to desert on February 26 in Deir ez-Zor in eastern Syria.

According to a local activist network called Deir ez-Zor Is Being Slaughtered Silently, The group beheaded the Belgian fighter after a Sharia official read a statement to the public, explaining how he tried to escape fighting the enemies of the Caliphate.

On March 1, the militant group shot dead three foreign fighters, a Tunisian and two Algerians, in the Deir ez-Zor provincial town of al-Mayadeen, claiming they had accepted bribes from locals.

Again, a Sharia court official read a statement before the three were shot, accusing the foreigners of robbery, say local activists.

The three were members of the IS police in al-Mayadeen city. Days earlier, the militants also stoned to death two teenage girls in Deir ez-Zor city in front of hundreds of onlookers.

The 17-year-old and 16-year-old were accused of committing adultery; the men they were alleged to have had improper relations with were flogged and then freed.

Resistance to IS

IS has ruled its self-styled caliphate with an iron and ruthless hand, seeking to intimidate locals into submission. But the latest round of slayings in eastern Syria has not stopped resistance fighters from striking back.

A group of gunmen in Deir ez-Zor city shot dead a leading member of the terror group after abducting him during the weekend. The body of Abu Saleh al-Jazrawi, who was in charge of tax collection in the city, was dumped.

Local activists say IS responded to the killing with a curfew and arrested dozens of people.

The slaying came two weeks after resistance fighters gunned down an IS "emir" in the province, after intercepting his convoy and killing four bodyguards.

Resistance fighters in Deir ez-Zor have killed several IS officials in the past few months in hit-and-run attacks.

They work in uncoordinated groups, an activist called Ghaith told VOA. Some of the fighters are believed to be from the Al-Sheitaat tribe. IS killed more than 700 members of the tribe two years ago when it overran much of the province.

Anxious about US ops

Activists say the terror group appears highly anxious about U.S.-led coalition airstrikes targeting IS leaders and the danger of U.S. commando raids, especially in the wake of a special forces operation that captured a senior IS operative during a raid in northern Iraq.

On February 29, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said a 200-member Expeditionary Targeting Force is in position ... having an effect and operating."

A U.S. counterterrorism official told VOA that recent reversals for the terror group in Iraq and the loss of territory in Syria have stressed the militants.

"ISILs veneer of invincibility was an allure to would-be jihadists and helped propagate its myth of inevitable victory, he said. The group has now suffered a string of setbacks that have eroded that pillar, including the loss of revenue streams from energy resources and the destruction of bulk cash sites. While these blows alone will not serve as a knock-out punch, theres no doubt that the losses are rippling across ISILs self-declared caliphate."

But IS remains a resilient opponent, analysts say, and still maintains an ability to fight on several fronts and to mount offensive operations in different parts of Syria and Iraq.

Battlefield gains

In recent weeks IS has made territorial gains in western Syria; mounted a surprise offensive on the town of Tal Abyad, just north of Raqqa in northern Syria, and maintained a fierce fight with Assad regime forces around the village of Khanaser on the outskirts of Aleppo.

At the same time, it has held off a Russian-backed Syrian government ground offensive in Deir ez-Zor near Al-Taim oilfield.

IS captured several villages this week in Hama province, bringing militant fighters nearer Salamiya, the capital of the countrys Ismaili minority, a group IS considers apostate.

The jihadist advance is prompting fears among the Ismaili that they could face a similar fate to the Yezidis, another minority group IS targeted, executing men and enslaving hundreds of women in 2014.

Ismaili cleric Haidar al-Saleh told local news agencies, We are aware of the ongoing progress by ISIS, and our community is highly concerned about what would happen if they overran the city.
A Camp Hill doctors medical license has been temporarily suspended while he faces charges filed by the state Attorney Generals Office alleging that he wrote illegal prescriptions for copious amounts of narcotic pain medicine.

Of Feb. 4, the Pennsylvania Department of State suspended the medical license of Dr. Joseph Acri, 58, of Camp Hill.

The suspension was requested in response to charges filed against Acri by the AGs Office that allege he wrote numerous illegal prescriptions entailing thousands of narcotic pain relieving pills like Oxycodone to several people, some of whom he never formally saw as patients, according to petition to suspend.

Acri also prescribed the pills at dosages well in excess of the manufacturers recommendation and gave prescriptions on more than one occasion to family members of the person for whom they were prescribed to distribute without seeing the patient, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by the Attorney Generals Office.

Acri is charged with four felony counts of illegal administration of controlled substance by a practitioner, felony illegal acquisition of controlled substances, felony conspiracy to illegally acquire controlled substance and misdemeanor refusal to keep required records.

He was arraigned on Feb. 2 and released on $10,000 unsecured bail.

The petition to suspend noted that Acri was not currently incarcerated and was free to practice medicine if action was not taken.

Acri waived his preliminary hearing on Feb. 18 and a formal arraignment is scheduled for 9 a.m. April 28 in the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas, according to court records.
Kurdish fighters tell VOA that Islamic State (IS) fighters in recent days fired mortars containing chemical materials into northern Iraq. They complain of vomiting and nausea after breathing in the chemicals.



I felt sick and my eyes hurt so badly, said Bedel Osman, a Peshmerga fighter. I vomited and was taken to the hospital. When I came back to my outpost, I saw several other colleagues suffering from the same thing.



Another Kurdish fighter said he saw troops vomiting and having difficulty breathing.



The mortars hit near us but they didnt explode, said Nuri Ibrahim, a Peshmerga fighter. A strange smell was coming from those unexploded mortar rockets. This was when we all began to vomit and felt nauseous.

VOA could not independently confirm the claims.



Investigating reports



The accounts come as Kurdish officials work with the U.S.-led coalition to verify that IS militants hit Kurdish Peshmerga fighters with mortars containing chemical materials outside Sinjar, an Iraqi town that was liberated from IS late last year. There are still occasional skirmishes on the outskirts of the city.

According to the Kurdish authority, it would be the eighth chemical weapon attack on its forces.



Kurdish officials say IS has increased its attacks with chemical weapons after losing territory.



They resort to such tactics when they lose control of territory, said Luqman Ibrahim, a Peshmerga [Kurdish forces in Iraq] commander in Sinjar.



He told VOA that IS has a highly experienced team of bomb-making experts who develop projectiles armed with chemicals. He said IS has multiple factories in Tel Afar, an IS-held town in the Nineveh province.



Kurdish commanders say at least 50 Peshmerga fighters were affected by the mortar shelling. IS militants also fired into the city, they say.



The Kurdistan Region Security Council said on its Twitter feed that it was investigating last weeks attack.



Little impact



Analysts say they are not surprised by the IS tactics.



It is obviously an effective tool to terrorize opponents, said James F. Jeffrey, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.



But Jeffrey, who also served as a U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told VOA that chemical mortar attacks wont have any strategic impact in the ongoing fight against IS.



U.S. officials have said that IS has used chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq in the past.



U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress in early February that the extremist group had used chemical agents in both Iraq and Syria.



CIA Director John Brennan later confirmed that IS had the ability to manufacture both chlorine and mustard gas.



A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told Reuters earlier in the month that lab tests showed Kurdish fighters had been exposed to mustard gas last year.
Australian transport minister Darren Chester says a piece of an airplane found on a beach in Mozambique will undergo testing in Australia to determine whether it is a part of the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing with 239 people on board, just short of two years ago.

Chester told Australian lawmakers early Thursday that it is too early to speculate on the origin of the one-meter-long piece of debris that a private U.S. citizen found washed up on the beach in the southeastern African nation. But he confirmed that the debris would be brought to Australia for analysis, although he could not give a projected date.

He also confirmed that the location of the piece was consistent with ocean drift models used by the Australian experts overseeing the search.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been coordinating the international search and rescue operation, in support of the Malaysian accident investigation team, in the southern Indian Ocean.

U.S. and Malaysian officials say that based on early reports, the debris likely comes from a Boeing 777 jet -- the same type of plane as the missing flight MH370.

But Malaysian Minister of Transport Liow Tiong Lai cautioned on Wednesday that officials "are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to MH370 at this time." He cautioned against "undue speculation" about the debris

Writing on Twitter, the transport minister says Malaysia's civil aviation authority is working with Australian officials to retrieve the debris.

A U.S. official says the debris appears to be the leading edge of the right-hand horizontal stabilizer of a Boeing 777.

Flight MH370 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew when it disappeared March 8, 2014 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The flight veered far off course about an hour after takeoff, and investigators believe it flew over the southern Indian Ocean for several hours before crashing. Last year, authorities found a piece of what they think is the plane's wing on the shores of Reunion Island.
March 1 was Super Tuesday in the campaign for the U.S. presidency, but March 15 is shaping up to be a key date in determining the nature of the Republican race.

Businessman Donald Trump, leading in national polls for months, has used that support to win the most state primaries and caucuses so far. But while the once-massive Republican field has dwindled to five candidates, there have been calls for Republicans to unite behind a single opponent who can earn enough delegates to prevent a Trump nomination.

As of March 15, candidates can start earning all of a state's delegates with a win rather than just a portion based on their percentage of the vote. It's also when two key states  Florida and Ohio  have winner-take-all primaries.

Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have been running about even in polls, both lagging far behind Trump. Neither has shown any sign of considering leaving the race. After Tuesday's voting in 11 states, Cruz called for candidates who have yet to win a state to consider "coming together, uniting."

"For those who have supported other candidates, we welcome you on our team standing united as one. That is the only way to beat Donald Trump," Cruz said.

Still too early to drop out

Analysts say it's too early for trailing candidates to consider stepping aside, given the way they could amass at least some delegates with the proportional system.

"I don't think you're going to see much until March 15," said Gary Nordlinger, an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. That's when "you have a whole bunch of primaries, including Florida, Rubio's home state. Rubio has plenty of money, he certainly has plenty of staying power. Why would he want to drop out?"

A candidate needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. If no one gets to that level, the nominee will be determined at the party's convention in July.

Nordlinger predicted candidates who could afford to stay in the race would do so "if for no other reason than hoping that there's an open convention in Cleveland," the Ohio city.

Republican strategist Ford O'Connell said it would take two more weeks for the decisions on who stays in the race and for how long.

"I think that determination will be made on the 15th whether they're going to have a two-man race or pack it all in for a stretch run to the convention," OConnell said.

Rubio is focused on Florida and its trove of 99 delegates. He told supporters there Tuesday night he accepts being an underdog in the race.

"We've all been underdogs. This is a community of underdogs. This is a state of underdogs. This is a country of underdogs. But we will win, and when we do we will do what needs to be done," he said.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has yet to win a state, but on Tuesday said he is not "not ready to quit."

Ohio Governor John Kasich also has yet to score a win and is counting on a boost from his state, where he trailed Trump by a few points in a recent poll.
Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has asked his lawyers to speed up his extradition to the United States, saying he is being mistreated.

Guzman, who has twice escaped from Mexico's maximum - security prisons, faces an array of charges linked to the hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin and other drugs he has shipped across the border.

Guzman's lawyer, Jose Rodriguez, told local a radio station Wednesday that Guzman has reached his limit and urged him to push for fast extradition. "I saw a defeated, humiliated man," Rodriguez said.

Guzman has complained that guards at the Altiplano prison will not let him sleep. Officials have acknowledged that guards at the prison wake him every four hours for a head count.

He has also complained about the amount of communication he is allowed with his family and the amount of time he spends in his cell.

Guzman's lawyers had previously vowed to fight extradition as long as possible, and Mexican officials had acknowledged it would take at least a year, and perhaps more, for the extradition process to work its way through Mexican courts.

Guzman was first captured in 1993, but escaped in 2001 with the help of prison guards. After more than a decade on the loose, he was recaptured early in 2014, with the help of intelligence that U.S. authorities provided to Mexico. He escaped for a second time on July 11, 2015 through a 1.5-kilometer underground tunnel, dug in secret from his cell to a nearby village.
Western and Russian diplomats are meeting this week to discuss ways to defuse the conflicts in eastern Ukraine, where fighting continues between Russia-backed separatists and government forces despite attempts for a truce. While top U.S. officials are touting the importance of a full implementation of the Minsk agreement, critics say that the peace deal is a way to legitimize ugly facts on the ground.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia are scheduled to meet Thursday in Paris. They hope to achieve a durable and effective cease-fire in eastern Ukraine to prepare the ground for a political settlement.

Mediated by Germany and France, the so-called Minsk II agreement is a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing conflicts, including a cease-fire, between Moscow-backed rebels and government forces in eastern Ukraine. It was agreed to by Ukraine, Russia and separatists in February of 2015.

While terms of the complex Minsk II were not fully carried out by its deadline of Dec. 31, 2015, top U.S. officials say it remains the best hope for peace, weapons withdrawal, decentralization in eastern Ukraine, and the return of Ukrainian state sovereignty over its border.

Criticism of peace accord

But critics said the western-brokered peace agreement cannot alter the fact that Crimea was annexed by Russia illegally two years ago. It has not changed Moscow's behavior.

"You see in Ukraine where the insertion of Russian forces, insertion of supplies to Ukraine rebels, Russian nationals in Ukraine, was able to create a state within a state, and then a political process that basically institutionalized the division of Ukraine, so the Minsk process really is, in my view, a way to legitimize the facts on the ground," former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Adam Ereli told VOA in an interview.

Ukraine foreign policy analyst Ian Brzezinski said that while Moscow is the one that violates Ukraine's territory integrity, the Minsk agreement treats Kyiv as equally wrong.

Brzezinski, who works for the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, criticized the "incrementalist approach" by the U.S. to respond to Russia assertiveness and aggression.

"I think the mistake has been the administration feels that it's been prudent in following a course of incrementalism, incremental economic sanctions, incremental political isolation, incremental military actions," he said.

Brzezinski added that stronger economic sanctions, a more robust military response to shore up NATO allies, as well as more security assistance  including lethal weapons to Ukraine  are needed to deter Russian aggression in central and eastern Europe.

Criticism of Russia

A senior U.S. State Department official blamed Russia and the separatists for not following through on commitments under the Minsk agreement.

He told VOA a full cease-fire and weapons withdrawal is needed for the implementation of political, economic and humanitarian aspects of Minsk, including the voting in local elections. That is a big sticking point for the Minsk process to move forward.

Violations of the cease-fire have thrown into doubt plans under the Minsk agreement for local elections in separatist-held areas.

"If elections are to take place," said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, "we need an electoral law, then we need a security condition on the ground that allows for elections to take place."

Secretary of State John Kerry attended a new conference with Steinmeier earlier this week in Washington.

"It's very important for Russia to live up to its obligations and to make sure the separatists do, and it's also very important for the Kyiv government to undertake its steps," Kerry said.

The Kyiv government has postponed a law on elections in the pro-Russian separatist east. Steinmeier said it is one of the impediments preventing the Minsk process from moving forward.

Germany and France also urged the Ukraine government to stamp out corruption.

In conversations with Russian president Vladimir Putin, President Barack Obama has discussed the importance of full implementation of the Minsk agreements and the responsibility to protect the integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, according to Kerry.

WATCH: Two sides of the Minsk agreement
U.S. Army General John "Mick" Nicholson has taken charge of American and NATO troops in Afghanistan as security conditions deteriorate across the war-ravaged nation in the wake of a vicious Taliban-led insurgency.

Nicholson, 58, took over Wednesday from General John Campbell, who oversaw the coalitions transition in 2014 from combat to the current so-called Resolute Support mission of training and advising Afghan security forces.

"We are here with you," Nicholson told Afghan officials at the ceremony, as he emphasized the mission's importance.

The new commander praised Afghan and international forces for continuing the fight against the Taliban and other extremist groups.

"Yes, we have a tough path in front of us, but with your courage all things are possible," Nicholson added.

He said little about the missions enemies, except that they "have brought only hardship and suffering to the Afghan people."

Taliban gains

The command change at NATO coalition headquarters in Kabul occurred while the insurgents occupy more territory than at any time since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Additionally, extremists pledging allegiance to the Middle Eastern Islamic State militant group have been trying to expand their influence, particularly in eastern border Afghan regions.

The United Nations says civilian casualties in the 15-year Afghan conflict rose to record levels of more than 11,000 in 2015, with the violence expanding to parts of Afghanistan that previously had been relatively peaceful.

Outgoing commander Campbell used the occasion to urge Taliban insurgents to engage in the political reconciliation process with the Afghan government.

"My message to the Taliban is, again, put down your arms come and talk to Afghanistan be part of the political process."

Suicide attack

A suicide attack Wednesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad underscored challenges facing Afghan international forces.

Officials said a suicide bomber blew himself up near the Indian consulate gate in a high-security zone. Shortly after the blast, four gunmen began a half-hour gunfight with Afghan security forces, who ultimately killed the assailants. The attack also killed at least two civilians and a police officer, while wounding another 19 people.
The U.S. presidential candidates on Wednesday moved past the excitement of Super Tuesday voting and focused on the next two weeks, when more than a dozen states and several territories hold primary elections or caucuses that will likely winnow the number of those still campaigning.

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump strengthened their grips on each party's presidential nominations, racking up wins in key states Tuesday, when the largest number of states hold primaries or caucuses on the same day.

US Presidential Candidate Delegate Count Delegate Count Here is an estimated delegate count for each candidate: Republicans Donald Trump: 621

Ted Cruz: 396

John Kasich: 138 Democrats Hillary Clinton: 1,561

Bernie Sanders: 800 Total delegates needed for party nomination: Democrats: 2,383 Republicans: 1,237 * As of March 16, 2016

For Democrats, the next big contest will be the primary election March 8 in Michigan, a populous state that accounts for 148 delegates to the national party's convention in July. Michigan accounts for more than 10 percent of the total delegate votes necessary to become the party's candidate for president in the general election, held this year on November 8.

Upcoming contests

Former Secretary of State Clinton led her rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, 50 percent to 40 percent in a February 18 survey of likely Michigan voters by Public Policy Polling. The two are scheduled to debate Sunday (8 p.m. EST / 0100 UTC Monday) in Flint, a city at the center of a drinking-water contamination crisis.

For the Republicans, primary votes in delegate-rich Ohio and Florida on March 15 could narrow the number of party candidates.

Ohio has 66 delegates and Florida has 99, all going to the candidate finishing first in election  the so-called "winner-take-all" system, in contrast to other states that allocate delegates either proportionally or on some other basis.

Ohio Governor John Kasich and Florida Senator Marco Rubio are under particular pressure to win their respective states' contests; political analysts say their candidacies may not survive a home-state loss.

Both Kasich and Rubio have finished well behind businessman Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz in almost all of this year's presidential preliminaries.

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, while not formally dropping out of the race, released a statement Wednesday saying he sees "no path forward" to the nomination.

Carson said he will not attend Thursday night's Republican presidential debate in Detroit, his hometown. The former neurosurgeon has done poorly in the 15 presidential nominating contests so far this year.

It was not immediately clear whether Carson would officially suspend his campaign. Armstrong Williams, Carson's longtime business manager, told The Associated Press the candidate will no longer actively seek votes.

With active campaigning underway in so many states during the coming two weeks, candidates have begun increasing their advertising to woo potential voters. Before the Super Tuesday voting, Republicans' anti-Trump ads outnumbered pro-Trump commercials nearly 3-to-1, and that ratio is likely to grow.

Attack ads to increase

Three outside groups, Our Principles, American Future Fund and Club for Growth, have laid plans for millions of dollars in new ads attacking front-runner Trump.

Conservative Solutions, a "superPAC" political action committee that backs Rubio and opposes Trump, has reserved $6 million of ad time for broadcast in Michigan, Florida and two other big states voting soon - Illinois and Missouri.

On the Democratic side, Michigan appears to be a "battleground" state between Clinton and Sanders.

The senator from Vermont, who has strong financial backing but fell well short of Clinton's vote totals on Super Tuesday, is allocating two-thirds or more of the donations to his campaign on advertising there.

WATCH: State-by-state Democratic results

Clinton, who hopes to become the first woman elected U.S. president, won Tuesday's primary votes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Sanders, who says he is a Democratic socialist, won his home state of Vermont plus Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

On the Republican side, Trump took Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont. Senator Ted Cruz took his home state of Texas, as well as Oklahoma and Alaska. Florida Senator Marco Rubio picked up his first win of the primary season in Minnesota.

Opinion polls

The results were not surprising. Opinion polls had showed Trump and Clinton with large leads in Super Tuesday states and nationally. In their victory speeches, each candidate focused on the other, rather than their primary opponents.

WATCH: State-by-state Republican results

"America never stopped being great," Clinton said at a rally in Florida, referencing Trump's campaign slogan. "We have to make America whole," she said, adding that the rhetoric on the Republican side "has never been lower."

At his own speech in Florida, Trump shot back. "She wants to make America whole again. I'm trying to figure what that's all about. Making America great again is going to be much better than making America whole again."

Trump also spoke of his rival, Rubio, whom he has clashed with fiercely over the past week. "I know it as a very rough night for Marco Rubio. He worked hard, he spent a lot of money. He is a lightweight, like I have said many times," Trump said.

"Rubio was the big loser of the night," Trump added.

WATCH: Report by VOA's Jim Malone



Speaking to a large crowd in his home state late Tuesday, Sanders stayed optimistic.

"This campaign, as I think all of you know, is not just about electing a president, it is about transforming America. It is about making our great nation the country we know it has the potential to be."

Sanders stressed that Democratic primaries are proportional, and that they award delegates according to the vote count. "By the end of tonight, we are going to win many hundreds of delegates," he said.
Editor's note: An immigration judge on Thursday granted more time for Junior Andres Francisco and his attorneys to prepare his case fighting deportation. A hearing is scheduled for April 26.

Junior Andres Francisco admits he made a "terrible mistake," one so costly that it landed him in federal prison for several years and left his wife and three young children to struggle in his absence. But he's terrified of one more possible consequence: being deported, perhaps as soon as this week, to his native Dominican Republic. He fears it would mean permanent separation from and irreparable harm to his family.

"I'm praying to God because Im not ready for deportation. I came to this country for them," Franscisco said in Spanish through an interpreter, speaking from a federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention facility in Farmville, Virginia.

Francisco, 37, moved to the United States in 2003 to join his wife Mirtha  his high school sweetheart, also from the Caribbean country  and their baby daughter in northern New Jersey. He became a legal resident and, with his green card, found work as a truck driver delivering meats. Mirtha obtained her U.S. citizenship, and the couple had another daughter and a son.

However, Francisco fell into a depression, lost his job and made a bad choice, he says. In 2011, he was convicted of cocaine trafficking and sentenced to 51 months in prison.

Mass prison release

Last fall brought Francisco some good news  at least it initially seemed that way. He was approved to be part of the mass release of 6,000 low-level, nonviolent drug traffickers, whose federal prison terms were shortened through new, retroactive sentencing guidelines. Each individuals case was reviewed  for considerations including personal behavior and public safety  and each approved by a federal judge. Most soon entered supervised release or other transitional programs.

But almost a third were non-citizens, like Francisco, who immediately were put into deportation proceedings, regardless of whether they were in the United States legally. Of those, 763 initially received final deportation orders and were quickly removed; ICE could not provide VOA with outcomes for the rest.

A policy divide

Treating felons differently just because of citizenship status "points to a schism" in federal policies, the American Civil Liberties Union and 13 other rights groups said in a letter last fall urging ICE toward individualized due process and against hasty removal.

The U.S. Department of Justice, with bipartisan support from Congress, encouraged the drug sentencing reforms as part of a broader plan to reduce incarceration and rehabilitate offenders. Advocates said those reforms seem at odds with enforcement actions by ICE, a law enforcement agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Deportation cases are decided by judges in DOJs Executive Office for Immigration Review  "not Homeland Security, an important distinction," an ICE official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

These are "inherently conflicting messages from the criminal justice system  and our very unforgiving immigration system," said Avideh Moussavian, an attorney for the California-based National Immigration Law Center. She reminded that every early-release prisoner was deemed not to pose a security risk. "Thoughtful deliberation in each of those decisions  is at risk of being entirely disregarded by ICE."

Also, non-citizen felons are "being punished twice for one wrong act," Moussavian said. "And for many people, its a surprise punishment because they didnt understand that they were going to be deported [when they applied to have their sentences reconsidered]. These are very different consequences than having, for example, a longer sentence. Its permanent exile, for many people, from their family."

Behavior should be above reproach

Conservative backers of more stringent immigration policies support the deportations.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said he could "see an argument for very minor crimes not being deportable," but "the bar should be pretty low" for removal. "As a general rule, a green card holder is a guest of the United States, and as a guest his behavior should be above reproach."

Rarely are non-citizen offenders granted deportation relief. An immigration court judge may take into account considerations such as a grave illness, and decide to let an individual remain in the United States. "Each case is individually reviewed," an ICE official told VOA.

While even illegal U.S. residents have a right to appeal deportation, that right vanishes for non-citizens with a criminal conviction. And they have no right to legal counsel.

But the Washington-based Capital Area Immigrants Rights Coalition has taken up Franciscos case pro bono, asking that ICE drop its prosecution and return him to his family "in the interest of justice," said Heidi Altman, the organizations legal director. It has done the same for Rodolfo Padilla, a Mexican national living in the United States for more than 30 years, citing robust personal rehabilitation and family hardship in each mans case.

Immigration court hearing

Meanwhile, Francisco is scheduled for a hearing Thursday morning in Arlington Immigration Court in northern Virginia. Hell participate from a video conferencing nook at ICEs Farmville Detention Center, his home since his late-October transfer from a federal prison in North Carolina. The low-security facility  ringed with chain-link fences and south-central Virginias gentle hills  can hold at least 500 detainees.

"During my prison time, I follow the right path, sustained good conduct and participate in several programs," Francisco wrote in a November 9 letter appealing for mercy from Judge Rodger C. Harris. Hed earned a high school equivalency diploma, studied English and taken courses in managing finances and stress. "My family, my children, need the guide and care of a father. ..."

Francisco, sent to prison March 5, 2012, last saw his family almost a year ago at the North Carolina prison.

Financial toll

His wife, who works in quality control for a New Jersey metal-parts business, said he has discouraged his financially strapped family from visiting him since then because it takes too much time and money.

"I dont have vacation. I work hard. He says, You wait until I go out of here," Mirtha said, explaining it takes at least seven hours to drive from her home in northern New Jersey to the facility in south-central Virginia. The facility permits visiting for one hour a day. "Its not worth it."

But Francisco speaks to his wife and children almost every day by phone. Mirtha said she puts $200 to $300 on his debit card monthly, mostly for their short calls.

Mirtha and the children share a two-bedroom apartment with her mother, who recently was injured in a car accident and had to stop working. The family receives government subsidies for food and medical care  and Franciscos return would reduce or eliminate that dependence, the CAIR Coalition argues in its appeal.

A trucking job awaits him in New Jersey, Mirtha said.

As a young man in San Cristobal, Dominican Republic, Francisco maintained automatic teller machines for banks. If he were deported and returned there, his criminal record would transfer with him, putting that job  and many others  out of his reach, he said.

Challenges in Dominican Republic

Franciscos close friend since childhood also expressed hope he wouldnt be sent back to their homeland.

"Economically, its bad. Also, the criminality has gotten worse. I dont know how hes going to help his family if he has to go back," said Carlos Maldonado, who periodically visits the island. A truck driver too, Maldonado helps Franciscos family through social outings and repairs, "but Ive got my own family," he said, noting hes married, with two children in college and one recent college graduate.

The U.S. State Department last year rated the Dominican Republics crime level as "critical."

Francisco, though uneasy about continued separation from his family, said he wouldnt ask his wife and children to move if he were deported.

"That would be selfish. The problem is not just taking them there, but the system is in chaos. That would expose them" to dangers, Francisco said.

Mirtha echoed her husbands concerns. Her children are Americans, with better education options in the United States than in her homeland, she said. "He understands that the kids need a better life, better opportunities. They are U.S. citizens. They belong to this country.  They know their father loves them. They know their father made a mistake. Hes paying for it."

The CAIR Coalition maintains Francisco has paid sufficiently. Its final point in the appeal is that "continued detention and removal of Mr. Francisco undermines the authority of federal officials and goes against public policy."

Francisco, his family and his lawyers are waiting for the governments response.
The Pentagon issued an invitation Wednesday to hackers -- provided they're U.S. citizens and can pass a background check -- to attack its websites as a test of its cybersecurity.

The pilot project is considered the first of its kind by the federal government.

"I am confident this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement unveiling the pilot program.

"Hack the Pentagon" is set to begin next month and could involve monetary awards to participants who can spot weaknesses on the Pentagon's public websites. More sensitive networks or key weapons programs would not be included, the statement said.

"Once vetted, these hackers will participate in a controlled, limited duration program that will allow them to identify vulnerabilities on a predetermined department system," the Pentagon said.

'Bug bounty'

So-called "bug bounties" are conducted by large U.S. companies that allow cyber experts to find and identify problems in their networks before malicious hackers can exploit them.

A senior defense official told reporters at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday that these outside experts will "use their skill sets and expertise... to make the country more secure."

Program details and rules were still being worked out, but one official said thousands of qualified participants are expected to join the initiative.

"I am always challenging our people to think outside the five-sided box that is the Pentagon," Carter said in Wednesday's statement.

During a trip to California's "Silicon Valley" on Tuesday, Carter stressed national security in urging greater cooperation between the public sector and private industry regarding data security and encryption.

Carter had traveled to the area, where many of the world's largest high-tech companies are located, to discuss cybersecurity. He warned officials that failing to improve U.S. defenses would allow China, Russia and others that do not favor a free Internet to set new global standards.

Encryption case

Carter did not directly address the controversy between the U.S. government and Apple, in which the FBI is asking the company to help it access information on an iPhone linked to the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, terror attack late last year.

He said, however, that the Pentagon, as the world's largest user of encryption, viewed such technology as critical. He also said no one case should drive future policy considerations.

"We shouldn't let the solutions to this larger issue of how to handle data security as a society be driven by any one particular case," Carter said after a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, according to Reuters. "It would be unreasonable."
Public support for Hungary's ruling Fidesz party dipped in February, a poll by the Median institute said, after months of growing or stable backing boosted by the hardline handling of the migrant crisis.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban's combative style has served him well since he swept back to power in 2010 with a large majority and he won a second four-year term in 2014 but disputed education reforms seem to be sapping his support, Median said.

Orban reversed a slide in support for Fidesz last summer by taking an especially tough stance on migration, vowing to protect Hungary from an influx of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

By October, his government had built a razor wire fence on the border with Serbia and Croatia, which shifted the route of migrants southwards, and boosted Orban's support at home.

However, the support declined in February according to a poll by Median published on Wednesday on website hvg.hu.

Median said support for Fidesz among all voters dropped to 32 percent in February from 34 percent in January, while far right Jobbik increased to 16 percent from 14 and the Socialists rose to 10 percent from 9 percent.

This is the first poll conducted by Median that recorded a drop in support for Fidesz since last summer. Backing among voters with a declared party preference for Fidesz dropped to 46 percent in February from 53 in January.

"Something broke, but this does not mean that there is a big turnaround," Endre Hann, director of Median, told Reuters.

He said there was discontent in society that manifested itself in the February poll, conducted between February 19 and 23.

Last month there were two big protests against reforms of the education system by Orban's rightwing government that many Hungarians consider oppressive and heavy-handed.

"The movement of teachers registered with a wide segment of the population," Hann added.

Another protest will be held on March 15, which is a national holiday in Hungary.

A few days after the protests, Orban announced that Hungary will hold a referendum on European Union plans to create a system of quotas for migrants. Analysts said this would allow him to keep the issue of migration on the agenda.
Hashim Thaci elected as President of Kosovo

Published: March 2, 2016

Hashim Thaci has been elected as the President of Kosovo by the Parliament of the country in the third round. He will succeed Atifete Jahjaga.

In the third round, 81 Members of Parliament (MPs) off total 120 took part and Hashim Thaci secured 71 votes of them, proving required simple majority.

With this, Hashim Thaci becomes fourth President of Kosovo after the country had unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Prior getting elected as President he was serving as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the Government led by Isa Mustafa, which had assumed office in December 2014.

About Hashim Thaci

Born on April 24, 1968 in the Drenica region of central Kosovo.

From the early 1990s as a student, Thaci was involved in passive resistance to the Belgrade authorities.

He had rose to prominence as the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a paramilitary organisation that was active during the Kosovo War

He was the first Prime Minister of Kosovo and was in office from January 2008 to December 2014.

Kosovo: It is a disputed territory and partially recognised state in Southeastern Europe after it had unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in February 2008. It has been recognised by the US and many EU countries. Since 1999, it is under UN administration after the NATO intervention had ousted Serbian forces. It is landlocked in the central Balkan Peninsula and is facing long-term severe ethnic tensions between Kosovos Albanian and Serb communities.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2016

Topics: Current Affairs - 2017  Current Affairs 2016

Latest E-Books
A wild elephant went on a rampage in a southern Indian village Wednesday, damaging several structures and creating panic among villagers.

Witnesses say the elephant entered Patchapalli village in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu state.

They say it came into their residential area causing extensive damage to buildings and walls and forcing residents to flee. It eventually moved off to a nearby forest.

Witnesses say the elephant is believed to be the same animal that has been menacing the area for about two weeks.

In a similar incident, a wild elephant went on a rampage in a village in India's eastern West Bengal state last month, damaging around 100 structures.

Wild animals like elephants, leopards and panthers often stray into inhabited areas in India in search of food and cause huge human and material loss.
Residents returned to Turkey's mainly Kurdish town of Cizre on Wednesday to find many of their homes damaged or destroyed after the government lifted a months-long 24-hour curfew.

Turkey has been pressing an offensive against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the southeastern part of the country since July and has shut off parts of cities with curfews and security operations. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to continue until every one of the militants is defeated.

In Cizre, the 24-hour curfew went into effect in December and has been relaxed to apply only between 7:30 p.m. and 5 a.m.

WATCH: Video footage from Cizre

Three weeks ago, Interior Minister Efkan Ala declared operations against the PKK were over in Cizre after the army killed nearly 600 militants. Kurdish activists disputed the number of militant deaths and said dozens of civilians were killed.

Rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have criticized Turkey's military, saying it needs to control its forces and investigate civilian casualties.

HRW also called on Kurdish armed groups to stop putting up barricades, digging trenches and planting explosives.
Top U.S. military intelligence officials are playing down expectations that the Iraqi Security Forces will be ready to reclaim the key northern city of Mosul from Islamic State fighters anytime soon.

The Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Marine Corps Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart, told the House Armed Services Committee that while every effort is being made to get after Mosul, Iraqi forces are not ready to engage in the difficult, large-scale urban fight.

Taking and securing Mosul in the next eight to 10 months is not something Im seeing in my crystal ball," Stewart said Wednesday.

Theyll need a significant amount of help from coalition partners," he said. "I dont know they will ask for that help.

U.S. military planners see Mosul as a critical next step in the effort to destroy the Islamic State terror group in Iraq, but have warned it will not be easy.

Up to 10 brigades

Officials have said the campaign to recapture Mosul will require as many as eight Iraqi brigades and two Kurdish brigades, each with 2,000 to 3,000 troops. And some of the brigades are being built from scratch, with training expected to take just over two months.

We can begin the operations. We can begin to isolate, Stewart said. We can do some of the preparatory work."

On Monday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joe Dunford told Pentagon reporters those efforts were underway.

Operations against Mosul have already started, even as we speak, Dunford said, adding the efforts included both conventional military strikes and the use of cyber warfare.

It is not something that will happen in the deep, deep future, he added.

U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that the U.S.-led coalitions air campaign targeted Islamic State positions in Mosul 127 times during the past month, making it more difficult for supplies and reinforcements to get into the city.

Militants fleeing

That pressure is having an effect, CENTCOM spokesman Colonel Pat Ryder told reporters. Weve had reports of militants fleeing the city. Over time, coalition operations and Iraqi ground forces "have pushed back ISILs defense," he said, using an acronym for Islamic State.

The United States is promising Iraqi forces more help for a final assault on the city.

We expect it to be like Ramadi in the sense that the Iraqi security forces under the control of the government of Iraq, Prime Minister [Haider al-] Abadi, will be in the lead, but we will be enabling them, Carter said.

Will we do more to enable them as they go north? Yes, we fully expect to do that," he said.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir is excited about the socio-economic and bilateral prospects for his country after the world's newest nation officially became a member of the East African Community (EAC) on Wednesday.

South Sudan was voted into the economic bloc during a summit of regional heads of state in Arusha, Tanzania.

"The president is jubilant, said presidential spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny. He is very happy that South Sudan has made it finally to the community of East Africa.  We don't have restrictions of movement and services between the East African Community [members] and South Sudan. So it is good that South Sudan has been admitted now officially."

South Sudan looks forward to strong bilateral relations with neighboring countries, Ateny says, as well as the enormous market that would be available for cross border businesses  which he says would be beneficial for citizens in the region.

Other member countries are Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.

Critics skeptical of benefits

Some South Sudanese say it remains to be seen how the anticipated transitional unity government will take advantage of the country's new status as a member of the EAC. Kiir is expected to form a government with his rival, Riek Machar, following an agreement to end the country's civil war.

But Ateny expressed optimism about the prospects for trade and strong multilateral relations that would help to improve the life of South Sundanese.

"It's a very big market now so we are happy we would all be cooperating on trade, on even defense, on [combating] crimes, Ateny said. So there are a number of benefits that can come."

Critics say it is unlikely South Sudan can benefit from the market the EAC provides. They contend that the country's economy is largely dependent on oil and has yet to be expanded to other promising sectors, including agriculture. The country is currently in an economic crunch due to the sharp drop in the price of fuel.

But "South Sudan with its population of 12 million people, if it joins the market of more than 150 million, it can have more benefit than the negative," Ateny said.

South Sudan applied for EAC membership soon after gaining independence from neighboring Sudan in 2011.
North Korea fired several short-range projectiles into the sea off its east coast, Seoul said Thursday, hours after the U.N. Security Council adopted tough new sanctions against Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

South Korea's defense ministry said it was still trying to determine the number and nature of the projectiles, which it said were fired into the Sea of Japan at 10 a.m. local time (1:00 UTC).

The move could be a response to the Security Council's unanimous approval Wednesday of sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear and long-range rocket launch.

Watch: U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power speaking at the U.N. Security Council.

North Korea is the only country in the entire world that has conducted a nuclear test in the 21st century. In fact, it has conducted not one nuclear test, but four, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told the council after the vote.

She said North Korea has consistently focused on its nuclear and ballistic missile programs instead of the basic needs of its people. Virtually all of its resources are channeled into the relentless and reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons, Power said.

At the White House, President Barack Obama welcomed the U.N. action.



"Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people," Obama said in a statement.

Robust measures

The U.N. resolution  which had more than 50 co-sponsors  has several unprecedented measures. One is the mandatory inspection of all cargo going in and out of the community nation. There is also a total arms embargo -- including both conventional and other weapons -- and restrictions on the sale of coal from North Korea, as well as other minerals, including gold, iron, iron ore and titanium.

A provision in an earlier draft of the text to ban the sale or supply to North Korea of aviation fuel  which is also used to power rockets  was revised in the final resolution to include an exception for civilian passenger aircraft flying to and from North Korea.

Banking sanctions have also been tightened, as well as bans on the sale of luxury goods to North Korea. In addition, travel bans and asset freezes have been imposed on 16 new individuals.

Firm response

Chinese envoy Liu Jieyi expressed Beijings anger at North Koreas January nuclear test and February rocket launch, saying his government has expressed its explicit opposition to these actions.

This resolution demonstrates the seriousness of the international community in opposing the further development of DPRK nuclear and missile capacities, Ambassador Liu said. He urged a resumption of dialogue to restart stalled six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyangs nuclear program through diplomatic negotiations. China is North Korea's most important ally.

Russia had delayed a planned Tuesday vote on the resolution for 24 hours while it pressed for some changes to the text. One change was the removal of a North Korean mining executive operating in Russia from a list of individuals designated for asset freezes and travel bans.

Both the Russian and Chinese envoys expressed concern about U.S. and South Korean consultations about the possible deployment of the U.S.-made THAAD anti-missile system, saying Pyongyangs behavior should not be used as a justification to increase military capabilities in the region.

South Koreas envoy, Oh Joon, was allowed to address the council. He spoke directly to North Korea, saying it does not need such sophisticated weapons systems and that perceived international threats against it are  a figment of your imagination. He urged Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and join the international community to live in peace and security.

No North Korean diplomat spoke at the session nor was seen around the council during the meeting.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement welcoming the resolution. He urged North Korea to abide by the resolution and called on all nations to ensure its implementation. Ban also renewed his call for North Korea to genuinely improve human rights, saying it is a necessary basis for long-term security and stability.
The United States and European Union are keeping up pressure on Thailand to continue with reforms in its fishing industry to resolve issues such as slave labor and the exploitation of seafood plant workers. The measures by the Thai Government are seen by analysts as key steps in a bid to boost Thailands rating in the U.S.s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report due later this year.

The worlds third largest seafood exporter, has faced intense pressure to reform work practices in the multimillion-dollar seafood export industry, which is threatened by sanctions in markets such as the European Union and United States.

The measures have had some effect and a European Union delegation recently granted Thailand a six month reprieve from sanctions to further solve the problems of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

U.S. closes loophole

U.S. President Barack Obama recently signed legislation banning all U.S. imports of products made or caught by slave labor, closing a legal loophole in existence since 1930, potentially affecting U.S. market access for Thai seafood.

Over the past two years, investigations and reporting of abuses in the seafood industry triggered a raft of measures by the Thai military government to curb abuses, ranging from legislation, to crackdowns on fishing vessels and seafood processing plants employing migrant labor.

In the southern seaside province of Phangna, Myanmar national Htoo Chit, president of a foundation assisting migrant worker seafarers, believes there has been progress in addressing many of the issues faced by the industry.

Ive always said compared to the previous time, the current government is the most active and most interested [in] working for these human rights issue[s] and [human] trafficking, especially in the seafood industry. They try to collaborate with NGOs [on-government organizations] like us. Since last year, the Thai government has tried to resolve these problems, he said.

Major seafood industry exporters, including Thai Union Frozen Products, with annual sales of $3.5 billion, were forced to cut ties with suppliers linked to slave labor.



Slave labor, trafficking



Australian-Japanese seafood exporter, Kingfisher Holdings, in a statement said it has taken steps to tighten policies and practices after reports linked some of its suppliers to using illegal labor to its products. The measures include mandatory certification for all raw material supplies from the sea.

Panitan Wattanayagorn, an advisor to the Thai Deputy Prime Minister, Prawit Wongsuwan, who held talks with the European Union delegation, said the Thai Government is committed to implementing policies and laws affecting the seafood industry.

There is a policy of zero tolerance in these areas. Trafficking is a very complicated issue, it involves many agencies, but the government is committed and very serious about pursuing to implement new measures, in upgrading the measures, in upgrading the law on fishery problems and on trafficking issues, he stated.

But others, including several non-government organizations (NGOs), remain cautious amid concerns over policy transparency with law enforcement often considered an area of weakness.

Andy Hall, a migration researcher and labor activist, said while some progress has been made in addressing the issues, including migrant worker registration, more needs to be done.

Certainly there seems to have been a lot of changes. But whether thats led to some kind of reduction in exploitation is very difficult to say. I mean we see the policies that are coming out from the government that are really not making much sense in terms of having a long term migration policy that promotes human security," Hall said. "So were still very skeptical that there has been significant improvements.

Government advisor Panitan also agrees there is still quite some way to go to address the labor issues in the seafood industry.

But analysts say Thailands challenge is to be upgraded on the U.S.s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) ratings after remaining on the reports lowest level of Tier 3 last year.

Panitan believes Thailand has taken sufficient steps to be upgraded to Tier 2 and failure to achieve the goal would, he says, send the wrong signal given the policy changes.

A U.S. TIP assessment of Thailands labor and trafficking measures is due to be completed by the end March, with the U.S. expected to release its worldwide assessment report on human trafficking by mid-year.
The release of two prominent Turkish journalists following a ruling by Turkey's top court that their rights had been violated is a "clear defeat" for

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of them said on Wednesday.

Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, and his colleague Erdem Gul were freed last Friday after the constitutional court ruled their detention was "unlawful" and violated their individual freedom and safety.

The two journalists, who still face trial and potential life sentences, were arrested in November and charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security.

Their detention has deepened concerns about media freedom in Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union. Erdogan says the case is not about press freedom but about espionage and says he does not respect the court ruling.

Cumhuriyet published photos, videos and a report last year that it said showed intelligence officials trucking arms to Syria in 2014.

"Erdogan is having trouble accepting the ruling because this was a clear defeat for him. We have a president who is not accustomed to defeat," Dundar said at a news conference.

Dundar also said he would defy an order to surrender his passport and would attempt to travel overseas.

The court's decision, which affirmed Dundar and Gul were acting as journalists, should pave the way for an acquittal at a first hearing on March 25, Dundar said, but added it was unclear how the judiciary would now act after Erdogan's intervention.

Dirty bargaining

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a close ally of Erdogan, echoed the president's remarks on the case on Wednesday, saying the court ruling should not affect the journalists' trial.

"It is wrong for the constitutional court to see itself as the primary court and intervene in the whole judicial process," Davutoglu told a news conference, adding that the case was about revealing state secrets and espionage.

Advocates of free speech criticized the government's stance.

"The words Mr. Erdogan used... is setting up a climate of intimidation and even threats against journalists. What he does is really dangerous," said Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders.

Dundar chided the EU for failing to press Turkey over basic rights, saying Brussels was too focused on securing Ankara's cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe.

"While we were in prison, there was bargaining going on over money for refugees. We see this as dirty bargaining to keep refugees off European territory," he said.

"It appears Europe is willing to concede its long-term principles for short-term gains."
A turtle drags itself along a white sandy beach, splashes through the gentle warm Indian Ocean and then vanishes with a plop, becoming one of 13,750 turtle success stories on a stretch of Kenyan coastline facing pressure from developers.



Kenya is striving to strike a balance between developing its 330 miles (530 kilometers) of coastline for a billion-dollar tourism industry that employs a half-million people and preserving the environment that attracts those visitors. As the East African nation does so, some experts say that turtles are key, because they are so picky when it comes to laying eggs that if the right environment is maintained for them, then things are going well.



Kenya's record is mixed in protecting endangered turtles, but is going pretty well, a top wildlife official says.



One of several sore spots for conservationists and locals  and not least of all, the turtles  is a hotel of former Renault F1 tycoon Flavio Briatore, 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of here.



The dispute centers around Briatore's Billionaire Resort on Malindi beach and its 100-meter concrete seawall to protect the property and guests from the elements.



Malindi resident David Kirk said the resort has been an "absolute environmental disaster,'' in which forests full of nesting birds were destroyed and soil erosion because of the seawall had stopped turtles from coming ashore to lay eggs.



Resort general manager Stephanie Ravessoud said the seawall was built following all government requirements and respects the environment.



"Erosion has been there for decades. Everybody knows that sand in our area is being washed away long before the building of our wall,'' she said.



Marine biologist Casper Van de Geer said turtles need quiet, sandy beaches to lay eggs and large tourist resorts or housing developments disturb that process.



"Light and noise scare them off,'' he said. "They lay their eggs above the high water mark. The nest has to be warm and above the water, so erosion affects that.''



Local Ocean Trust runs a rehabilitation center in Watamu that Van de Geer manages where sick or injured turtles are nursed back to health. The group also compensates local fishermen for turtles caught in their nets or found sick or injured.



"A big adult turtle can fetch up to $500 on the black market,'' Van de Geer said. "Fisherman earn about $100 a month, in a good month. So one turtle is almost half a year of work



"Turtle conservation is crucial because it also protects the habitat for thousands of other species, including sharks, dolphins and whales,'' Van de Geer said. "By protecting turtles you are protecting beaches, mangroves, open ocean, reefs and sea grass, which is virtually every ecosystem in the tropical ocean.''



Dr. Richard Leakey, chairman of the governmental Kenya Wildlife Service, said that while tourism and humans have invariably affected the environment, locally run projects on Kenya's coast have sustained endangered turtle population over the past decade.



"The situation these days is much better,'' Leakey said. "We still have problems with turtles getting stuck in trawler nets but we've seen very positive signs regarding turtle numbers.''



The Local Ocean Trust has rescued and sent back to the ocean turtles 13,750 times over the past 20 years of working in Watamu, according to Van de Geer. A turtle tagged in Watamu was later found in the Chagos archipelago 2,300 miles(3,700 kilometers) away, he said.



"From Mozambique, to Australia, to India and Thailand, we all have a stake in this,'' he said. "The beach here has an impact on the entire ocean, that's the weird and amazing thing about turtles.''



Of species found in Kenya, the Hawksbill turtle is critically endangered and the Green turtle is endangered while the Leatherback, Olive Ridley and Loggerhead turtles are vulnerable to becoming extinct, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.



"Despite our efforts, man remains the turtle's most serious enemy,'' Van de Geer said.
Uganda is headed for a Supreme Court battle over the results of the February 18 presidential poll as tensions there continue to climb.



Amama Mbabazi's lawyers managed to submit their petition to the Supreme Court Tuesday, just minutes before the deadline. The petition lays out 28 alleged irregularities including bribery, late arrival of voting materials, inconsistencies with voting cards and election papers the opposition says were pre-checked and stuffed into boxes.



Mbabazi finished a distant third in the February 18 poll. Results showed President Yoweri Museveni winning a fifth term in office with 60 percent of the vote.



Second place finisher Kizza Besigye was not able to get a petition to the courts by the deadline. His camp says repeated arrests and detention by security forces made it impossible for Besigye to file a challenge.



Besigye, Museveni's main challenger for the past 15 years, previously challenged election results in 2001 and 2006.

His party says they will speak to Mbabazi's camp about possibly joining Mbabazi's petition. But Robert Kirunda, a legal expert in Kampala, said that's unlikely to happen.



I don't think though that he will because I think there have been two principal issues with him going to court. In the first place after 2006, he decided he'd never go back to 'that court' as he called it. But also because of the handcuffs. I've spoken to his lawyers and they've told me man, the challenges are real. In terms of what he can and cannot do. And because of those challenges he figured, so what, he said.



However, if just one count of Mbabazi's petition is ruled in favor, the election can be nullified. This could lead to another election within 30 days. The Supreme Court could also name another winner.

Crackdown on journalists



Meanwhile, journalists in Uganda are coming under increasing pressure. Twice this week, local television stations have done live broadcasts of police loading journalists into cars and taking them away.



Robert Ssempala, with the Human Rights Network for Journalism Uganda, said this trend began before the vote.



Since the campaign season started, we've recorded now over 80 incidents, violations and abuses of media rights and freedoms. This has happened most at the hands of security agents, more especially the police which now works hand in hand with the army. Most of the victims have been journalists covering opposition related activities.... Lately we've now seen a more systematic and cruel crackdown on the journalists especially those covering Besigye in Kasangati. Now we have a total of 17 journalists victimized in about four or five days, he said.



Police say they are arresting people they deem to be disturbing the peace or inciting violence. However, with most journalists being let go the same day, and most of them without charge, many feel these roundups are a tactic of intimidation.



The Supreme Court is expected to hear Mbabazis petition next week. The court will have 30 days to rule.
The lord mayor of Ugandas capital, Kampala, says his re-election sends a strong message to President Yoweri Museveni that the will of the people is supreme, and he warned that the president and his ruling National Resistance Movement should stop frustrating residents of the city who want their needs and aspirations met.

The electoral commission declared Erias Lukwago re-elected with 82 percent of the total votes cast, while his main challenger, Daniel Kazibwe of the NRM, came in a distant second with about 20 percent.

Lukwagos first term was not without drama following his not-so-friendly relations with Jennifer Musisi, the executive director of the Kampala City Council Authority.

This led to Lukwagos impeachment after members of the KCCA accused him of abuse of office, misconduct and incompetence. A court later declared his impeachment illegal, although another court supported his removal from office. He was subsequently barred from entering his office in City Hall following his controversial impeachment.

During campaigns ahead of the Feb. 18 general election, Museveni said he supported Lukwagos impeachment. Local media quoted Museveni as saying he forced Lukwago out of office.

I chased Lukwago. He had failed. I used force to chase him. Rats had become a problem, rats would even eat roads. That Kafumbe-Mukasa road, I would send money but the road would not be constructed. I got Musisi like a drug to kill the rats in Kampala, but the drug might be very tough, Museveni said.

Lukwago says his second-term focus will be not to compromise on accountability and corruption, adding that Kampala residents didnt vote for him to fight personal wars.

[The election] sends a very powerful message to President Museveni and his [team] that the will of the people is supreme.  For the last five years he has refused to recognize that the people of Kampala chose Lukwago as their Lord Mayor, and he had made it difficult for me to receive the instruments of power, so that I can deliver on the promises I made to the people of Kampala, said Lukwago.

Lukwago expressed concern about the ongoing tensions in the city following the just-ended presidential and parliamentary elections in which there was a heavy deployment of police and security operatives, particularly in Kampala and its suburbs. Lukwago says the electoral commission failed to administer a credible general election, despite the insistence by the chairman of the electoral body that the polls were transparent, free and fair.

Many Ugandans are disenchanted, they are disillusioned, it was not a free and fair election. It was just a mockery of democracy. The mood now is somber, people are being suppressed and you will find police and other security agencies are roaming the streets. All of us, the political actors, are being kept under 24-hour surveillance, and the main opposition candidate Dr. Kizza Besigye is being kept under house arrest, Lukwago said.

But supporters of NRM say Lukwago, Besigye and other opposition partisans are to blame for the tense situation in the country by creating instability. They accuse the opposition parties of refusing to accept the outcome of the presidential vote, which Museveni won.

The inspector general of police, Kale Kayihura, blames Besigye for the opposition leaders frequent arrest following the conclusion of the presidential vote. Local media quoted Kayihura as saying, The responsibility for the actions that police [have] taken involving  Besigye during, and after, the campaigns lies squarely on his shoulders and that of his unruly and [ill-disciplined] supporters.

Lukwago disagreed with the assessment of the IGP.

That is a very unfortunate statement to come from the IGP because he knows for sure that Dr. Kizza Besigye and I, other political actors in the opposition, we are not at all responsible for the situation pertaining in the country right now. There is nothing they can point to, to say this is what Dr. Besigye is trying to do of inciting violence because as at now they have not attempted to charge Dr. Besigye or any other opposition leader with any offense, Lukwago said.
Foster a love of reading,



Create library repeat customers, and



Encourage life-long learning



For 10 years, Ive volunteered and also worked professionally in libraries.My ambition for librarianship is to:
The U.N. Security Council has approved tough new sanctions against North Korea following its latest nuclear test and long-range missile launch.

U.S. President Barack Obama welcomed the U.N. action. "Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people," he said.

Wednesday's vote came as a new study by the Security Council details how North Korea has effectively evaded international sanctions in the last decade.

The report, written by a U.N. panel that oversees sanctions violations, acknowledges that the four rounds of increasingly stronger U.N. measures imposed on North Korea since 2006 have failed to persuade Kim Jong Un's government to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missiles program.

Given North Koreas recent nuclear test and satellite launch, and its insistence that its nuclear program is needed to deter the U.S. threat, the report raises "serious questions about the efficacy of the current United Nations sanctions regime."

The U.N. report documents a number of cases where North Korea has evaded sanctions. It reveals how the secretive state continues to use the international financial system, airlines and container shipping routes to trade in prohibited items.

Lack of cooperation

A 2006 U.N. resolution requires member states to report all inspections of North Korean cargo suspected of carrying arms or other products that have military purposes, even if no violation is found. But in the last 10 years, only one member has filed a report.

Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East, the report notes, continue to sell North Korea banned military hardware such as unmanned aerial vehicle components and radar systems.

Myanmar's government was less than cooperative with the U.N. panel when contacted about the possible involvement of Myanmar-based entity Soe Min Htike in attempts to ship aluminum alloy rods to North Korea. The aluminum rods, which can be used to make nuclear centrifuges, were seized in Japan while in transit in 2012.

Front companies

The Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID) was designated in April 2009 as a main exporter of North Korean goods and equipment relating to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons.

But KOMID has been able to circumvent sanctions on its operations by using a different name and working though the Hong Kong shipping company Leader International.

The China-based Dalian Union International Trading knowingly engaged in trade prohibited under U.N. sanctions by working through a bank account held by the Sunny International Development Co., registered in Hong Kong.

"They adopted concealment techniques such as the use of foreign intermediaries, front company networks and incomplete documentation," said the U.N. report.

In 2015, Britain informed the panel about an attempt by North Korea to buy miniaturized optical equipment for drones through intermediaries based in China and registered in Hong Kong.

Richard Wang (Dewen Wang in Chinese), director of HK Conie Technology, was listed on the export license application for the drone parts.

The U.N. panel identified a trade relationship between HK Conie and a North Korean entity called Korean Pioneer Technology Co. Ltd., which reportedly used the alias Korea 21 Trading Co.

Misleading documentation

In 2013, a member state seized suspected cargo on its way from Beijing to Cairo.

Documentation listed a North Korean company, Ryongsong Trading Co. Ltd. as the shipper and an Egyptian company, MODA Authority International Optronic, as the consignee.

The cargo was labeled as "machine spare parts," including relays, "coils," connectors and voltage circuit breakers commonly used in commercial fishing ships.

Upon closer inspection the U.N. Panel found these items were spare parts used in Scud-B missile systems.

Examining the wreckage

In 2014, the U.N. panel examined a North Korean drone that crashed on a South Korean border island and concluded it was likely made by one of two Chinese companies.

Manufacturers in the Czech Republic and Canada also make components used in the Chinese made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

An examination of the debris of a North Korean Unha-3 rocket launched in 2012 revealed the involvement of a Taipei-based company, the Royal Team Corporation (RTC).

The report explained complicated payment schemes used to get around sanctions.

The panel found that North Korea tried to hide its illicit dealing with RTC by sending payments through a third party company that it ostensibly paid to host a trade show.

Cautionary tale

The report reveals North Korean military ties with Uganda, Eritrea and Vietnam. It notes the use of armored limousines from Europe in military parades, the transfer of gold and luxury goods from Israel and Ghana, the ongoing involvement of banned North Korean agents from the Reconnaissance General Bureau and North Korean government ties to the Ocean Maritime Management Co. Ltd.

The new U.N. Security Council sanctions approved Wednesday are intended to prevent future violations by making inspections mandatory, tightening restrictions and increasing financial oversight.

But the detailed extent of past evasions also illustrates the challenge ahead to implement sanctions against North Korea in many countries, including China, where enforcement has been lax.

The new sanctions

New U.N. sanctions aim to cut off the trade and funding of North Koreas nuclear program and its military and to target leaders and officials directly involved in illicit activities. These include:

*A total arms embargo enforced through mandatory inspection of all cargo, even food transiting into or out of North Korea via land, sea or air.

*Requiring member states to expel North Korean diplomats, companies and representatives involved in aiding or funding the banned nuclear and missile programs.

*Banning imports of highly refined aviation fuel used for both civilian planes and rockets, with no exemption for civil aviation.

*Limiting or banning exports of North Korean coal, iron, gold, titanium and rare earth minerals.

*Requiring states to close North Korean bank accounts and prohibiting engagement with the countrys banks.

*Expanding ban on luxury items for import into North Korea, prohibiting expensive watches, personal watercraft and snowmobiles valued over $2,000.
U.S. Special Operations forces have captured a suspected Islamic State operative in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.

The captive is the first known detainee since a U.S. expeditionary targeting force began conducting operations in Iraq and Syria. The force was sent to carry out raids for gathering intelligence and targeting high-ranking IS leaders.

Officials say Americans are interrogating the detainee, who is expected to be turned over to Iraqi officials in the coming days.

"Any detention would be short-term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities," Col. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command that oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, told reporters. He would not elaborate further.

So far, the raids of the U.S. expeditionary targeting force have been shrouded in secrecy in order to protect future missions.



"Raids beget follow-on operations," a defense official told VOA. As you learn something from one, you can get follow-ons that lead to another.

Aha moment

The targeting force in Iraq was formed after a successful raid last year in which a U.S. Delta force crossed into Syria and killed IS commander Abu Sayyaf. The commander's wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured during the raid.

Umm Sayyaf's interrogation provided the U.S. with valuable information about IS leadership organization, according to officials. It also provided information about Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old American aid worker whom the Sayyafs allegedly held prisoner in their home.

Umm Sayyaf eventually was turned over to Iraqi authorities.

A defense official told VOA the Abu Sayyaf raid led to an "aha moment" for the Pentagon.

"There was this recognition afterward that leaving a pile of smoking rubble might not always be the best way to go. If you're willing to take a little risk and raid, then you can get information that is very valuable," the official said.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department charged Umm Sayyaf for her alleged role in Kayla Mueller's death in February 2015.

U.S. officials say Mueller was subjected to repeated sexual abuse by IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during her captivity.
The United States has unilaterally widened sanctions against North Korea, a move that complements a U.N. vote to impose additional penalties on Pyongyang for illicit nuclear and weapons proliferation efforts.



The State and Treasury Departments announced sanctions against five individuals and 12 organizations on Wednesday.



Among those targeted are North Koreas Ministry of Atomic Energy Industry and the National Defense Commission.

The U.S. sanctions freeze any U.S. assets held by the entities and individuals and prohibit American organizations from doing business with them.

The coordinated U.N. and U.S. effort send a clear message, said Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew.



The global community will not tolerate North Koreas illicit nuclear and ballistic missile activities, he said, and there will be serious consequences until it modifies its reckless behavior, Lew said.



The action comes after North Korea conducted what it said was a nuclear test in January and a February rocket launch.
A senior U.S. official said the agreements on the cessation of hostilities in Syria and the delivery of humanitarian aid are broadly holding, making him optimistic that the planned resumption of political negotiations will go forward.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the massive human rights violations in Syria deplorable. He told journalists in Geneva the United States strongly supports efforts at the U.N. Human Rights Council to try to bring the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice.

Blinken said the U.S. is working with Russia and other countries on a parallel political track to bring Syrias five-year civil war to an end. He said progress is being made to monitor and verify the warring parties are living up to the cease-fire agreement.

He said monitors are seeing a reduction of violence and a reduction in the number of attacks. He said progress is being made to assist many thousands of Syrians who have gone without food, medicine and other relief for months.

Now we have to broaden out to even harder to reach populations that are besieged and make sure assistance is getting to them," he said. "All of this can set the foundation for renewed negotiations toward a political transition, which is the only answer to get to a Syria that is free of civil war, free of brutality, free of oppression.

Blinken also criticized North Korea for saying it would boycott any session that examines its record. He called North Koreas refusal to confront the realities of the widespread, systematic abuse to which its people is subject delusional.

This is the only nation in the world to test a nuclear weapon in the 21st century, a country determined to advance its U.N. prohibitive programs at the expense of the welfare of its own people," he said. "... It is a rogue state among rogue states and the people of North Korea deserve better.

North Korea accuses the United States of being a racist country where widespread gun-related violence claims more than 13,000 lives every year.



Speaking to VOA, Blinken said unlike North Korea, when the United States has a problem, it is covered in the media, widely debated and resolved.
President Barack Obama has extended targeted sanctions imposed on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his inner circle saying the political situation has not improved in the country since the imposition of restrictive measures a couple of years ago.

In a statement, Obama said Wednesday the extension of an executive order declared by former U.S president George Bush is designed to protect United States interests and promote democracy.

The White House said Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within 90 days prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the president publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date.

In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice stating that the national emergency originally declared in Executive Order 13288 of March 6, 2003, and renewed every year since then, is to continue in effect beyond March 6, 2016.

The threat constituted by the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe's democratic processes or institutions, contributing to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law, to politically motivated violence and intimidation, and to political and economic instability in the southern African region, has not been resolved.

Obama said, "These actions and policies continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States. For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue this national emergency and to maintain in force the sanctions to respond to this threat.

Former U.S. president Bush declared a national emergency on Zimbabwe, under Executive Order 13288 of 2003, accusing the country of undermining democratic practices.
A Zimbabwean based in South Africa is curving a niche in the film industry and has just made a big leap into the lucrative business after directing a documentary that will be premiered this month in New York, USA.

Davison Mudzingwa of Mvura Ya Afrika Productions directed Lost Tongue, a documentary that explores the revival of the ancient and endangered Nluu language of the Khomani San people in the Kalahari Desert.

The documentary captures the journey of a Khomani San woman, Helena Steenkamp, who is determined to restore and revive her disappearing language and culture.

Mudzingwa sad the documentary will be premiered as a surprise package at the Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York.

In the U.S from the 14th to the 21st there is a film festival called Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York and our film, we are fortunate to have been selected, to screen at the prestigious festival and this film is called Lost Tongue. It will be screened on the 17th of March in New York.

He said the film is based on Steenkamp, who is seeking to restore and revive her language and culture. We followed her for about three years filming her efforts to revive or to retain her language which is called Nluu. It is one of the most ancient languages in the world and for those that have done research about it they say its about 25,000 years old.

So, the problem with this language is that only three elders, and the youngest of these elders is 80 years old, can speak the language fluently. Helenas efforts have been to ensure that the language does not die  It doesnt disappear with these elders who are still surviving.

He said when they followed her for three years other thematic areas emerged like culture and preservation of identity. All these issues had to be answered in the documentary. They became universal themes because a lot of countries are facing similar problems.

If you check in different countries in the SADC (Southern African Development Community) in Zimbabwe we have also have the San people in Tsholotsho and we also the Tonga people in Binga they are also facing the same problem of a language that is disappearing.

He noted that a language does not disappear on its own it goes with the values, it goes with the culture and it goes with the identity.

Mudzingwa said the main objective of the documentary is to protect these important norms.
Zimbabwean lawmakers Wednesday told an International Monetary Fund team visiting the country to assess the final phase of the Staff Monitored Program that the IMF is taking too long to normalize relations with Zimbabwe.

The parliamentarians said the country would be soon heading for elections to choose another government without any meaningful action from the multilateral institution. But the head of the IMF believes that Zimbabwe should first pay its huge debts before the IMF normalizes relations with the southern African nation.

Frustrated lawmakers from parliaments Budget and Finance Committee, told the IMF team after it had briefed them on their mission that the Staff Monitored Program, which started in 2013 during the inclusive government era is taking too long and if nothing is done now, the country would start preparing for the next elections without any meaningful progress in normalizing relations with Zimbabwe.

Committee chairman, David Chapfika of Zanu PF there has been extensions to the program without any tangible benefits. Can you tell us exactly whether on this one there is going to be any value derived from this or its something that we should forget about.

Another lawmaker, Samson Mukanduri of Zanu PF, asked the IMF team to be flexible so that Zimbabwe can resume accessing financial assistance from the Bretton Woods institutions and other international organizations.

We are not saying the Fund should pump money into Zimbabwe, you are not all that generous, we know you have conditions.

But Domenica Fanizza said while Zimbabwe had made some progress in the Staff Monitored Program and had submitted its debt payment plan to the IMF in Lima, Peru last October, the organization cannot do anything unless Zimbabwe pays its debt.

You have to pay back the arrears  Until Zimbabwe has paid back the arrears to the Fund to the World Bank and the African Development Bank, we cannot act.

He added that it was also critical for Zimbabwe to build consensus from the international creditors who are key in the decisions of the IMF board. He said while the IMF mission can present a good report on Zimbabwe, nothing positive would come out if relations were not good with international creditors.

It will be critical and essential to make sure that you have the support of the stakeholders. Otherwise even if the Fund staff says well look you have any ambitious program, we are happy, the board will not accept it.

He said indications are that some the issues worrying international creditors were not related to debt but also to the land reform as spelt in the constitution. Fanizza said the sooner the country sorted this the better.

Former treasury chief economist, Masimba Manyanya, told Studio 7 the lawmakers frustrations were understandable.

He said while Zimbabwes pace meeting some Staff Monitored Program targets is been commendable though nothing is noticeable on the ground hence the frustrations by lawmakers and ordinary people.

He said if anything, things could get worse because what is simply happening now is restructuring the economy to prepare it to receive investment in future.

But both Manyanya and Fanizza agreed that there is no other way for Zimbabwe except the root that the country has taken.

An IMF team is in Zimbabwe for two weeks to assess the Staff Monitored Program and make further consultations and will present its report to the IMF board meeting in May.
Country

Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of Burkina Faso Burundi, Republic of Cambodia, Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Canada Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cuba, Republic of Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Dominican Republic Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Haiti, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Jamaica Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Mexico, United Mexican States Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu US Virgin Islands Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland United States Minor Outlying Islands United States of America Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
Activity at the volcano has been increasing. During the past days, explosions have become frequent, with intervals of only few hours. The largest on Wednesday evening at 20:50 local time showered almost the cone with incandescent ejecta and produced ash plumes up to 1 km tall. Unconfirmed reports suggest that some of the eruptions also have produced small pyroclastic flows. ...
Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Playing Christopher Darden on FXs The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story took Sterling K. Brown to painful, unexpected places. He stood for months in the shoes of a man branded an Uncle Tom just for doing his job. In Tuesday nights episode, we saw his most pivotal scene yet: Dardens famous N-word courtroom argument, which he lost miserably to Johnnie Cochran. The actor ultimately got the job because he was able to portray Dardens quiet rage and frustration. A lot of great actors cant not be charismatic; they cant not be the star, explained executive producer Nina Jacobson. There was a point where I went to go look at Sterlings other work, and I actually couldnt believe it was the same person. He had transformed himself so much for his audition and somehow made himself less imposing. Vulture spoke to Brown about his unconditional respect and empathy for Darden, the ugly truths he has learned about the justice system, and a recent racially charged incident that left him feeling dejected.

The role of Chris Darden might be the toughest one because he is such a conflicted man. He was caught between what his community was telling him versus what he felt in his heart regarding the case. How did you go about personifying that inner conflict?

First things first: I read Jeffrey Toobins book, The People v. O.J. Simpson: The Run of His Life. And thats sort of an overview on which our show is based. And then I was able to get a hand on Christopher Dardens book, In Contempt, which wasnt easy to find. It wasnt in circulation. But a friend of mine who knew I had just recently booked the role was at her moms house, and her mom had the book and graciously passed it along to me so I could highlight it until my heart was content.

Reading his book was really interesting, especially in tandem with Toobins book, because you have one persons perspective of how they see it from the outside and then your own perspective of how you see yourself in the same set of circumstances. Theres this idea out there that he was inept or not good at his job. But that wasnt something I was working with. I thought he was very good at his job, and he did the best job he could, given the circumstances. He was very cognizant that the idea of a black prosecutor prosecuting a black defendant would not necessarily be something that would be popular amongst African-Americans. He did feel, however, that if he was able to present the evidence to his people in the reasonable way in which it was presented to him, they couldnt help but reach the same conclusion he did. He was just trying to do his job in prosecuting a man who he thought was guilty of a double homicide. But the excommunication he underwent in terms of being called an Uncle Tom and a sellout, I think it hurt him deeply.

Was it difficult not to take on some of those feelings yourself?

I was watching a scene the other day in the show where Johnnie Cochran was sort of embraced by the black church. And, you know, theyre praying for him and for his success in the O.J. Simpson trial. And to see that stark contrast with Darden being a raisin in the sun, you know? An island to himself. It was very, very interesting to bear witness to that because it was a very lonely road for him to tow. Because hes the only black prosecutor working on that case at the time, so its not like he had somebody to turn to and be like, Hey, I cant believe what were going through here. This is tough. So more than me feeling bogged down, my empathy for him and what he had to endure was augmented by having gone through this process.

I know youve tried to reach him and he didnt respond, right?

Thats right. Im curious to see what happens. Ive had a couple people reach out to me on Twitter, a former associate of his in law took a picture of herself and said, Sterling K. Brown, Im here with your doppelganger. Your twin! #ChristopherDarden. And shes taken an actual picture with Darden recently! And I said, Please tell him I said hello. And then his daughter actually tweeted me and said, You look a lot like my dad. And this was his daughter who was 16 years old at the time of the trial. She actually wrote a blog talking about her experience of the show and what it was like to live through that, live through her father getting death threats and her family being threatened as well. And then seeing us portray it. So I know that there are people that are close to him who have been watching. As to whether or not that means hes watching himself, Im not sure. But I hope he sees something that he can admire in the portrayal that rings true for him. And maybe one day well get a chance to sit down and break bread.

Did working on the show give you a different perspective on the trial?

Well, Cochran was talking about trials not being about evidence, trials being about narratives and who tells the better story. Thats something that really struck me because information can be told in a multitude of different ways and evoke completely different responses. The prosecution had what they thought was an insurmountable amount of evidence: DNA, blood, a history of violence towards the victim by the defendant. And Cochran was able to turn this from a double homicide case to a case about the indictment of the Los Angeles police department. I remember Chris Darden talking on Charlie Rose about how truth has very little to do with receiving justice in the criminal-justice system and how he felt the system had let down the victims. If Rodney King had not been two years before, if it had been another part of the country, it couldve been a completely different outcome. That was the world in which we were living in at the time and the black population of Los Angeles was all too willing to find a reason to punish the Los Angeles police department. This is a case of the right message with the wrong messenger.

Some of your most poignant scenes are with Courtney B. Vance (who plays Cochran). Theyre a little shocking sometimes in the way Johnnie responds to Chris. Mr. Darden has talked about how hard it was to deliver the N-word argument in court. How did you feel filming that scene?

That scene was one of the scenes I auditioned with. Gosh, its such a fascinating thing because I agree with what his sentiment at the time was, like how people might respond to the N-word. I think he was ultimately right. And then Johnnie retorted and it was so shocking on so many levels because we set it up as though it was a mentor-mentee relationship. And Johnnie Cochran was a very prominent lawyer in Los Angeles at the time. A lot of black lawyers looked up to him. So, to be accustomed to being on the same team with your mentor and now having to joust against him, I think was possibly intimidating for Mr. Darden. The way that Johnnie was able to spin that whole incident and make it look as if Darden was an embarrassment to his people frustrated him deeply. And Ill also say this: Playing that scene, I was so angry! Like theres very little acting I had to do because it was just, How dare he!

When Chris is making his arguments, it all makes perfect sense. But then Johnnie gets up and it makes sense what hes saying, too. And youre just left with this feeling that the one who was more forceful and charismatic is going to win.

Thats exactly it! When I was watching the scene, I was noticing the way in which John Singleton edited it together and it really made Mr. Darden seem as if he wasnt as polished as I thought he was going to come across when we were shooting it. And then Johnnie was just so slick and so passionate and so eloquent. And it was just like, ugh! Everything I tried to do with such earnestness just got obliterated. And I felt for myself. I felt for myself! I was like, What is going on here? I know I didnt do what hes saying I just did! And now because he said it, people are going to take it as gospel.

But it really went down like that in real life, I think.

Yeah. It was shortly after the time that the poll was out, you know? Seventy-six percent of African-Americans thought Christopher Darden wasnt doing a good job. That was the straw that broke the camels back. He talks about it in In Contempt. He says, you know, the public animosity that played out between him and Cochran was one of his great regrets throughout the trial, and that he wished it had not become so public. It became about one person being on the right side and one person being on the wrong side. That was particularly painful to him.

When I interviewed the producers, they talked about how the role of Chris Darden was so difficult for them to cast because they met lots of really good actors but felt people were doing it a little bit too intense and you had succeeded at making yourself less imposing. Do you see that in yourself?

Thats so interesting. Ill tell you, the first thing I did was cut my hair off. Then I watched a lot of YouTube footage of the trial and interviews of Chriss and just tried to get inside of his vocal dynamic, his different intonations, which arent necessarily mine. If you can find somebodys voice to a certain extent, it explains a lot of how people responded to him. His voice isnt as full as mine is. It isnt as resonant as mine is. Its more nasal and its more back in his throat. Finding that voice and using that voice in the audition really helped me unlock a lot about who his character was. He didnt have the dynamic sort of personality that Johnnie Cochran had. The mistake I think a lot of people make is trying to play him like he was a bad lawyer. The thing about that is that its a negative choice. When youre an actor, you try to find positive choices. Jeffrey Toobin came on set and he was very complimentary to both Sarah Paulson and myself, telling us what a wonderful job we were doing on the show and then he said something like, Its just such a shame that they werent very good lawyers. Both Sarah and I had to walk away because we didnt want that sort of resounding in our consciousness.

Chris Darden can take heart that there is at least one person more reviled than him: Mark Fuhrman. Here hes played by a very likable actor, Steven Pasquale. Did you enjoy those scenes?

Darden talks about meeting Fuhrman for the first time in his book, and how his Spidey sense was tingling from the very beginning that something was off about this guy. Something was not right, so I knew that was going to be present from the beginning. His level of ire that he has with Mark Fuhrman is very, very high. It was really interesting to play those scenes with Steven, and he was great. Fantastic. Very understated. It was one of those things Im sure the editors had a lot of fun with because they couldve gone in many different directions. We didnt want it to be openly hostile. We wanted that simmer to be underneath all of the interactions between the two of them.

The show will cover the glove fiasco in the seventh episode. What was it like to relive that in Dardens shoes?

Oh man. So, in each interview Id watch of Dardens he was obviously asked about the glove, and on Oprah in particular, I think she asked him, Did you know it was going to be this huge mistake? and he said no. He even says it was obvious to him that O.J. was faking and that the glove fit. Shooting that was very, very powerful. The way we set up the narrative in our story may not be exactly the way it happened in real life, but I think we set it up in a very interesting way. It was one of those things as an actor, you have to be in the moment. As Sterling K. Brown who knows what happened, you have to throw that all completely away and believe in the bottom of your soul that youre about to get a slam dunk, that when you put that glove on that mans hand, its over. Its done. The ocular proof is right in front of the jury, and Im about to bring this thing home for everybody. Im gonna be celebrated. Its a very interesting Vulcan mind trick that one plays on himself while hes doing that scene.



Did Cuba Gooding Jr. have a really good time with that?

Oh, God. That dude, Cuba, man. Hes such a natural-born fool anyway that the opportunity for him to ham it up in front of the whole set, in front of the guys and the jury, he was pretty much born to do this scene.

Chris and Marcia are portrayed to have a flirtatious relationship, which in real life people have been trying to get to the bottom of for decades. What do you know?

Im starting to gather that. I didnt even realize how present that was during the trial but people may have their little jokes that they would make about them and comments that other people would make. I think Johnnie Cochran even said, it looks like the relationship between the two of them has gone beyond the platonic point. So we do tease that out a little bit within our show. In episode seven, you get a chance to see a little bit more of what transpires between the two of them outside of the courtroom. On the record, I dont think either one of them has ever confirmed nor denied anything beyond being friends.

I understand theres an epic fight scene in episode nine between you and Sarah Paulson. Chris has had it. He feels used.

Man, Sterling blowing up at Sarah, Chris blowing up at Marcia, was hard because I love her so much. That whole day I didnt talk to her and she would come up to me and be like, Youre not talking to me right now, are you? And Im like nope. I had to build up the animosity, the frustration of the whole thing. I couldnt do that and just be giggling and chuckling with her all day. We shot it a few different times. I remember the last take that we did Sarah had said, That was really good, so probably thats the one that theyll use. But after it was over it was such a relief to be done because I just wanted to go back to loving some Sarah Paulson. Thats all I wanted to do.



We talked about how angry you were when you did the N-word scene, that you actually felt angry yourself. Were there other feelings of Chris Dardens that you ended up living with temporarily that were difficult for you?

You know I can answer that like this, and this is a very interesting experience that happened to me just yesterday. I was in Philadelphia doing a re-shoot on the M. Night Shyamalan film that I shot at the end of 2015, called Split. I was down in the hotel restaurant and I heard a group of people talking about The People v. O.J. Simpson. I got a chance to be a fly on the wall. It was a group of black folks talking about the show and they were talking about how they enjoyed it and how they learned all these things about [Robert Shapiro] and [Robert Kardashian]. And then they said something like, Whos that coon nigga? That coon nigga for the prosecution? Darden, Darden, right? You know, it hit me that there are people who may still feel very much that this man was a race traitor or a sellout or an Uncle Tom or a coon, if you will. My heart broke a little bit because I realized Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark were trying to speak up for Ron Goldman and for Nicole Brown Simpson. Johnnie Cochran had the whole black community trumpeting him and lifting him up. Christopher Darden never really had anybody speak up for him and the level of empathy that Ive gained for this man and the ordeal that he had to go through and the fact that he endured it to the end, that he didnt shirk his responsibility to the prosecutor, that he saw it through in the face of death threats and hate mail  my level of compassion for him is infinite. And it hurts my heart when I hear things about him that make him seem like hes a one-dimensional man, that dont give him the credit for the wholeness of who he is and what he did during that trial. I care about him and that people see him for the 360 degrees of humanity that he is on this planet. I hope that watching the show may possibly change peoples minds who felt a certain way about him 20 years ago.

Did you respond to those people?

No. I thought about it. They were far enough away from me that I wasnt really in their conversation, and they didnt know that I was in the show or anything so I just took it on as a reconnaissance.

No wonder Chris Darden is unwilling to revisit this period of his life.

I completely understand.
Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

After Mad Men, Christina Hendricks jumped right into another period piece, called, fittingly, Another Period (Comedy Central). Shes back at it as femme fatale Trudy in pulpy 80s crime drama Hap and Leonard, premiering March 2 on the SundanceTV. At the shows premiere party, Hendricks took a moment to tell Vulture what drew her to the role and how she perfected that Southern accent.

How hard was it to find a series to follow up a phenomenon like Mad Men?

As soon as we wrapped, I went right into doing Another Period. I guess it was a palate cleanser, and I was such a huge fan of [creators and co-stars] Natasha Leggero and Riki Lindhome that it was a no-brainer. I was also like, I would love to be distracted and not sit around and think about how Im not on Mad Men anymore. But after Another Period, I had every intention of taking a break, and my manager sent me Hap and Leonard and said, I know you want a break, but just read this. I did, and I wanted to play Trudy so bad. I couldnt deny it. I didnt want someone else to get to do it. I wanted to do it. I didnt have some big plan or grand, mapped-out situation. I got it, I loved it, I wanted to do it, and so I did.

What did you respond to so strongly about Trudy?

When I read a script and the character jumps off the page and jumps into me in a way that I feel like I can contribute, that I can have a voice in it  I can always tell because I start acting it out in my head, instead of trying to fix it. It just comes so naturally. She was so well-written and such an unusual character. Shes playful and sassy, but in a different way than the characters that Ive been playing recently that I was excited by her.

Trudy lures her ex-boyfriend Hap (James Purefoy) into a dangerous scheme over the objections of his best friend Leonard (Michael K. Williams). Is she trustworthy or trouble?

Oh, she is so not trustworthy!

You were born in Knoxville, Tennessee, moved to Twin Falls, Idaho, then went to high school in Fairfax, Virginia. Did Hap and Leonard reconnect you to your Southern roots?

This environment is so unlike my Northern Virginia experience. I have a lot of relatives in Georgia, although that accent is very different. I always consider myself as having family from the South. I did work really hard on Trudys accent. I wanted it to be specific to the area, so I had to make sure to not listen to my relatives in my head. I didnt want to just copy my grandma or my aunt. I had so much fun doing it, I probably took about two weeks to shake it when I got home. My husband [Madam Secretarys Geoffrey Arend] said, You know you dont actually talk like that, right?
Trump. Photo: Tom Pennington/Getty Images

With Trump racking up Super Tuesday wins, its not surprising that the word Trump has also racked up Google search wins. The New York Times reports that Donald Trump leads as the most searched-for candidate in the U.S. now, a surprise: For a window of time, second place went not to Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, but to the John Oliverinspired Donald Drumpf. The Google Trends data, measured over a 24-hour period that ended at 2 p.m. on Super Tuesday, noted that for every 100 Trump searches, there were 25.8 Drumpfs, 20.8 Cruzes, and 18 Rubios. Over in Canada, CTV News reported similar findings: Super Tuesday was the top Stateside election term Googled, and Drumpf again came second. The results definitely indicate a triumph for Oliver and his nightmare-in-chief awareness campaign  but they also perhaps represent an indirect victory for Trump and his all-publicity-is-good-publicity campaign. For more on the findings, head here, and scope out the Times post on using Google data to track voting here.
Netflix is going full House. Photo: Saeed Adyani/Netflix

Everywhere you look, everywhere you go, theres a show (theres a show) that people are watching. And that show is Fuller House. Wake up, San Francisco and other cities, we have Full House news. According to Variety, Netflix, the streaming site that gave Hemlock Grove three seasons, has renewed Fuller House for a second season. This renewal comes mere days after the reboot launched on February 26. Critics didnt love it, but, since Netflix doesnt release numbers, the renewal means we have to assume fans of catchphrases did. With a second season, will Mary-Kate Olsen (Ashley said she hasnt acted since she was 17) once again blame timing for failing to appear on the show or will she tell the shows creator, Jeff Franklin, You got it, dude! [Cue the explosive nostalgia-fueled laughter of a studio audience.]
Photo: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musee national dart moderne/Centre de creation industrielle, Bequest of Baroness Eva Gourgaud, 1965  2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Every single one of the works here has a story attached to it, says Sheena Wagstaff, the British curator hired away from the Tate Modern to direct the Mets dramatic expansion into contemporary art (and into the old Whitney building on Madison Avenue, which its renting from the Whitney for that purpose). The drawbridge reopens March 18 on the reflagged Brutalist redoubt, and the Met hasnt done much to the building itself  the same philanthropists names remain inscribed on the galleries  but the bluestone floors are polished; theres a zippy new video-display wall when you first walk in and a new reception desk; the lightbulbs in the lobbys famous grid of ceiling lamps are now LED; and by this summer there will be a new restaurant. The Whitney had moved its offices out of the fifth floor to make room for more gallery space, but now there are offices there again (Wagstaff remembers that, when she was at the Whitney Independent Study Program in 1982, then-director Tom Armstrong had a little balcony with tomato plants up there). She gave me a walk-through of the installation of the first big show, Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible, and her thoughts, which mostly involve the shifting parameters of what it means that a piece is unfinished.

That Wagstaff et al. chose this theme, illustrated by works dating from 1437 to 2015, could be read as a gesture toward something like transparency (unusual for the Met) or even humbleness (even more so). But the first show also furthers an imperious claim: that the canon the Met has long seemed to embody is not a story with a fixed endpoint but one thats ravenously open to the contemporary (a period, and market, that art patrons are ravenous for these days, and the Met has always been an academicized trove of billionaires bling, so it has to stay with what it finds currently covetable). Although only about a third of the pictures are drawn from the Mets collection (six come from MoMAs), the exhibition shows off what Wagstaff has said all along the museum was planning: putting contemporary art in context, including the surprising influences on the later artists  what you can learn from the imperfect.

She started with the Titian that opens the show (The Flaying of Marsyas, considered a bit underpolished for a Titian), stopping here and there to tell anecdotes. (Of a big blue Brice Marden: He was very resistant  well, reluctant, to let us show this. But in the end he okayed it. So this is something that is absolutely unfinished. Hes kept it and kept it and kept it. He said he throws nothing away.) Theres a 1931 Picasso, probably of his mistress, although one cant be sure, since the face is violently squeegeed away. We pass a blue-and-burgundy Barnett Newman from 1970 which was considered incomplete because it needs another layer of blue paint (there are three of burgundy, but only two of blue), finishing up with the finale of the show: Cy Twomblys Untitled I-VI (Green Paintings). These have never been published or seen, she says. They were painted in 1986 and Twombly designed the frames as well and theyre onboard. He never allowed them out of his studio, in Gaeta, outside Rome, and were never included in the catalogue raisonne of his works, published after his death, in 2011. His partner, Nicola Del Roscio, didnt know why Cy had an issue with these; he felt they were finished.



Twombly is credited with the idea for the show [I]t was important to me to be able to cite an artist for who came up with this idea, Wagstaff says  dating from when she was at the Tate and there was a retrospective of his work there.

The unfinished conceit is flexible  possibly too flexible, and too encompassing, which makes the largely chronological installation feel a bit too abrupt at times, like youve turned the corner and wandered into a different and sometimes abruptly less-engaging museum show. Unfinished can mean abandoned mid-creation, because of the death of the artist (or the person paying for it), but more often the work is left a bit ragged or open-ended on purpose to achieve some stylistic or rhetorical point. Dodging art handlers (with their rubber suction cups) and donors getting sneak peeks during installation, Wagstaff, joined by two other curators responsible for the show, Kelly Baum and Andrea Bayer, told me those stories.

Photo: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Sam A. Lewisohn Bequest (by exchange), and Mrs. Marya Bernard Fund in memory of her husband Dr. Bernard Bernard, and anonymous funds, 1971  2016 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Pablo Picasso

Charnel House

194445



On loan from MoMA, it is one of the pieces which Nick Cullinan had worked with Diana Picasso to get into the show (another being Woman in a Red Armchair) and it was completed at the end of the Second World War; it refers either to concentration camps (Wagstaffs preferred interpretation) or to victims of a Franco massacre. Its incomplete and yet finished, notes Baum, who joined the team in July. You have a sense of the edits and corrections. Picasso donated this painting to the Association Nationale des Anciens Combattants et Ami-e-s de la Resistance Francaise for an art exhibition in 1946. He clearly considered it finished enough to donate; and then he called it back to his studio to, he said, make corrections. And then he sold it. We dont know if he made any corrections.

Photo: Private Collection

Andy Warhol

Do It Yourself (Violin)

1962

Warhols do-it-yourself series marked the beginning of his move into fine art, and was based on then-popular Venus Paradise paint-by-numbers kits.* He made five of them, and only filled in one of them all the way. Its a finished painting of an unfinished paint-by-numbers kit, notes Baum. The task of completing the work was left to the viewer . Of course these works are now too valuable to allow that to happen.

Photo: Rogers Fund, 1956

El Greco

The Vision of Saint John

ca. 160814

This show is also a celebration of the Mets collection, says Andrea Bayer, a curator in the department of European Paintings. There are 26 or 27 paintings from the European Paintings collection including this El Greco. So one of the things which we hope is that it makes us look at old favorites in a different way: Its in a new building, and in a new context. Since its not on the wall of the Met, you can look at it as not a great masterpiece, but as a work which he didnt finish before his death. It was commissioned in 1608 for the altar of the Tavera Hospital outside Toledo. The man was gesturing to something. But it was cut off in the late-19th century  When it was rediscovered in the early-20th century by people like Picasso, who saw it while he was painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon, they were reacting to its unfinishedness, the fact that the people are floating and the ground is not defined and the sky hasnt been completely painted up.

Photo: Rubenshuis, Antwerp

Peter Paul Rubens

Henry IV at the Battle of Ivry

ca. 162830

This is a national treasure of Belgium, says Bayer. At the time this was made, Rubens was working in Antwerp, and this was one of the paintings he was commissioned to do to document the victories of Henry IV of France for his widow, Marie de Medici. In 1631, he finds out that they had given him the wrong dimensions for this one, and were late paying, and so he just stopped. The top of the picture, where his assistants were sketching out more of the battle, was cut off, while Rubens was at work on the center of the composition, which is a soldier with a fierce look on his face  and three arms. Rubens hadnt decided which arm had to go, says Bayer.

Photo: The Lewis Collection

Gustav Klimt

Posthumous Portrait of Ria Munk III

19171918

This is a posthumous portrait of a woman who killed herself over a love affair, says Baum. Maria Ria Munk was the niece of a major patron of Klimts, and the writer Hanns Heinz Ewers broke off their engagement. Her family asked [Klimt] to make it, but he couldnt get it right. They werent happy with it and he did it again and again. And he died with it on his easel.

Oil on Canvas, 60 x 40 inches[NEEL-1323] Photo: COMMA Foundation, Belgium

Alice Neel

James Hunter Black Draftee

1965

She would ask people she didnt know off the street to come in and sit for her, says Baum. She asked this man James Hunter to pose and he told her he had been drafted for the war. He never came back for his second sitting. She decided she was going to call this painting finished anyway. She signed the back and showed it in the Whitney here in her retrospective in 1974. We dont think he died because his name is not on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in D.C. But we dont know what happened to him.

Photo: Mr. and Mrs. Otto Naumann, New York

James Drummond

The Return of Mary Queen of Scots to Edinburgh

ca. 1870

He is a Scottish artist working in a very traditional manner, says Bayer. We think he stopped because the panel cracked. It shows Drummonds methodical approach to painting: Some parts are complete (notably the architecture and some of the costumes), but other parts, including Marys face, are little more than graphite underdrawing. A finished version of the same scene, on canvas, is today at the National Galleries of Scotland.

Photo: Mr. and Mrs. Otto Naumann, New York

Anton Raphael Mengs

Portrait of Mariana de Silva y Sarmiento, duquesa de Huescar

1775

The collector Otto Naumann has a personal interest in the incomplete: He is out there looking for unfinished works of art, says Bayer. Naumann also loaned the show this one. Mengs was a very prominent painter of his time  papal commissions and so forth  and it isnt clear why this wedding portrait wasnt finished. Theres the ring, and that would be the faithful dog, Bayer points out, before noting that it was either never painted or scraped out. [The subjects] face looks blurred out, as if shed gotten caught on a reality-TV-show shoot and refused to sign her waiver. It kind of reminds you of a John Baldessari.



*This article has been corrected to show that Warhols Do It Yourself (Violin) was not part of his show at Sable Gallery.

*A version of this article appears in the March 7, 2016 issue of New York Magazine.
Im sure this is my East Coast myopia talking, but there is something distinctly strange about watching this episode on the first day of March. Its a bit hard to feel the sweaty, oppressive claustrophobia of an L.A. heat wave while Im wrapped in a wool Olivia Popestyle wine sweater.

And because of that, or maybe because every crisis on New Girl has relatively low stakes, the riots/weather/power outage pressure that forces our Loft Gang into a little bottle episode doesnt feel all that weighty. Based on the offhanded jokes everyone makes, it seems like L.A. is about two degrees away from a full-blown apocalypse, and Nicks just focused on how many fans he can get up and running.

But regardless of whatever strangely intense circumstances push our intrepid, aimless New Girlkateers into the bottle episode, Im happy it happened. If youre trying to create depth in relationships, or move characters forward, or give audiences a shade of someone they havent seen before, bottle episodes are the televisual nuclear option. And in the case of New Girl, which has been trying (quite successfully!) to integrate a new character into the fold, pulling the trigger on a bottle episode is a solid choice.

As I was saying, it is apparently the End Times in Los Angeles. The one-two punch of a killer heat wave and public rioting have forced the lofties to hang out in the apartment together, and because theres no air conditioning, things are getting pretty unpleasant. Nick  oh, sweet Nick  has developed a strategy hes calling the ranch system, which involves about a dozen rotating fans, a beach chair, some ice packs, and a kiddie pool.

Too bad Reagans not buying it. Unimpressed by the ranch system (It feels like someone is learning to whistle very close to my face), Reagan braves the proto-apocalypse and comes home with an air conditioner. She then sets it up in her room and magnanimously invites everyone to join her in there. Schmidt insists that Cece take Reagan up on the offer because she has an audition for gas-station TV later that day, and needs to stay fresh. And obviously Schmidt also heads in, totally relieved that he can now stop living like the people in a beer commercial before the beer shows up.

While Nicks out in the main room sweating his butt off in a boilin-hot kiddie pool, Schmidt and Winston are dealing with the fact that Cece has been taking broadcasting classes and finally has an audition for a gig, but now plans to blow it off. Her insecurity and fear of failure is an element of Ceces character that seems super plausible, and retroactively explains a lot of things about her recent behavior  most notably, why shes been a bartender for the last season.

Winston quickly determines that Schmidts coddling is no way to get Cece off her butt and into the audition, and pulls out his awesome new Cop Voice to intimidate her into action. MAAM! he shouts. WHY ARE YOU AVOIDING YOUR AUDITION THAT YOU KNOW IS IMPORTANT TO YOU! It doesnt take much before Cece caves and admits that shes afraid shes not good enough to land a gig. Schmidt is astonished, Winston is quite impressed with the efficacy of his Cop Voice, and somewhere outside, a pile of collapsing, heat-stricken pedestrians slowly accumulates on the pavement.

As impressive as it is, Winstons Cop Voice is not enough to do more than freak Cece out. (No surprise there, since his Peekaboo Street apres-ski jacket does not help establish his newfound authority.) Finally, Schmidt steps up and gives Cece a piece of his Mariska Hargitayinflected mind, and Cece runs out of the Loft Hot Box in tears. Great job, team!

However, this is all a sidebar to the main events  namely, Nicks ranch system, Reagans increasingly transparent desire to humor Nick, and an unusually rat-infested romantic union. The setup here is that Nick refuses to enjoy the cool delights of Reagans A/C unit because, as Reagan thankfully says aloud quite early in the episode, Nick has a crush on her and wanted to impress Reagan. Why he thinks the best way to do this is with a cooling system that looks like something a child would map out using crayons and a glue stick, no one will ever be able to explain. But Reagan seems to find it appealing, so what do I know?

Reagan tries to bully Nick into joining them by turning on all of the stove burners and boiling water and watching as Nick slowly succumbs to hallucinations (which Nick insists are ha-truth-inations). This fails miserably, and the end result is Nick and Reagan getting in a slap fight over the lofts breaker box and inevitably blowing power to the loft  and therefore, killing the now-vital air conditioner.

So Nick and Reagan troop down to the basement to confront the horrors of the buildings electrical system and Jeremiah the Rat. Reagan holds up the two most cartoonishly fraying wires imaginable, swearing up and down that  I dont know, tying them together with a string or something?  will turn the power back on, and Nick decides to take on the more-than-likely risk of electrocution as a stunning gesture of chivalry. This  works?! And then Nick and Reagan almost kiss, as we knew they were going to from the moment this episode began. And then Nick gets freaked out by a rat, goes stumbling back into an electrical board that looks like a booby trap from Home Alone, and takes down the power for the entire neighborhood.

The exposition for this little bottle episode is not particularly impressive, but I have got to say that the final scenes deliver. Nick and Reagans kiss is more moving than I expected it to be, Outside Dave shows up, and the shots with everyone out in the streets sell the heat-wave/riot concept in a way that nothing else really had up until that point.

Cece comes back and tells everyone that she did go to the audition, and totally blew it because she was drunk and wearing shorts. But the gang is proud of her anyhow, and we get a fun little teaser with her drunkenly trying to read gas-station-broadcast copy. Plus, Winston actually gets to be a cop and use his Cop Voice to do good things  like directing traffic when the lights are out  as well as super Winston-y things  like pulling over an ice-cream truck and demanding they hand over the goods.

There are some elements, however, that do not work. The oddly lengthy exchange that rested solely on the pronunciation of Gstaad, for instance, was sadly lacking in anything remotely funny. And while Im happy with any plot that involves depth for Ceces character, Men Yell at Her Until She Does What They Say is not the stuff of inspirational, revolutionary television.

But the main engine of Heat Wave was clearly the union of Nick and Reagan, and in this respect, this bottle episode does its job. The unspoken and somewhat shaky underlying premise is that Nick is a child, and that Reagan is an otherwise competent human being who nevertheless finds that kind of thing attractive. What plays out is actually quite sweet, and is exactly the sort of thing a bottle episode can do best. Everyone gets stuck together, demonstrates elements of their deeper selves, and comes out the other side with ice cream.
For those who watched last weeks very special episode of Black-ish, the opening of this weeks The People vs. O.J. Simpson feels exquisitely timed. In the Black-ish episode, titled Hope, the family gathers around the TV as the police shooting of an unarmed black man fails to yield an indictment and the community rises up in protest. All parents of small children are naturally inclined to protect them from the terrible realities of the world, but the news forces Dre and Bow to face a difficult question specific to African-Americans: How (and when) do you tell your kids about racial injustice and police brutality?

In the early 80s, Johnnie Cochran had already had that conversation with his girls  or at least the part about how to deal with the police. As The Race Card opens, we flash back to 1982, when Cochran, then an assistant district attorney, gets stopped for the offense of being a black man driving through an affluent white neighborhood. This is the third time in a week hes been pulled over, and we see it as a ritual humiliation. Cochran is cuffed, face down on the hood of his car, while white passersby stare at him. He issues a reminder to his kids:

What do we say to the police? Nothing. And who talks to the police? Our lawyer.

For the upwardly mobile families in Black-ish and The People vs. O.J. Simpson, wealth is no insulation from injustice or police harassment. And for Cochran specifically, misbehavior from the LAPD is less the exception than the norm.

As I wrote last week, one of the better qualities of The People vs. O.J. Simpson is its generous perspective on Cochran and Marcia Clark, who each faced intense criticism during the trial. Christopher Dardens line about Cochran being the preacher who goes to church every Sunday is key: Theres a degree to which Cochran is exploiting attitudes about the LAPDs institutional racism to get his client off, given O.J.s Mayor of Brentwood status and his distance from the black community, but those attitudes are deeply ingrained. As he tells the defense team, the case wont be won on evidence: Jurors go with the narrative that makes sense. Were here to tell a story. Our job is to tell that story better than the prosecution tells theirs.

Frankly, the story O.J.s team is telling is conspiratorial and convoluted, less believable on its face than the story the prosecution plans to tell. Clark and Darden will argue that the murders were the culmination of a pattern of abuse and obsession, and theyll follow the trail of blood from Nicole Browns house to the white Bronco to O.J.s estate. They have a motive and a mountain of evidence. Cochran and Co. are citing technicalities on the handling of evidence and arguing that people like Det. Mark Fuhrman made a rush to judgment, if they didnt set up O.J. entirely. Thats an uphill argument, but Cochran is a superior storyteller and hes confident that his story, based on personal experience, will be persuasive enough to cast reasonable doubt on his clients guilt.

The title of the episode is significant, too. While the term the race card is associated with Cochran and O.J.s defense strategy, the prosecution was also playing the same game  and less nimbly. The Race Card may begin with Cochran, but it throws much of the focus on Darden, whos watching the opportunity of a lifetime turn into an unending torment. Dardens addition to the prosecution team comes as a result of Garcettis order to stir in a little flavor, and it leaves him in a precarious spot on at least three fronts. For one, he will be perceived, not unfairly, as getting the job based on the color of his skin. For Darden, this recalls painful memories of law school in the 70s, when other students looked at him as an affirmative-action beneficiary, rather than someone who deserved the spot. Then, with O.J. enjoying broad public support in the black community, pre-trial hearings get Darden cast as an Uncle Tom.

The third reason is the thorniest: The prosecution needs Darden to make a dodgy witness more credible. The show dances around this awkward proposition beautifully. Darden knows why hes been assigned to Fuhrman, the abhorrent racist who happened to find the bloody glove on O.J.s estate. He can raise objections with Clark, but without much leverage, given his fresh (and therefore tenuous) appointment to the trial of the century. The most likely result, based on the response to his pre-trial motion to keep the n-word out of the proceedings, is that Cochran would expose his role for what it is. When Cochran whispers to Darden, Whatever happens, dont do Fuhrman. Make the white people do him, its not entirely self-serving. Its wise counsel that Darden takes to heart.

Darden eventually gets out of questioning Fuhrman, after a couple of sessions raise his suspicion. (Closing the episode with Fuhrman standing over a gleaming case of Nazi memorabilia is a pulpy affirmation of his earlier dog-whistle racism.) But the the prosecutions questionable faith in Darden lingers, especially with regards to his relationship to Clark, who is his strongest advocate. Its Clark who suggests he be promoted to co-prosecutor after William Hodgman is hospitalized with chest pains, and Darden clings poignantly to her faith in him. Sterling K. Brown plays Darden as a bundle of anxiety and self-doubt, buoyed by Clarks support, but rightly dubious of it, too, given his symbolic value as part of the team. Darden is there to tell black jurors  in the courtroom and in living rooms nationwide  that its okay to convict O.J. Simpson. Thats a lonely, thankless role to play.

Dancing Itos:
Photo: Voltage Pictures, Open Road Films

Forget Leo. The geekiest of film geeks among us know that Oscar nights most dramatic redemption narrative belongs to Spotlight director Tom McCarthy. Just last March, the man who won golden statuettes for both Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay was releasing his other movie of 2015 buried in a day-and-date VOD release: the universally panned comedy fable The Cobbler, starring Adam Sandler as a Lower East Side shoe mender who discovers a magical stitching machine passed down by his Jewish ancestors that allows him to physically transform into his clients  a hoodlum (played by Method Man), a drag queen, Dan Stevens, etc.  by very literally walking in their shoes. It has a 10 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes; Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri called it ghastly. More recently, Sandler got two Razzie nominations for it, one for Worst Actor and one for Worst Screen Combo, as Adam Sandler and any pair of shoes.

I was at the Toronto Film Festival back in September 2014 when The Cobbler premiered at an early press screening because it wouldnt be debuting for the general public until the end of the fest, and the response was the definition of not good. Hopes had been high, given McCarthys reputation on the indie-film scene as a director who can do no wrong (see: The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win). First came the snickering word of mouth, then the reviews comparing the movie to a blimp crash or making jokes of how Sandler loses his sole. Then, one year later, McCarthy debuted Spotlight at the same festival, and, well, you know how that went. (Side note: He and Sandler are still good friends; according to Spotlight actress Rachel McAdams, McCarthy actually left the set of Spotlight to do a voice part in Sandlers Pixels. He skipped out of work one day to play a robot! McAdams told me. Which I just love. I thought that was so quintessentially Tom.)

Whats it like to go from a total bomb to Best Picture contender (and eventual winner) in a single year? Or to release three beloved indie movies and then have your next one flop harder than New Coke? I asked the very honest McCarthy exactly that when I interviewed him for a profile in New York Magazine just before Spotlight opened in theaters this fall. Here are McCarthys thoughts on Sandler and The Cobbler that didnt make the original piece.

The Cobbler was not incredibly well received 

[Laughs.] How do you figure?

[Laughs.] I laughed a lot. I liked it!

I really liked it too! Thats why we made it! But it freaked a lot of people out who were expecting a certain thing of me. It wasnt that thing, which is exactly why I made it. If you have four children and ones wacky, you go, Hey, hes wacky, but I love that kid! Every time someone reaches out to me, and it has been quite a few people over the last year and a half, many of them say, Man, I finally saw it. I dont know  I liked it! almost like, Why is everyone so mean to you?

Where did you get the idea?

I literally had the idea sitting at my desk one time, wondering, Where does the expression walk a mile in someones shoes come from? Then I had a buddy whos a young writer [Paul Sado] and said, Hey, you wanna work on this with me? and whenever we had spare time wed play around with it. I thought it was interesting and weird and started playing with genre and style, and the idea of gentrification in New York City meant something to me. [Editors Note: A lot of the movies plot involves Sandlers cobbler character, Max Simkin, transforming into his customers to fight crime and/or evil real-estate developers who are trying to evict old people on the Lower East Side from their rent-stabilized apartments.] Also, a cobbler is a craftsperson, and the idea of people who do something really well was really interesting to me. You never want to defend your work. Our job is to make the work, present it, and move on, but it was tough because, critically, people did not connect with it. The bright spot is that there has been a real audience for it.

Wheres the audience?

Its done really well on Netflix, which is where it ended up very quickly, as was part of the deal. I get a lot of emails, a lot of feedback from people because they find me. Its funny, I was at Telluride [Film Festival] with Spotlight and one of the women running it was like [whispering], Can I tell you something? I loved The Cobbler. And I was like, Its not a secret! You could say it loud, and itll make me happy, too!

What was it like to debut it at Toronto and have the reception be what it was?

We had a bad slot at the end of the week, but the P&I [Press & Industry] slot was at the beginning of the week, and a buddy of mine, a fellow director, was at that screening and was like, Huh boy. He was like, Get ready. I was like, Cool, good to know. I was quite honestly surprised. Theres some lovely things about that movie, and the response felt so definitive and one-note that Im like, Okay. But I had to accept it. Meanwhile, Im deep in pre-production on Spotlight when that happens, which was a lot to balance. If I was doing nothing, that would be a lot to cope with, but I had work happening over there.

But then, heres what happened: For three or four days I had to live with the response from that P&I screening. Then we had our public premiere. Cast came in  huge theater. All I can say is that that movie screened exactly how I wanted that movie to screen. Audiences dont lie at festivals: If they dont love something, theyll let you know. If theyre bored, or they dont get it, theyll leave. That was not the reaction of that audience, and we all walked backstage like, Wow! Ive made a lot of movies with a lot of the people I collaborated on that movie with, and none of us felt like it was that far off the mark as the critical world thought.

Creatively, it was really interesting and challenging. Very early on, as it was happening, I felt very liberated by it. All my movies at that point had been critically well-received, and I was like, Okay, so this is the worst? I can live with this. Im going to go make another movie now. Of course its painful. You feel it, and, yeah, I had my dark moments. You cant not, its personal; its your film.

I cant say enough good things about Adam Sandler, and by the way, any actor or director I know who has worked with him  and hes worked with some very wonderful actors  has the same amount of good things to say about him. Unfortunately, I think the press paints him in a very specific light, and in my very strong, personal opinion, its misguided. They have it out for him. But I thought he was great in the movie.

So was Method Man.

Love Method Man! Also on The Wire!

Were you friends on The Wire? [McCarthy spent season five of The Wire playing weaselly, fabricating Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Templeton, and his work and friendship with David Simon partially inspired him to sign up to write and direct Spotlight.]

No, wed never met, but I had him in mind, and hes just a good actor. Everyone in that movie felt like they were there for the right reason. Methods from Staten Island, Wu Tang and he got that world.

Did you research cobblers?

Oh my God, yeah! Everything! I spent a lot of time with cobblers. A lot. A lot of time in certain sections of Brooklyn; spent a lot of time walking, walking, walking the Lower East Side; got to know as many people as we could. The work is always the same for me. I hire the same, I cast the same, I work as hard. There were a lot of pitfalls to making Spotlight, too. There are a lot of ways it couldve gone wrong, and it didnt. Its obviously connecting, where The Cobbler didnt.

And it must feel like whiplash, now with Spotlight.

Im used to it as an actor. What we do is very public and people have to accept that. I have a great job, and Im a lucky guy, full stop. So when you experience criticism, you have to take it in stride and go, This comes with the territory. Like youre that athlete whos a good pitcher and gives up a home run, and you might think no ones ever going to forgive you for it. But youve gotta be like, All right! Next season! and you go back to work. Its an easy thing now for me to do, especially sitting in this chair, to be honest, where I do have a movie thats connecting and doing well. But by the time I was into Spotlight, I was at peace with how The Cobbler was received.

I continue to be pleasantly surprised when I hear good things back from people, especially after everything weve been through on that one. And we had some really horrible partners on that one. The people who financed the movie were just bad partners. Lifes too short to work with people you really dont trust or like, and that was one of those situations where we got our financing from a company that I greatly regret, just because theyre not one of the good ones. [Note: That company seems to be Voltage.]

Remind me: Wasnt a big part of Adam Sandlers character that hes Jewish?

Adam plays a Russian Jew from Brooklyn.

So you went from writing about Russian Jews to a movie about Irish Boston reporters uncovering a conspiracy of pedophile priests?

As Sandler said, Boy, the Catholics are really going to hate you. First you make a Jewish superhero in The Cobbler, and then you go after the Church!
A state district judge denied requests from defendants in the West explosion case to transfer the upcoming trial to another county.

Defendants CF Industries and El Dorado Chemical Co. asked 170th State District Judge Jim Meyer during a hearing Tuesday to move the trial, set now for May 16, to a larger county.

Citing responses to a lengthy questionnaire filled out by potential jurors in the first trial setting in October, CF attorney Noelle Reed argued that local media coverage of the April 17, 2013, West Fertilizer Co. explosion and intense feelings generated by the tragedy will make it difficult to select a jury in McLennan County.

Plaintiffs attorney Matt Morrison countered that questionnaire responses revealed at least 43 prospective jurors who had no opinion about the explosion, no personal feelings about West Fertilizer Co. and no knowledge or connection to any of the parties involved in the lawsuits.

Meyer recently moved the third trial setting in the massive litigation case from March 21 to May 16, while parties on both sides continue negotiations to reach settlements.

Besides CF and El Dorado, defendants include Adair Grain Co., owner of West Fertilizer Co.; Thermaclime Inc.; and International Chemical Co.

The defendants either manufactured or sold fertilizer to West Fertilizer Co.

Adair Grain has filed a counterclaim against the four fertilizer producers and sellers.

Court officials and attorneys said Tuesday a list of plaintiffs in the third trial group is still under consideration.

Previous trial settings  the first in October, the second in January  were canceled after the parties reached undisclosed settlements and partial settlements.

Those in the second trial group included the wrongful death claims filed by the families of Cyrus Reed, an Abbott volunteer firefighter who was completing an EMT class, and Morris Bridges Jr., a West volunteer firefighter, who both were killed in the explosion.

Plaintiffs in the first trial group were the families of Kevin Sanders, 33; William Buck Uptmor Jr., 45; and Kenneth Luckey Harris Jr., 52. The three were killed in the blast.

The third trial group is expected to include the wrongful death claims of the family of at least one more first responder killed in the blast, court officials said Tuesday.

The more than 200 plaintiffs are being divided into trial groups. Other plaintiffs, including the city of West, West Rest Haven nursing home and West Terrace Apartments, filed lawsuits in the wake of the devastating explosion that killed 15, mostly first responders; injured scores of others; and destroyed a large section of town.

A number of plaintiffs include insurance companies, which have filed subrogation claims to recoup funds already paid to those affected by the explosion.
Will Jones will remain McLennan County commissioner of Precinct 3 after a narrow victory in the Republican primary over Ben Matus, 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent.

Jones, 44, of Waco, has held the seat since 2012. He received 3,890 votes Tuesday, and Matus received 3,069 votes.

Elections Administrator Kathy Van Wolfe said the race was left off some ballots at First Assembly of God Church on Bosque Boulevard due to human error. She said the problem was fixed quickly, but those who voted with incomplete ballots and told officials later were not able to re-vote.

Theres obviously been some problems with the voting center, and were going to look into that, Jones said.

Jones said his second term will focus on limiting the impact on taxpayers when projects arise. But on election night, he said he learned a lot throughout the process and noted that he won by roughly the same margin he won by in 2012.

Im just humbled, and Im grateful and looking forward to another term, Jones said.

No Democratic challenger filed, and Jones will remain in the position after the general election barring any unexpected change.

Matus was unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

In the beginning of the race, Matus said Jones had twice offered to reimburse him the $1,250 filing fee to drop out of the race. Jones admitted he made the offer but called it a business transaction, not a bribe.

After consulting with a San Antonio attorney, Matus said he would not pursue a complaint against Jones.

I am not a lawyer, and nobody would give me an opinion about it, Matus previously told the Tribune-Herald. I did fill out the paperwork with the Texas Ethics Commission, but I decided not to send it.

Matus, 63, of West, also created his share of controversy. He listed a $1,000 campaign contribution from a corporation on his last campaign finance report.

Corporation officials could face third-degree felony charges and civil penalties for such donations, and candidates could face the same if they knowingly accept the contribution.

Matus, an auto mechanics instructor at Texas State Technical College for the past 29 years, has said he plans to fix the error and that he should have stated the donation came from the companys owner.

Precinct 3 includes part of northwest Waco, a portion of Woodway, West, Gholson, Ross, Tours, Leroy, Chalk Bluff, Elm Mott and parts of Lacy Lakeview and Bellmead.
Incumbent Precinct 1 McLennan County Commissioner Kelly Snell edged out Cory Priest by 29 votes and will keep his seat. Snell had 50.24 percent of the vote, and Priest had 49.76.

Snell received 3,068 votes, and Priest received 3,039 votes.

Snell, 57, of Robinson, was seeking his third four-year term in the seat.

I couldnt believe it was as close as it was, Snell said.

Priest, 49, of Lorena, has branded himself as a true conservative during the campaign and claims Snell outspent Republican commissioners on the court by more than $4 million in the past four years on road maintenance.

Priest, owner of Priest Cattle Co. and co-owner of a Waco construction company, was unavailable for comment before final results were in.

Snell has said the size of his precinct, the second-largest in the county, makes his larger budget road budget necessary.

He also boasted his own record of conservatism. Snell said he voted against granting the county treasurer a more than $15,000 raise at the beginning of the fiscal year when the treasurer asked for only a $1,800 raise.

The precinct includes parts of Waco, Beverly Hills, Robinson, Golinda, Lorena, Bruceville-Eddy and Moody.
Robinson City Council appointed the citys water utilities director as acting city manager Tuesday, effective immediately.

The council appointed Greg Hobbs, 54, a week after it unanimously approved a mutual agreement to terminate former City Manager Robert Cervenkas contract. Cervenkas last day was Monday.

Hobbs has worked for the city since 1979. His salary did not change in the move.

Mayor Bert Echterling said city staff will review its budget to determine how it will pay for an interim or permanent city manager. The council will schedule another meeting to evaluate staff recommendations.

Council member Jeremy Stivener said he would like to start heavily recruiting for a permanent city manager but also not make any hasty decisions.

This is a major, major event for the city of Robinson, Stivener said.

The council Tuesday also approved in a split vote changing its sick leave policy.

Council members Steve Janics and Doye Baker voted against the change.

City Attorney Mike Dixon said the citys policy allows employees to accumulate sick leave in case of a catastrophic sickness or injury requiring an employee to take an extended period of time off work.

The policy allowed employees to cash out on accrued sick leave upon leaving the city, Dixon said. The accrued sick leave payout was based on an employees last wage, which could be higher than the wage when he or she initially earned the sick time, he said.

Dixon said if an employee were to receive significant raises over time, that accrued sick leave payout is better than any savings account.

Council member Jimmy Rogers said the cashout on sick leave was essentially a bonus, which was never the intention of the citys policy.

I think everybody was pretty shocked when we discovered this was an option here, Rogers said.

No one during the meeting referenced Cervenka during the talks about the sick leave policy.

However, the mutual agreement to terminate Cervenkas contract stated that the city opted to avoid potential litigation by paying Cervenka his accrued and unused sick leave balance.

Cervenka was the highest-paid city employee at the time, making $137,259.20 annually. The next highest-paid Robinson employee is the police chief, at $88,004.80 per year.

In parting ways with Cervenka, the city agreed to pay him a lump sum of $68,629.60, minus required payroll deductions for taxes, Social Security and retirement contributions.

The city also will pay him for his accrued and unused vacation time and its matching retirement contributions withheld from Cervenkas lump-sum payment.

According to the termination agreement, the city made the move to end Cervenkas contract because the council wanted a management change.
Incumbent McLennan County Sheriff and longtime lawman Parnell McNamara earned another four years in office Tuesday after a sometimes contentious Republican primary contest against Waco police Sgt. Patrick Swanton and Pastor Willie Tompkins.

I am overwhelmed. Its been a long time getting here and I am humbled by all of the support everyone has given me, McNamara said, walking into his election night watch party at Mannys on the River in Downtown Waco. Im going to do it until I am at least 95. As long as I am on my two feet and the people want me, I will be in there.

McNamara, a 69-year-old retired deputy U.S. marshal and third-generation law enforcement officer, won Tuesdays primary with 19,976 votes, or 66.31 percent. Swanton, 54, had 9,445 votes or 31.35 percent. Tompkins, 66, received 705 votes or 2.34 percent.

McNamara will not face a challenger in the November general election and will remain in office barring an unprecedented write-in campaign.

McNamara celebrated a considerable lead over both challengers following the release of early voting totals, which gave him a commanding lead. Supporter Meg Sandell and her 5-year-old son, Ty, stood outside Mannys, eager to congratulate McNamara.

Ty saw all the campaign signs a while ago and he just wanted to know who that cowboy man was, Sandell said. He wanted to know all about the sheriff, if he was going to win, how hes going to beat the other guy, so he got to go with me today to push the button to vote for Parnell McNamara.

In challenging McNamara, Swanton, a sergeant with Waco police and a team leader of the Hostage Negotiation Unit, gained national renown after the May 17 Twin Peaks shootout when he represented the department as spokesman during national news coverage. In his campaign, Swanton touted his 34 years of law enforcement experience and varied experience in police work. He was not available for comment late Tuesday night.

Tompkins, a pastor of New Generation Church in Bellmead and a substitute teacher in the Waco Independent School District, ran for a second time for sheriff, highlighting 17 years of experience in law enforcement in McLennan County. Tompkins ran as a Democrat in 2012 and ran as a Republican this year.

For those who supported me, I just want them to know that I appreciate their hard work in trying to get things right, Tompkins said Tuesday night.
A Chisholm Trail marker will return to the McLennan County Courthouse as the state prepares for the trails 150th anniversary next year.

County commissioners approved Tuesday allowing Texas Department of Transportation to place the marker on courthouse grounds.

TxDOT will pay for everything, including the installation, County Administrator Dustin Chapman said.

Betsy Pittman, TxDOT Waco District landscape architect, said the agency is working to replace markers originally placed in the mid-1930s that have been lost or stolen.

The minutes of the original highway commission meeting stated one should be at the courthouse and one at a place of significance that would be visited by a lot of people, Pittman said. We usually dont do things off the right of way, but this is kind of a special issue and we kind of want to see it through to the end.

Pittman said it is unclear how long the sign at the courthouse has been gone. There are two other signs in McLennan County. Both are also missing and awaiting approval in Waco for reinstallation. There were 44 signs placed in Texas in the 1930s, and 33 need to be replaced because they are no longer at their locations, she said.

We dont have any idea how long theyve been missing, Pittman said. The two in Bell County are still in place.

The trail was the major route out of Texas for livestock, and as the longhorn cattle were driven north, it provided a source of income to help the state recover from the Civil War, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

Pittman said there are many claims as to where the Chisholm Trail actually crossed, but that trail route isnt officially under debate at this time. TxDOT just hopes to get all the old markers back in place, she said.

In its brief existence, it had been followed by more than 5 million cattle and a million mustangs, the greatest migration of livestock in world history, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

Also Tuesday, commissioners approved using Global Tel Link Corporations services to install video relay services at the Jack Harwell Detention Center and at the McLennan County Jail.

The move was to address one of more than 350 Americans With Disabilities Act violations cited by the U.S. Department of Justice. Chapman said the settlement agreement requires both jails to have a video service to allow deaf inmates the opportunity to communicate with visitors. The service is being provided at no cost to the county, he said.

The Federal Communications Commission pays for the video service, and Global Tel Link is providing the devices, he said.

It worked out really well, Chapman said.

The settlement agreement was reached in November between the county and the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice in 2011 performed a survey of county properties and in the summer of 2014 presented its report.
While political pundits say New York real estate developer and reality TV star Donald Trumps success as the Republican presidential front-runner in most Super Tuesday states mandates major revisions in the American political playbook, McLennan Community College government professor Andria Ramon reminded students at a lively, on-campus Election Night pizza party that primary elections have been evolving and mutating since our republics birth, complete with party bosses, caucuses and national conventions. And Election 2016 has already confirmed some basic truisms, including primary election races that wrapped up Tuesday night in Texas. Among those truisms:

 Pick your allies very carefully: Judging from congressional challenger Ralph Pattersons 90-minute Q&A with the Trib editorial board and his remarks at the McLennan County Republican Womens candidate forum, the former McLennan County Republican Party chairman relied not on a political platform but on boisterous, stream-of-consciousness rambling in which he seemed to say anything that came into his head. That might work for some  it did wonders for Trump  but it didnt carry Patterson far. He lost Tuesday.

For instance, while Patterson, 58, failed to directly answer questions on everything from Social Security reform to immigration during his meeting with our editorial board  he even failed to swing at softballs in discussing an Article V Convention of States, red meat for any conservative  he did cite as Texas Republican congressional models worthy of his unstinting support once in Congress Roger Williams, Brian Babin, Lamar Smith and Louie Gohmert.

A few weeks later, Williams, Babin and Smith all endorsed the re-election bid of Pattersons chief Republican opponent, Congressman Bill Flores. Oops.

As for East Texas Republican Gohmert, he faced two opponents in Tuesdays primary election, both of whom argued he had become an embarrassment to his constituency because of his bizarre policy stances and long-winded speeches on the House floor. One challengers quote: Im frustrated that Congress has become such a circus and that our representative Louie Gohmert is one of the main clowns. However, early returns showed East Texans opting for clowns last night.

 Location, location, location: The old maxim touted by real estate veterans goes double for political candidates. In neighboring Bell County, a campaign manager for state Rep. Molly White  infamous for her radioactive comments informing American Muslims they could count on little hospitality from her office  got into an early morning scrap with Whites Republican challenger, retired Army Col. Hugh Shine. This erupted last week after Shine reportedly moved the White campaign tent from its location at the Bell County Annex while the campaign manager was away for coffee.

After the 22-year-old White campaign manager returned, a confrontation ensued in which Shine, 63, reportedly struck the campaign managers car with a tent pole. The campaign manager then vowed to file an assault charge. Police resolved the matter peacefully.

No charges are anticipated in a similar dust-up involving early-bird representatives of two of the three Republican campaigns for McLennan County sheriff that pivoted on staking out the best turf in an otherwise empty First Assembly of God parking lot, a favorite of both candidates and voters in recent years. Happily, violence was visited on neither man nor automobile.

Incidentally, McLennan County Commissioner Will Jones, who easily dispatched challenger Benny Ray Matus (whose campaign slogan, Pinch that penny, Benny, was the best thing about his campaign), tells me candidates like First Assembly of God as a campaign site because the church lets them use the church restrooms.

 Be wary of claiming to be something youre not: This principle generally applies to ideology, but former College Station City Councilman Jess Fields, 27-year-old challenger of Republican state Rep. John Raney, 68, reportedly took this to another level, phoning Congressman Flores office back in 2011 and passing himself off as Brazos County Judge Duane Peters. According to Flores communications director, Fields made several calls to Flores Bryan office during which he was abusive to an office intern. All this erupted as an issue in the 2016 race.

The office intern told our sister paper, the Bryan-College Station Eagle: Finally we figured out it wasnt Judge Peters  that it was Jess. Of course, the caller ID didnt help [Fields]. He was calling and impersonating the judge and throwing his voice.

Fields, who also served as a consultant for the resolutely right-wing Texas Public Policy Foundation, dismissed the impersonations as a joke: The attempt to fabricate this as a crime is disgusting and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that John Raney is one of the most liberal Republicans in Austin. Fields lost Tuesday night.

Another candidate who ran afoul of such matters, also running for state representative as a Republican, suspended his campaign after the Tyler Morning Telegraph learned he didnt earn the two college degrees from Southern Methodist University he had claimed. The really bad part about all this is the Telegraph had to retract its endorsement of candidate Philip Hayes, 25, after learning the truth. So it goes.

 It sure helps to be able to tell tales about the good old days: Voters love hearing stories that resonate with their past. On that account, McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara probably had everyone beat, based on the wealth of tales he draws upon in his 69 years, mostly in McLennan County. On Tuesday, a voter reminded him of a mynah bird that spoke to customers at the old Ben Franklin Variety Store and later the Texaco filling station the McNamaras owned. The sheriff said it was actually a large crow named Joe.

He was a big attraction, the sheriff said hours before he won re-election. People thought he was a mynah bird, but he was just a big crow and a real smart one. Hed say Hal-lo when people came in, and sometimes hed yell Help! Help! and itd sound like somebody was being attacked.

During the time when Parnell and his brother Mike ran the Texaco station at 19th Street and Park Lake, they also had squirrels, raccoons and defumed skunks in the place, to the extent that the Rev. Joe Montgomery on his radio show The Gospel Train urged listeners to patronize the McNamara Texaco & Zoo. Joe the Crow remained a fixture among the McNamaras for the better part of two decades. After the birds death, Parnell McNamara had Joe respectfully mounted and kept at his daily post till the crows feathers began dropping off, signaling his departure at long last from the McNamara saga  at least till Primary Election Day 2016.

Bill Whitaker is opinion editor of the Tribune-Herald.
WAHOO  Democrats will be gathering in the states 93 counties this Saturday to determine their partys presidential nomination.

The 2016 Presidential Caucuses in Nebraska will take place March 5.

In Saunders County, five caucus sites have been established by voting precincts. Caucuses will begin at 10 a.m., but participants are asked to arrive between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. for registration.

According to the Nebraska Democratic Party, attending the caucus is the only way Nebraska Democrats will have a say in selecting their preferred presidential nominee.

Although the Democratic presidential candidates will appear on the primary ballot, the May 10 primary will have no effect on Nebraskas presidential preference choice.

However, that does not mean there will not be a reason for Democrats to go to the polls on May 10.

The Nebraska Democratic Party still encourages every Democrat to attend the primary to support state and local candidates, the party said in a written statement released last week.

Saunders County Election Commissioner Patti Lindgren agreed that all registered voters needed to keep May 10 on their calendars.

Based on candidate filings, some area of the county may have more local, regional or state races listed on the May ballots. But, Lindgren said there would ballots for all parties.

There will still be a Democratic ballot, and there will also be non-partisan races to vote on, she said.

Which races will appear on the May ballots has not yet been inked.

The deadline for elected incumbents to file for office has past, but the deadline for non-incumbents is not until March 15.

In addition to accepting candidate filings, Lindgrens office has been busy with voter registration. Voter registration activity began earlier than usual this election season and continues to be busy.

Lindgren has not only seen new voters signing up, but also voters changing registration. She said both Republicans and Democrats have been switching parties.

Its active, period, she said. For each party, it hasnt made a difference, its been active.

Lindgren said the Democratic presidential caucuses have added some confusion in her office as well as for voters this year.

For example, people have already started asking for absentee voter forms. She said that activity for the May Primary has not yet started in her office.

Absentee preference cards are being used for those unable to attend Saturdays caucuses. However, those needed to be requested through the Nebraska Democratic Party, and the requests had to be received by Feb. 24.

When they call in asking for an absentee, we have to really try to find out what they are asking for, Lindgren said.

For those able to go to the caucuses on Saturday, the sites are set up by voting precincts.

Democrats in the voting precincts of Ashland Ward 1, Ashland Ward 2 and Ashland Rural, which includes the townships of Ashland Rural and Clear Creek and Village of Memphis, will meet at Ashland Community Resource Center.

The voting precincts of Cedar Bluffs, Malmo and Prague will gather at the Cedar Bluffs Senior Center. This caucus site includes voters in North Cedar, South Cedar, Morse Bluff, Elk, Chester, Bohemia, Mariposa and Douglas townships.

The caucus for the voting precincts of Ceresco, Valparaiso and Weston will be at the Ceresco Community Center. In addition to those villages, townships for this caucus location are Richland, Green, Oak Creek, Rock Creek, Newman and Chapman.

The Wahoo High School cafeteria will be the caucus site for the Wahoo Ward I, Wahoo Ward II, Wahoo Ward III, Wahoo Rural and Center voting precincts. This includes the townships of Stocking, Wahoo and Center and the towns of Wahoo, Ithaca and Colon.

Marietta, Yutan and District 4 voters need to report to the Yutan Veterans Country Club. This caucus will be for the townships of Marietta, Marble and Union, which includes the towns of Yutan, Leshara and Mead.

In Butler County, the presidential caucus will be held at Runza in David City at 6 p.m.

For additional information please visit nebraskacaucus2016.org, or call the NDP at 402-434-2180.

Leverne Barrett of Ceresco, a member of the Saunders County Democratic Party leadership, said the caucuses should take about an hour.

Participants will be asked to gather in a designated area to indicate their preference for a candidate or their undecided/uncommitted status. There will be an opportunity for participants to stump for their candidates before final preference counts are taken.
WAHOO  Improving how Saunders County residents live, work and play was at the heart of Saunders Medical Center and Three Rivers Public Health Department focus groups on Feb. 24.

Based on data from a community health strengths and needs study done by Lincolns Schmeeckle Research, the focus groups filtered through the information to come up with four primary strategic issues.

Mental health, health education and responsibility, a shortage of skilled workers and obesity were the four primary strategic issues that surfaced, after the focus groups pilfered through the list of strengths and needs.

The study was first done in 2011 and strengths and needs will be reassessed every three to five years.

Focus groups working through the information last week consisted of Saunders County residents in education, government, law enforcement, assisted living, hospitals and other social service agencies.

Some of the data that led to these broader categories included higher ratios of the population to primary care physicians and mental health providers compared to the state.

According to the data, the ratio of individuals to mental health providers is one to 3,488 county residents. The ratio to primary care physicians is one to 3,471.

The state ratio for mental health is one to 435, and the ratio for primary care physicians is one to 1,405.

Some of the data can be skewed, as larger metropolitan areas like Lincoln and Omaha will have a larger concentration of providers.

Any rural county is going to be worse on these indicators, said Saunders County Supervisor Ed Rastovski of Wahoo.

Other ratios and trends for the county that were higher than the state average also included a higher suicide rate, a higher rate of motor vehicle deaths, death due to diabetes and birth defects.

Some trend data was not limited to Saunders County, but included Dodge and Washington counties, to include all three counties that Three Rivers serves.

In these three-county categories, higher than state rates of past 30-day marijuana and prescription drug use occurred for 10th and 12th grade students.

The statistics also said obesity rate for the three counties is also higher than the state rate.

Two of the more noted distinctions for Saunders County were that an estimated 52.8 percent of the population has adequate access to locations for physical activity, while the state rate is 81.4 percent.

And according to the study, Susan G. Koman Nebraska has selected Saunders County as its first target community in Nebraska for targeting efforts to fight breast cancer morbidity and death.

The three primary factors are that the county is rural and has a high proportion of older adults, has a high risk diagnostic rates for female breast cancer and late-state breast cancer, and that the mammography rate is reported as much lower than the state and nation.

Not all insight gained by the group isolated needs.

Compared to state averages, strengths in Saunders County included low poverty rates for the overall and under 18 population, a low rate of children living in single-parent households, a low rate of children in foster care, a high rate of high school graduation, a low rate of deaths due to stroke, chronic lung disease and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

One of the main forces of change identified was the emergence of SMC in the community. The groups identified that the best use of the facility is key to improvement.

The data and identification of primary strategic issues will be compiled into a Community Health Improvement Plan, said Three Rivers Executive Director Terra Uhing. This should be complete by March 18.

We have the data and momentum, lets get it done while its fresh in our mind, said Uhing.

To get this many people to come from across the county to collaborate is key, said Saunders County Supervisor Doris Karloff.
The evocative and now sadly rare whine of three Pratt&Whitney JT8D engines ringing in close harmony echoed over Paine Field in Everett, Washington as the prototype Boeing 727 airliner made her final flight today; a short hop from the Museum of Flights restoration facility to the main museum site at Boeing Field in nearby Seattle. As most of our readers will know by now, the aircraft has been under preparation for this journey for some years now, with the museum deeming it more practical, and less expensive to fly the aircraft to her final home, than dismantle and move her by road.

While the restoration has likely taken several million dollars to accomplish, the bulk of this has come from volunteer labor as well as in-kind donations from the likes of Boeing, United Airlines and Federal Express, meaning that actual financial outlay from the museum has been relatively low for such a massive endeavor.

Its hard to imagine a more romantic way of sending the 727 to her new home either, and thousands of people were on hand to witness the take off and landing of this historic airliner, one of the most important transport types of all time. Amazingly, it wasnt until the 1970s that the venerable DC-3 was exceeded in numbers on the civil registry around the world, and it was the 727 that accomplished this. The 727 had a long production run following her first flight on February 9th, 1963. The assembly line didnt close until 1984. Very few operators still fly the 727, due to the much improved efficiency and quietness of more modern aircraft. The remaining examples operate mostly in air-cargo roles. FedEx was one of the last users of the type, and greatly assisted the Museum of Flights restoration, by donating parts and systems, not to mention more than half a dozen engines to rebuild three operable units for the final flight.

Saving the 727 prototype was more or less a lucky accident. Retired Boeing engineer, and long-time Museum of Flight employee, Bob Bogash happened to see the aircraft from his seat upon landing at OHare International in 1984. The 727 prototype served its entire commercial life with United Airlines, who agreed to donate the airframe to the Museum of Flight when its flying days were over, so in 1991 they ferried her to Paine Field. Because the museum hadnt got a hangar big enough to house the 727 indoors, she has sat outside since that time, which has presented considerable obstacles to her maintenance and preservation.

The Museum of Flight press release noted the following The 727s brief trip from Everett to Seattle was flown under a special flight permit, with only essential flight crew onboard during the flight: pilot Tim Powell, co-pilot Mike Scott, flight engineer Ralph Pascale, and safety officer Bob Bogash. Powell, Scott and Pascale fly 727s on a regular basis; airline and corporate pilot Powell has over 10,000 hours at the controls of various 727s. Bogash is the Museums 727 project manager.

Now that the airliner is at Boeing field, she will remain on outdoor display for a few more months in the Air Park beside the main museum building until the new Aviation Pavilion is ready to take her in late summer. The 727 will then take pride of place alongside a number of other Boeing airliner prototypes, including the 737 and 747 Jumbo Jet! Bravo to all concerned at the Museum of Flight for ensuring that this jewel of an aircraft has been saved for future generations to come!

WarbirdsNews wishes to express much gratitude to Joe Kunzler, Dan Hagedorn, Michael Grant, who helped with this article, and of course to the many people at the Museum of Flight who helped make this monumental flight possible!
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





Followers




























Pell's words, not mine. Did consultors have an obligation to keep ears and eyes out to properly advise the bishop? "Correct." Pell's answer, not mine. "It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me. The suffering of course was real. And I very much regret that. I had no reason to turn my mind to the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated."

Pell again, not me. The counsel assisting, Gail Furness, asked Pell: Who is responsible for the children? "Everybody has some sort of general responsibility ... Every member of the church has a responsibility to do what they can to protect children." My emphasis, not Pell's. What, I wonder, should we make of what they can? Is it really what they choose to do in the context of blissful ignorance and loose lips sink ships?

After signs of reconciliation on Monday, the cardinal reverted to denial in his first 90 minutes of testimony on Tuesday. We have reached a turning point. From where I sit, as a non-Catholic of Catholic origin who just wants the church to come clean, help the healing of the victims and ensure these crimes never happen again, Pell lost so much credibility in those 90 minutes as to make it impossible for objective, understanding people to empathise with him. It is difficult to conclude anything other than Pell made gross errors of judgment. It takes a village to raise a child. No caring person could countenance a culture of silence about dangers to children, no matter work ambitions, ideology or duty to an institution like the Catholic Church.

Yet Pell was inclined to believe priests before children who alleged abuse. He says he did not hear what was common knowledge about deviant priests. He cannot recall what specifically was discussed at two meetings about Ridsdale being moved on, but says for certain that paedophilia was not mentioned. Christians rely on teachings more than 2000 years old. Yet Pell claims common responses to child abuse in the 1970s were so different to what they are now as to, in my reading of it, excuse the approach of some church leaders. And different levels of caring for kids? "Under canon law, you can identify direct levels of responsibility." And shifting responsibility for caring onto others who might still lie to you, as Pell claims Mulkearns and fellow consultor Leo Fiscalini did to him?

"Gross deception." And why would Mulkearns choose to lie to you? "He would realise that I didn't know and he did not want me to share in his culpability. He would not have wanted to mention it to me and at least some other consultors because we would have asked questions about propriety." Royal commissioner Peter McClellan asked Pell: "If we were to come to the conclusion that you did know about Ridsdale when he was moved, then you would be culpable too?" "Correct."
If, as Scott Morrison keeps telling us, the trouble with the budget is a spending problem, not a revenue problem, the government's decision last week to greatly increase our spending on defence has just made the problem a lot worse.

If you wonder why it will be so long before we get the federal budget back into surplus, doctors are part of the reason.

But I'm still a journo, and have to do my job. So let me let me adapt something Kerry Packer said about a youthful Malcolm Turnbull: never get between a doctor and bag of money.

Some of my best friends are doctors. These days, I even have in-laws who are doctors. I've just become a grandad and my tiny grandson stands a fair chance of ending up as a doctor, too.

That's the problem with saying government spending is the problem. Politicians  of all stripes  are much keener on increasing spending than on reducing it.

A lot of the growth in spending  especially if you include the state governments  is coming from spending on healthcare. Part of it's the ageing of the population, but most of it's the higher cost of new pharmaceuticals, prosthetics and medical procedures.

There's actually nothing terrible about that. If we're getting a little more prosperous each year, what's more natural than that we choose to spend a fair bit of that increase on improving our health?

If so, the problem isn't our spending, it's our reluctance to pay for it. Which means the real problem with the budget is the aversion of pollies on both sides to confronting voters with that simple truth: if you want more spending on better healthcare you're welcome to it but, as with everything else in life, you'll have to pay more for it.

The problem with the debate about spending and taxing is that government budgets are so huge  about $430 billion a year, and a lot more if you add in the states  with so many taxes spent on such a multitude of things  that it's easy for each of us to lose our sense of cause and effect, in a way we'd never do with our own, household budget.
Spotlight serves as a painful reminder of one of the darkest periods in Catholic Church history, where more than 200 priests and religious were accused of abusing minors and were reassigned in a cover-up.

The movie, which won best picture at the Oscars in the US on Sunday, chronicles the Boston Globe's groundbreaking coverage of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the archdiocese of Boston that would go on to win the paper a Pulitzer Prize in 2003.

Pursuing priests: the crusading cast from Spotlight.

Reflecting on the 10-year anniversary of the Globe's revelations, Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley said that "the media helped make our church safer for children by raising up the issue of clergy sexual abuse and forcing us to deal with it." (Editor's note: The Globe's editor at the time was Martin Baron, now executive editor of the Washington Post.)

And as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat observed in 2010: "The Catholic Church has always had enemies ... But Catholics  and especially Catholic leaders, from the Vatican to the most far-flung diocese  should welcome it, both as a spur to virtue and as a sign that their faith still matters, that their church still looms large over the affairs of men, and that the world still cares enough about Christianity to demand that Catholics live up to their own exacting standards."
Cardinal Pell says he does not recall an incident in which abuse victim Timothy Green told him that Edward Dowlan was "touching little boys".

Timothy Green had previously testified that when he was 12 he told then-Father Pell in late 1974 that Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan was abusing boys at Ballarat's St Patrick's College.

"I said `Brother Dowlan is touching little boys'," said Mr Green, himself a victim of Dowlan.

"Father Pell said 'don't be ridiculous' and walked out."

Today, Cardinal Pell says: "I've got no such recollection." He says: "I'm sorry, I can't corroborate his story."
Police have charged a suspect over the shooting of a 27-year-old man in South Lake on Monday night.

After releasing details to the public on Tuesday, police received intelligence that led them to an Atwell home at 11.30pm.

Police wanted to speak to Michael Ivan McNeill in relation to the shooting incident.

Members of the Tactical Response Group and Fremantle Detectives arrested the 38-year-old, allegedly in possession of methamphetamine and a laser, without incident.

He has been charged with act or omissions causing bodily harm, possessing methamphetamine and possessing a weapon.
A WA prison guard accused of raping a young female prisoner has appeared in court on Wednesday.

Derby Detectives charged a 51-year-old man in relation to a string of indecent and sexual assaults against a female prisoner in her 20s at West Kimberley Regional Prison.

West Kimberley Regional Prison.

The man was "charged with sexual penetration without consent, and three counts of indecent assault," a WA Police spokesman said.

He appeared in Derby Magistrates Court on Wednesday and was granted bail to reappear in May.
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Jakarta: A major earthquake struck south-west of the Mentawai islands in West Sumatra on Wednesday evening, triggering a tsunami warning and sending people running for higher ground.

However, the Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG) later confirmed the tsunami warning, which was triggered by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, had ended several hours later.

An Australian tsunami warning for the Western Australian coastline, Cocos Island and Christmas Island has also been cancelled, with the main tsunami waves having now passed.

"Small unusual waves may continue but are no longer expected to be dangerous," the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology said.
Washington: Osama bin Laden left a will indicating that he had about $US29 million (about $40 million) in Sudan, with detailed instructions to "spend all the money I have left" continuing the global terror campaign he had led, according to newly released documents recovered by the US from the compound in Pakistan where the al-Qaeda chief was killed in 2011.

The handwritten will and 112 other documents were released on Tuesday by the office of the Director of National Intelligence - a collection that also includes letters to subordinates in al-Qaeda, messages from followers willing to carry out suicide attacks, and screeds on issues including bin Laden's conviction that the US and Iran were poised for war.

Osama bin Laden.

The files reinforce the sense that bin Laden was both increasingly anxious about security amid an escalating campaign of CIA drone strikes as the decade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda leader wore on. He also appeared increasingly disconnected from how much his organisation had been degraded, calling on deputies to mount operations and fill positions even as they pleaded that they lacked capable recruits.
Jerusalem: Iraq's Mosul dam faces "unprecedented" risk of a "catastrophic failure" that would unleash a wave of water which could flatten cities and kill hundreds of thousands within hours, the US has said.

The US government issued an unusually stark warning of the horrors that face Iraq if the dam gives way, describing a "tsunami-like wave" that would crush nearly a third of the country.

An aerial view of the Mosul dam, the biggest in Iraq. Mosul is out of shot on the top left. Credit:Ali Haidar Khan/Commons

It told its citizens to be ready to leave Iraq in the event of a collapse of the country's largest hydro-electric dam.

Iraqi officials have sought to play down the risk but Washington urged its citizens to make contingency plans now.
At the invitation of H.E. Mr. Tsukasa Kawada, Japans Ambassador in charge of International Cooperation for Countering Terrorism and International Organized Crime and Chair of the G7 Roma-Lyon Group, WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya participated in the Groups meeting held in Tokyo on 1 March 2016.

Speaking to the G7 Roma-Lyon Group made up of security experts, Secretary General Mikuriya explained Customs contribution to the fight against terrorism and organized crime and its role in the security context, referring to the Punta Cana Resolution adopted by the WCO Policy Commission in December 2015.

He gave an account of the WCO's Security Programme and its related technical assistance and capacity building programme, encapsulated by the WCO Border Security Initiative. The Security Programme covers (1) Passenger control, supported by the use of API/PNR; (2) Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), through Programme Global Shield that the United Nations General Assembly encouraged its Members to support in its Resolution of December 2015; (3) Strategic Trade control, through the successful Operation Cosmo resulting in the establishment of the Information and Intelligence Centre (I2C);

(4) Firearms and Light Weapons; and (5) Terrorist Financing, by combating illicit trade and money laundering (cash couriers and trade-based money laundering).

He also emphasized the importance of capacity building within the Compliance and Enforcement Package to enhance risk management capability, use of technology to improve networks, collaboration with other law enforcement agencies and business, as well as enforcement operations. These initiatives were aimed at guaranteeing results by Customs activities to dismantle the illicit trade supply chain and terrorist funding sources. Japan Customs representative gave a supplementary presentation on the usefulness of API/PNR and its positive outcomes, in order to encourage all G7 Members to support Customs access to this useful data.

The G7s group of experts thanked the Secretary General for his compelling explanations and acknowledged Customs contribution to each component of the Security Programme. It also underlined the importance of border control in fighting illicit trade, including wildlife crime (such as the INAMA Project) and cultural heritage trafficking, suspected of being emerging terrorist financing risks.

The G7 Roma-Lyon Group is tasked with reporting on and recommending the requisite anti-terrorism measures to the G7 Meeting of Heads of State/Government, to be held in Japan this May.
The New Zealand Customs Minister, Hon. Nicky Wagner, met with Deputy Secretary General Sergio Mujica at WCO Headquarters on 2 March 2016 to discuss a range of topical Customs matters, including e-commerce, digital Customs, security issues and trade facilitation.

The Minister expressed New Zealands appreciation for the cooperation provided by the WCO in many areas, serving as a forum for the exchange of experience and best practices amongst the Organizations membership worldwide.

Deputy Secretary General Mujica welcomed the commitment of New Zealand to the WCO and its very positive input over many years.

Both parties look forward to continuing and enhancing the longstanding cooperation.
It seems curious that about a week after The Bahamas Press Club and Save The Bays announced plans to urge the passage of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the government, through the Minister of Education, has announced consultation will begin soon.

If memory serves me correctly the first draft of a Freedom of Information Act was presented to the Attorney General for review in late 2007 or early 2008. An FOIA was passed in 2012 but was not enacted.

The present government circulated its own draft but it was considered unreasonable as it did not meet internationally acceptable standards.

So presumably the Bill that is about to be circulated has been substantially revised?

While the presentation of a useful FOIA is long overdue, the process of getting ideas put into a Bill needs to be reconsidered. Instead of consultation after the Bill is completed, it should be done first with these ideas forming the basis of what might become law.

In the United Kingdom for example their process includes a less formal Green Paper. This is discussed and refined and then aWhite Paper with more firm positions is circulated.

Then a Bill is formulated for presentation to Parliament etc.

When Bills are presented in their final form as is the norm here, confusion reigns.

Will The Bahamas ever see a FOIA and a revised process?
Weight information available early, end customers can make changes without missing their ship

No overloaded containers during road transport to the port

Highly accurate weight information, certified OIML III

Efficient weighing, no driving back and forth to weighbridges

Information available on individual shipments within containers

Ravas (Netherlands) - As of July, the verified weight of sea containers must be made known to the shipping company before loading them onto the ship. Two methods are allowed: weighing the packed container (Method n.1), or weighing all individual items in the container (Method n.2). With iForks on the forklift, every pallet lifted is immediately weighed, without taking the goods out of the process. Using the RAVAS SOLAS App, total container weights are easily computed and communicated with all stakeholders in the supply chain, including the shipping company.Amendments to the SOLAS regulations require that as of July 2016 the verified gross weight of containers must be made known before loading them onto a ship. The IMO (International Maritime Organisation) has decided that container weights may be determined by weighing the packed container (Method n.1) or by weighing the individual items in the container (Method n.2), earlier in the chain. RAVAS supplies the mobile scales and the connectivity to make individual pallet weights and shipments available throughout the supply chain.iForks is the successful wireless mobile scale for forklift trucks from RAVAS. With iForks on the truck, every load lifted is immediately weighed. iForks provide a highly accurate weight read-out in 1 kg steps on a display in the cabin, and are available in legal for trade version OIML III. Extended scale functions include registering of ID codes with every weight recorded. iForks also communicates bi-directionally with WMS or ERP systems, via Bluetooth or Wifi connection. iForks can be installed on any counterbalanced or reach truck in a matter of minutes.For efficient computing of container weights, RAVAS offers its SOLAS App. The App can be installed on a PDA, iPad or iPhone. After identifying the container by its number and registering its tare weight, the App allows the user to identify individual pallets or shipments and register their weight, communicated by iForks. Total container weight is computed and registered on the PDA, and can be downloaded to a PC via USB cable as a CSV file. If the App is used on an iPad or iPhone, the information can be e-mailed to the shipping company straight from the App.
Field and grass fires have been burning in Graves, McCracken, Calloway Counties
Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required.

Your Full Name: (optional)

Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 01, 2016 | 04:35 PM | WESTERN KY, SOUTHERN IL

During Red Cross Month in March, the American Red Cross invites individuals to help local blood supplies catch up after winter weather cancelled hundreds of donation events in Kentucky, Illinois and Tennessee.



March has also been recognized as Red Cross Month by every U.S. president since 1943. Red Cross Month is a celebration of supporters who are the face of the Red Cross in their communities, helping to prepare for and bringing help and hope after emergencies.



For more than 30 years, blood donor Sherri Kay has been helping the Red Cross fulfill its lifesaving mission. Knowing that I help to save lives and make a difference through the Red Cross is one of the most significant things that I do, she said.



Heroes of all blood types are needed to ensure a sufficient blood supply this spring. The Red Cross must collect approximately 14,000 blood and platelet donations every day for patients.



Make an appointment to donate blood by downloading the free Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting redcrossblood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767).



Upcoming blood donation opportunities:



Anna Community School District, 301 South Green St. Anna, IL 62906

3/15/2016: noon - 5 p.m.



Dongola Unit School District # 66, 1000 High St. Dongola, IL 62926

3/11/2016: 10:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.



Bardwell Baptist Church, 323 US Highway 51 S Bardwell, KY 42023

3/3/2016: noon - 6 p.m.



First Baptist Church, 115 Second St Fulton, KY 42041

3/8/2016: noon - 4 p.m.



Fancy Farm Elementary School, 10225 State Rt. 80 West Fancy Farm, KY 42039

3/8/2016: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.



Lowes Elementary School, 6775 State RT. 440 Lowes, KY 42061

3/10/2016: noon - 5 p.m.



Sedalia Elementary School, 5252 State Route 97 Mayfield, KY 42066

3/7/2016: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.



Graves County Central Elementary, 2262 State Rt. 121 North Mayfield, KY 42066

3/8/2016: 1 p.m. - 6 p.m.



Farmington Elementary School, 7730 State Route 121 South Mayfield, KY 42066

3/10/2016: noon - 5 p.m.



Symsonia Elementary School, 11730 State Route 131 Symsonia, KY 42082

3/9/2016: noon - 5 p.m.



Wingo Elementary School, 449 Lebanon St. Wingo, KY 42088

3/9/2016: 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.



Lake City Baptist Church, 410 Hazel Demery Road Grand Rivers, KY 42045

3/2/2016: 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.



First Baptist Church Kuttawa, Walnut Drive Kuttawa, KY 42055

3/14/2016: 12:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.



Calvert City Civic Center, 1445 5th Avenue Southeast Calvert City, KY 42029

3/14/2016: noon - 6 p.m.



Paducah Blood Donation Center, 4635 Falconcrest Drive Paducah, KY 42001

3/1/2016: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.

3/4/2016: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.

3/5/2016: 7 a.m. - 1 p.m.

3/7/2016: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

3/8/2016: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.

3/10/2016: 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

3/11/2016: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.

3/12/2016: 7 a.m. - 1 p.m.

3/13/2016: 7 a.m. - 1 p.m.

3/14/2016: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

3/15/2016: 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.



Lourdes Hospital, 1530 Lone Oak Rd. Paducah, KY 42003

3/2/2016: 7 a.m. - 1 p.m.



First Christian Church, 415 Audubon Drive Paducah, KY 42001

3/7/2016: 11:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.



Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 9701 Blandville Road West Paducah, KY 42086

3/13/2016: 1 p.m. - 5 p.m.



Fairfield Church of Christ, 1860 Hwy. 100 Centerville, TN 37033

3/7/2016: 12:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.





How to donate blood



Simply download the American Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed to ensure a reliable supply for patients. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age (16 with parental consent in some states), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.







Blood donors can now save time at their next donation by using RapidPass to complete their pre-donation reading and health history questionnaire online, on the day of their donation, prior to arriving at the blood drive. To get started and learn more, visit redcrossblood.org/RapidPass and follow the instructions on the site.







About the American Red Cross



The American Red Cross shelters, feeds and provides emotional support to victims of disasters; supplies about 40 percent of the nations blood; teaches skills that save lives; provides international humanitarian aid; and supports military members and their families. The Red Cross is a not-for-profit organization that depends on volunteers and the generosity of the American public to perform its mission. For more information, please visit redcross.org or cruzrojaamericana.org, or visit us on Twitter at @RedCross.
Advertisement

By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 01, 2016 | FRANKFORT, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 01, 2016 | 05:22 PM | FRANKFORT, KY

The Kentucky Senate today approved legislation that would place a proposed constitutional amendment on a statewide ballot to create a crime victim bill of rights.



Senate Bill 175, which seeks to enact constitutional protections for crime victims that dont currently exist, passed by a 34-1 vote and was forwarded to the House for its consideration.



Among the bills protections are a right to be heard at steps along the justice process such as hearings, plea deal negotiations, sentencings and parole hearings. Victims would also have a stated right to be treated with fairness and respect, to be kept abreast of developments as a case progresses and to have reasonable protection from the accused or anyone acting on their behalf if the bill passes.



Many of the provisions are commonly offered to victims, sponsor Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Hopkinsville, said while introducing the bill. Many arent codified, however.



Westerfield said there are around 9,000 violent crimes in Kentucky each year.



For every one of those violent offenses, theres at least one victim, sometimes more. The rights that they are afforded either dont exist at all or exist in random places in statute, Westerfield said. While we have a lot of people at the end of the day that work to make sure victims are taken care of, I think its important that we enshrine (these) rights in the state constitution.
By The Associated Press Mar. 02, 2016 | 09:22 AM | SHEPHERDSVILLE, KY

Shepherdsville police have arrested a man they say opened fire on another car as he drove, all while his 18-month-old child sat in his vehicle.

Multiple media outlets report that 22-year-old Curtis Wyatt is accused of firing a shot from his car into another man's car Monday evening as the two traveled south on I-65 in Bullitt County.

An arrest warrant says the victim told police Wyatt followed him closely before he passed him on the right, pulled in front of him and then slammed on the brakes. Soon after, the shot was fired, which police say passed through the front passenger door and passenger seat.

Wyatt was arrested and charged with attempted murder and first-degree wanton endangerment.
Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world
Southwark Playhouse have announced they will host the London premiere of Krieger and Russell's 1997 cult Broadway musical Side Show.

We thought we'd put forward some ideal pairings to play conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton.

Who would you like to see in the roles? Let us know on twitter.

Rosalie Craig and Laura Pitt-Pulford

Following her outstanding performance in As You Like It at the National it's about time that Craig got back into a musical! And who else better to team up with than recently announced Olivier nominee Laura Pitt-Pulford.

Nicola Hughes and Rachel John

Hughes is also an Olivier Award nominee for Trevor Nunn's 2007 production of Porgy and Bess. Following her performances in The Bodyguard and Memphis we'd absolutely have Rachel John in our dream cast.

Louise Dearman and Kerry Ellis

How could we not include green twins Dearman and Ellis in this list? When they teamed up for their reunion concert last year the stagey kids went into meltdown. This casting would be a bums-on-seats crowdpleaser.

Christine Allado and Rachelle Ann Go

We can thank shows including Here Lies Love and Miss Saigon for introducing a whole host of Asian talent to the London theatre scene. Allado's credits include From Here to Eternity and Here Lies Love and she can currently be seen in computer generated musical Beyond the Fence, a star in the making. WhatsOnStage Award winner Rachelle Ann Go is soon to return to the West End to play Fantine in Les Mis, but maybe she could put that off for a few months?

Lauren Samuels and Lucie Jones

Since appearing together in We Will Rock You, Samuels and Jones have gone on to take theatreland by storm. Samuels finishes in Bend it Like Beckham this weekend before appearing in The Buskers Opera, and Jones is soon to star as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde at the Curve, but both will be done in time to join Side Show.





Side Show runs at Southwark Playhouse from 21 October to 3 December.
Loading...

Matt Trueman, WhatsOnStage



"Anthony Weigh has transposed Anouilh's plot to the Hamptons in 1959 - a shift that elegantly enhances the question of escaping oneself."

"Anouilh's play is a witty philosophical teaser about identity, and Weigh keeps us guessing about who Gene really is."

"Weigh has a hoot with the snobbery of Hamptons high society, and Blanche McIntrye's production, with a sea breezy Mark Thompson design, gives it just the right comic gloss."

Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph



"Despite the evident commitment of director Blanche McIntyre and a crack cast, the new script doesn't land entirely comfortably on stage."

"It's the stylishly attired women who bag most of the evening's laurels. Katherine Kingsley is hilariously puffed up as the arriviste gorgon who brings family and putative son together while snarling at her cigar-chomping hubby (Danny Webb). Sian Thomas is on formidably icy form as Jack's unmaternal ma. Fenella Woolgar is discreetly amusing as his diffident but waspish sister in law and one of his forsaken flings."

"Passably entertaining, then, but eminently forgettable."

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail



"Anthony Weigh has adapted Jean Anouilh's 1938 play Le Voyageur Sans Bagage and it works well in this Long Island set-up with the black servants, martini hours and predatory women."

"Most of Blanche McIntyre's cast are excellent: Sian Thomas as the snobbish chatelaine, Fenella Woolgar as her daughter-in-law... Katherine Kingsley and Danny Webb play the couple who bring Gene to the Foxes. They have a terrific scene of marital bitching, she all a-quiver, bosomy, lipsticked, he older and raddled by hatred for his wife."

"This almost farcical fantasy somehow combines Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Oscar Wilde-ish self-creation and the feelgood factor of It's A Wonderful Life. Thoughtful fun."

Ann Treneman, The Times



"This is a great cartoon fun, an identity crisis comedy that seems the perfect thing for spring, a great way to shoo away the winter blues."

"Blanche McIntyre directs at a lively pace though it could have been smoother in places. The set by Mark Thompson feels as if it is something out of old Hollywood, all happy colours and bright vistas."

"The costumes, particular Marcee's sun-dress ensemble, are superb. The music has a swish to it."

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard



"Keenan expertly conveys Gene's mixture of bemusement and opportunism  and Blanche McIntyre's elegant even if somewhat fidgety production relishes the strangeness of the story."

"There are gleefully outrageous performances from Sian Thomas, Fenella Woolgar and Danny Webb, while Katherine Kingsley sparkles as Marcee."

"The play may be overlong but its brand of witty cleverness is seductive."

Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out



"Blanche Mcintyre's production is brilliantly cast. As the bemused Gene, Keenan has something of the diamond in the rough charm of Sinatra's prime screen roles. Fenella Woolgar is magnificent as his scheming sister-in-law Valerie."

"It's an enjoyable caper that at its best mixes screwball silliness with an agreeably tart interrogation of the American Dream  that it is mostly selfish, yet may truly offer the possibility of redemption through reinvention. But for whatever reason Captain Fox! didn't really feel as funny as it should."

"Welcome Home, Captain Fox! is both a loving homage to the golden era of the American comedy and a smart adaptation of an older, more complicated French play  perhaps it's that odd combination that means it doesn't quite hit the funnybone."

Welcome Home, Captain Fox runs at the Donmar Warehouse until 16 April.
Loading...

Europe was in the grip of its own amnesia when Jean Anouilh wrote his play about a soldier with no memory in 1937. Regarded as the French playwright's first success, Le Voyageur Sans Bagage (The Traveller Without Luggage) stages an existential crisis. Fifteen years after the first world war, Gaston is presented with a past he neither remembers nor wants.

Anthony Weigh has transposed Anouilh's plot to the Hamptons in 1959 - a shift that elegantly enhances the question of escaping oneself. After 14 years in an East Berlin prison hospital, Rory Keenan's Gene is hurled back into (ahem) polite East Coast society. He is, he's told, Jack Fox - probably Captain Jack Fox, by now - and his well-heeled, if snooty, family welcome him home with open arms and pursed smiles. Mrs Fox (Sian Thomas) greets the son she thought dead like a letter returned to its sender.

However, Keenan's innocent is a far-cry from his former shitbag of a self. Jack Fox was a keen hunter, who bullied his dim brother (Trevor Laird) and carried on with his sister-in-law, the vituperative Valerie (Fenella Woolgar). As the Foxes try all manner of aides-memoire, it becomes increasingly obvious that Gene doesn't want to be Jack. He sits in his childhood bedroom, surrounded by his stuffed animal victims, and contemplates the scar on his shoulder that seems to confirm his identity.

As word of a long-lost soldier gets out, however, other families arrive to stake their claim. Almost everybody has lost somebody, and that makes this human goldfish gold-dust, giving Gene/Jack a shot at being somebody else.

Anouilh's play is a witty philosophical teaser about identity, and Weigh keeps us guessing about who Gene really is. Even a scar isn't proof, but the more ardently he denies being Jack, the more his stubbornness seems to confirm it. But Anouilh pushes past the usual conundrums - are we defined by our memories, our actions or our character and so on - to ponder the possibility of personal reform.

Gene, essentially, wants a new life - to throw off his past and start afresh. Weigh's canny setting extends that with ideas of privilege (the Foxes' black servants are a constant presence) and the restricted worldview of American capitalism. How much can any of us really shake off our selves? Anouilh answered in black and white, but Weigh adds shades of gray. As Valerie hammers home, "You can't escape from the whole world."

Weigh has a hoot with the snobbery of Hamptons high society, and Blanche McIntrye's production, with a sea breezy Mark Thompson design, gives it just the right comic gloss. Katherine Kingsley and Danny Webb are a blast as the social-climbing Dufort-Duponts (do not soften that hard t), who throw Jack to the Foxes to raise their own standing. "There is only so much Mah-Jong one can play," she pooh-poohs. Woolgar's on tremendous form as the arch Valerie, and Sian Thomas suggests, right at the end, the human heart beneath Mrs Fox's icy exterior. Their behaviour - so intent on keeping up appearances - serves as proof that identity is, at least in part, a performance.

However, sometimes that performance falls apart - and Weigh's version sidesteps the darker edges of personal disintegration. Keenan lends Gene a boyish insouciance and a bewilderment, and he's never anything less than charming, but with no real danger of breakdown, there's no real danger at all.

Welcome Home, Captain Fox runs at the Donmar Warehouse until 16 April.
German second tier side SV Sandhausen have secured a sponsorship deal that is certain to go down well with a certain section of their supporters  namely the sex-starved perv demographic.

Sandhausen recently announced that they have successfully agreed a commercial partnership deal with local brothel Bienenstock Eros Centre (which translates as Beehive), which is located in the neighbouring town of Heidelberg.

Bienenstock, it might interest you to know, claim to be the most environmentally-conscious brothel in the world, as Sandhausen general manager Jurgen Meier Mach explained thus.

They are a very serious partner. Alcohol and cigarettes are regularly promoted (by other clubs). At least Bienenstock is good for the environment.

As part of the agreement, the eco-knocking shop will now be able to advertise their services on the electronic hoardings around Sandhausens Hardtwaldstadion and take out a half-page advert in the matchday programme.

According to Bild, the deal will also come with a few choice perks for Sandhausen fans, who will be offered discount rates at Bienenstock until the end of the current season.

How thoughtful.

Cue penis jokes
The Sun are going big today with their claims that five of the Premier Leagues biggest cash-cows have held secret talks to form a splinter competition of their very own.

The story is largely based on the fact that top brass executives from Manchester United, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal were all spotted leaving the same London hotel yesterday after meeting with American real estate billionaire Stephen Ross.

Old Trafford executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck, Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis, Citys chief executive Ferran Soriano and Liverpools Ian Ayre ALL emerged smiling and shaking hands after the clandestine meeting.

Might have been a congratulatory post-orgy handshake for all we know. Think on that for a minute.

Apparently Ross, who owns the Miami Dolphins among other things, is planning to create a European Super League that would see only the continents most elite (read: marketable) teams pitted against one another.

Ross is also the man responsible for creating the International Champions Cup, i.e, the faceless pre-season tournament now held every year in which the big boys (and a couple of MLS sides) play each other in a series of friendlies across the US.

More from The Suns report:

The new competition would see the English elite join with top clubs round Europe and cut out the risks of them missing out on Champions League millions every season if they fail to qualify. That would benefit the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool, who fear missing out this season with Leicester and Spurs  conspicuous by their apparent absence  currently filling the top two slots.

It should perhaps be noted that its also reported that the aforementioned meeting with Ross was merely to discuss arrangements for the next International Champions Cup itinerary, but thats not nearly as exciting as the formation of a new clandestine super league of evil, now is it?
Bali's Kerobokan Prison

The Surabaya District Court on Tuesday (01/03) sentenced to death a female prison inmate for controlling a drug syndicate from behind bars with the help of a police officer and his wife, who also received the death penalty.





Tri Diah Toriassiah, also known as Susi, was serving a 7-year jail term in East Java's Porong prison in Sidoarjo district for another drug crime when she was found to have distributed at least 50 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, with an estimated street value of Rp 6 billion ($450,958), the court ruled.





Susi had enlisted the help of Adj. First Insp. Abdul Latif of the Sedati Subdistrict Police and his wife Indri Rahmawati to pick up shipments from a former inmate named Yoyok and distribute them to drug dealers across Surabaya, Indonesia's 2nd biggest city.





"Despite being in prison for drug offenses, Susi continued to run her [narcotics] business by working with Yoyok; the volume of drugs [they distributed] was huge," presiding judge Kamaruddin Simanjuntak said on Tuesday afternoon.





The judges unanimously agreed to hand her the death sentence.





Source: Jakarta Globe, March 1, 2016




Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 01/03/2016 (2425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Manitoba senators are now so rare in Canadas Parliament they could almost be considered an endangered species, but the Prime Ministers Office wont say when they might be getting more company.

With the retirement of Liberal Maria Chaput taking effect Tuesday, Manitoba has four vacant seats in the upper chamber, leaving Conservatives Sen. Janis Johnson and Sen. Don Plett to represent the province there.

Chaput was due to retire in May 2017 but left early because of health issues.

Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press files Maria Chaput retired from the Senate Tuesday, leaving four vacant Manitoba seats.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is fulfilling a campaign promise to create a non-partisan appointments board to seek out possible Senate nominees, and then he will name new senators from the boards recommendations. The board members were named in January, but where they are at in their work is unknown. A spokeswoman for the PMO said Tuesday there is no date for when the first five vacancies will be filled. Two of them are from Manitoba, two are from Ontario and one is from Quebec.

The board is to submit five possible names for each vacancy  so, 10 names from Manitoba  to Trudeau for consideration. He is not bound to use the list but has said he will. The lists are not to be made public.

Meanwhile, Aniz Alani, a Vancouver lawyer who is suing the federal government over its failure to fill vacancies in the Senate in a reasonable amount of time, said Manitoba and the West are losing out.

Even if the panel moves fairly quickly at this point, the Manitoba vacancies are accumulating faster than they are being filled, he said. Youre losing that representation, that voice.

Manitoba has been without half its complement in the Senate since August 2014. Former prime minister Stephen Harper stopped filling vacancies in the Senate in 2013, when the Senate expense scandal blew up. Just before the election began last year, he announced an intention to never fill the vacancies and let the chamber die through attrition.

That led to Alanis lawsuit. Attempts by the federal government to have the case thrown out of court were tossed in January, and the case is now scheduled to be heard in June. Alani said he is willing to drop the suit if Trudeau agrees to set clear timelines for filling the empty seats.

The 24 vacancies in the Senate are more than ever before in Canadian history, Alani said. A spokesman for Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef told the Free Press the other two Manitoba vacancies will be among those filled later in 2016 in the second phase of the new appointments process.

That phase will include soliciting applications from the public.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 01/03/2016 (2425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VICTORIA  Premier Christy Clark says her governments protection of the Great Bear Rainforest is British Columbias gift to the world.

The province introduced legislation Tuesday that protects most of the globes largest intact temperate rainforest on B.C.s rugged central coast from logging.

We all knew that yes today would mean something incredible for the next 100 years, for the next 500 years, not just for B.C., but the entire world, Clark said at a ceremony after the protection law was introduced in the legislature.

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark talks about the Great Bear Rainforest (Forest Management) Act during a milestone announcement at the Legislative Library at the legislature in Victoria, B.C., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

The Great Bear Rainforest Forest Management Act protects 85 per cent of the 6.4-million-hectare area that stretches from the Discovery Islands on Vancouver Island northwards to Alaska.

The government announced a landmark agreement last month to protect the area after 20 years of talks with industry, First Nations and conservation groups.

Clark said the protected area covers seven per cent of B.C.s land mass and is the size of Ireland.

Forests Minister Steve Thomson said often-opposing groups in B.C. learned to co-exist and the result is an agreement that shares and preserves the riches of a global treasure, located about 700 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Anti-logging protests during the 1990s drew worldwide attention to the Great Bear Rainforest, forcing all sides to compromise and reach an agreement.

First Nations, industry, environmental and government leaders gathered at the legislature to mark the introduction of the protection law.

Forest company executive Ric Slaco said he was on the front lines of the battles between forest companies and environmental groups that organized worldwide boycotts of B.C. forest products in the 1990s to try and stop logging in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Slaco, who is now vice-president of Interfor, said he was one of the backroom negotiators who helped hammer out the protection deal that keeps 15 per cent of the Great Bear Rainforest open to logging.

If the job was easy, it could have been done a long time ago, he said. Today is a great day for the forests of B.C.

Sierra Club spokesman Jens Wieting said the agreement stands as an example of a difficult but successful decision-making process.

We are hopeful we have provided a beacon of light for how to move ahead in the 21st century, he said.

The Great Bear Rainforests white kermode bear, widely known as the spirit bear, became the symbol of the pressing need to protect the areas unique and pristine qualities.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When a sitting mayor sells concert and hockey tickets to a contractor who bids on city work, the optics are terrible.

As columnist Dan Lett opined in Tuesdays Free Press, former mayor Sam Katz appeared to demonstrate little regard for his office when he accepted cheques from Caspian Construction as payment for tickets to Winnipeg Jets games and concerts at the MTS Centre.

If optics were the only consideration, it was unwise for Katz to accept personal cheques from the company awarded Winnipegs police-headquarters contract, eventually valued at $172 million. But these transactions, revealed in the contents of a search warrant that allowed the RCMP to raid Caspians office in 2014, have ramifications beyond the realm of public relations.

The revelation of some form of personal relationship between Katz and Caspian president Armik Babakhanians, described as a friendship by one witness in the RCMP warrant, places three outstanding questions about the procurement of Winnipegs police headquarters in a new context.

These questions are aside from the RCMPs avenue of investigation in 2014, when the Free Press first reported the Mounties were looking into allegations about doctored invoices at the police headquarters project.

They concern the larger question of how the police headquarters construction contract was awarded in the first place. These questions involve the security clearance granted to Caspian, changes to the construction-bonding requirement on the contract and the recipient of the contract itself.

The security-clearance issue first emerged in 2012, when the Free Press and CBC Manitoba reported Babakhanians had a business relationship on a downtown property with the late Ray Rybachuk, who had a lengthy criminal record and ties to organized crime.

Babakhanians moved quickly to sever his ties to Rybachuk, but the publicity forced Winnipeg police to reveal they conducted a special vetting of Babakhanians to ensure he posed no threat.

Typically, entities with ties to organized crime, however tenuous, are not permitted to bid on police work. Earlier, a police source who spoke to the Free Press alleged city hall exerted pressure to allow an individual with organized crime ties to bid on police headquarters work.

When asked about the allegation, former police chief Keith McCaskill said, Look, its corporate. Aside from this statement, there has never been independent corroboration of the sources complaint.

The 2014 KPMG audit of the police headquarters project did not deal with the security clearance. It did, however, draw attention to a second question related to the award of the police headquarters construction contract.

The initial contract, for $50,000 worth of pre-construction services, was awarded to a joint venture between Caspian Projects and Akman Construction. This work was assigned to Caspian alone when Akman bowed out.

That was not problematic. The problem arose when the city awarded what initially was a $137-million construction contract to Caspian Projects without the firm ever submitting a solo bid.

We note that Caspian did not submit a proposal, and that Caspian was awarded the construction contract, the KPMG auditors wrote.

The third and final question related to the contract award pertains to a city decision to reduce the size of the construction bond, which is a pot of money a company must set aside as a form of assurance it can complete the work.

Six says before the police headquarters bid opportunity closed, the documents were amended to reduce the size of the construction bond to $25 million, or about one quarter of the value of the original construction estimate. The city later asserted in a report this was done to allow more companies to bid on the work. The city also said the reduction was conducted at the behest of the Surety Association of Canada, which represents the construction bonding industry.

As the Free Press reported in 2013, an official with the Surety Association of Canada called this bullshit and stated it would not recommend reducing a construction bond below the threshold of 50 per cent of the total construction estimate.

The cheaper bond resulted in cost savings, the city explained. The winning bid, from Caspian and Akman, was also the lowest.

None of these questions has ever been resolved. But they are worth asking again, now that Katz has established a personal relationship of some form with the president of Caspian Construction.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

wfpvideo:113844787:wfpvideo

LIBERAL Leader Rana Bokhari refused to comment Wednesday as one of her candidates came under fire from the NDP for offensive comments he posted about women on social media.

Jamie Hall, who is running for the provincial Liberals in Southdale, has referred to women as whores and skanks in postings on social media. He was nominated by the Liberals Tuesday.

The businessman, author and technology expert apologized at a news conference for his language on Twitter and Facebook after the New Democrats brought them to light, although he insisted at first he made the comments to promote a work of fiction.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Southdale Liberal candidate Jamie Hall (right) with his girlfriend, Dez Joyal, at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The tweets in question are from that promotion. They did come from my Twitter account, though, so its not an excuse. I am very apologetic for it, he said, flanked by his girlfriend, Dez Joyal, and Liberal communications director Mike Brown.

Bokhari did not attend the mid-afternoon news conference, and Brown said late Wednesday the party would not announce a decision on Halls candidacy until today.

Hall said he wished to remain a candidate, although he left the door open that he might resign. He said he hadnt yet discussed his posted comments with Bokhari.

I have told my volunteers that they need to give me today to work through all of this and figure out (his future), he said.

According to a screen grab provided by the NDP, Hall tweeted Aug. 17, 2012: If a whore screams in the bedroom and no one is around to hear it, is she really a whore? #thoughtprovokingquestions #trees On July 20, 2014, on Facebook, Hall posted: Never play this card skank @desjoyal in rummy. She plays dirty and wins like a skank. What a skank. #soreloser.

Speaking for the NDP, Health Minister Sharon Blady called the comments  and several others her party discovered online  disgusting, hateful, misogynistic.

She said the fact Bokhari didnt immediately distance herself from them  and her candidate  doesnt reflect well on her leadership.

As a woman, I find it very worrisome that the Liberal leader would stand beside someone that engages in this kind of language and this kind of action, Blady said.

Right now, the longer she waits and the less decisive her actions are, the more, frankly, it muddies the reputation of her own party and her own name, she said.

TWITTER A tweet by Jamie Hall on Aug. 17, 2012.

In a news release Wednesday morning announcing Halls candidacy, Bokhari said: We continue to build a team Manitobans can be proud of. Jamie Hall is the kind of candidate that Manitobans should be excited about because of his ability to deliver better technology services to the province and the cost savings that come with that.

Brown said Hall had been vetted, but admitted the party was unaware of his controversial postings on social media.

A source told the Free Press the Liberals once had a formal vetting committee, but it was disbanded, in part, because Bokhari thought the process was too slow and wanted to announce candidates more quickly.

Speaking with reporters, Hall first suggested his controversial comments were confined to the promotion of a book.

It is about a character that has a very difficult time in the dating world. And hes ultimately looking for the right woman, he said.

It is a racy book, absolutely. Thats the thing I love about living in Canada; you can release books that are both creative and a piece of fiction and youre allowed to have freedom of expression 

When it was pointed out he made other sexist comments outside the book-promotion period  in 2012 and 2013  including the Facebook posting in which he calls his girlfriend a skank after losing to her in gin rummy, Hall said: Thats satire. Thats myself and my girlfriend playing rummy. And my friends know thats satire.

He added he is a very sarcastic and satirical person.

The Manitoba Progressive Conservatives refused to comment Wednesday about the Liberal candidates remarks.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "I don't know when there is ever an appropriate context for the use of those words," said Health Minister Sharon Blady.

Blady said Halls comments came across more as a justification for his actions than regret.

One of the NDPs star candidates, Wab Kinew, who is running in Fort Rouge, employed sexist and demeaning lyrics against women years ago when he was a rapper.

Blady said the difference is Kinew has taken ownership for his past, apologized and wrote a book dealing with it.

Hes talked about his own personal growth and, frankly, the regret (about) a period of angry youth behaviour, she said.

Kinew has come out on the right side of things, and is a very strong feminist male, Blady said.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
The policy also proposes capping of airfares at Rs 2,500 for one-hour flight under regional connectivity scheme for places that are unserved currently as well as auctioning of bilateral rights, among others.

New Delhi: The national civil aviation policy, which proposes various tax sops and setting up of no-frills airports, is likely to get Cabinet approval by this month, a top official said today.

"We are hopeful of getting Cabinet approval to the policy by the end of this month," Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said here.The ministry had earlier planned to take the draft policy, which was unveiled on October 30 last year, to the Cabinet for its approval by January.

"We wish it takes less time but it is largely because of the comments received by diverse stakeholders (in response to the draft document)," the secretary said.Choubey said the Government was "taking time" in finalising the policy and its subsequent implementation.

"The government's effort is to find the best possible solution to various issues so that the civil aviation sector takes off," he said.The draft policy proposes providing viability gap funding for airlines for regional connectivity, various tax sops and setting up of no-frills airports.

Besides, the policy also proposes capping of airfares at Rs 2,500 for one-hour flight under regional connectivity scheme for places that are unserved currently as well as auctioning of bilateral rights, among others. Pointing out that the country never had an "integrated national civil aviation policy but only sectoral ones", Choubey said the government is trying to bring an integrated policy which is "bound to take time.

"After taking comments from all stakeholders including airlines, airport operators, general aviation firms, ground-handling agencies, among others, a group of ministers under Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had discussed the draft policy late last month.
Faith Lutheran Church invites the community to learn about and the women who struggle to keep their churches open at 1 p.m. March 4 at the church, 1717 W. Service Dr. in Winona.

Women, men and children in more than 170 countries and regions will celebrate World Day of Prayer on Friday, March 4. The women of the WDP Committee of the Cuba invite everyone into a time of worship. The diverse group of women work united in creativity in feeding and caring for their families during their struggle to survive.

The women have also become dedicated to preserving life in the natural environment of Cuba through eco-justice.

For more information contact Margi Obst at 474-5234 or Diana Cyert at 454-1643.
The city of Arcadia has submitted a scaled-back plan to move nearly half a mile of creek in an effort to protect the city from flooding.

The project, which would fill part of Myers Valley Creek and create a new channel, is part of an effort to prevent floods like one that caused an estimated $11 million in damage in 2010.

The goal is to eliminate a potential clog where the creek passes under a low bridge.

With a population of just 2,925, Arcadia is home to multiple international corporations employing more than 5,000 people. In previously circulated documents, the flooding risk was said to threaten thousands of jobs and an entire regional economy.

The new flood control plan is estimated to cost about $2.1 million. It is less costly than a proposal floated last year, which would have included a $6 million contribution from Ashley Furniture, which was tied to an expansion of the companys headquarters.

Were getting the best option we can for the price and still making Arcadia to hopefully be a little less flood prone, said Mayor Robert Reichwein, who added that Ashley is a very large employer that wed like to keep not just in this city but in the area.

In an application submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the city proposes filling about 1,750 linear feet of the existing stream and rerouting it to avoid the bridge. The project would affect about 2,200 feet of the stream and ultimately shorten it by about 150 feet.

As part of the proposed project, Ashley would allow the creek to be routed through a truck parking lot; in exchange, the city would fill about 2.7 acres of wetlands along the abandoned stream bed.

Arcadia proposes to offset the wetland losses with the purchase of 3.14 acres from the Foggy Acres Mitigation Bank in Chippewa County.

The Corps of Engineers is accepting public comments on the application through March 31.

The project will also require approval of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, which is awaiting additional information before accepting public comments.

The city began discussing ways to remove or relocate the bridge in 2002 and has been focused on moving the creek since 2010.

In May, Ashley decided not to pursue $6 million in state tax credits, a move that former Arcadia Mayor John Kimmel called potentially devastating to the citys downtown.

Those tax credits, approved by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., were connected to plans for a $35 million expansion of Ashleys Arcadia headquarters and a controversial provision that would have allowed the company to cut its state workforce in half.

An Ashley spokesman declined to comment on whether the company would contribute to the current project or whether the company plans to expand in Arcadia.

The city is doing their best to lead this thing. Its their project, said Jason Lockington. Theres a lot of things that depend on how this project unfolds. We cant really disclose anything until then.

In 2005, Ashley expanded its headquarters into wetlands after year of wrangling to get the required environmental approval and spending $1 million to create new wetlands nearby. An Ashley spokeswoman told the State Journal in 2010 that if the permit had not been granted, the company would have moved its headquarters and about 2,000 jobs to another state.
There was no way to sugarcoat the news.

On Monday, employees at the Ferrara Candy Company were told the Winona plant will be closing. The last day of production will be at the end of April, according to multiple people who work at the plant or are associated with those who do.

The closing will affect 124 employees in Winona.

Company officials confirmed the closing in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

Following a detailed review of our manufacturing capacities, we have determined to move our production capacity at our Winona, Minnesota facility to our facility in Bellwood, Illinois, the statement read.

Decisions that affect people are never easy and this was not one we took lightly, the statement continued. We are committed to providing transition assistance and severance for affected Winona employees. Our employees impacted by this closure will have the opportunity to apply for positions with other Ferrara operations.

The company announcement follows a Valentines Day fire at the plant, located at 1000 West Fifth St. The fire started in a piece of candy-making equipment and spread to the building and broke through the roof, causing extensive damage to the machinery and relatively minor damage to the building.

The Fifth Street manufacturing plant was built in 1940 by the SchulerCandy Co., makers of Cherry Humps. Since then, a variety of confections carrying the label of a succession of manufacturers have rolled off the production lines inside the sugar-white factory building.

In 1972, the SchulerCandy Co. became a subsidiary of BrockCandy Co., a family-owned firm based in Chattanooga, Tenn.

A major shift came in 1986 when Cherry Hump bars were discontinued and manufacturing shifted to a new, fruity taste from Germany  Gummi Bears. Long a favorite in Europe, they were a hit when they arrived on this side of the Atlantic and in 1986, Winona became the countrys primary producer of fruit-flavored ursines.

The plant had new owners again in 1994 when Brachs bought Brocks. In 2007, Farley & Sathers, itself the product of the merger of several candy-makers in 2002, bought Brachs and in 2012 merged with Ferrara Pan to form the Ferrara Candy Co.

With factories in Winona, Iowa, Illinois, Tennessee and Mexico, Ferrara manufactures and markets such childhood and movie-theater favorites as Lemonheads, Red Hots, Atomic Fireballs, Boston Baked Beans, Brachs, Now and Later, Chuckle and more.
Winona loves Bernie.

DFL voters from the city of Winona overwhelmingly chose Bernie Sanders at Tuesday evenings caucus at Winona Senior High School.

Preliminary results from the Winona County DFL were that Sanders received 1,277 votes to Hillary Clintons 333. Another ten ballots were uncommitted, and one vote went to Martin OMalley, who has dropped out of the race. Results from rural Winona County were still coming in as of press time.

Voters statewide embraced Sanders in similar if not as quite so overwhelming fashion, with Sanders handily winning the state caucus, according to an Associated Press prediction late Tuesday.

At 6:20 p.m. Tuesday, the line to get into the Winona DFL caucus stretched beyond the doors at Winona Senior High School.

Inside the lobby, a crowd of people stood in small groups, bent over their phones as they searched for their ward and precinct information.

The bottleneck at the door soon spread throughout the commons at the school, where participants cast preferential ballots and conducted other business with members of their precinct. Several precincts met in upstairs classrooms as well.

Many people voted and left as quickly as they had come, but by 7:45 p.m., participants were still trickling in.

It was a big night for the Winona DFL, said party chair Bill Harris. Without having a total count, Harris guessed that the crowd was at least as large as it was in 2008, and probably larger.

Its gonna be a record, he said. For us in Winona for sure, and I bet statewide.

Harris said the turnout could be due to an increased sense of the importance of caucus participation; votes cast on the preferential ballots are binding for district-level delegates at the national convention.

Its very meaningful  its a big deal, he said.

Harris said votes are counted by hand by at least three people for each precinct. The tellers take the ballots out one by one and record who was voted for, including a write-in. At the end, precinct chairs verify counts, and candidate representatives can also verify the process.

Many of the participants at the caucus were there for the first time.

Shelby Mootz and Ben Elliott walked into the commons at 6:30 p.m. They are both WSU students, and both were attending their first caucus.

Asked why they were there, they didnt hesitate.

I want to vote for Bernie, Elliott said. I like his stance on getting money out of the government, and stuff.

I dont want Trump to win, Mootz said.

Winona Senior High School student Usman Nawaz is an exchange student from Pakistan, and sat at a table with some of his friends. He cant vote, of course, but wanted to see the process.

I want to experience how democracy really works, he said.

He was in good company to that end. Megan Dienger, a senior in high school, was at the table with Nawaz and several other classmates. I think its important for younger people to vote, she said.

Faith Grcic, a college student, nodded. I would rather have someone vote for a candidate I hate than not vote at all, she said.

While there were plenty of first-timers, others were semi-regular caucus attendees. Jim Lenarz said while he was undecided about the presidential candidates, he has attended the past three or four caucuses because he likes to know whats going on and speak up about issues that concern him.

Tuesday, his biggest concern was a lack of tolerance in the country.

Id like to see some harmony and cooperation among the American people, he said.

Kathryn Hesch, a stained glass worker, said she had been to a few caucuses over the years and felt inspired to come to this one.

Though she said shed be happy with either candidate, Hesch was particularly fascinated by Bernie Sanderss campaign, and said shes pleased that the country has pulled away some from its Cold War fear of socialism.

I like that people have come far enough in their understanding that theyre actually listening to the message, she said.

While many people had cast their preferential ballots and gone by 7 p.m., precincts convened their meetings with strong attendance.

Out in the commons, the attendees for Ward 4, Precinct 3 selected nine delegates to send to the Winona County DFL convention March 19. Among them were two first-timers, Kayla Wohlferd and Taylor Schweisthal. Wohlferd is a student at WSU and Schweisthal is a recent college graduate.

Wohlferd said for her, being a delegate seemed like a good way to continue her participation in the process.

Not only is our age group often underrepresented in politics, I just feel strongly about politics, she said.
Winona Countys Republicans are bigger fans of Marco Rubiomuch biggerthan Donald Trump.

Record-breaking modern crowds filled the registration line leading from the Winona Middle Schools commons area out into the parking lot Tuesday night, where hundreds of voters, many first-time caucus goers both young and old, waited half an hour or more to cast their preferential ballot in support of a candidate.

Marco Rubio received the most votes in the county, with 48 of the 49 precincts reporting, at 341 votes. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump came in second and third with 216 and 211 votes respectively.

They were also the top three in the city of Winonas precincts, with Rubio winning there as well, out of the just over 600 votes cast.

Ben Carson had 55 votes, and John Kasich 48.

Rubio was also Republicans choice statewide, according to an Associated Press prediction, taking about 38 percent of the vote compared to 27 percent for Cruz and 21 percent for Trump, with a little more than half of precincts statewide reporting.

The Winona County Republicans had predicted three times the turnout of the 2008 caucus, party chair Lynae Hahn said, and thought they had done even better.

We have well over that, Hahn said. Six or seven times (2008 turnout). Its incredible.

The attendance was boosted by new caucus goers. Several groups of college students waiting in line said they had come to see the process and gather information on the candidates.

Jake Kelly, a 19-year-old WSU student who was with a large group, said he was using it as a way to be more active. This year will be his first vote in an election.

I was just excited to see live debate, Kelly said. And see people rally together.

Others said that while they hadnt normally participated, they felt there was too much hinging on the selection to wait until the general election to weigh in.

Kurt Stolpa, a first-time caucus attendee, said that he and others who hadnt normally gone were tired of not feeling that they were being heard.

This year its like, no, Stolpa said. Theres too much at stake.

During the end of the voting, statements were made on behalf of the candidates. An extemporaneous statement in support of Rubio was made by the president of the Saint Marys University College Republicans; the rest of the candidates statements were read by Hahn.

Many of those who chose to vote also stayed and participated in choosing delegates for the party. Those chosen will go to the Winona County Republican Convention, held March 19 at Southeast Tech.

Ray Wold, 25, who was taking a quick break from work to vote, said he had stayed and become a county delegate for Ron Paul in the 2012 county convention.

It was interesting, Wold said of the caucusing experience. The chance to convince others what you believe in, thats more important than just voting.

The large turnout was complicated by the Secretary of States precinct-finding website crashing under the heavy traffic several times Tuesday. Hahn said if they have to have a problem, heavy voter involvement is what theyd choose.

Its many more than we expected, Hahn said. Its a good problem to have.

The chance to convince others what you believe in, thats more important than just voting. Ray Wold, GOP caucus-goer
New Delhi: Railways on March 1 launched bar coding system for unreserved tickets to prevent revenue leakage and bring transparency in the ticketing system. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said bar coding of unreserved tickets, one of the rail budget 2016-17 commitments, will be launched in three stations of the city - New Delhi, Old Delhi and Nizamuddin.

The IT-based bar coding project has been introduced as a pilot project at nine ticket counters in these stations. Railway Board Member (Traffic) Mohd Jamshed noted that there were cases of misuse of unreserved tickets by unscrupulous elements who used to get the tickets printed illegally.

"The circulation of unauthorised tickets was affecting Railways' revenue. The bar coding system will prevent such malpractices," he said. The official stated that in order to check fraud, Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) has decided to print encrypted QR code on unreserved tickets through thermal printers.

The bar coding feature includes details like ticket number, stock number, fare, source station, destination station, number of adults, number of children, train type, class code and date of journey, that are printed in the form of encrypted QR code. Jamshed explained that whenever a staff checks the ticket, he can scan the encrypted QR code and validate the information printed on the ticket to prevent any fraud.

In this technology, printing will be done through thermal printer on thermal stationery only. Therefore, fraud by taking out carbon copy of the ticket or erasing of data and printing of other information on it will be detected by scanning its QR, the official noted. The bar coding will be extended to more stations and gradually it will cover reserved segment also, he added.
There is a big push to call a Convention of States to amend the United States Constitution. The promoters say that its sole purpose is to pass a balanced budget amendment because Congress wont pass one on its own. Be careful of what you wish for.

Once the door is open, the Constitution is free game. It is even possible it could be replaced. If you dont think that is possible, you should review the proposed rules for this new convention. The rules arent designed for passing one simple amendment. The rules, as proposed for this convention, show they are planning to be there for the long haul.

It seems to me that Congress should get its act together before this Pandoras Box is opened up. It may seem like the proposal for a Convention of States is simple enough but, once it convenes, the entire Constitution could be scrapped. If you dont think that can happen, consider the original Articles of Confederation.

Most of us tend to think of July 4, 1776, as the anniversary of the founding of our country. While truly the date of our countrys declaration of independence, we should consider celebrating another date. It was this week 227 years ago that the first session of the U.S. Congress convened.

The Revolutionary War ended in 1783. In a hurry to form our new government, the Second Continental Congress rushed to adopt the Articles of Confederation. Without it, our young nation would have lacked the direction it needed to lead the war effort, despite not being ratified by all 13 colonies until 1781.

Once the war ended, it became obvious that the Articles of Confederation lacked some punch, so the Continental Congress set out to form a more perfect union. One of the problems the nation faced is the new government lacked an ability to levy taxes. It also lacked the authority to negotiate with other countries and to coordinate domestic commerce.

The new U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787 and signed by 38 of the 41 delegates at the Constitutional Convention. It became binding Dec. 7 when nine of the 13 colonies ratified it. The first session of the U.S. Congress was held March 4, 1789, in New York City.

Work began immediately on the Bill of Rights to improve the document that convened Congress on this date. Only eight of the 22 senators and 13 of the 59 representatives showed up. The work was critical after Massachusetts originally opposed the Constitution because it did not protect freedom of speech, religion, freedom of the press, and the right to bear arms.

Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, and Rhode Island ratified the Constitution with assurances these amendments would be added. It wasnt until the Bill of Rights was adopted that North Carolina and Rhode Island also ratified the Constitution.

Its important to consider the history of our Constitution when considering a Convention of States. The argument to pass one amendment is incredibly dangerous when you consider our last major Constitutional crisis led to the Civil War. It seems that to avoid bloodshed, a Convention might have been a better option in 1861.

The fight over a balanced budget amendment, something that should be ratified by the states easily, isnt worthy of another civil war. Based on its favored status among the populous, you would think it would pass without requiring a Convention of States. After all, it would only take Congress to pass it through two sessions and then send it to the states for ratification.

But Congress has failed on this point and will continue to do so. It is most likely because Congress has a spending problem. It is too bad we cannot give them a medicinal patch to ween them.

There is a movement to do the only other thing that can be done to get this accomplished. A Convention of States is the other option. But a Convention of States does not assure that they will meet for one single purpose. The Convention could take on other business and, as addressed earlier, the promoters of this movement are aware of this.

The most contentious arguments in todays society center on freedom of speech, religion, and the right to bear arms. If a Convention of States is called can we protect these very basic freedoms? After all, it could also be argued the founding fathers never intended for us to have them.

Congress should pass a balanced budget amendment and avoid a potential Constitutional crisis.
Warren William Schultz, 95, Waupun, passed away Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at the Christian Home of Waupun.

Warren was born July 3, 1920, in Waupun, the son of William and Elsie (Schroeder) Schultz. He was united in marriage to Mary Leonard on Dec. 20, 1941, in Waupun. Warren served in the U.S. Army overseas from 1942 to 1946. He was a lifelong employee with National Rivet until he retired and was a school bus driver for eight years. Warren enjoyed his social meetings with his friends at McDonald's. He would attend Waupun High School sporting events and enjoyed going for walks and riding his bike around town. Warren was a lifetime member of Immanuel Lutheran Church.

Warren is survived by his daughter, Patty Schultz, Oshkosh and her significant other, Jon Soderman, Mayville; sister, Roselind Schouten, Waupun; nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary in 1999; brothers-in-law, Arnold Schouten and Richard (Catherine) Leonard.

A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. on Friday, March 4, at Kohls Community Funeral Home, 405 W. Main St., Waupun, with the Rev. Jeff Nicla officiating. Visitation will be held Friday from 9 a.m. to the time of the service. Burial will follow at Forest Mound Cemetery with military honors provided by the American Legion Post 210 Honor Guard.

In lieu of flowers a memorial fund will be established in Warrens name.

Kohls Community Funeral Home is serving the family. Visit www.kohlsfh.com.
Befikre, which is being directed by Aditya Chopra, also stars Vaani Kapoor.

Mumbai: Ranveer Singh, who recently flew to Paris, has begun shooting for his next film Befikre which stars Vaani Kapoor as his leading lady. After a quick trip to Toronto, where he celebrated Valentines Day with his alleged beau Deepika Padukone, Ranveer wasted no further time and got back to work.

While shooting for filmmaker Aditya Chopras next, the actor was surrounded by fans. Taking time off his shoot, the actor met his fans and posed for few selfies. Looking dashing as ever, we like Ranveers new look, which could possibly be his character's look in the film.

The new pictures of Ranveer Singh from Befikre's set found its way on the internet.

Ranveer Singh poses with a fan.

Directed by Aditya Chopra, the film has been in the news ever since it was announced. After all, the filmmaker, who last helmed SRK-Anushka Sharma starrer Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, is making his comeback as a director after seven years.

In the romantic drama, Ranveer will be seen playing the role of a chocolate boy. The films first schedule will take place in Paris.

The film is set to release on December 9, 2016.
According to nature writer, Paul Schullery, Calling fly fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job. Reedsburg resident and fly fishing enthusiast John Beth might agree. Beth has written and provided photographs for over 100 articles about fly fishing. He has also been featured in four books and a dozen television programs about the sport. Beth, along with fellow fly fishing and fly tying experts, will present two sessions of All Things Fly Fishing at 1 and 2 p.m. March 12 in the Community Room.

Beth will present the history and evolution of fly fishing, including rods, reels, lines and fly development and the importance of fly fishing organizations. Bob Harrison, the president of Badger Fly Fishers of Madison, and Jim Romberg, a professional fly fishing guide, will demonstrate the art of fly tying. Scott Allen, president of the local Aldo Leopold Trout Unlimited chapter will talk about conservation efforts and bringing environmental education to the classroom.

For the novice, Beth explains that fly fishing differs from regular fishing in that an artificial lure is used in the form of a fly. The flies are made to attract whatever species the fly fisher is aiming to catch and can be made to imitate hundreds of food organisms, including insects, small baitfish and even mice. Many species of fish can be caught in this way from bluegills to sharks. Most modern fly fisherman practice catch and release of their fish unharmed.

Casting also differs from traditional fishing in that the cast is carried to the water by the weight and taper of the line, not the weight of the lure since most flies are essentially weightless. Those who imagine that fly fishing is reserved for the wide open spaces of the west will be happy to learn that fly fishing has become a popular sport in Wisconsin. In this area, fly fishing is used to catch trout pan fish, bluegill, crappie, sunfish, smallmouth and largemouth basseven pike and musky.

Attendees will have time to ask questions and time for watching fly tiers and reviewing the exhibits. There will be a small collection of rods, reels and line dating from the 1800s to the present. The presenters will also discuss where additional information on fly fishing, and classes for fly fishing and tying can be found in the area.

Fly fishing may become your hobby or you may just want to learn more about it. For more information, or any other library program or materials, call the Reedsburg Public Library at 768-READ (7323).
Chances are, someone you know has dementia.

Chances are even better  in fact, almost certain  you will know someone with dementia sometime in the near future.

Thanks to the Baby Boom generation, dementia  the mental condition defined as a set of symptoms causing a decline in cognitive function severe enough to affect daily living  is about to enter the American consciousness in a way that it never has before, the way rock music did in the 1960s and computers did in the 1980s.

The Baby Boomers  that massive demographic group born between the years 1946 and 1964  began turning 70 this year. Because age is the primary risk factor for dementia and because so many Americans will be entering their Golden Years in the next two decades, the number of people diagnosed with (and affected by) dementia is set to increase dramatically during that time.

Change is coming, says the website for the Alzheimers and Dementia Alliance of Wisconsin (ADAW). Our state, our nation and many other countries around the world are beginning to recognize that we are faced with a great challenge in the upcoming years as more and more people are diagnosed with Alzheimers and other forms of dementia.

Alzheimers accounts for 50 percent of the dementia diagnoses in the U.S., and dozens of other, mostly age-related diseases and conditions (including Parkinsons and vascular issues including heart disease and stroke) are other significant causes.

The numbers of people diagnosed is sure to increase dramatically  perhaps even triple  in the coming decades as the Boomers age. One in 11 people 65 or older has dementia; one in two people 85 or older has dementia.

Ironically, advances in medical treatment for numerous age-related illnesses have increased the primary risk factor  age  because so many Americans are living so much longer.

Now that people are living longer with these diseases, theyre actually developing the cognitive issues that go with them, said Janet Wiegel, outreach specialist for the ADAW in Columbia, Marquette and Sauk counties.

Potential for hope

The most common symptoms of dementia are short-term memory loss, difficulty performing familiar tasks, poor or decreased judgment, difficulty with verbal or written communications, disorientation to time and place, difficulty with coordination and motor functions, personality changes and difficulty with abstract thinking and problem solving.

But just as aging  and the potential for dementia that comes with it  is among the inevitable, sometimes challenging experiences of human existence, so too are the potential for hope, support and even love that can come from a difficult experience collectively shared.

That latter fact of life has begun to emerge in South-Central Wisconsin, as state and county agencies, assistance organizations, local governments, communities and individuals across the region have begun taking the crucial first steps in addressing the issue of dementia, both on individual and societal levels

From Portage to Mauston and Sauk City to the Dells, the programs, services and support for people with dementia  and, just as important, for the people who care for and love them  are on the increase.

From dementia-friendly training for employees at such ubiquitous businesses as Walgreens to memory cafes in Portage, Sauk City and elsewhere, the South-Central region is gearing up for the monumental change that more and more people with dementia will bring.

People have come to realize that this particular disease has epidemic written all over it  the social and financial impact to everyone is a figure you almost cant wrap your head around, said Portage Mayor Bill Tierney, whose city last August announced its intention to become dementia friendly and since then has seen numerous local businesses as well as its police force and fire department undergo training that raises understanding of and sensitivity to people in the community with dementia.

As dementias numbers rise, so too does the increased number of people with dementia still actively engaged in their communities  sometimes with the help of family, friends and care-givers, sometimes still on their own recognizance.

Many still at home

Of the 120,000 currently diagnosed with dementia in Wisconsin, 70 percent continue to live at home, according to Wiegel, and she estimates that at least half again that many people in Wisconsin have dementia but dont realize it or have the diagnosis.

Hence the value and the need for the kind of community support provided throughout the region by the ADAW, the Aging and Disability Resource Centers in various counties (including Adams, Columbia, Marquette, Juneau and Sauk), veterans groups and centers dedicated to serving senior citizens, like the brand new Frank Fischer Center in Lake Delton.

Such regional support efforts are not only helping those with dementia to more effectively operate in society, they also are helping everyone who may come in contact with them.

As awareness builds, said the experts, so too are opportunities for both receiving and providing help.

The more we talk about it, the more people are aware of it, and the more, then, they are willing to reach out for help, said Wiegel, who in her role with the ADAW probably talks as much or more than anyone about dementia and its related causes to groups across the region. It decreases the fear.

Fear is certainly one of the primary byproducts of coping with dementia, especially when trying to function in a public setting, such as a grocery store or pharmacy. Thats why dementia-friendly training has proven so successful for such public-facing businesses as Walgreens and Pierces Marketplaces, the latter of which also has begun training its employees to be "dementia friendly.

Its amazing how many people probably already have the start of (dementia) and you dont realize it, said Dana Weiland, manager of the Walgreens store in Wisconsin Dells, which earlier this year completed employee-wide dementia-friendly training. Ive noticed Ive had to step back and think about the training and talk a little bit slower, and say the questions more than once so that they get what Im trying to say, and make them feel comfortable in the situation  so theyre comfortable talking to me.

The training resonated beyond the store for Dana Priest, assistant manager of Walgreens in Wisconsin Dells, who noticed a change in her grandfathers demeanor after he had brain surgery a year ago.

I would say hes probably starting to lose his sharpness a little bit, she said. The training has helped me recognize that, so now I can have better conversations with him.

Priests experiences speak to the need dementia-friendly training and other programs offered by the ADAW fulfill for the loved ones, care givers and friends of those diagnosed with dementia.

Taking care of care givers

The caretaker as well as the person suffering from memory loss needs help, and they need it right in the place where they are, said Corrine Hill, a regular attendee at the Sauk City Memory Cafe, with her long-time partner John Connell. It seems like sometimes when you are the caretaker you feel like you are in a tunnel and its never, ever going to end."

Where caretakers are oftentimes is overwhelmed with responsibility, especially if they are family members or companions of the person with dementia. Along with the help emerging in the region for people with dementia, help for their all-important caregivers also is beginning to emerge.

Assistance includes day centers  one just opened in Prairie du Sac, the other already in operation in the Adams-Friendship area  are fully equipped to provide day-long care for people with dementia that in turn gives caregivers a day-long break.

I can have a place that John can have company and activities, and I can go away and have a day to myself and do what I need to do, Hill said. For people who can afford it, this is a lifesaver.

Dementia-specific caregiver support groups also already exist in Baraboo, Montello, Portage, Reedsburg and Wisconsin Dells, with dozens more south of the region toward Madison.

Family Education Programs covering such topics as home safety, communications tips and strategies, first steps for families and understanding and responding to behavior changes also are available on an almost monthly basis from the ADAW throughout the region in various locales.

Legislation addresses issues

A suite of bills designed to help cope with Alzheimers disease and dementia and supported by the ADAW recently passed in the state Assembly. Those 10 bills, now in the Senate for consideration, include proposals to create a dementia specialist certification and a pilot program for dementia crisis units and $1.37 million for dementia specialists in rural counties and grants supporting local dementia crisis team training.

Dementia friendly campaigns are beginning to emerge in the regions more rural areas as well. They include a multi-year plan underway in Juneau County under the leadership of its Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC).

The community-wide approach to dementia friendliness is a need, and it is helping people to remain in their communities, said Juneau County ADRC Director Charlene Norberg. Dementia-friendly communities are really starting to help as communities realize (a dementia diagnosis) doesnt have to be the end of somebody. It will make it better, and it will catch on.

Maustons Mile Bluff Clinic already offers dementia screening, which is one of the most important early tools in addressing dementia, and the county also provides mini-bus transportation for those in need, Norberg said.

Region-wide, the community approach to addressing dementia apparently is catching on, and if there is a silver lining in what can be a dark cloud of dementia, that sense of communal effort and responsibility has to be at least one of them.

Thanks in large part to the help and love of friends, family and community support, dementia really doesnt have to be a death sentence, Norberg said, echoing the sentiments of virtually everyone involved in the dementia friendly movement. People can live with it for 20 years. Youre just taking a trip into uncharted territory.
USDA announces $1 billion debt relief for 36,000 farmers

The USDA announced a program to provide $1.3B in debt relief for about 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on loan payments or face foreclosure.
After Chris Rock this year, it could be Ride Alongs Kevin Hart hosting the Academy Awards next year. Hart had made a brief, but interesting appearance, at this years event and Hollywood tabloids are already claiming executives are keen on casting the comedian for next years show.

The Academy definitely wants to skew a little younger and look a little more hip. With ratings down yet again this year they are already thinking about the host next year. And Kevin is on their radar and the front runner to host next year and he would do it 100 per cent if asked, a source was quoted as saying by Hollywood-life.com.

Harts also extremely popular on social media. A photo Hart posted from the Oscars with Chris Rock and comedian Dave Chapelle was the second most liked Instagram photo on Oscar night.
Sanam Shetty who is on a roll in Tollywood, is looking forward to her Tamil release Sawaari. Directed by Guhan Senniappan of Naalaya Iyakkunar fame, the film, which also stars debutant Benito, is touted to be a psychological thriller. There are lot of unexpected twists and turns in the film. And the Hollywood style of filmmaking will give a different kind of experience for the audience, claims Sanam.

Sharing her frightening experiences while shooting for Sawaari, she said, We had to go on a catamaran ride for a duet song. That was my first ride on a catamaran and it was a scary experience for me. I could not balance and each time I tumbled, it was Benito who came to my rescue!
Grove receives 2016 Bator Award as outstanding legal scholar under 40

Tara Grove: The W&M law professor recently received the Federalist Societys 2016 Paul M. Bator Award. W&M Law School photo Photo - of - Hide Caption

Professor Tara Leigh Grove of William & Mary Law School received the Federalist Societys 2016 Paul M. Bator Award on Feb. 27 at the societys 35th National Student Symposium, held at the University of Virginia School of Law. The award each year honors a legal scholar under the age of 40 who has demonstrated excellence in legal scholarship, a commitment to teaching, a concern for students, and who has made a significant public impact.

Bator was a renowned legal scholar and professor, who taught at Harvard and at the University of Chicago, and was a Principal Deputy Solicitor General during the Reagan administration. Grove joins a distinguished group of professors honored with the Bator Award since its creation in 1989.

I am delighted to see Tara Grove receive the Bator Award, said Law School Dean Davison M. Douglas. She is a rising star in the fields of Federal Courts and Constitutional Law, and is a very deserving recipient of this honor.

Groves scholarship has gained substantial recognition in her seven years in academia. Her work has appeared in top law journals, including the Harvard Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, the New York University Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Cornell Law Review, and also has been discussed and cited in leading federal courts casebooks. The Federal Courts Section of the Association of American Law Schools selected her article, The Article II Safeguards of Federal Jurisdiction (SSRN), as the Best Article of 2012 by an untenured professor. Her article Standing Outside of Article III (SSRN) was one of three papers selected for the 2014 New Voices in Civil Justice Workshop at Vanderbilt University Law School. More recently, her article The Lost History of the Political Question Doctrine (SSRN) was selected for the Federalist Societys 2015 Junior Scholars Colloquium.

National media have turned to Grove for her expertise on stories concerning the constitutional separation of powers and the federal judiciary. In the summer of 2014, for example, she was among legal experts quoted in The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, CBS News, and Newsweek when House Speaker John Boehner announced his intent to challenge President Obama in court over his enforcement of the Affordable Care Act.

In courses such as Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, and Federal Courts she challenges her students to think more deeply about constitutional and other legal issues. She also is known for giving generously of her time to students outside class.

3L Leonard Simmons said Grove is an especially effective teacher because she has always held her students to the same intellectual rigor to which she holds herself.

Kevin Elliker, J.D. 14, recalled that Groves Federal Courts class was both his favorite class during law school and the one he found most challenging. To label her spirit as enthusiastic would not properly recognize her love of the law, he said. She practically bounced with joy during class as she excitedly laid out dense and complex doctrines, cheered on the a-ha moments of her students, and patiently guided the class to mastery of what once appeared to be an insurmountable syllabus.

Aaron Gold, J.D. 15, said one could not hope for a better teacher than Professor Grove with her vibrant classroom style and what he humorously described as her saint-like patience in office hours. Grove possesses in equal measure a commitment to fostering precise legal thinking in her students and a dedication to helping students outside of class, according to 3L Eric S. Fleming. He described the many times he has stopped by her office to ask for advice about job interviews or upcoming moot court tournaments. Though I invariably find her writing her next article beside a towering pile of books and journals, she has always greeted me with a smile and a healthy dose of insight, he said.

Alan Meese, the Ball Professor of Law at William & Mary, was a student of Professor Bator at the University of Chicago and helped nominate Grove for the award. According to Meese, Taras scholarship exemplifies numerous virtues that characterized Professor Bators own work, including careful attention to text, history, and constitutional structure, the ability to stake out clear and forceful positions, and a willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads. She is rapidly becoming one of the leading voices in the field of Federal Courts and is a very worthy recipient of this award."

William & Mary recognized Groves achievements when, in 2014, she became the first untenured faculty member at the university to receive the Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, and in 2015, when she was named the Robert E. and Elizabeth S. Scott Research Professor in her first year as a tenured faculty member.

Traveling to Charlottesville, Virginia, for the ceremony was a homecoming for Grove. She grew up in the city and has family there. In addition to her husband, David Davies, her mother and brother, Lyn Grove and Allen Grove, attended the award banquet.

I am deeply humbled and honored to receive the Bator Award, Grove said. Having my family at the ceremony made the event all the more meaningful.

Grove received her undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from Duke University, and her law degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where she was Supreme Court Chair of the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for Judge Emilio Garza on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and later served for four years as an appellate attorney in the U.S. Department of Justices Civil Division. She began her academic career at Florida State University College of Law in 2009 and, two years later, joined the William & Mary faculty. She was a visiting professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 2012, and will serve as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2017.

The Federalist Society's press release about the prize, and videos and photos from the ceremony can be found here.




China News on Women





Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page
Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.
Officials say the city is introducing the reform to give police more time to focus on serious crime (Photo: Twitter)

New York: New York police are loosening up -- at least when it comes to drinking alcohol and urinating on the street.

From next Monday, petty offenders will no longer be arrested or prosecuted in Manhattan for minor misdeeds such as public consumption of alcohol, public urination or putting your feet on the seat in the subway.

Officials say the city is introducing the reform to give police more time to focus on serious crime -- following an increase in homicides, gang-motivated shootings, rape and robbery in 2015.

Overall crime fell 1.7 per cent in the largest US city, but major crime rose three per cent in Manhattan in 2015, albeit up from an historic low in 2014.

"Today's reforms allow our hardworking police officers to concentrate their efforts on the narrow group of individuals driving violent crime in New York City," said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

People will be arrested for minor offences, other examples of which include littering or taking up two seats on the subway, only if there is a clear public safety reason to do so, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance said.

The change in policy is expected to ease the burden of around 10,000 arrests otherwise being processed in the Manhattan criminal court.

America has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world, around 20 per cent of whom are awaiting trial. Officials hope the reform will prevent unnecessary jail time for low-level offenders who cannot post bail.

"By ensuring courts are not unnecessarily bogged down with minor offences committed by those who pose no threat to public safety, we help focus police and prosecutorial resources on those who commit serious crimes," said Vance.

"We enable officers to get back to patrolling, investigating and keeping our neighbourhoods safe. And by reducing unnecessary incarceration, we make our criminal justice system fairer for all New Yorkers," he added.

Crime has fallen steadily in New York city, the financial and entertainment capital of the United States, since "zero tolerance" policing was introduced in the 1990s.
India budgets to boost nuclear projects

01 March 2016

Share

India has allocated an extra 30 billion rupees ($442 million) to boost nuclear power generation projects over the next 15-20 years in its 2016 budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced on 29 February.

"We need to diversify the sources of power generation for long-term stability," Jaitley said in his budget speech. "The government is drawing up a comprehensive plan, spanning over 15 to 20 years, to augment nuclear power generation. Budgetary allocation of up to 3000 crore rupees per annum, together with public sector investments, will be leveraged to facilitate the required investment for this purpose," Jaitley said in his budget speech. (One crore is equivalent to ten million).

India has 21 nuclear power plants in operation, with six under construction, and plans for further construction of both indigenous pressurized heavy water reactors and projects with overseas partners. In April 2015 the government gave its approval in principle for new nuclear plants at ten sites in nine states: indigenous PHWRs at Gorakhpur in Haryana's Fatehabad; Chutka and Bhimpur in Madhya Pradesh; Kaiga in Karnataka; and Mahi Banswara in Rajasthan; and plants with foreign cooperation at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu (VVER); Jaitapur in Maharashtra (EPR); Mithi Virdhi in Gujarat (AP1000); Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh (ESBWR) and Haripur in West Bengal (VVER). Two 600 MWe fast breeder reactors are also proposed at Kalpakkam.

In January, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and French president Francois Hollande said that the two countries are on course to finalize a deal on the construction of six EPR units at Jaitapur by the end of the year. The same month, the Indian cabinet confirmed that commercial negotiations between Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and Westinghouse on the construction of six AP1000 units at Mithi Virdi in India were also on course to be finalized this year.

India recently amended its atomic energy act to enable NPCIL to form joint ventures with other Indian public sector units, which will help the state-owned company to secure finance for new projects.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Russia and Kazakhstan to ink nuclear power accord this year

02 March 2016

Share

Russia and Kazakhstan are preparing to sign an intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in research and development in the nuclear energy sector, Rosatom said yesterday. Vyacheslav Pershukov, the Russian state nuclear corporation's head of design and innovation, led a delegation to Kazakhstan last week to discuss potential joint projects in the sector.

"We have talked about how to harmonise aspects of the agreement, have noted real progress in our mutual understanding of how to implement its programs, and hope that we shall sign an agreement this year," Pershukov said. The Kazakh side "has asked to extend the scope of activities under the agreement and to include work on nuclear and radiation physics," he added.

The two sides have also agreed to include in the agreement the possibility of Kazakhstan's participation in the international research centre for the MBIR complex that is under construction at the site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors, in Dimitrovgrad, Russia. MBIR is the Russian acronym for multipurpose sodium-cooled fast neutron research reactor.

Pershukov also said that Kazakhstan's nuclear experts are interested in joint programs in nuclear medicine, including for the supply of medical isotopes.

During the visit, the Rosatom delegation toured the National Nuclear Centre of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which was established in 1992 in the town of Kurchatov. They acquainted themselves, Rosatom said, with the work of the Semipalatinsk Test Site and the Kazakhstan Material Study Tokamak for material testing, which produced its first plasma in 2010.

Pershukov said he had observed "noticeable progress" over the last ten years in the development of the National Nuclear Centre. He noted that at the Semipalatinsk Test Site there is a "unique system of environmental radiation monitoring thanks to the introduction of modern diagnostic equipment to laboratory facilities."

It is clear, he said, that the town of Kurchatov is growing and that the National Nuclear Centre is attracting a lot of young professionals, with the average age of its employees being about 36.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Decommissioning milestone achieved at Pile Fuel Storage Pond

02 March 2016

Share

Sellafield Limited has announced its "most significant stride ever" with the removal of the last batch of bulk metal fuel from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond (PFSP) in Cumbria, northwest England. The fuel has been moved to safer, more modern storage in the Fuel Handling Plant.

Decommissioning teams lifted the final skip of 'metal fuel' from the pond via a remote controlled process. Retrieval of the pond's 'canned fuel' inventory was successfully completed in October 2015. The project was commissioned and delivered under the management of Nuclear Management Partners.

In a joint statement, Sellafield Ltd and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said: "The work means radioactivity levels at the 68-year-old pond have been cut by 70%, vastly reducing the risk it poses to people and environment." They added, "The achievement is the most visible sign yet of progress in the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA's) program to clean-up the legacy of Britain's early nuclear industry, which is set to continue for at least another 100 years." The removed fuel has been transferred to a modern storage building at Sellafield where it can be held in a "far safer environment", they said.

The final skip of 'metal fuel' is removed from the PFSP (Image: Sellafield)

The pond had played a "pivotal role" in the development of the UK's original nuclear deterrent, the company noted. Used fuel rods were cooled in the pond after they had been burned in the old Windscale Pile reactors to create weapons material at the height of the Cold War in the 1940s and 50s.

The statement added that the pond had also played a vital role during Britain's worst nuclear accident - the 1957 Windscale fire. Rods pushed through the core of the reactor by workers battling the blaze were later transferred to the pond for storage.

Pete Lutwyche, the NDA's Sellafield program director said: "This is a huge achievement in the decommissioning of Sellafield's most hazardous facilities, and I congratulate the team on their commitment, dedication and hard work."

Paul Foster, managing director of Sellafield Ltd, said: "This is a truly landmark moment in the decommissioning of Sellafield. Removing decades-old corroded fuel from an aging facility and placing into modern containment makes Sellafield, and the whole of the UK, a far safer place." Foster added that the "enormity of the challenge" could not be overstated, since the pond was "built with no design for how its contents would be removed".

He said: "We have had to retro-fit an export process and then safely execute it in one of the most challenging environments imaginable. Operators removed the fuel from 40-feet away, working behind radiation shields and using cameras and well-rehearsed procedures. The approach required a step-change in thinking at Sellafield as it necessitated bringing fuel skips up and out of the water and therefore being 'unshielded' for a time."

The Office for Nuclear Regulation welcomed the decommissioning milestone and said that attention will now shift to the remaining solids and sludge in the pond, including any residual fuel which will be exported in due course.

"The key milestone has been achieved through a fit-for-purpose, lead-and-learn approach where the unshielded skips of fuel were lifted out of the pond, transferred across the operational area and then lowered down a hoist well into a shielded flask to be lidded and transported," the ONR said. "Operators controlled the move from 40-feet away, working behind radiation shielding using cameras and well-rehearsed procedures to complete an operation first trialled in 2011, when 350kg of metal fuel was exported from PFSP."

Andy Lindley, Sellafield program director, said the removal of bulk metal fuel from PFSP "many years ahead of schedule" was another significant risk reduction step in the wider clean-up of Sellafield's legacy facilities. "We have worked with Sellafield and other key stakeholders to expedite the project safely and in the coming months our attention will switch to the removal of the remaining wastes from the facility, including sludge," he said.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
German consortium awarded Ukrainian waste contract

02 March 2016

Share

A consortium of four German companies has been awarded a contract to improve infrastructure for managing radioactive waste, the rehabilitation of contaminated areas and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

The consortium - comprising Brenk Systemplanung, DMT, Plejades and TUV Nord EnSys - was awarded the contract for the project, which is within the framework of the European Union-funded Instrument for Nuclear Safety Cooperation (INSC). The INSC is designed to support non-EU countries in improving nuclear safety. The contract will run for an initial two-year period and have a maximum budget of 1.5 million ($1.6 million).

According to the tender notice, the main objectives of the contract are to support the Ukrainian State Corporation 'Radon' in establishing an emergency response system for "radiation incidents involving unauthorized radioactive materials that are not related to nuclear power plant operation". It also calls for the establishment of integrated, automated monitoring systems for radiation and environmental protection at Radon facilities, as well as the remediation of radioactive waste storage sites resulting from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and situated outside the exclusion zone.

In a statement yesterday, DMT said it will jointly lead with TUV Nord EnSys Hannover the assessment of some 50 radioactive waste storage sites. By means of a ranking, they will also identify a possible pilot rehabilitation project, for which a complete remediation concept - including safety report and tender documents - must be created. Recommendations for the processing of other sites will then be drawn from the pilot. This work, DMT said, will be carried out "in close cooperation with Ukrainian counterparts, the site managers and the relevant authorities".

The European Commission launched its TACIS (Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States) nuclear safety program in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl accident to provide nuclear safety assistance mostly to projects in Russia and Ukraine. Since 2007, it has widened its nuclear safety assistance and cooperation to third-party countries under the INSC, which had a total budget allocation of 524 million for 2007-2013. A new INSC covering 2014-2020 was adopted in 2013, with a total budget of 225 million. The INSC program grants for projects aims at promoting a high level of nuclear safety, radiation protection and the application of efficient and effective safeguards of nuclear material in third countries.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Bengaluru: A 25-year-old small time Kannada television actress was found dead under mysterious circumstances at her friends residence in Kachohalli in Nelamangala on Tuesday. The deceased, Shruthi, was found hanging at her friends house at around 3 am. Shruthi was married to Umesh, a businessman, for last seven years and they were staying at Harohalli.

Investigations revealed that on Monday night Shruthi had gone to meet her friend Shrikanth. They later went for a party after which Shruthi reportedly had a quarrel with Shrikanth. An enraged Shruthi went inside the room and locked herself, while Shrikanth went to another room. However, after sometime when Shrikanth knocked at the door there was no response.

When Shrikanth broke open the door at around 2.30 am, he found Shruthi hanging from the ceiling. He immediately informed the police. Umesh filed a police complaint accusing Shrikanth for Shruthis death. Based on his complaint, the police have registered a case of abetment of suicide against Srikanth, police added.
The IRS told a compromised tax filer that fraud with the use of Identity Protection PINs is a big problem this year.

In May 2015 the U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced that approximately 100,000 tax transcripts had been stolen when hackers broke into its website. That figure has now been upped to 724,000. The new system to protect the victims of the 2015 hack was to assign them Identity Protection PIN numbers that must be included on the tax return in order for it to be accepted by the IRS. Lost IP PINS can be retrieved by logging into the IRS website, a process that is protected from hackers by technology called Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA)  which is ironically the same technology that was hacked in the first place. And its been hacked again this year.

Brian Krebs, journalist and security researcher, reported Mar. 1 in KrebsonSecurity that at least one person has been hacked already this tax season. Becky Wittrock is a CPA from Sioux Falls, S.D. who received one of the PIN numbers in 2014 after scammers tried to impersonate her to the IRS. This year she filed her tax return on Feb. 25, with the PIN number included as instructed, and was told that her return had already been filed on Feb. 2.

Wittrock called the IRS and told them that when she tried to e-file her return was rejected as a duplicate. She was told that the return that was already filed had included the correct PIN, and that fraud with use of these identification numbers is a big problem for the IRS this year. The IRS representative told her that they will soon be changing the system, and that the six-digit PIN will not be used next year.

The 724,000 tax records that were stolen in 2015 were accessed through the Get Transcript function on the IRS site between January 2014 and May 2015. Copies of tax returns could be obtained by anyone by providing the taxpayers name, Social Security number, date of birth and address, as well as answering some multiple choice questions that are fairly easy to guess, such as a street previously lived on, or what the users mortgage payment is.

Get Transcript was taken down, but the service used to retrieve the new IP PIN number stayed up, and is still using KBA to verify users attempting to access past records, the same system that was hacked in the first place. The IRS is aware of the weakness, and after testing the system reported that some likely identity thieves were able to answer the authentication questions correctly while some actual taxpayers were not.
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
Daniel Ciamara

By: Wayne Morin

A man robbed a home and then tried to make money by selling the stolen goods.

However, his plan backfired when he unknowingly tried to sell the item to its owner at a computer shop.

Police in the United Kingdom, were called to a store after 26-year-old Daniel Ciamara of Blackburn, tried to sell items to a store worker at a discounted price.

David Harrison went through the items that Ciamara brought to the shop, which included a Blu-ray player and a number of Blu-ray discs to determine the value of the items he was about the purchase.

However, Harrison, 60, soon realized that the items are the same as the collection that he had at home.

Harrison also saw that two discs that had not been opened were the same ones that he recently bought as an addition to his collection.

Harrison told the suspect that he will have to try out the Blu-ray player to see if it worked and asked him to return for the money the following day.

Meanwhile, Harrison went home and found his back door had been kicked in and his house had been burglarized.

The police were informed, and when the defendant came to pick up his money, he was arrested. At the Preston Crown Court, Ciamara pleaded guilty to burglary.

Ciamara did not return to court for sentencing. Instead, he fled to Poland.

The Lancashire police applied for extradition, and Ciamara was brought back to face justice.

Ciamara was sentenced to four months in prison for the theft and an additional two months to run concurrently for the breach of bail.
Carrie Giesler

By: Mahesh Sarin

(Scroll down for video) A teacher filed a lawsuit against her former employer after she was fired from her job because she called the police to report an assault, according to court documents in Colorado.

Carrie Giesler of Loveland, said that she was hired by the Thompson School District to teach a 13-year-old boy with autism.

The boy began to physically attack Giesler, and the abuse continued for six months.

The boy allegedly slapped his teacher in the face with an open hand, punched her in the ribs, kicked her in the back and spit in her face.

The boy also threatened to kill her.

The teacher complained to the principal, but instead of punishing the student, Giesler was prohibited from documenting the incidents or calling the police.

After the boy broke Giesleras finger, she called the police who arrested the boy on a charge of assault. After the incident with the police, Giesler was fired.
The police said Husnains cousin said that he would never visit a hospital for any injury or illness. (Photo: PTI/DC)

Mumbai: It has come to light that Husnain Warerkar, the chartered accountant from Thane who killed himself after butchering 14 of his family members on Sunday, was in touch with a tantrik in a dargah. He reportedly never visited a hospital for treatment, but only consumed medicines given by the self-styled godman.

Read: Thane mass murder: Husnain Warerkar lost Rs 2 crore in shares, says police

The Thane police is looking for the tantrik. When Deccan Chronicle visited the Pardeshibaba dargah, only a kilometre away from Husnain's house, none of the persons were ready to talk about the incident.

The police said Husnains cousin said that he would never visit a hospital for any injury or illness.

We were shocked when we heard from his aunt that she would advise Husnain to go to a nearby hospital but he would ignore it and once he even told her, I go to my doctor (the tantrik) who is more efficient than yours, aunty, said a policeman on condition of anonymity.

For small worries such as his exam results to every thing he had been visiting the tantrik at the dargah, added the police official Till now, the police has taken statements of some 20 people, including his maternal and paternal uncles and aunts.

DCP Vilas Chandan Shive said, We have got details from many people; we have to scrutinise and verify it. Apart from this, when we tried to talk to people of Pardeshibaba dargah, of which Husains father was a trustee, no one was ready to talk about the incident. The dargah is situated near Anand Nangar, just a kilometre away from Husnains house. We tried to ask some of the people over there about Husnains father and about him but no one gave us any details. They refused to talk about the incident or about Husnain. One person said it was a trap to ruin the dargahs name.

Read: Thane massacre: 'I have a surprise', murderer texted his brother-in-law

The 35-year-old Husnain killed 14 members of his family  including his parents, wife, two daughters, three sisters and their children  at his Thane house before committing suicide in the early hours of Sunday. He slit their throats with a butchers knife. When the police reached the crime spot, they found 14 bodies with their throats slit on the ground and first floor of the house. Husnains body was found hanging, with a knife still in his hand.
Creative Industries Conference Underway at Wrexhams Glyndwr University

This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Mar 2nd, 2016

A four day conference offering students an insight into working in the creative industries is well underway at Wrexhams Glyndwr University.

Now in its seventh year, the Creative Futures event was launched by the universitys new head of Media, Art and Design on Monday.

The four-day creative industries conference aims to raise the quality of artistic work being developed in North Wales and help students develop employability, entrepreneurship and professional development.

Professor Alec Shepley, the newly appointed head of Media, Arts and Design School, at Wrexham Glyndwr University, gave the keynote lecture at the Creative Futures event, outlining key concepts for the school to have a successful future.

Kick starting the event and addressing students, staff and visitors, Professor Shepley, said: Im using this opportunity to tell you about me, my own work and my ideas for the school and for you.

This week were aiming to provide insight into realities of working in the creative industry, help improve employability, and provide opportunities to meet people in the industry so students can network beyond the university and into what people call the real world.

We already work well with the North Wales community which is really important. We must look at partnerships we wish to create and work with agencies in the UK to help monetise our ideas.

During the seminar Professor Shepley said the creative industry generates 30 million a year for the UK economy.

Creative Futures week has brought more than 250 media, art and design experts and practitioners from all over the world to this region since its inception in 2009.

Professor Shepleys own artistic works have been show nationally and internationally and his research has attracted funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Council, the Arts Council of England and the Arts Council of Wales.

He added: Teaching is the universitys priority and the ultimate aim for students this week is to get a much better idea of employability. There is a new world opening up and we must change with it and we are ready I think to take this change.

Our big issue is impact. Impact we must demonstrate as an organisation to get the funding we need to achieve our ideas. Impact leads to value which will get us noticed.

While the professor addressed students, staff and visitors, Fran OHara, visual communications specialist, captured the presentation with a visual minute by drawing key aspects of the seminar live on stage.

Creative Futures week includes a diverse programme of workshops, talks and panels. It hosts an abundance of creative professionals who will share their knowledge, insight and experiences.
Considering that the government has released two installments thus far in the last two years; the leakage could be nearly Rs 70 crore.

Hyderabad: The TRS government is under pressure to clear the remaining two installments of farm loan waiver which comes around to over Rs 8,000 crore in a single go. However, some deft steps by the government may result in savings of nearly Rs 2,000 crore, which will also ease the financial burden to a major extent.

An audit of crop loan distribution in Medak district has revealed large-scale irregularities. When accounts in about 250 public sector banks were checked, it was found that loans were distributed in gross violation of rules. As a result, nearly Rs 35 crore was diverted illegally in one year (2014-15) alone.

Although, the government stated that only one person in a family would get a waiver of Rs 1 lakh, loans had been extended to both husband and wife in a few banks, resulting in a loss of Rs 60 lakh.

In some banks, long dormant accounts were reopened and about Rs 50 lakh siphoned off by the authorities themselves. While the crop loan should not go beyond two to three years, at the maximum, it was extended to farmers who took loans before January 2007. Despite the government fixing the cut-off date as March 31, 2014, amounts were distributed to farmers who took loans even after the due date.

These violations, to name a few, resulted in loss of Rs 35 crore to the exchequer in Medak district alone in one year. Considering that the government has released two installments thus far in the last two years; the leakage could be nearly Rs 70 crore.

The state government had released a total of Rs 8,350 crore in two installments in 2014 and 2015. This amounts to nearly 50 per cent of the total crop loan of Rs 17,000 crore, which will be released in four installments from 2014-17. The audit was done from November 17 to January 25 in 250 public sector banks.

However, the District Co-operative Central Bank, (DCCB) that consists of leaders and farmers with political connections was untouched for obvious reasons. The situation in this bank is expected to be no different from other banks and hence accounts should also be probed here, sources said.

With Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao exploring various options to pool funds for implementation of his schemes, this leakage is being seen as a body blow.

It is learnt that government will go through this report in the coming weeks and take a decision whether to undertake similar exercise in remaining districts. If so, the beneficiaries list, which is nearly 35 lakh at present could be pruned after the irregularities are identified.

All India Kisan Sangham vice-president S Malla Reddy called upon the government to conduct a social audit and expose the irregularities.

The greedy few in banks, government departments, local leaders and fake farmers took to unfair means to divert funds. Even the DCCBs should not be spared from the enquiry, Mr Malla Reddy said.
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott delivered a speech last Friday in Tokyo calling on current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to directly challenge Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea by sending a warship or military aircraft within the 12-nautical-mile limit surrounding one of its islets.

Abbott, who was ousted by Turnbull last September in an inner party coup, has clearly not shelved his ambitions to retake the Liberal Party leadership. Underpinning this rivalry are ongoing divisions within the Liberals and the political establishment more broadly about how to balance between Australias longstanding military ally, the United States, and its largest trading partner, China.

While both men are fully committed to the US-Australian alliance, Abbott very aggressively backed the renewed US war in the Middle East, its confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, and above all its pivot to Asia and military build-up in the Indo-Pacific against China. Turnbull, a former investment banker with connections in China, was critical of the pivot when announced by Obama in the Australian parliament in 2011. He only signalled his support for the confrontational US strategy last year as he prepared his challenge for the leadership.

Abbott told his audience in Tokyo that China shared economic interests with Australia, but unlike Japan, did not share democratic values. We are not entirely confident, he declared, that when Chinas interests differ from Australias, there is a shared set of values that will allow a mutually satisfactory outcome.

He repeated Washingtons mantra of calling on China to better appreciate the rules-based international order that had brought stability to Asia. The rules-based global order is, of course, the one dominated by US imperialism, in which the rules are set in Washington. The purpose of the pivot is to ensure that China is subordinated to this international system, by military means if need be.

Abbott identified the South China Sea as a potential flash point and echoed Washingtons year-long campaign against Chinas land reclamation and militarisation. Without naming China, the former prime minister condemned countries which turn reefs into artificial islands at massive environmental cost, fortify disputed territory and try to restrict freedom of navigation, putting stability and security at risk.

Abbott noted that Australia had quietly increased our own air and naval patrols in the South China Sea. He added: We should be prepared to exercise our rights to freedom of navigation wherever the international law allows because this is not something that the United States should have to police alone.

Abbotts comments came in the wake of mounting demands in Canberra and Washington for the Turnbull government to give the green light for a so-called freedom of navigation operation. The US navy has already carried out two such patrols, most recently in January, when the destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, provocatively sailed within the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone around Chinese-administered Triton Island.

During a press conference in Washington last week, Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command, specifically appealed for like-minded nations to carry out freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. While not specifically named, Australia would be at the top of the admirals list. Following his first visit to Washington as prime minister in late January, Turnbull stopped off in Hawaii for discussions with Harris, in which the issue was undoubtedly raised.

The Turnbull government is also under pressure from the opposition Labor Party to stage a military intrusion into Chinese-claimed territory. Labor defence spokesman Stephen Conroy called on the government last month to stand up and demonstrate that they are not prepared to be bullied by China. The previous Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard stood fully behind the pivot, signing the initial deal with Obama in 2011 to rotate up to 2,500 US Marines through the northern city of Darwin.

The other focus of Abbotts speech last week was the growing strategic relations with Japana partnership that Washington has encouraged between its two key allies in its military expansion in Asia. Abbott, who once described Japan as Australias best friend in Asia, applauded the recent decision of the Australian and Japanese governments to upgrade relations to a special partnership.

Abbott went out of his way to cover up the Japanese governments accelerating efforts to remilitarise, remove constitutional restrictions on military operations and whitewash the war crimes of Japanese imperialism during the 1930s and 1940s. Referring to Germany and Japan, he said both have been exemplary international citizens in the years since [World War II] and have shown not the slightest tendency to militarism or expansionism.

In fact, both Germany and Japan are remilitarising. Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japans military budget has continuously expanded and new collective self-defence laws were rammed through parliament last year, allowing Japan to engage in US-led wars. Far from atoning for the past, the Abe government has downplayed or denied past Japanese atrocities.

Abbott hailed Japans willingness to share is sophisticated submarine technology with Australia and all but declared that Tokyos bid to build 12 submarines for the Australian navy should prevail over rival German and French bids. For Japan, this submarine deal is strategic; for the other bidders, its commercial, he said. In other words, the deal would cement a strategic partnership involving not just Japan and Australia, but also the US, as the war drive against China intensifies.

Back in Australia, Abbott has criticised the Defence White Paper released by the Turnbull government last week for extending the time for the delivery of the submarines to the early 2030sfrom the mid-2020s projected by his government. Im not just disappointed, Im flabbergasted at this decision, he told todays Australian, raising doubts about the viability of extending the life of the present Collins class submarines.

The articles author, the Australians foreign editor Greg Sheridan, is well connected in Washington. He cited unnamed sources who were similarly concerned that the new defence spending promised in the Turnbull governments white paper is heavily focussed on the distant future. The real source of the criticism is without a doubt the Pentagon, which is determined to ensure that its main allies are well equipped for a war with China, and not in the distant future.

Abbott, who is now on the parliamentary backbench, along with some of his former senior ministers, is clearly positioning himself for a future challenge for the Liberal Party leadership. Turnbull is not only under pressure over military matters, but is under fire from big business and the financial media for failing to take steps to make deep cutbacks to social spending. Yesterday Abbott also called on the government in a Liberal Party room meeting to take on the savings challenge again.

Abbotts public support for the military demands coming from Washington will not be lost on Turnbull. In June 2010, Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was ousted by his deputy, Julia Gillard, in an overnight inner-party coup orchestrated by a handful of Labor and union powerbrokers, later identified via WikiLeaks as protected sources of the US embassy in Canberra. Rudds crime in Washingtons eyes was to appeal for the US to accommodate to China, right at the point when Obama was preparing the pivot to confront Beijing.

While the US role in Rudds ouster is never spoken of publicly, Turnbull is certainly aware that his grip on office depends in no small measure on continued support from Washington.
Last Thursday, Germanys lower house of parliament (Bundestag) passed the so-called Asylum Package II by a large majority. The upper house (Bundesrat) then agreed on Friday to this further restriction of the countrys right to asylum as well as a law making it easier to deport convicted foreigners.

This has far-reaching implications. The German parliaments decision not only signifies a restriction of the right to asylum to the point where it is virtually no longer recognisable, it goes beyond that. It lays the basis of a legal system that for the first time since the Nazi regime robs a portion of the population of democratic rights. Today it is people fleeing war and poverty who are affected, and tomorrow it will be other portions of the population who will be excluded and denied their rights.

While human tragedy is running its course on the borders of the Balkan countries, destroying any hopes for life and a future for tens of thousands of families with children, the well-paid politicians of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) voted 429 in favour and 147 against, with four abstentions. This brings into force the following changes in German asylum law:

* Rapid decisions on asylum applications by refugees coming from so-called safe countries of origin. This group already includes the Balkan countries and some African states such as Ghana and Senegal. Currently, the list of safe nations is being expanded to include Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Follow-up applications will also be treated in this way, as well as those from people who do not cooperate. As the law states, This will apply, for example, if they falsify their identity or refuse to provide fingerprints.

* Accommodation of refugees in three to five large internment camps (reception centres or registration centres) and a strict residency rule. Those people without the perspective of staying will be interned and their application reviewed on site. In practice, this means the application will be rejected, and deportations will then be carried out directly from the reception centre. The entire asylum procedure will be complete within a week. If a refugee violates the residency requirement, he or she will receive no welfare payments and the asylum procedure will be suspended immediately.

* The deportation of sick and traumatised refugees. Doctors examinations will in practice be ignored, unless they indicate a life-threatening illness when the asylum application is made. Sick children will also be deported, although Germany ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1992 explicitly prohibiting this.

* The right to family reunification will be suspended for two years for those with a subsidiary right to protection. Subsidiary protection is given, for example, to Syrian refugees who are not or have not yet been recognised as refugees under the Geneva Convention of Refugees, but who enjoy protection from deportation due to the dangerous situation in their home country resulting from war. Unaccompanied minors also come under this category. They will only be able to reunite with their parents in individual cases.

* Welfare payment will be cut. Single refugees will have benefits cut across the board by 10 per month for language courses. In the future, asylum seekers will only be fully entitled to claim state welfare when they have registered in the local area and hold a refugee pass.

* In conjunction with all this, the easing of equal treatment regulation under current law, thus enabling the deportation of foreigners convicted of crimes, and not just refugees. In the future, a criminal without a German passport, convicted of a violent crime (grievous bodily harm, rape) carrying more than a one-year suspended sentence, will, in addition to the punishment for those holding a German passport, be deported. People of second- or third-generation immigrant families will thereby be stigmatised.

A number of human rights, asylum, legal, medical, psychiatric and childrens organisations have opposed the reactionary, vindictive Asylum Package II. Members of the German Bar Association (DAV) and the Republican Attorneys Association (RAV) protested in several cities on the same day. In addition, the fact that the governments human rights commissioner, Christoph Strasser (SPD) resigned three days before the vote, even though the SPD was a key architect of the law, makes clear how wide-ranging the attack on existing legal norms is.

The newly adopted asylum regulations were a sell-out of the principles of a constitutional state, wrote the RAV in a Berlin statement. The law marked a sad high-point in a terrible development of law, and could ultimately not be justified on constitutional principles.

Several basic rights are being suspended for certain sections of the population by the new law. The rapid decisions on asylum applications deny those affected the right to a fair and independent hearing. For the entire process of review, legal consideration and adjudicating, which normally takes several months, only a week is planned. Representation by lawyers will generally not take place, due to the short time-scale and above all the practical impossibility of leaving the reception centre at all to contact a lawyer, the RAV wrote.

Secondly, the deportation of sick individuals violates the right, guaranteed in the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Constitution), Article 2 (Personal Freedoms), Paragraph 2, which states that Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity and that Freedom of the person shall be inviolable, as well as Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to life.

Children and young people in particular with post-traumatic stress disorder require longer periods of treatment, explained Jakob Maske, spokesman for the association of paediatricians on DeutschlandRadio. The German government cynically justified the deportation of sick refugees, by saying it was necessary to implement provisions against doctors and psychotherapists who provided certificates to refugees on request.

The denial of family reunification for refugees with subsidiary protection violates Article 6 of the Basic Law, which guarantees the protection of the family, as well as Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The review of specific individual cases involving unaccompanied minors, which was included shortly prior to the vote following complaints from the SPD, means no improvement, according to migration lawyer Bernward Ostrop. Many minors, during the long waiting period for such proceedings, would become adults and thus lose the special protection afforded to children and young people.

Claudia Kittel of the German Institute of Human Rights actually expects an increase in the waiting time for family reunification from two to four years and says the basic right to family reunification has been overturned. In regard to the review of specific cases involving children and family reunification, Tobias Klaus from the federal professional association for unaccompanied child refugees commented that in the meantime, more people would [get into] boats in the Mediterranean.

During the presentation of its annual report, Amnesty International also strongly criticised the German government. It was losing sight of human rights, according to general secretary of Amnesty Deutschland Selmin Caliskan, and was relying only on harshness and sealing borders. On Tuesday, Heinz Hilgers, president of the German Child Protection Association (DKSB), wrote an open letter to President Joachim Gauck, urging him to block the lawa futile effort!

With the latest asylum law, the German government has finally swung behind the racist policies of extremist forces. CSU leader Horst Seehofer and Alexander Gauland of the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany were correspondingly vehement in their comments. The latter called for the closure of the German border with full decisiveness, and protested that the faces of suffering children could not be used as blackmail.

The Greens and Left Party played a critical role in this attack on basic rights. In the Bundestag, where their votes were not decisive, they declared themselves to be friends of the refugees and voted firmly against the law. But in the Bundesrat (representing the sixteen federal German states), where the grand coalition relies on the Green-led or Green-supported governments in Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland Palatinate, they voted in favour. Although a vote against would not have overturned the law, it would have at least delayed its implementation.

Even the Left Party-SPD-Green-governed Thuringia, represented by Left Party state premier Bodo Ramelow, and the SPD-Left Party government in Brandenburg did not raise objections to the law in the Bundesrat.

The new asylum law represents a qualitative turning point for democratic rights in post-war Germany. Hand in hand with the revival of German militarism and imperialism, the old, deeply anti-democratic and racist domestic policies are returning. They are intended to divide the working class and defend the interests of the wealthy privileged elite.
French security forces violently attacked refugees with tear gas Monday as they launched the demolition of the refugee camp in Calais. The assault, launched as Macedonian police assaulted refugees at the Greek border to shut off the Balkan route leading to Germany, testifies to the escalating persecution of refugees throughout Europe.

The administrative court in Lille confirmed on February 25 a request from the Socialist Party (PS) government of President Francois Hollande to dismantle the southern half of the camp. NGOs working at the camp had counted roughly 3,500 refugees living in this zone. The ultimatum issued to the refugees living in this area to leave before February 23 by Fabienne Buccio, the prefect of police of the Pas de Calais department, had been briefly suspended because of an appeal filed by a number of humanitarian NGOs.

Two weeks ago, the Pas de Calais prefecture had ordered the razing of a 100-metre strip around the portion of the camp near a pathway leading to the port of Calais.

On Monday, heavily armed riot police forced their way into the camp to escort bulldozers that destroyed at least a hundred buildings. They then launched tear gas and attacked hundreds of refugees as well as members of the No Borders aid organisation, while at the same time a dozen buildings in the camp also went up in flames.

The camps inhabitants and humanitarian NGOs working with them denied official accusations that the refugees themselves had set fire to the buildings, and insisted that fires started because of projectiles thrown by the security forces. Four No Borders members were arrested.

The PSs expulsion of refugees fleeing war-torn countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Pakistan, including women and children, in the middle of winter, during which it is illegal to expel people from their homes, is an act of horrific brutality. The destruction of the Calais camp is a demand long associated to the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

For several days, the government has carried out a sickening propaganda campaign, trying to present its operation to destroy the camp as a humanitarian gesture. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve hypocritically presented the razing of the camp as an action of protection of the migrants. He insisted it would be done of course while proceeding in a gradual fashion, and giving the central place to dialogue, persuasion, and giving information to the migrants.

Nonetheless, the PSs stated goal is to use all means necessary to deter migrants seeking to reach the UK from coming to Calais. The demolition of the camp is part of a broader strategy carried out by all the EU governments to discourage people in the Middle East and Africa from fleeing imperialist wars that have devastated their countries.

The Belgian government has reacted to the prospect of the closure of the Calais camp by unilaterally re-establishing border controls with France and temporarily suspending the Schengen accords on free movement inside Europe, to prevent refugees from fleeing Calais to Belgium. Cazeneuve called this decision strange, claiming that the Belgian government had not informed him that they were doing it.

The entire French political establishment is supporting the xenophobic and anti-immigrant policies of the PS, often under a cynical cover of moral support for the refugees.

Reacting to the Pas de Calais prefects announcement of the evacuation order, Left Front leader Jean-Luc Melenchon attacked London, which has refused to let the refugees at Calais cross the English Channel and enter Britain.

He advised the French government to send refugees to Britain as soon as possible, knowing full well that even if they left France under these conditions, they would not be allowed to enter Britain or would be immediately expelled.

Melenchon also took the opportunity to speak for a British exit from Europe, echoing the right-wing nationalist Brexit propaganda carried out by reactionary figures such as the right-wing mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and former Labour MP George Galloway.

Why are we playing at being [Britains] border guards, while Cameron is demanding more concessions in Brussels, he asked. Why shouldnt Britain take her fair share, by what right?  London is showing no solidarity towards Europe, quite the contrary, so why should we try at all costs to keep Britain in Europe?

In a letter dated February 25, Michelle Demessine, a Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) senator from the North region, published a statement in the daily LHumanite warning the government not to carry out an overly hasty evacuation. She also called for pressure on London to allow immigrants to bring their families to Britain, a principle that the French government has refused to endorse.

The PSs cynical strategy aims to discourage the refugees to the point that they agree to leave France without going to Britain. The French state is applying essentially the same policies applied to the Roma, which it previously expelled to Romania. Now that Romanian Roma are EU citizens, the PS orders the destruction of dozens of Roma camps each year, hoping they will become disgusted and return to Romania on their own initiative.

France has created a virtually impossible situation for immigrant workers. Asylum seekers in France can only work once their case has been processed, which takes an average of nine months. If they want to work during this time, they must do so without papers. Even if they are ultimately accepted as refugees or as immigrants, with Frances unemployment rate at 10.5 percent, they are often forced to take work under the worst conditions.

Even in terms of legal immigration, in 2011 the OECD only counted 211,300 immigrants in France, or 0.33 percent of the population. This was behind Spain (349,300), Britain (321,200), Italy (312,200) and Germany (290,800). As a percentage of the population, France ranks 15th out of 16 European countries in terms of the number of immigrants it admits, surpassing only the Czech Republic.

France refuses most asylum applications. Last year, of 79,100 requests of all origins, only 26,700 or 31.5 percent were accepted. Other asylum seekers were told to leave the country.

This is the result of decades of incitement of the poison of Islamophobia by the French ruling class, often using the rise of the FN as a pretext, to undermine democratic rights and attack the refugees.

At the Munich Security Conference, French prime minister Manuel Valls recently insisted that France would not accept more than 30,000 Syrian refugees. In fact, France has only accepted 10,000 Syrian refugees since that countrys civil war began in 2011. Of Vallss quota of 30,000, fewer than a thousand have already arrived.
A report published by the union-backed Ontario Common Front paints a harrowing portrait of the social devastation inflicted on the provinces working class and poor over the course of a single generation. Titled Falling Behind, the report documents the impact of years of right-wing government policies that have laid waste to the jobs and living standards of working Ontarians, producing levels of social inequality not seen since the Great Depression.

The report places responsibility for this social disaster on provincial governments both past and present, which have implemented anti-worker policies in the service of big business. Figures included in the report demonstrate that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and years of social spending cuts have crippled public services such as health care and education. The resulting crises, such as overcrowded hospitals, sky-high post-secondary tuition fees, the shuttering of community service organizations, and the slashing of social assistance funds, are then blamed on government waste and inefficiency and used to justify privatization and still greater cuts.

Although the report points to the depth of the social crisis facing millions of Ontario workers, it omits the central role played by the unions and the New Democratic Party (NDP) in facilitating this situation, and thus only tells half the story.

Among some of the starkest findings in the report are the following:

* At 12 percent of its workforce, Ontario has the highest proportion of minimum wage workers (C$11.25 per hour) in the country.

* In 2009, 13.1 percent of Ontarians, or 1,689,000 people, lived under the poverty line, including 14.6 percent of all children.

* Between 1976 and 2004, the bottom 40 percent600,000 Ontario familiesexperienced stagnating or declining incomes, while the wealthiest 10 percent saw their incomes rise by an average 41 percent.

* Public spending per capita in Ontario is the lowest in the country, at C$9,000 per person.

* Almost 400,000 Ontarians used food banks in 2011.

* Almost one quarter of unemployed Ontarians are out of work for six months or longer.

* Child care costs and university tuition fees in Ontario are the highest in the country.

The gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in Ontario is now at its greatest since the 1930s. The ruling class of Ontario, like its counterparts at the national and international level, has accomplished this by effecting a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top, using the 2008 financial crisis as a pretext to accelerate its austerity drive.

Between 1976 and 2004, the chasm between the rich and poor grew ever wider. In 1976, the wealthiest 10 percent of Ontarians earned just 27 times more than the poorest 10 percent. By 2004, this had exploded to 75 times more. In the span of one generation, the top 10 percent have experienced a 41 percent increase in net wealth, but the poorest 10 percent have suffered a staggering 150 percent decline.

With almost one third of Ontarians earning within C$4 of the miserable C$11.25-per-hour minimum wage and the price of necessities such as housing, food, and utilities steadily rising, workers and their families increasingly find it difficult to meet basic expenses.

The relentless drive of the banks and corporations to increase profits, in addition to the anemic nature of the so-called economic recovery, has led to the shedding of 318,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. At least 270,000 new jobs would be required to merely return Ontarios employment numbers to their pre-recession levels. Instead, corporations have done the opposite, with major layoffs taking place on a monthly basis.

Kathleen Wynnes Liberal government and its Conservative and NDP predecessors have delivered decades of austerity.

In 2012, the Liberals, led by then-premier Dalton McGuinty, initiated the greatest spending cuts in the provinces history, dwarfing those made by the hated Harris Conservatives in the late 1990s. When the Liberals took office in 2003, they essentially maintained the massive tax cuts for the rich and super-rich, as well as the savage cuts to welfare rates, which had been implemented by their Conservative predecessors.

As a result of these cuts to public services, which include a three-year public spending freeze that began last year and C$7 billion in cuts over the past five years, the social services on which millions of Ontario workers depend have been gutted to the point of near-collapse.

Ontarios hospitals are the most underfunded in the country, and Ontarians pay more for health care expenses than residents of any other province. More than 30,000 Ontarians at any given moment are waiting for a hospital bed or long-term care, and hospitals regularly operate at or above full capacity.

Social and community services have been hollowed out as a result of drastic budget cuts. Wages within this sector have fallen precipitously as a result of these cuts, to the point that many workers in this sector are forced to use the same services and resources they administer.

Falling Behind repudiates the incessant gloating of government and big business representatives about the merits of the free market in creating a just and equitable society. The real picture that emerges is that of debilitating poverty and hardship for the vast majority of Ontarios workers, and a feeding frenzy of unprecedented proportions for the wealthy.

At the same time, the Ontario Common Front, which is comprised of 90 community organizations and led by the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), maintains an indefensible silence about the role played by the trade unions and the NDP in facilitating this crisis. If Falling Behind is a list of crimes perpetrated against the provinces workers and poor, then it is also an implicit indictment of the treachery of the union bureaucracy and the middle class left.

The Ontario Common Front was created by the trade union bureaucracy in the wake of the 2011 Occupy protests as a way to corral oppositional and anti-austerity sentiment back behind the pro-capitalist perspective of the union bureaucracy. The participating community groups were solicited so as to give a left-wing gloss to the unions thoroughly right-wing nationalist politics.

The unions, while historically tied to the social-democratic NDP, have in one shape or another supported the Liberals bids for power since 1998 [http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/06/14/onta-j14.html], when many major unions created the Ontarios Working Families Coalition to muster votes for the Liberals. Driven by fear of the explosive social power of the working class, which threatened to escape their control during the mass anti-Conservative protests between 1995 and 1997, the unions shifted further to the right, playing a critical role in bringing the big business Liberals to power in Queens Park.

The stock-in-trade of the union bureaucracy is the promotion of strategic voting, urging support for the lesser evil Liberals to prevent a hard-right Conservative government. Once in power, the Liberals invariably implement right-wing policies as demanded by the corporations and financial houses that line Bay Street.

Similarly, the NDP and its pseudo-left supporters, while posing as opponents of austerity and allies of the working class, represent the interests of a thin and affluent middle class layer. Dependent on the capitalist system for their privileged social status and hostile to socialism and the interests of the working class, they have rapidly shed their left-wing pretensions in response to the economic crisis and the resurgence of working class opposition to capitalism.

For 18 months between 2012 and 2014, Andrea Horwaths NDP was in a de facto coalition with the Liberals, enabling the passage of McGuintys devastating austerity budget and its use of strikebreaking legislation to impose a cut in teachers real wages. Over the opposition of the unions, Horwath only pulled her partys support in May 2014 in an attempt to salvage what was left of the NDPs tattered left credentials. This, however, did not prevent the NDP from running its most right-wing campaign ever in the ensuing election.

An exposure of the sordid machinations of the unions and the NDP would completely undermine the Ontario Common Fronts legitimacy, existing as it does as a tool of the union bureaucracy.
The World Socialist Web Site received numerous comments on the statement of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) calling for an active boycott of the June 23 referendum on British membership in the European Union. Many readers enthusiastically supported the statement, while others raised political objections or questions.

We are posting below replies from Chris Marsden, the national secretary of the SEP, to two comments. The first criticized the position of the SEP and advocated instead for a vote in favor of leaving the EU. The second asked how the SEPs position on Brexit related to its call for a no vote in the September 18, 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. The original comments can be found here.

***

The Socialist Equality Party rejects your response to our call for an active boycott and urges you to think more carefully and clearly about the implications of your critique.

You state that our analysis of the Remain and Leave campaigns is faultless, but you clearly disagree with this analysis. Your position is that we are simply too small (miniscule) to take a position that is independent of the Leave campaigna right-wing nationalist block. We do not agree. The position we take will be followed by the most advanced workers and youth and will contribute greatly to their political education.

You assert that a Leave vote is still somehow an expression of the wishes of the vanguard of the working class and class conscious workers generally. But nowhere do you explain how, if that is the presently existing consciousness of the mass of the working class, leadership of the Leave campaign has fallen to the right wing of the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party, at whose behest the referendum was called.

You write as if this situation can be overcome through the judicious allocation of socialist slogansNo to the Bosses, Bankers, and Tory EU, Workers Unity against Nationalism, Fascism, and War, etc.

If this is all it takes to clearly demarcate a Socialist opposition to the EU, then the official Leave campaign would be a political consideration of no great significance. As we explained, Under conditions of a movement of the working class involving mass strikes and appeals for solidarity with the Greek masses and other victims of EU diktats, a vote to leave would acquire an anti-capitalist character.

But this is not the case today and this situation cannot be overcome by wishful thinking and rhetoric. It must be changed through a political struggle to demarcate the independent standpoint of the working class, free it from all bourgeois and petty bourgeois influences and arm it with a consistently socialist and internationalist perspective.

You describe our reference to Lenins call for an active boycott in 1905 as utterly inappropriate, irrelevant, and far-fetched. However, we are not making a direct historical parallel but rather explaining how Lenin urged independent political action to establish the leading role of the working class and to prevent its subordination to the bourgeois opponents of Tsarism.

More importantly, you say nothing about our warning of the tragic result of the mixing of the class banners when we referenced the Red Referendum of 1931. The German Communist Party, under Stalins instruction, also took the position that the judicious use of radical phrases and skilfully basing ourselves upon the natural antipathy of workersat that time to the Social Democrats--could somehow transform the character of a referendum called by the Nazis into a vehicle for revolutionary struggle. The result was a political catastrophe.

You urge the small forces of Revolutionary Socialism to adopt a political strategy aimed at building those small forces. However, yours is a recipe not for expanding the political influence of socialists but for transforming the socialist movement into a political apologist and adjunct of a right-wing nationalist movement.

***

The position taken by the Socialist Equality Party in the referendum on Scottish independence and the call for an active boycott of the referendum on UK membership of the European Union are politically consistent. Both positions are motivated by our opposition to nationalism and our fundamental aim of maintaining the unity and political independence of the international working class.

We called for a no vote in the Scottish referendum because we are opposed to the setting up of a separate capitalist state, as demanded by the Scottish National Party and supported by the pseudo-left groupsbehind insincere and politically false promises that this would eventually become the basis for a Scottish road to socialism.

We explained, The primary function of a separate Scottish state would be to establish more direct relations with the major banks, corporations and speculators by offering to drive up exploitation, smash up wages and working conditions, destroy or privatise social services and eliminate as far as is possible taxes on corporate wealth.

We made no concession to the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and big business backers of a no vote, but we insisted that separatism only weakens and divides the working class in its struggle against these forces. We warned that encouraging separatism in Scotland would, moreover, be a green light for similar movements of the regional bourgeoisie in Catalonia and elsewhere that would end in the Balkan-style carve-up of the European continent.

We called for the overthrow of British imperialism and its state apparatus, the creation of a workers government committed to socialist policies and the formation of the United Socialist States of Europe.

The vote to Leave is not a vote for a socialist Britain, let alone the starting point for a struggle for a socialist Europe. It is an endorsement of a British nationalist agendaspearheaded by far-right forceswhich would be equivalent to our having supported a yes vote for Scottish independence. Like a yes vote then, it would just as surely provide an impulse for the nationalist division of the European continent and its working class.
On Monday, February 29, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder officially named Judge Steven Rhodes the leader of the transition team for the Detroit Public Schools (DPS), tasked with balancing the books and ushering in reforms.

Judge Rhodes was a natural choice, Snyder said in a statement. He is highly respected in the city and was invaluable in leading Detroit out of bankruptcy. Detroit needs strong public schools for the citys economic comeback to continue through its neighborhoods.

Judge Rhodes was, in fact, invaluable during the bankruptcy, lending a cover of legal authority and neutrality to a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the accounts of the banks and debt bondholders. The judge was particularly invaluable for his role of vacating the Michigan state constitution and carrying through the destruction of long-held workers pension rights.

We need honesty, integrity and trustworthinessand we get another liar, one teacher who spoke to World Socialist Web Site said of Rhodes appointment. Hes not even an educator.

Why do they bring in a judge now? Because he is bought. Its like the people running for president, they dont care about the little people. We should start chopping at the top. We are speaking about the rights of children and their education.

Tuesday was the last day on the job for DPS emergency manager (EM) Darnell Earley, who faced intense public outrage and became a political liability due to his previous role in the lead poisoning of Flint children. As a result of the criminality widely associated with the term emergency manager, Rhodes asked to be known as DPSs transition manager. He will, however, assume all the dictatorial powers of the EM, plus the same $12,000 monthly salary.

Rhodes said his immediate priority is meeting with all the stakeholders in the Detroit Public Schools. He vowed to get input from teachers, parents, principals and others before selecting a district superintendent. Last week he met twice with teachers and principals, and was warmly welcomed by the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) who sponsored a meeting so he could address DPS workers.

On Monday DFT interim president Ivy Bailey indicated the unions willingnesseven enthusiasmto work with Rhodes. She emphasized that the unions main concern is a locally elected and empowered school board. Rhodes has signaled his support for local control, Bailey said.

The DFT leader went on to salute Rhodes willingness to listen to and work with educators, parents and the community. She contrasted this to the actions of Earley, which included filing lawsuits against educators, banning health inspectors from hazardous public school buildings, and racking up a school debt of a half-billion dollars with no accountability.

She urged Rhodes to name an additional member to the transition team, someone from the school district who is known and respected by educators, school employees, parents and the community, e.g. someone either from the union or in alliance with it.

So far only Tonya Allen, president and CEO of the Skillman Foundation, has been asked to serve on the team. Allen is co-chair of the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren, working closely with the national American Federation of Teachers and local Democratic politicians. Allen refused to accept the position as DPS superintendent, but says she will continue to serve as a consultant in the reorganization process.

The AFT and its local Detroit affiliate have been working overtime since January to suppress the independent actions of rank-and-file teachers and to divert their militancy behind the Democratic Party and the demand for restoring local control through the reestablishment of an elected school board. This has nothing to do with giving working people in Detroit any greater say-so over the allocation of public resources and school policy. On the contrary, it is aimed at expanding the influence and business opportunities of local Democratic politicians, union functionaries and their corporate connections.

In fact, the union is supporting the pending legislation, sponsored by Republican Governor Rick Snyder, for the reorganization of the school district, which will open the door to much greater privatization, attack if not destroy DPS pensions and health care, and criminalize teacher protests, among other reforms in the interest of balancing the books. The only interest of the DFT officials is to have a seat at the table so it can share in the spoils from the dismantling of public education.

A long-term Detroit educator who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site said, Those who went to the DFT meeting where he [Rhodes] spoke said it was horrible and they couldnt voice their opinion anyway. So what is the next step for us?

I just read through the Michigan House bill to reorganize DPS. It never addresses our retirement. They are taking away our rights to collectively bargain and we dont know if well have our retirement. But its almost amusing because they repeatedly address the work stoppagesin several parts of the bill! What are they so worried about?

They are taking away our First Amendment rightscriminalizing them, she said, adding, Theres a lot they are doing in Michigan which is unconstitutional.

So Rhodes is in charge of the transitiontransition to what? They say the Great Lakes Education Project, the DeVos family, is just waiting to take over DPS. Its very scary.

Reflecting on the nature of the political challenges ahead in the fight to defend public education, she said, This is so massive, we have no idea how to change it. Rhodes already seems to know whats happening. The conspirators are already planning, and we dont have a plan.

She continued, Detroit is being used as a model for everywhere else. I feel Washington is backing this. They are seeing how to run this, how to get it through deceitfully. People dont know. It is so scary; they are deceiving the public.

Another veteran teacher said, Privatization is just crap. Are they going to bring in quality schools? Weve got kids that cant read and write. The conditions are abominable. The buildings are old and dilapidated. Its a capitalistic society and they have knocked out the middle class. The balance is gone.

People ask me how I know that this is statewide, national. Well, we have some 28 billionaires who control half of the wealth of the US. They are getting richer and richer. The word needs to be passed on. We need to seek out more information and become more politically aware, she emphasized.

Asked about the role of the Detroit Federation of Teachers in opposing the sickouts and now supporting Rhodes, she said, The unionsits becoming more apparent. Its been going on for years and years. But people are now beginning to realize that our union is not helping us. Ive always been union. My parents were both teachers. I always believed that the union was supposed to back us, but once [former DFT president] Keith Johnson came in, I knew that was not how it worked.

The sickouts were the best things to do, but it should have been everybody out there. We dont have enough teachers. We have kindergartens with 40 childrenand theyre supposed to learn something?

Referring to the role of the now retired DPS Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, who had previously been the EM in Flint, she emphasized his criminal role in the lead poisoning of the citys children. How is Earley walking around scot-free? He just walks away? He should be in a cell. That man cost peoples lives. People in Flint died. He and Snyder took their lives. Why dont they have to pay for that?
Following the decision by Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative Party secretary of health, to impose an inferior contract on 55,000 junior doctors in England by August 1, the British Medical Association (BMA) has announced a further series of industrial action. These entail 48-hour national stoppages on March 9, April 6 and April 26, in which only emergency care will be provided.

The enforcement of the contract will remove unsocial payments and reduce the safeguards against junior doctors working excessive hours.

The decision by the BMA to escalate the rolling strike action, following the 24-hour stoppages in mid-January and beginning of February, came after consultation meetings with junior doctors who voiced their determination to defy the government ultimatum.

The junior doctors fight can only go forward by rejecting the no politics mantra of the BMA and the isolation of the dispute by the trade unions. No effort is being spared by the BMA in order to prevent the dispute from providing a focal point for the suppressed opposition to austerity and the dismantling of the National Health Service.

The BMA announced the new strikes dates while pleading with the government there is still time to avert the planned industrial action. Even now, after several years of talks, which have only prepared the way for the imposition of a regressive contract, the BMA states, The Government can avert this action by re-entering talks with the BMA and addressing the outstanding issues and concerns junior doctors have, rather than simply ignoring them.

The BMA warned that if the government presses ahead with a contract junior doctors have resoundingly rejected we will be left with no option but to take this action. The Government must put patients before politics, get back around the table and find a negotiated solution to this dispute.

The BMAs claim that the dispute is non-political is false to the core. This is not a sectional struggle over pay, but a fight against a government-mandated attack on junior doctors that is directed at all NHS employees in order to facilitate further cuts and the privatisation of services.

Public opinion is overwhelmingly on the side of the junior doctors. The general public trusts their ethics and judgement, upon which the lives and wellbeing of millions depend, over a government dedicated to the interests of the wealthy and intent on eliminating all health and social provision.

The BMA is placing its call to return to negotiations on assurances that it will accept a settlement compliant with the longest spending squeeze on the NHS in its history.

As the Kings Fund commented on the governments spending review last year, the NHS and social care are now set for a decade-long funding squeeze which will see the largest sustained falls in spending as a share of GDP on both services in modern times.

Johann Malawana, chair of the BMA junior doctors committee emphasised the cost neutral basis of the alternative it submitted in December, in which the retention of unsocial hours payments would come from a reduction in an increase in basic pay.

The BMAs attempt to come to a trade off with the government over unsocial hours only serves to obscure the real issues. It gives succour to the disinformation by the mass media that the junior doctors resistance is not bound up with a broader fight to defend the NHS.

The BMA presents the governments actions as simply the outcome of incompetence. On this basis, the BMA has taken up a legal appeal on the grounds that the Tories have not conducted an Equality Impact Assessment, as required by law, in compliance with the Equality Act 2010.

The central risk to the junior doctors is the continued isolation of their struggle by the trade unions. The last one-day stoppage by junior doctors in February coincided with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) official week of action against the governments anti-strike Trade Union Bill. This only served to expose it as a non-event. Even as the government tore up the pay and conditions of a section of NHS employeesthe biggest workforce in the countrythe TUC with 52 affiliated unions stood idly by.

The trade unions oppose any unification of the fight against the destruction of public health care. There has been no attempt to enjoin the junior doctors with the fight by nurses and midwives against government decision to scrap NHS bursaries in 2017. Unison, with nearly half a million members in the NHS, has not organised any support behind the junior doctors. Instead, it conducts a separate campaign over bursaries restricted to letter-writing to MPs and pleas to government.

In an attempt to cover for the betrayal of the trade unions, an online petition has been initiated by Unite the Resistance. This is endorsed by a handful of national union leaders under the misleading title Solidarity with the junior doctors. Its declaration, This is the time for solidarity and action is belied by its contents. It does not go beyond token gesturesincluding email messages of support and visiting junior doctors picket lines and a proposal that the BMA approaches the TUC about the organisation of a national demonstration.

The petition is confined to calls to resume the discredited negotiations in which the BMA is attempting to broker a sellout. We call on Hunt to withdraw the imposition and listen to the BMA.

Unite the Resistance consists of the pseudo-left Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and a section of the trade union bureaucracy predominantly drawn from the public sector. It was founded following the TUC betrayal of the 2011 public sector strike and based around the National Unions of Teachers (NUT), University College Union (UCU) and Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) led by Mark Serwotka.

The NUT, UCU and PCS were dubbed the rejectionist unions because they initially refused to sign up to the governments terms. However, they played a central role in demobilising all opposition after winding down a few national stoppages, which they failed to co-ordinate.

The Unite the Resistance signatories includes that of Dave Ward, the assistant general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU). The record of the CWU and Ward over cuts and privatisation is one of collaboration with productivity increases and the culling of jobs and calling off a succession of national strikes including the one prior to the Royal Mail selloff in 2013.

After more than five years of endless austerity, the fact that the Cameron government has not yet confronted a resurgent and militant movement of the working class is due to the services rendered by the trade unions.

They have presided over a record low level of industrial action. This is not a reflection of the reluctance of the working class to wage a fight. In June last year, unions in the public and private sector called off three national strikes in steel, rail and probation services.

Neither the growth in social inequality nor the intensification of the class struggle and even the prospect of more draconian anti-strike laws have roused the trade unions. They are pro-capitalist and dedicated to preserving the lifestyle of a bureaucracy which bargains away the past gains made by workers and polices social discontent on behalf of the government and corporations.

A genuine appeal for solidarity with the junior doctors and a mobilisation of the working class against the Cameron government would cut across all of this. This is why a genuine struggle can only be taken forward based on the creation of rank and file organisations, and an international socialist perspective which challenges the monopoly the financial and corporate elite exerts over every aspect of economic and social life.

For further information visit: nhsfightback.org
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey and Bruce Sewell, vice president and general counsel of Apple Inc., testified Tuesday before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on the efforts of the Obama administration to eviscerate encryption protection for users of cell phones and other communication devices.

It was the first congressional hearing held specifically on the conflict that has erupted between the Obama administration and the biggest tech company over the governments drive to obtain backdoor access to private encrypted information on cell phones.

On February 16, a federal court in California granted a Justice Department request for an order requiring Apple to write new software enabling the FBI to bypass security features and crack the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack that killed 14 people last December 2. Apple refused to comply with the order and last week filed an appeal with the court, charging that compliance would set an illegal and unconstitutional precedent for the government to gain access to the personal information stored on the cell phones of millions of people in the US and around the world.

The administration, which decided last fall not to pursue legislation in Congress to compel tech companies to help it gain access to encrypted information, seized on the terror attack in San Bernardino as the occasion for a highly public campaign, utilizing the courts, aimed at overwhelming and intimidating broad popular opposition to a further expansion of government police and surveillance powers.

The governments contention is that it must have access to the dead shooters phone in order to determine if he and his wife were acting in concert with outside groups such as ISIS. This is absurd on its face, since it is well known that the government already has access to metadata on the phone calls, text messages and other electronic communications of every man, woman and child in America and millions more people around the world through the mass data collection programs that were exposed beginning in June 2013 by National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The administration is pursuing a two-track strategy to undermine encryption protection for cell phone users. It is seeking to obtain sanction via the courts and simultaneously manipulate public opinion to make it easier for Congress to pass legislation giving the government broad authority to override encryption.

Tuesdays hearing was a step toward obtaining congressional authorization. The response of House Judiciary Committee members to the testimony of Comey, Sewell, New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. and Professor of Cybersecurity Policy Susan Landau indicated that a majority on the committee are prepared to support a law compelling Internet and tech firms to provide the government backdoor access to encrypted information.

In the course of his testimony, Comey backed away from previous claims that the California case was unique and a government victory would not set a precedent for further efforts to crack encrypted iPhones. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, Republican from Virginia, asked Comey, If the FBI is successful in this case, will it set a precedent in many other cases? Comey replied, Yes, potentially.

When the ranking Democrat on the committee, John Conyers of Michigan, asked, If you succeed in this case, will the FBI return in other cases to ask to unlock phones? Comey said, Of course. Conyers, who supports Apple in the dispute, complained that the FBI, by seeking a warrant in the San Bernardino case in open court, had preempted discussions in Congress over legislation and sought to exploit a national tragedy to make an end run around this committee.

Ted Poe, Republican from Texas, asked whether the FBI had other phones in its lawful possession that it could not access. Comeys response was, A lot.

In its appeal brief filed last week in the San Bernardino case, Apple revealed that it is already facing demands from the Justice Department to unlock twelve other phones.

In his prepared remarks to the committee, Comey laid out the framework of the governments propaganda in favor of access to encrypted private information by characterizing the hearing as an opportunity to discuss the challenges to public safety and national security that have eroded our ability to obtain electronic information and evidence pursuant to a court order or warrant.

He reiterated the claim, We are not asking to expand the governments surveillance authority, a transparent lie.

Questioning by committee members showed that divisions over the governments assault on encryption straddled party lines, with some of the most obsequious remarks coming from supposedly liberal Democrats. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois told Comey, If you have a lawful warrant, you should be able to get private information. We are in the same place.

Cedric Richmond, Democrat from Lousiana, asked Comey, Are we in danger of creating an underground criminal sanctuary? to which the FBI director replied, Yes we are.

Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican from Wisconsin, attacked Apple attorney Sewell for appealing to Congress to resolve the encryption dispute while failing to put forward his own specific proposals for legislation. Sensenbrenner then quipped, We will be very happy to do that, but I can guarantee you wont like the result.

In his opening statement, Sewell began by stressing his firms record of collaboration with the government, including giving it private customer information. The revelations of Snowden and others have documented the complicity of all of the major tech, Internet and communications companies in the illegal mass spying operations of the NSA and other state agencies.

When the FBI came to us in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attacks, Sewell said, we gave all the information we had related to their investigation. And we went beyond that by making Apple engineers available to advise them on a number of additional investigative options.

Sewell denied that commercial considerations were behind the companys decision to draw the line at openly collaborating in the hacking of its own iPhones, but there is no doubt that untold billions in sales and profits are at stake.

New York County District Attorney Vance, a Democrat, gave a hard-line presentation opposing Apples encryption policy and demanding that the government be given the authority to override encryption protection.

Landau, the cybersecurity expert, spoke in opposition to the governments demands, citing as her authority the NSA, which has declared end-to-end encryption to be essential to US national security.

The hearing was held one day after a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York delivered a setback to the administrations anti-encryption offensive, rejecting its appeal for a warrant ordering Apple to unlock the cell phone of a convicted drug dealer.

In his ruling, Judge James Orenstein singled out for attack the Justice Departments use of the All Writs Act, dating from 1789, as the legal basis for its demand that Apple disable its encryption protection. He concluded that the governments interpretation of the act was so far-reaching as to cast doubt on [its] constitutionality if adopted. The Justice Department is basing its case in connection with the San Bernardino attacks on its novel and extraordinarily expansive interpretation of the same law.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday weighed in on the encryption dispute, attempting to ratchet up the pressure on Apple to give in to the governments demands. Addressing the RSA Cybersecurity Conference in San Francisco, she said she was disappointed by the Brooklyn ruling. Employing a phrase used by Comey to cast encryption in a sinister light, she declared, The going dark problem is a very real threat to law enforcements mission to protect public safety and ensure that criminals are caught and held accountable.

Meanwhile, bipartisan bills are being introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to give the government the authority to force tech and communications firms to unlock encrypted data. A bill being drafted by the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Dianne Feinstein of California, would penalize companies that dont comply with court orders to help authorities hack into encrypted devices.

A competing bill was introduced Monday to create a bipartisan committee called the National Commission on Security and Technology Challenges to consider encryption and cybersecurity legislation. It was jointly sponsored by Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner. In introducing the bill, McCaul said, Law enforcement clearly needs the ability to gain lawful access to information that can stop future attacks.
A report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Detention Watch Network (DWN) and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) documents that egregious violations by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) caused the deaths of at least eight detained immigrants between 2010 and 2012.

Violations of ICE medical standards included failure to intervene in a timely manner, staff medical personnel adequately, refer and transfer to higher-level medical care, communicate critical information between staff, screen patients adequately, and identify and rectify concerns about medical care.

The ACLU report, Fatal Neglect: How ICE Ignores Deaths in Detention, laments that its initial request under the Freedom of Information Act pertained to 24 deaths. To this day, ICE has not provided investigations for seven of them and in some cases it refuses to review deaths of immigrants held in short-term custody.

In addition, additional reports published on ICEs web site show that at least 155 similar deaths occurred between October 2003 and January 2016. Figures are based on ICEs own released data and are at the very least conservative.

In order to conceal the gross level of basic rights violations, in 2009 the Obama administration adopted a detention reform that instituted such death reviews. However, violations continued, compounded by millions of deportations. Under Obamas reforms, at least 56 deaths in ICE custody have been reported.

The ACLU report notes that, despite the agencys admission that it violated medical standards, ICE detention facility inspections conducted before and after these deaths failed to acknowledgeor sometimes dismissedthe critical flaws identified in the death reviews. This is essentially an acknowledgement that Obamas detention reform failed to stop the violations.

The report details the death of eight immigrants:

 Evalin-Ali Mandza, heart attack after egregious delay in calling emergency.

 Amra Miletic, complications of chronic bowel inflammation and heart arrhythmia after almost two months of substandard care.

 Pablo Gracida-Conte, cardiomyopathy after four months of persistent requests for treatment were ignored.

 Anibal Ramirez-Ramirez, liver failure following poor communication, inadequate screenings and delays in referring to higher-level care.

 Irene Bamenga, given an incorrect dosage of medication.

 Fernando Dominguez-Valdivia, pneumonia following failure to provide proper physical examination.

 Victor Ramirez-Reyes, heart disease following failure to monitor and control patients blood pressure.

 Mauro Rivera Romero, disseminated cryptococcosis following inadequate screenings, failure to transfer critical information and refer patient to a higher-level provider.

All these deaths could have been avoided, and no one has been or will be held responsible for these crimes. The largest share of political responsibility, however, rests with the Obama administration, whose immigration policies have provoked popular revulsion around the world.

The pictures of women and children being deported en masse, returned to dangerous areas and life-threatening conditions or families being broken apart have given the world a realistic sense of the cruelty and contempt, by the Obama administration, for some of the most basic democratic rights.

In October 2015, a similar report entitled Lives in Peril published by the DWN and the NIJC exposed a system of outright abuse and neglect of the most basic medical needs. That report noted that September 11, 2001 was a turning point for attacks on immigrant rights, and detentions grew exponentially. In fact, the fraudulent war on terror was utilized by the US government to launch a massive attack on fundamental democratic rights, including those of immigrants.

That report, like the more recent one, also pointed to ICEs culture of secrecy, through which the federal agency systematically denies availability of documents and operates in complete absence of independent oversight, since the entities responsible for inspections are either housed within ICE or are employed by private companies contracted by ICE.

The US immigration detention system is based on a set of contracts between federal agencies and private corporations. Contract Detention Facilities are privately operated through contracts with ICE. Similarly, Service Processing Centers are operated by ICE, which in turn subcontracts important functions to private companies. The profit motive dominates every aspect of immigration detention.

Such a record points to a sustained criminal practice resulting from decades of anti-immigrant and, more broadly, anti-democratic policies, especially under the Bush and Obama administrations, aimed at the social rights of the working class as a whole. By creating an atmosphere of fear and threats, the government seeks to prevent immigrants from solidarizing with other layers of the working population and resisting poverty and hyper-exploitation.

Since 2009, Obamas government has deported more than 2.5 million people, an increase of 23 percent over the Bush administration and a historic record. According to the Department of Homeland Securitys web site (see Table 39), at the current pace, Obama will have deported more people than the total of all 19 US presidents from 1892 to 2000, from Grover Cleveland to Bill Clinton.

This does not include at least 2.5 million immigrants who have been returned not on the basis of a removal order, but because of restrictive immigration rules. In the last decade alone, the US immigration detention system has grown by 75 percent, with nearly half a million immigrants jailed every year.

The entire political establishment in the US is deeply and increasingly hostile to immigrant rights, just as they are to democratic rights as a whole. The current election campaign clearly reflects this position, summed up in Donald Trumps openly xenophobic calls for mass deportations and fascistic attacks against Mexicans and Muslims.

The self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, in addition to making deliberate efforts to outdo his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton with regard to his support for Obamas police-state measures and imperialist policy, which has been a major cause of millions being forced to flee their countries, has openly declared that opening borders is a Koch brothers proposal. His campaign, which vows to ensure our borders remain secure and protects local communities, is founded on the very same nationalist foundations used to persecute and deport immigrants.
A series of explosions at the Severnaya coal mine in Vorkuta, Russia, which is about 1800 km northeast of Saint Petersburg and slightly north of the Arctic Circle, caused the deaths of 36 people on February 25 and 28. This included 31 mineworkers and 5 rescue workers, all men between the ages of twenty-four and fifty-five. A three-day official mourning period in Russias Komi Republic began Sunday.

A sudden methane discharge and two explosions occurred at the mine on February 25, causing a collapse and fire. At the time, 111 people had been inside the mine, of whom four were killed immediately. Eighty-one were rescued, of whom nine had been injured, while 26 remained missing, trapped in mine shafts that had become obstructed in the collapse.

Hundreds of personnel from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Management were deployed for rescue operations at the mine. On Saturday, February 27, some of the rescue workers warned of the danger of further explosions. Later on Sunday, Minister of Emergency Management Vladimir Puchkov told television network Pervyy Kanal, We are compelled to state that the conditions in [the part of the mine where the miners were trapped] cannot allow a human being to survive. The data show that in the underground area where the 26 miners were located there are high temperatures and no oxygen. This statement was confirmed by Denis Paykin, Technical Director of mine operator Vorkutaugol.

As late as the morning of February 28, Vorkutaugol had denied that the trapped mine workers had been given up for dead, claiming that rescue operations were ongoing. However, it emerged later that day that a third explosion in the early morning hours of February 28 had caused the deaths of 5 rescue workers and 1 mineworker, and that an additional 5 people had been injured. After this, rescue operations were halted.

Puchkov, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich and parent company Severstal President Aleksey Mordashov, had flown out to the mine site. According to Dvorkovich, a preliminary government investigation concluded that the explosions resulted from natural factors. He asserted that officials from the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Oversight had inspected Severstal just a few days before the disaster; that the issues identified in the inspection were not related to the explosions at Severnaya; and that the methane sensors in the mine had recorded below-critical levels and had not detected any dangers.

On Monday, Dvorkovich explained to a meeting with Vice President Dmitry Medvedev, It would have been impossible to prevent the explosion at Severnaya. The methane level rose spasmodically. That is, there was a spasmodic discharge. There was no gradual rise in the gas level. The gas sensors didnt detect anything, and it actually would have been impossible to prevent this particular discharge using safety control measures.

Nevertheless, the Investigative Committee of Russia has initiated a criminal prosecution over violations of safety regulations. As mine disaster expert Aleksandr Gerusov explained to media agency RBC, If all safety systems are functioning properly, the likelihood of a methane explosion or rock burst is practically reduced to zero. Statistically, 90 percent of all mine disasters result from the human factor.

Surviving workers and the families of the killed workers likewise dispute the governments assessment. Mikhail Momot, a Severnaya mineworker who survived because he was on vacation, told Internet news agency Rus2Web, Everybody who was working there knew that a large quantity of methane gas had accumulated over recent months. However, the mines management for some reason didnt do anything about it.

Similarly, Konstantin Pimenov, a miner and Vorkuta City Council member, told Rus2Web, I had spoken directly with Severnaya miners and technical specialists. They had told me that there was a significant increase of methane emissions going on. All of the officials know this, but they just left it to chance. They hoped that it would pass somehow.

Darya Tryasukho, daughter of killed miner Vyacheslav Tryasukho, posted on her page on the VKontakte social network website photographs of a portable gas sensor belonging to a Severnaya miner that show a 2.55 percent methane level recorded on February 11, 2016. According to Russian government regulations, the maximum acceptable concentration of methane in a coal mineshaft is 2 percent.

In an interview with news agency LifeNews, Natalia Tryasukho, the widow of Vyacheslav Tryasukho, explained that her late husband had warned of the danger of a disaster in the mine.

Just a few days before the tragedy, my husband had said that there was the danger of a rock burst. The level of gas in the air was very high, but management had taken all possible measures to keep gas safety sensors from functioning. They covered the sensors up and buried them. They did this because the system is automated, and when the sensors are activated, everything stops. They demanded production, and nothing else. Safety concerned no one, Natalia Tryasukho explained.

Severnaya miner Sergey Proskuryakov, who survived the disaster because he worked during a different shift, supported the Tryasukhos contentions regarding gas sensors. He told Rus2Web that its a well-known fact that they tampered with the sensors that record the methane gas content in the air in the mine. Following management instructions, the sensors were configured so as not to go too high and only to show numbers that fall within the limit. In reality, the methane content in the mine is significantly higher than the safety rules require. Now those who gave the directions to tamper with the sensors should face the relatives of the dead miners.

Severstal representative Vladimir Zaluzhsky claimed to Business FM that tampering with the gas sensors was unlikely, as they are programmed to detect attempts to modify their functioning and shut off mine operations in case they do detect such activity.

Following a disaster at the Raspadskaya mine in Kemerovo Oblast in 2010, which eventually caused 91 fatalities and 99 injuries, similar assertions had been made that mine workers themselves had been instructed to glue the gas safety sensors so that they could continue production after gas levels in the air reached the critical level.

Vorkuta resident Madlena explained to Business FM, There were reasons to anticipate a disaster. There had been tremors, and the methane level already exceeded the normal numbers. Everybody knew this. There were warning signs. People came from work just a couple of weeks ago and were vomiting. Some of them had nosebleeds. You understand what it means to work in that kind of atmosphere. Everything was already going in this direction.

Severnaya coal mine is owned and operated by coal company Vorkutaugol, which itself is a subsidiary of Severstal, which in its turn belongs mostly to Aleksey Mordashov, Russias fifth richest person. He owns 79 percent of Severstal and has a net worth of approximately US$11.1 billion. In 2015 Severnaya produced 2.874 million tons of raw coal and 1.5 million tons of coal concentrate, comprising 27 percent of Vorkutaugols aggregate production and 15 percent of production in the Komi Republic. 1084 workers were involved in the development of Severnaya, including 668 at the mine itself.

Representatives of Severstal, whose stock fell 3 percent after news of the disaster, have said that they hope to return the mine to operational condition after pumping nitrogen into the disaster area and then evacuating air from it. However, all this will take at least half a year. In the meantime, the surviving workers are to be transferred to nearby mines.

Since it began operation in 1969, there have been three disasters at Severnaya, all within the last 16 years. In 2000, a fire that resulted from safety violations in the conduct of welding operations at the mine administration building led to the deaths of ten people, including an 8-year-old child. A mine collapse in 2004 caused the deaths of five miners. And two miners were killed in another collapse in 2011.

A methane discharge and resulting explosion in 2013 at the nearby Vorkutinskaya mine, also owned by Severstal, caused the deaths of 19 people. Relatives of victims commented that the same person who had been in charge of safety operations at Vorkutinskaya later occupied the same position at Severnaya. Vorkuta resident Madlena, quoted above, confirmed this. The person responsible for safety at Severnaya had been at the central mine when the explosion occurred at the Vorkutinskaya mine in 2013. They didnt fire him. They just transferred him to Severnaya.

Similarly, miner Sergey Proskuryakov commented, I hope that the commission conducts an objective investigation, so that the guilty parties dont get away with it, which is what happened three years ago at the Vorkutinskaya mine. That mines management was not held accountable. Moreover, after the disaster, the Vorkutinskaya mine administrators were given managing positions at our mine, Severnaya, and continued working there undisturbed.

Proskuryakov continued, The mines administration is constantly pressuring and intimidating people. If you say too much, youll have to leave, they say. Company managers behave like slave owners. But everybody keeps quiet and is afraid of getting fired. This is what that silence has led to.

Vorkuta was the site of Vorkutlag (initially called Ukhtpechlag), one of the Stalinist regimes largest prison camps, which also had been occupied primarily in the industrial production of coal and at its peak in 1951 held over 70,000 prisoners. A hunger strike initiated by Trotskyists at the camp in autumn 1936 led to an extended conflict that ended in the massacre of 2901 people, including both political prisoners and their family members, in a series of mass executions in spring 1938.

A massive strike that came to be known as the Vorkuta Uprising occurred at the camp in June-August 1953, just a few months after the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953. The Soviet states suppression of that uprising involved the killing of at least 53 strikers.

The author also recommends:

The decay of Russias infrastructure

[20 January 2011]
New Delhi: Accusing Chief Minister Siddaramaiah of turning a 'capitalist' for possessing a luxury watch, Union Minister Ananth Kumar on Tuesday demanded a impartial probe into the "watch scam".

The senior BJP leader also asked Siddaramaiah to explain how he possessed the watch when he being a public servant cannot accept a gift valued more than Rs 400.

It is very unfortunate that Siddaramaiah who comes from socialist background has become a capitalist. An impartial inquiry should be ordered in this watch scam, Kumar said.

He said the chief minister should explain to the people from where this watch came from or whether he had that much disposable income to purchase the expensive item.

If yes, then he should also make public his income sources," he said, adding "If you are public servant you cannot take gift of more than Rs 400. Then how Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah can have this costly gift.

The six-time MP from Bengaluru also said that if it is a imported watch then it could also be a violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). At the same time it is a case for Enforcement Directorate (ED), he said.

Siddaramaiah is in a spot after the controversy that cropped up over him wearing a Rs 70-lakh diamond-studded Hublot watch, with JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy alleging that it could have been a "stolen" watch as the chief minister said it was not bought by him but gifted by a friend.

However, Siddaramaiah has said that it was gifted to him by his close friend who visited India last July.
Earlier this month, the International Committee of the Fourth International published a statement, "Socialism and the Fight Against War," which analyzed the economic and political contradictions of world imperialism that underlie the growing danger of a global conflagration.

The International Committee called attention to the mounting threat of a military confrontation between the United States and both Russia and China. It warned: The American ruling class has drawn the conclusion that the nuclear-armed states in Beijing and Moscow must be brought to heel, sooner rather than later. Washingtons objective is to reduce China and Russia to the status of semi-colonial client states

The statement of the International Committee was published on February 18. Exactly one week later, on February 25, General Philip Breedlove, commander of US forces in Europe, released his Command Posture Statement, which came close to an official declaration that war with Russia is now viewed as all but inevitable. He declared, The Russian problem set is not going away, and presents a new long-term challenge Russia poses an existential threat to the United States and to the NATO alliances as a whole.

On February 25, Admiral Harry Harris, who heads the United States Pacific Command, declared that a Chinese declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea would be ignored by American military forces. As if to underscore the warning to both China and Russia, the US Air Force later that day test-fired a Minuteman 3 nuclear missile from California to a testing range in the Pacificthe second test in a week.

In examining imperialist efforts to weaken Russia and China, the International Committee also called attention to the promotion by imperialism of secessionist movements, based on ethnic-religious and national-linguistic tensions, in both countries. This assessment has been confirmed in an article published in the new March-April issue of Foreign Affairs. In a commentary entitled Eurasias Coming Anarchy, Robert D. Kaplana leading geo-strategist for US imperialism and one of the architects of the invasion of Iraqargues that the deepening economic crisis in both Russia and China is likely to result in deep internal tensions. These, he writes, will take the form of growing demands for national autonomy by various ethnic, religious and linguistic groups.

Russia, Kaplan states, will be thrust into turmoil that could cause [it] to fragment yet again. He calls attention to the heavily Muslim North Caucasus, along with areas of Russias Siberian and Far Eastern districts, distant from the center and burdened by bloody politics, which may begin loosening their ties to Moscow in the event of instability inside the Kremlin itself.

As for China, Kaplan stresses the growing ethnic tensions in this vast country." He continues: "To some degree, the Han-dominated state of China is a prison of various nations, including the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Uighurs, all of whom have in various degrees resisted central control. Kaplan concludes, Today, Uighur militants represent the most immediate separatist threat.

Chinas Uighur minority constitutes only some 10 million of Chinas 1.3 billion people. But the Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Chinas relatively sparsely-populated but geopolitically vital Xinjiang province, which spans some 1.6 million square kilometers and borders the strategic countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Kaplan goes on to note that Uighur separatists have received training in Iraq and Syria, and as they link up with the global jihadist movement, the danger will grow.

Kaplan is not alone in drawing the connection between the war in Syria and secessionist movements in Russia and China. In an article published in December 2015 in the London Review of Books, journalist Seymour Hersh cited one Washington official as declaring that Turkey, a key US ally in its proxy war in Syria, has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while [the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan] has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. The US official cited by Hersh said that what he called the rat line had led to more than 800 Uighur fighters entering Syria.

Christina Lin, a former Pentagon and State Department official, wrote in September that if the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad were to fall to the Islamist militias, fighters from Russias Chechnya, Chinas Xinjiang and Indias Kashmir will then turn their eyes toward the home front to continue jihad, supported by a new and well-sourced Syrian operating base in the heart of the Middle East.

These comments throw into sharp relief the broader significance of the ongoing conflict in Syria. Just as the United States intelligence forces used their support for the Mujahedeen in the Soviet-Afghan war in the 1980s to organize, fund and train Islamist forces that would ultimately become Al Qaeda, the war in Syria is being used to organize and train Islamist separatist forces that will ultimately target Russia and China for destabilization.

As Kaplan puts it, As Moscow loses control, the global jihadist movement could take advantage of the vacuum and come to Russias outlying regions and to Central Asia. He adds that having received training in Iraq in Syria, these Islamist secessionist movements may link up to the global jihadist movement.

He concludes that the result could be Yugoslavia lite: violence and separatism that begin in one place and spread elsewhere. In other words, China and Russia could face a repeat of the tactics used by the United States and Western powers to break up Yugoslavia: the fomenting of national-sectarian divisions, which are then packaged as a casus belli in the media and made a pretense for military intervention.

Beginning with US recognition of the independence of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991 and approval for the secession of Bosnia in 1992, the breakup of Yugoslavia was guaranteed by the political intervention of the major powers, which culminated in the 1999 bombing of Serbia.

The ethnic partition of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which led to the deaths of over a million people, helped create the conditions for the encirclement of Russia and the continuous eastward expansion of NATO. In 1999, NATO added the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, followed in 2004 by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, and finally Albania and Croatia in 2009. As a result, the frontier of NATO has been moved eastward by over 600 miles.

In the final analysis, the desperate geo-political situation confronting both China and Russia is the outcome of the restoration of capitalism. The measures employed by the capitalist regimes in both countries to counter the threats from US, Japanese and European imperialismthe incitement of national chauvinism, the intensification of state repression and the massive expenditures on military armamentsprovide no way out of the crisis.

The working class of Russia and China must recover its revolutionary socialist heritage. It must once again, as it did in the past century, return to the road of revolutionary struggle and overthrow the existing national capitalist regimes. Only on this basisallied with the international working classcan the masses of Russia and China prevent both imperialist subjugation and the horrors of nuclear war.
Billionaire demagogue Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took significant leads in the contests for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations, based on results of primaries and caucuses held in 12 states on Tuesday.

Trump won seven of the 11 states with Republican contests, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia, with Senator Ted Cruz carrying his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida winning the caucuses in Minnesota. The outcome of the Alaska caucuses was still undetermined as of this writing.

Clinton took seven out of 11 states where Democrats went to the polls, including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders won his home state as well as Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

NBC News projected that Clinton would win 525 delegates and Sanders 335, bringing their total of elected delegates to 641 and 401 respectively. Clinton has a huge lead of 425 to 22 among so-called super delegatesmembers of Congress, state officials and members of the Democratic National Committeegiving her a combined total of 1,066, about half way to the total required for nomination.

The delegate totals in the Republican race showed a less decisive lead for Trump, but over a highly fragmented opposition. The belief is growing that even if Trump fails to win a majority of delegates in the primary contests, no other candidate will, and the nomination will be decided at the Republican National Convention in July.

With the nomination contest in the big business parties now close to the one-third mark, with primaries or caucuses having been held in 15 of the 50 states, the US political system has clearly entered into an historic crisis, marked by unprecedented political polarization.

The Republican Party is revealed as the incubator of a fascistic movement. The Trump campaign represents the union of reactionary, racist and militaristic politics and the gangster economics personified by the real estate speculator-turned politician. More important than any of the specific policies he advocates is his promotion of authoritarianism: Trump as the great man who will call the shots in Washington.

This was symbolized on the night of the March 1 primaries when Trump discarded the usual victory rally, where the candidate thanks his supporters, in favor of a press conference, staged in quasi-presidential style in front of a bank of American flags and held in the ballroom of Trumps own luxury hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

He was introduced by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has made the degrading transition from campaign rival to cup bearer and court jester.

Trump was asked about criticisms from Republican congressional leaders of his refusal to promptly disavow the support of Ku Klux Klan figure David Duke. He replied by dismissing the criticism, then warning House Speaker Paul Ryan that if he crossed President Trump, he would pay a tremendous price.

As one observer, former House Republican Whip Tom Delay, commented on MSNBC, Trump appeared ignorant of the constitutional separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and seemed to be running for king rather than president.

While Trump represents the rise of a personalist, authoritarian movement on the right, broad sections of the population have given their support to the campaign of Bernie Sanders, demonstrating that there are large numbers of people who are moving to the left and inclined towards socialism, but who are trapped in the Democratic Party for lack of a visible alternative.

More than two million votes were cast on March 1 for Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. On top of this, the Sanders campaign reported that in the month of February it raised $42 million, virtually all of it from small donations coming over the Internet. This is more than double the amount raised in January and a record sum for any US presidential campaign.

The United States is becoming politically polarized to an extraordinary degree. The danger is that while the millions backing Sanders are sincerely looking for an alternative to the domination of Wall Street, Sanders is not. He functions as a longtime trusted agent of the Democratic Party, seeking to trap this broad movement to the left and keep it confined within the political straitjacket of the two-party system.

If Clinton and Trump become the nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties, the candidates of both capitalist parties will be deeply unpopular. A CNN/ORC poll published Monday found that Trump was regarded unfavorably by 59 percent of those polled, while 53 percent had a negative view of Clinton. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found 49 percent very negative towards Trump and 39 percent very negative towards Clintontriple the level of such feelings toward the Democratic and Republican candidates in 2008.

Trump makes an appeal, in a very right-wing form, to the tremendous sense of frustration and anger building up among workers and sections of the middle class after years of economic stagnation, financial crisis, the loss of jobs, and the deterioration of social services and infrastructure, through both Republican and Democratic administrations.

At his press conference Tuesday night, he denounced what he called Third World conditions in the United States, while indicting Hillary Clinton as sharing the responsibility, as part of the Obama administration, for the deteriorating conditions of life in America.

Sanders offers no alternative because, in the final analysis, he is committed to the Democratic Party and supporting its presidential nominee, whether Clinton or someone else, and its right-wing, pro-Wall Street program. He defends the Obama administration, which has presided over an intensification of social inequality at home while expanding the military operations of American imperialism around the world.

Trump faces many obstacles to his rise to power. The initial success of his campaign has brought the political crisis in the Republican Party to a head, with leading figures denouncing him and declaring they could not support him as the nominee. At the same time, he has received his first top-level endorsements, beginning with Christie and including two governors, a senator and four congressmen, with more likely to come after his Super Tuesday victories.

Whatever the immediate outcome of the Trump campaign, however, it is the inevitable byproduct of the decay of political culture in America, embracing both capitalist parties and the entire political, media and corporate establishment.

Since the 1960s, when Nixon sought to co-opt the Southern segregationists and the George Wallace movement, the Republican Party has encouraged and drawn sustenance from the most reactionary, racist and chauvinist tendencies in American society.

The growing intimacy between the Republican Party and semi-fascist elements has long been the dirty secret of official American politics. Both the Democratic Party and the corporate-controlled media have sought to cover this up, downplaying periodic eruptions such as the presidential campaigns of Patrick Buchanan, the close ties between Southern Republicans and white supremacist groups, and, more recently, the rise of the Tea Party and the birthers (those, Donald Trump most prominent among them, who claimed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to become president).
As a result of a deal struck last week, the Greens with the Liberal-National Coalition government are jointly rushing legislation through parliament to overhaul voting laws for the Senate.

Both parties, and the media, are falsely presenting the changes as a bid to remove backroom deals and allow voters to truly express their political choices. In reality, the reforms seek to shore up the increasingly discredited parties of the political establishmentCoalition, Labor and the Greensand create the conditions for the government to push sweeping austerity measures through the Senate.

Working together, the Greens and the Coalition have fast-tracked the measures, staging a perfunctory one-day parliamentary committee inquiry yesterday, so the laws can take effect by mid-March. That would be in time for a double-dissolution electionan election for all the seats in both houses of parliamentwhich is now being increasingly mooted after the government hands down the federal budget on May 10.

These moves are clearly intended to result in the ouster of most of the eight current various crossbench senatorseither from small parties or so-called independents. This is in line with demands from the corporate and financial elite for a Senate dominated by the Coalition, the Greens and Labor to expedite pro-business measures, including sweeping cuts to social spending, which have been stalled in the Senate since 2014.

The move is a direct response to mounting frustration within business circles over the inability of the Liberal-National government, whether headed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull or his predecessor Tony Abbott, to force through a stepped-up assault on healthcare, education and a pro-business restructuring of labour relations. Such is the popular hostility to austerity that these measures have been stymied by various combinations of opposition parties and independents, who fear a voter backlash.

The financial press has welcomed the electoral changes. A typical opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review headlined, Goodbye to the oddballs of the Senate declared: At last ... Some sensible reform that can be delivered relatively quickly and will have a huge impact on the Governments ability to manage its policy agenda. The article claimed the reforms would make it impossible for so many perverse and oddball outcomesrelying on complicated formulas to gather preferences despite having no voter support.

The truth is that there is no voter support for the austerity measures demanded by big business and widespread hostility to the partiesCoalition, Labor and Greensthat have imposed savage cutbacks. That anger and alienation finds very limited and often perverse expression in the Senate via Australias anti-democratic compulsory preferential voting system. The new legislation, however, is intended to ensure that votes are channelled back into the three main establishment parties.

The push to overhaul Senate voting procedures is a response to the protracted decline in support for the major parties, which resulted in successive federal elections in 2010 and 2013 producing governments lacking a parliamentary majority.

The outcome of the 2010 election was the first hung parliament since 1940, with Labor only eventually able to form a minority government with the support of the Greens and two Independents. The result reflected widespread opposition to the pro-business program implemented by the previous Labor government, along with anger over the anti-democratic backroom coup that had installed Julia Gillard as prime minister in mid-2010.

In 2013, the Liberal-National Coalition won a large majority in the lower house but the popular discontent saw nearly a quarter of the Senate vote go to an array of parties and independents who postured as alternatives to the political establishment. Some senators who won small first preference votes were elected via complex preferential voting swaps with other candidates. While the Coalition was able to form government, it confronted eight crossbench senators wielding the balance of power in the upper house.

The Coalition-Greens legislation seeks to prevent such outcomes by introducing optional preferential voting, and by barring parties from using group voting tickets to allocate preferences to each other. Voters will be able to vote for one party list of candidates, or allocate their own preferences, for up to six parties. The measure is designed to ensure that votes for minor parties will either be exhausted, with their preferences not flowing on to other candidates outside the major parties, or be channeled back behind Labor, the Liberals and the Greens.

Previously voters who wished to allocate their preferences completely had to vote below the line which required them to number the boxes for every candidate, who could number well over 100. The government initially retained this method of voting with minor changes, but today agreed to apply optional preferential voting below the line as well, allowing voters to number just six boxes to cast a valid vote.

The claims of enhancing democracy and voters choice are just as cynical as they were when the current voting system was introduced by the Hawke Labor government in 1984, supposedly to reduce the level of invalid votes produced by the previous requirement to fill in all the boxes below the line. In reality, the purpose was to permit the major parties to submit group voting tickets that facilitated back-room preference deals among them. This system has now broken down, however, because of the level of political discontent, which has enabled smaller parties to benefit from that vote-swapping mechanism.

Following the 2013 election, parliaments Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters issued a report in 2014, calling for the reform of Senate voting rules. The report was endorsed unanimously by Labor, the Liberals and the Greens, but Labor has opposed the current legislation, fearing that it could lose Senate seats as a result.

That report also unanimously recommended new laws to make it even more difficult for new or smaller parties to register for elections. The current anti-democratic laws, also introduced by Labor in 1984, require parties to submit to the authorities the names and details of more than 500 members in order to exercise the fundamental democratic right to contest elections with their party name appearing on ballot papers. The report called for this membership list to be trebled to 1,500.

Cynically, the Greens, who backed this proposal, are now claiming to have ruled it out as part of their deal with the government, presenting this as evidence of their democratic credentials. The truth is that both the Greens and the government calculate that the changes to the Senate voting system will achieve the same end of clearing out small parties from the Senate.

The true position of the Greens was displayed in New South Wales following the 1999 state election. The Greens were instrumental in pushing through laws requiring new parties to submit lists of 750 members, up from the previous 200, and imposing other anti-democratic measures.

The Greens partnership with the government on the Senate changes has a broader significance. Amid a collapse of support for the two traditional parties of the Australian ruling elite, Labor and the Liberals, the Greens are advancing themselves as a responsible party of government, capable of forming government and implementing the dictates of big business.

When he was installed as new party leader in May 2015, Senator Richard Di Natale hastened to reassure the corporate elite that he was no ideologue and had entered into politics to get things done. A month later, the party signed a deal supporting the Liberal-National governments sweeping cuts to the aged pension, predicted to save $2.4 billion over four years.

Last November, Di Natale declared that the Greens must prepare to become a party of government. He said it was necessary to explore what the Greens role in a multi-party government looks like ... and how to get there. It was a clear message that the Greens are prepared to form a government of stability with Labor, or the Coalition, now further confirmed by its support for the governments electoral legislation.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed that the writ petition seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against former home minister P. Chidambaram for filing a false affidavit in the Gujarat high court be listed for hearing.

A bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justice Uday Lalit agreed to post the matter for hearing on a mention made by advocate M.L. Sharma, who has filed this petition in public interest. The petitioner contended that by filing a false affidavit, the former home minister had committed contempt and perjury. He also sought quashing of the false fake encounter case registered against Gujarat police officers, based on this affidavit.

Read: Chidambaram acted on Cong orders to target Modi in Ishrat Jahan case: BJP

He said that on February 11 he came to know about the judicial proceedings and the statement of David Headley, who conspired with the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba in plotting the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, in which he declared that four persons, including Ishrat Jahan, who were killed in June 2004 by the Gujarat police were part of LeT terrorist organisation belonging to Pakistan and they were assigned to kill the then chief minister of Gujarat, Mr Narendra Modi.

He said that it is a judicial fact that all four persons, including Ishrat Jahan, killed by the Gujarat state police were terrorists. In June 2004, terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba assigned the job of killing Mr Modi to four members: Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year-old woman from Mumbra, Maharashtra, Javed Ghulam Sheikh (born as Pranesh Pillai), Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar.

The Gujarat state police claimed that Ishrat Jahan and her associates were LeT operatives based on an affidavit filed by the IB in the Gujarat high court in August 2009 during an FBI interrogation that Ishrat Jahan was a fidayeen. However, this affidavit was changed in September 2009 at the insistence of Mr Chidambaram. It said Ishrat Jahan was not a terrorist. The Central government was not concerned with the merits of the action taken by the Gujarat police and anything stated in the (first) affidavit was not intended to support or justify the action of the state police. As a result, the Gujarat police officers are facing false cases.

Read: SC moved to initiate contempt against Chidambaram in Ishrat Jahan case

The petitioner cited the recent statement made by American-born LeT terrorist David Headley that he had shared the information that Ishrat Jahan was a member of LeT in 2010 with a four-member investigation team comprising officials from the National Investigation Agency, CBI, law officers and others. Former Union home secretary G.K. Pillai in an interview had blamed Mr Chidambaram for changing the affidavit at a political level. While seeking to quash the false case foisted against the Gujarat police officers, the petitioner prayed for initiating contempt of court proceedings.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP)  A Florida Senate bill that would require the state's Department of Environmental Protection to study and create regulations for fracking is essentially dead.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday refused to reconsider the bill after narrowly voting against it last week.

The bill had been kept alive on a procedural move, but the sponsor didn't ask the committee to vote on it again after it was clear it wouldn't be approved.

Opponents had concerns the method of oil and gas drilling could contaminate groundwater. Supporters said the practice of using chemicals and water to blast through rock to get to oil and gas underneath is already legal, and that the bill would ensure it was done safely.

The House already passed a similar bill.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A major gambling bill is having trouble moving ahead in the Florida Senate.

A key Senate panel on Tuesday postponed a vote on a proposed deal with the Seminole Tribe of Florida that would allow the tribe to add craps and roulette at their existing casinos. The bill would also allow slot machines to be added at existing dog and horse tracks across the state.

Sen. Tom Lee, the chairman of the Senate committee considering the bill, was unsure if the Senate will reconsider the legislation before the end of session. The session is scheduled to end March 11.

Lee said that some senators remained opposed to the bill because it is a significant expansion of gambling.

The Florida House has rejected gambling bills during the past few sessions, but the bill was moving in that chamber this year.
ATLANTA (AP)  A Georgia judge has rejected the appeal of an energy company seeking to build a 360-mile pipeline to carry gasoline, diesel and ethanol from South Carolina through Georgia and into Florida.

Texas-based Kinder Morgan Inc. last May was denied approval by the Georgia Department of Transportation to use eminent domain laws to build the Palmetto Pipeline on land owned by others. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kimberly Adams sided with the DOT in a ruling Monday.

The pipeline would link to an existing network carrying refined petroleum from points in Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina to markets in Savannah and Jacksonville, Florida. Kinder Morgan estimates construction would cost roughly $1 billion.

Opponents have warned the project could harm environmentally sensitive wetlands.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)  A man has been sentenced to life in prison for the killings of two South Florida convenience store clerks during a robbery.

The Palm Beach Post (http://goo.gl/tiqE78) reports that Robert Alvarez was sentenced Tuesday immediately after a jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder and a single count of armed robbery.

Alvarez and co-defendant Darnell Razz were previously convicted in 2012, but those convictions were later overturned. Razz was convicted again last June and sentenced to life in October.

Authorities say Ralston Muller and Michael Dean Bennett were fatally shot during a masked robbery caught on video at a Greenacres Circle K convenience store in April 2010. Prosecutors acknowledged that Razz was the one who pulled the trigger but argued that Alvarez was just as responsible for the deaths.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (By The News Service of Florida) -- The House set the stage Tuesday to approve a measure -- dubbed the "Pastor Protection Act" -- that is an outgrowth of court rulings that have legalized same-sex marriage.

Sponsor Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, said the bill (HB 43) is aimed at making clear that clergy and churches do not have to take part in marriage ceremonies that are contrary to their religious beliefs.

But Democrats raised a series of questions about the need for the bill. As an example, Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach, said clergy members already do not have to perform ceremonies that are contrary to their beliefs.

The House took up the bill Tuesday and adopted two amendments, setting up a vote on the measure as early as Wednesday.

Also Wednesday, the Senate is slated to take up its version of the bill (SB 110), filed by Sen. Aaron Bean, R-Fernandina Beach. Senators could vote on the issue later in the week.
TALLAHASSEE Fla.-- On Super Tuesday, voters in 12 states, including Georgia, and one territory will be making their voices heard.

Monday, presidential hopeful Donald Trump rallied at Valdosta State University to a packed out crowd.

Those in attendance say that during the rally about 30 black students were kicked out.

According to some students, those kicked out were part of a group silently protesting Trump.

They say as soon as they walked in they were told to leave, before the presidential candidate even took the stage.

William Baskin, who was kicked out of the rally said, "I wouldn't call us protesters, I'd call us students because that's what we are and we came to the event as students dressed in black attire to show our unity, but we were just standing there and the only thing that happened was the audience around us, the Trump supporters, I guess they didn't like our presence."

The group says they all had tickets to Monday's event, and were coming to hear what trump had to say.

Trump will be in Ohio and Kentucky on Tuesday.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (By Jim Turner and Dara Kam, The News Service of Florida) -- The Senate has scuttled efforts to reach a compromise on a heavily lobbied proposal involving app-based transportation services, an official from the ride-sharing service Uber said Tuesday.

But Senate leaders said they're still working to advance legislation, as the annual session prepares to end next week.

The Senate and House have taken different positions on legislation that has been called the "Uber bill." Senate leaders have focused on adding insurance requirements for drivers, while the House has approved a more-sweeping measure that would block local governments from regulating ride-sharing services.

Colin Tooze, public affairs director for Uber, blamed Senate President Andy Gardiner for the stalled talks and pointed to close ties between the powerful lawmaker and Orlando-based Mears Transportation.

"We have not had the same opportunity to make our case in the Florida Senate because of one termed-out individual's cozy relationship with one taxi company in his district," Tooze said in a conference call with reporters.

Gardiner, R-Orlando, responded later that his stance "has nothing to do" with anyone on either side of the issue, as he dismissed Tooze's statement.

"I'm not going to change my view or my position just because I got attacked by some Uber guy in Washington," Gardiner said.

Gardiner said the focus on the Senate bill has always been on liability and insurance.

"Everybody loves the technology until there's an accident," Gardiner said. "I think that's where the state should provide an umbrella understanding of what the insurance should be."

Sen. David Simmons, an Altamonte Springs Republican who has steered the Senate bill (SB 1118), said he's still working on the issue, though time is short to address the desires of Uber. The House proposal to block local regulations is known as "preemption."

"The Senate has not dealt with the issue of enforcement preemption," Simmons said. "We've only dealt with insurance, which in itself is a huge, huge hurdle."

Simmons added that he's been waiting for Uber to provide copies of legislation from other states addressing issues such as preemption of local laws and federal disabilities compliance.

Last week, Simmons said he expected aspects of the House plan (HB 509) would land in his proposal.

But Tooze suggested the Senate didn't want to reach a compromise on the issue.

"Mears and their powerful benefactor in the Senate changed their minds and have walked away from a deal that would have ensured access to safe transportation options and flexible work for all Floridians," Tooze said. "It's apparent now that they were never serious about it in the first place."

Uber already operates in Florida through contracts with local governments.

The House approach is expected to have brighter prospects next year as Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, is set to replace Gardiner as president. Negron recently lent his name to a press release supporting statewide ride-sharing regulations.

Under Simmons' bill, drivers for the services would be required to have $125,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per person, $250,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per incident and $50,000 in coverage for property damage when logged on to the network or engaged in prearranged rides.

When not logged into the system, drivers would have to maintain $25,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per person, $50,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per incident and $10,000 in coverage for property damage, all levels that are higher than the state's personal-injury protection insurance requirements.

The House measure would set insurance requirements of $50,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per person, $100,000 in coverage for death and bodily injury per incident and $25,000 in coverage for property damage while drivers are logged on to the network.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly and Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson aren't waiting to win their parties' Senate nominations before agreeing to one-on-one debates.

Each candidate announced Tuesday they'll meet for four debates around the state, regardless of the fact that Jolly still has four other Republicans to beat, and Grayson has to defeat U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy before either can get on the November ballot.

Their campaigns announced the decision simultaneously, each declaring the other their parties' front-runners based on a poll released this week. The first two debates will be held in the Tampa Bay area and Orlando, where Jolly and Grayson live respectively.

The last two will be held in the Republican stronghold of Jacksonville and South Florida, where Democrats dominate elections.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seems to have made a bad miscalculation in proposing to tax a large portion of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) savings on withdrawal, a fund that is for most salaried people a precious nest egg post-retirement. Notwithstanding the clarifications issued and concessions made on Tuesday, the governments intention is being seen as suspect. A thoughtless bid to gather revenue in an otherwise thoughtful budget?

The Union government, which is often accused of diluting the labour laws to help further the hire and fire policies of the corporate world, has once again invited the wrath of the working class with its proposal to tax withdrawals made from the Employees Provident Fund (EPF).

Though the finance ministry on Tuesday clarified that only interest on 60 per cent of the PF withdrawals made after April 1, 2016 will be taxed, the salaried class is on the warpath, pointing out that there is already tax deduction at source .

Upset with the new tax proposal several employees launched an online petition on change.org under the title Withdraw Budget 2016 proposal to tax Employee Providend Fund (EPF) and received more than 10,000 signatures within 24 hours, making it one of the highly trending petitions on the site. The proposal particularly hits Bengalureans hard as the city with over a 15 lakh workforce sees the largest PF withdrawals owing to the fact that job attrition is highest here in the country.

Experts in the field note that EPF is a very sensitive issue as far as the middle class is concerned, and by attempting to tax it, finance minister, Arun Jaitley may have touched a raw nerve. An officer of the state labour department says labour unrest is bound to brew across the country due to the proposal. Even a few years ago when the then UPA government proposed some reforms in EPF contribution and investment, it faced a backlash. Whatever may be the clarification by the Union finance ministry now, it could face strong resistance from the labour class to its current proposal, he warns.

Its not just the labour class, which is unhappy, but also corporate employees, who took to their micro blogging sites and the social media to express their disapproval and demand a roll- back of the proposal. It all now depends on how the government responds to the hue and cry. Will it come out with a win-win formula or decide to stick it out no matter what the opposition? Only time will tell.

Step taken to ensure employees make best use of their funds: FM

The Union finance ministry took pains to explain its decision to tax EPF withdrawals on Tuesday saying it was only doing it in the interest of employees to ensure that they made best use of the fund. It also promised to consider all the points raised against the proposal. The clarification was as follows:

There seems to be some amount of lack of understanding about the changes made in the General Budget 2016-17 in the tax treatment for recognised Provident Fund & NPS.

The following clarifications are given in this matter:

(i) The purpose of this reform is to encourage a greater number of private sector employees to go in for pension security after retirement instead of withdrawing the entire money from the Provident Fund Account.

(ii) Towards this objective, the government has announced that forty per cent (40%) of the total corpus withdrawn at the time of retirement will be tax exempt both under recognised Provident Fund and NPS.

(iii) It is expected that the employees of private companies will place the remaining 60 per cent of the corpus in annuity, out of which they can get regular pension. When this 60 per cent of the remaining corpus is invested in annuity, no tax is chargeable. So what it means is that the entire corpus will be tax-free if invested in annuity.

(iv) The government in this Budget has also made another change which says that when the person investing in annuity dies and when the original corpus goes into the hands of his heirs, then again there will be no tax.

(v) The idea behind this mechanism is to encourage people to invest in pension products rather than withdraw and use the entire corpus after retirement.

(vi) The main category of people for whom EPF scheme was created are the members of EPFO who are within the statutory wage limit of Rs 15,000 per month. Out of around 3.7 crores contributing members of EPFO as on today, around 3 crore subscribers are in this category. For this category of people, there is not going to be any change in the new dispensation.

(vii) However, in EPFO, there are about 60 lakh contributing members who have accepted EPF voluntarily and they are highly-paid employees of private sector companies. For this category of people, amount at present can be withdrawn without any tax liability. We are changing this. What we are saying is that such an employee can withdraw without tax liability provided he contributes 60 per cent in annuity product so that pension security can be created for him according to his earning level. However, if he chooses not to put any amount in annuity product the tax would not be charged on 40 per cent.

(viii) There is no change in the existing tax treatment of Public Provident Fund (PPF).

(ix) Currently there is no monetary ceilings on the employer contribution under EPF with only ceiling being that it would be 12 per cent of the salary of the employee member. Similarly, there is no monetary ceiling on the employer contribution under NPS, except that it would be 10 per cent of salary.

(x) Now the Finance Bill 2016 provides that there would be monetary ceiling of Rs 1.5 lakh on employer contribution considered with the ceiling of the 12 per cent rate of employer contribution, whichever is less.

(xi) We have received representations today from various sections suggesting that if the amount of 60 per cent of corpus is not invested in the annuity products, the tax should be levied only on accumulated returns on the corpus and not on the contributed amount. We have also received representations asking for not having any monetary limit on the employer contribution under EPF, because such a limit is not there in NPS. The Finance Minister would be considering all these suggestions and taking a view on it in due course.

Taxing withdrawals from EPF is an anti-labour move: Meenakshi Sundaram secretary, CITU, Karnataka

It is an anti- labour move. An Employees Provident Fund (EPF) account is not like a Savings Bank account. People save money in the EPF so it can come to their rescue in difficult times. It is unfair to tax the interest accumulated on these savings. Adding to this, the government has allowed private entities to enter into pension schemes and the FDI. By proposing tax on EPF, the Union government is trying to encourage employees to move to pension schemes which will be beneficial to private players.

Also, people often change their EPF account with a change in job for several reasons, including lack of cooperation from their employers. This means they must withdraw their savings several times. There is a need to educate both employees and the employers on having a single EPF account. When the EPF system requires reforms, instead of offering solutions to the existing problems, the Union government has proposed to tax it.

It has also announced that it will bear the EPF amount of start-ups for three years. This is condemnable. Why should public money be used to pay the EPF of private players? The government must also rethink this proposal.
New Delhi: The Government has declassified all the available classified files and transferred these files to National Archives of India (NAI) for permanent retention.

This was told by Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in written reply to a question by Trinamool Congress leader Derek O. Brien in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

All declassified files pertaining to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose received in the National Archives of India (NAI), are first subjected to preliminary conservation and digitization, before being released in public domain. Both of these are time consuming exercise.

The issue of handing over documents relating to Netaji has been taken up with the governments of Austria, Federal Republic of Germany, Republic of Italy, Japan, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and United States of America.

Responses from the Governments of Russian Federation, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have been received.

Meanwhile, responses from the Governments of Austria, Republic of Italy and the United States of America are awaited.
Submit An Obituary

Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death.

Go to form
The Foreign Ministry criticized Fiamma Nirenstein, the unconfirmed ambassador to Italy, for breaking diplomatic protocol by partaking in public events. Nirenstein held a launch event for her new book, "The Ayatollah's Suits - A Siege on our World." A Foreign Ministry official said Monday: "It is not acceptable for an ambassador to work in the country she will serve, before she has been confirmed."

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Nirenstein was born in Florence and worked as a journalist and politician in Silvio Berlusconi's The People of Freedom party. She immigrated to Israel in 2013, and last August Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced her appointment as ambassador in Rome. The appointment caused discomfort in the Italian Jewish community, which reportedly fears it will raise accusations of dual loyalty

Fiamma Nirenstein

Even though Nirenstein was appointed more than six months ago and already received security clearance, the Civil Service Commission has not confirmed her appointment and, therefore, neither has the government. The Civil Service Commission has not received a request from the foreign minister regarding her confirmation by the appointments committee. Nirenstein is supposed to assume her position this summer, but it is not clear if that will actually happen.

Meanwhile, Nirenstein has returned to live with her husband in Italy, who works for Italian television station RAI. He hosted a book launch event for her at the Jewish Community Center in Rome on Sunday. The unconfirmed ambassador also granted an interview to right wing Italian party's radio station a month ago.

Foreign Ministry officials said these public appearances violate Foreign Ministry protocol. Officials in charge of Israeli-Italian relations said that Netanyahu's handling of the appointment has been "scandalous and twisted" from the start. They elaborated that Netanyahu's appointment not only upset the sitting Ambassador Naor Gilon, but also undermined Israeli interests. Gilon is considered one of the best diplomats in the Foreign Ministry.

The Foreign Ministry said in a response: "The relevant procedures in the process of appointment are on course. We have nothing to add."
The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council decided Wednesday to formally define Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The decision comes against the backdrop of the recent crisis between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon in which Saudi Arabia has decided to stop the transfer of security assistance to the Lebanese army and Lebanese security forces following the increasing influence of Hezbollah in state institutions.

It was the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani who made the declaration. "It is a militia. Hezbollahs incitement and terrorist acts in Syria, Yemen and Iraq are contrary to morality and human values," he said.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah

Such declarations regarding Hezbollah have been made in the past, but the decision now to define Hezbollah as a terrorist organization is designed to give the Gulf states more leeway against Hezbollah, as now they will be able to act more aggressively against it since given it is officially defined as a terrorist organization.

Saudi Arabia periodically imposes sanctions on companies and individuals associated with Hezbollah, and it is likely that after this decision this activity will increase.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah Tuesday called on his supporters to not be dragged into violence as those who would profit would be Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In a speech on TV Nasrallah accused Saudi Arabia of stepping to a low level with the broadcast on Saudi TV last week of a parody of himself, and teased the Saudis currently at war in Yemen saying that "Yemenis are the most deprived people in the world - more than the Palestinians'.
Israel intends to grant decorations of valor to citizens and soldiers who sacrificed their lives to save lives during the current wave of terror.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Deputy Defense Minister Eli Ben Dahan conceived of the idea many months ago and discussed the it with Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan.

Following the murder of Rabbi Nehemia Lavi last October, Ben Dahan wrote to Erdan: "His (Lavi's) family members recently asked me to give a badge of courage to honor his noble act, in which he sacrificed his life to the nation. This act is meant to do something positive for the family of the slain and strengthen the unity and spirit of the people."

Terror victims to be granted decorations of valor

Erdan was initially uncertain if it is possible to grant decorations of valor, but it later became clear that the 1972 Decorations Law allows decorations to be granted to police officers, guards, and "citizens who acted bravely and risked their lives or who carried out an irregular courageous act." According to the 1972 law, the police commissioner and minister of internal security are authorized to grant such a decoration.

Tuvia Yanai Weissman

Erdan requested that the review process be expedited. Shortly thereafter, Gila Gaziel, the police's human resources chief, announced that the decorations committee will convene this month.

Minister Erdan told Yedioth Ahronoth, "Since the start of the current terror wave, many citizens and of course police, have acted with great courage and wisdom in many situations, risking and sacrificing their lives to prevent attacks and save human lives. My moral obligation is to act swiftly to grant them the appreciation and honor they deserve on behalf of Israel and its citizens. These people are examples for our youth and many citizens."

At the an event dedicated to the memory of the Sergeant Major Zidan Saif, who was killed in a terror attack in 2014, Ben Dahan mentioned a number of names the committee will review: "During the current terror wave, I have witnessed the bravery of the nation. Citizens killed terrorists with their bare hands so that other would not be wounded like Tuvia Yanai Weissman. May God avenge his blood.

Ofer Ben Ari

"Border Police officers saved citizens and their fellow soldiers, like Hadar Cohen. Rabbi Nehemia Lavi heard an attack taking place near his home and passed away in defending his Jewish brothers. Ofer Ben Ari, a civilian, was accidentally shot by police officers when he was fighting terrorists who murdered Rabbi Reuben Birmajer near the Damascus gate. All of these people deserve a badge of courage."

The committee will also consider granting badges of courage to citizens and police officers who foiled attacks and neutralized terrorists, but did not pay with their lives. The committee can discuss recommendation of the police commissioner and the internal security minister, and it can recommend names as well. However, it is important to note that the law does not mention IDF soldiers and therefore it is not clear if Yanai Tuvia Weissman will merit a decoration because he was an off-duty soldier at the time of his death.
Anti-Israeli organizations projected writings onto the wall of the Palace of Westminster, meeting place of the British Parliament, ahead of a visit by Knesset Speaker MK Yuli Edelstein. Some of the sentences called Edelstein a racist Israeli leader, said he was unwelcome in the UK, and even called for his arrest.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Other projections called for a boycott of Israel, referring to Edelstein as a participant in an apartheid regime.

A video by the protesters.

X

Edelstein arrived in the UK on Tuesday, meeting with Foreign Minister Philip Hammond, thanking him for the UK's friendship towards Israel, and its resistance to boycott efforts. Of the projected writings Edelstein said that "Those who hate us don't deter me, and I will speak in front of Parliament members. I will find both supporters and detractors there, and it's an opportunity for me to unwaveringly sound the Israeli position."

Edelstein told Hammond that boycotts, ironically, would achieve a result opposed to boycotters' intentions, as a lack revenue for business in the West Bank area would chiefly result in harm to the many Palestinians working for Israeli businesses in the settlements. When Hammond said that Israeli settlements violate international law, Edelstein responded by claiming Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and the subsequent rise of Hamas as evidence that removing settlements causes terrorism.

One of the protesters' projections.

Edelstein also spoke about Iran, saying he had no faith in a country whose leaders have desired the destruction of Israel for years. He expressed worries that some of the money flowing into Iran due to the removal of sanctions may go to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Edelstein is set to speak at the Parliament on Wednesday, and is expected to discourage Britain from participating in the BDS movement, as well as against marking Israeli products made in settlements. Edelstein is expected to mention Labour Party Leader MP Jeremy Corbyn in his speech, saying that Corbyn must decide whether he's on the good guys' or bad guys' side, as he cannot claim to be a friend to both the Palestinian people and terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit requesting his legal opinion regarding the possibility of expelling terrorists families who assist in terror to the Gaza Strip.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The letter was sent in the wake of Mandelblit ruling that the measure is contrary to Israeli and international law. "These terrorists sometimes come from families who encourage and support their action," Netanyahu wrote.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit (Photo: Mark Salem)

"I believe that the use of this tool will result in a significant reduction in terror attacks against Israel, its citizens and residents, he continued.

Cabinet ministers heard Mandelblit say that there is the fear that the deportation of terrorists or their deportation to Gaza and Syria will lead to claims being made against Israel at the International Court in The Hague for committing war crimes. Therefore, the legal establishment prevents this policy at this stage.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's letter to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit

The subject came up already in 2014, but the former Attorney General, Yehuda Weinstein, explained why the legal, military and civilian leadership objected to the move. It is estimated that Mandelblit, who was the the chief military advocate general, supports this position because of his expertise in international law. However it should be noted that more than a decade ago, the Supreme Court upheld the deportation of terrorist leaders to Gaza.

In the past, it was decided to favor demolishing the homes of families of terrorists as a deterrent, in accordance with the opinion of the Shin Bet which claimed that the demolition of houses may deter potential terrorists from carrying out murderous attacks.

Intelligence Affairs Minister Yisrael Katz welcomed Netanyahus request: "On Monday I will present to the Knesset, via MKs from the coalition and the opposition, a proposal to change Israeli law to allow the deportation or expulsion of families of terrorists to Syria or Gaza. If given government support, the procedure will be fast and short. As Ive said before: we will change Israeli law and deal with international pressure."
Seven men were killed in clashes with Jordanian Special Forces, the country's intelligence service said Wednesday.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



The men allegedly had ties to ISIS, and had planned attacks on military and civilian targets in the kingdom. The deadly confrontations sparked by an arrest raid took place late Tuesday in the northern city of Irbid. The men killed in the raid wore explosive belts while weapons and explosives were found at the scene, according to the intelligence agency. The agency did not elaborate on the fugitives' ties to IS or provide details about their alleged plans.

ISIS supporters (Photo: AP)

Jordanian troops tracked suspected militants to a residential building near the city center, surrounded it, and opened fire with automatic weapons when the suspects refused to surrender, the intelligence agency said. A Jordanian officer was killed in the clashes, along with the seven wanted men. The intelligence service said 13 suspects linked to the group have been arrested in Irbid in previous raids, but did not say when those took place.

"I heard an exchange of fire and the sound of helicopters flying above our house," area resident Ahmed al-Jamrah said of the raid. "We couldn't sleep because of the shooting and the loud explosions."

Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour told parliament that the operation ended at 3 a.m. Wednesday. He stated that extremists "are trying to reach our country which is stronger and more solid than they think."

In downtown Irbid, security forces on Wednesday sealed off the area around the three-story residential building where the fugitives had been holed up. The facade was blackened. Irbid Mayor Hussein Bani Hani said followers of a hard-line stream of Islam have become increasingly active in the city in the past two years. They were suspected, among other things, of vandalizing cemeteries because they believe graves should not be marked, he said. "Security measures were beefed up in the city of Irbid since then," he said.

Jordanian soldiers on the border with Syria (Photo: AP)

Fayez Dweiri, a retired major general in the Jordanian military, said Jordanians who returned home after fighting alongside IS and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq also pose a potential security risk. "Our security agencies should be cautious with them as their return might not be to show repentance," he said, adding that he did not have details about the Irbid operation.

The pro-Western kingdom is part of a US-led military coalition against IS in neighboring Syria and Iraq. Security forces have also cracked down on suspected IS sympathizers in Jordan. Some of those expressing support for the group on social media have been sent to prison by military courts.
The trial of two suspects in the the Dawabsheh family murders, which indictments say was an incident of Jewish terrorism, began Wednesday at the Lod District Court.

Bitter confrontations erupted in court between supporters of the victims and those of the suspects as tensions boiled over. The case, which involves the arson fire that killed 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and fatally wounded his praents as they slept in their home, has drawn renewed attention to Jewish extremists and the so-called "hilltop youth". Meanwhile, the arrest of two suspects -- Amiram Ben-Uliel and an unnamed minor -- led to accusations among some Jews that the Shin Bet was using torture in its investigation.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



On Wednesday, Ben-Uliel's wife walked through the hallway of the Lod District Court to the sound of Dawabsheh family supporters chanting "murderers" and "God is great."

"You are proving that you are terrorists," she retorted.

Dawabsheh family supporters protest outside Lod District Court, (Photo: Avi Moalem)

Court security guards prevented a skirmish between the two parties and removed two Dawabsheh family supporters who were shouting. Later, Hussein Dawabsheh, the grandfather of slain infant Ali, angrily left the courtroom. "The defendant laughed at us during the hearing," he said. "This is a joke; this is not a court. He murdered my son and they let him laugh at me."

Saad Dawabsheh, Ali's father; Riham Dawabsheh, Ali's mother; and Ali himself were murdered in a terrorist attack when their house was set on fire. Nasser Dawabsheh, Saad's brother, told reporters outside the courtroom today: "I came here because we need to see what happens in the courts. We do not believe the Israeli courts. It is very difficult to see my brother's murderers. I am filled with anger. We demand justice, but we do not believe justice will be served. If justice existed, lsrael would have been able to prevent the incident."

Hussein Dawabsheh, grandfather of Ali Dawabsheh (Photo: Avi Moalem)

Two months ago, Israeli authorities lifted a gag order against publishing details on the terrorist attack and charged Amiram Ben-Uliel and an unnamed 17-year-old from the northern West Bank.

Ben-Uliel, the primary suspect, was indicted for three counts of homicide, two counts of attempted homicide, two counts of arson, and conspiracy to commit a hate crime. The anonymous 17-year-old was indicted for conspiracy to commit a crime, six counts of arson, several counts of property damage, and racially-motivated insult to religion.

According to the indictment, the two conspired to attack Arabs after Malachi Rosenfeld was murdered in a terror attack. Ben-Uliel allegedly gathered two bottles of lighter fluid, flammable rags, a lighter a box of matches, gloves, and black spray paint. Ben-Uliel purportedly left his house on July 30 and did not meet with the 17-year-old youth, even though they had planned to meet. According to the charges, Ben-Uliel later arrived at the Dawabsheh family's home and threw a Molotov cocktail in it, killing three family members.

Nasser Dawabsheh (Photo: Avi Moalem)

The hearing on Wednesday morning took place behind closed doors, like the other hearings in the case. The suspects are almost certain to plead innocence when the court asks them to state their plea. Ben-Uliel's lawyers claim that he was abused by the Shin Bet and thus his confession, which he later recanted, was illegally obtained.

Hussein Dawabsheh spoke further about why he came to court. "They burned my family and I want to know what is happening here," he said. "I do not want to look at them; I am seeking justice and I hope it will be served. Ahmed is still at the hospital and in better condition. He does not want me to come here because he fears something will happen to me like what happened to his parents. He told me that I should not come here."

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the lawyer representing the suspects, said: "The behavior of the Dawabsheh family outside the court proves that they are not interested in a fair and just ruling."
New Delhi: The Government on Wednesday recommended special security cover to some of the important religious and cultural places of the country.

This information was given by Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in written reply to a question by Ramdas Athawale in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

At present there is no proposal under consideration of Ministry of Home Affairs to provide any.

However, Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) under Ministry of Culture has intimated that a committee of that Ministry has recommended creation of a Special Force for protection of Museums, objects and protected monuments as part of a comprehensive security policy.

The responsibility for providing security to public places including places of religious and or cultural importance, rests primarily with the State Governments/Union Territory (UT) Administrations.

However, threat inputs, if any, received by the Union Government through the Central Security Agencies, are promptly shared with the State Governments/UT Administrations concerned.

Further, in order to augment the security arrangements made by the State Governments/UT Administrations for important places and / or important events, festivals etc, based on the requests made by them, Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel are placed at the disposal of the State Governments / UT Administrations.

Central Security Agencies carry out periodic security reviews of important places, including places of religious or cultural importance, and the reports of such security reviews are forwarded to the State Governments/UT Administrations concerned for necessary action, as per the recommendation made therein, for strengthening security.
Two terrorists stabbed and wounded two soldiers in Har Brakha in the West Bank on Wednesday evening, and then fled.

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Large numbers of security forces were searching for the attackers in the Nablus area. Har Brakha residents were asked to stay indoors. One soldier was moderately wounded and the other lightly.

We have opened an emergency headquarters and are waiting for security directions. The incident has not ended, said Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan.

It was initially feared that the attackers had stolen the soldiers' weapons, but these were found in the nearby guard post.

Wounded soldiers being taken to hospital (Photo: Rotem Elizera)

The attack came close on the heels of an attack in the early hours of Wednesday, when two terrorists infiltrated the settlement of Eli in the West Bank and attacked a local resident on his doorstep with clubs. They ran away but were killed by security forces soon after.
Three weeks after Hamas executed a member who allegedly led Israel to the hideout of the groups military leader, a few things are unclear  did he give Israel intelligence? Was he being blackmailed? And how did he actually die?

Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter



Mahmoud Eshtewi, who had two wives and three children, was recruited to Hamass military wing in 2000. The last role he filled was a battalion commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. His three brothers also joined the military wing. One was killed in a 2003 Israeli airstrike.

Mohammed Eshtewi

Eshtewi was arrested a few months after Operation Protective Edge. He was held in a Hamas detention center for a year, and is believed to have been severely tortured. Only on February 7 did Hamas declare that he had been executed. The supposed justification was vague: moral and behavioral violations to which he admitted during interrogation.

Rumors abounded that he had been executed after providing Israel with intelligence on the precise location of Mohammed Deif, the military wings leader, during Operation Protective Edge.

The Human Rights Watch organization, which investigated the circumstances of Eshtewis killing, concluded based on witness testimony that he had undergone severe torture during his interrogation.

During Operation Protective Edge, Israel launched several missiles at a house in Gaza City's Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in which Deif was believed to be holing up. Hamas claimed that the attack, which killed Deif's wife and son, was a breach of the ceasefire between the two sides. Israeli officials have confirmed that the Deif was targeted but declined to speculate on whether he had been injured in the attack. To this day, his fate remains murky, and Hamas insists that the master terrorist is alive and well.

Eshtewis relatives, who have been enmeshed with Hamas since the military wings inception, turned to Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza and Khaled Mashal in Qatar with requests to ask for his release. Both promised to look into the issue and did nothing more. A rare protest organized by the family in front of Haniyehs house was violently dispersed by Hamas security.

The mans mother, Samira Eshtewi, even appealed to Deif via a video asking him to release her son. In the vide, the cancer-stricken woman is seen weeping and begging for mercy, but also reveals that Deif was apparently a guest at the familys home at one point. You honored us with your presence in our house and that was a great honor for me; I swear to you Abu Khaled (Deif), they tortured by son severely, even some of the al-Qassam commanders condemned it, she says in the video.

Executed or starved to death?

The family received Eshtewis body the day after he died. They asked to examine the body and, they claimed, saw that he had carved in his flesh an Arabic word that translates roughly to someone who has been wronged. The family also said that a doctors examination suggested that he had died after dying of starvation during a hunger strike, with the gunshots being made after death to hide the real cause. Relatives even demanded that Hamas conduct an autopsy, but Hamas refused.

It is therefore unclear exactly what caused Eshtewis death. A New York Times report said that Eshtewi was first brought in for questioning after suspicions of embezzlement arose. He immediately confessed, with caused Hamas to suspect that he was confessing in order to cover up a bigger secret. An ensuing investigation led the military wing to someone who claimed Eshweti was homosexual who had previously had sexual contact with him. Hamas suspected that the money Eshweti embezzled was used to pay for sex with this person or to keep him quiet.

Hamas was more disturbed, however, by the belief that Israels intelligence services had discovered Eshtweis alleged sexual orientation and used this as leverage to pressure him into providing information.
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.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

In the meanwhile, here are some of our most popular posts and categories to keep you busy.

Happy shootin' my friends!

Buying Guides:

Firearms

Firearm Accessories

Ammunition

Gun Safes

Scopes & Optics

Hunting

Air Rifles

Best AR-15

Best AR 15 Scope

Best Hunting Rifle

Best Gun Safe

Best AK 47

Best AR 10

Best Glock Triggers

Best Glock

Best Home Defense Shotgun
Three girls, two from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka, were rescued by Porvorim police on Saturday following arrest of the duo. (Photo: PTI)

Panaji: A government employee who was recently arrested here along with his lady companion for allegedly trafficking women, has been in this trade for last four years, Goa Police claimed on Wednesday.

"Pravin Parab has confessed that he has been trafficking girls for the last four years. We will interrogate him further," Porvorim police Inspector Jivba Dalvi said.

The accused, a pump operator with Goa Water Resources Department, and his partner Sajjiya Khan, were arrested last Saturday under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (ITA), he said.

Sajjiya, originally from Mumbai, was currently residing with the accused, Dalvi said, adding a team would be sent to Mumbai for a background check. He said some documents have been seized from the flat where both the accused were staying, the inspector said.

"We have also found an Income Tax certificate from the flat and the department has been requested to furnish more information about it," the inspector said, adding police have also written to the Vigilance Department to initiate inquiry into the assets of Parab.

Three girls, two from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka, were rescued by Porvorim police on Saturday following arrest of the duo.
Last moth, Pakistan had lodged an FIR into the Pathankot terror attack case which was seen by India as a step forward in bringing the perpetrators of the strike to justice. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: India on Wednesday indicated that action against terror by Pakistan will take priority over talks with it in the aftermath of the Pathankot strike that had prompted the postponement of the Foreign Secretary-level talks.

"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said.

He was replying to a question during an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue, a conclave on geo-economics and geo-politics on whether FS talks between the two countries were linked to action by Pakistan on information given to it by India on Pathankot terror attack.

Read: Pathankot probe: Progress depends on co-operation from India, says Sartaj Aziz

Jaishankar said both the countries were in touch with each other following the Pathankot attack, primarily at the level of National Security Advisers and to a certain extent between him and his Pakistani counterpart. The Foreign Secretary said "parallel processes" are at works.

India had blamed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed for the Pathankot attack and sought action against the perpetrators of the strike, which had led to the postponement of Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks. India had said Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar masterminded the attack.

Talking about overall Indo-Pak ties, he said India was for a "much more modern relationship" with Islamabad but for that to happen there was a need to have change in attitude towards a number of issues of which terrorism is a "central" one.

Underlining the need for better connectivity between India and Pakistan, he said, "It takes two hands to clap" and that India would like to have same kind of ties with Islamabad like with other neighbours.

"Most people in this country want to treat Pakistan as a normal neighbour. So we would like to do with Pakistan what we do with everybody else. But the fact is that there are obstacles and we know what the obstacles are," he said, emphasising on the need to remove the obstacles.

To a question whether India and Pakistan can remain isolated, Jaishankar said they shouldn't and that New Delhi has been making sincere efforts to improve ties with Pakistan.

"I cannot think of any Prime Minister of India who did not strive for better relations with Pakistan. There may be differences in nuances, pace and packaging," he said.

Last moth, Pakistan had lodged an FIR into the Pathankot terror attack case which was seen by India as a "step forward" in bringing the perpetrators of the strike to justice. The FIR was filed against "unknown persons" though India had named Masood Azhar as mastermind of the strike.

India submitted evidence to show that the six men who opened fire at the air base came from across the border, and demanded action against the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed led by Azhar.

Yesterday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz said the SIT may visit India in the next few days and hoped that the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon.

Pakistan last week set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack. Earlier, a six-member SIT was set up by the government for the initial probe into the January 2 attack based on the leads given by India.
KARIMNAGAR: An Intermediate I year student was found dead under suspicious circumstances in the hostel of a private junior college at Rekurthi village in Karimnagar mandal on Tuesday. However, the parents of the girl attributed her death to negligence of the management in providing treatment.

Students staged a rasta roko, demanding action against the management and compensation to the kin. The deceased was identified Ghanta Bhanu, of Narsingapur village in Jagtial mandal.

She was pursuing Intermediate I year MPC group. Karimnagar Rural inspector B.S. Krishna said that the girl collapsed all of a sudden while getting fresh after coming from study hours at around 12.30 pm. Her brother who was waiting to meet her rushed her to a private hospital. However, she was declared brought

dead by doctors of the hospital.

Vital parts of the body were preserved for sending to forensic lab, he explained.

The girls maternal uncle alleged that staff of the hostel initially told him that she

was suffering from fever and later she had bouts of epilepsy. They did not shift Bhanu to a hospital when she fell down. Delay in rushing to a hospital resulted in her death, he accused.

Based on a complaint from family members of the girl, a case was booked against the management.
Figures released this week by SQM research show residential listings totalled 354,633 in February after a 3.4% month-on-month increase and were 0.8% higher than in February 2015.

Sydney easily led all capital city markets in terms of monthly and yearly increases, with its 25,698 listings over February 15.1% higher than Januarys total and 18% higher than February 2015.

Melbourne saw listings rise 8.6% over February; however, its total of 36,406 is 5.6% lower than February 2015.

Hobart is the only other capital city where listings have dropped in the past year, recording a 6.8% fall, as a well as 0.7% decline over February.

Behind Sydney, Darwin has home to the second largest year-on-year increase with listings up 12% in the year to February.

Canberra, Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide all saw monthly and year-on-year increases in listings.

Source: SQM Research

Louis Christopher, head of SQM Research, said the end of summer usually brings about a rise in listings, but the changes seen in Sydney and Hobart represent shifting conditions in their markets.

Listings normally rise at this time of year as the market fully opens up from the summer hiatus. The rise from Sydney however is well above normal seasonality and well above levels recorded this time last year, Christopher said.

This is evidence of a slower Sydney market where it is taking longer to sell. On the other hand, recording a decline at this time of year, as what has happened with Hobart, is also abnormal and is suggestive of a strong market made up of many buyers and fewer sellers, he said.

Speaking to Your Investment Property Magazine, Rich Harvey, chief executive officer of propertybuyer.com.au, said there were likely multiple factors that had contributed to the increase in Sydney.

A 15% increase over February is definitely interesting. Theres traditionally a bounce in listings at this time of the year, but that is higher than usual, Harvey said.

Id say there are a few vendors who have wanted to get things done before Easter, so theyve come to the market a bit earlier. I also think theres probably a psychological aspect at play. People have seen how Sydneys performed over recent years and now seeing its going to take a bit of time to sell theyve come to the market earlier than they might have so they can try to lock in their profits, he said.

While the numbers may be an out of the ordinary increase, Harvey said he believes the Sydney market, outside of some pockets, will absorb the increased offerings.

I do think the market has the capacity to absorb it. Theres still strong demand from aspirational home buyers, those who want to upgrade or buy their first home. Sydney still has the strongest employment and economic conditions and that is helping with population growth as well.

There might be some pockets, those suburbs that are over supplied with new units like Zetland and possibly Mascot, which might struggle a little bit. Im also a little sceptical of Parramatta, the number of new apartments and the prices theyre asking are a little worrying as well.

If I was an investor, Id be cautious of the new stock in those areas, I think well see their prices flatline a bit and resale prices suffer.

While Harvey believes the city at large can handle the increase in listings, he does believe the strong run the citys auction market has had to start the year may fall off somewhat.

The clearance rates over the last few weeks have been a bit higher than I was expecting, but they have been on lower volumes.

Once we see volumes increase, I think well see clearance rates settle at around 65% - 75%.
According to the latest New Home Sales Report from the Housing Industry Association (HIA), seasonally adjusted new home sales increased 3.8% over the month of January, though conditions differed vastly in the performance of detached houses and multi-unit dwellings.

Sales of detached houses increased 5.8% over January, while the sale of new multi-unit dwellings decreased by 5.8%.

Source: HIA/ABS

HIA chief economist Harley Dale said the sales figures were a positive sign for the housing sector, but there are indications that the construction boom that gained strength over 2015 is deflating.

Contrary to yesterdays ABS building approvals release, the HIA New Home Sales Report for January 2016 showed further strength. The overall trend evident across both leading indicators is very similar  signalling that once the current record pipeline is exhausted, new home construction activity will soften, Dr Dale said.

This year will be another healthy one for detached house and multi-unit construction, but we wont surpass the heights of 2015, he said.

The new home building sector is crucial to Australias economic prospects in 2016 and should continue as a mainstay of domestic economic activity. That is provided policy considerations and debates underway now dont have adverse consequences for confidence towards housing.

In the month of January 2016 detached house sales increased in each of the five mainland states: Queensland (+7.9%); Western Australia (+7.3%); Victoria (+5.5%); New South Wales (+4.2%); and South Australia (+1.3%).
As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More
The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu in Lok Sabha for the Budget session in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: BJP on Wednesday alleged that the decision to change the affidavit in Ishrat Jahan encounter case was taken at the "political level" involving the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, and asked Congress to come clean on it.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu charged that CBI was misused by the then UPA government to harass its political opponent and "defame" the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is now Prime Minister.

Read: Ishrat case: AIADMK continues protest as Sonia Gandhi defends Chidambaram

He said the issue needs to be debated and discussed in Parliament and appropriate action needs to be taken.

"First it was Lashkar-e-Taiba's website, secondly it was David Headley's statement and thirdly it was central government affidavit in the Gujarat High Court and Gujarat Police also said it. IB has said it. In spite of all these, they changed the affidavit.

"Now another startling revelation by former Home Secretary G K Pillai (who is) saying that the decision to change the affidavit was taken at the political level. Political level means the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, Prime Minister and Congress President. These are the three people who were at the helm of affairs," Naidu told reporters here.

Read: Chidambaram acted on Cong orders to target Modi in Ishrat Jahan case: BJP

He also cited former Under Secretary in Home Ministry R V S Mani's statement that he was forced and tortured.

"The torturing of government officer by other agency at the behest of political leadership, you can understand how much misuse was done by the previous government with regard to CBI. How political opponents were harassed. The entire plan was to stop Narendra Modi, defame Narendra Modi, implicate Narendra Modi," he said.

"Congress party should come clean instead of simply denying it. What do you say? What is the justification for change in affidavit? Do you have an answer? explain," he said.
New Delhi: JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested in a sedition case, was granted interim conditional bail for six months by the Delhi High Court on Wednesday, which said he will "not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national".

The high court also enjoined on him, as president of JNU students union, that he "will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus."

"Taking into consideration the facts and circumstances, I am inclined to release the petitioner on interim bail for a period of six months," Justice Pratibha Rani said, while making it clear that the accused will have to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and present himself before the investigators, as and when required.

Read: 2 videos of JNU event 'manipulated,' finds forensic probe: sources

The judge also considered the family background of Kanhaiya, whose mother is an Anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3000 on which the entire family survives, and ordered that he be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of like amount.

The judge directed that the accused's surety "should also be either a member of the faculty or a person related to him in a manner that he exercises control on him not only with respect to appearance before the court but also to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner."

While giving monetary concession for furnishing the bond for release, the high court said Kanhaiya has to "furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national."

The High Court took strong exception to the manner in which slogans were raised and protest staged by the students carrying photographs and posters of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, mastermind of hijacking of a passenger airline to Lahore in 1971 who was hanged in 1984, on the campus.

Read: Kanhaiya's bail good news for us, hope normalcy returns: JNU

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters, carrying photographs, of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat," the judge said.

The high court noted that Kanhaiya belongs to an intellectual class pursuing PhD from International School of Studies, JNU, which is considered as hub of intellectuals.

The court said that his political ideology or affiliation has to be pursued within the framework of Indian Constitution as freedom of speech and expression is subject to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.

"He may have any political affiliation or ideology. He has every right to pursue that but it can only be within the framework of our Constitution. India is a living example of unity in diversity. Freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution," the judge said.

Read: My son is not a terrorist, the world will know soon: Kanhaiya Kumar's mother

The High Court said that the faculty of JNU has to play its role in guiding them to the right path so that they can contribute to the growth of the nation and to achieve the object and vision for which the university was established.

"The reason behind anti-national views in the mind of students who raised slogans on death anniversary of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for attack on our Parliament, which led to this situation have not only to be found by them but remedial steps are also required to be taken in this regard by those managing the affairs of the JNU so that there is no recurrence of such incident," the judge said.

The High Court also made strong remarks on the slogans raised by the accused students, saying they cannot claim protection under fundamental right to speech and expression particularly in view of the fact that the investigation into the case was at nascent stage.

Read: Cheers of 'azaadi', 'laal salaam' for Kanhaiya among JNU students

It considered the entire incident "as a kind of infection" from which such students are suffering and needs to be cured "before becoming epidemic" and "surgical intervention" is required when the first line of treatment fails.

"The investigation in this case is at nascent stage. The thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of JNU who organised and participated in that programme cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to free speech and expression.

"I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic.

"Whenever such infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical intervention also. However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it may become gangrene, amputation is the only treatment, the judge said.
Risky sexual behaviors among teens are associated with rap music with explicit lyrics, a new study found. Parents are called to pay attention to what their children are streaming in their music devices or blasting in their room.

A new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health revealed that teens listening to rap music with sexually explicit lyrics for at least three hours daily are more likely to engage in promiscuous sexual behavior. These behaviors are associated with a host of problems of young teens, such as unplanned pregnancy, STD, HIV/AIDS and many more.

According to the lead researcher, a faculty associate in the Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, teens who listen to rap music with sexual overtones can start to think that everyone is doing it. The more that they listen to such music, the more that they will feel like to conform to the idea, fueled by the belief that that this is what majority of their peers are doing. The data were derived from 443 predominantly black and Hispanic students from 13 to 16 years old.

Advertisement

The lead researcher however claimed that their friends' behavior and reaction to the explicit content can act as a mediating variable. If teens see that their friends are critical of the explicit content, they are unlikely to believe that the lyrics apply to majority of their teens. However, if it seems that their friends are also engaging in sexually risky behaviors, then the rap music can encourage them to engage in risky behaviors as well.

"Perceived peer sex is the most powerful predictor of future sex and addressing perceived peer behavior with youth is really important. Rap music and forms of progressive hip-hop education can be used as tools to deconstruct sexually explicit messages adolescents receive," she said.

Experts therefore call for parents to regulate the media exposure their children have. During the teen years, the brain's impulse-control center is not fully developed yet, but their interest in sex is already arising. They can be gullible to lyrics and perceived behaviors of their peers.
Sign up to get the latest news delivered to your inbox every week!

The Revenant star, Leonardo DiCaprio, finally won the very elusive Academy award after previously being nominated six times. During the ceremony, the 41 year old actor used his Oscar acceptance speech in order to shed light on one of the most pressing issues the planet is suffering through at present - Climate Change.

DiCaprio has long been an advocate for environmental issues. In his speech, the actor spoke about how The Revenant is clearly about humanity's relationship with the environment. He revealed that during the filming of the movie, the crew had to go through lengths in order to find snow.

"Climate change is real, it is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating" read a part of his speech.

Advertisement

Scientists from all over the globe have since commented on Leo's controversial speech and according to some, the quips by the Oscar winning actor might not be that far off from the truth.

A team of scientists from the Department of Geography at Rutgers University recently released a report detailing the slow decline of snow coverage throughout the years. According to the data they have accumulated which dates back from 1967, there is a significant difference between the snow fall in the past four decades.

"Northern Hemisphere snow cover during 1988 and 1989 was at its lowest extent since the advent of reliable satellite snow-cover monitoring in 1972; running some 8 to 10 percent below the 18-year annual mean of 25.7 million km squared [9.9 million miles squared]" explained David Robinson a professor from the university.

The team agrees that the disappearing snow brings a multitude of ramifications. Robinson in particular explains that if there is no snow light gets absorbed into the ground where it melts and becomes permafrost. Permafrost, the scientist reveal, can release methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas.
A University decided to ban energy drinks from being sold within campus because these drinks can allegedly lead to sexually risky behaviors, among other problematic behaviors. Experts weigh in on the accuracy of this assumption.

Fox 2 Detroit reported that Middlebury College in Vermont banned the drinks because high-risk sexual activity and alcohol abuse are just some of the negative behaviors that can result from its consumption. In addition, the drinks may also affect students' academic performance and perpetuate a culture of stress. The ban is said to start on March 7.

The ban includes famous energy drinks such as Red Bull, Rockstar and 5-Hour Energy. "The school has a responsibility to direct students to healthy choices through what they provide," Dining Software Intern Myles Kamisher-Koch told the school paper,The Middlebury Campus.

Advertisement

Even though there have been several studies highlighting the negative effects of energy drinks on one's health, none had associated this with increased propensity to engage in high-risk sex. Studies have said that drinking energy drinks can lead to higher risk of heart disease and even diabetes, but none have said that it can lead to risky behaviors such as drinking and having unsafe sex.

The closest study that the University's allegations can be base on is the one that was done back in 2012. According to the study, mixing energy drinks and alcohol can lead to sexually risky behaviors among men. "Mixing energy drinks with alcohol can lead to unintentional overdrinking, because the caffeine makes it harder to assess your own level of intoxication," lead researcher Kathleen E. Miller said in a press release. She explained that the caffeine on energy drinks can increase the craving to drink more alcohol. The person can end up drinking more overall than just sticking to alcohol alone, which encourage them to engage in unsafe sex, such as not using condoms during intercourse.
LG a lansat un Smart Monitor 4K de 32 inch, care pare un TV Office

Dupa monitoarele pliabile de la IFA 2022 era greu sa ne imaginam ca LG ne mai poate uimi. Iata ca tocmai a lansat un model Smart Monitor care se anunta numai bun pentru Office, dar si pentru divertisment. LG Smart Monitor 32SQ780S este numele sau si avem de-a [citeste mai departe]
Kanhaiya Kumar was granted interim bail for six months by the Delhi High Court which said that he has to cooperate in the ongoing investigation. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: JNU administration on Wednesday welcomed the Delhi High Court's decision to grant bail to students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, as a "good news" for the varsity hoping that normalcy will return on campus soon.

"We are delighted to hear the news. Let the law of land prevail. It is a good news for the students as well as for the university. We hope normalcy will return on campus soon," JNU Registrar Bhupinder Zutshi said.

Kanhaiya, was arrested on February 12 in a sedition case in connection with an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

He was today granted interim bail for six months by the Delhi High Court which said that he has to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and has to present himself before the investigators as and when required.

The students have been agitating demanding Kanhaiya's release alleging he has been "framed" for raising his voice and being "branded" as a terrorist.

Kanhaiya, is also among the eight students who were academically debarred by the university on the basis of a preliminary enquiry report from the varsity's high-level committee.

"The decision about further course of Kanhaiya in the university will be taken once the probe committee comes up with its report. But we are happy at least he will be free from jail, " Zutshi said.

Five others, Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Rama Naga, Anant Prakash and Anirban Bhattacharya had gone in hiding since Kanhaiya's arrest fearing "mob-lynching".

They resurfaced back on campus 10 days later. While Umar and Anirban surrendered before the police, the remaining three refused to do so but maintained that they are open to questioning by police as and when needed. The five-member probe committee of the university is scheduled to submit its report tomorrow.
- The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has dismissed several of its workers for securing jobs with fake certificates.

- It was revealed at a meeting that the educational Certificates of newly engaged staff were verified and two of the certificates were confirmed to be fictitious.

- Human Resource Department tasked to enforce measures that will not allow staff to explore loopholes in the system.

The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has dismissed some newly engaged workers for securing jobs with falsified certificates. According to a report by Starr FM, the staff who were mainly with the Seed Production Department were sent home following an intense investigation by the Human Resource Department.

According to reports even more workers of COCOBOD could be on their way out of the company as a committee probes the matter further. The Executive Director revealed at a meeting that the educational certificates of newly engaged staff were verified and two of the certificates were confirmed to be fake.

In one instance, the worker involved Mr. Harrison Gborglovor is alleged to have presented a forged certificate which indicated that he completed his degree programme at the University of Ghana. The Human Resource Department has been directed to sit up and enforce measures that will not allow staff to explore loopholes in the system. A committee has also been set up to conduct further investigations into the matter.

The Ghana Cocoa Board was established by ordinance in 1947. The mission of the Board is to encourage and facilitate the production, processing and marketing of good quality cocoa, coffee and sheanut in all forms in the most efficient and cost effective manner, and maintain the best mutual industrial relation with its objectives.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Convener of Mahapurush Smriti Samiti said that the invitation from Chandel could actually set a new trend in the region. (Representational Image)

Lucknow: The campaign against celebratory firing that caused many accidental deaths recently is catching on.

The cards sent out for a family wedding on February 29 and the reception on March 1 by a RSS leader Mahirajhdwaj Singh Chandel in Banda district clearly requests the guests not to indulge in alcoholism and celebratory firing.

The card prominently says, Saadar Nivedan: Kripya harsh firing aur Madyapan na karne ki kripa karen.

Mahirajdhwaj Singh Chandel said, In February alone, there have been four cases of deaths due to celebratory firing. Deaths have been reported from Sitapur (where the groom was killed), Baghpat, Rae Bareli and Shamli. Celebratory firing is often done after a person consumes alcohol so I decided to disallow both.

Bharat Singh Puredarbar, convener of Mahapurush Smriti Samiti, is one of the invitees and said that firing in weddings is actually a display of an individuals power and position, but turns into a major catastrophe if something goes wrong.

In Bundelkhand, owning and flaunting firearms is a status symbol, he added.

He said that the invitation from Chandel could actually set a new trend in the region.

Lucknow: Patients hit by wedding

The entire staff of the government hospital in Bulandshahar left the patients at the mercy of their attendants and went out to participate in a marriage party that was being held in the hospital compound.

The incident took place on Sunday and a video clip that show the hospital staff dancing at the party has now gone viral on the social media.

The wedding of the daughter of one of the hospital staff members was held on the premises and loud music played through the night, showing scant respect for the patients.

We tried to request them to lower the music volume because the patients were getting troubled, but they abused us and sent us back, said one of the attendants.

Minister of State for Medical and Health S.P. Yadav said here that according to reports, DJ played music till late in the night in the hospital premises which had caused lot of inconvenience to the patients.

The state government has now ordered an inquiry into the matter though a health official defended the incident and said, If the hospital staff is living in the quarters in the compound, they will naturally hold family functions. They cannot be denied this privilege.

Directives will also be issued to all the districts to ensure that no weddings are performed in hospital premises.
New Delhi: Youth Congress on Wednesday took out protest march against Union Minister Smriti Irani in the national capital over the death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

According to ANI reports, more than 1,000 Youth Congress workers marched in protest against the Union Minister at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi.

The protesting members also demanded Prime Minister Narendra Modi to remove Smriti Irani from his Cabinet for her role in the institutional murder of Hyderabad University student Rohith Vemula.

26-year-old Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Central Universitys hostel room on January 17.

He was among the five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on an ABVP student leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The suspension was revoked later.

The issue also took a political turn with allegations that the extreme action was a result of discrimination against Dalit students after Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya had written a letter to Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani seeking action against their anti-national acts.
New Delhi: For Babita Sharma it was a nightmarish experience on February 22 at NH-1 when, at around 3 am, a mob pounced on her family and others, beat them up, damaged their car and compelled them to chant "Jai Jat".

Babita beseeched the hooligans with folded hands to spare their lives. "Burn our car, but please for god's sake don't harm us," she implored.

The incident took place at Murthal in Sonipat district while Haryana was convulsed for over a week by the Jat community's agitation for reservations in education and jobs.

The violence that took place during the agitation claimed the lives of at least 16 people and is estimated to have caused property losses of Rs 20,000 crore (USD 3 billion).

Babita is now at Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) hospital here, looking after her injured husband Satish Kumar Sharma who has multiple fractures in his hands. He is now awaiting surgery.

Her nephew Harjinder received 25 stitches in his head. Her son and another nephew were traumatized by what they experienced but were, thankfully, unscathed, she said.

Babita also sustained injuries due to broken glass.

The Delhi-based family was returning home after a pilgrimage to Naina Devi in Himachal Pradesh. They knew about the Jat agitation and would have avoided taking the route through the troubled areas.

"We decided to take that route after being told that the Jats' demands have been heeded and the agitation has subsided," said Satish, Babita's husband.

Passing the "Sukhdev Dhaba" near Murthal at about 3 am, the family saw cars halted due to a protest.

"There were men in blue uniform, so we felt safe. Suddenly they (security personnel) started chasing a violent mob and we were left unguarded. It was then when scores of armed youth came out of fields and started attacking everyone and misbehaving with women," Satish recalled.

They were trying to drag people out of their cars and command them to chant "Jai Jat," which the family shouted repeatedly, Satish said.

"My wife pleaded with them to spare our boys. They replied in abusive language. They tried to open the door to attack my wife, but thankfully couldn't. They did get my door opened and attacked me. They were all young men," he added.

There were many cars on the highway at that time and the rioters kept targeting them as they moved on, Satish said.

"By the time they were finished with us, my nephew was bleeding, my wife was injured and we were all very scared. They went on attacking others and we didn't know what to do. That's when my nephew, who was bleeding, ran to hide in the paddy fields," he said.

The rest of the family followed him and stayed hidden for about an hour.

"From the fields we kept hearing terrible noises. People were screaming and shouting. The mob was also setting some vehicles on fire and poking the tyres to deflate them," he said.

They then moved towards a farmhouse, where a farmer, Master Om Singh, helped them, gave them some painkillers, got their car fixed, accompanied them to the police station and then escorted them out of the area.

Om Singh is, interestingly, a member of the Jat community.

"These people were very frightened and stayed hidden in a field until one of them approached our house for help. I called them in as it was not safe out there; we too feared that the mob might attack our house," Om Singh told IANS.

Asked about the reported incidents of rapes in Murthal, Om Singh said: "Lots of things were going on out there. I didn't see anything as terrible as rape. I also heard that some miscreants from other communities might have been involved."

Satish said the police in Murthal, when approached, asked them to "collect a copy of the FIR later". The police also did not bother to arrange for any medical aid for the victims of the violence.

"Only after this matter was highlighted by the media did the police contact us. We had to go in this condition back to Murthal Police station on Wednesday. Then they inquired and registered FIR," said Babita.

She said she was doubly thankful to god about her family's safety after looking at the deluge of media reports that said gang-rapes and other terrible things might have taken place at Murthal.

"After we learnt about rapes and other incidents that went on near Sukhdev Dhaba, we thanked god that we made it out safe. Their intentions were clearly not good. But what happened since then has not been good either," said Babita.

Her husband started to receive proper medical treatment four days after the incident, on Saturday, only after Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) chief Swati Mailwal arranged to get him to admit to GTB hospital, she said.

Earlier, the family also suffered the insensitivity of the Lal Bahadur Shastri (LBS) hospital, where they first went for medical treatment. The officials of the city-based hospital told them not to divulge the actual incident as the cause of their injuries.

"At emergency ward of Shastri hospital, they advised us to say that we were injured in a bike accident and keep quiet about the violence in Murthal," Babita said.

The family was received with neither sensitivity nor urgency at LBS hospital, even though the doctors did their part, she said.

"My husband with multiple fractures and injuries stood in the queue for hours waiting for reports, which are yet to come. It seemed like they didn't care; we had to take our nephew to a private hospital where he received 25 stitches on his head," she said.

Asked about Babita's experience, official of the LBS hospital refused to believe it.

"I can't believe it. Why will the staff say that? Staff in not the politician, why would they give this type of advice. These things are always distorted and told to journalists. I'll just find out about the medical aspects and let you know," Amita Saxena, LBS Hospital Medical superintendent, told IANS.
Copenhagen: Three British scientists have won a prestigious brain research prize for their ground-breaking work into memory, the award organiser announced here on Tuesday.

Timothy Bliss, Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris, were awarded Denmark's one million euro ($1,45,751) Brain Prize 2016 for giving vital insight into the way in which the human brain remembers, learns and navigates, Xinhua reported.

"Together, the three scientists have revealed how the brain can alter through experience, enabling us to acquire new information and adapt to our surroundings. These scientists have also provided us with better tools for understanding serious diseases such as depression, epilepsy and drug addiction. An achievement of this kind deserves recognition," the award committee said in a press statement.

The hippocampus, which is deep in the centre of the brain, is the brain's learning portal that enables us to store information. These three researchers have shown how neurons in the hippocampus collaborate and provide a basis for understanding how humans go about remembering, the organiser said.

They have shown how the connection between brain cells in the hippocampus can be strengthened through repeated stimulation -- a phenomenon that is called long-term potentiation.

The scientists have also described the mechanisms behind the phenomenon and have proven that long-term potentiation is the very basis for our ability to learn, remember and navigate our surroundings.

Moreover, their research results show that the brain is able to handle and adapt to new impressions and events, and this plasticity enables the brain to reorganise itself after damage such as stroke or sudden blindness.

Bliss, a visiting worker at the Crick Institute in London, gave the first detailed description of long-term potentiation in both anaesthetised and non-anaesthetised laboratory animals as early as 1973. Since then, he has worked intensively to describe the underlying mechanisms and has been the driving force in this research field.

Collingridge, who is a professor of neuroscience in anatomy at the University of Bristol, also head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto, has developed and applied sophisticated, pharmacological techniques to identify and describe the signal molecules and receptors responsible for long-term potentiation.

Morris, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, invented the "Morris water maze" method to prove that the hippocampus is essential to our ability to navigate.

Established in 2010, the prize is awarded annually by non-profit organisation Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Foundation.

The three researchers will share the prize, which will be presented at a ceremony scheduled for July 1 in Copenhagen.
Zee Media Bureau

Beijing: Chinese scientists claimed to have successfully decoded the gene sequence of imported Zika virus.

The success was achieved by scientists with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the provincial center in east China's Jiangxi Province.

The successful gene decoding could help with prevention and diagnosis of the mosquito-borne disease that has triggered a global health emergency.

China confirmed its first case of imported Zika virus on February 9 this year after a 34-year-old man from Jiangxi, who visited Venezuela in January, showed symptoms of the deadly virus.

As per reports, China has reported 10 cases of Zika so far.

Zika virus is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also carries dengue fever and yellow fever. The virus has been reported in at least 34 countries, many of them in Central and Latin America.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought response of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh on CBI's plea seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh High Court's interim order restraining the agency from arresting, interrogating or filing a charge sheet against him in a disproportionate assets case.

The agency moved the application before a bench of Justice Pratibha Rani, who issued a notice to Singh and posted the matter for hearing on April 4.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) P S Patwalia, appearing for CBI, told the bench that the agency is seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh HC's interim order of October 1, 2015.

"This application is for vacation of the interim order. A notice may kindly be issued," Patwalia told the bench.

During the hearing on February 25 on Singh's plea seeking quashing of FIR lodged against him and others in the case, the CBI had told the bench that its investigation in the case was "held up" due to the interim order of Himachal Pradesh HC.

In his plea, Singh has claimed that CBI had overstepped its jurisdiction in filing the case and had also questioned how the agency could raid his premises when the case was already pending in the Delhi High Court, as also before the Income Tax Tribunal and other tax authorities, where all documents relating to his returns had been submitted.

The CBI had earlier pleaded before the high court that it has jurisdiction to register and investigate the DA case.

The agency had also sought dismissal of Singh's plea to quash the FIR against him, alleging that his prayer was "frivolous and not maintainable".

The arguments on Singh's plea would continue on April 4.

On November 5 last year, the Supreme Court had transfered Singh's plea from the Himachal Pradesh High Court to the Delhi High Court, saying it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the case but "simply" transferring the petition "in the interest of justice and to save the institution (judiciary) from any embarrassment".

The CBI had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the case from the Himachal Pradesh HC to the Delhi High Court and setting aside of the interim order granting protection from arrest and other relief to Singh. The chief minister had filed a petition in the Himachal Pradesh High Court pleading that the searches on his private residence and other premises were conducted with "malafide intentions and political vendetta" by the central investigating agency.

Singh had sought directions from the high court to quash CBI's FIR registered in Delhi against him and others under Sections 13 (2) and 13(1)(e) of Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 109 of IPC.
New Delhi: Amid speculation over the possibility of Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan after the cross-border terror attack in Pathankot, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar on Wednesday hinted that action against terror took priority over dialogue.

"In the aftermath of a terrorist attack if you ask me so what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious," Jaishankar said in response to a question at an interactive session during the Raisina Dialogue, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the External Affairs Ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

Talks between the Foreign Secretaries scheduled for the middle of January this year got derailed after the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2 that claimed the lives of seven Indian security personnel.

The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack in which all the six terrorists were also reportedly killed.

India has since sent "actionable evidence" to the Pakistani authorities to bring the perpetrators of the attack to book.

Pakistan filed an FIR in Gujranwala last month against unknown terrorists in connection with the attack.

It also said that it would send a special investigation team (SIT) to India to probe the attack.

India and Pakistan had agreed on starting a comprehensive bilateral dialogue after a meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistan prime minister`s advisor on foreign affairs, during the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad in December last year.

Following this, Jaishankar said on Wednesday that he and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry were supposed to meet and discuss how the modalities of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue could be worked out.

"When the Pathankot attack happened, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch primarily through the NSAs (national security advisors), to some extent communications between me and my counterpart," he said.

"There was also a phone call between (Pakistani) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and our prime minister (Narendra Modi). The picture you see is of really parallel processes which are working," the Indian Foreign Secretary said.

Jaishankar`s comments come after Aziz, who is currently on a visit to Washington, said that Foreign Secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad`s probe team visited Pathankot to investigate the attack.

Aziz said a Pakistani team would visit India "in the next few days" to investigate the attack.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Aziz on Tuesday said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.

Since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of "important steps" to facilitate resumption of the talks, Dawn online quoted Aziz as saying.
Delhi: Hours after Congress vice president slammed Narendra Modi government in the Lok Sabha over a host of issues, BJP leader and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took on Rahul Gandhi writing a scathing blog on Facebook titled - How much does he know  when will he know.

Taking on the Congress leader for criticizing Prime Minister Modi, Jaitley said that the PM not only 'works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally'.

Jaitley added that after hearing Rahul he felt that India had made the right choice between 'the Prime Minister who leads the government and a Prime Minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere'.

The FM also said, "Shri Rahul Gandhis views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a crowd around a family."

Following is the full text of Jaitley's blog:

The Congress vice president, shri Rahul Gandhi, has claimed that the Prime Minister hardly consults his senior ministers. If shri Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then smt Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, shri Rajnath Singh was unware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unware of the Budget proposals.

As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know  when will he know.

The Prime Minister should be the natural leader of the party and the government. In the NDA it is so. The UPA was quite different. The Prime Minister is to lead by example. The present Prime Minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally. Each one of us, whether the External Affairs Minister, Home Minister or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each of one departments. We do not by-pass the Prime Minister who is always available for consultation and guidance. After hearing shri Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the Prime Minister who leads the Government and a Prime Minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere.

Shri Rahul Gandhis views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a crowd around a family. The UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the Prime Minister, he should be reduced to being a figure-head. Given a choice between a hands-on Prime Minister or a nominal head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former.

Rahul today launched a scathing attack on PM Modi and his government over the "fair and lovely" scheme on black money and the raging trouble in JNU and Hyderabad University.

In acerbic remarks on Modi's style of functioning, the Congress VP accused him of not listening to anyone's opinion including that of his ministers and MPs.

"You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is one truth in the universe - your own and nobody else's opinion matters," he told the treasury benches while speaking on the motion of thanks to the President's address in the Lok Sabha.

"The Prime Minister cannot run the country with his opinion alone. The country is not PM and PM is not the country," he said in a 40-minute speech during which PM Modi was absent.

Attacking the scheme on black money announced in the budget on Monday, Gandhi said, "Nobody who has black money will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme. All those who have black money can make it white under this scheme," as per PTI.

Recalling Modi's promise of putting people with black money behind bars, the Congress leader said the government had instead come up with a way to help such people.

He was referring to the one-time four-month compliance window announced by Jaitley under which people with domestic black money can come clean by paying 45 percent tax and penalty and get immunity from prosecution.

Gandhi was sharply critical of the government over the turmoil in Delhi's JNU and maintained that student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been charged with sedition, had not uttered a single word against the law but was behind bars while the "real culprits" were roaming free.

Questioning PM Modi's silence over the JNU episode, Gandhi said that he had not uttered a single word when teachers and the media were attacked in the Patiala House court complex in the capital when Kumar was brought there for a hearing.

"Which religion teaches to assault teachers," he asked.

Gandhi said that 60 percent of students in JNU belonged to Dalits, minorities and OBCs and 40 percent of them came from a poor background.

"Why are you after the JNU? Because dalits and adivasis study there and you don't want them to grow. But we will not let this happen. We cannot crush the JNU," he asserted in the course of his speech interrupted by the ruling NDA members.

Referring to the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in the Hyderabad Central University, Gandhi said that the PM had not bothered to call his mother.

He also attacked PM Modi's Pakistan policy and accused him of releasing that country from a "small cage" in which the UPA government had put it through its diplomacy by suddenly visiting Lahore to have tea with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

(With Agency inputs)
Police use water cannons to disperse Youth Congress activists at a protest against HRD Minister Smriti Irani's statement on Rohith Vemula in Parliament, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Several Congress leaders on Wednesday attacked the NDA government at a demonstration here, accusing it of being "anti-Dalit" and "repressing" the voice of the country's youth.

At the Jantar Mantar, senior party leaders including Digvijaya Singh, Jitin Prasada, Raj Babbar, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Oscar Fernandes and Selja Kumari attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and HRD Minister Smriti Irani over alleged "atrocities" against dalits and students and "silencing" their voice of protest in the country.

Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika also addressed the gathering at the protest venue in Telugu. Several members of the Youth Congress then marched towards Parliament from there before being detained at the Parliament Street.

Attacking the Modi government, Digvijaya Singh said, it was "fundamentally" against the dalits, tribals, farmers and workers.

"Rohith is not among us but he has awakened the society in slumber like Dr Ambedkar did," he said.

Rallying behind Rahul Gandhi who has extended support to JNU students, he said, "Some people said to me that Rahul should not have gone to JNU, but why not, we ask. Injustice was done to Kanhaiya Kumar who is innocent. Now police is saying that their is no video of him raising anti-India slogans, after sending him to jail on sedition charges."

Surjewala said the Modi government in its 22-month-rule has done the "most dangerous" thing of "repressing" the voice of youth in the country and attacking the right of poor to education.

Radhika reiterated her demand for a law that ends discrimination against students on the basis of caste in educational institutions in the country.

"Injustice was done to my son and like him several others died in other universities of the country and justice should be done. A government order should be issued to bar universities from discriminating against students on the basis of caste," she said, which was interpreted in Hindi afterwards.

"Prime Minister is anti-Dalit and anti-student and I will continue my struggle till I get justice for my son," she said.

Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Barar launched a scathing attack on HRD minister Smriti Irani and questioned her for not going to Hyderabad University after Vemula committed suicide.

The crowd of protesters broke through two barricades on way to Parliament before their march was stalled by the police, which also used water cannon to break up the protest before detaining some of them.
Patna: The Patna High Court on Wednesday granted bail to former MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in connection with a double murder and kidnapping that took place 12 years ago, a lawyer said.

After hearing the bail petition, the court bench headed by Justice Anjana Prakash granted bail to the former MP.

In January this year, his bail petition was rejected by the high court.

Last year, the special court in Siwan district convicted Shahabuddin and awarded him life imprisonment in a 2004 case in which he and his men were charged with giving an acid bath to two brothers Girish Raj and Satish Raj and murdering them.

Shahabuddin has been languishing in jail for several years in connection with many serious criminal cases.

According to police officials, Shahabuddin has been convicted on charges of criminal conspiracy, kidnapping and murder.

Shahabuddin's son Osama has also been charged with the killing of a local BJP leader Rajiv Roshan, who was a witness in the murder case of the two brothers in which Shahabuddin has been convicted.

The two brothers were kidnapped allegedly at Shahabuddin's behest and drenched in acid before being murdered.
New Delhi: Breaking precedent, Supreme Court on Monday passed the custody of a child to his Hindu adoptive father and thus disposing a petition filed by the biological mother of the child eight years ago.

In 2004, four-year-old Akbar went with his alcoholic father to a roadside drinking joint in Allahabad where he went missing.

Aiku Lal , a Hindu tea stall owner, found the child crying in a park in Lucknow.

Lal took pity on the child and advertised about him in TV channels. Receiving no response from the child's family, Lal finally took the child home as his son. He also admitted the child (Akbar) to a school without changing his name or religion.

Three years later, in 2007, Akbar's biological parents turned up and and claimed the custody of the child from Aiku Lal, though the boy did not want to return to them. The same year, the parents move the Allahabad High Court and filed a petition seeking custody of their child.

In the petition filed before the court, they also accused Lal of using their son as a bonded labour at his tea stall. However, Lal challenged the claim by producing the school certificates and other documents proving that he had been taking god care of the child.

The matter was later brought to Supreme Court, who decided to give priority to the welfare of the child. First Post quoted the bench as saying, "Rather than altering the present arrangement, we, therefore, feel that it would be appropriate if Akbar lives with his mother during the duration of the summer vacation every year (from May to July) till he attains the age of 18 years."

In its ruling, the bench also observed it would be completely up to Akbar to decide if he wants to move to his biological mother Shahnaz Begum or stay with his adopted father Aiku Lalu, after he attains maturity.
New Delhi: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is due to hold a strategy meeting on Wednesday to discuss preparations for crucial assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh next year.

According to reports, the Congress vice president will deliberate with 35 senior party leaders from Uttar Pradesh when they meet today.

The party has prepared at least five reports on the upcoming polls, which would be taken up for discussion during the meeting. These reports are based on various surveys conducted, discussions held with local party workers, preparations of other parties and identifying candidates.

One such report has been prepared by AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry and state president Nirmal Khatri following discussion on each seat with block and district presidents, other reports have been prepared by AICC observers, an independent agency and state office-bearer in-charges of districts, said a report published in The Indian Express.

At the moment, the party appears to be divided over contesting elections in Uttar Pradesh. While one section of the party wants to alone in the polls, the other is in the favour of forging strong alliance with like-minded parties on the line of Bihar.

Importantly, the issue of alliance will also be taken up at the meeting.

Former Union ministers, MPs, MLAs, Rajya Sabha members, Congress legislative party and legislative council leaders, Khatri, Mistry and secretaries in-charges of the state will attend the meeting.

Significantly, the Congress has recently roped in Congress ropes in election strategist Prashant Kishor, who is widely credited for designing the successful election campaign of Nitish Kumar's Mahagathbandhan in Bihar.

With Kishor on board, the party hopes for a repeat of Bihar in UP polls.

Kishor will report directly to Gandhi and may pitch for a larger role for his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the polls, including perhaps projecting her as the party's chief ministerial candidate, as per sources.

The party, however, plans to announce its candidates at least six months ahead of the polls.
New Delhi: Manipurs human rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila was on Wednesday re-arrested after her health condition declined further.

As per ANI, she will be charged with attempt to suicide by fasting.

Irom had resumed her hunger strike in protest against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) after a magistrate court ordered her release from judicial custody on Monday.

Sharmila has been on a fast-unto-death for the past 15 years, demanding the repealing of Afspa. She was arrested under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code on charges of attempt to commit suicide. Held at a prison hospital, she was force-fed through the nose several times a day.

Referred to as the Iron Lady of Manipur, Sharmila continued her often interrupted hunger strike at Saheed Minar, accompanied by women activists of Sharmila Kanba Lup (Save Sharmila Committee).

The 43-year-old began her non-violent protest in November 2000 after 10 people were killed by troops of the Assam Rifles near a bus stop at Malom, in the outskirt of Imphal.

The AFSPA 1958, which covers large parts of northeastern India and Kashmir, gives security forces sweeping powers to search and shoot on sight, and is seen by critics as a cover for human rights abuses.

On August 19 2014, a Sessions court in Imphal had ordered her release, dismissing the prosecutions charge that she was attempting to commit suicide. But Sharmila was re-arrested few days later on the grounds of securing her life.
New Delhi: India on Wednesday sought Pakistan's help in deciphering the information it has regarding the Pathankot terror attack.

The Ministry of External Affairs, served letters rogatory to Pakistan seeking information on the intercepted phone calls of people allegedly belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammad, reports said.

India also wants information on the food packets, arms and ammunitions recovered from the slain militants.

India has submitted evidence to show that the six men who opened fire at the air base came from across the border, and demanded action against the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed led by Azhar.

At least for the record, Pakistan has indicated its seriousness to probe the attack. Last week Islamabad set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack. Earlier, a six-member SIT was set up by the government for the initial probe into the January 2 attack based on the leads given by India.

Yesterday, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz said the SIT may visit India in the next few days and hoped that the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon.

Earlier today, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar indicated that action against terror by Pakistan will take priority over talks with it in the aftermath of the Pathankot strike that had prompted the postponement of the Foreign Secretary-level talks.'

In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious, he said.

Jaishankar said both the countries were in touch with each other following the Pathankot attack, primarily at the level of National Security Advisers and to a certain extent between him and his Pakistani counterpart. The Foreign Secretary said parallel processes are at works.

India had blamed terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed for the Pathankot attack and sought action against the perpetrators of the strike which had led to the postponement of Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks. India had said Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar masterminded the attack.

With PTI inputs
New Delhi: In more trouble for Congress, former joint secretary AK Jain on Wednesday claimed that there was complete mistrust between the then Gujarat government led by Narendra Modi and Manmohan Singh-led Central government when the Ishrat Jahan encounter took place.

Shedding more light on Ishrat and her accomplices, Jain said there was no doubt that they had links with terror outfits and were on a mission to kill VIPs.

Jain further said that there was no doubt about the genuineness of the inputs provided by the Intelligence Bureau on Ishrat and her accomplices.

In an exclusive interview to news agency ANI, Jain, who was the Joint Secretary (JS) in-charge of monitoring communal-related matters across the country, said, "I was JS in-charge of the communal situation, and had obtained reports from the IB and the state government. The reports were clear that outfits, to which Ishrat belonged to, had an association with terror groups."

Jain, who was posted in the Home Ministry in 2004, was responsible for collating facts on Ishrat Jahan encounter case.

Ishrat, Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were killed in an encounter with Gujarat Police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004.

He revealed that a Commission of Inquiry was proposed by the central government on the post-Godhra situation.

"References also came from the National Advisory Council (NAC) to tweak the report of the commission, which I did not support," he alleged.

The former bureaucrat's revelations come at a time when the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are engaged in a war of words over the alleged flip-flop on the affidavits in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, with BJP accusing the Congress of having attempted to frame Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in the sensational encounter killing and demanding a probe into the issue.

The trigger for the battle was the interview by RVS Mani, the then Under Secretary in the Home Ministry, who had filed the two affidavits. In the interview, Mani alleged that he was tortured to implicate senior IB officials in the case to project the encounter killing of Ishrat and other three LeT terrorists in Ahmedabad in 2004 as fake.

Mani suggested that Chidambaram was behind the decision to file the second affidavit. He alleged that the then SIT chief, a CBI official, was after him and an attempt was made to question the quality of professional inputs by the intelligence agencies on Ishrat and other terrorists.

It also came on a day when two former home secretaries claimed the second affidavit was filed in the Supreme Court at the behest of the then Home Minister P Chidambaram.

Former home secretary GK Pillai had said that Congress leader and former minister in UPA government P Chidambaram had bypassed him and got the affidavit on Ishrat Jahan changed.

Last month, Pakistan-American terrorist David Coleman Headley had claimed that young Mumbai women Ishrat Jahan was an Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative.
New Delhi: Several Congress leaders on Wednesday attacked the NDA government at a demonstration here, accusing it of being "anti-Dalit" and "repressing" the voice of the country's youth.

At the Jantar Mantar, senior party leaders including Digvijay Singh, Jitin Prasada, Raj Babbar, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Oscar Fernandes and Selja Kumari attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and HRD Minister Smriti Irani over alleged "atrocities" against Dalits and students and "silencing" their voice of protest in the country.

Hyderabd scholar Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika also addresed the gathering at the protest venue in Telugu.

Several members of the Youth Congress then marched towards Parliament from there before being detained at the Parliament Street.

Attacking the Modi government, Digvijay Singh said, it was "fundamentally" against the dalits, tribals, farmers and workers.

"Rohith is not among us but he has awakened the society in slumber like Dr Ambedkar did," he said.

Rallying behind Rahul Gandhi who has extended support to JNU students, he said, "Some people said to me that Rahul should not have gone to JNU, but why not, we ask. Injustice was done to Kanhaiya Kumar who is innocent. Now police is saying that their is no video of him raising anti-India slogans, after sending him to jail on sedition charges."

Surjewala said the Modi government in its 22-month-rule has done the "most dangerous" thing of "repressing" the voice of youth in the country and attacking the right of poor to education.

Radhika reiterated her demand for a law that ends discrimination against students on the basis of caste in educational institutions in the country.

"Injustice was done to my son and like him several others died in other universities of the country and justice should be done. A government order should be issued to bar universities from discriminating against students on the basis of caste," she said, which was interpreted in Hindi afterwards.

"Prime Minister is anti-Dalit and anti-student and I will continue my struggle till I get justice for my son," she said.

Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Barar launched a scathing attack on HRD minister Smriti Irani and questioned her for not going to Hyderabad University after Vemula committed suicide.

The crowd of protesters broke through two barricades on way to Parliament before their march was stalled by the police, which also used water cannon to break up the protest before detaining some of them.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday rebutted Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's remarks on Naga accord in the lower house, describing it 'completely false and baseless'.

"Shri Rahul Gandhi's statement on Naga Peace accord in Lok Sabha today is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Shri Rahul Gandhi's attempt to mislead the House," Singh tweeted.

Gandhi while participating on the discussion on the motion of thanks to the President on his address to the joint sitting of parliament's two houses, attacked the Prime Minister for his claims on the Naga accord.

"The Prime Minister told the Congress president that he has solved the Nagaland problem and signed a historic accord. The Congress president asked us to check what happened because none of our Chief Ministers mentioned anything about the Naga accord," he said.

"Our North East Chief Ministers were stunned. They had not heard a word about any accord. What had the government signed? Where is Naga accord now? It's gone with the wind. Bye Bye accord," he said.
New Delhi: Terming Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's claims over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Pakistan visit 'incorrect', External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday said that the PM had apprised her after he spoke to his counterpart Nawaz Sharif.

Speaking to ANI, Swaraj said, 'After he spoke to PM Sharif, PM Modi had called me to seek my opinion on his visit to Lahore. Had I been in Parliament today, I would have given him an answer right then and there

During the visit, I had told PM that this will be a very 'out of the box' move and that he should go to Lahore. So what Rahul Gandhi has said is incorrect,' she added.

Attacking the PM over his surprise visit to Pakistan, Rahul had today said, Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered. And what did PM do? Without any thought or vision, the PM decided to go and have tea with Pakistan PM."

He further mentioned Sushma's name, stating, "PM didn't consult the armed forces, he didn't consult the officials, I don't think he even discussed with Sushma ji."

(With Agency inputs)
Delhi: Reacting to the allegations of former under secretary for internal security at the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) regarding the Ishrat Jahan case, former SIT chief Satish Verma said on Wednesday that RVS Mani's claims about him being tortured was wrong.

"Mani's allegations are old, this the third time he has said these things, there's nothing new in what he has said. Mani was an employee of GOI, nobody could even think of torturing him," Verma told a news channel.

In an interview with India Today TV channel he added, "Affidavit that Mani filed was as per the facts given to him by IB. Would any reasonable person believe what Mani is saying. In RVS Mani's statement there is no mention of any leader or party, he implicates none."

On the controversial case he opined, "Four persons got killed, one of them was Ishrat Jahan, two of them were suspected to be Pakistani. Another person killed was an Indian national, these are facts. There was no evidence to prove that Ishrat was a terrorist beyond the text posted on a website. RVS Mani was a low-ranking officer in home ministry, was just collating all the details of the case. Mani's affidavit read like Gujarat Police report."

"Statements of GK Pillai and RVS Mani are politically motivated. It was a unanimous decision of three member SIT that the Ishrat encounter was fake. It was a premeditated murder. First intelligence report never mentioned Ishrat, evidences put by Mani were ridiculous. It is unlikely that Ishrat could have been a Lashkar terrorist. No one tried to fix Narendra Modi, I did not have any reason to do so. There was no political pressure on me during the investigation. National security can't become a defense for premeditated murder of a 19-year old girl," Verma told the TV channel.

On the other hand, Mani has said, "I filed the first affidavit, it was approved by the home ministry and then law secretary before it was filed. What was reason for the second affidavit, I don't know. I signed the document because as per the conduct rule three, when an order is received on the file, I have to execute it because before an order is issued by a competent authority or a senior officer, I can put my view points."

Mani said after a decision is taken, it has to be executed and so he was authorized to sign the affidavit.

"The Intelligence input conclusion is after the event occurs. I am absolutely neutral person, I have no agenda. The IB is working very hard, there is no margin of error. The home secretary is a very upright officer. Pillai is an excellent officer and a man of very high integrity. So, I have no reason to disbelieve what he has said," he added, as per ANI.

Putting Congress in a spot, Mani pointed out that in the first affidavit he had given every detail of Ishrat and none of the facts were denied.

"He (P Chidambaram) has only said that IB inputs are not conclusive. If they were not conclusive, he should have said. We have something else to the contrary," he said.

Mani also alleged of harassment by ex-SIT chief Satish Verma, adding that it is for Verma to answer whether he was working on someone's direction.

"Cigarette butts were put on my thighs and so many things happened. The interrogation started at around 9 am, then Satish Verma joined the interrogation at 10:30 am, went up to 2:30-3 pm in polite manner. After that he (Satish Verma) started narrating nonsense. He became physical after 4 pm. I informed the seniors. I have already put an affidavit in the Supreme Court," he said.

Mani further alleged that Verma forced him to take the name of former IB Special Director Rajendra Kumar in bringing the affidavit.

"I said that is not the truth, I am competent. I don't require an IB Officer to walk in and say sign the affidavit. I did not give in to his (Satish Verma) pressures. At 5 p.m., I said this is not right, my wife will go to Chief Justice's house and we have contacts there," Mani added.

The former undersecretary for internal security also said that his phone was snatched and he was threatened to taken into custody.

"Pillai was not the home secretary. By then, the tenure had changed. RK Singh had come. The procedure is I had to report to the office where I am working. They will forward it to the concerned ministry. In this case, at that time, I was posted in Ministry of Urban Development. I recorded all these things. I put it up to my seniors. I believe that they must have forwarded it to the minister of home affairs," he said.

Mani also said that he expected the government to protect his interest.

"I have seen the file, I will use the word cross fire not encounter. If inquiry into cross fire or encounter was the only mandate of the SIT, why was I called for the investigation. I was not posted in 2004 in MHA, I came in 2005 or so. Legal Attache in the US embassy Daniel had also written saying that it (Ishrat being a terrorist) is true" he said.

In a startling revelation, Mani said earlier that he was coerced to file the second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case.

The second affidavit is the one in which the references to the alleged links of Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were removed.

Mani's shocking claims come just a few days after former home secretary GK Pillai revealed that someone at the political level did not want the real picture to come out in the Ishrat case.

Pillai had mentioned that two affidavits submitted by the home ministry in relation to the case were contradictory to each other.

The former home secretary had said there was no doubt that those killed in the alleged fake encounter in Gujarat had links with LeT.

Ishrat was one among four people killed in an alleged fake encounter case in 2004.

Javed Sheikh alias Pranesh Pillai besides two Pakistani nationals Amjad Ali and Jishan Johar Abdul Ghani, all alleged LeT terrorists, were also killed in the encounter.

(With ANI inputs)
Bengaluru: For the second consecutive day on Wednesday, Karnataka Legislative Assembly was rocked by the controversy over a luxury watch gifted to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with JD(S) too joining BJP in pressing for discussion on the issue.

The House that was adjourned twice, passed the Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, amidst din.

As the Assembly met for the day, opposition BJP entered the well of the House and demanded that discussion on the issue be allowed and the Speaker reconsider his decision on allowing an adjournment motion on the issue.

"Chair should reconsider its decision; we have lot of things to discuss on this issue of public importance. Government is trying to close the issue," Opposition Leader Jagadish Shettar said.

Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa had yesterday rejected BJP's appeal to allow adjournment motion on the issue.

Sticking to his decision, Thimmappa today said there will be no reconsideration of the decision.

BJP then continued its protest, demanding that the affidavit, documents and receipt relating to the watch be made public by Dr Girish Chandra Verma, who is said to have gifted the watch to the Chief Minister.

Ruling Congress members led by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Jayachandra countered BJP's protest, accusing it of trying to question the Speaker's ruling.

Intervening, JD(S) leader Y S V Datta requested the Chair to allow a discussion on the issue in any other form as the adjournment motion has been overruled.

When government did not respond to the request positively JD(S) members too entered the well of the House in protest.

Questioning the "double standard" of the government, Shettar said Karnataka government has appealed against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa considering undeclared gifts received by her as illegal wealth in the disproportionate assets case, and questioned why no similar yardstick was being followed against Siddaramaiah.

As both opposition and treasury benches were involved in war of words, the House was adjourned by the Speaker, who called the floor leaders for a meeting.

When the House resumed, opposition members entered the well of the House and demanded that discussion on the issue be taken up immediately.

"Government is making it a prestige issue; there are lot of other issues like drought that need to be discussed. If government has nothing to hide, why are they shying away from discussion If they have guts let them agree for discussion," Shettar said.

Criticising the attitude of the government, Shettar also raised the issue of Power Minister D K Shivakumar reportedly directing police action against a "frustrated" individual who, on phone, rued about unscheduled power cuts.

The Speaker said there would be no special discussion on the issue, but opposition can debate it during the motion of thanks to the Governor for his address, and continued with the question hour amidst uproar in the House.

As the Speaker asked Ministers to lay the papers mentioned against their names on the table of the House and conducted proceedings, Shettar opposed it, saying the House was not in order.

He demanded that the case be investigated by a central agency so that truth is revealed.

Amidst sloganeering and protest by the opposition, the Speaker even allowed the introduction and passage of Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, aimed at making provision to provide pension to family members of the member deceased before December 26, 1978 operative from February 22, 2014.

As the protest continued, the Speaker once again adjourned the House till afternoon.
New Delhi: With an aim to boost BJP's prospects in the upcoming Assam Assembly elections, the party has forged an alliance with Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) to jointly contest the upcoming polls.

The development came after PM Narendra Modi launched BJP's election campaign from Kokrajhar  in January by announcing a slew of initiatives, including tribal status to two communities. It seems the strategy carved out by PM Modi and Amit Shah is yielding good results.

Here are five reasons why this time BJP may score big in the Assam Assembly elections:-

Alliance with Asom Gana Parishad (AGP)

- BJP broadened alliance by tying up with Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) too. Reportedly, BJP's top brass was already in touch with the AGP high command including ex-CM of Assam Prafulla Mahanta. Notably, AGP and BJP had fought the 2009 Parliamentary elections together.

BJP's new ally Bodoland People's Front

- PM Modi had kick started the poll campaign with its new ally Bodoland People's Front (BPF). The BPF is believed to have strong presence in Kokrajhar and its neighbouring areas. The party has been in power in Bodoland Territorial Council since its inception in 2003. Hence, with this new alliance partner, BJP's prospects of coming to power have been enhanced.

'Modi wave'

- Considering how 2014 Lok Sabha polls witnessed 'Modi wave' that helped BJP bagging seven of the state's 14 LS seats, while AGP drew a blank, this time the saffron party may secure enough seats in Assam.

Tribal status to two communities



- PM Modi had announced that the people of Karbi community living in the plains of Assam and Bodos living in hill areas would be granted tribal status and the process has already started. This is also likely to boost winning prospects.

Recruitment of Northeast youths in Delhi Police

- The Prime Minister had said that he had instructed that youths from the Northeast should be recruited in the Delhi Police and the process has already started. With this move, BJP may woo Northeast youths.

---

Election to Assam's 126-member Assembly is expected to be held in April-May along with four other states.
New Delhi: Amid furore over the upcoming World Culture Festival being organised by the Art of Living foundation, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has said that they will not harm the Yamuna river.

The three-day event will be held on the floodplains of the Yamuna river near DND toll bridge and massive construction is underway for the festival starting March 11.

The event, being held on the 35th anniversary of the Art of Living foundation, is expected to be attended by nearly 35 lakh people.

Several NGOs and environmental activists have moved the National Green Tribunal (NGT) against the festival saying it will cause irreparable damage to the Yamuna ecosystem.

While NGT is continuing hearing on the matter, it has proposed a fine of Rs 120 crores on the organisers of the event.

But, Ravi Shankar, the founder of Art of Living, has stressed that they will not cause any harm to the river.

We would not harm the Yamuna. Nobody associated with the event will stay there. They will come at 5 pm and leave by 10 pm. The hue and cry that we are destroying the Yamuna floodplain is nonsense, Ravi Shankar told the Hindustan Times in an interview.

He dismissed the allegations that flora has been destroyed to prepare the ground for the event.

First of all, there was nothing there but weeds at the location. Secondly, the land is cultivated. If it was virgin land with flora and fauna, I would have been the first one to say lets not do anything here, we dont want to destroy anything, the AOL founder said.

He also denied that trees have been cut on the floodplains.

Ravi Shankar said the allegation of debris being dumped on the floodplain was wrong and that they have only levelled the land.

Responding to fears that high footfall will cause damage to the floodplain, Ravi Shankar said festivals have been organised for centuries on the banks of river Ganga.

Asked how traffic will be managed during the festival, the spiritual guru said they are in touch with police and that 10,000 volunteers are working on the traffic management plan.
Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister S Siddaramaiah on Wednesday handed over his Hublot watch, worth Rs 70 lakh to Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa.

Siddaramaiah decided to hand over the watch after Karnataka Legislative Assembly was rocked by the controversy over a luxury watch gifted to him with JD(S) too joining BJP in pressing for discussion on the issue.

Siddaramaiah's dramatic gesture came when the House reassembled after two adjournments with BJP and JDS persisting with their demand for a discussion on the issue. The Chief Minister said in the letter to the Speaker, who read it out, that he had paid "advance tax" for the watch.

While giving away the high-priced wrist watch, Siddaramaiah declared it as a state asset.

"I, being the Chief Minister of Karnataka, by following the precedents set by my predecessors in Office, declare that the gifted watch HUBLOT BIG BANG.301-M as government asset...," Siddaramaiah said. He requested the Speaker to forward the watch to the Chief Secretary to place it in the Cabinet Hall at Vidhana Soudha.

Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy today led the charge in the Karnataka Assembly and launched a scathing attack on Siddaramaiah.

Kumaraswamy was the first one to target the Congress leader over the diamond-studded watch is worth Rs 68,56,000, and with customs duty is worth Rs 70 lakh.

Siddaramaiah, on his part, had said that the watch was given to him by a person named Dr Girish Chandra Verma, adding that the watch was `second hand`.

"He forcibly took out the watch that he was wearing and gave it to me. I said no, but he insisted and gave it to me. I couldn`t say more as he was a friend," he had told a press conference.

Kumaraswamy had also said that the Karanataka CM has left wearing the sunglasses which is worth Rs one lakh.

Siddaramaiah had left the Janata Dal (Secular) in 2007 to join the Congress.
Kochi: An Indian court has sentenced a Christian priest to 40 years in prison for repeatedly raping a 12-year-old girl at the church where he worked, the prosecutor said Wednesday.

Sanil K James was convicted of raping and sexually assaulting the girl at a Salvation Army church in the southern state of Kerala in 2014.

The 37-year-old is also being investigated for the alleged rape of another girl during the same period.

"The court said the priest deserved the maximum punishment for this cruel act," special prosecutor Pious Mathew told AFP.

Prosecutors told the court James had raped the girl, now aged 13, several times inside the church complex over a period of two months.

The judge ordered that he should not get remission and also imposed a 20,000 rupee ($295) fine.

He was given two 20-year sentences, one under India`s stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences act and one under a separate section of the criminal law covering the rape of children.

Activist Smriti Minocha said the length of the term was highly unusual in a country where even those sentenced to life usually only serve 14 years.

"Courts normally award life sentences to rape convicts but sentencing him to 40 years is exceptional," said Minocha, director of the women`s justice initiative at the Human Rights Law Network, a Delhi-based NGO.

"Most of the cases of child sexual abuse remain undocumented, it`s only grave acts like rape and molestation which are reported."

Child sexual abuse is common in homes, schools and residential care facilities across India and critics say the authorities have a poor record in bringing offenders to justice.

More than 18,000 children were sexually assaulted in 2014, according to India`s national crime records bureau.

A UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2014 said it was alarmed by widespread violence and sexual abuse of children in India.

It said one in three rape victims in India was a minor and half of the abusers were known to the child or in a position of trust and responsibility.
New Delhi: In a relief for dance bar owners, the Supreme Court on Wednesday modified seven conditions put by the Maharashtra Police for the issuance of licences to hotels and restaurants in Mumbai.

The apex court bench, comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, excluded installation of CCTV from restaurants and dance performance place.

The SC also rejected the condition that live CCTV footage of dance performances should be given to area police.

The court, however, said the CCTV can be permitted for security purposes at entrance gate.

Giving three days` time to the owners of the hotels and restaurants to comply with the modified conditions, the apex court bench said competent authorities would issue licences in 10 days and thereafter.

"We are certain that competent authorities will not conceive of anything to stall the grant of licence," the court said and added that the authorities will "comply with the command of this court and not venture to defy it".

The court order came after the Maharashtra government watered down some of the conditions for the grant of dance bar licences.

The petitioner Indian Hotels and Restaurant Association had told the court on February 24 that some of the conditions being imposed for the grant of licence were unreasonable.

On February 24, the court had asked the Maharashtra government to revisit the conditions.
Kabul: The Indian Consulate in eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad was attacked by a group of heavily armed terrorists on Wednesday.

The blast, believed to be a suicide attack, occurred around noon.

After a fierce gunbattle, the security forces managed to eliminate all five terrorists who were involved in the attack.

At least 19 persons, including some policemen and civilians, were also injured in the attack.

The Afghan media claimed that the operation to neutralise all attackers has ended and the entire area is being searched massively.

The Afghan government troops had cordoned off the area shortly after the blast, keeping people away from the site fearing more blasts.

Several warning shots were also fired by the security force personnel.

The Iranian and the Pakistani consulate buildings are also located at the same place.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had earlier confirmed that it was a suicide explosion which targeted the Indian Consulate.

All Indian Consulate officials are reported to be safe, the MEA said.

The ITBP jawans deployed at the Indian Mission also joined the Afghanistan security forces in eliminating the terrorists who were holed up in a nearby building.

Those injured were rushed to a nearby hospital, said reports. The Afghan media had earlier claimed that five attackers, including a suicide bomber, were involved in the attack on the Indian Consulate.

Some eyewitnesses were also quoted as saying by the Afghan media that several blasts took place near the gate of Indian Consulate.

One suicide bomber had detonated himself after which four other terrorists started firing indiscriminately on the security forces.

The explosions were so powerful that they shattered windows and doors in nearby buildings and destroyed at least eight cars.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

It comes nearly two months after a suicide attack on the nearby Pakistani Consulate in Jalalabad in January.
Washington: In an unusually candid admission, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan`s adviser for foreign affairs, has said that Islamabad has considerable influence over the Taliban because its leaders live in the country.

"We have some influence over them because their leadership is in Pakistan and they get some medical facilities. Their families are here," Aziz said.

"We can use those levers to pressurise them to say, `Come to the table`. But we can`t negotiate on behalf of the Afghan government because we cannot offer them what the Afghan government can offer them," an online gandhara.rferl on Wednesday quoted Aziz as saying.

Aziz made the comments at Washington`s Council on Foreign Relations think tank on March 1. He added that Islamabad pressurised Afghan Taliban leaders to participate in the first-ever direct talks with the Afghan government on July 7, 2015.

"We have to use these levers and (have) restricted their movements, restricted their access to hospitals and other facilities, and threatened them that `If you don`t come forward and talk, we will at least expel you`," he said of the tough message Islamabad sent to Taliban leaders, most of whom are believed to be operating out of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan Province.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US, and China last week agreed on a road map to end the Afghan war through negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban.

Taliban representatives are expected to join Afghan officials in the first round of peace talks in Pakistan during the next few weeks.

Aziz, however, took pains to convince Washington`s audience that Islamabad has abandoned its support for the Islamist militant groups.

"After our government came into power in 2013, there has been a significant change in our policy. We are now moving against all terrorists without discrimination," he said.
Chennai: With an eye on the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly Elections, J Jayalalithaa-led government has decided to remit sentences of convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case and release them.

The AIADMK government today sought Centre's response in seeking release of the former prime minister's assassins.

In a letter to Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi today, Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan said the state government has received petitions from the seven convicts requesting it to release them as they had spent more than 20 years in prison.

"Nalini has also filed a writ plea in Madras High Court requesting the government of Tamil Nadu to release her," he said.

"The Government of Tamil Nadu after taking into consideration the petitions of the seven convicts has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and to release the seven persons since all of them have already served imprisonment for 24 years," he said.

The convicts are V Sriharan alias Murugan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan, A G Perarivalan alias Arivu, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini.

In 2014, Jayalalithaa had announced that her government would release the seven convicts.

However, the matter soon went to the Supreme Court and is pending there, with the Central government questioning the states powers to grant remission to them on specific grounds.

Rajiv Gandhi and 14 others were killed on May 21, 1991 when a suicide bomber blew herself up at an election campaign rally in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai.

Nalini was sentenced to death by a special court for her involvement in Gandhi's assassination at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991.

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Sonia Gandhi, the former prime minister's widow, petitioned for clemency -- for the sake of Nalini's daughter.

Nalini, an Indian, had accompanied the Sri Lankan woman suicide bomber who blew up Rajiv Gandhi with concealed explosives.

Nalini, who was a close friend of an LTTE operative known as Murugan, who too is an accused in the case, later gave birth to a girl in prison.
Chennai: After forging an alliance with the Congress for the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, Karunanidhi's DMK is likely to tie-up with Vijayakanth's DMDK, reports said on Wednesday.

Interestingly, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Prakash Javadekar had met Vijayakanth recently, amidst reports that BJP-DMDK alliance may soon be over.

During 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had joined hands with DMDK an PMK. While, the BJP and PMK had won one seat each, DMDK was unable to open its account.

Senior Congress leader and Leader in Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad announced last month that the party will contest the upcoming Assembly election in Tamil Nadu in an alliance with DMK.

Azad, after meeting the DMK chief Karunanidhi at his residence in Chennai, announced the news to reporters, DMK and Congress will fight Tamil Nadu assembly elections in alliance. Our mail goal is to put in place a government led by the DMK.

Congress had contested the last Lok Sabha elections on its own and had drawn a blank. It had contested the last Assembly elections along with DMK but secured just five seats. Assembly strength in the state is 234.
Chennai: The gleaming gold shops on arterial T. Nagar, NSC Bose Road and Purasawakkam in the city besides other jewellery shops across Tamil Nadu, will for the first time, down their shutters for three days from tomorrow demanding the Centre to rescind the one per cent excise duty levy on articles of gold and diamond studded jewellery.

The strike will see the participation of about 35,000 jewellers including 7,000 in Chennai. In addition the gold and silver bullion and goldsmiths too would join the nation-wide strike from Wednesday.

The strike will result in a transaction loss of Rs 250 crore per day in Tamil Nadu and on all India basis the transaction loss would be over Rs 900 - 1,000 crore crore per day, says T. Shanta Kumar, managing director of Coimbatore-based Kirtilal Kalidas Jewellers Pvt.Ltd.

Our association has already declared holiday for our nearly 2.5 lakh employees in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Shanta Kumar told this correspondent. Both the State and Central governments would forfeit the revenue by way of taxes during the three-day strike.
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will be setting up a state university and modern library in Allahabad, an official said on Wednesday.

Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan has asked the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) to present a proposal this week for setting up the university on a 100-acre stretch of land and 20 acres for the library.

The university will be named after the late Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Janeshwar Mishra.

"Till the new building is constructed, Allahabad divisional commissioner should arrange an appropriate building for commencement of State university classes from next academic session," Ranjan said.

The chief secretary has also asked concerned officials to ensure timely payment at proper rate of the 120 acre land identified by UPSIDC under Saraswati Hitech City at Naini, Allahabad.

He directed the Higher Education department to put up a proposal for allocation of Rs 50 crore to the finance department for the infrastructure development at the state university to be set up at Allahabad.

In order to operationalise the university soon, the top bureaucrat has also directed for arrangement of personnel, furniture and computers under the jurisdiction of Allahabad State University.
Adelaide: An Australian inquiry Wednesday heard of a gun-toting paedophile priest who made children kneel between his legs during confession as Vatican finance chief Cardinal George Pell admitted a time of "crimes and cover-ups" within the Catholic Church.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Sydney heard evidence from Pell, via videolink from Rome, for a third day, with the senior Australian official again facing intense questioning about what he knew.

The inquiry is currently focused on the town of Ballarat and the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, where Pell grew up and worked, and how the church dealt with complaints, many dating back to the 1970s, against the Catholic clergy.

Gail Furness, the top lawyer leading questioning in the inquiry, centred attention Wednesday on Doveton parish priest Peter Searson, who Pell called "one of the most unpleasant" men he had ever met.

The church failed to act in the 1980s despite mounting evidence of his bizarre behaviour.

The commission heard that one complainant said Searson brandished a gun and made children kneel between his legs when they went to confession, during which he had a tape recorder.

Pell called Searson`s behaviour "abhorrent" but denied knowing about it at the time, and suggested that Melbourne Archbishop Frank Little, now deceased, should have done more.

"Archbishop Little for some reason seemed incapable or unable to deal with Father Searson, or even to provide any adequate level of information about the situation," said Pell, suggesting he likely took no action to protect the church`s reputation.

The inquiry heard Searson, who died in 2009, was also accused of sexual assault, swinging a cat by its tail over a fence, killing it, showing children a dead body in a coffin and holding a knife to the chest of a young girl.

Pell, as an auxiliary bishop in the Melbourne archdiocese, said he sought a briefing from the Catholic Education Office after a delegation came to him in 1989 complaining about Searson, but claimed the office "deceived" him about what was being done.

Furness suggested Pell`s evidence was designed to deflect blame from him for doing nothing about the priest, to which he replied: "That is not accurate."

The senior Vatican official has claimed this week that at least two archbishops and other people in authority all lied to him by not revealing what was happening in Ballarat and Melbourne.

"This was an extraordinary world. A world of crimes and cover-ups. And people did not want the status quo to be disturbed," he explained.Furness also questioned Pell on Brother Edward Dowlan, who was based in Ballarat and Melbourne, and was jailed for abusing boys.

Pell, an adviser to the Ballarat bishop at the time, said he could not remember, when asked if he was aware of specific allegations against Dowlan.

"I can`t remember in any detail except that there were unfortunate rumours about his activity with young people. It was always vague and unspecific," he said.

"I regret that I didn`t do more at that stage."

On Tuesday, Pell, who heads the Vatican Treasury, said the crimes of priest Gerald Ridsdale, convicted of more than 100 child sex abuse charges, were a sad story but they were "not of much interest" to him at the time.

He denied all knowledge about Ridsdale`s offending and accused the Ballarat bishop at the time, Ronald Mulkearns, of "gross deception" by failing to tell him what was happening.

A group of abuse survivors who travelled to Rome to witness the testimony have requested a meeting with Pope Francis and Pell Wednesday said he was "happy to assist".

Australia ordered the Royal Commission in 2012 after a decade of growing pressure to investigate allegations of widespread paedophilia.

It has spoken to almost 5,000 survivors and heard claims of abuse involving churches, orphanages, community and youth groups and schools.
Manilla: A German man whose mummified body was found on a yacht adrift off the southern Philippines had died of a heart attack about a week earlier, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday.

Police earlier named the victim based on documents found on the yacht on Friday as Manfred Fritz Bajorat of Germany, but they have yet to establish where he had sailed from or where he was heading.

"The cause of death is acute myocardial infarction based on the autopsy by (the) regional crime laboratory," national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor told AFP.

"The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days," he added, citing a police statement by police in the southern Philippines.

Local fishermen found the white-hulled, 13-metre (44-foot) yacht with a broken mast adrift on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean on Friday, with the dried-up corpse of the naked man hunched over a table in the main cabin.

Police launched an inquiry to determine whether he had been the victim of a crime, but the autopsy result indicated otherwise.

The area where the boat was found is some 100 kilometres (60 miles) off the town of Barobo, the town`s deputy police chief Inspector Mark Navales told AFP.

"The... saltwater in the air could have mummified his body," Navales added.

Documents, old pictures of a family visiting Paris landmarks, rice and tinned food lay scattered on the cabin of the boat, which had taken in water and was listing to one side, he said.

One document photographed by police indicated the boat had obtained clearance from maritime police in Sao Vicente in 2013, although it was unclear if it was issued in Cape Verde or Brazil, which have ports of the same name.

Police were still investigating the yacht`s travel plan, Chief Superintendent Mayor said.

The German embassy in Manila referred queries on the case to the German foreign ministry.
Riyadh: Gulf monarchies on Wednesday declared Lebanon`s Hezbollah a "terrorist" group, in the latest regional move against the Shiite organisation fighting in support of Syria`s regime.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council "decided to consider the militias (of Hezbollah) a terrorist organisation", GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said in a statement.

The Sunni-dominated GCC targeted Hezbollah because of "hostile actions of the militia who recruit the young people (of the Gulf)," he said.

Zayani cited "their terrorist acts and incitement in Syria, Yemen and in Iraq", which he said were threatening Arab security.

Gulf nations have taken a series of measures against Hezbollah since Saudi Arabia last month halted a $3 billion programme funding French military supplies to Beirut.

Hezbollah is backed by Saudi Arabia`s regional Shiite rival Iran, which supports opposing sides to Riyadh in conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

Announcing the military funding cut last month, a Saudi official said the kingdom had noticed "hostile Lebanese positions resulting from the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state".

He specifically cited Lebanon`s refusal to join the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in January.

Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after demonstrators burned its embassy and a consulate following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Last week Saudi Arabia urged its nationals to leave Lebanon and avoid travelling there.

Qatar and Kuwait followed with similar travel advisories. But the United Arab Emirates went further, banning its nationals from travel to Lebanon and reducing diplomatic representation there.

Saudi Arabia last week extended sanctions on Hezbollah, freezing the assets and prohibiting dealings with three Lebanese nationals and four companies.

Gulf monarchies had already sanctioned Hezbollah in 2013, targeting residency permits and the movement`s financial and business activities in reprisal for its armed intervention in Syria.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar back rebels opposed to Syria`s government, and Riyadh says it is ready to send special forces to fight Islamic State jihadists in Syria if a US-led coalition decides on ground action.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday called on Saudi Arabia not to collectively punish Lebanon`s people just because Riyadh disagreed with his group`s policies.

In a televised address, Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia does not have "the right to sanction the Lebanese people because one particular party took a certain position".

Nasrallah pledged Hezbollah would continue to speak out against what it saw as Saudi aggression in the region.
Jerusalem: The Israeli Army is to return West Bank land it requisitioned nearly 40 years ago to its Palestinian owners in what a human rights group called an "extremely unusual" move.

Israeli rights group Yesh Din said that the army had taken the decision to surrender control of the land after it petitioned the High Court late last year.

The decision, which spares the Army a potentially lengthy court case, will see more than 170 hectares (420 acres) of what used to be valuable farmland restored to its original owners, Yesh Din said.

The land, which had been seized for military purposes in the 1970s and 1980s, had ceased to be used by the Army.

The largest of the claims involves 170 hectares of land in the village of Jalud in the northern West Bank.

Control of other tracts of land near the city of Ramallah will also be transferred.

"These are lands that have been seized nearly 40 years ago," Yesh Din spokesman Gilad Grossman told AFP. "Palestinian farmers rely on their land.

"For them to be able to return to these lands, maybe they can improve their lives."

Grossman called on the army to give up other land that it had seized but was no longer using. "We shouldn`t have to go to court every time," he said.

The army did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jalud village council leader Abdullah Hamed welcomed the army`s decision to surrender control but said villagers were still waiting for a second decision allowing them to actually return to their land.

He said that before it was confiscated, the land had supported up to 1,000 people.

Israel seized the West Bank in the Six Day War of 1967.

In the early years of the occupation, the army confiscated large tracts of the territory for military purposes.

Some were later used for the construction of Israeli settlements regarded as illegal by the international community.
Amman: Jordanian security forces killed seven Islamist militants overnight in the northern border city of Irbid, a security source said on Wednesday, in one of the country`s largest sweeps in years against hardline sleeper cells.

One Jordanian police officer was also killed in the operation, which two security sources said targeted mainly members of the Islamic State group. At least 30 suspects were rounded up.

Dozens of special forces clashed with militants holed up near a Palestinian refugee camp in the centre of the city, which is close to the Syrian border, the first source said.

The manhunt began on Tuesday night and ended at dawn, according to officials.

Jordan has tried and sentenced dozens of people, mostly Jordanians, who have returned from Syria, some of whom were recruited by Syria`s al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front or Islamic State.

In a tighter crackdown on followers of radical Islamist groups since last year, it has also arrested dozens of sympathisers who show support for such groups on social media.

Jordan`s King Abdullah, a U.S. ally who has safeguarded his country`s peace treaty with Israel, has been among the most vocal among regional leaders voicing alarm about the threat from Islamic State, which has taken territory in Syria and Iraq.

Jordan`s military has conducted sorties against Islamic State hideouts in Syria.

Since the civil war erupted in Syria in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have joined Sunni militant groups fighting in the insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad`s rule.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have meanwhile fled across the border and are now living in Jordan, some in refugee camps.

Jordan has long been vigilant about the risk of militant strikes in a country that has suffered such attacks before, notably bombings on Amman hotels by al Qaeda-linked militants during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
California: US National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers warned Tuesday that hackers will inevitably mount a cyber attack against US infrastructure, similar to the power failure in western Ukraine last year.

"It`s only a matter of the when, not the if, you are going to see a nation state, a group or an actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure of the United States," Rogers told a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

Rogers also heads the US military`s Cyber Command, which is engaged in targeting enemy networks and social media sites.

On December 23, parts of western Ukraine were plunged into darkness after a computer virus affected the networks of several regional electricity companies.

"An actor penetrated the Ukrainian power grid and brought large segments of it offline in a very well-crafted attack that both focused on knocking the system down but also focused on how was the provider likely to respond to that outage," Rogers said.

"Seven weeks ago, it was Ukraine. That isn`t the last we are going to see of this, and that worries me."Rogers and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in separate presentations, urged cyber security specialists gathered at a flagship annual RSA Conference here to work with the US government to keep the country and its people safe.

"I believe the future is all about partnerships and it is all about integration," Rogers said.

"We are not going to solve this within the government, and within the Department of Defense specifically; it is partnerships that will develop the best outcomes."

The charm offensive here by Lynch and Rogers came amid a battle with Apple over cracking into an iPhone.

"We know that devices are more and more the repository of all types of information and are so essential to solving serious crimes," Lynch said during an on-stage chat following her prepared remarks.

"Having the inability to obtain evidence that could save lives is a real risk."

Lynch voiced support for data encryption, but argued for middle ground where investigators fighting evil doers could get legal access to information they need.

"The government relies on the cooperation of citizens and companies; the reality is that we are all in this together," Lynch said when asked where that point was in the legal fight with Apple.

"With the ability to live in this country and create wonderful things comes responsibility."

She referred to the confrontation with Apple as a "flashpoint" sparking a much-needed, broader conversation about the balance between digital privacy and public safety.

"Do we let one company -- no matter how great the company or how beautiful their devices -- decide the issue for all of us?" Lynch asked.While addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, FBI chief James Comey defended his agency`s efforts to force Apple to help unlock an iPhone in the San Bernardino attacks probe.

Addressing a case that has set off a fierce public debate, Comey said Americans need to know the safety implications if encryption makes it impossible to access data on smartphones and other devices.

"It`s our job to tell the American people the tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less effective," Comey told the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But Comey also acknowledged that forcing Apple to help unlock the San Bernardino shooter`s iPhone could set a precedent for other investigations.

The hearing comes amid an intense legal and political battle after Apple said it would challenge a court order to provide the FBI technical assistance to help break into the San Bernardino iPhone.

Apple has argued the FBI is effectively asking the company to "hack" its own devices and create a "back door" that malicious actors could exploit.

Comey told the hearing that in his view, "it`s not about back doors... there`s already a door on that phone, we`re asking Apple to take away the vicious guard dog."

In remarks prepared for the same hearing, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said the public should understand that "encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing," even if it complicates the work of law enforcement.

Encryption helps preserve privacy around the world, he added, "and it keeps people safe."

A US magistrate judge in New York ruled Monday that police overstepped the law when they called on Apple to unlock the iPhone of a suspected drug dealer.

The ruling could signal Apple is on sound footing in its separate but similar battle with the US government over being forced to help crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December`s San Bernardino attacks.

"We were obviously disappointed," Lynch said of the latest ruling during her on-stage chat at RSA.
Manila: Philippine authorities were on Wednesday probing an assassination attempt against an influential Saudi preacher who was on an Islamic State hit list, after the gunman was killed and two suspects arrested.

Preacher Sheikh Aaidh al-Qarni and a Saudi diplomat, Sheikh Turki Assaegh, were both wounded in a shooting as they left a university auditorium in the southern port city of Zamboanga, where the cleric had been giving an address.

Their Filipino police escorts killed the lone assailant, while two other suspects who were seen with the gunman were arrested as they tried to escape, police said.

"The suspect popped up from the crowd, moved in close and shot the victim" as he was boarding his car, said city police spokeswoman Chief Inspector Helen Galvez, adding that the gunman then walked to the other side of the vehicle and shot the Saudi diplomat.

A student driver`s licence and a local government ID were recovered from the man, which identified him as a 21-year-old Filipino, but police said they were not ruling out forgery.

A uniform for engineering students in the Western Mindanao State University, where Qarni was speaking, was found hidden in his backpack, but university officials could not immediately confirm the gunman was enrolled in the institution.

Islamic State militants who control vast swathes of Iraq and Syria had called on "lone wolves" to attack Qarni and several other Saudi clerics whom they accused of apostasy in the latest issue of Dabiq, their monthly online magazine.

Tuesday`s shooting also came as the army quelled a rampage by an obscure armed group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Butig, a poor farming town some 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Zamboanga.

At least 12 militants and five soldiers were killed while more than 30,000 people were displaced over several days of fighting, which ended as the army seized the gunmen`s main camp over the weekend.

However, Filipino authorities have not linked sympathisers of Islamic State jihadists to Tuesday`s attack.

He has been flown to Manila for treatment, according to a Saudi government statement.

Saudi media outlets described Qarni as a senior Islamic scholar and he has more than 12 million followers on Twitter. In his book "Awakening Islam," the French academic Stephane Lacroix included Qarni in his list of "the most famous" Saudi preachers.

Last week, the Saudi embassy in Manila asked local police for increased security for its premises, as well as for the Saudi national airline due to an unspecified threat, Philippine foreign affairs spokesman Charles Jose said.

Zamboanga, 800 kilometres south of Manila, is one of the largest cities in the southern Philippines, an area troubled by a decades-long separatist rebellion by the mainly Catholic nation`s Muslim minority that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The port city has a mixed Christian and Muslim population, and has been a frequent target of attacks by local Muslim militant groups.
Zamboanga (Philippines): Philippine authorities were today probing an assassination attempt against an influential Saudi preacher who was on an Islamic State hit list, after the gunman was killed and two suspects arrested.

Preacher Sheikh Aaidh al-Qarni and a Saudi diplomat, Sheikh Turki Assaegh, were both wounded in a shooting as they left a university auditorium in the southern port city of Zamboanga, where the cleric had been giving an address.

Their Filipino police escorts killed the lone assailant, while two other suspects who were seen with the gunman were arrested as they tried to escape, police said.

"The suspect popped up from the crowd, moved in close and shot the victim" as he was boarding his car, said city police spokeswoman Chief Inspector Helen Galvez, adding that the gunman then walked to the other side of the vehicle and shot the Saudi diplomat.

A student driver's licence and a local government ID were recovered from the man, which identified him as a 21-year-old Filipino, but police said they were not ruling out forgery.

A uniform for engineering students in the Western Mindanao State University, where Qarni was speaking, was found hidden in his backpack, but university officials could not immediately confirm the gunman was enrolled in the institution.

Islamic State militants who control vast swathes of Iraq and Syria had called on "lone wolves" to attack Qarni and several other Saudi clerics whom they accused of apostasy in the latest issue of Dabiq, their monthly online magazine.

Yesterday's shooting also came as the army quelled a rampage by an obscure armed group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Butig, a poor farming town some 200 kilometres northeast of Zamboanga.

At least 12 militants and five soldiers were killed while more than 30,000 people were displaced over several days of fighting, which ended as the army seized the gunmen's main camp over the weekend.

However, Filipino authorities have not linked sympathisers of Islamic State jihadists to yesterday's attack.

He has been flown to Manila for treatment, according to a Saudi government statement.

Saudi media outlets described Qarni as a senior Islamic scholar and he has more than 12 million followers on Twitter.
Washington: Pakistan Foreign Affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz today discussed the Afghan reconciliation process and "positive developments" in Indo-Pak relationship with US National Security Advisor Susan Rice here.

Rice appreciated the sacrifices made by Pakistan military in its successful endeavours to confront the security challenges posed by terrorist elements, according to a statement issued by the Pakistani Embassy here.

Aziz briefed Rice on the recent positive developments concerning Pakistan's relations with India, the official statement said.

Aziz, the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, reiterated the importance of reconciliation process in Afghanistan, while reassuring that Pakistan would provide the necessary support for an Afghan owned and Afghan led initiative in this regard.

He also stated that improved management of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was key to the ultimate success in efforts to root out the scourge of terrorism in the region, the statement said.

The two leaders reviewed the current state of Pak-US bilateral relations and expressed confidence that strategic partnership between the two countries would further strengthen and deepen in various areas of cooperation.

While recognising the significance of continued high-level engagements between the two countries, Rice said she is looking forward to the visit of the Prime Minister of Pakistan to Washington at the end of March for participation in the Nuclear Security Summit.
New Delhi: In a sharp attack on P Chidambaram, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the second affidavit filed in the Supreme Court by the UPA government in the Ishrat Jahan case was "fraudulent".

Saying the encounter in which Jahan and her other alleged LeT operatives were killed in Gujarat was "honest", he asked if the Congress believed it was fake why did it then allow those officers involved in the actual shootout to get bail on the 90th day by not filing chargesheets and make them a witness.

In an interview to a news channel, he said the first affidavit by the UPA government mentioning her terror links "was not ambiguous. It was as clear as day light. The second affidavit was fraudulent."

Asked if the UPA government played around with the intelligence framework, the Minister said, "Obviously."

Chidambaram had on Monday justified the filing of second affidavit as absolutely correct and as Minister owned up the decision.

Recalling his 2013 blog on the issue, he said he had raised questions about allowing CBI to investigate the Intelligence Bureau operations and compromising of national security.

"Obviously when the encounter took place, there were some officers who were physically present in the encounter. The CBI arrested all of them. It consciously did not file a chargesheet within 90 days. So those officers were let out on bail," he said.

He claimed that those offers were then "asked to give statements under Section 164 against senior political leaders of the Gujarat government."

Those officers, he said, were not even named in the chargesheet.

On Congress president Sonia Gandhi's statement that she stood by what Chidambaram said, Jaitley said the series of facts brought out by him "make out a perfect case of how a concoction" was taking place.

"This has been a tradition of this political party. After all didn't they cook up the fake bank account against V P Singh when they saw a possible threat in him becoming a future Prime Minister," he said.

Fake bank accounts in VP Singh's sons' name were opened in St Kitts but this time "they were trying to fabricate a case of murder in this manner. This is the extent which the Congress party can stoop."

Asked if he wanted reopening of Ishrat Jahan files, Jaitley quoted from his 2013 blog where he had stated that governments are not immortals and they change. "But officers who are indulging in this would one day have to answer many questions. I had further said that I hope one day a Commission of Inquiry is set up to go into the functioning of CBI in this. This I had written in 2013," he said.

When pressed further if he wanted a Commission of Inquiry, he said he did not want to say anything more than what he had written in the blog.

Jaitley said it was unheard in criminal law that an accused becomes a witness against an alleged co-accused. "So since they had no evidence, that's the only one they could fabricate," he said.

He claimed that a senior officer of the CBI, who was pushing for this prosecution during the period running up to the 2014 election, was rewarded with a position in the Disaster Management Department of Government.

"So now if you see the sum total of the facts, you change an affidavit, you censor a paragraph of the FBI, you bring in pressure on SIT -- it had to be reconstituted three times.

"You have the Home Ministry interfering in a CBI investigation, you get the CBI to open out the covert operations of a security intelligence agency, the IB and then you have friendly bails being granted to certain people who were actually involved in the encounter in a quid-pro-quo that they should name political leaders, this is what was going on," he said.

He said the sense of truth cannot indefinitely be hold back. "Officers with a conscience are speaking out and ultimately every word of what I had written in my Blog in 2013 each fact is now being corroborated."

Questioning composition of Special Investigation Team (SIT) on the issue, he said the first officer appointed by the Central government was extremely independent but was transferred to the North East.

"They made it physically impossible for him to Chair the committee," he said adding the second officer rescued himself because he probably felt pressures.

"The third officer and contemporaneous evidence would be available as to how his arm twisting took place in order to get him agree to a fabricated report," he said.

CBI, he said, does not come under the Home Ministry and is supposed to be independent. "Was the Director (of CBI) being called repeatedly and asked to continue with a particular officer in the SIT who could not do a frame up and then you get a CBI inquiry or investigation into the functioning of IB. The covert operations of a security intelligence agency are made public and made bare," he said.
Islamabad: The Senate of Pakistan witnessed a heated debate over reports that oil-rich Saudi Arabia might buy nuclear weapons from Islamabad.

Senate chairman Mian Raza Rabbani admitted an adjournment motion moved by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Senator Hafiz Hamdullah despite the government's opposition, with directives that the house would hold a detailed debate on this issue by next Tuesday.

Senator Hamdullah said that Saudi Arabia could buy nuclear bomb amidst mounting tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Riyadh's move to buy nuclear weapons would destabilise the Middle East as well as Pakistan, JUI-F Senator maintained.

Federal Minister for Commerce and Trade, Khurram Dastgir Khan, opposed the adjournment motion.

The House was informed that a national census would be taken this year and the reason for a delay in the census was the ongoing military operation against militants in the restive North Waziristan.

Federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, informed that a national census would be taken in March 2016 as per the recommendation of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
Seoul: South Korea on Wednesday hailed the adoption of a new UN Security Council resolution on North Korea, calling it the toughest and most effective in UN history.

Seoul`s foreign ministry said in a government statement that it was a resolution including tougher-than-ever sanctions against Pyongyang, expressing a perfect welcome and support toward it, Xinhua reported.

Calling the North Korea`s nuclear test and rocket launch as "intolerable", the statement said the new UN resolution was an expression of the international community`s firm will to change the DPRK`s "wrong calculations" by making Pyongyang pay a harsh price for its reckless provocations that came in defiance of previous UN resolutions and the international society.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the new sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6 and went ahead with a long-range rocket launch on February 7.

South Korea vowed to make all necessary efforts, including cooperation with all UN member states, to make the resolution enforced without any setbacks, saying the country will strengthen international cooperation further to encourage Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear programme "completely, verifiably and irreversibly."

Seoul urged Pyongyang to come to a road to denuclearisation as early as possible by accepting calls from the international society as seen in the fresh resolution, warning that Pyongyang would face more severe consequences if it conducts more extreme provocations.

Seoul said new sanctions against Pyongyang would eliminate loopholes in previous resolutions to focus on cutting off resources to finance North Korea`s nuclear programmes.
Ottawa: The brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked Canada's public safety minister to intervene to halt the deportation of an Algerian man accused of being an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent.

Alexandre Trudeau urged the government in a letter to quash its own order to deport Mohamed Harkat, a 47-year-old former pizza delivery man who has been fighting for more than a decade to stay in Canada.

The documentary filmmaker has long supported Harkat, reportedly offering in 2005 to act as his surety in a bail application, while steadfastly opposing a provision of Canada's immigration law used to detain him.

The seldom-used national security measure allows tribunals to be held in secrecy and indefinite jailing without charge of foreigners suspected of terror ties. It has been at the center of a post-911 legal and political shakeup in Canada that has pitted security advocates against champions of civil liberties.

In a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Alexandre Trudeau said the so-called security certificates are "fundamentally unfair."

"I am absolutely convinced that at this moment, he (Harkat) poses no danger whatsoever to the public or to public safety in Canada, but rather offers a positive commitment to the life he has created here."

A spokesman for Goodale confirmed receipt of the letter and its contents, but declined to comment on the request for leniency.

Harkat was first detained in 2002 on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, and spent nearly four years in jail before being released under strict bail conditions.

He has denied terror links, claiming he fled Algeria over a crackdown on a political party to which he belonged, the now-defunct and banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

But Canadian courts ruled he was likely an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent and a security threat.

The original security law used to prosecute Harkat was struck down in 2007 as unjust. But a tweaked version meant to ensure better legal representation of defendants was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Washington: Donald Trump`s triumphal march toward the Republican presidential nomination left his party in disarray Wednesday as Democrats coalesced around their White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton after her slew of Super Tuesday victories.

Both candidates emerged the clear winners after party nominating contests in a dozen states, piling up delegates on the biggest, most pivotal day of primaries in the race to replace President Barack Obama.

Trump was victorious in seven of 11 states, weakening but not eliminating his rivals, while Clinton equaled that score with wins in seven states against Bernie Sanders, absorbing a formidable challenge from the left.

But whereas Clinton appeared to solidify her support ahead of the next key round of primaries March 15, divisions within the Republicans deepened over Trump`s success with a slashing campaign that has galvanised disaffected voters but opened wounds on racial, ethnic and gender fronts.

With the 69-year-old billionaire powering past their favored candidates, Republican stalwarts have raised the possibility of the party splintering if Trump wins the nomination."I think that`s a very real possibility," Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, told National Public Radio.

"There are a lot of people who just cannot see themselves supporting Trump. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, telling Senate candidates if this is a problem for you, go ahead and run ads against him even if he is your party`s presidential nominee."

Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio have both pitched their campaigns to Republican voters looking to stop Trump.

In Tuesday`s polls, Cruz won his delegate-rich home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma as well as Alaska, a better performance than Rubio who notched just one victory in caucuses in Minnesota.

Those wins were enough to keep them both in the race for now, but did little to quiet the alarm among their establishment backers, who fear the party is headed toward an annihilating defeat in the general elections.

"Happiness for Donald Trump is a divided opposition. He`s got precisely that and it`s going nowhere for the time being," said Sabato`s Crystal Ball, a political newsletter published by the University of Virginia.

Trump`s wins were widespread, from Alabama and Georgia in the deep south, to Massachusetts in the northeast, to the vital battleground state of Virginia.

In his victory speech Tuesday night, the real estate mogul and reality TV star set aside his usual boastfulness to offer an olive branch to party leaders.

"I think we`ll be more inclusive and more unified. I think we`ll be a much bigger party," Trump said.

But Cruz used his victories to argue he is the only Republican who can beat Trump.

"For the candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, uniting," he said.

After his disappointing performance, Rubio ended the day in Florida -- a clear signal that he is banking on a win in his home state, which votes on March 15, the next major date in the primary cycle.

Two other Republican candidates -- Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson -- came up empty handed on Super Tuesday. Kasich also was expected to hang in until Ohio votes March 15. Once a contender, Carson has faded into irrelevance."Republicans are reaping the whirlwind right now, and Democrats should seize the chance to show Americans an alternative to Mr Trump`s politics of rage, and an image of themselves to be proud of, not shrink from," the liberal New York Times observed.

In her victory speech, Hillary Clinton signaled she is now turning her attention to a general election face-off with Trump.

"It`s clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we`re hearing on the other side has never been lower."

Attacking Trump`s pledge to "make America great again," she said, "America never stopped being great!"

Trump painted Clinton -- the former first lady, senator and secretary of state -- as a Washington insider who cannot address a furious electorate`s desire for change.

"She`s been there for so long. I mean if she hasn`t straightened it out by now, she`s not going to straighten it out in the next four years," he said.

A recent CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the general election -- set for November 8 -- were held now.

Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, has vowed to press on with his well-funded grass-roots campaign that has made the growing gap between rich and poor the central issue of the Democratic contest.

Sanders notched wins in his tiny home state of Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado and in Minnesota.

But Clinton, who was unbeatable in the southern states with big African-American majorities, trounced him in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas and Massachusetts.
Tunisia: Tunisia launched a counter-terrorism operation near the Libyan border on Wednesday after what state television said was an infiltration by an armed group from the other side.

"A security operation is under way against terrorists in Ben Guerdane," interior ministry spokesman Yasser Messbah told AFP without elaborating.

State television reported gunfire after an armed group in a 4x4 managed to get across the border.

Witnesses said that security forces had surrounded a house in El Aouija, 10 kilometres (six miles) outside Ben Guerdane and were exchanging fire with those inside.

Tunisian media reported that one civilian had died from a bullet wound. Mosaique FM radio said a soldier had been seriously wounded.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

A series of deadly attacks by the Islamic State jihadist group last year, which have dealt a devastating blow to the country`s tourism industry, are believed to have been planned from Libya.

Washington carried out an air strike last month against an IS training compound in western Libya, that it has said probably killed the attacks` mastermind as well as dozens of other militants.

Britain announced on Monday that it was sending a team of around 20 soldiers to Tunisia to train troops patrolling the border with Libya.
Tunisia: Tunisian security forces killed five militants near the Libyan border on Wednesday in a gunbattle in which one civilian also died and an army commander was wounded, the government said.

Troops had been on alert after receiving reports that militants had slipped across the border over the past three days in response to a US air strike on an Islamic State group training camp in Libya on February 18 that targeted a senior Tunisian commander, the interior ministry said.

The militants were killed after being surrounded by troops in a house in El Aouija, 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the town of Ben Guerdane, the defence ministry said.

The army commander was wounded in the head during the operation but was in a stable condition, ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati told AFP.

The civilian was killed by a stray bullet, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Explosive vests, improvised grenades and a large quantity of munitions were recovered from the slain militants, it added.

Search operations were continuing late Wednesday, the defence ministry said.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

A series of deadly attacks by IS on foreign holidaymakers last year, which have dealt a devastating blow to the country`s tourism industry, are believed to have been planned from Libya.

Last month`s US strike on the IS training camp outside the Libyan city of Sabratha targeted the suspected mastermind of two of the attacks, Noureddine Chouchane.

Washington has said that Chouchane was likely killed along with dozens of other militants.

Britain announced on Monday that it was sending a team of around 20 soldiers to Tunisia to train troops patrolling the border with Libya.
Jerusalem: Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian teens who had attacked an Israeli settler at his home in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the military said, as a wave of heightened violence entered its sixth month.

"There were two young guys, teenagers, terrorists, at my door, dressed in dark clothes and holding wooden clubs," the Israeli man, Roee Harel, from the Eli settlement near the Palestinian city of Nablus, told Army Radio.

He said the two began beating him before he managed to push them out of the house, and he also found a knife at the door.

Soldiers who rushed to the scene shot the two Palestinians, a military spokeswoman said. "Upon the significant threat to the people of the community, forces shot the attackers, resulting in their death," the military said in a statement.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two were both 17, from the adjacent village of Qaryout.

Since October Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests.

The violence has raised concern of further escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. The Palestinians and international powers have said Israel has often used excessive force against assailants, many of them youths.

Israel has rejected those allegations, saying it has been preventing lethal attacks on civilians and security forces.

Palestinian leaders say many Palestinian attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement towards creation of an independent state. Israel says they are being incited to violence by their leaders and on social media.
New York: The US Air Force created a worldwide sensation when it unveiled the first rough design of its underdevelopment Long Range Strike Bomber, tentatively named 'B-21'.

The futuristic military aircraft will be developed at a cost of $80 billion by Northrop Grumman. However, there are no existing prototypes of the aircraft.

The US Air Force will procure around 100 B-21s at a cost of around $500 million each.

The program has been shrouded in secrecy since its inception for fear of revealing military secrets to potential enemies, and to avoid giving the losing bidders any details before their formal protest was rejected last week.

The all-black plane has a distinctive, zigzagging shape and a super-low profile that will make it hard to spot on radar, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Air Force's B-2 bomber, which is also made by Northrop Grumman.
New Delhi: India, the United States and Japan will hold naval exercises in waters off the northern Philippines near the South China Sea this year, the US military said on Wednesday, a move likely to further raise tensions with China.

The announcement comes a day after the United States warned China against militarisation of the South China Sea, where Beijing is locked in a territorial dispute with several countries, saying there would be consequences.

Last year, India and the United States expanded their annual naval drills in the Bay of Bengal to include Japan after a gap of eight years, in a move seen as a response to China`s growing assertiveness in the region.

Admiral Harry B Harris, head of the US Pacific Command, said the naval exercise will be held in the northern Philippine Sea and that Japan will take part.

Freedom of the seas was a fundamental right of all nations, he told a security conference in New Delhi, adding some thinly veiled criticism of Beijing.

"While some countries seek to bully smaller nations through intimidation and coercion, I note with admiration India`s example of peaceful resolution of disputes with your neighbours in the waters of the Indian Ocean, " he said.

Tensions in the South China Sea have risen recently, with the United States and others protesting against Beijing`s land reclamations, along with the recent deployment of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets in the Paracel Islands.

Along with China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims on the waters, through which about USD 5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

Harris said the United States wished to expand the naval exercises it held with India each year into joint operations across the Asia-Pacific, which could draw India directly into the row in the South China Sea.

The two countries have held talks on joint naval patrols and last month a US defence official told Reuters that these could include the South China Sea.

Both India and the United States later said these patrols were not imminent after Beijing warned that interference from countries outside the region threatens peace and stability.

Harris said it was up to the leaders of India and the United States to decide where to hold the joint operations.
New Delhi: Delhi Police has urged the Director General of Health Services to form a medical board to examine test reports in connection with Sunanda Pushkar's death.

A letter was sent to the DG Health Services after the Special Investigation Team probing the case failed to draw any conclusion from the AIIMS medical board's opinion vis-a-vis the FBI report on Pushkar's viscera sample and other evidence in the case, a police source said.

The SIT had earlier written to the AIIMS medical board seeking further clarification on their opinion, but the response of the board is still awaited.

Even a day before his retirement, Delhi Police chief BS Bassi had said the case will be taken to its logical conclusion.

The AIIMS medical board's opinion on the FBI report had suggested that Sunanda, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, died of poisoning with the presence of Alprax found in her stomach.

Last month, the police questioned Tharoor for the third time in connection with his wife's death.

51-year-old Sunanda was found dead in her room at a five- star hotel in south Delhi in January 2014. A case of murder was registered in the matter around one year later following which her viscera sample and some other evidence in the case were sent to an FBI laboratory in the USA.
By Ernest Scheyder

(Reuters) - Private equity fund Energy & Minerals Group told investors on Wednesday it will stop entering new deals with Aubrey McClendon, the former chief executive officer of Chesapeake Energy Corp <CHK.N>, a day after the U.S. government charged him with breaking antitrust laws.

In a letter to investors seen by Reuters, EMG's Managing Partner John Raymond said his fund would "cease any and all new business activities" with McClendon, a legend in the U.S. energy industry.

The comments mark another reversal of fortune for McClendon, removing EMG as one of his main sources of capital to find and develop land in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other shale-rich states, as well as overseas.

The U.S. Justice Department charged McClendon on Tuesday with rigging bids for oil and gas acreage. McClendon has denied the charges and was not immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

Houston-based EMG, which has invested some $3 billion in ventures with McClendon since he left Chesapeake in 2013 after investors questioned his leadership, said the allegations will not affect any of its portfolio companies.

But the indictment could signal that prosecutors are ready to apply stricter scrutiny to an industry that has seen few legal challenges in recent years to the way land lease agreements are negotiated with private landowners for thousands of parcels of minerals across the United States.

"These are serious allegations that have been made against McClendon (and could have equally serious implications across the industry) and EMG takes this matter very seriously," Raymond wrote.

The fund, which manages about $17 billion in assets, is planning to launch several energy companies it co-founded with McClendon's American Energy Partners by the end of March.

"It is purely a coincidence that these charges have been brought at the same time as these business arrangements were already being finalized," Raymond wrote in the letter.

Raymond stressed in the letter that the charges against McClendon "have nothing to do with EMG or any EMG portfolio company."

As of Feb. 26, McClendon is no longer CEO or a board member of any EMG portfolio company, Raymond added.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes the stage to rally with supporters at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Hillary Clinton took a swipe at Donald Trump and other Republican politicians during her victory speech after the Super Tuesday primary contests.

At the time of her speech, the Democratic presidential frontrunner was projected to win Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Clinton repeated lines she's used before to emphasize how she differs from Trump, the Republican frontrunner.

"Instead of building walls, we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential," Clinton said, in an implicit attack on Trump's calls to build a wall on the southern border of the US to prevent illegal immigration.

She also took a shot at Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."

"We know we've got work to do. It's not to make America great again," Clinton said. "America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole ... and fill in what's been hollowed out."

Clinton also referenced the rhetoric from Republicans as a whole.

"It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher," Clinton said. "And the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower. Trying to divide America between 'us' and 'them' is wrong and we're not going to let it work."

She pushed a message of unity while portraying Republicans as divisive.

"Whether we like it or not, we're all in this together, my friends," Clinton said. "And we all have to do our part. But unfortunately, too many of those with the most wealth and the most power in this country today seem to have forgotten this basic truth about America."

Clinton's primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, had given his own victory speech earlier in the night despite having won only his home state of Vermont at the time. Sanders would later be projected to win Oklahoma shortly after Clinton finished her speech.

NOW WATCH: A global intelligence analyst explains why Clinton is sinking in the polls





More From Business Insider


ANTANANARIVO (Reuters) - Madagascar has scrapped a new $100 levy on the export of shipping containers after miners said it was hurting mining projects at a time when the industry is struggling with falling commodity prices. The government said it was cancelling its Advance Cargo Declaration (ACD) regulations but would continue work to improve security at the Indian Ocean island's ports. "The ACD pre-registrations are no longer required for exporters and importers. They therefore pay no more fees," Ulrich Andriantiana, the minister of transport, tourism and meteorology, told reporters late on Tuesday. Last month, Ambatovy, a $7 billion mining project 40 percent owned and operated by Sherritt International, said the ACD regulations would force it to close operations. Ambatovy, Madagascar's biggest foreign direct investment and one of the world's largest nickel and cobalt plants, said that due to enforcement of the ACD regulation, it had been unable to ship spare parts and raw materials, limiting its cash flow. Madagascar has struggled to attract foreign investors in recent years, with many citing bureaucracy for their reluctance to invest in the mineral-rich nation. Madagascar's mining sector has also been hurt by falling commodity prices. (This version of the story was refiled to add dropped word in first paragraph) (Reporting by Lova Rabary; writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by George Obulutsa and Jason Neely)
Mexico foreign minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu

The Mexican government issued its most strident official response to Donald Trumps incendiary comments about immigration and the border, with Mexicos top diplomat calling his remarks "ignorant and racist" this weekend.

"When an apple's red, it is red. When you say ignorant things, you're ignorant," Mexican Foreign Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu said Saturday, according to The Washington Post.

"It sounds ignorant and racist, because it is," she added. "We are pretty sure that's not the way most Americans feel."

Ruiz Massieu is the latest government official to respond to Trumps repeated assertions, first made last summer, that Mexico was sending "rapists" and other criminals across the US border, "bringing drugs" and "bringing crime."

Trump has also insisted he would force Mexico to fund a border wall to halt flows of people and purported economic losses.

"I would do something very severe unless they contributed or gave us the money to build the wall," he said last June.

Mexicos top diplomat singled out the proposed wall for criticism.

"It is not a proposition we would even consider," Ruiz Massieu said. "It is impossible to think of a 2,000-mile border being walled off and trade between our two countries stopped  frankly, it is not an intelligent thing to do."

'Im not going to pay for that f------ wall'

Though Ruiz Massieus comments are the strongest yet from the current Mexican government, former Mexican officials have condemned Trump more forcefully.

"Im not going to pay for that f------ wall," Vicente Fox, Mexicos president from 2000-2006, said in a Fusion interview last week.

Vicente Fox George Bush Mexico US

Story continues

Republican voters "are hearing the prophet telling them that he is going to take them to the promised land," said Fox  who, The Post noted, has long identified with the US' Republican Party.

"But he is going to lead everybody into the desert to die of hunger and thirst. He is a false prophet," Fox said.

"We wont pay a single cent for that stupid wall," Felipe Calderon, Mexicos president from 2006 to 2012, told The Washington Post in an interview last week. "Its pathetic  Trump is completely demagogical, Calderon added.

Fox also compared Trump to Hitler, a sentiment Calderon echoed.

I think his logic of exalting white supremacy isnt even acting against immigration, Calderon said last week. "It is acting and speaking against immigrants who have a different skin color than him, which is frankly racist and is a bit like the exploitation of raw nerves that Hitler did in his day, Calderon continued, according to El Daily Post.

Joe Biden Enrique Pena Nieto US Mexico

Other leaders have been more measured.

During a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto last week, Vice President Joe Biden said rhetoric about Mexico the US presidential campaign had been "dangerous, damaging and incredibly ill-advised," without referring to anyone by name.

Pena Nieto's administration has called Trumps remarks "prejudiced and absurd."

Though the Mexican president did not refer to Trump specifically last week, he did say that there "are those who have the vision to close themselves off ... build walls.

"But this only means isolating oneself and ending up alone," he said, according to AFP.

'We love it'

Trump's success has caused some in Mexico to believe that US border policy will become more severe  and that the best outcome of his candidacy now is a "more polite nativism" in the US.

Others in Mexico have jeered the Republican business mogul and beaten pinatas of his likeness in the streets.

Donald Trump Mexico pinata racist

None of these condemnations are likely to sway Trumps supporters in the US, who have lifted him to victory in three of the four Republican primaries so far.

Nor does Trump himself seem chastened. At a rally in Huntsville, Alabama, on Sunday, Trump responded to Fox.

"The wall just got 10 feet higher," he boomed, a reply that was met with cheers by the thousands in attendance.

"We love it," Trump added.

NOW WATCH: Heres why Donald Trump waited until now to run for president





More From Business Insider


(Reuters) - A Pennsylvania appeals court ordered a temporary halt to the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby on Tuesday pending its ruling on whether defense lawyers' appeal of a decision moving the case to trial can be quashed. The order by the Pennsylvania Superior Court postpones a March 8 preliminary hearing in a suburban Philadelphia court where Cosby, 78, faces charges of sexually assaulting a woman more than a decade ago. Cosby's attorneys had appealed a ruling by Common Pleas Court Judge Steven O'Neill in Norristown that dismissed the entertainer's claims that he had been granted immunity from prosecution in the case. Prosecutors had sought to quash the appeal. Cosby's attorneys had asked the judge to toss the charges, contending that a deal reached with former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor spared their client from prosecution in exchange for a 2005 civil deposition. In the deposition, Cosby admitted giving what he said was an anti-allergy drug to his alleged victim, Andrea Constand, before a sexual encounter that he described as consensual. Constand, now 44, has said Cosby plied her with alcohol and drugs before raping her. More than 50 women have accused Cosby, whose long career was based on family-friendly comedy, of sexually assaulting them in attacks dating back to the 1960s. Many of the incidents are too old to prosecute. The Pennsylvania case is the only incident for which Cosby has been criminally charged. (Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Dan Kelley in Philadelphia; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leaders discussed a plan in 2010 to arrange a peace deal with the government of Mauritania, according to documents seized by U.S. Navy Seals when they raided Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout in 2011 and made public by the U.S. government on Tuesday. The plan suggested that al Qaeda's North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), would promise "not to carry out any military activity in Mauritania", initially for a year, with the possibility of renewal. In return, the proposal says, Mauritanian authorities would release all al Qaeda prisoners, commit not to attack AQIM, and pay it 10 to 20 million euros ($11 million-$22 million) a year to "prevent the kidnapping of tourists". Senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the documents said they had no evidence that any such deal was ever done, or that the militant group had contacted anyone in Mauritania to make the proposal. El Housseine Ould Nagi, legal counsel to Mauritania's president, denied that his government had had anything to do with such a deal. "We have always been against paying ransoms and indirect financing of terrorism. Consequently, there has never been a secret accord between us and those people," he said. Unlike its neighbours Mali and Algeria, Mauritania has enjoyed relative freedom from AQIM attacks in past years, especially since 2011. It has also faced international criticism for freeing jihadist prisoners, such as a former spokesman for the AQIM-linked group Ansar Dine. Others have escaped in opaque circumstances. However, Mauritania also hosts a regional security body known as the Group of Five Sahel and is working with Western allies France and the United States to counter a growing Islamist insurgency in the region. Olga Bogorad, an independent security analyst specialising in Islamist groups, said it was possible that Mauritania was playing a double game: "On one side, it has a deal with AQIM and enjoys no terror attacks on its soil ... and on the other, it participates in counter-terrorism efforts to avoid criticism and probably to get support." AQIM, a spinoff of what was originally an Algerian-based Salafist militant group, made its first public appearance in January 2007 and rose to prominence mainly through its involvement in kidnapping Westerners for ransom in countries in the Sahel region including Mauritania, Niger and Mali. In July 2012, the head of the U.S. military's Africa Command described AQIM as al Qaeda's wealthiest affiliate. The al Qaeda document also says that a "truce" with Mauritania would allow AQIM to "put the cadres in safe rear bases" that it said would be available there while enabling the group to focus on Algeria. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington, additional reporting by Kissima Diagana in Nouakchott and Emma Farge in Dakar; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Angola said on Friday it has proposed that the United Nations Security Council impose an arms embargo on South Sudan, where more than 10,000 people have been killed in a two year civil war sparked by a political dispute between the country's leaders. The United Nations said last week that South Sudan's warring parties are killing, abducting and displacing civilians and destroying property despite conciliatory rhetoric by President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar. "The situation evolves and you have to evolve with the situation. Now what is necessary to do is an arms embargo," said Angola's U.N. Ambassador Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins. "We have proposed, I hope everybody goes with it." Angola is an elected member of the Security Council. British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft on Friday backed the proposed arms embargo. "In South Sudan, half the population is in need of humanitarian assistance. It is clear that despite the peace agreement, the continued fighting is further entrenching the humanitarian crisis. That is why the UK is calling for an arms embargo now," he said. Veto-power Russia said last month it was opposed to an arms embargo on South Sudan or blacklisting Kiir and Machar as such moves were not helpful to the implementation of a peace deal agreed by the pair in August. After months of ineffective negotiations and failed ceasefires, both sides agreed in January to share positions in a transitional government, and earlier this month Kiir re-appointed Machar to his former post as vice president. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Kiir and Machar, who was reappointed to his old post this month, would face individual sanctions if they did not deliver on the peace deal, warning of a "critical moment for South Sudan's survival". 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. U.N. peacekeepers are sheltering nearly 200,000 people at six protection sites in South Sudan and more than 2.3 million people have been displaced. The conflict has reopened ethnic fault lines between Kiir's Dinka and Machar's Nuer people. A U.N. panel that monitors the conflict in South Sudan for the Security Council stated last month that Kiir and Machar are still completely in charge of their forces and are therefore directly to blame for killing civilians. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Diane Craft)
Rumble

This video shows the incredible behaviour of a caring mother elephant on high alert, quickly stopping her adorable baby which was curiously straying away from her towards a vehicle full of safari tourists. Going on safari in the Kruger National Park is a life changing experience. Driving around multiple tarred roads, slowly scanning a massive area of wilderness is all part of the thrill. You never know what will be around the next corner or what animal will suddenly appear from the bush onto the road. Its an exciting experience and one of the must-see animals for most tourists are elephants. Not only are they the largest land mammals on our planet and fairly intimidating, elephants are also one of the most intelligent and emotionally intelligent animals that roam this planet. Seeing these giants in the wild is always a sight to remember. The video shows an incredible moment filmed in the Kruger National Park when a safari vehicle full of tourists found a large elephant cow and her adorable calf next to the road. The safari vehicle stopped and it looked like the mother elephant and her baby wanted to cross the road. The baby elephant was the cutest thing alive in the wild right at that moment. While the elephant cow remained focussed on crossing the road, her baby took notice of the safari vehicle and curiously started straying away from its mother towards the vehicle. The caring mother elephant immediately went into high alert and quickly took her trunk and stopped her baby from going any closer to the safari vehicle. The mother elephant gently used her trunk to guide her baby back and into the right direction. It was incredible to see how quickly the elephant cow became protective over her baby. The elephant calf listened to its mother and in a well-behaved manner, walking on the opposite side of its mother, continued to focus and follow its mother as it should. This is crucial for the survival of the calf in the wild. The gestation period of an elephant is twenty-two months, so it is very understandable that an elephant calf is seen as a huge investment and there will always be a mother around, ready to protect her calf from any potential danger. Even though the tourists were not a direct threat, the mother elephant knows all to well that there are humans that still pose a danger for them in the wild. The mother of such a small calf is definitely not something to mess with at all and its best never to get too close to a mother and her calf.
By Julia Harte and Julia Edwards (Reuters) - A federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday rejected a U.S. Justice Department request to order Apple Inc to help law enforcement access data on a locked iPhone, in a ruling that bolsters the company's arguments in a growing privacy fight with the government. The government sought access to the phone in October, months before a judge in California ordered Apple to give the government access to the phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, attacks. U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn ruled that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone seized during a drug investigation. The Justice Department is "disappointed" in Orenstein's ruling and plans to ask a higher judge within the same federal district to review the matter in coming days, a department representative said. Though the defendant in the case has already pleaded guilty, the Justice Department still believes the phone may contain evidence that "will assist us in an active criminal investigation," the official said. When fighting the government's order to help extract data from the iPhone, Apple had argued that being forced to do so "could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand," according to court records. Orenstein said his ruling in Apples favor was not a decision on "whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come." The implications of the governments position are so far-reaching as to produce impermissibly broad results, he wrote. Prosecutors have said that since 2008, Apple has complied with 70 such court orders based on the All Writs Act, a 1789 statute that grants federal courts broad power to issue necessary or appropriate writs, without objection. The case before Brooklyn was, according to prosecutors, the first time Apple had objected to law enforcement efforts to utilize search warrants to get the tech company to provide assistance and unlock iPhones seized during investigations. But since October, when Apple first asked Orenstein to deny the government's request, Apple has objected to helping law enforcement access at least 12 devices for which the U.S. Justice Department has sought its help, according to a letter from Apple to Orenstein that was unsealed earlier this month. (Reporting by Julia Edwards and Julia Harte in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese and Lisa Shumaker)
A delegation led by K Chandrasekhar Rao would leave for Mumbai on March 7. (Photo: PTI)

Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Wednesday said it has reached an understanding with neighbouring Maharashtra for construction of five barrages on Godavari, Penganga and Pranahita rivers.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has invited his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao to Mumbai to sign an agreement on construction of the projects, a release from Rao's office here said.

Accordingly, a delegation led by Rao would leave for Mumbai on March 7, it said.

The five proposed projects include Kaleswaram, a barrage at Rajapet on Penganga, a barrage between Chankha-Kovata, a barrage at Penpahad and another one at Tammidihatti on Pranahita river in Adilabad district. A barrage would also be built at Medigadda in Karimnagar district, it said.

Maharashtra government would take up the projects at Rajapet and Penpahad, while Telangana would build the remaining three, the release said.
By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba reported its first case of Zika on Wednesday, diagnosed in a 28-year-old Venezuelan doctor whose husband and brother-in-law previously contracted the virus in their home country. The World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak, suspected of causing thousands of birth defects in Brazil, an international health emergency on Feb. 1, although much about the virus remains unknown. The patient arrived in Cuba on Feb. 21 to take a post-graduate course in medicine along with 37 others. She reported a fever a day later and was diagnosed with Zika on Monday. She was recovering well in hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. Her husband was diagnosed with Zika two months ago and her brother two weeks before she traveled, the statement said. Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said on Feb. 23 it was investigating possible cases of sexual transmission. The outbreak has spread to many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and the WHO estimates Zika could eventually affect as many as four million people in the region. The Cuban government, which has fumigated neighborhoods and homes for decades to contain dengue -- also a mosquito-borne virus and a close cousin of Zika -- put doctors on alert for the virus weeks ago and ramped up mosquito eradication efforts. The WHO is investigating a "strongly suspected" relationship between Zika and microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size. There is no vaccine or treatment for the virus and some 80 percent of people infected show no symptoms. (Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Daniel Trotta and John Stonestreet)
By Kieran Guilbert MONTSERRADO, Liberia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sitting in a dusty schoolyard in rural Liberia, mental health clinician Dickson Korfeh watches as pupils dance, sing and play games in their break, and focuses on those who do not take part. He frowns as he studies their body language and behaviour for signs of grief and trauma, common in a nation haunted by a 14-year civil war and devastated by Ebola - and with one-tenth of the population suffering from mental illness. "There is a sadness in schools as pupils have lost family and friends to Ebola... some are suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)," the former nurse said. "But children do not have the vocabulary to express their suffering, so we analyse the way they act, to look for clues." Korfeh is one of more than 150 newly trained mental health clinicians in a country that spends less than one percent of its health budget on mental health, a neglected and stigmatised part of a fragile and under-resourced health system. The 1989-2003 civil war left almost half the population with symptoms of PTSD or depression and created a mental health crisis which was deepened by the Ebola epidemic, experts say. "Both crises saw bodies pile up in the streets and people flee in panic," said Janice Cooper of the Carter Center. "This led to a lack of trust and social cohesion, which fuel trauma." Trauma not only harms communities, but also hinders economic growth, according to the World Bank, which hopes a focus on mental health will kickstart Liberia's struggling economy. It is working with the Carter Center on a $3 million project to train health staff in psychosocial treatment, set up support groups, lead community reconciliation efforts and tackle stigma. "Trauma can affect economic output if children struggle at school, people become less productive at work or withdraw from society," said World Bank public health expert Carmen Carpio. "Mental health issues cannot be seen in isolation." MYTHS AND MISCONCEPTIONS At least 400,000 of Liberia's 4.3 million people have mental health problems, yet the issue is ignored and there is only one psychiatrist and mental hospital in the country, experts say. "Mental health conditions are invisible compared to other illnesses," Carpio said. "Illness is something people feel they can see and touch... those with mental health problems receive very little support, and are reluctant to seek help." People with mental illness are often attacked or abandoned over fears that their condition is contagious and linked to witchcraft or violence committed during the bloody civil war. Liberia's 166 mental health clinicians - mainly state nurses who received six months training in psychosocial support - teach people, religious leaders and even police about mental illness, and help to reintegrate people ostracised by their communities. Tackling myths and misconceptions about mental health is vital to reducing stigma and addressing trauma, clinicians say. Bill Jallah, a pastor and bipolar disorder sufferer, recalled a relapse where he found himself standing half-naked in the middle of a road in the early morning, confused and alarmed. "People said: 'he must have been violent during the war', before throwing stones and coming at me with sticks," he said. "Many struggle to believe a mentally ill person can have a job and a wife - and be a fully functioning member of society." The clinicians also face stigma - even from other health workers who call them "crazy people doctors" - and have to deal with huge caseloads and harrowing stories of abuse and neglect. "I treated a woman with psychosis who gave birth alone after her family shunned her," said Esther Bunder. "She and her baby were then kicked out of the family home and left on the street." ECONOMIC IMPACT Mental health sits firmly at the bottom of the list of health priorities for most West African nations, experts say. But the inclusion of a target to promote mental health in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in November could galvanise West African nations to improve mental health funding and services, Cooper said. Liberia, which only introduced a mental health policy in 2009 and has no mental health law, should have focused on dealing with trauma after its civil war, said World Health Organization (WHO) mental health specialist Florence Baingana. "Liberia should have cleaned out its wounds after the war... Now it must address suffering from the war, Ebola, and poverty." While Liberia lost $240 million in gross domestic product due to Ebola, and saw economic growth plummet to 0.7 percent in 2014 from an original forecast of 5.9 percent, the economy should gradually pick up this year, analysts say. But Liberia and other West African nations should consider the economic impact of untreated psychological trauma and mental illness, said Richard Mollica, adviser for the World Bank. Mental illness will cost the global economy $16 trillion in lost economic output by 2030, more than other non-communicable diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, according to research from Harvard and the World Economic Forum. "Job and education prospects lead to better mental health, which fosters increased productivity and output," Mollica said. "It is a smart investment to address mental health issues and livelihood opportunities early on - to avoid costly, long-term consequences for individuals, communities and countries." Back at Kpalla school in Liberia's Montserrado county, several pupils gather round Korfeh for a group discussion. "During Ebola many of our loved ones died... we felt sad all the time," said 15-year-old Bendu, who dreams of being a nurse. "But the teachers have helped us - now we laugh and joke again. We talk about Ebola, instead of ignoring it like before." (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, editing by Tim Pearce. 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 news.trust.org)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Police in Papua New Guinea shot and killed 11 prisoners and wounded 17 after a mass prison breakout in the Pacific nation's second largest city, PNG media outlet EMTV reported on Friday. More than 30 prisoners attacked two guards at the Buimo prison in Lae, nearly 320 km (200 miles) north of the Papua New Guinea capital, Port Moresby, before escaping, EMTV said. "It is confirmed that 11 prisoners have been shot and killed and 17 wounded and recaptured," EMTV quoted Metropolitan Superintendent Anthony Wagambie as saying. It was not clear how many prisoners were unaccounted for, the station said. In 2009, 73 prisoners cut through two fences to escape from the same facility, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported. Papua New Guinea, formerly administered by its near-neighbor Australia, struggles with endemic violence and poverty. The Australian government warns of "high levels of serious crime" on its travel advice website and refers to a "general atmosphere of lawlessness". (Reporting by Colin Packham)
The New Brunswick government says it's "business as usual" with the Energy East pipeline, despite Quebec's move to force the project developer to go through that province's environmental review process.

Environment Minister Brian Kenny says the Gallant government still believes the project does not have to go through a full provincial environmental impact assessment because the pipeline will cross several provinces.

That means the National Energy Board is the only regulator that needs to review the project, Kenny told reporters Tuesday.

"It is an interprovincial pipeline and we're going to follow the rules that exist right now," he said. "It's business as usual for us."

Quebec announced Tuesday it will seek an injunction to force TransCanada, the company behind the Energy East proposal, to file paperwork to trigger a full provincial environmental review.

So far, TransCanada has not responded to Quebec's request that it give formal notice of the project, though the company is scheduled to appear before a provincial board next week for a less stringent review.

TransCanada is citing the same argument as Kenny, that a pipeline crossing more than one province is subject only to a federal environmental impact assessment.

Province defers to feds

A British Columbia court ruled last month the B.C. government was wrong to hand off environmental review of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to Ottawa.

The court ruled that the province should have consulted aboriginal people before giving up jurisdiction.

But Kenny insisted Tuesday there's no reason New Brunswick can't defer to the federal process.

"We will follow the steps with the National Energy Board," Kenny said, "and apply for intervener status to look at what's taking place here in New Brunswick with pipelines."

The Gallant Liberals are enthusiastic supporters of the Energy East pipeline proposal. Quebec's Liberal government hasn't officially opposed it, but it is facing strong opposition to the project in the province.

Story continues

Kenny wouldn't comment directly on Quebec's position, though he said "it's their right to do what they're doing today."

"This is a Canadian project and it's a project that's going across the country, and every province will have their say in it. We'll follow our process and we'll allow Quebec to do what they're going to do."

Green Party wants review

Green party leader David Coon, an opponent of Energy East, complained last year that TransCanada should be filing paperwork for a full provincial review in New Brunswick.

"It's the same issue, only the Quebec government has decided to go to court," Coon said Tuesday.

Coon said even with new transitional rules brought in by the Trudeau government for Energy East, the federal review process is weak because it was "gutted" by the previous Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

"We're still dealing with a very poor piece of federal legislation that's not up to the task of properly doing environmental assessments, while we've got legislation in the provinces that's more comprehensive these days," he said.

Brian Kierstead, PC environment critic, says he's worried Quebec's move "could kill the project, not just delay it."

Noting other pipelines already run through Quebec, Kierstead said the government there "is going to stop something for New Brunswick that they're already supporting in other aspects within their own boundaries."

But he was also vague on whether a pipeline review should be exclusively federal. "The jury's still out on that in many, many ways," he said.

"You've got to be cognizant of the concerns of each and every province, and their population."
By Edmund Blair ASMARA (Reuters) - Eritrea is not prepared to stop forcing its youth into lengthy stretches of work as soldiers and civil servants, a conscription policy that is driving waves of refugees to make the perilous trip across the Sahara desert and Mediterranean Sea to Europe. European nations say that the poor Horn of Africa nation is moving only slowly and cautiously to stabilise the economy to stem the tide of migrants which is aggravating the refugee crisis that is gripping the European Union. The Asmara government insists conscription is vital for national security saying that it fears attack by its far bigger neighbour Ethiopia with which it fought a bloody and expensive war that ended in June 2000. On paper, citizens between the ages of 18 and 40 must complete 18 months of service to the state but diplomats and those who have fled say this can stretch to a decade or more. The government reserves the right to extend length of service in periods of emergency. Eritrea is raising national service salaries, printing new local currency notes to deter people-traffickers and investing in mining and other sectors, but diplomats are not convinced it is doing enough to retain its young people. Western diplomats said the strategy, boosted by a new EU financial package, showed greater engagement and openness by one of Africa's poorest countries, which has championed "self reliance" and has long accused world powers of trying to push it into isolation with U.N. sanctions. But the diplomats, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, accused Eritrea of back-tracking on privately made commitments by some officials last year to fix national service at 18 months, a term stipulated four years after Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia in 1991. European nations say that as long as national service dragged past the time limit Eritrean youths would continue to leave the country, thereby losing valuable workers that are needed to prop up the domestic economy. Each month as many as 5,000 people flee Eritrea according to U.N. figures, estimates the Eritrean government disputes. The government puts the population at about 3.6 million, while other estimates suggest it could be almost double that. "The government is doing the utmost that it can do, under the circumstances," Information Minister Yemane Ghebremeskel told Reuters in Eritrea, saying salaries would rise but there were no plans to scrap or cut national service. "Demobilisation is predicated on removal of the main threat," Yemane said in his office overlooking Asmara. "You are talking about prolongation of national service in response to ... continued belligerence by Ethiopia," he said referring to Eritrea's neighbour with a population of 97 million. ERITREA "ENGAGING MORE" Eritrea, which sits on the Red Sea coast next to one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, won independence after decades of conflict in which the death toll for both sides was tens of thousands dead. It also fought a border war in 1998 to 2000. It has complained that world powers failed to push Ethiopia to accept an arbitration ruling on demarcating their boundary. The government in Addis Ababa has said it wants talks on implementation, which Asmara rejects saying the ruling is clear. Diplomats want the Eritrean government to make creating more jobs in the state-dominated economy a priority to discourage young people from fleeing, but believe the government is acting cautiously. They are engaging more," one Western diplomat said. "You have to build their confidence. They dont move quickly." Eritreans in national service receive military training, but many move to civil service jobs after a few months, working as medical professionals, teachers, engineers or other jobs. For years, they have earned less than regular civil servants and often complain they are shunted into careers they didn't choose. "Some people come out after two to three years. Some serve more than 10," said another diplomat. "That makes it difficult for the young people to plan their life. That has been one of the main reasons why Eritreans get asylum so easily in Europe." Rights activists have described it as "forced labour" and accuse Eritrea of other rights abuses too, including holding political prisoners, allegations the government denies. Eritreans who have fled dismiss the idea of serious reforms to the national service system, run by President Isaias Afwerki since independence. However, others who have stayed said some national service conscripts were now being better paid. Abel Haile, a 21-year-old who fled this month to Ethiopia, told Reuters when he was drafted into the army in 2014 an army general told conscripts they would be in the military for just one year. He left 13 months later when he saw no end in sight. "It would mean sacrificing your whole life otherwise," he said in Enda Aba Guna, an Ethiopian town near the border. In Asmara, a 23-year-old who works at a ministry said she earned 500 nakfa - the equivalent of about $33 a month at the official rate but less on the black market. But she said she understood her earnings would rise under new rules. "We are waiting. Graduates pay is higher," she said, speaking while helping out in her family's small grocery shop. PUSH VS PULL FACTORS In a series of interviews, ministers accepted there were "push" factors like low pay driving people abroad, but mostly blamed "pull" factors enticing Eritreans away, saying migrants only needed to complain about what they said were injustices in national service to get asylum in Europe. Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed, who said ties with European Union states were deepening, also told Reuters that Western policies had "taken the young generation to Europe". The EU signed a 200-million-euro package of support last month with Eritrea, a nation that has in the past turned down some foreign aid when it believed it would create dependence not development. The EU package includes energy sector support. Generators from chronic power shortages often rumble in the capital, an elegant, low-rise city with buildings and street cafes from the early 20th century Italian colonial era. Most residents cannot afford the luxury of a private power supply, leaving shops in the dark as evening draws in. In rural areas, many are not connected to the national grid at all. Finance Minister Berhane Habtemariam said new mines - one commercial mine is in operation and three more are due to start by 2018 - would boost the economy, but he said the government also wanted investment in tourism, fisheries and other areas. He declined to give growth or other economic forecasts. "Every time we give figures, it is used by our enemies to attack us," he said, the kind of remark that fuels Eritrea's reputation as a reclusive nation, a description the government vehemently disagrees with saying it is open but faces threats. The African Development Bank estimates growth in 2015 was 2.1 percent up from 2.0 percent a year before. The minister said he did not know how the bank reached those figures, but said growth had been in double digits about five years ago when gold mining started and prices were higher. Berhane outlined some new national service pay scales, including for graduates who would receive 4,000 nakfa a month instead of 1,400 nakfa. Civil service pay across the board was under review and would help discourage migration, he said. SECRET PLAN, WORTHLESS NOTES Introducing new nakfa currency notes late last year was designed to rein in a black market and hit human traffickers abroad, such as those in Sudan who took cash from migrants in nakfa and had kept the old notes, the minister said. The new notes were issued in a six-week period - the timing of which had been kept "top secret" said one official - to ensure traffickers could not send their cash hoard back in time, leaving them holding now worthless old currency notes. "It might not stop (human trafficking) altogether, but I am sure it is going to have an impact," the finance minister said. While the official rate of around 15 nakfa to the U.S. dollar has stayed fixed, the black market rate has plunged to about 20-25 from 50-55 before the new notes were circulated. Western economic experts say floating the nafka currency would help scrub out the black market in a nation that relies heavily on remittances from Eritreans abroad. Government officials say it would simply hurt the economy. The government has instead limited circulation of the new notes and bank withdrawals to encourage more Eritreans to use cheques and bank transfers, trying to reduce the size of the cash economy that officials say allowed illegal trade to thrive. But this has created challenges for a country with just two commercial banks and 30 branches combined. A cash crunch has left shops and restaurants struggling to find customers, as few people have enough notes to spend on anything more than basics. "Demand is less than it was since the new exchange system," said Mohamed Nour, a 70-year-old clothes shopkeeper on one of Asmara's main commercial streets. "But we must have patience." (Additional reporting by Aaron Maasho in Ethiopia; Writing by Edmund Blair, editing by Peter Millership)
By Mary Wisniewski

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Chicago have seen poverty rise and services diminish even as the nation's third largest city has become less racially segregated, according to a study released on Wednesday.

While Chicago has become more racially balanced over the decades with more neighborhoods showing no majority populations, black areas are seeing economic stagnation or decline, according to the study by the Chicago Urban League, which promotes progress for blacks.

"This is not a situation that's getting better. This is a situation that's getting worse," said Stephanie Bechteler, director of research and evaluation for the Chicago Urban League. "We must put forth time and effort to make a change."

Despite the progress on racial integration, Bechteler said the city has a long way to go. She noted that the Brookings Institution late last year found that Chicago remained the third most segregated city in the United States behind Milwaukee and New York City.

Chicago saw protests following the release last November of a video showing a white police officer shooting and killing a black teenager. The officer was fired and charged with murder, but this incident and other police shootings have raised tensions in the city's black community.

In the first two months of 2016, Chicago has had 95 murders, mostly in black neighborhoods, Chicago Police said. That is the highest rate since 1997, the Chicago Tribune found.

The Chicago Urban League found that mostly black areas have lost health clinics, social service agencies and other areas of support in recent years.

The study, which relied on findings and interviews from more than two dozen Chicago housing and transportation advocacy groups, found that predominantly black parts of the city were harder hit by the housing market collapse and slower to recover.

While home sale prices in Chicago overall lost 5 percent of their value between 2005 and 2013, homes in primarily African-American neighborhoods lost 25 percent to 71 percent of their value.

Story continues

The study also found a lack of affordable housing in mainly black areas. For example, about three-quarters of renters in the troubled mostly black neighborhood of West Englewood spend 30 percent or more of their income on rent. In the city overall, only slightly more than half spend that much.

Northern U.S. cities became segregated following the migration of black workers from the south to get manufacturing jobs in the early 20th century. Restrictive covenants that prohibited property owners from selling or renting to blacks, government policies and other forms of discrimination created segregation patterns that still persist, the study said.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski, Editing by Ben Klayman and David Gregorio)
PARIS (Reuters) - France has detected its first sexually transmitted case of Zika in a woman whose partner had traveled to Brazil, the epicenter of an outbreak of the virus, a senior health official said on Saturday. U.S. officials said earlier this week they were investigating 14 reports of the mosquito-borne disease that may have been transmitted through sex, including to several pregnant women. Francois Bourdillon, head of France's Institute for Public Health Surveillance (IVS), said the infected woman was the country's "first confirmed indigenous case of transmission". "This was a woman who had never traveled. Her partner had come from Brazil, so she was tested," Bourdillon said in an interview broadcast on BFM TV, adding that both patients were doing well. Marie-Claire Paty, who helps monitor diseases transmitted by insects for the IVS, told Reuters the current epidemic seemed to confirm sexual transmission, which was identified as a possibility during an earlier outbreak in Polynesia in 2013-14, when the virus was isolated in sperm. Brazil has declared a public health emergency over Zika, which may be linked to thousands of cases of the microcephaly birth defect that is marked by undersized heads and underdeveloped brains. There is no cure or treatment for the virus, which is usually transmitted by mosquitoes and has spread to more than 30 countries. (Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou; Writing by James Regan; Editing by Helen Popper)
Saskatchewan's First Nation chiefs are telling the Prime Minister and the provincial leaders heading to a climate change meeting they have a special relationship with the land and want attention paid to their environmental concerns.

The Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, which represents 74 First Nations, is directing its concerns to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers gathering for the climate change meeting in Vancouver on Thursday.

It's expected to be contentious meeting about carbon pricing and other proposals for fighting climate change, with Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall already saying he's not signing anything that would result in a new "carbon tax."

- RELATED: National carbon price will be test for Liberals at first ministers meeting

The FSIN says the meeting should focus on the immediate impact that climate change is having on the environment.

"In northern Saskatchewan, the ice road around the Hatchet Lake First Nation is dangerous due to the warm winter, in part due to climate change," FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron said in a news release.

"We want to remind the first ministers that First Nations are not going anywhere. We're all in this together."

The group says it's going to continue to advocate and lobby for a year-round grid road, so people in the Hatchet Lake area no longer have to rely on an ice road to connect them to the south.

Ice roads are human-made pathways across frozen lakes and bays in northern regions.

"We want to work with the various levels of governments to build a road that will meet the needs of northern Saskatchewan residents," said Bob Merasty, vice-chief of the FSIN.
By Ellen Wulfhorst NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Arctic permafrost that is thawing due to global warming is releasing greenhouse gases, further compounding the problem of climate change, according to a study released on Thursday. As the permafrost thaws, changes in the way its soil microbes function and the soil carbon decomposes add to the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, according to the study by U.S. and Chinese scientists. Carbon dioxide and methane are the main greenhouse gases that trap heat and contribute to climate change. Permafrost is the perennially frozen ground that covers a quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily in the Arctic, said the study published in the monthly Nature Climate Change journal. Working in Alaska, researchers warmed plots of tundra to thaw the permafrost and after 18 months found numerous changes in the soil microbes, it said. "This study highlights the critical role that microbes play in mediating carbon losses from Arctic soils," said Susan Natali, a scientist at Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts and co-author of the Nature Climate Change paper, in a statement. "The rapid response of the microbial community to warming suggests that the large store of soil carbon currently contained in permafrost will be highly susceptible to decomposition once it is thawed." Previous studies have suggested that permafrost could decline by as much as 70 percent by the end of the century, according to the statement. (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, editing by Alisa Tang. 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)
Chennai: Three faculty members of Meenakshi College for Women, Kodambakkam here, are getting half of their salary for the last one year for protesting against the out time signing rule by the college management.

Without giving any reason their names were removed on Tuesday from their department attendance registers and their names kept separately.

Protesting this, B. Sujatha from Computer Science department, M. Vennila from Tamil department and V. Akiladevi from English department conducted a sit-in protest on the college campus.

I joined the college as an Assistant Professor in 2007. For several years, the faculty members are treated very poorly. They are made to wait long hours before the mandatory out time signing every day. Some days, the lady members leave the campus after 8 pm, said B. Sujatha.

Court judgments and proceedings of director of collegiate education say the one-time signing is enough for the college faculty. So, we started this protest of not signing the out time register last February. After that the college management is not paying our salaries regularly, she said.

When asked for comment, D.Parvathy Shenbagadevi, principal, did not say anything. Association of University teachers general secretary N.Pasupathy said, The college management is acting against the rules and targeting the three faculty members. The directorate of collegiate education is afraid to take action on this issue saying the college management is an influential one.
By Eric Auchard FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's cartel office is investigating Facebook for suspected abuse of market power over breaches of data protection laws in the first formal probe of the social network for violating competition rules. The watchdog said it suspected Facebook's terms of service regarding how the company makes use of users' data may abuse its possibly dominant position in the social networking market. It planned to examine whether users were properly informed about how their personal data would be obtained by the company. Facebook, the world's biggest social network with 1.6 billion monthly users, earns revenues from advertising based on data it gathers about its users' social connections, opinions and activities in their postings. "For advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely important," Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said. "For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected." A Facebook spokeswoman said on Wednesday: "We are confident that we comply with the law and we look forward to working with the Federal Cartel Office to answer their questions." The company has faced criticism from politicians and regulators in Germany, where data protection is strictly regulated, over its privacy practices and its slow response to anti-immigrant postings by neo-Nazi sympathisers. Co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg visited Berlin on a charm offensive last week. "We welcome the approach of the Cartel office," Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar told Reuters. "Whoever has power over user data gets market power and vice versa." EU officials have also expressed support for the view that Facebook's use of data might expose it to regulatory action on competition grounds. The cartel office said it was coordinating its probe with the European Commission, competition authorities in other European Union states, data protection authorities in Germany and consumer rights groups. French and Irish competition regulators said they were not actively involved with the German case. A spokesman for the Belgian competition authority declined to comment on whether it was cooperating with the German probe, while the British regulator was not immediately reachable. "This is an unusual case in many respects," said Mark Watts, head of data protection at London-based law firm Bristows. He said it was the first time the volume of personal data a company held was such a significant factor in an investigation into whether a company has abused its dominant position. Facebook owns four of the top eight social network services globally including its core profile service, two separate instant messaging services, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and its photo and video-sharing social network service Instagram. Facebook has nearly the twice the number of users as the world's second largest social network, Tencent's <0700.HK> QQ of China. Nearly 84 percent of the members of Facebook's core social network are outside the United States and Canada, which generated half its nearly $18 billion in revenues last year. Companies can theoretically face a fine of up to 10 percent of their annual turnover by the German competition regulator if they are found to have abused a dominant market position. But the cartel office has never leveled a maximum penalty. BIG DATA European regulators have begun debating the role that vast collections of "big data" - collected from billions of Web searches, messages and other online interactions - give Internet giants in marketing and commerce and how such data makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in those areas. "User data is often the currency which consumers pay for supposedly free services," said Klaus Mueller, chairman of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. "Consumers have no adequate alternative. They can't just transfer their user data to other portals." The cartel office had already signaled last month it was ready to consider data protection issues as raising potential competition concerns. European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said the EU executive shared the view of the German cartel office that the mere infringement of data protection rules by a dominant company did not automatically amount to a competition violation. "However, it cannot be excluded that a behavior that violates data protection rules could also be relevant when investigating a possible violation of EU competition rules," he added, while declining specific comment on the new case. Speaking in Germany in January, top EU antitrust enforcer Margrethe Vestager said her agency was taking a harder look at whether the collection of vast amounts of consumer data by big Internet companies violates competition rules. By contrast, U.S. privacy law enforcement remains limited to gross privacy violations where it can be show companies failed to properly safeguard customer information. The EU has accused Facebook rival Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc , of favoring its own shopping services in search results at the expense of rivals, and is weighing possible sanctions against the world's most popular search engine. However, the commission previously considered and rejected big data issues when it approved Google's acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick in 2008 and Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp in 2014. (Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan and Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Klaus Lauer in Berlin, Matthias Inveradi in Duesseldorf, Conor Humphries in Dublin, Phil Blenkinsop and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, Mathieu Rosemain in Paris, Paul Sandle in London and Diane Bartz in Washington; editing by Louise Heavens and Giles Elgood)
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday the build-up of migrants and refugees at Greece's northern border showed Europe needed to find a common solution to the crisis at an EU summit next week and reinstate the Schengen free travel zone. "The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks," Merkel told reporters after meeting Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic in Berlin, adding she was in regular contact with Greece's prime minister. "We need to deal with the difficult situation in Greece and ... return to the Schengen system as soon as possible." Migrants have become stranded in Greece after Austria and countries along the Balkans migration route imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross. Many of the migrants hope to reach Germany. Macedonian police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday, tearing down a metal gate. Merkel opposes the border restrictions and she, and senior EU officials, have said the suspension of the Schengen passport-free travel zone, one of the pillars of European Union integration, could lead to its collapse. The restrictions imposed by Austria and other countries have also angered Greece, where an estimated 22,000 migrants and refugees were trapped on Monday and a minister warned the figure could reach 70,000 in the coming weeks. On Tuesday, Merkel rejected suggestions that the situation on Greece's northern border was similar to that in Budapest last year when Hungary closed the main train station in the capital leaving thousands of migrants stranded. The stand-off ended after the German government intervened to allow about 25,000 migrants to board trains to Austria and Germany. Asked if she would repeat that if migrants on the Greek-Macedonian border asked for help, Merkel said: "There is actually no right that a refugee can say 'I want to receive asylum in this specific EU state'." She said the situation was not comparable given that systems to process refugees, who are fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere, had been set up in Greece, the first EU country they arrive into, mainly on boats from Turkey. Merkel said the EU should help Greece deal with the influx. Financial experts in Merkel's ruling coalition urged all EU states to agree a financial aid package for Greece, whose public finances were strained even before the migrant crisis. (Reporting by Paul Carrel, Joseph Nasr, Matthias Sobolewski and Andreas Rinke; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
DUBAI (Reuters) - The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) named Hezbollah a terrorist organization on Wednesday, opening up the possibility of further sanctions against the Iran-allied group that wields influence in Lebanon and fights in Syria. The Sunni Muslim dominated council - representing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar - already imposed sanctions on the Shi'ite Muslim group in 2013 after it entered Syria's war in support of President Bashar al-Assad. In Wednesday's announcement, GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani said the council would now "take the necessary measures to implement its decision ... based on anti-terrorism laws applied in the GCC and similar international laws". Zayani did not specify what action might follow, but Saudi Arabia, the biggest power in the grouping, last week said it had blacklisted four companies and three Lebanese men for having links to Hezbollah. Zayani accused Hezbollah of committing "hostile acts" against GCC states, including recruiting young men to carry out "terrorist attacks, smuggling weapons and explosives, stirring up sedition and incitement to chaos and violence". Individual members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have already labeled Hezbollah a terrorist group. There was no immediate reaction from Hezbollah. But a day earlier, its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had said Saudi Arabia had pushed Lebanon into a new phase of political conflict by announcing it was suspending an aid package to the Lebanese army. Nasrallah also stepped up criticism of Saudi Arabia, accusing it of directing car bombings in Lebanon. Leading Sunni power Saudi Arabia and its Shi'ite regional rival Iran compete for influence across the region and back different factions in divided Lebanon. Former Lebanese Sunni prime minister Saad al-Hariri stopped short of publicly endorsing the Saudi decision, but criticized Hezbollah for its involvement in Syria and its alleged involvement in Yemen which he described as "unlawful, criminal and terrorist". (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; additional reporting by John Davison, Mariam Karouny, Laila Bassam in Beirut; Editing by Larry King and Andrew Heavens)
Surjeet, a 24-year-old student from Mumbai's prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, raises slogans against the government.

A crackdown on dissent and free speech at universities has brought him and hundreds of others to a protest march in the capital, New Delhi.

It comes after student Rohith Vemula committed suicide in January over allegations of caste discrimination and harassment at the University of Hyderabad.

The following month Kanhaiya Kumar, a student union leader at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, was arrested and charged with sedition and faces a potential life sentence.

"I am angry," says Surjeet.

"The reason is that this government has been oppressing the voice of students whenever there is an opposition to their ideology, their ideology of Hindu nationalism. They attack students wherever they can."

The row threatens to wash out the crucial budget session of parliament which began this week.

Opposition parties have come together to attack the Narendra Modi government.

Srikant Sharma, national secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told Sky News the allegations were "wrong and baseless" and came from "political parties and not students".

"There is freedom of speech in this country but there is a lakshman rekha, or red line, and you cannot cross it for your freedom of speech," said Mr Sharma.

"The country's constitution does not permit it. If you do then a sedition charge under section 124A will be levelled against you and the law will take its course."

The anti-India slogans allegedly raised by student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar are yet to be proved. And, while in court for his bail hearing and under police protection, Mr Kumar was beaten by a group of men in lawyers' robes.

The debate on nationalism has threatened to split India.

Right-wing organisations have played up their brand of patriotism.

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, calls the situation one of "frightening bigotry" and an attack on places which host "democratic debate".

Story continues

"The government is in control of ultra-Hindu right-wing organisations and they brand those of any opposition ideology as anti-national," she said.

Opposition leader and vice president of the Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, has also waded into the fray.

Showing solidarity with protesting students, he said "the voice of the youth is being crushed"

"We don't want an India which has only one kind of thought and ideology," he said. "We want every citizen to have the freedom to speech."

Writers, intellectuals, academics, and a number of civil society personalities have also expressed concern over rising intolerance in the country.

Many have returned their state and national awards in response to right-wing violence.

In September last year, a Muslim man was lynched by a mob on rumours that he stored beef at his house.

Prime Minister Modi called it unfortunate but said his government was not to blame.

The attack on freedom of speech and dissent is the latest in the war to gain control of higher education institutions which are often the bastions of leftist ideology.

India has the largest youth population in the world under the age of 24.

For them, debate and discussion is crucial for a healthy democracy. They want their voice heard however contrary and challenging.

"This movement is an expression of students' unity and solidarity and no matter what happens we are all together," says Manjushree, a student at Jawaharlal University.

"We will fight whatever the central government and its right-wing forces will unleash on us. We are going to fight and stand together and will say 'no' in an emphatic and clear voice."
By Ahmed Aboulenein ARISH, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian military effort to recruit and arm tribal fighters to take on Islamic State militants in the Sinai is failing, according to security sources, Sinai residents and tribal figures. The military launched the program with much fanfare last year and tribal leaders pledged to provide hundreds of fighters. But the number of fighters in the field is no more than 35, security sources say. The scheme has been hampered by the military's reluctance to provide weapons to local fighters and by attacks by Islamic State, which are scaring off would-be tribal troops. The failure is a blow to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has promised to crack down on militants, whom he sees as an existential threat to Egypt. Islamic State's insurgency in Sinai gives the ultra-hardline group a fourth front in the Middle East after Iraq, Syria, and pockets of Libya. In statements and videos, Sinai Province, the Sinai branch of Islamic State, has said it has executed at least 17 people so far this year. On Feb. 28, the group warned on its Telegram channel, which functions as an encrypted online message board, that it had set up checkpoints around the Sinai to intercept and kill anyone who collaborates with the military. In January, Islamic State wrote in its weekly magazine Naba', which runs news from the group's various branches, that the Sinai branch had killed 1,400 people  members of the military and police as well as collaborators and tribal fighters  in the previous 15 months. The military has disputed this figure and said only 69 military personnel were killed in that period. It would not comment on its Sinai operations. The army had hoped its plan, launched in April last year, would gain it an edge in the massive region, which stretches from the Suez Canal east to the Gaza Strip and Israel. It wanted to team up with tribal leaders and local fighters who know the terrain. The local fighters promised to provide 300 men who could bring intelligence and help close down routes used to smuggle in weapons from neighboring countries. Those fighters were to be organized in what the military calls "popular committees." But a counter-terrorism researcher who closely watches the Sinai and did not want to be named because of the threat of violence when he visits the Sinai said the strategy was floundering. "The militias are child's-play. It is a failed initiative. These guys are getting the floor wiped with them by the Islamists. They do not have the training to match them." DIGGING THEIR OWN GRAVES Given the history of tensions between the Bedouins and the military, the scheme was never going to be easy to implement. The Sinai's Bedouins are seen by some in government as a fifth column, while tribesmen have long felt neglected by the central government, tribal leaders say. Some senior officials initially remained uneasy about handing over weapons to local fighters. A police captain stationed in North Sinai said tribal fighters receive no formal combat training but are advised by the military and police. Even some tribal leaders were reluctant to have their men armed. One senior tribal member, who was once at the forefront of the military's campaign, said arming tribal fighters could cause infighting. "Help the army? Yes. But carry guns, no. We do not form militias," said the man, who is on an Islamic State hit list and has moved away from North Sinai, the epicenter of the insurgency, after militants attacked his home. But the main reason the military has struggled to recruit more tribal fighters has been the punishment those who have joined have faced when captured by Sinai Province militants. Abdelrahman al-Moqata'a was one of nine prisoners beheaded or shot by the group in January. On a Sinai Province video of the executions, the men all said they had fought alongside or provided intelligence to security forces. In the video, Moqata'a is seen digging his own grave. "This is the fate of those who work with the army, whether young, old, or a child," he said, standing in a sandy ditch up to his waist. "No one work with the army. This is the advice of the brother digging his own grave." Sinai Province later circulated a list of men it wanted dead for "crimes" such as "forming militias against Muslims" and spying for the military. NEW RECRUITS, BUT NOT NEARLY ENOUGH Despite the dangers, some tribal fighters remain enthusiastic about helping the army. Some 500 meters outside the eastern entrance to al-Arish, North Sinai's provincial capital, motorists are questioned at a police checkpoint. One day in January, two masked men brandishing assault rifles stood guard about 100 meters up the road. They were young members of a popular committee. "We are a group of youths who decided over two months ago to do our part in protecting our people from what the militants are doing," one told Reuters. "At first there were nine of us. We met with police and military leaders, asking to be allowed to help get rid of these militants after the city became a war zone home to murder and horror," he added in a thick Bedouin accent. His group now numbers 15, and has been asked to provide the military with local intelligence. Initially the authorities did not want to give the men guns, the man said. "A while later we went back and told them it was important they allow us to carry weapons to protect ourselves and families and they agreed, but under certain conditions." A security source said the tribal fighters can only use the guns to help secure checkpoints or to repel an attack. They also have to tell the military who is participating in each shift or mission. Residents in Arish, Sheikh Zuweid, and surrounding villages have mixed views of the army initiative. Some said the tribal fighters had restored some normality to the province. Others complained that the fighters steal food from them or bully them. "We don't have a problem with them helping (the security forces), said one shopkeeper. "But they shouldn't bully people and act like thugs." (Additional reporting by Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, Mahmoud Mourad, Omar Fahmy and Aly Abdelaty; Edited by Simon Robinson)
By Tom Perry and Laila Bassam BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri on Monday urged Saudi Arabia not to abandon Lebanon after it halted aid to the army, reflecting concerns that Riyadh is reducing support for a country that has been an arena for its struggle with Iran. Hariri's direct appeal to King Salman reflects worries among Saudi Arabia's allies in Lebanon that a major shift is under way in its policy toward the country. Riyadh's backing has been crucial to the decade-long struggle waged by Hariri and his allies against the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah. The crisis came to a head last week when Saudi Arabia decided to suspend its aid to the army in response to the Lebanese government's failure to sign up to statements condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. Reflecting deep differences among rival Lebanese politicians, a government statement issued after a meeting of the national unity cabinet on Monday also fell short of condemning them. Instead, it was left to Prime Minister Tammam Salam to condemn them himself after reading the declaration. Hariri, who heads the Saudi-backed March 14 alliance, said Lebanon would "not be a protectorate for Iranian policies in the region". "We are here to confirm in the loudest voice that nobody will be able to cancel Lebanon's Arabness," he said, making only his third visit to the country since the Hezbollah-dominated March 8 alliance toppled his government in 2011. He urged King Salman and other Gulf Arab leaders "not to abandon Lebanon and to continue to support and embrace it". Hezbollah, a political party with a powerful militia, has grown in strength over the last decade. Its fighters are playing a crucial role fighting on President Bashar al-Assad's side in the war in neighboring Syria, one of the major arenas of Saudi-Iranian rivalry in the region. Many Lebanese are worried about how Saudi policy will affect the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese employed in Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab states allied to it. The money they send home is crucial to the Lebanese economy. Saudi Arabia pledged the aid for the Lebanese army in 2013 in what then-Lebanese President Michel Suleiman called the largest grant ever to the country's armed forces. The army, carefully balanced to reflect Lebanon's sectarian make-up, is widely seen as the backbone of the weak Lebanese state. ARAB STATEMENT Saudi anger at the Lebanese government appeared to come to a head last month when the government, represented by Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, refused to vote on a joint Arab statement condemning the attacks on Saudi missions in Iran by crowds protesting at the kingdom's execution of a prominent Shi'ite Muslim cleric. Bassil, a political ally of Hezbollah, cited the statement's criticism of Hezbollah as the reason for not backing it. He stressed the need for national unity in Lebanon. The government statement issued on Monday said it was necessary to "fix relations between Lebanon and its brothers, and to remove any flaws that may have emerged in recent times". It said Prime Minister Salam should make contacts with Gulf states that would "pave the way for a Gulf tour ... with this aim". The statement said Lebanon would not forget Saudi Arabia's sponsorship of the peace agreement that ended Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, its role in rebuilding the country, and its support for Lebanon's "financial, economic, military and security institutions". "Likewise it will not forget that the kingdom, and the rest of the Gulf Arab states ... embraced and continue to (embrace) hundreds of thousands of Lebanese of all sects", the statement said. Hezbollah member Mohammed Fneish, a minister of state in the government, said when asked whether the group supported sending a ministerial delegation to apologize to Saudi Arabia: "When Saudi apologizes for its insults to us, we will think". (Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Dana Halawi BEIRUT (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Syrian refugee Fatmeh fled to safety in Lebanon in 2011 after militants raided the family home, beat her up and tried to rape her. But her problems were far from over. Two months after the attack Fatmeh - then aged about 12 - developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). "Her mental illness became obvious when she started walking down the streets while screaming and beating herself," said Lebanese psychotherapist Charelle Ghazal. "She had regular nightmares of someone trying to rape her. She put knives under her pillow to protect herself. She was awake all night and slept during the day when her family was awake." More than a million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the start of the conflict five years ago, placing a huge strain on health services in the small Mediterranean country. Up to one fifth of refugees may be suffering from mental health disorders, but gaps in Lebanon's mostly private mental health services and a major shortage of mental health professionals mean many refugees' needs are not being met. "The public health system in Lebanon is under tremendous pressure and the specialized services that are currently offered for Syrians in need of mental healthcare are not enough," said Rabih Chammay, head of Lebanon's mental health program at the Ministry of Public Health. There is no data on the number of Syrian refugees with mental health problems, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 15 to 20 percent of people in a humanitarian crisis suffer mild or moderate disorders, suggesting 200,000 Syrians in Lebanon could be affected. REPERCUSSIONS Witnessing atrocities and losing one's loved ones, home, livelihood, friends, community and social standing can all create or worsen mental health problems. The daily stresses of living as a refugee - lack of access to basic necessities and limited work and education opportunities - add to the pressure. Common symptoms include anxiety, depression, withdrawal, insomnia, nightmares, tearfulness and despair. Experts warned that a failure to address mental health problems would have social and economic repercussions for both Lebanon and Syria. "If mental health conditions in children and adolescents are left untreated this will lead to a 'lost generation' which would have a longterm impact on Syria's future after the war," said Mohamed Elshazly, a regional mental health consultant. The International Medical Corps (IMC), which provides psychosocial support for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, said people with untreated mental health issues could gradually lose their ability to function in society. Children may drop out of school and fail to acquire skills needed to prosper in life. Adults may find it difficult to hold down a job, form healthy relationships or care for their children. This puts a strain on not only the individual but also the family. If problems remain unaddressed, people's lives can spiral out of control, resulting in homelessness and increasing the risk of physical health problems, injury, violence and abuse, the IMC said. FEAR OF STIGMA Mental health services in Lebanon are mostly private so refugees rely heavily on NGOs for mental health care. The government is now overhauling mental health care and integrating it into primary health care. Chammay said this would allow general medical doctors to offer mental health services and refer complex cases to specialists. The Health Ministry, the WHO and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF have set up a taskforce of some 60 agencies which is training doctors, nurses and social workers to provide refugees with mental health services. Psychotherapist Anne Marie Ghossain said one problem facing NGOs is that many refugees do not ask for help because they do not realize they need it. Others may be reluctant to do so when they have no money and are struggling to feed their families. Ghossain cited the case of Mohamed, a seven-year-old Syrian who was having serious problems adjusting to life as a refugee, and was therefore failing at school. Therapy was helping, but his family stopped his treatment because they could not afford transport to the clinic. Psychotherapists working with NGOs tend to treat refugees by focusing on changing troublesome behaviors, feelings and thoughts. But Ghossain said some refugees need longterm psychoanalytic therapy, which is difficult to provide given the shortage of specialists and the fact refugees often move around. The stigma surrounding mental health is another hurdle. Many people are reluctant to attend mental health centers for fear of being seen as "mad". This is one reason why integrating such services into general health provision is important. In Fatmeh's case, her parents initially took her to religious leaders to read Koranic verses for her. This is a common response in some communities where beliefs that mental illnesses have supernatural causes lead people to seek help from religious or traditional healers. "When we offered our support, they resisted at first because they feared that their daughter would be seen by others as crazy if she takes pills," said psychotherapist Ghazal. But Elshazly, the IMC's former regional mental health adviser, said the scale of suffering among Syrian refugees was reducing the stigma around mental health issues. "Since so many people are affected, these problems have been voiced more and more. This is why there is a gradual change in attitudes," he added. "For example, we are seeing people from rural areas of Syria who would not previously have admitted to mental health problems and who are now seeking help." He said it was also widely recognized that humanitarian crises created an opportunity to push policy makers to focus resources and attention on improving mental health services. Although Lebanon was already addressing gaps in its mental health services before the refugee influx, the crisis has accelerated reforms. "Because disasters and conflicts lead to an increased incidence of mental health disorders, and because they expose the weak mental health systems in these countries, we get what we call a 'policy window'," Elshazly said. "People tend to listen more when you talk about mental health during disasters and conflicts." (Additional reporting by Emma Batha, editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
Vijayawada: Let down by the Centre, AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday telephoned Union finance minister Arun Jaitley to complain about the poor allocations to the state in the Union Budget.

Expressing his displeasure over the allocations, the CM requested the Centre to fulfil promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act.

Mr Jaitley assured Mr Naidu that the Centre would release funds priority-wise. He told the CM that several sectors like agriculture, rural development and irrigation have been allocated funds department-wise and not state-wise.

I explained the states financial condition to the Union finance minister. I asked him to do justice immediately. He reacted positively and assured me that the Centre will do justice. The Centre will complete all necessary financial allotments in this financial year, Mr Naidu told TD leaders.
By Stella Tsang and James Pomfret HONG KONG (Reuters) - Four of the five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in October appeared on Chinese television confirming for the first time they'd been detained for "illegal book trading" in mainland China. The five booksellers - including a British and Swedish national - had been linked to the same Hong Kong publisher and bookstore that specialized in scandalous books on the private lives and power struggles of China's Communist Party leaders. The disappearances have prompted fears that mainland Chinese authorities may be using shadowy tactics that erode the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return to China from British rule in 1997. Four of the men, Gui Minhai, Lui Por, Cheung Chi-ping and Lam Wing-kee, gave details of their alleged offences to Phoenix Television on Sunday night. [http://bit.ly/1pjwXIB] "I have deeply reflected on what I have done and very much regret the illegal book trading I have carried out with Gui Minhai," said Lui Por in the Phoenix TV report. In a four-minute report that involved exclusive interviews with the four, they confessed to selling "unauthorized" books in China via an online platform and evading customs inspections to deliver some 4,000 books to 380 customers since October 2014. Gui said he'd altered and obscured the covers of the Hong Kong-printed books with nylon bags to "evade" customs security checks and was singled out by the others as the mastermind. The group had also opened a bank account in China to make payments. Gui had previously confessed on Chinese state television to a fatal drink-driving incident over a decade ago, after going missing in Thailand late last year. The TV report also detailed how Lui, Cheung and Lee had been arrested by Chinese authorities in Shenzhen and Dongguan, two cities in southern China close to Hong Kong, in October and then called upon to testify in the case. "I know that Gui Minhai's books are fabricated. They were downloaded from the Internet and were pieced together from magazines," said Lam. "They have generated lots of rumors in society and brought a bad influence ... I deeply acknowledge my mistakes and am willing to be penalized." The only bookseller not to appear in the report was Lee Bo, a British passport holder, who Britain said had been "involuntarily removed" to China from Hong Kong in December, constituting a "serious breach" of the one country, two systems formula. Hong Kong police said in a statement, however, that they had met Lee on Monday at a guesthouse in China and that Lee had told them he'd traveled to China "voluntarily" and hadn't been kidnapped. But Lee gave no details on how he'd crossed into China without his travel document, telling police a friend had helped him use his "own means" to do so. Lee added he was assisting in an investigation involving Gui. A number of governments have expressed concern regarding the disappearances, which some diplomats fear were abductions by Chinese agents in Hong Kong and Thailand. China's Foreign Ministry, however, has said its law enforcement officials would never do anything illegal, especially not overseas, and called on foreign governments not to interfere in Hong Kong affairs. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei acknowledged the television report in a daily briefing, saying the men had "already admitted to their actions", without elaborating. The Phoenix television report said Lam, Lui and Cheung might be allowed to return to Hong Kong this week, citing unspecified sources. Gui, however, was expected to remain in detention. A Swedish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told Reuters by telephone that an envoy had visited Gui on Wednesday and that his condition is "very good", but gave no further details. Britain has not yet been granted consular access to Lee despite formal requests to China, a spokesperson for the British consulate in Hong Kong told Reuters. A Phoenix Television spokeswoman said it was granted access to the men after making "numerous requests to the relevant authorities" but declined to give further details on where, when or under what conditions the interviews were conducted. (Editing by Nick Macfie)
GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea does not seek to use its nuclear weapons against South Korea but needs to maintain its nuclear deterrent to ensure stability of the divided peninsula in the face of "hostile" U.S. policies, Pyongyang's envoy said on Wednesday. So Se Pyong, North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, took the floor at the Conference on Disarmament to respond to South Korea's foreign minister's call for imposing tough sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in punishment of its latest nuclear and missile tests. "We have already made clear that the DPRK's nuclear deterrent is not directed to harm the fellow countryman but to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula and security in the region from the U.S. vicious nuclear war scenario," So told the forum. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles)
Nunavut Premier Peter Taptuna says while the North sees the devastating effects of climate change first-hand, measures to lower greenhouse gas emissions cannot put the "very delicate economy" in the territories at risk.

When Taptuna attends the first ministers meeting in Vancouver this Thursday, he says he will bring the message that "climate change mitigation and adaptation needs to go hand-in-hand with responsible economic development," while pushing for the federal government to support an upgrade to Nunavut's aging diesel power generators.

"I will raise the issue of a pan-Canadian price on carbon," Taptuna said in the legislature. "Right now, it does not factor in the challenges of living in Northern and remote communities."

That's one of the items on the agenda for the one-day, closed-door meeting, which  if early indications hold true  will be a challenge for the Liberal government.

'We've made it pretty clear'

In the legislature Tuesday, Taptuna was probed further on his stance on climate change issues, including the big one  the possibility of a carbon tax.

Nunavut's premier would not speculate on how his fellow provincial and territorial leaders might be leaning on the controversial issue, except to say that the territories are in agreement.

"We've made it pretty clear between the three territories ... at the Quebec City climate change conference that we oppose a carbon tax being imposed," he said.

"We do have a very delicate economy and more taxes put forth to our small businesses and our people is very damaging."

MLA Simeon Mikkungwak, who represents the land-locked community of Baker Lake, raised the issue, adding that he personally sees the need for a balanced approach.

"As a lifelong hunter, I am also very aware of the importance of realistic and responsible actions to address climate change, given its impact on the Arctic," he said.

Story continues

"However, Nunavut itself hardly compares with major industrialized jurisdictions when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions."

Energy generation a key issue

While Taptuna says Nunavut is "a long way off" from relying on renewable energy, such as tidal, solar and wind power, the premier says one of the main ways the territory can decrease its environmental impact is by updating its system of power generation.

Nunavut does not work on a power grid, instead relying on each remote community's "old, breaking down" power plants, explained Taptuna.

"We have old generating systems and generating plants that are from the '60s. They're not fuel efficient. They're not economical," he said.

"One of the things, of course, is that we want to modernize to new generators, newer engines so we could contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions."

Taptuna says he hopes the federal government will recognize and financially support Nunavut's desire to upgrade its inefficient diesel-fuelled power plants.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama asked Republican congressional leaders for suggestions on a Supreme Court nominee during a meeting on Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Obama met with Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, both Republicans, in the Oval Office to discuss a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "The president ... gave everyone in the room, Democrats and Republicans, the opportunity to put forward their own suggestions for potential Supreme Court nominees," Earnest said at a news briefing. "The president didn't guarantee that he would choose that person, but the president did indicate that he would take seriously any recommendations that either Democrats or Republicans had to put forward." Earnest declined to say whether any Republican congressional leaders, who have said the top court seat should remain vacant until Obama's successor takes office next year, offered any names. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the judiciary panel, also attended the meeting. (Reporting by Clarece Polke; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
(Reuters) - Digital privacy advocates have called on a U.S. federal judge to approve Apple Inc's request not to be compelled to build software to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack. The American Civil Liberties Union, Access Now and the Wickr Foundation laid out arguments in amicus briefs released on Wednesday ahead of a March 22 hearing in which Judge Sheri Pym will review Apple's appeal of a court order demanding it help unlock a phone used by Rizwan Farook. Alphabet Inc's Google, Facebook Inc , Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc also plan to file similar briefs, Twitter, Microsoft and people familiar with the plans of the other two companies said last week. [L2N1642BW] The ACLU argued that the FBI's request would undermine the privacy and security of Americans by forcing a private firm to act as its investigative agent, seeking information that it does not already possess. "Law enforcement may not commandeer innocent third parties into becoming its undercover agents, its spies, or its hackers," according to a draft of the brief obtained by Reuters. Access Now and the Wickr Foundation, which both advise activists on digital privacy, said in a joint brief that complying with the order would undermine human rights around the globe. "In some countries reliable security tools such as encryption can be the difference between life and death," their brief says. "The relief sought by the government endangers people globally who depend on robust digital security for their physical safety and wellbeing." The U.S. government has said the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California, was inspired by Islamist militants, and the FBI wants to read the data on Farook's phone to investigate any links with militant groups. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others before they themselves were killed in a shootout with police. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Paul Simao)
By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) - Three San Francisco sheriff's deputies were charged with arranging "Fight Club" duels between jail inmates, and one of the deputies made prisoners gamble for food, clothing and bedding, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The criminal charges came as newly elected San Francisco Sheriff Vicki Hennessy was implementing jail reforms, such as increased use of video cameras, to prevent such offences.

The case brought by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office described scenes reminiscent of the 1999 film "Fight Club", starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.

The two current San Francisco sheriff's deputies and one former deputy were expected to surrender within two days, said Max Szabo, a spokesman for the prosecutors.

Prosecutors brought the most serious charges against ex-deputy Scott Neu, including assault by an officer, criminal threats and inhumanity to a prisoner. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Deputies Eugene A. Jones and Clifford Chiba were charged with cruel and unusual punishment and willful omission to perform their duty, and Jones was also charged with assault by an officer.

On March 5, 2015, Neu pitted two jail inmates against each other, threatening to use a taser gun against them unless they fought, prosecutors said.

Thinking they had no choice, the inmates battled and the smaller one hurt his rib, prosecutors said. Chiba is accused of watching the melee and not stopping it.

The next day, Neu again forced the pair to fight and this time Jones took part in pitting the two inmates against each other, prosecutors said.

At other times, Neu forced inmates to gamble for food, clean clothing, bedding and other items, the prosecutor added.

Neu's attorney, Harry Stern, said in a statement there was no "fight club".

"Deputy Neu allowed two inmates to wrestle to settle a minor dispute. In retrospect, he shouldnt have. This is the sum and substance of the case," Stern said.

Story continues

It was unclear if the two current sheriff's deputies, who were on leave, had obtained attorneys.

Hennessy, who was elected in November, said the accused deputies were stationed at an outdated jail and the alleged actions occurred under her predecessor, Ross Mirkarimi.

"I'm not going to say it's his fault. What I am going to say is we need to do more there," Hennessy said in a phone interview.

District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement that subjecting inmates "to degrading and inhumane treatment makes a mockery of (the) justice system."

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Richard Chang)
By Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles GENEVA (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister called on the U.N. Security Council to expand sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday to punish what he called an escalating and increasingly threatening nuclear program. Yun Byung-se called North Korea a "serial offender" and denounced Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test and latest long-range missile launch, carried out in January and February. North Korea's Ambassador Se Pyong So said his country's nuclear program was designed to ensure peace on the divided Korean peninsula, and warned that more sanctions would bring a "tougher reaction". Both men addressed the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva hours before major powers were scheduled to vote at the U.N. Security Council across the Atlantic on a resolution to expand sanctions on North Korea. The United States also condemned Pyongyang's actions. "The international community stands united in its firm opposition to the DPRK's development and possession of nuclear weapons," Christopher Buck, deputy U.S. disarmament ambassador, told the Geneva talks. "We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state." LANDMARK RESOLUTION After nearly two months of bilateral negotiations, China last month agreed to support new measures in the Security Council to try and persuade its ally North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons program. Pyongyang has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 because of its nuclear tests and multiple rocket launches. "It's no wonder that the Security Council will very soon put up a landmark resolution with the strongest ever non-military sanction measures in seven decades of U.N. history," South Korea's Yun said. The credibility of the nuclear non-proliferation regime needed to be protected, he added. "Even at this moment, Pyongyang is accelerating its nuclear weapons and missile capabilities from nuclear bombs and hydrogen bombs to ICBMs and SLBMs," he said referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. "We have heard Pyongyang officially state its intention not only to further develop its nuclear weapons and missiles but also to use them." Japan's parliamentary vice-minister for foreign affairs, Masakazu Hamachi, said North Korea's actions had undermined the security of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world. North Korea's envoy retorted that the nuclear program was "not directed to harm the fellow countryman but to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula and security in the region from the U.S. vicious nuclear war scenario." "The more sanctions will bring about tougher reaction," So said. (Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay; writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Andrew Heavens and John Stonestreet)
The Maulana told reporters that Muslim weddings in recent years were becoming increasingly extravagant and lavish even though Islam does not permit wasteful spending. (Representational image)

Lucknow: In an attempt to check extravagant spending in weddings, Muslim clerics in Saharanpur have unanimously decided not to solemnise weddings where bands are played and singing and dancing takes place.

At a meeting held at the residence of senior cleric Maulana Qari Syed Ishaq Guara in Saharanpur, the clerics said that band-baaja, naach-gaana and dowry were against the tenets of Islam and efforts must be made to put a check on the same.

The Maulana told reporters that Muslim weddings in recent years were becoming increasingly extravagant and lavish even though Islam does not permit wasteful spending. We have decided not to solemnise such weddings and initiate a social boycott of those who do. These steps are necessary to prevent the young generations in the Muslim community from aping the trend, he said.

Mufti Arshad Gaura, who was also present at the meeting, said that a number of Muslim scholars and intellectuals had also expressed concern over the new trend of lavish weddings and wanted a curb at the earliest.
ACCRA (Reuters) - Turkey stands ready to help fight the growing threat of terrorism in west Africa under a new strategic partnership that aims to boost trade and other ties with the continent, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. Addressing members of Ghana's parliament during a two-day visit to Accra, Erdogan said Turkey was well placed to help African countries combat terrorism, an allusion to its decades-long fight against Kurdish separatist rebels as well as other groups including Islamist militants. "Turkey has a vast experience in combating terrorism and we understand those countries suffering at the hands of terrorism best," he said, citing recent attacks by Islamic militants in Mali and Burkina Faso. At least 28 people from 12 countries were killed in January when Islamist jihadists attacked a hotel and a restaurant in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou. The attacks followed a similar raid on a luxury hotel in Mali's capital Bamako in November which left 20 dead. Erdogan said developing countries, including in Africa, needed to push harder for reforms of the United Nations Security Council to make it more responsive to their needs in times of crisis, adding that the body as currently constituted only served the interests of a few "elite" countries. The Security Council's five permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. "The Security Council of the United Nations is not active in Syria, in northern Africa, or northern Iraq ... and its failure to interfere in troubled countries should be of concern to all and that's why we need to push for reforms in the Council," he said. Erdogan, accompanied by some 150 Turkish businesspeople, is keen to open up new markets for his country's exporters, to seek new investment opportunities in fast-growing African economies and boost Ankara's diplomatic profile on the global stage. Turkey is set to significantly expand its trade with Africa, Erdogan said, though he gave no figures. His tour of west Africa also includes Ivory Coast, Guinea and Nigeria. (Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Editing by Gareth Jones)
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday he did not respect or accept a constitutional court ruling that the detention of two journalists from a leading opposition newspaper had violated their rights. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet, and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul were released pending trial on Friday after the constitutional court ruling. Their arrest last November, after Cumhuriyet published video footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria, drew international condemnation and concern about media freedom in Turkey. "I will remain silent to the decision the court has given. But I don't need to accept it, I want to make that clear. I don't obey or respect the decision," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul before leaving on an official visit to West Africa. "This has nothing to do with press freedom. This is a case of spying," he said. The two were charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security. Cumhuriyet published photos, videos and a report last May that it said showed intelligence officials transporting arms to Syria in trucks in 2014. Despite their release, the two journalists are facing possible life sentences at a trial due to start on March 25 and are banned from leaving the country. Erdogan, who has cast the newspaper's coverage as part of an attempt to undermine Turkey's global standing, has said he will not forgive such reporting. (Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
By Phil Stewart and David Alexander WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is waging cyber attacks against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and its newly deployed commandos are also carrying out secret missions on the ground, Pentagon leaders said on Monday, in the latest signs of quietly expanding U.S. activity. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the cyber attacks, particularly in Syria, were designed to prevent Islamic State from commanding its forces, and Washington was looking to accelerate the cyber war against the Sunni militant group. "The methods we're using are new. Some of them will be surprising," Carter told a Pentagon news conference. General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the cyber attacks were helping lay the groundwork for an eventual offensive operation to recapture the city of Mosul in Iraq from Islamic State. Carter and Dunford, the Pentagon's top civilian and uniformed officials, both suggested the attacks were aimed at overloading the militants' networks. They declined to delve into specifics. "We don't want the enemy to know when, where and how we're conducting cyber operations. We don't want them to have information that will allow them to adapt over time," Dunford said. Dunford suggested Islamic State might not know why its computer networks were proving unreliable. "They're going to experience some friction that's associated with us and some friction that's just associated with the normal course of events in dealing in the information age. And frankly, we don't want them to know the difference." U.S. COMMANDOS The United States disclosed in January that a new, roughly 200-strong U.S. continent of special operations forces was "in place" in Iraq, poised to carry out raids against Islamic State and other secret missions, both in Iraq and in Syria. Carter disclosed on Monday that the so-called "expeditionary targeting force," or ETF, was already operating on the ground. "The ETF is in position, it is having an effect and operating, and I expect it to be a very effective part of our acceleration campaign," he said, without elaborating. Its deployment represents increased U.S. military activity on the ground against Islamic State, exposing American forces to greater risk - something President Barack Obama has done only sparingly. The force follows another deployment last year of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed forces battling Islamic State. The U.S. military disclosed last week that those U.S. forces helped opposition forces recapture the strategic Syrian town of al-Shadadi from Islamic State. The Pentagon said recapturing the town helped sever links between Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, the two major power centers in Islamic State's self-declared caliphate. More knowledge about the group's operations is expected to be discovered, Carter said. "As our partners take control of Shadadi, I believe we will learn a great deal more about ISIL's criminal networks, its criminal enterprise and what it does to sustain them," Carter said, using an acronym for the group. (Reporting by Phil Stewart and David Alexander; Editing by Susan Heavey and Richard Chang)
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council plans to vote on a resolution on Tuesday that would dramatically expand existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea in response to its Jan. 6 nuclear test, the U.S. mission to the United Nations said on Monday. The vote is expected to come during a meeting that begins at 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Tuesday, an official at the mission told Reuters. Last week the United States presented to the 15-nation council a draft resolution it negotiated with China that would significantly tighten restrictions after North Korea's nuclear test and rocket launch, and create what it described as the toughest U.N. sanctions regime in two decades. Originally Washington had hoped to put the resolution to a vote last weekend but Russian demanded more time to study the text, which the United States agreed last week with China in an unusual partnership against Beijing's neighbor and ally Pyongyang. The draft, seen by Reuters, would require U.N. member states to conduct mandatory inspections of all cargo passing through their territory to or from North Korea to look for illicit goods. Previously states were only required to do this if they had reasonable grounds to believe there was illicit cargo. One diplomat said there had been minor changes to the text, though he offered no details. The United States used the nearly two months of bilateral negotiations that at one point involved President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, diplomats said, to win China's support for unusually tough measures intended to persuade North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons program. The proposal would close a gap in the U.N. arms embargo on Pyongyang by banning all weapons imports and exports. There would also be an unprecedented ban on the transfer to North Korea of any item that could directly contribute to the operational capabilities of the North Korean armed forces, such as trucks that could be modified for military purposes. Other proposed measures include a ban on all supplies of aviation and rocket fuel to North Korea, a requirement for states to expel North Korean diplomats engaging in illicit activities, and blacklisting 17 North Korean individuals and 12 entities, including the National Aerospace Development Agency or 'NADA', the body responsible for February's rocket launch. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters the new measures, if approved, would be "the strongest set of sanctions imposed by the Security Council in more than two decades." North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 because of its multiple nuclear tests and rocket launches. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Michael Perry)
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - A study of nine pregnant women from the United States who traveled to countries where the Zika virus was circulating shows a greater-than-expected number of fetal infections and brain abnormalities, U.S. health officials said on Friday. Two of the women had miscarriages, two had abortions, two had apparently healthy children, and one child was born with severe microcephaly, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Doctors are still following the two remaining pregnancies, which so far appear to be progressing without complications, the CDC said. "We did not expect to see these brain abnormalities in this small case series of U.S. pregnant travelers," said Dr. Denise Jamieson, a birth defects expert serving on CDC's Zika Virus Response Team. She said it was "greater than we would have expected." Brazil is investigating thousands of cases of babies born with abnormally small heads thought to be linked with Zika, a mosquito-borne virus circulating in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the nine U.S. cases, Zika virus infection during pregnancy was associated with a range of outcomes, including early pregnancy losses, congenital microcephaly, and apparently healthy infants, the CDC said. Microcephaly is a birth defect associated with undersized heads and developmental problems. More information will be available in the future from a new CDC registry for U.S. pregnant women with confirmed Zika virus infection and their infants. An analysis of some cases showed the virus had crossed the placenta and affected the fetuses. In one, a woman traveled to a Zika-affected area when she was five weeks pregnant. Antibody testing confirmed a recent Zika infection. The mother miscarried at eight weeks, and an analysis of the fetus detected Zika virus. "Our lab identified Zika in the placental tissues. That is suggestive that Zika may have caused the miscarriage," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters on a conference call. But he cautioned that 10 percent to 20 percent of all pregnancies end up in miscarriage, so it was not certain that Zika was to blame. In another case, a woman in her 30s had traveled to a Zika-affected area when she was about 12 weeks pregnant. Shortly after her return, she developed a fever, eye pain, body aches and a rash. Testing confirmed a recent Zika infection. The woman got a routine ultrasound at about 20 weeks gestation, and doctors noted that the fetus was missing its corpus callosum, tissue that connects both halves of the brain. It also had fluid in the brain and there was evidence the brain had shrunk in size. The Zika virus was detected in the amniotic fluid. The woman chose to abort the fetus. In another case, a woman who had lived in Brazil gave birth to an infant with severe microcephaly. The CDC did not release details on where the baby was born. In January, a CDC spokesman confirmed that a U.S. woman who had lived in Brazil gave birth to a microcephalic baby in Hawaii. "It's more evidence to me that this association is continuing to look stronger and stronger," said Dr. Richard Beigi, president of The Infectious Diseases Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology, who had seen the reports. "We want to be cautious because it's a small group of women, but from what I saw, it is suggestive that the effects look to be more severe in the early part of pregnancy," said Beigi, an obstetrician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The CDC is also investigating another 10 cases of Zika infection in pregnant travelers. On Jan. 15, the CDC issued an advisory telling pregnant women to consider postponing travel to areas with active transmission of Zika virus. On the conference call, the CDC said it has developed a diagnostic test that it plans to distribute to U.S. public health laboratories to speed the diagnosis of Zika, which currently takes about a week. It is not yet clear that Zika virus actually causes microcephaly in babies, but experts say the evidence of a link is growing. Brazil has confirmed more than 580 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,100 suspected cases of microcephaly. The CDC said it has deployed 25 staff to help with the investigation. That was in addition to the 50 CDC staff members in Brazil studying dengue, a related virus. (Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by David Gregorio)
Clinton Correctional Facility officer Gene Palmer, 57, is seen in a picture released by the New York State Police on June 24, 2015. REUTERS/New York State Police/Handout (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An upstate New York correctional officer pleaded guilty on Monday to helping two convicts make a daring escape from a maximum security prison last year, and was sentenced to six months in jail and $5,000 in fines.

Gene Palmer admitted to charges that he gave a screwdriver and pliers to two inmates who escaped in June 2015 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, about 25 miles from the Canadian border in the Adirondack Mountains.

At least some of the tools smuggled to inmates David Sweat and Richard Matt were hidden in frozen meat provided by Joyce Mitchell, another prison employee.

After a three-week manhunt, Matt was fatally shot by a federal agent and Sweat was captured two days later.

Sweat, who was already serving a life sentence for killing a law enforcement officer, was sentenced in February to up to 14 more years for the escape.

Palmer pleaded guilty in Clinton County Court in Plattsburgh, New York, on Monday to two counts of promoting prison contraband, one a felony and one a misdemeanor, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie asked Judge Kevin Ryan to sentence Palmer to at least one year in county jail.

Palmer remained silent in court except to plead to the charges.

Before sentencing him, the judge cited Palmer's 28 years of otherwise unblemished service as well as his help in an ongoing state inspector general's investigation into the dramatic break.

Calling it an "egregious violation of your duties," the judge noted that Palmer had allowed Sweat to enter passageways behind prison cell walls, which helped the inmates plan their June 2015 escape. Eventually the pair cut through a steel wall and slithered through a steam pipe before emerging from a manhole on the street outside the prison's walls.

Mitchell, the prison employee who admitted helping the two convicted murderers by smuggling them tools, was sentenced in September to 2-1/3 to seven years in prison.

Story continues

The judge noted that Palmer said he had helped the inmates in exchange for "priceless" information that helped keep corrections officers and other inmates safe in their often violent surroundings.

Palmer will resign from the corrections department, the judge said. After the escape, he was suspended from his $74,644 a year job as a guard.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by David Gregorio)
The city Intelligence wing is an empty cupboard. The vacancies in key posts have not been filled up yet, said an official source. (Representational image)

Bengaluru: The last bastion of the Intelligence apparatus of the city police will fall this month-end with the superannuation of Deputy Commissioner of Police K.N. Jitendranath, who had blown off the lid of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) terror conspiracy in Karnataka, the then Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra along with then joint commissioner (East) B. Dayananad.

After Mr Jitendranath demits office on March 31, Bengaluru police will have no one to hold brief for Intelligence with vacancies that continue to exist in sensitive posts including Joint Commissioner (Intelligence), Deputy Commissioner (Crime) and DCP (VIP security), despite empty assurances from the government that security of the city is their top priority.

The city Intelligence wing is an empty cupboard. The vacancies in key posts have not been filled up yet, said an official source. The downfall in the Intelligence wing started with the former Intelligence chief  Additional Director General of Police Gopal B. Hosur opting for voluntary retirement in 2013. Mr Hosur had served the city police as DCP (Central), when Kannada thespian Dr Rajkumar was kidnapped by forest brigand Veerappan and had investigated the role of notorious Dandupalya gang, which was involved in the worst ever serial killings in the state post-Independence.

He had also probed the terror attack on the Indian Institute of Science in 2005 and the serial blasts of 2008. Mr Hosurs exit from the police was barely filled when another ace Intelligence officer V.S. DSouza, who had cracked the first serial terror blast case in Bengaluru, Goa and the then Andhra Pradesh by proscribed organization Deendar Anjuman in 2000, retired in 2014. Mr Dsouzas impeccable investigation in the serial church blast cases is even now considered as a ready reckoner for investigating officers.

Mr Jitendranath is the last officer standing in the deserted corridor of city Intelligence. The government should fill up the vacancies with officers who know the city and have an aptitude for Intelligence and serious investigation, the officer said.
By Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is proposing increased humanitarian aid for Greece, where more than 20,000 refugees and migrants are stuck after borders were tightened along the Balkans preventing them from trekking north to wealthier parts of Europe. The EU executive's aid and crisis management commissioner will put forward a plan on Wednesday that officials said would allocate 300 million euros ($325 million) this year to helping any EU state, not only Greece, deal with humanitarian crises, and a total of 700 million over the three years to end-2018. Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who oversees annual foreign aid spending of 1.1 billion euros, will propose funding the new scheme through transfers within the EU's existing multi-year budget, officials said, without touching funds earmarked for humanitarian relief outside the 28-nation bloc. Beyond 2018, the scheme would continue with further funding. A European Commission spokesman told reporters the new plan was needed "to prevent humanitarian suffering as a result of an unprecedented number of people arriving in the EU". Margaritis Schinas said the Commission was very concerned at violence on the Greek-Macedonian border. He spoke as the bloc is gearing up for a summit on Monday with Turkey, the point of departure for the vast majority of people heading to Europe. More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year -- mostly via Turkey to Greece -- and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016. Overwhelmed, Greece and other countries along the main migration route have tended to wave the people through and the influx has brought Europe's Schengen zone of free travel to the verge of collapse. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker talked to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk will visit Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey this week. Brussels and Berlin, which are battling to make a joint European plan to alleviate the migration crisis work, are banking on Turkey to sharply reduce the number of people embarking for Europe, many of whom have fled the war in Syria. But a growing number of EU states are resorting to unilaterally tightening their own borders, seeking to control the flow of people and prevent a spike in the arrivals many expect later in March as the weather improves. Austria, the last stop for refugees and migrants heading to their top destination Germany, infuriated Athens, Berlin and Brussels last month by announcing daily caps on the number of people it processes. Chancellor Werner Faymann defended the step, saying Austria cannot become a waiting room for Germany. Tusk, in Vienna on the first leg of his pre-summit tour along the Balkans migration route, said after talks with Faymann: "We must face together the consequences of our decisions. The country that we must support in particular is Greece." ($1 = 0.9211 euros) (Additional reporting by Tom Koerkemeier in Brussels and Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former finance co-chair of Chris Christie's presidential campaign on Sunday slammed Christie's recent endorsement of Donald Trump, according to NBC, calling for the New Jersey governor's supporters to reject the Republican front-runner. "Chris Christie's endorsement of Donald Trump is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be president," Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, said in a statement reported by NBC's "Meet the Press" program. Christie, appearing on ABC's "This Week" program, responded by describing Whitman "a great friend" with a different political opinion. "And that's OK. That's what makes this country great is that people can have differences of political opinion," he said. Just days before the Super Tuesday nominating contests, Christie on Friday became the most prominent mainstream Republican to get behind the billionaire Republican front-runner and former reality TV star, declaring Trump to have the best chance of defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. But Whitman's statement said the New Jersey governor made his statement despite his own public misgivings about a Trump presidency. "Trump would take America on a dangerous journey. Christie knows all that and indicated as much many times publicly," Whitman said. Trump's unorthodox candidacy has shaken the Republican Party and has drawn increasingly vehement criticism from his rivals. But a growing number of senior Republicans are becoming resigned to the idea he will be their candidate in November. Christie, who withdrew his own White House bid earlier this month, denied that he reversed course on Trump after promising New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper publisher Joe McQuaid that he would not endorse him after the billionaire won the state's Feb. 9 primary election. "It's just not true. He called me two days after the primary and said, I was just told that you're about to endorse Donald Trump. And I said to him, that's absolutely untrue. I'm not about to endorse anybody," Christie told ABC. (Reporting by Alana Wise and David Morgan; Editing by Ros Russell)
The conflict at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus where Right-wing student activists tore up posters, hurled abuse and shouted slogans against a group of students conducting a signature campaign in support of the JNU students in Delhi, reflects simmering tension on the elite campus. Is the IISc on the verge of a JNUlike episode? Are the students fiercely divided here as well?

An internal inquiry is being carried out by the management of the premier Indian Institute of Science (IISc) into Tuesdays violence, which saw a few right wing students barge into a gathering of liberal and left leaning students collecting signatures in support of the JNU students. Hurling abuse, they vandalised the furniture, tore up posters and the sheets carrying the signatures which were to be attached to a letter the students planned to submit to the President of India.

As the ruckus threatened to get out of hand, security guards were called to defuse the situation which took the elite institute by surprise as it has never seen anything like it in the past. This is an unprecedented incident at the IISc and is a clear indication of the shrinking of democratic spaces inside university campuses, posted a student on social media.

Speaking of the fallout, a student leader representing the liberal and left leaning group, said the management had talked to them about the incident, and they had informed it about their views and stand on the matter. It is looking at it as a purely internal affair and wants to settle the issue amicably, he said, adding that the management also wanted all students, including the ones who created the ruckus, to express their views so that they could be discussed and debated for an inference to be drawn.

Right-wing students seen tearing up posters and the sheets carrying the signatures (Photo: DC)

Recalling Tuesdays events, the leader said the students had launched the signature campaign as they believed everyone had the right to free speech in a democracy. While we may disagree with what someone has to say, we must stand up for their right to say it, he asserted. Its basically the right to stand up for what you believe in. People have not been given a chance to be heard fairly. Instead there have been a lot of knee-jerk reactions based on emotions when logic and rule of law should prevail, he deplored.

Despite the violence, the left and liberal students seem willing to let bygones be bygones. We dont have a personal grudge against the students who created trouble, but we feel the entire incident was uncalled for especially in an institute like ours. We can always speak and discuss things instead of fighting, the student leader contended, however protesting that the right wingers were not willing to give any room for discussion. We are saying we are trying to discuss something and they are telling us we cannot do that. But why not? Lets try to talk and figure things out. We may be wrong, but we cannot find out until we talk about it. We are not saying this is right or that is right. We want people to discuss and figure out what is right and how things should work in a mature system, he maintained.

Willing to accept that the students who objected to the signature campaign had their own reasons for doing so, some of the liberal students said they were open to discussing their point of view as well. Even a few professors supported us during the signature campaign and warned those opposing us not to resort to violence, they revealed.

Coming out in support of the pro-JNU students right to their views, one IISc. professor said, Whichever group is against them, it could have expressed its dissent in a democratic manner by simply counter-petitioning them and saying they do not subscribe to their views. After all, the group is only going to send a petition to the President. Nothing stops the other group from expressing dissent and countering with a petition of its own. This would have been the right spirit. Its unfortunate that it all ends up in fist fights always.

IISc returns to normal

Peace returned to the Indian Institute of Science campus on Wednesday. Having successfully defused the situation while it was still unraveling, the management of IISc, unlike the one in JNU, seems to be handling the issue calmly, calling it merely a conflict of beliefs among students.

Unlike at JNU, no police case was registered against the students for Tuesdays violence and no police was seen on campus questioning or taking anyone into custody, which could have triggered more unrest. There were no communications from the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD) either for an inquiry into the incident, that is being treated purely as an internal matter by the management.

The institute, however, did insist on the signature campaign being delayed by a day to allow things to settle down, according to the students. The IISc. management asked us to hold back the signature campaign for a day on Tuesday immediately after the incident, but it was resumed on Wednesday and we successfully collected over 300 signatures on the letter we intend to submit to the President of India, said a student organising the campaign.

We need to develop tolerance for dissenting voices: G.K. Karanth

Whether they are premier institutes or other institutions, I think they must not lose sight of the fact that there can be a multitude of ideas and ideologies. Even if someones ideas are in conflict, they should not forget to be decent to each other. Whether from the right wing or the left, I think no one should use their muscles to prove their point. This is not a healthy way of doing things in universities, research or other educational institutions. We need to develop tolerance for dissenting voices and there should be an appropriate forum to prove which voice is better and so on, which unfortunately the student community is also losing sight of and in more than one case, embarrassing the managements as a result. But then some managements also try to join hands with the powers that be, resulting in the situations becoming uncontrollable.

I think this country will have to re-discover the meaning of protest. Had Mahatma Gandhi been protesting today, there would have perhaps been some miscreant in the crowd shouting a few slogans and even he would have been discredited. In other words, I think when organising a protest it should be confined to what it was intended for originally and responsibility must be taken for any unintended outcome. If someone is gathering a crowd, he should make sure it is of like-minded people.
Will the Crude Oil Market React to the US Crude Oil Inventory Report?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Crude oil producers

The key crude oil producers that contributed to the global crude oil oversupply were the US, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Canada. The US crude oil production rose by 700,000 bpd (barrels per day) to 9.4 MMbpd (million barrels per day) in 2015compared to 2014. Read Is $40 the New $70 for Shale Crude Oil Producers? to learn more about US crude oil production. Iraqs crude oil production, along with liquid fuels, rose by 700,000 bpd to 4 MMbpd in 2015compared to 2014. Iraq is OPECs (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) second-largest crude oil producer. Iraqs oil consumption fell marginally in 2015. This also contributed to oversupply in 2015. As a result, all of the crude oil production increase was exported to international markets.

Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Canadas crude oil production

Saudi Arabias crude oil production rose by 300,000 bpd in 2015. To learn more about Saudi Arabias production, read Did Saudi Arabia Keep Its Word and Freeze Crude Oil Production? and Why OPECs Crude Oil Production Fell in February 2016. Likewise, Brazil and Canadas crude oil production rose by 200,000 bpd and 100,000 bpd in 2015, respectively. The rise in production growth of crude oil in the oversupplied market led to the collateral damage of crude oil prices.

The higher break-even costs and production costs from US and Canadas shale oil producers will see oil production fall in 2016 and 2017. For more information on US energy companies financial woes, read US Oil and Gas Companies Debt Exceeds $200 Billion and Crude Oils Total Cost of Production Impacts Major Oil Producers. Political uncertainty, corruption, and lower oil prices will lead to a decline in Brazilian oil production. To learn about the historic deal, read Why Crude Oil Prices Fell despite the OPEC and Non-OPEC Deal. It will see Saudi Arabia and Iraq freeze crude oil production at January 2016 levels. So, we could see crude oil production decline in the coming years. In the next part of this series, well discuss how Iran will play the crude oil market.

Story continues

The 12-year low crude oil prices impact the margins of national and international oil producers like Chevron (CVX), ExxonMobil (XOM), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A), Saudi Aramco, Total (TOT), Petrobras (PBR), PetroChina (PTR), and BP (BP). In contrast, the low prices benefit oil refiners like Valero Energy (VLO) and Northern Tier Energy (NTI).

ETFs and ETNs such as the iShares Global Energy ETF (IXC), the Market Vectors Oil Refiners ETF (CRAK), the United States Oil Fund (USO), the VelocityShares 3x Inverse Crude Oil ETN (DWTI), the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE), and the iShares U.S. Energy ETF (IYE) are also influenced by the ups and downs in oil prices.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
IRVINE, CA, and HERSTAL, BELGIUM - March 2, 2016 - MDxHealth SA (Euronext: MDXH.BR), today announced that its ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer test has been included in the United States' 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Guidelines. The NCCN is an alliance of 23 world-leading cancer centers from across the US. The guidelines provide recommendations to ensure that patients receive diagnostic testing services and treatment that have been shown to improve clinical outcomes. The new guidelines are published online at www.nccn.org.

"We are delighted that the NCCN panel for early detection of prostate cancer included our ConfirmMDx test into these highly respected clinical guidelines. Inclusion in the guidelines establishes ConfirmMDx as a 'standard of care' for the management of men at risk for undetected prostate cancer," stated Dr. Jan Groen, Chief Executive Officer of MDxHealth. "This is the second MDxHealth test to be included in the NCCN guidelines, with PredictMDx for Glioblastoma added in 2013, and illustrates our commitment to delivering clinically valuable solutions to improve patient outcomes."

ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer is the first epigenetic, and only tissue-based test in the 2016 NCCN Guidelines for early detection of prostate cancer which addresses false negative biopsy concerns. It is the only molecular diagnostic test that provides a high negative predictive value (NPV) of 90% for all prostate cancers, and a NPV of 96% for clinically significant prostate cancers, as well as prostate mapping of the test results to help guide repeat biopsies. To date nearly 2,800 urologists have ordered ConfirmMDx on more than 40,000 patients. ConfirmMDx has qualified for Medicare reimbursement and is also available to more than 152 million insured lives via private health insurance plans.

"Gaining acceptance into the NCCN Guidelines has been at the core of our medical affairs strategy, and supported by our investment in building a strong dossier of clinical evidence," commented Christopher Thibodeau, Chief Commercial Officer of MDxHealth. "This is a major milestone for the Company which paves the way for widespread adoption of the assay within the US urology community, and as importantly, strengthens our position to negotiate with health insurance plans."

About ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer

ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer helps urologists identify men who may forego an unnecessary repeat biopsy. Each year, more than 1 million American men undergo an invasive prostate biopsy with a negative result, however approximately 30% of those men actually have prostate cancer. The current standard of care for prostate biopsy procedures samples less than 1% of the prostate, leaving men at risk for undetected cancer and leading to a high rate of repeat biopsies, even on cancer-free men.

About MDxHealth 

MDxHealth is a multinational healthcare company that provides actionable epigenetic and molecular information to personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The company's tests are based on proprietary DNA methylation (epigenetic) technology and assist physicians with the diagnosis of cancer, prognosis of recurrence risk, and prediction of response to a specific therapy. For more information visit mdxhealth.com and follow us on Twitter at: twitter.com/mdxhealth.

For more information:



Dr. Jan Groen, CEO

MDxHealth

US: +1 949 812 6979

BE: +32 4 364 20 70

info@mdxhealth.com



Amber Fennell, Chris Welsh, Hendrik Thys (PR & IR)

Consilium Strategic Communications

UK: +44 20 3709 5701

Cell: + 44 7739658783

mdxhealth@consilium-comms.com





This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of MDxHealth and the market in which it operates. Such statements and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable but may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict, may depend upon factors that are beyond the company's control, and may turn out to be materially different. MDxHealth expressly disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements in this release to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based unless required by law or regulation. This press release does not constitute an offer or invitation for the sale or purchase of securities or assets of MDxHealth in any jurisdiction. No securities of MDxHealth may be offered or sold within the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or in compliance with an exemption therefrom, and in accordance with any applicable U.S. securities laws.

NOTE: The MDxHealth logo, MDxHealth, ConfirmMDx, SelectMDx, AssureMDx and PredictMDx are trademarks or registered trademarks of MDxHealth SA. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
WASHINGTON, March 2, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The ABLE National Resource Center (ANRC) announced today the launch of its inaugural website, www.ABLENRC.org. The ANRC website will offer important information regarding the Stephen Beck Jr., Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2014, a law which allows eligible individuals with disabilities and their families to open tax-advantaged accounts for the purposes of saving to cover the costs of disability-related expenses that assist in advancing their health, independence and/or quality of life.



The ANRC, founded and managed by National Disability Institute (NDI), aims to educate individuals with disabilities and their families, ABLE program administrators, financial institutions and other relevant stakeholders about the benefits of these new accounts and the potential they have to significantly improve the lives of what is estimated to be millions of eligible children and adults with disabilities in America.



"The ABLE Act has the potential to be one of the most important laws approved by Congress since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990," Michael Morris, founder of the ANRC and NDI Executive Director, said. "In 2016, we expect to see several states launch nationwide ABLE programs. The ANRC website will play a significant role in educating potential beneficiaries and their families as to which program is right for them."



The ANRC website will provide:

- State-by-state ABLE program development updates;

- Side-by-side comparisons of ABLE program elements;

- Informational ABLE videos;

- Archived ABLE webinars and presentations;

- Published research;

- Summaries of policies, rules and regulations;

- Frequently asked questions (FAQs); and

- An online portal to submit questions to a panel of experts.



The website is sponsored with the generous support of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo, First National Bank and Intuition ABLE Solutions.



The ANRC website can be found at www.ABLENRC.org. For more information, please contact Chris Rodriguez, NDI Senior Public Policy Advisor, at crodriguez@ndi-inc.org.



About National Disability Institute

National Disability Institute (NDI) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to building a better economic future for people with disabilities. The first national organization committed exclusively to championing economic empowerment, financial education, asset development and financial stability for all persons with disabilities, NDI affects change through public education, policy development, training, technical assistance and innovative initiatives. NDI and its Real Economic Impact (REI) Network have helped more than 2.3 million people with disabilities receive nearly $2.3 billion in tax refunds and credits. To learn more, visit www.realeconomicimpact.org. Engage with NDI on Facebook: RealEconImpact or follow NDI on Twitter: @RealEconImpact.
Marels Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held at the companys headquarters in Gardabaer, Iceland, on March 2, 2016. All proposals presented by the Board were unanimously approved by the meeting. Chairmans address Asthildur Margret Otharsdottir, Chairman of Marels Board of Directors discussed Marels powerful growth drivers during her presentation. Population growth, urbanization, sustainability and environment are all trends that will drive global economic development in the future and
As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ
New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Wednesday granted interim bail for six months to JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was arrested on charges of sedition, but said categorically that the slogans raised in the programme cant be termed as freedom of expression.

The conditional interim bail mandates that Kanhaiya must cooperate fully in the ongoing investigation and present himself when required before the investigators. Kanhaiya, who is now in judicial custody at Tihar Jail, is likely to be released on Thursday after he furnishes a bail bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of like amount at the Patiala House court.

The high court directed Kanhaiya should not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national and told him that as president of the JNU students union he should make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus.

The court also made strong remarks about the slogans that were allegedly raised by the students, including the other accused, saying they cannot claim protection under the fundamental right to speech and expression, particularly as the investigation into the case was at a nascent stage. Further, Justice Pratibha Rani was critical of the slogans at the February 9 event on the JNU campus eulogising Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, mastermind of the hijack of a passenger plane to Lahore in 1971 who was hanged in 1984.

Read: My son is not a terrorist, the world will know soon: Kanhaiya Kumar's mother

The feelings or protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters, carrying photographs, of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, the judge said, while ordering Kanhaiyas release. He also cannot leave the country without the permission of the trial court.

Kanhaiya has an intellectual attitude

Justice Pratibha Rani also considered his family background, that his mother is an anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3,000 on which the entire family survives, to fix the bail amount.

The 23-page detailed order says the court doesnt appreciate the thoughts reflected at the university event. I consider this a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic, said the court order. The court said Kanhaiya has an intellectual attitude, but added that as president of a students body he will be held responsible for activities in the campus.

Read: 2 videos of JNU event 'manipulated,' finds forensic probe: sources

The order was orally announced at 7 pm in a jampacked courtroom.

Soon after the high court granted him bail, hundreds of students, teachers and social activists who had taken out a march from Mandi House to Parliament Street police station in support of Kanhaiya turned it into a celebration, with many hailing the countrys judiciary for giving justice to their innocent leader. The protesters, however, made a strong pitch for dropping the sedition charges, not only against Kanhaiya but also against two other students, Umer Farooq and Anirbhan Bhattacharya, who too are in Tihar Jail. Many protesters shouted slogans like Dont Target JNU, Drop Sedition Charges against Kanhaiya.

Read: JNU row: Videos doctored, says Hyderabad-based Truth Labs

In Bihar, Kanhaiyas father said his son was not a traitor. My son is not a traitor, he will be proven innocent soon, he said. His brother said the sedition case was based on a doctored video and that the truth will prevail.

Kanhaiya was arrested February 12 in the sedition case, in which he and others, including two more JNU students, are accused of raising anti-India slogans at the February 9 event on the JNU campus.

Kanhaiya sought bail claiming he had not raised any anti-India slogans but the Delhi police had told the high court it had evidence to show the accused had raised such slogans. The bench had put some tough questions to the police on slapping sedition charges on the accused and asked it to produce evidence showing his active role in raising anti-India slogans.

Defence lawyers, including Kapil Sibal, had countered these charges, saying some outsiders with covered faces had raised anti-India slogans and Kanhaiya Kumar was seen in CCTV footage asking them for their identity cards.
New Delhi: The usually belligerent Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday wore a benign smile as he tore into the Narendra Modi dispensation in a calm and composed manner in the Lok Sabha, lambasting the Prime Minister on a slew of issues, right from the JNU row to the issue of black money to Pakistan policy as well as the invisible Naga peace accord. While launching this stinging attack, he even handled the incessant heckling by the Treasury benches with a calm demeanour.

Read: Rajnath Singh refutes Rahul Gandhis claim on Naga deal

Mr Gandhi seemed in total control during his speech in the Lok Sabha (as part of the discussion on the vote of thanks over the Presidents speech). In a calculated attack, he took on the government on all the aforementioned issues turn by turn. He said Mr Modi brought a Fair and Lovely Yojna to convert black money into white and blamed him for destroying the UPAs work against insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and against terrorism.

Mr Gandhi also blamed the Prime Minister for releasing Pakistan from the small cage in which it was put after the 26/11 attacks by his sudden visit to Lahore. Reading out from brief notes he had written on some pieces of paper, a visibly relaxed and clean-shaven Mr Gandhi, the Congress MP from Amethi, claimed the Prime Minister had made a great show of resolving the Naga problem, but the Naga peace accord which the government had signed amid full media glare was now nowhere to be seen. When a BJP MP quipped whether he had read the accord, Congress president Sonia Gandhi quickly retorted, There is no accord.

Amid thumping of benches by Congress MPs who were present in full strength during Mr Gandhis half-hour speech in the Lower House, the young leader sportingly took the jibes made by the Treasury benches where Union ministers Jitendra Singh, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Harsh Vardhan and Jayant Sinha were also present.

Mr Gandhi claimed that when the Prime Minister contacted the Opposition leaders intimating them about the government solving the Naga problem by signing an accord, none in the state governments or the Central government knew. He said although the issue had huge ramifications, neither the chief minister of Nagaland nor the chief ministers of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh knew a word about it.

The home ministry and the intelligence agency, even the home minister had no idea. Fascinating. Now it (the accord) has vanished into thin air. Gone with the wind. Bye-bye accord... Is it not an insult to the institutions? he quipped.

He criticised the Prime Minister for being autocratic while dealing with issues of governance. You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is only one truth in the universe, your own; that nobody elses opinion matters in the entire universe. This is all you have shown us in the last two years. The Prime Minister cannot run the country on only his opinion. The country is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the country, Mr Gandhi emphasised.

On the JNU row, Mr Gandhi asserted that Mr Kanhaiya Kumar had not uttered a single word which was against the law but still he was behind bars while the real culprits were still roaming free. He also accused the government of crushing the voice of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

What is JNU? Sixty per cent of the students belong to dalits, minorities and OBCs. Forty per cent of them come from a poor background. Why are you after JNU? Because dalits and adivasis study there and you dont want them to grow. But we will not let this happen. You cannot crush JNU, he said. He rapped Mr Modis silence on the JNU row, especially the attack on journalists and teachers in court. In acerbic remarks on his style of functioning, he said Mr Modi did not listen to anyones opinion, including that of his ministers and party MPs, on issues like his visit to Pakistan and the Naga accord.

Picking on the one-time compliance window announced in the Budget as a Fair and Lovely scheme, Mr Gandhi said this was nothing but a move to turn black money into white. The finance minister has announced a new scheme  Fair and Lovely scheme. In this scheme, any thief of the country can convert his black money into white. If anyone indulges in corruption, he can convert his black money into white using the Fair and Lovely scheme, he said.

Appealing to the Prime Minister to reach out to the Opposition, the Congress vice-president made it clear that the Opposition does not consider the government an enemy and does not hate you.

Taking the floor in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the motion of thanks to the Presidents address, Mr Gandhi, in a speech that was often interrupted by BJP members, accused Mr Modi of single-handedly destroying six years of UPA work to put Pakistan into a small cage after the 26/11 terror strikes, by visiting Pakistan.

He charged the Prime Minister with releasing Pakistan from a cage for which the UPA had invested thousands of hours of hard work and all-round consultations. The work done by the UPA has made us all proud. We conducted panchayat elections, created self-help groups which generated employment. We had broken the back of insurgency in Kashmir completely. And what did the Prime Minister do? He decided to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif without any vision. He decided to take a detour to Pakistan. Just like the Naga accord. He did not bother to consult anyone... the people in intelligence, the diplomats. Perhaps he did not even talk to (external affairs minister) Sushmaji (Swaraj). Only his opinion matters. He single-handedly destroyed the six years of work done by the UPA, Mr Gandhi said.

Insisting that the then UPA government had put Pakistan into a small cage after 26/11, Mr Gandhi said this was achieved by UPA by investing by working tirelessly and taking into account diverse opinion ranging from Opposition leaders, diplomats, armed forces and intelligence officers. With such Herculean efforts, he said, India managed to isolate Pakistan internationally, turn it into a pariah nation and succeeded in exposing it as a global supporter of terrorism.
New Delhi: Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday refuted Rahul Gandhis claim that he was not informed before signing a peace pact with Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM saying the Congress Vice-Presidents statement was completely false and baseless and he misled the Parliament.

Rahul had said that although the Naga issue had huge ramifications, neither the chief minister of Nagaland nor the chief ministers of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh knew a word about it.

The home ministry and the intelligence agency, even the home minister had no idea. Fascinating. Now it (the accord) has vanished into thin air. Gone with the wind. Bye-bye accord... Is it not an insult to the institutions, he had said. Hitting back, Rajnath Singh said, Rahul Gandhis statement on Naga peace accord in Lok Sabha is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Rahul Gandhis attempt to mislead the House.

The Home Minister's strong reaction came hours after Rahul also told the Lok Sabha that Singh was not aware of Naga peace accord which was signed in August 2015 in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rahul alleged that Modi did not listen to anyones opinion, including his ministers on issues like his visit to Pakistan and Naga accord.
BENGALURU: In a frantic effort to scupper moves by BJP leaders to raise the controversial issue of his luxe wristwatch in Parliament, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah handed over his diamond-studded Hublot watch to Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa in the Legislative Assembly and declared it a state asset on Wednesday.

With Opposition legislators digging their heels in for the second consecutive day on their demand for a discussion on the gift received by the Chief Minister from a Dubai-based doctor, Mr Siddaramaiah passed on the wristwatch and his letter declaring it a state asset to Mr Thimmappa who subsequently handed them over to chief secretary, Mr Arvind Jadhav. The watch would henceforth be displayed in the cabinet hall.

Karnataka Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimappa looks at the Hublot watch during the Assembly session in Bengaluru on Wednesday. (Photo: PTI)

At the end of the drama, Mr Thimmappa parried all questions on his involvement in the issue. With speculation rife that the watch was, in fact stolen from a local resident, there were several queries pertaining to it. What if the person who lost the watch comes to you and asks for the watch? Dont you think it was morally incorrect to hand over the watch to the chief secretary on behalf of the Chief Minister? The Speaker, however, maintained That question does not arise.
Modifying the condition on permit room, the bench said, this licence is valid for only one stage of 10 ft. x 12 ft. size in restaurant area/permit room as per approved plan of the Excise Department for F.L.-III with non transparent partition between restaurant and permit room area. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it clear to the Maharashtra government that CCTV cameras shall be fixed at the entrance of the premises of the dance bars but shall not be fixed in the restaurant or the permit area or the performance area.

Modifying the conditions imposed by the State, a Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh relaxed the earlier condition which said, The licensee shall ensure that adequate number of CCTV cameras which will live feed continuously to police control room be installed to cover the entire premises which will record the entire daily performance and the same will be monitored by a specially appointed person on a monitor/display. The daily recording of performance of last 30 days would preserved and will be made available to any competent authority as and when required for viewing.

In respect of other conditions, the bench in its order said on the last occasion, the Court had noted seven conditions which had been taken exception to by Mr. Jayant Bhushan, senior counsel appearing for the petitioners, Indian Hotel and Restaurants Association and others.

Modifying the condition on permit room, the bench said, this licence is valid for only one stage of 10 ft. x 12 ft. size in restaurant area/permit room as per approved plan of the Excise Department for F.L.-III with non transparent partition between restaurant and permit room area.

On partition, the bench said, in the affidavit filed by the State, the said condition has been modified as follows: There shall be a railing of 3 ft. height adjacent to the dance stage. There should be distance of 5 ft. between the railing and seats for the customers.

In respect of dance bars which have secured licenses earlier, provisions mentioned above be made binding, the court said. It should be made binding on dance bars seeking new licenses to have railing of 3 ft. height adjacent to the stage and leaving a distance of 5 ft between the railing and sitting arrangement for customers, the court added.
BENGALURU: A 22-year-old engineering student allegedly jumped to her death from a four-storey apartment where her boyfriend was living in A. Narayanapura near DRDO Quarters on Monday night. The deceased, Neha Reddy, daughter of Mallesh Reddy, a businessman and a resident of Chinnappanhalli in Mahadevapura, was a second semester engineering student in New Horizon College.

The police have taken Vignesh, Nehas alleged boyfriend and her classmate, into custody on charges of abetment to suicide and are questioning him. Vignesh was living with his parents and had allegedly promised to marry Neha after his studies.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Neha, who took the promises made by Vignesh seriously, had even introduced him to her family as her fiance. But, things turned ugly when Vignesh revealed his relationship to his parents. His family got upset and warned him to stay away from Neha and to focus on his studies. Over the last few weeks, Vignesh was avoiding her calls. Neha, who decided to confront Vignesh, finally caught him and asked him why he was avoiding her. Vignesh reportedly told her that he was breaking up with her, the police said.

A depressed Neha on Monday went to Vigneshs house to try her luck and to convince him, but they had a heated argument and Vignesh told Neha that he would never marry her. Unable to take the rejection and humiliation, Neha allegedly told Vignesh that she was going to end her life and bid a final bye to Vignesh before she walked out of the house. She climbed onto the terrace of the building and leapt to her death.

Passersby, who saw her crashing to the ground, rushed her to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared her brought dead. An alert was made to the police.

Mallesh Reddy, Nehas father and the complainant in the case, has accused Vignesh of pushing his daughter to death. Based on the complaint, the Mahadevapura police have booked a case of abetment to suicide against Vignesh and taken him into custody, a senior police officer said. Neha met Vignesh in college and they fell in love. They were said to be in a relationship for over a year.
Sarbananda Sonowal, the chief ministerial candidate of BJP in Assam, announced that BJP is joining hands with AGP. (Photo: PTI)

Guwahati: In what is said to be a politically wise move, the BJP on Wednesday decided to contest forthcoming assembly elections with regional Asom Gana Parishad.

AGP president Atul Bora, his senior colleagues Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, Biren Prasad Baishya, Pradip Hazarika and others attended the meeting with BJP president Amit Shah on Wednesday, which was attended by Sarbananda Sonowal, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Mahendra Singh.

If insiders are to be believed former minister Himanta Biswa Sarma who is also the convener of Assam BJP campaign committee for 2016 assembly polls was the architect of two significant deal roping in AGP and Bodoland Peoples Front in the alliance led by BJP. The BJP is also trying to accommodate some of the ethnic groups of Rabha Autonomous Council in order to create a formidable alliance against the ruling Congress party in Assam.

Emerging from the meeting, Assam BJP president Sarbananda Sonowal and AGP president Atul Bora told reporters, In larger interest of the state and to remove the Congress party from power, both the parties have decided to join hands.

Sonowal who is also the chief ministerial candidate of BJP in Assam said that prime objective of BJP is to free the states people from the corrupt regime of the Congress party.

Mr Bora said that alone it was not possible to stop the Congress so to fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the people, they have decided to join hands with BJP.

He said that party has decided to contest this election under the leadership of BJP.

He however clarified that they are yet to finalise the seat distribution. We will settle this issue amicably, said Mr Sonowal.

Sources however claimed that AGP will contest in 19 seats while they are yet to reach to create consensus on seven other seats that AGP has been claiming.

The AGP is likely to contest on Naharkatiya, Amguri, Mahmora, Khumtai, Sarupathar, Kaliabar, Chaygaon, Barhampur, West Guwahati, Boko, Hajo, Lakhimpur, Bongaigaon, Barpeta, Tezpur, North Abhoyapuri, Biswanath and Rangapara seats.
Chennai: DMK chief M. Karunanidhi on Tuesday said that all sections of people are expecting a criminal investigation to bring out the hidden truth behind the AIADMK government signing of power purchase agreement with Adani Groups 648 mw solar power plant in Ramanathapuram.

In a statement, Mr Karunanidhi said that the Adani group has got a stay from Madras high court against its own lawyer, Kabilan Manoharan after he threatened to publicize illegalities in the project unless his remuneration was increased.

He noted that the email sent by the lawyer to Adani contains charges of illegal purchase of lands for the plant, non-compliance with many regulations and power purchase agreement with Tangedco was done on the basis of fraudulent documentation and the company has got loans to the tune of Rs 4,300 crore from banks based on the PPAs. No amount of political patronage will ever be able to sweep under the carpet the illegalities, non-compliance and surreptitious circumvention of procedure in the bid to meet TANGEDCOs specification he quoted from the email.

Adani groups is setting up a 648 mw solar power plant in Ramanathapuram. The company has signed a PPA with Tangedco to supply the solar power at a cost Rs 7.01 per unit. The signing of the PPA become a controversy in the state with opposition political parties including DMK and PMK alleged that the Tangedco would become more debt ridden.
Voters of the state of Kerala hold the distinction of not electing the same government in successive elections since 1977. For that reason alone the return of the Left Democratic Front government (LDF, a coalition of Communist Party of India-Marxist, Communist Party of India, Janata Dal-Secular, Nationalist Congress Party and other political parties) seems imminent after the 2016 Assembly elections. This alternate change seems to be a matter of routine rather than a reflection of the performance of the government. Findings of surveys conducted by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) after various Assembly elections in Kerala do not indicate negative rating for any government, yet the ruling party gets defeated in the next election. Victory and defeat in Kerala, in fact, is decided by narrow margins, another indication of not very strong negative or positive opinion of the people for or against any government.

Apart from the states electoral history, even the results of the recent local body elections held in Kerala indicate a return of the LDF government. The United Democratic Front (UDF, an alliance of the Congress, Indian Union Muslim League, Kerala Congress-M, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Janata Dal-United and Kerala Congress-Jacob), which kept winning most of the local body elections since it came to power in the state in 2011, suffered a setback in the recent ones, indicating a change in the mood of the voters.

While there could be some local issues that may have influenced voters, one thing is sure  corruption charges worked against the UDF government in the local body elections. With the LDF sure to make an issue of this in the forthcoming elections, its very likely to further dent the prospects of the UDF.

In the recent past a decline has been witnessed in the support base of the UDF. Its vote share dropped from 45.8 per cent in the 2011 Assembly elections to 42 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In spite of this decline, the UDF maintained its lead over the LDF as the vote share of LDF also declined from 44.9 per cent in the 2011 Assembly to 40.1 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The two per cent lead of the UDF resulted in the alliance leading in 80 Assembly segments, while the LDF led in 56 Assembly segments during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Despite the lead the UDF had over the LDF during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, there is no evidence to suggest whether the lead is still intact or it has declined, or if the LDF has taken over the UDF in terms of popularity. If there is any indication, it is the result of the recent local body elections in which the UDF suffered defeats, an indication of the partys declining popularity closer to Assembly elections.

But if there is one thing which is clear, it is the increasing popularity of the BJP in Kerala. The party gained popularity during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and its vote share increased from 6 per cent in the 2011 Assembly elections to 10 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The past few months give further indication about the increase in the BJPs popularity considering that the party performed well in the local body elections in Kerala. Compared to only nine seats in various corporations earlier, the BJP managed to win 51 seats with its best performance in Thiruvananthapuram, where the party won 34 seats. In municipalities the BJP has increased its seat share from 79 in 2010 to 236 in 2015.

Thus, while the LDF has an edge over the UDF at the moment, a careful analysis of election results suggests that the increasing popularity of the BJP might damage the prospects of the LDF much more than those of the UDF. The BJPs popularity has increased particularly in Keralas urban pockets where the party polled 13.7 per cent votes, more than its average. The vote share of the LDF was 36.5 per cent in urban constituencies, compared to its average vote share of 40.1 per cent. This big shift of upper class voters from the LDF to the BJP is reason for concern for the LDF.

The urban young voters also seem to be attracted to the BJP. Survey conducted by CSDS during the 2014 Lok Sabha suggests that among the upper class voters, 22 per cent voted for the BJP while 27 per cent voted for the LDF. There was also a shift among voters belonging to the Nair community, of whom 30 per cent voted for the LDF and 30 per cent for the BJP. The BJP is making an effort to woo the Nair community by wooing the Nair Service Society (an upper-caste Hindu outfit) and other similar organisations.

Going by the states electoral history, a change of government seems most likely, but this trend can be reversed. Punjab had a similar history of not re-electing the same government in successive elections, but the 2007 Assembly elections threw a surprise as the Akali-BJP government retained power in the state. Who knows, Kerala may be heading the Punjab way in 2016?

The possible alliance of the BJP and the Bharat Dharma Jan Sena, a new political outfit of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana movement which is popular amongst the Ezhava community, can damage the prospects of the LDF.

The two main communities in Kerala are the Ezhavas and the Nairs. They account for about 23 and 14 per cent of Keralas population respectively. The two communities have traditionally voted differently from each other and never as a unified Hindu bloc. But the BJP is making a rather ambitious attempt to unify the Hindu vote.

The Ezhavas, more sizeable in numbers, were once the backbone of the Left in the state. They might shift towards the BDJS-BJP alliance. While the new alliance will nowhere be close to forming the government, a shift in voters of the Nair and Ezhava communities towards the BJP may further damage the vote base of the LDF more than UDF. The internal strife within LDF would be another issue on account of which the front will suffer in the forthcoming elections.
Toronto: Aliens may have identified Earth as a habitable, living world long ago and we could be receiving their broadcasts on Tuesday, a new study suggests.

As scientists step up their search for other life in the universe, researchers are proposing a way to make sure we do not miss the signal if extraterrestrial observers try to contact us first.

According to researchers from the McMaster University in Canada the best chance for us finding a signal from beyond is to presume that extraterrestrial observers are using the same methods to search for us that we are using to search for life beyond Earth.

On Earth, space researchers are focusing most of their search efforts on planets and moons that are too far away to see directly. Instead, they study them by tracking their shadows as they pass in front of their own host stars.

Measuring the dimming of starlight as a planet crosses the face of its star during orbit, scientists can collect a wealth of information, even without ever seeing those worlds directly.

Using methods that allow them to estimate the average stellar illumination and temperatures on their surfaces, scientists have already identified dozens of locations where life could potentially exist.

Astrophysicists Rene Heller and Ralph Pudritz noted what if extraterrestrial observers discover the Earth as it transits the Sun. If such observers are using the same search methods that scientists are using on Earth, the researchers propose that humanity should turn its collective ear to Earth's "transit zone", the thin slice of space from which our planet's passage in front of the Sun can be detected.

"It's impossible to predict whether extraterrestrials use the same observational techniques we do," said Heller, who is now at the Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. "But they will have to deal with the same physical principles as we do, and Earth's solar transits are an obvious method to detect us," said Heller.

The transit zone is rich in host stars for planetary systems, offering approximately 100,000 potential targets, each potentially orbited by habitable planets and moons, the scientists say - and that is just the number we can see with today's radio telescope technologies.

"If any of these planets host intelligent observers, they could have identified Earth as a habitable, even as a living world long ago and we could be receiving their broadcasts today," said Heller.

The question of contact with others beyond Earth is hardly hypothetical, as several projects are under way, both to send signals from Earth and to search for signals that have been sent directly or have "leaked" around obstacles, possibly travelling for thousands of years.

The study was published in the journal Astrobiology.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Mumbai: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently approved the stalled X Planes program by awarding a contract for preliminary design of a low boom supersonic passenger jet aircraft.

According to a recent post put up on NASAs website, this is the first in a series of X-planes in NASA's New Aviation Horizons initiative, introduced in the agencys fiscal year 2017 budget.

The agencys administrator Charles Bolden made the announcement at an event held at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Monday.

NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieterall while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently, said Bolden.

To that end, its worth noting that it's been almost 70 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 as part of our predecessor agency's high speed research. Now were continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight, he added.

The preliminary design for Quiet Supersonic Technology (QUESST) will be conducted by a team selected by NASA, and headed by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale.

After conducting a series of feasibility studies and tests to better understand acceptable sound levels across the country, the agencys Commercial Supersonic Technology project wing asked numerous industry teams to come up with design concepts for a piloted test aircraft that can fly at supersonic speeds, creating only a supersonic heartbeat.

Developing, building and flight testing a quiet supersonic X-plane is the next logical step in our path to enabling the industry's decision to open supersonic travel for the flying public," said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASAs Aeronautics Research Mission.

For the project, Lockheed Martin will be receiving approximately $20 million over the next 17 months for QueSSTs initial design work.

The company will develop baseline aircraft requirements and a preliminary aircraft design, with specifications, and provide supporting documentation for concept formulation and planning, said NASA.

This documentation will later be utilised later for testing and building the QueSST jet. The performance of the preliminary design will go through analytical and wind tunnel validation.

NASAs decade-long New Aviations Horizons initiative aims to reduce fuel consumption, emissions, and noise through new innovations in aircraft design, which is totally different from conventional tube-and-wing aircraft shapes.

The X-Planes will be about half the size of a commercial aircraft, and are likely to be piloted. NASA said that designing and building the ultra-modern jet would take several years and they will start test flights by 2020, depending on the funding.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Cape Canaveral: Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth on Wednesday after an unprecedented year in space for NASA, landing in barren Kazakhstan with a Russian cosmonaut who shared his whole space station journey.

Their Soyuz capsule parachuted onto the central Asian steppes and ended a science-rich mission at the International Space Station that began last March and was deemed a steppingstone to Mars.

New views of the reentry of the #YearInSpace crew earlier returning to Earth from @Space_Station: https://t.co/96LV6YYR3r  NASA (@NASA) March 2, 2016

It was a triumphant homecoming for Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko after 340 days in space. Kelly pumped his fist as he emerged from the capsule, then gave a thumbs-up. He smiled and chatted with his doctors and others as photographers crushed around him in the freezing cold.

"The air feels great out here," NASA spokesman at the scene, Rob Navias, quoted Kelly as saying. "I have no idea why you guys are all bundled up."

Clearly animated and looking well, he said he didn't feel much different than he did after his five-month station mission five years ago.

Kelly and Kornienko had checked out of the space station 3 hours earlier. In total, they traveled 144 million miles through space, circled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets during the longest single spaceflight by an American.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
Washington: FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple Inc to give the FBI data from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters would be potentially precedential in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies.

The remarks were a slight change to Comey's statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was "unlikely to be a trailblazer" for setting a precedent for other cases.

Tuesday's testimony from Comey and remarks before the same US House Judiciary Committee by Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the duelling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts.

On February 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting.

Sewell and Comey's remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree. Comey said the tool created for Farook's iPhone would not work on other models. But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone.

"This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today," Sewell said.

Committee members seized on Comey's statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device.

"Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?" asked the panel's ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers.

Comey responded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not asking to expand the governments surveillance authority, but rather to maintain its ability to obtain electronic information under legal authorities that Congress has already provided.

He also acknowledged that it was a "mistake" for the FBI to have asked San Bernardino County officials to reset the phone's cloud storage account after it was seized. The decision prevented the device, which was owned by the county, Farook's employer, from backing up information that the FBI could have read.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last Dec. 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police. The government has said the attack was inspired by Islamist militants and the FBI wants to read the phone's data to investigate any links with militant groups.

Comey told a congressional panel last Thursday that the phone could have "locator services" that would help the agency fill in a gap in its knowledge of the route the couple travelled as they fled.

"We're missing 19 minutes before they were finally killed by law enforcement," Comey said. "The answer to that might be on the device."

A federal judge handed Apple a victory in another phone unlocking case in Brooklyn on Monday, ruling that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday at the RSA Cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that she was "disappointed" by the Brooklyn ruling, and rebuffed Apple's claim that its Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was being violated.

The Justice Department is "not alleging that [Apple has] done anything wrong, Lynch said, but is treating the company as a third party holding data valuable to an ongoing investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified in support of the FBI on Tuesday, arguing that default device encryption "severely harms" criminal prosecutions at the state level, including in cases in his district involving at least 175 iPhones.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
The letter was among materials that were seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan (Photo: AFP)

Washington: Osama bin Laden wrote a letter calling on the American people to help President Barack Obama fight "catastrophic" climate change and "save humanity", in the latest evidence of his worries about environmental issues, newly released documents show.

The letter was among materials that were seized in the May 2, 2011, US raid on bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan that killed the al Qaeda chief and which were released on Tuesday by the Obama administration.

The undated, unsigned letter "to the American people," which US intelligence officials attributed to bin Laden, appeared to have been written shortly after Obama began his first term in 2009, based on the letter's references to events.

Bin Laden's preoccupation with climate change also emerged as a theme in the first tranche of documents from the raid that was declassified in May 2015, as well as in an audio recording released via the al Jazeera network in January 2010.

In the rambling letter made public Tuesday, bin Laden blamed the 2007-8 US financial crisis on corporate control of capital and corporate lobbyists, and the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He called on Americans to launch "a great revolution for freedom" to liberate the US president from those influences.

That would enable Obama to make "a rational decision to save humanity from the harmful gases that threaten its destiny," bin Laden continued.

In a separate letter, bin Laden urged a close aide to launch a media campaign for the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks that included a call for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Bin Laden contended that the world would be better off fighting climate change than waging what he claimed was a war against Islam.

"...the world should put its efforts into attempting to reduce the release of gases," said the undated, unsigned letter to someone identified as Shaykh Mahmud that US intelligence officials said they believed was written by bin Laden.

"This is a struggle between two of the largest cultures on Earth, and it is in the shadow of catastrophic climate conditions."
Aziz said that an SIT is scheduled to visit India to investigate the Pathankot terrorist attack and collect samples and evidences (Photo: PTI)

Washington: Pakistan is "anxiously waiting" for the Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks, a top aide of Pakistan Prime Minister said on Wednesday and asked India not to give the non-state actors "a veto" over bilateral ties.

Sartaj Aziz, the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that his government's policy direction with regard to fight against terrorism is "clear" but conceded that the "implementation is not very easy".

Also read: Sartaj Aziz says India top security concern, rules out reducing nukes

He said a Special Investigative Team (SIT) is scheduled to visit India to investigate the Pathankot terrorist attack and collect samples and evidences.

But the progress on the investigation depends on the co-operation from India, he said in response to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations a top US think-tank.

"As our policy of peaceful neighbourhood, we have reached out to India. We are anxiously waiting for the dialogue to be resumed. The Pathankot incident disrupted the process of the two foreign secretaries' meetings," Aziz said.

"Once we begin the dialogue, I am sure we would be able to deal with some issues even if we are not able to solve all the issues at dispute. Our main purpose is that Line of Control should be peaceful, normal relationship should start, sporting links should resume so that tension decreases. That prepares the ground for dealing with more difficult issues," Aziz said.

Responding to a question on how Pakistan would manage the "ability of the spoilers" to take off track the peace efforts of the government in particular with that with India, he conceded that this is a tough task at their disposal.

"The question is obviously people who want to disrupt these talks, non-state actors of course. No country has totally controlled them. So for somebody to orchestrate an incident, with people on both sides of the border, these kinds of incidents would always take place. We have been urging India not to give a veto to these non-state groups.

"There is one incident and the whole relationship collapses," Aziz said.

Observing that a great deal of the problem being faced by Pakistan today is the result of fighting other people's war, including the war against Russia by Afghan Mujahedeen and the US.

"Should, we have done that in retrospect, I do not know. Look at the cost to us.. both guns and drugs. We have destroyed our economic potential in last 20-25 years because of the one decision that we took," he said.

Ironically military rulers of that time took such decisions to stay in power.

"We have now decided enough to enough. We must look after our own borders, look after our own country, must develop our economy and not become part of anything that does not directly affect us," he noted.

Pakistan, he argued, has shown to India that it wants to strongly deal with terrorist groups. "Terrorism is a common threat. In India they have one or two incident a year. We have an incident every week.

Therefore, we have suffered much more from terrorism that anybody else. We have told them that in our relationship they have been interfering not through non-state actors but through state actors. So therefore, let's improve our relationship," he said.

Aziz hoped that India would provide Pakistan necessary evidence to carry the investigation of those involved in the Pathankot terrorist attack.

Also read: Pathankot attack: May make Masood Azhar available for probe, says Pakistan

"In one interview in an Indian newspaper, what I said was that so far the information given is telephone call, is numbers which are linked to some. Out of those three-four (numbers), one was traced to one particular organizations head office. That persuaded us to take action against that (organisations) and preventive detention of their leaders and sealing (of its office)," he said.

"The next step is to identify the four people who carried out the attack. And there the photograph provided, fingerprints provided are not enough to link with our database.

Also read: Have changed policy to target all terror groups: Pakistan

"The Special Investigation Team, which is going to India soon, will try to get proper photograph of the face, because they are people lying underground and you can't match them with your database and proper finger prints which would also enable us to find out whether they are Pakistanis or not. That is step number one," he said.

"The link of those with the telephone number and the organisations would be the next step. Right now we can't pre-judge as to who is responsible.

"Anybody can dial that particular number from India. That is not very difficult," Aziz said.

"We know what the number of that organisation is. But to establish (the links), we require further evidence. Whether they were using the kind of communication...because they were using the phone of someone who were murdered," he added.

"In a very short time we have prepared the requirement we have for additional evidence. It would depend on the visit of the SIT team to Delhi next week. As a result of that hopefully India would cooperate fully, give us provide us additional evidence, which would then enable us to proceed against whosoever is suspected," Aziz said.
Washington: Pakistan today said it may make Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack, available to Indian investigating agencies for questioning, but it will first investigate the case.

Aziz also described as "outdated" Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's remarks that non-state actors operate in Pakistan with support of the establishment and said he needs to update this narrative.

"First of all, we have to investigate ourselves and (find out) what it is... if he (Masood) does something (wrong) we would move against (him)," Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister, told Defense Writers Group at a breakfast meeting today.

Mr Aziz was responding to a question if Pakistan would make Azhar Masood available for interrogation if he is found guilty of the Pathankot terrorist attack.

He was asked the question twice during an hour-long meeting with reporters over a breakfast.

"Is he (Masood) going to be shared with India for interrogation?" he was asked by a journalist.

"I think, (Pakistan's) response to (terrorist attack in) Pathankot has been very positive and prompt. Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) immediately called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and said we are ready to co-operate," he said.

"So whatever intelligence came from there (India), national security advisor, immediate action was taken to take under protective custody some of their leaders as well as sealed their facilities, set up a joint investigation team.

The first information report which is a legal requirement for our investigations to begin has been filed," he said.

Pakistan last week set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, a week after it lodged an FIR over the assault without naming Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood who India has accused of having masterminded the strike.

"I am hoping that the investigation team would now go (to India) in the next few days. Then you would be able to trace the phone calls, who all...The phone call (from India) came to one or two numbers but then their links and the identities of the four people who were killed in the attack are also got to be established yet, as we haven't got the right photographs or finger prints of those," Mr Aziz said.

"So once the process goes and considering the time that has elapsed, very good progress is being made and I hope that this would demonstrate to India that we are co-operating in this exercise and they would share the evidence that we require and whatever prosecution would require would take place," Mr Aziz said in response to a question.

Referring to Mr Parrikar's remarks on non-state actors, Mr Aziz said, "I think; it is out of date. This is the old narrative which India has been following. The situation (in Pakistan) is now very different."

The terror attack on Pathankot Airbase on January 2 was carried out by Pakistan's "non-state actors" who operate with support of the Pakistani establishment, Mr Parrikar had said.

In response, Mr Aziz said, "Initially there were sympathies for certain groups, but after the December 2014 (army) school attack and the policy that there is no good and bad terrorist and we are going to move against all of them (things have changed)."

"But obviously you can't move against all of them. (We would move against them) gradually and sequentially. So to that extent, I think the policy direction is very clear. And on the whole there was support for these groups within the local community, for example funding because many of them had a lot of welfare activities and under the cover of that they would raise funds. Now it is being monitored. You can't collect fund without any accounting," he said.

"So I think, the suspicion (of Parrikar) refers to the old previous ones when the Afghan related...you do not forget that the Mujahideen of Afghanistan were trained, funded and armed jointly by the US and Pakistan. Then it was a different kind of operation. At that time they were not terrorists. They were called holy warriors. Once 9/11 happened they all became terrorist," he said.

"Our policy of not supporting them is very significant. Because we realised that supporting them is bad for all our security. That's why our relationship with Afghanistan started improving. The same is true with others. So I think, one has to update this narrative," Mr Aziz said while responding to the question on the statement made by Mr Parrikar.
There was no immediate word on casualties from the blast. (Photo: Twitter)

Jalalabad: Afghan security forces on Wednesday killed a team of suicide bombers who targeted the Indian consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad, following an attack in which at least six people were wounded, officials said.

The incident, coming just days after dozens of people were killed or wounded in suicide attacks in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern province of Kunar, casts doubt on efforts to revive a stalled peace process with the Taliban.

A bomb in a car driven by one of the attackers was detonated near the Indian consulate, shattering doors and windows and destroying at least eight cars as explosions and gunfire rocked the area, witnesses said.

Security forces in armoured vehicles were seen moving to the scene, while civilians fled.

But the four attackers were killed before being able to enter the consulate compound, said Attahullah Khugyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

"Their target was the Indian consulate, but our forces shot and killed them all before they reached their target," he said.

The head of the public health department in Nangarhar, Najibullah Kamawal, said at least six people had been wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which followed a suicide attack on the nearby Pakistani consulate in January.

That attack was claimed by Islamic State, which has a growing presence in Nangarhar, the province of which Jalalabad is the capital.

In January, India's consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif was also attacked by insurgents.
The attacks come amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula with Park taking a markedly tougher stance with Pyongyang following its nuclear test and last month's long-range rocket launch. (Photo: AFP)

Seoul: North Korea launched a fresh personal attack on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Wednesday, calling her an "ugly female bat" in an article apparently penned by a satirising zoologist.

The article, published by the official KCNA news agency, also painted a picture of a panic-stricken Park losing her dress and shoes as she ran to a bunker after hearing of North Korea's January 6 nuclear test.

It followed an equally aggressive diatribe in the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Sunday which described Park as a "crazy old bitch" and triggered an angry response from Seoul that condemned the use of such "base, vulgar language."

The attacks come amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula with Park taking a markedly tougher stance with Pyongyang following its nuclear test and last month's long-range rocket launch.

Wednesday's article was attributed to a North Korean zoologist, Pak Ryo-Un, and was, it's headline suggested, meant to be read as a satire.

The main theme was a running and rather forced comparison of Park to a bat, in terms of both looks and behaviour.

The choice was a play on Park's surname which is a partial homonym for the Korean word for bat "bakjwi".

"She behaved like a bat which lives in such dingy place as cave," the article said.

Upon hearing the news of the North Korea's nuclear test, "she hastily ran down to the underground bunker... unaware that the waistband of her skirt slipped down and her shoes came off, stunning even her confidants," it said.

It variously described Park as an "ugly female bat" and someone with a bat's "twisted point of view" and "twisted skinny body."

The North has previously launched similarly vitriolic and highly sexist personal attacks on Park, likening her to a "babbling peasant" and a prostitute eager to please US President Barack Obama.
Arlington (United States) (AFP) - Millions of Americans cast ballots Tuesday on the most pivotal day of the presidential primary season, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to wipe out all rivals for their party nominations.

On Super Tuesday, voters have their say in a series of primaries and caucuses in a dozen states, stretching from Massachusetts and Virginia on the east coast to Texas and all the way to Alaska.

If Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump -- an outspoken billionaire who has tapped into a vein of conservative rage at conventional politics -- win big, they will be well on their way to the nominations, spelling doom for their challengers.

Polling stations opened first in Virginia where a steady stream of voters stopped to cast ballots on a day like few others on the calendar leading up to the November presidential election.

Steve Slye, who runs an audio-visual company in Arlington, in the swing state's suburbs near Washington, said he voted for Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich.

"He's the adult in the room, to me," he said of Kasich, who has run a more optimistic campaign than Trump but has failed to generate enough enthusiasm to topple the frontrunner.

Halfway across the country, in Conway, Arkansas, 23-year-old student Dominique Vinson said she felt compelled to cast her ballot in the Democratic primary -- in support of Clinton.

"I don't like how the other candidates are presenting the future of America, so I decided I needed to vote," she said.

Trump's main Republican rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have been frantically trying to halt the real estate magnate's march toward the nomination, seeking to unite the party against the man they see as a non-conservative political interloper.

But it might be too little too late, with polls showing the 69-year-old Trump in a commanding lead in most Super Tuesday states and beyond.

Former secretary of state Clinton, coming off a blowout weekend win in South Carolina, is also well ahead of her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, though her camp has admitted they do not expect a clean sweep Tuesday.

Story continues

Even as the 68-year-old Clinton made her final case to voters in Minnesota, she appeared to tilt toward the general election matchup, assailing Republicans "running their campaigns based on insults."

Asked if Trump would be the eventual nominee, she told reporters "he could be on the path." But "whoever they nominate, I'll be prepared to run against (him) if I'm fortunate to be the nominee."

A new CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the general election -- set for November 8 -- were held now.

If Rubio or Cruz were the Republican nominee, Clinton would face a much closer race. Strikingly, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, topped all three Republican candidates by wide margins, the poll showed.

- An incendiary campaign -

Trump's incendiary rhetoric has infuriated his Republican rivals, and the race has descended in recent days into a mud-slinging match between him and the mainstream favorite Rubio.

The Florida senator sent a letter to his supporters Tuesday calling Trump "a serious threat to the future of our party, and our country."

"In just the last few days, Trump has refused to condemn white supremacism and the Ku Klux Klan, praised dictators Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi, and proposed infringing upon the First Amendment of our Constitution," he wrote.

"This is no joke. It's time to fight back."

Trump also received a stern rebuke from House Speaker Paul Ryan over his failure to immediately denounce the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games," Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, told reporters. "This party does not prey on people's prejudices."

Trump remains in the driver's seat. He is leading in polls in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states, and expanding his lead nationally with CNN/ORC giving him 49 percent support.

Rubio is a distant second at 16 percent, with Cruz one point further behind. The Texas senator is banking however on winning his home state, the largest prize on Tuesday.

- Furious electorate -

Trump's inflammatory rhetoric -- he has accused Mexico of sending "rapists" across the border, mocked women and the disabled, urged a ban on Muslims entering the country, and eagerly advocated the use of torture -- would have been the undoing of a normal candidate.

But the 2016 cycle has been anything but normal, with a furious electorate keen to back an outsider who scorns the political establishment.

If Trump sweeps the South, where many of the Super Tuesday races are taking place, it could be lights out for his Republican challengers.

Almost 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday, nearly half the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination.

Some 865 Democratic delegates are at stake, 36 percent of those needed to win.

As the prospect of a Trump nomination loomed ever larger, a lengthy clip by British satirist John Oliver skewering his many false claims and inconsistencies has gone viral.

The segment on "Last Week Tonight" launched a hashtag, #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain, in a nod to the candidate's original family name, and by Tuesday, the word "Drumpf" was ahead of both Rubio and Cruz in Google search rankings -- right behind Trump himself.
By Julia Harte and Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) - FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple Inc to give the FBI data from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters would be potentially precedential in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies. The remarks were a slight change to Comey's statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was "unlikely to be a trailblazer" for setting a precedent for other cases. Tuesday's testimony from Comey and remarks before the same U.S. House Judiciary Committee by Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the dueling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts. On Feb. 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting. Sewell and Comey's remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree. Comey said the tool created for Farook's iPhone would not work on other models. But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone. "This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today," Sewell said. Committee members seized on Comey's statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device. "Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?" asked the panel's ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers. Comey responded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not asking to expand the governments surveillance authority, but rather to maintain its ability to obtain electronic information under legal authorities that Congress has already provided. He also acknowledged that it was a "mistake" for the FBI to have asked San Bernardino County officials to reset the phone's cloud storage account after it was seized. The decision prevented the device, which was owned by the county, Farook's employer, from backing up information that the FBI could have read. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last Dec. 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police. The government has said the attack was inspired by Islamist militants and the FBI wants to read the phone's data to investigate any links with militant groups. Comey told a congressional panel last Thursday that the phone could have "locator services" that would help the agency fill in a gap in its knowledge of the route the couple traveled as they fled. "We're missing 19 minutes before they were finally killed by law enforcement," Comey said. "The answer to that might be on the device." A federal judge handed Apple a victory in another phone unlocking case in Brooklyn on Monday, ruling that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday at the RSA Cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that she was "disappointed" by the Brooklyn ruling, and rebuffed Apple's claim that its Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was being violated. The Justice Department is "not alleging that [Apple has] done anything wrong, Lynch said, but is treating the company as a third party holding data valuable to an ongoing investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified in support of the FBI on Tuesday, arguing that default device encryption "severely harms" criminal prosecutions at the state level, including in cases in his district involving at least 175 iPhones. (Reporting by Julia Edwards and Julia Harte; Editing by Bill Rigby and Grant McCool)
Bosnia-Herzegovina: A Bosnian court has sentenced a former Playboy model to prison for participating in an attempted murder of a local crime figure.

The court ruled Wednesday that Slobodanka Tosic should be imprisoned for 2.5 years for luring convicted murderer Djordje Zdrale into an ambush where his rivals were waiting to kill him. Zdrale, who was allegedly in love with Tosic, survived the attempted assassination and later testified against her.

Tosic, 29, appeared on the Serbian Playboy cover and also participated in a Serbian reality show. She was arrested last year in Croatia and extradited to Bosnia to face trial.

The court said the attempted assassination was masterminded by another Balkan gangland figure, Darko Elez. According to media, Tosic was dating Elez at the time.
Beirut (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad pledged to do his part to guarantee the success of a shaky ceasefire that was largely holding on its fourth day.

World powers have thrown their weight behind the landmark truce as a way to bring an end to Syria's conflict, which began in 2011 with anti-government protests.

The United Nations said the next round of peace talks would resume in Geneva on March 9, announcing a two-day postponement "to allow adequate time to address logistical and practical matters".

Assad said the truce provided a "glimmer of hope" for Syria, where more than 270,000 people have been killed since the complex conflict erupted.

"We will do our part so that the whole thing works," Assad told German public broadcaster ARD, referring to the cessation of hostilities reached by the United States and Russia.

"We have refrained ourselves from retaliating in order to give (a) chance for the agreement to survive. That's what we can do, but at the end everything has a limit. It depends on the other side."

Assad also offered an amnesty to opposition fighters if they agree to disarm.

"The most important thing for me, legally and constitutionally... (is) that you're not allowed, as a citizen, to hold machineguns and hurt people or properties," he said.

"This is the only thing that we ask. We don't ask for anything. As I said, we give them full amnesty."

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, whose Lebanese Shiite militants are fighting in support of Assad, also welcomed the ceasefire.

"We are happy with the truce and God willing it will persist and lead to a political solution," he said in Beirut.

- 'The revolution continues' -

The ceasefire has brought relative calm to swathes of territory in Syria's north, south, and around the capital, where civilians were back on the streets demonstrating against the regime.

In the besieged rebel town of Daraya, near Damascus, dozens of young men chanted against the government and carried signs reading "Daraya will not kneel!"

Story continues

"Of course we're going to seize this opportunity (to protest) because the rest of the time there were constant barrel bombs and shelling," said activist Shadi Matar.

The truce does not include areas where the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, are present.

Regime forces clashed Tuesday with IS jihadists in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir Ezzor, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Clashes also took place in Aleppo city and in the town of Harbnafsa in central Hama province, said the monitor.

The complex patchwork of territorial control has made the truce difficult to monitor, particularly in areas where Al-Nusra Front has formed close ties with non-jihadist rebel groups.

- 'Much fewer planes' -

Civilians in central Homs province say their towns are not being targeted as often, but violence has not stopped.

"There are much fewer airplanes, which is very good... (But) there's still artillery, mortar fire, and we hear the planes flying above us," said Hasaan Abu Nuh, an activist in the flashpoint town of Talbisseh.

"People still have the same routine -- they still go down to the shelters when they hear the planes."

Despite backing opposing sides of Syria's war, Moscow and Washington drafted the UN-backed cessations of hostilities deal and co-chair the international task force evaluating its implementation.

Washington said Tuesday the ceasefire appeared to be holding, although State Department spokesman John Kirby noted that "nobody's doing any victory dances" yet.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been apprised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," Kirby said, while noting there had been reports of violations in past days.

The opposition High Negotiations Committee however said there had been at least three violations by regime forces on Tuesday and 17 the previous day.

And Russia said Tuesday it had recorded 15 truce violations in the past 24 hours.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for the closure of Syria's border with Turkey to prevent supplies reaching "terrorist" groups.

Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians amassed along that border last month, fleeing an intense government offensive backed by Russian strikes.

Speaking in Washington, top NATO General Philip Breedlove said Russia and Syria had turned the refugee crisis into a "weapon" against the West.

"Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve," he told US lawmakers.
Washington (AFP) - The battle between the FBI and Apple over encryption moved to Congress on Tuesday, with both sides arguing security is at risk in the legal wrangling over accessing a locked iPhone.

FBI chief James Comey defended his agency's efforts to force Apple to help unlock an iPhone in the San Bernardino attacks probe, saying that law enforcement's job may be crippled by "warrant-proof spaces" that become inaccessible to investigators.

Addressing a case that has set off a fierce public debate, Comey said Americans need to know the safety implications if encryption makes it impossible to access data on smartphones and other devices.

"It's our job to tell the American people the tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less effective," Comey told the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

"If there are warrant-proof spaces in American life, what does it mean? What are the costs?"

While everyone values privacy, Comey said, "there are times law enforcement saves our lives and rescues our children."

But Comey also acknowledged that forcing Apple to help unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters could set a precedent for other investigations.

"It is going to be potentially precedential, that's just the way the law works," he said in response to a question from Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

The hearing comes amid an intense legal and political battle after Apple said it would challenge a court order to provide the FBI technical assistance to help break into the San Bernardino iPhone.

Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell told the panel the public should understand that "encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing" -- even if it makes the work of law enforcement more difficult.

He said Apple is being asked to develop a tool that could be used on any iPhone, even with more advanced encryption, which could make users vulnerable to hackers and government surveillance.

Story continues

"This is not about the San Bernardino case -- this is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today," Sewell said.

- 'Vicious guard dog' -

Apple has argued the Federal Bureau of Investigation is effectively asking the company to "hack" its own devices and create a "back door" that malicious actors could exploit.

Comey told the hearing that in his view, "it's not about back doors... there's already a door on that phone -- we're asking Apple to take away the vicious guard dog."

Citizens' rights are protected by an independent judiciary, he noted, citing a long-standing principle that "if an independent judge finds reason to believe that certain private communications contain evidence of a crime, then the government can conduct a limited search."

Lawmakers from both parties appeared skeptical of the FBI efforts, questioning whether they could lead to weaker overall security in the future for new technologies.

"It won't really be a one-time request? It will set a precedent for the FBI and other law enforcement agencies?" asked the committee chairman, Virginia Republican Bob Goodlatte.

- Bypassing Congress -

Conyers said that the FBI's legal efforts could be seen as an "end run" around the legislative process to step up its access to encrypted devices.

"I would be deeply disappointed if it turns out that the government is exploiting a national tragedy to pursue a change in the law," he said.

"This committee and not the courts is the place to consider the appropriate consequences."

Representative Trey Gowdy, however, offered strong support for the FBI, arguing that it is not for Apple to decide what is off-limits to a search.

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican, chastised Sewell for failing to offer any constructive proposal for lawmakers.

"Your position, since you don't have anything positive, is to leave us (lawmakers) to our own devices, and I can guarantee you're not going to like the result," Sensenbrenner said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told the panel his office has over 200 phones that are inaccessible due to encryption, frustrating efforts to prosecute murderers, rapists and child molesters.

"What we should be seeking is not a phone by phone solution to accessing devices, we should be creating a framework where there are standards," he said.

Susan Landau, a cybersecurity specialist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, backed Apple's case on the risks of providing a weaker operating system.

"It would weaken us, but not change it for the bad guys," Landau said, noting that criminals could still use apps for encryption.

"They wouldn't have to buy a foreign phone, they could just download the app from anywhere."

Landau added in her testimony that "law enforcement continues to see electronic surveillance in 20th century terms, and it is using 20th century investigative thinking in a 21st century world."

"Instead of celebrating steps industry takes to provide security to data and communications, the FBI fights it," she said.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure over a five-month wave of violence, said Wednesday he wants to expel to Gaza relatives of Palestinian attackers involved in their assaults.

Netanyahu asked the attorney general to examine the possibility of carrying out such expulsions, his office said, while rights groups immediately denounced the move.

"Expelling family members of Palestinian terrorists who aided attacks to Gaza will lead to a significant decrease in terrorist attacks," a spokesman for Netanyahu said on Twitter.

The proposal could prove to be a fresh source of tension ahead of a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden next week.

The White House said Wednesday Biden would visit Israel and the West Bank, beginning on March 8.

Talks with the Israelis are expected to include defence aid, Israeli-Palestinian violence and the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

The Gaza Strip, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist movement Hamas, is under an Israeli blockade that severely restricts the movement of people and goods.

It also has one of the world's highest unemployment rates, and the UN development agency said in September that conditions in the strip could make it uninhabitable by 2020.

The Palestinian enclave, separated from the occupied West Bank by Israeli territory, has remained relatively calm during the current wave of violence.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly said previously that such expulsions would violate both Israeli and international law.

Story continues

Mandelblit was said to have made his recommendation after a member of Netanyahu's cabinet who is also a political rival of the prime minister requested expelling relatives of attackers to Gaza or Syria.

Netanyahu has come under heavy pressure from right-wing members of his coalition over the continuing wave of violence.

- Political pressure -

Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for Israeli rights group B'Tselem, said "it seems obvious that the prime minister is under a lot of pressure from the right now, from politicians accusing him of being soft against the wave of attacks."

"Any form of collective punishment is illegal and in this case the point is trying to punish the relatives of attacks who aren't actually accused of anything," she said.

"This is a complete breach of international law and the Geneva Convention."

Legal analyst Moshe Negbi said he did not think the attorney general would agree to the proposal.

Expulsions of those directly involved in attacks had occurred in the past under defence regulations dating back to British mandatory Palestine, said Negbi.

"I find it hard to believe that the attorney general would agree to legislation which is even more draconian than the mandatory law," he told public radio.

Further violence occurred Wednesday when two 18-year-old Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops after infiltrating a West Bank settlement and wounding a settler, the military said.

Later in the day, the army said, "two assailants stabbed two soldiers" guarding another settlement, Har Bracha, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

"The assailants fled the scene," it said in an English-language statement, adding that troops were sweeping the area.

Palestinians said soldiers searched the neighbouring Palestinian village of Burin.

Israeli rescue services said one of the soldiers was moderately wounded and the other lightly hurt.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence.

Many of the attackers have been young Palestinians, including teenagers, who appear to have been acting on their own.
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN (Reuters) - Jordan's security services said on Wednesday they had thwarted a plot by sleeper cells of Islamic State militants to blow up civilian and military targets in the U.S.-allied Arab kingdom. One of Jordan's biggest security operations in years tracked down militants with suicide bomb belts to a hideout in the northern city of Irbid near the Syrian border, according to a statement carried by the state news agency Petra. Seven militants were killed in clashes that began on Tuesday night and lasted until dawn and a police officer was also killed, it said. Security forces seized automatic weapons, munitions and explosives from the Islamic State cell. "After diligent and detailed intelligence gathering the intelligence department was able soon to thwart a criminal and destructive plot linked by the terrorist Daesh group aimed at destabilizing national security," the statement said, using the pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State. No details were given on the targets or the plot. Two security sources said dozens of special forces had been involved in the operation and that the militants had been holed up near a Palestinian refugee camp in the center of Irbid. Militants who refused to surrender engaged in heavy exchanges of fire with special forces that also injured five policemen, the security services statement said. "They showed heavy resistance with automatic weapons and so the security forces dealt with the situation with the necessary force." King Abdullah, a key Middle East ally of Western powers against Islamist militancy who has also safeguarded Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, has been among the most vocal leaders in the region in warning of threats posed by Islamic State, which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. The monarch, in ceremonial military attire, attended the funeral of the dead police officer along with several thousand people near the city of Zarqa. BATTLING ISLAMIC STATE Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour told lawmakers that the security operation had fully achieved its goals, saying the targeted "terrorist group" had forged organizational ties with Islamic State in an attempt to destabilize Jordan. Jordan has tried and sentenced dozens of suspected militant, mostly Jordanians returning from neighboring Syria's civil war. Some of them were recruited by Syria's al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front or by Islamic State insurgents. "We live in a neighborhood that is full of terrorist organizations ... All of our effort is directed towards stopping these terrorist organizations from attacking us and undermining the security of our country," government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told Reuters. Intensifying its crackdown on followers of radical Islamist groups since last year, Jordan has also arrested dozens of sympathizers who show support for such groups on social media. International rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have accused Jordan of using the crackdown on Islamist militants as an excuse for harsher curbs on freedom of speech by civil activists and dissidents. Jordan's military has also conducted some raids on Islamic State hideouts in Syria. Since Syria's war erupted in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have joined Sunni Muslim militant groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have meanwhile fled across the border and are now living in Jordan, some in refugee camps. Jordan has long been vigilant about the risk of militant attacks. During the U.S. occupation of neighboring Iraq, Jordan suffered bombings of Amman hotels by al Qaeda-linked militants. (Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
By Lidia Kelly MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a phone call on Tuesday, reaffirmed the need for cooperation to ensure the end of hostilities in Syria, Russia's Foreign Ministry said. "The focus (of the call) was on the implementation of the Russian-American initiative for a cessation of hostilities in Syria and the relevant United Nations Security Council decision," the ministry said on its Facebook page. "The foreign ministers confirmed the crucial importance of coordination between the two countries, especially in the military sphere, to strengthen the ceasefire, which must be respected by the government forces and armed opposition groups not associated with terrorists," it said. Russia supports President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's civil war, while Washington has backed rebel forces. The United Nations said on Tuesday it would delay the next round of Syria peace talks by two days to March 9 to allow the cessation of hostilities in force since Saturday to take hold. Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that United States military officials at the U.S. Reconciliation Centre in Amman, Jordan, were in constant touch on developments in Syria with officials at Russia's Hmeymim air base in Syria. "Virtually every two hours, colleagues from the American Centre in Amman communicate with our officers at the National Centre for Reconciliation at the Hmeymim base," RIA Novosti news agency cited Konashenkov as saying. "Professional contact, professional work is up and running." (Additional reporting by Polina Devitt; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
DETROIT (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T><TM.N> said on Wednesday it is expanding by 331,200 cars worldwide its recall involving potentially defective Takata Corp <7312.T> air bag parts.

Toyota earlier on Wednesday said the new recalls totaled 356,000 globally but later lowered the figure.

An estimated 29 million Takata air bag inflators have been recalled in the United States in more than 19 million vehicles because the inflators can activate with too much force, sending potentially deadly metal shards into the passenger compartment.

All the vehicle Toyota added to the recalls are equipped with a Takata-made dual-stage front passenger air bag inflator.

Toyota said the new recalls increased the number of Toyota vehicles with Takata air bags worldwide to 15,314,000, including 3,156,000 in the United States.

U.S.-registered vehicles account for 198,000 of the freshly recalled vehicles. The total in North America is 231,000 vehicles.

The new recall in the United States will include the 2008 Corolla and Corolla Matrix models as well as 2008 to 2010 model years Lexus SC 430 vehicles.

In Europe, 86,000 vehicles will be added to the existing recalls of Avensis and Lexus SC430 models. Model years were not available.

Added recalls in Japan number 3,000 and include Avensis and Lexus SC 430 models made from May 2007 to July 2010.

There will be another 220 vehicles recalled in Asia.

In other regions, Toyota is adding another 11,000 vehicles to the recalls, including Avensis, Corolla, Corolla Matrix and Lexus SC 430 models.

Reuters has reported that U.S. auto safety regulators are examining whether an additional 70 million to 90 million Takata air bag inflators should be recalled.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Bill Trott)
Tunis (AFP) - Tunisian security forces killed five militants near the Libyan border on Wednesday in a gunbattle in which one civilian also died and an army commander was wounded, the government said.

Troops had been on alert after receiving reports that militants had slipped across the border over the past three days in response to a US air strike on an Islamic State group training camp in Libya on February 18 that targeted a senior Tunisian commander, the interior ministry said.

The militants were killed after being surrounded by troops in a house in El Aouija, 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the town of Ben Guerdane, the defence ministry said.

The army commander was wounded in the head during the operation but was in a stable condition, ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati told AFP.

The civilian was killed by a stray bullet, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Explosive vests, improvised grenades and a large quantity of munitions were recovered from the slain militants, it added.

Search operations were continuing late Wednesday, the defence ministry said.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

A series of deadly attacks by IS on foreign holidaymakers last year, which have dealt a devastating blow to the country's tourism industry, are believed to have been planned from Libya.

Last month's US strike on the IS training camp outside the Libyan city of Sabratha targeted the suspected mastermind of two of the attacks, Noureddine Chouchane.

Washington has said that Chouchane was likely killed along with dozens of other militants.

Britain announced on Monday that it was sending a team of around 20 soldiers to Tunisia to train troops patrolling the border with Libya.
AAMVA and MyCarDoesWhat Partner on Driver Safety

The partnership aims to put educational tools in the hands of drivers at driver services offices

NSC and the University of Iowa have announced a partnership with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) to increase awareness of safety features that can prevent crashes and reduce deaths and injuries.

According to a news release, the MyCarDoesWhat campaign (created by the University of Iowa) is designed to educate consumers about how to best interact with these features in order to promote safer driving.

The Iowa DOT will be the first to launch the campaign by providing tools to consumers online and in offices throughout the state.

Our vehicles have technologies that may be capable of saving our lives, but we need to help drivers understand how to use them, said Deborah A.P. Hersman, president and CEO of the National Safety Council. We are excited to partner with AAMVA because we will have an opportunity to reach drivers before they are even licensed  while theyre at their states DMV.

The campaign will include multimedia resources that include PSAs, videos, graphics and brochures.

The MyCarDoesWhat campaign provides valuable and easily accessible information to provide drivers with the knowledge about safety features in the cars they drive. Building partnerships with AAMVA members throughout the United States and Canada will help get this information directly into the hands of drivers, said Anne Ferro, president and CEO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. This effort fits perfectly with our members critical role in making our roads safer.
Countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also have similar policies around menstrual leave for female employees. (Photo: AP)

London: A community and arts centre based in Bristol, south-west England, has become the first employer in Britain to introduce so-called "period leave" for women.

Coexist, which has a largely female workforce, said today that it will offer workers the option of flexible working from home during their monthly menstruation cycle and any time off for the reason would not be classed as sick leave as employees would be allowed to make up for the time lost over the course of the month.

"As a manager of staff I have seen women really suffer with their periods and I have found them doubled over in a lot of pain. Despite this, they feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell. And this is unfair.

"At Coexist we are very understanding. If someone is in pain, no matter what kind they are encouraged to go home," Bex Baxter, one of the directors at Coexist, told 'Bristol Post'.

"Nothing like this has been done in the UK before, we believe, and if it has, it has been very small," she said.

Co-Exist employs 24 people, seven of them men, and the details of the new policy will be worked out as part of a "Pioneering Period Policy: Valuing Natural Cycles in the Workplace", seminar at the centre on March 15. It is based on the work of Alexandra Pope, the founder and creator of women's leadership programme at Red School.

The school is base on "a radical new approach to woman's health and wellbeing; creativity and leadership; and spiritual life based on the power of our menstruality consciousness".

Baxter believes the scheme will increase productivity and hopes other firms will follow the lead of global sportswear giant Nike and introduce similar policies.

Nike had introduced menstrual leave in 2007 and makes business partners sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure they maintain the company's standards.

Countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also have similar policies around menstrual leave for female employees.
News

Microsoft Unveils Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Service

Microsoft announced a new Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service today.

The service is described as "a combination of client technology built into Windows 10 and a robust cloud service," per Microsoft's announcement. It's a big step up from the venerable but staid Windows Defender consumer utility program, which is used to check Windows clients for malware. Windows Defender was built into the Windows 8 and Windows 10 operating systems, replacing the Microsoft Security Essentials consumer antimalware service. It currently provides antimalware protection across nearly "300 million devices," according to Microsoft.

Microsoft's announcement described Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection more as a service for organizations to use than as a utility program for consumers. It's currently being used across Microsoft and is under early adoption by companies such as Avanade.

The Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection service doesn't appear to be available yet more broadly. A Microsoft spokesperson indicated via e-mail that it could pop up sometime "in the coming months" for Windows Insider Program Windows 10 testers. This solution isn't available for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 as it was "specifically built into Windows 10," according to the spokesperson.

There also was no explanation if the service would be an additional cost. Window Defender for consumers is a free service.

Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection will provide a "post-breach" means of detecting attacks using machine-learning capabilities. It can quickly detect if there's been any compromise of a system for the clients that opt into the protection, according to Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Microsoft Windows and Devices Group, in a Microsoft-produced video. It can check the breach status of PCs over the last six months.

Microsoft is also promising that Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection will remove the drudgery of having to comb through logs to detect security breaches.

"Simplified investigation tools replace the need to explore raw logs by exposing process, file, URL and network connection events for a specific machine or across the enterprise," Microsoft's announcement explained.

A future release of the service will include "remediation tools for affected endpoints," the announcement promised.

The service taps Microsoft's Big Data analysis capabilities to detect threats. It uses what Microsoft describes as its "intelligent security graph" to carry it out, per the announcement:

Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection is powered by a combination of Windows behavioral sensors, cloud based security analytics, threat intelligence, and by tapping into Microsofts intelligent security graph. This immense security graph provides big-data security analytics that look across aggregate behaviors to identify anomalies -- informed by anonymous information from over 1 billion Windows devices, 2.5 trillion indexed URLs on the Web, 600 million reputation look-ups online, and over 1 million suspicious files detonated every day.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had previously described the intelligent security graph back in November as a means of harvesting of sensor information, as coordinated via the Microsoft Cyber Defense Operations Center based in Redmond, Wash. Microsoft also works with security experts around the globe on the effort.

The service isolates files and URLs on a virtual machine for analysis. It has a "cloud-based detonation service" to test for malware.

Microsoft is saying that Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection will be a complementary service with some of Microsoft's existing security software, such as "Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics."

Advanced Threat Protection is an Exchange Online service that went live in June. It adds security protections for e-mail attachments and provides scanning for malicious URLs. It also has a trace capability for analytics.

Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics is a security solution for detecting attacks that gets deployed in an organization's computing infrastructure, according to Microsoft's datasheet on the topic. The Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics solution checks for attack avenues, such as remote execution and pass-the-hash attacks. It also checks for abnormal behavior and known security issues, such as weak protocols and broken trust issues.

The spokesperson offered some clarification about how Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection would complement those existing security solutions.

"It complements email protection services from Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and identity protection service from Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics," the spokesperson said.
5 Common Part-time Jobs for Students in Singapore to Earn Some Money

When I was at school, social media manager was not a part-time job that existed because Facebook didnt exist either. If you wanted to make some extra pocket money, you either became a tuition teacher even you were a child yourself (I have former tuition students who are now married with kids), or you joined the ranks of fresh-faced, barely-legal F&B workers and flyer distributors.

If youre not already some teenage programming whiz or budding YouTube star and in need of a part time job to tide you through secondary school/poly/ITE/university, here are some classic optionsand some of the challenges youll face.

1. Private tutor

This is the default part-time job of virtually every NUS student, and has been for years, for a good reason. You wont enjoy the camaraderie with colleagues that you would if you were working in a bar or at a roadshow, but in return youll get paid some of the highest rates possible as a student part-timer. Depending on what level you wish to teach, youll need decent O level, A level or IB grades, as well as a true mastery of your subjects so the parents dont end up smelling a rat and firing you. JC and poly students are often hired to teach primary school kids.

Rates: Rates vary wildly, but you can expect at least $15/hour for kindergarten (yes kindergarten tuition exists) or primary school students, and $20 and upwards for secondary students. If you can teach at JC level you might be able to command up to $35/hour as an A level grad.

Challenges: Few people realise just how tiring giving tuition is. Youre talking nonstop for 1.5 to 2 hours to an often unresponsive kid. It can be even worse for the tutor than for the student, as the parents often hover around, so you need to be on your best behaviour.

Tip: Some parents might have their own assessment books, but dont count on it. If you sat your own exams not long ago, you may be able to fall back on past year papers from your own school days. Otherwise, hit up Popular for assessment books and Bras Basah Complex for past year papers. Dont forget to get reimbursed by the parents for your purchases.

Story continues

2. F&B staff

Even if you know youll be earning a pathetic salary, working in F&B can be rather rewarding as a bright eyed, bushy tailed student.

So long as you dont get a job at Old Chang Kee or something, its likely youll be working with a whole bunch of other young people between the ages of 16 and 25. Taking orders, working the coffee machine and greeting guests can also be fun if youre young enough to have the energy.

Theres also the prospect of free food which, if you come from a household where lunch means instant noodles, can be quite a treat.

Rates: $6 to $10 an hour, with banquet waiters and those doing late-night shifts at bars and clubs garnering the highest rates. Interestingly enough, this hasnt changed much over the yearsI remember earning $5 to $6.50 an hour 10 years ago.

Challenges: Other than the fact that being on your feet and carrying heavy dishes and glasses gets tiring, if the place where you work doesnt have a good system for identifying customers tables, you might find it surprisingly difficult to keep track of customers and their orders, especially at the start when youre still getting used to how things work. Dont be surprised if you find yourself wandering around trying to remember which customer ordered that spaghetti bolognese. If youre working at a bar its even harder to identify customers in the dark when their orders are ready. Most companies require their waitstaff to put all their tips into a tip box, and then vaguely tell you its later shared with employees, although at my own part-time jobs I never saw any of that money.

Tip: Volunteer for off-peak shifts if you cant handle the intensity of peak hour (lunch and dinner at cafes and restaurants). If your employer has 4 hour shifts, 2 to 6pm is a good window.

3. Receptionist

Spas, dental clinics, gyms and the like often hire part-time receptionists whose main job is to pick up the phone, help clients book appointments and greet anyone who enters. You might also be made to sell packages.

Unless your workplace is particularly busy during peak hour, this is a job thats definitely one of the more relaxing out there. I used to work the night shift at a spa back at school, and there were times when only two or three customers would come in my entire shift. I spent the rest of that time reading novels and topping up the essential oils in their burner.

Rates: $6.50 to $10 an hour. The higher paying jobs are often more intense, and youll have to be computer literate which, if youre even reading this, were sure you are.

Challenges: If your job has a sales component with commission, its going to be a lot tougher than it is for those who just have to sit back and wait for customers to call. Depending on your employer, you might be required to employ pushy sales tactics, which isnt for everyone.

Tip: If you work at a place with few customers, bring something to dodo your homework in between tasks or do some reading. At certain places it can be an hour before you see your next customer.

4. Flyer distributor

This is one of the lowest jobs in the hierarchy of student part-time options. I once spent a few days standing outside a primary school distributing flyers for a tuition centre, but was chased away by security.

This is a job that is both mind-numbing and tiring, and in addition to being avoided by everyone on the streets, you dont have the advantage of free meals or colleagues you can hang out with.

Rates: Few skills required, so expect to earn $5 to $6 an hour.

Challenges: Other than the fact that people are going to treat you like youve got leprosy, flyer distribution is not allowed in many places, and you might be told off by the police or security.

Tip: If you are serious about giving out those flyers, smiling and making eye contact with people helps. Dont just flick the damn flyers suddenly at people like some uncles and aunties do.

5. Roadshow salesperson

This is actually a pretty worthwhile part-time job option, not only for students but also working adults who need to make some quick cash on the weekends and dont want to earn $5 an hour waiting tables. The assignments are usually ad-hoc, so its a low-commitment option, yet you earn an above average hourly rate.

Youre usually made to man a booth hawking anything from computer spare parts to weight-loss machines. You may or may not be paid a commission for selling the products, but one things for sureget ready to be asked lots of questions you will have no idea how to answer.

Rates: $8 to $15 an hour

Challenges: Roadshow staff are usually given minimal training, yet are expected to educate customers about a product they had never heard of until 5 minutes before their shift started. To make life easier for yourself, spend the first hour trying to find out as much as possible about the product in between interacting with customers. Read the brochures throughly and familiarise yourself with the prices. Shifts are often full days, and its pretty tough to bluff your way through 10 whole hours.

Have you tried any of the above part-time jobs? Share your experiences in the comments!

The post 5 Common Part-time Jobs for Students in Singapore to Earn Some Money appeared first on the MoneySmart blog.

MoneySmart.sg helps you maximize your money. Like us on Facebook to keep up to date with our latest news and articles.

Compare and shop for the best deals on Loans, Insurance and Credit Cards on our site now!





More From MoneySmart


Suspected aircraft debris has been found on the coast of Mozambique, and Malaysia's transport minister said Wednesday there was a "high possibility" it came from a Boeing 777, the same model as missing flight MH370.

"Based an early reports, high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777," Liow Tiong Lai said on his Twitter feed.

US television network NBC earlier reported a piece of debris had been found along the eastern African coast between Mozambique and Madagascar.

If confirmed, it would be the second piece of debris found from MH370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014 while on a routine overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

Last July a man on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion found a wing fragment that experts later determined came from the Malaysia Airlines flight, the only confirmed evidence of the plane's fate so far.

Citing US, Malaysian and Australian investigators who had seen photos of the object, NBC said the Mozambique debris could be a horizontal stabiliser -- a wing-like part attached to the tail.

Liow said Malaysia was working with Australia, which is coordinating an Indian Ocean search for the ill-fated jumbo jet, to retrieve the debris for closer study.

Liow stressed the origin of the item was "yet to be confirmed and verified".

"I urge everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to MH370 at this time," the transport minister said.

The find comes just days before the two-year anniversary of MH370's disappearance.

Investigators believe the plane rerouted to the southern Indian Ocean, where it crashed, but no site has been found and the cause of the disaster remains unknown.

- 'Malaysia to analyse debris' -

The debris was found on a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370, NBC said.

Mozambican authorities confirmed that a possible plane part had been handed in by an American tourist, who reportedly founded it near the coastal town of Vilankulo in Inhambane province.

Story continues

"We can't confirm categorically that this small piece belongs to the (MH370) plane," Paulo Teimezira, inspector of aeronautical materials at the civil aviation department in Maputo, told AFP.

Neither NBC nor Teimezira said when the debris was found.

Teimezira also denied reports the object was on its way to Malaysia for further examination, saying it was still in Mozambique. More information would be released on Thursday, he added.

The disappearance of flight MH370 in 2014 gripped the world and remains one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.

Theories of what happened include a hijacking, rogue pilot action, or sudden mechanical problem that incapacitated the crew, but there is nothing to support any one theory.

Families of passengers accuse Malaysia Airlines and the Malaysian government of allowing the plane to disappear through a slow and bungled response, as well as withholding information and treating families poorly.

Both strongly deny the charges, but a number of miscues blotted Malaysia's chaotic reaction -- including its air force's failure to act despite tracking the plane on radar for nearly an hour after it diverted.

A slew of lawsuits targeting the struggling carrier have been launched in US, Malaysian Chinese and Australia courts ahead of the two-year anniversary, a deadline for taking legal action against the airline.

Aviation-law specialists say are they likely to result in payouts of possibly hundreds of millions of dollars.
Millions of Americans cast ballots Tuesday on the most pivotal day of the presidential primary season, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to wipe out all rivals for their party nominations. On Super Tuesday, voters have their say in a series of primaries and caucuses in a dozen states, stretching from Massachusetts and Virginia on the east coast to Texas and all the way to Alaska. If Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump -- an outspoken billionaire who has tapped into a vein of conservative rage at conventional politics -- win big, they will be well on their way to the nominations, spelling doom for their challengers. Polling stations opened first in Virginia where a steady stream of voters stopped to cast ballots on a day like few others on the calendar leading up to the November presidential election. Steve Slye, who runs an audio-visual company in Arlington, in the swing state's suburbs near Washington, said he voted for Ohio's Republican Governor John Kasich. "He's the adult in the room, to me," he said of Kasich, who has run a more optimistic campaign than Trump but has failed to generate enough enthusiasm to topple the frontrunner. Halfway across the country, in Conway, Arkansas, 23-year-old student Dominique Vinson said she felt compelled to cast her ballot in the Democratic primary -- in support of Clinton. "I don't like how the other candidates are presenting the future of America, so I decided I needed to vote," she said. Trump's main Republican rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have been frantically trying to halt the real estate magnate's march toward the nomination, seeking to unite the party against the man they see as a non-conservative political interloper. But it might be too little too late, with polls showing the 69-year-old Trump in a commanding lead in most Super Tuesday states and beyond. Former secretary of state Clinton, coming off a blowout weekend win in South Carolina, is also well ahead of her rival Senator Bernie Sanders, though her camp has admitted they do not expect a clean sweep Tuesday. Even as the 68-year-old Clinton made her final case to voters in Minnesota, she appeared to tilt toward the general election matchup, assailing Republicans "running their campaigns based on insults." Asked if Trump would be the eventual nominee, she told reporters "he could be on the path." But "whoever they nominate, I'll be prepared to run against (him) if I'm fortunate to be the nominee." A new CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the general election -- set for November 8 -- were held now. If Rubio or Cruz were the Republican nominee, Clinton would face a much closer race. Strikingly, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, topped all three Republican candidates by wide margins, the poll showed. - An incendiary campaign - Trump's incendiary rhetoric has infuriated his Republican rivals, and the race has descended in recent days into a mud-slinging match between him and the mainstream favorite Rubio. The Florida senator sent a letter to his supporters Tuesday calling Trump "a serious threat to the future of our party, and our country." "In just the last few days, Trump has refused to condemn white supremacism and the Ku Klux Klan, praised dictators Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi, and proposed infringing upon the First Amendment of our Constitution," he wrote. "This is no joke. It's time to fight back." Trump also received a stern rebuke from House Speaker Paul Ryan over his failure to immediately denounce the support of David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. "If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games," Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, told reporters. "This party does not prey on people's prejudices." Trump remains in the driver's seat. He is leading in polls in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states, and expanding his lead nationally with CNN/ORC giving him 49 percent support. Rubio is a distant second at 16 percent, with Cruz one point further behind. The Texas senator is banking however on winning his home state, the largest prize on Tuesday. - Furious electorate - Trump's inflammatory rhetoric -- he has accused Mexico of sending "rapists" across the border, mocked women and the disabled, urged a ban on Muslims entering the country, and eagerly advocated the use of torture -- would have been the undoing of a normal candidate. But the 2016 cycle has been anything but normal, with a furious electorate keen to back an outsider who scorns the political establishment. If Trump sweeps the South, where many of the Super Tuesday races are taking place, it could be lights out for his Republican challengers. Almost 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday, nearly half the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination. Some 865 Democratic delegates are at stake, 36 percent of those needed to win. As the prospect of a Trump nomination loomed ever larger, a lengthy clip by British satirist John Oliver skewering his many false claims and inconsistencies has gone viral. The segment on "Last Week Tonight" launched a hashtag, #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain, in a nod to the candidate's original family name, and by Tuesday, the word "Drumpf" was ahead of both Rubio and Cruz in Google search rankings -- right behind Trump himself.
BEIJING  Singapore and China have looked into some exploratory ideas on minimizing the risks from unplanned encounters in the disputed South China Sea, Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said on Monday.

We both reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea. This is an essential lifeline for China and for all ASEAN countries because so much of our trade and energy flows through this area, Balakrishnan said.

He added that both countries would continue to work on it in the next few months.

Balakrishnan met with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during an introductory visit to Beijing.

Singapore is not a claimant in the South China Sea and acts as the country coordinator of ASEAN-China relations. It will focus on the formulation of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, which will set guidelines for parties involved in the disputes to manage tensions and avoid conflict.

Balakrishnan said they have agreed to expedite negotiations on formulating the Code of Conduct.

Wang said Chinas stance on the South China Sea remains unchanged, but added that Beijing is ready to work with ASEAN to implement the Declaration

on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), while expediting consultations on the Code of Conduct.

First of all, we believe that the specific disputes should be settled by the countries directly involved through dialogue and negotiation and this has been whats stipulated in Article 4 of the DOC, he said. At the same time, China and ASEAN countries, as littoral countries of the South China Sea, will continue to maintain peace, stability and that includes the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.

China and other ASEAN countries including Brunei, Vietnam and the Philippines have disputed territorial claims to some parts of the sea.

China navy launches first self-propelled floating dock.

Story continues

Meanwhile, Chinas navy has launched its first self-propelled floating dock, giving it the ability to repair warships far from the coast, the official Peoples Liberation Army Daily said yesterday.

The newspaper said the dock, the Huachuan No. 1, would enable the navy to re- turn damaged ships to fighting capability in very rapid time and was designed to be sent into combat zones.

The ships launch marks a further breakthrough in shifting repairs to our militarys large warships from set spots on the coast to mobility far out at sea, it added, showing a picture of a warship inside the floating dock.

As a modernization plan, the dock would mean ships with minor damage will not have to be taken out of service and those with severe damage will not have to return to a shipyard, the paper said.

The dock can handle cruisers, destroyers and submarines, but not aircraft carriers. It could also cope with waves up to two meters high, it added.

Beijing has invested billions developing its homegrown weapons industry to support its growing maritime ambitions in the disputed South China Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

It has also cast an eye to- wards foreign markets for its comparatively low-cost technology. Its total military budget in 2015 was 886.9 billion yuan ($141.45 billion), up by 10 percent from a year earlier.  Channel News Asia, Reuters
Dolce and Gabbana, the designers who were once Italy's most famous gay couple, put the fairytale back into fashion on Sunday, days after Italy's Senate voted to legalise same-sex civil unions.

The duo must have called upon every available golden-locked model in Milan for an ode to all things princessey that was also an unabashed celebration of living happily ever after.

With the tone set by invitations which, on opening, played "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes," from Disney's 1950 animated version of "Cinderella", this was a celebration of true and enduring love in all its forms.

The catwalk backdrop featured a recreation of Cinderella's bed, a golden horse and a tapestry featuring representations of Domenico Dolce as a man and Stefano Gabbana as a woman.

"The princess was walking in the woods accompanied by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana when they met a handsome prince, riding his white horse ...and they lived happily ever after ... " read the script.

Fable references abounded, commencing with the giant pumpkin and Cinderella-inspired mirror at the entrance to the converted cinema that staged the show.

The graffiti on the mirror asked, "Who is the most beautiful? YOU!" - just perfect for a self-affirming selfie.

As ever with D&G, all was not quite as it appeared. The Prince Charming in this show was a girl sporting a bolero jacket over cropped pants, one of a number of outfits with a 19th Century cavalry feel about them.

Away from the military and piratical elements, dresses featured embroidery inspired by the mice that stitched Cinderella's ball gown, the apple in Snow White and the clock in Alice in Wonderland.

Many of the props used were borrowed from sets belonging to Milan's La Scala opera house with the help of the venerable institution's own set designer Angelo Scala.

- 'A different attitude' -The idea was "to evoke a dream-like feeling in every woman," the designers said.

Story continues

"Every woman wants to be a princess deep inside, albeit a modern one, a princess that instead of waiting in her castle for her prince to come and give her the kiss of true love, is independent and looks for her prince herself."

In developing their vision of a new generation of princesses, D&G said they had been particularly inspired by Disney's 2013 hit "Frozen", a film in which the main character Elsa's magical powers are rejected in a way some have interpreted as an allegory for society's treatment of homosexuals.

"The new girls are not only independent, but have a personal point of view: first of all, they consider themselves as individuals; what makes them different is their attitude," the designers said.

The show culminated in a glittering finale of 95 models dressed in mid-thigh mini-dresses covered in fuchsia, silver and pink sequins and crystals.

Italy's debate over civil unions has proved bruising for two men who, particularly because of Dolce's roots in socially conservative Sicily, have been pioneers as prominent gay men in Italian public life.

Dolce caused a furore last year by saying in an interview that he did not like the idea of gay couples seeking to have children through surrogacy and that he felt every child should have a mother and a father.

Gabbana disagreed but defended his former life partner's right to his opinion, leading to accusations of betrayal from some inside the gay community and brand-damaging criticism from the likes of Elton John and Victoria Beckham.

The duo last month unveiled a line of handbags and T-shirts celebrating diverse family models in what some interpreted as an attempt to undo the impact of last year's spat.

As things have turned out, Dolce and Gabbana's different perspectives on gay parenthood were mirrored by broader Italian society's reservations about allowing gays to adopt the biological children of their partners.

The bill which got through the Senate and now has to be approved by the Chamber of Deputies approves legal partnerships but does not ensure equal adoption rights for homosexuals.

Recent polls suggest 70 percent of Italians think the parliamentary fudge was the right outcome.
EU President Donald Tusk was due to arrive in Athens Thursday for talks on the migrant crisis, after the bloc proposed 700 million euros in emergency aid for Greece and other states to help them manage the influx at their borders. Tusk's visit forms part of a regional tour which has already taken in Slovenia and will on Friday see him meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, ahead of a migration-focused summit in Brussels on Monday. The proposed emergency fund would mark a departure for the 28-member bloc, as it begins to tackle migration within its borders like humanitarian disasters in developing countries. The United Nations has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis as thousands of people remained stuck in miserable winter conditions on the Greece-Macedonia border after Balkans states and Austria capped the numbers arriving. Greece has been the main point of entry for the 1.13 million migrants who have arrived since the start of 2015 in the European Union, which has been divided and weakened by its biggest migration crisis since World War II. "No time can be lost in deploying all means possible to prevent humanitarian suffering within our own borders," EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said Wednesday, adding that much of the help would go to Greece. The funds would be allocated over three years, with 300 million euros ($325 million) in 2016, and 200 million euros in each of the following years under the plan, which must be approved by a majority of member states and the European Parliament. Athens has asked for around 480 million euros ($520 million) to help shelter 100,000 refugees. - Macedonia border misery - The crisis is particularly acute at the Greek border crossing of Idomeni where more than 10,000 are stuck after Balkan states including neighbouring Macedonia imposed tighter controls. Non-EU Macedonia on Wednesday allowed some 250 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to cross, the first group since dawn on Monday when the frontier was closed. Bleak scenes played out with refugees in mud-soaked fields fighting over food distributed from the back of a van, as aid agencies reported a lack of food and tents, and warned that the wintry weather was taking a toll on people's health. "We know (the border) is closed, but what will happen? There isn't any other way. We must go here and wait," said Mouiiaed Saker, a Syrian. In the French port of Calais, demolition workers razed makeshift shelters in the so-called Jungle migrant camp for the third day running under the close watch of dozens of police officers equipped with water cannon. The camp is a magnet for people hoping to reach Britain and many have refused to leave, although there has been no repeat of the violent clashes that erupted on Monday. An annual Franco-British summit was also due to take place on Thursday, where France was expected to ask for more British aid to tackle the Calais migrant crisis, diplomats said. - 'Tougher measures needed' - But the apparent show of European solidarity with the emergency fund for Greece and others masks growing criticism of countries that have capped the number of migrants they are willing to let in. European leaders are divided ahead of two summits this month on the migration crisis, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that debt-hit Greece must not be allowed to plunge into "chaos". The crisis has also raised fears for the EU's Schengen passport-free zone as more states bring back border controls. Tusk on Wednesday defended the use of barbed-wire fences against migrants, saying that securing the Schengen area's outer borders was a "pre-condition" to solving the refugee crisis. "I'm afraid that sometimes you need tougher measures if you, we want really to apply Schengen. Sorry but this is the reality," Tusk said during his visit to Slovenia. After meeting Tusk in Skopje, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov said he did not want the migrant burden to fall to Greece alone, but warned his country would not pick up the bill for "unilateral solutions". The EU and Turkey will hold a crucial summit in Brussels on March 7 to discuss a faltering deal they signed in November under which Ankara agreed to limit the flow of migrants. So far, more than 131,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe this year, UN figures show -- more than the total number for the first five months of 2015. Last year, a million landed on Europe's shores.
Karachi: Trying to lure him into the Islamic State group, the would-be recruiter told Pakistani journalist Hasan Abdullah, "Brother, you could be such an asset to the Ummah"- the Islamic community. Abdullah replied that he was enjoying life and had no plans to join the jihadis.

"The enjoyment of this life is short-lived. You should work for the Akhira" - the Afterlife, the recruiter pressed.

IS had its eye on Abdullah not because he adheres to any extremist ideology but because, as a journalist, the group believed he could be a boon to its propaganda machine, Abdullah said, recounting his meeting with the recruiter.

His encounter was a sign of how the Islamic State group is looking for sophisticated skills as it builds its foothold in new territory: Pakistan. It is courting university students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and businessmen, and using women's groups for fundraising. It is also wading into fierce competition with the country's numerous other militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Subcontinent, the new branch created by the veteran terror network.

Here in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, IS loyalists have set up their strongest presence, carrying out multiple attacks in the past year and setting up networks.

The port city of some 20 million people on the Arabian Sea has always been a favourite for militants to operate. Wealthy districts running on the city's profitable commerce hold potential for fundraising, while the crowded, cramped poorer districts that have spread around the city provide recruits and places to hide. It also gives recruiters links to other parts of the country, since its population is full of people who have migrated from tribal regions or Afghanistan, looking for work.

The Karachi police's top counter-terrorism official, Raja Umer Khitab, warns that IS has great potential to grow in Pakistan, not only because of its large reservoir of Sunni extremists but also because of the virulent anti-Shiite sentiment among their ranks. Hatred of Shiites and attacks against them are a keystone of the Islamic State group's ideology and one source of its appeal among some hard-line Sunnis as it set up its self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

IS first announced its presence in Pakistan with a bloody attack in May in Karachi in which gunmen boarded a bus carrying Shiites, ordered them to bow their heads, then opened fire, killing 45. The gunmen left behind a tattered piece of paper proclaiming, "Beware ... We have entered the battlefield for retribution and the implementation of Shariah."

Since then, it has killed more than 35 policemen in targeted attacks, attacked two schools and killed rights activist Sabeen Mehmud, who was gunned down in her car with her mother at her side.

IS was able to expand into two tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan - Bajour and Orakzai - when Taliban leaders there switched allegiance to the Islamic State group. The IS branch in neighbouring Afghanistan is also aggressively trying to expand its presence, putting it in direct competition with the Taliban.

The number of IS loyalists in Pakistan is not known. Government officials only recently admitted that they have a presence and insist loyalists here have no known operational links to the IS leadership in Iraq and Syria. Still, in one of the first warnings by an official about IS, intelligence chief Aftab Sultan told a Senate committee earlier this month that hundreds of Pakistanis have gone to fight in Syria, and some are now coming home to Pakistan to recruit.

One way IS militants are trying to recruit and build is through women. One academy for women in Karachi's Baloch Colony neighbourhood recruited women by playing IS videos in the classrooms, Khitab told the AP. The 20 female students then reached out to middle-class and wealthy Karachi women, urging them to donate their religious tithes to the IS cause of establishing a caliphate.

Several women were detained, including the wife of a suspected IS operative, and were released after questioning, Khitab said.

IS recruiters have been stalking university campuses. For example, the suspected mastermind in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.

A professor at the Institute, Huma Baqai, said there are radicalised professors teaching in some of the country's top universities. They "are using the classrooms to mould (students') minds," she said. "There is no scrutiny in what happens in the classroom."

An intelligence official told the AP that security officials have interrogated several university professors suspected of supporting IS and trying to recruit students. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to the press.

"Finding people who are willing to strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves up is easy. There are hundreds, thousands," said Abdullah, the journalist. But the educated are a bigger prize. He said he knows two other journalists whom IS tried to enlist. Abdullah said IS probably sought him because he was known from his work writing on extremism in the region and has met many militants personally.

Abdullah said his courtship by IS began when he received a message on social media from someone offering information for him for a story. Abdullah didn't hear from him again until weeks later, when a man using the same name approached Abdullah as he had lunch in a park outside his office. The man told Abdullah he closely followed his writings - then said he was from the Islamic State group. Abdullah quizzed him about militants he knew to verify his claims. Near the end of the conversation, the man noted that many professionals were joining IS.

"This was basically his invitation to me to join their rank," Abdullah said. And the man made his pitch.

Professionals can hold leadership posts or be involved in the group's prolific and powerful propaganda machine, which includes sophisticated videos produced with the latest technology and vigorous use of social media.

Al-Qaeda in particular is pursuing a similar caliber of recruits. Khitab said it isn't clear who is winning the competition but there are known instances of al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan crossing over to IS. Most notably, Khitab said, al-Qaeda operatives Abdullah Yusuf and Tayyab Minhas defected to IS and are believed to have orchestrated much of the group's violence in Karachi.

The past stereotype of a militant as a tribesman from the mountains in traditional garb with bandoliers of ammo slung over his shoulder has been replaced, said analyst Bruce Hoffman, director of the Centre for Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

The new generation comes from "well-educated, cosmopolitan, university educated Pakistanis from middle-class backgrounds who can navigate our globalised space whether virtually or physically with facility and confidence." They can use social media, cross borders and fit "seamlessly into global societies."

"They are the new force multipliers of terrorist groups," he said.
EU president Donald Tusk on Wednesday defended the use of barbed-wire fences against migrants, saying that securing the outer borders of Europe's passport-free Schengen area was a "pre-condition" to solving the refugee crisis. "I'm convinced that... back to Schengen is a pre-condition for this European solution to the migration crisis," Tusk said in Slovenia as part of a multi-country tour ending in Turkey later this week. Asked about barbed wire fences, Tusk said: "I'm afraid that sometimes you need tougher measures if you, we want really to apply Schengen. Sorry but this is the reality." Schengen member Slovenia, which has built a fence along parts of its border with non-Schengen Croatia and limited the daily number of migrants entering to 580, is the "best example that a European comprehensive plan can really work," Tusk said. He was speaking during a visit to a migrants reception centre in Dobova, Slovenia, a day after holding talks in Austria. Later on Wednesday he was in Croatia from where he was expected to move on to Macedonia. On Thursday he is due in Athens and from there to Ankara to meet Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The following day he will hold talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul. His regional tour is aimed at laying the groundwork for a summit in Brussels on Monday between the EU and Turkey on a deal which the EU hopes will go a long way to halting the flow of migrants into the bloc. This agreement, struck in November, will see Turkey prevent migrants travelling to Greece in return for billions of euros in aid and speeding up Ankara's EU membership bid. Accepted migrants would then be flown directly from Turkey to EU countries.
By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations will delay the next round of Syria peace talks by two days to allow the cessation of hostilities in force since Saturday to take hold, U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said. International observers have acknowledged violations of the agreement intended to halt nearly five years of fighting while reporting that the level of violence has decreased considerably. "We are delaying it to the afternoon of (March) 9th for logistical and technical reasons and also for the ceasefire to better settle down," de Mistura told Reuters on Tuesday. The talks had been pencilled in for March 7. The cessation of hostilities was "a glimmer of hope", Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said, although he accused the opposition of violating the agreement. The opposition in turn says the Syrian government has breached the fragile truce by repeatedly attacking its positions, which the government denies. "We will play our part to make the whole thing work," Assad told Germany's ARD television network, adding that the Syrian army had not reacted to truce violations in order to give the agreement a chance. "The terrorists have breached the deal from the first day. We as the Syrian army are refraining from responding in order to give a chance to sustain the agreement. But in the end there are limits and it all depends on the other side," Assad said. The cessation of hostilities agreement, drawn up by the United States and Russia, is seen by the U.N. as an opportunity to revive peace talks which collapsed before they had even started a month ago in Geneva. It also hopes the truce will allow humanitarian aid to be sent into besieged areas where many Syrians are living in dire conditions. However, the opposition said it had yet to be officially informed of a new round of talks on March 9, insisting that no serious discussions can begin before detainees are freed and blockades are lifted. Riad Nassan Agha, a member of the High Negotiations Committee, told Reuters the opposition would study the call for talks based on developments on the ground, adding that it heard of the March 9 date only through the media. NEGOTIATING TABLE U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was an urgent need to implement the agreement and for the warring parties to return to the negotiating table, a U.N. statement said. "They agreed on the importance of urgently moving forward simultaneously on implementing the cessation of hostilities agreement, providing vital humanitarian assistance to civilians, and returning to political negotiations," the statement said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that while efforts were being made to track down alleged violations of the cessation of hostilities, there was currently no evidence to suggest they would destabilise the fragile peace. In a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Lavrov and Kerry reaffirmed the importance of coordination, chiefly military, between Moscow and Washington to strengthen the truce, the Russian foreign ministry reported. De Mistura expected to see attempts to disrupt the ceasefire, saying these needed to be contained to avoid them spreading and undermining the credibility of the truce. "We don't want discussions in Geneva to become a discussion about infringements or not of the ceasefire, we want them to actually address the core of everything," he said in an interview. De Mistura wants the Syrian sides to focus on constitutional reform, governance, and hopes elections can be held in 18 months. Prisoner releases would also be "very much up front on the agenda", he said. Syria's Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Hussam Aala, said his government was cooperating over aid deliveries, including to rebel-led areas. It was facilitating "access to humanitarian aid to those who need it without discrimination, between the besieged zones or zones infiltrated by terrorists". However, addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council, he also accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of financing jihadist rebel groups including the Nusra Front, which is linked to al Qaeda, and also rejected criticism from France. JIHADIST GROUPSThe agreement does not include Islamic State or the Nusra Front, and Assad and his Russian backers have made clear they intend to keep attacking them. The Saudi-backed "moderate" opposition says that because some of their fighters are in areas alongside Nusra, they fear being targeted too. The Russian Defence Ministry said it was refraining from striking areas where the "moderate opposition" was respecting the ceasefire agreement, Interfax news agency reported. A total of 15 ceasefire violations have been registered in Syria in the past 24 hours, Interfax quoted the Russian military as saying. The U.S. State Department, however, said it had not received any reports of "significant" violations. The Syrian military denied it was responsible for any violations and said "terrorist groups", the term it uses to describe its enemies, were to blame. Operations against Islamic State - also known as Daesh - and the Nusra Front were going ahead. "The combat operations that the Syrian Arab Army is carrying out against Daesh and Nusra are continuing according to the plans of the military command," a Syrian military source said. (Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly and Tom Perry; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Peter Millership, Pravin Char and David Stamp)
Americans vote Tuesday in what is deemed the most pivotal day in the presidential nominating process, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to finish off their challengers. Voters in a dozen states will take part in "Super Tuesday" -- a series of primaries and caucuses in a dozen states ranging from Alaska to Virginia. If Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump -- an outspoken billionaire political neophyte who has unexpectedly tapped into a reservoir of conservative rage at conventional politics -- win big, it could spell doom for their challengers. With just hours to go before polls open, the duo made last-ditch appeals to supporters ahead of a day like few others on the calendar leading to the November election for the White House. Trump's Republican rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, were trying frantically to halt the real estate magnate's march toward the nomination, seeking to unite the party against the man they see as a non-conservative political interloper. Clinton meanwhile was riding high after thrashing rival Bernie Sanders in South Carolina over the weekend, securing an astronomical 86 percent of the African-American vote in her third win in four contests. Should she win black voters by similar margins in places like Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, she should dominate there to become once again the inevitable candidate. That was her status at the start of the campaign -- before the rise of Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. She was leaving nothing to chance, traveling to multiple states Monday to urge a strong turnout. Clinton also took aim at the increasingly hostile campaign rhetoric on the Republican side led by the brash real estate mogul Trump. - Scapegoating, fingerpointing - "I really regret the language being used by Republicans. Scapegoating people, fingerpointing, blaming. That is not how we should behave toward one another," she told hundreds at a university in Fairfax, Virginia. "We're going to demonstrate, starting tomorrow on Super Tuesday, there's a different path that Americans ought to take." Trump's incendiary campaign has infuriated Republican rivals, including mainstream favorite Rubio who has intensified his personal attacks and stressed Trump would have trouble in a general election. The Florida senator warned supporters in Tennessee that US media and Democratic groups will jump on Trump "like the hounds of hell" if he wins the nomination. But Trump is clearly in the driver's seat. He is leading in polling in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states. And a new CNN/ORC poll shows the billionaire expanding his lead nationally, earning a stunning 49 percent support compared to second place Rubio at 16 percent. Cruz of Texas is third, at 15 percent, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent and Ohio Governor John Kasich at six percent. Trump punched back against Rubio, calling him "Little Marco," mocking him for sweating on the campaign trail and warning that Rubio could not stand up to strong men like Russian President Vladimir Putin. - 'Party of Lincoln' - Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, including accusing Mexico of sending rapists across the border, mocking women and the disabled and urging a ban on Muslims entering the country, would have been the undoing of a normal candidate. But the 2016 cycle has been anything but normal, with a furious electorate keen to back an outsider who scorns the political establishment. "I'm representing a lot of anger out there," Trump told CNN. "We're not angry people, but we're angry at the way this country's being run." In the latest controversy, Trump came under withering criticism for not immediately disavowing the support of David Duke, who once led the Ku Klux Klan. Rubio said Trump's failure to promptly repudiate Duke, who has expressed support for Trump, makes him "unelectable." Some conservatives have said they will shun Trump if he is the nominee. "This is the party of Abraham Lincoln," said Senator Ben Sasse, accusing Trump of being a non-conservative plotting a "hostile takeover" of the party. Trump supporters, Sasse told MSNBC, "need to recognize that there are a whole bunch of other people who say, if this becomes the David Duke/Donald Trump party, there are a lot of us who are out." If Trump sweeps the South, where many of the Super Tuesday races are taking place, it could be lights out for his Republican challengers. Texas is the largest prize Tuesday, and Cruz is banking on winning his home state. He trails in nearly all other Super Tuesday states. Almost 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs Tuesday, nearly half the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination. Some 865 Democratic delegates are at stake, 36 percent of those needed to win.
DUBAI (Reuters) - The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) named Hezbollah a terrorist organisation on Wednesday, opening up the possibility of further sanctions against the Iran-allied group that wields influence in Lebanon and fights in Syria. The Sunni Muslim dominated council - representing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar - already imposed sanctions on the Shi'ite Muslim group in 2013 after it entered Syria's war in support of President Bashar al-Assad. In Wednesday's announcement, GCC Secretary-General Abdullatif al-Zayani said the council would now "take the necessary measures to implement its decision ... based on anti-terrorism laws applied in the GCC and similar international laws". Zayani did not specify what action might follow, but Saudi Arabia, the biggest power in the grouping, last week said it had blacklisted four companies and three Lebanese men for having links to Hezbollah. Zayani accused Hezbollah of committing "hostile acts" against GCC states, including recruiting young men to carry out "terrorist attacks, smuggling weapons and explosives, stirring up sedition and incitement to chaos and violence". Individual members of the Gulf Cooperation Council have already labelled Hezbollah a terrorist group. There was no immediate reaction from Hezbollah. But a day earlier, its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had said Saudi Arabia had pushed Lebanon into a new phase of political conflict by announcing it was suspending an aid package to the Lebanese army. Nasrallah also stepped up criticism of Saudi Arabia, accusing it of directing car bombings in Lebanon. Leading Sunni power Saudi Arabia and its Shi'ite regional rival Iran compete for influence across the region and back different factions in divided Lebanon. Former Lebanese Sunni prime minister Saad al-Hariri stopped short of publicly endorsing the Saudi decision, but criticised Hezbollah for its involvement in Syria and its alleged involvement in Yemen which he described as "unlawful, criminal and terrorist". (Reporting by Sami Aboudi; additional reporting by John Davison, Mariam Karouny, Laila Bassam in Beirut; Editing by Larry King and Andrew Heavens)
Reuters

India's capital market regulator approved the government's proposal to convert dues of over $1.92 billion by telecom operator Vodafone Idea to equity, two senior government officials said on Thursday. Last year, India had approved a rescue package for debt-strapped telecom companies that allowed them to convert interest on deferred adjusted gross revenue owed to the government into equity. Among the country's three major telecom players, including Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries' Jio, the government package was seen as a bailout for Vodafone Idea, which was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure over a five-month wave of violence, said Wednesday he wants to expel to Gaza relatives of Palestinian attackers involved in their assaults. Netanyahu asked the attorney general to examine the possibility of carrying out such expulsions, his office said, while rights groups immediately denounced the move. "Expelling family members of Palestinian terrorists who aided attacks to Gaza will lead to a significant decrease in terrorist attacks," a spokesman for Netanyahu said on Twitter. The proposal could prove to be a fresh source of tension ahead of a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden next week. The White House said Wednesday Biden would visit Israel and the West Bank, beginning on March 8. Talks with the Israelis are expected to include defence aid, Israeli-Palestinian violence and the conflict in neighbouring Syria. A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll. Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities. Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations. The Gaza Strip, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist movement Hamas, is under an Israeli blockade that severely restricts the movement of people and goods. It also has one of the world's highest unemployment rates, and the UN development agency said in September that conditions in the strip could make it uninhabitable by 2020. The Palestinian enclave, separated from the occupied West Bank by Israeli territory, has remained relatively calm during the current wave of violence. Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly said previously that such expulsions would violate both Israeli and international law. Mandelblit was said to have made his recommendation after a member of Netanyahu's cabinet who is also a political rival of the prime minister requested expelling relatives of attackers to Gaza or Syria. Netanyahu has come under heavy pressure from right-wing members of his coalition over the continuing wave of violence. - Political pressure - Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for Israeli rights group B'Tselem, said "it seems obvious that the prime minister is under a lot of pressure from the right now, from politicians accusing him of being soft against the wave of attacks." "Any form of collective punishment is illegal and in this case the point is trying to punish the relatives of attacks who aren't actually accused of anything," she said. "This is a complete breach of international law and the Geneva Convention." Legal analyst Moshe Negbi said he did not think the attorney general would agree to the proposal. Expulsions of those directly involved in attacks had occurred in the past under defence regulations dating back to British mandatory Palestine, said Negbi. "I find it hard to believe that the attorney general would agree to legislation which is even more draconian than the mandatory law," he told public radio. Further violence occurred Wednesday when two 18-year-old Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops after infiltrating a West Bank settlement and wounding a settler, the military said. Later in the day, the army said, "two assailants stabbed two soldiers" guarding another settlement, Har Bracha, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. "The assailants fled the scene," it said in an English-language statement, adding that troops were sweeping the area. Palestinians said soldiers searched the neighbouring Palestinian village of Burin. Israeli rescue services said one of the soldiers was moderately wounded and the other lightly hurt. Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest. Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence. Many of the attackers have been young Palestinians, including teenagers, who appear to have been acting on their own.
Brits guzzle down 35 percent of exports of Prosecco, made in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy with the DOC label, as well as the superior DOCG category

Italy was the biggest exporter and producer of wine in the world in 2015, while the United States consumed the most of the Mediterranean country's prized nectar, a study published Wednesday showed.

"Today, one bottle of wine exported in five is made in Italy, the biggest wine exporter in the world," Italy's Coldiretti agricultural association said in a statement.

The country exported a record $5.4 billion's (5.0 billion euros) worth, a 575-percent increase over 30 years, it said in the study, which examined how the sector had recovered following a 1986 methanol scandal.

The addition of wood spirits to table wine by a family business which wanted to increase the alcohol level of a poor batch had left 23 people dead and dozens of others poisoned, some suffering blindness or neurological damage.

"The image of Made in Italy foodstuffs was dramatically compromised across the world, but it was also a chance for a new start with a revolution which saw Italian wine set out to conquer first place" on the international stage, the association said.

The leap in safeguards and quality saw an increase in designations as well: 66 percent of bottles of wine exported are now classified with the quality assurance labels DOC, DOCG or IGT.

The number one consumer of Italian wine is the United States, which imported 1.3 billion euros worth in 2015, up 13 percent from 2014, pushing Germany into second place, with Britain ranking third, Coldiretti said.

The appetite for Chiantis and Barolos continues to grow in China, which imported 80 million euros worth of Italian wine, up 18 percent on 2014, while the market in Japan grew 2.0 percent on the previous year.

In October, the International Organisation of Wine (OIV) brought tears to French eyes by announcing that Italy had overtaken France to become the largest producer of wine.
U.N. imposes harsh new sanctions on North Korea drafted by U.S., China



The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution that dramatically expands existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea in response to its Jan. 6 nuclear test, a measure largely negotiated by Washington and Beijing.



U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the new sanctions on Pyongyang go further than any U.N. sanctions regime in two decades and are aimed at cutting off funds for its nuclear and other banned weapons programs.



Under the sanctions, all cargo going to and from North Korea must be inspected and North Korean trade representatives in Syria, Iran and Vietnam are among 16 individuals added to a U.N. blacklist, along with 12 North Korean entities.



Previously states only had to inspect North Korean cargo shipments if they had reasonable grounds to believe they contained illicit goods.



"Virtually all of the DPRK's (North Korea) resources are channeled into its reckless and relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction," Power told the council after the vote, adding that the cargo inspection provisions are "hugely significant."



After nearly two months of bilateral negotiations that at one point involved U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, China agreed to support the unusually tough measures intended to persuade its close ally North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons program.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish prosecutors have opened nearly 2,000 cases against people for insulting Tayyip Erdogan since he became Turkey's president 18 months ago, the justice minister said on Wednesday. Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey punishable by up to four years in jail, but the law has previously been invoked only rarely. Critics accuse Erdogan of intolerance and say he is using the law to stifle dissent. Those who have faced trial for insulting Erdogan include journalists, cartoonists, academics and even schoolchildren. "The justice ministry has allowed 1,845 cases on charges of insulting Erdogan to go ahead," Bekir Bozdag said, responding to questions in parliament. "I am unable to read the shameful insults made against our president. I start to blush," said Bozdag, who is from Erdogan's ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party. Last month, a Turkish man filed a criminal complaint against his wife for insulting Erdogan. It is the first known case where somebody has faced legal action for comments made about Erdogan in the privacy of their own home. Erdogan became president in 2014 after serving as prime minister for more than a decade. He is now trying to reshape Turkey's constitution to boost the powers of the president, until now a largely ceremonial role. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Gareth Jones)
(Screenshot from stuff.co.nz)



New Zealand-based teen Brandon Smith, who caused a furore online when he said he wanted to avoid National Service (NS) must return to Singapore to fulfill his NS obligations, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

Smith, 19, holds both New Zealand and Singapore citizenship and moved to Dunedin when he was eight years old.

In a written reply to a parliamentary question, MFA said, All Singaporeans are expected to fulfill our NS obligations as citizens. It would not be fair to allow citizens to avoid NS just because they reside overseas.

MFA added that even if Smith were to apply to renounce his Singapore citizenship after he attains the age of majority, he is still liable for any breaches of the Enlistment Act. MFA also advised Smith to return to Singapore as soon as possible to resolve this matter.

Smith could face a two-year jail term and a $10,000 fine if he does not enlist.

The son of a New Zealander father and Singaporean mother told New Zealand media in January that it was a waste of time to go back to Singapore and come back to New Zealand. He was also concerned that he does not speak Chinese and would be treated differently in the army, reported New Zealands stuff.co.nz.
By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korea will boycott any session of the U.N. Human Rights Council that examines its record and will "never, ever" be bound by any such resolutions, its foreign minister said on Tuesday. The announcement signalled further isolation of North Korea whose leadership has been accused by U.N. investigators of committing crimes against humanity and is poised to be hit with fresh U.N. sanctions for its nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong also accused the United States, Japan and South Korea of sending agents into his country to recruit criminals to become "so-called North Korean defectors". "As a way out and in order to earn their living, they are compelled to continue to fabricate and sell groundless testimonies by trying to make them sound as shocking as possible," Ri said in a speech to the 47-member state forum. South Korea rejected the accusations, saying that "questioning the credibility of the defectors' testimony is nothing but a denial of truth". Japan urged Pyongyang to take concrete actions to improve human rights at home. "We shall no longer participate in international sessions singling out the human rights situation of the DPRK (North Korea) for mere political attack," Ri said. Any resolutions adopted against the DPRK "will be none of our business and we will never ever be bound by them", he said. Ri said the U.N. rights forum was marked by worsening "politicisation, selectivity and double standards", and criticised gun-related violence in the United States and Europe's migrant crisis. Japan and South Korea are drafting a resolution for debate at the ongoing four-week session to renew the mandate of the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, currently Marzuki Darusman, and may seek further steps. Darusman, in a report last month, asked the United Nations to officially notify North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that he may be investigated for crimes against humanity, in line with the findings of a landmark 2014 U.N. report. The U.N. Security Council delayed until Wednesday a vote on a U.S.-Chinese drafted resolution that would dramatically expand U.N. sanctions on North Korea after Russia said it needed more time to review the text, diplomats said. The expanded sanctions, if adopted, would require inspections of all cargo going to and from North Korea and blacklisting of North Koreans active in Syria, Iran and Vietnam. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistan should not be blamed for carrying out a "duplicitous policy" or for the problems of Afghanistan, a senior Pakistan official said on Monday at the start of talks in the United States. U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern about a possible sale of F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan because of its impact on relations with India and Pakistan's policies in Afghanistan, but national security adviser Sartaj Aziz said the sale would help stability in the region. "We are blamed (for) pursuing a duplicitous policy," Aziz said to reporters and U.S. and Pakistani officials before the meetings in Washington began. "Regrettably there is a tendency to blame Pakistan, in (a) somewhat simplistic fashion for most of the difficulties and challenges that engage Afghanistan," Aziz said. The U.S. government announced on Feb. 12 that it had approved the sale to Pakistan of up to eight additional F-16 fighter jets, and radar and other equipment in a deal valued at $699 million. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told Secretary of State John Kerry in a letter that he was concerned about Pakistan's ties to the Haqqani network, a militant group that U.S. officials have said is behind attacks in Afghanistan. U.S. lawmakers have until March 12 to block the sale. Such action is rare since deals are usually well vetted before any formal notification, and it remained unclear if lawmakers would thwart the agreement. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to conduct a hearing on the possible sale. Afghan government and Taliban representatives are expected to meet in Islamabad by the first week of March for their first direct talks since a previous round of the peace process broke down last year. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Grant McCool)
After the First in the Nation New Hampshire Primary in early February, many people learned the term superdelegates, even though its not a new term or idea. The Democratic Partys superdelegate rules have been in place since 1984. Superdelegates, unlike the pledged delegates, are not bound by the results of the various primaries and caucuses, and are free to support the Democratic Party Presidential candidate of their choice. CBS News reports, A superdelegate falls into one of three categories: a major elected official, including senators and members of the House of Representatives; a notable member of the party, such as a current or former president or vice president; and some members of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).University of Georgia political science professor Josh Putnam said, the concept of superdelegates came about because some in the Democratic Party felt a need for there to be a voice for the establishment within the party to nudge along a nominee who would be well equipped to win during the general election  to avoid nominees like George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.
Spain's Socialist party chief Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday lost a bid to form a new government and end weeks of political stalemate as he was defeated in a vote of confidence in parliament. Sanchez, whose Socialists came second in an inconclusive general election on December 20, was seeking parliament's approval to become prime minister. He needed an absolute majority in the vote in the 350-seat lower house of parliament, but lost, with 219 votes against him, 130 in favour and one abstention. Both acting Prime Minister's conservative Popular Party (PP), in power since 2011, and new far-left party Podemos, a close ally of Greece's ruling Syriza party, voted against him as expected. Sanchez only secured the support of his own party, which won 90 seats in the election, and new market-friendly party Ciudadanos which has 40 seats. The Socialist leader, a 44-year-old career politician dubbed "El Guapo" ("Mr. Handsome") for his good looks, will have another chance on Friday in a vote in which he would only need a simple majority. The December 20 elections resulted in a hung parliament divided among the four main parties -- none of which won enough seats to govern alone. The PP came first in the polls -- which put an end to Spain's long-running two party system -- but lost its absolute majority, taking just 123 seats. Rajoy gave up attempts to form a government after he failed to get support from other parties fed up with years of crisis and corruption scandals plaguing his grouping. So King Felipe VI asked runner-up Sanchez, whose Socialists scored their worst result in history, to form a government. After weeks of negotiations and ping-pong televised statements, he sealed a deal last week with Ciudadanos. Podemos, which with its 65 seats would be a valuable partner for Sanchez, immediately suspended its talks with the Socialists over their deal with Ciudadanos, which it considers too liberal. - 'Fictitious candidature' - Rajoy dismissed Sanchez's bid to form a government as "theatre" since he did not have enough support and said it was aimed at blaming others if Spain needs fresh elections. "This is a fictitious, unreal candidature," he said during a debate in parliament ahead of the confidence vote. Rajoy also warned that a Socialist-led government would threaten the country's economic recovery since Sanchez had vowed to undo many of his governments key reforms. Spain's economy grew 3.2 percent in 2015, one of the fastest rates in Europe, although the unemployment rate remains high at 20.9 percent. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said his lawmakers would be voting against Sanchez because the Socialists did not appear set to lead a genuine leftist government. "Negotiate with us, stop obeying the oligarchs," the pony-tailed political science professor said. Sanchez appealed to leftist lawmakers on Tuesday to join him in alliance to oust the PP, arguing in the assembly that Spain voted decisively for change in last year's election. He said a Socialist-led government would enact progressive measures such as a minimum wage increase and a gender wage-gap law, and stressed that all sides would need to compromise as no single ideological group has enough seats for a majority. "Why don't we get together and pass as many reforms as possible to solve the most urgent problems of Spaniards?" he asked the assembly. - Fresh elections - If Sanchez fails the second vote, a two-month countdown will then start from Wednesday, during which the wildly diverging parties will try once again to come to an agreement to govern Spain. Failing that, new elections will be called, most likely on June 26. That would leave Spain in political limbo for several more months just as the country emerges from a severe economic crisis, and also faces an independence threat in the northeastern region of Catalonia. Recent polls suggest that if Spain goes back to the polls, the four main parties would obtain roughly the same result as they did in the December election. No candidate for prime minister has failed in both confidence votes since Spain returned to democracy following the death of longtime dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.
By Madeline Chambers and Mariam Karouny BERLIN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described the cessation of hostilities in force since Saturday as a "glimmer of hope" and accused the opposition of violating the agreement intended to halt nearly five years of fighting. The opposition has in turn accused the Syrian government of breaching the fragile truce by repeatedly attacking its positions, which the government denies. International observers have acknowledged violations of the agreement while stressing that the level of violence has decreased considerably. "We will play our part to make the whole thing work," Assad was quoted as saying in an extract of an interview with Germany's ARD television network. The president said the Syrian army had not reacted to truce violations in order to give the agr0eement a chance. "The terrorists have breached the deal from the first day. We as the Syrian Army are refraining from responding in order to give a chance to sustain the agreement. But in the end there are limits and it all depends on the other side," Assad said. He also said people in Syria were suffering from a "humanitarian disaster". The war has killed at least 250,000 people and forced millions to flee their homes. The United Nations hopes the cessation of hostilities will allow it to deliver aid to more than 150,000 people in besieged areas of Syria. The cessation of hostilities agreement, drawn up by the United States and Russia, is also seen by the United Nations as an opportunity to revive peace talks, which collapsed before they had even started a month ago in Geneva. NEGOTIATING TABLE U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was an urgent need to implement the agreement and for the warring parties to return to the negotiating table, a U.N. statement said. "They agreed on the importance of urgently moving forward simultaneously on implementing the cessation of hostilities agreement, providing vital humanitarian assistance to civilians, and returning to political negotiations," the statement said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday that while efforts were being made to track down alleged violations of the cessation of hostilities, there was currently no evidence to suggest they would destabilise the fragile peace. The agreement does not include Islamic State and the Nusra Front, and Assad and his Russian backers have made clear they intend to keep attacking the jihadist groups. The Saudi-backed "moderate" opposition says that because some of their fighters are located in areas alongside Nusra, they fear being targeted too. The Russian Defence Ministry said it was refraining from striking areas in Syria where the "moderate opposition" was respecting the ceasefire agreement, Interfax news agency reported. A total of 15 ceasefire violations have been registered in Syria in the past 24 hours, Interfax quoted the Russian military as saying. The Syrian military denied it was responsible for any violations and said "terrorist groups", the term it uses to describe its enemies, were to blame. Operations against Islamic State and the Nusra Front were going ahead. "The combat operations that the Syrian Arab Army is carrying out against Daesh (Islamic State) and Nusra are continuing according to the plans of the military command," a Syrian military source said. Moscow, meanwhile, called for the Syrian border with Turkey to be closed. Russia's Lavrov said it was a channel being used to supply weapons to groups he described as terrorists, with some arms hidden in humanitarian aid deliveries. (Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly, Tom Perry, Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)
Donald Trump's triumphal march toward the Republican presidential nomination left his party in disarray Wednesday, as Democrats coalesced around their White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton after her slew of Super Tuesday victories. Both candidates emerged the clear winners on Tuesday after several party nominating contests, piling up delegates on the biggest, most pivotal day of primaries in the race to succeed President Barack Obama. Trump was victorious in seven of 11 states, weakening but not eliminating his top rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both US senators. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson meanwhile announced after his poor Super Tuesday showing that he did not "see a political path forward" in the race. Carson's campaign soared last year but steadily lost steam amid questions over his personal narrative and lackluster debate performances. Should Carson officially drop out, that would leave Trump and a trio of pursuers: Cruz, Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich. Clinton equaled Trump's score with wins in seven states against Senator Bernie Sanders, absorbing a formidable challenge from the left. But whereas Clinton appeared to solidify her support ahead of the next key round of primaries March 15, divisions among Republicans deepened over Trump's success with a slashing campaign that has galvanized disaffected voters but opened wounds on racial, ethnic and gender fronts. With the 69-year-old billionaire powering past their favored candidates, Republican stalwarts have raised the possibility of the party splintering if Trump wins the nomination. - 'Desperate and angry' - "I think that's a very real possibility," Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, told National Public Radio. "There are a lot of people who just cannot see themselves supporting Trump. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, telling Senate candidates if this is a problem for you, go ahead and run ads against him even if he is your party's presidential nominee." Cruz and Rubio have both pitched their campaigns to Republican voters looking to stop Trump. In Tuesday's polls, Cruz won his delegate-rich home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma as well as Alaska -- a better performance than Rubio, who notched just one victory, in Minnesota. Those wins did little to quiet the alarm among their establishment backers, who fear the party is headed toward an annihilating defeat in the general elections. "Happiness for Donald Trump is a divided opposition. He's got precisely that and it's going nowhere for the time being," according to Sabato's Crystal Ball, a political newsletter published by the University of Virginia. Trump's wins were widespread, from Alabama and Georgia in the deep South to Massachusetts in the northeast, to the vital battleground state of Virginia. In his victory speech Tuesday, the real estate mogul and reality TV star set aside his usual boastfulness to offer an olive branch to party leaders. "I think we'll be more inclusive and more unified. I think we'll be a much bigger party," Trump said. Hours later, the sweet nothings evaporated. "Marco Rubio lost big last night. I even beat him in Virginia, where he spent so much time and money," Trump posted to his 6.5 million Twitter followers Wednesday. "Now his bosses are desperate and angry!" Cruz used his victories to argue he is the only Republican who can beat Trump. "For the candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, uniting," he said -- before Rubio notched his Minnesota win. After his disappointing performance, Rubio ended the day in Florida -- a signal he is banking on a win in his home state, which votes on March 15, the next major date in the primary cycle. - 'Reaping the whirlwind' - "Republicans are reaping the whirlwind right now, and Democrats should seize the chance to show Americans an alternative to Mr Trump's politics of rage, and an image of themselves to be proud of, not shrink from," The New York Times observed. In her victory speech, Clinton signaled she is now turning her attention to a general election face-off with Trump. "It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," she said. Trump painted Clinton -- the former first lady, senator and secretary of state -- as a Washington insider who cannot address a furious electorate's desire for change. "She's been there for so long. I mean if she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years," he said. A recent CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the November 8 election were held now. Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, has vowed to press on with his well-funded campaign that has made shrinking the gap between rich and poor a central issue of the Democratic contest. Sanders notched wins in his home state of Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota. Clinton, buoyed by overwhelming African-American support, trounced him in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian teens who had attacked an Israeli settler at his home in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, the military said, as a wave of heightened violence entered its sixth month. "There were two young guys, teenagers, terrorists, at my door, dressed in dark clothes and holding wooden clubs," the Israeli man, Roee Harel, from the Eli settlement near the Palestinian city of Nablus, told Army Radio. He said the two began beating him before he managed to push them out of the house, and he also found a knife at the door. Soldiers who rushed to the scene shot the two Palestinians, a military spokeswoman said. "Upon the significant threat to the people of the community, forces shot the attackers, resulting in their death," the military said in a statement. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two were both 17, from the adjacent village of Qaryout. Since October Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests. The violence has raised concern of further escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. The Palestinians and international powers have said Israel has often used excessive force against assailants, many of them youths. Israel has rejected those allegations, saying it has been preventing lethal attacks on civilians and security forces. Palestinian leaders say many Palestinian attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement towards creation of an independent state. Israel says they are being incited to violence by their leaders and on social media. (Reporting by Maayan Lubell and Ali Sawafta; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Women and girls should be the focus of disaster risk reduction as they often bear the brunt of climate change, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) said yesterday.

Experts tasked to monitor the implementation of a UN landmark policy that seeks to end discrimination against women were told during a gathering in Geneva that women and girls needed to be at the core of disaster risk reduction.

UNISDR head Robert Glasser cited the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, saying it puts the gender issue in the spotlight.

The Sendai framework is a 15-year international blueprint adopted last year in Japan, which aims to save lives and curb the economic impact of natural and man-made calamities.

The Sendai framework places significant importance on human rights, gender equality and climate change adaptation, Glasser said.

He said the gender issue is a key component of the frameworks shift from managing disasters to managing risk.

Among the gender equality gaps that needed to be addressed, according to Glasser, are women participation in decision-making and resource management, and access to social protection measures, education, health and early warning.

Women are greatly affected by disasters. There is a need for more precise information and disaggregated data on the impact of disasters in order to take better correction measures, he said.

Disasters affect men and women, and boys and girls, differently for a range of reasons.

The UNISDR cited some gender inequalities that could affect the decision of women and girls on matters concerning themselves as well as their access to resources, and sidelines them from joining activities meant to mitigate the impact of disasters.

Due to socio-economic conditions, cultural beliefs and traditional practices, the UNISDR said women and girls are more likely to be affected when calamity strikes.

Nahla Haidar, chief of the UN committee on the elimination of discrimination against women, said these disadvantages are exacerbated by views that women are victims and vulnerable, when they should be acknowledged as actors.
Iceland was the top-growing European destination in 2015, recording an impressive 30 percent increase in international visits in 2015.

That's according to the latest figures released from the European Travel Commission (ETC), which also found that overall international arrivals to Europe grew by 5 percent in 2015 over the year previous.

Iceland's chart-topping performance for 2015 marks the fourth consecutive year that the country was the leading European destination for growth: from 2012 to 2015, arrivals grew an average of 24 percent per year and show no signs of slowing.

Visits from US tourists alone grew 60 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Overall, analysts cite the strength of the US dollar against the euro, improved consumer confidence and falling oil prices for boosting travel to Europe.

But Iceland also owes much of its growth to innovative incentives drawn up by the country's flagship airline and their national tourist office, which have carved out a reputation for innovative tourism campaigns.

For example, Icelandair offers travelers the opportunity to stop over in Iceland and explore the country for up to seven nights, at no additional cost.

Last week, the carrier launched a Stopover Buddy Service that will pair travelers with an Icelandair employee, another free service that allows visitors to experience Iceland like a local. Activities are organized by theme such as nature, health, culture, food and adventure, and could include everything from mountain biking, running or knitting a woolly sweater together.

Last year, the tourist office launched a cheeky campaign they called the world's first human search engine, which invited visitors to ask a real-life Icelander any of their pressing travel questions. The#AskGudmundur campaign tapped all the Gudumundurs in Iceland -- the most common first name in the country -- to serve as tour guides.

And in 2011, the country's president Olafur Ragnar Grimsson famously invited tourists to a pancake breakfast at the presidential residence as part of a tourism campaign that encouraged locals to likewise open up their own homes and offer an authentic local travel experience to tourists.

Story continues

Meanwhile, here are some other interesting statistics from the ETC's European Tourism 2015: Trends & Prospects report.

- After Iceland, Romania saw a 17 percent spike in international tourist arrivals in 2015, followed by Slovakia (16 percent), Montenegro (15.5 percent) and Ireland (14 percent).

- Tourism fell in Bulgaria and Turkey (both down 1 percent), Estonia (-3 percent) and Finland (-5 percent).

- The US accounted for 5 percent of total arrivals to Europe in 2015.

- Europe saw a 30 percent growth in Chinese arrivals to Europe.

- Cyprus was the fastest growing destination in 2015 among French visitors.
FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
By MacDonald Dzirutwe HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's former vice president Joice Mujuru launched a new party to challenge her ally-turned-adversary Robert Mugabe, promising to revive the economy and repair strained relations with the West. Mujuru was Mugabe's deputy for a decade and seen as the veteran president's likely successor until he fired her in 2014, accusing her of leading a plot to oust him. In her first public address since then, she told reporters on Tuesday the new Zimbabwe People First party would bring jobs and review the ruling ZANU-PF party's divisive black economic empowerment laws, which critics say have scared off investors. She said she was open to alliances with other opposition groups before 2018 presidential elections. There is no independent estimate on the size of her support. Other parties have previously said they would be open to talks with Mujuru. "Today we confirm our existence as a viable, inclusive home-grown political party," Mujuru, 60, said to cheers and ululation from supporters. "We are not fighting one man but a system, that system which is unjust," she told an audience including reporters, Western diplomats and four former cabinet ministers fired by Mugabe. ZANU-PF national commissar and cabinet minister Savior Kasukuwere described Mujuru's party as a "gathering of losers". "We will defeat them anytime. We are ready for them. What is it that they want to tell us that they couldn't do for 34 years when they were with us in the (ZANU-PF) party?" said Kasukuwere. Zimbabwe is struggling to emerge from a deep recession that shrank its economy by nearly half during the decade to 2008. It is also facing its worst drought in years. Zimbabwe has had particularly strained relations with former colonial ruler Britain and the West since 2000, when Western powers imposed sanctions on Mugabe's government accusing him of election violence, rigging and rights abuses. Mugabe, 92, denies the charges and says Britain lobbied its allies to punish Zimbabwe for taking commercial farms from white farmers, in an often-violent land seizure drive. Mujuru, like Mugabe, took part in Zimbabwe's 1970s independence war, and her aides say she still enjoys support from some of her comrades who hold senior positions in the politically powerful military. "She had deep roots in ZANU-PF and her appeal was national so she may be able to take some supporters to her new political home but it will not be plain sailing," Eldred Masunungure, a political science lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe said. Mujuru said an interim management team would run Zimbabwe People First until it elects leaders at a convention this year. (Editing by James Macharia and Alison Williams)
The human gut is a complex and amazing system, and the more we learn about it, the more amazed we are. It turns out
By Ed Cropley JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - When Barclays bought South Africa's Absa in 2005, wading back into a market it quit in the 1980s under pressure from anti-apartheid campaigners, the deal was trumpeted as a "tangible vote of confidence" in Africa's future. Eleven years on, as the British banking giant looks to end more than a century of involvement on the continent by putting the 'For Sale' sign above its Africa business, it is hard not to conclude the opposite. Barclays said it was selling down its 62.3 percent, 70 billion rand ($4.5 billion) stake in its Johannesburg-based subsidiary - which runs Absa in South Africa and Barclays-branded operations in 13 other countries - because of British regulations. Barclays Africa chief executive Maria Ramos also said the decision had nothing to do with the outlook for Africa, pointing to a 10 percent rise in annual profit and 17 percent return on equity to support her view. But these numbers are in local currency terms. When translated into pounds - the only currency that matters to Barclays bosses in London - they tell a very different story, in particular the return on equity, which falls to 8.7 percent, below the parent bank's 11 percent target. Over the last year, South Africa's rand has shed 20 percent against the pound as mining exports have slumped, the economy has stagnated and President Jacob Zuma has rattled investors by firing two finance ministers in four days. Over the decade since Barclays bought Absa, the decline is far larger, to the point that - despite a 70 percent share price rise - Barclays is likely to take home the same amount of money it spent in the first place. SHORTAGE OF SUITORS Furthermore, this assumes Barclays will be able to sell at Tuesday's share price of around 142 rand - an unlikely prospect given the absence of obvious suitors and the clouds looming over Africa's famously large horizons. In its latest economic outlook, the IMF forecast sub-Saharan growth of 3.75 percent for this year, a sharp decline from pre-financial crisis levels and a prediction that gives the handful of potential Barclays Africa suitors a strong hand in any talks. Analysts and mergers and acquisitions bankers say interest is possible from China - now Africa's largest trading partner - although the performance of the 20 percent in South Africa's Standard Bank bought by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 601398.SS 1398.HK in 2008 has been underwhelming. National Bank of Abu Dhabi [NBADHK.UL] and Qatar National Bank are also possible bidders for the whole portfolio, although Qatar's strained diplomatic relations with Cairo might complicate any deal due to its Egypt component, Middle East banking sources said. Speculation is also bound to swirl around Africa-focused bank Atlas Mara , co-founded by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond, although it is hard to see Atlas, valued at just $320 million, raising sufficient quantities of cash. Another option for Diamond's outfit is to team up with sovereign wealth funds or other financial investors and launch a joint bid as part of a consortium, one of the bankers suggested. If these do not materialise, alternative outcomes for Barclays are breaking up the unit to sell off piecemeal, or keeping its hands on a minority stake. Barclays said on Tuesday it may keep a small non-controlling stake in Barclays Africa beyond the 2-3 year sale deadline. ELUSIVE MIDDLE CLASS The continent's prospects are nothing like as rosy as 2005, when Irish rocker Bob Geldof arm-twisted rich nations into writing off billions of dollars in defaulted African sovereign debt. Freed from the burden of unpayable interest charges and boosted by a commodity price boom, the impact of technology such as mobile phones and a flood of 'Africa Rising' investment predicated on the emergence of a middle class, the continent embarked on a decade of unprecedented growth. Last year's slowdown in China and the ensuing drop in demand for raw materials such as iron ore, copper and crude, has brought that to a juddering halt, exposing the fragility of African government finances and economies. The case of Nigeria, its biggest economy, most populous nation and top crude producer, is telling. Having relied on oil for 70 percent of its revenues and 90 percent of its dollars, Abuja has had to impose budget cuts and foreign exchange controls to protect the naira, which is now trading on the street at nearly half its official value. Other commodity producers such as Ghana, Zambia and Angola have suffered similar fates. Meanwhile, the hoped-for windfall has failed to materialise from a continental middle-class whose size varies from 327 million of Africa's billion plus population to just 16 million depending on whose daily income definition you accept - the African Development Bank's $2, or McKinsey's $55. "It's become clear that most of the people portrayed as the new consumer class are not going to have jobs - and if you're not earning, you're not consuming and you're not borrowing," said Francois Conradie of NKC Africa Economists in Cape Town. "Instead of having a big middle class, you're just going to have big slums - and that is a serious political problem." ($1 = 15.6701 rand) (Additional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia and David French; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
The Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the highest executive body that takes a call on defense matters, has cleared the acquisition of two Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) platforms, from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) at a cost of US$1.1 billion (Rs 7,500 crore).

The acquisition of the AEW mission systems installed on two IL-76 (A-50) aircraft will be processed as a follow-on phase under the tripartite contract with Israel and Russia, under which India bought three such aircraft for the same amount, from Israel and Russia in 2009 and 2010. The Indian Business Standard reported.

The AWACS platform plays significant role in Indian Air Forces Network-Centric Operations. In addition to the three arrays comprising the ELM-2075 L-band early warning radar located in the static dome, these aircraft have electronic intelligence (ELINT) and communications intelligence (COMINT)-gathering capabilities that help intercept signals from enemy areas, in monitoring troop build-up and to detect aerial threats. It can detect aircraft, drones and cruise missiles from a range of 400 km.

The CCS has also cleared a proposal for the induction of the fourth regiment of Brahmos missile and two more of Pinaka rocket-launchers for the Army.
By Joseph Guyler Delva PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Provisional Haiti President Jocelerme Privert said on Tuesday a new election council would determine if a delayed runoff could be held by an April deadline, as concerns grow that a political standoff would again scupper efforts to hold the vote. Privert took office last month for a 120-day term after a botched runoff vote meant former President Michel Martelly left office without a replacement. Martelly's party accuses Privert of bias in favour of the left-wing Fanmi Lavalas movement. The election has already been delayed three times over allegations of fraud in the first round, and Privert called on opponents to support his efforts to quickly hand power to an elected successor. Privert said he was doing everything he could to ensure the transfer of power happened within a time frame agreed in February, but details would be decided by the still-unformed election council. "The electoral council will establish a calendar and a budget. It is only then that we will know whether they need additional time or not," he said in an interview at his office. Haiti has struggled since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship to build a stable democracy and transfer political power through regular elections. The last time the impoverished Caribbean nation had an interim government, it took two years to organise a vote. Martelly's party members oppose Privert's choice of prime minister, an ex-central bank chief who had links to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas movement. Without the support of Martelly's and other allied parties Prime Minister Fritz Jean may not be able to form a government, putting at risk the tight election timeline. "I invite political actors to trust me, to believe that I am above all conflicting interests," Privert said, calling on his critics to help quickly organise the election. "I ask you (political actors) for your support to reach that goal." Privert said the election council, with representatives fromnine sectors, would be established as soon as parliament ratified Jean's programme and he was able to build his cabinet. He said he had no intention of setting up an inquiry commission to look into alleged corruption during Martelly's administration, noting that such a move would be seen as political persecution ahead of the elections. (Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Richard Chang)
The United Nations has warned that Europe is on the brink of a "self-induced humanitarian crisis" caused by the build-up of migrants and refugees on Greece's border with Macedonia.

Food, water and shelter are in short supply for the rising number of families gathering at the border between the two countries.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says better planning and more accommodation must be provided for some 24,000 people who are stuck in Greece.

"Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis," UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

"The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation.

"As we all saw yesterday (Monday), tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers."

It comes as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said clashes at Greece's northern border on Monday showed the urgency with which the EU needs to act.

Army trucks have been stationed at a railway line near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija in anticipation of more trouble after hundreds stormed the border - prompting police to fire tear gas as several migrants were nearly trampled and one officer injured.

Near Idomeni on the Greek-Macedonian border itself a tent city has grown, leading to anger among those trapped there.

"Macedonian police put us here, the Greeks don't want us back," said Yase Qued, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan.

Many refugees have been caught in Greece after Austria and other countries imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the number of people allowed to cross.

Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.

Some 131,724 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean already this year, more than in the first half of 2015, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
By Eric Auchard FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's cartel office is investigating Facebook for suspected abuse of market power over breaches of data protection laws in the first formal probe of the social network for violating competition rules. The watchdog said it suspected Facebook's terms of service regarding how the company makes use of users' data may abuse its possibly dominant position in the social networking market. It planned to examine whether users were properly informed about how their personal data would be obtained by the company. Facebook, the world's biggest social network with 1.6 billion monthly users, earns revenues from advertising based on data it gathers about its users' social connections, opinions and activities in their postings. "For advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely important," Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said. "For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected." A Facebook spokeswoman said on Wednesday: "We are confident that we comply with the law and we look forward to working with the Federal Cartel Office to answer their questions." The company has faced criticism from politicians and regulators in Germany, where data protection is strictly regulated, over its privacy practices and its slow response to anti-immigrant postings by neo-Nazi sympathisers. Co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg visited Berlin on a charm offensive last week. "We welcome the approach of the Cartel office," Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar told Reuters. "Whoever has power over user data gets market power and vice versa." EU officials have also expressed support for the view that Facebook's use of data might expose it to regulatory action on competition grounds. The cartel office said it was coordinating its probe with the European Commission, competition authorities in other European Union states, data protection authorities in Germany and consumer rights groups. French and Irish competition regulators said they were not actively involved with the German case. A spokesman for the Belgian competition authority declined to comment on whether it was cooperating with the German probe, while the British regulator was not immediately reachable. "This is an unusual case in many respects," said Mark Watts, head of data protection at London-based law firm Bristows. He said it was the first time the volume of personal data a company held was such a significant factor in an investigation into whether a company has abused its dominant position. Facebook owns four of the top eight social network services globally including its core profile service, two separate instant messaging services, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and its photo and video-sharing social network service Instagram. Facebook has nearly the twice the number of users as the world's second largest social network, Tencent's QQ of China. Nearly 84 percent of the members of Facebook's core social network are outside the United States and Canada, which generated half its nearly $18 billion in revenues last year. Companies can theoretically face a fine of up to 10 percent of their annual turnover by the German competition regulator if they are found to have abused a dominant market position. But the cartel office has never levelled a maximum penalty. BIG DATA European regulators have begun debating the role that vast collections of "big data" - collected from billions of Web searches, messages and other online interactions - give Internet giants in marketing and commerce and how such data makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in those areas. "User data is often the currency which consumers pay for supposedly free services," said Klaus Mueller, chairman of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations. "Consumers have no adequate alternative. They can't just transfer their user data to other portals." The cartel office had already signalled last month it was ready to consider data protection issues as raising potential competition concerns. European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said the EU executive shared the view of the German cartel office that the mere infringement of data protection rules by a dominant company did not automatically amount to a competition violation. "However, it cannot be excluded that a behaviour that violates data protection rules could also be relevant when investigating a possible violation of EU competition rules," he added, while declining specific comment on the new case. Speaking in Germany in January, top EU antitrust enforcer Margrethe Vestager said her agency was taking a harder look at whether the collection of vast amounts of consumer data by big Internet companies violates competition rules. By contrast, U.S. privacy law enforcement remains limited to gross privacy violations where it can be show companies failed to properly safeguard customer information. The EU has accused Facebook rival Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, of favouring its own shopping services in search results at the expense of rivals, and is weighing possible sanctions against the world's most popular search engine. However, the commission previously considered and rejected big data issues when it approved Google's acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick in 2008 and Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp in 2014. (Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan and Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Klaus Lauer in Berlin, Matthias Inveradi in Duesseldorf, Conor Humphries in Dublin, Phil Blenkinsop and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, Mathieu Rosemain in Paris, Paul Sandle in London and Diane Bartz in Washington; editing by Louise Heavens and Giles Elgood)
DELPHI, Greece (Reuters) - Greece must push on with the implementation of crucial reforms to stabilise its economy and return to growth and broad political consensus will help the effort, the European Union's Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici told a conference on Friday. "Crucial reforms must be done now, the cost and challenges will be bigger in the future," the commissioner said in a video message. "A broad political consensus would increase the probability of success and would reduce uncertainty." Athens is keen to conclude the first review of its performance on implementing reforms prescribed in its third bailout, clinched in August last year. But a key element - the overhaul of its ailing pension system remains a snag. Moscovici said that measures taken by the leftist-led government since August have been encouraging and a fast completion of the review would boost confidence and pave the way to ease capital controls that were imposed in late June. He said the migration crisis afflicting the EU is a challenge for all the bloc's members and requires a coordinated European solution. (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos)
How ironic is it that two days after "Spotlight" - the movie that captured the dogged efforts of a team of investigative reporters at theto blow the roof off the problem of priest abuse of children in the Boston Archdiocese - we would be reliving this horror once again here in Pennsylvania. In a truly horrific presentation, state Attorney General Kathleen Kane Tuesday presented a scathing grand jury presentation that once again pointed an accusatory finger at Catholic church leaders, this time in the Altoona-Johnstown Archdiocese. The report lays out the ugly details of more than 40 years of child abuse at the hands of 34 priests, and the willful conduct of two archbishops to cover it up.It will be eerily familiar to those in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, who lived through a very similar grand jury presentation a decade ago. How bad was the rampant abuse in the Altoona-Johnstown Archdiocese? The report alleges that church leaders actually created something called a "payout chart" that plotted out how much money a victim would receive depending on the severity of the abuse. There will be no charges - at least not yet - filed as a result of the grand jury presentment. Most of the cases are now too old to prosecute, and many of the suspected priests have died. The grand jury report specifically rips two archbishops, Bishop Joseph Adamec and Bishop James Hogan, for failing to report abuse to law enforcement authorities. They instead "chose to shield the institution and themselves from scandal," the report states. Sound familiar? Hogan died in 2005. Adamec did not answer questions from the grand jury, instead asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. He has denied any wrongdoing. The archdiocese released a statement Tuesday, saying they would have no comment other than to note they had "cooperated fully with authorities throughout the investigation." The current archbishop is not suspected of any wrongdoing. This is not easy - again - for Catholics. I know. I happen to be one, a former altar boy. Once again I feel a fury building inside of me that church officials would not only allow this to happen on their watch, but in some cases clearly enable it, and then choose to cover it up. Our columnist Chris Freind today takes a strong stance in terms of what the church needs to do to finally come to grips with the abuse scandal. I don't doubt many people are going to disagree with him. They once again will call us anti-Catholic, just as they did in the wake of the Philadelphia grand jury report and the criminal charges that were eventually lodged against Monsignor William Lynn, my parish pastor. Lynn now is awaiting a new trial on the charges as he continues to fight to clear his name. Clearing the name - and the reputation - of the church, may take a little longer. Yes, it has made me question my faith. No, it has not turned me, as it has so many other, away from the church. I will not stay away from Mass. I don't attend because I'm supposed to as a commandment of my faith. I am no longer beholden to any one man, priest or bishop. I go to Mass for a peaceful hour of reflection in what is an increasingly angry, harried world. I go there looking for a reinvigoration of faith. I don't find it in the wrote responses to the liturgy. I find it in my own personal peace of mind. That does not mean I am not angry with my church, and church leaders who for so long allowed these depravities to exist. Once again, I would pose just one question for the church leaders in Altoona-Johnstown who allowed this to happen on their watch. How did you sleep at night?
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's al Shabaab Islamist group bombed a busy junction and a nearby restaurant in the town of Baidoa on Sunday, killing at least 30 people, police and the group said. Al Shabaab often carries out such suicide attacks in the capital and elsewhere in its bid to topple Somalia's Western- backed government. The group wants to impose its strict version of Islamic rule in the Horn of Africa nation. "The restaurant and the junction were very busy," Police Major Bilow Nurr told Reuters from Baidoa, which lies about 245 km (152 miles) northwest of Mogadishu. Police Colonel Abdi Osman said the death toll was 30, with 40 others injured. A hospital officials said many of the bodies it received were charred beyond recognition. A police officer said a suicide car bomb blew up at the junction while a second blast - possibly a bomb that had been planted or a suicide bomber - struck the restaurant. "We targeted government officials and forces," al Shabaab's military operation spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters, adding there was a police station nearby. Ismail Olad told Reuters the two locations were full of civilians and security forces. "I heard a huge crash at the busy junction and as I ran, I heard another blast at a restaurant ahead of me. The whole place was covered by smoke," he said. The blasts follows a car bomb attack in Mogadishu near a park and hotel on Friday that killed 14 people, police said. He said three militants from the al Shabaab group were also killed. (Reporting by Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Michael Perry)
SWNS

<p>Americans are still waiting for their Goldilocks moment  four in five say theyve never found their perfect fit for certain items.</p><p>According to a new poll of 1,000 people 250 lbs and over and 1,000 people under 250 lbs, 52% struggle to find clothing, mattresses (40%) and bathtubs or shower enclosures (38%) that fit their body types.</p><p>In fact, about two-thirds (67%) find themselves struggling frequently with finding items that fit their body size needs.</p><p>This was especially true for those 350 lbs and over, as 41% admit they always struggle, compared to only 23% of those under 250 lbs.</p><p>Despite frequency, almost three-quarters (74%) of all respondents find themselves feeling frustrated when they are searching for an item that accommodates their needs.</p><p>Conducted by OnePoll on behalf of <a href="https://www.bigfigmattress.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="1">Big Fig Mattress</a>, the survey asked respondents how they go about their everyday lives despite challenges they may face because of their body type. </p><p>Results found that seven in 10 respondents feel less confident when they struggle with finding items that fit their size needs.</p><p>When asked about other emotions respondents experience, those 250 lbs and over are more likely to feel set apart from others, citing embarrassed (59%) and isolated (53%).</p><p>While those who are under 250 lbs tend to lean towards disappointed (51%). </p><p>Even so, those 250 lbs and up were more optimistic than those under (35% vs 23%).</p><p>The average respondent has crossed off about five brands or retailers because they dont carry products that meet their physical needs.</p><p>However, for those who are 250 lbs and over, 72% have eliminated between three and eight stores.</p><p>Almost one in five (18%) of those under 250 lbs cited that all stores carry their size, compared to only 2% of those who are 250 lbs and up.</p><p>"This survey makes it clear that the 'all' part of 'one size fits all' couldn't be further from the truth," said Jeff Brown, president, Big Fig Mattress. "Almost two in five respondents haven't found something that they felt was made for them. Everybody and every <em>body</em> deserves a long-lasting and comfortable mattress to support a good night's sleep, regardless of your size."</p><p>Products made for all body types are an issue no matter what the product, with respondents needing to stand on furniture to reach something (46%) or finding that clothing is either way too long or too short (46%).</p><p>And ill-fitting items arent just an inconvenience, 61% of respondents say that clothing, vehicles (59%) and mattresses (50%) that arent made for their body type have a big impact on their quality of life.</p><p>More than half of those 250 lbs and over (53%) believe their life is more difficult than for someone who is considered normal sized.</p><p>But that doesnt mean respondents are only dwelling on the negative  almost half (44%) frequently make light of their struggles. </p><p>When asked how they do so, respondents outlined things like, I speak to myself. I'm beautiful and special. I'm impeccable," and Remind myself that if this is the biggest problem I have, then I am doing just fine in life."</p><p>The survey also asked about relationship status and how respondents are navigating integrating their lifestyles with another uniquely sized person.</p><p>Seventy-four percent of all respondents are in a relationship and living with their significant other.</p><p>Almost half (45%) are mixed-size couples, meaning they have a noticeable difference in body size or type.</p><p>Because of this, couples face challenges like finding a place to live that accommodates both people (40%), struggling to share a mattress comfortably (40%) and having items that one person uses but the other never would such as step stools (34%).</p><p>In the end, more than two-thirds (68%) of all respondents agree that its difficult to navigate a one size fits all world when people have varying body types.</p><p>We believe and support being body positive, in body acceptance, and in making positive life choices, noted Brown. Bigger figured people deserve the same level of quality products and choices as everyone else. Its important to accept that all bodies are different and require more from product manufacturers, and I think the data makes that clear.</p><p><strong>MOST DIFFICULT ITEMS TO FIND FOR A SPECIFIC BODY TYPE</strong></p><ul><li>Clothing - 52%</li><li>Mattress - 40%</li><li>Bathtub/shower enclosure - 38%</li><li>Chairs/couch - 35%</li><li>Bike/scooter - 34%</li><li>Vehicle - 31% </li></ul><p><em>Survey methodology:</em></p><p><em>This random double-opt-in survey of <strong>1,000 Americans under 250 lbs and 1,000 Americans 250 lbs and up </strong>was commissioned by <strong>Big Big Mattress</strong> between <strong>September 8 </strong> and <strong>September 21</strong>. It was conducted by market research company <a href="https://www.onepoll.us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="2">OnePoll</a>, whose team members are members of the <a href="https://www.mrs.org.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="3">Market Research Society</a> and have corporate membership to the American Association for Public Opinion Research (<a href="https://www.aapor.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="4">AAPOR</a>) and the European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (<a href="https://www.esomar.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" data-safelink="true" data-linkindex="5">ESOMAR</a>).</em></p>
By Ana Isabel Martinez MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government is planning a diplomatic push to counter aggressive rhetoric against its nationals in the U.S. election race, a senior official said on Tuesday, after calls by Donald Trump for a massive wall to divide the two nations. Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have also proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is Trump who has taken the hardest line against the United States' southern neighbour. The Republican front-runner has labelled Mexican migrants as drug runners and rapists, proposed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and said Mexico is "killing" the United States with cheap labour. Francisco Guzman, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's chief of staff, on Tuesday said it was time for the government to push back against these negative images. Mexico plans to use its extensive network of U.S. consulates to highlight the benefits of U.S.-Mexican relations to the U.S. economy and the American people, Guzman said. The initiative will include forums with U.S. business people, politicians and public figures to get Mexico's opinions heard. "Mexicos positioning in the U.S. election debate is not generally adequate," Guzman told a group of foreign correspondents. "It doesnt reflect the constructive relationship between Mexico and the U.S." Trump rolled up a series of primary wins on Tuesday and looked set to take command of the Republican nomination battle. The Mexican government has up till now avoided a direct confrontation with the billionaire real estate developer, though the country's top diplomat has called his policies and comments "ignorant and racist." Former Mexican presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon have publicly condemned Trump, both comparing him to Adolf Hitler. "We're not going to involve ourselves in the (U.S. presidential) debate. We don't want to polarise, but we do want to have a positive institutional relationship as we've had in the past," Guzman said. "The U.S.-Mexico relationship requires more bridges and fewer walls. The isolationist solution is not a solution at all," he added. The United States is Mexico's top trade partner, the destination for about 80 percent of its exports, in addition to sharing many cultural and family links. To promote stronger ties, Mexico's government plans to meet with the final contenders for the White House once the two major parties have selected their candidates, Guzman said. "Any candidate, above all if he wants to project himself forward, has to, in my opinion, see the relationship with Mexico not as a threat but as an opportunity," he said. (Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Simon Gardner and Andrew Hay)
By Greg Torode HONG KONG (Reuters) - The United States and China are risking a tit-for-tat escalation over the Paracel Islands as Beijing asserts its authority over one of its most tightly-held assets in the South China Sea and Washington challenges a growing military build-up. Both Chinese and foreign security experts say Beijing won't compromise over the Paracels, and it views its 42-year grip over the entire archipelago as significantly different to the more fragmented situation further south in the contentious Spratly Islands. China does not acknowledge the Paracels are disputed by neighbouring Vietnam, repeatedly ignoring Hanoi's requests for talks on the Paracels as part of broader territorial discussions and attempting to force them off the regional diplomatic agenda. "We're in for a difficult time...when it comes to the Paracels, China is not going to budge on what it sees as its absolute sovereign rights," said Zhang Baohui, a mainland security expert at Hong Kongs Lingnan University. "We could see China acting more swiftly and decisively to anything it sees as a so-called provocation in the Paracels." Since the U.S. navy dispatched a destroyer to sail close to the Paracels last month, China has established advanced surface-to-air missiles batteries and re-deployed fighter jets to the islands, prompting U.S.-led protests that Beijing is militarising the South China Sea. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying last week reiterated China's insistence that the islands were not in dispute, so Beijing could deploy what it wanted on its territory without reproach. The Paracels could not be considered part of the landmark declaration between China and Southeast Asian nations in 2002 that calls for peaceful resolution of disputes and self-restraint, she said. "We have stressed many times that there is no dispute that the Xisha islands are China's sovereign territory," she said, using China's name for the Paracels. VITAL WATERWAY The South China Sea is a vital trade route, linking the large economies of Northeast Asia with South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Much of the focus has been on the Spratlys, where China's extensive reclamation and construction on reefs over the past two years is widely seen as presaging Beijing's first military installations deep in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia. But U.S. moves last month to send the USS Curtis Wilbur patrolling within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island put China's long-established occupation under scrutiny. U.S. officials privately acknowledge that China's military and civilian presence in the Paracels is more long standing than the Spratlys and that Washington had eyed previous deployments without going public with its concerns. But given rising regional and congressional concerns, Washington does not want to be seen as taking a soft stance towards any Chinese moves without protest and has promised more "freedom of navigation" patrols. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday warned China against what he called "aggressive" actions in the region. "China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea," Carter said in San Francisco. "Specific actions will have specific consequences," he said, without elaborating. Carl Thayer, a security scholar at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said he was "simply amazed" by the recent U.S. patrol in the Paracels, which could complicate actions to challenge the newer risks posed by China's work in the Spratlys. "China's had effectively uncontested control of the Paracels since the 1970s, so they've been militarised for decades," he said. "I think China was really taken by surprise when they sent the Curtis Wilbur." U.S. and Vietnamese officials protested China's deployment of HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the Paracels, fearing a similar move on the Spratlys. China occupied Woody Island in 1956 and took the rest of the archipelago when it drove off the navy of the then-South Vietnam in 1974. "The status quo in these two archipelagos is being changed," Vietnam foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said last week. "The more important and dangerous issue is the militarisation of the South China Sea and these are very serious issues." While many analysts and regional military attaches believe the recent missile and jet fighter deployments represent Beijing's own protest, some note its determination to better protect its expanding submarine fleet on Hainan Island. The fleet is expected include several nuclear armed submarines over the next few years, Pentagon surveys show, making Hainan at the core of Beijing's nuclear deterrent. (Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Martin Petty in Hanoi and David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal in Washington.; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
(Reuters) - Digital privacy advocates have called on a U.S. federal judge to approve Apple Inc's request not to be compelled to build software to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack. The American Civil Liberties Union, Access Now and the Wickr Foundation laid out arguments in amicus briefs released on Wednesday ahead of a March 22 hearing in which Judge Sheri Pym will review Apple's appeal of a court order demanding it help unlock a phone used by Rizwan Farook. Alphabet Inc's Google, Facebook Inc, Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc also plan to file similar briefs, Twitter, Microsoft and people familiar with the plans of the other two companies said last week. [L2N1642BW] The ACLU argued that the FBI's request would undermine the privacy and security of Americans by forcing a private firm to act as its investigative agent, seeking information that it does not already possess. "Law enforcement may not commandeer innocent third parties into becoming its undercover agents, its spies, or its hackers," according to a draft of the brief obtained by Reuters. Access Now and the Wickr Foundation, which both advise activists on digital privacy, said in a joint brief that complying with the order would undermine human rights around the globe. "In some countries reliable security tools such as encryption can be the difference between life and death," their brief says. "The relief sought by the government endangers people globally who depend on robust digital security for their physical safety and wellbeing." The U.S. government has said the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California, was inspired by Islamist militants, and the FBI wants to read the data on Farook's phone to investigate any links with militant groups. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others before they themselves were killed in a shootout with police. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Paul Simao)
Steamrolling to a string of Super Tuesday victories, Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump has vowed to beat Hillary Clinton in November's election.

The real estate billionaire took a stride towards his party's White House nomination with seven victories after votes in 12 US states.

Mr Trump swept Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Tennessee, and claimed narrower wins in Virginia, Arkansas and Vermont.

Arch-conservative Texas Senator Ted Cruz breathed a sigh of relief after a crucial win in his home state of Texas, as well as victories in Oklahoma and Alaska.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican party favourite, won his first 2016 contest, the Minnesota caucuses, but was judged to have had a lacklustre night overall.

During a victory rally in a ballroom at his seaside resort Palm Beach, Florida, Mr Trump congratulated Mr Cruz, but scorned "lightweight" Mr Rubio.

:: Donald Trump Charges Through Super Tuesday

The tycoon - who has wooed legions of low-income, white voters - told supporters: "Once we get all of this finished, I'm going to go after one person - Hillary Clinton."

:: Clinton Gains Momentum In White House Race

He added: "We have politicians who truly, truly, truly don't know what they're doing."

Mr Trump was flanked by former rival New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who endorsed him last week.

:: Profile: Donald Trump

In the Democratic race , front runner Hillary Clinton won seven states, while her rival, Bernie Sanders, took four.

Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson have still not won any contests for the Republican nomination.

The White House hopefuls are all vying to win delegates who will vote for them at the parties' conventions in July.

:: Profile: Ted Cruz

After Super Tuesday, Mr Trump was leading with 274 delegates, Mr Cruz had 149, Mr Rubio was on 82, Mr Kasich 25 and Mr Carson eight.

Some 1,237 delegates are needed for a candidate to win the Republican nomination.

Story continues

State primaries and caucuses will continue on for months, but Mr Trump's rivals will be hard-pressed to make up ground.

:: Profile: Marco Rubio

Party leaders fear Mr Trump will ruin their chances of recapturing the White House after President Barack Obama's two terms.

The tycoon has repeatedly courted controversy with inflammatory outbursts.

But on Tuesday he sought to defuse claims he is too divisive, insisting he was a "unifier" and a "common-sense conservative" who would grow the party.

Mr Cruz, meanwhile, argued he is the only Republican who can beat "profane and vulgar" Mr Trump.

The Texas senator "prayerfully" suggested candidates who have not yet won a state bow out.

For Mr Rubio, the 15 March primary in his home state of Florida is a now must-win.

Mr Trump currently has a double-digit lead there.
Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.

This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media  main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.




DAKAR (Reuters) - French forces killed a Spaniard working as an al Qaeda commander in northern Mali during a military operation against the group this week, a Spanish intelligence firm and security sources said. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that emerged from Algeria's civil war, has stepped up a regional insurgency in West Africa, claiming two hotel attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso's capitals since November that killed at least 50 people. U.S. Africa Command calls it the world's "most enduring" extremist group and a U.S. commander warned last month it could strengthen further. "The death of (Abu al-Nur al-Andalusi) happened during an attack by French forces on a meeting of al Qaeda members in northern Mali," AICS, a Spain-based intelligence company said in a statement sent to Reuters on Wednesday, citing local sources. The firm's CEO Salvador Burguet described al-Nur as a 35-year-old from Melilla, an autonomous Spanish enclave in north Africa. For at least the past year he has been leading a Katiba, or brigade, made up of around 25 fighters in the desert area north of Timbuktu, Burguet said. Two other security officials in Mali confirmed al-Nur's death, adding two French operations were made in the Gao and Timbuktu regions earlier this week. It was not clear how many other militants were killed. Spain's Foreign Ministry said they did not have information on the case and French defence officials declined to comment. Al-Nur has been involved in a number of attacks against the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country, known as MINUSMA. An AQIM video in September showed a smiling al-Nur, wearing sun-glasses, encouraging others to join militants in Mali in Spanish, according to a video released by the SITE global intelligence agency. He then boards a truck with a group of fighters to ambush a U.N. vehicle and begins firing bullets into an apparently lifeless pile of bodies. The U.N. said at least six Burkinabe soldiers were killed in that attack. Separately, MINUSMA said six peacekeepers were wounded on Tuesday when their vehicle hit a landmine in northern Mali. French forces intervened in northern Mali in 2013 to drive out Islamic militants from urban centres but scattered bands of fighters remain in desert areas. France is the largest Western power involved in fighting insurgents in the arid Sahel region, with around 3,500 troops based there. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Paul Day in Madrid, Adama Diarra in Bamako and Marine Pennetier in Paris; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Ireland's political future has been plunged into uncertainty after voters dealt the traditionally dominant parties an unprecedented hammering.

Early indications suggest a widespread disaffection with mainstream parties and austerity.

The outgoing Fine Gael-Labour partnership is facing a humiliating defeat, as the electorate sent a resounding message to the established order.

A poll for the Irish Times newspaper shows support for Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party slumped to 26.1%, compared to 36.1% in 2011.

After five years of austerity, backing for junior coalition partners Labour also plummeted - from 19.5% to 7.8%.

By contrast Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, Independents and smaller parties all made significant gains.

The poll by Ipsos MRBI puts Fianna Fail on 22.9%; Sinn Fein on 14.9%; Anti Austerity Alliance/People Before Profit on 3.6%.

The Greens are on 3.5%; Social Democrats on 2.8%; Renua on 2.6%; and others on 16.1%.

However, the final picture could be very different as Ireland has a single transferable vote system.

Counting of the votes began this afternoon, with the final results not expected until later tonight.

The outlook raises the prospect of weeks of protracted negotiations on potential coalitions.

By 7pm, 10 of 158 seats had been declared.

Fianna Fail's Micheal Martin, the opposition leader in the last Dail parliament, insisted the party did not want to take power with Fine Gael.

"We have made it clear we do not want to go into government with Fine Gael or with Sinn Fein," he said.

"The idea that it is just down to two parties, I think, is ignoring the reality of how people voted."

Mark Mortell, the Taoiseach's closest adviser, said Ireland would have to review its "political system" once the outcome is decided.

The top-ranking aide admitted the chance of another general election was "now very, very high".

Around two million people cast their votes in one of the most uncertain elections in the country's recent political history.

Story continues

If, as seems likely, Fine Gael fail are unable to form a new administration with Labour, they will have a number of options.

One would be to form a minority government supported by arch-enemies Fianna Fail.

Another would be a rainbow coalition with Labour and some other groups.

The parties will have until 10 March - when the Dail is scheduled to reconvene - to forge a power-sharing deal.

If they fail to do this, another election may be necessary.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian armed forces took territory east of Damascus on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, on the third day of a fragile international attempt to halt nearly five years of fighting. A Syrian rebel spokesman said this was a violation of the truce deal in place. The Observatory said that Syrian government forces took control of a strategically important piece of land between two neighbourhoods in the eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. The capture of the land between Beit Nayim and Harasta al-Qantara came after Syrian and allied forces fought Islamist factions and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front for around 24 hours, the Observatory said. A fragile truce came into force in Syria early on Saturday, but the main opposition group has said that the deal could collapse because of continuing attacks by government forces. Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for the Alwiyat Seif al-Sham group, part of a rebel alliance in the south, said government forces had been trying to storm the area in eastern Ghouta since the first day of the truce. "This is a clear violation of the ceasefire," Shami said. The cessation of hostilities, drawn up by Washington and Moscow, is a less formal arrangement than a ceasefire and is meant to allow peace talks to resume and aid to reach besieged communities. The agreement does not include jihadist groups, such as Islamic State and the Nusra Front, and Russia --which is supporting Syrian forces with air attacks -- has made clear it intends to keep bombing them. Eastern Ghouta is regularly targeted by the Syrian army and its allies. It is a stronghold of the Jaish al-Islam (Islam Army) rebel group, which is an influential member of the main opposition alliance, the High Negotiations Committee, and has been used as a launch pad for rocket and mortar attacks on Damascus. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry; editing by Ralph Boulton)
Reuters

Outgoing Italian Finance Minister Daniele Franco gave his blessing to the appointment of Giancarlo Giorgetti as his successor, saying in a newspaper interview on Friday they shared the same ideas of what Italy needed and would certainly do well. Giorgetti, the outgoing industry minister in Mario Draghi's government and the deputy leader of the right-wing League party, looks well placed to become economy minister in a new government led by rightist leader Giorgia Meloni. Giorgetti is considered one of the League's most moderate and pro-European figures.
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A World Food Programme (WFP) ship carrying humanitarian aid offloaded its cargo in Yemen on Wednesday, the United Nations said, after it was diverted to Saudi Arabia last month because it was carrying communications equipment. Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition in a war against Iran-allied Houthi rebels and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in an effort to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. The Mainport Cedar, which the United Nations said was carrying a cargo of humanitarian relief supplies bound for the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida, was diverted by the coalition to the Saudi port of Jizan on Feb. 11. "The World Food Programme confirms that the Mainport Cedar has offloaded its cargo at Yemen's Hodeida port today," said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq. "The vessel was carrying interagency cargo that includes canned tuna and medical supplies. It had also been carrying information technology equipment that was left behind in Jizan to complete paperwork to allow it into Aden for the U.N. humanitarian hub," Haq said. Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, the Saudi-led coalition's spokesman, said in February that the communications equipment was similar to that used by the Houthis and had not been declared by the WFP. Yemen relies almost solely on imports, but the conflict has slowed shipments to a trickle after Saudi Arabia imposed a naval blockade to stop weapons being imported. United Nations aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the U.N. Security Council earlier this month that a U.N. verification and inspection mechanism for shipments had now been launched in a bid to boost commercial imports. O'Brien is due to address the council again on Yemen on Thursday. More than 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians, in Yemen since Saudi-led forces began military operations in March last year after the Houthis advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden. (The story was refiled to correct throughout to show ship was diverted in February, not earlier this month.) (Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by G Crosse)
KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn.
"Man, this town's like the pantsuit of nowheres."

-- Clark Systma

SYNOPSIS: Set in the early 1980s, when teenagers lugged pocket combs and grew abysmal mustaches, Albany, Oregon tracks the flowering romance between Clark Systma, first-floor crowd control at Everybody's Records, and Shandi Everacre, senior lettuce handler at Angi's Burgers. Can they find true love at the Santiam/Pacific triangle under the ever-watchful consternation of Shandi's father, Bill, a Harvard-educated upholstery consultant at Rubenstein's Furniture? And what of the aggressive affections of Jake Eppling, head buyer for the Fred Meyer music department and, most importantly, heir to the Hereford Steer empire? Will his calculated urbanity and brand new Le Car be enough to spirit young Shandi away? We're not sure, but it's enough to tear the Gut apart!

But Clark has a plan, and it's crazy enough to work. Barreling in from Portland: all-important shipments of Blue Oyster Cult's "Fire of Unknown Origin," destined to become the biggest-selling album in city history. It's a race against time as Clark and Jake battle to intercept the delivery and alter Albany's destiny forever!

With the revenue, Clark plans to transform the derelict Van Dran Hotel into a premier destination for out-of-towners too full to drive home from King Arthur's Pizza, marry the fair Shandi in the shadow of the T&R sign, and thwart the Jaycees' plans to turn the Elks Lodge into a timber-themed discotheque. Longtime residents may shed a tear at the CGI-generated Roth's IGA, and sigh audibly at the painstaking re-creation of the Al Ray Motel at three in the morning.

Rated R for general malaise, affronts to the ozone layer, suburb-ennui and prolonged exposure to Billy Squier.

SIDE 1

1. LOVERBOY, "Turn Me Loose"

2. JOURNEY, "Don't Stop Believin'"

3. AC/DC, "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)"

4. KISS, "Shandi"

5. THE CARS, "It's All I Can Do"

6. REO SPEEDWAGON, "Don't Let Him Go"

SIDE 2

1. BLUE OYSTER CULT, "Veteran of the Psychic Wars"

2. CHEAP TRICK, "Dream Police"

3. MOTORHEAD, "Love Me Like a Reptile"

4. VAN HALEN, "Little Dreamer"

5. QUEEN, "Sail Away Sweet Sister (To the Sister I Never Had)"

6. EAGLES, "In the City"

Soundtrack available on Bamboo Terrace Records and Tapes.
The prosecution introduced more witnesses Tuesday in the Devin Hansen murder trial, presenting testimony from medical examiners and law enforcement officials that paints a picture of violent struggle and methamphetamine use.

Hansen was arrested Jan. 25, 2014, for murder, second-degree assault, fourth-degree assault, strangulation, menacing and reckless endangerment in the death of his girlfriend, Christine Smith.

Hansen and Smith allegedly got into an argument and struggle that resulted in Smiths death. Hansen, who weighed close to 400 pounds at the time, allegedly pinned Smith, who weighed 250 pounds, down on the couch and held his arms across her throat and head until she stopped breathing. He then called 911 and tried to revive her. She was pronounced dead two days later.

While the prosecution seeks to prove Hansen intentionally strangled Smith that night, the defense wants to show the death was the unfortunate result of a confrontation with an erratic and abusive girlfriend.

Among the witnesses, Linn County Assistant District Attorney Jonathon Crow called Albany Police Lieutenant Travis Giboney, one of two detectives who responded on the night of the incident. Giboney said he seized blood evidence from the wall and helped examine the sofa where the crime took place. The sofa, he said, had a broken wooden leg and a damaged center brace, which he said was noteworthy because the breaks appeared fresh, meaning the damage likely happened that night.

Defense attorney Elizabeth Baker took issue with Giboneys characterization of the couch damage, and called into question his assertion that there was blood on the wall, citing the fact the samples were not sent to a lab for analysis.

So you have no idea that its blood? she asked him. Giboney replied that his training and experience told him what he observed on the wall was blood.

Baker also questioned Giboney on the condition of the crime scene, which he described as a mess. What stood out, said Giboney, was that the rest of the apartment was messy and unorganized, while in the master bedroom, all of Hansens clothing was neatly hung up in the closet.

Baker also asked Giboney if he had asked the neighbors whether theyd heard any kind of a noise that would be consistent with a struggle, or with the couch breaking as a result.

Some people said theyd heard noises and others didnt, he answered.

Albany police detective Ryan Corbett also testified that he seized syringes and just under 10 grams of methamphetamine from a womans purse he found in the closet. Crow later offered blood and urine samples from both Hansen and Smith as evidence.

Crow also called two medical examiners as witnesses, both giving descriptions of strangulation and suffocation injuries. Jennifer Schindell, a registered nurse, has also worked as a chief medical examiner for Linn and Benton counties. As a specialist on strangulation and suffocation injuries, she described in detail the anatomy of the neck and throat, and explaining what happens during strangulation. When Crow asked her to describe the types of physical indicators that could result from strangulation, baker objected seven times, arguing such information is not relevant to the case, and called Schindells qualifications into question.

While Judge DeAnn Novotny over ruled most of the objections, Crow accepted others, and reworded his question.

Schindell agreed she was not a medical doctor, but said she was in agreement with the forensic pathologist, who gave the cause of death as cerebral anoxia due to compression, meaning the brain was deprived of oxygen, and decided the manner of death was homicide. Baker called into the question the suggested manner of death, saying Schindell was simply repeating the information from the police report when she presented her report to the forensic pathologist.

Are you speaking to police officers? Because you have a lot of detailed quotations, Baker began. So with the lengthy interviews that Mr. Hansen provided, Im asking if you read transcripts of the things that Mr. Hansen said. Because He indicated very specifically he leaned on Ms. Smith.

Schindell said she could not say whether he said he leaned on her.

So isnt it a guess other than the cause is cerebral anoxia? baker asked.

I would leave that up to the forensic pathologist, replied Schindell.

The trial is expected to continue through the week, with the defense planning to introduce at least 15 more witnesses.
Credit: Deni MesanovicThe Who kicked off its 2016 North American tour on Saturday in Detroit, but the day before the trek got underway, Pete Townshend reportedly visited a nearby recording studio to work on an upcoming musical project. According to a Facebook post by Ryan McGuire, owner of The 45 Factory studio in the Detroit suburb of Waterford, Michigan, Townshend visited the facility "to record some acoustic tracks for an upcoming project."

McGuire reported that the Who guitarist/songwriter was accompanied at the session by the band's longtime soundman, Bob Pridden.

"Pete's a true icon and recording him was an experience I'll never forget," writes McGuire, who also shared a note Townshend sent him praising the studio after the session.

"I had a great direct-to-tape session at the 45 Factory," the 70-year-old rock legend wrote, according to McGuire. "Wonderful sound, the way it always used to be for me, and very close to the sound I get in my own 'Vintage' style studio. But at the 45 Factory most things are new, or fully restored to new condition and everything works beautifully."

Pete added in the note that he "had a fantastic time recording a new song direct to an old Ampexstereo tape machine. Some great music is going to come out of the 45 Factory."

McGuire also posted a few photos on his Facebook page of Townshend working at the studio.

In May of 2015, Townshend took part in another session at studio featuring vintage gear, Nashville's Welcome to 1979 Recording Studio, while the band was in that city to play a concert.

The Who's next show takes place tonight, March 1, in Toronto.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
RAIN recently blew into Albany, and its about time.

In this case, RAIN refers to the Oregon Regional Accelerator and Innovation Network, a somewhat ungainly title (with, granted, a nifty acronym) for a four-county effort that combines government, academia and business communities in Linn, Benton, Lane and Lincoln counties to encourage entrepreneurial efforts.

The original idea for RAIN was to bring university research to the state level, and so the nonprofit organization initially focused on university towns such as Corvallis and Eugene. While we supported the idea four years ago, when it was formed, we worried about whether Linn County would tend to be overshadowed by those university towns.

But recent developments in Linn County show that RAIN finally is broadening its focus.

You might recall that, late last year, the Linn County commissioners approved a $34,000 investment over the next two years in RAIN. Part of the commissioners rationale for making that investment was their sense that Linn County would prove to be a hospitable place for entrepreneurs looking for places to put their growing businesses. (And theres obviously some truth there; consider, for example, the decision by McCool Millworks to move from Lane County to a new location near Sweet Home.)

At the time, we thought that the commissioners investment in RAIN was smart  but we encouraged the commissioners to be sure to keep tabs on the organization to see how the investment was paying off.

At about the same time, RAIN officials were meeting with city officials and Chamber of Commerce members to discuss how best to introduce the program here. That resulted in a RAIN-sponsored event, Start Up Meet Up, which was held last week at the Brick and Mortar Cafe in downtown Albany. The meeting, by all accounts, was a success, attracting a dozen entrepreneurs, who made contacts and got advice about how to grow their fledgling businesses. (Two more RAIN meetings are scheduled for Albany in the next few weeks, on April 5 and May 5; go to the website www.oregonrain.org for details.)

Not every business launched by these entrepreneurs will be successful, of course: The cold economics of the business world dictate that most new businesses will fail. But some of them will take root and thrive  and those businesses could bring new, high-paying jobs to the region. Albany and Linn County have compelling cases to make to those entrepreneurs. So this recent storm of RAIN activity is a welcome development indeed for our economic climate. (mm)

Revamped website

set to debut

Heres a reminder that, barring any last-second glitches, the Democrat-Heralds website (democratherald.com) will have a new look sometime this morning.

The revamped website will feature technology that allows it to automatically adjust to fit the size of whatever device youre using  so, in other words, the site that you view on your mobile phone will be exactly the same as the site that you view on your desktop computer. As more and more readers access our site through their mobile devices, thats an important consideration for us. (Its not unusual for more than half our traffic to come from mobile devices at any given time.)

The new site also places a heavier emphasis on visuals  an increasingly important part of the online experience  and features what we believe is a cleaner design. (Our current design, while functional, is getting a little long in the tooth.)

We invite you to explore the new redesigned website. Let us know what you think. (mm)
Yes, we are

being conned

Tom Cordiers letter about hydroelectric power not listed as renewable energy (Mailbag, March 1) is right on the money (and there seems to be some environmental/power company collusion going on). Meanwhile ridiculous wind energy is called renewable.

Tom is right: We are being conned.

Unbelievably, environmentalists are still calling for removing the four Snake River Dams. There was an article a few months ago in Northwest Steelheaders magazine encouraging exactly that. A really foolish direction.

And, meanwhile, the last two years the salmon returning up the Columbia are exceeding records.

Those dams allow barge traffic to go clear to Lewiston, Idaho. An average of nine barges a day travel up the Columbia, each equivalent to 120 semi-trucks. Imagine that extra traffic on I-84, 1,000-plus trucks per day! The pollution!

Plus, those dams produce 2,500 million watts of clean, reliable peak power, reliable water power, and not flaky wind energy.

And replacing those dams would require at least 2,500 wind generators. That is, if wind was reliable.

Tom is right: Something smells very fishy here.

Gary Hartman

Lebanon (March 1)
A 30-year president/CEO of a failed Louisiana credit union, who created fake loans and coded those accounts so no statements would be generated, pleaded guilty last week in U.S. District Court in New Orleans to stealing more than $1 million.

Jacqueline Ray, 60, of Biloxi, Miss., admitted in court documents she carried out a fraudulent scheme from 2007 to May 2013 by creating 149 bogus loans and 71 fictitious member accounts at the Ochsner Clinic Federal Credit Union. Nearly all of the bogus member accounts were connected to at least two fake loans.
This daily digest focuses on market sentiment, new developments in Chinas foreign exchange policy, changes in financial market regulations and Chinese-language economic coverage in order to keep DailyFX readers up-to-date on news typically covered only in Chinese-language sources.

- Chinas top annual conferences, CPPCC and NPC meetings, will start on March 3.

- China welcomes foreign investment to participate mergers projects on stated-owned enterprises.

- Hong Kong and Shanghai plan to introduce a new channel to connect IPOs in the two markets.

To receive reports from this analyst, sign up for Renee Mu distribution list.

Hexun News: Chinese leading online media of financial news

- Heads up: Chinas top annual sessions: National Peoples Congress (NPC) and Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) will be held this week. NPC will start on March 5. CPPCC will start on March 3. Both will close on March 13.

Highlights: On March 5, Chinas Premier Li Keqiang will deliver a government work report to NPC deputies.

- CPPCC held a press conference on March 2, and the spokesman said the government still has confidence in the countrys growth prospects. Yet, he also admitted that reforms such as in the health care system still have a long way to go.

Sina News: Chinas most important online media source, similar to CNN in the US. They also own a Chinese version of Twitter, called Weibo, with around 200 million active usersmonthly.

- After Moodys downgraded Chinas outlook to negative from stable, Dagong Global Credit Rating, a Chinese credit rating agency published commentary saying that it retains Chinas stable outlook and AA+ rating in domestic credit and AAA rating in international credit. The rating company expects that Chinas growth rate in 2016 will slow to 6.8% and the fiscal deficit will expand to 3.4%. Despite the increasing fiscal deficit, the credit rating company believes that China will remain solvent over the following periods; Chinas foreign reserve to total foreign debt ratio and to short-term foreign debt ratio were at relatively high levels. The ratios were 217.7% and 351.5% respectively at the end of 2015. Dagong Global Credit Rating was established following the approval of Chinas Central Bank and State Economic and Trade Division.

PBOC News: Chinas Central Bank

- Chinas Central Bank announced that China and Russia commercial banks have launched several currency swap trades since October 2015. In October 2014 two central banks signed a 150 billion yuan/815 billion ruble deal for bilateral currency swaps. The PBOC has been promoting Yuans global role. One strategy is to sign bilateral deals with other countries such as Korea and United Arab Emirates.

China Stock News: Chinese leading online media of financial news

- The spokesman of Department of Commerce said on Wednesday that China encourages foreign investors to participate in state-owned enterprise (SOEs) reforms, such as through mergers projects. He compared the foreign investment in China to the global average: in 2015, foreign investment in China through mergers was $17.8 billion, accounting for approximately 14% of the total foreign investment in China. On the other hand, global foreign investment through mergers projects took up roughly 38% of the total global foreign investment. As Chinas foreign investment though mergers projects is still below global averages, the nation will continue to promote such investments.

- On March 2, Hong Kong Exchanges CEO, Li Xiaojia, revealed details for the first time of a new stock connect design between Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai Stock Exchange. The new stock connect will be an expansion of the current Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program in the primary market. Under the new design, mainland investors and Hong Kong investors will be able to participate in IPOs in the other market. For Hong Kong markets, investment from mainland will help increase market liquidity. For mainland investors, they will be given additional channels to allocate assets and diversify investment.

Written by Renee Mu, DailyFX Research Team

To receive reports from this analyst, sign up for Renee Mu distribution list.
Aquila Capital to launch '500m' strategy

Aquila Capital has launched an infrastructure strategy with a focus on shorter-term investments.

The vehicle, which is reported to be targeting 500 million, will invest directly and via funds in projects including transport, utilities, waste disposal and energy.

"Aquila Capital's real assets pipeline, with a focus on selected renewable energy projects, will provide a diverse range of investment opportunities," the firm said in a statement.

The strategy will have a minimum investment period of two years  much shorter than conventional infrastructure investment horizons.

Allocation will be focused on projects and funds in OECD countries, with "significantly" more than 50% being invested in Europe. Operational assets or their operating companies will be targeted.

"Extensive diversification will be achieved through a range of infrastructure sub-asset classes, managers, regions and investment timelines, resulting in a yield profile similar to that of mainstream bonds in terms of levels and frequency of distributions," Aquila added.

NRW set to issue 1bn next sustainability bond

The German State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is gearing up to issue a 1 billion ($1.1 billion) sustainability bond, one year after its inaugural issue.

Proceeds from the bond will focus on, but not be limited to, green investment, including projects such as renewable energy, biodiversity and public transport.

Oekom has provided a second opinion on the green credentials of the bond.

HSBC is the lead bookrunner for the deal.

NY lawmakers launch bid to force public state pension fund to divest

Nearly two dozen state lawmakers have launched a bid to force New York's public pension fund to divest its holdings in oil, natural gas and coal companies.

Senate and Assembly bills floored by the legislators would require the fund to divest holdings in the 200 largest publicly-traded fossil fuel companies within a year and from all others by 2020.

New York State Common Retirement Fund, the state's public sector pension fund, is the third largest in the US, with $178.3 billion assets under management. The move by the lawmakers comes just days after a report by Corporate Knights revealed it had lost $5 billion from its 200 holdings in fossil fuel companies in 2015.

Last year, California State senate passes a similar bill aimed at forcing its public sector pension funds, the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) to divest from coal companies.

Equitix and GIB back Scottish CHP project

Equitix and the the UK's Green Investment Bank (GIB) will acquire a combined heat and power (CHP) project for 9.8 million ($13.7 million).

Via the Energy Savings Investments fund (ESI)  which is managed by Equitix, and in which GIB is a cornerstone investor  and the Equitix Energy Efficiency Fund (EEEF), the pair will buy Ignis Biomass Limited, which owns and operates the 3.5MW site in Scotland. The deal includes a district heating network for the plant.

ESI has committed 4.8 million, while the EEEF  funded by private capital  will invest 5 million.

The project  which currently provides heat and power to a number of public and commercial buildings in the area, as well as more than 200 residential properties  will be upgraded to connect it to 150 new customers by 2017. There will also be "at least" four new, smaller CHP systems developed nearby as part of the agreement.

Rhode Island eyes green bond

The US Senate Finance Committee, which oversees federal bonds in the country, is currently consulting on a proposal for Rhode Island State to issue a green bond.

At a meeting tomorrow afternoon, the body will decide whether to approve the $35 million green bond, which will be a combination of general obligation, refunding and temporary notes.

According to the agenda, proceeds will be used across seven categories, including improvements to parks, land acquisitions, reducing stormwater pollution, brownfield remediation and the development of cycle paths.

In November, Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank issued an $18.3 million green bond to finance the construction and improvements to its wastewater and drinking water infrastructure. In July, the state's Clean Water Finance Agency priced a $56 million green bond to make loans to local government bodies for water abatement projects.

Indiana plans additional $175m issue of green bonds

The Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) is set to issue green bonds totalling $175.455 million to fund water improvement projects.

Of this total, $72.425 million will be used to refinance outstanding bonds under the state's 'revolving fund programme' for wastewater pollution control and public drinking water. The IFA issued a similar series of bonds, amounting to $137 million, in February 2015. (LINK)

The new bonds will have various maturity dates between 2017 and 2036, with at least one tranche maturing every year in this period.

They have been assigned a AAA credit rating, in line with the other bonds issued under the programme.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs are the senior underwriters of the issue. The other underwriters are: Raymond James, KeyBanc Capital Markets and Ramirez & Co.

SUSI commits 50m to Engie's energy storage projects

SUSI Partners, a specialist Swiss investment advisor, has agreed to make an equity investment of 50 million ($56 million) in energy storage projects to be developed by French energy giant Engie.

Energy storage has been identified by Engie as a strategic growth area. It has commissioned its first large-scale battery-based storage project  a 2.4MW lithium-ion system  in Corsica and is also assessing opportunities in the UK, the US, Chile, Germany, Ireland, Italy and France.

The French company said the 50 million from SUSI would help it diversify the risk of its new developments.

"Third party financing represents the next step in the sector's development and we are delighted to team up with Engie to provide the necessary capital for their projects," said Asif Rafique, SUSI's managing director for energy storage.

SUSI has approximately 500 million of assets under management and aims to launch a dedicated energy storage fund in the next three months.
Industry leaders have called on the government to do more to help hard-pressed farmers after MPs described delays to support payments as unacceptable.

NFU president Meurig Raymond said: The fall in prices and associated cashflow problems are the biggest challenges currently facing our farmer members.

And we are not expecting the market situation to get better any time soon.

See also: BPS payment delays unacceptable, say MPs

Mr Raymond was responding after a report by the House of Commons environment, food and rural affairs select (Efra) committee hit out at delays in basic payments to farmers.

Published on Wednesday (2 March), the report said farmer would face further cashflow problems unless problems were rectified with the IT system at the Rural Payments Agency.

The document followed a three-month investigation by the MPs committee into low farmgate prices, particularly in the dairy, sheep and pig sectors.

Mr Raymond said: We are pleased the Efra committee has listened to our evidence and to others from across the supply chain and produced this wide-ranging report.

There is no quick fix. However, the report identifies a range of recommendations that can help in the short term and not leave the industry so exposed in the future.

Better labelling

The report found that current legislation surrounding origin labelling has the potential to mislead consumers and cause confusion.

MPs found a growing interest in the provenance of food and in British products required a move towards clearer labelling.

Other recommendations include better pricing models, long-term relationships in the supply chain, contracts, producer organisations and a greater emphasis on exports.

Farmers expected to see the report swiftly followed up with positive, visible and tangible actions, said Mr Raymond.

He added: It is vital the industry comes together to deliver these recommendations to support farmers through these difficult times.

Genuine improvements, transparency and commitment would give farmers more confidence.

Mr Raymond said: Using these tools will help the agri-food sector through this period of uncertainty and the whole supply chain better combat volatility.

Judith Bryans, chief executive of Dairy UK, said the entire dairy industry was taking positive steps forward, but still needed government support to achieve long-lasting success.

Dr Bryans said: From farm to fridge, the industry is affected by harsh market conditions and we must continue to work with government and its agencies to facilitate and stimulate demand at home as well as in key export markets.

Focus on innovation

In order to develop new export markets, the sector would need to showcase and promote the quality, the value and the integrity of UK dairy products, she added.

We fully agree with the committee on the need for innovation and new product development to meet changing demands.

We must focus on value to make sure we deliver innovative, appealing and nutritious dairy products to consumers across the world.

Defra said the government had implemented a range of measures to help farmers ride out the downturn  and would continue to do so.

A Defra spokeswoman said: We recognise that many farmers are suffering financial difficulty in the face of volatile global prices.

We want to help find ways through this difficult time to build a thriving, resilient industry that is able to take advantage of the growing demand for British produce both at home and overseas.

Measures had included the introduction of five-year tax averaging, backing a futures market and the creation of producer organisations, and opening up new export markets.

Were also continuing to push for mandatory labelling for dairy products so consumers are clear where the food they buy comes from, said the spokeswoman.

More than 70,800 farmers  over 80% of all those eligible  had now received their basic payment and almost all farmers in England would be paid by the end of March, she said.
Yesterday, a group of seven legislators led by Senator Ben Allen (D - Santa Monica) sent a letter to federal fishery officials, Dorothy Lowman, the chair of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and William Stelle, the administrator for the Northwest Region of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), asking them to phase out the use of driftnets in California. Joining Senator Allen in sending the letter to federal fisheries regulators were Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Assemblymember Richard Bloom, Assemblymember Marc Levine, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, and Assemblymember Mark Stone.

Joanna NasarCommunications DirectorTurtle Island Restoration NetworkCell: (415) 488-7711Joanna@SeaTurtles.Org

Statement on Legislators Letter to Fishery Managers to Phase Out Driftnet Gear in California

Sacramento, Calif. (March 1, 2016)  Yesterday, a group of seven legislators led by Senator Ben Allen (D - Santa Monica) sent a letter to federal fishery officials, Dorothy Lowman, the chair of the Pacific Fishery Management Council, and William Stelle, the administrator for the Northwest Region of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), asking them to phase out the use of driftnets in California. Joining Senator Allen in sending the letter to federal fisheries regulators were Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, Assemblymember Richard Bloom, Assemblymember Marc Levine, Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, Assemblymember Kevin Mullin, and Assemblymember Mark Stone.

"Turtle Island Restoration Network applauds the leadership of Senator Ben Allen, and the commitment of his colleagues," said Peter Fugazzotto, strategic programs director of Turtle Island Restoration Network (SeaTurtles.Org). "These decision makers recognize the importance of safeguarding whales, dolphins, and sea turtles from harmful driftnets, and reflect the desire of Californians to see our oceans protected,"he added.

"Senator Ben Allen is taking action to save our California marine wildlife from destructive, mile-long driftnets. We commend his leadership," said Joanna Nasar, communications director of Turtle Island Restoration Network. Turtle Island has long been working to phase out driftnets, and the organizations recently published report shows the true cost of this out-dated fishery.

Background on Driftnets: Driftnets are responsible for the death of an estimated 16 endangered sperm whales in the last decade. An estimated 22 leatherback turtles (an endangered species) and loggerhead sea turtles also have been caught, and 1 leatherback was killed in 2015. If more than one Pacific leatherback is killed in a 6-year period from any human activity, the entire population is at risk. There are only about 1438 of the species left, and they could go extinct by 2030. In the last decade, 15 megamouth sharks have been caught. These are a critically endangered species with only 100 left worldwide. 885 other marine mammals have been killed by drift gillnets in the last decade.

According to our report and data collected by NOAA's observation program, California's driftnet fishery kills or injures approximately seven times more whales and dolphins than all other observed fisheries in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska combined, and 13 times more than any other single observed fishery on the West Coast.

###

Turtle Island Restoration Network works to mobilize people and communities around the world to protect marine wildlife, the oceans and the inland waterways that sustain them. Join us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. SeaTurtles.Org
New Orleans, LA Although Although Unum, or First Unum was reprimanded more than a decade ago by the Department of Labor for its bad faith insurance practices, the largest health insurer in the United States still seems to deny long-term disability benefits as its mandate.

Many Unum policyholders have consequently filed lawsuits, alleging that the company has falsely denied their benefits. For instance, a recent Unum lawsuit was filed by a disabled health care worker.Brenda Andrus was a case manager at the Opelousas General Health System Medical Center - a government entity that is exempt from ERISA - until she became disabled due to numerous medical conditions. Andrus claims in her lawsuit that she has been diagnosed with sarcoidosis (an inflammatory disease), hypercrapnic respiratory failure, chronic bronchitis, low back pain, severe fatigue, diabetes, lymphadenopathy and hypertension. She provided Unum with medical documentation detailing her condition.But Unum disagreed with Andruss doctors and denied her benefits. In her appeal, Andrus provided even more documentation, including letters from three doctors who are treating her, saying she can no longer work full-time and that she is disabled under Unums policy terms. Andrus claims her doctors also phoned Unum to confirm that she is disabled.Andrus is now seeking a jury trial. She filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against Unum alleging illegal denial of long-term disability benefits and waiver of life insurance premiums. She is suing for damages, including past and future disability benefits, interests, for continued life insurance coverage sans premium, for penalties under the Louisiana Insurance Code, damages from physical and emotional injuries, court costs, and attorney fees (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana Case number 2:16-cv-01112).Ignoring or overriding policyholders own medical reports is a common tactic of denial by Unum. Sometimes Unum will insist on the claimant being examined by its independent medical examiners; sometimes they determine that the claimant can work in another type of job.Sarah (not her real name) worked as a bank teller until a back injury left her disabled - she couldnt stand for more than a few hours at a time. And her workers compensation doctor sent medical reports to Unum stating she could no longer work. But Unum denied her claim and told Sarah that she can work in a sedentary position holding 10 pounds in my lap.Her doctor wrote another letter, stating that Unum misinterpreted his medical report. I have a permanent restriction of notlimited walking, no uneven surfaces, no ladders, no stairs, no squatting, no standing, says Sarah. My bank doesnt have a sedentary position for me - Im not a charity case.Sarah underwent a second back surgery last month. I am collecting workers compensation but just for my medical bills, she says. I havent had any income for the past three months and I just applied for food stamps. I dont have any savings and Im at my wits end. The Unum representative just told me to apply for Social Security - I dont understand how they can continue to deny, how they can get away with it.
- The political ship of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was sunk by the party itself

- There were at least 10 great mistakes committed by the PDP that stopped the party from ruling Nigeria beyond 2015

- The continuous existence of the party is threatened daily as there are rife allegations that a new political party may spring out from the new national opposition party

According to a one-time PDP National Chairman, Chief Vincent Ogbulafor, he said the PDP will rule Nigeria for 60 years. However, the situation on ground is totally different. The party has been licking its wounds since it lost out the centre to the young All Progressives Congress (APC) at the general election in 2015.

READ ALSO: Should Nigerians angelise or demonise President Buhari?

Since the PDP received the heavy blow of defeat last year, the house of the new opposition party has been rendered asunder due to the different infighting by its members.

Senator Ali Modu Sheriff and Chief John Odigie-Oyegun (Inset)

Would anyone have thought that the All Progressives Party (APC) which was less than two years at the time of the presidential election on March 28, 2015 would be calling the shots as far as the political terrain of Nigeria is concerned now?

There were a good number of political analysts who said the APC will die a natural death after the election. Some bootlickers under the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration ran different propaganda-infested advertorials to stem the surging tide of the APC, which all did not work. One of such persons was Dr Doyin Okupe, the senior special assistant to Dr Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs. He categorically stated that the APC's burning fire would be extinguished in little or not time. He probably would have ate his words afterwards.

Some of the big mistakes committed by the PDP should also not be made by the APC in order for the electorates not to send the APC parking in 2019 as they did for the PDP in 2015.

1. Absence of internal democracy

The major bane of the PDP while it controlled the central government was that the party was not fair to all its members. There were some dedicated and committed members who bought tickets in order to vie for elective positions, but were denied because they had no godfathers to back them up. This was the major reason that led to the mass defection of some aggrieved members to the APC. The result was glaring as the PDP fell apart.

2. Promoting impunity and corruption

When the PDP was elected to rule Nigeria after the return of democracy in 1999, a good number of Nigerians had high expectations. They believe the president then, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo would take them to the promised land based on his previous experience as a military Head of State. However, Obasanjo disappointed Nigerians. He came up with policies that made corruption to be entrenched among politicians and Nigerians alike. He wanted to perpetuate himself in power by coming up with the third term agenda. It was alleged that he tried bribing National Assembly members with huge sums of money totaling into billions of naira.

There were other cases of corruption the Siemens, Halliburton saga and the rest that the perpetrators were let off the hook without any tangible prosecution during his government.

When Obasanjo left, corruption began to flourish in leaps and bounds that Nigerians and Nigeria were known for corrupt practices almost everywhere in the world. The different revelations of corrupt cases President Muhammadu Buhari is trying to unravel are proofs of these, among which is the $2.1billion Dasukigate under the last administration.

In addition, it was during the PDP years that Nigeria had four different Senate presidents in a space of four years.

3. Disregard for the rule of law

There are numerous examples of how the PDP flouted court orders with impunity. There was a time the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Lagos state government regarding distribution of federal allocations. Then the PDP called the shots. It refused to release the money to Lagos state and nothing was done.

4. Jettisoning party leaders and party decisions

The APC may blame itself if members are not totally loyal to the dictates of the party leaders and follow all decisions laid down. The images of what happened when the Senate president was to be chosen after the APC assumed power on Friday, May 29, 2015 are still fresh in the memories of Nigerians.

The party decided on a particular candidate, but some party members went behind and colluded with the PDP to elect an entirely different candidate. This was a common practice while the PDP was the ruling party between 1999 and 2015.

5. Belittling the founding fathers

Founding fathers of the PDP like Chief Alex Ekwueme counted for nothing when the PDP was clearing other political parties off the way. Sometime before the last general election, Chief Ekwueme complained bitterly that his advice was never sought in the running of the PDP. There were other old members who complained of a similar thing.

Another example was when Chief Obasanjo bared his mind through the letter he wrote to the former president. He was not given any listening ears. Chief Obasanjo got so annoyed that he ordered someone to tear his PDP membership card. The end result was the ousting of the PDP from the central government after the 2015 general polls.

6. Monetisation of political positions

There has not been any political party in the history of politics in Nigeria that gave preference to money over equity and justice as the PDP did while it ruled. It was not easy for an aspiring PDP member to pick the party's ticket not to even talk of contesting election. This was because the money charged to purchase express of interest form is in millions not to talk of the actual candidacy form. This was why the primary ticket of the party went to the highest bidder. The money spent also included the ones used in bribing the political godfathers in order for them to anoint such a candidate.

7. Appointing square pegs in round holes

Currently, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has been crying on the top of his voice regarding the selection of Senator Ali Modu Sheriff as the National Chairman of the PDP. He said it was a wrong choice as he is not comfortable with his appointment. There are other chieftains of the party who said Modu Sheriff is a square peg in a round hole.

8. PDP-produced presidents were overlords

There was a time some public affairs analysts opined that Nigerian presidents were the most powerful in the world because they use their executive power the way they like. While Obasanjo was the president, he masterminded the change of leadership of the PDP at will. He arm-twisted the leadership of the National Assembly to his biddings even if his desires were against the national interest. Likewise during Jonathan's presidency, he played his own role when he suspended the one-time Central Bank of Nigeria's governor and the present Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi over the latter's statement that the NNPC did not remit some amount of money into the CBN's account.

9. Nigerian citizens counted for nothing

Another reason the PDP fell like a pack of cards at the last year election was because Nigerian masses were seen as nothing. There was little or no regard for the opinion of the citizens on how the PDP governed the nation. This habit infuriated Nigerians as they were tired of the party's high-handedness after 16 years of hunger, unemployment, epileptic power supply and other national problems. Therefore, when it was time for elections, there was no going back as the electorates voted out the PDP from power.

Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, the National Chairman of the APC has joined the bandwagon of those playing the blame game of misgovernance the PDP brought on Nigerians. One thing he should be conscious of is that people are tired of excuses. All what Nigerians know is that they voted in the APC so that it could repair all that was damaged by the PDP and give Nigerians comfortability.

10. Do or die politics advocacy

Nigerians were shocked when Chief Obasanjo said it is do or die politics or nothing when he was about handing over power to his successor prior to the 2007 presidential election. Statements of this nature are used by political vultures to feast on other political opponents which later leads to assassinations and killings. There are so many politicians who have fallen to the bullets of assailants just because they showed interest for an elective position. This was the order of the day during the dark days of the PDP.

Source: Legit.ng
- Seventy-six starving Boko Haram terrorists have surrendered to Nigerian soldiers.

- The defeated terrorists said more of their comrades want to hand themselves in to the army.

- Boko Haram is said to be experiencing severe food shortages thanks to Nigerian military operations.

Military officers and a self-defense fighter have reported that dozens of emaciated Boko Haram fighters begging for food have surrendered to Nigerian soldiers in the north-east of the country.

A senior army officer, who spoke anonymously as serving soldiers are banned from speaking to journalists, said 76 Boko Haram supporters, including their children and women, surrendered to the army over the last weekend.

READ ALSO: Boko Haram terrorists speak about missing Chibok girls

The starving terrorists and their supporters gave themselves up in Gwoza, a small local government area around 100km from Borno state's capital Maiduguri.

Gwoza was the site of a horrific massacre in 2014 when Boko Haram terrorists dressed up as Nigerian soldiers and slaughtered 200 mostly Christian civilians.

All of the jihadists have been detained at the Nigerian army's regional headquarters in Maiduguri, also the birthplace of Boko Haram.

The emaciated terrorists said more of their comrades want to surrender

A self-defense civilian fighter serving with the Civilian Joint Task Force who escorted the detainees says they said many more terrorists want to surrender but are afraid to do so, fearful of their comrades' retribution.

Shortages of food could indicate that Nigerias military is succeeding in cutting off the supply routes of the Islamic extremists who have taken their fight across Nigerias borders.

Last month, Nigerias information minister Lai Mohammed said that Boko Harams members were becoming hungry and confused thanks to the Nigerian military.

Mohammed believes the Nigerian army is slowly grinding Boko Haram down

Source: UGC

In essence, the insurgents have been effectively denied territory or sanctuary and are now in disarray, Mohammed said during a speech he gave in Abuja.

Scattered, demoralized and hungry, they have resorted to terror tactics available to a degraded and defeated insurgent group.

The fact that they operate in a few local governments does not equate to holding and controlling territories. We must make that distinction.

READ ALSO: Nigerian Air Force gets new camouflage

Earlier today, the Nigerian army scored another success against Boko Haram in Bauchi state.

Soldiers of the 33rd artillery brigade arrested four men suspected of being spies for the jihadist group.

The alleged spies are believed to have been on a reconnaissance mission in Bauchi state to look for targets vulnerable to suicide bombings.

Source: Legit.ng
- The abducted Bayelsa state teenager Ese Oruru is 5-6 months pregnant.

- Her medical condition was initially concealed by the white flowing hijab she wore on arrival in Abuja.

- Oruru's abductor Yunusa Dahirua has now been detained for further questioning and faces extra charges of child sexual abuse.

Fourteen year old Ese Rita Oruru, the Bayelsa born girl who was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow, but rescued by police officers in Kano, has been discovered to be 5-6 months pregnant.

According to Vanguard, whose sources are said to be very reliable, the white hijab dress Ese wore on her arrival in Abuja on Tuesday was used in an attempt to cover up her pregnancy, even though her physical condition and looks created a suspicion.

Ese is now receiving medical treatment

Video footage shot of Ese as she left Kano, where she can be seen crying and pleading to be reunited with Yunusu, now appears all the more relevant.

According to the police sources, Ese pregnancy is what motivated IGP Solomon Arase to decide to hand her over to the police gender and child protection unit on arrival in Abuja.

READ ALSO: How Ese was abducted - police

A team from the police medical department then carried out a comprehensive medical examination of the teenager at the police medical facility in the federal capital territory.

Upon certifying her medical status and emotional state, Arase became unhappy with the transport arrangements made for Ese and her parents and decided to order for Ese and her mother to be flown to Yenegoa by air.

READ ALSO: Ese Oruru's father speaks out about daughter

Arase has now directed the Bayelsa state police command to take over the investigation into Eses kidnapping as she was impregnated at the residence of her abductor Yunusua

Yunusa will be now moved to Yenegoa to face interrogation and prosecution for kidnapping, sexual abuse against a child and committing violent acts against a child.

Source: Legit.ng
The Yoruba people are an ethnic group of southwestern and north central Nigeria. They are a collection of diverse people bound together by a common language, history, and culture.

Reports have it that they make up 21% of Nigerias population, making them one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa. The Yorubas dominate the western part of the country.

There are certain misconceptions about this group of people. You hear things like Yoruba people are fetish, dirty and all other negative things. Before you believe anything you hear about Yoruba people, you need to get your facts right because some of the people saying this have never had an encounter with a Yoruba person and are basing their belief on what they heard from someone else.

Legit.ng has compiled this list of some misconceptions people have about Yoruba people.

1. Yoruba people are very tribalistic. The Yoruba man only helps those that are from the same tribe with him. To the average Igbo man, Yorubas are tribalistic.

2. They like respect too much. Yorubas are so obsessed with greeting and you have to bow, prostrate or kneel to do it. You also have to address the elderly as mummy and daddy when youre not even related.

3. They dont marry outside their tribe. Many Yoruba parents will not allow their children marry other tribes.

4. Yoruba people all have accent. Most of them have the H factor. They say hold man instead of old man, and appy instead of happy.

5. They are very loud. They talk a lot and always in your face.

6. Yoruba men love women and are heart breakers. I am yet to see a man from any tribe that does not love women.

7. They dont travel. Many Yoruba people have not been to other states of the country. They like to remain in their comfort zone.

8. Yoruba people are stingy, especially those from Ijebu. It is common for you to hear people describe anyone who is stingy as an Ijebu man or woman.

READ ALSO: 10 common misconceptions about Igbo people, No 5 is a must see

9. They are dirty. There is this popular notion that Yoruba people are very dirty but personal hygiene is on an individual basis.

10. Yoruba people dont know how to cook. People say all they know how to cook is stew, stew, stew and they add a lot of pepper to food.

11. By their face, you shall know them. Has anyone ever told you have a Yoruba face? Some say they have a funny face with plenty tribal marks.

12. Their marriages dont last. Some say their women are promiscuous and cant stay married.

13. They are not bold. They can brag and shout but when it comes down to fighting, they run away or become cowards.

14. Yoruba people are fetish. Many have this misconception probably because of what is portrayed in the movies.

15. Yoruba people love parties. Who parties like a Yoruba man or woman? Yorubas would throw party for any and every occasion and sew asoebi.

Source: Legit.ng
The Ferrari GTC4Lusso V12 supercar, an updated version of the FF, has made its first public appearance at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show which is currently underway. The four-seat all-wheel drive supercar comes with quite a few upgrades.

The most significant of the upgrades comes in the form of the 4RM Evo four-wheel drive and steering system (steerable rear wheels for better control on all types of surfaces) with Slip Side Control System. The 6.3-litre naturally aspirated V12 petrol engine has been tuned to extract more power than before at 690 PS and 697 Nm of torque (80% of the peak torque is available from 1,750 rpm). Transmission is a 7-speed dual-clutch automatic unit with paddle shifters.

The GTC4Lusso is claimed to dispatch 0-100 kmph sprint in just 3.4 seconds en route to a hair raising top whack of 335 kmph. The supercars driving dynamics is enhanced by an E-Diff and SCM-E dampers without compromising on comfort.

The latest prancing horse derives its name references form the iconic 330 GTC and 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso. 4 in the terminology denotes the number of seats. The cars styling is sharper than the outgoing FF with the return of twin-circular taillight clusters being the main highlight. Ferrari says that the enhancements have resulted in a Cd that is substantially lower than on the FF.

The interior is a modern interpretation of what was seen in the FF. The centre console settles for a dual-vent layout compared to the older cars triplets and the infotainment screen is now significantly larger. The seats are revised and like before, most of the cabin is swathed in plush leather.

Check out our exhaustive live coverage of the 2016 Geneva Motor Show here.

Ferrari GTC4Lusso  Live Photos

News Release
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has discontinued its tried-and-tested 1.3-litre diesel mill ahead of BS6-implementation. End of an era.

Often regarded as The National Diesel Engine, the BS4-compliant 1.3-litre Fiat SDE MJD four-cylinder mill has finally reached the end of its production. Fiat shared its initial plans to phase out the popular engine ahead of mandatory BS6-implementation, back in September 2017. The decision came as a direct result of Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki (two of the main clients who employed the 1.3 MJD) developing their own diesel power plants. This gave a hard blow to Fiats revenue charts and the company found it best to discontinue the engine in due course.

On 23rd January 2020, Fiat kept its word and the legendary engine saw its last unit  #810829  roll out from FCAs manufacturing facility in Ranjangaon, Pune. Sameer Ajgaonkar who works at the plant shared on Facebook that the 1.3-litre MJD had directly and indirectly supported thousands of families and helped in creating many employment opportunities. Total production stood at 9,60,719.

He also praised the engines excellent design which makes it easy to manufacture, fit and repair while boasting of excellent fuel efficiency and class-leading durability. The 1.3-litre MJD was effortlessly tunable and a good tuner or remap module could easily bring out amazing results without hindering the motors life.

It is safe to say to that more than half the diesel engines running on Indian roads at present, employ the 1.3-litre SDE MJD. SDE MJD stands for Small Diesel Engine  Multi-Jet Direct injection and comes under Fiats common-rail diesel range known as JTD (Jet Turbo Diesel).

If you are not familiar with the nomenclature, SDE MJD, names such as Quadrajet (Tata Motors), Duratorq TDCi (Ford) and of course, DDiS (Maruti Suzuki) might ring a bell. For the last Fiat India products, the engine came as the Multijet II. Outside the Indian market, the engine was popular among the likes of Chevrolet, Citroen, Lancia, Opel, Suzuki and Peugeot.

Of course, the base 1.3-litre SDE MJD was not a direct fitment into various products (especially hatchbacks and small sedans) from the brands mentioned above. Instead, manufacturers worked over the original design to create their own engine characteristics. The changes were done mostly to the pressure of the common-rail injection system, turbocharger, timing system, camshafts, etc.

In its most popular 1,248cc DDiS avatar that has served in multiple Maruti Suzuki products over the years, the SDE MJD made around 74-90bhp and 190-200Nm of torque. The engine was usually seen coupled to a 5-speed manual, but a few torque-converter and AMT units were also employed alongside. Popular cars using this engine over the years are Maruti Swift, Baleno, Dzire, Ciaz, Ertiga, Brezza; Tata Bolt, Zest, Indica, Indigo; Fiat Punto, Linea and others.
An unseen war rages between the ocean's tiniest organisms, and it has significant implications for understanding the ocean's role in climate change, according to a new study.

David Needham and Jed Fuhrman from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences sampled water off the coast of Southern California over the course of five months, almost every day shortly after an algal bloom occurred, and found that the cloud of microorganisms is anything but uniform. Instead, they found traces of a constant battle between dozens of species, with the fortunes of war favoring different organisms on a daily basis.

Not only do the tiny organisms, known as phytoplankton, make up the base of the food chain in the ocean, they also are the planet's main scrubbers of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

"We witnessed a daily boom and bust among the phytoplankton species," said Fuhrman, senior author of a study that was published in Nature Microbiology on Feb. 29.

Scientists concerned with global warming have a vested interest in looking closely at phytoplankton. The microscopic plants, most of which are about as big as a piece of paper is thick, perform roughly half of the world's carbon fixation -- that is, they convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into organic compounds that can be used by other organisms.

As creatures that exist on the boundary between sea and sky, they also have an outsized role in carbon fixation -- sucking up atmospheric carbon dioxide and locking it away in the ocean.

advertisement

Different phytoplankton manage carbon dioxide to varying degrees, however, making it important for researchers to gain a more nuanced understanding of algal blooms if they hope to quantify the blooms' role in carbon fixation and carbon sequestration.

Scientists have also long wondered about the trigger of algal blooms, which can include "red tides" caused by toxic dinoflagellates that poison marine life like sea lions and can render shellfish in the area unsafe to eat. Those dinoflagellates and other toxic algae were among some of the microorganisms that dominated the bloom periodically.

Most previous efforts to study the blooms relied on microscope analysis to classify which species of phytoplankton were in the mix -- a problematic strategy, given that many of the organisms tend to look alike, even to a trained eye.

Instead, Needham and Fuhrman analyzed the organisms' ribosomal RNA, which give each species a distinctive and quantifiable signature. Specifically, they sequenced the RNA from the parts of the cell that perform photosynthesis, called chloroplasts.

"This could shift how this work is done in the future," said Needham, lead author of the study. "I think a lot of people are going to start taking a closer look at their blooms."

The samples were collected by dipping buckets off the side of the Miss Christi -- the ship that sails daily between San Pedro and the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center (run by the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies) on Catalina Island -- at a specific location at about the half way point of the trip each day.

advertisement

The authors were surprised not only by the sheer diversity of phytoplankton in the bloom they studied -- they counted about three dozen different species -- but also by the constant and abrupt shifts in which species were dominant within the bloom.

Some of the species variability can be attributed to spatial variability However, the content of the samples changed too dramatically for that to be the sole cause, Needham and Fuhrman concluded.

In addition, as the phytoplankton varied, so did the species of bacteria and other microorganisms that feed on the organic material produced by them. On one of the sample days, the team was shocked to discover that the dominant species were in a group called the Archaea -- single-celled microorganisms once thought to live only in extreme environments like hot springs.

"Until the 1990s nobody thought Archaea were even present in the sea in appreciable numbers," Needham said.

Needham and Fuhrman's findings also have bearing on the causes of algal blooms, which remain shrouded in mystery. Temperature and nutrient content of the ocean have been shown to help trigger the blooms -- but they remain unpredictable.
Climate change may have a new way of getting under your skin.

Researchers in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University have validated a model showing growth in Kansas for the habitat of the troublesome lone star tick. Previously thought only to live in the eastern third of the state, computational modeling and live specimens have revealed the existence of these ticks as far west as Colby, which is only 55 miles from the Colorado state line.

Ram Raghavan, assistant professor in the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and diagnostic medicine and pathobiology department, published the findings in the March 2016 issue of Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. He collaborated on the article "Maximum Entropy-Based Ecological Niche Model and Bio-Climatic Determinants of Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma americanum) Niche" with faculty from Kansas State University's entomology and geography departments as well as other experts in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Raghavan said the best-known diseases resulting from pathogens transmitted by the lone star tick include human monocytic ehrlichiosis and human ewingii ehrlichiosis, tularemia, southern tick-associated rash illness and feline cytauxzoonosis.

"The number of cases of feline tularemia and cytauxzoonosis in the region diagnosed at the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory have increased steadily over the years, at least partly owing to the wider geographic distribution of Amblyomma americanum, or the lone star tick," Raghavan said. "The model also suggests ongoing warming of global temperatures will likely influence the ecology and distribution of such medically important ticks, favoring more tick-borne diseases among people and pets. Climate conditions in Kansas have already been noted to have changed in noticeable ways, and many such conditions are known to favorably affect tick phenology and spatial distribution."

Raghavan listed specific examples of climate factors.

advertisement

"For instance, diurnal temperature range, a climate-change index that influenced the model, has been decreasing steadily since the 1950s," he said. "Similarly, increased atmospheric humidity during spring and summer months over the Northern Plains was noted for roughly the same time period. Other ixodid ticks occurring in northern latitudes have already shown shifts in their distribution and abundance that have been linked to warming climate."

Several researchers at Kansas State University and a researcher at the University of Kansas assisted with the study.

"Greg Zolnerowich, professor of entomology, and Doug Goodin, professor of geography, were extremely helpful in providing data for our models, and Townsend Peterson, university distinguished professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at KU, provided much valuable help by sharing his years of experience in using such models to realistically predict species distributions," Raghavan said. "This was also a real team effort with our new Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Diseases led by Roman Ganta, professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology."

Raghavan said the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory also helped by providing data about the incidence and types of diseases spread by the lone star tick.

Kansas State University's Mike Dryden, university distinguished professor of veterinary parasitology, who is also frequently cited by national media as an expert of fleas and ticks, helped co-author the article.

"At first, Dr. Dryden was skeptical about our findings until he received a tick specimen from a dog that was sent in the mail from a veterinary clinic in Stockton, Kansas," Raghavan said. "This shows that it's not just a model; somebody had actually picked a tick from a dog that had no history of travel. Our team had also collected ticks on trips to areas around Hays, but it's always nice to get evidence from an independent source."

While the spread of pathogens and diseases are worrisome, Raghavan emphasizes that more research is needed. In the meantime, he recommends that people take precautions to help protect themselves and their pets.

"Always wear protection to keep ticks away, and inspect pets frequently to make sure they're not carrying any ticks," Raghavan said. "Nothing will stop the spread of the lone star tick because people are not really doing anything to stop climate change. In the meantime, we need to keep studying not only how the ticks are adapting but also understand how the pathogens associated with these ticks are changing and the potential for elevated risk for humans and animals."
What would you do without water?

Farmers in drought areas are especially concerned by this question. As fresh water resources become scarce, one option for water-conscious farmers is to water crops with treated wastewater. This effluent is becoming a more popular option for applications that don't require drinking-quality water. However, there are still questions about how the effluent interacts with and affects the rest of the ecosystem.

This is where Alison Franklin and her team at Pennsylvania State University come in. Franklin is investigating what happens to certain compounds that remain in the effluent after treatment. She wants to know, "Where do these compounds go?"

The chemicals that Franklin studies are pharmaceutical and personal care products, including antibiotics. Currently, wastewater treatment facilities are not able to completely remove these compounds. They frequently remain in the effluent in an active form.

Franklin explains, "As I learned about pharmaceutical and personal care products in the environment, I became very interested in where these compounds were ending up. What were the possible implications of these low level compounds in the environment on human, animal, and ecological health?"

Franklin and her team set out to follow the environmental paths of four different compounds found in effluent when it is used to spray irrigate wheat crops.

advertisement

First, Franklin measured the amounts of three types of antibiotics and one anti-seizure medicine in the effluent from the University Park wastewater treatment plant. The water from this treatment plant was then used to irrigate wheat crops at Penn State's Living Filter site. This site is a special area used to test the reuse of effluent. Samples of the wheat straw and grain were collected before and at harvest time, and the samples were analyzed for the four different compounds.

"The concentrations of the compounds in the effluent were fairly low, so I was quite surprised when we were able to actually quantify the compounds in the samples," says Franklin.

The researchers found that the pre-harvest samples showed most of the compounds on the outer surfaces of the plant, but insignificant amounts in the plant parts (grain and straw). The samples collected at the time of harvest had trace amounts of all four compounds on the plant surface. Three of the compounds were detected in the plant parts. Two compounds were detected only in the grain and not in the straw. The third compound was detected in both the grain and the straw. However, none of the compounds were at toxic levels.

Many factors affect the path of a compound into and within the plant, such as the pH level of the soil and the plant, the plant species, and even the specific plant part. By analyzing both the straw and the grain, Franklin was able to have a better idea of how the wheat plants take up the compounds.

"It is preferable for the compounds to be taken up into the non-edible portion, like straw, because it minimizes risk," she explains. "By looking at both plant parts the study provided more comprehensive information about the fate of these compounds."

The compounds' trails have been tracked from the effluent to the wheat plants. So Franklin's next investigation will be whether the small amounts of compounds in the wheat plants pose potential health risks for humans and animals. Franklin admits, "It's a fine balance of protecting the health of the environment and organisms, yet managing water resources that are diminishing."

Franklin is working to understand that balance and determine best options for smart water use. Read more about Franklin's work in Journal of Environmental Quality. Penn State's Office of Physical Plant and the USDA Regional Research Projects W-3170 and W-2082 funded this project.
Belarus, Russias western neighbor and only ally in East Europe, is ordering at least a dozen new Su-30SM fighter-bombers to replace 37 elderly (1980s vintage) MiG-29 fighters. Belarus tried upgrading the MiG-29s in 2004 but the 13 aircraft that were refurbished demonstrated that it was not worth the effort. Meanwhile in 2013 Belarus decided to retire its Su-27 fighters. It wanted sell them, but there were no buyers. Belarus did not have the cash to refurbish the Su-27s and was not sure that would work any better than it did on the MiG-29s. These Su-27s entered service in the 1980s and not built to fly more than 3,000 hours. This is low for modern jet fighters but typical of Russian combat aircraft. The Belarus Su-27s were worn out.

Russia is selling the Su-30SMs to Belarus on very attractive terms. In fact this deal may end up with Belarus actually paying nothing. Belarus is a loyal ally of Russia but very corrupt and going broke. Russia has already donated new anti-aircraft systems to Belarus and based some modern fighters there as well.

The problems with Belarus stem from the fact that current leader Alexander Lukashenko has been in charge since 1994, when he consolidated power in the wake of the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. This led to the creation of Belarus. Lukashenko is a Soviet era official, who runs Belarus like the Soviet Union still existed. Belarus is a police state, where elections, and everything else, are manipulated to keep the politicians in power. It's a tricky business, but so far Lukashenko has kept the security forces up to snuff and on his side. He bribes or bullies key officials to keep the country running. Lukashenko has maintained good relations with Russia, getting him cheap fuel supplies and other aid. Lukashenko initially won clean elections as a reformer and clean-government candidate. But he slowly went bad and now is very dependent on Russia.

The armed forces of Belarus are still largely armed with Cold War era equipment and that stuff was not built to last. This is especially true for combat aircraft. For example, in 2012 the first 18 Su-30s India received from Russia were retired after a decade of service and a service life of only 4,000 flight hours. In many respects, the Indian made Su-30s, the Su-30MKI, is the most capable version available, due to its Israeli and European electronics and the well trained Indian pilots. The Su-30SM is similar to the Su-30MKI but with all Russian components. The 38 ton SU-30MKI is most similar to the two seat American F-15E fighter-bomber. Even though equipped with Western electronics the aircraft cost less than $40 million each, about half what an equivalent F-15 costs. The Su-30MKI can carry more than 8 tons of bombs and hit targets over 1,500 kilometers away. But like all Russian combat aircraft, they are not designed and built to last for decades, like Western aircraft. That is slowly changing and the latest version of the original Su-27; the Su-35S, is good for 6,000 flight hours.

Only about 700 Su-27s were produced (mostly between 1984, when it entered service, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991), adding Su-30 production (an Su-27 updated) and you have over 1,000 aircraft (including license built ones in China and India). The MiG-29 entered Russian service in 1983. Some 1,600 MiG-29s have been produced so far, with about 900 of them exported. The 22 ton aircraft is roughly comparable to the F-16 but it depends a lot on which version of either aircraft you are talking about. Russia is making a lot of money upgrading MiG-29s. Not just adding new electronics but also making the airframe more robust.

The MiG-29 was originally rated at 2,500 total flight hours. At that time (early 80s), Russia expected MiG-29s to fly about a hundred or so hours a year. Didnt work out that way. India, for example, flew them at nearly twice that rate, as did Malaysia. So now Russia is offering to spiff up the airframe so that the aircraft can fly up to 4,000 hours, with more life extension upgrades promised. This won't be easy, as the MiG-29 has a history of unreliability and premature breakdowns (both mechanical and electronic).

Western warplanes are built to last longer. The F-16C was originally designed for a service life of 4,000 hours in the air. But advances in engineering, materials, and maintenance techniques have extended that to over 8,000 hours. Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, F-16s sent to these areas will fly over a thousand hours a year more than what they would fly in peacetime. The current planned refurbishment program will extend F-16C flight hours to 10,000 (10K) or more.

The U.S. Air Force will refurbish several hundred of its 22 ton F-16 fighters, because their replacement, the 31 ton F-35, is not arriving in time. Its F-16s are old, and by 2016, many will be too old to operate. The average age of existing F-16s is over 20 years, and the average aircraft has over 5,000 flight hours on it. In 2009 the first Block 40 F-16 passed 7,000 hours. In 2008 the first of the earliest model (a Block 25) F-16s passed 7,000 hours. While older F-16s and F-15s are being retired for age, they tend to have at least twice as many flight hours as their Russian counterparts.
The violence continues in the north largely because of ancient animosities that are exploited by Islamic terrorist groups. About a third of the population are Bambara but the majority belong to dozens of other tribes, the most prominent being Dogon, Fulani, Malinke, Sarakole, Senufo, ethnic Arabs and Tuareg. Ancient feuds and rivalries are revived using calls to protect Islam from attack or to replace corrupt national leaders. The problem in Africa is that in a multiethnic nation corruption is expected if one tribe takes care of itself at the expense of other tribes. For centuries religion has been used periodically to unite normally antagonistic tribes but that unity never lasts, as was seen in Mali after the 2012 rebellion in the began falling apart within months because blood (ethnic loyalty) was thicker than religion. All this creates a perpetual unrest as ambitious tribal leaders are always ready to use force to unseat the dominant national leaders, or force them to share more of the loot. Arbitration and negotiation works pretty well within a tribe but there are none of those cultural and family connections with other tribes that help make non-violent solutions work.

The Islamic terrorist groups are not making a comeback but they are trying to stay visible. Most of the active Islamic terrorists are from AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), the local Ansar Dine and several new (and quite small) Islamic terror groups in central and southern Mali. In addition to trying to stay in the news the Islamic terrorists are less visibly busy raising cash and seeking recruits to organize and carry out many more large scale attacks, especially in the more populous, and more hostile south.

While only three percent of the population is Christian Islamic terrorists seek out and threaten or attack Christians. Islamic terrorists believe Islamic scripture compels them to convert, kill or expel all non-Moslems they can reach. This has led to most Christians in north driven from their homes. Extending this form of terror to the south is more difficult because the Christians down there have more powerful allies in the form of family or tribesmen who are Moslem and tolerant.

While the tribal and religious violence up north gets most of the headlines, overall Mali is at peace and that has led to economic growth. Food and raw materials production is way up and the GDP is expected to grow by six percent in 2016. That is up from 4.9 percent in 2015 but down from 7.2 percent in 2014. Nearly all that growth is in the south. The thinly populated northern two-thirds of the country has a population of less than two million, out of 16 million for all of Mali. The north was very poor in the best of times, and over a year of Islamic terrorist government halted tourism (a major source of income, especially in the three major cities) and the movement of many goods. The south has always prospered while the north scraped by. But because of the 2012 uprising the north is surviving on charity and continued envy of and anger at the wealthier (and ethnically different) south.

February 19, 2016: In the northeast (Menaka) an army checkpoint near the Niger border was attacked. Two soldiers were killed, one was wounded and two are missing. A car was also stolen. Islamic terrorists are suspected.

February 12, 2016: In the north (outside Timbuktu) Islamic terrorists attacked a checkpoint killing three soldiers. Elsewhere in the north (near Kidal) AQIM Islamic terrorists attacked a military base killing six peacekeepers. This attack involved a suicide truck bomb, rockets and gunmen.
This mother cow and her newborn calf nearly lost everything. Instead, they have a future. Ruby and her son, Lucas, were rescued last month from Pennsylvania's New Holland livestock auction. Ruby gave birth to Lucas while standing in a kill pen, the ill-named area where animals destined for slaughter are placed. At that moment a horse rescuer walked by and made eye contact with the brand new mother - and knew she couldn't leave them. "The cow turned and looked at her, and literally had tears running out of her eyes," Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary wrote on Facebook. "Kelly [Smith of Omega Horse Rescue] decided then and there that even though she did not rescue cows, she would save this mother and baby." Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Smith successfully bid on the pair and rushed them to a veterinarian, where they required three weeks of treatment. "Both animals were very sick after being kept in freezing cold pens at the auction with no food, water or bedding, and the little calf almost did not survive," Poplar Spring wrote. Fortunately, they pulled through, and on Monday they arrived at their new home at Poplar Spring's Maryland sanctuary. Soon after their arrival, they were able to venture out into Poplar Spring's fields for the first time. For Lucas, this was the first time in his short, turbulent live that he'd ever seen grass - and the result was magical. While Ruby played the role of cautious mother, Lucas was "sooooo excited," one staffer wrote, as he raced and frolicked around his mom.

Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Couple Meets A Beach Dog In Mexico Who Changes Their Life

Because Lucas is so tiny, he and his mother are staying in an enclosed sheep pasture before they can join the rest of the herd. But they've already met some of their new family, Poplar Spring wrote - thanks to what seems to be a bit of bovine intuition. "Yesterday after our newest cow Ruby and her calf Lucas arrived, all the other rescued cows somehow knew it, even though they couldn't see them," the sanctuary wrote. "Yesterday afternoon the entire cow herd walked all the way through the woods and crossed two creeks just to meet them!" Carolyn Hamilton/Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Carolyn Hamilton/Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Three short weeks ago Ruby and an hours-old Lucas were facing death. Today, they're looking at a long and happy life together. Carolyn Hamilton/Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary

Carolyn Hamilton/Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary
http://donpolson.blogspot.com/ Bringing you the very best information, analysis and opinion from around the web. NOTE: For videos that don't start--go to article link to view.
When Debby and Chris Stephens brought their first baby, Dayna, home from the hospital in mid-February, they knew the other members of their family would be waiting to meet her.

Dayna (left) with Cruzer. | Debby Stephens

And Cruzer and Fender, two greyhounds rescued through the Greyhound Adoption Center (GAC) in California, were more than ready. "I brought a blanket she'd been sleeping in home from the hospital the day before so they got a sense of someone new coming into the house," Chris Stephens told The Dodo.

Dodo Shows Cat Crazy Fluffy Cat Wants To Sit On His Dad At All Times

Cruzer meeting Dayna. | Chris Stephens

Cruzer was the couple's first dog, adopted when they first got married five years ago. "It was one of those things, when you first get married, where you adopt a dog to see how you handle the responsibility," Stephens said. They handled it quite well, it seems, since not so long after that they adopted Fender, also from the GAC, which has been saving greyhounds since 1984.

Cruzer babysitting two-day-old Dayna. | Chris Stephens

"We really love the Greyhound Adoption Center," Stephens said. "These dogs are really wonderful in any environment we put them in."

One big happy family. | Debby Stephens

Sadly, greyhound racing is not fun and games for these loving dogs who are confined for about 20 hours a day and are often left homeless when they leave the spotlight. While greyhound racing is in decline in the U.S., there will still be a deluge of surplus track dogs for the next two decades and probably longer, according to the GAC. While the GAC has already rescued nearly 6,000 dogs, they know thousands more are in need.

Debby Stephens
A violin belonging to an enslaved man was donated to the forthcoming National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington by his great-granddaughter, Shirley Burke. ( Shirley Burke/ )

It took Shirley Burke three years to decide to donate the violin once owned and played by her enslaved great-grandfather to a museum, where it would be properly cared for and available for many others to appreciate.

But when Burke finally gave it away, she chose the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, and not her local African American museum in Detroit.

I wanted to put it in a place where more people would have access to it, and more people will go to D.C., said Burke, 73, a retired high school assistant principal who lives in the Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield.

Burkes choice of the Smithsonian museum over the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History didnt surprise the Wright museums president and chief executive, Juanita Moore.

Theres no jealousy at all, Moore said. It is so important for her and her family for that to be part of the national story.

This is a scenario playing out across the country, as hundreds of African American museums grapple with the arrival of the new national museum, opening on the Mall on Sept. 24. Regional and local organizations cant compete with NMAAHCs national profile, its prominent location or its Smithsonian pedigree, and as a result, theyve watched it snag gifts of family heirlooms and cold cash, sometimes from their most ardent supporters.

But theyve also received benefits from the newest  and largest  African American museum, including funding for conferences, training workshops and internships for young museum professionals. Its opening will generate national headlines and interest in the African American story, and they hope some of that attention will spill over to their institutions.

We look at the national museum as our champion on a national level, said Leslie Guy, chief curator at the DuSable, in Chicago, the nations oldest African American museum.

There are almost 300 museums in the United States focused on African American history, art and culture, according to Samuel Black, president of the Association of African American Museums. Most are small community organizations with volunteer or small staffs focused on local missions, although there are a handful of larger institutions in cities such as Baltimore, New York and Detroit. The museums work together, through the association, on everything from collection care to education and exhibitions, Black said. When the NMAAHC opens, it will become the largest in terms of budget, building and visitors, but it will be treated the same as its peers.

We share things we normally share, he said about the members relationships with the national museum. Its not so much a competition kind of thing. Theyre going to do it anyway, so you might as well work with them.

The NMAAHC has supported the national organization for many years, providing office space, conference funding, scholarships and administrative support, according to Deborah Mack, NMAAHCs associate director for community and constituent services. Her office assists individual museums and state and regional networks to strengthen programs and staff. The museum works with historically black colleges and universities, too.

Its been gratifying to see when we, as a Smithsonian institution, partner with a local organization, Mack said. It brings a lot of visibility or new support for what has been an excellent program all along.

Government agencies and local funders are influenced by the Smithsonian brand. They see them differently, or see them for the first time in a way that they werent aware before, she said. Its a great leveraging of resources.

But the institutions are often in competition, especially when it comes to donations. In this arena, the larger ones have an edge. NMAAHC has been seeking gifts from individuals and foundations for more than a decade, Black noted, and it will continue to do so after the opening.

Ive heard the concern . . . that people in their local areas might be more inclined to donate to the Smithsonian because the name has cachet, Black said. I think that will remain a concern, and it will probably heighten once the museum opens and all the attention is on them and every one wants to participate in that shiny new thing.

Gerald B. Smith, the founding chairman of the Houston Museum of African American Culture, made a gift of $1 million to the national museum with his wife, Anita, and family. Smith said he wanted to be part of a historic effort.

Those of us, people of color who have the opportunity and the resources to give, should give, he said. The national museum has a broader perspective, a broader audience, a broader agenda. It is for all the people.

The Smithsonian museum has raised $252 million of its $270 million goal, including major gifts from American Express, Target, Bank of America and Caterpillar. Other African American museums dont quarrel with these grants because corporate monies have not been accessible to African American museums historically, Black said.

The national museum has enjoyed an advantage in acquisitions, too. The NMAAHC has built its 35,000-piece collection from scratch by purchasing items, uncovering new artifacts and courting donors to give their art or family heirlooms.

As a curator and historian, I have a bone to pick with them because there are things that Ive lost to that institution, said Charles Bethea, director of collections and exhibitions at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore. I say that with a smile. Its what we do, and I understand.

The Smithsonians deep pockets, wealthy friends and national profile give it an edge. It could outbid other museums when rare artifacts came up for auction. And its curators landed gifts of art because they could boast that the works would be on display on the Mall.

Its Save Our African American Treasures program crisscrossed the country, encouraging people to bring their family treasures to curators and learn how to preserve them. Burke brought her great-grandfathers violin to the Detroit Public Library as part of that program. She told NMAAHC curator Rex Ellis that it was given to her ancestor, Jesse Burke, by his owner, Elijah Burke, and that Jesse would play it while his wife, Millie, danced for their owners in North Carolina. She decided to give it to the museum that would attract the most visitors. The Smithsonian is expected to attract several million visitors a year; the Wright Museum in Detroit attracted 270,213 visitors in 2015.

Museum officials say some of the benefits from the NMAAHC are intangible. A seated president is talking in favor of museums, the importance of a museum, Bethea said.

The opening provides an opportunity to take stock of their own programs, said Andrea Taylor, president and chief executive of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. When it opens, the NMAAHC immediately becomes the standard-bearer for African American museums, and it will force its colleagues to update their programs and improve their technology, she said.

We may need to regroup and think about our strategies, Taylor said. But its like having more than one restaurant on a block. They cluster together and everyone does better.

Bethea, whose museum is just 30 miles away in Baltimore, says the opening may draw his audience away initially, but he believes the curiosity factor will fade.

The NMAAHC cant tell every story, Bethea said. Their job is to tell a broader story and push people toward local institutions, which tell the stories of their regions.

To be successful, they will need to adapt. Moore, head of Detroits Wright Museum, laughs when asked about her organizations boast that it is the worlds largest museum dedicated to the African American experience.

Until Sept. 24, she said, noting the day President Obama is expected to cut the ribbon on the $540 million building.

And were good with that, honestly, she said. Would I rather have the [national] museum, or say were the largest? she asked. The museum, no ifs ands or buts.
The high point of director Ron Danielss enrichingly nuanced Othello is one of the tragic heros lowest. Jonno Robertss coldly efficient Iago  a Shakespearean psychopath if there ever was one  stokes the doubts of Faran Tahirs Othello in such an ingeniously insidious way that the embers of Othellos paranoia about Desdemonas fidelity suddenly erupt into an inferno.

On the steel floor of designer Riccardo Hernandezs industrial, post-World War I set, Tahir performs an unsettlingly convincing rendition of Othellos epileptic fit, shaking as if 10,000 volts are coursing through his body. Its a wholesale collapse of Othellos nervous system we are witnessing. The virile leader of armies, racked by suspicion, is made to feel powerfully the one sensation more devastating to him even than love: helplessness.

And so this Othello implodes, with an accessible completeness, in Shakespeare Theatre Companys latest mounting of Shakespeares most breathtakingly well-plotted tragedy. The meticulously dramatized steps leading up to Othellos vibrating in anguish speak to a director with a keen understanding of the sophisticatedly twisted game Iago plays; its the first time in many sittings that the breakdown has made total sense to me. The choice, too, of an actor of Pakistani descent as the proud, doomed Moor of Venice assists an audience in understanding the wild anxieties just below the surface of a successful man from a culture that is considered exotic and suspect.

The finely calibrated psychological development of Danielss Othello means you need a little extra patience with the domestic catastrophe unfolding in Sidney Harman Hall, where the production had its official opening Monday night. The intelligence displayed here is not accompanied at all times by high-impact emotionality, and so a spectators reaction to the performances is one of admiration rather than captivation. Roberts, for instance, plays Iago as such a cool customer that an audience only fleetingly gets to revel in his diabolical excesses. Hes a strapping, handsome Iago but not a magnetic one; this villain is more fixated on getting the job done than seducing us. The choice makes sense in the context of Danielss master plan, even if its not the most entertaining one.

I hate the Moor, Iago declares early in the play, and though he explains the rumors are that Othello twixt my sheets has done my office, the motive for Iagos extremely cold-blooded treachery remains eternally a matter of conjecture. That enduring mystery reflects well on Othello, contributing mightily to why its far more than the best-written crime procedural of all time. An explanation for the hard feelings toward Othello, though, seems more concretely explored on this occasion, both in the preliminary scene in Venice, where the secret marriage of Othello to Desdemona (Ryman Sneed) is revealed to her apoplectic father, Brabantio (Rufus Collins), as well as in tasteful efforts to remind us of Othellos religious roots. While Othello has converted to Christianity, a scene in Danielss production shows him performing the prayer rituals of his forebears; hes a man who has not entirely reconciled his nature to his circumstances.

Ryman Sneed, left, portrays Desdemona and Faran Tahir is Othello in Shakespeare Theatre Companys production of Othello. (Scott Suchman/Scott Suchman)

If the manipulation of Tahirs Othello by Iago is highly persuasive, the romantic elements of Othello dont always come across quite so successfully. Theres something less than fully activated about the passion between Othello and Sneeds dewy Desdemona; similarly, the bond between Desdemona and Iagos wife, Emilia (Merritt Janson), appears for too much of the play to be one remaining at arms length. These elements may well deepen over the course of the run. At the moment, however, the terrible revenge sparked by Othellos misplaced fury doesnt have quite the wrenching effect one waits for.

At plays end, too, after Iagos heinousness is exposed, Robertss blankness feels like a bit of a letdown. The intent may be to suggest that with Iago, there is no there there, that once his evil runs its course, no trace of a human being remains. And while an explosion of maniacal laughter would be silly, youre still left craving some expression of some kind, of what Iago thinks of the horrors hes perpetrated.

A few of the supporting performances round out the three-hour production in satisfying ways: Natascia Diaz brings zest to her portrayal of Bianca, the lady of the evening who plays a crucial, unwitting role in the tragedy, and Ben Diskant makes a first-rate fool of a Roderigo, the poor rich gentleman used and brutally dispatched by Iago.

Costume designer Emily Rebholz creates a handsome wardrobe of soldiers uniforms and billowy frocks, and Hernandezs unfussy set smartly reduces the Venetians military presence on Cyprus to a single backdrop, depicting Venices symbol, the Lion of St. Mark. The designs, like the production, are full of good ideas.

Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by Ron Daniels. Set, Riccardo Hernandez; costumes, Emily Rebholz; lighting, Christopher Akerlind; sound and music, Fitz Patton; fight direction, Robb Hunter. With Patrick Vaill, Ted van Griethuysen, Gregory Linington, Elan Zafir, Robbie Gay. About 3 hours. Tickets, $20-$108. Through March 27 at Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St. NW. Visit shakespearetheatre.org or call 202-547-1122.
The Duchess of Cornwall, second left, pulls a pint of beer in the Rovers Return pub as she meets actors Beverley Callard, left, who plays landlady Liz McDonald; Anne Kirkbride, second right, who plays Deirdre Barlow, second right, and Ryan Thomas, who plays Jason Grimshaw, during a visit to the Coronation Street set in 2010. (Andrew Yates/AP)

Tony Warren, a British writer who created one of the most popular and longest-running soap operas of all time, Coronation Street, died March 1 at 79. The show he leaves behind is 56 years old, a national cultural fixture whose fans have included royalty, poets, rappers and millions of TV viewers.

Broadcaster ITV announced the death but did not cite the place or a specific cause.

Mr. Warren, an actor since childhood, was 24 when he had the idea for a television series set in a working-class street in northwestern England, where he had grown up. He wrote the initial 13-episode run of what was originally called Florizel Street  renamed before it was first broadcast in December 1960.

Some TV executives had their doubts about the program, calling the characters northern speech the language of the music halls. But its workaday setting, memorable characters, dramatic story lines and tart northern humor was a hit.

Corrie  as it is known  set the model for British TV soaps, which offer grit rather than the gloss of their U.S. counterparts.

Coronation Street creator Tony Warren in 2014. (Ian West/PRESS ASSOCIATION VIA AP)

Coronation Street still has millions of regular viewers and a surprising range of fans around the world. Prince Charles once made a cameo appearance, and his wife Camilla pulled a pint in a fictional pub, the Rovers Return, during a 2010 visit to the set.

The late poet laureate John Betjeman compared Corrie to the novels of Charles Dickens, and Snoop Dogg recorded a message for its 50th anniversary.

Mr. Warren said that being gay, which began to be decriminalized in England in 1967, gave him an outsider sensibility that propelled his success as a writer. The outsider sees more, hears more, has to remember more to survive, he told the London Guardian in 2010. All that is terrific training for a writer.

Mr. Warren was born Anthony McVay Simpson on July 8, 1936, and grew up near Manchester. He said listening to his mother and aunts gossip at family gatherings helped inspire the series, based on a little back street in Salford, with a pub at one end and shop at the other, and all the lives of the people, just ordinary things.

For Mr. Warren, the shows success had a dark side. The pressure of creating it, he said, left him addicted to alcohol and morphine for many years. He told the London Independent in 1998 that he began to wean himself off drink and drugs by the late 1970s but that it took much longer to get my head together. I was a monument to self pity; my brain was absolutely fried  and fried is not going too far. In the past when I had written scripts I could hear it all in my head. Other people when they turn barmy start hearing voices; when I went mad I could no longer hear them. It was very frustrating. So I almost wrote nothing.

Mr. Warren wrote for the show for many years, and ITV said he remained a consultant on the series until the day he died.

Mr. Warren also wrote several novels, other TV shows and the 1960s film Ferry Cross the Mersey, starring Gerry and the Pacemakers. But nothing had the impact of Coronation Street.

A list of survivors was not immediately available.
For decades, comedian Bill Cosby was celebrated as a keen and vigorous observer of daily life. Now, as he faces a criminal charge of sexual assault and myriad allegations that he preyed upon and drugged women, a vastly altered Cosby has emerged: impaired, dependent and, his lawyers argue, blind.

At his December arraignment in suburban Philadelphia, the embattled entertainer carried a thin wooden cane and stumbled over a curb, as two attorneys guided him by each arm into the courtroom.

Hes a 78-year-old blind man who theyve chosen to charge, Cosby attorney Monique Pressley said later. Thats not a defense to a charge, thats just a fact.

How prominent a role will the entertainers health play in his multiple legal cases? How was Cosby able to conduct his Far From Finished comedy tour last year, where he often sat in a chair but, at his Baltimore appearance, was without a cane and performed workout exercises on the stage? When did his eye condition first arise?

[After sex assault charges, Bill Cosby faces jail time  and his legal battles are just beginning.]

Cosbys attorneys would not comment for this story, but the comedians impaired vision was mentioned in a 2004 sexualassault lawsuit brought against him by Andrea Constand, a former Temple University official and the alleged victim in the Pennsylvania criminal case. In a decade-old deposition, Cosby testified that his weakening eyesight is ongoing. Its getting worse and refers to his then-ophthalmologist, who has a subspecialty in glaucoma.

Between the deposition and the 2014 storm of sexual-assault allegations, Cosby maintained a rigorous schedule of appearances and comedy concerts, collecting multiple honorary degrees and the 2009 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, where he did not require assistance appearing on the Kennedy Center stage. He was developing a weekly sitcom with NBC and taped a comedy special for Netflix, both projects ultimately shelved.

In 2010 at Al Sharptons annual convention, Cosby acquaintance and news commentator Roland Martin recalls the comedian was assisted by someone to get to the stage and initially didnt recognize Martin. The previous year at the Essence Music Festival, Martin says, Cosby was observant and did not require the assistance.

A 2015 defamation lawsuit that Cosby filed against model Beverly Johnson, one of his sexual-assault accusers, notes that Mr. Cosby has suffered from a degenerative eye condition for years, which has steadily worsened, and that for over a year the entertainer has been legally and functionally blind.

Cosbys right eye appears cloudy and gray in his police mug shot. News articles have variously reported that the comedian has glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration and keratoconus, a progressive cornea disease.

His right eye looks like he might have had a cornea transplant, said ophthalmologist Christopher Rapuano, chief of cornea services at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, who has never examined the comedian. From his police photo, Cosby could have a cataract or glaucoma, Rapuano says. The left eye looks good and clear.

During a two-day February hearing in Norristown, Pa., part of the aggravated indecent assault criminal case, Cosby never referred to documents or wore glasses, occasionally applying drops to his eyes.

[Bill Cosby is back in court to throw out criminal case.]

Cosbys seemingly impaired vision is cited frequently as a possible mitigating factor in a defense motion in the criminal case: Mr. Cosby has lost his eyesight, hampering his ability to identify the physical appearance of witnesses, to view documents, photographs and video, and thus is limited and in many instances incapable of working with attorneys in preparation of his own defense as well as hindered in his ability to confront evidence offered against him by the District Attorneys Office.

Will such arguments succeed?

It is a creative defense, likely without precedent, that I expect will be unsuccessful, says Jacob Frenkel, a veteran Maryland criminal defense attorney and former federal prosecutor. A defendant becoming incompetent or compromised after the offense does not affect culpability for the commission of a crime.

Under the theory that poor eyesight impairs Cosbys defense, Frenkel says, no blind person could ever be prosecuted.

More essential to his legal defense is Cosbys health in 2004. Its the sight he had at the time of the alleged offense, says Maryland criminal and civil lawyer Bruce L. Marcus.

In addition to his loss of eyesight, the defense motion states that Cosbys age and the substantial passage of time have impaired his memories of the relevant events and witnesses.

Sort of floating around is the issue of competency, Marcus says, to take the position that hes incompetent to stand trial.

In the decade-old Constand lawsuit deposition, Cosby said he gave his onetime protege Benadryl to relieve stress and help her sleep. Constand and her attorneys dispute it was Benadryl and say it was a stronger drug that, according to a court filing, made her feel dizzy and weak and only barely conscious.

At that time of the alleged 2004 assault, Cosby testified it was easy to know what he gave Constand, but that his eyesight had since deteriorated.

A number of months have passed. When Andrea took the pills, I could see and identify the boxes clearly, Cosby said. But when he gave the deposition, he testified that the degeneration of the vision now required him to use an illuminated magnifying glass to distinguish the antihistamine.

Cosby continued to lead an active life. Many of our patients have limited vision and visual function but live very productive and fairly normal lives, says Rapuano, the ophthalmologist.

Cosby was criminally charged days before Pennsylvanias 12-year statute of limitations expired. That long prosecutorial delay, rather than Cosbys vision,  now impairs his ability to defend himself, says Joe King, a veteran Virginia criminal defense lawyer.

A good defense lawyer from day one pulls every trick out of his bag, says Frenkel. The defense strategy is to do everything possible to ensure it never goes to trial.
American Cancer Societys Road to Recovery program seeks volunteer drivers to provide transportation to cancer patients. Schedules are flexible. 804-527-3719, leah.seldinsommer@cancer.org or cancer.org.

Arlington County Invasive Plant program needs volunteers to remove invasive plants: 9-11 a.m. first Saturdays, Haley Park; 10 a.m.-noon fourth Saturdays, Benjamin Banneker Park; 2-4:30 p.m. second Saturdays, Gulf Branch Nature Center; 10 a.m.-noon third Saturdays, Tuckahoe Park; 2-4 p.m. third Saturdays, Madison Manor; 2-4:30 p.m. third Sundays, Long Branch Nature Center; 10 a.m.-noon fourth Sundays, Fort Bennett Park. Information: environment.arlingtonva.us. To register, call 703-228-1862.

Arlington Neighborhood Village needs volunteers to help senior citizens with various tasks. Must pass a background check. arlnvil.org.

H-B Woodlawn Film Department seeks entries for Arlington Student Filmfest 16. Deadline is April 11. tinyurl.com/asff16-entry-form or arlingtonstudentfilmfest@gmail.com.

Shepherds Center of McLean-Arlington-Falls Church seeks volunteers for the friendly visitor and caller programs for homebound seniors. 703-506-2199 or info@scmafc.org.

Travelers Aid needs volunteers to help travelers at Reagan National Airport. Must be able to work evenings and weekends, and commit to six months. Parking provided. 703-417-3975, travelersaiddca@mwaa.com or travelersaiddca.com.

Virginia Hospital Center Auxiliary in Arlington County offers opportunities to help on information desks, the surgical center and in gift shops. 703-558-6401.

Wildlife Rescue League needs hotline volunteers, transporters and wildlife rehabilitators. 703-391-8625 or volcoord@wildliferescueleague.org.

Volunteer Alexandria: Call the numbers below or contact Volunteer Alexandria at 703-836-2176, mail@volunteeralexandria.org or volunteeralexandria.org for information on the following opportunities:

ACT for Alexandria needs members for Spring2ACTion Street Team. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Ballyshaners needs St. Patricks Day parade marshals, 9:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Saturday. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Capital Caring needs a receptionist, handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Child and Family Network Centers needs young professionals as council volunteers. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Community Service Day seeks event planning volunteers. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

D.C. Paws Rescue needs volunteers to handle animals at adoption events at the Dog Park in Alexandria, 1-3 p.m. every fourth Saturday. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Living Legends of Alexandria needs volunteers for database clean-up. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Old Town Farmers Market needs experienced bicyclist as volunteers for the Bike for Good Food Rescue program, every last Saturday, from May to October. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Trust for the George Washington Memorial Parkway Arts Afire at Jones Point Park, a National Park initiative to showcase the meaning of parks through music, visual arts and social media, seeks volunteers 3-7 p.m. April 22, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. April 23 and noon-5 p.m. April 24. handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Volunteer Alexandria needs St. Patricks Day Parade volunteers, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, handsonconnect.volunteeralexandria.org.

Volunteer Arlington: Call the numbers listed below or contact Volunteer Arlington at 703-228-1760 or volunteer.truist.com for information about the following:

American Heart Association needs volunteers for Hearts Delight Wine Tasting and Auction, 9:30-11:30 a.m. March 12 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in the District. 703-248-1784, joellen.brassfield@heart.org or volunteer.truist.com.

Arlington County Department of Parks and Recreation needs coaches for youth basketball (volunteer.truist.com); a senior adult travel leader (volunteer.truist.com); volunteers to clip and pull vines from trees (volunteer.truist.com); volunteers for summer camps (volunteer.truist.com). 703-228-4730.

Arlington Historical Society needs volunteers in public relations, event and program planning, and more. 978-807-0134 or volunteer.truist.com.

Arlington library system needs a circulation support-delivery volunteer, Wednesday mornings for two hours at Westover Library. 703-228-7688 or volunteer.truist.com.

Bikes for the World seeks volunteers to prepare donated bikes for overseas, 2-6 p.m. March 16 and April 9, 2-8 p.m. March 17. 703-740-7856 or volunteer.truist.com.

Bowen McCauley Dance needs volunteers for the 7th Annual Move Me Festival, noon-5 p.m. April 30. 703-910-5175 or volunteer.truist.com.

Community Residences needs a buddy/mentor for a male adult with mental health issues. 703-842-2344 or volunteer.truist.com.

National Chamber Ensemble needs volunteers to meet and greet attendees, assist with concession sales, and set up and service a post-concert reception, 6:30-10:30 p.m. March 12 for the American Landscape concert ( volunteer.truist.com ) and Mothers Day concert on May 7 (volunteer.truist.com).

Race for Hope needs volunteers for 5K Walk/Run, 8-11:30 a.m. May 1. 703-578-9510 or volunteer.truist.com.

Wesley Housing Development needs homework helpers for elementary students in the after-school program at Community Resource Centers. Must commit an hour, one day a week and pass a background check. volunteer.truist.com.

 Compiled by Ria Manglapus

TO SUBMIT AN ITEM

Email: axliving@washpost.com

Fax: 703-518-3001

Mail: Volunteer Opportunities, The Washington Post, Alexandria-Arlington Local Living, 526 King St., Suite 515, Alexandria, Va. 22314.

Details: Announcements are accepted on a space-available basis from public and nonprofit organizations only and must be received at least 14 days before the Thursday publication date. Include event name, dates, times, exact address, prices and a publishable contact phone number.
THE DISTRICT

Cause of fatal re in SE is investigated

Investigators were working Tuesday to determine the cause of a deadly fire in Southeast Washington, but authorities said the blaze does not appear to be suspicious.

The person killed in Monday nights fire in the 4300 block of Massachusetts Avenue SE was a woman, police said. Lt. Sean Conboy, a D.C. police spokesman, said there were no suspicious circumstances.

Conboy said police have not publicly identified the victim.

 Peter Hermann

No charges in killing at Union Station

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they would not file charges against a security guard who fatally shot a man last fall in Union Station. The shooting took place moments after the man stabbed a woman repeatedly outside the building during a domestic dispute.

The U.S. attorneys office said the guard chased William T. Wilson into Union Station after Wilson stabbed the woman just before 1 p.m. Sept. 11.

Prosecutors said they concluded that the evidence in the shooting was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer involved in the shooting used excessive force or possessed the requisite criminal intent.

The name of the security guard was not released.

 Keith L. Alexander

MARYLAND

ATV rider dies after crash in Montgomery

A 26-year-old man who was riding an all-terrain vehicle died after a collision with a car, Montgomery County police said.

Authorities said the crash occurred Monday at Whites Ferry and Sugarland roads near Darnestown. Mark Douglas Hutchinson was riding north on a four-wheel ATV on Sugarland Road about 3 p.m., police said. At the same time, a car driven by a 19-year-old Germantown woman, was heading east on Whites Ferry Road.

The vehicle and the ATV collided. Hutchinson, of Boyds, died at a hospital.Police said he was not wearing a helmet.

The woman was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

 Victoria St. Martin

Man is shot, then driven to college

Rockville police are investigating the shooting Tuesday of a man who was driven to a Montgomery College parking lot after being hit.

The victim suffered a relatively minor injury to the leg, apparently from a small-caliber weapon, said Maj. Michael England, a Rockville police spokesman.

After the man was shot, he was picked up along Hungerford Drive, Route 355. He was then driven to the nearby campus, where someone called 911, officials said.

The victim was taken to a hospital but is really not being very cooperative, England said. He added that the man appears to be in his early to mid-20s.

Marcus Rosano, a spokesman for Montgomery College, said students were in no danger. He said did not know whether the man is a student there.

 Dan Morse

and Donna St. George

VIRGINIA

Authorities search for male escapee

Authorities said they were trying to find a man with a history of violent behavior who fled Monday from a mental-health facility near Falls Church.

Michael Marshall, 33, escaped from the Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute in the 3300 block of Gallows Road, officials said.

Officials said Marshall was reported missing about 6 p.m.

Marshall, who is African American, is about 5 feet 8 and weighs 235 pounds. He has black hair and wears glasses.

Marshall could be traveling on foot in the Annandale and Falls Church areas near the mental-health facility where he was receiving care, according to officials. He also has ties to the Centreville and Sterling areas.

 Dana Hedgpeth

Prince William bank robbed during officers funeral

While grieving Prince William County police officers went to funeral services Tuesday, someone took advantage. A bank in Woodbridge was robbed while police were honoring slain Officer Ashley Guindon.

The robber jumped the counter at the BB&T Bank in Dillingham Square about 11:30 a.m. and threatened a teller with a knife. The robber, who appeared to be 17 or 18 years old, fled with an undetermined amount of cash in a grocery bag.

The information was released by the Manassas police department, which joined with the county sheriffs office and the state police to answer calls during the funeral.

 Martin Weil
Abortion rights supporter Sarp Aksel of New York and anti-abortion protesters rally outside the Supreme Court. The justices are taking up the biggest case on the topic in nearly a quarter century. (Susan Walsh/AP)

As oral arguments were heard inside the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, crowds of abortion rights supporters and opponents gathered beyond the buildings white pillars to bear witness to the most significant abortion case to reach the court in decades.

Some linked arms. Others chanted. Many held signs.

Life counts, read one. Keep clinics open, read another.

The divisions were also marked by colors. Supporters of abortion rights wore purple and opponents wore blue. Dueling podiums held speakers who vied at times to be heard over one another.

The crowds reflected what is at stake in the case, Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt , which challenges Texass stringent regulations on abortion clinics. State lawmakers argue that the restrictions, passed by the legislature in 2013, protect womens health. Abortion providers say in reality that they cause clinics to close and make it unduly difficult for women to obtain legal abortions.

More than 40 people set up camp outside the Supreme Court the day before it hears a case about Texass abortion clinic regulations. They waited in line through the pouring rain for a chance to sit in the courtroom on March 2. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

[Supreme Court hears arguments on Texas abortion clinics case]

In the past five years, states have passed more than 250 restrictions on abortion.

Im a uterus, Jessie Sebbo shouted as she stood in the crowd, wearing a pink silky costume. And Im here to say thank you!

They are here to fight for my right to do whatever I choose to do, said Sebbo, 34, of Atlanta. Im a complicated organ. Sometimes things happen that I dont want to happen.

Sebbo said that her husband made her costume and that its anatomically correct down to purple gloves that represent fallopian tubes. But she modified it a bit to allow her to move more easily. I want to give out plenty of hugs, she said. Im hugging pro-lifers, too, because I think we need to share a little more love and understanding.

As she walked through the crowd, people stopped her to take pictures. Thank you for being here for me! she shouted.

Amid the chants and speeches, one group stood quietly in the crowd, their mouths covered with strips of red duct tape with a single written word: Life. They were praying, not protesting, they said.

South Texas's only abortion clinic, located in the border town of McAllen, has become a battleground for abortion activists on both sides. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

Matt Lockett, 45, said members of his group, Bound4Life, have stood outside the Supreme Court for more than 10 years. Sometimes its two people, sometimes 100.

Weve been especially praying over the Texas case for 2 1/ 2 years, he said. Well continue praying all the way until a decision is reached.

Nearby, Dee Kalman held a black sign with white letters that read, I regret my abortion.

She had five abortions in the 1970s, she said. I didnt want them, but I was too young to figure that out, said Kalman, 64, who lives in Northern Virginia.

Next to her, Nancy Tanner, 64, also carried a sign and a story. Her abortion was in 1984 at a D.C. Planned Parenthood facility. She said she is affiliated with the Silent No More awareness campaign, which has collected the stories of 17,000 women who have regrets, some who suffered infections and hysterectomies as a result of their abortions.

I think common-sense minimum standards are really important, Tanner said. This is not about closing clinics at all. She said its about making sure clinics are clean and have halls big enough to support a gurney should anything go wrong during a procedure.

Abortion providers say full implementation of the Texas law passed in 2013 would reduce the number of clinics in the state from 42 to 10.

We cant go back to the time when we didnt have abortion access, said Chi Nguyen, 25, of New York, holding up a corner of a quilt that took 10 people to carry.

On it were 300,000 stitches sewn by women from 34 states and six countries. The goal, said Nguyen, the artist behind it, is to fill it with 5.4 million stitches, one for each woman of reproductive age in Texas.

One of those women, Candice Russell, 32, who lives in Irving, said she has already felt the impact of the Texas regulations.

I had to travel 1,000 miles to get an abortion, she said.

When she became pregnant in 2014, she faced long wait times for an appointment at a Dallas clinic and a two-appointment requirement, and so she took out a payday loan to supplement her administrative assistant salary and flew to California to obtain an abortion. At least I was able to do that, Russell said. I know thats not the case for everybody.

Marva Sadler, the director of clinical services for Whole Womans Health, said she was in Texas the day the law went into effect and saw clinics close overnight. She traveled from San Antonio on Tuesday night to speak at the rally.

This is my life, she said There is no way I could not see this through. Ive been through this entire fight, and I will see it through to the end.

About 11 a.m., as arguments were nearing a close inside the building, a line of people still waited along the sidewalk to get inside. Some were tourists. Others were personally invested in the case. Two medical students wore hospital scrubs. All of them would get only three minutes inside. The line for those who got seats began days earlier.

Abortion rights supporters Kate Banfield and Heather Hardy spent Monday night in fold-out chairs in front of the court to secure their prime spots  Nos. 13 and 14.

I feel really strongly we all need to be doing something to try and bring change, and you cant bring change if you just sit at home, said Banfield, 48, a mother of three who lives in San Francisco. She was one of the many women who chose to describe her abortion in the friends of the court briefs for the case.

Coming felt like the right thing, she said, and now that Im here, I know its the right thing.

Dana Hedgpeth contributed to this report.
A bill mandating that Maryland allocate $15 million in annual operating funds for a transitioning Prince Georges County hospital system was approved in the state Senate on Wednesday despite calls from Republicans that the vote be delayed.

The measure, which is now headed to the House of Delegates, is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the funding between Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and county officials.

County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), along with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D-Calvert), said the funds are necessary to keep the countys healthcare system running while plans move forward to build a new state-of-the-art hospital operated by the University of Maryland Medical System.

Hogan has said he needs time to review the project and renew a memorandum of understanding on how to fund it.

A previous agreement drafted during the administration of then-Gov. Martin OMalley expired in 2015. The Hogan administration has been in discussion with hospital and county officials to draw up a new binding contract that would ensure the projects future.

I think weve given enough time, Sen. Douglas J.J. Peters (D-Prince Georges) said Wednesday, responding to entreaties from Republicans who said Hogan was 48 hours away from completing a new agreement.

The bills passage infuriated Hogan, who vented his frustration on his Facebook page and accused Miller of having broken a promise.

As a result of his impatience and incredible shortsightedness... Miller has opted for a hastily-crafted, one-size-fits-all bill that mandates more state spending but fails to hold Prince Georges County, the University of Maryland Medical System, Dimensions, or anyone else accountable, Hogan said. Its a waste of time, its pure politics and another step in the wrong direction.
Maryland Del. Nathaniel T. Oaks (D-Baltimore) listens to testimony during a February hearing on a bill supporting the right to die for those with terminal illnesses. A state Senate panel is expected to vote on the measure Thursday. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

A bill that would allow terminally ill adults in Maryland to take their own lives appears likely to fail in committee for the second straight year, its lead sponsor said Wednesday.

With a vote expected Thursday, none of the four lawmakers whose support is needed to move the Death With Dignity Act to the full state Senate appears ready to commit to the measure, Sen. Ronald N. Young (D-Frederick) said.

I have a feeling we dont have the votes to get it to the floor, Young said. I talked to several of the people who were on the fence, and got no affirmative answer from any of them.

The bill, which would allow doctors to prescribe a fatal dose of medication to patients who are expected to die within six months, has drawn strong support from advocates and families of the terminally ill but equally passionate opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, disability rights groups and others.

[Agonizing over a persons right to die]

Two members of the 11-person Judicial Proceedings Committee are co-sponsoring the legislation, while five members have said they oppose it. That means each of the remaining four lawmakers on the panel would have to vote in favor for it to advance. Two of them  Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), the committee chair, and Sen. Victor R. Ramirez (D-Prince Georges)  expressed reservations Wednesday.

We dont want people who are not receiving proper health care to see this as the option they have, said Ramirez, citing testimony from bill opponents that poor people and the disabled could opt to end their lives early because options for medical treatment are too expensive or appear out of reach.

Zirkin said he shared those concerns. He was troubled that no amendments have been offered to the legislation to ensure that it would not be used in an unethical way. I have to make a decision on if its the right public policy, he said.

A third undecided lawmaker, Sen. Susan C. Lee (D-Montgomery), called aid in dying a tough issue and said there are compelling arguments on both sides.

The fourth undecided lawmaker, Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince Georges), declined to comment.

Marylands bill is modeled after a law passed in California last year following the highly publicized death of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old San Francisco Bay area woman with terminal brain cancer who moved to Oregon to commit suicide legally. A handful of other states also allow some form of assisted suicide, although a right-to-die measure failed in Colorado last week.

In Maryland, a recent Goucher College poll found that 60 percent of state residents support allowing terminally ill adults to take their own lives. Young said the bill appears to have widespread support in the full Senate, and perhaps in the full House as well.

But proponents of the bill said they knew they were fighting an uphill battle to push the bill out of committee, given the states strong African American and Catholic communities, both of which have historically been uncomfortable with assisted suicide.

The Maryland Catholic Conference made defeating the bill its top priority this legislative session  joining with disability rights advocates to say the measure could open the door for mistreatment of the disabled, the elderly and minorities, and arguing that those groups already experience disparities in health-care access.

Legalizing suicide as a medical course-of-action will only serve to further erode the healthcare that vulnerable people currently receive, especially since it is much less expensive than continuing treatments, said a statement distributed in Annapolis on Catholic Lobby Night.

Lawmakers heard hours of emotional testimony on the bill during hearings in both chambers of the General Assembly. There were terminally ill patients who pleaded for the option to end their lives and caregivers who described the painful deaths of their loved ones. And there were religious leaders and disability advocates who argued that every life is precious and raised concerns about the potential for abuse.

Proponents of Marylands bill have worked since last year to build momentum for the measure. They invited small groups to watch the documentary How to Die in Oregon (2011), about that states assisted-suicide law, and held house parties where they served refreshments and offered information about end-of-life options for the terminally ill.

Several senators said they expect the committee to vote on the bill Thursday, and for it to fail to muster the six votes needed to advance. Young said the bill could just be quietly dropped from consideration.

Every demographic group supports the bill, he said in frustration. I consider this a personal choice. If you dont like it, dont do it.
Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has traveled to North Carolina to be at the bedside of a relative who is in hospice care, according to his spokesman.

Matt Clark said it is unclear when the governor will return to Annapolis, but he remains in charge of state affairs.

We dont have a specific day or time confirmed for when he will return, Clark said. Obviously he wants to get back to the business of the state, but he is in touch with staff several times of the day, and he is at the helm of the state.

Clark said Hogan left late Monday night to be with his sister. The governors office declined to release the sisters name.

Hogans wife, Yumi, is scheduled to join him on Wednesday.

Hogans out-of-state visit comes as the legislature hits the halfway mark of its 90-day session.

Hogan, who has been battling cancer, finished a follow-up chemotherapy treatment on Monday morning before heading to out of town late Monday.

[Hogan underwent follow-up chemo on Monday]

Clark said follow-up chemotherapy was routine for the Stage 3 non-Hodgkins lymphoma that Hogan was treated for last year. In November, when the governor announced that his cancer was in remission, he said he would be receiving maintenance treatments.

Since completing regular chemotherapy, Hogans hair has started to grow back. He says his energy has returned to normal and has resumed a full public schedule.
Dyckia sp, what does this mean? ...and what else?

Dyckia sp is the very same as Dyckia species, in fact short for Dyckia species. It refers to an unnamed Dyckia species.



A Dyckia sp can not be a hybrid Dyckia and never a Dyckia you do not know the name but a nameless Dyckia species. The fact that you do not know the plant it does not mean a nameless one.



A new Dyckia species must be published in order to have its name valid. This obligation doesnt counted on Iternet publications as The World Wide Web didnt exist and publication meant : journals, books, magazine, scientific report magazines.



Nowadays nothing is better published than in the WWW.

Publishing means getting public and there is nothing equal nor close to the WWW.



Public means everybody not just a bunch of selected guys.

These are mates, collegues, fellows not public. Here people publish new Plant species on very restricted magazine or very specialized magazines and assume as published. Publishing means everybody who is willing to know of it. Also the world doesnspeaks Portuguese, nor spanish and less than this doesnt understand old Latim ( Not even those who publishes a new species. They rely on claves and many mistakes are made.) Today publishing means WWW!!! Today it means English!! If a new species is published here in Brazil it must be in Latim as in any other place on the Earth, Portuguese and for Gods sake also in English and entirely not a sinopsis only. Publications with a very restrictec and exclusive public is out of question. Publications with on purposal omitted data is also out of question and not valid. A bunch of readers is not public. A group of readers are collegues never public!!!Public is WWW and your reader may be in Reykjavick or Auckland, Rio or Tokyo and everywhere in between. Portuguese is a lovely sounding language. It makes feel home...but who is going to undertand me in ...in...everywhere else besides people which countries speak Camoes language? English, English for Godssake.

Also there is no sense publising without precise data.

Preservation means showing, educating not hidding an less yet iluding.

What Light is for if it doesnt Brighten up high above everything? Light is to iluminate or it is not Light and if it isnt Light it isnt Science!


Holding cocaine bricks such as these would still be a criminal offense under a Maryland bill to relax penalties for low-level possession. (Janine Costa/Reuters)

Maryland lawmakers heard conflicting testimony Tuesday on whether the state would benefit from eliminating criminal penalties for low-level narcotics possession, with some witnesses claiming the change would encourage more drug use, while others said it would put addicts where they belong  in treatment.

The discussion occurred during the House Judiciary Committees hearing on a bill that would decriminalize low-level possession of seven common drugs: Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, MDMA, LSD, methadone and amphetamine. Under the legislation, holding small amounts of those controlled substances would result in a civil fine of up to $500, although distributing narcotics would still be a criminal offense.

Del. Dan K. Morhaim (D-Baltimore County), who sponsored the legislation, acknowledged that his proposal would sound radical to many people at first. But he said the state needs to focus on treatment rather than imprisonment. He called the nations so-called war on drugs madness, saying it has led to mass incarceration, higher levels of addiction and deaths from gang violence.

[Md. lawmaker calls for state to exit drug war]

Sara N. Love, public-policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, testified on behalf of Morhaims bill.

We believe this is a good first step into shifting drug policy to where it belongs -- in the health-care arena, she said.

Law-enforcement officials testified against the measure, saying it would do little to reduce addiction or diminish the drug trade.

Maryland State Police Lt. Andy Johnson, who worked much of his career in undercover narcotics operations and drug interdiction, said the bill would have a negative impact.

Weve identified these drugs as controlled dangerous substances for a reason  theyre dangerous substances, he said. The dangers associated with decriminalization is that it gives the green light to the younger generation to begin using, which ultimately leads to a higher rate of addiction.

[Maryland House passes new marijuana bill]

Morhaim, an emergency-room physician who said he regularly treats overdose patients, has also proposed legislation that would require hospitals to make addiction counselors available at all times and develop plans for transferring drug users to appropriate detoxification and rehabilitation centers.

His decriminalization measure defines low-level possession as up to 10 grams of marijuana; 10 pills of MDMA; 2 grams of cocaine; 1 gram of heroin, amphetamine, or methadone; and 0.0015 grams of LSD.
A Maryland flag was placed on all 141 desks of the delegates during their swearing-in ceremony on the opening of the Maryland General Assembly on Jan. 14, 2015, in Annapolis. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)

The Maryland Senate on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a bill that stiffens penalties on adults who provide alcohol to underage drinkers.

Under the bill, a person who provides alcohol to someone younger than 21 could go to prison for up to one year, be fined up to $5,000, or both for a first offense. They could receive two years of incarceration, a $7,500 fine or both for a second or subsequent offense. Current law carries a fine of $2,500 and no jail sentence.

The bill is named after Alex Murk and Calvin Li, two teens in Montgomery County who were killed in a car crash last year after attending a party where alcohol was served. It advanced with no debate and is expected to receive final approval in the Senate on Wednesday.

[Report: Parent allowed teen parties on a regular basis]

We are losing many young people in horrific drunk-driving accidents because adults stop acting like adults, said Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery). We owe this to the Murk and Li families.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr. (D-Prince Georges) said his panel will probably vote on the House version of the bill this week or next week.

The Senate delayed action Tuesday on a bill that would clamp down on the audio recordings of private conversations of passengers on public buses.

Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County) said the measure was held to allow the committee to review amendments that were offered by county leaders to address the costs of modifying or changing the recording equipment that has been used on some buses since 2012.

The measure, which would affect MTA buses in the Baltimore area, Ride On buses in Montgomery County and TheBus in Prince Georges County, creates new guidelines for audio recordings and places limits on when and how such recordings can be made.

[Devices on public buses in Maryland are listening to private conversations]

Meanwhile, the House voted 96 to 43 to approve a bill that would require the Board of Public Works to notify various legislative committees at least 10 days before voting on any proposed reductions in appropriations. The three-member board  which handles state contracting decisions and comprises the governor, the comptroller and the treasurer  would also have to post the notifications on its website. The Senate is scheduled to hold a hearing on its version of the bill on March 17.

Lawmakers also heard testimony on legislation that would change the way police officers in Maryland are trained and the process they go through when they are accused of misconduct; ban firearms at public colleges and universities in the state, including community colleges; and change the way transportation projects are prioritized by the state for funding.

The House Appropriations Committee heard testimony on legislation that would require the state to use a scoring system to help determine which transportation projects to fund. Under the legislation, lower-ranked plans could win approval ahead of those that score higher, but transportation officials would have to explain each of their funding decisions.

The measure, sponsored by Del. Pamela G. Beidle and Sen. James E. DeGrange Sr., both Anne Arundel County Democrats, is designed to increase transparency in transportation spending. Often residents cant understand why one project is funded and one is postponed, Beidle said. Shouldnt we have a predictable and transparent system?

The administration of Gov. Larry Hogan has strongly criticized the measure, saying the plan would diminish local input and favor urban transit projects over projects in other areas.

Hogans office released a graph Tuesday showing that Montgomery County would have received 96 percent of Marylands transportation funding if the state awarded money to the highest-ranking projects under the proposed scoring system.

[Md. Democrats announce transportation agenda]

Del. Maggie L. McIntosh (D-Baltimore), chair of the committee, questioned the accuracy of the administrations mock scoring and stressed that the legislation would not force the state to fund projects that rank highest.

Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn said the administration is open to working on an alternative scoring system that would be fair for all jurisdictions. We are willing to study this concept to find a process that fits Maryland, Rahn said. That is something we can certainly agree to.

In the hearing on police reform, Sen. Catherine E. Pugh (D-Baltimore), who participated in a workgroup that studied police practices and made nearly two dozen recommendations to improve police-community relations, told members of the Senate Judiciary Proceedings Committee that the bill is designed to build confidence between residents and the police.

The workgroup was created after the riots in Baltimore last spring that followed the death of Freddie Gray, who was severely injured while in police custody.

[Proposed police reform in Maryland draws strong praise, sharp criticism]

This didnt just happen in Baltimore; it happened around the nation, Pugh said of police-involved deaths of African American men. What were talking about here is how do we support each other . . . and make our communities and neighborhoods safe.

In response to complaints from advocates, Pugh amended the bill to eliminate a proposed change in how hearing boards that review misconduct complaints are selected. The bill had proposed allowing the officer accused of misconduct to have input into who is on the panel; the amended legislation would leave that decision to the chief of police.
PRINCE GEORGES COUNTY

These were among recent cases received by the Prince Georges County Animal Management Division. Call 301-780-7200 for directions to the county animal shelter, hours of operation, and adoption and licensing procedures. For information, go to princegeorgespets4us.com.

Chain-wearing dog: 6000 block, Marlboro Pike, District Heights, Feb. 17. A caller reported a stray dog running loose with a chain around its neck. An animal control officer picked up a 3-year-old silver male Yorkshire terrier mix. The owner was not found. The dog was transferred to a rescue organization.

Dog chase: 2300 block, Matthew Hens Ave., Hyattsville, Feb. 18. Animal management received a call about a large dog running loose and chasing people, making them climb on top of cars to get away. An officer picked up a 3-year-old black male Rottweiler. The owner was found and he paid a $165 fine. The dog was returned home the next day.

Stray on school grounds: 12500 block, Fort Washington Rd., Fort Washington, Feb. 18. Animal management received a call about a large dog running loose on a schools property. An animal control officer removed a 5-year-old black Rottweiler. The dog was reunited with its owner the next day after a $105 fee was paid.

Chihuahua on the loose: 10100 block, Rhode Island Ave., Beltsville, Feb. 19. Animal management received a call from the Maryland State Police requesting pickup of a stray 9-year-old brown colored female Chihuahua found on U.S. Route 50 at the exit for Route 410. The dogs owner went to the Animal Services Facility in search of his lost dog. They were reunited that day.

Low-cost vaccination clinic

The SPCA/Humane Society of Prince Georges County is sponsoring a low-cost shot clinic for dogs and cats from 1-3 p.m. Sunday at 8210 DArcy Rd., Forestville. Rabies and distemper shots are $10. Microchip IDs are $25. Only cash and credit cards are accepted as payment. All animals must be on a leash or in a carrier. Owners should bring an up-to-date rabies certificate. For information, call 301-262-5625 or visit pgspca.org.

pET Volunteers Needed

The SPCA/Humane Society of Prince George s County, an all-volunteer organization, needs volunteers 18 and older to assist with a variety of tasks. Opportunities include photographers/videographers, social media outreach, adoption show assistance, administration and pet foster families. Call 301-780-7200 or visit pgspca.org/get-involved.

Prince Georges County Animal Management Division seeks volunteers to assist animals in need by joining the pet foster family program. Foster families provide a safe, loving home to animals that are too young, injured, recovering from surgery or have other special needs, until they are adoptable. Call 301-780-7219 or visit princegeorges

pets4us.com.

The Partnership for Animal Welfare needs volunteers to foster homeless dogs and cats, provide transportation to vet appointments, and handle animals at adoption shows. For information, go to paw-rescue.org or leave a message at 301-572-4729.
Thursday, March 3

AARP income-tax preparation help Thursdays and Tuesdays 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Sundays noon-3 p.m. Chinn Park Regional Library, 13065 Chinn Park Dr., Woodbridge. 703-792-4800; and Thursdays noon-8 p.m. Saturdays 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Mondays 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Bull Run Regional Library, 8051 Ashton Ave., Manassas. 703-792-4530. Free.

Woodbridge Toastmasters Club An open-house meeting. Learn effective communication and leadership skills. 7:30 p.m. Ebenezer Baptist Church, 13020 Telegraph Rd., Woodbridge. 703-898-7171. woodbridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $68 membership fee.

Catherine Cole: Drawing and Printmaking With a touch a whimsy, Coles printmaking pieces focus on figurative imagery. Through March 17, Center for the Arts, 9419 Battle St., Manassas. 703-330-2787. center-for-the-arts.org. Free.

Manassas Art Guild exhibit Mixed media, watercolors and quilling by member artists, including Maureen Guillot, Herald Grandstaff and Laura Lavarnway. Through March 11, Manassas City Hall, 9027 Center St., Manassas. 703-257-8200. Free.

Friday, March 4

American Legion dinner The public is invited to dinner with a different special every week. Proceeds support local veterans and the community. 5:30-7:30 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. vapost364.org. $5-$15.

Impressions Osbourn High Schools student art show features mixed media, sculpture and drawings. Through April 17. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free.

To Be Sold Works of 19th century artist Eyre Crow examine the story of enslaved African Americans sold into forced migration. This exhibit is from the Library of Virginia with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through April 17. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free.

Saturday, March 5

Pain and Mercy in Virginias Civil War Hospitals bus tour Learn the history behind the PBS drama Mercy Street with stories of wounded soldiers and hospital staff in Virginia. The tour begins at Ben Lomond and travels to Alexandria. Lunch is included. 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Ben Lomond Historic Site, 10321 Sudley Manor Dr., Manassas. 703-367-7872. pwcgov.org/historicsites. $80, reservations required.

Manassas winter farmers market 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Parking Lot B, West Street (next to the train station visitors center), Manassas. 703-361-6599. www.visitmanassas.org.

Home buyer seminar Presented by local real estate broker Bob Hummer. 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Strayer University, 13385 Minnieville Rd., Woodbridge. 703-878-4866. military-realestate.com. Free.

Haymarket indoor farmers market 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 14600 Washington St., Haymarket. 571-494-0897. frontierkitchen.org. Free.

Montclair Library open house Explore the new community library and meet the staff. The event includes a childrens scavenger hunt and punch and cookies. 1-4 p.m. Montclair Community Library, 5049 Waterway Dr., Dumfries. Free.

Manassas Symphony Orchestra From the British Isles features music from British composers including Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams. 7:30 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 703-993-7759. hyltoncenter.org. $20, seniors and educators $16, students free.

Sunday, March 6

Dale City winter farmers market 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Dale City farmers market, Dale Boulevard, Dale City. 703-670-7112, Ext. 227 (Betty Finney). Free.

Author Patrick Bizarro A discussion of his book Poems of the Manassas Battlefields. 1:30 p.m. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. Free.

Bingo Proceeds support local veterans. Doors open at noon on Sunday with games beginning at 2 p.m. Doors open at 5:15 p.m. Mondays with games beginning at 7:15 p.m. Woodbridge American Legion, 3640 Friendly Post Lane, Woodbridge. 703-494-4304. $15 minimum.

Jeffrey Siegel The pianist presents The Golden Age of the Piano, a Keyboard Conversations program featuring works by Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Scott Joplin. 4 p.m. Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Cir., Manassas. 888-945-2468. hyltoncenter.org. $24-$40.

Monday, March 7

Job search network group Plus discussion of various topics related to the search process. 1-3 p.m. House of Mercy, 8170 Flannery Ct., Manassas. 703-659-1636. Free.

Bingo Proceeds support Dale City Knights of Columbus activities and charities. Doors open at 6 p.m. with games beginning at 7:30 p.m. VFW Post 1503, 14631 Minnieville Rd., Dale City. 703-491-2378. $9 minimum.

Lake Jackson Mid County Lions Club meeting 6:30 p.m. Great American Steak and Buffet, 8365 Sudley Rd., Manassas. 703-369-6791. Free.

Prince William Community Band Rehearsal, for musicians 19 and older, no audition necessary. 7:30 p.m. Saunders Middle School, 13557 Spriggs Rd., Manassas. 703-791-4119. pwcb.org. Free.

Historic Manassas Restaurant Week Carmellos, Okras, Philadelphia Tavern and other restaurants offer either two courses for $25 or three courses for $35. Mondays-Wednesdays at, through March 14, Old Town Manassas. 703-361-6599. visitmanassas.org.

Tuesday, March 8

Pre-K Tuesday Songs, stories and crafts for children 3-5 with a caregiver. 10 a.m. Manassas Museum, 9101 Prince William St., Manassas. 703-368-1873. manassasmuseum.org. $10.

Virginia family law session The firms domestic relations practice group answers questions. Noon-1 p.m. through March 29, Compton & Duling, 12701 Marblestone Dr., Suite 350, Woodbridge. kny@comptonduling.com. 703-583-6060. comptonduling.com. Free, registration required.

Summer job fair High school students 16 and older interested in a job with the Prince William County Public Schools summer program should bring a completed application and two references. 6-7:30 p.m. Potomac High School, 3401 Panther Pride Dr., Dumfries. 703-221-1134. pwcs.edu. Free.

Vietnam War talk Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Ron Christmas discusses the battle for Hue City in 1968. 7:30 p.m. The Freedom Museum, Manassas Regional Airport, 10600 Harry Parrish Blvd., Manassas. 703-393-0660. freedommuseum.org. Free.

Spring is in the Air Watercolors by Karin Sebolka. Through April 3. Loft Gallery, 313 Mill St., Occoquan. 703-490-1117. loftgallery.org. Free.

The Beauty of Spring An exhibit of mixed media by Anica Kriel of Vienna and mosaics by Diann Root of Alexandria. Through April 4. Artists Undertaking, 309 Mill St., Occoquan. 703-494-0584. theartistsundertaking.com. Free.

Wednesday, March 9

Lake Ridge Toastmasters Club Members 18 and older develop their public speaking and leadership skills. 7:30-9:15 p.m. Tall Oaks Community Center, 12298 Cotton Mill Dr., Lake Ridge. 703-491-3020. contact-8913@toastmastersclubs.org. lakeridge.toastmastersclubs.org. $34-$64 membership fee.

 Compiled by Sarah Lane

To submit an event

E-mail: pwliving@washpost.com

Fax: 703-392-1406

Details: Announcements are accepted on a space-available basis from public and nonprofit organizations only and must be received at least 14 days before the Thursday publication date. Include event name, dates, times, exact address, prices and a publishable contact phone number.
A Maryland woman released early from prison after killing two people in a 2009 drunken-driving crash was sent back to jail Wednesday after an alcohol-sensing interlock device stopped her several times from starting her car.

I dont know what to do with you. I truly dont, an exasperated judge told Kelli Loos, 40, during a hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

Judge Joseph Dugan ordered Loos held without bond for 90 days, at which point he will bring her back for sentencing. Loos and her attorney are advocating she go to a treatment program. Prosecutors want incarceration.

After tripping the device last year, Loos of Annapolis claimed that Altoids breath mints caused the device to indicate alcohol infractions. In court Wednesday, she abandoned the mint claims.

I made poor decisions, she told Dugan, adding, I need help.

A Maryland woman is back in jail after being released early from prison in 2009 after killing two people in a drunken-driving crash. Kelli Loos was ordered held without bond after the "interlock" device in her car stopped her from driving. (WUSA 9)

Her case has taken on new resonance in a state in which some lawmakers are pushing to toughen drunken-driving laws and penalties.

Two of the legislative proposals in Maryland: Raise the maximum sentence for vehicular manslaughter convictions, like those in the 2009 Loos case; and require anyone convicted of drunken-driving to install an interlock device, not just those drivers who exceed certain thresholds.

[We must put technology between all offenders and their cars]

Loos was paroled from prison in 2013, after serving four years of a 10-year sentence. She later was permitted to drive as long as she first blew into an interlock.

At least three times, the device halted her from starting her car when she was legally drunk, prosecutors said. One of the readings was a 0.16, which is twice the legal limit.

Here she is: Shes back, prosecutor Mark Anderson said in court Wednesday. The interlock works or else shed be driving around at these levels. These levels are ridiculous.

Loos, a graduate of Virginia Tech University who had worked as a meeting planner, stood for much of the hearing on Wednesday, wiping away tears. Dugan ruled that she violated her probation for two reasons: Drinking, and trying to drive after drinking.

A photo of Gradys Mendoza that is displayed in the home of surviving family members. He was killed in 2009 after his truck was hit by a drunk driver. (Family photo)

His voice raised, Dugan kept asking Loos why she would drink again  knowing she could be sent back to prison, knowing she had an 8-year-old daughter at home, knowing that she had killed two people while driving drunk seven years ago.

He said she was making rationalizations: Trouble being out on her own, a need for more rehabilitation, fears of going back to prison. His words led to a rapid exchange with Loos.

Youre trying to make excuses, Dugan said.

No, Im not, Loos said.

I did it because. I did it because, Dugan said, imitating her. All right, why did you do it?

Because I made poor decisions.

Why did you make poor decisions?

Because I need help.

Because, Dugan responded, directing her on what to say, Im an alcoholic. And I cant stop drinking.

Because Im an alcoholic, Loos said, correcting herself. Thats what I meant. Im sorry. I just didnt use those words.

Well, you didnt use those words because you dont believe it.

No, I do believe it.

No, you dont. If you did, you would have said that right from the beginning, the judge told her.

People just dont take the issue of drinking and driving as deadly serious as they should, Del. Benjamin Kramer (D-Montgomery County) said Tuesday.

The 2009 crash devastated the families of two men: Gradys Mendoza and Franklin Manzanares.

In an interview Tuesday, Mendozas widow said that Loos should have stayed in prison longer. I feel as if justice was not made for the two families, Maria Mendoza said.

After her husband died, she maintained hope the pain would ease. Their three children were 12- to 15- years old at the time. But the pain hasnt receded, Mendoza said, and her children became adults without their dad. We miss him more and more, she said. It gets harder.

In letters written earlier to the court, Loos had spoken about her deep sorrow, and her efforts to get better through programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.

I would sincerely give my life to bring Gradys Mendoza and Franklin Manzanares back to this earth and to their families, Loos wrote. Gradys and Franklin are my first thought each morning, and my last prayer at night.

[The 2009 arrest: Kelli Loos was driving more than twice the legal limit ]

In court Wednesday, Looss lawyer, Charles Lipscomb, acknowledged that until last week, whenever he asked Loos if she had recently been drinking, Loos said no  and blamed breath mints for the interlock readings.

The answer has always been: No, no, no, no. Altoids. No, no, no. I didnt drink, I didnt drink, I didnt drink, Lipscomb told Dugan, adding how he knew Altoids couldnt have registered the readings at issue. Finally, she said to me, without any sort of prodding at all: I admit it. I was drinking. And it was almost  for her  a come to hallelujah moment.

The judge, Dugan, set the sentencing date for June 1. He acknowledged that sending Loos back to state prison could hurt Looss daughter and elderly relatives she helps care for.

I could throw you away for 20 years, and that would be that. And then the public would be protected, he told Loos. But I suppose there would be a lot of people who would suffer from that as well.

On the evening of July 7, 2009, Loos had gone with a friend to Hamburger Hamlet in Bethesda, where she drank a bottle of wine. She dropped off the friend and drove onto the Capital Beltway, heading south in a Jeep Cherokee.

Ahead of her were Mendoza, who owned a construction business, and his good friend, Manzanares. The men were sober, wearing seat belts, and coming home from signing a construction job contract.

Loos struck their truck from behind, sending it skidding over a guardrail and airborne down a 60-foot ravine. Loos kept driving, into Virginia, where she crashed. She was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.20, more than twice the legal limit.

Loos pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular manslaughter and one count of leaving the scene of an accident. Each count carried a maximum penalty of 10 years, for a total of 30. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to limit their sentencing request to 20 years.

On May 19, 2010, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Louise G. Scrivener sentenced Loos to 10 years, giving her credit for time she served while detained after the wreck.

Because the crimes to which Loos pleaded guilty are considered nonviolent under Maryland rules, she became eligible for parole consideration after serving 25 percent of her sentence.

In July 2013, Loos was paroled, having served roughly 40 percent of her sentence. At her parole hearing, Loos was able to show a record of good behavior behind bars, presented herself as remorseful and took responsibility for the crime, said David R. Blumberg, chairman of the Maryland Parole Commission.

We have to balance all factors, and we try to make our best judgment, he said.

Loos is on parole supervision until 2019 and probation supervision until 2018, Blumberg said.

She has a job and lives in Annapolis, according to court records, and has an interlock device on her car. Her test readings are relayed to a vendor. On July 11, 2015, the vendor reported to state officials that the previous day, the device prevented Looss car from starting after three alcohol reading, court records say. (The court records dont specify the exact readings.)

[The 2010 sentencing: Victims family/friends charter a bus to court ]

Loos was brought in for a parole-violation hearing, where she denied she had been drinking and said she had eaten Altoids mints that set off the interlock, according to Blumberg. She was found not guilty of a parole violation, he said.

The terms of her probation  and whether the interlock readings constitute a violation  was the subject of Wednesdays hearing.

Kramer, the Maryland legislator, is sponsoring legislation that would lower the threshold for when an interlock would be required for a convicted drunk driver. Interlocks are mandated for drivers found to have been very drunk, with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.15 or higher. Kramer wants to lower the threshold to the legal limit for drunken driving: 0.08.

In one regard, the Loos case does not relate to the legislative proposal. Loos was very drunk, at 0.20. But in another aspect, her case is relevant because it illustrates how interlocks prevent cars from starting, Kramer noted.

In the most recent year for which records are available, interlocks in Maryland had stopped at least 3,800 attempts  at 0.08 or higher  to drive drunk, Kramer said.

We know for a fact the interlock is working, Kramer said.

He also said the devices are designed to account for other substances that could create a false read, and that even if the ignition wont start, drivers have the option of rinsing their mouths and re-blowing  which lets them use mouthwash, for example, and still drive. If someone has been drinking alcohol, Kramer said, the rinsing doesnt work.

In Northern Virginia, Maria Mendoza  the widow of one of the men hit by Loos  said that without her late husbands income she has had to sell their home. Their children are in college  one at George Mason University and two at Northern Virginia Community College.

I try to do the best I can, she said. I tell them: Daddy wants you to go to school. We have to make Daddy proud. 
In this screenshot from a video of a news conference, Chief Howard Hall compares the type of air pistol Kionte DeShaun Spencer was holding, left, with a 9mm pistol. (Roanoke County Police Department)

A high school student holding a BB gun was fatally shot by two police officers in the Roanoke area Friday.

Roanoke County Police Chief Howard Hall said his officers believed that the 18-year-old was brandishing a more dangerous handgun when they shot the teen.

At this point, our investigation indicates that our officers responded within their training, Hall said at a news conference.

A spokeswoman for the police department identified the teen as Kionte DeShaun Spencer. He was a student at Hidden Valley High School, Hall said.

Hall said that someone called police Friday about 7:15 p.m. and said that a black man with a bandana on his face was waving a gun and pointing it at cars.

Police found Spencer at Brambleton Avenue and Electric Road. They told him to drop the gun, and when he didnt, they followed him as he walked north on Electric Road, Hall said.

An officer twice deployed a Taser to try to stun Spencer, but it did not work, possibly because it struck the teens backpack, Hall said.

Then Spencer turned toward the officers, and two officers fired at him, Hall said. The teen was struck once in the hip and once in the shoulder, and died shortly afterward at a hospital.

Hall said there were at least six officers at the scene and multiple civilian witnesses, whom police are interviewing. He refused to name the two officers who fired or say how many officers were placed on leave while the department investigates the shooting.

At the news conference, Hall displayed a photograph of the type of BB gun that Spencer was carrying next to a photograph of a similar-looking 9mm handgun.

This was a deadly force encounter, despite the fact that we know now that this handgun was an airgun, Hall said. Youve seen the pictures. You saw what our officers saw in his hand. That is a potential deadly encounter.
Jesse Matthew is escorted out of court after a hearing on two different murder charges in Charlottesville, Va.

Jesse Matthew is escorted out of court after a hearing on two different murder charges in Charlottesville, Va. Steve Helber/AP

Jesse Matthew is expected to enter guilty pleas in the murder cases of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham and Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington.

Jesse Matthew entered guilty pleas in the murder cases of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham and Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington.

Jesse Matthew entered guilty pleas in the murder cases of University of Virginia student Hannah Graham and Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington.

Jesse L. Matthew Jr. hopped from bar to bar, making ever more aggressive advances on women and getting rebuffed, before he spotted Hannah Graham weaving drunkenly down a Charlottesville pedestrian mall in the early hours of Sept. 13, 2014.

A witness watched as Matthew, a burly former football player, caught up to Graham and slung his arm around her neck. The witness protested to Matthew, You dont even know her.

Matthew replied simply, Hush.

The moment was the beginning of Matthews abduction and murder of the 18-year-old University of Virginia sophomore, whose disappearance would touch off a massive search and make headlines across the country.

The fresh details in the high-profile case emerged Wednesday as Matthew, 33, pleaded guilty to killing Graham, of Fairfax County, and Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington in a similar abduction in 2009.

Jesse L. Matthew Jr. entered a guilty plea on March 2 and was sentenced to four life terms in the kidnapping and deaths of two Virginia college students. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)

The guilty pleas in an Albemarle County court  to two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of abduction with intent to defile  were part of an agreement with prosecutors that spared Matthew the possibility of facing the death penalty if convicted at trial in Grahams murder.

Circuit Court Judge Cheryl V. Higgins sentenced Matthew to four life terms, added to the three life terms he is serving for a brutal sexual assault in Fairfax County in 2005. He was convicted in that case last year. As part of the deal, Matthew may not appeal or seek geriatric release, ensuring that he will die in custody.

The emotional hearing brought a close to a long, slow journey for the Grahams and for Harringtons family, which had waited more than six years for her killer to be brought to justice.

Susan Graham, Hannah Grahams mother, read a statement to the court.

Her friends said that she would change the world, and she did, but at a terrible price, Graham said, noting that her daughter helped police arrest a serial rapist and murderer hiding in plain sight. She is a heroine.

Wearing a black-and-white-striped jumpsuit, Matthew spoke only to answer the judges questions. Douglas Ramseur, his attorney, read a statement on his behalf.

Hes very sorry for what happened, Ramseur said. He loves his family very much.

Harrington, 20, disappeared after leaving a Metallica concert in Charlottesville in October 2009. Her body was found months later in an Albemarle County pasture, but it would take years and Grahams disappearance to catch a break in the case.

Graham set out with friends on the evening of Sept. 12, 2014, to go to a restaurant and attended two parties. Witnesses told authorities that Graham had been drinking all night and had become increasingly intoxicated.

Around midnight, Graham said she was not feeling well and left the second party for home. Soon, she was lost.

Meanwhile, Matthew had made his way to several bars, where women would later tell investigators he made them feel uncomfortable by touching them and making unwanted advances. At one bar, prosecutors said Matthew took off a womans sock and grabbed her foot.

A woman that takes care of her feet takes care of everything else, he is said to have told her.

After 1 a.m., a surveillance camera captured the moment Matthew and Graham met  the same scene described by a witness. Susan Graham talked in court about the horror of watching Matthew notice her daughter and then make his way toward the young woman.

We saw what evil looks like, Graham said. He hunted her.

Matthew and Graham went to a bar called Tempo, where he ordered a drink for her. As the pair were leaving, prosecutors said, a witness who observed Matthew and Graham told someone ominously, Hes gonna [expletive] her up.

Matthew and Graham were then seen walking to his car. When they arrived, another witness heard Graham shout: Im not getting in that car with you! What is it, stolen? The witness told investigators that Graham seemed frightened. The witness said he kept walking and listened, but heard nothing else.

It was the last time anyone saw Graham alive.

Friends quickly reported Graham missing, and searches for her began in the days that followed. Police soon found the surveillance footage of Matthew and Graham together, and he fled the area after being questioned. He was arrested in Texas after a nationwide manhunt.

About a month after her slaying, Grahams body was found in a ravine behind an abandoned home in a remote part of Albemarle County. Susan Graham commented in court on the indignity of her daughters treatment.

He dumped our daughters body like a bag of trash, Graham said, noting that the remains sat for weeks in the wooded area, to be picked over by buzzards and vultures.

After Matthews arrest, he was linked through a DNA test to a cold case that bore striking similarities to the Graham disappearance  the slaying of Harrington. Harrington had stepped out of the concert alone and was unable to get back inside the arena. Matthew was driving a taxi in the area at the time, and a witness saw Harrington just feet from his cab that night.

[Man charged with killing U-Va. student said he was really drunk that night]

A bloody T-shirt that Harrington wore was discovered in Charlottesville the next month, and her remains were found on a farm in southern Albemarle County three months later.

A DNA analysis of blood on the shirt yielded a match with a profile of a suspect in a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax County. In addition, investigators found a dog hair on the shirt, prosecutors said. A lab that specializes in animal DNA would later determine it shared genetic similarities with hair taken from Matthews dog, Popcorn.

[The three cases police say are linked to Jesse L. Matthew Jr.]

It was just one example of the lengths investigators went to in gathering evidence in the cases. In Grahams case, detectives called on a botanist who determined plant material removed from the chassis of Matthews car matched plants at the location where Grahams body was dumped. Forensic anthropologists examined the skeletons in both cases.

Last year, Matthew was convicted in the Fairfax County case. Evidence showed that DNA recovered from the victims fingernail was highly likely to belong to Matthew.

After he took the witness stand steps away from his daughters killer, Dan Harrington described the void left in his family by her death and asked aloud the questions that he had thought about for 6 1/ 2 years.

How could he? Why would he? Harrington said.

Matthew said nothing.
A man who was shot while sitting in a car in Southeast Washington on Tuesday afternoon, near a school and a child learning center, died Wednesday morning at an area hospital, according to D.C. police.

The shooting occurred shortly after 3 p.m. at Sixth and Chesapeake streets in Washington Highlands, steps from Hendley Elementary School and near the Sunshine Early Learning Center, which enrolls 230 children.

The centers chief operating officer, Robert Gundling, asked police about the shooting on the departments internet bulletin board, saying, We do appreciate it when we are notified of situations like this to make sure we do everything possible to keep the children and adults safe.

[Six shot in matter of hours in Southeast Washington]

Gundling said Wednesday that he later learned that a police lieutenant did visit the center to provide details shortly after the shooing occurred. The police have done an exemplary job today on following up, he said.

A teacher said about two dozen children were on a playground outside when the gunfire erupted about a block away.

We just heard the shots, and we took off, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition that she not be named because the suspected gunman has not been arrested. We got the kids to safety.

Gundling said those children may have been at the nearby elementary school.

Cmdr. Vendette T. Parker, who heads the 7th Police District, wrote on the internet board that the gunman opened fire on a man sitting inside a car. The victim either went by himself or was taken by acquaintances to an area hospital, police said.

A D.C. police spokesman said the victim died Wednesday. The mans name was not immediately released pending notification of relatives.

On Monday afternoon, police said a man was shot in the 4300 block of Fourth Street SE, about a half-mile south of where Tuesdays fatal shooting took place on Chesapeake Street. Police said the victim in Mondays shooting, which occurred about 4:40 p.m., suffered wounds not believed to be life-threatening.

Police said they could not say yet whether the two shootings are related.

As of Wednesday, there have been 18 homicides in the District this year, up from two at this time in 2015.
Virginia state police called Tuesday for new information in the abduction and murder of a woman who disappeared 20 years ago on Wednesday.

The state police said they still hoped to solve the case of Alicia Showalter Reynolds,a 25-year-old graduate student, who disappeared on March 2, 1996, while driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville.

Her car was found later on that day after being abandoned in Culpeper County, Va. Her remains were found two months later in a field that had just been cleared of trees in the rural commuity of Lignum, Va.

Witnesses said they had seen a white man stopped near her vehicle on Route 29 on the day of her disappearance, according to police.

Later the police heard from other females who said a white male had either stopped them or tried to do so as they drove on Route 29 in Culpeper County.

Police said that they have pursued more than 10,000 leads over 20 years, and still receive tips and information connected to the disappearance.

In a statement issued in connection with Wednesdays anniversary, police said they are encouraging the public to offer any information that could bear on the investigation.

They can contact the Virginia State Police Culpeper Division toll-free at 1-800-572-2260, or the Bureau of Criminal Investigation toll-free at 1-888-300-0156 or by email at bci-culpeper@vsp.virginia.gov
Carlton Taylor of Tysons Corner gets budget and job-interview tips from Silvia Portillo, his case manager at OAR of Fairfax County. The organization is among several nonprofit groups in the region that help ex-inmates reenter society. (April Greer/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)

Marsha Martin will never forget the day she was released from a military correctional facility in 2011, after serving a 15-month sentence for theft. One thought kept running through her mind: How do I start my life over?

It took me about six months to break down my pride and go to the system and say, I need help,  Martin, 41, said. The Alexandria resident went to OAR (Opportunities, Alternatives and Resources) of Fairfax County, one of a handful of nonprofit organizations in Northern Virginia that help offenders reenter society. She received assistance with her resume there, and she eventually landed a job in veterans services.

Despite two promotions in her first year, she was forced to resign, she said, because her felony record kept her from obtaining accreditation through an affiliate organization. She eventually returned to OAR to seek further help.

According to Justice Department figures, about 650,000 people are released from state and federal prisons each year. Millions more are released from local jails annually, according to the Council of State Governments. After reports last year that 46,000 drug offenders in federal prisons could qualify for early release under revised sentencing guidelines, reentry organizations such as OAR have been bracing for a potential surge in clients.

I look at it as like a tsunami thats coming, and you know its a hundred miles out, but it really hasnt impacted us in that way yet, said Derwin Overton, executive director of OAR.

OAR of Fairfax collects and distributes donated clothing to aid formerly incarcerated individuals re-enter the workplace. (April Greer/For The Washington Post)

Reentry programs are designed to reduce recidivism  repeat offenders returning to the criminal justice system  but data on their effectiveness is hard to evaluate, said Danielle S. Rudes, associate professor of criminology, law and society at George Mason University. Jurisdictions track information differently, and the computer programs they use are often incompatible with one another, she said.

Recidivism can mean re-conviction, re-arrest or re-incarceration, Rudes said. So you could be comparing apples to oranges, depending on how each agency uses the term. Although scientific studies on the effectiveness of these programs are inconclusive, she said, You will find tremendous anecdotal evidence from places like OAR that offenders are indeed being helped.

Many local groups that offer reentry services outside correctional facilities are nonprofit organizations, such as OAR of Arlington County, which serves Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church; and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, which provides services in suburban Maryland and the District.

Montgomery County helps offenders connect with the nonprofit organizations as they leave the correctional system.

Reentry is about a warm handoff, about making a connection, said Robert Green, director of the Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation. When you make a human connection, the likelihood of follow-up is much higher.

OAR of Fairfax County is extending its reach into Loudoun and Prince William counties, said Brandon Cosby, the groups director of development. Case workers assist inmates in all three counties, and OAR has applied for a grant from Loudoun this year, in hopes of expanding services there.

Several former inmates said they benefited from the classes OAR conducts in the Fairfax and Loudoun detention centers.

Clients receive hygiene kits with items such as shampoo, deodorant and a razor, when they are released. (April Greer/April Greer)

Samuel Johnson, 35, of Sterling took life skills classes offered by OAR when he was in the Loudoun Adult Detention Center for selling drugs. After being in and out of jail for more than a decade, he realized that he needed to change.

I started doing a moral search of myself, just trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted, Johnson said. They taught you how to look at things from a different perspective. And I was able to utilize those skills to help change my life, along with the Bible and some good self-reflection.

OARs life-skills classes focus on anger management, parenting and financial literacy. Other classes aim to help inmates understand the effects of crime and how to avoid the thought processes that lead to criminal behavior. These classes are particularly important, Cosby said, because criminal thinking  such as resistance to authority and an inability to delay gratification  is one of the main risk factors for returning to jail.

I started making better decisions after taking the classes, Johnson said. If you have an anger problem, [you learn] how to think before you react, and how to recognize when youre getting upset, so you know when to leave. So you dont just blow up.

OAR also conducts classes in resume writing, interviewing for jobs, keyboarding and other basic computer skills to aid offenders with their job searches. Johnson said that helped him get a job working for a company that modernizes elevators, escalators and moving walkways. He was able to buy a car. He is now preparing to buy a home, he said.

OARs post-release program starts by helping inmates with their immediate  and most basic  needs.

For many of them, everything they own is in the clear plastic bag that the sheriffs office hands them when they are released, Cosby said. They dont know where their next meal is, and they dont know where theyre going to go.

The bag contains only what they had with them when they were arrested  often just the clothes they were wearing at the time, Cosby said.

If you were arrested in June in flip-flops and shorts, and youre released [in the winter], youll be wearing flip-flops and shorts, he said.

OAR keeps a supply of donated clothes to give clients when they are released, along with personal hygiene kits with items such as shampoo, a razor, soap and deodorant.

Those types of things can go a long way to just make you feel human again, Cosby said.

Housing and transportation are two other immediate needs. Even public transit can be a challenge for people without money, so OAR will help with bus tokens and Metro SmarTrip cards, Cosby said.

Well try to get them to a safe place, he said. We can pay for the transportation there, make sure they have appropriate clothing, and try to get them into a stable arena.

After that, OARs case workers assess offenders needs and risk factors, and follow up periodically to see how they are doing.

Because obtaining employment is often one of the biggest hurdles to starting over successfully, OAR develops and maintains a list of employers who are willing to hire its clients.

An investment in people, even formerly incarcerated individuals, offers such a great return in a variety of places, from a public safety aspect, Overton said. They can earn money and in turn start paying taxes and give back to a community. They can get engaged with their children and break that cycle of crime.

Several former offenders said that the moral support they received from OAR was invaluable to them.

Youre looking at all of these challenges, said John, a 45-year-old Fairfax resident who served nearly five years in prison for larceny. He asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy. How am I going to make money? How am I going to get work?

Every couple of months, they would call me out of the blue, he said. I had a great career before I screwed my life up, but that didnt mean a whole lot when I got out. I didnt really know how I was going to overcome that hurdle.

OAR connected John with potential employers, places that you could feel comfortable applying for if you said you were coming through OAR, he said. So you could approach the situation and not have to say right out, I have a criminal background.  He eventually found a succession of jobs in management.

When youre locked up for a long time like I was, you have to relearn a lot of things, because you get really institutionalized, John said. People can have good experiences when they get out if they work at it and have the proper support.

After serving time for selling drugs, Jose Amaro, 31, of Leesburg has gotten a job building retaining walls. He said his OAR caseworker is helping him find recreational activities so that he can meet good people so I dont go back to the lifestyle I used to live.

I think Ive been doing good, he said. Ive been holding this job, and I havent been thinking about taking any shortcuts.

The reentry process has not gone as smoothly for Martin, who spends much of her time perusing job listings and filling out applications. The stigma of her felony conviction has stayed with her, nearly five years after her release.

Its as if youre reliving that sentencing day every day, she said.

Martin would like to help others who have had experiences similar to hers. She hopes to land a job as a caseworker for a reentry organization, as a first step toward her long-term goal of becoming a professional counselor.

People can get in a place of hopelessness, and not knowing which way to go, she said. I want to assist people in moving forward. I dont want to be a problem. I want to be a solution.
Employees at work at the Jewish Social Service Agency in Rockville, Md. The agency offers services to Holocaust survivors and the Jewish community at large, including those with special needs. (Leah L. Jones/For The Washington Post)

Twenty-three Jewish services organizations, including agencies in greater Washington and Baltimore, will receive $2.8 million to help aging Holocaust survivors, the Jewish Federations of North America announced Tuesday.

The money is part of a five-year, $12 million government initiative to provide support to survivors, and when combined with matching funds, the awards announced Tuesday will result in more than $4.5 million for the agencies.

It is the first time in history that the U.S. government is providing money for social services specifically for aging Holocaust survivors.

The Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington and the Jewish Community Services of Baltimore are among the recipients; the amounts of individual grants were not disclosed, but they range from $15,000 to $475,000.

Of more than 100,000 survivors in the United States, almost a quarter are 85 or older, and 1 in 4 lives in poverty. Experiences during the Holocaust such as malnutrition, torture and severe mental stress have had lasting effects, and as survivors age, they are at greater risk than the general population for poor physical and mental health, depression and social isolation.

Theyre much frailer, both psychologically and physically, said Todd Morgan, vice chair of the JFNA Fund for Holocaust Survivors. They dont have the family structure like many of us. Many lost brothers and sisters. Many live alone in a one-bedroom apartment. . . . These are the forgotten people.

The U.S. government has provided money to Holocaust survivors in the past, but this is the first time the money addresses issues of aging. The funding stems from an initiative announced in 2013 by Vice President Biden.

For some survivors, such acts as going to the doctor or applying for government funding can trigger a traumatic response, Morgan said. They dont want to come up and put their name on a list. They say, Theyll round me up again, Ill die right away. 

The Jewish Social Service Agency of Greater Washington, one of the recipients, serves 430 Holocaust survivors from the former Soviet Union. The average age is 85, and 85 percent are at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty line. The grant money will help with the training and coordination of caregivers through the lens of what survivors experienced, said Todd Schenk, the agencys chief executive.

Survivors are particularly averse to moving to institutions such as nursing homes, he said.

In general, people would prefer to live in their own homes as they age, but if you have an experience like imprisonment, concentration camps, displacement, and government forces that were very often villains, the prospect of institutionalization carries a very different flavor.
For ex-offenders who have successfully fought to have their voting rights restored in recent months, the presidential primaries were the first chance to go to the polls in years, even decades. And what a special welcome back it must have been for them to choose from a bunch of candidates who have often exhibited the kind of behavior that many were warned about when they were given a second chance.

One of those who expected to start voting again in a Super Tuesday presidential primary was JeMarc Morton, a warehouse employee in Williamsburg, Va. His voting rights were revoked for seven years after his conviction for grand larceny in 2008. His sentence for the larceny was five years probation.

Morton successfully petitioned to get back the right to vote last year. Now he was able to vote in a presidential primary  to choose among candidates variously described by one another as liars, con artists, hypocrites, wackos, frauds, cheats and thieves.

And to think that millions of people have been permanently disenfranchised  even after completing their sentences  because politicians like some of those running for president say ex-offenders do not have the judgment or trustworthiness to cast a ballot.

Ive heard bits and pieces of the campaigns, candidates being called things like crooks and stupid,  said Morton, 28. Its been a dispiriting campaign, to say the least. I celebrated when I received a certificate saying my voting rights had been restored. But I just havent decided what to do.

Just vote, thats what he ought to do.

Get back into the habit of participating in the political life of the nation. These voting-rights-

revocation laws, which proliferated after the Civil War, were designed to do nothing more than keep black people away from the polls. However, as often happens, poor and working-class white people began getting caught up in the traps that were laid for black people.

As Paul Berendt, then the Washington state Democratic Party chairman, told the Seattle Times back in 2005:

We know for a fact that nonunion, blue-collar, Caucasian men vote very disproportionately Republican, and when you look at the felon population in the state of Washington, they are overwhelmingly nonunion, blue-collar, male Caucasians.

The result has been a budding bipartisan effort to reform these draconian restrictions on voting rights.

Today, there are an estimated 5 million Americans who have lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. Virginia, as it turns out, is one of the states doing the most to remedy the injustice, with Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) continuing reforms started under his predecessor, Robert F. McDonnell (R).

Nevertheless, Virginia still has one of the highest rates of disenfranchisement in the country. According to the Virginia ACLU, an estimated 450,000 Virginians are barred from voting for the rest of their lives because of a felony conviction  nearly 7 percent of the states population.

That includes 1 in 4 African American men in Virginia permanently banned from voting, and 20 percent of black people in the state, the ACLU says. The numbers would be even higher if McAuliffe hadnt made policy changes that have helped people with certain drug convictions get their voting rights restored sooner and removed the requirement that people pay court fines and fees before applying for restoration.

Black people make up 45 percent of those arrested for drug offenses in Virginia, even though they are only 19.7 percent of the states population  and despite evidence showing that white people use illegal drugs at higher rates than black people, according to the ACLU.

Such systemic racial disparity could understandably lead to despair and cynicism among black ex-offenders. Why even participate in a political process that undergirds obvious injustice?

Because voting is the best remedy, no matter how imperfect.

The real push now should be for people to find out if they are eligible to have their voting rights restored and get it done in time for the November elections, said Rebecca Green, a law professor and co-director of William and Mary Law Schools Election Law Program.

It takes a few months to go through the process, so they need to start now, said Green, who also helps run a project for disenfranchised Virginia residents called Revive My Vote. At least in Virginia, theres never been a better time to apply to get your rights back.

And when ex-offenders do succeed in getting their rights, they need to use them. Hopefully, Morton exercised his and voted  if only for the candidate who lies the least.

To read previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/milloy.
Maria Esteves in her Fairfax County home. Esteves's purse containing money for her daughter's tuition was stolen in January at a local doughnut shop. (Kate Patterson/for The Washington Post)

Maria Candida Esteves always had one simple message for her children.

Dont steal, Esteves, 51, recalled in a recent interview. When you need something, you ask for it.

Now Fairfax County police say the mother of two has found herself the victim of a galling theft: Someone stole $10,000 in cash that she had set aside for her daughters college tuition. After weeks of investigation, the thief  who was seen on surveillance video  has yet to be caught.

Investigators say it happened around 11:50 a.m. Jan 10. Esteves said it is family tradition: Every Sunday the family goes to a Dunkin Donuts in Falls Church. And even though Esteves and her husband were taking their daughter back to Penn State University, that Sunday was no different.

They stopped; they ate. They didnt sit at their usual table, but all seemed well when they piled in their car packed with college supplies.

Police in Fairfax are looking for a woman who, they say, stole a purse with cash in it from a doughnut shop. (Fairfax County Police Department)

That was until Esteves looked down at her feet and didnt see her purse. She said she asked her 18-year-old daughter to check the back seat. It wasnt there.

The family turned the car around. A traffic light took long to change, Esteves said, and her husband ran out of the car onto Arlington Boulevard and into the store.

Estevess purse  which she said held a bank envelope with Lilianas Tuition scrawled on it  was no longer hanging on a chair near the door.

Officer Roger Henriquez, a Fairfax County police spokesman, said theres clear video of what happened after the family left.

A woman sitting in the doughnut shop looked to her right and spotted Estevess unattended purse. She turned around and then looked up and toward the counter. She gathered her coffee and her own purse, walked over to the unattended purse and peeked inside.

The woman walked more, tossed something in the trash and then tucked Estevess purse inside her own before walking out the door.

Purse snatchings are, unfortunately, common in the county, Henriquez said.

Its usually a situation of opportunity, he said. All it takes is three or four seconds to be distracted.

The lady that did the crime grabbed it, and it was her lucky day: $10,000 in cash, Henriquez added.

But it has been painful for Esteves, who has worked cleaning houses each day  except Sunday  for more than 25 years. She said she socked away much of what she earned for her childrens education.

Cleaning floors on my knees  thats the way I worked, she said. And its okay to work. I dont feel bad about my work at all  Im not complaining. Im just complaining that she stole my money.

[Teenagers college tuition money stolen from purse at doughnut shop in Fairfax area]

Because Esteves had been saving over time, the family was able to pull together the money to pay the spring tuition. The Estevess daughter is now hoping they get lucky and someone notices the purse snatcher.

I dont know her. I dont know her life. I dont know what shes been through. I dont know her struggles, said Candida Liliana Ferrufino Esteves, also known as Lili to family, of the mystery woman. But its safe to say she got a glimpse into our struggles. And for someone to, like, take something thats not yours and for someone to see something that clearly says  Lilis tuition  I cant, like, process it through my brain.

Its another layer of wrong.

The younger Esteves is a freshman and pre-med major at Penn State University. Her mother immigrated from Portugal, her father from Bolivia. A saying her dad once sent her, which loosely translated to the pencil weighs less than the shovel, inspired her to go to college.

They worked their whole lives their lives for me and my brother to never know what they go through  that pain, she said. When it came to education, my parents never said You cant go too far, you cant do this. 

She said the money was taken from her and her family. Whats left behind is the guilt.

Fifty-one-year-old Esteves has cried every day.

I wanted to have the money to provide for them later on, and then this happened, and it made me feel helpless, she said. Its money I earned with all my hard work and time away from my kids that I could be with them. Why work so hard if this happens?

It was my fault that I left that purse there, she added during a recent interview at her Fairfax County home.

She studied her daughters face on a nearby tablet screen. No, Mom, shot back her 18-year-old, who was listening in on a video call.

The teen said an officer promised they would find the purse snatcher. And Henriquez said investigators think the case will be solved when someone recognizes the suspect and tips off police.

The mystery woman left the doughnut shop in a dark-colored SUV. Authorities said they think the vehicle was a 2009 to 2011 Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Henriquez, who added that police have no new developments, said he hopes the purse snatcher puts herself in the shoes of the woman she stole from.

If it was you, would you want this person caught?
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and other federal officials have taken a special interest in Metro and its problems. (Bonnie Jo Mount)

The District, Maryland and Virginia have agreed on a plan to create an independent agency that will oversee safety at Metro, officials said Wednesday. But whether the deal will be enough to satisfy the nations top transportation official  and stave off the potential loss of at least $15 million in federal transit funds  remains to be seen.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has been outspoken in his frustration with elected officials in the three jurisdictions and the slow pace of their efforts to create a Metro safety oversight office.

In a meeting with reporters last week, Foxx reiterated his threat to withhold millions in federal funding from the jurisdictions if they fail to act on legislation to create the agency by the end of this year.

It appears the pressure worked.

On Wednesday, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that spells out the powers, governance, finance and jurisdiction of a new office overseeing the safety of Metro.

The Metro system is an enormous economic asset for the entire region, and ensuring that it is as safe as possible must be priority one, McAuliffe said. I look forward to continuing our work with Maryland and Washington, D.C., to execute this MOU and establish the Metro Safety Commission as soon as possible.

[Foxx: Metro safety cant wait]

But there is a catch. Under the agreement, D.C. officials would act to create the agency this year. Maryland and Virginia indicated that they would not be able to act on the matter until 2017, because their legislative sessions conclude shortly.

In his meeting with reporters last week, Foxx said delaying action beyond this year was unacceptable. His office did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a longtime supporter of Metro and a vocal critic of the agency for its safety and financial failings, said he was pleased about the agreement, but added, Frankly, its overdue  at least a year or two overdue.

As for Foxxs threat to withhold transportation funding for the three jurisdictions unless a safety commission is established this year, Connolly said it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get state legislative authorization for the commission before 2017, especially in Virginia.

Although the Maryland General Assembly has a month remaining in its session, which is due to end April 11, Virginias session is scheduled to end March 12. Before seeking votes on state funding for the commission, Connolly said, the two governors have to lay political groundwork, educating lawmakers from outside the Washington region about the critical importance of the Metro system.

With Virginia General Assembly members just a little more that a week from adjourning, McAuliffe could call them back into special session, Connolly said. But that would be expensive, he said, and perhaps controversial because the Metro situation is an issue specific to Northern Virginia  and not a big concern for the constituents of state lawmakers from distant districts.

Connolly said Foxx has some flexibility in taking cognizance of that, but he is also correct politically, it seems to me, to keep the heat on.

Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said it will take time to work through the details of how the oversight agency will work, but officials will provide Foxx with a schedule so he will know that the effort is moving forward.

The draft is just that  a draft that is still being reviewed and updated, said Erin Henson, spokeswoman for Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn. It is not ready to be shared at this point.

The memorandum of understanding says the three jurisdictions have developed a draft interstate compact that defines the powers, governance, financing and jurisdiction of the proposed safety commission. But Layne said the details are unlikely to be released until a final version is completed.

Late last year, Foxx transferred safety oversight of Metros rail operations to the Federal Transit Administration with the understanding that it would be temporary  until the three jurisdictions could develop a compact to create an oversight agency.

Candidly, I dont think the FTA wants to be stuck with this, said D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D). I think they want the jurisdictions taking care of their own  and I dont blame them.

The push by Foxx comes amid renewed concerns about whether he made the right decision to transfer safety oversight of Metros rail operations to the FTA.

The unprecedented move was made after federal officials determined that the agency charged with the task, the Tri-State Oversight Committee, was ill- equipped for the job.

But in giving oversight to the FTA, Foxx ignored an urgent recommendation from the National Transportation Safety Board to make the Federal Railroad Administration, an agency with a long history of safety oversight, responsible for Metro safety. The NTSB recently wrote to Foxx reiterating its concerns.

Foxx has taken an unusually hands-on approach to Metro safety. In July, frustrated with the lack of progress in the creation of the oversight agency, he summoned Bowser, Hogan and McAuliffe to a meeting. The three leaders pledged to work together to form the new body.

[Foxx meets privately with elected leaders to push Metro safety]

Foxx this week also sent a letter to the leaders of the Maryland and Virginia legislatures urging them to move quickly on the matter.

Said Connolly: I would hope Secretary Foxx would approach this issue with that level of sympathy, although I certainly support his sense of urgency and his willingness to keep the pressure on the respective jurisdictions. Because what the past has taught us is, absent that pressure, theyre not going to get it done with any deliberate speed.
Maryland is moving forward with its plan to build a light rail train line between Bethesda and New Carrollton. Gov. Larry Hogan announced a contract proposal on March 2 that would open the 21-stop Purple Line by 2022. (WUSA9)

Maryland is moving forward with its plan to build a light rail train line between Bethesda and New Carrollton. Gov. Larry Hogan announced a contract proposal on March 2 that would open the 21-stop Purple Line by 2022. (WUSA9)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Wednesday that the state has chosen a team of private companies to build, operate and maintain a light-rail Purple Line in the Washington suburbs for $3.3 billion over 36 years.

Under the winning bid  proposed by the team Purple Line Transit Partners and led by construction giant Fluor Corporation  the six-year construction project would begin late this year, and the 16-mile line would open for service by spring 2022.

If approved by the states Board of Public Works on April 6, the contract would allow the Maryland Transit Administration to secure about $900 million in recommended federal construction aid. That would put the final funding in place to build the regions first suburb-to-suburb rail link. The Purple Line also would be the first rail line to connect spokes of the Metrorail system, which was designed to carry federal workers between suburbs and the city.

It would be only the second U.S. transit project to involve private financing; the other is in Denver.

[Read The Posts latest coverage of the Purple Line plan]





The Purple Line would run two-car trains mostly along local streets between Bethesda in Montgomery County and New Carrollton in Prince Georges County, inside the Capital Beltway. The 21 stations would include Silver Spring, Langley Park, the University of Marylands flagship College Park campus and Riverdale.

Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn called the proposed contract very aggressive and said the states total cost of $3.3 billion was $550 million below estimates. The 36-year public-private partnership would amount to a $5.6 billion contract, Rahn said. However, the state would end up paying $3.3 billion because the rest would be covered by federal funding, county contributions and the Purple Lines fare revenue.

Were very pleased with this contract, Rahn said during a conference call with reporters. The companies involved are all experienced  theyre generally the largest within their fields. Were confident we have [a team] committed to delivering this project.

A spokeswoman for Purple Line Transit Partners referred questions to Maryland transportation officials.

The winning-bid team includes a Spanish rail car manufacturer that made the rail cars that a Metro spokesman called among the fleets least reliable. The company, CAF, provided Metros 5000-series rail cars in the early 2000s. The cars break down so often that Metro plans to replace them 20 years early.

CAFs rail cars also have come under scrutiny in Houston for being delivered late and 8,000 pounds overweight, and in Kansas City, Mo., and Cincinnati for late deliveries.

Asked how confident he was in CAFs ability to deliver high-quality Purple Line cars on time, Rahn said the contract includes financial penalties for the private consortium if the rail cars arent ready on schedule or do not provide reliable service.

The responsibility for the performance of the Purple Line is on Purple Line Transit Partners, Rahn said. They have substantial incentives to deliver on what they committed to by contract.

State officials say a Purple Line would provide faster and more reliable transit service than buses and would attract redevelopment around stations in aging, inner-Beltway suburbs. The line would be owned and operated by the MTA. Critics say the project is too expensive, would destroy a popular wooded recreational trail between Bethesda and Silver Spring, and would disrupt neighborhoods and businesses along the route.

Rahn repeatedly declined to say how much the line would cost to build compared with the previous $2.15 billion the state estimated. He said he focused on the states total net cost over 36 years  six years of construction and 30 years of operations  totaling $3.3 billion. The proposal chosen among four bids had the lowest overall cost and the best technical scores by a substantial margin, Rahn said.

The state would pay $159.8 mil- lion in upfront construction costs. The rest of the construction costs would be covered by about $900 million in federal aid and a combined $160 million pledged by Montgomery and Prince Georges counties. The counties also have pledged in-kind contributions, such as land.

After the line opens, the state would pay $149.4 million annually to cover the lines operating and maintenance costs and pay off the private teams construction debt. The state would pay the same amount regardless of how many people ride the line. Whatever annual costs arent covered by fare revenue would be paid out of the states transportation trust fund. The amount of those annual payments could be reduced if certain standards, such as clean stations and reliable service, arent met, state officials have said. The state would set fares.

Rahn said the upfront construction costs for the state would be $8 million lower than anticipated, and the annual payments would be $18 million less than predicted.

He said an additional $30 million in savings would come from design changes made to the Purple Line station at the Silver Spring Transit Center, although he didnt cite specifics.

Purple Line Transit Partners is led by three companies: Fluor, Meridiam and Star America. All three have pledged to invest money in the project and manage it long-term. Rahn said the private team would finance about $1 billion of the lines construction costs.

Experts say such arrangements ensure that the private sector shares in the financial risks because the companies have an incentive to build the rail line within budget and open it to revenue service on time. Public-private partnerships, if structured correctly, also encourage the private team to design and build a quality project that will be cost-efficient to operate and maintain, experts say.

Fluor would be the most extensively involved, from investing money to overseeing design, construction, operations and maintenance. Fluor says it is the largest publicly traded engineering and construction company in the United States.

Fluor designed and built 14 miles of Express toll lanes on Virginias portion of the Beltway and 29 miles of Express toll lanes on Interstate 95 between Stafford County and the Beltway. Both are public-private partnerships in which Fluor and its private partner, Transurban, covered most of the construction costs in exchange for lengthy contracts  78 years on the Beltway lanes and 73 years on I-95. Transurban operates the lanes and keeps the toll revenue. Fluor exited both projects after completing construction.

We found them to work very well on both projects  in the quality of their work, and they were on time and on budget, which are two key factors, said Dusty Holcombe, deputy director of Virginias public-private partnership office.

Fluor, headquartered in Irving, Tex., also is managing partner on a 34-year public-private partnership being used to build and operate a 36-mile commuter rail system in Denver. The first segment is scheduled to open in April. The Denver Eagle project, budgeted to cost $2.2 billion, was the first public-private partnership on a U.S. rail project.

Dave Genova, interim general manager for Denvers Regional Transportation District, described Fluor as a good collaborative partner.

They have people who can lead a project of this scope and magnitude, Genova said, and they have the expertise for the design and engineering and overseeing construction.

Meridiam, a French investment firm, would provide 70 percent of the private teams equity, according to a Meridiam news release. Meridiam makes long-term investments for pension funds and life insurance companies in public infrastructure projects, according to its website.

Star America, which is based in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., would provide 15 percent of the private equity, Meridiam said. Star America also invests in public infrastructure projects, according to its website.

Fluor would provide the other 15 percent of the private equity, Meridiam said.
The Iwo Jima Memorial in Rosslyn, Va. Arlington County will again be allowed to levy a small additional tax on hotel visits. (Tracy A. Woodward/THE WASHINGTON POST)

Five years after it lost a bruising battle with the Virginia General Assembly, Arlington County will again be allowed to levy a small additional tax on hotel visits, generating money for travel-and-tourism promotion.

The 0.25 percent tax on hotel rooms will bring in about $1.25 million in the coming fiscal year, county Budget Director Richard Stephenson said Wednesday, on top of an existing 5 percent tax on hotel visits.

The extra tax was first levied in 1990 but expired in 2011, said Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), who sponsored this years bill in the House of Delegates. The General Assembly refused to reinstate the tax because of a lawsuit Arlington had filed against the commonwealth over its plan to build high-

occupancy toll lanes on Interstate 395.

[Va. lawmakers approve hotel taxes  except in Arlington]

In addition to costing Arlington revenue, the standoff seriously damaged the relationship between the states most liberal county and its more conservative legislature.

The Arlington County Board chair, Libby Garvey (D), on Wednesday lauded the passage of the legislation, calling the additional tax a vital tool in the countys efforts to attract more visitors.

Garvey and Hope noted that the bill passed with larger-than-

needed majorities, and credited the local business community and County Board member John Vihstadt (I) with lobbying Republican leaders and lawmakers to let bygones be bygones.

Richmond lawmakers understand and appreciate that Arlington is under new management, said Vihstadt, referring to recent turnover on the County Board. We want to work together to help our tourist economy thrive.

Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax), who sponsored the bill in the Senate for the past four years, said: The time for vendetta is over. The people theyre angry with have almost all been replaced.

According to a 2015 study by the Virginia Tourism Corporation, visitors staying in Arlington generated $80.75 million in local tax receipts and $107.8 million in state taxes in 2014. Tourism accounts for about 25,000 jobs in Arlington, the local convention and visitors bureau said, and the reinstatement of the transient occupancy tax was the countys top priority.

The bill, which has yet to be signed by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), allows the tax to be levied for two years. Hope said he has every reason to believe it will be extended again in the future.
Donald Trump captured Virginias Republican primary Tuesday, beating back a vigorous challenge from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in a key swing state and cementing his status as the leader for his partys presidential nomination.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won a resounding victory, bolstering her place as the partys front-runner as voters rejected the insurgent campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

While pre-primary polls showed Trump leading in Virginia by a wide margin, Rubio benefited from robust turnout in Northern Virginia, capturing twice the number of votes as the billionaire in the suburbs outside Washington, according to preliminary exit polls.

But Trump overwhelmed his competitors in more rural areas, including the Shenandoah Valley to the west and the Tidewater region in the south, and drew enough votes in the suburbs to emerge victorious.

[The way Trump won the Va. primary could mean trouble for him in the fall]

Over the past generation, Virginia has evolved into an important bellwether in presidential elections, with its diverse population of blue-collar workers, suburban professionals and immigrants serving as a microcosm for the country.

Virginia was key in George W. Bushs victories in 2000 and 2004. But the state went Democratic in 2008, with its burgeoning population in Northern Virginia helping to catapult Barack Obama to the presidency. That unpredictability has made Virginia an important prize for both parties heading into November.

Desperate for his first primary victory, Rubio devoted significant resources to the commonwealth in the days before voting, drawing support from high-income and highly educated Virginians as he hoped to emerge as the moderate alternative to Trump.

Rubio also performed well in the suburbs outside of Richmond, home to former Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor, who was unseated in 2014 by Rep. Dave Brat, a tea party upstart.

But Trump was able to hold off Rubio in part because Ohio Gov. John Kasich also took a significant number of votes in Northern Virginia, including 23 percent each in Arlington, Alexandria and Falls Church.

[What Virginia results mean for the rest of the country]

On the Democratic side, African Americans, voters older than 45 and those who favor candidates with experience propelled Clinton over Sanders. More than half of Democrats said they favor President Obamas policies, which Clinton has promised to continue if she wins the White House.

Here are key moments from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders's speeches, as results from Super Tuesday elections rolled in on March 1. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Republican turnout across Virginia was record-breaking: roughly four times the level of 2012 and more than twice as many as voted in 2008, although both those contests were less competitive than Tuesdays race. Democratic turnout was down, compared with 2008, the last time there was an open race for the White House.

In Arlington, poll workers ran out of Republican ballots and scrambled to make additional copies, registrar Linda Lindberg said.

Mike Lane, a veteran precinct captain in Alexandria, called the turnout exceptional and incredibly unexpected.

Clintons victory was also a win for Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a close friend of and fundraiser for the candidate and her husband, former president Bill Clinton. McAuliffe said the Democratic contest was notable for its civility, unlike the divisive race to the bottom playing out on the other side.

Virginia Democrats were presented with a substantive choice about the future of our country, he said. Tonight they made the right one and helped bring Hillary Clinton another step closer to becoming our nominee and our president.

But John Whitbeck, chairman of the state GOP, said that Clinton, despite her victory, had real problems convincing voters she is trustworthy and the right leader for the country.

Trump was counting on a victory in Virginia to build his delegate lead in the nominating process and add to the growing evidence that he appeals to a broad swath of Republicans, including blue-collar voters, college graduates and evangelical conservatives.

Clintons victory in Virginia is likely to help dispel doubts about her viability as the Democratic nominee and position her strongly for the fall contest.

In preliminary exit polls, more than 8 in 10 Virginia Democrats said they wanted a president who is a mainstream candidate, as opposed to someone outside the political establishment.

A third of the Democratic electorate identified experience as a key quality in a candidate, topping any other attribute.

The momentum is clearly in Hillarys direction, said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University. The fact that voters are choosing experience over an outsider is so different than the Republican side right now  and thats her calling card. In a year thats supposed to be all about outsiders, shes proving that experience still matters and that many voters want a certifiably qualified person as president.

While Democrats in Virginia prized experience, Republicans were looking for a candidate to challenge the political establishment.

More than 1 in 3 Republicans said the quality they most want in a presidential candidate is an ability to bring needed change, according to preliminary exit polls.

Fewer than 2 in 10 Republicans said a candidates ability to win in Novembers general election was the most important quality, and a similar share said they want a candidate who tells it like it is.

About 6 in 10 Virginia Republicans said that undocumented immigrants who are working should have a legal way of staying in the country, and a vast majority of those voters supported Rubio. Trump led by an even wider margin among voters who want to deport undocumented immigrants.

In interviews with The Washington Post over the past week, Trumps supporters in the commonwealth repeatedly said they liked the billionaire for his ability to roil Washington. But an equal number  3 in 10  said they were seeking a candidate who shares their values, a theme that both Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas stressed in their visits to the state.

I think the change vote is one that is most important for Trump, said Robert Holsworth, a retired Virginia Commonwealth University political science professor. The big question is: How does Trump do in the Northern Virginia suburbs and the Richmond suburbs. For Republicans to win in November, Trump has to be a good candidate in the suburbs  and its an open question whether he is.

As polls closed, Cruz and Kasich were fighting it out well below Trump and Rubio, jockeying for the third and fourth spots.

After voting in Prince William County, Jim Collins, 62, a building inspector, said he pulled the lever for Trump, even though he isnt convinced that the billionaire will win in November.

While he may not make the presidency, hes definitely put things on the table that the other candidates have to address, Collins said. Thats what I like about him.

At the Herndon Community Center, where a mix of Hispanic and Asian immigrants joined the growing stream of voters all morning, several Hispanic residents said they had chosen Clinton and were offended by the negative comments Trump had made about Mexicans and illegal immigrants.

Karen Gonzaga, 37, said she liked Trump, but Im not ready for him  hes too extreme. Instead, she voted for Rubio, in part because she thinks he would restore political peace in Washington.

Everything is so chaotic now, she said. We have to be a democracy and talk to each other.

Correction: Some earlier versions of this article gave incorrect information for how many votes Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) won in specific Northern Virginia jurisdictions. The article has been corrected.

Scott Clement contributed to this report.
Virginia Supreme Court Justice Jane Marum Roush addresses the House Courts of Justice Committee in Richmond in January, the month before her most recent appointment expired. (Bob Brown/AP)

Republicans in the Virginia Senate on Wednesday approved Gov. Terry McAuliffes embattled state Supreme Court pick, but only as part of a complicated procedural scheme that could give the GOP the element of surprise as it seeks to install someone else in the slot.

The GOP-controlled Senate voted for former justice Jane Marum Roush, McAuliffes choice for the states highest court. But the House promptly rejected her, with 38 delegates voting for her and 55 taking the rare step of voting against the nominee.

Legislators opposed to judicial candidates typically leave the chamber rather than vote nay, out of deference to the office.

The purpose of the exercise was both symbolic and procedural. By taking up a joint House-Senate resolution to elect Roush, the legislature got the judicial-election process rolling. It is a long, cumbersome process that requires legislators to act as messengers, scurrying back and forth between chambers to report on a series of procedural votes.

With that step behind them, Senate Republicans are now free to put another name up for an immediate vote  avoiding delays that could give Democratic leaders time to pressure potential defectors back into the party fold. Earlier this session, Republicans thought they had persuaded two Democratic lawmakers to support GOP-backed nominees for the court appointment, only to see those potential deals fall apart after word got out.

McAuliffe (D) has twice put Roush on the bench temporarily, but both times the Republican-controlled legislature has declined to give her a full 12-year appointment. Her most recent appointment expired in February, leaving her unemployed and the court shorthanded.

[Time runs out  again  for McAuliffes Supreme Court pick]

Republicans have not questioned the qualifications of Roush, a highly regarded former Fairfax County Circuit Court judge who has presided over many high-profile cases, including the trial of D.C.-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo. But they have noted that judicial appointments are theirs to make and that they prefer Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr., who has served on the Court of Appeals since 2009. Republicans also have said that McAuliffe violated protocol by not consulting them on the choice.

Republicans have the votes in the House to install Alston, but they are one vote short in the closely divided Senate, where freshman Glen Sturtevant (R-Richmond) has refused to go along with his partys plan.

Republicans were tight-lipped about how Wednesdays maneuvering might ultimately advance Alstons prospects. But some said privately that it could pave the way for a quick floor vote on Alston when and if they can convince one more senator to support him.

Well see the drama play out, said Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (R-Rockingham), chairman of the Courts of Justice Committee.

One day in late January, Sen. Kenneth C. Alexander (D-Norfolk) said he was considering voting for Alston, but hours later he said he had decided to support Roush.

Soon after that, Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) voted in the courts committee to support Alston and said she would also back him in a floor vote. But she changed her position after meeting privately with McAuliffe.
Did Democratic crossover voters in Virginia help fuel the states extraordinary surge in Republican voting on Super Tuesday?

More than twice as many GOP ballots were cast on Tuesday than had been submitted in the 2008 presidential primary. Part of the increase was undoubtedly because of the tumultuous nature of this years Republican primary, and the fact that there are still many candidates jostling for votes.

But interviews at the polls and posts on social media showed that at least a slice of those voters were people who planned to vote Democratic in the fall, but took advantage of Virginias open-primary law to try to impact the Republican race.

Lifelong Democrat here and I cast my first vote for a Republican yesterday in the VA primary, Liz Odar, an Arlington millennial, said in an email. I decided my vote was better used as a vote against Trump.

Arlington, the bluest of the counties in Virginia, recorded more than 27,000 voters in the GOP primary so many that election officials ran out of pre-printed ballots in some precincts.

[What Virginia says to the rest of the country]

Several thousand voters received officially photocopied ballots so they could cast their votes, registrar Linda Lindberg said. Those ballots then had to be counted by hand.

Jim Presswood, chairman of the Arlington Republican Committee, said he and other long-time Republicans have heard about crossover voting but its an impossibility to know for sure.

While billionaire Donald Trump won the state, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) placed first in Arlington and across Northern Virginia, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich also did relatively well in the Washington suburbs.

We were very excited that there was this much interest in our candidates, Presswood said. We hope they will mark their ballots for us again.

[Trump won Virginia Tuesday, but could struggle in November]

Dave Kennedy, director of a nonprofit association, said he voted for Kasich on Tuesday, though he normally backs Democrats.

Its the best use of my vote, to stir up the pot on the Republican side, said Kennedy, 53.

In Alexandria, another historically Democratic jurisdiction, more than 13,000 Republican ballots were cast, and Rubio won every precinct. There were 23,430 Democratic ballots, a drop of about 14 percent compared to 2008.

There were probably a lot of Republicans and maybe some independents who were threatened by [Trump],said Clarence Tong, chairman of the Alexandria Democrats.
Saying he wanted to avoid a likely nasty Republican contest, Henrico County Sheriff Mike Wade plans to run for a newly Democratic-leaning open seat in Virginia rather than challenge Rep. Dave Brat.

Wade will most likely face state Sen. A. Donald McEachin (Henrico), the only Democrat thus far to declare interest in the seat being vacated by Rep. Randy Forbes (R).

Forbes, meanwhile, is moving districts in hopes of replacing retiring Rep. Scott Rigell (R). His current seat became far more Democratic under a new court-imposed map correcting Republican lines deemed unconstitutional.

I dont think its impossible to win under the new lines, said Wade, whose decision was first reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. While he lives in Brats district, he grew up and goes to church in the district he hopes to represent. He says hes well-known in the area and can reach across the aisle.

Wade says he thinks he could have won against Brat as well. However, the contest would have been a convention rather than a primary, and he said he didnt want to put his allies through that process.

I would have had to bring a lot of people to the convention, and I didnt want to bring a lot of friends to the convention.

He recalled the state convention that preceded Brats victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014.

They were very nasty, he said. A lot of [Brats] followers havent been exactly nice to me.

He said he was told that Brat supporters were going to start a petition to get him removed from office, and he saw online postings soliciting unflattering photos of him.

Im not scared of them, he said. I just think I have a better opportunity in the Fourth.

The 4th Congressional District Wade hopes to win became 11 percent more African American and 12 percent more Democratic under the map chosen by a federal court. Brats district also became slightly more Democratic and lost two of his conservative strongholds, leaving him more vulnerable to a primary challenge.

In Congress, Wade said he would like to focus on mental health, substance abuse and correctional reform. As manager of a jail himself and a past president of the American Corrections Association, he said, he could bring much-needed perspective to the criminal justice debate.

He would also like to reform privacy laws that he thinks make it too difficult for parents to help mentally ill adult children.

I would like to be the corrections voice and make very constructive changes that would benefit both inmates and the field of corrections, Wade said.
Moments before Virginia lawmakers passed a bill Tuesday that allows parental control over sexually explicit material taught in schools, a senator read aloud a graphic rape scene on the floor of the Senate.

How can we debate them if we dont read them? said Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr. (R-Buckingham), who read from the Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye, quoting words not typically spoken in the genteel chamber.

The critically acclaimed works of Morrison, a Nobel laureate, have been at the center of a heated debate about a bill that would make Virginia the first state in the nation to require K-to-12 teachers to notify parents of classroom materials with sexually explicit content. Parents could then opt out their children and request that the teacher provide an alternative assignment.

About half of Virginia school districts already follow this practice, but lawmakers who support the bill said it should be enshrined in state law. Opponents say the measure would remove discretion from local school boards and push Virginia down a slippery slope toward banning books.

The Senate on Tuesday passed the bill, 22 to 17, with the support of all Republicans and one Democrat, Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (Accomack), who also voted for it in committee last week. Sen. Jeremy S. McPike (D-Prince William) was absent.

The bill now goes back to the House for a final vote before it reaches the desk of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), whose spokesman declined to say whether the governor would veto it. The House previously passed it unanimously in a block of uncontested bills, but subsequent attention could prompt some Democrats to vote differently.

The floor debate in the Senate veered into uncharted territory when Garrett, who is running for Congress, read from an excerpt that he later said was provided by Laura Murphy, the Fairfax County mother who prompted the bill, but he didnt know which novel included the passage.

Sen. Stephen D. Newman (R-Lynchburg) interrupted Garrett and asked him to stop reading the scene because he said it was inappropriate for 12- and 13-year-old pages who were present in the chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) made a humble request for Garrett to cease, and he agreed.

A few minutes later, a visibly shaken Sen. John A. Cosgrove Jr. (R-Chesapeake) thanked Newman and Norment for pleading for a stop to one of the worst  worst!  soliloquies weve heard on this house floor. Im ashamed.

In an interview later, Garrett said he would allow his 16-year-old daughter to read Morrisons work but he wanted to be notified about it first. Id like veto power, he said.

Several Democrats spoke against the bill, which calls for the state Board of Education to write specific guidelines for how teachers should proceed.

Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) said the bill undermines Virginias efforts to appear progressive in an effort to attract business that can rejuvenate the state economy.

Toni Morrison has won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and shes the last American author to win the Nobel Prize for literature, she said. So lets just make ourselves look ridiculous.

[Special delivery to Va. lawmakers: 22 copies of Beloved, The Bluest Eye]

But Sen. Charles Bill Carrico Sr. (R-Grayson) said the bill alone wouldnt remove books from schools or deny students or parents the opportunity to read any book. He added that easily influenced children should not be exposed to books that include passages about rape, incest and bestiality, which he called evil.

That evil act is just like a kitten, he said. It may be playful and harmless in the beginning, but you feed that evil, it grows and it grows. . . . Its going to grow into a lion, and its going to eat you.

In response, Sen. Mamie E. Locke (D-Hampton), who is chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, noted that the bill applies not only to English, but also science, physical education, social studies, art and art history.

This bill is the kitten that is about to morph into a lion, she said, because next year were going to be seeing something else added on to this legislation that were going to be banning.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won Tuesday night in Virginia. But the details of their victories should make Democrats happy and Republicans nervous.

The state is a crucial battleground for both parties in November. Most analysts say that the winning candidate will be whoever dominates in the voter-rich suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia.

In Fairfax, Loudoun and  narrowly  Prince William counties, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) outperformed Trump on Super Tuesday, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich had his own strong current of support.

[See full Super Tuesday results here]

Ground zero now is all those Rubio and Kasich voters in Northern Virginia, said Dan Scandling, a longtime aide to former Republican congressman Frank R. Wolf.

If Trump is the GOP nominee, he said, where are they going to be in November? Do they stay with the party? Do they vote Democratic? Or do they just not vote in the presidential race?

Exit polling suggests the latter two options are possible. A majority of Virginia Republican voters  55 percent said they would be dissatisfied with Trump as their partys nominee.

[What Virginia says to the rest of the country]

In addition, several Republican voters told The Washington Post on Tuesday that they probably would not vote for Trump in November. Dario Sotomayor, 30, a Rubio voter in Arlington, said that if Trump gets the nomination, he will actively work for the Democratic nominee.

Trump is forgetting where [his family] came from. Hes forgotten the roots of this country, said Sotomayor, a Texas-born businessman of Mexican descent. Hes inciting everyone into thinking racism is right.

By contrast, 78 percent of Democratic voters said they would be satisfied with Clinton as their partys nominee. Her victory in the state crossed all demographic lines: She won among men and women, among low-income and high-income voters, and in every region but the rural west. She also won with every age group except 17-to-29-year-olds.

Republican officials took comfort from the high Republican turnout on primary day  twice as many voters as in 2008, the partys most recent non-incumbent presidential primary. We just blew the Democrats numbers out of the water, said the state party chairman, John Whitbeck. It was a great night for us.

Democratic turnout, on the other hand, sank by a fifth.

[Love him or hate him, Trump is what brought many Va. voters to the polls]

But with nearly all precincts reporting Tuesday night, Clinton had received 497,581 votes, and Trump had 352,833. In Loudoun, where voters have backed the winning general-election candidate in every presidential race since 2000, Rubio and Kasich combined to win a majority of the Republican votes, and Trump lost to Rubio by double digits.

To me, the most important and impressive story of the night so far is the breadth and diversity of the @HillaryClinton coalition in Virginia, tweeted Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who advises a pro-Clinton super PAC.

Some Clinton supporters were openly speculating that the surge in Republican votes Tuesday came in part from Democrats who plan to support their partys nominee in the fall but chose to cast Republican ballots in Virginias open primary.

[Super Tuesday a nightmare for GOP establishment]

One bright spot for Trump: He essentially tied Rubio in Prince William, an increasingly diverse county that  like Loudoun  has been a bellwether in recent elections. Anger over illegal immigration runs high among Republicans there, and Corey A. Stewart, the county board chairman, stood strongly behind the business mogul, chairing his statewide campaign.

Trump is the only one who is likely to do anything about illegal immigration, and I think that definitely hits a nerve in Prince William County, Stewart said.

In 2014, U.S. Senate hopeful Mark R. Warner (D) narrowly lost Loudoun to Republican Ed Gillespie. But Warner beat Gillespie in Prince William and went on to win the state, and Stewart suggested Wednesday that Trump could forge a similar path to victory.

At the same time, Clinton got thousands more primary votes in Prince William than Trump did.

Former congressman Thomas M. Davis, who is helping Kasich, said it is still too early to assume that Trump will be the partys nominee.

John Kasich could actually beat Hillary Clinton up here in November, said Davis, who represented Fairfax while in Congress.

He also disputed the idea that Kasich cost Rubio a win in Virginia by splitting the anti-Trump vote. At this point, were all on the same team, Davis said, with the common goal of stopping Trump at the Republican convention. For that to happen, he maintained, Kasich needs to stay in the race until Ohios March 15 primary.

Stewart, meanwhile, argued that it is too hard to extrapolate the results of a primary to a general election. No poll, no exit poll of any kind, can tell us how people are going to feel eight months from now.
IRAQ

Suicide attack kills 8 on military compound

Four suicide bombers disguised as soldiers struck an Iraqi military headquarters in the western town of Haditha on Tuesday, killing eight army officers, including a local commander.

The Islamic State militant group claimed the attack in statements issued on jihadist websites.

Haditha is about 150 miles northwest of Baghdad, near a key dam on the Euphrates. The Islamic State has attacked the town on several occasions but has been unable to seize it.

Meanwhile, officials said Iraqi forces, primarily Shiite militias, launched a new push to retake a sprawling desert area outside the central city of Samarra, home to one of Shiite Islams holiest shrines. They hope to cut the Islamic States supply lines and tighten the noose around the key militant-held northern city of Mosul, according to a statement by the Joint Operations Command. It said Iraqi jets were supporting the mission.

Iraqi forces have advanced against the Islamic State in recent months, driving the extremists from the western city of Ramadi and pushing them back on other fronts. But progress has been slow, and

the group has launched counterattacks.

 Associated Press

Afghan police officer kills 4 colleagues; 11 missing: An Afghan police officer fatally shot four of his colleagues at a checkpoint on a remote stretch of a major southern highway, an official said. Eleven other officers manning the checkpoint when the shooting occurred were missing, said the police chief of Uruzgan province. The Taliban asserted responsibility for the incident. Afghanistan has experienced several such insider attacks in recent years.

Bomb kills 2 Pakistanis working with U.S. mission: Secretary of State John F. Kerry said two Pakistanis working with the U.S. Consulate in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar were killed by a roadside bomb while on a mission to eradicate drug cultivation. A Pakistani government administrator said the bomb targeted officials working for a project on the eradication of poppies. The project is being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Ukraine bans officials from criticizing government: Ukraine has banned government officials from publicly criticizing the work of state institutions and their colleagues, after damaging disclosures last month that highlighted slow progress in fighting corruption. The move drew criticism from some civil servants, who say it is a blow to the freedom of speech and at odds with the embattled governments Western-backed reform drive.

Ex-U.N. climate official charged with stalking: A former chairman of the U.N. climate panel, Rajendra Pachauri, was charged with stalking and sexually harassing a woman who worked at the New Delhi environmental think tank he has led for more than three decades. Pachauri has denied the allegations but resigned last year from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Energy Research Institute after the researchers accusations were published in Indian newspapers. His recent appointment to another top post at the institute renewed outrage. An initial court hearing is scheduled for April 23.

Britain revises surveillance bill after criticism: The British government said it has amended a proposed Internet surveillance law to strengthen privacy protections after the bill met with criticism from lawmakers, global technology firms and civil liberties groups. The measure is meant to replace a patchwork of laws and define the scope and limits of surveillance in the digital age. But the revisions have not impressed critics, one of whom said the changes amounted to minor Botox.

 From news services
AFTER SUPER Tuesday, Donald Trump could well be on the ballot come November  which means, among other things, that Americans are going to be offered a radical view of the world, and Americas role in it. The Trump foreign policy, at least as hes described it in various outbursts on the campaign trail, is that the United States long-standing relationships and alliances are stacked against it, and that they must be downgraded, renegotiated or abandoned in favor of closer ties with, well, almost no one, except possibly Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Quite apart from the ugly moral implications, the sudden, sullen U.S. retreat Mr. Trump advocates would be deeply destabilizing for an already unstable world.

The negative global impact would begin at the southern border. Relations between the United States and Mexico, once frosty but now warm thanks to a generation-long effort on both sides of the border, would be sacrificed to a pharaonic anti-migrant wall project and, possibly, a trade war, about which Mr. Trump says, I dont mind. Mr. Trump would pick fights with Japan and South Korea over their purported insufficient payments for the U.S. troop presence in those countries, even though each country funds about half the non-personnel costs  and even though the costs of dealing with a U.S.-free Asia, in which Japan and South Korea might go nuclear for fear of China and North Korea, could be higher by far.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump implies that he would forge cozy ties with strongmen and rely on them to keep order in their various domains and spheres of influence. His admiration for Mr. Putin  flattering himself, Mr. Trump boasts that the admiration is mutual  is already well-known. The revelation in the last Republican debate before Super Tuesday, though, was Mr. Trumps benign view of Iraqs Saddam Hussein and Libyas Moammar Gaddafi: At least they killed terrorists, all right? he observed. This, regarding dictators with a long and proven record of backing murders of Americans, including 189 killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Mr. Trump leavened these geostrategic musings by noting it would be a fantastic thing to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and merited a stance by him of neutrality toward the two parties. What he didnt explain was how or why he would prove any more successful than past peacemakers, such as Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who recently spent a lot of time and U.S. prestige proving that the moment is not ripe.

To be sure, all of the above could change with the candidates mood, or with his naming of a foreign policy team  something Mr. Trump promised last September but has yet to deliver. For now, though, this is what we know: The likely Republican nominee has a wildly distorted assessment of the risks and rewards of U.S. engagement with the world. He envisions a country that seals itself off behind walls, physical and conceptual  and emerges only to bomb the odd terrorist camp or haul in a suspect for much worse  than waterboarding. Ultimately, this would prove far more costly to the American people than the institutions, alliances and commitments that Mr. Trump derides.
A march on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, in Jerusalem's Old City on April 23, 2015. (Gali Tibbon/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

It is ironic that Andrew Bowen of the Center for the National Interest, in his Feb. 28 letter, An alliance that threatens Turkey, chose to impugn Armenia for an alliance that permits Russia to build an air base near the Turkish border. Mr. Bowen should refresh his history of the World War I era, when the remnants of a failed Ottoman Empire inflicted their final savagery through the ethnic cleansing of at least a million Armenians. The method was a deadly military assault extending across eastern Anatolia, into Armenian-populated areas governed by Russia. Thanks to Russian intervention, Turkeys massacres, unequaled up to that period in the 20th century, were brought to an end.

Despite those horrific events, the United States government has never officially acknowledged this genocide or held Turkey accountable.

Disregarding Armenias gratitude and the obvious socioeconomic ties to its dominant neighbor, one might ask, Is Russias Armenian air base any less intrusive then Americas naval base in Cuba or hundreds of other U.S. military sites around the world? Finally, when might Turkey, the United States alleged friend, strive for a more peaceful Middle East by recognizing and reconciling with the Kurds, a major culture, in and surrounding Turkey?

Paul Manoukian, Arlington
THE AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union went to court last month to challenge an egregious Kansas law that requires residents to provide proof of citizenship  such as a birth certificate  to register to vote. The requirement seems contrary to the intent of the federal Motor Voter law, which was supposed to make registration simple. But legal or not, this state law and others like it are truly awful public policy.

The case for the Kansas law is that noncitizens might be able to get drivers licenses and register to vote at the department of motor vehicles, potentially allowing them to skirt the fraud prevention that more conventional voter-ID laws provide. But there is scant evidence of such voter fraud, and certainly not enough to justify demanding that people jump through even more hoops to cast a ballot.

When we asked Craig McCullah, a spokesman for Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach, for evidence that voting by noncitizens is a problem demanding a significant policy response, he responded, If there is no murder in Washington, D.C., does that mean that Washington shouldnt have a law against murder?

Arizona State Universitys News21 counted 2,068 cases of alleged voter fraud across the country between 2000 and 2012. Registration fraud accounted for about 18 percent of those cases  mainly occurring when paid registration workers signed up fake people in order to get more money. Maybe there is a tidal wave of undercover, malicious voter fraud occurring under the noses of hyper-zealous election officials. More likely, it simply is not a major problem. Kansass law might cut down on some rare instances of registration fraud, but that still would not justify the burdens it imposes on citizens trying to exercise a fundamental right.

The Kansas secretary of states office claims that there is no evidence that the states restrictions, which have been in place since 2013, have prevented anyone from voting. But evidence certainly exists that even conventional voter-ID laws, which erect lower barriers to the ballot box, discourage voting. A 2014 Government Accountability Office analysis found scattered instances of voter fraud in Kansas and Tennessee in the 2012 presidential election but a much more concerning two-to-three-percentage-point drop in turnout attributable to the states new voter-ID requirements. In the absence of strong evidence of a problem, the government should err on the side of encouraging the vote rather than turning it into a bureaucratic ordeal.

In other words, states should streamline the voter registration system, not complicate it. Oregon and California have moved to an automatic system, for example, registering people when they get drivers licenses unless they specifically ask to opt out. This should be a first step toward universal voter registration. States, not individual voters, should take on the responsibility to keep voter rolls complete and accurate.
Regarding the Feb. 28 editorial Gun violence: 7,548 incidents and counting:

As a retired detective, I do not understand why the editorial board failed to mention the huge role that drug prohibition plays in the deaths of so many of our youths. Young people are shot  sometimes shot dead  every day because of their employment in the drug trade in the United States.

Given the justified concern for the death toll from guns, why continue to support our nearly 50-year-long, trillion-dollar, highly unsuccessful modern prohibition?

Howard Wooldridge, Adamstown

I do not accept that there is anything absolute about the Second Amendment. Having read District of Columbia v. Heller , in which the Supreme Court ruled that individual Americans have the right to bear arms, I believe there are at least two grounds for it to be reversed.

First, Justice Antonin Scalia discovered an ancient right to bear arms for self-defense, inherited from English common law, that no other common-law nation, including England, appears to have, and that, by the way, has nothing to do with militias.

Second is the absurdity of the proposition itself, that the security of a free state depends on a well-regulated militia. We dont have a well-regulated militia, and if we did, we certainly would not be more secure, as recent events in Oregon have made abundantly clear. The premise Justice Scalia relied on is that our Founding Fathers believed we needed a peoples militia, not regulated by Congress, to protect us from the tyranny of our own government. If such tyranny came into existence, an armed populace likely would be powerless to resist it.

Some people in this country may still believe we need a militia, but they seem to exist mainly on a dangerous fringe. I hope the new court will take another look at the demoralizing position in which we find ourselves and do something about it.

Donald M. Goldberg, Chevy Chase
Asked to describe the current shape of the Middle East, a visiting Israeli official uses a Hebrew expression, gam vegam , which translates roughly to: Its going in both directions at once.

The shards of the Middle East mosaic are as sharp and dangerous as ever, but U.S., Israeli and Arab officials say these pieces have been rearranged in the past few months  and may now fit together in different and often surprising ways. There are opportunities few observers would have expected and also new perils. President Obama is often seen as a lame duck who is hobbling off the Middle East stage in his final 10 months as president. But the pace is likely to be set largely by Secretary of State John F. Kerry, a man who still has something to prove as a diplomat.

However the next months unfold, 2016 will shape the options for the next president. The departing Obama, who hoped to change the strategic balance in the Middle East, has partly done that  encouraging others to take a larger military role, for better or worse, but preserving U.S. diplomacy.

What are the new puzzle pieces? First, theres Syria, arguably Obamas greatest foreign policy failure. Despite a chorus of naysayers, Kerry has managed to cajole the various Syria antagonists  Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the fractious Syrian opposition  into the same tent to work on details of a cease-fire.

This diplomatic process is fragile, and dependent on the goodwill of Russians and others who in the past have displayed only naked self-interest. But its not nothing. According to State Department estimates, relief convoys have reached 225,000 desperate Syrians in the past few weeks; the target is to provide aid to 1.7 million by the end of March.

The cease-fire process invites violations, because many of the more than 100 rebel groups that have accepted the truce are camped alongside excluded fighters from the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. State Department officials describe this co-location of groups as marbling and expect it will take weeks for fighters to vote with their feet which side of the line theyre on. This sorting will work only if theres some sign of progress toward an eventual political transition away from Assad.

Iran is the second puzzle piece that looks different than most would have predicted a few years ago. Obamas bet that Iran could be pressured into a meaningful nuclear deal by a global sanctions coalition has proved correct. Whats more, his hope that the Iran opening would strengthen pragmatic forces there also appears to have borne fruit in Fridays elections.

State Department officials say its impossible now to calculate precisely what the political balance will be in the new parliament or the Assembly of Experts group that will choose Irans next leader. But its clear that the hard-liners have been weakened, and that President Hassan Rouhanis position is stronger. That was Obamas biggest strategic gamble; it appears to be paying off.

Saudi Arabia is also changing shape. Who would have predicted a few years ago that the decisive figure in this once-moribund, hyper-conservative monarchy would be a headstrong 30-year-old whose goal appears to be a Saudi version of the modernizing, relatively tolerant United Arab Emirates? But thats whats happening under Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The young Saudi has sometimes been more bold than wise, as in his war in Yemen, his decision to break diplomatic relations with Iran and his new effort to destabilize a Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon. But his role as a change agent is unmistakable. He wants to transition Saudi Arabia very quickly, said Adel al-Toraifi, the Saudi information minister, whos just 36 himself, in a visit to Washington last week.

The piece of the Middle East puzzle that seems most jagged right now is Turkey, only a decade ago the brightest spot in the region. President Recep Tayyip Erdogans power plays have shattered a once-promising reconciliation with the Kurds and undermined Turkish democracy. Turkey has managed simultaneously to worsen its relations with Russia, Israel, Iran and the United States  quite a feat. Veteran Turkey-watchers fear growing internal turmoil there.

As the United States has stepped back in the Middle East during Obamas presidency, Russia, Iran, the Islamic State and Saudi Arabia have stepped forward. This has brought many new dangers. But even though U.S. military dominance has faded, its diplomatic role remains decisive  as the Syria and Iran talks show.

Fitting together the altered pieces of the puzzle brings many risks, but it does provide new openings. And its clear that even in its diminished role, the United States remains the indispensable stabilizing power, like it or not.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
In his Feb. 28 Sunday Opinion column, Trumps Captain Underpants campaign, Dana Milbank attributed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trumps success at the polls to his ability to communicate on a third-grade level. This brought to mind Occams razor, the philosophical principle propounded in the 14th century by Franciscan friar William of Occam, who held that more things should not be used (or said) than are necessary.

And thats what Mr. Trump does. In other words, keep it simple. There should absolutely be no magniloquent attempt at perspicacity.

Otts Laupus, Ellicott City
IN ANY other February, the Obamacare enrollment numbers released last month would have been big news. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that 12.7 million people had chosen health-care plans in the exchanges the law set up  far more than the 10 million HHS predicted would have exchange-based insurance in 2016. The number will likely go down, as some people fail to pay their premiums; the best case, according to the Kaiser Family Foundations Larry Levitt, is that about a million more people will be covered in 2016 relative to last year.

These figures leave the Affordable Care Act in an awkward place. It has achieved its primary goal  reducing the rate of uninsured Americans  by cutting the number of people without insurance by 16 million since 2013. But the number of people participating in the markets it set up is not as large as some had predicted  or hoped. The Congressional Budget Office projected that some 21 million people would have insurance through the exchanges in 2016. The law is by no means failing, but higher exchange enrollment would help ensure that the insurance markets were stable and sustainable.

The optimistic view is that enrollment is climbing and will continue to do so, only at a slower-than-anticipated rate. In the early months of the ACAs rollout, President Obama allowed some people to keep their old plans. That accommodation will end by next year, boosting enrollment in the laws marketplaces. Also, the laws penalty for failing to have insurance coverage is set to ramp up dramatically.

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of premium hikes in major cities found that insurance-buyers on the ACAs marketplaces face an average premium increase of 3.6 percent this year  not double digits  and that number does not factor in federal subsidies. Though some parts of the country are seeing more price volatility, that is in part because insurers are still learning what their customers health needs are and how to compete against each other in the exchanges.

The pessimistic view is that, without further enrollment gains, some places may end up without healthy, competitive insurance markets. This may be particularly true of less populated parts of the country that insurance companies never served well. Insurance companies complain about high costs in some places, and this Congress will not provide them with any more assistance. If insurers abandon tough markets, some insurance customers may be underserved under a law that was supposed to nudge the country very close to universal coverage.

The solution is to focus on keeping enrollment growing, as bringing more people into the system helps spread costs and attracts insurers into competing for business. Many people still do not know they are eligible for federal help in buying insurance coverage. There are no doubt others who do not know that the penalty for going without insurance is increasing. Simple outreach, along with fixing some minor technical issues that continue to frustrate insurance-buyers, could help. A different Congress would debate nudging up premium subsidies, increasing the penalty or both. Wholly unhelpful, though, are the constant calls to defund or repeal a law that has made great progress  and could do much more good if more politicians gave it a chance.
The window for stopping Donald Trump closed almost completely Tuesday night, leaving the demoralized anti-Trump forces with two weeks and no agreed-upon strategy for denying the New York billionaire the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump pulled out victories in seven of the 11 contests that made up the biggest single primary-caucus night of the nominating season. His remaining rivals  Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich  and their allies were left to cling to the flimsiest of hopes that a reversal of his fortunes still lies on the near horizon.

For Rubio, the hope of many in the establishment, Super Tuesday turned into a super disappointment. He made a run at Trump in Virginia but fell short. Late Tuesday, he was declared the winner in the Minnesota caucuses. Still, that left his win-loss record this year at 1-14. Meanwhile, he was running third in at least half the states, and in some of those states his percentage of the vote was low enough that he was in danger of winning few or no delegates.

Rubio has been described by many as the future of his party. His performance to date instead has reinforced his image as a politician who has not lived up to that potential. Were it not for the Washington suburbs in Northern Virginia, where a well-educated and government-connected electorate gave him support strong enough to place second, his bad day would have been even more dispiriting.

Despite five days of relentless attacks on Trump, which started at last weeks GOP debate in Houston and carried through a raucous weekend of campaigning, Rubio was not able to deliver significant results. He scored well among late-deciding voters; in Virginia they favored him over Trump by about 20 points. But there were not enough of them to overcome the hold Trump has on anti-establishment Republicans who remain in control of the nominating battle.

Cruz did more than enough to argue that he should become the main challenger to Trump, carrying his home state of Texas, as he had long predicted, as well as Alaska and Oklahoma. Along with his victory in the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of last month, he remained through much of Tuesday night the only Republican who could say he had defeated the partys front-runner anywhere.

Months ago, Cruz envisioned that Super Tuesday, with its Southern flavor, would be the day he took command of the GOP nominating contest. Instead, it was the day he managed to preserve his candidacy, although he remains at a distinct disadvantage against Trump, particularly with Rubio and Kasich still in the race. Which was why he said Tuesday night that the only way to stop Trump is for the anti-Trump forces to get behind a Cruz candidacy.

Cruz can now claim, with more credibility, the mantle of the true conservative in a conservative party against a front-runner with no clear ideology and views at odds with GOP orthodoxy. But whether he is capable of taking down Trump in Northern states remains in question.

Kasich came in second behind Trump in tiny Vermont, but he, too, remains a distinct underdog as the campaign heads to Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine on Saturday. None of those states looks hospitable to Kasichs work-across-the-aisles message. He has pinned his hopes on next Tuesdays Michigan primary and, crucially, the Ohio primary March 15.

For the GOP establishment, Super Tuesday had nightmarish qualities. Not only did Trump tighten his grip on the nomination, but the only candidate who has been able to beat him more than once so far is Cruz, the nemesis of Republican congressional leaders and what the Texas senator likes to call the Washington cartel. In a choice between Trump and Cruz, many who could be counted as part of that establishment would be hard-pressed to declare a preference.

What is remarkable is that the anti-Trump forces only recently awoke to the reality that Trump was on track to take the nomination. Instead, Trump has awakened a voting bloc that has soured on the party leadership. As he has continued to win, his support has continued to grow. In Georgia, Alabama and Massachusetts, he was winning with more than 40 percent of the vote.

For months, the party elite dismissed Trump, seeing him as a candidate who would burn himself out before the end of 2015. When he proved capable of surviving mistakes and misstatements that hurt most normal candidates, they then assumed that, when the primaries began, voters would reject him in favor of one of any number of establishment candidates who were then in the race.

1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Photos: What Super Tuesday looked like around the country View Photos Voters headed to the polls and cast ballots.. Caption Voters headed to the polls and cast ballots. Donald Trump speaks alongside New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a campaign press event at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Today, those desperate to prevent Trump from hijacking the party recognize his strength and his seeming inevitability but seem powerless to stop him.

Some believe that the most realistic scenario for stopping Trump begins with victories by Cruz, Kasich and Rubio in their home states. Cruz managed that Tuesday; Rubio and Kasich face those tests March 15. Theoretically, that could lock up enough delegates against Trump to prevent him from winning a majority before the Republican convention and force a battle in Cleveland in July for the nomination.

Another scenario calls for two of the three remaining viable candidates to quit the race, allowing the party to consolidate around a single remaining challenger. People have been talking about that for months. When he quit the race last year, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said others should follow his lead in order to bring the anti-Trump forces together early enough to make a difference. Whats to say that will happen in time to make a difference in the trajectory of the race?

The fallacy of all this talk was underscored by former Utah governor Mike Leavitt.

Theres this fallacy that some small group can get together and decide the outcome of this, he said. That does not exist. This is a marketplace of political ideas. The party is responsible for its structure but cannot dictate the outcome.

Trumps victories Tuesday seemed an echo of his win in South Carolina on Feb. 20. In the Palmetto State, he survived a debate in which he accused former president George W. Bush of lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction as the pretext for invading Iraq and also praised Planned Parenthood for providing health-care services to millions of women.

On Tuesday, he survived not only the attacks from both Rubio and Cruz but also managed to win the majority of contests, despite a major controversy when he declined to denounce the Ku Klux Klan during an interview Sunday on CNN.

Trump predicted Tuesday night that establishment money will come pouring in against him over the next two weeks as he seeks knockout blows against Rubio in Florida and Kasich in Ohio. Up to now, that opposition has been scattered and inconsistent. They are loading up now for what could be one last effort to prevent something unimaginable to them when this campaign began.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson says he does not see "a path forward" for his presidential campaign. Here's a look back at some of the things he has said since announcing in May 2015 that he was seeking the Republican nomination. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson says he does not see "a path forward" for his presidential campaign. Here's a look back at some of the things he has said since announcing in May 2015 that he was seeking the Republican nomination. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who briefly led the Republican presidential race before his campaign began an extended public implosion, told his supporters in a statement Wednesday afternoon that he does not see a path forward and will not attend Thursdays debate in Detroit.

But Carson did not formally suspend his campaign. Instead, he said in the statement that he has decided to make a speech about his political future on Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, just outside Washington.

I do not see a political path forward in light of last evenings Super Tuesday primary results, the Wednesday statement said. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of We the People will continue. Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for President, I remain committed to Saving America for Future Generations.

The announcement served as an acknowledgment that Carsons candidacy is all but over following a disappointing showing in the 11 states that held contests Tuesday.

The decision follows months of candidate stumbles, staff infighting and strategy shifts derailing what had once appeared to be an unstoppable journey to conservative superstardom. It also marks the coming departure of the only high-profile African American candidate in the 2016 presidential race.

Carson, 64, burst onto the political scene in early 2013 when, addressing the typically nonpartisan National Prayer Breakfast, he spoke about the dangers of political correctness, put forward the idea of a flat tax and criticized President Obamas health-care law. What stood out was that he did so right beside a steely-faced Obama.

That week, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial titled Ben Carson for President. By August of that year, there was a National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Before he launched his presidential bid last May, the group had raised close to $16 million, gotten a half-million signatures encouraging Carson to run and had 30,000 active volunteers across the country, according to organizers.

The media whirlwind was hardly his first brush with fame. Before he took the conservative world by storm, Carson was famous for an up-from-his-bootstraps life story, from impoverished childhood to a high-profile neurosurgery career. He was, at 33, the youngest major division director in Johns Hopkins Hospital history, and he was the first pediatric neurosurgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head. He wrote a best-selling book, Gifted Hands, about his life, which later became a television movie.

[The surgery that made Ben Carson famous  and its complicated aftermath]

The same bluntness that catapulted him into contention in a year that favored plain-spoken insurgents and outsider candidates earned him criticism as well. He found himself in political hot water for calling the Affordable Care Act the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery, saying that the United States now is very much like Nazi Germany and predicting that allowing same-sex marriage could lead to legalized bestiality.

Even his political team admitted from the start that perhaps he needed to work on his messaging. If I could create the Websters dictionary of words Dr. Carson could use in the campaign, there would be some words Id leave out, his former campaign chairman, Terry Giles, told The Washington Post before Carson officially jumped into the race. Later, when Donald Trump grabbed headlines, the usually mild-mannered Carson was urged to dial it up and take the mogul on more aggressively.

Carson resisted that advice as well. Until the end, he sought to offer himself to Republicans as a calm and steady hand, untouched by Washington.

Many people told me that this business is corrupt, that its evil, that its how itll always be, Carson said in a phone interview Monday. But I dont believe that we have to accept that. We should rail against that, fight against it, and get something thats decent and inspirational.

His performance may have played a role in his political undoing. Even as his politically incorrect style played well in places with staunchly conservative bases, his apparent unfamiliarity with many policy fundamentals, particularly on national-security issues, made some voters wary.

[Ben Carson slashes staff as funds dry up]

His support dropped precipitously in the weeks after two terrorist attacks late last year, bringing him from second place just behind Trump to fourth or fifth place in most national polls.

Unfortunately, Paris happened. San Bernardino happened, he told The Post late last year. Somehow the narrative has been projected that if youre soft-spoken and mild-mannered, there is no way you can deal with terrorism, with national security, that youre not a strong person.

It wasnt just Carsons often unfiltered and unseasoned approach that cost him; his advisers did as well, as internal feuds played out publicly, and candidate and campaign deficits were spotlighted in unusually detailed media admissions by some staffers and advisers.

Disagreements within the campaigns highest ranks broke out into the open on numerous occasions, highlighting a persistent and sharp division between Armstrong Williams  Carsons longtime business manager, who was not formally part of the campaign  and Barry Bennett, the Republican operative who led it.

As Carson fell from top-tier status, he publicly blamed campaign aides for his drop in the polls  calling some of them overpaid and ineffective  and vowed a staff shake-up in an interview arranged by Williams without Bennetts knowledge. Carson backtracked hours later, but within days, several of his most experienced campaign hands, including Bennett, had resigned.

A new campaign chairman was named: retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert F. Dees  previously a Carson policy adviser who, like the candidate himself, had never before been involved in a political campaign.

The departure of a string of senior aides didnt end the behind-the-scenes drama. Within weeks, reporters were sent a list of the only staffers they were to contact for campaign comment and for candidate interview requests  a list that pointedly did not include Williams.

[Flashback: Why is Ben Carson toying with a long-shot presidential bid?]

The Carson campaign war chest, which had been flush with cash after solid fundraising quarters earlier in the race, began shrinking dramatically amid questions about how the money was being spent. Carson made further sweeping changes last month, cutting staff salaries and shrinking his traveling entourage.

We had to get a much better check on the finances. I was appalled when I did a deep dive and saw what was going on. We saw that and stopped it, Carson said in the Monday interview.

The mild-mannered candidate soon lashed out at individuals he accused of sabotaging his presidential bid, including rival Ted Cruz of Texas, whose campaign falsely circulated the idea that Carson was going to quit the race on the night of the Iowa caucuses.

He followed up a distant fourth-place showing in Iowa with last-place showings in New Hampshire and in South Carolina, a state he had once said would be a special focus. He polled poorly again in the 11 GOP primaries and caucuses Tuesday night.

When asked Monday whether he would ever reenter politics if he left the race, Carson chuckled at the prospect.

Im certainly not looking for something to do, he said, adding that his plan after leaving medicine in 2013 was to retire to Palm Beach, Fla., with his wife.

Im not going to disappear, he said. But yes, if I didnt think the country needed what were doing, Id be there.
Following big victories on Super Tuesday, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are firmly in command of their respective races. Heres what some Clinton supporters had to say at the prospect of a general election between Clinton and Trump. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Following big victories on Super Tuesday, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are firmly in command of their respective races. Heres what some Clinton supporters had to say at the prospect of a general election between Clinton and Trump. (Alice Li/The Washington Post)

Super Tuesday victories by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton put the nation on a path toward an ugly and contentious general election, pitting a pair of major-party presidential candidates saddled with vulnerabilities in a contest that will be decided by a fearful and angry electorate divided along racial, cultural and ideological lines.

A Trump-Clinton general election matchup would represent the continuation of a decade or more of politics marked by gridlock in Washington, distrust of institutions and leaders, and political discourse that has been on a downward spiral. Whoever wins in November will face the enormously difficult task of trying to bring the country together in the hope of being able to govern effectively.

Trump would lead a Republican Party ruptured and with at least a portion of its followers dispirited by his nomination. He also would face resistance from legions of other voters who consider his nativist message bigoted and repellent.

Clinton would enjoy a more united Democratic Party, although not all would be enthusiastic about her candidacy. Democratic turnout in the primaries has been much lower than it was in 2008, a possible warning sign of less energy behind the partys nominee in the fall. Beyond her party, Clinton remains a sharply polarizing figure who engenders distrust, even anger, from her opponents.

For millions of voters, the motivating emotions in such a race would be largely negative  driven by stop-Trump or stop-Clinton sentiments as well as fears that the other partys candidate might prevail and general distress over the state of the country. What the presidential campaign has shown is that positive messages and uplifting visions have barely resonated with the voters. The odds suggest that the general election would be an extension of that pattern.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won at least seven states in the Super Tuesday competitions. Though neither has won their party's nomination, they each went after the other in their March 1 speeches. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

[Unity or discord for the Republican Party?]

It has not come to that point yet. Clinton must keep at least a partial eye on Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) as she steadily accumulates the delegates needed to win the nomination. Trump, for all his success Tuesday, still remains far short of a majority of the delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination, leaving anti-Trump forces within the party clinging to the hope that they can derail him before he can attain the number he needs.

The spectacle of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) using his megaphone on the morning of Super Tuesday to reaffirm that the Republicans are the party of Abraham Lincoln, not bigotry or white supremacy, said everything about what Trumps candidacy has done to the party he seeks to lead.

Ryan is among those who have preached the gospel of positive ideas over personal insults as the Republican Partys route to winning the White House. So far, he and others who share his views have been fighting a rear-guard action against the grass-roots forces angry with their leaders in Washington and drawn to Trumps populist message.

Clinton faces nothing like that resistance within the Democratic Party. Sanders has talked of carrying his anti-establishment message into the spring and possibly later. But Clinton is on a clear path to victory and, as she showed on Tuesday night, is already looking toward the general election.

Among her challenges will be trying to improve her image among skeptical independents and even Republicans turned off by Trump before the fall race begins in earnest. Since Clintons thumping victory in South Carolina on Saturday, her message has been focused increasingly on Trump, as she tries to position herself as the more optimistic and empathetic of the two.

What the country needs is love and kindness, she said again Tuesday night, not anger and insults. Playing off the New York billionaires pledge to make America great again, Clinton said the United States already is a great country, and long has been one. Whats needed, she argues, is to make it whole.

[Sanders team says he still can win. Clintons team begs to differ]

Trump mocked that aspiration, although the sentiment might be shared by many voters after a year of poisonous political rhetoric in the Republican race. In recent days, the GOP race has descended into a trough of petty insults and vulgarities that most people consider unbecoming of the highest office in the land.

Whether Clinton is the candidate who can convincingly make the case that as president she could unite the country is a far different question. Other than President Obama, no Democrat inflames the opposition more than she does. Republicans have not forgotten that, in an early Democratic debate, Clinton said that among the enemies she has made about which she is most proud are Republicans.

A Pew Research Center poll in January asked Americans to rate the prospects for many of the leading presidential candidates. The question was whether they would make good or bad presidents. For Clinton, 35 percent offered a positive response while 44 percent were negative. Eleven percent said she would make a great president, while 28 percent said she would be terrible.

For Trump, about 3 in 10 gave him positive ratings, compared with about half offering a negative view. Those who said he would be a great president totaled 11 percent, the same as for Clinton. But 38 percent said he would be a terrible president, 10 points higher than for the former secretary of state.

A recent CNN-ORC poll found that 37 percent of registered voters have a favorable impression of Trump, compared with 60 percent who view him unfavorably. For Clinton, it was 42 percet favorable to 55 percent unfavorable.

[Romney gets ready to weigh in on the GOP race]

Clintons weaknesses have been evident throughout the campaign  a lack of trust from voters, many of whom question her honesty. Her candidacy remains clouded by an FBI investigation of her use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. Trumps weaknesses are even more glaring, as the turmoil inside the Republican Party highlights.

The attack lines for a Trump-Clinton general election are already obvious and will become sharper. Trumps failure to denounce the Ku Klux Klan over the weekend is only one statement that could come at him. The criticisms launched by Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in the closing days before Super Tuesday  that Trump is an unprincipled con man who has exaggerated his business acumen and who has no grasp of policy issues  only hint at what the Democrats would throw at him.

Trump said Tuesday night that he would be a unifier as the GOP nominee, but he also signaled his intention to talk almost exclusively about Clinton in the general election. Given his style of campaigning, the attacks on her would be even more personal and relentless, aimed not only at her honesty and her handling of the email issue but also at her husbands past dalliances, at the Obama record overseas and her role in it as secretary of state.

Thats a recipe for a general election largely bereft of aspirational campaigning, more negative by far than the campaign of 2012 in which Obama and the Democrats pounded Republican nominee Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat and the Republicans hammered Obama as a president who was trying to take the country far to the left.

That campaign left the nation deeply divided, and the past three years have done little to change the environment. The fall campaign has not fully taken shape. But everything to this point suggests thats where this crucial contest could be heading.
Hillary Clinton bested rival Bernie Sanders in seven Super Tuesday states, strengthening her momentum as she marches toward the Democratic presidential nomination.

Propelled in part by a sweep of Southern states with large black voting populations, Clinton is now on a path toward a permanent lead among delegates that will be hard for Sanders to surmount. Although Sanders held his own by winning four of 11 states Tuesday, Clintons performance dramatically widened her lead as she tries to put to rest any lingering doubts over her shaky start in the 2016 voting.

Speaking to supporters in Miami on Tuesday night, Clinton seemed to assume the mantle of presumptive nominee, speaking only briefly of Sanders and instead looking ahead to the general election  and taking jabs at the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, without mentioning his name.

America prospers when we all prosper. America is strong when were all strong, she said. We know weve got work to do, but that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole; we have to fill in whats been hollowed out.

That play on Trumps signature line gave a strong hint about the thrust of Clintons argument in a head-to-head contest: She would say the country needs to unite and build on what she calls President Obamas accomplishments, and she would seek to turn Trumps bitter rhetoric against him.

Here are key moments from Hillary Clintons and Bernie Sanderss speeches, as results from Super Tuesday elections rolled in. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Its clear tonight that the stakes of this election have never been higher, Clinton said. And the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower.

She slipped into the cadences of the black church as she thanked supporters in Miami.

We have to make strong the broken places, she said, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our country.

Sanders remains a potent force who can pull Clinton to the left and force her to spend money and other political resources to keep her footing in the primary race while she looks ahead to a likely contest with Trump in the fall.

Sanderss campaign boasted Tuesday that he had raised more money in February, almost all of it in small amounts, than Clinton. The campaign also announced late Tuesday that it would host a path forward breakfast for the media Wednesday to detail what it considers a viable way to the Democratic nomination.

Sanderss team has mapped out a busy schedule in coming days, with events planned in Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Ohio  all by Saturday.

Clintons choice of Florida for her election night party was a nod to its upcoming primary on March 15  and also to November, when it will be an important swing state. If Clinton captures Florida and other states in two weeks, she will have an effective lock on the nomination.

In his own election night speech, also in Florida, Trump showed that he was just as ready to take aim at Clinton as she was at him. He was dismissive of Clintons remarks, saying that in his opinion, Make America great again has a better ring to it than Make America whole again.

Up in Vermont, Sanders celebrated his home-state victory at a party in Essex Junction. He also won in Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota.

Standing with his wife, children and grandchildren, the democratic socialist senator said that while he wants to win in every part of the country, it was meaningful that the people who know me best . . . have voted so strongly to put us in the White House.

He vowed to stay in the race until voters in all 50 states have had a say, noting that by the end of the night, only those in 15 states would have done so.

More delegates were up for grabs on Super Tuesday than on any other single day in the Democratic nominating calendar.

Clinton had been widely expected to win in six Southern states, including Virginia, that were considered a firewall of African American support with the power to blunt Sanderss surge, which had carried him to an effective tie with Clinton in Iowa and a 22-point victory in New Hampshire. Clinton began regaining momentum after a five-point victory in Nevadas Democratic caucuses  and a trouncing of Sanders by nearly 50 points in South Carolina.

She was immediately declared the winner in Georgia and Virginia when polls closed at 7 p.m.; Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee came next. She also won delegate-rich Texas. And she dominated in most of the states she won, including a nearly 60-point margin in Alabama with more than half of precincts reporting.

In Virginia, with all returns in, Clinton defeated Sanders by nearly 30 points. Preliminary exit polls there showed that roughly 6 in 10 voters wanted to continue the policies of the Obama presidency, something Clinton has largely promised to do. Voters made the connection; Clinton was winning those voters by about 60 points, while Sanders held a 2-to-1 lead among those who wanted more liberal policies.

Experience was the top candidate quality Virginia voters said they preferred, picked by more than a third in preliminary exit poll data, and Clinton won those voters by about 90 points.

Sanders had concentrated on five states Tuesday: Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Massachusetts and Vermont. All have whiter voting populations, and most have a liberal bent. He won all but Massachusetts, which Clinton claimed by a narrow margin.

Pop star Ben Folds was still playing onstage at Sanderss election night party when news organizations called Vermont for Sanders. Clinton never campaigned there, although she won the endorsement of some prominent state leaders and one newspaper.

Because of Democrats system of awarding delegates proportionally, Sanders collects significant numbers of delegates even in states he loses.

He reminded his audience of that Tuesday, telling supporters that by the end of tonight, we are going to win many hundreds of delegates.

Sanders had been expected to do well in Minnesotas caucus format. But Clintons late decision to make a caucus-day campaign swing to the state showed that she considered it competitive.

Sanders also continued his dominance among young voters, a dynamic that worries some Clinton supporters for the general election. In Oklahoma, for instance, he beat Clinton by more than 60 points among voters under 30 and by 42 points among those 30 to 44, according to preliminary exit polls reported by CNN.

Asked whether she would call on Sanders to drop out of the race if his path to winning the nomination became impossible, Clinton said Tuesday that she would defer to him.

Everybody has to make their own decisions, Clinton said before leaving Minnesota for Florida, where 214 delegates are at stake March 15.

Sanders and his advisers say the calendar now becomes more favorable to his campaign, with most of the Southern states behind them and several delegate-rich targets on the horizon, including Michigan and other states battered by trade that are likely to be more open to Sanderss economic message.

The Democratic candidates will debate in Flint, Mich., on Sunday. A government decision in the poor, majority-black city led to contaminated water and a crisis of lead poisoning that has become a touchstone in the Democratic race this year.

Regardless of Sanderss performance Tuesday, money is not likely to be a problem for his campaign anytime soon.

The campaign announced Monday that it had raised an eye-popping $42 million in February, twice Sanderss haul in January. As further evidence of his donors enthusiasm, the campaign said it had raised more than $6 million on the final day of February, nearly matching the amount taken in during the 24 hours after his stunning victory over Clinton in the New Hampshire primary.

Clintons campaign sent out two email fundraising appeals as returns came in Tuesday night.

Camellia Noriega, a Miami resident, said Clinton struggled early in the campaign but has since proved that she can address the concerns of diverse groups of Americans.

No ones perfect, and you cant expect anything to be pure, said Noriega, 41. I think she can win, and thats the most important strategic decision we can make right now.

Wagner reported from Essex Junction, Vt., and Gearan from Washington.
In a 2014 interview, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks about how she thinks Roe v. Wade should have been decided differently. (The International Womens Health Coalition)

In a 2014 interview, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks about how she thinks Roe v. Wade should have been decided differently. (The International Womens Health Coalition)

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the Supreme Courts most ardent protector of abortion rights, outspoken enough about their importance to become an icon to young feminists and a source of outrage among her detractors.

With her valedictory on the court undetermined but within sight, Ginsburg, 82, may have only one more chance to leave a mark on reproductive rights. It comes in the most consequential abortion case during her time on the court

[Supreme Court hearing arguments on Texas abortion-clinics case]

The court on Wednesday is reviewing a Texas law that put new requirements on doctors and tougher regulations on abortion clinics in the name of patient safety. Abortion providers say the restrictions are unnecessary, in some cases impossible to satisfy and would reduce the number of clinics in the state from more than 40 to about 10.

The providers strategy for defeating the restrictions depends in part on Ginsburgs uniting the courts three other liberals to find that Texas erected an unconstitutional obstacle to a womans right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

At Georgetown University in February 2015, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about the socio-economic implications of overturning Roe v. Wade. (CSPAN)

With her leadership on the issue pivotal, it is difficult to remember that 23 years ago Ginsburg was considered suspect on the issue.

Some womens groups questioned President Bill Clintons choice of Ginsburg for the Supreme Court because she had criticized the legal foundations of the courts landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade . She added that its wholesale repudiation of state abortion restrictions went too far, too fast.

No less than Kate Michelman, then head of the National Abortion Rights Action League, was worried. Her criticisms of Roe raise concerns about whether she believes that the right to choose is a fundamental right or a lesser right, Michelman said.

If the questions about Ginsburgs reliability on the issue have been put to rest, still open to debate is what impact she had made on the courts jurisprudence.

The lawyers in the case are making their arguments to an audience of one  and it is not Ginsburg.

[Arguments in Supreme Court abortion case pitched to audience of one]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, as in so many other issues, is the decider. Before him, it was Justice Sandra Day OConnor. And it is likely that Ginsburg will end her long run on the court with only a limited influence on the issue with which she is most identified.

Although she cares deeply about abortion rights, I would guess that she may have had less of an impact in this area than she might have wished, said Richard Fallon, a Harvard law professor who studies the court.

So far, Ginsburgs most meaningful statement on abortion rights during her time on the court came in a scathing dissent she wrote in 2007, when the court voted 5 to 4 to uphold the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which outlawed a late-term abortion procedure.

It was the first time the court had ever agreed that doctors could not use a specific abortion method and the first time the justices ratified a restriction that did not include an exception for the health of a woman.

In candor, Ginsburg wrote, the Act, and the courts defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court  and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to womens lives.

Ginsburg was incensed by an assertion in Kennedys majority opinion that said it was self-evident that women who had abortions through such a method could come to regret their choice and, consequently, suffer from severe depression and loss of esteem.

Ginsburg answered: The court deprives women of the right to make an autonomous choice, even at the expense of their safety. This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about womens place in the family and under the Constitution  ideas that have long since been discredited.

That is indicative of Ginsburgs view that the Roe decision was wrongly grounded in a constitutional right to privacy.

The finding in Roe, she has said, is based on the woman in consultation with her doctor. So the view you get is the tall doctor and the little woman who needs him.

Sonja West, a constitutional law professor at the University of Georgia, said Ginsburgs view is that women must be autonomous.

The key to understanding Justice Ginsburgs views on the constitutional right to abortion is that she sees it as a question of equal protection and not of privacy, West said.

She has said on many occasions that for women to attain true equality with men, they must have sole control over their fertility. This control, in Justice Ginsburgs view, is tied to a womans ability to be independent, which is in turn tied to her status as an equal citizen.

That was the position that even Clinton termed very provocative when nominating Ginsburg to the high court in 1993.

But in truth, the court already had moved closer to Ginsburgs view. The year before, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey , the court affirmed the Roe decision. But it also found that a pregnant womans suffering is too intimate and personal for the state to insist, without more, upon its own vision of the womans role, however dominant that vision has been in the court of our history and our culture.

Likewise, it found, the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.

That was why Ginsburg reacted so sharply to Kennedys language in the partial-birth abortion case, West said.

She saw a group of powerful men putting their views about what was the best or most moral choice for women over the views of the women, she said. And that they did so at the risk of the womens safety, by not including an exception for the health of the woman, made it all the more upsetting to her.

It is how Ginsburg has expressed herself outside the courtroom that has drawn the ire of abortion opponents.

The side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, theyre fighting a losing battle, Ginsburg told Emily Bazelon in a 2009 interview for the New York Times Magazine. Time is on the side of change.

And conservatives initially said Ginsburg should recuse herself from the Texas case because of comments she made in a 2014 New Republic interview. Asked if states could be entrusted to guard abortion rights, she answered: How could you trust legislatures in view of the restrictions states are imposing? Think of the Texas legislation that would put most clinics out of business. The courts cant be trusted either.

One thing that is unknowable about Ginsburgs influence is if, and how, she has affected her colleagues behind the scenes. But what will become clear from Wednesdays questioning is her strategy  and that of her colleagues on the right  to attract Kennedys vote.
As results showed Donald Trump leading in at least six states on Super Tuesday, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) argued that nominating him would be bad for the Republican Party. Here are key moments from their speeches following the March 1 races. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

As results showed Donald Trump leading in at least six states on Super Tuesday, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) argued that nominating him would be bad for the Republican Party. Here are key moments from their speeches following the March 1 races. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)

Donald Trump won GOP primaries in seven states, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) took three in a Super Tuesday rebound, sparking renewed calls from some Republicans to unify around a single Trump rival as the billionaire tightened his hold as the front-runner.

The contests in 11 states showcased Trumps dominance over a crowded GOP field. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) was the winner in one state, Minnesota, his first victory of the 2016 primary season.

Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. In several states, his lead was in double digits, and his share of the GOP vote neared 50 percent. With those wins, Trump has more than doubled his victory total in this GOP primary season.

The results prompted former pediatric surgeon Ben Carson, who has failed to win a single primary or caucus vote so far, to effectively drop out of the race in advance of Thursdays debate in his home town of Detroit.

I do not see a political path forward in light of last evenings Super Tuesday primary results, he said in a statement, although he stopped short of formally suspending his campaign. He added that he would continue to be active in the conservative movement. We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our Founders intended for this exceptional nation.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is now on a path toward a large lead among delegates that will be hard for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to surmount. Although Sanders held his own by winning four of 11 states Tuesday, Clintons performance dramatically widened her lead as she tries to put to rest any lingering doubts over her shaky start in the 2016 voting.

At this point, both Trump and Clinton have substantially more delegates than their opponents. Trump has 316 to Cruzs 226 and Rubios 106, according to the Associated Press, while Clinton has amassed 1,001 delegates to Sanderss 371 when superdelegates are taken into account.

The turnout results from Tuesday showed a sharp disparity between the two parties. There was an overall 70 percent increase in Republican turnout since 2008 across the states holding primaries and caucuses Tuesday, according to Edison Media Research, but Democratic turnout declined 28 percent compared with 2008.

While part of the shift stemmed from changes in the election schedule, since Texas and Virginia voted this year when the contest remained competitive, it also showed that GOP voters are energized by the current battle over control of the party after having a Democrat in the White House for more than seven years.

Even as Trump basked in his Super Tuesday romp, a well-funded super PAC launched a 60-second ad centered on Trump University, the billionaire moguls for-profit enterprise that promised to teach students the tricks of the real estate trade and is now defunct and the subject of a fraud suit.

[The GOP has two weeks to take down Donald Trump]

The million-dollar ad campaign echoes themes that Rubio, who is trying to unite the GOPs anti-Trump forces under his own banner, has advanced as he has addressed swelling crowds in suburban areas. Trump had mocked him for not winning any states before the latest contests, and while Rubio did manage to secure one Tuesday, the night was a disappointment overall.

1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Photos: What Super Tuesday looked like around the country View Photos Voters headed to the polls and cast ballots.. Caption Voters headed to the polls and cast ballots. Donald Trump speaks alongside New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a campaign press event at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

He had attacked Trump sharply in the past few days and shifted some late-deciding voters into his camp. But beyond Minnesota, it wasnt enough.

Speaking to Fox News Channel on Wednesday morning, Rubio  who has cited several media reports while blasting Trump over the past week  criticized journalists for taking a pass when it comes to the front-runner.

I had hoped it would take its own course, he said, but he concluded that he needed to launch a frontal assault. If this were any other front-runner, Rubio added, we would have people saying, Lets all rally around the front-runner. That will never happen with Donald Trump.

Rubio also expressed confidence that he will win when his home state, which will deliver 99 delegates in a winner-take-all primary, votes March 15. Its going to be close, no doubt about it, but we know how to win in Florida, and we will.

Cruz won Alaska, Oklahoma and his home state of Texas just after 9 p.m. They were the second, third and fourth states Cruz has won in this race; he also won the first contest, the Iowa caucuses. The win in Texas, in particular, was vital: It saved Cruz from a humiliating home-state defeat and gave him part of the largest slate of delegates that was up for grabs Tuesday.

But this was not the Super Tuesday that Cruz had hoped for months ago. He had campaigned hard in Southern states, hoping to dominate among evangelicals and very conservative voters. Instead, in state after state, he saw those voters flock to Trump.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich came in a close second to Trump in Vermont.

The worry among the party establishment  which has put its last hopes on Rubio  was strong and growing after Trumps Tuesday victories.

Even Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken critic of Cruz, said to CBSs Charlie Rose on Tuesday night, Well, I think were about ready to lose to the most dishonest politician in America, Hillary Clinton, and how could you do that?

I made a joke about Ted, but we may be in a position to have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and Im not so sure that would work, he said, adding that when it came to that prospect, I cant believe I would say yes, but yes.

Cruz (R-Tex.) addressed his supporters at a venue called the Redneck Country Club in Stafford, a Houston suburb. He sought not so subtly to persuade Rubio to drop out of the race, saying that a divided field was allowing Trump to succeed.

So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trumps path to the nomination remains more likely. And that would be a disaster . . . for conservatives, and for the nation. And after tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump, Cruz said. He spoke to primary voters in future states: We must come together.

Rubio ran close to Trump in Virginia, boosted by support among college-educated voters and Republicans in the D.C. suburbs. But he fell short, with Trump piling up large margins in the states rural South and West.

[No Republican nominee has ever won all the states Trump has]

Still, exit polls showed some good news for Rubio. In several states, he did well among voters who decided late, according to media reports. That could be taken as proof that Rubios late attacks on Trump worked  and it could encourage Rubio to continue them, hoping to win more primaries in the coming weeks.

Rubios campaign has sought to position him as the top alternative to Trump: the one who would be waiting and ready when voters  or delegates, at a fractious GOP convention  finally turned on the front-runner. But Tuesdays results showed that was not exactly true. In fact, Rubio came in third in eight states, and placed second only in Virginia and Georgia.

Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) took to the chamber floor Wednesday to decry Trumps rise, which he blamed on Republican leaders in Washington.

Donald Trump is the ultimate fulfillment of the Republican Partys legacy of obstruction and resentment, he said. The reality is Republican leaders are reaping what theyve sown.

And while Reid described the New York billionaire as the standard-bearer for the Republican Party, he said candidates including Cruz and Rubio have been equally disparaging of minorities and immigrants. Their message, he said, may be a little more subtle, but theyre saying the same thing.

Trump, for his part, spoke to supporters in an ornate ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla. He mocked Rubio, calling him the little senator and reminding his crowd that [Rubio] didnt win anything. He hasnt won anything, period.

Trump also called his campaign a movement, and sought to look ahead to a general election contest against Clinton.

I am a unifier. When we get all of this finished, Im going to go after one person, Hillary Clinton, Trump said. He rejected suggestions that his comments  about Mexican immigrants, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and a ban on Muslim foreigners entering the country  had divided his party.

We are going to be a much finer party. Were going to be a unified party, Trump said. I mean, to be honest with you. And we are going to be a much bigger party. Our party is expanding.

In a wide-ranging news conference that followed Trumps speech, he issued a kind of threat to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), who  before Trump came on the scene  had a claim to being the most popular figure in the GOP.

Paul Ryan, I dont know him well, but Im sure Im going to get along great with him, Trump said. And if I dont, hes going to have to pay a big price, okay?

It seemed possible, given Tuesdays results, that Rubio, Cruz and Kasich could find a reason to remain in the race. So even where Trump lost Tuesday night, he may have won  reaping the benefits of a crowded field of candidates and splitting the anti-Trump vote into pieces.

[Winners and losers from Super Tuesday]

In the Democratic race, with nearly all the votes counted,Clinton won the Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia primaries as she looked to dramatically widen her lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination over Sanders.

Sanders chalked up four victories: his home state of Vermont, as well as in Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.

We still think we have a winning hand in this game, and were going to continue to play it, Sanderss strategist, Tad Devine, said Wednesday at a morning briefing for reporters in Burlington, Vt.

But Clintons campaign manager, Robby Mook, noted in a memo Wednesday that her lead of more than 180 pledged delegates is larger than any lead then-Senator Obama had at any point in the 2008 primary.

We anticipate building on this lead even further, making it increasingly difficult and eventually mathematically impossible for Sen. Sanders to catch up, he added. In order to catch up, Sen. Sanders doesnt just have to start winning a few states, but he needs to start winning everywhere and by large margins.

Speaking to supporters in Miami on Tuesday night, Clinton seemed to assume the mantle of presumptive nominee, speaking only briefly of Sanders and instead looking ahead to the general election  and taking jabs at the Republican front-runner, Trump, without mentioning his name.

America prospers when we all prosper. America is strong when were all strong, she said. We know weve got work to do, but that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole; we have to fill in whats been hollowed out.

Eilperin, Fahrenthold and Rucker reported from Washington; Scott Clement, Anne Gearan and Paul Kane in Washington; Robert Costa in Atlanta; Jose A. DelReal in Nashville; Fenit Nirappil in Norfolk, Va.; Ed OKeefe in Alcoa, Tenn.; Abby Phillip in Minneapolis; Patricia Sullivan in Arlington, Va.; Laura Vozzella in Richmond, Va.; John Wagner in Burlington, Vt.; David Weigel in Castleton, Vt.; and Katie Zezima in Houston contributed to this report.
More than 40 people set up camp outside the Supreme Court the day before it heard a case about Texass abortion clinic regulations. They waited in line through the pouring rain for a chance to sit in the courtroom. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

More than 40 people set up camp outside the Supreme Court the day before it heard a case about Texass abortion clinic regulations. They waited in line through the pouring rain for a chance to sit in the courtroom. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

The Supreme Courts liberal justices united Wednesday to attack Texass abortion regulations as an unconstitutional burden on a womans rights, but the justice who holds the key vote left the courts ultimate resolution of the issue in doubt.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whom both sides consider pivotal to the outcome of the courts most important abortion case in a generation, wondered whether there was enough evidence to decide that changes in Texas law were responsible for the closure of nearly half of the abortion clinics in the nations second-largest state. He wondered whether lower courts might need to do more work on the issue.

But Kennedy also questioned the law in a way that would give hope to those who support abortion rights. He was reluctant to accept Texass arguments that there was no reason to weigh the states grounds for making the 2013 changes against the obstacles created for women.

And he seemed concerned that a lack of access might be leading to women undergoing abortions later in their pregnancies, which are riskier. This may not be medically wise, Kennedy said.

If Kennedy joins the liberals to make a five-member majority, it will have national implications, cutting off what abortion opponents had seen as a promising way to make abortion more rare. Abortion rights backers say more than 200 restrictions have been passed by states in the past five years.

South Texas's only abortion clinic, located in the border town of McAllen, has become a battleground for abortion activists on both sides. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

The case is being heard by only eight members after the death last month of Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative who did not believe that the Constitution protected the right to abortion.

If Kennedy sides with the three remaining conservatives, that will not be enough by itself to secure the courts endorsement of the two issues at stake: requiring admitting privileges at a nearby hospital for doctors who perform abortions and requiring clinics to maintain hospital-like standards.

A number of states have adopted such standards, which they say improve patient care. But abortion providers say the rules are medically unnecessary and so expensive or hard to satisfy that they force clinics to close.

While a 4-to-4 tie would uphold a lower courts decision approving the Texas law, it would not set a national precedent. The restrictions have been found unconstitutional in other courts across the nation.

The absence of Scalia affected the arguments in other ways. He was a dominating questioner, and when he and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., fellow conservatives, worked in concert, they formed an intimidating bloc.

On Wednesday, it was the courts four liberals who dominated the questioning.

What its about is that a woman has a fundamental right to make this choice for herself, said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She and Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned the lawyers for so long after Roberts had indicated time was up that the scheduled one-hour argument stretched for almost 30 more minutes.

Stephanie Toti of the Center for Reproductive Rights, representing the clinics, told the court that Texass regulations violated the standard set in the courts last majority abortion decision, 1992s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

That decision, written partly by Kennedy, balanced states legitimate interests in regulating abortion and womens fundamental liberty to make personal decisions about their pregnancies, she said, adding that the Texas rules are unnecessary health regulations that create substantial obstacles to abortion access.

She contended that partial implementation of the law has meant the closure of about half of Texass more than 40 abortion clinics and that full implementation would reduce that to 10 or fewer in a state with more than 5 million women of reproductive age.

Alito questioned whether Toti had proved to lower courts that the new laws were the reason.

There is very little specific evidence in the record in this case with respect to why any particular clinic closed, Alito said.

Kennedy joined in that questioning, and that was when he wondered whether lower courts should take a closer look.

But Justice Elena Kagan said the facts of what has happened as the case has worked its way through the legal process answered the questions.

Its almost like the perfect controlled experiment as to the effect of the law, isnt it? she said. Its like you put the law into effect, 12 clinics closed. You take the law out of effect, they reopen.

[The forgotten history of Justice Ginsburgs criticism of Roe v. Wade]

Roberts questioned Toti about whether the court should pass judgment on Texass grounds for passing the 2013 law, as long as the state had a rational reason for the changes.

I thought the undue burden and substantial obstacle [test] went to whether it was undue in light of the womans right to exercise her right to an abortion, Roberts said  either the restrictions went too far or they didnt, regardless of the states intent.

With Justice Clarence Thomas asking no questions, the conservatives questioning was muted. At times they debated a technical legal point that, because of previous legal wrangling in the case, the clinics may have lost their right to a blanket ruling that the Texas law is unconstitutional.

U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the Obama administration, was forceful in his turn before the court.

This law closes most abortion facilities in the state, puts extreme stress on the few facilities that remain open, and exponentially increases the obstacles confronting women who seek abortions in the state, Verrilli said. And it does all of that on the basis of a medical justification that cannot withstand any meaningful scrutiny.

Verrilli seemed to score points with Kennedy when he said the remaining clinics that met the ambulatory surgical requirements  already required in Texas for second-trimester abortions  could not meet the demand.

There are about 65,000 to 70,000 abortions in Texas each year, Verrilli said, and clinics that meet the standards perform about 14,000 per year.

Twenty percent, Kennedy said.

Verrillis counterpart, Texas Solicitor General Scott A. Keller, said that Texas was meeting its constitutional obligations.

Abortion is legal and accessible in Texas, Keller said. All the Texas metropolitan areas that have abortion clinics today will have open clinics if the court affirms, and that includes the six most populous areas of Texas.

But he was immediately set upon by the liberal justices.

Kagan said that 750,000 women would live more than 200 miles away from an abortion clinic; before the law was passed, that number was 10,000.

Sotomayor questioned why a woman undergoing a medication abortion, which requires taking pills, needed to do so in a center equipped for surgery. Your brief seemed to be telling us that theres no role for the court to judge whether theres really a health benefit to what youre doing, she said.

Ginsburg and Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned the requirement that doctors have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of a center. For one thing, Ginsburg said, any complications happen after a woman has left the center and has returned home.

And Breyer challenged Keller for evidence of a single incident in which a woman was turned away from a hospital because the doctor performing an abortion lacked the required credential.

Keller conceded there was nothing in the record to indicate that.

The liberal justices said that liposuction and colonoscopies had higher rates of complications than first-trimester abortions but that those procedures were performed in doctors offices.

Keller said abortion could be treated differently under the courts precedents and said legislators react to topics that are of public concern.

Kagan questioned the motives of the lawmakers. Even if Texas were allowed to set much higher medical standards for abortion clinics, she said, I guess I just want to know why would Texas do that?

Her point seemed to be that it was not to protect health but to close clinics.

The justices are applying a test the court formulated nearly 25 years ago in the Casey decision. It said states had a legitimate interest in regulating abortion procedures but could not make them so onerous as to impose an undue burden on a womans right to terminate a pregnancy before fetal viability.

Included in the description of such a burden was unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion.

While Texas presented medical experts who said the restrictions protected women, the clinics were supported by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association, among other medical groups.

Laws that regulate abortion should be evidence-based and designed to improve womens health, they said in a brief. The challenged provisions of H.B. 2 are neither.

A trial judge found the arguments unconvincing and struck down those provisions of the law. But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans reversed that decision and said courts do not have to scrutinize the rationale provided by a legislature for abortion laws as long as that rationale has a reasonable basis.

The case is Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt.

Sandhya Somashekhar contributed to this report.
As Donald Trump rampaged through the Super Tuesday states, adding Massachusetts and Georgia and Virginia to his map, the Republican Partys mainstream decided to trade panic for hope.

Trump is not sweeping the Super Tuesday states as expected, said Katie Packer, the Republican strategist whose Our Principles PAC was loading new attack spots for the mid-March contests.

This is exactly how Democrats governed for 50 years, said GOP activist Grover Norquist, stepping out of the annual dinner of the American Spectator magazine. They owned the states. They occasionally won the presidency.

If this did not sound like the reactions of people watching a hostile takeover of their political home, it was because their eyes were adjusting to a new reality. In the hours before the polls closed, some elected Republicans said they would refuse to support a Trump candidacy. More said he was dreadful, but they would support the ticket. And some thinkers, more aligned with the conservative movement than any party, were making contingency plans in case they needed to split.

The first group included Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), a retiring moderate whose district was decisively won by Trump. Hours before the polls closed, he released an open letter on a Virginia conservative blog promising not to vote for Trump but not endorsing any other candidate.

My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, said Rigell, and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nations commander-in-chief.

Rigell had company, with Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) saying that they could not support Trump either  Sasse even saying he would favor the creation of a new party if Trump won the nomination. But more Republicans were choosing to wait it out, following House Speaker Paul D. Ryan in condemning Trumps behavior.

That attitude was not matched by the conservative base. Randy Barnett, the libertarian lawyer whose thinking informed the near-miss lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, wrote in USA Today that Trump was creating the conditions for a new Constitution Party, an ideologically pure breakaway.

If the Democrats succeed in collapsing a Trump campaign  as I believe they can and will  then GOP voters can seamlessly shift to the new party, he wrote, suggesting that this party also nominate a candidate for president. If this happens, such a party can either actually win outright or throw the election into the House, which is allowed to pick from the top candidates, in this case, three.

Erick Erickson, the conservative media mogul who disinvited Trump from his summer conference, agreed with Barnett.

Controlling so many state legislatures and Governors mansions could be advantageous in access for a Republican third party bid, he wrote on his website, the Resurgent. Many of those incumbents understand that their survival depends on an alternative to Donald Trump.

The disagreement between these conservatives is not so much about whether Trump is acceptable. Its whether  given how many Republicans still oppose him  he is containable. Its whether he can be contained by being defeated, or whether he can be contained by being influenced as the party nominee who has brought an army of new, disgruntled voters to the polls.

1 of 38 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Photos: What Super Tuesday looks like around the country View Photos Voters head to the polls and cast ballots.. Caption Voters headed to the polls and cast ballots. Donald Trump speaks alongside New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during a campaign press event at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Trump did not win everywhere on Tuesday, but he won in most places. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas enjoyed a bit of a resurgence, winning his home state, neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska. The establishment candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, were left hoping to eke out wins in Minnesota and Vermont, respectively.

As the race moves next week to the Midwest, no campaign or faction was in despair. Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party  and niece of 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney  said that the new Trump voters were welcome in the party and that a Trump nomination could appeal to older voters.

I ask this at every listening tour: How many of you are going to back our nominee? she said. Every hand goes up. Everybody is going to.

David Bossie, the president of the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, reacted to early results by saying it was time for Rubio to end his campaign and let Cruz take Trump on. But if Rubio and Cruz both lost, a Trump-led party could endure.

Eight years ago, I worked against [John] McCain for the nomination and I sucked it up, said Bossie. Four years ago, I was against Romney. He won and I sucked it up. Thats what the establishment asks of conservatives every four years, to move on.

And Judd Gregg, the former governor and senator from New Hampshire, was happy to see the race continue. He had initially endorsed Jeb Bush for president. On Monday, he switched his support to Kasich. If Trump goes to the convention without a majority of delegates, theres a pathway for Kasich, said Gregg, waving off any suggestion that the party was in crisis and needed to consolidate.

And if Trump won? Gregg would support him.

Whats the option, Hillary Clinton? asked Gregg. Id rather have somebody a little light on substance than somebody who put our national security at risk.
New rules that limit a real estate agents access to closing documents make it harder for home buyers to learn of errors and avoid settlement delays. (Mark Gail/The Washington Post)

When youre buying a house, dont you want an experienced set of eyes checking out the closing papers for errors and potential overcharges?

Of course. But under the new federal real estate settlement procedures that took effect late last year, an unexpected problem is taking shape: Many lenders and title companies are refusing to provide copies of the final closing documents to real estate agents representing home buyers. That, in turn, is threatening to jeopardize one of the traditional services agents perform for their clients: scrutinizing closing statements for inaccuracies that could cost them money or delay the settlement unnecessarily.

Yet in a recent internal survey of members across the country, the National Association of Realtors found that 54.5 percent of agents reported they had experienced difficulties obtaining the Closing Disclosure form used under the new federal rules and that half of these agents detected errors when they finally reviewed them. The errors included incorrect fee charges, commission splits, taxes and failure to include seller concessions to the purchasers.

[More Harney: Mortgage lenders try to turn more renters into homeowners]

In some cases, when Closing Disclosures had to be changed and reissued  triggering a mandatory three-day waiting period for the purchasers and delaying the settlement  sellers have balked and even canceled sales. Eric Post, principal broker at BHGRE Realty Partners in Portland, Ore., told me, Weve had some situations where this caused the termination of entire deals because the delay wasnt acceptable to the sellers.

Dan Galloway, an agent with Redfin in the Washington area, said that under the previous system, agents routinely received a copy of the HUD-1 closing form, which summarized the costs and credits for both the sellers and buyers in one document. Typically the HUD-1 was prepared and delivered by the settlement or title agent or attorney closing the transaction.

Now lenders are solely responsible for preparing and delivering the Closing Disclosure, the replacement for the HUD-1, directly to the buyers. Lenders are often reluctant to deliver it to any party not expressly designated in the governments rules. The rules are silent about sharing a copy with the buyers realty agent.

Lenders also cite federal consumer privacy regulations that they feel constrain them from providing a Closing Disclosure to a realty agent because the document contains non-public personal information. Although title, escrow and settlement agencies typically are local, frequently the lender is located hundreds or thousands of miles away and may not be adequately informed about local real estate tax practices, transfer fees and other charges.

As a result, lenders Closing Disclosures now commonly contain errors; Galloway says the lions share of them have one or more mistakes.

[More Harney: Landslide vote in House bodes well for easing limits on condo sales]

Emily Vaile, regional manager for BHGRE David Winans & Associates in Dallas, agrees. Errors are happening all the time, she said in an interview. Maybe half of Closing Disclosures contain them, she estimates  some minor and clerical, some consequential. If theres something thats inconsistent with the sales contract in the Closing Disclosure, it may be obvious to the agent, she said, but be totally missed by the buyers, whose heads are spinning with all the last-minute details of getting ready to move.

When realty agents cant obtain their clients Closing Disclosure from the lender, they often turn to the title or settlement agent. But title agents also may not be willing to share it with them because of their own federal privacy concerns. Some lenders also prohibit title and settlement agents from sharing the Closing Disclosure with realty agents.

So where is this all headed? Some title agents have begun using work-around solutions that provide realty agents the information they need, including a customizable settlement statement from the American Land Title Association that itemizes all the fees and charges that the buyers and sellers must pay during the settlement process. It includes no personal information that violates privacy rules, but it allows agents to counsel their clients and report transactional data to the local multiple listing service.

Bottom line for you: Be aware of this issue and discuss it with your agent and the title company you choose. Alternatively, short-circuit the whole controversy by handing over a copy of the final settlement disclosure to your agent as soon as you receive it from the lender. Ask for a thorough walk-through of the closing items and their accuracy.

Get the most out of that extra pair of eyes.

Ken Harneys email address is kenharney@earthlink.net.
The main entrance gate of a detention center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the vice president of Facebook for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, was detained. (Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images)

A senior executive of Facebook left a Brazilian detention facility on Wednesday even as authorities moved ahead with an investigation over access into the companys popular messaging service.

The executive, Diego Dzodan, was taken into custody on Tuesday after the Facebook subsidiary, WhatsApp, told Brazilian authorities that it was unable to intercept instant messages in connection with a drug-trafficking investigation.

Dzodan, Facebooks vice president for Latin America, was detained on an order from a Brazilian judge, said WhatsApp spokesman Matt Steinfeld.

But a higher court ruled that Dzodan could be freed while the legal process against Facebook, being held away from the public eye, is ongoing. He was released soon after the decision.

He continues to respond to the process, said Luciano Andrade, a spokesman for the court in Aracaju, in northeast Brazil. The process is against Facebook, but as he is responsible for Facebook in Latin America, the judge requested the imprisonment.

The case reflects the growing conflict between technology firms and governments around the world over access to customer data.

[Apple gets tech world support in U.S. fight]

As more companies use strong encryption on the devices and communication, user information becomes increasingly out of reach for law enforcement, even if officials have obtained warrants.

Compounding the issue, a U.S. firm operating overseas can often find it difficult to comply with local laws when they conflict with U.S. rules. Congress, for instance, bars American companies from providing court-ordered wiretaps to anyone except the U.S. government.

Both WhatsApp and Facebook are hugely popular in Brazil, where WhatsApp has more than 100 million users.

WhatsApp has said that it is moving to strong encryption on its platform to protect users security and privacy. Although U.S. law enforcement says it supports encryption, it has expressed frustration over its inability to gain access to user data in criminal and terrorism cases.

[Lynch: Wiretap pact with British would protect privacy, rights]

The FBI is wrangling with Apple in U.S. courts over access to a phone used by one of the shooters in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Steinfeld, the WhatsApp spokesman, said the companys platform is simply not built for wiretaps. The company, which operates as a separate entity and is based in Mountain View, Calif., does not have an office in Brazil or store the messages on its servers. It encrypts them when they are in transit between users.

WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have, Steinfeld said.

Facebook said in a statement that the company is disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook.

The company added: Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have.

Brazilian police said in a statement that they wanted the information in connection with a probe into organized crime and drug trafficking.

The police requested the wiretap four months ago, after officers investigating a drug gang seized a car carrying cocaine on the main street in Lagarto, a city with a population of about 100,000, said Monica Horta, a spokeswoman for the federal police in Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe state.

Two months ago, the judge levied a daily fine of $12,600 on Facebook, raising this to $254,000 when the data was not supplied. Frustrated, police requested the order for Dzodans arrest.

[[The awkward irony in Brazil blocking WhatsApp]]

A judge in Sao Paulo state briefly blocked WhatsApp in December over its failure to provide information in a separate criminal investigation, but the ban was overturned less than 24 hours later.

The service was also nearly suspended in February 2015 over the orders of a judge in Piaui, another northeastern state, for lack of cooperation in an investigation into pedophilia. In that case, too, the ban was overturned  this time before it came into effect.

Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.

Read more:

Everything you need to know about encryption: Hint, youre already using it.

Obama administration explored ways to bypass smartphone encryption

As encryption spreads, U.S. grapples with clash between privacy, security

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Seamus Daly is released from Magheraberry Prison on Tuesday in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. The 45-year-old laborer was accused of murdering 29 people in the 1989 Omagh bombing, but the case collapsed in court Tuesday when prosecutors decided there was no reasonable prospect of conviction. (Charles Mcquillan/Getty Images)

The man charged with murdering 29 people in a car bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh walked free from prison Tuesday after prosecutors concluded that the evidence against him  particularly a witness who was supposed to place him in the area that day  was too weak.

Seamus Daly had spent nearly two years in prison awaiting trial for the Aug. 15, 1998, attack on a crowd of shoppers, workers and tourists. His case joined a string of failed prosecutions against figures with a group known as the Real IRA who have long been blamed for the deadliest single bombing of the Northern Ireland conflict.

Daly, 45, did serve a brief prison sentence in Ireland after pleading guilty in 2004 to membership in the Real IRA, one of several outlawed factions, each of which styles itself as the true Irish Republican Army. These small, feud-prone gangs reject the cease-fire observed since 1997 by the major group, the Provisional IRA.

The Real IRA planted a string of car bombs in Northern Ireland towns in 1998 in a bid to undermine support for that years Good Friday peace accord, which sought to end a three-decade conflict that claimed 3,700 lives. Police prevented deaths in several other car bombings with swift evacuations.

But on that unusually sunny Saturday in Omagh, police responding to vague telephone warnings ordered people away from the towns hilltop courthouse and down Market Street  straight toward the bomb parked outside a shop selling school uniforms. Most of those slain were women and children, including a mother pregnant with twins.

In this Aug. 16, 1998 photo, police stand amongst the rubble after a car-bomb attack in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh. (Dan Chung/Reuters)

Public horror over the Omagh atrocity spurred an island-wide security crackdown on those IRA factions that refused to back the peace accord. The British and Irish prime ministers and U.S. President Bill Clinton visited the blast scene and vowed to isolate the extremists. But in the nearly 18 years since then, those factions remain active and Omagh has become a byword for justice denied.

Police have testified in court that telecommunications records document how a cellphone allegedly used by Daly traveled across the Irish border to Omagh on the day of the attack. A witness, Denis OConnor, who previously testified that Daly used that phone to call him from Omagh a half-hour after the blast, performed badly on the stand last week during a preliminary hearing designed to test evidence.

He sounded not a credible witness at all, a very untruthful witness. I would not want anybody to be convicted on that evidence, said Michael Gallagher, who has campaigned since 1998 for the Real IRA bomb unit responsible for the incident to be brought to justice. Nobody has been successfully prosecuted for the crime.

Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden died in the attack, noted that three high-profile attempts to convict alleged members of the Omagh bombing team have failed because of weak, disputed or overturned evidence.

Dalys lawyer, Peter Corrigan, compared the prosecutors case to a house of straw. He said OConnor committed perjury, while police had misrepresented their evidence on mobile phones used by the attackers.

In 2009, a Belfast civil jury found Daly and three other Real IRA figures responsible for the bombing and ordered them to pay about $2.5 million in damages, a judgment that was upheld on appeal in 2013. They have refused to pay.

In 2007, electrician Sean Hoey  who had faced 56 charges, including construction of the Omagh bombs power-timer units and 29 counts of murder  was acquitted on all charges after a Northern Ireland judge rejected forensic evidence and said police witnesses had lied. Hoey had spent four years behind bars awaiting trial.

In this 1998 photo, friends and family carry the coffins of Avril Monaghan and her 18-month-old daughter, Maura, to a church in Augher, northern Ireland. The mother and daughter were among 29 people killed in the Aug. 15, 1998 car bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh. (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

In 2002, pub owner Colm Murphy was convicted of supplying the phones used by the bombers and received a 14-year prison sentence in Ireland. His conviction was overturned on appeal eight years later, after two detectives admitted they had rewritten their interrogation notes to remove conflicts in information.
French riot police walk past makeshift shelters being dismantled in the migrant shantytown called the "Jungle" in Calais on Wednesday. (Pascal Rossignol/Reuters)

More than a dozen humanitarian and nongovernmental organizations accused local authorities of brutality against migrants as the demolition of a shantytown on the edge of Calais known as the Jungle continued into a third day.

After police moved ahead with dismantling the camp on Wednesday, six Iranian migrants sewed their mouths shut to protest the mass evictions and destruction of the makeshift facility in an attempt to bring attention to their plight, the Associated Press reported.

Some camp dwellers have stood on roofs to try to save their huts; others set them afire.

The Iranians held a sign asking for a U.N. representative to visit the camp.

Clare Moseley of the Care4Calais British volunteer group said the protest was a cry for help because they dont know what else to do.

French authorities began dismantling the massive migrant camp in Calais on Feb. 29, 2016. Pro-migrant activists clashed with police, with at least three people being arrested. Thousands of migrants will be affected, although authorities have offered to relocate them. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

In a statement, French and British humanitarian organizations decried what they called the mass gassing of migrants by local authorities.

The French government had promised that the dismantling of the camp would be a humanitarian operation. But bulldozers and police arrived first thing Monday morning, and riots broke out among migrants. As a ground crew destroyed homes, migrants responded with rocks and police with tear gas.

[French court clears way for camp demolition]

The groups said the governments soothing rhetoric was only intended to disguise the reality  a direct response to remarks last week from Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve promising a methodical demolition.

That reality, they alleged, included rubber bullets used against migrants assembled in peaceful protest and several club beatings Monday and Tuesday. Many refugees, the 16 co-signers said, were ordered to leave their homes in a time frame between 1 hour and 10 minutes, in many cases without time to gather their belongings, including crucial identity documents.

All theyre trying to do is get rid of the embarrassing situation, Moseley said of the French governments tactics in the camp. They dont care where the people go. Theyre not even looking where those refugees go.

Calais officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

1 of 15 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  A harrowing journey for migrants from France to Britain View Photos Many have tried to make it from Calais to the United Kingdom via the undersea channel tunnel. Caption Many have tried to make it out of a Calais camp via the undersea channel tunnel. Oct. 7, 2015 Nawaf, who would not allow his last name to be used because he fears for the security of his family in Syria, and other migrants attempt to reach the channel tunnel in Calais, France. Shannon Jensen/for The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Meanwhile, the European Union moved to push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to deal with the refugee crisis.

Christos Stylianides, the E.U. humanitarian-aid commissioner, said Wednesday that 300 million euros ($325 million) would be earmarked for this year and used where it is most needed, alluding to Greece and the nations along the Balkan trail that refugees use to move into the heartland of the 28-nation bloc. The overall total would cover three years.

Stylianides said the funds will not be diverted from aid programs aimed at non-E.U. nations.

The proposal will need to be approved by the European Parliament and the member states when E.U. leaders meet Monday for a summit focusing on the migration issue.

Read more:

Spring could bring a fresh surge of refugees. But Europe isnt ready for them.

Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants
People wave the flags of Lebanon and Iranian-backed Hezbollah at a rally last year in Beirut. (Nabil Mounzer/EPA)

A Saudi-dominated political bloc on Wednesday formally designated Lebanons Hezbollah militia a terrorist organization, a move that signals dangerously escalating tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The Gulf Cooperation Councils decision against the Iranian-allied group comes two weeks after Saudi Arabia canceled a $4 billion aid package intended to strengthen Lebanese security services.

The cancellation was rooted in anger over Hezbollahs dominance of Lebanese security and political institutions. Saudi Arabia and other GCC member states quickly followed the scrapping of the aid package with advice to their citizens to leave Lebanon.

[Irans president tries to cool tensions with Riyadh]

The growing rifts between Saudi Arabia and Iran have increasingly rattled Lebanon, where both nations until recently have managed to restrain their destructive rivalry despite their competing influence. Saudi Arabia and Iran also are on opposing sides in the civil war in neighboring Syria, where fighting has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions.

A blistering statement posted on the GCC website accused Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim movement, of hostile acts in the six states in the Sunni-led bloc: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

The statement, citing GCC Secretary General Rashid al-Zayani, accused Hezbollah of recruitment to carry out terrorist attacks, and of smuggling weapons and explosives, in flagrant violation of [GCC members] sovereignty, security and stability.

All Hezbollah leaders and the groups affiliated factions fall under the new terrorism designation, said the statement, which also charged that the militia is responsible for terror and incitement in Yemen and Iraq.

There was no immediate response from Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia and other allied nations broke ties with Shiite-led Iran in January. The rupture came after mobs stormed Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in protest over Saudi Arabias execution of a prominent Shiite cleric accused of anti-state crimes.

[5 facts to make sense of Saudi-Iranian rifts]

Iran and Saudi Arabia for years have jostled for influence across the region.

Their rivalry has badly strained relations between Sunnis and Shiites the world over, and it has fueled devastating conflicts beyond Syria. In Yemen, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened with ground and air assaults last year against Iranian-aligned rebels.

Last week, Yemens Saudi-backed government accused Hezbollah of working in the war-torn Arabian Peninsula country to train the rebels, known as Houthis, who are followers of the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam.

Wednesdays announcement followed a provocative speech a day earlier by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who criticized Saudi Arabia, its role in the region and its decision to halt military and security aid to Lebanon.

The decision to cut off aid, as well as other Saudi moves, signals that we have entered a new phase of political and media struggle that Saudi Arabia has escalated, Nasrallah said.

But the Hezbollah leader said there would not be a return to the kind of clashes that gripped Lebanon in 2008. That surge of unrest  pitting the groups militants against Saudi-backed political forces in battles that locals described as a brief civil war  resulted in Hezbollahs consolidating its unparalleled power in Lebanese affairs.

Divided by multiple, feuding religious groups, Lebanon fought a 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

Militants from Iran and Hezbollah are fighting in Syria to prop up President Bashar al-Assad against a rebellion that is supported with money and weapons from Saudi Arabia and other states. Pro-Assad forces  backed by Russian air power  have made startling advances against rebels near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, alarming Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other backers of the rebellion.

Some analysts speculate that the shift in momentum in Syrias war compelled Saudi officials to press Iran by intensifying the pressure against it in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia also has suffered from falling oil prices, leading others to suspect that the decision to cut aid to Lebanons security forces was financially motivated.

Hezbollah intervened in Syria unilaterally, angering many Lebanese, who say that the move dragged Lebanon deeper into the conflict.

Despite the friction, Lebanon has managed to weather immense pressures.

More than 1 million Syrians have taken refugee in the tiny country of 4.4 million people. Gridlock in the government  partly a result of differences over the Syrian war  has prevented politicians from selecting a new president for nearly two years and has hampered garbage collection in Beirut.

But the recent surge in Saudi-Iranian tensions shows signs of spurring broader unrest.

Over the weekend, Hezbollah supporters staged demonstrations after a Saudi-owned pan-Arab satellite television station aired a comedy segment poking fun at Nasrallah. The show portrayed him as a stooge of Iran, sparking protests in which people blocked roads and burned tires.

Hezbollah has been pressured and denounced for decades by the United States and its allies over the groups military opposition to Israel, including rocket barrages fired across Lebanons southern border. Hezbollah and Israel fought a brief but devastating war in 2006, but Israeli forces failed to dislodge the militants from bases in southern Lebanon.

Read more:

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world
The main entrance gate of the Provisional Detention Centre in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the vice president of Facebook for Latin America, Diego Dzodan was being detained on March 1. (Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images)

A senior Facebook executive was detained in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Tuesday after the companys WhatsApp cellphone chat subsidiary told federal authorities it was unable to intercept instant messages in connection with a drug investigation.

Diego Dzodan, Facebooks vice president for Latin America, was taken into custody on his way into work following a judicial order from a judge, said WhatsApp spokesman Matt Steinfeld.

The case reflects the growing conflict between technology firms and governments around the world over access to customer data. As more companies use strong encryption on their customers devices and communication, the information becomes increasingly out of reach for law enforcement, even if officials have obtained warrants.

[Google, Facebook and other powerful tech firms filing briefs to support Apple]

Compounding the issue, a U.S. firm operating overseas can often find it difficult to comply with local laws when they conflict with U.S. rules. Congress, for instance, bars American companies from providing court-ordered wiretaps to anyone except the U.S. government.

Both WhatsApp and Facebook are hugely popular in Brazil, where WhatsApp has more than 100 million users.

WhatsApp has said it is moving to strong encryption on its platform to protect users security and privacy. Although U.S. law enforcement says it supports encryption, it has expressed frustration with its inability to gain access to user data in criminal and terrorism cases. The FBI is wrangling with Apple in U.S. courts over access to a phone used by one of the shooters in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Brazils Federal Police said in a statement that Federal Police in the northeastern state of Sergipe had requested the arrest, following repeated failures by Facebook to comply with court orders to supply information from the social-media site.

Steinfeld said that the companys platform is simply not built for wiretaps. The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., separately from Facebook, does not have an office in Brazil or store the messages on its servers. It encrypts them when they are in transit between users.

WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have, Steinfeld said.

[Tim Cook: U.S. government wants something we consider too dangerous to create]

Facebook said in a statement that the company is disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook.

The company added: Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have.

The Brazilian police said in a statement that it wanted the information for a probe into organized crime and drug trafficking. Dzodan is currently providing statements to the Federal Police in Sao Paulo, where he will remain jailed at the disposition of the justice system, the police said.

The police requested the wiretap four months ago, after officers investigating a drug gang seized a car carrying cocaine on the main street in Lagarto, a city with a population of around 100,000, said Monica Horta, a spokeswoman for the Federal Police in Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe state.

[Lynch: Wiretap agreement with Britain would protect privacy, human rights]

Two months ago, the judge levied a daily fine on Facebook of $12,600, raising this to $254,000 when the data was not supplied. Frustrated, police requested the order for Dzodans arrest.

Theres technical limitations to what we can do to cooperate, Steinfeld said. Weve cooperated as much as we could.

This information is important evidence in a criminal investigation into drug traffic, Horta said.

WhatsApp was briefly blocked in December by a judge in Sao Paulo state for failing to provide information related to a separate criminal investigation, but the ban was overturned less than 24 hours later.

The service was also nearly suspended in February 2015 after a judge in Piaui, another northeastern state, ordered its suspension for not helping a different investigation, this time into pedophilia. In this case, too, the ban was overturned  this time before it came into effect.

Nakashima reported from Washington.

Read more:

Judge rules in favor of Apple in key case involving a locked iPhone

Google, Facebook and other powerful tech firms filing briefs to support Apple

Apple is working to make iPhones even tougher to hack into

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., where the Security Council adopted sweeping new sanctions on North Korea. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted harsh sanctions Wednesday against North Korea, imposing some of the strongest measures ever used to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

The new sanctions come two months after North Korea tested what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb and a month after it conducted what was widely described as a banned missile test under the guise of launching a satellite into space. But U.S. officials began drafting the measures three years ago, soon after North Korea conducted a previous nuclear test, in order to move swiftly the next time it happened. Negotiations to win Chinas support began two days after North Koreas January nuclear test, its fourth in a decade.

The resolution is far more sweeping than existing sanctions requiring a link to proliferation activities. That precondition has been removed, in effect erasing the presumption of innocence.

[Punishing North Korea: A rundown on current sanctions]

It mandates cargo inspections for all goods going in and out of North Korea by land, sea or air, chokes off supplies of most aviation fuel for its armed forces, and bans the sale of all small arms and conventional weapons to Pyongyang. It also prohibits transactions that raise hard cash for North Korea through sales of its natural resources.

The resolution doubles the blacklist of people and institutions already sanctioned and requires countries to expel North Korean diplomats involved in any sanctioned activities.

One provision was designed to prevent Pyongyang from sending taekwondo instructors to train foreign police forces. Another bars North Koreans from specialized training at any school or research center in the world if the learning can advance Pyongyangs nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

President Obama welcomed the sanctions as a firm and appropriate response to North Koreas attempts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Today, the international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people, he said.

As soon as the sanctions were released, the Treasury Department and the State Department updated their blacklists of people and entities tied to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the official name for North Korea, and its proliferation programs. The designation freezes their U.S. assets and bars Americans from doing business with them.

The U.N. sanctions, which target the countrys elites and avoid adverse humanitarian consequences for civilians, aim to accomplish what worked with less onerous sanctions on Iran by pushing the impoverished nation to quit pumping money into its nuclear program.

[After nuclear test, Park has epiphanies on North Korea  and China]

1 of 50 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  What life looks like inside North Korea View Photos Scenes from inside the hermit kingdom. Caption Scenes from the hermit kingdom. April 14, 2016 A girl dances ballet at the Mangyongdae Childrens Palace in the Pyongyang suburbs. The large facility, opened in 1989, has hundreds of rooms for various activities, including mathematics, chemistry, computer science, sports, music and dance practice. Franck Robichon/European Pressphoto Agency Wait 1 second to continue.

The chronic suffering of the people of North Korea is the direct result of the choices made by the DPRK government, a government that has consistently prioritized its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs over providing for the most basic needs of its own people, said Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The North Korean government would rather grow its nuclear weapons program than grow its own children, she added.

The resolution was presented by the United States with the support of China, a sharp reversal, given Beijings longtime support of its neighbor. Although the United States has long had an embargo on trade with North Korea, China has provided food and fuel and has been a key trading partner. In recent years, living conditions in North Korea have improved, thanks in large part to China.

In the past, China has been unwilling to tighten the screws on Pyongyang, in part out of concern for what an imploding, unstable North Korea might mean for Chinas own border. But recently North Korea has continued testing new weapons and missiles, disregarding Chinas warnings and personal envoys.

After North Korea on Jan. 6 detonated a new device  calling it a hydrogen bomb, although most experts say it was a smaller nuclear device  Chinas ambassador to six-party talks, Wu Dawei, went to Pyongyang to urge restraint. Instead, North Korea announced while he was there that it would test a missile.

Chinas about-face suggests it has started to realize that doing nothing would impose growing political costs internationally  the possibility of a greater U.S. presence in the region and weaker relations with South Korea, which Beijing has been cultivating.

I expect theres been a delayed recognition in China to the political price China was paying, with South Korea in particular, for its equivocation or outright silence about how to respond to North Korea and North Korea actions, said Jonathan Pollack, a specialist on East Asian politics and security at the Brookings Institution.

[China, U.S. cite progress on N. Korea sanctions deal. But theres no quick fix.]

During a visit to Washington last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi hinted at the strains in policy toward North Korea.

On the one hand, were saying to the international community . . . that the normal exchanges, especially those affecting the livelihoods of the North Korean people, should not be adversely affected, he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On the other hand, in order to uphold the international nuclear nonproliferation regime for the sake of denuclearization, our exchanges will be affected to some extent.

But some analysts question the depth of Chinas commitment to the latest round of sanctions.

The real question going forward is whether China will enforce the new measures, said Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University. My guess is that China will squeeze for a little bit, but not too hard, while the U.S. will want China to squeeze harder and for a longer period of time.

Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean studies professor at Tufts University, said the U.N. sanctions, even if violated in the future, will become increasingly meaningful if ordinary citizens in North Korea are adversely affected.

The fact the U.N. is involved will lend greater legitimacy to the effort to sanction North Korea and enable others, like Japan and Europe, to shoulder some of the blame if there are negative repercussions from sanctions, so the blame doesnt just fall on the shoulders of the United States, he said.

Preparatory work on the sanctions began in early 2013, immediately after the Security Council passed a sanctions resolution in response to North Koreas third nuclear test, according to a State Department official who spoke about the sensitive negotiations on the condition of anonymity. U.S. officials concluded that incrementally ratcheting up sanctions was insufficient and that more restrictive measures were needed, the official said.

As technical experts from many government agencies met to share ideas, a contingency draft of sanctions was repeatedly updated to be ready for a fourth nuclear test by North Korea.

[As U.S. pressure mounts, China talks up prospect of N. Korea sanctions that bite]

On Jan. 8, two days after North Korea announced the fourth test, diplomats from the U.S. mission to the United Nations presented a draft to the Chinese mission. There was little response during January as China studied the proposed sanctions, which dropped requirements to prove proliferation links, as China had insisted on previously.

China did not change its position during a Jan. 27 visit to Beijing by Secretary of State John F. Kerry or during a Feb. 5 phone call that Obama placed to Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But after the Feb. 7 missile test, the State Department official said, the Chinese came around to the U.S. point of view. Throughout much of February, U.S. and Chinese diplomats met several times a day to discuss provisions that had to be approved by Beijing, the official said.

At 8 or 9 at night, diplomats at the U.S. mission would schlep to the Chinese mission, the State Department official said. Then they would meet again the next day after Beijing had worked through the provisions overnight.

After a tentative agreement was reached early last week, U.S. officials had hoped for a quick adoption by the Security Council. But there were delays while Russia studied the sanctions to gauge their impact. Russia transports coal over a short stretch of railroad in North Korea to a port, and Moscow wanted reassurances it would not be banned, the official said.

In recent days, North Korea has boasted that more sanctions would not hurt. Now China, South Korea, Japan and the United States are awaiting its reaction. Early Thursday, hours after the sanctions were approved, the North fired short-range projectiles into the sea, South Koreas Defense Ministry said.

Weve seen its reckless and unpredictable acts for years, Power said. Weve seen threats directed at the continental United States and the Republic of Korea. Weve seen cyberattacks on American companies costing hundreds of millions of dollars. We do not expect a change of behavior overnight.

Read more:

China backs U.N. move to denounce North Korea over nuclear test

Student held in North Korea confesses to severe crime

North Koreas glamorous girl band is back, celebrating the rocket launch

Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
On the Sunday television talk show hosted by Anne Will, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated her opposition to a change in course on refugee policy. A national solution was not in Germanys interests. Freedom of movement within the Schengen zone had to be maintained. Instead of national borders, the European Unions external borders had to be secured. Intensified efforts to this end were required, she said.

Sundays broadcast was deliberately arranged to give Merkel the opportunity to respond to her critics. For months, right-wing Christian Social Union (CSU) chairman Horst Seehofer has been insisting on stricter restrictions on the number of refugees at the national borders.

At the beginning of the year, Seehofer demanded an upper limit on refugees of 200,000 per year. At the frontier, relations determined by law [had] to be reestablished rapidly, he asserted. Otherwise, the Bavarian state government (in which he is Minister-President) would file a complaint against the federal government in Germanys Constitutional Court, Seehofer threatened, even though the CSU is itself a part of the federal government coalition.

The German government has come under immense pressure following the implementation of strict border controls by the Austrian government and others over the past week, and the decision by one Balkan country after another to shut its borders to refugees.

Germany divided, isolated in Europewhen will you make an about-turn, Mrs. Merkel? Will headlined her programme and called upon the chancellor to respond to the attacks on her policy. Merkel, who often argues in careful and compromising diplomatic tones, was clear and categorical on Sunday. Responding to the question, When will you change course?, she answered bluntly, I will not change course. In answer to the question, Do you have a plan B?, the response was even more succinct, No!

Then Merkel explained that she shared the goal of her critics of sharply reducing the number of refugees. In the summer, she did not open the borders, as she was often accused of doing, she had merely not closed already open borders. Today, she also wanted to defend open borders within the Schengen zone [the area comprising the more than two dozen European countries that have abolished passport and other border controls]. This was because the ending of freedom of movement within Schengen would mean the end of the common European economic market and, very rapidly, the end of the European single currency. From the standpoint of German interests, nobody can seriously want that, Merkel stated.

Therefore, instead of strengthening the European Unions internal borders, the external ones had to be secured. This would not be easy, and required difficult and sometimes very drawn-out negotiations, but there was no way around that. The European Union [EU] had to learn to effectively protect its external borders, she declared, adding, Thats why Im for NATO intervention in the Aegean. NATO units would support Frontex [the EU agency that patrols its borders] and the Turkish army in the struggle against smugglers, and secure the maritime border between Greece and Turkey.

Collaboration with the Turkish government was thus indispensable, she continued. Much had been achieved in talks with the Turks. After the 3 billion [$US 3.26 billion] agreed upon by the EU had been made available, the building of mass internment camps for refugees on the Syrian border was proceeding apace. Germany was also directly involved. The German technical assistance unit (DTW) had been deployed to aid Turkish emergency services with providing for refugees.

Merkel attempted to conceal her support for the sealing off of fortress Europe with humanitarian phrases. In Greece, one could currently see that the closure of the Balkan route did not lead to the desired aim, but had catastrophic consequences. Since Greeces border was difficult to secure due to its many islands, refugees were arriving every day who could go no further and were massing in a country that is highly indebted, she said.

The Greek government could not be left alone precisely at this moment, Merkel stated, noting she was in close contact with Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras. Clearly the German government fears Greece could collapse under the pressure of the refugeeswith 100,000 having arrived since the beginning of the yearwith incalculable consequences for the finances and continued existence of the EU.

The German government is therefore concentrating on militarily patrolling and securing the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. At a meeting of NATO members in Brussels last week, details about the NATO deployment in the Aegean were discussed and finalised. German naval units have been operational since Saturday and are carrying out surveillance on the refugee routes around the clock. Their task is to punish people smugglers (i.e., target refugee boats) who were similar to terrorists and bring back refugees rescued at sea directly to Turkey.

The European solution to the refugee crisis demanded by Merkel is increasingly assuming a military form. An emergency EU summit with Turkey is planned in Brussels next Monday, at which the cooperation on deterring refugees will be concretised. Ankara is demanding financial support for this.

While the most prominent issues are financial support and visa relaxation for Turkish citizens, Turkeys intervention in the Syrian war, where Ankara is determined to topple the Assad regime and prevent the emergence of a Kurdish state, will be discussed behind closed doors. Merkel has repeatedly spoken out in favour of the establishment of a security zone in Syria, a demand also raised by Turkey. This would necessitate a direct military intervention by NATO.

In this context, an article published in the Suddeutsche Zeitung more or less simultaneously with Merkels talk show appearance Sunday was significant. Two leading representatives of economic think tanks, Michael Huther (Cologne Institute of Economic Research) and Hans-Werner Sinn (longtime president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich), demanded the construction of a joint, European army.

The full-page piece began with a very sober assessment of the situation in Europe. Faced with financial problems and the unresolved refugee crisis, the EU is threatened with a break-up. European politics has never appeared so worn out, disillusioned, divided and clueless as today, the authors claimed.

The refugee crisis made clear how deep the crisis of leadership in Europe was. A leading European power was missing. The leading power in Europe in practice, Germany, could no longer evade its responsibility. It was wrong to rely upon the borders being secured by Turkey. Instead, the creation of a comprehensive European defence community had to be adopted as a clear goal.

Huther and Sinn wrote, Faced with the military flash-points in Europes environs, we consider it an unsustainable anachronism that the 28 EU states control 25 separate armies with their own general staffs, even though they are bound together in emergencies via NATO.

Europe needed a new project to maintain its unity. Before the euro zone states involve themselves even more in a union of financial liabilities, the Schengen zone states or the euro zone should come together to form a kind of European defence community. A new, sustainable pillar of European cooperation [would be] based on joint units and a command structure, which gives the political union a solid basis and has a logic of political order.

With Merkels refugee policy increasingly assuming the form of sealing off Europe militarily, and with conflicts growing in NATO over the war in Syria, the demand is being raised for a European army under German leadership.
A crowd of about 300 people gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Monday evening to protest the fatal police shooting of a young black man earlier in the day.

On Tuesday, police identified D.C. Twiddy, 29, as the Raleigh police officer who shot and killed the man during a foot chase the day before. Twiddys account of the incident has not been released and he has been placed on administrative duty pending investigation.

As of Tuesday afternoon, police had not released the name of the deceased. However, a Raleigh woman, Rolanda Byrd, told NBC News that she believes it was her 24-year-old son, Akiel Denkins, and that witnesses told her they saw him shot while running from the police. She said her son worked for a moving company and was the father of two young boys.

Raleigh police said in a statement that Twiddy had been pursuing a man wanted on a felony drug charge Monday afternoon when he fired at the suspect and killed him in the vicinity of Bragg and East streets in the citys impoverished South Park neighborhood.

Chief of Police Cassandra Deck-Brown claimed that a gun was found in close proximity to the suspect.

Deck-Brown had been scheduled to meet with the Raleigh mayor and city council Monday to discuss equipping police officers with body cameras, but the meeting was postponed after the shooting death.

People soon gathered at the scene of the fatal shooting, shouting at police across yellow crime scene tape. They killed my son for no reason, Byrd told local news station WRAL. Everybody out here said he was running, didnt have a gun, [was] trying to jump a fence, and that officer shot my son seven times. For what? For nothing, she said.

My son didnt have no gun on him. My son wasnt threatening that officer, Byrd told reporters. She said people in the area at the time told her that her son was fleeing the police and they couldnt catch him, so they shot at him seven times.

Byrd told reporters that her son had a warrant out for his arrest for failure to appear and that she believed that was why he ran from police. She told NBC News that her son didnt own a gun and that witnesses told her they didnt see him with one during the police chase.

A witness, Truvalia Kearney, told the Raleigh News & Observer that she was standing near Denkins around noon on Monday when a police car pulled up and Denkins took off running. She said that Denkins jumped a chain-link fence and ducked into the backyard of a house while Twiddy, the officer, pursued him.

Kearney told the News & Observer, The officer jumped the fence and fell down and then pulled his gun out and started shooting. [Denkins] got shot in the back.

Byrd, the slain mans mother, spoke to reporters at the scene of the shooting several hours after it happened. Everybody out heres saying that he ran, she said. He wasnt running toward the officer, he was running away from the officer.  He wasnt threatening anyone.

Byrd told reporters that her lawyer is in possession of a video in which the shooting can be heard, but not seen. Theres video, she said. Yall are going to see it soon.

Police chief Deck-Brown said that the shooting would be investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation and by the Raleigh Police Departments internal affairs unit.

People gathered Monday evening at a makeshift memorial and vigil near the scene of the shooting. Neighborhood resident Casanova Womack told WRAL that tensions were running high in the neighborhood and that People are just frustrated, angry, upset and disappointed.

Rev. Chris Jones, pastor at a church several blocks from the shooting scene, told WRAL of Jenkins, I treated him like my son. Ive fed him at my church before, Jones said. Now, hes lying back there, dead.

Jones questioned why the police had to kill Denkins, WRAL reported. If he ran from you today, you could have arrested him tomorrow, he said. Why did you have to kill him today?

According to a Washington Post database that tracks fatal police shootings, Mondays shooting is the first time a Raleigh police office has shot and killed someone since at least the beginning of last year. Twenty-nine people were fatally shot by police in North Carolina in 2015.
By Ethan Lou TORONTO (Reuters) - A breed of sheep believed to have been raised by the Jewish patriarch Jacob may soon be brought to Israel, its Biblical homeland, after an Israeli couple gathered a herd in Canada and brokered a bureaucratic detente to import the animals. The effort to bring 130 sheep to the Golan Heights from Canada has been inching along for nearly a year, Israelis Jenna and Gil Lewinsky said on Tuesday, with the reintroduction of the breed stymied by red tape between the two countries. The couple, based near Vancouver, said the project was initially opposed by Israel's Agriculture Ministry because Canada was not on a list of approved sheep importers. But the Israeli embassy in Canada facilitated a dialogue between the couple and the ministry and sent along "strong recommendations," embassy spokesman Eitan Weiss said. "And the ambassador visited Israel. He met some people with the Ministry of Agriculture and issued a letter," Weiss said in an interview. "The idea was very, very nice, and of course we said, 'Let's push it.'" According to Hebrew and Christian holy books, Jacob had received a flock of a speckled and spotted breed as wages. The couple said the sheep have since gone extinct in Israel. Late last year, Israel's Agriculture Ministry changed its stance, and on Monday said it has contacted its Canadian counterpart as part of the import process, Jenna Lewinsky said. She said Israeli Ambassador Rafael Barak walked in on the birth of a lamb when he visited her family's farm in Abbotsford, British Columbia, about 70 km (43 miles) east of Vancouver. The couple had started raising the sheep after receiving a few as a gift from a heritage farm. "It should be the national animal of the Jewish people," Jenna Lewinsky said. "It would be a very important and historic moment when the sheep return after basically 2,000 years." The couple said the sheep are expected to reach Israel this year, subject to passing medical tests, and will be used for educational and heritage purposes. Israel's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Ethan Lou; Editing by Leslie Adler)
Following a poor performance on Super Tuesday, Ben Carson announced on Wednesday that he sees no path forward in the race for the Republican nomination and will not attend Thursdays Fox News GOP debate in his hometown of Detroit.



I do not see a political path forward in light of last evenings Super Tuesday primary results, Carson said in a statement. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of We the People will continue. Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for president, I remain committed to Saving America for Future Generations. We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our Founders intended for this exceptional nation.

Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America, he added.



Carson said he will address his political future on Friday in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C.

The soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon, who actually led Donald Trump in the Republican race in early polls, finished a disappointing fourth or fifth in all 11 of Tuesdays GOP contests.

Ben Carson is bathed in a haze of purple backlight as he speaks during a primary night party in Baltimore, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)



Carsons unlikely rise among the ranks of Republican hopefuls began in 2013 at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, where he criticized Obamacare with President Obama seated just a few feet away.

What we need to do is come up with something simple, Carson said. When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account to which money can be contributed  pretax  from the time youre born till the time you die.

As recently as November, Carson was neck and neck with Trump in several states, including South Carolina.

But mounting questions surrounding the 64-year-olds colorful biography, coupled with an admitted lack of foreign policy chops and a series of controversial comments on the campaign trail, ultimately derailed Carson.

Story continues

During the Iowa caucuses, Carson flew home to Florida for a change of clothes  a move that was interpreted by Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs rival GOP campaign as Carson pulling out of the race, and broadcast by Cruzs operatives.



Cruz subsequently apologized, but Carson and other Republican candidates accused the Texas senator  who won Iowa  of playing dirty.

Im not going to use this opportunity to savage the reputation of Sen. Cruz, Carson said days later during a Republican debate. I will say I was disappointed that members of his team thought so little of me that they thought after having hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers and college students who sacrificed their time and were dedicated to the cause  one even died  to think that I would just walk away 10 minutes before the caucus.

On Tuesday night in Baltimore, Carson told his supporters he was not quite ready to quit.

As Ive had an opportunity to study our system, it has become a little bit discouraging seeing all the relationships that exist there, he said. It is rotten to the core on both sides, Democrats and Republicans. And they have weaved such a complex web, it will be very, very difficult to untangle it. But Im not ready to quit trying to untangle it yet.
Hillary Clintons campaign has been reminded not to solicit votes near polling sites, Boston.com reports, after former President Bill Clinton ventured into a polling location outside Boston on Tuesday.

Via the websites report:



Massachusetts election rules forbid the solicitation of a vote for or against a candidate, party, or position within 150 feet of a polling place.

Alongside Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Clinton greeted election workers and voters on Tuesday at the Holy Name Parish School, a polling location in West Roxbury. The former president chatted up voters, kissed an old lady on the head, posed for photos, and bought a cup of coffee, MassLive reports.

Brian McNiff, a spokesman for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, said he had heard about Bill Clintons presence. McNiff said that Hillary Clintons campaign has been reminded of the 150-foot rule.



Jane Sanders, wife of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the former secretary of states rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, alluded to the issue in an interview with Yahoo News Tuesday night.

I understand there was some question where former President Clinton went in and was not supposed to be there, Jane Sanders said.



The Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clinton was projected to narrowly edge out Sanders in Massachusetts, the Associated Press said late Tuesday.

We knew it was going to be close, and we dont know where its going to end up, Jane Sanders said.
MIAMI  Marco Rubio jumped on to a stage in front of a few thousand wildly cheering supporters at an open-air equestrian center Tuesday night, pumped his right fist twice, and bragged that he has been rising in polls since he started aggressively going after Donald Trump.

We are seeing in state after state his numbers going down. We are seeing in state after state, our numbers going up, Rubio said.

The boast came about as close to ignoring reality as a politician can get. Eleven states held actual primary elections or caucuses Tuesday night, and Rubio lost all but one. He gained his first victory of the entire primary process so far in the Minnesota caucuses, a result announced an hour before midnight.

Now, with one-third of the total delegates that determine the GOPs nominee awarded, the 44-year-old U.S. senator from Florida trails Trump and fellow Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the delegate race. But far more pressing for Rubio is his momentum problem. He has almost none, and worse, Tuesday marked the third time in this primary that he has appeared to have some wind in his sails, only to run aground when the votes are cast.

Cruz, a 45-year-old first-term senator, won the surprise contest of the night, beating Trump 34 percent to 28 percent in Oklahoma, with Rubio finishing at 26 percent. In addition to winning his home state of Texas, Cruz emerged as the winner of the ongoing sweepstakes to be the alternative to Trump.

Cruz crowed that his was the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump.

Trump, 69, continued to write his own script, holding a press conference rather than a victory rally, and conducting it in a room at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., that bears a resemblance to the East Room of the White House. No one has ever accused Donald Trump of subtlety.

With New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie standing behind him, Trump congratulated Cruz on his win in Texas, and quickly pivoted to his next point: how he wants to unite the Republican Party to defeat the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Story continues

Im a unifier. I know people are going to find that a little hard to believe. But I am a unifier, Trump said. Were going to be more inclusive. I think were going to be more unified.

Trump declared that he is becoming diplomatic and delved into the details of how to deal with the Syrian civil war, seeking to project a more presidential air than he has as a candidate so far. It was difficult for him to stay in character as a peacemaker for long. Asked whether he would be able to work with Congress and with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Trump said that he expects he could get along great with him.

And if I dont, hes going to have to pay a big price, OK? he continued.

Trump argued that he is expanding the Republican party by attracting Democratic and Independent voters, and there is some evidence this is the case. However, in the one state that did not allow Democrats to vote in the GOP primary on Tuesday, Oklahoma, Trump lost to Cruz.

Rubio, meanwhile, was left to ponder another setback. After a higher-than expected finish in the Iowa caucuses, he was poised to capture the anti-Trump wing of the GOP in New Hampshire, but was sidelined by a disastrous debate performance a few days before voters went to the polls and finished sixth in that primary.

After narrowly beating Cruz in South Carolina to finish second behind Trump, Rubio once again claimed to be the candidate who could unite the GOP and defeat Trump. But then Trump rolled to a huge win in the Nevada caucuses three days later. And over the past few days, Rubio has dominated the news cycles because of his relentless and biting attacks on Trump, who he has called a con man.

There was some evidence that Rubio made up ground on Trump in Virginia in the last few days. But Rubio didnt get the kind of bump hed hoped for.

Minnesota eased the sting of a bad night somewhat. But it also came late into the night, after most Americans had tuned out, and after most of the nights political conversation had centered around Rubios lack of victories anywhere.

He hasnt won anything, Trump said of Rubio at his press conference.

And if Rubio cannot win his home state of Florida on March 15, his candidacy will be considered over by most observers.

Rubio was defiant, however, in an interview with CBS News Charlie Rose. When Rose asked Rubio if Trump would destroy the Republican party if he becomes the nominee, Rubio did not hesitate.

Absolutely, Rubio said. It will split the Republican party.

Peggy Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, said she had never seen political tumult like the current moment in her lifetime.

I believe we are seeing a great political party shatter before our eyes, she said on CBS News.

Rubio vowed to do anything it takes to keep Donald Trump from being our nominee.

Cruz supporters will say the best way Rubio could fulfill that promise is to drop out and endorse Cruz. In his speech at the Redneck Country Club near Houston, Cruz asked his opponents to prayerfully consider our coming together, united to defeat Trump.

Tomorrow morning we have a choice. So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trumps path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives, and for the nation, Cruz said.

An official with one of the super PACs supporting Cruz underscored the plea. This is now a two-man race. If all those folks trying to stop Donald Trump are serious, they will coalesce around Ted Cruz, said Kellyanne Conway, with Keep the Promise I.

Even Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who last weekend cracked jokes about killing Cruz and has never made any secret of his dislike for him, said that Republicans may need to unite behind the Texan.

Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, Graham said on CBS News. But we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Trump.

On Twitter, conservatives took solace in the fact that Trump would not garner even half of the 595 delegates up for grabs in the various contests Tuesday. The New York Times estimate had Trump at 244 delegates for the night, with 221 going to Cruz, 108 going to Rubio, 18 going to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and three to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.

That would leave Trump with 326 delegates over all, to 238 for Cruz, 124 for Rubio, 24 for Kasich, and 8 for Carson.

Yet Trumps support remained Tuesday night at about a third of Republican voters. While he scored right at the 50 percent mark in Massachusetts and got 44 percent in Alabama, his average support Tuesday night in a heavily Southern roster of states was 36 percent.

Kasich, despite his low overall delegate haul, played a big part in Virginia. It was likely his presence in the race that kept Rubio from winning the state. Some good portion of the nine percent that Kasich won there likely would have otherwise gone to Rubio, who finished just three points behind Trumps 35 percent. With Virginia polls closing early in the night, a Rubio win there would have changed the tenor of the nights media coverage.

The Rubio campaign was already talking about a contested convention before Tuesdays results. Republican operative Henry Barbour was presented to Rubio backers and donors Tuesday morning as the man heading up Rubios strategy for a brokered convention. The Rubio campaign and many others do not see Cruz as a viable general election candidate, and so while there may be calls for Rubio to exit the race, there is still considerable support within the GOP for him to stay.

And a super PAC funded by wealthy Republican donors is ramping up efforts to take down Trump, in part because Rubio has shown the party how to successfully prosecute the case against the businessman and reality TV personality.

A growing number of Republicans, including freshman U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, have said in recent days that they will never vote for Trump, even if hes the partys nominee in November. Trumps open admiration for tyrannical rulers of other countries, his encouragement of violence at his political rallies, his eagerness to restrict the freedom of the press, his rejection of equality under the law for minority groups, his lack of any coherent political beliefs combined with his many liberal positions in the past all combine to make him anathema to a large number of Republicans.

Trump responded to this news at his press conference by charging that special interests want to have their little senator do exactly what they want. But Rubio, he said, is not going to win anyway and if GOP leaders tried to mount a third party campaign against him they would lose everything.

The race now moves to four more contests on Saturday, followed by four more next Tuesday, including delegate rich Michigan. March 15 holds Rubios biggest test, when his home state of Florida will hold its primary. Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina will also hold primaries that same day.

After the March 15 contests, 60 percent of the delegates in the primary process will have been awarded. And if Rubio does not win Florida, the pressure on him to exit the race will be enormous.

Rubio surged back into the spotlight over the last week following a debate in Houston last Thursday in which he went after Trump in a way that no one, including Rubio, had done before. Rubio pestered, confronted and mocked Trump repeatedly, and his candidacy was infused with new energy on the campaign trail in the following days. Rubio hit Trump on a number of things in the businessmans past that supported an argument that Trump has hurt, not helped, the working class common man voter, and called Trump a con man.

Rubios mockery of Trump on the campaign trail veered into the juvenile, with jokes about Trumps spray tan, the size of his hands as a way of mocking the size of his genitals, and with speculation about Trump having peed his pants during the debate. These comments were one-offs from Rubios main message and he made the latter two jokes only once each, but they drew headlines.

For the Rubio campaign, it was a few days in which they were playing the perpetual attention machine game that Trump has perfected this election, using provocation and outrage to dominate news cycles and suck up attention.

One Rubio supporter in touch with the campaign acknowledged that the short fingers riff  was probably too edgy for some of our supporters. And when someone at a rally shouted out a comment about Trumps hands at a rally Monday in Oklahoma, Rubio issued a mild rebuke.

Rubio will have another chance this Thursday evening to tangle with Trump, during the 11th debate of the primary, in Detroit.

This past Saturday, Rubio added his name to a chorus of support for a motto trending on Twitter that in effect signaled his willingness to fight all the way to the convention.

#NeverTrump, Rubio wrote.

That sentiment may endure to the Republican convention in Cleveland this July. But its increasingly doubtful that Rubios candidacy will do so.

Holly Bailey in Palm Beach, FL and Jason Sickles in Houston contributed to this report.
In a preview of just how ugly a general election matchup between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton could be, two CNN commentators got into a heated debate over race Tuesday night  with name-calling and accusations that went beyond the typical election analysis.

Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord and liberal commentator Van Jones, in turn, accused each others political parties of stoking racial tension to further their political ambitions.

The trouble started during the channels Super Tuesday coverage when conservative pundit S.E. Cupp accused Trump of putting forth crazy, dog-whistle policy proposals to whip up support among bigoted voters.

Lord, who served with the Reagan administration, said the Republican establishments view of civil rights is to tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club and that Trump is succeeding because hes not going to patronize people.

Jones, a Democrat, joined the conversation to say that Trump has been horribly offensive throughout the race. In particular, he denounced Trumps failure, which the candidate later blamed on a bad earpiece, to unequivocally reject white supremacist David Dukes endorsement in a CNN interview on Sunday.

He is whipping up and tapping into and pushing buttons that are very, very frightening to me and frightening to a lot of people, Jones said. No. 1: When he is playing funny with the [Ku Klux] Klan, that is not cool. I know this man when he gets passionate about terrorism.  The Klan is a terrorist organization.

CNN political contributors Jeffrey Lord, left, and Van Jones clash over the issue of race in politics on Tuesday. (Photo: CNN via YouTube)

A leftist terrorist organization, Lord chimed in.

At this point, Jones accused Lord of playing word games to divert attention from the fact that Trump has not denounced the Klan as forcefully as he has Islamic terrorist groups.

What difference does it make if you call them leftists? Jones said. You can call them chipmunks! They killed people!

Story continues

Lord then accused Jones of ignoring the Democratic Partys historical ties to the Klan and expressed his belief that dividing people by race has been  and still is  part of the progressive agenda.

You dont hide and say, Thats not part of the base of the Democratic Party. They were the military arm, the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, according to historians, Lord said. For Gods sake, read your history!

Jones conceded that the Democratic Party of the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries was racist and violent but said it has evolved into a far more inclusive and compassionate organization.

Jones delivers the keynote address at a tribute honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at the Wisconsin State Capitol in January 2015. (Photo: Wisconsin State Journal/John Hart)



Lord disagreed: It is the Democratic Party of today! The Democratic Party of today divides by race!

On Wednesday morning, Jones and Lord appeared on CNN again to flesh out their ideas and differences with cooler heads and lower voices.

For African-Americans, Jones said, when we try to speak about the pain of the lynchings, we try to speak about the fear that we are having around every African-American dinner table, kitchen table about, What does Trump mean? People thought, Well, 50 years ago they were Democrats  to us it feels dismissive.

Lord said he would like to focus on today as well but wanted to provide historical context. He doubled down on his belief that race fuels the progressive movement.

Whether its slavery, segregation, lynching, Ku Klux Klan, to todays racial quotas, illegal immigration by skin color, groups like La Raza, the Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, etc., its always about, Lets divide people by race.

Jones strongly disagreed that liberals were responsible for the United States history of institutionalized racism and credited people of conscience on both sides for fighting against it.


MIAMI  Hillary Clinton entered this presidential campaign last April as an overwhelming frontrunner and inevitable Democratic nominee. Tonight, she regained that status.

There was a lot of cheering at Clintons primary night party as results from the 12 states and territories that voted on Tuesday began to flash on the screen. Polls had indicated Clinton would do well today, and there were no surprises.

Following her huge win in South Carolinas Democratic primary on Saturday, Clintons strong showing in the Super Tuesday races today has allowed her to pull substantially ahead of her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As the night progressed, she was declared victor in the delegate-rich states of Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Texas and Massachusetts. Sanders won his home state of Vermont right off the bat  and later Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota  and gave an early evening speech before calling it a night. Though Clinton and her allies arent declaring victory just yet, it is clear they believe the writing is on the wall for Sanders.

Hillary Clinton speaks at her Super Tuesday election night rally at a film studio in Miami. (Photo: Joe Skipper/EPA)



Tuesdays balloting kicked off a streak of primaries this month, and Sanders campaign reportedly views March 15 as a decisive moment in the fight for the Democratic nomination. A Clinton campaign source who spoke to Yahoo News at her primary night party here on Tuesday indicated that the campaign also sees March 15 as a turning point  and that it expects the night will be a good one for them.

Slideshow: Super Tuesday winners >>>

By mid-March, our lead will be large enough that it will be effectively insurmountable  [it] wont be mathematically impossible  but it will be effectively insurmountable, the Clinton source said.

In her victory speech, Clinton congratulated Sanders on his strong showing and campaign. She then emphasized her own forward trajectory.

Story continues

Now this campaign moves forward to the Crescent City, the Motor City and beyond, Clinton said.

Since her win in South Carolina, Clinton has increasingly shifted her focus to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Her Tuesday night speech included jabs at Trumps Make America Great Again slogan, which Clinton has been deploying on the campaign trail in recent days.

America never stopped being great, Clinton said. We have to make America whole.

It was easy to forget in the wake of Sanders surge in the early-voting states, but this is how the race was always supposed to be for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton arrives to speak at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami. (Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)

With her years of experience as a former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state, Clinton began this race almost as more of an incumbent than a White House hopeful. This time last year, polls showed Clinton with a lead that was, on average, more than 40 points ahead of all her likely rivals. But then America  and the Clinton campaign along with it  began to Feel the Bern.

Sanders numbers climbed, and he started the primaries by nearly tying Clinton in Iowa and defeating her soundly in New Hampshire. Clinton was expected to have a firewall of support that would block Berniementum in the next two states on the calendar, Nevada and South Carolina. But as the Feb. 20 Nevada caucus approached, Sanders was closing the gap, and Clintons firewall seemed in danger of being breached.

Then Clinton ended up winning Nevada by five points, and South Carolina brought her an even stronger victory than she expected. She came into Super Tuesday with momentum on her side, and with her strong performance this evening, her allies dont expect the race to shift again.

Former Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., was in attendance at Clintons primary night party and, even before any results were in, predicted that the night would be the beginning of a surge that would propel Clinton past Sanders.

I think this is a continuing momentum is what it is The 12 states and territories that are going today, assuming she does well in many of the areas, I think it will just build a continued ball of steam, Klein said.

At one point, as the results were coming in, jubilant supporters waiting at the party to watch Clinton speak began chanting, I believe that she will win! I believe that she will win! Indeed, all the supporters who spoke with Yahoo News expressed confidence in Clintons chances. However, like the campaign, most of Clintons supporters arent ready to say the race is over just yet.

Michael Lefevre, a 26-year-old transportation planner from nearby Coral Gables, Fla., said he is eager for Clinton to take on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.

Im tired of it. I cant believe its just a primary. Im ready for the real thing, Lefevre said.

Still, in spite of his eagerness, Lefevre doesnt think the primary is finished.

I think todays the day where you really start to see them separate, he said.

Cindy Lerner, the mayor of Pinecrest, Fla., similarly said that the Democratic race is winding down.

It will be close. I dont know that it will be over, Lerner said. It looks like everybodys doing their best to prolong their opportunities to be involved, and thats OK to me.

Though she was optimistic about Clintons chances, Lerner sounded one cautionary note. Lerner was a pledged delegate for Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary. After Clinton was defeated by Barack Obama in a hard-fought race, Lerner was somewhat reluctant to switch sides. The experience makes Lerner concerned that Sanders supporters might not all be able to unite behind Clinton in the general election.

I was one of those people that was so heartbroken that she stepped aside, Lerner said of Clinton in 2008. I was supposed to go to the national convention. I didnt want to go.  A lot of us went through a lot of angst about it. I hope that doesnt happen this time.

April Hardemon, a Miami police officer who was at Clintons primary night party, said she has no such worries. She said theres no question in her mind that the fight for the Democratic nomination ended Tuesday night.

Im very confident in Hillary Clinton, Hardemon said, adding, Shes going to take it.
Christie and Trump arrive for a campaign rally in Millington, Tenn., on Saturday. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht/Reuters)



In a stunning admission rarely seen in the media world, New Hampshires Union Leader says it was wrong to endorse Chris Christie.

Back in November, Union Leader publisher Joseph W. McQuaid explained why the newspaper was endorsing the New Jersey governor for president.

Gov. Christie is right for these dangerous times, McQuaid wrote in a Nov. 28 editorial. He has prosecuted terrorists and dealt admirably with major disasters. But the one reason he may be best-suited to lead during these times is because he tells it like it is and isnt shy about it. Other candidates have gained public and media attention by speaking bluntly. But its important when you are telling it like it is to actually know what you are talking about.

Christie finished a distant sixth in the New Hampshire Republican primary and suspended his campaign. That didnt bother McQuaid. But Christies surprise endorsement of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump did.

Boy, were we wrong, McQuaid wrote in a follow-up editorial that was published Tuesday. Watching Christie kiss the Donalds ring this weekend  and make excuses for the man Christie himself had said was unfit for the presidency  demonstrated how wrong we were. Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support.

McQuaid continued: Voters here apparently knew better than we. Most rejected Christie but divided their votes among several others, leaving Trump to claim victory. And now, despite specifically telling us that he would never endorse him, Christie is backing Trump. If nothing else, that might wake up some Trump fans. We will look for that, just as soon as we get the egg off our face.

The stinging editorial extends a streak of humiliating turns for Christie.

On Saturday, after Christie introduced Trump at a campaign rally at an airport in Arkansas, the billionaire mogul could be heard on a hot mic telling the New Jersey governor to go home, pointing to a plane waiting for him on the tarmac.

Story continues

On Sunday, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman, who served as the national finance co-chairman for Christies failed presidential campaign, called his endorsement of Trump an astonishing display of political opportunism.

Donald Trump is unfit to be president, Whitman said in a statement. He is a dishonest demagogue who plays to our worst fears. Trump would take America on a dangerous journey.

Christie knows all that and indicated as much many times publicly, she continued. The governor is mistaken if he believes he can now count on my support, and I call on Christies donors and supporters to reject the governor and Donald Trump outright. I believe they will. For some of us, principle and country still matter.

In an interview with ABCs This Week the same day, Christie struggled to explain how he could support Donald Trump after criticizing his policies on the campaign trail.

Chris Christie is now ruined, the Washington Posts Jennifer Rubin wrote in an op-ed. If it had not been obvious to him before this weekend, his political career is essentially over.
Pop culture is frequently shaped and colored by the current events that surround it. In this sense, the new season of House of Cards, which begins streaming on Netflix Friday, plunges us back into a world that now seems far away and, in a sense, almost foreign. To be sure, were mostly still in Washington, DC, mostly in the White House with President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and First Lady Claire Underwood (Robin Wright). But watching the show at a time when, just beyond your Netflix subscription, there is Donald Trump rampaging across the political landscape, a bull in the political china shop urging others to be as bumptious as he is  well, President Underwood, for all his often malicious scheming, seems quaint and mannerly by comparison.



Because of this, and because the previous season of Cards led itself down blind alleys of narrative that now require some escape, the new episodes  six of which were made available to critics  can frequently seem somber to the point of soddenness. Its good for the shows momentum that Underwood is in the throes of running for election  the blue 2016 Underwood signs pick up the bright glint in Spaceys eyes, and Underwood is never more compelling than when hes out on the stump, pouring honeyed platitudes upon his supporters.



Related: House of Cards: Where We Left Off

But hovering grimly behind him  the Batman to his Superman  is Claire Underwood, unhappy in marriage and unhappy at her own thwarted political ambitions from last season. Obviously I cannot give away too much about the new season, but its not a spoiler to say that Claires drive, in her personal and professional life, take on a new centrality in season four, and Wright is more than up to the challenge: Both as an actor and as director of some episodes, she humanizes Claires steeliness.



Other guest stars shine. Ellen Burstyn, as Claires mother, is superb  you never doubt for a second that this is the parent who imbued Claire with a ruthless view of the world. Neve Campbell turns up as an extremely efficient political operative. Cecily Tyson is equally strong in an entirely different way as a Congresswoman with whom a strategic deal must be struck.



Story continues

Again, current events find curious echoes at certain Cards turns: Just as Donald Trump has recently had troubles with a Ku Klux Klan endorsement, the KKK suddenly looms up to spook Underwood at a key moment here. But thats enough hinting at what happens. Well, I will also say that if you arent immediately drawn in from the start of the new season, be sure to watch through episode four at the very least, when Big Things Occur.

Oddly enough, the most unwieldy element in House of Cards now is Underwood himself. The man whos been at the center of everything  a President fashioned by show developer Beau Willimon into a kind of cross between Lyndon Johnson and The West Wings Josiah Bartlet, half-realistic pol and half-idealized statesman  doesnt hold center-stage quite as surely anymore. My goodness, its not until well into the second episode that Underwood finally turns to the camera to give us one of his trademark icy stares and a mini-speech about his innermost demons.



The new season of House of Cards is no place for a newbie to start. You have to be well-versed in all the chicanery thats gone before to follow the references and the intricate maneuverings. And whether were talking about Chief of Staff Doug Stamper (the consistently wonderful Michael Kelly) or Claire or other members of Underwoods cabal, its now the powers behind the White House throne that command most attention.



At precisely the moment when, in the real world, media coverage of Presidential politics is dominated by a figure who wants all attention paid to himself, House of Cards has opted to diminish its central figure to allow others to emerge, even if that is done strategically, in the hope of consolidating his personal power.



Whether thats a winning strategy remains to be seen when all of the episodes are available to be binged.

House of Cards starts streaming Friday on Netflix.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 18 years and 38,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
ELKO  Mine safety and maintaining it is of the utmost importance to the mining companies, the employees and all involved in the endeavor.

Since the early '90s, Safety First Training & Consulting Services Inc. has been training miners, both new and continuing. Even though it started with mine safety, the organization will do anything safety related, including Occupational Health and Safety Administration training.

In spanning occupational and mine safety training, the company offers: MSHA New Miner at least once a week; surface and underground training; annual refresher; safety plans and audits; OSHA training; audiometric testing; spirometer testing; 10 and 30-hour training; respiratory fit testing and CPR, first aid and automated external defibrillator training.

If youre going to go on a mine site, you have to have MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration) training to do either surface or underground, thats a federal recommendation and the mine sites require it, said owner and instructor Jason Sims. The mine sites, typically, like I said, do it on their own but we do cater to them whenever they need it: special classes or special vendors coming on-site, theyll call us up and ask us to provide the training..."

While Safety First has been part of mine safety in Elko for over 20 years, it made a location change last summer from Commercial Street to Cimarron Way. Sims said it was nice being part of historic downtown, but a change was needed.

Its helped tremendously that we no longer have stairs and we now have central heat and air, said Office Manager Sherrie Sims jokingly.

Jason Sims told the Free Press there are a lot of contract companies that cater to the mine site in Elko and these contractors need MSHA-authorized training.

He received his blue card about eight years ago when he was working at Barrick Gold Corp.s Cortez Hills Mine. Sims is also a certified OSHA instructor.

Sherrie Sims explained the organization helps the contractors in different ways, including providing on-site safety.

They dont necessarily have to hire a safety guy, she said. They can call us up if they have a one or two day job and we can send a safety guy out there for them.

Primarily, Jason Sims conducts this job, and although there are others, it is easier to find a substitute teacher than an individual qualified in mine safety protocols, she said.

You need to do safety meetings, you have to do hazard awareness and recognition or workplace examinations making sure its safe for you to be there in that location, said Jason Sims, explaining what a qualified safety individual does on the site.

Additionally, he said there are different hazards associated with what each mine does. Safety Firsts job, in this case, is to make sure these dangers -- whether its the use of cyanide or equipment operation and traffic patterns -- are known. Generally the mines relay any special needs or requirements to the business.

It helps growing up in this town too, he said.

Having worked on a mine site before, Jason Sims has an idea what each one is looking for. Additionally, he knows safety personnel at those locations, considering safety has been a family business for Sims  his father was in health and safety for 20 years and was connected to Newmont Mining Corp., he said.

Jason Sims has worked at Safety First since October of 2011 and has been the owner since July of 2012. While there were probably many different reasons why he moved from working at the mines to being a safety instructor, he said he needed a change.

One of the things was working on mine rescue, being an EMT, first responder and all kinds of things like that, seeing enough people get hurt. I just kind of got tired of meeting people on the worst day of their life, he said. Im trying to help them before they get hurt. It seemed to be a much more logical approach -- people getting hurt because they just didnt know any better or werent familiar with it.

Safety Plans and Audits

The business not only works with companies such as Barrick and Newmont, but it also works with American Staffing and the state.

We dont just cater to the contractors. We have people coming through who are looking for employment. Its one of the first steps, typically, when youre looking for employment in the mining industry is to obtain your surface MSHA training, said Sherrie Sims.

MSHA, for those who have never been to a mine before, recommends 24 hours of training. After that, there are eight-hour annual refresher courses to keep your caution skills high, said Jason Sims.

Mine sites and companies need to have a safety plan so they make sure that theyre not hurting their people, said Jason Sims.

Sherrie Sims said its important for these protocols to be in place. The Sims normally get calls from small, growing contractors and they assist them in the process of developing these plans.

Sometimes the company goes out and surveys the site to build a plan with them, or theyll sit down with the managers or safety personnel and create the plan with the help of phone calls, emails and pictures.

Over the past year, Nevada mining has seen four fatalities. In light of that, Sims said he has not seen an increase in safety plans or audits.

Personally, I think they should be done, he said.

A lot of people are doing it internally right now, said Sherrie Sims. Its usually about six months behind, added Jason Sims.

Audits are done before an MSHA inspection and can help the mines avoid getting citations, he said.

Growth

Training requirements can be complicated, Jason Sims told the Free Press. Safety First has recently acquired Cat Mining Truck Simulator systems; one is a loader and the other a haul truck. The company is trying to incorporate them into its training. They can have two purposes, training and recruitment.

"Its kind of like when youve got your drivers license they want you to go through drivers training before you get behind the wheel  If youre going to operate mining machinery, you have to be trained on it. Its kind of complicated to take a piece of equipment and throw you in a big, giant two-story building on wheels and hope you figure it out, he said.

The simulators have the same controls as the equipment, giving those who have never been on a mine hands-on experience. Before employment, these machines can also test the accountability of the possible employee.

There are some things they would like to achieve going forward and one of them is reaching more people, building and maintaining their clientele.

One of the things that Jason and I would like to be able to do a lot more of is go out and actually visit customers and potential customers more, but when its just the two of you, its really hard. You have to be here to service the people that are existing, said Sherrie Sims.

She told the Free Press they pride themselves on great customer service and follow-up.

They would also like to offer more classes, more diverse classes.

Were always changing. The classes have been the main focus for quite a few years, but were expanding as the industry needs it  If a client needs it, or a contractor needs it, or the mine site wants it, we try and make it available. We always try to be a one stop, said Jason Sims, explaining the spirometer testing is a good example of the companys continuous evolution.

Resources

We have resources everywhere, Sherrie Sims said.

In addition to the resources, the safety and consulting company prides itself on trying to have more interaction in its classes. Jason Sims, describing mining as one of the most diverse industries in personality and job description, said it becomes like an information exchange as each participant has expertise in his or her field.

The organization works with different instructors and tries to keep different people as resources  so its skill-set remains broad and many different types of training are available for the customers. Sherrie Sims said being a member of the Nevada Mining Association has also helped in this endeavor.

We want to make sure that everybody has current, correct information, that were not just telling them what was true in the 1980s or the 1990s, were telling them whats going on right now to the best of our ability, she said.

Our jobs basically consist of research 24-7 to make sure that our information is whats going on right now. Doing the safety plans and stuff like that I want to make sure they have this is what the standard is right now, this is what people are doing and this is what you should be doing, she said.

The Sims told the Free Press that if the companies are maintaining the prevailing standards its going to be more cost effective and the companies are going to be able to fill their needs from local vendors.

Friendships

Prevention and education are number one -- this is so miners know what to expect at the site.

You drive out past Carlin and theres mine sites out there that are bigger than the town of Carlin. Thats why the training is important because you dont want somebody to go out there and get ran over by a piece of equipment or touch something that they shouldnt be touching because they didnt know that sort of thing, said Sherrie Sims.

Jason Sims said the employees of a mine are there to do what they want in life and not get hurt.

The last thing anybody, whether it be the mine site, the contractor or the community wants, is somebody to die, he said, calling last year's four fatalities heart-breaking and something that affects everybody.

In fact, the day they spoke to the Free Press there was training for Long Canyon contractors and the subject was brought up -- one of the participants was on the most recent mine site, and she told the class about the stress it placed on all there.

It affects the community as a whole. Theres camaraderie amongst the miners and I like to think that Jason provides that when you have a class of new miners come in, sometimes theyre going to the same place or theyre running into each other in the mining community. Its kind of nice that we get to see those friendships first form, said Sherrie Sims.

With the formation of these relationships, many times, she said, they return the next year for the annual refresher course and they are working at the same mine, or, to top it off, theyve become fishing buddies.

Loyalty

They come back, said Sherrie Sims.

The company, in its continuous expansion, has maintained its base through repeat customers. These customers started coming when James Crawford started the business in 1992 and, even though they have been through a few instructors, hopefully theyre still coming because Jason and I can provide that customer service theyre used to from Safety First, she said.

Their new building is still a work in progress. However, he said both Safety First and Cimarron West are part of Elko  a staple company in a staple location.

Safety First is still in business and we have been forever and we fully intend on it staying that way. I like to think that being open as long as we have is a pretty important part -- providing the same stuff over 20 years, Jason Sims said.
Kathryn Michelle (Crapo) Guzman, 55, died Friday, February 26, 2016 at St. Marys Hospital in Reno, NV following her long battle with Lupus.

Born in Salt Lake City, UT to Joan Zunino on April 21, 1960, Michelle was raised in Elko and a member of this community for most of her life. She graduated from Elko High School, and worked at JCPenneys for over 30 years where she received numerous awards for being an outstanding employee.

Michelle married her first love, Jose Carlos Guzman, at St. Josephs Church on July 15, 1978. They relocated to Los Angeles, CA, but returned to Elko in 1982 following the birth of their son and Michelles diagnosis with Lupus. Carlos had dedicated his life to caring for Michelle and was by her side when she passed.

Michelle enjoyed spending her free time on creative endeavors including stained glass, sewing, and oil painting. Her talent was seen best in the gingerbread houses she created for local fundraisers, and the cakes she baked and decorated for friends and family. In recent years she most enjoyed spending time with her granddaughters and using her talents to make birthday cakes, dresses, and other surprises for them.

She is survived by husband Jose Carlos Guzman, son Andrew Guzman, daughter-in-law Briana Guzman, granddaughters Viola and Olivia Guzman, mother Joan Zunino, and brothers Ronald Crapo, Steven Crapo, and Jack Zunino.

A memorial service will be held at St. Josephs Church at 1035 C St, Elko, NV 89801 on Thursday, March 3 at 10am.

The family asks that you consider a memorial donation to the Lupus Foundation of America at www.lupus.org. We are thankful for the many years that treatment of this disease bought us with Michelle, and hope that continued research can do the same for others.
Nevadas economic development efforts are forging new business frontiers for this state. Exciting sectors are taking shape around advanced manufacturing, remote piloted vehicles, and data management. To be successful, these opportunities will demand a highly-skilled, well-educated workforce. Preparing that workforce has focused on STEM education in schools across Nevada.

The acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM is also the cornerstone of the mining industry. Indeed, mining is the oldest and most enduring STEM industry in this state. Highly skilled and well trained, the mining workforce applies STEM principles every day on every shift in nearly every job.

The mining industry, which already has a robust presence throughout this state, requires STEM education in our local schools as much as do any of the nascent industries just getting a toehold. As a result, the Nevada Mining Association and its member companies are already deeply invested in efforts to enhance STEM educational opportunities from K to PhD.

For over 30 years, the Nevada Mining Association has hosted free workshops for teachers seeking innovative ways to teach earth science. Over a two-day session, our dedicated volunteers offer lesson plans that comply with state standards and a first-hand look at mining through field trips. Teachers take home ideas and materials that are classroom-ready.

Our member companies are engaged in school programs in communities throughout Nevada. They provide field trips and funding, of course, but they also model future job opportunities for students. With this close interaction between schools and mines, students can see for themselves just how STEM relates to their future job prospects.

Its exciting to watch the development of STEM opportunities for students outside of the classroom, too. The new STEM club at Carlin High School, sponsored by the math and science departments, is an exciting enhancement for those students. Building on an existing foundation with mining engineering, the club will demonstrate the broad horizons made possible by a good STEM education.

In Reno, over 50 students have enrolled in the new Mining Academy at Manogue High School. In Lyon County, a popular and robust Mining Club has been established at Yerington High School. In schools across the state, students participate in chapters of SkillsUSA, which helps prepare students for skilled technical careers.

Mining yields the minerals and metals that are essential for the new economic frontiers envisioned for this state. The mining industry has also established STEM educational opportunities that are essential for the workforce in those new industries. Nevadas oldest industry continues to contribute many of the necessary building blocks for the New Nevada. We are a proud part of Nevadas heritage and a vital part of our states bright and shining future.
ELKO  Another year has begun, and it seems to be faring better than 2015.

As I write this column, the price of gold is above $1,200. I am sure this was a welcome number to many in the industry since last year companies were hoping the yellow metal stayed above $1,100.

The even more important news is that no one has died in a metal/nonmetal mine as of the beginning of February. I am sure no one wants a repeat of last years tragedies of losing four Nevada miners in work-related fatalities.

According to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, 2015 was the least deadly year recorded in the industry. However, it was the deadliest year for Nevada since 2004.

This is the main reason I made sure this edition focused on safety and what companies are doing to reinforce proper protocols and procedures.

The cover story this quarter is on Newmont Mining Corp.s annual refresher training. The company puts thousands of employees through this training, which includes everything from equipment safety to fire extinguisher use and first aid.

I have been to these courses before, but the company made some changes starting with having the courses be driven more by the employees. For about a decade, Newmonts training has been interactive, but this year there seemed to be more games and more hands-on activities.

The one people really seemed to enjoy was led by the Carlin Mine Rescue Team. Employees have always been taught CPR and shown first aid. This year they were given a scenario and they had to figure out the proper procedure to help a fellow employee who has been hurt.

I think this course is well done, and I wish more companies throughout the country would take the time to do interactive safety courses with employees. Many people in rural Nevada know of someone who was helped by a miner during an emergency and some miners have even saved lives because of the training they received during ART.

While safety has been better in 2016 and the price of gold went up, the industry still doesnt have a true answer on how sage grouse land use plans will affect mining.

A guest columnist, David Gray, said the restrictions imposed by the Greater Sage Grouse Approved Resource Management Plans are an attack on the 1872 Mining Law.

Gov. Brian Sandoval tried to negotiate with the federal government. He thought he had guarantees from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on using different maps, and making the process easier, but those promises have yet to materialize into reality.

I doubt anything will be cleared up by the time this publishes.

Despite this uncertainty, several companies have moved forward or completed projects that should help increase production.

Newmonts Leeville Underground commissioned its No. 3 ventilation shaft, which should allow the mine to increase production and hire more people.

Pershing Gold hopes to soon produce new ore at Relief Canyon.

Jerritt Canyons new owners spent the end of 2015 cleaning up the property and will be exploring for more ore  something that hasnt been done in years.

Barrick Gold Corp. also went through a few changes, selling some properties and restructuring its management. Longtime Goldstrike General Manager Andy Cole accepted a new position as executive director Barrick U.S.A.

You can find the details on all these stories and more in this edition of the Mining Quarterly.
ELKO  The nations mining industry hit a record low for work-related fatalities in 2015, however, Nevada had more deaths than any other year since 2004.

The U.S. Department of Labors Mine Safety and Health Administration stated 28 miners died last year in work-related accidents, down from 45 in 2014. This is the lowest number of mining deaths ever recorded and the first year that mining deaths dropped below 30, MSHA stated.

Eleven of the 28 deaths occurred in coal mines  three in Pennsylvania; two each in Kentucky, Illinois and West Virginia; and one each in Alabama and Virginia. The leading causes were powered haulage and machinery accidents, which accounted for six deaths.

Of the 17 deaths in metal and nonmetal mining, Nevada led with four, followed by Missouri with two, and one each in California, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The leading cause of death in these mines was machinery accidents, which led to five deaths, followed by falling materials that killed four miners.

In Nevada, the year began and ended with fatalities.

Brian Lee Holmes, 53, was killed Jan. 11 while riding on a work platform on top of a skip in the mines No. 1 Vent Shaft at Newmont Mining Corp.s Leeville Mine. Holmes was working for Cementation USA Inc. at the time.

His death was the first of four metal/nonmetal fatalities to occur last year.

The second fatality was May 28 at Allied Nevada Gold Corp.s Hycroft Mine near Winnemucca. An Allied Nevada employee, David D. Martinez, 61, was killed when a water truck ran into the porta-john he was occupying.

The third Nevada mine death was Aug. 3 in Elko County. Jason Potter, 26, of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, was killed at the SSX Mine when he was struck by mobile equipment. He was working for Small Mine Development in the underground mine owned by Jerritt Canyon Gold LLC.

The fourth death was Dec. 28 at Barrick Gold Corp.s Cortez Hills Mine in Lander County.

Douglas P. Hicks, 42, was killed after loaded haul trucks crashed into each other on a snowy haul road.

While coal mine closures had some effect on the historic low number of mining deaths, actions by MSHA and the mining industry to improve mine safety have been a major factor, said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.

Increased Enforcement

Main said the agencys use of strategic enforcement tools, including special impact inspections that quickly address problem mines and the retooled Pattern of Violations procedure that targets mines with chronic violations, along with compliance assistance, training and outreach efforts to the mining industry. In 2015, the agency collected $60,710,631 in civil penalties nationwide and $1,607,463 in Nevada.

MSHA took a proactive approach to reverse the upward trend of mining deaths that began in October 2013, Main said. MSHA collaborated with stakeholders and launched an aggressive enforcement and outreach effort across the country.

Potters death in August was one of the catalysts for the change. His death was one of three mining fatalities that happened on the same day, which led the MSHA to step up enforcement efforts. The other two deaths on Aug. 3 were in North Dakota and Virginia.

Not since 2002 have we had three miners die in a metal/non-metal mine in a single day, Main said in August. In the past month alone, and I actually think its been about three weeks, there have been five mining deaths in the metal/non-metal industry. And to reverse this unacceptable trend, MSHA is going to be stepping up enforcement efforts and intensifying outreach and education throughout the country.

For the next 134 days, no metal and nonmetal mining deaths occurred in the nations mines, passing the previous record in 2010 of 82 consecutive days without a mining fatality, MSHA stated.

Mining companies in the area said they continue to interact with MSHA as a regulatory component of the industry.

Newmonts first priority continues to be the health and safety of our employees and we strive to exceed the requirements established by MSHA, said Rhonda Zuraff, Newmont director of communications and external relations. Newmont utilizes a multi-faceted approach to employee health and safety including risk management and field-level risk assessments, leadership and behavioral-based training related to safe work practices; underpinned by an employee-led safety culture focused on continuous improvement in all that we do.

Barrick views the standards set by MSHA to be minimum requirements, said Leslie Maple, Barrick Gold Corp. manager of communications and corporate affairs. Our safety programs continue to exceed these minimums. Safety is always our top priority and we continue to work collaboratively with MSHA.

Nevada Mining Association President Dana Bennett said safety remains the industrys top priority, and any injury or death on a mine site is unacceptable.

Its my understanding that MSHA determined that a major contributing factor in recent mine fatalities has been training; as a result, MSHA has increased its educational outreach. NvMA members typically were already receiving good quality workplace examinations, so changes related to MSHA have primarily involved additional walk and talks related to safety education.

Despite the decrease nationwide in fatalities, Main said the industry should strive for zero harm.

While record-low numbers have been achieved, we are mindful that things could change in a heartbeat if we let down our guard," Main said. "There is still much more to be done to ensure that miners go home after every shift, safe and healthy.
Aug. 21

Thomas Davin Oliver, 27, of Spring Creek pleaded guilty to petit larceny.

Dec. 8

Kevin Alberto Cabrera Castillo, 32, was ordered to maintain the stipulations of his suspended sentence; after previously pleading guilty to DUI of alcohol and or drugs.

Dec. 11

Erik Cano, 29, of Elko was ordered to pay restitution totaling $1,077.50 and serve time in lieu of fees; after previously pleading no contest to trespassing.



Jeffrey Nicholas Gardner, 37, of Elko was ordered to complete 48 hours of community service and serve time for contempt; after previously pleading guilty to battery.

Dec. 15

Evan Ficklin, 24, of Yucca, Arizona, was reordered to complete alcohol counseling, AA meetings, DUI school and a victim impact panel in violation of the suspended sentence; after previously pleading guilty to DUI of alcohol and or drugs and improper starting of a vehicle from the stopped position.

Dec. 16

Christian Neil Martinez, 20, of Elko pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace.

Dec. 17

Dwaine Lee Gardner, 41, of Elko was reordered to pay $700 and complete counseling and AA meetings; after previously pleading DUI of alcohol and or drugs.

Jan. 5

Franklin Harrington, 30, of Spring Creek had domestic battery counseling reimposed; after previously pleading guilty to domestic battery and battery.
ELKO  Two men were arrested Monday after a high-speed chase across state lines, where the car was going in excess of 100 mph on U.S. Highway 93 and one of the occupants overdosed in an effort to get rid of drugs.

The pursuit began just after 1:30 p.m. when an Idaho State Police trooper stopped a northbound car just north of Rogerson, Idaho, for speeding. The man driving the Toyota rental car with Idaho plates admitted there was a handgun in the car, ISP Lt. Robert Rausch said Tuesday.

The driver and a male passenger were acting suspiciously, Rausch said, and gave the trooper fictitious names, which turned out to be names of felons from California. The trooper called for backup and requested a drug-sniffing dog.

When a second patrol car pulled in five minutes later, the driver turned the car around and sped toward Jackpot with the ISP in pursuit, he said. During the chase, the men threw a large bag of marijuana out a window.

The ISP notified Nevada authorities as the chase neared Jackpot and turned the chase over to them at the state line.

After the car entered Nevada, deputies backed off to ensure the safety of all parties, but kept the vehicle in sight, said Elko County Undersheriff Clair Morris.

The off-ramps to get to Wells were shut down in case the vehicle made its way there as a precaution. The four-way intersection at the entrance to the town was closed off, and northbound traffic was shut down.

An initial set of spike strips was set out to slow down the vehicle, but it drove around. Another set of spike strips was placed at the deer crossing 12 miles north of Wells, and the vehicle drove off-road to avoid them but was eventually trapped in the mud, Morris said.

Deputies found drugs, according to Morris. An estimated amount was not available as the occupants tried to get rid of it by way of the sunroof. Approximately half a pound of marijuana was recovered, as well as methamphetamine.

Kenneth R. Franklin, 38, of Groveland, California, was arrested for speeding 31 mph or more over the posted limit, driving with a suspended drivers license, driver disobeying peace officer and endangering others, and possession of a controlled substance. His bail was listed at $11,125.

The other occupant  identified as Paul Overley, 31, of Billings, Montana  tried to ingest heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and Ecstasy in an attempt to get rid of the drugs, Morris said. This caused him to stop breathing and he was transported to Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital.

Overley is charged with possession of a controlled substance and a felony warrant out of California. His bail was listed at $10,000.

The subjects also threw methamphetamine and a gun out the window before leaving Idaho, Morris said. He was not sure of the charges brought up in Idaho. However, the department is obtaining a search warrant for the vehicle because it was a rental.

The Times-News contributed to this article.
Shortly after Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the 29 states suing in federal court to block the Environmental Protection Agencys Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions from electric power plants, the attorney for an environmental group fired off a criticism.

Attorney General Laxalts opposition to the Clean Power Plan is out of step with Nevadas commitment to advancing clean energy that protects public health, the environment and our clean energy economy.  wrote Robert Johnston, an attorney with the Western Resource Advocates. Our state has been proactive in developing and enacting clean energy policies for more than a decade  As a result, Nevada is in a strong position to comply with the goal of a 35% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 contemplated in the final rule.

He said there is no logical reason for Laxalt to oppose the EPA fiat.

Whether the state is capable of complying with the plan is neither here nor there. The question is whether any federal agency has the power to order the sovereign states to do its bidding, which would be contrary to the constitutional concept of federalism under which powers not assigned to the federal government are retained by the states and the people  the 10th Amendment.

In fact, Laxalts brief, which was filed in conjunction with Consumers Research, a national consumer advocacy organization, states in its opening pages that the elementary principles of federalism would preclude giving credence or deference to any state-authority-invading regulation 

The state is well within its prerogatives to reduce its carbon emissions, but the EPA has no power to require it to do so under the Clean Air Act. The EPA proposal essentially seeks to divert energy generation from plants fueled by coal and other fossil fuels to plants powered by wind or solar, which the EPA claims will benefit the environment and prevent global warming by sharply reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.

The Supreme Court, shortly before the death of strict constitutionalist and states rights advocate Antonin Scalia, voted 5-4 to suspend enactment of Clean Power Plan rules until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia can hear and rule on the suit filed by the states. The action was deemed unprecedented by legal observers. The lower court had declined to block the rules but has expedited the case and is expected to hear arguments in June. The Laxalt brief is being entered into the record of that case.

In their appeal to the Supreme Court seeking to delay the rules, the 29 suing states also cited federalism.

The Clean Power Plan raises serious federalism concerns. It is a well-established principle that it is incumbent upon the federal courts to be certain of Congress intent before finding that federal law overrides the usual constitutional balance of federal and state powers.  the states argue. The Power Plan cannot be squared with that principle. The States authority over the intrastate generation and consumption of energy is one of the most important functions traditionally associated with the police powers of the States.

While rooted in this principle of states rights, the Nevada friend-of-the-court brief does not ignore the real consequences of the EPAs meddling, noting, EPAs expensive economic experiment, imposed by fiat, will increase electricity prices for consumers and may well compromise the reliability of electric power service. The best estimates of how much prices will rise, performed by the NERA (National Economic Research Associates) economic consulting group, projects increases of as much as 14 percent per year costing Americans as much as $79 billion in present dollars. These excessive costs underscore the fundamentally legislative character of EPAs final rule.

Back when he was first running for office, Obama told a San Francisco newspaper editorial board, Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

Of course, there is also the unambiguous wording of the Clean Air Act itself, which says the states, not the EPA, are to establish and apply performance standards, while the EPA merely outlines procedures.

It is not just about power plants, but about fundamental powers and principles.
RENO (AP)  Facing a deadline set by federal regulators, Gov. Brian Sandoval said at the end of January the state needs more time to decide whether to end its long-held opposition to having an abandoned Nevada mine listed among the nation's most contaminated sites.

The agency notified Sandoval in December that if they didn't hear from him by Jan. 29, they'd formally propose placing Yerington's former Anaconda copper mine on the Superfund's National Priority List as soon as March. Sandoval sent a letter to the agency asking for more time.

In February, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials agreed, with conditions.

Jared Blumenfeld of the EPA told Sandoval the state has until March 29 to send a formal response.

"I appreciate your goal of identifying private sources of capital to fund the $32 million-$40 million clean-up," Blumenfeld wrote. "However, if a comprehensive solution is not forthcoming from private entities, I am convinced NPL designation is the only viable option for continued federal support."

Blumenfeld said he wants to "personally meet with the Mason Valley farmers and agricultural interests" this month to hear how EPA can reduce the impacts of NPL listing on their businesses.

I am encouraged that the EPA will remain involved in the discussion related to the Anaconda Site and the Administrator has agreed to hear directly from the local stakeholders and leaders of the affected community," Sandoval said. "For more than a decade, this community and the State of Nevada have worked with the EPA toward achieving our shared goal of fully cleaning up the site. The health and well-being of the community remains my top priority and I have been assured by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection that there are no imminent concerns regarding the health and public safety of the residents.

"The fact that the EPA has consented to at least 60 days for Nevadas additional review indicates to me that the agency agrees we have time to get this right, without immediate risks to public health as some have alleged. I understand that the EPA believes there is a heightened sense of urgency due to regulatory timelines, yet we know that a Superfund designation on the National Priorities List will not guarantee funding and that the list has not been fully funded since 1995. I remain committed to working together toward achieving our shared goal of fully funding a comprehensive clean-up in a timely manner. I would like to thank Administrator Blumenfeld for his prompt response and sincerely appreciate his continued willingness to work with the State of Nevada on issues important to our residents.

The World War-II era mine is already a federal Superfund site, a designation that brought federal help with containing the pollution and pinpointing its source. Adding the site to the priority list would make it eligible for federal money to pay for 90 percent of the tens of millions of dollars needed to start cleanup.

But critics fear the listing would give Yerington and surrounding ranches a black eye.

In the January letter to the EPA, Sandoval said he is not yet convinced such a listing is in the state's best interest given continued opposition from local residents. They fear an adverse impact on property values and uncertainty over future availability of EPA funds.

"We continue to view NPL listing as an option of last resort," the governor wrote. "I am assured by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection that there are no imminent health concerns at the site that require immediate action."

Sandoval said there's no reason any rule-making can't wait until September. He said he'll provide his formal position on the matter at the end of April, while the state continues to examine its options.

The mine covers 6 square miles of land owned partly by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Atlantic Richfield acquired the property in 1977 from Anaconda Copper, which built the mine in 1941.

Fueled by demand after WWII, Anaconda produced 1.7 billion pounds of copper from 1952 to 1978 at the mine in the Mason Valley, an irrigated agricultural oasis in the area's otherwise largely barren high desert.

The site's most recent owner, Arimetco, abandoned it in 2000.

In 2013, the mine's rural neighbors won a $19.5 million settlement from companies they accused of covering up the contamination of drinking water wells. EPA tests showed rural wells were tainted by uranium and other toxic chemicals that leaked from the mine for decades.

EPA regional administrator Jared Blumenfeld last month told Sandoval he needed to know by Jan. 29 whether the state has an alternative cleanup proposal. He said the agency is running out of time to get funding proposals in the pipeline and head off concern about the risk of hazardous chemicals escaping from the aging site in the next few years.

Blumenfeld could not be reached for comment on Sandoval's response.

A statement released by regional EPA spokeswoman Margot Perez-Sullivan late Friday said the agency remains committed to ensuring the necessary funding is available but will consider Sandoval's request for additional time to negotiate alternative plans.

Blumenfeld said in a Dec. 22 letter to Sandoval that the most immediate threat is the estimated 90 million gallons of acidic solution that Arimetco left in the heap leach and fluid management system.

"The reason for urgency is that funding needs to be in place well before the current pond capacity is exceeded," Blumenfeld wrote. He said the situation demands constant management to avoid further leakage from the storage ponds, or an overflow.

"The consequence of either could result in significant additional threat to the Mason Valley Groundwater Basin," he said.

Construction on a remedy needs to start by summer 2019, he added

The state projected last year it would cost $30.4 million to address the most pressing concerns at the mine.

On Friday, Sandoval acknowledged the need for a permanent closure of the Arimetco heaps.

"But not the dire nature of the situation and urgency conveyed in your letter," he wrote to the EPA. "I have been advised that there is no critical reason to propose listing of the site in March, as you recommend, versus September 2016."
An unemployment office in Andalusia. Garcia-Santos

There was good news and bad for the Spanish job market last month. Unemployment rose slightly, albeit by just 2,231 people, leaving the total number of jobless in the country at 4,152,986.

At the same time, the number of people signed up with the Social Security system saw a rise of 63,355, bringing the total of registered workers up to 17,167,712, according to data released by the Labor Ministry on Wednesday morning.

When seasonal factors are accounted for, both of the figures are positive. Employment, measured by Social Security affiliations, rises by 32,492 workers, while registered unemployment falls by 13,538 people.

February saw growth in practically all sectors, in particular hostelry, up by 21,197 workers; construction, +20,584; education, +17,172; and manufacturing, +14,342.

When seasonal factors are accounted for, both the unemployment and Social Security figures are positive

However, the agricultural sector saw a fall of 28,902 workers in February (-3.65%), leaving a total of 762,762 registered. The ranks of the self-employed, meanwhile, went up by 3,593 workers, to leave a total of 3,153,066.

The number of Social Security affiliates rose in most of Spains regions in February. The biggest increases were in Catalonia (+22,134), the Balearic Islands (+12,032), the Madrid region (+11,884), Murcia (+4,758) and Galicia (+4,654). Andalusia, meanwhile, saw a fall of 7,509 registered workers.

But when compared with 2015 the positive figures look slightly worse. February was a good month for the labor market in 2015  unemployment fell by nearly 14,000 people while the number of workers signed up with the Social Security system grew by nearly 100,000.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Homeless man teaching English in Barcelona bars inundated with help Hungarian-born Laso is on verge of attaining his goal of flying to London to start a job

Laso with Diego Bernal (right).

A homeless 55-year-old who had begun giving English classes in bars in Barcelona in order to buy a ticket to get to a job in London is on the verge of achieving his goal.

Hungarian-born Laso had spent his life working in the hotel and restaurant industry until an employment swindle last September forced him to use up all his savings and left him sleeping on the street.

Dozens of people have contacted me to give or lend money to Laso; he didnt want to accept it Diego Bernal

Refusing to receive handouts from the public, he told his story to 22-year-old good Samaritan Diego Bernal, who subsequently came up with the plan for him to teach language classes in city bars for 7 an hour to earn his fare to London. Aside from his native Hungarian, Laso also speaks fluent English, French, Spanish and Romanian.

Since EL PAIS published his story, Laso and Bernal have been inundated with offers of help from all over the world. Dozens of people have contacted me to give or lend money to Laso; he didnt want to accept it, Bernal said on Tuesday. One man offered him 250 to translate some documents into English, Bernal says.

Laso only wants to accept money for his work and over the last few days has been pruning trees, as well as giving English and French classes in bars.

He has promised me a weekend in the hotel where hell be working Diego Bernal

At one in the morning on Sunday, Laso called Diego from a phone booth: He told me that he had spoken with the head of the London hotel and that he was offering him a job to start now. He used the 148 he had earned in the last few days to go to Madrid, to the embassy. His passport had been stolen in a hostel  as soon as he gets his documents, he will be off, Bernal explained.

Laso will be leaving behind almost a dozen students who had reserved classes for this week in bars around Barcelonas Plaza Espana. He has said he will call Bernal in a few days from London. He has promised me a weekend in the hotel where hell be working, Bernal said, smiling. I only hope that everything goes well and my friends nightmare comes to an end.

English version by Nick Funnell.
Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Congress on Wednesday morning. Chema Moya (EFE)

Tuesday saw the first debate of this weeks investiture session in Congress, at which Socialist Party (PSOE) leader Pedro Sanchez, who has been invited by Spains King Felipe to try to form a government, appealed to his rival political parties to support his bid to become prime minister. His 90-minute speech was the only one heard during the afternoon session, but on Wednesday morning it was the turn of the leaders of other parties to offer their responses.

Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose Popular Party won most votes at the inconclusive December 20 general election, but fell short of a majority, was the first to take the stand in Congress, followed by Pablo Iglesias, the head of the anti-austerity left-wing group Podemos.

Rajoy ridiculed his opponent and his calls for a government of change, while Iglesias called Sanchez miserable at one point

Both politicians expressed their huge distance from the stance of Sanchez, who last week reached a deal with center-right group Ciudadanos to try to form a minority government. Rajoy ridiculed his opponent and his calls for a government of change, while Iglesias called Sanchez miserable at one point. They both did their best to discredit their opponent throughout.

Meanwhile, the leader of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, appealed for dialogue, cross-party pacts and accord. He accused the PP and Podemos of trying to derail an agreement that represents nine million [Spanish voters].

The PP leader described the bid for power by the Socialists, who reaped one of their worst election results ever at the December polls, as a farce. Iglesias, meanwhile, described the prime ministerial hopeful as someone who had surrendered to the oligarchs and the powers that be.

The debate, which will continue throughout Wednesday, is likely to see Sanchez lose the first investiture vote scheduled for later today. As things stand, he is also unlikely to win a second vote on Friday, at which he needs a simple majority to be successful. Right now he can only count on the 90 votes from the PSOE and 40 from Ciudadanos, out of a total of 350.

English version by Simon Hunter.
SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

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

Google Ad

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

Google Ad

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET

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
SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

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

Google Ad

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces

LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET

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


Photo: Manh Hung/CPV

Huynh briefed his guest on the outcomes of Vietnams 12th National Party Congress as well as major orientations in the countrys reform, socio-economic development and integration process.



He said he believes that the traditional friendship and cooperation between the two parties would continue to be maintained.



Negre, in turn, affirmed that the French Communist Party will continue following the progresses of the Vietnamese side, considering Vietnams successes a motivation for its struggle cause.



He conveyed an invitation to the Communist Party of Vietnam to attend the 37th congress of the French Communist Party slated for June.



During the meeting, both sides also compared notes on issues related to cooperation between the two parties and the two nations./.
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
The Palace Museum received its largest-ever cash donation of 100 million yuan, some $15 million, from a single donor--the famous Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo in Beijing, capital of China, on the afternoon of Feb. 25, 2016.

During an interview with reporter from Guangming Online, Cui said that three important research organizations in the Palace Museum are all short of money to do researches and repair the relics. Moreover,as he spent a lot of time there in practicing sketching at his young age and he felt he owed much to the Palace museum, he wanted to return the favor. Therefore, he donated 100 million yuan to the Palace Museum. Cuis works are being exhibited at the Palace Museum, demonstrating his artistic style, the finger-ink-painting.

It has come to international focus for the record values of his works at auction. In 2015, his "Landscape in Snow" was purchased for over 30 million U.S. dollars at Poly Auction Hong Kong.

Shan Jixiang, Curator of the Palace Museum , said that he appreciated the artist's generosity. The museum's vice-curator Wang Yamin talked about how the 100 million yuan would be used: one fifth of that will be used to repair the relics and the rest of the money will be used for staff-training and researches.

Cui creates the unprecedented finger-ink-painting works and has painted the longest scroll finer-ink-painting in the world, which is 60 meters in length. Speaking of 20-year-old Chinese auction market, Cui said that the works of Chinese artists should be as valuable as those of western artists. For instance, Picasso and Qi Baishi were both masters of art and lived in a same era. However, fifty years ago, the price of a Picasso painting was thousands of times that of a painting by Qi, which is abnormal.

When talking about how young artists create better traditional Chinese paintings, Cui said that they should acquaint themselves with traditions, improve their acknowledge of literature, history and philosophy, study Chinese theory of painting, practice Chinese calligraphy and improve their artistic culture in an all-round way.

(Reporter: Qiu Xueying, Cameraman and Translator: Zhang Zhou, Video Editor: Wang Enhui)

[ Editor: Fanhua ]
Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagicDoes this mean we all should be nervous again? Less than 24 hours after the band's rep said rumors that the band's breaking up are "utterly ridiculous," Foo Fighters have posted a notice on their social media that an "official band announcement" is coming tonight.

The brief message, posted around midnight Tuesday on the band's Twitter and Facebook, says only "Official band announcement tomorrow night. Stay tuned." We can take "tomorrow night" to mean Wednesday night, most likely, judging from when the note was posted.

The break-up rumors began after the New York Post's Page Six reported that Dave Grohl is planning on going solo this year, which purportedly has resulted in "tension" between the Foo frontman and drummer Taylor Hawkins. The Post also cites an unnamed source who claims that Hawkins is "pissed" about Grohl's solo plans. However, another source "close to the group" told the gossip column that reports of conflict between Foo members are "completely untrue."

Grohl performed solo this past weekend at the Oscars -- he sang The Beatles' "Blackbird" during the ceremony's "In Memoriam" segment. The rep for Foo Fighters declined to comment to EW regarding Grohl's plans for this year.

Foo Fighters spent most of last year touring in support of their latest album, Sonic Highways. Their most recent release is the November 2015 EP, Saint Cecilia.

Hawkins recently told Billboard that Foo Fighters currently have "nothing on the books."

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
FTA agreement with Turkey has to be signed this year  Yatseniuk

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has tasked the government to sign a Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreement with Turkey this year.

"We have to find a common ground with our Turkish friends, so that to sign the FTA [agreement] this year," Yatseniuk said at the Cabinet's sitting on Wednesday.

According to Agricultural Policy and Food Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko, Ukrainian delegation responsible for the establishment of the FTA will leave for Turkey on March 10 to hold the talks.
The political subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for settling the situation in eastern Ukraine will meet on March 9-10, following a meeting of the Normandy Quartet foreign ministers scheduled for March 3, Ukraine's representative in the political subgroup Roman Bezsmertny said.

"The political subgroup's next meeting will take place on [March] 9-10, after the meeting of the foreign ministers in the Normandy format," Bezsmertny said in a Skype interview shown on Channel Five on Tuesday.

No meetings of the Trilateral Contact Group's subgroups are scheduled for March 2 in Minsk, he said.

As regards legislation on elections in territories in Donbas and Luhansk regions not controlled by Kyiv, the negotiators in Minsk have so far discussed only modalities of such elections, "that is, conceptual approaches," he said.

"There was no talk about any legislation in Minsk, and Ukraine's position at the political subgroup's negotiating table is that [...] it would make sense to talk about this legislation when the security problem is resolved," he said.

Security in Donbas is the top priority now, which particularly implies measures to prevent supplies of mission weapons from Russia and to expand the OSCE security control mission, Bezsmertny said.

He also said that Russia categorically dismissed either the possibility of the presence of an EU/UN police mission in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) or the patrolling of these territories on a parity basis by representatives of Ukraine, the OSCE, and these republics.
Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin has called on the UN Human Rights Council to press on Russia to open access for international organizations to Crimea.

"The constant presence of international organizations, including the UN, the Council of Europe and the OSCE must be allowed on the peninsula to monitor the status of human rights. Our Council should urge the Russian Federation as the occupying power to open Crimea to conventional and monitoring mechanisms of international human rights organizations," Klimin said during his speech at the first session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday evening.

According to him, a comprehensive evaluation of the human rights situation in Crimea should be measured only by legal standards in accordance with existing international legal instruments, not by political considerations of the occupying authorities. "In this regard, we consider that the recent mission to Crimea of the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe may facilitate the permanent access to Crimea," Klimkin said.

In his speech, the minister said that under Russian occupation, Crimea has become a "gray zone" where injustice, terror, intimidation, kidnapping and torture prevail. "The occupying authorities commit systematic and large-scale violations of fundamental rights and freedoms, wage a hidden war against dissidents, destroy the signs of linguistic, religious and cultural identity of Ukrainians and the indigenous people of Crimea  Crimean Tatars," he said.
The UN Human Rights Council should look into the human rights situation in Russia, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin said.

"Against the backdrop of an increasingly deteriorating human rights situation in Russia the state of affairs with human rights, fundamental freedoms and rule of law in the Russian Federation merits closer attention by the UN Human Rights Council," Klimkin said during his speech at the 31st session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday evening.

The minister said that for the current Russian authorities it is just a normal pattern of behavior, a part of everyday life marked by curtailing the space for civil society, independent media and political opposition, as well as an unprecedented rise in violent extremism, aggressive nationalism, neo-Nazism and xenophobic manifestations.

"We believe that there is no place for impunity for any human rights violations, regardless of where and by whom they are committed. Ukraine is investigating each and every case of such violations in the territory of Donbas and will make every effort to bring to justice those responsible for committing them," he said.
The Information Policy Ministry of Ukraine on Tuesday sent a letter to Sweden's SES ASTRA AB regarding the postponement of the terms to pay debt liabilities of Atlant-SV (ATR TV) and the Cabinet of Minister of Ukraine will consider the issue paying the debt at the nearest meeting.

It is planned to settle the debt using the funds foreseen in the national budget to resolve problems of Crimea, the ministry said.

The ministry said that the 2016 national budget foresees UAH 60 million to finance the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People. Chair of the Mejlis MP Refat Chubarov said that despite the fact that ATR is a private company, some of the funds will be sent to support it.

"The ministry declares its support to ATR and calls on everyone, including SES ASTRA AB, not to allow making decisions that could result in the stoppage of broadcasting of the Crimean Tatar TV channel," the ministry said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Deputy Director General of ATR Ayder Muzhdabaev said that in the near term two Crimean Tatar TV channels  ATR and Lale  could stop their broadcasting in Crimea.

"Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ART and children's TV channel Lale could stop their broadcasting in Crimea, as the Crimean Tatar TV channel, which Russian authorities deprived of everything, cannot pay for its broadcasting via satellite, while Ukrainian authorities do not want to do this," he wrote on his Facebook page.

On April 1, 2015, the only in the world Crimean Tatar TV Channel ATR stopped broadcasting in Crimea, since Russia Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications refused to register the TV channel under the Russian legislation.

In June 2015, ATR resumed broadcasting from Kyiv after over 2.5-month stop.
The all-Ukrainian association Svoboda (Freedom) has published a bulletin saying that its activists blocked about 30 Russian trucks from moving through Ukrainian territory on Tuesday.

In particular, Svoboda activists stopped six Russian trucks near Baturyn, the Sumy region, and two trucks not far from the Domanove checkpoint in Volyn region.

One truck with Russian license plates managed to pass through the Baturyn checkpoint "under escort of police vehicles with flashing beacons on," the bulletin says.

One Russian truck was stopped at the entrance to Stryi, the Lviv region, and another "broke through a checkpoint at a high speed and under police escort," it said.

Activists also managed to stop 12 trucks with Russian license plates in the village of Hamaliyivka not far from Lviv.

Young Svoboda activists also stopped 11 Russian trucks and made them turn around near the Porubne checkpoint in the Chernivtsi region, the bulletin says.
Impossible to lift sanctions from Russia until sovereignty of Ukraine restored  Estonian official

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) Oleksandr Turchynov at a meeting with Chairman of the Coordinating Bureau on National Security and Defense of Estonia Christian Prikk discussed bilateral relations in the security and defense area, the Russia's hybrid war against Ukraine, sanctions against Russia and Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration.

"At the meeting the parties discussed issues of cooperation between our countries in the sphere of security and defense. The interlocutors also exchanged their views concerning the hybrid war, which the Russian Federation wages on Ukraine and Europe, and discussed issues regarding continuation of sanctions against Russia," the press service of the NSDC reported on Tuesday.

Turchynov said that sanctions are not a present to Ukraine but, "primarily, Europe's capability to defend itself from Russian aggression and from that disregard of international law, demonstrated by Russian leadership".

In turn, Prikk said that "Estonia's position is that it is impossible to lift sanctions from the Russian Federation until the State Sovereignty of Ukraine is restored".

"Ukraine may rely on the support of Estonia on its way to the European Union," he said.

Turchynov said that there is no alternative of European and Euro-Atlantic integration for Ukraine.

"The example of the Baltic states is the example that Ukraine is to follow on the way to Europe," he said.
Militants from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) shelled Ukrainian government forces' positions 47 times between 6:00 a.m. Tuesday and 6:00 a.m. Wednesday, the press center of the anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine reports.

"Forty-seven attacks have been recorded over the past 24 hours, including 29 in the Donetsk sector, 15 in the Mariupol sector, and 3 in the Luhansk sector," the press center reported on Facebook on Wednesday.

In particular, militants fired 82mm mortars upon Ukrainian government forces' strongholds in Mayorsk and grenade launchers and large-caliber machineguns upon those in Zaitseve and Novhorodske.

Ukrainian government positions in Opytne, Pisky, and Avdiyivka were shelled with "various types of weapons," it said.

The press center of the Ukrainian government forces also said the situation in the area of Maryinka and Krasnohorivka was unstable. Mortar fire was also opened upon Ukrainian government positions in Talakivka, Chermalyk, Hnutove, Krasnohorivka, and Nevelske.

Militants reduced their activity at about midnight, the press center reported.
The General Secretariat of the European Parliament and the Secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine have signed an agreement on cooperation in the administrative field.

According to the Ukrainian parliament's website, the agreement was signed by Secretary General of the European Parliament Klaus Welle and Acting Head of the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus of Ukraine Volodymyr Slyshynsky.

The document was signed during the closing events of the Ukraine Week at the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday.
The prosecutor asked the Donetsk City Court in Russia's Rostov region to sentence Ukrainian aviator Nadia Savchenko to 23 years in a general security penitentiary at a hearing on Wednesday, an Interfax correspondent reported from the courthouse.

The prosecutor also asked the court to fine Savchenko 100,000 rubles. He insisted that the prosecution's case was logical, consistent with the documents, and sufficient to find her guilty.

"Possessing military combat skills, the defendant joined the Aidar battalion, where she criminally colluded with the battalion's commander and its members. She committed criminal deeds using generally dangerous means," he said.

In committing the crime, Savchenko was motivated by hatred and aversion toward residents of the Luhansk region and Russian citizens, the prosecutor said.

According to Russian investigators, Ukrainian Armed Forces officer Savchenko was at the base of the Aidar battalion near the village of Metalist in the Slovyanoserbsk district of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014, where she was conducting secret surveillance and correcting artillery fire targeting a checkpoint of militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, as well as civilians sheltering there; among them were three journalists of Russia's VGTRK broadcaster. Two Russian reporters, namely Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed in the attack.

Savchenko denies all charges. She has been held in custody in Russia since July 2014. Savchenko declared at a hearing at the Donetsk City Court on December 17, 2015 that she would be on a hunger strike until the end of her trial.
During the presentation of arguments in the Donetsk City Court, Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko accused Russian journalists of providing distorted coverage of events taking place in Ukraine and worldwide, an Interfax correspondent has reported.

"The Russian journalists are guilty of lying and false coverage of the situation in Ukraine and worldwide. The killed journalists are guilty of not observing security regulations. They were not wearing bullet-proof vests and helmets at the time of their death," Savchenko said.

The defendant said the trial of her case has not proved her guilt.

According to Russian investigators, Ukrainian Armed Forces officer Savchenko was at the base of the Aidar battalion near the village of Metalist in the Slovyanoserbsk district of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014, where she was conducting secret surveillance and correcting artillery fire targeting a checkpoint of militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic, as well as civilians sheltering there; among them were three journalists of Russia's VGTRK broadcaster. Two Russian reporters, namely Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, were killed in the attack.

Savchenko denies all charges. She has been held in custody in Russia since July 2014. Savchenko declared at a hearing at the Donetsk City Court on December 17, 2015 that she would be on a hunger strike until the end of her trial.
BEIJING -- China will make stable employment a priority as structural reform puts pressure on the job market, said Vice Premier Ma Kai on Tuesday.

Structural reform will put pressure on employment and the government should focus on stable employment along with economic expansion, said Ma at a State Council meeting.

Local governments should support mass entrepreneurship and innovation as they will create jobs. In addition, migrant workers should be encouraged to start their own businesses back in their hometown.

Workers that are made redundant as industrial overcapacity is addressed should be relocated and offered training.

Policymakers have made cutting overcapacity a top priority in supply-side structural reform, which will help the world's second-largest economy achieve sustainable growth.

In the process of capacity cuts, around 1.3 million people in the coal and steel sectors will loose their jobs, according to Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin.
Beijing boasts the world's second-largest number of most valuable tech startups, showcasing its advance in the sector.

The number of so-called unicorn companies  tech startups valued at more than $1 billion each  has reached 40, second to Silicon Valley in the United States.

This is according to the Zhongguancun Unicorn List released on Monday by the Great Wall Enterprise Institute, a research house in the capital.

They account for half such companies in China, with an aggregate valuation of $146.2 billion, including three worth more than $10 billion each.

Smartphone maker Xiaomi, valued at $46 billion, ranks first, followed by group-buying player Meituan-Dianping, valued at $18 billion.

Didi Kuaidi, China's largest ride-hailing app, valued at $16.5 billion, came in third, the report said.

Lin Renxiang, an analyst at iResearch Consulting Group, said, "Beijing is China's Internet center and many Internet companies are based in the city.

"Moreover, Beijing is home to China's top universities and research institutes, which cultivate technical talent for these unicorn companies."

Lin estimates that more unicorn firms are likely to appear in service fields including big data, cloud computing and mobile health.

According to the list, most unicorn companies operate in e-commerce, Internet finance, consumer electronics, transportation and big data.

These companies have seen dramatic growth, with more than 30 unicorns formed after 2010 undergoing vigorous initial development.

Liu Hang, spokesman for the management committee at the Zhongguancun Science Park, estimates that with technical breakthroughs in big data application, intelligent hardware, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, a series of new unicorn companies will emerge in these fields.

By December, there were 70 unicorn firms nationwide. Beijing ranked first with 40, followed by Shanghai (15), Hangzhou (4) and Shenzhen (3), the report said.

Last month, a list issued by Fortune magazine showed the number of unicorn companies globally had increased to 173, with 35 in China.
China will stage its largest annual political and legislative eventsthe "two sessions"starting on Thursday. China Daily takes a close look at a series of likely hot topics and catchphrases during the sessions.

(File Photo)

Today's catchphraseAging populationThe aging of China's population is progressing rapidly, with the number of people aged 60 and older expected to expand to one-third of the population by the middle of the century. But healthcare services for the elderly, such as rehabilitative and hospice services, are lacking in many places in China. Measures are being taken to cope with the challenges, such as encouraging the integration of elderly care with healthcare services to ensure that the elderly receive proper care.

Zhang Shouzi, a psychiatrist at Beijing Geriatric Hospital, has seen the number of patients seeking treatment for dementia in the hospital increasing over the past few years, resulting in some patients having to wait for weeks to get a bed.

"The situation may get worse in the future with the aging of the population in Beijing," Zhang said. "The incidence of dementia rises with the increase of age, and up to 40 percent of people aged 85 or older may develop the condition."

To cope with the growing number of elderly patients, the hospital is increasing the number of beds, and it opened a new complex in January, according to Yang Yingna, a publicity official of the hospital.

That complex has 400 beds and is equipped with better facilities to meet the increasing demands, she said.

With the rapid aging of the Chinese population, major cities such as Beijing are working out plans on coping with the healthcare needs of the elderly.

By the end of 2014, the number of Chinese aged 60 or older reached 212 million, more than 15 percent of the population, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Some experts predict that it will swell to more than one-third of the population by 2050, when China will become one of the countries most heavily burdened by population aging.

Beijing had 3.2 million permanent residents aged 60 or older by the end of 2014, and their number is predicted to reach 4 million by 2020, according to the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau.

President Xi Jinping said in February that coping with population aging concerns China's overall development and the interests of hundreds of millions of people. He urged the government to improve major policies such as family planning, employment and elder care to cope with the problem.

China will encourage the integration of healthcare and elderly care services to meet the challenges, according to a guideline the State Council, or the Cabinet, released in November.
SHANGHAI -- China's eastern metropolitan of Shanghai saw its population shrink for the first time this century.

The city's permanent population, those who have lived there for six months or more, was 24.15 million at the end of 2015, marking a decline of 0.4 percent year on year, the city's statistics bureau said Tuesday.

The city has been a magnet for job seekers thanks to booming economy, but its aging local population and low birth rate have dragged down the growth figure.

Yet population experts believe last year's negative growth was mainly a result of the measures taken by the megacity to curb its population in order to alleviate the pressures on traffic flow and infrastructure.

Zhou Haiwang, a demographer with Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, said the city had relocated many residents by phasing out obsolete industrial capacities and demolishing illegal buildings.

Zhou said the trend befitted the city's plan to limit its permanent population within 25 million by 2020.
Six students from Xi'an Gaoxin No. 1 High School are going to make their voices heard when their proposal is put forward during the fourth annual session of the 12th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which will kick off in Beijing Thursday.

Their prize-winning proposal for the construction of nursing rooms in public spaces at the second National Youth Model CPPCC event is going to be submitted by Wang Yuan, CPPCC National Committee member, on March 3.

"For the first time, I feel proud to be a citizen. Every citizen's voice will be heard and every citizen's demand deserves respect," said Zhang Donggang, one of the six students.

The topic of a room for breastfeeding is seemingly of little concern to high school students. The inspiration actually came from a volunteer teacher, who was also the working mother of a four-month-old.

Due to the lack of a nursing room at their school, she had to lock the teachers office and nurse under the table when everyone left the room for lunch. She felt bad when she learned that one of her male colleagues had complained about her "improper behavior."

These students have set up four surveys for people in different walks of life. After four months of research, their proposal was finally drafted using fewer than 2,000 Chinese characters, as a great deal of thought and effort went into each one.

CPPCC is no longer a remote concept in a textbook for Chinese youth, said Zhang Wuhua, deputy director of the Central Education Committee, China's Zhi Gong Party, and also the founder of the Model CPPCC event.

In fact, all three winning proposals from the second National Youth Model CPPCC event, which was held last August, will be submitted to the real CPPCC for consideration this year.

Similar to Model U.N., where students learn about the organizations operations by simulating its political process, the Model CPPCC event aims to give students firsthand experience with the process through which social issues are identified and researched, plans are drafted to address these problems, and policy is written and passed through cooperation and negotiation.
BEIJING, March 2 -- Qiushi Journal, the flagship magazine of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, has called for conforming with the country's top leader, Xi Jinping.

To promote the core leadership of the Party, the priority is to "conform with the CPC Central Committee, with General Secretary (of the CPC Central Committee) Xi Jinping as well as with the Party's theories, guidelines, principles and policies," according to a recent commentary under the byline "Qiushi."

It urged enhancing "consciousness of the ideology, the whole, the core and the line."

The "four consciousnesses" were raised earlier this year at a high-level meeting of the CPC Central Committee and have been frequently invoked since then.

The article was published ahead of the annual sessions of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, China's top political advisory body, and the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.

Together dubbed the "two sessions," the meetings are the most important political events in China, where political and economic development measures are discussed and key policies are adopted.

Party advocacy of China's development must be ensured in all processes and aspects of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, it said.

It calls for unifying the thinking of all people with a series of important speeches by Xi amid efforts to realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.

The article stresses advancing the "Four Comprehensives," the overarching strategy for China's long-term development. The phrase was first coined by Xi in 2014.

It also called for upholding and implementing the five development concepts of innovation, coordination, green development, opening up and sharing. These have become key words in guiding the country's development since they were raised at a key CPC meeting last October.

On the same day when the Qiushi article was published, Liu Yunshan, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said conforming with the line is a significant political principle. It is where the Party's strength and advantage lie.

"The fundamental principle of strengthening the consciousness of the line is to conform with the CPC Central Committee, with Xi as general secretary, in ideology, political thinking and deeds," he said while speaking at the spring semester opening ceremony of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
Political advisers have begun to gather in Beijing for this year's CPPCC meeting with their proposals mainly focused on issues concerning reform and public concerns.

"Our party will talk about the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, technology and innovation, financial system reform, social credit system, AND public entrepreneurship," CPPCC member Cai Ling said.

"I hope the legislation over the ethnic minority's medicine should remain in the same pace and level with the legislation on Chinese traditional medicine. It's not only beneficial to the ethnic minority's medicine development, but also to seek a common development of the both," CPPCC member Yao Hasi said.

"My suggestions focus on anti-corruption by punishment, prevention, institution establishment, AND inspection. We need a transformation from letting the officials 'don't want or dare to be corrupted' to letting them 'cannot and don't need to take bribes,'" CPPCC member Zhu Zhuanxing said.

"I bring with me a proposal to let the education sector further strengthen the teenagers' knowledge on traditional culture," CPPCC member Huang Dekuan said.
BEIJING, March 2 -- China's diplomacy is geared to serve its own development, but it will also support global governance.

China's foreign policies are in the limelight as the country's lawmakers will examine a national five-year development plan in the coming two weeks.

Explaining China's diplomatic missions in a speech at an American think tank during his visit to the United Stateslast week, Foreign Minister Wang Yi placed the Belt and Road Initiative as China's strategic priority.

This infrastructure network, which is aimed at increasing trade and strengthening ties among Asian and European countries over land and by sea, is also a driving force for global economic recovery.

Niu Jun, professor of international relations with Peking University, said the speech showed China's efforts to build mutual trust and avoid strategic miscalculation with the United States, a harder challenge in the year of a U.S. general election.

"The atmosphere might be tense this year as topics involving the South China Sea, Taiwan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and trade will be thrown out to court voters," said Niu. "But they can be managed since China and the United States are so closely linked, economically and socially."

"It is precisely because of so many differences that the world has become such a diverse and colorful place," President Xi Jinpingsaid in Washington in September, "and that the need to broaden common ground and iron out differences has become so important."

Xi stressed at the same time that the two countries should accommodate each other's interests and concerns, including China's expanding overseas interests.

The upcoming annual legislative session has attracted more than 1,000 foreign journalists as China is becoming an increasingly pivotal global stakeholder.

The reporters might be keen to understand how China is going to deal with the world, especially after February editions of China's leading newspapers gave coverage to "Xi's innovative diplomacy": his agenda for global governance, supported by the ancient Confucian philosophy of building a "community of common destiny."

China will host the G20 summit in September, a big occasion for Chinese leaders to explain this diplomatic plan.

The country has taken steps to participate more in global financial system. It launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with 56 other founding members and joined the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in January.

Wang Yi assured his American audience that the AIIB is intended as a supplement to existing global financial institutions, rather than an attempt at subverting them.

Xi's visit to Iran, Egyptand Saudi Arabia in January and China's big role in resolving the Iranian nuclear issue showed that China is working to resolve international hot-spot issues.

Xi also explained China's diplomatic policies with reference to the Confucian philosophy of justice and benefit, saying China is focusing more on justice as the world becomes a smaller place.

Contagious economic woes, intercontinental refugee crisis,the spread of terrorism and the Zika virus have affirmed the validity of the "common destiny" theory.

Many observers have noted that Xi's notions are at odds with the "Clash of Civilizations" theory which advocates that cultural and religious identities will be the primary source of conflict in the modern world.

Xi championed the pursuit of common values based on peaceful competition. Those values are peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, as he told the United NationsGeneral Assembly in September.

China is likely to instill those values into a new five-year development plan featuring innovation, coordination, green development, opening up and shared prosperity.
High-level foreign talent will enjoy a simpler application process for visas, immigration and permanent residence in Beijing. According to the Beijing Public Security Bureau, 20 new immigration policies will be implemented starting March 1.

These measures are aimed at meeting the needs of high-level foreign talent, overseas Chinese returnee entrepreneurs, foreign members of entrepreneurial teams and young foreign students. The measures will help give the green light for these parties to stay permanently in China.

Some of the 20 new policies will be tested out first in Beijings Zhongguancun National Innovation Demonstration Zone.

Those policies include: the Ministry of Public Security setting up a Permanent Residence Service Center in Zhongguancun to deal with demands of foreigners, the approval period for the permanent residence for high-level foreign talent being shortened from 180 working days to 50, and an integral assessment system being implemented for the permanent residence demands of foreigners in Zhongguancun. Additionally, a convenient channel for applying for permanent residence will be offered to overseas Chinese who have Doctoral or Masters degrees, and who have set up long-term businesses in Zhongguancun. Foreign students in universities will also be allowed to take short-term internships in Zhongguancun.

Another 10 policies, which have been implemented in Shanghai since July 1, 2015, will also be implemented in Beijing. These include allowing foreigners who meet certain requirements for wages and taxes to apply for permanent residence in China, allowing foreign students who graduated from Chinese universities to start enterprises in China, and allowing high-level foreign talent to hire foreign domestic workers in China.

The Permanent Residence Service Center in Zhongguancun will be officially open to foreigners in Beijing from March 1, 2016.
Chinas two sessions this year will specify the five development notions stressed in its 13th Five-Year Plan, namely innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, said Xin Ming, a professor of Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

Xin made the prediction ahead of the upcoming annual meetings of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) and the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The five notions, defined at the 5th Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee last October, have become a guideline for Chinas 13th Five-Year Plan, a roadmap for the nation's development from 2016 to 2020.

Those philosophies, closely related to the lives of ordinary citizens, can address the roadblocks unable to be dealt with by traditional approaches in todays economic and social setting.

They also serve as a strategic guideline as the Chinese economy enters the new normal, focusing more on development quality rather than quantity.

The notions attracted worldwide attention after Chinese President Xi Jinping elaborated on them at the 10th G20 summit held in Antalya, Turkey, last November.

From a global perspective, the five words highlight Chinas determination to better integrate the development of China with the rest of world while being further involved in global economic governance. They herald that the countrys economy will open wider to the world as well.

For years, China has devoted itself to global development. Its dazzling performance when fulfilling the UN-initiated Millennium Development Goals is one example. It also supported the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the UN last autumn.

Xi once stated that China will include implementation of the 2030 agenda as part of Chinas 13th Five-Year Plan.

He also suggested that all the G20 members come up with their own plans of implementation to boost strong, sustainable and balanced global growth. Amid increasing interactions brought by economic globalization, countries worldwide will witness increasing common interests.

Analysts believe that the China-initiated notions will effect the world positively when the country accelerates its economy.

Given this backdrop, the international community will attach much importance to Chinas upcoming two sessions in the hope of finding development opportunities these notions can bring them.
China and the United States kicked off the 2016 China-U.S. Tourism Year at a ceremony in Beijing on Monday.

In a message to the ceremony launching the "China-U.S. Tourism Year", President Xi Jinping said he is looking forward to increased people-to-people exchanges between China and the U.S. as the two sides kick off a major tourism promotion.

Li Jinzao, director of National Tourism Bureau said that more than 4.75 million people traveled between the China and the U.S. in 2015 and the number will increase to 5 million in 2016. China is willing to work with the U.S. to further increase the investment cooperation and degree of openness of travels. Hundreds of activities and events will be organized during the China-U.S. Tourism Year.

Analysts say more facilitation on infrastructure construction, entry and exit policies will bring more benefits to the cooperation on tourism between the two countries.

Over 25 million trips have been made between the two nations with an average annual growth of 7.6 percent since the China-U.S. Tourism Leadership Summit was established in 2007.

Among that, the number of Chinese tourists travelling to the U.S. has grown at an annual rate of 18.4 percent.

China-U.S. Tourism Year will provide a platform for the countries to continue to improve and upgrade systems to accommodate anticipated travel flows.
Over 70 elite snipers of the Armed Police Force in Chongqing attended training which lasted several days recently. Punching holes on rice grains, piling up shell cases, and pinhole threading are the basic tests to train the snipers patience, accuracy, and control power.

The news of a soldier named Xu Guangming punched 13 holes on a rice grain soon became viral in the camp. As simple as it seems to be, punching holes on rice grains actually takes great patience and fingers coordination. According to his instructor, the previous record was nine holes on a rice grain set by a PLA soldier. Xus 13 holes is completely incredible.
A group of foreign journalists organized by the Russian Defense Ministry to observe the ceasefire situation in Syria came under artillery fire in Syria's northern province of Latakia. Some in the group were wounded, including a Chinese journalist, according to a report from the Russia Today news agency on Tuesday.

"The shells were fired from the Turkish border, the area of Dama, near Idlib," the TASS news agency quoted Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

The group consisted of 33 journalists from Bulgaria, Canada, China, Germany, Greece, Russia and the United States, and was organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. The attack occurred when the journalists went to visit the Latakia air base in Syria.

Konashenkov said a total of eight artillery shells were fired, and that they crashed at distances ranging from 150 meters to 400 meters away from the journalists.

The Chinese embassy in Russia confirmed that the Chinese reporter's right leg and left hand had been injured by the artillery fire.

The U.S.-Russia truce for cessation of hostilities in Syria came into effect on Feb. 27. The ceasefire does not apply to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), Al-Nusra, or other terrorist organizations, as designated by the U.N.

The Syrian Civil War broke out in March 2011. According to the U.N., more 250,000 people have been killed, and more than 1 million people injured as a result of the war in recent years.
My Favorite Quotes Recent Quotes

Portfolio Summary Your most recently viewed tickers will automatically show up here if you type a ticker in the Get Quotes box on the top of the page.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

Trend:

The transition to the floating rate of the national currency in Azerbaijan has justified itself, head of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov told reporters March 2.

"Given the current conditions, considering the situation in the global economy, this is the right decision, and it corresponds to strategic interests of Azerbaijan," he said.

He went on to add that the Azerbaijani manat will remain in 'floating' mode until its stability is ensured.

The CBA switched to the floating rate of manat on Dec.21, as a result of which the exchange rate of dollar and euro increased by 47.6 percent and 47.9 percent and stood at 1.55 and 1.685 manats, respectively.

Rustamov further said that Azerbaijani banks receive sufficient foreign currency volume through auctions.

"Today we hold auctions, and, as one can see, there are no other parallel processes on the market," he said. "We have our own schedule in accordance with which we carry out the auctions."



He said that the task of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan as the regulator is not to provide banks with foreign currency, but to prevent sharp fluctuations of the manat exchange rate.

"A revised state budget for 2016 has already been adopted, and it envisages the transfer program, which is the main channel for providing market with foreign currency," Rustamov said.

Azerbaijani parliament at the plenary session on Feb. 23 adopted amendments to the country's state budget for 2016.

In accordance with the amendments, the adjusted state budget revenues are expected at 16.822 billion manats (AZN), which is 15.5 percent more than the approved forecasts. Expenditures of the state budget are projected at 18.495 billion manats. The state budget deficit will amount to 1.673 billion manats.

The official exchange rate on March 2 is 1.5764 AZN/USD.

Revenues of Azerbaijan's adjusted consolidated budget for 2016 are expected at 15.738.6 billion manats, which is 981.5 million manats, or 5.9 percent less compared to the approved budget.

Azerbaijan's state and consolidated budget parameters were adjusted based on oil price of $25 per barrel.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 1

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) intends to defend its interests in court due to the revocation of licenses of Atrabank and the Caucasus Development Bank, head of the CBA Elman Rustamov told reporters March 2.

"The trial is underway," he said. "We will defend the decisions made and our own interests in court."

The CBA revoked the licenses of these two banks on Jan. 27 because their total capitals didn't correspond to the minimum requirement of 50 million manats.

The banks also couldn't fulfill obligations to creditors, CBA explained.

At the same time, Atrabank and Caucasus Development Bank have agreed to merge, in connection with which a protocol of intent was signed.

Rustamov also raised the issue of consolidation of banks, noting that this process is not yet finished.

"This process will end when new shareholders hold a meeting," he said. "For now, three banks are in the process of consolidation, they have already signed a protocol of intentions. But the further process will take time. At first, they need to carry out mutual evaluation of assets and so on."

AGBank [on the market since 1992] and Bank Standard [since 1995] also announced about the intention to unite, and have already signed a corresponding protocol.

At the same time, NBCBank has already signed a protocol of intent to merge with Parabank and Kredobank.
Baku, Azerbaijan March 2



By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:



Baku hosted the second meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council Feb.29. The event itself, participation of a large number of high-ranking guests in it, shows that the project is rapidly nearing completion.



Curiously enough, on the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting with head of Gazprom company, Alexey Miller in Moscow on supplying gas to Europe via the same route as the Southern Gas Corridor, that's to say, to Greece and Italy.



It seems that Russia is seriously concerned about the progress of the Southern Gas Corridor and the competition with Azerbaijan in gas supply to Europe.



This assumption has grounds, given that two Russian projects on gas supply to Southern Europe (South Stream and Turkish Stream) have already failed for various reasons.



At the same time, Moscow sees that there are no problems regarding the implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project, as demonstrated by the second Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council in Baku.



At the meeting in Baku, EU Commission Vice-President for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic reiterated the key and strategic importance of the Azerbaijan project. It was very significant because Moscow at the time refused from the South Stream project's implementation namely due to the 'unconstructive position' of the EU. But now, the Russian Federation sees the support for the Southern Gas Corridor by Europe and the US, and zealously boosts other similar projects.



All this suggests that Russian experts and even the country's leadership see the Southern Gas Corridor as a competitor and a threat to their interests in Europe, which once again proves its success and feasibility.



It was also noted by Alexey Miller, who admitted that Gazprom with his new idea to supply gas to southern Europe repels the ITGI [Interconnection Turkey Greece Italy] Poseidon project, which once envisaged the transportation of 12 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from Greece on the seabed of the Ionian Sea to the south of Italy. Russia's attempts to use Azerbaijan's idea are another proof and recognition of the foresight of Baku's energy policy.



Why there is such a struggle especially for the European gas market?



First, this market is still very attractive and besides that, its gas is a leverage of influence in Europe for Russia, which the country does not want to lose. Second, the issue on supply to another promising market - China - is not clear yet. The parties continue to negotiate, in addition, an expensive pipeline needs to be built, so it is a stretch for now.



Regarding the financing of the Southern Gas Corridor project, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natig Aliyev said that all financial issues in this regard will be addressed until May. The European financial institutions also confirmed that.



Sefcovic also said in Baku that it is very important to implement the Southern Gas Corridor in time to avoid unnecessary costs. High Representative of the EU, Vice-President of the European Commission Federica Mogherini said that the project is vital for Europe. This means that the support will be rendered and Europe itself is greatly interested in it.



In his speech, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also stressed that the Southern Gas Corridor is a large-scale infrastructure and energy project of Europe itself. Moreover, the president said that there may be other sources of supply. This expands the geographic coverage and the involvement in the project. This will attract additional investments into the country and assist in getting a profit.



Of course, all this can not but bother Russia, which seems to take a great interest in a 'gas rally' with Azerbaijan.



Trend analyst Maksim Tsurkov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

The Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF) has paid the compensations worth over 22.8 million manats to clients of the bankrupt Bank of Azerbaijan, a statement posted on ADIF's website said March 2.

As of March 2, the official exchange rate is 1.5764 AZN/USD.

The applications have been received from Bank of Azerbaijan's insured depositors since January 29, 2016.

The amount of the insured deposits in Bank of Azerbaijan is 24.2 million manats. The payments are made in the branches of Muganbank and Rabitabank, assigned as agent banks.

At the same time, more than 749,000 manats have been paid to Ganja Bank's clients since Feb. 4. In general, the amount of insured deposits in Ganja Bank is 1.5 million manats.

The payments to Ganja Bank's depositors are made in the branches of Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank.

ADIF has also started paying compensations to Texnikabank's depositors since February 12. More than 66.67 million manats have been paid to the bank's clients recently.

The payments to Texnikabank's depositors are made in the branches of Muganbank, Rabitabank, Unibank and Kapital Bank.

The fund returns up to 30,000 manats for each insured deposit.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

Trend:

The only solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani defense ministry told Trend March 2.

"The issue must be resolved by Armenia's compliance with norms and principles of the international law or the Armenian armed forces must be expelled from the Azerbaijani territories by the country's armed forces to restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan," the defense ministry said.

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

Trend:

An OSCE monitoring was held March 2 along the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry told Trend March 2.

The monitoring was held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative on the contact line in Azerbaijan's Aghdam district, the ministry said.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was carried out by the field assistants of OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Hristo Hristov and Peter Svedberg.

On the opposite side, the monitoring was conducted by the field assistants of OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Yevgeny Sharov and Jiri Aberle.

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.
Baku, Azerbaijan March 2

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

The US ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta has discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and efforts to build peace in the region, said the official Twitter page of the US embassy in Baku.

The discussions were held during the visit of the US ambassador to Azerbaijan's Sumgayit city March 2.

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.

Meanwhile, Cekuta met with the head of Sumgayit City Executive Power to learn about social and economic development priorities in the region.

Cekuta also discussed the importance of entrepreneurship and ways to increase jobs for youth in Azerbaijan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

Azerbaijan is at a turning point which will allow it to improve its relations with Europe and the Council of Europe, said Pedro Agramunt, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), ending a two-day state visit to Azerbaijan.

Agramunt stressed that he held meetings with Azerbaijani leadership as part of the visit, the statement posted on the PACE official website said.

"I was encouraged by the frank and open discussions with my high-level interlocutors about a number of rule of law and human rights issues," the statement said. "I was able to discuss openly with the highest authorities some of the problems faced by civil society in terms of the recent legislation, affecting NGOs."

"I could raise some of the issues arising from the recent parliamentary elections," the statement said. "I was in a position to press for greater co-operation with the Council of Europe's Venice Commission."

Agramunt was on a visit to Azerbaijan Feb. 29-March 1. He was elected the PACE president at the organization's winter session in Strasbourg Jan. 25. In 2010-2015, Agramunt worked as a co-rapporteur of PACE for Azerbaijan. He replaced Anne Brasseur on this post.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan has prepared a report 'Illegal economic and other activities on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.'

The report, presented March 2, reflects illegal economic activity, relocation to Azerbaijan's territories occupied by Armenia, illegal exploitation of natural resources of the country's Nagorno-Karabakh region, etc., Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hikmet Hajiyev said.

The document consisting of seven parts reflecting data collected from open Armenian resources, he said.

Those parts are as follows:

1. Introduction (This part presents information on the specified topic and methodology used in preparation of the report).

2. Executive Summary (This part presents the report's results).

3. Occupation by Armenia of the Territories of Azerbaijan (This part presents the facts proving that control is being carried out on the territories occupied by Armenia).

4. Illegal Economic and Other Activities in the Occupied Territories for Armenia's Own Economic Gain (This part presents the facts proving that illegal activity is being carried out on the occupied territories, including the illegal resettlement, use of natural resources, and infrastructure change).

5. Responsibility under International Law Arising from the Continuing Unlawful Occupation by Armenia of the Territories of Azerbaijan and Illegal Activities on These Territories (This part analyzes and explains Armenia's legal responsibility on the basis of international law in connection with occupation and illegal activity).

6. Urgent Measures to Cease Unlawful Attempts of Occupation and Annexation of Azerbaijani Territories by Armenia (A list of urgent measures is indicated here).

"There are facts that illegal economic and other activities are carried out on the occupied Azerbaijani territories, and Armenia is responsible for organizing them," said Hajiyev.

Armenia plays the role of a transit point in export of goods illegally produced on these territories to international markets, the foreign ministry spokesman said.

He said that many facts of building infrastructure facilities on Azerbaijan's occupied territories are known, in addition, wine, vodka and other products are manufactured there, illegal activities in the field of ICT, banking and so on is carried out.

"The report will be submitted to all international organizations," he said.

"A separate chapter of the report is dedicated to the facts of relocation to the occupied Azerbaijani territories," said Hajiyev, adding that according to Armenia's official reports 20,000 Syrians of Armenian descent were relocated to Armenia, and hundreds of Syrian Armenian families out of them were relocated to the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.

He said that a mission to investigate facts of illegal activity on the country's occupied territories was established in the OSCE at the initiative of Azerbaijan in 2005.

Following the investigation, the mission came to the conclusion that such illegal activity on the occupied territories hinders peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said.

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

The full text of the report can be found at the following link:http://mfa.gov.az/files/file/MFA_Report_on_the_occupied_territories_March_2016_1.pdf

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:

The experts of the GUAM member countries have discussed issues of ecology and waste management in Japan, according to a press release published March 2 on the website of the organization.

The event was held within the framework of the GUAM-Japan cooperation, according to the message.

The workshop was attended by representatives of ministries and agencies of the GUAM member states and the secretariat of the organization.

During the event, its participants discussed ecological situation and issues of waste management in their countries and got acquainted with the policy of Japan in this sphere.

GUAM includes Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova.

Azerbaijan has been chairing the GUAM since January 1, 2016.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2





Trend:

Azerbaijan's successful and internationally appreciated model of tolerance would inspire many others to follow towards a better and more peaceful world, Consul General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev said at a meeting with the Oregon State Governor Kate Brown.

Prospects of mutual cooperation in various fields were discussed at the meeting, the consulate general told Trend March 2.

Highlighting also Azerbaijan's long-standing traditions of tolerance and positive multiculturalism, the Consul General spoke of peaceful and harmonious coexistence of various religions and ethnicities in the country.

Informing the Governor about Azerbaijan's steady development as a free and independent nation in a strategically important region, Consul General Aghayev stressed the great potential for fruitful cooperation between Azerbaijan and Oregon in a variety of areas, especially in the fields of port services, urban development, transportation, agriculture, IT, and education.

During his visit to the State, Aghayev also met Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, various State Legislators, Mayor of Portland (the State's largest city) Charlie Hales, as well as addressed a group of students at the Portland State University.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:

Emir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani will pay an official visit to Baku March 8, a diplomatic source told Trend March 2.

The prospects of Azerbaijan-Qatar relations will be discussed during the two-day visit, according to the source.

During the visit of Qatar's Transport Minister Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti to Azerbaijan in 2015, the sides discussed the opportunities for cooperation in industry, agriculture, education and other areas.

Qatar ranks third in the world in terms of its natural gas reserves and is the largest supplier of liquefied natural gas. As an OPEC member, it exports considerable volumes of oil.

In this regard, the prospects for cooperation in the oil and gas sector can also be discussed during the upcoming visit of the Qatari emir to Baku.

---



Follow the author on Twitter: @Asebaa
Baku, Azerbaijan March 2

Trend:

Baku Higher Oil School was represented at the exhibition held in the frames of Eurasian Higher Education Summit in Istanbul, Turkey.

Along with BHOS, a number of the higher educational institutions of Azerbaijan were also represented at the exhibition.

The exhibition that showcased peculiarities of the higher educational institutions from Turkey, Italy, US, Kazakhstan and Germany including achievements and advantages of such organizations as the European Students' Service Center, DAAD, Study in Turkey, Study Portal and Alumni groups became also the venue for manifestation and promotion of BHOS related broad information including publications.

The purpose of organization of Eurasian Higher Education Summit by Eurasian Universities Union was to provide opportunities to hold view exchange, discussions, establishing economic and cultural relations between representatives of the universities from Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and Pacific Ocean.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2



By Azad Hasanli - Trend:



Azerbaijan's location will allow to increase the number of countries covered by the North-South project in the western direction, Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Shahin Mustafayev told ANS TV channel.



He said that the North-South route will allow transporting cargo to Pakistan, India, Asia and Northern Europe through Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran.



"I would like to stress another feature of the project - Azerbaijan will get a way to the Black Sea by rail through Georgia," he said. "Moreover, the way to other Turkish transport channels is being opened thanks to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) project."



"Thus, it is appropriate to speak about the South-West route, rather than the North-South route," he said. "North-South" route also intersects with other international transport corridors. So, it is a very important project for us."



While speaking about the construction pace as part of the North-South corridor, the minister said that Azerbaijan will construct an 8.3 kilometer-missing part of the railway to the Astara river by late 2016.



The minister added that then, together with Iran, a bridge will be built across the river.



He also said that on its territory Iran will build the railway stretching over two kilometers, adding that both countries will build the cargo terminals.



"It has been reported that Iran has already completed more than 80 percent of the Qazvin-Rasht railway construction," he said. "Other countries are also interested in this project. For example, negotiations on the North-South project will be held with Russia in March-April."



"Azerbaijan also intends to actively participate in this project implementation because it is strategically important not only for us but also for Iran, Russia, the countries of Northern Europe," he said.



Mustafayev said that the funds have been envisaged in the state budget-2016 for the first phase project implementation.



He said that Azerbaijan will have no problems with its funding, adding that Iran will also fulfill its obligations.



The minister also spoke about the benefits of this project compared to other transport corridors.



"North-South" route stretching through Azerbaijan is more profitable than alternative routes, such as the Suez Canal-Mediterranean Sea-Northern Europe and Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Northern Europe by each parameter [time, the number of procedures, etc.]," he said. "The advantages of our project are obvious."



Mustafayev stressed that the project will bring big profits to Azerbaijan.



"The profit will depend on the volume of cargo transportation," he said. "Initially, the volumes to be transported through Azerbaijan will hit five-seven million tons per year. But of course, these volumes will increase by a lot in the future. I think in the future it will be possible to talk about tens of millions of tons."
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2





Trend:

American Chamber of Commerce in Azerbaijan held its Annual General Meeting for electing new members of the Board of Directors.

Mr. Ilgar Veliyev, President of AmCham Azerbaijan, opened the General Assembly Meeting by introducing the candidates to the Board of Directors and passing the floor to them for delivering their platforms.

Afterwards, Mr. Veliyev introduced Ms. Leyla Novruzova, the newly appointed HR committee chairperson, and Ms. Aygun Babazade, to be the new Member Services Officer of AmCham, to the audience. Moreover, Mr. Veliyev gave the information on the updates of the elaboration of White Paper (Observations and recommendations for improving Azerbaijan's business climate) and also organization of two substantial upcoming events - conference on "Development in Customs System and Future Perspectives" in cooperation with State Customs Committee of Azerbaijan Republic and Round Table on "Development of Agriculture Sector".

Afterwards, followed by the elections to the Board membership of AmCham, five candidates to be Teyba Gouliyeva, Head of Representative Office of Societe Generale, Nuran Kerimov, Managing Partner of Deloitte Azerbaijan, Movlan Pashayev, Managing Partner of PwC Azerbaijan, Fariz Ismayilzada, Vice Rector for External, Government and Student Affairs at ADA University and Taygun Gunay, General Manager of P&G joined the existing Board Members Farid Ismayilzadeh, Founder and CEO of GoldenPay, Taleh Kazimov, CEO of Pasha Bank, Vugar Aliyev, Managing Partner of KPMG, Kent McNeley, CEO of Nar Mobile and Ilgar Veliyev, Country Managing Partner of EY.

Over the coming month, the board will meet at AmCham Strategic Board Meeting in order to discuss better ways of contributing to the development of AmCham further along increasing the effectiveness of existing AmCham committees with their extensive experience.

AmCham Azerbaijan is the leading business association supporting and promoting the interests of business in Azerbaijan. Being one of the largest and the most influential organizations in the country we provide the best networking opportunities. Our mission is to promote the business interests of our members by working to improve the business climate in Azerbaijan and to provide services to our members.

Established in 1996, AmCham is composed of over 280 Members and Associates active in every sector of the Azerbaijani economy. The Chamber represents 80% of all foreign and a significant portion of the local investment in Azerbaijan. Through our industry sector committees our members are able to share information, raise issues of common concern and propose possible solutions to government officials.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

The Turkish Mavi Jeans textile company has postponed the store opening in Russia, Cuneyt Yavuz, head of the company, said.

Yavuz said that the company would like to open more than 20 stores in various cities of Russia, the Turkish Postmedia newspaper wrote March 2.

He said that the company has postponed the store network opening in Russia due to the crisis in the Ankara-Moscow relations.

Mavi Jeans is one of the largest textile companies in Turkey. The company was established in 1991.

Some 18 percent of jeans production in the world accounts for the company. The company's revenues amounted to 1.2 billion Turkish liras in 2015.

As of March 2, the Turkish central bank's official exchange rate is 2.9504 TRY/EURO.

The Russia-Turkey diplomatic relations soured after a Russian Su-24 was shot down by the Turkish Air Forces Nov. 24, 2015. Following the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on measures to ensure national security and economic measures against Turkey.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2



By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $100 million to 23 local banks through the auction held by Azerbaijan's Central Bank (CBA) March 2, SOFAZ said.

"SOFAZ offered $100 million for sale through the auction," the statement said. "This amount was fully sold to the banks."

Thus, SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016.

The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZ's transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at six billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.

As of October 1, 2015, SOFAZ assets reduced by 6.38 percent compared to early 2015 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $34.74 billion.

Based on SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for the construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.

The main goals of the State Oil Fund include: accumulation of resources and the placement of the fund's assets abroad in order to minimize the negative affect on the economy, the prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations and support of current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

The decree signed by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev on additional measures to promote the non-oil export is a bright example of state support to export of domestic products, Sahib Mammadov, the country's deputy economy minister said.

Stimulating the export is a part of the economic development strategy pursued by the president, Mammadov told reporters March 2.

"Very important decisions were made in this sphere and the decree on additional measures to promote the export of non-oil products, signed March 1, clearly shows the state support to the export of goods produced in Azerbaijan," said the deputy minister.

Mammadov noted that the main factor in this decree is that three percent of customs value of the declared export goods will constitute the base amount of promoting the export.

"This amount will be paid to the entrepreneurs from the state budget, which is another stimulus for them," said the deputy minister.

Additional measures on promoting the export of non-oil goods produced in Azerbaijan entered into force on March 1, 2016.

The corresponding decree was signed by Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev on March 1. The decree will be effective until Dec.31, 2020.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anvar_Mammadov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

Trend:

Official exchange rate of manat, the Azerbaijani national currency, against the US dollar was set at 1.5843 manats for March 3, said the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) March 2.

The average rate of manat was set following the interbank transactions on the Azerbaijani currency market, said the CBA.

The State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) sold $100 million to 23 local banks through the auction held by Azerbaijan's Central Bank (CBA) March 2.
Baku, Azerbaijan March 2

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project is important not only for Azerbaijan, but for Europe and the whole world, Azerbaijani MP Tahir Rzayev told Trend March 2.

This project will play a significant role in supplying European markets with gas, according to the MP.

Rzayev noted that holding both meetings of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council in Baku once again shows that Azerbaijan plays a key role in the project's implementation.

"It also shows that Azerbaijan has gained a great international reputation as an economic and political partner," he said.

The MP added that implementation of the Southern Gas Corridor project is also aimed at ensuring Azerbaijan's economic development in long-term.

This project is of great importance in terms of ensuring peace and stability in the region, according to Rzayev.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority energy projects for EU. It envisages transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe through Georgia and Turkey.

At the initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Stage 2 of the Shah Deniz development, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline and Trans-Adriatic Pipeline.

Edited by SI
Baku, Azerbaijan March 2

By Elena Kosolapova - Trend:

The conflict in Syria will have negative consequences far beyond the region, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev said.

He made the remarks during the meeting with heads of the diplomatic missions accredited in the country.

Nazarbayev noted that today, the fate of the whole world is being determined in the Middle East, Kazakh president's press service said March 2.

"Disunity of activities of the international community in fighting the "Islamic State" terrorist group (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) plays into the hands of terrorists," said Kazakh president. "Therefore, I proposed to create a single global network under the UN auspices to fight the international terrorism and extremism."

He noted that Kazakhstan welcomes the ceasefire agreement between Russia and the US in Syria.

"We urge all parties involved to fully implement the agreements. We are confident that it will create conditions for a long-term political settlement," said the president.

Nazarbayev reiterated that the identification of terrorism with the peaceful Islam and other religions is inadmissible.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed the lives of over 220,000 people. Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops.

The "Islamic State" and Jabhat al-Nusra are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

Edited by SI

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 2

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend:

Russia and Turkmenistan have discussed the possibilities of selling Turkmenistan's textile and cotton products on the Russian market, said the website of Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

During the discussions, the Russian side was represented by the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Alexander Rybakov, while from the Turkmen side, the meeting was attended by the country's ambassador to Russia Berdymurad Redzhepov, as well as representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Textile industry.

Moreover, the meeting was attended by heads of various textile enterprises from the two countries.

Russian side is interested in purchasing textile products from Turkmenistan, but due to a large number of barriers and requirements to buyers, it is more beneficial to purchase these products through European dealers, said the message from Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In this regard, the meeting participants discussed the steps which could improve the situation by benefiting both sides.

"It was decided to discuss this issue in the near future," said the message.

Further, Turkmenistan's representatives talked about the development of textile industry and its prospects.

Turkmenistan traditionally grows cotton, which serves as the basis for developing the country's textile industry.

The major part of products is exported to the US, Canada, Germany, UK, Russia, Italy, Turkey, China and Ukraine.

Edited by SI
Baku, Azerbaijan, Mar. 2

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and three Swiss companies, Glencore, Vitol Group and Trafigura have agreed on a deal on swapping oil and oil gas with gasoline.

Mehr news agency reported that NIOC and the three mentioned companies have discussed a deal for oil swap with Iran. Within the next couple of days a huge shipment of Glencore gasoline will be unloaded at the Bandar Abbas terminal, the report said. Glencore was one of the companies that exported gasoline to Iran before cutting the business in the beginning of 2010 due to international sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Vitol was also a traditional exporter of gasoline to Iran, and cut off the export in 2009 due to sanctions imposed on Iran. Iran's primary energy consumption reached 4.428 million barrels of oil equivalent per day during the last fiscal year (ended on March 20, 2015). The latest National Iranian Oil, Refinery and Distribution Company's (NIORDC) report indicates a 4.7-percent increase in the country's energy consumption year-to-year.

The report says the country consumed 84 billion liters of liquid fuels with worth $48 billion. Iran produced about 59.6 million liters of gasoline per day, while the consumption level was 69.6 million liters during last fiscal year.

The Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann, heading a high-ranking delegation arrived in Tehran Feb. 26 to hold talks with senior Iranian officials and discuss ways to improve mutual, regional and international relations, signing agreements in various fields.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 1

By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:

Iran and South Korea have discussed expansion of cooperation in the nuclear sector.

Visiting South Korean Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Joo Hyung-hwan has met with Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi in Tehran to discuss the expansion of cooperation between the Islamic Republic and Seoul, ILNA news agency reported.

During the meeting Salehi said the Korean minister's recent visit to Tehran shows Seoul's serious will to boost trade and economic ties with Iran.

Pointing out South Korea's nuclear capabilities, Salehi welcomed cooperation between the two nations to develop Iran's nuclear industry.

In turn, Joo Hyung-hwan also called for the expansion of bilateral ties and welcomed mutual cooperation between Tehran and Seoul.

Joo Hyung-hwan further invited Salehi to pay a visit to Seoul and said South Korean President Park Geun-hye is also expected to visit Tehran.

During Joo Hyung-hwan's visit, Iran and Korea discussed several agreements and signed a basic agreement to attract funds worth a total value of 5 billion to be spent on Iran's development projects.

South Korea is a key trade partner of Iran in Asia. Seoul imports as much as 10 percent of its required oil supplies from Iran.

The current volume of trade between the two countries stands at around $9 billion which is expected to be increased to well above $10 billion in the near future.
Customs departments of Iran and Russia have agreed on launching the 'green customs corridor' connecting the two countries.

An agreement to this effect was finalized during the visit of First Deputy Head of the Federal Customs of the Russian Federation Vladimir Malinin to Tehran and his meeting with the Governor of Iran Customs Administration (ICA) Masoud Karbasian on March 1, said an ICA press release.

It said the most important item in the agreement is export of Iran's agriculture products to Russia stipulating that such items will be placed with priority in Russia's green customs corridor, IRNA news agency reported.

Malinin said that Russia has not so far settled the customs with any country with such a speed it did with Iran.

The agreement also lays down expansion of transit between Iran and Russia which includes the facilities to be provided by the green customs corridor.

Karbasian said the agreement will increase bilateral trade between Tehran and Moscow ten times and the value of joint bilateral projects will rise to $30 billion.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Fatih Karimov - Trend:

Iran and Germany's engineering giant Siemens signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on transferring the technology for production of Class F gas turbines to the Islamic Republic, IRNA news agency has reported.

The five-year agreement was signed between Iran's MAPNA Group and Siemens on the sidelines of a meeting of Iran's Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian and Germany's Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel in Berlin on March 2.

Based on the agreement Siemens will provide Iran with technology to build the SGT5-4000F gas turbines domestically.

MAPNA Group is an Iranian enterprise operating in the area of construction and development of thermal power plants.

Siemens' SGT5-4000F gas turbine is distinguishable for its high performance, low power generating costs, long intervals between inspections and service-friendly design.

Commenting on the new agreement today, Siemens said it signed the MOU to jointly develop a roadmap for extension and optimization of the overall Iranian power and electrification system.

As part of the agreement, MAPNA would acquire technological know-how to manufacture Siemens gas turbines in Iran and the parties will cooperate to deliver more than 20 gas turbines and associated generators over the next decade, the statement reads.

Iran is currently making attempts to improve output at its power plants.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2



By Farhad Daneshvar - Trend:



Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has called on to reconsider the eliminated Nabucco West project.



"Proposal for the Nabucco gas pipeline was partially eliminated after imposing sanctions against Iran and now with the removal of sanctions the ground for reconsidering the project has been laid," Larijani said at a meeting with Andra Rupprechter, Austrian Federal Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management, IRNA reported.



In turn, Andra Rupprechter said that industrial cooperation including the Nabucco West project is of high importance for Austria.



He further described converting gas into new forms of energy as an important issue for Austria.



The concept of the Nabucco West project envisaged the construction of 1,300-kilometer pipeline (412 kilometers running through Bulgaria, 469 kilometers - Romania, 384 kilometers - Hungary, 47 kilometers - Austria) from Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria's Baumgarten. Iran has also proposed to supply gas through the Nabucco.



The Nabucco West project, first mooted in 2002, envisaged transporting Caspian gas via Turkey to Europe, bypassing Russia and Iran. The principal sources for Nabucco were expected to be Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, with additional contributions from Kazakhstan.



The optimal route for transporting Turkmen and Kazakh gas to Azerbaijan would entail the laying of a 300-kilometer gas pipeline on the bed of the Caspian Sea. However, disagreements between the participating states (over transit fees, etc.) were compounded by the failure of the EU to demonstrate real commitment to the scheme.



There were some attempts to modify the route, but in 2013 the Nabucco pipeline was finally replaced with Trans Adriatic Pipeline.
Tehran, Iran, March 2

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran's problems with the US are still unsolved, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said.

Speaking to reporters at an event March 2, Zarif said Iran painstakingly monitors how committed the six powers are to their deal, Fars news agency reported.

Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have occasionally said the nuclear deal doesn't necessarily mean that Iran should make a compromise in other areas in relations with the US.

"The nuclear deal has turned into a social reality today. Everyone, from critics to negotiators, should focus on the future and turn differences into a tool for reaching a common cause," Zarif added.

On the same day, Iranian parliament's speaker, Ali Larijani criticized the world powers for what he called a "delay" in fulfilling commitments under the nuclear deal.

"While Iran has carried out all of its commitments under the nuclear deal, the counterpart has not implemented its commitments completely so far," said Larijani.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will travel to Iran this week on an official visit, IRNA reported citing Turkish media.

The visit could offer the neighbors an opportunity to discuss their different views on the war in Syria.

Tehran, along with Russia, supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while Turkey is among his most outspoken critics. Turkey is also close to Saudi Arabia, which has cut its diplomatic ties with Iran.

Despite their differences, Turkey and Iran have largely maintained cordial diplomatic relations. Davutoglu will travel to Iran on March 4 and 5, according to a statement from his office.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani will pay a working visit to Turkey on Feb. 14 Hurriyet Daily News reported .

Al-Thani will hold talks with President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss bilateral relations and regional issues, the Turkish Presidency has said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, Gul will travel to Hungary between Feb. 16 and 18 for an official visit. Gul will hold meetings with Hungarian President Janos Ader, Parliament Speaker Laszlo Kover and Prime Minister Viktor Orban and will also participate in a business forum, according to a statement released by the Presidency.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), which includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, recognized Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Hezbollah [a Shi'a Islamist militant group and political party] is the culprit of the death of civilians in Syria, calls for radicalism and terror, a message of the GCC said March 2.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said earlier that Hezbollah is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in Syria.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has so far claimed the lives of over 220,000 people. Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops.

The "Islamic State" and Jabhat al-Nusra are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
A member of the foreign affairs committee of the Saudi Arabian consultative Shura Council ruled out on Wednesday the possibility of a military action against the Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah militant group, in comments to Sputnik.

Earlier in the day, the six-member Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG or GCC) designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization.

"I do not think that the Gulf countries will enter into a conflict against Hezbollah. We consider that Hezbollah should get under a real blockade, should act in compliance with Lebanon's constitution as a political party, but not as the party, which is above the state," Zuhair Harisi said, commenting on whether any military measures against the Beirut-based militant group might be implemented.

Aside from the GCC, Hezbollah Shiite Muslim movement is, partially or entirely, considered a terrorist organization by a number of countries including the United States, Israel and the European Union.

The regional body's decision was condemned by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has warned of the threat of new terrorist attacks, the Turkish newspaper 'Haber7' said March 2.

Two members of the terrorist group 'Islamic State' (IS, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) crossed into Turkey under the guise of Syrian refugees March 1, according to MIT.

It is also assumed that the attacks are planned in the south-eastern provinces of Turkey, according to the newspaper.

A terror attack was carried out in Ankara Feb. 17 near the buildings of the Turkish parliament, the general staff and a military dorm in the city.

The explosion killed 28 and injured 61. Reports suggest that a car bomb was detonated.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the Syrian wing of the terrorist organization Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) - Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) stood behind the terrorist attack in Ankara.

Earlier, MIT warned the country of the possibility of new terrorist attacks, according to the Haber 7 newspaper's reports citing a source in the intelligence agency.

Some members of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and PKK militant groups were preparing terrorist attacks in Turkey's international airports, according to MIT.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 2

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

The US in Syria rely and trust the YPG (The People's Protection Units) terrorist organization, which is the Syrian wing of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Deputy Prime Minister of Turkey Yalcin Akdogan said, the Turkish TV channel 'Kanal7' reported March 2.

Akdogan said that such a position is mistaken, and Washington should change it.

"For Turkey, there is no difference between the PKK, the YPG or organization 'The Democratic Union Party' (PYD), since they all are terrorists," he said.

US officials said before that the PYD in Syria is not a terrorist organization.

Earlier, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the US must decide who is its ally - Turkey, or the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the US's statement that the PYD in Syria is not a terrorist organization is contrary to common sense.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Honor guards prepare to raise the Taiwan flag in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall square in Taipei, Taiwan, on Jan. 14, 2016. (Photo : Getty Images)

An unknown motorcyclist threw petrol bombs at the headquarters of the ruling Kuomintang Party (KMT) in Taipei early Sunday morning, the day marking the anniversary of a deadly government crackdown in Taiwan nearly 70 years ago.



The protester also flung flyers holding the KMT and the United States accountable for the 228 Incident, which saw riots erupting across Taiwan on Feb. 28, 1947 that left thousands of people dead, and demanding that the KMT return its ill-gotten assets to Taiwanese citizens, according to a China Post report on Monday.



Advertisement

The attempted arson attack, which occurred at around 3:50 a.m. and was quickly extinguished by security guards, drew widespread criticism and calls for social harmony in the country.



Those who hate the party should stop "using historical wounds to create stand-offs and divisions," the KMT's acting chairperson Huang Min-hui told the press after the attacks.



On Sunday, Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou said the people have already suffered much in the past, adding that the pains of history should be soothed and that peace and love should fill the land.



Taiwan has seen an uptick in protests coinciding with the 228 Incident. On Friday, students at National Chengchi University plastered a statue of Taiwanese political leader Chiang Kai-shek with fliers listing the names of the victims of the crackdown. Statues of Chiang were also defaced in Yilan, Nantou and Miaoli counties, according to the Taipei Times on Monday.



Lin Yih-hua, director of the KMT's Department of Culture and Communications, expressed concern that the radical way of expressing views might incite "hatred and stand-offs" in Taiwan, which already enjoys freedom of expression and ethnic harmony.



Lin added that the KMT and the outgoing administration of President Ma Ying-jeou, which is set to be replaced by President-elect Tsai Ing-wen in May, have made great strides over the years "to heal the wounds and proactively promote reconciliation among ethnic groups" across Taiwan.


iStock/Thinkstock(OKLAHOMA CITY) -- An Oklahoma City English teacher wrote what he calls a brutally honest open letter asking the parents of his students to "love your children the way we love your children."

In the letter, 49-year-old Steve Wedel admonishes irresponsible parents and "inept" lawmakers for the struggles he says he faces as a teacher.

"I teach them to look behind your lies and rhetoric," Wedel wrote about his students. "I teach them to think for themselves."

Wedel said although the sentiments in the letter have been bubbling up for some time, the final straw was when budget cuts eliminated the after-school activity buses that take home underclassmen student council members. He is the faculty sponsor of student council activities at Western Heights High School.

"That was very upsetting to me," Wedel told ABC News Tuesday.

Wedel sat down to write the letter Friday morning and published it to his website. To his surprise, it had been viewed more than 10,000 times by the next day. So far, the blog post has been viewed more than 39,000 times, and he says he has received thousands of comments, mostly positive, on social media.

Current and former teachers have reached out to Wedel to congratulate him on writing such a powerful and passionate letter, he said.

"Ive gotten emails from as far away as Japan and Australia saying, 'I know what youre talking about,'" he said.

Wedel said he goes above and beyond for his students, as is evidenced by the list of extras he keeps for them in his classroom, such as blankets "for when they're cold."

"I love my job," Wedel wrote. "I love your kids. I call them my kids."

Wedel, who wrote that he's been teaching for 10 years, criticized parents for neglecting their children.

"Often, they stay at school with me for an hour and a half after the bell rings because they dont want to go home to you," he said.

The AP Literature teacher also criticized lawmakers, calling them "uncaring" for whittling down education funding and wasting taxpayer dollars.

"... As I turn 50 this year and wonder how Ill put my own high school-age kids through college, I have to consider giving up helping scores of kids per year so I can afford to give my own children what they need to find satisfaction in their lives," he wrote.

He ended the letter by begging parents to love their children and to "vote for people who will help teachers educate and nurture the kids we share."

"We can't do it alone, anymore," Wedel said.

Wedel says he asked the school administration for permission when he received his first interview request following his open letter going viral. They told him they would remain neutral and that he was free to do any interviews as long as they didn't take place on school grounds, he said.

Read Wedel's full letter here.

The Western Heights Public School District did not immediately return ABC News' request for comment.

Copyright  2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
China will begin production of the robotic exoskeleton developed by a university to help disabled persons walk and move. (Photo : REUTERS)

A robotic exoskeleton which can help disabled people to walk again will begin production this year, its Chinese developer announced Friday, Feb. 26, the Xinhua News Agency reported.



The report said that since 2010, the Center for Robotics at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China based in Chengdu has been developing the robotic exoskeleton, which is a wearable robot that can be held on one's waist and legs to help with walking and movement.



Advertisement

The report said that the robotic exoskeleton was worn by disabled torch bearer Lin Han at the opening ceremony of the 6th National Special Olympics held in Chengdu last year.



"This new version is more sensitive to instructions thanks to its embedded motion sensors," according to Huang Rui from the Center for Robotics.



Cheng Hong, executive director of the center, added that the new version can assist those suffering from hemiplegia and limb paralysis with walking.



"From mechanical and electric design to software research, all were independently developed by the center," Cheng said. "We hope to see our robotic exoskeleton used as part of medical rehabilitation."



But aside from helping disabled persons walk, robotic exoskeletons may have potential use in military.



An article published in July 2015 by www.popsci.com said that real world researchers are working to provide future soldiers with battlefield exoskeletons.



The article said that most exoskeletons, whether in the U.S., China or Europe, are generally intended for logistical and engineering purposes, due to their short range and battery life. However, it said that Chinese manufacturers are hoping that upgrades to exoskeletons could make them suitable for military use in difficult environments such as mountainous terrain.



The 202 Institute of China Ordnance Industry Group first displayed its exoskeleton at the Nov. 2014 Zhuhai Airshow to show off its flexibility. In June 2015, the 202 Institute also showed an exoskeleton with upgrades, including a larger battery pack on the back, strengthened legs and more powerful, hip-mounted hydraulic/pneumatic pumps to power leg movement.



The exoskeleton can allow the user to carry over 100 pounds and walk 20 km at a speed of 4.5 km per hour (Lockheed Martin's HULC also has similar speed and endurance figures). It also has great flexibility that can allow lateral ground movement such as crawling in the mud while under enemy fire.


China plans to launch its second space lab, the Tiangong-2, and send astronauts to it aboard the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft and eventually build a space station. (Photo : REUTERS)

Chinese space authorities have unveiled additional details about their plans for the creation of China's own orbiting space lab, according to an article published by CRIENGLISH.com.



The latest step in the plan will be the launch of the second space lab called the Tiangong-2, which is scheduled for the third quarter of this year, the report said.



Advertisement

After that, sometime before the year ends, two astronauts will be carried by the Shenzhou-11 spacecraft, which will dock with the space lab.



The plan is for the astronauts to stay inside the new lab for 30 days, double the previous Chinese record for the longest manned space mission.



Nie Haisheng, chief of China's astronaut brigade, said that staying in space for a longer period of time has several challenges.



"Firstly, we have to ensure the health and survival of our astronauts in orbit over the long-term," Nie said. "Secondly, we have to improve our monitoring and controls in our spacecraft. As we continue to build the space station, there will be a lot of equipment to move up there. This means they will have to spend more time in orbit inside the space station, as they will have to spend a lot of time setting up and maintaining the equipment."



Nie, who was in command of the Shenzhou-10 mission that completed the manned docking to the Tiangong-1 space lab in 2013, said that the Chinese astronaut corps is also training to conduct more spacewalks.



"During the Shenzhou-7 mission, we conducted a spacewalk and accumulated some experience," Nie said. "But in the future, our astronauts are going to have to complete a lot of tasks during the spacewalks, as they will have to deal with issues such as equipment transfers, installation, repairs, maintenance and disassembling different components. We also have plans to carry out some scientific experiments outside the space capsule."



The report said that the planned launch of the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft, which is due to dock with Tiangong-2 in the first half of next year, is included in the new blueprint for the Chinese Space Station.



Wu Ping of the China Manned Space Engineering Office said that Tianzhou-1's role will be critical to the construction of the space station.



"After we finish the testing of our new CZ-7 carrier rocket, we're going to use it to transport the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft into orbit to dock with Tiangong-2," Wu said. "The flight will be a test of the key technology needed for the construction of the space station. It will also test our capacity to transport cargo and replenish propellants in orbit."



The report said the space lab would require a form of propellant to keep it in orbit and prevent it from slowly drifting into the atmosphere.



The full-scale construction of the Chinese space station is set to begin in the next four years, the report said.


Supreme People's Court (Photo : Chinacourt.org)

Division of property in a divorce case that was unsatisfactory to one of the parties involved resulted in the death of a Beijing judge on Friday. Following the murder of 38-year-old Judge Ma Caiyun of Changping District Peoples Court, the government promised to provide more protection to justices.



Advertisement

Ma was shot in the face and stomach by two suspects who killed themselves when police caught up with the two in a vehicle in Yanqing district early the next morning. Li Fusheng, the husband of Ma and a police officer in the same court, was injured also during the Friday shooting, reported China Daily.



Ma decided on the property allocation in a divorce case. One of the suspects, also with the surname Li, was not happy with her ruling. She is considered a model judge who decides on almost 400 cases yearly.



News of the incident spread fast among judges in China, causing a Fujian Province judge who handles mostly civil disputes to state that he will pay more attention on protecting his family and his privacy. The Supreme Peoples Court, in turn, condemned the violent attack on judges.



Sun Jungong, spokesman of the Supreme Peoples Court, vowed to put in place better and more effective protection for judges, but would still deal strictly with cases that involve property or personal damage. The guideline on how to protect Chinas judges is expected to be released this year, 2016, said Hu Shihao, director of the Judicial Reform Office of the Supreme Peoples Court.



Hinting of the measures, Hu said people who cause trouble or disruption in court hearings would be punished heavily. Phone numbers and home addresses of judges would not be divulged to the public. Thats because Ma was shot inside her home, according to Shanghaiist.






Johan Djourou And Abou Diaby Visit Arsenal FC And 'Save The Children' Funded School (Photo : Getty Images)

First, it was former Spice Girls Victoria Beckham who was at the receiving end of Hong Kong residents ire for her use of simplified Chinese characters in announcing the opening ofher retail outlet in the Special Administrative Region.



Now, their anger is vent on local TV station J5 for its use of Putonghua, seen by Hong Kong residents as subservience to mainland China which changed to simplified Chinese characters. Following the renaming of HD Jade Channel, J5 was the subject of almost 10,000 complaints filed before the local communications authority, reported The South China Morning Post.



Advertisement

The Hong Kong-based daily, however, noted that a large number of mainland newcomers in the region have yet to become familiar with the traditional Chinese characters used there. Rather than be a contentious issue, Hong Kong residents should welcome the opportunity to improve their reading skills of Putonghua.



A spokesperson from the authority pointed out that J5, under the conditions of its license, is mandated to have Chinese subtitles for current affairs shows, weather forecasts and newscasts. It is up to the station to decide the way the subtitles are presented.



J5, owned by TVB, the largest television station in Hong Kong, stressed in a statement of Feb. 23 that the region is an international city and its viewers should have more choices. Using Putonghua better serves the needs of its diverse viewers.



TVB became the center of jokes on Facebook that is has become like the state-owned China Central Television (CCTV) in the mainland, characterized by its being the mouthpiece of Beijing.



One Facebook user, named Caspar Pong Luk, wrote, Cantonese and traditional characters are part of Hong Kongs traditional culture. Hong Kong people are proud of inheriting traditional Chinese characters from ancient culture.



Pong emphasized, We refuse to use Putonghua and simplified Chinese that do not belong to Hong Kong traditions. The issue just added to the growing tension between Hong Kong and the mainland.






State-owned GAC Automobile Group Co. plans to set up plants in Russia and Iran as part of its expansion efforts. (Photo : REUTERS)

Aiming to expand overseas, state-owned GAC Automobile Group Co. may establish plants in Russia and Iran to assemble vehicles using kits from China, according to a Chinese media report.



Internet Info Agency, a Beijing-based website, quoted GAC general manager Wu Song as saying that the company is now looking for a local partner to construct the plant, after studying the Russian market for a year and a half.



Advertisement

Wu said that GAC will first find a partner before it builds a plant in Russia that would initially produce 50,000 vehicles a year.



For Chinese automakers, Russia and Iran are key export markets. But when the Russian economy slid, sales of Chinese brands fell nearly 53 percent in 2015 to 39,085 vehicles, according to Automotive News China.



In Iran, Chery Automobile Co. is the largest exporter among Chinese carmakers, with sales of about 40,000 vehicles in 2015.



Wu, however, did not reveal the details about GAC's proposed assembly plant or the models to be produced in the plant in Iran. But it is likely that the facility would assemble cars for the Trumpchi brand, which GAC launched in 2010, the report said.



Last year, Trumpchi's global sales rose 45 percent to 195,134 vehicles, which included 1,455 vehicles shipped overseas. GAC's export markets include the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Lebanon and Qatar.



The report said that although GAC appears to be focused on Russia and Iran, it has also shown some interest in the U.S. market.



At the Detroit auto show in 2015 and 2016, GAC showcased the Trumpchi GS4 crossover. Wu also told the press at the Shanghai auto show in April that the company planned to launch the GS4 in the U.S. in 2017.



Wu did not disclose any details but the report said that GAC has not recruited dealers in the U.S. yet.



GAC, based in Guangzhou, has joint ventures in China with Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler.


Farmer To Have Quadruplets In Wuhan (Photo : Getty Images)

While some Chinese women are even paying for expensive IVF treatments to bear a child, especially with the relaxation of Chinas one-child policy, a private primary school in Henan is even banning its teachers from getting pregnant.



Liu Zhu, headmaster of the Shangqiu Shangbo School, a private primary school in Henan Province, even confirmed that four teachers signed contracts that banned them from becoming pregnant. It the tutors violate their contracts, they would be fined 2,000 yuan ($305).



Advertisement

Besides the penalty, getting pregnant during the fall semester would mean not being allowed to teach in the spring semester. Liu defended the contract and said the fine would be used to pay the salaries of substitute teachers. Liu added the pregnant teachers, after they give birth, could resume their jobs.



The issue became a hot topic on microblogging site Sina Weibo when a teacher from the school bared the onerous contract which violated the law for not providing them maternity leave pay, reported Global Times.



Liu said the contract aimed to avoid frequent changing of teachers to protect the interest of the schools 1,100 pupils. He explained, We dont want teachers to quit midway. It is irresponsible to frequently change their teachers.



China has a Protection of Women and Children Law that banned contracts that disallow employees to marry or bear a child.



In the comments section of The Paper, an online news website in China, one user described that the schools contract is also a form of birth control, reported Epoch Times.






To Curb China's High Divorce Rate, Couples Are Given Seven Days to Rethink Marriage

Back in the day, couples who wanted to get divorced must get permission from community committees or employers. (Photo : Getty Images)

Officials are discouraging couples from getting divorced, according to an article by Shanghai Daily, as a result of the rising divorce rate in the country. In 2014 alone, about 3.6 million couples got divorced--double the numbers in the previous decade.



Advertisement

Instead of making rushed, irrational decisions, couples are being given advice by government officials to think things through to avoid regret and additional stress.



Such was the case with Li An, a 28-year-old man who wanted to divorce his wife last year after endless quarrels regarding their baby's care. After a year, he is now back together with his wife.



During the process of filing for a divorce, a staff member from Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture's civil affairs bureau declined to grant them a divorce. Instead, they were given a reservation form and was told to come back after a week if Li An and his wife were still keen on getting divorced.



"The seven days are a grace period," said Wang Zhaowei, head of Dali Bai's civil affairs bureau, in an interview with Xinhua. "Many couples, especially the young, rush irrationally into decisions. They will probably change their mind after they calm down."



Dali's process on divorce, appointments and reservations included, started in Feb. 2015. By the end of the year, 9,571 couples made reservations, with almost half of the number not pushing through with the divorce. A similar system has been set up in other cities across China.



Back in the day, couples who wanted to get divorced must get permission from community committees or employers. A regulation passed in 2003 simplified the process, allowing couples to divorce on the same day of application for 10 yuan ($1.5).



"In the past, people wanted to divorce mostly because of domestic violence and affairs," said Liu Min, a divorce lawyer from Anhui Province, East China. "Now it is increasingly common among young couples to separate after trivial disputes or interference of their parents."



Although the new system is well-meaning, it is not without critics.



"It is not proper for governments to put obstacles in front of people wanting a divorce, because Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of marriage," said Nie Aiping from the Jiangxi Academy of Social Sciences.


Some officials are calling for improved road infrastructure to ease congestion. (Photo : Getty Images)

Beijing officials are considering a number of programs to help curb congestion in the capital, according to an article by China Daily. New measures are expected to be released by the local city government before April 10, when Beijing's current traffic restrictions end.



Advertisement

One option is to sell automobile license plates in an auction instead of the lottery system. Market-based reform programs are also being considered by the city's transportation department.



As of now, no clear plan has been released by Beijing city officials.



"The final plan has not been made yet," said Rong Jun, spokesman of the Beijing municipal commission of transport, in an interview with China Daily. "But there are many measures that can be used for reference, such as the car plate auctions in Shanghai."



"We have put forward different adjustments several times in the past, but the original measure has ended up being kept every time as we consider residents have gotten used to it," Rong added.



Residents like 32-year-old Cassie Zhang are ready to welcome the new regulation with open arms, if ever it gets to be implemented. Zhang believes that the license plate auction would be a far more reliable method than the current lottery system.



"You will get a car as long as you have money to bet," said Zhang, who included her name on the lottery list last year. She hopes to win in the lottery to get a second car for her family.



Restrictions shouldn't be the only solution to ease congestion in the city, however, with some officials calling for improved road infrastructure.



"The government should think about how to create good rules for society, not limit it," said Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.



An optimized road network will help solve congestion, added Shi, saying that the government shouldn't deprive people of their right to own and drive a car.



Through the current traffic restrictions employed by the city, one-fifth of the vehicles in Beijing are not allowed to enter the streets on a weekday based on their license plate number.


Doctors gained public sympathy following the Matariya Hospital incident, but the Ministry of Interior's handling of the case tarnished its image and dealt a serious blow to the Egyptian regime

In an extraordinary meeting of the Doctors Syndicate General Assembly, an unprecedented 10,000 doctors gathered from all around the country to defend the dignity of medical professionals, which is synonymous with the dignity of Egypt.

Behind them stood masses of Egyptians from different professional syndicates, along with average citizens, to express both their solidarity with the doctors and outrage at the Minister of Interior's hostility.

It is a simple story. A policeman went to Matariya Hospital asking for a fabricated medical report. The doctor refused, so the policeman beat the physician, dragged him across the floor and stomped on him.

Along with eight other policemen, he grabbed the doctor and another physician, put them in a police car and took them to Matariya Police Station.

The policemen later forced the physician to withdraw the complaint he had filed.

It is an open and shut case, with witnesses and video footage. However, police investigations  which are known to be biased, inaccurate and dishonest  claim it was a quarrel.

The head of the hospital filed a complaint and the Chairman of the Doctors Syndicate filed another with the Prosecutor General. He referred the matter to prosecutors, who decided to release the policemen pending investigation.

Everyone knows that the prosecution's decisions are based on documents and investigations presented by the police.

All physicians in Egypt were deeply insulted and decided to go to Dar Al-Hikma (the headquarters of their syndicate) on Friday. They captured the sympathy of millions of Egyptians and the syndicate was packed--the balconies, halls and even the courtyard of the neighbouring syndicate.

Mega screens broadcast the event and thousands poured into Qasr Al-Aini Street. The physicians were nevertheless still mindful of their patients.

The syndicate made ten decisions, most notably to treat all patients at state hospitals for free, meaning that fees for x-rays, tests, surgeries, and treatment will not be collected.

Patients will be happy and doctors will do their job, which is punishment for the state that is negligent in defending its citizens.

Other observations and key decisions include:

1- I have never seen such a massive gathering in 50 years, which demonstrated the anger of all physicians towards the Ministry of Interior and the regime as a whole.

2- I have met many colleagues who are pro-Sisi, but were very angry with him and view him as personally responsible for not holding the policemen accountable. Their explanation is that he does not care about professionals or that he simply cannot confront the Ministry of Interior.

3- The overwhelming attendance and wise decisions by the syndicate led to sympathy of millions of Egyptians on this issue. Social media lit up with the event. On Facebook, the endless support for the police by figures associated with Mubaraks regime and hated by the people further fanned the flames.

4- I believe the actions of the Ministry of Interior, such as the attempts to cover up the crime and submit false investigations, have delivered a serious blow to the Egyptian regime. It clearly shows that thuggery wins and the police do not protect the people but instead beat them. Simliarly, the Ministry of Interior does not protect the regime, but forces it to defend a lost and outrageous cause.

It is a catastrophe and Egypt is in danger. The cabinet lacks any political platform and fears the Ministry of Interior, which violates everyone and tramples on the laws and constitution.

We want a police force, and we want it to protect us. We sympathise with it greatly because of its sacrifices in the face of terrorist attacks. We want to appreciate and respect it, but it has forced the people once again to chant the interior ministry are thugs."

There must be a leadership that understands politics and defends Egypt in these difficult circumstances. Egypt must remain standing--strong and united. We will not allow it to fall.

The writer is head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report on Monday calling on the Moroccan government to adopt laws that protect survivors of gender-based and domestic violence.

The report was part of a series of interviews and stories by the watchdog organisation on survivors of domestic violence in Morocco.

The latest story focuses on a 26-year-old female victim of domestic abuse who was interviewed by the US-based rights organisation, along with 19 other women and girls in Morocco in September 2015.

The survivor recounted how she often went to the police to file a report, at times covered in blood or almost naked.

She said that the police disregarded her reports on the grounds that they did not have the right to enter her house.

They would tell her to go to a doctor to get a medical certificate, but she had no ID and no money.

She explains that her husband would cover her nose and mouth until she lost consciousness.

"He did this to shut me up when I cried or shouted so people could hear me. He wanted to kill me, she said.

Earlier in February, HRW wrote a letter to Moroccan officials  Minister for Solidarity, Women, Family and Social Development Bassima Hakkaoui, and Minister of Justice and Freedom Moustapha Ramid  calling on them to consider domestic violence law reforms.

HRW stated that the bills should specify police and prosecutor duties in handling any domestic violence case, in addition to the inclusion of marital rape as a crime in Moroccan law.

"The bills should also require prevention measures, including awareness-raising, educational curricula, and sensitising the media about violence against women," the HRW letter said.

In 2014, a bill to combat violence against women was announced and was considered a small but positive step to an issue that has been affecting Moroccan women for years.

Beirut-based NGO Legal Agenda said that the bill guaranteed temporarily removing abusive husbands from their house, in addition to barring the husband from approaching the survivor, her home, workplace or educational institution.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The UN organisation had been suffering from a lack of funds that forced it cut to funds for Syria aid operations

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will fully reinstate its food assistance programme to Syria following funding pledges at Londons Supporting Syria and the Region Conference earlier in February, the WFP said in a press release on Monday.

The funds pledged will support a comprehensive restoration of food assistance for refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt from March until the end of the year, the statement read.

Syrians inside their country will also benefit from a full food basket beginning in April until October this year.

The "record pledge" is worth around $675 million and will be used for school meals and other in-kind activities in order to help Syrian refugees.

The funds for Syria-related operations pledged at the conference were mainly provided by Germany, with $623 million.

On 1 December 2014, the WFP announced that a lack of funds made them stop providing food assistance to 1.7 million Syrian refugees in the region, saying food assistance for the month of December only would require $64 million, Reuters reported at the time.

Eight days later, the food aid programme resumed its operation after it received $80 million.

Eight months later, the WFP announced it had to drop the value of food vouchers in half in Lebanon and Jordan, according to a July 2015 press release.

In August 2015, the WFP said it needed $163 million to continue supporting Syrian refugees in the region until October, according to an August press release.

The organisation is funded by governments, companies and private individuals.

On behalf of the Syrian people whose lives have been torn apart by the conflict, we thank those world leaders who stepped up in London.

Their generosity means that we are able to fully meet the immediate basic food assistance needs of 1.8 million refugees in the region and 4.5 million Syrians inside the country who rely on WFP assistance every day, WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin said, according to Mondays press release.

The UNs WFP fights hunger on a global level, mainly through food assistance for emergencies such as in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and West African countries.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


El-Sisi will meet with the Korean president, senior government officials, and business leaders to address means of boosting Korean investment in Egypt

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi arrived in South Korea after leaving Japan on Wednesday. South Korea is the president's last stop on his week-long Asia tour.

During the three-day visit, El-Sisi is due to hold talks Thursday with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

El-Sisi will also meet with senior Korean government officials and business leaders to address means of boosting Korean investment in Egypt, state news agency MENA reported.

Egypt aims to draw foreign investment needed to shore up its ailing economy, with special focus on a key project of developing an international industrial and logistics hub around the Suez Canal, one of the world's key shipping routes and a major source of international trade.

Egyptian presidency spokesman Alaa Abdel Fattah said that both countries are set to agree on "upgrading ties to a comprehensive partnership level."

Both countries plan on signing several agreements in the fields of energy, technology, and transportation.

After a trip to Kazakhstan, the Egyptian president traveled to Japan, where he pinned a number of deals worth around $18 billion in energy and other sectors.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The bombing that took place outside Kafr El-Sheikh stadium killed three military academy students and injured six people

An Alexandria military court sentenced on Wednesday seven supporters of former president Mohamed Morsi to death for their role in a deadly bombing last April that killed three military academy students in Kafr El-Sheikh city in the northern Nile Delta.

The court also sentenced five defendants to life in prison, another two to five years in prison, while the remaining two defendants were sentenced to three years in prison.

A total of 16 defendants were tried in the bomb attack case, including six in absentia.

The defendants still have the right to appeal the court's sentence.

In February, the court issued a preliminary death sentence for the seven supporters, referring the sentences to the Grand Mufti for review, a necessary procedure under Egyptian law.

The religious opinion of the Mufti is non-binding.

The deadly bombing, which also injured six people, took place in April 2015 outside Kafr El-Sheikh Stadium, as the students were waiting for a bus to transport them to the military academy in Cairo.

In 2014, the then-interim President Adly Mansour signed ammendments to the military criminal court, granting defendants for the first time the right to appeal military court sentences.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


In a stormy session, Egypt's parliament revoked the parliamentary membership of MP and high-profile TV anchor Tawfik Okasha.

A report by a seven-member investigative committee accused Okasha of violating the principle of the separation of powers and disrupting Egypt's deep-rooted parliamentary rules and precedents when he recently took the unilateral decision of meeting with Israel's ambassador.

Hassan Bassiouny, a former judge who led the committee, told the assembly that the seven members of the committee recommended that Okasha be banned from attending one nine-month legislative session after they found him guilty of showing disrespect to parliamentary rules and acting against the sovereignty of state institutions.

"The committee, which was formed on Sunday and questioned Okasha on Tuesday, decided that he was not able to defend himself or show that he received prior approval from any sovereign state authority before he held his meeting with the ambassador of a foreign country (the ambassador of Israel)," the report said.

Read out by Bassiouny, the report stressed that Okasha's decision to discuss national security issues with the ambassador of a foreign country on issues like Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam could cause serious damage to Egypt's strategic interests.

"We know that sovereign state authorities are heavily involved in conducting negotiations on this issue," said the report.

"Egypt's position in these negotiations could be negatively affected by Okasha discussing such a sensitive issue with a foreign ambassador," the report added.

The report also argued that the Vienna agreement for diplomatic relations designates the foreign ministry as the official body legally and constitutionally authorised to conduct contacts with foreign diplomatic corps in Cairo.

The parliaments speaker Ali Abdel-Al was keen to stress that Egypt deeply respects its international and foreign agreements and treaties," especially the peace treaty with Israel.

"This treaty showed that Egypt's strategic policy is aimed at spreading peace in the Middle East," Abdel-Al said.

Abdel-Al also argued that "what were discussing here isnt Okasha's meeting with the ambassador of a foreign country because Egypt's parliament highly respects the embassies of all foreign countries in Cairo.

What were discussing here is an issue directly related to the national security of this country," Abdel-Al said.

MPs erupted in anger when the committee's head Hassan Bassiouny said it had recommended that Okasha be just banned from attending one complete legislative season.

MPs shouted in one voice, asking for Okasha to be completely stripped of his parliamentary membership.

When Abdel-Al put the committee's recommendation to a vote, it received no support. Abdel-Al said that "we have another recommendation other than for Okasha be stripped completely of his parliamentary membership.

But in order to meet this objective, and according to parliament's internal by-laws, two-thirds of MPs should be available and each one should vote in person - whether he approves of the recommendation or not."

Abdel-Al also indicated that parliament should listen to Okasha and allow him to defend himself.

But as Okasha was not available, Abdel-Al asked the parliament to go ahead and administer the vote.

Okasha opted at the beginning to watch the session from a big TV screen in the nearby Pharaonic lobby of parliament. Shocked by the fierce reaction against him on the floor, he tried to enter the meeting chamber, but was prevented from doing so by Abdel-Al's orders.

In his daily TV talk show on Tuesday night, Okasha said he played a big role in ridding Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood and that his next job was to rid Egypt of Nasserites and leftists.

"The Nasserites and leftists are just as skillful in causing damage to Egypt, so all the liberals  especially businessmen  should join forces with me to achieve this objective," Okasha said.

Nasserist MPs, though few in Egypt's new parliament, form a strong and vociferous lobby that was able to rally deputies behind voting down a new civil service law in January.

They were also up in arms against Okasha on Wednesday, accusing him of grand treason and tarnishing the image of late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser who was an avid enemy of Israel.

Independent MP Mostafa Al-Guindy said: "I am a Nasserist who saw how millions of Egyptians raised the posters of late president Abdel-Nasser during the revolutions of 25 January and 30 June at Tahrir Square."

"When I saw them I realised that I am a Nasserist and when one of us defames Gamal Abdel-Nasser in a meeting with Israel's ambassador he should be a big shame to this parliament," Al-Guindy said.

Mostafa Bakri, an independent MP and a self-described Nasserite journalist, argued that "Okasha was not in a meeting with the ambassador of a foreign country, but he was meeting with a spy for America and Israel."

"But Okasha's crime was not confined to this because he exploited his TV talk show to tarnish Saudi royal family members one by one," said Bakri.

Bakri, a controversial figure himself, also asked "Egypt's security agencies to unveil the real contents of Okasha's meeting with Israel's ambassador."

MP Khaled Youssef, a high-profile film director, said he supports expulsion of Okasha's from parliament not suspension of membership.

"I decided to join my colleagues in taking this decision. Not because of the peace treaty, which I rejected from the beginning, but because Okasha insisted on defaming Nasser," said Youssef.

Youssef also wondered how "Okasha gave himself the right to go to Israel's ambassador and appeal to him to save Egypt from the crisis it currently suffers because of Ethiopia's Nile Dam."

Some MPs, however, refused to follow the line of the Nasserists.

Mohamed Mounir, an independent MP, argued that "a strong reaction against Okasha could send a message to the outside world that Egypt does not respect the peace treaty with Israel."

"I am afraid to say that some MPs, who want to settle personal accounts with their colleague Tawfik Okasha, also want to impose their say on all MPs," Mounir said.

Liberal MP Anwar Al-Sadat, the nephew of late president Anwar Sadat who signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1979, also refused to join the anti-Okasha chorus.

"why was the decision against Okasha rammed through parliament without following the correct procedures or taking some time to listen to his defence,"Sadat said.

Sadat said he fears that MPs are working under orders to expel Okasha from the parliament in any way possible.

Irritated by the argument, Abdel-Al insisted that the anti-Okasha procedures are in line with the constitution and the house's by-laws.

"Furthermore, do you not all remember when an MP -- Ashour Nasr -- insulted president Sadat while he was delivering a speech in parliament in 1977? The house decided to drop his membership for the same session," Abdel-Al said.

Okasha is the second MP to leave Egypt's recentlyly convened parliament in two months.

The first, former judge and appointed MP Sirri Siam, submitted his resignation in protest at what he dubbed speaker Abdel-Al's autocratic practices.

MPs agreed that the quick and fierce reaction against Okasha was also intended to send a tough message to other "unruly MPs" like flamboyant lawyer and chairman of Zamalek sporting club Mortada Mansour and journalist Abdel-Rehim Ali: you also could lose your membership if you insisted on going down the Okasha road.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The sit-in at the Journalists Syndicate aims to pressure Egypts authorities to allow jailed journalists to receive vital medical care and visitors

On Wednesday afternoon, Omniya Magdy, the wife of a jailed journalists donned her white wedding dress and joined the three-day-old sit-in at Egypts press syndicate, expressing her solidarity with jailed journalist husband andb imprisoned colleagues inside jail.

Her husband, Amr Abdel Maksoud and his two brothers were sentenced in January 2016 by a court in Meit Ghamr, Dakahliya's to 25 years on criminal charges.

Amr was arrested in April 2015 one week before his wedding night.

On Wednesday, tens of journalists and supporters joined the third day of a sit-in at the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo to demand justice for jailed colleagues.

The sit in began on Monday by two leading syndicate board members, Khaled El Balshy and Mahmoud Kamel, to protest reports of mistreatment of imprisoned colleagues.

"The sit in is part of an important fight that comes to protect press freedom, and in solidarity with our colleagues who face extremely harsh conditions and are denied medication. A fast response is necessary that ensures them the right to medication and visits," a statement released on Wednesday by journalists participating in the sit-in said.

El-Balshy and Kamel have demanded that prison authorities provide medical treatment for at least four colleagues -- Youssef Shaaban, Hani Salah El-Din, Hesham Gaafar, and Hossam El-Sayed -- saying there lives were in danger.

The four journalists are imprisoned on a number of charges which range from membership the now banned Muslim Brotherhood to illegally protesting in 2013 when Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was in office.

On Monday, hours after the sit-in started, journalist Mahmoud Kamel, a syndicate council member and one of the organisers, told Ahram Online that only two journalists were moved to a hospital outside prison while blood samples were drawn from the two other journalists, who were then returned to prison.

The veteran journalist and editor of Al-Bedaya website, El Balshy, had said that one of the imprisoned journalists needs urgent heart surgery while another, Youssef Shaaban, needs his Hepatitis C medication.

Hours after El-Balshy and Kamel started the open-ended sit-in, the interior ministry provided medical care to some ill prisoners including Shaaban, and allowed visitations to other jailed journalists who had been previously denied thechance to see familiy members, El-Balshy said.

Sit-in on hold

Following Wednesday's rally on the steps of the syndicate in downtown Cairo, the journalists decided to suspend their sit in until the syndicate's general assembly is held on Friday, 4 March.

Friday's general assembly will be held to discuss several issues, including press freedoms and the recently proposed media and press law.

"This general assembly comes at a very critical time in Egypt. Aside from the usual matters related to the syndicate, we have the issue of press freedom and the media laws proposed by the government," El-Balshy, who is also the head of the freedoms committee at journalists syndicate, told Ahram Online earlier.

According to the journalists' syndicate, there are currently 32 journalists  not all syndicate members  detained and jailed in Egypt, including 18 in cases related to journalism.

The Egyptian government has repeatedly denied that journalists who are behind bars were arrested due to their work.

The authorities have also denied what rights activists describe as systematic violations against inmates inside Egypt's prisons.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The doctor activist and roomates are accuse of plotting to overthrow the Egyptian government

A Cairo court ordered on Wednesday a 45 day renewed detention of doctors syndicate freedom committee member Taher Mokhtar and his two roommates pending further investigations.

Mokhtar, a long-time revolutionary socialist activist and a member of the freedoms committee at the syndicate, was arrested along with his roommates Hossam El-Din Hamed and Ahmed Hassan on 14 January at his apartment in downtown Cairo.

Mokhtar and his roommates are accused of inciting protests for the fifth anniversary of the 25 January revolution, an accusation that the doctor and roommates emphatically deny.

According to the prosecution, the defendants are accused of "possession of posters that call for protesting and overthrowing the government."

However, according to Mokhtar's lawyer, Mokhtar simply possessed union documents about the medical conditions of jailed doctors.

Several Egyptian NGOs and human rights organisations as well as a group of prominent public figures have called for the immediate release of Mokhtar and his housemates in a campaign highlighting his long activism in Egypts medical sector

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Trying to lure him into the Islamic State group, the would-be recruiter told Pakistani journalist Hasan Abdullah, "Brother, you could be such an asset to the Ummah" the Islamic community. Abdullah replied that he was enjoying life and had no plans to join the jihadis. "The enjoyment of this life is short-lived. You should work for the Akhira"  the Afterlife, the recruiter pressed.

IS had its eye on Abdullah not because he adheres to any extremist ideology but because, as a journalist, the group believed he could be a boon to its propaganda machine, Abdullah told The Associated Press, recounting his meeting with the recruiter.

His encounter was a sign of how the Islamic State group is looking for sophisticated skills as it builds its foothold in new territory: Pakistan. It is courting university students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and businessmen, and using women's groups for fundraising. It is also wading into fierce competition with the country's numerous other militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida in the Subcontinent, the new branch created by the veteran terror network.

Here in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, IS loyalists have set up their strongest presence, carrying out multiple attacks in the past year and setting up networks.

The port city of some 20 million people on the Arabian Sea has always been a favorite for militants to operate. Wealthy districts running on the city's profitable commerce hold potential for fundraising, while the crowded, cramped poorer districts that have spread around the city provide recruits and places to hide. It also gives recruiters links to other parts of the country, since its population is full of people who have migrated from tribal regions or Afghanistan, looking for work.

The Karachi police's top counterterrorism official, Raja Umer Khitab, warns that IS has great potential to grow in Pakistan, not only because of its large reservoir of Sunni extremists but also because of the virulent anti-Shiite sentiment among their ranks. Hatred of Shiites and attacks against them are a keystone of the Islamic State group's ideology and one source of its appeal among some hard-line Sunnis as it set up its self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

IS first announced its presence in Pakistan with a bloody attack in May in Karachi in which gunmen boarded a bus carrying Shiites, ordered them to bow their heads, then opened fire, killing 45. The gunmen left behind a tattered piece of paper proclaiming, "Beware ... We have entered the battlefield for retribution and the implementation of Shariah."

Since then, it has killed more than 35 policemen in targeted attacks, attacked two schools and killed rights activist Sabeen Mehmud, who was gunned down in her car with her mother at her side.

IS was able to expand into two tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan  Bajour and Orakzai  when Taliban leaders there switched allegiance to the Islamic State group. The IS branch in neighboring Afghanistan is also aggressively trying to expand its presence, putting it in direct competition with the Taliban.

The number of IS loyalists in Pakistan is not known. Government officials only recently admitted that they have a presence and insist loyalists here have no known operational links to the IS leadership in Iraq and Syria. Still, in one of the first warnings by an official about IS, intelligence chief Aftab Sultan told a Senate committee earlier this month that hundreds of Pakistanis have gone to fight in Syria, and some are now coming home to Pakistan to recruit.

One way IS militants are trying to recruit and build is through women. One academy for women in Karachi's Baloch Colony neighborhood recruited women by playing IS videos in the classrooms, Khitab told the AP. The 20 female students then reached out to middle-class and wealthy Karachi women, urging them to donate their religious tithes to the IS cause of establishing a caliphate.

Several women were detained, including the wife of a suspected IS operative, and were released after questioning, Khitab said.

IS recruiters have been stalking university campuses. For example, the suspected mastermind in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.

A professor at the Institute, Huma Baqai, said there are radicalized professors teaching in some of the country's top universities. They "are using the classrooms to mold (students') minds," she said. "There is no scrutiny in what happens in the classroom."

An intelligence official told the AP that security officials have interrogated several university professors suspected of supporting IS and trying to recruit students. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to the press.

"Finding people who are willing to strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves up is easy. There are hundreds, thousands," said Abdullah, the journalist. But the educated are a bigger prize. He said he knows two other journalists whom IS tried to enlist. Abdullah said IS probably sought him because he was known from his work writing on extremism in the region and has met many militants personally.

Abdullah said his courtship by IS began when he received a message on social media from someone offering information for him for a story. Abdullah didn't hear from him again until weeks later, when a man using the same name approached Abdullah as he had lunch in a park outside his office. The man told Abdullah he closely followed his writings  then said he was from the Islamic State group. Abdullah quizzed him about militants he knew to verify his claims. Near the end of the conversation, the man noted that many professionals were joining IS.

"This was basically his invitation to me to join their rank," Abdullah said. And the man made his pitch.

Professionals can hold leadership posts or be involved in the group's prolific and powerful propaganda machine, which includes sophisticated videos produced with the latest technology and vigorous use of social media.

Al-Qaida in particular is pursuing a similar caliber of recruits. Khitab said it isn't clear who is winning the competition but there are known instances of al-Qaida militants in Pakistan crossing over to IS. Most notably, Khitab said, al-Qaida operatives Abdullah Yusuf and Tayyab Minhas defected to IS and are believed to have orchestrated much of the group's violence in Karachi.

The past stereotype of a militant as a tribesman from the mountains in traditional garb with bandoliers of ammo slung over his shoulder has been replaced, said analyst Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

The new generation comes from "well-educated, cosmopolitan, university educated Pakistanis from middle-class backgrounds who can navigate our globalized space whether virtually or physically with facility and confidence." They can use social media, cross borders and fit "seamlessly into global societies."

"They are the new force multipliers of terrorist groups," he said.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Philippine authorities were on Wednesday probing an assassination attempt against an influential Saudi preacher who was on an IS group hit list, after the gunman was killed and two suspects arrested.

Preacher Sheikh Aaidh al-Qarni and Saudi diplomat Sheikh Turki Assaegh were both wounded in a shooting as they left a university auditorium in the southern port city of Zamboanga, where the cleric had given an address.

Their Filipino police escorts killed the lone assailant, while two other suspects who were seen with the gunman were arrested as they tried to escape, police said.

"It all happened so fast. Suddenly there were gunshots," local Muslim community leader Wakil Kasim, who was at the auditorium at the time of the incident, told reporters.

The gunman "popped up from the crowd, moved in close and shot the victim" as he was boarding his car, said city police spokeswoman Chief Inspector Helen Galvez, adding that the gunman then walked to the other side of the vehicle and shot the Saudi diplomat.

Qarni was shot in the right shoulder, left arm and chest while Assaegh, a religious attache at the Saudi embassy in Manila, was wounded in his right thigh and left leg, according to a police report.

A student driver's license and a local government ID were recovered from the man, which identified him as a 21-year-old Filipino, but police said they were not ruling out forgery.

A uniform for engineering students in the Western Mindanao State University, where Qarni was speaking, was found hidden in his backpack, but university officials could not immediately confirm the gunman was enrolled in the institution.

Footage from ABS-CBN television showed the remains of the gunman, who was wearing a hoodie, sprawled face down on the ground beside the victims' car.

Islamic State militants who control vast swathes of Iraq and Syria had called on "lone wolves" to attack Qarni and several other Saudi clerics whom they accused of apostasy in the latest issue of Dabiq, their monthly online magazine.

The Philippine government should investigate whether the Islamic State group (IS) had influenced the shooting, international security analyst Stephen Cutler told reporters in Manila.

"Its possible it is Daesh-related because he was on this hit list but I don't know yet," the American said, using an Arabic abbreviation for the IS group.

Tuesday's shooting also came as the army quelled a rampage by an obscure armed group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Butig, a poor farming town some 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Zamboanga.

At least 12 militants and five soldiers were killed while more than 30,000 people were displaced over several days of fighting, which ended as the army seized the gunmen's main camp over the weekend.

However, Filipino authorities have not linked sympathisers of Islamic State jihadists to Tuesday's attack.

Saudi media outlets described Qarni as a senior Islamic scholar and he has more than 12 million followers on Twitter. In his book "Awakening Islam," the French academic Stephane Lacroix included Qarni in his list of "the most famous" Saudi preachers.

Last week, the Saudi embassy in Manila asked local police for increased security for its premises, as well as for the Saudi national airline due to an unspecified threat, Philippine foreign affairs spokesman Charles Jose said.

Zamboanga, 800 kilometres south of Manila, is one of the largest cities in the southern Philippines, an area troubled by a decades-long separatist rebellion by the mainly Catholic nation's Muslim minority that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The port city has a mixed Christian and Muslim population, and has been a frequent target of attacks by local Muslim militant groups.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Two Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli occupation troops Wednesday after allegedly infiltrating an illegal West Bank settlement.

"Two assailants infiltrated the community of Eli, south of Nablus. They attacked a man outside his home," the Israeli occupation army said in a statement.

"Forces arrived... (and) shot the attackers resulting in their death."

It was the latest incident in an almost four-month long surge of Israeli-on-Palestinian deadly repression met with violent responses by Palestinians against settlers and Israeli soldiers.

The recent surge in violence has raised concern of wider escalation, a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided.

Since the start of October, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 170 Palestinians. Meanwhile, almost daily stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks by frustrated and unarmed Palestinians have killed 26 Israelis as well as an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP count.

The current wave of protests by Palestinians and repression by Israeli occupation forces started in late July when toddler Ali Dawabsha was burned to death and three other Palestinians were severely injured after their house in the occupied West Bank was set on fire by Israeli settlers.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, as well as daily clashes and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque, describe Palestinians' daily suffering.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Jordanian security forces killed seven Islamist militants in armed clashes with Islamic State group sympathisers in the northern city of Irbid near the Syrian border, a security source said on Wednesday.

One Jordanian police officer was also killed in the security operation against militants holed up in the city, which began on Tuesday night and ended at dawn, the source said.

It was one of the largest sweeps against sleeper cells of sympathisers of hardline Islamist groups in recent years, according to officials.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Thousands in Turkey's Kurdish-majority town of Cizre started returning to their homes Wednesday after authorities partially lifted a curfew in place since December for a controversial military operation to root out separatist rebels.

The regional governor's office announced Tuesday that the curfew -- in place since December 14 -- would be lifted each day from 5:00am (0300 GMT) to 7:30pm (1730 GMT) and would be in force from 7:30pm to 5:00am in the southeastern town.

Thousands of residents carrying their belongings formed long queues at the entrance of the town where checkpoints had been put up, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.

Many houses sustained serious damage, even visible from the entrance of Cizre. Some houses were burned and shops destroyed.

People are trying to recover their belongings from the rubble and checking if there are any corpses, the correspondent reported. In normal times, Cizre is home to some 100,000 people.

Turkish authorities barred access to the town, which lies near the border with Syria and Iraq, in mid December as the army launched a relentless offensive to root out rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK, designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and its Western allies, has killed dozens of members of the Turkish security forces in bomb and gunfire attacks since a fragile truce collapsed in July.

The Turkish army says 666 PKK "terrorists" have been killed in the operation but Kurdish activists ridicule this figure and say innocent civilians have also lost their lives.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Turkey's justice minister says as many as 1,845 cases have been opened against people accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to office in 2014.

Erdogan has been accused of aggressively using a previously seldom-used law that bars insults to the president, as a way to muffle dissent. Those who have gone on trial include celebrities, journalists and even schoolchildren.

Critics say Erdogan, who has been accused of increasingly authoritarian traits, even considers strong criticism as insults.

Responding to questions in parliament late Monday, Bekir Bozdag said his ministry has allowed 1,845 cases on charges of insulting Erdogan to go ahead.

He defended the prosecutions, saying: "I am unable to read the insults leveled at our president. I start to blush."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Wednesday 43 of its fighters were killed when Islamic State group militants attacked the town of Tel Abyad on the Turkish border at the weekend.

YPG official Redur Xelil said the YPG has 140 bodies of IS fighters killed in the battle which began on Saturday and ended on Monday with the YPG keeping control of the town.

Twenty-three civilians were also killed, he said.

The YPG captured Tel Abyad from IS group last year in an offensive backed by U.S.-led air strikes.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman says that the cease-fire in Syria has been violated 31 times since it came into effect midnight Friday.

During a Wednesday press briefing in Moscow, Maria Zakharova rebuffed suggestions that the cease-fire would end after a two-week period.

When asked about the possible federalization in Syria, Zakharova said it is up to the Syrian people to determine their government's structure.

She echoed previous statements from Russian officials that the Kurds should be part of future peace talks in Syria

Search Keywords:

Short link:


US Vice President Joe Biden will arrive in Israel on March 8 for a two-day visit, Israel's government said Wednesday, with talks expected to include defence aid and Israel's deadly use of force against Palestinian protesters.

Talks between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also include the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

It was unclear whether Biden would visit the Palestinian territories.

Israel and the United States have been seeking to move past deep disagreement over the Iran nuclear accord, which Netanyahu strongly opposed, and work out a new 10-year defence aid package for the Jewish state.

But his visit comes amid a five-month use of violence by Israeli force against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories, which led to the death of 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

International efforts to end the violence have so far failed.

Biden last visited for the funeral of former prime minister Ariel Sharon in January 2014.

Another visit by the vice president in 2010 was marred by the announcement of a major Israeli settlement project in the occupied east Jerusalem.

The announcement drew a public scolding from Biden and it soured relations with Washington for months.

Such settlements are seen as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace efforts.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The Red Cross on Wednesday began distributing thousands of almond trees to growers in the Gaza Strip whose fields along the border with Israel were ravaged in succesive wars.

Mamadou Sow, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in the coastal Palestinian territory, said the organisation would give "4,000 almond trees of different varieties to farmers along the border (whose lands were) particularly exposed in the wars."

Grower Marwan Abu Mharreb, one of the beneficiaries, described life in the border zone, hit by three conflicts with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist militant movement Hamas.

"Every day we put our lives in danger by going to our land," says the 45-year-old who grows aubergines, courgettes and other vegetables in greenhouses, in addition to the plot where he is now planting the almond trees.

"We are 700 or 800 metres (yards) from the border," he said.

"(Israeli) military patrols pass near our fields, every day we hear shots from their training areas" on the other side of the border fence.

As he spoke, shots rang out in the distance sending a flock of frightened storks into the sky.

Palestinian farmers on the border are nervous too.

"Who can say if an Israeli plane will not come and destroy everything anew," another grower said, referring to Israeli aerial spraying of defoliant along the border.

The Israeli military spokesman's office told AFP that the spraying was carried out to deny cover for the planting of roadside bombs and other "destructive purposes".

"The substance sprayed does not harm the environment," it added, before going on to say that it "will cause the surrounding vegetation to wilt and prevent its growth."

Sheep farmers along the border believe the aim is to kill foliage on which their flocks graze.

Sow said that the Red Cross had discussed the spraying with the Israeli military.

"We hope this will not happen again," he said.

Mohammed Abu Mharreb, also planting almond trees donated by the Red Cross, says that war wipes out harvests but farmers' debts remain.

"I still owe $4,200 to my fertiliser dealer and I don't know how I'm going to pay," he said.

The United Nations says that half of cultivable land in the Gaza Strip and 85 percent of fishery resources are inaccessible because they are adjacent to borders under Israeli blockade for the past 10 years.

In 1968, agriculture accounted for more than half of Palestinian gross domestic product, today it represents about 4-5 percent.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Tunisia launched a counter-terrorism operation near the Libyan border on Wednesday after what state television said was an infiltration by an armed group from the other side.

"A security operation is under way against terrorists in Ben Guerdane," interior ministry spokesman Yasser Messbah told AFP without elaborating.

State television reported gunfire after an armed group in a 4x4 managed to get across the border.

Witnesses said that security forces had surrounded a house in El Aouija, 10 kilometres (six miles) outside Ben Guerdane and were exchanging fire with those inside.

Tunisian media reported that one civilian had died from a bullet wound. Mosaique FM radio said a soldier had been seriously wounded.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

A series of deadly attacks by the Islamic State jihadist group last year, which have dealt a devastating blow to the country's tourism industry, are believed to have been planned from Libya.

Washington carried out an air strike last month against an IS training compound in western Libya, that it has said probably killed the attacks' mastermind as well as dozens of other militants.

Britain announced on Monday that it was sending a team of around 20 soldiers to Tunisia to train troops patrolling the border with Libya.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Indonesia's anti-terror squad arrested four more people suspected of being connected to deadly attacks in the capital in January, police said Wednesday.

National police spokesman Maj. Gen. Anton Charliyan said the four knew about the plot one month before the Jan. 14 bombings that killed eight people, including four attackers.

Two of the suspects were arrested in the Central Java town of Kroya on Monday, while two others were apprehended in Patok Picis village in the hilly city of Malang in East Java.

A total of 43 suspects have now been arrested in connection with the attack.

Among those arrested earlier was Nazarudin Mukhtar  also known as Abu Ghar, who is believed to have planned the Jakarta attack with Muhammad Ali and Afif Sunakin, who were both fatally shot by police while trying to detonate a bomb in front of a Starbucks cafe.

Mukhtar had recently completed a prison sentence for his role in a deadly 2004 attack on a police station in Maluku province and allegedly joined a new militant cell after visiting imprisoned clerics Abu Bakar Bashir and Aman Abdurrahman.

Charliyan said the last four suspects have links to Abdurrahman.

In response to the attacks, Indonesia's government submitted a new anti-terrorism law to parliament last month, and lawmakers are expected to pass it within two months.

The draft bill, obtained by The Associated Press, says an individual suspected of plotting to carry out an act of terrorism could be detained for up to six months without charges. If approved, it would be the first measure that strict to be enacted since the downfall of dictator Suharto in 1998.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico vowed Wednesday to push the European Union to stem the influx of refugees into the bloc by sealing the border of non-member Macedonia with Greece.

EU member "Greece isn't functioning, we need to stop migrants on another line. And we came here to countries that are on this line to help," Fico said Wednesday during a visit to Macedonia's Gevgelija border crossing with Greece.

Fico added that he would raise the issue with EU partners at a Monday summit with Turkey.

The move would leave Athens with rapidly rising numbers of refugees arriving from Turkey while effectively excluding it from Europe's passport-free Schengen zone.

Set to win his third term in a weekend general election after having centred his campaign on anti-refugee policies, Fico told a Slovak daily on Monday that "we are coming to a moment when Greece is likely to be sacrificed."

Along with regional allies the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, Slovakia has vowed to help Bulgaria and Macedonia seal their borders with Greece, should Athens fail to stem the tide of refugees from Turkey by mid-March.

The EU said Tuesday it was "very concerned" about the fact Macedonian police fired tear gas at hundreds of refugees and migrants -- including women and children -- who tried to break through the border fence on Monday.

Some 10,000 people mainly from Syria and Iraq have become trapped on the border after a spate of travel restrictions imposed by Balkan states and Austria.

These moves have triggered a swift build-up along the Greece-Macedonia border with Athens warning that the number of people "trapped" could reach up to 70,000 by next month.

Having argued that jihadists masquerading as refugees could slip into the EU, Fico insisted Wednesday he would "continue to emphasise the security aspect of this crisis."

NATO's top general warned Tuesday that Russia and Syria "are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve".

As Slovakia gears up for its first six-month stint as rotating EU president starting in July, Fico said that the "EU will either get the migration crisis under control or collapse" in 2016.

More than a million people, mostly refugees and migrants from war-torn Syria and Iraq, arrived in the EU last year amid the worst crisis of its kind in Europe since World War II.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


When Barclays bought South Africa's Absa in 2005, wading back into a market it quit in the 1980s under pressure from anti-apartheid campaigners, the deal was trumpeted as a "tangible vote of confidence" in Africa's future.

Eleven years on, as the British banking giant looks to end more than a century of involvement on the continent by putting the 'For Sale' sign above its Africa business, it is hard not to conclude the opposite.

Barclays said it was selling down its 62.3 percent, 70 billion rand ($4.5 billion) stake in its Johannesburg-based subsidiary - which runs Absa in South Africa and Barclays-branded operations in 13 other countries - because of British regulations.

Barclays Africa chief executive Maria Ramos also said the decision had nothing to do with the outlook for Africa, pointing to a 10 percent rise in annual profit and 17 percent return on equity to support her view.

But these numbers are in local currency terms.

When translated into pounds - the only currency that matters to Barclays bosses in London - they tell a very different story, in particular the return on equity, which falls to 8.7 percent, below the parent bank's 11 percent target.

Over the last year, South Africa's rand has shed 20 percent against the pound as mining exports have slumped, the economy has stagnated and President Jacob Zuma has rattled investors by firing two finance ministers in four days.

Over the decade since Barclays bought Absa, the decline is far larger, to the point that - despite a 70 percent share price rise - Barclays is likely to take home the same amount of money it spent in the first place.

SHORTAGE OF SUITORS

Furthermore, this assumes Barclays will be able to sell at Tuesday's share price of around 142 rand - an unlikely prospect given the absence of obvious suitors and the clouds looming over Africa's famously large horizons.

In its latest economic outlook, the IMF forecast sub-Saharan growth of 3.75 percent for this year, a sharp decline from pre-financial crisis levels and a prediction that gives the handful of potential Barclays Africa suitors a strong hand in any talks.

Analysts and mergers and acquisitions bankers say interest is possible from China - now Africa's largest trading partner - although the performance of the 20 percent in South Africa's Standard Bank bought by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 601398.SS 1398.HK in 2008 has been underwhelming.

National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Qatar National Bank are also possible bidders for the whole portfolio, although Qatar's strained diplomatic relations with Cairo might complicate any deal due to its Egypt component, Middle East banking sources said.

Speculation is also bound to swirl around Africa-focused bank Atlas Mara, co-founded by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond, although it is hard to see Atlas, valued at just $320 million, raising sufficient quantities of cash.

Another option for Diamond's outfit is to team up with sovereign wealth funds or other financial investors and launch a joint bid as part of a consortium, one of the bankers suggested.

If these do not materialise, alternative outcomes for Barclays are breaking up the unit to sell off piecemeal, or keeping its hands on a minority stake. Barclays said on Tuesday it may keep a small non-controlling stake in Barclays Africa beyond the 2-3 year sale deadline.

ELUSIVE MIDDLE CLASS

The continent's prospects are nothing like as rosy as 2005, when Irish rocker Bob Geldof arm-twisted rich nations into writing off billions of dollars in defaulted African sovereign debt.

Freed from the burden of unpayable interest charges and boosted by a commodity price boom, the impact of technology such as mobile phones and a flood of 'Africa Rising' investment predicated on the emergence of a middle class, the continent embarked on a decade of unprecedented growth.

Last year's slowdown in China and the ensuing drop in demand for raw materials such as iron ore, copper and crude, has brought that to a juddering halt, exposing the fragility of African government finances and economies.

The case of Nigeria, its biggest economy, most populous nation and top crude producer, is telling.

Having relied on oil for 70 percent of its revenues and 90 percent of its dollars, Abuja has had to impose budget cuts and foreign exchange controls to protect the naira, which is now trading on the street at nearly half its official value.

Other commodity producers such as Ghana, Zambia and Angola have suffered similar fates.

Meanwhile, the hoped-for windfall has failed to materialise from a continental middle-class whose size varies from 327 million of Africa's billion plus population to just 16 million depending on whose daily income definition you accept - the African Development Bank's $2, or McKinsey's $55.

"It's become clear that most of the people portrayed as the new consumer class are not going to have jobs - and if you're not earning, you're not consuming and you're not borrowing," said Francois Conradie of NKC Africa Economists in Cape Town.

"Instead of having a big middle class, you're just going to have big slums - and that is a serious political problem."

Search Keywords:

Short link:


Egypt's main index EGX30 declined 0.64 percent on Wednesday, the third consecutive drop, to register 6,076 points.

Daily stock turnover amounted to EGP 429 million.

Non-Arab investors joined domestic investors as net sellers while Arab investors were net buyers to tune of EGP 11.4 million.

The bourse postponed the approval of the offering prospectus for the Domty brand company Arabian food industries until the firm sends a modified report from the independent financial advisor.

The dairy firm has set a maximum price of EGP 11.38 per share for its planned flotation on the Egyptian bourse, set to begin on Sunday, a market source told Reuters on Wednesday.

At that price, the company would raise up to 1.4 billion Egyptian pounds ($179 million) in the planned sale of a 49 percent stake, and the 88.5 percent family holding of Chairman and Managing Director Omar El Damaty would be worth some 2.5 billion, added Reuters.

Blue chip, Commercial International Bank (CIB), edged down 0.66 percent to EGP 32.7 per share and one of Egypt's leading investment banks, EFG-Hermes, dipped 0.7 percent to EGP 6.92 per share.

Leading real estate developers, TMG Holding, SODIC and Palm Hills for Development all declined, falling 1.02 percent to EGP 4.75, 1.32 percent to EGP 6.63 and 0.44 percent to EGP 2.22 per share respectively.

Search Keywords:

Short link:


MPs said the loan was necessary to help Egypt's armed forces fight terrorism in North Sinai

Related Egypt receives 3 more Rafale fighter jets from France

Egypt's new parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a defence loan agreement with France, aiming to boost the powers of the former countrys armed forces. 

A parliamentary report explained that the agreement is between Egypt's defence ministry and a number of French banks led by Credit Agricole for Companies and Investment.

"These banks will provide a cash loan of 3375.54 million euros, representing 60 per cent of the value of French military equipment that will be delivered to Egypt," the report stated.

"The total value of this equipment is estimated at 5625.9 million euros, with Egypt to pay the remaining 40 per cent," the report also revealed.

The loan will be guaranteed by Egypt's finance ministry.

Spokespersons from most political parties in the parliament said that MPs approved the loan agreement, stating that it is be necessary to boost the military powers of Egypt's army.

Alaa Abed, the spokesman of the liberal Free Egyptians Party, said that the party has high hopes that the agreement would help the armed forces do its job fighting terrorism in North Sinai and safeguard the country's borders.

Sameh Seif Al-Yazal, an MP and a former intelligence officer, said that "as far as I know this equipment aims to beef up the army's powers against terrorist groups in the Sinai peninsula."

Saad Al-Gammal, an independent MP, thanked France for stepping up cooperation with Egypt in areas of defence.

Meanwhile, many MPs from the border governorates of North Sinai and Matrouh urged the parliament to send delegations to visit the two governorates inorder to listen to the needs of the people living there

MP Nemaat Rashad said "Sinai is going through hard times and every day a police or army officer is being killed at the hands of terrorists. Parliament should hurry up and send a delegation to Sinai to explore what is going on there."

The parliaments speaker Ali Abdel-Al approved three parliamentary delegations to visit the governorates of North Sinai, Matrouh, and the Red Sea.

"These delegations must compile reports on what is going on Egypt's eastern, western and southern borders," Abdel-Al said. 

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The first phase of the 170,000 feddan mega project is due to start before the end of this month

Egypts housing minister said Tuesday that around 90 to 95 percent of the total construction activities in the countrys new administrative capital project will be assigned to local contractors, state-run news agency MENA reported.

Chinese companies will only provide Egyptian contractors with long maturity loans to finance the construction of 14 new governmental buildings, major conference centre and fairs area, Moustafa Madbouly said at Cairo-based conference.

In January, Egypt and China signed financial deals including loans, grants and memorandums of understanding worth around $15 billion of which a part is expected to be invested in the infrastructure of Egypt's planned new administrative capital.

The new capital, which is part of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisis plan to boost the economy through a series of mega-projects, is estimated to cost $45 billion.

The government aims to complete the infrastructure of the 170,000 feddan project within three years, Madbouly said, adding that contractors will start working before end of the current month in the first phase of 30,000 feddans.

Last month, chairman of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Akinwumi Adesina said the bank will offer a $140 million fund for the ambitious Egyptian project.



Search Keywords:

Short link:


Twenty new lines have been added to what is considered to be one of the earliest literary narratives in human history

A clay tablet has been discovered in Iraq, adding 20 new lines to the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, a work of poetry widely regarded as one of the earliest literary narratives in the world.

Dating back to the Neo-Babylonian period (2000-1500 BC), the tablet was identified along with 90 other pieces back in 2011 by Farouk El-Rawi, a professorial research associate at the department of Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East at University of Londons School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and Abdallah Hashim, a museum official.

It was found in possession of a smuggler, who sold it to El-Rawi for USD 800, and it now belongs to the Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraqs Kurdistan region, where it is on public display.

The new piece fits in the left half of a six-column tablet, which is 11 cm high, 9.5 cm wide, and 3 cm thick.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is about the king of Uruks journey to find eternal life. After an initial fight with Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people, the two become close friends.

Together, they journey to the Cedar Mountain and defeat Humbaba, its monstrous guardian, and the Bull of Heaven, which the goddess Ishtar sends to punish Gilgamesh.

As a punishment for these actions, the gods sentence Enkidu to death, leaving Gilgmesh with much to learn about life in the second half of the epic.

The newly discovered tablet is part of chapter five of the epic written in Neo-Babylonian, and sheds light on some events in the story, while adding context and detail.

El-Rawi published a paper about the new find, co-authored by fellow SOAS professor Andrew George, which includes the original tablet text transliterated and translated into English.

The paper states that among the new additions the tablet provides is the continuation of the description of the Cedar Forest, one of the very few episodes in Babylonian narrative poetry when attention is paid to landscape.

Another added perspective is on the character of Humbaba.

Humbabas jungle orchestra evokes those images found in ancient Near Eastern art, of animals playing musical instruments. Humbaba emerges not as a barbarian ogre but as a foreign ruler entertained by music at court in the manner of Babylonian kings, but music of a more exotic kind, played by a band of equally exotic musicians.

New motives were also discovered in those 20 additional lines, namely the guilt of Gilgamesh and Enkidu after they killed Humbaba, something that was not previously made clear in the story, and now sheds light on their actions afterwards.

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

Search Keywords:

Short link:


The performance is the outcome of a storytelling workshop that commenced in October 2015, and is part of the Institute's celebration of International Women's Day

The BuSSy project is scheduled to hold a new performance titled "Anesa Wala Madame?" (Mademoiselle or Madame?) at Cairos French Institute on 16 March, as part of Women's Week, the insitute's programme celebrating International Women's Day.

The performance is the outcome of a storytelling workshop that commenced in October 2015, and comprises a "selection of stories and reflections about the social pressures single women face," according to the Facebook event description.

BuSSy started in 2006 when two students at the American University in Cairo directed a performance based on real stories, centred on memories of womanhood.

In 2010, BuSSy transitioned from a university-affiliated group to an independent theatre project, performing in numerous venues around Egypt and abroad.

By organising workshops and performances addressing the complexity of gender issues at large, from both male and female perspectives, BuSSy documents and gives voice to censored untold stories about gender in different communities in Egypt," states the event's description on Facebook.

Programme:

Wednesday 16 March, 8pm (doors open at 7.30pm)

French Institute, 1 Madraset Al Hoqouq Street, Mounira, Cairo

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

Search Keywords:

Short link:


(Beijing)  Like a swimming pool on a hot summer day, China's booming insurance sector is attracting throngs of consumers, investors and companies eager for refreshing protection and cool cash.

Behind the boom is a summer-like business climate that's made it easier than ever for firms to offer and consumers to buy all kinds of insurance.

A regulatory easing for the industry launched by the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) in 2012 and fine-tuned several times since then has helped insurance companies diversify and profit from investments in stocks, bonds and other financial products. It has also encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit, as dozens of new insurance companies have started in recent years and, as of February, more than 100 others were seeking business licenses.

The easing and subsequent boom have been a hallmark of Xiang Junbo's tenure as CIRC chairman. He took the job in 2011 and ever since has been behind industry reforms in areas such as insurer fund investments, policy premium rates and farm policies.

In a February 22 interview with Caixin, Xiang acknowledged that the reform climate is getting increasingly complex given the economic slowdown that's been spreading across China since 2014. But he is confident that regulatory easing is still the right thing to do, particularly since it has won support from officials at the highest levels in Beijing.

"A few days after I took the post (as CIRC chairman), some central government ministry leaders told me that a top task for the insurance industry was to liberalize insurance fund investments," said Xiang, 59, adding that he was told, "Don't control too much."

Those directives have certainly been good for business. From 2010 to 2015, according to CIRC data, total insurance industry assets increased from 5 trillion yuan to 12 trillion yuan. The industry's profits more than tripled during that period from about 83 billion yuan to 282 billion yuan. Last year was especially lucrative for the industry, as total profits rose 38 percent above the 2014 level.

And although the economic slowdown has been profoundly affecting business growth, strategies, product structures and sales models for the nation's insurance companies, Xiang is generally upbeat about the future.

"The industry is facing unprecedented challenges," he said, "as well as opportunities."

Risk Factors

Xiang accepts that risks are rising as the economy slows and the sector expands in terms of companies, clients, assets and investments. Caution is the watchword for many of industry's smaller newcomers which, having found a lucrative niche, offer non-traditional, short-term insurance plans.

Analysts say these plans, which can provide coverage for as few as three months yet generate a lot of business by offering consumers high payouts, may generate liquidity risks for industry underweights.

"In the past, life insurance companies seldom had liquidity troubles because their debts were long-term," said Zhou Xing, a partner at the China insurance division of PricewaterhouseCoopers. But now, he said, short-term liabilities are putting companies at risk.

CIRC has been working since last year to rein in small-insurer risks. In January, the commission drafted a policy that would set limits for capital levels and terms for short-term products. Xiang said CIRC plans to tighten short-term insurance regulations throughout 2016.

Xiang said 57 companies issued short-term products last year and generated a combined 647 billion yuan worth of premiums against payouts of 374 billion yuan. The gap points to healthy balance sheets for small insurers. And that explains why, industry sources said, small insurers relying heavily on short-term products for capital flow are enthusiastic about the products.

An actuary who declined to be named said small insurers and the sector's heavy hitters have different business models, and "it's difficult to say whether they are good or bad." Some have worked wealth management product business into their models.

However, the actuary said, regulators are cautious because "what's irrefutable is that the risks behind these models must be monitored."

Meanwhile, large and small insurers alike have ventured into investment danger zones by playing China's volatile stock markets. Although three-quarters of the nation's insurance company cash is parked in banks or fixed-income products such as bonds issued by governments and state-owned companies, according to CIRC, another 23 percent is in equities. Most of these equities are in the shares of state-owned companies and other blue chips.

CIRC gave insurance companies permission to play the stock markets without restrictions in 2012. That year, insurers averaged a 5 percent return on their stock investments, CIRC data show. Returns rose to 6 percent in 2014 and 7.5 percent last year, compared to mere 4 percent yields on average for bank deposits and bonds held by insurance companies.

Insurers have invested 50.8 billion yuan in margin lending products, which were closely linked to last year's stock market volatility, and 480 billion yuan in trusts, CIRC said.

Funds controlled by insurance companies have had CIRC permission to invest in wealth management products, trusts, private equity, financial derivatives and overseas stock markets since 2013.

Zeng Yujin, director of CIRC's investment supervision department, said high returns have made stocks a favorite investment target for insurance companies. Last summer, insurance companies raised eyebrows by stepping up stock buying on the secondary market.

Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchange records showed that in the second half of last year, insurance companies closed twice as many share-purchase deals as they had over the previous five years.

CIRC recently ordered insurance companies to start disclosing the financial details of stock purchases. The order followed December assessments of investment portfolios and asset holdings of major insurance companies.

Sources said most of the 18 insurance companies that underwent financial stress tests got passing grades, and CIRC ordered those that failed to put their books in order.

Xiang suggested he is not losing sleep over insurer investment risks. And his industry track record suggests he knows what he is talking about: Before joining CIRC in 2011, Xiang spent four years as president of the Agricultural Bank of China, served as a central bank deputy governor and worked as director of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Some 30 percent of insurance company assets have "good liquidity," Xiang said, "proving that insurance fund risks are under control." And CIRC has "repeatedly performed tests and found that, overall, insurance fund risks are under control."

"I've worked for the national statistics bureau and commercial banks, so my risk awareness has always been strong," Xiang said.

Zeng said that because insurance company "investment portfolios are more diverse, there is more room" for them to manage risks.

Business Opportunities

The risks have certainly not dampened the insurance industry's entrepreneurial spirit. According to sources who declined to be named, as of late February CIRC was processing applications from more than 130 companies that want to start selling insurance.

Sources close to the regulator said about 50 of those applicants want to sell life insurance. Others are seeking permission to offer property insurance, re-insurance services and other businesses.

Xiang said licenses can be issued to companies that support national strategic and regional development goals, and promote innovation in their respective business fields.

Regulators are also trying to strike a balance between the industry's available talent pool and the scramble to open new insurance firms. He Xiaofeng, deputy director at CIRC's development and reform department, said the commission's biggest current challenge is coping with the industry's rapid expansion in the face of a lack of well-trained workers.

"We're worried about everyone flooding into the market after liberalization even though there isn't enough professional talent," he said. "The result can be simply expansionary with no added value."

Among those vying for the green light to sell insurance, usually through affiliates or business partners, are property developers. Smaller insurers such as Sino Life, Foresea Life and Pearl River Life each got their start with investments from developers.

Major developers including Evergrande Group and Wanda Group have also invested in insurance businesses. State media reported that by the end of 2015, at least 34 insurance companies received backing from developers.

Several insurance sector sources said that developers like insurers because they can help their companies maintain healthy capital flows and thus offset the peaks and valleys of their industry.

Developer-insurer partnerships have raised risk concerns. An insurance company executive who asked not to be named said many developers have been "transferring funds from insurance to property projects." The practice "will increase risks due to investment concentrations. If the economy slows and property values decline, risks will be exposed."

CIRC has taken steps to control insurance company investment by firms from outside the sector, such as developers. In April 2015, CIRC put more requirements on business relations between insurance companies and non-sector affiliates that take aim at insurance fund misuse. Under one rule, an insurer's controlling shareholder must have net assets of more than 10 billion yuan and commit to investing in the firm for at least three years.

More recently, CIRC officials at a meeting with insurance firm executives reportedly claimed that some of their shareholders were using insurers to raise funds for other firms. The commission's goal, He said, is to get insurer stakeholders to invest for the long-term and thus support insurance industry development.

One of the next steps for leading insurance investment down the right path is expected to involve investor exit strategies. Xiang said that this year CIRC plans to work out rules for an investment exit mechanism, with regional pilot projects likely to be launched soon.

(Rewritten by Han Wei)
It has been a week since Liu Shiyu became the chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). What should his priorities be? A lot of people have tried to answer the question for him.

Among the many ideas that have been put forward, one is particularly jarring. It urges the new chairman to show off of his power and abilities quickly by taking steps to push up the A-share market's benchmark index.

This appeal is dangerous, and yet deeply rooted in society's mindset. It also reflects the desires of interest groups and the confusion they have caused.

As long as we hold up the index as some all-important yardstick, China's capital market will have no future. The reason is simple: The government has neither the mandate nor the ability to control the index, which is linked to stock prices. Unless a systemic risk looms, intervening only distorts the market.

Sadly, though, throughout it 24-year history, the CSRC has been held hostage to the index, succumbing to pressure under various circumstances and leaving behind a trail of disasters. Take its bungled attempt to shore up the market after its crash last summer or the short-lived "circuit breaker" mechanism this year.

That first bit of meddling meant trillions of yuan that was plowed into the market at the command of the regulator was wiped out, at least on paper, when the stimulating effect it had on the bourse faded. More embarrassingly, some senior regulators were found to have taken advantage of the bailout to personally benefit.

This is all the evidence that is needed to confirm that "unique national conditions" are no excuse for disobeying the laws of the market. Doing so is not only futile, but dangerous. The first step for ending this interference is for the securities regulator to end its fixation on the share price index.

This is a huge challenge for a CSRC chairman because certain groups will always disguise their desire for a stronger market as a call for protecting investors, something the regulator will have a hard time rejecting.

Some officials even see a stable benchmark index as a matter of policy. Others balk at any action that could be seen as hurting share prices. What they all fail to see is that by reinforcing the government's role as savior, they only ensure that the stock market will remain immature, tumbling from one crisis to another and hurting small investors along the way. If the events of last year prove anything, it is this.

It is time we break from the past. A wise man follows the market's laws rather than fighting them. Liu would do well to remember that the job of the regulator is to serve and supervise the market, letting it play a decisive role in allocating resources.

This will not be easy. It will require top-down changes to how the CSRC operates.

The direction for making progress to how the securities market is reformed has always been clear. The problem is simply that we have not moved as quickly as we should. Former CSRC chairmen Zhou Xiaochuan and Guo Shuqing made much progress, but the most difficult battles must still be fought.

What are the main changes that should be made? Let's start with establishing a market-oriented system for listings and de-listings, improving the oversight of how public firms' assets are restructured, and deterring fraud with harsher punishments.

Liu does not have any experience regulating the securities market, but he has worked in the central bank and at a commercial bank. More importantly, he is known to be an unflinching reformist, who supports innovation, respects the market and has a global vision. He is said to be tolerant of the new, stringent about controlling risk and talented at balancing the interests of different sectors.

In the past, he has called for the development of a healthy, multilayered capital market. This will only be achieved when the securities regulator respects the market, and is transparent, fair and impartial in implementing its policies.

As the CSRC's new helmsman, Liu should set a course for reform quickly so that the public understands that government intervention is a thing of the past and rules and laws will be followed. The CSRC should improve its structure by taking a holistic view of financial regulatory reform and establishing and defending proper market order. This is the only real way to protect investors.

There is no doubt that this is a difficult time to be the head of the CSRC. One way to make the job easier is ditching the fascination with the stock index.

Hu Shuli is the editor-in-chief of Caixin Media
A top Chinese Air Force officer has harshly criticized North Korea for being "ungrateful" for Chinese support.

"For the last half-century all China did to influence North Korea was to provide unconditional aid, with no strings attached," Maj. Gen. Qiao Liang, an influential military commentator, told Hong Kong monthly Zijing.

"North Korea used to concern itself with China's reactions but now they don't accept our demands, and our influences seem to be diminishing."

He said this is because the North is more interested in a security guarantee from the U.S. Qiao added that Beijing's hands are therefore tied and the solution to the North Korean nuclear problem lies with the U.S.

The Chinese media, which rarely criticize the North, carried the full text of Qiao's remarks a day after Washington and Beijing sought a new UN Security Council resolution sanctioning the North over its nuclear test and rocket launch.

Meanwhile, Qiao expressed some sympathy for South Korea, which is under pressure from the U.S. over the deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense batteries. "If the North Korea nuclear problem persists, South Korea can only accept U.S. demands to deploy THAAD," he said.

Qiao often speaks on behalf of the Chinese government on military matters.


Korea's exports decreased yet again in February extending the streak to a record-breaking 14 months. The previous record was 13 months set from March 2001 to March 2002 after the dot-com bubble burst in the U.S.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said on Tuesday that the nation's exports in February were US$36.4 billion, down 12.2 percent from a year ago (US$1=W1,238). This is a slight improvement compared to January, when exports were down by over 18 percent on-year.

Imports also fell 14.6 percent from February last year to $29 billion, bringing the monthly trade balance to $7.4 billion in the black.

"The biggest factors behind sluggish exports are weak overseas demand resulting from low fuel prices and an economic slowdown in major trading countries," said Kim Byung-yu of the Korea International Trade Association.

Meanwhile, shipments of mobile phones and general machinery increased by two to six percent, and exports to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations and the U.S. rose by four to 17 percent.

Exports to China, which account for about a quarter of Korea's total exports, decreased for the eighth month in a row, by 12.9 percent.
Medium-sized Korean cosmetics company Tonymoly will open an outlet in the premium Sephora chain store in downtown Paris next month.

Tonymoly will display 35 of its products at the chic boutique and is also selling its products at 825 Sephora stores in 15 European countries. The total order for products amounts to W10 billion (US$1=W1,238).

Tonymoly has been gaining popularity both in Korea and abroad for its unique cosmetics, which are sold in cases shaped like pandas, bananas and lips. "European cosmetics are usually sold in generic cases, but many consumers prefer cute packaging," said Shin Joo-hee at Tonymoly.

With rising brand awareness for Korean cosmetics, small players' overseas sales are rising.

 Small but Effective

It's Skin, a subsidiary of Hanbul Cosmetics, is a success in China and elsewhere with a skin whitening product using the unusual ingredient of snail mucus.

Chinese consumers posted rave reviews on Weibo in 2014 leading to a seven-fold rise in sales. Last year, It's Skin sold W309.6 billion worth of products, up 28 percent compared to 2014. It also started selling products in 12 DFS stores worldwide last month.

Facial packs made by Sansung L&S went on sale in 2,200 Watsons chain stores in China in January of this year, the pitch being that it was developed by dermatologists.
Korea, Japan and the U.S. are arranging a meeting of their leaders on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on March 31 and April 1.

According to a government source here, a similar meeting took place on the sidelines of the 2014 summit in The Hague.

Japan's Kyodo News reported that Tokyo hopes for a separate meeting between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the event.

But a government source here said there has been no official approach from Tokyo.

The leaders of Korea, Japan and China also meet in Tokyo in May.
Han Zheng meets US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew

 

From:Shanghai Daily | 2016-03-02 13:13

SHANGHAI Party Secretary Han Zheng last week met the US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew as he led a delegation to attend the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Pudong.

Han briefed American guests on Shanghais 13th Five-Year Plan and the development of Shanghai Free Trade Zone. He said the city is shifting emphasis to innovation, green development, and quality of economic growth.

He said many American companies are closely following the development of Shanghai Free Trade Zone and are participating in its construction. Many American business leaders who are members of the International Business Leaders of Advisory Council for the Mayor of Shanghai provided valuable ideas and suggestions.

Han said Shanghai has strong ties with sister cities of Chicago and San Francisco and other American cities. It hopes to widen exchanges and cooperation with them in more fields.

Lew said the worlds economy is at a critical stage. He hoped the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting would have effective dialogues on key issues and have a positive impact on the global economy.

The Shanghai FTZ has attracted the worlds attention. It is not only important for Shanghais goal of becoming an international financial center but also important for Sino-US cooperation.

Shanghai Executive Vice Mayor Tu Guangshao was present at the meeting.
The ongoing digital revolution may spell end of capitalism

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-02 10:28

Paul Mason's Postcapitalism, which has received high profile reviews across the world, is not a conventional journalist's book but more of a polemic.[Photo by Nick J.B.Moore/China Daily]

Paul Mason believes that people innocently sharing free music on the Internetas is particularly the case in Chinacould spell the end of capitalism.

The multi-award-winning broadcast journalist and author argues in his now already bestselling book Postcapitalism that the digital revolution could finally make Karl Marx's prophesy about the end of the economic system that has dominated since the mid-18th century British Industrial Revolution a reality.

"If you have got somethingno matter what its production costs arethat can be reproduced infinitely, then sooner or later under free competition, its price is going to fall close to zero," he says.

"We can see this in digital music. When I first started writing this book, I had research that showed that Apple had 95 percent of digital music. Obviously, that was just the digital music market. It did tell you that a whole unmeasured chunk of digital music was being shared for free."

Mason, who made headlines at the weekend by quitting his high profile role as economics editor of Channel 4, was speaking in a cafe opposite the ITN studios in Gray's Inn Road in central London.

The book, which has received high profile reviews across the world and involved the author in an extensive speaking tour, is not a conventional journalist's book but more of a polemic.

"My previous four books, including a novel, are written from the experience of a journalist. This book is written from my lifetime engagement with two issuessocial justice and technology. In my mind I believed that they were separate but that has all changed," he says.

That change has been the Internet and the availability of an almost infinite supply of information and the emergence of open-source operations such as the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where there is no profit motive.

"Capitalism cannot deal with abundance since like all previous economic systems it is a solution to scarcity. The capitalist solution is to distribute goods according to the market. The feudal solution was according to obligation. The Han Chinese solution was semi-slavery, peonage and obligation," he says.

Mason, a regular visitor to China during his broadcasting career, believes the Chinese government is more aware of the challenges posed by the digital revolution than many in the West.

[Photo by Nick J.B.Moore/China Daily]

"The upper reaches of the Chinese Communist Party do engage with all these things. They think very broadly and talk very aggressively about non-market technology. Certainly China's young people are engaging with technology."

Mason says far from all this being pie in the sky it could have very profound implications for the way people live and, more importantly, work in less than a generation.

He believes that the Internet of Thingsmachines speaking to machineswill destroy white-collar as well as blue-collar jobs.

Instead of mass unemployment he believes the solution is for everyone to have a basic income from the state so they could do other things like community work, study or look after an elderly relative.

He says that the cost of giving everyone in the UK, as one example, 6,000 pounds ($8,357) a year would double the current benefits bill but there would be ways of offsetting the cost.

There would still be incentive to work with the minimum wage being set at a high level.

"The basic income is coming and it is a near-term issue. I had a debate with a bunch of rightwing economists a couple of weeks ago and they said it wouldn't work because people are naturally acquisitive and competitive and want to be richer than their neighbors. I said that I knew that was not the case because I grew up in a community that had real social solidarity," he says.

Mason was the son of a lorry driver and teacher and grew up in the relatively working-class town of Leigh in Greater Manchester in northern England.

In an unconventional career, he was a music teacher before switching to be a journalist on trade publications in the 1990s.

He came to prominence as an expert interviewee on the Dot.com crash and then landed the plum job as business correspondent of the BBC flagship news and current affairs program Newsnight. He moved to Channel 4 in 2013.

Mason, who has been described recently as a Renaissance Man and has recently become a specialist on the Greek crisis, believes neoliberalism of the past 25 years has been a disaster, resulting in millions having to endure low-paid employment while only a few have gotten rich.

He believes there is evidence even in the Kondratieff wave theory named after the Russian economist Nicolai Kondratieff, who Stalin eventually had executed, that capitalism is now incapable of moving on from the 2008 crash.

He argues financialization is an existential threat to the global economic system with the value of financial derivates globally rising from just $50 billion in 1991 to $38 trillion now when the real economy is just $70 trillion.

"It is like building a nuclear power station with a terrible management next to a village," he says.

Postcapitalism by Paul Mason (Allen Lane) will be published in paperback in June.
Occupant of Western Han Dynasty tomb in Jiangxi confirmed

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-02 11:34

A press conference is held in Beijing to release the archaeological findings and the identity of the occupant of an ancient Haihunhou tomb, March 2, 2016. [Photo by Lei Xiaoxun/China Daily]

The identity of the occupant of a prominent ancient royal tomb has been confirmed, archeologists said in Beijing on Wednesday.

Researchers said the tomb in East China's Jiangxi province dating to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD 24), belongs to Liu He, the first of the four generations to hold the title Marquis Haihun.

Liu's remains are inside the inner coffin of the main chamber, where archaeologists said a personal jade seal with his name was found.

According to ancient Chinese burial traditions, a seal is the most accurate identifier of a tomb occupant.

Related: China's Jiangxi releases achievements on study of royal tombs

A jade seal with Liu's surname inscribed. [File photo by Guo Jing/China Daily]

Hoof-shaped ingots are found at the tomb site. [File photo by Guo Jing/China Daily]
A diplomat's tales of three Chinese cities

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-02 11:34

"Bird's Nest" national stadium in Beijing was built in 2008. [Photo/CFP]

When my friends at China Daily proposed that I share with its readers some impressions from my experience of living in China, I thought that one day I would like to write a book to record in detail those impressions and rich experiences I gained through living and working in this great land. However, for an article I have to be brief. Therefore, what I would like to share are some of the dimensions that I discovered about China and the Chinese people through my experiences in three different cities.

Beijing

Beijing was my home city in China. I have many fond memories of my life there, that developed to a sense of belonging to the city that makes part of me feel like a "Beijinger". Of all the cities that I had lived in around the world, Beijing was the only one that I kept returning to after leaving it.

From 2005 to 2008, I observed Beijing planning and preparing for the opening of the Olympic Games that took place at 8 pm on Aug 8, 2008. The capital city was transformed in many ways. Ancient sites were restored in a magnificent way. Many old neighborhoods gave way to new residential, shopping, and business areas that were developed with state-of-the-art architecture and landscaping. In my view, ordinary people were the champions of the event: the construction workers who came from the provinces to build the Olympic City and Beijing's new high-risers, the middle school children who hosted students from a school in Egypt to celebrate the spirit of the Olympics, and the senior citizens of the city who I used to meet in the parks. They would practice their English language with me so that they could volunteer as guides to foreign visitors during the Olympics. Needless to say, the Chinese youth who volunteered during the events from the opening until the closing ceremonies of the Olympics were equally champions.

What I realized during this period was that as much as hosting the Olympics was a goal to be achieved by the Chinese people, it was also used as a mean to upgrade Beijing's infrastructure and services. In addition to that, the Olympics were a way to develop the capabilities of the Chinese people and further integrate them with the world. It was also an opportunity to show the world what China and its people have achieved through 30 years of opening up and reform. Furthermore, the Olympics built a momentum that was built upon in subsequent years. The Beijing Olympics proved to be a successful model that was emulated throughout the country, such as when Shanghai hosted the Shanghai Expo in 2010 and when Guangzhou hosted the Asian Games in 2011. These successes show how the Chinese government is developing society by setting goals and challenges to meet. Once these goals have been achieved, they create a model to be followed and built upon in different areas.

A child is worshiping Deng Xiaoping in front of his statue in Shenzhen on April 4, 2014. [Photo/CFP]

Shenzhen in Guangdong was another city on the mainland where I discovered different dimensions of China, especially related to the Chinese people's dynamism and mobility. It was one of the cities that I visited several times during my stay in China, and each time I used to witness and learn new things that added to my knowledge and enriched my understanding of China. The city stood as a symbol for and a result of China's policies of reform and opening up that were launched by Chairman Deng Xiaoping. Shenzhen was one of China's first experiments with a special economic zones (SEZs), and it represents, in my view, a model for other developing countries to learn from.

The speed with which Shenzhen developed and grew gave it the title of the "Overnight City"; people used to compare its rising buildings to bamboo shoots after a good rain. I admired the way the city was planned, keeping a balance between urban construction and natural greenery. Shenzhen is a city where young people represent the majority of its population. Many of Shenzhen's inhabitants migrated from their home cities and villages in the western provinces to pursue their dream of having a better life.

I can imagine the positive impact of the exposure that many of these youths gain from living and working in Shenzhen. Equipped with new skills, knowledge and entrepreneurial spirit, many of these youths could return to their home villages and cities in the western provinces to contribute to their social and economic development.

In modern history, while many developing countries are exporting migrants to the outside world for economic or political reasons that create the phenomena of brain drain, most of the migrant movements in China during the past decades are heading from the country's western provinces to the eastern ones. The result of these migrant movements will be that the successful models of the eastern provinces will be emulated in the western ones.

Although Shenzhen is not a city of ancient history like many other places in China, I admired the attention paid by the city's government and urban planners to the cultural features of the city. When visiting Shenzhen, I used to enjoy attending many of the cultural and art performances there, as well as the "Culture Industry Fair" hosted annually by the city.

Shenzhen, which started off as a small fishing village looking out from the mainland at Hong Kong, has transformed into a big, vibrant metropolis, standing tall and setting the speed and quality by which China has been developing since the 1970s.

Li Mingcui, 61, wearing Qiang minority costumes, holds a red scarf as a sign of respect to the rescuers during the May earthquake at Beichuan County, Sichuan province November 11, 2008. Li was dug out by rescuers about 164 hours after the earthquake on May 12, 2008. [Photo/CFP]

Chengdu

Chengdu in Sichuan was the third city experience I had in China that deeply influenced me. I visited the city twice. My first visit was as a guest to see the industrial area in Chengdu, where I was impressed by the developed aviation industry in particular. Later, I had one of my most memorable tourist experiences by climbing the mountains to visit Gugaizhou Park, a place of natural beauty and tranquility that moves the mind and the soul from earth to feel closer to heaven. Later on, I paid a visit to the panda station where Chinese experts created a special environment to breed and protect one of the most adorable animals in the world. The panda has become a Chinese icon and a distinguished part of Chinese diplomacy because it is the only animal that is issued a special passport to travel as a guest to different countries around the world.

My second visit was on a rather sad occasion but it left a deep impression in my mind and heart. On May 3, 2008, part of Sichuan suffered from a strong earthquake that caused a lot of damage and led to many casualties. Egypt was one of the first countries to express its sympathy to the Chinese people and government by sending urgent relief on two big military aircraft. I flew to Chengdu to receive the cargo and handed it over to the Chinese rescue authorities so that they could distribute it to the people in the affected areas. When I expressed my wish to visit the people in the areas most affected by the earthquake, the Chinese officials in charge were surprised, as this was the first such request from a foreign diplomat. I am glad and grateful that they responded to my request because what I witnessed made me feel closer to the suffering of the people and allowed me to experience the strength and resilience of the Chinese in the face of hardships and calamities.

I will never forget the smiles of the children I visited in a newly built, makeshift school when I gave them a small gift of children's story books. I brought from the city as a personal gift on a day that happened to be the International Day of the Child.

What I witnessed, from the speedy mobilization, the resilience of the people and the smiles of the children in their classes in the middle of the disaster area not only impressed me but gave me a glimpse of the future of China.

The above are just part of my experience in China, which covered many places, events and interactions with people from all walks of life. I still live and enjoy not only the memories I carry with me but the knowledge I try to gain everyday about the history, culture and developments in this great nation.

About the author:

Mahmoud Allam is former ambassador of Egypt to China. He is also a keen observer and scholar of Chinese studies. Currently, he works as Ministerial advisor for Ministry of International Cooperation. The author can be reached at allammahmud@hotmail.com
Artists performs to celebrate China-Cambodia cultural day

From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-02 11:34

Chinese and Cambodian artists jointly performed here on Tuesday evening to celebrate the China-Cambodia cultural day.

Held at the Confucius Institute of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, the two-hour show, which was staged by Chinese artists at the institute and Cambodian artists from the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, attracted dozens of spectators.

Chea Munyrith, director of the Confucius Institute of the Royal Academy of Cambodia, said the performance was part of cultural exchange between China and Cambodia.

"I'm confident that the event will cotribute further to enhancing traditional friendship relations between the two countries," he said.

Siyun Sophearith, a professor of culture from the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, said the joint show would also contribute to creating closer relations between the peoples of the two countries.

At the event, each of the performances had received hearty rounds of applause from the audience.
Swiss Finance Minister: RMBs prospect depends on its performance in the crisis

By:Jiang Wenran | From:english.eastday.com | 2016-03-01 13:31

Sharp exchange rate volatility has become a large disturbance of global macroeconomic stability at the beginning of 2016. The G20 nations on Saturday reiterated their commitment to avoid competitive devaluation and put forward closely discussion on the foreign exchange market, which is for the first time during recent G20 Meetings.

The G20 meeting has successfully pointed out the direction for future development in different fields, said Swiss Finance Minister, Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer during the interview with reporter from Eastday.com after the two-day G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Shanghai.

While the G20 meeting itself can't signed any agreement, finance ministers and central bank governors have obviously realized the harm brought by the competitive devaluations, Maurer was looking forward to detailed measures to be taken out in the coming days.



How long it will take for RMB to become a safe-haven currency? Maurer noted that the internationalization of RMB is at the initial stage. Whether RMB can become the safe-haven currency like Swiss franc depends on its performance in the crisis.



It is important to note that the RMB in recent years has become an important bridge to connect China and Switzerland. Direct trading between RMB and Swiss Franc (CHF) on the inter-bank foreign exchange market was allowed on November 9, 2015.



When asked whether they worry about the recent increased volatility of RMB, Maurer confirmed that they have confidence in the RMB exchange rate due to China's strong economic background. At the same time, China should take effective measures to control the RMB fluctuation in the appropriate range.



This is an important step in strengthening bilateral economic and trade connections between China and Switzerland. Maurer noted that China and Switzerland will make further efforts to mutually promote the direct trading between the two currencies based on market principle.




After the LDF came to power in 2016, it has to be said that the patronage came right from the top, from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan himself," a former DGP told Onmanorama.
Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper.
Won weakens for 3rd straight session amid yen's tumble, lackluster trade data The South Korean currency weakened against the U.S. dollar for the third straight session on Friday as major currencies continued to lose ground and gloomy trade data suggested wor...

#Navy plans Navy eyes creation of unmanned command in 2040s South Korea's Navy is seeking to create a new command running unmanned ships, submarines and aircraft in the 2040s, the armed service said Friday, in an effort to address a potenti...
Blog Archive April (10) March (4) February (2) December (8) November (4) October (7) September (11) August (8) July (1) June (3) May (5) April (13) March (11) February (18) January (18) December (17) November (34) October (40) September (36) August (19) July (16) June (15) May (14) April (19) March (18) February (14) January (14) December (22) November (15) October (8) September (18) August (5) July (13) June (10) May (17) April (15) March (20) February (15) January (15) December (8) November (25) October (26) September (26) August (11) July (18) June (23) May (24) April (22) March (20) February (25) January (41) December (31) November (38) October (43) September (27) August (27) July (18) June (27) May (24) April (23) March (24) February (28) January (50) December (23) November (33) October (29) September (31) August (29) July (46) June (44) May (36) April (26) March (38) February (8) January (22) December (32) November (32) October (33) September (17) August (20) July (21) June (29) May (28) April (17) March (27) February (26) January (27) December (21) November (38) October (37) September (46) August (25) July (50) June (39) May (18) April (38) March (31) February (35) January (54) December (62) November (44) October (46) September (11) August (38) July (26) June (62) May (45) April (46) March (73) February (56) January (62) December (81) November (68) October (143) September (164) August (153) July (121) June (97) May (86) April (91) March (98) February (84) January (131) December (38) November (101) October (61) September (69) August (52) July (59) June (50) May (67) April (62) March (65) February (55) January (54) December (50) November (46) October (53) September (43) August (40) July (46) June (67) May (23) April (53) March (70) February (78) January (45) December (3) November (47) October (60) September (104) August (46) July (71) June (67) May (68) April (52) March (20) February (65) January (58) December (45) November (48) October (68) September (27) August (38) July (20) June (15) May (25) April (25) March (21) February (25) January (13) December (24) November (13) October (9) June (1)
Guardians of the Galaxy was definitely a surprise hit for Marvel, with many commentators believing it to be their first commercial flop.

Of course, it wasn't and became a huge hit for Marvel and confirmed that if a reasonably original idea was put forward, audiences would go for it. Sure enough, a sequel was put into production and reports are seeping out from the set as to what's going. We've rounded up and confirmed as best we can all the rumours from the set and put forward a few theories of our own.

Check it out.

SO WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

Exact details are sketchy, but the official synopsis released a couple of days ago have it that Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) is continuing the search for his father, who we believe is played by Kurt Russell. Chris Pratt said that he's read the full script and that it made him cry, especially now that he's a father himself. Tommy Flanagan from Sons Of Anarchy has been cast and will reportedly play a Ravager who's out to collect the bounty on Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) whilst the sisterly relationship between Zoe Saldana and Karen Gillan's characters will be more heavily explored. As to who the villain is and what the overarching plot is, we've no idea. There's been some rumours of a living planet, but sources say Marvel nixed that idea as being way too weird.

WHO'S BEEN CAST?

The cast, in broad terms, are all returning. Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel and Michael Rooker are all returning. However, Glenn Close won't be back nor will Josh Brolin or his character, Thanos. Pom Klementieff has also been cast as Mantis whilst Kurt Russell has been confirmed as a cast member. It's been heavily rumoured - although not officially confirmed - that Kurt Russell will be playing Star-Lord's father. It was understood that Matthew McConaughey was to be cast in that role but then later passed. Comedian Steve Agee has been confirmed as having a small cameo role and, believe it or not, David Bowie was due to be approached to appear in a cameo before he sadly passed.

The big, BIG rumour circulating regarding the cast is that Al Pacino is in final negotiations to star as The Grandmaster, an Elder of the Universe who's connected to the story somehow. Gunn's initial treatment had it that Pacino would be the voice of Ego - a giant living planet, however Disney knocked it back and called it too risky. Again, there's been nothing officially confirmed other than whispers and rumours, however Gunn has said that he specifically wants to work with Al Pacino at some stage. It's not the craziest thing in the world, either. Marvel has a long history of getting high-profile, well-known actors in for stuff. Robert Redford in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Michael Douglas in for Ant-Man and the aforementioned Glenn Close for Guardians of the Galaxy. You even had Jeff Bridges turn up in the first Iron Man.

WILL IT BE CONNECTED TO OTHER MARVEL MOVIES?

No, definitely not. James Gunn has managed to keep Guardians of the Galaxy fairly separate from the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe and plans on keeping it that way. As he mentioned in a recent interview, there'll be very little or no mention at all of Infinity Stones or Thanos in the sequel, instead focusing on ploughing its own furrow than crowbarring in references to Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk. That's a very smart move by Gunn. Guardians of the Galaxy is far too weird and closer to '80s sci-fi than anything in the current Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not only that, if what we're hearing about Civil War is correct, they're going in a much more darker, realistic tone. Guardians of the Galaxy is none of those things so why force it to be?

WHAT ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK? WILL IT BE THE SAME '70s THEME AS THE FIRST ONE?

Yes. If you remember from the end of the first one, Star-Lord found a tape marked Awesome Mix-Tape Vol. 2 that will most likely form the basis of the soundtrack this time around. The time period that songs can be pulled from, as far as we know, would be up as far as 1988. You're talking Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald, Duran Duran, any number of absolute classic bangers in the mix. There's been next to no word on what'll feature on the soundtrack, however during his tribute to David Bowie, James Gunn mentioned that he was the only artist to feature on both soundtracks.

WHEN IT'S GOING TO BE RELEASED?

Guardians of the Galaxy is due for release here in Ireland and the UK on April 28th, 2017.
It was only recently that we were telling you about Ronan Keating's comments about a potential Westlife/Boyzone supergroup at some point in the near future.

Well, it seems that Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden have stolen his thunder and plan to form a new duo themselves, after discussing it at Keating's wedding last year. They're calling it 'Boyzlife', and are going on a UK tour in October.

"We all had a chat, the lads," McFadden told The Sun. "We said it would be amazing. Not even just performing together, but can you imagine the craic? Nine of us Irish lads on a tour bus together, going round the world together."

Yes, we can imagine the craic, all right.

He added: "We could end up adding more people to the next one. Right now this is about me and Keith but the door is always open.

Duffy, meanwhile, said: "It might end up on TV and well record a documentary of it. We might end up writing some songs together. Theres no limit to this. Were going out there with our ears and eyes open."

While several of Boyzone would be at a loose end (i.e. Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch), it's unlikely that Keating would join them anytime soon, as he is currently a mentor on the Australian version of The Voice. Shane Filan and Markus Feehily both have solo careers bubbling under, Kian Egan is on The Voice of Ireland and Nicky Byrne is representing Ireland in the Eurovision this year, as well as presenting his own 2FM show.

Having released a comeback single last year, 'Call On Me Brother', McFadden was gearing up for a new album release this year - but it's not clear whether that has now been put on hold.

Their 12-date UK tour kicks off in London in October, although it has not been announced whether they will also play in Ireland.

In the meantime, let's cast our minds back to the last pop duo that Duffy was a part of:

Update: Keith Duffy just tweeted out the first slew of dates and pre-sale codes.
The photograph below is of Shanghai's waterfront. It contains 24.9 billion-pixels in a full panorama of the Huangpu river and its surrounding area.

The company behind the shot, Big Pixel Studio, have described the image as Chinas first 10-billion pixel panoramic photo with more than 30 million page views. As impressive as that sounds, in our opinion the best thing about the image is the wonderful little secret spotted by one of the more eagle eyed (and bored) viewers.

If you zoom in on the Pudong Shangri-La hotel you'll find what we're talking about....

Yep that's a guy on the phone at the window of his hotel room. Naked.

Talk about bad timing?

Why not have a go at viewing the image and let us know in the comments what else you find? Try to keep it clean though.

Via Indy100
The secrecy around season six of Game of Thrones has just been stepped up a notch, as HBO have announced they won't be issuing any preview episodes of the show to press ahead of the premiere in what will be a first for the show, or indeed any major television series.

It doesn't come as too much of a surprise considering the controversy last year when the first four episodes leaked online meaning that there were spoilers running rife around the internet. Since then, HBO have switched to a more secure online screening system for press, but they are not taking any chances.

HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told EW; Were not sending out press copies this year, anywhere in the world. There will be no copies for review.

"Its painful for Dan and David [when leaks happen], Lombardo added. When you have press copies, inevitably friends ask, Can I see your copy? There are things that happen. We talked about the upsides and downsides. Some of the press are fans who might be disappointed, but theyll understand.

As a media outlet who previously did receive preview screenings, yes, it's slightly disappointing, but it's definitely for the greater good of the show.... and it gives us even more hope that there is one very specific reason for all this secrecy.

He's coming back guys, we can feel it.

Game of Thrones season six will premiere on Sky Atlantic at 9pm on Monday April, 25th, while it will also simulcast with the States again this year, so you night owls can see it at 2am in the early hours of Monday morning too.
The European Union is considering introducing an all-out ban on Thai fishing products due to problems with labor abuses of the immigrant labor force mainly coming from Myanmar and Cambodia. Thailand is the worlds third biggest seafood exporter but the sector is under heightened international scrutiny for right abuses and trafficked labor. Last month, more than 100 were arrested on trafficking charges linked to the fishing industry. Overall, authorities registered about 200,000 undocumented foreign workers in the sector.

Thailands ruling military junta, which came to power in 2014, wants to avoid any harm or threat to the countrys fishing industry while it is desperately trying to revive the domestic economy. Foreign ministry spokesman, Sek Wannamethee, commented yesterday (1 March) on the recent compensation paid by a Thai tuna-processing factory in Samut Sakhon to its staff for labor abuses by saying that the government is committed to use this approach in order to eliminate labor exploitation and to uplift the quality of life of workers in Thailand. The $1.3 million compensation for a myriad of labor abuses is an unusual victory for immigrant workers in the kingdoms fishing industry.

EU Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmstroem, commented that Thailands shortcomings are against the trade principles of the European Union, mainly Trade for All strategy, which takes into account also civil liberties, work conditions and human rights in trade negotiations. Miguel Ceballos Baron, Mrs Malmstroems Deputy Head of Cabinet, even said that the European Parliament would never ratify a deal with Thailand even if the Commission negotiated one. Other EU representatives also confirmed that Brussels must continue using its influence on Bangkok wisely in order to promote and achieve sustainable, legal and, above all, ethical products from the Thai fishing industry. A European Union delegation visited Thailand in January to access its progress in fighting illegal and unregulated fishing after it had criticized it in April last year for not being able to crack down on the problems in fishing.
China Life to buy 23.7% stake in China Guangfa Bank Updated: 2016-03-02 09:51 By Jiang Xueqing(China Daily)

China Life Insurance Co Ltd gained 3.97 percent to close at 20.67 yuan ($3.16) per share on Tuesday, following an agreement to buy a 23.686 percent stake in China Guangfa Bank Co Ltd.

The largest commercial insurance group in the Chinese mainland announced on Monday that it had reached a definitive agreement to acquire Citigroup Inc's 20 percent stake in CGB and IBM Credit LLC's 3.686 percent stake in the bank at 6.39 yuan per share. The acquisition will cost China Life a total of 23.31 billion yuan.

Once the transaction is settled, the insurance group will become the single largest shareholder of the Guangzhou-based commercial lender, with its stake in the bank increasing to 43.686 percent of the total.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2016, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

China Life said in a statement: "China Guangfa Bank is strongly competitive in differentiated business areas such as retail banking and lending to small and micro businesses. With well-established infrastructure, it has a foundation for the acceleration of development.

"The bank is in harmony with our corporation in terms of size, the client and businesses. After we become its single largest shareholder, both parties will have the opportunity to achieve comprehensive and collaborative development, optimize operational efficiency, improve customer loyalty, increase our comprehensive competitiveness, and enhance the ability to fight against risks."

China Life listed acquisition of a bank as one of its strategic targets last year. Apart from CGB, the group also approached Huaxia Bank Co Ltd, but it turned out that Deutsche Bank AG reached an agreement to sell its 19.99 percent stake in Huaxia Bank to People's Insurance Co (Group) of China Ltd in December.

Francisco Aristeguieta, CEO of Citi Asia Pacific, said: "While we are proud of our decade-long partnership with China Guangfa Bank, this transaction is consistent with the simplification of Citi and allows us to focus our resources in China on growing our core franchise further."

Citi first acquired its stake in CGB through a consortium investment in 2006 that included China Life.

After the introduction of strategic investors, CGB started seeking an initial public offering in 2011, in order to raise around 35 billion yuan. But the plan was shelved since its shareholding reform did not proceed smoothly, said a banking analyst who declined to be named due to regulatory requirements.

He said the equity acquisition by China Life may accelerate the bank's IPO process.

China Life noted that the investment faces risks including the worsening of asset quality and the weakening of profitability in China's banking sector.
Work starts on Airbus A330 completion center in Tianjin Updated: 2016-03-02 15:26 By Wang Wen(chinadaily.com.cn)

(L-R) Tianjin Vice-Mayor Duan Chunhua, National Development and Reform Commission Vice-Minister Lin Nianxiu, Airbus President and CEO Fabrice Bregier and Aviation Industry Corporation of China president Lin Zuoming lead a ground-breaking ceremony for an A330 Completion and Delivery Center at Airbus Tianjin facilities in Tianjin municipality, March 2, 2016. [Photo/IC]

Construction of an Airbus A330 completion and delivery centre in Tianjin began on Wednesday.

The project is a joint venture between Airbus SAS, Tianjin Free Trade Zone and Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which signed the framework agreement in 2014 and confirmed it last year.

The first A330 to be completed in the center will be delivered in September 2017, according to Airbus' plan, and the production rate of the center will be two planes monthly, a year after it opens.

The center, at the same site as the Airbus Tianjin A320 Family Final Assembly Line, will cover aircraft completion activities including cabin installation, painting and flight testing, as well as delivery.

The aircraft, which will be completed in Tianjin, will be assembled in Toulouse, France, and then fly to Tianjin for painting, cabin fitting and delivery.

At present, the in-service Airbus fleet with Chinese operators comprises more than 1,240 aircraft, including more than 170 A330 Family and in excess of 1,000 A320 Family aircraft.

China owns the largest A330 fleet in the world.
Have a story idea or tip about something happening in the East Village? Or maybe a photo? Or several photos? Or video! We'd love to hear about it. Or see it. Or something. Please go here to submit a tip.
Testosterone

Oxytocin

Cortisol

Leptin

Thyroid Hormone

Every person in the world has one thing in common is the need for fat loss. Unfortunately, this is a common scenario for many people. Thats why its important to know what hormones or steroids are available that can help you reach your goal sooner and more efficiently. If you are interested in buying weight loss steroids, then a Great place to buy weight loss steroids at LAWeekly . Five essential hormones can help increase your metabolism and burn calories at a faster rate. They are all easy to use, just like any other hormone supplement would be.Testosterone is a natural hormone that is mainly produced in males. It is the best testosterone booster you can get when burning fat  even if you have a low testosterone level. You need some testosterone to make your muscles hard and your body feel healthier. The best thing about this hormone supplement is that its use does not require a prescription for any condition. More importantly, this drug has no side effects and should be used only by adults.This hormone regulates fertility. However, this is not the only reason why it is so popular. Oxytocin helps you increase your connection and trust with other people, which makes some people addicted. Sometimes, oxytocin is used instead of morphine because of its analgesic effect. Nowadays, oxytocin fat burners are very popular among women and men who want to get rid of extra calories. Oxytocin is beneficial to lose weight faster without any side effects.Cortisol reduces stress and increases blood pressure levels in the body. It also increases blood sugar levels, contributing to more energy during a workout session or sports activities. The best thing about cortisol is that it can increase your metabolism, making it the perfect hormone for people who dont have the time and energy to go to the gym to lose fat.This is a direct response to the leptin level in your body. If it becomes too low, your hunger will increase, and you will feel inclined to eat more food than needed. Leptin can help suppress that feeling and regulate your eating habits and diet plans for losing weight fast.T3 and T4 are the hormones that promote healthy metabolism, essential for burning more calories. The only drawback to these two hormones is that they require prescriptions like any other hormone supplement and from a specialist. So whenever you want to take thyroid hormone pills, you should always check with your doctor first if it is right for you or not. There is no point in risking your health just because you dont have enough money for prescription drugs.Eating less and working out more is not the only way to lose weight. You need to do it faster and easier if you want to see results in a short time. The five hormones listed above can help you burn calories faster than ever without any effort at all.
The now out March 7th edition of "The New Yorker" has a "Talk of the Town" comment about Alexander Litvinenko's death in 2006 in London, and his wife Marina's effort to keep the story of his murder alive, and keep a focus on the F.S.B. agents who poisoned him, as well as their boss Vladimir Putin. At this point the facts are undeniable but Russia ignores requests for extradition and most recently, in 2013, the British Home Secretary rejected requests for a public inquiry into the death, apparently under pressure from Russia.A New Yorker article from November 7th, 1953, entitled the "The Old Boys" is initially about Chiang Kai-shek and the leading generals of the Nationalist Army who had settled in Taiwan. As the article moves along it veers into the direction of Russia's influence in China and on the Communists. The former top general of the Nationalists says to the writer, "What you must not forget is that the Communists have not stopped cheating you. They never stop cheating." The conversation continued and as the writer departed the old general yelled after her, "They always cheat."Bill Browder's book "Red Notice" is about a fund that he created to invest in Russia during the period of privatization under Boris Yeltsin after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With funds from Edmund Safra and the knowledge he had gained working on the Salomon Russia desk, Browder became the largest foreign investor in Russia at that time. The book describes that initial period of chaotic free market capitalism in which the few people with any understanding of how markets worked, and armed with loads of what would be called insider information in any market economy with rules, had great opportunity. Former Yukos Chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky was one of those self made oligarchs.As the markets slightly evolved and Vladimir Putin took power, Khodorkovsky and most of those like him were displaced by friends of and proxies for Putin, and the establishment of the full scale Putin run kleptocracy that exists today was put in place. "Red Notice" describes this period of Putin dominance, one that led to the beating death in prison of Browder's tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, who refused to admit to crimes that he did not commit. That eventually became a "cause celebre" for many who were trying to bring some accountability to the Putin regime, but, just broadly , sanctions, for many reasons,against Russia have yielded little results. They lead to the deprivation of the Russian people and despite that 80% of Russians maintain a nationalist fervor supporting Putin.Today, the "truce" in Syria orchestrated by the U.S. and Russia is fraught with problems due to the Russian's manipulation of Kerry and Obama with their constant lying. As all know, the ceasefire does not include ISIS or al-Nusra, and what kind of ceasefire is that? Maybe it would have been valuable, but the week before the starting date the Russians, with their presence near Damascus, bombed rebel held areas in Homs and Aleppo at an unprecedented rate and then honored the exact ceasefire date. The Assad government, who Russia and Iran support, has by all independent accounts paid little attention to the ceasefire. The Assad regime is even blocking much of the humanitarian aid that was scheduled to be delivered during the ceasefire. Putin magnanimously suggests, in his that the ceasefire is working and with patience will benefit the region. There is no comment of consequence from the Obama and Kerry team. In fact, they seem to be mute.The Russians may not by name still be Communists, but "they still always cheat."This never ends, and with Putin it is worse. What about Putin vs. Trump? They admire each other.
Comment Policy

Advance Indiana allows you to post comments via this blog subject to the guidelines set forth herein. You understand that any comments you post are your own and are not those of Advance Indiana. You further understand that Advance Indiana is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced in your comments. Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable comments are not acceptable. If you think any content posted or otherwise included in Advance Indiana violates the guidelines set forth herein, then please alert Advance Indiana. Advance Indiana reserves the right to pre-screen, edit, and remove any post as it deems appropriate. You specifically acknowledge that Advance Indiana has no obligation to display any post submitted or otherwise provided via Advance Indiana.
...an award-nominated Irish blog, with over one million hits, on Irish history and Irish politics - from today and yesterday - all 32 Counties !

Updated at least once a week . (Mirror site here) ...and we've been known to have our say on Twitter and Facebook as well!
BRUSSELS - The European Union is proposing increased humanitarian aid for Greece, where more than 20,000 refugees and migrants are stuck after borders were tightened along the Balkans preventing them from trekking north to wealthier parts of Europe.

A boy carries a baby as refugees and migrants arrive aboard the Diagoras passenger ship at the port of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece, March 1, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The EU executive's aid and crisis management commissioner will put forward a plan on Wednesday that officials said would allocate 300 million euros ($325 million) this year to helping any EU state, not only Greece, deal with humanitarian crises, and a total of 700 million over the three years to end-2018.

Commissioner Christos Stylianides, who oversees annual foreign aid spending of 1.1 billion euros, will propose funding the new scheme through transfers within the EU's existing multi-year budget, officials said, without touching funds earmarked for humanitarian relief outside the 28-nation bloc.

Beyond 2018, the scheme would continue with further funding.

A European Commission spokesman told reporters the new plan was needed "to prevent humanitarian suffering as a result of an unprecedented number of people arriving in the EU".

Margaritis Schinas said the Commission was very concerned at violence on the Greek-Macedonian border. He spoke as the bloc is gearing up for a summit on Monday with Turkey, the point of departure for the vast majority of people heading to Europe.

More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year -- mostly via Turkey to Greece -- and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

Overwhelmed, Greece and other countries along the main migration route have tended to wave the people through and the influx has brought Europe's Schengen zone of free travel to the verge of collapse.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker talked to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk will visit Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey this week.

Brussels and Berlin, which are battling to make a joint European plan to alleviate the migration crisis work, are banking on Turkey to sharply reduce the number of people embarking for Europe, many of whom have fled the war in Syria.

But a growing number of EU states are resorting to unilaterally tightening their own borders, seeking to control the flow of people and prevent a spike in the arrivals many expect later in March as the weather improves.

Austria, the last stop for refugees and migrants heading to their top destination Germany, infuriated Athens, Berlin and Brussels last month by announcing daily caps on the number of people it processes.

Chancellor Werner Faymann defended the step, saying Austria cannot become a waiting room for Germany.

Tusk, in Vienna on the first leg of his pre-summit tour along the Balkans migration route, said after talks with Faymann: "We must face together the consequences of our decisions. The country that we must support in particular is Greece." ($1 = 0.9211 euros)
This is a place where we post our latest news and views. Whether it is family news or church news we will look to be fairly regular with our comments (a couple of times a month maybe). Hope you enjoy it.
nutella

Maria Franca Fissolo is the richest person in Italy with a net worth of $22.1 billion, surpassing eyewear tycoon Leonardo Del Vecchio and drugstore behemoth Stefano Pessina, according to Forbes' 2016 ranking of the richest people on the planet. Little is known about the personal life of Fissolo, the fourth-richest woman on the planet and the widow of Michele Ferrero, the Italian chocolate manufacturer whose empire includes household brands Ferrero Rocher, Nutella, Kinder, and Tic Tac.

The ranking comes one year after Ferrero's death in February 2015  he was previously listed on Forbes' billionaires list as the 30th richest person in the world. Ferrero left his fortune to his wife and family, and he left control of the Ferrero Group, his $9.1 billion revenue company, in the hands of his son, Giovanni, who now serves as CEO.

The 70-year history of the company began when Ferrero's father, Pietro, set up a confectionary lab in northern Italy to supply his wife's pastry shop in 1946. Pietro used hazelnuts in his recipes to make up for a shortage of cocoa caused by World War II. After his death in 1949, the Ferrero Group fell into the hands of his young son Michele, who introduced new brands and developed a global expansion plan.

Ferrero reportedly added vegetable oil to his fathers chocolate-hazelnut recipe to make it spreadable. In 1964, he put the spread into glass jars and coined Nutella. Within the decade, Ferrero added Kinder, Tic Tac, and the family's namesake chocolate, Ferrero Rocher, to its cache of household brands.

Nutella is famous for being a truly global product. According to a 2013 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the company outsources all of Nutella's ingredients: "hazelnuts are from Turkey; the palm oil is from Malaysia; the cocoa is from Nigeria; the sugar is from either Brazil or Europe; and the vanilla flavoring is from France." Ferrero products are sold today in more than 160 countries.

Story continues

While the family is native of Italy, they live primarily in Monaco. When he ran the company, Michele Ferrero reportedly flew via helicopter to the company's headquarters in Alba every day.

Pietro, Ferrero's eldest son and co-CEO, was set to inherit control of the company with his brother Giovanni before he died of a suspected heart attack in 2011. Giovanni is now the sole leader of the Ferrero Group.

NOW WATCH: New Yorkers are going crazy for this Nutella-stuffed pastry





More From Business Insider


Children gather outside an evacuation centre in the village of Drauni-Ivi on February 25, 2016, after Cyclone Winston swept through Fiji (AFP Photo/Steven Saphore) (AFP)

Humanitarian aid was finally reaching isolated communities in Fiji devastated by super-cyclone Winston, officials said Friday, with the government estimating the damage bill will top hundreds of millions of dollars.

At least 44 people died when the most powerful storm in Fiji's history hit on Saturday and the UN says about 50,000 -- more than five percent of the entire population -- have been left homeless.

Some of the worst-affected villages were on far-flung islands, complicating the relief effort, but the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said they were now receiving aid after days of waiting.

"Aid has begun arriving in cyclone-affected communities, especially the hard-hit outer islands and Rakiraki in the west (of the main island Viti Levu)," it said.

The agency added the challenge remained significant.

"Intermittent essential services, as well as poor road access and communications difficulties, remain a constraint for both assessments and the delivery of relief," it said.

The cyclone lashed Fiji with gusts of 325 kilometres per hour (202 miles per hour) and Oxfam said the Pacific nation's humanitarian needs were "huge and widespread".

The charity's Fiji chief Dolores Devesi said some settlements had been completely destroyed, leading to cramped evacuation centres where outbreaks of disease and diarrhoea were a danger.

"Its very crowded, so theres a risk that the toilets and water supplies wont be adequate to cope with the number of people in the centres," she said.

The government, which has declared a 30-day state of natural disaster, said the storm was a costly blow for Fiji.

"If you take into account the number of homes all over Fiji that have been damaged, demolished, (the) impact on agriculture... the impact on power lines, you can easily say it's FJ$1.0 billion (US$470 million) so far, Finance Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum told reporters on Thursday.

Australia and New Zealand have so far led the international response, sending planes laden with supplies, helicopters and medevac teams.

New Zealand is also dispatching two naval ships this weekend, while France sent two military transports from New Caledonia.

In addition, there has been financial support from Australia, New Zealand, India, China, the United States, Japan, Nauru and the Asian Development Bank.
The past week saw an array of developments in the airline space. Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings RJET filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing pilot shortage as the primary reason for its action. Furthermore, struggling carrier GOL Linhas GOL stated that it intends to trim routes in an attempt to counter headwinds posed by the deteriorating Brazilian economy. In addition, the Brazilian company announced that it will receive a significant cash inflow.

Moreover, according to a Reuters report, foreign ownership in Brazilian carriers has been increased to 49% from 20%. Shares of Gol Linhas reacted positively to the news.

Atlanta, GA-based Delta Air Lines DAL also grabbed headlines with Moody's Investors Service, the rating services arm of Moody's, unveiling its bullish view on the carrier. Meanwhile, Southwest Airlines LUV received encouraging news on the labor front with its flight instructors ratifying a deal for higher pay. Low-cost carrier JetBlue Airways Corp. JBLU was also in the news by virtue of its efforts to strengthen its footprint in Latin America.

On the price front, the NYSE ARCA Airline index decreased 2.23% to $84.48 in the course of last week, with oil prices moving north.

Read the last Airline Stock Roundup for Feb 24, 2016.

Recap of the Past Weeks Most Important Stories

1. Republic Airways Holdings, the parent company of Republic Airlines and Shuttle America, sought bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The carrier, plagued by a dearth of pilots, has seen its revenues dwindling in the recent past (read more: Republic Airways Falls Prey to Pilot Shortage, Files for Bankruptcy).

2. In a bid to overcome its struggles, GOL Linhas announced that it intends to reduce landings and takeoffs of its flights by at least 6%. The carrier also aims to discontinue services to seven destinations this year. GOL also said that it will return five planes to leasing companies apart from taking delivery of only one aircraft by Dec 31, 2017 as opposed to the originally planned 15.

Story continues

Moreover, the carrier will receive a significant cash injection (up to one billion reais) as it aims to bolster its balance sheet. The Sao Paulo-based carrier also said that the Brazilian Securities Commission has cleared its efforts to change the ratio of its American Depositary Shares to preferred shares from 1:1 to 1:10.

3.According to Moody's Investors Service, Delta is well-equipped to handle the situation even if fuel prices move up. Moodys is also highly impressed with Deltas efforts to reduce its debt levels. The firm believes interest expenses will drop further at Delta as it is expected to continue with its debt reduction strategy. This should help mitigate the pressure on the bottom line in the event of oil prices moving north (read more: Delta Air Lines Receives Vote of Confidence from Moody's).

4. Members of the Transport Workers Union Local 557, representing the flight instructors of Southwest Airlines, ratified a four-year contract with the carrier, which guarantees them higher pay, other financial benefits and improved working conditions. Approximately 68% of the votes cast were in favor of the deal, which becomes amendable on Dec 31, 2019. The tentative deal was inked in Jan 2016.

5. In a bid to expand further in Latin America, JetBlue Airways has started operating daily flights between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Quitos Mariscal Sucre International Airport in Ecuador. Quito is increasingly gaining popularity as a holiday destination (read more: JetBlue Adds Ecuador Flights, Latin-American Plans on Track).

Performance

The following table shows the price movement of the major airline players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Company Past Week Last 6 months HA 7.22% 82.71% UAL 6.55% 1.94% GOL 21.91% -47.25% DAL 0.39% 6.33% JBLU -0.31% -5.23% AAL 4.53% 0.77% SAVE 3.38% -5.35% LUV 3.50% 12.67% CPA 4.14% -0.37% ALK 5.95% -2.23%

The table above shows that all airline stocks have gained over the past week with JetBlue Airways as the sole exception. Over the course of six months, airline stocks exhibited a mixed trend with the NYSE ARCA Airline index declining marginally. GOL Linhas emerged as the biggest loser (47.25%) during the period due to a weak economy and currency struggles. On the other hand, shares of Hawaiian Holdings HA gained the most (82.71%) in the period.

What's Next in the Airline Biz?

Investors will remain focused on updates from the J.P. Morgan Aviation, Transportation & Industrials Conference which will see presentations from airline heavyweights like American Airlines Group AAL and JetBlue. Moreover, February traffic updates from carriers are expected in the coming days.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



SOUTHWEST AIR (LUV): Free Stock Analysis Report



REPUBLIC AIRWAY (RJET): Free Stock Analysis Report



JETBLUE AIRWAYS (JBLU): Free Stock Analysis Report



GOL LINHAS-ADR (GOL): Free Stock Analysis Report



DELTA AIR LINES (DAL): Free Stock Analysis Report



HAWAIIAN HLDGS (HA): Free Stock Analysis Report



AMER AIRLINES (AAL): Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Nikki Haley.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had a three-word response to Donald Trump on Tuesday after he called her an embarrassment.

"Bless your heart," she tweeted at Trump, the Republican presidential frontrunner.

Trump, the frontrunner for the nomination, has been sparring with rival Marco Rubio for days after the senator went on the offensive against Trump at a Republican debate last Thursday.

Trump went after Haley, one of Rubio's supporters, on Tuesday.

"The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!" Trump tweeted.

"Bless your heart" isn't quite a nicety in the South. It's more of a condescending way of dismissing someone.

NOW WATCH: 'My party has gone bats--- crazy: Lindsay Graham jokes about killing Ted Cruz and bashes the remaining GOP candidates





More From Business Insider


SAO PAULO, BRAZIL--(Marketwired - Mar 2, 2016) - The economic crisis in Brazil, one of the world's most important growth markets, is taking a toll on consumer sentiment. Anxiety over job security, personal debt, and Brazil's economy has risen significantly since 2014, and 72% of consumers say they intend to cut discretionary spending in the year ahead. These are among the findings of new research released today by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Consumer worries have reached the highest levels since BCG began surveying Brazilian consumers, in 2009. The shift in consumer sentiment in the past few years has been dramatic. Fifty-one percent of Brazilian consumers say they are "anxious about the future," according to the survey of more than 2,000 Brazilians of all income levels conducted by BCG's Center for Customer Insight. In contrast, 39% of Brazilians in 2014 and only 30% in 2012 expressed anxiety about the future. Spending cuts can be expected to varying degrees nearly across the board, including in luxury goods, services, food, clothing, and home appliances.

Despite its economic challenges, however, Brazil remains one of the world's biggest markets for many products. Brands that scale back in Brazil now could lose customer loyalty, which will be difficult to regain when the economy eventually recovers.

"Companies cannot afford to bail out of Brazil," said Daniel Azevedo, a BCG partner. "But consumer product companies that have ramped up for dramatic growth will have to streamline their operations and be very strategic in their approach to the market."

The findings reflect how deeply Brazil's economic crisis has affected consumers. After a decade during which GDP growth averaged 3% to 4%, Brazil slipped into recession in mid-2014. GDP contracted by 3% in 2015. Eighty percent of consumers surveyed by BCG said they believe Brazil is facing an economic crisis, and 58% said they believe that recovery will take more than three years.

Story continues

Rising personal debt burdens are one significant constraint on spending. Forty-three percent of respondents reported that they are devoting more than 30% of their incomes to paying off debt, compared with 33% who gave that response in 2014. Another 18% are paying 20% to 30% of their incomes to service debt. The survey also found that 54% of Brazilian consumers are borrowing in order to pay routine expenses such as rent, utilities, and groceries -- a 5 percentage-point increase since 2014. Thirty-two percent are borrowing to buy clothes and shoes.

The weak Brazilian real, which has lost more than 40% of its value against the U.S. dollar over the past year, also is hurting Brazilian consumers by making imported electronics, luxury items, foods, and other products more expensive. The weakened real also indirectly inflates the prices of goods that use imported materials and machinery.

The research found that financial anxieties are significantly altering consumption patterns in Brazil. Ninety-five percent of consumers said they have changed their shopping and saving behavior in some way. Sixty-three percent said they are eating at home more often, 60% said they are "buying fewer things overall," and 58% are saving more. All are significant increases from 2014. A greater percentage also said they are hunting for better prices.

Although Brazilians plan to spend less on all kinds of foods and beverages, many respondents indicated that health and quality remain high priorities -- in keeping with findings in previous BCG surveys. Sixty-four percent of respondents cited "healthier or better for you" as a reason for trading up to higher-value products. For the fifth year in a row, "fresh food" was cited as the top food category for trading up in 2015. Fresh fruits and vegetables, locally grown food, natural products, "super foods," and organic milk were also high trading-up priorities. In addition to fast-service restaurants and sit-down restaurants, the leading categories cited for trading down were snack foods, energy drinks, and sugar confectionaries.

Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they plan to "trade down" to lower-value non-food items, compared with only 33% who gave that response in 2011. Magazines, luxury brands, fashion jewelry, and travel purchases were the top trading-down priorities.

For consumers who intend to trade up, the categories cited most often were beauty and personal care products. But even these consumers want value for money. The highest priorities cited by respondents are products that "give better results" and offer "meaningful technical differences" relative to competing products. By contrast, only 48% said they intend to trade up because they "deserve it," compared with 81% who cited that reason in 2011.

"While many consumers are still willing to pay a premium for goods and services that are most important to them, they are paying much more attention to whether a product offers tangible benefits and value," said Rim Abida, a BCG principal.

Many companies will need to overhaul their approach to Brazil in order to succeed in the challenging years ahead, according to the authors. They will need to take a fresh look at their product portfolios, brand positioning, pricing strategies, and marketing messages to make sure they are in line with the priorities of key consumer segments and Brazil's new economic context. And rather than trying to achieve growth through higher sales volume, many companies should seek to boost profitability by improving the efficiency of their operations.

"For companies that really understand the wants and needs of today's Brazilian consumers -- and the best ways to reach them -- the downturn offers great opportunities to win market share for the long term," said Eduardo Leone, a BCG partner. "But with the easy growth years over, they will have to be much more strategic in the way they target consumers and will need to make their organizations much leaner. For many companies, this will require a transformation of their Brazilian organizations."

For press inquiries, please contact Anna Damico at damico.annamoreno@bcg.com or +55 11 3046 9148.

About BCG's Center for Customer Insight

The Boston Consulting Group's Center for Customer Insight (CCI) applies a unique, integrated approach that combines quantitative and qualitative consumer research with a deep understanding of business strategy and competitive dynamics. The center works closely with BCG's various practices to translate its insights into actionable strategies that lead to tangible economic impact for our clients. In the course of its work, the center has amassed a rich set of proprietary data on consumers from around the world, in both emerging and developed markets. The CCI is sponsored by BCG's Marketing & Sales and Global Advantage practices. For more information, please visit http://www.bcg.com/expertise/institutes/center-customer-insight

About The Boston Consulting Group

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with 85 offices in 48 countries. For more information, please visit bcg.com.

About bcgperspectives.com

Bcgperspectives.com features the latest thinking from BCG experts as well as from CEOs, academics, and other leaders. It covers issues at the top of senior management's agenda. It also provides unprecedented access to BCG's extensive archive of thought leadership stretching back 50 years to the days of Bruce Henderson, the firm's founder and one of the architects of modern management consulting. All of our content -- including videos, podcasts, commentaries, and reports -- can be accessed by PC, mobile, iPad, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
SAO PAULO, March 2 (Reuters) - The board of Brazil's state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro Sa has approved the start of exclusive negotiations to sell its stake in Petrobras Argentina to Pampa Energy, according to a securities filing on Wednesday.

In a separate filing, the company said its board had approved the start of a competitive process to sell rights to explore and develop a group of onshore oil fields, along with related assets, without naming possible buyers.

(Reporting by Brad Haynes and Priscila Jordao Editing by W Simon)
Motley Fool

Shares in copper miner Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) were up by more than 8% by early afternoon today. The results themselves brought few surprises; after all, investors can see where the price of copper is in the market and therefore ascertain the trend in Freeport's revenue. During the earnings call, CEO Richard Adkerson talked of the physical copper market being "strikingly tight globally right now" and customers "fighting" to get hold of products.
By Tom Polansek and Valerie Parent

CHICAGO/PARIS, March 2 (Reuters) - Bunge Ltd will deliver a cargo of French wheat that Egypt rejected in December to Spain, in a further sign the agricultural trading house has been unable to resolve a dispute with Egypt over the quality of the grain, U.S. and European traders said.

Bunge, one of the world's top grain traders and processors, reached an agreement with the owner of the ship carrying the rejected wheat to deliver it to another client in Spain, a trader with knowledge of the deal told Reuters.

A Bunge spokeswoman in the United States did not respond to questions about the cargo this week.

Chandris Hellas Inc, the ship's owner, also did not respond to requests for comment.

The vessel, named Amira, is estimated to arrive on Friday in Tarragona, a port city in northeastern Spain, according to Reuters shipping data. It temporarily stopped near Malta on its journey from the Egyptian port of Damietta, the data show.

Traders said the grain, which Bunge sold to Egypt as milling wheat for human consumption, will likely be delivered as feed wheat for livestock.

"It is always difficult to sell wheat for food which was rejected by another buyer for quality reasons," a trader said.

Bunge launched legal proceedings against Egypt's state grain buyer after inspectors rejected the cargo for containing too much of a common fungus known as ergot.

Confusion over Egypt's position on ergot levels has disrupted wheat tenders, raising the possibility of a shortage of grain that could pose a political problem for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The impoverished population relies on highly subsidized bread.

Bunge has said the quality of the rejected French wheat met the terms of Egypt's tender and that the company wanted to complete delivery of the rejected cargo.

Discussions about Bunge sending Egypt a replacement cargo ended with no agreement, the country's state grain buyer said last month.

On Tuesday, Egypt bought 180,000 tonnes of Romanian and Ukrainian wheat in its latest tender.

(Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg and Jonathan Saul in London; Editing by Tom Brown)
in n out burger

From the no-frills menu to the juicy burgers, fresh lettuce and perfectly crispy-on-the-outside-soft-on-the-inside french fries, what's not to love about In-N-Out?

Apparently one thing, at least according to some vocal fans: the company is still using meat from animals who are routinely fed antibiotics.

Last week, representatives from over 50 consumer and environmental groups sent a letter to the Irvine, California based chain asking them to stop serving meat produced with the drugs.

The practice of feeding farm animals antibiotics is routine: The drugs, when used judiciously, can be a critical tool for the ranchers who raise our livestock.

It's when too many of the drugs are given out too frequently  especially to animals that don't need them  that major problems begin to surface.

Years of research from around the world, including a 2013 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, strongly suggest that antibiotic overuse is fueling a grim scenario where super-strong, infection-igniting bacteria (so called "superbugs") no longer respond to the drugs we prescribe to treat them.

In near future, experts say, we'll end up plagued by everyday infections that our precious antibiotics are powerless to treat.

The problem is being driven by two main factors  only one of which is related to food:

Antibiotics

1. Doctors are giving antibiotics to people who don't necessarily need them, and the problem is deadly:

Experts estimate that as many as half of all antibiotic prescriptions given out in the US are unnecessary. Between 2000 and 2010, international sales of antibiotics for human use shot up 36%, according to a recent report in the British medical journal The Lancet. The practice is already having tragic effects: In 2013, 23,000 Americans died from bacterial infections that didn't respond to antibiotics.

2. Farmers are feeding large amounts of antibiotics to livestock: Farmers give antibiotics to pigs, cattle, and chickens, and in the process create stronger, more resistant bacterial strains. According to a recent USDA report, the amount of antibiotics farmers gave to their stocks rose by 16% between 2009 and 2012. But here's an even bigger problem: Close to 70% of those drugs are also the ones that humans use to fight infections. Oops.

Story continues

In-N-Out wouldn't be alone if it turned away from antibiotics

Moe Chipotle 17

If it chooses to respond to the letter (which from its email to Reuters it sounds like it very well could), In-N-Out would join a handful of other chains that have promised to phase-out meat produced with antibiotics.

They include Chipotle, who already says it's antibiotic-free, and McDonald's, who says it has plans to reduce its use of meat made with the drugs.

As a hamburger restaurant known for its high-quality, fresh ingredients, In-N-Out should be a leader on this issue," Public Health Advocate with CALPIRG Education Fund Jason Pfeifle, one of the letters co-signatories, said in a press release. "It's time for the company to set a strong antibiotics policy that will help push the meat industry to do the right thing for public health."

NOW WATCH: Researchers say your over-the-counter cold medicine doesnt actually work





More From Business Insider


OTTAWA, ON / ACCESSWIRE / March 2, 2016 / Carube Copper Corp. (CUC.V) is in high spirits with regards to our two Joint Ventures and our 100% owned projects: two in Jamaica and three in British Columbia. Please drop by our booth for the latest exploration results on all seven projects. Enter to win a bottle of 12 year-old Appleton Estates Jamaican Rum or an award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon from British Columbia's Burrowing Owl Winery.







Updates Available on All 7 Projects



To view an enhanced version of Updates Available on All 7 Projects image, please visit:

https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/19476_enhanced1.jpg

Contacts

Jeff Ackert, President and CEO  1-613-839-3258  jackert@carubecopper.com

Vern Rampton, Executive VP  1-613-839-3258  vrampton@carubecopper.com

Alar Soever, Chairman  1-705-682-9297  asoever@carubecopper.com

www.carubecopper.com

Carube Copper Corp. (CUC.V) is a Canadian exploration company focused on the exploration and development of copper and gold projects in Jamaica and Canada. In Jamaica, two projects, totalling 188 square kilometres in area, are the subject of separate joint venture agreements with OZ Minerals Limited, an Australian copper-gold producer with a market capitalization of over $1B. Carube Copper holds a 100% interest in two other nearby projects, totalling 72 square kilometres. In Canada, Carube Copper holds a 100% interest in three porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum properties, totalling 593 square kilometres within the Tertiary-aged Cascade Magmatic Arc in southwestern British Columbia. Exploration continues on these properties with the goal of joint-venturing them to larger exploration and mining companies.

SOURCE: Carube Copper Corp.
A man holds an iPhone as he visits Sina's Weibo microblogging site in Shanghai May 29, 2012. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party will impose "severe intra-party penalties" on a former property tycoon whose microblogs were closed at the weekend after he criticised government policy, state news agency Xinhua reported.

Microblog portals such as Weibo.com and t.qq.com, among China's most popular, were ordered to shut the accounts of Ren Zhiqiang, a retired top executive from a state-controlled property developer who had more than 30 million online followers.

China's Internet regulator said that Ren, a party member, had been "spreading illegal information".

Chinese media has accused Ren of making remarks criticising state media and questioning whether taxpayers money should be used to promote the government.

The Beijing city Xicheng district party committee said that Ren had "released illegal information and made inappropriate comments online, resulting in a vile influence and damage to the party image", Xinhua said late on Monday.

The committee, where Ren is registered as a party member, will "punish him strictly according to party rules", the report said, without elaborating.

Party punishments generally involved administrative demerits, but in extreme cases members can be expelled, which generally happens to those implicated in major corruption cases.

It has not been possible to reach Ren for comment.

The Chinese government routinely censors the Internet, blocking many sites deemed to have undermined the rule of the Communist Party or threatened stability, including global sites such as Facebook and Google's main search engine and Gmail service.

Authorities have launched numerous operations to combat illegal online behaviour, from pornography to gambling.

Last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping toured the country's top three state new organizations - Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily and China Central Television - and asked them to toe the party line.

Since assuming office in late 2012, Xi has overseen a crackdown on rights groups, especially lawyers, that has drawn international condemnation.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
The partially-capsized boat believed to be owned by German national Manfred Fritz Bajorat, whose mummified body was found inside, marooned off the coast of Barobo, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao (AFP Photo/)

A German sailor whose mummified body was found on a yacht adrift off the southern Philippines had died of a heart attack about a week earlier, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday.

Police earlier named the victim as Manfred Fritz Bajorat, based on documents found on the yacht last Friday, but still do not know where he had sailed from or where he was heading.

"The cause of death is acute myocardial infarction based on the autopsy by (the) regional crime laboratory," national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor told AFP.

"The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days," he added, citing a statement by police in the southern Philippines.

Bajorat was a 59-year-old veteran yachtsman who left his native Germany two decades ago and lost his long-time wife several years ago, according to Germany's Bild daily, which quoted an old friend.

The newspaper also published pictures of the man hunched over a table in the main cabin, and cited forensics experts who explained that a combination of tropical heat, dry wind and salty sea air can quickly preserve or mummify a corpse.

Police in the town of Barobo on the east coast of Mindanao island, where the corpse was taken, said the German embassy was arranging for a relative to fly to the Philippines.

"It appears he has a daughter based in Germany and the embassy is to fly her here to identify the dead body," Chief Inspector Dominador Plaza, the Barobo police chief, told AFP.

- 'Around the world trip' -

Local fishermen found the white-hulled, 13-metre (44-foot) yacht with a broken mast adrift on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean on Friday.

Police launched an inquiry to determine whether Bajorat had been the victim of a crime, but the autopsy result indicated otherwise.

The area where the boat was found is some 100 kilometres (60 miles) off Barobo, said the town's deputy police chief Inspector Mark Navales.

Story continues

"The... salt water in the air could have mummified his body," Navales added.

German-language documents, old pictures of a family visiting Paris landmarks, rice and tinned food lay scattered in the cabin of the boat, which had taken in water and was listing, police said.

One document photographed by police indicated the boat had obtained clearance from maritime police in Sao Vicente in 2013, although it was unclear if it was issued in Cape Verde or Brazil, which both have ports of the same name.

Bild quoted an old friend as saying Bajorat "emigrated 20 years ago, first to the Netherlands, then he wanted to travel around the world with his wife".

"I haven't seen him since then," said the friend, who added that he had stayed in contact with Bajorat via Facebook once or twice a year.

"The last time was a year ago. At the time he said he wanted to go on (another) around-the-world trip," said the friend.

The sailor's wife of some 30 years, Claudia, was believed to have died years ago, likely in 2010 on the Caribbean island of Martinique, said Bild.
By Julia Fioretti

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union executive urged U.S. regulators on Wednesday to allow budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle (NWC.OL) to fly to the United States from Ireland, warning it may escalate the matter after two years of deadlock.

Europe's third-biggest carrier wants to expand its long-haul operations to the United States but has run into opposition from unions and some U.S. airlines who say Norwegian would undermine wages and working standards.

The European Commission has previously said that the delay constitutes a breach of the Open Skies air traffic agreement between the European Union and the United States.

The airline has relied on the fuel-efficient 787 jetliner from Boeing Co (BA.N) to keep its costs low and cut fares on trans-Atlantic routes dominated by traditional flag carriers.

Norwegian's Irish subsidiary applied for permission to operate flights to the United States more than two years ago but the U.S. Department of Transportation has yet to approve it.

"I hope that actions will rapidly be taken to ensure compliance with the EU-U.S. Air Transport Agreement," Violeta Bulc, EU Transport Commissioner, said in a statement after meetings in Washington D.C.

"The EU is seriously considering all available options to swiftly solve the issue."

That could mean submitting an arbitration request to resolve the dispute, something that has never been done before.

Norwegian currently flies to the United States from Norway and elsewhere in Europe, including Britain, on its Norwegian operating licence.

It has asked for permission to fly on its UK operating licence, but that has also been delayed.

Pending the U.S. approval, the carrier has had to delay a new service from Cork, Ireland, while it will start direct flights between Paris and the United States.

(Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
* IMF, euro zone disagree on Greek growth, primary surplus outlook Athens needs more pension reform or better euro zone debt relief

* Debt talks, loans on hold until euro zone, IMF views align

By Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS, March 2 (Reuters) - Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund disagree over how much more Greece needs to do to reform its economy, a dispute that may delay new payouts and the start of debt relief talks, officials said.

Greece has been kept afloat since 2010 by IMF and euro zone bailouts. The lenders have disagreed in the past, but they have managed to resolve their issues before they got much publicity.

But after Athens had to ask for a third bailout last year, officials said that some in the IMF wanted to stay out of yet another programme unless they were sure it would get Greece back on its feet.

"The main problem now is disagreement between the institutions, because that will harm the credibility of any solution," one senior official said. "They must get their act together and agree on a scenario and on policy measures."

IMF and euro zone officials hope to reach a compromise on Greece in talks this week, before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday. Senior officials from both sides are to meet for dinner on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the issue.

Until the euro zone and the IMF agree, they cannot decide if Greece has met the first requirements for the payout of new loans. Nor can the euro zone start discussions with Athens on debt relief that would help make Greece's huge debt sustainable.

Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July, giving the lenders and Athens time to find a compromise. But the drawn- out talks undermine investor confidence.

"If we now enter a cycle of whether this review will be concluded or not, it will generate the kind of insecurity we more or less had last year ... with the loss of confidence and capital flight," a third official close to the lenders said.

Story continues

The dispute focuses on what the country needs to do to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018 and keep it there so that it no longer has to borrow from other euro zone governments to remain solvent.

Officials said the IMF had a more cautious outlook than euro zone institutions on Greek economic growth and fiscal performance, as experience showed Athens underperformed targets.

The IMF believes Greece's primary surplus in 2018 will be around 2 percent with the current reforms. Growth will be about a percentage point lower than forecast by the euro zone. Greece should therefore be more ambitious with reforms, especially with the most politically difficult, pension reform.

REFORMS NOT ENOUGH

Yet Greece's commitments are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the euro zone in August. It says the pension reform will deliver savings of 1 percent of gross domestic product in 2016. The draft reform prepared by Athens does that.

The IMF was involved in talks on the memorandum, but did not sign off on it and is not formally part of the bailout. It says the numbers don't add up.

"To reach its ambitious medium-term target for the primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP, Greece will need to take measures in the order of some 4-5 percent of GDP," the IMF's head of the European department, Poul Thomsen, wrote on his blog on Feb 11. "We cannot see how Greece can do so without major savings on pensions."

The pension reform could be less ambitious and the 2018 primary surplus lower if the euro zone offered Greece greater debt relief, Thomsen said.

That would irk some in the euro zone who have to maintain similar surpluses to keep debt sustainable or who, like the Baltics or Slovakia, find it difficult to justify Greeks getting bigger pensions than their own citizens.

Another snag is that the IMF wants debt relief to solve the issue once and for all. The euro zone wants a staggered scheme, linked to conditions over time.

While the IMF is not formally part of the third bailout, the euro zone would very much like it to be. But the Fund will not join unless their views align.

The approval of the IMF is also a must for northern European countries like Germany, Austria or Finland, which believe the European Commission is too lenient towards Greece and too optimistic with forecasts.

"The Germans and others are warning the Commission that the conditions for concluding the review have to be sufficient to bring the Fund on board," a fourth official said.

"The French are supporting the Greek view that the MoU conditions alone should be the criteria for concluding the review," the official said.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, additional reporting by Paul Taylor in Brussels, Gernot Heller in Berlin, editing by Larry King)
Piggybank painted in colours of Greek flag stands in front of letters spelling word 'GREECE' in this picture illustration taken in Berlin A piggybank painted in the colours of the Greek flag stands amongst various euro coins in front of letters spelling the word 'GREECE' in this picture illustration taken in Berlin, Germany June 30, 2015. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

By Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund disagree over how much more Greece needs to do to reform its economy, a dispute that may delay new payouts and the start of debt relief talks, officials said.

Greece has been kept afloat since 2010 by IMF and euro zone bailouts. The lenders have disagreed in the past, but they have managed to resolve their issues before they got much publicity.

But after Athens had to ask for a third bailout last year, some in the IMF wanted to stay out of yet another programme unless they were sure it would get Greece back on its feet.

"The main problem now is disagreement between the institutions, because that will harm the credibility of any solution," one senior official said. "They must get their act together and agree on a scenario and on policy measures."

IMF and euro zone officials hope to reach a compromise on Greece in talks this week, before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday. Senior officials from both sides are to meet for dinner on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the issue.

Until the euro zone and the IMF agree, they cannot decide if Greece has met the first requirements for the payout of new loans. Nor can the euro zone start discussions with Athens on debt relief that would help make Greece's huge debt sustainable.

Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July, giving the lenders and Athens time to find a compromise. But the drawn- out talks undermine investor confidence.

"If we now enter a cycle of whether this review will be concluded or not, it will generate the kind of insecurity we more or less had last year ... with the loss of confidence and capital flight," a third official close to the lenders said.

The dispute focuses on what Greece has to do to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018 and keep it there so that it no longer has to borrow from the euro zone to remain solvent.

Officials said the IMF had a more cautious outlook than euro zone institutions on Greek economic growth and fiscal performance, as experience showed Athens underperformed targets.

Story continues

The IMF believes Greece's primary surplus in 2018 will be around 2 percent with the current reforms. Growth will be about a percentage point lower than forecast by the euro zone. Greece should therefore be more ambitious with reforms, especially with the most politically difficult, pension reform.

REFORMS NOT ENOUGH

Yet Greece's commitments are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the euro zone in August. It says the pension reform will deliver savings of 1 percent of gross domestic product in 2016.

The draft reform prepared by Athens does that, but Greece also understood the deal from August a bit differently.

"In summer we promised to do 1 pct GDP of extra measures to be legislated in 2016 but to be implemented in 2017 and 2018. The IMF is asking for even more measures than this, which is very difficult for us to understand," Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told a hearing in the European Parliament.

"We feel that we have already compromised. I dont think we have to make a greater compromise ... because we are at the end of a recession and ... we have already had 11 cuts," he said.

The IMF was involved in talks on the memorandum, but did not sign off on it and is not formally part of the bailout. It says the numbers don't add up.

"To reach its ambitious medium-term target for the primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP, Greece will need to take measures in the order of some 4-5 percent of GDP," the IMF's head of the European department, Poul Thomsen, wrote on Feb 11. "We cannot see how Greece can do so without major savings on pensions."

The pension reform could be less ambitious and the 2018 primary surplus lower if the euro zone offered Greece greater debt relief, Thomsen said.

That would irk some in the euro zone who have to maintain similar surpluses to keep debt sustainable or who, like the Baltics or Slovakia, find it difficult to justify Greeks getting bigger pensions than their own citizens.

"We should do what we promised in the summer, and the IMF should pressure the EU to make that sustainable (with more debt relief)," Tsakalotos told European parliamentarians.

Another snag is that the IMF wants debt relief to solve the issue once and for all. The euro zone wants a staggered scheme, linked to conditions over time.

While the IMF is not formally part of the third bailout, the euro zone would very much like it to be. But the Fund will not join unless their views align.

The approval of the IMF is also a must for northern European countries like Germany, Austria or Finland, which believe the European Commission is too lenient towards Greece and too optimistic with forecasts.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, additional reporting by Paul Taylor and Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Gernot Heller in Berlin, editing by Larry King)
* IMF, euro zone disagree on Greek growth, primary surplus outlook Athens needs more pension reform or better euro zone debt relief

* Debt talks, loans on hold until euro zone, IMF views align (Adds Greek finance minister's comments)

By Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS, March 2 (Reuters) - Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund disagree over how much more Greece needs to do to reform its economy, a dispute that may delay new payouts and the start of debt relief talks, officials said.

Greece has been kept afloat since 2010 by IMF and euro zone bailouts. The lenders have disagreed in the past, but they have managed to resolve their issues before they got much publicity.

But after Athens had to ask for a third bailout last year, some in the IMF wanted to stay out of yet another programme unless they were sure it would get Greece back on its feet.

"The main problem now is disagreement between the institutions, because that will harm the credibility of any solution," one senior official said. "They must get their act together and agree on a scenario and on policy measures."

IMF and euro zone officials hope to reach a compromise on Greece in talks this week, before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday. Senior officials from both sides are to meet for dinner on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the issue.

Until the euro zone and the IMF agree, they cannot decide if Greece has met the first requirements for the payout of new loans. Nor can the euro zone start discussions with Athens on debt relief that would help make Greece's huge debt sustainable.

Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July, giving the lenders and Athens time to find a compromise. But the drawn- out talks undermine investor confidence.

"If we now enter a cycle of whether this review will be concluded or not, it will generate the kind of insecurity we more or less had last year ... with the loss of confidence and capital flight," a third official close to the lenders said.

Story continues

The dispute focuses on what Greece has to do to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018 and keep it there so that it no longer has to borrow from the euro zone to remain solvent.

Officials said the IMF had a more cautious outlook than euro zone institutions on Greek economic growth and fiscal performance, as experience showed Athens underperformed targets.

The IMF believes Greece's primary surplus in 2018 will be around 2 percent with the current reforms. Growth will be about a percentage point lower than forecast by the euro zone. Greece should therefore be more ambitious with reforms, especially with the most politically difficult, pension reform.

REFORMS NOT ENOUGH

Yet Greece's commitments are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the euro zone in August. It says the pension reform will deliver savings of 1 percent of gross domestic product in 2016.

The draft reform prepared by Athens does that, but Greece also understood the deal from August a bit differently.

"In summer we promised to do 1 pct GDP of extra measures to be legislated in 2016 but to be implemented in 2017 and 2018. The IMF is asking for even more measures than this, which is very difficult for us to understand," Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos told a hearing in the European Parliament.

"We feel that we have already compromised. I don't think we have to make a greater compromise ... because we are at the end of a recession and ... we have already had 11 cuts," he said.

The IMF was involved in talks on the memorandum, but did not sign off on it and is not formally part of the bailout. It says the numbers don't add up.

"To reach its ambitious medium-term target for the primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP, Greece will need to take measures in the order of some 4-5 percent of GDP," the IMF's head of the European department, Poul Thomsen, wrote on Feb 11. "We cannot see how Greece can do so without major savings on pensions."

The pension reform could be less ambitious and the 2018 primary surplus lower if the euro zone offered Greece greater debt relief, Thomsen said.

That would irk some in the euro zone who have to maintain similar surpluses to keep debt sustainable or who, like the Baltics or Slovakia, find it difficult to justify Greeks getting bigger pensions than their own citizens.

"We should do what we promised in the summer, and the IMF should pressure the EU to make that sustainable (with more debt relief)," Tsakalotos told European parliamentarians.

Another snag is that the IMF wants debt relief to solve the issue once and for all. The euro zone wants a staggered scheme, linked to conditions over time.

While the IMF is not formally part of the third bailout, the euro zone would very much like it to be. But the Fund will not join unless their views align.

The approval of the IMF is also a must for northern European countries like Germany, Austria or Finland, which believe the European Commission is too lenient towards Greece and too optimistic with forecasts.

(Reporting By Jan Strupczewski, additional reporting by Paul Taylor and Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Gernot Heller in Berlin, editing by Larry King)
Facebook's (FB) commanding position as the world's leading social network is also making it a juicy target for an array of government regulators.



Just this week, Facebook, which has 1.6 billion members, found itself at odds with regulators in Germany and Brazil. Germany is using tougher antitrust rules to pursue privacy issues at Facebook, while Brazil briefly arrested a Facebook executive after prosecutors complained the company's WhatsApp messaging service wasn't turning over data. And just a few weeks ago, the social network lost a French court ruling over possible censorship charges.



The clashes mark just the latest examples of the company's vast user data collection efforts and occasionally shifting privacy policies drawing attention from regulators around the world. As Facebook has grown, it has built one of the largest caches of data about individuals ever assembled, creating concerns about how the data might be used or shared. Last year, Facebook faced scrutiny of its privacy practices from France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, among others. And Facebook's various messaging platforms now carry communications not just from billions of law-abiding people but also potentially from criminals, hackers and terrorists.



Still, none of the recent cases is likely to threaten Facebook's domination of the social world online or on mobile phones. The company, worth $312 billion in the stock market, finished 2015 with revenue of almost $18 billion, up 44%, and over 1 billion daily active users. More than 3 million companies, mostly small businesses, now advertise on Facebook, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg disclosed in an interview with USA Today on Wednesday.



'Abuse of market power'



In Germany, instead of using privacy protection laws, authorities in the cartel office this week said they are seeking to investigate Facebook for possible misuse of its users' data under antitrust laws.



"For advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely important," Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt told Reuters. "For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected."



Facebook said it would cooperate with the inquiry. "We are confident that we comply with the law and we look forward to working with the Federal Cartel Office to answer their questions," the company said in a statement.



The case in Brazil echoes in some ways the current, high-profile battle between the FBI and Apple (AAPL) over the contents of an iPhone used by one of the deceased San Bernardino terrorists. Brazilian authorities investigating a drug trafficking ring demanded that WhatsApp provide decrypted messages, but the Facebook unit said it did not have the ability to decode its users' communications. Criminal Court Judge Marcel Maia Montalvao initially imposed fines, then ordered the arrest of Facebook vice president Diego Dzodan for "repeated noncompliance."



Facebook said it was disappointed with the arrest. "Arresting people with no connection to a pending law enforcement investigation is a capricious step and we are concerned about the effects for people of Brazil and innovation in the country," the company said in a statement. "We remain willing to address questions Brazilian authorities may have."



The free messaging service, which recently surpassed 1 billion regular users itself, encrypts all messages inside its apps, so that the communications traveling over the company's network can't be intercepted and read while in transit. But the security design also means WhatsApp itself can't decrypt the messages even if requested by law enforcement authorities.
Niamey (AFP) - Increasingly targeted by jihadist fighters roaming its remote northern desert, and Nigeria's feared Boko Haram insurgents on its southern flank, Niger fears the emergence of its own brand of home-grown Islamist trouble.

In recent years foreign-funded aid groups and social media have brought ideas peddled by Wahhabism -- an ultraconservative form of Islam -- to more and more of Niger's 19 million people, one of the planet's poorest nations.

The past decade has seen thousands of mosques built and the number of madrassas, or Koranic schools, soar.

Almost every street in poor parts of the capital Niamey has a mosque, with the faithful gathering by the hundreds for prayers. Most women in the west African nation now wear a headscarf.

Niger is 98 percent Muslim, but the vast majority adhere to the Maliki school of Sunni Islam popular across the region that is viewed as more tolerant than Wahhabism -- a fundamentalist school of Islam supported by Saudi Arabia and accused of inspiring the Islamic State group.

Even this month's presidential and parliamentary elections were marked by religion, with campaign rallies invariably opening with the Fatiha, a recital of the opening passage of the Koran widely used before public events.

Boubakar Seydou Traore, imam of the Tchangarai district in northern Niamey and general secretary of the Islamic Association of Niger, welcomed the growing place of religion.

"With the new media, television, Internet, radios, we now have access to more information. This has promoted better practices. Women wearing veils, interrupting university courses at times of prayer, this is the emergence of Islam," Traore said.

- 'Not like this 5 years ago' -

"It wasn't like this five years ago," countered Moulaye Hassane an Islamic studies expert at Niamey's Institute of Research into Human Sciences.

But Hassane said Wahhabism is taking hold mainly in the towns, while Maliki Islam prevails in rural areas.

Story continues

"The (armed radical) Salafist groups in the desert don't have a direct influence. But the danger for Mali, Mauritania and Niger is that a new form of Islam will surface. It's an internal process.

"The day will come when (some) will want an Islamic republic."

The Christian minority once lived peacefully alongside Muslims, but in January 2015 anti-Christian riots in Niamey and southeastern Zinder left 10 dead and 50 churches razed in an unprecedented flare-up of religious violence.

The riots were sparked by the publication of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, a week after gunmen killed 12 people in a Paris attack against the paper.

Hassane says religious hardliners got a boost in the 1990s.

"Due to bad governance, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed regulations that forced the state to slash social spending. NGOs (non-governmental organisations) with Wahhabite ideas arrived with funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere.... They work in the social sector," he said.

"Students with grants to study in Arab countries too learn Wahhabism. After the elections they'll go into parliament," he added.

- Imans arrested -

Hassane said politicians were ignoring the problem and said "the state needs to come back, the adminstration needs to be present everywhere."

With a fast-growing population and a world record fertiliy rate, Niger lacks education facilities, with few girls in class and boys frequently sent to Koranic schools.

Interior Minister Hassoumi Massaoudou played down the influence of Wahhabism, saying it "only concerns a small part of the population" and that most hardliners come from Mali, Libya and Nigeria.

He did acknowledge however that "there is a fringe that could become radical"and said the administration was closely monitoring the Islamist issue.

Authorities "watch the mosques and the prayers", Massaoudou said, adding that some preachers have been arrested.

But prominent civil society figure Moussa Tchangari said bad governance and human rights violations were responsible for the growing Islamist influence.

"Wayward politics lay the groundwork for all that. If we fail to establish a democracy, it provides a justification for Islamists who say that democracy is a model imported from the West," he says.

Policies based on tight security are no solution, he said. The regime "wants to eradicate the evil without addressing its causes."
Aubrey McClendon walks through the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana March 26, 2012. REUTERS/Sean Gardner

Former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon has died in a single-car crash.

It took place around 9 a.m. in Oklahoma and, according to officials, the car was going very fast.

"Speed was definitely a factor in the fatality," Oklahoma City officials said in a press conference. "He pretty much drove straight into the wall."

On Tuesday, McClendon, 56, was indicted on conspiracy to rig bids for oil and natural-gas leases. He and other companies allegedly colluded to figure out who would win the bids.

McClendon maintained his innocence in the following statement:

The charge that has been filed against me today is wrong and unprecedented. I have been singled out as the only person in the oil and gas industry in over 110 years since the Sherman Act became law to have been accused of this crime in relation to joint bidding on leasehold. Anyone who knows me, my business record and the industry in which I have worked for 35 years, knows that I could not be guilty of violating any antitrust laws. All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy, and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans. I am proud of my track record in this industry, and I will fight to prove my innocence and to clear my name.

Here's a picture of McClendon's vehicle. According to police, he ran into/off of a bridge: pic.twitter.com/ce7RUSBQXi  Royce Young (@royceyoung) March 2, 2016

McClendon, who founded Chesapeake in 1989, left it in 2013 with no shortage of controversy. It was the result of a 2012 Reuters investigation alleging conflict of interest at the country's second-largest natural-gas producer. The company did an internal investigation of its Founder Well Participation Program, which granted McClendon exclusive rights to company wells. The program was eventually suspended, but the business said that it found no misconduct.

Story continues

At the time, energy magnate T. Boone Pickens sold all his Cheseapeake stock, but he also told people not to count McClendon out.

McClendon went on to found and become CEO of American Energy Partners. Upon finding out that he passed away on Wednesday Pickens said that McClendon was a "true American entrepeneur."

Ive known Aubrey McClendon for nearly 25 years. He was a major player in leading the stunning energy renaissance in America. He was charismatic and a true American entrepreneur. No individual is without flaws, but his impact on American energy will be long-lasting," Pickens said in a statement on his website.

The company said in a statement:

Aubrey's tremendous leadership, vision, and passion for the energy industry had an impact on the community, the country, and the world. We are tremendously proud of his legacy and will continue to work hard to live up to the unmatched standards he set for excellence and integrity.

That aside, McClendon lived incredibly well. He was the best paid CEO in America in 2008. His collection of vintage Texas and Oklahoma maps are worth $12 million, and he owned a portion of the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team. There's a dorm at Duke, his alma mater, named after him.

A local Oklahoma news station has footage from the scene of the crash:

NOW WATCH: The fabulous life of Kirsty Bertarelli, the richest woman in Britain





More From Business Insider


Troy Alstead, Chief Operating Officer of Starbucks, is pictured on stage during the company's annual shareholders meeting in Seattle, Washington March 19, 2014. REUTERS/David Ryder

(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Tuesday former Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead would not return from his extended unpaid leave.

The world's largest coffee chain said in January last year that Alstead was taking leave to spend more time with his family.

Alstead had resigned from his position effective Feb. 29, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday. (http://bit.ly/1T6ApTi)

Alstead, who helped lead Stabucks' extensive restructuring a few years ago, had been with the company for more than two decades.

The company named director Kevin Johnson chief operating officer in January last year.

(Reporting by Abhijith G in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)
French Labour minister Myriam El Khomri arrives for a meeting at the Hotel Matignon in Paris, on February 18, 2016 (AFP Photo/Kenzo Tribouillard) (AFP)

Paris (AFP) - France's Socialist government unveiled labour market reform plans making it easier for companies to cut staff, provoking criticism Thursday from within its own ranks and labour unions.

Despite unemployment running at record levels, the measures to be considered by the government next month would dismantle one of the key job guarantees for French workers.

The goal of the reform is to "improve the competitiveness of companies, to develop and and preserve employment," said Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri in an interview to the business daily Les Echos.

She called the reform "French-style flexicurity" in a reference to the Danish system which gave companies flexibility to cut jobs but installed social security measures to protect unemployed workers.

Currently French companies have to justify in court plans to shed workers due to an economic downturn, a process they have complained makes it difficult and expensive to trim their staff when the economy slows and ultimately makes them reluctant to hire.

The reform spells out simple conditions such as falling orders or sales, or operating losses as sufficient cause for shedding staff.

Sylvain Niel, a labour lawyer who defends companies, said the proposed reform will "provide companies with complete flexibility over their staff in the short term".

The proposal could drive a wedge in the ruling Socialists.

"I'd have a tough time voting for it in its current version" said the head of the Socialist Party, Jean-Christophe Cambadelis.

"At the moment, the draft text isn't balanced between flexibility and security."

With many left-wing Socialists unhappy with the government's adoption of pro-business policies, El Khomri threatened that the government could use a controversial mechanism allowed under the French constitution to adopt the law without parliamentary approval.

Labour unions were also critical of the reform plan.

Story continues

"We can't accept it as it stands," said Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the Labour Force union.

The Solidaires union said Hollande's decision to favour competitiveness as did his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy "...will produce the same results: no jobs and everything to expand company profit margins."

The draft reform also provide more room for companies to reach agreements with their staff on employment conditions, and provide more exceptions to the conditions set out in the labour code, including on overtime pay and maximum working hours.

The reform also limits the damages employees can win in court for wrongful firing.
A sign displaying the logo of Russia's Gazprom Neft oil company is seen at the company's office in the West Siberian city of Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, January 28, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

By Foo Yun Chee and Alissa de Carbonnel

BRUSSELS - Gazprom's (GAZP.MM) deputy chief executive will meet the EU competition chief next week, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, signalling progress in resolving antitrust charges against the Russian gas giant without a regulatory fine.

The Russian state-controlled company is fighting accusations of overcharging customers and blocking rivals in eastern Europe, practices which the European Commission say breach the bloc's rules ensuring a level playing field.

It is seeking to avoid a fine, which under EU rules could be up to $7.6 billion, equal to 10 percent of its 2014 revenue, and settle the charges with concessions.

Both Gazprom and the European Commission have narrowed their differences on the issue and may soon find a solution, one of the sources said.

Gazprom supplies around a third of the 28-member EU's gas and a decision in the case, which has dragged on for nearly five years, comes amid continuing tension between the European Union and Russia over Ukraine, Syria and the proposed Nord Stream gas link to Germany.

Gazprom's deputy chief executive Alexander Medvedev will meet EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager in Brussels on March 9.

"The meeting will take stock of the settlement discussion. A certain degree of progress has been made which warrants another discussion. Things are going well but still far from a deal," said one of the sources.

A source at Gazprom Export confirmed the meeting plans. A Gazprom spokeswoman and European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso both declined to comment.

Medvedev met Vestager in December and both sides agreed to continue talks aimed at resolving the case.

The European Commission however is still keeping its options open as Vestager has said it is also working on a decision to penalise Gazprom but would make a final decision later on which track to take.

The EU antitrust authority has said that Gazprom's gas price formula, which is linked to the price of oil, has led to consumers in Poland, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia paying excessive prices compared with Germany.

Story continues

Gazprom derives more than half of its revenues from Europe.

(The story has been refiled to add additional source and additional reporting line)

(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Editing by Susan Fenton)
People walk in front of the Facebook logo at the new Facebook Innovation Hub during a preview media tour in Berlin, Germany, February 24, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

By Eric Auchard

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's cartel office is investigating Facebook for suspected abuse of market power over breaches of data protection laws in the first formal probe of the social network for violating competition rules.

The watchdog said it suspected Facebook's terms of service regarding how the company makes use of users' data may abuse its possibly dominant position in the social networking market. It planned to examine whether users were properly informed about how their personal data would be obtained by the company.

Facebook, the world's biggest social network with 1.6 billion monthly users, earns revenues from advertising based on data it gathers about its users' social connections, opinions and activities in their postings.

"For advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely important," Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said.

"For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected."

A Facebook spokeswoman said on Wednesday: "We are confident that we comply with the law and we look forward to working with the Federal Cartel Office to answer their questions."

The company has faced criticism from politicians and regulators in Germany, where data protection is strictly regulated, over its privacy practices and its slow response to anti-immigrant postings by neo-Nazi sympathisers.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg visited Berlin on a charm offensive last week.

"We welcome the approach of the Cartel office," Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar told Reuters. "Whoever has power over user data gets market power and vice versa."

EU officials have also expressed support for the view that Facebook's use of data might expose it to regulatory action on competition grounds.

The cartel office said it was coordinating its probe with the European Commission, competition authorities in other European Union states, data protection authorities in Germany and consumer rights groups.

Story continues

French and Irish competition regulators said they were not actively involved with the German case. A spokesman for the Belgian competition authority declined to comment on whether it was cooperating with the German probe, while the British regulator was not immediately reachable.

"This is an unusual case in many respects," said Mark Watts, head of data protection at London-based law firm Bristows.

He said it was the first time the volume of personal data a company held was such a significant factor in an investigation into whether a company has abused its dominant position.

Facebook owns four of the top eight social network services globally including its core profile service, two separate instant messaging services, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and its photo and video-sharing social network service Instagram.

Facebook has nearly the twice the number of users as the world's second largest social network, Tencent's QQ of China. Nearly 84 percent of the members of Facebook's core social network are outside the United States and Canada, which generated half its nearly $18 billion in revenues last year.

Companies can theoretically face a fine of up to 10 percent of their annual turnover by the German competition regulator if they are found to have abused a dominant market position. But the cartel office has never levelled a maximum penalty.

BIG DATA

European regulators have begun debating the role that vast collections of "big data" - collected from billions of Web searches, messages and other online interactions - give Internet giants in marketing and commerce and how such data makes it difficult for smaller businesses to compete in those areas.

"User data is often the currency which consumers pay for supposedly free services," said Klaus Mueller, chairman of the Federation of German Consumer Organisations. "Consumers have no adequate alternative. They can't just transfer their user data to other portals."

The cartel office had already signalled last month it was ready to consider data protection issues as raising potential competition concerns.

European Commission spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said the EU executive shared the view of the German cartel office that the mere infringement of data protection rules by a dominant company did not automatically amount to a competition violation.

"However, it cannot be excluded that a behaviour that violates data protection rules could also be relevant when investigating a possible violation of EU competition rules," he added, while declining specific comment on the new case.

Speaking in Germany in January, top EU antitrust enforcer Margrethe Vestager said her agency was taking a harder look at whether the collection of vast amounts of consumer data by big Internet companies violates competition rules.

By contrast, U.S. privacy law enforcement remains limited to gross privacy violations where it can be show companies failed to properly safeguard customer information.

The EU has accused Facebook rival Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, of favouring its own shopping services in search results at the expense of rivals, and is weighing possible sanctions against the world's most popular search engine.

However, the commission previously considered and rejected big data issues when it approved Google's acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick in 2008 and Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan and Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Klaus Lauer in Berlin, Matthias Inveradi in Duesseldorf, Conor Humphries in Dublin, Phil Blenkinsop and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels, Mathieu Rosemain in Paris, Paul Sandle in London and Diane Bartz in Washington; editing by Louise Heavens and Giles Elgood)
Jim Bourg | Reuters. Ohio Gov. John Kasich tells CNBC he expects to win his home state in next week's series of GOP contests.

A day after failing to win any Super Tuesday contest, Ohio Gov. John Kasich predicted victory in his home state's winner-take-all contest.

Calling out rival Marco Rubio , Kasich told CNBC's " Squawk Box " on Wednesday that if the senator from Florida does not win his home state on March 15, he should drop out. Ohio also has its primary on March 15.

Kasich was joined on CNBC by two of his billionaire supporters, former hedge fund titan Stanley Druckenmiller and Home Depot (NYSE: HD) co-founder Ken Langone.

Kasich said he has the ideas to fix the nation, laying out his resume as a long-time Capitol Hill insider and now a governor of a state.

Correction: This story was updated to show the Ohio primary is March 15.





More From CNBC


Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, pictured on March 2, 2016, said the IMF must "return to reality" in its dealings with Greece (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand) (AFP)

Brussels (AFP) - Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos warned Wednesday that his country's massive bailout programme could fail if the EU and IMF persist in delaying the completion of a crucial review.

"We haven't got endless time," Tsakalotos told lawmakers at a European Parliament committee hearing in Brussels, sharply criticising that teams from the EU and the IMF had not returned to Athens in a month.

Greece's international creditors -- the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund -- completed a first phase of the review on February 5, but there has been little progress since.

"That time is in danger of making a self-fulfilling prophecy that the Greek programme fails, for no reason that I can understand either as an academic economist or as a minister of finance," Tsakalotos, an Oxford-educated former professor, told MEPs.

The IMF worked with the EU on two previous bailouts for Greece since 2010 but the Washington-based lender has said it will not participate in the third rescue plan without credible reforms and an EU agreement to ease Athens' debt burden.

A major sticking point is the pension reforms planned by Greece's leftist government which the IMF has found insufficient.

The IMF also questions Greece's budget estimations, a crucial piece of data that helps determine if Athens has delivered on the austerity reforms promised in its 86-billion-euro bailout programme.

"On the fiscal gap we are very close to the European institutions... We are quite a distance away from the estimations of the IMF," the minister said.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday said the IMF, led by Christine Lagarde, must "return to reality" in its dealings with Greece.

The Tsipras government has faced a wave of protests in Greece as anger mounts over the biting reforms demanded by the creditors.

Tsakalotos will discuss those issues at talks with his eurozone counterparts in Brussels on Monday, where Germany's fiscal hardliner Wolfgang Schaeuble and the IMF play a determining role.

In these meetings, "Greece is like an antelope trying to avoid being stamped on by the two giants," Tsakalotos said, without explicitly naming who he meant.

Greece in July agreed to the huge three-year programme after six months of harrowing negotiations with its European partners that nearly saw Athens thrown out of the euro.
Haiti's interim president Jocelerme Privert (C) and new Prime Minister Fritz Jean (R) stand during an inauguration ceremony at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince (AFP Photo/Pierre Michel Jean) (AFP)

Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Haiti's interim leader Jocelerme Privert named a former Central Bank governor as prime minister to help pull the country out of a paralyzing electoral crisis.

Appointed by decree, Fritz-Alphonse Jean will work on forming a government before delivering a policy statement to Haitian lawmakers.

With some 60 percent of the population suffering from extreme poverty in this poorest of the Americas countries, Jean said he was aware of the challenges he faces, and criticized previous administrations.

"For decades, frustrations have piled up in our country due to unkept promises," the head of state said Friday during his first public speech.

"We need to stop improvising and start planning."

Standing by his side, Privert reiterated his goal to unite a highly polarized political system.

"The country's future does not depend on a single citizen or single party alone. The future of the country depends on us all," the president said.

"It's time for all of us to make sacrifices in the interest of national unity."

But just hours before Jean took office, his predecessor Evans Paul said he disapproved of the nomination.

"We should not allow our country to be led down a path of chaos," the former prime minister said during a press conference with several members of the outgoing government.

Jean said he was aware of his political foes.

"When there's a change in government, there are always these sorts of grudges," he told AFP.

The persistent political tension will complicate an already difficult mission for the interim president and his prime minister.

Within his 120-day mandate, Privert is due to see to the end an electoral process that was interrupted in January.

Privert took office on February 14, a week after the departure of president Michel Martelly, who left without a successor after a vote to choose his replacement was postponed over fears of violence.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, still struggling to get back on its feet after being hobbled by a devastating 2010 earthquake and now plunged into a drawn-out electoral crisis.

There is still much uncertainty over the country's ability to hold presidential and legislative elections within the next four months.
US Magistrate James Orenstein in New York said in a 50-page opinion that law enforcement lacked the authority to compel Apple to unlock the iPhone of a suspected drug dealer (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad )

San Francisco (AFP) - A US magistrate judge in New York has ruled that police overstepped the law when they called on Apple to unlock the iPhone of a suspected drug dealer.

The ruling could signal Apple is on sound footing in a separate but similar battle with the US government over being forced to help crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December's San Bernardino attacks.

US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in New York said in a 50-page opinion that law enforcement lacked the authority to compel Apple to comply.

"The relief the government seeks is unavailable because Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it," he wrote.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI went to court to compel Apple to help it break into an iPhone confiscated in June of 2014 from a suspected methamphetamine trafficker, according to court documents.

The US government sought to get Apple to help break into the iPhone under the auspices of the All Writs Act, which is what is being relied on in the San Bernardino case -- a 1789 law that gives wide latitude to law enforcement.

Orenstein refused to issue the order in the case, saying it undermined Constitutional principles and was a matter to be dealt with by Congress.

"This is precisely on point in the San Bernardino case," a senior Apple executive said during a telephone briefing with reporters after the New York ruling was issued.

Apple and FBI are locked in battle over a warrant seeking to force the technology company to help unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in December's San Bernardino attacks.

Apple's refusal has set off an intense political debate about encrypted devices that provide "keys" only to users.

- Non-binding precedent -

Orenstein's ruling was a precedent, but the judge presiding over matters in the San Bernardino case is not bound by his decision.

Conflicting rulings on the same points of law would increase the chances of the US Supreme Court being called upon to make the final call.

Story continues

Oral arguments in the San Bernardino case are to be made in federal court in Southern California on March 22.

The Apple executive said that while the magistrate judge in California is free to rule differently, the iPhone maker hoped that she would be persuaded by Orenstein's "thoughtful and masterful" reasoning in his decision.

Apple argued that it is being asked to go further in the California case by creating software that doesn't exist to essentially "hack our own phones."

Apple wants a "conversation" to help settle a standoff with US law enforcement over accessing an encrypted iPhone, according to testimony prepared for a congressional hearing.

In a statement prepared for the Tuesday hearing, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said the public should understand that "encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing" even if it makes the work of law enforcement more difficult.

In his remarks, Sewell said Apple has been stepping up its encryption over the past few years.

"As attacks on our customers' data become increasingly sophisticated, the tools we use to defend against them must get stronger too," he said.

"Weakening encryption will only hurt consumers and other well-meaning users who rely on companies like Apple to protect their personal information."

Encryption helps preserve privacy around the world, he added, "and it keeps people safe."

Lawmakers and the public should decide the question of access to the locked iPhone, Sewell said, renewing Apple's criticism of the government's use of the broad 1789 All Writs Act, which offers broad authority to law enforcers.

Sewell repeated comments by Apple chief Tim Cook that the FBI is asking the company "to create an operating system that does not exist" that would open "a backdoor into the iPhone."

But New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance argued in his own prepared testimony that the current level of encryption "cripples even the most basic steps of a criminal investigation."
KUALA LUMPUR, March 2 (Reuters) - Malaysia's transport minister said on Wednesday that based on early reports there is a high possibility that a piece of debris found in Mozambique belongs to a Boeing 777 jet.

But Liow Tiong Lai added that he could not conclude it was from the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner MH370, at this time.

He said in a tweet that Malaysian aviation authorities were working with Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris.

"I urged everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to #mh370 at this time," he said.

Flight MH370 disappeared two years ago when it was en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Last year authorities found a piece of the plane's wing on the shore of Reunion island in the Indian Ocean.

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Alison Williams)
WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - March 01, 2016) - On Thursday, March 3 from 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM, USHCC President & CEO Javier Palomarez and a bipartisan coalition of Senators, led by U.S. Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), will address the delay in confirming Roberta Jacobson's nomination to be U.S. Ambassador to Mexico.

Jacobson, currently serving as U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, was nominated last July and received approval by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in November. However, since then, there has been an indefinite delay in confirming Jacobson for this post. Without an ambassador in place, the indispensable relationship we share with our southern neighbors may stall, at a time when our mutual economic, security, and cultural interests require our bond to be stronger than ever.

WHO: United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC) President & CEO Javier Palomarez

Senator Tom Udall (D-NM)

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ)

WHAT: Press Conference regarding Roberta Jacobson's nomination and the crucial importance of confirming a U.S. Ambassador to Mexico

WHEN: Thursday, March 3, 2016 from 11:30 AM to 12:00 PM

WHERE: U.S. Senate Swamp (located on the grass across the drive from the East Senate steps)

REGISTER HERE.

For more information, please see "America's Missing Mexican Ambassador" on The Hill.

About the USHCC

The USHCC actively promotes the economic growth, development and interests of more than 4.1 million Hispanic-owned businesses, that combined, contribute over $661 billion to the American economy every year. It also advocates on behalf of 260 major American corporations and serves as the umbrella organization for more than 200 local chambers and business associations nationwide.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu accepts his award for Best Director in The Revenant (AFP Photo/Mark Ralston)

Mexico City (AFP) - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu soared into Hollywood lore on Sunday, giving Mexico a best director triumph at the Oscars for a stunning third straight year.

The former radio DJ became just the third filmmaker to win back-to-back Academy Awards for best director for his epic story of vengeance and survival, "The Revenant."

He won the best director and best picture Oscars last year for "Birdman." His friend and countryman Alfonso Cuaron won the top director award for "Gravity" in 2014.

Only two other Hollywood legends won two straight best director Oscars: John Ford in 1941 and 1942 and Joseph Mankiewicz in 1950 and 1951.

"I couldn't be more happy. Every film is like a song -- you can't like one song more than the other," Inarritu told reporters after his win.

"Storytelling is a way for us to confront emotions and possibilities and feel beautiful and horrible emotions. It's a way to control life, to have an oxygen capsule for life without suffering for real."

Inarritu also joins an impressive club of directors who have two golden statuettes: Billy Wilder, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Milos Forman, Oliver Stone and Ang Lee.

"The Revenant" is the result of five years of travel and research that Inarritu dedicated to make the brutal biopic, shot under adverse weather conditions with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as a 19th century frontiersman who seeks revenge after being left for dead.

- Government critic -

Inarritu has had an enviable career. His six feature films have all earned some kind of nomination at the Oscars.

With Cuaron and their friend Guillermo del Toro, the trio have been dubbed "The Three Amigos," heading a golden generation of Mexican filmmakers who have scooped up the industry's most prestigious prizes in recent years.

Inarritu has used his international fame to take the government of President Enrique Pena Nieto to task.

Story continues

When he took the stage last year to accept the Oscar for "Birdman," he urged Mexicans to "find and build the government that we deserve."

Two days later, he doubled-down on his criticism, saying that "the level of dissatisfaction, of injustice, of corruption, of impunity have reached intolerable levels" in his native land mired in a decade-long drug war.

Pena Nieto, who had congratulated Inarritu for his Oscar glory, responded that his government was striving to improve the lives of the Mexican people.

This year, he tackled the thorny row over diversity that roiled the Oscars.

"There is a line in the film that says, 'They don't listen to you when they see the color of your skin'," Inarritu said.

"So what a great opportunity to our generation to really liberate ourselves from all prejudice and, you know, this way of thinking and make sure for once and forever that the color of skin becomes as irrelevant as the length of our hair."

- Music lover -

While Inarritu shot to fame with his 2000 Mexican drama "Amores Perros," and earned his first Oscar directing nomination for 2006's "Babel" starring Brad Pitt, the 52-year-old Inarritu came late to the movie world.

A music lover, the wild-haired director started working for WFM radio in the 1980s while he was still a communications student at Mexico City's Iberoamerican University.

But true to his adventurous spirit -- he traveled the world as a cabin boy in a merchant vessel at the age of 19 -- he took his chances, trading the microphone for a camera.

"I think that I'm a musician before I am a filmmaker -- a frustrated musician," Inarritu, a father of two who lost a third child shortly after birth, once said.

Inarritu left WFM in the 1990s to make television advertisements and short films for his production firm, Z Films, while learning the craft from Polish-born theater director Ludwik Margules.

It was during that time that he met screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, with whom he made "Amores Perros" -- a raw drama in which three stories collide after a car crash in Mexico's sprawling capital.

His debut feature earned Inarritu a big ovation at the Cannes film festival, where it won the Critics' Week prize in 2000.

On the back of the film's success, Inarritu moved to Los Angeles, where he directed other somber dramas packed with Hollywood stars.

But Arriaga and Inarritu had a bitter break after "Babel," with the screenwriter, who earned an Oscar nomination, complaining that his role in the film was underplayed.

During a visit to Mexico City in January, Inarritu said that after the grueling filming of "The Revenant," he was ready to "crawl into a cave to hibernate like a bear" for six months.

"I cannot imagine that I will be making another movie any time soon," he said.
By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA, March 2 (Reuters) - Nigeria's parliament expects to pass the 2016 budget in Africa's biggest economy on March 17, lawmakers said on Wednesday.

President Muhammadu Buhari presented a record $30 billion budget in December but asked for its withdrawal in January to make changes after a further drop in oil prices forced the deficit up to 3 trillion naira ($15 billion) from 2.2 trillion.

Last month voting on the budget was postponed because ministers could not agree on revised public spending plans.

Representatives of the Senate, the upper house, and their counterparts in the lower house, the House of Representatives, said they had held talks with ministries on the issue of how much money would be allocated to each department.

"We should be able to lay our report of the 2016 Appropriation Bill before the House and the Senate on 16th of March," Abdulmumin Jibrin, who chairs the budget committee in the lower house.

He said parliament was expected to finish considering the budget's contents by the end of the following day. "So it is safe for us to conclude that the 2016 Appropriation Bill will be passed on the 17th of March," he added.

Nigeria has held talks with the World Bank and has looked at borrowing from the African Development Bank and China Exim Bank to plug the budget gap as oil trades around $30 a barrel, down from over $100 in 2014.

(Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Refugees and migrants arrive on the northern island of Lesbos while crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey, on February 29, 2016 (AFP Photo/Aris Messinis) (AFP/File)

Brussels (AFP) - NATO vessels deployed in the Aegean Sea to help stop the flow of migrants into Europe have not yet started operating in Turkish waters and are waiting for the go-ahead from alliance member Ankara, diplomats told AFP Tuesday.

Despite requests by the NATO operation's German command, "the Turks refused" this weekend to allow the vessels to enter into Turkish waters, a diplomatic source told AFP.

Another diplomat confirmed the report.

The unprecedented mission, which seeks to tackle migrant smugglers, was launched earlier this month and aims to help the European Union cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

The plan is for the NATO force to conduct reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance to provide information to Greece, Turkey and the EU's border agency Frontex so that they -- not the alliance -- can deal with the traffickers.

Longstanding disputes between Athens and Ankara over Aegean airspace and territorial waters have however held up agreement on the operational details.

Turkish authorities have now asked Rear Admiral Jorg Klein, the German commander of the NATO operation, "to go to Ankara to determine the area where (NATO) might deploy", the diplomatic source said.

"That is now being discussed between the Germans and the Turks," the source added.

Turkey meanwhile "is showing little to no interest" in taking back migrants picked up by the NATO vessels at sea as they attempt to make the perilous crossing to Greece, the source said.

Plans for the mission were first laid out in a meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Ankara on February 8.

Three days later, defence ministers from NATO's member states gave their go-ahead to start preparing the operation, and to the immediate deployment of three vessels in the Aegean.

More than a million migrants fleeing war in Syria and upheaval across the Middle East, Asia and Africa landed in the European Union last year, the bulk of them making the perilous journey across the Aegean from Turkey to Greece.
By Barani Krishnan NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices ended up for a third straight day on Wednesday as buyers shrugged off record high U.S. crude stockpiles to focus on an OPEC plan to freeze production, keeping alive the notion that market has bottomed from a near two-year selloff. OPEC member Venezuela said a total of 15 oil producing countries will attend a meeting planned later this month on freezing output at January's highs. Diplomatic activity between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major producers to address the supply glut by freezing output has helped feed a 25 percent price gain in the last 2-1/2 weeks from 12-year lows. Oil prices briefly dipped on U.S. government data that showed crude stockpiles at record highs for the third consecutive week after rising 10.4 million barrels to 518 million barrels last week. [EIA/S] Brent futures settled up 12 cents at $36.93 a barrel. They have risen more than $1.80, or 5 percent, since Friday's close. U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures finished up 26 cents at $34.66 a barrel. Only in mid-February, WTI fell to a 2003 low of $26.05. "It seems more likely that $26 is in the rear view mirror at the moment," Anthony Headrick, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging, a commodities broker in Saint Paul, Minnesota, said. "Fundamentals remain bearish but prospects of OPEC freeze and downward cycle in U.S. output will likely limit a retest of the recent lows." Other analysts were confident that the market has bottomed out. "We believe prices will see modest gains over the course of the year and we have likely seen the worst of price declines, unless the global economy actually moves into recession," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, who helps manage some $125 billion. Some traders were less bullish, saying the selloff will likely return as crude inventories build further from the U.S. refinery spring maintenance season. "We could be in store for another large move down over the next few weeks," said Tariq Zahir at Tyche Capital Advisors who bets nearby WTI contracts will weaken against forwards. (Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London; Editing by Susan Fenton, David Gregorio, Chizu Nomiyama and Marguerita Choy)
People, including some of our most prominent columnists, are still trying to explain the popularity of Donald Trump. Peggy Noonan says he appeals to the unprotected; Ross Douthat says Trump is a reaction to seven years of Obama. Both are right, but the rise of Trump is not really that complicated. While President Obama famously vowed to avoid doing stupid stuff overseas, he unfortunately failed to apply that guideline to domestic policy. The country is awash in stupid stuff  and Americans are sick of it.

Just this week, The New York Times reported on the struggles of an Afrocentric school in Chicago, which faces closing. The Barbara A. Sizemore Academy is failing to teach its mostly black students from its South Side neighborhood to read and write. Children in third through eighth grades scored in only the 14th percentile in reading in the most recent national exams, and in the 8th in math. These are not just dismal scores in the absolute. They also compare poorly with Chicagos results overall. The citys median scores were in the 48th percentile in reading and 52nd in math. By any definition, Sizemore is not getting the job done.

Related: How Govt Student Loans Ruined College Education

However, the academy has its supporters  fans of its Afrocentric approach, which surrounds students with reminders of their African heritage. The concept was the brainchild of Carol Lee, a professor of education and social policy at Northwestern in the 1970s, and took hold in tandem with the rise of the Black Power Movement. Ms. Lee says students at such schools can view the world through the perspective of the people of Africa. Africa is the mother of civilization."

The number of schools that adopted the approach peaked in the 1990s and has since declined, mainly because of poor results. The principal of Sizemore explains that the environment is aimed at helping kids suffering all the ills of, you know, the residual effects of slavery, saying, Absolutely this is where they need to be.

Story continues

Sizemore embodies the goals of many black activists. Suspensions are rare and the courses include much celebration of black achievement  a curriculum intended to make the children proud of their heritage. The day starts to the pulse of African drumming, and the kids raise their fists to salute not only the American flag, but also the Pan-African banner. They chant We are African people and call their instructors Mama and Baba, Swahili for mother and father. The artwork in the hallways includes pictures of African nationalists like Dedan Kimathi, a controversial leader of Kenyan independence. First graders are taught Igbo, a language used in Nigeria.

Related: Common Core Sparks a Schoolyard Brawl Over Education Standards

Defenders of the school argue that while test scores are pitiful, Sizemore has been successful in instilling confidence in a psychologically battered population, according to The New York Times. The school argues, The Afrocentric model provides a layer of social nurturing that prepares even poor testers for success.

It is hard to imagine a more wrong-headed concept. What could be more isolating and degrading than not being able to read and write? What could batter the confidence of a young black child more than knowing he will never find his way in our multicultural society because he lacks the building blocks of middle class life? Young people without the early education essential to graduating from high school will never be employable, never able to care for themselves.

Withholding education from children today is as morally wrong as any past injustices perpetrated against blacks, including segregation. Afrocentric education is a return to segregation, which was once thought heinous. Was the fight to integrate our schools a mistake?

Moreover, one might imagine that the emphasis on African heritage would only serve to isolate black kids. Most are not first-generation immigrants--they are Americans. Celebrating their African roots is a fine curriculum addition, but making it the centerpiece of their experience surely makes them feel different, as opposed to special. The concept is akin to the enthusiasm for bilingual education that Hispanics embraced in the 1960s  until they realized that nothing could hold Latinos back more than failing to learn English.

Related: Bi-Lingual Education Is Making Kids Functionally Illiterate

Americans today worry that income inequality is becoming more pronounced, and that upward mobility is on the decline. Democrats have made this a centerpiece of their campaign, but they are in fact the architects and defenders of one of the pillars of those troubling trends. Democrats, and their allies in the teachers unions, ignore the collapse of our public education system, which no longer prepares kids for success in todays workplace. As our economy becomes more dependent on technology and more stratified by academic achievement, our schools have not kept pace. Entire communities unable to read and to perform basic math are being left behind. That is what the educational establishment is doing through its defense of its indefensible failures.

President Obama gets this, and early on advocated for reforms like greater teacher accountability. The political price for him became too hefty, however, as the teachers unions in 2010 threatened to withhold their support for his reelection bid. Obama caved, and that was the last we heard about school reform.

Does Donald Trump know how to turn around our failing education system? Doubtful, judging from what is posted on his website and his public utterances on the topic. Like most conservatives he bashes Common Core, condemning it as federal overreach, a dubious charge. He wants to shrink the Department of Education, which conservatives applaud, and is incensed that the U.S., which spends more on schooling than any nation in the world, ranks 28th. This is unacceptable, and The Donald promises to make it better. Maybe he can  and he can start by avoiding stupid stuff like Afrocentric schools.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
By Andrea Shalal SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday underscored the U.S. military's support for data security and strong encryption as he asked top U.S. technology sector entrepreneurs and innovators to play a larger role in national security. Carter, on his third trip to Silicon Valley since taking office a year ago, urged greater cooperation between private industry and the public sector on data security and warned that failing to do would allow China, Russia and others who do not favor a free Internet to set new global standards. The defense chief also waded into a controversy between the U.S. government and Apple Inc over the FBI's request to circumvent security features on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters. Carter did not address the case directly since it is under litigation, but he said the Pentagon as the largest user of encryption in the world viewed strong encryption as critical, and no one case should drive future policy considerations. "We shouldnt let the solutions to this larger issue of how to handle data security as a society be driven by any one particular case," Carter told reporters after a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. "It would be unreasonable." He said the issue of protecting data was complex, involving many different kinds of data, including data in motion, data at rest, and data crossing borders, and a solution required interaction between private industry and the public sector. FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple to give the FBI data from the iPhone 5c in the San Bernadino case would be potentially precedential in other cases. In his speech, Carter also warned against new legislation spurred solely by this case. "It is easy to see wrong ways to do this. One would be a law hastily written in anger or grief. Another would be to have the rules be written by Russia or China," he said. After his speech Carter and his chief arms buyer met with five small companies at an event styled on the television series "Shark Tank," where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors. Carter told reporters that he saw some interesting new technologies, including unmanned surface drones and ways to visualize big data, but he was particularly impressed with the "tremendous" people behind the ideas. "I hope we steal some of them," he said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alistair Bell)
Refugees haven't been knocking on Portugal's door, with most opting to go to northern European countries such as Sweden and Denmark (AFP Photo/)

Lisbon (AFP) - Traditionally a country of emigration, Portugal has offered to take up to 10,000 migrants from countries struggling to cope with the influx, to help maintain its own population.

Portugal's socialist premier Antonio Costa last week sent letters to Austria, Greece, Italy and Sweden -- countries that have seen refugees arrive in large numbers -- offering to welcome up to 5,800 more refugees in addition to the 4,500 they already agreed to take as part of the European Union's refugee quota system.

Costa recently told Brussels that Portugal should "set an example", adding that he was against "a Europe that closes its borders to block access to refugees".

His comments echo those he made during a visit to Berlin earlier this month, when he said that it was "unfair" to burden Berlin with a duty which is for "all European leaders".

Germany has taken over one million asylum-seekers this past year alone, an influx weighing heavily on the European power.

But refugees haven't exactly been knocking on Portugal's door, with most opting to go to northern European countries such as Sweden and Denmark -- which have begun tightening their borders in an effort to stem the flow of migrants.

Portugal has taken just 32 migrants, and the country's ambassador to Greece, Rui Alberto Tereno, even visited a Greek refugee camp recently in an effort to promote the sunny coastal nation to the migrants making their way across Europe.

- Deserted towns -

Portugal is little known and "needs to make its voice heard to migrants arriving in Europe," head of the Portuguese Refugee Council (CPR) Teresa Tito Morais, said.

"The arrival of refugees will benefit the regions in the country that have become deserted," Tito Morais said.

"A large number of Portuguese have emigrated and certain regions need to regain some life."

The country was hard hit by the global financial crisis and, as elsewhere, unemployment took a toll among the country's young people, forcing many to leave in search of jobs. Unemployment remains high at 12 percent.

Story continues

Nearly half a million Portuguese have left the country either permanently or temporarily in the last four years.

Portugal's birth rate is also the weakest in the European Union.

If the current decline continues, the country could lose 20 percent of its population by 2060, dropping from 10.5 to 8.6 million residents, according to the National Institute of Statistics in Portugal.

The idea to welcome refugees was launched in September by Braganca, a small town in northeast Portugal that counts some 35,000 residents, with hopes of reviving its declining population.

- Lacking manpower -

But the country will be picky in the migrants it welcomes, as it attempts to boost its workforce with students and skilled labourers.

It plans to receive 2,000 university students, 800 vocational students, and 2,500 to 3,000 refugees qualified in the agriculture and forestry fields.

"These are the sectors that lack manpower and are being forced to recruit workers in Vietnam and Thailand," the government said.

"They are the jobs that the Portuguese do not take," said Tito Morais, adding that it is a myth that refugees come to Portugal to steal jobs.

The anti-refugee movement has remained small and marginal in Portugal, with anti-refugee rallies attracting only small crowds.

"The Portuguese are used to emigrating and know what it's like to look for a better life elsewhere," a refugee council official said.
A man displays a protest message on his iPhone at a small rally in support of Apple's refusal to help the FBI access the cell phone of a gunman involved in the killings of 14 people in San Bernardino, in Santa Monica, California, United States, February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

(Reuters) - Digital privacy advocates have called on a U.S. federal judge to approve Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) request not to be compelled to build software to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Access Now and the Wickr Foundation laid out arguments in amicus briefs released on Wednesday ahead of a March 22 hearing in which Judge Sheri Pym will review Apple's appeal of a court order demanding it help unlock a phone used by Rizwan Farook.

Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, Facebook Inc (FB.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) also plan to file similar briefs, Twitter, Microsoft and people familiar with the plans of the other two companies said last week. [L2N1642BW]

The ACLU argued that the FBI's request would undermine the privacy and security of Americans by forcing a private firm to act as its investigative agent, seeking information that it does not already possess.

"Law enforcement may not commandeer innocent third parties into becoming its undercover agents, its spies, or its hackers," according to a draft of the brief obtained by Reuters.

Access Now and the Wickr Foundation, which both advise activists on digital privacy, said in a joint brief that complying with the order would undermine human rights around the globe.

"In some countries reliable security tools such as encryption can be the difference between life and death," their brief says. "The relief sought by the government endangers people globally who depend on robust digital security for their physical safety and wellbeing."

The U.S. government has said the Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, California, was inspired by Islamist militants, and the FBI wants to read the data on Farook's phone to investigate any links with militant groups. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others before they themselves were killed in a shootout with police.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Paul Simao)
Fighters loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government celebrate as they come close to seizing the centre of Libya's eastern coastal city of Benghazi on February 23, 2016 (AFP Photo/Abdullah Doma) (AFP)

Benghazi (Libya) (AFP) - Fighters loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government said Tuesday they were close to seizing the centre of second city Benghazi after gains against Islamist militias including the Islamic State group.

"We entered most of the sectors controlled by terrorist groups in Lithi" in central Benghazi, a military source told AFP.

The press office of Libya's General Command, which supports the recognised administration, said it would announce the liberation of Lithi, a bastion of Islamist militias including IS, "imminently".

Libya has had rival administrations since the summer of 2014 when the recognised government fled Tripoli after a militia alliance including Islamists overran the capital.

Fighting has flared periodically in Benghazi as security forces try to wrest neighbourhoods from armed groups including IS and Ansar al-Sharia, which is close to Al-Qaeda.

At least 19 pro-government troops were killed over the weekend in clashes that saw loyalists seize Al-Marayseh port in western Benghazi and Al-Hawari hospital in the south.

Medical sources in Benghazi said Tuesday that more than 20 loyalist fighters had died in the operation to retake the city.

Earlier this month the military announced that one of its fighter jets had been shot down as it carried out air strikes on opposition positions in the coastal city.

Chaos engulfing Libya since the fall of dictator Moamer Kadhafi's regime in 2011 has fostered the rise of IS which has based itself in the former dictator's hometown of Sirte in eastern Libya.
KATHMANDU -- China has provided a medical assistance worth Nepali Rupees 240 million ($2.20 million) on Wednesday for the improvement of Nepal's health sector.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Wu Chuntai and Secretary at the Nepalese Ministry of Health and Population Shanta Bahadur Shrestha signed an agreement on the aid.

Under the agreement, medical equipment including ICU monitors, radar technologies and ventilators among others have been handed over to BP Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital, located in Chitwan, some 150 km from the capital city.

Also on Wednesday, the eighth Chinese medical team deployed in BP Cancer Hospital was bidden farewell whereas the 17-member new team has been welcomed.
Soldiers from Chad patrol at the border between Nigeria and Cameroon, part of a military contingent battling the Islamist group Boko Haram (AFP Photo/Ali Kaya) (AFP/File)

Yaounde (AFP) - A Cameroonian reporter with Radio France International (RFI) appeared at a military court Monday accused of acting as a Boko Haram accomplice.

Ahmed Abba, a Hausa-language RFI reporter who was arrested last July, faces charges of "complicity in terrorism and failing to denounce acts of terror", according to a charge sheet read to the court in Yaounde.

He denies the charges.

The trial was adjourned until March 28 to allow judges to rule on complaints by Abba's lawyers that he has suffered rights abuses including torture.

The journalist is accused of acting as an accomplice to two members of Boko Haram, the Nigeria-based extremist group that has also launched attacks on Cameroonian soil.

Prosecutors also accuse Abba of failing to warn authorities when he became aware of "activities by the Boko Haram sect".

Abba was arrested in Maroua in Cameroon's Far North region, where more than 1,200 people have been killed in Boko Haram attacks since 2013, according to the government.

The journalist's legal team has demanded that the trial be scrapped altogether, saying his detention is "arbitrary and illegal" and that he was initially denied access to his family and lawyers.

"When I went to see him in prison, he was locked up and in chains like at Guantanamo," his lawyer Charles Tchoungang said.

Cameroon adopted a controversial anti-terror law in December 2014 allowing capital punishment for convicts found guilty of carrying out terror attacks or complicity in terrorism.

"Glorification of terrorism" also carries heavy penalties.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's car industry must be privatized to meet the government's goal of turning it into a global competitor, the president said on Tuesday, sending a strong signal of his intention to open up the country's economy to world markets.

Hassan Rouhani said Iranian carmakers, which form the second biggest sub-sector of the economy behind oil, should cooperate closely with foreign companies to improve the quality of their products.

"The car industry must be completely privatized, it must be competitive," Rouhani said in a televised address to an international carmakers' conference in Tehran.

The state currently controls roughly half of the sector.

Rouhani's allies made gains in parliamentary elections on Friday that should give the president more scope to push through ambitious plans to modernize Iran's economy.

The large but outdated car sector is one of the most attractive industries to foreign investors, who have flocked to Tehran since international sanctions were lifted in January following Iran's nuclear deal with world powers.

France's PSA Peugeot Citroen (PEUP.PA) signed a joint venture agreement with Iran's largest carmaker Iran Khodro in January. The two companies had an existing relationship that was suspended in 2012 due to sanctions.

"Our manufacturers must be world-class, and we will cooperate with foreign companies so our manufacturers have a presence in world markets," Rouhani added.

(Reporting by Sam Wilkin; editing by John Stonestreet)
Refugees and migrants walk to cross the Slovenian-Austrian border on January 5, 2016 in Sentilj (AFP Photo/Rene Gomolj) (AFP)

Ljubljana (AFP) - Slovenia said Sunday it would clamp down on the number of migrants allowed to enter the country, ahead of tougher measures set to be announced by neighbouring Austria later this week to slow down the influx.

The two EU member states, which also belong to the passport-free Schengen zone, have become key transit nations for migrants and refugees trekking up through the Balkans to reach western Europe.

Austria, which has hardened its stance in recent weeks, will in the coming days announce a daily cap on the number of migrants allowed to enter the country via its main border crossing with Slovenia.

The country of nearly nine million people last year received 90,000 asylum claims, one of the bloc's highest rates per capita.

In anticipation of Vienna's move, the Slovenian interior ministry said it would also begin limiting the arrivals to avoid becoming a bottleneck.

State TV reported the tougher controls would start Monday morning and see the number of people allowed to cross the Sentilj checkpoint into Austria restricted to 1,000 per day.

Slovenia said in a statement released by its interior ministry it had informed neighbouring Croatia, the next country along the migrant trail, of its decision to bring in tougher border controls.

Hermann Muhr, the spokesman for Austria's Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, confirmed to AFP Sunday that "a series of tougher measures will be announced in the course of this week including a daily quota of migrants, in line with what Germany is already doing".

Last month, Vienna already warned it would cap this year's number of asylum claims at 37,500 and deport at least 12,500 people.

The continent is grappling with its worst migrant crisis since World War II, which shows no sign of abating.

In 2015, over a million people reached Europe's shores -- nearly half of them Syrians fleeing a civil war that has killed more than a quarter of a million people.

Story continues

Germany has been the main destination for most of the migrants once they land in Greece or other points in Europe.

Austria, along with the so-called "Visegrad Four" group -- Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic -- is accusing Athens of failing to protect the EU's external borders.

The Visegrad Four will meet leaders from Macedonia and Bulgaria, which both share a border with Greece, in Prague on Monday to discuss reinforcing border controls.
Stocks are rangebound today, trying to extend gains from yesterday's big rally. Will stocks hold until Friday's big jobs report? Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer breaks down all the market action.

McClendon dies in car accident

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Zuckerman discusses the breaking news of former Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon dying in a car accident, only a day after his federal indictment.

Winners and losers

Stocks slipping today include Royal Caribbean after its ship "Anthem of the Seas" returned to port early for a second time; discount retailer Dollar Tree after issuing a downbeat guidance; and Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, withering today after cutting its 2016 forecast, citing economic headwinds.



Shares climbing higher today include Chipotle after Credit Agricole hiked its price target, U.S. Steel, on fire after the Commerce Department imposed tariffs on steel imports; and finally, embattled miner Freeport McMoran, higher after Merrill Lynch resumes coverage with a bullish tone, claiming a conservative approach to spending and a demand recovery in China will boost Freeport.

Buy the consumer?

For more on this market and where investors should go from here, money manager Ted Parrish, president and CIO of Parrish Capital joined The Final Round to discuss some consumer stock picks.

Looking ahead
DENVER, CO--(Marketwired - March 01, 2016) - Synergy Resources Corporation ("Synergy" or the "Company") (NYSE MKT: SYRG) issued an update regarding its operations in the Wattenberg Field, and changes to the Company's year-end and its Board of Directors.

OPERATIONS UPDATE

The Company is finishing the drilling activities on its Vista pad where ten standard length wells, approximately 4,200 feet in lateral length, are being drilled to test the Niobrara A (3 wells), Niobrara C (4 wells), and Codell Formation (3 wells). Four of the wells were drilled in late 2015 and utilized an intermediate string of casing. In late January 2016 a newer build rig was mobilized to drill the last six wells allowing the Company to utilize technology that eliminates the intermediate string of casing, reducing drill time and costs. The Company owns an approximate 77% WI, 65% NRI interest in the wells and the timing of completion activities is discretionary based upon service costs and commodity prices.

The rig will be mobilized to Synergy's recently acquired 1,100 acre Fagerberg pad, where the Company has an approximate 96% WI, 77% NRI interest in the wells. The Fagerberg pad will consist of 14 mid-length lateral wells, approximately 7,900 feet in lateral length, to test the Niobrara A (2 wells), Niobrara B (5 wells), Niobrara C (3 wells), and Codell Formation (4 wells).

During the Company's first fiscal quarter, four mid-length wells on its Bestway pad, where the Company has an approximate 100% WI, 85% NRI interest in the wells, were completed with one well in each of the Niobrara A, Niobrara B, Niobrara C, and Codell formations. During the first 90 days of production the wells have averaged approximately 730 BOED each. While the Niobrara C well has the highest cumulative oil production to date, it is too early to make definitive comments on the individual formations. These results have been achieved despite intermittent high line pressure issues which have impeded optimum production on the pad.

Story continues

The only completions since November 30, 2015 were eight standard length wells on the Wind pad, where the Company has an approximate 100% WI, 75% NRI interest in the wells. The wells consist of Niobrara A (2 wells), Niobrara C (4 wells), and Codell Formation (2 wells). Production information on these wells will be provided after 90 days of production.

Lynn Peterson, Chairman and CEO of the Company, stated, "We are excited with the early production results of the Bestway wells and feel the wells generally are tracking above a 750 M BOE type curve each. We are also pleased with the performance of the newer rig we mobilized earlier this year. The first six wells drilled by the rig and crew have gone well and we expect additional efficiencies as we move to the Fagerberg pad."

FISCAL YEAR END AND BOARD OF DIRECTORS CHANGES

Synergy also announced that its Board of Directors has approved a change in its fiscal year end from August 31 to December 31. As part of the change in year end, in late April the Company will file a 10KT, covering the four months ending December 31, 2015. The Company will file its first calendar quarter results for the period ended March 31, 2016 in early May 2016, and after that will follow a normal calendar year reporting schedule.

Bill Conrad, who has been a director of the Company since its inception, has stepped down from the Board effective March 1, 2016. For the immediate future, there are no plans to fill the vacancy created by Mr. Conrad's resignation.

Mr. Peterson remarked, "The change of year end is something that our investors have asked for over the past few years. This change to a calendar year end will put us on the same reporting period as our peers making it easier to track our performance. Regarding the change in our Board, I would like to thank Bill Conrad for his efforts on Synergy's behalf and wish him well in his future endeavors."

About Synergy Resources Corporation

Synergy Resources Corporation is a domestic oil and natural gas exploration and production company. Synergy's core area of operations is in the Denver-Julesburg Basin, which encompasses Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska. The Company's corporate offices are located in Denver, Colorado.

NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Statements in this news release related to the Company's future plans and opportunities, including statements regarding drilling plans, expected drilling results and additional efficiencies, and all other statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Synergy urges you to carefully review and consider the cautionary statements made in the "Risk Factors" section of the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended August 31, 2015, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on October 16, 2015, and other filings with the SEC for further information on risks and uncertainties that could affect the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations. The Company cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. Synergy undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance occurring after the date of this release or currently unknown facts or conditions or the occurrence of unanticipated events. All forward looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.
Without Apples (AAPL) assistance, the FBI says it will remain shut out of an iPhone used by one of the two shooters in last Decembers mass murder of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. But there are still plenty of smartphones the government can crack without court orders, public hearings or any involvement by phone makers.

A device called the IP-Box, made in China, can crack the passcode on older iPhones and has become a popular forensics tool for police agencies nationwide. Lke other similar gizmos, it doesnt work on iOS 9, Apples latest operating system. But there are roughly 100 million iPhones in use in the United States and about 25% of them still run on older software. The IP-Box has been a substantial help to solving many cases around the country, says Bill Teel, whose company, Teel Technologies of Norwalk, Conn., sells the device and other forensic tools to law enforcement agencies.

The IP-Box, which costs around $350 new and less used, came on the market late in 2014. Teel wont say how many units hes sold, but sales spiked in 2015 as law enforcement agencies began using the device to work through a large inventory of iPhones seized in criminal cases that they couldnt crack any other way. Apple released its newest operating system, iOS 9, last September, and it has aggressively pushed updates of the newer system to any iPhone capable of handling it. So interest in the IP-Box has waned as more iPhones carry the newer software.

The FBI says it does not have the ability to break into iOS 9, which is why its concerned about mobile devices going darkconcealing more and more information law enforcement cant access. With regard to the San Bernardino phone, FBI Director James Comey said at a recent Congressional hearing, We have not found a way to break the 5C running iOS 9. They have set out to design a phone that can't be opened and they're darn near succeeding.



Android vs. iPhone

Yet the public scrutiny surrounding that case and others like it shows that the government has better tools for cracking phones on their own than many users probably realize. Meanwhile, smartphones running on Googles (GOOGL) Android operating systemwhich have gotten little attention in the current controversyare considered far easier to crack than Apples iPhones, since Google doesn't emphasize security as heavily as Apple. And 52% of Americans use Android phones, according to comScore, which equates to slightly more than 100 million devices.

Story continues

Unlike iOS 9, Android is open-source software used by dozens of device manufacturers. Apple devices are much more secure, says Patrick Siewert of Professional Digital Forensic Consulting in Henrico, Va. Many of the Android manufacturers are just now coming up with hardware-based encryption, and many Android users dont update the software as religiously as iOS users do.

The IP-Box tool for cracking into iPhones is a brute force device that works by guessing passcodes on an iPhone and quickly cutting the phones power after each failed attempt, which prevents the phone from counting each try and erasing its data after 10 mistaken entries. On versions of the iPhone that call for a simple four-digit numeric passcode, there are 10,000 possible options; it would take 6 seconds to crack the code if IP-Box guessed it on the first try, and as long as 111 hours if it guessed on the last try, according to British consulting firm MDSec, which tested the device last year. It effectively exploits a vulnerability in iOS 8, says Dominic Chell of MDSec. Apple plugged that hole with iOS 9but users have to upgrade to the new software to get the protection.

In federal testimony last fall involving a now-convicted heroin trafficker named Adamou Djibo, Special Agent David Bauer of the Department of Homeland Security described working with the IP-Box and other similar tools. The phone in that case, heard in the Eastern District of New York, was an iPhone 5C running iOS 8.1.2. I have spoken with other examiners who have actually broken passcodes on phones that have operating systems that are more recent than this particular version, Bauer said. Those versions would arguably be more secure and more difficult to break into. He also said the IP-Box can be very finicky and theres a non-trivial risk of data destruction if its not used correctly, meaning an agent who makes a mistake using IP-Box can inadvertently delete evidence.

Theres a cottage industry of other devices used for cracking both iPhones and Android devices, including svStrike, HDB Box and MFC Dongle. Many are hacker tools police departments and other law-enforcement agencies find handy because they typically have little or no budget for developing cryptographic tools of their own, and either cant get the manufacturers to help or dont want to. Some law-enforcement agencies send devices they need cracked to an Israeli company called CelleBrite, which is able to retrieve information from many locked smartphones, but that can cost $5,000 per phone, an amount not in the budget for many local police departments.

Limits of the government's power



An unanswered question is whether any corner of the U.S. governmentespecially supersecret ones such as the National Security Agencyhas better capabilities for cracking into the newest smartphone technology than the FBI is letting on. Documents released by Edward Snowden in 2013 showed that stealthily accessing smartphones was a high priority for the NSA, as it presumably still is. Those documents also showed the NSA was able to access virtually any iPhone in operation at the time. Whether the NSA maintained that capability for newer iPhones is not publicly known.

At the recent Congressional hearing, some members of the House Judiciary Committee were skeptical that the FBI doesnt have technology to get into the latest iPhones, without Apples help. Comey insisted the agency isnt as slick as outsiders might imagine. We have engaged all parts of the U.S. government, he said, to see, does anybody have a way  to do it with a 5C running iOS 9, and we do not." Cynical observers of government might note that there have been many instances of one agency withholding information or technology from another; its plausible the NSA has iPhone-cracking capability it doesnt share with the FBI. Comey may also have left some wiggle room by essentially saying he asked other agencies if they have the technology, rather than saying he knows for sure.

If the feds truly cant crack into the latest iPhones, they certainly have the budget and brainpower to give it a go. Plus, other successful hacks, such as the Stuxnet virus that damaged Irans nuclear weapons system and was supposedly the work of the U.S. and Israeli governments, demonstrate the capability. Whenever Apple issues a new operating system, everybody starts developing new exploits, says Siewert. Its within the realm of possibility that the government already has something in place, and if not, theyre working on it. Which is why Apple, no doubt, is working on new countermeasures to the government countermeasures.

Rick Newmans latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
Donald Trump Speech

The ascent of Donald Trump has caused dismay for many leaders, inside and outside the US.

But for Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, a Trump presidency may be a positive development.

When a type [like Trump] arrives, I think it would be very bad for the United States, Correa told a group of journalists on Tuesday, according to Sin Embargo. His discourse is so clumsy, so basic.

The USs loss, however, would be Latin Americas gain, according to Correa.

Trump's words "would arouse a reaction from Latin America," Correa said.

"Latin America is already fairly independent," he continued, "and [Trumps] message, I think even for the progressive leaning of Latin America, would be positive."

"That would be a major positive of a Trump victory," Correa concluded.

Correa, whose comments come after Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Trump, is suggesting that a Trump presidency, considering the aggressively anti-immigration rhetoric and xenophobia toward Latin Americans that Trump has displayed so far, would galvanize many people in Latin America, in particular those with progressive or left-leaning politics.

The Ecuadorian president compared this potential effect to the boost left-wing governments and progressive movements got during the administration of US President George W. Bush, who, Correa said, alienated many in the region and the world with his "primitive" politics, according to TeleSur.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa addresses the nation with a speech to commemorate 192 years of independence from Spain at the National Assembly in Quito May 24, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer

It's not surprising that Correa thinks Latin America's progressives and leftists could benefit from an external boost.

Recent defeats of leftist governments and their initiatives in Venezuela, Argentina, and Bolivia, as well as a region-wide economic slump, have led some to argue that the Pink Tide" of leftist governance in the region is receding.

Story continues

Recent backlash against the current Brazilian government has lent credence to this perception.

Trumps incendiary comments have certainly aroused a response from people in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, whose citizens have borne the brunt of Trumps bombast.

Donald Trump Mexico racist

Many in Mexico have jeered the Republican candidate, mocking him online and in television and plays. Others worry Trump, regardless of if he gets elected, has irrevocably shifted US policy toward Mexico to a darker place.

But, as Correa said, Latin America is independent, and voters there have shown their concern is for issues that affect them at home  and that they vote pragmatically. In 2013, 55% of people in the region said they didn't identify as "left" or "right."

Whether backlash against Trump will influence the political mood in Latin American remains to be seen. The rise of Trump may be getting global attention, but politics is still local.

NOW WATCH: IAN BREMMER: These are the 4 reasons Donald Trump is doing so well





More From Business Insider


Syrian children walk past heavily damaged buildings in the rebel-held town of Douma, on the eastern edges of the capital Damascus on February 27, 2016, on the first day of the landmark ceasefire agreement (AFP Photo/Sameer Al-Doumy)

Beirut (AFP) - A "cessation of hostilities" has been in effect in Syria for three days, although both sides accuse the other of violations.

The accord was drawn up by Russia and the United States, and has the unanimous backing of the UN Security Council.

It applies to Damascus and most of its suburbs, the southern province of Daraa, and parts of Aleppo and Homs provinces.

What is not included is more than half of the country's territory that is controlled by Islamic State group (IS) jihadists or Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

Saturday, February 27

- The unprecedented cessation of hostilities begins at 0000 local time (2200 GMT on Friday).

- Russia says it will suspend for one day its air strikes in Syria to support the agreement and avoid "bombing mistakes".

- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and militants report a precarious calm in the central regions around Homs and Hama, in Damascus and around Aleppo in the north. No air strikes are signalled against rebel regions.

- One exception is near Abbasid Square in Damascus, where about a dozen shells hit an area disputed for the past three years by government troops and rebels.

- A Geneva-based international working group issues a positive evaluation of the situation. Although a few incidents are noted, the UN estimates they have not torpedoed the ceasefire.

Sunday, February 28

- Aircraft attack six locations in Aleppo province and one in Hama, the Syrian Observatory says. The director of a pro-rebel press agency says the aircraft were Russian.

- Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko accuses rebels of violating the ceasefire nine times, but adds: "On the whole, the ceasefire regime in Syria is being implemented."

- The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, which represents most of the opposition groups, says the ceasefire has been broken two dozen times by Syria's government and its allies, leaving 29 dead.

- Saudi Arabia directly accuses President Bashar al-Assad's regime and Russia of "ceasefire violations".

Story continues

- The UN says it will distribute supplies to an extra 154,000 people in besieged areas over the next five days.

Monday, February 29

- The Observatory says that the death toll in areas outside jihadist control has fallen sharply since the ceasefire began, with 40 people killed on the first two days in areas where IS is not present, against 144 on Friday.

- Ten airstrikes hit part of the eastern town of Deir Ezzor controlled by IS.

- Turkey shells IS positions in northern Aleppo province in coordination with the US-led international anti-jihadist coalition.

- The UN human rights chief warns that thousands could die from starvation because of sieges that have affected more than 480,000 people. The Red Crescent begins delivering UN-provided hygiene supplies to the rebel-held town of Moadamiyet al-Sham southwest of Damascus.

- The international task force was to meet in Geneva to shore up the ceasefire, after UN chief Ban Ki-moon tells media that "by and large the cessation of hostilities is holding even though we have experienced some incidents".
* Japan wants to offer Australia package of industrial deals

* Toshiba eyes military, commercial sales of lithium batteries

* South Australia expects to benefit from battery tech, facilities

* Australia to pick submarine design this year (Adds comment from Japan's Ministry of Defence)

By Tim Kelly and Nobuhiro Kubo

TOKYO, March 1 (Reuters) - Japan has enlisted electronics firm Toshiba Corp to help it try to win Asia's biggest defence contract, a A$50 billion ($36 billion) deal to build a dozen submarines for Australia, three sources said.

Toshiba is considering building a factory in Australia to make lithium-ion batteries to power the vessels, said the sources who are familiar with the plan but not authorised to talk to the media.

The potential investment, which is contingent on Canberra picking the Japanese design, is part of an incentive package promising commercial and defence sector work beyond the submarine programme, aimed at winning over politicians who want jobs in Australia.

The proposed plant, which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, will also fabricate industrial scale power packs for commercial customers around the world, said the sources.

Such an investment could be an attractive proposition for Australia, which is seeking other avenues of growth as it grapples with plunging commodity prices.

"Australia's prime minister (Malcolm Turnbull) is promoting innovation, and that is something Japan can do," said one of the sources.

Australia's submarine industry is based in South Australia, but the sources did not say where Toshiba was considering building a factory.

Toshiba denied it was mulling a new Australian battery plant.

"There is no such a fact, no such a plan," a spokesman said.

A spokesman for Japan's Ministry of Defence said nothing was decided regarding which maker's batteries would be used if its bid was successful.

"If Japan is chosen, then Japan and Australia would consider detailed plans over several years and the first discussion would come from there," the spokesman said.

Story continues

BOOST FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA, TOSHIBA

Without commenting on Toshiba's potential involvement, South Australia's Minister for Defence Industries Martin Hamilton-Smith said he expected new facilities associated with battery technology would be based in the state as part of any domestic-build option, regardless of who won the tender.

"This is an example of the impact the Future Submarines project would have across other industry sectors," he told Reuters in an emailed response. "It also underlines the economic effects of a local build and why such effects should be taken into account when the Federal government considers where the submarines will be built."

Australia's Department of Defence did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The choice of Toshiba to supply the Australian submarine batteries would be a boost for the struggling Japanese industrial conglomerate as it braces for a net loss of 710 billion yen ($6.3 billion) this year following a major accounting scandal.

It was not immediately clear if the plant would build lithium ion battery cells from scratch or be a cheaper, simpler assembly operation, offering fewer jobs and economic benefits.

Toshiba's batteries were picked for the Australian submarine project over those made by GS Yuasa Corp because they are easier to maintain, two of the sources said.

GS Yuasa declined to comment, while Japan's Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

JAPAN'S STRENGTHS

Japan is offering Australia a variant of its 4,000 ton diesel-electric Soryu submarine built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, with a lithium-ion underwater propulsion system.

It is up against France's state-owned builder DCNS, which plans to make a conventional version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine, and Germany's ThyssenKrupp (TKMS), which is proposing to scale up its 2,000-ton Type 214 class vessel.

Domestic political considerations, particularly jobs for Australian workers, will also weigh on the final choice.

Japan was initially slow to commit to build all vessels at South Australian shipyards. But sources told Reuters in January the competition was narrowing to a race between Japan and France as TKMS loses ground over concerns about the technical challenges of scaling up the size of its sub.

To win over Australia, Japan's government is also pushing the strategic value of its design over one from Europe.

The two U.S. allies in Asia are deepening security ties as Washington pushes its defence partners to work more closely together to balance China's rising regional power.

Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Fumio Kishida stressed that strategic significance when he met his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop in Tokyo last month.

Defence officials in Tokyo, however, worry their bid is undermined by a dearth of experience managing overseas military projects and a lack of industrial ties in Australia it will need to complete the complex vessels, the sources said.

Until Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ended a decades-old ban on arms exports in 2014, Japanese military equipment makers had only ever sold kit to domestically.

Australia's government has said it will make its submarine pick this year. ($1 = 1.3845 Australian dollars) ($1 = 112.5700 yen)

(Additional reporting by Colin Packham in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
Americans face the serious possibility of a Donald Trump presidency, with the businessman highly likely to be the Republican candidate to lead the country following primary elections on Tuesday, a top political consultant has told CNBC.

Trump is the projected winner of Republican primaries in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Vermont and Alabama, NBC News reported on Wednesday. The caucuses in Alaska have yet to be decided.

"It isn't over by any means but Trump is coming very close indeed to being the inevitable candidate now  He is well ahead in many of the opinion polls," Alastair Newton, head of Alavan Business Advisory and former political analyst at Nomura, told CNBC from the Global Financial Markets Forum in Abu Dhabi.

With Trump as the Republican presidential candidate, the Democrats would face a challenge, said Newton.





The Democratic Party's Hillary Clinton won in seven states  Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, and Massachusetts  but fell to rival Bernie Sanders in Vermont, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.



"Trump is getting people to the polls that historically have not gone. Mrs Clinton is going to have a fight on her hands It has defied all the pundits today  me included I have to admit  He has certainly proved to be a doughty opponent," Newton said.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz, meanwhile, won Oklahoma and his home state of Texas, NBC projected. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was the projected winner of the Minnesota Republican caucus.

Trump's success has surprised people both inside and outside the U.S. and some, such as former U.K. prime minister, Tony Blair, have expressed concern.

On Wednesday, Blair said that the rise of social media had helped create "insurgent movements that are often around very polarizing political positions."

"I get really anxious when I think that policy is being made by Twitter feed  Those that shout loudest do not necessarily deserve to be heard the most," he added.

Story continues

Also in Abu Dhabi, IHS Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin said concerns about a Trump presidential bid could reverberate globally.



"You are seeing now Republicans saying for the first time in their lives that they will vote for a Democrat, vote for Hillary Clinton. I'd say American politics are very unsettled," Yergin, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, told CNBC on Wednesday.

 By CNBC's Katy Barnato at the Global Financial Markets Forum in Abu Dhabi.







More From CNBC


By John Whitesides and Steve Holland

REUTERS - Donald Trump consolidated his lead in the 2016 Republican presidential race with Super Tuesday victories but failed to eclipse his rivals or draw reluctant party leaders into his corner.

The New York real estate tycoon proclaimed himself a "unifier" on Tuesday night after he won seven states from centrist Massachusetts to the conservative Deep South.

That fell on deaf ears as his White House rivals were unbowed and the Republican establishment unwilling to accept him as their standard-bearer in the Nov. 8 race to replace Democratic President Barack Obama.

"If this was anybody else as a front-runner, there'd be people right now saying 'Let's all rally around the front-runner,'" said U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who won his first state contest, Minnesota, on Tuesday.

"That will never happen with Donald Trump," Rubio, favorite of the Republican establishment, told Fox News on Wednesday. "On the contrary."

The Super Tuesday wins cemented Trump's front-runner status. The 69-year-old political newcomer went into the busiest day of the primary season with a hefty lead in national opinion polls and victories in three of the first four Republican contests.

His latest wins also compounded the problem for a party whose leaders are both critical of many of Trump's positions and values and skeptical he can defeat the likely Democratic nominee in November, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While they have yet to coalesce around a single strategy, anti-Trump Republicans have begun taking action. Conservative advocacy group Club for Growth claimed credit for slowing Trump in some primary states by running attack ads.

Some party donors - including hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and Meg Whitman, the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise chief executive - organized a phone call on Tuesday to get funding for an anti-Trump effort, the New York Times reported.

'DARKEST FORCES'

Democrats pounced on the chaos.

Story continues

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called Trump a "monster" the Republicans spawned with their years of rancorous opposition to all major Obama administration initiatives.

"Republicans created him by spending seven years appealing to some of the darkest forces in America," Reid said on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

On the Democratic side, Clinton, 68, took big steps toward securing her party's nomination on Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of state-by-state nominating contests.

Her victories in seven states were propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, began their political careers.

Clinton's rival, U.S Senator Bernie Sanders, won his home state of Vermont along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma but lost to her in Massachusetts, which he had hoped to win. The democratic socialist vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote.

Trump's main rivals, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Rubio, 44, said they were determined to remain in the race.

Cruz, 45, won Texas and Oklahoma, as well as the Alaska caucuses, bolstering the conservative senator's argument that he has the best chance of stopping Trump.

Trump dismissed furious criticism aimed at him by establishment Republicans during his victory speech in Florida on Tuesday night.

Facing strong party disapproval over his ideas to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country, Trump declared he had expanded the party by drawing in disaffected blue-collar Democrats who like his tough-on-trade rhetoric.

"I am a unifier," he said. "I would love to see the Republican Party and everybody get together and unify, and when we unify, there's nobody that's going to beat us."

The country's top two elected Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, chastised Trump this week over his delay in disavowing an endorsement by David Duke, a former leader of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.

"I've disavowed," Trump said. "Im going to get along with Congress, OK? Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure Im going to get along great with him.

"And if I don't, hes going to have to pay a big price, OK?" the former reality TV star added in remarks that could further inflame party tensions. Ryan's press representatives said they would not comment.

For Rubio, Tuesday was a day of reckoning. His losses piled up after a week in which he tried to tackle Trump on his own terms, calling Trump a "con artist" and lobbing crude taunts.

Suddenly, the March 15 contest in Florida loomed over Rubio as a must-win.

"Florida, I know youre ready," Rubio said. "The pundits say were underdogs. Ill accept that. Weve all been underdogs."

(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Ginger Gibson, Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez, Jeff Mason, Megan Cassella and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Emily Stephenson in Houston; Writing by John Whitesides, Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Howard Goller and Frances Kerry)
Marvin Gentry | Reuters. The GOP race in Virginia is too close to call  with exit polls indicating Trump and Rubio are vying for first, according to NBC.

Businessman Donald Trump walked away from Super Tuesday with a strengthened claim to the GOP nomination, but both of his chief national rivals notched wins that will most likely propel them onto the next series of contests.

Trump was the projected winner of GOP primaries in Virginia, Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts and Alabama, NBC News reported.



U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz , meanwhile, won Oklahoma and his home state of Texas, NBC projected. And U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida was the projected winner of the Minnesota GOP caucus. Ted Cruz was projected to win Alaska, the final of the 11 states holding GOP contests on Tuesday, NBC News said.

In a Tuesday night address, Trump struck a general election tone, saying he has expanded the Republican party's voter base and hitting Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in his speech.

"I am a unifier, I know people are going to find that a little bit hard to believe, but believe me that I am a unifier," Trump said. "Once we get all of this finished, I am going to go after one person  that's Hillary Clinton."

"When we unify, there's nobody  nobody  that's going to beat us," he said at the conclusion of his victory speech.

Real estate magnate Trump was the favorite to win all but the Texas primary during the March 1 contests, according to betting markets and recent state polls. Trump has led nearly every recent national GOP poll, and he secured the most Republican delegates ahead of Tuesday.

Texas's Cruz, who won the first GOP test of the year when he defeated Trump in the Iowa caucus, had been banking on a Texas victory to help maintain his campaign's momentum after successive losses in Nevada, South Carolina and New Hampshire.

"I believe we're going to do very very well here in Texas," Cruz said earlier Tuesday. "It's going to be up to Texans to make their decision, but there is no doubt that any candidate who cannot win his home state has real problems."

That comment may have been directed at GOP hopeful Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, who trails Donald Trump by double digits in Sunshine State polls. Florida doesn't vote until March 15, but Rubio has yet to record a win during the primary season, so his campaign is hoping to build up some steam before that contest.

Story continues

An apparent favorite of Republican leadership, Rubio had yet to turn endorsements and big donations into outright state victories before Tuesday  although he had won 16 delegates going into the day, compared to Cruz's 17. For his part, Trump entered Super Tuesday with 82 delegates.

"I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio  he had a tough night," Trump said in a Tuesday evening address. "We're going to go to Florida, we're going to spend so much time in Florida."

The states holding the GOP's delegate-binding contests on Tuesday were Alabama , Alaska , Arkansas , Georgia , Massachusetts , Minnesota , Oklahoma , Tennessee , Texas, Vermont and Virginia . There were 595 Republican delegates up for grabs in those tests.

Also in the race are Ohio Gov. John Kasich  the second-place finisher in New Hampshire who pundits say is competing with Rubio in the GOP's so-called establishment track  and retired surgeon Ben Carson . The former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital has seen his campaign's fortunes steadily eroding after challenging Trump as national front-runner in November.

Early exit polls showed that the GOP contests in Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia had the lowest percentage of voters identifying as very conservative, according to NBC News. Overall, 38 percent of voters in Super Tuesday GOP primaries said they identified as very conservative, 42 percent as somewhat conservative, 18 percent as moderate and 2 percent as liberal.

About 42 percent of Super Tuesday Republican primary voters said they had made their decision about which candidate to vote for more than a month ago, according to early exit poll data from NBC News. That data also showed that 22 percent made up their minds in the last few days, another 10 percent in the last week, and another 24 percent in the last month.

Other early exit poll results indicated that Republican primary voters are split on their ideal candidate's background: 50 percent said they want the next president to come from outside the establishment, and 40 percent said they wanted someone with political experience.

On the proposition of a ban on Muslims, 85 percent of Trump voters in the GOP's Super Tuesday primaries said they support the measure, but that fell to 60 percent for other Republican candidates' voters, according to NBC News early exit polls.





More From CNBC


A fighter loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government walks along a damaged street in Benghazi after they seized the centre of the eastern coastal city on February 23, 2016, following a string of gains against Islamist militias (AFP Photo/Abdullah Doma)

Geneva (AFP) - All sides in Libya's chaotic conflict are likely guilty of war crimes, including torturing, raping and executing prisoners, the UN said Thursday, urging the world to do more to bring the perpetrators to justice.

"A multitude of actors, both state and non-state, are accused of very serious violations and abuses that may, in many cases, amount to war crimes," UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

A report released Thursday documenting abuses committed in Libya between 2014 and 2015 warned the situation had deteriorated dramatically during that period.

Libya has had rival administrations since the summer of 2014 when the recognised government fled Tripoli after the Fajr Libya militia alliance including Islamists overran the capital.

A power vacuum since the 2011 toppling of dictator Moamer Kadhafi has fostered the rise of the Islamic State (IS) group in the country, which is currently headquartered in the former dictator's hometown of Sirte, but control of Benghazi remains divided between a collection of militias.

Thursday's report details how most major armed groups in the country "have carried out unlawful killings," mainly executing people they had taken captive and assassinating those seen voicing dissent.

The six-member investigation team behind the report was only able to visit Libya briefly during their year-long probe due to the dire security situation in Libya but conducted interviews with more than 200 victims and witnesses.

They described how bodies of people detained by different armed groups and the Libyan National Army, were found bearing clear evidence of torture and execution.

- Repeatedly raped -

The report also details widespread and horrific torture by different factions, including beatings with plastic pipes and electrical cables, prolonged suspension in stress positions, electrocution and lack of food. According to the report, a number of detainees had been tortured to death.

Story continues

The report, which was ordered by the UN Human Rights Council, said thousands of people were currently in detention, most without any proper examination of their cases, and many in secret detention centres.

Sexual violence, while difficult to document, appears to be rife in places of detention, the investigators said.

They detailed one case where a woman said she had been abducted in Tripoli by members of an unidentified armed group, before being drugged and repeatedly raped over six months. After her escape, she discovered she was pregnant.

The woman said she had seen six girls as young as 11 who were sexually abused by members of the same group.

The investigators also decried the forcible recruitment of children by armed groups, including those linked to the Islamic State, who celebrated the practice.

The report cited two boys, aged 10 and 14, who said they had been forced from their families to take part in IS weapons training, using live ammunition, and watch videos of beheadings.

"One of the most striking elements of this report lies in the complete impunity which continues to prevail in Libya and the systematic failures of the justice system," Zeid said.

Thursday's report called on the Security Council to list the "individuals responsible for violations or abuses" and slap them with sanctions.

They also complained that the International Criminal Court tasked with investigating the abuses did not have the resources to do so properly.
iraq isis

An American Special Ops unit recently captured a significant ISIS fighter in Iraq, but its plans for the operative after his imminent interrogation don't appear very solid.

The militant  the first captured by the Army's elite Delta Force since its deployment in December  is being interrogated by the US at a temporary detention center near Erbil in northern Iraq, The New York Times reported.

But US officials didn't seem clear about what they planned to do with the detainee  and the presumed wave of detainees to come, if all goes to plan  after his interrogation, which could take weeks or months.

The Defense Department said there were no plans to hold any detainees for an indefinite amount of time  there is little appetite among administration officials for a new American facility to hold Islamic State detainees, a la the disgraced Abu Ghraib prison that held suspected members of Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 to 2006.

No ISIS operatives will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, either, in light of Obama's recent proposal to Congress that the controversial military prison be closed for good.

The US might do what it did with Umm Sayyaf, the wife of ISIS' "oil emir" Abu Sayyaf. Umm Sayyaf was detained for three months by US officials after American commandos killed her husband in a May raid. She was then transferred to Iraqi Kurds in August.

iraq isis

The Kurds, however, haven't filed any charges against Umm Sayyaf for her alleged role in the death of American aid worker Kayla Muller, or for the abuse of Yazidi women by her husband she reportedly helped facilitate. The worry among administration officials now, The Daily Beast reported, is that if they hand over the newest ISIS detainee to the Kurds, they won't bring him to justice.

Story continues

"We discussed the idea of [Sayyaf's] surrender and extradition to the US with senior-level [Iraqi] officials, but ultimately that option was not available as Iraq has a constitutional prohibition on surrendering Iraqi citizens to foreign authorities," the official said.

It's not clear whether the ISIS fighter captured earlier this week is an Iraqi citizen. But if US officials remain steadfast in transferring him over to the Iraqis, as they did with Sayyaf, it's uncertain what will happen to him in their custody.

NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL's advice on how to choose the best workout





More From Business Insider


Colombia has been imposing duties on clothes and shoes that come from Panama, particularly from the free trade zone (AFP Photo/Luis Acosta) (AFP/File)

Panama City (AFP) - Panama's free trade zone -- the biggest in Latin America -- is in crisis in large part because of economic woes sapping major export customers Venezuela and Colombia, Commerce Minister Augusto Arosemena said Wednesday.

"The patient (the Colon Free Trade Zone) is in a coma because re-exports have gone down and some companies have closed," he told reporters.

"Colombia and Venezuela were the main markets for the free trade zone, and a big part of that (the crisis) can be attributed to the situation they have," Arosemena said.

The free trade zone is vital to Panama's economy but has been in decline since 2012, prompting companies located there to demand tax cuts.

An association representing firms in the zone says that in January this year 55 companies shut down, following 155 that closed over 2015. Thousands of jobs have been lost in recent years, it said.

Official figures show that, between January and November 2015, commercial movement through the free trade zone dipped 10 percent to $20.3 billion compared with the same period in 2014.

Venezuelan companies especially have contributed to the downturn. They face big obstacles in paying invoices because of devaluation and rigid currency controls in place in Venezuela for the past 13 years.

Some Panamanian sources put their accumulated debt at some $1 billion.

Colombia, meanwhile, has been imposing duties on clothes and shoes -- most of them made in Asia, especially China -- that come from Panama, particularly from the free trade zone. It brought in the tariff to protect its own textile industry.

Panama won a complaint against the tariff before World Trade Organization, but Colombia lodged an appeal in January.
Why Did Moody's Downgrade Vale to Junk Status?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Brazil credit downgrade

On February 24, 2016, Moodys also cut Brazils (EWZ) sovereign rating to junk. The move came amid deepening political turmoil in the country. The agency envisions further deteriorating debt metrics for the country, with deb-to-GDP inching towards 80% from the current 66%. The countrys ceiling was also lowered to Ba1, which means some of the corporate names with investment grade could fall to high-grade (HYG) as well. Brazils debt yields have risen close to 15% on average. The spread between emerging market (EEM) bonds and US Treasuries (TLT) is widening.

Impact on Vale

According to Moodys rating methodology, while Vale SA (VALE) could have sustained a credit rating two notches above the sovereign rating due to its international diversification, the issues particular to Vale led to its downgrade below an investment-grade rating. The negative outlook for Vale means there could be further downgrades and, according to Moodys, The negative outlook reflects the deterioration in market fundamentals for iron ore and base metals in a period in which Vale is undergoing a large expansion phase with substantial capital expenditures. As a consequence, margins, leverage and coverage ratios will remain challenged through 2016.

More downside?

While with the increasing divergence between the returns generated by emerging markets such as Brazil, their bonds and equities might have started to look attractive to investors looking for yield. Its also important to consider the risks associated with these returns. Brazil needs to sort out its political situation first to sustainably work toward improving its economy.

Many funds great exposure to Brazil has proven costly. The materials sector was the biggest negative contributor to the funds returns in 2015. The sponsored ADR of Vale (VALE) was the main driver of the negative returns the sector posted. The current commodity downturn is driven by overcapacity and weaker demand growth, especially from China. Risks to commodities are skewed to the downside. This trend could mean a long, difficult road ahead for Vale and other miners such as BHP Billiton (BHP) (BBL), Rio Tinto (RIO), and Freeport-McMoRan (FCX).

Browse this series on Market Realist:
My wife and I have been manufacturing a human. To be honest, she is doing most of the hard work. I've been busying myself reading the in...
The River Falls First Covenant Church 2016 Mission to Ecuador Blog
2000 - 2022   24 .-   .       focus-news.net,                 () .                  24 .                 24      .       .       24 .
We value your privacy.

Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy.
Random thoughts on almost anything and everything, with an emphasis on defense, intelligence, politics and national security matters..providing insight for the non-cleared world since 2005.
Come and enjoy Read more [...]
Why leaving Canada makes sense for Alberta, and U.S. would likely welcome a new stateFacebook | Twitter | Google+ | EmailJen GersonWednesday, Mar. 18, 2015Downtown Calgary Dec. 10, 2014. Geopolitics expert Peter Zeihan says Alberta would be better off joining the U.S. in his new book, which examines the future of America. Colleen De Neve / Postmedia NewsU.S. forecaster Peter Zeihan, a former geopolitical analyst with the security firm Stratfor, has spent his career trying to predict the future of tumultuous states  recently, hes turned his gaze to North America. Now, his latest book, The Accidental Superpower, takes a bleak look at the direction of the world in general. Among his speculations, the future of Alberta in Canada. He spoke to the Posts Jen Gerson.Geopolitics expert Peter Zeihan. HandoutQ Tell me about your book as a whole?A The global system as we understand it is highly artificial. The United States created it after the Second World War to fight the Cold War. We introduced this concept of free trade that allowed anyone we were friendly with to trade with anyone else we were friendly with  the U.S. guaranteed the security of the oceans, it would open its markets, it would patrol the Middle East and make sure energy could get to where it needed to go. Before, you had competing empires fighting for resources and markets. The American system expanded peace and prosperity throughout the world in a way the human race had never experienced before. But we did it to contain the Soviet Union. Since the Cold War ended, the U.S. has been withdrawing from that system.Q Why?A Two big things. The first is shale oil  the U.S. will be energy independent by the end of 2016. Shale is severing the strongest link between us in North America and the rest of the world. The Middle East is becoming someone elses problem.The second piece is demographics. The percentage of Americans who are baby boomers is smaller than the equivalent cohort elsewhere. Every other country (except New Zealand) has a much larger population hitting mass retirement, and youve got all the financial problems that come with that.Q Amid this interesting geopolitical shift, you devote a chapter to Albertas possible secession.A Canadas demographic situation is similar to the rest of the developed world  a large population moving toward retirement and hardly any young people in the replacement generation coming up.However, Alberta does not fit that mould. It is the youngest province, and is becoming younger, better paid and more highly skilled as the rest of Canada becomes older and less skilled, and a ward of the state financially.The other piece is, of course, energy. British Columbia has been hostile to Albertas efforts to diversity oil exports and the Atlantic is more than 2,000 miles away.But really, it comes down to demographics. Right now, every man, woman and child in Alberta pay $6,000 more into the national budget than they get back. Alberta is the only province that is a net contributor to that budget  by 2020, the number will exceed $20,000 per person, $40,000 per taxpayer. That will be the greatest wealth transfer in per capita terms in the Western world. The only other place we see things like that is in Saudi Arabia, where the oil-producing regions subsidize the rest of the country.Pumpjacks at work pumping crude oil near Halkirk, Alta., June 20, 2007. File photoSecession has been a dirty political word in Alberta for several years, with politicians rumoured to be secret secessionists. That talk died down when the Harper Conservatives were elected  when a group of people who came out of the Alberta mould assumed power.
Or hey how about a better solution? It's a plan I've been working on for the past 30+ years of my life and conducted extensive research which guarantees success.



I call it the "Get your Fk'n kids off their *** and go outside to play" plan.



It sounds complicated but it is based off of a system that has been used in ancient times for at least since the dawn of written history.



Here's how it works:



You walk into your living room and see your kid playing Call of Duty on their XBox. You then go up to them, smack em once, real hard, in the back of the head. While they are confused, turn the TV off, grab the controller, point your finger towards the front door and sternly say, "Get the Fk off your ***, go outside to play!"



An interesting thing I found in my studies is that in the early, mid and even the late 1900's, there were still piles of sugar, unhealthy food and commercials aimed at kids, yet there also wasn't a huge issue with fat kids as there is today. That's because kids back then we're lucky to have three channels of TV shows to watch which were mostly all boring until close to bed time or they were stuck listening to their parent's boring dramas on the AM radio. Kids in droves would flock to the streets and the outdoors to play with their friends and use their imaginations to keep themselves active. Whatever crap food they ate was quickly burned off.



I know it's mind boggling to think that things were like that at one time, but it's true.



For those interested in learning more I will have a book published in the next few months describing in detail what to do. It will contain one chapter and that chapter will contain about 1-2 pages. It will be on sale in your favorite book store for $19.99..... 80 for Blackleaf though.
If the Mosul Dam goes, a lake of water will submerge cities from Mosul to Baghdad and kill hundreds of thousands.he Iraqi government and an Italian engineering firm have finally reached a tentative agreement that could provide a long-term fix for the worlds most dangerous dam. But the tricky repairs needed to prevent a catastrophic failure at the Mosul Dam, in northern Iraq, could potentially make a bad situation even worse.Mosul Dam, built in the early 1980s, has for decades been considered a ticking time bomb. Constructed on top of gypsum, limestone, and other minerals that dissolve when in contact with water, the dam has been plagued by the threat of collapse since even before it began operations. Six days a week for 30 years, engineers have pumped thousands of tons of grout under the dam to shore it up and prevent a catastrophic breach. U.S. Army Engineers famously called it the most dangerous dam in the world.Late last week, Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, the top U.S. general in Iraq, warned that the dam is again in danger of collapsing, which would hurl a lake full of water down the Tigris River, flooding cities from Mosul to Baghdad and possibly killing hundreds of thousands of people.mo
The Free State Foundation is seeking to fill the position of Research Fellow / Legal Fellow. For information and to apply, please click

!
OMAHA  Five Plattsmouth High School students prepared an award-winning meal this past weekend at one of the top culinary arts competitions in the Midwest.

Plattsmouths culinary team of Rebecca Leonhardt, Matt Miller, Kassondra Rhea, Lizzy Wise and Heven Burkhardt captured honors at Metropolitan Community College Feb. 26. The quintet competed in the MCC Institute for the Culinary Arts High School Culinary Invitational. Teams from multiple states came to the Fort Omaha campus of MCC for a full day of action.

Plattsmouth earned silver medals in the overall contest. The team also pocketed the Best of Beef honor at the regional event. The achievements allowed the Blue Devils to qualify for this upcoming weekends state contest.

All teams had to prepare and produce a three-course meal in 60 minutes. Local chefs and culinary arts professors judged students based on their creative abilities and culinary skills.

Leonhardt, Miller, Rhea, Wise and Burkhardt first created appetizers of fried ravioli and mango salsa. The main meal featured beef tenders covered in balsamic mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes flavored with garlic and spinach and a side dish of mixed vegetables. Dessert was a tiramisu mousse with a chocolate bowl, fresh fruit, vanilla tusle crumb and sugared hazelnut.

The five Blue Devils will travel to Lincoln for the state contest Saturday, March 5. The event will take place in the East Campus Union of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Cass County Weed Control Superintendent Randy Group recently the Nebraska Weed Control Associations Annual Conference at Divots Conference Center, Norfolk.

Speakers for the Tuesday session included: Shayne Galford, State Plant Health Director  Biocontrol Agent Permitting; Brian Teeter, NRCS Wildlife Biologist - Habitat Management for Pollinators; Steve Rolfsmeier, Director of CSC Herbarium - More Weeds; Aimee Hurt, Working Dogs for Conservation  Dogs Moving Conservation Forward; Jeffrey Boer, Wild Dakota  How Invasives are affecting Wildlife; Kyle Shepherd and Bill Sellers, Nebraska Cooperative Republican Platte Enhancement Program; Streamflow Enhancement and Prairie Restoration. Tuesday evening attendees enjoyed the banquet and awards ceremony, followed by Spike Blake Half of Dueling Pianos.

Wednesday speakers included Tim Johannesen, Warne Chemical  Anatomy of a Sprayer; Mark Jones, Kaput-D Prairie Dog Control  Control and Timing; Richard Endicott, Board of Educational Lands and Funds Executive Director, The Myths of School Land Trust; Fred McCartney, Nebraska Forest Fuel Management Specialist  The Role of Fire in Nebraskas Ponderosa Pine Ecosystem; Lynn Brien, Applied Research Scientist AgPixel  Drones, Piloted Aircraft, Aerial Imagery and Data Products for Weed Monitoring; Mitch Coffin, Noxious Weed Manager, Nebraska Department of Ag., County Added Noxious Weeds. During Wednesday lunch, the annual Business Meeting was held. Todd Boller of Fillmore County will move up the ranks to be the new NWCA President, and members elected Rod Stolcpart of Rock County as the new NWCA Vice President.

This training was the first of four opportunities in 2016 to earn continuing education hours required for all Nebraska weed superintendents. Each day the superintendent must answer role call twice, and must complete and pass the exam at the end of each day to obtain the hours of continuing education. The next opportunity will be NWCA Spring Training, April 6-7 at Kearney.
Spring has sprung at Gallery 92 West as hundreds of blossoming young artists are displaying their work on the Gallery walls. Two exhibits featuring our area schools have filled the space with a multitude of media including drawings, paintings, sculptures, pottery and more.

Creative works from the K-12 art students of Fremont Public Schools will be on display in the Hinds Gallery during March. This multi-media exhibit highlights Youth Art Month, a national celebration sponsored by the Council for Art Education, and happily supported by the Fremont Area Art Association.

The annual celebration emphasizes the value of art education for all children and encourages support for quality art programs. The program recognizes skills developed through visual arts experiences unlike any other curriculum subjects, including problem solving, creativity, observation and communication.

Students from Fremont High School under the direction of Mara Hornig, Amy Gillespie and Jennifer Gay; Fremont Middle School, grades 7 and 8, taught by Axton Kahler; Johnson Crossing Academic Center, grades 5-6, taught by Andrea Rockeman and Geoff Semrad; and 7 elementary schools, grades K-4, guided by Jesse Kiefer, Julie Bristol and Jennifer Trapp are participating in this years Youth Art Month exhibit.

There will be a public reception for all of the student artists from 1-3 p.m. Sunday at Gallery 92 West, 92 West Sixth Street.

The Bristol Gallery is hosting the annual Agriculture Poster Contest featuring students from around the Fremont Area as part of the 43rd annual Agriculture Week.

The Fremont Area Chamber Agriculture Business and Natural Resources Council, along with the Fremont Tribune are the sponsors of the How I See Nebraska Agriculture art poster contest.

The exhibit will be judged by members of the Fremont Area Art Association. The top three entries will be awarded prizes in the following age groups: grades K-1, grades 2-3, and grades 4-5. All of the contest entries will be on display through March 31.

A reception for artists and announcement of Awards, sponsored by the Cleary Corporation, will be held from 1-3 p.m. March 19 at Gallery 92 West.

Also held that day will be the Touch a Tractor event. Children are invited to explore farm equipment just outside of the gallery. Platte Valley Equipment will provide the opportunity for children to touch and discover more about the big machines used in Nebraska agriculture.
Roger Fredenburg was 28 when he noticed the tremor in the fingers of his right hand.

He dismissed it, figuring it was an inherited tick from his grandmother. As a hairdresser in an Omaha salon, hed attribute the tremor to low blood sugar when clients noticed it  and promise to eat something after their appointment.

I told that lie so, so many times that eventually I believed it to be true, he said.

He went to doctors who attributed the tremor to stress and prescribed medicine for high blood pressure. His condition only worsened. The man who once walked tall and with a long stride was hunched over and shuffling.

Eventually, a neurologist discovered the source of Fredenburgs symptoms: Young-Onset Parkinsons Disease. And after years of dealing with the disease, the Fremont man had Deep Brain Stimulation surgery  something he said gave him back his life.

Now, Fredenburg has written a book about his journey called Always Shaken Never Stirred: Re-Wiring My Parkinsons Brain. The book, available on Amazon and as an e-book, covers his years of trying to find the source of his symptoms, the DBS surgery, and a chapter on suggestions for Parkinsons patients and their caregivers. The book has received positive Internet reviews and Fredenburg, whos given talks, looks forward to more speaking engagements.

Born in Fremont, where he grew up, Fredenburg was a member of the junior high marching band. He played cello in elementary, junior and senior high orchestra. At 15, he played with Mannheim Steamroller. He sang in the senior high choir and had the lead in the musical Wheres Charley? After graduation, he moved to Omaha and taught at Fred Astaires dance studio.

Im not the typical face of Parkinsons, Fredenburg said, noting the three years he spent with numerous doctor and specialist visits.

Youre too young to be sick, one doctor would say.

Another later labeled him as a hypochondriac.

But Fredenburg knew something was wrong.

In his book, Fredenburg recalls how the tremor that began in his right hand worsened as each month passed. A doctor ran tests to rule out diabetes and thyroid problems and gave him medication to lower his blood pressure.

In May 1998, Fredenburg went to a graduation party in California. The next day, he and friends were watching the video, when he noticed an old man, hunched over, who looked like he needed a walker.

When the man in the video turned around, Fredenburg was stunned.

That man was him.

I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone, he wrote in the book. I went into the bathroom. I starred at a reflection of a man I didnt recognize in the mirror.

More doctors and tests followed as his symptoms worsened. He drooled at night. He couldnt write his signature. He couldnt sit up, roll over or get out of bed without help. Food didnt smell or taste good.

Eventually, he was able to see a neurologist, who after conducting tests, prescribed a medicine for Parkinsons disease in 2000. By the time Fredenburg returned to see the neurologist 11 days later, the symptoms were gone.

The neurologist diagnosed Fredenburg with Young-Onset Parkinsons Disease. The National Parkinson Foundation indicates that the disease itself isnt fatal, but complications are serious.

My first concern was, How was I going to tell my parents (Ernie and Dorothy)? he remembered.

Fredenburg did his own extensive research on Parkinsons and didnt tell clients or staff at the salon for about a year.

He managed the disease with medication for years. But in 2008, the disease had progressed to the point that he could no longer work for more than three hours.

From 2008 to 2010, the disease progressed rapidly, he said.

Fredenburg had his own salon, which he sold. He also sold his Omaha home and moved in with his parents in Fremont.

By 2010, he couldnt go out in a public without a wheelchair. At the end of that year, he attended a symposium and learned about Deep Brain Stimulation.

With this procedure, electrodes are implanted in the brain. WebMD data states that the electrodes are connected to a device implanted under the skin of the chest. The device sends pulses to the brain, blocking impulses that cause tremors.

After a years worth of testing, Fredenburg was approved for the procedure by the end of January 2012. He didnt fear the surgery.

By then, I was so tired of the progression of the disease that I wasnt scared at all, he said.

Fredenburg was awake for the surgery on March 1, 2012, during which the electrodes were implanted. On March 7, the device was put his chest.

Since the surgery, he hasnt had to use a wheelchair or his cane and his living on his own.

It gave me my whole life back, he said.

In 2013, he began writing the book. He did the layout, format and cover. Douglas Rasmussen painted the artwork for the cover. Fredenburgs sister, Roberta Rivas of Fremont, helped with proofing the book. Fredenburg self-published the book in August 2015. He did a book signing at the shop he used to own.

A lot of my former clients came and bought the book, which was nice, he said.

He also gave a speech at a Parkinsons DBS support group in Omaha and talked to intensive care unit nurses about the patients perspective of the disease.

Now 48, Fredenburg said hed like to write another book and give inspirational, self-help talks to groups.

I think it would be fun to do, he said.

Fredenburg has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Always-Shakin-Never-Stirred-Re-Wiring-My-Parkinsons-Brain/472162622936230
"Everyone deserves to live a life free of violence." The Bridge is driven by that belief and commitment every day. The recent murders of two brothers in Omaha trying to help their sister leave an abusive ex-boyfriend reinforces the importance of that commitment.

Victims of abuse cautiously try to find a way out after determining the abuser isn't stopping. It is natural for family members, friends and co-workers to want to help someone leave the abuser.

Many times the concern for the victim outweighs the fear of the consequences of her leaving the perpetrator. If you are being abused, it is important that you develop a safety plan for yourself , your children and those who are helping you so that you will know in advance what you can do when a situation occurs. There are steps you can take to reduce the risk of harm and to get out.

 Connect with The Bridge. We are a 24 hour agency that works with victims of abuse. We can talk out safety concerns and options confidentially including a safe place to stay. (24 hr crisis line 1-888-721-4340 or 402-727-7777).

 Identify safe places and safe people you can let know what is going on including a police officer, probation officer, co-worker, neighbor, family or friends. The more people aware of your situation, the safer everyone will be.

 Leave money, an extra set of keys, copies of important documents, and extra clothes with someone you can trust so you can leave quickly if necessary.

 If in immediate danger CALL 911. Tell them about the abuse. They can help and connect you to safe services.

There are protections for victims of domestic violence and The Bridge is here to help and offer safety and support. Be careful. Try not to place yourself in a position where the person who is being abusive could harm or manipulate you. Dont try to intervene directly if you witness a person being assaulted  call the police instead. For more information contact The Bridge 888-721-4340.

Suzanne Smith

The Bridge

Crisis Center
Aeroflot will launch regular flights on the routes Moscow  Valencia  Moscow and Moscow  Alicante  Moscow starting from June 1, 2016.

Flights will be operated daily on comfortable modern Boeing B737 aircraft on the following schedule:

Flight SU 2502 leaves Moscow at 9:00 and arrives in Valencia at 13:00. Return SU 2503 flight leaves Valencia at 13:50 and arrives in Moscow at 19:35 (all time is local);

Flight SU 2522 leaves Moscow at 11:15 and arrives in Alicante at 15:10. Return SU 2523 flight leaves Alicante at 16:20 and arrives in Moscow at 22:05 (all time is local).

Valencia and Alicante provinces are the part of the Autonomous Community of Valencia and are located on the Mediterranean coast. Valencia is famous for its wide sandy beaches, orange groves and quiet fishing villages. Alicante is a center of fishing and seafood export.

The continuous route network expansion and service quality improvement promote success of Aeroflots strategy aimed at becoming a world-class air carrier offering a global network
Lufthansa commenced its new non-stop service between Frankfurt and Panama City.

Panama, which is located between Costa Rica and Colombia, has experienced strong and accelerating economic growth in the last few years. In addition to the world-famous Panama Canal, the countrys substantial banking sector, its favorable geographic location and its well-developed infrastructure are all key reasons for business and leisure travellers to visit this Central American country. With its unspoilt beaches and its large number of national parks featuring rainforest, mangroves and a unique underwater world, Panama offers vacationers in particular an unforgettable stay.

Panama is also an ideal starting point for exploring various Central American countries and the islands of the Caribbean. And in this regard, Lufthansas new bilateral codeshare agreement with Copa Airlines, on of Central Americas leading air carrier, which is based in Panama City, offers a wide range of advantageous onward travel options.

Under the new codeshare accord, Lufthansa travelers can fly on with Star Alliance partner Copa Airlines from Panama City to any of 73 further destinations in Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Costa Rica, many of them bookable under Lufthansa flight numbers. In return, Copa Airlines customers gain access to the global network of the Lufthansa Group, which currently extends to 261 destinations in 101 countries.

A round-trip Lufthansa flight between Frankfurt and Panama City is currently available for as little as EUR 799.
Disney Cruise Line invites families to explore culturally rich and exotic locales and adventure seekers to 2016 Norwegian Fjords sailings.

Beginning May 29, the Disney Magic returns to Europe, including itineraries visiting the Norwegian Fjords and Iceland. Guests exploring these ports will be treated to richly diverse destinations that showcase iconic locations, enchanting cultures, tantalizing cuisine and unrivaled experiences.

To enhance guests experiences while at port, Disney Cruise Line Port Adventures are designed to entertain and inspire both children and adultsin true Disney fashionwith an extra dash of pixie dust.

Frozen Festivities and Viking Ventures in Alesund

Disney Cruise Line guests join Anna, Elsa and Kristoff from the animated hit Frozen in Alesund, the land that inspired their story. Only Disney guests are invited to a Norwegian summer celebration at the Sunnmre Open Air Museum where the festivities culminate with the grand arrival of the beloved sisters and their ice-loving companion, who join in the lively revelry. After being personally greeted by their Frozen friends, and surrounded by the idyllic beauty of Norway, guests dance to local musicians and sample tasty Norwegian specialties, including svele, a traditional sweet pancake from the region.

Another Alesund adventure exclusive to Disney Cruise Line includes a quest to a Viking village on the island of Giske, where guests head back in history to meet the village chieftain and experience the Viking world. Adventurers find themselves in the middle of daily Viking life and mingle with members of the Norse families, experiencing first-hand the traditions, authentic food and games that come with being a Viking. Guests also learn traditional Viking handiwork and put it to practice by crafting their own leather bags.

A Taste of Norway in Kristiansand

For those with a culinary passion, a Port Adventure exclusive to Disney Cruise Line in centuries-old Kristiansand provides the perfect hands-on cooking experience. Guests don their aprons and create Nordic specialties first-hand, such as succulent wild game filets and krumkaker, a heavenly waffle cookie typically served around Christmastime. The experience culminates with a sumptuous meal paired with a glass of wine.

The Great Outdoors of Geiranger

From the port of Geiranger, crowning jewel of the Norwegian fjords, comes an experience just for Disney Cruise Line guests  a visit to the Gjaera Mountain Farm where the local family provides an up-close look at daily life. Children join Disney Cruise Line youth counselors to create one-of-a-kind stamped pillows in the farms printing studio using handmade wooden stamps that have been passed down through the familys many generations. Meanwhile, adults explore the farm and its microbrewery, sampling fresh brews. After building up an appetite, everyone reunites for a taste of traditional Norwegian foods produced at the farm including juices, breads, creams and cured meats.

Another journey brings Disney Cruise Line guests to the Herdalsetra Mountain Farm, where on the way to a nearby scenic valley they will enjoy a spectacular view of the Geirangerfjord and the Seven Sisters waterfall made famous in Norwegian folklore. Guests tour the enchanting farm brimming with 30 farmhouses and more than 450 sprightly goats scampering around the property. They also sample the farms fresh cheeses including Norways famous brown cheese  similar to sweet fudge.

Those looking for even more adventure will find it kayaking through the Geirangerfjord. Gliding over dazzling turquoise waters, guests will get an up-close look at stunning waterfalls roaring down into the fjord and the majestic mountains along the waters edge.

The Land of Fire and IceReykjavik, Iceland

Only Disney Cruise Line families can get fired up during an exhilarating trip to the edge of a local lava field that gives adventurers an up-close look at volcanic craters and lava fields that make up the country of Iceland. Families take part in an art workshop on the edge of the hardened lava field, using real lava to create their very own framed art.

Classic cant miss Icelandic landmarks take center stage on the tour of The Golden Circle. On this visit to some of Icelands most iconic attractions, guests will explore a national park, a glittering waterfall, popping hot springs and a high-tech geothermal energy exhibition. Over a barbecue lunch in the woods offered exclusively to Disney Cruise Line guests, troll wife Gryla and her helpers tell the legend of troll giant Bergthor of Blafell, whose exceptionally large grave, headstone and ring from his walking stick can be found in a nearby churchyard.

The Disney Magic will sail to the Norwegian fjords and Iceland on two 12-night cruises June 17 and July 13, and two seven-night cruises to the Norwegian fjords on May 29 and June 29.

Details on all Disney Cruise Line shore excursions can be found on the Port Adventures section of disneycruise.com.
Heads up, coders: GDC 2016 organizers would like to give you a preview of the cutting-edge discussions taking place during the day-long Math for Game Programmers tutorial which will help kick off the conference next month.

And of course if this isn't quite up your alley, remember that it's just one of many excellent Bootcamps and Tutorials scheduled during the first two days of GDC (Monday and Tuesday, March 14th and 15th this year.)

But shucks, if the Math for Game Programmers tutorial sounds at all intriguing to you then you're in for a treat. Because as games and gaming platforms continue to evolve and diversify, so has the complexity and variety of problems facing the modern game programmer.

Creating the latest code for graphics, gameplay, animation, physical simulation, and artificial intelligence requires thorough knowledge of the necessary mathematical underpinnings.

Attendees of this tutorial will help carry on the tradition of the "Math for Programmers" tutorial by joining together with some of the best presenters in gaming math to concentrate on the mathematics essential for creating unique and sophisticated graphics, plausible interactive physical simulations, and interesting and nuanced gameplay.

The day will focus on the issues of game development important to programmers and includes programming context and guidance throughout. This year's topics include several new tricks for dealing with randomness, implicit raytracing, non-Euclidean spaces, enhanced jumping physics, algebraic game balancing, dynamic split-screen cameras, soft voxels, mesh smoothing and deformation, hashing game-state spaces, and techniques for enforcing angular joint limits without leaving quaternion space.

For more details on the talks that will take place during the day-long tutorial, check out the GDC Session Scheduler.

GDC 2016 itself will take place March 14-18th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. For more information on GDC 2016, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.



Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.
Finnish mobile startup Kopla Games, founded last year by a group of former Angry Birds developers, has raised 700,000 ($759,000) in seed funding from Flaregames and Gameforge founder, Klaas Kersting.

Kersting has acted as an early stage investor for many startups including Supercell, Spacetime Studios and iQU, and has given Kopla a cash injection to help the studio expand its team and finish up its debut title, an action RPG codenamed 'Project Nonstop'.

Kopla was founded back in 2015 by CEO Mika Kuusisto; product lead, Janne Jaakkola; art lead, Ilkka Siik; and tech lead. Vilppu Tuominen. The group initially teamed up while working on Rovios Angry Birds franchise.

"Kopla are a highly experienced group with a unique mindset when it comes to developing mobile games," said Kersting. "They have very impressive plans to expand their team in a scalable way."
Are you interested in getting your company, event, or institution noticed? Advertise with the GRC on Global Geothermal News - Contact

at dgroves@geothermal.org
DES MOINES  Iowa senators launched an effort Tuesday to require more government oversight of private companies the state has contracted effective April 1 to manage care provided to 560,000 Iowans who rely on Medicaid for their health services.

The intent of this legislation is to safeguard the interests of Medicaid members, encourage the participation of Medicaid providers and protect Iowa taxpayers, said Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, at the start of floor debate in the Iowa Senate on Senate File 2213.

The measure, which cleared committee with bipartisan support, seeks to enhance the role and responsibilities of the Health Policy Oversight Committee, execute a comprehensive review of program integrity and create a special fund to finance system improvements and support for recipients, Ragan said in her opening remarks.

Other provisions of the bill would assign duties and authority to the managed care ombudsman program, expand and enhance the Medical Assistance Advisory Council, and direct state officials to improve consumer protections, monitor rates and payments and collect data as part of the evaluation and oversight process, she added.

Floor debate was deferred after Ragans opening remarks to give minority Republicans time to review changes made to the original legislation and allow time to have amendments drafted for consideration when senators return to the topic on Wednesday.

There are too many unanswered questions about who will provide oversight and how and where individuals will get services, said Ragan, who noted that federal regulators twice delayed Gov. Terry Branstads implementation of Medicaid privatization that initially was to begin Jan. 1.

It is undeniable that Gov. Branstad took a too much, too fast approach to Medicaid privatization, Ragan added. This Medicaid privatization program is destined to harm the very people it was supposed to help. Apparently, it was designed by those who know the cost of everything but understand the value of nothing.

Branstad has questioned the need for oversight that he sees onerous and duplicative beyond new duties of the three private managed care organizations (MCO) and the authority that his administration and the Legislature already has to monitor Medicaid as it moves from a fee-for-service model to a system that encourages health outcomes and rewards providers for improvements.

The whole idea of managed care companies is indeed to provide oversight over the providers to see that were moving in that direction, the governor told reporters earlier this week.

So were looking at more people that oversee the overseers basically to manage the managers, Branstad said of the Senates proposed oversight expansion. How much of that duplication do we want and how much will it cost? Those are the kinds of things you have to balance in determining whether this is good public policy.

The six-term GOP governor said the state insurance commissioner already is in place to oversee the MCOs and the state has ombudsmen to advocate for Medicaid participants who have questions or problems. He said he was open to adding more ombudsmen if needed but was reserving judgment on legislation calling for more oversight.

In other action, senators voted 49-0 to lower the age to 17 that Iowans can register to vote in primary and general elections. Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Waterloo, said Senate File 2142 was another step in an effort to make Iowas election process more secure, efficient, accurate and citizen friendly.

With this bill, we will expand the enterprise of democracy, hopefully deepening the meaning of freedom by broadening our definition of universal suffrage, he said. Were not moving heaven and earth, but we do believe that allowing Iowans who are 17 to begin that process so that when they are 18 on Election Day that they have had the full benefit of participating in who those candidates would be in particular primaries and other research that they would want to do.

Senators also voted 49-0 to expand options for outpatient treatment of a person with a serious mental impairment who fails to comply with a court order  including the ability to provide the choice of an injectable medication to address bipolar of schizophrenic conditions.

Also Tuesday, senators voted 24-25 to defeat a bill designed to give prescription-writing authority to certain psychologists. Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, switched his vote to make it possible for him to file a motion to reconsider Senate File 2188 to keep the measure eligible for possible changes or further work this session. Three GOP senators voted with 21 Democrats to support the measure, while four majority Democrats opposed the bill in its current form.
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..
MUNICH, Germany, March 2, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ADVA Optical Networking today announced its involvement in the 5G-XHaul project. The company's engineers and equipment are playing a central role in the EU-funded initiative to develop the next generation of mobile networks and services. ADVA Optical Networking's WDM-PON technology is being used to create optical links between access points, antennae and core networks in the research project's testbeds. The initiative, which is part of the EU Horizon 2020 5G Infrastructure Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP), aims to revolutionize fronthaul and backhaul networks to create the infrastructure needed for LTE-Advanced connectivity. The three-year project is a pan-European collaboration bringing together market-leading companies, research institutes and universities in order to create the new 5G standard and address the rapidly growing need for higher data rates.

"5G is about bringing phenomenally high bandwidth to mobile devices. The problem is that the capacity requirements for the backhaul and core network also increase enormously," said Christoph Glingener, CTO, ADVA Optical Networking. "The 5G-XHaul project is helping to address this issue by creating a unique platform for collaboration. It's a vitally important joint initiative and we're thrilled to be able to contribute so much to it. Our WDM-PONs are helping to build a world where devices can connect with the Internet anywhere. We're redesigning wireless architecture and enabling applications and services to physically follow the user so that they experience the least possible delay. Coverage dead spots will be a thing of the past. Even in dense urban canyons and remote rural backwaters, HD teleworking and video streaming will be easily accessible. 5G will even ensure connectivity when traveling on high-speed transport."

The 5G-XHaul project will culminate in 2018 with ADVA Optical Networking's team jointly conducting a large-scale field trial in Bristol, UK. This city-wide demonstration will showcase how flexibility in the passive network can be increased with the highly-efficient and cost-effective tuneable lasers built into ADVA Optical Networking's WDM-PONs. Funding for the unique collaboration is provided by the EU's 5G PPP, the world's biggest information and communication research program. The ultimate aim of the project is to rethink fronthaul and backhaul networks from the system and architecture levels all the way down to the physical layer. It's goal is to enable dynamic allocation of network resources through network functions virtualization and software-defined networking, delivering the increased capacity needed for 5G as well as providing radical improvements to energy efficiency.

"More and more mobile users want to be able to stream ultra-high definition TV and video on mobile devices. And this is just the beginning," commented, Jorg-Peter Elbers, VP, advanced technology, ADVA Optical Networking. "Today's infrastructure is nowhere near flexible enough to cope with the scale of tomorrow's requirements. A network with tens of billions of devices must be dynamic and it needs to manage itself automatically. The 5G-XHaul project is bringing together academics and industry experts to tackle this problem. Working with university research departments means it's also a great opportunity for many students. Not only is this a real-world project with an actual product target but it puts them at the heart of the industry's next giant leap forward. They get to help connect the world, to enable the Internet of Things, to make sure Europe plays a leading role in creating the mobile network of the future."

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 671551. This news release does not reflect the views of the European Commission and the commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

About ADVA Optical Networking

At ADVA Optical Networking we're creating new opportunities for tomorrow's networks, a new vision for a connected world. Our intelligent telecommunications hardware, software and services have been deployed by several hundred service providers and thousands of enterprises. Over the past twenty years, our innovative connectivity solutions have helped to drive our customers' networks forward, helped to drive their businesses to new levels of success. We forge close working relationships with all our customers. As your trusted partner we ensure that we're always ready to exceed your networking expectations. For more information on our products and our team, please visit us at: www.advaoptical.com.

Published By:

ADVA Optical Networking SE, Munich, Germany

www.advaoptical.com

For Press:

Gareth Spence

t +44 1904 699 358

public-relations(at)advaoptical.com

For Investors:

Stephan Rettenberger

t +49 89 890 665 854

investor-relations(at)advaoptical.com

HUG#1990620
English Dutch French

PRESS RELEASE





TiGenix submits MAA to EMA for Cx601 for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients

Leuven (BELGIUM) - March 2, 2016, 19:00h CET - TiGenix NV (Euronext Brussels: TIG), an advanced biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising novel therapeutics from its proprietary platforms of allogeneic expanded stem cells, announced today the submission of a centralized Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for Cx601 for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in adult patients with Crohn's disease.

TiGenix has submitted a European MAA for its lead product Cx601, consisting of a suspension of allogeneic expanded adipose-derived stem cells (eASC), following the positive results from the pivotal ADMIRE-CD Phase III study in Crohn's disease patients suffering from complex perianal fistulas.

A complex perianal fistula consists of abnormal tracts between the rectum and the skin surface near the anus, and is commonly associated with Crohn's disease. It is a serious clinical condition leading to pain, discharge and that can cause severe incontinence. Complex perianal fistulas are associated with depression and may constitute a risk for anorectal carcinoma. Up to 120,000 adult Crohn's disease patients in Europe and the United States may eventually benefit from Cx601 in an indication for which there is no alternative satisfactory treatment.

"The submission of this application to the EMA represents another important achievement in TiGenix efforts to bring Cx601 to those Crohn's disease patients who currently lack an effective treatment for this serious and debilitating condition," said Maria Pascual, VP Regulatory Affairs of TiGenix. "Meeting this milestone brings us one step closer to fulfilling our ultimate goal of making our therapy available to European patients in the second half of 2017."

"The EMA filing is the culmination of the milestones set by TiGenix over the last eight months," said Eduardo Bravo CEO. "This achievement follows the completion of the ADMIRE-CD trial in August, the recently granted license to manufacture Cx601 commercially in Europe and the agreement from the FDA through a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) on our proposal to conduct a Phase III pivotal trial in the United States. Our capacity to execute timely on these objectives reassures us about our ultimate goal of launching Cx601 in the coming years at both sides of the Atlantic."

As recently announced, the results of the ADMIRE-CD have been accepted for oral presentation at the upcoming Annual Congress of European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) in Amsterdam on 17th and 18th March 2016. The acceptance of the abstract confirms the relevance of the results and positions Cx601 as a truly innovative treatment for complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients, a severe, debilitating and difficult to treat condition.

For more information, please contact:

TiGenix

Claudia D'Augusta

Chief Financial Officer

T: +34 91 804 92 64

claudia.daugusta@tigenix.com

About TiGenix

TiGenix NV (Euronext Brussels: TIG) is an advanced biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising novel therapeutics from its proprietary platforms of allogeneic, or donor-derived, expanded stem cells. Two products from the adipose-derived stem cell technology platform are currently in clinical development. Cx601 is in Phase III for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients. Cx611 has completed a Phase I sepsis challenge trial and a Phase I/II trial in rheumatoid arthritis. Effective July 31, 2015, TiGenix acquired Coretherapix, whose lead cellular product, AlloCSC-01, is currently in a Phase II clinical trial in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). In addition, the second product candidate from the cardiac stem cell-based platform acquired from Coretherapix, AlloCSC-02, is being developed in a chronic indication. TiGenix also developed ChondroCelect, an autologous cell therapy product for cartilage repair of the knee, which was the first Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). From June 2014, the marketing and distribution rights of ChondroCelect were exclusively licensed to Sobi for the European Union (except for Finland, where it is distributed by the Finnish Red Cross Blood Service), Norway, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey, and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. TiGenix is headquartered in Leuven (Belgium) and has operations in Madrid (Spain). For more information, please visit www.tigenix.com.

About Cx601

Cx601 is a suspension of allogeneic expanded adipose-derived stem cells (eASC) injected intra-lesionally. Cx601 is being developed for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients. Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine and patients can suffer from complex perianal fistulas for which there is currently no effective treatment. In 2009, the European Commission granted Cx601 orphan designation for the treatment of anal fistulas, recognising the debilitating nature of the disease and the lack of treatment options. Based on positive Phase II results, TiGenix sought scientific advice from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on the future development path of Cx601. TiGenix then initiated a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III trial in Europe and Israel designed to comply with the requirements laid down by the EMA (the ADMIRE-CD trial). 'Madrid Network', an organisation within the Autonomous Region of Madrid which helps companies to grow through high-technology innovation, issued a soft loan to help finance this Phase III study. The programme is funded by The Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) within the framework of the INNTEGRA plan. The study's primary endpoint was combined remission, defined as clinical assessment at week 24 of closure of all treated external openings draining at baseline despite gentle finger compression, and absence of collections >2cm confirmed by MRI. In the ADMIRE-CD trial, the results of which were reported in August 2015, Cx601 achieved statistically significant superiority (p<0.025) on the primary endpoint with 49.5% combined remission at week 24 compared to 34.3% in the placebo arm in the ITT population. These results translate into a relative risk of 1.44, meaning that patients receiving Cx601 had a 44% greater probability of achieving combined remission than placebo patients. Efficacy results were robust and consistent across all statistical populations. Treatment-emergent adverse events (non-serious and serious) and discontinuations due to adverse events were comparable between Cx601 and placebo arms. The ADMIRE-CD trial has a follow-up analysis to be performed at 52 weeks post-treatment. Based on the positive Phase III results, TiGenix has submitted a Marketing Authorisation Application to the EMA in early 2016. TiGenix is preparing to develop Cx601 for the US market after having reached an agreement with the FDA through a special protocol assessment, or SPA, procedure on its proposed protocol on August 7, 2015.

Forward-looking information

This press release may contain forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of TiGenix and the market in which it operates. Certain of these statements, forecasts and estimates can be recognised by the use of words such as, without limitation, "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "seeks", "estimates", "may", "will" and "continue" and similar expressions. They include all matters that are not historical facts. Such statements, forecasts and estimates are based on various assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable when made but may or may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict and may depend upon factors that are beyond the Company's control. Therefore, actual results, the financial condition, performance or achievements of TiGenix, or industry results, may turn out to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements, forecasts and estimates. Given these uncertainties, no representations are made as to the accuracy or fairness of such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates. Furthermore, forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates only speak as of the date of the publication of this press release. TiGenix disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statement, forecast or estimates to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with regard thereto, or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement, forecast or estimate is based, except to the extent required by Belgian law.
The Gorilla Radio archive can be found at: www.Gorilla-Radio.com. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in State and Corporate media. Gorilla Radio airs live Thursdays between 11-12 noon Pacific Time. Airing in Victoria at 101.9FM, and featured on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca and www.pacificfreepress.com. And check out Pacific Free Press on Twitter @Paciffreepress
Upper West Side residents venturing out on Tuesday morning were alarmed to discover bloodstains in the street and blood smearing the outside of a parked car. Police were called to West 70th Street between Riverside Boulevard and West End Avenue shortly after 6:15 a.m., where they found a 36-year-old man with lacerations to both wrists and his neck. He was rushed to Mt. Sinai hospital in stable condition.

Police at the scene cordoned off the blood-stained car with police tape, and declined to offer details about the incident. An NYPD spokesperson could not confirm that the man had tried to take his own life, but a police source tells West Side Rag that the man tried to kill himself with a sword. Investigators are reportedly treating it as a suicide attempt.

If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide: do not leave the person alone; remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt; and call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional.
The NYPD will no longer make arrests in Manhattan for low-level offenses such as public consumption of alcohol or public urination, and DA Cy Vance's office will no longer prosecute such cases: instead, individuals found committing such low-level offenses will receive summonses. The new policy will go into effect on March 7th, and is expected to keep approximately 10,000 cases from making it to Manhattan Criminal Court.

Under current NYPD policy, officers must make an arrest if someone committing a low-level offense has an open summons; the DA's office notes that over 1.1 million New Yorkers currently have open summons for failing to appear in court. This new policy would require that an officer bring someone with an open warrant to one of the Arraignment Parts of the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building to face a judge both on the summons matter and the outstanding warrant. Similarly, if an offender can't produce an ID, they'll be taken to a precinct where they can wait for someone to bring them their photo ID. In neither circumstance will an arrest be made.

Police Reform Organizing Project Director Robert Gangi said that while this is a significant change, it ultimately affects a relatively small number of arrestsin 2014, police made 221,851 misdemeanor arrests.

"If in Manhattan that practice stops, that is a good thing, and that is a positive step toward curtailing one of the current abusive NYPD practices," Gangi said. "Now, highly problematic is that apparently this changerelatively modest changewill only take place in Manhattan...this will result in a significant discrepancy in practice, where if you're caught for a second time being in the park after dark in Brooklyn, the police can arrest you."

In a statement, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said that this policy change "will save valuable police resources. Police officers can now quickly return a person to court on a warrant and, at the same time, adjudicate their current summonsable offense, all without jeopardizing the public safety." But Gangi questioned why drinking from an open container or sitting in a park after dark should be considered a threat to public safety at all.

"None of these people jeopardize public safety," he said. "If you're arresting people for having a foot up on the subway seat...not only is it wasteful, it also sort of reaches to a kind of absurdity when you arrest someone for having a foot up on a subway seat at 2:30 a.m. instead of just telling them to put their feet down. So I'm not quite sure why he's reeling in the public safety point when it's irrelevant to these particular kinds of infractions."

It's not yet clear whether other borough DA's offices will follow suit, but currently, this policy only applies to Manhattan. Meanwhile, a package of bills introduced to the City Council in January would reduce such low-level offenses to civil offenses, though police reform activists don't think those bills go far enough, either.
New York City landed near the very bottom of U.S. News & World Report's list of the "Best Places To Live," falling behind Cleveland, Ohio; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and, um, Albany, New York. So why is the greatest city in America ranked 96 out of 100 in this "study," which factored in data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Labor, and, of course, the FBI? Besides the obvious Chartbeat appeal of trolling the loudmouth residents of the nation's media capital, U.S. News & World Report has decided that NYC has bad "value."

The report's Value Index, calculated using U.S. Census data, "measures how comfortably the average resident of each metro area can afford to live within his or her means." NYC scored a very low 1.1 out of 10 on the report's Value Index. NYC did, however, score high ranks on several of the other indexes, including quality of life, job market, and "Desirability." Check out our 8.4 in Desirability! Go cry in your pillow, hideous 98th-ranked Stockton, California.

Peruse the whole bullshit report here, if you have nothing better to do (which must mean you don't live in New York). And if you really think you'd be happier getting more value in Rochester, then by all means, peruse the whole bullshit report from the spacious, high-value confines of your comfortable split-level townhouse in the charming Rochester suburb of Pittsford.

There is no disputing the facts: all the money you waste on rent in NYC could get you a much larger domicile in a place like stimulating Winston-Salem, North Carolina. But why stop there? You'll get even more value in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, or any city in Ukraine for that matter. Of course, to get the most value, you need only invest in a comfy subterranean studio apartment anywhere in hip downtown Hades. Quiet and cozy!

[Editor's note: An earlier version of this article sarcastically referred to Pittsford, NY as "charming." After receiving objections from one longtime Pittsford resident, and investigating the suburb further, we hereby withdraw the sarcasm.]
News

Woman claims losing Dhs542000 due to relationship in Abu Dhabi

The woman said she knew the appellee for a long time and trusted in him, so she lent him Dhs542,000, which he asked to pay off his financial obligations, as he claimed.
This was passed along from Bob B. and also credit to Kevin Sorbo. For me When the State tells you its safe to go to Home Depot to buy a ...
An ongoing remote testimony pilot project at the State Capitol offers a peek into how neighbor island residents might more directly participate in their state government in the future. Today, using new videoconferencing equipment, Rep. Nicole Lowen (Kailua-Kona, Holualoa) was able to successfully communicate with Kailua-Kona resident David Case.This is great. It seems to do everything you want and need the process to do, said Case in his live streamed video conference with Lowen. Its certainly preferable to spending $200-$300 and taking up a whole day to testify for two or three minutes before a committee at the Legislature.The demonstration gave House staff and legislators a first-hand look at how residents on the neighbor island could provide live testimony during future legislative hearings. The demonstration follows years of attempted legislation introduced by Lowen to facilitate outer island residents' active participation in the legislative process."I've introduced a bill on this initiative every year since I was first elected, Lowen said. Today, even without the passage of a bill, we took some big steps toward creating a remote testimony system. It's a huge burden when our constituents on the neighbor islands have to pay for a plane ticket, hotel room, and rental car just to get a few minutes of time to speak in front of a committee. Other states do thisAlaska, Washington, Colorado; we can and should do it too."As part of the pilot project, selected measures before the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources & Hawaiian affairs (OMH) will utilize the high tech equipment to provide limited live testimony remotely from the neighbor islands during the current session.Testifiers seeking to participate in the pilot program will require a computer with a functional webcam and microphone, along with a broadband connection for optimal results. Participants are required to register to testify prior to the hearing, and will be sent a hyperlink to join the committee meeting by teleconference at the time of the hearing.In addition, House Bill 1595 , introduced by Lowen, would establish a Remote Testimony Task Force to bring together a group of legislators, staff and technical experts to develop procedures and expand opportunities for the public to testify remotely during legislative proceedings. The bill passed the House Committee on Finance and now moves to the House floor and then to the Senate.
For All U of U Health Patients & Visitors
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP)  A suspect in the abduction of a 4-year-old girl taken while playing in a park on Montana's Fort Peck Indian Reservation was charged Tuesday with kidnapping, attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault of a minor.

John William Lieba pleaded not guilty to the charges during an initial appearance in Fort Peck Tribal Court, court officials said. Judge Marvin Youpee ordered him held without bail.

Lieba, 20, is accused of forcibly removing the girl from the park on Friday night and holding her against her will "for a significant period of time," according to a criminal complaint filed by Fort Peck Chief Prosecutor Adrienne Weinberger.

During that time, Lieba raped and attempted to strangle the girl at an undisclosed location in or around the town of Wolf Point on the northeastern Montana reservation, according to the complaint.

He faces up to nine years in prison and $45,000 in fines if convicted on all three counts, according to the complaint.

Federal charges also are anticipated in the case, FBI Special Agent Todd Palmer said.

The Associated Press is withholding the girl's name because she is an alleged victim of sexual assault.

The suspect was apprehended while driving around Wolf Point on Saturday, after being identified by witnesses to the abduction.

After an intensive search, the girl was found a day later at an undisclosed location about six miles from the abduction site, according to the FBI. The federal agency is jointly investigating the case with the Fort Peck Tribal Police and Roosevelt County Sheriff's Office.

Both Lieba and the victim are American Indians. They are not related by blood, Roosevelt County spokesman Lee Allmer said. The Fort Peck Reservation is home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes and has a population of about 10,000 people.

It was not immediately clear who represented the suspect during his Tuesday court appearance. County officials said Lieba was being held at the tribal jail, and he could not be reached directly for comment.

The federal government has jurisdiction over many crimes on Indian reservations. Potential punishments in federal court typically are far more severe than in tribal court.

Palmer said the victim was in a safe location but released no further details. After an initial health assessment on the reservation, the girl was to be taken to Billings for further examination, Allmer said.
BUTTE -- Attorneys for a 51-year-old transient woman who was convicted in the killing of a Butte man at a southwest Montana campground are seeking a new trial.

Sandra Lee Ann Cantrell was found guilty in January of felony deliberate homicide, felony assault with a weapon, felony tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and misdemeanor theft.

Cantrell admitted under oath during her trial to stabbing Mark Robert Mullen in August 2014. Christopher Lee Stiles, her common-law husband, pleaded guilty to the beating death of Mullen and is serving 50 years at the Montana State Prison.

In a motion filed Monday in Dillon district court, attorney Christopher C. Petaja wrote that Montanas statutes governing criminal procedure do not provide for a judge to overturn a jury verdict even if it was reached incorrectly.

Instead, state law permits a defendant to move for a new trial after a guilty verdict and permits the district court to modify or change the verdict by finding the defendant guilty of a lesser included offense or finding the defendant not guilty, the motion states.

Petaja's motion states that evidence in the case does not support a guilty verdict for deliberate homicide by felony murder.

As an alternative to ordering a new trial, the motion asks Judge Loren Tucker to modify the verdict, throwing out the felony murder conviction but allowing the lesser charges to stand.

Beaverhead County Attorney Jed C. Fitch said Monday the facts in the case were clear about what happened at the Bryant Creek Campground near Wise River.

The man is dead and those two did it, he said.
The constitution was a hot topic Tuesday night at Helenas Constitution Park, where hundreds rallied in support of Montanas acceptance of refugees from war-torn Syria.

More than one speaker and dozens of rally attendees managed a reference to the countrys founding principles in the course of the nearly one-hour rally, one of five co-organized by the Montana Human Rights Network and simultaneously staged in cities around the state.

All seemed to agree Americas founders would have liked an oft-repeated line from the Emma Lazarus poem 'The New Colossus' that appears on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Our great nation was built on refugees and immigrants, refugee advocate Valerie Hellermann told a receptive crowd of around 300 supporters. The average American is a fifth generation immigrant. Look at the richness of America from the assimilation of those many cultures.

Some people have expressed fear over who gets into this country.  But keep in mind, refugees are fleeing terrorism, not propagating it.

Hellermanns speech came little more than a week after anti-refugee protesters descended on Montanas Capitol building to decry the expected arrival of up to 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. this year.

That event, the third such rally staged around Montana in recent weeks, also featured plenty of criticism aimed at Gov. Steve Bullock, who in November ignored calls from 55 Republican state lawmakers seeking to block or resist the placement of Syrian refugees in our great state at this time."

Tuesdays rally saw state Sen. Christine Kaufmann laud Bullocks resistance to that shameful piece of propaganda.

The longtime state lawmaker, part of an eclectic lineup of rally speakers that also included a pastor and a Liberian refugee, wrapped up her brief remarks with a call-and-response chant inviting the crowd to Stand together!

Minutes later, thats exactly what they did, posing for a group photo also taken at similar rallies in Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell and Billings.

The rally closed in less than half the time anti-refugee protesters took up at the Capitol late last month, but attracted nearly twice as many attendees.

Signs welcoming refugees and inviting racists to go home greeted a half-dozen or so counter-protesters who picketed the rally around the parks edges.

Some of those protesters, like Helena hair stylist Gina Satterfield, said rally attendees simply failed to grasp the danger posed by adherents to Islam, a religion she called more political than religious.

Feet away, Jan Larsen, who first immigrated from the United Kingdom in 1974, had just wrapped up a brief verbal clash with one of Satterfields cohorts.

Would I not be let in (to the U.S.) today if I was a different color, or wearing a headdress? Larsen wondered. Its just scary to see whats going on.

Her husband, Einar Larsen, agreed.

Theyre no different than anybody else, he said of the refugees. Theyre the same. Theyre people.
KALISPELL, Mont. (AP)  The head of the Division of Child and Family Services will leave the agency in April to return to practicing law as a committee appointed by the governor prepares to make recommendations for changes in agency policy and state law.

The move by Sarah Corbally came while the agency is under fire by some families and mental health counselors over complaints that it was not doing enough to protect abused and neglected children.

The agency, a division of the Department of Public Health and Human Services, has seen a high rate of turnover among caseworkers and has difficulty filling those jobs. The state currently lists 17 openings for child protection specialists, including seven in Missoula and four in Kalispell.

Counselors and the families of some children involved with DCFS have picketed DCFS offices around the state. Several met with Gov. Steve Bullock last July, asking for wholesale changes within the agency. They complained that they were disrespected by caseworkers, the agency ignored the recommendations of some counselors, and workers seemed to lack training.

Bullock created the Protect Montana Kids Commission in September to study the agency and make recommendations to align the system with national standards and best practices in the field of child welfare.

An audit released in November found that the agency needed to strengthen its supervision, better document its decisions and complete more investigations within the time frame required by law. The audit focused on how the child abuse hotline handled calls.

Corbally has long said the division needs more money to hire more caseworkers and a new computer system to improve efficiency.

DPHHS Director Richard Opper called Corbally's resignation a loss for the agency, the Flathead Beacon (http://bit.ly/1OLBl85) reported.

"No one works harder or is more passionate about protecting Montana's children from abuse and neglect than Sarah," Opper said in a statement.

Corbally said her resignation has nothing to do with the complaints against the agency, which she says is doing important work. She said the pressure and turmoil are to be expected in her current post.

"Honestly, when I took this job and I left being a lawyer, I decided I would probably do it for five to seven years. It's been six years, and I'm really ready to go back to law," Corbally said.
Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture's dismal projections for grain markets and the farm economy got most of the headlines last week at the annual Outlook Forum in Washington, it may have been Howard Buffett who offered the most poignant take-home messages.

The global farmer and philanthropist shared the stage with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a chat about conservation.

He leveled his sights, took aim and fired a magnum clip of quotable Howardisms, telling the international audience that Soil is an amazing, living ecosystem. If you treat it like dirt, thats what youll get. While none in the audience had more mud on their boots than did Buffett, his place on the big stage allowed the USDA to raise soil conservation issues to the highest level. Addressing Vilsack, Buffett said, The greatest legacy you leave behind is that you put conservation on the map; and I hope it stays there.

USDAs Natural Resources Conservation Service will use $5 billion to $6 billion annually to avert the loss of soil and to promote high quality water with a myriad of programs. The conversation with Buffett was the first time in memory that soil conservation was addressed in the opening session of the two-day conference, and it pre-empted such important issues as diminishing trade and the weakening farm economy.

If policy makers were listening, and several congressional aides were in attendance, the chat with Buffett could have been a USDA masterstroke toward elevating soil conservation and farm environmental issues as Congress begins work on the next Farm Bill. He offered many catchphrases in that direction, including, If you give farmers the right opportunities for conservation they can do it, and they will. and Agriculture isn't changing fast enough to avoid more government regulations.

While many Corn Belt farmers are moving in the general direction of conserving soil, protecting water quality, and utilizing existing soil biology to boost yields, Buffett is already there when he says, When you see soil erosion, sedimentation, water quality and when you see effect of drought, then no-till and cover crops become easy. And he added, You can pay for cover crops when you see the difference of 25 bushels of corn per acre.

While Buffett has to be all business in dealing with the familys business investments, he is applying those same principles to everyday farming. From a business standpoint, it was a smart decision to employ conservation practices. It doesnt work well economically to do the kind of rotations we really should do to protect our land and soil. Thats the challenge. We need government incentives to get farmers away from a corn-bean rotation.

The globe-trotting philanthropist has had the opportunities to see the impact of U.S. agriculture on the rest of the world, and he is thrilled with the positive results. U.S. farmers have saved tens of millions of acres of bio-diverse jungles and forests because of efficient, high-yielding production agriculture. Considering the alternative, in which farmers in many foreign nations have no conservation priorities, Buffett says, Biodiversity is underrated and American farmers are the best conservationists.

As farmers head to the field this year to produce a crop that will cost more than it will return, Buffetts observations about his fertility practices will get some attention, particularly with high yields and half of the typical nitrogen application. He told the USDA audience that he raised 227 bushel corn on 160 acres applying just 100 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre. I am very competitive with yields, but spend significantly less.

Wherever he goes, Buffett cuts a wide swath. And it certainly didn't hurt when he said, I learned a huge amount about farming from Nebraska Cooperative Extension, and couldn't have done it without them. There's no way we could be where we are without land grant universities.
SPRINGFIELD  Democrats in the Illinois Senate voted Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauners veto of a bill that would spend $721.5 million to fund grants to low-income students and operations at community colleges.

Republican Senators urged their Democratic counterparts to hold off on the vote in favor of moving forward with GOP proposals that tie higher education funding to measures they say would pay for the spending.

But Democrats, who have a supermajority in the Senate, moved forward with the vote, arguing that it would help ensure that students who receive grants through the Monetary Award Program are able to continue attending school. The measure also would free up millions of dollars universities have been fronting to students to cover the grants, they said.

The measure passed 37-17, with two Senators voting present. Among those voting against the bill were Sens. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, who represents Eastern Illinois University; Jason Barickman, R-Bloomington, who represents Illinois State University; and Dave Luechtefeld, who represents Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Immediately following the vote, Rauner issued a statement putting pressure on two Democratic state representative who voted against the bill initially, Jack Franks of Marengo and Scott Drury of Highwood, to vote against the override when it comes up in the House.

The bill can only become law if Representative Franks or Representative Drury succumb to pressure from (House) Speaker (Michael) Madigan and flip their votes to force a massive tax hike on the people of Illinois, Rauners statement said.

These members sided with taxpayers the first time around because this is a sham bill and an empty promise to students, Rauner said. We believe these members will do the right thing to ensure taxpayers are not left holding the bag. All of us want to fund higher education and MAP, and we stand ready to work with the General Assembly to find ways to do so without adding to the deficit or forcing a massive tax increase.

This story will be updated.
New Braunfels, TX (78130)

Today

Clear skies. Low around 60F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low around 60F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
On March 2, in accordance with the arrangement reached with the authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE Mission conducted a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the Askeran direction.

From the positions of the NKR Defense Army, the monitoring was conducted by Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk and his Field Assistants Jiri Aberle (Czech Republic) and Yevgeny Sharov (Ukraine).

From the opposite side of the Line of Contact, the monitoring was conducted by Field Assistant of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Khristo Khristov (Bulgaria), as well as by Personal Assistant to the Personal Representative of the CiO Simon Tiller (Great Britain) and staff member of the Office Peter Svedberg (Sweden).

The monitoring passed in accordance with the agreed schedule. No violation of the cease-fire regime was registered.

From the Karabakh side, the monitoring mission was accompanied by representatives of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense.
Interview with Michael Janssen, an Expert from the GRECO Secretariat

The Council of Europes Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) published a report recently stressing that corruption remains an important problem for Armenian society, even though the fight against it has been high on the political agenda for years. The report specifically looks at the issue of preventing corruption among parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors. The judiciary in Armenia appears to be particularly prone to corruption, the report says, and to suffer from a lack of independence. There are also concerns about the lack of clear separation of powers, the weakness of the parliament and insufficient transparency in public decision-making.

GRECO specifically recommends that the rules on the acceptance of gifts by parliamentarians, judges and prosecutors, as well as on submitting regular asset declarations, on their control and enforcement be further developed and made more effective.

Q: Among other propositions, the report states that according to the authorities the establishment of the rules of ethics and of the Ethics Committee has already had a positive impact on MPs: they have started displaying a restrained attitude towards each other and in relationship with other persons; in particular, they have become more tolerant when communicating with journalists. Yet, there was a recent another appalling abuse of a journalist by MP Mher Sedrakyan

First of all, let me explain this part in the report concerning a tenet displaying a restrained attitude towards each other and more tolerant with communicating with journalists, that is based on the comments and information given by the authorities. And then of course there were some other views, which are also reflected in the report, which show that is still progress that need to be made, so the report clearly takes into account such different views on the matter, and thats why GRECOs report very much highlights that further measures are needed, like for example, implementing real code of conduct, drawn by MPs themselves, and introduce more effective supervisory mechanisms, which could be connected actually to code of conduct or not necessary, could also be just take a form of amendments to the rules of procedure for example, to have more effective sanctions and monitoring mechanisms.

Now, I cannot comment on the particular case here, I don't have this responsibility and mandate here from the Council of Europe to go into such details, just to reflect on the situation that we encounter in the country globally and try to find some solutions and help the country concerned to get ahead. The report is quite clear. It is important to have more effective supervisory mechanisms also in the parliament. You know there is an Ethics Commission but until now it has not many cases and many results, and it cannot impose many sanctions apart from publishing some conclusions. So this is probably not good enough, and GRECO thus stresses that more needs to be done.

Q: A number of media outlets demanded that the MP in question be punished and there were even demands requiring a termination of his deputy mandate. Don't you think the new version of the code of conduct should envisage more effective tools to defend journalists from such attacks and take measures to really put an end to their MP mandate?

A termination of an MP mandate, of course, would be really the strictest measure possible. I think it is very important to have a regulation of sanctions, to start with lighter sanctions that could also be fines, or other things. Termination of a mandate would be really the very last resort. Ultimately, its up to the authorities of Armenia to find a good way, but sometimes it can also be counterproductive to have too harsh sanctions, which then cannot be applied in practice.

Q: Can you bring any of examples from international practice in similar cases?

There are no clear standards internationally speaking, and this really depends very much on the particular country. One situation is quite clear, if an MP has been convicted in the past for criminal offences, then he should not be elected as a member of parliament, or if, of course, an MP commits a crime during his mandate, then the proceedings about the suspension of the mandate could start, but the question of immunity inevitably arises. But these are rather extreme cases and I am not 100 percent sure what this case you are referring to looks like. If there are some disciplinary matters, misbehavior, then the termination of the mandate would be probably too harsh.

Q: Concerning oligarchs in the Armenian parliament, does the report suggest that these people should leave the parliament?

Not exactly. Here again I must say that GRECO does not make so specific recommendations targeting individual persons but really the overall situation. And here the findings were that on one hand the rules in Armenia are quite strict, so MPs in Armenia are prohibiting from operating businesses during their mandate, they may not be engaged in paid activities with some exceptions, not to hold positions in commercial organizations and so on, and on the other hand, there is quite lot of evidence that these rules are not respected quite often in practice. So, the solution found by the constitution of Armenia is very severe that the mandate should be terminated if this rule is not obeyed. So, its not a GRECO proposition but in fact if the constitution is not respected that would have consequences. Now, this does not mean that businessmen cannot become elected as MPs and one must really clearly looking to the individual cases, but it is important to have transparency on these issues, to know exactly what are Parliamentarians are doing in their life apart from their mandate as MPs, and it is important that the rules are applied in practice. Here again there is no effective supervisory mechanisms, no one to really looking to the activities of the MPs. So, probably here more needs to be done in Armenia.

Q: What is your expert opinion as to what will be the risks for Armenia if these business people stay and the plutocracy remains the dominant regime, given the increased role of the parliament after 2018?

The most important thing for GRECO is that the rules are obeyed and that must be ensured and there must be a proper mechanism to identify what is happening, what is the background of individual MPs, what are their activities, and if they are in conflict with the law, proper sanctions are applied, this is the most important. If everything is transparent and people, citizens want to elect such oligarchs, business people in the parliament, then they just have the right of course to do so, and GRECO would not suggest that there should be no business connections between MPs and the business community, which realistically speaking always exists. But there must be transparency.

Q: However, the findings of the report suggest that because of these oligarchs in the Armenian parliament, citizens have lost confidence, which means that is not their will

This is a rather political question, and GRECO is not as such a political body, but we are giving technical advice and say: apparently there is a rule, which is there, but it does not really function, and afterwards its up to the Armenian society to draw a line and see who should be elected as a member of parliament. But for us the most important is the issue of transparency and that citizens know what candidates and MPs are doing in their life, what are their links to business, which interests are defended by them, do they defend by people or not or do they only defend their private business interests. Then must be clear to everybody, and then citizens would be in a situation to elect those people.

Q: Concerning bribes and gifts, it is widely known that judges and prosecutors with relatively low salaries that do not exceed 1 million drams possess millions of dollars in their back accounts. What surveillance technics should be applied to prevent such criminal practices?

There is a specific body established by Armenia, the Ethics Commission for High Ranking Officials. We understood in GRECO that there is a reform process going on and the Commission should get more power and also a possibility to impose fines in case of violations of the rules of non-declaration or declaration of false numbers. We very much hope, that this process will go on and this Commission will get more jurisdiction and possibilities to bring to light irregularities. For the time being, this is not really the case and as we understood it the Commission just has the right to see if the forms are completed by the judges and if they have responded to the questions, but the Commission would not be able to really conduct investigations. So, more needs to be done, and hopefully it is underway now.

Regarding the issue of criminal persecution, if there are really serious cases of misbehavior, of fraud, better cooperation between this Commission and law enforcement bodies, prosecution and police is indispensable.

Q: By the end of April 2017 the authorities of Armenia are to report back on measures taken to implement the 18 recommendations included in this report. Are there any sanctions envisaged in case of non-compliance?

Within one year, Armenian will have to report back on the actions taken for each individual recommendation. Then GRECO will draw a compliance report. This is an ongoing procedure, it will not stop here with just one report, but we will see, if the overall picture of implementation is satisfactory or not.

If the result is relatively good, the procedure will go on, there will be the next report. Armenia will be urged to carry on the reforms. This is a standard procedure taken by the member countries. If the result is unsatisfactory, then a so-called non-compliance procedure is launched - a specific procedure, which means first of all that the country has to report back every six months, so there is more pressure to show results. And there will be diplomatic steps afterwards.

Interview conducted by Oksana Musaelyan
Transcripts of tapped phone calls between the prime minister and several members of the Lithuanian government were released to the public Tuesday, sparking a major scandal.

The calls, tapped by the local anti-corruption agency (STT), were released by the Parliaments Anti-Corruption Commission, which is headed by members of the opposition.

The move came in response to an unexpected action by the prosecutors office, which shut down an STT pre-trial investigation into a case that involves three members of the government and Ricardas Malinauskas, the mayor of Druskininkai, a resort town in southern Lithuania.

The STT was investigating events that took place in September 2015, when the government moved quickly to amend a resolution on environmental policy. An entire chapter was excised from the resolution, one that regulated resort protection zones that severely limit construction in designated parts of Lithuanias resort areas.

The amendment was made two days before a court ruling that involved the Vijunele estate in Druskininkai, near the borders with Belarus and Poland.

This luxurious complex had been built in a resort protection zone, and was determined to be illegally built by the prosecutors after it was registered in 2014. However, the court rejected the prosecutors claims, citing (among other factors) the recent change in governmental policy.

Shortly after that, the STT announced it would investigate this case.

Malinauskas, the mayor, and Kestutis Treciokas, the Minister of Environment, were questioned as was Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, the leader of the Social Democrat party in which Malinauskas is a vice-chairman.

In a surprise move, prosecutors shut the investigation down, saying there was no evidence of criminal activity. However, a few hours later, the Anti-Corruption Commission leaked transcripts of tapped conversations between Malinauskas and several members of the government.

The transcripts show that Malinauskas called Butkevicius, Treciokas and Evaldas Gustas, the Minister of Economy, and urged them to quickly pass the amendment deleting the chapter on resort protection areas. In several of these conversations, Malinauskas said the deletion was needed for a court case and must be adopted immediately.

Butkevicius, according to the transcripts, said: Got it. Okay. I will urge them.

The tapped conversations allegedly took place in August and September 2015. Malinauskas allegedly pressured the chancellor of the government as well as the two ministers and the prime minister to take the action.

In one of the conversations, Malinauskas reportedly told Gustas, the minister of economy, that he needed a ministry approval, to which Gustas responded that he never objects to such things but noting that the project must be submitted by Treciokass Ministry of Environment.

A key conversation occurred on Sept. 21, shortly before the government changed the policy. In this conversation Malinauskas allegedly told Treciokas time was growing short.

Weve got it on the 25th, I mean we have a court on the weekend, and we really [need] that decision. Weve been waiting for half a year, Malinauskas allegedly said. According to the transcript, he also stated he spoke to the prime minister and head of his administration on the matter.

Treciokas allegedly said, Okay. I will give a zadaniye [task  Russian) to the chancellor soon. And Malinauskas reportedly reiterated the decision must be taken precisely on the resort zones.

On Sept. 23, after the government acted, Malinauskas and Treciokas reportedly exchanged SMS messages:

Good evening. Thank you very much, Malinauskas reportedly wrote. Treciokas response was reported to be, No problem. Wasnt hard.

Prime Minister Butkevicius didnt say much, according to the leaked transcripts. Soon after the prosecutors decision to shut the investigation down, he had addressed the issue.

This is a responsible government and it doesnt (tolerate) any signs of corruption, if there are any. The closing of the investigation proves that members of the government got accused without a basis, Butkevicius said.

The Vijunele estate belongs to Zilvinas Povilonis, a friend of Malinauskas father, and the mayor said he himself oversaw some of the work and paid some of the workers, but said it was Povilonis money. Malinauskas denies allegations that he is the real owner of the estate.

However, in February, the mayor said he would like to purchase it, if it was for sale (it isnt). Povilonis allegedly bought the estate for LTL 600,000 ( 173,722). According to the probes findings, it was all paid in cash. On Tuesday, the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT) said it is going to investigate the origins of that cash.

Photo: Kestutis Treciokas, the Minister of Environment

occrp.org
The Historian Bluesman Social Studies Singapore Singapore, Singapore, Singapore In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that. - Mark Twain And that is what this blog attempts to do and to put it on the public domain. Knowing is an ongoing process and and it is made free for all. View my complete profile
The Legend.....

but should danger ever come, then Holger Danske will rouse himself, and the table will burst asunder as he draws out his beard. Then he will come forth in his strength, and strike a blow that shall sound in all the countries of the world.



- Hans Christian Andersen


I am person who is uncompromisingly black and unapologetically gay. Deal with it.

I am person who is uncompromisingly black and unapologetically gay. Deal with it. Alvin McEwen

[image: 649151 origin 1]Published by Reuters By Luc Cohen and Karen Freifeld NEW YORK (Reuters)  Donald Trumps family company is set to face a criminal t...

On November 12, 2017, at 6:49 pm, I received a text that read: Antron has transitioned. The official cause of death was cancer, but HIV was the cause. I...

Weeks before the Nov. 8 elections, a gaggle of far-right pundits are helping raise money for the 1776 Project PAC, one of the right-wing groups that is i...

From marching bands to mad science to the rare, double ring, these proposals are over-the-top.

High school golfer Rio Pearlstein talks about navigation competition and transition on this weeks edition of The Trans Sporter Room | Rio Pearlstein Wi...

Three months ago Steve Bannon, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump, was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. And on Friday he was ...

Variety reports: A woman who accused That 70s Show actor Danny Masterson of raping her in April 2003 said Friday that she fears retaliation from the C...
Rebecca Bradley and JoAnne Kloppenburg are vying for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the April 5 election.
MENOMONEE FALLS / MIDDLETON - Marcia L. (Helleckson) Rosecky, age 41, reached the end of a long and courageous battle with Leukemia, complicated by graft vs. host disease, on Feb. 27, 2016.

Marcia was born on Feb. 11, 1975, in Madison, the daughter of Theodore and Marita (Olson) Helleckson. She was a 1993 graduate of Middleton High School and a member of the high school volleyball and softball teams. She started her softball career at the age of 6 as a catcher and ended it on the mound as a dominant pitcher with the highlight being a trip to the High School Softball State Tournament. She attended Madison Technical College and earned her associate's degree in Fire Protection Technician, graduating in 1996. Marcia was united in marriage to David Rosecky on June 17, 2000, at St. Norbert's Church in Roxbury, Wis. She was a member of the Middleton Volunteer Fire Department from 1996 to 1997.

In May of 1997 Marcia earned a position with City of Brookfield Fire Department and was the only female firefighter on the Department at the time. She was tremendously proud of that accomplishment and quickly earned the respect of her fellow firefighters due to her hard work and tenacity. In September of 1998, Marcia was proud to have her husband, Dave, join the Brookfield Fire Department so they could pursue their careers together. Marcia was recognized for her work as a firefighter/paramedic receiving the City of Brookfield Distinguished Service Award in 2005 and a Retirement Award after being forced to retire following her cancer diagnosis in 2008.

Marcia and Dave lived life to the fullest travelling and exploring the United States. Motorhome road trips and Harley rallies were regular occurrences. Her first baby was her beloved black lab, Jack, who was then followed by Dawson and Charlie, also labs. In 2010 their family was completed with the birth of Fletcher Thomas Rosecky. Being a mom was the most important thing in Marcia's life. She was an at home mom, who cherished every day that she was able to spend with Fletcher, developing an amazing, unbreakable bond.

Marcia was an amazing person who touched the lives of everyone she met. She had an amazing spirit, kind heart and a great sense of humor and almost always had a smile on her face, even during her struggle with cancer. Her untimely departure leaves everyone who met her with a sadness in their heart, but we must all remember the times we shared with her and keep her amazing legacy alive.

Marcia is survived by her husband of 15 years, David Rosecky; her 5 year old son, and pride and joy, Fletcher Rosecky; her father, Ted Helleckson; her siblings, Joleen (Marty) Breunig and Ted Jr. (Laura) Helleckson; her nieces and nephews, Kayla and Kyle Breunig and Sydney, Jack and Ashley Helleckson; her mother-in-law, Dorothy Rosecky; her uncles, John (Mary) Helleckson and Tom (Christy Maik) Helleckson, John (Kateri) Nelson, Shaun (Jackie) Olson and many cousins.

She was preceded in death by her mother, Marita Helleckson; her father-in-law, John Rosecky; and her grandparents, Palmer and Angie (Crapp) Helleckson and Leon and Jessamine (Whelan) Olson.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at ST. BERNARD CATHOLIC CHURCH, 7450 University Ave., Middleton, at 2 p.m. on Friday, March 4, 2016, with Father Brian Wilk presiding. Family and friends and may call from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. with service to follow. In lieu of flowers, the Rosecky family will be establishing the "Firefighter/Paramedic Marcia Rosecky Memorial Fund" to benefit women who want to pursue a career in firefighting and emergency medicine, through Madison College. Please make donations out to "FF/P Marcia Rosecky Memorial Scholarship Fund".

Marcia fought Leukemia, and all of its complications, with an amazing amount of strength, determination, and grit. She received numerous chemotherapy treatments, as well as a stem cell transplant in 2008 with cells from her sister, Joleen Breunig. Marcia's entire family would like to thank the exceptional staffs of numerous departments at Froedtert Hospital, along with an endless number of Medical College of Wisconsin students, who refused to give up on her and everything she challenged them with. Finally, a special thanks to the extraordinary men and women of the Bone Marrow Transplant unit, who were not only her caregivers, but also our friends.

Online condolences may be made at www.gundersonfh.com.
MADISON - Marion Ardelia Tande, age 102, passed away peacefully at Oakwood Village in Madison, Wis., on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016. She was born July 27, 1913, in Hanska, Minn., to Mikal Mikkelson and Amanda (Anderson) Mikkelson.

Marion grew up on the home farm as the eldest of five children. As a young child, she spoke Norwegian and attended a one-room schoolhouse. As a young woman, Marion kept house for her bachelor uncles on the Anderson family farm. She met Alvin Tande, a handsome North Dakotan, in the mid-1930s while he was visiting relatives in Hanska. The couple married July 1, 1935, and continued living on the Anderson farm where their daughters, Janice and Carla, were born. The family moved to Madison, Wis., in 1942 when Al Tande took a job as an airplane mechanic at Truax Field with the Wisconsin Air National Guard.

Marion was a loving mother to her girls and to son, Allen, born in 1945. She was a great cook who was known for a full cookie jar. After her kids left home she put her culinary skills to work for the Madison school lunch program.

Marion kept a beautiful garden and a side yard full of peonies. She loved to gather family around the picnic table in her backyard.

Church was always important to Marion and she was a longtime member of Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison. She sang in the church's senior choir throughout her 80s and enjoyed attending Sons of Norway meetings, where she enjoyed brushing up on her Norwegian. She celebrated her 80th birthday with a trip to Norway with her daughter, Jan.

Marion lived in the same home on South Owen Drive in Madison for 60 years. She was an active member in her neighborhood Ladies Circle and bridge club. She continued to make new friends as the neighborhood turned over, and did the same after she moved to Oakwood Village after her 90th birthday. As she moved to assisted living and then to the nursing facility in her later years, Marion enjoyed art, music, exercise, and the kindness and good care she received from Oakwood staff. She was well-liked by staff and described as a gracious, thankful person.

Marion's sweet and caring nature endeared her to family and friends alike. A robust crowd from Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Washington and beyond gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday. Marion was soft-spoken but her sly wit and love of learning remained with her throughout her days.

She is survived by her sister, Carol Todnem of St. James, Minn., and her sister-in-law, Ardis Mikkelson of Madelia, Minn; her three children, Jan (Jack) Gaumnitz of Lawrence, Kan., Carla (Cliff) Hageman of Fitchburg, Wis., and Allen (Karen) Tande of Plover, Wis.; 11 grandchildren, 17 great-grandchildren, and many other nieces, nephews, other relatives, and dear friends. She was preceded in death by her husband, parents, and siblings.

Visitation for Marion will be from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 5, 2016, at OAKWOOD VILLAGE WEST in RESURRECTION CHAPEL, 6205 Mineral Point Road, Madison, Wis., with a funeral service to follow at 11 a.m. Burial will follow at Sunset Memory Gardens.

Please share your memories at www.CressFuneralService.com.
Cyprus PIO: Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review, 16-03-02 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. 42/16 02.03.2016 [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Akinci reacted over Dombrovskis' visit in Cyprus and the fact that he will hold only a courtesy meeting with him [02] The breakaway regime assesses a decision by an American court for a property in occupied Cyprus [03] Kalyoncu will discuss with Davutoglu ways to support the Cyprus negotiations during his visit to Ankara [04] Reactions to the signing of the water agreement continue [05] Denktas: The Cyprus negotiations will be led to a dead-end [06] Benter: "The closed city of Maras belongs to Evkaf" [07] Occupancy of five-star hotels in the occupied area of Cyprus has reached to 55% for the month of February [08] Top judge replied to Erdogan: "Rules are binding for everyone" [09] Kilicdaroglu called Erdogan a 'narcissist' [10] HDP co-chair probed for calling on locals to march to restive Sur [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Akinci reacted over Dombrovskis' visit in Cyprus and the fact that he will hold only a courtesy meeting with him Under the title: "They should not showed up at all", Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris Gazette (02.03.16-online) reports that Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, commenting on the two-day forthcoming visit in the island of the European Commissioner for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis, stated that as they were informed, Dombrovskis will pay a courtesy visit of only 15 minutes with him and reacted saying the following: "If they will carry out such visits, it would be better not to show up at all". Speaking during an event in the occupied area of Cyprus, Akinci explained that the European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis who is responsible to coordinate the Turkish Cypriot's harmonization process with the EU, will pay a 2-3 day visit in the island, will hold several contacts in the "south" and hold a press conference. Commenting on the fact that Dombrovskis will pay a 15 minutes courtesy visit in the "TRNC", Akinci said: "I want to openly say the following: If they will carry out this kind of visits, it would be better not to come at all. We are serious and we want those visiting us to be serious as well. The normal thing would be the one who is responsible to prepare the Turkish Cypriot side for the EU, to carry out contacts here. To come and hear us, learn about our sensitivities; this is their main responsibility. It should be made known that we will not accept such approaches". (AK) [02] The breakaway regime assesses a decision by an American court for a property in occupied Cyprus Turkish Cypriot daily Star Kibris newspaper (02.03.16) reports that the self-styled foreign ministry of the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus has assessed a decision taken by the District Court of Columbia in Washington in a lawsuit filed against the occupation regime by Greek Cypriot Michalis Toumazou and a group of Greek Cypriots living in the United States of America. The lawsuit had been filed in 2009 and ended on 30 September 2014 in favor of the regime, notes the "ministry" in a written statement issued yesterday, noting that afterwards the plaintiffs took the decision of the lower court to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, which on 15 January 2016 also ruled in favor of the regime. According to the statement, the Court decided that the issues regarding the property in dispute were not entering into the scope of the Court's authority and that none of the plaintiff's allegations could be proved. The "ministry" alleges that the above-mentioned decision constitutes an important precedent and could be a basis for other cases in the USA or other countries. Claiming that they respect the property right of everyone living on the island, the "ministry" alleges that searching in courts for a solution to "politically controlled cases" on the property issue is not a correct method. (I/Ts.) [03] Kalyoncu will discuss with Davutoglu ways to support the Cyprus negotiations during his visit to Ankara Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (02.03.16) reports that the so-called prime minister Omer Kalyoncu stated that he will exchange views with the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu about the solution procedure taking place now in Cyprus. He also stated that they will discuss ways to support the negotiations in order an agreement to be reached within the current year. Kalyoncu made these statements yesterday at the illegal Tymbou airport, prior to his departure to Turkey. The self-styled prime minister is holding today a meeting in Ankara with Davutoglu in order to sign the agreement reached with Turkey on the water issue on behalf of the breakaway regime. Referring to the water agreement, Kalyoncu stated that the agreement is extremely important since it will help towards the prosperity of the "country". He also expressed the hope that "the water of peace to be shared with the Greek Cypriots in the future". The paper writes that Kalyoncu and Davutoglu will also discuss economic issues during their meeting. "We are asking for support in order to establish an economy that will be able to stand on its own feet [?] and for reforms to be made towards this direction", Kalyoncu stated. Kalyoncu is escorted by the "foreign minister" Emine Colak, the "agriculture and natural resources minister" Erkuk Sahali and the "culture minister" Kutlu Evren along with various "bureaucrats". (CS) [04] Reactions to the signing of the water agreement continue Under the title "Treachery signature", Turkish Cypriot daily Afrika newspaper (02.03.16) reports that the Social Democracy Party (TDP) youth organization and the Baraka Cultural Centre organized a protest yesterday at the illegal Tymbou airport during self-styled prime minister Omer Kalyoncu's departure for Turkey to sign the "agreement" on the water. The protesters asked from Kalyoncu not to sign the "agreement". Moreover, TDP's chairman Cemal Ozygit also called on Kalyoncu not to sign the "agreement" which he described as "treachery against the Turkish Cypriot people". In statements to the press yesterday, Ozyigit said that if Kalyoncu signs the "agreement", the TDP will not abandon its struggle on the water issue. Describing the water from Turkey as "a great need for the country" and thanking everybody who contributed to the project, Ozyigit argued that the Turkish Cypriots are ready to buy, distribute and control the water. Accusing the self-styled government of succumbing to impositions on this issue, he expressed the view that the second text of the "agreement" is different from the first only in words. He noted that the "municipalities" will "lose their functionality", pointing out that "the company will collect even the local revenues of the municipalities". Furthermore, the so-called Water Platform, which consists of 40 organizations, handed over a letter yesterday to Kalyoncu's office saying that they will never allow the privilege regarding the administration and the operation of the water to be given to a private company. The organizations expressed the view that the water should be administered by protecting the interests of the public and the future generations and not the interests of private companies or persons. Finally, in a written statement on the issue, Sener Elcil, general secretary of the Turkish Cypriot Primary School Teachers' Trade Union (KTOS), described the "agreement", which Kalyoncu will sign today, as a "second Treaty of Sevres", accusing the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) of doing things which "submissive" parties such as the National Unity Party and the Democratic Party do not dare to do. Elcil noted that the "assembly' established after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus for "administrating" the Turkish Cypriots has been turned into a mechanism which materializes Turkey's integration policies. He argued that Ankara brings to the "government" whichever party it desires and uses the "elections" in the occupied area of the island for deceiving the world. (I/Ts.) [05] Denktas: The Cyprus negotiations will be led to a dead-end Turkish Cypriot daily Diyalog newspaper (02.03.16) reports that Serdar Denktas, chairman of the Democratic Party (DP) visited the occupied Dikomo village and talked with the inhabitants about the latest developments on the Cyprus negotiations. Denktas expressed the opinion that issues like the sovereignty, the guarantees and the property will lead the Cyprus negotiations to a dead-end. He also said that his party will never abandon "this state and its people", as he said. He went on and stated that by the end of 2016 a referendum will be conducted for the solution of the Cyprus problem. Finally, Denktas said that the "coalition government" of the National Unity Party (UBP) and the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) has no future. (CS) [06] Benter: "The closed city of Maras belongs to Evkaf" According to illegal Bayrak television (01.03.16) the "general director" of the Cyprus Vak?f Administration Ibrahim Benter has alleged that the closed city of Maras [Translator's note: the occupied fenced off city of Varosha] is a property of the Evkaf or Foundations Administration. Speaking on a radio program in the occupied area of Cyprus, Benter argued that most of the properties owned by the Evkaf had been improperly and unlawfully handed over to others during the island's British colonial rule. "When the island was rented to the British in 1878, 14% of the properties on the island belonged to the Evkaf Administration. Today the total percentage of Vak?f or Evkaf owned property has dropped to 6%. The area covering the closed city of Maras [Varosha] falls within that 14%", Benter claimed. Explaining that a deal of high level experts had carried out a study in 2009 to determine the number of Vak?f owned properties, Benter said that the deal signed with the British in 1878 clearly stated that Evkaf properties could not be sold or transferred to others. "We have all the title deeds and legal documents to back up our claim" he argued. [07] Occupancy of five-star hotels in the occupied area of Cyprus has reached to 55% for the month of February Turkish Cypriot daily Halkin Sesi newspaper (02.03.16) reports that the hotel occupancy at the five-star hotels in the occupied area of Cyprus for the month of February has reached to 55%, an increase of 5%, comparing with the same period last year. Also, smaller hotels recorded occupancy of 32% for February 2016, which was also an increase of 15% compared to the same month last year. On average, all hotels had a 44% occupancy rate on February this year and compared to 2015 this was on average an increase of 11% for that period. (AK) [08] Top judge replied to Erdogan: "Rules are binding for everyone" Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (01.03.16) reported that Turkey's Constitutional Court President Zuhtu Arslan said at a conference in Ankara on March 1 that the rulings are binding for everyone. Arslan made the above statement following critical statements from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a ruling that led to the release of two journalists, Cumhuriyet Editor-in-Chief Can Dundar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul who were arrested in late 2015 over a news report about trucks allegedly carrying weapons to Syria. "The rulings the Constitutional Court issues within its authorization defined by the laws in the Constitution are binding for everybody and every institution. This is a constitutional rule," Arslan said. Erdogan said he would neither accept nor respect the ruling issued by the Constitutional Court late February 25 that provided the legal ground for the release of Dundar and Gul hours after the ruling. (?) Arslan also said that the court rulings could be criticized, while condemning what he described as imaginary conversations created to depict the Constitutional Court as a judiciary body whose rulings depend on personal judgments. "Justices are not sacred beings. Hence, court rulings can and should be criticized. Otherwise, the law could not be developed further. We, for this reason, respect any sort of criticisms against our rulings. However, I strongly condemn and reject any statements and comments directed at myself and our personnel with imaginary dialogues that imply that our court issues rulings based on personal judgments," Arslan added. [09] Kilicdaroglu called Erdogan a 'narcissist' Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (01.03.16) reported that the Republican People's Party (CHP) chairman Kemal K?l?cdaroglu said on March 1, that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's "narcissism" was revealed by his comments after the recent release of two prominent journalists. Kilicdaroglu expressed "sadness" over Erdogan's decision "not to respect or recognize" the Constitutional Court's ruling. "The President of a country should set a model for the society and should obey the judiciary and the law. But if his or her narcissism shows up then he doesn't recognize any rule, because what he says is the law itself. He doesn't comply with the law, the Constitution, or any of the other rules", Kilicdaroglu noted. "What is the law? The law is the assurance of all living people in a society. Who distributes the law? The courts," K?l?cdaroglu said, responding to reporters' questions during a visit to the Union of Chambers of Certified Accountants of Turkey (TURMOB). [10] HDP co-chair probed for calling on locals to march to restive Sur Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (01.03.16) reported that Diyarbak?r Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation into the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtas and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) co-chair Kamuran Yuksek on March 1, after they called on locals in the southeastern province of Diyarbak?r to march toward the restive Sur district. "We do not view a 24-hour war being waged in the center of a city for three months as an ordinary situation. All Diyarbak?r residents should rise up in order to lift the blockade in Sur. Everyone should march towards Sur from their residences on March 2 at 4 p.m.," Demirtas had said at a press conference, urging locals to be "resolute in calling for their democratic rights." Sur has been under military curfew amid clashes for over three months. In December 2015, two separate investigations were launched into the HDP co-chair over his remarks calling for "autonomy." 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, 16-03-02 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] The refugee crisis is manageable, FM Kotzias says [02] Institutions to meet in Brussels on Greek programme [01] The refugee crisis is manageable, FM Kotzias says "The main cause of the refugee crisis is the war, and they tend to forget it and put the blame on us," Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said in an interview with Skai TV late on Tuesday. Regarding Austria's stance, he said that "Austria is also based on other forces that oppose to the German government of Merkel. I would say that it (Austria) plays the 'dirty game' of many countries that would like to destroy Merkel or at least her policy." Kotzias reassured that the refugee flows in Greece are manageable, adding that Greece can host up to 150,000 refugees. He also suggested calmness and not panic in addressing the problem. "The refugee problem is a complex one," he said and noted that nobody in Europe was ready to accept such a large number of refugees. [02] Institutions to meet in Brussels on Greek programme The heads of the institutions will meet on Wednesday evening in Brussels to reach common ground on the Greek program and "unblock" the review procedure. According to EU sources, the European Commission and the IMF still disagree on the fiscal gap until 2018. Therefore, the EuroWorking Group advised the heads of the representatives to make another effort to achieve convergence before the Eurogroup on March 7 so that the program review starts as soon as possible. Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos will address the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs of the European Parliament, at 16:00 (Athens time). Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-02 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] The situation of the refugees camp at Idomeni is to the limits [02] Vitsas optimistic problems with Turkey on NATO role in the Aegean will be overcome [03] Light quake jolts Crete [04] Only 170 refugees crossed the borders since midnight [01] The situation of the refugees camp at Idomeni is to the limits The refugees camp of Idomeni, at the borders between Greece and FYROM, changes shape almost every hour of the day. Less than an hour a ship docks at the port, or a train arrives at the station of Thessalonica, more people flow to every available space in the fields near the frontier. Anyone who comes to observe the situation in the morning, in the afternoon finds a new surprise, more tents and new influx of people, arriving from every possible direction and means. Those who have not enough money, on foot through the fields and the motorway, in taxi those who can afford it. The situation is already asphyxiating. The newcomers lack everything during those first hours of their arrival. The organizations and the authorities, which have been caught in surprise by FYROM's decision to close the border, the only thing they can provide them immediately are blankets. All day long one can watch families carrying bundles of blankets in order to build with them a hasty structure, till they manage to orientate themselves and get the situation in hand. "We cannot do anything to stop them. This is not a camp, till Skopje closed the border it was a passage, there were no infrastructure to host them. And they're impatient, they won't stay to the hot spots in Athens, or elsewhere, they prefer to wait here", explained Vassilis, a volunteer of the Praksis, an organization of volunteers responsible for the registration and the assistance of the refugees. Those who cannot afford the 40 euros to buy a tent, they have to sleep, wrapped in their blanket, upon the cold and humid ground. Even small children and babiesa Hosham, who before leaving the country worked as a civil engineer in Syria, leads till the closed railway line, where new tents have sprouted and people in blankets try to sleep on the wooden traverses, or near the wired fence. "Me too", he explained, "for five days I slept on the ground with only a blanket. Then three days ago, I decided that I could not make it and I asked a taxi driver, who made a phone call and a few minutes afterward a woman came with a tent. I paid 40 euros. You see these blue ones, all of them are bought by those who cannot wait for their number and the small tents the authorities provide when they have them." Hosham, like every other refugee is anxious to cross the border and reach Germany. He asked us if we have some news and show us the photos of his house, his wife and his two year old daughter he left behind, till he has the means to bring them. He gets desperate when we explain there is no progress on the issue. "Please, pass the message. I don't want them to play political games over me, holding me as a hostage to obtain what they want. Where is their humanity?", asked Hosham. But for many others even the perspective to leave in case the border opens seems to be difficult. Ali, from Iraq, show us his papers and the registration he got from the hot spot of Mytilene, where is erroneously written a different month on the birthday of his wife, making impossible for her a possible crossing elsewhere than Greece. "What could be done now? I try to explain, to fix it and I'm at a loss", said Ali. It is a matter of time for the sanitary situation to be out of control. The corn field attached to the wired fence at the border, was empty last Monday, but on Wednesday morning was already half full. Every inch around the tents is progressively covered with rubbish of any kind. The air is filled with the smell of the fires people light to keep their clothes warm and dry. Small children play in the filthy waters of a pond, three other small girls find a toy to a spiral of barbed wire and inexorably one of them cuts her hand and cries. The containers of the examining center of the Medicines Sans Frontieres, since 06:00, are filled with people coughing, ill children that cry, adults with cuts and other wounds. In the line for some milk, a piece of cheese-pie and pampers, people are coming in continuously. Here, one can see the increased number of refugees each day. Every one takes the meager sandwich and the small bottle of water and cherishes it as a gift, the only thing offered to him and has no price, during this journey they had to pay for everything. Here at Idomeni the only news the outside people could get, apart from the personal tragedies, are only the reports about the new arrivals, the inflated number of those who wait to cross the border. The only news buster would be the opening of the cross point, or another uprising of the desperate refugees. Which could also be a matter of days, as they explain to us two volunteers from Slovakia, who wait for the arrival of their prime minister on Wednesday at the border cross in order to protest against his stern opposition to accept refugees in the country. "He is a fascist", said one of them, showing the slogans in favour of the opening of the borders and the admittance of refugees. But even in the middle of this rubble and despair life continues. A young couple of refugees, holding hands, try to cut themselves away from the camp and make a romantic stroll towards the remote roads to the periphery of the village. They try to be detached from all the commotion around them, people running and shouting in every direction, the mingling between the tents, the television crews and photographers discharging their vans and setting their cameras. With the music from the man's mobile, they walk together the opposite direction every one else takes, looking straight on, ignoring everything, pacing calmly and lovingly to a transcendent vastness stressing beyond the fence. George-Byron Davos [02] Vitsas optimistic problems with Turkey on NATO role in the Aegean will be overcome Alternate Defence Minister Dimitris Vitsas in statements to Mega TV on Wednesday expressed optimism that the problems with Turkey on NATO's role in the Aegean will be overcome. He stated that the agreement signed by the involved members provides for NATO "observation, recording and updating" on the conditions between the Greek islands and the Turkish coast. "We can deal with the issue of the refugees in the benefit of Greece and Europe, and play a leading role," Vitsas said. [03] Light quake jolts Crete ANA/MPA---A light quake measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale was recorded at 01:54 at the sea region south-southwest of Ierapetra, Crete. According to the Geodynamics Institute of Athens' Observatory, the quake's epicentre was located 434 km south-southeast of Athens and 125 km south of Heraklio, Crete. No damages were reported. [04] Only 170 refugees crossed the borders since midnight The Greek-FYROM buffer zone opened Tuesday midnight until 2 am on Wednesday and 70 people managed to cross the borders. Another 100 persons crossed the borders between 6 am and 9 am when they opened it again. A total of 7,000 refugees have been stranded in the camp at the buffer zone and 2,000 persons live in tents nearby. Another 180 persons remain at the gas station, 15 klm from Idomeni. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
The movie Thank You, Dad by Hrach Keshishyan tells a story of an American-Armenian girl, named Virgy. Although, she had hardly ever see...




The discussions around aid effectiveness bring a new focus on how to enhance, measure and track sustainable development. With about 75% of the world's poor living in rural areas, one question is: How do we assess and measure rural poverty in order to be more effective at eradicating it? The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) developed a simple and innovative tool to help answer this question. Just as rural poverty is based on more than one factor, the tool - the Multidimensional Poverty Assessment Tool (MPAT) - combines 10 different indicators to create a rural poverty dashboard."MPAT provides data that can inform all levels of decision making by providing a clearer understanding of rural poverty at the household and village level. As a result, MPAT can significantly strengthen the planning, design, monitoring and evaluation of a project, and thereby contribute to rural poverty reduction.MPAT is the result of a collaborative, international initiative begun in 2008 and led by the IFAD. The purpose was to develop, test and pilot a new tool for local-level rural poverty assessment. The tool went through extensive field testing in several countries and independent validation and peer-review. MPAT is relatively easy to use, requires few resources to implement, and provides users with a reliable and comprehensive picture of a communitys poverty situation.During IFADs Learning Days, a session was organised on the use of MPAT in Mali. This is the first Francophone country where the tool has been tested. Given that the project supports the adaptation of poor smallholder farmers to climate change, an 11th indicator was developed to capture this dimension.Group discussions were held on the use of the tool. The strengths and benefits of MPAT for users and projects are manifold:Developed by an international group of rural development expertsField-tested data collection tool with purpose-built surveysIndependently assessed and validatedMuch of the work is already done for the user (an off-the-shelf tool)Field-tested training programmes for enumerators, supervisors and data entry personnelUses locally collected data based on peoples perceptionsStandardized methodology, but also customizableIndicators are automatically calculated and displayed in an easy-to-understand formatDesigned for organizations of all sizes and budgetsThere are however also some limitations:Attribution remains a challengeRespondents are mainly menUndertaking the surveys and doing the report requires significant time and human resourcesMPAT is complementary to IFADs Results and Impact Management System (RIMS). In Mali they have merged the two for the baseline study of the Rural Youth Vocational Training, Employment and Entrepreneurship Support Project with interesting results. MPAT will be tested in a number of countries in the near future: Mauritania, Kenya, Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland.
Now, Republicans in both the House and the Senate say they plan to continue pressing the Obama administration on its decision to redirect the money.

Following the release of a memo from the Congressional Research Service last week, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell on the $3.5 billion illegally diverted to insurance companies under Obamacares transitional reinsurance program. The nonpartisan agency said that the administration violated the Affordable Care Acts language in prioritizing insurers over the Treasury.

WASHINGTON - The fight over whether the Obama administration broke the law by prioritizing insurers over billions of dollars in payments to the U.S. Treasury through a program implemented under Obamacare is only beginning.

HHS should remember that breaking the law with regards to Obamacare is why the House sued them in the first place, David Pasch, spokesman for Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., told The Daily Signal.

Pasch was referring to a lawsuit the House of Representatives filed against the Obama administration in 2014. The lawsuit challenges the legality of the health care laws cost-sharing subsidies, which the House argued were funded without an appropriation from the lower chamber.

Roskam serves as chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, and he, along with Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, and Subcommittee on Health Chairman Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, sent Burwell a letter earlier this month requesting information on the transitional reinsurance program.

In some circumstances, Congress delegates discretion to agencies to implement laws, they wrote. However, when Congress withholds discretion, as was the case here, agencies are bound to carry out the law as written or seek assistance of Congress to change it.

Pasch told The Daily Signal that Roskam and the Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee will consider all remedies available to ensure the administration follows the law and plans to hold hearings and introduce legislation addressing the redirection of $3.5 billion to insurers.

Thus far, Republicans in the House have taken the lead on looking into Obamacares reinsurance program. But the Senate isnt planning to stand idly by.

Read the rest of the story on Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal.
The new Renault Duster includes India's first 6 speed Easy - R AMT and also boasts of more than 32 new changes along with superior engineering, styling, safety and comfort features.

By India Today Web Desk: Renault India launched the all new Duster range on Wednesday. The New Duster range which was recently unveiled at the Auto Expo 2016 includes India's first 6 speed Easy - R AMT and also boasts of more than 32 new changes along with superior engineering, styling, safety and comfort features.

Sumit Sawhney, Country CEO and Managing Director, Renault India Operations said, "Duster is a perfect example of Renault's core specialty of concept innovation, where we redefine an existing segment, offering something new to the customer. Success in the automotive space is led by clutter-breaking products that rewrite automotive trends and make customers' lives better."

advertisement

Engine:

ALSO READ: Ten things to know about the new Renault Duster

Offering the comfort of a sedan and the performance of an SUV, the New Duster diesel offerings are powered by an extremely efficient K9K 1.5 litre dCi engine (common rail direct injection), delivering a combination of high performance and an excellent fuel efficiency. With superior comfort, high driving position and 210mm of ground clearance, the new Duster is capable of handling the toughest of Indian roads.

In the AWD diesel variant, the reliable and fuel efficient the K9K 1.5 litre dCi engine will deliver maximum power of 110PS@4000rpm and peak torque of 245Nm@1750rpm. The engine is mated to a 6 speed manual transmission delivering an excellent fuel efficiency of 19.72 kmpl (ARAI).

The new Duster with 6 speed Easy - R AMT is a driver's delight enabling easy driving in busy city traffic conditions. It is available on K9K 1.5 litre dCi engine with maximum power of 110 PS@4000rpm and peak torque of 245Nm@1750rpm. The new Easy - R AMT provides similar fuel economy of 19.6 kmpl (ARAI).

Trim Levels:

ALSO READ: Renault unveils concept cars at Auto Expo 2016

The New Duster with manual transmission is available in five trim levels - Standard, RXE, RXL, RXS, and RXZ, with both diesel and petrol powertrains on offer. While the introductory petrol base variant is priced at Rs. 8,46,999 (ex-Delhi), the top of the line AWD (4x4) variant is offered at an introductory price of Rs. 13,56,999 (ex-Delhi).

Along with this, the all new Duster will also come with India's first 6 speed Easy - R AMT in a diesel powertrain at an introductory price of Rs. 11,66,999 (ex-Delhi).

Design:

Upping the ante in the fast growing SUV segment, the new Duster flaunts completely refreshed front and rear looks, Electrically Adjustable & Foldable ORVM's with turn indicators, Waterfall LED Tail Lamps, Hawk Eye Cluster Headlamps, Firefly Fog Lamps, 16" Gun Metal Finish Alloy wheels and Kayak Roof Rails. New Duster will also be available in a sporty and modern new colour - Cayenne Orange.

ALSO READ: Renault Kwid to be exported to Brazil from next month

The new Duster's boasts of a Crimson-Black Interior Theme with sporty Double Spacer Fabric for AWD, and a Cedarwood-Black Interiors theme with Premium Embossed Fabric for other variants. This comes along with Dual Tone Soft Touch dashboard.

advertisement

Features:

The new Duster is equipped with New Rear View Camera with guidelines, New Automatic Air Conditioning, New Auto-up/down window with anti-pinch, New Media Nav, and New Centre Fascia. In terms of essentials of safety, the New Duster will have a host of active and passive safety features including ABS, EBD with Brake Assist, Dual Airbags, ESP & Hill start assist.

Renault created an all new segment in the Indian automotive industry with Duster, which has continued to dominate the Indian roads selling over 1.4 Lakh units in India since its launch in the July 2012. It is also one of the best-selling SUV's world-wide being marketed in over 100 countries and manufactured in 5 countries.

ALSO READ: Renault Lodgy provides ample comfort for all

--- ENDS ---
Travel to these places to see some of the most amazing Buddha statues in the world.

By Samonway Duttagupta: The idea of travelling to a Buddhist destination brings about a feeling of calmness. Most of us imagine a place where peace prevails. This is not only because we have always known Gautam Buddha as the symbol of peace. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine a monastery high up on the mountains -- you can picturise the Tabo monastery if you like -- the place is so serene that you want to leave everything behind and sit there for hours. That's the feeling one gets in most Buddhist places.

advertisement

Most Buddhist sites in the world are located in remote corners, hidden amidst beautiful natural surroundings. These places can provide the perfect break from your mundane routine -- places where you can keep your gadgets aside and unwind in the lap of nature, and reclaim your faith on the existence of peace and harmony.

Also read: A journey across the amazing Buddhist circuit of eastern India



Here's a selection of a few remote places in the world with Buddha statues you might have never seen before.

Leshan Giant Buddha, China

Picture courtesy: Wikimedia/Ariel Steiner/Creative Commons

Carved out of a cliff face of Mount Emi in the Sinchuan province of China, the Leshan Giant Buddha is the tallest Buddha statue in the world. Representing the Maitreya form of Buddha, the statue is 231 feet tall and is located at the confluence of Min River, Qingyi River, and Dadu River. It is believed to be the tallest Buddha statue in the world.

The UNESCO World Heritage site was built way back in the ancient times of the Tang dynasty in China, when a Chinese monk named Haitong decided to calm the turbulent waters that troubled ships travelling down the river. In order to show piety and sincerity to the cause, Haitong is said to have gouged out his own eyes when the project was threatened with lack of funding. Although it couldn't be constructed in his lifetime, it was completed by his disciples 70 years later, when a governor of the Tang dynasty finally decided to sponsor the project.

The construction of this statue led to massive amounts of stone being carved out from the cliff face and thrown into the river. The deposits at the riverbed was so high that the currents altered, making the place a safe passage for the rivers to pass.

Reach: The best way to reach this place is to take a bus from Chengdu (162 km) to Leshan City and from there change to a local city bus that will get you to this place.

Ayutthaya Buddha Head, Thailand

Picture courtesy: Wikimedia/Diego Delso/Creative Commons

If you are planning to travel to Thailand anytime soon, make sure you include this place in your itinerary. The ancient Buddhist site of Ayutthaya city in Thailand is home to a Buddha statue that you have never seen before. All that this statue is the head of Buddha entwined within the roots of a tree. As surprising as it sounds, the statue actually doesn't have a body to it. Located among the ruins Wat Mahathat (The Temple of the Great Relic), the existence of this Buddha statue has been a mystery.

advertisement

Although there are several theories, the most popular belief is that the Buddha head came into being when the Burmese army invaded the 14th century temple in 1767 and reduced it to ruins. While the temple was destroyed, the army vandalised a lot of Buddha statues by chopping off their heads. The area remained abandoned for many years until it was restored in the 1950s. It is believed that it was during this period that a tree grew around one of the Buddha heads.

The statue-tree is located within the Ayutthaya Historical Park, where you can see many more ruins, restored beautifully by the Fine Arts Department, Ministry of Culture. The park is also a part of the UNESCO World Heritage List.

advertisement

Reach: The best way to reach this place is by trains available from Bangkok's Hualamphong Train Station. The journey takes from an hour and a half to three hours, depending upon the train.

Also read: Off the tourist map: 5 of the remotest places on Earth



Kothaung Paya, Myanmar

Picture courtesy: Wikimedia/Creative Commons

This temple has the power to leave you speechless. Well, it is but natural to be nothing but awestruck when you are a witness to 90,000 Buddha images at one place. Yes, this temple actually houses so many of them! Walking the moss-covered ancient site will make you wonder the way mankind has been capable of creations beyond imagination.

The Kothaung Paya temple is one of the key attractions in Mrauk U region of Myanmar. This huge temple was built way back in 1553 by King Mintaikkha, son of King Minbin. Much of this site was excavated in several fragments spread across the area, and was reconstructed heavily in 1996. The temple is believed to have been destroyed in the late 18th century by reasons unknown. Legends suggest different reasons, including a major earthquake, a lightning, or a construction done with stones of inferior quality. Whatever the past be, anybody who travels to this place would remember it forever.

advertisement

Reach: The best way to reach this place is to hire a boat up the Kaladan River from the twon of Sittwe.

--- ENDS ---
"If Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Shri Rajnath Singh was unaware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unaware of the Budget proposals," Jaitley said.

By India Today Web Desk: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today reacted to Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's speech in the Lok Sabha. [Full text of Rahul Gandhi's speech in Lok Sabha]



"If Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Shri Rajnath Singh was unaware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unaware of the Budget proposals. As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I wonder, 'how much does he know - when will he know'," Jaitley said.

advertisement

Jaitley then went on to compare the NDA and the UPA's model of governance.

"The Prime Minister should be the natural leader of the party and the government, at least that's how the NDA works. The UPA government was different. Our present prime minister, Narendra Modi, not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than our normal selves," he said.

The Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha today accused Prime Minister Narendra of not listening to his colleagues and ignoring the voice of the people, especially the youth, and slammed his silence on a series of issues. Modi hardly consults his senior ministers, Gandhi alleged.

"Whose opinion does the PM listen to? Whose opinion does he respect? His ministers? ...You are silent," Rahul said, addressing the BJP MPs in Lok Sabha. "I know Narendra Modi is a very powerful man, but you all should stand up to him," he said as the BJP MPs jeered.

Rahul went further to talk about India-Pakistan ties and PM Modi's trip to Pakistan in December last year.

"Pakistan attacked this country in Mumbai (26/11). Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered. And what does the PM do? Without any thought or vision, he decided to go have tea with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif," he said.

"The PM didn't consult the armed forces, he didn't consult any officials. I don't think he even discussed the visit with (Foreign Minister) Sushma Swaraj," he added.

Arun Jaitley responded to this by taking a jibe at the appoinment of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"Each one of us, whether the external affairs minister, home minister or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each and every department. We do not bypass the prime minister who is always available for consultation and guidance. After hearing Shri Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the prime minister who leads the government and a prime minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere. Shri Rahul Gandhi's views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a 'crowd around a family'," he said.

"The UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the Prime Minister, he should be reduced to being a figure-head. Given a choice between a 'hands-on' Prime Minister or a 'nominal' head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former," he added.

advertisement

Also Read

Who does Modi listen to, asks Rahul Gandhi in fiery attack on PM

Modi has a fair and lovely plan to protect black money holders: Rahul Gandhi



--- ENDS ---
As Tiger Shroff turned a year older, the makers of his upcoming film Baaghi had a pleasant surprise for the actor. On his 26th birthday, the team of Baaghi shared Tiger's first look from the film. Shraddha Kapoor, who will share screen space with Tiger for the first time, took to Twitter to share her co-actor's much-awaited look from Baaghi.

By India Today Web Desk: As Tiger Shroff turned a year older, the makers of his upcoming film Baaghi had a pleasant surprise for the actor. On his 26th birthday, the team of Baaghi shared Tiger's first look from the film. Shraddha Kapoor, who will share screen space with Tiger for the first time, took to Twitter to share her co-actor's much-awaited look from Baaghi.



advertisement

ALSO READ: Have you ever seen Tiger Shroff in a rugged avatar in Baaghi?

ALSO READ: Do you know what Shraddha Kapoor and Tiger Shroff did for Baaghi?



Tiger, who made his Bollywood debut in the 2014 film Heropanti, will be seen in the role of a rebel who is ready to go to any lengths to fight for his love.

The 26-year-old actor will be seen in an intense avatar in Baaghi: Rebels in Love. Tiger, who trained hard to get into the skin of the character, also shared a picture from the sets of the film on Twitter. The official poster of the film is expected to be out on March 9.



Let nothing take your mind off what's ahead of you. #2MonthsToBaaghi pic.twitter.com/I7M7bGEUMZ Tiger Shroff (@iTIGERSHROFF) February 29, 2016

Directed by Sabbir Khan, the film is set to hit the screens on April 29.

--- ENDS ---
The Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has taken over the probe into the rape case involving Alliance University Chancelor Madhukar G Angur, who is accused of repeatedly raping his 32-year-old niece (sister's daughter) between 2011 and 2014.

By Mail Today: The Karnataka Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has taken over the probe into the rape case involving Alliance University Chancelor Madhukar G Angur. In addition to this, the CID will also probe 7 other cases of financial irregularities filed against him.

Angur (60) is accused of repeatedly raping his 32-year-old niece (sister's daughter) between 2011 and 2014. He was arrested by the police after the victim and her family lodged a complaint against him last month.

advertisement

However, Angur claimed that he was being framed in the case because of a property dispute with his sister's family, who were also involved in running the private university in the city. Initially, the Anekal police had registered a case against Angur, but in view of the complexity of the cases, the CID took over the same.

Also read:

Bengaluru: Man gets 10 years in jail for raping 16-year-old

Rape victim files petition in Karnataka HC seeking transfer of her case to another court



--- ENDS ---
The opposition Congress today repeated its demand of the setting up of a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged land scam in Gujarat involving Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel's daughter Anar Patel.

By India Today Web Desk: The opposition Congress today repeated its demand of the setting up of a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged land scam in Gujarat involving Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel's daughter Anar Patel .

"There should be an inquiry in the Gujarat land issue involving the Gujarat CM's daughter," Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, said in Parliament today.

advertisement

Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of nepotism, conflict of interest and plunder of public land for commercial and business purposes, the Congress has demanded probe into all the land allotments during his term as Gujarat chief minister.

"Shocking facts reveal that PM Modi, as the CM of Gujarat, sanctioned the plunder of public land for commercial purposes. Modi had given public land to business entities close to Ms Anar Patel at a meagre Rs.15 per square meter," Congress spokesperson RS Surjewala said today.

"When we are talking of a special investigation team probe, it is not limited only to this case of Wildwood Resorts or business associates of Anar Patel," Congress leader Anand Sharma had said last month.

"It is a fit case for a court-monitored investigation because not only was government land given at a throwaway price to private players, the Environment Projection Act, Wildlife Act... all norms have been violated with impunity," another Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.

--- ENDS ---
During UPA rule, investigating agency refused to share David Coleman Headley's interrogation report with Gujarat SIT in which Headley had named Ishrat a suicide bomber who was on a mission for LeT.

By Abhishek Bhalla : The twists and turns in the Ishrat Jahan case are far from over. The latest twist comes with the revelation that in 2011 the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had refused to share its interrogation report of David Coleman Headley with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Gujarat High Court to probe the alleged fake encounter of Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives. The NIA claimed that Headley's reference to Ishrat Jahan was only hearsay and not admissible as evidence.

advertisement

The NIA had interrogated David Headley in Chicago in 2010 for his alleged involvement in the 26/11 case. The SIT, looking for clues in the alleged fake encounter case, had sought details of the questioning from NIA.

A letter dated May 5, 2011 written by NIA to SIT chief Karnal Singh said: "The relevant portion of the statement made by David Coleman Headley with reference to Ishrat Jahan is in the nature of hearsay and will not be admissible as evidence. Therefore sharing of this portion of the statement may not serve the purpose of investigation."

There were reports suggesting that Headley, during his interrogation by the NIA team that visited Chicago in 2010, had named 19-year-old Mumbra girl Ishrat as a suicide bomber who was on a mission for the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

A letter dated January 1, 2011 was written to the NIA by IPS officer Karnal Singh who was heading the SIT then. The letter asked for Headley's statement regarding Ishrat as part of the probe.

Mastermind

Headley, one of the masterminds of the 26\11 Mumbai attack, recently deposed via video conferencing to a Mumbai court. He picked up Ishrat's name from the three choices given to him by the special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam to identify a woman LeT member who was part of a botched-up mission in Gujarat.

Ishrat, 19, was killed along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai from Kerala, and two alleged Pakistanis - Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana - on June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Headley's claims once again kicked up a storm and questions are being raised about the intentions of the UPA government. The CBI had filed a charge sheet in 2013 against four officials of the Intelligence Bureau and officials from Gujarat Police for plotting a fake encounter to kill Ishrat Jahan and three others.

While the Union home ministry did not give a prosecution sanction against the IB officials citing lack of evidence, the police officials are currently out on bail.

advertisement

Former Home Secretary GK Pillai's comments that ex-home minister P Chidambaram had changed an affidavit, which originally described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, has kicked up a political storm.

Even RVS Mani, then under secretary in home ministry under whose name the affidavit was filed, has reportedly claimed that he was asked forced to do so. Speaking to a news channel he said the affidavit in question was not drafted by him and if it was not drafted by the home secretary it was clear who was behind it, hinting at Chidambaram's role.

Sources said the home ministry is all set to examine files relating to the controversial Ishrat Jahan case again in view of the revelations made.

The UPA government had submitted two affidavits - one that said the four killed in the alleged fake encounter were terrorists and the second said there was no conclusive evidence - within two months in 2009.

CBI Director Anil Sinha on Tuesday refused to be drawn into the issue of American-Pakistani terrorist Headley's recent testimony in 26/11 case that Ishrat was an LeT terrorist, saying the matter is subjudice.

"The matter is sub-judice. We have already submitted charge sheet in the case. Hence, I would not like to comment anything on this," Sinha, who was in Mumbai for inauguration of the new CBI office in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), said.

advertisement

The CBI's earlier stand in the matter has been that the agency was mandated to probe whether the encounter was a fake one or not and that it did not get into the antecedents of Ishrat and others.

Also Read:

Ishrat Jahan case: Ravi Shankar Prasad questions Chidambaram's actions



Ishrat Jahan case: Plea in Supreme Court seeks quashing of murder charges against Gujarat cops

MHA to examine files related to Ishrat Jahan case

--- ENDS ---
At a height of 19,500 feet experts from the Siachen Battle School and the 19 Madras battalion struggled against insurmountable odds to try and rescue a colleague who had fallen into a crevice, which was 130 feet deep.

By India Today Web Desk: For the past five days brave men from the Indian Army have been engaged in what is being called the world's most treacherous rescue operation. At a height of 19,500 feet experts from the Siachen Battle School and the 19 Madras battalion struggled against insurmountable odds to try and rescue a colleague who had fallen into a crevice, which was 130 feet deep.

advertisement

India Today's Rahul Kanwal travelled to the Tiala area of the Siachen Glacier to report on the super human effort being made in a completely inhuman terrain. This is an India Today exclusive ground report.

Half a dozen officers and more than 30 soldiers from the 19 Madras Battalion and experts from the Siachen Battle School have been digging into a crevice which is 130 feet deep to try and rescue porter Thukjay Gyasket.

On 25 February, Porter Gasket fell off his snow scooter while ferrying supplies for the 19 Madras Batallion. 19 Madras is the same battalion which suffered massive casualties when a killer avalanche came crashing near the Sonam Post a few days ago. Lance Naik Hanumanthappa and 9 other soldiers who lost their lives also belonged to the 19 Madras battalion. The paltan had just about begun to come to terms with the loss that they had suffered when another tragedy struck.

India Today joined the General Officer Commanding the Indian Army's 14 Corps General S Patiyal on board an Advanced Light Helicopter to get a first hand sense of the challenges at hand.

General S Patiyal spoke about the rescue operation and how difficult it was to reach porter Thukjay Gyasket as he was located in spot that was not accessible to the rescuers.

"The big difference between what you just saw and the rescue mission being mounted at 19500 feet is that here the solider fell in an open crevice. The rescuers know exactly where he is and what needs to be done to get to the stranded solider. However, porter Thukjay Gyasket fell into a crevice which was not only 130 feet deep but also bent, making it very difficult for rescuers to reach him," General Patiyal said.

After toiling night and day for five days the team from the Siachen Battle School was finally able to pull out the body of porter Thukjay Gyasket. His mortal remains were brought down on Wednesday afternoon to the Siachen Base Camp. It wasn't the Pakistani solider but inclement weather which always posed the greatest threat to the soldiers deployed at Siachen. But now, global warming has added a potent new dimension to the threat faced by the Indian army serving at the world's highest battlefield.

advertisement

The Siachen Battle School is where soldiers of the Indian army are trained for rescue missions at high altitudes. But the training they receive is nothing in comparison with the enormity of the challenge they face when they are deployed on the world's highest battlefield.

Take a look at this crevice rescue mission to get a sense of the challenge involved.

--- ENDS ---
The Congress vice president spoke out against the Narendra Modi government, and on the fair and lovely scheme Arun Jaitley had announced that would turn black money white.

By India Today Web Desk: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi spoke in the Lok Sabha today to give a motion of thanks on the presidential address. Here is his full speech.

I was listening to Arunji present the Budget yesterday, and in the middle I was startled. Not yesterday, sorry, but day before yesterday. I was shaken like this. He announced a new scheme. Fair and lovely scheme. Under this scheme, any thief in the country can convert black money into white. It doesn't matter where he can pilfer from - through corruption, all his black money.

advertisement

Arun Jaitley announced this in the House here - "Modiji's fair and lovely scheme is here. You can make your black money white."

Modiji had given a speech in 2014. He had promised that when he came to power he will go after black money and will win the battle against it. Will imprison all who have earned black money. As per the fair and lovely plan, no one will be imprisoned. No one will be arrested. No one will be questioned. Approach Arun Jaitley, pay taxes and convert your black money to white.

What a promise made by Narendra Modi. He promised on the economy. During elections he had said that pulses are sold for Rs 70. The prices will come down when he came to power. Will reduce the burden on women folk - our mothers and sisters. He came. Now pulses sell for Rs 200. Shame.

Petrol used to be $130 per barrel. Today it is Rs 35 per barrel. $35 not rupees, sorry. I am not from the RSS, I make mistakes [on misquoting oil prices]. I do not know everything or understand everything, I make mistakes. I listen to the public, try to understand their plight, and then speak in this House. $133 came down to $35, but not a single rupee was given to the people. Neither to women, sisters and mothers. Big industrialists benefited.

The prime minister had promised employment. 2 crore jobs will be given to India's youth every year, he had said. He created a Babbar Sher [Make in India symbol] out of Make in India. It is a black lion with a clock inside, found everywhere - on internet, TV, Modiji's speech. A stage is burned down, and you can still see the Babbar Sher. All we ask you is that now that you have shown us a Babbar Sher, how many jobs have you created for the youth?

I was looking for data to prepare for the speech. I asked Scindiaji too - How many people got new jobs in one year? No one knows the data. Hence I ask PM Modi to tell the country how many new jobs did you give to Indian youth in the last one year. When I go and ask people if Modiji had delivered on his promise of creating jobs, they reply in the negative.

advertisement

The prime minister tells the House here that he has never seen a plan as bad as NREGA. MNREGA. Mahatma Gandhi Yojana. Not Savarkar Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi Yojana. Why don't you create your own plan with Savarkar's name?

Modiji stands here and tells us that [NREGA/MNREGA] schemes have destroyed India and will not remove it to let the country know about the mistakes made by the UPA government.

Yesterday, when Arunji was addressing, I thought it was Chidambaramji. They are talking about MNREGA. Arun Jaitley came to me and said that there was no better scheme than MNREGA. I asked, why don't you tell this to your boss - the prime minister of India? Why are you telling me? Tell this to the people outside. He didn't utter a single word. He was silent.

There is a little bit of fear. Narendra Modi is a powerful person. I am speaking well. I know that you all fear him, but you must speak up in front of him.

advertisement

Modiji spread a web of promises. Then questions begin to arise. First question was asked or raised by Rohith Vemula. He asked what was his fault? He asked - 'Why am I killed for being a Dalit? Why am I being crushed or suppressed? Don't I have a future in India? Don't I have a career just because my mother is poor?'

All that you did was use the power in government to crush him down and he committed suicide. The question is not what your minister asked - whether he was a Dalit or not. The question is why was the life of an Indian youth cut short?

Narendra Modi neither called his mother on the phone, nor talked about it. Not a single word.

Then, Kanhaiya stood up in JNU. I have listened to Kanhaiya's 20 minutes long speech. He did not utter a single word against India in that 20-minute speech. You arrested him. You can sure arrest and prosecute someone who speaks wrong or against the law at JNU. But you have kept them free, and raised questions on JNU.

What is JNU? 60 per cent students in JNU come from Dalit, OBC, backward, minority families.

advertisement

There's a marked difference between you [BJP government] and us. You claim to know everything and do nothing wrong. We learn from mistakes. We don't claim to know everything. There's Gandhi on one side, and Savarkar on the other. One is for violence, and the other non-violence.

Tell us something. I haven't understood this. I said Gandhiji is ours and Savarkar yours. What's wrong in that? Isn't Savarkar yours? Have you thrown him out? Reply to this. Because if you did so, you did very well.

The family income of 40 per cent of JNU students is less than Rs 6,000. I will tell you why you have gone after JNU and Rohith Vemula. Because they are weak, poor, Dalit and tribals. You do not want India's poor and backward people to progress. We will not let that happen. You will not be able to suppress JNU or the poor people of India.

Where is it written to beat up teachers? Show me a book that JNU students, teachers should be beaten up in court in front of the media? In fact, beat up the media too. Mr Prime Minister, why didn't you utter a single word when the media, students and teachers were beaten up?

After addressing the House in Hindi, Rahul switched to English.

A nation is the relationship between its people. It is nothing but a conversation between its citizens. Destroy the relationships, stop the conversation, and the nation dies.

Speaker madam, .... sorry, sorry, sorry. Chairman Sir, when I salute the flag. I am not saluting the cloth. I am saluting the relationships that the flag represents.

A Muslim man who joins his Hindu brothers to play Holi, or a Hindu man who embraces his Muslim brothers on Eid. A Christian woman who bows her head when she walks past a Gurudwara. A Jat farmer who embraces a Dalit labourer in Haryana. A Punjabi student who protects his brother hailing from the northeast. The relation between Rohith and his fellow students. The relationship between all of us on this side of the aisle, and those of you friends sitting across it. When I protect the flag, I protect the conversations on which those relationships sustain. I protect every single voice, and I pay special attention to the weakest, those voices that are most difficult to hear, that nobody can hear.

Respecting the flag means respecting the opinion of every Indian. When I went to JNU, your ABVP workers waved black flags on my face. They taunted and abused me. I felt no anger. In fact, I was proud that I still live in a country, in an India where it was possible for me to be confronted by people who held a different opinion than my own. I don't agree with their views.

I protected our Indian flag when I let your people wave those black flags in my face. I protected the Indian flag when I allowed them to taunt me. You cannot defend the Indian flag by destroying the relationships between our people. You are not defending the Indian flag when you frighten your own people into silence. Whose opinion does the prime minister listen to and respects? Does he respect your opinion, your ministers'? You are in silence, I understand. I understand the feeling within you. I want to bring that out, and I want you to make him listen. Anyway, that will happen slowly.

You've been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is only one truth in the universe. Your own. That nobody else's opinion matters in the entire universe. This is all you have shown us in the last two years. The prime minister cannot run the country only on his opinion.

The country is not the prime minister. The prime minister is not the country.

One day, the prime minister called all the senior opposition leaders and told them that he had achieved what the Congress party couldn't achieve in 40 years. He told the Congress president that he has solved the Nagaland problem, and has signed a historic accord. Congress president panicked. She called me up and asked - 'Rahul, what have they signed? Our chief ministers have not mentioned anything.' She asked us to check with our chief ministers. We called them up. We asked them - have you heard about the Naga accord?

As our esteemed colleagues know that the Naga accord has huge ramifications in the states of Arunachal, Assam and Manipur. Massive tracts of lands in these states are involved. We called them. They had not heard a word about the accord. What had the government signed? They asked us.

According to the media, even though officials in the home ministry and the intelligence bureau had no idea, even the home minister had no idea. Fascinating. I am asking a straightforward question. Did the home minister, Nagaland chief minister know about the accord? Did you tell our chief ministers about the accord? And the most important question: Where has the accord gone now? It has vanished into thin air. Poof, it's gone. Gone with the wind. Bye bye accord.

Is it not an insult to every citizen of those states? Is it not an insult to the institutions and professionals in the home ministry and the intelligence bureau? Is it not an insult to the Indian flag?

Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai on 26/11. They trained and sent killers murderers into Mumbai into the heart of Mumbai. Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered by those people. The operation to stop the terrorists was on. Our soldiers and citizens were dying. The government of India begged the chief minister of Gujarat not to go to Mumbai. The then chief minister of Gujarat decided to go to Mumbai. Did he care? No. He went right ahead to Mumbai. To the Oberoi Hotel itself and disturbed the entire operation. He grabbed his headlines while our people died.

But let us forget that. Mumbai was a horrible, terrible blow to the country. It was a blow to every Indian. The UPA government worked tirelessly to trap Pakistan. We isolated them internationally. We spent thousands and thousands of hours of diplomacy to turn them into pariah nation. We destroyed their reputation internationally and put them into a little diplomatic cage. We convinced the world that they were global supporters of terrorism.

Speaker sir, how did we achieve this? Our prime minister took the advice of everybody - the armed forces, our diplomats, our intelligence people. We had wide ranging conversations with everybody who understands these issues. We spoke to the opposition. We worked tirelessly in Jammu and Kashmir. It is the work that the UPA did there that makes us all really proud. We held Panchayat elections, built thousands of self-help groups, and created thousands of jobs. By the end, we had destroyed the insurgency in Kashmir. We had broken the back of the insurgency. We had achieved the biggest strategic victory against Pakistan, completely peacefully.

What does the prime minister do? He decides to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif. Without any thought, without any vision. Chai par charcha. He decides to make a detour to Pakistan. Just like he did with Nagaland accord, he did not bother ask anyone - armed forces, intelligence people, diplomats, and probably didn't even bother to ask Sushmaji. He just went there as if only his opinion matters.

Speaker Sir, the prime minister single handedly destroyed six years of our work. In one move, he personally let Pakistan out of the little cage. He gifted them a status equal to our own. When stopped over in Pakistan without taking the advice of anyone, the prime minister disrespected our flag. He disrespected those who died in Mumbai adn Pathankot, our bureaucrats, the tremendous talent of Indian people.

There have been others in history who could only see their own perspective. People who saluted the cloth but destroyed the conversations between the people. Milosavic, the president of Yugoslavia, used to salute the flag every morning and talk of patriotism all day long. He broke the relationship between Serbs and Croats, and destroyed his country. Nearer to us in Pakistan, Yahya Khan came to defend the Pakistan flag. As a soldier, he saluted the flag every morning. He actually believed he was protecting it. He thought he was a patriot and refused to listen to his countrymen. He destroyed the relationship between a Punjabi and Bengali and tore his country into two.

The prime minister still has the option to listen to what the country is trying to tell him. The country is gently trying to give him a message. Listen to those around you. Listen to Rajnath Singhji, Advaniji, Sushma Swarajji, to your MPs. Listen to us across the aisle here. We are not your enemies. We don't hate you. Listen to the voice of Indian people - the farmers and workers who have so much wisdom. Especially, listen to the voice of the next generation. They are the future of this country. Allow them the dignity of their voice.

Thank You.

Click on the video below to watch the whole speech:



Also Read:

Twitter reacts as Rahul Gandhi guns for Modi in Lok Sabha



--- ENDS ---
The court rejected the condition that there should be live CCTV footage of dance performances which should be given to area police. However, the court said the CCTV can be permitted for security purposes at entrance gate.

By India Today Web Desk: In a big relief to dance bar owners in Maharashtra, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the Maharashtra government to grant licences to dance bars by March 15.

The court also modified the conditions for the permit and excluded installation of CCTV from restaurants and dance performance place. However, the court said the CCTV can be permitted for security purposes at entrance gate.

advertisement

The apex court has given three days' time to the owners of the hotels and restaurants to comply with the modified conditions.

Dance Bar Association members had petitioned the court after Maharashtra Police imposed 24 new conditions on them before allowing them to open dance bars.

The apex court had last October stayed a law passed by the Maharashtra assembly banning dance bars.

--- ENDS ---
Taking a firm stand on cross-border terrorism originating in Pakistan, India has told Islamabad that dealing with terror is a bigger priority than resuming bilateral dialogue between the two neighbours.

By India Today Web Desk: Taking a firm stand on cross-border terrorism originating in Pakistan, India has told Islamabad that dealing with terror is a bigger priority than resuming bilateral dialogue between the two neighbours.

"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue, the answer is obvious," Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said today.

advertisement

India has accused Pakistani groups for the Pathankot airbase attack in January and has demanded action against Jaish-e-Mohammed, which allegedly plotted the assault. The talks between the two countries were suspended following the attack.

All six terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, were also killed in the attack which derailed the India-Pakistan "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" that started following Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's meeting in Paris.

Jaishankar, however, said the prime ministers and the National Security Advisors (NSAs) of the two countries "have been in touch".

On Tuesday, Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz said the India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad's probe team visits Pathankot town to investigate the January 2 attack.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Aziz said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.

Also read:

The blunders of Pathankot

Exclusive: How Pathankot attack highlighted NSG's weaknesses

Pathankot-like attacks will keep happening, says Pervez Musharraf



--- ENDS ---
RVS Mani, former Under-Secretary in the Home Ministry, has said, "I filed the first affidavit approved by the Home Ministry and the then Law Secretary. After a decision has been taken, a dissenting note cannot be given."

By India Today Web Desk: The Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case continues to haunt the Congress with another senior bureaucrat alleging that he was forced to sign a second affidavit.

RVS Mani, former Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Home Affairs during the UPA government, has said, "I filed the first affidavit approved by the Home Ministry and the then Law Secretary. After a decision has been taken, dissenting note cannot be given. I am authorised to sign affidavit in the process and I signed it."

advertisement

Expressing his surprise over the second draft in the 2004 shootout case, he said, "What was the reason for the second affidavit? I don't know since the then Home Secretary also came on record saying it was not drafted at his level."

When asked about passing on the second affidavit, Mani said, "As per conduct rules, once an order is received on a file, I have to execute it. That's why I signed the second affidavit."

Earlier, the Congress was left red-faced when former Home Secretary GK Pillai also said that his boss and former Home Minister P Chidambaram had changed an affidavit which described Jahan and her aides as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives.

Pillai claimed that Chidambaram had recalled the file a month after the original affidavit was filed in Supreme Court. "Only after the affidavit was revised, as directed by the minister, did the file come to me," Pillai is quoted as saying by a media report.

In 2009, the UPA government had submitted two affidavits within two months - one that the four, who were killed in an alleged fake encounter, were terrorists; and the second, saying there was no conclusive evidence of any terror links.

The BJP on Tuesday alleged flip-flop by the Congress at the Centre in the Ishrat Jahan shootout case and demanded a thorough probe into it.

Countering the allegations, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said it was for the courts to decide if Ishrat Jahan was guilty. "But that courts would have done if she was alive," he said.

--- ENDS ---
He was granted interim bail on a personal bail bond of Rs 10,000, and the court has also asked him to cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

By India Today Web Desk: JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was charged with sedition, has been granted 6-month conditional bail by the Delhi High Court.

Taking into consideration the family background of Kanhaiya, whose mother is an Anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3000 on which the entire family survives, Justice Pratibha Rani ordered that he be released after furnishing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of like amount.

advertisement

The judge directed that the accused's surety "should also be either a member of the faculty or a person related to him in a manner that he exercises control on him not only with respect to appearance before the court but also to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner."

While giving monetary concession for furnishing the bond for release, the high court said Kanhaiya has to "furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national."

The JNUSU welcomed the interim bail granted to Kanhaiyya, and called for a Victory March in the JNU campus tomorrow night.

Kanhaiya was arrested on February 12 in connection with the case in which he and others, including two arrested JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, are accused of raising anti-India slogans during an event organised inside the JNU campus on February 9.

He had sought bail claiming that he had not raised any anti-India slogans but the Delhi Police had maintained before the high court that they have evidence to show that the accused had raised anti-national slogans.

Kanhaiya Kumar had written a four-page letter to the NHRC in which he claims that the Delhi Police arrested him from his hostel without any warrant or a notice.

In the letter, the JNUSU president also claimed to have been under extreme mental pressure even though he was never physically manhandled by the police.

Kanhaiya also wrote in the letter that the police registered his statement without his wishes and approval. This very statement was then produced before court which is completely misleading.

Also Read:





)

India Today impact: Tests confirm 2 out of 7 Kanhaiya sedition videos doctored

Exclusive: Here's how Kanhaiya Kumar is being treated in Tihar Jail



--- ENDS ---
Leonardo DiCaprio might have won over the entire world - and the Academy - thanks to his Oscar win this year, but seems like pleasing his Titanic co-star and friend Kate Winslet is quite a task. Winslet wants to see Leo fulfil another dream - getting married and starting a family. And you thought just the elusive Oscar was enough!

By India Today Web Desk: Leonardo DiCaprio might be the reason nearly the entire world is savouring an Oscar-induced high, but his Titanic co-star and friend Kate Winslet wants something more from the star. And it doesn't involve winning an Oscar after 22 years.

ALSO READ: Oscars 2016 - The night Leonardo DiCaprio did not take for granted!

PHOTOS: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet together will make you wipe tears of nostalgia

advertisement

ALSO READ: Leonardo DiCaprio gets his first Oscar. Finally!!

Winslet has reportedly urged DiCaprio to get married and start his own family.

"Kate is completely overjoyed with Leo's Oscar win," an insider told hollywoodlife.com.

"Now she wants to see him fulfil another dream - getting married and starting a family. She knows without a doubt that Leo would be an exceptional dad," added the source.

The insider also said that Winslet assured DiCaprio that being a father was the most interesting job a man could have.

"She keeps telling him that once he experiences fatherhood, he'll fall madly in love with the greatest role ever! Kate has joked with him, but it's not really a joke, that she wants to meet all future girlfriends so she can determine if they are wife material," the source added.

DiCaprio won his first Academy Award in the Best Actor category for his power-packed performance in The Revenant. Leo's Oscar win at the 88th Annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles on February 28 had him trending all over social media. He is the one person who ranked above all else in Oscar searches on Google too.

The actor's big Oscar win came 22 years after his first Academy Award nomination. DiCaprio was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role in the 1993 classic What's Eating Gilbert Grape. After that, Leo had seen four nominations in the Best Actor category, and one as a producer for Best Picture - all of which he lost to others.

--- ENDS ---
In a press statement released by the western sub-zonal bureau of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the organisation demanded the release of "innocent" Kanhaiya Kumar.

By Mail Today: The Maoists have come out in support of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who was recently arrested on sedition charges in connection with an event held at the varsity to commemorate the death of Afzal Guru.

In a press statement released by the western sub-zonal bureau of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the organisation demanded the release of "innocent" Kumar.

advertisement

The release, which police sources claimed had first been circulated among the locals of Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district before being apprehended by the police, also went on to criticise the Narendra Modi government.

"If it is sedition to take the name of Afzal Guru, the heartbeats of the 124 crore Indians will also be seditious," the release stated. Kanhaiya's arrest has been called a conspiracy by the "orthodox Hindu Fascists".

The release claimed that Kumar's arrest was an attack on "progressive, secular and pro-people thinking and ideologies".

"The eroding image of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Akhil Vidyarthi Parishad could not be digested by the blind nationalist forces which is why they Kanhaiya Kumar was targeted in a planned manner and was sent to jail on false charges of sedition," the statement read.

The banned Maoist outfit called for "an end to the anti-democratic Brahmanical Hinduism of the Modi government" and demanded that "people not be forced to become Hindus", apart from deprecating the "saffronisation of the society" and the "communalisation: of the country.

The Delhi High Court would be pronouncing a decision in the matter relating to the bail plea of Kumar on Wednesday. Justice Pratibha Rani had reserved the order on Monday. The Delhi Police had opposed Kumar's bail plea, but the Delhi government had been in favour of bail being granted to the student leader.

Also Read:

Maharashtra Police reveals JNU, DU's dark Maoist secret

JNU row: Patriotism is sacrosanct, sedition law can't be scrapped, says Santosh Hegde

--- ENDS ---
A set of newly released personal documents of Osama bin Laden reveals a lot about his inner thoughts and fears. These documents were seized from his hideout after he was killed during a US raid in Pakistan in 2011.

By India Today Web Desk: Who could've thought that the inner thoughts of slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden would some day be out in the open for the world to read?

But that has happened.

A set of documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence provides a peek into Laden's thoughts, plans and fears. These documents were seized from his hideout after he was killed during a US raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011.

advertisement

Here's a list of 10 striking findings from the set of 113 documents seized in the raid. These were made public on Tuesday.

1. Bin Laden wanted his wealth to be used 'on jihad'

A handwritten will found in Laden's residence states his wish of wanting most of his wealth - which is about 29 million dollars (almost Rs 20 crore) - to be used "on jihad."

"I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah," Laden wrote in the will, which does not explain how he assembled his wealth.



2. He had written a letter 'to the American people'

An undated, unsigned letter - which the US intelligence believe to have been written by Laden reads "to the American people" to help President Barack Obama fight climate change and "save humanity".

Based on the letter's references to events, it is believed to have been written shortly after Obama began his first term in 2009.



3. He planned to attack Pakistan

A 42-page booklet describes the Al Qaeda leader's detailed blueprint on proceeding to launch a jihad against Pakistan and establish Islamic rule there.

"We have to launch raids against the Pakistani army that is deployed on the Indian border, as these are vast desert battlefield areas and it will be easy to target them," reads his action plan to attack Pakistan.

"By these operations, we will realise these border armies will not come to the rescue of armies that are present in Sarhad and Baluchistan; on the contrary, they will focus their efforts on strengthening their positions in their areas, as these are sensitive areas from the point of view of Pakistan's war with India."



4. Bin Laden feared his wife had a tracking device in her tooth

In one of his letters, Laden confessed his concern about one of his wives visiting the dentist, fearing a chip would have been implanted in a tooth or under her skin during the visit.

Worried the tracking device was planted by Iranians to locate him, Laden sounded pretty certain in his letter that said "the size of the [computer] chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli".

Bin Laden's letter. Source: Reuters Bin Laden's letter. Source: Reuters

advertisement

5. He believed Americans were failing at war

In another letter, Laden wrote the United States was financially not ready for the war and 'lacked popular support'.

"Here we are in the tenth year of the war, and America and its allies are still chasing a mirage, lost at sea without a beach," he wrote, adding "America appears to be hanging on by a thin thread."

"We need to be patient a bit longer," read the letter. "With patience, there is victory!"



6. He reacted to Islamic State's brutality against Muslims

In one letter, he responded to the complaints about the Islamic State's growing brutality in Iraq, which was then a part of the Al Qaeda.

Signed under the name Abu al-Abbas, a letter read: "We heard from more than one person at the leadership level that they are claiming to be an independent state and to have no ties with (Al Qaeda)".

Al-Abbas wrote in the letter that members of "the State" were seizing the property of Muslims "on the pretext that they don't wage jihad". He also mentioned about people being tortured and "15 detainees of a rival militia" being murdered.

advertisement



7. Laden was planning a media campaign for 9/11 10th anniversary

The documents show that bin Laden and his followers were planning a media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

In what seems like an exchange with one of his close aides, Laden discusses names of media outlets that could be offered material, such as Al Jazeera, CBS and British and Arabic journalists.

"It is obvious to you that the coming anniversary of the two Manhattan attacks is the tenth anniversary and this event has great importance," read a letter the US intelligence believe bin Laden has authored.





8. Laden's love letter to one of his wives

Among his notes to his dear ones, Laden left one letter to one of his wives in which he writes that if he were killed, she could remarry.

"I really want for you to be my wife in paradise, and the woman, if she marries two men, is given a choice on Judgment Day to be with one of them," reads the letter.





advertisement

9. There was course syllabus for new terrorists

Found in these documents was a syllabus titled as "Course of Islamic Study for Soldiers and Members," which includes a list of subjects and skills to be taught to terrorists who just joined.

It also has a reading list that contains mostly books about Islam, and a list of lectures to be given throughout the course, with subjects ranging from history of jihad in the Horn of Africa to "a brief word on raising children".

10. Laden's care about climate change

In one of his letter, bin Laden implied that the world should rather be fighting climate change instead of fighting 'what he claimed was a war against Islam'.

The letter goes like this: "...the world should put its efforts into attempting to reduce the release of gases," read the unsigned, undated letter addressed to a Shaykh Mahmud. "This is a struggle between two of the largest cultures on Earth, and it is in the shadow of catastrophic climate conditions."

Looks like bin Laden shared Leonardo DiCaprio's worry about the climate change.

--- ENDS ---
Deepika Padukone looks stunning in her all new badass avatar in the upcoming film XXX The Return Of Xander Cage. In the film, Deepika plays the role of Serena, Vin Diesel's love interest. After Priyanka's successful red carpet appearance at the 88th Academy Awards, it is time for Deepika to make her Hollywood debut memorable.

Deepika Padukone in a still from XXX The Return Of Xander Cage

By India Today Web Desk: After releasing a number of steamy pictures with her XXX The Return Of Xander Cage co-star Vin Diesel, Deepika Padukone is bang on in action.

SEE PICS: A sneak-peek into Deepika Padukone and Vin Diesel-starrer XXX The Return Of Xander Cage shoot

SEE PICS: Deepika Padukone looks adorable with Ruby Rose and XXX The Return Of Xander Cage team



advertisement

ALSO READ: XXX The Return Of Xander Cage - Deepika Padukone and Vin Diesel-starrer to release on...



XXX 3 director DJ Caruso posted an image of Deepika filming an action scene. The 30-year-old actor looks stunning in this image as she takes down the stuntman. Caruso wrote, "After the slate. I felt sorry for this stuntman. Serena unleashed! #xxx3 #xandercagereturns Dominican here we come (sic)."

After the slate. I felt sorry for this stuntman. Serena unleashed!#xxx3 #xandercagereturns Dominican here we come. pic.twitter.com/lG71Za4HQD D.j. Caruso (@Deejaycar) March 1, 2016

Deepika essays the role of Serena, Vin Diesel's love interest in the film. Deepika has gone through a rigorous training for the film.

After Priyanka Chopra's sizzling red carpet appearance at the Oscars this year, it is time for Deepika to make her Hollywood debut memorable.

DJ Caruso shared another image with Thai actor Tony Jaa, who plays Talon in the upcoming film. Caruso went out for dinner with Tony Jaa. He wrote, "Unbelievable authentic Thai dinner with the great #tonyjaa and Jamie Freitag. Thank you Tony (sic)."

Unbelievable authentic Thai dinner with the great #tonyjaa and Jamie Freitag. Thank you Tony. pic.twitter.com/2ysA9kiAaa D.j. Caruso (@Deejaycar) March 1, 2016

The cast and crew of the film have left Toronto for Dominican Republic to shoot for the film. DJ Caruso shared, "Bye Toronto see you in a few weeks. #DominicanRepublicfilimg (sic)."

Bye Toronto see you in a few weeks. #DominicanRepublicfilimg pic.twitter.com/wHpYYbmlpg D.j. Caruso (@Deejaycar) March 1, 2016

In the third instalment of the XXX series, Vin Diesel reprises his role as Xander Cage. The film also stars Nina Dobrev, Samuel L Jackson, Ruby Rose, Donnie Yen, Kris Wu and Tony Jaa.

XXX The Return Of Xander Cage is slated to release on January 20, 2017.



--- ENDS ---
Delhi Police has urged the Director General of Health Services to form a medical board to examine test reports in connection with Sunanda Pushkar's death.

By India Today Web Desk: Delhi Police has written to the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) to form a special team comprising doctors and forensic scientists to examine the medical reports and evidence in Sunanda Pushkar's death.

A letter was sent to the DG Health Services after the Special Investigation Team probing the case failed to draw any conclusion from the AIIMS medical board's opinion vis-a-vis the FBI report on Pushkar's viscera sample and other evidence in the case, a police source said today.

advertisement

The SIT had earlier written to the AIIMS medical board seeking further clarification on their opinion, but the response of the board is still awaited.



The move comes in the wake of the differences between Delhi Police and the AIIMS medical team over this case. Police will soon file a status report in the court and seek a lie detector test on Shashi Tharoor.

The Delhi police and the AIIMS team have had a number of exchanges for nearly a year but they are not on the same page over a number of aspects.

Two days before his retirement, Delhi police commissioner B S Bassi had decided to have another medical team formed in the case.

The AIIMS medical board's opinion on the FBI report had suggested that Sunanda, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, died of poisoning with the presence of Alprax found in her stomach.

Last month, the police questioned Tharoor for the third time in connection with his wife's death. 51-year-old Sunanda was found dead in her room at a five-star hotel in south Delhi in January 2014. A case of murder was registered in the matter around one year later following which her viscera sample and some other evidence in the case were sent to an FBI laboratory in the USA.

ALSO READ



Sunanda Pushkar death probe: Shashi Tharoor repeats she died due to medication



Sunanda Pushkar case: Will only comment once the probe is over, says Tharoor

Sunanda Pushkar case: Delhi Police SIT questions AIIMS over discrepancies in medical reports

--- ENDS ---
A policeman in Bengaluru has been accused of assaulting a Kerala-based techie after the latter couldn't make way for the former's car on the busy streets of the city yesterday.

By Mail Today: A policeman in Bengaluru has been accused of assaulting a Kerala-based techie after the latter couldn't make way for the former's car on the busy streets of the city yesterday.

According to Joseph Rajan, a rashly-driven police car was trying to overtake his vehicle from the left side on Museum Road in the heart of the city on Tuesday morning. However, Joseph could not make way for the policeman's car in view of traffic congestion.

advertisement

The policeman allegedly abused Joseph all along while the vehicular traffic was slow. Eventually when he overtook Joseph's car, the policeman blocked his car and alighted from the vehicle. It is alleged that he dragged Rajan out of the car, abused him and assaulted him.

Meanwhile, other motorists rushed to Joseph's rescue. Sensing mob trouble, the policemen fled the scene in his car. After Rajan posted his harrowing experience on his social media account, the Bengaluru police instructed him to approach them.

In his Facebook post, Rajan wrote, "Since the road was chock-a-block with vehicles, I obviously couldn't move my car to the right to give him space to overtake from the left (and break the law!). As soon as the signal light went red, the driver of the car started yelling and abusing me in Kannada. I tried explaining my situation to him, but in vain. He kept abusing me."

Later, in front of the main gate of St .Joseph's Boys High School, the Sedan driver intercepted his car and continued the abuse. "The driver tried to pull me out and abused me, asking how I could teach traffic rules to a policeman. (He said) you are not even from Karnataka, you are an outsider," Mr. Rajan said.



Also read:

Techie arrested for assaulting police in Bengaluru

24 injured, 26 arrested in communal clash in Karnataka



--- ENDS ---
Two Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawans were shot dead by a fellow jawan in a power plant in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district yesterday night. The Jawan also shot himself and his wife after a heated argument.

By India Today Web Desk: Two Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawans were shot dead by a fellow jawan in a power plant in Maharashtra's Ratnagiri district yesterday night. The Jawan also shot himself and his wife after a heated argument.

Assistant sub-inspector Balu G. Shinde of Sangli district of Maharashtra and P. Ranesh of Kerala were killed in the incident.

advertisement

The incident took place at the Ratnagiri Gas & Power Pvt. Ltd when the CISF constable, Harishkumar Goud (36 years old) got into a heated argument. Goud also shot

his pregnant wife Priyanka who was brought in to calm him down.

After this, he also shot at himself and was taken to a hospital in Chiplum on Wednesday.

Goud allegedly threatened an on-duty CISF official Balwan Bajesingh to not speak about the incident.

Ratnagiri police have lodged case of murder, attempt to murder and arms act against Goud.

Though the exact motives behind this are being examined from preliminary enquiries, police suspect it could be the outcome of professional harassment at their workplace.

--- ENDS ---
Home Minister official RV Mani on Tuesday claimed that SIT officers headed by Sathish Verma tortured him and burnt him with cigarette butts to change the stance. Rajdeep Sardesai in an exclusive interview talks to former SIT chief Sathish Verma about RVS Mani's allegations.

By India Today Web Desk: There have been many new twists in the Ishrat Jahan case, a case of encounter that is unsolved since 2004, ever since a Home Ministry officer said he was forced to change his version by the then UPA government.

Home Minister official RV Mani on Tuesday claimed that SIT officers headed by Sathish Verma tortured him and burnt him with cigarette butts to change the stance.

advertisement

"The SIT chief burnt me with cigarette stubs. I was chased by a CBI officer," RVS Mani said in an interview.

The BJP has since then been asking the UPA government and the former Finance Minister P Chidambaram for an explanation.

Rajdeep Sardesai in an exclusive interview talks to former SIT chief Sathish Verma about RVS Mani's claims.

For more details, watch the entire interview:



Also Read

We are being targeted: Sonia Gandhi on Ishrat Jahan row

Ishrat Jahan case: Plea in Supreme Court seeks quashing of murder charges against Gujarat cops



Here is what he said Sathish Verma was associated with the Ishrat Jahan case in two phases. In the first phase from the end of 2010 to 2011, he was a member of SIT and then from July 2012 to June 2013 when he assisted the CBI in the investigation. RVS Mani's allegations are reckless. He has made these allegations twice before. No violent technique is used during a CBI inquiry, that too against a government official. RVS Mani was a low ranking official in the Home Ministry, and did not have the knowledge of the case. It is unlikely that Ishrat Jahan could have been a Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist. First intelligence report never mentioned Ishrat Jahan, evidences put by RVS Mani were ridiculous.

--- ENDS ---
Giving a clean chit to former Home Minister P Chidambaram, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said her party is being targeted in the Ishrat Jahan shootout controversy.

By India Today Web Desk: Giving a clean chit to former Home Minister P Chidambaram, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday said her party is being targeted in the Ishrat Jahan shootout controversy.

"Chidambaram has already explained his stand. We have been targeted since we were in the government," Gandhi told reporters ahead of the Parliament meeting for the day.

The BJP has demanded probe into the manner in which the Centre's affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case was changed.

advertisement

In 2009, the UPA government had submitted two affidavits within two months - one that the four people, who were killed in an alleged fake encounter, were terrorists; and the second, saying there was no conclusive evidence of any terror links.

Citing former Home Secretary GK Pillai's recent TV interview, the BJP said the second affidavit came at the level of Chidambaram.

Pillai, who signed the affidavits, has said he was "tortured" during the probe to ascertain if Ishrat Jahan was killed in the 2004 encounter. Another senior bureaucrat, KVS Mani, has also alleged that he was forced to sign a second affidavit.

Also Read

Ishrat Jahan case: Was forced to sign second affidavit, says former MHA official







--- ENDS ---
A belligerent Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi tore into Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, accusing him of not listening to his colleagues and ignoring the voice of the people, "especially the youth", and slammed his silence on a series of issues.

"Whose opinion does the PM listen to? Whose opinion does he respect? His ministers? ...You are silent," Rahul said, addressing the BJP MPs in Lok Sabha.

By India Today Web Desk: A belligerent Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi tore into Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, accusing him of not listening to his colleagues and ignoring the voice of the people, "especially the youth", and slammed his silence on a series of issues.

"Whose opinion does the PM listen to? Whose opinion does he respect? His ministers? ...You are silent," Rahul said, addressing the BJP MPs in Lok Sabha. "I know Narendra Modi is a very powerful man, but you all should stand up to him," he said as the BJP MPs jeered.

advertisement

"The country is not the PM, the PM is not the country," the Congress leader said in his 30-minute speech, in which he repeatedly named the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP.

"You have been taught by your teachers in RSS that there is only one truth in universe - your own - and that nobody elses opinion matters," he said.

Rahul got the BJP lawmakers most animated when he mentioned Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar a few times. As they objected to it, the Congress leader said: "Isn't Gandhi ours and Savarkar yours? Have you all disowned Savarkar now? Please answer."

Covering a range of issues from JNU and Make in India to black money, Rahul directed his attack on Modi, peppering his speech with sarcasm.

"Arun Jaitley came to me and said there was no better scheme than MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). I asked him why he doesn't say that to his boss," he said, taunting Modi for his "MNREGA a monumental failure of the Congress" remark.

"For a moment, I thought it was P Chidambaram presenting the Budget on Monday," Rahul said, referring to the largest-ever allocation by the NDA government for the UPA's flagship scheme.

On the JNU sedition row, Rahul said he heard the complete speech of student leader Kanhaiya Kumar and found "not a word" in it anti-national. "Why is the Modi government targeting JNU where 60 per cent of th students are either Dalit or OBC or from other minorities?" he asked.

"Which religion says the teachers, students and even media persons should be thrashed for doing their jobs?" he said, referring to the attacks on academics and journalists outside a court in Delhi last month.

On Pakistan, Rahul alleged that the Modi government has no diplomatic plan to corner Pakistan over terrorism.

"Pakistan attacked this country in Mumbai (26/11). Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered. And what does the PM do? Without any thought or vision, he decided to go have tea with Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif," he said.

In December last year, Modi had stunned the nation by making a surprise stopover in Lahore on his return from Kabul and having a day-long deliberation and photo-op with Sharif and his family.

advertisement

"The PM didn't consult the armed forces, he didn't consult any officials. I don't think he even discussed the visit with (Foreign Minister) Sushma Swaraj," he said.

Slamming the speech, BJP MP Prahlad Joshi later said he didn't know if Rahul was "giving his vote of thanks to President Pranab Mukherjee's opening remarks (on Budget session) or speaking in a rally".

Also Read

Country is not PM, PM is not the country: 10 best quotes from Rahul Gandhi's speech

Modi has a fair and lovely plan to protect black money holders: Rahul Gandhi

Twitter reacts as Rahul Gandhi guns for Modi in Lok Sabha



--- ENDS ---
The company wasn't directly available for comment on the latest chain of events. But, the exit seems to be a definite this time round.

By India Today Web Desk: Vineet Taneja has formally resigned from his position as chief executive officer of home grown brand Micromax Informatics. "Vineet has moved on to pursue other interests. We would like to thank him for his contribution and wish him good luck," a spokesperson from Micromax was quoted by the Economic Times as saying .

The company wasn't directly available for comment on the latest chain of events. But, the exit seems to be a definite this time round. To recall, there were similar reports back in January as well . Taneja was said to be finding it difficult to implement his vision for the company as his ideas were apparently clashing with those of its promoters, namely Rahul Sharma, Rajesh Agarwal, Vikas Jai and Sumeet Kumar. There were reports that they were possibly encroaching on the role that Taneja was supposed to play as well. We have reached out to Micromax for a comment on this.

advertisement

The company has so far not disclosed Taneja's replacement for the near term, as well as future endeavors.

Taneja - who had joined Micromax in July 2014 - has had a prolific career, heading the cellphone business at Samsung India as well as working for Bharti Airtel and Nokia earlier. His exit marks a long list of high-profile departures from the company, which started off with Chairman Sanjay Kapoor. Kapoor resigned in August last year. He was reportedly forced out of his job on account of alleged inflated petrol bills.

Even though, Micromax continues to be the second biggest smartphone company in the country, it has been facing some stiff competition from the likes of Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Lenovo. The company known for its affordable phones recently took the plunge into the premium category through its YU sub-brand.



--- ENDS ---
Investigative reporting from the inner city to Wall Street to the United Nations This is the blogspot version InnerCityPress.com
The Kansas Republican Party is filled with characters on the inside. I'm looking through the window and holding up a mirror.
Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Groysman has initiated the extension of the mission of the European Parliament to assess the needs of the reform of the Ukrainian Parliament led by former EP President Pat Cox.

The European Parliament's Needs Assessment Mission will contribute to the practical implementation of the roadmap for the internal reform of the Verkhovna Rada, which was presented in Brussels, the press service of the Ukrainian parliament reported on Tuesday.

"I believe that the team of the European Parliament led by Pat Cox can be an efficient mechanism for the implementation, because it is important not just to write a plan of reforms, but to implement it," Groysman said while interacting with journalists in Brussels on Tuesday.

The Ukrainian speaker said that the European Parliament's mission under its current mandate was more of a technical mission which assessed the needs of the Verkhovna Rada and the progress of the plan. This job has been done, and now there comes the time for the second mandate for the provision of technical support, Groysman explained.

The Verkhovna Rada chairman noted that Cox expressed his interest in this initiative, supported him and the leaders of the faction of the Ukrainian parliament.

"So I think that the right solution for the continuation of this work will be found," Groysman said.

As reported, on March 1, members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the European Parliament have endorsed the recommendations of the report of the needs assessment mission of the European Parliament, which contains a roadmap of the reform and transformation of the Ukrainian Parliament
The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine signed two documents on terms of the normalization of the situation at the contact line in Donbas at its meeting on Wednesday, OSCE Special Envoy Martin Sajdik told reporters.

The first document is on the mine-clearing operations, Sajdik said. The armed forces and groups of the both conflicting parties have bound themselves to secure before March 31 the designating of the targeted areas and the mapping of the areas to be cleared of mines, he said.

The second document refers to the total prohibition of military exercises, in which any kinds of combat weapons are used, Sajdik revealed, adding that this ban will take effect in the early hours of March 4.

Sajdik then went on to clarify that according to the documents, all those territories directly adjoining the checkpoints at the contact line that are used for civilian traffic and all those situated along the roads that lead to the checkpoints will have top priority with respect to the mine-clearing works.

The parties have also agreed to take appropriate steps in order to raise awareness among local residents, Sajdik said. The Joint Center for Control and Coordination will coordinate the mine-clearance with the help of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, he said.

Sajdik also expressed hope that the practice of prisoner exchange in Donbas will continue.
Three Ukrainian military servicemen killed, 14 wounded in Donbas over past 24 hours

Kyiv reports casualties in the special military operation area in Donbas.

"Three our servicemen have been killed and 14 others have sustained wounds in the fighting over the past 24 hours," Ukrainian presidential spokesman for the special operation in Donbas Andriy Lysenko said at a news briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday.

The three servicemen were killed and two others injured as a vehicle carrying servicemen hit a mine on the Hirske-Lysychansk road, he said.

Three other servicemen were injured near Triokhizbenka, where a mobile task force uncovering contraband was shelled with a grenade launcher.

Six other servicemen were injured near Artemivsk, and one each in Maryinka, Slavne and Chermalyk, Lysenko said.
"According to the EPO, an MoU has almost been finalized and a representative from the Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO), the main union, is prepared to sign it. "

The European Patent Office has just announced a "landmark deal" in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with FFPE-EPO , which is a trade union of EPO employees. It was reported last week in The Register that an MoU was in progress, and at the time it was said:This seemed to Merpel highly unlikely, since SUEPO had continually stated that it would not sign such a document. There were several reasons for this - one is that there had been no real negotiation over the content of the MoU: counter-proposals from SUEPO had been ignored, and the MoU was expressly subordinate to the Service Regulations, which can be (and are) changed unilaterally by the EPO management. The other was that officials of SUEPO were under disciplinary investigation, since when two have been fired, one demoted , and others continue to be under sanction: SUEPO officials declined to negotiate under such duress. Mr Minnoye, EPO Vice President, claimed in a recent interview on Dutch television that disciplinary actions against so many SUEPO officials was mere coincidence, but that is near impossible to believe. (That interview, and other press coverage, can be seen on the SUEPO website here ).In fact, as today's announcement makes clear, the union that has signed the MoU is FFPE-EPO. What is the significance of this? Well, FFPE-EPO exists only in the Hague office of the EPO, and is believed to have about 70 members, whereas SUEPO has about 3400 (about half of the EPO staff, and increasing over recent years). While any union recognition is to be welcomed, the concern is that the EPO is trying to present this as showing that all is well, when in fact, with the overwhelmingly larger union, the disciplinary sanctions remain against the officials and there is no sign that a dialogue is possible at all. The social situation remains in a toxic state, and, under the current management, seems likely to stay that way.The r eports of the Board 28 meeting from last month suggested that perhaps the Administrative Council meeting this month on 16/17 March might be a turning point. Merpel still hopes that it will be, and that today's announcement will not be used to suggest that the social and industrial issues within the EPO's workforce area already being resolved.
[March 01, 2016] Xerox Helps Print Providers Capture Booming Inkjet Printing Opportunities with Two New Presses

According to InfoTrends, production color inkjet print will account for 57 percent of the total production digital color page volume by 20191. To help print providers capitalize on inkjet's growing momentum, Xerox (NYSE:XRX) today announced it will launch two new inkjet presses, the Xerox Brenva HD Production Inkjet Press and the Xerox Trivor 2400 Inkjet Press, at drupa 2016, May 31 - June 10 in Dusseldorf, Germany. To access a video replay of the news conference unveiling the technology visit http://xerox.bz/1UwIAIj. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160301006744/en/ The presses are the first in an innovative new series of inkjet offerings to come from Xerox; Brenva HD to the cut-sheet inkjet market and Trivor 2400 with the Xerox IJ Print Server powered by Fiery to the continuous feed inkjet market. Each will enable print providers to accelerate growth and drive the production of more high-value applications such as direct mail, transactional, books and catalogs. "We are focused on expanding our inkjet portfolio with more choices and greater capabilities for print providers to grow their businesses," said Robert Stabler, senior vice president and general manager, Global Graphic Communications Business Group, Xerox. "With the addition of Brenva HD and Trivor 2400, we're making inkjet more accessible and affordable to a larger number of print providers."



Carving out a new space in the cut-sheet inkjet market Xerox is targeting the space - dubbed by InfoTrends as the Zone of Disruption - that sits below the gap between high-end toner and low-end inkjet presses with Brenva HD. The new press combines the cost effectiveness of inkjet with the flexibilities of cut-sheet to address the needs of print providers in the light direct mail, transactional and book markets. Incorporating many of the reliable paper-path components of the award-winning Xerox iGen, Brenva HD offers best-in-class automation and reliability features to maximize press productivity including:

An inline spectrophotometer to assist with calibration and profiling;

Object-oriented color management to distinguish text, graphics and images and optimizes the image quality of each accordingly;

K-only mode so it will run as a cost effective monochrome press. Flexible for today, scalable for tomorrow The Xerox Trivor 2400 Inkjet Press provides printers with a platform built to grow as business demands increase with the same machine scaling up for more speed, volume and solutions. The Trivor 2400 press combines high performance and increased speed (551 feet/168 meters per minute in color; 656 feet/200 meters per minute in monochrome) in a small footprint. The press will allow print shops to move into catalogs, magazines and color books, giving customers more flexibility. Engineered-in automation ensures superb, reliable image quality including inline density optimization, clear pixel technology, and missing jet detection and correction. A new print server developed in partnership with EFI, the Xerox IJ Print Server powered by Fiery, will handle multiple data streams for various application types. The IJ Print Server will simplify integration, provide comprehensive color management and integrate seamlessly with customers' workflows. Availability Availability and list price for the Xerox Trivor 2400 Inkjet Press with the Xerox IJ Print Server powered by Fiery will be revealed at drupa.

The Xerox Brenva HD Production Inkjet Press will be available in Europe in May 2016 and in North America in September 2016. Shipments will begin in June 2016. The list price starts at $649,000. Brenva HD and Trivor 2400 with the IJ Print Server powered by Fiery will be on display at drupa 2016, Hall 8B A62, Messe Dusseldorf. With a theme "Let the Work Flow," the Xerox stand at drupa will showcase how providers can work better by becoming more automated, integrated and productive in their operations. For more information about Xerox at drupa, visit: xerox.com/drupa. Click to Tweet About Xerox Xerox is helping change the way the world works. By applying our expertise in imaging, business process, analytics, automation and user-centric insights, we engineer the flow of work to provide greater productivity, efficiency and personalization. We conduct business in 180 countries, and our more than 140,000 employees create meaningful innovations and provide business process services, printing equipment, software and solutions that make a real difference for our clients - and their customers. Learn more at www.xerox.com. 1 Global Production Printing & Copying Market Forecast: 2014-2019, InfoTrends. Note: To receive RSS news feeds, visit http://news.xerox.com. For open commentary, industry perspectives and views visit http://twitter.com/xerox, http://www.linkedin.com/company/xerox, http://simplifywork.blogs.xerox.com, http://www.facebook.com/XeroxCorp, http://www.youtube.com/XeroxCorp. Xerox, Xerox and Design, Brenva, Trivor and iGen are trademarks of Xerox in the United States and/or other countries. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160301006744/en/

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 01, 2016] Anritsu Company Provides Exclusive 4x4 MIMO Device Acceptance Solution for Major U.S. Carrier

RICHARDSON, Texas, March 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Anritsu Company announces exclusive support for LTE 4x4 Multiple-In-Multiple-Out (MIMO) Carrier Acceptance Test (CAT) requirements for a major U.S. carrier. This new coverage, based on the ME7834LA Mobile Device Test Platform, builds on the leading 3G and LTE CAT test offering for this carrier. With this announcement, Anritsu is the first test solution provider in the world to offer a device acceptance solution for 4x4 MIMO. MIMO is an essential part of LTE that allows an increase in data rates without adding bandwidth. This is accomplished using "spatial multiplexing" of multiple streams of data on the same carrier. A 4x4 MIMO downlink configuration uses four antennas on the base station to transmit four simultaneous streams of data, and four antennas on the device to receive and separate the mixed streams. Combination of MIMO and LTE Advanced Carrier Aggregation (CA) can result in extremely high data rates, as evidenced by Anritsu's recent announcement of 1 Gb/s IP throughput using 3CA and 4x4 MIMO. "Anritsu is committed to developing device acceptance solutions for the entire mobile ecosystem so the benefits of MIMO and CA can be realized. This will help ensure consumers have the best experience for a multitude of data applications and ue cases. The ME7834LA is part of our extensive wireless solutions portfolio designed to address the needs of operators, device makers, and chipset manufacturers," said Paul Innis, Vice President and General Manager of Anritsu's Americas Sales Region.



The ME7834LA is a scalable GCF, PTCRB, and carrier-validated test system that enables certification of 3G and LTE devices to industry and carrier standards. The ME7834LA provides test coverage for 3GPP 36.523 and 34.123, as well as a wide portfolio of CAT test plans across multiple operators. For existing ME7834L platform users, an upgrade path is available with support for 4x4 MIMO and multi-carrier aggregation, as well as legacy test cases. About Anritsu

Anritsu Company is the United States subsidiary of Anritsu Corporation, a global provider of innovative communications test and measurement solutions for 120 years. Anritsu's "2020 VISION" philosophy engages customers as true partners to help develop wireless, optical, microwave/RF, and digital instruments, as well as operation support systems for R&D, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance applications. Anritsu also provides precision microwave/RF components, optical devices, and high-speed electrical devices for communication products and systems. The company develops advanced solutions for 5G, M2M, IoT, as well as other emerging and legacy wireline and wireless communication markets. With offices throughout the world, Anritsu has approximately 4,000 employees in over 90 countries.

To learn more visit www.anritsu.com and follow Anritsu on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150410/197878LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/anritsu-company-provides-exclusive-4x4-mimo-device-acceptance-solution-for-major-us-carrier-300229041.html SOURCE Anritsu Company

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Allegion to Present at 2016 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Industrials & EU Autos Conference

Allegion plc (NYSE: ALLE) President, Chairman and CEO David D. Petratis will discuss the company's long-term strategy at the 2016 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Industrials & EU Autos Conference on Tuesday, March 15. The conference will be held at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Financial Centre in London.

The live webcast will be accessible via Allegion's investor website at investor.allegion.com or directly at http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/4dcq76k7.







About Allegion

Allegion (NYSE: ALLE) is a global pioneer in safety and security, with leading brands like CISA, Interflex, LCN, Schlage and Von Duprin. Focusing on security around the door and adjacent areas, Allegion produces a range of solutions for homes, businesses, schools and other institutions. Allegion is a $2 billion company, with products sold in almost 130 countries.

For more, visit www.allegion.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160301006896/en/
[March 02, 2016] Cequens and Intel Bring Skype for Business to Meeting Rooms, Unveils Product Line at Enterprise Connect

ORLANDO, Florida, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cequens, a global enabler of universal communications, announced today the launch of the Cequens Room video conferencing system that instantly extends Skype for Business to meeting rooms. Powered by Intel NUC hardware, Cequens Room is an affordable and plug-and-play video conferencing system that runs on existing Lync, Office365, and Skype for Business deployments. Cequens will exhibit at Enterprise Connect as a Silver Sponsor (Booth 535) and unveil its flagship product in Orlando 7 to 10 March. Cequens Room was designed to capitalize on existing infrastructure, investments, and equipment with support for single and multiple displays, generic USB microphones and cameras, full HD, and PTZ cameras. The intuitive interface also supports wireless and USB content sharing as well as the ability to project from an HDMI connected computer, features designed to improve business productivity, team collaboration, and communication. "We were very conscious about adding clutter and bulky equipment to the meetng room, and Intel's NUC was just what we wanted" explained Abdallah Ahmed, Cequens Video Product Manager. "Superior graphics and processing packed in such an ultra-compact unit that can be hidden away behind the meeting room display. The wide range of ports available with the Intel NUC including four USB 3.0, mini HDMI, and Ethernet, give our customers the flexibility and choice of multiple peripherals", he continued.



The company is also showcasing Cequens Office that extends Skype for Business to private offices through a powerful all-in-one and touch enabled device with built-in camera and microphone, and Self-serve stations that extend Skype for Business to standalone kiosks. "We're happy to see what the team at Cequens is doing with the Intel NUC", said John Deatherage, Director of Marketing for Intel. "The NUC is ideal for conference room experiences and adding Skype for Business to that takes it to a whole new level," he continued. "We're proud to be partners with Cequens on the Cequens Room video conferencing system, and we look forward to more collaboration opportunities."

Cequens Room starts from $999 and will be available for pre-order at Enterprise Connect. About Cequens Cequens is a global enabler of messaging, video, and voice services. Cequens Video revolutionizes video conferencing with products that instantly extend Skype for Business to conference rooms, executive offices, and self-service stations. For more info, please visit cequens.com/video or contact: Marketing & Communications Director

[email protected]

Middle East & Africa +2-(011)-2233-9000

Europe +34-931-845-687 or +44-(20)-3129-4057

North America: +1-(408)-337-6395

SOURCE Cequens

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
[March 02, 2016] Index Brings Apple Pay, Enhanced Security and a New Customer Experience to American Apparel

SAN FRANCISCO, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Index, a leading retail software company that brings measurement and personalization to the offline world, is deploying a cloud-based payments infrastructure for American Apparel, Inc. Index's solution for American Apparel will drive efficiencies and cost savings as well as improve security, future-proof payments and significantly expand digital capabilities across its U.S. stores. "Our launch with Index provides a strong technical foundation to prepare our stores for the future," said Brian McHale, American Apparel's Chief Information Officer. "Index is an incredibly valuable partner to help us accomplish our objective of moving major systems to the cloud and overhauling security." Index Hosted Gateway and Index Semi-Integrated Payments provide American Apparel with a turnkey solution for point-to-point encryption (P2PE), EMV, NFC, processing flexibility and value-added services including robust analytics and personalized marketing. By integrating with American Apparel's existing systems  its RetailPro point-of-sale (POS) deployment and Ingenico PIN pads  Index delivers a seamless upgrade for its stores. "Our integrated solution provides tremendous flexibility, reliability and enhanced security for American Apparel's in-store environments," said Jonathan Wall, Index Co-Founder and CTO. "American Apparel is an iconic American brand and our technology enables them to accelerate innovation across customer experience, cros-channel personalization and performance-based marketing," added Marc Freed-Finnegan, Index Co-Founder and CEO.





Some key features and benefits Index provides to American Apparel include:

EMV & P2PE  Advanced security technologies validate payment card authenticity for in-store transactions and protect card data from the moment of use.

 Advanced security technologies validate payment card authenticity for in-store transactions and protect card data from the moment of use. Apple Pay & Android Pay  Enablement for the latest mobile technology. With Apple Pay, it's never been easier or safer to pay in-store.

 Enablement for the latest mobile technology. With Apple Pay, it's never been easier or safer to pay in-store. Beautiful, Branded Checkout  Custom fonts, colors and seasonal branding engage customers on the PIN pad and streamline the checkout experience. Index software for Ingenico PIN pads unlocks the full potential of these devices.

 Custom fonts, colors and seasonal branding engage customers on the PIN pad and streamline the checkout experience. Index software for Ingenico PIN pads unlocks the full potential of these devices. Email Capture & Digital Receipts  Seamless email capture on the PIN pad offers easy, one-time sign-up for e-receipts and loyalty.

Index technology provides the foundation to protect American Apparel customers in-store and further elevate their shopping experience. For many retailers, PIN pads are one of the most underutilized devices in-store, but with Index, American Apparel has unlocked the potential of these devices to secure payments and personalize every customer's checkout experience. Index offers a full set of solutions for Apparel, Grocery and Quick Service retailersincluding payments, security, marketing, analytics and loyalty. It leverages strong partnerships with leading POS platforms, PIN pad providers and payment processors to elevate the in-store experience and transform online and offline retail. To learn more about Index's offerings, visit www.index.com.

About Index

Based in San Francisco, Index is a leading retail software company that combines secure payments and personalized marketing to transform offline retail. Index's set of performance-based marketing tools links the online and offline world, and its unique POS integration allows for customer analytics never before seen in brick-and-mortar retail. Index enables retailers to connect with customers on the channels where they engage, deliver personalized shopping experiences to build lifelong customer relationships, and harness the power of mobile to elevate these relationships. About American Apparel

American Apparel, Inc. (the "Company,") is a vertically-integrated manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of branded fashion-basic apparel based in downtown Los Angeles, California. As of September 30, 2015, the Company had approximately 9,000 employees and operated 227 retail stores in 19 countries including the United States and Canada. The Company also operates a global e-commerce site that serves over 50 countries worldwide at http://www.americanapparel.com. In addition, the Company operates a leading wholesale business that supplies high-quality T-shirts and other casual wear to distributors and screen printers. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339537

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339538 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/index-brings-apple-pay-enhanced-security-and-a-new-customer-experience-to-american-apparel-300229351.html SOURCE Index

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]
Este sitio utiliza cookies para mejorar la experiencia de usuario. Aceptar Ver mas
anterior

Campana de ONG israeli para demandar en Corte Penal Internacional a TV palestina por incitar al terrorismo
Senators will start off Wednesday -- day 36 -- with debate on more senator priority bills. Those will include bills on wage discrimination (LB83), hazing (LB710), adopting a stroke system of care (LB722), and a bill (LB857) to change the population threshold of when cities of the first class are required to employ a full-time fire chief.

As afternoon hearings wind down this week, three committees are scheduled to hear bills on Wednesday: Government, Military and Veterans Affairs; Health and Human Services; and Judiciary. Details are available online at: http://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/calendar/hearings.php?day=2016-03-02.

A proposed "right to farm" constitutional amendment stalled in the Agriculture Committee, with some members saying the measure was too broad. Committee Chairman Jerry Johnson of Wahoo says he doesn't plan to bring LR378CA to a vote again this year.

Senators gave final approval Tuesday to a bill (LB954) that would allow the inspector general for child welfare access to court records for investigations, and one (LB1016), that would allow for performance audits for the office of public guardian and the office of probation administration.

The Judiciary Committee advanced a bill (LB1055) Tuesday that would would bring more transparency to grand jury procedures called to investigate the death of any person while being apprehended or in custody. The bill, introduced by Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, would require a report that would explain the grand jurys findings and recommendations, if it does not return an indictment. The report would be filed with the court and available for public review, along with the grand jury transcript.

At least three Nebraska women in the Legislature or formerly in the Legislature shared birthdays with the state of Nebraska on Tuesday. U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer and state Sens. Kate Sullivan and Kate Bolz. Sullivan celebrated by bringing Big Red Beef Sticks for her all colleagues and Bolz' mother Pam Eisenhauer made and sent three kinds of cupcakes -- lemon, red velvet and vanilla -- to lawmakers.
The Legislature's budget committee swallowed hard Tuesday afternoon and voted to give the prisons director money to expand community corrections beds in Lincoln.

The decision came as the nine-member Appropriations Committee reviewed requests from agencies and senators, and buttoned up some final decisions on the budget it will send to the full Legislature next week.

Decision making got tense at times, when committee members disagreed on funding choices. Fairly early in the discussions, Sen. Bill Kintner got exasperated with spending decisions and shouted at Chairman Heath Mello, who invited him to leave the meeting. He left, saying he wasn't going to vote to spend any more money, anyway, and didn't return.

Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes had asked the Appropriations Committee for $26.2 million to construct 160 community custody beds for women.

For months, since Frakes delivered his strategic plan for the prisons, which included the expansion project, several legislative committees have questioned whether it is the best use of resources to help alleviate the giant problem hanging over the department: prison crowding.

Mello was reluctant to fund the project, but had finally decided the Legislature needed to OK it, even if those beds wouldn't be ready for at least three years.

He was expecting more of an effort from the department, he said, to deal with prison crowding in the short term. But the reality is, that's the request the Legislature received.

Sen. Dan Watermeier, a member of the committee, said he believed community corrections beds were a safe bet, the most practical choice, because those would be the beds the state would need the most and the longest.

Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz said Frakes' proposal didn't satisfy what she saw as the need to address crowding, but she would go along with it.

Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm agreed the decision didn't feel right. And Omaha Sen. Tanya Cook said even though the expansion could eventually lead to more access to programming for inmates, she's concerned in two years she'll still be reading about brick-and-mortar expansions and inadequate services.

In defending the proposal, Frakes has told senators he believes recent laws aimed at reducing the prison population and a reclassification of inmates will work in time, and this will be the project most needed.

The committee also voted to advance a bill (LB733), introduced by Watermeier, that would appropriate $1.5 million for retention bonuses for Corrections staff.

The department has been able to recruit more staff in recent months, but loses a high number at the same time. Mello said the committee can't force the department to use the money for bonuses, but it has to try, and hope that the base salary for those employees can be raised during the next contract negotiations.

In other decisions, the committee voted to make room for $13.7 million, from the state's rainy day fund, to improve levees that protect Offutt Air Force Base from potential flooding.

An amendment to a bill (LB537) would create the Military Installation Infrastructure Program, to be administered by the state Department of Natural Resources. The program would provide grants to assist in those infrastructure improvements.

The levee improvements would cost $25 million, and the cities of Bellevue and Omaha and the Papio-Missouri River Natural Resources District would make up the remainder of funding.

Offutt provides about $1.5 billion annual economic impact to the Omaha metro area and the state economy, Mello said earlier at a hearing on the amendment. It employs more than 10,000 people.

Without the levee project, he said, a $125 million runway project, needed to help ensure Offutt isn't closed or realigned in the future, could be jeopardized.
The Legislature made short work of an anti-hazing bill Wednesday, advancing it from first-round debate in slightly under 20 minutes.

The bill (LB710), introduced by Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango, extended the state's hazing law to apply to youths younger than college age. It also added public indecency to the definition of hazing, including sexual penetration, an exposure of the genitals with intent to affront or alarm a person, and lewd fondling or caressing of the body of another person.

Hughes said the bill grew out of a case in which Cambridge High School upperclassmen reportedly hazed freshman students during a wrestling camp at Hastings College.

Two Cambridge seniors involved in the incident have been charged with felony child abuse by the Nebraska Attorney General's office. Juvenile petitions were filed in Adams County Court on Feb. 9.

The June 30 incident allegedly involved a freshman being forced to eat doughnuts off the older boys genitals while others watched. It came to the attention of authorities and school officials in late August.

Adams County Attorney Donna Fegler Daiss declined to prosecute the incident as hazing, saying Nebraska law covers such incidents involving post-secondary organizations, such as fraternities and sororities.

Hughes said during debate Wednesday most schools feel they don't have authority to deal with hazing incidents as the law is written now.

"My intent with this bill is more about protecting kids than punishing them," Hughes said.

The idea is to try to reinforce with young people that this type of behavior is unacceptable and there would be consequences outside of school, in the courts, if they take part, he said.

Incidents such as this must be dealt with in a way that is moral, legal, and most of all timely, said Omaha Sen. Bob Krist. It's a matter of putting the right tools in the hands of educators, county attorneys and public defenders, he said.

Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus pointed out that the bill broadens the hazing law to any organization, not just educational ones, which may require some additional consideration by senators.

He also questioned whether the state already has laws that cover such incidents, such as disturbing the peace and laws against subjecting a person to sexual contact.

The bill advanced on a 31-0 vote.
A debate on a wage discrimination bill got underway in the Legislature Tuesday and drew quick fire from two senators before time ran out on the morning session.

The issue was a bill (LB83) that started out as a measure that would make it legal for employees to disclose their own salaries to other employees. But it came out of the Business and Labor Committee replaced by a bill (LB928), introduced by Omaha Sen. Heath Mello, that would broaden the size of companies that had to adhere to the Nebraska Equal Pay Act.

The issue, however, was much the same. Women should be paid the same as men are paid for doing comparable work.

The bill as amended would change the definition of employer in the Nebraska Equal Pay Act, which holds it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sex by paying a lesser wage to one sex than to the opposite sex for comparable work. The change would make the act applicable to more employers, those with two or more workers, rather than the 15 or more it applies to now.

It would align state law with federal law.

The change has been negotiated with the business community, said Omaha Sen. Tanya Cook, who introduced the wage disclosure bill.

Some women still earn less than their male counterparts, Cook said, even for the same positions and same length of service. That has a negative impact for women, taxpayers and the overall economy, she said.

There are employers who get around the equal pay law by either expressly or tacitly prohibiting their employees from discussing their own wages, Cook said.

"This keeps unlawful discrimination hidden," she said.

People who say women make less because of lifestyle choices are wrong, she said.

After accounting for such things as college majors, occupations, hours worked, months unemployed since graduation, GPA, type of undergraduate institution, age, geographic region and marital status, there is still a difference in the earnings between male and female college graduates after one year, Cook said. And 10 years later, there's a 12 percent difference.

"The pay gap is not a myth. It's math," she said.

But Sen. Bill Kintner of Papillion said the bill was a bad one.

For every statistic that says women are paid some less percentage than men, he said, he could come up with one that shows that's wrong.

"Let's think about this. If you really could pay women less than men, why wouldn't the company hire all women if I can save 30 percent, right?" Kintner said. "The whole argument just falls apart when men and women sometimes have different goals and different lifestyle choices."

While the Chamber of Commerce may have negotiated a compromise on the bill, he said, he didn't come to the Legislature to negotiate "half of our liberty away" by telling businesses how to do things, he said.

Sen. Paul Schumacher also found the bill deeply concerning, he said, because it says if you have under 15 employees you don't have to comply with a whole slew of requirements.

"We in this body have got to balance ourselves between putting onerous restrictions and rules on small business and protecting people from invidious discrimination at some level," he said.

Then he stepped into it, somewhat, by saying he didn't think the state needs to burden small businesses -- "guys" who just want to go about their construction or accounting businesses without being subject to a bunch of requirements.

Lincoln Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks took note that Schumacher said he was worried about the "little guy," and continued to use the pronoun "he" in referring to small business owners.

This is exactly the problem, she said, not only in laws but in language.

"We dismiss an entire part of our population," Pansing Brooks said.

She suggested that if all the women watching from the chamber balconies had water balloons, the senators would be all wet.

Debate on the bill will continue Wednesday.
A 39-year-old Lincoln man is accused of forcing a 15-year-old girl to perform sexual acts on him last fall, according to court documents.

Prosecutors on Tuesday charged Matthew T. Towle with first-degree sexual assault of a child, generating child pornography and enticement by electronic device.

In an affidavit to jail him, Lincoln Police Investigator Troy Cockle said Towle met the teenager last summer through a Cub Scout group. They exchanged sexually explicit text and Facebook messages for several months.

In September, the now 16-year-old told investigators Towle, a den father and Scout parent, came to her house to bring her cigarettes, according to police.

When she met him outside, she said, he told her to get into the car and forced her to perform sex acts on him and also forced her to undress, Cockle said.

He was arrested Friday and is in the Lancaster County jail.

Lancaster County Judge Thomas Zimmerman appointed the Public Defender's Office to represent him, set Towle's bond at $200,000 and ordered him not to have contact with the girl or anyone else younger than 18.

In a statement, Chris Blum of the Boy Scouts of America's local Cornhusker Council called the allegations abhorrent and "counter to everything for which the Boy Scouts of America stands."

"Although these actions appear to be unrelated to Scouting, upon learning of these allegations we took immediate action to preclude this individual from any future participation in the Scouting program," Blum said.

Boy Scout officials are cooperating with investigators, he said.
A key deadline for Nebraska Democrats to weigh in on their party's presidential nominee left some would-be voters scrambling Tuesday.

That's when absentee preference cards were due at the state party headquarters for people who can't participate in Saturday's live caucus events.

Several people complained that while they had requested absentee ballots before a separate Feb. 24 deadline set by the Nebraska Democratic Party, they didn't get them in time to return them by Tuesday.

"I think I'm out of luck, and I'm very disappointed. Very disappointed," said Marilyn Humphrey, a 68-year-old Hillary Clinton supporter from west Omaha who had yet to receive her preference card in the mail Tuesday afternoon. "I'd like to know who dropped the ball."

State Democratic Party officials agreed Tuesday evening to adjust the deadline to accept cards that were postmarked by March 1 but not necessarily delivered to the party office.

Clinton's campaign had requested the absentee deadline be extended to Thursday. A state official for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders OK'd the March 1 postmark compromise.

Thousands of Nebraska voters had received and returned their absentee cards in time, according to a post on the state party's website.

Yet Nebraska Democratic Chairman Vince Powers acknowledged that some of the 1,400 preference cards the party mailed Thursday didn't arrive in peoples' mailboxes until Monday or later, particularly in the state's largely rural 3rd Congressional District.

"Unfortunately we are at the mercy of the United States mail," Powers said.

Still, he credited Nebraska Democrats with creating another way for people to participate if they can't attend the caucus, an option that isn't available in neighboring Iowa or in many other caucus states.

Former Lt. Gov. Kim Robak, who introduced Chelsea Clinton at a campaign event for her mother in Lincoln on Monday, had suggested early Tuesday that the state party should consider counting preference cards that arrive late but were postmarked by Tuesday's deadline.

"The mail is unpredictable," she said. "That seems to be a reasonable solution."

That wouldn't help people like Humphrey who still hadn't received their ballots Tuesday. Nor would it allow Haley Eck, a 20-year-old Clinton supporter from Omaha who attends Southern Oregon University, to engage in her home state's nominating process.

After initially seeking a ballot from Douglas County election officials, Eck realized her mistake too late to mail her request for a preference card to the state Democratic Party in time for the Feb. 24 deadline.

Requests were only accepted in person or by mail, not online or via fax.

"The system is supposed to work for someone like me and it still doesn't," Eck said.

Robak said while she doesn't want anyone excluded from the process, the amount of discussion surrounding the absentee card issue illustrates the level of interest in Saturday's caucus.

"The fact is, people want to vote."
Pay confidentiality policies are widespread in the private sector and the negative impact on womens earnings is significant. If a woman does not know how much her male colleagues earn, it's difficult to determine whether she is a victim of pay discrimination. Such policies enable employers to discriminate against women employees without their knowledge.

According to a 2010 study, 6 percent of private sector employees reported they are discouraged or prohibited from discussing wage and salary information.

The Supreme Court of the United States has recognized [f]ear of retaliation is the leading reason why people stay silent instead of voicing their concerns about bias and discrimination.

After nearly two decades of employment, it took an anonymous note for Lilly Ledbetter to find out she was earning significantly less than male colleagues performing the same job. Had an anti- retaliation bill been in effect, Ledbetter might have discovered the wage discrimination far earlier and could have sought a remedy without fear of recrimination.

Pay transparency can help to narrow the wage gap.

The gender wage gap in the federal government, where wages are more transparent, is only 11 percent, as compared to 23 percent for the economy as a whole. LB 83 would help to combat unfair pay practices. The Nebraska Legislature has an opportunity to encourage pay transparency and discourage discrimination by prohibiting retaliation based on wage disclosure. The proposed wage disclosure bill would make it an unlawful labor practice for employers to retaliate against workers for disclosing or discussing their wages.

I urge all of our Senators to vote in favor of this legislation that will help their mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, grand-daughters, in receiving fair and equal pay in Nebraska. The rhetoric I have heard from business owners against this bill during testimony simply needs to be quashed.

Mary Herres, Lincoln
Sen. John Kuehns proposed Right to Farm Constitutional amendment is really the Right to Harm amendment ("Senators will debate 'right to farm' amendment," March 3).

I lived in Hastings for 25 years. Essentially all cropland in south central Nebraska, including mega-corn fields adjacent to our small acreage, are both cropland and toxic dump. By ceaseless marketing and perpetual application of herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and questionable irrigation practices, these toxins, especially nitrates and uranium contaminated the aquifer and polluted the entire Hastings water supply. Thus, Hastings must build a nonsubsidized approximate $45 million water treatment plant to make the water drinkable.

Walk into a Big Ag cornfield in mid-summer. They are dead zones with few signs of typical Great Plains life, with no insects, birds, mammals or plant life except the crop. This is the agricultural technology with predictable economic externalities that LR378CA supporters want to protect in perpetuity.

Many accepted practices used in Big Ag Nebraska livestock production, including at Kuehns districts USDA Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, are moribund or dead ("Animal welfare group takes on Clay County Sheriff," Jan. 1). Consumers, who outnumber producers 20-to-1, do not want animal welfare-tainted products. McDonalds will buy only cage free eggs. Walmart, Aramark, General Mills and more than 100 of the nations biggest food retailers embrace the Five Freedoms of animal welfare to guide their animal product purchases.

So, go ahead, Big Ag Nebraska, raise all the pork you want from sows in gestation crates or eggs from caged layers. Good luck selling your products. LR378CA supporters may demonize the Humane Society of the United States as the bogeyman but animal welfare groups are on the right side of history. Their policies and consumer proponents will prevail.

Finally, although Kuehn's amendment is called the "Right to Farm," the words "farmer and "rancher" appear nowhere in LR378CA.

Jim Keen, Lincoln
Nearly 1,000 new housing units designated for senior citizens will be built in Lincoln over the next few years.

Among them are four major complexes -- coined life care communities -- designed to meet the changing needs of an aging population.

Its a senior housing boom.

But is it more than the market can handle?

At least one developer thought so, and late last year withdrew plans for a $20 million independent and assisted living facility in the Haymarket, saying Lincolns senior housing market was overbuilt.

Pat Day, the developer for the new Knolls Senior Living Community, disagrees.

We feel bullish about Lincolns senior living industry, said Day, president of Dial Senior Properties.

And with good reason.

U.S. Census projections show Lincolns senior population is on a strong upward trajectory. Senior citizens are among the citys fastest growing demographic -- and demand for senior housing, which already falls short of supply, is only going to increase over the next 25 years, said Brandon Garrett, a city planner.

Between 1980 and 2010, Lincoln added more than 40,000 new housing units and 16 percent of that growth was in the 65-plus age group, Garrett said.

But in the next 25 years, that growth pattern shifts. Using U.S. Census estimates, Lincoln will add 52,000 housing units between 2010 to 2040, and 53 percent will be for seniors 65 and older, Garrett said.

In 2005, Lancaster County had 22,709 residents between the age of 65 to 84, and another 3,532 age 85 and older.

In 2015 that number grew to 31,843 people age 65 to 84 and another 6,300 age 85 and older.

By the year 2040, census projections expect senior numbers to nearly double to 75,196 senior citizens -- 58,329 of them between 65 and 84, and 16,867 age 85 and older.

A good percentage of those people (age 65-84) will age in place, Garrett said, meaning they will continue to live in their long-time homes.

But if 20 percent need specialized housing, that is 11,665 people on top of the projected 16,867 seniors 85 and older expected to live in Lancaster County in 2040.

Thats four times the number we have today, Garrett said. No matter how you add it up, just by the nature of our needs we see a demand (for more housing).

Its a nationwide issue: How do we properly house the people in that age group?

Its an issue Mary Ann Stallings deals with all day every day. Stallings is the founder of Bridge to Better Living, a consulting business that helps families find the housing that best fits the needs and desires of senior members.

Stallings is also president of Seniors Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides financial support for senior centers in Lincoln and Lancaster County. The foundation is working to redevelop Lincolns Veterans Affairs campus into Victory Park, a housing complex for veterans and seniors.

When you see 50 percent growth projected in the next 25 years  Yes, we will need more (senior) communities.

What those communities will look like remains to be seen.

Waiting lists not uncommon

Although the needs of seniors vary widely, demand for housing exceeds the current supply in virtually every category: independent living, assisted living, memory care and skilled care, Stallings said.

Those choosing to move into an independent living/retirement community often must get on a wait list.

Its not uncommon to wait one year or more, Stallings said.

She noted that several clients have been on wait lists for four years, willing to wait until the community of choice has an opening.

More frequently, Stallings clients need to move as soon as possible -- usually to a facility offering some level of assisted living or memory care. But Lincolns assisted-living facilities are almost always full, Stallings said.

And assisted-living services vary by facility.

I say if you have seen one assisted-living facility -- you have seen one assisted-living facility, Stallings said.

By Nebraska law, assisted-living communities must provide three meals a day, have a nursing coordinator available 24/7 and provide assistance with activities of daily living. Those activities can vary from helping people get dressed to dispensing medication and caring for those who are incontinent. Some places offer an assisted plus option, meaning the level of assistance can increase with the need.

Unfortunately, most people dont plan ahead or foresee their need for assisted living until they need it -- meaning they usually have to take the first available spot, regardless of it the facility's services perfectly match their needs, Stallings said.

Some of the biggest growth is in memory care facilities -- a need that continues to increase as more people are diagnosed with Alzheimers disease and other dementias.

By their very nature, memory care facilities are smaller, often housing 12 to 18 residents per wing. In recent years both Country House and Emerald Communities Independence Houses have opened new facilities.

Lincolns Country House III, a 39-bed facility under construction at 70th and O streets, is slated to open in the spring.

Emerald Communities has four Independence Houses, with its original building at 1740 Superior St. undergoing a complete renovation.

Newest trend is life care communities

The newest trend in senior housing is to offer all the housing options in one senior community.

That's the plan for the new Eastmont at Yankee Hill complex slated for 52nd Street and Yankee Hill Road; the Knolls Senior Living; and a proposed senior community, formerly called Gable Pines, to be built near Hillcrest Country Club at 95th and O streets.

They are being called life care communities, said Carol Ernst, Eastmont executive director. Its more than a name change from retirement community, its a new philosophy built to meet the needs and wants of aging baby boomers.

Eastmont at Yankee Hill will be geared to the very choices future consumers are going to demand, Ernst said. We will be tailoring our services and programs to the individual, versus trying to have them (individuals) fit into what is being offered.

Life care communities are designed for very active and healthy lifestyles, versus the sedentary, were-retired-now lifestyle, Ernst said.

Its a different way of looking at health and wellness activities, she said.

It also incorporates a broader philosophy that seniors can receive the care they need for the remainder of their lives.

Transition is difficult. Whether it is from preschool to kindergarten, middle school to high school or high school to college ... for seniors moving from their home, this is one of the last transitions. They want to make sure that when they do it, this is where they will end up, Stallings said.

Life-care communities are designed to be seniors final move -- that even as their physical, mental and health care needs change, the community can accommodate them, said Dials Pat Day.

With independent- and assisted-living units, as well as a memory care facility, these new complexes allow husbands and wives, brothers and sisters and lifelong friends to continue living in the same community, no matter how the care needs change.

More than physical needs

When talking about senior housing, the focus is often on peoples physical needs. But emotional and social needs are just as important -- if not more, Stallings said.

As people age, they often become homebodies, decreasing activities because they arent comfortable driving at night or dont feel as sure-footed as they once did. That can quickly slip into self-imposed isolation, Stallings said.

Seniors who stay home by themselves tend to go into depression, she said.

One of the first things to go is nutrition -- and poor nutrition only exacerbates the depression."

Senior housing doesnt just cater to physical needs of fewer stairs, wider hallways and safer bathrooms, it provides connections to people, activities and conversation.

And memory care facilities make socializing non-negotiable, Stallings said. For good reason, studies have found a strong link between active friendships and brain/memory health.

Senior housing can also alleviate stress on adult children, who may take on the cooking, housekeeping and shopping roles for their aging parents. If the life care community provides those services to residents, sons and daughters can better enjoy their time with senior parents, Stallings said.

While no one has a crystal ball to determine what senior housing will look like 10 or even 25 years down the road, one thing is certain: Lincoln will need more.

There is going to be a strong demand for it, and we need to figure out where all these people are going to live, Garrett said.

Stallings agreed.

Over the next 15 to 20 years it will be interesting to see the concept of retirement communities and how they work for baby boomers, she said.

... Baby boomers are a different breed.
Two well-established Wisconsin craft brewing companies have been purchased, but not by a macro brewing company looking to expand its portfolio.

Sand Creek Brewing Co. in Black River Falls, which in 2015 produced 9,990 barrels of beer, has acquired Furthermore Brewing Co. of Spring Green and Cross Plains Brewing Co. in Cross Plains.

Neither company had their own brewing facility but instead had their beer made on contract by other breweries.

Cross Plains had used Stevens Point Brewery until 2013 when it began using Sand Creek.

Furthermore has been brewed at Sand Creek since its inception in 2006.

Each brewery has its unique take on its style of beers, Jim Wiesender and Todd Krueger, Sand Creek co-owners, said in a joint statement. All three breweries together will complement each others strengths.

Under the arrangement, finalized in October but announced Tuesday, Furthermore and Cross Plains will operate as subsidiaries of Sand Creek Brewing Co. and retain their names and distributor networks for the time being. Both Wayne and Larry Esser of Cross Plains Brewing Co. and Aran Madden of Furthermore will continue as brewery representatives of Sand Creek and their respective brands, Wiesender and Krueger said.

Part of the deal would include the establishment of a tasting room and microbrewery in Cross Plains.

Scott Zellmer, Sand Creeks sales manager, said they would like to have the facility open by fall but a location has not yet been identified.

The facility would serve products from Sand Creek and include a three-barrel brewing system that would allow Madden to experiment with recipes.

It would be a great asset to our community and certainly help the brands, Wayne Esser said.

Madden of Furthermore could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday but Wiesender said the deals came along in September at about the same time and will allow the brands to expand their reach into the Minneapolis and Chicago markets.

They didnt know they were talking about the same thing at the same time, Wiesender said. Its a great way to continue to grow the brands. The economy of scales was the driving force.

In 2015, Furthermore produced about 1,500 barrels while Cross Plains produced about 2,000 barrels, Wiesender said.

Sand Creek was founded in 1999 in a dairy barn in Downing, about 40 miles northwest of Eau Claire.

In 2004, Wiesender joined forces with Krueger to buy Pioneer Brewing Co., founded in 1995 in Black River Falls in a building that was built for Oderbolz Brewing Co. in 1856.

Besides its own brands, Sand Creek also brews beer for Pangaea Beer Co., based in the Marquette County community of Neshkoro; Door County Brewing Co. in Baileys Harbor and Lake Monster Brewing Co. in St. Paul, Minnesota.

When Madden and his business partner, Chris Staples, came up with a plan for their Furthermore Brewing Co., they spent $60,000 to buy the former public works building from the village of Spring Green.

They later sold the building and purchased land in the villages industrial park.

It has always been six months away, Madden told the State Journal in 2010. Were always thinking about it.

In the beginning, Madden made the more than two-hour drive from Spring Green to Black River Falls to brew the beer and return on bottling day but later had Krueger, Sand Creeks brewmaster, brew his brands.

The Esser family in 1995 relaunched the Esser brand  produced in Cross Plains from 1863 until Prohibition in 1920  and had the beer produced at Stevens Point Brewery. The companys brands include Essers Best Original and Essers Cross Plains Special.

George Esser came to Madison in 1852 from Ichendorf, Germany, and purchased a small brewery in Monroe for $1,500, where he produced lager. In 1863, he purchased 2.5 acres of land at what is now Church Street and Brewery Road in Cross Plains.

Wayne Esser said his family had approached a few other small breweries about buying their company before coming to an agreement with Sand Creek. The move will bring more stability to the brand and allow for the development of more beers, but it wasnt easy considering the familys roots to the company.

Its a little bit difficult, but it keeps the name alive, Esser said. We really have to look at what the big picture might be. This gives us stability so that well be around for a while.
RACINE  CVS could have another shot at building a store at the corner of Ohio Street and Washington Avenue after a vote taken Tuesday by the City Councils Committee of the Whole.

More than five months after its last vote on the issue, the committee voted 8-6 Tuesday to recommend that the full City Council rescind its Aug. 3 vote denying CVS the zoning it needs to build a store at the intersection.

Aldermen Mollie Jones, Q.A. Shakoor II, Jim Kaplan, Steve Smetana, Sandy Weidner, Mike Shields, Terry McCarthy and Henry Perez voted in favor of having the City Council rescind the vote. Aldermen Jeff Coe, Ray DeHahn, Mary Land, Ron Hart and Melissa Lemke voted against the move.

The proposal now moves on to the full City Council. It will likely be voted on at the councils March 15 meeting.

But a number of obstacles remain for CVS, if it is indeed still interested in the project it proposed more than two years ago.

If the City Council ends up supporting the committees recommendation and ultimately votes to rescind the Aug. 3 vote, it can then take up a proposal rezoning the properties.

That proposal to rezone the properties can take place at the very same meeting, explained City Attorney Scott Letteney.

But to pass, the proposal to rezone must be approved by three-quarters of the aldermen present, City Council President Dennis Wiser reminded aldermen during the meeting.

Discussion

Despite the emotion surrounding the CVS proposal, the committee on Tuesday spent less than 20 minutes discussing it. It was the third item on the committees agenda for the meeting.

Regardless of time constraints, aldermen on both sides of the debate were able to squeeze in impassioned pleas to their colleagues.

I think we need to treat businesses with a little more respect than we have. Im really disappointed, said Kaplan in support of the recommendation to rescind  a communication he submitted for committee discussion more than four months ago.

Perez, who represents the 12th District where the store would be constructed, spoke about the benefits that would come with the project.

They want to invest in our community  they are not asking for any kind of money from us. They are going to make the corner safer  This is an opportunity for redemption on our part, Perez said.

Hart, who has long opposed the project, bemoaned the fact that committee was even still discussing the matter, saying it was clear CVS was not interested in coming back.

Lets not waste our time and move on, Hart added. Let somebody else try to get that property if they want it. Quit playing games here for crying out loud.

Coe, who also has long opposed the rezoning, said the city should also be concerned about homeowners.

We say we have to be business friendly, we also have to be homeowner friendly, he said.

No word from CVS

Both Kaplan and Perez said Tuesday that CVS is still interested in the property. Attempts by The Journal Times to confirm that information were unsuccessful, however.

Asked by email on Tuesday if CVS still had an option to buy the parcels, company spokesman Mike DeAngelis said the retailer had no comment. That was also his response when asked if CVS would still be interested in building a store at the site should the city grant zoning to the project.

Past vote

CVSs attempt to get city approval to build a 24-hour location at the intersection appeared to have ended more than six months ago when aldermen voted 7-6 to deny a request to rezone the land. Perez hoped that a request he made to rescind the vote in late August would be discussed at a Committee of the Whole meeting, but it never made it to an agenda.

City staff said the project would have negative implications for traffic in the area and would remove a buffer that currently exists to protect residences from Washington Avenues bustling commercial corridor.

Supporters of the project, including several aldermen, argued that the project would open up the intersection, improving traffic, and that City Halls opposition to the retailers plans sent a bad message to businesses looking to locate here.
RACINE COUNTY  A Milwaukee man is facing several felony charges after allegedly fleeing officers trying to pull him over on Highway 20 Monday night.

Adrian Iler, 30, sped away from a Mount Pleasant police officer attempting to conduct a traffic stop at the intersection of Highway 20 and Oakes Road just before 7 p.m. Monday, according to a criminal complaint. Iler continued into Racine, where he was apprehended by Racine officers after first throwing 17.5 grams of marijuana over a nearby fence, the complaint stated.

Iler, of the 4400 block of North 21st Street, made his initial appearance in court Tuesday, according to court records. Records show that his bond was set at $2,500 cash.

According to the complaint, Iler sped away from the officer trying to pull him over, reaching speeds of more than 80 miles per hour in the process. Another Mount Pleasant officer began to pursue Iler, but terminated the pursuit since Iler was running red lights, making the situation too dangerous, police said.

Shortly afterward, Racine police officers observed Iler blow through a red light at the intersection of Washington Avenue and Taylor Avenue, according to the criminal complaint. Police said they followed the vehicle without emergency lights activated and confronted Iler after he exited the vehicle in the 1400 block of Junction Avenue.

According to the criminal complaint, Iler threw an object, later identified as a mason jar containing 17.5 grams of marijuana, over a nearby fence as officers approached him. Iler was uncooperative with officers as they tried to handcuff him, police said.

Iler faces four charges: Attempting to flee a traffic officer, second degree recklessly endangering safety, possession with intent to deliver marijuana and obstructing an officer. The first three of those charges are felonies. Iler remained in custody at the Racine County Jail as of Monday night, online jail records showed. He has been assigned a preliminary hearing on March 9 in Racine County Circuit Court.
Our conservative legislators in this state have accomplished a phenomenal sleight of hand and should be commended for it. They have succeeded in convincing our more conservative citizens that they can have the same quality of life that they always have enjoyed just by reducing their individual responsibility for maintaining it.

The legislators, including the governor, have equated public service with free-loading, tax-sucking, wasteful philanders of the public largess and our citizens less able to think critically about all the services provided, have agreed. They have effectively separated our quality of life from our shared economic responsibility and even provided the tools to ensure the separation.

The necessitated utilization of these "tools" has succeeded in dividing our citizenry.

People who do not have children in public school are unwilling to have their tax dollars go to fund public education, rural residents cant see the immediate personal benefit of funding programs and services in the urban areas which contribute more taxes than they ever get back. Non-unionized employees cant see why union employees should get wage increases and benefits when they dont have them, instead of asking, Why they dont have them, too?

Congratulations, my conservative friends, neighbors and legislators. You are succeeding in destroying our quality of life in Wisconsin.

It appears that the only "tool" our legislators have given the communities of Wisconsin is a screwdriver.

Patrick Davis, disabled American veteran

Franklin
Withering on the Vine The Demographic Time Bomb is Most Marked in Japan The demographic time bomb  whereby the elderly population assumes a greater and ...

Government Sexual Libertinism Coming to a Government School Near You Further to our piece yesterday on the promotion of sexual libertinism in government schools, we rep...

Some Random Observations The Aftermath of Mass Pre-Mediated Murder A few observations on the murder of 14 people in San Bernadino and the wounding of many more see...

Letter From the UK (About State Tyranny) Ta-ta UK freedoms! Miranda matter outs vindictiveness of wounded police state Annie Machon is a former intelligence of...

The Big One The Panoptican State Is Actually Operational Yesterday the "big one" dropped. The Guardian reported that the US and UK spy age...

Fraud Central German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On Unbelievable Scale by James Delingpole BreitbartLondon A German professor ha...

Statist Groupthink More and More Fashionable The Rise of Liberal Intolerance in America Edward Luce Financial Times I t ought to be a triumphal moment for American liberalism ....

Vacuous Greenism Anti-Fracking Luddiocy Think of any technology that involves carbon based energy and its utilisation, and the lunatic fringe can be found ...

"It is Finished": the Sixth Word from the Cross It is Finished: our Lords Sixth Word from the Cross What is history? That simple question covers a multitude of complexity, profundity...
JURIST Guest Columnist Rogendy Toussaint of St. Johns University School of Law Class of 2016, is the twelfth author in a twelve-part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. Toussaint discusses whether the disparate impact of international aid in Haiti

As a seemingly routine afternoon faded to dusk on January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Haitis capital city, Port-au-Prince. The devastation was exhaustive: 316,000 people dead, 300,000 injured and nearly 1.5 million people left homeless. As the once majestic National Palace lay in ruin, it became clear that the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere would need all the help it could get in order to get back on its feet.

Heeding Haitis call the international community donated nearly $13.5 billion dollars to assist with humanitarian efforts, including $4 billion donated by the US government. Yet five years later less than 7 percent of the total money pledged has aided the Haitian people, and 93 percent has been lost to fraud and waste. While unfortunate this outcome is far too customary to the citizens of Haiti. In fact since 1986, hundreds of millions of dollars [PDF] belonging to the Haitian people has sat in European bank accounts, as thousands of Haitians struggle in the squalor of makeshift tent cities. These funds, stolen from Haitis treasury in 1986, were deposited in several countriesincluding Switzerlandby Haitis former dictator Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier. For 15 years, he led a government rife with open corruption.

Following Baby Docs exile an accounting was done which revealed that nearly $504 million of the Haitian peoples money had been misappropriated from the nations treasury and hidden in foreign accounts. Over the next three decades the Haitian government fought to have the money returned, but to no avail. In 1986 both the French and Swiss governments refused to overturn money held within their jurisdictions. Then in 2011, hours before the massive earthquake, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court decided to release the remaining $6 million held in Swiss accounts to the Duvalier family uninhibited. After the earthquake, Switzerlands government was worried about a public relations nightmare following the courts decision and decided to reverse course. The Swiss enacted a groundbreaking new lawthe Restitution of Illegal Assets Act (RIAA) [PDF].

Before the RIAA Switzerland had long been a tax haven for deposed despotsmandating strict bank confidentiality, and enabling clients to invest assets without paying any taxes. Past despots with Swiss bank accounts included General Sani Abacha of Nigeria, who kept a reported $505 million in Swiss bank accounts, and the former president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, who stashed away $624 million. The RIAA looks to remedy this problem by burden shifting. It moves the burden of proof away from the petitioning nations seeking a return of funds and places it squarely onto the shoulders of the former heads of state, requiring the heads of state to prove that his or her alleged assets were earned legitimately.

The provisions of the RIAA are straightforward. First, it must be determined that traditional channels of justice cannot produce binding outcomes. This may occur for a variety of reasons, but it is typically caused by an inability of the petitioning country to successfully prosecute the former head of state in their own justice system. Once this determination is made, the Federal Council of Switzerland may freeze assets held in Switzerland if two additional conditions are met: (1) the funds held in Switzerland are significantly larger than what could have credibly earned by the former head of state while in office, and (2) the petitioning country has a history of corruption. Once these two conditions are met, the burden of proving the legitimacy of the assets falls on the former head of state. If no such proof can be provided, the assets are frozen. If frozen, the RIAA provides for a restitution process. In the case of Baby Doc Duvalier, this point came in 2013.

Nonetheless two years after the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland determined that restitution was appropriate, the RIAA has failed to return any money to the Haitian people. Why? Swiss authorities fear that the funds will be returned into a cycle of corruption. Accordingly the two sides have never even met to negotiate. All the while 60 percent of the countrys entire population lacks access to basic health care services and less than 2 percent of Haitian children finish secondary school.

I propose a possible solution to this seemingly intractable quagmire. Currently there are between 3,000 and 10,000 NGOs in Haiti, providing four-fifths of the nations social services. In fact NGOs are widely viewed by the Haitian people as being more adept than the national government in solving the pressing issues that affect their day-to-day lives. This is Haitis reality. Therefore, I propose that the government of Switzerland accept non-governmental entities as suitable custodians of stolen assets in their restitution standards under the RIAA.

The Swiss are not the first to want to assist Haiti, and yet be wary of corruption. Back in 1986, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, fashioned a remarkable non-governmental entity called The Commission for a New Haiti (The Commission). The Commission would consist of a seven-member panel: three development economists or experienced project administrators; two representatives chosen from a reputable human rights organization; and two representatives chosen from the private sector. All panel members would be of Haitian descent, with all commission proceedings being a matter of public record, subject to public scrutiny during a thirty-day comment period. The Commission would have the fiduciary duties of allocating any funds returned to Haiti in accordance with a detailed restitution plan governed by an agreement between Switzerland and Haiti. Such procedure would mitigate both the temptation of corruption and any fears of wasteful spending.

While the RIAA was an important step in the right direction, it has effectively been stalled by mistrust and cynicism. By embracing NGOs like The Commission For A New Haiti, Switzerland could finally put an end to this three decades long cat-and-mouse game and finally fulfill the very goal that the Swiss government had at the time of the RIAAs passagedelivering direct assistance to the citizens of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Rogendy Toussaint is a 4LE at St. Johns University School of Law. Along with this Senior Staff position on the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, he also serves as the Executive Director of the Moot Court Honor Society. This fall, he is serving as an extern for the US Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Suggested citation: Rogendy Toussaint, The Failure of Illicit Asset Recovery: A Haitian Case Study, JURIST  Student Commentary, Mar. 2, 2016, http://jurist.org/dateline/2016/3/rogeny-toussaint-illicit-asset-recovery.php

This article was prepared for publication by Elizabeth Dennis, an Assistant Editor for JURIST Commentary. Please direct any questions or comments to her at commentary@jurist.org
Apple [corporate website] filed objections [text] Tuesday in the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] against an order [text, PDF] requiring the corporation to aid the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI [official websites] in unlocking the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The appeal was filed in conjunction with an earlier motion to vacate. Apple says it is arguing to protect the privacy of all its customers, and the order would force the company to design new software for law enforcement to have the ability to access the encrypted iPhone. In a brief [text] filed last week, Apple called this case unprecedented, and said it would set a standard for infringing on freedom of speech. Fourteen people were killed in the San Bernardino attacks [CNN report] in December.

The DOJ filed a motion [text] to compel Apple to unlock the encrypted iPhone [JURIST report] earlier this month. The FBI is seeking Apples help to access Farooks phone, but the tech company has refused. In a letter [text] to its customers, Apple explained, We are challenging the FBIs demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications. While the DOJ describes Apples rhetoric as simply a marketing strategy, the tech company has been joined by Google [NBC report], one of its largest competitors, in standing against the order. Complicating the situation, a report surfaced [ABC report] earlier this week that the iPhone in question had its iCloud password changed while in government custody. A California federal court is scheduled to hear the motion on March 22. Earlier this week a federal judge ruled in a separate case in New York that Apple could not be required [JURIST report] to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.
The Council of Europes Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) released a report [text, PDF] Tuesday condemning Greece for police abuse, poor prison conditions and mistreatment of detained juveniles. The report details findings that the system to hold those responsible for police misconduct is undermined [press release] by systemic failings. The report outlines the following steps to improve the situation: all detainees should be provided with full information in a language they understand on their legal situation; all detainees should be provided ready access to toilet facilities, including at night; and all detainees should be afforded access to health care everyday, including on weekends. The report states that Greeces prisons have deteriorated to the point where lives are being lost and that overcrowding with staff shortages have led to 350-400 [ABC News report] inmates being staffed by just one or two prison offers in at least one prison.

Conditions in prisons have been criticized globally. On Tuesday the former head of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, US Army Major General Geoffrey Miller, failed [JURIST report] to appear before a French court to answer a subpoena to appear for questioning on his involvement in the torture of two French detainees. In January the US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that a landmark decision banning mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles should apply retroactively. In Syria, the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) reported [JURIST report] last month that the Syrian government is systematically exterminating detainees. Also in February the UN Subcommittee on the Prevention of Torture stated [JURIST report] that migrant detention facilities in Cyprus need better monitoring and should improve conditions.
[JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] in The Hague opened the confirmation of charges against Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi for destruction of religious and cultural heritage on Tuesday. The charges levied against Al Faqi, an alleged member of Islamic terrorist group, Ansar Dine [BBC backgrounder], and an important figure in the occupation of Timbuktu, signal what appears to be the first ever war crimes trial addressing attacks against cultural heritage. Specifically, the charges [transcript, PDF] state that Al Faqi is criminally responsible, either himself or through his assistance, for intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion and/or historical monuments in Timbuktu, including nine mausoleums and the Sidi Yahia Mosque. According to Regulation 53 [materials] of the Court, the Pre-Trial Chamber must deliver its decision to either confirm or deny that the prosecutor has established a reasonable grounds to prosecute Al Faqi within 60 days of the end of the confirmation hearing.

Al Faqi was turned over [JURIST report] to the ICC by Nigerian authorities in September pursuant to an arrest warrant issued earlier that month. In 2012 this investigation into the terrorist attacks was encouraged by the Malian Justice Minister Malick Couliably after the ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda stated [JURIST reports] that the attacks in Mali would not be tolerated and would be considered war crimes. Much of the turmoil associated with the current situation in Mali arose [BBC report] from the president of Malis removal from office and the military take over of the government by the Taureg rebels earlier in 2012.
South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard [official website] on Tuesday vetoed [statement] a bill [materials] that would have required public school students to use the bathroom or locker room corresponding to their sex at birth. In a statementDaugaard said that the bill would put schools in the difficult position of following the law while knowing it openly invited federal litigation, and that it removes the ability of local school districts to determine the most appropriate accommodations for their individual students and replaces that flexibility with a state mandate. He also noted that it did not address any pressing issue the state was facing. The bill was passed [JURIST report] last month by the states senate, with supporters arguing that it would protect the privacy of students. Opponents of the bill argued it would create a separate but equal situation for transgender students, and that the bill was extreme and dangerous. The bill would have become law at midnight had Daugaard not issued a veto. The Williams Institute [official website] had estimated [text] that the law would have impacted 1,360 South Dakota students who identify as transgender.

Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity has been a controversial issue in the US. In December a judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California ruled [JURIST report] that sexual discrimination is prohibited under a law that protects gender-based discrimination. In November President Barack Obama expressed support [JURIST report] for legislation that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity through an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In July 2014 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, 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 National Assembly of the Republic of Korea [official website] passed a resolution on Wednesday addressing the human rights situation in North Korea. A total of 212 legislators voted on the bill, which will become official law when approved by the Cabinet. The bill, proposed in 2005 but stalled by political disagreement, will fund civil activist groups and archive rights abuses committed in the north. The legislation comes the same day the UN Security Council announced new sanctions [WP report] against North Korea for the nations recent armament testing. Opponents of the sanctions are concerned that they will have a devastating impact on the North Korean economy [NK News report] by hampering its ability to join the regions burgeoning economy.

This decision comes on the heels of a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] calling for [press release] the South Korean government to pass legislation that would promote human rights in North Korea [JURIST report]. Last month the UN Special Rapporteur on North Korea Marzuki Darusman called for Kim Jong-Un to be held criminally responsible [JURIST report] for the human rights conditions in the nation. In November Japan and the EU circulated [JURIST report] a draft UN resolution condemning North Koreas human rights abuses and encouraging the UN Security Council to refer the country to the International Criminal Court [official website], noting reports of torture, limits on freedom of mobility, restrictions on freedom of speech, restrictions on freedom of religion, privacy infringement, arbitrary imprisonment, prison camps and more. Darusman expressed deep concerns [JURIST report] regarding human rights violations in the country just a month earlier. In November 2014 Darusman said that there is enough evidence to hold Kim responsible for massive human rights atrocities [JURIST report] committed in the country. In response to these concerns, the UN in June opened a new office [JURIST report] in Seoul to specifically monitor human rights in North Korea.
[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] on Wednesday heard argument [transcript, PDF] on a Texas law [HB 2] that would require abortion clinics to upgrade facilities to hospital-like standards and would require doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. In Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt [docket], the court is specifically asked to decide if this law is an undue burden under the Casey v. Planned Parenthood [text] standard, balancing the states interest in promoting health with the practical outcomes of the regulation. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] ruled [text] last year that Texas could, with very limited exception, apply the law throughout the state. Throughout his argument, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller [official website] faced ardent questioning by the three female justices, along with Justice Stephen Breyer, giving the impression that the eight-justice bench may currently be split 4-3 against the bill, with Justice Anthony Kennedy seemingly undecided. Supporters of the law argue that it serves to protect womens health, while opponents see it as a veiled attempt at limiting access to abortion. Those opponents note that prior to the law, there were around 40 abortion clinics in Texas. Following the implementation of several other provisions of the omnibus bill, that number dropped to 20. Some, such as plaintiffs attorney Stephanie Toti [official website], assert that number will drop to 10 if these new provisions go into effect.

Abortion procedures and reproductive rights issues have been heated topics throughout the US. Late last month Louisiana abortion clinics and doctors filed a new application [JURIST report] with the Supreme Court attempting to block a 2014 state law that would require three of the four remaining abortion clinics in the state to close. The law, which went into effect earlier in the month, is identical to the Texas law currently at issue. Earlier in February the Indiana Senate released a bill [JURIST report] from committee that would ban abortions based on genetic disabilities and would also require aborted or miscarried fetuses to be cremated or interred. Also last month the Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed [JURIST report] a lower court decision upholding a law that restricts use of medication abortion drugs. Just prior, Ohios governor signed [JURIST report] a bill that would purportedly cut state-funds to Planned Parenthood by $1.3 million.
[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company [SCOTUSblog materials] against a 2005 Vermont health care law that required health insurance providers to release data regarding the amount paid on medical claims, siding with Liberty Mutual Insurance Company [corporate website]. In a 6-2 decision, the court said that the law did not apply [Reuters report] to self-funded insurance plans that are usually used by large companies. The court also found that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) [materials] preempts the Vermont law. Justice Anthony Kennedy stated in the majority opinion, The fact that reporting is a principal and essential feature of ERISA demonstrates that Congress intended to pre-empt state reporting laws like Vermonts. This ruling will most likely affect similar laws in 17 other states.

Health care related issues have generated significant legal controversy in the US. Last month the US House of Representatives failed [JURIST report] to garner enough votes to override the presidents veto of the Restoring Americans Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015, the most recent legislative effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and defund Planned Parenthood. President Barack Obama had originally vetoed [JURIST report] the bill in January. In December District Judge Edward Chen for the Northern District of California ruled [JURIST report] that Californias policy for reimbursing out-of-state hospitals that care for California Medicaid (Medi-Cal) patients is unconstitutional.
[JURIST] The highest court in Venezuela, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice [official website, in Spanish], on Tuesday ruled that the Venezuelan National Assembly [BBC backgrounder] may not review the appointment of 13 justices to the high court. The 13 justices were sworn in on December 23, immediately prior to the exit of prior Socialist Party majority. The court ruled that the assemblys role is limited to nominating and appointing judges [AP report]. Further, the assembly may only remove or review judges after an investigation into wrongdoing by a two-thirds majority vote. The new assembly marks the first time in 16 years that Venezuelas opposition party has taken control over the national assembly. The election placed 109 opposition members into office for a five-year term, compared to 54 members of the socialist party. Upon overtaking the majority in December, one of its first orders of business was to develop a commission to study the judicial appointments made by the prior assembly. A spokesperson for the opposition called on neighboring countries to activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter [text] because the actions of the Supreme Court against the National Assembly constitute a judicial coup that is putting Venezuelas democracy at risk.

There has been considerable legislative tension between the pro-government controlled Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the opposition-majority National Assembly of Venezuela following the December election. In February the court upheld [JURIST report] President Nicolas Maduros economic emergency decree as legal and valid despite a rejection by the national assembly. The decree allows the president to control the budget, companies and the currency. In January the court ruled [JURIST report] that all decisions from the opposition-led assembly would be void until three opposition lawmakers were relieved from their seats. The courts decision came days after the assembly swore in elected lawmakers that were temporarily barred [JURIST reports] by the court. The ruling had suspended four elected lawmakers for alleged election fraud in the December elections [JURIST report].
Bihar CM Nitish Kumar in Kathmandu, to meet prez, PM

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has arrived in Kathmandu to take part in the 13th General Convention of Nepali Congress.
Bin Laden left $29m inheritance for jihad

The will is among a trove of documents released to US media. It was seized in the US assault in Abbotabad, Pakistan.
Chitwan National Parks rhino released in Bardiya

The one horned rhino transported from Chitwan National Park (CNP) has been released at Chepang in Babai valley, Bardiya National Park (BNP).
Congress full of equations, likely to see 3-way contest

The Nepali Congress is likely to see a three-way contest, with at least two leaders from the establishment camp and senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba vying for the post of party president, during its 13th General Convention beginning Thursday.
Dr KC postpones planned hunger strike

Dr Govinda KC, a senior orthopaedic surgeon at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital and a staunch crusader for reforms in the countrys medical education and profession, has put off his planned hunger strike that he was due to begin on Tuesday.
India cuts annual grant to Nepal by 40 percent

India has reduced its annual grant to Nepal by 40 percent.
Japanese grant for heritage preservation

The Government of Japan has decided to extend financial assistance totaling USD 77,805, equivalent to approximately 8.45 million rupees to the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), a Nepali NGO, under the Grant Assistance for Cultural Grassroots Project (GCGP) scheme.
Lumbini Zonal Hospital tense over pregnant woman's death

Butwal-based Lumbini Zonal Hospital remained tense throughout the day over the death of a pregnant woman at the hospital on Wednesday.
Nafea members submit memo to labour minister

Representatives of the Nepal Association of Foreign Employment Agencies (Nafea) on Tuesday submitted a memorandum to Minister for Labour and Employment Deepak Bohara seeking an immediate end to raids on the recruiting agencies.
NC to spend Rs10.2 million for meals during convention

The Nepali Congress has estimated a budget of Rs 10.2 million for the meals to the participants of the national convention which is being held in Kathmandu from March 3 to 6.
Nepal in watercolour

The Nepal chapter of the International Watercolor Society is currently hosting a group exhibition displaying the artworks of 13 Nepali artists at the Newa Chhen Art Gallery in Patan, Lalitpur.
Nepal to make strong presence in Kunming

Nepal has confirmed its participation at the 4th China-South Asia Exposition and the 24th China Kunming Import and Export Commodities Fair, scheduled for June 12-17 in Kunming, Yunnan.
Rhinos on the move (Photo feature)

Wildlife technical team captured one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) in Chitwan National Park (CNP) and translocated it to Bardia National Park (BNP) (approximately 299 kilometres away) on Tuesday.
US travel warning for Nepal lifted

The United States has said it has cancelled its Travel Warning for Nepal.
1. Yes. Its important to cast my votes early and avoid the lines on Election Day.

2. Yes. With nearly two weeks of early voting, its a more convenient way to take part.

3. No. Its better to wait until Election Day, in case any last-minute information surfaces.

4. No. Im not planning to vote early or on Election Day. It isnt worth my time.

5. Unsure. It depends on how the campaigns are shaping up. Ill play it by ear.

Vote

View Results
OWN A HOUSE AND PAY MONTHLY

WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED:

EMPOWERMENT TIME

Blog Archive Blog Archive February (1) December (1) November (1) October (2) August (4) July (5) February (3) January (3) October (1) September (6) August (1) June (29) May (57) April (23) March (77) February (69) January (85) December (99) November (19) October (138) September (244) August (327) July (219) June (367) May (169) April (204) March (197) February (189) January (35) December (42) November (30) October (6) March (3) February (1) October (1)
The National Resistance Movement has scoffed at the move by former premier, Amama Mbabazi to contest the results of February 18th polls.

Yesterday Mbabazis lawyers led by Severino Twinobusigye petitioned the Supreme Court seeking an annulment of the results.

Speaking to KFM, the spokesperson of the NRM campaign task force, Mike Ssebalu said that Mbabazi was among the ultimate losers in this election thus challenging the results is ridiculous.

He however said its Mbabazis constitutional right to seek legal redress.
Parliament has this evening passed the Childrens Amendment Bill 2015 into law.

The amended law seeks to strengthen the protection of childrens rights and among the amendments is a provision restricting legal guardianship of children to Ugandan citizens.

The mover of the Private Members Bill and Ayivu County MP Bernard Atiku says this is a great achievement in the struggle for childrens rights in Uganda.

He further says the above provision coupled with the created childrens authority will go a long way in protecting the countrys children from various forms of exploitation.

Earlier in the day, the issue legal guardianship in Uganda by non-citizens sparked heated debate in parliament as legislators debated amendments to the bill.

Serere Woman MP Alice Alaso proposed that legal guardianship be restricted to only citizens so as to strengthen monitoring of these children.

This attracted mixed reactions from various legislators including Joseph Sewungu, Alex Byarugaba, Odonga Otto, and Rosemary Seninde among others. Some welcomed the proposal while others thought it would be suicide for Uganda to shut herself way from other countries in todays global village.

Story By Benjamin Jumbe
The 17th Ordinary Summit of the East African Community (EAC) Heads of State held in Arusha, Tanzania on Wednesday formally admitted South Sudan to the bloc.

Africas youngest nation becomes the sixth member of the East African Community.

The other members are Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.

Just months after attaining her independence from Sudan, South Sudan applied for membership of the EAC in 2011 while Somalia applied in February 2012.

The application was however deferred twice; first in April 2011 and then in November the same year.

According to a communique issued at the end of a Nairobi summit, EAC needed to conduct more negotiations with Juba after a progress report on South Sudans admissibility was presented to leaders of member states.

The summit also endorsed Tanzania President Pombe Magufuli to continue sitting as EAC chairman for another year.

The EAC Heads of State also launched the new international East African E-passport to commence from 1st January 2017.

Also during the summit, Burundian Liberat Mfumukeko was sworn in as the new Secretary General, replacing Dr. Richard Sezibera whose five year term ends in April.

Dr. Liberat Mfumukeko has been the Deputy Secretary General of the East African Community in charge of Finance and Administration.

He joined the EAC from another position of leadership  Director General, Burundi Water and Electricity Utility, the last position he held prior to his appointment as Deputy Secretary General. Prior to joining the EAC, Mfumukeko also held the Chairmanship of the Steering Committee of the East African Power Pool.

Dr. Mfumukeko brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to his new position, with vast international experience including the establishment of the Burundi Investment Promotion Authority in 2009.

The Deputy Secretary General boasts international, intercultural and linguistic skills, with fluency in French, English, Kirundi, Kiswahili and Russian as well as having worked in France, Russia, USA, DR Congo, Rwanda, Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

Story By Catherine Ageno


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.


We live in a world in which an authoritarian state, $-freeloader narcissistic U.S., controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world's technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform the world society, economy and military, to continue feeding U.S.' parasitic needs. However, the really funny thing is that US smears China for exactly what US itself is.

Why didn't NATO (US) stop the real genocide and grave Human Rights violations (since 2014) in Ukraine?! And when Russia did, the NATO (US) attacked Russia. And what about the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's atrocities in Yemen - just to mention one from the Saudi pile?!





China is now not only outperforming the West technologically but also the capitalist country that has come the furthest in balancing greed for the good of the people. In contrast to communist dictatorships such as the Soviets, Mao's China, North Korea and others, modern China is more democratic than most Western countries. This is because, via a meritocratic system, political career is built from the bottom up, i.e. local politicians must show results in order to move forward, while together they later form a political communication link between Beijing and the people, which means that unlike dictatorships, it is the top that is most sensitive to grassroots dissatisfaction. And this is proven in several Western research projects which unilaterally show a popular support that is sky-high above, for example, the US. Peter Klevius art analysis: When kings possessed antidemocratic total power (as the Saudi islamofascist murderer and terrorist war criminal "king" still today), they could deliberately show off their personhood. However, when kingdom became art - not to say sign post - then a "good" king or queen became someone who like Elizabeth had to shut up and instead be filled with the content of "the eye of the beholder" - just like art, which is always excluded from its artist. My guess is that she could only really trust her husband - 'husband' is Swedish meaning 'hus' (house) and 'band' means ties like in 'bond'. However, her son Charles has an extremely poor record at that - which may be entertaining, especially for republicans.

US should be the "enemy" rather than modern China And when will Liz Truss declare the islamofascist "custodians of islam", the Saudi dictator family - who has murdered, tortured, terrorized and committed war crimes - an enemy? With the U.S. dollar as the world's main reserve currency - since 1971 criminally disconnected from its promised gold connection - and with the U.S. controlling global financial and monetary flow U.S. has raised massive debt while printing money - not "out of thin air" but out of the world. The U.S. economy hence rests on financial colonialism and imperialism, i.e. forcibly robbing its value from other countries. And when excess liquidity drives up global inflation, and the Fed raises interest rates and tightens monetary policy, it also widens its interest rate gap with other countries, while attracting international capital to the otherwise empty (and doomed) U.S. dollar. The Brits should blame US, the militant financial $-freeloader (since 1971) - not modern China, the peaceful tech and wealth building rescuer at home and around the world! Bank of England is a helpless pawn against the feds. At the very moment when especially UK but also the rest of the world needs China the most, then dangerous and militant (CIA steered?) Liz Truss declares China an "enemy". Hello! It's US that 2014 ignited the low scale Ukrainian civil war to a fullblown deadly genocide against Russians, and 2022 to a real proxy war via NATO threatening Russia for the ultimate purpose of attacking China. And it is the US' antidemokratic (decoupled from democratic institutions) Federal Reserve that is behind inflation and the fall of the pound and other financial problems outside US. US is the only country in the world that can survive heavy deficit by counterfeiting money. It's US that is the root of high inflation, energy costs, supply shortages etc. (because of modern China). The feds has since 1913 been the factual dictator of US, and when US became bankrupt after a costly Vietnam war and space (incl. military) program it 1971 unscrupulously cheated with the promised dollar connection to gold. US hence started a fullblown robbing of the world with the dollar as the world currency and now culminating in an untenable money printing that together with China's economic and tech rise threatens US criminal $-freeloading. US is a theocracy if measured by how much "in god we trust" is involved in policy and politics, and that the Supreme Court is 100% religious, in stark contrast to the huge number of Atheist people in US. This has also led to US using islamists against China.





How come that this US patriot shares Peter Klevius view on US?













Why trust Peter Klevius instead of BBC and other trolls? Because 1. Peter Klevius has a much higher IQ (beware of IQ-phobia) than most professors or world leaders 2. Peter Klevius has a long and clean life record when it comes to women, children, crimes, drugs etc. 3. Peter Klevius has no finacial or career ties to anything he writes about 3) Peter Klevius doesn't (sadly) know (20220326) a single Russian or Chinese, and has never visited the countries nor having any other connections 4) Peter Klevius groundbreaking scientific achievements (e.g. about evolution, consciousness, sex segregation, sociology, psychoanalysis etc.) can all be dated to publications, theses (and after 1998 also on the web) or correspondence with professors considered top of their game. Possibly all of them may also qualify as first of its kind - or at the very least certainly not copied from others - as others seem to do with Peter Klevius' works, without even giving him credit. 5. Peter Klevius had the most unprivileged start of life and adulthood - but also the most privileged when it comes to brain power, dopamin-serotonin balance and psychological stability - to an extent that he can't possibly believe in the psychological non sense excuse that "we're all a little mad".

US rape of the Maid of Finland



Peter Klevius to Boris Johnson: It was only half of the Brits who voted Brexit, and it was only half of the Ukrainians who voted for Ukrexit. However, in Ukraine it ended with civil war instigated by UK's ally $-freeloader rogue state US. You should really have kept your peaceful Huawei instead of being pushed to the militant F35!





US has already sunk below the surface but abuses the "West" as its snorkel. What most people don't realize is that by following US you step downwards in future development compared to China. Little Japan already showed the world how to beat the West in technology. China is more than ten times bigger. And when people - sooner or later - realize the difference, the backlash will be harsh. Peter Klevius asks: Which war (post WW2) has NOT been instigated by rogue state $-freeloader US? Korea, Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, Syria etc.. US, which has also used nukes, biological wepons, and torture, tops by far the list of war criminals - and US allies are gravely complicit!

We're constantly told "not to incite hatred against muslims" when we're just criticizing sharia islam for its lack of Human Rights. However, when US/CIA not only incites hatred but also weaponizes it, no one in the West seems to care. Why?! How many more should suffer and die because of US senseless behavior when facing a future where its $-freeloading is coming home to roost because of China's success?





20220221: BBC main news hour at 13:00 today for the first time didn't mention Ukraine and Putin at all - while the worst shelling against Russian populated parts of Ukraine significantly escalated, leading to a peak of over 50,000 refugees fleeing to Russia to escape the genocide the $-freeloader (and now desperate because of China's growth and success) US iniitiated, agitated and assisted with weapons (together with its coerced, or just stupid/evil Western puppets) - while continuing spitting on Putin/Russia.





World economies (CIA World Factbook 2022): 1 China 2/3 US, EU 4 India 5 Japan 6 Germmany 7 Russia 8 Brazil 9 France 10 UK

Dear reader, stop supporting/aiding dangerous rogue state US! Otherwise US $-desperation (i.e. that it will lose its financial stealing hegemony because of China's growth) will lead to it deliberately starting a WW3. Except for human suffering and lower standard, it would be the great reset for $-freeloader US to stand in the ruins and continue being a stealing and ruling world dictator. No other country poses a similar threat.

Religion is segregation. Judaism: We are the chosen people! Christianity: Christ will forgive, you sinner! Islam: Everyone is born muslim, you infidel! Human Right is de-segregation, you human!

Peter Klevius wonders if you can spot the difference between the People's republic of China, the Congress' republic of US, and the Parliament's/government's "democracy" of UK. Hint, the clue is in the word 'people' and the fact that Chinese are more satisfied with their democracy than US and UK people. Moreover, can you spot the difference between modern China and Stalin's, Mao's, Castro's, Pol Pot's etc. Communist countries? And when it comes to unjust sentencing, spying, surveilling, detaining/torturing/killing people, US is definitely worse than China. Not to mention US global meddling, militarism and dictatorial fiat $-freeloading. A US that can't manufacture its own chips but tries to hinder China from it. And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! Why is US calling anti-islamism "human rights violation"?! And when will US stop dealing with Saudi, NATO (e.g. Turkey) etc. Human Rights violators?!Btw, Peter Klevius suggests buying Chinese property stocks now. After all, there are more rural Chinese than the entire US population, waiting for getting urban after this temporary slow down.

Why doesn't Peter Klevius publish his groundbreaking science in Nature? Because he has no peers! Peer review, according to Google, is the evaluation of work by people with similar competence. Peter Klevius healthy mind and total lack of institutional/financial/political/career bias combined with extra high intelligence is unique in science - and it's precisely therefore his best scientific achievments can't be evaluated by peer-biased people but need a blog to be presented because 1) they would never be peer approved in Nature 2) they would never be produced in a "proper" form with painstaking efforts to squeeze in citations/references etc. that contribute nothing. Whom should Peter Klevius quote about EMAH/consciousness out-of SE Asia , or about hetersosexual attraction and sex segregation ? When I made my phd on sex segregated resistance against female football I was asked to quote feminists. I did, and after every quote I had to negate it. Alternatively it would have silenced the women's voices in my in-depth interviews re. thair experience about resistance. After all, it was feminists behind the 1921 ban against women's football in England, and it was the most powerful feminists in Sweden who for a decade opposed girls and women playing football after the Swedish FA had included it. So instead of me testing Nature, you test me - before "anti-feminism", "anti-out-of-Africa" and "anti-religion" are criminalized as "hate speech"! - In anthropology fossils usually get all kinds of nicknames before scientifically "baptized". However, precisely because Homo floresiensis (the definite proof that humans evolved in SE Asia) was the "missing link" that afropologists wanted to find in Africa (how could an allround mover and allround eater ever evolve on a continent?!) they needed to dismiss it at every level incl. continue calling it a "hobbit". And when it comes to EMAH/consciousness it's extremely simple - yet not "simplistic" at all. However, the culprit is what humans are most proud about, i.e. language. By giving something one doesn't comprehend but wants to put in a package, a name, will continue to contain its blurred definition. This is why EMAH only deals with 'now' and the body of past this now lands on. Of course this leads to everything having "consciousness". A brick "remembers" a stain of paint as long as it's there - and with some "therapeutical" investgation in a laboratory perhaps even longer. And a stain of paint on your skin is exactly the same. However, unlike the the brick you've also got a brain that may also be affected by the stain. This could be compared with a hollow brick where the paint has vanished from the outside but submerged so that when cutting the brick it "remembers" it and tells the cutting blade about it. And for more "sophistication" just add millions of differect colors unevenly spread. Our brain is no different from the rest of the body. If Frankenstein with tomorrow's tech had created an adult human body, then that body wouldn't be able to walk or talk etc. because it lacked the body program we've been programmed with by living.

The US-led climate hoax against China : $-freeloader US uses its hegemony to cover up the worst global threat, i.e. itself. And targets China which challenges its hegemony. A sustained and coordinated campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of China. China is already way more democratic than US - especially when considering that its infrastructure today is already where it inevitably will be tomorrow in a technologically lagging US. In other words, technology itself puts ever more distinction on our behavior - compare e.g. the shift from unmarked cash to marked card/online payments. And as an extra bonus China has extremely low criminality, better privacy law, and incredible record of improving poverty and welfare both home and abroad compared to US. Just consider how US has painted itself into a corner by the 1971 cheating that disconnected the dollar from US' own means, hence creating a situation with no other return than lowering its standard (i.e. stopping printing dollar that the rest of the world have had to pay for due to US' global financial empire tentacles) or a new war (which US is already brewing). Where US uses CIA meddling, sanctions and militarism, China has risen with honest manufacturing and trade.

Peter Klevius: Do note that my klevius.info is an experimental webmuseum made 2003 and deliberately hasn't been touched upon since 2007.

20211103: Why is BBC 4 news so silent about CIA's murder plot and ongoing extradition request against Julian Assange, but instead has plenty of news time to repeatedly tell listeners about some cricket player (muslim?) who 'was allegedly hurt' because of 'verbal abuse'?

$-freeloader US is the main driver of dangerous global militarism and state terror. It's also a many times bigger per capita polluter than China. Why is BBC repeating the lie that "China is the biggest polluter" when in fact it's one of the smallest?! And the only reason to not use per capita would be that China, unlike e.g. similar size Africa, has a single government. But even then China shines as the by far best led country. China is the technological future that we all have to walk - not led by the Chinese, but by technology. And because of US's desperation as its dollar-thieving (since 1971) is now threatened by China irresistibly passing them technologically and economically, China actually serves as a protected "soft landing model" for the future AI world (China's new privacy law, tech crackdown etc.) is exactly what most people want), while aggressive U.S. is a threat to peace and prosperity. Google is precisely the state link Chinese companies are accused of being, and US's "alliance" with "colored" and muslims is basically Sinophobia, i.e. the fear of losing control of those whom it has abused - it simply divides the world into good colored/religious and evil Chinese/Atheists (and evil whites who disagree). US-led "anti-communism" is not about communism or any belief that China would attack the rest of the world (as the US has done, after all). Almost everyone understands that today's China has nothing in common with Cuba, the Soviet Union, Pol Pot, and Mao's China.

Peter Klevius has collected US Google News China headlines for years and never seen them (algorithms) so extremely anti-China as now. US' (+its puppets) Taiwan lies in perspective: UN Resolution 2758 which was approved on October 25, 1971 states that "The representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations" and "decides to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (i.e. Taiwan) from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it." Again, U.S.-linked disinformation campaign against China is made up as it goes along. So how much of US' "anti-Communism" rant is actually Sinophobia spized with greed and fear of losing its parasitic world sucking position? Btw, the worst polluters on measure of culpability as weighted annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution taking relative per capita income into account include the Anglosphere countries US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. Isn't it shameful that these hypocrites point finger at China?! And why is BBC so silent about the volcanic catastrophe on La Palma that not only keeps continuing but also is getting more vicious by the day?! Volcanos can at any moment start an abrupt iceage - and we are anyway already overdue to the next statistical iceage.

20210926 UK became even more a totalitarian right wing militaristic one party state when Labour cut off its left wing. And unlike China, UK has no meritocracy demand on MPs, nor has it any people's democracy even close to that of China (just consider how the Western, US steered, media told you Xi ordered less gaming for kids when in fact it was a broad demand from parent). And China forces its companies to use less energy - and the Sinophobic West of course spits on this environmental effort when some energy companies break the limits and can't deliver.





The West, not China, is the biggest emitter of pollution. What's not to like about China?! Best privacy law: least crimes: best high tech: best tech control: best poverty extermination: best manufacturer: best meritocratic democracy happiness: best trust in leadership, applauded by OIC for treatment of muslims, etc. And badly behaving $-freeloader and financial (and militaristic) global dictator U.S. jailed Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in a foreign country for her normal business in an other foreign country (whose prsidential candidate was murdered by US in a third foreign country) that US didn't happen to like as it didn't like the success of Chinese Huawei.

How $-freeloader US has robbed the world since 1971

China hating bigoted and hypocritical West (i.e. US+puppets) - which strangly calls itself "the international community" - worries about Taliban sharia while West's close ally, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family (behind 9/11 and most other islamic terror) has the most medieval form of sharia of any muslim country! Btw, most feminists are sharia muslims - and feminism ticks most fascism boxes . Peter Klevius to his readers: Never forget that fascism emerged in the very midst of what is now in anti-China rhetoric called "the international community" or the West. And the roots of Western fascism has never been treated but live on. Ask yourself, what if China had behaved like the murderous terror rogue state $-freeloader U.S.?!













Islamism wants islamic "human rights". Feminism wants women's "human rights". Peter Klevius wants Human Rights. Together with their close ally Saudi Arabia, US and its puppet UK have among the worst Human Rights records - yet they blame China and Russia instead. Fact correcting BBC's lies: Rogue state $-freeloader U.S. is also the by far much worse per capita greenhouse gas polluter than China.

Peter Klevius serious questions to you "out of Africa" believer! Ask yourself: How come that the oldest primates came from outside Africa; that the oldest great ape divergence happened outside Africa; that the oldest bi-pedals are from outside Africa; that the only australopithecines with a Homo skull lived as far from Africa you can get; that the oldest truly modern looking skull is from eastern China (and to Chris Stringer - its slightly archaic bun fits a very old age); that the oldest Africans are mongoloid; that the latest genetic mix that shaped the modern human happened in northern Asia and is traced to SE Asia; that the earliest sophisticated art (e.g. a drilled and polished perfect shiny stone bracelet from Siberia, perfect paintings and figurines) and tools (e.g. a perfect sewing needle, flutes etc) are found from Iberia to Sulawesi - but not in Africa so far; that the oldest round skulled Homo sapiens in sub-Saharan Africa is much younger than similar skulls in Eurasia; that we lack ancient enough DNA from Africa to use as evidence (although afropologists happily do), etc. etc.? Peter Klevius theory answers all these questions - and more.

Peter Klevius (the only serious anthropologist?!) to afropologists: If you honestly and with simple words would explain the essence of the out-of-Africa myth/hoax to a child s/he wouldn't believe a word of your story: A cold adapted (mongoloid phenotype) population P1 (Homo sapiens), which eats everything and has almost infinite time and skills to move anywhere on land - lives all over a southern "island" (Africa) that has an easily accessible bridge (Sinai) to an other "island" (Eurasia), but somehow cannot get out for hundreds of thousands of years. And when they tried they couldn't survive on places where their primitive relatives (Homo erectus) for 2 million years had thrived all over the places from the tropics to the northern cold. Then the kid would probably ask why you keep telling things that make no sense. And when you answer by saying that this now living population P2 on the warm island - but with features seen in all cold adapted populations P3 far north of the bridge - has the oldest DNA, then the kid would probably ask you if you have ever considered the possibility that those genes were aquired in the cold north far on the other side of the bridge. And your last resort to convince the child concists of some bone fragments that fit in a shoe box together with a decent pair of shoes - and there is no agreement about what they really are - and are the only thing we have between the chimp-like Lucy and the human-like erectus. And what would you answer when the kid then asks how a tiny Lucy-like (poor bipedalism) population A4 could possibly make it out of Africa all the way over the Wallace line to Flores as well as to the Philippines, long before Homo sapiens managed to do so? Peter Klevius suggests you and your kids learn from the best: Peter Klevius theory Speciation needs isolation over time and the best evolutionary lab has been SE Asian archipelago. Like all primates, carnivores, ungulates etc. we also came out of SE Asia with a new brain setup (due to island shrinking and mainland enlargement of this new brain setup), got coldadapted in the north and then spread all over the world while mixing with other Homo sapiens in a pattern easily recognizable.

Peter Klevius evolution formula.



U.S. main brain asset is East Asians - same with China... East-Asians (mostly Chinese) also took most gold medals in Tokyo Olympics. China won shared gold in the gold-medal race (39 golds - why are some excluding Hong Kong's gold).

Peter Klevius suggests taking the knee for Human Rights instead of for certain "races" based on skin color, religion - or sex.

The main threat against Taiwan is U.S. starting a war. But China just has to wait until the Taiwanese anyway want to rejoin because of Cnina's fast growing superior R&D, high tech, infrastructure, privacy law, economy etc.. For U.S. it's just the opposite. And West's hollow rant about "liberty" and "party-democracy" echoes back against China's democracy where the Chinese vote for truly merited individuals and against corruption. And Chinese hightech will, after some political delay come near you anyway - while in the meantime being called "assertive threat from CCP". And there's no more "Communism" in China's progress than there is Christianity in U.S' militaristic war mongering, criminal sanctions, $-freeloading, extrajudicial murders, unfair justice, torture, spying on everyone, use of islamists etc.. U.S. "Americans"! Payback time! When Peter Klevius bought his Japan made Citizen Eco Drive chronograph watch it cost ~ $240 in US and ~ $340 in EU. Those ~ $100 is what "American" (i.e. U.S. people - not all Americans) $-freeloaders owe to the rest of the world because of benefitting locally by money printing and pricing the main global reserve currency - but the end is near. $100 trillions - or more?!

Apoorva Mandavilli (New York Times): "Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here." Peter Klevius wonders what made her later delete it?! Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US' intention is not at all to clarify anything but instead to keep up hate against China. Would Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US and its UK puppet let Chinese inspect Fort Detrick and over 200 US bio-labs all over the world and UK's notorious military research at Porton Down, Salisbury. So while Chinese and "Chinese" looking people now are the most harrassed, BBC gives it no real attention while filling its news with BLM and "worries about islamophobia". Btw, if you poke any s.c. "free speech debate" you'll always find islamic efforts for "blasphemy" laws - and never laws against real blasphemy against basic negative Human Rights of 1948. When should islam pay for 1400 years of genocides? The West has abandoned Human Rights for the sake of sharia islam and is again becoming what it fought against - itself. Communistphobia (an "autoimmune" reaction now boosted by US' collapse and due aggression) led to Fascism, Nazism and WW2. Why do the worst (per capita and consumption) militant polluters and hypocrites (Fiat $-freeloader US, UK, Australia etc.) lie about China. the world's best source for cleaner tech?! Fiat $-freeloader US' influence behind Sinophobic attacks against China, the world's by far largest economy and future of tech, privacy law and Human Rights, and with less assaults, rapes and murders etc. than e.g. US and EU, while the "democratic West" turns sharia theocratic and militant. And why is islamism called "religion" and Confuzianism "propaganda"?! Peter Klevius: Why would religious precepts and Human Rights denial be more worthy of protection than political ones? After all, Human Rights are there to guide legislators and the Chinese trust their politicians much more than Westerners trust theirs. So there's a case to be made against anti-China hate propaganda which harmfully affects Chinese and "Chinese" looking people. The senseless flaw of monotheism: The pompous self-delusion of oneself as "god's" chosen individual while projecting one's "beliefs" on "god's" chosen "community" - which in turn projects a collectivist "belief" on its individuals. Freedom of thought doesn't mean freedom from law - and freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from Human Rights. The only "ideology" that flawlessly fits negative Human Rights is Atheism (not believeing in any supremacist "god"). Lod/Lydda in Israel should be a warning that convinces anyone about the necessity to abandon racist and sexist monotheist religions and instead support the basic negative Human Rights of 1948 to guide legislation and behavior for a positive human future for all. https://negativehumanrights.blogspot.com/2021/05/negative-human-rights-for-positive.html









US declares Turkish murder and islamization of more than a million Armenians a genocide while UK declares China's de-islamization and education of backward Chinese Uyghurs a "genocide".



Joe Biden: "China will not become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world on my watch! And history proves US is the dangerous one that wants to dictate and bully the world to keep its $-freeloader hegemony.

Xi Jinping: "China will never seek hegemony, no matter how strong it becomes." And he has the longest civilization to back it up with.



Peter Klevius warns the Brits about the danger posed by spy master Jeremy Fleming's delusional, dangerous and Sinophobic China "analysis" which, if followed, may lead to stagnation and even US initiated war. It's all about UK either chosing a dangerous puppet status under US decline and stagnation by supported US' populist riding on pre-existing anti-Chinese (and anti-mongoloid racism, compare e.g. footballer Son Heung-Min and BBC lacking to report hate crimes against Chinese etc) sentiments - or simply benefitting from China's success through cooperation. The "danger" of new Chibese surveillance tech becomes ok later on in the West. However, China has now better privacy protection than the West, and China's meritocratic political representation combined with the world's toughest anti-corruption, makes West look bleak in comparison. And unlike UK, China has a real written constituion that gives women the same rights as men without exeption - someting US is still lacking, as are UK's sharia courts.



20210416: US' puppet sidekick UK cowardly runs away when it cannot hide in the master's shadow anymore - leaving Afghanistan's women without protection against islamic evil.



Don't respect islam as long as islam doesn't respect Human Rights! And if you don't trust Peter Klevius (2001-) on this, then trust Council of Europe's (2019) basically similar criticism of islam's main worldly (except Gabriel) representative, Saudi based and steered OIC's Human Rights violating sharia declaration CDHRI! Moreover, the most pious muslims seem to be the ones furthest distancing themselves from Human Rights.



Peter Klevius to the women of Greenham Common: Aren't the Saudi allied and posturing "in cheat and global nUKes we trust" right wing Sinophobic Brexiters a bigger threat than Iran?



BBC is the world's main spreader of anti-Sinoist hate speech and populist Sinophobic propaganda on an industrial scale and therefore guilty of inciting crimes against humanity!



First spitting on China and then using China's reaction as an excuse for more spitting.



The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". * Similarly criticized by Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe. Are both "islamophobes"?!

Global China for peace and wealth vs. "global UK" for more hate incitement, lies, threats, nukes, warmonger and miltarism under the shield of the militaristic world dictator and $-freeloader US. Compare this to UN's Resident Coordinator in China, Siddharth Chatterjee, who says "we stand in a unique position to cooperate with the Government of China and apply its successes of lifting hundreds of million people out of poverty globally. China has shown its firm belief in the principles of multilateralism. As I witnessed in Kenya, China's donations of personal protective equipment and other supplies played a critical role during the disruption in global supply chains in March 2020. And every day I am in China, I am inspired by what I see around me, what China has achieved and can achieve as a country."

But US/UK do their utmost to stop "assertive Chinese influence". And a Sinophobic parliament shouts "genocide" when China protects women's Human Rights.

Without a fair reason UK declares Chinese a "threat" while Brits and other "infidels" are constantly threatened by Human Rights violating islamism.

20210320: The world's master fake news troll farm BBC today still uses conspiracy theorist, warmonger and China hater Pompeo to smear China and spread anti-Sinoism - but nothing about islamist Human Rights violating atrocities (e.g. 50 children beheaded by islamists in Mocambique etc.), !? Btw, UK abducts proportionally many more children than China - and expose them to islamist child abuse. Peter Klevius feels truly ashamed of looking like a Westerner. Btw, how can you excuse US criminal behavior: First benefitting from monopolizing global web tech and then using this monopoly as a weapon against competitors?!

$-freeloader US and its UK puppet don't care about the wellbeing of Chinese but want only to damage China's success. Sinophobic UK parliament should just shut up talking about China and democracy. People living legally in their own state EU were robbed of their democracy by UK! And even UK nationals are just subjects, not citizens.



BBC, the world's worst war mongering and hate spreading propaganda troll farm, uses Chinese "Guantanamo"* prisoner fotage out of context as "evidence" of how "truthful" BBC is! * US detained muslim terrorist suspects outside US! BBC stereotypes whatever to fit "genocide" in China but doesn't mind US-UK-Australian torture and murder of civilians. Where China stands for tech and wealth development $-freeloader US + UK-Australia stand for spreadinng lies and militarist tensions. And why so silent about UK torture of Assange while declaring an Iranian spy suspect as "innocent" simply because she says so (Iran, like US, doesn't approve of double citizenship).



Uncritical democracy with islam inevitably means the death of Human Rights. Peter Klevius probably has some half of muslims on his side in saying so.



BBC welcomes Jo Johnson when he now says "China is authoritarian, almost neo-totalitarian regime". Peter Klevius wonders how that fits with a country which leadership is much more approved of than Western ones?! Even an idiot (but not BBC) can see that China's modern Communism has nothing to do with Maoism or Soviet Communism. The only criticism left the West can come up with is name calling. The welfare, progress and out of poverty success for Chinese people has nothing in common with "conventional Communism". On the contrary, it delivers exactly where s.c. "democracies" (one might even argue that China is closer to democracy than the West) often fail. "Democracies" are anyway one party states supported by at the most some half of the population compared to China's qualified majority. So China's "authoritarian" Communist "dictatorship" is as far you can get from the West's beloved Sunni islamist theocracy, steered by the murderous and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family. So why is China declared an enemy while Saudi is an ally! Moreover, China's new privacy law will protect the individual much better than any similar laws in in the West. Why? Because China's leadership thinks the individual's privacy is too important to fiddle with (read the draft). Something the West has given up (to US). And who was it that started smearing, lying, spreading rumours and conspiracy theories, military threats etc. against China in the forst place? Sinophobic racism from the West for the purpose of aiding the US $-freeloader.



Peter Klevius: Every muslim is responsible for muslims racism and sexism. So stop shouting "you're not a muslim" to a muslim who believes and knows the Koran by heart! Immigration is ok - if you criminalize anti-Human Rights sharia muslims (and their accompllices)!

In cheat we trust: UK decreases aid to Yemen while increasing weapons sale to the muslim Saudi dictator family and spending more on militarism. And BBC is more concerned about Uyghurs than Yemenites. And worries more about Buddhists who don't like to be attacked, raped, murdered etc. than about their radicalized muslim attackers.





Lord Palmerston, UK PM who supported the Confederacy in the US civil war, hoping a dissolution of the Union would weaken the US: "The Chinese are uncivilized and the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a civilized nation could do."



US is now the worst global threat that only cooperating with China could mitigate - instead of being US' puppets. Peter Klevius: Why is US ordering 600 new nukes - i.e. the double of China's total?

Why is China the only NPT state to give an unqualified negative security assurance with its "no first use"?

Why isn't UK's parliament more interested in the real genocide in Yemen than the made up "genocide" in Xinjiang?!

Why is UK applauding the conviction of Syrian soldiers while UK soldiers go free from similar crimes against humanity.

Why isn't the real genocide that muslim Uyghurs have committed against non-muslim Uyghurs talked about?! When Dominic Raab visited Saudi Arabia he failed to raise the question of Saudi Human Rights abuses.However, in UN he lied about "China's industrial scale Human Rights abuses". He deliberately conflated unchecked BBC "reports" by East Turkestan jihadis with China's out of poverty and de-radicalization programs. And of course forgot to say sterilization was offered after three (3) children and with economical and educational incentives for muslim women tied at home by sharia.

The militant $-freeloader US' spread of misinfo about China has made Chinese the most hated ethnicity while sharia muslims are the most protected - and US' puppet UK's Dominic Raab keeps spitting Sinophobia while supporting anti-Human Rights islamism.



UK, which illegally still colonizes Chagos (but complains about China), in a secret ballot 'arranged' (helped by OIC) a sharia islamist to become leader of the International Criminal Court - i.e. someone who doesn't respect basic Human Rights! Should ICC now change to ICT (In Cheat we Trust)?

Peter Klevius (like e.g. most really intelligent Jews is an Atheist, not confined with "faith", politics, career, finance etc.): While the West accepts OIC's Human Rights violating sharia islamism, China defends Human Rights against islamism. And unlike US' constitution, China's constitution is fully aligned with women's rights in the 1948 Human Rights declaration. So to avoid the West turning into a full muslim theocracy (OIC sharia) fractioned in infighting, we better become Sinophils instead of Sinophobes! "Anti-democratic ommunism" is now the only (empty - the only difference is that MPs in China are under harder scrutiny) argument the West still swings.



Peter Klevius: SE Asia was the evolutionary laboratory that made human evolution possible. Africa doesn't tick a single box

20210127, BBC (fake) News: "We are memorizing 6 million Jews in Holocaust." Peter Klevius: So why not include the more than 6 million non-Jews?! See BBC's diabolically wild lies about Uighurs!





Many Afgan women's dream is to be treated like Uighur women in China. However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation".



However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation". The biggest scandal in anthropology: Afropologist John Hawks and faith creationists dismiss the hereto most important "missing link" in human evolution. How many have they brainwashed and kept misinformed?!



1990 islam officially and globally (via UN) rejected Human Rights (the Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia declaration witch gravely violates the most basic of Human Rights)!



If Atheist Chinese had reproduced like muslims, there'd be more s.c. "Mongoloids" than the whole world population today.

BBC is the world's biggest lying and faking propaganda troll - BBC's agenda has absolutely nothing to do with journalistic principles but is a mix of US pressure spiced with the worst of "Britishness" (UK cuts foreign aid from 0.7-0.5% and adds the same money to militarism) meeting in Saudi/OIC islamofascist sharia against basic Human Rights. BBC: UK has to aid Saudi war crimes and genocides cause else Russia and China would do it. UK's future is as a militaristic puppet for US (compare BBC's campaign against Johnson and Corbyn). Peter Klevius to BBC's Sinophobic muslim presenters in their ivory minaret: How many muslim women are detained in UK's sharia camps?



US secretary of state, Pompeo declares Islamic State Uighur jihadi not terrorists - so they can attack China and get support from US (as in Syria).









It's an irony that China now seems to offer the only defense of those very Human Rights it's accused of not following - while the West supports islamism that violates those Human Rights (compare Saudi based and steered OIC's global sharia declaration against Human Rights). Moreover, apostasy (i.e. leaving islam, which is the worst crime in islam) and the fact that the muslim man determines the faith for the children no matter who is the mother, together have to be added to any estimation of muslim population growth.

US' and its puppets' Sinophobia campaign rooted in UK's appalling opium wars against Chinese people



Why do Sinophobic BBC and UK parliament call it "deradicalization" in UK, US and Saudi Arabia, but "genocide" in China?! And why wasn't one-child policy against Atheist Han Chinese called "genocide" while Uighur muslims were allowed to have many children?! Btw, e.g. Sweden abducts many more children than China does in Xinjiang - and for extremely questionable reasons (read Peter Klevius' thesis Pathological Symbiosis and ask yourself why Sweden gets away with its Human Rights violations). Answer: It's all about U.S. being a lousy loser and therefore behaving appalingly badly with smear, threats, illegal sanctions, militaristic aggression etc! Btw, China is already number one in economy and most technology - and accelerating compared to US. So you stupid US puppets - take note! Shame on everyone who blinks Saudi based and steered OIC's anti-human rights sharia for all the world's muslims while spitting on China!

Should BBC and some politicians be put on a Nurenberg trial after this relentless and demonizing Sinophobia campaign and deliberate lies?

US is rottening fast and should therefore go for peace and cooperation! Despite using $-freeloading, sanctions, breaking treaties, murdering officials and politicians in other countries during state visits etc., hindering the use of tech previously used to monopolize US companies globally etc., US now wants to destroy Huawei and other Chinese companies, not for security but because US is inevitably losing the tech race. And no, it isn't the Chinese state support any more than US uses state support for force-feeding Apple, Google etc. and backed up by US state militaristic interventions, spying, interference, threats etc. globally. And China was the first to recognize the danger of Covid-19 - not "delaying" anything" but quite the contrary (see below)! BBC News' deliberately misleading and dangerous anti-China rant 20200706: "China ought to be our enemy! We can't do any business with China because of Hong Kong, and the sterilization of Uyghur muslims which some people (BBC and its cherry picked guests?!) think amounts to genocide". Peter Kleius: That Chinese muslims should follow the same laws as other Chinese, and that China uses similar deradicalization programmes proposed in the West, BBC thinks is "suppression". And volontary sterilization in the West BBC calls "genocide" in China. And Hong Kong's security law is similar to those in the West - and not as bad as US - and are definitely neccessary to keep "one nation" together under the immense pressure from US and its puppet regimes. 2020 4th of July: Peter Klevius wonders when US women will get the same rights as Chinese women - ERA is still lacking from US constitution? Article 2, Chinese constitution: Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life. Peter Klevius also wonders why aggressive and assertive US attacks peaceful China (every schism has US fingerprints) while siding with the war crimes committing murdeous islamofascist Saudi dictator family whose OIC sharia clearly denies eqaulity for women?! China is doing more good to more people than any other country today. Is this the reason?!



20200618: Why is the most cemtral witness, Inge Morelius (later aka Marelius) in the Swedish PM Palme's murder case, deleted by Google's search engine from

deleted by Google's search engine from Peter Klevius revealing murder analysis ?! 20200616: When China discovers Covid-19 with a European DNA profile on a cutting board for Norwegian salmon, the BBC thinks it's the communist party.

Why is BBC so quiet about Churchill's secret (until 2018) pact with Stalin in 1939 which would have divided Scandinavia between Russia and UK?! And US' NATO puppet Jens Stoltenberg repeats like a parrot his master's voice against China - while a civil war is going on inside NATO between Greece and Turkey. African Pygmy lives matter! Colonized and enslaved for more than 3,500 years by the Eurasian Bantu etc. intruders we now call Africans. It's a senseless irony that "Africans" (Bantus etc. newcomers) who enslaved and mixed with original Africans (Khoisan and especially Pygmies from whom they got their phenotype) and later were enslaved by muslim Arabs and their "African" collaborators now get a brain drop at the West African ports where islam exported slaves. Any old African genes come from Khoisan and Pygmies - and ultimately out of Asia - not Africa. "Out-of-Africa" and BLM are created by white idiots and only feed supremacism. Read "out-of-Africa" more dangerous than the Piltdown hoax

Peter Klevius 20200604: What if Floyd had been white or Chinese?! And the officers members of Nation of Islam? And how do we even know that any racism was involved? And what about a fair trial?

20200603: UK's Sinophobic right wing anti-EU migration Brexiters now want to import 3 million Chinese from Hong Kong!?

20200529: In its everyday Sinophobia rant BBC today managed in one sentence to accuse Chinese, China and Xi separately - and even missing the stock smear, i.e. the "communist party". However in a very near future China will develop and export a world leading ecosystem of non-US software, hardware, fintech, social media, telecom infrastructure etc. that everyone will long for. Stubborn and dumb stiff lipped Sinophobes will become Neanderthals in no time. Sadly few politicians understand how powerful Chinese tech development is. Japan did the same but wasn't hampered by Maoist communism and was ten times smaller. High IQ and an Atheist culture they both have in common.

The pro-Saudi and anti-China "party-within" UK's governing party is committing long term criminal harm to UK. China is the future and US is rottening with accelerating speed (the desperate sanctions against China tell it all). Only tech cooperation with China will benefit Brits and Americans. So why are UK politicians and BBC so eager to shoot their own PM and the Brits in the foot by being dictated by Pompeo, Trump and the Saudi dictator family, and boosted by a general Sinophobia racism? The "communist" scare mongering has no relevance because in practice China behaves in no way different than US - but is under constant smear and subversion attacks. And China's surveillance has actually developed less fast than that of US. US is a rogue state that murders and surveils in other countries (e.g. murdered top politician in Iran and surveilled Merkel - and you). And who likes ISIS and al-Qaeda etc. Uyghur jihadi terrorists anyway? Pompeo, Erdogan and Saudi steered islamofascists.



20200522: BBC and some right wing MPs call it a "draconian move" when China wants to stop foreign interference and people using Molotov cocktails. Really! So what about in UK?!



20200518: BBC again repeated the anti-China lie about "a silenced doctor" by inviting the former right wing and pro-Saudi (anti-)EU Research Group - now (anti-)China Research Group. How bad a journalist isn't Sarah Montague then when she didn't even try to question it - or is she muffled?! Eye dr. Li Wenliang wrongly spread out it could be SARS. It wasn't and just one hour later - and long before any police etc. had contacted him - he corrected his mistake (see fact check below).

$-freeloader US provoking China with war ships while simultaneously "leaking" "classified" rumours. Why?! Its Sinophobia is all about trying to stop China's success as the foremost spreader of wealth and high tech both in China and the world. It's not the leadership but China's success that US can't stand.



BBC sides with whoever Sinophobes - and would probably even have used Goebbels against China if he was still around. UK universities etc. are littered with dangerous Saudi (OIC) anti-Human Rights sharia jihad propaganda (incl. supprt of IS Utghur jihadi) - yet China has always been aggressively smeared all the way since UK's opium war attacks on China when it was declared "inferior" and "uncivilized". Today the problem seems to be that China is too superior and too civilized - but thankfully they have a "communist" party to blame, although the leadership has behaved better than most in the West. And when BBC talks about the "West" against China it actually means US spy organization Five Eyes (with the puppet states Australia, UK, Canada and NZ) and whoever other Sinophobes it can find elsewhere - like the Israel supporting and anti-muslim right wing Axel Springer, Europe's largest media (practically a monpoly) which is accused of e.g. censorship and interference in other countries (just like state media BBC).



Should China sue BBC and UK (not to mention US) and the far-right, anti-China and anti-muslim UK "think tank" the Jackson Society (with associated Sinophobic MPs and lords) - whose Sinophobia (disguised as "against communism" etc.) complements leftist and pro-sharia jihad muslims BBC which now so eagerly gives it a platform, as well as the closely connected US spy organization Five Eyes which has demonized China for years long before Huawei or Covid-19? The lies about China they have spread are indistinguishable from those of Pompeo and Trump. Is this baseless (compared to US/UK) hate mongering really conducive to the welfare of UK? And when China reacts to this massive Sinophobia campaign then BBC calls it "aggressive Chinese propaganda".



US "warns" about China "stealing" vaccine info because US knows that China now produces much better research than US.



BBC anti-China fake 20200506: "Hundreds if not thousands of people were likely to have been infected in Wuhan, at a time when Chinese officials said there were only a few dozen cases." Peter Klevius fact check: BBC deliberately conflates real time confirmed knowledge with calculations in retrospect.



US has made all the mistakes it accuses China for. Here's one from the top of the iceberg: Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, pressed for urgent access to funding, personnel and clinical specimens, including viruses, which he emphasized were all critically necessary to begin development of lifesaving medicines needed in the likely event that the virus spread outside of SE Asia. He was then cut out of critical meetings for raising early alarm about the virus and ousted from his position.



Chinese 5G much more reliable than US' Five Eyes, the world's most dangerous misinfo and conspiracy spreading US spy and smear organization (together with its puppet states UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) which "leaked" a 15-page dossier alleging "probing the possibility" the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As Peter Klevius has said before, it didn't come from bats to humans but from some other host animal. Fake news and anti-China propaganda videos are making false and unfounded claims about "delays" and "late" human to human transmission report. Again, it was only in retrospect anyone could have known the nature of early cases. Many weren't even connectded to the wet market and many weren't affected at all despite intimate contact. Moreover, the wrong early SARS diagnosis was corrected the very same day but spread by a "whistleblower" eye doctor (see fact check below). And despite being first affected China acted better than US etc. countries. 5eyes equals Nazi Goebbels in propaganda misinfo. Every single accusation so far has built on deliberate distortion of facts. And possble improvements in retrospect would have been exactly the same in even the best of Western countroes.



Peter Klevius to Chinese people: I'm not a racist - although I certainly look like one.



Origin of Sinophobia: The 19th century Opium Wars were triggered by UK's imposition of the opium trade upon China. Lord Palmerston regarded the Chinese as uncivilized and suggested that the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a "civilized" nation could do. The resulting concession of Hong Kong compromised China's territorial sovereignty. There's also the background to South China Sea.



"God", "Allah", or whichever "monotheistic" idol is a pathetic fallacy and "monotheism" is a ridiculous and dangerous self-delusion because your "god" is used to defend the undefendable. There are equally many "gods" as there are individuals - and the collective "god" only functions as cherry picked confirmation of the individual's "god". However, the collective "god" may combine individual evil - never individual good, because that can only be achieved by (negative) Human Rights. After all, as Peter Klevius always has said, the only way of being fully human is to allow others full humanhood (what else could possibly unite all humans) - without religious impositions/exclusions.

Pentagon, islam - and China?!



Also check out Peter Klevius theory (1992) on "consciousness"/Thalamus - the only one that fits empirical evidence. And don't miss And don't miss Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa .

Peter Klevius asks for an independent international inquiry on BBC's racist Sinophobia and its support of sharia islamism - incl. how many victims and suffering it has caused because of its worldwide propaganda influence.

In the early 1990's US accused Japan of selling superior cars in US without buying crappy cars from US. And a congress woman warned for tech theft if selling US planes to Japan - but was told that those planes wouldn't even fly without Japanese high tech. At the same time EU was created to build a trade wall against Japanese products. However, Japan is more than ten times smaller than China - and isn't at the hotbed of different coronaviruses in SE Asia.



Dear reader, if you think Peter Klevius has a problem with self-assertion you're very wrong. Apart from it being connected to Peter Klevius criticism of citation cartels (see Demand for Resources, 1992:40-44) Peter Klevius main problem is your self-assertion.







Is this MP a clown?

Sinophobic BBC working hard for a Coup d'etat together with Saudi loving and China hating MPs against PM Boris Johnson.



Peter Klevius wonders why Sinophobic state media BBC (with Tom Tugendhat etc.) goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?! goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?!

20200417: BBC's Sinophobic muslim Razia Iqbal together with Tom Tugendhat arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate...! arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate...

20200416: State media BBC's Sinophobic Uganda rooted muslim Razia Iqbal lies about Chinese "racism" against Ugandans without telling that it was a local matter that was caused by some Africans linked to a cluster of cases in the Nigerian community in Guangzhou at a time when China had already curbed Covid-19. At least eight people diagnosed with the illness had spent time in the city's Yuexiu district, known as "Little Africa". Five were Nigerian nationals who faced widespread anger - not for being Africans but because of reports that they had broken a mandatory quarantine and been to eight restaurants and other public places instead of staying home. As a result, nearly 2,000 people they came into contact with had to be tested for Covid-19 or undergo quarantine. Guangzhou had confirmed 114 imported coronavirus cases  16 of which were Africans. The rest were returning Chinese nationals.

20200407a.m.: UK's best PM, Boris Johnson, is much shorter (same as Einstein and Klevius dad) than Trump - but also much more intelligent. It's OK to say so when Trump is white - and loves to play on height, right? 20200412: The reason the Chinese government wanted extra control of DNA results was the previous failed report (see below) which wrongly indicated SARS. However, British media (BBC etc.) blatantly lie about it and first accused Shi Zhengli's lab for spreading infected bats, while some weeks later making her a hero and accusing the government. And no, it didn't spread from bats - but possibly from civet cats. Suspected animals are now forbidden from the market.





Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa. And why would antelopes evolve in the very opposite direction to humans - at the same time?

UK/Matt Hancock (20200402): "We will work (against Covid19) with our friends and allies." Peter Klevius: That excludes the best, i.e. China, which you, on order from US, have declared an "unfriendly enemy"!



SINOPHOBIA RACISM. US tries to pull you away from Chinese high tech superiority so US can keep feeding you with its outdated tech and influence - just as it used to do with cars and wars. Your pick: US militarism with Saudi led islamofascism - or highspeed Chinatech towards Chinese democracy and global wealth. China is the very opposite to Cuba - and already, in practise, almost identical to Western governments. Excluding China only prolongs the democratic process - and even speeds up China's high tech inside its 1.4 billion market.



Peter Klevius fact check: "COVID-19 has a natural origin and there is no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered" (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is that

for China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda!

Covid19 timeline " (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is thatfor China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda! 17 November 2019: A retrospectively confirmed case.

1 December 2019: The first known patient started experiencing symptoms but had not been to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. No epidemiological link could be found between this case and later cases.

818 December 2019: Seven cases later diagnosed as COVID19 were documented; only two of them were linked with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

18-29 December 2019: Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) that will eventually be used for viral genome sequencing is collected from patients.

25 December 2019: Wuhan Fifth Hospital gastroenterology director Lu Xiaohong reported suspected infection by hospital staff.

26 December 2019: Zhang Jixian identified a CT scan that showed a different pattern from other viral pneumonia.

27 December 2019: She reported to Jianghan district CCDC with four cases. During the following two days, the hospital received three similar cases, who all came from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The hospital reported to the provincial and city CDC directly which initiated a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients potentially linked to the market. They found additional such patients and on 30 December, health authorities from Hubei Province reported this cluster to CCDC who immediately sent experts to Wuhan to support the investigation. Samples from these patients were obtained for laboratory analyses.

30 December 2019: Wuhan Municipal Health Committee informed WHO, Weibo etc. about an "urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause". There had been "a successive series of patients with unexplained pneumonia recently." However, a DNA report inaccurately indicated SARS on one patient. Late same day (17:43) ophthalmologist Li Wenliang WeChatted "There were 7 confirmed cases of SARS at Huanan Seafood Market." He included a patient's CT scan. At 18:42, he admitted that it wasn't proven SARS.

31 December 2019: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were alerted by China of an unexplained "cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia in Wuhan.

US worst nightmare is a democratic China - which wouldn't change China but make it even more like one-party "democracies" in the West - because that would mean losing US only argument. US deliberately seeks Sinophobic confrontational aggression against China - which hampers the development and peace of the world.

US island puppets against China and EU. US, who used to treat Japan as it now treats China, is now parasitizing on former enemy Japan in an (in vane) effort to keep China high tech down, and on the much tinier UK ally to trouble EU.



Something sinister is behind when Sinophobic far right extremist politicians so desperately risk future development in UK with false accusations of "possible risks in the future", skewed presentations, and unfounded demonization of Chinese high tech. And while Klevius is posting this, all in his machine is spied on and sent to US. And why is BBC constantly only hosting Sinophobic guests who also happen to be supporters of the islamofascist Saudi dictator family and happy to allow US spying on you via US companies? The only risk Huawei poses is that the Chinese state gets fed up and makes it illegal to sell Chinese top tech to UK. China is the future of high tech, so stepping off the bus means retardation. Btw, the two main accusations against China could easily be made against US/UK as well. China wants to trade and therefore doesn't want to risk reputation. US doesn't bother about its reputation. And when it comes to clean up muslim "communities" from islamofascist extremists there's really no other difference than in numbers. Moreover, NATO/Turkey uses extremist Uyghurs against civilians in e.g. Idlib - and hypocritically accuse China when these jihadi return.



Klevius to women: NATO makes a deal with the Taliban to continue sharia oppression of women, and NATO+IS=true because NATO is the main culprit behind the suffering in Idlib. Without the support from NATO the worst muslim terrorist group would never have survived. Like IS, NATO ally Hayat Tahrir al-Sham wants to create an islamic state. Turkey/NATO backs SNA well knowing that it's together with HTS. I.e. a NATO member state invades its neighbor, sides with terrorists and gets full support from NATO when its soldiers get killed while helping the terrorists. And what about Yemen?! It's truly pathetic that muslims seem more worried about islamofascism than the West!







Peter Klevius to climatists: Sinophobia is a threat to the environment, because China has the slowest population growth and is the the least per capita polluter of main economies (see table below) and the main producer of alternative and conventional super high tech! Moreover, China lacks the same proportion of natural resources as e.g. Sweden, Norway etc. (e.g. hydropower) but instead has to deal with the dust smog blowing from the Gobi desert and the extreme cold from the north. And China bears the manufacturing pollution for products other countries then consume and profit on.



NATO (Turkey supported by US/UK) is siding with the worst muslim terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (some 10,000 IS jihadi) against the people of Idlib while BBC News spreads misinfo propaganda against Syria, Russia and Iran - and nothing about the Saudi dictator family.

BBC (20200217) wants to stop Chinese tech because China opposes islamofascist Uyghurs. Klevius suggests the world should stop dealing with US/UK because of involvement in war crimes and genoscides against Shia muslims.

Why is Wikipedia allowed to spread polemical, tendentious and deliberately misleading info about islam? And not a word about islam's original supremacist enslavement, booty and humiliation ideology?! This misinfo is the most harmful of all!

From a true (negative) Human Rights, as well as from a historical perspective, original islam may rather be seen as original fascism. The oldest Koranic texts and the historically verified beginning of islam both emphasize supremacism as the main tenet (blamed/excused on "Allah"). Islam conserves racism, sexism and supremacism as pointed out by true muslims (aka "fundamentalists") reinforced through sharia (e.g. by Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia which is heavily criticized both by Klevius and the Council of Europe etc.). Islamic (and therefore muslim) supremacism is easily distinguished as it doesn't approve of Human Rights equality.

And why does Wikipedia deliberately conflate the history of islam with the fairy tales of believers in islam?!

Sinophobia is racism but "islamophobia" is criticism of an ideology. "Islamophobia" shouters are directly responsible for islamic hate crimes based on Koranic texts and hitting children of "infidels".



The Saudi-US-UK axis of evil



Chinese eyes less intrusive than Five Eyes (US and its puppets) - because China prioritizes trade and reputation while US prioritizes global spying, meddling and military control. The Saudi loving US puppets Duncan Smith, Davis, Paterson, Green, Ellwood and Seely etc. produce baseless "security" arguments for Sinophobic MPs.

U.S. flu this season Feb. 2020: 19 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and over 10,000 deaths (China has a third less common flu than US). 2019-nCoV, 6 Feb. 2020 (estim. total death rate 0.1-0.2%, i.e. same as common flu): 28,018 cases (not illnesses) and 563 deaths. Did the eye doctors SARS rant on social media delay response in China? It wasn't SARS but much closer to common flu - but without vaccine. Instead of assisting, US/UK/BBC did the utmost to smear China with it! Klevius warning to Finland (and the rest of the world): Don't be useful idiots in US' export of militarism! It will create tension and pull fire on you in a conflict. Four balancing power blocs is safer than one or two. Moreover, China will become the world's first true democracy thanks to AI. Don't let Sinophobia blind you. US is going down unless it starts cooperating instead of trying to rule the world. Non 5G iPhone sells well - in US - where there's no true 5G.

BBC's bigoted and hypocritical Pakistan rooted, Saudi raised and Cambridge schooled "muslim" (no veil, no Ramadan fasting, but yes to alcohol etc.) presenter Mishal Husain, like many Saudi/OIC supporters, represents the "security risk" between islam's "core" (OIC sharia) and "periphery" (e.g. "Euro-islam", "cultural islam" etc.).

Peter Klevius suggests cooperation instead of unfounded incl. religious) hate!

Klevius is ashamed over hateful, racist Western Sinophobia - and support of hateful sharia jihad. BBC's sharia supporting (?) muslim Mishal Husain now eagerly sides with Sinophobic extreme right wing politicians who support Saudi islamofascism but demonize China and Chinese (except if critcical of China). Sinophobes would treat China exactly the same if it copied US "democracy".



BBC today (20200129) forgot to tell about China already having isolated the virus for vaccine (and helped Australians to do so). However, BBC repeatedly lied that the death rate is 20%. Common flu and the new corona virus deaths (~2%) are extremely rare outside very vulnerable groups - who don't travel much.

BBC, who otherwise don't hesitate to spit on Trump, has no problem using his advisor when it comes to racist Sinophobia against Huawei. US is blackmailing UK so to hinder China's tech success and the "security issue" is actually US itself.

Niklas Arnberg, Swedish professor in virology: "Considerably higher mortality than ordinary flu." BBC: "Death toll rises as disease spreads from China."

Peter Klevius: Both are faking! Arnberg used overall death numbers although most (all?!) of these deaths have been people who could have died from ordinary flu as well. And do you really think BBC would ever have written similarly about the deadly camel flu from Saudi Arabia?!

Why is BBC spending so much more time on a 2019 flu from China than on the much deadlier 2019 camel flu from Saudi Arabia?!

Why is BBC only talking about Jewish victims - and why is BBC silent about the fact that most "anti-semites" (i.e. anti-Jews) are muslims? Holocaust: 6 million Jews and 11 million "others" were murdered by the German government for various discriminatory practices due to their ethnicity, Atheism, or LGBT+.

Hitler: "All character training must be derived from faith." Himmler: ""We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; he has created the earth, the Fatherland, and he has sent us the Fuhrer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid." Klevius (the Atheist "other"): That's a description of me by most Americans and muslims. Btw, why are muslim sex predators (compare Koran and sex slaves) from Pakistan called "Asians"?! And why have they been protected while Klevius has been muffled?!

Islam trumps LGBT rights in English schools - and hateful sexist and racist muslim supremacism defending BBC is silent as usual (e.g. about Parkfield Community School 2020). Klevius: Do you really support US/UK/BBC's disgusting racist Sinophobia madness - and their support and use of anti-Human Rights muslim islamism?! Wikipedia: In the Xinjiang riots Turkic speaking Uyghur muslims shouted/posted "kill the Han (Chinese) and Hui (Chinese speaking muslims)"!

Why is BBC so silent about Iran Air Flight 655 that was recklessly shot down by US over Iran territory killing 290 incl. 66 children?! Is it the new US puppet empire agenda? Did US aggression also cause the latest plane crash?



When BBC announces "the threats of 2020" the murders, terrorism and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family isn't included. As isn't US/UK militaristic meddling and proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq etc. However, China's peaceful trade and high tech manufacturing is!?



Saudi based and steered Human Rights violator OIC is the main legal guidance for the world's sharia muslims. BBC eagerly supports it by neglecting to criticize it while spitting on those who do. OIC's Cairo Declaration on "Human Rights" in Islam (CDHRI) is against freedom of religion - but abuses real Human Rights for the promotion of anti-Human Rights sharia islam. The CDHRI concludes in Articles 24 and 25 that all rights and freedoms mentioned are subject to the Islamic sharia, which is the declaration's sole source. OIC hence keeps the gate open for continued islamofascism in the "muslim world" - and as a convenient tool for meddling in "hostile states".



You believer in "islamophobia"! Doesn't it scare you that if Peter Klevius is right about islam but wouldn't say anything, then who would when you're doomed on the market if you do? If Marx had been called a "messenger" then Marxism would have been protected by freedom of religion, and critics called "Marxophobes". All "monotheist" religions make excuses not to fully accept Human Rights equality, but islam is by far the worst - not the least due to its origin and the fact that it's protected, unlike other threats to Human Rights. Whereas totalitarian Marxism used to be the enemy of the West, today US is on the totalitarian islamofascist side using it for Saudi gains against declared "enemies". It's truly a grim irony when BBC protects islamofascist terrorist groups by telling you that the suffering in Syria is due to the Syrian government and Russia. US could stop the muslim terrorist groups at any time - but doesn't because it wants the war and suffering to continue.





Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google (and BBC) lie and fake straight up your face about China ?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity. NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family.

Peter Klevius Christmas greeting to BBC and Tesco: Ever thought about the possibility that muslim islamists don't like making Christmas cards but are encouraged by US/UK/BBC etc. to smear China. "We are foreign prisoners (muslims?) in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will (islamic Christophobia?). Please help us and notify human rights (ultimate bigotry if sharia muslims ask for HR) organisation (Saudi based and steered OIC?!)."



"British" nationalist hypocrisy: Get back control - and meddle, influence, intervene, spy and control all over the world.



More than half of muslims in UK are "islamophobes" (against sharia) - just like Peter Klevius, Council of Europe etc. - but opposite to BBC and many UK politicians (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). BBC awards a white man who plays an odd sport few are interested in the title of "sports personality of the year 2019". Why?! Because cricket is a "british" colonial sports and also fits BBC's special interest in "asians" - but couldn't find a "british asian" good enough.

England voted (for the second time) against Merkels islam import from Turkey. Can islam be rehabilitated from its evil origin and deeds - and can unrehabilitated islam be allowed in public and private spheres? Why is Saudi based and steered OIC's Islamic State of Gambia accusing Aung San Suu Kyi for the consequences of islamofascism OIC's sharia protects - and why isn't the murderous islamofascist war criminal and genocide committing Saudi dictator "prince" accused of anything? And why is BBC's leading muslim extremist propaganda presenter Mishal Husain allowed to "present" an absolutely one-sided pro islamist picture for BBC's compulsory fee paying listeners? Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google lie and fake straight up your face?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity.

NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family.



DEMOCRACY DENIED: WARNING TO UK VOTERS ABOUT BBC's HUMANRIGHTSPHOBIA! WHO's RIGHT ON ISLAM - BBC OR THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE?

BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"?

Is BBC killing UK democracy and paving the way for islamofascism?BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"?

How Merkel paved the way for Brexit (Erdogan deal) and aided jihad in EU. NATO (US) with former fascist state Germany now sides with islamofascism - especially Erdogan's Ottoman aspirations - and supports Uyghur jihadism in hope of placing NATO (i.e. US) nukes between Russia and China. Peter Klevius wonders whether this ill-directed jihad propaganda will promote peace and safety?

The world bully U.S. thinks it owns and rules the world after having colonized it via dollar manipulation, infiltration, spying, meddling, sanctions and the unscrupulous use of militants and militarism. Thanks to the global dollar scam, Americans have been freeloaders on the rest of the world, the biggest per capita polluters and the U.S. by far the biggest threat to world peace via weapons built with money it stole from the world. Said by Peter Klevius who has been an anti-socialist all his life. Btw. the world's industrial revolution didn's start in England but in Sweden already in the late 17th century by inventor Christopher Polhem and capitalist Gabriel Stierncrona. Without Polhem's automation to get the rich Swedish iron ore from the mains, England had no chance to start real industrial production.







A nun's gear doesn't sign other women as "whores". However, what about a woman in an islamic "chastity" gear?



K.S. Lal (a giant among historians): Mahmud of Ghazni had marched into Hindustan again and again to wage jihad and spread the Muhammadan religion, to lay hold of its wealth, to destroy its temples, to enslave its people, sell them abroad and thereby earn profit, and to add to muslim numbers by converting the captives.

Is BBC 100% steered by muslims? Not only can you ever hear anything critical about islam and muslims - but all main channels are also occupied by sharia (OIC) supporting (i.e. against basic Human Rights equality) muslims. Nazir Afzal ('Moral maze', news, culture etc.), Mishal Husain (news, culture etc.), Samira Ahmed (news, culture etc.), Razia Iqbal (news, culture etc.). And they all keep cheating the public about it and instead pointing finger to "dumb and hateful xenophobes". Not a word about e.g. Council of Europe's harsh critcism (see below) of muslims biggest sharia organization, the Saudi based and steered OIC. Foreigners isn't the peoblem - sharia islam is!



BBC's muslims and their PC supporters also meddle in UK election by demonizing "islamophobia", i.e. trying to stop critcs of islamofascism.



Muslim child/youth fascism induced by an islam interpretation from family and strengthened by PC media, politicians etc.



Peter Klevius: Everyone - incl. every muslim who respects Human Rights - ought to make sure to vote for an "islamophobe"! BBC and Sayeeda Warsi will make their utmost to stop critics of islamofascism in the election. Don't be robbed of your democratic right. And of course you know that the only real problem with migration is islamofascism.

BBC's "man in Hong Kong" asked street terror leader Joshua Wong if they could possibly escalate violence. And they could. One day later they put a Chinese on fire in a murder attempt.

While US/UK aim for militarism and war, China aims for health and wealth.



One Atheism and three "monotheisms"







The Saudi Aramco and OIC scams



Peter Klevius: The Saudi Aramco sale is the biggest ripoff in the world. If there's any future in oil and you don't care about environment, then why buy what's at its peak when Venezuela's PDVSA is bigger and as low it can get?!

Are you an "islamophobe" if you don't like islamist Human Rights violations? Islam has (via OIC's sharia declaration) abandoned the most basic anti-fascist Human Rights from 1948. Islam is hence the only religion in doing so - not even the Catholics have needed to replace Human Rights with "Catholic human rights".



The seed for world fascism is dormant in Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia - opposed by ECHR and Peter Klevius, but supported by Sayeeda Warsi.





Breakit instead of Brexit because what's the point of leaving one EU while still staying in an other called UK? England voted leave.



However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US.



BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property.

Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister. However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US.BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property.Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister.

China (laws against sharia islamofascism) and EU (Human Rights against sharia islamofascism) are now the only ones protecting basic (negative*) Human Rights. * Religious people and socialists don't like negative Human Rights simply because they prefer collectives ("communities") rather than individuals. That's why the web is full of misinfo about these rights. Read Peter Klevius definition instead if you want a deep view - or listen to Lauren Chen starting from 7:11 if you want it light The Saudi "custodian of islam" has some 1.5 billion "citizens" in the muslim world Ummah nation - and demands the world to bow them no matter what (as long they aren't Shia or so, of course). China, on the other hand, keeps its citizens and laws within its own borders. IS islam IS fascism and islam (even the archbishop agrees). So why is sharia fascism not separated from an "islam" that submits to basic Human Rights? As it stands now Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia (the 1990 Cairo declaration) still stands as the basic Human Rights violation via sharia muslims all over the world. And whereas China actively tries to erase sharia islamofascism, EU keeps promoting import of it while judicially telling us it's not right, yet doing nothing to stop it. Unlike the West, China hasn't aggressively meddled militaristically in other countries around the world, but rather being the world's foremost spreader of new technology and wealth. And whereas the West has eagerly supported Mohammed's totalitarian aims, China has, in practise, implemented in law most of the Human Rights advices that The Council of Europe has directed against OIC. Against this background West's Saudi backing and China smearing is deeply bigoted and hypocritical.



John le Carre: I'm depressed and ashamed of British nationalism. Nationalism needs enemies but today we really have no identifiable enemies except among ourselves.



North Atlantic (sic) Treaty Organization invades a country in Mideast and attacks (with chemical weapons) a people without a country. UK's Brexit business model: Sharia finance, weapons sale and militaristic meddling?UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (sic) and Global Neo-Imperialist and Militarist Meddling, Jeremy Hunt, 15 Oct. 2019: It's wrong to accuse Donald Trump - it's Americans isolationism because American taxpayers don't want to pay between 1/2 and 2/3 of the defense of Europe. And Turkey is very skilled at finding wedges and gaps between allies. UK should be EU's bridge to US.

Peter Klevius: No, EU should take care of its own defense - against whom? The Saudi dictator family who is the world's no 1 spender on weapons and islamic terror incitement and who hates EU's anti-sharia legislation? And UK taxpayers should not have to pay more for dangerous militarism. Militaristic meddling is a bad and dangerous business idea.

Read K.S. Lal (free online) on islam's evil spread!



A Google (i.e. U.S. web monopoly) search (20191006) reports 'islamists Hong Kong' "missing". Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers?



Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers? Peter Klevius cong r atulates Savid Javid for abandoning the islamofascist "islamophobia" smear. BBC s bigoted hypocrite Mishal Husain and others ought to follow!

BBC's Mark Mardell couldn't get a visa to China because of his extreme and hateful Sinophobia - but that didn't stop him/BBC from producing a fake anti-China program series while pretending to be there. Is Sinophobia really better than cooperation?

Are EU citizens in UK included in Tom Tugenhadt's "British people"?



Sinophobe Tom Tugendhat, chair of UK's Foreign Affairs Committee (who has studied islam and Arabic in Mideast) suggests that English speaking universities should consider banning Chinese students because "they might be used as leverage like Huawei". Peter Klevius wonders if one could be any more racist than this, and if he doesn't see any islamofascist sharia supremacist "leverage" at all? Btw, there are more than 50,000 Chinese muslims in Hong Kong. Peter Klevius wonders how many of them are "radical" ones and participate in BBC's lengthy anti-China propaganda "news" - while the world doesn't suffer from Chinese but from muslim violence and Human Rights violations?

US/UK destroyed the lives of millions of Chinese during some hundred years of evil militaristic meddling. BBC is now busy smearing China all the time while supporting Saudi islamofascism and violent Hong Kong demonstrators - but neglecting the mass of peaceful pro-China demonstrators. BBC also "worries" about Chinese "surveillance state" while the truth is China's technological superiority. US is much more insidious in its surveillance policies but lacks the techno - can't even produce a working 5G so far. US/UK follow exactly China but utilize the meantime to smear it. And who is really behind the Hong Kong riots? Someone who can't take China's success? But the Syria tactics won't work. US (and its UK puppet) wants to be able to meddle militarily near China - therefore its interest in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Tibet, Myanmar, Uyghur extremist muslims etc.

As Greta Thunberg is allegedly reported to the Swedish social authorities, Peter Klevius suggests that her parents read his thesis Pathological Symbiosis in LVU, Relevance, and Sex Segregated Emergence. Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Angels of Antichrist, the Social State vs the People (P. Klevius 1996) . And last but not least, Peter Klevius 1981/1992 Demand for Resources (original titel Resursbegar)

Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe share exactly the same "islamophobia". Council of Europe. Resolution 2253 (2019), Sharia, Saudi based and steered OIC's Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights: Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The right to manifest ones religion, however, is a qualified right whose exercise, under Article 17 of the Convention, may not aim at the destruction of other Convention rights or freedoms.

Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. People in UK-land (especially women) will loose their Human Rights after Brexit - while sharia prevails in UK, and UK citizens in EU are protected by the European Court of Human Rights. Brexit was meant to protect UK from muslim invasion via Turkey's proposed visa free deal with Merkel. Even the possibility of temporary membership in ECHR (in case of a deal) isn't enough - especially considering UK will be out of reach of the European Court of Justice.

US loosing the tech war - and starting a real one?



A muslim wants to criminalize Peter Klevius islamophobia. Really!



West's indulgence of islamofascism (sharia) has made its boasting against China about "democratic values" empty. The risk of you being stabbed, raped etc. by a hateful jihadi is created by your political leaders, BBC etc. - who also have arranged so it's not even called a hate crime.

Peter Klevius stands for these "stops" and due huge implications - all shame on him if you can prove him wrong (click links if you need to educate yourself before saying something stupid): Stop using Stop using the misleading 'gender' instead of sex (sociology)! Stop islam's abuse of Human Rights (jurisprudence)! Stop saying humans came "out of Africa" (anthropology)! Stop talking about "consciousness" when you don't know what you're talking about (philosophy/ai).

Peter Klevius: BBC supports the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's strategic use of supremacist islam which has spred muslim hate all over the world's streets, institutions etc. (and usually not correctly, if at all, reported by BBC which instead doesn't hesitate to give long coverage of "alternative news" that better suits its propaganda) - while muslim terrorist organizations keep it within muslim territories. So if true Salafists became the "gurdians of islam's holy places" then that would mean less muslim terror elsewhere. And less to cover up for BBC. How big a contributor to the suffering of islamic supremacist hate crimes has BBC's fake (and lack of) info been? Will we in the future see BBC in an international court accused of crimes against humanity? As it stands now the spill over effect of BBC's cynical support of proxy evil is stained in blood and rape etc. over innocent p
I have been with lots of Binary Option brokers so far, and only few of them were able to be what I expected them to be. Most of them will sc...
The heat pump industry is booming in China due to the governments extended policies and efforts on promoting the development and application of renewable energies. Conforming to the governments environmental goals of reducing energy consumption and tackling haze, the organisers of ISH China & CIHE 2016 has added Hall W4 to its show profile. The additional hall will be dedicated to showcase the latest heat pump technologies and other related products to meet the markets energy-saving objectives.

The 20th ISH China & CIHE will be held from 30 May  1 June at the New China International Exhibition Center in Beijing. For the first time, the fair will occupy all eight halls offered at the exhibition centre. Covering 95,000 sqm, the fair expects to welcome over 1,200 exhibitors from across the world.

With many cities in China suffering from severe air pollution and haze, air source heat pumps are proven to be one of the most effective and energy efficient heating technologies offered in the market. As the technology reaches maturity, it is being applied in both macro and micro settings, from districts to shopping centres, hotels, residential complexes, schools and the like.

Mr Song Zhongkui, Secretary General from the Heat Pump Committee of China Energy Conservation Association, expressed: At the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, national representatives united and pledged to further reduce emissions in their respective countries and regions. In order to achieve this goal, we have to rely on renewable energy sources and energy-efficient products such as air source heat pumps. With its renowned environmentally friendly, energy saving and efficient properties, I am confident that this technology will be a key promotion highlight for the Chinese government.

A number of prominent exhibitors have already confirmed to join. Some leading brands presenting innovative solutions and products include A.O Smith, AKL, AMA, Amitime, Airosd, Bilai, Cadiff, Elaix, Gassero, Gomon, GeeWee, Haier, Hoval, Hiseer, Jinshan, LCL, Lytte, Macon, Midea, NB Wave, Outes, Phnix, Puke, Power World, Realnen, Singyes, Shuangzhi, Tenesun, Tempia, Tongyi, Tsinghua Tongfang, Vanward, Vaillant, Wotech, Yong Zheng, ZKFD, Zxing and many more.

KNX Association debuts to introduce leading HVAC intelligent control technology and trends

The KNX Association, renowned as one of the leading worldwide standards for home and building control, have confirmed their participation at ISH China & CIHE for the first time. For the 2016 edition, KNX will introduce their international communication standards for HVAC intelligent controls and share their insight on the latest industry trends. Renowned brands include Afriso, Danfoss, Edison, Double-lin, Elsonic, Gaupu, Galaxywind, Hailin, Hoffer, Linkon, Meibes, Samson, Saswell, Siemens, Tsinghua Tongfang and others have reserved booths. They are committed to showcasing their latest home comfort and intelligent control products to the professional buyers worldwide.

Mr Heinz Lux, CEO of KNX Association, said: Our target visitors are manufacturers of home and building control products who are interested in applying KNX standards to their products. We aim to promote our advantages to engineers, designers, installers, planners, architects, national associations and end-users in the HVAC industry. Messe Frankfurt is a world-renowned exhibition company for organising professional exhibitions. We have ongoing partnership agreements with Messe Frankfurt building automation fairs across the world and the success shall be continued at ISH China & CIHE 2016.

ISH China & CIHE is organised by Messe Frankfurt (Shanghai) Co Ltd and Beijing B & D Tiger Exhibition Co Ltd. It is headed by the biennial ISH event in Frankfurt, Germany, which is the worlds leading trade fair for the Bathroom Experience, Building, Energy, Air-Conditioning Technology and Renewable Energies.

www.ishc-cihe.hk.messefrankfurt.com
ALBION  For an effort that probably shouldnt have gotten off the ground, the Brick Ark Inn bed and breakfast is thriving.

Ive hosted people from 48 countries around the world, owner Tammy Luce said. Thats just amazing to me.

People representing every state in the union  with the exception of Hawaii  have also chosen the Inn in Albion for their overnight lodging.

Luces business has thrived, in no small part, because she is flexible.

I cater the visit to what they want, she said. Some folks want to visit with me in the kitchen, and thats fine. Some want to be out to see the sights.

Luce provides breakfasts for her guests. In some bed and breakfasts, there is a set menu and time schedule for when guests can get their first meal of the day.

I serve breakfast on their schedule, she said. And if they want something in particular, she can make it happen.

Guests always have fresh baked goods available upon arrival, ranging from cookies to pies to breads  all made from scratch.

Luce seems to enjoy the people who come to stay. And they seem to enjoy her, too.

They send cards, they send gifts, Luce said.

It used to be January and February were her slow times. Now, shes busy in those months, too. All five of her rooms were booked for the third weekend in February.

To an outsider, at least, her sudden venture into the bed and breakfast business might have seemed a long shot.

In March of 2007, she lost her job when the automotive industry began its downturn.

I had some decisions to make, she said. I was out of work for the first time since I was 10-year-old. I had two children to raise. I really wanted to work for myself.

And she wanted to spend more time with her daughter Jessica and son Caleb.

She took a two-pronged approach to her work life, both of which fit into her desire to leave the corporate world and work for herself.

A Certified Public Accountant, she decided to open her home accounting operation in Albion. She also took a leap of faith and opened a bed and breakfast.

She figured one of her ventures would take off and would help support the other, since Albion didnt have either.

Turns out the community wants both, so I am a very busy gal, Luce said.

With her years of experience, it would have been easy to assume the CPA business would be her main source of income.

The bed and breakfast businesses?

She said she had never even been to such an establishment.

She needed to add on to make it feasible. The oldest part of the original homestead, built in 1846, had to be torn down. She said she offered it to various people, but had no takers.

Next, she needed to have an 1,800-square-foot addition built in its place.

Without a job, she couldnt get financing from a bank.

To make it feasible from a money standpoint, her architect told her shed have to serve as the projects general contractor.

Her only skills in that area were as a painter and someone who could wallpaper. Her only tools were a single screwdriver and a hammer.

It was crazy in the worlds terms, Luce said. In the worlds view, this was doomed from every angle.

But buoyed throughout the project with a fervent faith, she started what she anticipated would be a 12-month process.

Thanks to longtime family friend Jeff Nelson, she got to work. She and Nelson did all of the plumbing and wiring in the home. She contracted out work to several groups for such things as drywalling and trim work.

While on a mission trip with some high school students, she was exposed to a parasite that gave her a life-threatening illness, setting the project back six months.

During one phase of the construction process, she found herself in a small crawlspace in the dead of winter, running cable and phone lines. She was so cold  that section of the home still did not have any heat  that she actually thought she might perish in that crawlspace.

A revelation of sorts hit her.

This must be how Noah felt when he built the ark, she said.

From that moment on, she knew ark would be somewhere in the name of her bed and breakfast.

At every turn, Luce said she saw Gods generous hand in helping her through her project.

In 2013, a real strategy struck her family. Her youngest, Kaleb, 17, then a senior at Central Noble High School, died in a car crash.

In the midst of her grief, she was able to see Gods tender hand.

I lost my job at Bosch on March 9, 2007, she said. Gods plan was that I would be home with my son every day for six years.

Kaleb was killed on March 9, 2013.

Jessica, now 25, is married and living in the Evansville area. She received her masters degree in speech language pathology from Indiana University and works for a school system in southern Indiana.

Luce plans on writing three books from her experiences, the first showing how God helped provide for her during the construction project. The second will be a story about the people who have stayed at the bed and breakfast, detailing the blessings God has shown her through them. The third book will be about perseverance through tragedy, relying on the lessons God can show through times of loss.

Along with her book writing, she stays busy with her work as an accountant, as well as her duties as hostess. She has 3,200-square-feet to keep clean, and there is always baking to be done for guests.

You have to be organized, she said. I like to be as prepared as I can ahead of time. I get to do a variety of things. I really enjoy that.

She would also like to travel in the future, and looks forward to spending more time with her daughter.

She is also a member of the Albion Chamber of Commerce, currently serving on its board of directors.

When guests come to her, she is quick to point out popular tourist destinations in Albion like Blank Pine Animal Sanctuary and Chain O Lakes State Park as well as places to shop and eat in Albion.
Check back often for news and commentary about Kentucky by David Adams. Contact via email: kyprogress(at)yahoo.com or Lexington area telephone 537-5372.
When it comes down to it, family planning sometimes ends up in the hands of babes  just ask Tara and Jason Etrheim of Onalaska, whose new daughter, Rowan Amelia, pushed the envelope to arrive a month early, on Leap Day.

This definitely caught us by surprise, Jason said in an interview Monday, when Rowan was a smidge over 7 hours old and sleeping comfortably in mommys arms in her room at Gundersen Health System in La Crosse.

Rowan, weighing a mere 6 pounds, 11 ounces and stretching the tape at 19 inches, also pulled a fast one on her paternal grandparents, Mark and Dorie, also of Onalaska, who are in Ecuador on a trip scheduled specifically around the due date of March 25.

Shes very sad right now, Tara said of Dorie, who quickly volunteered to take the next flight home until Tara and Jason encouraged her just to wait until their scheduled return on Wednesday.

Dorie wasnt the only one chomping at the bit to see Rowan. Big sister Sloan, whose third birthday was Feb. 22, got to see pictures of Rowan and was telling other children at preschool when her dad dropped her off Monday morning, After school, I get to see my sister, Jason said.

Before Rowan made her early appearance, she was in the breech position, so Tara had an appointment for 11 a.m. Monday for a doctor to try to get her pointed in the right direction, Tara said.

My water broke at 1:20, Tara said. I stood there in shock, wondering what to do.

After she opted to wake up Jason, his initial assumption was I thought something was wrong with our other daughter, he said, until Tara told him Rowan appeared to be resetting the delivery clock.

Indeed she did, being born via caesarean section at 4:19 a.m.

Asked how they felt about having a Leap Day baby, Jason and Tara said that hadnt sunk in yet.

Were still in shock that we have a baby, Tara said.

They agreed, though, that they probably will celebrate Rowans birthday on March 1, in part so that Sloan will have her own birth month.

The couple, both 32, had decided on Rowans name on Thursday, just in time, Tara said.

As for Sloan, she has been able to observe the big sister/little sister phenomenon recently with family friends who had had a baby, so the Etrheims were anticipating a peaceful greeting for her sibling instead of the rivalry that sometimes ensues.

Hopefully, she will understand, because shes been the only child, and the only grandchild, Tara said.

Tara wont have any trouble finagling maternity leave, as she works part-time at MasterCraft Homes in La Crosse, which Jason co-owns with his parents.

Jasons mom already told me to stay home as long as I want, because theyre only little once, said Tara, who also is a professional photographer.

When the Etrheims decide Rowan is ready, Mom will take her to work with her, as she did Sloan.

Rowans surprise arrival did not catch her parents totally off guard in preparing her room outside the womb.

The nice thing about a second girl is the clothes  Jason said, with Tara ending his sentence with a practical point that probably is more important from the female perspective:   and theyre in the same season.
Over the past year, an Onalaska cemetery improvement project has built a head of steam, with a citizen committee raising about $150,000 to erect a decorative fence along Main Street and give that side of the cemetery a facelift.

Throughout this process, Onalaska City Engineer Jarrod Holter has consistently grounded the momentum, warning that once a city sends a project out for bids, theres no guarantee they come in at or below the anticipated price range.

Unfortunately, Holter called it.

The lowest bid for the cemetery work came in this week at $230,000, still $80,000 over the amount the Onalaska Cemetery Improvement Committee has fundraised for.

However, with the bid at $230,000, the project requires paving, storm sewer services, and a concrete sidewalk. The city has money set aside to pay for these specific types of projects, so by using these funds in the cemetery project, they can nearly cut the difference in half to $44,000.

Lois Riniker, speaking on behalf of the cemetery committee, encouraged the board to accept the bid, explaining that committee members felt very confident they could raise that much money.

She worried that if the city didnt accept the bids now, the project wouldnt be completed by Memorial Day  as the committee had hoped  and the price could increase by the next time the project could be bid.

So the question for the board then became: what happens if the cemetery committee cant raise the $44,000?

City Finance Director Fred Buehler said the city has enough money accumulated in its capital improvement budget to cover the remaining balance if the committee cant gather the donations.

The board felt satisfied with Buehlers reassurance, and approved the $230,000 bid.

Mayor Joe Chilsen said the project is absolutely worth it and wants to see it completed.

Bike lane removal

Regardless of any action taken on the topic, the board might have learned a valuable lesson at its March 1 meeting: Onalaska has a strong contingent of citizens who adamantly support a bike-friendly community.

A request for the relocation of a bike lane at the intersection of Sand Lake Road and Well Street drew a crowd of about 20, nearly half of which spoke to encourage the city to deny the request during a 25 minute public input session.

Paul Klipp, an insurance agent for American Family Insurance, requested the board vote to move the bike lane farther down the street and not in front of his business, which he also shares with Emery Insurance. When the bike lane was added in 2004, it narrowed the road and eliminated parking on the side of his business at 507 Sand Lake Road.

Because of an elderly clientele with nowhere to park and no access to the front entrance, he felt that it created a hazard for his customers.

I have seen older customers cross the road, Klipp told the board. Its a scary situation walking across Sand Lake Road at 3 oclock in the afternoon.

But almost every bicyclist countered with the same argument: that the move would be hazardous and unsafe. Many pleaded that removing the bike lane would only add more confusion to a heavily biked intersection where theres already a lot to be aware of as a bicyclist.

With the bike racks at City Hall overflowing for the boards meeting,

Council President Jim Bialecki, who chairs the board, said he felt inclined to do nothing with the request. He stated that the amount of work that went into establishing the bike lane there just over 10 years ago shouldnt be eliminated for increased parking.

Chilsen wanted to delay the request, given that representatives from Emery Insurance couldnt attend the meeting.

Bialecki countered that he respected that, but knowing how long its taken to get this far with the bike lane, made a motion to deny the request that carried unanimously.

Tree planting

The board approved a bid for a spring tree-planting project, a move that prompted by invasion of the emerald ash borer, a beetle that wiped out ash trees in the city.

The recommended bid for the project came at a cost of $250,000, which includes replacing nearly 500 trees city staff has already removed because of the infestation.

If the council approves next week, eight species of trees, none of them ash trees and none susceptible to the same bug, will be planted on city-owned public right-of-ways, typically between sidewalks and curbs.

The hope is that with a wider variety of trees, a bug wont cost the city a quarter of a million dollars next time around. Holter said that 30 to 40 years ago, ash and maple trees were popular, which meant that right before the infestation, ash trees made up about one-third of the citys trees.

The replanting process will continue through 2017.
In spite of its significant natural beauty, Door County is not an easy place to live.

Bounded on three sides by water, its cut off from the rest of Wisconsin, different from the rest of the state in the way a thumb is not really a finger. A large majority of the people who make it what it is for six months of the year  visitors and seasonal employees  are nowhere to be found in the off season.

But the flip side of that geographic and social isolation is an intense sense of community, of place, among those who really live there. And that is the philosophy that the new Door County Brewing Co. is putting into its beer, which this fall began appearing for sale in Madison and Milwaukee.

The brewery was founded this January by John McMahon, not a native to the Peninsula but a Chicago transplant who has called it home year round for 20 years. He used the startup to lure his 27-year-old head brewer and son, Danny, back to Door County years after he left for college in Minnesota and swore he wouldnt return for good.

Can I get you to move back home if I buy you a brewery? John McMahon recalls telling his son, who had quickly become an accomplished homebrewer in college.

It worked, and the first batches of Door County Brewing beer hit shelves and taps in June. For now, Dannys making it on the equipment at Sand Creek Brewing Co. across the state in Black River Falls, but the companys own brewery is expected to open for business by Memorial Day. The 1800s-era building just outside Baileys Harbor has been a barn, a feed mill and a grocery store, and after extensive renovation will host the brewery and tasting room.

A chat with the gregarious John McMahon gives a sweeping sense of what the Door County identity means to him.

First, theyll use local ingredients whenever possible. That will include grains, herbs, spices, or maybe even something a local farmer is growing that they dont know about yet. But even though McMahon lives on a cherry orchard, dont expect a cherry beer. Too cliche, he said.

Local sourcing is more than just label appeal though.

The earthiness of Door County  the ground, the trees, the water, the dirt  thats what our philosophy is about, McMahon said. Were trying to ground our beers in the tradition of where we are, so we can build our community by buying local as much as we can, and make quality products and create these microeconomies around what were doing.

The McMahons considered starting a brewpub but ultimately decided a production brewery was a better fit because everybody in the community benefits.

A brewery, if you make good beer, will be around for a long, long time. And we will be able to hire full-time, year round. I will be able to help 30 people like my son to stay in the place they love year round and be able to live, John McMahon said. Its about creating a long-term legacy of creating great beer.

The start on that legacy consists mainly of two flagship beers so far: Polka King porter and Little Sister, a Belgian-style witbier. On the horizon are two more year-round beers  a saison and a rye saison  from what Door County Brewing calls its rustic series of farmhouse ales. Those should be ready in time for launch during Madison Craft Beer Week in May, McMahon said, as well as one or two seasonals to join the limited Goat Parade smoked imperial stout.

The names evoke Door County as well. The imperial stout was named for the tendency for goats to line up and follow a person outside their pen, a phenomenon that somewhat resembles a parade, McMahon said. The wit is a reference to Little Sister Bay, just across the Peninsula from the brewerys home.

But the name with the best back story is Polka King. Hes a real man, Freddy Kodanko, whom McMahon called a bachelor farmer and self-anointed Polka King for his hobby of playing music at all the local summer festivals, wearing a crown and riding in the parades. Kodanko sounds like he was known for a lot of things, but one of them was driving his red Massey Ferguson tractor every day to the bar in Baileys Harbor. Thats depicted on the Polka King label, as are the slogans  Hey hey, Good beer will make you want to dance  that are Freddyisms well known by the locals, McMahon said.

A beer called Polka King is too good to pass up. Lets take a closer look.

Polka King Porter

Brewed by: Door County Brewing Co., Baileys Harbor (on the Lake Michigan side of the Door Peninsula, about 75 minutes northeast of Green Bay)

What its like: A lot of good porters made around here; Ale Asylums Contorter and Lake Louie Tommys are my favorites.

Where, how much: Door County Brewing has made inroads quickly in Madison, with dozens of outlets carrying it. My six-pack was $10 at Jenifer Street Market.

The beer: Polka King pours a lovely mahogany with an aroma of roasty-sweet but clean malt with chocolate accents and a touch of hops. The flavor is more of the same, with a nip of spiciness on the very dry back end. This very well balanced beer has a quaffable medium-light body.

Booze factor: Polka King oom-pah-pah-oom-pah-pahs in at a highly repeatable 5.3 percent ABV.

The buzz: McMahon said his sons beer is winning over Door County locals, even older folks who they didnt really expect to become customers. The combination of drinkability and great taste that Polka King and Little Sister bring to the glass lend credence to that claim. McMahon knows his brand has cachet both with tourists and also the tight-knit year-round community  the name opens the doors  but itll be the quality that will make or break Door County Brewing Co. statewide or even into markets in Illinois and Minnesota. If the next chapters unfold as well as the first, those doors will remain open for a long, long time.

Bottom line: 3 stars (out of four)
Sand Creek Brewing is a brewery with a tangled history.

To wit: While Sand Creek is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, its brewmaster, Todd Krueger, has been brewing for 17 straight years in the 158-year-old building in Black River Falls that Sand Creek now calls home. The special beer that its making to celebrate the milestone is an amped-up version of a stout that was originally made in the 90s by the now-defunct Wisconsin Brewing of Wauwatosa (no relation to the six-month-old brewery of the same name in Verona).

Founded in 1999 in a farm garage in Downing, about halfway between Eau Claire and the Twin Cities, Sand Creek combined about five years later with Pioneer Brewing, which in 1995 had revived the old Oderbolz brewery in Black River Falls after 75 years of dormancy and other uses. Krueger, then Pioneers brewmaster, stayed on as a co-owner of the new company, which retained the Sand Creek name and moved into the brewery in Black River Falls, about 50 miles on the other side of Eau Claire.

Adding to the confluence of names and histories was Pioneers 1998 purchase of Wisconsin Brewing, which had shuttered in Milwaukee County after floods in back-to-back years. Wisconsin Brewing made several beers that may be familiar to the states craft beer veterans, including Whitetail Cream Ale and two beers still in Sand Creeks portfolio: Badger Porter and Oscars Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.

Sand Creeks present is just as complicated as its past. Under its robust contract brewing business, Krueger brewed or oversaw the brewing of about 4,000 barrels of beer last year for other companies  nearly as much as the roughly 4,500 that left Black River Falls with the Sand Creek label. Contract clients known to Wisconsin drinkers include Spring Green-based Furthermore, whose brews have been made largely at Sand Creek since its 2006 debut; Door County Brewing, which is opening its own brewery in Baileys Harbor this summer; as well as Cross Plains Brewery (Essers), Milwaukee-area brewpub Saint Francis Brewing and Wisconsin Rapids-based Pangaea Beer.

Making beer for other breweries is an up-and-down business. Krueger noted that Sand Creeks 2013 contract barrelage was a nearly 50 percent decline to more historically normal levels after a 2012 that saw three major clients  Fulton (Minneapolis), Fargo (North Dakota) and Falls City (Louisville)  graduate to their own facilities like Door County Brewing will this year. One well-known fledgling that left the Sand Creek nest is Half Acre, which opened its own facility in 2007 and this March announced plans for its second brewery in Chicago.

Sand Creeks own beers have found a nice niche in the reliable and easy-drinking end of the Wisconsin craft beer spectrum. Its three biggest sellers, Krueger said, are Oscars, Wild Ride India pale ale and Hard Lemonade  which is better than it sounds, much less cloying and sugary than its national competitors.

Joining them and others in the Sand Creek portfolio this year are two new beers: American APA, a light, moderately hopped pale ale that should be hitting shelves by mid-May; and Bugler Brown, a brown ale rolling out later this summer as a fundraiser for the Jackson County Wildlife Fund, which is working with the Ho-Chunk Nation to reintroduce elk to the area.

My favorite Sand Creek brew has always been Oscars, a beer with big chocolate-roast flavor in a smooth, surprisingly low-ABV (4.5 percent) package. So I was excited to see that Sand Creeks anniversary brew was a double Oscars. Krueger has doubled Oscars before, but while previous versions featured cherry wood-smoked malt, he said this one uses a Belgian coffee malt left over from one of Fargos beers, which makes this an interesting emblem of what Sand Creek is all about.

Oscars Double Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

What its like: The coffee character isnt quite as pronounced here, but Oscars Doubles flavors and aromas are definitely in the ballpark of Founders Breakfast Stout.

Where, how much: Krueger made two batches of Oscars Double, the first 40 barrels primarily for bottles that hit shelves last month. The second 20-barrel batch, shipping around now, is mostly destined for keg distribution. My four-pack was $10.49 at Hy-Vee East.

The beer: Oscars Double pours inky black, with chestnut brown highlights around the edges. The aroma is a roasty delight of cohesive chocolate and coffee, with a touch of sweetness  yes, mocha-like. Sips reveal a sweetness  which has a touch of graininess in the middle, a slight demerit  that is well balanced by those roast bitter notes, which run the beers finish. Oscars Double has a soft, creamy texture from the oatmeal addition, and it retains regular Oscars smoothness in spite of the robust ABV. Krueger says Oscars malts or floats are a hit at summer beer festivals, and the chocolate cream motif that carries through to the double makes it easy to see why.

Booze factor: Oscars Double finishes a touch over 9 percent ABV.

The buzz: Juggling production of Sand Creeks own beers and those for its many contract clients would be a challenge in its own right. Doing so in a brewery just eight years younger than the state of Wisconsin, its understandable that Sand Creeks days in the old Oderbolz brewery might be numbered.

Though its been updated with modern brewing equipment, it still has its share of 19th-century features, including 17-inch-thick concrete that makes immense work out of running pipes and electrical work for brewing upgrades. Krueger and co-owner Jim Wiesender want to add a canning line, fermentation capacity and an expanded tap room, but the cost of adding it to the existing brewery just doesnt add up. Its why theyre looking at other locations  perhaps in Black River Falls industrial park, or in a larger city in the region  for a new brewery.

We know what we need for the numbers, Krueger said, we just have to find the right footprint to drop it into.

And who knows what that could mean Sand Creeks 20th anniversary.

Bottom line: 4 stars (out of five)
From the public files of the La Crescent Police Department.

Monday, Feb. 22

Extra patrol request, Valley Ln.

Houston County Sheriffs Offie records check regarding a permit to carry firearm, Main St.

Background check regarding a subject entering the Navy, Main St,

8:56 a.m. La Crescent resident applied for permit to purchase a firearm.

9:58 a.m. La Crosse resident obtained fingerprints for employment.

10:36 a.m. Assist federal agency with investigation, Orchard View Dr.

10:50 a.m. Welfare concern reported, Sycamore St.

11:57 a.m. La Crescent resident requested extra patrol.

12:01 p.m. Assisted sheriffs department with possible domestic, but were unable to locate involved parties, Bluff Dr.

12:53 p.m. Property found by La Crescent resident.

3:03 p.m. Open door at closed business reported, S. Sixth St. Officer inspected. Everything in order and owner contacted.

3:12 p.m. Emergency medical, N. Elm St.

10:01 p.m. La Crescent man cited for driving after revocation and possession of marijuana, N. Chestnut St.

Tuesday, Feb. 23

Resident fingerprinted for federal government employment, Main St.

2:08 a.m. Emergency medical, N. Second St.

8:09 a.m. Extra patrol requested in neighborhood, N. Fourth St. Suspicious vehicles and activity observed.

9:04 a.m. Juvenile sexual assault investigation, N. First St.

9:51 a.m. Citation issued to a La Crescent woman for allowing dog to run at large, S. Seventh St.

11:30 a.m. Welfare concern, S. Second St.

4:35 p.m. Suspicious activity believed to be related to controlled substance violation, Redwood East.

5:04 p.m. Suspicious activity/vehicle reported, N. Second St.

6:41 p.m. Civil property dispute regarding person who purchased motor vehicle failing to properly register it, N. Second St.

Wednesday, Feb. 24

Houston County Sheriffs Office background check for permit to carry firearm application, Main St.

12:03 a.m. Door checks, Lancer Blvd.

2:58 a.m. Door checks, N. Hill St.

4:18 a.m. Door checks, N. Elm St.

4:28 a.m. Door checks, S. Second St.

4:32 a.m. Door checks, S. Second St.

8:42 a.m. Emergency medical, Larch Ave.

9:40 a.m. Parking complaint, S. Oak St.

10:22 a.m. Child welfare concern, S. Third St.

11:02 a.m. 911 hang-up call, Park St. Everything found to be fine at the residence and believed number was dialed accidentally as phone was being wiped off.

3:09 p.m. Driving record request, Main St.

4:45 p.m. Report of business peddlers selling door-to-door, Red Apple Dr.

7:49 p.m. Emergency medical. Lancer Blvd.

Thursday, Feb. 25

1:47 a.m. Suspicious activity, McIntosh Rd.

2:09 a.m. Check forgery investigation, S. Third St.

7:52 a.m. Citation issued to a La Crescent man for driving after revocation, S. Sixth St.

9:19 a.m. Trouble with juvenile, Lancer Blvd.

11:27 a.m. La Crescent resident reported fraud phone call.

11:35 a.m. La Crescent resident applied for a permit to purchase a firearm.

1:03 p.m. Suspicious person reported at a local business, N. Elm St.

1:49 p.m. Lost property reported, Shore Acres Rd.

6:10 p.m. Emergency medical, S. First St.

6:58 p.m. Parking complaint, Main St. Issue was resolved.

7:23 p.m. Dog reported to be running at large, Welshire Dr. Animal taken to La Crescent Animal Rescue.

Friday, Feb. 26

11:19 a.m. La Crescent resident requested records.

12:58 p.m. La Crescent resident requested animal trap.

3:14 p.m. Trouble with juvenile, S. Oak St.

3:39 p.m. Received a complaint of a juvenile driver having driven through a residential yard, Larch Ave. Officer made contact with nearby homeowner, who refused to cooperate or identify the passenger in the vehicle that had just been dropped off as a passenger in the subject vehicle.l Under investigation.

3:59 p.m. Motorist assist, N. Elm St.

4:59 p.m. Assisted Houston County with a domestic situation, Selke Rd.

5:45 p.m. Check forgery reported, Main St.

10:49 p.m. Minor property damage motor vehicle crash reported, S. Second St.

Saturday, Feb. 27

5:33 a.m. Emergency medical, Lancer Blvd.

9:21 p.m. La Crescent man cited for no vehicle insurance, Hwy. 16.

10:47 p.m. Door checks, N. Pine Creek Rd.

Sunday, Feb. 28

5:00 a.m. Open door at local business, N. Chestnut St.

12:07 p.m. Rochester man issued citation for speeding, Hwy. 14/61.

12:43 p.m. Caledonia man issued speeding citation, Hwy. 14/61.

1:54 p.m. Hudson, Wis., man issued speeding citation, Hwy. 14/61.

2:26 p.m. Onalaska, Wis., woman issued citation for speeding, Hwy. 14/61.

8:09 p.m. Tobacco compliance checks, S. Walnut St. Business passed. No tobacco sold to minor under 18.

8:14 p.m. Tobacco compliance checks, N. Fourth St. Business passed. No tobacco sold to minor under 18.

8:21 p.m. Tobacco compliance checks, Kistler Dr. Business passed. No tobacco sold to minor under 18.

8:35 p.m. Tobacco compliance checks, S. Third St. Business passed. No tobacco sold to minor under 18.

10:02 p.m. Suspicious activity, DNR boat landing.

10:15 p.m. Arrested a La Crescent woman for no Minnesota drivers license, no insurance and failure to update address, S. Seventh St.
WASHINGTON  Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton swept through the South on Super Tuesday, claiming victory in their parties primaries in delegate-rich Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia. The front-runners appeared ever more likely to end up in a general election showdown.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, the nights single biggest prize, as well as neighboring Oklahoma. Democrat Bernie Sanders picked up his home state of Vermont, as well as Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota, but failed to broaden his appeal with minority voters who are crucial to the party in presidential elections.

The night belonged to Trump and Clinton, who turned the busiest day of the 2016 primaries into a showcase of their strength with a wide swath of American voters.

Signaling her confidence, Clinton set her sights on Trump as she addressed supporters during a victory rally.

Its clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower, she said.

Trump, too, had his eye on a general election match-up with the former secretary of state, casting her as part of a political establishment that has failed Americans.

Shes been there for so long, Trump said at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. If she hasnt straightened it out by now, shes not going to straighten it out in the next four years.

Clinton also picked up wins in Texas, Arkansas and Massachusetts, nabbing her first victory in New England, while Trump carried GOP contests in Arkansas, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Trumps dominance has rattled Republican leaders, who fear hes unelectable against Clinton in November. Even as Trump professed to have good relationships with his partys elite, he issued a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who declared earlier in the day that this party does not prey on peoples prejudices. Trump said that if the two dont get along, hes going to have to pay a big price.

But all efforts to stop Trump have failed, including an aggressive campaign by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to discredit the billionaire businessman.

For Rubio, Super Tuesday turned into a bitter disappointment. He emerged with his first victory in Minnesota but failed to live up to the wider hopes of the numerous Republican officeholders who have promoted him as the partys best alternative to Trump.

With an eye on Floridas March 15 primary, Rubio vowed to keep up efforts to unmask the true nature of the front-runner in this race.

Cruz desperately needed his win in Texas in order to stay in the race. He beat Trump in three contests this primary season, more than any other Republican, a fact he wielded as he called on Rubio and other candidates to step aside.

I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, united, Cruz said.

With results still coming in, Trump had won at least 175 Super Tuesday delegates, while Cruz picked up at least 89. Overall, Trump leads the Republican field with 257.

Sanders wins did little to help him make up ground in his delegate race with Clinton. She was assured of winning at least 421 of the 865 at stake on Super Tuesday. Thats compared to Sanders, who had at least 232 delegates.

Trumps wins in the South were a major blow to Cruz, who once saw the region as his opportunity to stake a claim to the nomination. Instead, hes watched Trump, a brash New York real estate mogul, display surprising strength with evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming his populist appeal would fizzle. Instead, hes appeared to grow stronger, drawing broad support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states on Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump. Nine in 10 of Trumps voters were looking for an outsider, and half were angry with the government, according to exit polls conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

In the Democratic race, Clinton has steadied herself after an unexpectedly strong early challenge from Sanders. The Vermont senator did carry his home state decisively, and told the crowd at a raucous victory party that he was so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country.

Sanders, who has energized supporters with his calls for a political revolution, has struggled to expand his base beyond young people and liberals. His weakness with black voters, a core part of the Democratic constituency, was underscored anew.

Clinton was supported by at least 80 percent of black voters in the Deep South and Texas. She was also bolstered by women and older voters.
A challenge to a decision by Wisconsin regulators authorizing a high-voltage power line between Holmen and Dane County will be allowed to proceed in court.

La Crosse Countys town of Holland petitioned the court in April for review of the Public Service Commissions approval of the Badger-Coulee line and its routing, which runs along Highway 53, across the street from another high-voltage line completed last year.

La Crosse County Circuit Judge Todd Bjerke denied the PSCs motion to have the case thrown out in an order released Thursday.

Now we can deal with the substance of the matter, said the towns attorney, Frank Jablonski.

A joint venture of Xcel Energy and American Transmission Co., the 345-kilovolt line, as approved, will originate at a substation on Briggs Road that was built as part of CapX2020, the other high-voltage transmission project running across Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. The chosen route would run through Jackson County.

ATC and Xcel said the project will improve system reliability, deliver cheaper power and provide a pipeline for wind energy from Minnesota and Iowa to population centers to the east.

The three-member PSC, all appointed by Gov. Scott Walker, agreed, allowing the estimated $580 million cost to be passed on to ratepayers in Wisconsin and other Midwestern states.

Opponents contend the line isnt needed and will allow utilities to profit by trading energy while discouraging more cost-effective local alternatives such as energy efficiency and solar power.

The town argued that underlying assumptions about the growing demand for electricity do not stand up and also objected to the approved route, which will travel north from Holmen to Black River Falls and then along the I-94 corridor to the outskirts of Madison.

The PSC sought to dismiss the case on the grounds that the towns petition was not filed within the statutory 30-day period after its final ruling.

The ruling, signed June 12, was not delivered to the town until June 15. The town filed its petition July 14, which PSC attorneys argued was more than 30 days after the ruling was signed, and therefore finalized.

Holland would not be able to know what was in the PSCWs final order until it was served upon them, Bjerke wrote. Without knowing what the PSCWs final order was, Holland could not petition for judicial review until it was served upon them.

The PSC in a statement said it will defend the merits of the Badger-Coulee decison.

Bjerke has not set a date to hear arguments on the petition.

ATC said the decision would not affect construction, which began last month in Dane County and is expected to continue through 2018.

The town has not sought to put the project on hold during the court proceedings, citing state statutes that would require it to put up a $580 million bond.

The Legislature arranged things so that is out of reach for any municipality or individual, Jablonski said.
Black River Falls elementary students will attend school on one campus starting next school year.

The district recently was able to make a change to allow 4-year-old kindergarten through fifth-grade students attend school at Forrest Street Early Learning Center or the nearby new elementary school when they begin classes for 2016-17.

BRF originally had planned to house 4K and early childhood programming at the Gebhardt Elementary building during referendum discussions of building a new elementary school, but recent changes to a state aid program allowed the move to have all elementary students at one campus off Forrest Street.

We just kind of felt like the stars aligned a little bit, BRF Superintendent Shelly Severson said. Im just really excited for people  to feel like they can build that relationship with school even stronger because theyre not going to be transitioning all the time.

Red Creek Elementary is under construction at a site at the corner of Forrest Street and Highway A in Black River Falls, directly adjacent to the current Forrest Street building, which houses early childhood, 4K, kindergarten and first-grade students. The new building, OKd by a successful referendum in fall 2014, is set to hold second- through fifth-grade classrooms and mean the closure of Third Street Elementary next school year.

Gebhardt, which currently has fourth- and fifth-grade students, will be home to the Black River Area Green School and Nexus and Phoenix programming starting in 2016-17 instead of also incorporating early childhood and 4K.

A state change to the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program removed a cap on class sizes, allowing BRF to slightly increase class size to accommodate keeping early childhood and 4K students at Forrest Street. Severson said the new arrangement will allow students and parents more consistency in the lower grade levels and mean only changing buildings once instead of twice during their elementary school years.

I just think its fantastic, she said. Hopefully between Forrest Street and Red Creek, they will continue to align  Its exciting.

Construction of Red Creek continues on schedule and on pace to open for the start of the new school year this fall. The work has reaped the benefits of mild fall and winter weather throughout the project.

Its been continuing ahead of schedule, which is just great news, Severson said.
A student-led initiative is under way to improve respect and understanding at Black River Falls High School.

The Student Senate is looking to Change the Conversation through an initiative of the same name after starting to field concerns about respect and diversity issues last fall.

In general, around the school, there was a lack of respect and a lack of understanding of whats acceptable and whats not, said BRF senior Daniel Forman, president of the Student Senate. Overall, were trying to get across the respect  respect is key.

The Change the Conversation effort recently launched and is planned to have pairs of Student Senate members craft and deliver messages in classrooms to highlight the concerns raised and how students can help improve the school culture.

Student Senate members began to hear increased concerns from their student groups of constituents last fall about negative interactions between students and also between students and teachers. One of the first issues raised was about non-attentive students in classrooms who were disruptive to the point that listening and learning was difficult, Forman said.

There also was a particular instance in which a student came forward to express they heard a racial comment intended to be humorous that was offensive to some.

It just raised up the issue again of some of the complexities we get into with that in our building, said BRF social studies teacher Paul Rykken, who also serves as a Student Senate advisor.

The Student Senate presentations are aimed at talking about peer and teacher respect and also broadening into topics of race, gender and sexual orientation and how to be sensitive to them.

We decided we would try to come up with a proactive approach to getting students involved in being solutions-oriented and providing leadership, Rykken said. The goal is, between now and the end of the year, that we just kind of keep this alive and keep bringing it to students in good ways, short doses and trying to get some discussion going.

Were trying to get different kids involved in it, and we think that its going to be more effective if we can get student leadership into it.

The Student Senate also has planned to play video messages over the schools broadcast channel to extend the message school-wide. One video involved interviewing teachers for their thoughts on the subjects.

In Student Senate, we had a discussion on what would be the most effective way to improve the conversation in our school, and we thought that the best thing to do would be to give presentations to classes throughout the school so we can kind of raise awareness of this problem, Forman said.

Hopefully we can get some discussion so its kind of like a grassroots movement.

Matthew Bronsdon, Student Senate vice president, said he hopes the organization can develop the initiative into a format for elementary school students, who can take in the positive messages early and then bring them into the middle and high schools as they advance through the grades.

I think it will be valuable if we get that message out to the younger grades, he said.

Rykken also hopes the project extends beyond the end of the 2015-16 year.

I think it goes beyond, he said. Well have to see how it plays out here and well see in the next couple of months. I dont envision it stopping because I think its just an ongoing issue.
Black River Falls School Districts annual Jump Rope for Heart fundraising event took in a record amount of money this year.

Elementary school students in grades second through fifth at Third Street and Gebhardt elementary schools raised $24,000, which shattered last years previous record of just over $19,000.

I was astounded by the amount we raised, said BRF fourth-grade teacher Mary Danielson, who serves as the local Jump Rope for Heart coordinator. It was unbelievable. Since we have been allowed to have our event during the school day, we have had amazing results.

I am proud to be part of a community that does such wonderful things for so many people.

The 37th annual fitness and fundraising event was held Friday, Feb. 12 at the two elementary schools and promotes heart health through jumping rope and hula hooping. It is co-sponsored by the American Heart Association and the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance.

Top individual fundraisers from Gebhardt were fourth-graders Madyson Schultz and Kiana WhiteOwl and fifth-graders Frannie Everson and Jayme Koenigs. Top students from Third Street included second-graders Chloe Hawley and Macie Goldsmith third-graders Lauren Beck and Ashton Volkey.

Schultz and WhiteOwl also were top individual fundraisers during last years event.

Second and third graders each had an hour to rotate through various stations, and the fourth- and fifth-graders had a half hour to jump in a 35 foot rope and compete in a speed jumping contest. There were 257 jumpers that also volunteered to gather donations for the American Heart Association.

The speed-jumping contest at Gebhardt gave jumpers a chance to show their individual jumping abilities. The top fifth-grade boys jumper was Gabe Steponik and the top fifth-grade girl was Olivia Rumsey. The fourth-grade boys were led by Nick Dutton and the girls by Bre Nortman.

Third Street again created its own challenge to see how much the school could raise and set a goal of $11,000 that would allow students who raised a minimum amount to throw whipped cream-filled plates at teacher and coordinator Andy Osegard.

The students exceeded the $11,000 mark and also hit $15,000, which allowed the top six individual earners to take part in shaving Osegards head. Last year Third Street students raised $11,000, prompting Osegard to wear a duck costume for two school days.

This event would not be so successful if it wasnt for the combined efforts and generosity of the jumpers, volunteers, parents, Black River Falls School District and especially the community, Danielson said. Thank you to everyone.
Lincoln Elementary School recently was honored for its work in educating students from low-income backgrounds.

Lincoln was named a beating-the-odds school for the third year in a row and the eighth time in 13 years by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

We just feel like weve got some great things going on, said Alma Center-Humbird-Merrillan Superintendent Paul Fischer. We feel like were continuing the excellence weve always provided at the elementary school.

Wisconsins Title I School of Recognition awards highlight schools that have demonstrated success in educating students from low-income families. Schools named with beating-the-odds honors are in the top 25 percent of high-poverty schools in the state and have above-average student achievement in reading and mathematics when compared to similar schools.

Poverty is measured by the number of students who received free or reduced price lunches, and Lincoln Elementary has about 60 percent of its 160 students who are eligible. Test scores continue to grow at the elementary level, Fischer said.

We take great pride in the work that were doing as a staff and as a district, he said. We try not to focus on that one test as Ive said  we look at those that were giving throughout the year.

Lincoln Elementary was one of 117 schools to receive beating-the-odds honors this school year and will accept its award at a March 14 ceremony at the state capitol in Madison.

Congratulations to these schools. They are examples of the academic success we need in all of our schools to close achievement gaps, State Superintendent Tony Evers said in a statement announcing the winners. These awards recognize the work of students and their parents along with teachers, school administrators and school staff members to break the link between poverty and low academic achievement.

Their efforts will help us ensure that every student graduates college and career ready.

Lincoln Elementary Principal Brad Rogers said the award highlights the schools efforts in professional development, goal setting and positive behavior initiatives.

He said the relationships between staff members and students are keys to success, noting learning increases when those relationships are established.

(The award) is definitely just another way to show the great things that were doing in Lincoln schools  it really is, said Rogers, whos in his third year in his position. I was just fortunate enough to step into the system that has the support of the community.

Its a great community to work within, and the staff here  its a phenomenal staff.

Both Rogers and Fischer noted the district would like to take the honors a step further and become a high-progress or high-achieving school, which dont take poverty levels into account and rather awards top schools in the state regardless of family income.

Wed like to get to the next level where were in a different category where were a top-ranked school and it doesnt matter what your poverty level is, Fischer said. (A high-achieving school) is what we strive for. Thats what we really strive for. While were proud of the being-the-odds award, we want to get to that next level where we have high student success overall.
Two Jackson County school districts are the recipients of grants to combat alcohol and drugs.

The Black River Falls School District received a state AODA grant for $15,000 and Blair-Taylor High School was the recipient of a $1,000 student mini grant.

Funding for the 2015-16 school year grants, which are administered by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, totals more than $940,000 across the state and comes from the penalty surcharge for traffic fines and forfeitures.

Students can be their own best teachers, State Superintendent Tony Evers said in a statement. When our young people create solutions to the problems of alcohol and drug use or other risky behaviors, they become part of a school environment that supports healthy and resilient students.

This is at least the third year Black River Falls has received the grant, which it uses for several prevention activities in the schools. High school students come to the UW-Extension office, where they are taught on how to educate younger students on anti-drug programming.

Middle school students receive a variety of information, including prescription drugs, and the district last year started adding in information about heroin and needles and some on methamphetamine.

Funds also go toward suicide prevention education and the Strengthening Families program.

Its very important, said Lisa Listle, Together for Jackson County Kids project director who manages several grants. I know that the schools are on a tight budget  so this grant brings prevention education to students.

BRF Superintendent Shelly Severson said collaboration with community groups for this type of programming is important.

We are very appreciative of the collaborative efforts in our AODA programming. While we continue to use our school counselors to provide developmentally appropriate AODA education to our students throughout the grade levels, we know that our county continues to struggle in fighting illegal substances, she said. Our schools are a microcosm of the greater community  the more directions we work to address this important topic, the stronger our efforts become.

Blair-Taylor High School students work on and submitted the application for a mini grant, and a majority of the funding will be used for the schools Kick Butts Tuesday event for anti-tobacco programming for elementary students.

Were very excited about it, High School Principal Dana Eide said.
Two well-established craft brewing companies in Wisconsin have been purchased but not by a macro brewing company looking to expand its portfolio.

Sand Creek Brewing Co. in Black River Falls, which in 2015 produced 9,990 barrels of beer, has announced that it has acquired Furthermore Brewing Co. of Spring Green and Cross Plains Brewing Co. in Cross Plains. Neither company had its own brewing facility but instead had their beer made on contract by other breweries.

Cross Plains had used Stevens Point Brewery until 2013, when it began using Sand Creek. Furthermore has been brewed at Sand Creek since its inception in 2006.

Each brewery has its unique take on its style of beers, Jim Wiesender and Todd Krueger, co-owners of Sand Creek said in a joint statement. All three breweries together will complement each others strengths.

Under the arrangement, finalized in October but announced Tuesday, Furthermore and Cross Plains will operate as subsidiaries of Sand Creek Brewing Co. and retain their names and distributor networks for the time being. Both Wayne and Larry Esser of Cross Plains Brewing Co. and Aran Madden of Furthermore will continue on as brewery representatives of Sand Creek and their respective brands, Wiesender and Krueger said.

Madden and the Essers could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon, but Wiesender said the deals came along in September at about the same time and will allow for the brands to expand their reach into the Minneapolis and Chicago markets.

They didnt know they were talking about the same thing at the same time, Wiesender said. Its a great way to continue to grow the brands. The economy of scales was the driving force.

In 2015, Furthermore produced about 1,500 barrels while Cross Plains produced about 2,000 barrels, Wiesender said.

Sand Creek was founded in 1999 in a dairy barn in Downing, about 40 miles northwest of Eau Claire. In 2004, Wiesender joined forces with Krueger to buy the Pioneer Brewing Co., founded in 1995 in a building in Black River Falls that was originally built for the Oderbolz Brewing Co. in 1856.

Besides its own brands, Sand Creek also brews beer for the Pangaea Beer Co., based in the Marquette County community of Neshkoro; Door County Brewing Co. in Baileys Harbor and Lake Monster Brewing Co. in St. Paul, Minnesota.

When Madden and his business partner, Chris Staples, came up with a plan for their Furthermore Brewing Co., they spent $60,000 to buy the former public works building from the village of Spring Green. They later sold the building and purchased land in the villages industrial park.

It has always been six months away, Madden told the State Journal in 2010. Were always thinking about it.

In the beginning, Madden made the more than two-hour drive from Spring Green to Black River Falls to brew the beer and return on bottling day but later had Krueger, Sand Creeks brewmaster, brew his brands.

The Esser family in 1995 relaunched the Esser brand  produced in Cross Plains from 1863 until Prohibition in 1920  and had the beer produced at Stevens Point. The companys brands include Essers Best Original and Essers Cross Plains Special and is one of the oldest beer names in the state.

George Esser came to Madison in 1852 from Ichendorf, Germany, and purchased a small brewery in Monroe for $1,500 where he produced lager. In 1863, he purchased 2.5 acres of land at what is now Church Street and Brewery Road in Cross Plains. The original building had two cellars and rooms for the Esser family.

The beer business has been good to us, Wayne Esser said in 2013. Very few businesses nowadays last to be 150 years.
After seven years with the La Crosse School District, Steve Salerno is moving on.

Salerno said he recently accepted an offer to become the next superintendent of the Mount Horeb Area School District, near Madison. Salerno, the associate superintendent of human resources for La Crosse, said he was interested in the challenge leading a school district and was looking forward to the opportunity to interact more with students.

I am ready for a bit of a change, he said. I felt being a superintendent might be an option for me.

Salerno was one of four finalists for the position, all from Wisconsin school districts, and survived two rounds of interviews. One of the finalists was the director of advanced learning of the Madison Metropolitan School District, and the other two were superintendents in Platteville and Mineral Point.

We look forward to working with Steve and welcoming him and his family to Mount Horeb, board president Mary Heidl said on the districts superintendent search blog etnry announcing the decision.

Salerno started as the associate superintendent for human resources in July 2009. Before that, he was the director of human resources and a middle school principal in the Janesville School District in southern Wisconsin. He started his career 1993 as a high school social studies teacher.

The Mount Horeb district serves 2,500 students and is growing, Salerno said.

It is a district that is a lot like La Crosse, he said. It has a lot to offer in terms of academic programs.

A firm start date at Mount Horeb hasnt been set, Salerno said, as he works with administration at both districts on the details of the transition.
WEST SALEM  The battle flag of the Confederacy no longer flies in the West Salem High School parking lot after administrators asked students to either remove the flags from their vehicles or park elsewhere Tuesday.

Ethan Faucett, who said he first began flying the Confederate flag a few weeks ago as a gesture of individualism and rebellion, was warned late last week that the flag was a distraction. Principal Josh Mallicoat explained the significance and history of the flag. Faucett removed the flag from his vehicle.

On school property, its not OK, Mallicoat said he told Faucett.

On Monday, the flag was back and in force: Four trucks brandishing the Confederate flag were parked along the back of the school lot, clearly visible from Mark Street.

Faucett, a 17-year-old junior, and his senior friends Zack Magnuson, 17, Jared Novak, 18, and Jake Adams, 18, had scoured the student handbook for a rule covering the flags and hadnt found one.

Mallicoat warned them they wouldnt be allowed into the parking lot again with the flags raised. On Tuesday morning, the group returned to the parking lot, flags flying high. Mallicoat invited the students, now five of them, to his office.

I tried to make it a learning opportunity for them, he said.

Mallicoat again explained the significance of the flag to the students and what it has come to represent.

Its definitely associated with principles that we dont stand for, Mallicoat said.

Mallicoat told the group the flags couldnt be flown on school property because they had become a distraction to other students.

All of them claimed there wasnt any racial motivation to it, Mallicoat said. They thought the flag looked cool flying from the back of their vehicles.

He added that some of the students said they identified with Southern pride.

In no way was it racist or to upset anyone, Novak said.

Mallicoat said two of the students responded well when asked to remove the flags or leave the parking lot and they apologized for the disruption.

He said the other three students werent as happy to comply, but agreed to park elsewhere.

Novak said it was understandable that the school district asked them not to park in the parking lot.

We didnt put up a fuss. We understand that they need to teach and we are not trying to cause a big problem, he said. Its rebel, not racist.

Three of them parked their vehicles on the street, less than a block from the high school. Faucett and his friends returned to their vehicles after school to find the flags stolen.

Novak said people have the right to think what they want, but they dont have the right to steal.

All the flags were gone, Faucett said. One was ripped off the pole.

This has done little to dissuade the students. Theyve already ordered new flags and plan to fly them again once the community calms down.

Magnuson said they are now trying to share the true meaning of the flag.

Novak said he has received a lot of support from fellow students telling him to keep the flags up.

Both Mallicoat and Superintendent Troy Gunderson consulted attorneys before asking the students to remove the flags.

As a school you want to make sure you handle these cases carefully, Gunderson said.

Gunderson cited the West Salem High School handbooks policy that states a students freedom of speech can be limited if it causes a significant disruption, is perversely vulgar, or is harmful to ones self or others.

It had reached the point of being disruptive, he said.

Gunderson said he faced a similar as superintendent in Galesville, where a student refused remove a white t-shirt that read KKK.

Faucett and his friends display caught the attention of a number of students, teachers and parents.

Theyre kind of idiots, student Nick Johnson said. They cant claim the heritage because theyre not from the South.

Student Brett Zinnel said flying the flags gave the school a negative feel.

They can do their own thing, but maybe not on school property, he said.

Mallicoat said he received numerous calls and visits from concerned parents, and a number of minority students expressed anxiety over the display.

He said in the display cut into educational time, but distraction became a learning opportunity because of classroom discussions.

This didnt come as a surprise to the students who parked their vehicles on the street less than a block from the high school.

Magnuson said he and his friends understand the past, but that other people have misconceptions about the flag because they dont know the history.
Ive got two questions Id like to address to our Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Ive been attentive to the debates to date and to the best of my knowledge, neither question has been asked.

Weve heard plenty about health care and immigration, the economy and foreign relations, ISIS and the criminal justice system, the environment and gun control  all highly worthy topics. Yet these arent the only issues that merit our attention.

So without further ado: Candidates, what do you believe that we as a society must do to meet the social and emotional needs of the rapidly growing population of elderly in our country?

To provide some context: In 2013, people reaching age 65 had an average life expectancy of an additional 19.3 years (20.5 years for females and 17.9 years for males), according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Furthermore, the oldest old  those age 85 and over  are the most rapidly growing elderly age group in the country. In 1994, the oldest old numbered 3 million and comprised 10 percent of the elderly and about 1 percent of the total population. In 2050, the oldest old are projected to number 19 million  thats 24 percent of elderly Americans and 5 percent of all Americans (US Census Bureau).

To highlight one critical need: According to the National Institute on Aging, as many as 5 million Americans today may have Alzheimers disease. The physical and emotional implications of this are tremendous, not only for the person afflicted with Alzheimers, but for family, friends, caregivers and community as well.

Please note: My question is not how we meet the medical or other physical needs of our oldest adults, critical though these are. My question concerns their social and emotional needs. What can we do to address the weight of loneliness, isolation and emotional neglect suffered by so many? Does government have a role in how we as a nation respond? What about the next president? What about the average citizen? Be specific please.

Second question: What can be done to improve the quality of life for our nations only truly non-immigrant population, American Indians, and especially the conditions of reservation life?

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, There are more than 560 federally recognized Indian tribes. On Indian reservations, poverty is still commonplace and tribes face a number of social and economic challenges.

A Feb. 12, 2014 article in The Washington Post quotes Theresa M. Pouley, the chief judge of the Tulalip Tribal Court in Washington state and a member of the Indian Law and Order Commission: One-quarter of Indian children live in poverty, versus 13 percent in the United States. They graduate high school at a rate 17 percent lower than the national average. Their substance-abuse rates are higher. Theyre twice as likely as any other race to die before the age of 24. They have a 2.3 percent higher rate of exposure to trauma. They have two times the rate of abuse and neglect. Their experience with post-traumatic stress disorder rivals the rates of returning veterans from Afghanistan.

The Post article further states that in one of the broadest studies of its kind, the Justice Department recently created a national task force to examine the violence and its impact on American Indian and Alaska Native children, part of an effort to reduce the number of Native American youth in the criminal justice system. The level of suicide has startled some task force officials, who consider the epidemic another outcome of what they see as pervasive despair.

Candidates, what should be the response within our country  again, of government, including our next president, as well as of the average citizen  to the challenges facing so many of our countrys American Indians, and particularly the young people?
MADISON (AP) | Gov. Scott Walker signed a sweeping bill Friday that reworks Wisconsins hiring and firing practices, brushing aside Democrats complaints that the measure will lead to cronyism in state agencies.

The Republican-backed legislation dramatically rewrites the states 110-year-old civil service system by eliminating job applicant exams, centralizing hiring decisions within the governors administration and tossing so-called bumping rights, which protect more senior employees from losing their jobs during layoffs.

The new law also creates merit bonuses, allows state agencies to extend probation periods from the current six months to two years and specifies that layoffs will be based on job performance rather than seniority.

A handful of other states have also taken steps to roll back civil service protections, which are designed to keep officials from handing out government jobs as rewards to their political allies. Arizona, Tennessee and Colorado all passed legislation in 2012 scaling back those states civil service protections.

Critics say the century-old rules lead to inefficiencies, offer little incentive for hard work and unfairly protect employees who behave badly.

The bills authors, Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke of Kaukauna and Sen. Roger Roth of Appleton, insist the changes will help state agencies quickly replace baby boomers as they retire. The new law calls for state agencies to complete the hiring process within 60 days.

The Republicans also contended, along with Walker, that the current system makes it too difficult to punish bad behavior. The new law defines just cause for terminations and lists infractions that would result in immediate firing, such as stealing or viewing pornography at work.

Democrats say the bill will open the door to patronage and favoritism in state agencies. They also say its another attack on state workers by Walker, who quickly backed the bill following his short-lived 2016 presidential bid. Walkers administration said in 2014 that he had no interest in changing Wisconsins system.

The governor  who made a national name for himself among conservatives by redefining Wisconsins labor landscape  stripped almost all public workers of their collective bargaining rights in 2011, and later helped erase local prevailing wages.

The changes, most of which will take effect July 1, are expected to affect about 30,000 state workers.
Trust and faith must be restored in the states embattled Department of Corrections, the agencys new leader said Wednesday in his first public appearance since being appointed by Gov. Scott Walker last month.

Jon Litscher, a former DOC secretary under Republican Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum, told the Senates public safety committee that his priority is to improve staffing levels, address training and restore faith in the states justice system that has waned amid a wide-ranging investigation of the states youth prison.

The department as it stands now has many issues that we have to face, Litscher said at a hearing on his appointment.

While critical problems exist throughout the entire Department of Corrections, Litscher said a primary concern is addressing systemic issues at Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls juvenile facility in Irma, about 30 miles north of Wausau.

In January 2015, the state Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into alleged abuse at Lincoln Hills, with allegations ranging from sexual assault to misconduct in public office.

The Lincoln County District Attorney launched a John Doe probe into the allegations in October, and the FBI assumed control of the investigation earlier this year.

Litscher said under his previous administration of DOC  and before the passage of Walkers law that all but eliminated collective bargaining for most public employees, including corrections staff  a system of meetings between DOC administration and employee groups at each prison was in place.

Litscher said he hopes to establish something similar if meetings are not currently occurring.

He also said a critical problem DOC must address is ending the process of jamming, or operating an institution with staffing levels so low that employees must work overtime.

Staff at Lincoln Hills who spoke with the Wisconsin State Journal on the condition of anonymity because of a department policy prohibiting staff speaking with reporters without permission have said they often work 16-hour shifts because of low staffing levels.

Lincoln Hills staff have also said they tried, through their union and through direct contact with DOC officials, to warn of an unsafe environment that was brewing at Lincoln Hills but their comments were ignored.

Employees need to have input on their work sites, Litscher said.

Litscher replaces Ed Wall, who resigned in February after the FBI took over the investigation at Lincoln Hills.

Litscher worked as DOC secretary between 1999 and 2003.

The state Senate confirms all appointments, prompting Wednesdays hearing on Litschers new role.

Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee, said at the hearing that she also wants Litscher to address diversity in staffing and be wary of relying solely on past practices.

She noted that DOC faced two lawsuits over staff handling of inmates when Litscher was previously DOC secretary.

According to Wisconsin State Journal archives, the DOC agreed in 2003 to pay $462,000 to a Sun Prairie mother whose 20-year-old son died after an asthma attack at the St. Croix Correctional Center in one lawsuit.

The suit alleged that then-Corrections Secretary Litscher and unnamed employees at the facility in New Richmond knew that the inmate was asthmatic and failed to exercise the appropriate standard of care, resulting in his death.

A 2001 audit of health care provided to Wisconsins prison inmates, prompted by the death of an inmate at the Taycheedah womens prison, also found that the quality of care in the states prison system had been mixed.

A 29-year-old inmate died of a heart attack in 2000 after suffering an asthma attack and pleading for medical help that wasnt provided.

I dont mind you taking some good stuff that may have worked in the past but it depends on the past that you are taking me to, Taylor said.

Litscher declined Wednesday to answer reporters questions after the public hearing, but promised to do so in the future because the problems at Lincoln Hills are a public matter.
Months before the announcement that Madisons Oscar Mayer headquarters would close, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. discussed engaging a high-level contact at parent company Kraft Heinz about its future plans but was dissuaded from doing so after meeting with a top executive at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, new records show.

The records shed new light on why WEDC, the states job-creation and retention agency, didnt contact the multinational food conglomerate between the announcements of its merger in March and the planned closure of Oscar Mayer and reduction of 1,000 local jobs in November.

Emails WEDC released to the Wisconsin State Journal under the state open records law show that WMC, the states largest business lobby, alerted WEDC in June that other states were seeking to lure Kraft Heinz facilities out of Wisconsin. The email related specifically to concerns about Kraft Heinzs cheese-processing facility in Beaver Dam and does not mention any concerns about Oscar Mayer closing.

But the emails also show that WEDC decided not to contact Kraft Heinz after a discussion with a WMC official.

WEDC officials discussed meeting with Kraft Heinz officials face-to-face asap, the records show, but instead decided to get more information from WMC senior vice president Jim Morgan.

I met with Jim Morgan yesterday for more (perspective), Wade Goodsell, a WEDC business attraction account manager, wrote to then-WEDC CEO Reed Hall on June 30. He provided good background information, but he doesnt see a need for us to engage with Kraft at this time, it was more of an FYI.

In an interview Wednesday, Morgan emphasized the conversation with Goodsell was related to the Beaver Dam cheese facility, and not Oscar Mayer. There was no talk of the Beaver Dam facility closing at the time  Kraft Heinz has since said it will remain open  so he didnt see a need to contact the company, Morgan said.

Like other local and state officials, Morgan said he had no inkling Kraft Heinz would close the antiquated Madison facility, home to one of the states iconic brands.I think my conversation with them was a pretty isolated, unrelated conversation, Morgan said.

WMC president Kurt Bauer said in a statement Wednesday there was no connection between the conversation and the Oscar Mayer plant closing.

We told the WEDC that the Kraft cheesemaking plant in Beaver Dam was in good shape and committed to Wisconsin, he said.

Bauer and Morgan declined to say whether WEDC should have reached out to Kraft Heinz to learn more about its plans for Wisconsin facilities after the merger was announced in March or whether Goodsell misinterpreted the conversation. A WEDC spokesman didnt make Goodsell available for an interview.

Its unclear that it would have mattered if WEDC had contacted Kraft Heinz.

The Madison Region Economic Partnership made two attempts to meet with the company after March but wasnt able to schedule a meeting. Mayor Paul Soglin told Oscar Mayer executives in August, after it announced it would lay off 165 employees, that city resources were available. But local officials didnt seek the help of WEDC.

In contrast, Iowa offered Kraft Heinz $4.75 million in state incentives and $10 million in local incentives so the company can build a new facility and downsize its Davenport meat-processing operation from 1,400 to 475 jobs. New York put together a $20 million incentive package to retain 1,000 jobs at three Kraft Heinz plants that were at risk of closure.

Gov. Scott Walker spoke briefly with a Kraft Heinz executive over the summer about setting up a meeting, but he didnt follow up with the company until prompted by a local lobbyist in October, according to records provided by his office. The company declined to meet with the governor before announcing the closure on Nov. 4.

WMC dissuaded meeting

On June 18, Bauer forwarded to Hall an email Morgan had written with the subject line Kraft  NY & CA Want Them.

NY and CA are throwing incredible incentives at them to move their WI facilities, Morgan wrote after talking with a Kraft plant manager in Beaver Dam. They have no plans to do so, but in our business competitive benchmarks, she wonders how you capture that, referring to efforts to track how other states are offering incentives to businesses.

Morgan also wrote that he was told other states were using incentives such as home property tax exemptions and student loan forgiveness to attract workers. Also, he was told California and New York were pressuring Kraft to add the CA cheese or NY Dairy seals to their products made in Wisconsin, which were also produced in their state, and offering big promotional dollars.

Kraft has said no because it is deceptive, Morgan wrote. But, again, she wonders if anyone in WI is keeping track.

Hall forwarded the email to Goodsell, deputy secretary Tricia Braun and Kristie Pulvermacher, another business retention account manager.

Thanks for passing this on, Pulvermacher responded. We should get in to see them face-to-face asap. I have a high level contact there who could direct us to the right person.

Goodsell and Pulvermacher discussed contacting Morgan to find out more. Goodsell met with Morgan on June 29 and advised Hall and Pulvermacher the next day that Morgan didnt see a need to engage Kraft Heinz. There was no further email discussion of the topic provided by WEDC.

An agency official didnt meet with Kraft Heinz officials face-to-face until Nov. 19, two weeks after the Oscar Mayer announcement.

After the State Journal published a story about the emails online Wednesday, Democrats announced plans to hold a press conference about them Thursday.

Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, who once worked at the Oscar Mayer plant, said he was deeply troubled by the State Journals report that WEDC didnt reach out to Kraft Heinz after learning other states were luring its facilities.

Equally troubling, WEDCs failure to act was apparently on the recommendation of what is supposed to be a pro-business lobby group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Risser said.

Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, who along with Risser represents the Oscar Mayer site, said the state should have done more to prevent Oscar Mayer from leaving the state.

Now I know why more wasnt done  because this supposed pro-business advocacy group inexplicably told them not to, Taylor said.

WEDC spokesman Steven Michels said the agency always responds and seeks to take action on leads from local, state or regional partners. He highlighted that the email from Morgan said the Beaver Dam plant wasnt at risk.

In no way does WMC or any other chamber, regional or local economic development group direct WEDCs policies or decisions, Michels said. In this case we followed up with where the lead was generated.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, issued a statement defending WMC.

In this instance, WMC leadership volunteered to share insights gained from a meeting with one individual Kraft plant manager with the board of WEDC for informational purposes, Fitzgerald said. Any further claims as to what recommendations may have been made, what actions could have been taken and what impact that those actions might have had are nothing but rampant speculation.
Kickapoo, La Farge, Viroqua and Westby FFA members were among the nearly 200 high school students who attended the Wisconsin Farm Bureaus FFA Farm Forum in Wisconsin Rapids, Feb. 19-20.

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau is proud to host this annual event with the FFA to help grow the next crop of agricultural leaders in Wisconsin, said Jim Holte, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation president.

During the two-day event at Hotel Mead in Wisconsin Rapids, FFA members attended workshops that covered topics including post-high school agricultural opportunities, social media, agriculture advocacy and leadership.

Joining Holte as keynote speakers at the event were Jonathan Eckelberg, digital content specialist at the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, and Ethan Giebel, director of education at Cooperative Network.

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Foundation sponsors the FFA Farm Forum in cooperation with the Wisconsin Association of FFA. This years FFA Farm Forum marks the 44th year the Farm Bureau family of affiliates has sponsored the event for Wisconsin youth.
U.S.Department of Agriculture Rural Development Wisconsin State Director, Stan Gruszynski, announced that USDA is seeking applications for grants to support rural businesses and help create jobs.

Under the Rural Business Development Grant (RBDG) program, funds can be used to acquire or develop land, buildings, plants and equipment; build or improve access roads, parking areas, utility extensions, and water and waste disposal facilities; provide technical assistance; establish revolving loan funds; and to support rural distance learning programs for educational or job training.

Eligible applicants include:

Public bodies;

Government entities;

Federally-recognized tribes;

Non-profit organizations;

For example, Vernon Economic Development Association (VEDA), in Viroqua, successfully assisted five businesses with a $43,000 grant award, creating and saving 27 local jobs in the process. The organizations Food Enterprise Center, a state-of-the-art value-added food processing, aggregation and distribution facility used grant funds to provide technical assistance to the small, rural businesses utilizing the center.

The application deadline is March 31. For additional information on how to apply, contact the USDA Rural Development Wisconsin State Office at 715-345-7610 or RD.BCP.SO@wi.usda.gov. Application instructions and related forms are available at www.rd.usda.gov/wi. Applications must be sent to the USDA Rural Deveopment Wisconsin State Office, 5417 Clems Way, Stevens Point, WI 54482.

Congress established the RBDG program under the 2014 Farm Bill by combining USDAs Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG) and Rural Business Opportunity Grant (RBOG) programs. The new program, like its predecessors, is designed to assist the startup or expansion of small and emerging private businesses and/or nonprofits in rural communities.
VIVA Gallerys monthly First Thursday artist reception will be held March 3, and Merikay Payne will be the featured guest artist. Payne creates colorful, accessible monoprints, collographs, linoleum and woodcuts, as well as collage and mixed media works.

Payne grew up in Monticello, and took a twisted path to becoming an artist. There were no art school teachers in her small town, so she attended the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with hopes of becoming an elementary teacher with an art minor. After a few years she moved to Madison, completed a journalism degree, married, had three children, took 16 years to complete a two-year commercial art degree, and worked, until recently, at UW-Madison as a graphic artist. While working in 2002, she started a second undergraduate art degree at UW-Madison and was able to take the time to learn art mediums. She completed the degree in 2009 and along the way found that printmakings experimental qualities and endless possibilities piqued her interest.

Payne has found inspiration in the liveliness of impressionistic brush strokes, the succinctness of Matisse and in the many textures and colors of her childhood home. Blending the allusion of writing with the illusion of art is fertile ground for Paynes figurative and abstract art. Language is important to her and often added as narration in her collage. Her nostalgic prints are made with ink, pastel, colored pencil and occasional three-dimensional materials. By applying ink to plexiglass and pressing paper to the image, her monoprints are born.

Paynes prints, along with the works of VIVAs member artists, will be featured at VIVAs First Thursday reception on March 3 from 5 to 7 p.m. The gallery is located at 217 S. Main St. in Viroqua. For more information about this and future First Thursday events, contact the gallery at 608-637-6918 or info@vivagallery.net.

The gallerys First Thursday reception will be followed by a 7 p.m. dinner next door at Rooted Spoon Kitchen Table. The Rooted Spoon cash bar will be open during the reception. Email rootedspoon@gmail.com or call 608-632-2120 to make reservations.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Twelve states cast votes for presidential nominees on March 1, also known as Super Tuesday, the biggest single-day delegate haul of the nomination contests. Republicans are voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake. Democrats are casting ballots in 11 states, too, plus American Samoa, with 865 delegates up for grabs.

Heres a look at what some voters had to say as they went to the polls:

Gloria Pryor-Lewis and her daughter Greta Lewis went to a Memphis, Tennessee, church to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Pryor-Lewis, a 63-year-old dentist, said she admires Clinton for being a strong woman.

Of course, my daughter calls her arrogant, she said, getting a laugh out of her 31-year-old daughter, who works as a receptionist in her dental office.

I do like a strong woman like my mother, said Greta Lewis, who praised Clinton for her support of minorities.

She has been the one who has stepped out to at least try to identify with most of the minorities, whether theyre women, black, Asian, Hispanic, Greta Lewis said. Shes the one that has taken the most time to talk about it, to have something to say about it and be firm about it, and know who the leader of the KKK is.

Jacob Lawrence-Simon, a software developer for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, started his day as a Bernie Sanders volunteer at 4:30 a.m., hanging notices on doors to remind voters to caucus.

Lawrence-Simon, 30, said he supports Sanders because of his views on gay rights, a higher minimum wage and his desire to not go to war.

I want politicians to try to solve an issue without bombs first ... and I feel like Bernie Sanders better represents that mentality than Hillary Clinton, who seems to be like a bomb-and-fix kind of candidate, Lawrence-Simon said.

Dormetra Henry, a 50-year-old clerical worker from Houston, said for her it was a toss-up between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. But in the end, her faith helped her decide to vote for Cruz.

Were deeply religious, and I believe Ted Cruz, he has a heart for the Lord. I believe that he is a Christian, said Henry, who is nondenominational but was previously Catholic.

Henry said that while she had her doubts about Trumps Christian values, she still admires his strong personality.

He says whatever he wants to say, and he doesnt really care about any repercussions, she said. That can be good and bad. You cant go into the presidential office and tell all these other countries, We dont care what you do, and they bomb us. So you have to be careful.

Retired Marine Corps. Gen. Bill Weise joined about a dozen people waiting patiently in line at the Greenspring precinct in Fairfax County, which traditionally has the highest turnout in Virginia. The precinct is made up entirely of voters from the sprawling Greenspring retirement community.

The 86-year-old Weise says seven months of agonizing over who hed vote for came down to the final 10 seconds before he filled in the bubble next to Ted Cruzs name.

Ben Carson was his favorite candidate, but he concluded Carson wasnt viable. In sorting through the other GOP candidates, Weise felt Cruz would make better decisions than Donald Trump.

Ive read Cruzs autobiography, he said. Hes not perfect. But show me somebody who is. ...The ideal candidate does not exist.

Jan Kearns, a special education teacher originally from Canada, recently became a U.S. citizen and was voting in her first presidential election. Experience was key in her decision to support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

Kearns admires Clintons stance on equal pay for women and says she knows how government works. She agreed with a lot of Sanders positions but questioned whether he could succeed as president.

Hes a little too earthy, crunchy for the way Washington works, she said after voting in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Jim Stephens, a 72-year-old retired pastor from Anchorage, Alaska, said he supported Marco Rubio.

I believe of the three main ones, he probably has the best chance of winning against the Democratic person thats running, said Stephens, who now works part-time in a hardware store. He and his second wife have five daughters and 13 grandchildren.

Stephens said John Kasich would be his second choice, but he doesnt have much faith the Ohio governor could win the general election.

He also had thoughts on how Donald Trump is conducting himself, comparing him to a schoolyard bully.

I just think that doesnt show the level of stature for a presidential person, Stephens said.

Tyler Murphy, a 26-year-old Boston resident who works as a project manager for a construction company, voted for Donald Trump even though he thinks the billionaire businessman is undeniably wrong on a lot of things.

For better or worse, he said, the controversial candidate is the wake-up call the country needs.

Ultimately, if we have to elect someone who is borderline crazy to get people to understand whats going on, then thats what we have to do, Murphy said.

An independent, he voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and Barack Obama in 2008 and said hes donated to both parties in the past.

Murphy said that if Trump had not become such a viable candidate, he would likely have voted for Hillary Clinton.

I just dont think shes going to be the person to shake people out of their seats, he said. Shes not what the country needs right now.
Blog Archive Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (4) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (2) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (3) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (1) May 26 (4) May 25 (2) May 24 (3) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (4) May 08 (2) May 07 (3) May 06 (4) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (4) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (3) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (5) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (5) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (2) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (3) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (5) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (4) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (4) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (2) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (4) May 28 (4) May 27 (3) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (6) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (5) May 11 (4) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (8) Mar 11 (6) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (5) Mar 03 (7) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (7) Feb 03 (9) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (6) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (7) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (8) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (6) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (6) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (8) Nov 09 (8) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (8) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (3) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (5) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (5) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (5) May 26 (7) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (5) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (3) May 07 (6) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (6) May 03 (4) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (7) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (7) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (4) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (5) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (6) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (5) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (3) Feb 29 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (2) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (5) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (2) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (1) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (5) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (1) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (4) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (4) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (1) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (4) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (4) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (6) May 26 (3) May 25 (3) May 24 (3) May 23 (3) May 22 (5) May 21 (3) May 20 (3) May 19 (3) May 18 (4) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (4) May 12 (5) May 11 (2) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (3) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (2) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (6) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (7) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (5) Feb 21 (5) Feb 20 (5) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (6) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (3) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (5) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (7) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (6) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (5) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (4) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (5) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (7) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (6) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (6) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (6) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (5) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (4) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (5) May 18 (6) May 17 (6) May 16 (4) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (4) May 10 (5) May 09 (2) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (4) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (6) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (6) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (7) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (5) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (6) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (5) Feb 24 (8) Feb 23 (7) Feb 22 (8) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (6) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (5) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (4) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (7) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (6) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (5) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (7) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (6) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (7) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (7) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (5) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (7) Nov 10 (6) Nov 09 (7) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (7) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (7) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (6) Oct 23 (10) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (5) Oct 19 (5) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (6) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (6) Oct 09 (8) Oct 08 (6) Oct 07 (5) Oct 06 (4) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (6) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (6) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (6) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (7) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (6) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (6) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (5) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (5) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (7) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (4) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (5) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (6) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (3) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (5) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (8) May 26 (7) May 25 (7) May 24 (5) May 23 (2) May 22 (5) May 21 (4) May 20 (5) May 19 (5) May 18 (5) May 17 (5) May 16 (7) May 15 (7) May 14 (7) May 13 (5) May 12 (6) May 11 (8) May 10 (4) May 09 (6) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (5) May 05 (6) May 04 (7) May 03 (7) May 02 (8) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (6) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (8) Apr 22 (6) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (7) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (8) Apr 16 (5) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (9) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (8) Apr 11 (5) Apr 10 (10) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (7) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (7) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (3) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (7) Mar 10 (6) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (7) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (7) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (9) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (7) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (5) Feb 18 (5) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (7) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (5) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (10) Feb 02 (9) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (9) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (7) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (5) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (6) Dec 19 (10) Dec 18 (9) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (6) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (6) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (8) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (7) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (9) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (12) Nov 17 (8) Nov 16 (6) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (11) Nov 13 (11) Nov 12 (9) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (7) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (7) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (7) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (7) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (7) Oct 22 (7) Oct 21 (6) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (7) Oct 18 (6) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (6) Oct 13 (7) Oct 12 (5) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (8) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (7) Oct 05 (8) Oct 04 (6) Oct 03 (8) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (10) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (10) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (5) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (6) Sep 18 (6) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (6) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (10) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (3) Sep 08 (8) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (6) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (6) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (5) Aug 25 (9) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (9) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (7) Aug 18 (6) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (6) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (9) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (6) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (7) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (8) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (9) Jul 25 (9) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (9) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (7) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (7) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (7) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (7) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (6) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (7) Jun 12 (8) Jun 11 (5) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (7) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (4) May 29 (5) May 28 (1) May 27 (5) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (8) May 23 (8) May 22 (7) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (9) May 18 (5) May 17 (9) May 16 (7) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (13) May 11 (5) May 10 (7) May 09 (6) May 08 (8) May 07 (9) May 06 (6) May 05 (5) May 04 (2) May 03 (6) May 02 (7) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (6) Apr 26 (10) Apr 25 (7) Apr 24 (5) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (6) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (10) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (5) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (7) Mar 26 (9) Mar 25 (11) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (6) Mar 22 (8) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (2) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (6) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (7) Mar 10 (8) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (6) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (2) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (6) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (9) Feb 23 (12) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (5) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (9) Feb 16 (10) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (9) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (7) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (6) Jan 31 (10) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (8) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (10) Jan 19 (8) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (7) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (6) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (7) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (2) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (6) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (8) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (8) Dec 16 (7) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (7) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (6) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (7) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (8) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (6) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (6) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (5) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (7) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (5) Oct 19 (5) Oct 18 (6) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (6) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (6) Oct 06 (6) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (8) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (6) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (7) Sep 17 (6) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (8) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (8) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (6) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (5) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (7) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (5) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (7) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (8) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (2) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (8) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (2) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (2) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (5) May 27 (1) May 26 (1) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (1) May 22 (2) May 21 (2) May 20 (3) May 19 (3) May 18 (2) May 17 (2) May 16 (2) May 15 (3) May 14 (2) May 13 (2) May 12 (2) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (2) May 08 (3) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (2) May 04 (2) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (2) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (2) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (2) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (4) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (2) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (2) Apr 15 (2) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (2) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (2) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (2) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (2) Mar 22 (1) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (2) Mar 18 (2) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (2) Mar 14 (2) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (2) Mar 07 (1) Mar 06 (2) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (2) Mar 01 (1) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (2) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (2) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (2) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (1) Feb 14 (1) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (2) Feb 11 (1) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (1) Feb 08 (1) Feb 07 (1) Feb 06 (1) Feb 05 (5) Feb 03 (1) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (1) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (5) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (3) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (1) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (4) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (6) Dec 14 (4) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (5) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (5) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (5) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (3) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (4) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (4) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (6) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (3) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (6) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (4) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (5) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (2) Aug 06 (2) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (2) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (2) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (6) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (4) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (2) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (2) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (1) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (2) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (4) May 13 (9) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 10 (5) May 09 (4) May 08 (3) May 07 (5) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (1) May 02 (5) May 01 (7) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (3) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (3) Apr 14 (4) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (1) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (4) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (6) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (4) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (4) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (4) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (4) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (4) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (5) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (2) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (4) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (4) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (2) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (4) Nov 15 (6) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (2) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (2) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (4) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (7) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (2) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (5) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (6) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (8) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (2) May 29 (2) May 28 (2) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (2) May 18 (3) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (3) May 10 (4) May 09 (4) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (2) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (2) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (7) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (6) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (5) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (9) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (3) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (2) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (2) Jan 04 (2) Jan 03 (2) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (2) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (2) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (2) Nov 21 (2) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (2) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (2) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (2) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (2) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (2) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (2) Aug 25 (2) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (2) Aug 12 (2) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (2) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (2) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (2) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (2) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (2) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (2) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (2) Jun 15 (2) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (2) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (7) May 16 (2) May 15 (2) May 14 (4) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (3) May 08 (2) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (1) May 04 (2) May 03 (4) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (2) Mar 02 (2) Feb 28 (1) Feb 24 (1) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (5) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (4) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (3) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (3) Jul 01 (6) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (5) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (5) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (4) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (3) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (4) May 19 (3) May 18 (3) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (1) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (5) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (3) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (3) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (3) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (3) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (3) Mar 07 (3) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (3) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (3) Mar 01 (3) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (3) Feb 25 (3) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (3) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (3) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (3) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (3) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (4) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (3) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (5) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (5) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (4) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (3) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (4) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (3) Nov 03 (2) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (6) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (3) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (5) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (2) Oct 11 (2) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (2) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (3) Oct 04 (2) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (4) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (2) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (1) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (1) Sep 18 (1) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (1) Sep 15 (2) Sep 14 (2) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 11 (2) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (1) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (1) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (2) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 12 (1) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (5) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (4) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (4) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (4) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (6) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (6) Jun 18 (5) Jun 17 (5) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (5) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (4) May 30 (4) May 29 (4) May 28 (5) May 27 (5) May 26 (5) May 25 (4) May 24 (5) May 23 (4) May 22 (4) May 21 (3) May 20 (6) May 19 (4) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (3) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (3) May 11 (3) May 10 (3) May 09 (3) May 08 (3) May 07 (3) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (3) Apr 22 (3) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (4) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (4) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (6) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (3) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (5) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (4) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (5) Mar 15 (3) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (7) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (4) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (7) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (8) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (3) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (6) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (6) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (5) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (4) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (5) Jan 05 (6) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (7) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (6) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (4) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (5) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (4) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (5) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (4) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (5) Nov 19 (5) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (4) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (3) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (3) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (5) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (3) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (4) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (4) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (4) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (4) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (3) Sep 09 (3) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (4) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (2) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (3) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (4) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (3) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (5) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (5) Jul 11 (4) Jul 10 (4) Jul 09 (8) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (3) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (2) Jun 21 (1) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (3) Jun 15 (7) Jun 14 (3) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (5) Jun 11 (4) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (4) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (3) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (3) May 26 (3) May 25 (4) May 24 (2) May 23 (4) May 22 (3) May 21 (2) May 20 (3) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (3) May 15 (2) May 14 (6) May 13 (4) May 12 (2) May 11 (3) May 10 (2) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (4) May 06 (3) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (3) May 02 (4) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (2) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (2) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (3) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (4) Apr 16 (3) Apr 15 (2) Apr 14 (4) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (5) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (4) Apr 04 (4) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (6) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (4) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (3) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (3) Mar 17 (5) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (4) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (4) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (4) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (4) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (4) Feb 24 (5) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (4) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (4) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (4) Feb 11 (3) Feb 10 (4) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (3) Feb 04 (4) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (3) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (3) Jan 21 (4) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (3) Jan 16 (2) Jan 15 (2) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (2) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (3) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (2) Dec 29 (2) Dec 28 (2) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (1) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (3) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (1) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (4) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (1) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (2) Dec 10 (2) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (1) Dec 05 (2) Dec 04 (1) Dec 03 (2) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (2) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (1) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (1) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (2) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (1) Nov 16 (1) Nov 15 (1) Nov 14 (1) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (1) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (1) Nov 06 (2) Nov 05 (2) Nov 04 (1) Nov 03 (1) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (2) Oct 31 (2) Oct 30 (2) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (2) Oct 25 (2) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (2) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (3) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (1) Oct 18 (3) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (2) Oct 15 (1) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (2) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (1) Oct 03 (2) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (1) Sep 27 (3) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (2) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (1) Sep 20 (1) Sep 19 (2) Sep 17 (2) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (1) Sep 14 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (1) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (2) Sep 08 (2) Sep 07 (1) Sep 06 (1) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (1) Sep 02 (1) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (1) Aug 25 (1) Aug 24 (2) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (1) Aug 18 (1) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (1) Aug 13 (1) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (1) Aug 08 (2) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (1) Aug 05 (1) Aug 04 (1) Aug 03 (2) Aug 01 (1) Jul 31 (2) Jul 30 (1) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (1) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (2) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (1) Jul 20 (3) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (2) Jul 16 (3) Jul 15 (1) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (2) Jul 09 (5) Jul 08 (1) Jul 07 (1) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (1) Jul 03 (2) Jul 01 (1) Jun 30 (1) Jun 29 (2) Jun 28 (2) Jun 27 (2) Jun 25 (2) Jun 24 (1) Jun 23 (2) Jun 22 (2) Jun 20 (1) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (3) Jun 12 (1) Jun 11 (1) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 05 (1) Jun 04 (1) Jun 03 (1) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (1) May 27 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (1) May 23 (2) May 22 (1) May 21 (1) May 20 (2) May 19 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (2) May 14 (1) May 13 (1) May 11 (2) May 10 (2) May 09 (1) May 07 (2) May 06 (1) May 05 (1) May 04 (1) May 03 (3) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 29 (1) Apr 28 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (2) Apr 17 (1) Apr 15 (1) Apr 13 (1) Apr 10 (2) Apr 08 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (1) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 24 (1) Mar 22 (2) Mar 21 (1) Mar 20 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (1) Mar 14 (2) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1) Mar 06 (4) Mar 05 (1) Mar 04 (1) Mar 03 (2) Mar 02 (2) Mar 01 (2) Feb 28 (2) Feb 27 (1) Feb 26 (1) Feb 25 (1) Feb 23 (2) Feb 19 (2) Feb 13 (1) Feb 12 (1) Feb 02 (1) Jan 31 (1) Jan 22 (1) Jan 18 (1) Jan 16 (1) Jan 09 (1) Jan 01 (1) Dec 20 (2) Dec 15 (1) Dec 13 (1) Dec 11 (1) Nov 30 (1) Nov 27 (1) Nov 20 (1) Nov 11 (1) Nov 10 (1) Oct 23 (1) Oct 20 (1) Oct 01 (1) Sep 30 (1) Sep 29 (1) Sep 24 (2) Sep 15 (1) Sep 13 (1) Sep 12 (1) Sep 08 (1) Sep 02 (2) Aug 31 (1) Aug 28 (1) Aug 27 (2) Aug 24 (1) Aug 21 (1) Aug 20 (1) Aug 18 (3) Aug 16 (1) Aug 15 (1) Aug 14 (1) Aug 11 (1) Aug 08 (1) Aug 07 (1) Aug 03 (1) Jul 27 (1) Jul 26 (1) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (1) Jul 21 (1) Jul 19 (1) Jul 15 (1) Jul 14 (1) Jul 13 (3) Jul 10 (1) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (1) Jul 06 (1) Jul 03 (1) Jul 01 (1) Jun 28 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 20 (1) Jun 19 (1) Jun 18 (1) Jun 15 (1) Jun 14 (2) Jun 11 (1) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (1) Jun 07 (1) Jun 06 (1) Jun 04 (2) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (1) May 31 (3) May 30 (1) May 29 (1) May 28 (2) May 26 (1) May 25 (1) May 18 (1) May 17 (1) May 15 (1) May 09 (1) May 07 (2) May 02 (1) May 01 (1) Apr 30 (1) Apr 27 (1) Apr 26 (2) Apr 23 (1) Apr 22 (1) Apr 19 (1) Apr 18 (1) Apr 12 (1) Apr 11 (1) Apr 09 (1) Apr 07 (1) Apr 05 (1) Apr 01 (1) Mar 30 (1) Mar 27 (1) Mar 25 (1) Mar 22 (2) Mar 19 (1) Mar 18 (1) Mar 16 (1) Mar 15 (2) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (1) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (1)
English Version Here: Why is the US Funding Protesters to Attack Thailand's Military and Monarchy?  5  2563 (Tony Ca...
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
Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Last week I did a post about the opinion of the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland in Wilder v. State, 991 A.2d 172 (Md.App. 2010), which "require[d] the prosecution to offer expert testimony to explain the functions of cell phone towers, derivative tracking, and the techniques of locating and/or plotting the origins of cell phone calls using cell phone records." It turns out that the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland isn't the only court to reach this conclusion. Instead, the Court of Appeals of Maryland reached the same conclusion in State v. Payne, 104 A.3d 142 (Md. 2014), a case that also involved the State failing to properly turn over cell phone/tower instructions to the defense.

In Payne, Joseph William Payne and Jason Bond were convicted in a joint trial of first degree felony murder and kidnapping, along with the use of a handgun in the commission of a felony.

These convictions were based, in part, on the testimony of Detective Brian Edwards of the Baltimore County Police Department. Detective Edwards testified, without having been qualified as an expert witness under Maryland Rule 5-702, that by interpreting Payne's and Bond's cell phone records subpoenaed from Sprint Nextel for the period from August 26 to August 27, 2007, he was able to determine the location of cell phone towers through which particular calls were routed and to plot the locations of those towers on a map in relation to the crime scene. The attorneys for Payne and Bond objected to Detective Edwards's testimony arguing, inter alia, that he should have been qualified as an expert. The trial judge overruled their objections and opined that Detective Edwards's testimony only related facts that could be independently verified from the phone records.

The Court of Appeals of Maryland disagreed, noting that

Detective Edwards...testified that he could determine the call time, phone number called, whether the call was incoming or outgoing and the cell tower through which the cell phone communicated, based on the complete records he had received from Sprint Nextel. When Payne's counsel objected to the Detective's testimony on the ground that Detective Edwards needed to be qualified as an expert in order to interpret the data, the State responded that the actual records contained step-by-step instructions as to the use of the records, although neither the actual records nor the instructions were introduced into evidence.

Payne claimed in his brief that "the instructions were not provided in discovery," but it's unclear whether the instructions were never provided or provided but attached to a document different from the State's trial exhibit. According to the court,

Detective Edwards later clarified, towards the end of his testimony, that the instructions were not part of the phone records, but were something he produced from another record:

[STATE'S ATTORNEY]: This is included as part of the cell records.

[DETECTIVE EDWARDS]: That is notthis is something I produced from another record.

This misleading or non-disclosure of these instructions likely would have been enough in and of itself to grant the defendants a new trial, but the Court of Appeals of Maryland didn't even need to reach this issue. According to the court,

Once Detective Edwards had culled the records, he further relied on his knowledge and experience to understand the significance of a LAC ID and Cell ID and how they related to identifying a particular cell tower amongst a cellular provider's records. Detective Edwards's testimony was that of an expert, because Call Detail Record entries are not entries typical of a cell phone bill where a juror could rely upon his or her personal experience to understand their meaning.... Detective Edwards needed to be qualified as an expert in order to also opine regarding the Menlo Drive and Balmoral Towers cell towers. Using the data he derived from his experience and expertise, Detective Edwards urged that he had determined the location of the cell towers through which Payne's and Bond's cell phone connected on the night of the murder and their location relative to the crime scene, which only an expert could derive, based upon the fact that a cell phone may connect to several towers during a call which may not be recorded.

-CM

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2016/03/last-week-i-did-a-post-about-theopinion-of-the-court-of-special-appeals-of-maryland-inwilder-v-state991-a2d-172-mdapp-2.html
Wednesday, March 2, 2016

(University of Idaho students discussing a culvert on a Boulder Creek tributary scheduled to be replaced to improve salmonid habitat.)

A common complaint about legal education is a perceived lack of practical experience. Law schools across the country, including at the University of Idaho, have addressed this need by increasing opportunities for students to participate in live-client experiences through clinics or internships, and by incorporating practical exercises throughout the substantive curriculum. But although students now have the opportunity to draft real legal documents, appear in court, and communicate with clients, many students are still missing exposure to the things of lawthe people and places that law affects and effects.

The study of law is, of course, notoriously dense and difficult, with much in the way of words and little in the way of images, places, or dirt under the fingernails. This is a serious problem, as should be particularly obvious when we are studying the law of natural resources, land use, environmental protection, and real places and real people. We cannot understand conflict, and cannot propose useful solutions, until we knowintimatelythe people and landscapes where those conflicts arise.

In August 2014, during my first attempt at offering a field course in natural resources law at the University of Idahos McCall Field Campus, we spent all of one afternoon driving gravel roads around what would become the Lost Creek-Boulder Creek Landscape Restoration Project on the Payette National Forest. We were looking at places that would be burned, roads that would be closed, and culverts that would be replaced to allow for steelhead and bull trout passage. I also tried to take advantage of our time in the forest to teach my students to identify all of the trees in the area, and perhaps more importantto me at leastto care about what those trees are. This is something of a Long-family tradition that I have taken from my father and am trying to impose on my own sons. My sons seem to enjoy it, but on the Payette, I got the sense that while a few of the students seemed to want to know the trees, most were boredor worse, annoyedby my constant pestering.

I finally felt compelled to pull our van over in a large clearing, at the high point of that days drive. The spot is known as Railroad Saddle, and is the hydrologic divide between Boulder Creek to the north and Lost Creek to the south. It is a broad, open, and relatively flat divide, offering few clues as to its legal and ecological significance.

But it is significant. Boulder Creek flows north and east about twenty miles to the Little Salmon River, which continues north until it meets the main stem of the Salmon River at the small town of Riggins, Idaho. At this point, the Salmon has mostly completed its unencumbered journey across Idaho. From Riggins, it continues north and then west before finally joining with the Snake River on the Idaho-Oregon border.

Precipitation falling south of Railroad Saddle follows a different path, flowing into the East Fork of Lost Creek. The East Fork flows about eight miles before joining with Lost Creek itself, a mile or so upstream of the Lost Valley Reservoir. After pausing a bit in the reservoirfilled with algae, surrounded by cows and overgrazed riparian areas, off-road vehicle trails, and paradoxically, a colony of the threatened Northern Idaho Ground SquirrelLost Creek continues on another ten miles to the West Fork of the Weiser River. This becomes the Weiser River, and then after flowing southwest for quite a while, eventually also meets the Snake River at the town of Weiser, Idaho, also on the Idaho-Oregon border.

Although both Boulder Creek and Lost Creek are part of the larger Snake River watershed, they differ in meaningful ways. The divide is open and flat enough that you can look each direction and see how the vegetative communities change, from the thicker, wetter, Douglas fir dominated forests in the mostly north-facing Boulder Creek drainage to the more open, drier, Ponderosa Pine forests on Lost Creek. Because we had spent the morning with the New Meadows District Ranger, we also knew that as we traveled from Boulder Creek into Lost Creek, wed start seeing more cows and more evidence of unauthorized off-road vehicle use.

But it is what we cannot see that might matter more, particularly from a legal perspective. Boulder Creek is part of the Salmon River watershed, famous for containing the largest area of contiguous wilderness in the continental United Statesthe Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness. Although the Frank Church gets the most press, the Salmon River watershed is also home to the Gospel Hump Wilderness and millions of acres of National Forest. It is a fairly pristine watershed, as they go in the contemporary West, and between Railroad Saddle and the confluence of the Salmon and Snake Rivers, there are no dams, just as there are no dams on the entire Salmon River itself.

The Weiser River, and thus Lost Creek that flows into it, are farther upstream in the Snake River watershed. Lost Creek has its own dam, just a few miles from where we stand on Railroad Divide. But much more significant, immediately after flowing into the Snake River, the Weiser River water enters Brownlee Reservoir and the slack water of Brownlee Dam. Below Brownlee, it becomes the slack water of Oxbow Dam, and then the slack water of Hells Canyon Dam, a 330-feet tall concrete monolith standing at the head of Hells Canyon.

Together, these three damsthe Hells Canyon Complex, owned and operated by Idaho Powerare a complete barrier to fish passage, and the thousands of miles of streams that were historic spawning grounds for migrating salmon and steelhead.

This is what we cannot see, standing on Railroad Divide. Despite having to endure the eight dams on the Columbia and Lower Snake rivers on their journeys to and from the Pacific, salmon and steelhead continue to survive, and on occasion thrive, in the watershed to our north. But there are no migrating salmon or steelhead in the watershed just a few feet to our south.

The law means two very different things in these few feet of space we occupy on Railroad Divide, some of us standing in salmon habitat, some of us not. And we can see those differences on the ground, and in the proposals for landscape restoration we discussed in the morning and are visiting in the afternoon. The hours we spent seeking out culvertsboth old and newwould have been largely meaningless just a hundred yards to our south. And the cows and off-road vehicles we will soon see would be much more meaningfulas significant as they already arejust a hundred yards to our north.

All of these subtle, meaningful things come together in this one place, as law on the ground. During this day, we have seen human uses on the landscape: sheep and old timber harvests and camping areas complete with 1950s pit toilets. We have seen the different trees, the different slopes and mountains and streams. And we have talked and thought and seen the effects of law. And so concluding my Railroad Divide soliloquy, I tell my students that it is my beliefand the raison detre of the classthat you can only understand how law works, and why, when you understand the natural history of a place, when you know the people who live there and what they care about, and when you have walked the landscape and felt the rocks beneath your feet, waded the streams, and maybe crawled through the culverts.

And when you know the trees.

Railroad Divide, as a place, demonstrates how understanding specific laws, or particular legal or policy decisions, requires moving beyond text and into the forests. Understanding place in a broader sense is at once as simple as thinking about how water flows across the ground, and as complex as all of the constellations of legal, cultural, social, and physical landscapes through which that water might pass. An intricate understanding of people and landscapes, and of the unique cultural and social histories they developed on those landscapes, similarly requires exploring the streams and forests, meeting the people, and thinking about how legal, social, and cultural relationships work themselves out on the ground.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/property/2016/03/law-in-place-the-need-for-an-outdoor-legal-education.html


Islamic State militants carried out two suicide attacks outside of Baghdad, killing dozens of people this weekend.

In the northeastern Shiite suburb of Sadr City, the extremists carried out a double bombing.

Hours earlier, three suicide bombers and gunmen stormed into Abu Ghraib. The attackers rode pickup trucks into the town, just 25 kilometers west of downtown Baghdad.

Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr called upon his followers to protect Baghdad.

Residents said Baghdads International Zone (IZ) was temporarily put on high alert. Many embassies, international staff and Iraqi government officials live and work in the IZ.

More Iraqi forces were quickly deployed there. They were also sent to the capitals international airport, west of the city.

The Iraqi officials declared the fighting in Abu Ghraib over by early afternoon. And Baghdad residents said the city was back to operating as normal.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry told local media that all the attackers in the Abu Ghraib assault were killed. He said that the situation was under control.

He also said that some 30 Iraqi security forces died in the assault.

But by early evening, local media said Iraqi fighter jets were involved in the Abu Ghraib fight. They said fighting was still going on in parts of the city.

Abu Ghraib is west of Baghdad, about halfway between the capital and Fallujah. IS controls Fallujah.

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Abu Ghraib became notorious for the photographs showing U.S. troops abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

In Sadr City, two bombs tore through a crowded local mobile phone market. For years, the Shiite suburb has suffered through sectarian violence. Hundreds of people have been killed there in bomb attacks over the years.

Last August, a truck bomb at a different market killed 80 people. IS militants took responsibility for that attack.

Im Anne Ball.

Sharon Behn wrote this story for VOA News. Anne Ball adapted it for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section. And find us on Facebook.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

alert - n. the state of being watchful for danger

stormed - v. raided

assault - n. attack

notorious  adj. well-known or famous especially for something bad

sectarian  adj. relating to religious or political sects and the differences between them


Some immigrants in the northeastern state of Maine are learning to lose their accents.

Some of the immigrants speak English fluently, but have a difficult time being understood because they have heavy accents, reported the Portland Press-Herald newspaper.

Assouma Nyirabahizi says she left her home and job in Rwanda two years ago, coming to America on a green card in hopes of a brighter future.

Nyirabahizi has a masters degree in computer science and speaks English fluently. She says all of her classes in Rwanda were taught in English, but here I have to learn again because of (my) accent.

She attends a free class to reduce her accent with seven other students. The city of Portland conducts the class.

Marta Greenlaw is the teacher. She is also a speech therapist. She says immigrants who reduce their accent have better success at work. And they can communicate more easily with store workers, teachers, doctors and neighbors.

Its a basic need to be understood, Greenlaw told the newspaper. It affects every part of their lives.

Greenlaw begins the class by telling students the 44 sounds of the English language. Those sounds include vowels, consonants and other sounds that give American English its unique sound.

Later, students speak about the food in their home countries. Sometimes, Greenlaw corrects their pronunciation. She tells them to pronounce the word onion as unnnn-yunnnnn, and the word potato as poe-TAY-toe. She tells the students how the lips and jaw work to form the word.

Greenlaw tells the students that some American English pronunciation rules dont make a lot of sense. But she says they are important to learn if immigrants are to be understood by Americans.

Losing ones accent is especially important for immigrants who live in Maine, which is one of the least diverse states in the country. More than 90 percent of the population of Maine is white. Many people who live in Maine have not heard foreign accents except in movies or on television.

Greenlaw says some Mainers are impatient with people who speak English with a heavy accent. Her students say some Mainers ignore them or are unfriendly toward them because of their accent. They say this makes them less likely to speak.

Imagine waking up every day knowing you are going to have that struggle, she says.

Im Christopher Jones-Cruise.

Noel K. Gallagher reported on this story for the Portland (Maine) Press Herald newspaper. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted the story for VOA Learning English. Kathleen Struck 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

accent  n. a way of pronouncing words that occurs among the people in a particular region or country

fluent  adj. able to speak a language easily and very well

green card  n. a document that shows a person from a foreign country can live and work in the United States (it is not green, but once was, so it continues to be called a green card)

conduct  v. to plan and do (something, such as an activity)

speech therapist  n. a person who gives treatment or therapy to people who have speech problems to help them learn to pronounce words correctly

vowel  n. a speech sound made with your mouth open and your tongue in the middle of your mouth not touching your teeth, lips, etc.; a letter (such as a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y in English) that represents a vowel

consonant  n. a speech sound (such as /p/, /d/, or /s/) that is made by partly or completely stopping the flow of air breathed out from the mouth; a letter that represents a consonant especially any letter of the English alphabet except a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y

diverse  adj. different from each other; made up of people or things that are different from each other


Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko have their feet on the ground for the first time in 340 days.

Riding in a Russian spacecraft, they made it back to Kazakhstan, along with a fellow Russian cosmonaut.

Theirs was a record-setting journey. It is the longest time humans have spent living on the International Space Station (ISS). Now, Kelly also holds the record for the longest time an American has spent in space: 520 days in space, over four missions.

After being taken out of the capsule, they were put in special chairs while they start getting used to Earths gravity again. They were to be examined and tested before Kelly is flown home to the United States.

After undergoing more tests and exams at NASAs Houston, Texas offices, Kelly said he wants to go home and jump into his swimming pool.

We will find out more about his journey when he talks to the media on this coming Friday.

In his last press conference from space, Kelly talked about the difficulties of living on the ISS for a year. He called it a harsh environment, with only a small personal space.

You know, Ive spent in the CQ Im looking at, the crews quarters here, probably almost half the time Ive been here between sleeping and working on the computer, Ive spent in a basically a box, the size of a phone booth.

He said he feels pretty good physically. But the toughest part was being away from loved ones.

The hardest part is being isolated, you know, in a physical sense from people on the ground that are important to you.

Kelly and Kornienko performed scientific experiments including growing flowers and lettuce. The space station year tested how humans endure long-term space flights.

What they learn will be part of NASAs Journey to Mars program. It will take astronauts at least 500 days  round trip -- to travel to Mars, and back home. During that time they will need to grow their own food and live in small spaces with others for many months.

Kelly and Kornienko monitored their bodies to see what space does to humans. There are concerns about the effects of long space flights. These include damage from radiation and loss of bone and muscle mass due to lack of gravity. Also, over time in space flight, the fluid in a persons body moves up toward the head, sometimes causing eye problems.

Scott Kelly is also part of a twin study. His brother Mark Kelly is an identical twin and a former astronaut. During the past year, NASA has been testing both the men. They will study the brothers to see how space changes a body.

NASA will use these lessons learned to help the newest astronauts now being hired for the Mars journey. The space agency hopes to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.

It is a mission Scott Kelly believes is possible. If we can dream it, he said from space, we can do it if we really want to.

Im Anne Ball.

Anne Ball wrote this story. Kathleen Struck edited it.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and join us on our Facebook page.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

swimming pool  n. a large structure filled with water for swimming

harsh  adj. unpleasant or difficult to experience

isolate  v. to put or keep in a place that is separate from others

endure  v. to experience something for a long time, sometimes painful

monitor  v. to watch for activity or behavior
March 1 was Super Tuesday, but March 15 will be key for candidates against Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton strengthened their control of their parties presidential race after big wins on Super Tuesday. But 16 more states and territories will hold primary elections or caucuses in the next two weeks. That includes the two large states of Florida and Ohio.

Upcoming contests

Republican Governor John Kasich of Ohio and Florida Senator Marco Rubio are looking to win the primaries in their home states. Both Kasich and Rubio have finished well behind businessman Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz in almost all of the nominating elections. Political experts say their candidacies may not survive a loss at home.

On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Clinton is heading into Michigan with a lead over Senator Bernie Sanders of Maine. The two are scheduled to debate Sunday in Flint. The city is dealing with a drinking water crisis. High lead levels were discovered in city drinking-water and residents.

Finals of Super Tuesday

Clinton won Tuesday's primary votes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Sanders captured his home state of Vermont as well as Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

With the victories, Clinton now has over 1,000 delegates. That is nearly three times larger than the 373 delegates for Sanders.

On the Republican side, Trump took Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont. Senator Ted Cruz took his home state of Texas, as well as Oklahoma and Alaska. Florida Senator Marco Rubio picked up his first win of the primary season in Minnesota.

With the victories, Trump has 316 delegates and Ted Cruz has 226.

A Democratic Party candidate must win 2,383 delegates to get the presidential nomination. A Republican Part candidate must win 1,237 delegates.

What the big winners said

"America never stopped being great," Clinton said at a rally in Florida, referencing Trump's campaign slogan. "We have to make America whole," she said, adding that the rhetoric on the Republican side "has never been lower."

At his own speech in Florida, Trump shot back. "She wants to make America whole again. I'm trying to figure what that's all about. Making America great again is going to be much better than making America whole again."

Trump also spoke of his rival, Rubio, whom he has clashed with fiercely over the past week. "I know it was a very rough night for Marco Rubio. He worked hard, he spent a lot of money. He is a lightweight, like I have said many times," Trump said.

"Rubio was the big loser of the night," he added.

Speaking to a large crowd in his home state late Tuesday, Sanders stayed optimistic.

"This campaign, as I think all of you know, is not just about electing a president, it is about transforming America. It is about making our great nation the country we know it has the potential to be."

Im Jonathan Evans.
Android Pay is Googles mobile payment platform that lets you pay for items at select retailers using your phone. You can link it to credit, debit, or store card accounts so you can leave your wallet at home and pay with your phone.

Now you can even leave your phone in your pocket or bag at least if youre shopping at some locations the South Bay area of San Francisco. Thats where Google is launching the first test of its new Hands Free feature.

Google unveiled plans for Hands Free last year, but this is the first time its been available for use in the real world. The pilot program will be available at a small number of McDonalds papa Johns and local eateries in the area.

Heres how it works: set up the app on your phone and tie it to a payment source. Youll also need to associate a photo with your account  because when you tell a cashier at a participating location that you want to pay with Google, theyll initiate a connection to your phone wirelessly (using Bluetooth, WiFi, and location services), ask for your initials, and look at your photo to see if it matches the person standing in front of them.

At a few stores, Google is experimenting with automating even that step: there are Hands Free cameras which will snap a photo of you, match it against your stored image and then delete the new photo after your identity has been confirmed.


My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from Inpress. For Reviews and Notes see the website
Mumbai: The makers of the yet-to-be-released Bengali film Dark Chocolate, which is based on the Sheena Bora murder case, on Wednesday told the Bombay High Court that it was based on the information available in the public domain and there was no scope for defamation.

A division bench of Justices SC Dharmadhikari and GS Patel was hearing a petition filed by former media baron Peter Mukerjea, one of the arrested accused in the case, opposing release of the film on the ground that it would violate his fundamental right to free and just trial.

The director of the film Agnidev Chatterjee and the producers on Wednesday filed their reply which said Mukerjea's claim that he would not get a fair trial if the film was released casts aspersions on the integrity of the judiciary itself.

"Since the case information is in public domain, there is no cause for defaming the accused," the affidavit said.

Chatterjee had earlier informed the court that the film's shooting was over and the post-production work was going on.

The court had at the last hearing asked the producers not to release anything other than the already-released online trailer till further orders.

The hearing was adjourned till the next week.

The film stars Mahima Chaudhry in the role of Indrani Mukerjea and Riya Sen as her daughter Sheena.

Indrani, the prime accused in the case, allegedly killed Sheena in April 2012 in a conspiracy with others, but the murder came to light only last year.

PTI
It wasnt long ago when veteran industrialist Ratan Tata spoke about the governments interference in peoples lives when he was addressing a group of students in Chennai. ...They (the government) should have no role in telling people what to do. Though the industrialist said this in a totally different context, Tatas comments should prompt Finance minister Arun Jaitley to rethink, as he has proposed to tax the retirement corpus of millions of salaried people.

Jaitleys budget proposal to tax 60 percent of a retirees EPF savings, if not invested in annuity, is a poorly-thought out move since no one would want the government to tax a good part of their lifes savings (for many of them EPF is the only savings). For Modi himself, this is politically disastrous move as many states are set to enter the election phase in a few months, and also in the backdrop of growing skepticism on this government for well known reasons such as growing intolerance, slowing economy and stagnant reforms.

The reason for the public uproar on the proposal to tax 60 percent of the EPF corpus is understandable. The government is effectively moving from EEE regime (exempt, exempt exempt), to EET (exempt, exempt, tax). There is also a proposal to tax employer contribution, in which case it becomes a double tax or TET (tax, exempt, tax).

The governments rationale to bring 60 percent of EPF corpus under tax net was to bring it on par with NPS and encourage (rather forcing) salaried class to maintain a corpus for retirement by investing part of it in annuity schemes.

The governments intention is good for sure but may not work for all since the financial needs of retirees are different.

Many reserve their EPF funds to either buy a retirement home or get their children married. When the government forces them to reinvest part of this amount, else pay heavy taxes, they will have one question. How can the government decide what one should do with their retirement corpus? It is up to the individual to choose to spend or reinvest his life savings. Also, there arent many annuity schemes to choose from and give attractive returns to the investor.

The salaried class is a soft target to impose tax. It is an extremely harsh move on the salaried segment, especially the small salaried segment, said Riaz Thingna, Director (direct and indirect tax) at Grant Thornton Advisory Private Ltd.

The confusion within the government on the EPF tax proposals was evident on Tuesday, a day after Jaitley launched the shocker in the budget announcement, when confusing explanations came from revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia (who said only interest accrued on 60% of the contributions to the EPF will be taxed while the principal amount will remain tax exempt) and Jayant Sinha, Union Minister of State for Finance (who tweeted out a clarification that said 60% of the corpus will also be taxed if not invested in annuity).

Prima facie, it appears that the proposal is to tax the whole corpus (both the principal and the accrued interest). If that is the case it can be politically disastrous move for the Modi government.

According to a calculation by Indian Express, an employee who is drawing a salary of Rs 1 lakh will have to pay tax on Rs 38.7 lakhs out of the total accumulated corpus of Rs 64.6 lakhs, after, say 30 years of working period. That would mean a significant component of his corpus will return to the government coffers if he refuses to reinvest the amount in annuity schemes. There is no fairness in this proposal. What if the employee wants to use that money to buy a retirement home?

The big irony is that on the other hand, Jaitley is proposing to offer an amnesty-like window to the blackmoney holders to come clean of their ill-gotten wealth by paying 45 percent tax. In other words, the honest taxpayer is burdened with higher tax outgo on his lifes savings while the crooks are given a golden chance to legalise their ill-gotten wealth. One cant blame the taxpayer if he feels anger towards the government.

Clearly, the government doesnt have a strong case to go ahead with the proposal here. It should immediately scrap the plan. Jaitleys budget 2016 has indeed scored some points with its increased focus on issues concerning rural segments and farm-sector.

But, Jaitleys bad move on EPF tax changes, which will directly impact millions of salaried class, is enough to spoil all those positives and can very well boomerang.
Ishrat Jahan's death in a 2004 encounter is once again caught in a maze of allegations, counter-allegations and politics following ''revelations" by former home secretary GK Pillai and his erstwhile colleague RVS Mani.

At the centre of the storm is an affidavit filed by the Home Ministry under P Chidambaram in which references to Ishrat's alleged links with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were deleted.

This affidavit was in stark contrast to an affidavit filed earlier by the ministry in August 2009, where it had argued that Ishrat was an LeT operative and, thus, there was no need for a CBI probe into the encounter.

On 15 June, 2004, a special team of Gujarat police had killed Ishrat, a 19-year-old college student from Mumbra, along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, and two alleged Pakistanis, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Police said they were on their way to assassinate the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

The case was handed over to the CBI after an investigation by a Special Investigation Team appointed by the Gujarat High Court said it was a fake encounter.

Pillai's story

Six years after retirement, a period during which he remained silent, Pillai has questioned Chidambaram's role in the alleged fake encounter of Ishrat Jahan. He has claimed that the home ministry deleted references to Ishrat's alleged links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba because Chidambaram did not want them to be a part of it.

According to Pillai, Chidambaram recalled the file from the joint secretary a month after the original affidavit  which described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives  was filed in the Gujarat HC.

"Mr Chidambaram, who was then the home minister, had asked for the file from the joint secretary, saying that the affidavit needed to be reworked. Only after the affidavit was revised, as directed by the minister, did the file come to me," Pillai told The Times of India.

Chidambaram, on his part, has claimed the revised affidavit was absolutely correct. The Congress has backed the former home minister, saying the BJP is trying to subvert a court-monitored investigation into Ishrat's alleged fake encounter. The Congress has hit back, saying Pillai now works for a corporate group with known affiliations.

Pillai has also argued that these four persons were lured into Gujarat as part of an intelligence operation. It was a very successful intelligence operation we managed to entice the LeT to send their shooters to India and were able to monitor their activities in India and to, in one sense, catch them It was a very planned operation something intelligence agencies around the world do.

Yes, it was a trap and it was a very successful operation you are using the sources of LeT, people who think they are LeT, to be able to pass on information It is always better to know when your enemy is coming in rather than wait for collateral intelligence where someone plans something without your knowledge," he said in the interview.

This gives credence to the theory that the Gujarat cops were waiting for Ishrat and the three men and to the rumours that Javed aka Pranesh was a double agent helping Indian intelligence agencies. Whether they were killed in retaliatory fire on the outskirts of Ahmedabad or were first captured, confined and then killed in cold blood, as several reports and enquiries have revealed, is now for the HC to decide.

Mani's affidavit

On Tuesday, RVS Mani, a former undersecretary in the home ministry told Times Now that he was coerced to file the second affidavit in the Ishrat Jahan case. The second affidavit is the one in which the references to the alleged links of Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) were removed.

Before this, Mani, who was an undersecretary in the ministry's internal security department, had filed another affidavit claiming Ishrat and the three men killed in the encounter were LeT operatives. On the basis of this affidavit, filed in August 2009, the then UPA government had opposed a CBI investigation into the encounter.

But even the first affidavit filed by Mani is disputed. An audio tape of a purported conversation between PP Pandey and GL Singhal, two police officers accused of Ishrat's extra judicial killing, questioned the background of the first affidavit.

According to the Ahmedabad Mirror, the taped conversation was reportedly submitted by Singhal to the CBI during investigations into the encounter. 'The conversation between Singhal and Pandey indicates that these officers were not only aware of Manis arrival in the city to sign the affidavit, but they were also aware that advocate Abhichandani had been given the responsibility to vet the affidavit, the newspaper reported.

Interestingly, during the purported conversation, the two officers are heard discussing how the advocate vetting the affidavit can benefit if he "does it properly."

Here is the transcript of the purported conversation from the report:

GL Singhal: Sir, Namaskar.

PP Pandey: Are you in meeting?

Singhal: Yes Sir, Now I have come out.

Pandey: That order for Abhichandani is done?

Singhal: Ji, ji, Sir.

Pandey: Tomorrow, someone is coming. Undersecretary from Delhi, for signing affidavit.

Singhal: Right, right, Sir, right, Sir.

Pandey: Tell Abhichandani, if he does properly, we may try to make him High Court Judge.

Singhal: Right, right, Sir, will explain  Ji, ji Sir.

Incidentally, Mani had earlier complained that he was "coerced" by an officer of the SIT into signing a statement saying the first affidavit was drafted by two IB officers. According to the TOI, in his letter to the joint secretary in the urban development ministry, where he was posted then, Mani accused SK Verma, the SIT officer, of "coercing" him into signing a statement that is at odds with facts. "Knowing fully well that this would tantamount to falsely indicting of (sic) my seniors at the extant time, I declined to sign any statement," he had said then, the newspaper reported.

So, which affidavit was closer to the truth? Was Chidambaram trying to hide something in the second affidavit or just rectifying "errors" made in the first?

Ishrat's story is getting more complicated by the day.
By Saikat Datta

After the massacre of Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics of 1972, the Israeli government began a secret plan to go after the Palestinian leadership that planned and sanctioned the attack. A team of Israeli intelligence officials was gathered and sponsored by the Israeli state, to carry out killings across Europe in an act of retribution that was unparalleled until then. As subsequent and credible accounts suggest, the killings were sanctioned personally by Prime Minister Golda Meir.

As the debate around the killing of Ishrat Jahan Raza, a 19-year-old girl from Mumbra swirls up again, it raises difficult questions about how a state should respond to terrorism and the complex relationship it has when it opts for extra-constitutional executions. By all credible accounts the killings that took place on 15 June 2004, was an extra-judicial killing  a staged encounter that led to the death of Ishrat Jahan and those who were travelling with her. Forensic and ballistic reports available gave strong indications that the encounter was staged.

But the entire episode posed one of the biggest challenges to Indias counter terrorism architecture and specifically for the Intelligence Bureau (IB)  a challenge the magnitude of which, the organisation had never faced since it was created by a colonial power in 1887. The IB was created as a means of obtaining secret and political intelligence on Indian and Russian activities that were inimical to the British Raj in India.

For decades the IB played a leading role in helping independent India quell fires and control insurgencies across the country. Its representatives lived in the grey zone, stepping in on behalf of the government in Delhi to quietly push or undermine state governments or insurgents, depending on what the centre wanted. In states like Jammu & Kashmir, IB agents like Hasan Walia would be the point-person for the former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. They would ensure that Shaikh Abdullah was kept in check as New Delhi worked towards consolidating its hold over the state after the 1947-48 war with Pakistan.

The role of the IB is like most other intelligence agencies around the world. It is an instrument of power for the central (federal) government. It exists in a zone that is not always within the legal and constitutional boundaries, a difficult zone, ambiguous at best, dangerous in the least. Most nations need intelligence, but are not sure how to curb the enormous power it accrues to itself by the nature of the job it executes.

At the centre of the political controversy that erupted over the Ishrat Jahan killing, was a senior IB official  Rajinder Kumar. A 1979 Manipur-Tripura cadre officer, Kumar switched to the IB after 8 years in the Indian Police Service (IPS). In his role as an intelligence officer, Kumar enjoyed a formidable reputation. The bulk of his career was spent in operational roles existing in the grey zone of the intelligence community, where you push the boundaries to notch up successes against violent ideologies.

His core area was on counter terrorism and Pakistan and was considered to be a thorough professional. We were always impressed at how much he knew about Pakistan and how closely he monitored it, a former senior intelligence official from the Research & Analysis Wing told me last week. Kumar was clearly focused on operations and he had quite a few successes against the Lashkar-e-Taiba. What happened after 204 was quite sad.

Kumar was naturally quite angry with what happened. Over the phone he told me how upset he was, that one of their finest operations against the LeT became such a political mess. It was one of Indias finest undercover operations where we managed to get a team that was targeting a senior Indian political leader. For us in the intelligence community, political affiliations do not matter, he said.

Kumar pointed out that during the UPA regime between 2004 and 2014, there were at least 20 to 25 credible alerts issued by the Centre that groups were targeting Mr. Modi. What are we supposed to do when we are faced with such kind of intelligence? Didnt the UPA government continue with Mr Modis Z-plus security category based on these assessments?

Kumar is also upset that the issue became so political. Sources in the government familiar with the case told me how at least three police officers  two in the CBI and one in the IB  grabbed this case to please the ruling dispensation of that time. There is no independent way to verify this, but it can be said with some degree of confidence that the UPA government did take undue interest in the case. As it is now clear, affidavits were tweaked, senior IB officers interrogated, and a push was made to even arrest them.

This could not have happened without clear political directions from the senior echelons of the UPA government.

Regrettably, it created an unprecedented situation when the government at the centre unwittingly went to war with a key intelligence organisation central to its governance. No organisation wields as much influence as the IB, something which is never seen, only felt.

That said, the war within the police and intelligence community was unprecedented. It created a situation where the government came close to officially manipulating an official investigation and its intelligence community. It was a dark episode for many of us and I decided to quit the IB and return to my cadre, a former IB official, now serving as a senior police official told me separately. As intelligence officials we are frequently asked to walk a thin line between what is legal and what isnt. That needs us to protect our men and women and support them through difficult periods. Counter terrorism is not an easy job and it has very few rules. How do you expect us to work if we cant protect our subordinates? the former intelligence official told me.

The problems around Indias intelligence community are many. The organisations have become archaic, there is very little accountability and oversight and their role has never been codified through a Parliamentary statute. However, the IB continues to be one of the few institutions that performs when called upon in extremely difficult circumstances. The cynical use of the IB for political purposes during the UPAs rule set a dangerous precedent.

 Datta is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. He tweets as @saikatd. Views are personal.
JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was on Wednesday granted six months interim bail by the Delhi High Court in the sedition case against him.

Kanhaiya was asked to furnish a bail bond of Rs 10,000. The court directed the faculty members of the university to furnish the bail bond on Kanhaiya's bond. Sources also told CNN-IBN that he was unlikely to leave Tihar jail on Wednesday. The student union head was in jail for two weeks.

"The court has recognised our concerns," said Kanhaiya's lawyer. Kanhaiya's brother Manikant also reacted to this development and said, "I am very happy today."

On the other hand, the lawyer for Delhi Police said, "Today, the court gave interim bail to the accused subject to the outcome of the investigation. If something else turns up in the probe, we have to see the terms of the order and accordingly, the police will act."

Justice Pratibha Rani of the Delhi HC bench had on Monday reserved the order after over three hours of hearing on the bail plea of Kanhaiya who is accused of raising anti-India slogans inside JNU campus during an event organised on 9 February.

During the hearing, while Kanhaiya's counsel had argued that the student leader had never raised any slogans against the nation, Delhi Police had maintained that there was evidence that he and others were shouting anti-India slogans and were holding Afzal Guru's posters.

Police had claimed that Kanhaiya was "not cooperating" in the probe and even came out with "contradictory" statements in joint interrogation by Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Delhi Police.

Defence lawyers including senior advocate Kapil Sibal had countered the allegations saying there were "some outsiders with covered faces who raised anti-India slogans and Kanhaiya was seen in CCTV footage asking them for their identity cards."

The bench had also asked tough questions to the police on slapping sedition charge on the accused and asked it to show evidence against him of his "active role" in raising anti-India slogans.

Kanhaiya had also distanced himself from Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, the two other accused arrested in the case.

During the hearing, the Delhi government's counsel had urged the court to grant bail to Kanhaiya, who is currently in Tihar Jail under judicial custody.

He was arrested on 12 February in the case which was registered under sections 124 A (sedition) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.

According to the police, a group of students had on 9 February held an event in the campus and allegedly shouted slogans against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Guru.

(With inputs from PTI)
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) workers, including women, on Tuesday ransacked and destroyed the office of a real estate developer in Mumbai.

According to this IBNLive report, the MNS goons attacked the office after the builder allegedly removed MNS posters and flags which had been pasted outside his office.

The report added that party workers threw stones at the glass door of the office and the women employees were shocked as the MNS workers destroyed furniture and computers in the office.

The entire incident was caught on CCTV cameras. Police has stated a probe in this matter and registered an FIR against MNS workers responsible for the assault.

This incident points to a disturbing rise in hooliganism in the last few weeks in Mumbai. Last week, a Shiv Sena leader called Shashikant Ganpat Kalgude had been arrested for beating up a woman traffic constable in Thane. After being remanded to police custody for a day, he was released on bail.

On Saturday, an office-bearer of Shiv Sena had allegedly assaulted a shop assistant for refusing to provide free vada pavs. The accused, Sunil Mahadik, had allegedly hit Chetan Geveriya (28), who works at Trupti Sweet and Farsan Mart on DJ Road, with a bamboo stick, police had said on Monday.

Mahadik had sent a person to the shop demanding 100 vada pavs free of cost. Chetan had told him that they didn't have so much stock, so the person had left.

Mahadik had then gone to the shop and hit Geveria with a bamboo stick and had threatened to kill him.

The incident was captured by the CCTV cameras in the shop and later an FIR was registered with Juhu police. The footage was also aired by some local news channels.

(With inputs from PTI)
By Gyanant Singh

A Muslim woman whose son went missing at the age of four in 2004, lost a protracted legal battle to get back her son from a Hindu tea seller who brought up the child as his son after finding him in a park. Disposing of a petition filed by Shahnaz Begum eight years ago, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the Hindu adoptive father who had brought up Akbar without changing his name or religion. Aiku Lal will retain custody of Akbar until he turns 18  two year from now.

Akbar was four when he went missing from Allahabad and surfaced in Lucknow where Aiku Lal found him crying in a park. He had been living happily with the Hindu tea stall owner until Shahnaz claimed in 2007 that he was her son and sought his custody.

The story of the Hindu father-Muslim son had already hit headlines when Shahnaz came to claim the child.

With Aiku Lal refusing to let go of the child, Shahnaz took to judicial recourse by filing a habeas corpus petition before the Allahabad High Court in 2007. The high court, however, decided to let Akbar remain with the tea vendor because he 'explicitly and categorically' stated before the judges that he did not want to go with his parents.

"If there can be inter-caste marriages, which is not very uncommon, there can also be an inter-caste 'father and son' relationship and that need not raise eyebrows," the high court had said, while rejecting arguments that a Hindu should not be allowed to retain a Muslim couple's child.

Shahnaz rushed to the Supreme Court in appeal against the January 2008 decision. In what was a ray of hope to the mother, the Supreme Court ordered a DNA test which established Shahnaz as the biological mother of Akbar. But finally even this did not count when it came to the welfare and wish of the child. The court, while disposing of the matter on 23 February, allowed Aiku Lal to retain custody but directed him to send Akbar, who is now in Class XI, to live with his mother in Allahabad during summer vacations every year.

Though both sides were represented by lawyers, the Supreme Court bench presided over by Justice JS Khehar decided to hear Shahnaz, Aiku Lal and Akbar before pronouncing the verdict. While not letting DNA evidence overshadow the wish and the interest of the child, the bench pointed out that the high court had recorded in its order that Aiku Lal remained unmarried for the welfare of Akbar.

Akbar did not know his address or the name of his parents when he was found in Lucknow. Aiku Lal got him admitted in a school and gave his name in place of his father's. He, however, did not change Akbar's name nor attempt to change his religion. Shahnaz was able to locate her son with the media highlighting how the father-son duo made an unusual family. Shahnaz had alleged before the high court that her son had been detained as a bonded labourer by Aiku Lal to work at his tea stall.

With Akbar being with his father when he went missing, the high court said Aiku Lal, unlike Akbars own father who was careless, was taking proper care of the child who was 'receiving education under his pateria-potesta'.

The high court further rejected the argument that a Hindu keeping a Muslim child might create disharmony in society. "We are after all a secular country and the consideration of caste and creed should not be allowed to prevail," the court said.

"All other considerations including the right to custody under any law, must yield, to the question of the welfare of the minor," the high court said, while taking note of the wish of Akbar who did not want to leave Aiku Lal.

Though the Supreme Court initially went into a fact-finding exercise by ordering a DNA test, it finally decided to give due weightage to the welfare of the child who did not wish to leave Aiku Lal. "Rather than altering the present arrangement, we, therefore, feel that it would be appropriate if Akbar lives with his mother during the duration of the summer vacation every year (from May to July) till he attains the age of 18 years," the bench said.

The bench pointed out that it would be open to Akbar to take a decision whether he wished to reside with 'his natural mother  Shahnaz Begum or his adopted father Aiku Lal' after he attained

majority.
Agra: An FIR has been registered against BJP corporator Kundanika Sharma and three others for alleged hate speeches in Agra, police sources said.

The FIR also stated that Ram Shankar Katheria, minister of the state in Human Resource Development Ministry and Fatehpur Sikri MP Choudhary Babu Lal were present at the meeting, were the hate speeches were made.

On Tuesday evening, a condolence meeting was held for VHP leader Arun Mahaur who was shot dead on February 25.

Police sources said that the two Agra MPs and MLAs could be questioned during the investigations as their names were included in the FIR. However, Katheria has denied the charges and questioned the authenticity of media reports.

In protest against the FIR, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad plans to take the "battle to the people", the Hindu Jagran Manch demanded arrest of those responsible for cow slaughter under National Security Act.

The Yuva Kori Samaj has announced "asthi kalash yatra" in a specially designed vehicle driven by seven horses, from Chitra Talkies area in Agra to Bodla crossing, on 8 March.

Local BJP leaders also plans to stage protests at the police stations in the district.

District president Ashok Rana said a strategy for mass mobilisation against the government action was being drawn up.

The FIR was registered on a complaint made by Jaipur House colony police chowki in-charge Anil Kumar alleging that those named had made provocative hate speeches to disturb communal harmony, the police sources said.

Senior superintendent of police Preetendra Singh said that video clip was being monitored and all those making objectionable remarks will be booked under the hate speeches law.

Members of the NSUI in a memorandum to the SSP have demanded action against Katheria for allegedly giving "seditious speech" targeting sections of the society.

Congress state unit secretary Shabbir Abbas has also demanded action against the minister.

Purushottam Khandelwal, president of the BJP Braj Prant, has said that the local administration was clearly under pressure from the state government to file a case and compelling people to take to the streets.

Meanwhile, the VHP has clarified that Sadhvi Prachi was not an office bearer or spokesperson of the parishad, after she appeared at the condolence meeting.

"The signals are clear. Passions are being charged and the tussle is being prolonged even after the arrest of five accused in the case. A candle light march was organised at the Shaheed Smarak on Tuesday evening for the deceased VHP leader Arun Mahaur. The locals luckily have so far shown little interest in the ongoing war of words between the BJP leaders and the opposition parties," said activist Shravan Kumar Singh.

IANS
New Delhi: Several Congress leaders on Wednesday attacked the NDA governemnt at a demonstration in New Delhi, accusing it of being "anti-Dalit" and "repressing" the voice of the country's youth.

At the Jantar Mantar, senior party leaders including Digvijay Singh, Jitin Prasada, Raj Babbar, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Oscar Fernandes and Selja Kumari attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and HRD Minister Smriti Irani over alleged "atrocities" against Dalits and students and "silencing" their voice of protest in the country.

Hyderabd scholar Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika also addresed the gathering at the protest venue in Telugu.

Several members of the Youth Congress then marched towards Parliament from there before being detained at the Parliament Street.

Attacking the Modi government, Digvijay Singh said, it was "fundamentally" against the Dalits, tribals, farmers and workers.

"Rohith is not among us but he has awakened the society in slumber like Dr Ambedkar did," he said.

Rallying behind Rahul Gandhi who has extended support to JNU students, he said, "Some people said to me that Rahul should not have gone to JNU, but why not, we ask. Injustice was done to Kanhaiya Kumar who is innocent. Now police is saying that their is no video of him raising anti-India slogans, after sending him to jail on sedition charges."

Surjewala said the Modi government in its 22-month-rule has done the "most dangerous" thing of "repressing" the voice of youth in the country and attacking the right of poor to education.

Radhika reiterated her demand for a law that ends discrimination against students on the basis of caste in educational institutions in the country.

"Injustice was done to my son and like him several others died in other universities of the country and justice should be done. A government order should be issued to bar universities from discriminating against students on the basis of caste," she said, which was interpreted in Hindi afterwards.

"Prime Minister is anti-Dalit and anti-student and I will continue my struggle till I get justice for my son," she said.

Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Barar launched a scathing attack on HRD minister Smriti Irani and questioned her for not going to Hyderabad University after Vemula committed suicide.

The crowd of protesters broke through two barricades on way to Parliament before their march was stalled by the police, which also used water cannon to break up the protest before detaining some of them.

PTI
In a rejoinder to Rahul Gandhi's statement on PM Modi's impromptu Pakistan visit made in Lok Sabha earlier on Wednesday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the Prime Minister had sought her opinion on his visit to Lahore. She further said that Gandhi is incorrect in saying that the PM did not follow the diplomatic protocol on his visit, as she had suggested PM Modi to go ahead with the visit as it would be an 'out-of-the-box' move.

"I told PM that this will be a very 'out of the box' move and that he should go to Lahore. So what Rahul Gandhi has said is incorrect," Swaraj told ANI.

Swaraj added that had she been present in the Lok Sabha, she would have quickly corrected Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress scion had even dragged the 26/11 Mumbai attack to prove his point.

"When 26/11 operations were on, our citizens and soldiers were dying, the government of India begged the then Gujarat CM to not visit Mumbai. But he didn't listen. Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. Almost 200 people were murdered and butchered. Did he care? He went there, disturbed entire operations, grabbed headlines when our people died. And what does PM do? Without any thought or vision, the PM decided to go have tea with the Pakistan PM (Nawaz Sharif). PM didn't consult the armed forces, he didn't consult the officials, I don't think he even discussed with Sushma ji," Gandhi said in Lok Sabha.

"The PM destroyed six years of our work. In one move he let Pakistan out of the cage we had forced them into. He gifted them a status equal to ours. He just went there as if its only his opinion that matters. Without any thought, without any vision he decides to take a detour to Pakistan. We spent thousands of hours of diplomacy to put Pak in a diplomatic cage. We convinced the world that they were the global supporter of terror," Gandhi said referring to the work done by the then UPA government on the Pakistan front.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday refuted Rahul Gandhi's claim that he was not informed before signing a peace pact with Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM saying the Congress vice-president's statement was "completely false and baseless" and he "misled" the Parliament.

The Home Minister's strong reaction came hours after Rahul told the Lok Sabha that Singh was not aware of Naga

peace accord which was signed in August 2015 in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a stinging attack in the Lok Sabha on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of releasing Pakistan from a small "cage" in which it was put after the 26/11 attacks by his sudden visit to Lahore and bringing a "fair and lovely" scheme to launder black money.

"Rahul Gandhi's statement on Naga peace accord in Lok Sabha on Wednesday is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Rahul Gandhi's attempt to mislead the House," Singh tweeted.

Rahul Gandhi had alleged that Modi did not listen to anyone's opinion, including his ministers and party MPs, on issues like his visit to Pakistan and the Naga accord. PTI
Jalalabad/New Delhi: India's Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city was attacked on Wednesday with a suicide bomber blowing himself up during the terror strike but all Indians at the mission were safe, Indian foreign office said.

On Thursday CCTV footage emerged of the suicide bomber walking towards the compound moments before the blast.

One local staff sustained minor injuries in the attack, nearly two months after a similar assault was carried out by terrorists on the Indian mission in Mazar-i-Sharif in January.

"Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission. All Indians in the mission are safe while a local staff has sustained minor injuries," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) fired after they detected some movement and gunfire near the consulate complex at about 1:30 PM IST, according to officials.

On 3 January, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan security forces.

Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.

Afghan forces have killed four militants involved in the attack. However, an exact number of attackers was not immediately known.

The combing operation is on after the attackers were killed, sources said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

PTI
By Seema Guha

It is well known that though Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to continue his engagement with Pakistan and take forward the gains of his Christmas Day visit to Lahore, the attack on Pathankot air base had led to a pause. However, India has been restrained in its reaction to the terror attack, simply announcing that foreign secretary-level talks would be resumed and that the top diplomats were in touch.

Beyond that, there was no official comment. It was apparent that domestic public opinion was weighing in on the government. No political leader, after all, can go ahead with talks as if nothing had happened.

On Wednesday, foreign secretary S Jaishankar, delivering the key note address at the Raisina Dialogue, said in response to a question about Pakistan, "The Pakistan foreign secretary and I had agreed to meet. Then Pathankot happened. The two national security advisers and foreign secretaries are in touch. Parallel processes are happening. If there is a choice between action on terrorist attacks and diplomatic dialogue, the answer is obvious."

The bottom line is that Islamabad has to do more on terror before the dialogue can resume. And it might seem obvious, but this is the first time that it has been publicly articulated by a foreign secretary.

Ironically, Sartaj Aziz, Nawaz Sharif's foreign policy adviser, was reported by the Pakistan press as saying that talks between the two neighbours would resume after a team from his country visits Pathankot. There is a buzz in Delhi that when Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif travel to Washington for the Nuclear Summit hosted by US President Barak Obama at the end of March, the two leaders will continue their conversation. But there is still no official confirmation of any meeting.

The Pakistan issue was an aside at the keynote address that Jaishankar delivered at the Raisina Dialogue, which was inaugurated on Tuesday by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. The dialogue, the first of its kind held on this scale by the Observer Research Foundation and the MEA, is an attempt to make this event an annual show along the lines of the Shangrila Dialogue in Singapore, which is a major event in the diplomatic calendar. Former presidents of Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Seychelles, Chandrika Kuratunga, Hamid Karzai and James Mancham respectively, US Pacific Command admiral Harry B Harris Jr, Bangladesh foreign minister Abdul Hassan Mahmood Ali and 100 more speakers from 35 nations were present.

Jaishankar's talk was on Asian connectivity, which is the broad central theme of the dialogue. Connectivity  both digital and through rail, road and sea  has been a central theme of the Modi government. The foreign secretary admitted that India is "under-connected". "Like most things, connectivity begins at home," Jaishankar admitted, but also said that the Modi government is seriously hoping to remedy the situation.

"We are investing substantially in the development of road connectivity infrastructure with an emphasis on the Northeast and strategic border areas. The railway policy unveiled by the government last week outlines an ambitious programme involving transformation. Our maritime agenda envisages port development to harness the private sector's capabilities. It is also important that the nodes of outward connectivity are linked better with the hinterland. The integrated development of ports and the hinterland, which is the main objective of our SAGARMALA project, would surely have profound consequences over time," he added.

He spoke at length about India's attempts to connect with its eastern neighbours  Bangladesh and Myanmar. Many such projects had been initiated during the UPA regime, but have been accelerated by the present government, he said.

Jaishankar said that progress was least to the North West of India, perhaps referring to Pakistan, though he did not name the country. "The absence of transit rights there is an impediment to trade, energy flows and economic integration," Jaishankar said.

At the inauguration on Tuesday evening, former Afghan president Hamid Karzai had also brought up Pakistan's refusal to grant transit rights to India as a major hindrance to trade.

Especially with Iran now coming out of the sanctions regime, the situation could ease. India had long been associated with the Chahbahar project in Iran. This was done to bypass Pakistan and build a road between the Iranian port city and Afghanistan. This would not only open Afghanistan's markets to Indian goods, but also help in exploring the central Asian markets. "We are working to invest in the Chahbahar port, join the Ashgabat Agreement and participate in the International North South Transport Corridor. Combined with other ambitious bilateral initiatives, they could be game changers in Central Asia  a part of the world that historically and culturally has strong affinity with India," the foreign secretary said.

China's former foreign minister Li Zhaoxing said that the two great Asian powers  India and China  have a responsibility to drive economic growth and regional connectivity. He said that China was already concentrating on improving roadways and infrastructure in Asia. He spoke of the Silk Road Fund and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which would go a long way in bringing connectivity to the region. While India is part of the AIIB, it has reservations about President Xi Jinping's ambitious one belt one road initiative, which has been welcomed by most Asian nations. Li added that improved India-China

strategic cooperation would help the process of integration and connectivity in the region. India has so far been less than enthusiastic about China's beltway plans, but perhaps it would be more pragmatic to embrace it, because whether India likes it or not Asian nations will have also welcomed the move of connectivity with Chinese funds.
Two asylum seekers from Afghanistan have been charged with attempted rape of two schoolgirls in a public swimming pool in northern Germany on Tuesday.

The accused, aged 34 and 14, are said to have committed the crime at the Arriba aquatics center in Norderstedt in the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The girls, aged 18 and 14, approached the security staff after getting harassed by the men, with the authorities promptly nabbing the perpetrators and calling the police.

According to a report on Russia Today, the duo have been held in custody without bail  due to the substantial risk of them fleeing the country in order to escape the punishment, or continue to commit such crime should they be granted bail. The accused are being held in separate prison facilities.

The incident apparently is not the first of its kind at the Arriba aquatics centre.

According to a report on The Daily Mail, a group of seven immigrant men had heinously attacked five schoolgirls aged between 15 and 17 at the exact same spot as the latest incident, grabbing their breasts and buttocks, and ripping the bikini top off one of them.

According to a report on The Guardian, the western German town of Bornheim banned male adult asylum seekers from its public swimming pools after a rise in the number of complaints of sexual assaults on women in the facility.

"There have been complaints of sexual harassment and chatting-up going on in this swimming pool  by groups of young men, and this has prompted some women to leave [the premises]," Bornheim's deputy mayor Markus Schnapka was quoted as saying in the report.

Bornheim, a town of 48,000, is 18 km south of Cologne, which was the site of the sexual assaults on scores of women on New Year's eve, with the perpetrators largely believed to be Arab and North African in origin.

Similar incidents have been recorded in the neighbouring country of Austria, where a 10-year-old boy was raped by an Iraqi asylum-seeker at a pool in Vienna, sparking outrage in the Austrian society. The suspected abuser cited 'sexual emergency' as the motive behind his act, according to the report on Russia Today.

Meanwhile, the German government has spent a fortune in trying to educate the refugees on appropriate behaviour towards women. The government has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in producing posters in numerous languages, especially targeting public swimming pools in their initiative, according to a report on The Daily Express.
By Shreerupa Mitra-Jha

The US said that the resolution on North Korea unanimously adopted on Wednesday by the UN Security Council (UNSC) is among the toughest in the history of the United Nations and called North Korea a rogue state among rogue states.

This is the only nation in the world to test a nuclear weapon in the 21st century. The country determined to advance its UN-prohibited programmes at the expense of the welfare of its own people, said Antony Blinken, the US Deputy Secretary of State, to reporters in Geneva.

We also see with North Koreas egregious violations of its commitments to the international community with respect to nuclear tests and missile tests that the resolution which is now before the Security Council is among the toughest in the history of the United Nations, he added.

Yet the country refuses to change and as we have seen here, in Geneva, refuses even to consider change. It is a rogue state among rogue states and the people of North Korea deserve better, Blinken said.

North Korea is already subjected to UN sanctions since 2006 for its four nuclear tests and rocket launches and the country is the subject of a permanent item on the agenda of the UNSC.

North Korea launched its fourth nuclear detonation in January 2016.

We hope the resolution... is implemented effectively, the senior US official said.

The sanctions will hit hard multiple sectors of the country including limiting or prohibiting the nation's export of coal, iron, gold, and titanium as well as the delivery of aviation and rocket fuel. Cargo going into and out of the country will be subject to strict inspection.

The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) government has repeatedly accused other countries of bias against it in the UN Human Rights Council.

On 1 March, the North Korea vowed to boycott any session of the HRC that examines its human rights record, stating that it will "never, ever" be bound by any UN resolutions.

We shall no longer participate in international sessions singling out the human rights situation of the DPRK (North Korea) for mere political attack," its Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong told the 47-member HRC on Tuesday.

He added that any of the UN resolutions concerning North Korea "will be none of our business and we will never ever be bound by them". This signals the further isolation of this already-isolated country.

UN investigators on DPRK have accused the government of crimes against humanity. The next report of the Special Rapporteur on DPRK will be presented to the HRC on 14 March.

The North Korean foreign minister also accused the US, Japan and South Korea of recruiting criminals by sending agents into the country to become so-called North Korean defectors.

The fact that North Koreas foreign minister refuses to attend sessions on his own country gives some indication of the DPRKs delusional refusal to confront the realities of what it is doing to its own people, Blinken said.

Blinken said that if North Korea took irreversible steps towards denuclearization then the issue of long term peace could be brought forward.

There is a very powerful example that could and should inspire North Korea and that is the agreement that was reached with Iran on its nuclear programme, he added.

The writer is a journalist with the United Nations
Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan has called on tax advisers to ensure their multinational clients meet their tax obligations.

"My message is clear  if you do business in Australia, you must pay your fair share of tax on the profits you earn here," Mr Jordan said on Thursday, as part of his annual keynote address to the Tax Institute conference, which this year is taking place in Melbourne.

Australian Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan. Credit:Daniel Kalisz

At a Senate estimates hearing last month Mr Jordan said that multinationals that had "pushed the envelope on reasonableness" and were playing games with the ATO would be "aggressively pursued".

The federal government last year boosted anti-avoidance measures, which are aimed at stopping multinational profit shifting, but tax advisers at the time had described them as "bad tax law".
In a report on Swedish website Avpixlat dated February 29, Jan Sjunnesson claimed he had "guided" 60 Minutes presenter Liz Hayes and three crew members into Rinkeby, a suburb in which nearly 90 per cent of residents are immigrants.

Channel Nine has denied partnering with a notorious Swedish anti-immigration activist during an ill-fated trip outside Stockholm in which a 60 Minutes crew was allegedly attacked by "masked men".

On the way into Rinkeby, the 60 Minutes crew, working on a story about the European refugee crisis, was reportedly hassled and then once they had arrived, a 60 Minutes producer and cameraman were allegedly assaulted by "masked men" who confronted them after police escorts left them unprotected. It is not known why the six officers with the crew decided to leave them alone in Rinkeby.

Jan (or January) Sjunnesson, the man who claims he guided the 60 Minutes crew into Rinkeby, Sweden, where they were apparently attacked. Credit:Facebook

Sjunnesson's "report" was later picked up by other Swedish outlets. In addition to touting himself as 60 Minutes' guide in that article, Sjunnesson was also offering interviews to Swedish radio with "my 60 [Minutes] team" about what really went on in Rinkeby.

Nine has refuted any suggestion of a partnership with Sjunnesson or Avpixlat, despite yesterday saying they agreed with the website's version of events.

"We categorically deny any suggestion we were in cahoots with this organisation, we merely interviewed them in an effort to get all sides of the story," the spokesman said.
A man has been arrested after allegedly walking up to a pram and spitting on a four-month-old baby seated inside during a bizarre incident in Sydney's east.

The baby girl was being pushed in her pram by relatives along Crown Street about 5.30pm on Saturday when a stranger approached her.

The man allegedly leaned inside the pram and spat on the infant's face before running off.

The baby's grandfather chased the man, who is known to police, to nearby Foveaux Street where the man collided with a car and fell on the ground.

However he managed to pull himself up and was last spotted running along Crown Street.
Community angst over the WestConnex motorway will soon spread when plans for new motorway interchanges are unveiled for Rozelle and at Sydney University, Camperdown.

The interchanges will almost inevitably involve property acquisition and, in Rozelle and adjacent Lilyfield in particular, will require the construction of elevated ramps to Anzac Bridge and Victoria Road.

More detailed plans for the motorway interchanges are set to be unveiled by NSW Planning and Environment in the next few weeks, after the organisation building the $16.8 billion toll road  the Sydney Motorway Corporation  lodged planning documents last month.

Yet the interchanges are already raising the ire of local politicians opposed to the motorway, after previous motorway entrances at St Peters and Haberfield and Concord were criticised for their impact on densely populated neighbourhoods and local roads.
The 7.5 million Americans living outside the United States do not have to be mere spectators of the electoral process.

Some Democratic Party members are voting in Thailand to coincide with the "Super Tuesday" balloting back home, some 13,000 kilometers from the Pacific shores of the continental United States.

The Democrats, through Friday at several locations in Thailand, are casting ballots to determine who the 13 delegates from their overseas organization will support at the partys national convention.

A lot of places in the developing world theyre fighting to have this opportunity. For me to squander this opportunity would set a bad example. So Im here doing my part, said Clyde Kakazu, who cast his ballot Wednesday at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

After the first day of balloting at the correspondents' club polling station, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was leading former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 82 votes to 55, with one uncommitted vote.

Thailand is one of 39 countries where Democrats Abroad are holding primaries through March 8.

Representatives of Republicans Overseas, which has 50 chapters worldwide, said their organization had not established voting stations in Thailand but registered Republicans can ask for absentee ballots from their home state.

Its a very inclusive process and good for the 7.5 million expats who are passionate about politics and interested in their next president, said Matthew Hays, country director in Thailand for the International Republican Institute.

Hays and officials of Democrats Abroad Thailand spoke about the Super Tuesday process at a U.S. Embassy-sponsored event held Wednesday morning at a branch of an upscale American cafe in a Bangkok office building.

Thai citizens  who ironically cannot presently vote in their own country  were invited to participate in a mock American presidential election.

Sixty-five votes were casts in the multiparty mixed balloting with Clinton prevailing with 34 votes. Sanders was runner-up with 23 votes, surpassing Republican billionaire Donald Trump who garnered six votes. Republican retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and the Green Partys Jill Stein, also a physician, each received one vote.

For the U.S. ambassador there is something quite personal at stake with the real results in Novembers general election.

All ambassadors around the world will, once the election happens, will submit their resignations because it is up to the new president of the United States to decide whom to appoint to these various jobs, Ambassador Glyn Davies told VOA.

Until then, part of the envoys job will be diplomatically advocating the merits of democracy in a kingdom run by a military junta that has suspended the electoral process.

The government here has committed to a return to civilian elected government and democracy, Davies said in response to a question from a Thai reporter. Wed like to see Thailand get back to elected government as soon as possible. Everybody has made that clear, including our president.
NATO's military commander has told the U.S. lawmakers that Russia poses a long-term threat to the United States and to its European allies and partners.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove said that Russia is eager to exert unquestioned influence over neighboring countries.

Russia has used military force to violate the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia and others like Moldova. In Ukraine specifically, Russia continues to use all elements of national power to hinder Kyiv, he said.

Breedlove said Tuesday that NATO has recently observed an increase in violence along the line of contact in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and a number of diplomatic, economic and propaganda efforts on Moscows part to keep Ukraine from moving closer to the West.

Moscow seeking leading role

Breedlove told senators Russia has also undertaken a massive military deployment in Russia's Kaliningrad province, the Black Sea and, most recently, in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and western Syria, sharply constraining the alliances access to those areas.



Russia seeks to re-establish a leading role on the world stage. Russia does not just want to challenge the agreed rules of the international order, it wants to re-write them. Russia sees the U.S. and NATO as threats to its objectives and as constraints on its aspirations. So, Russia seeks to fraction our unity and challenge our resolve. Russia recognizes strength and sees weakness as opportunity, he said.

To that end Russia is using what some call unconventional or hybrid warfare, Breedlove said. Russia is using diplomatic, economic and informational tools in addition to military pressure to shake and influence nations, while trying to remain below triggering a military response, he said. Russia is using snap exercises to mask and desensitize real military deployment, he added.

Russias entry into the fight in Syria has changed the dynamic in the air and on the ground, despite public statements to the contrary, Breedlove said. He added that Russia has done little to counter the Islamic State militant group, but has greatly bolstered the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and his allies.
Super Tuesday is known as the biggest day ahead of the U.S. presidential election, with at least 11 states and one U.S. territory (American Samoa) casting votes for their chosen primary candidate.

But even though Super Tuesday has all the attention of candidates and voters right now, after it's over, both parties have plenty to look forward to.

Over the month of March alone, there are 26 primaries or caucuses.

On March 5, there will be five states up for grabs. The Democratic and Republican candidates will be competing for delegates in Kansas and Louisiana, with Democrats additionally vying for votes in Nebraska and Republicans in Kentucky and Maine.

The biggest prize of that day is Louisiana, with 46 delegates for the Republicans and 59 for the Democrats.

Delegate count

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hoping that Super Tuesday will give her a huge lead over Bernie Sanders. She has strong support in the Southern states.

For the Republicans, the stakes are even higher.

About half of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination are in play, but Super Tuesday delegates are awarded proportionally, so no one candidate could win all of them.

However, front-runner Donald Trump could win a big enough portion of the total delegates to cinch the nomination if he wins a large enough percentage in each state.

Although the day is certainly not to be underestimated, the Super Tuesday victories and defeats have the potential to be short-lived for each party's candidates. After all, there are many more contests ahead.
Blog Archive October (22) September (38) August (33) July (33) June (44) May (34) April (31) March (29) February (29) January (33) December (36) November (43) October (33) September (38) August (26) July (32) June (24) May (27) April (4) February (1) December (2) October (1) September (25) August (14) July (21) June (28) May (24) April (35) March (35) February (56) January (63) December (58) November (35) October (49) September (49) August (52) July (60) June (59) May (52) April (60) March (49) February (53) January (37) December (66) November (170) October (161) September (140) August (142) July (145) June (134) May (163) April (143) March (156) February (134) January (141) December (119) November (100) October (54) September (110) August (141) July (130) June (157) May (157) April (152) March (165) February (137) January (151) December (128) November (155) October (143) September (149) August (166) July (146) June (169) May (157) April (157) March (180) February (149) January (142) December (157) November (153) October (160) September (170) August (157) July (179) June (194) May (188) April (184) March (187) February (154) January (158) December (164) November (164) October (211) September (217) August (180) July (203) June (189) May (196) April (214) March (200) February (188) January (224) December (196) November (209) October (186) September (216) August (315) July (310) June (278) May (327) April (311) March (293) February (284) January (311) December (265) November (303) October (315) September (324) August (407) July (202) June (288) May (222) April (206) March (228) February (257) January (275) December (266) November (279) October (282) September (312) August (284) July (180) June (132) May (121) April (140) March (176) February (140) January (150) December (144) November (151) October (156) September (136) August (156) July (146) June (160) May (176) April (194) March (157) February (154) January (2) December (3) November (5) October (6) September (8) August (7) July (5) June (4) May (4) March (4) February (5) January (11) December (1) November (7) October (6) September (2) August (2) July (5) June (4) May (3) March (2) February (4) January (1) December (5) August (1) June (2) May (2) April (1)
BOISE  Idaho legislative leaders are discussing plans for an Idaho-run health care program that could receive federal funding, the House speaker and Senate president pro tem said Tuesday.

The remarks signal efforts by top Republican leadership to revive plans to expand health coverage for thousands of Idahoans, even after lawmakers stalled an expanded coverage plan by Gov. C.L. Butch Otter earlier this session.

The governors proposal, the Primary Care Access Program, would have provided limited coverage and cost the state $30 million. Now, lawmakers are considering ways to develop an Idaho-run program that would take advantage of federal funds without having to fully embrace a Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

People are pretty reluctant to expand a program that already has some problems with it, said Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, referring to Medicaid at an Idaho Press Club luncheon.

Instead, Idaho lawmakers may model their system on health care programs in other states. Six states, including neighboring Montana, have federal waivers that have allowed them to implement alternative coverage programs but still get federal Medicaid expansion funding under the ACA. House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said some lawmakers are looking at what kind of system Idaho could design with a federal block grant and cited Arkansas and Iowa, two states with Medicaid expansion waivers, as examples.

An Idaho-run alternative could include more private-sector involvement, more of an emphasis on managed care and possibly more involvement from health-insurance companies, Hill said.

Lawmakers rejection of Otters state-run proposal was a major surprise for Hill.

I really thought the governors plan was going to sail through quite easily, Hill said.

A bill to implement PCAP was introduced into House Health and Welfare the second week of February, but it has been in limbo ever since another committee rejected a bill to fund the program a few days later. The proposal has been criticized both by Democrats who would prefer Medicaid expansion and by more fiscally hawkish Republicans who dont want to create another government program or spend the $30 million a year.

The so-called Medicaid coverage gap has left 78,000 Idahoans without health insurance because they dont qualify for Medicaid but dont earn enough for subsidies on the state insurance exchange.

Hill said the GOP alternative being considered now would be different from PCAP, which would cover only primary care and wouldnt fund things like hospitalizations and surgeries. At the same time, Hill said PCAP could be the interim solution while state officials pursue a federal waiver or other possibilities.

PCAP is not mutually exclusive with something else, Hill said.

Statehouse Democrats have been arguing for Medicaid expansion for the past several years, and two Medicaid expansion bills got a hearing in Senate Health and Welfare a month ago. However, expansion has run into resistance from many Republicans opposed to Obamacare.

Bedke said lawmakers are doing their own individual due diligence on the health care issue. He said the stakeholders have asked what PCAP would buy, and Bedke noted that the services available at community health centers now are pretty similar to what would be available under PCAP.

It doesnt diminish the plight of the gap population, Bedke said.

Hill and Bedke said they werent sure whether something would get done on the issue before the Legislature adjourns. Hill expects sine die, the final day of the session, to be March 24.

Whatever health care plan lawmakers come up with would likely need majority support from the Republicans to pass.

The minority party has made it clear to me that anything much less than full Medicaid expansion under Obamacare is a nonstarter with them, Bedke said.
MARK FRANKLAND

I wear two hats when I write this blog of mine. First and foremost, I manage a small charity in a small Scottish town called Dumfries. Ours is a front door that opens onto the darker corners of the crumbling world that is Britain 2015. We hand out 5000 emergency food parcels a year in a town that is home to 50,000 souls. Then, as you can see from all of the book covers above, I am also a thriller writer. If you enjoy the blog, you might just enjoy the books. The link below takes you to the whole library in the Kindle store. They can be had for a couple of quid each.


The blog is devoted to the multiple issues of the security culture.
Operation Al Jazeera Security is underway in Iraq where security forces and Shia militia groups have launched attacks on militants of the Islamic State group in the northwestern desert areas of Iraq.

The operation seeks to disrupt supply routes from the western Anbar province to the northern city of Mosul. The desert area is used as a hideout by the extremist militants to launch attacks on areas controlled by the government in Tikrit and Samarra.

According to military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, these operations will play a significant role in cutting all the supply routes in areas under terrorists control.

Another military spokesman in Salahuddin province, Colonel Mohammed Al-Asadi, said the ground forces are being supported by both the Iraqi air force and the US-led coalition warplanes. He said taking over the areas in the desert would also limit the flow of fighters from the western parts of the country towards Mosul. The operation is launched from the towns of Tikrit and Samarra

Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghabban in an interview with British the Independent newspaper hinted that the fight against IS could go on till 2017 because government forces are unlikely to capture Mosul, the most important city of the group in Iraq. He said government forces and their allies would try to encircle the city and cut its supplies before launching an assault. Al-Ghabban also downplayed reported tensions between the government and Hashid al-Shaabi, a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shia militias dedicated to fighting IS.

According to the monthly report of the UN political mission for Iraq, at least 670 people including 410 civilians were killed last month.
Exchange of gun shots between Jordanian security forces and an armed group in the northern city of Irbid close to the border with Syria took place on Tuesday.

The unidentified gunmen are claimed to be outlaws according the government and the state-run Petra news agency reported that some fighters were killed while three security officers sustained injuries.

Video footages published by local media purportedly from the scene featured heavy gunfire. Early reports claimed that the fighters are members of the Islamic State probably due to Irbids closeness to the Syrian border.

In January, Israel warned that Jordan could become a target for the extremist group. Lieutenant-General Gadi Eizenkot, chief of Israels armed forces, said the successes against ISIS by Russian and pro-Assad forces raise the probability that we will see them turning their guns both against us and against the Jordanians. He thinks that Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade could attack Israel and Jordan after it fought against Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham for the control of territories next to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and close to northern Jordan. The Brigade is believed to have close ties with IS.

Amman has not yet identified the attackers and no group has claimed responsibility yet. Some officials and local media described the gunmen as extremists and it is not clear whether any organized group is behind the incident.

Jordan joined the US-led military coalition in December 2014 to ensure the stability and security of its borders following the brutal assassination of its pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh by the IS after three months in captivity. His warplane crashed in Syria while on a mission.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) on Monday said South African cellphone operator MTN has paid $250 million as part of the $3.9 billion fine imposed on the operator for violating SIM card registration rules.

The NCC slapped a $5.2 billion fine on MTN in October 2015 for failing to disconnect users with unregistered SIM cards but after weeks of negotiations reduced it by 25 percent.

MTN, which makes about 37 percent of its revenue from Nigeria, then filed a suit in the West African country questioning NCCs legal grounds for imposing the penalty.

According to Tony Ojobo, Director, Public Affairs at NCC, the government has constituted a negotiating team on the issue while the carrier has also constituted its, adding that the suit instituted against the regulator by the telco has also been withdrawn to pave way for further discussions.

In his words, the receipt of the amount, and withdrawal of the suit is without prejudice to the final decision of government on the terms of payment being proposed by the company.

Nigeria has been trying to halt the widespread use of unregistered SIM cards amid worries these are being used for criminal activity, including by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.
UK has sent ground troops to Tunisia to help local forces to foil border crossing by IS fighters from Libya, British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon revealed on Monday.

A training team of some 20 troops from the 4th Infantry Brigade is now moving to Tunisia to help counter illegal cross-border movement from Libya in support of the Tunisian authorities, Fallon said in the House of Commons

With Daesh terrorists determined to target civilians wherever they can, this training will help Tunisian forces to increase their border security. It underlines our commitment to peace and security in the region.

According to the Daily Mail, the troops were moved in Tunisia early February at the request of Tunisian authorities who are struggling to stop the flow of IS fighters crossing from Libya into Tunisia to perpetrate attacks.

The Daily adds that the troops, during their two-month mission, will provide mobile patrolling and surveillance training in Tunisia. The training also involves classroom and practical exercises, which will assist the Tunisians to better guard their land borders, the Daily says.

UKs support came following killing of 30 British tourists last year at Sousse by an IS-trained young Tunisian. The attack prompted the Foreign Office to advise its nationals not to visit the North African country. As a result thousands of the British holidaymakers left Tunisia plunging the tourism industry into abyss.

Fallon also told the House members that he gave the go-ahead to US air forces to launch attacks on IS fighters in Sabratha, West of Libya, on February 19, attacks which reportedly killed Noureddine Chouchane, a notorious Tunisian terrorist who allegedly facilitated Bardo and Sousse attacks.

Fallon pointed out however that British troops will not engage in ground fighting in Libya but London stand ready to assist on an invitation by the new Libyan government and also after consulting the British parliament.
Al Shabaab, al Qaedas affiliate in Somalia that is most known for carrying out deadly attacks there and in Kenya, released a new video threating to storm the State House of Kenya.

The leader of the terror group in Kenya, who is also a former engineering student at JKUAT University, Ahmed Iman, reportedly said they will erase all the colors of the national flag at State House except the red one as a symbol of the coming onslaught.

The propaganda video shows a clip of terrorists celebrating the recent murder of over 100 Kenyan soldiers in Somalia, The Star reported.

Iman, said to be the leader of Shabaabs al-Hijra wing, said the fighters are in Kenya and will attack Kenyans from every lane and corner.

Kenyans immersed themselves into a war they did not fully know the meaning of.

Know for sure that disaster has struck El Adde. The Kenyans were warned again and again and again. Right now as I speak to you, the only thing that I bought was my turban. My gun, my pouch and my uniform are all war booty from Kenyan troops, Iman said amid chants of Allahu Akbar.

According to local media, the video was released by the groups media agency Al Kataib.
The Islamic Development Bank on Tuesday told the Nigerian senate that the west-African nation is using up to 80 per cent of its revenues to service both its local and foreign debts.

According to the Resident Representative of IDB in Nigeria, Abdallah Kiliaki, Nigerias debts GDP ratio is low at 17 per cent and resources being used to pay the debts were enormous going by percentages taken on a yearly basis.

Nigeria stands the risk of running into economic stampede if it continues to deploy huge sums to service debts, he warned, adding that IDB looks at the debt profile of a country before it gives it new contractual sort of financing.

We also work closely with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to ensure that our financing has the required threshold of grant financing, which is normally 35 per cent but, at the same time, there were financing that is not a burden to a country to the extent that the debt may not be sustainable.

Nigerias total debt amounted to $60 billion out of which $10.6 billion is foreign loan.
Your digital subscription includes access to content from all our websites in your region. Access unlimited news content and The Canberra Times app. Premium subscribers also enjoy interactive puzzles and access to the digital version of our print edition - Today's Paper.
A 3D image of blood vessel (red) and lymph vessel with green fluorescent spheres (green), with tumour cells (orange). Credit: Le et al., Nature Communications.

Monash University researchers have revealed that chronic stress builds lymphatic "highways" that provide cancer cells with a faster and more efficient way to spread.

The lymphatic system helps carry immune cells throughout the body in order to fight illness, however it also plays a role in transporting cancer cells throughout the body. A study by Dr Caroline Le and Dr Erica Sloan from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences indicates that chronic stress can be extremely detrimental to cancer patients. High stress levels increase lymphatic activity, making the patient's own lymphatic system a more efficient and networked distributor of cancer cells.

Dr Le explained that "cancer highways" develop as a result of chronic stress, allowing cancer cells to travel more freely.

"We found that chronic stress signals the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)  better known as the 'fight-or-flight' response  to profoundly impact lymphatic function and the spread of cancer cells," Dr Le said, who undertook the work as part of her PhD research.

"These findings demonstrate an instrumental role for stress in controlling lymphatic function to impact health, and suggest that blocking the effects of stress to prevent cancer spread through lymphatic routes may provide a way to improve outcomes for patients with cancer."

To accurately monitor the movement of tumour cells, researchers tagged the cells with a fluorescent marker and used state-of-the-art imaging techniques to visualise tumour cells that had spread into lymphatic vessels. The imaging showed that stress increases the number and size of lymphatic vessels in and around tumours, while also increasing the rate of fluid flow through these vessels. Both of these combine to increase the capacity of lymphatic "highways" to carry and spread tumour cells throughout the body.

The research was a collaborative effort involving clinicians at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and the European Institute of Oncology in Milan. Importantly, the study shows that blocking neural signaling in patients, with drugs that are readily available and currently used to treat hypertension, regulates the function of lymphatic vessels to prevent the spread of cancer cells.

The remarkable findings have provided the groundwork for an ongoing clinical trial at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and will provide clinicians and researchers with a valuable weapon in the battle against cancer, and ultimately, may provide a way to improve outcomes for patients with cancer.

Explore further How cancer tricks the lymphatic system into spreading tumors
A study by National Jewish Health concluded that more than half (55 percent) of teens who were homeschooled got the optimal amount of sleep per week, compared to just 24.5 percent of those who attend public and private schools. Credit: National Jewish Health

A new study published in Behavioral Sleep Medicine shows that children who are taught at home get more sleep than those who go to private and public schools. The findings provide additional evidence of teens' altered biological clocks and support an argument for starting traditional high school later in the morning.

"We have a school system that is set up so that the youngest children, who are awake very early in the morning, start school latest, and our adolescents, who need sleep the most, are being asked to wake up and go to school at a time when their brains should physiologically be asleep," said Lisa Meltzer, PhD, a sleep psychologist at National Jewish Health in Denver, and lead author of the study.

"Adolescents need nine hours of sleep a night and if they're only getting seven hours, on average, by the end of the week they are a full ten hours of sleep behind schedule," said Meltzer, "and that impacts every aspect of functioning."

Meltzer and her colleagues charted the sleep patterns of 2,612 students, including nearly 500 who are homeschooled. They found that adolescent homeschooled students slept an average of 90 minutes more per night than public and private school students, who were in class an average of 18 minutes before homeschooled children even awoke.

"That cumulative sleep deprivation adds up," said Meltzer. "The ability to learn, concentrate and pay attention is all diminished when you haven't had enough sleep. But more than that, a lack of sleep can also impact a teenager's mood and their ability to drive early in the morning," she said.

Experts urge later start times at other schools after charting homeschool sleep benefits. Credit: National Jewish Health

If your teenager needs more sleep, why not just send them to bed earlier? "It's not that simple," said Meltzer. Melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate our sleep, shifts by about two hours during puberty. So, even if they wanted to get to sleep earlier, teenagers are battling biological changes in their bodies that are nearly impossible to overcome.

"It's not that they don't want to go to bed, but physiologically they simply can't fall asleep earlier. So, the logical solution, is to allow them to sleep later," said Meltzer.

Fifteen year old Caelin Jones couldn't agree more. Jones, who lives in Denver, says he sets his alarm every morning for six o'clock to get to school on time, though he never quite felt fully awake until several hours later.

"Most days I would get to school and pretty much be the same as all the other kids. We were all just bleary-eyed and wondering why we had to be here at this time," he said.

Jones' sleep problems became so consuming that he sought sleep counseling through Dr. Meltzer at National Jewish Health. "It's made a big difference for me," said Jones, who has learned habits to help him wind down at night.

The study concluded that more than half (55%) of teens who were homeschooled got the optimal amount of sleep per week, compared to just 24.5% of those who attend public and private schools. Conversely, 44.5% of public and private school teens got insufficient sleep during the school week, compared to only 16.3% of homeschooled teens.

"The differences are stark," said Meltzer. "Across the country, public and private schools that have changed their high school start times see considerable benefits. Students are tardy less often and graduation rates are actually higher," she said.

While you may not be able to change teenagers' biology, you can help them develop healthier sleeping habits. Meltzer offers this advice:

Get all electronics out of the bedroom. TVs, computers, video games and phones are major distractions for teens and often delay sleep.

Don't look at any screens 30-60 minutes before bed time. Though turning off media is as simple as flipping a switch, the human brain does not work the same way. Being stimulated by media just before bed can make the brain too active to sleep.

Set up family charging stations, where mom, dad and the kids plug in their phones at night so they are out of reach.

Most importantly, set a consistent routine. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This one habit can help regulate your body's internal clock and improve the quality of sleep you get.

Explore further Study finds homeschool students sleep better: Research supports later start times for high school
An event in the 2016 Brazilian Zika Zero public education campaign. Campo Grande/MS 19/02/2016. Mobilizacao Nacional da Educacao Zika Zero. Credit: Ubirajara Machado

Some Brazilians escape from Carnival. And when they escape and travel abroad, they are often asked "why in hell are you here instead of celebrating Carnival?"

I'm used to answering this question every February when I visit Washington DC but this year was an exception. 2016 was a Zika year for Brazilians, and my escape from Carnival also means I get to become the unofficial spokesperson of all things Zika and how it's affecting the Brazilian population.

The questions first emerged at the AAAS conference and the DC Science Writers Association (DCSWA) dinner. The scientists in attendance were curious about the virus, but the journalists in attendance were intrigued on what and how to report.

Our little table became known as the Zika information center, and I found that answering their questions was difficult. Several times I had to counter misconceptions or correct random information propagated about Zika by the mainstream media. For example, I had to point that I live in southern Brazil, whereas the epidemic is spreading in the northeasta distance analogous to the space between Toronto and Miami. So, once I was back home post-Carnival, I started to research the extent of the Zika information getting out and how it correlates with the actual clinical reports from Brazilian doctors. I surveyed PubMed and discussed with colleagues.

Back in the DCSWA party, one editor of a scientific publication basically summarized everyone's questions in two parts when he asked: (1) Was the epidemic as bad as they say? and (2) Was it Zika or some insecticide that was responsible for the surge in microcephaly?

For a brief background, Zika is an virus carried by mosquito Aedes aegypti, which originated in Africa. The mosquito favors tropical climates, where its larvae can breed in dirty, standing water. The mosquito's favorite habitats are typically in tropical climates and developing countries, for instance, in Brazil, only 60% of the population have access to reasonable waste disposal. In northeastern Brazil, where the Zika epidemic is spreading, this number narrows to just 30%.

Answering question (1) how bad is the epidemic? may seem counterintuitive at first. Why is Zika so bad? One in five people affected experience the symptoms of the common cold. The other four remain asymptomatic. A small percentage of Zika-infected people develop the neurologic syndrome Guillain-Barre, which generally resolves without major complications. Until now, only three people have died.

But what about for babies exposed to the Zika virus? Well, that's the bad part of the story.

Pediatricians in northeastern Brazil were the first to notice that hospitals were filling with severely microcephalic babies. The connection between the virus and the neurologic condition was drawn early. The neuropediatricians treating those infants found it extremely unusual that they were seeing the same amount of anomalies in a one-week span that they usually saw in a whole year. The doctors warned the authorities.

After that, Brazilian researchers could identify the virus and were able to infer a causal link between Zika and microcephaly.

The Brazilian government reported 508 confirmed babies and 3,935 awaiting laboratory confirmation.

And to answer to question (2) is the insecticide Pyriproxyfen the culprit? The Argentinian organization Reduas first claimed Pyriproxyfen was the cause of the microcephaly outbreak in South America. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends Pyriproxyfen be used in tropical countries in the developing world that lack proper clean water infrastructure. The WHO seems to feel it is safe to use the efficient and inexpensive insecticide to protect the population that lacks sources of water and sanitation hygiene and the diseases that accompany inefficient WASH.

Furthermore, Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and editor-in-chief of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, said that "research on Zika and the birth defect 'overwhelmingly point to a virus as the cause of microcephaly,'" in USA Today.

I feel the organization that claimed the correlation between Pyriproxyfen and the microcephaly epidemic was irresponsible when making that point. This claim reaches the level of anti-vaxxers in the US: It is the type of misinformation that can cause harm. After all, when blaming the insecticide they absolve the virus, which may cause people to stop taking mosquito precautions (such as deciding not to travel to endemic locations).

Hotez quotes Ernesto Marques, a microbiology professor, with a sentiment that I share: "These guys come out of the blue, and people believe them, with no evidence at all. It really shows the lack of science education among the public."

And if you are asking yourself, why in hell did I come to Washington DC instead of celebrating Carnival in Brazil? The answer is I like to escape from the noise. But I still bring my Brazilian culture with me, even if it's in answering questions and clarifying misinformation about the epidemic.

Explore further Brazil finds Zika in microcephaly babies' brains

Provided by PLOS Blogs

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) shows that patients, who undergo elective hip and knee surgery in hospitals with inadequate nurse staffing and poor nurse work environments, are more likely to require re-hospitalization. The results are set for publication in a future issue of the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, but are available now online here. The cross-sectional study analyzed data of more than 112,000 Medicare patients in nearly 500 US hospitals and points to hospital nurses as a likely answer to the need for reducing postoperative readmissions.

The most common reason patients were readmitted was for postoperative infection. Hospital nurses are essential to the prevention of infection. They are responsible for administering antibiotics prior of surgery, caring for the surgical wound, monitoring for signs and symptoms of infection or sepsis, and maintaining diligent hand washing practices. However, when nurses are inadequately staffed and resourced, time demands detract from the diligent work of nursing.

These study findings come at a time when hospitals' reimbursements are contingent on demonstrating satisfactory performance on patient outcomes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandatory Hospital Readmission Reduction Program and Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Program are placing hospitals financially accountable for patient outcomes including readmission rates following elective hip and knee replacements.

Accounting for patient characteristics and hospital features, every additional patient in a nurse's workload is associated with an eight percent increased likelihood of a patient being readmitted within thirty days of discharge following the surgery. Patients who underwent surgery in hospitals where nurses reporting having supportive environments, including strong collegial relationships with physicians and autonomy in clinical practice, were 12 percent less likely to be readmitted.

"These study findings are consistent with decades of prior research demonstrating the role hospital nurses play in ensuring safe outcomes for surgical patients," said the study's senior author Matthew McHugh, PhD, JD, MPH, RN, Associate Director of CHOPR. "Nurses work around-the-clock providing care to patients before, during, and after surgery, making them the likely healthcare providers to identify and intervene on early warning signs that could lead to a negative health outcome."

While only six percent of Medicare patients undergoing elective hip and knee replacements are readmitted to the hospital within thirty days, every hospitalization puts patients at risk of acquiring serious complications and injury. "This study supports the notion that hospital nurses are fundamental to ensuring high quality care and outcomes for patients," said the study's lead author Karen Lasater, PhD, RN, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at CHOPR.

Explore further Novel study shows lower surgical mortality in hospitals with best nursing care
Shown are PET scans that track tau (top row) and beta-amyloid from two normal older people and a patient with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The normal older adult on the left has no brain amyloid deposition and minimal tau in the medial temporal lobe. In the normal older adult in the middle, amyloid deposition is present throughout the brain, and tau has spread out into the temporal cortex. In the AD patient, both amyloid and tau are spread through the brain. Credit: Michael Scholl

New research led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, shows for the first time that PET scans can track the progressive stages of Alzheimer's disease in cognitively normal adults, a key advance in the early diagnosis and staging of the neurodegenerative disorder.

In the process, the scientists also obtained important clues about two Alzheimer's-linked proteins - tau and beta-amyloid - and how they relate to each other.

The findings, to be published March 2 in the journal Neuron, come from positron emission tomography (PET) of 53 adults. Five were young adults aged 20-26, 33 were cognitively healthy adults aged 64-90, and 15 were patients aged 53-77 who had been diagnosed with probable Alzheimer's dementia.

The stages of tau deposition were established by German researchers Heiko and Eva Braak through postmortem analysis of the brains of suspected Alzheimer's patients.

"Braak staging was developed through data obtained from autopsies, but our study is the first to show the staging in people who are not only alive, but who have no signs of cognitive impairment," said study principal investigator Dr. William Jagust, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health and at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "This opens the door to the use of PET scans as a diagnostic and staging tool."

Dr. William Jagust shows how PET scans can help track the progression of Alzheimer's disease. Credit: Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally

PET scans are used to detect early signs of disease by looking at cellular-level changes in organs and tissue. The results of the scans in this study paralleled Braak neuropathological stages, which range from 1 to 6, describing the degree of tau protein accumulation in the brain.

Jagust worked with study co-lead authors Michael Scholl, a visiting scholar, and Samuel Lockhart, a postdoctoral fellow, both at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

Tau vs. amyloid

Their findings also shed light on the nature of tau and amyloid protein deposits in the aging brain. For many years, the accumulation of beta amyloid plaques was considered the primary culprit in Alzheimer's disease. Over the past decade, however, tau, a microtubule protein important in maintaining the structure of neurons, has emerged as a major player. When the tau protein gets tangled and twisted, its ability to support synaptic connections becomes impaired.

While a number of symptoms exist that signal Alzheimer's disease, a definitive diagnosis has been possible only through an examination of the brain after the patient has died. The availability of amyloid imaging for the past decade has improved this situation, but how Alzheimer's developed as a result of amyloid remains a mystery. Studies done in autopsies linked the development of symptoms to the deposition of the tau protein.

Through the PET scans, the researchers confirmed that with advancing age, tau protein accumulated in the medial temporal lobe - home to the hippocampus and the memory center of the brain.

"Tau is basically present in almost every aging brain," said Scholl, who holds an appointment at Sweden's University of Gothenburg. "Very few old people have no tau. In our case, it seems like the accumulation of tau in the medial temporal lobe was independent of amyloid and driven by age."

The study revealed that higher levels of tau in the medial temporal lobe were associated with greater declines in episodic memory, the type of memory used to code new information. The researchers tested episodic memory by asking subjects to recall a list of words viewed 20 minutes earlier.

Both proteins involved in dementia

One question yet to be answered is why so many people who have tau in their medial temporal lobe never go on to develop Alzheimer's. Likewise, adults may have beta amyloid in their brains and still be cognitively healthy.

"It's not that one is more important than the other," said Lockhart. "Our study suggests that they may work together in the progression of Alzheimer's."

While higher levels of tau in the medial temporal lobe were linked to more problems with episodic memory, it was when tau spread outside this region to other parts of the brain, such as the neocortex, that researchers saw more serious declines in global cognitive function. Significantly, they found that tau's spread outside the medial temporal lobe was connected to the presence of amyloid plaques in the brain.

"Amyloid may somehow facilitate the spread of tau, or tau may initiate the deposition of amyloid. We don't know. We can't answer that at this point," said Jagust. "All I can say is that when amyloid starts to show up, we start to see tau in other parts of the brain, and that is when real problems begin. We think that may be the beginning of symptomatic Alzheimer's disease."

What the study does indicate, the researchers said, is that tau imaging could become an important tool in helping to develop therapeutic approaches that target the correct protein - either amyloid or tau - depending on the disease stage.

Explore further Scientists use immunotherapy to reduce memory problems with Alzheimer's disease
Northeastern assistant professor Leo Beletsky says a safe injection site for heroin users is an extraordinary intervention for an extraordinary situation. Credit: iStock

he opioid crisis continues to grow year after year, with heroin-related deaths jumping 39 percent from 2012 to 2013. Now one U.S. community has proposed an innovative strategy to help combat the scourge, which is ravaging cities and towns nationwide.

Last week, the mayor of Ithaca, New York, announced the most aggressive alternative plan to date: opening a safe site where drug users can inject the drug under the supervision of medical personnel without the fear of being arrested.

While this may seem far-fetched, Northeastern University associate professor Leo Beletsky, an expert in law and public health, explained that this measure should be seen in a context of an extraordinary situation.

"I don't think it's crazy at all," said Beletsky, who holds joint appointments in the School of Law and Bouve College of Health Sciences. "We need innovative interventions because what we are doing is not working."

Ithaca's safe injection site would be the first of its kind in the U.S, but dozens of similar facilities are already operating in Europe, Australia, and Canada. A safe injection site that opened in Vancouver in 2003 sees up to 1,000 visitors a day. And extensive research suggests the intervention is working: According to a study by the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, there was a 35 percent reduction in heroin overdose deaths in the neighborhood surrounding the site from 2001 to 2005. It has also demonstrated positive impact on infectious disease transmission and quality of life in the neighborhood.

"Aside from those direct benefits, the Vancouver facility is also co-located with a range of other services," Beletsky explained. "At the intake desk they will immediately ask you what services you would like that day, whether it's wanting wound care, getting tested, or entering detox. From my perspective, the optimal safe injection program provides the broadest possible support to their clients."

Ithaca is one of many communities trying to combat the rise of heroin and prescription drug addiction. In a three-week span in 2014, the city saw three fatal overdoses and 13 non-fatal overdoses. That same year, more than 1,000 people in Massachusetts died from accidental overdose.

But there is hope. According to Beletsky, supervised injection sites provide health benefits as well as psychological benefits, giving people who may be facing complex problems and limited options the chance to take charge of their health. "These facilities help highly-vulnerable drug users to make better choices,"

Opening this type of official facility anywhere in the U.S. would require overcoming a range of legal barriers. As an example, Beletsky pointed to a provision in the federal Controlled Substances Act that imposes criminal liability on landlords if they are aware of illicit drug activity in their buildings.

"Clearly if you are the city government and you are running a facility, you need to protect your staff," Beletsky said. "But the political environmentfrom federal down to the local levelshas never been more favorable to innovations like safe injection facilities. You have to ask, 'How likely is it that the state would come after a mayor for doing something like this, given all of the evidence that it works?'"

Explore further A new tool in drug overdose prevention

More information: Brandon DL Marshall et al. Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America's first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study, The Lancet (2011). Journal information: The Lancet Brandon DL Marshall et al. Reduction in overdose mortality after the opening of North America's first medically supervised safer injecting facility: a retrospective population-based study,(2011). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62353-7
Georgia-China complete free trade talks in 2016

Georgia has begun free trade talks with China while hosting the first round of negotiations with Chinese officials in Tbilisi.Over two days (February 22-23) of negotiations, Georgian and Chinese officials agreed that free trade talks should be completed by the end of 2016.The officials also planned to arrange the next round of negotiations in May 2016 with subsequent consultations to be held once every two months.The deal will be extremely beneficial for Georgia, as it will facilitate increased business and trade turnover between the nations. Thanks to the deal, Georgia will be able to export its products to China without additional customs fees.Establishing a free trade regime with China was initiated by Georgias former Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili when he met his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang in September 2015.Last December, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) in China.The MoI signing was significant because it signified the official start of negotiations on a Georgia-China free trade deal.Georgia will be the first country in the region to sign this type of agreement with China.The friendly relations between Georgia and China have become more prominent since more Chinese companies expressed interest in investing in Georgia. In addition, Chinese tourists are becoming increasingly aware of Georgia and interested in visiting, according to statistics.Recently, China has become one of Georgia's closest economic partners. In 2014, the trade volume between the two countries increased by 28 percent, official figures revealed.Adjusted figures released by the National Statistics Office of Georgia, Geostat, reveal Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) in Georgia for the year 2014 amounted to $1.758 billion USD.
Ten days on strike

By Messenger Staff

Georgian coal miners of the western Tkibuli region have now been on strike for ten days; their main demand is an increase of their monthly salary.The workers stress that despite the fact they have to work in very hard conditions without meeting minimal standards of hygiene, health protection and safety, their principle demand remains their pitiful salary.Their employer, the GIG company, is the nations only coal producer, and the sole owner of economically-important Georgian coal mining assets, namely the Tkibuli-Shaori and Vale coalfields.It is responsible for extracting the coal, enriching it and then selling it. Under current extraction licenses, 407 million tons of coal deposits are at the company's disposal.Extraction volumes amounted to 350 thousand tons of coal in 2014, the companys webpage reads.Currently, the company leadership says that due to problems on the foreign market, they have no financial resources to increase salaries.Meanwhile, Eliso Chapidze, a Georgian Dream (GD) majoritarian MP from Tkibuli whose father was also a coal miner, says the problem can still be settled through negotiations.However, her speeches and comments revealed that she could not reach a consensus with her own team members over the miners problems.Chapidze says that Tkibuli should be granted the status of a mountainous area, which will partially settle the problem, as workers will receive supplements for their low salaries; for over a year the government has been subsidising low salaries in low-income 'mountainous areas', though Tkibuli had this status revoked for unknown reasons..Ignoring the lack of safety standards in the mines is shameful for a country whose people earn a salary of 400-500 GEL salary despite the fact that their work endangers their lives. In addition, this wage is not even enough to feed a family of four for one month.The development of the economy should not transcend the protection of labour rights.
No foothold for racists on 1916 platform

Ronit Lentin

I was thrilled to stand on OConnell Street on Saturday 6 February as part of a large coalition of people, Irish and migrants alike, who congregated in front of the GPO to say no to racism and Islamophobia, and to counter Pegida Irelands plans to hold its inaugural meeting.

Pegida stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (in German: Patriotische Europaer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes). It was established in October 2014 in Germany, where thousands of neo-Nazi fascists have since marched in opposition to Muslim migrants, though the Islamisation of the west is a figment of the racists imagination: Muslims remain a small, persecuted minority throughout the region.

Like all far-right groups, including Identity Ireland, Pegida presents itself as defending European values and providing a legitimate opposition to migration. However, the German term Abendlandes derives from The Downfall of the Occident, a 1918 book penned by Oswald Spengler, whose racist ideas about the division of history into discrete cultures fed Nazi racial superiority that led to the extermination of millions.

The European far right regards Europes refugee crisis as an opportunity to publicise its anti-immigrant message. During the last months of 2015 there were 208 rallies in Germany, up from 95 a year earlier. And Pegida members set fire to refugee hostels, instilling fear in the million or so migrants who have reached Germany mostly from the war-torn Middle East. Racist rallies were also held in in Amsterdam, Prague, Birmingham, and in Calais, home to thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty.

Wherever they go, Pegida members  holding flags and chanting nationalist chants  attack counter-demonstrators who support migrants. They attack centres where provisions for refugees are collected, throw stones and bottles. And they often complain that by preventing them from marching, they are deprived of freedom of speech and right of protest against what they see as legitimate targets.

Since the 1930s, when the precursors of Fine Gael, the Blueshirts described by Look Left magazine as the most serious fascist movement to emerge in Ireland  had 48,000 members across the Free State, and apart from some insignificant attempts by tiny groups such as the Immigration Control Platform and Identity Ireland, Ireland has not had a significant extreme right-wing political party. Judging from the Governments restrictive migration policies and the ongoing incarceration of asylum seekers in direct provision hostels, as well as Irelands reluctance to play its part in admitting refugees from Syria, some say that Ireland does not really need an extreme right party. Yet the establishment of Pegida Ireland was a step too far. This was why the anti-Pegida coalition, led by groups such as Anti-Racism Network Ireland and the European Network Against Racism among many others, decided to mount a counter-rally.

We were guided by several important principles, among them the need to hold the space of the 1916 Rising for inclusion and against racial hatred. Thus, most of the rallys speakers were members of ethnic minorities and migrant communities, all of whom expressed their sense of belonging to an inclusive republic that they and their children call home.

Although we invited all political parties to endorse this inclusivity, only representatives of minority parties spoke, while the Government parties preferred absence. In the presence of many supporters, the largely peaceful rally claimed the streets of Dublin as our own, and yet again, managed to prevent the extreme right from setting up its stall on the 1916 scene.

Ronit Lentin is a retired associate professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears regularly in Metro Eireann
An unapologetic Gov. Rick Scott offered no regrets about how he has handled the Florida Legislature, even while lawmakers continued to butcher his legislative agenda on job creation programs and tax cuts.

Over the last six months Scott spent millions on television ads, a bus tour around the state, and trying to cajole business leaders to pressure legislators to give him his priority items.

It hasn't worked so far.

Legislators are on the verge of passing a state budget with a fraction of the $1 billion in tax cuts he asked for and no money for his job creation fund - a signature issue of his tenure as governor.

"My responsibility as governor is to do exactly what I ran on in 2010 and 2014," Scott said of his campaign promises to create jobs. "There is no question what I ran on. I'm very committed to doing everything I can, and I'm going to keep doing it."

Scott said if the legislature continues to refuse to give him $250 million for his job creation program, called the Enterprise Fund, it will result in lost jobs. The Republican governor said he has about 277 job recruitment projects on the table now that could generate another 50,000 jobs.

"Individuals are not going to have a job because of this decision," Scott said after a meeting of the Florida Cabinet in Tallahassee on Wednesday.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg in potential disappointment for Scott. The Legislature is working on a tax plan that is expected to be rolled out later this week that would cut just $110 million in taxes. Scott was adamant in pushing the Legislature to give him $1 billion in cuts, including eliminating corporate income taxes for manufacturing and retail companies.

Legislators have also effectively killed any potential of a gambling agreement passing this year.

Scott was asked by reporters if the combination of issues could lead him to veto the entire state budget that the Legislature is expected to send him next week. Scott refused to say, but repeated three times during the interview that after the Legislature passes a budget, it is his duty to review it.

"We still have 9 or 10 days left in this legislative session," Scott said. "Let's see what happens with the budget, then I will review the budget."
For the second year in a row, the Florida Legislature is poised to finish a session without awarding any of the legal damages owed to the surviving victim of one of the most horrific child abuse cases in state history.

Victor Barahona, the surviving twin brother of Nubia Barahona, was found near death and covered with pesticides alongside his sisters decomposing body on Interstate 95 in Palm Beach County in 2011. They were 10 years old.

The twins had been sexually abused, starved and forced to sleep in a bathtub for years by the foster parents who adopted them, Jorge and Carmen Barahona. They were ordered to eat cockroaches and consume food that contained feces and, despite numerous complaints to the child abuse hotline and warnings from teachers, the state failed to stop their parents from routinely beating and binding them inside their West Miami-Dade home.

A report commissioned by David Wilkins, then secretary of the Department of Children and Families, found that the agencys "failure in common sense, critical thinking, ownership, follow-through, and timely and accurate information-sharing" defined the care of Nubia and Victor.

In 2013, the agency conceded it was at fault and agreed to pay Victor $5 million to settle a lawsuit filed on Victors behalf. The department said it would pay $1.25 million to Victor immediately, money from a risk-management fund used to cover liability. But the agency can't pay the rest without legislative approval of a "claim bill."

Under state sovereign immunity laws, the state is shielded from having to pay more than $200,000 when it injures someone, unless the Legislature agrees to lift the cap and authorize the payment. But because of a decision by Senate leadership, the Legislature wont pay the Barahona bill and, potentially, a host of other claim bills even though the state is at fault.
@Cveiga

Miami Congressman Carlos Curbelo has asked U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for federal assistance in fighting a wave of gun violence that has claimed the lives of young people in Miami-Dade County.

Curbelo, a Republican, asked in a March 1 letter for funding from the Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance Program for local police departments. The program provides training, equipment and personnel to help with unexpected law enforcement emergencies, according to Curbelo's letter.

"The local police forces throughout Miami-Dade County, while performing admirably, need assistance," he wrote.

About 100 teens and children have been killed in Miami-Dade County in the last three years. The February shooting death of 6-year old King Carter, who was caught in the crossfire of teens feuding over social media posts, has forced the community to examine whether more can be done to keep kids safe.

Curbelo noted in his letter that most of the shootings have occurred in poor neighborhoods. They have been clustered in the northwest area of the county, though young people from all over Miami-Dade have fallen victim -- including 7-year-old Amiere Castro, who was killed in December a drive-by in Richmond Heights.

"The senseless shootings have left both the aggrieved families and their neighbors emotionally devastated. As they continue to grapple with the horrifying experience of losing loved ones, we as a community have united in the call for combating gun violence," Curbelo wrote.
@ByKristenMClark

Adding to his lengthy -- and growing -- list of establishment endorsements, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy just landed the two biggest names possible for a Democrat: Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The president and vice president of the United States are backing Murphy in his bid for Marco Rubio's U.S. Senate seat, Murphy's campaign announced this morning.

And Biden will campaign with Murphy on March 28, the campaign said. Specific details haven't been released yet.

In statements provided by the campaign, both Obama and Biden heaped praise on Murphy, a congressman from Jupiter, for his work supporting the middle-class and a host of other issues.

"Patrick has been a tireless champion for middle-class families and a defender of the economic progress that American workers and businesses have made," Obama said in the statement. "In Congress, he's fought to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, reform our criminal justice system, and protect a woman's right to choose. Floridians can count on Patrick Murphy to stand up for them every day as their next Senator."

Biden added, "Patrick Murphy has the progressive values, the work ethic and the youthful energy the U.S. Senate needs. He'll work tirelessly to bring people together to make a difference for Florida's middle class."

The endorsements -- including that compliment -- weren't well-received by Murphy's primary opponent, fellow U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson. The Orlando congressman is a proud and passionate progressive, who's banking on progressives' support to beat Murphy in Florida's Democratic primary in August.

Grayson's campaign said in a statement that Obama's and Biden's endorsements smack of "a last-ditch effort by the D.C. Establishment to try to blunt our large and growing command of the race."
Foreign leaders are "troubled" by some of the rhetoric coming out of the Republican presidential primary, and its not just what theyre hearing from Donald Trump, says President Barack Obama.

"But this is not just Mr. Trump. Look at the statements that are being made by the other candidates," Obama said at a Feb. 16 news conference. "There is not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change, that thinks its serious. Well, that's a problem. The rest of the world looks at that and says, how can that be?"

Obamas statement sounded similar to a take from Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, who recently said, "Not one Republican has the guts to recognize that climate change is real." We rated that claim False because a couple GOP presidential candidates (including some who are no longer in the running) have acknowledged its existence.

Obamas claim is different: He said none of the Republicans thinks the country should do anything about climate change.

To different degrees, the remaining candidates dont believe man-made climate change is happening, or at least not to the extent that Obama and a vast majority of climate scientists believe its happening.

See what Lauren Carroll of PolitiFact found about what Marco Rubio and his GOP rivals have said about climate change plans. More here.
Blog Archive March (5) January (190) December (300) November (359) October (297) September (270) August (344) July (323) June (336) May (274) April (291) March (268) February (201) January (217) December (243) November (228) October (182) September (174) August (186) July (181) June (174) May (228) April (225) March (290) February (289) January (333) December (252) November (270) October (336) September (349) August (324) July (346) June (385) May (425) April (422) March (354) February (285) January (321) December (364) November (346) October (306) September (291) August (274) July (276) June (275) May (313) April (279) March (277) February (287) January (326) December (293) November (369) October (418) September (397) August (391) July (385) June (224) May (267) April (193) March (190) February (198) January (218) December (235) November (315) October (303) September (254) August (264) July (237) June (253) May (261) April (204) March (325) February (318) January (224) December (188) November (255) October (285) September (428) August (403) July (324) June (163) May (207) April (184) March (155) February (108) January (147) December (243) November (236) October (188) September (73) August (14) July (10) June (3) May (5) April (5) March (8) February (7) January (9) December (21) November (18) October (34) September (11) August (31) July (25) June (34) May (11) April (9) March (29) February (27) January (9) December (23) November (6) October (20) September (13) August (2) July (6) June (3) May (20) April (2) March (4) February (3) January (2) December (2) November (6) October (4) September (11) August (28) July (27) June (32) May (59) April (44) March (47) February (36) January (48) December (41) November (55) October (80) September (50) August (30) July (63) June (46) May (36) April (24) March (46) February (36) January (30)
Humanities Montana is now accepting online applications for 2016 Hometown Humanities at humanitiesmontana.org/programs/hometown_application.php.

The deadline for applications has been extended to March 15, 2016.

Any Montana community with a population under 20,000 is eligible to apply.

Previous Hometown Humanities locations include Miles City, Dillon, Lincoln County, and Havre.

Hometown Humanities brings a years worth of humanities-based programming to a single community  15 to 25 events all free of charge and open to the public, selected from Humanities Montanas extensive program catalog. Humanities Montana staff works with the selected community to design a schedule that includes public speakers from its Montana Conversations and Speakers in the Schools programs, community conversations on local issues, reading and discussion groups, and an array of other possibilities.

Hometown Humanities supports the particular cultural interests of a Montana community, and explores the capacity of the humanities to enrich lives, foster inquiry, and stimulate civil and informed conversations about the human experience. It gets people talking  sometimes about challenging and sensitive subjects in ways that broaden perspectives and bring people together. For more information, visit humanitiesmontana.org or call 406-243-6022.

Humanities Montana is the states independent nonprofit state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Since 1972, Humanities Montana has provided services and grants to hundreds of Montana organizations in support of public programs in history, literature, values, and public issues. Among its many programs are its grants, Montana Conversations, and the Governors Humanities Awards. Its overall goal is to support top-quality, in-depth humanities programming in order to create a civil and engaged society where Montanans think critically and converse about our roles in the contemporary world.
Jameel Chaudhry, a Muslim immigrant who has been working as an architect and raising a family in Missoula for two decades, delivered a poignant address Tuesday night to a crowd of hundreds gathered in Caras Park for a pro-refugee resettlement rally.

I just would like to say as-salaam-alaikum, which in Arabic means peace be with you, he said. Its a greeting which is said by six million Muslims in America and 1.6 billion people across the world. So whether you are Arab, Indonesian, Pakistani, Somali, whatever, we all say the same greeting. I have lived in America for 25 years. I refer you to one of the signs I saw that said No entry to Muslims in Montana. Its too late. Were already here.

Chaudhrys comments drew wild applause from the crowd. He went on to explain how he believes Missoula and America are better, stronger and more vibrant places when citizens "embrace diversity, allow religious freedoms and show respect for others."

A coalition of churches and community organizations, including the Montana Human Rights Network (MHRN), organized a series of simultaneous statewide events called the Stand against Violence, Fear and Hate - Day of Action on Tuesday. In Missoula, hundreds of people marched from the XXXs on Higgins to Caras Park while singing songs, carrying signs and holding candles.

Were here in the name of love, compassion and opportunity for all of our fellow mankind, said city council member Emily Bentley.

The event aimed to publicly challenge the rhetoric of fear and hate toward refugees as well as to support the efforts to create relocation opportunities for refugees in Montana, according to Rachel Carroll Rivas, co-director of the MHRN.

Refugees have endured incomprehensible hardship to escape violence and discrimination, all to create a safer life for their children and families, she said. We challenge Montanans to educate themselves about the security of the immigration and refugee process and about other faiths. We ask all good people to stand up to the hate rhetoric and resist the bigotry and feary of anyone deemed other, may it be Muslim, immigrants or refugees."

***

As local musician Josh Farmer played Lean on Me, demonstrators circled Caras Park with signs that said Fear is our Foe and Montana Welcomes Muslims. A smattering of protesters carried signs with slogans that said Montana First or Montana Before Muslims, but the two sides mingled peacefully.

Missoula is the epicenter of the divisive issue of refugee resettlement efforts in Montana. An organization called Soft Landing Missoula is trying to get the federal government to open a refugee resettlement agency office here. In January, the Missoula County Board of Commissioners sent a letter to the U.S. Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to support Soft Landings request to help resettle about 100 refugees per year through the International Rescue Committees Reception and Placement program.

That was followed by an anti-refugee protest rally in February at the Missoula County Courthouse, and the Ravalli County Commission recently drafted a letter opposing the settlement of Syrian refugees.

A few months ago a group of Missoulians decided to join communities around the world stepping up to assist millions of people displaced by conflict, said Betsy Mulligan-Dague, executive director of the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center. That decision, as you know, has cast Missoula into a national debate about refugees in general and Muslims in particular. Christian versus Muslim, refugees versus our own homeless, safety versus danger, understanding versus misunderstanding. What makes a community whole is the love they share."

Missoula Mayor John Engen came out to show his support for the rally.

I am so proud to serve as the mayor of Missoula, Montana, because of all of you, Engen said. You show up again and again at the right time to restore our communitys faith in one another and the spirit of peace, compassion, caring, neighborliness, love  all of the things that make Missoula great.

He noted that he is the son of a Norwegian woman who didnt speak English when she immigrated to America.
KALISPELL  The owner of a health clinic that provided the only abortion services in northwest Montana is suing the man who destroyed her clinic  plus his parents, and a Kalispell anti-abortion group and its executive director.

Susan Cahill, a physician assistant, and her husband Steve Martinez, maintain that Zachary Klundt was not acting alone when the then-24-year-old Columbia Falls man ransacked All Families Healthcare in 2014.

Klundt pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges last year and was sentenced to 20 years in the Montana State Prison, with 15 suspended.

He has notified the Montana Supreme Court he intends to appeal.

The lawsuit, filed in Flathead County District Court, maintains that Hope Pregnancy Ministries purchased the Kalispell building where All Families Healthcare had leased space and evicted Cahill.

Then, three weeks after Cahill relocated her clinic, it says Twyla Klundt, who was a member of Hope Pregnancy Ministries board of directors at the time, provided Cahills name to her son on the night he broke into the new offices of All Families Healthcare.

The clinic was a total loss, according to Cahill and her attorney, Timothy Bechtold of Missoula.

Klundt broke or slashed practically every object and surface inside the clinic, they wrote in a news release. He destroyed the buildings plumbing and heating systems, pulled plants up by their roots, stabbed holes through the faces in Cahills family photographs, and destroyed all furniture, medical tools and equipment, and medical records.

Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan said Klundt had also covered everything in the primary portion of the clinic in iodine and then emptied a fire extinguisher over it all.

The clinic has never reopened.

***

Named as defendants are Zachary Klundt; his parents Kenny and Twyla Klundt; Hope Pregnancy Ministries; and its executive director, Michelle Reimer.

Hope Pregnancy Ministries operates Clear Choice Clinic in Kalispell.

The lawsuit accuses the defendants of conversion, nuisance, negligence, tortuous interference with a business relationship, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

Defendants intentional and malicious conduct in evicting Susan Cahill from her office, attempting to drive her out of business, destroying Susans possessions, and vandalizing Susans office was outrageous and exceeded all bounds of decency, and is regarded as atrocious, odious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community, the lawsuit states.

Joanna P. Wirth, chairwoman of Hope Pregnancy Ministries, denied in a written statement that the pro-life health center was involved.

The vandalism of All Families Healthcare was deplorable and regrettable, but it has nothing to do with Hope Pregnancy Ministries, Wirth said in a statement provided to the Missoulian. We are currently in the litigation process, and will continue to defend our organization against any claim that our organization was responsible for the vandalism. Hope Pregnancy Ministries has, for the past 17 years, provided compassionate care to thousands of men and women in this community, and will continue to do so regardless of baseless allegations intended to malign an organization which has always been above reproach.

Twyla Klundt, a member of the Hope Pregnancy Ministries board when the vandalism occurred, resigned that position after her sons arrest.

***

It wasnt the first time Cahill, who had operated family practice services in Kalispell since 1976, had been targeted for offering abortion services.

A previous Kalispell clinic where she worked was firebombed in 1994. A Washington man was convicted of firebombing it, and seven other clinics in four states that provided abortion services, including ones in Missoula and Helena.

The following year, according to Bechtold, the Montana Legislature passed a bill known as the Susan Cahill Law that banned physician assistants from performing abortions in Montana.

Cahill was the only physician assistant in the state who provided abortions at the time. The Montana Supreme Court later overturned the law.

Bechtold called Cahill and Martinezs lawsuit a courageous attempt to speak truth to power and let the extremists know that they cannot get away with terrorizing the life and livelihood of medical professionals who perform a legal procedure that saves womens lives.

They seek a jury trial. District Court Judge David Ortley is presiding over the case.
Jake attended Whittier and Missoula County High School. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1951 where he trained as an auto body repairman. In 1954 Jake has honorably discharged and returned to Missoula. He joined his father and older brother working at the Highlander Brewery. During this time he met the love of his life, Joan Zimmerman. They married on June 25, 1955. Together they made their home in Missoula and raised three daughters. When the Highlander Brewery closed in 1964, Jake resumed his trade of auto body repairman working at Warren Harris Buick and T & W Chevrolet. In 1976 he opened his own body and fender shop. This opportunity gave him more freedom to pursue his hunting and fishing adventures. Jake tirelessly shared his hunting and fishing stories with anyone who would listen. He also loved to hear others hunting and fishing tales. Jake was a talented wildlife artist. He shared his unique artwork with family and friends.
I would suggest that the people who are against bringing refugees to Missoula from the Middle East are not motivated by hate but motivated by love. Love for country, love for community, love for family and love for a way of life that is threatened by a radical brand of Islam coming out of the Middle East, that would enjoy nothing more than eradicating our people and our country out of existence.
BILLINGS - Convicted killer Joseph Richard Polak was sentenced Tuesday to serve 80 years in prison.

The 33-year-old Polak was found guilty of deliberate homicide in a November trial for killing 29-year-old Scott Hofferber at a Lake Elmo Trailer Park.

Polak was also convicted of hiding the gun used to kill Hofferber, as well as endangering others when he fled from officers after the shooting. Polak maintained during trial that he shot Hofferber in self-defense.

During sentencing Tuesday, Polak told Yellowstone County District Court Judge Mary Jane Knisely that Hofferber was aggressive when he approached him that night.

"Im sorry he died, Im sorry a family lost their son," Polak said. "Please don't condemn me for wanting to live."

This argument did not sway Knisely, who said Polak never showed true remorse for Hofferber's death and showed disrespect for the justice system by referring to his trial as a "mistrial."

Knisely also ordered Polak pay restitution to Hofferber's family.

Both families testified for their respective sons. Both families blamed the drug world for the circumstances that led to the murder.

Evidence presented at trial indicated both Hofferber and Polak were users of methamphetamine.

Stepmother of Hofferber, Amber Hofferber, said Tuesday it was disturbing to hear about the last moments of her son's life.

"Surrounded by people who placed more value on their next high than friendship, family, integrity or loyalty," Amber Hofferber said.

Hofferber's father, Shawn Hofferber, said Polak would be held accountable for what he had done. During his statement, Shawn Hofferber held up a photo of his son for the courtroom.

The Hofferber family characterized Polak as evil and their son as a good man with dreams left unfulfilled.

Polak's mother and sister both spoke on his behalf. His mother, Susan Garcia, said she prayed for Hofferber's family and spends "a lot of nights lighting candles" for them.

"My boy is not vicious," Garcia said. "The situation of the drug world is vicious."

Hofferber and Andrea Sattler, who testified at trial, were walking through the Lake Elmo Mobile Court at about 2:30 a.m. on April 28. The pair ran into Polak, who asked Hofferber, "What's your problem, bro?"

"You're my problem, bro," Hofferber responded, according to court documents.

Hofferber handed Polak a nail puller, similar to a crow bar, and insinuated the two were going to fight.

Polak shot Hofferber in the chest.

Sattler ran away, fearing for her life, she testified.

Polak was arrested April 30 by the U.S. Marshal Service. When officers arrested Polak, he had a handgun.

Polak was arrested and held in lieu of a $305,000 bond.
The Women's Law Caucus at the University of Montana's School of Law is hosting its 19th annual silent auction to benefit the YWCA Pathways Program. The event will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday at the Missoula Children's Theatre, 200 N. Adams St.
" " The Underwood Tariff Act, named for the pleasant-looking Sen. Oscar Underwood, re-instated the federal income tax. Philipp Kester/ullstein bild via Getty Images

Sure, dark money has a cool name, but what about its backstory? To boil it down, dark money is the result of a convergence between a seemingly innocuous tax statute and a deeply divisive Supreme Court ruling. Sensational stuff? In its own way, yes. Let's start with the tax status.

Back in 1913, the U.S. Congress enacted the so-called "Underwood Tariff Act" (aka the Revenue Act of 1913). That's the one in which the feds reintroduced income tax. Included in the act were a bunch of exemptions, one of which was for nonprofit groups [source: Gershman]. It's generally thought that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was behind this statute, which would make sense because the Chamber just happens to be a nonprofit. This exemption included in the 1913 Act is considered the forerunner to 501(c)(4) designation, but it's unclear exactly when that precise nomenclature appeared. The 501(c)(4) designation refers to two different types of nonprofits: "social welfare organizations" and "local associations of employees" [source: IRS].

Advertisement

By 1959, the government had accepted the idea that these organizations could be involved in politics and had codified them as "action organizations." By 1981 the rules were further loosened with the result that such a group could be politically engaged and still retain 501(c)(4) status if it limited its engagement to the promotion of "social welfare." It doesn't take a tax accountant to see that this kind of language is a slope waiting to be slipped down [source: Gershman].

Indeed, 501(c)(4) has always been slippery, but the slope it established turned out to be the setting for an avalanche.

On to part two: In 2010, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case of "Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission." In a nutshell, the ruling defined corporations and unions as individuals and spending as a form of free speech. Since the free speech of individuals is protected by the First Amendment, the ruling meant that corporations are allowed to spend as much as they want when it comes to political campaigns. While direct contributions to candidates remain limited, contributions to the PACs that support them are completely unlimited. PACs, however, are inconveniently obliged to disclose the names of their donors [source: Levy].

Say you want to help create an ad that viciously attacks a candidate. Maybe, to up the ante, you wouldn't be averse to spreading a little misinformation. This kind of thing looks bad if it can be traced back to you and your associates. That's where dark money comes in. By shoveling funds into a nonprofit "social welfare" organization with 501(c)(4) status, you can avoid all that. Your donation remains anonymous, and the organization can fund away without any fear of blowback. In fact, the 501(c)(4) organization can even donate your funds to a PAC. When the PAC discloses its sources, all that pops up is the name of the nonprofit. You and yours stay safely hidden behind the dark money curtain, and, best of all, you can give as much as you want.

So while the 501(c)(4) designation has been around for decades, the Citizens United decision made it deeply relevant to American politics.
A suspect in the abduction of a 4-year-old girl taken while playing in a park on Montana's Fort Peck Indian Reservation was charged Tuesday with kidnapping, attempted murder and aggravated sexual assault of a minor.

John William Lieba pleaded not guilty to the charges during an initial appearance in Fort Peck Tribal Court, court officials said. Judge Marvin Youpee ordered him held without bail.

Lieba, 20, is accused of forcibly removing the girl from the park on Friday night and holding her against her will "for a significant period of time," according to a criminal complaint filed by Fort Peck Chief Prosecutor Adrienne Weinberger.

During that time, Lieba raped and attempted to strangle the girl at an undisclosed location in or around the town of Wolf Point on the northeastern Montana reservation, according to the complaint.

He faces up to nine years in prison and $45,000 in fines if convicted on all three counts, according to the complaint.

Federal charges also are anticipated in the case, FBI Special Agent Todd Palmer said.

The Associated Press is withholding the girl's name because she is an alleged victim of sexual assault.

The suspect was apprehended while driving around Wolf Point on Saturday, after being identified by witnesses to the abduction.

After an intensive search, the girl was found a day later at an undisclosed location about six miles from the abduction site, according to the FBI. The federal agency is jointly investigating the case with the Fort Peck Tribal Police and Roosevelt County Sheriff's Office.

Both Lieba and the victim are American Indians. They are not related by blood, Roosevelt County spokesman Lee Allmer said. The Fort Peck Reservation is home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes and has a population of about 10,000 people.

It was not immediately clear who represented the suspect during his Tuesday court appearance. County officials said Lieba was being held at the tribal jail, and he could not be reached directly for comment.

The federal government has jurisdiction over many crimes on Indian reservations. Potential punishments in federal court typically are far more severe than in tribal court.

Palmer said the victim was in a safe location but released no further details. After an initial health assessment on the reservation, the girl was to be taken to Billings for further examination, Allmer said.
When Greg Gianforte recently appeared on "Face the State" with Dave Parker and Mike Dennison, he slipped up and let us in on his plans for undercutting middle-class workers. When asked about Right to Work, Gianfrote dodged the question and simply stated that imposing Right to Work on private sector unions wasnt one of his top priorities. That answer is very telling.

Gianfortes response sounds very much like the answer Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gave while running for re-election. He signed Right to Work into law the second he took office, of course. He had already pushed through and signed legislation that took away the collective bargaining rights of most public sector workers.

What Gianforte didnt say is even more important; he didnt mention public sector unions: firefighters, police, teachers, snow plow drivers, county workers, school cooks, nurses, etc. -- the people who help hold together the fabric of communities. Public sector employees are in the crosshairs and should be on high alert. At least we now know where Gianforte stands when it comes to the rights of working Montanans. Its unfortunate, especially given the recent news regarding the National Right to Work Committees illegal activities in Montana elections. This would have been a perfect opportunity and time for Gianforte to disavow Right to Work and pledge never to sign any such extremist legislation.

The fact of the matter is that Right to Work laws hurt working middle-class families. Facts are the facts. People in Right to Work states make almost $6,000 a year less than people in other states. Right to Work laws lower the wages of everyone. Just compare Wisconsin to its neighbor Minnesota. Most importantly, Right to Work puts the safety and dignity of workers in danger. In fact, workers in Right to Work states have a 43.8 percent higher risk of dying on the job. Why would we want to bring that kind of legislation to Montana?

Gianforte talks about raising wages in Montana, so why he supports an attack on private and public sector unions is beyond me. If elected governor, he would turn worker against worker and neighbor against neighbor.

Montana doesnt need Right to Work and we dont need to elect someone to office who wont give us a straight answer even though his agenda is transparent. The fact of the matter is that you either think Right to Work is wrong or you dont. Those of us in the private sector should take no comfort in Gianfortes non-answer.

-- Keith Allen is the business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) 233.
Volunteer firefighters in the Wise River area want commissioners in Butte-Silver Bow, Anaconda-Deer Lodge and Beaverhead counties to help them create a steady stream of revenue.

Commissioners from the three counties will meet in Wise River on Saturday to take public comments on a proposed rural fire district that could levy $20,000 from property taxes every year. The money would help offset expenses for such things as training, insurance, fuel and equipment.

Commissioners in the three counties must authorize the district, but no votes will be taken when they hold a joint public hearing at 1 p.m. Saturday in the Wise River Community Center.

The district would cover 37,255 acres in and around the small, unincorporated community of Wise River on Highway 43 in northern Beaverhead County, where the Wise River flows into the Big Hole River. Silver Bow County is just to the north and Anaconda-Deer Lodge County is nearby to the northwest.

The Wise River Volunteer Fire Company, unlike a rural fire district, cannot levy taxes so it gets its funding from donations and fundraisers.

In the last few years the expenses are outpacing the donations, said Scott Marsh, fire warden in Beaverhead County. They just need a steady income so they can plan on being able to buy equipment and pay for other needs and put money away for capital improvements.

Silver Bow Countys portion of the district would be the smallest at 4,249 acres, or about 11 percent, most of the land hugging the Big Hole River and along Jerry Creek Road.

About 52 percent of the district  19,322 acres  would be in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County and 13,674 acres, or 37 percent, would be in Beaverhead County.

Nothing will change in the way fires are fought or responded to, Marsh said. Fires often draw mutual aid responses from several departments, including Butte-Silver Bows paid department, even though Butte is about 35 miles away.

They will ask Butte-Silver Bow to respond and the same way with other departments, Marsh said.

Butte-Silver Bow Fire Chief Jeff Miller said if a fire occurred in the area today, volunteer firefighters from Melrose would be dispatched, probably Rocker and at least one truck from the paid department in Silver Bow County.

But he said a district would give the Wise River volunteers a steady revenue source.

For the people who live in that area, this is probably the best thing, Miller said.

There is quite a bit of local support for the plan now.

To get the proposal before commissioners, supporters needed to get signatures from owners of at least 40 percent of the real property in the area and 40 percent of the taxable value of the property. They got signatures for more than 60 percent in each category.

That wasnt an easy task because many of the property owners have homes they only stay at in the summer, Marsh said.

I sent out 320 letters to all the property owners  so everyone should know about it, he said. It shouldnt be a surprise to anyone.

Land owners in the district would pay a new property tax of 21.92 mills. That would have raised $20,000 in the 2014 tax year, but the amount would fluctuate when taxable values of the properties changes.

Miller said there are numerous rural fire districts that encompass parts of two Montana counties, but he believes this would be the first covering parts of three.

The $20,000 amount might not seem like a lot, but Marsh said the Wise River volunteers do a good job stretching their resources and it would fill a real need without asking too much from taxpayers.

Commissioners in the three counties are expected to vote on the proposal soon.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  Congressman Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, will have a member of his staff in Eastern Iowa for open office hours in coming weeks. Jared Hershberger, Loebsacks District Representative, will be at several locations to work with individuals who are having difficulty with a government agency, have suggestions for Loebsack, or would just like to share their concerns. Members of the public are invited to attend. If residents are unable to attend but have a concern to share with the Congressman, they can call the district office toll-free at 1-866-914-IOWA (4692).
(Weapons and Warfare) The Iran-Iraq War was one of the longest and deadliest in recent histories. Iran full of zeal after its revolution...
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 []
Net1 CEO Serge Belamant is the latest high-profile South African who was found to have a fake degree.

Belamant, Net1s CEO since 2000 and its boards chairperson since 2003, had been referring to himself as Dr Belamant.

Two Net1 board members conducted a review into Belamants qualifications amid questions on social media over the validity of his honorary PhD in Information Technology and Management conferred by Burkes University.

In light of the review, Belamant and the board have come to the conclusion that it is likely that Belamant was the unfortunate victim of a scam and that the honorary degree was not legitimate, said the company.

Belamant joins a growing list of high-profile South Africans who have been caught with fake qualifications. Here are some of these individuals.

Net1 CEO Serge Belamant claimed to have an honorary PhD, and referred to himself as Dr Belamant.

Net1 CEO Serge Belamant has headed up the company since 2000, and served as chairperson of the companys board since 2003.

He referred to himself as Dr Belamant, after obtaining an honorary doctorate from Burkes University.

However, after questions were raised about his qualification on social media, the board discovered that Belamants honorary degree was fake.

The company said that Belamant was the victim of a scam, and that the honorary degree was not legitimate.

Source: Net1 CEO gave money to fake university for PhD

Daniel Mtimkulu, Prasas head of engineering, claimed to have a doctorate in engineering.

Prasas head of engineering, Daniel Mtimkulu, lead the team that designed the Afro 4000 locomotive. The locomotives have been the subject of reports questioning their suitability for local conditions.

After Beeld reported that Mtimkulus claims that he had a doctorate in engineering from a German university could not be verified, Prasa investigated the matter.

It emerged that Mtimkulu was not registered as an engineer, and Prasa said that Mtimkulu lied about his qualifications.

Source: Prasas head of engineering lied about his qualifications

Pallo Jordan, a former South African cabinet minister, claimed to have a doctorate from the London School of Economics.

Pallo Jordan served as Minister of Post, Telecommunications, and Broadcasting; and as Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

Jordans CV contained the following claim: Dr Jordan acquired a postgraduate degree from the London School of Economics.

The Sunday Times revealed that Jordan has no formal academic qualifications. He subsequently apologised and resigned from Parliament and from the ANCs national executive committee

Source: Pallo Jordans phantom doctorate

Hlaudi Motsoeneng, SABC COO, claimed to have a matric certificate.

SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng claimed to have passed high school in his interview for a position at the SABC.

The Public Protector was asked to investigate the claim, and found that Motsoeneng lied about his qualifications.

Despite a recommendation from the Public Protector that he should be removed from his position, he is still serving as the SABCs COO.

Source: Dont punish Motsoeneng for lying: SABC

Ellen Tshabalala, SABC chairperson, claimed to have BCom and postgraduate degrees from UNISA.

SABC chairperson Ellen Tshabalala claimed to have BCom and postgraduate degrees from the University of South Africa.

The Mail & Guardian revealed that Tshabalala does not have the qualifications she claimed, and that she failed most of her modules at Unisa.

Tshabalala resigned as chairperson of the SABC on 17 December 2014.

Source: SABC chair Ellen Tshabalala resigns

Mohau Pheko, South Africas ambassador to Japan, claimed to have a doctorate from La Salle University (which sold degrees).

South Africas ambassador to Japan, Mohau Pheko, claimed to have a PhD from La Salle University. This university closed in 1996 when it emerged it was selling degrees and other academic qualifications online.

Pheko apologised for misrepresenting her qualifications on her CV, saying she registered for and worked towards her degree with La Salle, but did not complete the qualification.

The DA called for the suspension of Pheko in February 2015. However, Pheko remains SAs ambassador to Japan.

Source: South Africas ambassador to Japan Mohau Pheko admits lying about PhD

Sicelo Shiceka, former Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, claimed to have a Masters degree in political economy from the University of the Free State.

Former Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Sicelo Shiceka claimed to have a Masters degree in political economy from the University of the Free State.

The Mail & Guardian revealed in 2010 that this was not true, and that he was not in the process of completing the degree as his spokesperson claimed.

Lacea Loader, University of the Free State spokesperson, said: He was registered here from 2004 to 2005, but he never completed the degree.

Source: Shiceka: Hey big spender

Tshwane University of Technology vice-chancellor Johnny Molefe received his doctorate from an unaccredited degree mill.

Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) vice-chancellor Johnny Molefe received his doctorate from St George University International in the Bahamas  an unaccredited degree mill.

The Mail & Guardian reported that Molefe knew four years before his appointment that South Africas statutory qualifications authority would not recognise his doctorate.

Source: Molefe shocked about fake degree

More on qualifications

Who has the best qualifications  ANC vs DA

No qualifications are fine, as long as you succeed

Fake qualifications growing problem in Africa
After being away from TV that introduced him to the many Kenyan fans so in love with his good looks and acting prowess today, One FMs Nick Mutuma has announced that he will soon be making a mega comeback on your screens. The former Tahidi High and Shuga actor has announced through social media that he has a new dramatic and comic TV series dubbed This is It that will feature him and Chiagoziem Nwakanma.

The soon-to-premier series shot in Naija has been produced and directed by Dolapo Adeleke (Lowladee). To break the news, Nick took to social media and recorded this message for his fans.

Here are some photos from behind-the-scenes.














Advertise Here

Be seen advertise here. Contact us.


The following is a transcript of a letter that ran on May 11, 1868, in the Daily Alta, a San Francisco newspaper that published from 1849 to 1891. The Daily Alta was a descendant paper of Sam Brannans California Star, which was published from 1847-1848, shutting down when its staff left for the gold rush. The article is provided by Kathy Bazzoli, a board member of the Sharpsteen Museum.

Our little community was startled out of its priority night before last about half-past eleven by an unmistakable earthquake, jarring the houses and shaking up the economy of life in the upper part of the Napa Valley beyond anything ever before known here. The shocks, which appeared to come from the northward, were accompanied by subterranean rumblings peculiarly ominous at the dead of night. The phenomena seemed to originate in the vicinity of Mt. St. Helena, the highest point of the Coast Range. All this region of the country, including the Calistoga Springs and Geysers, appears to be of volcanic origin  a fact of which the residents hereabout are reminded, at long intervals, by underground demonstrations such as that above alluded to. But, as if to compensate for any little irregularities beneath the surface, nature has lavished upon Napa Valley all her charms of rural beauty.

The country has never looked more inviting than at present. The late rains have given a brilliant hue to the surrounding hills, while the far reaching grain fields, vineyards, and orchards give promise of immense yields.

Today, by the permission of Dr. Rowell, Mr. Sam Brannan leaves for San Francisco after a tedious and critical sickness, during which his life was more than once despaired of  the result of a murderous attack made upon him a month ago.

There is but one sentiment throughout the valley regarding the attempt to assassinate a citizen through whose full handed expenditures in all the worthy enterprises, including his Napa Valley Railroad, which have helped to build up this region, every inhabitant within 50 miles of Napa City has been more or less benefitted, to say nothing of his liberal encouragement of enterprises elsewhere in the state.

It is the same spirit of envious hostility against intelligent progress which murdered the lamented Osborn at Oak Knoll several years ago, and which, in its lawless malignity, destroyed nearly a thousand head of invaluable French and Spanish merino sheep, imported at immense expense by Mr. Brannan, which were driven in the night over a high precipice at the upper end of the Napa Valley, sometime since, because they riled the source of a stream which afforded water to parties below.

The feeling throughout Napa Valley against these and high-handed outrages of a like nature has finally become outspoken and decided and you may well believe that the forthcoming trial is awaited with greatest interest.

Mr. Brannan is now pronounced to be out of danger, although some of the balls from the cowardly fusillade are still lodged in his body. Your correspondent found him yesterday busily engaged in his mulberry nursery and vineyard, directing his numerous workmen, and looking like anything but a candidate for the graveyard, although considerably reduced by loss of blood.

Mr. Dickey, of the Ocean House, is now proprietor of the Calistoga Springs Hotel. Since he has become the presiding genius, a new life seems to have been infused into everything. The hotel has been thoroughly repaired and renovated, under his experienced supervision, and is surrounded by beautiful shade trees, groves, and every variety of flowers and shrubbery, affords one of the most attractive places of resort in California.

The lands of the Napa Railroad Homestead Association are adjacent to these springs, and extend miles up the valley  fifteen hundred acres of plain, hill, and woodland, and forming the terminus of the Napa Valley Railroad, which connects this place with Napa City, and eventually with Vallejo. The iron is now laid to within two and a half miles of Mr. Brannans Calistoga Springs, and when the road is completed hither, which will be in a few weeks, the trip from San Francisco here will be made in three hours  two hours by steamboat to Vallejo, and one hour thence by the Napa Valley Railroad to Calistoga.

Nothing can excel the beauty of the scenery of this famous valley, where the wood-crowned and picturesque mountains everywhere sheltering the lowlands, are in fine contrast with the continuous fields of grain, reaching up to the very slopes of the foothills and stretching for nearly forty miles along the level valley.

Towards evening, when the declining sun pours its golden rays through the foliage of oaks, and across the emerald of the young grain, the valley presents a scene of which the most gorgeous fancy landscape painting would scarcely be an exaggeration. The reality forms a vivid picture, combining the rugged and romantic features of nature with the most charming pastoral scenery and the highest condition of scientific culture, extending over forty thousand acres of land.
Retired federal employees meeting

The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, Vallejo Chapter 16 will meet at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 8 at the Florence Douglas Senior Center, 333 Amador Street, Vallejo. The speaker will be former Mare island HR Department Specialist Beverly (Lane) Snow. Tickets for the spring luncheon on April 12 at Los Molcajetes Restaurant will be available for purchase.

ACMS Casino Night happening March 11

American Canyon Middle Schools 3rd Annual Game Night Fundraiser will take place on Friday, March 11, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. in the Community Center Gym. Tickets are $30 per person and $50 for two people. Admission includes dinner (tri-tip, roasted chicken, pasta, salad and rolls), $20 in gaming chips, and two free drink tickets (wine, beer, soda or water).

A silent auction will be held for the following prizes: Bottlerock tickets, Disneyland Park Hopper Passes, staycations at local hotels, wine lots, Xbox One, Apple IWatch and more.

For more information contact Blanca Wright at msblancawright@gmail.com or 363-1631.

Recognition award nominations now accepted

The American Canyon Parks and Recreation Department is accepting nominations for community service recognition awards until Friday, March 11 by 5 p.m. The five award open for nominations include: Certificate of Community Appreciation; Organizational Award; Gateway Award; Business of the Year Award; Youth of the Year Award.

Nomination forms are available at the Parks and Recreation Office, 100 Benton Way or online at www.cityofamericancanyon.org/CommunityRecognition Ball2016.

ACHS Career Day

American Canyon High School will hold its annual Career Day on Wednesday, March 16 from 8:30 a.m.1:30 p.m. Businesses are encouraged to sign up and participate. One complimentary lunch will be provided, sponsored by Dr. Jeffrey Nichelini of American Canyon Orthodontics. The deadline to register March 11. For more information contact Kasama Lee at kasama@kasamalee.com.
Elisa Aurora Olivera Navarrete came into the world on Monday, but it will be four years before her family can celebrate the exact day of her birth.

The newest daughter of a Napa couple was one of three babies reported to be born in local hospitals on Feb. 29, a day occurring only in leap years. For her parents, Dulce Navarrete and Miguel Olivera, Elisas arrival was a happy accident both of the calendar and timing.

No, it was not planned! the 40-year-old Olivera said with a laugh as his family gathered Tuesday in a maternity suite at Queen of the Valley Medical Center, where the 6-pound, 9-ounce Elisa  the couples third child  was born by cesarean section at 8:26 a.m. the day before.

Not only was Navarrete, 38, not due for another week, the baby was her first in five years, conceived shortly after Navarrete and Olivera married 13 years into their relationship.

Barely 27 hours into Elisas life, her father already was speculating lightheartedly about how to celebrate his daughters mileposts to come. Feb. 29 would show up on the calendar for her Sweet 16 in 2032, but when would she celebrate her quinceanera the year before, when her 15th birthday would be caught in limbo?

Navarrete, holding her bundled, dark-haired newborn in her bed, took the conundrum in stride.

Actually its normal to me, she said with her eldest daughter Victoria, 13, translating. (The couple also has a 5-year-old son, Emiliano.) It wont change the fact that shes getting older; every (non-leap) year well celebrate her birthday the day after or the day before.

Elisas birth was the second at Queen of the Valley on the leap day. Later Monday, at 11:03 p.m., a 6-pound 10-ounce girl, Marielle Frias, was born to another Napa couple, Michelle Lane and Fernando Frias, according to hospital spokeswoman Christina Harris.

A third leaper arrived Upvalley, where a 7-pound, 9-ounce boy, Jacob Perez, was born at St. Helena Hospital to Araceli Morales and Carlos Perez, according to spokeswoman Jill Kinney.

No official figures exist for the number of leaper in the population, but the Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies has estimated that 200,000 Americans, and 5 million people worldwide, have birthdays on Feb. 29. American births totaled 3,988,076 in 2014 for an average of 10,926 babies daily, according to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Napa High School junior Evelyn Tijero, 17, plans on going to an in-state university when she graduates from high school, but how do her parents feel about letting go of their youngest child?

Now that her mother has participated in Napa Valley Parent Universitys new College Readiness pilot program, Evelyn says that both her parents are more comfortable with the idea and more supportive of her goals.

The program was offered in four sessions throughout February to parents of Youth Leadership Program students at McPherson Elementary School. Evelyn volunteered her time to help out with the series and asked if her mother could also participate.

Her mother has been looking for more ways to get involved in her life, Evelyn said. Im proud of her, Evelyn said. Seeing her mom step up has added stability to Evelyns life and has motivated her to work even harder to attain her goals.

Evelyn plans on going to an in-state university and possibly pursuing a law degree to enable her to give back to her community. She would be the first in her family to attend college.

Many of the parents who attended the College Readiness series did not attend college themselves and were unfamiliar with what it takes to get into one, how to pay for it and what the differences are between community colleges and universities.

The majority of parents were low-income who spoke only Spanish, according to Maria Ruiz, co-coordinator for Parent University. However, other than this pilot program, Parent University classes are open to all parents.

Parents in the program might not have ever considered that their child may be able to attend college or even want to, explained Mary Alvarez, coordinator for the Youth Leadership Program, formerly known as the Leadership Academy. They expect their children to go to a junior college first, get a job or even get married, Alvarez said.

Over the course of four sessions, speakers discussed how to prepare for college, what resources are available to help pay the expenses and how to overcome fears and misconceptions about sending away a child to college.

We didnt really have a big idea on how to get them to a university, (translated from Spanish) said Mireya Rodriguez. She and her husband, Julian, have two children, ages 15 and 13. We wanted to get the information so we can help our kids go to a university.

Rodriguez admitted that she and her husband fear letting go of their children and of being separated from them. She has learned that it is important to talk to them about going to college and trust them to go out on their own.

Rodriguez also learned what her children need to start doing now in and out of school to be on track for college, like improving their grades and being involved in volunteering or other extracurricular activities.

This is really what helped us see that it was a reality, she said of the program.

LaRina Davis decided to attend the class because she has a 17-year-old son who is getting ready to go to college and she wanted to be able to help him with the process. I figured why not come to this class and see what he needs to do, she said.

Her son is the oldest of six kids, Davis said, so learning about preparing for college now will enable her to support her younger children on their education paths.

This is a good class  I learned a lot, Davis said. Her daughter, Khyra, 10, was especially excited that her mom was attending, she said. Khyra is a fifth grader who would like to be a lawyer.

Patricia Mendoza has already had her oldest child begin college at Sonoma State University, but has one more graduating soon and two younger ones. Three out of four have participated in the Youth Leadership Program, she said.

Sending her first child to college was full of challenges, Mendoza said. With that experience, and now the College Readiness program, It will only get easier with the next child, she said in Spanish.

When you hear the word university and you look at how much it costs to go, you kind of block yourself and think its not possible because you dont know that there are ways to pay for it, Mendoza added.

Ruiz and Alvarez plan to hold the College Readiness program again during the 2016-2017 school year.

Parent University is a collaborative effort between Queen of the Valley Medical Center and On the Move Napa Valley.

For more information on this program or other available opportunities, visit nvparentuniversity.org or Facebook.com/napavalleyparentuniversity.j
NATO and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) expressed their determination to enhance cooperation in addressing common security challenges, during an official visit by the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to Abu Dhabi on 2 March 2016.

During talks with his counterparts, Mr Stoltenberg strongly welcomed the United Arab Emirates support to NATO-led operations around the world.

Meeting with Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, he praised the Emirates contributions to NATO-led missions in Bosnia, Libya and Afghanistan.

The Alliance's Secretary General said that the UAE is one of NATOs most active and valuable partners in the framework of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) and noted that the practical cooperation developed together helps project security and stability abroad.

The Secretary General highlighted the UAEs strong partnership with NATO and avenues for further cooperation. In 2012, the UAE became the first and only country in the Middle East or North Africa to open a mission to NATO. The UAE has held joint consultations and exercises with NATO in numerous areas, including maritime security, counter-piracy, proliferation and energy security.

Mr. Stoltenberg stressed that there is scope for more participation by the UAE in NATO exercises and interoperability programmes, as well as further joint work on defence capacity building and civil emergency planning.

While in the UAE, the Secretary General also met with the Minister of Defence, Mohammed Ahmed Al Bawardi Al Falasi, and with the UAEs National Security Advisor, Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

In his bilateral meetings, Mr. Stoltenberg underlined that the security of the Gulf region is linked to NATOs security. Both NATO and the UAE face a volatile security situation and forces, such as ISIL, that seek to overturn the rules-based international order. These security challenges, the Secretary General said, make closer cooperation valuable. He added that NATO and the UAE share the same aspirations for peace and stability in the Gulf region and beyond.

During his official stay in Abu Dhabi, the Secretary General also visited the Joint Operation Centre to the French Naval base in the UAE. He met with the Commander of the Maritime Area of the Indian Ocean, Rear Admiral Antoine Beaussant.
Today, General John Mick Nicholson assumed command of NATOs Resolute Support mission from General John F. Campbell.

As commander of the Resolute Support mission, General Nicholson will lead NATOs effort to train, advise and assist the Afghan security forces and institutions, and help them further improve their effectiveness and sustainability. Immediately before his appointment, he served with distinction as Commander of NATOs Allied Land Command. General Nicholson has previously served in multiple roles in Afghanistan, including as Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations for the International Security Assistance Force, and I am confident that his experience and leadership will prove invaluable in guiding our continuing efforts in Afghanistan. I wish him success in his new role, and I look forward to continuing to work closely with him.

I thank General Campbell for his exceptional service as the last Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, and the first Commander of the Resolute Support mission. Under his tenure, the Afghan forces stepped up to new challenges, and assumed responsibility for security across the country. General Campbell has made an outstanding contribution towards achieving peace and stability in Afghanistan, for which I am deeply grateful. I wish him every success for the future.
Question -- What is the goal of this website? Why do we share different sources of information that sometimes conflicts or might even be considered disinformation?

Answer -- The primary goal of Nesaranews is to help all people become better truth-seekers in a real-time boots-on-the-ground fashion. This is for the purpose of learning to think critically, discovering the truth from withinnot just believing things blindly because it came from an "authority" or credible source. Instead of telling you what the truth is, we share information from many sources so that you can discern it for yourself. We focus on teaching you the tools to become your own authority on the truth, gaining self-mastery, sovereignty, and freedom in the process. We want each of you to become your own leaders and masters of personal discernment, and as such, all information should be vetted, analyzed and discerned at a personal level. We also encourage you to discuss your thoughts in the comments section of this site to engage in a group discernment process.





"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."  Aristotle

11
47,000 Years of Aboriginal Genomics

Jeremy Eccles | 02.03.16

Author: Jeremy Eccles

News source: Press Release



The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent c50 thousand years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology on 25th February 2016.

The study by researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and collaborators at La Trobe University in Melbourne and several other Australian institutes, challenges a previous theory that suggested an influx of people from India into Australia around 4-5 thousand years ago. This new DNA sequencing study focused on the Y chromosome, which is transmitted only from father to son, and found no support for such a recent migration. The results instead show a long and independent genetic history in Australia.



Modern humans arrived in Australia about 50 thousand years ago, forming the ancestors of present-day Aboriginal Australians. They were amongst the earliest settlers outside Africa. They arrived in an ancient continent made up of todays Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea, called Sahul, probably thousands of years before modern humans arrived in Europe.



Five thousand years ago, dingos, the native dogs, somehow arrived in Australia, and changes in stone tool use and the spread of the Pama-Nyungan language family over most of the mainland around the same time raised the question of whether there were also associated genetic changes in the Australian Aboriginal population. At least two previous genetic studies, one of which was based on the Y chromosome, had proposed that these changes could have coincided with mixing of Aboriginal and Indian populations about 5 thousand years ago.

Further study is needed to answer questions such as how the dingo did get to Australia and why other people such as the seafaring Polynesians didnt settle on the continent. Expanding the genetic analyses beyond the Y chromosome and to the whole genome will also be necessary to completely rule out external genetic influences on the Aboriginal Australian population before the very recent times.

Comments from participants:

We worked closely with Aboriginal Australian communities to sequence the Y chromosome DNA from 13 male volunteers to investigate their ancestry. The data show that Aboriginal Australian Y chromosomes are very distinct from Indian ones. These results refute the previous Y chromosome study, thus excluding this part of the puzzle as providing evidence for a prehistoric migration from India. Instead, the results are in agreement with the archaeological record about when people arrived in this part of the world.

Anders Bergstrm, first author on the paper at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Clearly there is keen interest in the Aboriginal community to explore their genetic ancestry and without them this study would not be possible  our first step was to return their results to them, before the scientific article was published. This collaboration in genome sequencing, to explore their ancient history, was made possible by years of engagement beforehand with Aboriginal communities.

Dr John Mitchell, Associate Professor at La Trobe University in Melbourne

As an Aboriginal Elder and cultural consultant for this project I am delighted, although not surprised, that science has confirmed what our ancestors have taught us over many generations, that we have lived here since the Dreaming.

Lesley Williams, who was responsible for the liaison with the Aboriginal community

By fully sequencing and analysing Y-chromosomal DNA, we have been able to trace ancient human migrations and inform living people about their ancestry. We are using the latest technology to genetically unearth our ancient history  something that has only become possible in the last decade. We look forward to further collaborations to understand more of this unique heritage.

Dr Chris Tyler Smith, group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

And here are the origins of the Aboriginal Australian Individuals (and two Torres Strait Islanders) sampled for this study

ID Y Coverage Haplogroup Key Variant Paternal Origin

A45 19.74 C M130 Uncertain, possibly Normanton, Queensland

A268 13.06 C M210 Atherton Tablelands, Far North Queensland

A305 18.03 C M347 The Karryarra group located near Port Hedland, WA

A342 18.06 C M347 The Karryarra group located near Port Hedland, WA

A343 12.90 C M347 Northwest coast, near Broome, Western Australia

A136 12.61 K M526 Kuranda, Far North Queensland

A179 18.85 K M526 Gunganji tribe, Yarrabah, near Cairns, FNQ

A201 12.19 K M526 Uncertain, but fathers people from SE Queensland

A266 19.07 K M526 Gunganji tribe, Yarrabah, near Cairns, FNQ

A293 12.77 K P308 Pilbara, Western Australia

A473 13.73 K P308 Mount Isa region, Central Queensland

A238 16.42 M M186 Mer (Murray Island), Torres Strait, FNQ

A440 15.29 M M186 Mer (Murray Island), Torres Strait, FNQ



URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216000786



Share this:  del.icio.us  Digg it  reddit  Google  StumbleUpon  Technorati  Facebook

Contact Details

Further Research
Japan and U.S. will hold joint military exercises

France withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty

CNN: White House is in talks with Elon Musk to create satellite Internet service Starlink in Iran

Baku outraged by Iran's statements and frightened by IRGC military exercises

Who are main beneficiaries of 'Zangezur' corridor?: Another anonymous article by 'Haykakan Zhamanak' newspaper

Ankara decides to stand up for Riyadh amid deteriorating relations between Saudi Arabia and U.S.

French Foreign Minister considers it vital to keep lines of communication with Russia open

Pentagon refuses to give details of conversation between Austin and Shoigu

Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Head of Caucasus Muslims Department again made slanderous and false statements

Erdogan denies using chemical weapons against Kurds and threatens those who dare to talk about it

Saudi Arabia and China will strengthen their ties in energy sector

Governor of Gegharkunik province receives representatives of OSCE fact-finding mission

Penny Mordaunt runs for Prime Minister of Great Britain

Sweden expects ratification of NATO membership application by Hungary and Turkey to be completed soon

European Union will allocate 1.5 billion euros per month to Kiev in 2023

An Israeli-built flight school opened in Greece

Russian Railways is negotiating with Azerbaijan and Iran to launch the Rasht-Astara route

Overchuk: Construction of road through Meghri, whose sovereignty is not in question, depends on Armenia's position

Armenian Defense Minister's working visit to India is over

Hungary will not agree to limit prices for imported gas

Iranian Foreign Minister: Iran considers Armenia one of most important transit countries

Naribekyan participates in meeting of secretaries general of PACE parliaments

Delegation from United Arab Emirates visits Armenia at invitation of head of MONKS: Two agreements signed

Dollar, euro drop in Armenia

Iran consul general in Armenias Kapan: We do not accept any change of borders

Baza: Mobile military registration and enlistment offices will be removed on Russian-Georgian border

Iranian Consul: Countries of region do not need presence of foreign armed forces

Armenia FM: Iran consulate general in Kapan will be important for regional security

Iranian Consul General advises Kapan residents not to worry anymore: Iran is here for Armenian people

FM reaffirms Armenia plan to open consulate general in Irans Tabriz

Turkey to open consulate in occupied Armenian Shushi city of Artsakh

Turkish Ministry of Finance: Ankara can buy Russian oil without Western funding

Armenia Security Council chief briefs European Parliament rapporteur on recent Azerbaijan military aggression

British bookmakers name favorite for post of prime minister

Erdogan: Armenia-Azerbaijan relations progress will contribute to Armenia-Turkey relations normalization

Iranian Consulate General opens in Kapan

Erdogan: Turkey is looking for alternative to American F-16 fighters

Iran consul general: We are here for Armenian people

Turkey FM slams OSCE decision to send needs assessment mission to Armenia

Peskov reacts to Erdogan's words about Putin's softening on Ukraine negotiations

European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia visits Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

European Parliament rapporteur on Armenia to legislature speaker: Attack was from Azerbaijan, naturally

Armenia President to EEU PMs: We will manage to take another confident step by respecting mutual interests

EUSR Toivo Klaars exclusive interview with NEWS.am on EU Monitoring mission,Nagorno Karabakh future and violence videos

Explosions rock Ukraines Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia

President meets with newly formed Artsakh Public Council members

Armenia PM: We need understanding in price horizon, at least in medium term

Lawyer: 20 of fallen solders parents detained from Yerevan military pantheon are recognized as injured party

PM: Armenia trade with other EEU countries increased by 74%

France region to provide 300,000 to Armenias Syunik Province affected by Azerbaijan military aggression

Eurasian Intergovernmental Council extended meeting underway in Yerevan

MOD: Armenia did not fire at Azerbaijan positions, vehicle

MPs in Strasbourg, present threatening dangers: Armenia has powerful support in European Parliament

Years first snow falls in Armenias Shirak Province

World oil prices on the rise

Newspaper: Russia dismisses Armenia PM's news on Karabakh

Russia PM in Yerevan, to discuss with EEU colleagues single oil, natural gas markets formation

Newspaper: Why is Iran in hurry to open consulate in Armenias Syunik Province?

France, Spain, Portugal agree to build Barcelona-Marseille natural gas pipeline

Admiral: U.S. should now prepare for Chinese 'invasion' of Taiwan

Harutyunyan: I cannot imagine Artsakh's future without presence of Russia

Harutyunyan: Without questioning path of our independence, we must meet with Baku

Prime Minister of Finland does not think that Hungary and Turkey will block country's application for NATO membership

Iranian FM: U.S. made hasty statements in connection with protests

Former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim involved in car accident in Karabakh

Arayik Harutyunyan: Artsakh people's right to self-determination is non-negotiable

Iranian MFA calls it important to form platform with Armenia and India on North-South corridor

Details of EU monitoring mission in Armenia are known

Foreign Ministry: It seems Ankara is more interested in opening corridor through Armenia than Azerbaijan

Mirzoyan: Unexpected third countries support Azerbaijani interpretation of road to Nakhchivan

Foreign Ministry: Armenia, Iran and Bulgaria initial agreement on creation of Persian Gulf-Black Sea corridor

Israeli Defense Minister to visit Ankara

Armenian Foreign Minister names main obstacle to solving problems with Azerbaijan

Erdogan once again raises issue of so-called 'Zangezur corridor'

Armenian and Iranian FMs to open Iranian Consulate General in Syunik province tomorrow

Abdollahian: Aliyev assured that he does not want border changes, Iran will prevent implementation of such idea

Iranian Foreign Minister in Yerevan supports '3+3' platform

Iranian Foreign Minister recalls Tehran's 'red lines' in regional issues

Mirzoyan: We highly appreciate Iran's principled position regarding territorial integrity of Armenia

UK imposes sanctions against Iran for alleged delivery of drones to Russia

Yerevan hosts meeting of Eurasian Intergovernmental Council in narrow composition

Armenian and Iranian Foreign Ministers meet in Yerevan in extended format

Charles Michel: EU energy deal possible, but difficult

Erdogan says Baku should demand 'compensation' from Yerevan

Pashinyan: EEU mechanisms are of great help, trade turnover between Armenia and Belarus has doubled

Yair Lapid: Russia-Iran relations are serious problem for Ukraine, Europe, and whole world

Amir-Abdollahian: Iran is against presence of foreigners in this region, both in Azerbaijan and Armenia

Pashinyan at EAEU meeting: Fundamental principles of world economic system in question

Iranian Foreign Minister's official visit to Yerevan begins

Macron says Germany should not isolate itself in Europe

EU begins deployment of mission on Armenia-Azerbaijan border

Trump's son made fun of Zelenskyy's ability to ask West for money

EU to provide emergency aid for Armenia residents affected by recent Azerbaijan military aggression

Azerbaijan army units fire at Armenia positions

Mikhail Mishustin arrives in Yerevan

EU approves new sanctions against Iran over alleged drone deliveries to Russia

Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting begins in Yerevan

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

Liz Truss quits as UK Prime Minister
YEREVAN.  The Prime Minister of Armenia, Hovik Abrahamyan, on Wednesday received newly appointed Egyptian Ambassador Tareq Maaty.

The PM congratulated the diplomat on his appointment as Ambassador of Egypt to Armenia, and wished him fruitful work. The Premier noted with satisfaction that relations between the two countries have been actively developing in recent years, and that there is great potential for strengthening and expanding the Armenian-Egyptian relationship.

Ambassador Maaty, for his part, said it is an honor for him to assume the commitment to strengthen the ties of friendship between Armenia and Egypt, and that he will make every effort to deepen the mutually beneficial cooperation. Also, he conveyed the Egyptian prime ministers warm greetings and best wishes to Hovik Abrahamyan.

Speaking about the prospects for Armenian-Egyptian cooperation, the interlocutors stressed the importance of reciprocated high-level visits, active political dialogue, and intergovernmental and interparliamentary contacts.

In the context of bilateral and multilateral trade and economic ties, the Armenian prime minister and the Egyptian ambassador stressed the importance of the activities of the intergovernmental commission, and discussed the details of this years upcoming regular sitting of the Commission.

In conclusion, Hovik Abrahamyan expressed confidence that during his tenure Ambassador Maaty would contribute to the development and expansion of cooperation between the two countries.
Karine Gumashyan, accused of espionage in favor of Azerbaijan, tried to involve her son in espionage activities, the publicized record of testimony of Gumashyans son, officer Tigran Karapetyan, says.

In his words, his mother left for Turkey, telling the family she worked at a shoe factory. First, only household issues were discussed during the communication via the Internet.

But later she asked about the location of the military unit where her son served. Following this, Gumashyan said she had to seriously talk to Karapetyan, but not on phone. She promised to arrive in Armenia in several days and visit her sons military unit.

She came to the unit with a woman named Karine, who was from Armenias Vanadzor city. Gumashyan said in Turkey she had got acquainted with a benefactor from France, who wanted to help Armenia, specifically the army, at the same time making sure the money will serve correct purposes.

For this purpose, he needed to learn several things, for instance, what the Armenian soldiers eat, etc. Gumashyan brought a telephone and showed him a correspondence with Arman on his behalf. Later Karapetyan understood this was an Azeri, who was gathering information on Armenian army, the witness noted.

According to him, the relations with her have now mother spoiled, since she was going to divorce his father and take the younger son to Turkey.

Karines other son, David Karapetyan, who lived with his mother in Turkey for a certain time, working at a shoe factory and studying gold-work, noted in the testimony that Rafik Papoyan from Vanadzor, who is also a defendant in this case, lived in the same building as they.

In his words, it was Rafik who introduced the benefactor to her mother. And Mother told him my brother was an officer. He promised to help us if my brother provided information on the army, the witness noted, adding that his mother liked the man. They began to meet and after each meeting he gave her $200.

The Karapetyan brothers refused to give testimony and respond to questions in the court. Moreover, they stated that the investigators didnt notify them on their right not to give testimonies against their mother.

The next session will be held on March 18.
As a child growing up in Singapore, Jared Bok developed an early interest in the nuanced presence and practice of Christianity in a country rich with diversity of peoples, cultures and religions.

"I learned firsthand the kinds of negotiations Christians sometimes make when trying to hold true to their beliefs about faith and love while also realizing that their traditional methods of conversion sometimes cause resentment amongst their target audience," he explains. "These Christians, therefore, find themselves occasionally needing to make practical compromises that, at the same time, cannot be seen as compromises to their faith."

This interest led him to the Laney Graduate School's doctoral program in sociology, and to his current work on a dissertation that combines three fields of scholarship: religion, organizations and globalization.

"I was born and grew up in Singapore, which, like many other countries in Southeast Asia, is a multi-religious society with all the beautiful  and sometimes not so beautiful  messiness that that implies," Bok explains. "A part of that messiness and complexity arises from the interaction between Christian missionaries and local residents who, themselves, hail from multiple other countries and multiple religious traditions."

Bok's interactions with some of these missionaries led to astute observations about the adaptations  and rejections  of Christian doctrine and practices in a multicultural context.

His dissertation examines how Protestant missionary agencies in the U.S. have expanded over the last 50 years, both in terms of the countries in which they conduct their ministries, as well as their various types of activities, from evangelism to relief and development.

To determine the factors contributing to how (and how fast) these agencies expand, Bok compares national data on these organizations from 1953 to 2010 with international data from all the countries where these agencies operate during that same time period.

"While scholars and non-scholars alike may continue to disagree about whether the cross-national influence and role of American Christianity in global religion is desirable or not, this influence remains very real and will likely continue in this way for the next few decades," he says. "I wanted to be part of the growing body of scholars tracking and seeking to explain this role as enacted by religious groups themselves."

A passion for teaching

At Emory, Bok found a supportive intellectual environment in the graduate program in sociology. What he did not anticipate discovering, however, was a very deep passion for teaching.

"Thanks in large part to the PhD program in sociology and more recently my involvement with the Laney Graduate School's TATTO (Teaching Assistant Training and Teaching Opportunity) program, I not only continued to develop my interest and skills in conducting academic research, but also came to a realization about teaching at the college level," he says. "I love it!"

Recognizing Bok's skills and passion for teaching, his program nominated him for the Dean's Teaching Fellowship (DTF), which supports students whose records demonstrate excellence in teaching and who will complete their doctoral degrees in the fellowship year.

As part of his DTF responsibilities, this semester Bok is teaching a course called Religion in Global Motion. Related to his dissertation work, the course explores the various ways in which religion operates, changes and interacts with society as it moves across geographical and cultural borders.

Students learn about how, in an era of modernization and globalization, it becomes increasingly difficult to pin down religion to geopolitical boundaries. As it moves globally, it transforms just as much as it is transformed. In the course, students study the ways transnational religion is connected to topics like immigration, humanitarian efforts, foreign policy, pilgrimage and religious tourism, conflict and violence, and more.

And as Bok's graduate career winds down, he is absolutely certain about one thing: teaching is in his future.

"I have clear and strong intentions to continue teaching at the college level," he says. "And thanks to my highly positive teaching and teacher-training experiences, I now know what I would like to see in the teaching institutions to which I intend to apply."
Posted by PickupTrucks.com Staff | March 2, 2016

By Aaron Bragman

The 2016 Geneva International Motor Show here in Switzerland is a little different from shows you'll see in the U.S. For instance, cars far outweigh trucks and SUVs in Europe  the idea of a pickup truck for personal everyday use is a completely foreign concept over here. That doesn't mean, however, there aren't some tasty trucks on these narrow European roads that we'd love to see in our driveways. Europeans still need to go off-road now and then, and they've got some fun and interesting rigs to choose from. Here's what we spotted at the Geneva show for pickup fans:

2017 Toyota HiLux

Not quite the same as the Tacoma we know and love, the HiLux (Europe's best-selling pickup) is a bit more utilitarian. But the latest version, introduced here in Geneva, is anything but spartan. This version gets a 2.4-liter turbo-diesel engine with automatic stop-start technology. It makes 148 horsepower and 295 pounds-feet of torque, and is mated to a six-speed manual or automatic (4x4 only) transmission. Three cab configurations bring versatility, and the new diesel reportedly gets 39.8 mpg in the European test cycle.

2016 Ford Ranger Wildtrak

Available only as a double-cab 4x4, the Ranger Wildtrak might just be the nicest pickup on the market. A truly top-notch interior features quality materials and technology that easily matches anything Ford offers in other vehicles, and would put the Chevrolet Colorado's interior to shame, should Ford ever hear our demands and bring it to North America. Two diesel engines are available, a 2.4-liter and a 3.2-liter, with the bigger one making about 200 hp and 346 pounds-feet of torque. The Wildtrak model here adds some unique trim pieces, 18-inch wheels and off-road goodies. Looks like it would be a great competitor to the Colorado Z71.

2016 Nissan NP300 Navara

While we wait for the Frontier to get the update it needs to make it fully competitive with the Tacoma and Colorado, the rest of the world got the new Navara last year. Powered by a 2.3-liter turbo-diesel engine putting out either 158 or 187 hp, depending on options, it has a hefty payload capacity and stacks up well against the Ranger and HiLux. We're still waiting to see if the Navara is a precursor to a redesigned North American Frontier or if Nissan will go in a different direction when its midsize pickup for America gets a desperately needed update in a year or two.

Isuzu D-Max

We used to have the Isuzu pickup in the U.S., but it's long gone. That's not the case for the rest of the world, where you can snag a new one like this Isuzu D-Max Quasar crew cab and Solar extended cab. D-Max has a 2.5-liter turbo-diesel making 163 hp and 295 pounds-feet of torque mated to a five-speed automatic.

Mitsubishi L200 Geoseek Concept

Mitsubishi took its L200 pickup, a direct competitor to the Ranger, HiLux and Navara, and gave it an orange trim and color treatment to put it on stage as a concept.

Fiat Fullback Concept

Check this out: A Fiat compact pickup truck based on a Thai-built Suzuki. Sounds like a bit of a mess, but it looks legit, and straight from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles CEO Sergio Marchionne's mouth to PickupTrucks.com's ears, a truck this size (or slightly larger) might show up sometime soon as a vehicle you can buy. Ram brand boss Bob Hegbloom said in January at the 2016 Chicago Auto Show that Ram had no plans for a midsize truck, but as always, it's Marchionne's ultimate decision, and it appears he likes the idea of one. What do you think? Would you buy this if it was badged as a Ram? Maybe badged as a Jeep?

Cars.com photos by Aaron Bragman
Ryan Gougis named Callahan intern

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Ryan Gougis of Chicago is the recipient of the spring 2016 Gene Callahan Internship at the Illinois State Capitol, awarded by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

The internship provides selected students the opportunity to be an active participant in the legislative process of Illinois. As the 2016 student intern, Gougis will work closely with members of the Illinois General Assembly as they craft laws and shape public policy.

We are pleased to make this opportunity available to SIU students, David Yepsen, institute director, said. It is a fitting tribute to Genes legacy that we help eager and determined young people of any background explore and get a foothold into public service. The selection process was competitive and Ryan rose to the top.

In his work, Gougis will acquire new skills and gain firsthand knowledge of the legislative and political processes. The experience and knowledge received during the General Assembly legislative session can be a great asset and lead to exciting career opportunities, Yepsen said.

Gougis plans to graduate in May 2016 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in criminology. During his years at SIU Carbondale, he has been commended as a compassionate and ambitious mentor and student, helping his fellow students in the community. His service on the Carbondale Liquor Advisory Board evidences his devotion to public service, community involvement, and criminal justice.

The Gene Callahan Internship was created in honor of the late Gene Callahan, a longtime aide to U.S. Sens. Paul Simon and Alan Dixon. Callahan served as a member of the SIU Board of Trustees and was a founding member of the institutes board of counselors. The internship is supported by a generous gift from Jerry Mileur, who served with Callahan on the board of counselors. The internship provides a stipend to the selected student to help defray housing and meal expenses during the spring semester.

Linda Baker, university professor at the institute and former secretary of the Department of Human Services and director of the Department of Employment Security, as well as the first African-American legislative liaison for an Illinois governor, will mentor Gougis in the state capitol.

It is a pleasure to work with promising students with a history of community involvement. Gene Callahan was an important community leader, and I enjoy the opportunity to work with young people who share his spirit and commitment to service. I look forward to seeing them make a significant contribution in the future, Baker said.

Private donations from individuals and corporations fund the Gene Callahan Internship program. Tax-deductible donations can be made online at www.paulsimoninstitute.org/donate or sent to the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Mail Code 4429, 1231 Lincoln Drive, Carbondale, Ill., 62901. For more information, contact Baker at 217/553-6660.
The India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad's probe team visits Pathankot town to investigate the January 2 airbase attack, Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz has said. Aziz, who is on a visit here, said a Pakistani team will visit India "in the next few days" to investigate the terror attack at Pathankot airbase that left seven security personnel dead. All six terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, were also killed in the attack which derailed the India-Pakistan "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" that started following Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's meeting in Paris. After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Aziz on Tuesday said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan. Since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of "important steps" to facilitate resumption of the talks, Dawn online quoted Aziz as saying. "Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Narendra Modi immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. The two national security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts," he said. "A case has been registered and the special investigation team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," Aziz said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue he co-chaired with Kerry. Aziz said the government's decision to reach out to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of a strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring countries. "We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues -- including the Kashmir dispute -- is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," said the adviser. He added that Pakistan also had "proposed a mechanism to address our respective concerns on terrorism". Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member probe team to follow up on the leads India had provided. On Saturday, a court in Punjab province of Pakistan granted remand of six suspects, arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack, in police custody for further investigation. Aziz said the Indian participation in the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad last December and the announcement to start the "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" were positive developments that augured well for peace and stability in South Asia. "Prime Minister Modi's visit to Islamabad was welcomed by most in Pakistan. Here, I would like to express our gratitude to you and President Barack Obama for your consistent support to the revival of Pakistan-India dialogue," Aziz said in his remarks. He said the Pakistani government was committed to acting against all terrorist groups without any distinction. --Indo-Asian News Service py/dg ( 463 Words) 2016-03-02-11:53:33 (IANS)
Ties between India and the US are blossoming as the two countries, after 12 years of talks, are closer than ever to signing an agreement to share military logistics, said a Pakistani daily. An editorial "US-India relations" in the Daily Times on Wednesday said that two weeks ago, India was up in arms about the proposed sale of up to eight Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, worth $700 million, from US to Pakistan. The Barack Obama administration characterised the sale as contributing to US foreign policy objectives and national security goals by helping to improve the security of a strategic partner in South Asia as the fighter jets would enhance Pakistans ability to conduct counter-insurgency and counterterrorism operations and thus the sale was approved. "Despite the sale being approved, the fact that loud voices were raised so publicly against this sale by a number of US lawmakers was almost unprecedented ever since 2001s US-led war on terror began -- to be sure, such concerns have been raised by US lawmakers before, but almost always in private," said the daily. It noted that the airing of these contrarian opinions was thus indicative of a shift in criticality of Pakistan for the US. "Initially appeasing Pakistan was necessary for it provided the US logistical support to invade and subsequently remain in and fight in Afghanistan, but since the withdrawal of most troops the landscape has changed and a new chapter is beginning in this historically transactional relationship." It went on to say that Indias angry reaction to the sale compounded matters further, "given the context, coming as it did at a time when the US and India are starting a new chapter in their own historically fluctuating relationship". "And now we see the results of this blossoming relationship, as India and US are closer than ever to signing an agreement to share military logistics, after 12 years of talks." The finalisation of this Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) would allow the two militaries to use each others land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repair and rest. The editorial observed that already the US has offset Russia, Indias historically strongest ally, as the countrys biggest supplier of arms. "Suffice it to say, the sale of eight paltry fighter jets pales in comparison to deals of this magnitude. But the world would hear nary a peep from Pakistan, in sharp contrast to Indias protestations. As US lifts its focus from Afghanistan and Iraq, the lure of India as an ally has become stronger than ever, especially with the rise of China." "...however the negative implications of shoring up Indias military in a volatile region must be recognised by the US or another crisis will brew up in the near future." The daily warned that India and Pakistan have a tenuous balance of power and "Indias military strength would usher in a new destructive era of arms race that must be avoided at all costs". --Indo-Asian News Service rd/dg ( 503 Words) 2016-03-02-12:17:33 (IANS)
The blast, believed to be a suicide attack, occurred around noon (local time).

"We cannot provide details on casualties. There is fear of possible casualties, both civilian and security personnel," Xinhua quoted a police official as saying.

Government troops cordoned off the area shortly after the blast, keeping people away from the site fearing a second blast.

Several warning shots were also fired by the security force personnel.

Unofficial sources said the Indian Consulate office may have been the target of the attack in the city.

The nature of the blast might have been group attack or complex assault, involving several attackers, the official said.

The Iranian and the Pakistani consulate buildings are also located at the same place.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

--Indo-Asian News Service py/dg

( 162 Words)

2016-03-02-13:45:33 (IANS)
The attack on an Indian consulate in Afghanistan on Wednesday is the latest in a series of terror strikes targeting Indian interests in Afghanistan where New Delhi has made huge investments to rebuild the war-torn country. Here is a list of previous attacks: January 3, 2016 - A group of four terrorists attacked the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif injuring an Afghan civilian. The attackers firing from a nearby building wrote graffiti with blood on some walls, stating they intended to avenge the execution of Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri militant who was hanged in 2013 for his role in the 2001 Indian parliament attack. Photographs of the graffiti appeared in some newspapers with Afghan police confirming they were taken immediately after security forces stormed the building. May 23, 2014 - Indian consulate in Herat, guarded by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Afghan security forces, was attacked by four heavily armed militants. No one in the consulate's staff was injured but the attackers were gunned down in retaliatory fire by the Indian and Afghan security forces. August 3, 2013 - An explosive-laden vehicle with three suicide bombers hit the Indian consulate building in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. Nine civilians, including six children, were killed in the attack. However, no Indian official was injured. February 26, 2010 - Nine Indians, including army, ITBP personnel and doctors, were among at least 18 people killed in the bomb and gun attack at the Arya Guesthouse, also known as Hamid Guesthouse, and the Park Residence hotel, located in the Shar-e-Naw neighbourhood of Kabul. The guesthouse has been popular among Indian doctors in the Afghan capital. October 8, 2009 - A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle packed with exploses near the Indian embassy in Kabul, killing 17 Afghan civilians and injuring scores. Some Indians were injured in the bombing that blew out the doors and windows at the embassy. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. July 7, 2008 - At least 58 people were killed and some 140 were injured in the suicide car bombing outside the Indian embassy in Kabul. The attack was allegedly planned by Pakistans ISI and executed by its Afghanistan-based syndicate, the Haqqani Network. Pakistan, however, denied any involvement in the attack. A day later, a bomb was found on a bus that carried 12 Indian workers of the Border Roads Organization in Zaranj. --Indo-Asian News Services sar/rd ( 407 Words) 2016-03-02-15:25:33 (IANS)
In a press release, the federal police stated that Dzodan had been arrested in Sao Paulo on Tuesday.

This followed an arrest warrant issued by a judge from the state of Sergipe, after Facebook allegedly did not release messages, sent by WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, which concerned a drug trafficking investigation.

"The arrest was made for the federal police of Sergipe, considering the repeated ignoring of judicial orders...concerning organised crime and drug trafficking," Xinhua quoted the press release as saying.

Facebook has maintained that WhatsApp is operated independently and that it has no staff in Brazil and does not store messages, making it impossible to comply with the court order.

In December, another Brazilian judge ordered the WhatsApp service to be blocked nationwide for 48 hours after the company refused to provide information as part of an investigation into a user of the app.

At the time, the judicial decision provoked a wave of criticisms in Brazil and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, stated that he was "stupefied" and called it "a sad day for Brazil".

--Indo-Asian News Service sku/na/pgh/rd

( 213 Words)

2016-03-02-10:21:32 (IANS)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is preparing for the world's longest commercial flight which will take off from Auckland and travel to Dubai on Wednesday. The Emirates flight, with a duration of 15 hours 13 minutes, landed in Auckland from Dubai earlier on Wednesday, Xinhua reported. The return flight is estimated at a duration of 17 hours and 15 minutes, but the airline said the service would cut journey duration by almost three hours each way. It marks the start of a daily direct service between Dubai and New Zealand, which the airline said would add 125 million NZ dollars ($82.92 million) a year to the New Zealand economy. The first service was operated with a double-decker A380, but the airline will have the Boeing 777-200LR, carrying up to 266 passengers, regularly flying the route. "We anticipate high demand for the route, providing a further boost to inbound tourist traffic in New Zealand that exceeds three million a year," Emirates president group services Gary Chapman said. The service would give New Zealand exporters more capacity through Dubai, which would particularly benefit those with perishable goods for markets in the Middle East and Africa. New Zealand Transport Minister Simon Bridges said the service increased New Zealand's connectivity with the rest of the world. "The United Arab Emirates is our primary entry point to the Middle East, and one of New Zealand's top 15 trading partners. Being a trading country, we rely on effective air services to create much needed connections with the rest of the world," Bridges said. "Direct flights will encourage even more trade and tourism between the two countries, by offering more choice to passengers and freight customers." The route is expected to become the world's second longest commercial flight when Emirates launches a service between Dubai and Panama later this month. --Indo-Asian News Service mg/py/dg ( 316 Words) 2016-03-02-15:57:33 (IANS)
"We will increase oil and natural gas imports from Iran, especially Iranian condensate," the ministry said in astatement.

It added that the two countries would establish a payment system to facilitate smooth trade of crude and condensate between National Iranian Oil Company and South Korea's SK Energy and Hyundai Oil Bank.

South Korea's imports of Iranian crude oil tripled in January from a year earlier with the United States liftingsanctions on Tehran, but shipments remained far below pre-sanction levels.

The Islamic Republic on Jan. 17 emerged from years of economic isolation as sanctions over its disputed nuclear programme were lifted.

Iran is exporting 100,000 barrels a day of oil to South Korea, one of its main crude customers, and hopes to double that figure by the end of 2016, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted as saying on Monday. REUTERS DS GC0707

-- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-616754.Xml
Shah Rukh Khans father-in-law, Colonel Ramesh Chandra Chibber passed away, sources said today. Colonel Chibber died here at Escorts hospital at about 2100 hrs last night. The sources said the actor and his wife Gauri had immediately left for Delhi last night after hearing the news. The cremation is expected this morning at Lodhi Crematorium. Hailing from Patti village in Hoshiarpur district, Colonel Chhibber, married to Savita Chibber, shifted to Delhi in 1970 where he had been staying ever since. The couple had two children, Gauri, who is married to SRK and a son Vikrant. UNI AR AJ 1042 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-616826.Xml
A massive rescue operation has been launched by the Army in Northern Siachen Glacier to retrieve a porter who fell in deep crevasse. The porter has fallen in a 200 ft deep crevasse, where the temperature goes as low as minus 200 degree Celsius, the army officials said here. Since 2013, 41 soldiers have lost their lives in the Siachen glacier, the highest battle field in the world. In this year alone, at least 14 army personnel have been killed due to extreme weather in the Glacier. UNI MK AJ 1149 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0364-616894.Xml
Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has warned his side to be wary of South Africa leg-spinner Imran Tahir in the upcoming T20 series between the two sides ahead of World T20 in India. Describing Tahir as an 'experienced' player, Maxwell said the former is an outstanding bowler and that his side have to perform well against him. The 27-year-old had played against the spinner while he was with Delhi Daredevils in the last year's Indian Premier League (IPL). "He has been very successful and he played really well in the IPL last years, said. I think that was a big thing for him and for his confidence. I think he has been riding that since. He seems to grab the momentum back for South Africa every time he comes on," Maxwell was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo. Maxwell also admitted that Australia didn't have great record in the subcontinent and added that they had mostly struggled while playing excellent spin. Maxwell, however, believes that his side would come even stronger this time and would prove that they were worth being the number one side. "If you look at our batting order, it's suited to combat that. We've got excellent players of spin in our team and guys that have got international experience in India. It's going to be key for us to have those guys perform well for us. It felt like the Indian series we were trying a lot of players. We didn't play our main team at any stage. It's an exciting that we can get better from that. Hopefully when we hit Durban on Friday night we can show that with our No. 1 side," he added. The two sides will lock horns in a three-match T20 series, starting from Friday in Durban. (ANI)
Thirty-six-year old Harish Kumar Gound, who was deployed at the Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd (RGPPL), allegedly opened fire on two of his colleagues on Tuesday night.

Gound, who hails from Madhya Pradesh, was apparently engaged in a verbal altercation with the victims earlier.

Gound and his wife have been admitted to the hospital in Chiplun and their condition is said to be serious. (ANI)
Amid the see sawing developments of dialogue between India and Pakistan, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said on Wednesday it was obvious that New Delhi's priority would be action over talks in the aftermath of the deadly Pathankot terror attack. Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, a joint initiative of the Ministry of External Affairs, which kicked off in Delhi, Jaishankar indicated that action took priority over talks given the present circumstances. "After the Pathankot attack, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch through NSAs and me and my counterpart. The picture you see is of parallel processes. In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue then the answer is obvious," he said. Asserting that every Indian Prime Minister has tried to maintain peace with Pakistan, he said the two nations must not remain isolated from each other. "It takes two hands to clap. Indians would like to have same relations with Pakistan as other neighbours," Jaishankar said. Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that talks with India are likely to resume after a team visits Pathankot in the upcoming days, to investigate into the deadly attack on the Indian Air Force Base. "Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. National security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts," he said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary John Kerry. "A case has been registered and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," he added. Aziz also asserted that Pakistan's decision to 'reach out' to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of Islamabad's strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring nations. "We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues - including the Kashmir dispute - is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," he said. Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member Special Investigation Team to follow up on the leads which India had provided. (ANI)
Distribution of relief among the flood hit traders has gain pace after the imposition of Governor's rule in the Jammu and Kashmir and so far an amount of over Rs 40 crore has been disbursed among the affected shopkeepers in the valley. Officials said till date an amount of Rs 40.70 crores has been disbursed among 9,984 traders who were affected during the devastating floods of September 2014. They said the process of disbursal of relief was expedited after February 25 and since then 5,532 traders have been granted cheques worth Rs 14.32 crores. They said yesterday an amount of Rs 1.99 crores was disbursed among 813 traders. Giving details the officials said Rs 1.10 crores was distributed among 377 traders of Srinagar, Rs 74 lakhs among 390 traders of Anantnag, Rs 13 lakhs among 39 traders of Pulwama and Rs 3 lakhs among 12 traders of Bandipora today. Officials said that Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, Dr Asgar Hassan Samoon has said that the process of relief distribution would continue with full vigour. He said that a proposal for release of additional Rs 120 crores has already been sent to government and the same will be distributed among flood affected people. Thousands of traders, including in the summer capital, Srinagar, were badly affected due to devastating floods in September 2014 and even after 18 months, majority of traders were not paid any compensation. The traders hit the streets several times against the delay in sanctioning the compensation for the loss.UNI BAS JW AJ CS1334 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-616957.Xml
The Indian Consulate in Jalalabad was today rocked by two explosions that occurred near it around noon today. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the target was the Indian Consulate. "There were two or three suicide bombers. The firing is still going on. However, all Indian staff is safe," Mr Swarup said. The Afghan security forces have reached the spot and the area has been cordoned off. No group has taken responsibility for the attack. Several other consulates are also located near the India Consulate. The capital of the eastern province of Kandhar has seen several attacks in the diplomatic area in the past one yearThe India Consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif was also attacked by insurgents in January. UNI NAZ SHS RJ 1458 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-617203.Xml
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa today announced an assistance of Rs one lakh each to the families of three people, including a cop, who were killed in various incidents in theState. In a statement here, Ms Jayalalithaa expressed grief and anguish over their deaths and announced the solatium from the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund. Ms Jayalalithaa also offered her condolences to the families of Dastagir Basha (Chennai city), policeman Santhakumar (Rameswaram)and Muthumari (Tirunelveli district) who died due to drowning, road accident and wall collapse respectively.UNI GV 1430 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-617166.Xml
Chief Wildlife Warden Satya Prakash Tripathy today said that the tigress shot at Medziphema under Dimapur district on Monday could have been tranquilized. However, before Assam Forest Department officials could reach the spot with tranquilizer, the villagers had already shot the big cat.In a statement Mr Tripathy said the Forest Department had received information of the tigress on Sunday morning. He expressed grief that the facilities such as tranquilizer were not available in the state due to resource crunch. Though the tigress was shot dead in self defence he, however, pointed out killing it was a serious matter since it is considered as the national animal of the country. There were never any reports of tigress being spotted in the state, but this incident is being investigated by the Forest Department of Dimapur Division under the chief wildlife warden, Tripathy said.Meanwhile, postmortem on the carcass was conducted today in Dimapur. UNI AS PL JW AJ NS1420 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-617034.Xml
A day after the Congress refuted charges by the BJP that the affidavit on the killing of Ishrat Jahan was changed by the then Home Minister P Chidambaram to implicate the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his Home Minister Amit Shah, party president Sonia Gandhi today came out in support of Mr Chidambaram on the issue. Responding to the queries by mediapersons outside Parliament, Ms Gandhi, in response to BJP allegations that the former Home minister changed Ishrat's affidavit for political reasons, said, ''Chidambaram has already talked on the Ishrat matter. We stand by that.We have been targeted since we were in power." Ishrat was shot dead along with three others in Gujarat riots (2004). Gujarat police officers claimed that all four were involved in a plot to assassinate Mr Modi.BJP has alleged that Mr Chidambaram amended the affidavit to suit his party's stand that Ishrat was innocent and shot in cold blood on the Gujarat government's orders. In a press conference yesterday, the ruling party alleged that Mr Chidambaram was directed by his party's top leadership to frame Mr Modi and Mr Shah, ahead of the Gujarat elections.The charge made by Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, came after an interview by RVS Mani, the then Under Secretary in the Home Ministry, who had filed the two affidavits, alleging that he was tortured to implicate senior IB officials in the case to project the encounter killing of Ishrat and other three LeT terrorists in Ahmedabad in 2004 as fake. Mr Mani suggested that Mr Chidambaram was behind the decision to file the second affidavit.He also alleged that the then SIT chief, a CBI official, was after him and an attempt was made to question the quality of professional inputs by the intelligence agencies on Ishrat and other terrorists. Responding to the BJP charges, Congress yesterday charged the former with spreading false propaganda, merely to score political points. Responding to Mr Prasad's allegation, AICC Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that it was very unfortunate that BJP was resorting to false propaganda.''It is unfortunate that sensationalism is being practised on the issue only to score political points. Congress has never supported or opposed the guilt issue of Ishrat, if established in a court of law or any procedure known to law. ''If IB had intelligence inputs, Ishrat would have been prosecuted. The entire Congress stand was that irrespective of guilt, a guilty person cannot be assassinated or liquidated without the due process of law, which is what happened in Mr Modi's autocratic rule in Gujarat," Mr Singhvi said. "The point being made is that after an inquiry, the matter went to the Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court during Narendra Modi's rule and the court's probe found that it was a fake encounter. ''The then state government challenged it in the High Court, but it also ruled that it was a fake encounter. A similar conclusion was reached by the SIT appointed by the court and later, the CBI,'' he said. Mr Singhvi said, "India is a proud democracy, where Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab faced full trial up to the Supreme Court. Police did not kill the Parliament attack convict or the 26/11 perpetrator in a fake encounter''.Mr Singhvi also wondered if Modi government was intervening in the case to block the prosecution of guilty policemen.Mr Chidambaram yesterday said the second affidavit in the encounter case was 'absolutely correct' and as a Minister then, "I accept the responsibility".He also expressed disappointment over former Union home minister GK Pillai distancing himself from the affidavit issue, despite being "equally responsible". UNI AR SHS RJ 1558 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0092-617205.Xml
The delegation included former chief minister and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Hemant Soren, state Congress president Sukhdeo Bhagat and other opposition parties.

One of the objections of the opposition was that the candidature of 618 of the 2,085 who appeared in the mains examination was rejected on "technical grounds".

The opposition claimed that only a particular series of the roll numbers were declared successful. Besides, only those candidates who opted for the same subject and also belonged to a particular institute were selected. The cut-off marks of the mains were declare Before the interviews.

"What is the guarantee that the question papers were not leaked," the opposition asked.

"We have requested the governor to intervene in the issue. This is issue of students of the state," Sukhdeo Bhagat of the Congress told reporters.

The issue was raised by the opposition parties on Wednesday in the state assembly, and its working disrupted for the fourth day.

The opposition members have demanded cancellation of the JPSC results and a probe by CBI.

"Why government is not handing over the probe to CBI?" Hemant Soren said, while talking to reporters.

The opposition also alleged that candidates belonging to other states were selected for the higher posts by the JPSC.

The state government has made it clear that the issue is pending in the Jharkhand High Court and the government would accept the court verdict.

The students who were rejected in the mains examination on "technical grounds" are also protesting.

On Tuesday, they were baton-charged in Ranchi.

The students demonstrated near Raj Bhavan on Wednesday.

--Indo-Asian News Service ns/pgh/vt

( 308 Words)

2016-03-02-16:13:34 (IANS)
The Patna High Court today granted bail to incarcerated former RJD MP Mohammad Shahabuddin in the infamous 2004 acid murder case involving his alleged goons. Hearing the bail petition of Shahaubddin, a division bench of the Patna High Court comprising Justices Anjana Prakash and Rajendra Kumar Misha accepted the bail petition of the former RJD MP's counsel. The court also granted bail to one of the accomplices in the case Munna Miya.The counsel of Shahabuddin contended that his client was falsely implicated in the case and was made accused after 62 months of the case. He was not made a named accused in the FIR lodged with Mufassil police station in Siwan district in this connection. As it is, Shahabuddins supporters had allegedly abducted two brothers, Girish (23) and Satish (20) following a dispute with the duos father, Chandrakeshwar Prasad alias Chanda Babu, over possession of his shops in the main Siwan market. While Girish and Satish lost their lives after they were drenched in acid, their elder brother Rajiv Roshan, who was also abducted, had managed to flee. Roshan was later killed in June 2014, three days before he was scheduled to appear in the court to record his statement as an eyewitness after the High Courts intervention in the case. A Siwan court had sentenced Shahabuddin to life imprisonment on December 9 last year.UNI XC DH AD SHS RJ AS1617 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-617155.Xml
A total of three persons including one from Baramulla of Jammu Kashmir, who were tried for the alleged charges of handling charas, have been acquitted by the Thane district court on Monday for want of sufficient evidence and giving them the benefit of doubts. Thane Additional Sessions Judge and Special Judge MH Patwardhan trying the cases under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act stated that the prosecution had failed to prove the case against the alleged accused beyond reasonable doubt and hence, they get the benefit of doubt and being set free. The Prosecutor told the court in his submission on behalf of the prosecution that on November 13, 2010, a truck was seized at the APMC market in Vashi Navi Mumbai. A total of around 70 kgs of charas worth Rs 27 lakh was concealed in the cavity and brought into Mumbai from Kashmir, the prosecution added. A team of NDPS officials arrested four persons at that time, including a driver, cleaner of the truck and two others who had reportedly come to the spot to purchase charas, the prosecution stated. The arrested and the truck was taken to the NCB office at Ballard Pier for further action and the offence was registered against the accused under Sec29RwSec20biiSec8cofNDPSAct1985. During the pendency of the trial the driver of the truck Mohammad Dhar, 52 died in the jail itself a couple of year back hence the case was abatted against him. Appearing for the accused counsel AK Sarpandey contested the claim by the prosecution and said that the arrested accused had nothing to do with the truck and the seized goods. The trio also claimed that they had never travelled with the truck and hence the question of concealing the seized goods in the cavity does not not arise. The truck was not not owned by them they said and added that the duo had just come to the market and were not at all wanting to purchase the so called seized goods. The defence counsel also argued that the seized truck was not inspected during the trial and the only thing that was produced was the key of the so called seized truck. As the accused had no connection whatsoever with the seized goods or the truck in question they need be given the benefit of doubt and set free argued the counsel. The judge after the arguments and submissions by both the prosecution and the defence concluded that the trio deserve the benefit of doubt as the prosecution had faild to prove the case and the trio deserve to be set free. Besides the one from Jammu Kashmir the two others acquitted were from Dharavi and Mahim. UNI XR NV RJ CS1648 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-616944.Xml
The Congress-supported United Panjim Front panel today released manifesto for the elections to the Corporation of City of Panaji slated to be held on March 6. Addressing a press conference, Congress MLA Pandurang Madkaikar said while opposition panels have tried to project rosy picture of the city in their manifestos, we have promised what we can really deliver.'' The manifesto promises infrastructure development, administrative reforms, health and sanitation facilities besides focus on tourism and heritage. As the local body elections are not being held on party lines, three panels have been formed. While Congress and BJP are supporting their own panels, Atanasio 'Babush' Monserate, an MLA, has formed his own panel and fielded 30 candidates. The polls are expected to witness multi-cornered contest as independents also are in the fray.UNI AKM NV PY RJ AS1646 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-617357.Xml
After taking on Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati, by hosting a `Dalit Conclave and accusing the former BSP chief minister of suppressing the community, Uttar Pradesh Congress is now getting ready to expose the failure of the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) government in the stae on all front. The Congress Party would bring out a report card on SP government governance on March 15, the day when chief minister Akhilesh Yadav will complete four years in the office. Besides, Congress is also likely to hold demonstration against the ruling government. "Akhilesh Yadav had failed on all fronts, whether it was law and order front, power scenario, giving compensation to farmers, raising minimum support price, giving jobs to youths or to provide them unemployment funds etc so we are preparing a charge-sheet in the form of a report card of the Samajwadi Party government and would expose them on March 15, revealed a senior Congress leader attached with a media section of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee. "Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is just throwing dust in the eyes of the public by laying foundation stone, almost daily, of some project just to project that the government is taking development on top priority but the reality is that all these projects never took off except for one or two projects, the lCongress eader alleged here today. He claimed that chief minister had made several pre-poll promises which he failed to live up. The Samajwadi Party government is celebrating last two financial years as Farmers Year, but the truth is that they were not giving any compensation to the farmers who received a major loss due to incessant rains last year, not increasing the minimum support price, not clearing the dues of the cane growers even after the orders of the High Court, forcing closure of sugar mills, not providing subsidised urea or seeds to farmers, irregular power supply, etc all that hit the farmers community badly and many of whom were forced to commit suicide, Congress leader further alleged. Besides this UP Congress would also expose the SP Governments failure on law and order front, how the transfer turned out to be luxurious business, and how the morale of the police has touched bottom with series of attacks on the Khakhi, the leader disclosed. The Party also claimed that SP government failed to check the rising prices of even essential commodities that had posed a serious threat for common man to have two time meal. It may be mentioned here that besides `Dalit Conclave organised about a fortnight back to target dalit vote bank, Congress to give a new boost to the Party in the biggest state of the country had used the opportunity of birthday of their President Sonia Gandhi, by carrying out over a dozen padyatras all over the state exposing both National Democratic Alliance in the Centre and Samajwadi Partys government in the State.UNI MB PS RJ AN1617 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-616897.Xml
Haryana government employees would now be able to avail the loans through scheduled banks at the same rate of interest as is admissible through government and now they will not have to wait for days to get their applications processed. A decision to this effect was taken in a meeting of the state cabinet, which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar here today as the cabinet decided to shift its portfolio to the banks.The state government would sign a Memorandum of Understanding with banks, which would ensure quick release of loans and as and when required. It was observed that as a result of this decision, the cost of interest subvention would be reduced and there would be wide and fair competition between all banks licensed by Reserve Bank of India. There would be good and favourable terms and conditions for the employees. There would also be strict time limits upon forwarding of an employees loan application by Head of Department or Managing Director or Administrative Secretary concerned. There would be quick release of documents and easy pre-payment terms. It was also observed that the beneficial rate at which the loan is provided to the employees is linked to the rate of interest applicable on Public Provident Fund and is revised by the state government from time to time. The budgetary allocation made annually by the government does not suffice the need of all the employees of the government. Therefore, there is discontent amongst the employees. To cater to the need, the employees line-up to avail the discretionary quota of Finance Minister allocate d on year to year basis. The decision to shift the portfolio of the state government to the banks would overcome the discontent amongst the employees as all of them would be able to avail this facility and amount of loan presently given would be available with the government for diversification towards the developmental works. This shift would also increase the clients of the banks and enhance their priority sector lending. Also, as the banks might be charging a rate of interest higher than that linked to the Public Provident Fund account, the State government would provide interest subvention to the banks on account of differential between the prevailing rate of interest and that to be charged by the banks on the basis of bid-able parameters. The state government would have to make budgetary allocation only to the tune of a maximum of three per cent of the existing allocated budget on account of interest subvention to be paid to the banks. There are over 2.74 lakh government employees, out of which only 24,507 employees have availed housing loan and 9,757 took vehicle loan. As many as 7,144 employees have taken computer loan and 16,887 have availed marriage loan from the government till March 31,2014. The facility of loan was availed by the employees as per the policy of the state government.UNI DB PY RJ AS1621 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-617290.Xml
Haryana cabinet today approved the proposal of Gram Panchayat Sotai (Faridabad) to gift a residential plot measuring 200 square yards out of its land to Memwati, widow of Shaheed Naik Raghuvir Singh, who attained martyrdom in Operation Rakshak in Jammu and Kashmir-2000. It was observed that Ms Memwati has a house measuring 40 square yards only, which is very small and insufficient for a family. The value of the said land is Rs 70 lakh per acre. The cabinet, which met here under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, also approved exchange of shamilat land measuring 12 kanal 19 marla of Gram Panchayat Jajru (Faridabad) with the land of NTPC Ltd Faridabad measuring an equal area as the panchayat land has come within the boundaries of NTPC Ltd. Moreover, land of NTPC is being used as passage since 1996 by the villagers. It also approved the proposal to exchange the shamilat land measuring two kanal nine marla of village Nainawali of Gram Panchayat Bahadurpur (Yamunanagar) with that of private persons land measuring two kanal nine marla. The land was allowed to be exchanged because it is already in use as a passage rather than earmarked passage in the record. The Gram Panchayat is also getting six marla more land. According to the Yamunanagar Deputy Commissioner, the market value of both lands is at par that is Rs 16 lakh per acre. The cabinet also reviewed and approved the Annual Administrative Reports of the Directorate of Land Records for the year 2012-13, Agriculture and Fisheries department for the year 2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15, Home Guards and Civil Defence department for the year 2014-15, Prosecution department for the year 2009-10 and 2010-11, Printing and Stationery department for the year 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12.UNI DB PY RJ AS1648 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-617313.Xml
"Bada yarana lagta hai," Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad today imitated the famous dialogue of iconic villain Gabbar Singh from the film Sholey to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Pakistan policy, attracting peals of laughter from Members in the Rajya Sabha. Participating in a debate on the Motion of Thanks on President's Address, Mr Azad was at his wittiest best but the Prime Minister withstood his onslaught with a straight face. "I am not saying, tera kya hoga re kalia," he said, holding back his laughter. "I am on other dialogue of Gabbar, which is bada yarana lagta hai," the leader of Opposition said mixing swipe with anger. He continued, "Aap karein toh makhanchor, hum karen toh haramkhor." He said this seems to be Mr Modi's Pakistan policy, which is two steps forward and two steps backward. Mr Azad accused the Government of disrespecting the martyred soldiers during several terror attacks carried out in India from across the border. Quoting Mr Modi's speeches in the run-up to the General Election, he said the same person who used to attack the previous government of showing weakness while dealing with Pakistan, was now paying unscheduled visit to Lahore, holding meetings with his Pakistani counterpart some time in Washington, other time in Ufa. The Prime Minister patiently heard Mr Azad's full speech and left the House the moment it ended. UNI MK SB 1755 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0090-617634.Xml
Addressing the annual day of TTD-run SGS College here, Dr Krishnamurthy said, the noble intention of TTD is to give the nation competent people, who will remain the best citizens of the country.

Later, the Chairman said, the SV Degree College in New Delhi is considered as one of the top ten colleges in the country. This prestigious college was was established in 1961, he informed.

We have taken efforts to ensure that 15 per cent of seats are reserved for children of TTD employees in renowned colleges, he added. UNI KNR KVV ADB 1732

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-617470.Xml
The Assam unit of BJP today claimed that its party-led NDA government at the Centre has already decided on according ST status to six communities of the state in keeping with the longstanding demand of these groups. The party further maintained that a committee formed by the Home Ministry for granting ST status to these communities was a first step towards realising the formalities. Addressing a press conference here, party spokesperson Rupam Goswami said, "The committee has been asked to recommend for granting of ST status to these communities. It implies that the Central government has already decided on according ST status to these groups." Reacting to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's criticism that the committee was a political gimmick, he said, " The Congress had been in power for years but did nothing to meet this legitimate demand. The BJP government has started the process within 20 months of coming to power." Another BJP leader Dr Dayananda Borgohain said the state party leadership has been able to convince Mr Modi on urgency of granting ST status to these communities. He said, "The indigenous Assamese people do not enjoy any constitutional safeguard against the onslaught of external factors. Hence, the ST status will help protecting these communities." Six communities - Moran, Mottock, Tai Ahom, Tea tribe, Chutia and Koch-Rajbonshi, have been demanding ST status in assam. The Home ministry had formed a committee on February 29 last to recommend modalities for granting ST status to these communities and submit report within May 31 next.UNI SG AD PY RJ AS1739 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-617556.Xml
BJP members created ruckus during the pre-lunch session of the Bihar Assembly today over the issue of deteriorating law and order situation. As soon as the House assembled for the day, Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar raised the issue of growing criminal activities in the state and demanded governments reply over lawlessness on their partys adjournmentmotion. Recalling yesterday`s bank dacoity in Siwan district where outlaws looted Rs. 17 lakh from a branch, he saidit was not an isolated case of unlawful act as incidents of murder, kidnapping and loot had become order of the day in the state now. He said the people were living in an atmosphere of fear. State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shravan Kumar sought to know from the Leader of Opposition under which rule he was raising the issue. He said if Mr Kumar was serious about any matter, he should followrules and regulations laid down for the purpose. He said if the Opposition brought some issues to the notice of the House in a non-serious manner and without following rules, the government would not take it seriously. Normalcy returned to House after a few minutes of slogan shouting by the opposition members paving the way for taking up of the question hour. After the Question Hour, Speaker Vijay Kumar Choudhary rejected the adjournment motion of BJP members stating that since a debate would be held on the Home Department in the post lunch session, they couldpresent their views on the law and order situation at that time. This infuriated the BJP members who again started creating noisy scenes in the House to press for admission of their adjournment motion on the worsening law and order situation in the state. During the Zero Hour BJP members Sanjay Saraogi, Vinod Kumar and Neeraj Kumar Babloo and some other members started reading their notices on law and order and accused the government of patronising criminals. Objecting to it, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shravan Kumar said that only notices were read out during the Zero Hour but BJP members had started delivering speeches against the established norms and practices. After the zero hour, BJP members once again started raising anti-government slogans in support of their demand on law and order situation in the state. Several BJP members trooped into the well of the House and continued to raise slogans. Amid slogan shouting and disorderly scenes speaker Vijay Kumar Chouadhary adjourned the house till lunch recess. UNI DH IS PL SHS RJ AS1745 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-617524.Xml
: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah todayhanded over the controversial diamond studded 'Wrist Watch' to theSpeaker Kagodu Thimmappa in the Legislative Assembly today and itnow became a government asset. The Speaker displayed the Watch to the House and read out theaffidavit given by Mr Girish Chandra Verma, settled in Dubai, whowas friend of Siddaramaiah and had given the Watch last year as gift. Mr Thimmappa handed over the Watch to the Chief Secretary and asked him to keep it in Cabinet Hall. Not satisfied with handing over the Watch to the Government, theOpposition members continued their dharna in the well of the Housedemanding CBI inquiry into the issue and if necessary arrestMr Verma. Receipt for purchase of the Watch should be produced. The Chief Minister has played a high drama by handing over the watchto the Speaker without giving opportunity to the Opposition partiesto seek clarifications. At one stage Mr Siddaramaiah lost his coolness when Mr Shettardemanded inquiry by CBI or any one of the Central Agency into theissue. "During your (BJP) rule not even a single case was handedover toCBI, but after Congress coming to power five cases were referred tocountry's highest investigating agency. This issue was raised withpolitical motive and only to tarnish my image. I dont have even asingle black mark in my political life," Mr Siddaramaiah said. After completing reading of the Affidavit to the House, theSpeaker adjourned the House for tomorrow even as opposition memberscontinued their dharna shouting against Mr Siddaramaiah. Talking to newspersons here, Mr Shettar said, "we are not satisfied with the ChiefMinister's move of handing over. If he is clean, he should haveallowed discussion. Only affidavit given by Verma was read out bythe Speaker but the receipt for purchase was not produced. Evenhanding over the Watch to the Speaker is also not a correctprocedure. It should have been given to Chief Secretary. He said that his party legislators will meet and decide nextcourse of action. (Eds; Pick up suitably from earlier series).UNI MSP KVV ADB 1705 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0285-617471.Xml
Russia, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have handed over the documents related to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose to India, which could help unravel the mystery on several aspects of his life, the Rajya Sabha was today informed. The issue of handing over of documents has been taken up with the governments of Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and United States of America, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in a written reply. '' Responses from the Governments of Austria, Republic of Italy and the United States of America are awaited,'' he added. The Government of India has declassified all the available classified files and transferred these files to National Archives of India (NAI) for permanent retention. All declassified files pertaining to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose received in the National Archives of India (NAI), are first subjected to preliminary conservation and digitization, before being released in public domain. Both of these are time consuming exercise. UNI RG SB 1820 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-617690.Xml
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said that those whose insured properties have been damaged during the recent distressing incidents in the state were being provided interim relief within a week and their claims would be given within 15 days from the day they apply for the same. While presiding over a meeting with the Insurance Companies' representatives regarding claims of victims of the recent agitation here, Mr Khattar directed them to deal with the claim cases at the earliest. He said that they should be sensitive while taking up the claim cases of the victims and dispose off the same within a time-bound manner. Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu, who was also present in the meeting, directed the Insurance Companies representatives to remain in constant touch with their offices situated in Delhi to ensure quick disposal of claim cases falling in the National Capital Region (NCR) area so that the victims could get compensation without any inconvenience. In the meeting, the Chief Minister was informed that 330 persons have so far applied to the insurance companies for the claims on account of damage to their property, the amount of which is about Rs 70 crore. It was also informed that out of these, 150 applications have been received by United Insurance Company, New India Insurance Company, National Insurance Company and Oriental Insurance Company. Similarly, about 180 applications of claims have been received by other private sector insurance companies like Bajaj Allianz, Iffco Tokio, Future Generali, Universal Sompo, Bharti AXA, Tata AIG, Reliance GIC, Videocon, ICICI Lombard and HDFC Ergo Company. It was informed that the state government would soon release a toll-free number to register complaints regarding compensation. At present email id compensationcellcmo.hry@gmail.com has been created on which people could send their complaints, if any. Apart from this, a web portal namely Sanjeevani would also be launched soon for this purpose. The representatives assured the Chief Minister that insurance claims received by them were being disposed off at the earliest.UNI DB RJ VN1827 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-617621.Xml
Punjab Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa said today that soon the State will have 4G connectivity and broadband. Mr Dhindsa was presiding over the third International Conference on Sustainable development through green initiatives concluded at Sri Guru Granth Sahib World Universitys School of Commerce and Management. He said that in a country like India, the concept of Sustainable development is of utmost importance and it is the duty of present generation to seize this opportunity to become the custodian of environment. He also said in order to excel the transfer of technology must take place between developing and developed Nations. Dhindsa heaped praise on the University for organising the conference on such an important and relevant issue and said that the Ministry will be providing a grant of 10 lakh rupees for development purposes of the University. The Vice Chancellor of the University, Dr Gurmohan Singh Walia said that the overall objective of the conference was to stimulate discussion on various issues and challenges of Sustainable Development and to find solutions to develop plans for achieving the Sustainability Development Goals at local, national, regional and global levels. The Vice Chancellor added that the conference aimed to provide an interdisciplinary forum to practitioners and academicians on global sustainable development and they have succeeded in that. Dr Walia congratulated the School of commerce and management for putting up such a splendid show and said that it is high time we started thinking about the happiness and contentment of our people rather than profits and income. Throwing some light on the academicians that came to attend conference, Professor of Eminence and Dean Research Dr B.S. Bhatia said that the Dr Indi Seerha, Director Human Resources and Professor London School of Economics gave the Valedictory address in which he talked about the concept of Sustainable development in reference to corporate social responsibility and business ethics. Dr Gurpreet Singh Dhillon of Virginia Commonwealth University USA, Dr Karin Hedstrom of Orebro University Sweden and Dr Somendra Pant of Clarkson University, USA delivered special addresses. Dr Bhatia added that the organising committee of the conference has received over 200 research papers from scholars and academicians across the globe and the University released a journal of selected papers in the session as well. Dr Bhatia also thanked the State bank of Patiala for collaborating for the conference. UNI XC JS CJ RJ RAI1850 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-617794.Xml
Public sector Sutlej Jal Vidyut Jal Nigam (SJVN) has paid interim dividend of Rs 168 crore to the Centre, holding 64.5 p c equity in the Company, for 2015-16. SJVN had declared a total interim dividend of Rs 260.61 crore at the rate 63 paisa per share) for FY 2015-16. While 25.5 per cent equity holder Government Himachal Pradesh received Rs 66.47 crore as interim dividend and Rs 26.14 crore is paid to public shareholding, the Mini-Ratna PSU said in a statement today. Last year, the company paid dividend of Rs 434.35 crore to its shareholders.The dividend cheque was handed over to Power Minister Piyush Goyal by R N Misra, CMD, SJVN Limited at New Delhi. Hydro Power is the core strength of SJVN and the Company has the distinction of implementing India's largest 1500 MW Nathpa Jhakri Hydro Power Station in Himachal Pradesh and the Company is implementing 12 other projects in Nepal, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakhand, Bihar and Gujarat. The Company's other two projects namely 412 MW Rampur HE Project in Himachal Pradesh and 47.6 MW Khirvire Wind Power Project in Maharashtra are already in operation. SJVN which has already diversified in the field of Wind Power, Thermal Power and Power Transmission is presently generating 2000 MW of electricityUNI ML RJ RSA BD2030 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-617693.Xml
Shortly after Delhi High Court granted interim bail to JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, held under sedition charges, the Opposition parties and agitating students today described the order as ''victory of truth'' even as Delhi Police maintained that it was not a setback to them. Communist Party of India leader Sitaram Yechury spared no time in hitting out at the Centre as soon as the news broke about Kumars bail. The Left stalwart said since Kumar is now free man, the government must press charges against those who ''doctored'' tapes, in which the student leader was shown chanting anti-India slogans. The magisterial probe ordered by Aam Aadmi Party led Delhi government has found that at least two videos out of seven, which were sent to forensic lab to ascertain their authenticity, were 'tampered.' '' Kanhaiya and others were set up to mask other national security failures. False hysteria was whipped up. But who framed Kanhaiya and JNU ? '' Mr Yechury said on micro-blogging site Twitter. ''This government can go to any length to cover up its all-round failure. Victimisation of innocent students is only one case in point,'' he alleged. Nagendra Sharma, the spokesperson of AAP led Delhi Government also hailed the decision. The news of release of Kumar was also celebrated in the controversy hit campus amid singing, dancing and slogans like ''Red Salute to Comrade.'' Shehla Rashid, vice-president, JNUSU, called for a ''Victory March'' tonight from Sabarmati Dhaba to Ad Block celebrating the release of Kumar, who was in police custody since February 12 for allegedly having organised an anti-national event inside the campus on February 9.'' This is the victory of truth. Not just Kanhaiya is innocent but Umar Khalid and Anirban, who are also charged with sedition, will also soon walk free. The government must release them as well ,'' one of the JNU student said. Justice Pratribha Rani granted bail to Kumar for the period of six months, this evening after hearing detailed arguments from the prosecution and defence.The High Court asked Mr Kumar to deposit a personal bail bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of the like amount. He is likely to be released tomorrow from Tihar Jail. On the other hand, Delhi Police said it was not a setback for them and it will decide the future course of action after analysing the order. When asked that will the police challenge the order in the Supreme Court, Special Public Prosecutor Shailendra Babbar said, '' We will first analyse the order and then decide the next move accordingly. The interim bail has been granted subject to outcome of probe.''Earlier in the day, the agitating students also took out a protest march from Mandi House to Parliament demanding Kumar's release.UNI RG RSA 2143 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0377-618313.Xml
The city police today busted a notorious fraudsters' gang which indulged in stealing and forging cheques of Rs 40 lakhs, by arresting three people including the kingpin and seizing Rs 11 lakh.Three other fraudsters are absconding, according to the Assistant commissioner of Police (Saifabad Division), J Surendar Reddy.. The material used in the commission of the offences was also seized from their possession and an amount of Rs. 16.34 lakhs which was lying in their accounts has been freezed. In the recent times, Hyderabad City witnessed several incidents of presenting fabricated and forged cheques and misappropriating huge amounts belonging to the customers. All together 10 such cases were reported in Twin Cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. One such case was reported at PS Ramgopalpet on February 6 this year, wherein the complainant S. Kiran Kumar, Hardware Businessman, stated that he had presented a cheque issued by his customer in the name of his firm M/s Satyavarapu Hardwares for an amount of Rs.2,66,986 in HDFC Bank through ATM drop box for clearance on February 4, 2016,Later he came to know through his customer that the above cheque was cleared in the name of Paresh Vishal Kumar from UCO Bank, MG Road, Sec'bad. He had approached the concerned Bank authorities and lodged a complaint with Police. A case vide FIR No.34/15 u/s 379, 468 and 471 IPC was registered and taken up for investigation. In the next 15 days, 9 more cases of misappropriation of huge amounts through forged and fabricated cheques, were reported in Hyderabad City. In view of the occurrence of series of cases, 2 special teams were constituted to identify and apprehend the fraudsters..The special teams collected the CC Camera footages from several ATM Centres and analysed. Technical data was also collected and the documents furnished to open the Bank Accounts were obtained and verified. Available leads were worked out, which led to the identification of the shelter of the gang and the raid conducted on the den led to the arrest of 3 fraudsters, including the kingpin of the gang. The accused three were arrested by Ramgopalpet police station and produced before the Honble court for judicial custody.UNI KNR CJ RSA 2316 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-618375.Xml
Two youths were killed in road accidents on NH 72 and 73 under Naraingarh sub division during last 24 hours. Rahul (16) was killed when a Pickup hit his bike which he was driving near Adampur village on NH 72 today. He and his father on pillion were injured seriously. Villagers took both of them to the civil hospital from where Rahul was referred to the PGI Chandigarh but he died there. His father has been admitted for treatment. In the second accident on NH 73 Saha-Shehzadpur road, biker Arjun resident of Bari Rasor was killed while a woman Puja wife of Vijay on pillion was injured when a car coming from opposite side rammed into the bike. Arjun died on the spot while the woman was injured. She was admitted to the primary health centre The police said that the car was impounded and a case was registered against the driver. In another incident, two year small girl died of drowning in a gutter near the residence of her parents in a colony on river Tangri bandh. The child Suhani had gone missing and on search, her parents found her body in a gutter outside their house. Her father Anmol a Bihari migrant working as labourer, said that his daughter might have fallen into thegutter while playing. He said that his neighbourers told him that Suhani had died after she fell into the gutter. UNI XC CJ RSA VN2326 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-618124.Xml
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said 12 countries would participate in the first Happening Haryana Global Investors Summit-2016 being organised in Gurgaon on March 7 and 8. Addressing media persons at the venue of the event, being organised by the state government in association with the CII, here, Mr Khattar expressed hope that the summit would be a historic event and said that entrepreneurs had assured him of their keenness in investing in the state. Describing the people of Haryana as resilient, he expressed belief that the state would organise the summit in a successful manner. He said that China, Czech Republic, Japan, Republic of Malawi, Mauritius, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Republic of Peru, Republic of Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the Tunisian Republic were participating as partner countries in the event. Earlier addressing the media persons, Industries Minister Capt Abhimanyu said that Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would inaugurate the two-day event. Several Union Ministers, including Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu, Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Minister Kalraj Mishra, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy would also be present on the occasion. He said that Union Road Transport and Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari would be the chief guest during the closing ceremony on March 8. Replying to a question, he said that more than 800 entrepreneurs from India and other countries would participate in the summit on the first day. Technical sessions would also be held. Representatives of 140 foreign companies and Ambassadors and High Commissioners of different countries would also participate in the event, he added. He said that well-known industrialists such as Chinas Wanda Group had decided to invest in Haryana. He said that despite the recent incidents in the state, Japan has proposed to become a partner country in the summit. It was telephonically conveyed to the Chief Minister that the state should organise the summit and that Japan would definitely participate in the event. He said that even the people wanted to ensure the safety of the industries, therefore, when the law and order situation in the state was disturbed, the people provided protection to the industries and drove away the protesters.UNI DB RSA VN2309 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-618289.Xml
The commander of US troops in Europe warned that a two-decade American effort to cultivate Moscow as a partner has failed and Washington no longer has the military resources it needs in Europe to counter a "resurgent, aggressive" Russia.Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the NATO supreme allied commander and head of US European Command, told lawmakers that "Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and our European allies and partners.""Russia is eager to exert unquestioned influence over its neighboring states," Breedlove told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pointing to the continuing conflict in Ukraine as well as ongoing tensions in Georgia and Moldova, whose territorial integrity Russian forces have challenged.Breedlove said the Minsk accord that led to a ceasefire in the Donbass region of Ukraine had brought an element of calm to the area, but violence had increased significantly in recent days, with 71 attacks in 24 hours and 450 attacks over the past week."I believe that Russia will dial up and down the pressure along the line of contact to keep Kiev under pressure to meet their parts of the (Minsk) agreements first," he said.Breedlove said the United States needs additional resources in Europe, which "faces a resurgent, aggressive Russia." The US European Command has paid a "steadily increasing price in resources and assigned forces" since President Barack Obama ordered a strategic rebalance to the Asia Pacific, he said.The US military presence in Europe has fallen from a Cold War high of half a million troops to about 62,000 military personnel today.Breedlove said he asked for a substantial boost in resources for the region in the budget for the 2017 fiscal year that begins on October 1. Lawmakers said the Pentagon had quadrupled its request for the region to 3.4 billion dollars.Russia has been increasingly aggressive in the Arctic, militarizing the region it claims, Breedlove said. It also is testing sophisticated submarines in the Atlantic between Britain, Iceland and Greenland, he said.Asked whether the US military had reconsidered its decision to leave the Keflavik air base in Iceland a decade ago, Breedlove said bases like Keflavik were important for reconnaissance and "we are already renewing some of these conversations."REUTERS DS GC0347 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-616742.Xml
Australian victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church clergy called for a meeting with Pope Francis after watching a high-ranking Vatican official testify that senior clergy lied to him to cover up abuse in the 1970s.Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's treasurer, has told the inquiry that the church made "enormous mistakes" and "catastrophic" choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and over-relying on counselling of priests to solve the problem.Given Pell's high rank within the church, his testimony to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse over cases that occurred decades ago has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders.Pell's failing memory to questions about what he knew of abuse by clergy and claims that he was deceived by superiors about individual cases in the 1970s has angered many of the 15 abuse victims and supporters who travelled to Rome to see him give evidence.Pell repeatedly said he could not recall particular events and, in one testy exchange, denied a suggestion from special prosecutor Gail Furness that his claims that he was not briefed properly on abusive priests was "implausible."During a break in testimony, the victims in Rome released a statement they have faxed to the Pope: "This is about children. Children who were abused and damaged in the past. ... We would like to request a meeting to discuss the commitment to the children of the past and children of the future, to implement systems so that this is never repeated again."The group, who travelled to Rome after Pell said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems, said they had requested a meeting before they fly back to Australia on Friday.Philip Nagle, who was abused as a child, said the group has become frustrated with Pell's evidence to the inquiry and no longer wanted to meet with the Cardinal at the end of his evidence as scheduled."We want to be heard and we want someone to show that they care about us and who can possibly help change things for children into the future," Nagle told reporters."SEE NO EVIL"Pell's evidence, which adds to testimony from almost 5,000 survivors according to Commissioner Peter McClellan, has received wide coverage in Australia.McClellan repeatedly interjected to suggest that Pell could and should have done more when as a more senior cleric in the 1990s he was told about specific abuse cases.In Australia, the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper printed a full page photo of Pell leaving the hearing with the headline "See no evil, hear no evil, stop no evil." The Sydney Morning Herald blared "Pell under fire."Last year, Pell denied accusations made at Commission hearings that he had tried to bribe a victim to remain quiet, that he ignored another complaint and that he was complicit in the transfer of a paedophile priest.Church sexual abuse broke into the open in 2002, when it was discovered that US bishops in the Boston area moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them. Similar scandals have since been discovered around the world and tens of millions of dollars have been paid in compensation.The Australian hearing started on the same night that Spotlight, a film about newspaper reporters who uncovered systemic paedophilia in the Church in Boston, won the Academy Award for best picture. REUTERS DS GC0645 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-616749.Xml
Israeli soldiers shot dead two Palestinian teens who had attacked an Israeli settler at his home in the occupied West Bank today, the military said, as a wave of heightened violence entered its sixth month."There were two young guys, teenagers, terrorists, at my door, dressed in dark clothes and holding wooden clubs," the Israeli man, Roee Harel, from the Eli settlement near the Palestinian city of Nablus, told Army Radio.He said the two began beating him before he managed to push them out of the house, and he also found a knife at the door.Soldiers who rushed to the scene shot the two Palestinians, a military spokeswoman said. "Upon the significant threat to the people of the community, forces shot the attackers, resulting in their death," the military said in a statement.The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two were both 17, from the adjacent village of Qaryout.Since October Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and a US citizen. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests.The violence has raised concern of further escalation a decade after the last Palestinian uprising subsided. The Palestinians and international powers have said Israel has often used excessive force against assailants, many of them youths.Israel has rejected those allegations, saying it has been preventing lethal attacks on civilians and security forces.Palestinian leaders say many Palestinian attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement towards creation of an independent state. Israel says they are being incited to violence by their leaders and on social media. REUTERS JW PM1217 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-616940.Xml
In one of the declassified documents, Bin Laden outlines that at least 29 million dollars stashed in Sudan should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue the global 'jihad', reports the Dawn.

The document part of a cache of 113 documents has been described by intelligence officials as Bin Laden's will.

The documents are mostly dated between 2009 and 2011 and comprise the second cache from the raid to have been declassified.

Osama had set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle's children and maternal aunts.

Documents seized by US special forces personnel during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan have revealed that Al Qaeda leaders were increasingly worried about spies in their group, drones patrolling the skies and secret devices tracking their movements.(ANI)
Afghan security forces today killed a team of suicide bombers who targeted the Indian consulate in the eastern city of Jalalabad, following an attack in which at least six people were wounded, officials said.The incident, coming just days after dozens of people were killed or wounded in suicide attacks in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern province of Kunar, casts doubt on efforts to revive a stalled peace process with the Taliban.A bomb in a car driven by one of the attackers was detonated near the Indian consulate, shattering doors and windows and destroying at least eight cars as explosions and gunfire rocked the area, witnesses said.Security forces in armoured vehicles were seen moving to the scene, while civilians fled.But the four attackers were killed before being able to enter the consulate compound, said Attahullah Khugyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province."Their target was the Indian consulate, but our forces shot and killed them all before they reached their target," he said.The head of the public health department in Nangarhar, Najibullah Kamawal, said at least six people had been wounded in the attack.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which followed a suicide attack on the nearby Pakistani consulate in January.That attack was claimed by Islamic State, which has a growing presence in Nangarhar, the province of which Jalalabad is the capital.In January, India's consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif was also attacked by insurgents. REUTERS PY AS1458 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-617218.Xml
Hwang visited a centre in Seoul for countermeasures to internet infringement, saying that a close cooperation system should be built between the military, the government and the civilian sector to blockade the North Korea's possible attacks in cyberspace in advance, Xinhua news agency reported.

The prime minister said that top North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had ordered officials to muster up capability for anti-South Korea terrorist attacks, which raised possibility for the North Korea's cyber provocations.

South Korea's spy agency reportedly made mention of such an order without revealing where the agency got the information from.

Hwang said North Korea had staged massive cyber attacks against South Korea after conducting nuclear tests, instructing officials to detect such attacks at a right time and recover attacked networks successfully.

He also urged people to update security vaccines on their computers and smartphones and to refrain from opening suspicious emails or text messages in order to minimise possible cyber attacks from Pyongyang.

His comments came amid rising concerns about Pyongyang's terror attacks following its fourth nuclear test on January 6 when the it tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb.

On February 7, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket using banned missile technology.

--Indo-Asian News Service mg/py/dg

( 242 Words)

2016-03-02-15:55:34 (IANS)
Jordan said today it had thwarted a plot by Islamic State militants to blow up civilian and military targets in the country.A statement carried by the state news agency Petra said security forces had located the militants, who were carrying suicide belts, in a hideout in the northern city of Irbid near the border with Syria.Seven militants were killed in clashes that began on last night and lasted till dawn, with one police officer also killed, it said. Automatic weapons, munitions and explosives were found with the group. REUTERS PY AS1622 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0298-617414.Xml
Palestinian students at an elementary school for the blind in the West Bank are learning English through song.For the youngsters, it's a welcome departure from the usual braille textbooks and memorising the rules of grammar."In specific subjects, I like to motivate them (to learn) so I teach them grammar or vocabulary by creating a song, because they feel better and they keep repeating it," said Hind Al-Tamimi."We are dealing with students with special needs, they are blind or visually impaired, so we urge them to depend on their hearing sense more than their sense of touch that they use in braille."But while students said they were delighted with the new curriculum, some parents in the religiously conservative town of Hebron are concerned the use of music in the classroom is not in harmony with Islamic tradition.Rashid Rashid, English-language studies supervisor at the Palestinian Ministry of Education, said he has been assuring families that music can be a positive learning tool."The people think that the musical methods and singing may lead to dancing, so they may not accept it," he said. "Before we adopted this method at all of the schools, we chose 25 schools and made it clear to the headmasters that the musical method is not taboo and not shameful."Scientific studies have shown that musical sounds enhance neuroplasiticity, or the brain's ability to adapt and change as a result of training and experience, making learning easierREUTERS CJ BD2059 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-618247.Xml
Turkish police fired tear gas and water cannon on Wednesday to disperse hundreds of people protesting in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir against months-long security operations.Police detained 33 people at the protests, which took place after an appeal by senior officials from the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) to halt what they called a "massacre" in Diyarbakir's historic district of Sur.Sur has been under lockdown since Dec. 2 as police and soldiers try to root out Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who erected barricades and dug trenches in the neighbourhood.HDP Chairman Selahattin Demirtas told Reuters his party would "resist" what he called the destruction of cities and the killing of civilians in the name of fighting terrorism."The people of Diyarbakir are against the government's policy of war and massacre and the burning and destruction of their own city," he said in an interview.But Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday members of the HDP, the third biggest party in parliament, had sought to collaborate with "terrorists" and to drag Turkey into chaos.Parliamentary immunity should not protect lawmakers who "commit crimes," he said.Davutoglu also said there were plans to make it easier for civilians to leave areas now under curfew as well as to allow militants to surrender. CURFEW PARTIALLY LIFTEDA handful of cities in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast have been engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s following the breakdown of a two-year ceasefire with the PKK last July.The autonomy-seeking PKK has sealed off entire districts of some towns and cities in the southeast, prompting the security forces to step up their operations.Authorities partially lifted the curfew in the town of Cizre on Wednesday, allowing residents onto the streets between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m. An explosion soon after the curfew was lifted wounded a woman and a child, security sources said.Residents tried to retrieve belongings from houses either destroyed or badly damaged during the round-the-clock curfew in Cizre, along the Syrian border, which lasted a total of 79 days.One group found a dead body in the ruins of a building, witnesses said.The number of civilians killed during the security operations in Sur, Cizre and two other towns, Silopi and Idil, has reached 211 since December, the HDP said. The government has not provided a figure for the civilian death toll.The PKK, considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, launched a separatist armed rebellion against the Turkish state more than three decades ago, and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflictREUTERS CJ VN2315 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-618398.Xml
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Eighteen fighters were killed in a car bomb blast that hit a Syrian insurgent group in the southern province of Quneitra on Wednesday, monitors reported, and a rebel source said the attack was likely carried out by hardline Islamists. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the explosion occurred in the village of al-Isha, targeting a base belonging to Jabhat Thuwwar Souria, a Free Syrian Army group. Issam al-Rayyes, spokesman for the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army, said 11 people had been killed in the blast, including the Front's commander, known as Abu Hamza al-Naimi. Rayyes said it was not clear who was behind the attack. Suhaib al-Ruhail, a spokesman for the Alwiyat al-Furqan group which operates in the area, said it was most likely carried out by "Daesh sleeper cells", a reference to Islamic State insurgents. He gave a lower initial death toll of 10 people. The incident did not immediately appear to be related to the current cessation of hostilities between the Syrian government and its allies and non-jihadist insurgent groups. (Reporting by John Davison in Beirut and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
The Student Loan Ranger receives quite a few emails from student loan borrowers who want to know if they will be required to pay back their loans even if they aren't working in their field. Others aren't happy with the quality of the education they received or just don't think it was worth the debt.

Unfortunately, most of the time, the answers to questions like these aren't going to be what the borrower was hoping to hear.

As a rule, student loan borrowers are required to pay back their loans even if they are unhappy with their school or the education they received, or even if they didn't complete their credential. This is outlined in the entrance counseling borrowers are required to complete and may even be listed in your promissory note.

However, if the school did not properly certify your federal aid eligibility, it is possible to receive a discharge. The following scenarios all fall under the discharge called "false certification."

[Discover five steps to file a student loan complaint.]

Lack of High School Diploma or Equivalent

With some exceptions, a student must have a high school diploma or its equivalent to be eligible for federal student loans. In most situations, students could have also passed what's called an ability-to-benefit test or completed six credits at an institution of higher education to be considered eligible. If you did not meet these criteria, you may submit an application for discharge to your loan holders.

If you apply for this discharge, proving the negative, such as not having a high school diploma when you received your loans, can be difficult. Submitting proof of a GED obtained after you received your loans, for example, is one way to show that the school may have approved your loans inappropriately. Submitting a copy of your high school transcript showing you did not complete can also help.

[Learn ways to avoid being duped by a student loan service.]

Lack of Benefit From the Education Due to a Disqualifying Condition

Some occupations -- such as attorneys, most teachers and law enforcement -- exclude those convicted of felonies. Others, such as truck driving, require that the student be able to obtain a driver's license, something a person legally blind may not be able to do.

Story continues

If a school was aware, or should have been aware, of a condition that legally prohibits you from working in that field in that state when it certified your loans, you may be eligible to have them discharged. The education must have been tailored to that specific profession.

You may be required to provide proof of the state law being cited as well as proof the condition existed at the time the loans were made. You can submit your application directly to the loan holder .

[Find out aboutthree student loan discharges you should never have to use.]

False Certification by the School or Identity Theft

Borrowers can also receive a discharge if their school forged their signature on the promissory note, electronic funds transfer authorization or loan check. The caveat is that the student will also have to show that the funds from the loan were not used for their tuition, fees or other components of their cost of attending that school, or that they otherwise did not receive benefits from that money.

To apply for the discharge, submit this form to your loan holder, along with no fewer than five copies of your signature. Two of those signatures must be from within a year of the disputed signature. The best way to find old signatures tends to be with cashed personal checks you've written, of which your bank can likely get you copies.

If the loan was obtained through identity theft, however, the burden can be heavier. While the discharge application is the same one used for claims of school forgery, you'll also need a court verdict that states that the loans were obtained through identity theft. This can be difficult, especially if you aren't sure who forged the documents.

Remember, you typically aren't eligible for this discharge if you benefited from the loans. So if you are claiming that someone forged your name on the promissory note, but the loan was sent to the school you attended and used to pay your tuition, your chances of discharge are slim.

These claims usually involve a parent who signed the student's name to a Stafford loan promissory note or a student who signed a parent's name to a Parent PLUS loan promissory note.

In the Student Loan Ranger's experience, these are almost never discharged because the money was used to pay the student's tuition, and family members are generally hesitant to pursue each other in court over such matters. It may be best to convince the family member to reimburse you for the loan or work out some other arrangement in exchange for not reporting the identity theft -- a serious crime -- to police or suing in civil court.

If you feel that you have been the victim of one of these claims, file your application as soon as possible. Evidence that could be used to prove your claim can be harder to obtain over time. Also, be sure to file the discharge paperwork with all loan holders that maintain loans you feel were obtained fraudulently.

Finally, remember that these eligibility criteria are listed out in federal regulations. This means that there is very little wiggle room allowed when your loan holder evaluates your discharge claim and it doesn't fully meet the criteria. As you build your claim and gather evidence, ensure the loan holder will have everything needed to approve your request if possible.

Betsy Mayotte, director of regulatory compliance for American Student Assistance, regularly advises consumers on planning and paying for college. Mayotte, who received a B.S. in business communications from Bentley College, is a frequent contributor to ASA's SALT Blog; responds to public inquiries via the advice resource "Just Ask;" and is frequently quoted in traditional and social media on the topics of student loans and financial aid.
BURLINGTON, Vt.  Bernie Sanders may be facing tough delegate math against his rival Hillary Clinton, but the progressive candidate told a crowd of his strongest supporters that he would fight for the nomination in every state.



At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted. Thirty-five states remain, Sanders told a Vermont crowd of thousands. Let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states.

The Vermont senator assured his supporters that he will still pick up delegates in states he loses on Super Tuesday.

This is not a general election, its not winner-take-all. If you get 52 percent or 48 percent, you end up with roughly the same amount of delegates, he said.

The senator is right that he is picking up delegates even in states he loses, but Super Tuesday has seriously dented his chances of becoming the Democratic nominee. Though he did better than some expected  winning his home state of Vermont in a landslide, plus Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota  Sanders was falling short of making up for Clintons very strong showing in the South, where she won six states, and in delegate-rich Massachusetts. (Superdelegates, who are chosen by the party and not allocated based on the popular vote, also overwhelmingly support Clinton.) On this course, Sanders is likely to find himself in a delegate hole he cannot dig out of.



Slideshow: Super Tuesday winners >>>

But this pessimism has not reached Vermont, the campaign or the Sanders supporters who contributed $42 million to his campaign last month, outdoing Clintons fundraising machine. The hometown crowd gave Sanders a rock stars reception, cheering for a full minute when he arrived on stage with his wife, Jane. Jerry Greenfield of Ben & Jerrys ice cream and other campaign surrogates introduced Sanders as the next president of the United States to the cheering crowd.

Story continues

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont addresses a primary night rally in Essex Junction, Vt., on Super Tuesday. (Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

Sanders appears to have the money and the will to go all the way. And he doesnt have to worry about big-time donors deciding its time for him to pull the plug if he cant catch up with Clinton.

We think were going to have the resources to go all the way, Sanders senior adviser, Tad Devine, said. In the past, campaigns ended because the bundlers said, We arent going to bundle anymore. We dont have any bundlers. The people who are investing in this campaign are doing so not because its a smart money calculation, but because they believe in Bernie Sanders.

Devine said the campaign is looking forward to upcoming races in Kansas, Nebraska, Maine, Louisiana and Michigan. Were going to compete and win in as many states as possible, he said.

Devine dismissed the possibility that Sanders supporters will lose some of their enthusiasm as they see their candidates chances dim.

You know, I think our supporters are enthusiastic about Bernie and his message, not enthusiastic about his delegate totals, he said.

Sanders has from the beginning been a candidate of ideas, when he entered the race nearly a year ago with almost zero name recognition to take on a candidate most Democrats saw as inevitable. His surprising popularity pushed Clinton to the left on many issues, from the Keystone Pipeline to economic inequality, and has changed the race forever. The money that keeps pouring into this campaign means he can continue to deliver this message, even if he doesnt have a shot at the nomination.

What I have said is that this campaign is not just about electing a president, it is about making a political revolution, Sanders said at his victory rally.

One thing the campaign says wont happen, no matter the outcome? Sharper attacks on Clinton.

Ive worked with Bernie for 20 years. Weve never run a negative ad, and I predict we never will, Devine said.
By Terrence Edwards ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - Global aid agencies are responding to a call for assistance by Mongolia as harsh winter weather raises fears for the safety and livelihoods of the country's traditional pastoralists, who have already been hit hard by a drought last year. Dry weather has scorched most of Mongolia's wheat crop and now mass animal deaths due to a freezing winter, locally known as "dzud", are threatening more pain for the country, where farming accounts for about 13 percent of the economy. The last dzud in 2009-2010 killed 9.7 million of the country's livestock, according to the National Emergency Agency of Mongolia. While the government has not yet declared the current winter a natural disaster, it has warned the situation could get worse. So far, a drop in temperatures to minus 55 Celsius (minus 67 Fahrenheit) has killed nearly 200,000 livestock. The weather and grazing conditions are already worse than they were in the previous dzud, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said in a statement, citing the Mongolian Ministry of Food and Agriculture. "Usually for the dzud, the most devastation is observed in March, April and May," Garid Enkhjin, national program coordinator for the IFRC in Mongolia, told Reuters. The IFRC said it has launched an emergency appeal for 834,000 Swiss Francs ($835,000) to assist 25,500 Mongolian herders, who are at risk of losing their livestock and livelihoods due to the extreme winter. Currently, 80 percent of Mongolia is under snow, making it difficult for nomadic families to travel along centuries-old pasture routes to find food for their livestock. Aggravating the situation is the fact that herders can live up to 50 kms (31 miles) from urban settlements and many are without cars. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has said it plans to provide trucks to get aid to families' doorsteps at some of the most-difficult-to-reach areas. "We want to relieve the burden of that last mile of distance to the most affected," Ben Hemingway, USAID's regional adviser, said on phone from Bangkok. In the worst affected districts, sheep and other livestock have started dying. Many herders are trying to sell their animals while they are still alive, leading to an oversupply of livestock that has driven down market prices. Although the death toll for animals so far is far less than in 2009, "the impact on the people is more or less the same", said Enkhjin. "Livelihoods will be impacted immediately and have devastating effects." ($1 = 0.9987 Swiss francs) (Reporting by Terrence Edwards; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
(This March 1 story has been corrected in 13th paragraph to show that letter was written by Osama bin Laden's son Saad, and not by Osama bin Laden) By Jonathan Landay and Phil Stewart WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden outlined in letters and other documents how at least $29 million of his funds and possessions should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue global jihad. One of the letters - part of a cache of 113 documents taken in the 2011 U.S. Special Forces raid that killed bin Laden - was described by U.S. intelligence officials as what they believed was a last will. Reuters and ABC Television were given exclusive access to the documents, which were translated from Arabic and declassified by U.S. intelligence agencies. They were part of a second tranche of documents seized in the operation and have been declassified since May 2015. A large number have yet to be released. One document, a hand-written note that U.S. intelligence officials believe the Saudi militant composed in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29 million he had in Sudan. One percent of the $29 million, bin Laden wrote, should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al Qaeda militant who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al Mauritani. "By the way, he (al-Walid) has already received 20,000-30,000 dollars from it, bin Laden continued. "I promised him that I would reward him if he took it out of the (Sudanese) government." Bin Laden lived in Sudan for five years as an official guest until he was asked to leave in May 1996 by the then-Islamic fundamentalist government under pressure from the United States. Another 1 percent of the sum should be given to a second associate, Engineer Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa'ad, for helping set up bin Laden's first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co, the document said. Bin Laden urged his close relatives to use the rest of the funds to support holy war. "I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah," he wrote. He set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle's children and maternal aunts. In a letter dated Aug. 15, 2008, and addressed "To my Precious Father," bin Laden's son, Saad bin Laden, asks his father to take care of his wife and children in the event he died first. Saad bin Laden was killed in the 2011 U.S. raid on his father's hideout in Pakistan. "My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow up on their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs," he wrote. In a final wistful paragraph, he asks for forgiveness "if I have done what you did not like." (Reporting by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Lisa Shumaker)
(Reuters) - A white Alabama police officer faces murder charges for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, authorities said on Wednesday. Montgomery police officer Aaron "A.C." Smith, 23, is in state custody after investigators found "probable cause" that he broke the law when he shot and killed Gregory Gunn last Thursday, Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey said. Smith was being held on murder charges on Wednesday in lieu of $150,000 bond, Bailey said. Gunn was shot at 3:20 a.m. local time in front of a Montgomery home, Bailey said. The case now goes to a grand jury, he said. "As district attorney, I will do everything in my power to protect and support a police officer that is acting within the law," Bailey said. "I will also use every ounce of my power as district attorney to prosecute a police officer who has acted outside of the law." Police killings of African-Americans, many of them unarmed, have sparked repeated protests over excessive use of force in the past few years. Initial reports indicated Gunn may have been holding a stick or something that could have been used as a weapon, but Montgomery Police Chief Ernest Finley declined to confirm that in remarks to reporters on Wednesday. "It's possible," Finley said. "At the end of the day, we're going to wait for the entire report from the DA's office or the SBI (State Bureau of Investigation)." Mayor Todd Strange said he was not aware if there is any video of the incident. Strange said the police department, composed of about 500 officers and 45 percent black, has made big strides in community relations over the years and will continue to reach out to citizens in the wake of the shooting. "We have bridges to build again, but let's don't tear down what we have done," Strange said. In front of the family home in Montgomery, a woman identified as Gunn's mother spoke to reporters. "God is still in charge. And Heaven knows what happened," she said in a video posted by the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper. "Man may not know. Only one that did it and one that got done to. But Heaven knows." (Reporting by Karen Brooks in Fort Worth, Texas and Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida; Editing by Tom Brown)
By Lisa Richwine LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Thursday's Republican debate on Fox News Channel could be Round 2 of Megyn Kelly versus Donald Trump. But the journalist and fellow moderators say they are not preparing to stoke the fire with questions about his headline-grabbing battles with the network. Trump accused Kelly of lobbing him tougher questions than those directed at his rivals in an August debate that was the Republican candidates' first televised encounter. Kelly asked about Trump's remarks about women, prompting a stream of attacks from the candidate, who skipped a Fox debate in January. "Frankly, I have been ready for seven months to move beyond what happened after that August debate," Kelly said in a recent interview. "I feel like it's getting boring. Trump has bigger things to worry about, and so do I." The brash billionaire's unfiltered style has helped generate unprecedented ratings for news networks including Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox Inc . The cable channel's August debate attracted 24 million viewers, a record for a presidential primary debate on any network, according to Nielsen. The January forum without Trump drew 12.5 million, still the second-largest audience in the network's history. Trump is set to appear at Thursday's rematch with Fox News anchors Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace. "Mr. Trump will be at the debate tomorrow and looks forward to participating," spokeswoman Hope Hicks said on Wednesday. The moderators said they do not plan to mention Trump's comments about Kelly, his complaints about unfair treatment by the cable news network or his absence from Fox's January debate. Kelly said she has not prepared a comeback if Trump gets personal. "I have my questions," she said. "That's all I need." Last week's debate on Time Warner Inc's CNN turned into a raucous match where rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio ganged up on Trump, who fired back. Wallace called it an "embarrassment" to Republicans. The three "seemed hell-bent on taking out each other on a lot of fairly minor points," he said, "rather than discussing issues that affect people's lives." On Tuesday, Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' nominations with a series of state-by-state victories. After 10 Republican debates, there remains plenty to explore because the remaining candidates - Trump, Cruz, Rubio and John Kasich - have now staked out positions, Kelly said. "They will have to own those positions or try to wiggle out," she said. "But there is not that much wiggle room left on some of these things." A fifth candidate, Ben Carson, appeared set to end his campaign and said he would skip Thursday's debate. Cruz has clashed with Wallace on air and accused him of being too soft on Trump. The contenders "try to work the refs and complain and hope they will get it a little easier next time," Wallace said. All three moderators said they ask tough questions of each candidate. "I think Fox has been fair across the board," Baier said. He said he hopes for a discussion that is "fiery" but "the most substantive debate so far" as rivals try to score points. "We will let the contrasts and the conversations between candidates go," Baier said. "But there will be some balance. That's what it's always about, not letting it get off the rails." (Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Peter Henderson and Jonathan Oatis)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia followed major world powers by lifting sanctions on Iran on Wednesday, after confirmation from the United Nations that Tehran had taken steps required to curb its disputed nuclear program. Under changes announced by the Australian government, businesses will no longer need to seek approval for transactions of more than A$20,000 ($14,436) involving entities from Iran. While Australia has suspended some of the sanctions imposed on Iran autonomously in 2008 because of the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, some non-nuclear sanctions remain in place, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) said in a statement. Sanctions still in force against Iran include restrictions on the transfer of proliferation sensitive goods, the arms and ballistic missiles embargoes and sanctions against some designated persons and entities. Australia's anti-money laundering watchdog AUSTRAC expects reporting entities to scrutinize all payments that are routed via third-party countries to Iran or North Korea, which is also subject to sanctions due to its nuclear program. AUSTRAC says all transactions to those two countries should be considered as "high risk." Iran has always denied its nuclear program was aimed at obtaining an atomic bomb. The United States and other countries formally lifted banking, steel, shipping and other sanctions on Iran in January, giving one of the world's major oil producers access to international markets that it had been virtually shut out of for the past five years. Washington still maintains separate, less comprehensive sanctions on Iran over its missile program. (Reporting by Nathan Lynch and Swati Pandey; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Stockholm (AFP) - The heir to the Swedish throne Princess Victoria gave birth to a baby boy on Wednesday, her second child who becomes the third in line to the crown.

"The baby and Victoria are doing very well," her husband Prince Daniel told reporters at the Karolinska hospital in Stockholm.

The couple are expected to announce the new prince's name on Thursday. His sister Estelle has just celebrated her fourth birthday.

King Carl XVI Gustaf and his wife Queen Silvia now have four grandchildren, with a fifth on the way in April.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump told a US television studio audience he is "tired of seeing the country ripped off," adding with characteristic bravado that if he ran for president, "I would have a hell of a chance of winning."

The real estate tycoon is currently the odds on favorite to win the 2016 Republican nomination. While he has expressed similar confidence over the past year, Trump's TV boast -- to host Oprah Winfrey -- came not in the run up to his current White House bid, but in 1988, when he was just 42.

Consistency has not been The Donald's calling card, his rivals argue. They claim Trump is a flip-flopping political opportunist, and that appears to be true on some counts, notably abortion, taxes and gun control.

But he is showing noteworthy consistency on the core of his message: strong defense, compassionate health care, support for the working man and tough talk on trade.

In late 1999, Trump made a more serious if only months-long flirtation with the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party launched by populist billionaire Ross Perot.

"I'm a registered Republican. I'm a pretty conservative guy," he told Larry King in a one-hour CNN interview at the time.

But "I'm somewhat liberal on social issues, especially health care."

Trump expressed appreciation for then-first lady Hillary Clinton, whom he would likely face in a 2016 general election should he win the Republican nomination.

As for abortion rights, "I'm very pro choice," he told NBC in October 1999, although he stressed that "I hate the concept of abortion."

Trump's 1980s and 90s entrepreneurial flamboyance and his unquenchable obsession with winning -- despite four Trump-owned casinos filing for bankruptcy -- remain hallmarks of the 2016 Republican frontrunner.

Obsessed with his own destiny and image, the tycoon is relentlessly pursued by US media, seduced by his charming patter that often veers into insults and rage.

Story continues

But if over the past 30 years he has shifted on some issues dear to conservatives, he has refined his populist protectionist message.

Free trade is a key example. Today, a Trump rally never fails to include his rants against nations "ripping off" America, be it China or Japan.

Who were the culprits in 1999? Germany and Saudi Arabia were "ripping us off big league; France, I mean, they're the worst team player I've ever seen in my life," Trump told CNN, adding that Japan was treating America "like a whipping post."

His message remains the same today: America needs a president with the backbone to defend its interests.

- 'Beautiful machine' -

During the 1988 Republican convention that nominated George H.W. Bush, Trump told CNN that "I doubt I'll ever be involved in politics beyond what I do right now.

"But I do enjoy the system, I find it a really beautiful thing to watch. It's a beautiful machine."

Back then, as in 2016, he boasted of his popularity with the working class.

"The people that I do best with are the people that drive the taxis," he said. "Wealthy people don't like me, because I'm competing against them all the time."

Last week after romping to victory in Nevada, where exit polls confirmed his intuition about support from low-income residents, Trump bellowed, "I love the poorly educated!"

And he retains his contempt for the wealthy, repeating that by self-funding his campaign he owes nothing to the lobbyists and billionaire donors who finance his rivals' candidacies.

This populist strain is reflected in his commitment to broad health coverage, a significant issue on the 2016 campaign trail. Trump insists he joins with conservatives in wanting to repeal and replace President Barack Obama's health care reform law, which they have decried as a step towards socialism.

"I will not allow people to die on the sidewalks and the streets of our country if I'm president," he vowed in a February debate.

"Somebody will say, 'he's not a conservative to say that,'" Trump said later. "Call it whatever you want."

In 1999, he expressed similarly compassionate views on health care, saying "it's an entitlement to this country if we're going to have a great country."

Trump's incendiary bombast and divisiveness today is an amped up version of his slick, confident personality of yesteryear, when he made headlines for his massive real estate deals and messy divorces, and hit best-seller lists with his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal."

But Trump's tough talk was already on display decades ago, particularly when it came to other nations and their trading policies.

"This country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage," Trump told Oprah in 1988.

"It wouldn't be the way it's been. Believe me."
Berlin (AFP) - Bayern Munich suffered a shock 2-1 defeat to Mainz on Wednesday, losing their 100 percent home record this season, as their lead in the Bundesliga was trimmed to five points.

The result shakes up the title race ahead of Saturday's crunch clash when Pep Guardiola's Bayern play at second-placed Borussia Dortmund.

Colombia striker Jhon Cordoba came off the bench to seal only Mainz's second victory in Munich with the winner on 86 minutes to finish off a counter-attack.

"We had our chances and then let them counter-attack. We shouldn't have allowed that to happen," fumed Bayern's goal-scorer Arjen Robben.

Mainz took a shock lead at the Allianz Arena when Spanish winger Jairo fired home in the first-half with the Bayern defence well beaten.

Robben pulled a goal back for the Bavarians on 64 minutes.

Despite Mainz managing only 22 percent of possession, Cordoba grabbed the late winner and was mobbed by his team-mates.

"We knew how we could win here with a strong defensive display and a good counter-attack," said Mainz coach Martin Schmidt, who praised his side's 'outstanding display'. "It feels really good."

Dortmund's 2-0 win at Darmstadt on Wednesday cut Bayern's lead from eight points to five as another Colombia striker, Adrian Ramos, and defender Erik Durm netted.

"We and Bayern both know that things can now be a bit tight. We want to win the thing," said Dortmund's Germany defender Durm.

Hertha Berlin cemented third place, but remain 15 points adrift of Dortmund, with a 2-0 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in the capital.

Ivory Coast striker Salomon Kalou and Mitchell Weiser scored to keep Hertha on course for a first return to the Champions League since 2000.

At the other end of the table, Werder Bremen climbed out of the relegation places with a shock 4-1 win at Bayer Leverkusen as veteran Claudio Pizarro claimed a hat-trick.

The 37-year-old Peru international showed why he is the Bundesliga's top scoring foreigner by needing just under half an hour to wrap up his hat-trick which included a penalty.

Story continues

Having knocked Leverkusen out of the German Cup in the quarter-finals last month, Bremen again humbled Bayer.

Roger Schmidt's Leverkusen has now lost four of their last five games in all competitions and drop to seventh in the league.

Elsewhere Schalke climbed to sixth with a 3-2 comeback win at home to Hamburg while Borussia Moenchengladbach remain fourth after their 4-0 thrashing at home to Stuttgart.

Second-from-bottom Hoffenheim boosted their survival chances with a 2-1 win over Augsburg.

On Tuesday, Germany winger Andre Schuerrle claimed the first Bundesliga hat-trick of his career as Wolfsburg routed bottom side Hanover 96 4-0 away.

March 1 is a lucky day for Schuerrle who also scored a hat-trick for ex-club Chelsea against Fulham in the Premier League exactly two years ago.

His performance will boost his standing at Wolfsburg and in this one game he has scored more goals than in his previous 33 matches for the Champions League side.

He needed just 26 minutes to score three goals before Germany team-mate Julian Draxler added Wolfsburg's fourth at Hanover's HDI Arena.

The win leaves Wolfsburg eighth while Hanover are bottom, four points from their nearest rival and seven points from safety.

The German FA (DFB) is expected to fine both clubs after one of the flares fired from the away fan block hit the Hanover bench before kick-off, but no-one was hurt.

Elsewhere, French striker Anthony Modeste rescued a point for Cologne in their 1-1 draw at Ingolstadt after forward Lukas Hinterseer had given the hosts the lead.
A triumphant Donald Trump, and a less-content Chris Christie, as the votes came in tonight. (Scott Audetta / Reuters)

Congratulations to Hillary Clinton! And to Ted Cruz on his Texas and Oklahoma wins. And to Bernie Sanders for his successes. And to Donald Trump for everything else.

When Trump announced last summer, in his famous theyre sending rapists presentation, I made the wrongest call Ive made in many decades in journalism: that Trump would be this cycles version of Herman Cain. You can read all about it here.

Obviously it wasnt just me who got him wrong. Almost anyone who extrapolated from modern U.S. political history had been expecting Trump either to hit a ceiling of demographic or regional support, or to hit a wall as he crossed line after line that for previous candidates had meant going too far:

Insulting John McCains war record? Imagining a military record for himself, because he had gone to military school? Revealing first-principles ignorance of the mechanics of national security (the nuclear triad flap)? Saying that the previous Republican president lied the country into war? Or that hed opposed the war beforehand, when he hadnt? The Klan? For previous candidates, even one or two gaffes like these had been too much. Think of poor Rick Perry with his comparatively harmless brain-freeze over oops!

Recommended: Trump Gives His Supporters What They Want

I still think Donald Trump is extremely unlikely to win the presidency. But his chance of being the 45th president is no longer exactly zero, as I said last summer  and his chance of being the nominee is obviously very good.

***

So, Trump is something new. By last December, Trumps improbable progress was so evident that I contributed to a Newsweek feature on The Worst Thing I Wrote This Year. You can read my confession here.

Yesterday a Politico reporter, Hadas Gold, asked me whether wrong calls about Trump meant that we had to change all the rules of political reportage. I sent her my earlier Newsweek item and an update. Today she ran this item, quoting part of what I said in email. She was aware (because I told her), but did not mention in her article, that Id written about this in Newsweek two and a half months ago. Instead her article implied that I was only now being caught out. (Now, months later, Fallows acknowledges...) [Update She has now added a Newsweek link to her item, without the usual step of noting that this is an update.]

Story continues

Just for the record, heres the full version of what I sent to Hadas Gold last night when she asked whether in the wake of Trumps rise the rules of political coverage need to be changed:

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Washington (AFP) - Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said Wednesday he sees no viable path forward for himself in the 2016 Republican presidential primary race, essentially ending a campaign that soared last year only to steadily lose steam.

"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results," Carson said in a statement, referring to the busiest day of the nomination process that saw 11 states vote for their Republican standard-bearer.

The night was dominated by frontrunner Donald Trump, with Carson finishing fourth or fifth out of five candidates in every state.

Carson, 64, said he would not participate in Thursday's Republican debate in his home city of Detroit.

Although his statement made no official mention of shutting down his campaign, it was a clear signal that he was dropping out of the race.

"I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America," he said. "Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances; rather by what is in the best interests of the American people."

He said he remained committed to "saving America" for future generations, adding that "we must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our founders intended for this exceptional nation."

The religiously conservative Carson, the only African American in the race to succeed President Barack Obama, said he will discuss his political future on Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, near Washington.

The soft-spoken, mild-mannered Carson once rivaled the bombastic Trump in the quest for the nomination. He was the second-place candidate from early September through November, attracting substantial support from evangelical conservatives.

But he struggled to maintain the momentum. Carson's challenge for the White House stumbled over questions about the veracity of aspects of his compelling life story, notably his claim in books and speeches that he had been offered a scholarship to the prestigious West Point military academy.

He placed fourth in the first nominating contest, in Iowa, and eighth in the second contest, in New Hampshire.
Dressed all in white, Nnamdi Kanu took his seat in the Federal High Court in Abuja, Nigeria, on February 9. Though he had been in detention for almost four months, the 48-year-old activist initially declined requests from court officers to agree to have his handcuffs removed. In an act of defiance, he raised his cuffed hands to the television cameras. It was hard to divine his intention, but the act and his angry expression suggested that he barely recognized the authority of the court he found himself in.

Kanu, a dual British-Nigerian citizen, was arrested in Lagos in October by Nigerian intelligence agents during a visit from his home in London. Kanu leads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a separatist movement calling for the independence of the southeastern territories that made up Biafra in the late 1960s. He denies all six of the charges against him, which include treasonable felony, a charge that carries a possible life sentence. The authorities essentially accuse Kanu of trying to overthrow the Nigerian head of state by broadcasting secessionist propaganda on Radio Biafra, the underground radio station he runs from London.

An oil-rich region about the size of the island of Ireland, the former Republic of Biafra has a history of turmoil and civil unrest. It existed as an independent republic for just two and a half years in the late 1960s, after millions of peoplemainly from the southern Igbo ethnic groupled a movement to secede from the newly independent Nigeria, sparking the civil war of 1967 to 1970, which claimed more than 1 million lives.

Forty-six years after that war ended, Nigeria is again facing a potential uprising in the southeast. Since Kanus arrest in October, a protest movement has sprung up in Nigeria, with thousands of people identifying as Biafrans demonstrating in the streets across the southeast and as far north as Abuja to demand the release of their leader. The demonstrations began peacefully but turned bloody in December: According to Associated Press reports, at least 22 protesters and two police officers have been killed in clashes at pro-Biafra rallies. The Nigerian government has not provided an official death toll, but Uchenna Asiegbu, a senior IPOB official, tells Newsweek that more than 100 civilians have died.

The rise in tensions between pro-Biafra activists and the Nigerian government comes at a time when NigeriaAfricas biggest economy and most populous nationis grappling with serious challenges. In recent years, the country has struggled to quell an insurgency mounted by Boko Haram, a militant group that has killed an estimated 20,000 people since 2009 as it attempts to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria. Although President Muhammadu Buhari said in December that Boko Haram had been technically defeated, the group continues to attack civilians and security forces in Nigerias northeast.

Meanwhile, militant groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta have been linked to a series of recent attacks on oil and gas facilities in the area, which was wracked by conflict in the mid-2000s. A Nigerian Cabinet minister said in January that the attacks were costing the country $2.4 million a day. This instability in both the northeast and the south, combined with plummeting oil prices, has hammered Nigerias economy. (Oil revenue constitutes 35 percent of Nigerias gross domestic product, and 90 percent of the countrys export revenue comes from oil.) In December, Buhari said he expected the countrys budget deficit to double in 2016 and capital expenditures to triple, as the government tries to revive growth.

Now, as pro-Biafra groups step up their demands for a breakaway state, the Nigerian government has yet another challenge on its hands. Todays pro-Biafra secessionist movement, led mainly by young people with no direct memory of the civil war, nevertheless shares some of the same concerns that sparked the original calls for independence. Nigeria was forged in 1914, when British colonialists cobbled together two territories, hoping to subsidize the poorer north with the resources of the oil-rich south. The borders of modern-day Nigeria did not reflect the ethnic boundaries of different rival kingdoms: the Igbos in the southeast, the Hausa-Fulani in the north and the Yoruba in the southwest.

After Nigeria declared itself independent of British colonial rule in 1960, regional and ethnic tensions erupted in a vicious power struggle. A coup against the northern-led government in January 1966seen by the leaders and many people from the north of the country as a plot led by the Igbosprompted the northerners to seize back power. Mobs from communities in the north of the country then killed tens of thousands of Igbos; many Igbos living in various parts of Nigeria fled to their eastern homeland. The following year, military officer Odumegwu Ojukwu annexed the southeast and declared the independent Republic of Biafra. That marked the start of Nigerias bloody civil war, which ended in 1970 after Nigeria blockaded Biafras border and hundreds of thousands of people starved to death. The Biafran troops surrendered.

Nearly half a century later, many of the same rivalries and fears of persecution that set off the war still linger. After Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999 after decades of rule by military juntasexcluding one four-year stretch that began in 1979the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra was founded with the aim of restoring the state of Biafra. But the IPOB, established 10 years later, has since become the premier pro-Biafra movement; it claims to have some 20 million members and 95 branches across the world. It has even opened its first Biafran embassy in northern Spains Basque country, chosen because of the regions historic struggle for independence.

Kanu, who was elected IPOB leader in September 2015, has been hailed as the restorer of the Biafran nation. Nnamdi Kanu is ordained to take us to the Biafran promised land, says Asiegbu. He is the chosen one. Kanus critics say that the secessionist leader is a promoter of hate speech and propaganda. At an event in May 2014 to commemorate the 1967 declaration of the Republic of Biafra, Kanu reportedly told a group of IPOB members and civil war veterans: We shall fight until we get Biafra. If they dont give us Biafra, no human being will remain alive in Nigeria by that time.

Nigerias president has said relatively little on the subject of Kanus arrest or the Biafran issue. I n December, Buhari told journalists that Kanu had entered the country without a passporta claim Kanu disputes. Theres a treasonable felony against him, and I hope the court will listen to the case, Buhari said. Since then, the president has kept silent, and the government has declined repeated requests from Newsweek for further comment.

With pro-Biafra protesters rallying around Kanus arrest, the outcome of the trial could heighten tensions between the activists and the government. The significance of Kanus trial can only be determined by what follows after, says Manji Cheto, an Africa analyst at U.K.-based risk consultancy Teneo Intelligence. Should IPOB react violently, it could potentially be a tipping point for the Biafra agitation.

Related Articles
Karlsruhe (Germany) (AFP) - A request to ban Germany's neo-Nazi fringe party the NPD crossed a first hurdle Wednesday when the highest court rejected party claims it was being infiltrated by state undercover informants.

"The court has had very extensive consultations" on the point, said Constitutional Court chief justice Andreas Vosskuhle. "An obstacle to the proceedings does not exist."

The presence of such secret sources within top NPD ranks had scuppered a first attempt to outlaw it in 2003 because it was seen to have sullied evidence against the openly xenophobic party.

Security services say they have now withdrawn or "deactivated" the informants.

The new bid to ban the ultranationalist NPD and seize its assets was launched by the Bundesrat upper house of parliament, which represents Germany's 16 states.

The case argues that the party threatens the democratic order, holds an "aggressive and combative attitude", has created a "climate of fear" and "shares essential characteristics" with the Nazis.

The case comes at a time when a record influx of refugees and migrants has polarised German society, and as the number of racist hate crimes has surged.

The legal hurdles are high to ban any political party, something Germany last did in 1956 when the top court outlawed the German Communist Party.

On Wednesday, the second day of hearings, judges questioned whether the NPD -- which has some 5,200 members and scored just 1.3 percent in national elections in 2013 -- really does threaten German democracy.

Six of the panel's eight judges would have to agree to a ban, which the NPD would likely challenge before the European Court of Justice.

After the last scheduled day of hearings Thursday, the court plans to give the NPD six weeks to formulate a response, before the court reconvenes. A verdict is expected to be months away.

In Thursday's hearings, one judge, Sybille Kessal-Wulf, said that violence associated with NPD supporters could be a "helpful criterium" to prove that a ban is needed.

Story continues

Bundesrat lawyer Christoph Moellers also pointed to intimidating NPD rallies staged outside the homes of political opponents.

Judge Peter Landau, however, asked whether such incidents should not be primarily blamed on police inaction and the "state's failure to protect" the public.

Critics say the high-profile case gives the NPD a national stage, and worry that a ban could turn its leaders into martyrs for their racist cause.

The NPD has one seat in the European parliament. It is also represented in one state assembly and more than 300 municipal councils, mostly in Germany's formerly communist east, which still lags behind the west in terms of jobs and prosperity.
Gunfire and an explosion echoed Wednesday as militants attacked India's consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, killing three people in the latest in a string of assaults on Indian installations in the country.

No group has so far claimed the brazen attack, which coincided with a NATO change-of-command ceremony that saw US army general John Nicholson take charge of international troops in Afghanistan.

Indian diplomats were not hurt, the foreign ministry in New Delhi said, after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the consulate's entrance and four other attackers breached the compound.

"All four of them were killed by our security forces," government spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP after the two-hour assault ended.

"Three others -- two civilians and one policeman -- were killed and 19 other people were left wounded."

The powerful explosion sent a column of smoke rising in the sky and blew out windows of nearby buildings, as Afghan troops hauled away bodies from the area littered with charred debris.

The attack highlights the worsening security situation in Afghanistan as Taliban insurgents step up nationwide attacks and Islamic State jihadists make inroads in the volatile east.

"There is still much work to be done. We now find ourselves at an inflection point in our campaign," outgoing NATO commander General John Campbell told reporters in Kabul.

"(Afghan security forces) have come far but they still need our help. (Their) desire to improve and their resilience warrants our continued support in the critical years ahead."

Wednesday's assault was reminiscent of a 25-hour gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in January.

India has been a key supporter of Kabul's post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan -- the historic backer of the Taliban -- has long been accused of assisting the insurgents, especially with attacks on Indian targets in Afghanistan, but denies the claims.

Story continues

- Uptick in violence -

Direct peace talks are expected to start this week in Islamabad between the Western-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, which has been waging a deadly insurgency for more than 14 years.

Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the US and Pakistan recently met in Kabul for a fourth round of talks aimed at paving the way for the nascent peace process.

But the Taliban have intensified their insurgency in an apparent attempt to gain leverage before the planned negotiations.

Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, also faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq and is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan -- challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

The jihadists have managed to attract disaffected Taliban fighters increasingly lured by the group's signature brutality.

In January IS fighters claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege of the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the first major attack by the group in an Afghan city.

The violence tearing the country apart is having a devastating impact on Afghan civilians.

A recent UN report highlighted more than 11,000 civilian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, a new record since 2009 when the agency began tabulating the statistics.
PHOENIX (Reuters) - Boeing Co <BA.N> is studying options for an aircraft in the middle of the jet market, but faces a "tough business case," Marketing Vice President Randy Tinseth said.

Speaking at the Istat Americas air finance conference, he ruled out reviving the out-of-production 757 with new engines because of the previously high production cost.

The middle of the jet market is widely seen as a "grey space" sitting between workhorse narrow-body jets like the Boeing 737 or the larger and more capable wide-body jets.

Ron Bauer, vice president for fleet planning at United Airlines <UAL.N>, predicted demand for an aircraft with longer range than the 1980s-vintage 757, a narrow-body jet which has been popular with airlines for its high performance.

"We look at it as a 757 on steroids," he told the gathering of aircraft financiers.

Boeing is exploring whether to build a new plane, which industry sources say could be a small twin-aisle plane, rejig an existing model or do nothing.

"We are looking at a number of options...but as you look at those you have to have a business case that works," Tinseth said, adding "it is a tough business case".

Jeffrey Knittel, president of lessor CIT Transportation <CIT.N>, said he saw potential demand for 1-2,000 such jets, which could connect New York to secondary European destinations like Barcelona.

But industry experts are debating whether it is a market sweet spot.

"You are at risk that this airplane will start cannibalizing other segments," said Bert Van Leeuwen, a managing director at Germany's DVB Bank.

Airbus claims most of the market's needs can be met by demand for its single-aisle A321. Its own A310 twin-aisle jet in the 1980s was considered a flop.

"There isn't a clear target," said Bob Lange, senior vice president for market and product strategy.

As development costs soar, Boeing is looking for a design that can be built affordably and sold at the right price.

Story continues

"If those things come together you have a business case that works and go forward. We are far from that point now," Tinseth said.

Experts say expanding the already revamped 737 would require costly engine and structural changes. Putting new engines on the wide-body 767 would compete in size terms with the very jet that was developed at huge cost to replace it, the 787.

Tinseth sought to reassure the industry any project would not clash with a busy slate of developments including new versions of the 737, 787 and 777 in the next 4-5 years.

"We have a lot of things on our plate which means that an airplane like this would come later rather than sooner."

(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Adrian Croft and Michale Perry)
La Paz (AFP) - The government of Bolivian President Evo Morales has gone to court to establish whether a child he fathered out of wedlock is alive or dead, the latest twist in a high-level scandal gripping the Latin American country.

Morales previously acknowledged he had a child with his ex-girlfriend Gabriela Zapata during a two year affair but claims she told him the infant died shortly after birth.

Zapata is now at the center of a corruption scandal shaking his administration, and in a plot worthy of a telenovela, her aunt revealed last week that the child was not dead, but alive and well.

The 56-year-old Morales, through the government and directly, has voiced doubts and is now seeking the final word on the matter through the courts.

"We are absolutely convinced that sadly, the boy has passed away," Defense Minister Reymi Ferreira said Tuesday. He said Morales asked for Zapata's family to prove any claim to the contrary.

"An appeal has been filed with the child magistrate, calling for the child to be produced by the family, privately, within five days," Ferreira added.

He also said damages were being sought "to put to rest any doubt anyone may have, and for it to be seen who is lying."

The 28-year-old Zapata is in jail orders of a prosecutor investigating allegations she used her influence with Morales on behalf of a Chinese engineering group, CAMC, which obtained $560 million in government contracts.

She faces charges of money laundering, embezzlement and abuse of influence, prosecutor Edwin Blanco said Sunday.

Zapata, who until recently was a senior manager at CAMC, entered into a relationship with Morales in 2005 when she was 18 years old. Morales said it ended two years later.

A reporter's bombshell disclosure last month of the previously unpublicized relationship set off an investigation into influence peddling just weeks before Bolivia was to vote on whether to change the constitution to allow Morales to run for a fourth term.

Story continues

The February 21 referendum was the first electoral defeat for Morales, who has been re-elected three times and already is Bolivia's longest serving president.

A congressional committee is investigating the contracts awarded to CAMC, and opposition members of congress have called for Morales and Zapata to testify.

The opposition accuses Morales of favoring Zapata, and insists their relationship lasted at least until 2015, despite Morales' denials.

The president has said their child would now be eight or nine years old, and that he would like to raise the boy if he were alive. Morales has a son and daughter whom he has recognized, from previous relationships.
Boyzone's Keith Duffy and Brian McFadden of Westlife are set to join forces to create new boyband Boyzlife reports The Sun.

The duo will tour the UK as Boyzlife later this year, and could see other members of Boyzone and Westlife joining them in the future, "We all had a chat, the lads. We said it would be amazing," confirmed McFadden in an exclusive interview with The Sun, "We all get on so well so you never know. We would have so much fun on tour. We could end up adding more people to the next one. Right now this is about me and Keith but the door is always open."

The tour, which is being backed by the hotel chain Hilton, will kick off in London on October 16 before going on to do 11 more shows at Hilton hotels across the UK.

The duo are set to perform a selection of Boyzone and Westlife's greatest hits, including "No Matter What" and "Flying Without Wings", but are also open to the idea of writing and recording new music together. "Westlife have had 14 No1s, Boyzone have had nine or ten. There's a lot of material we could perform. But we wouldn't want to tour old music all the time. We love making music," said McFadden, with Duffy adding, "We might end up writing some songs together. There's no limit to this. We're going out there with our ears and eyes open."
Sao Paulo (AFP) - A Brazilian judge ordered the release Wednesday of Facebook's vice president for Latin America, a day after he was arrested for refusing to hand over WhatsApp messages to the police investigating a drugs case.

The judge, Ruy Pinheiro, considered the detention of Diego Dzodan in Sao Paulo on Tuesday "unlawful coercion," the court in Sergipe state said in a statement.

"It seems to me that the extreme measure of imprisonment was hurried," Pinheiro said.

Facebook, which owns the popular WhatsApp mobile phone messaging tool, denies it has tried to obstruct the police probe.

Dzodan had been arrested on the request of a lower court judge in Sergipe and accused of "repeated non-compliance with court orders" to share Facebook data, federal police said.

"This information was required to produce evidence to be used in an organized crime and drug trafficking investigation," police said.

According to Brazilian media reports, traffickers had been using WhatsApp to discuss their business.

When Facebook refused to comply, Brazilian authorities imposed fines, starting with 50,000 reais (about $12,500) daily beginning two months ago, and which rose to 1 million reais ($250,000) a month ago, Sergipe federal police told AFP.

US billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's companies slammed Brazil's approach.

"We are disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook," Facebook said in a statement.

"Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."

WhatsApp insisted that it had no technical means for cooperating.

"We are disappointed that law enforcement took this extreme step. WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have," it said in a statement.

It's not the first arm-wrestle between Brazilian justice authorities and Facebook.

Story continues

In December, a judge ordered the suspension of WhatsApp for 12 hours after it failed to hand over information during another criminal investigation. The stoppage, which provoked widespread anger, was overturned on appeal.

Three years ago, Google was in the firing line. The search engine giant's top Brazil executive was accused of breaking election laws when he refused to remove videos on YouTube that were critical of a mayoral candidate in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

In the United States, Apple is embroiled in its own row with the government over a refusal to cooperate with the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a mass killing by a couple in San Bernardino, California, last year.
Brasilia (AFP) - The owners of an iron ore mine in Brazil where a burst dam spewed a toxic flood, flattening a village and killing 19 people, settled with the government Wednesday for $6.2 billion.

Representatives of Samarco -- co-owned by Brazil's Vale iron ore giant and the Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton, the world's biggest mining company -- signed the accord in the capital Brasilia.

President Dilma Rousseff said the settlement would help heal "a tragedy without precedent."

The funds, which will go toward social and environmental damages, will be paid out over 15 years.

Twenty billion reais ($5.1 billion) is earmarked for damages and an extra 4.4 billion reais ($1.1 billion) is specifically allocated for investments aimed at providing compensation for irredeemable losses.

Rousseff underlined that the heavy financial costs for Samarco might not end there.

"There will be complete restoration of socio-economic conditions and of the affected environment. And I want to emphasize: There will be no financial limits until there is full reparation," she said.

"We want to build a new life on the ruins."

- Destruction and 'homicide' -

The November 5 accident near Mariana in Minas Gerais state began when a tailings dam at Samarco's mine failed, unleashing the flood of polluted water and mud into the River Doce, one of the most important in Brazil.

A village was destroyed, drinking water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people were interrupted and damage reached as far as the river's mouth on the Atlantic coast, with wildlife, tourism businesses and fishing communities all suffering.

Seventeen people were confirmed killed and two are missing, presumed dead.

BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie called the agreement an important step toward recovery and said his company was making a "commitment to repairing the damage caused and to contributing to a lasting improvement in the Rio Doce."

Story continues

Paulo Hartung, governor of Espirito Santo state, which also straddles the River Doce, said the toxic flood marked "the biggest environmental disaster in the history of Brazil."

Last month, police announced homicide charges against six Samarco executives, including the CEO at the time of the accident, and an engineer.

Samarco and its powerful owners could still face further legal difficulties, despite Wednesday's deal.

Last week, a federal prosecutor said that he would challenge the settlement, arguing that not enough care was taken in assessing the true costs of the disaster.

"How can you define an amount if there are no criteria for evaluating the damage?" Jose Adercio Leite Sampaio said. "Where did they get this number? For us, it's a magic number... It could be 23 or 24, 30, 40 billion."

Vale reported last week that it lost $12.3 billion last year due to lower prices for iron ore, the sharp depreciation of the real, and the deadly accident at the Samarco mine. The 2015 loss followed a 2014 profit of $657 million.
BRASILIA (Reuters) - The number of confirmed and suspected cases of microcephaly in Brazil associated with the Zika virus has risen to 4,863 from 4,690 a week earlier, the Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. Of these, the number of confirmed cases climbed to 641 from 583 a week earlier, while suspected ones under investigation increased to 4,222 from 4,107 in the same period. Brazil considers most of the cases of babies born with abnormally small heads to be related to Zika, though the link between the virus and the birth defects has not been scientifically established. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Daniel Flynn, G Crosse)
By Nicolas Misculin and Jeb Blount

BUENOS AIRES/RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Argentina's Pampa Energia SA offered Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA about $1.2 billion to buy its 67.2 percent stake in Petrobras Argentina SA, a source with direct knowledge of the bid said on Wednesday.

The board of Petrobras <PETR4.SA>, as the Brazilian company is known, has approved exclusive talks with Pampa <PAM.BA> for up to 60 days. The discussions were announced earlier on Wednesday in a Brazilian securities filing.

Petrobras Argentina <PER.BA> is among the four largest producers of oil and gas in the South American country and has extensive downstream operations, including refining, petrochemicals and electricity generation.

A final deal should be complete within two months, said the source, who requested anonymity because a final accord has not been signed.

"There is an agreement on the figure," the source said. "I don't see anything cumbersome to work out. Now it's the work of lawyers."

Petrobras preferred shares rose 2.82 percent in Sao Paulo in afternoon trading to 5.46 reais, on track for its highest close in seven weeks. Pampa fell 3.94 percent, in Buenos Aires, its biggest one-day drop in six weeks, and Petrobras Argentina rose 2.55 percent.

The proposed transaction comes at a key time for Petrobras and Pampa. If completed, the sale will be one of the first major deals in Petrobras' eight-month old plan to sell $15.1 billion of assets by the end of 2016.

Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Aldemir Bendine has said the company needs to sell the assets to shore up its troubled finances and pay debt of about $130 billion, the world oil industry's largest.

For its part, Pampa would widen its range of energy assets, including natural gas and oil rights. It is the largest integrated power company in Argentina, generating about 8 percent of the nation's electricity.

Story continues

The talks come only months after the election of Argentine President Mauricio Macri, who promised to open the country to international trade and investment after more than a decade of increasing state control. This has raised expectations that investment in Argentina's overstretched and underdeveloped energy industry will increase.

Pampa controls Transener, which operates Argentina's largest high-tension power transmission line, and also has a stake in Edenor, the nation's largest power distributor.

In a separate filing, Petrobras said its board had also approved a competitive process to sell rights to a group of onshore oil fields, and related assets, in Brazil.

(Additional reporting by Marcelo Teixeira; Brad Haynes, and Priscila Jordao in Sao Paulo; Writing by Jeb Blount; Editing by W Simon and Lisa Von Ahn)
London (AFP) - Leading rugby players hit back on Wednesday after over 70 doctors and medical experts called on the British government to ban tackling in school rugby matches.

In an open letter, the concerned parties warned that school rugby poses a high risk of serious injury and urged educational institutions to instead adopt touch rugby or non-contact rugby.

But players including Ireland number 10 Jonathan Sexton, who has a history of concussion problems, and former England captain Will Carling rejected the calls.

Sexton, who was last year told by a neurologist that he was one heavy blow away from having to consider retirement, dismissed the idea of a tackling ban.

"I don't think you can play rugby without tackling. Then it's not going to be rugby," the Leinster number 10 told Irish radio station Today.

"The IRFU (Irish Rugby Football Union), who look after us unbelievably well, are taking every measure to make sure that player welfare is top of the list and they're doing everything they can.

"They're actually leading the way internationally with looking after players with concussion."

Carling said there were dangers inherent in every sport, tweeting: "So I presume we play cricket with soft ball, no tackling in football, sponge sticks in hockey etc etc???"

England and Saracens scrum-half Richard Wrigglesworth also hit out on Twitter.

"Let's not give these 70 so-called experts the time of day," he wrote.

"Seventy are outnumbered by thousands of people with real knowledge on the benefits of rugby!"

Austin Healey, the ex-England scrum-half, described touch rugby as a "waste of time".

The letter, signed by sport scholars, academics, doctors and public health professionals, said studies show that the risks of injuries for under-18s playing rugby "are high and injuries are often serious".

- 'Life-ending consequences' -

"The majority of all injuries occur during contact or collision, such as the tackle and the scrum," the letter said.

Story continues

"These injuries, which include fractures, ligamentous tears, dislocated shoulders, spinal injuries and head injuries, can have short-term, life-long, and life-ending consequences for children."

The letted noted that many British secondary schools, for students aged 11-18, offered full-contact rugby as a compulsory sporting activity.

It also warned of the dangers of concussion and noted that people who have previously suffered concussion are more likely to suffer it again.

"A link has been found between repeat concussions and cognitive impairment and an association with depression, memory loss and diminished verbal abilities, as well as longer term problems," the letter added.

"Children take longer to recover to normal levels on measures of memory, reaction speed and post-concussive symptoms than adults."

The letter asserted that the government has a duty to inform children about the risks of injury enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

One of the letter's signatories, Allyson Pollock from London's Queen Mary University, said: "Children are being left exposed to serious and catastrophic risk of injury."

Concussion has become an increasingly contentious issue in modern rugby owing to the increased physicality and speed of the game.

Wales wing George North and England full-back Mike Brown were both sidelined by concussion injuries during last year's Six Nations.

Global governing body World Rugby reminded countries of the need to observe concussion protocols in the build-up to last year's World Cup in England.

A major study of rugby union players carried out by the Auckland University of Technology and partially released last year pointed to a potential link between frequent concussion and brain function.
LONDON (Reuters) - A British man, described by prosecutors as a dangerous sexual predator, was found guilty on Wednesday of raping and assaulting women he met through the popular international online dating website Match.com. Jason Lawrance, 50, was accused of using the website to make contact with seven divorced or widowed women and then arranging to meet them in person, having persuaded them to move their online conversations away from the Match.com messaging system. When he met them in person, he raped, tried to rape or sexually assaulted his victims who came from all over Britain. "Jason Lawrance is a prolific, serial rapist," said Detective Chief Inspector Allison Rigby who led the police investigation. "These women were looking for companionship and instead what they found was a man who was willing to commit serious sexual offences against them." Lawrance met all his victims through Match.com, which he had joined in 2009. Police said they believed he had contacted several thousand women over the next five years, a number of whom he might have met in person. He raped his first victim in 2011 having previously met her a few times. He tricked her into getting into a van, took her to a dark country lane and then attacked her. Other victims were raped or attacked in hotel rooms or their own homes. Lawrance was convicted at Derby Crown Court in central England of five counts of rape, one attempted rape and one sexual assault. He will be sentenced on Thursday. "We are very sorry for those affected and appalled by these terrible acts," said a spokesman for Match.com. He said the website was working with a personal safety charity to ensure its internal safety processes were as secure as possible. "Nobody should feel that meeting people through a dating site means that they are consenting to any sexual activity," said Sue Matthews from Britain's Crown Prosecution Service. "If a person does not consent to sexual activity and the perpetrator does not reasonably believe they are consenting, that is an offense, regardless of how the victim meets the perpetrator, or how well they know each other." (Reporting by Michael Holden, editing by Estelle Shirbon)
By Matt Scuffham CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Executives at some of Canada's biggest pension funds say they are looking more closely at the oil and gas sector, attracted by low valuations, but will take a scrupulous approach to deals given the uncertain oil price outlook. The funds say they are prepared to overlook depressed oil prices in the short term if it means they can directly invest in assets at knock-down prices, especially as rival investors retreat and lenders get tough with struggling firms. Pension funds are under less pressure than other investors, such as private equity, to hit short-term targets and may be able to cherry-pick assets. "We see some great values because, unfortunately, there is capital that is leaving Alberta as the oil price sinks. So we see excellent opportunities for long-term investors," said Kevin Uebelein, chief executive of Alberta Investment Management Corporation, which manages C$90 billion ($67 billion). Oil started to sell off in mid-2014 when a global supply glut from excessive U.S. shale crude production began to pressure prices at above $100 a barrel. U.S. crude oil settled at $34.66 a barrel on Wednesday. Fund industry executives talk of Calgary's bars and restaurants being full of Toronto and New York investment bankers, in town to size up investments in anticipation of a wave of deals. A possible trigger could come when banks conduct debt covenant reviews this spring that may reduce credit for some energy clients. Canada's biggest pension funds, such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, have for years sought investment alternatives to volatile global equities and low-yielding government bonds. Bankers say oil and gas assets across North America could prove attractive to them, especially so-called midstream plays like pipelines and storage tanks. "The pension funds will definitely be active in the energy space and are keenly studying some of the assets that are currently in the market, both midstream and upstream," one Calgary-based banker told Reuters. INFRASTRUCTURE ASSETS Another Calgary-based banker said pension funds were particularly interested in energy infrastructure. "We have distressed sellers looking to de-leverage and the only assets they can sell right now and get bids on are infrastructure assets like pipelines and processing facilities," he said. Canada's 10 biggest public pension funds, which have more than C$1.1 trillion of assets under management, currently have only modest sums directly invested in oil and gas assets. Ontario Teachers' is one of the biggest investors with C$11.9 billion invested in natural resources at the end of 2014. Last year it bought Cenovus Energy Inc royalty properties for about C$3.3 billion. An executive at one of Canada's three biggest public pension funds, who did not want to be named, said his organization was looking at setting up an office in Calgary this year to study possible targets, but emphasized the need to maintain investment discipline. "There will definitely be opportunities. It's not for the faint-hearted though," he said. Roland Lescure, chief investment officer at Caisse depot et placement du Quebec [CDPDA.UL], Canada's second-biggest public pension fund, said uncertainty about the sector remained. "Are we vigilant for opportunities? Yes. Are we being very cautious because of the exogenous risk right now? The answer to that is also yes." (Additional reporting by Euan Rocha in Toronto and Nia Williams in Calgary; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
By Philip Pullella and Jane Wardell ROME/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church clergy on Tuesday called for a meeting with Pope Francis after watching a high-ranking Vatican official testify that senior clergy lied to him to cover up abuse in the 1970s. Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's treasurer, has told the inquiry that the church made "enormous mistakes" and "catastrophic" choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and over-relying on counseling of priests to solve the problem. Given Pell's high rank within the church, his testimony to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse over cases that occurred decades ago has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders. Pell's failing memory to questions about what he knew of abuse by clergy and claims that he was deceived by superiors about individual cases in the 1970s has angered many of the 15 abuse victims and supporters who traveled to Rome to see him give evidence. Pell repeatedly said he could not recall particular events and, in one testy exchange, denied a suggestion from special prosecutor Gail Furness that his claims that he was not briefed properly on abusive priests was "implausible." During a break in testimony, the victims in Rome released a statement they have faxed to the Pope: "This is about children. Children who were abused and damaged in the past. ... We would like to request a meeting to discuss the commitment to the children of the past and children of the future, to implement systems so that this is never repeated again." The group, who traveled to Rome after Pell said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems, said they had requested a meeting before they fly back to Australia on Friday. Philip Nagle, who was abused as a child, said the group has become frustrated with Pell's evidence to the inquiry and no longer wanted to meet with the Cardinal at the end of his evidence as scheduled. "We want to be heard and we want someone to show that they care about us and who can possibly help change things for children into the future," Nagle told reporters. "SEE NO EVIL" Pell's evidence, which adds to testimony from almost 5,000 survivors according to Commissioner Peter McClellan, has received wide coverage in Australia. McClellan repeatedly interjected to suggest that Pell could and should have done more when as a more senior cleric in the 1990s he was told about specific abuse cases. In Australia, the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper printed a full page photo of Pell leaving the hearing with the headline "See no evil, hear no evil, stop no evil." The Sydney Morning Herald blared "Pell under fire." Last year, Pell denied accusations made at Commission hearings that he had tried to bribe a victim to remain quiet, that he ignored another complaint and that he was complicit in the transfer of a pedophile priest. Church sexual abuse broke into the open in 2002, when it was discovered that U.S. bishops in the Boston area moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them. Similar scandals have since been discovered around the world and tens of millions of dollars have been paid in compensation. The Australian hearing started on the same night that Spotlight, a film about newspaper reporters who uncovered systemic paedophilia in the Church in Boston, won the Academy Award for best picture. (Editing by David Gregorio and Michael Perry)
After announcing Kristen Stewart as the face of its upcoming beauty campaign at the beginning of February, Chanel has lifted the lid on a series of portraits of the American actress photographed by Mario Testino.

Kristen Stewart can be seen channeling various attitudes as she poses for Chanel's "Collection Eyes 2016" makeup campaign, shot by the famous Peruvian fashion photographer.

The pictures show the actress in tomboyish, mischievous, playful and star-like stances, in black and white portraits that highlight her eyes.

For summer 2016, Chanel's Makeup Creation Studio has developed a collection of eye makeup including "Dimensions de Chanel" mascara in three colors (black, brown, cobalt) and the "Palette Sourcils de Chanel" brow powder duo in two combinations (Natural and Brown). There are also three new versions of the iconic "Les 4 Ombres" eye shadow palette in store, worn alongside several new "Stylo Eyeshadow" pen-style eye colors for nude, smoky, bold or high-color looks.

Chanel's "Collection Eyes 2016" makeup range is due out this spring in stores and via www.chanel.com.
Are Lindsay (Sophia Bush) and Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) headed for a rough patch on Chicago P.D.?

The Intelligence Unit partners have also been in a romantic relationship for the better part of season three  with surprisingly little pushback from Erin's surrogate father, and Jay's boss, Voight (Jason Beghe), or anyone else. But it appears there are bigger hurdles ahead for the couple, specifically Jay's attractive new boss at the pot dispensary, Brianna (Charisma Carpenter).

In The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive video from Wednesday's new episode, she makes the first move and asks him out.

"Jay, it's just dinner," she tells him. "I'm going through a complicated divorce, so we can keep it simple."

Suffice it to say, 'Linstead' fans will not be pleased with Jay's response. Watch the video below:

Chicago P.D. airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
By Sue-Lin Wong CHONGQING, China (Reuters) - The economic success of the metropolitan area of Chongqing in central China was in the balance following the jailing four years ago of its charismatic Communist Party chief Bo Xilai, a rising star in the political elite. But the city has continued to thrive, a feat that has some lessons for other local governments and reflects a pragmatic streak in China's leadership in allowing Bo's Chongqing model, and his economic adviser, Mayor Huang Qifan, to survive his fall. China is trying to transform its giant economy from one led by basic manufacturing to one more reliant on services and consumption, which the government expects to provide more stable growth in the future. A slowdown in growth and slumping stock markets in the past year have raised concerns among investors about Beijing's ability to maintain stability while driving structural reforms. Chongqing appears to have achieved that balance. Unlike much of China, it didn't shirk the hard decisions, opting early to cut overcapacity in its steel industry and investing heavily to move up the value-chain from lower-end manufacturing to electronics, biomedical products and high-tech equipment. Under Bo, Chongqing became one of China's fastest-growing regions, helped by a crackdown on corruption, corporate tax breaks, the pursuit of foreign investment, and rapid urbanization and industrialization. And so it remains, chalking up growth of 11 percent in 2015, while the national economy slowed to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent. While Beijing purged many of Bo's associates, Huang was left in office to oversee that success under new city party boss, Sun Zhengcai, a man tipped for top national leadership. Even so, the scandal briefly threatened Chongqing's economic future. Local government official Le Peng said business activity and foreign investment declined, and projects initially approved for Chongqing were moved elsewhere. "The Bo Xilai incident had a very large impact on Chongqing's economy," he said, speaking from an office in the city's Liangjiang New Area. Chongqing was blessed with advantages before Bo and Huang, from its handy location on the Yangtze River and arms-manufacturing history in the 1940s, to central government's decision to make it the fourth municipality in 1997, alongside Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, in a push to develop inland regions. But it didn't rest on its laurels. "I think we can learn from Chongqing's experience about the importance of undertaking industrial upgrading and restructuring," said Yating Xu, an economist at IHS in Beijing. CHINA MOTOWN Policies included a corporate income tax at 15 percent to develop priority industries in China's west compared with 25 percent in more developed parts of China; the first tax-bonded area in inland China, so importers didn't pay duties until they sold products on; incentives for investing in high-tech and green industries; reforms to encourage rural workers into the city; and policies to make more land cheaply available to industry. The city is now one of the country's leading centers of automobile manufacturing, drawing global brands such as Hyundai, Iveco, General Motors and Ford. One of China's biggest carmakers, Chongqing Changan Automobile, which plans to sell 4.5 million vehicles by 2020, is based there. Huachen Xinyuan's new auto plant, which primarily supplies China's domestic market, is based in nearby Fuling district - once a six-hour boat ride from Chongqing center but now just 40 minutes by high-speed train. That in turn attracted businesses like Haoxiang Machinery. "We moved out here to be closer to Huachen Xinyuan, along with 14 other component suppliers," said Ye Huagang, its boss, over the buzz of jackhammers at his new factory. Global electronics brands including Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, Acer and Asus all have operations in Chongqing, lured by tax breaks, cheap labor and land, plus a developed supply chain and logistics. The region makes one in three of the world's laptops. The vigor of the manufacturing sector has also helped develop related technology clusters and attendant finance and logistics services. "There's a very close connection between the development of manufacturing and services," said Tu Xingyong, chief economist at Chongqing's Economic and IT Commission. Chongqing hasn't just been successful at attracting inward investment. Chongqing firms are also outbound investors, and consular representatives from 10 countries are based there. "We are here mainly to attract Chinese companies who want to invest in Ethiopia and Africa," said Kebede Abera, Ethiopia's consular general to Chongqing. In the past four years, around 80 Chinese companies have visited Ethiopia, and some, including Chongqing carmaker Lifan and Chongqing Bureau of Geology and Mining Exploration, have invested there. POLITICAL PROMISE Fears that Chongqing might suffer for its connection with Bo, who some had considered a potential rival for leadership in Beijing, were soothed when President Xi Jinping made his first trip of 2016 to the city. "This place is full of promise," he said in a speech looking out over a port connecting railways, waterways and roads along China's new Silk Road linking Asia and Europe. That is in part a political calculation. "If Chongqing's economy slowed down, the outside world would think Chongqing can't do without Bo," a source with ties to the leadership said. As a further sign of favor, Mayor Huang was among half a dozen regional officials picked to join Xi on his visit to the United States last year. Huang's next role could well take him to the national stage. Two sources say he is tipped to become secretary-general of the cabinet, which would make him Premier Li Keqiang's right-hand man. "The power he has here, even if it is local, it's a very national level experiment," said Sergio Maffettone, Italy's consul-general to Chongqing. "Chongqing is like a lab for reforms." ($1 = 6.5339 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom, Kevin Yao, Benjamin Kang Lim and Pete Sweeney; Editing by Will Waterman)
Tonight was the first night of the general election, and Donald Trump won.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio dont have a path to the nomination. Neither does Bernie Sanders.

Super Tuesday 2016 will be remembered as the night Hillary Clinton and Trump won their parties nominations.

Its not that the two New Yorkers have it mathematically clinched, of courseonly about 15 states have chosen delegates. But the majority of delegates will have been chosen by the end of this month, and given what we know about organization and demographics, its hard to see the presidential race going any other way. Cruz and Rubio, who won a whopping three states between them, are essentially what used to be called Favorite Son candidates: representing their home states in order to wield influence at a convention, but with limited national appeal and little prospect of being their partys nominee. Given how Rubio lost race after race, its questionable whether he can win his home state of Florida next week. (Rubio, Clinton and Trump all spoke from the Sunshine State on Tuesday, a reminder of how important that contest will be.)

Clinton sealed the deal too, taking seven states to Sanderss three. Colorado and Oklahoma were easy victories for Sanders, who going forward will be able to win states that are heavy on whites, caucuses and weed. But none of Sanders victories bode well for Florida, Ohio or New York. The contest also remains close in Massachusetts, home of elusive Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has yet to endorse either Sanders or Clinton.

So 2016 is looking like Trump versus Clinton. On Tuesday night, Trump gave a press conference from his Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago, a weird, ersatz White House affair, featuring rows of flags and rainbow flag lighting that made the whole thing seem more La Cage aux Folles than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Chris Christies thuggish presence behind the big dog will be remembered as one of the stranger moments in American history, the mannequinization of a once voluble governor.

Story continues

0301_Super_Tuesday_results_06

Scott Audette (left) and Javier Galeano (right)/Reuters

But if you think Clintonveteran of national campaigns, New York senator, former secretary of stategoes into this race with a lead over Trump, Super Tuesday should give you caution. Trump did pretty well, taking six states. His press conference, a preview of the fall campaign pitch, was a classic, old versus new narrative: Clintons been here forever, so if she was any good, how come things are crummy? Only someone free of special interest money and with a proven record in business can secure the border, reverse the trade deficit and make America great again.

In the course of his campaign, Trump has exhibited all of the qualities that make many Americans consider Canadian citizenship: the threats to Mexico, the proposed ban on Muslim immigration, the tedious braggadocio about his great business. And he did the same on Tuesday night. But he also did something new by framing the race in simple terms of change versus more of the same, which is always a powerful message. The past six months have been vaguely reminiscent of 1980, when people wanted change and Jimmy Carters campaign tried to scare the country about Ronald Reagan, who went on to win over 40 states. Trump lacks Reagans smoothness and gubernatorial bona fides. But running a campaign around making people afraid of Trump, a self-professed ambassador of change, would be risky for Clinton.

Clinton might have benefitted on Tuesday night from a rainbow flag, or something Trumpian in scale. Its not that she fumbled. Her speech was good, with a tip of the hat to love and unity and diversity. Her slogan, borrowed from Bill Clinton, was that America never stopped being great, which is a pretty good line, a bit of jujitsu that makes Trump seem unpatriotic. But Clintons follow-up line, a kumbaya about making America whole again, seemed too derivative of Trump and too difficult to comprehend. If shes campaigning as the great unifier, thats noble...but its not the Clinton we know, who Republicansjustified or notcant stand. Going into the general election, Clinton is better off with an Ill-fight-for-you theme, one that doesnt beg us to believe in her power to soothe the divides in society. No one thinks those chasms are closing anytime soon. Selling Clinton as tough and smart is good branding. Selling her as a healer? Not so much.

Related Articles
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva may be named in plea bargain testimony from the former chief executive of an engineering conglomerate who was convicted in a corruption probe, newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Wednesday. Leo Pinheiro, who formerly ran builder OAS Empreendimentos SA [OAS.UL], is expected to detail work done on vacation homes for Lula and his family, Folha reported without saying how it had obtained the information. The testimony would be related to a bribery scheme that involved state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, the newspaper reported. A spokesman for Lula reiterated to Reuters Lula's position that none of the properties cited in the Folha story belonged to the former president. The prosecutor general's office declined to comment on the newspaper report, and OAS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The federal prosecutor general's office is negotiating the plea deal because it also names sitting lawmakers who can only be tried before the Supreme Court, the newspaper reported. (Reporting by Brad Haynes; Editing by Toni Reinhold)
While the presidential candidates garnered most of the attention in the Super Tuesday primaries, a handful of important down-ballot contests determined the fate of several powerful conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill.

One byproduct of the uproar over billionaire Donald Trumps relentless march to the GOP presidential nomination has been a conservative wave of challenges to veteran congressional incumbents who might have run afoul of the anti-establishment mood gripping the party.

Many Senate Republicans Are Ready to Drop Trump Like a Hot Rock

Two of the biggest GOP stars with their jobs on the line were Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the chair of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the recently installed chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Shelby, who previously chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee and served on the Appropriations Committee over the past three decades, faced four challengers in his GOP primary, including Jonathan McConnell, a right wing Republican who attacked Shelby for his big spending ways.

Brady, who has served in the House since 1997, was challenged by former Texas state representative Steve Toth (R), who was backed by several local tea-party affiliated groups. Toth used social media to criticize Brady for not doing enough to undercut President Obamas policies, such as defunding Obamacare and Planned Parenthood.

But the fear of a Trump-style conservative backlash against incumbents appears to be unfounded  at least for now. Shelby fended off his challengers and garnered 65 percent of the vote to cruise into the general election. Things were much tighter for Brady, who narrowly avoided a runoff with 53.3 percent of the Republican vote.

Related: Free Market Conservative Kevin Brady Takes Over Ways and Means

Shelby spent about a third of his $18 million war chest on the race and told supporters last night that he was taking nothing for granted amid the tumult over the presidential campaign. "We ran the race to win, there's a lot of turmoil in politics," he said, according to media reports.

Story continues

Another prominent Texan, House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, scored a solid victory with more than 61 percent of the vote. Sessions was worried that Trump voters would favor his anti-establishment opponents, according to The Washington Post.

But this is likely to be just the opening act of a long, tense drama involving Capitol Hill and Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Trumps fiery rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims and his ambiguous rejection of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan last weekend have alienated many GOP leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. McConnell and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas are advising their Republican colleagues to run against Trump, if necessary, in order to hang onto their seats and help preserve a Republican majority in the Senate.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
On the same night Donald Trump racked up wins across the country, Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) spoke for many Republicans when he grudgingly conceded that the GOP has only one option left to stop the billionaire: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, and I dont wish him illI was making a joke about Tedbut we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump, and Im not so sure that would work, Graham, who dropped his own bid for the White House in December, told CBS on Tuesday night.

Related: Unstoppable? The GOP Has 13 Days to Keep Trump from Hijacking the Nomination

It was quite the change of heart from last week when Graham, speaking at an event in Washington, joked: If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you, reference to the chambers widespread dislike of the Texas lawmaker.

But Graham and others should think twice before tapping Cruz as their savior and the de facto GOP standard-bearer against Trump.

Cruz had staked much of his candidacy on winning Super Tuesday and the so-called SEC Primary of Southern states, where evangelicals were supposed to catapult him ahead of Trump. That theory held after Cruzs victory in the Iowa caucuses, where he bested Trump among the key group, 34 to 22 percent.

Related: Cruzs Economic Plan Would Add Trillions to the Debt

But somewhere in the weeks between contests, anger about Washington began to outweigh Bible Belt beliefs, and Cruz finished behind Trump among evangelicals in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, according to data from last night. The only primaries where he came in first with evangelicals was in Texas, his home state, and Oklahoma, which shares a border with the Lone Star state.

Despite another win in far-off Alaska on Tuesday, the data indicate that while Cruz does well in his own region, that doesnt make him a religious crusader capable of stopping Trump.

Story continues

The calendar isnt about to do him any favors, either.

Related: Heres What Happens in a Clinton vs. Trump Matchup

On Mar. 5, Republicans will caucus in Kansas, Kentucky and Maine and hold a primary in Louisiana.

A survey released last week in Kansas showed Trump beating Cruz, 26 to 14 percent. The same goes for Kentucky, where likely caucus-goers support Trump 35 to 15 percent over Cruz. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who won Minnesota on Tuesday night, received 22 percent.

Ben Carson leads Trump in Louisiana, according to the few public opinion polls conducted in state, but the data is dated, coming well before the retired neurosurgeon became irrelevant to the presidential race.

Maine has also received scant attention, but surveys conducted last year had Trump at least 10 points ahead of his nearest rivals, and that was before the states controversial governor, Paul LePage, backed the real estate mogul and before he notched his biggest margin of victory Tuesday night in nearby Massachusetts.

Poor showings for Cruz this weekend could have a butterfly effect and hurt his standing in Puerto Rico on Mar. 6 and on Mar. 8 when voters turn out in Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan and Mississippi.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
EBR Says It's Back. Again.

EBR, the company that we here at RideApart have declared dead multiple times, claims to have risen once again, with the company restarting production as of March 1st.

Now operating under the slightly new name of "EBR Motorcycles, LLC," the company says it expects its first fully assembled bikes to roll off the production line on St. Patrick's Day. Those models will be the 1190RX and 1190SXthe same bikes it was producing before things fell apart for the company almost a full year ago.

The company has invited the general public to attend a launch party at its East Troy, Wisconsin factory on March 18th, 2016. EBR has promised free food, a "meet and greet" with the EBR team, and tours of the production line.

EBR's owner, Liquid Asset Partners, says it has worked with the EBR team to develop a stable financial plan that will help the motorcycle brand face a less rocky future.

READ MORE: 10 Reasons To Date A Woman Who Rides A Motorcycle | RideApart

ebr

"(EBR) has financial stability, a profitable multi-year plan, and a 5- to 10-year vision," said Chief Financial Officer Bill Melvin Jr. "We feel there is still room for new partnerships or investment, but it is not critical. EBR is on solid ground and moving forward."

EBR has promised to deliver more specific details in the coming weeks, but says its first priority will be to re-establish its dealer network. The company will also be selling off "excess assets," including machinery, equipment, tools, and parts.

EBR's bumpy road began in April last year, when the company filed for receivership after having grown too fast, according to founder Erik Buell.

"We thought we could balance it all," he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "But we couldn't."

READ MORE: Guy Sees Pretty Girl, Wrecks Scooter | RideApart

2014-erik-buell-racing-1190rx-05

In July 2015, India's Hero Motor Corp., which had held a 49.2% stake in EBR, left the partnership as a result of legal proceedings, taking with it the company's consulting assets. Shortly afterward, it was announced that EBR was to be purchased by a company known as Atlantic Metals Group, LLC, fronted by the charismatic Bruce Belfer.

Story continues

However, that deal fell through in December when Belfer was unable to raise the required capital and EBR went instead into the hands of its now owners, Michigan-based Liquid Asset Partners. The company seemed initially unwilling to take on the burden of EBR, issuing a press release that to our cynical ears sounded a lot like people grasping at straws.

"With the internet, motorcyclists everywhere will know this business is still for sale and we will be open to discussing options, the release stated. Tell everyone! Maybe it will be crowd sourced."

READ MORE: 10 Bikes That Are Actually Comfortable | RideApart

2015-Erik-Buell-Racing-1190SX-02

However, to our surprise, Liquid Asset Partners announced a few weeks later that EBR would be producing bikes again. Presumably these are the same bikes Erik Buell was referring to in July of last year when he told the Journal Sentinel: "We could literally be shipping motorcycles, probably within a couple of days, as soon as we brought back an assembly team. The bikes are just sitting there, covered in plastic, waiting to be finished."

It will be interesting to see what happens beyond this initial production run, and just exactly what EBR's 5- to 10-year vision entails. No doubt many Buell fans will be hoping that part of that vision involves finally releasing the 1190AX adventure-sport model that was originally supposed to have surfaced this year.

Follow RideApart on Facebook and Twitter, along with @RideApart on Instagram.
Quito (AFP) - Ecuador's Defense Minister Fernando Cordero resigned Tuesday, after top military brass were fired for criticizing military benefit cuts by President Rafael Correa.

"I have decided to resign as defense minister," Cordero told a briefing after the president slashed Armed Forces Social Security benefits, while insisting they were "guaranteed."

Cordero, who had held the post since September 2014 and considered progress on the issue a key priority, also said he hoped Correa would pick a replacement that "can keep making progress on that issue."

On Friday, Correa fired his top military commanders, accusing them of interfering in "administrative matters."

"Just try to find another country where military officers go around making statements on administrative matters. It pains me but I have had to dismiss the high command," the leftist leader wrote on Twitter.

The dispute appeared to stem from statements by the head of the joint chiefs of staff, General Luis Garzon, criticizing the government's intervention in a real estate deal between the army pension fund and the environment ministry.

Correa's administration slapped a $41 million charge on the pension fund for allegedly overpricing a parcel of land in southwestern Ecuador.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's parliament voted on Wednesday to expel an independent lawmaker who invited the Israeli ambassador in Cairo for dinner, drawing widespread criticism and prompting a fellow deputy to attack him with his shoe. Speaker Ali Abdelaal announced that 465 lawmakers, out of 490 who attended the session voted to expel Tawfik Okasha from the legislature, less than two months after it was sworn in. Egypt was the first of a handful of Arab countries to recognize Israel with a U.S.-sponsored peace accord in 1979, but Egyptian attitudes to their neighbor remain icy. Israel has an ambassador stationed in Cairo but many Egyptian officials make a point of keeping their distance and the embassy has been the focal point of protests in the past. Okasha, a television presenter and lawmaker known for courting controversy, hosted the Israeli ambassador Haim Koren for dinner at his home in the northeastern Dakhalia province last week. He made the invitation live on his television show. The move triggered outrage in the media and in Egypt's parliament, with several lawmakers demanding on Sunday that Okasha be dismissed and one colleague, Kamal Ahmed, hurling his shoe during the session in a fit of anger. On Wednesday, lawmakers voted to remove him permanently. Witnesses said Okasha tried to get into the session to apologize to colleagues before it was too late but was barred by security on the orders of the speaker. He sat outside, watching the vote on a screen, and left shortly before the session closed, declining to comment. In comments earlier this week, Okasha said he had done nothing wrong as Egypt has diplomatic ties with Israel. (Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein and Mahmoud Mourad; Editing by Lin Noueihed and Alison Williams)
What Were Following: Lets Get Ready to Rumble

Twelve states hold their presidential primaries todaythe most in a single day in the presidential race. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz has focused on carrying his native Texas and other evangelical-friendly states, while Marco Rubio has invested in states with better-educated, more affluent votersbut both are focused on outperforming Donald Trump anywhere. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is looking to widen her lead over Bernie Sanders. Were liveblogging it all here.

One Long Commute: American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are on their way back to Earth from the International Space Station, where they lived and worked for the last 340 days, twice the length of a usual mission. The goal of the expedition was to better understand how the human body reacts to microgravity for long durations, like a voyage to Mars.

Recommended: Live Coverage of the Super Tuesday Primary Elections

Obama v. McConnell: The president and the Senate majority met in the Oval Office, presumably to discuss the administrations plans for nominating someone to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. But Republican lawmakers continue to dig in, reminding the president that they wont give his nominee a hearing, a vote, or even a courtesy meeting.

Snapshot

Reindeer are herded in central Norway. More photos by Amos Chapple here.

Quoted

Years from now, when everyone is saying meatmobile, I will be KING. Ed Yong, an Atlantic staff writer, on what people in the future will call cars driven by humans

The parks arent interested in making really good maps. The parks make what we call information graphics. Tim Harrison, who makes maps of Californias state parks

The GRE is like taking a cancer test that was invented in the 1940s. Robert Sternberg, who studies intelligence and college admissions, on the test required for most U.S. graduate programs

Story continues

Evening Read

Novelist Ethan Canin on his favorite passage from literature and what it teaches:

To be a writer, I think, you have to abandon the idea that fiction is about something. This concept is bad enough in your reading life. But its fatal in your writing life. Ive seen plenty of students come in and say, I want to write a novel about blah blah blah. But you just cant do it. You can only write a novel about a character who does something wrong, and see what happens from there. Novels are compendiums of bad behavior, and literature is the gossip about it. In other words, if youre writing a piece of fiction, Id urge you not to try to show anythinginstead, try to discover something. Theres no way to write anything powerful unless your unconscious takes charge.

News Quiz

1. Some ancient Roman physicians treated pain with baths, wine, and __________.

Recommended: Bernie Is Not a Socialist and America Is Not Capitalist

(See answer or scroll to the bottom.)

2. Google has test-driven its driverless cars for __________ miles.

(See answer or scroll to the bottom.)

3. A new study finds that the number of U.S. judicial opinions referencing __________ as evidence more than doubled between 2005 and 2012.

(See answer or scroll to the bottom.)

Reader Response

Valerie Peterson is a single mother in Texas, where a law being debated before the Supreme Court this week could shut down nearly all of the states abortion clinics. During her third pregnancy, Peterson learned that her child would have a condition that is 100 percent incompatible with life:

I had two options. I could try to carry the pregnancy to term and eventually miscarry or give birth to a stillborn baby, or I could terminate my pregnancy.  My doctor referred me to an abortion provider in Austin. However, I was told that there was a three-week wait for an appointment. As you can imagine, I was emotionally distraught and didnt know how I would continue to carry the pregnancy that long. My doctor was eventually able to find an earlier appointment through his personal connections at Planned Parenthood. But I was again devastated to learn that due to the laws in Texas, my procedure would take four days. The first day I would have to go through mandatory counseling. This included having an ultrasound and learning about additional options besides abortion. After the counseling, there is a mandatory 24-hour waiting period. On day three, they would be able to begin the procedure, but because of how far along I was, they would have to dilate my cervix on day three and have me return on day four to have the procedure completed. The process seemed extremely cruel and emotionally grueling on top of everything else I was dealing with at the time, and I just couldnt do it.

Peterson ended up flying to another state to get an abortion. Read the rest of her story here.

Verbs

North Korea sanctions vote delayed, Donald Drumpf searched, old zoo redesigned, robot dog rebuffed, oldest nervous system discovered.

Answers: naps, 1.4 million, neuroscience

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Abuja (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he was ready to help combat terrorism in Nigeria, where Boko Haram fighters have killed thousands of people in a bloody campaign for a hardline Islamic state.

He also signed a memorandum on trade and economic cooperation, which Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said was "just the beginning of what we have in the pipeline."

Speaking after talks with Buhari in Abuja, Erdogan commiserated with Nigerians fighting insurgents, saying he felt their pain.

"As a country combating terrorism for a long time now, every reprehensible terrorist attack that takes place here in Nigeria deeply hurts our heart," Erdogan said to reporters at the presidential villa.

"We are always ready to cooperate with Nigeria when it comes to combating terrorism."

Security was a recurring theme in the Turkish leader's stops in Ivory Coast and Ghana ahead of his stay in Nigeria during a tour designed to strengthen economic ties with members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

On Tuesday, Erdogan told Ghana's parliament that Turkey can "contribute tremendously to the establishment of global peace and security."

He will cap off his visit to the region with a stop in Guinea.

Traditionally focussed on North Africa, Turkey in the past decade has paid increasing attention to the fast-growing economies of sub-Saharan Africa.

"Erdogan wants to build a case that Turkey is not just a regional power, but aspires to be a global one," David Shinn, Africa professorial lecturer at The George Washington University, told AFP.

"The primary connection with Africa is commercial, especially investment," Shinn said.

"Turkey can rarely compete head-to-head with China in Africa but can fill niche markets such as small construction projects, smaller manufacturing companies and even some services."

The country has more than tripled its embassies in Africa since 2009 while flag carrier Turkish Airlines has dozens of destinations on the continent.

Story continues

"Turkey is not currently a major trading partner for either Nigeria or Ghana, nor is Turkey one of the main foreign investors," Cobus de Hart, economist at NKC African Economics in South Africa, told AFP.

"That said, any bilateral agreements that would facilitate increased investment in West Africa would certainly be welcome," he said.

"Nigeria especially would do well to utilise opportunities such as these, with the aim of diversifying the economy away from its dependence on oil."

Nigeria, Africa's number one oil producer, has been hit hard by the slump in oil prices, which has squeezed government revenue and severely weakened the naira currency.

Boko Haram still remains a threat in the country's northeast, where the group has reverted to attacking "soft" civilian targets such as markets, bus stations, and mosques using suicide bombers.

The insurgency has left at least 17,000 people dead since it began in 2009 but over the last year Nigerian forces have recaptured territory lost to the rebels.
By Katy Migiro SERIEL, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The worst part of Mulugeta Kassaw's job is not when dangerously thin children arrive at his health center in drought-stricken northern Ethiopia, often at death's door. It is when they recover and must be sent home. "The mothers are not willing to go because they don't have anything at home to feed their children," said the public health officer whose clinic is in the Amhara region. "It's heartbreaking ... We try to convince them by telling them there are other children who need treatment here." Following two failed rains, the number of children Kassaw admitted for severe acute malnutrition with complications -- such as being unable to eat or suffering dehydration -- more than quadrupled to 25 in January compared with December. Africa's second most populous nation of 95 million people is in the grip of its worst drought in 50 years. The government and the United Nations have asked for $1.4 billion to feed 10.2 million Ethiopians -- the third largest appeal globally after Syria and Yemen. Yet funding shortages mean food aid is in short supply and malnutrition will increase dramatically if donor money runs out in May, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said. At Kassaw's health center, mothers sit quietly on blanket-covered mattresses on floor, some cradling their babies, with a few plastic mugs and bowls arranged neatly by each bed. Signs on the wall indicate if the babies are in phase one -- requiring antibiotics and milk formula fortified with protein, vitamins and minerals -- or had progressed to phase two, well enough to eat Plumpy'nut, a high-energy peanut-based paste. Debre Mekuria came to the center five days ago, troubled by the weakened condition of her eight-month-old baby Tamin. Despite the emergency food rations her family receives, and a loan taken out to buy maize, it was not enough. "I don't have enough to feed them well," the 30-year-old mother of four said. MALNUTRITION FEARS Funding and logistical problems present some of the biggest obstacles to dealing with Ethiopia's emergency. The bulk of grain and cooking oil rations are provided by the Ethiopian government, which is also transporting water by truck and donkey to those in need. WFP says unless there is additional funding, 7.6 million people will be deprived of food aid from May and moderately malnourished children will go without the supplements they need. "We know it's a very precipitous decline into severe acute malnutrition in these areas once the food runs out and that's why we are so concerned," John Aylieff, WFP's Ethiopia country director, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview. "If the food runs out in May and June ... it (malnutrition) is going to be off the scale." Aylieff speaks from experience. A record 43,000 children were admitted with severe acute malnutrition in August because supplies of food aid failed to keep pace with escalating needs. The government and agencies predicted in December that 2.2 million under-fives and pregnant and nursing mothers would become moderately acutely malnourished in 2016. They also predicted that 435,000 children would become severely malnourished this year. But these numbers could now rise dramatically because of funding shortages. And there are questions over how much capacity there is to respond in such a large country with poor infrastructure. Food is imported through neighboring Djibouti, where ships usually wait several days for a berth. It is then driven thousands of kilometers (miles), often through winding mountain roads, to reach the people who need it. "LAST RESORT" Mothers and health workers in dusty villages nestled among the highlands of Amhara's Wag Himra zone told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that many families do not receive enough food aid to last until the next distribution. "I have a family of four but I only get a ration for two," said Hana Mekonnen, 30, whose one-year-old son was diagnosed with moderate acute malnutrition in October. She gives her baby fortified porridge, provided by aid agencies, three times a day. The rest of the family always eat injera, a sourdough flatbread that is Ethiopia's staple food, with red pepper instead of stew. Health worker Firehiwot Zeru, who lives in the neighboring house, separated by a dry stone wall, said there is no milk because emaciated cows and goats have stopped producing, while villagers trade eggs for wheat because it fills more stomachs. Increasing number of children are falling sick with malnutrition, diarrhea and eye infections, Firehiwot said. Scabies, a contagious rash caused by mites that burrow into the skin, is also becoming common as people are unable to wash their bodies or clothes. The Ethiopian government says it will find the money to feed its people if donors do not respond in time. "It is the last resort if the situation becomes worse," said Mikitu Kassa, head of Ethiopia's National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee. It has already spent $380 million on the emergency response since July and has set aside another 6 billion birr ($283 million) for 2016, he said. "We all hope like crazy that the Ethiopian government can fill the gap but that's a big worry," said John Graham, Save the Children's country director. ($1 = 21.2000 birr) (Reporting by Katy Migiro; Editing by Katie Nguyen; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, property rights, human trafficking and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)
News Story not available

This story has been published on: 2022-10-22. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.

This story is no longer available on our site.
Brussels (AFP) - EU President Donald Tusk was due to arrive in Athens Thursday for talks on the migrant crisis, after the bloc proposed 700 million euros in emergency aid for Greece and other states to help them manage the influx at their borders.

Tusk's visit forms part of a regional tour which has already taken in Slovenia and will on Friday see him meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, ahead of a migration-focused summit in Brussels on Monday.

The proposed emergency fund would mark a departure for the 28-member bloc, as it begins to tackle migration within its borders like humanitarian disasters in developing countries.

The United Nations has warned of a looming humanitarian crisis as thousands of people remained stuck in miserable winter conditions on the Greece-Macedonia border after Balkans states and Austria capped the numbers arriving.

Greece has been the main point of entry for the 1.13 million migrants who have arrived since the start of 2015 in the European Union, which has been divided and weakened by its biggest migration crisis since World War II.

"No time can be lost in deploying all means possible to prevent humanitarian suffering within our own borders," EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said Wednesday, adding that much of the help would go to Greece.

The funds would be allocated over three years, with 300 million euros ($325 million) in 2016, and 200 million euros in each of the following years under the plan, which must be approved by a majority of member states and the European Parliament.

Athens has asked for around 480 million euros ($520 million) to help shelter 100,000 refugees.

- Macedonia border misery -

The crisis is particularly acute at the Greek border crossing of Idomeni where more than 10,000 are stuck after Balkan states including neighbouring Macedonia imposed tighter controls.

Non-EU Macedonia on Wednesday allowed some 250 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to cross, the first group since dawn on Monday when the frontier was closed.

Story continues

Bleak scenes played out with refugees in mud-soaked fields fighting over food distributed from the back of a van, as aid agencies reported a lack of food and tents, and warned that the wintry weather was taking a toll on people's health.

"We know (the border) is closed, but what will happen? There isn't any other way. We must go here and wait," said Mouiiaed Saker, a Syrian.

In the French port of Calais, demolition workers razed makeshift shelters in the so-called Jungle migrant camp for the third day running under the close watch of dozens of police officers equipped with water cannon.

The camp is a magnet for people hoping to reach Britain and many have refused to leave, although there has been no repeat of the violent clashes that erupted on Monday.

An annual Franco-British summit was also due to take place on Thursday, where France was expected to ask for more British aid to tackle the Calais migrant crisis, diplomats said.

- 'Tougher measures needed' -

But the apparent show of European solidarity with the emergency fund for Greece and others masks growing criticism of countries that have capped the number of migrants they are willing to let in.

European leaders are divided ahead of two summits this month on the migration crisis, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that debt-hit Greece must not be allowed to plunge into "chaos".

The crisis has also raised fears for the EU's Schengen passport-free zone as more states bring back border controls.

Tusk on Wednesday defended the use of barbed-wire fences against migrants, saying that securing the Schengen area's outer borders was a "pre-condition" to solving the refugee crisis.

"I'm afraid that sometimes you need tougher measures if you, we want really to apply Schengen. Sorry but this is the reality," Tusk said during his visit to Slovenia.

After meeting Tusk in Skopje, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov said he did not want the migrant burden to fall to Greece alone, but warned his country would not pick up the bill for "unilateral solutions".

The EU and Turkey will hold a crucial summit in Brussels on March 7 to discuss a faltering deal they signed in November under which Ankara agreed to limit the flow of migrants.

So far, more than 131,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe this year, UN figures show -- more than the total number for the first five months of 2015. Last year, a million landed on Europe's shores.
By Robin Emmott and Francesco Guarascio BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is pressing Ankara to cut the number of migrants reaching Greece by sea to less than 1,000 a day in return for taking refugees directly from Turkey, EU officials said, desperate to see results from a deal agreed last year. Facing a humanitarian crisis in Greece, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for an emergency EU summit with Turkey on March 7 in Brussels that will follow days of intense diplomacy with Ankara to save a Nov. 29 deal meant to stem migrant flows. "There is no good alternative to an effective cooperation with Turkey," said European Council President Donald Tusk before heading to Ankara to hold talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday. Three months since Ankara agreed to help tackle Europe's worst migration crisis since World War Two, more than 2,000 people a day are still crossing the Aegean Sea in dinghies and fishing trawlers from Turkey until they reach Greek islands. Two officials told Reuters that Germany, the principal destination for migrants, is looking for daily flows to be "in the realm of three digits, not four" in order to start taking refugees directly from Turkey for resettlement. Resettlement would help send a message to Syrian refugees in Turkey that there is a path into Europe which avoids risking drowning at sea or getting stuck at borders that are rapidly closing across Europe, a third EU official said. More than one million people arrived in Europe last year, fleeing war and failing states in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. Numbers have been declining in the last few months, also because of the winter, but remain high. "The Germans are ready to make a move if the Turks bring the number of arrivals below a thousand a day," said an EU official involved in the negotiations and who requested anonymity. With smaller flows, the European Union could also begin to send Turkey money to help house Syrians and other refugees under the terms of the 3 billion euro ($3.26 billion) deal agreed in November. None of the money has yet been disbursed, although nearly 400 million euros of separate EU funds are already being spent to help the refugees in Turkey. The U.S.-led NATO alliance has also agreed to help patrol the Aegean to tackle people smugglers. But that mission is not yet at full steam, so the so-called EU-Turkey joint action plan remains the bloc's central focus. In return for more help from Turkey, Brussels is willing to speed up Ankara's long-stalled EU accession talks and help to accelerate visa liberalization for Turks visiting Europe. "STEP FORWARD" Officials have warned that the consequences of inaction are already multiplying, mainly in the border closures and the erection of fences that are threatening the viability of the EU's passport-free Schengen travel area. "We expect a more intensive engagement from our partners to avoid a humanitarian disaster," the EU's Tusk said after talks on Tuesday in Vienna and Ljubljana, where he called for an end to the border closures that have caused scenes of desperation and clashes with police at Greece's frontier with Macedonia. Austria last month limited the number of migrants it lets through to 3,200 a day, something EU officials say was a panic reaction that prompted Macedonia to close its border. Merkel is expected to discuss the situation with French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Friday. On Monday Merkel played down the chances of a breakthrough at next week's summit, telling a political meeting in Germany: "I cannot promise that the next summit will solve all our problems. But we can take another step forward." In one sign of possible progress, Turkey has offered to sign readmission agreements with 14 countries, the foreign ministry's spokesman said on Wednesday, a move which would enable it to take back more quickly migrants rejected by the EU. On Wednesday the Commission said that 308 irregular migrants were in the process of being returned to Turkey from Greece. "A small move but a good step in the right direction," an EU official said. (Addtional reporting by Paul Taylor in Paris and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Editing by John Stonestreet and Gareth Jones)
Nairobi (AFP) - Former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa was named Wednesday as the new mediator for talks to end a nearly year-long crisis in neighbouring Burundi by the regional East African Community (EAC).

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni officially remains the main mediator, but 77-year old Mkapa is expected to push renewed efforts to solve the violence. Burundi has been in crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza's controversial decision last April to run for a third term.

EAC chairman and Tanzanian President John Magufuli announced the new appointment at a summit meeting in the bloc's headquarters in the Tanzanian town of Arusha.

Mkapa was Tanzania's president from 1995 to 2005, when he hosted a million Burundian refugees fleeing the civil war. He was accused at the time of also harbouring Burundian Hutu rebels, including forces now with key posts in power in Bujumbura.

Nkurunziza did not attend the summit: the last time he left Burundi was for an EAC meeting, when rebels staged a failed coup bid.
On Feb. 18, members of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) testified before Congress about the Feb. 11 announcement that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) had directly detected gravitational waves  ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago.

The congressional panel members questioned the scientists about what the discovery means for humanity, science and innovation. Sheer inspiration, for both scientists and the general public, tops the list  as can be seen by the roughly 17 million tweets that followed the discovery  but that's closely followed by the ability to build a stronger, international workforce and to create spin-off technologies, the scientists said.

"The window to this new world of gravitational waves has just been cracked open," said David Shoemaker, project leader for Advanced LIGO and director of the LIGO Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "As we open it wider [and] more people look out on the landscape, we'll be rewarded with discoveries that will, time and time again, give us all  scientists, students, leaders and laypersons  a thrill of understanding things much bigger than ourselves." [Hunting Gravitational Waves: The LIGO Laser Interferometer Project in Photos]

The waves came from two black holes that spent aeons circling each other, hurtling closer and closer, before they eventually collided, releasing great shudders of gravitational energy. That energy  which exceeded the energy output of all the stars in the universe combined  traveled for 1.3 billion years until it washed over the Earth in a signal just one-ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton.

"This discovery is a beginning, not an end," said Fleming Crim, assistant director for the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. "It marks the birth of gravitational-wave astronomy  a new tool for understanding the cosmos."

Story continues

Indeed, the first direct detection provided direct evidence that both gravitational waves and black holes exist  two phenomena that previously had been observed only indirectly. The continued study of gravitational waves holds great promise for future surprises, and scientists are continuing to improve the sensitivity of LIGO's detectors. (The upgraded detector is sometimes referred to as "Advanced LIGO.")

"The really good news is that Advanced LIGO is designed to be three times still more sensitive and should begin observations with an even greater reach this summer," Crim said.

Looking forward, scientists expect to see gravitational waves from neutron stars  stars that have stopped the fusion process in their cores and collapsed from their original size, becoming so dense that a single teaspoon would weigh 10 million tons on Earth  and supernovas, stars that have exploded with so much brightness they often briefly outshine their host galaxy. Observations on the former might help explain what happens to regular matter under such extreme conditions, and observations of the latter might help to explain why these stars explode in the first place, the LIGO scientists said.

But an even weirder discovery, scientists speculate, would occur if bursts of gravitational waves were detected coming from cosmic strings, hypothetical defects in the curvature of space-time. "There will certainly be surprises," Shoemaker said. "Every time we open a new window into the universe, we see new things, and we're surprised every time."

"The majesty of exploring our universe motivates this ambitious experiment," Crim said. "But as with all fundamental science, LIGO offers other important benefits. The science will advance education, inspiring students in developing the workforce our society requires."

Such inspiration can already be seen. Included in that list of 17 million tweets was one by President Barack Obamahimself, congratulating the LIGO collaboration and the National Science Foundation (which funds LIGO). LSC spokeswomen Gabriela Gonzalez also pointed out that, on the Saturday following the announcement that LIGO had directly detected gravitational waves, almost 1,300 people, some driving hours to get there, visited the LIGO Science Education Center at the LIGO observatory in Livingston, Louisiana.

"After we announced our discovery, the amount of reaction to it worldwide was awe-inspiring," said David Reitze, director of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech.

That inspiration will help to improve the scientific workforce in various ways, the scientists said.

"Many scientists, when they come to LIGO, they fall in love with it, and they choose to stay," Reitze said. "However, others go on to distinguished careers in both high-tech industry and national laboratories." LIGO employees might one day bring their polished skill set to places like SpaceX and Apple.

Gonzalez noted that more than half of the members of LIGO's collaboration are postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and even undergraduate students. "These are young, busy and happy investigators in training in a very interdisciplinary and international scientific environment," she said. "We are training the workforce in the U.S."

Then, of course, there are technology spin-offs. Although every member who testified to the panel was careful to point out that he or she can't predict the exact technological advances, many drew the parallel to general relativity  a once-obscure theory that is now used in GPS measurements. Yes, Einstein's scary mathematical formulas help you find the closest Starbucks.

"There are remarkable efforts of vibration isolation, laser stabilization  all of those are spinning forward into technologies that are extremely important for the country," Crim said.

Follow Shannon Hall on Twitter @ShannonWHall. 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.
By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who scored a major victory in a series of Super Tuesday nominating contests, has been criticized by some in his party for being vague on policy specifics and heavy on rhetoric. Here is a closer look at what Trump has said he would do on trade, taxes, the economy, immigration, healthcare and defense should he become the nominee and win the Nov. 8 election. The policies are drawn from a review of his website, stump speeches, debates and town halls, and televised interviews. TRADE Trump has complained that China, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and India are "ripping us off" by devaluing their currencies and keeping out some U.S. exports. He would not sign the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada. He would designate China a currency manipulator and impose countervailing duties on its exports. He also wants to pursue a World Trade Organization case on Chinese government programs that subsidize exporters. Trump has said he would put activist investor Carl Icahn in charge of negotiating a better trade relationship with China. Icahn has said he is happy to advise Trump, but would not seek a formal position if Trump were elected. Trump has said he would slap 35 percent tariffs on air conditioners made by United Technologies Corp's Carrier in Mexico after the company decided to move production there from Indiana, and on Ford Motor Corp vehicles made in Mexico that are sold in the United States. TAXES Trump has pledged to cut and simplify taxes. Individuals making less than $25,000 per year and married filers earning less than $50,000 would not pay income tax. There would be three other brackets, down from seven currently, with a top marginal income tax rate of 25 percent, and a top rate for long-term capital gains and dividends of 20 percent. Charitable giving and mortgage interest deductions would remain unchanged. Other deductions would be trimmed in the highest tax brackets. He would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax, and the carried interest tax break that allows investment fund managers to treat income as capital gains. The corporate tax rate would be cut to 15 percent, down from the current level of 35 percent. He would phase in a "reasonable cap" on deductions for business interest expenses and would cut other corporate loopholes. Trump would impose a one-time 10 percent "deemed repatriation" tax on deferred corporate overseas profits and would end deferral of income from foreign subsidiaries. The Tax Foundation, an independent policy research group, has said Trump's plan would cost more than $10 trillion over the next decade. His campaign has said the plan is fully paid for. ECONOMY Trump has pledged to get rid of the $19 trillion deficit by boosting jobs, and cutting government waste, but he has not released a formal policy paper on how he would do this. He has said he would not cut the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for senior citizens and low income Americans, nor Social Security retirement benefits. He would cut the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency. IMMIGRATION Trump has promised to build a high wall at the southern border to keep out illegal immigrants that he has said would cost $10 billion to $12 billion. Mexico would pay for the wall or face consequences, his campaign said. Trump would "impound" remittance payments to Mexico from undocumented workers, and increase visa and border crossing fees for Mexican workers. Applying tariffs on Mexican goods and cutting foreign aid are also "options," his campaign has said on his website. He would deport the 11 million undocumented people living in America and end "birthright citizenship" for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants. He has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and would not allow refugees from Syria. Trump would triple the number of border agents and require all businesses to use the E-Verify database to ensure employees are in the country legally. He would withhold federal funding from "sanctuary cities" that decline to help the federal government deport illegal immigrants. Trump's campaign has also said he would "pause" new green cards and require employers to hire American workers first. HEALTH CARE Trump has said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, and replace it with a system of health savings accounts. He would still require insurers to provide coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions, a key feature of Obamacare. He would move to allow insurance companies to sell plans across state lines to spur competition. Trump has said he could save the government $300 billion by negotiating better prices with drug companies. ISLAMIC STATE Trump has promised to "knock out" Islamic State quickly and said he is open to working with Russia to do so. He has said he would "bomb the oil" that helps finance the insurgent group and stop the "back channels of banking" used by the group. He has vowed to bring back the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning and has been banned as torture under U.S. law. He said he also supports other, unspecified techniques "a hell of a lot worse" than waterboarding. He would "take out" the family members of Islamic State militants and would like to shut down "areas" of the Internet to try to stop the group from recruiting members. He wants to build a "safe zone" for Syrian refugees in Syria. But Gulf states would have to pay for it. He has said the United States should first deal with Islamic State before addressing President Bashar al-Assad's future, saying "We have to do one thing at a time." He has questioned whether the United States should back opposition groups in Syria, saying "we have no idea who they are." DEFENSE Trump has said he would increase the size and power of the U.S. military to make it "so strong, so powerful that nobody's going to mess with us." He says too much money is wasted buying equipment the military does not want. He wants Japan, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to bear more of the cost of military aid provided by the United States. "We can no longer defend all of these countries," he said, citing the deficit. Trump would boost the U.S. military presence in the East and South China seas to "discourage Chinese adventurism," according to his website. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton, editing by Ross Colvin)
(Reuters) - Global health officials are racing to better understand the Zika virus behind a major outbreak that began in Brazil last year and has since spread to many countries in the Americas. The following are some questions and answers about the virus and current outbreak: How do people become infected? Zika is transmitted to people through the bite of infected female mosquitoes, primarily the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the same type 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? There is no treatment or vaccine for Zika infection. Companies and scientists are racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine for Zika, but the World Health Organization (WHO) said it would take at least 18 months to start large-scale clinical trials of potential preventative shots. 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. It has also been associated with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the nervous system. How is Zika related to microcephaly? Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly in babies, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems. Research is under way in Brazil to confirm the suspected link to microcephaly, with initial findings expected within months, according to public health officials. Brazil said it has confirmed 641 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,222 suspected cases of microcephaly. Research in Brazil indicates the greatest microcephaly risk is associated with infection during the first trimester of pregnancy. Recent studies from other countries have shown evidence of Zika in amniotic fluid, placenta and fetal brain tissue. What are the symptoms of Zika infection? People infected with Zika may 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. and international 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? Active Zika outbreaks have been reported in at least 36 countries or territories, most of them in the Americas, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Brazil has been the country most affected. (http://1.usa.gov/1ovAJyh) Africa (1): Cape Verde Americas (31): Aruba, Barbados, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Curacao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Maarten, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, U.S. Virgin Islands and Venezuela Oceania/Pacific Islands (4): American Samoa, Marshall Islands, Samoa, and Tonga What is the history of the Zika virus? The Zika virus is found in tropical locales with large mosquito populations. Outbreaks of Zika have been recorded in Africa, the Americas, Southern Asia and the 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? On Feb. 26, the U.S. CDC reported six confirmed and probable cases of sexual transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus from male travelers to female non-travelers. On Feb. 23, the CDC had said it was investigating 14 new reports of possible transmission, in addition to a previous case in Texas. In two of the suspected cases, the infection was confirmed in women whose only known risk factor was sexual contact with an ill male partner who had recently traveled to a Zika outbreak area, the agency said. The reports suggest sexual transmission may be a more likely means of spreading Zika than previously considered, the CDC said. All cases involve possible transmission of the virus from men to their sex partners. On Feb. 27, France said it had detected its first sexually transmitted case of Zika in a woman whose partner had traveled to Brazil. British health officials reported Zika was found in a man's semen two months after he was infected, suggesting the virus may linger in semen long after infection symptoms fade. The WHO has advised women, particularly pregnant women, to use condoms. The PAHO said Zika can be transmitted through blood, but this is an infrequent transmission mechanism. There is no evidence Zika 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 2013-14 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 are 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. (Compiled by the Americas Desk)
By Georgina Cooper LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has won the 2016 Templeton Prize, worth 1.1 million pounds ($1.5 million), for his efforts to help steer young people away from the message of extremists by encouraging religions to connect with them. The U.S.-based John Templeton Foundation said Sacks, 67, was ahead of his time with his central message of respect for all faiths and his argument that only by recognizing the values of each of them could violence and terrorism be countered. The prize, awarded to an individual who has made "exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension", is one of the world's richest. Sacks said he was "absolutely knocked sideways" to have won. "It just felt very thrilling and so my wife and I did a little dance together," he told Reuters Television in an interview earlier this week. "Not something we do that often, but it was lovely." As Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Sacks was the leading spokesman for British Jews from 1991 until 2013, leading what many considered to be the revitalization of Britain's Jewish community. The Templeton Foundation praised his work tackling the spread of religious violence which he argued had been sparked by Western secularization that had failed to address young people's search for meaning, belonging and identity. "Today the most powerful religious voices are coming from the extremes and I think that is terribly dangerous. They are speaking to young idealistic kids and turning them really into murderers and we can't sit still and just let that happen," Sacks told Reuters. "I think religious leaders have to give the same power and passion to the forces of reconciliation, compassion, forgiveness, love, friendship across the boundaries between faiths. "We really need to connect young people to the sources of positive idealism and I am afraid those voices have tended to be screened out by what I see as quite a self-indulgent secular culture of the west right now." Sacks joins a list of 45 former winners which includes South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. Last year's winner was Canadian Jean Vanier who launched an international network of communities for people with learning difficulties. (Writing by Michael Holden)
By Heidi Brandes OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Aubrey McClendon, a brash risk-taker who led Chesapeake Energy Corp to become one of the world's biggest natural gas producers, died in a single-car crash on Wednesday one day after being charged with breaking federal antitrust laws, police said. He was 56. The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday announced that McClendon had been indicted for allegedly colluding to rig bids for oil and gas acreage while he was at Chesapeake, a central player in the U.S. fracking revolution of the past decade. He denied the charges. Police said they were investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred when McClendon was driving his 2013 Chevy Tahoe on a sparsely populated, two-lane road. Police responded to the crash at 9:12 a.m. local time, though they have not said at what time the crash was believed to have occurred. The crash occurred about 8 miles (13 km) from American Energy Partners, which McClendon had founded and where he was the chairman and chief executive. Police said the vehicle was badly burned in the crash and McClendon was not wearing a seat belt. McClendon, who was revered in oil and gas circles as a visionary, resigned from Chesapeake in 2013 after a corporate governance crisis and investor concerns over his heavy spending. After leaving Chesapeake, McClendon went on to start American Energy Partners and, with the help of private equity funds, made billions of dollars in bets on vast tracts of oil and gas land around the United States and Australia. Tuesday's indictment followed a nearly four-year federal antitrust probe that began after a 2012 Reuters investigation found that Chesapeake had discussed with a rival how to suppress land lease prices in Michigan during a shale-drilling boom. Although the Michigan case was subsequently closed, investigators uncovered evidence of alleged bid-rigging in Oklahoma. (http://reut.rs/1TPxUVy) "VISION AND PASSION" A native of Oklahoma, McClendon attended Duke University before starting Chesapeake with his friend Tom Ward, who went on to lead SandRidge Energy Inc for a time. "Aubrey's tremendous leadership, vision and passion for the energy industry had an impact on the community, the country and the world. We are tremendously proud of his legacy," American Energy Partners said in a statement. McClendon was known for his high tolerance for risk and debt and for his lavish lifestyle, which included the purchase of high-end homes, antique boats and an extensive wine cellar. (http://reut.rs/1QUfnHp) On his watch, Chesapeake leased a fleet of planes that shuttled executives to oil and gas fields - and the McClendon family to far-off holiday destinations. Closer to home, McClendon pursued other passions, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, the National Basketball Association franchise in which he had a minority stake. He was one of the foremost leaders of a U.S. energy boom that lifted output to the highest levels in years, reduced reliance on foreign oil and mobilized new pools of investment capital for wildcat drillers. "Ive known Aubrey McClendon for nearly 25 years. He was a major player in leading the stunning energy renaissance in America," Texas energy investor T. Boone Pickens said in a statement. "He was charismatic and a true American entrepreneur. No individual is without flaws, but his impact on American energy will be long-lasting. Chesapeake, which had recently sued McClendon's AEP on accusations of stealing trade secrets, offered condolences. "Chesapeake is deeply saddened by the news that we have heard today and our thoughts and prayers are with the McClendon family during this difficult time, the company said in a statement. McClendon is survived by his wife, Katie, and their three children, Jack, Callie and Will. (Additional reporting by Liz Hampton and Ernest Scheyder in Houston, and Jessica Resnick Ault in New York; Writing by Terry Wade and Lisa Shumaker; Editing by Leslie Adler)
(Reuters) - Manchester City have entered 'hunting season' and know what is required to chase down the 10-point gap on surprise Premier League leaders Leicester City, captain Vincent Kompany said. City have 12 games left, two more than Leicester, and head to Anfield to face Liverpool later on Wednesday after beating the Merseysiders on penalties in the League Cup final on Sunday. "What we've learned in our recent history is that in moments like this, you just have to get your head down and start racing as much as you can. It's what we call the hunting season," Kompany, who led City to the title in 2012 and 2014, told the club's website (www.mcfc.co.uk). "So we're not going to look back or do anything other than focus on the opponents that we have to play. There's no other way to approach this anymore. You cant come with mathematics or anything like this." Fourth-placed City lost ground in the title race after back-to-back home defeats by Leicester and second-placed Tottenham Hotspur last time out but Kompany, whose side are also in the Champions League last 16, said nothing was lost. "We still have a lot to play for but nothing to lose anymore. It's a weird feeling but, as I say, it is hunting season so it's better to be chasing than be chased in some ways," the Belgium defender said. "The whole organisation - everyone at the club has to have the knife between the teeth and know that now everyone needs to be as sharp and focused as ever." (Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru. Editing by Patrick Johnston)
Istanbul (AFP) - The editor of one of Turkey's leading newspapers, who was recently released after three months in detention, vowed Wednesday to expose the government's "crimes" when his trial begins later this month.

The Cumhuriyet newspaper's editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul were released from jail last week by Turkey's top court but still face charges of revealing state secrets and espionage.

"Right from the first hearing of our trial, on March 25, we will throw all light on the crimes of the state," Dundar told a news conference in Istanbul.

"We are not going to defend ourselves, we will put the crimes of the state on trial," he added.

The pair had been in detention since November over a story alleging that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government had tried to deliver arms to Islamist rebels in Syria.

The report sparked a furore, fuelling speculation about the government's role in the Syrian conflict and its alleged dealings with Islamist rebels.

Their arrest also amplified concerns about press freedom under Erdogan, who personally warned Dundar he would "pay a price" for the story.

Dundar said a stretch in prison was par for the course for Turkish journalists.

"If you are a journalist in Turkey, going to prison will be part of your career plan," he said.

"We are journalists, not civil servants. Our duty is to inform the public, including about the illegal acts of the government," he said, denouncing the "climate of fear propagated by the Erdogan regime among journalists."

Erdogan had said on Sunday he had "no respect" for the Constitutional Court's decision to release the pair, prompting accusations from the opposition that he was trampling on the Turkish constitution.

"Through his declarations, Erdogan transformed an internal question into an international affair," said Dundar.

Story continues

The Constitutional Court, Turkey's highest, is one of the very few public institutions in the country not controlled by Erdogan who enjoys the support of a loyal army, parliament and government.

In a rare public intervention, the president of the court Zuhtu Arslan pointedly said on Tuesday that the court's decisions applied to everyone "including leaders as well as citizens."

But Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag rapidly accused the Constitutional Court of violating "the constitution and the law." Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused it of "interference" in an ongoing legal process.

However former Turkish deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc, a one time ally of Erdogan who has sharply criticised him in recent weeks, on Wednesday said he backed Arslan and congratulated him on the decision.

- 'Dirty bargaining' -

The European Union had expressed alarm over the detention of the journalists and warned Turkey, which has long desired to join the bloc, that their incarceration was not compatible with its values.

But Dundar also hit out at "dirty bargaining" between Turkey and the EU over a deal for Ankara to cut the numbers of migrants seeking to cross the Aegean to EU territory.

"The proposed deal is 'you keep control of the refugees in your country and in return we will tolerate an authoritarian government'. But this is not the Europe that we want," he said.

Dundar and Gul have been formally charged with obtaining and revealing state secrets "for espionage purposes" and seeking to "violently" overthrow the Turkish government as well as aiding an "armed terrorist organisation."

Both Erdogan and the head of the National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) Hakan Fidan -- the president's hugely powerful but low-profile ally -- are named as plaintiffs in the 473-page indictment.

There is growing alarm over the general state of freedom of expression in Turkey with several journalists and other public figures facing legal action on charges of insulting Erdogan.

The Turkish judicial authorities have opened almost 1,845 cases on accusations of insulting Erdogan since he came to office in August 2014, Bozdag said Wednesday.
Berlin (AFP) - Facebook may be abusing its dominant market position and violating data protection rules, Germany's competition watchdog said Wednesday, announcing it had opened a probe into the social network.

Just days after Facebook's founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg made a highly-publicised visit to Berlin, the Federal Cartel Office said it had "initiated a proceeding against Facebook Inc., USA, the Irish subsidiary of the company and Facebook Germany GmbH".

"The authority is investigating suspicions that with its specific terms of service on the use of user data, Facebook has abused its possibly dominant position in the market for social networks," said the office, the Bundeskartellamt, in a statement.

Facebook has come under fire from privacy advocates who claim the social network collects too much data and is not transparent enough in how it uses the information.

The German cartel watchdog said there was "an initial suspicion" that Facebook's conditions of use were in violation of data protection provisions.

This "could represent an abusive imposition of unfair conditions on users," it explained.

The Bundeskartellamt will examine, "among other issues, to what extent a connection exists between the possibly dominant position of the company and the use of such clauses," it said.

- 'We abide by the law' -

Cartel office chief Andreas Mundt said that for advertising-financed Internet services such as Facebook, user data were "hugely important".

"For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected," Mundt said.

The office said that Facebook collected a large amount of personal user data from various sources.

By creating user profiles the company enabled its advertising customers to better target their activities.

Story continues

In order to access the social network, users must first agree to Facebook's collection and use of their data by accepting the terms of service, the office said.

It was difficult for users to understand and assess the scope of the agreement accepted by them, it argued.

"There is considerable doubt as to the admissibility of this procedure, in particular under applicable national data protection law," the cartel office said.

"If there is a connection between such an infringement and market dominance, this could also constitute an abusive practice under competition law."

In a short emailed response, Facebook said it was "convinced that we abide by the law."

And the group said it would "cooperate actively with the cartel office to respond to its questions."

The cartel office said it was conducting the probe "in close contact with the competent data protection officers, consumer protection associations as well as the European Commission and the competition authorities of the other EU member states."

In February, France's data-protection regulator threatened to fine Facebook if it does not change how it handles data about its users and others on the Internet.
Berlin (AFP) - A German Greens party lawmaker Wednesday resigned from several political posts after police allegedly caught him carrying a small amount of suspected illegal synthetic drugs.

Volker Beck, 55, was found to be in possession of "0.6 grammes of a suspected narcotic substance," a prosecution service spokesman told Bild daily's online edition.

Bild reported that the substance found during a police street check in Berlin late Tuesday was thought to be crystal meth, but authorities did not immediately confirm this.

The lawmaker said in a brief statement: "I hereby step down from my posts as my parliamentary group's spokesman for interior and religious affairs and as chairman of the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group."

Beck, who did not resign as a parliamentarian, said his lawyers would respond to any criminal charges levelled against him and added that "I have always supported a liberal drugs policy".

In mid-2014 a Social Democratic lawmaker, Michael Hartmann, stepped down from several parliamentary posts, including on an intelligence services oversight committee, after being caught with crystal meth.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German prosecutors are seeking 325 million euros ($353 million) in damages from potash and salt miner K+S over suspected illegal waste water disposal, weekly magazine WirtschaftsWoche reported. The prosecutors in the town of Meiningen, southeast of K+S's headquarters in the German city of Kassel, are accusing the company of having put undue pressure on regional authorities to obtain permission for waste water discharge, the magazine said, without specifying its sources. A Meiningen state attorney who acts as spokesman for the prosecutors office declined to comment. A judge at the court in Meiningen said it would take at least three months for it to decide whether the prosecutors' case will be accepted for trial. He declined to comment on any damages or fines sought. K+S shares were down 2.1 percent to 19.86 euros by 1316 GMT. A judge told Reuters last month that prosecutors had filed charges over suspected illegal waste disposal at K+S. K+S has said previously it had approval from state mining authorities for the waste water disposal during the time in question and that K+S was fully cooperating with the investigators. A spokesperson was not immediately reachable for comment on Wednesday. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss; Editing by Georgina Prodhan)
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany has agreed to work with the United States to find common standards to connect to the Internet as part of its plan to modernize its small and mid-sized businesses for the digital age and safeguard its industrial competitiveness. Europe's biggest economy owes much of its exporting prowess to its small-to-mid-sized, often family-owned manufacturers, many of which are latecomers to Internet-era technology. Officials are concerned that a failure to capitalize on the latest digital trends will leave its industrial base exposed to new competitors in the United States and Asia. Germany, which launched its "Industrie 4.0" platform in 2013 to promote the digitization of industry, will collaborate on common standards with the U.S.-based Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). "Collaborating with other initiatives is important, especially for Germany's export-orientated economy," said Siegfried Russwurm, chair of Platform Industrie 4.0 and Chief Technology Officer at Siemens "We are highly interested to cooperate intensively with others in order to pave the way for global standards." AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel founded the IIC in March 2014 to accelerate the widespread adoption of everyday devices with software and analytics. While Industrie 4.0 has focused on manufacturing, the IIC is looking at the adoption of industrial internet technologies across industries, including healthcare, energy, transportation and the public domain. Representatives from both organizations met in Zurich to see if they could find common ground. They agreed to set up a regular technical exchange on making sure the platforms could work together in the future and to discuss common testing initiatives. "This will allow for much smoother international cooperation between smaller companies and larger enterprise to test out use cases and initiate standards," said Bernd Leukert, a member of the managing board at German software maker SAP. (Reporting by Caroline Copley, editing by Louise Heavens)
Theres no easier way to create, edit and share documents online than Google Docs. It doesnt receive as much attention as many of Googles standout services, but its an incredibly useful tool, and one that many students and full-time employees alike use on a daily basis. And best of all, its free.

This week, Google is sprucing Docs up with a few new templates in order to better compete with Microsoft Office.

SEE ALSO: How to get hundreds of paid Android apps and games for free

Google revealed on Wednesday that it has collaborated with five experts in their field in order to bring new templates to the ever-expanding collection available for Docs, Sheets and Slides. All five templates will be available on PC, Mac, Android and iOS.

First up is Reading Rainbow, the childrens TV series that was recently revived thanks to Kickstarter. Reading Rainbow created a lesson plan and a book report template for Docs.

The Google Science Fair also joined in with an appropriately named science fair template for Slides.

Intuits QuickBooks did what they do best by bringing an annual business budget template to Sheets.

Venture capital firm Google Ventures wants to make it easier for entrepreneurs to show off their great ideas with the pitch template for Slides.

Finally, Made to Stick authors Chip and Dan Heath have designed a big idea template for Slides.

If youve been struggling to find the right template for your presentation, it might not be a bad idea to see if these new templates can bring your project to life.

Google Docs Templates

Related stories

ISIS hackers wage war on Google, bring down the wrong website

Google plans to kill the wallet for good with a hands-free mobile payment system

Google's abused Atlas robot vows to take revenge in horror remix video

More from BGR: Apple asks the FBI: How hard did you really try to hack into the iPhone?

This article was originally published on BGR.com
Guatemala City (AFP) - Guatemalan authorities issued a warning Wednesday as the country's Fuego volcano, located near the capital, spewed ash into the air.

A spokesman for the country's disaster response agency, David de Leon, said the 3,763-meter (12,346-foot) high volcano had entered a new eruptive phase with increasing explosive activity, prompting an orange alert indicating danger.

The volcano sent ash plumes billowing more than 2,000 meters above the crater; they then spread as far as 40 kilometers to the west, southwest and north, the spokesman said.

He added that rural communities surrounding the volcano, as well as the urban municipalities of San Pedro Yepocapa and Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa de Escuintla, reported fine ash particles falling from the sky.

De Leon said his agency was in touch with local authorities and that so far no evacuations had been deemed necessary.

The Fuego volcano is located some 45 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of the capital Guatemala City.

Guatemala's Vulcanology Institute has instructed civil protection authorities to step up their vigilance and recommended precautionary measures for air traffic.

The Fuego volcano has long been active. A powerful eruption in February 2015 prompted an alert and the closure of Guatemala City's airport.
Riyadh (AFP) - Gulf monarchies on Wednesday declared Lebanon's Hezbollah a "terrorist" group, escalating tensions with the Shiite militant organisation that is fighting in support of Syria's regime.

The designation is the latest step taken by Gulf states against Hezbollah as ties between its main backer Iran and regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia deteriorate.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council "decided to consider the militias (of Hezbollah) a terrorist organisation", GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said in a statement.

He said the states targeted Hezbollah because of "hostile actions of the militia who recruit the young people (of the Gulf)".

Zayani cited "their terrorist acts and incitement in Syria, Yemen and in Iraq", which he said were threatening Arab security.

Saudi Arabia last month halted a $3 billion programme for military supplies to Lebanon in protest against Hezbollah, which has lawmakers in Beirut's parliament.

Announcing the funding cut, a Saudi official said the kingdom noticed "hostile Lebanese positions resulting from the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state".

He specifically cited Lebanon's refusal to join the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in January.

Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after demonstrators burned its embassy and a consulate following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Last week Saudi Arabia urged its nationals to leave Lebanon and avoid travelling there.

Qatar and Kuwait followed with similar travel advisories, while the United Arab Emirates banned its nationals from travel to Lebanon.

- String of sanctions -

Gulf monarchies had already sanctioned Hezbollah in 2013 in reprisal for its armed intervention in Syria.

Last week Riyadh upped measures against the group, freezing assets and prohibiting dealings with three Lebanese nationals and four companies.

Story continues

Saudi Arabia and Qatar back rebels opposed to Syria's government, whereas Hezbollah is fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Syria's war has also exacerbated political rivalries within Lebanon, which has been without a president for almost two years because of fierce disagreements between Hezbollah and its rivals.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday called on Saudi Arabia not to collectively punish Lebanon's people just because Riyadh disagreed with his group's policies.

In a televised address, Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia does not have "the right to sanction the Lebanese people because one particular party took a certain position".

Nasrallah pledged Hezbollah would continue to speak out against what it saw as Saudi aggression in the region.

Mustafa Alani, of the independent Gulf Research Centre, said the GCC designation should make it easier to take further measures against Hezbollah.

"You need to fight this sort of organisation," he said.

Yemen's government last month accused the group of sending fighters to aid Iran-backed Huthi rebels, which a Saudi-led regional coalition is battling.

In January, Bahrain said it had dismantled a "terror" cell allegedly linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah.

That same month, a lower court in Kuwait sentenced 22 people, all but one of them Kuwaiti Shiites, who were charged with spying for Iran and plotting Hezbollah-linked attacks in the Gulf country.

And a United Nations-backed special tribunal is trying five Hezbollah members in absentia for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
By Joseph Guyler Delva PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Provisional Haiti President Jocelerme Privert said on Tuesday a new election council would determine if a delayed runoff could be held by an April deadline, as concerns grow that a political standoff would again scupper efforts to hold the vote. Privert took office last month for a 120-day term after a botched runoff vote meant former President Michel Martelly left office without a replacement. Martelly's party accuses Privert of bias in favor of the left-wing Fanmi Lavalas movement. The election has already been delayed three times over allegations of fraud in the first round, and Privert called on opponents to support his efforts to quickly hand power to an elected successor. Privert said he was doing everything he could to ensure the transfer of power happened within a time frame agreed in February, but details would be decided by the still-unformed election council. "The electoral council will establish a calendar and a budget. It is only then that we will know whether they need additional time or not," he said in an interview at his office. Haiti has struggled since the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship to build a stable democracy and transfer political power through regular elections. The last time the impoverished Caribbean nation had an interim government, it took two years to organize a vote. Martelly's party members oppose Privert's choice of prime minister, an ex-central bank chief who had links to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas movement. Without the support of Martelly's and other allied parties Prime Minister Fritz Jean may not be able to form a government, putting at risk the tight election timeline. "I invite political actors to trust me, to believe that I am above all conflicting interests," Privert said, calling on his critics to help quickly organize the election. "I ask you (political actors) for your support to reach that goal." Privert said the election council, with representatives fromnine sectors, would be established as soon as parliament ratified Jean's program and he was able to build his cabinet. He said he had no intention of setting up an inquiry commission to look into alleged corruption during Martelly's administration, noting that such a move would be seen as political persecution ahead of the elections. (Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Richard Chang)
By Ted Siefer

MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) - A New Hampshire lawmaker was formally charged on Wednesday with drug dealing and attempting to lure a 14-year-old girl for sex.

State Representative Kyle Tasker, who made headlines four years ago when he dropped a loaded .45-caliber handgun he had worn to a public safety hearing, entered no plea at the brief court proceeding.

Prosecutors said the parents of the girl tipped them off that the 30-year-old Republican had been communicating with the child on Facebook. Members of a state task force on internet sex crimes posed as the girl, and when Tasker arranged to meet for sex, they moved in, prosecutors said.

Authorities raided his home in Nottingham, about 25 miles east of the state capitol Concord, on Tuesday, and found an "enormous amount of controlled substances," including psychoactive mushrooms, marijuana and prescription pills, as well as several firearms, prosecutor Stephanie Ilberg-Lamm said at Wednesday's hearing.

"It was apparent from the way they were stored and the volume ... that those controlled and regulated drugs were there for a distribution operation," Ilberg-Lamm said.

A judge ordered Tasker to remain in custody on $250,000 bail.

Tasker's attorney could not be reached for comment.

Tasker has been charged with using a computer service to seduce a minor and possession of controlled drugs with intent to distribute, both felonies. Authorities say additional charges could be brought.

The Republican speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives called on him to resign.

"Representative Tasker is facing serious charges that, if true, are beyond the bounds of human decency," Speaker Shawn Jasper said in a statement.

(Editing by Scott Malone)
With Super Tuesday upon us, it seems an appropriate time to start thinking about whom Hillary Clinton might select as her running mate, should she win the Democratic Partys nomination at its July national convention. While Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is still very much in it to win it, Clinton emerged as frontrunner after her big win in Saturdays South Carolina primary.

Who might Hillary select as her vice president? The candidate hasnt named her would-be V.P. yet, but speculation has been swirling for some time now. There are many possibilities: Elizabeth Warren, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown  even her current opponent Sanders, the apparent choice of 26% of Democrats polled in a recent survey.

That seems unlikely, but Clinton may well opt for someone whose politics and professional track clock with Sanders progressive ethos. Here are three people whose names have been tossed around as potential vice presidents.

Julian Castro is the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; he is also, according to the Los Angeles Times, a distinct possibility when it comes to Clinton V.P. choices. When he campaigned for Clinton in Iowa, the Times reported, the Secretary  whose background and rapid rise within the party have prompted people to compare him to President Obama  spoke in cities throughout the state, warning Latino populations of the threat posed by a Republican presidency.

According to Politico, hes spent time building bridges within Congress, a strategy that could serve him well as second-in-command to a president Republicans would likely see as an extension of the Obama administration. Hes also much younger than Clinton; at 41, he could help sway the younger voters who have, so far, gravitated toward Sanders.

And as Reuters reported in October, Clinton has already pledged close consideration of Castro when considering V.P. candidates. I am going to look really hard at him for anything, because thats how good he is, she said of Castro, who later endorsed her, at a meeting of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce held in San Antonio, Texas.

Story continues

Clinton and Castro then hosted a Latinos for Hillary rally in the city  as her running mate, Castro could help swing Clinton the Latino vote that will be decisive in the 2016 election.

Tom Perez, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, is another buzzed-about contender for the coveted VP slot, especially in recent days as she reestablishes her lead over Sanders. Perez, some have speculated, could help the Clinton campaign to attract the partys progressive element, a goal he highlighted when he endorsed the candidate in December.

Before joining the Obama administration in 2013, Perez was Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice; he fought against discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting and law enforcement.

And then, his parents are both Dominican immigrants; this, combined with his experience working for labor rights means he is an ideal choice to reach some of the key voter demographics whose votes Clinton will need to secure the presidency. Indeed, the Washington Post has called him one of Obamas top emissaries to liberal, labor and Latino constituencies.

Perez has already helped her there, rallying Latino support for the former Secretary of State leading into the South Carolina primary, which proved a major victory for her.

Another Democratic up-and-comer who turned out for Clinton in Iowa was Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark, New Jersey and current junior senator. As the Washington Post reported, Clinton and Booker made an appearance at Cedar Rapids' Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where Booker gave a sermon to the majority African American members.

Afterward, Clinton praised the junior senators continual self-sacrifice in the interest of equal opportunity and said something that may or may not be construed as a VP hint. It gives me such a sense of gratification that he is here, supporting me in this very important election, because there is nobody Id rather have by my side, Clinton said of Booker.

Of course, Clinton didnt clarify whether or not she meant have by my side as a vice president or simply, campaign with, but Bookers name had been dropped in conversations surrounding V.P. picks even before that. NBC listed him as one of seven potential contenders for the position in early January, noting his skill with social media.

For his part, Booker has been a strong Clinton supporter from the start, formally endorsing her in June and saying that he could think of few candidates in history who are as qualified or ready for the job of president as Hillary Clinton. Recently, he defended her stance on Wall Street against attack from Sanders. Hes also called her a civil rights champion whom black and Latino voters can trust to work for equality.

The largest obstacle to a Clinton-Booker ticket? The 46-year-old is relatively inexperienced. Clinton may do better to pick someone with a longer track record in Washington.
Days after handily defeating Bernie Sanders in South Carolina, Hillary Clinton once again triumphed with black voters. In the states and one American territory where Democratic voters cast ballots in Super Tuesday's primary, Clinton won overwhelming support from black voters.

It's one of her campaign's defining moments, and a major boost at a crucial moment, according to experts. Clinton has been taken to task publicly and relentlessly in recent weeks for a now-infamous comment she made while she was first lady in 1996 about gang-involved youth of color who'd allegedly become "super predators."

A

More broadly, noted criminal justice scholar Michelle Alexander criticized Clinton's vocal support for policies that gutted the safety net for working families. "From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted  and Hillary Clinton supported  decimated black America," Alexander wrote in the Nation.

But on Super Tuesday, none of that mattered. In Virginia, 84% of black voters supported Clinton, and among Democrats, Clinton swept Southern states. Overall, 8 in 10 black voters preferred Clinton to Sanders, according to the Washington Post.

The reasons for Clinton's sweeping victory are as diverse as black voters are themselves. But one may be more surprising than most because it has to do with Donald Trump, who won decisively among Republicans on Tuesday.

"African American voters are very practical voters," Pearl Karen Dowe, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas, told Mic. "I think people are also making a decision based on who they possibly think is going to be the Republican nominee [and] I think that is helping Clinton because if there's a likelihood that the Republican nominee is going to be Donald Trump, then that is a very frightening idea to many people. In their minds, Hillary Clinton would be the most formidable opponent. I think that is playing a part."

Clinton took a veiled shot at Trump in her victory speech on Tuesday, essentially conceding to those voters' concerns. "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work. Whether we like it or not, we're all in this together my friends," she said. "We all have to do our part. Unfortunately, too many of those with the most wealth and the most power in this country today seem to have forgotten that basic truth about America."
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Computing giant International Business Machines Corp (IBM) <IBM.N> plans to sell up to $150 million worth of shares in China's Lenovo Group Ltd <0992.HK>, IFR reported on Wednesday, citing a term sheet of the deal sent to investors.

IBM is offering 182 million shares in an indicative range of HK$6.26 ($0.8052) to HK$6.42 each, added IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication. The price is equivalent to a discount of up to 6.4 percent to Lenovo's closing price on Wednesday.

IBM and Lenovo didn't immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on the sale.

Goldman Sachs was hired as sole bookrunner for the deal, the terms showed.

(Reporting by Fiona Lau of IFR; Writing by Elzio Barreto; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
An Indian court Wednesday granted bail to a student leader whose arrest on a controversial sedition charge last month sparked major protests and a nationwide debate over free speech.

Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on February 12 over a rally at Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at which anti-India slogans were chanted. He has been in judicial custody in the capital's Tihar jail since February 17.

On Wednesday the Delhi High Court granted Kumar six months' interim bail while the police conduct an investigation into the case, ordering him to furnish a personal bond of 10,000 rupees ($148).

The court also asked a JNU faculty member or a relative to put up the same amount as surety, the Press Trust of India reported.

"Today the court granted interim bail for six months to the accused, subject to (the) outcome of the investigation," a lawyer for the Delhi police, Shailendra Babbar, told reporters after the hearing.

"The court has taken a balanced view to ensure that the investigation is not affected and also making sure his (Kumar's) liberty is not curtailed," he added.

He is expected to be released from jail tomorrow evening, Vrinda Grover, a lawyer for Kumar, said.

"We welcome this order because clearly Kanhaiya has no role to play in any of this," Grover added.

The student union leader denies he was among those chanting anti-India slogans at a rally to mark the 2013 hanging of Kashmiri separatist Mohammed Afzal Guru over a deadly 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.

Television footage Wednesday showed students, who had been protesting against Kumar's arrest in New Delhi earlier in the day, celebrating the news of his bail.

In his home village in the impoverished state of Bihar, his family and well-wishers were seen jubilantly smearing each other's faces with coloured powder, setting off firecrackers and handing out sweets.

"I am feeling very relieved now... I have complete faith in the judiciary and our law and order. My son is not a traitor from any angle," his father, Jaishankar Singh, told NDTV television network.

Story continues

Kumar's arrest sparked a major row over freedom of expression in India, bringing thousands of students, teachers and activists onto the streets.

Two other students are also accused of being among the organisers of the JNU event and have been arrested on the same sedition charge as Kumar.

Some rights campaigners say the Hindu nationalist government is using the British-era sedition law to clamp down on dissent.

Sedition carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment although convictions are rare.
Dzhezkazgan (Kazakhstan) (AFP) - US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Wednesday after spending almost a year in space in a ground-breaking experiment foreshadowing a potential manned mission to Mars.

The 340-day mission saw Kelly claim the record for the longest single stay in space by a US astronaut, while Kornienko is now fifth on the list for lengthiest mission by a Russian cosmonaut.

"We have landing," Russian Mission Control confirmed after the trio touched down southeast of the settlement of Dzhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan at around 0430 GMT.

After returning from his lengthy stint in space Kelly was clearly in high spirits as he was lowered to the ground by burly Russian rescue workers at the landing site.

"The air out here feels great. I've no idea why you guys are so bundled up," NASA TV reported him as saying as he sat upright in a chair on the steppe in temperatures just below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

Kelly and Kornienko returned with Russia's Sergei Volkov, who was stationed at the ISS for over five months and was met upon landing by his father, retired cosmonaut Aleksandr Volkov.

The "one-year crew" mission -- which began on March 27 last year -- was the longest by any astronauts aboard the ISS and seen as a vital chance to measure the effects of a prolonged period in space on the human body.

- 'Giant leap to boots on Mars' -

"Scott Kelly's one-year mission aboard the International Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America's Journey to Mars," NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

"Scott has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space, and in so doing, helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars."

The pair were subjected to a battery of tests before and after their ascent towards the ISS and underwent more tests soon after landing.

Story continues

Weightlessness reduces muscle mass and bone density and is believed to diminish eyesight by increasing cerebrospinal fluid around the optic nerve.

Kelly, 52, was also part of an experiment comparing his development and changes in space with his identical twin brother -- Mark -- back on Earth.

He will now arrive by chartered flight in Houston for a NASA medical examination.

- Gorilla in space -

In his year aboard the space station Kelly has been an avid Internet poster, capturing stunning views on his Instagram page and tweeting regularly to nearly a million followers while travelling some 143 million miles (230 million kilometres).

In one particularly eye-catching stunt, the bald-headed astronaut posted a short video of himself dressed up in a gorilla suit and floating through the ISS in pursuit of a colleague.

"Needed a little humour to lighten up a year in space," he wrote on Twitter on February 23, when he posted the video.

One image Kelly tweeted captured the economic divide between North and South Korea as visible from space, with the South aglow with electric lights and the North cast in a blanket of darkness.

Another impressive shot was one of the Milky Way which Kelly described as "old, dusty, gassy and warped. But beautiful."

"Spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is, and it's incredibly important that we all work together to make what is seemingly impossible possible," Kelly said when handing over command of the ISS to fellow NASA astronaut Tim Kopra on Monday.

The ISS trio leave behind Kopra, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and the European Space Agency's British astronaut Tim Peake.

NASA's Jeff Williams and Roscosmos' Oleg Skriprochka and Alexey Ovchinin, will join them following a launch from Baikonur later this month.

The record Kelly beat for consecutive days spent in space by an American astronaut was previously held by Michael Lopez-Alegria, who spent 215 straight days in space in 2007.

The world record for longest single stay in space is held by Russian Valery Polyakov, who spent some 438 days on the Mir space station from 1994 to 1995.

The ISS space laboratory has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000 kilometres (17,000 miles) an hour since 1998.

Space travel has been one of the few areas of international cooperation between Russia and the West that has not been wrecked by the Ukraine crisis.
Will the Crude Oil Market React to the US Crude Oil Inventory Report?

(Continued from Prior Part)

Irans election

Iran is OPECs (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) key member. It held its parliamentary elections on Friday, February 26, 2016. The moderates group, led Hassan Rouhani, won the elections. President Rouhani reported that his government would nurture growth and prosperity for the country. The election results favor better relations with Western countries. This would contribute to more business opportunities in Iran for international oil and gas companies.

Irans crude oil production

The latest survey from Bloomberg suggests that Irans crude oil production rose by 140,000 barrels per day to 3 MMbpd (million barrels per day) in February 2016. This was Irans highest production level since July 2012. The lifting of Western oil sanctions boosted Irans crude oil production. Iran is pumping at record levels to regain the market share that it lost to Saudi Arabia and Iraq due to oil sanctions. To learn more about Saudi Arabias production read Did Saudi Arabia Keep Its Word and Freeze Crude Oil Production? and Why OPECs Crude Oil Production Fell in February 2016.

Iran and new production deal

The consensus of rising crude oil production from Iran will continue to put pressure on the crude oil market. Irans oil minister commented that the recent crude oil production deal wouldnt allow Iran to scale up production by 1 MMbpd in 2016. So, it was against the historic deal. To learn more, read Why Crude Oil Prices Fell despite the OPEC and Non-OPEC Deal.

Opportunity with Iran

The cost of producing crude oil per barrel in Iran is equal to $12 per barrel. It costs around $9, $36, and $52 per barrel in Saudi Arabia, the US, and the United Kingdom, respectively. It gives international oil companies like BP (BP), Eni (ENI), Repsol, Shell (RDS.A), Statoil (STO), and Total (TOT) an opportunity to enter into a strategic partnership with Iran to extract oil. Iran needs investments to extract oil in the depressed energy market. Iran is providing long-term contracts that lure international oil companies to sustain in the depressed oil market. So, Iran could have a negative impact on the crude oil market in 2016 and 2017.

Story continues

The roller coaster ride in oil and gas prices impacts ETFs such as the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), the First Trust Energy AlphaDEX Fund (FXN), the Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3x Shares ETF (ERX), and the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE). Read the next part of this series to learn how mounting debt puts pressure on oil producers.

Continue to Next Part

Browse this series on Market Realist:
By Steve Scherer and Massimiliano Di Giorgio ROME (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities have given Italian investigators some evidence they had been seeking for weeks regarding the murder of an Italian graduate student in Cairo, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. The move came just hours after an Italian judicial source told Reuters that Italy was considering recalling its seven-member legal team in Cairo because of a lack of cooperation from their Egyptian counterparts. Giulio Regeni, 28, disappeared in January and his tortured, battered body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Cairo on Feb. 3. He had been studying Egypt's independent labor unions and wrote critical articles about the government. The case has stirred outrage in Italy and strained relations between two countries that share major geopolitical and economic interests, with widespread speculation in the media that Regeni was killed by either police or security services. Egypt has denied any such suggestion. The Egyptian authorities invited Italian police to join the murder inquiry, but the Italians have complained from the start that they were not being given the information they needed. On Wednesday investigators received some, though not all, of the evidence they had requested, including data about Regeni's cell phone calls, a partial summary of the Egyptian autopsy and information gathered by police from witnesses. "It's a first, useful step," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "Some of the material requested by our embassy has not yet been handed over." On Wednesday, Milan officials hung a banner from city hall reading "The Truth for Giulio Regeni", in response to a campaign by human rights group Amnesty International. Other cities around the country started to follow suit. An Egyptian forensics official has told the public prosecutor's office the autopsy he conducted showed Regeni was interrogated for up to seven days before he was killed, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two sources. The findings, which were denied by Egypt's Justice Ministry, are the strongest indication yet that Regeni was killed by security services because they pointed to interrogation methods which human rights groups say are their hallmark. The case has caused friction between Egypt and Italy, though it looks unlikely to drive a permanent wedge between them. Italy exported some 3 billion euros ($3.25 billion) in goods to Egypt last year, Italian export credit agency Sace said. State-controlled oil producer Eni is leading the way for Italian firms, developing Egypt's giant Zohr gas field. In a letter to Amnesty International seen by Reuters, Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi expressed his support for Regeni's family. "We are confident in the work being done by the Egyptian and Italian governments and we can't but hope, like everyone, that the question marks regarding this affair are cleared up as soon as possible," Descalzi wrote last month. ($1 = 0.9226 euros) (Additional reporting by Stephen Jewkes in Milan; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Alison Williams)
By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health)  An active mind with intellectual pursuits in midlife may delay the onset of Alzheimers disease symptoms, but it does not appear to stave off physical changes in the brain for most people, says a new study. Studies have shown that it reduces the onset of symptoms, said lead author Prashanthi Vemuri of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But based on the new results, amyloid plaque buildups in the brain - a common trait of Alzheimer's - do not change based on activity for most people, she told Reuters Health. The researchers studied almost 400 people age 70 and older without dementia. Of those, 53 had mild cognitive impairment, which may precede dementia. They were divided into two groups based on years of education. Their brains were scanned to identify physical signs of Alzheimers. Mental and physical activities were assessed with questionnaires. The participants rated how often each month or week they had done light, moderate and vigorous exercise, heavy activities like mowing the lawn and light activities like laundry or vacuuming when they were age 50 to 65. For the same time period they estimated how often they had read books, magazines, newspapers, played games, played a musical instrument, done crafts or attended social clubs. Neither brain volume, buildup of amyloid plaques nor brain glucose metabolism, which is a measure of brain function, were strongly tied to education level, occupation or mental and physical activities in midlife. But people with at least 14 years of education who carried the APOE4 gene, which increases Alzheimers risk, who kept mentally fit in midlife did have less amyloid plaque than similar people who did not stay mentally active, as reported in Neurology. One in five people carries the APOE4 gene. Its not clear why only APOE4 carriers with 14 or more years of education would have slower plaque accumulation with midlife cognitive activity, said Anja Soldan, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Soldan, who was not part of the new study, told Reuters Health that it's important for people to know that the researchers did not look at dementia outcomes. Still, she said people should find activities they enjoy. If you only play chess, which is mentally stimulating, but you dont enjoy it, it may not benefit you very much. Find something that you enjoy, and try exposing yourself to new things that are challenging, Soldan said. Ideally you should be doing this throughout your lifetime, rather than just starting in middle age, she added. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1XYEHLT Neurology, online February 24, 2016
A version of this story first appeared in the March 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

Call it the supergroup of altruism.

Four veteran philanthropic advisors have joined forces to launch The Artemis Agency, a firm dedicated to providing support for the philanthropic strategies of individual, corporate and nonprofit clients. Each of the founders has deep connections and experience in Hollywood: Sarah Adolphson is coming from her post as executive director of the WME Foundation, Catherine Kimmel from serving as lead West Coast consultant for Bonos anti-poverty ONE Campaign and Regina Miller from serving as Geffen Playhouses chief development officer, while former CAA Foundation program director Michelynn Woodard most recently served as president of the foundations for Dr. Phil McGraw and his wife, Robin McGraw.

The new agency  named after the Greek goddess of the hunt  already has signed up several of its founders former employers and clients, including WME | IMG, ONE, Lady Gagas youth-empowerment-focused Born This Way Foundation, Geffen Playhouse and Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, as well as Al Gore's The Climate Reality Project, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw's faith-based Kershaw's Challenge. Artemis will work with them on a comprehensive, long-term basis, a departure from how philanthropic consultants typically operate. There are firms that specialize in campaigns, there are firms that specialize in fundraising, there are firms that specialize in programmatic strategy, but there are very few that do it all, Adolphson tells The Hollywood Reporter. I found in working with a lot of our clients at WME that there was a need to find that one-stop shop, and the expertise among the four of us covers all of those different areas.

Read More: How Many Women Work in a Hollywood Talent Agency?

Artemis will help clients identify opportunities that match their passions and resources, and then develop creative and sustainable programs and strategies to leverage their considerable platforms. Its not just that immediate, &lsquoCongratulations, you raised a significant amount of money at this event  we want to be there the morning after to help clients determine how to spend that money wisely, Adolphson says. Were here for you from soup to nuts.
London (AFP) - Hundreds of personal items from the estate of an eccentric British duchess, the youngest of six sisters who scandalised 1930s British high society, were auctioned in London on Wednesday.

A collection of insect brooches, 36 model hens and a phone topped with a foot-high figure of Elvis Presley that dances and sings when the phone rings were among the items belonging to Deborah, the late duchess of Devonshire and one of the Mitford sisters.

"Together, the objects tell this amazing story about her taste, the choices she made about what to keep, the things from her childhood, the jewels from her husband, the things that made her smile," David MacDonald, a specialist overseeing the Sotheby's sale, told AFP.

Raised in decaying aristocratic splendour in the English countryside, the Mitford sisters were close to the Kennedy US political dynasty and then British prime minister Winston Churchill, but courted tabloid infamy with their unorthodox lives and political views.

Two became novelists, one embraced communism and two became part of Adolf Hitler's inner circle.

Deborah, known to her friends as "Debo", led a quieter life until her death in 2014. She danced with future US president John F. Kennedy as a debutante, but married Andrew Cavendish, who later became Duke of Devonshire.

Hit with a massive inheritance tax bill, they set about monetising the estate.

Deborah masterminded the transformation of Chatsworth House, the family's 18th-century mansion in Derbyshire, northern England, into a profitable tourist attraction that now hosts more than a million visitors a year.

She was famously devoted to her chickens, having made pocket money selling eggs at market as a child.

She regularly hosted parties where live hens would strut about the dinner table, and was photographed feeding her chickens while wearing a Balmain ball gown and pearls.

Following Presley's death she made several pilgrimages to Graceland, his home in Memphis, Tennessee and gathered a collection of memorabilia that was included in the sale.

Story continues

The collection reached A1.8 million ($2.5 million, 2.3 million euros) in all, almost three times higher than estimated.

Sold for A52,500 was an autographed pre-release of the novel "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh, a close friend who sought the Mitford sisters' suggestions for edits -- including advice on jewellery.

Many of her jewels were in the collection, including an 18.5 carat heart-shaped diamond brooch commissioned by her husband for their diamond wedding anniversary which sold for A40,000.
It was a Tuesday for Hillary Clinton.Hillary Clinton.

Aside from winning primaries in seven states' primaries on Super Tuesday, Clinton's camp trounced Sanders by a 70-30 margin when it came to Texas Latinos, BuzzFeed reported.

"It's not surprising," Julian Castro, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told BuzzFeed. "Hillary Clinton has had strong support in the Latino community in Texas and throughout the country for a very long time, and tonight's results in Texas and her strong support from Latinos are one more affirmation that she appeals to diverse communities. It says a lot about her ability to win in November."Hillary Clinton has had strong support in the Latino community in Texas and throughout the country for a very long time, and tonight's results in Texas and her strong support from Latinos are one more affirmation that she appeals to diverse communities. It says a lot about her ability to win in November."

Immigration has been a cornerstone of Clinton's platform, and she said believes in a path to citizenship. That makes a difference in an electorate like Texas, where there are 1.7 million undocumented immigrants. Exit polls asked about a number of issues, but not immigration.

However, it has not always been rosy for the former first lady and Secretary of State when it comes to the United States' Latino population. Clinton used the term "illegal immigrants" rather than "undocumented immigrants" as recently as November. However, she later apologized and has since called out former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush for his use of the term "presidential candidate Jeb Bush for his use of the term "anchor babies" to describe the children of undocumented immigrants.

In December, Clinton was called out for "Hispandering," or pandering to the Hispanic community when an article on her website listed the ways that she is just like people's abuelas, or grandmothers. In turn, the article sparked the hashtag #NotMyAbuela.

Currently, half of Latinos eligible to vote are millennials, a demographic notorious for two things: a love of Sanders and lower voter turnout than other age groups.

For now though, Latinos seem to be flocking to Clinton, adding another important voting bloc to her current coalition, which includes women, black voters and older voters.
Tripoli (AFP) - At least 28 civilians including five children have been killed in fighting across Libya so far this year, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), which has been pushing the north African state's rival parliaments and governments to sign up to a national unity deal, said 38 civilians had also been wounded since January 1.

UNSMIL said in a statement that 14 of the deaths occurred in the second city of Benghazi, where forces allied with the internationally recognised government have battled Islamist militias including the Islamic State group.

"Due to limited access and the multiple parties engaged in the conflict... UNSMIL was unable to determine with certainty which party caused these civilian casualties," the statement said.

Chaos has engulfed Libya since the 2011 NATO-backed ouster of dictator Moamer Kadhafi and rival administrations are being urged to sign a UN-brokered national unity government to help restore stability.

IS and other extremist organisations have exploited the power vacuum, making gains along Libya's oil-rich coastal regions and triggering concern among Western nations over jihadists controlling territory just 300 kilometres (185 miles) from Europe.

UNSMIL said most of the civilian deaths and injuries were caused by shelling, while six people were shot dead and at least two killed in air raids.
(Reuters) - At least four people were hurt and dozens of homes damaged when a possible tornado swept through Alabama late on Tuesday, forecasters and local officials said.

The National Weather Service had warned of a storm packing strong winds, hail and the potential for tornadoes as the system moved over a swath of the state near Birmingham.

At least four people were hurt, with two of them hospitalized, according to the Jefferson County Emergency Management Agency. About 30 homes were damaged, with crews still surveying the area, the agency said.

Last month, a storm system that swept across the U.S. Southeast from Mississippi to Washington D.C., spawning a number of twisters, left three people dead along the Gulf Coast. Another four were killed in Virginia.

(Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Tait)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Former Lebanese prime minister Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, said on Wednesday he would keep domestic dialogue open with rivals Hezbollah, after the Gulf Cooperation Council designated the Shi'ite group a terrorist organization. Hariri, who is backed by Saudi Arabia, told a news conference it was not up to him to agree or disagree with the terrorist listing, but that he wanted to continue meetings with Hezbollah "to avoid sedition" in Lebanon. However, Hariri also criticized the group for its involvement in the Syrian war and its alleged involvement in Yemen as "criminal, unlawful and terrorist". (Reporting by John Davison, Mariam Karouny, Laila Bassam; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Washington (AFP) - Tuesday's votes in a dozen US states have cleared the air in some respects, and muddied the waters in others.

The Super Tuesday contests showed Clinton reclaiming her mojo against Bernie Sanders. It was a big night for Donald Trump, too, but what will the establishment do about it?

Here are four lessons learned from the events of Super Tuesday.

- Trump may be unstoppable -

The billionaire businessman at the center of the Republican race cleaned up Tuesday night, winning seven of the 11 states at stake for his party, including the key swing state of Virginia.

"It's awfully close to inevitable" for Trump winning the nomination, said professor Dante Scala at the University of New Hampshire.

About 30 percent of the Republican delegates, the men and women who choose the nominee at the conventions, have been awarded so far through a proportional system, with Trump in the clear lead.

After March 15, most state races are winner take all. By the end of the month, 62 percent of delegates will have been awarded.

The longer the race goes, the more difficult it will be to oust Trump. If he obtains 1,237 out of the total 2,472 delegates, he clinches the nomination.

Meanwhile his two main competitors, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are duking it out for the role of Trump spoiler.

- Rubio fails to shine -

Republican leaders may have thrown their weight behind Senator Marco Rubio as the antidote to Trump, but Tuesday's results confirmed what millions of voters felt in their gut: it was too little, too late.

After spending the past week brutally attacking Trump, scooping up major endorsements, and presenting his case as the mainstream candidate, Rubio finished a disappointing third-place on the night, behind Trump and Cruz.

The last state to report its voting results, Alaska way out west, went to Cruz, for his third win of the day.

Many have laid the debacle at the foot of the Grand Old Party.

"The party itself, faced with the real prospect of Donald Trump being the nominee, failed to act to stop him before he got off the ground," Scala said.

Story continues

Rubio, who won in just one state -- Minnesota -- has vowed to go on. He is now staking his candidacy on winning his home state of Florida on March 15, even though Trump is leading in polls there.

"Winning Florida is a necessity for him," Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, said of Rubio.

- Blocking the Donald -

The Republican Party has been scrambling to prevent a Trump nomination, but nothing has worked. Now it's crunch time.

Some Republicans, notably Senator Ben Sasse, have suggested either a third party or independent run against Trump. Others point to party operatives potentially altering the rules of the convention in order to prevent a Trump takeover.

"There's a danger here. If Republicans go after him, they're destroying their own nomination," strategist Frank Luntz told CBS.

"If you try to kill him you may be trying to kill your own flesh and blood."

With Rubio faltering, former candidate Lindsey Graham, an establishment US senator who detests Trump, points to a last resort.

"We may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Trump," Graham told CBS.

- Clinton regains pre-eminence -

"By the end of tonight, we are going to win many hundreds of delegates," Senator Bernie Sanders told his supporters, noting there were still another 35 states to vote after Super Tuesday.

Even though he won four states Tuesday, the message from Sanders, who has based his campaign on ending economic inequality, fell flat among a crucial Democratic bloc: minority voters.

More than 80 percent of African-Americans voted for Hillary in southern states, exit polls showed. And in Texas, two-thirds of Hispanic Democrats voted for her.

Clinton also handily won among women, who represent more than half of the Democratic electorate. Altogether, Clinton has won 11 of the 16 primary races to date and holds a substantial delegate lead.

Sanders stunned the establishment last year when he pulled ahead of Clinton in some states and drew huge crowds to his rallies. But his path has narrowed dramatically, and momentum is on Clinton's side.
Marcia Clark, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who was the lead attorney on the O.J. Simpson murder case, says she blames herself for the controversial outcome of the case.

Sitting down for a Dateline NBC interview set to air Sunday, Clark shed some more light on the inner workings of the case which captivated the world more than two decades ago.

A preview of the pre-taped interview was released Tuesday; Clark sitting down with Josh Mankiewicz talks about not wanting Simpson to try on the gloves during the trial and how she felt when the jury foreman read "Not guilty."

"It was physically painful," Clark says of the verdict. "And I thought of Ron [Goldman] and Nicole [Brown], and I thought, 'This is wrong.'"

The double homicide has once again become a main topic of conversation following the recently launched FX series The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

So far, four episodes of the nine part series have aired.

Read More: 'The People v. O.J. Simpson': How Accurate Was the Fourth Episode?

The two-hour Dateline special will also feature interviews with Kris Jenner, Denise Brown, Fred Goldman, Alan Dershowitz and Kato Kaelin, among numerous others connected to the case.

In the preview for the special, Clark  played by Sarah Paulson in the FX series  says she blames herself for Simpson going free.

"But at the end of the day, we really ... there was no way to reach that jury," she tells Mankiewicz. "There was no way to make them believe. There really wasn't."

Clark also says she was against Simpson trying on the gloves, which police said the killer left behind, during the trial. That iconic moment, when the glove appeared to not fit, was a massive blow to the prosecution.

"That was not my call. That was not my call," she tells Mankiewicz. "I did not want him to try on the evidence gloves. I never did."

That idea came from co-counsel Christopher Darden, played by Sterling K. Brown in the FX series. Darden apologized to Clark for the massive blunder, she says.

Story continues

"And I said, 'Its okay," says Clark. "If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway'.

Read More: 'The People v. O.J. Simpson': Lead Reporter "Impressed" By First Episode's Accuracy
Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman wants to be rapidly extradited to the United States out of "desperation" over being sleep-deprived in prison, his attorney said Wednesday.

The lawyer, Jose Refugio Rodriguez, said the defense team would seek to negotiate with US authorities and that it would take at least two months for Guzman to be shipped to Mexico's northern neighbor.

The Sinaloa drug cartel leader made his plea "in a moment of desperation" over his treatment, Rodriguez told AFP, citing concerns for his client's health.

"He can no longer take this situation," said the lawyer, who had filed injunctions against his client's extradition following his January 8 recapture.

Prison authorities acknowledged that Guzman, 58, is woken up every four hours to make sure he is still alive as part of regular security measures for high-profile inmates.

Guzman was returned to the Altiplano maximum-security prison after his January capture, which came six months after he had escaped from the same penitentiary through a 1.5-kilometer (mile-long) tunnel.

Authorities have taken extraordinary measures to prevent another embarrassing escape, installing metal rods in the floor to prevent another tunnel dig and posting a guard wearing a camera on his helmet outside the cell.

In a reversal, President Enrique Pena Nieto has ordered the attorney general's office to expedite the extradition process. Prior to Guzman's July escape, Pena Nieto had refused to send him to the United States.

Mexico's attorney general has said extradition could take at least a year.

An official at the attorney general's office said on condition of anonymity that the case was in the hands of a court but that Pena Nieto could use a special law to accelerate the process.

Guzman's wife, former beauty queen Emma Coronel, who is 26, told Radio Formula that "if his life is in danger, we will have to do what's necessary."

Story continues

She said that Guzman's extradition would not be a "defeat" because she and their twin daughters are US citizens. She gave birth to the girls in California in 2011.

- Rights 'not violated' -

Rodriguez told Radio Formula that he saw Guzman on Tuesday and that the drug cartel leader told him: "Try to get me extradited as fast as possible."

"Not allowing someone to sleep is an act of torture," Rodriguez told the radio station. "I saw a desperate man, a dejected man. I found him very discouraged and in a very serious state of health."

"He is isolated and segregated in a special area, separated from the other inmates. He told me that he was taken to a small room ... [and] doesn't see the sun," the lawyer said.

Rodriguez said last week that Guzman would be willing to plead guilty in the United States in return for a "relatively reasonable" sentence at a "medium-security" prison.

Two US courts have formally requested Guzman's extradition since he was recaptured, with charges of drug trafficking in California and murder in Texas.

Eduardo Guerrero, the head of Mexico's penitentiary system, said the security measures were part of security protocols for high-profile inmates.

"This protocol, in which attendance is called every four hours at night, means that the inmate is woken up once for proof of life," Guerrero told Radio Formula on Tuesday.

"We are not violating the rights and guarantees of any intern subjected to this type of security protocol," he said.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said recently she was confident that Mexican courts would soon decide on the extradition.

The US embassy declined to comment on Guzman's plea to be extradited.
Dakar (AFP) - Middle-class Africans are becoming drug users in countries that once acted solely as transit points for narcotics headed for Europe, with powerful criminal gangs exploiting the new markets, a global narcotics body said Wednesday.

The UN-linked International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said at a launch of the report in Dakar, Senegal that nations such as Benin and Namibia were particularly affected by the phenomenon in a continent identified as a "key transit point" for narcotics.

"The increase in illicit drug use in West Africa has resulted in challenges related to security, treatment and negative health and social consequences of that drug use," the report said.

"Traffickers in search of new illicit markets forcocaine and heroin have targeted the nascent middle class in certain African countries, such as Benin, which has been used as a transit country for many decades, and Namibia, a transit country that is becoming a consumer country."

And it said: "Organised crime continues to contribute to social and economic costs by increasing drug trafficking and addiction and by concentrating wealth and power in the hands of comparatively few well-armed criminals."

Furthermore, Chinese and eastern European gangs had apparently established "a significant presence" in South Africa.

Elsewhere, the north of the continent remained a significant source of drugs destined for Europe, according to the INCB, while eastern Africa was increasingly a transit point for heroin from Afghanistan.

"East African countries and certain European countries have reported annual growth in seizures of heroin of African origin," the INCB reported.

A separate escalation of primarily cocaine imports to Africa from South America had only aggravated the continent's drug problem.

Elsewhere, cannabis production in Morocco and Nigeria was indicative of those countries' dual roles as producers and consumers of the drug, which was also the most commonly abused narcotic in Africa.

Story continues

Annual usage of cannabis by the average African was double that of the world average, at 7.5 percent of 15-64 year olds on the continent, and even higher in west and central Africa.

Finally, the online sale of the controlled substances and ingredients used to make them represented a worrying new development, according to the INCB.

"The increase in online trafficking has made it difficult for law enforcement authorities to identify website owners and users involved in trafficking precursor chemicals," the report said.
Dont worry, pregnancy isnt an illness, said my midwife, smiling affectionately as I worried about my lack of morning sickness. She must have been well acquainted with the limbo of early pregnancy, the constant fluttering between hope and fear.

More From Mosaic

Mosaic Science

Two days later, doubled over on the toilet and clutching a hot water bottle as I watched dark clots of blood drip into the pan, it felt very much like an illness. I knew something was desperately wrong.

The largest lump of tissuewhat I believe to be the yolk sacwas smaller than it felt in my heart. I searched for the embryo inside it until my clothes were stained with blood. I couldnt flush the toilet for an hour because I was sure that my baby was in there. Rationality had ceased to register through the distress.

Recommended: Why the Strange History of Medieval Abortions Matters Today

The list of things I dont understand about my miscarriage seems never-ending. I dont know how old the embryo was when it stopped living. I dont know why it stopped living. I will never know.

Why? I asked myself. Again and again and again, as if it was a mantra that would take me back in time and stop it happening. Why? If someone could answer that, then at least Id be able to grapple with another looming question: Will it happen to me again?

* * *

Miscarriages are so commonone in five pregnancies end up in a miscarriage, says Arri Coomarasamy, a professor of gynecology at the University of Birmingham. Empathy is soothingly evident in his voice as I come to the end of my story.

The one in five figure is often quoted. Sometimes it creeps up to one in four. This is because its difficult to determine how many miscarriages take place. In the U.K., miscarriage means the loss of a pregnancy during the first 23 weeks (any later and it is called stillbirth). But it often occurs before a woman even realizes shes pregnant, and most of the time85 percentit is in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Story continues

That has given us clear social guidelines. The 12-week rule warns against telling anyone youre pregnant until the end of the third month. It anticipates the risk of loss, even sets us up to tentatively expect miscarriage during the early stages of pregnancy, but this silence doesnt make it any easier if it does happen.

We never talked about the experience itself, the physical process and the effects of miscarriage.

A recent survey of over 6,000 women who had had a miscarriage, conducted by the charity Tommys, found that around two-thirds found it hard to talk about. The same number felt that they couldnt discuss their miscarriage with their best friend. A third didnt feel that they could even talk to the father about it.

Finding support remains a challenge for women experiencing miscarriage. Sharing was important for mealthough saddening, I took comfort from the fact that friends of mine had also been through it. Like them, I would get through it. But we never talked about the experience itself, the physical process and the effects of miscarriage. Saying I had one, too seemed to be as far as it went.

Recommended: The Bad Science of Alcoholics Anonymous

So here goes. I was nine weeks pregnant when I started bleeding in the middle of a late night shift at work. The sight of that fresh, bright red blood was a sudden, vicious smack in the face. I pressed my hand over my mouth until I could feel the outline of each tooth, as if to prevent anything else leaving my body. I bled; I cramped; I googled. The lady who answered the phone at the community midwife centre directed me to the emergency room. Later, my doctor assured me that I was right not to go. I cant think of a worse place to have a miscarriage, he said, his head in his hands.

The pain was bearable and the bleeding stopped after a week or so. My miscarriage was natural and complete, meaning that when I had a scan at the end of it, there was barely any evidence that Id been pregnant at all. Nothing was left. Unlike many women, I didnt need medical management to complete the process. The staff who dealt with me were polite, straightforward, and quietly sympathetic.

Other women are not so lucky.

* * *

Lizzie Lowrie has had six miscarriages, all in the first trimester. The care she has received has been patchy. Shes met people whove been amazing, but shes also had to beg and cry down the phone to be admitted to hospital, and has turned up only to be congratulated on her pregnancy.

When she tells me about her most recent miscarriage, at 10 weeks, I am shocked. She opted for a medically managed miscarriage, in which you take tablets that open the cervix to let the remaining tissue leave the body. It was horrendous, she says. It was so painful. And I was in this ward with other people doing the same thing  It was terrible.

They didnt tell me anything. I came home bleeding and not really knowing what to do.

Around 1 percent of couples are affected by recurrent miscarriage, which in the U.K. is defined as the loss of three or more consecutive pregnancies.

Emma Benjamin has had several miscarriages, too, but still remembers the terror of the first. They just sent me home and they didnt tell me anything, she says. I came home bleedinghaving the most awful period pains, I supposeand not really knowing what to do or what was going to happen or how long I was going to bleed for. I knew nothing, literally nothing  I wasnt given a leaflet or anything. So it was horrible, it was really awful, because I suppose I didnt really know what was going on.

Recommended: Why Stress Makes Your Hair Fall Out

Its another side of the silence that surrounds miscarriage. But Benjamin and Lowrie both talk clearly and calmly about their experiences, and have become more open with each successive miscarriage. Lowrie tells me that for her husband and her the 12-week rule has gone out the window.

At first, very few people knew that I was pregnant, she says, but then as the miscarriages went on we just made sure there were certain people close to us that knew  they tried to keep me sane when I was going through the pregnancy  Its just so hard breaking those two bits of news: I was pregnant and Im not now. Its really hard to bring it into conversation.

It is still quite a silent thing, she adds, and I think part of it is that no one knows what to say.

Coomarasamy agrees that lack of support is a serious problem and that women who have an early miscarriage, and their partners, may need just as much help as those who have lost an older baby to stillbirth. Whether it was this size baby or that size baby is irrelevant, and the psychological impact is not much different, he explains. So I think there is a real need to understand how couples experience miscarriages. Theres a real need to identify better ways of supporting the couples.

Lowrie and her husband now run a blog about childlessness called Saltwater and Honey. Of course, no one should ever feel they have to share their experiencesI have friends who wanted to keep their miscarriage private. But it does seem that its becoming increasingly acceptable to speak out about miscarriage.

* * *

Breaking the silence is crucial. Research has shown that one-third of women attending specialist clinics as a result of their miscarriage are clinically depressed. As well as depression and grief, its been reported that both women and their partners experience increased anxiety for several months after a miscarriage. Post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessivecompulsive disorders and panic disorders have also been observed in research studies.

Once, this would have surprised me. Not now. Three months after my own miscarriage, I still struggle to see my experience in perspective. There are still days when I feel a shadow over me and a sadness in the pit of my stomach that wont go away. There are still days when a strange emotion surprises me with its stranglehold.

Its only after my conversation with Lowrie that I realize this emotion is grief. She, too, was confused, until a counselor demystified what she was going through.

I thought to grieve you had to have lost something youd metlike a person that you had talked toor you could grieve over a baby that maybe youd held, she tells me. I didnt know anything about grief  I didnt know whether I should leave that to people who had lost actual people, not a very, very tiny baby that youve never met.

Benjamin agrees: I used to think, God, people go through so much worse  and Id feel guilty for grieving  But in my head, I had planned when this baby was going to be born. So it was still as upsetting for me.

Part of this distress comes from that unanswered Why? Most women having their first or second miscarriage are told to put it down to one-off, unspecified genetic abnormalities in the fetus. It just wasnt meant to be. Yes, society likes fate. But women feel better if they get more accurate information, says Ruth Bender-Atik, the national director of the Miscarriage Association. The reason is that they have an answer, an explanation, she says, rather than a huge question mark and a tendency to assume its their fault.

Most women never get an answer, however, even if they are tested for possible explanations, because the science is sorely lacking.

I think its fair to say that miscarriage, despite being so common, despite having physical and psychological consequences to the woman and her partner, despite being a condition that demands quite a lot from the NHS, has not been researched well for a long time, says Coomarasamy. But that is changing, I believe.

* * *

The unspecified genetic abnormalities that are said to underlie most miscarriages have various possible causes. The risk of random genetic faults in the fetus seems to increase with the age of the mother: the chances of having a miscarriage rise from 9 percent aged 2024 to more than 50 percent for women aged 40 and over. Beyond age, other risk factors associated with miscarriage include obesity, smoking, drug use, and drinking more than two units of alcohol a week or more than a couple of cups of coffee a day.

There are several other potential causes: abnormalities in the womb or cervix, genetic faults inherited from the parents, hormone imbalances, polycystic ovary syndrome, various infections and so on. In the U.K., tests for these possibilities are offered only after three consecutive miscarriages, whereas in many other countries the threshold is two.

Its the kind of hope many women and their partners cling to: that a cause will be found and an effective treatment will follow.

Some women whove had a number of miscarriages have antibodies in their blood that seem to prevent the pregnancy embedding properly or cause blood clots in the placenta. This is called antiphospholipid syndrome, also commonly known as sticky blood syndrome, and it is the most important treatable cause of recurrent miscarriage. Low doses of aspirin, sometimes also the blood-thinning drug heparin, seem to help these women carry a pregnancy to term. Its the kind of hope many women and their partners cling to: that a cause will be found and an effective treatment will follow.

A blood test for these antibodies is therefore standard after recurrent miscarriages, but its the answer only 15 percent of the time. Half of all women who have tests are still left without an answer. Although Benjamin and her husband now have three children, a cause was never identified for her miscarriages. After two successful pregnancies in which she took progesterone, blood-thinning drugs, aspirin, and steroids, she knows that it was more likely simply luck rather than targeted medical intervention.

Lowrie, still trying for her first child, has also tried taking low-dose aspirin, heparin, and progesterone, but thinks she was probably only offered this cocktail of drugs because they just didnt know what to do with me.

Its a familiar story to Coomarasamy. There are a lot of people out there who are just putting patients on a bit of this, a bit of that, he says. Statistically speaking, any patient who has had a miscarriage previouslyalmost all patients who have had a miscarriage previouslythe odds are in their favor in terms of having a normal pregnancy next time round, no matter what one does. So if they happen to be popping a pill it may have nothing to do with it. In fact, statistically speaking, they were going to carry that baby to term anyway.

While aspirin increases the chances of a successful pregnancy for the minority of women with sticky blood syndrome, it had no significant effect in clinical trials for other women at risk of miscarrying. And following years of debate, the results of the PROMISE trial announced in November 2015 showed that progesterone supplements did not prevent early miscarriage for women with unexplained, recurrent losses.

They are all looking for answers, hoping for a breakthrough.

A number of other trials continue to investigate potential treatments. The RESPONSE trial is testing a medicine called NT100 to find out if it can improve the chances of a successful pregnancy without serious side-effects. The TABLET trial is looking into the role that thyroid antibodies may play in women with unexplained miscarriage, and whether the drug levothyroxine may help. Lowrie is one of those waiting to hear if she is eligible to take part.

Lots of women seek out such trials, keen to be involved. Of Coomarasamys patients at Birmingham, 6070 percent take part in clinical trials being carried out there, and often the research team finds recruits through other avenues, such as Facebook campaigns. They are all looking for answers, hoping for a breakthrough. But it may be that to understand miscarriage better, we need a new approach.

* * *

Jan Brosens is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Warwick. He agrees that our current knowledge is too thin to help many people after recurrent miscarriage and says the current tests available are mostly a waste of time. [For] the vast majority of couples that you see in clinic, you can test until youre blue in the face and you will find nothing, he says. But more importantly, even if you have a patient where you have a positive test, you will find that same positive test in at least 50100 women who dont have a history of miscarriages.

In other words, the tests are nowhere near specific enough to identify what is causing recurrent miscarriages. Brosens thinks we will make more progress if we change the way we think about miscarriage.

The problem I face when I see patients is that the vast majority come with this narrative that has been imposed upon themand which they defendwhich is that miscarriages are your body rejecting the pregnancy, that this is a complete failure, he says, sadly.

Instead, he is keen to emphasize that a successful pregnancy begins with the start of a periodan event that so many women regard merely as an annoyance or, at worst, the uncomfortable end to another month of trying to conceive a baby.

I completely and utterly dismiss the current view of miscarriages.

But consider it differently, and the period is just the beginning, as the old womb lining disappears and a completely new one begins to grow. Brosenss research with Siobhan Quenby at Warwicks Biomedical Research Unit in Reproductive Health suggests that the womb lining plays a major role in determining whether the next pregnancy succeeds.

Most if not all human embryos have some chromosomal abnormalities. The range of variation runs from embryos with errors in a couple of cells right up to ones that are so unstable they are known as chaotic. The cells of the womb lining, the endometrium, go through a process called decidualization in response to the pregnancy hormone progesterone, which makes them able to recognize genetically poor embryos and prevent implantation so that pregnancy never begins.

But if the womb lining isnt suitably prepared, it may prevent healthy embryos from implantingor do the opposite. Brosens and Quenbys research has found that in women with recurrent miscarriage, the womb lining is often super-receptive but unselective, meaning that it allows genetically doomed embryos to implant and grow. These women may get pregnant fairly easily, but the pregnancy never truly has a chance of succeeding.

In essence, Brosens tells me as firmly as his friendly Dutch lilt allows, I completely and utterly dismiss the current view of miscarriages.

The idea that something has gone wrong in your pregnancy? No. The feeling of guilt that you must have done something wrong, despite sticking to all the rules of pregnancy? Pointless, because the outcome of your pregnancy was most likely determined at that moment of implantation.

Brosens is convinced that this new perspective will eventually lead to an uplifting advance: being able to predict who is at risk of miscarriages, even among women who have never been pregnant. When cells taken from the womb lining of women who have experienced recurrent miscarriage are cultured in the lab, the behavior of the cells is very, very different [compared to] control patients, he says. This provides a new starting-point for developing diagnostic tests and even treatments to make recurrent miscarriages far less likely.

* * *

Today, after just one miscarriage, the statistics tell me that I have an 80 percent chance of my next pregnancy being successful. Regardless, I have been worrying that my miscarriage was the result of something that might make me prone to it happening again. I simply dont know, and its the same for most women experiencing miscarriage, whether their first or their fifteenth.

The wonders of modern science have accustomed us to medical explanations and diagnoses. The women Ive spoken toEmma Benjamin, Lizzie Lowrie, and some of my friendsshare similar feelings of frustration. We expect that doctors will find out what is wrong with us and give us something to treat that problem. We think we will feel better if that happens.

For the small percentage of women whose every pregnancy has ended in miscarriage, the question of why looms particularly heavy over their trauma. While Lowrie hasnt given up hope of having a child of her own, she has accepted that it may not happen.

I dont think there is always a resolution, but sometimes youve got to live with that, she says. Life isnt neat. We dont always have answers.

I dont have an answer, and I know Im not going to get one any time soon. So for now, Im going to try and stop asking Why?

One tiny life has ended, but mine goes on.

This article appears courtesy of Mosaic.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Russia is looking far into the future of war in the air.

In a bid to write the rules of aerial warfare, Russia has at least developed blueprints for sixth- and seventh-generation aircraft -- planes much more advanced than the fifth-generation jets available today, according to top officials.

"They have really come up with the designs for the creation of the sixth-generation fighter, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told TASS News agency on Wednesday. Im referring also to new design concepts briefly presented by the Sukhoi design bureau and by the general designer appointed for all aircraft systems and armaments.

Related: Russia Unveils a New Warplane as Fighter Jet Wars Rage On

Air Force chief Colonel General Viktor Bondarev confirmed work is going on. I cant say too much [about it], but he did indicate the cutting-edge platforms would be both manned and unmanned, according to Russia Today.

Sukhois production line is humming these days: The state-controlled company recently signed a slew of deals for its Su-35S multirole fighters with Moscow, China and Indonesia. Its also testing its fifth-generation fighters, the Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA, which are meant to compete directly with the Lockheed Martin-manufactured F-22 Raptor and likely will enter into service before the end of 2016.

The T-50, which can reach Mach 4 in seconds, will also carry anti-ship bombs capable of hitting maritime targets over 150 miles away and will have storage space in its fuselage so that the aircraft can fly sorties without appearing armed.

Related: Russias Latest Weapons Sale to Iran Shifts the Balance of Mideast Power

A new fighter from Moscow likely wouldnt be airborne for years, if not decades. But it does raise the stakes for the U.S., which is trying to determine what comes after the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Americas own fifth-generation warplane.

Last month a top official at Northrop Grumman sketched the companys vision of what that might look like, proposing a possibly unmanned aircraft complete with lasers and advanced cyber resiliency, according to Defense News. Lockheed and Boeing have also started working on their own concepts.

Story continues

Any U.S. proposal would face incredible scrutiny both inside the Defense Department and on Capitol Hill after the F-35s troubled development. The program has been, and remains, plagued with technical glitches that have driven its price tag up to around $400 billion, making the jet the most expensive weapons effort in U.S. history.

Related: Heres the New, Secret Warplane Everyone Will Soon Be Talking About

A sixth-generation fighter program would be another multibillion addition to the Air Forces development to-do list, which already includes finishing the F-35 effort and developing new tankers and bombers.

Moscow doesnt seem to have those fiscal concerns, though, and is moving ahead.

"If we stop, we will stop forever, Bondarev said.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Kellyhome

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly is back on Earth after a record-setting 340 consecutive days in space, the most in NASA's history.

The space explorer landed in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. ET on March 1 after spending nearly a full year on the International Space Station in an effort to understand how the human body responds to long periods of weightlessness.

SEE ALSO: This astronaut just spent 340 days in space. Here's why it was worth it.

Kelly returned to Earth with his fellow yearlong mission crewmember, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, and cosmonaut Sergey Volkov in their Russian-built Soyuz spacecraft.

Image: NASA

They did it," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said. "Theyre home after a year in space, and they stuck the landing."

Kelly and Korienko launched to the station on March 27, 2015.

Image: NASA

Goodbye to the Space Station

The trio of space explorers came back home on March 1  just shy of a full year in space  partially because of the orbital mechanics needed to get the three crew members back to the ground safely, NASA spokesman Dan Huot said.

"Essentially there are specific dates where the station and therefore the Soyuz will cross over specific parts of the Earth (Kazakhstan) which allow you to line up for the usual landing and recovery zones," Huot told Mashable via email.

For his part, Kelly doesn't mind that he wasn't on orbit for a full 365 days.

"If I launched in March and land in March, that's pretty close to a year," Kelly said during an in-flight news conference before the landing. "So, no, I'm not slightly disappointed at all, actually. It is actually something I haven't really considered."

Image: NASA TV

Leaving the Space Station also meant that Kelly needed to say goodbye to his off-world home for what may be the last time.

The record-holding astronaut also flew to orbit on three previous flights, one of which was for a more typical six-month mission aboard the Space Station.

Story continues

This yearlong mission bring's Kelly's total time in space to 520 days, more than any U.S. astronaut to date.

"Leaving this amazing facility is going to be tough, because I probably will never see it again," Kelly said. "I've flown in space four times now so it's going to be hard in that respect ... I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here."

Kelly will be greeted back in Houston, Texas Wednesday by Dr. Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden and John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology.

Kelly's identical twin brother Mark Kelly and his wife, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, will also be there with other members of his family to meet the returned astronaut.

The science of a yearlong mission

And now that Kornienko and Kelly are back on Earth, the real scientific fun can begin.

The two Space Station crewmembers will now be put through their physical paces before ever leaving the landing zone in Kazakhstan.

"We go through about an hour of what is called this 'field test' that is various different types of experiments," Kelly said.

"Some are physical  kind of like even an obstacle course, where you run around obstacles and stand up from a sitting position and jump and stand  that looks at the ability of our physiology to adjust to those different positions."

That kind of data is immensely important for scientists on Earth.

The whole point of Kornienko and Kelly's mission has been to gather more information about how the human body behaves during and after a year in space. This information is important because NASA eventually wants to send humans to Mars, a round trip mission that could take more than a year.

By testing the crew members' agility just after landing, researchers should get at least some sense of what a Mars-exploring astronaut may experience when feeling the gravity of the red planet for the first time after a long journey in weightlessness.

If NASA scientists can figure out how the body changes during an extended period in space, they may be able to come up with ways to mitigate any harmful side effects of space travel like bone density loss or radiation exposure.
By Jeffrey Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday he hopes to curb a wave of Palestinian assaults by expelling to Gaza families of assailants found to have encouraged them to attack Israelis. Netanyahu, in a letter to Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit released to the media, asked for a legal opinion on such a move, which he said would "lead to significant reduction in terrorist activities against the state and its citizens". Mandelblit, who assumed his post last month, and his predecessor have rejected similar expulsion proposals floated by right-wing cabinet ministers, political sources said. But with pressure growing on Netanyahu to take tougher action against violence now in its sixth month, he appeared to have little to lose politically by formally asking for Mandelblit's approval, even if it was unlikely to be granted. Since October, Palestinian stabbings, shootings and car rammings have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests. In the occupied West Bank, the Palestine Liberation Organisation condemned the expulsion proposal as "ethnic cleansing and collective punishment". Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, said expulsions would "escalate the current Palestinian uprising". Israel Radio's legal analyst, Moshe Negbi, said expulsions from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas where most the violence has taken place, would be "ultra-illegal" and contravene international and Israeli law. Palestinian leaders say many Palestinian attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement towards creation of an independent state. Israeli officials have said assailants are being incited to violence by their leaders and on social media. In his letter to Mandelblit, Netanyahu said some of their families had also been complicit. "Many of the terrorist activities in recent months have been carried out by terrorists profiled as 'lone wolves', Netanyahu wrote. "These assailants sometimes come from families that encourage and abet their actions." With the declared aim of deterring Palestinian attacks, Israel has destroyed the family homes of several alleged assailants in the West Bank in recent months. Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in a 1967 war. It removed its troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and the Palestinian enclave has been run by the Islamist Hamas movement since 2007. Palestinians seek to establish an independent state in both areas. (Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Alison Williams)
Leonardo DiCaprio, Brie Larson, Mark Rylance, Alicia Vikander, Alejandro Inarritu and George Miller all went home with a gong from the 88th Oscars ceremony on Sunday, February 28. As the dust settles on their moments of glory, they'll all soon be heading back to work. Here's a look at what this year's winners have in store for the coming months.

Leonardo DiCaprio: a sixth Scorsese?

After taking home his first Oscar with a triumphant win for "The Revenant," this year's Best Actor could soon be back working with his favorite director, Martin Scorsese. The pair are thought to be adapting Erik Larson's true-crime thriller novel "The Devil in the White City," which focuses on Dr Henry Howard Holmes, thought to be one of the first serial killers in American history. Based in Chicago in the late 19th century, the movie hasn't yet been officially announced. Before stepping back in front of the camera, Leonardo DiCaprio will be concentrating on production roles. In particular, he's due to work on Ben Affleck's upcoming feature film "Live by Night," as well as a new version of Robin Hood -- "Robin Hood: Origins" -- starring Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx.

Brie Larson: a blockbuster

Little known to the general public before being crowned Best Actress for "Room," the Oscar-winner is moving into a whole new league with "Kong: Skull Island," a blockbuster that she's currently filming with Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman. This King Kong prequel is up for US release on March 10, 2017. The American actress will also be starring in the adaptation of Jeannette Walls' memoir "The Glass Castle," looking back at the New-York-based writer and journalist's chaotic and impoverished childhood.

Mark Rylance: back with Spielberg

After winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "Bridge of Spies," the British actor will be back working with Steven Spielberg in "The BFG," a big-screen adaptation of the Roald Dahl book due in US theaters July 1, 2016. Plus, the Oscar-winner will soon be heading to northern France to start filming World War II movie "Dunkirk," directed by Christopher Nolan and scheduled for July 2017, also starring Tom Hardy and Kenneth Brannagh.

Alicia Vikander: alongside Jason Bourne

After starting the year with a surprise win for her role in "The Danish Girl," 2016 looks busy for this year's Best Supporting Actress. The Swedish newcomer is set to star in the upcoming Jason Bourne movie with Matt Damon (out July 29, 2016, in the US), as well as "The Light Between Two Oceans" (September 2, 2016), alongside Michael Fassbender, and "Tulip Fever," a period drama with Cara Delevingne and Christoph Waltz. The actress has also been cast in Wim Wenders' upcoming movie "Submergence," a thriller up for release in 2017.

Alejandro Inarritu: a small-screen project

Following the epic feat of "The Revenant," which saw him crowned Best Director for the second year running, the Mexican director has been tempted into the world of TV. His series, "The One Percent," is scheduled for the end of the year on the Starz network and follows a farmer struggling to keep the family business afloat. Ed Helms, Hilary Swank and Ed Harris have been cast in the drama, which is written, produced and partially directed by Inarritu.

George Miller: next stop, Cannes

"Mad Max: Fury Road" bagged no less than six Oscars in technical categories at this year's Academy Awards. Before returning to the director's chair for another Mad Max installment ("Mad Max: The Wasteland"), the Australian director will be president of the jury at the 69th Cannes Film Festival, May 11 to 22, 2016.
The U.S. Defense Department should invest heavily in an emerging class of high-speed platforms that could help the military overcome a variety of potential enemy defenses by hitting targets at several times the speed of sound, according to a new think tank report.

Hypersonic weapons are like missiles, but theyre capable of reaching speeds of 3,600 miles per hour or more. They promise to revolutionize military affairs in the same fashion that stealth did a generation ago and the turbojet engine did a generation before, argues a study released Tuesday by the Air Force Associations Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Related: Heres the New, Secret Warplane Everyone Will Soon Be Talking About

Once realized, the incredibly fast projectiles would allow the U.S. to strike targets deep in enemy territory, even if it were defended by anti-air systems, simply because of their speed would cut hours-long transcontinental flights down to minutes. The weapons also could lessen the threat to U.S. airmen, since piloted aircraft like fighter jets or bombers would be able to do their job faster.

China and Russia are already investing in the technology, the report notes. Beijing has conducted at least five tests of its Wu-14 hypersonic strike vehicle in the last two years. That platform consists of launching a rocket to the upper atmosphere, then releasing a glider that reaches hypersonic speeds upon descent.

Meanwhile, Moscow plans to tests its new hypersonic weapon by 2020.

These developments portend severe costs for the loser in this competition. The U.S. not only would cede decades worth of investment, test, research, and experimentation in this arena, but would also face strategic vulnerability if other nations field a successful hypersonic weapon first, according to the study.

Related: The Air Forces New Bomber Gets a Name: Meet the B-21

The U.S. isnt coming at the problem cold, though.

Congress has appropriated millions for hypersonic tests and research and development. In a 2013 test, the X-51 Waverider, similar to a cruise missile and powered by a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engine, flew at speeds around 3,500 mph for over three minutes before it ran out of fuel and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

Story continues

Despite the seemingly successful test, another experiment, this time dubbed the Hypersonic Air Breathing Weapon Concept, isnt slated for another four or five years.

The U.S. investment is now at risk due to indecision and vacillation. Having pioneered hypersonic flight, the United States must redouble its efforts to retain its lead in hypersonics, according to the Mitchell report.

Related: How the Air Forces New Planes Could Bankrupt the Pentagon

The study pointedly aimed at Congress first recommends that lawmakers first recognize the potential of the blisteringly fast technology; second, it recommends lawmakers help the Pentagon chart a path for moving forward based on maturing incremental, realistic and achievable technologies leading to practical hypersonic weapons.

It also recommended putting the Air Force in the lead of all hypersonic research and development and making the Defense Department establish a realistic acquisition strategy.

The authors envision an air-launched medium-range hypersonic strike weapon in the 2020s; a more-capable offensive, intelligence-gathering weapon in the 2030s; and an eventual goal of a persistent, reusable hypersonic aircraft in the 2040s.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Niamey (AFP) - Niger's opposition on Wednesday called for the release of presidential contender Hama Amadou, jailed for his alleged role in a baby trafficking scandal, ahead of a second round vote on March 20.

"We demand Hama's release. If President Mahamadou Issoufou has any pride, all he has to do is free him and face him fair and square," opposition coalition spokesman Ousseini Salatou said after visiting the former prime minister and national assembly president in jail.

Salatou said Amadou's conditions were "increasingly difficult", adding, however, that he was "very serene".

Amadou, who has campaigned from behind bars, denies the allegations and has denounced the legal process against him as a ploy keep him sidelined from the elections.

He left Niger in August 2014 to escape the charges but returned from France last November, when he was immediately arrested and sent to prison in Filingue, northeast of the capital.

An appeals court on January 11 upheld the decision of another court in late December that he should not be granted conditional release.

President Issoufou took a solid lead in the February 21 first round vote in the uranium-rich nation's presidential election but will now faces an unprecedented run-off against Amadou.

Issoufou won 48.4 percent of the vote with his nearest challenger Amadou picking up 17.4 percent.
By Camillus Eboh ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's parliament expects to pass the 2016 budget in Africa's biggest economy on March 17, lawmakers said on Wednesday. President Muhammadu Buhari presented a record $30 billion budget in December but asked for its withdrawal in January to make changes after a further drop in oil prices forced the deficit up to 3 trillion naira ($15 billion) from 2.2 trillion. Last month voting on the budget was postponed because ministers could not agree on revised public spending plans. Representatives of the Senate, the upper house, and their counterparts in the lower house, the House of Representatives, said they had held talks with ministries on the issue of how much money would be allocated to each department. "We should be able to lay our report of the 2016 Appropriation Bill before the House and the Senate on 16th of March," Abdulmumin Jibrin, who chairs the budget committee in the lower house. He said parliament was expected to finish considering the budget's contents by the end of the following day. "So it is safe for us to conclude that the 2016 Appropriation Bill will be passed on the 17th of March," he added. Nigeria has held talks with the World Bank and has looked at borrowing from the African Development Bank and China Exim Bank to plug the budget gap as oil trades around $30 a barrel, down from over $100 in 2014. (Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Dominic Evans)
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria will start new talks with South African mobile phone operator MTN "very soon" to settle a dispute over a $3.9 billion fine but the final decision rests with President Muhammadu Buhari, the communications minister said. "It is (now) for government to meet with them and conclude negotiations," telecommunications minister Adebayo Shittu told Reuters. Last week, MTN said it had withdrawn a lawsuit against Nigeria over the fine, which originally stood at $5.2 billion. MTN was fined for failing to disconnect unregistered SIM users and has paid $250 million towards a settlement. (Reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Ulf Laessing and Jason Neely)
By Stine Jacobsen OSLO (Reuters) - Norway said on Wednesday it was not violating mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's human rights by keeping him in isolation, ahead of a lawsuit he is bringing to change the conditions of his detention. Breivik, who killed 77 people in a bomb attack and shooting spree in 2011, argues his effective solitary confinement makes him a victim of cruel and inhuman treatment. "There is no evidence that the plaintiff has physical or mental problems as a result of prison conditions," the Office of the Attorney General, the Norwegian state's legal office in civil lawsuits, wrote in a document sent to the Oslo District Court and released on Wednesday. The Norwegian Correctional Service denies Breivik is held in solitary confinement, preferring the phrase "excluded from the company of other prisoners". There is no maximum time for how long he can be held in such "extra high security", a service official previously told Reuters. Breivik, who has been held alone since his arrest, argues the regime is degrading and is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The hearing, scheduled for March 15-18 in the gym of Skien prison where Breivik is held in southern Norway, has prompted renewed soul-searching in a country where many want to move on from the killings. According to the Attorney General's document, Breivik has access to three different prison cells - for living, study and exercise - between which he can move freely. He can take walks in a yard and he can cook his own food and do his laundry. He also has access to a computer without Internet, television and a PlayStation. Breivik's lawyer says his client only has had contacts with professionals, such as prison staff, his lawyers and his mother, when she was alive, according to a separate court document published late on Tuesday. "According to the information available, they (Breivik and his mother) only had five minutes together when they could hug each other," it said. Breivik's mother died from cancer in 2013. The document also said Breivik's mail was being monitored to a degree where "he doesn't feel he could form relationships through letters". He considers this a breach of "his right to respect for his private life and his correspondence", also part of the European Convention on Human Rights. Norway says control over prisoners' communication is not in itself a violation, because it could uncover information about the planning or commission of criminal offences. Breivik wrote in his extreme right-wing manifesto discovered after the killings that prisons were considered ideal recruitment places, the Attorney General's document said. He is serving a 21-year sentence, the maximum in Norway. The term can be extended if he is still considered a threat. (Editing by Alison Williams)
San Francisco (AFP) - US National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers warned Tuesday that hackers will inevitably mount a cyber attack against US infrastructure, similar to the power failure in western Ukraine last year.

"It's only a matter of the when, not the if, you are going to see a nation state, a group or an actor engage in destructive behavior against critical infrastructure of the United States," Rogers told a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

Rogers also heads the US military's Cyber Command, which is engaged in targeting enemy networks and social media sites.

On December 23, parts of western Ukraine were plunged into darkness after a computer virus affected the networks of several regional electricity companies.

"An actor penetrated the Ukrainian power grid and brought large segments of it offline in a very well-crafted attack that both focused on knocking the system down but also focused on how was the provider likely to respond to that outage," Rogers said.

"Seven weeks ago, it was Ukraine. That isn't the last we are going to see of this, and that worries me."

- Charm offensive -

Rogers and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in separate presentations, urged cyber security specialists gathered at a flagship annual RSA Conference here to work with the US government to keep the country and its people safe.

"I believe the future is all about partnerships and it is all about integration," Rogers said.

"We are not going to solve this within the government, and within the Department of Defense specifically; it is partnerships that will develop the best outcomes."

The charm offensive here by Lynch and Rogers came amid a battle with Apple over cracking into an iPhone.

"We know that devices are more and more the repository of all types of information and are so essential to solving serious crimes," Lynch said during an on-stage chat following her prepared remarks.

Story continues

"Having the inability to obtain evidence that could save lives is a real risk."

Lynch voiced support for data encryption, but argued for middle ground where investigators fighting evil doers could get legal access to information they need.

"The government relies on the cooperation of citizens and companies; the reality is that we are all in this together," Lynch said when asked where that point was in the legal fight with Apple.

"With the ability to live in this country and create wonderful things comes responsibility."

She referred to the confrontation with Apple as a "flashpoint" sparking a much-needed, broader conversation about the balance between digital privacy and public safety.

"Do we let one company -- no matter how great the company or how beautiful their devices -- decide the issue for all of us?" Lynch asked.

- Backdoor backlash -

While addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, FBI chief James Comey defended his agency's efforts to force Apple to help unlock an iPhone in the San Bernardino attacks probe.

Addressing a case that has set off a fierce public debate, Comey said Americans need to know the safety implications if encryption makes it impossible to access data on smartphones and other devices.

"It's our job to tell the American people the tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less effective," Comey told the House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But Comey also acknowledged that forcing Apple to help unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone could set a precedent for other investigations.

The hearing comes amid an intense legal and political battle after Apple said it would challenge a court order to provide the FBI technical assistance to help break into the San Bernardino iPhone.

Apple has argued the FBI is effectively asking the company to "hack" its own devices and create a "back door" that malicious actors could exploit.

Comey told the hearing that in his view, "it's not about back doors... there's already a door on that phone, we're asking Apple to take away the vicious guard dog."

In remarks prepared for the same hearing, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said the public should understand that "encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing," even if it complicates the work of law enforcement.

Encryption helps preserve privacy around the world, he added, "and it keeps people safe."

A US magistrate judge in New York ruled Monday that police overstepped the law when they called on Apple to unlock the iPhone of a suspected drug dealer.

The ruling could signal Apple is on sound footing in its separate but similar battle with the US government over being forced to help crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December's San Bernardino attacks.

"We were obviously disappointed," Lynch said of the latest ruling during her on-stage chat at RSA.
Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama hailed the adoption of UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea, saying it sent a "simple message" that Pyongyang must abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs.

Obama said the unanimously adopted sanctions sent "a firm, united, and appropriate response by the international community" to a January 6 nuclear test and February 7 missile launch.

"The international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is close to submitting to the U.S. Senate a Supreme Court nomination to fill the vacancy left by the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said on Wednesday.

Reid, speaking on the Senate floor, said it was the chamber's "duty" to perform a confirmation process on a nomination, "which we will have in a matter of a week or so."

Reid did not give any hints of who the nominee might be. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated that the Senate will ignore any Supreme Court nomination from Obama and will instead await a choice from whoever replaces Obama as president next January.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Eric Beech)
Washington (AFP) - US President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama were announced Wednesday as headliners of South by Southwest, the celebrated showcase of cutting-edge technology and music.

Obama will be the first sitting president to appear at the closely watched annual conference in Austin, Texas, famous for providing early exposure to platforms such as Twitter, Foursquare and Meerkat as well as numerous bands.

The president will speak before the creative audience on March 11 about "civic engagement in the 21st century."

"The president will call on the audience to apply their ideas and talents to make technology work for us -- especially when it comes to tackling big challenges like increasing participation in the political process and fighting climate change," the festival said in a statement.

Obama has been a longtime champion of new technology, with his 2008 presidential campaign considered groundbreaking in its embrace of burgeoning social media sites.

But more recently his administration has been embroiled in a row with Apple as the FBI tries to force the technology giant to unlock an iPhone in the San Bernardino attacks probe.

His appearance comes two years after the headliner at South by Southwest was former government contractor turned privacy activist Edward Snowden, whom the Obama administration wants to prosecute for his leaking of intelligence secrets.

Michelle Obama will speak separately on March 16 during South by Southwest's music session where she will push the "Let Girls Learn" initiative that aims to bring education to some of the 62 million girls around the world who go unschooled.

The Obamas' participation marks the 30th anniversary of South by Southwest, with each year throwing a spotlight on technology, music and film.

"As each new generation comes up at SXSW they look for ways they can be of service, and it's important to reflect and support that message," the festival's co-founder Roland Swenson said.

"President and Mrs. Obama's visit here will inspire attendees to that purpose," he said.
BEIJING (Reuters) - One Chinese national was killed and three wounded in a "militant" attack in Laos, state media said on Wednesday, in what was at least the second confirmed attack in the country involving Chinese workers this year. China's consulate in Luang Prabang province confirmed Tuesday's attack, "which was aimed at a shed of a Chinese-invested company", the official Xinhua news agency said. The wounded workers were sent to a hospital and regional security forces were "sent to wipe out the militants", Xinhua said. The report did not give further details and it was unclear if the Chinese workers were intentionally targeted. Xinhua said another attack occurred around the same time in the region targeting a bus and a pickup truck in which at least five people from Laos were injured. In late January, two Chinese nationals were killed and another wounded in a suspected bomb blast in Laos. That incident occurred in the remote Xaysomboun region, which has been plagued by sporadic conflict between the government and ethnic Hmong militants for years. It's not uncommon for bandits to operate in the country's countryside. Chinese workers have increasingly come under attack as China's firms expand operations abroad, often in politically unstable places. In November, three executives from a Chinese state-run railway firm were killed when militants attacked a hotel in Mali, which highlighted China's limited means to respond to threats abroad. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Its hard not to have Malvina Reynoldss famous ditty in my head after seeing this suburban view:

Residential homes in Killeen, Texas. The towns population grew from 86,911 to more than 127,000 in the decade between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, making it one of the fastest growing areas in the United States. A photo posted by Daily Overview (@dailyoverview) on Feb 24, 2016 at 12:04pm PST

I actually spent four years in Killeen as a kid, when my parents were stationed at neighboring Fort Hood, the biggest military installation in the world (about 53,000 residents in 2010 and as high as 95,000 in the 1940s). When I went in college, my mother returned to Hood as the assistant chief nurse of its hospital, so my drivers license for most of my 20s had a Killeen address. Bartenders, after checking my ID, would sometimes ask me about this notorious chapter in Killeen history:

The Lubys shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 16, 1991, at a restaurant in Killeen, Texas. The perpetrator, George Hennard, crashed his pickup truck through the front of a Lubys Cafeteria, and immediately shot and killed 23 people, and wounded 27 others before shooting and killing himself. It is the third-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, behind only the Virginia Tech and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in the U.S. that did not occur at a school.

My dad and I used to eat at Lubys often, but fortunately we moved to Kansas a few years before the massacre. And then there was the Hasan shooting of 2009 that left 13 people dead and more than 30 injured on Fort Hood. Other than that, a great place to grow up!

(See all Orbital Views here)

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Before his death in 2011, former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned his followers that any attempt to prematurely establish an Islamic state would fail, new documents released on Tuesday reveal.

In the 2011 U.S. special forces raid on bin Ladens Abbottabad compound, Navy SEALs retrieved a trove of intelligence. Washington has now released 113 declassified documents, including letters and speeches, that reveal the radical Islamists thoughts on the global jihad.

Written in Arabic and translated by the U.S., the letters show that the leader who gained notoriety for plotting the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington was wary of following the path taken by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) years later in moving to establish a caliphate too soon, as the latter did in 2014.

He was open about his desire to eventually create an Islamic state but, in an undated letter to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until a U.S. drone strike killed him in June 2015, bin Laden urged his followers to be patient as Western powers could defeat them due to their greater military power.

We want Sanaa to establish an Islamic State, but first, we want to make sure that we have the capability to gain control of it, bin Laden wrote. The enemy continues to possess the ability to topple any state we establish, he continued. We have to remember that the enemy toppled the Taliban and Saddams regime.

He also comes out against the barbarity of the early incarnation of ISIS, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which attacked locals and fellow Sunni Muslims, eroding public support for the group. He told subordinates not to publish pictures of prisoners after they were beheaded, which has become a trademark of ISISs execution videos.

These letters were likely written before 2011 and Al-Qaeda in Iraq only split from the Al-Qaeda leadership to form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in 2013, but the letters reveal the earlier ideological divide between the separate factions of this extremist group. Bin Laden tells his followers to remember their morals and not attack Muslims, particularly at mosques and other crowded locations, as they will then resist following the strict religious rule that the group wanted to implement.

Story continues

ISIS, which has overtaken Al-Qaeda as leader of the global jihad, has announced the creation of a caliphate, seized large swathes of territory that it has been unable to hold onto, and published brutal images and videos that have shocked Western audiences, all things that bin Laden condemns in his letters.

Related Articles
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistani police are hunting a 29-year-old man who shot his two sisters dead in a suspected honor killing, officials said on Wednesday, two days after a Pakistani filmmaker won an Oscar for a documentary on such murders. More than 500 men and women died in honor killings last year, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says. Many of these crimes, carried out by relatives who say their mostly female victims have brought shame on the family, are never prosecuted, observers say. Police named the suspect as Muhammad Asif, saying he has been on the run since Tuesday night, after murdering his sisters Fozia Bibi, 22, and Suriya Bibi, 24, in the eastern province of Punjab. "Muhammad Asif killed his two sisters last night over their character and lifestyle, which he didn't like," police officer Tariq Mehmood told Reuters. "Fozia was shot in her chest and Suriya was shot in her waist." Police said neighbors and relatives had told them the deaths were honor killings, over Asif's suspicions that his sisters were having affairs. Police said Asif was jailed after having murdered his mother four or five years ago, but set free after being pardoned by his family, but declined to provide details. Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won an Oscar on Sunday for a documentary about honor killings, prompting activists to call for changes in laws to punish those who kill women deemed to have disgraced their families. Pakistani law allows criminal cases against those charged with a killing to be dropped if the families of their victims forgive them, or accept a "blood money" offering instead. The forgiveness option in the law can effectively waive a complainant's right to seek the punishment of the accused, even in the case of attempted murder. Changing the law to remove the possibility of "forgiveness" could help cut the number of honor killings in Pakistan. Domestic abuse, economic discrimination, honor killings and acid attacks make Pakistan the world's third most dangerous country for women, a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation poll showed. (Reporting by Amjad Ali; Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
By Greg Torode HONG KONG (Reuters) - The United States and China are risking a tit-for-tat escalation over the Paracel Islands as Beijing asserts its authority over one of its most tightly-held assets in the South China Sea and Washington challenges a growing military build-up. Both Chinese and foreign security experts say Beijing won't compromise over the Paracels, and it views its 42-year grip over the entire archipelago as significantly different to the more fragmented situation further south in the contentious Spratly Islands. China does not acknowledge the Paracels are disputed by neighbouring Vietnam, repeatedly ignoring Hanoi's requests for talks on the Paracels as part of broader territorial discussions and attempting to force them off the regional diplomatic agenda. "We're in for a difficult time...when it comes to the Paracels, China is not going to budge on what it sees as its absolute sovereign rights," said Zhang Baohui, a mainland security expert at Hong Kongs Lingnan University. "We could see China acting more swiftly and decisively to anything it sees as a so-called provocation in the Paracels." Since the U.S. navy dispatched a destroyer to sail close to the Paracels last month, China has established advanced surface-to-air missiles batteries and re-deployed fighter jets to the islands, prompting U.S.-led protests that Beijing is militarising the South China Sea. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying last week reiterated China's insistence that the islands were not in dispute, so Beijing could deploy what it wanted on its territory without reproach. The Paracels could not be considered part of the landmark declaration between China and Southeast Asian nations in 2002 that calls for peaceful resolution of disputes and self-restraint, she said. "We have stressed many times that there is no dispute that the Xisha islands are China's sovereign territory," she said, using China's name for the Paracels. VITAL WATERWAY The South China Sea is a vital trade route, linking the large economies of Northeast Asia with South Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Much of the focus has been on the Spratlys, where China's extensive reclamation and construction on reefs over the past two years is widely seen as presaging Beijing's first military installations deep in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia. But U.S. moves last month to send the USS Curtis Wilbur patrolling within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island put China's long-established occupation under scrutiny. U.S. officials privately acknowledge that China's military and civilian presence in the Paracels is more long standing than the Spratlys and that Washington had eyed previous deployments without going public with its concerns. But given rising regional and congressional concerns, Washington does not want to be seen as taking a soft stance towards any Chinese moves without protest and has promised more "freedom of navigation" patrols. [nL2N1651JV] U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday warned China against what he called "aggressive" actions in the region. "China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea," Carter said in San Francisco. "Specific actions will have specific consequences," he said, without elaborating. [nL2N1691YR] Carl Thayer, a security scholar at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said he was "simply amazed" by the recent U.S. patrol in the Paracels, which could complicate actions to challenge the newer risks posed by China's work in the Spratlys. "China's had effectively uncontested control of the Paracels since the 1970s, so they've been militarised for decades," he said. "I think China was really taken by surprise when they sent the Curtis Wilbur." U.S. and Vietnamese officials protested China's deployment of HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the Paracels, fearing a similar move on the Spratlys. [nL3N15X1HD] China occupied Woody Island in 1956 and took the rest of the archipelago when it drove off the navy of the then-South Vietnam in 1974. "The status quo in these two archipelagos is being changed," Vietnam foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said last week. "The more important and dangerous issue is the militarisation of the South China Sea and these are very serious issues." While many analysts and regional military attaches believe the recent missile and jet fighter deployments represent Beijing's own protest, some note its determination to better protect its expanding submarine fleet on Hainan Island. The fleet is expected include several nuclear armed submarines over the next few years, Pentagon surveys show, making Hainan at the core of Beijing's nuclear deterrent. (Additional reporting by Megha Rajagopalan, Michael Martina and Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Martin Petty in Hanoi and David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal in Washington.; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
The brewing animosity between House Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump ratcheted up considerably on Tuesday when the Wisconsin lawmaker ripped the GOP presidential frontrunner for not immediately disavowing former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.

Related: For GOP Contenders, the Final Battle to Stop Trump Starts Now

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill this morning, Ryan said that Super Tuesday is the kind of moment where we should be having a serious debate about the policies needed to restore the American idea. Instead, the conversation the last few days has been about white supremacist groups.

Ryan then shook his head and bit his lip.

As you know I try to stay out of the day-to-day, up-and-downs of the primary, but Ive also said when I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and as a country, I will speak up, he said. So today I want to be very clear about something: If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.

This party does not prey on peoples prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the Party of Lincoln, he said. We believe all people are created equal in the eyes of God and our government. This is fundamental, and if someone wants to be our nominee, they must understand this.

Related: If Trump Prevails, Conservatives Could Rip the GOP Apart

Ryan said he hopes this is the last time I need to speak out on this race."

Trump was asked on Sunday about support for his campaign from the KKK and David Duke. The reality TV star repeatedly said he "didn't know" enough about Duke or white supremacist groups to renounce them.

Later that day, Trump tweeted: As I stated at the press conference on Friday regarding David Duke- I disavow.

On Monday, Trump said he was unable to hear the question due to a bad earpiece. His GOP rivals and Democrats alike have pounced on that excuse to paint Trump, who is leading in most Super Tuesday polls, as an unapologetic bigot.

Story continues

While Ryans comments were unusually forceful for someone who prides himself as consensus-builder, they were just then latest in a series of dust-ups between him and Trump.

Related: In the Trump v. GOP Divorce Case, Who Gets to Keep the House?

In November, the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee said he couldnt imagine how Trumps plan to deport 12 million illegal immigrants out of the country would work. A few weeks later, Ryan broke his rule not to comment on the race for the White House when he condemned Trumps proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

This is not conservatism, Ryan said at the time.

The House Speaker, arguably one of the most high-profile faces of the GOP establishment, took it to Trump again in January when he picked South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (who has now endorsed Marco Rubio) to deliver the response to Obamas final State of the Union address. Haley took direct swipes at Trumps immigration policies, saying that "during anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.

Naturally, Trump has been willing to return fire, labeling the two-year budget deal Ryan helped craft with the White House as stupid.

At this point its unclear how the rift between the two could ever be repaired. The split could be another fracture in the Republican coalition, like the vow by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) that he wont vote for Trump come November.

For his part, Ryan said he still plans to support whoever the eventual GOP nominee is.

I never believe that our party is beyond the point of repair, he said.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
(Reuters) - A Pennsylvania Roman Catholic priest was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 16 years in prison for sexually abusing boys living in shelters for at-risk children in Honduras, a federal prosecutor said.

Joseph Maurizio Jr., 70, worked in the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, the central Pennsylvania diocese criticized for rampant child sex abuse in a grand jury report released on Tuesday.

While the report said hundreds of children were victimized by about 50 priests and that bishops covered up their actions, no criminal charges will be filed because the alleged incidents are too old to be prosecuted, authorities said.

After an eight-day trial, a federal jury convicted Maurizio in September of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places, possession of child pornography and international money laundering, U.S. Attorney David Hickton said in a news release.

Prosecutors said Maurizio created a charity that became the biggest donor to Pro Nino, a non-profit organization that provided shelter to poor and abandoned children living near San Pedro Sula, Honduras. During more than a dozen missionary trips to Honduras between 2004 and 2009, Maurizio sexually abused two boys living in the shelters, Hickton said.

At least once, he paid the boys to engage in sexual acts with him, the prosecutor said. He also kept digital images of child sexual exploitation, including images of his victims, Hickton said.

Maurizio was sentenced to 200 months in prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine and $10,000 in restitution to each victim.

His lawyer, Devin Misour of Pittsburgh, declined to comment.

(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Two government reform organizations today accused a mysterious Delaware-based company of violating federal campaign finance laws.

As first reported by the Center for Public Integrity, Decor Services LLC contributed $250,000 on Jan. 12 to America Leads, a super PAC that backed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies failed presidential bid.

Donald Simon, general counsel for Democracy 21, argued that this limited liability company could simply be an anonymous conduit for hiding the true source of the funds. Thats why, along with the Campaign Legal Center, the group has now asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the matter.

The only name connected to Decor Services LLC in public records is the Wilmington, Delaware-based Corporation Service Company, a firm that serves as a registered agent for thousands of corporate entities.

Adding to the mystery? Decor Services LLCs six-figure donation came just 16 days after the companys formation.

As the Center for Public Integrity has previously noted, limited liability companies formed in Delaware are essentially black boxes.

Certain limited liability companies have long been allowed to make limited donations directly to political candidates. But in such cases, a living, breathing human must be named as the source of the money.

At the federal level, LLCs cannot be used by individuals to evade campaign contribution limits.

This story is part of Buying of the President 2016. Tracking the candidates, political committees and nonprofits that are making this presidential election the most expensive in history. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Don't miss another Politics investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

Super PACs, however, have no contribution limits. And rules for politicking by corporations, including LLCs, have been loosened in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Courts Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in 2010.

Story continues

The result: an increased flow of money into federal politics from LLCs  with no additional disclosure about where the money is coming from.

Thanks to the FECs inaction, were seeing a growing trend of campaign donors skirting disclosure laws by hiding behind corporations to anonymously fund elections, Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. We call on the FEC to enforce the law. Otherwise, big super PAC donors face no consequences, while Americans have no way of knowing who is funding and influencing elections, including whether illegal foreign money is creeping into American elections.

Virginia-based consultant Tim Koch, treasurer of America Leads, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pro-Christie super PAC raised nearly $20 million before Christie dropped out of the GOP primary in early February.

Christie has since endorsed Republican Party presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

This story is part of Buying of the President 2016. Tracking the candidates, political committees and nonprofits that are making this presidential election the most expensive in history. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Related stories

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.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Public support for Hungary's ruling Fidesz party dipped in February, a poll by the Median institute said, after months of growing or stable backing boosted by the hardline handling of the migrant crisis. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's combative style has served him well since he swept back to power in 2010 with a large majority and he won a second four-year term in 2014 but disputed education reforms seem to be sapping his support, Median said. Orban reversed a slide in support for Fidesz last summer by taking an especially tough stance on migration, vowing to protect Hungary from an influx of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. By October, his government had built a razor wire fence on the border with Serbia and Croatia, which shifted the route of migrants southwards, and boosted Orban's support at home. However, the support declined in February according to a poll by Median published on Wednesday on website hvg.hu. Median said support for Fidesz among all voters dropped to 32 percent in February from 34 percent in January, while far right Jobbik increased to 16 percent from 14 and the Socialists rose to 10 percent from 9 percent. This is the first poll conducted by Median that recorded a drop in support for Fidesz since last summer. Backing among voters with a declared party preference for Fidesz dropped to 46 percent in February from 53 in January. "Something broke, but this does not mean that there is a big turnaround," Endre Hann, director of Median, told Reuters. He said there was discontent in society that manifested itself in the February poll, conducted between Feb. 19 and 23. Last month there were two big protests against reforms of the education system by Orban's rightwing government that many Hungarians consider oppressive and heavy-handed. "The movement of teachers registered with a wide segment of the population," Hann added. Another protest will be held on March 15, which is a national holiday in Hungary. A few days after the protests, Orban announced that Hungary will hold a referendum on European Union plans to create a system of quotas for migrants. Analysts said this would allow him to keep the issue of migration on the agenda. (Reporting by Krisztina Than)
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's opposition members of parliament on Wednesday ended a record-breaking filibuster to block an "anti-terrorism" bill sponsored by their conservative rivals, more than a week after they began taking turns making marathon speeches. The filibuster began on Tuesday evening last week, when the opposition took the floor to debate the bill backed by President Park Geun-hye that they say, if passed, will threaten freedom of communication and privacy. By the time it ended on Wednesday evening, 38 MPs had spoken for an average of five hours each, the longest for more than 12-1/2 hours without a break. The round-the-clock filibuster easily surpassed a 58-hour session by 103 members of Canada's New Democratic Party in 2011. Park's office in February called for parliament to pass the stalled security bill, part of tough action by her government amid heightened tension with North Korea following its nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch. The security bill proposes to set up a new anti-espionage unit reporting to the chief of the country's spy agency and will coordinate surveillance, analysis and investigation into leads that point to a possible attack. The opposition objects to greater power for the spy agency and seeks to scrap a bill provision that would authorize the intelligence agency to monitor private communications. Conservative ruling Saenuri party members, with 157 of the assembly's 293 seats, have expressed dismay that the speech-making is causing other bills to be delayed ahead of parliamentary elections due in April. The decision to end the filibuster came after some senior opposition party members expressed concern that they might be seen as holding up other bills. Some opposition MPs have come to tears during their speeches, while one of them sang and another read aloud from George Orwell's "1984," according to a South Korean newspaper. (Reporting by Jack Kim and Dahee Kim; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Paris (AFP) - They arrived in Europe as child refugees fleeing civil war and are now running one of France's coolest fashion labels.

But the young Georgian brothers behind the hip brand Vetements, whose new collection hits the Paris catwalk Thursday, have still bigger plans -- to revolutionise the way the fashion business works.

Designer Demna Gvasalia, 34, newly installed at the head of Balenciaga, is such a hyped talent that the rapper-turned-designer Kanye West last week threatened to poach him.

"I'm going to steal Demna from Balenciaga," he tweeted.

But days before Gvasalia unveiled his first collection for the venerable label so loved by Jackie Kennedy, his younger brother Guram, 30, who runs Vetements' business side, said their maverick way of working could be a model for the rest.

With the industry increasingly torn by a row over whether collections should go on sale as soon as they hit the catwalks, Guram Gvasalia told AFP that fashion needs to go still further and rethink itself to embrace rarity and luxury.

Vetements produces only two collections a year, he said, while the big houses produce six to eight which means clothes are only in the shops for a matter of weeks before the price is slashed in the sales.

"The industry is overproducing. If something goes on sale, it means it was overproduced.

"In order to make people want something, you need to make scarcity. The real definition of luxury is something that is scarce," he added.

"Every single piece in our collection is going to be a limited item... We don't restock and we don't reproduce -- if it's sold out, it's sold out."

Vetements -- which simply means "clothes" in French -- began as a collective of seven anonymous designers who also worked elsewhere until Demna Gvasalia stepped out of the shadows.

- Designers 'spat out' -

It made its name with oversized streetwear, cleverly juxtaposing cheap materials and luxury looks, with Gvasalia claiming his principle inspiration was riding the Metro through one of the roughest stretches of the French capital.

Story continues

Yet his brother said the pressure to turn out so many collections was also impacting on creativity.

"Designers are human beings. Creative people need time... The big groups, they don't care about this. They take a designer... (and) the corporate machine eats them up and spits them out. And then, there's a new one.

"Of course I care for my brother, he's a very creative person but it's a lot a pressure, and I don't want to force him to do four collections for us, on top of his collections for Balenciaga," Guram Gvasalia added.

Instead he said he wanted to see only two shows a year, with Paris fashion weeks moved from March to January and to September to June.

"I want to have the solution that is not only just good for me, I want to have the solution that is good for every single brand that shows," he said.

As a part of this radical change, Vetements are already combining men and women's wear in their latest show.

"Today there are no genders anymore," claimed Gvasalia, who grew up with his brother in Germany after fleeing their homeland as civil war raged in the early 1990s.

"Today you can choose what you want to be. The clothes have the gender, not the people who wear them."

France and Italy's fashion federations are doggedly resisting American attempts to reorganise the catwalk calendar so the public can buy clothes as soon as they hit the catwalks.

Instead of the autumn-winter shows taking place in the spring as happens now, New York wants them to be staged "in season" at the beginning of each autumn, with spring-summer collections following suit.

But Gvasalia said the row over the switch to a "see now, buy now" system is only part of the problem.

"With Demna, we've been through war, we've been through so many things in life, we saw really bad things. And once you've seen bad things, the fashion industry is (about) having fun. You start to appreciate life differently," he said.

Life as a refugee and their mixed background has taught them to think in a different way.

"We are a mix of eight nationalities and three religions: we have a grandmother who is Jewish, a grandfather who is Muslim, and a father who is Christian. When someone asks me where my home is I cannot really say," Gvasalia said.
By Ayla Jean Yackley ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The release of two prominent Turkish journalists following a ruling by Turkey's top court that their rights had been violated is a "clear defeat" for President Tayyip Erdogan, one of them said on Wednesday. Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, and his colleague Erdem Gul were freed last Friday after the constitutional court ruled their detention was "unlawful" and violated their individual freedom and safety. The two journalists, who still face trial and potential life sentences, were arrested in November and charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security. Their detention has deepened concerns about media freedom in Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union. Erdogan says the case is not about press freedom but about espionage and says he does not respect the court ruling. Cumhuriyet published photos, videos and a report last year that it said showed intelligence officials trucking arms to Syria in 2014. "Erdogan is having trouble accepting the ruling because this was a clear defeat for him. We have a president who is not accustomed to defeat," Dundar said at a news conference. Dundar also said he would defy an order to surrender his passport and would attempt to travel overseas. The court's decision, which affirmed Dundar and Gul were acting as journalists, should pave the way for an acquittal at a first hearing on March 25, Dundar said, but added it was unclear how the judiciary would now act after Erdogan's intervention. "DIRTY BARGAINING" Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a close ally of Erdogan, echoed the president's remarks on the case on Wednesday, saying the court ruling should not affect the journalists' trial. "It is wrong for the constitutional court to see itself as the primary court and intervene in the whole judicial process," Davutoglu told a news conference, adding that the case was about revealing state secrets and espionage. Advocates of free speech criticized the government's stance. "The words Mr Erdogan used ... is setting up a climate of intimidation and even threats against journalists. What he does is really dangerous," said Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders.. Dundar chided the EU for failing to press Turkey over basic rights, saying Brussels was too focused on securing Ankara's cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe. "While we were in prison, there was bargaining going on over money for refugees. We see this as dirty bargaining to keep refugees off European territory," he said. "It appears Europe is willing to concede its long-term principles for short-term gains." (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Gareth Jones)
March 2, 2016: This story has been corrected and updated.

In the final two weeks before Super Tuesday, Republican super PACs coalesced, airing roughly 8,500 ads blasting GOP front-runner Donald Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of new data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG.

The ad blitz, however, may be too little, too late. Trumps Republican rivals have been slow to attack him and only recently have singled him out on the airwaves.

I dont think [Republicans] saw him as a true threat, said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. He breaks the mold of what weve seen in the past 50 years.

Super Tuesdays GOP nominating contests in 12 states came after a three-state winning streak for Trump. His streak continued when he won in seven states and added an expected 234 delegates to his grand total. Trumps success heightens anxiety among the Republican establishment wing that once doubted his ascendance.

People are starting to panic, said Johanna Dunaway, a political science professor at Texas A&M University. So now, you see the efforts to try to stop his path to nomination.

This spending frenzy will likely persist, especially after the real estate moguls Super Tuesday haul.

Following last nights results, Ridout said its too soon to say if the ads slowed Trumps momentum, though he said he is noticing more criticism of Trump.

In order to successfully take him down, you need a coherent counter narrative  a way to define him other than the way hes defined himself, Ridout said.

The week going into Super Tuesday, 64 percent of negative or so-called contrast ads were anti-Trump. Conservative Solutions PAC  a super PAC supporting Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida  waged a $4.5 million anti-Trump campaign in just the past week, according to federal campaign finance filings.

Ahead of Super Tuesday, Conservative Solutions PAC saturated the TV airwaves, launched digital ads and even turned to the mobile messaging application Snapchat.

Story continues

At a rally in Georgia on Saturday, attendees could use a Snapchat geofilter location-based images that overlay photos or video  to don a virtual red cap similar to Trumps signature Make America Great Again hat, which was instead emblazoned with the words Stop the Con Artist.

Related: Presidential ads hit Super Tuesday states

This story is part of Buying of the President 2016. Tracking the candidates, political committees and nonprofits that are making this presidential election the most expensive in history. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Don't miss another Politics investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email.

Conservative Solutions PAC reserved more than 4,500 spots that hounded Trump during the past week, according to Kantar Media/CMAG data. One ad titled Know Nothing slams Trump for not immediately disavowing the endorsement of David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Katie Packer, a former Mitt Romney campaign staffer, established a super PAC solely dedicated to discrediting Trump. Formed days before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, Our Principles PAC has spent about $4.4 million on anti-Trump ad barrages that cast him as a liberal.

For Super Tuesday, it aired anti-Trump spots nine times nationally, spending just over $400,000.

Also targeting Trump is Club for Growth and American Future Fund  two conservative outside groups that have spent millions of dollars in recent elections.

Club for Growth aired nearly 1,000 ads ahead of Super Tuesday.

Meanwhile, American Future Fund  a group with ties to conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch  released three ads this week featuring former Trump University students who say they were scammed and forced into debt by Trumps educational endeavor, which is now facing lawsuits in New York and California.

I was trumped by Trump, said one ex-Trump University student over a melancholy piano tune. I was duped by the Donald.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Stand for Truth  a super PAC supporting Cruz  took jabs at Trump as well. Together they aired hundreds of ads critical of Trump.

The anti-Trump ads do not come without retaliation. Trump assailed Super Tuesday states in the South with more than 3,000 ads since Feb. 22.

So will the sustained barrage of anti-Trump ads slow the candidate's momentum?

A sustained coordinated effort could definitely knock him down a notch or two, said Ridout of the Wesleyan Media Project. Is that enough for someone else to come in to prevent him from a nomination? Perhaps.

Michael Beckel contributed to this report.



This story was co-published with TIME.

Correction, March 2, 2016, 1:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this story reported that 6,000 anti-Trump ads were aired in the two weeks prior to Super Tuesday. Super PACs and candidates aired about 8,500 ads.

This story is part of Buying of the President 2016. Tracking the candidates, political committees and nonprofits that are making this presidential election the most expensive in history. Click here to read more stories in this investigation.

Related stories

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.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Too many crimes, including torture, disappearances and killings, go uninvestigated in Mexico, which is suffering a "serious crisis of violence and impunity," the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IACHR) said on Wednesday. In a new report, the IACHR highlighted repeated failures to get to the bottom of some 27,000 disappearances registered in Mexico as of 2015, as well abuses of power by police and the armed forces in the fight against the country's drug gangs. The report, which also acknowledged that Mexico has made progress on judicial reforms, followed a government announcement this week about the deaths of five young Mexicans targeted by suspected gang henchmen. Their remains were ground up after they were mistaken for members of a rival cartel in the eastern state of Veracruz. The Mexican government criticized the IACHR report, arguing it did not reflect the "general situation" in the country. IACHR experts last year condemned the government's account of the 2014 disappearance of 43 trainee teachers in the southwestern city of Iguala, a crime that sparked outrage and battered President Enrique Pena Nieto's reputation. Pena Nieto has pledged to tackle longstanding failings of the Mexican justice system, but the IACHR report said "the state's response is still insufficient to deal with this serious crisis of violence and impunity." "Unfortunately, there's a gap between what the law says and the reality. Somebody needs to take responsibility for changing the practices," said IACHR commissioner James Cavallaro, adding the commission was shocked by the impunity it found in Mexico. "It's like there was no interest in looking for the perpetrators and solving the crimes," he said. In a statement, the government denied there was a "human rights crisis" in Mexico. It said the report was based on premises and assessments the administration did not agree with. Furthermore, the government argued the IACHR's findings were not objective or well founded. "The Mexican state is constantly working to deal with the causes and consequences of violence in the country caused by crime, to guarantee security, to protect, promote, respect and guarantee human rights and improve access to justice," it said. More than 120,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since former President Felipe Calderon sent in the army to take on the gangs in late 2006. As the gangs fragmented, many increasingly focused on extortion, kidnapping and human trafficking. (Reporting by Anahi Rama; Editing by Tom Brown)
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Former King Michael of Romania will withdraw from public life because of illness at age 94 and will be represented in future by his eldest daughter Margaret, the royal house said on Wednesday. Michael, a cousin of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, was forced to abdicate in 1947 after the post-war Communist takeover of Romania and has lived in exile in the West for decades. He recently underwent surgery for leukemia and cancer and will follow a course of treatment that will rule out further public appearances, royal council member Andrew Popper said. "In the last weeks I have received news of a serious medical diagnosis," Michael said in a statement. "I am certain that my daughter Margaret will find the wisdom and strength to represent me and carry out all my public actions." Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and other politicians expressed concern for Michaels health and said they hoped his family would continue to embody hope for Romanians. There is no popular demand for a restoration of the Balkan state's monarchy but Romanians respect Michael as a historic figurehead as they have grown increasingly disillusioned with a political class perceived as corrupt. Born in 1921 in Peles castle in the Carpathian mountains, Michael as king played a big part in Romania's change of course during World War Two, participating in a 1944 coup against fascist leader Marshal Ion Antonescu, after which Romania broke with Nazi Germany and switched to the Allied side. After communism collapsed, politicians fearing Michael's influence blocked his first few attempted visits after decades of exile in Switzerland, Britain and the United States. Michael, also a descendant of Germany's old Hohenzollern dynasty, finally returned to Romania in 1992. Since 2004, he and his wife, Queen Anne, have been living in Aubonne, Switzerland. Princess Margaret and her husband live in Romania. (Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
The California-based cosmetics brand Urban Decay  known for its cult-favorite Naked palettes  is all about cool girls and edgy makeup, which makes the announcement of their brand-new ambassador absolutely perfect. The girl in question? Ruby Rose, the tattooed Aussie actress who broke out in season three of Netflix's Orange Is the New Black.

Read More: A Few Lessons Learned From Cate Blanchett at SK-II's Beauty Event

But true to Urban Decay form, theyre not calling Rose their spokesperson or face. The job description shes signed on for is Most Addictive New Vice. In a release, the brand explains: "When Ruby Rose hit the scene, we were immediately hooked: with her badass look, fk it attitude and playful spirit, she nails what it means to be feminine, dangerous and fun."

Surely there are many more who are already obsessed with the actress, who also stars in Denim & Supply Ralph Lauren's spring campaign. "Urban Decay believes in supporting individuality and personal self-expression  two values I hold very dear  because everyone deserves the freedom to explore their personality and discover their true selves," Rose said in the release. If the first image of Rose is any indication, we expect great  and perhaps dangerous  things to come of this partnership.

See More: See All the Looks from the Vanity Fair Oscar Party
aleppo rubble assad regime air strike

A cessation of hostilities agreement in Syria, brokered by the US and Russia, officially came into effect last Saturday.

Though violence has not stopped, it has "plummeted," according to AFP's Beirut correspondent Maya Gebeily. The number of airstrikes has also reportedly dropped from around 100 to about six to eight per day, Reuters reported, citing a Western diplomat.

Russia, which launched a bombing campaign on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back in September, said it would halt airstrikes for 24 hours. It was meant to ensure that no groups included in the agreement  which applies to most moderate, anti-Assad rebel factions  were accidentally targeted.

But opposition activists in rebel-held areas say Russia is still bombing them, despite Moscow's claim that it would only target areas controlled by Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State  jihadist groups excluded from the peace plan and considered fair game for airstrikes.

The New York Times' Moscow correspondent Neil MacFarquhar noted last week that the exclusion of ISIS and Al-Nusra is a "gaping loophole" that Russia will likely exploit to continue bombing rebel-held areas under the pretense of attacking terrorists  just as it has been since intervening in late September.

And Syria expert Aron Lund, editor of the Carnegie Endowment's Syria in Crisis blog, noted on Monday that "the devil is, as always, in the details."

"Islamic State territory is fairly well delineated, as the group is at war with everyone else in Syria, but the Nusra Front will be a harder nut to crack," Lund writes. "The group has embedded itself deep within the broader Syrian opposition, and it is a mainstay of opposition forces in the Idlib-Hama region and certain areas around Aleppo."

Story continues

Jabhat al Nusra Syria Islamist Fighter

Incidentally, the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC), an umbrella group encompassing many of Syria's more mainstream rebel groups, claimed on Tuesday that regime forces and/or Russian warplanes have attacked rebel-held positions in Idlib, Hama, Damascus, Homs, Quneitra, and Daraa since Saturday.

"If the Nusra Front continues to fight, and the Syrian and Russian governments continue to attack locations where Nusra jihadists are said to be present, how is a ceasefire supposed to hold?" Lund asks.

The Institute for the Study of War mapped Russia's airstrikes before and after the agreement took effect. The maps showed that while Russia's bombing campaign has slowed, its warplanes have continued to aggressively target rebel-held positions northwest of Syria's largest city, Aleppo.

russianairstrikes

The recent push by Assad's forces  backed by Russian air cover and Iran-backed Shi'ite militias  to cut off rebel supply lines from Turkey into Aleppo has resulted in some of the most significant battlefield gains for the regime since the Syrian civil war war erupted in 2011.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault addressed these accusations in a press conference on Monday.

"We have received indications that attacks, including by air, have been continuing against zones controlled by the moderate opposition," Ayrault told reporters at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, according to Reuters.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault reacts at the 31st Session of the Human Rights Council at the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, February 29, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

He then "demanded" that the task force charged with overseeing the cessation of hostilities "meet without delay" to resolve the disputes.

The Russian Ministry of Defense, for its part, said that both moderate and terrorist opposition factions had violated the agreement repeatedly since Saturday's truce.

"According to the Chief of the Russian center for reconciliation of opposing sides in Syria Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko, in the course of 24 hours, 9 events of the ceasefire violation were registered," the ministry wrote on its Facebook page.

Major world powers took part in a meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in early February to announce the terms of the plan, which was to be implemented with the help of two task forces focused on providing humanitarian aid to besieged cities and creating modalities to end the violence.

NOW WATCH: A Navy SEAL's advice on how to choose the best workout





More From Business Insider


Moscow (AFP) - Russia's state prosecutor on Wednesday demanded a 23-year prison sentence for Ukrainian pilot and lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko who is accused of killing two Russian journalists in war-torn Ukraine.

One of Savchenko's lawyers, Mark Feigin, told AFP the prosecution had also requested she pay a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,350/1,250 euros).

After more than a year in detention, the aviator was put in the dock last summer in the small southern Russian town of Donetsk, on the border with conflict-torn Ukraine.

The trial is now drawing to a close and Savchenko is expected to make her last address to the court on Thursday.

Two journalists from Russian public broadcaster VGTRK -- Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin -- died in shelling on June 17, 2014, in Ukraine's Lugansk region.

Russian prosecutors say Savchenko was involved in the killing in her capacity as a volunteer in a Ukrainian battalion.

Wearing a traditional embroidered Ukrainian shirt, the pilot reiterated her innocence, saying she was a Ukrainian officer and had every right to defend her homeland.

She said the management of the broadcasting company they worked and the Russian authorities should be blamed for their death.

"If they wore helmets and flak jackets, they would have remained alive," she said in remarks provided by her defence teams.

She also threatened resume a hunger strike -- refusing both food and water -- if the judge took more than two weeks to prepare and announce the verdict.

- 'You won't break me' -

"You would deliver the verdict posthumously, without me," an emotional Savchenko told the court in Russia.

"You have not broken me and will never break me."

Savchenko -- who was elected to Ukraine's parliament while in custody -- refused food for more than 80 days to protest her detention. She broke off her hunger strike last March because of severe health problems.

Kiev accuses Russia of kidnapping and smuggling the aviator across the border, and the Ukraine prosecutor's office said last year it suspected six Russian officials of taking part in her detention and prosecution.

Story continues

Savchenko is seen by her compatriots as a symbol of resistance against what most Ukrainians consider an insurgency fuelled by the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Her politically-charged case has drawn criticism from Ukraine's backers in the West and has sparked further tensions between Moscow and Kiev.

Few doubt that Savchenko's fate will be decided in the Kremlin, and Western leaders as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko have called on Putin to let her go.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A prosecutor asked a Russian court on Wednesday to jail Ukrainian military pilot Nadezhda Savchenko for 23 years, saying she was guilty of complicity in killing two Russian journalists reporting on the fighting in east Ukraine, Russian media reported. The 34-year-old's plight and defiant stance in captivity have made her a national hero for many in Ukraine, where she is considered a political prisoner. The West, as well as rights groups, have repeatedly called on Moscow to free her. Prosecutors allege that in June 2014, Savchenko, who had transferred from the air force to fight with Ukrainian ground forces, helped to direct the fire of Ukrainian artillery in the Luhansk region where a shell killed two Russian television reporters. Savchenko has gone on a hunger strike while in captivity and has denied any wrongdoing. She says she was spirited into Russia by Moscow-backed rebels after being captured in a day-long battle in June, 2014. (Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Christian Lowe)
London (AFP) - Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell came under renewed scrutiny on Wednesday over its environmental record in Nigeria after lawyers brought fresh claims of damage caused by spills to a London court.

British legal firm Leigh Day has filed two cases at the High Court in a bid to force the Anglo-Dutch energy major to clean up damage caused in the communities of Ogale and Bille in the Niger Delta, Nigeria's main oil-producing region, and provide compensation.

In Bille, the lawyers hope to prove that Shell is liable for failing to protect its pipelines from damage caused by third parties, which, they said, could mark a "significant expansion" in the firm's liability.

A 2011 report by the United Nations Environment Programme found that decades of oil pollution in Ogoniland region, where Ogale is located, may require the world's biggest ever clean-up.

Leigh Day says that Shell, historically Nigeria's largest producer, has failed to act on the report despite its promises -- a claim that was also levelled last year by Amnesty International.

The lawyers argued in a press statement that the 40,000-strong Ogale community continues to live with "chronic levels" of land and water pollution, which has had a devastating impact on its farming and fishing.

In hearings expected to take place later this year, Shell will argue that the two cases should be heard in Nigeria, not in Britain, according to a spokesman for the company's Nigerian subsidiary, SPDC.

He added that both Bille and Ogale are areas "heavily impacted" by oil theft, sabotage and illegal refining, activities which Shell has long argued are the main causes of pollution in the Niger Delta.

In Ogoniland, he said the company was acting on the UN report through an 18-month clean-up and remediation programme agreed last year with the Nigerian government and community members.

Chima Williams, of Environmental Rights Action (ERA)/Friends of the Environment, a Nigerian environmental rights lobby group, said the response to the UN report did not address the issue of compensation.

Story continues

"This is why the London suit is very important at this point. It will bridge the gap in terms of helping the people of Ogoniland to get off the ground and have their lives back," he told AFP.

Shell agreed in January 2015 to pay more than $80 million to the Nigerian fishing community of Bodo for two serious oil spills in 2008, following a three-year legal battle brought by Leigh Day in London.

A Dutch court also ruled in December that four Nigerian farmers demanding compensation and a clean-up in four heavily-polluted Niger Delta villages can bring a case against the energy giant in the Netherlands.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German industrial group Siemens signed an energy agreement with Iranian power and infrastructure group Mapna, it said on Wednesday, extending its early re-entry into the country after the lifting of sanctions. Siemens was the first major German company to agree a deal with Iran this year, signing a memorandum of understanding to work on Iran's rail infrastructure worth up to 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in early January. Mapna will acquire the technology to manufacture Siemens F-class gas turbines in Iran and the two parties will cooperate to deliver more than 20 gas turbines and associated generators over the next decade. "With these important agreements we reinstall the long-term energy partnership between Mapna and Siemens," said Siemens Chief Executive Joe Kaeser, who witnessed the signing during a visit of Iranian Energy Minister Hamid Chitchian in Berlin. Kaeser visited Iran last week and said Siemens wanted to pick up where it left off in Iran, where it had been present since 1868 but stopped doing new business in 2010. As a first project under the energy deal, Siemens will deliver two F-class gas turbines and generators for a power plant in the southern port of Bandar Abbas, with the first unit due to be shipped shortly. Siemens also signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop a roadmap with Mapna to expand and improve Iran's overall power and electricity system. ($1 = 0.9212 euros) (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Christoph Steitz and David Holmes)
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - A Slovak woman returning from South America was confirmed as the first case of the Zika virus in the country, Slovak Health Minister Viliam Cislak said on Wednesday. The World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil an international health emergency on Feb. 1, although much about the virus remains unknown. "Test results of the patient hospitalized with a suspected Zika virus last week in Presov, eastern Slovakia, were positive," Cislak told reporters. "The patient is in good health and does not require further treatment," he said. The first two cases of the mosquito-borne Zika virus were confirmed last week in the neighboring Czech Republic, in a man returning from Martinique and a woman who traveled to the Dominican Republic. Much remains unclear about the virus, including whether it causes microcephaly in babies, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems. (Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Clover Industries will no longer invest in Nigeria due to a financial crisis there, the dairy products company said on Wednesday. "The current financial crisis experienced in Nigeria which is fuelled by the low oil price is a further cause of concern, thus the group has decided to withdraw from future investments in Nigeria," Clover said in a statement. Companies have laid off thousands, cut production and even closed operations as they struggle to get enough dollars to pay for imported spare parts and raw materials. The Nigerian naira had devalued following a slump in oil revenues, the country's lifeblood. "It's a sad decision but until the currency crisis is resolved we wont be able to invest in there any further," Chief Executive Johann Vorster told Reuters. Clover had planned to invest no less that 100 million rand ($6.43 million) in developing its products in Nigeria, he said. The company said it would continue to expand in Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. He added that the company would like to keep the Clover brand alive through its Tropika juices. South African fashion retailer Truworths said this month it pulled out if its Nigerian business saying it was unable to import clothes and was struggling to pay rent and access foreign exchange. Clover on Wednesday posted a 7 percent rise in first-half profits due to a higher demand for its milk products and as a heatwave in southern Africa caused consumers to reach for its juices and bottled water. Headline earnings per share, a main gauge of profit in South Afica that strips out certain one-off items, for the six months to December totalled 117 cents from 109.2 cents in the previous year. Vorster said Clover was on the prowl for acquisitions which it would fund through its balance sheet, adding that the firm could go to investors for cash "if needs be". ($1 = 15.5603 rand) (Reporting by Zandi Shabalala; Editing by Kim Coghill)
A new documentary takes viewers inside the International Space Station to experience a year in space alongside NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who is just finishing his stay on the orbiting complex.

The hourlong PBS-Time Magazine documentary, "A Year in Space," airs on PBS at 8 p.m. EST Wednesday (March 2), the day after Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth to wrap up their landmark 340-day space mission. Check local listings for the exact time in your area.

The film covers Kelly's journey from launch to landing day. Incorporating footage from the astronaut's return to Earth will be no easy feat; Kelly and Kornienko are landing in a remote area of Kazakhstan, after all. But the filmmakers have experience with time crunches; they were able to include near-real-time footage of the July 2015 Pluto flyby by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, and the landing of Europe's Philae probe on a comet in November 2014. [Welcome Home! Landing Photos for 1-Year Astronaut Scott Kelly]

"But this is really in some ways different because it is the completion of a chronicle that we've been telling for a long time," PBS producer Bill Margol told Space.com.

A unique collaboration

The PBS-Time collaboration began when Margol got wind of Time's plan for the one-year mission, which is aimed at collecting data that will help pave the way for crewed missions to Mars.

The magazine planned to do a series of digital shorts with several staff members, including Jeffrey Kluger, an editor and writer at Time who is perhaps best known for co-writing the book "Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13" (Houghton Mifflin, 1994) with Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell.

"When Scott Kelly originally signed up to do this mission, our editors and writers at the time were very interested [in covering it]," Ian Orefice, senior executive producer of Time Inc. Video, told Space.com.

Initially, the plan was to do a one-off video story on Kelly, but when the producers visited Kelly and saw the interaction with his own family, "we realized there was a much bigger opportunity," Orefice said. Time committed to do a series of digital shorts, and PBS then signed on to bring a two-part documentary to a television audience.

Story continues

An insider's look

The documentary that premieres Wednesday night is the first installment of this two-part series. Part one features Kelly's time on the space station, showing footage that even obsessive followers of NASA TV haven't seen.

For example, there are several moments of video showing Kelly's spacecraft catching up to the International Space Station. Inside the spacecraft, Kelly, Kornienko and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka joke about how long the mission will be. "Don't remind me," one spaceflyer moans in Russian.

There also are long camera shots showing astronauts floating through the different modules of the station, which has been continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000. Kelly does interviews with the camera, occasionally pausing for a crewmember to go by to do his or her work.

Several television interviews with Kelly are shown on camera, and Kelly also provides some exclusive narration for the documentary that he recorded before and after he left the ground. Also participating are his long-time partner, NASA public affairs officer Amiko Kauderer; Kelly's two daughters; his identical twin, Mark, himself a former NASA astronaut (who is participating in the year-in-space mission as a genetic control for Scott); and Mark Kelly's wife, Gabrielle Giffords, (a former Democratic congresswoman from Arizona).

"It's the longest long-distance relationship in the history of mankind," Orefice said of Kelly's relationship to his family. Throughout the mission, Scott Kelly has stayed in touch through phone calls. Kauderer records videos of the things Kelly misses on Earth, such as rainstorms.

"It's pushing the boundaries of manned exploration," Orefice added, "and whether we could go to Mars. We just thought it was an amazing digital opportunity for a documentary."

The second part of the documentary, which is scheduled to air in 2017, will focus on Scott Kelly's recovery, as well as the science gathered during his time in space.

"A Year in Space" will air at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT on PBS on March 2. To learn more about the documentary, visit: http://www.pbs.org/a-year-in-space/home/.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace, or Space.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on 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.
DAKAR (Reuters) - French forces killed a Spaniard working as an al Qaeda commander in northern Mali during a military operation against the group this week, a Spanish intelligence firm and security sources said. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that emerged from Algeria's civil war, has stepped up a regional insurgency in West Africa, claiming two hotel attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso's capitals since November that killed at least 50 people. U.S. Africa Command calls it the world's "most enduring" extremist group and a U.S. commander warned last month it could strengthen further. "The death of (Abu al-Nur al-Andalusi) happened during an attack by French forces on a meeting of al Qaeda members in northern Mali," AICS, a Spain-based intelligence company said in a statement sent to Reuters on Wednesday, citing local sources. The firm's CEO Salvador Burguet described al-Nur as a 35-year-old from Melilla, an autonomous Spanish enclave in north Africa. For at least the past year he has been leading a Katiba, or brigade, made up of around 25 fighters in the desert area north of Timbuktu, Burguet said. Two other security officials in Mali confirmed al-Nur's death, adding two French operations were made in the Gao and Timbuktu regions earlier this week. It was not clear how many other militants were killed. Spain's Foreign Ministry said they did not have information on the case and French defense officials declined to comment. Al-Nur has been involved in a number of attacks against the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country, known as MINUSMA. An AQIM video in September showed a smiling al-Nur, wearing sun-glasses, encouraging others to join militants in Mali in Spanish, according to a video released by the SITE global intelligence agency. He then boards a truck with a group of fighters to ambush a U.N. vehicle and begins firing bullets into an apparently lifeless pile of bodies. The U.N. said at least six Burkinabe soldiers were killed in that attack. Separately, MINUSMA said six peacekeepers were wounded on Tuesday when their vehicle hit a landmine in northern Mali. French forces intervened in northern Mali in 2013 to drive out Islamic militants from urban centers but scattered bands of fighters remain in desert areas. France is the largest Western power involved in fighting insurgents in the arid Sahel region, with around 3,500 troops based there. (Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Paul Day in Madrid, Adama Diarra in Bamako and Marine Pennetier in Paris; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla./ALMATY (Reuters) - NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth on Wednesday after nearly a year on the International Space Station, the longest U.S. space mission on record, intended to pave the way for human travel to Mars. A Soyuz capsule carrying Kelly, Kornienko and Sergey Volkov, another Russian cosmonaut, made a parachute landing on the steppe near the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan at 10:26 a.m. (2326 GMT), about 3-1/2 hours after departing the station. Kelly and Kornienko have been aboard the space station for 340 days, about twice as long as previous crews. Their flight sets a record for the space station and for the longest U.S. space mission. Volkov, who has been in space for 5-1/2 months, was the first to emerge from the capsule, to be greeted by his father Alexander Volkov, also a cosmonaut. Kelly, extracted next, waved his hand energetically and smiled before beginning a satellite telephone conversation. In their nearly year-long stay in space, Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, have been the subjects of dozens of medical experiments and science studies trying to learn more about how the human body adjusts to weightlessness and the high-radiation environment of space. The research aims to help the U.S. space agency and its partners develop plans for eventual human missions to Mars that will last at least two years. Kelly and his identical twin brother Mark, a former NASA astronaut, are also participating in genetic studies, the first to assess if genetic changes occur during long spaceflights. Kellys 340-day mission eclipses the previous U.S. record-long spaceflight of 215 days, set by former astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria aboard the space station in 2007. The worlds longest missions were carried out by four Soviet-era cosmonauts aboard the now-defunct Mir space station, including a flight from January 1994 to March 1995, spanning nearly 438 days by record holder Valeri Polyakov, a physician. The International Space Station, a joint project of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, followed Mir and has been permanently staffed by rotating crews since 2000. About the size of a five-bedroom house, the $100-billion station flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. (Reporting by Irene Klotz and Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Grant McCool and Clarence Fernandez)
Stoke-on-Trent (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Newcastle United were plunged deeper into relegation trouble on Wednesday when a late goal from Xherdan Shaqiri allowed Stoke City to claim a 1-0 home win.

The defeat left Steve McClaren's side second from bottom of the Premier League and their night wasn't helped by seeing fellow strugglers Swansea snatch a shock 2-1 win at Arsenal to move six points clear of the drop zone.

Swiss international Shaqiri's goal came 10 minutes from time when his long-range shot, set-up by Mame Diouf, managed to evade Rob Elliot in the Newcastle goal.

It could have got worse for Newcastle, who have now lost six successive away games in the top flight, when Marko Arnautovic hit the crossbar in injury time but the three points comfortably left Stoke in the top half of the table.

In a rousing finish, Stoke goalkeeper Jack Butland kept out a Seydou Doumbia attempt with a fine one-handed save.

Newcastle were playing for the first time since their 5-1 thumping at Chelsea last month.

McClaren's side were whisked off to Spain for some winter sun training which was in stark contrast to the freezing rain which swept across Britannia Stadium on Wednesday.

Jonjo Shelvey took over the captaincy after Fabricio Coloccini was ruled out through injury while Jamaal Lascelles was handed just a second Premier League start.

In contrast, Mark Hughes named the same team which won 2-1 against Aston Villa at the weekend.

To add to Stoke's joy, former England striker Peter Crouch came on as a substitute to make his 400th Premier League appearance.

Stoke were on top for large parts of the first half with Elliot twice having to thwart the dangerous Shaqiri.

Moussa Sissoko had Newcastle's best opportunity from a rare attack but Geoff Cameron slid in with a final tackle.

Stoke continued to dominate after the interval but were breathing a sigh of relief when Butland kept out Doumbia from Shelvey's cross in the dying seconds.
By Kieran Guilbert NOUAKCHOTT (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Terrified of being dragged out of university and thrown into civil war like many of his fellow students, 23-year-old Amer fled Syria, hoping for a new life free of suffering and strife. Amer escaped to Lebanon in May 2013 - two years into the conflict - before flying to join his father in the West African nation of Mauritania, one of the few Arabic-speaking countries to allow Syrians to enter and move freely. But life in Nouakchott, the capital of the poor, mainly Muslim nation, has been a deep disappointment to the young refugee. "I left my studies, my family and my life behind for nothing - there is no life here," said Amer, slumped in a chair on the patio of a local community center in the sweltering midday heat. "I wish I could have returned to Syria... I would have suffered, but it would be better than suffering here," added the former management student, sitting next to his father Tiseer. Amer and Tiseer are among the thousands of Syrians to have arrived in Nouakchott since the war in Syria erupted in 2011, most having flown to the country from Lebanon or Turkey. While Syria's neighbors have become overwhelmed with refugees, other Arab countries like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have enforced visa restrictions on Syrians and Europe has tightened its land borders, Mauritania has kept its doors open. The West African nation has a small but growing number of Syrians seeking refuge, yet most of the arrivals see the country as a stop-gap or gateway to Europe, rather than a new home. The majority cross the border to Mali and head through the Sahel on long, dangerous journeys, often with people smugglers. Many go to Libya and Tunisia before setting off across the Mediterranean on perilous boat journeys to Italy, or apply for asylum in the North African Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. "Mauritania is not the ideal destination for Syrians... in fact it is often their last resort," said International Organisation of Migration (IOM) representative Anke Strauss. "HERE, LIFE IS HELL" While Syrians who stay in Nouakchott have been welcomed, due to a common language in Arabic and sympathy over the war, many complain of a lack of work, and poor education and healthcare. Many former professionals, including architects, doctors and lawyers, work in restaurants to eke out a living, said United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) representative Mohamed Alwash. "Syrians in Mauritania feel like they are stuck in limbo. They struggle to adapt to the culture, and to poorer living conditions and quality of life than they once enjoyed in Syria". Outside the community center, traffic and traders pushing vegetable carts inch down crowded, dusty streets strewn with litter. The Syrians describe the ramshackle city of more than one million inhabitants as "hot, dull, bleak and lifeless." Tiseer, who worked as a laborer in Syria's capital Damascus before fleeing in 2011 and arrived in Mauritania after being denied entry to Tunisia, does odd construction jobs but said bogus contracts and disputes meant he often did not get paid. The 50-year-old refugee said as neither his heart condition nor the post-conflict trauma suffered by his son Amer could be treated in Nouakchott, they were often too ill to work, and not strong enough to attempt the journey across the Sahel. "Life in Syria before the conflict - with my family, my car and secure work - was paradise. Here, it is hell," added Tiseer, who did not give his full name for fear of retribution towards his wife and seven other children who are still in Syria. The UNHCR helps Syrian refugees and asylum seekers to access education and healthcare, offers psycho-social counseling and provides cash grants towards schooling, health and food costs. But for some families such as Mohammed, a former mason who says he cannot work due to health problems, his wife Amal and their three children, such support is not enough. "We only receive $50 per month... we rely on food from our neighbors to get by," said Mohammed, who also asked not to be identified as his family fled Syria in 2014 to avoid compulsory military service for their eldest son. DREAMING OF THE WEST The number of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in Mauritania has increased tenfold to 340 since March 2015, when Algeria became the latest Arab nation to impose visa regulations for Syrians, cutting off a popular gateway to Ceuta and Melilla. But given that most of those arriving in Nouakchott do not register, as they plan to travel through Mali and towards Europe or have the wealth to live independently, the number of Syrians now residing in Mauritania is probably far higher, experts say. There are at least 3,000 Syrians living in Nouakchott, its suburbs and certain southern towns, said the Alwava Initiative of Tayerett Youth, a local group which works with Syrians. "Most who arrive either head straight on (through Mali) if they have the means, or stay in Nouakchott to earn money until they can afford to move on," said Strauss of the IOM. The vast majority of Syrians registered with the UNHCR in Mauritania have flown from Turkey, which has won international praise for hosting more than 2.5 million refugees. Yet Turkey has closed most of its border crossings amid pressure from the EU to prevent refugees traveling on to Europe, which could lead to more Syrians flying to Nouakchott. Campaigns have been launched to inform Syrians of the dangers of crossing Mali's lawless desert north towards Europe. Most arrivals are unaware of the risks, the IOM and UNHCR said. "We are not just talking about young men, but families with small children," said Alwash of the UNHCR. "It is a harsh journey, taken in desperation due to a lack of alternatives." Conscious of the dangers, Mohammed and Amal dream of being resettled in Europe, like some of their Syrian friends and relatives who have been granted asylum in Germany and Sweden, to give their children a better education and future. But the process can take years and only one percent of refugees worldwide are given the opportunity to start new lives in countries including the United States, Britain and Australia. Tiseer and Amer exchange fleeting smiles as they discuss the prospect of being resettled in Europe or further afield. "We would go anywhere where there is life, where we can have a proper life," Tiseer said. "Anywhere but here." (Reporting By Kieran Guilbert, Additional Reporting by Kissima Diagana and Makini Brice, Editing by Ros Russell; 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 news.trust.org)
Television news divisions have called early races in the Super Tuesday bonanza, entering the homestretch of a day on which nearly a dozen states headed to the polls to select Republican and Democratic candidates. And with Donald Trump taking Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Virginia, much of the media coverage has focused once again on how a Trump candidacy would dismantle the Republican party.

This is a hostile takeover of the Republican party and they should have seen it coming, observed Bret Baier, Fox News' chief political anchor. The network then cut to chief political correspondent Carl Cameron, who was at Trump headquarters at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., (that state has its primary on March 15). Cameron noted the anticipation of a Trump press conference, not a victory speech. And he likened the room to the Palace of Versailles, with the chandeliers and the gilt.

Over on MSNBC, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd noted that by Wednesday morning Trump is going to have the delegate lead by a lot. Of course, the brokered convention narrative also was a popular talking point, as anchors waited for returns to come in. And Republican strategist and NBC News contributor Nicolle Wallace asked rhetorically: Can you imagine trying to take this from him at the convention?

Meanwhile, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton was busy racking up delegates in Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia and Alabama, while Bernie Sanders easily took his home state of Vermont. In fact, Sanders made his Vermont victory speech at 7:30 p.m. ET. CNNs Jake Tapper noted that it was awfully early in the evening for a victory speech  to which his colleague Dana Bash pointed out that it would likely be Sanders only chance to make such a speech this evening.

All of the cable news channels are employing segmented screens with delegate count crawls on the bottom of the screen and various data boxes on the left, which had the effect of often relegating their anchors to the tiny corner on the right upper corner of the screen. Even during commercials, the crawl and the boxes continued.

Story continues

Around 9:15 p.m. ET, when news networks began to project Oklahoma for Ted Cruz  which was something of a surprise, though Cruz easily won his home state of Texas  the narrative shifted to the battle between Cruz and Marco Rubio. Networks cut to Rubio making what sounded a lot like a victory speech in Miami, despite the fact that the first-term Florida senator has not won any primaries or caucuses.

CNNs John King, crunching the numbers at his magic wall, noted that Cruz will be able to make the case mathematically that Rubio should get out of the race.

Lets be honest, said Fox News Baier, after the network cut away from Rubios speech, there could be a push by Cruz for Marco Rubio to leave to race, to which his co-anchor Megyn Kelly replied, I think we can expect that.

As Cruz took the stage in Texas for his victory speech there  which was carried live and in its entirety on the cable news networks  Rubio was busy booking interviews on CBS and ABC, which, along with NBC, began live coverage at 10 p.m. He told CBS Charlie Rose that Trump is a con artist. He will not win Florida. Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee.

After Cruz was done speaking, Rubio turned up on Fox News where Baier and Kelly pressed him on his disappointing night and on the polls in Florida, which show that Trump is well ahead of Rubio there.

Hes beating you right now by 20 points in your home state, said Baier.

Rubio answered that he doesnt believe the polls. And he insisted in many ways [Trump] is a creation of the media. But its the same media thats going to tear him to shreds if he gets the nomination.

The broadcast networks held special reports around 10 p.m. ET.

March 1, 9:15 p.m. Updated with results coverage
Lesbos (Greece) (AFP) - A Syrian refugee mother separated from five of her children while crossing from Turkey to Greece was reunited with them on Wednesday, the UN refugee agency said.

Deniz Sidour and her family were making the perilous sea journey on February 18 when their boat was stopped by the Turkish coastguard, who began transferring the migrants to a different vessel to bring them back to the Turkish coast.

But suddenly the captain of the migrant boat sped away from the Turkish officials, splitting up the family.

Sidour, a Syrian Kurd originally from Aleppo, made it to the Greek island of Lesbos where she was sheltered by an NGO along with her 20-year-old son, Omar.

She subsequently stumbled upon her children, aged between 7 and 14, at the Lesbos port of Mytilene.

The youngsters had been helped back to Greece with the aid of a family friend who found them on a Turkish beach, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.

Sidour now hopes to join her husband who has already settled in Germany.

"We are obviously very pleased they have been reunited. But once again this story highlights how people smugglers take advantage of dire situations," Boris Cheshirkov, the UNHCR's representative in Lesbos, told AFP.

Like neighbouring Greek islands, Lesbos has become a gateway for a relentless flow of migrants attempting to reach Europe via Turkey.

More than 10,000 unaccompanied migrant children have disappeared since January 2014 after arriving in Europe, according to European police agency Europol.

Upwards of 131,000 migrants and refugees have reached Europe via the Mediterranean so far this year, more than the total number in the first five months of 2015, according to the United Nations.
Tyrannosaurus rex, king of the dinosaur age, wasn't a North American native as many experts had previously thought, a new study suggests.

Instead, the giant tyrannosaur was likely an invasive species from Asia that dispersed into western North America once the opportunity presented itself, paleontologists said.

"It's possible that T. rex was an immigrant species from Asia," said study co-researcher Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. But he cautioned that the finding isn't necessarily a "slam dunk," and that more research is needed to say for sure. [Gory Guts: See Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy]

T. rex is one of the biggest meat eaters ever to live on land, but relatively little is known about its family tree. In a study published earlier this month, Brusatte and Thomas Carr, an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin, analyzed 28 different tyrannosaur species and constructed a family tree, noting approximately when and where each species lived.

Fossil evidence is lacking, but researchers suspect that the predecessors of tyrannosaurs lived on the supercontinent Pangaea, which began to break up about 200 million years ago, during the Triassic period. This would explain why tyrannosaurs fossils have been found on different continents, including Asia, western North America (called Laramidia at the time), eastern North America (Appalachia) and Europe, Carr said.

As time went on, the tyrannosaurs evolved in their respective places, meaning that the tyrannosaurs in Asia grew to look different than the ones in North America. But, around 67 million years ago, the seaway between Asia and North America went down, leaving a land bridge between the two continents, Carr said.

Perhaps T. rex crossed this route into North America, Carr said. Researchers have uncovered countless T. rex fossils in western North America, but a careful analysis of T. rex's skeletal features suggests that it is Asian in origin, the paleontologists found.

Story continues

In fact, T. rex is closely related to two Asian tyrannosaurs, Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus, the researchers found.

"Tarbosaurus is the Asian version of T. rex," Brusatte told Live Science in an email. "Or, you could say that T. rex is the North American version of Tarbosaurus. They are so similar in terms of their monstrous size, their proportions, their massive jaw muscles and thick teeth and even many minutiae of their skull bones."

Zhuchengtyrannus is also similar to T. rex, though it's more distantly related, Brusatte and Carr said.

Asian invasion

T. rex lived from about 67 million to 65 million years ago, going extinct when a 6-mile-long (10 kilometers) asteroid slammed into Earth and killed the nonavian dinosaurs.

During that time, the 7-ton (6.3 metric tons) T. rex monster spread from modern-day Alberta to Texas. (A giant seaway in the middle of North America prevented T. rex from reaching the East Coast, the researchers said.) Before T. rex invaded North America, presumably from Asia, other tyrannosaurs lived in western North America, but they disappeared shortly after T. rex came onto the scene.

It's unclear why these large tyrannosaurs went extinct, but T. rex may have played a role in their demise, the researchers said. [Photos: The Near-Complete Wankel T. Rex]

"Regardless of where T. rex comes from, when it enters the fossil record, it seems to take over immediately, like an invasive species," Brusette said. "It rose to the top of the food chain and elbowed out all competitors  or perhaps I should say outmuscled them, as their pathetic little arms didn't have very big elbows."

The new finding contradicts earlier studies, some of which say that T. rex is the culmination of tens of millions of years of dinosaur evolution within North America, Brusatte said.

"This also is a good example of how different family trees can imply different things about evolution," Brusatte said. "This is why we spend so much time building family trees for fossil groups: They tell us how different species are related to each other, which then allows us to tease out their evolutionary stories, the same way constructing genealogies for our own families tells us how our ancestors led to us."

The study was published online Feb. 2 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. 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.
When John Ellsworth was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2013, he could already recognize his words just weren't coming out right. The former marketing and design professional and avid gardener struggled to identify flowers and plants, and later the names of close friends. But it wasn't until his wife, Karlene, had to begin finishing his sentences that John felt the gravity of the disease take hold.

The couple, who live in, Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, were aware that John's ability to communicate would become a challenge as his brain changed.

"It goes with the nature of the disease," explains Ruth Drew, director of family and information services for the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago. "Alzheimer's is a disease that attacks the brain, and it starts with very minor changes over time. Those changes become more and more profound, impacting various aspects of communication, especially language."

A person's ability to say what he or she wants -- and decode what others are saying -- becomes increasingly difficult as Alzheimer's progresses. That's challenging for caregivers like Karlene, 68, who doesn't struggle to find the right words herself but must now find a way to adjust and accommodate John, 75. "The good news is there are good ways to communicate throughout the course of the disease," Drew says. Consider, for example, these strategies:

Understand the disease. As Alzheimer's progresses, difficulties with speech and memory can become more pronounced, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Someone with the disease might repeatedly rely on familiar words, begin inventing new words to describe familiar objects and easily lose his or her train of thought. He or she might revert back to a native language -- say, Spanish despite speaking English the past few decades. People with Alzheimer's will also likely have difficulty organizing words logically and, ultimately, will speak less often.

Story continues

In the early stages of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, Drew says communication doesn't necessarily suffer in a significant way. At most, someone might repeat stories or not be able to find the "right" words. John, for example, says Karlene has worked tirelessly to adjust the way the couple communicates with each other. "It's important for both of us to be comfortable with letting the other person talk and not getting angry because things aren't going fast enough," he says.

Learn how to get -- and keep -- attention. Start by limiting the number of distractions nearby -- turn off the TV or radio, or go into a quiet room and close the door, suggests Dr. Robert Santulli, an honorary associate professor of psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire. Throughout the conversation, maintain eye contact. If the person with Alzheimer's is sitting, sit nearby rather than looming above and speaking down to him or her. Touch can help, too. Try holding the person's hand, placing your hand on his or her shoulder or gesturing by pointing to whatever you're describing.

Prepare to repeat yourself. Someone with Alzheimer's likely won't recall certain details for more than a few moments at a time. Keep in mind this isn't intentional or meant to frustrate you, and your friend or family member with Alzheimer's is likely unaware of his or her behavior.

Identify yourself. A loved one with Alzheimer's may not need direct family members or caregivers to identify themselves until the later stages of the disease, but that's not necessarily the case for extended family or friends. In "The Alzheimer's Family: Helping Caregivers Cope," Santulli recommends using language such as: "I'm your nephew Carl ... Your brother Fred's son," or another identifier. Even though a person with dementia or Alzheimer's may not remember who someone is or the nature of the relationship, he or she will find comfort in knowing a member of the family or close friend has come to visit.

Call him or her by name. "All the rules of courtesy apply" when greeting someone with Alzheimer's, Drew says, which means using his or her name -- which creates a sense of individuality. "If they prefer, say, Mary -- say Mary. If they say Mrs. Jones, say Mrs. Jones," she adds. Addressing someone directly helps retain attention, too.

Speak in slow, short sentences, not paragraphs. If you're telling a loved one with Alzheimer's a story or plan to share multiple ideas, consider how confusing it might sound. Instead, limit your requests or stories to short, direct sentences -- with only one idea per sentence. "Keep communications clear and simple," Santulli says.

Be specific. If you want to show someone with Alzheimer's where something is, identify objects by name -- "here is your hat," for example, rather than "here it is," the Alzheimer's Association suggests. And avoid confusing and vague statements. Rather than saying, "Hop in the shower," try, "Please come here. Your shower is ready." The first request could be taken literally -- creating an unsafe situation.

Ask direct questions. Santulli suggests opting for closed-ended questions that can either be answered with a "yes" or "no." In his book, for example, he recommends asking, "Did you enjoy the roast beef and potatoes at dinner?" rather than, "What did you have for dinner?" Otherwise, someone with Alzheimer's could feel like he or she is being quizzed on memory, leading to unnecessary frustration. Direct questions make it easier to supply concise answers, Santulli says.

Avoid phrases like "Don't you remember?" Same goes for: "Did you forget? We already talked about that. I just told you. How could you not know that? Try to remember!" This type of wording can make someone with Alzheimer's feel worse about his or her inability to recall certain people, places or things. It's not fair to ask someone with Alzheimer's to remember something, Santulli says. Once it's forgotten, it's likely gone for good, and speaking in this way will only elicit feelings of frustration and guilt.

Offer to help. Making slight accommodations can go a long way, Drew says: "Maybe they're having difficulty finishing sentences or can't think of the right word for a certain thing but are still very capable overall. It's important to focus on the person, and ask: 'Does it help when I fill in the word, or did that frustrate you?" If the answer is that it helps, Drew says, suggest a word you believe the person is trying to think of. Just be careful not to cause unnecessary frustration by being overly suggestive or taking over the conversation. And if you understand what the person is trying to say, you might not need to give the correct word. "It takes a bit of detective work," Drew says, to determine what works best.

Don't rely on verbal communication. There are many ways to communicate beyond speaking verbally -- think facial expressions, body language and behavior, Drew says. "Just because someone might not be able to speak as eloquently as before, doesn't mean you can't look them in the eye, greet them by name and take them by the hand."

Avoid talking as if he or she isn't in the room. Your family member or friend with Alzheimer's disease is still a person, Santulli says: "Don't talk to someone else in the room about [him or her]. Just because they have Alzheimer's disease, doesn't mean they're not in the room." People notice when they're excluded from the conversation -- it feels demeaning and can strip away dignity.

Relax your tone. Like anyone facing a lifelong illness, people with Alzheimer's disease appreciate a calm and supportive attitude from caregivers, friends and family. The Ellsworths often find themselves frustrated -- or even angry -- when one of them doesn't understand what the other is trying to communicate, John says. Keep in mind that even when someone loses his or her words, that person can still recognize tone. "If we get frustrated and frantic or seem like we are in turmoil ourselves, we exude that, the other person can feel it and it can be upsetting to him or her," Drew says. He or she may not know why you're impatient, but they will certainly detect that you are. "We can help [people with Alzheimer's] be their best when we are calm, supportive and kind," Drew says.

Samantha Costa is a Health + Wellness reporter at U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter, connect with her on LinkedIn or email her at scosta@usnews.com.
By Tim Ghianni

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuters) - A 16-year-old high school student from Nashville shot and injured his grandmother after she and his mother tried to get him out of bed to go to school, police said on Wednesday.

The student, who is not being named because he is a minor, was charged with four counts of attempted homicide and one count of reckless endangerment in the incident, which happened on Tuesday, the Nashville Police said in a statement.

The teenager, who attends an alternative school for troubled youth, made threatening statements then grabbed a handgun from a closet and began shooting, striking his 67-year-old grandmother twice, according to police.

The teen's sister and nephew suffered graze wounds and were taken to the hospital along with the grandmother. The younger family members were treated and released and the grandmother is expected to recover, police said.

The teenager's mother and a 2-year-old sister were not injured.

(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
GRAND CAYMAN, CAYMAN ISLANDS--(Marketwired - March 2, 2016) -

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO US NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN WHICH IT WOULD BE UNLAWFUL TO DO SO. ANY FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS RESTRICTION MAY CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE SECURITIES LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTIONS. THE OFFERS AND SALES OF SECURITIES REFERRED TO BELOW HAVE NOT BEEN AND WILL NOT BE REGISTERED UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933 AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD IN THE UNITED STATES ABSENT REGISTRATION UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OR AN EXEMPTION FROM SUCH REGISTRATION.

Tethys Petroleum Limited ("Tethys" or the "Company") (TPL.TO)(TPL.TO) today announces that it has signed a legally binding amendment (the "Facility Agreement Amendment") to the US$15 million convertible debt facility entered into on November 19, 2015 (the "Interim Facility") with Olisol Investments Limited and its wholly owned subsidiary, Olisol Petroleum Limited ("OPL", together "Olisol"), setting out amended terms to the Interim Facility and consequential changes to the transaction documentation between the companies.

Key Terms of the Facility Agreement Amendment

Olisol to convert all but US$1,000,000 of the outstanding amount of principal and accrued interest under the Interim Facility (approximately US$6.25 million) into ordinary shares ("Interim Facility Conversion"). The conversion will take place at a price of USD$0.10 per share and the shares will represent approximately 15.6% of the enlarged undiluted share capital of the Company. This conversion will take place as soon as all approvals are obtained from the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX"), which will likely include the approval by the TSX of a Personal Information Form ("PIF") to be submitted by, or on behalf of, Olisol. The Facility Amendment Agreement provides that Olisol is to submit the PIF within seven business days and Olisol irrevocably commits to the conversion described above.

Olisol will work with a bank in Kazakhstan acceptable to Tethys ("Kazakh Bank") to secure a loan for Tethys Aral Gas LLP, in the amount of US$10,000,000 (the "Kazakh Loan"), within 60 days. Principals at one potential Kazakh Bank have already provisionally approved offering the Kazakh Loan, subject to satisfactory due diligence refreshment. The Kazakh Loan, together with the Interim Facility Conversion, would satisfy the outstanding obligations of Olisol under the Interim Facility. Olisol agree to pay any ordinary interest costs on the Kazakh Loan that are greater than 11%.

Olisol to provide additional working capital reasonably required by Tethys, if necessary, to ensure the Company is able to continue to operate until completion of a placement under an amended Investment Agreement. Any amounts provided by Olisol will convert to ordinary shares on completion of the placement under the amended Investment Agreement.

The Facility Amendment Agreement amends certain terms and definitions of the Interim Facility in order to facilitate and give effect to the Interim Facility Conversion and the other terms of the Facility Amendment Agreement.

Olisol has committed to purchasing 181,240,793 new shares at a price to be agreed by Tethys and Olisol (acting reasonably). This purchase will be subject to TSX approval, and would replace the previously announced placing of 150,000,000 shares and the backstopped further offering of 50,000,000 shares under the Investment Agreement announced by the Company on December 8, 2015. This purchase, together with the Interim Facility Conversion of the amounts outstanding under the Interim Facility would result in Olisol owning approximately 42% of the enlarged undiluted share capital of the Company. The shareholder approval for this placing will include an approval to reduce the par value of the shares of Tethys. The 20 largest shareholders will be offered a right to acquire additional shares to maintain their pro-rata stake following this placing.

Once certain conditions precedent are satisfied, which are expected in the near future, the previously announced initial changes to the board of directors of the Company ("Board") will come into effect.

Upon successful first draw down of the Kazakh Loan and conversion of the circa US$6.25 million under the Interim Facility into equity, the Board will be comprised of the following five directors. Adeola Ogunsemi, non-executive director and Chairman of the Audit Committee; Williams Paul Wells, non-executive director; Alexander Abramov, non-executive director; One additional non-executive independent director designated by Olisol; and The one remaining Board seat to be filled by a candidate who satisfies the legal and regulatory requirements of the Company and whose appointment is agreed by Tethys and Olisol.



Story continues

At that time, as required under the agreement, John Bell, David Henderson, David Roberts and Jim Rawls will step down from the Board;

John Bell, Executive Chairman commented

"Tethys now has a strong in-country strategic partner which has committed to becoming a minority shareholder and who will help the Company in its objective to supply the growing energy demand in China. I will shortly step down as Executive Chairman, into a non-executive co-Chairman role. Upon completion of the transactions under the Facility Amendment Agreement, David Henderson, David Roberts, Jim Rawls and myself will all step down from the Board. During our tenure we have reduced G&A from US$19.5 million in 2014 to US$9.5million in 2015 and to a target of $6 million on an annualised basis. We have closed seven offices, achieved certain vital Exploration & Production licence extensions, as well as overseen an increase in production. We leave the Board having steered Tethys into a Company focused on capital efficiency and cost discipline, well placed to become a strong platform for future growth."

About Tethys

Tethys is focused on oil and gas exploration and production activities in Central Asia and the Caspian Region. This highly prolific oil and gas area is rapidly developing and Tethys believes that significant potential exists in both exploration and in discovered deposits.

About Olisol

Olisol and its subsidiaries and affiliates have investments in energy and oil and gas operations in the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan. The company has more than seven years of experience with the Tethys in Kazakhstan and owns the Aral Oil Terminal in partnership with Tethys. Olisol has its own fleet of specialized oil tankers engaged in automobile transportation of oil from the Tethys fields and through its subsidiaries, is engaged in rail transportation, oil refining, storage and sale of petroleum products. Olisol is incorporated under the laws of Cyprus and is headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Disclaimer

Some of the statements in this document are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the intent, belief and current expectations of the Company or its officers with respect to Olisol's access to funds, the Interim Facility, the Kazakh Loan, the placing to Olisol, potential alternatives to the transactions with Olisol and related transactions. When used in this document, the words "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "may," "will," "should" and similar expressions, and the negatives thereof, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are not promises or guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those suggested by any such statements including risks and uncertainties with respect to completion of the placing and related transactions and receipt of proceeds, required shareholder approval and required regulatory approvals, use of proceeds, waiver of currency controls and receipt of funds pursuant to the Interim Facility and/or the Kazakh Loan.

No part of this announcement constitutes, or shall be taken to constitute, an invitation or inducement to invest in the Company or any other entity, and shareholders of the Company are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Save as required by the Listing Rules and applicable law, the Company does not undertake to update or change any forward-looking statements to reflect events occurring after the date of this announcement.
By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A student implicated in a case at Texas A&M University where racial slurs were allegedly used against a group of black high school students touring the campus is "no longer associated" with the university, the school said on Wednesday.

Texas A&M would offer no further details about the student due to privacy rules. It added no criminal charges would be brought in the February incident that raised questions about pockets of intolerance at one of the state's biggest universities.

University President Michael Young, who has described the incident as heartbreaking and intolerable, called on the university community to renew its respect for inclusion and diversity.

"We are launching our students into a world where they will need to work with everyone to be successful in addressing the great societal challenges that we, as a country, face," he said in a statement.

Initial reports said more than one university student was suspected of making the racially charged comments but the university on Wednesday did not make clear how many students may have been involved.

"One of the many students interviewed is no longer associated with Texas A&M University," Young said.The university has been investigating reports that at least one student directed racially charged remarks at a group of students from Uplift Hampton Preparatory in Dallas, a charter school with a student body mainly compromised of racial minorities.

Last year, 94 percent of its graduating class went to college and nearly every one of those students was the first person in his or her family to go to college, according to the school.

African-Americans comprise less than 4 percent of the student body at Texas A&M, university data shows. African-Americans made up 12.5 percent of the Texas population in 2014, U.S. Census data showed.

University police interviewed those involved in the incident and has concluded its investigation, police said in a statement.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler)
By Patpicha Tanakasempipat BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's junta is intensifying intimidation of academics who criticize the generals efforts to stay in power by sending army officers to their homes, a Thai rights group said on Wednesday. Since the military seized power nearly two years ago, at least 77 academics have been harassed at home by officers advising them to adjust their critical mindset or ordered to attend camps for indoctrination, according to Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. Those who attend the camps are usually released within a couple of days. At least five academics have been forced into exile, said Poonsuk Poonsukcharoen, a member of the lawyers group, which provides legal aid and monitors rights violations in Thailand and is influential with international NGOs, the European Union and other foreign governments. "With legitimacy stretching thin and achievements falling flat, the junta feels the pressure to silence critics to maintain its power," Poonsuk told Reuters. The country's generals have struggled to revive Southeast Asia's second-largest economy after ousting a democratically elected government in 2014 to end months of political unrest that was damaging business. There have been scattered protests against military rule, but they were quickly quelled by troops and police. Some Thais welcomed the coup after months of anti-government street protests, but critics accuse the military of delaying a return to democracy by pushing back the date for elections. Rights groups say the junta has used authoritarian methods to systematically repress rights and muzzle critics. In a Feb. 24 report, Amnesty International said Thailand had dismissed international calls not to silence dissent. Last week, self-exiled prominent Thai academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun took to social media to accuse the junta of intimidating his family in Thailand. "To hunt me is already unacceptable. But for them to go after my family is really too much," he told Reuters via Skype. "This has to be the junta's most daring move yet," said Pavin who gives lectures abroad on the Thai monarchy, a sensitive subject that cannot openly be discussed in Thailand because of draconian royal insult laws. Junta spokesman Colonel Winthai Suvaree denied that the military is pursuing academics with greater zeal and told Reuters he was unaware of any intimidation of Pavin's family. Authorities issued an arrest warrant for Pavin in June 2014, one month after the coup, for ignoring a junta summons to attend a military 'attitude adjustment' session while abroad. His passport was revoked the following month. The junta's pursual of academics highlights its growing insecurity, said Kan Yuenyong, an analyst at Siam Intelligence Unit think-tank. "The military sees academics as a mouthpiece whose messages carry big significance," said Kan. "Their criticism can do a lot to undermine the junta's legitimacy." (This story corrects dates of arrest warrant and passport revocation in paragraphs 15, 16) (Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Simon Cameron-Moore)
SEATTLE (Reuters) - A storm packing fierce winds has left thousands of customers without power in western Washington state on Wednesday, and a woman was seriously injured after a tree toppled onto a Seattle-area home, authorities said.

Some 13,100 customers were without power in the greater Seattle area after the storm struck on Tuesday, utility Puget Sound Energy said on its website. Late on Tuesday, as many as 75,000 customers were without power in Washington state, Seattle broadcaster KING5 reported.

In Portland's Multnomah County, more than 100 people were without power, Portland General Electric said on its website.

In Poulsbo, about 21 miles west of Seattle, a 35-year-old woman was seriously injured when a tree crashed into her home, the local fire department said on Tuesday evening. The home was destroyed, but the woman's children, including a one-year-old girl, managed to escape unharmed, it added.

Wind gusts as high as 66 mph were recorded in Shelton, outside of the Washington state capital of Olympia, the National Weather Service said.

Overall on Tuesday, 0.81 inches of rain fell at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the Service said. Since records started in 1945, there have only been 21 days in March with more than an inch of rain, it said.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle)
By Philip Pullella and Jane Wardell ROME/SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church clergy on Tuesday called for a meeting with Pope Francis after watching a high-ranking Vatican official testify that senior clergy lied to him to cover up abuse in the 1970s. Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's treasurer, has told the inquiry that the church made "enormous mistakes" and "catastrophic" choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and over-relying on counselling of priests to solve the problem. Given Pell's high rank within the church, his testimony to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse over cases that occurred decades ago has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders. Pell's failing memory to questions about what he knew of abuse by clergy and claims that he was deceived by superiors about individual cases in the 1970s has angered many of the 15 abuse victims and supporters who travelled to Rome to see him give evidence. Pell repeatedly said he could not recall particular events and, in one testy exchange, denied a suggestion from special prosecutor Gail Furness that his claims that he was not briefed properly on abusive priests was "implausible." During a break in testimony, the victims in Rome released a statement they have faxed to the Pope: "This is about children. Children who were abused and damaged in the past. ... We would like to request a meeting to discuss the commitment to the children of the past and children of the future, to implement systems so that this is never repeated again." The group, who travelled to Rome after Pell said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems, said they had requested a meeting before they fly back to Australia on Friday. Philip Nagle, who was abused as a child, said the group has become frustrated with Pell's evidence to the inquiry and no longer wanted to meet with the Cardinal at the end of his evidence as scheduled. "We want to be heard and we want someone to show that they care about us and who can possibly help change things for children into the future," Nagle told reporters. "SEE NO EVIL" Pell's evidence, which adds to testimony from almost 5,000 survivors according to Commissioner Peter McClellan, has received wide coverage in Australia. McClellan repeatedly interjected to suggest that Pell could and should have done more when as a more senior cleric in the 1990s he was told about specific abuse cases. In Australia, the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper printed a full page photo of Pell leaving the hearing with the headline "See no evil, hear no evil, stop no evil." The Sydney Morning Herald blared "Pell under fire." Last year, Pell denied accusations made at Commission hearings that he had tried to bribe a victim to remain quiet, that he ignored another complaint and that he was complicit in the transfer of a paedophile priest. Church sexual abuse broke into the open in 2002, when it was discovered that U.S. bishops in the Boston area moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them. Similar scandals have since been discovered around the world and tens of millions of dollars have been paid in compensation. The Australian hearing started on the same night that Spotlight, a film about newspaper reporters who uncovered systemic paedophilia in the Church in Boston, won the Academy Award for best picture. (Editing by David Gregorio and Michael Perry)
(Reuters) - Tribune Publishing Co, publisher of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, said it would offer print subscribers free access to its digital editions by April and that the head of its digital business would leave. Tribune said Denise Warren  who in a previous role is credited with overseeing the New York Times' paid digital subscription model  decided to leave as the company as it consolidates its digital operations. The company also reported a loss for the fourth-quarter, compared with a year-ago profit, and said operating revenue rose 1 percent on higher circulation revenue. However, Tribune said it expects continued pressure on advertising and circulation revenue in 2016 and that it would pursue strategic cost management. Tribune also named Tim Ryan as president of overall publishing. He earlier led the California News Group, which comprised of the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune. The company said Chairman Michael Ferro Jr had donated his stake in Chicago Sun-Times to charitable causes. Tribune Co spun off its publishing assets into Tribune Publishing in 2014 and renamed the parent company, which houses its broadcasting and digital assets, Tribune Media Co. (Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee and Kshitiz Goliya in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Savio D'Souza)
Ottawa (AFP) - The brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked Canada's public safety minister to intervene to halt the deportation of an Algerian man accused of being an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent.

Alexandre Trudeau urged the government in a letter to quash its own order to deport Mohamed Harkat, a 47-year-old former pizza delivery man who has been fighting for more than a decade to stay in Canada.

The documentary filmmaker has long supported Harkat, reportedly offering in 2005 to act as his surety in a bail application, while steadfastly opposing a provision of Canada's immigration law used to detain him.

The seldom-used national security measure allows tribunals to be held in secrecy and indefinite jailing without charge of foreigners suspected of terror ties. It has been at the center of a post-9/11 legal and political shakeup in Canada that has pitted security advocates against champions of civil liberties.

In a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper Wednesday, Alexandre Trudeau said the so-called security certificates are "fundamentally unfair."

"I am absolutely convinced that at this moment, he (Harkat) poses no danger whatsoever to the public or to public safety in Canada, but rather offers a positive commitment to the life he has created here."

A spokesman for Goodale confirmed receipt of the letter and its contents, but said the minister would not intervene.

"Minister Goodale has confidence in CBSA (Canada Border Services Agency) and IRCC (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada)'s ability to assess cases, protect our security and maintain the integrity of our immigration system," spokesman Scott Bardsley said.

He noted also that authorities assess "the risks to their life if (individuals) are removed, as well as humanitarian and compassionate considerations."

The prime minister, speaking to reporters, declined to comment on the matter, except to say that his brother has as much right as any Canadian to lobby the government on issues he believes in.

Story continues

Harkat, he added, can also count on the same "rigor which our citizens demand" being applied in his case.

Harkat was first detained in 2002 on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, and spent nearly four years in jail before being released under strict bail conditions.

He has denied terror links, claiming he fled Algeria over a crackdown on a political party to which he belonged, the now-defunct and banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

But Canadian courts ruled he was likely an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent and a security threat.

The original security law used to prosecute Harkat was struck down in 2007 as unjust. But a tweaked version meant to ensure better legal representation of defendants was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump's triumphal march toward the Republican presidential nomination left his party in disarray Wednesday, as Democrats coalesced around their White House frontrunner Hillary Clinton after her slew of Super Tuesday victories.

Both candidates emerged the clear winners on Tuesday after several party nominating contests, piling up delegates on the biggest, most pivotal day of primaries in the race to succeed President Barack Obama.

Trump was victorious in seven of 11 states, weakening but not eliminating his top rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both US senators.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson meanwhile announced after his poor Super Tuesday showing that he did not "see a political path forward" in the race.

Carson's campaign soared last year but steadily lost steam amid questions over his personal narrative and lackluster debate performances.

Should Carson officially drop out, that would leave Trump and a trio of pursuers: Cruz, Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Clinton equaled Trump's score with wins in seven states against Senator Bernie Sanders, absorbing a formidable challenge from the left.

But whereas Clinton appeared to solidify her support ahead of the next key round of primaries March 15, divisions among Republicans deepened over Trump's success with a slashing campaign that has galvanized disaffected voters but opened wounds on racial, ethnic and gender fronts.

With the 69-year-old billionaire powering past their favored candidates, Republican stalwarts have raised the possibility of the party splintering if Trump wins the nomination.

- 'Desperate and angry' -

"I think that's a very real possibility," Christine Todd Whitman, a former New Jersey governor, told National Public Radio.

"There are a lot of people who just cannot see themselves supporting Trump. You have Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, telling Senate candidates if this is a problem for you, go ahead and run ads against him even if he is your party's presidential nominee."

Story continues

Cruz and Rubio have both pitched their campaigns to Republican voters looking to stop Trump.

In Tuesday's polls, Cruz won his delegate-rich home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma as well as Alaska -- a better performance than Rubio, who notched just one victory, in Minnesota.

Those wins did little to quiet the alarm among their establishment backers, who fear the party is headed toward an annihilating defeat in the general elections.

"Happiness for Donald Trump is a divided opposition. He's got precisely that and it's going nowhere for the time being," according to Sabato's Crystal Ball, a political newsletter published by the University of Virginia.

Trump's wins were widespread, from Alabama and Georgia in the deep South to Massachusetts in the northeast, to the vital battleground state of Virginia.

In his victory speech Tuesday, the real estate mogul and reality TV star set aside his usual boastfulness to offer an olive branch to party leaders.

"I think we'll be more inclusive and more unified. I think we'll be a much bigger party," Trump said.

Hours later, the sweet nothings evaporated.

"Marco Rubio lost big last night. I even beat him in Virginia, where he spent so much time and money," Trump posted to his 6.5 million Twitter followers Wednesday.

"Now his bosses are desperate and angry!"

Cruz used his victories to argue he is the only Republican who can beat Trump.

"For the candidates who have not yet won a state, who have not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, uniting," he said -- before Rubio notched his Minnesota win.

After his disappointing performance, Rubio ended the day in Florida -- a signal he is banking on a win in his home state, which votes on March 15, the next major date in the primary cycle.

- 'Reaping the whirlwind' -

"Republicans are reaping the whirlwind right now, and Democrats should seize the chance to show Americans an alternative to Mr Trump's politics of rage, and an image of themselves to be proud of, not shrink from," The New York Times observed.

In her victory speech, Clinton signaled she is now turning her attention to a general election face-off with Trump.

"It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," she said.

Trump painted Clinton -- the former first lady, senator and secretary of state -- as a Washington insider who cannot address a furious electorate's desire for change.

"She's been there for so long. I mean if she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years," he said.

A recent CNN/ORC poll found that both Clinton and Sanders would easily defeat Trump if the November 8 election were held now.

Sanders, a self-styled democratic socialist, has vowed to press on with his well-funded campaign that has made shrinking the gap between rich and poor a central issue of the Democratic contest.

Sanders notched wins in his home state of Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota.

Clinton, buoyed by overwhelming African-American support, trounced him in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.
After seeing Donald Trumps success on Super Tuesday, the reality of the fact that he could become the nominee, and eventually the President of the United States, has begun to set in for many people. As a result, the Google search traffic for terms such as how can I move to Canada have suddenly skyrocketed.

DONT MISS: Apple asks the FBI: How hard did you really try to hack into the iPhone?

As the results poured in, Google Data Editor Simon Rogers noted the following:

That 350% increase turned into a 1,150% jump in the ensuing hours, before settling back down around +500% for the day, according to Mashable. If you arent confident that Donald Trump can truly Make America Great Again, this should be an encouraging sign. After all, general election polls have shown Trump losing more often than not. On the other hand, hes still way in the lead.

Move to Canada Google Searches

Theres no way to know for sure if the two are related, but Mashable also notes that the Canadian governments website has been warning visitors that they may experience delays while using the website. Based on some cursory Twitter searches, the message hadnt been appearing on the site prior to Super Tuesday.

Although some polls predicted otherwise, Trump did not run away with the nomination on Tuesday night. Ted Cruz managed to win both his home state of Texas and notched a slightly unexpected victory in Oklahoma. In other words, theres no need to start packing your bags this afternoon  primary season isnt over by a long shot.

Related stories

All the reasons Trump's plan to force Apple to make iPhones in the U.S. will fail

There's now a way to play as Donald Trump in 'Civilization V'

Humiliate Trump with brilliant 'make Donald Drumpf again' Chrome extension

More from BGR: Apple asks the FBI: How hard did you really try to hack into the iPhone?

This article was originally published on BGR.com
TUNIS (Reuters) - Tunisian security forces killed five Islamist militants after they infiltrated across the border from neighboring Libya, authorities said on Wednesday. The expansion of Islamic State militants in Libya is worrying the country's North African neighbors Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, who fear violent spillover from the chaos there. Tunisia has already suffered two major militant attacks last year by gunmen who officials say were trained in jihadist camps inside Libya. Western governments are now offering aid for Tunisia to better protect its Libyan frontier. "The army killed five terrorists during a raid on a house close to Ben Guerdan, after they crossed over the frontier from Libya," army spokesman Belhassen Ouslati said, according to local state news agency TAP. A security source told the agency the five militants were part of a group of 10 who had crossed the border with Libya in three vehicles. It was not immediately clear what happened to the other suspects. Tunisia has been held up as a model for democratic transition since the 2011 uprising against Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. But the militant attacks have battered its economy, particularly its tourist industry. More than 3,000 Tunisians have also left to fight with Islamic State and other militant groups in Iraq and Syria. Increasingly, Tunisians are also forming part of Islamic State ranks in Libya. (Reporting by Tarek Amara; writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Dominic Evans)
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday it would be wrong to let the constitutional court's decision to free two journalists, who are facing life in prison on charges of aiding a terrorist organization, affect their trial. Speaking at a news conference, Davutoglu said the case against Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of secularist opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, and his colleague Erdem Gul, should not be viewed as a free-speech issue. The two were arrested in November and charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security. (Reporting by Ercan Gurses and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
ISTANBUL/MAPUTO (Reuters) - Turkey's Karadeniz will in the next two weeks begin supplying Zambia with electricity from a power-generating ship as it looks to take advantage of chronic shortages in Africa, the company said on Wednesday. Karadeniz builds what are effectively floating power stations which plug into electricity grids after berthing. They run on fuel oil but can also use natural gas. One of the firm's vessels docked this week at Mozambique's Nacala port, from where it will supply 100 megawatts of electricity for the next two years, power that will then be exported through the grid to neighbouring Zambia. This is the second power ship Karadeniz has deployed to Africa after a 225 MW unit arrived in Ghana last year. "Africa has a clear increasing demand for electricity and presents itself as a very good market for us," business development director Zeynep Harezi told Reuters. Harezi said several other African countries had expressed an interest in using Karadeniz power ships, which can be delivered in 120 days. The 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million. This constrains Africa's growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty. Given Africa's huge electricity deficit, power ships can only offer a small, short-term boost to power output. (Reporting by Orhan Coskun in Istanbul and Manuel Mucari in Maputo; Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Johannesburg (AFP) - Two lions and over 100 vultures in South Africa's Kruger National Park died after eating the poisoned carcass of an elephant, officials said Wednesday, suggesting a new poaching trend in the heavily-guarded reserve.

"It seems poachers have resorted to wildlife poisoning in the national parks and other protected areas in Southern Africa," Glenn Phillips, the park's managing executive, said in a statement.

It was unclear when the poisoning occurred, but the animals' carcasses were discovered by rangers at the weekend.

Initial investigations showed the elephant was shot in the head, its tusks removed and its carcass laced with poison. Two lions, 110 white-back vultures and two jackals then died after feeding on the poisoned carcass.

The poisoning left authorities puzzled as to the poachers' ultimate target.

Tusks and horns are smuggled to eastern Asian countries where they are highly prized.

Park spokesman William Mabasa said vultures are also in demand from traditional healers or sangomas in South Africa.

Poisoning of wildlife has occurred at a lower level in South Africa compared to its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

In Zimbabwe, more than 370 elephants have died after being poisoned over the past two years, with the deaths blamed on poachers.

Last year, an elephant, four African lions and 46 vultures also died from poisoning in the Kruger National Park.

The park, which is faced with a poaching crisis targeting rhino, is one of the most heavily-protected in the country.

Rangers are equipped with infra-red binoculars to try and catch poachers who normally operate at night.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts on Thursday launched a civil rights investigation into the elite Boston Latin School after black students charged that its administration ignored incidents of racism on campus.

The oldest U.S. high school has been under a harsh spotlight for the past few weeks after black students reported that school officials failed to investigate alleged instances of racial insults, including one case in which a student threatened to lynch a black classmate.

Eight civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts and the Boston branch of the NAACP last week called on U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz to open a probe into the alleged instances of racism.

"We will conduct a thorough investigation into the recent complaints about racism at BLS and will go where the facts lead us," Ortiz said on Thursday.

The probe comes at a time of increased racial tensions across the United States. A series of high-profile police killings of black men in Baltimore, New York and Ferguson, Missouri, over the past two years have sparked months of peaceful protests punctuated with days of violence, and gave rise to the "Black Lives Matter" movement.

The school's headmaster, Lynne Mooney Teta, has rebuffed calls by some black leaders in the city to resign over her handling of the matter.

Mooney Teta vowed to improve the racial climate at the school, which has 2,439 students in grades seven through 12, in an open letter to students and parents in January.

"If we are falling short for some of our students, then we are falling short for all of our students," she wrote. "There is work to be done."

Boston Latin was founded in 1635, a year before Harvard University in nearby Cambridge, Massachusetts, and well over a century before the United States broke away from Great Britain.

It is a public school, but applicants must pass a rigorous test to gain admission. State data shows that just 8.5 percent of Boston Latin's students are African-American, well below the 32.4 percent of the overall district average, while some 47.4 percent of the students are white, more than triple their 14.2 percent average across the district.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
By Sanjeev Miglani NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India, the United States and Japan will hold naval exercises in waters off the northern Philippines near the South China Sea this year, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, a move likely to further raise tensions with China. The announcement comes a day after the United States warned China against militarization of the South China Sea, where Beijing is locked in a territorial dispute with several countries, saying there would be consequences. Last year, India and the United States expanded their annual naval drills in the Bay of Bengal to include Japan after a gap of eight years, in a move seen as a response to China's growing assertiveness in the region. Admiral Harry B. Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said the naval exercise will be held in the northern Philippine Sea and that Japan will take part. Freedom of the seas was a fundamental right of all nations, he told a security conference in New Delhi, adding some thinly veiled criticism of Beijing. "While some countries seek to bully smaller nations through intimidation and coercion, I note with admiration India's example of peaceful resolution of disputes with your neighbors in the waters of the Indian Ocean, " he said. Tensions in the South China Sea have risen recently, with the United States and others protesting against Beijing's land reclamations, along with the recent deployment of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets in the Paracel Islands. Along with China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims on the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year. Harris said the United States wished to expand the naval exercises it held with India each year into joint operations across the Asia-Pacific, which could draw India directly into the row in the South China Sea. The two countries have held talks on joint naval patrols and last month a U.S. defense official told Reuters that these could include the South China Sea. Both India and the United States later said these patrols were not imminent after Beijing warned that interference from countries outside the region threatens peace and stability. Harris said it was up to the leaders of India and the United States to decide where to hold the joint operations. (Editing by Dominic Evans)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States does not want China to use its navy to intimidate fishing vessels from other countries in a disputed area of the South China Sea, the State Department said on Wednesday. "We are aware of these press reports regarding the Chinese vessels operating near Jackson Atoll in the contested areas of the South China Sea," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a news briefing. "We don't want them using ... their navy to intimidate other fishing vessels in that region." Philippine officials said on Wednesday China had sent as many as seven ships to Quirino Atoll, also known as Jackson Atoll, in recent weeks, preventing Filipino fishermen from accessing traditional fishing grounds. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Writing by Washington Newsroom; Editing by Eric Beech)
By Andrea Shalal SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Tuesday warned China against "aggressive" actions in the South China Sea region, including the placement of surface-to-air missiles on a disputed island. "China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea," Carter said in a wide-ranging speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "Specific actions will have specific consequences." Asked what the consequences could be, Carter told reporters the U.S. military was already increasing deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend $425 million through 2020 to pay for more exercises and training with countries in the region that were unnerved by China's actions. He said China's behavior had fueled trilateral agreements that would have been "unthinkable" even a few years ago. The United States has carried out several freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea recent months, sailing near disputed islands to underscore its rights to navigate the seas. U.S. Navy officials say they plan to conduct more and increasingly complex exercises in the future. Carter said the Pentagon also planned to spend over $8 billion in fiscal 2017 alone to expand its fleet of powerful submarines and undersea drones. "There is no question that there are consequences for these actions," Carter said. "We have plans in all three of these categories. You'll see them unfolding." Carter underscored the U.S. military's determination to safeguard maritime security around the world, and particularly in the South China Sea region, which sees about 30 percent of the world's trade transit its waters each year. The U.S. defense chief also took aim at both Russia and China for their actions to limit Internet access, as well as state-sponsored cyber threats, cyber espionage and cyber crime. He said the Pentagon would spend $35 billion over the next five years to beef up cybersecurity and develop offensive cyber options to defeat the Islamic State militant group and other enemies. In his prepared remarks, Carter drew a sharp contrast between such behavior by Russia and China and what he described as much healthier U.S. actions to preserve Internet freedom. "We don't desire conflict with either country," he said. "But we also cannot blind ourselves to their apparent goals and actions." Carter also cited U.S. concerns about Chinese and Russian efforts to develop anti-satellite weapons that could destroy critical U.S. national security satellites, citing China's 2007 anti-satellite test that created over 3,000 pieces of debris (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Leslie Adler)
By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda has received seven bids for six oil exploration blocks offered in a licensing round and it plans to chose the winners and sign deals by the end of June, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development said on Wednesday. Oil deposits were discovered in Uganda along its border with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2006 but delays in erecting the necessary infrastructure, tax wrangles and the drop in the oil price have delayed the start of production. The blocks on offer are in the Albertine rift basin, close to the border with DRC, where commercial oil deposits are estimated by government geologists to total 6 billion barrels. The six blocks are in Ngassa, Tai Tai & Karuka, Mvule, Turaco, Kanywantaba and Ngaji. Ugandan officials say they are targeting commercial oil production by 2018 at the earliest. Also on Wednesday, Uganda and Tanzania announced they are planning to build a pipeline from Ugandan oil fields to the Tanzanian coast to help export Uganda's crude once production starts. Uganda announced its first competitive bidding round for the six exploration blocks, covering a total of 3,000 square kilometres, in February last year. Bidding documents were issued to 16 oil firms in October. In the statement, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development said seven of the 16 had submitted final bids. "The attraction of seven bidders is significant, taking into consideration the current low global oil and gas prices," the statement said, adding that the companies came from Australia, Nigeria, Canada and the United States. "Government will conclude the licensing round by negotiating with successful bidders, sign production sharing agreements and award exploration licences by the end of June 2016," the statement said. None of the three oil firms already operating in Uganda - London-listed Tullow Oil, France's Total and China's CNOOC - was among the bidders. Environmental groups including Global Witness and Greenpeace have protested the inclusion of Ngaji, a 895 square kilometre area that is part of Virunga park along Uganda's border with Democratic Republic of Congo. "Uganda and Congo should make a deal ... to protect Virunga from oil activities," London-based Global Witness said in a statement this week, adding that drilling there would be a "disaster" for the people and animals in the park. (Editing by Edith Honan)
LONDON (Reuters) - A new leukaemia drug viewed by industry experts as a future blockbuster has been rejected by Britain's healthcare cost-effectiveness agency NICE, which said it could not be confident the medicine represented an effective use of resources. Imbruvica has a list price of 55,954.50 pounds ($78,000) a year, although it is being offered at an undisclosed discount to the National Health Service by European supplier Janssen, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. Janssen said on Wednesday it was "extremely disappointed" by the draft recommendation from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which contrasted with decisions in 48 other countries to fund the medicine. Imbruvica is the first in a new class of cancer drugs known as Burton's tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Excitement over its prospects prompted AbbVie to buy Pharmacyclics, which developed the medicine with J&J, for $21 billion last year. AbbVie expects it to sell $5 billion annually by 2020. AstraZeneca, meanwhile, acquired a rival drug in the same class by purchasing 55 percent of privately held Acerta Pharma for $4 billion in December. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Susan Thomas)
London (AFP) - A British man was on Wednesday found guilty of raping five women he met through the US Internet dating service match.com, which he was allowed to use despite complaints to the website from his victims.

Derby Crown Court in central England heard that father-of-three Jason Lawrance, 50, contacted thousands of women on match.com using the profile names KeepItStraightToday and StraightMan_Looking.

Police described Lawrance, who was also found guilty of attempting to rape and sexually assaulting two other women, as a "sexual predator".

Four of Lawrance's victims complained to match.com, but the court heard that site administrators told one of the complainants that they could not take action because he had not sent abusive messages.

He was arrested in November 2014 after a friend of one of his victims complained to police.

Self-employed builder Lawrance sent a text to one of his victims after attacking her, saying: "When you were crying out for me to stop I couldn't, I'm so mad at myself xxx."

The jury also found him guilty of raping another woman in a van parked in a field and of attacking another victim at her home while her son slept in a nearby bedroom.

Allison Rigby, from Derbyshire Police, said Lawrance had "preyed" on vulnerable women.

"He is a sexual predator who has preyed on women through match.com that he has met who have got (some) vulnerability.

"He seems to have targeted females who are divorced and widowed," she added. "Only Jason Lawrance will know how many people he has sexually assaulted."

Senior prosecutor Sue Matthews warned users of dating sites that they were not beyond the reach of the law.

"Nobody should feel that meeting people through a dating site means that they are consenting to any sexual activity," she said.

"If a person does not consent to sexual activity... that is an offence, regardless of how the victim meets the perpetrator."
Paul Polman has been CEO of Unilever since January 2009. Polman is chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development; a member of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, the B Team, and the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development; and serves on the board of the U.N. Global Compact. In 2016, the U.N. Secretary-General asked Polman to be a member of the Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Group, tasked with promoting action on the 2030 Agenda. Polman contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Our understanding of the global climate, economic system and world has changed dramatically over the past decade. And with it, the roles and responsibilities of businesses have also changed.

But even amid this rapid disruption, there are certainties. Businesses, in agreement with scientists and national leaders, know it's critical that we limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit)  or, better still, 1.5 C (2.7 F)  to avoid the most dangerous consequences of climate change.

We also know that we have to change our mind-set and habits in an increasingly resource-constrained world, where there is pressure on resources, ranging from water to wood.

Irreversible change

2015 gave us the frameworks and momentum we need to address these problems. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals provide a global policy framework to eradicate poverty without putting natural resources at risk, and the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, agreed to by 195 nations, set a new direction and scale for global climate action.

But frameworks are only the starting point. It is up to everyone  governments, businesses and communities included  to take action to end extreme poverty and shift to a zero-carbon economy.

As the head of a company operating in more than 190 countries and whose products are used by 2 billion people every day, I'm convinced that businesses have both a responsibility and an interest in supporting sustainability.

Story continues

There is overwhelming evidence that the transition to a thriving, clean economy is inevitable, irreversible  and irresistible.

Last year, for the first time, the global economy grew without materially increasing carbon dioxide emissions. In many of the world's major economies, including China, India, France and the United States, renewable energy is now able to produce electricity for the same cost as traditional technologies. [The True Costs of Renewable Energy ]

Businesses around the world have started to change their mind-set. Whereas many used to see sustainability as an environmental or development issue, they now understand it's also a business and economic imperative.

Peter Bakker of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development recently noted that there were 13 business attendees at the first U.N. conference to address climate change in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In Paris last year, there were more than 1,000 business representatives.

This new generation of business leaders has realized that supporting the sustainable development agenda will help them protect their long-term performance and grow their businesses.

Responsible businesses gain the advantage

Business can help speed up implementation, and unleash the investment, innovation and economic transformation required to achieve this ambitious agenda.

According to "Towards the Circular Economy" (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2014), if we shift to a circular economy model, it can generate more than $1 trillion each year and create 100,000 new jobs in the next five years, while reducing both waste and emissions.

Moreover, investments in energy efficiency could boost world economic output by up to $18 trillion by 2035, according to the report "Capturing the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency" from the OECD/IEA, and also contribute to our goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees C.

If we create a more equitable workforce, in which women participate in the economy identically to men, the annual global GDP would increase by an estimated $28 trillion in 2025, according to the 2015 McKinsey Global Institute report "The Power of Parity."

And we know that $90 trillion will be spent on infrastructure in the world's cities, land use and energy systems over the next 15 years according to the 2014 New Climate Economy report "Better Growth, Better Climate."

If we make all the right choices now, it won't cost more to make those investment choices low-carbon, which will have major economic and climate benefits. The financial market is already showing interest in doing so, which is a sign that the transformation is happening.

To grasp these opportunities, business leaders have realized that they need to collaborate, not just compete. So, we've seen a groundswell of partnerships and coalitions to support business action for sustainable development.

Companies in the We Mean Business coalition  with combined revenues of $6 trillion, as well as 144 investors with $20 billion in assets  have made nearly 800 commitments to climate action.

Individual companies are also making ambitious commitments  Unilever will become carbon positive in its operation by 2030, which means directly supporting the generation of more renewable energy than we consume and making the surplus available to the markets and communities in which we operate. To achieve this and other targets, businesses will need to source from renewable sources and work in partnership with their supply chains.

But there's a lot more businesses can do to grasp and promote the economic case for sustainability. That's why business and civil society leaders have formed the Global Commission on Business and Sustainable Development, launched recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. We will work over the next year to articulate and quantify the compelling economic case for businesses to support the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, mapping the ways that businesses can get involved, build competitive advantage and flourish even as the world shifts to a different trajectory.

Our message is a simple one: Business interests and the human imperatives at the heart of sustainable development both pull in the same direction. Business investments and actions are already underway, but we need to come together with governments and civil society in an unprecedented partnership if we want to achieve the scale and ambition of the change needed.

Done right, and done together, these actions will power our economies and sustain the world's people for generations to come.

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.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
(Reuters) - The University of Missouri is investigating anti-Semitic vandalism in which "Hitler rules" was written on a dormitory poster, officials said on Tuesday, in the latest racial incident at the school.

The defaced poster was found at a residence hall. Campus police and the university's civil rights office were investigating, interim Chancellor Henry Foley said in a statement.

"We are angry to hear about yet another anti-Semitic incident in one of our residence halls over the weekend. This type of vandalism attacks everyone," he said.

The Jewish Student Organization said in a statement that it was the fourth incident of Nazi symbolism in a year.

The school's Residence Halls Association has reported that a swastika drawn in feces was found at a dorm building last fall.

The 35,000-student campus in Columbia was roiled by protests last year over what demonstrators saw as soft handling of reported racial incidents on campus.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington)
Geneva (AFP) - Deputy US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday condemned a surge in arrests of activists in Cuba, three weeks before President Barack Obama's historic trip to the Communist-ruled island.

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council, Blinken said Obama will stress the need for democracy and free political expression in Cuba during the March 21-22 visit, the first by a US president since 1928.

"In Cuba, we are increasingly concerned about the government's use of short-term detentions of peaceful activists, which reached record numbers in January," Blinken said.

"We call on the Cuban government to stop this tactic as a means of quelling peaceful protest," he added.

The White House has described Obama's forthcoming trip as a "Berlin Wall" moment after diplomatic relations between the Cold War foes, which broke off in 1960, were restored in July last year.

"During his historic visit... President Obama will emphasise that the Cuban people are best served by an environment where people are free to choose their political parties and their leaders, express their ideas, and where civil society is independent," Blinken told the council.

He began his speech by condemning Russia's rights record, noting the one-year anniversary of the assassination of former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow.

Nemtsov, who had become a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down near the Kremlin in February last year.

"The Russian government's attempts to suffocate civil society, suppress political opposition, and stigmatise members of minority groups, continue unabated," Blinken told the UN body.

The comments came as the two nations were cooperating on efforts to maintain a fragile ceasefire in Syria and push for a breakthrough at peace talks set to resume in Geneva next week.

Asked about his emphasis on Russia, Blinked told reporters that despite joint diplomatic efforts on Syria, it was "critically important" for the US to convey to Moscow its human rights concerns.

Blinken also chastised the UN rights council for giving disproportionate attention to alleged abuses in Israel, saying the body's work was "undermined by its persistent bias against" the Jewish state.
Washington (AFP) - US commandos have captured a major Islamic State operative in Iraq and his detention will likely lead to the apprehension of other IS targets, a US defense official told AFP Wednesday.

The issue raises questions about what will happen to the detainee and others like him, given that President Barack Obama has ruled out sending any more terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay and the United States does not want to create a holding center for IS captives in Iraq.

The US defense official, who asked not to be named, confirmed a New York Times report that said a "significant" operative had been captured.

Officials told The Times that US interrogators were with the detainee at a temporary detention facility in Erbil in northern Iraq, and that he would eventually be handed over to Iraqi or Kurdish officials.

The Times said its sources declined to identify the detainee or say how much he had cooperated, but the official AFP spoke to said the captive was providing useful information that could yield leads to other IS operatives.

"They're getting good stuff from him," the official said.

The detainee was captured by elite special operations troops who deployed to Iraq in recent weeks and whom the Pentagon calls a specialized expeditionary targeting force, or ETF.

The Pentagon has until now been tight-lipped about the team's operations, saying that discussing missions puts the elite fighters at risk.

The Times said the 200-member special operations team is made up of many Delta Force commandos.

Though it is small in number, it represents the first major US ground combat force since the official withdrawal of US troops at the end of 2011.

Another 3,870 or so US troops are in Iraq on a mission to train and support Iraqi forces fighting the IS group.

"The ETF has begun operations in Iraq. But we will not discuss the details of those missions when it risks compromising operational security," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told AFP.

Story continues

"One of the goals of the ETF is to capture ISIL leaders," he added, using an alternative acronym for the IS group.

"Any detention would be short-term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities."

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Monday the ETF was an increasingly important component of the US-led coalition's 19-month-old campaign to defeat the IS group in Iraq and Syria.

"It's a tool that we introduced ... to conduct raids of various kinds, seizing places and people, freeing hostages and prisoners of ISIL, and making it such that ISIL has to fear that anywhere, anytime, it may be struck," Carter said.

Obama is trying to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison but is unlikely to succeed given staunch resistance in Congress.

"We are not back in the business of having long-term detainees," a second US defense official told AFP.
Washington (AFP) - Sharp divisions appeared Wednesday as the US Supreme Court heard its most important abortion case in a generation, with far-reaching implications for women's ability to end an unwanted pregnancy.

The court's eight justices showed little common ground in 90 minutes of heated oral arguments over whether a Texas law placing a raft of requirements on abortion clinics aims to protect women's health or restrict access to the procedure.

With the death of stalwart conservative Antonin Scalia, whose chair was draped in black, the justices are evenly split between conservatives and liberals, and the state of Texas is unlikely to attract more than four votes in its favor on this most divisive of issues.

All eyes were on Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose swing vote will determine whether the court splits 4-4, meaning the 2013 law stays in place, or strikes it down if he sides with the liberals.

Under the legislation, doctors who perform abortions are required to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and their clinics must meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center.

Activists say the measures have forced more than half of Texas's 41 abortion clinics to close and that -- if upheld -- they would leave just 10 centers in the second-largest US state, home to some 5.4 million women of child-bearing age.

They are also sounding the alarm over moves to enact similar laws in other states, which would be bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling in Texas's favor.

- 'Political battleground' -

Justice Kennedy helped draft a ruling 24 years ago that struck down state restrictions imposing an "undue burden" on a women seeking an abortion.

Early in Wednesday's hearing, he voiced skepticism that challengers have sufficient evidence that Texas is trying to restrict abortions.

But he later raised concerns that could spell trouble for the law, noting that its restrictions were increasing the number of surgical abortions and decreasing those induced by medication, which "may not be medically wise."

Story continues

Before they disappeared behind the crimson curtain in the cavernous courtroom, several justices expressed frustration at the little supporting evidence presented by either side.

Kennedy even suggested sending the case back to the lower courts to collect more facts.

A Supreme Court decision is not expected until late June on the issue, which perhaps more than any other has gnawed at the social, religious and political fabric of American life.

The ruling could reshape constitutional standards on abortion in the middle of an election year, making it an instant hot topic on the campaign trail.

In a sign of the passions aroused, a huge, vocal crowd of pro- and anti-abortion protesters camped outside the court for up to two days for a chance to attend the hearing.

"Stop the sham!" pro-choice campaigners chanted, braving strong, cold winds. "Abortion access? Now!"

A woman held up a sign reading "My body is not your political battleground."

Farah Diaz-Tello, 34, traveled from Texas in the name of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a pro-choice group.

"It is important for me, as a Texan woman myself, that my sister, my friends have access to abortion services that they need," she told AFP.

"Everybody is hoping for Kennedy."

- 'What was the problem?' -

The Texas rules mean that hundreds of thousands of women are having or will have to seek abortion services far from their homes and face a weeks-long wait, while clinics struggle with the strict requirements and costly upgrades.

The costs involved "are so prohibitive, it will deter new clinics from opening to take the place of the ones that closed," said Stephanie Toti, who represented Texas abortion providers.

The three women justices on the bench and fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer pounced on Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller.

They argued that Texas has imposed medical standards on abortion that are not required of riskier procedures, such as colonoscopies and liposuctions -- and that the stringent requirements do not make abortions safer.

"This is among the most safe, the least risk procedures, an early-stage abortion," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who at nearly 83 is the veteran on the bench.

"So what was the problem?"

Keller said that "increasing the standard of care is valid," to which Justice Sonia Sotomayor quipped: "it's valid only if it's taking care of a real problem."

Justice Samuel Alito pointed to "really appalling violations" on the part of some Texas abortion clinics, but liberal justices noted that pre-existing state regulations had already made its centers safer.

If the law is fully implemented, some women in western Texas would find themselves driving hundreds of miles across the state border into New Mexico, which does not impose the same abortion requirements.

That angered Ginsburg.

"If it's alright for women living in New Mexico, why isn't it alright for women in Texas?" she asked.
Washington (AFP) - US Vice President Joe Biden will visit Israel and the West Bank next week, the White House said Wednesday -- a rare trip amid fears about escalating political violence.

"The Vice President and (his wife) Dr. (Jill) Biden will travel to Jerusalem and Ramallah" on March 8, the White House said in a statement.

Biden's visit comes as the White House considers how it could help restart the moribund peace process before President Barack Obama leaves office early next year.

Obama has acknowledged that there will be no comprehensive agreement between Israelis and Palestinians before then, or even Camp David or Oslo-style summits.

But a five-month wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories that has left more than 200 dead, according to a AFP toll count, has worried the White House and prompted thinking about steps that could help reduce tensions.

Biden will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, as well as with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, to "discuss our shared regional interests," the White House said.

With the Middle East already in turmoil, the last thing Washington wants is another widespread conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians who have died in the recent wave of violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

But steps to reduce tensions have been halting.

Obama has so far failed to convince Netanyahu to halt settlement building activity, which is seen as illegal under international law and poses a major stumbling block to peace efforts.

Relations between the pair, which have been strained for a long time, were virtually destroyed by Netanyahu's opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran.

But Biden's trip comes as the United States and Israel negotiate a massive new 10-year defense agreement, and both sides are trying to show they can still be partners.

Story continues

Biden last visited for the funeral of former prime minister Ariel Sharon in January 2014.

Another visit by the vice president in 2010 was marred by the announcement of a major Israeli settlement project in annexed east Jerusalem.

The announcement drew a public scolding from Biden and it soured relations with Washington for months.

Biden will also visit Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's Supreme Court stripped the opposition-led legislature of key oversight powers to try to thwart moves to change the makeup of the high court itself.

The opposition, which is seeking a legal means to oust President Nicolas Maduro, accuses him of packing the court with allies to bolster his embattled leftist government.

The Supreme Court ruling took away the National Assembly's power to remove justices, and declared unconstitutional its members' review of the lame duck appointments of 34 judges to the Supreme Court.

Pro-government legislators approved the mass appointments in December days before relinquishing control of the assembly to the opposition, which won legislative elections by a landslide earlier that month.

The Supreme Court's constitutional panel ruled that the National Assembly's oversight role is limited to the executive, and does not extend to the courts or the country's electoral bodies.

Political control "extends fundamentally to the national executive power and not to the rest of the public powers," the ruling said.

The National Assembly had been scheduled to open debate Tuesday on a committee report calling for the newly-appointed judges' removal.

But National Assembly Speaker Henry Ramos Allup accused the government of using the national justice system to render the legislature powerless.

The legislature's responsiblities "cannot be ordered to cease to exist by repeated Supreme Court orders that are patently unconstitutional," he said.
Super Tuesday night: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the big winners of the night, each winning seven nominating contests. Team politics is live-blogging the primary action here.

A journey home: Three astronauts are on their way back to Earth from the International Space Station. Two of them, NASAs Scott Kelly and Roscosmoss Mikhail Kornienko, have spent nearly a year there so researchers can study the effects of long-term exposure to microgravity on human beings.

A United Nations vote: The UN Security Council will vote tomorrow on sanctions against North Korea. The measures are in response to Pyongyangs recent nuclear test and rocket launch, which violate UN resolutions. The vote was supposed to take place today, but was postponed at Russias request.

The worsening refugee crisis: The AP spoke to one of 10,000 migrants stuck at a camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia. Ive been at Idomeni for 10 days and its the fourth day Ive been waiting to cross over, said Hassan Rasheed, who is from Iraq. Conditions are very bad. There are many ill children who are coughing, and we spent the night in this tent under heavy rain. Hundreds of migrants continue to arrive on the Greek islands from Turkey every day.

News from this afternoon here.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Wellington (AFP) - An Emirates Airbus A380 touched down in New Zealand on Wednesday, completing what is believed to be the world's longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight.

The service from Dubai to Auckland covered 14,200 kilometres (8,824 miles), according to industry website airwaysnews.com, pipping Qantas' 13,800-kilometre Sydney-Dallas route launched in 2014.

It said the route was also the longest in duration, with passengers set to spend 17 hours 15 minutes in the air during the return leg from Auckland to Dubai.

However, that record is expected to be short-lived because Emirates' upcoming Dubai-Panama City service will take 17 hours 35 minutes when it launches later this month.

Emirates described it as "one of the longest air routes in the world by distance".

"But with the assistance of clever technology and good planning, passengers will get to their destination in the shortest possible time," it said.

"Emirates will be using flexible routes, which can vary by day, taking advantage of tail winds and avoiding head winds to reduce the time in the air."

The inaugural Dubai-Auckland flight was made by an A380 but the regular service will be carried out using the Boeing 777.

New Zealand Transport Minister Simon Bridges said the non-stop service, which cuts three hours off current Dubai-Auckland travel times, improved New Zealand's connectivity to the rest of the world.

"Direct flights will encourage even more trade and tourism between our two countries, by offering more choice to passengers and freight customers," he said.
By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City paid more than $13 million in fiscal year 2015 to settle a rising tide of personal injury claims stemming from its jails, particularly the Rikers Island complex, according to a watchdog report released on Wednesday.

Scott Stringer, the city's comptroller, said data collected by his office showed that more than 2,800 such claims were filed between July 2014 and June 2015, a 27 percent increase from the previous year and a 172 percent increase since 2009.

Those claims were filed either by inmates or employees at correctional facilities, though the exact breakdown was not immediately available.

"We have a humanitarian crisis on our hands at Rikers that is hurting both inmates and corrections officers, and we have an obligation as a city to confront suffering and violence in our jails," Stringer said in a statement.

The notorious Rikers Island is one of the largest jail complexes in the United States, with around 10,000 inmates in 10 separate facilities.

The complex has drawn increased scrutiny in recent years after allegations of pervasive violence and poor supervision. Dozens of guards have faced state or federal charges for assault or smuggling contraband.

The problems drew the attention of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, who joined a class action against the city filed by Rikers inmates claiming abuse. The city and the Justice Department settled the case by agreeing to several reforms, including the installation of a federal monitor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has also allocated millions of dollars to implement other changes, such as adding security cameras and hiring more staff members.

In response to Stringer's report, Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said serious uses of force by officers had dropped 23 percent and serious assaults on staff members had fallen 11 percent in 2015 from the previous year.

"From expanding officer training to announcing a new use of force policy to safely curtailing solitary confinement, we are putting clear reforms in place to address violence and improve inmate outcomes on Rikers."

Story continues

Some officials, including Stringer, have called for the eventual closure of Rikers. De Blasio and Police Commissioner William Bratton have dismissed that idea as unfeasible.

Stringer also said preliminary data indicates that the number of claims has continued to rise in the current fiscal year.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Teen schoolboy on $35,000 bail

The 17-year-old appeared before a Couva Magistrate yesterday charged with three counts of assaulting a police officer in the execution of their duty, resisting arrest and using obscene language. He was placed on $35,000 bail and the matter postponed to April 19.

The charges stem from an incident at St Mary Junction, Freeport which took place on Monday at about 2.45 pm.

Three officers of the Freeport Police Station, literally wrestled with the youth in the car park of a fast food restaurant after they responded to a report of a fight at the scene of the incident.

The video, shown on Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites, showed the teen fighting with both male and female officers.

He is seen continuously pushing and shoving the officers while a crowd gathered.

A woman in the crowd, is heard egging on the youth to keep up the fight and not let the officers arrest him. In the end, officers had to push the schoolboy over the tray of a pick-up van in order to subdue and handcuff him. He was taken to the Freeport Police Station, cautioned and charged
San Juan man murdered

According to police reports, at about 6.35 am, on Sunday, North Eastern Division police responded to a call that a mans body was found in San Juan.

Officers arrived on the scene at Upper Lloyd Street, Sunshine Avenue, where they discovered the body of a man of mixed descent, lying face down in the bushes. The clothing on the body included a three-quarter length pants and brown vest; the hands were bound by a black and white bandana (large handkerchief) and there was an injury to the side of the victims head.

Grangers common-law-wife Jasmine, told Newsday that he was following his uncles vehicle into Alook Trace, San Juan, early on Sunday morning after he experienced car trouble, but when the uncle arrived at his destination, he realised that Granger was nowhere to be found.

His uncle waited for a while and realised that he was not coming, Jasmine explained.

He tried calling his (Grangers) phone but he did not get through. The family continued calling and searching for Granger, but to no avail. Hours later, they were told that a mans body was found and relatives who went to the scene, positively identified Granger.

An autopsy done yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James revealed that he was killed by blunt force trauma to the head.

Relatives and friends described him as a hard-working, and friendly person. Newsday understands that he will be cremated tomorrow after a service which is to be held at Ideal Funeral parlour, on Jerningham Street, Petit Bourg.
Senior cop: Police failing on murders

Speaking with residents last week Wednesday at the Castara Community Centre where the TTPS held its first town meeting for the year in Tobago, he noted that to date, 76 murders had been recorded for the first two months of this year. Dulalchan said the TTPS was working to remedy this failing with the seizure of 130 firearms so far this year in Trinidad and Tobago, three of which were seized by police in the Moriah district.

He said that in 2015, police recorded the seizure of 690 firearms, the highest ever in the countrys history. The organisations (TTPS) number one priority in 2016 is to reduce firearm related violence, he said. Assistant Commissioner of Police (Tobago Division) Garfield Moore, who was also at the meeting, said 11 illegal guns were recovered in Tobago last year. He said he has challenged his officers to recover more than 36 illegal firearms this year by bringing in at least three a month.

Castara businessman Bertile Taylor, addressed Dulalchan and Moore from the floor and asked whether there were more bandits with illegal guns than there were policemen and in what ways were business people and residents supposed to protect themselves. In response, Dulalchan said no research was available to the Police Service to suggest that such an alarming situation exists in Tobago.

The Deputy Commissioner told Taylor there was set criteria available if he wanted to apply to the Commissioner of Police for a licensed firearm but advised him against taking such action. Moore told Taylor that residents and business people have a responsibility to inform the police when they knew there are illegal guns in the community.

The Moriah Police Station district, inclusive of Castara, recorded seven serious offences for the first two months of last year as compared to three for the corresponding period this year. Dulalchan said that last year, the police service recorded the lowest annual number of serious crimes for the past 33 years and the lowest annual number of violent crimes for the past 17 years. He said too, TT had seen the lowest number of road traffic accidents annually in 2015, for the past 12 years and the lowest annual total of fatal traffic accidents for the past 15 years.
EBC Chairman gave go-ahead

The decision to extend the polls was outlined in an affidavit filed by the EBC in election petition challenges filed by the Opposition United National Congress (UNC).

In all, three affidavits were filed in the EBCs defence. According to the affidavit of EBC legal officer Fern Narcis-Scope, she provided figures representing the margin of victory in disputed constituencies of St Joseph, Tunapuna, La Horquetta/ Talparo, Moruga/Tableland, San Fernando West and Toco/Sangre Grande.

According to the document, the margin of victory in the constituencies, all won by Peoples National Movement candidates, were 1,633 votes (St Joseph); 3,615 (Tunapuna); 2,822 (La Horquetta/Talparo); 533 (Moruga/Tableland); 3,310 (San Fernando West) and 3,904 (Toco/Sangre Grande). Also providing an affidavit in defence was EBC communications manager Dominic Hinds.

According to Hinds, he received a call from Narcis-Scope at 5 pm on September 7, informing him that members of the commission had decided to extend voting time by one hour due to adverse weather conditions. Hinds said he received instructions to draft a media release which was later sent via email to various media houses at 5.22 pm.

Returning Officer for the Toco/ Sangre Grande electoral district David Warner, said he learnt of the extension of time shortly after 5 pm, on election day. He said before 6 pm, all but one presiding officer for the electoral district to which he was assigned, were contacted and informed of the extension. According to Narcis-Scope, the decision to extend the time by one hour in Trinidad came after Masson and a team of EBC officials visited several polling stations just after midday.

The group was immobilised at a Tacarigua polling station because of torrential rains and they received information that voting had stopped at the polling station in Oropune, which consisted of three tents, which collapsed because of high wind and showers. She also noted that the team received several calls of voter mobility being hampered by inclement weather and unusually heavy traffic in the polling districts of Port-of-Spain South, Toco/Sangre Grande, St Augustine, Tunapuna and St Joseph.

There were also reports of flooding at the polling stations at the Cedros Community Centre and St Crispins Primary School in Woodbrook, which was inundated with as much as eight inches of rain.

Narcis-Scope said there were no reports relayed that there were similar problems in Tobago. In November, last year the Court of Appeal, in a majority ruling, threw out a challenge from the Peoples National Movement (PNM) and the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) of Justice Mira Dean-Armorers decision to grant the UNC permission to pursue the petitions.

The UNC has argued that the decision to extend the polls by one hour was illegal. Hearing of the petitions will take place from June 27 to 30. However, an application to have the La Horquetta/Talparo petition thrown out will be heard tomorrow.
Salvatori vendors gone

Their evacuation comes years after contention between the vendors and previous PoS mayors, including Louis Lee Sing and Raymond Tim Kee. The vendors indicated that they had no problem with evacuating the lot, but they were concerned about where they would go.

Port-of-Spain mayor Keron Valentine, however, had assured the vendors that they would find a location for the vendors. Valentine met with Housing Minister Marlene McDonald and Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (Udecott), Noel Garcia, on Monday, and said they were considering putting the vendors in a building next to New City Mall, on Independence Square.

He said the site had to be handed over to Udecott, who proposed to use it for a car park. Yesterday, when Newsday visited the site, all that remained of the vendors stalls were pieces of wood, sheets of galvanise and tarpaulins. The vendors had already removed their wares and goods.

On site were City Corporation workers who were completing the erection of a galavanize fence around the perimeter.
Act early to beat US visa rush

The United States Embassy, Port of Spain, anticipates a 35 percent surge in tourist visa applications as peak visa numbers issued ten years ago are due to expire this year, said an Embassy statement yesterday.

As a result, the Consular Section has increased staffing for the first half of 2016 by 33 percent to quickly process the increased demand.

Applicants with current business/ tourist visas which expire this summer are encouraged to renew their visas as soon as possible to avoid delays.

At present, applicants can usually secure appointments within two to three days.

However, Summer applicants may need to wait several weeks to secure visa appointments.

Current visa-holders need not wait until their visas expire to apply to renew their visas.

The Embassy has dedicated afternoon appointments for visa renewals for the same visa classification.
Priest: Need to educate the poor

In a letter to the editor, Fr Martin Sirju referred to Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowleys view at the National Consultation on Education in Tobago last week Monday that the countrys education was not performing as it should.

One of the reasons why education has failed- to use the Prime Ministers word  is we have significantly given up on the education of the poor, Sirju said.

He continued, I came from a poor fishing village and my education did not suffer because of that. Many of my classmates at the then Point Fortin College (PFC) came from struggling backgrounds and have gone on to distinguish themselves in various fields. Sirju added,  Were they going to school today they might all be destined for tech-voc education. Saying he attended an earlier consultation at the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA), Sirju said some of the persons who made contributions, did not like the Concordat and accused denominational schools of elitism. The priest stated, I dont see why we should always staunchly defend ourselves against this charge when there is obviously truth here. Many educators complained about the colossal obstacle of dysfunctional and disruptive students, interestingly enough not only at the primary and secondary level but now at the level of pre-schoolers as well.

The Prime Minister even called some of these students monsters  an ascription that might not have found such warm reception in another political administration.

There were complaints about a one-size-fits-all education system, the absence of parents in PTAs and passionate pleas for more techvoc education: Boys learn differently they say; they are more hands-on. Recalling Rowleys reported comments about monsters at the consultation in Tobago, Sirju said, Many educators complained about the colossal obstacle of dysfunctional and disruptive students, interestingly enough not only at the primary and secondary level but now at the level of pre-schoolers as well. Saying he was not disturbed by the comment that boys learn differently, Sirju said, It was that boys  most of them at our government secondary schools are hands-on. The argument was made more convincing by lamenting the dearth in tec-voc professionals and the poor quality of work in this field. The priest said he remains concerned with the line of reasoning that class plays in education. Indicating that race is not far away, Sirju asked, Why is it boys at prestige boys colleges are not hands-on but boys at government secondary schools are? Is the problem boys and their learning capacity or class and the lack of opportunity; disincentives to upward mobility?
Carmona: Rise from your slumber

Speaking on Monday at the opening of the Conference of the Commonwealth Caribbean Association of Integrity Commissions and Anti-Corruption Bodies at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port-of- Spain, the President lamented, We live in a society where we can no longer depend on the goodwill of people and their ability to understand the need for absolute transparency and accountability in the progress of a country. Saying integrity must become a way of life if this country and the region are to progress, Carmona said an undeniable fact is that if every nation upheld and implemented every law, bodies like the Integrity Commission and similar regulatory institutions, would become unnecessary. Noting that many laws in the region are implementable but are not being implemented, the President cited the Proceeds of Crime Act, money laundering legislation and the Prevention of Corruption Act as examples in TT.

Describing the Prevention of Corruption Act as the law with,the fatal sting in its scorpion tail, Carmona said, It was considered draconian and it is, yet it is indeed a rare moment when this particular piece of legislation is invoked. Indicating that the BIR was the scorpion itself with respect to this legislation, the President recalled that at the opening of Parliament in 2013 he said, There have been allegations of profligate enrichment by persons in authority.

Saying there have been complaints and observations for just as many years that the asset base of politicians is inconsistent with their income and tax returns. Carmona said, There has been a hue and cry for the intervention of the Integrity Commission or the Fraud Squad. He asked, Why are we taking such a divergent route when we can wake up that sleeping giant called the BIR? The President also observed that that persons who fall under the ambit of the Integrity Commission have expressed great apprehension that the process of reporting highly personal information, mainly of a financial nature, is not absolutely secure apart from involving tedious annual submission of copious documents to the Commission. Admitting that the issue of confidentiality touches a raw nerve and needs to be treated with greater sensitivity, Carmona said there must be a modernisation of the process of handling information by integrity commissions of the region, with watertight safeguards.
Parsanlal believes in literacy

Parsanlal was presented with his instruments of appointment on Monday at the Old Fire Station Building, Abercromby Street, Portof- Spain.

Speaking to reporters after, Parsanlal noted when he saw the front page picture in last weeks Newsday of students of Chaguanas North Secondary being searched by security guards, he thought they were walking into the Maximum Security prison.

I keep wondering whether if we build more libraries, would we need more prisons? While I was minister we opened libraries at the YTC (Youth Training Centre) and Womens prison.

We can look at how to use libraries, raise our literacy levels, encourage more people to read on a wider basis so language skills and literacy become more important for us because when language ends, that is when violence begins and therefore part of my remit as chairman is going to be to drive home that we must become a more literate society, he said.

Minister of Communications Maxie Cuffie told reporters he anxiously awaited the appointment of the NALIS Board as there are several urgent matters to dealt with.

The construction of the Chaguanas library, the Mayaro library and we have some issues with the Toco library, these are the matters they will have to attend to immediately, Cuffie said.

Deputy Chairman is Charleen Phillip and other members are Elmelinda Lara, Cathyan Townsend, Dr Pandita Indrani Rampersad, Lynette Tyson-Noel, Karel Douglas and Jefferson Guy.
Dillon meets police top brass

Dillon sought to get an intimate insight into the operations and needs of the Police Service, and to voice his vision for the overall national security landscape, especially the role of the TTPS in the fight against crime. He vowed to urgently treat with the concerns of the TTPS Executive. Matters discussed included: Leadership and Governance; Management Structure of the TTPS; Crime Prevention, Detection and Reduction initiatives; Training and Development; A Whole-of-Government Approach; and Synergies among all arms of the TTPS.

Both parties agreed that crimes committed by the use of firearms was a matter of great concern and deliberated short-term, medium- term and long-term strategies to mitigate such offences.

Dillon advocated cooperation and collaboration, with strong leadership and a focused sense of direction. He said the Government wants to provide the resources needed for the TTPS to perform their tasks efficiently and effectively.
Colm wants FCB report

This, as First Citizens has taken steps to commence an internal probe to determine whether any breach occurred in relation to matters raised by Robinson-Regis.

After I speak with her, I will most certainly speak to FCB, Imbert told Newsday yesterday, a day after Robinson-Regis held a media conference at which she accused the bank of disclosing details of a transaction she said was necessitated by the health condition of her husband, among other things.

Though Robinson-Regis expressed 100 percent certainty that a breach occurred, Imbert said the facts were not established.

He further noted he had a duty to act cautiously in relation to any matter which involves confidentiality of banking records. After I determine the facts of what the allegations really are I would be asking FCB to give me a report on this to understand what is going on, the Minister said.

I am checking to find out what the issues are. My general view is yes of course a breach of confidentiality is a very serious matter as banks thrive on confidentiality.

People only use a particular bank if they believe their information would be confidential. If this were not the case, this could fatally affect the credibility of a bank, which is a very serious matter. The Minister continued, Even asking for a report from FCB must be done cautiously. I am not privy to peoples personal information.

It may be that the bank may say they do not know anything about this or that what they have to say may involve confidentiality and they cannot comment. He observed there may be several possible avenues by which details of the banking transaction emerged.

As Minister of Finance, Imbert holds responsibility for First Citizens Holding Company, First Citizens Bank, First Citizens Mortgage and Trust Company, and First Citizens Investment Services Limited. FCB chairman Anthony Smart yesterday refused to be drawn on the matter, saying it was a management issue which had been dealt with in a media release.

Minister Robinson-Regis yesterday lived up to her promise to close all accounts at FCB in protest over the matter. They said they would investigate but thats about it, Robinson-Regis said hours after her stop at
UNC chairman calls for all out attack on crime

I sincerely pray for strength and guidance for those families who may have lost loved ones and that they are able to rebuild their lives, the statement continued.

The Constitution of our land under Section 4 (Declaration of Rights and Freedoms) states that each person is entitled to the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law. At this point one can safely say that one of the basic constitutional rights is being violated as citizens no longer feel safe nor are they able to enjoy their property comfortably. Thus it is the role of Government to upkeep this right by strategically finding measures to battle the horrendous wave of crime plaguing our nation. Government would do well to facilitate local or regional consultations on crime in an effort to use the suggestions of the citizens in addressing this situation.
Imbert sets date for procurement debate

In an interview with Newsday, the Minister also defended changes now proposed  which were approved by the committee  saying they are designed to reduce levels of litigation. While one proposal would hand the Minister power to determine staffing and remuneration of a key review board, Imbert said this was not necessarily an issue.

Asked when the legislative proposals will be debated, Imbert said, I would say end of March. On the proposed Public Procurement Review Board  which would have power to suspend decisions of a Procurement Regulator  Imbert said the added layer of review would avoid litigation.

It does not add a layer, it is to avoid litigation, the Minister said.

If you look at the civil proceedings rules, the overriding objective is to avoid litigation.

If you get into the court you are talking about expensive legal fees.

You want to have an intermediate stage where you can review the decision of a public authority within 21 days. A person makes a complaint to a regulator, and if the person is aggrieved within 21 days then if you dont like that, you go to the court. That will remove 80- 90 percent of the matters. On a proposal that hands the Minister the power to determine staffing, remuneration, funding and other operational matters in relation to this review board, Imbert said, you cannot have an open-ended arrangement. Somebody has to do it. On whether an independent body should do this, Imbert said existing aspects of the law are already subject to a similar arrangement.

I dont know if that is a point, the Minister said. But I dont have a fixed view on that. On the decline in the number of suspicious transactions reported to banks, as disclosed in the latest annual report of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), Imbert said the figures may reflect lower reporting levels from banks.

The banks are reporting less, Imbert said. One would think that is a bit odd, so it is rather strange that the banks have reported less but, as Minister there is not much I can do except ask for comment from FIU in terms of their views. Are compliance units still functioning, or has there been a breakdown? I have to be careful in the way I interface with the FIU. The Minister further said, the FIU is almost like a closed department.

The only entity they can disclose information to, is the police. As minister, I cannot ask the FIU to give me confidential information. However, he added, I am looking at the FIU legislation as the way the FIU is set up, they account to no one in terms of the disclosure of specifics. All anybody can get is the report in Parliament. At the same time, you dont want political interference in an agency like this one, given how it handles sensitive and confidential information
Minister to determine pay, staff

A clause proposes a new section which would give the Minister of Finance power to determine staffing, remuneration, funding and other operational matters in relation to the Review Board.

The arrangement in relation to the Review Board contrasts with the existing arrangement in relation to the Procurement Office.

Under Section 18 of the current legislation, it is for the Office to determine its staff and terms and conditions.

The new Review Board would be appointed by the President, after consultation with the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader.

The Board would have the power to confirm, vary or overturn the decision of the Procurement Office; and (b) order the payment of costs as between parties to the review. A party to a review may appeal against the decision of the Review Board to the High Court within twenty-eight days of the making of the decision.
Why Florida's Coast Is Becoming the 'Preserve of the Wealthy'

Stronger hurricanes, higher insurance premiums and stricter building codes are changing who can afford life on the coast. After Hurricane Ian, WSJ's Arian ...

5 hours ago
Under the leadership of Pradesh Incharge Shyam Jaju party lodges complaint to the Police Commissioner

New Delhi, Wed, 02 Mar 2016 NI Wire

New Delhi, 2nd March: BJP Delhi President Shri Satish Upadhyay has said that the politically frustrated opposition is trying to save its existence only by indulging in undignified politics. Strongly condemning the video containing derogatory language against the Prime Minister by the Aam Aadmi Party MLA in a Programme of Urdu Academy under Delhi Government last month obtained through a social media group, he said that the politics of opposition parties is surviving on a competition of using abusive language against Prime Minister Shri Narender Modi.

A delegation under the leadership of Pradesh Incharge Shri Shyam Jaju met the Police Commissioner Shri Alok Kumar Verma and lodged a complaint against MLA Amanatullah Khan demanding legal action against him. The delegation included Pradesh President Shri Satish Upadhyay, National Secretary Sardar R.P. Singh, Leader of Opposition Shri Vijender Gupta and Pradesh General Secretary Shri Ramesh Bidhuri, Shri Ashish Sood, Smt. Rekha Gupta and Media Incharge Shri Praveen Shankar Kapoor. Shri Shyam Jaju said that by showing such uncivilised behaviour against the Prime Minister, the Aam Aadmi Party has displayed its political character before the people. After meeting the Police Commissioner Shri Shyam Jaju said that insult to the head of the Government of a democratic country by an MLA in an official programme is tolerated only in country like India this is due to the negative politics of the opposition.

Pradesh President Shri Satish Upadhyay and National Secretary Sardar R.P. Singh addressed a Press Conference in this connection. They said that the newly formed political parties are competing against each other for becoming the champion of using derogatory language and anti national activities. On the one hand Shri Arvind Kejriwal has himself been using unbecoming language & style and on the other hand his colleagues like Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan insulted Indian democracy by using derogatory words for the Prime Minister and provoking the Minority Community in the Presence of Chief Minister and other Ministers.

Shri Upadhyay said that last year in January there was a political upheaval in India when a Minister used a particular word against some anti national people. All the political parties and a section of the media tried to show that the Minister had hurt the sentiments of a particular community but today the entire opposition is mum against the use of insulting and derogatory language against the Prime Minister and provoking the people against Home Minister by an MLA Amanatullah Khan.

Shri Upadhyay also said that the silence of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on the insult to the Prime Minister by the MLA of ruling party in his speech in a Government function is actually encouraging the MLA. Even before this incident Shri Khan has been in the news for using provocative or anti-national language and a case of fixing a hoarding with provocative words is also lodged against him.

Shri Upadhyay has warned Aam Aadmi Party that it should take action against MLA Amanatullah Khan otherwise BJP will take this issue to the people by staging massive demonstration and compel to take action. He has also pointed out that the silence of other political parties make it clear to the people of the country that the opposition has personal grudge against Prime Minister Shri Modi and his Government. Hence the opposition parties should take the responsibility of condemning the statement of AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan and show political maturity.

Party National Secretary Sardar R.P. Singh told the press persons that the most serious thing in this context is that the MLAs speech was delivered in the presence of Chief Minister in an official function but the Chief Minister, Minister or any Government officer did not stop the MLA.

Source: BJP
Indian Railways is committed to make Railway System Passenger Friendly and respond to the needs of Passengers : Suresh Prabhu

New Delhi, Wed, 02 Mar 2016 NI Wire

Indian Railways dedicated two more services to the Nation : (I) Printing of Bar Code on Unreserved tickets to Prevent Fraud and (II) Auto Hub on Walajabad, near Chennai in Southern Railway

In its way to further improve passenger amenities and to increase railway revenue, Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu in a programme held i.e. 01.03.2016 at Rail Bhawan, New Delhi inaugurated through Video-Conferencing two services namely (1) Bar-coding of Unreserved tickets at nominated counters on New Delhi, Delhi and Nizamuddin Railway Stations over Northern Railway and (II) Inauguration of Rail Auto Hub in Walajabad in Chennai Division Southern Railway. Shri Manoj Sinha, Minister of State for Railway was specially present to grace the occasion. On behalf of the Indian Railways, Chairman, Railway Board, Shri A.K. Mittal, Member Traffic, Railway Board, Shri Mohd. Jamshed and other Board Members were present on the occasion. Several Public representatives and Senior officials from both the sides of Southern and Northern Railways witnessed the occasion. Out of these two services, Bar Coding of Unreserved Tickets was very recently announced by the Railway Minister in his Rail Budget Speech of 2016-17 and has been implemented as an immediate Action on Rail Budget 2016-17.

Speaking on the occasion about these two services, Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, stated that to improve passenger amenities and increase freight revenue Indian Railways has adopted multiple strategies including reach to multi commodity cargo. He said that in the direction to generate revenue through cargo, the Rail Auto Hub on Walajabad, Chennai is our initial step and Indian Railways is further working on how to get more auto transportation into the Railway Track. He said that Railways cannot rely upon only one business partner and this is the way to do business and thus reach to cargo is essential to generate/increased freight revenue.

Further, mentioning the salient features of the another service of Bar Coding of Unreserved Ticket through Thermal Printer Shri Suresh Prabhu said that this New Bar Coding system on unreserved rail tickets will stop possible fraudulent activities which will help in more railways revenue. He said that Indian Railways will ensure that we get proper revenues that are due to the Railways and also ensure that there should be better governance which will ultimately help railway passengers.

Salient Features of the Services :-

WALAJABAD AUTO HUB ON SOUTHERN RAILWAY

 Walajabad station of Chennai division in Southern Railway is being developed as the first common user Auto Hub on Indian Railways.

 The station is located near the major Auto units of Oragadam, SriPerambadur and SingaPerumal Kovil areas which are having the manufacturing facilities of M/s Nissan, M/s Hyundai, M/s Ford and M/s Daimler Chrysler.

 Spread over 5000 sq.meters, this hub will have loading capacity of 300 four wheelers.

 This hub would cater to over 1 million units of 4-wheelers being produced every year in this area.

 Walajabad Auto hub, would act as an ideal distribution centre for the inward traffic of M/s TATA, M/s Honda, etc. converging for distribution into Tamilnadu and adjoining states, including Pondicherry.

 While hinterland traffic is the prime segment, Indian Railway shall be able to capture export traffic which will move to ports of Chennai and Ennore.

 The hub has seamless road connectivity of 4/6 lanes to the production and consumption centres.

 Adequate lighting and fencing for security is also being developed.

 Presently, 4% automobile traffic are transported through Indian Railway and approximately Rs.100 crore revenue has been collected during financial year 2015-16 so far through this traffic.

 Target is to increase the share of Railways to around 20% by 2026.

BAR-CODING OF UNRESERVED TICKET THROUGH THERMAL PRINTER

Minister of Railways had announced Bar-Coding of Unreserved tickets in Rail Budget speech of 2016-17. Salient feature of Bar-coding are as under:

 Printing of Bar-code on unreserved ticket through thermal printer to speed up the ticket issue, and more importantly to check frauds.

 Printing of encrypted QR code on Unreserved Tickets will be implemented at New Delhi, Delhi Jn. and Hazrat Nizamuddin stations as a pilot project.

 The bar code being printed is QR (Quick Response) code by use of a thermal printer. This will save aprrox. 3seconds in the printing cycle of unreserved ticket.

 Presently, following information is printed in the form of encrypted QR code:-

1) UTS Number

2) Stock Number

3) Ticket Fare

4) Source Station

5) Destination Station

6) Number of Adults

7) Number of Children

8) Train Type

9) Class Code

10) Date of Journey

Whenever Ticket Checking Staff (TTEs/TCs) checks ticket, he can scan encrypted QR code and after decryption of data, he can validate the information printed on the ticket.

Source: PIB
Not Found

The requested URL was not found on this server.

Apache Server Port 80
Throughout their almost year-long stay in space, Kelly, 52, and Kornienko, 55, have been the subjects for dozens of medical experiments and science studies created to learn more about how weightlessness and the high radiation environment of space impact the human body.

The Soyuz TMA-18M carrying Scott Kelly, Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov drifts safely back to Earth.

The 340-day mission saw Kelly break the record for the longest single stay in space by a USA astronaut, while Kornienko is now fifth on the list for lengthiest mission by a Russian cosmonaut. Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the record for spending 437 days, the longest cumulative time in space.

NASA says it'll be 6-12 months until we see any hard, published data from Kelly's tenure in space but, whatever they find, it'll help us get one step closer to exploring our Solar System. Kelly is helping NASA develop protocols and techniques the agency will use for a crewed mission to Mars.

Now, the "Human Research Programme" is building on that foundation by proposing more global collaboration on future one-year space station missions. Scientists will be comparing his body and mental state to that of his twin brother, Mark Kelly, who was on Earth during the same period.

Soon Kelly will be headed back to Houston, Texas, where he will continue to undergo testing for the One-Year Mission.

AB InBev offloads SABMiller stake in Snow beer

The Chinese brewer previous year made a decision to focus on beer by exiting its retail and food businesses. Analysts said the sale appeared aimed at persuading Chinese regulators to sign off on the giant deal.

United States astronaut Scott Kelly (R) and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov (C) and Mikhail Korniyenko, surrounded by ground personnel, rest shortly after landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan (Zhezkazgan), Kazakhstan, March 2, 2016.

Travis Schenck of the Space Foundation said, "He's been in space for over 340 days but he's actually tweeted over a thousand times".

Kelly is scheduled to return to America late Wednesday after landing in Kazakhstan Tuesday night.

Clinton, Trump padding their delegate leads in Super Tuesday contests

His long-shot hopes now rest with his home state, Florida, which votes on March 15, but polls show him trailing Trump there. He said that he had watched Clinton's speech and asserted that she didn't deserve another four years in Washington.

Outside of the antics and stunning photographs he captured in orbit, Kelly was part of a bigger experiment for NASA.

"Leaving this incredible facility is going to be tough, because I probably will never see it again", Kelly said.

"I could go for another 100 days or 100 years", the astronaut said during his final briefing with reporters. Such Earth-reliant exploration will lead to more complex operations in orbit around the moon where NASA will demonstrate, advance, and validate the capabilities and technologies we will need to send humans to Mars.
Vanderbilt professor Dr. Carol Swain tells MSNBC the David Duke and KKK endorsements of Donald Trump, which the candidate eventually disavowed, will be a "non-issue" because people have had enough of political correctness and "no candidate can totally control who supports that candidate". "And I disavowed David Duke, and I disavowed him at a major news conference", Trump said. Trump specifies David Duke and "white supremacists" so he knew exactly what he was talking about.

Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don't want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?

But after universal condemnation ahead of the crucial Super Tuesday primaries, Trump said in a Monday morning interview with the Today Show that he had simply misheard CNN host Jake Tapper's questions.

"I was sitting in a house in Florida with a bad earpiece", he said. "What I heard was 'various groups.' And I don't mind disavowing anybody, and I disavowed David Duke".

Adele proved why she's the queen of all at the #BritAwards2016

During her Best British female artists , Adele showed support for Kesha and her legal battle she has been going through. His night had so far been "pretty intense... definitely the most extravagant awards show we've ever been to".

Trump later appeared on the "Today" show and said he had no problem distancing himself from Duke.

But on Sunday, Donald Trump swatted away the easy answers and instead feigned ignorance about the KKK and its most infamous Grand Wizard. Ted Cruz of Texas has 15 percent.

Later, Trump blamed a bad earpiece during the interview, and has tweeted that he disavows the endorsement.

In response to Trump's statements on various world leaders over the campaign, a group known as the "Emergency Committee for Israel" has released an ad attacking Trump over his views.

X marks the spot for Sony's new Xperia X phones

However like we said, there is no listing for the X Performance because apparently the handset will not be launched in Germany. Next up, the Xperia X Performance will feature the very same specs as the Xperia X except for the processor.

"I didn't even know he endorsed me", Trump said when he was asked about Duke's public support. "OK, all right. I disavow, OK?"

Meanwhile, Trump said he is not anxious by reports who say that establishment Republicans will not back his candidacy, telling Stephanopoulos he's received calls from people on both sides.

He added that he had to look into it and if someone sent him, a list of the different groups he would research them and would disavow them if he thought there had been something wrong about them. How are we going to grow the party if we nominate someone who doesn't repudiate the Ku Klux Klan?

For someone who's running for President, we can't imagine that he didn't know about the history of the KKK.

Court extends police custody of Umar, Anirban by one more day

Later, the case was transferred to Delhi Police's Special Cell and their police custody was again extended by a day. During the hearing, the magistrate allowed the Delhi Police to interrogate them for another day.

This is not the first time that the current Republican frontrunner has received support from Duke.
Astronaut Scott Kelly returns to Earth on Tuesday night after his record-setting mission, but have you ever wondered what nearly a year in space does to a person's body, and how astronauts reacclimate to terrestrial life?

Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko are set to depart tonight.

In his year aboard the space station, Mr Kelly has regularly posted on social media, capturing stunning views on his Instagram page and tweeting regularly to almost a million followers while travelling some 230 million kilometres. The journey isn't over.

Astronaut Scott Kelly is on his way back to Earth to end an unprecedented yearlong mission in space for NASA. "See you down below!"

Here's a fun fact about long-duration space flight: There's no shower on board the International Space Station.

Donald Trump Forces Black Students to Leave Georgia Rally

Is the Secret Service lying? Once on the ground, Mr Morris kicks his legs out at the agent as he tries to restrain him. Video shows Morris - a veteran White House photographer - later kicked at the agent while on the ground.

If all goes as planned, Commander Scott Kelly will be back on Earth Tuesday, but his mission is far from over.

Once on the ground, Kelly and Kornienko split.

Researchers were sent a NASA Twins Study patch that they keep in their offices at Colorado State University, March 1, 2016. With this voyage aboard the ISS and his three previous spaceflights, Kelly has spent 520 days in space - more than any other American before.

During his mission Kelly has measured how fluid distribution in his body has changed (using ultrasound and other noninvasive techniques); once he's back, scientists plan to look for "tortuosity and kinking" in Kelly's optic nerve, according to Japanese astronaut Dr. Chiaki Mukai, who is leading a vision study for NASA.

NASA hopes that his experiences will prepare the space agency for long-term missions to places like Mars and beyond.

Microsoft Has 'a Lot to Prove' With PC Gaming

But it raises a big question about the future of the Xbox One itself, as a piece of hardware, and as a business for Microsoft. Both retail and digital versions of Xbox 360 games are playable on Xbox One .

The choice of the pioneering Kelly turned out to be a bonanza.

Kelly took questions on Day 335 of what already is NASA's longest single spaceflight.

Kelly began his mission to the space station on March 27, 2015, riding a Russian rocket that launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

"The journey isn't over", Kelly posted on Twitter before leaving the station.

After Kelly lands, he'll be flown to Houston. Second Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Dr. John P. Holdren, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, and Kelly's identical twin brother and former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly will be in Houston to welcome Kelly home.
Kelly has proven a popular figure for NASA and has leveraged social media to build goodwill for the space agency's missions.

During that time he shattered the record for the longest consecutive days spent in space by any NASA astronaut. The previous record was 215 days, held by NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria.

Follow astronaut Scott Kelly's record-breaking 12-month mission on the International Space Station, from launch to landing, as NASA charts the effects of long-duration spaceflight on part one of A Year In Space on Wednesday, March 2 at 7 p.m. on KLRU.

Nebraska's Democrats preparing for presidential caucus

The Facebook group, started last Saturday, has about 100 members, links to an online petition and a link to complain to ESPN. One protester posted a link that Bernie Sanders is scheduled to visit Lawrence on Thursday evening for a rally.

How human bodies react to lengthy periods in space is a crucial subject for NASA, which predicts a round-trip manned mission to Mars would require two to three years inside a spacecraft.

Kelly isn't bringing back any souvenirs - this is his fourth mission in space, after all - but he's looking forward to returning some personal items when he lands.

Even an old astronaut like me can still marvel at the power of President Kennedy's declaration more than a half-century ago that space was the "new ocean"- and one we must "sail on".

New Leaked Images Of Huawei P9 Confirm Rear Dual-Cameras

This time around, though, the two cameras on the back are said to be 12-megapixel shooters. The phone will have 2 versions, a version with 3GB RAM and a version with 4GB RAM.

"I'll probably never see it again", Kelly told Gupta. "I've been up here for a really long time and sometimes, when I think about it, I feel like I've lived my whole life up here". While Scott was in space, Mark participated in parallel twin studies on Earth in order to provide scientists with more bases for comparisons.

Their Soyuz capsule parachuted onto the central Asian steppes and ended a science-rich mission at the International Space Station that began last March and was deemed a steppingstone to Mars. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will then explore the asteroid in the 2020s and return to Earth with samples. He'll have plenty of pictures, at least, for the scrapbook - he posted 1,000 dramatic, color-drenched pictures of Earth on his Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Right now, Kelly is getting ready to board a Russian Soyuz capsule with his one-year-mission partner, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. Between 1987 and 1995, four cosmonauts spent a year or more in space.

Radio Liberty's livestream of memorial march for Boris Nemtsov

Two weeks later unidentified attackers threw a cake at Navalny. Several thousand people took to the streets of St. Petersburg for March in his honour.

As he relinquished command of the space station Monday, Kelly noted that he and Kornienko "have been up here for a really, really long time" and have been jokingly telling one another, "We did it!" and "We made it!" Kelly heads to Houston with two flight surgeons and several other NASA reps, arriving late Wednesday night. NASA will spend years analyzing the tests he conducted on board.
Only two minutes after I had listed a dresser online for sale, someone was interested. I was ecstatic that the dresser would not only be off our hands, but wed get a little cash besides and in such short time. The buyer must have been searching for dressers for months, I thought, judging by
We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription.
For the last two days, Housing Minister Nick Smith has been dismissing the value of home insulation on reducing health costs. Meanwhile, State Housing Minister Paula Bennett is promoting its benefits:



New carpet, a heat pump, security lights and shiny new tapware have turned Jennifer Makatea's cold state house into a safe haven.



The 23-year-old mother of two had to put shoes on her children's feet to keep them warm on the bare floors in Hamilton's harsh winters, but those days are gone after Housing New Zealand spent $12,000 to upgrade her home.



[...]



Waikato's Housing New Zealand houses had $11.5 million spent on them in the past year and Social Housing Minister Paula Bennett said that was an increase of $2.9m since 2012.



Upgrades at Makatea's house have seen trips to hospital for her two-year old son, Ralph Lucas Opetaia, who suffers respiratory problems, all but disappear.



That unsurprising. Analysis of the warm-up New Zealand programme showed a benefit-cost ratio of roughly 4 to 1 , with the vast majority of that coming from avoided health costs. Or, to put it another way, warm, dry homes keep people out of hospital and save a huge amount of public money. So why isn't Nick Smith promoting that with proper standards? And why is he accepting landlords poor housing when he admits that it kills 18 people a year?Those 18 lives a year are just an effective subsidy to landlords. Its time we ended it, and made them provide safe houses, as we would with any other product.
What happens if you expose police incompetence around firearms safety? The police give you a criminal record:



TV3's Story co-host is off the hook, with police opting not to charge Heather du Plessis-Allan after their investigation into her gun purchase in one episode.



The journalist came under police investigation after a televised story exposing loopholes in how guns can be purchased online.



Police announced on Wednesday afternoon they instead issued formal warnings to three TV3/MediaWorks staff.



Which will show up on future background checks and potentially damage their future employment prospects. Its hard to see this as anything other than police vindictiveness over having their failings exposed. But as their continued refusal to admit wrongdoing over Arthur Allen-Thomas shows, the police place their reputation over justice, even when everyone outside their organisation knows its mud.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Tuesday offered to help West African countries fight the growing terrorism threat. Turkey has a vast experience in combating terrorism and we understand those countries suffering at the hands of terrorism best, Erdogan said as he was addressing the Ghanaian Parliament in Accra.

Erdogan who was on a two-day visit to Ghana referred to the recent terrorist attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and in the Malian capital Bamako which claimed lives of scores of people.

He also urged African States and developing countries at large to press for reforms at the United Nations Security Council for expansion of permanent membership, as the body in its current composition only benefits a few elite countries.

The UN Security Council is not active in Syria, in North Africa, or northern Iraq  and its failure to interfere in troubled countries should be of concern to all and thats why we need to push for reforms in the Council, he said.

The Turkish Presidents trip to Ghana is meant to bolster economic partnership and investment in one of the biggest economies of West Africa.

Erdogan who made a trip to Senegal in February will also visit Cote dIvoire, Guinea and Nigeria part of his efforts to expand Ankaras diplomatic influence in Africa.
The terror group Al Qaeda discussed in 2010 the contingency to strike a peace deal with Mauritania in return of an annual tithe of $11 to $22 million, according to documents seized from Osama bin Ladens Pakistani hideout and declassified Tuesday by the FBI.

The unveiled deal stipulates that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM,) an al Qaeda North African affiliate, would cease abductions and militancy in Mauritania for a renewable one year period, and in return, Mauritania would release all al Qaeda prisoners, commit not to attack AQIM, and pay $11 to $22 million a year to prevent the kidnapping of tourists, Reuters reports.

However, Mauritanian officials denied having been contacted by the terrorist group for any such a deal.

We have always been against paying ransoms and indirect financing of terrorism. Consequently, there has never been a secret accord between us and those people, El Housseine Ould Nagi, legal counsel to President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz told Reuters.

Independent security analyst and specialist of Islamist groups, Olga Bogorad, did not discard the possibility of the deal with Nouakchott, referring to the relative security enjoyed by Mauritania while neighboring countries are tormented by sporadic militant attacks and abduction of foreign nationals.

According to the analyst, Mauritania participates in counter-terrorism efforts to avoid criticism and probably to get support.

The declassified documents suggest that a truce with Mauritania would allow AQIM to put the cadres in safe rear bases while the militants will remain available to focus on Algeria, according to Reuters.

The released documents also revealed that Osama bin Laden had stated in his will that the millions he left in Sudan be spent on jihad, specifically. These assets reportedly amount to $29 million.

In the documents seized in Bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, investigators also found a letter encouraging Americans to overthrow the US government.

Bin Laden has been killed in his hideout in 2011, almost a decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Cooperation between Morocco and France in the fields of security and fight against terrorism is in full swing as evidenced by the regular contacts and continued dialog between the two partner countries.

Just a couple of weeks after Moroccos King Mohammed VI and the French President Francois Hollande held a meeting at the Elysee during which they renewed their shared resolve to expand their cooperation in matters of security, de-radicalization, and fight against terrorism and transnational crime, Moroccan Interior minister Mohamed Hassad met this Wednesday in Paris his French peer Bernard Cazeneuve.

The two ministers hailed the security cooperation momentum and the convergence of the two countries stands regarding many shared challenges including the fight against terrorism, transnational crimes and all types of trafficking rocking the region.

They also agreed to continue contacts between the two Home Departments to address all these issues and all the other topics of common interest.

French officials, including President Hollande, have repeatedly hailed Moroccos valuable cooperation and effective assistance as well as the effectiveness of Moroccan intelligence services that helped track down the authors of the November 13 Paris attacks.

It was indeed the intelligence provided by Morocco that helped put the French investigators on the trail of Belgian-Moroccan jihadist Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks, who was killed during a raid carried out by the Police against his hideout.

The Wednesday meeting between the two countries interior ministers, the fourth in less than a year, was attended by Abdellatif Hammouchi, head of Moroccos internal intelligence service (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire) and Patrick Calvar, Director General of Frances Internal Security.
Confira o preco do seguro para o Chevrolet Onix

Saiba quando voce gastaria com o seguro do carro mais vendido do Brasil
By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who scored a major victory in a series of Super Tuesday nominating contests, has been criticized by some in his party for being vague on policy specifics and heavy on rhetoric.

Here is a closer look at what Trump has said he would do on trade, taxes, the economy, immigration, healthcare and defense should he become the nominee and win the Nov. 8 election. The policies are drawn from a review of his website, stump speeches, debates and town halls, and televised interviews.

TRADE

Trump has complained that China, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and India are "ripping us off" by devaluing their currencies and keeping out some U.S. exports.

He would not sign the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada.

He would designate China a currency manipulator and impose countervailing duties on its exports. He also wants to pursue a World Trade Organization case on Chinese government programs that subsidize exporters.

Trump has said he would put activist investor Carl Icahn in charge of negotiating a better trade relationship with China. Icahn has said he is happy to advise Trump, but would not seek a formal position if Trump were elected.

Trump has said he would slap 35 percent tariffs on air conditioners made by United Technologies Corp's Carrier in Mexico after the company decided to move production there from Indiana, and on Ford Motor Corp vehicles made in Mexico that are sold in the United States.

TAXES

Trump has pledged to cut and simplify taxes. Individuals making less than $25,000 per year and married filers earning less than $50,000 would not pay income tax.

There would be three other brackets, down from seven currently, with a top marginal income tax rate of 25 percent, and a top rate for long-term capital gains and dividends of 20 percent.

Charitable giving and mortgage interest deductions would remain unchanged. Other deductions would be trimmed in the highest tax brackets.

He would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax, and the carried interest tax break that allows investment fund managers to treat income as capital gains.

The corporate tax rate would be cut to 15 percent, down from the current level of 35 percent.

He would phase in a "reasonable cap" on deductions for business interest expenses and would cut other corporate loopholes.

Trump would impose a one-time 10 percent "deemed repatriation" tax on deferred corporate overseas profits and would end deferral of income from foreign subsidiaries.

The Tax Foundation, an independent policy research group, has said Trump's plan would cost more than $10 trillion over the next decade. His campaign has said the plan is fully paid for.

ECONOMY

Trump has pledged to get rid of the $19 trillion deficit by boosting jobs, and cutting government waste, but he has not released a formal policy paper on how he would do this.

He has said he would not cut the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for senior citizens and low income Americans, nor Social Security retirement benefits.

He would cut the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

IMMIGRATION

Trump has promised to build a high wall at the southern border to keep out illegal immigrants that he has said would cost $10 billion to $12 billion.

Mexico would pay for the wall or face consequences, his campaign said. Trump would "impound" remittance payments to Mexico from undocumented workers, and increase visa and border crossing fees for Mexican workers. Applying tariffs on Mexican goods and cutting foreign aid are also "options," his campaign has said on his website.

He would deport the 11 million undocumented people living in America and end "birthright citizenship" for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants.

He has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and would not allow refugees from Syria.

Trump would triple the number of border agents and require all businesses to use the E-Verify database to ensure employees are in the country legally.

He would withhold federal funding from "sanctuary cities" that decline to help the federal government deport illegal immigrants.

Trump's campaign has also said he would "pause" new green cards and require employers to hire American workers first.

HEALTH CARE

Trump has said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, and replace it with a system of health savings accounts.

He would still require insurers to provide coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions, a key feature of Obamacare.

He would move to allow insurance companies to sell plans across state lines to spur competition.

Trump has said he could save the government $300 billion by negotiating better prices with drug companies.

ISLAMIC STATE

Trump has promised to "knock out" Islamic State quickly and said he is open to working with Russia to do so.

He has said he would "bomb the oil" that helps finance the insurgent group and stop the "back channels of banking" used by the group.

He has vowed to bring back the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning and has been banned as torture under U.S. law. He said he also supports other, unspecified techniques "a hell of a lot worse" than waterboarding.

He would "take out" the family members of Islamic State militants and would like to shut down "areas" of the Internet to try to stop the group from recruiting members.

He wants to build a "safe zone" for Syrian refugees in Syria. But Gulf states would have to pay for it.

He has said the United States should first deal with Islamic State before addressing President Bashar al-Assad's future, saying "We have to do one thing at a time."

He has questioned whether the United States should back opposition groups in Syria, saying "we have no idea who they are."

DEFENSE

Trump has said he would increase the size and power of the U.S. military to make it "so strong, so powerful that nobody's going to mess with us."

He says too much money is wasted buying equipment the military does not want.

He wants Japan, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to bear more of the cost of military aid provided by the United States. "We can no longer defend all of these countries," he said, citing the deficit.

Trump would boost the U.S. military presence in the East and South China seas to "discourage Chinese adventurism," according to his website.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton, editing by Ross Colvin)

This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.
A report by the Civilian Complaint Review Board looked at 1,762 complaints to determine whether NYD officers had entered residences without a warrant or consent. Photo: ANDREW GOMBERT/Corbis

The NYPD conducted 180 improper entries and searches from January 2010 through October 2015, according to an analysis by the Civilian Complaint Review Board released Tuesday. The board, an independent agency empowered to investigate claims of police misconduct, looked at 1,762 complaints about entries and searches made during that span.



As DNAinfo reports, bad searches typically occurred for one of two reasons: the officers misunderstanding of the grounds that would justify entry without a warrant, or the use of an outdated warrant. In some cases, officers used intimidation and threats of arrest, eviction, damage, force, or [a call to Administration for Childrens Services], according to the report. Heres one of the incidents described in the report:

In a 2014 case, a civilian owned a building with a barbershop and money transfer business on the ground floor, and his apartment on the second floor. Officers assigned to Conditions entered the barbershop and the closed-off area of the money transfer business to search for a gun, and also frisked the occupants. The shop owner asked the sergeant, who had no badge, what was going on and was told to shut the f up. Officers threatened to trash the place if they were not taken up to the second floor apartment to view footage from surveillance cameras recording activities on the ground floor. Eventually one individual took them to the upstairs apartment because he felt that things would only get worse if he did not. The shop owner filed a CCRB complaint because the officers had no search warrant and violated his rights. The CCRB found that consent to search was coerced, in that police acted in an intimidating fashion by cursing at and pressuring the civilians into allowing access.

Intrusion into peoples homes is among the most serious violations of basic constitutional protections and really a basic human right, CCRB board chair Richard Emery told DNAinfo.

According to the report (which you can read in its entirety here), African-Americans comprised roughly 55 percent of the victims in substantiated complaints, which is consistent with CCRB complaints generally. The report found that white individuals made up 4 percent.

The greatest number of improper entries, searches, and instances of a failure to show a warrant occurred between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. (All but 30 occurred between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.) Nearly half occurred in Brooklyn. The NYPD told the CCRB that it has imposed discipline in 64 percent of the cases it has reviewed so far.

The Times adds that the report criticizes the NYPDs internal rule book for failing to detail that a warrant, or probable cause, is needed for searches and seizures in homes. The report also notes that the departments rule book provides no guidance on the kinds of emergencies that allow officers to enter homes without them. We are going to decide if this is something that needs to be more clearly clarified, in terms of either interpreting the exigent circumstances that drive a lot of these or having officers properly explaining the reasons for their actions, said Stephen P. Davis, the NYPDs chief spokesperson.

The report makes a number of recommendations to the NYPD, including the use of body cameras for officers during home entries and a revision of the departments Patrol Guide to include a stand-alone section on the law of searches and seizures.
I have made a huge mistake. Photo: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Chris Christie, who was recently taken hostage by Donald Trump, has bigger problems than Trumps Super Tuesday victory speech. The governors constituents are unhappy with his failed presidential run, and an editorial published by six New Jersey newspapers Wednesday calls outright for Christie to step down. Were fed up with his long neglect of the state to pursue his own selfish agenda, the editorial reads. New Jersey needs someone whose full attention is devoted to making life better for New Jerseys citizens. That wont happen until Christie steps down or is forced out.

The piece, which appeared in the Asbury Park Press, Bridgewater Courier News, East Brunswick Home News Tribune, Morristown Daily Record, Cherry Hill Courier Post, and Vineland Daily Journal, goes on to list grievances against Christie including his refusal to take off topic questions from reporters at a recent press conference, his out-of-state travel on New Jerseys dime (an expense thats climbed to $1 million since he took office), his endorsement of someone who disagrees with him on virtually every important issue, and his tendency to put personal ambition ahead of the interests of New Jersey citizens. Whats more, the editorial says, New Jersey Republicans have done little to hold Christie accountable, and Democrats are too weak to fill the power vacuum.

And its not just journalists who disapprove of Christie; a poll out Wednesday shows record-low approval ratings for the governor statewide. Only 30 percent of Christies constituents approve of his job performance, and in the days after he announced he would support Trumps presidential bid, Christies ratings dropped 6 whole percentage points. When voters were asked to describe him in one word, they most often chose bully or arrogant. If his White House bid was supposed to reestablish credibility with voters, Christie blew it.

His approval ratings are likely to take an even bigger nosedive thanks to his bullish stance on the impending New Jersey Transit strike. Hes called transportation unions demands for pay raises and lower insurance premiums outrageous, and he doesnt exactly have a great relationship with public-sector unions in the first place. If Christie cant reach an agreement with those workers, New Jersey commuters will be, as Gawker put it, downright fucked. From the looks of it, New Jerseys list of grievances with its governor is about to get longer.
Cheer up  things will get better. (Actually, they wont.) Photo: Erik S. Lesser/epa/Corbis

In his role as the donor classs darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obamas Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the networks top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Foxs Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubios communications director, Brooke Sammon.

But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people hes lost confidence in Rubios ability to win. Were finished with Rubio, Ailes recently told a Fox host. We cant do the Rubio thing anymore.

Ailes was already concerned about Rubios lackluster performance in GOP primaries and caucuses, winning only one contest among the 15 that have been held. But the more proximate cause for the flip was an embarrassing New York Times article revealing that Rubio and Ailes had a secret dinner meeting in 2013 during which the Florida senator successfully lobbied the Fox News chief to throw his support behind the Gang of 8 comprehensive immigration-reform bill. Roger hates seeing his name in print, a longtime Ailes associate told me. He was appalled the dinner was reported, the source said.

Already, there are on-air signs that Foxs attitude toward Rubio has cooled. This morning, anchor Martha MacCallum grilled Rubio about his poor Super Tuesday performance. Is that a viable excuse at this point? she asked, when he tried spinning his second-place finish in Virginia.

Foxs corporate support of Rubio has also been a growing source of tension with the networks more conservative talent. Sean Hannity was furious that the Times article reported how he went along with Rubios immigration proposal. During an interview with Trump on Monday, Hannity barely defended Fox while Trump trashed Rubio backers like Hayes. He shouldnt be on the air, Trump said. The best Hannity could muster was to change the subject. Have you ever watched MSNBC? he said. They suck.

Ailes is now back to searching for a candidate the channel can rally behind. Hes thinking, What do we do about the whole damn thing? one of the news executives friends said.

Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti did not return a call for comment.
Hurling insults at a fellow Republican is one thing; refusing to support the party nominee is another. Photo: J Pat Carter/Getty Images; Branden Camp/Getty Images

On September 3, 2015, many Republicans heaved sighs of relief when Donald Trump signed a pledge saying hed support the GOP nominee for president instead of entertaining a third-party candidacy. In order to secure that pledge, all of the other candidates signed it, too, which wasnt surprising since everyone but Trump had promised to support the nominee during the very first candidate debate.

Trump was pretty clear that hed honor the pledge so long as the GOP treated him fairly, which most obviously meant hed have firm party support if he did win the nomination (still not something many Republicans seriously thought possible last September).

And at nearly every subsequent Republican debate some candidate would ritualistically opine that every one of them would be a better president than the godless socialists running for the Democratic nomination  and nobody publicly dissented.

The tone of the GOP competition obviously got very toxic during the most recent candidate debate in Houston, and the surprise aggressor at that event, Marco Rubio, hasnt let up in the days leading up to todays Super Tuesday megaprimary. But while everyones been focused on how the candidates might fare today on the vast battlegrounds of primaries and caucuses, Rubio crossed a line: embracing a #NeverTrump movement thats an implicit, if not explicit, violation of the loyalty pledge. If theres any doubt about Rubios new attitude toward his bitter rival, his rhetoric has removed it. After Trump temporarily failed to denounce (or, depending on how you read the chain of events, re-denounce) former Klan leader David Duke, Rubio hurled this anathema:

Marco Rubio, who has been savaging Trump as a con man for three days, responded by saying that Trumps defiance made him unelectable. The senator from Florida said at a rally in Northern Virginia, We cannot be the party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists   Rubio and his aides have been promoting a #NeverTrump campaign on Twitter.

Trump has certainly chosen to interpret never as meaning never, and hes responded with his own threat:

In response to all this, Trump told Jake Tapper that his loyalty pledge was a two-way street, and theyre gonna have a problem, theyre gonna have a big problem with me.

Independent or third-party candidacies aside, its very, very rare for major presidential candidates who lose nomination contests to refuse to endorse the winner. The only two I can think of are Nelson Rockefeller, who never got around to endorsing Barry Goldwater in 1964, and George Wallace, whose recovery from an assassination attempt protected him from recriminations for failing to provide what would have been a very unlikely endorsement to George McGovern in 1972.

Hmmm. Barry Goldwater and George McGovern  what is it they have in common?

Yes, this could be a pretty significant moment in this most agonizing of presidential cycles for the GOP. Perhaps cynics expect Trump and Rubio to kiss and make up when the dust has settled and raise hands together in Cleveland. But its reasonably clear that Rubio has decided not to let Republicans off the hook by professing neutrality in the presidential race, and that hes more than willing to counter Trumps threats to a united party in November with his own.
Photo: Evan Golub / Demotix/Corbis

The White House is vetting Jane L. Kelly as a potential Supreme Court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia, the New York Times reports. If Kelly were nominated and somehow made it past the Senate Republican caucus, she would bring a unique perspective to the bench. Before President Obama appointed Kelly to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013, she had worked for years as a public defender. Presently, the Supreme Court hosts multiple former prosecutors and professors but no career defense attorneys.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Kellys appointment to the appellate court three years ago. Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley was unreserved in his support, referring to Kelly as a forthright woman of high integrity and honest character and a person of exceptionally keen intellect. Grassley has backed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells decision not to hold any hearings on Obamas nominee, regardless of the individuals identity. McConnell and his colleagues argue that Obama should leave the appointment to the winner of Novembers presidential election, in deference to a precedent that does not actually exist.

However, Democrats believe that a Kelly nomination would force Grassley to change his stance, the Times reports. Kellys chambers are in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the Democrats figure that Grassley cant afford to disrespect a local jurist in advance of his reelection fight this fall.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that a nomination could be announced as early as next week.
Time to decimate the mosquito population? Photo: LUIS ROBAYO/Getty Images

It was a Brazilian obstetrician who first linked Zika virus to microcephaly in fetuses, and although that link is still unproven, so far thats where most reports on the virus have focused their attention. Now a study published in the British medical journal the Lancet suggests Zika might be to blame for more than birth defects. Evidence gathered during a 201314 outbreak in French Polynesia suggests a link to a severe neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome, which means the current global outbreak is as dangerous for men as it is for expectant mothers.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Guillain-Barre syndrome is a disorder in which the bodys immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. Its direct cause is unknown, but it begins with a tingling sensation and can progress until certain muscles are completely paralyzed. It can affect anybody, its not contagious, and most patients recover, although some may retain a certain degree of weakness.

In the study, researchers tested the blood of 42 patients with GBS at the Centre Hospitalier de Polynesie Francaise. Of those, 41 (or 98 percent) had Zika-neutralizing antibodies in their system. Because the body only produces antibodies as a reaction to infection, researchers could conclude that almost all GBS patients had been infected with Zika. Whats more, most patients (88 percent) who contracted GBS reported that theyd experienced Zika symptoms in the last six days.

Researchers then compared these GBS patients with a control group, of whom only 56 percent were carrying Zika-neutralizing antibodies  a markedly lower number than GBS patients. Although those results seem to suggest a strong link between Zika and GBS, researchers are careful to note that theirs is the first study linking the two and that more research is needed to corroborate it. The results of our study support that Zika virus should be added to the list of infectious pathogens susceptible to cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, the study reads. As Zika virus is spreading rapidly across the Americas, at-risk countries need to be prepared to have adequate intensive care beds capacity to manage patients with Guillain-Barre syndrome. That army of robot mosquitoes is sounding better and better.
Are you ready to use Facebook at work? Okay, wait, sorry, the wording here is key. Everyone who doesnt work in some draconian hell-office uses Facebook at work. What I mean is  Are you ready to use Facebook for work. Like, to talk with co-workers, I guess, about synergy?

Anyway: Facebook at Work. Imagine Facebook, but its for everyone in the office and its used to talk about projects and graphs and  road maps. (Can you tell that I do not work in biz dev?) Its not everywhere yet but it is starting to creep out into the wild. Fortune reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland and Club Med are among the companies testing out the service on their thousands of employees (more than 60,000 companies reportedly applied to be part of the beta).

Facebook at Work is reportedly not all that different from the Facebook you use now to look at baby pictures, observe your friends emotionally fulfilling romantic relationships, and watch free-booted WorldStar videos. Except this work-version of Facebook is more about project updates, sales leads, and customer service problems. Its got all of the features youre used to: groups, news feed, chat, event listings, and so on.

Important to note is that Facebook at Work does not interface with your personal account. From the services FAQ, Facebook at Work is a separate account that is associated with your company.

Heres what it looks like.

A connected workplace is a more productive workplace Interested in testing Facebook at Work at your company? Visit www.facebook.com/work to register your interest. We have a limited number of spots in our early adopter program. When the product is publicly available, we'll make an announcement on this page. Posted by Facebook at Work on Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Facebook at Work makes sense! People use Facebook all the time anyway. You can claim that you dont use Facebook, and in almost all cases you are for-sure lying. Mainly, this is Facebooks best shot at eating Slack (as well as competitors such as HipChat), the chat-and-collaboration hub around which a growing number of modern workplaces are situating their computers. Slack, in case you were skeptical of how big it is, is currently pursuing a $4 billion valuation.

But theres a large shadow looming over services like Facebook at Work and Slack that they generally dont acknowledge. If you watched the above video (and its okay if you didnt; it is very twee), you might have noticed that every scenario the service presents is in an office context. Facebook at Work never leaves the office in this conception. In reality, work-based social networks are tethers that keep you just keystrokes away from checking in with work wherever you are, at any hour of the day. This is especially true if the service supplies mobile apps (which Facebook and Slack do).

Already, Slack is becoming a hub for people who dont even work together, people who just hang out in friend Slacks, or family Slacks, or apartment building-specific Slacks. Slack is enterprise software made personal, while Facebooks is personal software turned enterprise. The unstated conclusion to services like these is a world in which people are accessible at any moment all the time, either fielding messages in real-time or letting their virtual inbox pile up. Regardless, the door is already partially open.

As meetings and discussions that once took place in oak-paneled boardrooms at gilded tables surrounded by Cigar Men (again, to reiterate, Ive never worn a suit to work) move online, the question of work-life balance gets muddy. What is work-life balance when you can shift from one to the other as easily as opening an app? If, for instance, you are an hourly worker (the gig economy!) instead of a full-time employee, workplace social networks bring up a billion thorny issues.

On Facebook at Work, when does the work day end? Trick question! It doesnt.
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox

Most of us like to think that were independent-minded  we tell ourselves we like Adeles latest album because it suits our taste, not because millions of other people bought it, or that we vote Democrat because were so enlightened, not because all our friends vote that way. The reality, of course, is that humans are swayed in all sorts of different ways  some of them quite subtle  by other peoples beliefs and expectations. Our preferences dont form in a vacuum, but rather in something of a social pressure-cooker.

This has been demonstrated over and over, perhaps most famously in the classic Asch conformity studies from the 50s. In those experiments, many participants went along with a blatantly wrong majority judgment about the lengths of different lines  simply, it seems, to fit in. (Although the finding is frequently exaggerated, the basic point about the power of social influence holds true.)

But that doesnt mean all humans are susceptible to peer pressure in the same way. You only have to look at your own friends and family to know that some people always seem to roll with the crowd, while others are much more independent-minded. What accounts for these differences? A new study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience led by Dr. Juan Dominguez of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, offers the first hint that part of the answer may come down to certain neural mechanisms.

In short, the study suggests that people have a network in their brains that is attuned to disagreement with other people. When this network is activated, it makes us feel uncomfortable (we experience cognitive dissonance, to use the psychological jargon) and its avoiding this state that motivates us to switch our views as much as possible. It appears the network is more sensitive in some people than in others, and that this might account for varying degrees of pushover-ness.

The researchers asked 39 participants, most of them students and 19 of whom were women, to lie in a brain scanner while judging whether 192 factual statements from four topics (biology, history, medicine, and physics) were true or false. The participants were informed that each statement had been made by either a student or a professor, and were told that some of them were known to be false. The statements were deliberately obscure (for example: Orchid flowers have the most species), because the researchers didnt want differences in the participants own background knowledge to interfere with their natural disposition to agree or disagree.

Just as theyd hoped, the researchers found there was a wide variation among their participants in their inclination to agree or disagree with the statements  just as in real life, some of them simply had more of a general tendency to go along with what they were told. But against the researchers expectations, it didnt make any difference to participants brain activity or response times whether the statements were from a student or professor. The researchers had thought it would be extra awkward to disagree with a professor because of their authority, but they reasoned that perhaps this was balanced out by the awkwardness of disagreeing with a fellow student.

Most intriguing, the researchers found a network of brain regions that was especially active during those rare moments when people who rarely disagreed  that is, those with more pushover-ish tendencies  actually did choose to disagree. This network incorporated several parts of the frontal lobes involved in decision-making, and the anterior insula  a deeper structure thats involved in the experience of social emotions and bodily sensations, among other things. Collectively, these regions have previously been associated with the experience of cognitive dissonance  the uncomfortable feeling of holding what feel like two contradictory beliefs (i.e.,My sister is a good person, but she just yelled at a waitress over nothing).

The researchers interpreted this result to suggest that people who are averse to disagreeing tend to experience worse cognitive dissonance when confronted with views they disagree with (as compared to less agreeable folks), which the researchers believe also comes with a dose of heightened mental stress and discomfort. It makes sense that such people agree as much as they can as a way to avoid experiencing this discomfort. Consistent with this account, people who rarely disagreed tended to respond extra slowly on those rare occasions that they did disagree, as if this was a difficult thing for them to do.

Although I really cant bring myself to openly disagree with the researchers interpretations, I should point out that they seem to have indulged in a fair amount of speculation about the meaning of the brain-activity patterns they uncovered. For example, one structure in their cognitive dissonance network, the anterior cingulate cortex, is one of the most promiscuously excitable structures in the brain, to quote Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld in Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience  meaning it tends to get activated all the time, so its hard to know what its really doing.

That said, the new results do fit with some earlier findings: For example, a study from 2010 found that teenagers who were more influenced by other peoples ratings of pop songs tended to show more activity in parts of the cognitive-dissonance brain network described in the current research, again consistent with the idea that some of us find disagreeing more uncomfortable at a neural level than others do. Theres also a study from 2011 which found that temporarily knocking out parts of this brain network with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduced peoples social conformity.

While three studies arent enough to establish anything for certain, its intriguing to think that there might be a brain basis for why some people are more sheeplike in their behavior than others. This new neural perspective also suggests you might want to go easy on that acquaintance who is going to a Justin Bieber show next week  maybe her extra-sensitive cognitive-dissonance network made it hard for her to say no to her Belieber friends.

Dr. Christian Jarrett (@Psych_Writer), a Science of Us contributing writer, is editor of the British Psychological Societys Research Digest blog. His latest book is Great Myths of the Brain.
Marchs installment of the Cut Book Club might be a little heavy, but thats okay  daylight saving time doesnt start until the middle of the month, so nows the time to hibernate with a book before beach-read season rolls around. Scroll down for the best books were reading this month, new and old, ranging from a collection of haunting short stories to a nonfiction look at people who commit radical acts of charity. Got other recommendations? Let us know in the comments.

1. Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

This bleakly funny 1959 novel tells the story of a repressed Kansas City housewife in small vignettes from her day-to-day life. Mrs. Bridge is obsessed with proper behavior but largely incapable of bending her family to her will. Told entirely from her point of view, the book manages to indict everything wrong with mid-century upper-middle-class life without ever breaking character. Theres an equally good follow-up, Mr. Bridge, about her jerk of a husband, but start with this one. And when youre done, say a silent prayer of thanks that youre living in the year 2016. Izzy Grinspan, senior editor

Photo: Courtesy of Amazon

2. Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

Astonish Me is recommended by Oprah, but, more important, it is recommended by Jen Gann, the Cuts copy editor, who gifted the book to me in December. The book hops through time as it follows the life of Joan, a former ballerina who traded the barre and her slippers for ho-hum domesticity in California. As her son grows up, Joan discovers that she passed along the gift of pointe to him and is drawn back into her former crazy-dramatic life, complete with Russian defectors, globe-hopping gigs, sex, and so many, many drugs. Its anything but boring. Ashley Weatherford, associate beauty editor

3. Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Bluets is one of those books that is so good, it made me want to write, draw, read, feel things, make things, reread the book, and copy the entire thing down by hand in my notebook and pretend I wrote it. It feels like a running commentary or like reading an ongoing train of thought. It has something of Walter Benjamins Illuminations in it in that Maggie Nelson weaves quotes and ideas into her own writing, but transforms them. Its almost impossible to separate Maggie Nelson from the quotes she pulls, though. Its hard to draw a line where one ends and the other begins. One of my favorite quotes: 58. Love is something so ugly that the human race would die out if lovers could see what they were doing (Leonardo da Vinci). Aude White, public relations associate

4. Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz

The only thing I remember about my early childhood babysitter is that she had glorious, glossy chestnut-colored hair she brushed constantly, and that she once had a copy of Slaves of New York in her bag when she came to my house to watch me and my brothers. A notorious book snoop, I secreted the book from her purse but only got a few minutes alone with it before she snatched it back from me. Still, those little glimpses were enough. Janowitzs New York  the New York of the early 1980s  is the one I imagined for years after: It was dirty and dark, covered in graffiti, awash in drugs, and full of prostitutes. It was, in short, exactly the kind of place I wanted to live in. New York has changed, but this book has not. I finally picked it up off a library shelf a few weeks ago randomly and remembered Id meant to read it for close to 30 years. All of its short stories are bizarre, sometimes-hilarious rides. Laura June, staff writer

5. Arcadia by Lauren Groff

If you liked Lauren Groffs Fates and Furies, youll enjoy Groffs previous novel, Arcadia, about a boy growing up on a commune and the life he lives once he ventures into the world beyond. It almost makes me wish I grew up living in a bread truck without heat or plumbing or electricity. I said almost. Jessica Roy, senior writer



6. Im Very Into You by Kathy Acker

If paper letters were best suited for love, perhaps email does the best with crushes, the introduction to Im Very Into You reads. The book is a collection of email correspondences between writers Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark, written after they had a brief fling. A mix of gossip, queer theory, and love letters, its perfect for anyone who enjoys critical theory and writing wacky emails (a.k.a. me). Eve Peyser, writer

7. Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women by Mia Bay, Farrah Griffin, and Martha Jones

This book is really the only way I have been able to learn about history in an in-depth educational manner and not be bored. Its a compilation of essays written by writers, educators, and activists from all walks of life that make you question societys standards and what we are taught about race and gender. Lindsay Peoples, associate market editor

8. Cities Ive Never Lived In by Sara Majka

I read Sara Majkas Cities Ive Never Lived In a week ago and I still cant get some of her perfect assessments of the human condition out of my head. Her writing is matter-of-fact (though very beautiful), and her characters are sad, occasionally desperate. In one story, she offhandedly notes that sometimes you can love someone and then not remember loving them at all in the same moment, and its these things that stuck with me. Shes incredibly effective. Dayna Evans, staff writer



9. Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar

We all have guilt over not volunteering enough, not donating enough, not being better people. Larissa MacFarquhar sought out the people who dealt by going to the extreme: adopting 22 children, moving to a lepers colony, Dumpster-diving for food because theyve given all their money to charity. Are they exceptionally good people, or exceptionally disturbed? MacFarquhar avoids any neat conclusions, which feels both philosophically unsettling and the only option. I cant stop thinking about it. Megan Greenwell, features editor

10. How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Pollys Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life by Heather Havrilesky

A few years ago I wouldnt be caught dead reading a self-help book. Maybe 2016 is the year it became socially acceptable to publicize our efforts to be better, or it has something to do with getting older, but now Im toting around How to Be a Person in the World, by Cut columnist Heather Havrilesky, in broad daylight, around other humans, without a deceiving book jacket! Whether youre already an Ask Polly fangirl or new to her tough-love approach to advice, this collection of old and new letters with responses, plus fun existential cartoons, will light a fire under your butt in the warmest, most loving way possible. Leah Rodriguez, producer

11. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

I started this book the night after reading Rebecca Traisters single-ladies cover story, and now Im finally realizing what life was really like for my grandma in the 1950s. When The Feminine Mystique was published, in 1963, 70 percent of American women were getting married before age 24. Fourteen million girls were getting engaged by age 17. To understand where we are now, this is a must-read. Betty Friedan interviews housewives and researches the advertising, media, and psychology behind the problem that has no name. Catie LHeureux, assistant editor
The U.S. Supreme Court. Photo: Evan Golub / Demotix/Corbis

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, its first major abortion case in almost ten years. The Courts decision will determine whether 34 out of 40 of Texass abortion clinics will be shut down. Heres what you need to know about the case, and what it means for the future of womens health care in America.

What is Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt?

In April 2014, the Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit challenging two provisions of Texass anti-abortion bill, HB2. That bill, signed into law by then-governor Rick Perry in 2013, restricts abortion in several ways, but Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt specifically challenges two: (1) the admitting privileges requirement specifically as it applies to two clinics  Whole Womans Health in McAllen and Reproductive Services in El Paso; and (2) the requirement that every abortion clinic meet the same building requirements as ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs).

Who are the parties involved?

Whole Womans Health is a privately-owned, feminist organization located in McAllen, Texas, that provides reproductive services, including abortion, for women; they are being represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

John Hellerstedt is the commissioner of Texass Health and Human Services commission, which oversees womens health services in Texas.

What are their arguments?

Whole Womans Health argues that the restrictions placed on abortion in HB2 are unconstitutional, pointing to 1993s Planned Parenthood v. Casey, when the court decided that states cannot limit abortion access to the point that it presents an undue burden on women seeking the procedure. The decision also banned unnecessary health regulations that have the purpose or effect of presenting a substantial obstacle to a woman seeking an abortion. According to RH Reality Check:

Plaintiffs argue that the admitting privileges requirement effectively gives local hospitals veto power over the McAllen and El Paso clinics ability to provide abortion care to women in the Rio Grande Valley and in West Texas respectively because hospitals in Texas have broad discretion to set the criteria for granting admitting privileges and can thereby grant or refuse privileges on the basis of idiosyncratic rules and regulations.

Texas argues that it is simply protecting the safety of women getting abortions, even though abortion is already very safe.

What does it mean if the Supreme Court votes to uphold the provisions?

Thirty-four of the states 40 abortion clinics will be closed. According to The Atlantic:

If that happens, legal abortion will be available only in the states four major cities. As a result, nearly 1 million women of reproductive age would find themselves more than 150 miles from a facility that could perform an abortion, and would need to wait more than three weeks for an appointment to receive one.







What does it mean if the judges vote 4-4?

After the recent death of Judge Antonin Scalia, a tie is possible and could have major repercussions. Writes the Times:

Justice Antonin Scalias death last month may have muted the prospect of truly bold action, but even a 4-to-4 tie would have enormous consequences because it would leave in place an appeals court decision that could drive down the number of abortion clinics in Texas to about 10, from roughly 40.

What are other people saying about this case?

Dozens of women have shared their abortion stories with the Court in the hopes of illustrating just how important access to reproductive health care is.

Several major news organizations have published editorials encouraging the Court to strike down HB2, including the New York Times, USA Today, and the Washington Post.

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards called the case the most significant abortion case before the nations highest court in more than two decades.

What does this decision mean for the future of abortion access in America?

If the provisions of HB2 that are being challenged are upheld, it could set a major legal precedent that allows states to continue to chip away at abortion rights. If its struck down, it would broaden abortion access in Texas and serve as a message to other states with similar laws that they cant enact legislation that places arcane restrictions on womens reproductive health.

When will we know the Courts decision?

The Times predicts it wont come until June, so its going to be a stressful next couple of months for pro- and anti-choice activists alike.
same. i'm dying over here.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte, forever weeping over the knick

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

it says limited series, so there's still hope

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

oh damn, i didn't see that another filmmaker would take over the knick. yeah, nhf.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

steven is lowkey one of my favorite directors he's not allowed to retire

Reply

Thread

Link

ehhh, wake me up when s3 of the knick is confirmed

Reply

Thread

Link

ok bitch but don't forget about the knick

Reply

Thread

Link

The Knick better be getting a 3rd season! Its one of my favorite shows on right now. But Steven won't be directing it though....:/

Reply

Thread

Link

dang, if he approaches this western the same he tackled the knick, this could be my new favorite thing.



cast andre in this too plsthxbye

Reply

Thread

Link

Yes! Make him a cowboy

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

After I heard Todd Field is pulling a Soderbergh and directing 20 episodes of the Purity adaptation, I now want to actually read a Franzen novel. Kill me.

Reply

Thread

Link

nooooo. I watch The Knick for Soderbergh, nobody can fill his shoes.

Reply

Thread

Link

Exactly, his directing/lighting/cinematography was always the highlight of the show

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

everything about the show was amazing tbh

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol Soderbergh never said he was retiring, iirc. He just said he wasn't going to make any more feature films.

Reply

Thread

Link

ok clearly i need to start watching the knick

Reply

Thread

Link

Western? Unless it's WOC-led, not interested.

Reply

Thread

Link

The knick should just end tbh the ending of the 2nd season was pretty perfect

Reply

Thread

Link

COME BACK TO THE KNICK, PLEASE

Reply

Thread

Link

And by another filmmaker we mean another white dude?

Reply

Thread

Link

This sounds pretty cool. Dude on that Kevin Smith retirement plan of never actually retiring

Reply

Thread

Link
ok they were super cute together but omg this needs to end

Reply

Thread

Link

mte, they were cute but they've also moved on. fans need to get over it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

NO IT DOES NOT! IT WASN'T OVER!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Seriously. He has a kid with another woman now, like

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ia

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte. they've both clearly moved on. also that movie sucked majorly.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link













A friend of mine saw them once at a restaurant in Toronto. They were all waiting for a table and she told me that Ryan and Rachel were literally dancing. And by dancing i mean, slow dancing, just like Noah and Allie.

It makes my heart melt just to think about it they really were SUPER cute together.A friend of mine saw them once at a restaurant in Toronto. They were all waiting for a table and she told me that Ryan and Rachel were literally dancing. And by dancing i mean, slow dancing, just like Noah and Allie.It makes my heart melt just to think about it

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

OMG @ the delusion of McGosling fans lol



Also they were in the same room @ the GG and SAGS too



Edited at 2016-03-02 01:19 am (UTC)

Reply

Thread

Link

I've never seen The Notebook

Reply

Thread

Link

me neither. I tried to watch it but I couldn't get past the first 10 minutes of it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Same here and I have no interest in seeing it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Me either.



It always seemed like a really basic movie that basic people went to see.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I was over this guys house one night, and I told him I'd never seen it, and he's like "oh my god, we have to watch it right now". I think he thought it would get me in the mood, but u literally couldn't make it 20 minutes without dying from boredom/white twee feelings... It was so awful and he was so offended I hated.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

keep it that way

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i read the book on a plane when i was in 8th grade and i have no desire to revisit it

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i found them so cute. and i found her and michael sheen so cute too.... SIGH!!!!!! IF she can't find someone special (if that is what she wants) wtf am I going to do smh.

Reply

Thread

Link

are michael sheen and sarah silverman still together?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

yes, they definitely are!

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Yeah, they were at the Oscars together.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

lol wasn't Michael Sheen also there with Sarah Silverman?

It must suck to have to navigate a room full of exes on the night you're nominated for an Oscar!

Reply

Thread

Link

It's time to let go. They've clearly moved on. I'm sure Ryan disappeared to keep any rumors from starting.

Reply

Thread

Link

Gena is a national treasure.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Gena or Rachel? lol.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

omg the delusion





also props to the op for an excellent use of spoiler cuts

Reply

Thread

Link

lmao petty, why do people still ship them?



and yeah idg the big deal about ryan, he's cute but plain

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i think Rachel is prettier but Eva is hotter. Both too fine for that lopsided face white boy

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

ia. rachel & eva should get together xoxox

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Ryan gosling is fugly, I don't get why straight women are obsessed with him.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

didn't rachel and ryan hate each other while making the notebook or did I hallucinate reading that? anyway, your last point is so perfect like ryan gosling looks like a foot.

Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

I personally think Rachel is prettier.

Eva comes off as a mean and rude woman and I will never be able to find her pretty after everything that I read about her.



Reply

Parent

Thread

Expand

Link

People get so invested in celebrity couples. It has to be exhausting to care so much, for so long, about people you will never even meet.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

mte @ all of this

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

both are pretty. can't we just have both?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

They're pitting two beautiful women against each other over that chinny chin chin?

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

he has a kid now and he and eva seem happy



like they gotta get over it, its over

Reply

Thread

Link

Rachel and Eva are both way too pretty for this rubber face.

Reply

Thread

Link

I wonder how many people who roll their eyes at people shipping McGosling are still shipping Kate/Leo 



(for the record, I ship neither)

Reply

Thread

Link

lol THIS. I still ship both, but I know it's nonsense as an irl thing.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

i was waiting for a comment like this to show up, thanks.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I can't with people who actually think kate/leo will eventually end up together.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

fuck you luke they are endgame

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

I just realized I've only seen it once, when it first came out in theaters (and I wept in the bathroom when it was over lol)....I always say I love it but I'm realizing I should probably check if that's changed since I was 13 lmao.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link

Rachel looked like.... really pretty at the Oscars.



Don't you agree???

Reply

Thread

Link

Are they even on good terms

Reply

Thread

Link

I read somewhere that they still talk but I dont believe it tbh. Eva would never allow it. Sis is cray and super jealous.

Reply

Parent

Thread



Link
Big oil and renewables dont always have to be adversaries, and nothing speaks to this more than the emerging offshore wind opportunity in the U.S. that could see offshore oilfield service providers fill the gap in the slump by shifting to renewables.

Unlike in Europe, where offshore wind farms provide 11,027 MW to the power grid, the United States has no offshore wind production to speak of. But that is about to change as the Deepwater Wind project offshore Rhode Island gears up to come online later this year.

The Block Island Wind Farm heralds the birth of an entirely new industry in the United States, and its presents a huge opportunity for offshore oilfield service providers struggling in the snowballing effect of sustained low crude oil prices.

The initial investment in the Block Island project is massive. Deepwater Wind secured funding to the tune of $290 million to complete the project.

But once the 130-turbine wind farm is complete, Deepwater Wind will face unique challenges in maintaining their equipmentchallenges that offshore oilfield companies already have a wealth of experience in tackling. Related: Oil Finds Some Support As U.S. Output Falls

Transporting employees to offshore rigs, maintaining equipment, conducting repairs in offshore conditions; these are all day-to-day tasks that offshore wind farms will require once they are fully operational.

The building of offshore wind farms also presents an opportunity for oilfield service providers to offer their expertise. No companies in the United States have experience like oilfield companies in constructing massive installments miles offshore. Transporting workers and equipment, securing rigs to the seafloor, and logistics planning for building offshore are just a few skills that oilfield service providers have had years to perfect.

And as the industry emerges, a second project is also at play, put forward by U.S. Wind. Some 14 miles off the coast of Maryland, this project is slated to be even bigger than the Block Island Wind Farm. With a $2 billion budget, there is a huge opportunity for oilfield service providers to expand their portfolio.

Its clear that the offshore wind industry is poised for incredible growth. The initial major investments have been made and favorable tax credits have been extended by Congress. Tax credits were extended for 2015 and 2016, and will continue at 80 percent of the present value in 2017, going down to 60 percent for 2018 and 40 percent for 2019. Related: Oil Companies On Edge Ahead Of Super Tuesday

All told, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the U.S. will be getting 20 percent of its electricity from wind by 2030.

Some of the big players in the oilfield services patch are already chalking up offshore wind experienceat least in Europe. No. 7-ranked Houston-based FMC Technologies Inc. (NYSE:FTI), which is a leading supplier of subsea systems, has plenty of wind experience.

But General Electric (GE) is probably the best example of a diversified energy company that is crossing the boundaries between renewables and fossil fuels. GE Renewable Energy and GE Oil and Gas, together, can weatherand even take advantage ofthe oil price downturn.

Last year, GE bought the power and grid business of French-based Alstom for $10.6 billion, and then used that to launch its Renewable Energy segment. And while oil prices are in a sustained depression, GE is using the time to grow its offshore wind farm prospects. In fact, GE is already entrenched in the emerging US offshore wind farm opportunities.

GE and Alstom are building the Deepwater Wind farm turbines, and Jerome Pecresse, president and CEO of GE Renewable Energy, has called the project the precursor for bigger offshore potential in the U.S. Related: Brazilian Oil Giant Petrobras Could Lose Its Most Valuable Assets

And its also planning to be in on the Dominion wind farm off the coast of Virginia.

The price environment here is key, he noted, because energy costs are higher in the Northeast. There are places in the U.S. where offshore wind can be competitive because of good wind.

GE Oil & Gas president and CEO Lorenzo Simonelli concurs. In a recent interview carried on Fuelfix.com, he noted that GEs wind farm ideas were all about disruption during a downturn. GE, he said, is on the offensive.

While the oil industry certainly isnt going anywhere anytime soon, the emerging offshore wind opportunities are exactly where oilfield services can start making up for lost market share while they wait for crude prices to rebound. GE is already on the offensive with wind farms. Will others follow?

By Dex Dunford for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Brazil has been one of the hottest plays going in the oil and gas sector the last several years. But recent financial and corruption woes in the country are prompting some critical changes.

The Brazilian Senate last week passed a bill to allow foreign E&Ps to take greater control of offshore fields. And late last Friday, the country announced an even bigger deal  securing a massive funding package from China, in return for oil supply. Related: Brazilian Oil Giant Petrobras Could Lose Its Most Valuable Assets

State-owned oil firm Petrobras said in a filing that the company has signed up a $10 billion loan from China Development Bank. An amount the firm needed in order to cover commitments on its massive debt burden for the coming year.

The most interesting part is what China gets in return for the funding. Namely, crude supply  with Petrobras saying that the loan comes with supply commitments to Chinese buyers.

Such dollars for barrels deals have been a common theme for China in Latin America of late. With three Chinese banks having already leant $10 billion to Petrobras last year. And Chinese lenders have also been active in Venezuelas oil sector recently, to help that nation service its burgeoning debt. Related: Gulf Stock Markets Feel The Pain From Low Oil Prices

Petrobras didnt say how much oil it is committing to send to China. But similar-sized deals by Chinese banks globally have involved exports in the range of 150,000 to 200,000 barrels per day  representing a significant amount of production.

This deal is yet another sign that China isnt slowing down in its pursuit of natural resource supply. And in fact may be using the current downturn in energy markets to leverage its massive cash reserves into tangible commodities. Related: Oil Companies On Edge Ahead Of Super Tuesday

For its part, Petrobras is far from out of the woods financially. With the company still having $20 billion in debt coming due over the next two years.

If other solutions arent found to those issues, watch for China to continue lending in this part of the world. A move that could sew up a significant amount of supply, under the noses of other crude consumers.

Heres to being a borrower and a lender.

By Dave Forest

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Saudi Arabia continues to talk tough and make headlines for its stance in oil. Last week, the Kingdoms oil minister advocated for a straight forward though painful solution to the current oil glut  wait for the worlds most expensive and inefficient oil producers to be forced out of the market.

While the Saudis have implemented a production freeze and there seems to be increasing room for cooperation with Russia and other nations, the Saudi view still leaves little room for high cost and inefficient producers. At the HIS Conference last week, Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi was quoted as saying that Inefficient producers will have to get out Efficient markets will determine where on the cost curve the marginal barrel resides. Al-Naimis quote refers to the marginal cost curve which relates to the production cost for each producer of oil. The chart below from the IEA details estimated relative costs of production in a variety of countries. Countries on the high end of the spectrum include Canada, the U.S., and most other non-OPEC nations. Related: Oil Companies On Edge Ahead Of Super Tuesday

(Click to enlarge)

The marginal cost curve above approximates roughly a standard supply curve. High cost producers can only compete on such a curve when demand is very high. Without that demand, high cost producers have little ability to extract oil at a price the market is willing to pay. Now of course, a large part of the costs of oil production are borne upfront in drilling a well, so once the well is drilled, even high cost producers will have an incentive to pump from existing wells. But when prices are below marginal costs of production, no new wells will be drilled. That is precisely what we are seeing in the U.S., Canada, and some other geographies right now. Related: Gulf Stock Markets Feel The Pain From Low Oil Prices

If we draw a supply curve against the chart of producer costs and add a hypothetical demand curve, we can get an idea of why the current crisis is taking so long to abate. In a free market, price is set by supply meeting demand. And with the current cost structure, as the chart below shows, its hard to imagine how demand can sustainably rebound strongly enough to push oil prices back over more than $60 a barrel. By the same token however, its equally hard to imagine demand being so weak that prices below $30 a barrel are sustainable.

(Click to enlarge)

In this situation, what can the U.S. and Canada do to ensure continued relevance in the markets? The key is to lower marginal production costs. This is not easy, but it is possible. In particular, marginal production costs can be lowered in one of three ways:

1.) Better technology enabling more efficient oil extraction

2.) Falling input prices reducing costs of extraction

3.) Focus on the most productive assets with the easiest extraction Related: The U.S. Still Dominates World Oil Prices

In the U.S. and Canada, all three approaches are in progress. Supply chain costs have fallen dramatically, and as the old adage goes, necessity has proved the mother of invention leading to new methods of drilling more efficiently that use less equipment and speed the process up (thus lowering costs). The last point is perhaps the most germane for investors though  there are some sites and likely even entire formations that are simply not economically feasible at present (and probably not economically feasible for years to come).



The sites that are the hardest and most costly to drill are probably a total loss for oil companies for the foreseeable future whether because of the remoteness of the area, the technical difficulty of extracting oil, or the cost of the land. This reality will wipe out some oil companies. Investors should do research on their own, or consult an expert to determine which firms are not going to recover. Those companies and individuals holding out hope for a miracle have little prospect of receiving one.

By Michael McDonald of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
On the day that Lou Reed would have celebrated his 74th birthday, the oil market is taking a walk on the wild side ahead of EIA inventories. Here are ten things to consider on this first Wednesday in March:

1) The positive momentum seen in the oil market in recent days has been curbed by last nights API report, which showed the biggest build to crude stocks in 11 months. Not only were total inventories a growlingly bearish number (of +9.9 million barrels), but Cushing inventories were said to have increased by a mammoth 1.8 million barrels. If a similar number is seen from the EIA report, it will propel stocks at the pipeline crossroads of the world to over 90 percent full.

2) If you wanted to find a bullish lining to this bearish report, gasoline inventories drew by 2.2 million bpd  as the impending peak of refinery maintenance season in the coming weeks means falling gasoline production, while gasoline demand continues to look robust. We should see a similar stance from the EIA report today: decent builds for oil and distillates, a decent draw to gasoline stocks. Related: A Shrewd Approach To Oil Investing

3) The crude build this week makes sense from a ClipperData perspective, as we saw PADD 3 imports tick higher last week. While we only saw 1 VLCC arrive from the Arab Gulf after a deluge seen earlier in February, there still remains a backlog of floating storage offshore in the U.S. Gulf. As of yesterday, there is over 10 million barrels of Arab Gulf crude waiting to discharge  which accounts for about a third of the total volume waiting.

4) While U.S. oil inventories push north of 500 million barrels, oil inventories on a global basis are pushing to a new record high. As the chart below illustrates, global inventories are already at a record 3 billion barrels. The IEA still sees a net stock build this year and next, while the EIA is of a similar view. It expects global oil inventories to rise by ~1 million bpd this year, and by an additional 0.3 million bpd in 2017.

(Click to enlarge) Related: Oil Finds Some Support As U.S. Output Falls

5) Just as the API report steals the thunder from the EIA data, the ADP employment report attempts to do a similar thing to Nonfarm Fridays official unemployment data. This mornings ADP report showed 214,000 jobs were created last month, more than the consensus of 190,000. Fridays report has a similar consensus of job creation, while the unemployment rate is expected to hold at the multi-year low of 4.9 percent.

6) The latest 8-to-14 day forecast from NOAA points a balmy end to a warm winter (viva the woolly worm!), set to stymie late-winter heating demand. As storage levels sit nearly 30 percent above the five-year average, and as the latest monthly data show natural gas production at its highest level since records began in 1973, it is no surprise that natural gas is testing levels not seen since last century (March 1999 is so last century). Related: Brazilian Oil Giant Petrobras Could Lose Its Most Valuable Assets

7) I remember writing a few years ago about how natural gas and retail gasoline prices had converged. The same thing has happened again, except this time around prices are about half of what they were back then. As natural gas plunders to new multi-decade lows, and retail gasoline prices begin their seasonal pre-driving season ascent, 1000 cubic feet of natural gas is cheaper than a gallon of gasoline.

(Click to enlarge)

8) We highlighted last week that we are not seeing materially higher Iranian oil exports showing up in our ClipperData, and this point has been affirmed by Mohsen Ghamsari, who is the director of international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company. He has said that crude exports have been complicated by issues surrounding ship insurance, payments and financing, but that for March, definitely our volumes are going to be higher than February  but it depends on the logistics situation and the banking channels. We shall avidly watch our data, and wait and see.

9) We mentioned on Monday how U.S. oil and gas companies are issuing equity to raise cash. This number is now up to $9.2 billion so far this year, which is the most year-to-date since 1999.

10) King Kong premiered in New York 83 years ago today.

By Matt Smith

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Prior to the announcement Tuesday, a host of stars had confirmed they would be performing at the festival in late February. Boy bands such as 2PM, Boyfriend, Monsta X and girl group Twice will perform In the first day, while the second day performance will feature Sunggyu, a member of boy band Infinite, Block B and girl group Lovelyz.



The last years KCON in Saitama, Japan was attended by some 15,000 people.



KCON, the Korean Wave convention, has played a role of offering global fans chance to get access to Korean stars, since it took off in 2012 in Irvine, California. This year, the festival is aimed at presenting not only K-pop stars performances, but also promoting Korean TV content, cosmetics and food products.



Before the Japanese event, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, is set to host KCON on March 25. K-Pop stars including BTS, Taeyeon of Girls Generation, Kyuhyun of Super Junior, Double S 301, Monsta X and SPICA will perform at the event, which is already sold out.



The festival is organized by Powerhouse Live, Mnet Media, CJ E&M and Koreaboo, and is endorsed by the government-affiliated Korea Creative Content Agency


When Super Tuesday March 1st elections were called, we saw Donald Trump take center stage on a made for TV comedy routine to answer questions from the media. During his chaperoned comments, the Humpty Dumpty Governor Chris Christie was the bouncer behind the "chicken in every pot" bravado. I listened to Trump bully the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan about how they might get along, or not. Moreover, a litany was recited about how the anti-immigration wall would be paid for by Mexico, the crumbling infrastructure of the US would magically be fixed while taxes would be cut and, oh yes, somehow, Obamacare would be replaced with something better.





Oh paaaaleeeze! Will Donald Trump be using his personal wealth to fund all of the above? Of course not! In fact, the Donald Trump plan for America's greatness must be tax dependent. Trump will have to raise taxes to support these chicken in every pot promises. Honestly? I'm not opposed to raising taxes when value is attached to the bill. But, Donald Trump isn't being truthful when he promises the chicken in every pot, without saying anything about how he'll pay for his delusional plans.





Donald Trump is making delusional promises without a plan about how to pay for them

In fact, Republican establishment conservatives are finally calling for Trump's accountability. Unfortunately, they've waited a long time, before finally swinging.





George Will unloads on coward Trump: Conservative icon calls him a presidential aspirant who would flunk an eighth-grade civics exam

Take a moment to appreciate some catty conservative infighting as GOP inches toward nominating a neo-fascist

BRENDAN GAUTHIER





Conservative columnist George Will on Tuesday body-slammed GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in an essay for the Hartford Courant. And though Wills critique can be added to the pile of too-little-too-late efforts to stop the neo-fascist from steamrolling Super Tuesday, its actually quite funny.



Likening Trumps distinctive rhetorical style to a drunk with a bullhorn reading aloud James Joyces Finnegans Wake under water, Will goes on to call Donald a thin-skinned tough guy, who resembles a campus crybaby who has wandered out of his safe space'  the ultimate conservative chirp.





And, (l)ike all bullies, Will adds,  Trump is a coward , and like all those who feel the need to boast about being strong and tough, he is neither.



neither respect for nor knowledge of the Constitution.  A claim bolstered by Trumps weirdly inept (even for Trump) understanding of the judicial process during lasts weeks debate: Trump, during the Houston debate, said that his sister, a federal judge, signed a certain bill and that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito also signed that bill. So, the leading Republican candidate, the breadth of whose ignorance is the eighth wonder of the world , actually thinks that judges sign bills. Trump is a presidential aspirant who would flunk an eighth-grade civics exam.



George Will and even the conservative rubber stamp Citing Trumps purported plan to loosen up those libel laws to easier sue the pants off publications whose reporting doesnt meet his standards of niceness, Will claims Trump has A claim bolstered by Trumps weirdly inept (even for Trump) understanding of the judicial process during lasts weeks debate: Trump, during the Houston debate, said that his sister, a federal judge, signed a certain bill and that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito also signed that bill. So, the leading Republican candidate, the breadth of whose, actually thinks that judges sign bills. Trump is a presidential aspirant who would flunk an eighth-grade civics exam.George Will and even the conservative rubber stamp William Kristol are now trying to bring down Donald Trump , because he is erratic and emotionally labile.





Obviously, the personal attacks against Trump are failing to change minds, but if Trumponian supporters knew the cost of their delusional icon's plans, it might be like giving them political narcan.









Labels: George Will, Super Tuesday, William Kristol
Racist Donald "Trump the Chump" (now named "Drumpf" by John Oliver), the Republican presidential candidate, has trashed the once-upon-a-time "Grand Old Party". Those who support Donald Trump, like Maine Governor Paul LePage, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and racist Georgia Senator Jeff Sessions, are now the "Going Out Party". They're being sucked into a political vortex of disrepectful mud slugging, void of any humanitarian enlightenment.

Republicans who support Donald Trump "Drumpf" are being sucked into a vortex of racism





What's even worse (if you can imagine worse) than the childish, ugly and darkly insulting accusations now included in our political discourse are the dual standards created by Drumpfianisms. For example, if our children used labels like "he's a joker", "he's a liar", "she's got blood coming from who knows where", "I don't know David Duke", and too many other stupidity statements and insults to list in any one single blog, we'd punish their immature behavior. Yet, Drumpf gets away with this low life behavior.





Somehow, in 2016 politics, this kind of non-productive behavior is becoming commonplace. Hopefully, however, the trend towards insutling incivility will not be tolerated. Americans must vote against Republicans in every election.





Democrats, on the other hand, are shining like comets in a night sky, with our two inspiring candidates. Secretary Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie "feel the Burn" Sanders, are both presidential. They debate with ideas, rather than insults!





Adding to the Republican hypocrisies are the candidates' destructive infighting, splitting their sparse political hairs over who is a conservative, while, at the same time, Secreatary Hillary Clinton has endured overwhelming and unsubstantiated criticisms. Yet, Secretary Clinton has endured the Republican hypocrisy and she's still here. As Barbara Stiesand sings - "I'm still here!"





Donald Trump doesn't represent Americans. Instead, Trump is an example of the worst of American racist extremism. To my internatioal blog readers, I apologize for the Trump "Drumpfism".





On the other hand, Secretary Hillary Clinton is the First Lady of the World! I'm asking the American people to vote Hillary2016!





Let the racist Going Out Party be sucked into their black vortex of political shame.

Labels: Barbara Striesand, Congressman Trey Gowdy, Drumpf, GOP, Governor Paul LePage, Hillary2016, Secretary Hillary Clinton
The latest

Cheer on the Packers live with our guide to Lambeau Field shuttles

Looking for a shuttle to get from Milwaukee to Green Bay? Take a peek at our shuttle guide for Packer game day!
The opinions expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the opinions of OnMilwaukee.com, its advertisers or editorial staff.

Even though Scott Walker dropped out of the Republican presidential race months ago, the Wisconsin governor still managed to get some social media buzz and make headlines on this hotly contested Super Tuesday.

However, a good portion of the buzz was likely not positioned exactly the way he intended.

Early Tuesday night, Gov. Walker tweeted this:

What my hand feels like after signing 58 bills into law today: pic.twitter.com/NcAE5Ng9oR  Governor Walker (@GovWalker) March 1, 2016

The remark provoked more than a little head-scratching, serving as one of those unfortunate political metaphors that made you wonder, "What was he thinking?" For Walker, it's a familiar situation. Remember when he ran that 2014 campaign ad that featured him speaking to the camera while standing in a dirt hole?

Even weirder, Walker also tweeted a picture of his actual hand. Maybe hes been listening to Marco Rubio too much lately.

Photo of my hand before signing 58 bills into law today: pic.twitter.com/crM19dwjNi  Governor Walker (@GovWalker) March 1, 2016

This is not a joke (I mean, I guess he meant it as a joke, but it really did not land). That's a real tweet of Walkers real hand.

He must have been exhausted, having signed all those bills on things like ATV size and grouse feathers. This came after the 46 other bills Walker signed Monday, including one to make sure Democrat Mark Harris cant run for the Legislature.

Here are the 14 best responses and metaphors raised Tuesday night by #walkerhand.

1. It's the UW system

Cut to the bone and stripped of its flesh. But thats another column.

(PHOTO: Bobby Tanzilo)

2. Its the average age of the Democratic presidential candidates

(PHOTO: Maggie Polsean)

3. Good question

4. Its Walker, after Trump and the presidential campaign got done with him

This guy kind of had the same idea:

@GovWalker About as healthy and lively as your political career.  Namir Yedid (@NamirYedid) March 1, 2016

Or, following the same unfortunate metaphorical theme, its Walker politically as governor, with a less than 40 percent approval rating.

5. Unlike Trump, at least hes got long fingers

6. Uh oh, GOP...

@GovWalker For a minute I thought that was a picture of what the GOP will be if Trump wins  NYC Infidel (@NYC_Infidel) March 1, 2016

7. A different type of bills

@GovWalker What my hand feels like after signing 58 bills into law today: pic.twitter.com/yBrR59WIwA  Its probably nothing (@kopprz) March 1, 2016

8. Ah, the civility in politics today

9. Sorry, governor, but these jokes were pretty predictable

What were you thinking?

@GovWalker That's appropriate, since most of those laws are boning your constituents.  Joel Zawada (@JoelZawada) March 1, 2016

10. Guns

.@GovWalker This is appropriate given that Milwaukee had had a dramatic rise is gun homicides. @scottwalker ignored this & loosened gun laws  Not Backing Down (@Pie_SocialMedia) March 2, 2016

Some people will use anything to make the same political point on guns.

11. High score!

@GovWalker like that friends episode where Chandler gets a claw from playing Pacman too much  Billy Richards (@Richards11Billy) March 1, 2016

12. Says it all

13. Another response to his bone-headed tweet

@jessmcbridemilw @GovWalker It's the hand of every prisoner in Wisconsin waiting for a pardon that's not coming. Don't want 2 undermine CJS!  Rich Donovan (@yankfan2010) March 1, 2016

14. Or maybe Walker's actually a trendsetter
German-Americans are joining with historic restoration advocates and civil rights groups in a "Rescue and Restore" campaign for King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, formerly Dreieinigkeitskirche.

The structure is a landmark on 4th St., one block north of North Ave., in the Harambee/Bronzeville neighborhood, adjacent to Halyard Park, Brewers Hill and Riverwest.

German immigrants were the initial settlers of the neighborhood. German Evangelical Lutherans formed a congregation called "Dreieinigkeitskirche," meaning "Trinity Church," and erected a magnificent building in 1892.

Vivid stained-glass windows and murals honor the early German political and business leaders of Milwaukee.

The German Lutherans made civil-rights history in 1896 when their pastor, the Rev. George Hirtz  withstanding a tremendous national protest  presided over the marriage of David P. Redd, a black man, and Gertrud Farun, a white woman.

While some of Hirtzs congregation left in protest, most of the congregation stuck with their courageous pastor. Hirtz remained at the helm of the church for another 15 years.

King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church was founded in 1958 and has been in the Dreieinigkeitskirche building since 1977. King Solomon is a stabilizing influence in the community, assisting its own congregants as well as area residents with projects that include a food bank and lunches for the homeless. The congregations leaders encourage civic involvement  and the church is a forum for politicians and civic leaders.

The church choir and congregation members participate in civic events such as Milwaukee Shakespeare in the Park, held in COAs Kadish Park a few blocks from the church.

"German-Americans, African-Americans, thriving Americans and modest-income Americans are all working together to accomplish this great task," the church says. "In honor of the German founders  and the worshipers of today  we will rescue and restore the buildings German-American / African-American artistic, cultural and civil-rights heritage."

Over the years, King Solomons members have dug deep into their pockets on numerous occasions to pay for exterior and interior restoration projects. But maintaining the structural integrity of a 125-year-old building is a challenge.

Today, the structure needs significant repairs to its roof, exterior brickwork, heating system and electrical wiring. The glorious stained-glass windows also need some loving care.

Estimated cost for complete restoration of the building is over $500,000. The work does not need to be done all at once. The project will proceed in stages as funds become available.

The "Rescue and Restore" Steering Committee includes respected Milwaukeeans who are not members of King Solomon; they are committed to German heritage and historic preservation.

The Steering Committees fund-development program includes grant applications to foundations and corporations, church members own fundraising events, and donations from the community at large. The Steering Committee is also seeking support from Milwaukee-area residents of German descent whose ancestors founded and attended Dreieinigkeitskirche.

Funds for the "Rescue and Restore" campaign are at all times strictly segregated from general church revenues. "Rescue and Restore" is in the process of becoming a 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Expenditures are reviewed by an independent "Rescue and Restore" Audit Committee.

For more information, or to tour the building, contact the "Rescue and Restore" campaign at GermanAfricanAmerican@gmail.com.

The church is grateful for historical research by Bobby Tanzilo of OnMilwaukee.com

and to photographic assistance from Alan Magayne-Roshak.
Co-written by Jenna McLaughlin

Apple scored a major legal victory in its ongoing battle against the FBI on Monday when a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the U.S. government's request as part of a drug case to force the company to help it extract data from a locked iPhone. The ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein was issued as part of the criminal case against Jun Feng, who pleaded guilty in October to drug charges. It is a significant boost to Apple's well-publicized campaign to resist the FBI's similar efforts in the case of the San Bernardino killers.

In the case that gave rise to Monday's ruling, the Drug Enforcement Administration had seized -- but, even after consultation with the FBI, claimed it was unable to access -- Feng's iPhone 5. The DEA and FBI said they could not overcome security measures embedded in Apple's operating system. The government thus filed a motion seeking an order requiring "Apple to assist" the investigation "under the authority of the All Writs Act" -- the same 1789 law the FBI is invoking in the San Bernardino case -- by "help[ing] the government bypass the passcode security." Apple objected, noting that there were nine other cases currently pending in which the government was seeking a similar order.

Judge Orenstein applied previous legal decisions interpreting the AWA and concluded that the law does not "justif[y] imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government's investigation against its will." In a formulation extremely favorable to Apple, the judge wrote that the key question raised by the government's request is whether the AWA allows a court "to compel Apple -- a private party with no alleged involvement in Feng's criminal activity -- to perform work for the government against its will."

The court ruled that the law permits no such result -- both because relevant law contains limits on what companies like Apple are required to do, and because Congress never enacted any such obligations. Moreover, the judge said of the government's arguments for how the AWA should be applied: "The implications of the government's position are so far-reaching -- both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about congressional intent in 1789 -- as to produce impermissibly absurd results."

Perhaps most devastating to the FBI's case is Orenstein's recognition that the purpose of the FBI's request is not simply to obtain evidence in one particular case, but rather to grant the government broad, precedential authority to force Apple and other tech companies to take affirmative technological steps to cooperate with criminal investigations generally. That the FBI is seeking to establish broad precedent is a key argument made by Apple and its supporters in the San Bernardino case. To accept that the U.S. government has this power, ruled the court, is to vest law enforcement agencies with statutory authority that Congress itself never enacted:

"The Application before this court is by no means singular: the government has to date successfully invoked the AWA to secure Apple's compelled assistance in bypassing the passcode security of Apple devices at least 70 times in the past; it has pending litigation in a dozen more cases in which Apple has not yet been forced to provide such assistance; and in its most recent use of the statute it goes so far as to contend that a court -- without any legislative authority other than the AWA -- can require Apple to create a brand new product that impairs the utility of the products it is in the business of selling. "It is thus clear that the government is relying on the AWA as a source of authority that is legislative in every meaningful way: something that can be cited as a basis for getting the relief it seeks in case after case without any need for adjudication of the particular circumstances of an individual case (as the arguments that the government relies on here to justify entering an AWA order against Apple would apply with equal force to any instance in which it cannot bypass the passcode security of an Apple device it has a warrant to search)."

The judge also accused the government of trying to manipulate secret judicial proceedings to obtain powers for itself against Apple that public debate and Congress would never permit. It is, Orenstein wrote, "clear that the government has made the considered decision that it is better off securing such crypto-legislative authority from the courts (in proceedings that had always been, at the time it filed the instant Application, shielded from public scrutiny) rather than taking the chance that open legislative debate might produce a result less to its liking." Because the government wants the courts rather than Congress to grant this power, the "government's interpretation of the breadth of authority the AWA confers on courts of limited jurisdiction " raises serious doubts about how such a statute could withstand constitutional scrutiny under the separation-of-powers doctrine."
Members of Congress did something almost unheard of at Tuesday's hearing on the brewing battle over encryption between Apple and the FBI: their job. Both Democrats and Republicans grilled FBI director Jim Comey about his agency's unprecedented demand that Apple weaken the iPhone's security protections to facilitate surveillance. This would have dire implications for smartphone users around the globe.

Normally, congressional committee hearings featuring Comey are contests among the members over who can shower the FBI director with the most fawning compliments in their five-minute allotted time frame. Hard questions about the agency's controversial tactics are avoided at all costs. But on Tuesday, in rare bipartisan fashion, virtually every member of the House judiciary committee asked Comey pointed questions and politely ripped apart his arguments against Apple.

One judiciary member questioned how the FBI managed to mess up so badly during the San Bernardino investigation and reset the shooter's password, which is what kicked this whole controversy and court case in motion in the first place. And if the case was such an emergency, why did they wait50 days to go to court? Another member questioned what happens when China inevitably asks for the same extraordinary powers the FBI is demanding now. Others questioned whether the FBI had really used all the resources available to break into the phone without Apple's help. For example, why hasn't the FBI attempted to get the NSA's help to get into the phone, since hacking is their job?



Comey readily admitted that the San Bernardino case could set a precedent for countless others after it, and that it won't just be limited to one phone, as the FBI tried to suggest in the days after the filing became public. Comey said the FBI has so many encrypted phones in its possession that he doesn't know the number (that's not including the hundreds of local police forces that are itching to force Apple to create software to decrypt those as well). Comey also admitted under questioning that terrorists would just move to another encrypted device if Apple was forced to do what the government is asking, and that there are companies all over the world offering similar products.

More than anything, though, the members of Congress expressed anger that the FBI director didn't follow through earlier on his stated intention to engage in a debate in Congress and the public about the proper role for encryption in society. Instead, he decided to circumvent that debate altogether and quietly go to court to get a judge to do what the legislative branch has so far refused to do.

Click Here to Read Whole Article


(Image by Think Progress) Details DMCA



Voter Suppression. Approximately one quarter of all qualified voters are not registered, and many state laws and administrative practices are aimed at blocking--rather than encouraging--their enrollment. These include the imposition of arbitrarily short deadlines for the submission of voter registration forms; imposing harsh penalties for administrative errors; and even requiring the forms to be printed on very specific weights of paper. On the other hand, some states such as California, automatically register all eligible voters when they apply for driver's licenses, and a number of states now allow online registration.

Other devices to suppress voting involve the unnecessary purging of registration rolls to remove qualified people; the deliberate misallocation of election resources resulting in long lines in low-income and college precincts; misleading voters regarding procedures and locations for voting; and "caging," which involves sending certified letters to voters and striking registrations for those whose letters are returned as undeliverable. Scandalous as these plots may be, they verge on criminal conspiracies when they are directed by politically partisan secretaries of state and other officials who have the responsibility to ensure elections are fair and unbiased.

Although some suppression dirty tricks are bipartisan--four Kerry supporters were convicted of vandalism for slashing the tires of vans intended to transport Republican voters to the polls in 2004--it is primarily Republicans and other conservatives who engage in voter suppression. Many of these individuals and groups consider voting to be a privilege, instead of a right, and they are untroubled by efforts to reduce the voting participation by certain groups, such as racial minorities, students, and the poor, who traditionally vote for Democratic candidates.

The most successful electoral subversion results from voter ID laws passed in many states in the past 15 years. These laws have been enacted--purportedly-- to prevent voter fraud, in which an ineligible voter impersonates an eligible voter. Typically, these laws require the presentation of photographic identification, such as a driver's license or passport in order to vote. In truth, these laws are a blatant stratagem to prevent the political opposition from voting.

As the less popular party, many Republicans unabashedly admit the purpose and consequence of these laws. One Republican legislator in Michigan warned, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election;" Another legislator believed the Pennsylvania voter ID law would "allow Governor Romney to win the state," while another bragged that the Pennsylvania laws "cut Obama by five percent" and that "voter ID helped a bit in that." The former head of the Florida Republican Party acknowledged that "We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us." Presidential candidate Governor John Kasich agreed: "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban--read African-American--voter-turnout machine." Prior to dropping out of the presidential race, Governor Chris Christie said that Republicans need to win gubernatorial races so they can control the "voting mechanism" in the presidential election.

There are millions of otherwise eligible voters in the United States (as many as ten percent) who do not possess acceptable photographic identification. If the reason is a lack of money to pay the licensing fee, voter ID laws have the same effect as the Jim Crow poll tax did in the South. The laws disproportionately affect the young, disabled, seniors, minorities, and the poor and disadvantaged of every race. One rigorous academic study conducted at UC San Diego concluded, "We find that strict voter identification laws do, in fact, substantially alter the makeup of who votes and ultimately do skew democracy in favor of whites and those on the political right."

The reality is that voter fraud is very rare, and when it does occur, it would not be prevented by voter ID laws. An in-depth study by the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University involved travel to 40 cities, 21 states, interviews of more than 1,000 people, and reviews of nearly 5,000 public documents. The effort identified only 10 cases of voter impersonation in more than a decade. There were more cases of absentee ballot fraud and registration fraud, which would not have been prevented by the voter ID laws.

The conservative political bias of suppression laws is indicated by the fact that more than half of all state photo ID legislation resulted from the efforts of the conservative, corporate-sponsored, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Sixty-two bills based on the model ALEC Voter ID Act have been introduced in state legislatures. Of the 22 states in which new voting restrictions have been passed, 18 have Republican-controlled legislatures.

The underlying racial basis of these laws was revealed by the Brennan Center for Justice which determined that of the 11 states with the highest numbers of African American voters in 2008, seven have since passed voter suppression laws. Of the 12 states with rapidly growing Hispanic populations, nine have enacted new restrictions. Finally, nine of the states formerly supervised by the Voting Rights Acts because of past racial discrimination have passed new voter suppression laws.

With Congress and the state legislatures and judiciaries increasingly controlled by corporations and the financial elite, there is little hope for legislative action or judicial relief to reduce the scandal of voter suppression. In 2008, a conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court approved an Indiana voter ID law--even though it had a partisan basis--because it was not "excessively burdensome" to most voters. The decision followed an earlier one in 2000 in which the Court affirmed that the Constitution "does not protect the right of all citizens to vote, but rather the right of all qualified citizens to vote." Amazingly, the Court shortly thereafter admitted in Bush v. Gore that "the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote."

A Voters' Bill of Rights. The only way to assure the voting power of the American People and to ensure the United States continues as a representative democracy is to amend the constitution to include a Voters' Bill of Rights. The United States Voters' Rights Amendment (USVRA) not only specifically guarantees a right to cast effective votes in all elections, but it also includes specific provisions regarding voter participation and suppression.

Any lingering doubt about the necessity of a constitutional amendment was quashed by another opinion of the Supreme Court rendered immediately prior to the 2014 midterm elections. The decision reversed a Federal District Court in Texas, which had ruled that the state's voter ID law unconstitutionally prevented more than 600,000 registered Texans from voting. The lower court had found the law was adopted "with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose" and that it placed "an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote." The conservative majority of the Supreme Court disagreed--directly cutting off the access of more than a half million Texans to the polls and challenging the votes of millions of other Americans subject to similar laws in other states.

Previously, the Texas voter ID law had been blocked by the Voting Rights Act, which required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to obtain permission before changing voting procedures. That provision of the Act was earlier struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, and Texas officials announced they would begin enforcing the state's new voter ID law.

In her dissent to the 2014 decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, "A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African American or Hispanic." She added that "racial discrimination in elections in Texas is no mere historical artifact."

Whether affected by strict photo ID rules or other forms of voter suppression, the turnout for the 2014 midterm elections was the lowest since 1942. The effect was shown by the difference between Texas--with the most restrictive rules and a 33.6 percent turnout--and Colorado, Washington and Oregon, which permit everyone to vote by mail, and their participation rates of 53, 54, and 69 percent, respectively.

Next Page 1 | 2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Story is much bigger than the obvious applications-- storytelling, movies and screenplays, novels and fiction, newspapers, television and magazines. We don't live, think or relate without playing stories in our heads.

Politicians touch hearts by weaving their issues into personal stories.

Psychologists help people to understand their personal narratives and stories, then revise them.

Publicists use stories to promote

A good attorney doesn't talk to a jury without wrapping evidence in story.

Teachers use stories

What would religions and religious services be without stories?

Marketing uses stories to engage, touch hearts and sell.

Cultures are defined by their stories.

Knowledge management uses stories to archive institutional knowledge and expertise

Add these all up and they produce a story industry that exceeds a trillion dollars a year, making story one of the biggest businesses in the world.

Our brains evolved to process and tell stories. Humankind is a storying animal. Story is one of the world's biggest businesses and one of the oldest. One might even speculate that a person who can use stories to explain the world, to sell or persuade has a special kind of intelligence-- story intelligence. I'm sure you know some people who are brilliant at turning what one person describes in a few words into a hypnotic story.

Actually, it's been said that effective stories literally induce in the listener or viewer a kind of hypnotic story trance.

A growing school of independent workshop presenters have taught tens of thousands of budding screenwriters, novelists, film and TV producers, directors and other writers their new models of story structure and story creation.

At least eight software programs have been designed to help writers build stories, with artificial intelligence prompting the writer to tap his or her unconscious resources for creative elements. Some story creation algorithms have already been patented.

At the same time, consultants have begun helping organizations by using stories to build community culture, team and customer relations, sales, visions, etc.



There is a growing body of wisdom developing around the art and science of story-- story structure, character development, arc, myths, archetypes, image, sound, icon, meme, symbol. About seventeen or eighteen years ago, Thom Hartmann turned me on to the work of Robert McKee, probably the most popular presenter of screenwriting workshops in the world. He'd just written a book, Story Structure, which summarized what he taught in his workshops. I read the book then attended the workshop and it blew my mind with the idea that there was an emerging science of story that could make stories better, more powerful. It got me thinking about how stories were so much more than just books and movies. I started learning about how story was applied in its other worlds, and I asked the practitioners if they'd ever been to a conference where people from the different worlds of story came together. No-one had. So I decided I would do it. I was already running one conference on the brain and consciousness and another on Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. I organized the first multidisciplinary summit meeting bringing together leaders in different applications of the art, science and application of story, the Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and ran it for six years, until I retired from the conference business. Story is bottom up, building from and weaving together a tapestry of other stories, narratives and myths that have emerged over much time from the culture and the environment. Part of growing up involves integrating personal, family and cultural stories.



(Image by Rob Kall) Details DMCA





Putting together the conference was an interesting challenge. I included people who had written books on screenwriting, story, sound and story, images and story, storytelling, psychologists, a minister, a neuroscientist, mythologists, marketers, knowledge managers, a narratologist-- about 30 speakers. I wanted to do like I'd done with my other two meetings, have presenters speak at advanced levels, beyond the basics. To make that work, I organized the first day of the conference as a kind of pre-conference intro to story day, where all the experts spoke for 20-30 minutes each, telling the core ideas that they had developed for their work with story. Twenty-five people participated from morning through night of that first day. I recorded it and for a few years sold the CD set for $149 then $99, plus shipping. Now, I'm embarking on a new project, offering a download file of the MP3s of the recordings with no need for shipping and a lower cost.
Reprinted from Other Words

The feds dropped the ball on a key terrorism case, so now they're going after privacy itself.

Civil liberties fans in the United States recently got an unlikely champion: the CEO of Apple.

In a high-profile spat with the White House, Tim Cook has emerged as a leading spokesperson against the Obama administration's efforts to weaken Americans' constitutional protections and civil liberties.

In particular, Cook is fighting a federal order that would force Apple to create software to bypass the iPhone's security features -- and give the FBI access to the phone and everything on it. He sent a letter to all Apple users explaining the company's position and promising to keep up the fight.

Here's what's at stake.

The FBI is investigating last December's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. It wants access to the iPhone used by suspected terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, who carried out the shooting together with his wife Tashfeen Malik.

But here's the controversial part: The feds basically want Apple to create a software "backdoor" that would allow the FBI to access the phone's information remotely.

The FBI insists this is a one-off request. But that's ridiculous: Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. Indeed, the FBI is already seeking access to iPhones in nine other cases.

The constitutional implications are chilling. If the government gets its way, nothing would be private. With a secret order from a judge, your phone company or manufacturer could have to provide all the information on your phone to the FBI, including call logs, text messages, emails, chat transcripts, and even photos.

They won't just find out if you're talking with "terrorists," of course. Are you calling a secret girlfriend or boyfriend? Are you talking with an abortion provider -- or a psychiatrist? What kind of porn do you look at?

If it's on your phone, the government would get to know about it. Nothing would be private. Nothing would be sacred.

And worse yet, those same tools the FBI wants could easily fall into the hands of hackers, criminals, or even foreign intelligence services. Once Pandora's box opens, there's no closing it.

There's another issue at play here, too: The FBI dropped the ball on Syed Rizwan Farook months ago, so now it's trying to cover its mistakes.

Federal law enforcement officials told CNN in December, for example, that Farook had been in touch with "more than one terrorism suspect" the FBI was already investigating. That was well before he carried out the shootings.

Why wasn't the FBI intercepting his communications then, when they could've gotten a warrant? Why was there no authorized surveillance? It's because the FBI botched the case, and now they're trying to make up for it by turning Apple -- and privacy -- into the bad guys.
Articles Listed By Date List By Popularity

Search Title

Date Between Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 and Any 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Any 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022

(1 comments) SHARE

Neurology Study Reveals What We Already Know: People of Color Get Worse Healthcare Yet another article shows that racial health inequity exists. This time, in neurologic diseases such as stroke. What's disappointing is that we continue to use resources to describe a problem we already know exists instead of trying to fix it. Friday, May 19, 2017Yet another article shows that racial health inequity exists. This time, in neurologic diseases such as stroke. What's disappointing is that we continue to use resources to describe a problem we already know exists instead of trying to fix it.

(1 comments) SHARE

TrumpCare is an Entitlement Program for the Rich and Powerful Trump continues the rich man's rampage to maintain power with a healthcare plan that benefits the rick and punishes the poor. Sunday, March 12, 2017Trump continues the rich man's rampage to maintain power with a healthcare plan that benefits the rick and punishes the poor.

SHARE

Three clear ways the Affordable Care Act has made healthcare better In an often theoretical and philosophical debate about politics, the repeal of Affordable Care Act is politics playing with the wellbeing of Americans. There are concrete ways that the ACA has improved healthcare in the United States: pay-for-performance, birth control coverage, and increasing healthcare access. Tuesday, December 6, 2016In an often theoretical and philosophical debate about politics, the repeal of Affordable Care Act is politics playing with the wellbeing of Americans. There are concrete ways that the ACA has improved healthcare in the United States: pay-for-performance, birth control coverage, and increasing healthcare access.

SHARE

Dakota Access Pipeline Prophecy for Worse to Come: Treaty Rights as Grim Lesson While many have framed the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline as an issue of treaty rights and environmental conservation, it represents a great threat to the rights of all Americans. Friday, November 4, 2016While many have framed the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline as an issue of treaty rights and environmental conservation, it represents a great threat to the rights of all Americans.

SHARE

Pour One Out for Jan: Author of the World's Best Abortion Legislation Passes Away Jan Bianchi, co-author of Washington State abortion legislation dies at 72. Initiative 120 that was passed in 1991 is one of the most liberal in the world. Friday, October 7, 2016Jan Bianchi, co-author of Washington State abortion legislation dies at 72. Initiative 120 that was passed in 1991 is one of the most liberal in the world.

(3 comments) SHARE

Seattle's 'Liberals' Get Chance to Finally Start Addressing Police Brutality With the petitioning of I-873 and the change in leadership in the Office of Professional Accountability, the direction of Seattle and Washington, one of the countries most regressive states when it comes to police brutality, is unclear. Wednesday, July 13, 2016With the petitioning of I-873 and the change in leadership in the Office of Professional Accountability, the direction of Seattle and Washington, one of the countries most regressive states when it comes to police brutality, is unclear.

SHARE

Orlando Shooter Omar Mateen's Mental Health Likely to Overshadow Gun Control Discussing the role of mental health in the Orlando shooting will only distract from the real issue: access to guns. Wednesday, June 15, 2016Discussing the role of mental health in the Orlando shooting will only distract from the real issue: access to guns.

(1 comments) SHARE

FDA Change to the "Abortion Pill" Overrated The FDA label to change to mifepristone has been hailed as a significant win for the Pro-Choice movement and the health of women in the USA. While it's promising, it's only a band-aid to a bigger problem. Monday, April 4, 2016The FDA label to change to mifepristone has been hailed as a significant win for the Pro-Choice movement and the health of women in the USA. While it's promising, it's only a band-aid to a bigger problem.

(7 comments) SHARE

Understanding the Texas Abortion Laws and Their Dangerous Implications for All of Medicine The Texas House Bill No. 2 impinges not only on women's rights but its far reach threatens quality healthcare for all. No other legislation dictates in such detail how medications can be used. All of the arguments in support of HB2 are medically flawed. Monday, March 7, 2016The Texas House Bill No. 2 impinges not only on women's rights but its far reach threatens quality healthcare for all. No other legislation dictates in such detail how medications can be used. All of the arguments in support of HB2 are medically flawed.

SHARE

Peter Liang Highlights the Asian American Identity Crisis The Peter Liang conviction reminds Asian Americans that there's racism against Asian Americans, but that doesn't mean we should be supporting a murderer. The Model-Minority Myth has lulled Asian Americans with privilege into a blinded stupor of security that's false. Tuesday, March 1, 2016The Peter Liang conviction reminds Asian Americans that there's racism against Asian Americans, but that doesn't mean we should be supporting a murderer. The Model-Minority Myth has lulled Asian Americans with privilege into a blinded stupor of security that's false.

(1 comments) SHARE

Even with treatment for Hepatitis C, Abu-Jamal's health not guaranteed Abu-Jamal's fight for adequate healthcare does not end with Hepatitis C treatment. His basic primary care is at malpractice qualities and illustrates the desperately poor quality of care received by inmates across the country. Pay-for-performance interventions needed to see any improvements. Monday, January 25, 2016Abu-Jamal's fight for adequate healthcare does not end with Hepatitis C treatment. His basic primary care is at malpractice qualities and illustrates the desperately poor quality of care received by inmates across the country. Pay-for-performance interventions needed to see any improvements.

(1 comments) SHARE

Abu-Jamal faces possible second death sentence Abu-Jamal is fighting for his right to Hepatitis C treatment. If he is denied, it will be akin to a second death sentence. Incarcerated people around the country face inadequate treatment of Hepatitis C. Wednesday, December 23, 2015Abu-Jamal is fighting for his right to Hepatitis C treatment. If he is denied, it will be akin to a second death sentence. Incarcerated people around the country face inadequate treatment of Hepatitis C.
Live by the sword, die by the sword

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has a history remarkably similar to another divisive political figure  President Barack Obama (D). And while there are similarity there are important differences.

Both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Obama were born of immigrant fathers; however, unlike Mr. Obamas father, Mr. Cruz father decided to stick around and help raise his son  the two remain close to this day.

Both attended prestigious undergraduate schools  Mr. Obama at Columbia and Mr. Cruz at Princeton. However, Mr. Cruz graduated with honors (cum laude) with a host of academic and debating awards and publication of a treatise entitled Clipping the Wings of Angels arguing for constitutional limitations on the power of government. Mr. Obama had neither academic honors or published dissertations.

Both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Obama attended Harvard Law School where each graduated magnum cum laude and where each was selected as executive editor of the Harvard Law Review; however, where Mr. Cruz published articles ad nauseam, Mr. Obama published none, becoming the only editor in chief to do so.

But the real divergence occurs after graduation. Mr. Cruz was much recruited and pursed an active legal career inside and outside of government. Mr. Obama was not recruited and became a community organizer which requires neither a law degree nor, in fact, any college degree. (Both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Obama served as adjunct professors teaching elements of constitutional law and whereas Mr. Cruz students probably learned a great deal, given Mr. Obamas growing list of failures before the United States Supreme Court, his students should ask the University of Chicago for their money back.)

Both Mr. Cruz and Mr. Obama learned the patois and cadence of the revivalist preachers and became mesmerizing speakers  Mr. Cruz during college, and Mr. Obama after he quit smoking dope. Mr. Cruz learned his from his father, a traveling evangelical minister; while Mr. Obama probably learned his from the likes of Reverend Jeremiah Wright  although Mr. Obama apparently learned only the patois and cadence given that he could not remember any of the racist and anti-Semitic sermons routinely preached by Rev. Wright.

Both began running for President of the United States before the ink was dry on their elections to the United States Senate. And finally, neither had any friends or admirers in the Senate  albeit Mr. Cruz colleagues were downright hostile while Mr. Obamas were simply dismissive. And it is at this point that there is a final divergence. Mr. Obama was elected twice to the presidency, while Mr. Cruz will never be elected. And here is why.

Mr. Cruz mapped out a careful and detailed plan to win the Republican nomination. The centerpiece  the foundation  of the plan was an invigorated bloc of conservative evangelical voters. With access to a wide cadre of evangelical ministers through his father  an evangelical minister  Mr. Cruz began a carefully orchestrated courtship of those evangelical leaders. Initially, Mr. Cruz was successful. He created a small army of volunteers in Texas and early primary states. He imbued them with a fervor that the abuses of the secular politicians would end and that a persons faith would be honored. That nearly fifty years of the liberal assault on religion would be halted and that a moral climate based on the Judeo-Christian teachings would ascend  a moral climate based on principle and not on relativism. And that is precisely where the wheels began to come off the wagon.

So long as Mr. Cruz was giving speeches, the fires of hope burned brightly. So long as Mr. Cruz was organizing, the primacy of the mission was apparent. But Mr. Cruz is duplicitous.

Hidden from view was the growing reputation that Mr. Cruz was gaining in the United States Senate as an orator who played fast and loose with the truth; as a back-stabber willing to sacrifice his colleagues for his own ambitions; and as an ally that could never be trusted. When those things began to be made public, Mr. Cruz promptly blamed others and declared that he was running against the establishment and that the criticisms were merely the slings and arrows that he had to endure from the powerful.

But that characteristic of moral relativism carried over into his presidential campaign. His inner circle was composed of people, like him, who would do anything to win. His campaign literature (ads, flyers, and speeches) began attacking other candidates using innuendo, half-truths and outright lies. During televised debates, he accused Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) of supporting amnesty for illegal aliens when it was readily apparent by Mr. Rubios actions that he had withdrawn his support for any plan involving a path to citizenship in favor of securing the border before ANY discussion as to the future of those already here illegally. In Iowa he sent his minions out to falsely tell caucus attendees that Dr. Ben Carson had withdrawn from the race and that his followers should support Mr. Cruz. He created a flyer that appeared to be an official document relating to voter violations if you did not attend a caucus. His campaign published a photo-shopped picture of Mr. Rubio shaking hands with President Obama in an effort to impose guilt by association. But my favorite is when he accused Donald Trump of favoring abortion because Mr. Trump said that Planned Parenthood provides valuable services to womens health  that despite the fact that Mr. Trump had repeatedly said that he would cut off funding to Planned Parenthood based on its refusal to segregate womens health services from its abortion practices. (Of course Planned Parenthood provides valuable services to womens health  the same services that other organizations provide to women without encouraging unrestricted abortions. The fact that one recognizes the value of those services does not reflect ones support for abortion on demand.)

When confronted with these facts, Mr. Cruz dissembled. He embraced moral relativism. He never answered for his own wrong doing but rather said that others were worse. In an interview this past Sunday with FOX News, when the host Chris Wallace read him the litany of his half-truths and dirty tricks, Mr. Cruz accused Mr. Wallace of reading from a Trump press release. And when Mr. Wallace quickly disabused Mr. Cruz of that notion and asked for an answer, Mr. Cruz instead asserted that others had done similar things and had not been called to account.

As the nature of Mr. Cruz began to become apparent, his evangelical base began to erode. And for good reason, most of the evangelicals that I have met actually live the life they espouse. They DO believe in the Judeo-Christian principles and they DO try to practice them in their own lives. They DO NOT believe in moral relativism and recoil regularly at the parsing of words, the stretching of truth and the convenient lies that have become the hallmark of politicians  they have come to expect it of those on the left but continue to be dismayed by those who engage in it on the right.

In Iowa, Mr. Cruz received only one-third of the evangelical vote, while the thrice-married Mr. Trump received twenty- two percent and Mr. Rubio receive twenty-one percent. In New Hampshire, Mr. Cruz lost the evangelical vote to Mr. Trump by a margin of twenty-seven percent to twenty-three percent. In South Carolina, the evangelical vote again went to Mr. Trump by a margin of thirty-three percent over Mr. Cruz twenty seven percent. And finally, in Nevada, Mr. Trump crushed Mr. Cruz amongst evangelical voters by a margin of forty-one to twenty-seven percent. This column is being written as voters in the Super Tuesday primary states go to the polls. With the exception of Texas, Mr. Cruz will lose every state to Mr. Trump and is more than likely to lose amongst evangelical voters in those states.

Mr. Cruz may have energized the evangelical vote, but after those voters got a look at the real Ted Cruz, they turned elsewhere with their support. Just because you have declared yourself to have been born again; just because you have acquired the vernacular of the evangelicals; and just because you have condemned the concept of moral relativism (while practicing it yourself) does not make you an evangelical. More likely it makes him like Elmer Gantry and just as the soiled minister of Sinclair Lewis tale, Mr. Cruz needs redemption from his hypocrisy.

Should Mr. Cruz be struck by lightening and actually become the Republican nominee, he will become the third Republican presidential candidate for whom I have refused to vote (President Richard Nixon twice and Sen. John McCain).
Brought to you by the Workforce and Economic Research Section of the Oregon Employment Department
Noida-based Ringing Bells, which has promised to sell smartphones for Rs 251 apiece, has started refunding money to customers due to negative speculation around its claim.

"There was a lot of negativity around us so we have decided to take money from customers only after delivering phones to them. We are refunding money to those who have paid for booking the phones and giving them an option of cash on delivery," Ringing Bells Director Mohit Goel told PTI.

About 30,000 people paid for booking the phones and over 7 crore people registered for it. The payment was facilitated by CCAvenue and PayU Biz.

"We don't want customers' money initially. We have investors to back our project. There is a business model to justify the price. We have a foolproof plan and to whomsoever we have disclosed it has agreed to it. I don't want to disclose full details as of now," Goel said.

He said the delivery of Freedom251 smartphones is expected to start in April after which the company will start the second round of bookings.

"Our payment gateway companies CCAvenue and PayU Biz have sought time till Wednesday to credit back the amount in accounts of all those who have paid. After which we will send an email seeking confirmation for cash on delivery," Goel said.

Ringing Bells President Ashok Chaddha had explained earlier that the manufacturing cost of the phone is about Rs 2,500, which will be recovered through a series of measures like economies of scale, innovative marketing, reduction in duties and creating an e-commerce marketplace.

"By going for Made in India components, we can save on the 13.8 per cent duty. Also, we will be selling online first and thus save the costs incurred on large distribution network," he said.

Chaddha also rejected speculations of the handset being subsidised by the government.

"The phone will be manufactured in Noida and Uttaranchal.

Two plants will be set up for Rs 250 crore each with a capacity of 5 lakh phones. The money will come in the form of debt and equity (1.5:1)," he said.

Chaddha said the equity is being met by the promoter family of the company that is "engaged in agri-commodities business" in Uttar Pradesh but declined to give further information.

However, people in industry and some politicians expressed doubt over the claim. Telecom Minister asked the Department of Electronics and IT to look in to matter. Ringing Bells has also come under the scanner of Excise and Income Tax Departments as debates around the feasibility of offering a handset for Rs 251 rages on.

According to the sources, the I-T Department is looking into the financial structure of the company and has obtained documents, including those from the Registrar of Companies (RoC), in this regard.
Mumtaz Qadri funeral held in Bara kahu

RAWALPINDI: Scores of supporters of Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of former Punjab governor Salman Taseer, gathered Tuesday for his funeral in his ancestral village in Bara Kahu area, close to Islamabad.



Qadri's funeral prayers were offered in Liaquat Bagh following Zuhr prayers, after which the body was taken to his final burial place.



The funeral procession took nearly six hours to reach as thousands of supporters and members of religious parties had gathered to attend the funeral.



Security was beefed up in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, with thousands of policemen guarding buildings and lined along the route taken by Qadri's funeral procession, AFP reported.



According to Reuters, stick-wielding Sunni Tehreek activists were maintaining security at Tuesday's funeral.



A United Nations official told AFP all its staff had been sent home from various locations in the capital due to security fears, including from the tightly guarded diplomatic enclave.



Qadri, a police bodyguard to Taseer, shot the Punjab governor 28 times at an Islamabad market in 2011.



He said he was angry at the politician's calls to reform the blasphemy law.



Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the country, and Qadri was hailed as a hero by many conservatives eager to drown out calls to soften the legislation.



Critics say the law - which carries the death penalty - is largely misused.



Analyst Amir Rana said the execution marked a key moment for Pakistan in its more than a decade-long fight against religious extremism.



I think it is a very critical moment in the political history of Pakistan.It is the first time the political government has made such a decision."



The resolve is on the rule of law and they will not allow the space for extremism in Pakistan."



But he warned there was potential for the move to backfire by making Qadri a martyr among his supporters and his execution a rallying cry.



Mourners travelled from distant cities, including Karachi and Lahore. In Karachi, members of Jamaat-i-Islami observed his funeral prayers in absentia at the Empress Market.



Scores protested across the country on Monday after authorities announced the hanging had taken place early that morning.



But as security stepped up at flash-points across the country, most dispersed peacefully. Many schools and universities remained closed for the day after shutting early Monday.
Osama bin Laden money to be used for jehad

NEW YORK: In one of the declassified documents, Bin Laden outlines how at least $29 million stashed in Sudan should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue global jihad.



He sets down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncles children and maternal aunts. He then writes: I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah.



The document  part of a cache of 113 documents  has been described by intelligence officials as Bin Ladens will.



The documents are mostly dated between 2009 and 2011 and comprise the second cache from the raid to have been declassified.



In one document, Bin Laden issues instructions to Al Qaeda members holding an Afghan hostage to be wary of possible tracking technology attached to the ransom payment.



It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it, he states in a letter to an aide identified only as Shaykh Mahmud.



In an apparent reference to armed US drones patrolling the skies, he says his negotiators should not leave their rented house in Peshawar except on a cloudy overcast day. While the document is undated, the hostage, Afghan diplomat Abdul Khaliq Farahi, was held from September 2008 to late 2010.



Another, fragmentary document acknowledges that Al Qaeda executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to discover they were probably innocent, according to senior US intelligence officials authorised to discuss the materials in advance of their public release.



I did not mention this to justify what has happened, wrote the undated letters unidentified author, adding: We are in an intelligence battle and humans are humans and no one is infallible.



In a May 11, 2010 letter to his then second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, Bin Laden urged caution in arranging an interview with Al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Zaidan, asserting that the United States could be tracking his movements through devices implanted in his equipment, or by satellite.



You must keep in mind the possibility, however, slight, that journalists can be under surveillance that neither we nor they can perceive, either on the ground or via satellite, he wrote.
Pak team to visit India: Sartaj Aziz

WASHINGTON: Adviser for Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz has said that a Pakistani team will visit India in the next few days to investigate the Jan 2 terrorist attack on an airbase in Pathankot.



An official transcript released on Tuesday also quoted him as saying that the foreign secretary-level talks between the two countries could be rescheduled soon after the visit.



After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Mr Aziz said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.



He pointed out that since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of important steps for resumption of these talks.



Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistans support in the investigation. National security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts, he said.



A case has been registered and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon, Mr Aziz said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue he co-chaired with Secretary Kerry.



Mr Aziz said that the governments decision to reach out to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of a strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring states.



We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues  including the Kashmir dispute  is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India, said the adviser while noting that Pakistan also had proposed a mechanism to address our respective concerns on terrorism.



Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member Special Investigation Team to follow up on the leads India had provided.



On Saturday, a court in Gujranwala remanded six suspects, arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack, in police custody for further investigation.



Mr Aziz said the Indian participation in the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad last December and the announcement to start the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue were positive developments that augured well for peace and stability in South Asia.



Prime Minister Modis visit to Islamabad was welcomed by most in Pakistan. Here, I would like to express our gratitude to you and President (Barack) Obama for your consistent support to the revival of Pakistan-India dialogue, Mr Aziz said in his opening remarks.



Mr Aziz said that the Pakistani government was committed to acting against all terrorist groups without any distinction.



Our strategy to eliminate terrorist networks and defeat their extremist ideology is all-encompassing. We are focusing on three fronts that include both kinetic and non-kinetic actions, he said.



Mr Aziz also highlighted Pakistans sincere commitment to transforming its relationship with Afghanistan, which, he said, reflected in its efforts to help start the reconciliation process



He noted that there was a growing consensus that an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process was the best way to achieve lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan.



Mr Aziz said that the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG), which counts the United States, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan as members, had also reached a unanimous agreement on a roadmap to take the reconciliation process forward.



It is our expectation that countries in the region, traditionally opposed to the reconciliation process, will shun their objections and support the efforts of the QCG to help the Afghan government bring peace and stability to their country, he said.



This was an indirect reference to India, which publicly voiced concerns about the reconciliation process because it excludes New Delhi.



With so much capital expended on this process, we cannot afford another setback, said the top diplomat, while referring to the derailment of the reconciliation process after the first meeting in Murree in July.
Pathankot attack not possiable without Islamabad support: Indian defence minister

NEW DELHI: As uncertainty looms over the probe on the Pathankot air base attack that killed seven Indian soldiers in January, India on Tuesday alleged that the Pakistan government is linked to the attack.



India had previously blamed militants from Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) for the assault on the Pathankot air base in the northern state of Indian Punjab, which triggered two days of gunbattles.



But on Tuesday the Indian defence minister said the militants could not have carried out the attack without Islamabad's support.



Pakistan's non-state actors were definitely behind the attack. Also, no non-state actor from there (Pakistan) can function smoothly without the state's support, India's Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told the parliament.



The entire details of the attack will only come out in the National Investigation Agency (NIA) investigation, he maintained.



Foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz had earlier revealed that one of the mobile phone numbers linked to those who attacked the Pathankot airbase had been traced to the Jaish-e-Mohammed groups headquarters in Bahawalpur.



Aziz called the lodging of the FIR in connection with the Pathankot assault a logical and positive step in bringing the perpetrators to justice.



JeM chief Masood Azhar has been named by India as the mastermind of the airbase attack and Mr Aziz confirmed media reports that he (Azhar) had been under protective custody since Jan 14.



He had said that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) from Pakistan may visit Pathankot in the first few days of March to probe the attack and that his country was pursuing the investigation seriously.



The attack on Pathankot air base came days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise visit to Pakistan in December. The incident led to the postponement of peace talks planned between the two countries.
Raheel Sharif offered Pakistan full cooperation to Tajikistan

DUSHANBE: Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif has offered Pakistans full cooperation in the capacity building of Tajikistans forces to counter terrorism.



According to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), General Raheel called on Tajik President Emomali Rahmon after his arrival in the country on Tuesday on a day-long visit. The two leaders discussed regional situation with particular reference to common challenges of fighting terrorism and reconciliation in Afghanistan, which shares a border with both the countries. While appreciating Pakistans role in facilitating the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, Tajik president applauded armys phenomenal achievements in Operation Zarb-e-Azb.



Rahmon said the operation being conducted by Pakistani forces against terrorists was a role model for rest of the world. The Tajik president added that General Raheels visit will further cement bilateral relationship and provide an impetus to defence cooperation between the two countries. The army chief also held meetings with Tajik defence minister and chief of general staff, and visited the Military Institute and Training Centre of Tajikistan. Upon arrival at Tajik army headquarters, General Raheel was presented a guard of honour by Tajik forces.



Pakistan and Tajikistan had last year agreed to stronger cooperation in energy, defence and trade and vowed to improve connectivity to further deepen their bilateral ties. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Emomali Rahmon witnessed signing of seven agreements dealing with cooperation in energy, industrial sectors, extradition, establishment of Joint Business Council, collaboration in science and technology and geology.
Senate debated over selling nuclear weapons to Saudi-Arab

ISLAMABAD: The Senate of Pakistan on Tuesday saw a heated debate over the reports that oil-rich Saudi Arabia might buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan.



Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani admitted an adjournment motion moved by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) Senator Hafiz Hamdullah despite governments opposition, with directives that the house would hold a through debate on the issue by next Tuesday. Citing an interview of US Secretary of State John Kerry to a foreign news channel, Senator Hamdullah said that Saudi Arabia could buy nuclear bomb from Pakistan.



Amid mounting tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran, he said, Riyadh could buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan. Any such move would destabilise the Middle East as well as Pakistan, he said. The reports say that Saudi Arabia has good relations with Pakistan. If media reports are to be believed, Riyadh may buy a nuclear bomb from Pakistan. It will be very dangerous for our security, the JUI-F senator maintained.



Federal Minister for Commerce and Trade Khurram Dastgir Khan opposed the adjournment motion, saying a local newspaper misquoted the US secretary of state. He read out the questions asked by the CNN interviewer and Kerrys replies to those questions to support his contention that Kerry was misquoted. Kerry did not mention even the name of Pakistan, he said.



The House was informed that a national census would be taken this year and the reason for a delay in the census was the ongoing military operation against militants in the restive North Waziristan Agency (NWA).



Responding to a question, Federal Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada said the Council of Common Interests (CCI) had decided in its last meeting on March 18, 2015 that the census would be taken in March 2016, as per the recommendation of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).



To a question regarding visas issued by the Pakistani embassies in different countries, the commerce minister said that 1,117,274 visas were issued during the last five years. He said that 193,144 visas were issued to Indians, 392,122 to Afghans, 15,609 to Bangladeshis, 4918 to Russian, 312,735 to Britons and 198,746 to Americans.



The Senate chairman stalled a resolution seeking to pay a tribute to Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. He said that several Pakistani women made sacrifices to stop honor killings; therefore, their names should also be included in the resolution. He asked the lawmakers to submit an amended draft having the names of other womens rights activists when the house meets for the next session.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
Of course. You would have to be be barking mad to want to bring this rabble to NZ. But then socialists are mad by definition. It's not as if we don't have...
I caught a whiff of the perfume I wore in Croatia the other day and almost broke down in tears, I longed so badly to be back there. Trust me, I know I could do well to shut up about last summer, but I can't help it  it was one of those experiences I was bewilderingly nostalgic for even as it was happening. Those were the weeks in which I yearned for a 'pause' button.





Dubrovnik will always represent my season of "in between." It was the intermission between two major acts in the play that is my life: the end of school and whatever was to come next. At the time, I was petrified about what was to follow and very crestfallen to see college go. Yet every day in Europe, and in Croatia particularly, I was so very carefree. With hardly ever a drop of makeup on, hair a matted mess, soaking up only the history of former Yugoslavia and nothing else... it was a profound and meaningful and anchoring chapter.









I will never, ever, ever forget...

Our agro-tourism dinner in the hills on the outskirts of Dubrovnik 





Hands down, one of the best meals I have EVER had in my life. When I first saw "agro-tourism" on the itinerary, I'll admit I was skeptical and my mind jumped to harvesting crops in overalls before being allowed to taste the fruits of our labor. Nope! This happened right at the very tail-end of our time in Dubrovnik, a farewell dinner of sorts. The charter bus picked us all up, a welcome reprieve of air-conditioning on full blast, and took us on one last scenic drive alongside the coast and dropped us off in Dubelj, in the hills on the outskirts of Dubrovnik.





There, we were met with a sprightly gentleman who whisked us away into the old family cellar, where their olive oil has been produced for generations. He walked us through in great detail the processes of making truly fantastic olive oil, urging us to assist every now and then and allowing us to pet the workhorse for a job well done.





That was about the extent of "harvesting crops in overalls"  tough work, huh? He then herded us out of the cellar, down a pathway lined with artichokes and herbs and purple blossoms, aaaaand...

This view!





Oh, and homemade herb (blegh) and rose (lovely!) brandies, sweet miniature pears, and candied orange peels to tease our tastebuds. Homemade brandies and liquers are a cultural treasure in Croatia  every dwelling has jars of them sunbathing on window ledges, with all sorts of fruits and herbs soaking in them. Our favorites: sour cherry and sweet orange! Quite strong and meant to be sipped, but delightful all the same.

A warm grandma-like figure chattered away, shooing her husband and kids into the kitchen to help with the food, and showing us her sprawling garden before seating us and beginning to serve the courses.





FIRST OF ALL, she kept on bringing jug after jug of heady red wine, tickled when we shook our heads, insisting that we continue imbibing. She drizzled the homemade olive oil onto our plates and uncovered crusty bread for us to taste. Amazing. Then, she carried over platters of salty prosciutto, sweet cherry tomatoes, pecorino, and spicy arugula, all of which came from the very farm we were visiting!

Then, she brought over a steaming bowl of vegetable risotto (um, I had thirds or maybe fourths, but who knows... see: wine), followed by a heaping serving of salad made with the freshest tomatoes and cucumbers. At this time, we were groaning and uncomfortably full, and THEN





laughing, she plops multiple platters of grilled and skewered smoky meats (cevapi!!), zucchini, and potatoes in front of us, absolutely refusing to take 'no more' for an answer.

Giggling still, she disappeared into the depths of her kitchen and re-emerged with a tin pan and we watched in awe as she flipped the pan over on a plate and clapped when she successfully wiggled a gorgeous and traditional 'creme caramel' out of the confines of the pan.





So stuffed were we, we each only managed about three servings after unbuttoning our shorts and rubbing our bellies in pain, but boy. was. it. worth. it. As we worked on the dessert, our hosts stood in front of us, thanking us in Croatian and telling us their life story, with the help of translations from our tour guide. They told us about their beloved farm and current agro-tourism business, about being young and resourceful during the war, and gave us advice if we are ever to become decision-makers in the future ('war' is never the answer). Teary-eyed and tipsy, we thanked them for letting us experience a truly homemade Croatian meal in their backyard. Absolutely unforgettable.





Needless to say, upon returning to our hotel, we passed out within seconds of turning on a Serbo-Croatian dubbed episode of Bones.

"Drifting," my final college assignment. We wandered, captured snapshots of the people, places, and moments that spoke to us, and created a narrative for our own Dubrovnik experiences.





The first part of my final college assignment was "to drift," a term coined by my professor that referred to simply wandering around Dubrovnik, letting architecture and geography and curiosity pull and drive us into different directions. Screw Google maps, essentially. We were to do this, and then produce two photos that created a narrative of Dubrovnik for us.





One morning, Cassandra and I woke up at 6am when the beaches and streets were empty and dare I say it  there was even a slight chill in the air. We walked the three miles to Old Town Starigrad, and right as we reached the gates of Old Town, the sky opened and thunder crashed and rain poured over us. I've talked many times before about the stifling heat and brutal sunshine, so you'll understand how totally out of the ordinary this downpour was.





We continued onwards and savored the stillness of a town that is never still, seeing hints of local life, so sacred and rare at landmarks usually so overtaken by hoards of sweaty tourists:

We headed towards the central market, which is open every day in a main square of Old Town, from morning until noon. The past few times we had visited, the vendors catered strictly to tourists, waving them over for prettily packaged goody bags of candied orange peels or gaudy souvenirs.





In the early morning however, we discovered, the market comes alive. Croatian grandmas and grandpas barter over the day's fruits and vegetables and fresh flowers, and small groups of close friends settle down at the cafes for cappuccinos. We wanted in, too:

Before long, the skies cleared and the sun (*side-eye*) took its rightful place once again, and the cruise ship crowds descended. Cassandra and I retreated back to our Lapad hotel for breakfast, still in awe that we were lucky enough to observe a slice of Dubrovnik unseen by many others. When the rest of our crew joined us at breakfast, we excitedly twittered on about the thunderstorm and they all looked at us as if we were crazy.





"Rain? Are you sure? Here?" To this day, they remain skeptical and we are still convinced that perhaps the heat got to us and the morning was simply a hallucination.

Learning and soaking up knowledge, in a more general sense.





Of course, there was more learning to be done. For instance, the second part of our project. Cassandra and I chose to compare and contrast our impressions of Sarajevo and Dubrovnik. In doing so, we continued to 'drift' the streets of Old Town as well as Lapad, seeking out locals to converse with. We mustered up the courage to approach shopowners, restaurant hostesses, hotel employees, cruise ship tourists, and students and ask for their opinions of Dubrovnik. We spoke Serbo-Croatian, English, Italian, Spanish, and Mandarin with locals and visitors alike. We wrote everyone's thoughts down on two separate postcards: Croatians on one, tourists on another, and in our final presentation, spoke of our own views as the overlapping section of this Venn diagram.





This exercise forced us out of our comfort zones and helped us gain a whole new perspective of this tourist town. We learned that some visitors wanted 'more luxury hotels,' some teenagers thought that 'it was shit through the branches' (something was missing in translation, I'm guessing), and some more thoughtful folks lamented 'Dubrovnik will be weighed down by its beauty / its beauty will be its downfall.'

We were assigned national literary classics to read (as you can see above, totally not leaving it till the last minute) and even met with one of the poets we studied.





We stumbled across diamonds we wouldn't have otherwise, thanks to 'drifting,' such as this little jewelry shop below. It is owned by a couple from Zagreb who design and make every single piece by themselves. There, we also met an Irish fellow who told us to adventure, to live, and also? To buy a custom piece of jewelry from the artist who owns the shop. Yes, sir!

Learning the language through three-hour crash courses, learning to try beloved foods and drinks (plijeskavica! Tangerine Schweppes! Banana chocolate candies!), learning the history of former Yugoslavia from professors who are experts in the subject and not to mention natives of the region, learning its culture today by way of chatting with the locals for our photography project, learning alongside a group of diverse, intelligent friends. Learning not to press my own perspectives of a country's narrative as the absolute truth, but to continue the quest for understanding additional viewpoints. Learning to challenge my beliefs and my worldview always, learning things I never knew I never knew.





It was the most I ever learned from a college course.

The ordinary rituals and moments from our day-to-day.





What is most precious to me was the 'Dubrovnik normal' we created for our brief and fleeting stint in the city. Waking up in time for a leisurely breakfast at the hotel across the street. It wasn't anything to write home about, but there was something delightful in the simplicity of a cup of burnt cappuccino and a glass of cold cherry juice, toast slathered with a mustard that pinches your nose and some boiled sausages and crusty eggs. Lectures in the late morning and early afternoon in the chilly conference room of the five-star hotel down the street from our two-star abode, a stark contrast to our lack of WiFi and air-conditioning. Office hours on the terrace of our hotel.





Searching for new lunch spots  from pastries at a bakery, to snacks from the supermarket, to breezy brunches next to the sea. Searching for shaky WiFi (the signal was actually strongest at the beach) and quick afternoon naps. Swims in the warm waters of the Adriatic. Holding up two fingers and a shy 'dva, molim... Hvala!' to the bus driver for our tickets to Old Town. Spending evenings on the terrace or drinking wine on the beach, sometimes having a Taylor Swift dance party on the shore with our professors' kids. Drifting. Cliff-diving at Buza Bar. Nights feasting at group dinners in Old Town usually, and then capping off the day with a visit to Dolce Vita for the best ice cream in town.





What a normal to have.

Leaving Dubrovnik, for brief stints of time and for new adventures ahead.





Some of the most special moments took place outside of Dubrovnik but during the span of the course. We took a day trip to Korcula , which is supposedly Marco Polo's birthplace - it had THE bluest waters. We spent a weekend in Bosnia & Herzegovina, roadtripping through the countryside and staying in heartbreakingly resilient and beautiful Sarajevo , which for all intents and purposes changed my worldview. All of these are stories I still have to share.





Finally, it was time for us to leave this beloved city for real. A black car picked us up, the driver telling us to come back in September (um... and we are...!). We went through the ridiculously tight security check, met up with our professor's family in the airport (turns out we were on the same flight to Belgrade) and endured a bumpy but quick flight to Serbia. At that point, we bid adieu to our professor's family, and proceeded to wile away the long ten hours of our layover in Belgrade.

You see, Cassandra and I had planned to spend a few of those hours exploring Belgrade but due to unforeseen circumstances  the lone ATM was broken, there was no luggage storage, and the heat was upwards of the 100's that day  we made the executive decision to lay low instead.





But it wasn't for naught! Two amazing things happened.





One, the discovery of one of the best ice creams either of us have had. Although the actual ice cream stand closed before we lined up, we sampled a packaged version from an airport restaurant and thought it was to-die-for. It's called Moritz Eis, and lest you thought we were just delirious from boredom, our professor and her daughter were in total agreement when we emailed them to try it. We went every single day! they emailed back.





Second! We caught a glimpse of THE most breathtaking sunset that either of us had ever seen. It was over in the matter of seconds so I wasn't able to snap a photo, but you have to understand that even after seeing ridiculously picturesque sunsets on our balcony in Split, on the terrace in Dubrovnik, and even the sunset to top all sunsets in Santorini days later, this one was the ultimate.





Like I said, it was over in the matter of moments and we saw it through the customs barriers cutting us off from Serbia, but it's a scene I'll never forget. A neon coral orb suspended in a mist of pinks and yellows and oranges and bright, bright bloodred, dipping quickly and quietly below the trees. I was spellbound, and it stilled my soul.

Ah, okay, I'm off to drink some water, that was quite the ramble.





For more Dubrovnik: our arrival & the city walls , and the first part of my most cherished memories. Still to come are a recap of our day trips to Korcula and Lokrum, as well as an ultimate travel guide to Dubrovnik.




Mr. Supanarm joins us from his previous role as Executive Sous Chef at JW Marriott Khaolak, having worked there for 3 years. He was also based at The Luang Say Residence in Luang Prabang, Laos for 2 years. Chef Pittaya or Moung as his Thai nickname, comes with a tremendous amount of experience in Thai and Western cuisine. He completed his Bachelors degree at one of the islands top university  Rajhabat Phuket University. While at JW Marriott Khao Lak, he was also sent as an opening taskforce team for Marriotts several locations including Koh Samui and Macau.

When asked about his favourite dish, Chef Moung stated that it is the authentic Kob Thod Samorn Prai or local frog dish fried with herbs. The next on his list of well-loved Thai delicacies is Gaeng Som Pla Kapong Nor Mai yellow-curry seabass with pickled bamboo shoot and his favourite Western dish is linguine vongole in sweet clams and white wine sauce.

Chef Moung will be leading the team at Saffron, (Contemporary Thai cuisine) and The Watercourt (Mediterranean Seafood) and assisting his Executive chef in other culinary matters.

Coming to Thailand from the St. Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Mr. Cutajar has had more than 17 years of culinary experience.

Originally from Malta, Mr. Cutajar spent five years working at the 5-star Sea Bank Hotel in his home country, before moving on to London to work for two Michelin-starred restaurants, including stints with celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Demetre.

After stages at the Wild Honey, The Savoy and Aitkens in London, Chef Kreaton acquired all the skills and techniques that a Western fine dining chef requires. He then decided to leave Europe to take on a role as Chef de Cuisine at the award-winning, signature restaurant  55&5th, The Grill at St Regis Saadiyat Island Resort, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

When asked about his favorite cuisine, Chef Kreaton admitted to having a penchant for Italian food, saying that he loves anything that involves fresh ingredients, specifically freshly-made pasta. Given the resorts long-standing reputation as a leader in premium hospitality and culinary excellence, Chef Kreaton is a perfect complement to the resorts food and beverage team.

He will be assisting and leading the team at the French Vietnamese restaurant Tre and all the other Western cuisine efforts.

Both Chef Moung and Chef Kreaton round out the best of East and West and will be a marvelous addition to Executive Chef Alfonsos culinary talent pool.
A partnership among scientists and the governments of the United States and India has made significant progress in improving the safety of people vulnerable to cyclones along the Indian coast since a devastating supercyclone there in 1999 claimed 10,000 lives, a Purdue University researcher says.

Dev Niyogi, professor of agronomy and earth, atmospheric and planetary science, noted that while the Orissa supercyclone that year made landfall in the state now known as Odisha on the Bay of Bengal coast and killed that many people, the death toll from a similar storm in the same area in 2013 - very severe cyclonic storm Phailin - was 39.

"The storm in 1999 was a pretty massive disaster," said Niyogi, who is also Indiana state climatologist. "Phailin, in 2013, was roughly the same strength and took about the same track, and it had roughly the same intensity, yet this time the number of deaths was many times smaller. When we improve science, when we improve models, it impacts the ability for officials to make life-or-death decisions and implement effective disaster and communication plans. This is the result of science and action."

In 2000, the U.S. and Indian governments developed the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, whose purpose is to catalyze collaborations in science, technology, engineering and biomedical research through interactions involving government, academia and industry. Niyogi and collaborators from the Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Indian National Institute of Technology Rourkela and the India Meteorological Department compared the storms in the December issues of the journal Earth Interactions.

Significant improvement in storm forecasting models was key to those results. Whereas storm watchers in 1999 were guessing at a 300-kilometer range of where the Orissa cyclone would make landfall, that number was cut in half by 2013's models. Along with more certainty about the storm's path came better information about the strength of the cyclone and the potential for damage and death.

"The ability to communicate accurate forecasts improved the credibility of the information with Phailin," Niyogi said. "The confidence that the media have in the output of the model helps them communicate with people in real time."

After the Orissa cyclone, government agencies in India worked with U.S. partners to develop new methods for disseminating warnings to the public. Besides the advent of social media, which helped spread information quickly, the India Meteorological Department implemented a broad-based strategy for keeping the coastal population informed, including updates on the Web and through texts, email, telephone, telefax, television and radio.

The Indian government also spent years planning and building infrastructure and action plans for a storm, including evacuation protocols, identifying safe buildings for evacuees and developing community-based volunteer teams to assist with the process.

"The government of India did a remarkable job using the information at hand to develop a disaster-response plan," Niyogi said.

Niyogi says the takeaway from the storms' comparison is that a well-developed partnership between scientists and government, as well as international partnerships, can lead to more robust and effective plans for dealing with storms and other natural disasters. He said this should be a model to emulate.

"Our problems are global in nature, and our solutions must be global in nature," Niyogi said.

Explore further Cyclone Hudhud due to slam into India's east coast

More information: U. C. Mohanty et al. A Great Escape from the Bay of Bengal "Super SapphirePhailin" Tropical Cyclone: A Case of Improved Weather Forecast and Societal Response for Disaster Mitigation, Earth Interactions (2015). U. C. Mohanty et al. A Great Escape from the Bay of Bengal "Super SapphirePhailin" Tropical Cyclone: A Case of Improved Weather Forecast and Societal Response for Disaster Mitigation,(2015). DOI: 10.1175/EI-D-14-0032.1
Scientists of the Tomsk State University have found preserved moose in Western Siberia with unique genetic features. This discovery will help determine the origin and path of moose movement in the last few tens of thousands of years and suggests that Siberia is a unique genetic repository. The research has been presented at the international conference "Theriofauna of Russia and adjacent territories," presented by the X Congress of the Russian Theriological Society.

Unique moose were found in the southeastern part of Western Siberia. Hunters of the Tomsk Region assisted in this discovery. Along with the license for opening the animals, they prepared for the capture of prototypes and a small profile.

After the genetic analysis of samples, the scientists codified data and compared it with data from GenBank, the international computer database. Zoologists have discovered previously unexplored genetic lines via this process, and the Tomsk researchers were similarly able to draw a conclusion about the existence of a new West Siberian haplogroup of moose similar in DNA structure. It is assumed that these genetic lines were widespread 30 to 40 thousand years ago, but disappeared during the last glacial maximum about 18 to 24 thousand years ago.

Molecular studies of animals in Western Siberia are still rare, says Olga Nemoykina, an employee of the Laboratory of Biodiversity Monitoring of Institute of Biology TSU. "This discovery confirms the existence of a refugiumplaces with favorable conditions in the south of the region, where groups of forest species might be saved during global cooling."

According to Nemoykina, mitochondrial DNA, which is not subject to recombination, was used for analysis. For the entire span of time from ancient moose to their present day descendants, the mitochondria express only mutation changes. At the same time, according to the molecular clock hypothesis, the mutation process occurs a certain speed: about 3,000 years elapsed for the emergence and consolidation of one mutation in the DNA fragment used by scientists.

Nemoykina emphasizes that moose of Western Siberia are characterized by a high level of genetic diversity, for moose.

"It allows us to assume that we also have the chance to find an unusually high genetic diversity of other forest species of our region," she says. "Due to the fact that the high genetic diversity of populations increases the likelihood of their survival when environmental conditions change, wildlife in Western Siberia can be a repository of such diversity for those species that are well represented here." The zoologists' next step will be identifying patterns between the genotype and the appearance of new species of moose.

Explore further DNA analysis of Denisovan molars offers more clues about ancient human relative

Provided by Tomsk State University
Pithovirus particle in an infected Acanthamoeba castellanii cell.

A team of scientists affiliated with several research facilities in France has conducted a study on giant viruses known as mimiviruses and has found that at least some of them have an immune system that is similar in some ways to CRISPR in bacteria. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes the genetic study they undertook of multiple strains of mimiviruses looking to understand why some of them appeared to have immunity to a particular kind of virophage infection while others did not.

Scientists have only known about the existence of mimiviruses and other giant viruses for not much more than a decade, thus research surrounding them is still relatively new. One thing that has been learned is that some of these mammoth sized viruses can be infected by other smaller viruses, known as virophages. Then, just two years ago, it was found that some mimiviruses have immunity against some virophages, and others do not. In this new effort, the researchers believe they have uncovered the reason why that is and the process by which that immunity works.

Suspecting that the mimiviruses were operating in a fashion similar to the way that bacteria ward off viral infections, via CRISPR (where snippets of DNA are stolen from invading viruses for use in identifying them the next time around) the researchers looked at the genomes of 60 strains of mimiviruses, searching for bits of DNA from a virophage known as Zamilon. In so doing, they found their suspicions confirmed, the strains of mimiviruses that were immune to Zamilon all had bits of the virophage residing in their own, which allowed the mimiviruses to recognize the infecting virus and to immediately put up a fight when it was detected. The researchers also found that the mimiviruses they studied had enzymes in them that were able to corrupt DNA that was not its own, which is similar to how CRISPER works in bacteria. The group has dubbed this new type of immune system in mimiviruses, MIMIVIRE.

The findings by the team not only help to better understand mimiviruses, which have been found to infect amoebas, but also fuels the debate regarding whether they should be categorized as an entirely new form of life, or whether they should be classified as being alive at all.

Explore further Mimivirus isolated, genome amputated

More information: Anthony Levasseur et al. MIMIVIRE is a defence system in mimivirus that confers resistance to virophage, Nature (2016). Journal information: Nature Anthony Levasseur et al. MIMIVIRE is a defence system in mimivirus that confers resistance to virophage,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature17146

 2016 Phys.org
The start screen of the Cooks Inlet section of the Salmon Sim where users can select the year of historical salmon returns to simulate. Credit: Roger Lew

Water bubbles and the distant rumble-swoosh of rapids can be heard upstream. On shore the occasional bird calls from the surrounding forest. Under the water you are fighting your way upstream, acutely aware of your waning strength as the water continually pushes you downstream. You are looking for a seam in the current, that path where turbulence and intersecting currents allow you to slip upstream without draining the limited reserves of energy you still have. You will need those to surmount the falls and find a mate, you can't waste them in the rapids. You try once again to slip past beyond the sheltering rock and make headway upstream only to be stymied again, barely managing to hold ground against the current.

This is the reality of becoming a salmon, and it is surprisingly difficult. Still, after we leave the Virtual Technology and Design lab at University of Idaho, my 10 year old son yells from the backseat, "Dad, when they release that game for Xbox you HAVE to buy it!" There must be something to this idea, I think.

This was a sneak peak at the Salmon Sim, an interactive virtualization of the spawning ecology of salmon in the Russian River of Alaska. The tour came about through my role as an advisor on salmon biology and ecology to the group. The simulation takes users through an interactive reconstruction of the return of salmon to Cook Inlet at the mouth of the river, leading to taking on the role of an individual salmon who must swim upstream to spawn on limited energy reserves. Users can also explore the life stages of a sockeye salmon in an aquarium mode to better visualize the effects of age and conditions on a salmon.

The simulation can be explored in immersive 3D throughout, and conditions like temperature can be changed to systematically explore what affect they have on the salmons ability to complete it's journey. The year-to-year fluctuations in salmon abundance and return timing can also be explored, the simulation includes re-creations of historical returns to Cook Inlet. In fact the entire simulation is underpinned by real scientific data, even the landforms are accurately mapped from GIS elevation data and vegetation is created based on imaging of the basin.

Users of the Salmon Sim take on the challenge of ascending the Russian river as a salmon (foreground). Visual and audio cues guide the journey while physical reserves are tracked and affect the ability to swim, requiring strategic rests and planning to succeed. Credit: Roger Lew

While the Salmon Sim is, in some ways, a computer game (it is controlled via Xbox controller for instance) the vision behind it is much deeper when you begin to talk with the projects creator Dr. John W Anderson about it's implications.

"How do we communicate through storytelling," begins Anderson. "We're stuck in a paradigm of ecosystem management that we can only it through a certain lens. These simulation tools are useful because now we can pose alternate management scenarios that reflect cultures."

Anderson explains that the process of exploring the sometimes contentious issue of salmon through the lens of a salmon allows people the space to reflect on the implications of management actions from a perspective that isn't their own. The immersive element allows learning through play, letting people see things in ways they hadn't before.

'Traditional Western management doesn't think that way. It's usually based on economics and that is eventually tied to some kind of value." But, Anderson points out, "People tend to have a higher level of empathy immediately within these [simulated] worlds," and begin to back away a little bit from their preconceived notions."

This empathetic response is important for the three goals of the project; decision making, education and scientific visualization. One future goal of these simulations is a tool to communicate real science and to help stakeholders and communities grapple with management scenarios. These diverse stakeholders are often at odds and the empathic response can be a benefit in helping break down barriers in decision making. It potentially helps people to look at management scenarios, rather than causes, argues Anderson.

A view from above in the Cook Inlet virtualization. Users can move throughout the scene, both above and below water, to explore the salmon run. Credit: Roger Lew

A second goal is to develop the simulator as an educational tool. This is currently is a major part of the work being done on the Salmon Sim, with collaborators at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau actively working to create curriculum based around Salmon Sim for K-12 children.

"Just like any video game they are immediately intrigued by the visuals and they are intrigued to jump into this worldIt's feeding right into their preferred way of consuming information, which the other side of this which is criticalthe content they are seeing needs to be aligned with science and educational goals," says Anderson.

To that end the team is hopeful for upcoming NSF support that will allow them to develop this project into a full fledged curriculum.

The goal would be to, "design a curriculum for a 7 year journey, so a kid could essentially start in junior high and follow a salmon all the way through highschool, understanding all the complexities along the way." This would be tied to local data collection and also to other classes following the same curriculum as a way to highlight that local conditions are different, and these differences inform management and policy. And while simulation might be visually catchy, Anderson is quick to point out that it isn't all about flash, which is why Salmon Sim is built on real data.

"It's one thing to catch the kids' attention. It's another to be sure we are informing them correctly, and that they are informing themselves correctly. Science, when you see it in action, makes perfect sense."

View of the Aquarium portion of the Salmon Sim where users can see the changes in salmon bodies with age, sex and condition. Credit: Roger Lew

As for the use of the Salmon Sim as a scientific visualization tool, those days are far off but scientists are eager to help build these tools according to Anderson and postdoc Roger Lew. "Building these tool libraries is necessary for the future," says Lew.

As data analysis and processing becomes more integrated the tools and processes that underlie Salmon Sim are being built with scientific visualization and modelling in mind. Eventually, the researchers muse, scientists can use these and as-yet-unimagined visualization tools to explore their models more directly.

"This is exciting, but imagine what will be possible 20 years from now," says Anderson.

Talking with Anderson it is hard not to come away with the impression that he could have a career as a futurist. The line between where current simulations end and future plans begin is fluid, both because the technology is moving fast and because Anderson has big plans. Often, answers come back much deeper than you might expect from a conversation about what looks, on the outside, like a video game. No doubt this has helped Anderson win over critics, mostly in the sciences, who wonder what the real utility of these virtualization tools are. "But, as people use them they see the strengths," and often become firm believers he says.

The philosophical questions don't end there. Anderson ends the conversation with a question to ponder:

"A question that is kindof profound is, can these simulated worlds [and presumably the empathy they engender] help individuals to potentially make decisions against their own self interest, but for the common good?"

Regarding the problem of salmon Anderson continues, "So, if you were to see that in seven generations, that the actions and management I'm making currently will give me financial benefit, but I realize [through the simulation] that I've collapsed the economy further ahead, will I make sacrifices in this generation to secure a healthy one for the next?"

Anderson isn't sure of the answer. Either way, he believes that having tools that cross societal boundaries and allow us to visualize multiple management scenarios are important. Developing these tools, he believes, are important for a realistic discussion of the costs and benefits inherent in ecological decision making.

Explore further Science journal letter highlights salmon vulernability

Provided by PLOS Blogs

This story is republished courtesy of PLOS Blogs: blogs.plos.org.
Hubble Space Telescope imaging (blue: F435W, green: average(F435W, F606W), red: F606W) of the host, NGC 5714, and immediate environment of SN 2003dr. The host image is 200 arcsec on a side, and the sizes of the individual filter images are indicated by the magenta square. The location of SN 2003dr is shown at the center of each zoomed image, with the dashed circle having a radius of 0.2 arcsec. Kron apertures of SExtractor detected sources are marked on their respective images, which have been slightly smoothed to aid visual identification of sources. At the distance of NGC 5714 one arcsec is  160 pc. Credit: Joseph Lyman et al., 2016.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers a multitude of spectacular images of celestial objects and a huge amount of scientific data helpful for astronomers. A team of scientists from UK and Sweden has recently made use of Hubble to study the host galaxies and environments of five calcium-rich supernovae that could provide new insights on the evolution of stellar systems. Their research was published online on Feb. 25 in the arXiv journal.

Calcium-rich supernovae, also called calcium-rich transients, are a type of supernova that eject a preponderance of calcium into space, less luminous than other supernova types and evolving more rapidly. According to previous studies, a large fraction of them are found at significant distances from the nearest galaxy, well outside the bulk of the stellar light. It is believed that this type of transient may be a major producer of calcium in the universe.

The researchers, led by Joseph Lyman of the University of Warwick, UK, employed Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys/Wide Field Channel (ACS/WFC) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to obtain images of five calcium-rich supernovae, among which three exhibit large offsets and two are coincident with the disk of their hosts.

"Our sample consists of five examples of the calcium-rich supernova class, which were targeted with Hubble for two orbits each," the scientists wrote in a paper published on arXiv.

The supernovae, lying well outside their hosts, are designated SN 2003dr, SN 2005E and SN 2007ke, and were observed using ACS. The scientists found no detected sources underlying the locations of these supernovae, ruling out the presence of massive stars, dwarf galaxies and globular clusters at these locations.

SN 2003dr is the most interesting of this group as it is quite complex. It lies offset along the minor axis of the galaxy and thus off the disk light, although it is relatively close in linear distance. Hubble images also show a strong tidal feature that passes through the location of this supernova along the southern and western sides of the galaxy.

The two calcium-rich transients appearing to be in line-of-sight with the disks of late type galaxies, named SN 2001co and SN 2003dg, were imaged by Hubble's WFC3. The team discovered that they both display strong patchy star formation and significant dust lanes  typical for their morphological types.

"In each case, the transient's location appears close to regions of star formation. () Furthermore, the lack of distinguishable underlying sources at their locations is in agreement with the findings for the remote sample, although in these cases there is clearly an underlying stellar population from the galactic disk," the paper reads.

Thanks to the new research, almost every calcium-rich supernova located within 300 million light years has been observed in detail. The study also confirmed that the majority of host galaxies of these transients are disturbed or merging systems.

However, how these calcium-rich supernovae form is still debated. It could be due to white dwarf mergers with neutron stars due to the collapse of massive stars. According to Lyman, the mechanism of the supernova explosion could cause the neutron star to be 'kicked' to very high velocities.

"This high-velocity system can then escape its galaxy, and if the binary system survives the kick, the white dwarf and neutron star will merge causing the explosive transient," Lyman said.

The scientists concluded that as new members of the class emerge, it will be prudent to further test this apparent bias of calcium-rich supernovae production in disturbed and merging systems.

Explore further White dwarfs crashing into neutron stars explain loneliest supernovae

 2016 Phys.org
The 305-m Arecibo telescope and its suspended support platform of radio receivers is shown amid a starry night. From space, a sequence of millisecond-duration radio flashes are racing towards the dish, where they will be reflected and detected by the radio receivers. Such radio signals are called fast radio bursts, and Arecibo is the first telescope to see repeat bursts from the same source. Credit: Danielle Futselaar

Astronomers for the first time have detected repeating short bursts of radio waves from an enigmatic source that is likely located well beyond the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. The findings indicate that these "fast radio bursts" come from an extremely powerful object which occasionally produces multiple bursts in under a minute.

Prior to this discovery, reported in Nature, all previously detected fast radio bursts (FRBs) have appeared to be one-off events. Because of that, most theories about the origin of these mysterious pulses have involved cataclysmic incidents that destroy their source - a star exploding in a supernova, for example, or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. The new finding, however, shows that at least some FRBs have other origins.

FRBs, which last just a few thousandths of a second, have puzzled scientists since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Despite extensive follow-up efforts, astronomers until now have searched in vain for repeat bursts.

That changed last November 5th, when McGill University PhD student Paul Scholz was sifting through results from observations performed with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico - the world's largest radio telescope. The new data, gathered in May and June and run through a supercomputer at the McGill High Performance Computing Centre, showed several bursts with properties consistent with those of an FRB detected in 2012.

The repeat signals were surprising - and "very exciting," Scholz says. "I knew immediately that the discovery would be extremely important in the study of FRBs." As his office mates gathered around his computer screen, Scholz pored over the remaining output from specialized software used to search for pulsars and radio bursts. He found that there were a total of 10 new bursts.

The finding suggests that these bursts must have come from a very exotic object, such as a rotating neutron star having unprecedented power that enables the emission of extremely bright pulses, the researchers say. It is also possible that the finding represents the first discovery of a sub-class of the cosmic fast-radio-burst population.

"Not only did these bursts repeat, but their brightness and spectra also differ from those of other FRBs," notes Laura Spitler, first author of the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists believe that these and other radio bursts originate from distant galaxies, based on the measurement of an effect known as plasma dispersion. Pulses that travel through the cosmos are distinguished from man-made interference by the influence of interstellar electrons, which cause radio waves to travel more slowly at lower radio frequencies. The 10 newly discovered bursts, like the one detected in 2012, have three times the maximum dispersion measure that would be expected from a source within the Milky Way.

Intriguingly, the most likely implication of the new Arecibo finding - that the repeating FRB originates from a very young extragalactic neutron star - is at odds with the results of a study published last week in Nature by another research team. That paper suggested FRBs are related to cataclysmic events, such as short gamma-ray bursts, which can not generate repeat events. "However, the apparent conflict between the studies could be resolved, if it turns out that there are at least two kinds of FRB sources," notes McGill physics professor Victoria Kaspi, a senior member of the international team that conducted the Arecibo study.

In future research, the team hopes to identify the galaxy where the radio bursts originated. To do so, they will need to detect bursts using radio telescopes with far more resolving power than Arecibo, a National Science Foundation-sponsored facility with a dish that spans 305 metres and covers about 20 acres. Using a technique called interferometry, performed with radio telescope arrays spread over large geographical distances, the astronomers may be able to achieve the needed resolution.

"Once we have precisely localized the repeater's position on the sky, we will be able to compare observations from optical and X-ray telescopes and see if there is a galaxy there," says Jason Hessels, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy as well as corresponding author of the Nature paper. "Finding the host galaxy of this source is critical to understanding its properties", he adds.

Canada's CHIME telescope could help unravel the puzzle, adds Kaspi, who is Director of the McGill Space Institute. Thanks to the novel design of the soon-to-be completed apparatus, it is expected to be able to detect dozens of fast radio bursts per day, she says. "CHIME will further our quest to understand the origin of this mysterious phenomenon, which has the potential to provide a valuable new probe of the Universe."

Explore further Could fast radio bursts be produced by collisions between neutron stars and asteroids?

More information: L. G. Spitler et al. A repeating fast radio burst, Nature (2016). Journal information: Nature L. G. Spitler et al. A repeating fast radio burst,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature17168
Index Brings Apple Pay, Enhanced Security and a New Customer Experience

SAN FRANCISCO, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/  Index[1], a leading retail software company that brings measurement and personalization to the offline world, is deploying a cloud-based payments infrastructure for American Apparel, Inc.[2] Indexs solution for American Apparel will drive efficiencies and cost savings as well as improve security, future-proof payments and significantly expand digital capabilities across its U.S. stores. Our launch with Index provides a strong technical foundation to prepare our stores for the future, said Brian McHale, American Apparels Chief Information Officer. Index is an incredibly valuable partner to help us accomplish our objective of moving major systems to the cloud and overhauling security. Index Hosted Gateway and Index Semi-Integrated Payments provide American Apparel with a turnkey solution[3] for point-to-point

Read more
Welcome

Welcome to Conservative Musings. The purpose of this blog is to discuss with everyone (conservatives, moderates, independents and progressives) the issues of the day in an intelligent discussion. We believe that discussion can lead to agreement or an agreement to disagree but it must be held in a mutually respectful environment. We learn nothing from name calling or argument for argument's sake therefore we will not allow that to happen here.







We will post our point of view and want a spirited discussion of the issues. Please express your opinions, hopefully we all can learn.




Instead of signing off on a couple of excellent government transparency bills, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has insisted on coming up with his own proposals, which arent as good.

We dont know if his reluctance springs from an impulse to seek credit, by substituting his own bills for the Legislatures, or if he watered down the bills because he doesnt actually want public information held by the state to be available to the public. Perhaps its some of both.

The governor keeps bringing up access to legislative records. He seems stuck on making the Legislature subject to the state Freedom of Information Law the way state agencies are.

The problem is, the two bills he vetoed applied to the Legislature and to state agencies. Also, although we believe FOIL should apply to the Legislature, its application to state agencies is much more important.

The agencies of the state  the departments of health, transportation, education, motor vehicles, environmental conservation and so on  interact with citizens and affect their daily lives. State policies are carried out and enforced through state agencies, and it is their records that hold the greatest public interest and value.

Heres an example: Last June, a state education official determined that state English tests in the Whitehall school district had been misadministered, and the test results were invalidated.

The Post-Stars education reporter, Michael Goot, filed a FOIL request with the state Education Department, seeking copies of emails between the department and the school district. That request was not complied with until the end of January  six months later.

The emails revealed that school staff had photocopied tests, which state rules forbid, and that is why the results were tossed out.

It should not take half a year for the state to answer a simple but important request for information about procedures at a public school district.

The bills that Cuomo vetoed address the culture of denial and delay that dominates state agencies when it comes to answering information requests from the public. One of them would have set stricter deadlines on court appeals so FOIL lawsuits would be resolved faster. The other would have forced state agencies that reject requests without justification to pay the legal fees of citizens forced to sue for the information.

The governors proposals water down the legal fees bill, so it applies only in narrow circumstances, and ignore the problem of court delays. They leave intact the huge advantage the state holds in any freedom of information dispute, since it can use its superior resources to delay requests in the courts for months or years.

We have often heard the governor pledge to improve the transparency of state government. But our reporters deal with state agencies daily, and we know the truth: Gov. Cuomo has fostered a culture of secrecy in Albany. Public information, even of the most banal sort, has become harder and harder to obtain under his leadership.

One element of Gov. Cuomos proposals is worthwhile: He wants collectively bargained public employee agreements to be made available to the public before they are approved.

That would mean, for example, that an agreement on a teachers contract would have to be available for public inspection as soon as it was sent to union members or district employers for ratification. Public input, at that point, would still be meaningful. Now, the contracts arent revealed until after ratification, when public reaction is irrelevant.

That single praiseworthy element of Gov. Cuomos proposals, which are part of his budget package, should be preserved in negotiations with the Legislature. Otherwise, state leaders should insist the governor honor government transparency not only in his speeches but in practice, and return to the principles of the two bills he vetoed.

Local editorials represent the opinion of The Post-Star editorial board, which consists of Publisher Terry Coomes, Editor Ken Tingley, Projects Editor Will Doolittle, Controller/Operations Director Brian Corcoran and citizen representative George Nelson.
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

Read more
CETLALIC nuestro centro, nuestra escuela, nuestro proyecto

Mas que una escuela de espanol, TODO UN PROYECTO! OTRO MUNDO ES POSIBLE!
The Bill is expected to improve the seed industry by providing a legal framework for the protection of the rights of breeders of new plant varieties and to enable Ghana to be in full compliance with obligations under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the WTO while promoting and encouraging investment in the seed industry.

However, Mr. Charles Nyaaba, Programmes officer of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) believes the current state of the Bill will end up doing great disservice to smallholder farmers.

"The current state of the Bill is actually giving the right to big time commercial breeders. Clause 23 gives too much discretion to government and can be changed without adequate notice and consultation of farmers...We are not resisting the Bill entirely. There are certain clauses within the Bill which are making this Bill not to be small-holder farmer friendly. Some are calling for these clauses to be amended," he said on Radio Ghana.

Meanwhile, a suit against the Plant Breeders Bill has been thrown out by the court, and this paves way for parliament to lift the bill again for debate to continue.
The Registrar Generals Department has begun inspecting all businesses and companies operating in the country.The Department has, therefore, directed Sole Proprietors, Partners, Company Secretaries, Directors, Shareholders, Local Managers and Auditors of companies, to provide copies of their Companys certificate of incorporation, commencement of business, annual returns, and evidence of current renewal of business registration to the team for inspection.A statement signed by Ms Constance Adomaa Takyi, the Public Relations Officer, also urged companies to provide their current Audited Accounts or Nil returns whichever, is applicable, depending on the date of incorporation.The Filing of annual returns is mandatory as stated in Section 122 (1&2) of the Companies Act, 1963, (Act 179), that a company shall file its annual returns eighteen (18) months after Incorporation and at least in once every year thereafter.The statement urged companies to take notice because failure to file their annual returns after the deadline would automatically attract a fine of 12 penalty units for each day in default whilst that of business names would elapse completely."Businesses and companies who do not update their records after the deadline would automatically be considered as being inactive," it said.The statement said inspectors from the Registrar-General's Department would have their staff identification tags on.The first phase of the exercise, which started in the last quarter of 2015, resulted in many companies adhering to the earlier press release by updating their records with the Department.However, it noted that, a lot more companies had not complied with the directive of updating their records as well as filing their annual returns.
Refering to the new Tarrifs rolled out by the Public Utilies Regulatory Commission, sachet water producers and beverage companies must pay GHp 1,121.02 (GHC 1.12) per 1000 litres, whereas bottling companies are charged as high as GHC5.78.

In an intervew with pulse.com.gh, the companies demanded an explaination with regards to the vast disparity in the cost of water between the two water producers when they all use the water for the same commercial purposes. They are yet to receive any meaning response, they say.

Corrspondence sighted indicated that the companies have complained to the PURC and the Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr. Ekow Spio Garbrah:

"As per the GWCL Website, they have specifically published that Special Commercial refers to bulk customers who use GWCL treated water as the main raw material for bottling water for resale. If that is the case then why are there separate tariffs for bottled water and sachet water; both use GWCL treated water as the main raw material for resale, even though not all companies provide further treatment though GWCL treated water is actually not safe to drink on its own. Are we promoting the consumption of sachet water over bottled water or is it because sachet water is affordable to the masses due to the low cost of packaging? What about hygiene and our environment, has that been considered?"

The companies again argue that increasing the cost of production for bottled water producers will push them out of business, increasing the supply of sachet water on the market, a situation that will not orgre well for the environment and the country's ambition to recycle plastic waste as the waste from sachet water cannot be recycled.

As things stand, the prices of bottled water will cost higher than soft drinks given that beverage companies are charged four times lower for water sourced from the Ghana Water Company.

A bottled water operator complained, "How can Bottled Water Companies survive if the cost of water is 4 times higher that of a Cola Drink? Is it that they believe that water in a bottle is considered an upper class product for the rich but a cola in a bottle is for all classes? Think about this, do we really have a PURC that works? Should all bottled water companies in Ghana shift to sachet water to bring their cost of production down by 400% as well?"

Reacting to the concerns of botlle water companies, in an interview with Pulse.com.gh, the head of communications at Ghana Water Company, Stanely Martey said the PURC will be in the best position to explain the disparity in the tariffs for industry.

He explains that bottle water companies have higher profit margins than their counterpart sachet water producers, therefore justifying the tariff disparities.

He however registered the willingness of the PURC and the Ghana Water Company to listen to any greivance s water bottling company may have, and are ready to dialogue on the right way forward.

Repercussions

Water bills sighted by Pulse.com.gh show the bills of some water companies have increased from GHC90,000 a month to GHC400,000. This they say is fast crippling their business.

When pulse.com.gh contacted the PURC on the matter, Nana Yaa Jantuah, PRO of the commission said
According to Nelson Mandela Ghanas independence on March 6, 1957, provided much strength and great inspiration to African liberation movements. This article is a foundation essay.

These are longer than usual and take a wider look at a key issue affecting society

Ghana was to become the testing ground for Arthur Lewis ideas on economic development. The excitement surrounding Ghanas independence in 1957 as tropical Africas rst decolonised territory captivated Lewis as thoroughly as it did African nationalists and Afrophiles around the world. Lewis, a St Lucian, went on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1979.

A veritable whos who of intellectuals of African descent living in the Americas ocked to Accra.

They were determined to show the world that Africans could govern themselves and achieve more for their people than the colonial rulers had. They were eager to make Ghana a shining example to inspire independence movements across the continent.

If, then, Lewis saw Ghana as a proving ground for his ideas on economic development, later scholars have viewed the Kwame Nkrumah years (1951-66) as a case study of striking failure.

From a country that seemed on the threshold of robust economic progress, it descended into economic misery and political instability.

Although Lewis was remarkably well informed on Ghana and knew many Ghanaian ofcials personally, he was not fully prepared for the complexities of his new position. Nor was he prepared for the fragility of Ghanaian economics and politics.

Seek ye first the political kingdom

The expectations surrounding Lewis at the time of his arrival were staggering. Since they were also highly contradictory, he could not meet all of them.

The Ghanaian politicians insisted that Lewis assert Ghanas economic independence from its former colonial rulers and from the outside world. They looked to him to design nancial institutions that would free Ghana from the British economy and promote rising standards of living as well as economic strength. Lewis was supposed to make possible Nkrumahs famous slogan:

On the other hand, the British, the Americans, the international nancial community, and representatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, wanted something quite different. They looked to Lewis to be a moderating inuence  procapitalist and pro-Western.

The radical wing of the Ghanaian political elite alarmed the British and the Americans. Perhaps no-one more troubled the Westerners than the Ghanaian prime minister himself, whose political and economic preferences were far from clear at this time.

The dramatic and heavily charged clash between an economic expert (Lewis) and a political leader (Nkrumah) was repeated again and again in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This was happening as African states, emerging from colonial rule, sought to buttress their political independence with economic progress. Economic advisers and ministers, some of whom were Africans and some not, regularly had to sacrice their economic projects to the patronage-building ambitions of politicians.

Rarely, however, are observers afforded the opportunity that the Lewis Papers provide to view the underlying tensions involving the political and economic elites that were so often covered up by anodyne formal announcements. The two men saw Ghanas independence from different vantage points even though they were united in wanting the country to enjoy economic progress.

Politicians versus economists

Nkrumah believed that the political leadership had the obligation to set the economic agenda and that economists should then design programs that would make it possible to achieve these goals.
Ghana is still Turkeys number four trade partner in the sub-Saharan Africa region, he said.Last years trade volume between Turkey and Ivory Coast was $400 million. Our goal is to boost this to $1 billion by 2020, he added.Ghana is one of our closest friends in West Africa, Erdogan said.In recent years we have been writing a bold new chapter in the history of our bilateral relations with Ghana. We see Ghana as our partner in development, he said.Our goal is to expand our mutual cooperation in the political, military, economic, cultural, trade, and diplomatic areas.

Erdogan also told Ghana's parliament that he is hoping to inspire investment in both Ghana and Turkey when he meets the business community. He encouraged Ghanaian businessmen to come and do business in Turkey.
For years, the school has set the standard in holistic education in Ghana and churned out thousands of women of substance who have made an impact in varied fields- from Science and Technology to the Arts, notable among them being Hon. Joyce Bamford Addo, Korkui Selormey, and Akosua Agyapong.

What makes this anniversary extraordinary is the build-up to the main event- For weeks now, a social media page- Celebrating Hopsans- has been created with the aim of celebrating Past Students who have gone on to achieve great feats, as well as provide the opportunity for all to share their favourite memories from Angels Hill and remember those who have passed. Hopsans young and old have reconnected as never before.

The school was founded in 1946 by Catholic missionaries in Cape Coast and has established a Teachers Training College in Takoradi which will be joining in the celebrations as well under the headship of Reverend Sister Josephine Anto.

More here: Arrears Teachers put strike action on hold

The 70th anniversary celebrations will be a true homecoming for many Hopsans in Ghana and the diaspora. Various fundraising efforts are on-going to renovate sections of the school.

It will start will a courtesy call on the regional minister as well as a candlelit vigil. In true Holy Child School style, there will be a grand opening mass celebration and literary night which will take place on March 5, 2016.

Independence Day will be marked by a photo exhibition and an expo on the various year groups present.

Games and a mass celebration for deceased Hopsans will follow on the 7th and 8th respectively. There will be a get-together of Hopsans on March 9, 2016, from around the world and a tour of Cape-Coast and Kakum National Park.

The students will also enjoy a career mentorship program to enable them interact with past students and make meaningful career choices.

The streets of cape-coast will be painted brown and yellow on Friday the 11 when students, staff, Hopsans and friends of the school partake in a float and an old school jam.

Read related: Ho Polytechnic offers Masters programme
Angry students and alumni of the school staged a protest on Tuesday over their exclusion from the technical universities list.

According to them, the exclusion is affecting enrolment at the school.

So far, six out of the ten polytechnics have made the cut for the conversion to technical universities as promised by the NDC administration.

The six as announced by President Mahama in the State of the Nation address on February 25, 2016 are Kumasi, Ho , Takoradi, Sunyani , Accra and Koforidua polytechnics. The six according to the president made the 16 point criteria for the conversion.

But the Cape Coast polytechnic alumni association has said enrollment will be affected drastically and this is evident in the polytechnic forms already on the market.

See related: Ho Polytechnic offers Masters programme

In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, The Deputy Minister in-charge of Tertiary education, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said government did not err in the conversion process, as a technical committee was set up to advice on the criteria to be used for the conversion.

He said Cape Coast Polytechnic should work towards meeting the requirements and apply to the NCCTE for reassessment.

"It is not a wholesale thing we are doing; just a mere nomenclature change; No. We want to really get it right," he added.
Laura Kehoe, who wrote about her experience for The Conservation, was aiming to record and understand a group of wild chimpanzees who had never been studied before. The chimps are not in a protected area, so have to carve out their existence in the patches of forests between farms and villages, she wrote.

With a group, she was tramping through the wilderness in the Republic of Guinea, guided by the chief of the village, Mamadou Alioh Bah, when they stopped in a clearing.

He told me he had found something interesting  some innocuous markings on a tree trunk. Something that most of us wouldnt have even noticed in the complex and messy environment of a savannah had stopped him in his tracks.

The group of six thought it was either wild pigs or teenagers messing around, she wrote.

But Alioh had a hunch  and when a man that can find a single fallen chimp hair on the forest floor and can spot chimps kilometres away with his naked eye better than you can (with expensive binoculars) has a hunch, you listen to that hunch. We set up a camera trap in the hope that whatever made these marks would come back and do it again, but this time we would catch it all on film.

The camera traps automatically start recording when any movement occurs in front of them.

Kehoe returned two weeks later to collect the footage, and the find was exhilarating  as she explains, a large male chimp approaches the tree and pauses for a second.

He then quickly glances around, grabs a huge rock and flings it full force at the tree trunk.

Nothing like this had been seen before and it gave me goose bumps. Jane Goodall first discovered wild chimps using tools in the 1960s. Chimps use twigs, leaves, sticks and some groups even use spears in order to get food. Stones have also been used by chimps to crack open nuts and cut open large fruit. Occasionally, chimps throw rocks in displays of strength to establish their position in a community.

But what she saw on film proved not to be a random, one-off event, instead it was a repeated activity with no clear link to gaining food or status. Kehoe found it could be a ritual.

After searching the area they found many more sites where trees had similar markings and in many places piles of rocks had accumulated inside hollow tree trunks  reminiscent of the piles of rocks archaeologists have uncovered in human history.

Other groups working on the project also captured similar activity, finding the same mysterious behaviour in small pockets of Guinea Bissau, Liberia and Cote dIvoire but nothing east of this, despite searching across the entire chimp range from the western coasts of Guinea all the way to Tanzania.

After months researching the activity, Kehoe and other researchers came up with their theories.

Firstly, that the behaviour could be part of a male display, where the loud bang made when a rock hits a hollow tree adds to the impressive nature of a display.

Researchers said this could be especially likely in areas where there are not many trees with large roots that chimps would normally drum on with their powerful hands and feet.

Or, as Kehoe writes it could be more symbolic than that  and more reminiscent of our own past. Marking pathways and territories with signposts such as piles of rocks is an important step in human history. Figuring out where chimps' territories are in relation to rock throwing sites could give us insights into whether this is the case here.

And the most intriguing option, the researchers could have discovered the first evidence of chimpanzees creating a kind of shrine that could indicate sacred trees.

Indigenous West African people have stone collections at sacred trees and such man-made stone collections are commonly observed across the world and look eerily similar to what we have discovered here, she said.

Through her research Kehoe called for better protection of chimps.

To unravel the mysteries of our closest living relatives, we must make space for them in the wild. In the Ivory Coast alone, chimpanzee populations have decreased by more than 90 per cent in the past 17 years.

Increased human populations, habitat destruction, poaching and infectious disease severely endangers chimpanzees, she wrote.

And, as research has found, if nothing changes, chimps and other great apes will have only 30 years left in the wild.
The Ashanti Regional Security Council (REGSEC), including the police and the military launched a campaign to rid the area of Fulani herdsmen.

But, the angry youth of Agogo claim that the action is yet to yield positive results, as two Agogo residents last week were allegedly killed by the nomads.

Chairman of the Agogo Youth Association, Emmanuel Amakye Buabeng said residents have lost trust in REGSEC to handle the menace.

"It is not like we have lost confidence. It is just that we don't trust them because of what we have seen before...Every year, when they come here they tell us they are coming to evict them," he told Accra-based Citi FM, adding that they are yet to see full commitment from security agencies towards flushing out the nomads.

The youth of Agogo, on February 23, 2016, announced a self imposed ban on all political activities in the town.
Confirming the news to Accra-based Citi FM, the Chief Executive of the Mental Health Authority, Dr Akwasi Osei said: Charles Antwi is doing fine but hes not good to the point where he can be left to go.

We are hoping that in the next one month hell be fit enough. We will take him back to the court and the court would decide on his fate, Dr Osei added.

The 36-year-old was sentenced to 10-years in prison in July 2015 after confessing that he had wanted to kill President Mahama at his church.

Antwi was arrested on July 26, 2015 at the Ringway Gospel Assemblies of God Church, where the President worships.

He was found carrying a locally manufactured pistol with two rounds of ammunition.

When asked by security operatives, he said he had come to the church to kill the President.

However, the president was not present at church when the incident occured.
He made the request on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

Counsel for Woyome, Mr Ken Anku argued that his client could not refund the money by December 31, 2015 as he had earlier promised because all his accounts were frozen by the state during criminal investigations into the payment of the money.

He told the court he could pay GHS8 million by the end of April 2016 and spread the remaining GHS43 million in three years.

Mr Woyome was paid the GHS51.2 million after he sued the state over an alleged breach of a purported contract between him and the Government. In connection with the termination of the same alleged contract, foreign construction firm Waterville Holdings BVI was also paid 25 million.

Background

Woyome was paid the money in three tranches of GH17 million each on the pretext that he provided financial engineering for the government for the construction of stadia for the CAN 2008 tournament.

However, the Supreme Court, in July 2014, unanimously ordered him to refund the GH51.2 million to the state.

The court said Mr Woyome got the money out of an invalid and unconstitutional contract.
He said the NPP had taken this stance because internationally acclaimed think-tank, Transparency International has recently been scoring the NDC government higher and higher marks in its fight against corruption.

But, speaking to Accra-based Joy FM, Founder and President of IMANI Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe said "Ordinarily, I wouldn't respond to these. As you know, we don't play in this local league, so what a local politician says doesn't really bother us...We play at the continent right now.

He also wondered why the NDC would make such allegations against his outfit after it [IMANI] had gone to the extent of verifying claims by the NPP that government had bloated figures of the cost of Ridge Hospital expansion.

On his part, the Deputy Director of Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Dr. Franklin Oduro said the allegations by the NDC are 'bogus' and lacked 'factual accuracy'.

"The Afrobarometer as you all know, I must say that the NDC itself has used the Afrobarometer in the past when they were in opposition," he said, and wondered why the NDC was making a U-turn this time.

He said CDD reports, which include the Afrobarometer survey, were credible, adding that institutions like Mo Ibrahim use their reports on the continent for their analysis.
According to him, the UN has failed to serve the needs of the nations in the global scale and is rather advancing the course of a few elite countries.

In the entirety of counter-terrorism platforms, Turkey is an influential and active figure. Ill like to vocalise this fact to the Ghanaian parliament and the rest of the world that in order to counter terrorism, we have put in more efforts on principles agreed unanimously by the UN. The Security Council of the UN has failed to serve the greater needs of nations on a global scale and is, instead, serving the needs of a few elite countries. The Security Council of the UN is not active in Syria, North Africa nor Iraq, and the Council has failed to intervene in events around the world and countries in trouble, he said.

President Erdogan made this known through an interpreter when he was addressing Parliament in Accra on Tuesday, during his two-day official visit to Ghana.

He further assured Ghanaians of Turkeys support to help the growth of Ghana's business sector.

The Turkish and Ghanaian trade volume used to be $41million in 2002, but in 2011 and 2012, this figure reached half a billion dollars. We have suffered a slight decline in trade in recent times, but significant opportunities of cooperation, especially in the field of construction, defence and other areas will be explored, he added.

Meanwhile, Ghana and Turkey have signed bilateral agreements in the areas of Investment, Communications, Sports, Energy and Natural Resources.
The GBA led by two former presidents, Nene Amegatse and Frank Bechem, filed the writ at the Supreme Court in 2015 seeking to nullify the nomination and subsequent confirmation of Justices Yaw Apau and Gabriel Pwamang as justices of the highest court.

According to them, the president in his appointment of the superior justices breached some vital procedures in the appointment and confirmation process.

The judgment of the court will also determine the outcome of a similar case by Citi FM journalist Richard Sky and Professor Kwaku Danso whose cases were consolidated with that of the GBA.

Sky filed a writ to Supreme Court over the appointment of the Chairman of the Electoral Commission (EC). Sky requested that the court interpret certain provisions of the 1992 Constitution in relation to the appointment of an Electoral Commissioner.
Friends of the Nation have been campaigning for the government to look into a phenomenon of whale carcasses washing up on Ghana's shores since 2012.

This was after noting a significant number of dead whales had washed up since 2009, in a very suspicious manner, Friends of the Nation programme manager Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah said.

We have counted close to 30 whales that have washed ashore since 2009 - this raises a lot of issues.

They would generally wash up between August to November, which was when they migrated along the coast, he said.

The trend continued last year when three were discovered, and Yamoah feared it would continue in the same period this year.

The pressure was on to find out why it was happening, and how to stop it.

Friends of the Nation (FoN) had petitioned the government to look into the issue, the Environmental Protection Agency did, but FoN did not accept the investigation was done properly.

The Environmental Protection Agency's August 2014 report took into account observations during a field survey, review of relevant publications, and interviews with individuals and the coastal communities where the whales were found.

It said the cause could be down to whales being hit by vessels, being entangled with fishing gear and ingestion of marine debris (e.g. polyethylene). However, it said a lack of adequate data and the fact that most of the cetaceans that beached in Ghana were considerably decomposed did not afford definite conclusions about specific causative factors.

We're not too satisfied by investigations into the matter or the findings. The findings pointed to illegal fishing contributing to the deaths, Yamoah told Pulse.com.gh in response to the report.

They were only washing up in the Western Region, which is where oil and gas exploration has been taking place. He said there needed to be a proper investigation to see if that was linked.

While the report noted seismic activities could lead to increased cetacean mortality and proposed ways to mitigate this, Yamoah wanted to know if those mitigations were in place, or worked.

He called on the government to further look into it rather than doing interviews and drawing up conclusions.

We thought there could have been more to it than that and we contested the findings. We realised no scientific study was done, it was just interviews with people who have perceptions. We thought that should not be the trend, we should at least analyse some of these whales that were washed ashore.

Yamoah said there could be a range of factors contributing to the deaths.

We know that some of them could be colliding with vessels some of them could be dying from natural causes and diseases, they also could be affected by pollution...There were also issues of the exploration of oil and gas and the use of seismic exploration that has globally and scientifically been proven to be having impact of fisheries.

There could also be issues of illegal fishing as well. These are the combination of factors that could contribute to the whales washing ashore and the survey team should have approached it with a wider scope.
The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah will be shutdown for maintenance work on Sunday March 20, an official statement from the Jubilee Partners led by Tullow Ghana Limited has said. The shutdown is to allow for planned maintenance work to be undertaken on key equipment of the FPSO," the statement said.

In an interview with Pulse Business however, Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Gas Company, Alfred Ogbamey said the situation will not affect energy supply to Ghanaians.

" This is not the first time, the FPSO is shutting down, and the first time it did, energy supply was not curtailed.

And just like the first time, contigency plans have been to put in place to ensure that there is enough gas to power the plants for the period of the shutdown" he assured."
Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle Nii Armah Ashitey and Nii John Coleman are challenging the legitimacy of Dr Zanetor Rawlings to contest for a parliamentary seat under the 1992 constitution.

According to them, "A declaration that the Dr Zanetor Rawlings election as a parliamentary Candidate elect for the Klottey-Korley Constituency is null and void and is of no effect as same violates the constitution of the NDC and the rules governing the conduct of the 2016 parliamentary primaries."

The two filed a suit at an Accra High Court against the Parliamentary candidate for the area Dr Zanetor Rawlings, and the Electoral Commission, challenging her eligibility to contest the 2016 general elections.

A letter purported to be from the EC dated March 3, 2016, said "We write to instruct you to conduct the above suit on our behalf. We have received letters from lawyers of the plaintiff in the matter of requesting information on the status of Dr Zanetor Agyeman Rawlings as a registered voter as well as 'Sub poena duces Tencum' served on the Commission in respect there of.

"Our records confirmed that she [Zanetor Rawlings] is not ion the Commissions register as a registered voter," the EC has stated.

"Please take note and take appropriate steps to strike out the suit against the Commission because it appears clearly from the processes served on the Commission, that the only reason the Commission has been made party to the suit, is because the plaintiff desires information on the status of Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings as a registered voter, which by virtue of the subpoena would have been bound to disclose to the court anyway."

Meanwhile, an Accra High Court has dismissed a motion seeking to dismiss her eligibility and also ordered Zanetor Rawlings to open her defense.
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The suspect, Adigun Oriyomi, had the sentence passed down by the Lagos State High Court sitting in Igbosere.

Oriyomi's sentencing by Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo, followed his arraignment on multiple counts of murder.

Oriyomi had been accused of killing his best friend, Femi Adekeye, in front of his four-year-old daughter.

PUNCH Metro reported the 2013 case after he had been arrested on September 9, 2013 and released under suspicious circumstances.

Oriyomi had been arraigned before the Ebute-Meta Magistrates Court where he confessed to being a member of the Black Axe Confraternity, owning up to four other murders between 2010 and 2013.

The case revealed that Oriyomi had led gunmen to Amodu Street, Mushin, where they had killed a pregnant woman, Musili Bello, her 12-year-old daughter, Suliat, and a motorcycle rider, Baba Monday.

The police revealed that the suspect had led a gang to Ewenla Street, Mushin, and killed another woman, 38-year-old Agbabiaka, her 4-month-old baby, Aishat, and another woman, Adeboye on February 10, 2014.

In March 2014, the suspect had reportedly killed his best friend, Adekeye, in front of his 4-year-old daughter on February 12, 2014, at the his residence on Isa Street in Aboru, in the Ipaja area of Lagos State.

In April 2014, the police said the suspect again led a suspected team of cultists to Akala Street, Mushin, and killed one 26-year-old, Azeez.

PUNCH Metro reveals that Oriyomi had escaped all the murder charges, but his best friend's death, whom he killed in front of the daughter.

A police source revealed:

The testimony of the little girl was what saved the case. After we could not establish the other murder charges due to absence of strong evidences, the small girl gave an eloquent testimony of how her father was killed in her presence. The judge tried to sway her by asking if the police prosecutor taught her what to say.

She said yes. The judge asked what she was taught to say. She said, She said (the prosecutor) I should speak the truth.

She narrated how Adigun (Oriyomi) entered their room with a big gun and her father begged him to kill only him and spare the lives of his children. She told the court that immediately he shot her dad dead, she quickly carried her baby sister and ran away from the room.
Before coming to Russia, had been registered at a psychiatric clinic in her homeland Uzbekistan - and her condition had been deteriorating in recent months.

In one of the most shocking scenes ever seen, the hijab-wearing nanny, 38 was seen brandishing the head of her four years old victim, screaming 'Allahu Akbar'.

"I am a terrorist," she cries. "I am your death."

The Moscow Investigative Committee in a statement said, "According to preliminary information, the child's nanny, a citizen of one of the Central Asian states born in 1977, waited for the parents and elder child to leave the flat and then, for reasons not established, murdered the infant, set fire to the flat and left the scene,"

Russian journalist Polina Nikolskaya, who was nearby during the woman's rant told Reuters that, "I was on my way to the metro station from home. She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar.

"I saw that she had a bloodied head in her arms but I thought it was not real. People in the crowd said it was real."

Bobokulova revealed that she committed the crime because her husband had left her for another woman, leading to a deep bitterness which possibly brought her schizophrenia condition to the fore.

"My second husband was born in 1967. I was just seeing him,"

"But he hasn't been around for four months, he left.

"He took me as his second wife and is now living with his first wife. I have no husband officially now. My first husband was born in 1975."

A police source in the ex-Soviet republic said: "The parents of Bobokulova and her husband were called to police for interrogation.

"They spent full day in police, and on Tuesday morning the interrogation continued."

According to reports, the nanny had practically became a member of the family, caring for the four-year old while her parents were at work.

Her behaviour changed after learning that her boyfriend who she had met recently had married another woman, which clearly devastated.
I met when I was in my first year in the University of Benin and ours was a whirlwind romance that was made in heaven. He was in his final year then. I loved Patrick with the whole of my life and was ready to do anything just to be with him.

He was the man that introduced me into the world of sex and since then, no man has ever been able to make me feel the way he alone is capable of. Even when he graduated and went for his service in Lagos, we made sure we saw each other at least twice a month.

Immediately he rounded up his service, he was employed by the company and by the time I graduated, it was natural that we would get married and I moved to stay with him in Lagos.

Then he had the opportunity to travel abroad and though my parents wanted us to have our introduction first, his family wanted him to settle down there first so that he could come back and take me along after our wedding.

The first two years were a torment for me and only his calls and messages made things easier. But then, the calls and messaged stopped coming and he became incommunicado. Even his siblings and close friends did not know what had happened to him. I almost ran mad with worry and ran from pillar to post, with no positive result.

After staying like that for over four years, my family and friends urged me to move on with my life. They tried to match make me with men but none could compare to my Patrick. But one man, , withstood all I threw his way, endured my non-romantic life and stuck on till he proposed marriage.

I accepted based on the fact that all my friends were married and my family was on my neck and time was no longer on my side. But I must state here that I only agreed to marry Steve because society wanted me to.

We had done all the introduction, printed our cards and the date fixed when out of nowhere, Patrick showed up. He narrated that he was arrested in a credit card scam and sentenced to 15 years in jail but was later pardoned after he had spent 13 years on the ground of good behaviour and the fact that he was directly involved.

He also said that he has been reabsorbed into the society and would want me to go back to the States with him.

Now my dilemma is this: this is the man I have loved with all my heart coming back to me at the nick of time. My heart still wants him but I know that Steve will be so hurt because he has been a good man to me. But my happiness is all that matters.

Efe."
"My name is Folarin, a 25-year-old undergraduate of a university in the south-western part of Nigeria. At my age, I should actually be a graduate or at most, in my final year but I am still in my second year with the prospect of not even finishing my education looming large.

You see, my father and mother are divorced and this took a toll on myself and my younger sister as the divorce was so messy that my mother took us away when we were kids.

For more than 15 years, mom kept us away from dad and practically poisoned our hearts towards him and we grew up with resentment for him. The feeling must have been mutual because until two years ago, dad never cared to look for us and even when his family members forced him to take us back, he was reluctant.

By the time he came for us, I had spent over six years at home after I finished from secondary school as my mother who not remarried, could not afford to send me to a tertiary institution. All those years, I survived through menial jobs and I lived with a lot of hatred for my father.

But after he took us to live with him, he has tried to be a good father, doing everything possible to fill the void but all he has done seem not to even scratch the surface of my heart. He has explained what led to him divorcing our mother but what she went through to raise us with him not being there still hurts and I don't think I can get over the past.

My sister has moved on and they have formed a great father-daughter bond but something still keeps me aloof and wary of dad's efforts to make us happy.

How do I get to forgive my father and come to accept him?

Folarin."

The teaser for the day was:

How Nigeria voted:

68% - Yes, I will forgive him if he apologises

14% - No, I will never forgive him for abandoning me

17% - I will forgive him but I will not take him as my father
It was gathered that that satanic incident happened on Tuesday, February 28, 2016, when the suspect sneaked into the children's playground and kidnapped the girl and took her into the bush where he assaulted her, causing damages to her vagina.

He was however apprehended when the girl's playmates raised an alarm leading the community youths to mobilise and comb the forest where he was arrested before he could cause untold damages to the toddler.

The suspect was then handed over to the police at Ikang Police Division, while the girl was rushed to the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH), where emergency surgeries were conducted on her.

Uche Okoro, a medical worker at the UCTH who volunteered to pay part of the medical expenses, revealed that the baby was brought to the hospital in critical condition.

The incident happened at Ikang in Bakassi LGA. The three-year-old girl was brought to the UCTH in a critical condition. She was said to have been abducted by a suspected ritual killer and taken to the bush.

Another girl that was with her when the incident happened immediately raised the alarm and a search party went to look for the little girl. She was found in the bush and the suspect was apprehended.
The Nsawam Police reports that the ugly incident at Oboadaka in the Aburi District of the Eastern Region on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

The deceased brother, Kofi Samuel, told newsmen that Okyerewah had prepared the evening meal on Monday, February 29, and was waiting for the husband to return from work before the two of them would eat the food, but the man was drunk when he returned from town, and refused to eat the food when he was served.

The man then took the food from the bowl and threw it away, which infuriated the wife, causing her to insult the husband. She parked her things and went to stay with her family at Aburi, Samuel narrated.

Samuel further narrated that his late sister, a fish monger seller, on Tuesday morning, was going to collect her debt at Adawso, when Adjei allegedly trailed her and hacked her with a sharp machete near a bush.

We later got the information after my younger sister, who was on her way to meet Okyerewah at Adawso, had spotted the husband hacking her. She raised an alarm for help but the husband ran away before the mob got to the crime scene, Samuel concluded.
Ambode added that the Lagos state government will mount 752 fixed posts, use 2,189 house-to-house team members and 1,712 transit teams for the polio vaccination exercise and would use the house-to-house strategy to reach children in various homes, markets, churches, mosques, etc.

This immunisation is free, effective and safe, with little gifts as incentives for immunised children. Parents and caregivers should take advantage of the exercise to boost the immunity of their children by vaccinating them at government designated centres.

We have invested a lot in the training of health workers at the state, local and ward levels to build their capacities. We are also collaborating with international and non-governmental organisations such as WHO, Rotary International, CHAI, JICA and UNICEF, among others.

We have also contracted technical facilitators and independent monitors to provide technical assistance and supervisory support to the immunisation officials throughout the campaign period, he added.
Mr. President said this while receiving a team of health professionals led by Professor Olu Akinkugbe at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Buhari also recalled that in his years at the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), pharmaceutical companies were empowered with resources to produce drugs locally.

He also said We can revisit the experience. We can strengthen pharmaceutical companies to produce essential drugs needed in the country locally. We can then be sure of the quality of such medications.

The Economist, recently said President Muhammadu Buhari is making the same mistakes in handling Nigerias economy that he made as a military ruler.

The publication also criticized Buhari for failing to devalue the Naira in an article titled: Nigerias economy; Hope the naira falls.
In a joint press briefing on Wednesday, March 2, the Chairmen of the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation, Senator Danjuma Goje and Hon. Jibrin Abdulmumin said reports from both chambers would be laid on Wednesday, March 16.

Having interacted with the various Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs), Goje said a lot of hard work has been put into the 2016 Budget proposals.

The various sub committees of the two chambers have interacted with the various MDAs, the Committees have produced their reports and all the Committees of the two chambers have fully submitted their reports," he said.

We have been working very hard round the clock at the same time at the weekends and we will continue to do that until we finish the compilation of our reports.

The essence of the press conference is to give Nigerians a progress report.

On his part, Jibrin said the reports from the various sub committees will be in alignment with the National Assembly guidelines.

He said: After all consultation with the leadership of the House and Senate we can confirm to you that all things being equal we should be able to lay our report of the 2016 Appropriation bill before the House and the Senate on the 16th of March and the consideration, hopefully should be done on the 17th.

So it is safe for us to conclude that the 2016 Appropriation bill will be passed on the 17th of March 2016.

We are going to open in the next few days consultation with the relevant stakeholders in this process, most especially the executive arm of government.

Particularly in the case of the House, we are going to engage the Minister of Budget and Planning, Minister of Finance, DG Budget office.

Most importantly we are working hand in hand with the Senate and things are looking up, we are putting in our best on a daily basis."
According to a statement signed by the Lagos Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Steve Ayorinde, the Governor said the Police and other security operatives in the state are combing everywhere necessary for the girls and their abductors.

We have not been silent on this unfortunate development. In a delicate security matter of this nature, where young innocent people are involved and management of information demands utmost circumspect, we were convinced that swift and coordinated reaction, guided by intelligence reports on the part of the Police, was a better and more sensitive approach to take, rather than a sensational, panic-stricken reaction, Ambode said.

He said the State Commissioner of Police, Mr. Fatai Owoseni and the Assistant Inspector General of Police for the Lagos/Ogun Command are leading the leading the rescue effort with every military apparatus.

We believe in the capacity of the Police to lead this rescue mission. I have had ceaseless briefing with them since the incident happened and God helping us, we shall spare no effort in securing the safe release of the girls and continue to secure the school and indeed every part of Lagos.

The incident, according to the statement, is believed to be connected with his recent visit to some parts of Ikorodu where he read the riot act to vandals and criminal gangs on the resolve of the state government to take the battle to their hideouts in a spirited effort to secure the pipelines.

We believe this is a case of evil fighting back. But Lagos will neither succumb to threats of lawlessness nor bow to terror.

Our resolve is very clear; we will assist the Police and other security agencies in dealing decisively with this one unfortunate case and prevent future reoccurrence. We will deploy the resources at our disposal to safeguard every life and property within our care, he said.
Dismissing media reports headline; Alert: Shiites threaten mass revolt nationwide, the spokesman for the sect, Ibrahim Musa, said they are not planning attacks.

"The report insinuated that the Islamic Movement of Nigeria under the leadership of Sheikh Ibraheem Yaqoub Zakzaky is planning a revenge mission for the killings done to it by the army in Zaria. The story was predicated on an extracted part of a speech by a member of the Islamic Movement in Kano, which was taken out of context, Musa explained.

He continued: We hereby categorically deny that there is any plan to hit back at the army and other symbols of authority as claimed by the report. This is only a ploy to start series of false flag operations whereby attacks will be staged somewhere and these will be attributed to the Islamic Movement as a revenge attacks.

It will be recalled that security operatives have for long had a history of planning such attacks, especially when all efforts to justify their atrocities fail woefully. Similar plots were exposed soon after the daylight cold-blooded murder of 34 members of IMN in 2014. It must be made clear however that any such attacks, now or in the future, is not by the Movement or its members as we wish to reiterate that the Islamic Movement in Nigeria has never ever even contemplated taking up arms or use of violence as a means to achieving our aims. We remain committed to our non-violent ways of extending our message of fairness and justice to all irrespective of sect or religion.

There has never been a single occasion when the Islamic Movement in Nigeria under the leadership of his Eminence Sheikh Ibraheem Zakzaky ever threaten the peace and stability of Nigeria or engaged in any form of violence throughout its 38 years of existence. We have always been the victims of those who are opposed to justice because of our insistence that due process of law should be followed by those in authority.

For the benefit of doubt, we restate that we will never be distracted by anyone and no amount of provocation or incitement would make the IMN ever engage in any form of violent activity.

Our leader Sheikh Zakzaky has said it many times in his discourses that the large following the Movement enjoys among the Nigerian people is not due to the use of arms by the Islamic Movement, but rather by its adherence to truth and justice for all irrespective of religion, tribe and region.

It seems those that wrote the story assume that the Islamic Movement in Nigeria operates like some terrorist groups created by the enemies of Islam, who release video clips in dissemination of its message. Such lousy ways are not our modus operandi and we are not anonymous. We have been living as peaceful Muslims for almost four decades and so it is myopic for anybody to attribute violence to us.

The Islamic Movement is still focused on its demand for the unconditional release of Shaikh Zakzaky and all those in detention sequel to the genocidal attack perpetrated by the army against the Islamic Movement in Zaria.
The disclosure was made to The Associated Press by a military source and a member of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF) on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

They are currently being held at a military facility in Maiduguri, the state capital, according to AP.

They are also said to have told troops that more members of the sect are ready to surrender.

The development confirms claims by Information Minister, Lai Mohammed that the terrorists are hungry and confused.

In essence, the insurgents have been effectively denied territory or sanctuary and are now in disarray, Mohammed had said on Tuesday, February 16, 2016, during a press conference in Abuja.

Scattered, demoralized and hungry, they have resorted to terror tactics available to a degraded and defeated insurgent group. The fact that they operate in a few local governments does not equate to holding and controlling territories. We must make that distinction, he added.
The president gave the assurance when he received the outgoing President of the ECOWAS Commission, Amb. Kadre Desire Ouedraogo at the State House, Abuja.

The President said the pursuit of the laudable goals of the regional economic bloc aimed at regional integration and peaceful co-existence that inspired its creation on May 28, 1975, would always remain a top priority for Nigeria.

"Nigeria, by its size and resources, has no alternative than to back ECOWAS to the hilt.

"We are part of ECOWAS. Indeed, we are at the very heart of it, so we will continue to play our role," he added.

Buhari said the gains recorded so far in collectively providing peace in the sub-region and curtailing health challenges were major achievements of ECOWAS that must be sustained.

Now, we have to get more reliable intelligence and support from the international community, and utilize the gains for the development of our countries," he said.

The President, who commended Ouedraogo for his diligence and visionary leadership, wished him well in his future engagements.

Ouedraogo recounted some of his achievements over the four-year period of serving to include peace and stability in the region.

He mentioned the resolution of crises in Mali, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso and the tackling of the Ebola scourge as some of his major achievements.

We signed trade agreements with China, U.S and Japan. The biometric identity card has been approved and is due for launch in 2016. A single currency by 2020 is on course.
When we got to Njimiya, we saw some girls fetching water. We spoke Kanuri to them. One of them later said in Hausa that they cant speak Kanuri because they are from Chibok, she said according to Leadership.

One of the Chibok girls who now called herself Hauwa, because Boko Haram had given most of them new Islamic names, had recently delivered a baby. Some of the girls were looking traumatized while some looked okay and not worried about their conditions, Zara added.

Kaduna State Senator, Shehu Sani recently also made a similar comment while urging the Federal Government to embrace dialogue as a means of getting the girls home safe.

The over 200 Chibok girls were abducted on April 14, 2014 and most of them remain in captivity.

------------------------------------------------
According to the acting CEO of NERC, Anthony Akah, the supply dropped from 5000 MW it was in the past two weeks, the lowest since May 2015 - it had dropped to 1,327 MW before former president Goodluck Jonathan, left office.

Speaking while signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Akah expressed displeasure over recurrent vandalism in the power sector.

A statement released on Wednesday, March 2, by NERC head public affairs department, Usman Abba-Arabi, said NERC would soon compel the DISCOs to publish their meter deployment schedules, adding that the publication would ensure adherence to the meter roll out plan contained in the performance agreement signed with government by the utility firms.

Such publication will make unmetered customers to be aware of the estimated period they have to wait before they can be metered, the statement said.

It said NERC had issued warning to the DISCOs against wrongful estimated billings and acts of compelling customers to buy, install and repair transformers and poles.
Dickson advised parents to be extremely vigilant, especially in the monitoring of the activities of their children, with a view to ensuring that, they do not fall victim to the antics of mischief makers.

He also thanked the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, for ensuring the safety of the teenager.

The Bayelsa Governor praised the security agencies for handling the matter in a professional manner.

Dickson also appreciated the Governor of Kano state, Abdullahi Ganduje for playing a pivotal role in ensuring the release of Ms. Oruru.

14 year old Ese Oruru was allegedly kidnapped from Bayelsa and taken to Kano state, by one Yunusa Yellow.

The teenager has however denied that she was abducted, adding that she wants to stay in Kano.

In an audio recording obtained from Premium Times, a voice purportedly Eses, said nobody kidnapped her.
He was said to have taken the photo above, obtained by Premium Times, in 2015, in Bayesla.

He allegedly kidnapped Ese from Yenagoa, Bayelsa capital in August last year and left with her to Kano, where he converted her to Islam and planned to marry her.

According to multiple reports, Yunusa was said to be 18 years olds, but his father, Dahiru Bala, claimed his son 22 years old.
The group claims that Yunusas collaborators are still in the Emir of Kanos palace.

The IYC spokesman, Eric Omare, in a statement said The IYC, therefore, insist that the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase, must bring those who masterminded the kidnap of Miss Ese Oruru to justice in line with the Anti-kidnapping law of Bayelsa.

This should include collaborators in the palace of the Emir of Kano.

This is the only way we can put a stop to such criminal conduct, especially considering the worrying activities of herdsmen in different parts of the country.

We commend the role of the Nigerian media in rescuing Ese Oruru from the hands of her abductors.

14 year old Ese Oruru has however denied that she was abducted by Yunusa.

She said she followed him by herself, adding that she does not want to return home.

Ms. Oruru also claimed that she is 17 years, contrary to what the parents had said.
The abductor, identified as Yunusa, aka Yellow, reportedly kidnapped Ese in August 2015.

Ganduje made the call via a statement released by Commissioner for Information, Mallam Mohammed Garba on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

It reads in part:

The government condemns the actions of the alleged abductor, as it is against the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and teachings of Islam which abhor abduction, forced marriage even with the consent of parents of a girl, be her a minor or adult, and forced conversion to Islam, as the Quran categorically states that there is no compulsion in religion

Security and other relevant agencies should expedite action to bring the suspect(s) to book according to the law.

Gandujes call was supported by Delta State Governor, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, who expressed shock at the abduction.

I am very much interested in this case, not only because the girl is an indigene of Delta State, but for the rule of law. I want the police to pursue it to its logical conclusion. Nothing short of diligent prosecution of the abductors will be satisfactory, Okowa said via In a statement issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Charles Aniagwu.
MURIC, in a statement signed by its Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, said The police have also acted very professionally. Nonetheless, we demand that Yinusa, the boy friend with whom the girl eloped should be arrested and prosecuted.

The statement also said Our position is based on the fact that the girl is a minor. Attempting to marry off the girl without her parents permission is not only a breach of common law but also a violation of the Shariah provision on the need for the parents approval before nikah (Islamic marriage) can be deemed valid (La nikah bila waliyyin).

Of particular significance in this regard is the express command in the Glorious Quran that women should be married with the permission of their parents. The Quran says inter alia,  And marry them (i.e. women) with the permission of their parents(Quran 4:25), the statement said.

The group also commended the Emir of Kano, Malam Muhammadu Sanusi II for handling the issue wisely.

MURIC also said The boyfriend cannot go scot free if it is established that he had had canal knowledge of the girl. In fact, his case is judiciable both before the Kano Shariah court and the Yenagoa court although the latter has the stronger jurisdiction. The girl should be properly examined in the hospital before being taken to Yenagoa.

The fact that Yunusa is a Muslim cannot becloud our sense of justice. The Quran commands Muslims to Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses of Allah, even if the case is against yourselves, or your parents, or your family, and whether it is against a rich or poor man (Quran 4:135).
Punch reports that Falae said the policemen shot at his vehicle, and refused to stop.

The SDP chairman said I was first kidnapped, now they want to kill me, Mr. Falae said, as he expressed amazement at repeated attempts on his life.

I was coming from Akure approaching Ilesa. I saw some vehicles ahead of me.

There was a bullion van in front. The vehicles ahead of us were overtaking the bullion van and we too followed.

I nearly passed them when I heard a shot and I heard a bang on my car. We stopped and we saw that they have fired at our car.

Adding that They didnt stop. We stopped at Erin-Ijesa and complained to the police at the check-point that we were fired at by some police following a bullion van at Ile-Oluji junction.

I dont know why I was kidnapped recently, why I was arrested in 1997 and locked up for two years.

The Osun state Police Public Relations Officer, Folashade Odoro said she is not aware of the incident.
The council elections which has been fixed for March 19, 2016, Jiba who doubles as the ALGON president, while speaking to journalists in Abuja, further congratulated the FCT minister on his 100 days in office.

Jiba said FCT residents have witnessed a peaceful atmosphere and has seen a working minister who took out his time to visits several project sites, particularly those that have immediate and direct bearing on the lives of FCT residents expecially the Abuja Light Rail and the knotty Karshi  Apo  Arah road.

"With our experience in government we know a working minister right from the first resumption in office.For instance he promised to make health services more accessible to the residents of the territory, especially for those at the rural areas, and immediately the minister ordered the management of the FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat to immediately commence medical services to patients at the Zuba Cottage Hospital which was completed over 5 years ago, I mean its a bold step.

For also making a commitment to immediately pay the contractor handling the Apo-Karshi-Arah Road a pending job certificate of N324 million is a bold step. And want to also commend the minister for given due attention to the development of the six Area Councils, and the Satellite Towns in order to decongest the Federal Capital City and his decision to moved the Satellite Towns Development Department (STDD) to Karshi to bring it closer to the rural people" he said.
Alhaji Ibrahim Deyebu, according to residents, told all the primary schools food vendors that the state government has asked him to collect one day money from the weekly food being supplied to the pupils.

Pulse gathered that Sanga LGA has a total number of about 182 schools with every food vendor spending between N6000 and N8000 for the feeding of the children on week days. "Most of the food vendors had remitted the money to the Education Secretary but others raised an alarm on the matter" a resident of the area who provides charity services in one of the schools told Pulse.

Another resident in Karshi who confirmed the issue also said that after they have submitted their money to the Education Secretary, the money was later refunded to them on the instruction of Kaduna State Education Commissioner. "From what we had, the commissioner has summoned the Education Secretary on the matter. Many of the schools food vendor submitted a day money to him. We don't know what they are planning to do with the money" Joshua Makama said.Reacting on the matter, the Education Secretary, Alhaji Ibrahim Deyebu said only vendors who failed to supply food to the children were asked to refund the money. Deyebu said the money were asked to be paid in a bank which some adhered to but others failed.
According to the newspaper which cited the victim's family source, the whereabouts of Sambo, who resides in Unguwan Dosa area of Kaduna metropolis, is yet to be known, five days after he was taken.

I was not there but our brother Aminu Sambo was kidnapped last Saturday in his farm in Kan Gimi. We are praying and begging kidnappers to release him unconditionally. Sambo is gentle man to the call who loves peace. We are pleading with kidnappers not to harm him wherever he is," the source said.

It was gathered that the kidnappers are demanding huge sum in exchange for Sambo's release.
The victims identified as Timilehin Olisa, daughter of Lagos States Anglican School Management Board, Tofunmi Popoolaniyan and Deborah Akinayo, were abducted on Monday, February 29, at about 9:30pm from their classroom during prep.

Following the call, it was reported that an emergency between the schools management, victims parents and security agencies led by the Police Commissioner Fatai Owoseni was held, and it lasted till the early hours of today, March 2.

Three other meetings were said to have been held between 11am and 4:15pm with the school authorities, the combat squads and heads of intelligence agencies.
Find out what is making headlines all over the country from the covers of The Punch, Vanguard, The Guardian and more.

For today, Wednesday, March 2 2016:

VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

Police hand over Ese to parents; Dad says shes hypnotised, taking her to TB Joshua

ABUJAPolice authorities in Abuja yesterday night said Ese Oruru, freed Monday, will now be officially handed over to her mother, Mrs. Oruru, today.READ MORE

Gunmen storm Lagos school, abduct three studentsThree students, two girls and a boy were last night abducted by gun wielding men in the all boarding Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary, BMJS, a secondary and a higher school certificate institution run by the Anglican Church of Nigeria in Agunfoye Lugbusi, near Ikorodu, Lagos State. READ MORE

Police escorts shoot at Olu Falae at Ile-OlujiOsogbo A leader of pan Yoruba socio-cultural group, Afenifere, Chief Olu Falae, yesterday escaped death by the whiskers when a mobile policeman along Akure-Ilesha Express way fired a gunshot at his car READ MORE_______________________________________

THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Adoke quizzed abroadA FORMER Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, may have been questioned in Netherlands where he is currently a student in a university.Prosecutors in that country were said to have opened a case on him following assistance sought by a third party. READ MORE

Court orders govt to publish details of recovered lootsA Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to publish up-to-date information on recovered stolen funds since the return of civilian rule in 1999. READ MORE

Reps stop planned closure of 556 Abuja schoolsGUARDING against the disruption of the education of thousands of pupils, the House of Representatives yesterday asked the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mohammed Bello, to halt the planned closure of 556 alleged illegal schools operating within the territory. READ MORE_______________________________________

BUSINESS DAY NEWSPAPER

Saudi, Iraq battle Nigeria over juicy Indian crude oil market shareSaudi Arabia and Iraq are battling Nigeria to gain more market share from India, the worlds third-largest crude oil importer, with the two Middle East countries oil exports hitting the highest levels in more than a decade, in January 2016. Competitive prices and shorter shipping distances are giving the Middle East countries the upper hand READ MORE

Global miners shun Nigeria as policy, knowledge gap hurt investmentInternational miners such as Barrick, Astra, Newsmont and Mitsubishi Materials are avoiding throwing money into Nigeria as a result of unclear policy. They are also worried by the poor level of knowledge shown by Nigerias mining administrators and the government officials who fail to understand that they must first pursue companies well known for exploratory READ MORE

UBA Group appoints Uzoka to replace Oduoza as GMD/CEOUBA Group yesterday, approved the appointment of Kennedy Uzoka as the new Group Managing Director, with effect from August 1, 2016 subject to the approval of the Central Bank of Nigeria. Uzoka succeeds Phillips Oduoza, who retires on July 31, 2016, after two terms of leading the UBA Group. Kennedy Uzoka has most recently been READ MORE_______________________________________

THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

Exclusive! Ese speaks: I am not fineThe mother of 14-year-old Ese Oruru has finally reunited with her daughter in Abuja. The Tuesday reunion came almost eight months after her abduction from Bayelsa to Kano State by Yunusa, aka Yellow, a regular customer at her mothers food stall, in August last year.READ MORE

Ambode silent as 15 gunmen abduct three Lagos schoolgirlsParents of pupils of Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School, a private school in the Ikorodu area of Lagos, have blamed the abduction of three schoolgirls of the college on security lapses in the school. BMJSS is a co-educational secondary school owned by the Lagos Anglican Diocese. READ MORE
Fayose said making promises without fulfilling them is "the peak of political 419. He said the President promised to create 3 million jobs per year, but he has not even "created a single job.

This is contained in a statement issued today, Fberuary 1, by his spokesman, Lere Olayinka.

He said: President Muhammadu Buhari prefers and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), duped Nigerians by obtaining their votes by trick.

Everything Buhari and his party promised Nigerians when they were looking for votes, they have denied and it wont be a surprise if one day, Buhari comes out to even deny that he was elected on the platform of APC.

Buharis declaration that he would not pay the N5,000 stipend he promised to unemployed youths in the country and minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammeds claim that creation of three million jobs per year was not promised by the APC as the peak of political 419 that the president and his party represent. They have not fulfilled any of the promises they made to Nigerians.

"In fact, they have even told us that they never made any promise. It is close to one year that Buhari assumed office; no single job has been created. Instead of the three million jobs per year that they promised, what we have been witnessing is job losses, economic hardship and budget padding..

Making reference to Buharis declaration of support for Palestine and description of Palestinians as his brothers and sisters that must achieve their desired objectives, Fayose said the statement is confirmation of the growing suspicion of the presidents interest in Nigeria becoming a full Islamic State.

Even though I am a lover of Muslims, I relate with them as I do with Christians in the State and across the country, Nigeria must remain secular and a free nation where its citizens proclaim the name of Jesus Christ and Allah (Subhanahu Wa Taala) freely, he said.

The moment President Buhari disowned his own campaign document titled: My Covenant with Nigerians, that was circulated to Nigerians during the electioneering campaign and also published in national newspapers and posted online on March 16 and 17, 2015, I knew that Nigerians had been duped.

Nigerians have now realised that they are inside a One Chance Bus because Buhari and his APC have disowned their entire campaign promises by disowning their campaign document titled My Covenant with Nigerians.

This document that they disowned in August, last year contained everything they promised Nigerians and if today, President Buhari chose faraway Qatar to announce that he wont pay the N5, 000 promised unemployed youths and Lai Mohammed is here in Nigeria saying no job was promised, no one should be surprised.
Okupe, on his social media page, said His Excellency, Prof Yemi Osinbajo said the Federal government did not construct a single new road in the last 10 years. The VP probably said this in view of the fact that based on reports made available to him almost 98% of government effort in the last decade has been devoted to roads rehabilitation.

Adding that The federal road network, going by the colonial road master plan, is about 35,000 km in length. By 2007, over 70% of these roads were completely unmotorable. No responsible government of the people will set aside 35000km of dilapidated and nonfunctional, often single lane roads, and embark on the construction of new ones.

Okupe also said "Therefore the efforts of the federal government in the last 10years has been focused on the repair, rehabilitation ,expansion and dualization of most of the interstate and axial road network nationwide. Examples are Benin/ Ore, kano / Kaduna, Enugu/port Harcourt, Ibadan/Ilorin, Lokoja/abaji/Abuja, Lagos/ Ibadan to mention just a few of about 65 such road projects.

He also said the federal government between 2006 to 2015,(9yrs) constructed the following new roads.

1. Loko Oweto link RD.(between nassarawa and Benue state.

2. Musa Yaradua (Abuja airport RD) 10 lanes .

3. Kubwa RD(Murtala Mohammed RD) 10 lanes fct.

4. Good luck Jonathan rd. 10 lanes. Fct

5. East-West RD 346km. Started by OBJ

in 2006. GEJ recommenced and is 90% complete.

6. Benin Byepass. (OBJ)
The senator made the comments on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, during an empowerment programme in Ijebu-Igbo.

President Muhammadu Buhari is on course. Why it looks as if there are some dislocations is because of the blockage of lose funds and sources of financial leakages in the system, Kashamu said according to Vanguard.

I am persuaded that in a short while things will pick up. Nigerians should not allow politicians to deceive them. We tend to play politics with everything. We forget that the elections or campaigns are over.

Now, we have a government in place. We should rise above selfish and narrow partisan interest and join hands to build our country by offering constructive advice just as some senior citizens like Prof. Wole Soyinka and Chief Emeka Anyaoku have done. We have no other country than Nigeria, he added.
According to him, despite its efforts, the state government needs help from all stakeholders to enable it achieve its set objectives. A statement by Tambuwal's spokesman, Imam Imam quoted Mr Devane in a remark as saying that both the Sokoto government and British Council will collaborate closely in areas of school leadership, higher and basic education, and teacher development.He commended Tambuwal for his foresight in prioritising education, saying the investment in the sector will pay important dividend in the future. While adding that British Council has experience of working in 115 countries, Devane said they have a lot to offer Sokoto state and Nigeria. He said the British Council has been involved with Nigeria since 1943, and will continue to work with all stakeholders to develop education in Nigeria.
The Registrar/Chief Executive Officer of JAMB, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde, who confirmed this in Abuja, saying that over 200,000 candidates results had been released since the examination commenced on Saturday.

Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, has however, expressed his worry over the difficulties faced by non-computer literate students sitting for the examination.

The minister expressed his reservation when he visited some centres in the FCT to monitor the on-going Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) being conducted by JAMB, ThisDay reports.

I seem to be very comfortable and happy with what they are doing. But my question has not been answered; that there may be people who are not computer literate, so, what do you do with them. I do not have reservation about CBT but I have sympathy for those who are not computer literate and there are many of them.

Ojerinde has however, urged those who sat for the examinations to visit the JAMBs website and check their respective results.

According to him, More than one million, eight hundred and fifty thousand candidates applied to take the examination nationwide in 2016.
During the inauguration of governing councils of 12 new federal universities in Abuja, yesterday, March 1, Garba described this development as 'embarassing.'

Garba added that the solution to this trend is to strengthen the weak educational structure in the country.

She, however, added that it was a positive development that tertiary institutions in Nigeria were gradually scaling up to be ranked among the top 100 best universities in the world.
"It's very unusual for drug dealers to use crocodiles to guard their money," said police spokesman Frans Zuiderhoek on Friday.

"I think they thought it was safer."

The suspected dealers were delivering drugs to several hundred addresses, including to neighboring Belgium, police said.

The suspects, including the owner of the crocodiles, are due to appear before a judge on Friday. Police also seized large quantities of synthetic drugs, firearms and half a million euros' worth of crystal meth in the haul.
China had deployed up to seven ships to Quirino Atoll, also known as Jackson Atoll, said Eugenio Bito-onon Jr, the mayor of nearby Pagasa Island in the Spratly Islands.

The Spratlys are the most contested archipelago in the South China Sea, a resource-rich region and critical shipping lane linking North Asia to Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

"I feel something different. The Chinese are trying to choke us by putting an imaginary checkpoint there. It is a clear violation of our right to travel, impeding freedom of navigation," he said.

Fishermen told the mayor one Filipino boat had run aground in the area and was still there but was not being harassed by the Chinese vessels.

The Philippine military said it was trying to verify the presence of Chinese ships near Jackson Atoll, where a Chinese warship allegedly fired warning shots at Filipino fishermen in 2011.

"We know there are Chinese ships moving around the Spratly area," spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla told Reuters. "There are also ships around Second Thomas Shoal, so we want to make sure if the presence is permanent."

Second Thomas Shoal is where the Philippine navy has been occupying and reinforcing a rusting ship that it ran aground in 1999 to bolster its claims to the disputed reef.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China's Ministry of Transport had sent vessels to tow the grounded ship and they had since left the surrounding waters.

"To guarantee safety of navigation and of work conditions, China urged fishing vessels near the site to leave," Hong said, adding that China had indisputable sovereignty over the atoll.

TENSIONS ON THE RISE

A military source from Palawan said a surveillance plane had seen four to five ships in the vicinity of Jackson Atoll last week. The source could not say if the ships were passing through or permanently stationed there because the area is close to Mischief Reef, where China is building an artificial island.

"There are no indications China will build structures or develop it into an island," said the source, who was not authorised to speak to the media about the South China Sea.

The Philippines Star newspaper, which earlier reported the story, quoted an unidentified fisherman as saying Chinese boats chased them away when they tried to enter the area last week.

"These gray and white Chinese ships, around four of them inside the lagoon, prevented us from entering our traditional fishing ground," he said.

Along with China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims on the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

Tensions in the region have been building recently, with the United States and others protesting against Beijing's land reclamations, along with the recent deployment of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets in the Paracel Islands.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned China on Tuesday against what he called "aggressive" actions in the region, saying there would be "specific consequences" to militarisation of the South China Sea.

In response, Hong urged Washington on Wednesday to "stop exaggerating and sensationalising" the issue.
Addressing members of Ghana's parliament during a two-day visit to Accra, Erdogan said Turkey was well placed to help African countries combat terrorism, an allusion to its decades-long fight against Kurdish separatist rebels as well as other groups including Islamist militants.

"Turkey has a vast experience in combating terrorism and we understand those countries suffering at the hands of terrorism best," he said, citing recent attacks by Islamic militants in Mali and Burkina Faso.

At least 28 people from 12 countries were killed in January when Islamist jihadists attacked a hotel and a restaurant in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou. The attacks followed a similar raid on a luxury hotel in Mali's capital Bamako in November which left 20 dead.

Erdogan said developing countries, including in Africa, needed to push harder for reforms of the United Nations Security Council to make it more responsive to their needs in times of crisis, adding that the body as currently constituted only served the interests of a few "elite" countries.

The Security Council's five permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

"The Security Council of the United Nations is not active in Syria, in northern Africa, or northern Iraq ... and its failure to interfere in troubled countries should be of concern to all and that's why we need to push for reforms in the Council," he said.

Erdogan, accompanied by some 150 Turkish businesspeople, is keen to open up new markets for his country's exporters, to seek new investment opportunities in fast-growing African economies and boost Ankara's diplomatic profile on the global stage.
The Islamic State militants have taken advantage of political chaos and a security vacuum in Libya to expand their presence there, taking control of the city of Sirte and staging frequent attacks.

Western officials are discussing ways to counter the group, including through the use of air strikes and special forces operations, though plans for outside assistance have been hampered by the failure of a United Nations-backed unity government in Libya to win wide approval in the country.

Last week a German delegation visited Tunisia to discuss a training programme for Libyan forces.

"We agree on the principle of the project," Tunisian Defence Minister Farhat Harchani said in an interview with the TAP state news agency.

He gave no details on the nature of the training or when it might happen, but said Tunisian forces would also take part.

"We will participate in the formation of the nucleus of the Libyan army and security forces in Tunisia. This is our duty and we will help Libya to get it done," he said.

Tunisia has been struggling to contain its own militant threat, and thousands of Tunisians have gone to fight in Iraq, Syria and Libya. Authorities say gunmen who killed dozens of tourists at a museum and a beach resort in Tunisia last year trained in Libya before returning home.

Tunisia recently completed a 200-km (125 mile) barrier consisting of an earth wall and trenches along its frontier with Libya, aimed at stopping militants from crossing the border. European and U.S. military trainers are to instruct Tunisian forces on improving electronic surveillance there.

Britain said on Monday it had sent a team of 20 military personnel to Tunisia to provide mobile patrolling and surveillance training on the border. It said a similar training mission had been conducted at the end of last year.
Karadeniz builds what are effectively floating power stations which plug into electricity grids after berthing. They run on fuel oil but can also use natural gas.

One of the firm's vessels docked this week at Mozambique's Nacala port, from where it will supply 100 megawatts of electricity for the next two years, power that will then be exported through the grid to neighbouring Zambia.

This is the second power ship Karadeniz has deployed to Africa after a 225 MW unit arrived in Ghana last year.

"Africa has a clear increasing demand for electricity and presents itself as a very good market for us," business development director Zeynep Harezi told Reuters.

Harezi said several other African countries had expressed an interest in using Karadeniz power ships, which can be delivered in 120 days.

The 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million. This constrains Africa's growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty.
Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind
As many as 12,000 people attended the Pahrump Hot Air Balloon Festival during the weekend, leading to a long line of cars back to Las Vegas on Saturday.

As many as 12,000 people attended the Pahrump Hot Air Balloon Festival during the weekend, leading to a long line of cars back to Las Vegas on Saturday.

Chris Erwin, the new chief executive officer of the Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce, said his first event was a big success, noting the vendor count actually increased from last year.

I got some rough attendance estimates from the Nye County Sheriffs Office and it looked like we were somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 for the weekend, which is an accumulated count, Erwin said. We had 65 vendors in all. We had about 60 last year.

Balloonists from all over the Southwest made the trip to Pahrump, as well as some from Colorado and Oregon.

We had balloons from California, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, he said. We had 30 balloonists in total who came out.

Vendors are the chief source of revenue for the event. Erwin said hes contemplating making a few adjustments for next years festival. Erwin said the chamber will hold a debriefing meeting next week to discuss the chamber-sponsored third annual event.

He added there were few complaints from those who set up shop at the park.

We are hearing a lot of good things and we had a couple of suggestions but no real complaints, Erwin said. I got the impression that the majority, if not most, of the vendors did quite well on their retail sales and typically there are not a whole lot of complaints from vendors when they do well on the sales side.

Rodney Fazackerly, a third generation candy retailer, said sales from the event exceeded his expectations.

My business did very well and we are looking forward to watching the successful growth of the balloon festival, he said. It was well organized and the people from the chamber of commerce were great. Its an event that I can see thats only going to get bigger and better for the town of Pahrump. This year I decided that I would give the balloon festival a shot and I was very happy that I did.

Those sentiments were also shared by face painter Pamela Sundlie from Henderson.

They did a great job in promoting it this year, she said. I went to the first one so this is my third year working there. I was doing face paintings, so I had a line all three days.

One change Sundlie would like to see is the variety of food vendors at the park.

Id like to see a barbecue vendor there next year, she said. Overall, I thought it was so cool. I will be going again next year. I live in Henderson. Ive been in business for about two to three years and I work when I want.

One major aspect of the events success was the weather, which Erwin said, cooperated, for the most part during the early morning hours.

We were very blessed this year because we had three days of great weather, so the balloons were able to fly all three days, he said.

Erwin, however, lamented the conditions in the afternoon hours created some disappointment for visitors who drove in from Las Vegas, expecting to get airborne, noting that hot air balloons and windy conditions are not a good match.

Some of the people from Las Vegas were disappointed that there were no balloons and we really wanted to do tethered rides for the public, he said. On Saturday, we were only able to do tethered rides for probably just a half hour before it became a safety issue.

As with many family-oriented events in town, comes the Valley Cruisers of Pahrump car show, which Erwin described as phenomenal.

Im going to say we had 50 to 60 cars, which was a huge draw for us, he said. About half as many people who were in the park were over by the classic cars checking them out. Spring Mountain Motorsports also brought over a couple of their race cars and that was pretty cool to see those up close.

Most importantly, Erwin could not give enough praise for all of the nearly 150 volunteers from 14 organizations and 47 companies that participated in this years event.

It was a totally community-involved event and it would not have been possible without the sponsors, the volunteers, Erwin said. Obviously with the community event, keeping it free and affordable was very important. It was easily one of the larger free events in town.

Additionally, Erwin said he and his staff are pondering a few alterations for next years balloon festival.

We have been kicking around the idea of having a booth where people who stop by could ask the pilots questions, he said. We are also kicking around some additional carnival rides and possibly create a different layout for the vendor booths as well as adding more live music. There is definitely some stuff that we can add and we are excited to sit down and get a good overview of the overall success of the event.

Aside from the events successful turnout, Erwin said several Pahrump businesses also benefited from the balloon festival.

I think the hotels were sold out two weeks prior to the event, he said. I want to look at ways to partner with some of the RV parks here in town, as well as the RV clubs. I think we need to explore ways of getting more RVers to visit the community for these types of events.

Erwin also applauded the efforts of the Nye County Sheriffs Office for their assistance in providing a safe environment for the festival goers, giving special mention to Sgt. David Boruchowitz and Sheriff Sharon Wehrly.

They really helped us out and I think we were all surprised at the turnout that we had, but we pulled together as a community and made adjustments as needed, Erwin said. It ended up on a very positive note because there were no major issues or safety problems. That experience is what caused it to run so smoothly and really look seamless probably from outside. 

Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes.com.
A Pahrump man is facing several charges, including attempted murder after an alleged altercation involving his underage girlfriend led to a manhunt, ending in California.

A Pahrump man is facing several charges, including attempted murder after an alleged altercation involving his underage girlfriend led to a manhunt, ending in California.

The mother of the female victim was also arrested after being connected to the alleged event.

Cody Robert Barnes, 21, was arrested by the Ventura Police Department in Ventura, California, where he traveled after committing the alleged crimes. Barnes is charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge firearm into a vehicle, aim firearm at a person and child endangerment.

Kristy Finnegan, 42, the mother of the victim, was arrested by the Nye County Sheriffs Office after their investigation revealed that Finnegan conspired with Barnes to commit the shooting, police said. Finnegan was charged with conspiracy to commit assault with a deadly weapon, attempted kidnapping second degree, conspiracy to commit child endangerment, obstruction, conspiracy to discharge a firearm where person may be injured and conspiracy to discharge firearm into car.

The incident began on Friday at about 3 p.m. when the victim and another male were traveling in a car when Barnes began shooting at the vehicle. The two victims fled to a residence on Hays Street where Barnes followed, firing another round of shots into the home, police said.

After the shootings, Barnes immediately fled the area. No one one was injured as result of the multiple shots fired at the two locations.

The sheriffs office issued a public alert shortly after urging residents to be on the lookout for Barnes, as he was armed and dangerous.

During their initial investigation, sheriffs deputies discovered that Finnegan allegedly worked with Barnes to plan the attack, leading to her arrest.

Officers also found out during their investigation that Barnes had fled the state and was in Ventura, California.

Nye County Sheriffs Office detectives obtained a warrant for the arrest of Barnes shortly thereafter and contacted authorities in Ventura to request their assistance in apprehending Barnes.

On Friday night, Ventura police responded to an apartment complex on the 1200 block of South Pettit Avenue in Ventura where the suspects vehicle was located, unoccupied, according to police.

A Ventura Police Department surveillance team responded to the apartment complex to monitor the vehicle while Ventura police coordinated resources with the Nye County Sheriffs Office.

Shortly after the surveillance team arrived at the scene, reports came into patrol units that the vehicle was seen leaving the complex.

A high-risk stop was carried out on the suspect vehicle near the intersection of Telephone Road and Cachuma Avenue in Ventura. Barnes was taken into custody without incident at around 9:45 p.m. Friday night and was armed with a handgun at the time of his arrest, police said.

Barnes was then transported to the Ventura County Jail and is awaiting extradition to Nevada.

Barnes had a prior domestic violence incident in March 2015, but it unclear if the victim of that charge is the same one in this case.

The investigation is ongoing and anyone with any information regarding this case is urged to contact Detective Fowles at the Nye County Sheriffs Office at 775-751-7000.

Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.
With their win, Pahrump Valley has clinched a playoff spot in the 3A southern regional tournament. The Trojans need just one more win or a tie by Equipo Academy to lock up the No. 1 seed in the Mountain League.
One day in 1997 at the Nevada Legislature, John Ensign  then a U.S. House member  was visiting and I took the opportunity to ask him a question.

One day in 1997 at the Nevada Legislature, John Ensign  then a U.S. House member  was visiting and I took the opportunity to ask him a question.

Some programs like domestic abuse prevention and Foster Grandparents were having their funding cut because of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, the patronizing name given to the Clinton/Congress welfare reform law.

What, I asked Ensign, did Foster Grandparents and other such programs have to do with changing welfare?

Ensign flatly denied that the new law had cut funding to unrelated programs. As it happened, I had in my pocket a letter that had been leaked to me. It was written by a Washoe County finance official informing a local agency that its funding was being reduced as a result of the PRWO Act.

Theres a new book, Unreal City, about the exploitation of Arizona tribes to build the city of Las Vegas. One chapter describes a meeting between U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater and Arizona Navajos in July 1978. The members of the tribe were angry because, as a result of Goldwater legislation, they were being forced off their land.

There has been no decision that says you have to move, Goldwater told them  though barbed wire was already in place closing off hundreds of square miles of their former territory and a partition order had been posted. Nevertheless, Goldwater told them, No money has been appropriated for relocation. Author Judith Nies writes, [T]he Indian Relocation Commission was in operation on a side street in Flagstaff and had been receiving money for more than three years.

There is also a new movie out, a documentary by Michael Moore. It contains an interesting scene from a television interview with Rick Perry, then governor of Texas. An interviewer asks Perry about abstinence education in Texas at a time when the state had the nations third highest teen pregnancy rate.

Abstinence works, Perry replies.

Then why wasnt it doing anything about the pregnancy rate? The interviewer asked again.

Perry stolidly replied, Im going to tell you from my own personal life, abstinence works.

The ability of politicians to let ideology or political need triumph over reality is often fascinating.

Long before science denial came along in the climate change field, politicians were skilled at denying reality. And it continues in this years presidential campaign.

Marco Rubio, for instance, was asked how old the earth is. That the question needed to be asked of a presidential candidate speaks volumes about how politicians have succumbed to doubt merchants whose commerce is more important to them than the fate of the environment. Can anyone imagine a reporter asking Kennedy or Nixon such a question in the 1960 debates?

Rubios response was to pit science against religion and commerce: I can tell you what recorded history says. I can tell you what the Bible says. But I think thats a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.

Jeb Bush said that academics are going to take the back seat in his administration, which as it turns out will not come to be.

The claims made as a result of the doctored Planned Parenthood tapes have been discredited by grand juries and prosecutors time and again, yet there are still presidential candidates like Ted Cruz taking policy stands based on those bogus tapes. Before their campaigns went into decline Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson similarly insisted on campaigning on the Planned Parenthood claims.

There are now fact checking websites that do a real service. One of them has received a Pulitzer Prize, but their articles cannot keep up with the incessant misinformation contained in television spots that are aired time after time, day after day.

There is a direct link between a presidential candidate who cannot accept reality and a president who cannot accept reality, who  for example  leads the nation into an unnecessary, preventable war because of imaginary vacuum tubes and weapons of mass destruction.

Must more than 4,000 troops die and another million be injured because of politicians who pay games with the truth?

Dennis Myers is an award-winning journalist who has reported on Nevadas capital, government and politics for several decades. He has also served as Nevadas chief deputy secretary of state.
A 15-year-old Rock Island boy charged in connection with the shooting of a 17-year-old girl made his first appearance Wednesday morning in a Scott County Courtroom.

Solomon Ray Parson, shackled and wearing a green jacket, faces charges of attempted murder, willful injury causing serious injury and going armed with intent, according to a delinquency petition filed by Assistant Scott County Attorney Dion Trowers.

Trowers also filed a motion seeking to try Parson as a youthful offender in adult court.

Davenport police were called about 9:40 p.m. Monday to the 2600 block of North Clark Street for a report of person lying in the street with a possible gunshot wound.

Parson, according to an arrest affidavit filed Wednesday, with the intent to cause the death of the victim without justification, did act in a manner by which the defendant expected to set in motion a force or chain of events which will cause or result in the death of the other person.

The girl suffered life-threatening injuries to her head as the result of Parsons actions, according to the complaint. Police said Tuesday she was in critical condition.

Capt. Brent Biggs, public information officer for the Davenport Police Department, announced Parson's arrest late Tuesday in a news release.

No other information, including the name of the girl, has been released as the investigation continues.

Associate Judge Christine Dalton closed much of Wednesdays hearing at the request of Parsons attorney, Jack Dusthimer.

Dusthimer argued that there was an urgency of privacy regarding family and placement options that outweighed the "public's right to know."

He declined to comment after the hearing.

Attempted murder is a Class B felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Willful injury is a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and going armed with intent is a Class D felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

A juvenile who is 16 or older who commits a forcible felony is automatically tried as an adult.

If Parson is deemed a youthful offender, he will be tried in adult court, but, if convicted, would be under supervision of the juvenile court until he turns 18, according to Iowa law. The case then would be remanded to adult court, where a judge would determine whether to impose a sentence or discharge the defendant, among other sentencing options.

To be deemed a youthful offender, a judge must determine whether Parson is 15 or younger; that probable cause has been determined that he committed an offense; and that there would not be reasonable prospects for rehabilitating him by the time he turns 18 if the juvenile court retains jurisdiction over him.

A hearing date on the youthful offender motion has not yet been set. Parson will be back in court March 9 for a detention hearing.

He is being held in the Scott County Juvenile Detention Center.
PURCELLVILLE, Virginia  With Super Tuesday arrived and make-or-break contests coming up March 15, we have entered the most intense and emotional two-week period of the Republican presidential campaign so far. Crowds are bigger, applause is louder, feelings run deeper.

Just consider the events of the last few days. A wild debate in Houston. The emergence of Marco Rubio, the insult comic candidate. The Christie endorsement. And then, on Sunday, Trump's refusal to disavow either David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan, setting off what could become an epic wave of rancor inside the GOP.

It was all very ... intense. And at Rubio's well-attended rally here at the conservative Patrick Henry College on Sunday afternoon, there were hints the campaign can be too overwhelming for some well-meaning voters trying to make a decision.

Scott and Stephanie Sloan, of Purcellville, told me they came to the rally undecided, but decided after hearing Rubio that they would vote for him. I asked who were the candidates they were considering when they arrived, and they said Trump and Rubio.

When we talked, they hadn't heard about Trump's Duke-KKK exchange on the morning shows; they had been in church. But even so, Trump had become too much for them.

"I think it's just the circus that surrounds Trump is just a little bit over the top," Scott told me.

"He's a little too much crass, and not enough class, I guess," added Stephanie. "He's just a bit of a loose cannon."

I asked what they liked about Trump to begin with. "I think a lot of people are intrigued by him because he's not a part of the establishment," Stephanie said. "He's an outsider, and he's like, hey, I can do everything differently."

But the Trump circus was too much; he faded from consideration. Then the Sloans saw that Rubio would be appearing nearby on Sunday. They liked what they heard. "He reminds me of my parents and my parents' parents," Stephanie told me. "Someone who came from parents who had to work for everything they had. That resonates with me."

So here's the theory, not just from Scott and Stephanie but also from talks with voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina who were receptive to Trump but couldn't quite commit: Everyone has a certain tolerance level for uncertainty, disorder, and controversy. If a candidate's campaign stays below that level, all is fine. If it climbs above that level, a voter may begin to think a candidate is more trouble than he's worth. The voter sees the campaign as an taxing experience  it's just one thing after another  and looks for an alternative choice.

The problem is, Trump has an apparently infinite tolerance for uncertainty, disorder, and controversy. He can be comfortable and prosper in a campaign that just wears some of his voters out. By Sunday, the Sloans had hit that point  and that was before they heard what Trump said on the morning shows.

Other Rubio supporters in Purcellville were in a strongly #NeverTrump mood. "I cannot vote for Donald Trump," Sara Brady, of Vienna, said. "I may have to vote for Hillary, if Rubio doesn't get the nomination. Donald Trump is a lunatic." Brady was dismayed at the "bathroom humor" Rubio has adopted against Trump, but said Rubio was forced to do it. "If you're attacked, you have to fight back."

"He's a disaster," said Cheryl Buford, of Vienna. "He's a con man. I think Marco nailed it."

"I could live with Cruz, quite frankly, but Rubio is the only candidate who inspires us," said Bill Cullo, of Alexandria, there with wife Tracy. Both have worked in politics in the past.

Trump? "She sees Trump as the End of Days," said Bill, nodding toward his wife.

"Oh, my God," said Tracy.

Over the course of the campaign, Trump has been compared to any number of dictators and strongmen. Carlos Chaves, of Dumfries, said he saw something familiar in Trump. "I lived in Venezuela for two years," Chaves told me. "The way (Trump) speaks and the way he expresses himself are very similar to how Hugo Chavez expressed himself to the people. So I don't want to make the mistake of electing someone who is like that."

There haven't been a lot of polls in Virginia. Only one, from CBS-YouGov, measured voter sentiment after last Thursday's debate. (It found Trump up by 13 points.) Before that, Monmouth had Trump up by 14. The Purcellville rally was in Northern Virginia, an hour outside Washington. It isn't Trump country, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for Rubio in the room. But the question is whether enough Virginians will come down with Trump Fatigue to prove the polls wrong.

Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.
Fugitive Russian ex-lawmaker Yegiazaryan challenges $84 mln arbitral award

MOSCOW, March 2 (RAPSI, Vladimir Yaduta)  Ashot Yegiazaryan, a former lawmaker in the State Duma, parliament's lower chamber, challenges the $84 million award plus interest granted by the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) in a dispute over a shopping center in Moscow.

Yegiazaryan who has been living in the United States since 2010 after he was stripped of parliamentary immunity challenges the arbitration award in a London court and seeks to prevent its enforcement in the United States, according to court records obtained by RAPSI.

Vitaly Smagin, Russian businessman and Europark shopping center shareholder, in November 2014 was granted arbitration award after he accused Yegiazaryan of stealing shares in a company that owned and operated the center. Yegiazaryan and Kalken Holdings Ltd. owned by him were ordered to pay the damages.

Yegiazaryan first challenged the award in Londons High Court. He claimed among other issues that a 2008 partnership agreement with Smagin that included an arbitration clause was invalid. Yegiazaryan further alleged that he did not sign the 2008 agreement, but rather that his signature was forged.

In July of 2015, Londons High Court dismissed the complaint which had been lodged by Yegiazaryan. He appealed contesting only the effectiveness of the arbitration clause. The appeal was scheduled to be heard and decided in May, however, due to a significant backlog in the Court of Appeal, it is more likely to be heard later this year, court records show.

Meanwhile, Smagin seeks the recognition and enforcement of the arbitration award in the United States. In December of 2014, he filed a petition with the California District Court. In early February, he moved the court for issuance of a summary judgment noting that Yegiazaryan had avoided payment of the award for over a year concealing his assets in jurisdictions worldwide. A declaration by Edward Elcoat Poulton, a partner in the London office of Baker & McKenzie LLP, was filed in support of petitioners motion for summary judgment. Poulton laid out his vision of the proceedings in Britain and expressed his readiness to testify in the US court.

Last week, Yegiazaryan presented his objections to Smagins petition. Yegiazaryan claimed that his former business partner had already secured an asset freeze in Russian courts that would more than satisfy the arbitration award.

Smagin did not disclose this freeze order when he applied to the US court as he was trying to set himself up for a double recovery, according to Yegiazaryan.

Declarations by Jeremy Brier, a member of Essex Court Chambers, Douglas James Watson from law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Dmitry Barannikov from Pavel Astakhov Collegium of Advocates, were attached to the objections.

In the meantime, two criminal cases were opened against Yegiazaryan on fraud charges in Russia. He has been on the federal wanted list since November 2010 and on the international wanted list since late December. In September 2013, the United States reportedly turned down a Prosecutor General's Office request to extradite Yegiazaryan back to Russia.
Prosecutor asks court to sentence Savchenko to 23 years in prison

MOSCOW, March 2 (RAPSI)  Prosecutor on Wednesday asked the court to sentence Ukrainian military ex-pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who stands charged with involvement in the murder of Russian journalists and civilians in Donbas, to 23 years in penal colony, RAPSI reported from the Donetsk City Court in the Rostov Region.

Prosecutor has also asked the court to impose a 100,000-ruble ($1,350) fine on Savchenko. Additionally, time she has spent in detention may be subtracted from her potential term in a penal colony.

Maximum prison time for women in Russia estimates 25 years.

Savchenko was arrested in Russia in the summer of 2014 on charges of involvement in the murder of two Russian TV journalists during hostilities in Donbas and on illegally crossing the border into Russia.

TV correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and sound engineer Anton Voloshin were killed on June 17 in a mortar attack.

Savchenko has pleaded not guilty.

Her attorneys claim that Savchenko was framed and that there is no evidence of involvement in the journalists murder. They also claim she did not cross the border voluntarily but was kidnapped.
Insurers claim against Vnukovo over Total CEO plane crash set for April 14

MOSCOW, March 2 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court will consider on April 14 a lawsuit filed by five foreign insurance companies seeking to recover from Vnukovo Airport 10 million in damages resulted from the crash of Total CEO Cristophe de Maergeries aircraft in 2014, RAPSI reported from the courtroom on Wednesday.

Among the plaintiffs are Berkshire Hathaway International Insurance ltd, Tokio Marine Kiln Insuranse ltd, Mapfre Global Risks Compania, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Company  Great Lakes Reinsurance.

Vnukovo Airport, Vnukovo International Airport and State ATM orporation are named as defendants in the case.

The companies have already paid 1 million euro to suffering parties as a compensation for life insurance of the aircrafts crew and passengers as well as 9 million for Falcon 50 EX airplane. Insurers demanded in the lawsuit to recover their damages from those who, according to them, guilty of the accident.

Vnukovos representative asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit because of lack of credentials provided by the plaintiffs.

Christophe de Margerie died in a plane crash at Vnukovo airport on October 21, 2014, when his planes wing hit a snow plow. Among the victims were three crew members, all French citizens.

Lead airfield service engineer Vladimir Ledenev, snow plow driver Vladimir Martynenko, air traffic controller Alexander Kruglov, airport flight manager Roman Dunayev, and dispatcher Nadezhda Arkhipova stand charged in the case.
Lord of the Rings Online is celebrating its ten year anniversary. Time to go back to 2007 and look at everything that has happened since...
For the second time in two years, Ravalli County has made the cut to receive federal funds to make life safer for pedestrians and bicyclists in the Corvallis area.

The Corvallis Pedestrian Safety Improvement project was one of 12 in the state selected by the Montana Department of Transportation to receive funding under the federal Transportation Alternatives program.

The project will install rapid-flashing beacons at three pedestrian crossings and vehicle speed feedback signs in the school zone at an estimated cost of a little more than $135,000.

Last year, the county tapped into the same funding source to pay for a new 330-foot-long pedestrian bridge across the Bitterroot River at Woodside Crossing.

The bridge project is estimated to cost about $1.2 million. Its construction is slated to begin the spring of 2018 if everything comes together as planned.

The newest project will install three pedestrian-activated rapid flashing beacons at three crosswalks in the Corvallis area. All three crosswalks were identified by the school officials, law enforcement and users as places that can be hazardous for pedestrians.

Two are located in the Corvallis school zone on the Eastside Highway. The third is on the Woodside cutoff road where the bike path crosses the highway.

The project also includes the installation of two solar-powered vehicle speed feedback signs in the Corvallis school zone on the Eastside Highway.

Members of the Corvallis Civic Club wrote the grants for both projects.

Corvallis Civic Clubs Tonia Bloom said it was really gratifying to have a project selected for the second year in a row.

The crossing beacons have been found to be very effective in other parts of the state.

Drivers will see those random flashing LED lights and know that someone is using the crosswalk, Bloom said. They get peoples attention.

The speed feedback signs will also be a nice addition to the highway that divides portions of the schools campus.

I know those speed feedback signs work well for me, Bloom said. This is going to be a good thing for people of all ages who walk and bike.

Montana Department of Transportation Consultant Design Engineer Ryan Dahlke said the project is slated to go before the states transportation commission at its March 24 meeting.

If approved, Dahlke said it could be in the design stage this fall with construction to begin in 2017.
"I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself."

"I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself."
Real Girl Runway is a DC area based fashion and fun blog. I'm Deb and I believe we are all real girls who live in the real world. We are every shape, size, age and budget. Great style is for everyone.


Blog Archive October 2022 (42) September 2022 (60) August 2022 (63) July 2022 (65) June 2022 (68) May 2022 (67) April 2022 (62) March 2022 (68) February 2022 (54) January 2022 (61) December 2021 (70) November 2021 (72) October 2021 (67) September 2021 (59) August 2021 (56) July 2021 (57) June 2021 (66) May 2021 (63) April 2021 (75) March 2021 (73) February 2021 (61) January 2021 (69) December 2020 (62) November 2020 (62) October 2020 (70) September 2020 (51) August 2020 (52) July 2020 (60) June 2020 (57) May 2020 (79) April 2020 (56) March 2020 (52) February 2020 (50) January 2020 (69) December 2019 (58) November 2019 (64) October 2019 (44) September 2019 (49) August 2019 (71) July 2019 (71) June 2019 (71) May 2019 (67) April 2019 (74) March 2019 (85) February 2019 (64) January 2019 (73) December 2018 (66) November 2018 (81) October 2018 (87) September 2018 (66) August 2018 (76) July 2018 (84) June 2018 (86) May 2018 (64) April 2018 (83) March 2018 (78) February 2018 (69) January 2018 (69) December 2017 (82) November 2017 (87) October 2017 (89) September 2017 (77) August 2017 (75) July 2017 (76) June 2017 (90) May 2017 (86) April 2017 (59) March 2017 (61) February 2017 (82) January 2017 (91) December 2016 (90) November 2016 (80) October 2016 (75) September 2016 (95) August 2016 (104) July 2016 (93) June 2016 (96) May 2016 (98) April 2016 (99) March 2016 (113) February 2016 (82) January 2016 (98) December 2015 (113) November 2015 (94) October 2015 (93) September 2015 (98) August 2015 (97) July 2015 (105) June 2015 (103) May 2015 (95) April 2015 (100) March 2015 (102) February 2015 (93) January 2015 (114) December 2014 (110) November 2014 (103) October 2014 (105) September 2014 (96) August 2014 (96) July 2014 (112) June 2014 (119) May 2014 (109) April 2014 (116) March 2014 (117) February 2014 (109) January 2014 (116) December 2013 (117) November 2013 (121) October 2013 (125) September 2013 (93) August 2013 (115) July 2013 (110) June 2013 (102) May 2013 (115) April 2013 (113) March 2013 (119) February 2013 (108) January 2013 (119) December 2012 (132) November 2012 (115) October 2012 (121) September 2012 (115) August 2012 (124) July 2012 (102) June 2012 (121) May 2012 (121) April 2012 (127) March 2012 (130) February 2012 (112) January 2012 (131) December 2011 (129) November 2011 (118) October 2011 (118) September 2011 (110) August 2011 (138) July 2011 (146) June 2011 (139) May 2011 (144) April 2011 (127) March 2011 (140) February 2011 (116) January 2011 (134) December 2010 (133) November 2010 (136) October 2010 (148) September 2010 (128) August 2010 (155) July 2010 (129) June 2010 (138) May 2010 (152) April 2010 (161) March 2010 (119) February 2010 (149) January 2010 (155) December 2009 (177) November 2009 (171) October 2009 (176) September 2009 (159) August 2009 (156) July 2009 (170) June 2009 (157) May 2009 (185) April 2009 (179) March 2009 (183) February 2009 (170) January 2009 (181) December 2008 (189) November 2008 (183) October 2008 (164) September 2008 (164) August 2008 (177) July 2008 (179) June 2008 (170) May 2008 (191) April 2008 (175) March 2008 (195) February 2008 (162) January 2008 (188) December 2007 (187) November 2007 (189) October 2007 (194) September 2007 (156) August 2007 (194) July 2007 (163) June 2007 (176) May 2007 (190) April 2007 (177) March 2007 (192) February 2007 (165) January 2007 (170) December 2006 (182) November 2006 (177) October 2006 (185) September 2006 (180) August 2006 (156) July 2006 (160) June 2006 (177) May 2006 (173) April 2006 (157) March 2006 (158) February 2006 (146) January 2006 (144) December 2005 (135) November 2005 (138) October 2005 (128) September 2005 (141) August 2005 (136) July 2005 (133) June 2005 (119) May 2005 (143) April 2005 (52)
Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
To search both this blog AND Religious Liberty Monitoring together, use the search field at the bottom of the page.


WARNING for European visitors European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent.

As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies.
Contact:

Mostly, the Rude Pundit doesn't give a shit what you have to say, but, if you have to say it, you can write to Lee Papa here: rudepundit(at)yahoo(dot)com
My website is here
I give my consent to Sakshi Post to be in touch with me via email for the purpose of event marketing and corporate communications. Privacy Policy
Fatal Crash Near Carlton Takes Three Lives

"...occupants in the Honda were not wearing seat belts and/or in child safety seats..." -OSP



Head on crash near Carlton Tuesday morning. Photo: OSP



(CARLTON, Ore.) - Three people were killed and a 4-year-old child was critically injured in a crash on Highway 47 near Carlton early Tuesday morning.

Emergency crews responded to Milepost 37 at 4:30 a.m. According to investigators, a northbound 1992 Honda Accord driven by 24-year old Teven Ray Stone, of Sheridan, drifted across the centerline into the path of an oncoming 2008 GMC pickup early Tuesday morning.

Stone and two of his passengers, 39-year old Jennifer A. Heath, of McMinnville, and 45-year old Johnny E. Highley, were pronounced dead at the scene.

A 4-year-old boy was also in the car, allegedly the driver's child. The toddler suffered life-threatening injuries, and is considered to be in critical condition. The child was transferred from Willamette Valley Medical Center in McMinnville to Oregon Health & Science University for treatment.

"It appeared several of the occupants in the Honda Accord were not wearing seat belts and/or in child safety seats," according to Oregon State Police.

The driver of the pickup, 64-year old Jeff Morgan of Yamhill, suffered serious injuries that were not considered life-threatening, according to police.

Highway 47 was closed for more than four hours, with traffic detoured while the on site investigation was underway.

OSP was assisted by the Oregon Department of Transportation, Yamhill County Sheriff's Office and the Carlton Fire Department.

The investigation is continuing.

_________________________________________
Do Kansas' drug-induced homicide laws actually help with fentanyl?

As drug overdoses related to fentanyl rise in Kansas, does a state law allowing drug dealers to effectively be charged with homicide have any impact?
Click On Our Advertisers Ads

Most of our ads have links to take you directly to their Websites. Just click on an ad and away you go.


If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE).
 "One Size Does Not Fit All: The Need for a Complete Abolition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Juveniles in Response to Roper, Graham, and Miller" | Main | Are death penalty advocates troubled by plea deal, presumably urged by families of two slain Viriginia college students, that allows a double murderer to escape any real punishment? 

As regular readers know, various groups and persons associated with the wealthy and politically active Koch brothers have been very supportive of state and federal sentencing reform efforts. Continuing in that tradition, Mark Holden, who is senior vice president and general counsel at Koch Industries, Inc., has authored this new Medium commentary titled "The Factual Case for Criminal Justice Reform." I recommend the piece is full (with all its links), and here are excerpts:

These days, its hard to find legislation in Washington, D.C. that has bipartisan support. Its even harder to find legislation that will help people improve their lives instead of making their lives worse.

Yet thats exactly what both houses of Congress are currently doing through criminal justice reform legislation. The Senate is considering the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. It contains a series of long overdue reforms that have been tried at the state level and have been proven to reduce crime, lower spending on incarceration, reduce incarceration rates, and give people a better chance at leading a productive and fulfilling life once theyre released from prison.

Theres little doubt that the current system is dysfunctional. American criminal justice is too often inconsistent with the promises of the Bill of Rights. We have a two-tiered system, with the wealthy and the well-connected experiencing a much better system than the poor, oftentimes regardless of guilt or innocence. A growing number of Americans recognize this  nearly 80 percent of the country supports reform. So do many prosecutors and judges. For example, liberal federal Judge Rakoff of the Southern District of New York and conservative Judge Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have raised awareness that innocent people are pleading guilty to crimes they didnt commit because they cannot effectively defend themselves against the power of the government. That is why calls for reform are growing so loud from both ends of the political spectrum that Congress can no longer ignore these problems, which have festered for more than three decades.

The numbers speak for themselves. Over the past decades more and more Americans are put behind bars, sometimes for crimes they didnt commit or with punishments that are not consistent with the crime. The result has been a skyrocketing prison population that ruins lives and wastes money. At the federal level alone, the number of prisoners has increased by 795 percent in the past 35 years. Federal and state spending on prisons also increased over this timeframe to $8 billion annually, which is 3 to 4 times more per capita than we spend on education. America is now the worlds largest jailer, with only 5 percent of the worlds population but a whopping 25 percent of the worlds prisoners. And there are as many Americans with a college degree as there are Americans with a criminal record.

As more people get caught in this system, it breaks apart families, destabilizes communities, increases poverty, and makes it harder  if not impossible  for people to rejoin society after theyve served their sentence. Why? Because criminal convictions are accompanied by countless collateral consequences that burden people for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, not everyone recognizes the need for reform. As demand for reform grows louder, the defenders of the status quo are mobilizing. Their argument is simple: Reforming the criminal justice system will endanger society and put peoples lives at risk. But these claims have no basis in reality. In fact, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act will have the opposite effect.

Many of its most important provisions are modeled after successful reforms from states such as Georgia, Utah, Kentucky, and Texas. In the past decade, more than half of states have passed a variety of changes to their criminal justice systems. Some lowered mandatory minimums  non-negotiable sentences that can run into the decades  for low-level offenders. Others gave judges greater discretion in sentencing. And still more tried a variety of other worthwhile reforms, including prison reform and expungement of past criminal records so worthy individuals seeking redemption could put their past mistakes behind them and have a fresh start when leaving prison.

The results speak for themselves. While the federal imprisonment rate increased by 15 percent over the last decade, the state rate fell by 4 percent. This didnt lead to an increase in crime, either. No less than 32 states saw drops in both the percentage of people imprisoned and the overall crime rate. Put another way: Criminal justice reform made society safer.

We need federal reforms along the same lines. Thats what the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act would do, which is why it has broad support from law enforcement. It contains a variety of reforms that would enhance public safety and make the criminal justice system more fair and humane....

Will lawmakers seize this opportunity to make peoples lives better, or will they fall prey to fear-mongering? For the sake of the least fortunate in society, I certainly hope they make the right choice.
 Updating Delaware's struggles with the post-Hurst hydra | Main | Mark Holden, GC at Koch Industries, makes "The Factual Case for Criminal Justice Reform" 

March 2, 2016

"One Size Does Not Fit All: The Need for a Complete Abolition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Juveniles in Response to Roper, Graham, and Miller"

The title of this post is the title of this article authored by Lindsey Krause now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Juvenile sentencing practices in the United States have seen an enormous amount of reform in the past decade. Three United States Supreme Court cases created the foundation for such reform: Miller v. Alabama, Graham v. Florida, and Roper v. Simmons. Each of these cases recognizes that youth in the criminal justice system are different from adults and should be treated as such. Mandatory minimum sentences prevent courts from following the promises of Roper, Graham, and Miller. The mitigating factor of youth cannot be considered if a judge is given no discretion where a mandatory minimum sentence exists. This article analyzes recent jurisprudence in Iowa, completely abolishing mandatory minimum sentences for youth under the age of 18 and advocates for the remainder of the nation to follow in the state's footsteps.

March 2, 2016 at 09:19 AM | Permalink

Comments

Mandatory Minimums need to be abolished for not only juveniles but for adults as well. Crimes and punishments are not "one-size-fits-all". Take sex offenders as an example, ask the general public what crime they think a sex offender may have committed and right away child molestation is the answer. But public urinators, romeo and juliet lovers, skinny dippers, they too all fall under the mandatory minimum as a sex offender. Time to make things right with prison reform and abolish mandatory minimums.

Posted by: kat | Mar 2, 2016 1:23:49 PM

Kat, your spot on. An 18 yr old having consensual sex with his 17 yr old girl friend, commits statuatory rape.

If he moves and doesnt update his addrs on their website, Uh Oh.

Its a general catch all.

With drug crimes, wow. The perfect storm us going to trial.

Downloading porn, as disgusting as it is. They now pay restitution. Really.

All if the little triggers that ratchett up sentences.

Posted by: MidWestGuy | Mar 2, 2016 2:43:28 PM

Mandatory minimums are not a "one size fits all." Instead, they are the bottom of the range that the legislature feels is appropriate for the conduct, and implicitly assume the presence of mitigating factors. In fact, the reference to them as "mandatory" borders on Orwellian double speak. You never hear the top of the authorized range of punishment referred to as a "mandatory maximum" even though judges are not permitted to exceed them. Within the full range of authorized punishment, the judge still has discretion to give weight to all mitigating factors to decide to sentence at the bottom of the range rather than the top of the range.

Regardless of what laws are passed, there will still be a mandatory minimum for all offenses -- even if, for some offenses, that mandatory minimum is a $1 fine or one day of probation supervision. One can argue, coherently, what the minimum and maximum range of punishment should be for a given offense. Replacing that offense specific argument with a battle cry of abolish mandatory minimum is misleading at best. Or is anybody seriously arguing that a $1 fine is an appropriate punishment for murder.

Posted by: tmm | Mar 2, 2016 2:51:57 PM

tmm, I heartily agree. But I think that we law and order folks lose something when we don't understand the driving force behind the sophistry. I fully support harsh sentences for serious crimes. Where the proverbial hammer is dropped for not-so-serious crimes (e.g., sex offense for public urination, and yes I get that many of those stories are apocryphal), then it undermines the moral seriousness we need to have to drop the hammer where appropriate. Couple that with the perception (in many cases valid) that justice is a function of who you know (e.g., why was Spitzer allowed to skate on obvious structuring) and that the game is rigged (e.g., real prosecutorial misconduct) then you have even sober people thinking about releasing pled-down drug dealers from federal prison. Moral authority is a very very important thing to have, and people naturally recoil from harshness that appears to be (or is portrayed to be) divorced from it.

And Doug, before you yammer about a federalist epiphany, you will note that I have made points along these lines many times for years.

And Solem--really?

Posted by: federalist | Mar 2, 2016 3:26:30 PM

federalist, I continue to not understand what "Solem--really?" is meant to achieve, and these days you would really earn my respect if, rather than harping on me, you at least poke Bill Otis a bit for his ignorance about what federal prosecutors would do in the RV case.

On the merits, here, I praise tmm for highlighting the inevitability of mandatory minimums (and mandatory maximums) in statutory sentencing law. But, as federalist indirectly but usefully suggests, prosecutors through charging practices regularly can (1) preclude judges from being able to give the judge's desired weight to all mitigating factors, and (2)avoid any real limit imposed by statutory maximums. (The Angelos case, of course, is the federal poster child for problem #1 and the Madoff case is a good example of problem #2.)

That said, and again as federalist indirectly but usefully suggests, what the federal sentencing system (and some severe state systems) have done is facilitate the conflation in the minds of many smart people the reality of mandatory minimum sentencing provisions and the problem LONG mandated PRISON sentence. A "better" title to this article that would be more accurate in light of your concerns, tmm, would be "One CELL Does Not Fit All: The Need for a Complete Abolition of LONG mandatory PRISON Sentences for Juveniles...."

Posted by: Doug B. | Mar 2, 2016 6:10:38 PM

Solem is a reference to the other thread where you suggest that Solem is relevant to mandatory juve LWOP.

You're putting words in my mouth. You'll note I spoke about sophistry. And you yap about how "smart people" have come to X conclusion blah blah blah.

The fact is that it's generally good that it's easy to nail serious drug dealers. I'll grant you that the ease of the hammer leads to some injustices, and that we should be distrustful of prosecutors having so much power. (Re: power--interesting how the Obama campaign can disable anti-fraud protection to facilitate overseas donations and then turn around and prosecute a GOP guy who illegally coordinated, while looking the other way at Claire McCaskill's in-kind contribution to the Akin campaign which far exceeded donation limits). And of course, there's the prospect of President Hillary Clinton, after having committed serious offenses with respect to classified info, overseeing an executive branch that prosecutes thousands. Of course, Doug, you'd never in a million years comment on things like that.

You want to be nice to criminals. I don't.

Posted by: federalist | Mar 2, 2016 8:36:59 PM

tmm, would be "One CELL Does Not Fit All: The Need for a Complete Abolition of LONG mandatory PRISON Sentences for Juveniles...."

Posted by: clash of clans download for android | Oct 27, 2017 1:25:15 AM

Post a comment
 Has DOJ decided not to appeal Judge Weinstein's recent notable decision in US v. RV to give no prison time to child porn downloaded? | Main | "One Size Does Not Fit All: The Need for a Complete Abolition of Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Juveniles in Response to Roper, Graham, and Miller" 

March 2, 2016

Updating Delaware's struggles with the post-Hurst hydra

As regular readers know, in this post not long after the Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida declared Florida's death penalty procedures violative of the Sixth Amendment, I coined the term term "post-Hurst hydra" to describe what I expected to be multi-headed, snake-like litigation developing in various courts as judges sort ought what Hurst must mean for past, present and future capital cases. And in this post about a month ago, I reported on the notable decision in Delaware to put all pending capital murder trials and executions on hold until the state Supreme Court resolved the constitutionality of the state's death penalty law in the wake of Hurst.

Now, thanks to this local article headlined "Public defenders: Death penalty unconstitutional," we can all read about the arguments from Delaware capital defense attorneys that the post-Hurst hydra must devour the state's existing capital sentencing scheme. Here are the basics from this press account:

Three assistant public defenders have argued to the Delaware Supreme Court that the death penalty law is unconstitutional -- and therefore needs to be fixed by lawmakers. The attorneys from the Office of Defense Services filed a written argument Monday explaining why they believe Delaware's capital punishment policy violates the U.S. Constitution, especially in light of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that deemed Florida's similar scheme unconstitutional. "The Delaware statute contains a number of unconstitutional provisions that cannot be exercised by this court in an effort to salvage the statute," the 58-page argument said. "Because these multiple constitutional problems require Delawares death penalty scheme to be substantially restructured, that task is for the legislature, not the courts."... Attorneys from the Office of Defense Services said in their argument that it is "crystal-clear that the judge is the independent and paramount capital sentencer" in Delaware. They went on to argue that Delaware is violating the Sixth Amendment by requiring a judge to make findings regarding aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and their relative weight, before a death sentence can be imposed. "As the opinion in Hurst makes clear, any fact-finding that is a necessary precursor to a death sentence, rather than one of imprisonment, must be performed by a jury," the argument said. "The highest courts and legislatures of several states have likewise acknowledged that the Supreme Courts Sixth Amendment jurisprudence requires the jury to determine the presence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances, as well as the weight of each." The attorneys went on to say that the practice of allowing juries to be non-unanimous is also unconstitutional. "There is a nationwide consensus against non-unanimous jury verdicts in capital cases," the attorneys wrote. "No existing state statute currently permits a non-unanimous determination of aggravating factors, and only two, in Alabama and Delaware, permit a jurys sentencing determination to be less than unanimous. That only two states permit non-unanimous jury verdicts in capital cases weighs heavily against its constitutionality."

The full brief referenced above can be accessed at this link.

Prior related post:

March 2, 2016 at 09:08 AM | Permalink

Comments

The app is free and also normally, comes pre-installed with Apple gadgets. As for the FaceTime for PC overview.

Posted by: facetime download | Apr 14, 2017 3:05:35 AM

thanks for share this amazing post

Posted by: Terraria APK Download for Android | Jun 19, 2017 12:48:07 PM

thanks for share this amazing post with us ...

Posted by: Terraria APK Download for AndroidGta | Jun 19, 2017 12:52:09 PM

Thanks for sharing you have a very nice post

Posted by: Nice post | Oct 26, 2017 2:17:42 AM

Post a comment
#SF supervisors rally w/dog owners before presenting resolution against dog restrictions at Ocean Beach & GGNRA land pic.twitter.com/vIXchNXCrO  Juan Carlos Guerrero (@JuanCarlosABC7) March 1, 2016

It looks like Nancy Pelosi isn't the only SF-based politico who feels the need to weigh in on new proposed rules for managing dog access to parks within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The rules, which are presently open for public comment, are designed to restrict dog access to certain park areas with the goal of protecting habitat and making the park-going experience more pleasant for non-dog owners. Not so fast, say at least five San Francisco Supes, who today announced their opposition to the proposed rules on the steps of City Hall.

So reports The Examiner, which correctly notes that the Supervisors have absolutely zero say over the proposed rules because the National Park Service, not the Board, manages the GGNRA. Scott Wiener, David Campos, Katy Tang, Norman Yee, and London Breed all came out against the rules.

When is the federal government going to listen to our local community ... in terms of how we do recreation in the Bay Area? Hoodline reports Wiener as asking while flanked by furry friends. The federal government is ignoring us.

At least one person, Hoodline notes, wasn't having it  and told the Supervisor as much.

"What about supporting the black community?" a protester reportedly yelled. "No one's shooting dogs!"

If you feel strongly about the rules, the National Park Service website will inform you how to leave a comment.

Previously: Fort Funston, Ocean Beach To Partially Ban Dogs Under Proposed Rule Change


With this week's expected rain, your desire to hunker down come Thursday is totally understandable. However! It's not raining yet, and besides, even though it sometimes feels like it, the totally awesome city of San Francisco doesn't shut down just because of a bit of precipitation. So here's a few ideas to get you moving this week.

TUESDAY, MARCH 1

SUPER TUESDAY WATCH PARTY: Super Tuesday is today, and as polls around the country close we'll all be one step closer to knowing who we'll have the pleasure of voting for (or against) in this November's presidential election. So why not watch the results trickle in over some drinks? And, if you're of the politically contentious type, then this event is for you. That is because, as you may or may not have noticed from the URL, this is a GOP watch party. So show up, order a drink at the no-host bar, and maybe get a look at the rare species known as the SF Republican in person. The Cigar Bar & Grill, 850 Montgomery Street at Pacific Avenue. Doors at 5:30 p.m., $10 suggested donation.

MARGARITAS IN THE SUN: The rain is expected to start later in the week, but it's supposed to be in upper 60's and sunny today, so why not enjoy it? Virgil's Sea Room has a big outdoor back patio, and a few weeks ago started a new tradition of offering $2 Margaritas every Tuesday from 4 p.m. until close. So bask in that sun, sip a cocktail, and pretend you live somewhere warm. Virgil's Sea Room, 3152 Mission Street at Precita Avenue. There's no cover, but the drink deal doesn't start until 4 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2

RADIO COMEDY FESTIVAL: Wednesday marks the opening night of the five-day Mutiny Radio Comedy Festival. Featuring 20 local comedians, and 24 national/international comedians, the sets are performed in front a small audience and broadcast out on the internet radio station live  but, you really should make it in person. Go laugh. Mutiny Radio, 2761 21st Street between Florida and Bryant Streets, 6 p.m. $10

PROTEST DOCUMENTARY: If the presidential campaign has got you down, why not let that general sense of unease wash over you with a documentary focused on the political-protest high jinks of The Yes Men. Alamo Drafthouse is showing The Yes Men Are Revolting, a film that covers four years of the group's stunts. Alamo Drafthouse, 2550 Mission Street between 22nd and 21st Streets, 7 p.m. $15.

THURSDAY, MARCH 3

MOTORCYCLE ART: If you've ever dreamt of cross-country motorcycle rides, or simply find beauty in the two-wheeled machines, then this exhibit is for you. With portrait photography, sculpture, and interviews all focused on motorcyclists and their rides, "I Am This Motorcycle" is a chance to get up close and personal and experience motorcycles as art. Heron Arts, 7 Heron Street, off 8th Street. Thursday is the final night of the exhibit.

LIVE ART-MAKING: Flipping things around a bit, with Creativity Explored's Tabula Rosa the art is in the install. Or, more precisely, the organization that works with developmentally disabled artists is presenting a six-week-long exhibit that showcases artists making their work inside the gallery space. Creativity Explored, 3245 16th at Guerrero Street, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Free

FRIDAY, MARCH 4

PURPLE RAIN: This one is such a no-brainer that we wrote about it earlier today, but it's worth repeating because it's Prince. The musician is set to perform at the Oracle Arena, and you should really just go see him. Oracle Arena, 7000 Coliseum Way. Tickets on sale here at 4:00 p.m. today.

LATIN AFRO-POP SHOW: OK, so you want to rock out, but didn't get tickets to the Prince show. Well, then get yourself over to the Red Poppy Art House for Friday night's performance by Guarandinga, a Latin Afro-Pop group from the Bay Area. The Venezuelan-inspired beats will definitely keep you moving, and it's a great excuse to check out the gem that is the Red Poppy. Red Poppy Art House, 2698 Folsom Street at 23rd Street. Doors are at 7 p.m., and tickets are $10 to $15.

SATURDAY, MARCH 5

HISTORICAL TOUR: The Old Mint is an awesome building, but you can be excused for never having been inside of it before. However, not after this week, as Saturday's San Francisco History Days gives you the opportunity to check out the historical building while wandering between a series of pop-up museums focused on San Fransisco's past. The Old Mint, 88 5th Street, between Mission and Market Streets. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.



LOVE IN THE TIME OF TINDER: It's a tale as old as time. Well, sort of. Faultline Theater presents Tinderella  the (definitely very San Francisco) original musical features the eponymous dating app, making (or missing?) the last BART train, and of course, true love. So take a momentary break from your online-dating sagas to watch one on stage. Oh, and it would probably make a good first internet date. PianoFight, 144 Taylor Street at Eddy, 7:30 p.m., $25.

SUNDAY, MARCH 6
Steamed barbecue pork buns at Yank Sing were $3.50 in 2005. Now they'll set you back $5.50. A Saturday night dinner at Chez Panisse was $75 back then  this coming weekend it'll stand at $125.

A lot has changed about dining in San Francisco since 11 years ago, where the Chronicle begins their price comparison of signature dishes at top Bay Area restaurants, and it's not just prices.

The whole game is different, as Kim Alter of Nightbird observed in conversation with Eater at a Golden Gate Restaurant Association panel discussion last night. "When opening a restaurant, we have conversations like, Should we have Instagrammable light in here? and its mind-blowing because its about the food, but its changed in the last five to ten years in what you need to think about when opening a restaurant and how people eat now."

Tracking 22 dishes and prix-fixe menus from 14 top Bay Area restaurants since 2005, the Chronicle found that menu prices rose at about double the rate of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Bay Area consumer price index. While the consumer price index swelled 27.6 percent since 2005 and 13.6 percent from 2010 to 2015 and, the dishes the Chronicle watched went up in price by 52 percent since 2005, 26 percent since 2010, and even 7.5 percent just in the last year. But why?

"I've always said that if a line cook at a restaurant could make a fair living wage in San Francisco, no one would be able to afford to eat at a restaurant in San Francisco." Thomas McNaughton, the chef and owner of Flour+Water, Central Kitchen, and Salumeria, chimed in. With restaurateurs David Steele and David White, his Ne Timeas Restaurant Group also operates Trick Dog, Aatxe, and Cafe Du Nord. "The $26 entree turns into [the] $56 entree," McNaughton continued, "There are so many people in SF and NYC right now putting their necks on the line of essentially an experience of, How do we make the economics of a restaurant work? Its something Id love to know the answer for myself."

Not to get all "Wage Labour and Capital," but San Francisco's rising cost of living has called for commensurate compensation for restaurant industry workers. To keep a place at the table, restaurateurs like Alter and McNaughton have difficult calculations to make.

Let's look at a hypothetical menu. Prices account for food costs, and across the board, those have gone up. Previously subsidized ingredients like beef, a story in itself, now bear costs more in line with their actual value.

Rent goes into the cost of a dish, too, and though some top restaurants own the buildings in which they operate, very many do not.

There's the profit margin you want  roughly 10 percent, maybe.

And then there's labor. That's the big one that's risen in several ways, with the Chronicle writing that "high prices are, in part, a measure of our political success," meaning with regard to labor laws.

Beyond wages, consider workers comp. San Franciscos Health Care Security Ordinance, est. 2008, says that businesses of 20 employees working eight or more hours per week require some health care compensation. For larger businesses that's $2.53 per employee per hour worked, and for smaller ones, it's $1.68.

"When you go out to eat, youre not thinking about how much the chair you sat on cost," Kim Alter also said. "Youre not thinking rent is $12,000 a month. Theres a strong conversation about how much apartments cost per month, but not about how much restaurants cost per month. When they take that bite of food, a diner is not thinking about how much it costs to process that and pay your cook $25 an hour. Youre just thinking, I can pay $2.50 for chicken at Safeway. Its an education of people understanding what things actually cost."

Coincidentally, Zuni's Pilgram also has a point to make about Safeway chicken. "People sometimes ask, If I can buy a [whole] chicken at Safeway for $6, why am I paying $50? Well, my chicken is better than Safeways. Then theres the wood for the oven, theres the person manning the oven  who is going to be making at the least $17 an hour  plus the linens, electricity, gas, the art on the walls, the building gets painted so it looks nice, theres a cleaning crew, and at the end of the day, you go home and you dont have to do the dishes.

That famous chicken at Zuni, by the way, has gone from $28 in 1995 and $48 in 2014 to $54 in 2016.

Related: San Francisco Has Always Been A Pretty Expensive Place To Live
Cory Heidelberger admits this:

Senator Soholt said commercial property owners in her District 14 had signed on to HB 1182 on the promise of property tax relief. Property tax relief is completely superfluous to the proper functioning of the plan, but as Rep. Lee Schoenbeck might have explained to me last summer, it is politically indispensible to passage of the plan in the 2016 Legislature.

Senators defeated Novstrups amendment to his amendment and his amendment on 2213 votes. In the debate on the amendments and HB 1182 itself, the conservative Republicans opposing HB 1182 unamended bemoaned the sales taxs regressive impact on the poor, its unfair transfer of wealth to property owners, and its potential to pressure schools to shed 400 teachers. For two hours, I was the ideological leader of the radical right wing of the South Dakota Republican Party.

But we know Senator Novstrup and his right-wing colleagues didnt mean the things they were saying.
SIOUX CITY | Sioux City's revised application for a $318,000 Vision Iowa grant for the proposed Cone Park project shows the city closed a $1.4 million budget gap and raised an additional $43,000 from private donors.

City officials now place the cost of the all-season park at about $4 million, down from earlier estimates, according to documents obtained by the Journal. The city said it bridged the gap by cutting some alternates and non-essential parts, including $250,000 for a used snow groomer.

The city also scaled back a proposed day lodge, from $750,000 to $600,000, and a maintenance building, from $67,000 to $45,000. In addition, the city cut some lighting elements and adjusted unit prices for construction materials, based on conversations with local contractors, according to the documents.

The city initially sought the Vision Iowa grant in December. For two straight months, though, city officials asked the board to delay scoring the application. Because costs had shuffled, the city said its numbers in the application were no longer accurate.

City officials had been concerned the city would need to reapply for the grant. However, Matt Salvatore, the city's parks and recreation director, said that likely will not be an issue this time.

"They're not telling us we need to reapply at this point," Salvatore said. "The only way it'd get scored in June is if they told us to reapply in April. Then it's a three-month process before it could get scored."

The board is scheduled to consider the revised application at its March 9 meeting.

Since December, the city has received an additional $43,000 in private donations and pledges, including $21,000 in February alone. Salvatore said state officials had previously requested that the city increase such funding.

The city has just under $3.7 million to fund the project, Salvatore said. The major funding source for the park is the proceeds from a gift the late Ruth Cone left to the city when the Sioux City woman died in 1981. The gift has since grown to roughly $2.6 million.

Overall, the city has now secured nearly $3.7 million, beyond the requested Vision Iowa grant. Other major gifts include $200,000 from Missouri River Historical Development and $50,000 from Woodbury County. The city has kicked in $800,000.

Salvatore said the park will include a $3.1 million tubing hill, and a $250,000 splash pad/ice rink.
The history of Burma and the Tai states on its frontiers (c. 1350-1600) and connections to Ming Dynasty Yunnan to the north and the Bay of Bengal to the south. The use of historiography and technology to investigate this time period and region are also covered.


Click a show title or use the red Streampad player at the bottom of our frame to listen now.
If you buy something through our links, we may earn money from our affiliate partners. Learn more.

You have specific steps to take if youre ready to sell your business. Even if youre just thinking about selling your business, you should start taking those steps now.

Thats because youll need concrete and detailed records to prove the value  the price  you put on your business.

You will also have decisions to make about how to sell your business. Use a business broker? Sell on your own? Choose a lawyer? You can start your investigation into those decisions now. Even if your plan to sell is a year or two away.

For more on this topic download BizBuySells Guide to Selling your Small Business as a training tool. To sell your small business go to Sell a Small Business on BizBuySell. If youre interested in buying a business instead, you can also download their Guide to Buying a Small Business.

Why Sell a Business?

Lets say you have a daycare business for sale. Your reasons for selling your business are important to you. The reasons may also be important to your potential business owner. The reasons must make sense, and not discourage, prospective buyers.

Here are some future business owners would easily understand:

Retirement Partnership didnt endure Illness or death

Other reasons for selling your business may be harder to convey in a positive manner. Is the business doing so well that you as company owner feel constantly overworked? Have you burned out as a result? If those facts are presented in the proper context, a buyer may become even more eager to buy!

What about the timing of business sales? When is the best time to sell?

During years of profitability and performance  Why sell when your company is making money? The short answer is that the company is much more attractive compared to a company that is losing money. Did you get a really nice contract? A contract that would convey to a buyer? Might make it a perfect time to sell.

Selling a Small Business

The size of your company is a factor in selling. Thats because a buyer is typically seeking a certain size business to purchase.

But other than that, heres a case where size doesnt matter when youre selling a small business. The steps are the same or similar.

11 Key Steps to Sell Your Business

Selling your business is a complex process, whatever the business size, and there are lots of steps to take before a business can be sold. Here are 11 of the most important steps in that process to get you started.

1. Sort Out All Accounting Records

Your accounting records should mirror accounting standards. That way, your profits can be easily compared to similar businesses. Thats because the same process has been used to maintain and compile the accounting records. As long as your accounting records have followed standards, your financial data can be compared to industry benchmarks.

With that said, though, you may want to additionally separate some expense that affect your bottom line. These would be expenses that a buyer may not incur. Thats because a buyer may opt to run things a little differently:

Those types of expenses can be termed discretionary expenses. Such as:

Travel costs  Maybe as you established your company you attended national conventions or sales venues. Entertainment costs  Similarly, as you worked to get established to feted potential clients. Bonuses  Which you paid to top performers. Business vehicles  Perhaps you leased or purchased a vehicle or vehicles for company use. Medical insurance  Did you pay for medical insurance for yourself and/or family members, set up through the business?

2. Hire a Valuation Expert and Find Out Your Business Worth

When you sell a house, you use a real estate appraisal to prove the price you set. That process is fairly straight-forward. The real estate agent can compare similar sales, and put a value on your house that may include appliances, age of roof, size and grounds.

To sell your business, you need a specific business valuation expert. Thats because there can be many factors that affect the price. Here are examples of information the business valuation expert may use to help you set a price:

Your business tax records for the last four years. The value of your inventory The value of any business equipment. Proof of your customer base. Proof of any long-term contracts to purchase your goods and/or services.

3. Work Out an Exit Strategy

How are you going to handle the profit from your business sale? Youll most likely need a financial manager or specialized CPA for this part of the plan.

Typically, youll hear the words no one likes to hear  Capital Gains. How to handle capital gains must be part of your exit strategy.

Many business sales are considered asset sales. An asset sale is usually taxed at the long-term capital gains rate, which is 15%.

Determining the value of assets can be part of the negotiations as you sell your business and make an exit plan for the money. Assets are grouped by type, such as capital assets, depreciable property, and inventory or stock. The dollar value that you and the buyer agree upon for these assets can affect the amount of capital gains you pay. This can be part of the sale negotiation process and this why shouldnt sell your business with no exit strategy.

4. Market Your Business

Are you going to sell on your own? Are you going to hire a business broker? Either way, you can contribute to the process and its important that you do.

Create an executive summary. This is where business sellers can be proactive and answer any questions future owners may have. Think of it as a business diary. An executive summary is an account of the life of the business, from start to present. To cover all the topics, describe any products and define the supply chain, with an eye to answering potential questions.

You dont need official numbers in the executive summary. In fact, financial information about the business should only be given to a buyer that is pre-qualified to buy.

The executive summary is the spot for detailing information and answering questions about your reasons for selling.

Whos going to market the business, you or a business broker? Either way, a marketing plan should be developed. If youre going with a business broker, you can offer your ideas while respecting the brokers expertise.

5. Put Your Business on the Market

Before you list your business, share your plans with family members or employees. You may even share information with trusted customers, if you think one would be interested in the purchase.

However, letting people know your plans to sell your business can be dicey. Could you cause a mass exodus of employees? Or worse, customers? Business owners should be careful letting the cat out of the proverbial bag.

One of the easiest ways to list a business on the marketplace is via Sell Business on BizBuySell. However before you take that step, you should think carefully about developing an explanatory letter for customers, as well as informing employees. Because all of those people are going to find out about the sale.

What about the price? Just as with a home sale, too high or too low is a mistake. Too high, and the property is one the market too long. Potential business owners could look at the date of the listing and start to wonder whats wrong with the business. Too low, and it looks like a fire sale. However, you can justify a low price if theres a reason to sell a business fast  such as unexpected illness or death. This is information to convey to a broker, if youre using a broker.

You should know that the time frame for sale of businesses is typically from six months to two years. Most sales of businesses are closer to the two-year mark. So, dont let the passing months without a sale prod you. Stay firm on the price.

6. Sift Through Prospective Buyers: Find the Perfect Business Owner

Financial screening is of utmost importance. Those tire-kickers can be more than annoyances if you dont prequalify each prospective buyer.

Do you really want tire kickers to get inside financial information about your business? And do you want to waste time providing that information, and having showings of the company?

Talk this over with your broker. You can put this stipulation in your Agreement to Sell that you have with the broker.

The broker can also advise you on if and when to accept an offer. The art of a deal includes negotiation. Few buyers would expect you to take the first deal thats inked. A broker may pressure you, but the decision is yours.

Keep in mind, though, if someone offers the asking price and your decision is not to take the money, youll owe the broker fee.

7. Respect The Due Diligence Process

The buyer is going to wants lots of information and the topics covered mostly deal with financials. Dont lose patience. The buyer wants the same information youd want if you were buying a company.

Due Diligence paperwork may include financial information, as well as info about licenses, property or equipment leases, and any pending/ongoing litigation.

8. Negotiate an Agreement and Close the Deal

In price negotiations, you may negotiate the price of pieces of the business. This can include inventory and equipment. It can also include depreciable property.

9. Hire a Lawyer and Finalize the Contract

Even if you list and market the business on your own, youll need a lawyer to close the sales process. And not just any lawyer. Youll need a lawyer or a law firm that specializes in business sales.

10. Receive Payment Upfront

The percentage of the down payment requirement may vary, depending on the bank. Upfront payment is a non-negotiable element of the sale. Potential buyers who dont have upfront money are just that  potential buyers. Potential buyers may not yet be ready to become actual buyers!

11. Enjoy Your Achievements!

Youve done it. A business sale can be extremely stressful. Take time to decompress.

6 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling Your Business

Of course, people make lots of mistakes when selling a business too. So weve put together the most common mistakes to help you avoid them.

1. Not Planning Ahead

Dont forget to plan your exit strategy.

2. Waiting too Long to Sell

Making a profit? Sell while youre on a roll.

3. Misrepresenting Your Business

Dont mess with financials especially tax returns. Unless you enjoy spending time in litigation.

4. Not Keeping Business Confidentiality

Nearly all sales of businesses include a nondisclosure or confidentiality agreement. This is not paperwork that is done when the business sells. It must be done before you provide any financial information about your business.

5. Finding the Wrong Buyer

Sellers must guard against that business buyer that might even look good on paper. Thoroughly investigate the financials of a prospective buyer. The deal has to work both ways.

6. Trying to Sell Your Business Alone

This is a tough row to hoe. The myriad of paperwork thats required is daunting for the average business sale. This is where brokers are worth every penny. Brokers that have completed many deals will streamline the process. Brokers have contacts, including lenders.

How to Sell a Business Quickly

If your main goal is a fast sale, keep in mind you may not get the highest price tag.

But heres how to get it done:

Have all your financials in order. Create a packet which includes financials and the executive summary. Prescreen buyers before sending information about financials and/or the packet. Sell for a lower price to an employee or family member. Keep interest high with aggressive marketing.

Selling a Business with a Commercial Lease

An owner may have a commercial lease which complicates selling a small business. The owner may be able to transfer interest in the lease to buyers. But the lease can only be transferred to buyers if thats allowed in the original lease agreement.

Either way, notify your landlord.

How much does it cost to sell your business?

The average cost of selling a business, if you use a broker, is the brokers 15% commission which is based on the sale price.

There will also be legal fees.

How do I legally sell my business?

Heres a sample of legal documents that make up a sale, in addition to the actual purchase and sale agreement:

Bill of Sale  Needed to transfer assets such as inventory or equipment to the buyer. Non-compete agreement  if necessary. Non-disclosure/confidentiality agreement  to be inked before sending financial information and business info (customer list, contracts, etc.). All Rights Reserved  All rights reserved is a copyright formality indicating that the copyright holder reserves all the rights provided by copyright law.

How long does it take to sell your business?

Some businesses sell within six months, especially a sole proprietorship. Most of the time the sale of a business takes closer to two years.

Expect your sale to take two years, and remain firm on the price tag.

How do you sell a struggling business?

Yikes. Youre struggling and you want to sell a business fast. But what if its not currently a success? Here are some tips:

As previously stated, have financial paperwork in order. Keep the doors open. Nothing says Make a low offer like a closed sign. Seek professional advice. You can start with SCORE, Service Corps of Retired Executives website, where the advice is free. Make other plans. How should the business take shape if you cant sell it? Is there anything you can do to make it a success? Use a broker, especially one who understands the metrics of your business type.

What is the best way to sell your business?

To sum up:

Follow accounting standards and have key data organized. Work to develop an executive summary of the business. Have an exit plan. Decide whether to go it alone or use a broker. Have a marketing plan that creates interest. Use a business valuation calculator.
It seems like a horse race, the Presidential candidates with first one, then another in the lead.

Most election years, that would be true of all the candidates, but this year, Donald Trump took the lead early on and kept it when most of the other Republicans have been chasing him or have since faded away. And hes continued this success despite the nature of the campaign and the polarizing figure hes become recently.

Why might that be?

A sluggish economy during the last few years has led to keen scrutiny by small business owners. And many small business owners ay feel a highly successful business owner can understand their problems.

A National Small Business Association poll (PDF) says that 40 percent feel that conventional politicians dont understand them and dont follow through on the promises they do make.

But a study of 884 small business owners by the NSBA (PDF) indicates that most are following this years elections closely with 53 percent following very closely and 42 percent somewhat closely.

A poll of 5,526 small business owners by Manta.com indicated that among Republicans, Donald Trump got 62 percent of their backing with Ted Cruz garnering 17 percent. Among Democrats, Hilary Clinton got 56 percent compared to Sen. Bernie Sanders at 43 percent. In a potential preview of this falls general election match up, Trump wins the vote of 38 percent of small business owners to Clintons 21 percent.

They are frustrated and feel that the mainstream of both parties is more interested in power politics and self promotion than in listening to the concerns of American business, Chris Bushong, a tax partner at Paretis, a company providing tax service for small- and medium-sized business owners and investors. One client recently told me that while he cant stand Donald Trump as a person, he believes hes the only candidate who has any concept of what it takes to run a business in the face of punitive taxes and choking regulation, Bushong explained in the Manta survey.

Here are some major policies each of the two most popular candidates with small business owners say they would support if elected. Most would impact small businesses either positively or negatively, so of course all are of interest to the small business community:

Donald Trump

Repeal the death tax

Lower capital gains tax

Reduce corporate tax rates

Impose a 20 percent tax on companies that export jobs

Simplify the tax code

Hillary Clinton

Make college affordable and pay for it by closing tax loopholes.

Tax credits that distribute profits between businesses

Raise minimum wage.
Ask anyone the one apprehension they have with digital financial services, and it will invariably be security. This has pushed companies in the sector to create innovative solutions to ensure the safety of their customers when they are using their services.

As one of the leading credit card service providers in the world, MasterCard just rolled out a new option when it comes to verifying your identity for an online purchase: a selfie or your fingerprint.

If you have one too many passwords, and who doesnt these days, a selfie password may be the answer. The MasterCard ID Check app was tested in the U.S. and the Netherlands last year, and according to the BBC 92 percent of the users preferred it over entering passwords.

To use the MasterCard ID Check app, you will have to download it on your smartphone, tablet or PC, and when you are ready to verify your identity, you can use your fingerprint or a selfie. If you choose a selfie, the app asks you to blink to make sure you are not holding a picture to set your selfie password.

Ajay Bhalla, Chief Product Security Officer, told the BBC, Consumers hate passwords, the most commonly used password is 123456. So they are not secure, and people also use the same passwords for multiple sites. If one site gets hacked all the places that you use the same password get compromised  they are a big pain.

As with any connected technology, there is always the potential hackers will be able to exploit the system, and this is no different. The BBC report points out facial scans and fingerprint sensors can be compromised.

For its part, MasterCard said the security mechanisms it has in place should prevent or at least detect suspicious behavior. The company also added, the fingerprint and selfie data will not be communicated in a way that could be intercepted, stolen or used by criminals.

In addition to convenience, MasterCard is looking to lower fraud and card rejections. As reported by the New York Post, the company loses $118 billion each year to card rejections, which is 13 times more than the cost of actual fraud. Identity verification is one of the biggest reasons for declining a card, and with this app, the company hopes that number will go down.

The new selfie password feature is going to be available this summer in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
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
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.
CALLAWAY, Md.

The chart shows the increase in salaries between 2004 and 2014 for key SMECO officers vs. the Social Security Administrations's Average Wage Index (AWI). Data Source: 2004 and 2014 SMECO Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Financial Reports.

(March 2, 2016)The average SMECO electric utility customer can expect to see an increase of about $7.36 on future bills. The increase comes in the form of new distribution service rates which were recently approved by the Maryland Public Service Commission.SMECO sought to soften the blow in a press release distributed today. They argue that the increase is "more than offset by the decrease in SMECO's Standard Offer Service (SOS) energy charges that customers have realized over the past couple of years." Raw energy (oil, natural gas, coal) prices have plummeted in recent years due the worsening world-wide economic depression. SMECO says the average residential bill in 2015 was $25 to $30 less than the average bill in 2014 due to lower energy prices.SMECO says its residential Facilities Charge, which has not changed in 21 years, will increase by 90 cents, from $8.60 per month to $9.50 per month. The residential Distribution Charge, which has not changed in five years, will increase from $0.03606 (3.606 cents) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to $0.04336 (4.336 cents) per kWh, just about  of a cent. Distribution Service rates reflect the investment SMECO makes in substations, poles, transformers, power lines, hardware and software, people, and buildings."For every improvement we make to our electric infrastructure or technology systems, for every line we replace or substation we upgrade, for every building, every line truck, every new line to every new neighborhood, there is a cost. Those costs are reflected on our customer-members' bills and they are an investment in the electric system that brings power to every home in Southern Maryland every day," said Austin J. Slater, Jr., SMECO president and CEO.Slater explained, "Our rates reflect the price we pay to provide a high level of electric service reliability. In the past six years, SMECO has invested more than $377 million in infrastructure, including the Southern Maryland Reliability Project, which was completed in November 2014 at a cost of $108 million. Our goal is to maintain the highest standard of reliable service for our customer-members."It can also be argued that Slater's increase in compensation in recent years has contributed to higher rates for consumers. His salary increased 72% from 2004 through 2014 (from $231,596.00 to $398,090.00), according to data SMECO submitted to the government (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Financial Report). The Social Security Administration's Average Wage Index (AWI) increased 30% over that same period (from $35,648.55 to $46,481.52).The main component of the bill, the SOS energy charge, together with the Power Cost Adjustment, covers the cost of power. That portion of the customer bill has decreased over the past few years, hitting a 10-year low in June 2015. SMECO makes no profit on Standard Offer Service. The wholesale price that SMECO pays for power is passed on to customers without any mark-up. SMECO's new Distribution Service rates do not affect the SOS costs for energy, which make up about 60 percent of the average residential customer bill.SMECO is an electric cooperative. It is owned in whole by its customers, also known as "members."
ANNAPOLIS

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost. Thomas Jefferson

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. Albert Camus

Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose. George Orwell

(March 2, 2016)Journalism student Maggie Gottlieb said protecting students from unfair censorship is important now more than ever, as school administrators continue to use prior review to control what their school's newspaper publishes.In high school, Gottlieb said a faculty member "screamed at (her)" for writing a story he didn't like."He said I never should have been able to write the story," Gottlieb said. And while it aired on the school's weekly news show, it was heavily edited from what she originally wrote.Gottlieb, who attends the University of Maryland and is president of the university's chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, said the Student Press Law Center asked the group to reach out to the state legislature supporting Maryland Senate bill 764: The New Voices Maryland Act.This billintroduced by Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, and Sen. James Rosapepe, D-Prince George'swould give student journalists freedom of speech and freedom of the press by allowing students more freedom in choosing what to publish in school-sponsored publications and protect them against censorship from administrators.Censorship has been an issue since the 1988 Supreme Court decision in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, said Gary Clites, president of the Maryland-D.C. Scholastic Press Association and journalism teacher at Northern High School. The decision said students' First Amendment rights are not violated when administrators censor certain articles."The Hazelwood decision happened the year I started teaching journalism," Clites said. "The Supreme Court had good intentions, but it was written very vaguely and left things completely up in the air."With current legislation, Clites said, administrators have too much power in choosing what to censor. As a result, he said, the First Amendment is "being thrown out the window.""Administrators have to have a strong reason to censor, but they're very smart and come up with other reasons," he said. "Rather than censoring (for legitimate reasons), they're violating the rules, and they'll censor anything that makes their school look bad."The New Voices Maryland act clarifies appropriate circumstances for censorship by providing more detail in what should and should not be censored, Clites said, protecting students from undue censorship as well as advisers from punishment for doing their jobs.Since 1988, eight states have passed laws giving students rights to freedom of the press. In 2015, North Dakota's John Wall New Voices Act passed unanimously in the state legislature and became law. This year, Maryland is one of five states to introduce a New Voices Act.Gottlieb wrote testimony for SB 764 on behalf of her chapter to members of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, which is scheduled to discuss the bill Wednesday. She also wrote a letter to Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller Jr., D-Calvert, about the bill."SPJ is a national organization that promotes freedom of the press, so this is right up our alley," Gottlieb said. "It's the duty of the press to tell the story."On Feb. 12, the state's Open Meetings Compliance Board and members of the public discussed various pending House and Senate bills and debated whether the board would support the bills' overarching goal to require public bodies to post their agendas before meetings. The board did not take an official stance on all of the bills but discussed the language of each and what it would allow in the community.The state legislature is also considering other free-speech related issues, including access to information about public meetings.In the House Health and Government Operations Committee meeting Feb. 24, members discussed and heard testimony for several of these bills, including House bill 217the Open Meetings Actwhich would force public bodies to post agendas as soon as possible before meetings. HB250, sponsored by Delegate Warren Miller, R-Carroll and Howard, requires all employees, officials and members of a public body to receive training within 30 days after taking their position. At the compliance board meeting, member April Ishak said this period was too short, and 60 days would be more realistic. Committee Chair Jonathan Hodgson and board member Rachel Grasmick agreed. (Cross-filed with: SB0528) David Rocah, Senior Staff Attorney of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said HB402sponsored by Delegate Erek Barron, D-Prince George'saddresses the issues of public interest and transparency in the government when residents file complaints against officials. According to the bill, records related to a complaint against a public employee are not personnel records, and custodians can release or deny inspecting records related to misconduct. (Cross-filed with: SB0671) HB413 states that public bodies do not have to provide written minutes of an open meeting if live audio and video streaming is available with an electronic index as well as closed captions or a written transcript. The bill is sponsored by Delegate Alfred Carr, D-Montgomery. The committee heard testimony on HB984, sponsored by Delegate Sid Saab, R-Anne Arundel, which requires public groups to keep minutes from an open session for at least five years after the session occurred. (Cross-filed with: SB0017)"There is a long tradition in Maryland of local public bodies whining about the high cost of keeping decent and accessible public records," said supporter Jim Snider, president of iSolon.org, a nonprofit supporting democratic reform. "Most of those arguments would be laughable except that they have been successfully used to preserve the status quo." Snider also testified in support of HB492, which establishes rules for the use of a public official's government and personal e-mail addresses. (Cross-filed with: SB0155) HB1088, sponsored by Delegate Bonnie Cullison, D-Montgomery, requires all members of a public group to take an online training class on the Open Meetings Act within 60 days of employment and every two years afterward, and public bodies that violate the Open Meetings Act and received complaints must be included in the State Open Meetings Law Compliance Board's annual report. (Cross-filed with: SB0754) HB823, similar to HB1088, requires all members of a public body to complete an online class on the Open Meetings Act within 90 days of employment and established civil penalties up to $500. Delegate Marice Morales, D-Montgomery, is the bill's sponsor. (Cross-filed with: SB0598)
WASHINGTON (March 2, 2016)In response to incidents against American Muslims following recent terror attacks, six Maryland House Democrats are co-sponsoring a resolution condemning "violence, bigotry and hateful rhetoric" against Muslims in the United States.



Between 1999 and 2014, the number of hate crime incidents against Muslims increased by over 381 percent, according to analysis of FBI Hate Crime data. Many Muslims have faced backlashes following the Paris attacks and San Bernardino shooting.



As of Feb. 23, 129 House Democrats have co-sponsored the resolution condemning retaliation against Muslims. Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., is the chief sponsor. The resolution has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on the Constitution and civil justice.



"It is unacceptable to use violent and hateful rhetoric that targets any group or individual on the basis of religion," said Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Fort Washington, one of the cosponsors and a candidate for the U.S. Senate.



The other Maryland Democratic representatives who are resolution cosponsors include John Delaney of Potomac, Chris Van Hollen of Kensington, John Sarbanes of Towson, Elijah Cummings of Baltimore and Steny Hoyer of Mechanicsville.



Resolutions are designed to express the collective opinion of the chamber.



"(This resolution's) purpose isto hopefully express the consensus of Congress to the public and administration on a serious social issue like Islamophobia and its impact on the safety and rights of American Muslims," said Robert McCaw, government affairs manager at the Council on American-Islamic Relations.



He added that if the resolution were to pass the House, "it would also act as a signal to other lawmakers that the introduction of anti-Muslim legislation based in the principles of Islamophobia would not be welcomed by Congress, or at least the House in this case."



A similar Senate resolution sponsored by Sen. Steve Daines, D-Mont. aims to affirm "the importance of religious freedom as a fundamental human right that is essential to a free society" and protected by the Constitution.



"In Maryland and across the country, we continue to embrace and protect cultural, racial and religious diversity," Edwards said.



Pew Research Center estimated there were about 3.3. million Muslims living in the United States in 2015, which is nearly 1 percent of the total population. In 2014, 1 percent of Maryland's population was Muslim, according to the American Values Atlas. This translates to almost 60,000 people.



The Muslim population is projected to double by 2050, according to analysts.



"The best thing Congress could do at this time to prevent Islamophobia while respecting the First Amendment rights of those who hate Muslims would be to adopt anti-profiling legislation," McCaw said.



McCaw mentioned the End Racial Profiling Act, which would prohibit law enforcement from racially profiling people. The Safe Schools Improvement Act would also prevent bullying in schools, he said. Both bills have been referred to committees for further review.



Stop Bullying, a blog run by the Department of Health and Human Services, also posted suggestions to prevent bullying of Muslim students.



Suggestions for educators included teaching students about discrimination, encouraging them to be allies when facing bias or bullying, and creating an anti-bias learning environment by incorporating the perspectives of Muslims in the curriculum.



"We must make our voices heard in the face of hate," Edwards said. "H. Res. 569 reaffirms that violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims, and all communities in this country, will not be tolerated."
LEONARDTOWN, Md. (March 2, 2016)A male 17-year-old Leonardtown High School student was arrested today and charged with several criminal violations to include Possession of Marijuana with the Intent to Distribute and Weapons on School Property. The student's name has not been released to the public.



After receiving a tip about the student selling marijuana on school grounds, sheriff's office deputies, in conjunction with school staff members from St. Mary's County Public Schools, conducted an investigation into the allegation which led to a search and seizure warrant being obtained for the student's vehicle.



Police say the vehicle, which was in the school parking lot, was searched. Nearly 100 grams of high grade marijuana (street value of nearly $1,000), three digital scales, packaging materials, a cell phone, two knives, and a hatchet were recovered from inside the vehicle.



The youth was released to the custody of his parents pending a hearing in the Juvenile Court.
0 SHARES Share Tweet Google Pinterest Linkedin Mail

I knew it would be challenging to teach English to the Basotho children in my rural school in Lesotho, but I never expected the level to be this low.

In Lesotho, all subjects (except for Sesotho, of course) are supposed to be taught in English, but most of the teachers are afraid of speaking English (so I was told) and so they revert to their own language. Another major problem is the repetition method of teaching. Some teachers think that the louder they, and their students yell, the more likely they are to remember. I was walking past second grade, and heard the teacher saying, I have a right to an education, and the children shouted this phrase ten times. I then asked the teacher if the children knew what they were saying in English. She asked them in Sesotho, and they had no clue.

I decided to teach English to Kindergarten, first and second grade, as they are not learning the basics. They all know how to respond to, How are you? they repeat this during morning Assembly, We are fine and how are you?

The first grade teacher admitted, I dont know what Im doing. Ive never taught first grade. The kids dont know the alphabet, and due to a lack of supplies, and a lack of teaching skills, memorization and repetition with the teacher pointing her long stick to numbers and letters on the blackboard, seems to be the only way that the kids are taught.

I subscribed to a website: http://education.com, so I could come up with some ready-made worksheets. The only problem is we dont have electricity, or a photocopier or printer at school. Our Principal keeps telling me there is no money for supplies, photocopying, or printing. She does have a nice flatscreen TV and leather furniture in her convent though.

I want to show the teachers that there are so many other things we can do than simply repeat and yell, so I printed some worksheets in the capital city, and tested the second graders with an Alphabet Blocks worksheet. I was shocked to see the results. Not one child could write the upper case alphabet. There were 12 letters missing, and they were in sequence. Even though they can sing the A, B, Cs they have no idea how to write the letters. Some even put numbers instead of letters, or several lower case h and ba. They are so used to copying from the board, and not ever thinking about what theyre writing, saying or doing.

I decided to buy a few pairs of scissors, and some play dough, to cut the letters out and use their fine motor skills. The teachers have never tried these techniques, and the Principal laughed at me, as though Im just making the children have fun, and not learn anything from the government book, that they are incapable of reading, let alone discuss any of the second grade assignments. (see the topics below.)

The second grade teacher did not show up today, (quite common for teachers to skip school) so we took out the scissors and felt pens, and I made them cut out a lower case and an upper case A. They loved it, and concentrated so hard on cutting out the letter, and coloring it. This was the first time they were given scissors and felt pens. I then played the ABC phonics song on my phone, and we sang together. Here they are working hard and enjoying it.

With a pass rate of only 17% in 7th grade, my school has to make some changes in order to improve. Im helping my 7th grade English teacher, who is a young enthusiastic teacher. He is the one who asked Peace Corps to send a volunteer to the school. I admire his hard work and dedication to making changes at my school.
Thursday, 3/3

Circus

Cirque du Soleil returns to South Florida with its new show, Toruk: The First Flight, tonight at the BB&T Center in Sunrise. The fanciful arena show, inspired by James Camerons groundbreaking film, Avatar, tells the story of the Navi and their symbiotic relationship with nature. The show plays through Sunday before moving to the American Airlines Arena in Miami on March 10. Tickets at Ticketmaster.com.

Friday, 3/4

Art

A temporary urban art gallery devoted to controversial gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe opens this weekend on the Wolfson Campus of Miami-Dade College. The show will include large projections of some of his most famous images and is being mounted to promote an HBO documentary premiering on Monday, April 4 at 9 p.m. The gallery will be open daily, Thursday through Saturday, 5  10 p.m.

Saturday, 3/5

Theater

Pembroke Pines Theater of the Performing Arts presents Young Frankenstein, the monster musical hit from Mel Brooks, through March 20 at the Susan B. Katz Theater at the River of Grass Arts Park, 17195 Sheridan St. in Pembroke Pines. The production stars audience favorite Larry Buzzeo in the comic role made famous by Gene Wilder in the classic film version. Tickets are $25 at PPTOPA.Tix.com.

Sunday, 3/6

Theater

Youre going to want to get up and dance at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale because the hit Broadway musical Kinky Boots is playing through March 13. This show has a huge heart and even higher heels. Charlie Price realizes he can take charge of his destiny with the help of Lola, a sassy drag queen who helps save his familys floundering shoe factory. Tickets start at $30 at BrowardCenter.org.

Monday, 3/7

Theater

Jan McArts New Play Reading Series continues tonight with the latest work from Dan Clancy, Middletown. This moving play from the writer of The Timekeepers focuses on two couples who reminisce on their friendship, marriages, children, and the choices they made over 35 years. The staged reading offers a fascinating opportunity to observe the evolution of a new play. Tickets are $10 at Lynn.edu/events.

Tuesday, 3/8

Cabaret

If you didnt get to see Lee Roy Reams as Dolly Levi at the Wick last fall, then get your tickets for the Broadway legends cabaret act tonight at 8 p.m. at the Delray Beach Center for Arts at Old School Square, 51 N. Swinton Blvd. in Delray Beach. Reams will sing and dance and share stories about his 10 major Broadway shows, including The Producers and 42nd Street. Tickets are $49 at OldSchoolSquare.org.
Syphilis can have very serious complications when left untreatedMost people who have chlamydia dont know it since the disease often has no symptomsANYONE who is sexually active can get gonorrhea.

These are the current PSA banners featured on the Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) homepage of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website, www.cdc.gov.

Across the U.S., gay and bisexual men face the highest and rising number of syphilis infections, according to a November 2015 CDC trends report.

While rates have increased among both men and women, men account for more than 90 percent of all primary and secondary syphilis cases. Men who have sex with men (MSM) account for 83 percent of male cases where the sex of the sex partner is known, the report states.

Dr. Steven Santiago, chief medical officer of Care Resource, a nonprofit and health center for uninsured and under-insured LGBT patients in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, gave his opinion on more cases of syphilis among gay men in South Florida.

Its the increase in use of recreational drugs, such as crystal meth, molly, and bath salts. These drugs, and alcohol, cause increases with high-risk unprotected/condomless sex, Santiago said.

He added, It is common to diagnose someone with an STD and HIV at the same time. The risk is increased even further if the person uses recreational drugs.

Syphilis is an STD that can cause long-term complications if not treated correctly. Symptoms in adults are divided into stages  primary, secondary, latent, and late syphilis  according to the CDC.

Syphilis can be contracted through direct contact with a syphilis sore during vaginal, anal or oral sex. Sores can be found on the penis, vagina, anus, in the rectum or on the lips and in the mouth.

The CDC reported recently that condomless sex had increased by 20 percent over the past decade amongst gay men. This can absolutely contribute to a rise in STD cases, said Stephen Fallon, executive director of Latinos Salud, a gay mens health and advocacy organization with offices and STD testing facilities in Wilton Manors and Miami Beach.

In 2014, general population increases were seen in all three nationally reported STDS  chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis (primary, secondary and congenital)  the CDC said.

Nationally, chlamydia cases in 2014 were at almost 1.5 million, an increase of 2.8 percent in 2013. Gonorrhea cases were around 350,000, an increase of 5.1 percent. Syphilis (primary and secondary) cases were at 20,000, an increase of 15.1 percent, while syphilis (congenital) cases were at nearly 500, an increase of 27.5 percent from previous year.

STDs are a substantial health challenge facing the United States. CDC estimates that nearly 20 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year in this country, half among young people aged 15-24, and account for almost $16 billion in health care costs, the CDC trends report states.

Each of these infections is a potential threat to an individuals immediate and long-term health and well-being. In addition to increasing a persons risk for acquiring and transmitting HIV infection, STDs can lead to severe reproductive health complications, such as infertility.

Chlamydia is a common STD that can infect both men and women, according to the CDC. It can be contracted by having vaginal, anal or oral sex with someone who has the STD. If a sex partner is male, chlamydia can still be contracted even if he does not ejaculate (cum).

Gonorrhea, which can infect men or women, can cause infections in the genitals, rectum and throat, the CDC reports.

Federal, state and local health agencies are aware of an uptick in STDs and are working to address the increase through educational campaigns, improved testing and better reporting methods.

Many STD cases go undiagnosed and unreported, and a majority of cases when discovered are in private physician offices or health maintenance organizations, according to the CDC.

Miami-Dade and Broward counties collectively accounted for the largest number of primarily chlamydia cases, followed by gonorrhea and syphilis cases in South Florida and statewide from 2005-2014, according to data from the Florida Department of Healths Division of Public Health Statistics.

During this time period, Miami-Dade County STD cases increased from 5,721 to 13,440. Broward County cases increased from 6,490 to 11,791. Palm Beach County had a smaller increase in cases from 3,085 to 5,955.

Statewide, there was an upward trend from 64,321 to 105,461 STD cases.

Mara Gambineri, spokeswoman for the state health department, said that population increases should be considered when examining data.

Miami-Dade is the largest county, and it is not unexpected that they have the highest number of cases. The vast majority of the increase in bacterial STDs is from reported chlamydia cases, which increased significantly statewide from about 40,000 cases in 2005 to over 70,000 cases by 2009, Gambineri said.

Gambineri additionally attributed an increase in chlamydia cases to improved testing technology for screening.

Prior to 2006, culture was previously considered to be the gold standard for diagnosis of infection. Nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) was adopted by most Florida health-care providers in 2006 and has resulted in better accuracy, she said.

It provides superior sensitivity and specificity and is now the recommended method for diagnosis of chlamydia, Gambineri said. Moreover, NAAT requires a urine sample rather than an invasive swabbing of the suspected infection site, a far more acceptable option for clients who opt for testing.

Gambineri further noted that the state health department has implemented a new surveillance and case management system for STDs that has been in place since 2006, and today is at almost 100-percent reporting with testing laboratories.

This new system has the ability to incorporate laboratory results through electronic transmission, she said. In 2015, approximately 95 percent of all positive STD lab reports received by the department were electronic.

State-level data for this STD trend is not broken down by age groups, gender or sexual orientation; however, the state health department estimates that almost 200,000 gay men live in South Florida, according to Latinos Salud.

Fallon, from Salud, said gonorrhea and chlamydia cases are highest among heterosexual women, but thats largely a matter of missed opportunities for diagnosis Studies show that if screening for gay men doesnt include self-collected rectal specimens, up to 60 percent of infections will be missed. Were in negotiations to add that screening to our service rooster.

Fallon added that Salud has a new program called DIversiSafe, which empowers gay men to choose their preferred method of protection against STDs.

For some, that will be condoms. For others, who are never going to be comfortable with condoms, we educate them about choices like negotiated safety, PrEP and TasP (treatment as prevention). Properly implemented, any of these will lower new HIV infections, though only negotiated safety would likely lower STDs. For those using any of the condomless risk reduction methods, we recommend vaccination against hepatitis A and B, and against HPV, he said.

Santiago, from Care Resource, doesnt necessarily agree with this approach.

This is also somewhat controversial. I believe that normalizing unprotected sex in this manner will decrease the perception of the risk that it carries, Santiago said.

Gambineri said STDs are preventable and that state and county health departments are committed to educating communities on how to prevent STDs by making positive choices, as well as knowing how and where to receive testing and treatment.

She added, Detecting and treating STDs early is key to protecting population health. All county health departments offer STD testing services; some even have mobile health units that go into communities with high-risk populations.

Get tested

Find free STD health clinics for testing and treatment in Florida by visiting www.yourstdhelp.com/florida.html.
Lesbian

Ellen Pages Gaycation Premiers

(SFGN) Vice launched its new cable station, Viceland on Monday, which will host a lineup of lifestyle programming including Ellen Pages Gaycation. The show will feature Page and her best friend Ian Daniel traveling the world and examining gay and lesbian culture at different locations.

The first episode of Gaycation, was released Wednesday on YouTube. (https://youtu.be/NnrAISE6x08 ) and visits Ni-chome, a gay district in Japan, a country where same sex marriage is illegal and there are no discrimination protections for sexual orientation or gender identity. Although Page had visited Japan twice before, she was closeted at the time, having only come out two years ago at the HRCs first annual Time to THRIVE conference.

The premier episode of Pages Gaycation airs on Viceland March 2.

Bisexual

BRC Designates March as Bisexual Health Awareness Month

(EDGE) With a focus on the unique needs and experiences of bisexual+ youth, the Bisexual Resource Center (BRC) proudly proclaims March as Bisexual Health Awareness Month (BHAM) for the third year in a row.

Throughout the month of March, BHAM will focus its efforts on bisexual+ youth with the following weekly themes:

March 1-4: (Statistics) A focus on current statistics and research surrounding bisexual+ youth, including mental health, sexual health, and interpersonal violence.

March 7-11: (Intersectionality) An emphasis on how race, ethnicity, gender, ability, and class can further impact social, economic, and health disparities among bisexual+ youth, particularly in regards to experiences of oppression and discrimination.

March 14-18: (Resources) A spotlight on current resources, and the creation of new ones, that can improve the health and wellbeing of bisexual+ youth.

March 21-25: (Action) The promotion of programs, policies, and services that can work to prevent or decrease social, economic, and health disparities among bisexual+ youth.

The third year of Bisexual Health Awareness Month launches Tuesday, March 1st on the BRC's Twitter (with hashtags #BiHealthMonth and #BHAM)

For more information, visit www.biresource.net

Transgender

Texas to Use Birth Certificate to Determine Athlete's Gender

(AP) School superintendents in Texas have overwhelmingly approved a change that requires public school officials to use a birth certificate to determine a student-athlete's gender.

A referendum ballot submitted to superintendents last month shows they voted 586 to 32 to amend University Interscholastic League rules when it comes to transgender athletes.The UIL is the state's governing body for high school sports.

The amendment goes into effect Aug. 1. It does allow other government documents to be used for the purpose of identification if a birth certificate is unavailable.

Transgender advocates condemned the move, saying it will force transgender students to amend their birth certificate, a laborious and costly process, in order to play. Chris Mosier, the founder of TransAthlete.com, told the newspaper that the policy would deny transgender athletes an "equal opportunity to sports."

Queer

Black Queer Organizer Interrupts Clinton Fundraiser

(SFGN) Ashley Williams is a Black queer organizer living in Charlotte, North Carolina the Nation reports. But Wednesday, Williams drew attention for interrupting a private fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. While Clinton was delivering a speech, Williams stood in front of her with a sign that read We have to bring them to heel, a quote from Clintons 1996 super predators speech.

"They are often the kinds of kids that are called 'super-predators,' " Clinton said in 1996, in reference to an increased rate of crime and violence. No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel."

The speech has come under scrutiny as an example of Clintons previous support for incarceration policies which had a disproportionately negative effect on the black community.

"I thought that quote was important not only because it was her own words, but because that was her pathologizing black youth as these criminal, animal people," Williams told The Washington Post. "And we know thats not right and we know thats really racist."

In a written response to The Washington Post Clinton said: Looking back, I shouldnt have used those words, and I wouldnt use them today."
The six Expedition 46 crew members gather one last time before saying farewell and closing the hatches between the Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station. From left are, Yuri Malenchenko, Tim Kopra, Mikhail Kornienko, Sergey Volkov, Scott Kelly and Tim Peake. Credit: NASA. NASA

Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly of NASA, and Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos landed their Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST. Russian recovery teams will help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after their stay in space.

Kelly and Kornienko launched to the space station on March 27, 2015, for their one-year mission. The pairs return on March 1 marks the end of 340 days aboard the space station and almost 143 million miles during their time in space, roughly the same average distance between Earth and Mars.

With Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov landing in Kazakhstan, Kelly has logged 520 days in space on two flights, the first of which was on space shuttle mission STS-103 in 1998. Kornienko has spent 516 days in space on two flights, the first of which was on Expedition 23/24 in 2010. Volkov arrived at the station on September 4 and has spent 548 days in space on three flights, the first of which was in 2008.

Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos, and Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) remain aboard the station to continue research and maintenance. The remainder of the Expedition 47 crew, NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skriprochka and Alexey Ovchinin, is scheduled to launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on March 18.

The one-year mission will provide new insights into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and stress of long-duration spaceflight. The science will continue for months and years as the data are collected and analyzed, an important step in the first phase of NASAs efforts to prepare humanity for the journey to Mars. Such Earth-reliant exploration will lead to more complex operations in orbit around the moon where NASA will demonstrate, advance, and validate the capabilities and technologies we will need to send humans to Mars.

On-Orbit Status Report

44 Soyuz (44S) Undock and Landing: The 44S Crew (Kelly, Volkov, and Kornienko) undocked from the ISS Mini-Research Module (MRM)-2 docking port at 7:02pm CST. The Soyuz deorbit burn occurred at 9:32pm CST resulting in a nominal landing in the Kazakhstan southern zone at 10:26pm CST. The ISS will be in 3-crew operations until 46S docking on March 19th.

Payload On-Orbit Still Shots for Utilization and Maintenance (POSSUM) Photographs: Peake obtained still digital photos of all payload racks to document any configuration changes and to support crew training.

Habitability Walkthrough Video: Kopra recorded a video of his walk-through of an area or activity and provide insights related to human factors and habitability. The Habitability investigation results will be used to assess the relationship between crew members and their environment to better prepare for future long-duration spaceflights. Observations recorded during 6 month and 1 year missions assist spacecraft designers to determine how much habitable volume is required, and whether a missions duration impacts how much space crew members need.

Twins Study: In support of the Twins Study, Peake obtained an ambient blood sample from Kelly for stowage on 44S. This investigation integrates ten different studies led by multiple investigators. The studies take advantage of a unique opportunity to look at the effects of space travel on identical twins, with one of the twins experiencing space travel for a year while the other remains earth-bound. The study also looks at changes in the human body that are important in the fields of genetics, psychology, physiology, microbiology, and immunology.

Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Video: Peake recorded a video and explained the CSA T-Bone experiment. The video is for the general public to view on the web and social media to promote science on board the ISS.

Story Time: Kelly photographed Peake as he read from the childrens book The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home. Story Time is an advocacy Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) and literacy project. It consists of reading seven books and performing related science demonstrations at a later date. Story Time provides an opportunity to deliver ISS research content to communities that have not previously been engaged in the space program.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

HRF  Samples Collection and Stowage Prep

TWIN  Saliva Samples Collection

HRF  Samples Insertion into MELFI

TWIN  Saliva Samples Collection

TWIN  Centrifuge Setup and Blood Samples Collection

TWIN  Assistance during Blood Samples Collection

Checkout of Station Support [???] Laptops Antivirus Scanning Results

HRF  Blood Samples Collection

HRF  Assistance during Blood Samples Collection

Return Cargo Transfer into Soyuz 718

HRF  Blood Samples Preparation, Packing, and Handover to RS for Transfer into Soyuz 718

Closure of SM Window Shutters #6, 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14

MRM1-FGB Interface Screw Clamps Tightening Work Prep

CMS  ARED Quarterly Maintenance

TWIN  Samples Stowage and Hardware Restow after the Experiment

HRF  Samples Stowage and Hardware Restow after the Experiment

ARED  Fly Wheel Cylinder Removal

Columbus HAM Radio Session

KORREKTSIYA. Blood Samples Stow into ECCO Mini-container and Transfer to Soyuz 718

ECCO  Blood Samples Retrieval from MELFI and Handover to RS for Transfer into Soyuz 718

POSSUM Payload Photography

HRF  Post-Experiment Blood Samples Stowage and Hardware Restow

Transfer and Packing of Return Cargo into Soyuz 718. Photography of Return Cargo

GoPro HERO3 Cameras Setup inside the Descent Module of Soyuz 718

Crew Departure Preparations for Return to Earth

CIR  Rack Alignment Guide Installation

WRS  Water Samples Analysis

Dose Tracker Data Entry  Subject

Soyuz 718 Transfer Completion Report

Soyuz 718 [?? ??] Hatch Cover Surface Photography

HABIT  HDD Cleaning

OCA Downlink of Soyuz 718 [?? ??] Hatch Cover Surface Inspection Photographs after the Return Cargo Transfer is Complete

Soyuz 718 Undock Comm Config

Soyuz 718 RSA2-S/G2 Comm Check

USOS Window Shutter Closure

SALMARK  Health Assessment Questionnaire

Soyuz 718 Activation

SM and Columbus Ham Radio Deactivation

SALMARK  Health Assessment Questionnaire

On MCC Go Removal of QD Screw Clamps on MRM2 side and Post-Removal Clamps Inspection. Video Recording of the Interface

Soyuz-MRM2 Transfer Hatches Closure.

MRM2 Transfer Hatch Closure TV Report

Soyuz-MRM2 Transfer Hatches Closure

TOCA  Data Recording

On MCC Go Leak Check After Soyuz 718-MRM2 Hatch Closure

Dose Tracker Data Entry  Subject

Downlink of ??? uninstallation from MRM2 in mpeg2 via Ku-band

HABIT  Experiment Ops

Story Time Historical Photo

[????] Deactivation and Closure of Apps on Central Post SSC

HABIT  Video Recording during the Experiment Ops

SPRINT  Post-Experiment Closeout Ops

Soyuz 718 ODF operations, undock and landing

On MCC Go Post-deactivation ELEKTRON purge

On MCC Go Switch DC-Soyuz PEV (???) in MRM2 to CLOSED

WRS Maintenance

IMS Delta File Prep

CEVIS Isolator Inspection

ISTOCHNIK-M. Preparation for Taking Measurements

ISTOCHNIK-M. Turning on Telemetry Recording from Soyuz 718

Return to Nominal Comm Config

Completed Task List Items

UPA Hardware Gather

Ground Activities

All activities were completed unless otherwise noted.

44S Undock Operations

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Wednesday, 03/02: Crew Off Duty

Thursday, 03/03: Robonaut CPCI Fault Troubleshooting

Friday, 03/04: BASS H/W Stow, Food Consolidation

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[???] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  On

[???] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  Off

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab  Override

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3  Operate

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab  Idle

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3  Operate

Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA)  Process

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)  Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Off

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Full Up
A closer look at the indicators behind the statistics paints a different picture.

Font size: A - | A +

The Bratislava region repeatedly places high among EU statistics of the richest regions, but analysts warn that when interpreting such positive results, indicators based on which the ranking is based should be taken into consideration and the whole picture should be painted.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union, published a report in late February. Based on this report the region of Bratislava placed sixth overall with 186 percent of the EU average when regional GDP per capita, expressed in terms of purchasing power standards for 2014, was taken into consideration. Inner London - West in the UK placed first with 539 percent, followed by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (266 percent), Brussels in Belgium (207 percent), Hamburg in Germany (206 percent) and Inner London - East in the UK (204 percent). The Bratislava region surpassed the region of Prague, which placed ninth with 173 percent and even Vienna which finished 17th with 158 percent.

Placing of Bratislava is, in our opinion, overrated due to several reasons, Michal Habrman, analyst of the Institute of Financial Policy (IFP), a governmental think tank at the Finance Ministry, told The Slovak Spectator.

Radovan Durana, an analyst at the think tank Institute for Economic and Social Studies (INESS), according to whom the statistics regarding wealth of regions should be taken with a pinch of salt, agrees, citing especially the kind of indicators evaluated behind this statistical phenomenon.

Alas, Bratislava, that appears richer than it is in reality, is paying for this when it does not have the right to draw EU funds, Durana told The Slovak Spectator.

The analysts point out that the Bratislava regions GDP includes also activities of those companies that have a headquarters in the capital, but conduct many activities also in other regions. Durana also mentions that when the biggest carmaker in Slovakia, Volkswagen Slovakia, sits in the Bratislava region but belongs to VW, this makes an impression that the region is extremely rich. As a consequence almost 30 percent of Slovakias GDP is created in Bratislava, which is more that Pragues share on the Czech Republics GDP. Thus the reason why in this comparison Bratislava has a better position than Prague.

Habrman and Durana further point out that the method of calculation via purchasing parity does not take into consideration price differences between Bratislava and the rest of Slovakia, when costs of living in Bratislava are higher, especially due to higher prices of housing and some services. If the regional GDP per capita is not expressed via purchasing power, that of Bratislava would be about 123 percent of the EU average, according to Habrman.

The IFP analyst also referred to the significantly underestimated number of citizens of Bratislava when a large amount of people who actually live and work in the Bratislava region, have their permanent residence registered somewhere else.

Then when the GDP is calculated per registered persons in the region, the final indicator of GDP per capita is exaggerated for Bratislava, said Habrman.

Moreover, Eurostat itself notes in the report, that in some regions the GDP per capita figures can be significantly influenced by commuter flows.

Net commuter inflows in these regions push up production to a level that could not be achieved by the resident active population on its own, wrote Eurostat in the news release. There is a corresponding effect in regions with commuter outflows.

Habrman added that this factor is common for regions consisting only of the capital and close vicinity like Bratislava, London, Brussels, Vienna, Prague or Bucharest.

Katarina Muchova, analyst at Slovenska Sporitelna, also points out that the GDP per capita speaks about the economic activity, but does not measure the income available to households in a given region or country.

Economist Vladimir Balaz from the Institute for Forecasting of the Slovak Academy of Sciences points out that GDP can be evaluated from various viewpoints. For instance, when a countrys GDP is calculated by using the income approach, it indicates what portion of GDP ordinary people enjoy. In such a case the countrys GDP consists of two main items: wages of employees and profits of businesses. Balaz specified that in Slovakia the portion consisting of the share taken by businesses is very high compared with other European countries when it amounts to almost two thirds. The part taken by employees is only one third.

Across Europe, except Romania, it is vice versa, Balaz told The Slovak Spectator, explaining this with profits of multinational companies having their headquarters also in Bratislava, yet these profits are being exported in the form of dividends. Thus he admits that in general the GDP created in the Bratislava region is high, but common people do not enjoy it.

The main message of Eurostats statistics about regions of the EU is, according to Balaz, that Slovakias economy is extremely dependent on foreign investments and foreign trade, while what can be done in the future is to try to draw to Slovakia more sophisticated production which would mean higher remuneration of workers.

Regional disparities

In spite of its imperfections the ranking [of regions] represents the best available way for comparison of regions according to their economic performance, said Habrman, adding that it enables identification of which regions are poor, average and rich, while the Bratislava region is by its economic activity well-above the EU average.

But in the case of Slovakia, for Habrman it is rather interesting to see a significant difference in economic activity of the regions of eastern and western Slovakia that ended with 53 and 72 percent of the EU average, respectively. For central Slovakia Eurostat reports 61 percent.

Muchova of SLSP agrees, pointing out that Slovakias regions except for Bratislava finished below the EU average and that the regional disparities have not only sustained, but even grown, especially between that of Bratislava and eastern Slovakia.
KAMILA Kusendova had to leave her post as the head of a childrens home in Nove Mesto nad Vahom due to machinations with sponsors gifts.

Font size: A - | A +

Her dismissal followed an inspection in the childrens home which confirmed the misuse of money granted by the sponsors to purchase gifts for children. It was initiated by a group of employees who turned to the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (UPSVaR) with a suspicion that Kusendova uses part of the money for herself, the Sme daily which first wrote about the case reported.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Kusendova has rejected any suspicions and called the motion a revenge by her employees who refused to fulfil their duties.

Read also:

Read also: Sponsors money lost in orphanage Read more

The employees claimed, among others, that the orphanage has signed four 1,000 contracts with the Manz company from Nove Mesto nad Vahom about contributions for Christmas presents for children, especially shoes, clothes or toys. But most of the money has not gotten to children.

When asked, the director initially said that she does not know anything about it, but later she submitted some bills, for example for purchase of sunglasses, mens pyjamas or driving gloves. Yet none of them was from goods purchased for children, Sme wrote.
SOFTWARE company Eset has opened a sales and distribution office in the United Kingdom by acquiring its long-term partner company.

Font size: A - | A +

Eset acquired data encryption company DESlock which is also based in the UK back in 2015. It highlighted its focus both on market position and technology outreach.

We have confidence that fusing the local Eset UK team with our global talent, its know-how and experience, creates the perfect mix to strengthen our market position in Britain, said Richard Marko, CEO at Eset, as quoted in a press release.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

The new Eset office is based in Bournemouth, in southern England and will be overseen directly by the Eset EMEA sales and marketing director. All the employees of the former exclusive partner remain and more will be added starting this year, with the expectation of at least doubling team size within five years, the press release reads.

The company has been present in the UK market for more than a decade thanks to its relationship with its partner company. In line with Esets strategy, it recorded double-digit sales growth in the UK in 2015.

Especially in the last few years, we have cooperated very closely with the team in the UK and are very excited to move this cooperation even further, in order to become a household name on the British market for all Eset consumer and business endpoint security solutions, said Miroslav Mikus, ESET EMEA sales and marketing director. Prospectively, also reaching a position among the top three vendors in the UK.

In the first year at the new office, the company will drive expansion of the team, focus on top-level technical support and reseller management with the aim of optimising for the long-term development of the partner network in the UK, Mikus added.

Establishing a direct Eset office in the UK is part of the companys long-term strategy to boost market growth in EMEAs top IT security market, the UK and to continue year-to-year double digit growth in sales. Along with the regional EMEA office Eset already has, there are also now eight local offices and research and development centres based in the European Union as well as an extensive network of European partner companies, the press release reads.

The opening of the Eset office in the UK follows the establishment of its German office in in 2013.
HUNTERS in the association of hunting organisations Hubert complain that legislation forces some 60,000 hunters to contribute to the Slovak Hunters Chamber (SPK), which fails to tell them what they do with the budget.

Font size: A - | A +

The chamber was created in 2009 as a part of a new law on hunting adopted by Smer MPs. Since then it has been led by Smer MP Tibor Lebocky. SPK united all hunting associations and is the only institution allowed to grant hunting licences.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Such an obligatory body is not fair because hunting is not profession, according to critics who point out that SPK members and even government do not have the power to check its finances.

Everyone who wants to have a hunting licence has to be chamber member. Every hunting organisation has to be chamber member, Huberts head Peter Cagala told The Slovak Spectator. And those payments are totally nonsensical.

Gathering support

Hubert gathered support from some of the biggest opposition parties for a plan to change legislation and rules concerning hunting. Hunters demand a cancellation of the obligation to join SPK and some payments for the chamber. They also want to cancel the obligation to renew hunting licences every five years.

Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO), Most-Hid, Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), Siet and Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) signed Huberts memorandum pledging to do so. The ruling Smer party has not responded to Huberts call and the Slovak National Party (SNS) said it will discuss the issue after general election March 5.

Such complaints have been around for awhile but they are not constructive, according to head of SPK Imrich Suba.

This is just rerunning rhetoric of several people with a single motivation to destroy the organisation, naturally without any proposed solution, Suba told The Slovak Spectator. Even if they had some solution its result would be anarchy.

Politicians also like to hunt

A number of Slovak MPs are hunters. The SME daily counted 18 hunters of 150 MPs while the final number is probably higher. Therefore hunting legislation probably concerns them too. Some Smer MPs would like to adopt some of the proposed changes.

Antonin Cicon who was a Smer MP, but has since become a substitute member, is one of them. He supports the idea of one organisation uniting all hunters but also wants to change the required renewal of hunting licences.

I would support the idea that a hunting licence is lifelong or at least 10-years long , Cicon told The Slovak Spectator. If someone has a problem with a permit to use a gun it could be checked via a gun licence.

Constitutional Court takes the case

Opposition MPs previously approached the Constitutional Court over this matter in 2014. The filed complaint was signed by 47 MPs from OLaNO, Most-Hid, KDH, SaS and Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU).

The court rejected their demand to block the enforcement of the legislation but it is deciding about the issue. The public hearing is slated for March 16, court spokeswoman Martina Demcakova told the Slovak Spectator.

On the other hand, it was not politicians but ordinary people and hunters who collected 350,000 signatures in a petition for creating a united hunting organisation as a guarantee of nature and cultural and historical values, according to Suba.

This decision is proof that they act before they study the organisation and the operation of similar modern organisations in developed Europe, reads the SPK statement.

However, this petition was about hunting organisations, not about SPK, according to Cagala.

Everyone signed it, even me, men in taverns and pensioners coming out from church, Cagala said.

Obligation goes too far

MPs filling a complaint against the obligatory element of the SPK referred to a Hungarian constitutional courts decision, which cancelled it in a similar matter.

Another reason to doubt the legality of enforced membership in SPK is, for example, the fact that people who fish, a similar hobby, are not obliged to unite in a fishing union, Jan Micovsky of OLaNO said in 2014, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Even professional foresters who have voluntary membership in the Slovak Forestry Chamber have such freedoms.

Micovsky added that obligatory membership in chambers is acceptable only in professions such as auditors, lawyers and so on.

Such comparisons are not right because hunting is not a hobby but a serious activity which should have specific rules, according to Suba.

Only experienced and well-prepared hunters should have the right to intervene in nature , said Suba. It is a relict of past times when anyone could become hunter within a short time and they thought that they could do anything.

He added that SPK cannot be compared with the Hungarian chamber because it is an organisation of people, while SPK is an organisation of legal persons.

Questionable transparency

When all basis payments are accounted including the hunting licence renewal fee, hunting ground fee, individual fee for membership and contributions to a hunting development fund, the SPK receives around 1.5 million from around 60,000 hunters per year.

SPK claims that its yearly income is 535,000. With this budget SPK is running 13 activities which the state would otherwise have to do.

However, SPK runs only those activities which are profitable and less profitable activities, like managing hunting plans, are still burdens upon state regional offices, according to Cagala.

Moreover, it is impossible to learn how chambers handle that money because it does not have publicly accessible annual reports. Even the Environment Ministry stated in the past that it does not have the power to check SPKs finances.

Suba responds that SPK is more open and transparent than many other similar chambers and its representatives are elected at the regional and state levels.

We discuss all information in our meeting where we present reports on our activities in particular areas such as hunting, cynology, education and so on, Suba said.

Cagala, however, questioned it saying that this statement is superficial.

SPK is obliged to publish everything; they live from our membership fees therefore we have the right to obtain complete information, Cagala said.
A DRAFT proposal to provide RKN Global Europe company with investment aid, published by the Economy Ministry on March 1, confirms that Ukrainian firms accused of corruption in the US are involved in the project.

Font size: A - | A +

The company plans to build a plant to produce duty stamps and clean copies of personal documents in an industrial park near Banska Bystrica, investing 89.4 million into the plant. Of this sum, 44.8 million should be paid from the companys sources, while the remaining 44.6 million from other sources, like bank loans, the Sme daily reported.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

The construction of a 38,000 square metre plant should start as soon as possible, with the launch of production being scheduled for the first half of 2017.

The Economy Ministry proposes to provide the investor with state aid of 18 million, of which 10 million should be used to subsidise purchases of tangible and intangible assets. The company should receive the stimuli for three years, while it should receive the first instalment of 5 million next year, as reported by Sme.

Read also:

Read also: Millions in subsidies to RKN firm questioned Read more

The remaining 8 million should be allocated as tax relief, which the company will use for five years, starting in 2018. The document proposes tax breaks of 1.6 million. To do so, its profit should amount to 7.2 million. Analysts of the Finstat.sk website calculated that under such conditions, the revenues of RKN Global Europe branch in Slovakia should amount to 238 million (under the average profit margin of 3.03 percent). If the profit margin was 20 percent, the company should report revenues of 36 million, Sme wrote.

The document also states that the company will employ 1,238 new jobs, while eight of 10 employees should have university education.

The firm plans to export its products to the European Union, as well as Africa, the Middle East and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Sme reported.

The document also confirmed several speculations surrounding the planned investment. Though the owner of RKN Global Europe is Dubai-based RKN Global and its shareholder is former secretary general of Interpol Ronald K. Noble, four Ukrainian companies contribute to the manufacturing of its products. Three of them are members of EDAPS consortium, which received an order to deliver the clear copies of passports from the Interior Ministry led by nominees of Viktor Yanukovych regime.

Moreover, chair of the EDAPS board Alexander Vassiliev and chair of its supervisory board Yuri Sidorenko have been investigated in the USA over accusations of alleged attempts to bribe a high representative of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Sme reported.
SLOVAKIAS authorities may have enabled the export of weapons needed by the Syrian opposition against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since 2013.

Font size: A - | A +

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has criticised several European countries for supplying Syria with weapons and supporting the conflict there, which has resulted in the current migration crisis. The fact, however, is that Slovakia has been secretly exporting weapons, which are also used in the country, the Dennik N daily reported.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Slovak weapons are reportedly delivered to Saudi Arabia, from which they are sent to the armed groups fighting in the Syrian war. The weapons cannot be exported to the area without the consent of Slovak state authorities, the daily writes.

Moreover, part of the exported weapons may come directly from the Slovak military storehouses.

Slovakia approved during the years 2013-2016 many exports of weapons of Czechoslovak and Soviet origin to Saudi Arabia. The licence to carry out exports was given to two unknown Slovak firms Eldon and Kelson. The former resides in Bratislava, the latter in Banska Bystrica. Both are owned by Ivan Jakes, as reported by Dennik N.

When asked whether he knew about this, Fico did not reply to the daily.

Allegedly, Saudi Arabia does not need these weapons and ammunition, but it is an ally to the USA and Turkey and provides them to rebels fighting against Assad, an ally of Russia and Iran. As the group of rebels is very varied, it is not always clear who receives the weapons, as reported by Dennik N.

The Economy Ministry did not want to comment on the exports, saying that it is confidential information. When asked why it allowed the exports of weapons that may end up in Syria, the ministry answered that it always asks the end countries to sign a note stating that they will not re-export the weapons. The Defence Ministry did not answer questions, while the Foreign Affairs Ministry told Dennik N that the re-export of weapons is possible, but only if Slovakia agrees.
THE CITY of Bratislava has commenced with cutting down the old and ill trees on Frantiskanske Square.

Font size: A - | A +

In place of them it will plant 10 new Chanticleer Pear trees. It will also cut down trees on the Main Square and replace them with four new lime trees. They will be planted via the Bratislava prepares for climate change project, for which it received money from the Norwegian funds, the SITA newswire reported.

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Regarding the health and examination of the existing trees, the new planting is necessary as in the past one of them was uprooted, Katarina Prostejovska of the Bratislava municipal authority said, as quoted by SITA, adding that following this incident the city ordered the survey of all trees planted there. The interest of the capital is the revitalisation of the square with the aim to plant new trees.

The planting will start as soon as the archaeological survey of the squares is completed. The survey, which started on March 3, was ordered based on the law as both squares are part of the monument zone in Bratislava.

The survey will take about a month, Ivo Stassel of the City Office of Monuments Protection told SITA. We expect to find remains of the old canal system and some small ceramics.
Slovakia took part in a total of 14 international crisis management (ICM) missions under the auspices of the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO and the UN in 2015.

Font size: A - | A +

This stems from the Report on Slovakias Involvement in ICM Activities acknowledged by the cabinet on March 2. The largest number of soldiers  159  took part in the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus (UNFICYP).

Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement

Slovaks also participated in the EUFOR ALTHEA military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Kosovo, and in an OSCE mission in Macedonia, as well as in missions in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan. They were also part of a UN observer mission in the Middle East (UNTSO). In the past year, Slovakia also participated for the first time in the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), to which it deployed six police officers. Active since 2004, the missions purpose is to aid and stabilise local public administration and reform police operations, the TASR newswire wrote.

Slovakia spent more than 18 million to secure its participation in these individual operations  with most of the money earmarked from the Defence Ministrys budget.

This year, Slovakia will continue to take part in all of the missions apart from two: EUPOL in Afghanistan and EUPOL COPPS in the Palestinian territories  both under the auspices of the EU. It also plans to extend its involvement in new missions, particularly those in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world. The top priority for 2016 is the EUs civilian mission in Ukraine (EUAM).
Privacy statement: This blog does not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through the use of cookies. You can turn off the use of cookies at anytime by changing your specific browser settings. We are not responsible for republished content from this blog on other blogs or websites without our permission. This privacy policy is subject to change without notice and was last updated on January 1, 2017. If you have any questions feel free to contact Springfield Vermont News directly here: ed44vt@gmail.com
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The sanctions under the new resolution adopted earlier in the day in response to recent nuclear and ballistic tests conducted by Pyongyang are due to affect multiple sectors of North Korea's economy, making all cargo entering and leaving the country subject to inspection and limiting or prohibiting the nation's export of coal, iron, gold, titanium and rare natural minerals. The resolution also bans conventional arms sale as well as the delivery of aviation and rocket fuel to Pyongyang.

"The unanimous adoption by the UN Security Council of Resolution 2270 (2016) is a clear expression of the unity and resolve of the international community to uphold the global non-proliferation regime and to target DPRK's illegal nuclear, WMD and ballistic missile programmes and its ability to finance them," the statement reads.

Mogherini branded North Korea's nuclear and ballistic tests "a grave threat to international peace and security in the region and beyond."
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  "What is more and more apparent is that the former construct of OPEC and the way in which OPEC formally performed and acted in the world markets is essentially, in my mind, over. Its not going to act anywhere near as impactfully as before," McConnell said.

McConnells comments come amid the proposal to freeze oil production by Russia, OPEC and some non-OPEC countries to raise the current low oil prices.

"I think there are a lot of things that are changing in all parts of the world that we live in, and I think that markets and access to capital are much more strongly going to drive oil prices than any consideration of a freeze or restriction on supply. I think those artificial situations are not likely to be anywhere near as impactful as we remember them to be from days gone by," he stated.
There were even complaints that Russia was materially assisting the Islamic State by bombing its supposed opponents, and by driving Syrias Sunnis into its arms.

In a particularly fantastic claim, it was even claimed Russia was deliberately bombing Syrian civilians to force them to flee to Europe so as to undermine Chancellor Merkel, who has put herself in a vulnerable position through her open door policy.

All these claims were wrong or untrue.

Predictions of a quagmire turned to panic as is it became clear around the New Year that Russias air operation was turning the tide of the war.

Claims the Russians bomb civilians have never been proved and come with no evidence.

Claims the Russians do not bomb the Islamic State are disproved by the Russian Defence Ministrys detailed reports  which are never contradicted or refuted by the only source which matters, which is the US military.
He dismissed all talk about shale gas supplies from the US as fairytales as Serbia simply has no money for that.

In an interview with Sputnik, Jelica Putnikovic, an expert with Balkan Magazine economic journal, said that the European Commission simply did not care much about Serbia.

Brussels keeps saying that all European countries need a unified network against disruptions They want to have a gas pipeline built between Serbia and Bulgaria, but the Bulgarians have no spare gas to offer us. Secondly, Brussels gives them money to build a pipeline to Greece and to us, while we have to pay for everything out of our own pocket, Jelica Putnikovic complained.

He also said that even though Serbia was among the first to join the European Energy Community, it was not viewed as a potential part of the European network with preference given to Bulgaria and Romania.

I think this is retaliation for Serbias refusal to join the EUs sanctions against Russia, Jelica Putnikovic said.

Alexander Frolov, deputy director of the National Energy Institute in Moscow, said that even though Russia was looking for alternatives to the existing gas transit routes via Ukraine.

The gas transit across Ukraine will not go anywhere, at least before 2020, while Russia is looking for new projects, including in the south, he told Sputnik.

In his recent report to President Vladimir Putin, Gasproms CEO Alexei Miller said that Italy and Greece supported the construction of a pipeline under the Black Sea to pump Russian gas via third countries to Greece and on to Italy.


In a sign of his frustration over Germany's 'open door' refugee policy, Faymann said Berlin: "should set up a daily quota and then bring these refugees directly from Greece, Turkey or Jordan.

"Austria cannot and must not become a distribution hub [for refugees]. There must be an end to that," he told the Kurier newspaper.

Faymann hit back at recent German criticism, saying that Berlin's actions had forced Austria to introduce daily refugee caps, adding he could not accept "that several thousands of people are waved through every day, [while] on the other hand Germany informs us that today it will only allow 1,000 or 2,000 into the country."

Today we are opening a new chapter called "Back to Schengen" in our struggle with the migration crisis pic.twitter.com/b0cY18oX1G  Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) March 1, 2016

Merkel Bites Back

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had repeatedly ruled out placing an upper limit on the number of refugees Germany is willing to accept, despite the country receiving more than one million in 2015.

The German chancellor also hit back at Faymann's criticism, calling for European borders to remain open.

"Anyone who closes national borders doesn't do anything against the causes for the refugee movement," she said.

"We have to find sustainable solutions that we will still be able to justify tomorrow [] Above all, [we need] solutions that don't set up something on one side that other countries simply have to deal with."

The fallout between the close allies comes as the EU struggles to get member states to agree on a common approach to stem the flow of refugees and migrants into Europe.

While Germany has thrown its support behind plans to implement a refugee relocation system, other states, such as the Visegrad Four  Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic  have rejected any calls to impose a compulsory relocation of refugees throughout the bloc.
Ali was born in Aleppo, but Daesh 's seizure of the city drove him and his family out of their home. The journey from the war-torn Syrian city to Finland took 15 days, and cost 2,000 euro, paid to smugglers.

My trip was 15 days long and it was full of challenges. We first went by sea, where hundreds of people suffered, it was the Aegean Sea, Ali says.

Having crossed the sea, the refugees spent three days on the streets of a Greek island before being moved to Athens, from where the route continued through Macedonian forests to Serbia.

But the real trouble was Hungary, where the border police used tear gas against us and shut the road. But despite all those troubles, we had high hopes and expectations of being safe, somewhere warm, Ali recalled.

Warm Nordic Welcome

In Finland, Ali was warmly welcomed. Since being sent to a facility in Helsinki, he has had several volunteer jobs  from delivering flowers to working in a hospice.

Finland welcomed us with open arms and hearts I am a determined person, and after arriving in Finland I was searching for a school and a job. I have a work permit, but since I could not find job, I have been doing volunteer work, Ali said.

The Finnish authorities provide Ali with food and accommodation, which allows him to do volunteer work. The only problem Ali mentioned was the fact that the Finnish authorities have decided to move him to a different camp, something he is resisting, as he has a job, friends and is taking lessons of Finnish in the area where he currently lives.
'Completely Meaningless'

Daniel Freund, Policy Officer EU Integrity at Transparency International told Sputnik:

"Lobbying is a part of any healthy democracy  and that includes corporates, non-governmental organizations, think-tanks, whatever  but it can sometimes lead to undue influence or other activities that distort politics. For that, we need more transparency. We need to know who lobbies, how much they spend and what they work on so that we can make sure there is no such influence."

"We [already] have the EU Transparency Register introduced in 2011  joint register by the Commission and Parliament, but this register is voluntary and our latest analysis shows that at least half the entries on that register are completely meaningless.

"It's either organizations that declare no activity, or the lobby budget, or the number of lobbyists they declare don't make any sense. There are a lot of organizations that declare  say  ten lobbyists, but the budget that should cover their salaries is so low that they couldn't even pay a minimum wage for an intern that applies in Belgium. The overall entries on the register right now are not reliable," Freund told Sputnik.

The European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said: "This Commission is changing the way we work by consulting stakeholders more and by being open about who we meet and why. We need to go further by establishing a mandatory register covering all three institutions, ensuring full transparency on the lobbyists that seek to influence EU policy making."

Welcoming the move, Freund told Sputnik:

"The influence of money on politics is a very complex issue and there's no one single solution that fixes the problem. Nevertheless, bringing the problem out into the open for everyone to see is always the first step."
"If they've escaped war, fled an awful situation and turn up, get a nice room in a safe country where you're offered three meals a day  would you mind wearing a wrist band to protect taxpayers' money?" Davies asks.

"If that's the worst thing that's ever happened to them then I think the economic migrants are pretty ungrateful," he said.

However, asylum seekers told WRC that "the use of the wristband to get a meal is humiliating and we are not always believed even when we wear them."

To wear a Tag as an asylum seeker,oh Cardiff this is so low! #lynxhouse  ROOS (@roospooscreate) January 25, 2016

Christ. There has to be a better solution than labelling human beings. What's next, the Star of David? #lynxhouse https://t.co/OZJpWlFKif  Philippa Brennan (@philippabrennan) January 25, 2016

However, David Davies remains unsympathetic:

"I'm going to spell it out  I don't care, it's my view but I think everyone is fed up, I'm a taxpayer too. We're getting a load of angry young men expecting us to change the rules to suit them and aren't willing to enter into the spirit and rules and regulations  instead they complain about wearing a wristband."

According to the WRC: "the stigmatizing practice is the latest in a long line of concerning procedures which neglect the interests and well-being of those seeking protection.

"We are very pleased to know [property management company] Clearsprings Ready Homes has now removed the use of wristbands as an identity to get a meal at Lynx House."

David Davies told Sputnik the bands have been replaced by ID cards.

"I've visited refugee camps in Calais, Hungary and seen the detention centers in Greece. The reality is the threat that the vast majority arriving in Europe and the UK are young men, not families. It begs the question, where are their wives? I don't accept that many of them are genuinely refugees; they're economic migrants  if they were truly fleeing war you would expect to bring their families with them," Davies told Sputnik.

"The [asylum] system is broken and we have to give asylum to those who don't deserve it. I support the British government's policy bringing in the neediest but the high numbers of people coming here are arriving illegally, abusing the system and the public has lost all sympathy."

But with sympathetic rhetoric, the International Development Committee recently called for the British government to do more to help thousands of unaccompanied child refugees in Europe  in addition to the Syrian resettlement program.
As riot police tried to clear the camp called Jungle, residents began to burn down some of the remaining buildings.

Some of them started pelting the officers with stones. Police responded with tear gas and batons.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve tried to defend his subordinates during a heated debate in parliament.

Just as we mobilize social workers, our police officers are being pelted with stones. The moment we send in reinforcements to help them everyone starts crying about police brutality. This holds no water, the Minister complained.

He said that the demolition of the Jungle camp was being done in the name of humanitarian ideals.

We believe that people who have suffered so much, should be offered decent accommodation, social benefits and a chance to learn French, Bernard Cazeneuve added.

Many of the migrants in Calais are trying to cross the Channel into neighboring Britain. London, meanwhile, says that a mere handful of migrants will be allowed in.

In January the office of Prime Minister David Cameron said that if all the refugees stranded in Calais were allowed to enter Dover the city would be choked and unable to keep the situation under control.
Despite the government warnings, Euroskeptics criticized the findings as being overly pessimistic. Leader of the Commons Chris Grayling described the findings as lacking "self-confidence", while rebel minster Iain Duncan Smith revived memories of the Iraq war by labeling the report a "dodgy dossier."

Dodgy dossier  Cameron turns into Blair by Peter Brookes pic.twitter.com/XtXm1Qn8N3  Political Cartoon (@Cartoon4sale) 1 March 2016

Ian Duncan-Smith tries a little too hard with his "dodgy dossier" comment trying to link it to Labour's dodgy dossier.  Financial Bear (@FinancialBear) 2 March 2016

"This dodgy dossier won't fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis ridden EU.

"The truth is, we won't copy any other country's deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms  and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. That's the safer choice."

The attacks on the government continued with Euroskeptic MP Dominic Raab accusing Prime Minister David Cameron of engaging in horror film-esque scaremongering by exacerbating the risks and talking down the potential benefits of a Brexit.

"I think that there is far too much scaremongering, it's like Halloween come early," he said in an interview with the BBC.

"We have a scare story each week about the ghoulish prospects outside the European Union. I don't believe in ghosts, and I'm not afraid of these ghoulish stories, or of life outside the EU."

'Messy Divorce'

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond hit back at the criticism, saying those campaigning for Britain to leave the bloc needed to put some "flesh on the bones" of the argument that the UK would be better off economically outside the EU.

"I answer it by asking them to present their own dossier: tell us what the model is that they believe the European Union would negotiate with Britain," he told the BBC.

"Remember, this is going to be a divorce if we decide to leave and, as with any divorce, it is likely to get messy. It will take a long time to sort out the disentanglement of our affairs and then we want to start renegotiating some kind of relationship with the EU going forward."

Just delivered speech @ChathamHouse on alternatives to #EU membership: non-EU options come at an unacceptable cost pic.twitter.com/lUUdnDPLPq  Philip Hammond (@PHammondMP) 2 March 2016

Meanwhile, US investment giant Blackrock backed calls for Britain to remain in the EU, arguing that negotiating new trade deals with Brussels would be a "lengthy and painful process" and would leave the UK "economically worse off".

History Repeats

While many issues have dominated the Brexit debate in Britain, much of the speculation has been based on whether the UK would be economically better or worse off outside the formal constraints of the EU.

The prime minister and pro-EU figures say leaving the EU and then attempting to negotiate new trade deals would be a complicated process that would hurt trade and weaken London's ability to secure favorable agreements in the future.
Hollande is struggling to maintain any sense of leadership with 79 percent of the French saying they are dissatisfied with his performance as president, in a recent poll. He enjoyed a surge in popularity following the Charlie Hebdo and November 13 attacks, but this reflected more on his role as president of a country gripped by terror than his personal rating.

'Enough is Enough!'

Hollande's failure to tackle his domestic economic and unemployment issues have left the country is darkened mood. Unemployment is nearing 4 million, there is considerable industrial unrest  not least within Air France which has been losing money hand-over-fist for years. A pilots' strike has added to the airline's woes and his has announced 2,900 job losses.

Does the state of emergency erode the founding principles of the French nation? https://t.co/36zI7fzWFj #France pic.twitter.com/RfKc9pTC7L  Sputnik UK (@SputnikNewsUK) 26 January 2016

His counterterrorism measures  which included extending the state of emergency, allowing for considerable extra police and surveillance powers  proved too much for many, who saw this as an intrusion into French liberties. His justice minister Christiane Taubira resigned over the issue.

Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille  along with 17 other left-wing figures  wrote a scathing column in the newspaper accusing Hollande and his prime minister, Manuel Valls, of crippling both the Socialist Party (PS) and the country.

"Enough is enough. What will remain of the ideas of Socialism when, day after day, its principles and its basis are being undermined?" Aubry wrote.

On Tuesday, her supporters quit the party's executive board, cementing the split at the heart of France's ruling party. Hollande's poor personal ratings and the deep divisions within his party have  so far  led him to refrain from announcing his candidacy for the 2017 presidential race, which could yet see Front National leader Marine Le Pen poll more than him in the preliminary elections in November.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In November 2015, the European Union and Turkey approved a joint plan to counter excessive migration into the bloc, under which EU member states will give some $3.3 billion to Ankara and fast track negotiations for its accession to the bloc. In turn, Turkey is to help protect EU borders from illegal crossings, and is expected to agree to resettle refugees that have managed to get to Europe from Turkey.

"The Commission is today able to confirm that Greece is in the process of returning 308 irregular migrants to Turkey. The European Union is stepping up its efforts to ensure those who do not qualify for international protection in Europe will be quickly and effectively returned to their countries of origin or transit," the statement reads.

According to the EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos, the Commission has reinforced its support for cooperation on the return of irregular migrants between EU Member States and Turkey and today's transfers from Greece to Turkey show that "our efforts are starting to bear fruit."
She added that the injuries were mostly caused by panic when the journalists came under fire.

"We were injured only because we were underclad. It was hot, and our arms and legs were not protected. I was not injured. But some people fell on the ground, others were crawling, and they were injured," she explained.

According to the journalist, the incident was aimed at hampering the peace process in Syria which has become possible mainly because of Russian efforts.

"When we arrived in Latakia last night it was clear that situation had changed. It was quiet at the airfield. Russia has made progress and reached a ceasefire. But some are not happy with this, especially terrorists," Guiliano said.

She also said that when the shelling began the situation seemed "very serious" to her.

"At the time I thought it was very serious. Even the most experienced of my colleagues said they never saw anything like this before. I was the only woman there, but I knew there was nothing to be worried about. I knew I was in safe hands," she concluded.

Greek reporter Thanassis Avgerinos also underscored that the journalist only survived thanks to the Russian servicemen on the site.

"The servicemen saved us. Afterwards the attacks continued exactly in the place where we had been earlier. We ran away, while three local residents died and eight were injured," he told RIA Novosti.
According to Yeni Safak, among those supporting the plan B are US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, and CIA Director John Brennan. They have called for President Barack Obama to pressure Moscow and intensify support for Syrian rebel groups.

In the current context, such stove-piping activity is logic, analyst on Middle Eastern affairs Stanislav Tarasov said.

"The recent events have proved that Turkeys actual policy toward Syria is aimed at dividing the country. What is more, it is logic in the broad context of the Arab Spring, with the gradual fragmentation of Arab states," he told Svobodnaya Pressa.

According to him, despite the Geneva peace process, there is still a scenario to divide Syria, and some forces are pushing it now.

"One of the most serious issues is Syrian Kurds. If Assad stays in power it would have to pass a new constitution with a new form of territorial division of Syria. Syrian Kurds are now enjoying support from both the US and Russia. And they are likely to ask for more autonomy," the analyst pointed out.

The Kurdish question is a big concern for Ankara, he added. If Kurds create their own autonomies in both Syria and Iraq, Turkey will be geographically and politically blocked. Such a prospect is also encouraging the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to intensify its struggle against Ankara, including for a Kurdish autonomous region in Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot let this happen.

This is why, now the Turkish government is testing public attitudes toward this scenario.

As a result, it is clear that despite the course on preventing Syria from disintegration, there are a number of actual processes and contradicting interests in Syria, like it was in Iraq after the US invasion, he concluded.

What is more, he added, some, especially in the Middle East, have insisted that there is no need to destroy Daesh. According to them, only its radical groups should be destroyed, to establish dialogue with its "moderate wing."
The Saudi Academy of Education and Public Consultation published a paragraph from a lecture with a provocative title, the theme of which affects woman's place in society and her role in the family.

Without going into the content of the upcoming lecture, many users on Facebook and Twitter became judgmental and started writing reciprocal comments, forcing the academy to make a public statement on its account on Facebook.

We are a Muslim society with a common God and a common prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). We as far as Almighty forces are concerned have escaped bias, since we will have to answer for it. The meaning of the headline can be understood as follows: a woman is either at a high level, the middle one or the lowest. Unfortunately, many have interpreted the title of low-level understanding of a woman who is our mother, wife, sister or daughter the title did not dare to underestimate the role of women.
MOSCOW (Sputnik)  A large-scale operation by the Turkish military is underway in the Kurdish-dominated Diyarbakir province, which has been gripped by violence between the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants and Turkish security forces for months. Curfews remain in place across many districts in the area since December.

"Among these people there are representatives of the youth wing of the PKK, civilian population of the city, children, the elderly. According to our information, some 200 people are there," Yuksek said.

He added that one of the buildings has been recently shelled and collapsed, wounding 15 people in the basement.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Russias use of advanced imaging capabilities in flights over the United States under the Open Skies Treaty would provide Moscow with an intelligence bonanza and a significant military advantage, US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart told Congress on Tuesday.

"The things you can see, the amount of data you can collect, the things that you can do post [flight] processing using digital technology allows Russia, in my opinion, to get incredible foundational intelligence on critical infrastructure, bases, ports, all of our facilities," Stewart said at a hearing by the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee.

"I would love to deny Russians having that capability," the three-star US Marine Corps general added.
A hidden political struggle is going on between the US party of war, represented by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and those Washington policymakers who support the Russo-American cooperation over the Syrian ceasefire, in particular, Secretary of State John Kerry.

Amid the newly settled truce in Syria, brokered by Russia and the US, top US and NATO military leaders have agreed that Russia poses an "existential threat" to the United States.

"Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the US and to our European allies and partners. Russia sees the United States and NATO as threats to its goals and constraints to its aspirations," NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove told journalists on Tuesday.
But that is not all.

"And then there's the money the government exports to other countries to support their arsenals, at the cost of $1.61 million every hour for the American taxpayers," Whitehead stresses.

Amid the Syrian ceasefire Washington war hawks are harboring the plans of attacking and splitting Syria up. In addition, they are banging the war drum over a new all-out invasion of Libya, at the same time proposing to expand their military "assistance" to Iraqi security forces.

Meanwhile, the Japan Business Press reported that the Pentagon is seeking more funds to invest into the "so-called Third Offset strategy" aimed against, in particular, Moscow and Beijing. The $18 billion system is supposed to undermine the countries' Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) capabilities.

In this context it is hardly surprising that US top military officials and their NATO counterparts agreed to regard Russia as an "existential threat" to the US. The decision will justify further US taxpayer money waste on military projects.

"Perhaps the most troubling fact of all is this: we have handed over control of our government and our lives to faceless bureaucrats who view us as little more than cattle to be bred, branded, butchered, and sold for profit," Whitehead remarks.
The third premise was that US nuclear deployment would not increase nuclear risks, even though Russia and China strongly opposed the US program. Russia has insisted that the US global defense plan would undermine global stability. Moscow also warned of a new arms race and has threatened countermeasures if Washington did not limit the program, the analyst wrote.

The US has labelled Russias rhetoric as "politically motivated" and hoped that it would be able to avoid countermeasures from Moscow. However, now "Russia is doing exactly what it has said it was going to do"  modernizing its nuclear arsenal and developing a new aerospace defense system. China has also opposed Americas strategy and plans to deploy THAAD to South Korea.

"Todays world is different. Its not like the Cold War. [] In todays world, missile defense might increase some nuclear risks while decreasing others. It might be stabilizing in one context but destabilizing in another," the analyst pointed out.

A new US administration will revise the military strategy, and its nuclear part is likely to be revised too, according to the article.

"This raises many controversial questions. Is it worth building a missile defense system in Europe against Iran? Should regional defenses target Russia? Are verifiable limits to US and Russian missile defense capability desirable?" Barzashka wrote.

According to him, reassessment of these points should constitute the basis for a new US missile defense strategy.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Vetted hackers have been invited to test the security of the US militarys public websites as part of a new pilot program that will be launched in April, the Department of Defense announced in a statement on Wednesday.

"I am always challenging our people to think outside the five-sided box that is the Pentagon," Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said in the statement. "Inviting responsible hackers to test our cybersecurity certainly meets that test. I am confident this innovative initiative will strengthen our digital defenses and ultimately enhance our national security."

The program is a first in a series designed to "find vulnerabilities in the [Defense] Departments applications, websites and networks." It is part of the Obama administrations Cyber National Action Plan, announced earlier in February to address the countrys overall cybersecurity needs.
One month prior to the loan agreement being made, Snyder's aides were notified by a state official about the spike in Legionnaires' disease, which has killed 10 people in the area since Flints water source was switched from Detroit to the corrosive water of the Flint River.

Snyder maintains that he was unaware of the toxicity of Flints water until health officials confirmed the elevated levels of lead in the blood of the citys children on October 1.

A review of 550 emails released last month, however, found that aides close to Snyder and his lawyers were voicing concerns over the polluted water in Flint a full year before the city switched back.

The poisoning of Flint water began in April 2014, when the city stopped receiving its supply from Detroit, instead shifting to water taken directly from the Flint River, a source known to have a high corrosive salt content. Corrosive salts in the water damaged the pipes, which contain lead, causing that material to be released into the water, and contaminating it.
On Monday, a bill was introduced to ban the use of weaponized drones, after Austin Haughwout, 19, attached a handgun to a drone and uploaded video of it being fired to YouTube. The case made national news after the FAA launched an investigation into Haughwouts actions and equipment. In a subsequent video, he roasted a turkey with a flamethrower attached to a drone. No charges were brought as Haughwout was on private property when he used the weaponed devices.

The bill aims to make it a class C felony to weaponize an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Additionally, it would make the use of drones to control explosives or deadly weapons, or to release tear gas or other substances, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Haughwout testified that the bill is pointless, as it is aimed at combating a problem that does not exist.
Researchers noted that the number of NYT headlines mentioning or referring to Islam increased about 1,000 percent in 2014, compared to the previous year. Of headlines referring to Islam or Muslims, the percentage taking a negative tone also rose significantly, to 68 percent in 2015, from 35 percent in 2009. Authors of the report link these dramatic changes to reporting on the actions of the Daesh extremist group.

According to 416 Labs, Christianity and Judaism were portrayed negatively in about 20 percent less cases than those of Islam.

Negative portrayals of Islam in the NYT, alongside other major media sources, have been common for long enough that the results of the study should not come as a surprise, researchers stated, cautioning, however, that the percentage is increasing from year to year, and this is a cause for concern.

"Over time it just became too rampant to ignore," said co-author Owais Arshad, who released the results of the study to several prominent Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Among the Muslim friends I have," he said, "there's been a distinct recognition that the media is a [] source of biased information."
Aaron Merriman scored the 8,000th win of his driving career while driving Watcha Got Abby in Northfield Parks sixth race on Tuesday evening.

Watcha Got Abby boldly left from the gate and led her competition from start to finish, winning by one-quarter of a length in 1:58.2.

Merriman, 37, keeps a torrid schedule, regularly competing at Northfield Park and The Meadows. However, he also races at various other venues throughout the year.

Aaron is the reigning North American dash champion and his talents have been noticed on the national stage. Merriman has competed in some of the biggest races in harness racing. In August 2013, Merriman became the youngest inductee into the Northfield Park Wall of Fame.

Merrimans richest win came in a $300,000 Kentucky Sire Stakes Final aboard Palazzo Princess. Aarons fastest win was race timed in 1:48.3 aboard Kanaris at Scioto Downs in September, 2014.

Merriman remembers his first win as being aboard a pacing mare named Alberts Filly at Raceway Park in Toledo, Ohio. Although there are 8,000 to choose from, Merriman says that he has no favourite win, It always feels great to win a race, explained Merriman, I really dont have a favourite. I have had the same elated feeling every time I have been to the winners circle.

Aaron has driven many talented horses, It would be hard to say the best horse I have driven, thought Merriman. I have been truly blessed to drive a lot of nice horses in our sports signature races.

Aaron has sat behind countless horses, but one sticks out to him above all others: I love to drive Tamarind. He is small and has a lot of problems, but he gives his all each and every race.

Merriman started driving at the age of 21 and appreciates the successful 16-year career he has experienced so far; accomplishing the 8,000-win milestone and purse earnings in excess of $46,000,000.

Ive had a great run for a long time, said Merriman. There are so many owners and trainers that have given me opportunities and I will be forever grateful to them. The chances I have been given are unbelievable and I wish I could thank them each individually. The horses deserve credit too -- they are the ones who carry us around the track and deserve the real credit for my 8,000 wins.

(Northfield Park)

THE MEADOWS, MSOA HONOR MERRIMAN FOR HIS 8,000th VICTORY

On Wednesday, the Meadows and the Meadows Standardbred Owners Association honoured Merriman.

For Merriman, 37, an Ohio native, the milestones have been piling up quickly. He notched win number 6,000 in October 2013 and reached 7,000 in January 2015. Thus, hes rolled up his most recent 1,000 victories in only 13 months.

The milestones seem to be coming one right after the other, Merriman said. But theyre always milestones to me. I celebrate them, even if its only in my thoughts and feelings.

In recent years, Merriman, harness racings winningest driver in 2015, has been competing at the Meadows by day and Northfield by night, a pace thats contributed to the rapid-fire rise in his win total. But he often drives two cards per day and logs many frantic highway miles, a performance thats earned him a number of speeding citations. He expects to keep double-dipping for the foreseeable future.

Its actually better for me when Northfield and the Meadows race the same day, he said. When the cards are piggy-backed like that, I get two full days off. That really helps. I know I cant do this forever, but now is the time to do it.

The gregarious Merriman once confided to an interviewer that if he werent driving Standardbreds, his dream job would be that of a U.S. Postal Service carrier because he would get to interact with so many people. Reminded of that just before his 8,000th win, he said hed never qualify for that job now because of all those traffic tickets. He appreciates the irony.

I couldnt get my dream job because of my driving record, he said.

(Meadows)

(Aaron Merriman, being honoured at the Meadows)
The video presentation of 'So God Made A Racehorse', produced by Standardbred Canada's Brittney Mayotte and Darryl Kaplan, has been honoured as a finalist for the 2015 Media Sovereign Awards.

On Tuesday, the Jockey Club of Canada announced the finalists for the Media Sovereign Award categories for 2015. The winner in each of the three media categories will be announced at the 41st Annual Sovereign Awards on April 8, 2016 at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto.

Kaplan's take on Paul Harvey's 'So God Made a Farmer' speech was originally published in the December 2014 issue of Trot Magazine. The video debuted at the 2015 Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame induction ceremony and was unveiled to the world the following morning on standardbredcanada.ca.

Judging for the 2015 Media Sovereign Award categories was performed by Professors of the Journalism Program at the School of Media Studies & Information Technology, Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Listed in alphabetical order, the full list of finalists follows:

Writing Category:

Joe Nevills and Nicole Russo  Smart Strike Remembered (Published in Daily Racing Form)

Curtis Stock  A Love of Horses (Published in the Edmonton Journal)

Paul Wiecek  Turbulence at the Track (Published in Winnipeg Free Press)

Digital Audio/visual and Broadcast Category:

Horse Racing Alberta  2015 Canadian Derby (Broadcast on Canadian Television Network)

Darryl Kaplan & Brittney Mayotte  So God Made a Racehorse (Broadcast on standardbredcanada.ca and at the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame)

Talkin Horses  Horses S02 E17 (Broadcast on CTV2)

Photograph Category:
Trot Insider has learned long-time horseman Erwin Stewart passed away peacefully with his family at his side in the Arnprior and District Memorial Hospital on Saturday, February 27. He was 78.

Stewart was the loving husband of Barbara (Burton) for over 51 years. Dear father of Catherine (Kevin), Jeffrey (Gina), and Brett (Angela). He was predeceased in 2012 by his daughter Rhonda. He was the proud grandfather to six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Stewart served five years in the Royal Canadian Navy and later was the Postmaster in the village of Ashton for 11 years where he owned the General Store and Carleton Fuels. In 1973, the family moved to Corkery in West Carleton where Erwin did what he enjoyed most, the training and driving of Standardbred racehorses.

A Memorial Service will take place Wednesday March 2, 2016 in the St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Arnprior at 11:00 a.m. Interment Arnprior Albert Street Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, Arnprior or to the Grove Nursing Home.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Erwin Stewart.
Judicial Watch Continues Fight Over IRS Criminal Investigation Facts

Seeks Information on Obama, Democrat Donor Barbara Bosserman's Involvement in IRS Investigation



Contact: Jill Farrell, Judicial Watch, 202-646-5172



WASHINGTON, March 2, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Judicial Watch is asking a federal appellate court to overturn a lower court's ruling allowing the Obama Justice Department to withhold records detailing the number of hours that agency attorney Barbara Bosserman expended on the investigation of the IRS targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections cycles. The opening appellate brief was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on February 16, 2016 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 15-5271)).



This lawsuit forced the Obama Justice Department to confirm the existence of a criminal investigation into the IRS' abuses and that Bosserman, a major donor to Obama's political campaigns and the Democratic National Committee, was part of the team of lawyers criminally investigating the issue. (On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department announced in a letter that it would not press any charges over the IRS abuse scandal.)



In 2014, Judicial Watch filed a 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking records detailing the number of hours Bosserman expended on the IRS matter. In 2015, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the agency had properly withheld the Bosserman records under the "attorney work product doctrine." Judicial Watch argues to the appellate court:

"[T]he Department presented no evidence whatsoever that the records requested by Judicial Watch were created in anticipation of litigation. The District Court also did not make such a finding. Instead the Department argued and the court ruled that some of the information contained in the responsive records was protected by the attorney work product doctrine. Because the requested records were created in the ordinary course of business  to assist senior officials in their management responsibilities  the records do not fall within the scope of the attorney work product doctrine. The records are being improperly withheld in their entirety."

In early January 2014, then-Attorney General Eric Holder reportedly appointed Bosserman to oversee the IRS investigation despite her substantial political activities. According to Federal Election Commission records, Bosserman contributed $6,750 to Obama's campaigns and the DNC from 2004 to 2012, including 12 separate contributions to Obama for America between 2008 and 2012. Then- House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA) called the Bosserman appointment "a startling conflict of interest [that has] compromised the Administration's investigation of the IRS."



"All Judicial Watch wants is the number of hours that the Obama donor/Justice Department lawyer spent investigating the worst IRS abuse in American history," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The failure to bring charges in the IRS scandal only adds to the public interest in finding out more details about the involvement of the Obama/Democratic Party donor in the criminal investigation."
Once about Knowledge and knowledge systems, especially knowledge applied to economic development, but since I retired branching into politics, music and whatever catches my attention.
http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/from-russia-with-bullets-moscow-gifts-kabul-10000-ak-47s/

Russia gives Afghanistan 10,000 assault rifles, but abstains from joining American efforts at peace talks.

By Catherine Putz , February 24, 2016

Wednesday, Afghanistan accepted a gift of 10,000 AK-47s and millions of rounds of ammunition from Russia. In recent months there has been much discussion about increased Russian engagement with Afghanistan, although Moscows cooperation with Washingtons initiativessuch as peace talks with the Talibanremains seemingly out of the question.

Speaking at a ceremony to accept the weapons gift, Afghan National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar said : This important donation is from an important friend of Afghanistan in a crucial time for Afghanistan and the region.





Twenty-seven years ago this month, the final Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan, where theyd been fighting a war for a decade. The communist government of Muhammad Najibullah, which they left in Kabul held out for three more years until the collapse of the Soviet Union cut off the financial inflow from Moscow, estimated at $3-4 billion annually, and the mujahedin closed in.

Last year, hopeful beginnings to peace talks with the Taliban led to deep disappointment as the revelation of Mullah Omars death two years ago tossed the insurgency into a degree of internal chaos and damaged the Afghan administrations efforts to repair relations with Pakistan. In 2016, however, the peace process is again being given a try, although most regional observers are skeptical that the planned talks will accomplish much.

Earlier this month , Zamir N. Kabulov, the Kremlins special envoy to Afghanistan, told Russian state media that Moscow had no interest in joining the American effort to settle peace through talks with the Taliban. We wont join the useless events, and weve already told the Americans.

The Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG)which includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States, and China met earlier this week and made a statement expressing support for planned talks between the government of Afghanistan and Taliban representatives in the first week of March. The chief of the Pakistani Army, General Raheel Sharif made a one-day visit to Qatar on Monday to talk with officials there. The Taliban maintain a political office in Qatar and General Sharifs visit is seen as laying the groundwork for further peace talks.

However, its not clear who from the Taliban will show up at the talks. The groupwhich rose to power in part because of its internal unity vis-a-vis the extremely fragmented mujahedinhas fractured in the wake of Mullah Omars death. The new Taliban leader, Mulah Mansour, has reportedly set preconditions for talks and other factions have rejected them outright.





Per Reuters , General John Campbell, the outgoing commander of NATOs forces in Afghanistan, said earlier this month that he thought there were a lot of Taliban interested in talks, but [t]hats whats going to be hard, to get all the right people to the table.





NATOs drawn-out withdrawal is source of much anxiety in Afghanistan. As the Afghan security forces took the lead in combat operations over the past year their casualty rates have skyrocketed and the rates of civilian casualties have risen as well. Beleaguered and dependent on foreign aid for funding and supplies, the Afghan forces welcomed Russias donation.
NATO and Ukraine have officially agreed to have NATO personnel help train and expand Ukrainian special operations forces. This is sorely needed because when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 Ukraine inherited about 6,000 special operations troops. During the 1990s this force shrank to about 3,000. A common reason for special operations troops leaving was that many were Russian or pro-Russian and Russia made more of an effort recruit special operations troops who had ended up in the armed forces of one of the new 14 nations created from the wreckage of the old Russian Empire. When a Ukrainian popular revolt in 2014 put an anti-Russian government in power even more Ukrainian special operations troops left, or were discharged, because they were more loyal to Russia. Since then Ukraine has been rebuilding its special operations forces using troops who are loyal to Ukraine. Thus the need for NATO help.

The Soviet era special operations troops Ukraine does still have come from highly respected Russian tradition. Airborne Forces (paratroopers) and special operations forces (Spetsnaz) have historically been a major source of pride to Russians, going back to the '70s and '80s, when 30,000 Spetsnaz and airborne troops constituted the most effective troops available during the Afghan War (1979-1989). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia's special ops suffered the same problems as the rest of the Russia, namely corruption, low morale, low funding, and a major decline in the quality of training. Special operations soldiers were often accused of doing contract killings and other "special tasks" for the Russian mob during the chaotic '90s.

Ukraine were on the receiving end of Russian special ops in 2014 Russia grabbed the Crimea Peninsula. Most of the work was done by several hundred members of the GRU 45th Spersnaz Regiment. These operators were sent to the Crimea disguised as civilians to create a popular uprising that would enable Russia to annex Crimea. Some of the uniformed men who then took control of Crimea were apparently pro-Russian locals hired by the Russians. The core of this local militia was men with obvious military training and who have been using those skills recently. These were the spetsnaz and they were obviously in charge. Nearly 60 percent of Crimeans are ethnic Russians and GRU appears to have been recruiting, or prospecting there for years. Some of these locals admitted that money changed hands and they were glad to be part of the effort that returned control of Crimea to Mother Russia. When you use armed amateurs you have to expect this sort of unauthorized contact with the media but these comments did not sidetrack the takeover plan. The armed men were obviously briefed and most would not talk to reporters or even let journalists get close. But a few of these fellows, apparently local recruits, just could not resist a reporter with a camera crew looking for a few snappy comments for the evening news. Some of the anonymous armed men may be civilian contractors (which Russia exports to some parts of the world) and some were just pro-Russian veterans willing to take a gun and endure a bit of risk.

There are actually several different special operations, or Spetsnaz organizations and most are of recent origin. After World War II it took the Soviet Union a while to note the success of U.S. and American commandos and attempt to emulate their success. In the 1960s, the Red Army began to organize "troops of special purpose" ("Spetsialnoye nazranie", or Spetsnaz for short) units. The Soviet Union had always had some form of commandos but they were special units of the secret police (KGB). For special operations the army would form temporary units consisting entirely of officers.

The original Spetsnaz were organized more like a massive use of SAS raiding teams. A Spetsnaz brigade of 1,300 men could field about a hundred 8-10 man teams. A Spetsnaz company had 135 men further divided into 15 independent teams. The actual organization of these brigades was four parachute battalions, an assassin company, a headquarters, and support troops (mainly communications). A naval Spetsnaz brigade had two battalions of "combat swimmers" (comparable to U.S. SEALs), a parachute battalion, a midget submarine company, and other units the army Spetsnaz brigades had. There were also many independent Spetsnaz companies assigned to armies or smaller units.

In wartime each team would be given an objective to destroy deep inside enemy territory. Or, if not to destroy something, to go deep and find out what was happening in the enemy rear. Put simply, the job of the Spetsnaz was reconnaissance and sabotage. The Spetsnaz teams would get to the target by parachute, ship, submarine, or as "tourists" before the war began. At the height of the Cold War the Soviet Union had about 30,000 Spetsnaz in service.

There was one flaw with this system: most of the Spetsnaz troopers have long been conscripts, in the army for two years. The Russians made this work by being selective in who they chose to be in the Spetsnaz and putting the recruits through a rigorous, and violent, training program. You could think of the Soviet era Spetsnaz as paratroopers with additional training in demolitions, infiltration techniques, foreign language training (which many Russian conscripts had just received in high school) and reconnaissance techniques. Perhaps most importantly, the Spetsnaz recruits were taught to think for themselves. This was a rare directive in the Soviet (or Russian) armed forces. But for commandos to be effective they had to think independently, and the Soviets realized this when they set up the Spetsnaz and the Spetsnaz training program.

During the Soviet period the Spetsnaz were seen as an elite organization and a career enhancing thing to have on one's resume. The army had more volunteers than it needed and would take the top graduates from the training program. A favorite method was to send volunteers to the six month NCO course. This course had a high washout rate but those who made it through were competent leaders and just the kind of people the Spetsnaz were looking for. Even after the Soviet Union fell the Spetsnaz were still seen as elite. It did not go unnoticed that Spetsnaz veterans were always in demand as well paid bodyguards and security experts.

The Soviets knew they were getting a lot of eager, motivated, and not thoroughly trained Spetsnaz troopers. But they had so many of them that it was felt enough of them would do enough damage to make it all worthwhile. We'll never know if the original plan would have worked, but the Spetsnaz were effective during the 1980s Afghanistan war. The main reason wasn't the superior Spetsnaz combat skills but their initiative and ability to think for themselves. The Afghans they were fighting noted this and learned to clear out of the area if Spetsnaz were found to be operating there.

The Spetsnaz recognized the need for career troops for some jobs. The assassin company in each Spetsnaz brigade was staffed with 70-80 career soldiers, whose job was to find, identify, and kill key enemy political and military leaders.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 the Spetsnaz didn't disappear. The new nations formed from parts of the Soviet Union inherited any Spetsnaz units stationed in their territory. Many of these non-Russian Spetsnaz still exist, although most are not of the same quality as they were when the Soviet Union still existed. Although there are fewer Spetsnaz today there are still about 10,000 of them in Russian service. And more of them are career soldiers (more than half, versus 20-30 percent during the Soviet period). Soon all Spetsnaz will be volunteers because conscription is fading away in Russia. Many of the current Spetsnaz are specialists, with specific skills needed for underwater operations (like U.S. SEALs) and anti-terrorist operations (like the U.S. Delta Force). The post-Soviet Union Russian government maintained the strength of their commandos because they knew they would need some skilled and dependable troops for emergencies.

The Spetsnaz selection and training methods were used to create commando units in the FSB (the successor of the KGB), military intelligence (GRU), the Interior Ministry (the national police), and various other paramilitary organizations. By 2012 most (about two-thirds) of the 15,000 Spetsnaz troops were in the ten army Spetsnaz Brigades. Since 2012 Russia has been working to expand its Spetsnaz force further.
Preliminary results of the February 26 national elections indicates that the reformers did much better, more than tripling representation in parliament from about ten percent to at least a third. Unlike 2012 the ruling clerics did not try to rig the voting. There were two main reasons for that. First, many hardliners have become pro-reform. Second the ruling clerics know they are in trouble. The government has long used surveys and a large informer network to monitor actual public opinion they knew that an effort to manipulate the vote like was done in 2012 would likely trigger popular anger and disorder. The ruling clerics understand that the huge post-Iraq war (which ended in 1989) generation wants change and within that generation reformers far outnumber religious conservatives. Unless handled carefully this growing pro-reform majority could be a lot of trouble for the government. For example a major complaint of the reformers is against the way the huge financial empire the religious conservatives have built up since the 1980s is run. These companies were taken over by clergy (and their families) for a lot of largely bogus reasons. These huge holdings make the religious conservatives much wealthier, on average, than ordinary Iranians and that is a very unpopular situation. Too much reform could threaten that cozy, and quite corrupt, arrangement. All Iranians want a stronger economy but the reformers understand this will only happen if there is more foreign trade with the West, especially the United States. The official government attitude towards the U.S. is still Death to America. Another major complaint of reformers is the use of lifestyle police to enforce unpopular rules about how women should dress and behave as well as prohibitions on all sorts of traditional Iranian pastimes (like drinking alcohol and watching what they want in movie theaters, TV and the Internet). Religious hardliners do not want to give any ground in these areas but the senior clerics pay more attention to Iranian history and know that the hardliners could be crushed if it came to a fight and most Iranians do not want that sort of bloodshed. But most Iranians also want change and in the past they have shown a willingness to fight if pushed too far. Violent rebellion is still a possibility, especially with so many new reformers being former hardliners who now are all for less corruption, lifestyle police and more foreign trade but still want America and Israel destroyed one way or another. Yet these same anti-American reformers also want better relations with Turkey and the Arabs as well as less dependence on Russia. As usual, not all is what it seems in Iran.

Saudi Arabia ignored Iranian, Russian and Syrian threats and insists it is sending some troops to Syria to fight ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). These will probably only be small numbers of special operations troops. Syria, Russia and Syria (the Assads) all openly shared their belief that Saudi ground troops could not handle ISIL or Syrian soldiers. Iran and Russia have long felt that the Saudi armed forces were second rate. There is some truth to this and it has long been an open secret even among Gulf Arabs. But after decades of efforts, including a lot of blunt criticism by foreign (mainly American and British) military advisors and trainers change did occur. The Gulf Arab ground forces proved quite capable (or at least more so than Iran expected) in Yemen. Foreign Arabs have been fighting there since early 2015. Iran was also dismayed to see the skill of Saudi and other Arab pilots in Yemen (and earlier in Iraq and Syria). In this part of the world publically demeaning a neighbors troops after those forces have recently displayed competence is a high praise. It also sends a message to Iranian commanders and troops to try harder because the Arabs may not be as easy to beat as before. The fact that Iran went public with disparaging remarks about Saudi troops ensured that the war of words stayed in the media and more recently Iran has threatened Saudi troops with Iranian supplied violence if the Saudis dared to send troops into Syria. Iran knows that such an invasion would be as much against the Assads and their Iranian backers as against ISIL. The Saudis have warned Russia to stand aside if the Saudis and Iranians get violent with each other inside Syria. Turkey then warned Russia that an attack on Saudi forces would compel the Turks to enter Syria to assist their Arab ally. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have had good relations for a long time so this Turkish pledge should come as no surprise. The Saudi threat of intervention on the ground is likely to occur after the current multi-national Northern Thunder military exercises in northern Saudi Arabia end on March 10th. These exercises involve over 150,000 troops from Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf Arab nations plus Egypt, Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, Sudan and Senegal.

It is to Irans advantage that ISIL hold the attention of the West and the Arabs. Iran is fighting ISIL, but mainly in Iraq, where Sunni Islamic terrorists have long focused their attacks on Shia civilians. Since the Shia are a majority in Iraq Iran becomes even more popular there as Iran backed militias and other military assistance plays a crucial role in driving ISIL (and eventually all Sunni Islamic terrorists) out of the country. Iranians speak openly (especially inside of Iran) of how well they have exploited their enemies and duped them into fight for Iran instead of against Iran.

Iran understands that Yemen is far more important to the Gulf Arabs than to Iran. Moreover the Yemeni Shia have never been dependent on Iran like those in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq or Syria. Control (or substantial influence) in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon give Iran a land route to their declared main foe; Israel. The Saudi royals and Arabs in general are secondary to the Iranian official hatred of Israel. The Iranian threat to the Arab states in the region, especially those with oil, is of more immediate concern for the Arabs and the main reason why Arabs have openly become allies with Israel against Iran. This complex web of opportunities and capabilities means Yemen is basically a sideshow where winning is not the highest priority for Iran or Arabs. Both the Arabs and Iran have an interest in shutting down the Sunni Islamic terrorists in Yemen because these cutthroats see both Arab rulers and Shia in general as prime candidates for elimination.

The U.S. fears that Iraq is on its way to becoming subordinate to Iranian foreign policy. Because of effective Iranian aid in dealing with ISIL the Iraqi government has become less enthusiastic about needing more American and NATO troops in Iraq. Iraq also announced that Saudi Arabia should not even consider sending troops into Iraq to fight ISIL. The Saudis did not suggest this but are planning to send troops into Syria. The Saudis have no border with Syria but do have land access to Jordan and Iraq. Thus Iraq is making it clear that Saudi forces are not welcome in Iraq even if they are just passing through. Jordan is another matter and has become an ally of the Saudis. Meanwhile Iran supports the increasingly aggressive and autonomous behavior of the Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militias that are assisting the army in the fight against ISIL. The Shia militias are also taking control of territory in urban and rural areas, displacing the police and local government. Because of that by late 2015 the Iraq government saw more American troops as saviors. At the end of 2015 there were several thousand American troops already in Iraq and more (most of them Special Forces) on the way. The government has made it clear to Iran (which is very hostile to U.S. forces in Iraq) that some American troops were essential. The presence of American troops also makes it less likely that Iran will attempt anything too ambitious (like invading or backing a takeover by Shia militias) and everyone knows that. But now Iran appears to have convinced Iraqi leaders that American troops come and go while Iranian forces are always next door. Most Iraqis are more concerned with Iranian meddling than anything the Americans might do. At the same time Iraqis are wary of the other Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia. For example the Saudi ambassador to Iraq suggested that the Iran backed Shia militias in Iraq should stand aside and let the Iraqi Army deal with ISIL. That comment was widely condemned by Iraqi Shia clerics and politicians. The Shia politicians running Iraq have to move carefully because Iran, Saudi Arabia and America are making demands, often contrary ones, on Iraq.

February 29, 2016: A lot of publicity was given to a government announcement about new Iranian designed and made chemical warfare equipment. This included chemical weapons detectors, a protective suit as well as medicines used to treat victims of chemical weapons. Officially Iran does not have any chemical or nuclear weapons. Unofficially no one is sure. Over 100,000 Iranians (mostly military personnel) were killed or badly injured by chemical weapons during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Most of the casualties were from chemical weapons like mustard gas that were developed during World War I (1914-18). But the 1980s also saw the first combat use of nerve gas, a World War II era weapon that, unlike nukes, was never used during that war. Iran and Iraq both made and used nerve gas against each other.

February 28, 2016: The United States revealed that it had halted an Iranian arms shipment to Shia rebels in Yemen.

February 27, 2016: In Syria a ceasefire was supposed to begin on the 27th but it only really lasted a day and there is widespread doubt that it will actually work. The main reason is the fact that ISIL and al Nusra (nearly as large as ISIL and affiliated with al Qaeda) have not agreed to stop fighting. This is the second attempt at a ceasefire this month. That first effort failed for the same reasons the new effort will. The UN and most of the West is eager for peace in Syria but for most Moslem nations Syria is a main battleground in the current Shia (led by Iran) and Sunni (led by Saudi Arabia) civil war as well as a joint effort to destroy ISIL, which threatens everyone. The West is not willing to use enough force to make a difference and the pro-government forces are better armed and more determined than the rebels. The UN is caught in the middle and goes along with whatever seems least offensive. Meanwhile the rebels willing to negotiate demand a lot of pre-conditions aimed at the Russians. At the very least the rebels wanted the Russians to halt their Assad support while peace talks go on. That never went anywhere. The rebels are asking for other concessions, like release of captured leaders and lifting of sieges of some pro-rebel civilian areas. Russia refused to consider this as well. Another issue the rebels are angry about was the UN agreeing to keep the Syrian Kurds out of the peace talks. This was something Turkey insisted on. There were other problems, like the tensions between Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran which have also helped cripple UN efforts obtain a meaningful Syria peace deal. The growing tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran has made cooperation over brokering a Syria peace deal less likely. Russian efforts to mediate are also compromised because of tensions with Iran and the Saudis.

February 25, 2016: The government announced an aid program to Palestinians that would pay $7,000 to the families of Palestinians killed while trying to kill Israelis. Over 116 Palestinians have died that way since September 2015. Iran will also pay $30,000 to Palestinian families who have their homes destroyed by Israel (to encourage families to dissuade their children from being terrorists). Until 2003 Saddam Hussein had a similar Palestinian aid program.

February 20, 2016: Officials have been in Russia discussing a multi-billion dollar deal to buy Russian Su-30 jet fighters, Yak-130 jet trainers and Mi-17 helicopters. Such sales are still forbidden without explicit permission from the UN. At the same time it was confirmed that Iran is still discussing details of the S-300 anti-aircraft systems sale. This was thought to be a done deal. In December Russian announced that deliveries would be made via the Caspian Sea. Some supporting equipment has already been flown in or came by sea as non-military equipment. Apparently the key S-300 components (missiles and fire control systems) have not been delivered.

February 19, 2016: Saudi Arabia is suspending military aid to Lebanon largely because the Lebanese government has been unable to curb Iranian use of Hezbollah fighters in Syria and Yemen. The $3 billion in weapons and equipment is being supplied for by France, paid for by Saudi Arabia and was arranged back in 2013. Deliveries began in early 2015 and were to have been completed by 2018. Training and maintenance services were to continue into the 2020s.

Pakistan officially lifted all economic sanctions it had imposed on Iran. Pakistan was obliged to enforce these sanctions because of international treaties (like belonging to the UN). Now that a July 2015 international agreement has lifted those sanctions Pakistan is free to resume trade and revive joint economic projects that had been stalled by the growing list of sanctions. India and Pakistan were both doing a lot of business with Iran before the sanctions and both countries are now reviving those activities.

February 18, 2016: The government revealed that it had sent special operations troops (Saberin) to Iraq and Syria. Those in Iraq are there mainly to ensure security around some very important Shia shrines in southern Iraq. The Saberin in Syria are apparently for special combat missions. The Saberin are modeled on the British SAS and U.S. Special Forces. At the same time the Saberin were headed to Syria many, if not most, of the 2,000 trainers and advisors from the IRGC (Revolutionary Guards) have been withdrawn. Many of these appear to have been shifted to Iraq where Iran wants its military well represented as Iraq seeks to clear ISIL out of western Iraq (Anbar province) and Mosul (second largest city and held by Iraq since mid-2014). At least 500 Iranians remain in Syria. Thousands of Iranians have served in Syria since 2012. Although Iran has never revealed how many troops have been in Syria it is known (from Iranian media) that at least 150 of these military personnel have been killed in Syria and several hundred more wounded. That would indicate that at least 5,000 (and probably more like 10,000) Iranians have been there training and advising Syrian troops or pro-Syrian militias and foreign volunteers. Israel believes that many more Iranian troops will return to Syria once ISIL is crushed in Iraq. Once the rebellion is crushed in Syria Iran expects the Assads to be more cooperative in supporting terror attacks against Israel.

February 11, 2016: Saudi Arabia detained a cargo ship carrying UN aid for Yemen. Saudi inspectors say they found four cargo containers containing computer and communications equipment that was not declared and is considered suspicious because this gear can also be used for military purposes and would be useful to the Shia rebels.
...they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Acts 17:11 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Isaiah 8:20 "Whatever it is, I'm against it. No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it." Groucho Marx, from Horse Feathers
In its latest clash with the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, Clark County ordered the tribe on Friday to cease all activities related to the wastewater disposal system planned for its $510 million casino resort project under construction near La Center.

But tribe Chairman Bill Iyall said Monday the county doesnt have jurisdiction over the Cowlitz Reservations proposed wastewater injection wells, which fall under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency purview, he said.

What theyre trying to do is say the tribe must get a permit from the county, and there couldnt be anything further from the truth, Iyall said. There is no county ordinance that applies to this.  They cannot issue permits on the reservation.

Accompanying the stop work order was a letter signed by County Council Chair Marc Boldt demanding the Tribe honor its own ordinance called Environment, Public Health and Safety Protections for the Construction and Operation of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe Gaming Facility.

The tribal government adopted the ordinance in 2007 after a judge struck down a 2004 memorandum of understanding between the tribe and Clark County. It says the tribe must comply with county development codes. It also says the tribe wont allow public use of the proposed casino until the sewer service is fully compliant with state and federal standards.

The ordinance includes a limited waiver of sovereign immunity that would allow the county to sue if the tribe failed to comply with its provisions, which cover issues such as law enforcement, public health, fire protection, traffic and transportation, sewer and water and payments in lieu of property taxes.

The tribe called its ordinance irrevocable, pointing out that it was approved by the National Indian Gaming Commission. However, at the time it was adopted, county officials were skeptical that the tribe couldnt simply change its mind and repeal the ordinance.

Now, the county alleges that building the proposed injection well system, which would pump up to 400,000 gallons a day of wastewater treated to drinking water standards deep underground, would trigger county and state regulations that the tribe would need to follow under its ordinance. One such regulation would involve getting a Critical Aquifer Recharge Areas permit from Clark County.

The injection wells are controversial because the Troutdale Aquifer System, which supplies 99 percent of Clark Countys drinking water, lies roughly 120 to 220 feet below the injection site. The tribe, however, has promised to ensure the discharged water meets or exceeds all local, state and federal standards as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The tribe would prefer to hook up the casino to the city of La Centers sewer system, but so far, the courts have prohibited it from doing so because the Cowlitz Reservation lies just outside the citys urban growth boundary. If that boundary changes, the infrastructure will be in place: Last week, the tribe agreed to pay for a $3 million sewer line running from the city to the east side of Interstate 5s Exit 16 interchange. The line will serve commercial development thats expected to arise near the casino, which is under construction on the west side of I-5.

Monday, Boldt agreed that the letter and stop work order are unlikely to have any binding effects because the tribe is a sovereign nation.

Weve been asking questions and really havent had any good communication with them, Boldt said. We cant get anything out of them. It could be a little drastic but I think its going to get us what we want. ... What were looking for is just some good standards of water quality going into the aquifer.

The county is misinformed about the process, said Iyall, who is meeting with county officials this week.

I think the bottom line is they need to stop opposing the tribe every chance they get, he said. It is dumbfounding to see this continuous effort by the cardrooms come between a positive relationship between the tribe and the county.  I think the county has a role  but its as a partner, not as an opponent.
Recently, I went to France to test drive some porcelain cookware. I wanted to see how it handled my favorite cooking method  grilling!

For inspiration, I headed to the famed indoor food market, Les Halles de Lyon-Paul Bocuse. The meat was displayed like jewels and treated as such. After speaking with a butcher, I settled on a beautiful piece of pork. It was long and oval with a thin fat cap on top. Perfect for grill-braising. In the U.S., this cut is sold as a pork roast or a pork center loin roast. You also can use a traditional pork loin, or a crown roast of pork, which is simply a bone-in pork loin.

Whatever you buy, try to get a piece of pork that still has a thin layer of fat on the top. This will help keep the lean meat moist during cooking, as well as add flavor.

As I tested recipes and cookware, my goal was to keep things simple. I started by placing shallots on the bottom of the dish to elevate the meat, like an edible roasting rack. This offered the added bonus that the meat produced its own sauce during cooking. Beer was my choice of braising liquid, as I like the bold, yeasty flavor. But you could use wine and/or chicken broth, or even apple cider. Just remember that the braising liquid is a key flavor ingredient, so it will alter the taste of the dish.

This very simple recipe is soul satisfying and the combination of herbs de Provence, shallots and beer tastes far more complex than the simple combination suggests. The best part of the dish is the bed of shallots that melt into a ragout-like sauce as the pork cooks. You slice the roast, then just stir the pan juices and soft shallots together to make a pan sauce.

GRILL-BRAISED PORK WITH SHALLOTS AND HERBES DE PROVENCE

6- to 8-pound pork roast, fat left on the top

Olive oil

Fleur de sel (or other large, flaked salt)

12 to 15 large shallots, peeled and halved lengthwise

1 tablespoon herbes de Provence

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Two 12-ounce bottles beer

Prepare a grill for medium-high heat, indirect cooking. For charcoal, this means banking the hot coals to one side of the grill and cooking on the other side. For gas, turn off one or more burners to create a cooler side, then cook on that side.

Use paper towels to pat dry the pork roast. Drizzle the roast with oil on all sides, then season with fleur de sel. Set aside.

In a large, oval Dutch oven, arrange the shallots in an even layer, cut sides down. Sprinkle the shallots with herbes de Provence and kosher salt. Drizzle all over with olive oil. Place the pork roast on top of the shallots, fat side up. The shallots will hold the pork off the bottom of the pot.

Pour 1 beer into the pot. You want about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of liquid on the bottom. Add more beer during cooking as needed to keep the dish moist. You never want the bottom of the dish to be dry.

Place the lid on the pot and set on the cooler side of the grill. Let cook for 1 hour. Remove the lid and cook for another 30 to 40 minutes. The fat cap will begin to brown and look crispy. Return the lid to the pot and cook for another 40 minutes, or until the pork reaches 135 F. The pork is done when the meat is completely white and the fat is golden brown.

Let the roast rest in the pan, covered, for 20 minutes. Transfer the roast to a cutting board. Skim the fat from the juices in the pan, then stir the shallots and pan juices together to make a sauce. Slice the roast and arrange on serving plates. Top with the sauce.

Makes 12 servings.

Per serving: 500 calories; 230 calories from fat (46 percent of total calories); 25 g fat (9 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 155 mg cholesterol; 460 mg sodium; 7 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 2 g sugar; 54 g protein.
More than eight months after 30-year-old Christopher Earl Heller died from injuries he sustained in an assault, authorities have arrested the man suspected of killing him.

Randall Lee Pritchard, 49, of Rainier, turned himself in to Columbia County sheriffs deputies Tuesday after a grand jury indicted him on murder charges. A lawyer entered a not guilty plea for Pritchard shortly after he turned himself in.

Shortly before 5:30 p.m. on July 21, Columbia County sheriffs deputies were called to the 6800 block Whitney Road near Goble for a reported assault involving Pritchard and Heller, who was from the St. Helens area.

By the time emergency personnel arrived at the scene, Hellers mother had already left to drive him to a Vancouver hospital. Authorities later discovered Heller had suffered a fractured skull.

The Columbia County Sheriffs Office and the Columbia County Major Crimes Team began investigating the incident.

A week later, Heller died from his injuries while in the hospital.

Pritchard is held in the Columbia County Jail on one count of murder, along with an outstanding warrant from the state of Washington for escape. Neither charge had a bail amount set.

A trial date has not been set.
Sergey Fedoruk is now considered mentally competent to stand trial for the second time for allegedly killing his brother-in-law in Kelso in 2011.

Fedoruk will now be evaluated at Western State Hospital to see if he can claim an insanity defense.

During a hearing Tuesday, Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Stephen Warning ruled that Fedoruk is competent to stand trial, a legal definition that means he is able to assist in his defense and understands the charges against him.

Mr. Fedoruk is doing about as well as Ive seen him do, said his defense attorney, Thad Scudder.

Fedoruk, 42, of Kelso is charged with second-degree murder in the Aug. 1, 2011, death of his brother-in-law, Serhiy Ishchenko, 48, of Kelso. Ischenko died of multiple blunt-force traumatic injuries, according to the coroner.

Fedoruk was convicted of that charge in 2012, but the state Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, finding that the first trial was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct and an inadequate defense. The Appeals Court noted that Fedoruk had a long history of mental illness in the years leading up to his brother-in-laws death and that his defense attorneys should have looked at presenting a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity sooner than it did.

Because Cowlitz County Prosecutor Ryan Jurvakainen participated in Fedoruks defense in his first trial, the Pacific County Prosecutors Office is now representing the state against Fedoruk.

Scudder has already stated that he intends to rely on a not guilty by reason of insanity defense in Fedoruks new trial. Such a defense applies to the defendants mental state at the time of the crime.

Fedoruks second trial had been set for last Nov. 30. However, on Oct. 5, two days after a psychiatric episode, Warning found that Fedoruk was found not competent to stand trial and ordered him into DSHS custody at Western State Hospital. After Western State staff said they wouldnt be able to treat Fedoruk for more than a month, Warning fined DSHS first $2,000 a day, later raising the fine to $4,000 a day. Warning terminated the sanctions on Dec. 4, the day Fedoruk was finally transported from the Cowlitz County jail to Western State.

Fedoruks sanity evaluation is to take place within the next two weeks.
CHICAGO  In communities of color, it has been common knowledge that African-American and Hispanic students do not fare well when burdened with student debt.

We tend to think of this as affecting mostly low-income students. Yet, according to Marshall Steinbaum and Kavya Vaghul, researchers at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, it turns out that among minority student borrowers, those most adversely affected are actually in the middle class.

For instance, among ZIP codes with a median income of about $20,000, those with a large share of Latinos have approximately the same rates of delinquency as those without. But among ZIP codes with a median income of around $60,000, those with a large Latino share have much higher rates of loan delinquency than those without. The same pattern stays true for African-American communities and is even amplified a bit.

This feels counterintuitive and yet, it makes a lot of sense. The authors of the study cite a variety of factors to account for this phenomenon  for example, very low-income Hispanics and African-Americans are not likely to even attend college whereas middle-income ones are likelier to attend, but not complete, an undergraduate degree.

And then there is the well-documented reality of a job market with barriers for even those minority students who successfully complete college. They tend to face higher unemployment rates and lower earnings than their white counterparts  disadvantages that are not attributable to particular college majors, occupations or the type of higher-education institution of the recent graduate.

Steinbaum and Vaghul lean heavily on the bugbear of structural racism in both the U.S. higher-ed system and in the job market, and theres no denying this plays some part.

But often overlooked is the reality that there arent many non-college pathways for staying in the middle class for anyone these days and  if were to generalize the racial gap in hiring to all workers, not just white-collar ones  even fewer for Hispanics and African-Americans.

This is why parents, families and teachers tell kids, from kindergarten on, that they have to go to college because theres no other choice. As my older son puts it, They make it seem like if you dont go to college, you are going to die young, poor and alone.

What are students who are interested in meaningful work, but not in the ridiculously expensive process of going to college for four to six years, supposed to do but slog through the application process, take out the loans, and simply hope they finish?

If you look at the numbers, Hispanic and African-American student-loan delinquency is concentrated among those who attended for-profit or other nontraditional institutions, which usually cost more than traditional colleges. And a for-profit student is likely to be the first in his or her family to attend college, likelier to be older (mid-20s) than the average college freshman and the least likely to be a dependent.

This is likely someone who didnt initially go to college, was stymied in the workplace without the all-important degree, and decided to try a program that promised to cut out all but the career-training aspects of a higher-ed credential. These students are likelier to borrow in larger amounts and default on their loans, in part either from not finishing or from finding their new credential is all but useless in the job market.

The parents, families and teachers who preach college arent trying to steer kids in the wrong direction  anyone who has been paying attention for the last 20 years knows that this country no longer has stable, middle-class jobs for people without college degrees. And this is a shame for a whole contingent of smart and otherwise potentially great workers who just dont want to gamble their futures on more schooling.

The student-loan debt crisis will, in large part, be fixed once the U.S. economy can create decent-paying jobs for people who dont desire to attend college. But first our leaders have to stop and recognize that not everyone wants to go to college. And that has to be OK.

For this country to thrive, there have to be jobs for achieving entry into the middle class  or staying in it  that are not strictly dependent on an undertaking that costs a bare minimum of $9,000 per year at a state college.
Despite rumors that a boy threatened to shoot up Kelso High School on Tuesday, Principal John Gummel says the threat never happened.

The kid never said it, Gummel said Wednesday morning. It was a rumor, and it got blown way out of proportion.

Gummel said the boy, whose grade he declined to give, made an inappropriate Facebook post that angered another boy at school, who then told teachers and administrators that the first student had threatened to shoot up the school.

Gummel said the boy who made the Facebook post was removed from school for his own safety, because administrators were worried he would be hurt by other students at school for his Facebook post. He declined to say how long the boy may be out.

Im concerned that kids are taking this seriously. Its all under control. We got it, Gummel said. Its one comment that got a life of its own.

The incident remains under investigation, the Kelso Police Department wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday night.
hidden

FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple to give the FBI data from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters would be potentially precedential in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies.

The remarks were a slight change to Comey's statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was "unlikely to be a trailblazer" for setting a precedent for other cases.

Tuesday's testimony from Comey and remarks before the same U.S. House Judiciary Committee by Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the duelling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts.

On Feb. 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting.

Sewell and Comey's remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree. Comey said the tool created for Farook's iPhone would not work on other models. But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone.

"This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today," Sewell said.

Committee members seized on Comey's statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device.

"Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?" asked the panel's ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers.

Comey responded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not asking to expand the governments surveillance authority, but rather to maintain its ability to obtain electronic information under legal authorities that Congress has already provided.

He also acknowledged that it was a "mistake" for the FBI to have asked San Bernardino County officials to reset the phone's cloud storage account after it was seized. The decision prevented the device, which was owned by the county, Farook's employer, from backing up information that the FBI could have read.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others last Dec. 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police. The government has said the attack was inspired by Islamist militants and the FBI wants to read the phone's data to investigate any links with militant groups.

Comey told a congressional panel last Thursday that the phone could have "locator services" that would help the agency fill in a gap in its knowledge of the route the couple travelled as they fled.

"We're missing 19 minutes before they were finally killed by law enforcement," Comey said. "The answer to that might be on the device."

A federal judge handed Apple a victory in another phone unlocking case in Brooklyn on Monday, ruling that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday at the RSA Cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that she was "disappointed" by the Brooklyn ruling, and rebuffed Apple's claim that its Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was being violated.

The Justice Department is "not alleging that [Apple has] done anything wrong, Lynch said, but is treating the company as a third party holding data valuable to an ongoing investigation. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance testified in support of the FBI on Tuesday, arguing that default device encryption "severely harms" criminal prosecutions at the state level, including in cases in his district involving at least 175 iPhones.

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

A ruling by a federal judge that the U.S. government cannot force Apple Inc to unlock an iPhone in a New York drug case does not affect the U.S. government's legal action to force Apple to grant access to a phone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters, the White House said on Tuesday.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest made the remark in a news briefing when asked about Monday's ruling by a U.S. magistrate judge in Brooklyn.

While Apple already had its hands full dealing with the FBI, the New York drug case seems to have added more fuel to the fire, with a top Manhattan District Attorney (DA), Cyrus Vance stating that Apple's encryption policies cripples even the most basic steps of a criminal investigation,.

The DA also mentioned that there were plenty of Apple devices lying in his office some of which preventing the law from exonerating innocent people suspected of crimes.

(Also Read: Apple vs FBI: The battle for encryption heats up)

At the same time U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn ruled that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation. Indeed this was a big win for Apple in the New York drug case. But as the above news points out, none of this affects the San Bernardino shooting case, a bigger encryption battle that now also seems to involve Congress.

In what appears to be a second face-off between Apple and the FBI in front of the Congressional panel, both organisations are now seeking the implementation of laws on new encryption technologies.

With inputs from Reuters
Karrishma Modhy

Almost everyone in Silicon Valley has Apples back. Several major tech companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft are siding with Apple which is currently in a unique battle with the FBI as the government agency wants to create a backdoor entry into iOS, so it could gain access to information when needed from any user, for situations such as a terrorist attack.

A report by Wall Street Journal had stated that these companies plan to file a joint motion supporting Apple. In its court fight against the Justice Department over unlocking an alleged terrorists iPhone, according to people familiar with the companies plans.

Twitter will also be seen supporting Apple in motion though it is unclear if it will join the combined filing. Microsofts legal chief, Brad Smith also stated that the company plans to file an amicus brief in support of Apples resistance to helping the FBI hack the phone. In addition, Facebook is also expected to throw in their legal support behind Apple. To everyones surprise, Verizon Wireless, a mobile carrier in the United States has stood up in support of Apple in its legal showdown with the FBI too!

Motion to Vacate Brief and Supporting Declarations

This move has clearly come to light after the San Bernardino, California shooting which took place in December. The county-owned iPhone was used by Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others at a holiday party in San Bernardino in December. The other phones, which were seized in a variety of criminal investigations, are involved in cases where prosecutors are compelling the company to help them bypass the pass code security feature of phones that may hold evidence.

Apple has filed a motion where the government requested, "Just this once" and "Just this phone." But the government knows those statements are not true; indeed the government has filed multiple other applications for similar orders, some of which are pending in other courts. Apple's Tim Cook says that the iPhone encryption debate should shift the debate over national security and privacy to Capitol Hill.

This case has drawn worldwide attention and the result might decide as to how the government could peep into our privacy and security, forever.

But, what made these cold-war rivals unite?

Apples iOS is in a constant war with Googles Android. Microsofts Windows OS tries to compete with the other two. Apple, Twitter and Facebook battle it out in a war for content online. So what makes this case so special, that it brought together the biggest and the most powerful companies in the world? Panic!

Whats in it for Facebook, Microsoft and others?

Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg said at the Mobile World Congress that, Were sympathetic with Apple. We believe in encryption  we think that thats an important tool. Even though he believes that Facebook has a pretty big responsibility to help prevent terrorist attacks, giving the government access to information could backfire heavily against it. In 2015, 3.2 million users used Facebook. Thats a huge number of population flocking to the giants website every day, with new users added by the minute. If users feel that their data is at risk, the number of visitors would decrease which in turn, would create losses for the company. Just as the others, Facebook too wants to keep the law and order at bay, and also, reassure its users that it is not willing to share any private information online.

Facebook-owned WhatsApp shares similar thoughts too. WhatsApp chief Jan Koum stated via a Facebook post that, We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set. Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake." The widely popular messaging app which is used by billions, where conversions go into trillions, cannot be at the risk of exposure. Its a matter of utmost security. He added, It is important for these other applications to make statements. ... If people are worried about their privacy, they might stand behind those apps more.

Similarly, Twitter and Square chief Jack Dorsey has also thrown in its support with Apple against the battle with the FBI.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/700457149227360256?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

It is evident that at a time where the company is struggling itself in the race to be on top, it would not like to lose out on any customers for sure. A social platform which survives only on words and comments shared online, having access to information on Twitter would lead to less and less users sharing their outrageous thoughts via the platform. The last thing the company needs to worry about is people exiting the service due to privacy issues.

And now, we come to Google. Googles stand with Apple might be the most significant one because; the company could have itself been in Apples shoes. Sundar Pichai, Googles chief executive officer, tweeted asking companies to create a way to hack into peoples devices and data would set a troubling precedent. Being a part of the same tech space, Google supporting Apple is more important rather than the government. Who would want to hack their own devices and share information with the US government.

How does it end?

Although this is a battle between Apple and the FBI, at a broader level, it's actually the beginning of something horrendous. As Cook said, 'it's about the future.'

As Apple pointed out, the government's request, "Just this once" and "Just this phone", wouldn't end with the San Bernandino case. Online social networking platforms thrive on user privacy, which is critical for users as well. If a law enabling government access to user information is eventually passed, it could potentially trigger the downfall of such massive digital services as Facebook, Twitter, and myriad others.
Naina Khedekar

Apple's big standoff with the FBI over unlocking an iPhone belonging to a terrorist has been hitting headlines for sometime now. For those living under the rock, Apple chief Tim Cook has refused a court order that wants the company to break into the iPhone owned by San Bernardino shooter, Syed Farook. Farook, along with his wife Tashfeen Malik, were responsible for killing 14 people on December 2 last year.

So, doesn't Apple want to help nab a terrorist by opening a 'single' requested iPhone? Well, it does want to help, but opening one unit means creating a backdoor for future requests that may follow and eventually compromising on user privacy, believes Cook. Now, the question is how tech companies will comply criminal investigation whilst upholding their customers' secure data. Yes, that pretty much sums up what's the fight about. But there has a lot of mud-slinging over the last one week. Here's a quick timeline showing how it all started.

February 16

Tim Cook wrote a long letter to its customers initiating a public discussion over court's orders that the company had decided not to comply with. He wrote how Apple has done everything possible in its power to help the FBI tackle the case.

"Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone. Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation," Cook wrote.

"In the wrong hands, this software  which does not exist today  would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someones physical possession," he further explained.

Read the complete letter here.

February 17

While Apple was firm at its decision, the company saw support from arch-rival Google. Google chief Sundar Pichai said directed his followers to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cooks open letter arguing that helping the FBI try to get into the phone would sabotage the security of tens of millions of American citizen".

February 19

By now, there were debates and discussions and people had started taking sides. Users supporting and opposing Apples position flooded Twitter with rival hashtags #thankyouapple and #boycottapple and Facebook users wrote lengthy posts on the move.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook were also among the firsts who voiced their support for Cook along with Google chief Sundar Pichai.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) slamed back at Apple saying the company's refusal was nothing but brand marketing strategy. The Obama administration also told a US magistrate judge that it would be willing to allow Apple to retain possession of and later destroy specialized software it has been ordered to design to help the FBI hack into the said encrypted iPhone.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called on to boycott Apple products until it agreed to help the US government unlock the phone of the killers. Boycott Apple until such time as they give that information, Trump said.

February 20

Tim Cook wrote an early morning email to employees, thanking them for their support, and urging the government to withdraw the demand that Apple help the FBI hack the locked iPhone.

February 22

Reports pouring in from all quarters spoke about worldwide protests planned by Internet rights groups. Other companies came forward supporting Apple's stance including Huawei and Microsoft.

February 23

Apple asked the US government for the creation of a government commission or panel of experts to discuss the implications of the demand on issues such as national security and personal freedoms, taking the case to public opinion.

February 24

In an interview with the ABC News, Cook explained how unlocking San Bernardino iPhone would be bad for America. Meanwhile, prosecutors took unusual steps in enlisting victims of the San Bernardino attack in the governments heated battle with Apple. Family members of at least two victims will join a legal brief to be filed next week urging Apple to help the government unlock the phone.

Here comes something that was worrying Apple. The US Justice Department started looking at court orders forcing Apple to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases across the country, which were seized in a variety of criminal investigations. These cases also involve wherein prosecutors are compelling the company to help them bypass the passcode security feature, reports said.

February 25

By now, Apple was reported to have started taking precautionary measures. It was developing security measures to make it even harder for the government to break into iPhones. The FBI had attempted to crack the pass code but failed as Apple systems are designed in a way that automatically erases the access key and renders the phone permanently inaccessible after 10 failed attempts, adds the report.

Meanwhile, activists conitnued protesting against the FBIs attempt to install software with backdoors in all of Apples iPhones.

February 26

Refuting Cook's claim of a dangerous precedent, the FBI chief said that it's quite unlikely to be a trailblazer for setting a precedent for other cases.

And Apple continued to fire back at the US government in the encryption standoff asking the court to dismiss the order. No court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the constitution forbids it, Apples lawyers wrote in the motion filed in California federal court.

Several major tech companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft plan to file a joint motion supporting Apple.

February 26 was said to be the last day for Apple to file its response to the motion filed by the Justice Department.

February 27

Meanwhile, some rivals backed Apple's stance, and many others, mostly Asian companies, chose to stay tight lipped and maintain a low profile.

February 29

In another case, a New York drug case, a federal judge in Brooklyn said the US government cannot force Apple to unlock an iPhone. In fact, a report hinted at that Members of the US House Judiciary Committee are considering filing a friend of the court brief in Apples encryption dispute with the US government to argue that the case should be decided by Congress and not the courts

March 1

White House soon said that the New York ruling won't affect San Bernardino case.

FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel that forcing Apple to give the data of the shooter would be potentially precedential in other cases where the agency may require similar cooperation from tech companies. As you see, the statement seems contradictory to what he said last week about it is unlikely to be a trailblazer for setting a precedent for other cases. He also acknowledged that it was a mistake to ask San Bernardino County officials to reset the phones cloud storage account. This decision prevented the device from backing up information that the FBI could have read.

By March 3, anyone outside the case can submit their remarks, which will be considered by the judge. On March 10, the government plans to respond to Apple and by March 15, Apple can submit its final reply to government's response. On March 22 a District Court will listen to both sides and take a call on the decision accordingly.
hidden

In view of increasing cybercrime cases, CBI is mulling setting up a special branch in Mumbai to probe such offences, its director Anil Sinha said on Monday.

Sinha was in the city to inaugurate the newly constructed 13-storey office of CBI in suburban Bandra-Kurla Complex. All its branches like anti-corruption bureau, economic offences wing and special crime branch will now operate from the new office.

"Over the last two years, the cyber world has witnessed a surge in activities. I am contemplating, provided we get cooperation from the state government, setting up a branch to probe cybercrime offences," Sinha said.

"As of now, such a branch is only in the headquarters (Delhi), but now I think it's time a similar branch is opened here in Mumbai, too. Cybercrime is increasing and a separate team of officers including experts are required," the director said.

He said CBI in Mumbai has unearthed several scams like the Harshad Mehta scam, Telgi fake stamp paper scam, Adarsh Housing society scam and so on. "Apart from such scams, CBI is also probing sensational murder cases of Sheena Bora and Narendra Dabholkar among others," Sinha said.

"Recently, state governments and high courts have also been handing over several cases to CBI. Though CBI started as an anti-corruption bureau, its scope has increased to economic offences, serious frauds and sensational cases under IPC. It is now a federal investigating agency which can probe any kind of case," he said.

"The corrupt are resorting to devious and ingenious meansto outwit investigating agencies. We must, therefore, update our knowledge and reinvent our practices and methods to detect and bring these new methods of corruption within the ambit of substantive evidence," he said.

Sinha said there is also a need to expand the definition of corruption as offenders are adopting new ways of indulging in graft. "We must now think beyond traps. Nobody these days accepts money in their hands directly. Hence, we must think of expanding the definition of corruption," he said.

PTI
tech2 News Staff

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently voiced about the threat made to him and Twitter CEO by an ISIS supporter group who published a 25-minute video threatening to take down Facebook and Twitter, as well as their leaders. "I am very concerned but not because of the video," he told Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of German media giant Axel Springer. "There have been worse threats," CNN reported.

According to the report, Mark Zuckerberg met with Dopfner while he was in Berlin and their wide-ranging interview was published in Die Welt am Sonntag respectively. He added, "I think the bigger issue is that what Facebook stands for in the world is giving people a voice and spreading ideas and rationalism."

In the video, the Islamic State claims they are fighting back against efforts by the social media giants to wipe their platforms of accounts promoting terrorism. The video includes a direct threat to the tech entrepreneurs, branding them allies of the American Crusader government. Pictures of Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Dorsey can be seen being blasted with a hail of bullets in the amateur footage which emerged.

"Our North Star is that we want to give the most voice possible to the most people," Zuckerberg stated during the interview. "We work closely with governments and local organizations to be certain we are applying [Community Standards] appropriately for local conditions and to identify and remove hateful or threatening content."
tech2 News Staff

The U.S. government cannot force Apple Inc to unlock an iPhone in a New York drug case, a federal judge in Brooklyn said on Monday, a ruling that bolsters the company's arguments in its landmark legal showdown with the Justice Department over encryption and privacy.

The government sought access to the phone in the Brooklyn case in October, months before a judge in California ordered Apple to take special measures to give the government access to the phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, attacks.

U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn ruled that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.

His ruling echoed many of the arguments that Apple has made in the San Bernardino case, particularly his finding that a 1789 law called the All Writs Act cannot be used to force Apple to open the phone. Orenstein also found that Apple was largely exempt from complying with such requests by a 1994 law that updated wiretapping laws.

A senior Apple executive, who spoke on condition he not be named, said during a call with reporters that Orenstein's decision would bode well for the company in the San Bernardino case, which has touched off a fierce national debate about the balance between fighting crime and preserving privacy in the digital age.

He said that the government's demands in the San Bernardino case, which include compelling Apple to alter its operating system, were even more far-reaching than in the NY case.

Although U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym, the judge in the San Bernardino case, will not be bound by Orenstein's decision, the senior Apple executive said it will likely be influential. In both cases, the government relies on the All Writs Act, a broad 1789 law which enables judges to require actions necessary to enforce their own orders.

The Justice Department is "disappointed" in Orenstein's ruling and plans to ask a higher judge within the same federal district to review the matter in coming days, a department representative said.

Though the defendant in the drug case has already pleaded guilty, the Justice Department still believes the phone may contain evidence that "will assist us in an active criminal investigation," the official said.

When fighting the government's order to help extract data from the iPhone, Apple had argued that being forced to do so "could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand," according to court records.

Orenstein said his ruling in Apples favour was not a decision on "whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act (AWA) resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come."

Orenstein concluded that "the government posits a reading of the latter phrase so expansive  and in particular, in such tension with the doctrine of separation of powers  as to cast doubt on the AWA's constitutionality if adopted."

He also wrote: "The implications of the government's position are so far-reaching  both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about Congressional intent in 1789  as to produce impermissibly absurd results."

Orenstein also found that Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994, exempted Apple from this sort of request.

The iPhone 5s at issue in the case was seized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency during a 2014 search of the Queens, New York, residence of Jun Feng, who authorities suspected of being involved in drug trafficking.

Authorities sought to access the phone in 2015 while the case was pending. Feng later pleaded guilty in October while Orenstein was weighing the request, but both Apple and the Justice Department said they still wanted a ruling.

Prosecutors have said that since 2008, Apple has complied with 70 such court orders based on the All Writs Act without objection. Many of those cases appear to have involved earlier iPhone models that did not require customised software to unlock.

The case before Brooklyn was, according to prosecutors, the first time Apple had objected to law enforcement efforts to utilise search warrants to get the tech company to provide assistance and unlock iPhones seized during investigations.

But since October, when Apple first asked Orenstein to deny the government's request, Apple has objected to helping law enforcement access at least 12 devices for which the U.S. Justice Department has sought its help, according to a letter from Apple to Orenstein that was unsealed earlier this month.

The senior Apple executive said the company has never made a new piece of software in response to a government request.

While it seems like things might be in Apple's favour after a long time, there seems to be trouble once again, this time coming from New York's top prosecutor.

Cyrus Vance a Manhattan District Attorney has written in a testimony that "Apple's encryption policy frustrates the ability of law enforcement to prevent, investigate, and prosecute criminals, including the very hackers that Apple claims it wants to protect users against,". The same testimony will be presented to a House Judiciary Committee hearing on 1 March.

Vance said that Apple encryption policy "cripples even the most basic steps of a criminal investigation," preventing the law from exonerating innocent people suspected of crimes, according to a report from CNN Money.

The same DA had more to add to his plea. He stated that Apple encrypting its iPhones as a default since 2014 has resulted in about 175 iPhones and or one quarter of 670 Apple devices that are currently cannot be tapped into, even though his office had a valid search warrant for the same.

In what has already exploded into a big issue with tech companies backing Apple, Vance says that he believes in encryption and privacy, but also argued that when needed, prosecutors should be allowed access.

With inputs from Reuters
hidden

US National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers warned that hackers will inevitably mount a cyberattack against US infrastructure, similar to the power failure in western Ukraine last year.

"It's only a matter of the when, not the if, you are going to see a nation state, a group or an actor engage in destructive behaviour against critical infrastructure of the United States," Rogers told a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

Rogers also heads the US military's Cyber Command, which is engaged in targeting enemy networks and social media sites. On December 23, parts of western Ukraine were plunged into darkness after a computer virus affected the networks of several regional electricity companies.

"An actor penetrated the Ukrainian power grid and brought large segments of it offline in a very well-crafted attack that both focused on knocking the system down but also focused on how was the provider likely to respond to that outage," Rogers said.

"Seven weeks ago, it was Ukraine. That isn't the last we are going to see of this, and that worries me."

Rogers and US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in separate presentations, urged cybersecurity specialists gathered at a flagship annual RSA Conference here to work with the US government to keep the country and its people safe. "I believe the future is all about partnerships and it is all about integration," Rogers said.

"We are not going to solve this within the government, and within the Department of Defense specifically; it is partnerships that will develop the best outcomes." The charm offensive here by Lynch and Rogers came amid a battle with Apple over cracking into an iPhone.

"We know that devices are more and more the repository of all types of information and are so essential to solving serious crimes," Lynch said during an on-stage chat following her prepared remarks. "Having the inability to obtain evidence that could save lives is a real risk."

Lynch voiced support for data encryption, but argued for middle ground where investigators fighting evil doers could get legal access to information they need. "The government relies on the cooperation of citizens and companies; the reality is that we are all in this together," Lynch said when asked where that point was in the legal fight with Apple.

"With the ability to live in this country and create wonderful things comes responsibility." She referred to the confrontation with Apple as a "flashpoint" sparking a much-needed, broader conversation about the balance between digital privacy and public safety.

"Do we let one company -- no matter how great the company or how beautiful their devices -- decide the issue for all of us?" Lynch asked.

While addressing a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, FBI chief James Comey defended his agency's efforts to force Apple to help unlock an iPhone in the San Bernardino attacks probe. Addressing a case that has set off a fierce public debate, Comey said Americans need to know the safety implications if encryption makes it impossible to access data on smartphones and other devices.

"It's our job to tell the American people the tools we use to keep you safe are becoming less effective," Comey told the House Judiciary Committee hearing. But Comey also acknowledged that forcing Apple to help unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone could set a precedent for other investigations.

The hearing comes amid an intense legal and political battle after Apple said it would challenge a court order to provide the FBI technical assistance to help break into the San Bernardino iPhone. Apple has argued the FBI is effectively asking the company to "hack" its own devices and create a "back door" that malicious actors could exploit.

Comey told the hearing that in his view, "it's not about back doors... there's already a door on that phone, we're asking Apple to take away the vicious guard dog." In remarks prepared for the same hearing, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell said the public should understand that "encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing," even if it complicates the work of law enforcement.

Encryption helps preserve privacy around the world, he added, "and it keeps people safe." A US magistrate judge in New York ruled Monday that police overstepped the law when they called on Apple to unlock the iPhone of a suspected drug dealer.

The ruling could signal Apple is on sound footing in its separate but similar battle with the US government over being forced to help crack into an iPhone used by one of the shooters in December's San Bernardino attacks. "We were obviously disappointed," Lynch said of the latest ruling during her on-stage chat at RSA.

AFP
Nimish Sawant

MediaTek has been a popular name when it comes to mobile phone chipsets. Its latest generation Helio X20 chipset has a ten-core CPU which MediaTek claims comes with a triple cluster configuration thanks to the division CPU cores into a single dual-core cluster and two quad-core clusters that make up 10 cores.

The other chipset line being the P10 series is targetted at more mid-range devices. While last generation we saw a lot of flagship devices sport Qualcomm's chipset, MediaTek promises that 2016 will be different. We have already seen the launch of Zopo Speed 7 at MWC 2016 with Helio X20 chipset, Gionee Elife S8 with Helio P10 chipsets inside them. MediaTek claims that there will be many more products with Helio chipsets inside them.

While Qualcomm has the lead when it comes to the LTE chipset market, MediaTek has been growing in that space. We had a free flowing conversation with Finbarr Moynihan, general manager of international corportate sales for MediaTek, as well as Kuldeep Malik who heads the India sales division of MediaTek, to get to know MediaTek's future plans and how it plans to ensure that more MediaTek chipsets are seen on flagship handsets this year. Moynihan was attending the 'Make in India' fair which took place in Mumbai couple of weeks ago and we interviewed him then.

What is the agenda for the visit this time?

Finbarr: So we have Kuldeep who looks after India and I look after the MediaTek international sales. India is one of the more exciting and growing market. The 'Make in India' initiative and this transformation to 4G/LTE is exciting. So I have been coming to India on a fairly regular basis and this time in particular was to coincide with the Make in India week. Just to try to understand what is happening on the ground and what our customers are doing. Already a lot of smartphone manufacturing has moved here, so we are seeing what we should do. There arent any specific announcements as such.

Since smartphone making has already moved here, how long do you think before fabrication plants can be set up here?

We are a fabless company and get our chips are made via TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC and others. But if you look at how the fab plants have developed in China and where the Indian industry is today, India is just moving into the first phase of handset manufacturing, so there are many more steps to go before there can be fabrication plants here. Right now you have handset assembling, the next step would be making and assembling PCBs, followed by component manufacturing as well - including camera, battery, display and so on. Then comes the part about actual R&D of various companies happening here. So I think the semi-conductor piece of the puzzle is further down the line. It would take at least 5 years before that happens.

Do you think it also has to do with the stringent requirements of having fab plants - clean environments, huge investments, etc.?

Finbarr: No, I dont think that is really an issue. My understanding is that one of the main objectives of the 'Make in India' program is employment. If you take any modern state of the art fabrication plant, it does not really employ a lot of people. It is quite automated for a lot of processes. The less people you have in a fab plant the better it is to keep the environments clean. So its not really about more employment per se, but about the evolution of the industry. Also say somewhere in the near future, if India is able to fulfill the objectives of churning out say 500 million smartphones by 2020, then comes the part of assembling, packaging and testing of the semi-conductors which will happen first. And then the fabrication plants come into the picture.

Kuldeep: The 'Make In India' plan is to have around 28 million jobs by 2020, and have a zero net import by then. But I think if you look at the way these industries have developed in China, then it has to grow in phases. What we are seeing at the moment is just the first step. Component manufacturers will only set up shop over here if there is someone buying from them, so we still have to get to that level. The best example is from the Auto industry. When Maruti started making cars in India, they also started making ancillary units around their plants. Slowly the private players got into the fray as well. The entire ecosystem developed over a period os 15-20 years.

Finbarr: Also if you look at China, it is really only now that China is starting to make big investments in the semi-conductor industry. Just like you have the momentum around Make in India and Digital India programs here in India, the Chinese government is also driving a specific set of programs to give a boost to the semi-conductor fab, semi-conductor design, semi-conductor packaging industries. So they are beginning to move into those areas, so it will definitely take some time for India to get there. There is definitely scope for India as it has a demand in the local market and it also has the potential to export products made in India to the Middle-East and African markets.

The number of chips you have sold worldwide for mobile phones so far? Your revenues for the year

Kuldeep: We sold about 400 million smartphone chipsets and over 150 million of those were LTE supporting ones. In 2014 that number was around 30 million LTE chipsets, so you can notice the growth. In 2016, although we havent made any prediction numbers wise, I think there will be a higher percentage in LTE chipsets shipments.

Would it be safe to say that going forward, MediaTek will only concentrate on making 4G chipsets across its product portfolio, or will 3G/2G still be given equal care.

Kuldeep: If you look at our roadmap, we have pretty much made most of our chipsets LTE compatible for mobile phones. But we will still have 3G for sure and that is going to stay in India for at least 2-3 years. So we will have 2G/3G platforms as well, but majority of the focus and R&D will be towards 4G. If you look at 4G, India sold around 20 million 4G enabled handsets towards the last quarter and that momentum will continue with the entry of new 4G service providers in the market. So we are trying to place ourselves there so that there are no surprises. Also a lot of the service providers have invested a lot of money in the spectrum, so 3G services will be mainstream for a long while.

Finbarr: We had announced one 3G platform in mid-2015 and have announced around six new LTE platforms, so you can see where the trend is headed. I think we have also been instrumental in getting down LTE to even the entry level handsets and we will continue doing that. But last year we still shipped around 300 million feature phones - so that is still a huge market. I believe we will still be shipping large volumes of 3G handsets for at least 2-3 years.

Last year, majority of the flagship smartphones sported Qualcomm chipsets - despite the bad rep that Snapdragon 810 got from the industry and critics alike. But we didnt see many Helio X10 / X20 product launches. Why was that?

Finbarr: We are making a lot of progress, like for instance we announced the Helio X10 at Barcelona last year and a lot of products were seen with that phone. This was followed by the P10 and later by the X20. We apply Helio only to the highest end spectrum of devices. So Helio X is the extreme and P is one step below it. We are seeing a lot of design wins with the Helio X10 from companies such as HTC, Xiaomi, Vivo, Gionee and so on. And now with P10 starting to ship which will be followed by the X20 couple of months later, you will see a lot more brands using Helio chipsets, so we will be competing in the high end segment.

So Helio will not be seen on entry level or mid-range devices?

Finbarr: For us Helio is a sub brand, within the MediaTek family, which only represents the higher end segment. I think that differentiation between chipsets based on the modem are over. The real test going forward will be around the user experience. Thats where a lot of our core-capabilities coming from our home-business such as TVs, DVDs, multimedia, video, camera, display - all of those kind of features become more important. Thats why Helio is only at the high end as that is where we have the right kind of price proposition that can deliver the best multimedia experience. So most of the companies are still releasing Helio X10 based products, but you will start to see X20 based products as well. Also Helio P10 based products have started to go into production as well, so we will be seeing a lot on that front as well.

But Helio X20 was announced around Computex 2015, but there arent really any products with that chipset selling the in the market, as compared to say a Snapdragon 810.

Finbarr: So we announced the X20 in June and it only went into production towards the end of the year. Now we are just waiting for the first customers to launch the products. We announced it early as we have our announcements coinciding with major technology events, so Computex was the last major platform to showcase our Helio X20 roadmap.

So one of the reasons, Qualcomm has an edge over MediaTek is beause of their modem technology. With the Helio X20, do you think you have levelled the playing field in that department?

Finbarr: To be fair here I think the Qualcomm products still have a lead, but the question is where is that important. There were really two things: one was the LTE modem technology where we have added carrier aggregation and the second thing was adding CDMA capability. So in the past when we didnt have CDMA support, our phones were not supported by China Telecom in China and Verizon or Sprint in the US. So for the phone brands that was a big problem, because if they wanted to have a global launch of a particular device then they had to go with a chipset which supported multiple regions. If we did not have LTE or CDMA back then, then we would definitely not be a first choice for some brands. We have since closed that gap significantly in terms of delivering the modem capabilities thats required today for the vast majority of networks globally. The benchmark for me is, if you look at the iPhone 6 today, it has carrier aggregation and LTE Cat 6. So if it is good enough for the iPhone 6, then it is good enough for us.

You have a deca-core CPU as an offering in the Helio X20 lineup. Is it really necessary to have more cores on mobile CPUs? Are there really many apps that actually stress all the 10 cores? Wouldnt more cores lead to more heating? Could you elaborate on the power/heat management in Helio X20?

Kuldeep: When we were designing this SoC we realised that there are many simple processes such as using a calculator, playing some audio, etc., which does not require that much CPU/GPU power and can be done more efficiently. With our tri-cluster platform we redefined the big.LITTLE architecture. So between the big and LITTLE we have put in a medium, power usage wise. With this implementation we realised that we had around 36% efficiency. So there is a lot of scope for optimisation, which can lead to using a slim battery and so on.

Finbarr: We dont imagine any application will use all 10 cores. So instead of having two clusters in the big.LITTLE architecture, we give you three clusters which gives a more granular approach to using apps based on their load. It is still an ARM processor, but there is always a trade-off with CPUs - speed and power. The faster the processor, the more power consuming it will be. So if you make a low power cluster, you can just optimise it for low power. High end cluster you can optimise for the extreme requirements. But there is still a gap between the low power and high power clusters, hence we decided to use a tri cluster design to make it even more efficient. So in some cases the cores will be the same but we decide the frequency at which they will operate. So you have more granular steps across the use cases. It is our scheduling hardware and software that sits on top of the cores, between the OS and the applications, which does the scheduling. We use our CorePilot technology in the Helio X20 as well.

So MediaTek also makes chipsets for TVs, so could you tell us how big that market is, because in India MediaTek is only associated with mobile phone chipsets.

Finbarr: If you take MediaTek as a company it is about two-thirds mobile and one-thirds home. Home includes not just TVs and blu-ray players but also some gateway platforms. Now, last year we acquired another Taiwanese company called MStar, which also has a TV business. So even though it is a 100 per cent subsidiary of MediaTek we run it as a separate company. So we work as separate companies. And if you include that, it is close to 50-50 for mobile and home. In the TV segments we provide chipsets for Sony and Sharps Android TVs, Panasonics FireOS TV, we have supplied to LG in the past, Vizio in the US, Philips, TCL and HiSense in China. Then if you go to MStar, they supply to Samsung. So between the two of us, we have pretty much all the major TV brands covered. But as far as India is concerned, we are concentrating only on mobile phones, because if you look at numbers last year - 280 million mobile phones against 12 million TV sales - it pales in comparison.

Since you have been operating in the Indian and Chinese market, what are the challenges between the two markets

Finbarr: China has undergone a fabulous transition in the last two years - going from completely 3G to completely 4G now. 3G smartphones do not sell in China anymore, its just 4G phones. This is obviously driven by the operators, the government, the carriers and so on. So that is quite exciting. In the last couple of years it has also become a high tier market, so phones with very high specs sell a lot there. Consumer awareness and consumer demand for those kind of high end specs is driving Helio level quality. Infact all of the entry level smartphones that are produced in China are exported. 250 million 3G phones that were sold with MediaTek chipsets last year - almost 95% of those were manufactured in China and probably all of those were exported. So thats the position in China. The challenge is that the market in China is slowing down, there isnt rapid growth. Around 450 million units are sold annually. But the curve is flattening and you are getting into the replacement market and so on.

India, on the other hand, has around 250-280 million buyers annually. Most of the sales happen in the entry level and feature phone segment. So to put it simply there is a lot of scope for mobile unit sales numbers to grow. If Indias GDP keeps growing at the rate that it is growing, if wealth continues to be generated in the country, I think there is a lot of opportunity for mobile business. And I dont think we know what kind of design innovations we will see in the next few years.

Kuldeep: This years forecast is I think around 133 million will be smartphones, 67 million will be LTE based handsets. There will be challenges from local brands. Today around 51% share is still held by the top 10 local players/brands. But they need to up their game. You cant just import phones from China, rebrand it and sell them here. There has to be investments in R&D departments of these local brands. Companies have to go beyond the pricing and look at improving overall user experience. Differentiation is key.

You have the LinkIt platform for IoT products and at Computex last year, I saw a lot of implementations across different product segments such as bike helmets, bicycles, clothing and so on. Are there any specific requirements that developers have to follow? How is the work on the platform going?

Finbarr: LinkIt is part of our overall approach to IoT. We formed a new business unit (BU) focussed on just the IoT last year and it is a very small unit as compared to our other divisions. There are four produce areas: Wearables, Home Automation, Machine to Machine (M2M) and GPS. We sell a lot of stuff in India for energy meters. So this BU is focussed on developing products for these four categories. Now we recognise that IoT is a whole different landscape as opposed to the mobile landscape. There are a finite number of customers who drive the volumes in these fields. But in the IoT space, it is a very nascent stage and it is a very broad field. So we are adapting our approach to the market. The MediaTek Labs is one approach by reaching out to developers. It is more about seeding these projects. Then the business side deals with how to market the product if has the potential to become successful.

In addition to Qualcomm and Intel, you have Samsung doing very well with its Exynos chipsets and even Huawei has started making its own APs. Do you view that as a threat to MediaTeks market share?

Finbarr: See there is always going to be competition, I mean we are not the only supplier in the market. If you go back in time in the mobile industry, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Ericsson had their own chipset businesses. Thats when MediaTek had also got started with mobiles and grew from there. Then there was a time that no one was doing things internally. Till Apple came along and developed their own custom chipset, Samsung followed with its Exynos line and so on. But there is still a very sizeable market out there. Also if you look beyond just the mobile market, there are a lot of other areas where you can leverage the potential of your chipsets. If you look at the broad Android platform, the mobile platform, it will certainly expand beyond smartphones. The best example would be the auto segment. A lot of embedded products such as payment terminals can leverage Android. So although the premium market is still quite vertically integrated, there is still a sizeable market from companies out of India and China which give us opportunities to grow. As long as we are developing the right products with the right differentiating features, there will always be a market for us.
tech2 News Staff

In a blog post published a few days ago, WhatsApp revealed that they will be withdrawing support for BlackBerry devices (BB10 included), Symbian 40, Symbian 60, Android 2.1 and 2.2 devices and Windows Phone 7.1 sometime this year.

WhatsApp wrote that the market right now comprises of 99% Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 and above devices. They said that the decision was "not an easy one to make" and that the market has evolved. While other platforms will suffer, there is some respite for BB10 users as their devices are capable of running Android apps within the OS. They will, of course, lose out on Hub integration, but if they really want WhatsApp, that might be the only way.

"While these mobile devices have been an important part of our story, they don't offer the kind of capabilities we need to expand our app's features in the future.", say WhatsApp. Finally, they add that, "This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp. If you use one of these affected mobile devices, we recommend upgrading to a newer Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone before the end of 2016 to continue using WhatsApp."

Switching to another platform might be a hard pill to swallow for lovers of BlackBerry and other mobile operating systems. But they will not be left with any other option.
This Page

has moved to a new address:

Sorry for the inconvenience

Redirection provided by Blogger to WordPress Migration Service
Volleyball results from Thursday

Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, 8:34 a.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- The Almont varsity volleyball team beat Madison Heights Lamphere and New Lothrop in a triple header at Almont Thursday. Dryden beat Bay City All Saints...

Golf and tennis regional results

Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, 5:41 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Boys' high school tennis regionals and girls' golf regionals took place yesterday. Lapeer girls' golf placed 11th at the Div. 1 regional hosted by Oxford...

Friday night football scores

Friday, September 30, 2022 10:15 p.m.  LAPEER COUNTY  Lapeer beat Grand Blanc 39-17 at Lapeer to remain undefeated at 6-0. Almont upset Croswell-Lexington 37-26 North Branch routed Richmond 62-10 Imlay City/Dryden fell to Yale...

Summer sports camps/clinics

Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 4:40 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Below is a list of the summer sports camps and clinics that will take place through early Aug. The regular sports update posting of high...
US election 2016: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump rack up more wins

BBC Online: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have both won the most states on the biggest day of the race for the US presidential nominations. Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia were among the states where both triumphed. Mr Trump was defeated by Ted Cruz in Texas and Oklahoma. Democrat Bernie Sanders won four, including his home state of Vermont. Super Tuesday sees 11 states voting on the biggest single day ahead of the 8 November presidential election. The former secretary of state and real estate mogul entered Super Tuesday as the favourites to win the vast majority of states for their respective parties. In her victory speech on Tuesday, Mrs Clinton appeared to already be looking towards a potential presidential race against Donald Trump, saying: "The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower." Donald Trump, for his part, insisted that he was a "unifier" who could put internal fighting in the Republican party behind him to focus on a general election race against Mrs Clinton. "Once we get all this finished, I'm going after one person - Hillary Clinton," he told reporters in Florida, where he has been campaigning ahead of the state's vote later this month. The billionaire also insisted he had "expanded the Republican party", referring to higher turnout from a broad demographic in states that have already voted. Texas Senator Ted Cruz called on his rivals to drop out of the race, which he says would enable him to contend Mr Trump's lead more effectively. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who was hoping to emerge as the main alternative to Mr Trump, won his first state on Tuesday in the Minnesota caucuses. This was a man not looking to the next primary, the next bit of slog along that long and exhausting road. This was a man with an eye on the much bigger fight in November, and his presumptive opponent Hillary Clinton. He graciously congratulated Ted Cruz over his wins in Texas and Oklahoma. No mention last night of him being the biggest liar he's ever met. And no demeaning of Marco Rubio either. Were it not for the unmistakable blond hair and the family members at his side, you might have been forgiven for thinking an impostor had entered the room. But no it was Donald 2.0 that we had with us. The trouble, though, when you upload a new operating system is there are inevitable bugs and glitches. And the new OS takes a bit of getting used to. And there will be many who say what brought me to the product was the original software. So can and will the new magnanimous Donald be able to keep up this new modus operandi, and will his army of fans like what they see? This was a strikingly different Donald Trump who met reporters on Tuesday night. His tone was conciliatory. He was quietly spoken. He said he would be a unifier - of the Republican Party, of the nation. He didn't crow and he didn't claim to be the nominee, but he clearly thinks the primary race is effectively over. Mr Trump has stunned the Republican establishment to become the party's front-runner. Despite his controversial policies on immigration, the former reality TV star has been consistently polling well above his rivals - Ted Cruz, Mr Rubio, Mr Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Both Senators Cruz and Rubio have ramped up their anti-Trump rhetoric over the past week, in a bid to halt his commanding lead in the race. The outcome of Super Tuesday will be critical for both candidates to remain the race. Mr Trump has faced heavy criticism this week over his failure to disavow David Duke, a leader of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, who has endorsed the Republican candidate. The front-runner later said he had on several occasions in the past disavowed Mr Duke. On the Democratic side, Mrs Clinton had already secured three wins in the first four early-voting states and has led significantly among blocs of black voters there. Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, has put up an unexpectedly strong challenge against the former secretary of state after his sweeping victory in New Hampshire last month. Alongside wins in Vermont and Oklahoma, he also was projected to win the Democratic Colorado caucuses - although this was merely a projection, as delegates do not vote until the state convention in April.
UN may delay Syria talks unless US, Russia guarantee truce

Syrian pro-government forces advance through the town of Khanasser, which is the sole link between government-held areas in and around Aleppo.

Reuters, Geneva :

The United States and Russia must make Syria's cessation of hostilities work or else it may become necessary to delay the resumption of peace talks, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told Reuters today.

Since the agreement to halt nearly five years of fighting came into force on Saturday, the Syrian government and the opposition have accused each other of violating the deal but international observers have reported a decline in violence.

Without progress on the cessation of hostilities and on access for humanitarian aid, de Mistura said he could "slightly" postpone the next round of peace talks, which has been pencilled in for Monday, March 7.

"The decision on whether they will be on Monday or slightly later will be taken in the next few days, depending on what is happening on the ground," he said.

"We don't want discussions in Geneva to become a discussion about infringements or not of the ceasefire, we want them to actually address the core of everything."

The United Nations hopes that the cessation of hostilities will allow humanitarian aid to be sent into besieged areas and provide an opportunity to revive the peace talks, which collapsed before they even started a month ago.

"So we will be in the next few days analysing how far both the ceasefire and the humanitarian access have come, so that they don't become hostages of the talks and the talks don't become hostages to progress on that," de Mistura said.

It was up to the United States and Russia, who drew up the cessation of hostilities agreement, to share information and police the truce because the United Nations was not involved in that, de Mistura said in an interview at the United Nations in Geneva.

This would require both sides to share common maps of the battlefield and monitor the situation with drones and satellites as it would not be possible to deploy thousands of observers on the ground. The United Nations only had general maps of the situation before the ceasefire, he said.

De Mistura said he expected to see attempts to disrupt the ceasefire, and these needed to be contained to avoid them spreading and undermining the credibility of the truce.

After an abortive first round of the Geneva peace talks, which ended on February 3, de Mistura wants the Syrian sides to focus on constitutional reform, governance, and elections to be held in 18 months.

Prisoner releases would also be "very much up front on the agenda", he said.

The war has created more than five million refugees, who must have the chance to vote in any future election, de Mistura said.

He already had reports from Damascus that many who were thinking of leaving were rethinking that decision because of the cessation of hostilities, "as fragile and delicate as it is".
Gonoshasthaya SMCollege holds skill development workshop

Economic Reporter :

A day-long "Inception workshop on self Assessment and Quality Assurance in MBBS program" was held at Gono Bishwabidyalay campus on Wednesday.

The workshop was organized by Gonoshasthaya Samajvittik Medical College of the university at the seminar room of academic building.

Prof. Mesbahuddin Ahmad, Vice-Chancellor was the chief guest and special guests were Prof Dr. Md. Delwar Hossain, Pro vice-Chancellor and Md. Delower Hossain, Registrar of Gono Bishwabidyalay. The chief guest Prof. Mesbahuddin Ahmad said in his speech, The University Grants Commission of Bangladesh is trying to raise higher education quality under Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP). Consequently, the Institutional Quality Assurance Cell has been formed at Gono Bishwabidyalay. Now we have to increase the quality of higher education by the proper use of this opportunity.

Prof Dr. Md. Ashraf Ul Karim Khan, Dean, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and Prof Dr Md. Mostafizer Rahman, The IQAC Director of Gono Bishwabidyalay and head of Microbiology Department presented the keynote paper. Prof Laila Parveen Banu, Principal & Head, Self Assesment Committee of Gonoshasthaya Samajvittik Medical College chaired the workshop.c
The closing of the academic mind

Chris Patten :

I would wager that I have been Chancellor of more universities than anyone alive today. This is partly because when I was Governor of Hong Kong, I was made Chancellor of every university in the city. I protested that it would surely be better for the universities to choose their own constitutional heads. But the universities would not allow me to resign gracefully. So for five years I enjoyed the experience of giving tens of thousands of students their degrees and watching what this rite of passage meant for them and their families.

When I came back to Britain in 1997, I was asked to become Chancellor of Newcastle University. Then, in 2003, I was elected Chancellor by the graduates of Oxford University, one of the world's greatest institutions of learning. So it should not be surprising that I have strong views about what it means to be a university and to teach, do research, or study at one.

Universities should be bastions of freedom in any society. They should be free from government interference in their primary purposes of research and teaching; and they should control their own academic governance. I do not believe it is possible for a university to become or remain a world-class institution if these conditions do not exist.

The role of a university is to promote the clash of ideas, to test the results of research with other scholars, and to impart new knowledge to students. Freedom of speech is thus fundamental to what universities are, enabling them to sustain a sense of common humanity and uphold the mutual tolerance and understanding that underpin any free society. That, of course, makes universities dangerous to authoritarian governments, which seek to stifle the ability to raise and attempt to answer difficult questions.

But if any denial of academic liberty is a blow struck against the meaning of a university, the irony today is that some of the most worrying attacks on these values have been coming from inside universities.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, some students and teachers now seek to constrain argument and debate. They contend that people should not be exposed to ideas with which they strongly disagree. Moreover, they argue that history should be rewritten to expunge the names (though not the endowments) of those who fail to pass today's tests of political correctness. Thomas Jefferson and Cecil Rhodes, among others, have been targeted. And how would Churchill and Washington fare if the same tests were applied to them?

Some people are being denied the chance to speak as well - so-called "no platforming", in the awful jargon of some clearly not very literate campuses. There are calls for "safe spaces" where students can be protected from anything that assaults their sense of what is moral and appropriate. This reflects and inevitably nurtures a harmful politics of victimization - defining one's own identity (and thus one's interests) in opposition to others. When I was a student 50 years ago, my principal teacher was a leading Marxist historian and former member of the Communist Party. The British security services were deeply suspicious of him. He was a great historian and teacher, but these days I might be encouraged to think that he had threatened my "safe space." In fact, he made me a great deal better informed, more open to discussion of ideas that challenged my own, more capable of distinguishing between an argument and a quarrel, and more prepared to think for myself.

Of course, some ideas - incitement of racial hatred, gender hostility, or political violence - are anathema in every free society. Liberty requires some limits (decided freely by democratic argument under the rule of law) in order to exist.

Universities should be trusted to exercise that degree of control themselves. But intolerance of debate, of discussion, and of particular branches of scholarship should never be tolerated. As the great political philosopher Karl Popper taught us, the only thing we should be intolerant of is intolerance itself. That is especially true at universities. Yet some American and British academics and students are themselves undermining freedom; paradoxically, they have the liberty to do so. Meanwhile, universities in China and Hong Kong are faced with threats to their autonomy and freedom, not from within, but from an authoritarian government.

In Hong Kong, the autonomy of universities and free speech itself, guaranteed in the city's Basic Law and the 50-year treaty between Britain and China on the city's status, are under threat. The rationale seems to be that, because students strongly supported the pro-democracy protests in 2014, the universities where they study should be brought to heel. So the city's government blunders away, stirring up trouble, clearly on the orders of the government in Beijing.

Indeed, the Chinese authorities only recently showed what they think of treaty obligations and of the "golden age" of Sino-British relations (much advertised by British ministers), by abducting a British citizen (and four other Hong Kong residents) on the city's streets. The five were publishing books that exposed some of the dirty secrets of China's leaders.

On the mainland, the Chinese Communist Party has launched the biggest crackdown on universities since the aftermath of the killings in Tiananmen Square in 1989. There is to be no discussion of so-called Western values in China's universities. Only Marxism can be taught. Did no one tell President Xi Jinping and his Politburo colleagues where Karl Marx came from? The trouble these days is precisely that they know little about Marx but a lot about Lenin.

Westerners should take a closer interest in what is happening in China's universities and what that tells us about the real values underpinning scholarship, teaching, and the academy. Compare and contrast, as students are asked to do.

Do you want universities where the government decides what it is allegedly safe for you to learn and discuss? Or do you want universities that regard the idea of a "safe space" - in terms of closing down debate in case it offends someone - as an oxymoron in an academic setting? Western students should think occasionally about their counterparts in Hong Kong and China who must fight for freedoms that they take for granted - and too often abuse.



(Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a former EU commissioner for external affairs, is Chancellor of the University of Oxford).


Transshipment must protect national interest

MINIMIZING national interests to maximize friendship, the Shipping Ministry is at odds with the National Board of Revenue (NBR) over realizing charges on transshipment cargoes through river routes under the Bangladesh-India Shipping Protocol. The apex revenue authority NBR has recently asked the ministry for realizing an additional charge of Tk 310 per tonne basis for security scanning leading to the tussle between the government bodies. In every step, citizens must be loyal to the nation and to protect its national interest as the national interest should be paramount, but the acts and deeds of certain governmental agencies seem contrary to the spirit.

As per the report of The New Nation on Tuesday, NBR asked for charges of Tk 130 for per tonne cargo or goods, Tk 300 for scanning and Tk 10 for providing automation service while in last November a secretariat level meeting fixed the amount at Tk 130 per tonne. Mentioning the Prime Minister's office approval, the ministry said the bid is nothing but non-cooperation by the NBR, but the NBR said nothing is wrong as the agreed minutes did not tag the condition of levying the scanning and automation fees at the time of Customs clearance.

The NBR high-ups said that the move is not to creating roadblocks to transshipment but rather a push to an ethical charge on cargo movement under the protocol. The additional charge should be put in place to ensure a viable and effective transshipment operation under the protocol. In 2011, the government formed a core committee headed by then Chairman of Tariff Commission who proposed to impose 15 types of duties for transit. The committee suggested paying Tk 580 per tonne to the National Board of Revenue but the government overlooked the recommendations. Not acting on one's own self- interest to respect friends is not a maxim in international relations or ordinary human society, but the Ministry wants to do just that.

New Delhi will get more benefit from the transshipment and for that Dhaka has to build infrastructures like roads, land-ports, and separate customs service and to appoint sufficient manpower. To facilitate transshipments to India, Bangladesh will have to invest more but the investment amounts would never be earned due to the low rates on such transshipment goods. For loading and offloading in river ports, the government must erect infrastructures and increase the capacity of the ports. Transshipment is an economic activity that should be considered according to profit-loss and in line with national interests. If political consideration triumphs over economic issues, the country will lose and the national interest would be severely compromised.
Scores of BD women trafficked to Syria

Risingbd.com :Scores of Bangladeshi women have been lured with the promise of a good job in the Middle East and then trafficked to war-torn Syria, where they are forced into domestic or sex work, a senior Bangladeshi police official said.The head of a Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) - an elite squad of the Bangladeshi police - said his unit had come across 45 cases of women who had been exploited, beaten, tortured or raped in Syria in the last year."It started with one woman called Shahinoor who escaped from her captors in Syria. She called her mother who complained to us," Commander Khadaker Golam Sarowar of RAB-3 said on Monday."Shahinoor was supposed to go to Lebanon. Instead she was taken to Dubai with five other women, and then onto to Syria where she was sold to different people - sometimes to work as a maid, sometimes for sex. She told us there were others."Sarowar said, the 34-year-old woman was "extremely sick and unable to move". Bangladeshi officials in Syria flew her to Dhaka where she is being treated for a kidney illness, he added.The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates that more than 8mn Bangladeshi nationals are working abroad, many of them in Gulf Arab states and South East Asia.Many migrate willingly, but find themselves in situations of forced labour due, in part, to exorbitant recruitment fees which need to be repaid and restrictions placed on them by their employers.Women, in particular, take up jobs as domestic workers in Gulf states where they are abused and face a lack of freedom.Sarowar said Syria-where a civil war has raged for five years-has become a new destination for traffickers who were using Bangladeshi recruitment agencies to legitimately move people to countries like Jordan and Lebanon.Traffickers in these countries then transported the women to Syria, where they were bought and sold and passed on to different people, with little chance of escape.Eight people have been arrested in Bangladesh, he said, adding most were owners and staff of recruitment agencies who had either knowingly or unknowingly been part of an international trafficking ring. Traffickers in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan has not been identified or arrested yet, he added.Sarowar said, the victims were largely poor rural women who were paying an average recruitment fee of 30,000 taka ($380) in return for a one-year contract with a monthly salary of $200."They are innocent, uneducated women who come from the villages. They do not know anything about Syria and what is happening there. They think they are going to Lebanon or Jordan for a good life," he said.
DU celebrates Flag Hoisting Day

DU VC AAMS Arefin Siddique along with teachers and students attended the premises of Aparajeo Bangla on Wednesday marking the Flag Hoisting Day of Bangladesh.

BSS, Dhaka :The Dhaka University yesterday celebrated the "Flag Hoisting Day" with due respect to mark the first hoisting of Bangladesh's flag on the university campus on this day in 1971."On March 2, 1971 flag of Independent Bangladesh was hoisted for the first time at Bat-tala on Dhaka University campus, which was a unique milestone forIndependence Movement of Bangalees,"Vice-Chancellor of DU Professor AAMS Arefin Siddique told a discussion after hoisting a national flag on the premises of Bat-tala yesterday morning.Describing the significance of the first flag hoisting, Prof Siddique said Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman realised that an independent state is needed for the emancipation of Bangalees when he initiated Language Movement in 1948.
Suspended GCC Mayor Mannan freed on bail

UNB, Gazipur :Suspended mayor of Gazipur City Corporation M A Mannan, who was arrested in an arson case last year, was released on bail from the prison cell of the Birdem Hospital on Wednesday morning. Jail Super of Kashimpur Jail part-1 Shubrata Bala said M A Mannan was sent to the hospital from Kashimpur jail a month ago due to his illness. Mannan, also the advisor of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, was arrested from his Baridhara residence in the capital on February 11 last year in a case filed for hurling petrol bombs on a passenger bus in Gazipur.Besides, some two dozens of cases were filed against the BNP leader.
Trump, Hillary capture key wins on Super Tuesday

Reuters :Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting.On Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved themselves the undisputed front-runners. Now they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties and avoid a potentially disastrous split in their ranks that could hurt them in the Nov. 8 election.U.S. networks projected Trump won seven states with victories stretching into the deep South and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests. Clinton's victories in seven states were just as impressive but in many ways predictable, propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and former President Bill Clinton began their political careers.Trump's rivals Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, emphasized their determination to remain in the race. Cruz, 45, won his home state of Texas, neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the brash billionaire. Rubio, favorite of the Republican establishment, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory. Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, a fifth state he had hoped to win.Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.At a news conference in a chandeliered ballroom at his seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, who has never held public office, dismissed furious criticism aimed at him by establishment Republicans. Faced with a party in turmoil over his ideas to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the country, Trump declared he had expanded the party by drawing in disaffected blue-collar Democrats who like his tough-on-trade rhetoric."I am a unifier," he said. "I would love to see the Republican Party and everybody get together and unify and when we unify, there's nobody that's going to beat us."The rivals of both Trump and Clinton aim to knock them off their pedestals in contests ahead in Michigan, Florida and Illinois. Trump waved off criticism from the country's top two elected Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, over his delayed disavowal of an endorsement by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. "I've disavowed," Trump said. "I'm going to get along with Congress, okay? Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him. And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, okay?" Trump said in remarks that could further inflame party tensions.Clinton, who still faces a well-funded Sanders despite having taken control of the Democratic race, was eager to assail Trump as a way of getting Democratic voters used to the idea of her as the nominee."The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," Clinton told supporters in Miami. "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work." Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner. "We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us," said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up "hundreds" of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.For Rubio, 44, it was a day of reckoning. His losses piled up after a week in which he labeled Trump a "con artist" and exchanged schoolyard taunts with him over, for example, who wet their pants under pressure at a debate last week.Suddenly, the contest on March 15 in Florida, his home state, loomed over him as a must-win state. "Florida, I know you're ready," Rubio said. "The pundits say we're underdogs, I'll accept that. We've all been underdogs."Rubio's plight was such that Senator Lindsey Graham, an establishment South Carolina Republican, told CBS News that Republican voters might need to rally around Cruz, who has been one of the most disliked public figures in Washington."I can't believe I would say yes, but yes," Graham said when asked about the idea of supporting Cruz as a way of stopping Trump. Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a "Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain."This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.
Russia, Syria using migrant crisis as weapon

AFP, Washington :

Top NATO General Philip Breedlove warned US lawmakers Tuesday that Russia is helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turn the refugee crisis into a "weapon" against the West.

The supreme allied commander in Europe for the 28-member military alliance said the massive flow of migrants from war-torn Syria has had a destabilizing effect on European countries where they found refuge, and that worked to Moscow's advantage. "Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve," Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Speaking of Russia's six-month air campaign in support of Assad, and the Syrian leader's use of barrel bombs in civilian areas, Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians. Breedlove, who also heads the US military's European Command, suggested this creates a distraction for Western powers as they grapple with the crisis and are forced to take their eye off its root cause.

"These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can't find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem," Breedlove said.

Further complicating the refugee crisis, he added, is that increasing numbers of foreigners who have fought in Syria are heading home again, bringing battlefield skills and sometimes extremist ideologies.

"What we have seen growing in the past months and year is that in that flow of refugees we see criminality, terrorism and foreign fighters," he said.

NATO last month launched an unprecedented naval mission in the Aegean Sea to tackle people smugglers taking refugees and migrants from Turkey to Greece.

Germany, Greece and Turkey had called for help dealing with Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II. Breedlove was in Washington partly to drum up support for a proposed sharp increase in money available to US forces in Europe. The coming year's budget includes $3.4 billion-quadruple last year's amount-for the so-called European Reassurance Initiative. The four-star general also accused Russia of posing a growing threat to the United States itself.

"Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies and partners," Breedlove said.

"Russia is eager to exert unquestioned influence over its neighboring states in its buffer zone... so has used military force to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia and others, like Moldova."

He said in the last week, the US ambassador in Ukraine had gotten reports of 450 attacks along the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels oppose Kiev's pro-Western leadership.

"The report from the ambassador is there are several disturbing trends in those attacks and that is that some of them are now happening in places that were heretofore quiet," Breedlove said.

More than 9,000 people have died during the Ukrainian government's 22-month war against pro-Russian insurgents in the former Soviet state's industrial east.

In a briefing with Pentagon reporters, Breedlove blasted Russia for its "irresponsible" attitude to nuclear weapons. "I see (Russia) as a real threat and I would just point to the fact that this is a nation that holds thousands of nuclear weapons and they talk all the time about using those nuclear weapons," he said.




Nominations for Khaleda, Tarique's posts collected

Staff Reporter :

Nomination papers on behalf of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman were collected on Wednesday for the posts of party chairperson and senior vice-chairman respectively. Khaleda Zia's nominated election agent and BNP Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed collected the nomination papers for the BNP chief, while the party's another Joint-Secretary General Mohammad Shahjahan collected nomination papers for Tarique Rahman for the post of senior Vice-Chairman. But no other party man collected the paper for himself.

Ahead of the party's sixth national council, collection of nomination papers for the two posts began in the party's Nayapaltan Central Office in the city in the morning. It will continue in the party office also today (Thursday).

Rizvi Ahmed collected Khaleda Zia's nomination papers in the morning, while Shahjahan did it for Tarique Rahman in the afternoon.

Before receiving the nomination papers, Rizvi Ahmed submitted an authorisation letter with Khaleda Zia's signature to the returning officer and party Standing Committee member Nazrul Islam Khan as her agent. Assistant Returning Officer and Dhaka district unit BNP president Abdul Mannan was also present at the time.

Earlier on Monday, BNP Standing Committee member and its Election Commissioner Barrister Jamiruddin Sircar announced the schedule for elections to the party Chairperson and Senior Vice-Chairman posts. The election will be held on the day of the party's national council on March 19. The aspirants will have to submit nominations by March 4. Nominations will be scrutinised on March 5 and the date for withdrawal is March 6.

The party constitution has a practice that the post of the party chairperson should be elected. It was practiced in the past though none contested against Khaleda Zia.

After the latest amendment to the constitution, the post of the Senior Vice-Chairman has been made open, meaning that anyone can contest.

In BNP's fifth council held in December in 2009, Khaleda Zia was elected chairperson unopposed while Tarique Rahman was made Senior Vice-Chairman. Khaleda Zia has been holding the post since 1984. Many said that the election to the two posts of the party is nothing but a drama, as Khaleda Zia and her son will occupy the posts again. Party insiders said that prior to the sixth national council, Khaleda Zia is going to be elected the party chairperson once again while Tarique Rahman will retain the second coveted post of the party.

A BNP leader said that although the BNP announced the polls schedule for the two posts, no other candidates can be found to submit nominations for the two posts.




Ex-ETV Chairman Salam sued over embezzlement

Staff Reporter :

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed a case against former Chairman of Ekushey Television Abdus Salam on charges of misappropriation of around Tk 340 million from the private TV channel's account.

Deputy Director of ACC Shamsul Alam filed the case with Tejgaon Model Police Station against Salam under the Panel Code on Wednesday morning, ACC Public Relations Officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya said. According to the ACC's probe report, Salam, who is currently in jail, swindled out about Tk 34 crore preparing fake business promotion bill, legal and professional fees, medical expenses, hotel expenses, foreign tour and satellite charge of the TV channel from September 2004 to December 2015 when he was the chairman of the channel.

Salam was arrested on January 6, 2015 in a case filed against him under the Pornography Control Act in November 2014. Earlier, the ACC on Tuesday approved a proposal for filing the case against him.

An ACC official, wishing anonymity, told The New Nation there was also money-laundering allegations against Salam. "He siphoned off funds to purchase ETV stakes from its foreign shareholder Citicorp (International Finance Corporation). The matter is, however, under investigation stage," he said.




Another ATM fraud

5 foreigners lost Tk 35 lakh : 4 suspects identified

Kazi Zahidul Hasan :

Investigators of Bangladesh Bank (BB) have identified four suspects of the second case of ATM fraud at the Premier Bank.

They have snub-nose and their physical structure and complexion are not like that of Bangalis. Subhankar Shaha, an Executive Director of BB, told it to The New Nation on Wednesday night over cell phone.

"They resemble the Rohingas to some extent and not like the tribal people," he added.

Suvankar Shaha said that the suspected persons have been identified after examining the CCTV footage obtained from various ATM centres of the bank.

"We got a clear picture of fraudulent transactions at six ATM booths of the Premier Bank mostly in the city," he added.

According to him, about 150 credit and debit cards were used in these ATM booths on that day when the fraudsters looted the money of the bank customers. "These are the primary findings detected by the BB investigators who launched the probe the same day the bank lodged complaint of fraudulent transactions," said Subhankar Shaha.

"We also warned all the commercial banks about the latest incident. Besides, they have been asked to strengthen security at their ATM booths to prevent similar occurrences in future," he said.

Premier Bank, a private commercial bank of the country, on Monday reported the second case of ATM forgery with the central bank in which five customers of a foreign bank have lost over Tk 35 lakh from their accounts.

Fraudsters have stolen the money from the city's six ATM booths of Premier Bank after cloning their international credit cards (VISA Cards) issued by the Al Rajhi Bank of Saudi Arabia.

The incident took place in between February 14 and 28.

After the incident, Premier Bank lodged a complaint with BB. A case has also been filed with Banani Police Station in this connection.

This was the second reported case of ATM forgery in Bangladesh. The first incident was reported on February 12 in which the private Eastern Bank Limited (EBL) detected 21 fraudulent transactions at the ATM booths of two other private banks, United Commercial Bank Ltd and The City Bank.

The skimming card gang has stolen Tk 25 lakh from the accounts of some 40 bank customers through making fake transactions.

Police later arrested a gang of four men including a foreigner in connection with the ATM scam.

The kingpin of the gang has been identified as Piotr Szcdepan Mazurek, who was born in Ukraine, claimed to be a German and carries a Polish passport.

He admitted his involvement in the ATM booth frauds along with the detained three bank employees during interrogation.

"We suspect that the same gang might be involved in the ATM card skimming fraud happened in Premier Bank," Khondker Fazle Rashid, Managing Director (MD) of the Bank, told The New Nation on Wednesday, admitting the incident.

He said the gang withdrawn Tk 35 lakh after duplicating credit cards of five foreigners from four ATM booths of the bank in the capital.

The foreigners were holding international credit cards of Saudi-based bank Al Rajhi, said Fazle Rashid, but he declined to disclose details of the account holders.

When asked, he said, his bank stopped the online transaction temporarily with the Saudi Bank soon after the incident came to the light.

The Premier Bank MD also said that the bank had informed the matter to the central bank and lodged a case with Banani police station in this connection.




Court directs for DNA test

Court Correspondent :

A Dhaka court on Wednesday ordered the chief of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to conduct DNA and chemical tests of the evidences seized from the house, where the two slain siblings of Banasree area in the capital were found in critical condition.

Magistrate Kazi Kamrul Islam of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Court of Dhaka passed the order following two petitions filed by Rampura Police Station Sub-Inspector Somen Kumar Barua. He is also the Investigation Officer (IO) of the incident. He sought direction of the court to conduct DNA profile test of bed sheet, pillow cover, tissue paper and blanket. Besides, he pleaded for the chemical test of the food and water bottle supplied from a Chinese restaurant to the slains.

The siblings- Nusrat Jahan, 14, and Alvi Aman, 6, were declared dead at Dhaka Medical College Hospital on Monday night, hours after they had eaten the food bought from the Chinese restaurant.

Although the autopsy findings suggest that the two siblings died of food poisoning, later, the test carried out at Dhaka Medical College Hospital has suggested that they have been strangled. DMC forensic department Lecturer Dr Prodeep Biswash, who conducted autopsy of the siblings, told journalists that both children's bodies bore injury marks on their throats. Nusrat also had blood in her eyes while Alvi had injury marks on one of his legs.

However, the cause of death could be confirmed after result from the viscera test reaches them, the doctor added. No case has been filed with the police station in connection with the incident till Wednesday afternoon.




1000 fake ATM cards found abandoned at HSIA

Staff Reporter :Customs intelligence officials on Wednesday seized 1000 counterfeit Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cards found in five abandoned cartons at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in city. Director General of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CID) Moinul Khan said the ATM cards were brought from Hong Kong by a flight of Thai Airways. "These seized fake ATM cards have been brought in five cartoons by DHL express courier service without any valid documents and papers," he told journalists at the airport. Moinul Khan said the customs intelligence officials are carrying out investigation to know the owners of the cards. "The cartons were seen abandoned on the premises of cargo village of the airport," he said, adding that none was arrested in this connection. In the recent development, the arrested four persons, including a foreigner Piotr Mazurek and three employees of a local bank Moksed Ali Maksud, Rezaul Karim Shahin and Refat Ahmed Rony disclosed that at least 50 individuals and business firms were involved with the recent ATM card scam.Maksud, Shahin and Rony are the employees of the City Bank's IT division. Piotr, who belongs to a gang of international fraudsters, along with the locals had installed devices and video cameras at six booths of the UCB, Eastern Bank Limited (EBL) and City Bank to steal client information.Meanwhile, Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan on Wednesday said, foreigners staying in Bangladesh are now under the scanner in light of the exposure of a German citizen being involved with the recent ATM scam."After the involvement of a German national was found in ATM scam, we are keeping a close eye on them" he told journalists.There are many foreign citizens involved in many activities in our country in non-government organisations, garments, businesses and others. The minister also said efforts are underway to make sure that strict cross-checking is done at all immigration counters to prevent the entry of foreigners with any forged passport or false visa.Citing a recent survey conducted by his ministry, he said over 2.6 lakh foreigners are working in Bangladesh in various sectors, such as RMG, NGOs and other consultancy services, both in and out of Dhaka city. With the ongoing monitoring, the minister said, notices will be issued to those whose visas are reaching the expiry dates and about deportation of those staying in Bangladesh country despite the expiry of their visas.Asked about Piotr's involvement in the card scandal, the minister said that at first he showed a Polish passport, which was then found to be forged and later a German smart card was recovered from him.On his arrival to Bangladesh, he had declared business as his reason for visiting, but as part of a bigger global fraud syndicate, he married a local woman and wanted to stay in the country and committed more crimes through fraudulence.Most of Piotr's accomplices have been arrested and those are still on the run will be hunted down soon, Kamal added.
The Elites Want Genocide This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a ...
If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Another Republican is joining the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana.

Former U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao announced his candidacy Tuesday in a news release.

Cao became the nation's first Vietnamese-American congressman with his unexpected defeated of a scandal-plagued incumbent Democrat, William Jefferson, in 2008. Two years later, he lost the New Orleans-based seat to another Democrat, Cedric Richmond.

Four other Republicans have announced plans to compete for the seat on the November ballot: U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, U.S. Rep. John Fleming, state Treasurer John Kennedy and retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness.

A Democrat, New Orleans lawyer Caroline Fayard, announced her candidacy a month ago. Another Democrat, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, has not made a formal announcement but has begun telling news outlets that he will be a candidate.

The seat is being vacated by David Vitter, who announced he would not seek re-election after losing last year's governor's race.

Cao, a soft-spoken attorney, first became known in the New Orleans area as an activist in the Vietnamese community of eastern New Orleans as the area struggled to recover after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In a hurricane-delayed election in 2008, he defeated Jefferson, who would later go to prison for corruption.

Cao's defeat of the once-powerful Jefferson in a strongly Democratic district made him a rising star in the GOP.

So did his compelling life story: As a child, he fled Vietnam with family members ahead of the fall of Saigon.

He broke with the party at times to vote with President Barack Obama. But his votes against the 2009 economic stimulus bill and his eventual vote against Obama's health care legislation didn't play well in the district. Richmond, then a state legislator, defeated him in 2010 to return the seat to the Democrats.

Cao's news release said he is running "because he believes Louisiana deserves a Senator who puts delivering for Louisiana ahead of party politics or political gain."
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!
Pre-purchase property inspection is a relatively new thing in the United Kingdom. Its not something that most people have heard about, but it has become increasingly popular over the last few years with the rise in property prices and increased demand for high quality homes.

What are the benefits of pre-purchase building inspection? What can you expect to find out when you pay someone else to inspect your home before you buy it? And what should you look for during an inspection?

Many people want to know if theyre buying a house thats been well maintained or if its had any serious problems. If youve found a place on the market that seems attractive, but then discover some issues after moving in, you may not be as excited about buying it as you thought you were.

Its important to do your due diligence when looking at properties. A lot goes into making a property appealing to potential buyers, from the landscaping to the flooring to the kitchen appliances. The same applies when inspecting a property  there are many things that need checking over to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Here are some of the benefits of performing a pre-purchase inspection:

You get to see exactly what will happen to your money

When you go shopping for a new car, youll probably be shown several different models. You might even be shown one that looks like a great value, but doesnt fit around all of the extra features that you want. When it comes time to actually buy the vehicle, however, you wont have seen how your money will be spent on it once you drive it off the showroom floor.

Likewise, when you shop for a new home, you dont really know what youre getting yourself into until you move in. In order to get a feel for whether the home youre considering is what you want, you normally have to spend quite a bit of time inside it. This allows you to learn more about everything that youre going to be spending your hard-earned cash on.

A pre-purchase building inspection gives you much the same kind of experience without having to spend thousands of dollars. Since youre paying for the service, you can expect to see exactly what youre paying for, instead of just seeing a vague idea of what you might end up with.

You find out about potential major repairs

Some buildings are very expensive to maintain, which means that owners often neglect them for the sake of saving money. While youre paying for a building inspection, youre also paying for a professional who knows how to spot signs of trouble and repair work that needs doing.

If you notice that a particular area of your new home needs fixing right away, you can call in an expert to take care of it quickly. If you find that theres something wrong with your boiler, you wont have to wait weeks for a plumber to come over and fix it. Instead, youll have access to a solution immediately.

You can save hundreds of pounds by finding out about potential problems early on

One of the biggest expenses when you first buy a home is the cost of moving in. Many people dont realize this until its too late. Buying a home involves not only paying for the actual house, but also for moving costs, furniture, and other items that have to be moved along with the home.

Having a good idea ahead of time of what youre likely to encounter can help you avoid these kinds of costs. If you know youll need to replace the plumbing system, for example, youll be able to put together a budget for the expense and plan accordingly.

You can protect your investment by finding out if the homes been well cared for

While there are plenty of people who think that houses always look better when theyre newly built, youd be surprised at how well maintained older residences can still look nice. Sometimes, though, those homes need some additional maintenance to keep them looking their best.

This could involve repairs that arent so noticeable or small improvements that you wouldnt consider otherwise. Even worse, some houses have fallen into disrepair without anyone noticing. This is why having a professional perform a building inspection prior to purchasing a home is such a big benefit.

Not only will it give you insight into the state of the property, but it will also give you peace of mind knowing youre not getting taken advantage of. As long as youre aware of the potential pitfalls, youll have less reason to worry about the state of your new home.

You can use information gathered during a building inspection to negotiate a lower price

If youre worried about buying a home because you suspect that it may need extensive renovation work, you may already have a rough idea of how much work youll need to do to bring it up to scratch. That knowledge can come in handy if you decide to buy the home.

You can use all of the details that you gather during a building inspection to present a realistic picture of what the home is worth to prospective buyers. If a potential buyer thinks that the home is worth more than what you paid for it, you can try negotiating a lower price.

You can sell your home faster and for more money

If you decide to list your home on the market soon after buying it, youll need to price it accurately in order to attract buyers. But if youve already done a thorough building inspection, youll know exactly what work is needed and what the current market conditions are.

In other words, youll be able to make a more accurate estimate of the amount of money youve invested in the home and how much its worth. If you find that youre selling your house for close to its full market value, you can use this information to convince the potential buyer that your home is worth the asking price.

Even if youre planning to stay in the home for a while before you decide to sell, the fact that you did a thorough building inspection will give you more confidence when listing it. Prospective buyers will know exactly what theyre paying for.

Your home will hold its value longer

As mentioned earlier, the value of a home depends heavily upon the condition of the building itself. If your home is in bad shape, potential buyers wont be interested in buying it. On the other hand, if youve performed a thorough building inspection and know what sort of repairs are necessary, you can offer your prospective buyer a compelling reason to invest in your property.

When you buy a home, youre essentially agreeing to have it inspected periodically to ensure that it stays in top shape. Not only does this allow you to avoid expensive repairs down the road, but it can also increase the value of your home.

You can make smart decisions about property investments

Buying real estate isnt as simple as just driving a couple of minutes to pick up a house. There are lots of considerations involved, ranging from location to cost. The same is true when youre investing in property.

If you find a house that meets all of your requirements, youll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of where it stands with regards to the rest of the market. If you havent spent enough time researching the area, you could inadvertently end up with a bad deal.

There are lots of resources available online that can help you determine the overall level of competition in your area. They can also help you figure out if there are any properties that meet your requirements that you didnt know about.

If you own rental property, you can use the information to identify tenants who might cause damage

If you own rental property and youve noticed that certain tenants consistently cause damage, you can use the results of a building inspection to identify them. You can then contact them directly to let them know that youre watching them closely and that you dont appreciate the problem theyre causing.

They might start taking better care of their homes, which would be good news for everyone. It could also be the case that youll find out that theyre responsible for previous damages that werent caught during a previous visit.

You can make smarter decisions about hiring contractors

If youve hired contractors to build or repair your home, you might want to ask them for references. However, unless you perform a thorough building inspection, you might not know exactly what to look for.

For instance, maybe you only checked the roof for leaks or the walls for cracks. You might not have looked underneath the foundation for anything that could cause a future issue. By performing a building inspection, you can ensure that you hire reputable contractors who will be trustworthy with your money.

You can avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition

Of course, the main benefit of structural inspections perth is that it helps you avoid purchasing a home thats in poor condition. Before you make the decision to buy a home, you should do whatever you can to find out about the state of the building.

You can also ask your realtor about what sorts of inspections are typically recommended. Some agents say that its standard practice to check the heating system, the roof, the electrical wiring, and the floors. Others will tell you that they recommend that you check the entire structure.

Either way, if you choose to hire an inspector, youll find out exactly what needs to be fixed and how much it will cost to do so.

As a result, it can be concluded that a pre-purchase building inspection is highly important for the buyers because it provides transparency regarding the current conditions of the structure. Additionally, the building owner is made aware of any upgrades or repairs that are required, which could lead to a fair deal throughout the purchasing and selling process.
7317 members



Follow TNBBC on Facebook and Twitter!!! and also be sure to check out book reviews and author interv...
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. -Jesus



-John 14:6
President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war?

You voted:
By AM Wednesday, March 2, 2016 Share Tweet Share Share Email

Political commentator and evangelical Christian,writing for Political Mind Fields , calls for the formation of a Christian party. Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter The Christian Church in Ireland, north and south, is facing a theological relevance problem as it loses societys support on core Biblical issues, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, assisted suicide and relations with Islam.If the Churches cannot hold back the secular, pluralist, agnostic, atheist tide sweeping the island  or maybe its just apathy in religion  by getting pro-Christian candidates elected in various parties, then perhaps the Church should grab the demon by the horns and form its own movement.This island urgently needs the formation of an Irish Christian Party to combat the potentially fatal crisis which has befallen many churches.The time is nigh for Christians of all denominations to set aside their theological differences, launch the ICP as an interest group and get candidates elected to the Dail in February and to Stormont in May.ICP activists must show the same zeal to succeed in getting elected as their forefathers in the Spanish Inquisition and the Puritan Witchfinders.The ICP is not a movement for pussy-footing whimps, who seem to dominate many churches in modern Ireland.The depth of the crisis facing Irish Christianity cannot be swept behind the pulpit.If the slide continues, within a generation there will be more people in Ireland who are non-Christians or non-worshippers than currently exist in the pews.Practically, when  not if  this becomes a religious reality, Catholic chapels will close and the smaller Protestant denominations will cease to exist.The clerical abuse scandals within Catholicism have created the false stereotype that only predator homosexuals and child molesters want to become priests or join Holy Orders.At one time, Ireland was one of the Vaticans beacons of Catholicism in Western Europe. Families saw it as a badge of honour when they proudly declared a son was entering the priesthood or a daughter becoming a nun.Has it become a case that folk who feel called to religious orders prefer to conduct their vocation overseas away from Irish eyes for fear of being falsely branded a pervert?Many Protestant churches find themselves in an equally precarious position.There are more than two dozen different denominations all claiming to be the one, true Protestant faith!The Irish Catholic Bishops got a right kick in the theological teeth when the Republic voted in favour of same-sex marriage.The islands largest Protestant denomination, the Church of Ireland, is at war with itself over same-sex marriage.The gay debate is about to split Presbyterianism as liberals and evangelicals lock horns, with some clerics supporting same-sex marriage; others vehemently opposing it.Some clerics in many churches need to get a large dose of sensible courage when it comes to dealing with the problems of young people, as they are more interested in their image in the community than helping folk.Among the fundamentalist churches, they are more interested in fighting over types of worship, womens hats, mens ties, what translation of the Bible to read, going to the cinema, heavy metal, and when, where and how to have sex!Christians of whatever faith need to face the bitter reality that to survive as an influential community in Ireland, they must unite and organise politically. The IPC must copy the tactics and zeal of their opponents.In less than a generation, the gay community has gone from having homosexual acts branded as a crime to being the most vocal and powerful lobby on the island.The IPC must adopt this strategy. It must dispel the myth that it is a bunch of fringe religious nutcases to becoming the majority voice of order, reason and control in parliament and council chambers.The IPC must instil in its membership the same discipline for Christian devotion as Islam has created among moderate muslims.Just as thousands now flock to gay pride events across Ireland, the IPC must sell its message through a series of massive Christian Pride Festivals.The IPC must rekindle the spirit of the famous 1859 religious Revival which swept across Ireland.Forget denominational rituals and traditions. When Catholic and Protestants get together under the banner of the Irish Christian Party, they will find there are more issues which unite them than divide them.The islands largest Christian denomination  Catholicism  faces the biggest challenge if its voice is to be heard in the corridors of Dublins Leinster House and Belfasts Parliament BuildingsThe Catholic Church in Ireland needs to be reborn spiritually  otherwise it will become a meaningless fringe cult in less than a decade.The abuse scandals, coupled with a secular society, have rocked confidence in the Church leadership, with Mass attendances collapsing nationwide.Ireland was once the great bastion of the Church-State relationship, especially in the Eamon de Valera era.But now Irish Catholics need a new set of beliefs, which will see the pews overflowing as they did in the Swinging Sixties.The Vaticans Irish office has been axed and outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny once publicly used a Dail speech to lambast the Catholic hierarchy.That represents the depth of the rot. And the calls to quit for any Catholic clergy suspected of being allegedly involved in sexual abuse or allegedly covering up sexual abuse will not go away.But there is light at the end of this very dark tunnel for Irish Catholics. The question is, do they have the faith and conviction to follow that path?A new faith  Pentecostal Catholicism  is slowly, but surely sweeping across the island. If Irish Catholics take this spiritual route, their faith will blossom as never before.This should not be misinterpreted as Catholics converting to Protestantism. But it does mean Irish Catholicism institutionally cutting its Vatican ties.Even in the Protestant community, the mainstream and many fringe churches are faced with falling attendances. And Pentecostal Protestantism is on the rise, too.The power of the Pentecostal movement is that it does not distinguish between Catholics and Protestants. All are what is classified by faith as born again believers.In worship terms, a Pentecostal Catholic can feel just as comfortable at a gathering of Pentecostal Protestants.The perfect example of this growing Pentecostal Catholic movement can be found in West Belfast.Its in the Falls Community Fellowship church, based near the Royal Victoria Hospital .It is led by Pastor Tony Meehan, who once wanted to be a Jesuit-trained priest and was in the Irish Army.He is also a married man with a family. Thats another benefit the new Pentecostal Catholic movement has for any Catholic male wanting to become a pastor  celibacy is optional.The general Irish Pentecostal movement began in Monaghan in the early 1900s, but such was the Vaticans grip on Catholicism in Ireland that bishops have always been able to cleverly dismiss Pentecostalism as Protestantism under another name.The modern-day Pentecostal Catholic movement is taking the Biblical Old Testament text of Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26 as its inspiration: A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.The Irish Catholic leadership, as well as dumping Vatican rule and going independent, should also follow the words of Jesus when He told people to sell their riches and give to the poor.With austerity cuts biting deep across Ireland, the Church has vast riches in its chapels, monasteries, convents and cathedrals.Poverty will be the social scourge of the next decade and the Irish Catholic Church must sell, sell, sell to help the poor and needy. It should immediately cut its funding to the Vatican.But money will not buy salvation for the Catholic Church as an institution. It must turn to Pentecostalism as a faith, otherwise Catholicism in Ireland as a religious influence will be dead in a decade, too.Likewise, if the Catholic and Protestant Churches can become politically relevant, the Christian faith will flourish, but do clerics have the courage of their convictions to save the faith or are they quite content to become religious ostriches and bury their heads in the social sands and pretend the rot is not happening?
Parece que todos los dias la tecnologia se hace cargo de otro trabajo, y estas ocupaciones obsoletas no son una excepcion. Y es que los tiempos cambian, y debido a
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.
South Carolina gave Hillary Clinton momentum beyond what she could have anticipated with Saturdays landslide win fueled by overwhelming support from African-American voters.

The front-running Democrat quickly turned to Super Tuesday and the forecast of wins in other Southern states fueled by African-American voters.

The irony in Southern states lifting Clinton is the nature of the presidential race from now to November. After Tuesday, Clinton will not be seen again in South Carolina or most other states below the Mason-Dixon line.

They play a crucial role in the nominating process because the percentage of minority voters in Southern states casting ballots in the Democratic primary is much higher than their percentage of the states populations. In South Carolina on Saturday, 60 percent of the vote was African-American, while blacks make up less than a third of the states population.

South Carolina and other Southern states are Republican. No Democrat has carried the Palmetto State in the general election since Jimmy Carter in 1976. That is not expected to change this year.

Consider that 737,000 people voted in the GOP primary on Feb. 20. Saturdays turnout for Democrats was just more than half that at 368,000. By the numbers alone, the GOP nominee is considered a lock to carry the state in November.

Hillary Clinton will remember South Carolina as a key win if she goes on to secure the nomination, but the state will be insignificant in November. With only nine electoral votes, South Carolina is not the place for Democrats to make the big push to regain support in the South.

And dont expect to see the Republican nominee either. Donald Trump won big here and may well have the same sentiment as Clinton about the boost his candidacy got from Palmetto State voters. But he or the eventual GOP nominee will be focused elsewhere for November, knowing that if the GOP cannot carry South Carolina without a big test, the race is lost nationally anyway.

The past weeks have seen South Carolina be the focus of the national political races. The state has played a key role in the process. Orangeburg County was significant in the Democratic race. Our voices have been heard.

Its sad to say, but now we can sit back and watch to see who is elected president.
A long tradition in American politics has been the metaphor of political parties serving as a big tent. In the case of the 2016 Republican nomination process, however, the tent seems to be collapsing if not set aflame by its own members.

The contentious and riotous affair that has been the primary season, a far different one than most pundits and party insiders had expected, could simply be laid at the feet of Donald Trump; a fitting carnival-barker candidate if there ever was one. To blame one man, however, for the fractured nature of the primary belies that the big tent metaphor not only fits, but also explains why the Republican primary has become the chaotic affair that it is.

Parties are always an amalgam of people with varied, and often contradictory, views and backgrounds. It is precisely this variance of individual interests that makes the big tent metaphor stick. The goal of any party is not to meet every individual need, but to unify a diverse group of people under several tent-poles.

The goal is to enlarge the tent so you are able to acquire the greatest number of voters while still adhering to some general principles or policies. Create a large enough tent and the party can, in theory, serve the diverse needs of voters from rural Iowa to inner-city youth and from the financiers of Wall Street to the small hardware store owner on Main Street.

The problem of the 2016 GOP is that the tent-poles are no longer able to bear the weight and the party is thus fracturing along cultural, economic, and regional lines. I would argue part of the reason the tent has collapsed is the tent pole of foreign policy has been irrevocably broken.

On the surface, suggesting that foreign policy is no longer an important issue in holding together a party seems farcical. Not only has the GOP held several foreign policy debates, but in a world filled with ISIS, a saber-rattling North Korea, and an emergent Russia, no candidate could survive claiming that foreign policy was immaterial. The issue is that while foreign policy may still matter as an issue, there is no longer any common agreement (or tent pole) among the GOP.

Since the 1960s, the GOP presented itself, above all, as the party of national defense and anti-communism. The leaders and stratagems might change but the common assumption was that if a voter wanted a muscular defense apparatus you would find a welcome seat under the big-top of the GOP. The collapse of the Soviet Union created some confusion as to the role of the United States and for the standard GOP foreign policy. During the 1990s the GOP remained affixed under the tent more out of unified resistance to President Bill Clinton as much as in a shared foreign policy vision.

It is likely that the divisions we see in 2016 would have emerged under President George W. Bush. His campaign promises to not get involved in nation-building, and the growing emergence of libertarian critiques on the size and scope of the national security apparatus, suggested a debate was in the offering on foreign policy let alone along the fissure-lines of the party.

The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, created a new shared tent-pole for the GOP but only served as a temporary one. The taxing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not only sapped the budget but also a common faith in the GOP for a neo-Wilsonian foreign policy. Indeed, the rancor between Senators Rubio and Cruz on the NSA or Libya is a reflection of the deep divide that now exists between traditional GOP foreign policy and the emerging libertarian tendencies within the base.

The fractures between rural and urban, college-educated and not, and religious and agnostic, have always existed in the Republican Party. The candidacy of Donald Trump did not create these fissures but he has seized upon them. Yet, his success needs to be explained as other candidates  Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Pat Buchannan  have tried his same road and found it wanting. The critical difference is that Trump has emerged at a time when there is no common assumption that paves over the differences and rallies the voters back into the tent. The huge debates over immigration may also be seen in this light as so many candidates now discuss it in terms of foreign policy. Senator Marco Rubio, for example, suggested his evolution on the issue of border security was directly related to the rise of ISIS.

The chaos of 2016 is what happens when the big-tent starts to collapse. Foreign policy no longer provides that unifying theme and so the fractures, often hidden under the cover of the big top, are on display for the world to see. For pundits who like to see a circus, it is all good fun, but for the GOP it suggests a worrying development that will not end in 2016.
Three faculty and staff members have been honored as Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical Colleges 2016 Educators of the Year. They were recognized during the South Carolina Technical Education Association annual conference Feb. 18-20 in Myrtle Beach.

Laney Cornelius, a building and grounds supervisor at OCtech, is the outstanding administrator; JoEllen Jody W. Ott, an Early Childhood Development instructor and program coordinator for Teacher Education University Transfer and Early Care and Education, is the outstanding faculty member; and Angie M. Fogle, a fiscal technician at the college, is the outstanding staff honoree.

SCTEA is a professional association of technical education personnel and others interested in post-secondary technical education.

Cornelius joined the OCtech staff as a trade specialist in March 2012 and was promoted to his current position within eight months. He joined the colleges physical plant staff with 10 years of operations management experience.

I take great pride in leading by example and assisting the faculty, staff and students at OCtech, said Cornelius, who often performs duties beyond his job requirements. OCtech is such a wonderful work environment. Everyone is so friendly and personable.

Cornelius has received numerous certificates in communication, leadership and management from Tooling University. He is an active member of the Columbia Road Church of God, enjoys hunting in his spare time and is an avid participant in the Regional Medical Centers Blood Assurance Program, where he recently surpassed the five-gallon blood donation mark.

I like helping people, he said. I treat everybody how I like to be treated.

Cornelius and his wife, Tammy, have two daughters  Lacey, a fifth-grader at Calhoun Academy, and Danielle, an accounting student at OCtech.

Being able to work here while my daughter is attending is a rewarding experience on its own, Cornelius said. I enjoy coming to work and getting my job done, but also being able to put a smile on the faces of the people I am serving.

Ott has been at the college since 2000. Prior to joining OCtech, she was a K-4 teacher at Guinyard Elementary School in St. Matthews, early childhood supervisor for SCETV Early Childhood National Programming, on-site manager and teacher at SCETVs Childrens Place and child development teacher at Booker T. Washington Child Care at the University of South Carolina.

I enjoy teaching at OCtech because the college serves as an avenue through which I can fulfill my lifes mission of making a positive difference in the lives of children, she said.

Ott was a nominee for OCtechs Educator of the Year in 2010 and 2014. She earned a Master Instructor Certificate at the college in 2003 and was awarded the Orangeburg County Community of Character award for cheerfulness in 2009.

Ott is a member of the South Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children and National Association for the Education of Young Children, where she has served as validator for the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs and the NAEYC Early Childhood Associate Degree Accreditation Review Team. She is also a member of the South Carolina Technical Education Association, and has previously served as the groups secretary (2004-2005), vice president (2008-2009) and president (2009-2010). She is co-advisor for OCtechs Educators Rising chapter and member of the Faculty Council and Advisory Committee at the college.

I am honored to serve as an instructor at an institution where all administrators, staff and faculty members are dedicated to student success, Ott said. Lasting impressions made on our students will, in turn, have a positive impact on the lives of many more children in the future.

Fogle has been employed at Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College for seven years. She served for two years in Student Services and has spent the last five years in accounting.

Fogle is also a graduate of OCtech, having received her associates degree in office system technology, diploma in automated office and certificate in word processing from the college. She is often the first person to greet students and visitors when they come to campus.

The best part about working at OCtech is the students, Fogle said. My journey here has allowed me to see so many different students with different backgrounds and lifestyles. I enjoy watching them grow and graduate.

Fogle has been a member of the International Association of Administrative Professionals chapter at OCtech and has performed community service with both the Salvation Army and Samaritan House in Orangeburg. Additionally, she has worked with Orangeburg-Wilkinson High Schools Band Booster Club.

My work in Student Services and the business office at OCtech has given me the opportunity to work with departments across campus to ensure that our students, faculty, staff and the public receive the assistance that they need, Fogle said. I enjoy what I do, and I appreciate that my hard work and dedication have been noticed.
A Branchville man is facing two felony charges in a case in which thousands of dollars in checks were allegedly forged.

Jer Norris Antwain Bryant, 25, of 176 Seacrest Lane has been charged with one count each of bank fraud and forgery for less than $10,000 by the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety.

When DPS charged Bryant on Tuesday, he was already being held at the Orangeburg County Detention Center on a charge of simple possession of marijuana. He had been in jail since Feb. 26.

Warrants for Bryant accuse him of knowingly executing a scheme to defraud funds from BB&T Bank between Nov. 13 and Nov. 17, 2015.

He allegedly issued three counterfeit checks, drafted from a BB&T account belonging to Titlemax of Georgia, in the amount of $1,000 each.

When Bryant cashed the checks at BB&T, he received the funds after submitting his S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles license as a photo identification.

A former BB&T teller admitted in a written statement that she knew the checks were fictitious, the warrant states.

Digital snapshots of the incident, statements, copies of returned checks and other supporting documents were collected by DPS as evidence.

BB&T sustained a monetary loss of $3,000 because of this incident, according to the warrant on Bryant.

If hes found guilty, Bryant could face up to five years in prison, a maximum fine of $10,000, or both.

Orangeburg Municipal Judge Barney Houser set Bryants bail at $5,000 cash or surety during a hearing on Tuesday.

Former BB&T Bank teller Maleiah Asakee Phason Clayton, 23, of 173 Raymond Court, St. Matthews, surrendered to DPS in mid-February after she was charged with bank fraud.

Her warrant states that she cashed 19 fictitious checks in the amount of $1,000 each from a BB&T account between Nov. 13 and Nov. 17, 2015.

Ms. Clayton had knowledge that these checks were fictitious but cashed them anyway, giving cash out to several payees/suspects totaling $19,000, the warrant states.

Claytons alleged bank fraud was captured on the banks surveillance video.

Judge Houser released Clayton on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond in a hearing last month.
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.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
"Clap Your Hands If You Believe in Fairies!"
To see our child's killer brought to justice and face Federal terrorism charges in a Washington DC court, two things need to happen.

One: The US has to explain to Jordan the imperative of the Hashemite Kingdom complying with its legal obligations under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty whose validity Jordan has disingenuously denied since March 2017.

Two: Jordan must arrest Ahlam Tamimi who has lived free in Jordan's capital since 2011 and hand her to US law enforcement officials who will put her on a flight to the US.




- Lauri's book,(the second instalment of her Amogelang Sethunya series) is now out, published by Diamond Educational Publishers!!is now available in print!!! It's published by Hands-On Books. Get it HERE . It is published as an ebook by HopeRoad- London. All stories in the collection are set in Botswana. Buy it HERE

My Writing Successes
The transition to the floating rate of the national currency in Azerbaijan has justified itself, head of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Elman Rustamov told reporters March 2.

Given the current conditions, considering the situation in the global economy, this is the right decision, and it corresponds to strategic interests of Azerbaijan, he said.

He went on to add that the Azerbaijani manat will remain in floating mode until its stability is ensured.

Rustamov further said that Azerbaijani banks receive sufficient foreign currency volume through auctions.

Today we hold auctions, and, as one can see, there are no other parallel processes on the market, he said. We have our own schedule in accordance with which we carry out the auctions.



He said that the task of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan as the regulator is not to provide banks with foreign currency, but to prevent sharp fluctuations of the manat exchange rate.

A revised state budget for 2016 has already been adopted, and it envisages the transfer program, which is the main channel for providing market with foreign currency, Rustamov said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan has prepared a report Illegal economic and other activities on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.



The report, which has been submitted March 2, reflects illegal economic activity, relocation to Azerbaijans territories occupied by Armenia, illegal exploitation of natural resources of the countrys Nagorno-Karabakh region, etc., Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hikmet Hajiyev said.

The document consisting of seven parts reflects data collected from open Armenian resources, he said.

There are facts that illegal economic and other activities are carried out on the occupied Azerbaijani territories, and Armenia is responsible for organizing them, said Hajiyev.



Armenia plays the role of a transit point in export of goods illegally produced on these territories to international markets, the foreign ministry spokesman said.



He said that many facts of building infrastructure facilities on Azerbaijans occupied territories are known, in addition, wine, vodka and other products are manufactured there, illegal activities in the field of ICT, banking and so on is carried out.



The report will be submitted to all international organizations, he said.



A separate chapter of the report is devoted to the facts of relocation to Azerbaijans occupied territories, Hajiyev said. There are indisputable facts of illegal resettlement of nearly 20,000 Syrian immigrants to the occupied territories.



He said that a mission to investigate facts of illegal activity on the countrys occupied territories was established in the OSCE at the initiative of Azerbaijan in 2005.



Following the investigation, the mission came to the conclusion that such illegal activity on the occupied territories hinders peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he said.

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

The full text of the report can be found here.
Ten protocols of intention on joint business development were signed in Ashgabat following the visit of a delegation of Chinese businessmen, Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper wrote.

Along with the expansion of trade ties, the documents envisage the establishment of modern facilities in Turkmenistan focused on import substitution and export, the information says.

In particular, Qinghai cashmere industrial group together with the Turkmen Oguzabat company agreed to establish a cashmere production facility in Ashgabat by using Turkmen raw materials.

The representatives of Pekin Sancuan Sencyuri Teknoloji Ko.Ltd together with Merdana Turkmen local company intend to establish the production and maintenance of the equipment for the oil and gas complex.

Among the plans of other Chinese companies are the construction of the cellulose production enterprises, a plant producing filters for cars, trucks and agricultural machines.

An agreement was also reached to establish a joint facility for the production of metal products, gas generators, granite and marble processing.

The two countries have agreed to open joint shops and restaurants and exchange the trading houses.
Romania's Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu has called for cooperation with Iran in economic and political grounds. Cooperation between Iran and Romania can contribute to the regional stability and security, Lazar Comanescu told reporters during a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran. We need to make efforts in order to establish stability in the region, Comanescu added. The Romanian minister went on to speak about economic cooperation with Iran and vowed to lay the ground for holding a session of a joint economic commission of Iran and Romania in Bucharest.

Earlier Iran and Romania announced their plan to organize a joint economic commission. The commission will be tasked with preparing a roadmap for the expansion of economic cooperation between the two countries. Saying that there are various fields for cooperation between Tehran and Bucharest, Comanescu added that Iran and Romania have agreed to cooperate in the fields of transport, agricultural, energy and tourism. He further said that the nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers has paved the way for cooperation and the expansion of bilateral ties.

We want to resume bilateral ties, Comanescu concluded.

Over the past decade in a bid to curb Irans nuclear program, the international community took measures against Tehran, including restrictions imposed on the countrys financial system, as well as industry, which have had a catastrophic impact on Iranians economic situation and life

conditions.

Following the long-awaited nuclear deal clinched between Tehran and the world major powers most of the international sanctions against Tehran were lifted on Jan. 16.
The United Nations will begin the next round of Syria peace talks on March 9, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told Reuters on Tuesday.

We are delaying it to the afternoon of the 9th for logistical and technical reasons and also for the ceasefire to better settle down," de Mistura said. "I will not delay it further."



Since an agreement to halt nearly five years of fighting came into force on Saturday, the Syrian government and the opposition have accused each other of violating the deal although international observers have reported a decline in violence.



De Mistura said earlier that he could slightly delay the start of the Geneva talks, which had been penciled in for Monday, March 7, depending on the situation on the ground.



"We don't want discussions in Geneva to become a discussion about infringements or not of the ceasefire, we want them to actually address the core of everything," he said in an interview.



The United Nations hopes that the cessation of hostilities will allow humanitarian aid to be sent into besieged areas and provide an opportunity to revive the peace talks, which collapsed before they even started a month ago.



MAPS AND DRONES

It was up to the United States and Russia, who drew up the cessation of hostilities agreement, to share information and police the truce because the United Nations was not involved in that process, de Mistura said in an interview at the United Nations in Geneva.



This would require both sides to share common maps of the battlefield and monitor the situation with drones and satellites as it would not be possible to deploy thousands of observers on the ground. The United Nations only had general maps of the situation before the ceasefire, he said.



De Mistura said he expected to see attempts to disrupt the ceasefire, and these needed to be contained to avoid them spreading and undermining the credibility of the truce.



After an abortive first round of the Geneva peace talks, which ended on Feb. 3, de Mistura wants the Syrian sides to focus on constitutional reform, governance, and elections to be held in 18 months.



Prisoner releases would also be "very much up front on the agenda", he said.



The war has created more than five million refugees, who must have the chance to vote in any future election, de Mistura said.

He already had reports from Damascus that many who were thinking of leaving were rethinking that decision because of the cessation of hostilities, "as fragile and delicate as it is".



"The moment we have, God willing, a real cessation of hostilities, humanitarian access, and implementation of these three points  new governance, constitution and elections - I can bet that many of them not only will not leave but will return, especially if we have a massive 'Marshall Plan' to rebuild Syria," de Mistura said.
A total of 670 Iraqis were killed and 1,290 others wounded in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in February across Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said in a statement on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.



The statement said the figures included 410 civilians killed and 1,050 others wounded.



It said UN envoy for Iraq and UNAMI chief Jan Kubis strongly condemned the suicide bombings which targeted a funeral in the town of Maqdadiyah in Iraq's eastern province of Diyala, and other attacks in Abu Ghraib area and marketplace in Sadr City in Baghdad.



"These outrageous attacks in Maqdadiyah against the funeral, the bombing in Abu Ghraib and at a market in Sadr City as well as places of worship in the last few days which claimed scores of lives and injured many others have one goal: to undermine Iraqi unity," Kubis said.

"Iraqis must deny the terrorists space for achieving their objective to undermine the unity of Iraq and its people," Kubis said, calling on "the government of Iraq to make sure that the perpetrators of these crimes are swiftly brought to justice."



A month ago, UNAMI put the toll of casualties in January at 849 people killed and 1,450 others injured in terrorist attacks and violence across the country.



Iraq is currently witnessing a wave of violence since the IS terrorist group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions in June 2014.
The European Union is proposing increased humanitarian aid for Greece, where more than 20,000 refugees and migrants are stuck after borders were tightened along the Balkans preventing them from trekking north to wealthier parts of Europe, Reuters reported.

The European Commission, the EU executive, said on Tuesday it will put forward a plan on Wednesday to offer emergency financial assistance for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc, comparable with operations it has launched elsewhere in the world.

The Commission's spokesman, Margaritis Schinas, told a regular news briefing in Brussels that the plan was necessary "to prevent humanitarian suffering as a result of an unprecedented number of people arriving in the EU".

Schinas said the Commission was very concerned with the outbreak of violence at the Greek-Macedonian border. He was speaking as the bloc is gearing up to a summit on Monday with Turkey, the main departure site for the vast majority of people heading to Europe.

More than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year -- mostly via Turkey to Greece -- and another 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

Overwhelmed, Greece and other countries along the main migration route have tended to wave the people through and the influx has brought Europe's Schengen zone of free travel to the verge of collapse.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker talked to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk will visit Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey this week.

Brussels and Berlin, which are battling to make a joint European plan to alleviate the migration crisis work, are banking on Turkey to sharply reduce the number of people embarking for Europe, many of whom have fled the war in Syria.

But a growing number of EU states are resorting to unilaterally tightening their own borders, seeking to control the flow of people and prevent a spike in the arrivals many expect later in March as the weather improves.

Austria, the last stop for refugees and migrants heading to their top destination Germany, infuriated Athens, Berlin and Brussels last month by announcing daily caps on the number of people it processes.

Chancellor Werner Faymann defended the step, saying Austria cannot become a waiting room for Germany.

Tusk, in Vienna on the first leg of his pre-summit tour along the Balkans migration route, said after talks with Faymann: "We must face together the consequences of our decisions. The country that we must support in particular is Greece."
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and three Swiss companies, Glencore, Vitol Group and Trafigura have agreed on a deal on swapping oil and oil gas with gasoline.

Mehr news agency reported that NIOC and the three mentioned companies have discussed a deal for oil swap with Iran. Within the next couple of days a huge shipment of Glencore gasoline will be unloaded at the Bandar Abbas terminal, the report said. Glencore was one of the companies that exported gasoline to Iran before cutting the business in the beginning of 2010 due to international sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Vitol was also a traditional exporter of gasoline to Iran, and cut off the export in 2009 due to sanctions imposed on Iran. Iran's primary energy consumption reached 4.428 million barrels of oil equivalent per day during the last fiscal year (ended on March 20, 2015). The latest National Iranian Oil, Refinery and Distribution Company's (NIORDC) report indicates a 4.7-percent increase in the country's energy consumption year-to-year.

The report says the country consumed 84 billion liters of liquid fuels with worth $48 billion. Iran produced about 59.6 million liters of gasoline per day, while the consumption level was 69.6 million liters during last fiscal year.

The Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann, heading a high-ranking delegation arrived in Tehran Feb. 26 to hold talks with senior Iranian officials and discuss ways to improve mutual, regional and international relations, signing agreements in various fields.
The $2.5-billion Bahrain Bay development in Manama is drawing increased investor interest following the completion of key aspects of the project, a forum heard.

The past year has been one of growth and expansion, with over 86 percent of plots sold, the infrastructure complete and projects of third party developers nearing completion, officials said at the Bahrain Bay Business Forum.

The development stands well positioned as it offers enormous opportunities to investors as it consolidates Bahrains status as a hub for business and investment opportunities in the region, the forum heard.

The forum, a well-attended investor event, which brought together partners, associates and dignitaries involved with Bahrain Bay, a luxury waterfront development, was held at the Four Seasons Hotel on Thursday (January 25).

A joint venture between Arcapita and a Bahrain-based investment group, the Bahrain Bay development has attracted some of the best-known international brands to Bahrain. Many of the third party developers from Bahrain, the GCC and India were present for the forum.

The forum began with an address from Bahrain Bay chairman and Arcapita CEO Atif Abdulmalik, followed by a presentation from Bahrain Bay CEO Gagan Suri. Speakers also included several prominent partners and associates, amongst whom were Mohamed Al Mutaweh, CEO and board member of Al Baraka Islamic Bank; Faisal Bin Faqeeh, chairman of Bin Faqeeh Real Estate Investment Group; Nayan Shah, the CEO and managing director of Mayfair Group; and Greg Pirkle, general Manager of Four Seasons Hotel. Sharing their insights also were Jarmo Kotilaine, chief economist, market strategy and intelligence at the EDB, and Xavier Theillere, regional director of Bahrain Bay Utilities.

The forum provided a platform that strengthened high value networks and gave Bahrain Bay an opportunity to communicate its vision and update the guests on the progress of the development.

Abdulmalik said: Bahrain Bay revolves around creating a metropolis for 21st century living that will meet the needs of residents, businesses and visitors from all over the world. Despite the uncertain geopolitical climate and volatile economic climate, the positive activity at Bahrain Bay has set an encouraging momentum which is promising as we focus on achieving our vision, our future of becoming a true legacy for the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The forum was also viewed as an excellent opportunity to showcase Bahrain, and to highlight its business friendly economy.

Suri added: We have been very successful in presenting a dynamic investment environment through the premium properties and the excellent facilities of Bahrain Bay. We are proud of the fact that Bahrain Bay has remained stable through the economic challenges of the last decade. We have a network of strong and trusted partners and investors with whom we have a unified vision. This forum will help in setting up crucial partnerships and provide information and support to potential international investors in the kingdom.  TradeArabia News Service
Global consultancy Turner & Townsend has been appointed to project and cost manage the multi-million pound internal fit out of Qatars first department store by the popular French retailer Galeries Lafayette.



The three-level, 14,000 sq m space is franchised by the Ali Bin Ali Group (ABA Group), a private family company which is considered as one of the major conglomerates in Qatar.



The interior of Les Galeries Lafayette, which will include 400 luxury brands in clothing, accessories and homeware, will be designed by Paris-based architect Bruno Moinard of 4BI & Associates.



The luxury department store, expected to be completed before the end of 2017, will form part of the prestigious Katara Cultural Village and Katara Retail Plaza shopping mall in the capital Doha.



The plaza will also include a unique mall for children, a branded spa, shops, cafes, restaurants, offices, luxury boutique hotel and landscaped park areas - all built over two storeys of basement parking.



Ground cooling technology will be used to help control the centres climate and enhance the shopping experience, making it one of the worlds first outdoor, air-conditioned commercial plazas, said a top official.



Turner & Townsend has proven experience working successfully with high-profile brands such as Tiffany & Co's emerging markets in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, remarked Stephen McCartney, Qatar country manager for Turner & Townsend.



"We are immensely proud to have been selected to provide project and cost management services for such an internationally-renowned retail brand," he stated.



"We fully understand the importance of successfully delivering the project on time and budget, and of meeting the sheer quality of design, which will combine classical Roman architecture with traditional Arabic building styles. To be working with international designer Bruno Moinard is a privilege," he added.



David Miller, the general manager for Galeries Lafayette, Doha, said: "We are confident Turner & Townsends experience and deep knowledge of the market in the Middle East will ensure the department store becomes a focal point for all visitors to the Katara Plaza."



"Les Galeries Lafayette is a world-class retailer and were delighted to have secured the franchise which will concentrate on exclusive brands rather than chain retailers," stated Miller.



"The new cultural village is part of establishing Doha as an international centre of retail, arts and culture," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Iraq has signed a contract with Italy's Trevi Group worth 273 million ($296 million) to reinforce and maintain the Mosul hydro-electric dam for a period of 18 months, state television reported on Wednesday.



Italy has said it plans to send 450 troops to protect the site of dam, which is 3.6 km long and close to territory held by Islamic State militants in the country's north. The Italian foreign ministry confirmed that the contract had been signed.



The agreement followed talks in New York between Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and US and Iraqi officials, the ministry said in a statement.



Mosul dam has suffered from structural flaws since its construction in the 1980s and a collapse would unleash a wall of water down the heavily populated Tigris River valley.



The Iraqi government says it is taking precautions against such a scenario but has sought to play down the risk, with Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi on Sunday describing the likelihood of a breach as "extremely small".



Islamic State militants seized the dam in August 2014, raising fears they might blow it up and send a huge wave on to Mosul and other downstream cities including Baghdad which could kill hundreds of thousands of people.



The dam was recaptured two weeks later by Iraqi government forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes, but the US has said that disruption of maintenance operations has increased the likelihood of a breach.-Reuters
Saudi Arabias information technology (IT) spending in the manufacturing sector is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5 per cent from 2013 to 2018, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).



With the Internet of Things (IoT) transforming the ways in which sensor-generated data is gathered, evaluated and leveraged, various industries in Saudi Arabia are realising the importance of analytics in enabling more efficient and competitive monetisation strategies, said a statement.



By streamlining processes from design to delivery, the Saudi manufacturing industry is leading the charge of heightened interconnected machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, it added.



Dubbed as the Industrial Revolution 4.0, disruptive IoT technologies are poised to play an essential role in the kingdoms manufacturing sector over the next five to 10 years. As intelligent cloud-based applications transmit and interpret data that allow factories to get smarter, business analytics will serve as the key enabler in collating data that optimises overall production systems and processes, it said.



Meanwhile, a key event focusing on IT in the manufacturing industry in the Saudi Arabia will take place next month.



SAS, the leader in analytics, is sponsoring the Plant Maintenance and Reliability Congress at Sofitel The Corniche, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, March 9 to 10.



As the summits analytics partner, SAS aims to create an awareness on the importance of business intelligence and analytics in achieving an integrated, market-driven approach across the manufacturing industry.



Yigit Karabag, information management and analytics practice manager, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at SAS, said: Driven by the rise in data volumes and the emergence of analytics and business intelligence capabilities, we are in the next phase of the manufacturing sectors digitisation. The first wave of these intelligent factories are using industrial machines that are connected and communicating with one another via sensors that collect and evaluate data.



This digital shift across different sectors, particularly in the manufacturing sector, is paving way for business analytics that are changing the way factories work. The manufacturing sector is one of the main contributors to Saudi Arabias gross domestic profit (GDP) and the congress aims to understand the market requirements, trends and challenges faced by the heads of operations and maintenance  the largest of those trends and challenges is IoT, he added.



With the recent decline in crude oil prices forcing more Saudi businesses to improve productivity and innovation by adopting new technologies such as advanced analytics, an increase in IoT deployments - particularly in the Analytics of Things (AoT) arena - is boosting businesses capacity to value and assess data to improve reliability and optimise operations.



Given the sheer number and complexity of processing activities that influence manufacturing productivity in various industrial sectors, a more granular, data-led approach increases businesses monetisation capacity by offering more potential to diagnose and correct process flaws through advanced analytics.



At the summit, SAS will highlight its Asset Performance Analytics, which accurately predict events that cause outages or degrade performances across machines. From batch data loads to streaming real-time IoT data, the SAS solution measures, analyses and evaluates sensor data to boost performance and productivity whilst reducing the risk of revenue loss.



The congress will feature interactive panel and roundtable discussions as well as conference sessions and case studies, it added.  TradeArabia News Service
Moody's downgraded its outlook on Chinese government debt to "negative" from "stable" on Wednesday, citing uncertainty over authorities' capacity to implement economic reforms, rising government debt and falling reserves.



"Without credible and efficient reforms, China's GDP growth would slow more markedly as a high debt burden dampens business investment and demographics turn increasingly unfavourable. Government debt would increase more sharply than we currently expect," Moody's said in a note on Wednesday.



Moody's said its rating committee had discussed China's status at a meeting on Feb. 9, during which the country's institutional and fiscal strength, as well as its susceptibility to event risks, were reviewed.



The agency said the downgrade was driven by expectations that China's fiscal strength will continue to decline, and the fall in its foreign exchange reserves which have shrunk by $762 billion over the last 18 months.



It also said that policymakers' credibility was at risk of being undermined by incomplete implementation or partial reversals of some reforms.



"Interventions in the equity and foreign exchange markets over the past year suggest that ensuring financial and economic stability is also an objective, but there is considerably uncertainty about policy priorities," Moody's said.



Moody's, however, retained China's Aa3 rating, noting the country's sizeable reserves gave it time to implement reforms and gradually address economic imbalances.



But the agency warned that it could further downgrade China's rating if it saw slowing down of reforms needed to support sustainable growth and to protect the government's balance sheet.



"It's not a worrying sign yet, but rather a negative direction. That's what Moody's is flagging," said Trinh Nguyen, senior economist for emerging Asia at global asset manager Nataxis.



"But they have room to do this. They have one of the lowest government debt as a share of GDP in comparison to other emerging nations. And most importantly, as China has a current account surplus it can fund its own fiscal expansion."



Initial market reaction to the outlook change was muted, although the cost of insuring Chinese government debt against default rose slightly.



"The drivers - local government debt, capital outflows, falling reserves and concerns on the progress of reforms - are all well recognized by investors and a lot of them have arguably already been priced in," agreed Aidan Yao, Senior Emerging Market Asia Economist at AXA Investment Managers.



HIGH AND RISING CORPORATE DEBT



A major rationale for the falling outlook, Moody's said, was the large stock of contingent sovereign liabilities such as state-owned corporations' debt, local government debt, and the debt of China's big "policy" banks - the Agricultural Development Bank of China, China Development Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of China.



While Moody's put actual government debt at only 40.6 per cent of GDP at the end of 2015, Standard & Poor's estimated in July that corporate debt had already risen to 160 per cent of GDP in 2014, twice that of the United States and up from only 120 per cent in 2013.



"There has been a lot of poor credit allocation, with too much credit directed at inefficient state firms and not enough going towards smaller efficient firms," said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China Economist at Capital Economics in Singapore.



In a separate note on Wednesday, ratings agency Fitch also highlighted rising risks to Chinese banks from accelerating credit growth.



"The 50bp cut to the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for Chinese banks on Tuesday, together with record loan growth in January, could point to an increasing likelihood that the authorities are shifting policy to enable more credit-fuelled growth," Fitch analysts wrote.



"Rolling over more debt will only delay and not resolve an expected rise in non-performing loans."



On Tuesday, the People's Bank of China cut bank reserve ratio requirements by 50 basis points, releasing an estimated $100 billion of cash for lending.- Reuters
UAE telecom leaders Etisalat and du have launched a joint initiative to support the development of smart infrastructure and giving customers an opportunity to select their operator of choice for telecom services.



Titled Taawun, the initiative will initially include more than 50 projects and will serve as the model for all new Greenfield areas in the country.



Taawun will establish a robust telecom infrastructure as a backbone for property developers, deploying advanced fibre-optic and passive telecom solutions that are best-in-class and future-proof  ready for the next generations of voice and data services.



It will also enhance the competitive landscape in the UAE allowing residents and businesses to select - and switch - between service providers of their choice. It aims to contribute to the UAE Vision 2021 to rank the nation among top ten globally in the overall ICT infrastructure, Online Services Index and the Network Readiness Index, in time for UAEs celebration for 50 years since formation.



It also aligns with the UAE governments smart city initiative, enabling the country to become one of the worlds most connected and sustainable nations, with Dubai World Expo 2020 becoming the platform for unveiling this vision.



The first phase of the programme has been implemented at the upcoming Dubai Sustainable City, which is Dubais first sustainable city that will include an environmental sciences university, school, commercial centre, shopping mall and a deluxe sustainable hotel and resort with a world-class natural spa centre. The operators have both installed passive fibre optic infrastructure connecting residential units within the community enabling residents to choose home telecom services from their preferred operator.



According to the Global Report on Information Technologies 2014 by the World Economic Forum, the UAE ranks 23rd in the network readiness index, as compared to the 24th position the previous year. The report assesses countries based on its economic capabilities in utilising technologies to support the growth and welfare of its citizens.



Saleh Al Abdooli, CEO of Etisalat UAE said: Customer choices will be key to the development of new telecom infrastructure in the UAE, embodied by the Taawun initiative, which is of strategic importance to the countrys telecom industry as well as the real estate sector. Etisalat is keen on this initiative, which aligns with our commitment to support the governments smart vision and development of a smart environment across the country.



It will ensure that the newly developed infrastructure will meet the current and future connectivity requirements of smart homes and systems in new property developments. Such initiatives are vital in positioning the UAE on the global map as a leader with a futuristic outlook in telecom and technology.



Osman Sultan, CEO of du, said: Taawun marks a major milestone in our progress towards a fully competitive telecommunications market in the UAE.



I am extremely pleased that, through Taawun, all new real estate developments across the UAE will be served by competitive state-of-the-art passive infrastructure and residents of these new development projects will now be able to make a choice between operators. This strategic initiative will enable realisation of the UAEs Smart Cities vision and will further strengthen the UAEs positioning as a global leader in the telecommunications sector, he added.  TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia's PetroRabigh has received bids from up to six foreign engineering companies for the construction of new units at its petrochemical and refining complex in Rabigh, industry sources

said.



PetroRabigh, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical, had announced plans for the new units in October last year.



It said tenders would involve building a polyether polyols plant with annual capacity of 220,000 tonnes, a 17,000 barrel per day naphtha-treating unit to produce clean fuel and a sulphur recovery unit (SRU) with capacity of 106,000 tonnes a year.



Those in the race include leading global players South Korea's Daelim Industrial, Spanish specialists Intecsa and Tecnicas Reunidas, Taiwan's CTCI Corporation besides Indian construction giant Larsen and Toubro.



Italian group Maire Tecnimont too was among the bidders, one source revealed, but a second source said that it had ultimately decided against bidding.



Work on the Rabigh expansion is due to begin in the second half of this year, PetroRabigh said in October.-Reuters
A new study has listed `factories automation as one of the top three emerging trends in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the UAE in 2023. The other two upcoming trends for 2023 in the two GCC countries, according to the study by Poly, are smart liv
Oil is likely to recover to $55 per barrel in 12 months, following gains in the latter half of 2016, according to a new report by UBS Wealth Management's chief Investment Office (CIO).



However, weakness in the price of crude oil is likely to continue in the short-term, with the market yet to see the end of the downside momentum, it said.



The CIO is urging investors to avoid direct exposure to crude oil for now. The oil market is still oversupplied in the first half of 2016 after supply expanded 2.7 per cent in 2015. In its view, investors need to be prepared for even lower prices in the first half of 2016. Prevailing market surpluses require accelerated supply curbs to rebalance the oil markets.



Market participants fear that the lifting of restrictions on Iranian oil exports might increase global oversupply even further in the short run. A quick return of additional Iranian oil barrels would require accelerating supply curbs, including more company defaults, to rebalance the markets, which could keep prices sliding below $25/bbl in the short run.



However, in the longer term, the effects of declining energy investment are slowly becoming more visible. Non-Opec supply finally dropped slightly in December 2015 and January 2016. The report expects it to shrink by 0.7 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 2016, with demand expanding by 1.1-1.2 mbpd. This should help cut the current oversupply of 1-1.5 mbpd.



The Chief Investment Office expects the market to be balanced towards the end of the year, allowing Brent crude oil prices to reach $55/bbl at the end of 2016. Risks to our expected price recovery come from a sharp increase in Opec supply and/or weaker oil demand from emerging Asia, which would push the market's rebalancing into 2017.



Simon Smiles, chief investment officer for Ultra High Net Worth at UBS Wealth Management, said: "Low Brent crude prices remain an immediate challenge for oil exporting nations in Middle East and North Africa, and in particular for government budgets. The price recovery that we see in the second half of 2016 should support the region in the near term, but economic reforms will still likely have to be implemented as oil prices are unlikely to move back to triple digit levels anytime soon."



According to Smiles, high-grade Gulf sovereigns like Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait should be more resilient to oil shocks than many other emerging market energy exporters. Their high production means they needed lower oil prices to balance their budget and has enabled them to accumulate ample foreign exchange assets.



By contrast, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and some other emerging market oil exporters in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East have lower fiscal buffers and require much higher prices to balance their budgets. - TradeArabia News Service
Leading hospitality group AccorHotels has signed a management agreement with Mawarid Finance to develop an ibis Styles hotel in Dubai, part of a mixed-use development that will also include Mawarid Finances new headquarters.



The 200-key ibis Styles, located in the Al Jaddaf area, marks the beginning of a partnership between AccorHotels and Mawarid Finance, a finance and investment company backed by more than 350 prominent families and institutions from the UAE and the Gulf.



Mohamed Al Nuaimi, managing director and chief executive officer of Mawarid Finance, said: This is an exciting step forward for Mawarid Finance. Al Jaddaf is an up-and-coming business district home to established brands and companies that we believe shall embrace the value and service proposition offered by the ibis Styles brand. We are delighted to commence this partnership and we are convinced AccorHotels Middle East is the ideal operator to make the hotel's modern design, attractive facilities and great location match the needs of Dubai's leisure and corporate guests.



Olivier Granet, managing director and chief operating officer of AccorHotels Middle East, said: We are delighted to embark upon the development of such a differentiated project and bring to life the ibis Styles Mawarid HQ. The unique nature of this development, combining office and hotel amenities in a single complex, will enable AccorHotels to further diversify our network of individually designed lifestyle hotels and continue catering to business travellers within the region.



Ibis Styles Al Jaddaf will be developed in close proximity to the upcoming Cultural Village project alongside other well-known retail destinations in Dubai such as WAFI Mall, Deira City Center and Dubai Festival City. The property will also benefit from its location next to the Dubai Metro green line, providing guests with access to various destinations within Dubai and clear visibility from both the Business Bay crossing and Al Khail Road.



The Ibis Styles Al Jaddaf is expected to open in 2018. The property will include an all-day dining restaurant and a lobby cafe, in addition to meeting room facilities. Guests will also be able to enjoy the hotels gym amenities and swimming pool.



Ibis Styles belongs to the ibis brand family, along with ibis and ibis budget. ibis Styles hotels are individually designed to offer excellent value with the highest level of comfort. Each property hosts a different style, yet retains three complementary values of being modern, simple and focused on well-being.



The new Ibis Styles Al Jaddaf joins seven other properties within the rapidly growing ibis Styles network in the Middle East. At present, AccorHotels has two operational ibis Styles hotels in the UAE with the recent opening of the 251-key ibis Styles Dragon Mart and the 191 keys Ibis Styles Jumeirah.



Dubais strong standing as a global business and tourism hub has kept up the requirement for quality economy and midscale hotels in the emirate. AccorHotels is committed to providing visitors with a variety of options, and we believe that the ibis Styles Mawarid HQ will add a well-priced offering to Al Jaddaf, which is currently populated with upscale and luxury accommodation, said Granet.



AccorHotels currently operates over 70 hotels in the Middle East, encompassing close to 19,500 rooms across the luxury to economy segments. The Groups network also includes more than 50 hotels under development in the region, bringing over 13, 500 rooms to the Middle East.  TradeArabia News Service
With its inaugural service just four weeks away, Emirates hosted over 75 travel industry partners for its Cebu and Clark Route Launch Presentation, presented jointly with the Philippine Tourism Promotions Board.

The presentation focused on educating the travel trade industry around the Emirates upcoming two gateways.

Khalid bel Jaflah, divisional vice president, commercial operations UAE and Oman, said: The circular Cebu and Clark routes will be the first new passenger destinations for Emirates in the 2016 calendar year and our preparations for the launch are currently in full swing. With a month to go we are ramping up our activities in our hub of Dubai and around our global network, in order to increase tourism flows in both directions.

Among the Philippine dignitaries and government officials present at the travel industry event were the Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Constancio R. Vingno Jr; Paul R. Cortes, Philippine consul-general; Marian Celeste Carella, chairman - Philippine Business Council Dubai and the Northern Emirates; Eric Elnar, commercial attache - Philippine Trade and Investment Centre; Gil B. Herico, agricultural attache and Dr. Rebecca Desiderio, CEO, The Medical City Dubai.

Since launching to Manila in 1990 Emirates has transported more than 7.5 million Filipinos, international tourists and business travellers. Last year alone, Emirates transported over 550,000 passengers on the Manila-Dubai route. The new linked service to Clark and Cebu will help enhance inbound tourism, supporting the Philippine Department of Tourisms Visit the Philippines Again 2016 campaign.

Emirates flights to Cebu and Clark will depart daily from Dubai as EK338 at 02:55hrs arriving at MactanCebu International Airport at 15:50hrs. The service will then depart from Cebu at 17:25hrs and arrive at Clark International Airport at 18:45hrs. The return flight will depart Clark at 20:20hrs, arriving at Dubai International Airport at 01:25hrs the next day.

The two-class configured Boeing 777-300ER which Emirates will operate on the route offers 42 seats in Business Class and 386 seats in Economy Class.

Of particular note for the Middle East is the Kids Stay Free Campaign, which has been designed exclusively for families (both nationals and expatriates), living in the GCC and offers exceptional value.

The campaign packages provide two children per family under the age of 11 with an exciting array of activities, food, accommodations and other experiences all on a complimentary basis. Additionally the packages allow families to twin both the Philippines capital Manila with another exotic Philippine destination such as Cebu, Palawan, Boracay, Bohol, Davao or Bicol, allowing for both an urban and idyllic getaway experience.

The Philippines no visa requirement for GCC and many other nationals, plus its many popular shopping experiences, tranquil beaches and numerous family-friendly attractions has resulted in an increasing number of GCC residents choosing to make the Philippines their holiday destination of choice.

According to the latest statistics available, a total of 65,642 visitors from the GCC visited the Philippines between January and September 2015, resulting in a 12 per cent increase compared to 2014 figures for the same period. Amongst those, the number from Saudi Arabia was the highest at 40,453 travellers, which was an increase of 17 per cent compared to the year before. Visitors from the UAE were the next highest, followed by visitors from Kuwait.  TradeArabia News Service
This Just In

New to Town Crier.

Spring crafts Friday, Saturday

The first spring vendor/craft fair holsted by the Casper Eagles will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at 306 N. Durbin St. Lots of unique items, metal crafts, Black Hills walnut jewelry, Scentsy candles, Mary Kay, spring and Easter ceramics, crocheted items, face painting, Thrive, KEEP Collective Jewelry, baked goods, yard ornaments and much more. Our Auxiliary Snack Bar will be open throughout. 235-5130, LaRae Weber and Nancy Keener, chairmen.

See strategic cancer plan Friday

A new plan intended as a guide for Wyomings efforts to help reduce cancers burden across the state for the next several years is available from the Wyoming Cancer Coalition and the Wyoming Department of Health. The coalition has scheduled a meeting for 9:30 a.m. Friday at the Ramkota Hotel to unveil the plan. For more information or to register, please call Jessica Perez at 307-777-3480 or visit www.fightcancerwy.com.

The plan can be viewed on the WYCC website at www.fightcancerwy.com.

Bantam A in Casper

Casper Amateur Hockey Club invites you to watch some youth hockey Friday through Sunday at the Casper Ice Arena as they host Bantam A Finals with teams from Casper, Jackson, Cheyenne and Cody. The full game schedule can be found at www.casperhockey.com. For more information, contact Diane at (307) 315-0188.

Friday Melrose music

The Melrose Coffeehouse welcomes the UCC's own "East 15th Street Band this Friday night. The East 15th Street Band plays a wide variety of favorites from Fleetwood Mac to the Fray, the Beatles to Mary Chapin Carpenter to One Republic. The Melrose Coffeehouse serves up gourmet coffees and homemade desserts. The Coffeehouse hours are 7 to 10 p.m. every Friday at the United Church of Christ-Casper at the corner of East 15th and Melrose Street. No churchy stuff and no cover charge -- just a safe, nonsmoking, alcohol-free, acoustically friendly environment to enjoy the talents of our local musicians.

Easter goods at Methodist thrift

Easter goods and decor are on display at the First United Methodist thrift shop located at 611 W. Collins, one block west of the Natrona County high school football stadium.

All other merchandise, clothing, kitchen items, books, decorative knick knacks is drastically reduced in price for winter clearance.

Clearance prices will continue to drop gradually till all winter merchandise is gone. But don't wait, shop now because it's going out the door fast.

We will close the week of April 4-9 to clean and re-stock with an all-new spring and summer inventory. Re-opening day is Monday, April 11.

Store hours are Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Donations of clean usable merchandise are accepted during those hours.

The shop is staffed with friendly helpful volunteers. All proceeds from sales help support Interfaith and Holy Cross Brothers with their work in helping those in the community who need their services.

Take advantage of crazy prices for quality goods while contributing to the community.

For more information call 234-6611.

Striders race Saturday

Just a reminder that the fourth in our five-race series is this Saturday starting at the Tate Pump house.

If you haven't participated yet, but always wanted to, it's not too late. You can register on-line at https://www.raceit.com/Register/?event=35947.

Bib number pickup begins at 8 a.m. and the race starts at 9 a.m. Each participant receives a raffle ticket for prizes drawn after the race.

We will be offering an early start beginning at 8:15 a.m. If you will be participating in the early start we ask that you pick up your bibs as close to 8 a.m. as possible.

As always, stick around after the race for the raffle drawing. See you on Saturday!

Super Flea this weekend

The Super Flea sponsored by the Casper Antique and Collector's Club will be at the Fairgrounds Industrial Building this weekend, Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Vendors from surrounding states and various Wyoming places and of course, from Casper. There will be all kind of merchandise including collectibles and some antiques, coins and "just what you have been looking for" items.

The Casper Reading Council will greet you at the door and will receive one fourth of the gate receipts and 43 museums around the state will also receive donations. Adults are $2 and ages 12 and under are free. This is a family oriented show and there is something for everyone. Arlene Maxwell will be in the food area with snacks and lunch. See you at the Super Flea this weekend. Fun for everyone. You might win a $10 gift certificate that is free to all who are over the age of 12.

Betty Hazen -- 234.2963

Mammoths at Saturday Club

Mammoths and saber-tooth cats will be the subjects of study for the Tate Geological Museums Saturday Club from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. March 5.

This month the older kids will look at the wild and wooly mammals that lived during the ice age, said Russell Hawley, Tate Museum education specialist. In addition, the group will also construct their own prehistoric zoo, according to Hawley.

The Saturday Club is free and has two age divisions: one for students aged 8 and older, and the other for children aged 5-7.

Saturday Club is held at the Tate Geological Museum located on the Casper College campus. For more information, call the museum at 268-2447.

Senior dance Saturday

From 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, come dance to the 3HIPP band at the Senior Center, 1831 E. Fourth St. Neefer Dude on piano, Sissy on bass guitar and Birdy on drums. Snacks to share will be available and served around 8. All ages are welcome. Admission is $5. For information, call Sheldon Wood, 234-8754.

Tween Monday on March 7

Students in grades four through six are invited to the weekly Tween Monday program at 4 p.m. March 7 at the Natrona County Library. This week, we'll build movable robots with wind-up feet and playdough. All supplies provided. Call 577-READ ext. 122 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Author C.J. Box at library

C.J. Box will discuss his latest Joe Pickett novel, "Off the Grid," at 6 p.m. March 7 at the Natrona County Library. The talk is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and available on a first come, first served basis. Wind City Books will have copies of Box's newest release for purchase, which he will sign after his talk. Wind City Books will also raffle off an "Off the Grid" hat and book. Call 577-READ, ext. 2, or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Photographers meet March 7

The Casper Photography Associations next meeting will be at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Building, 2211 King Blvd. Enter through the east door. The public is welcome.

The March meeting will feature Sam Shermans photography from Adam Jahiel's Willow Creek Ranch Photo Workshop which was held during September 2015. Jahiel and the Willow Creek Ranch at the Hole in the Wall, Kaycee, provided an experience for photographers to be at the heart of the fall cattle roundup. Shermans photography, from the workshop, allows the audience to visually participate by viewing a short video of his workshop photography. In addition, the meeting will include a photo tip about the Sunny 16 rule, also presented by Sherman.

Sherman is a retired teacher from Casper.

Please join us, to learn, network and enjoy a variety of events and field trips designed to maximize both the enjoyment and craft of photography.

Lyn Clark -- 259-1894

Buying online

The Natrona County Library will offer a "Buying Online" computer class at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 8, in the Tech Center. Come learn about online retailers, iTunes, app stores and much more. We will also discuss topics including how to avoid scams, safe online credit card use and credit card alternatives. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Never Too Old Book Club

A book discussion of young adult novel "Dodger" by Terry Pratchett will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, at Metro Coffee Co. The Never Too Old Book Club, sponsored by the Natrona County Library, discusses young adult literature with adult appeal. The group is open to both teens and adults, with parent-teen pairs especially encouraged. Pick up your free copy of "Dodger" at the Library's second floor reference desk. Please call 577-READ ext. 101 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Bible study starts March 8

Heart of Casper Community Bible Study, "Jesus the One and Only," by Beth Moore, begins with registration at 6:30 p.m., on March 8, at Hilltop Baptist Church, 2555 E. 2nd St. The study runs March 8 through May 3. Class facilitators are Nicole King, Carol Ann Marsh, and Gail Hilstrom. Remember you are something special in the Lord's eyes and ours too! Call Jean Brown for more information at 234-3594.

After School at the Library

Elementary-age students are invited to attend our weekly 'After School at the Library' program at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, at the Natrona County Library. This week, we'll learn watercolor techniques while creating personalized bookmarks to take home. All supplies provided. Call 577-READ ext. 122 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Coin club March 9

The Casper Coin Club will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 9, Casper College, Gateway Building room 222. The topic will be Confederate currency. Call Al at 237-1156 if you have questions.

Auto club meets March 9

The regular monthly meeting of the Oil Capitol Auto Club will be held March 9 at Zs Classics on East Yellowstone. This will be the St. Patricks Day pot luck with the main course supplied by the club. Dinner will begin at 6 p.m., so dont be late. Please be sure to bring a dish and your table service. Jason Vican of the National Historic Trails Center will address the group with ideas for both on and off pavement visits. Everyone is Irish on St. Paddy's Day.

Completing the FAFSA

If you're planning to attend college next year and need financial aid, then it's time to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. A representative from the University of Wyoming at Casper Educational Opportunity Center will provide FAFSA assistance from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, at the Natrona County Library. Please bring all 2015 W2s and tax information for both student and parents. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Beekeepers meet March 10

Interested in beekeeping? The Natrona County Beekeepers Association invites you to join us to learn more about beekeeping on Thursday, March 10, 7 p.m., in room 207 of Strausner Hall, Casper College.

Earth Angels on March 11

Earth Angels meets once a month. It is a gathering of women who will meet from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 11 at 3420 South Poplar St. to make bibs, lap covers, preemie baby gowns, caps for cancer patients, dolls, bears, quilts for preemie babies, heart patient pillows and any other items that will be of help to bless those who are hurting. Take a small luncheon salad to share at each monthly meeting (drinks are provided) as well as your scissors and your sewing machine if you own one. Please call Dolores at 237-2992 for information.

Audubon meets March 11

Travis Neebling, the reservoir research biologist with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, will be the guest speaker for the Murie Audubon Societys March program. Travis earned his Master of Science degree from Iowa State University and his Bachelor of Science degree from Northland College.

Travis' research focuses on native and non-native sportfish populations in Wyoming's large natural lakes and reservoirs. He evaluates new gear and techniques, monitors trends in populations, evaluates fish size and health, and evaluates stocking and harvest rates. He also serves as the state's technical specialist on hydroacoustics and technical specialist on mercury contamination in fish. He will be describing his work in more detail and will be available to answer any questions you may have on Wyoming's fisheries.

Come and hear more about this ongoing research at 7 p.m. Friday, March 11, at the Oil & Gas Conservation Commission Building at 2211 King Blvd. As always, the program is free and open to the public.

Lenten lecture series at FUMC

First United Methodist Church, Casper will host a Lenten lecture series, Turning Points in Jesus Life, featuring Dr. James Fleming. It will be held from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, March 12, and 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and Sunday, March 13. Lunch included both days. Registration is $10. Fleming serves as director of Biblical Resource Study Center, an ecumenical organization serving Christians around the world. Fleming lived and worked in Israel from 1974 to 2006, where he founded and directed the World of the Bible Archeological Museum and Pilgrim Center in Jerusalem. He also taught at Hebrew University in Israel. Casper First United Methodist Church is located at 332 E. Second St., Casper. You can pre-register by calling 234-9385 or email the office at office@fumccasper.com.

Equality at March 12 forum

Two strong supporters of helping Wyoming become more deserving of its Equality State motto will be speaking at the March 12 luncheon meeting of the Democratic Womens Forum at the Casper Petroleum Club. State Representative Cathy Connolly (D) from Albany County and Aimee Van Cleave, executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party, will speak on gender equity and related issues in the Legislative session just ending.

Rep. Connolly has served in the legislature since 2008. She currently serves on the Joint Appropriations Committee and several select committees.

Van Cleave graduated from the University of Wyoming in Gender and Womens Studies and Political Science. She maintains her big passion in life is to increase the number of women in elected office.

Democratic Womens Forum meetings are open to anyone interested, regardless of gender. Reservations for the $15-a-plate luncheon need to be made the Thursday prior to the Saturday meeting. Please call Jerre at 234-8625 for reservations.

Cabin fever clinic March 12

The Wyoming Flycasters will be hosting their annual Cabin Fever Clinic from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 12, at the Casper Recreation Center, 1801 E. Fourth Street. This free event is open to the public. We will have the pros who can teach you everything you need to know about fly fishing. There will be experienced fishermen giving casting lessons, as well as several people demonstrating the art of tying flies. We will give away a rod and reel at the end of the day. Come down and see us, well get you hooked!

Cheryl Wilson -- 267-1903

Zilah Club cards March 12

A card party sponsored by Zilah Club, Daughters of the Nile, will be held Saturday, March 12, at the Casper Shrine Club at 39th and Coffman streets. This function helps fund the club's charitable giving projects. Lunch is served at noon for $10 with cards or the game of your choice to follow at 1 p.m., or just enjoy lunch. For reservations, please contact Mary at 234-2951 or Lois at 472-9017 for reservations.

Computer Help en Espanol

The Natrona County Library will offer a "Computer Help en Espanol" class at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 12, in the Tech Center. This is an open session to answer questions related to computer use, Microsoft programs, the Internet and much more. Call 577-READ ext. 2 or email reference@natronacountylibrary.org for more information.

Ayuda tecnologica en espanol

La Biblioteca Publica del Condado de Natrona ofrecera una clase de 'Ayuda tecnologica en espanol' el sabado, 12 de marzo a las 2 de la tarde en el Centro Tecnologico. La clase sera de un formato abierto para contestar preguntas sobre el uso de la computadora, los programas de Microsoft, el Internet y mucho mas. Por favor llame al 577-7323 extension 2 o envienos un correo electronico a reference@natronacountylibrary.org para mas informacion.

Celebrate Pi Day March 14

Come celebrate Pi(e) day with Wyoming Food for Thought Project.

Now an annual celebration, Wyoming Food for Thought Project invites you to celebrate community and food.

Doors open at 5 p.m. at our community program center, located at 900 Saint John Street. After pie and coffee, we will show the film, "The Starfish Throwers."

This event is open to all. A donation of food or $5 will help us continue our vital childhood hunger program of weekend food bags. It just takes $5 to provide one child with a food bag which contains breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for Saturday and Sunday - when children are away from the safety nets of school.

We currently serve 625 children every week, and the number continues to climb. Every dollar given, every can of food donated, is used in our community to change lives and give hope.

For more information about how you can be a part of Pi Day or how you can help Food for Thought, call 337-1703, visit www.wyfftp.org.

Fleece blankets keep rolling

The "Fleece Blanket Project" provides a time of fun, fellowship, and community service for people of all ages. The group meets the third Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at First Christian Church, 520 CY Ave. This informal group welcomes volunteers from numerous churches, groups and other agencies, as well as anyone who would like to help cut and tie fleece to make brightly colored blankets to be given to the homeless and those in need in Natrona County.

Upcoming dates are March 19, April 16, May 21, and June 18.

To date volunteers have made 101 blankets which have been given to Interfaith, Community Action, the Casper Police Department, Youth for Christ, NCSD homeless student liaison, the Self Help Center, the Youth Crisis Center, and individuals in need of warmth and comfort. In addition to volunteering your time, you may donate fleece (2 yards each of two complimentary colors/patterns). Bring sharp scissors if you have them or just come and tie!

Spring Break camp at rec

Spring Break is almost here, and the Casper Recreation Center has activities planned for elementary-age children. Spring Break Camp will be held from Friday, March 25, through Friday, April 1, with leaders available from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Activities will include games and sports, arts and crafts, ice skating on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and swimming on Tuesday and Thursday. The fee for all six days is $92, or there are a limited number of daily registrations for $18 per day.

Children are supervised at all times and need to bring a sack lunch and morning snack. Fee includes an afternoon snack, skating and swimming. Pre-registration for these activities is highly recommended as space is limited. Registration can be done in person at 1801 E. Fourth St., by phone with a credit card at 235-8383 or online at www.activecasper.com.

Babysitting clinic March 19

The next Babysitting 101 class for ages 11 to 14 will be offered from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday, March 19 at the Casper Recreation Center. Babysitting 101 is an interactive class that trains the emergent babysitter in important topics, such as: getting your business started, understanding the likes and dislikes of children and equipping yourself with ideas for playing with kids of all ages. Students will learn solutions to the most common problems babysitters face and how to perform first aid - including a demonstration of CPR & abdominal thrusts for choking emergencies. They also get to make and fill their own babysitting bag and receive a notebook with first aid information and a resource guide.

The cost is $20 for those without a rec center pass and $18 for those with an annual rec center pass. Registration can be completed by calling 235-8383 with a credit card, stopping by the rec center or online at www.activecasper.com

Other Babysitting 101 classes will be offered in May.

Gymnastics at rec

The Casper Recreation Center is offering a new session of gymnastics classes for fun, flexibility and fitness. Saturday classes begin March 19, and Wednesday classes begin March 23. Ages 2 to 12 can learn to tumble, balance, jump and spin in one of the following classes: Gym Jam, Tot Tumbling, Youth Beginning or Advanced Beginning Gymnastics. No experience is necessary.

Gym Jam is for children ages 2-3 and their parents or other adult family member. They will improve motor skills and build a foundation for a healthy lifestyle with music, movement, tumbling and games. The class is held from 10:15 to 11 a.m. Wednesday. Tot Tumbling is for ages 3-4 and is offered from 4:30 to 5:10 p.m. Wednesdays. Youth Beginning Gymnastics for ages 5 and over is held from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. Wednesdays or 9 to 10 a.m. Saturdays. Advanced Beginning classes are for ages 6 and up who have permission from the instructor and are held from 6:20 to 7:20 p.m. Wednesdays or 10:05 to 11:05 Saturdays. A new instructor, Lauren Baures, comes to us with 20 years of international competitive gymnastics experience.

Class sizes are limited, so register today. For further information, or to register for any of our classes, please call the Casper Recreation Center at 235-8383. Information is also available at www.activecasper.com.

High school rodeo fundraiser

Rodeo is a year-round commitment that requires long hours, dedication, and motivation. Contestants build skills that will help them become future leaders.

The Casper High School Rodeo Club will be hosting its third annual dinner and silent auction fundraiser on Friday, March 25, 2016 at the Ramkota Hotel. Our event last year raised over $23,000.

We are hoping everyone can help us spread the word that we are looking for items for our silent auction or table reservations.

Individual dinner tickets, $35; reserved table, $350 (includes dinner and full page in rodeo program); gold buckle table, $600 (includes dinner, two bottles of wine at the table, western keepsake, full page ad in rodeo program, and name in a drawing for a one-night Jacuzzi suite at the hotel).

Funds raised will be used towards the annual Casper High School Rodeo at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds in May, enhancing members rodeo skills through participation in clinics, and providing scholarships to our high school seniors.

If you would be interested in helping us in our fundraising efforts or purchasing banquet tickets, please contact Marty or Collette Cox at (307) 267-6718 or marcolcox@hotmail.com.

Thank you in advance for helping the Casper High School Rodeo Club.

Joshua's needs driver

Joshua's Storehouse is a 501(c)(3) charity that needs drivers to help with daily operations. If you have the time, a good driving record and need to be needed, this may be just what you are looking for. Please call Dr. J at 265-0242 for an interview.

Artisans deadline to Werner is April 4

Monday, April 4, is the deadline for those interested in submitting entries for the Werner Wildlife Museums annual show Artisans Unbound: Feathers, Fur, and Fiber.

The show will open on Tuesday, April 12, and will run through Monday, July 11. There is no charge to enter, though size constraints may apply due to space limitations.

To request entry forms and guidelines, stop by the museum, call 235-2108 or email India Hayford at indiahayford@caspercollege.edu. The Werner Wildlife Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located at 405 E. 15th St.

CC sets livestock sale April 9

The Casper College Agriculture Department is hosting its 36th Annual Lamb and Pig Sale at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 9, in the Casper College Grace Werner Agricultural Pavilion on campus. Viewing of the animals, including goats, will begin at 10:30 a.m.

This is a great chance for kids to buy a high quality pig, lamb or goat for show purposes, said Heath Hornecker, Casper College agriculture instructor. According to Hornecker, 35 to 40 lambs, 60 to 70 pigs, and a number of goats will be up for sale at the auction.

The auction is a learning experience for the Casper College Agriculture Club members, who are responsible for the setup and handling of the event. Proceeds from the auction will go to the club to help with general and travel expenses.

For more information contact Hornecker at 268-2525, hhornecker@caspercollege.edu or www.caspercollege.edu/events/lamb-pig-sale.

Dems hold county convention April 9

The Natrona County Democratic Convention to choose our presidential candidate is to be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 9, at the Gateway Building at Casper College. To be eligible, voters must be registered as a Democrat by March 25. Attendees can preregister for the convention at wyodems.org and can contact Eric Nelson (ericnelsonwyo@gmail.com) or Brett Governanti (bgovernanti@gmail.com) for more information.
CHEYENNE  A Cheyenne man on probation for child abuse has decided not to challenge his new charge of felony animal cruelty.

The 25-year-old man is currently on probation for striking his 3-year-old son about a year ago. He said in court that he lost his temper and hit the boy after the toddler threw a tantrum.

According to court documents, the man threw a newspaper at his girlfriend's 6-pound Chihuahua from about 5 feet away because the dog relieved itself in the house.

He pleaded no contest to the animal cruelty charge in district court last Thursday. The plea avoids admitting guilt but has the same effect as a guilty plea.

Court documents indicate that he has a chance of staying on probation after the animal cruelty charge.
In between menu items touting latte macchiatos and spicy sandwiches, a sign hanging in a local Starbucks tells customers that the store is now part of the Davis-Monthan community.

Starbucks dedicated Tucsons first military family store to the Air Force base during a ceremony Wednesday afternoon at the store on the corner of Campbell and Broadway. The store, one of 20 such Starbucks across the country, focuses on hiring veterans and military spouses.

In 2013, Starbucks made a commitment to hire 10,000 veterans by 2018. So far, the company said it is more than half way there, having hired 5,500 veterans.

Starbucks also sends tons of coffee to military service members overseas and runs support programs for them, said Tom Tice, the companys military talent acquisition manager.

Starbucks employee Tara Santos husband was in the Marine Corps for four years, and the company has helped her keep her job through the process.

Ive been moving from different states with my husband as he transitioned out of the military and Ive been able to transfer my job with Starbucks and move, she said.

The stores are a great opportunity to bring together the friends and family of military veterans, Santos said, noting veterans and their loved ones need places outside of the military community or base where they feel welcomed.

The store features artwork inspired by the Air Force, such as a flying bald eagle. The veterans and military spouses who work at the store wear aprons emblazoned with a U.S. flag.

Theyre very understanding of what goes along with a military commitment, said Aaron Johnsen, a barista at the store and an Army reservist.

Johnsen frequently has to leave for training as part of his duties with the 335th Signal Command, a cyber warfare unit based in Phoenix, he said.

Starbucks often pays him during his training periods and doesnt dock him when he has to leave on short notice, he said.

Danny Guevara served in the Army for five years and has been a manager of the store for six months.
If you go

Tucson Festival of Books

What: Two days of exhibits, presentations, panel discussions and hands-on activities with about 400 authors that attract more than 100,000 book-lovers.

When: 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 12 and March 13.

Where: University of Arizona campus.

Cost: Admission is free.

Sponsors: The UA and the Arizona Daily Star. Net proceeds will promote literacy in Southern Arizona through the Tucson Festival of Books, a nonprofit organization.

Social media: Follow the festival on Facebook at facebook.com/tucsonfestivalofbooks. On Twitter: @TFOB.

Mobile: Apps are also available for iPhone and Android devices.

Bookmark it: Go to tucsonfestivalofbooks.org for more information.

Et cetera: The comprehensive Tucson Festival of Books pullout guide will be in the Sunday Star.
73, of Tucson passed away December 12, 2015. He is survived by his wife, Estrella "Ester" Havey; children, Gerald "Gerry" Havey and Josephine "Joey" Havey. Eddie served 20 years with the United States Armed Forces; after he retired from there he spent another 20 years as an engineer with Raytheon for his second retirement. He enjoyed being involved with numerous volunteer opportunities within his community. Eddie will always be remembered for his compassion, ability to help other people in any way he could, and for his sense of humor. As a husband and father, his kindness and patience will always remain dear to us. We would like to thank everyone for all the help and continued support. A Memorial Service will be held at 12:00 noon, Saturday, March 5, 2016 at St Joseph Catholic Church. Arrangements by VISTOSO FUNERAL HOME.
Dianne Ross Capin, 82, passed away peacefully at her home in Newport Beach, CA., accompanied by her loving daughter, Wendy Capin; grandson, Lance Rand and close friend Edward Lither. Dianne is survived by her brother, Paul Ross (Melissa Ross), New York; children, Roni Capin-Rivera Ashford (Danny Ashford), Tucson, Wendy Capin, Newport Beach, Sandra Capin-Kauffman (Rick Kauffman), Tucson and Ricky Capin (Perla Capin), McAllen, Texas; ten grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, three nieces and three nephews. Predeceased by her loving son, Mark Ross Capin on July 3, 2006. Dianne was born in Bronx, NY on December 6, 1933. She attended the Bronx High School of Science, the first class of women allowed to attend a previously dominant men's school. Recognized as a proud Life member of Mensa since December 22, 1988. Dianne was a loving mother of five children. After moving from the hustle and bustle of New York to Nogales, AZ in 1954, she kept herself extremely involved with her children, family, friends and the Nogales community. Every summer she would take all the children to Mission Beach, CA. Traveled with her children to New York to visit with her family, the New York World's Fair, Broadway shows and keeping close with her family ties. After leaving Arizona in 1966, she moved to Newport Beach, CA to begin her journey in the field of sales as a top sales representative for numerous luggage and leather good manufacturers. Dianne Ross Capin had a full life. Recognized by her peers in the Luggage Industry as a leading sales representative and also a successful owner of a chain of luggage stores in California. She was full of energy and constantly on the go traveling the southwestern states and Hawaii with a work ethic second to none. Her customers many of whom became longtime friends always looked forward to her visits. She was generous and outgoing. She maintained homes in Newport Beach, CA; Las Vegas, NV and at one point in New York City. Her homes were always open to her friends and family who would come and make long term visits with her enjoying her company. She was a wonderful and generous hostess. The best mother and friend a person could have. Dianne will be remembered by all her family and friends, as she had a great sense of humor, sometimes sharp but always with a good heart, beautiful inside and out, vivacious personality, quick witted, engaging, personable with a beautiful smile and an extremely intelligent woman who always strived for the best. Dianne created an Endowment Fund with the Bronx HS of Science in 2006 in memory of her loving son, Mark Ross Capin. Contributions in her memory may be made to The Bronx HS of Science Endowment Fund, Inc. In Memory of Dianne Ross Capin, 75 West 205th Street, Bronx, NY 10468 or online: www.bxscience.edu/give Memorial Services will be held Friday, March 4, 2016 at 9:30 a.m., Nogales Jewish Cemetery, 959 N Bejarano Street, Nogales, AZ. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOME, Dodge Chapel.
a native of Tucson with a career in health care administration, died February 26, 2016 after a lengthy illness. She was 67. Leslie was the daughter of the late Marvin Bliss Price and Claire Price. She was born in 1949 and graduated in 1967 from Catalina High School. Years later, she served on the board of directors for the high school's foundation. Leslie was graduated from Northern Arizona University with a degree in health care administration. She was among the original organizers of AHCCCS, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. She met her husband, Tom, in Tucson, and they moved to California, Wisconsin and West Virginia due to his newspaper career. Their twin daughters were born in Monterey County, California. While raising her daughters, Leslie worked in programs aimed at helping parents become better parents. Before retiring in 2013, Leslie worked as a program coordinator at the University of Arizona Human Subjects Protection Program. Wherever they lived, Leslie was active in the local Episcopal Church. In Tucson, she was a member of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, where she served on the altar guild. Survivors include her husband, Tom, of the home; daughters, Dana of Tucson and Tessa of San Diego; sisters, Janice Seward of Tucson and Harla Young of Las Vegas and numerous nieces and nephews. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that honorariums in Leslie's name be made to Amyloidosis Support Groups, 232 Orchard Drive, Wood Dale, IL, 60191. See www.amyloidosissupport.orgFollowing cremation, a Memorial Service will be held at 2:00 p.m., Friday, March 4, 2016 at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, 3738 N. Old Sabino Canyon Road, Tucson. ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel, is handling arrangements.
83, of Henrico, VA passed away on February 28, 2016 at Retreat Hospital, Richmond VA. He was born on November 18, 1932 in Ligonier, PA and was formerly a resident of New Florence, PA, retiring first to Tucson, AZ, then to Henrico, Virginia. Preceding his death were his wife Gladys Ruth Hill Shadron and his siblings, Warren, Allan and Lillian. Surviving are his sons, Robert Scott (Roslyn), Jeffrey Allan (Peggy) and five grandchildren, Matthew, Mark, Mitchell, Bryan (Shelley) and Amy. At age 19, in 1952, Robert joined the U.S. Navy and served during the Korean War on the USS Otterstetter (DE-244), an Edsall-class destroyer escort providing destroyer escort protection against submarine and air attack for Navy vessels and convoys. He served for eight years attaining the rank of Yeoman Petty Officer 2nd class (YNT2). He attended Cambria Rowe Business College and then joined Bethlehem Steel as an Industrial Analyst and retired in 1977 after surviving a heart attack. He took pride in his affiliation with the Masons and membership with the Tucson Lodge No. 4, Tucson, AZ. Family and friends will gather for visitation at BENNETT FUNERAL HOME, 11020 West Broad Street, Glen Allen, VA 23060 on March 5, 2016 from 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. A Memorial Service will follow at 3:00 p.m. in the funeral home chapel. His ashes will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Memorial gifts may be made to the American Heart Association, 4217 Park Place Ct., Glen Allen, VA 23060-9979. Friends may sign a guest register at bennettfuneralhomes.com.
The head of a drug trafficking organization and six others were arrested following a U.S. Drug Enforcement investigation into the Erick Erives drug ring, authorities said Wednesday.

Erives and six others were arrested after a 28-count indictment was issued by the Arizona Attorney General's Office, for multiple drug charges, money laundering and fraud, said DEA spokeswoman, Erica Curry.

The indictment alleges that Erives employed drug load coordinators, drivers and multiple stash houses in Tucson, Sierra Vista, Bisbee, Huachuca City and Naco, Curry said.

The investigation into the Erives operation began in September 2014 and led to the seizure of almost 1,600 lbs. of marijuana, 122 kilograms of heroin, ecstasy and mushrooms. Agents believe that several of the employees were recruited while attending high school in Sierra Vista and brought into the drug trafficking organization through meetings at a skate park near Veteran's Memorial Park, Curry said.

The two-day enforcement operation, leading to the arrests included DEA Agents, Homeland Security investigators, U.S. U.S. Border Patrol, Cochise County Sheriffs Office and the Pima County Sheriffs Department.

Those arrested include:

Erick A. Erives, 29, Tucson

Sorina N. Morales, 28, Tucson

Patrick J. Bramwell, 20, Sierra Vista

Cody D. Avery, 22, Sierra Visa

Mercedes V. Anello, 21, Huachuca City

Francisco Chavez-Bustamonte, 26, Sierra Vista

Lorenzo Cordova-Bustamante, 54, Sierra Vista
PHOENIX  Gov. Doug Ducey said this morning he will back whoever his party nominates for president  even if it's Donald Trump.

"I'm going to support the nominee,'' the governor told reporters.

"I think what's important is that we defeat Hillary Clinton,'' Ducey said. "I don't want to see another four or eight years of the policies of Barack Obama.''

And the governor said he remains convinced that Trump could win in November, even with the sharp divisions he is creating within the Republican party.

Ducey said he's convinced that, despite what's happening now, the GOP can coalesce behind a nominee, even if that is Trump.

"Part of the issue of having a competitive primary is that it can sometimes get very aggressive,'' Ducey said.

"That's where we are right now,'' he continued. "So let's run a primary where we settle on a nominee and then we're going to have to unify to beat Hillary Clinton in the fall.''

Ducey said he would have met with Trump when he came to town late last year.
PHOENIX  If youve got something to say, state lawmakers want to be sure you would be free to say it anywhere you want on college and university campuses  as long as you do it outside.

With no debate, the House on Tuesday approved two measures designed to not only guarantee the right to free speech but also the right to not be shunted off to some corner of the campus.

HB 2615 spells out that, with limited exceptions, community colleges and state-run universities cannot limit where the right of free speech can be exercised. The legislation applies to common areas of campuses and not inside the buildings themselves.

Rep. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, said the measure is a direct outgrowth of his experience when he was younger, trying to hand out material about his church at Glendale Community College. He said college officials shunted students off to a designated free speech zone, a place that was nowhere near the people his group was trying to reach.

In essence, Kern said, his legislation makes the entire campus a free speech zone.

The University of Arizona does not restrict free speech on campus.

Rep. Paul Boyer, R-Phoenix, said his HB 2548 has the same purpose.

Im actually grateful that our public universities dont have free speech zones, he said.

But our community colleges do, Boyer continued. And I want to see those free speech zones go away.

Boyers measure, however, has something that Kerns does not: teeth.

HB 2548 permits the attorney general or any person who believes his or her noncommercial expressive activity was blocked on a college or university campus to file a lawsuit.

But Boyer backed away from his original proposal, which required a court to award at least $500 to a person who wins such a lawsuit, with another $50 a day for every additional day those speech rights were denied. Instead, the only thing a court could do is order a school to allow the speech and enjoin it from enforcing any restrictions or policies that limit someones First Amendment rights.

As with the other measure, HB 2548 does allow schools to have policies that limit the time, place and manner of such speech, but only if those restrictions employ clear, published, content- and viewpoint-neutral criteria and provide for alternative means of expression.

But it does not permit schools to break up an event or demonstration, particularly for students and faculty, saying any rules must allow for members of the campus community to spontaneously and contemporaneously assemble.

Both measures need a final House roll-call vote before going to the Senate.

Even without the legislation, there is litigation.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing two students who said Paradise Valley Community College is illegally requiring groups to get permits and provide prior notice. The policy also restricts those who want to demonstrate or hand out literature to certain areas of the campus.

College officials have denied they are violating anyones rights.
OPINION: "Pima Community College belongs to the entire Tucson community. The governing board is the communitys way to hold the college accountable and to steer the institution toward best serving the greatest number of people. Help secure the brightest future for our community college and join us in supporting Theresa Riel for the District 2 seat on the PCC Governing Board," writes Makyla Hays, president of the Pima Community College Education Association.
Food stamps

Facing a wall of opposition, a proponent of welfare reform gave up Tuesday on his bid to remove food stamp benefits from 120,000 Arizonans.

As approved, HB 2596 would allow the state to provide only the benefits absolutely required by federal law in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It specifically prohibits state officials from taking advantage of provisions in federal law that allow states to expand eligibility or waive certain requirements  at federal expense  for certain groups.

For example, one waiver forgives the requirement to work in counties where the unemployment rate is higher than 10 percent on the premise that there are not jobs to be had.

But Rep. Justin Olson, R-Mesa, said that eliminating waivers and other exceptions would encourage more people to work.

That drew outrage from foes.

State Rep. Charlene Fernandez, D-Yuma, said the lost eligibility for food stamps would end the automatic qualification of children for the free and reduced-price lunches. This bill takes away a warm meal for 18,000 kids, she said.

And Rep. Lela Alston, D-Phoenix, scoffed at the idea that taking away benefits will get people into jobs.

This is the first time I have ever heard of the economic theory that the path to prosperity and self-reliance and well-being and money was achieved through starvation, she said.

Only as the measure was headed to defeat did Olson agree to remove the language that left him short of the 31 votes needed for approval. Several Republicans then changed their votes, allowing the measure to be approved on a 33-26 margin.

If Olson lives up to that commitment, that would leave in HB 2596 only what he said are anti-fraud protections, including putting the photo of recipients on their electronic benefit transfer cards.

Sober living homes

On a 49-9 vote the House agreed Tuesday to let communities regulate group homes designed to help people with drug and alcohol problems.

Rep. Noel Campbell, R-Prescott, said the homes have become a particular problem in his city, with 156 at last count.

And when you figure eight to a house, minimum, at any one time you have 1,400 to 1,500 young men walking around downtown Prescott, he said.

These are drug abusers, Campbell continued, saying theres a clash of cultures with the residents, especially when these homes pop up in an older, single-family neighborhood.

He acknowledged that cities cannot keep out such facilities that are protected by federal laws. But Campbell said HB 2107 provides oversight to ensure that actual treatment is being provided.

That includes mandatory registration  including the name of the property owner, minimum square-footage requirements for residents and supervision requirements  and requires that facilities have discharge plans, including what happens to those who do not comply with house rules.

Campbells legislation would have no effect on homes already licensed by the state Department of Health Services. And he conceded the measure would not necessarily solve what he said is a concentration of these group homes in certain neighborhoods.

The ones that are grandfathered in, they can stay there, he said. But he said homes that do not register and meet the requirements can be declared a nuisance and closed.

In getting the measure approved, Campbell told lawmakers they should not think of this as solely a Prescott issue.

This is a problem thats going to come to your neighborhood sooner or later, he said.

Gun rights

Without debate the state House voted to try to restrict the rights of Arizonans to propose new restrictions on the sale and transfer of firearms.

HB 2524 requires the state to try to enter into binding agreements with other states, each one agreeing not to allow any additional laws. That would cover not only what the Legislature could enact but would effectively override the constitutional right of initiative, at least on the subject of weapons.

Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, admitted the measure is aimed at initiative drives being promoted by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He is supporting efforts to require background checks any time a weapon is sold.

Current federal law applies that requirement only when a gun is sold by a licensed firearm dealer. Thorpe said he opposes measures that would impose the same mandate on person-to-person transfers, including weapons sold at gun shows.

The 35-24 vote sends the measure to the Senate.

Initiative overrides

The House voted to ask voters to let them override what is approved at the ballot.

HCR 2043 would void a constitutional provision, itself approved by voters in 1998, that says once a measure is enacted by voters it can be amended by the Legislature only on a three-fourths vote. It also cannot be repealed, as changes are permissible only if they further the purpose of the original ballot measure.

In its place would be permission for lawmakers to make alterations or repeal outright, as long as it was by the same margin that voters enacted the original measure.

A final House vote will send that to the Senate. But even if it gets approved there, the change would have to be ratified by voters in November.

Tax credits

Teachers could deduct up to $200 a year in what they owe in state income taxes under the terms of legislation approved Tuesday by the House.

HB 2151 would provide a dollar-for-dollar credit for anything spent by teachers for school supplies. Proponents said it would at least provide partial compensation for those who already are dipping into their own wallets.

The 34-24 vote sends the measure to the Senate.
Unsung Heroes

Select Search Engine... Turtlelearner Unsung Heroes Search The Web Powered by Rollyo

About Me turtlelearning Retired June 30, 2009 -- job was cut. Seemed better to agitate from without rather than from within. Are students inspired by books about real people? If so, I plan to write about people they have never heard about because the history books wouldn't allow it. View my complete profile
Help India!

By TCN News,

Mumbai: In order to help financially weak students to continue higher education, Popular Front of India (PFI) distributed scholarships to 28 students of Maharashtra under its SCHOLARSHIP CUM LOAN scheme.

Support TwoCircles



The scholarship distribution program was held here on Sunday at Bombay press club near Azad Maidan where scholarship was given to 16 girls and 12 boys in the presence of their parents.

Mohammed Hanif Khan, President of PFI, Maharashtra distributed these scholarships and explained students their responsibility towards the community.

Today you are the students but tomorrow youll grow as responsible person, in this way we together makes difference. For this reason Popular front is in the social field to uplift the community, Khan said in his address.

Last year 34 students from Pune, Aurangabad and Nanded were given scholarships by PFI under the same scheme.

PFI initiated this scheme of SCHOLARSHIP CUM LOAN in 2011 with an aim to help the meritorious students with weak financial backgrounds who wish to pursue higher studies after completing HSC.

This scholarship is interest free loan to the students, which means when they complete education or get a job, they need to return this to the community that extended helping hand when they were in need. In this way this cycle goes on and everyone gets the due share when actually they are in need, told Mazhar Khan, a PFI functionary from Mumbai.

We have distributed Rs 2.84 crore so far to more than 3100 students from 12 states, he added.

This is the fifth consecutive year that PFI is implementing this national level scholarship scheme for higher education.

First batch of students who completed the course and got the job, have started repaying the loan amount which will be given to more students in coming years, Mazhar Khan said.


Help India!

By TCN Staff Reporter

Adding fuel to the controversy over the alleged humiliation of AMU vice chancellor Lt. Gen (retd) Zameeruddin Shah by Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani and her statement that she would close down AMU centres, sources have confirmed to Twocircles.net that a delegation of Kerala ministers and MPs had almost the same experience in a meeting held in Thiruvananthapuram on January 14.

Support TwoCircles



She was cut and dry about the fact that she wouldnt disburse any fund to develop the Malappuram centre into a full-fledged university as planned by the UPA government, said a the personal assistant of an MP who attended the meeting in Thiruvananthapuram.

The meeting was attended by Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Minister for Minorities Welfare Manjalamkuzhi Ali, Minister for Education PK Abdu Rabb and IUML MPs P V Abdul Wahab and E T Mohammed Basheer.

HRD Minister attending the meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on January 14.

Whatever the centre got was illegally done by former UPA Government. We are going to close down the Aligarh Muslim University itself as it is non productive in terms of education, the source said quoting the HRD Minister.

While the Chief Minister brought her attention towards the land allocation and efforts taken up by Kerala to materialise the Malappuram Centre, Smriti Irani asked Oommen Chandy to run the centre at state governments expense.

The centre will go on with the present facilities and present strength. If you want to develop you take it over and develop it into a university or bring it under the Central University of Kerala, functioning in Kasargod. I will extend the possible help, the minister told the delegation while she was shown the detailed project report for the comprehensive development of the Malappuram centre.

The minister was blunt. While the delegation raised various demands, she couldnt help and said, I have invited you for breakfast and you are bombarding me. The meeting was finally dispersed, the source said.

Meanwhile, sources with AMU Malappuram Centre confirmed Twocircles that the HRD Minister insulted the AMU VC Zameeruddin Shah during the meeting, held in Delhi on January 8. It seems that there were planned attempts to ward off the Vice Chancellor from the meeting. The meeting was fixed at the office of HRD Minister. The venue was changed at last moment and the VC was ten minute late, one of the faculty member of AMU Malappuram, who was at the meeting, said.

The minister asked the VC Why did you come here? The VC replied that he was invited by the Kerala Chief Minister. The minister shouted at Zameeruddin Shah: Who pays you, HRD Ministry or Kerala CM? Go back and sit in your room, the source said.

According to the source, the delegation decided to blackout the issue for the sake of the development of the Malappuram centre.

The UPA Governments plan was to develop the Centre to a full-fledged university by 2020 with 3000 students and 30 departments. Presently there are around 350 students studying in three departments.
Help India!

New Delhi : CPI-M leader Mohammed Salim on Wednesday hit out at the central government in the Lok Sabha for curtailing freedom of speech and expression, citing the Patiala House court violence and action in Jawaharlal Nehru University.

When this government came to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about maximum governance, minimum government. But what happened in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was maximum government. And what happened in Patiala house court was minimum government, he said.

Support TwoCircles



Freedom of speech and expression was curtailed to the hilt. The laws and the rules were crushed by this government.

He, however, also had some words of praise for the government.

Earlier, they had completely rejected the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). Finally, in the budget the BJP-led government has acknowledged its importance. Good sense has finally prevailed, he said.
In an astounding interview with radio Voices of the People, Patrick Ngoma, the Zambian Minister of Tourism claimed that the Zambian nationals are the main poaching culprits in Zimbabwe as poaching by our people is controlled. He went on to state that these controls were so effective that poachers are now unable to penetrate Zambian national parks.

His statement that poachers from Zambia find the picking easier in Zimbabwe due to better law enforcement in Zambia was challenged in the interview. Zambian wildlife is at a low ebb, and it is more likely the poachers are crossing into Zimbabwe as that country has better protected their wildlife.

Zambia has been slow to protect wildlife

Crispin, an ex-police officer in the Chirundu area of northern Zimbabwe, confirmed that he had seen the Zambians killing Animals across the Zambezi River in the late 1980s and nobody stopped them. The Zambians are now more serious about poaching, but they are trying to close the door only now and this is why it is harder to find wild animals to kill in the southerno Zambian districts, he said. Crispin now volunteers as a Police reservist and he confirmed nearly every time there is a shooting contact with poachers, they turn out to be from Zambia.

The very porous Lake Kariba and Zambezi River, which has been a smuggling and poaching route for many years allows the Zambians to cross into Zimbabwe easily.

Many of them are recruited in Lusaka by Chinese nationals who buy ivory from the poachers and export it to China. Ken, who lived in Sinamwenda, a remote fishing area of Kariba confirmed the Zambians would cross into the Sengwa basin on fishing boats to hunt rhinos in the 1990's as there were no animalsleft on the opposite shore near the Chipepo settlement.

Most elephant poachers in Zimbabwe are Zambians

Ngoma admitted that Zambian nationals are now the main culprits poaching in the Victoria Falls, Hwange National Park and the eastern Zambezi reaches, and he did state that this is a sad state of affairs. It is becoming a humiliation for Zambia. Zambian media is critical of Zimbabwes shoot to kill policy and are becoming angered by the deaths of their own people.

However, it is time for Zambia to address the problem of their nationals thieving from Zimbabwes wildlife heritage. Cross-border co-operation between authorities is essential to combat the rampant poaching in Zimbabwe.

Cross-border co-operation essential

In mitigation, Ngoma did go on to elaborate that Zambia is trying to do something about the problems of poaching into neighbouring countries. To solve poaching cases, he said, it is important to form a joint operation between SADC countries. In particular, he spotlighted a proposed joint operation in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). The use of drones and cross-border communication could be the answer to the poaching problems he feels.

Zambia is using drones in anti-poaching operations, and Ngoma said the long term plan is to have many more of them patrolling the poaching route hotspots. The Thin Green Line Foundation has already participated in the funding of drones for use inZambia and Zimbabwe. Drones hold out hopes for better anti-poaching operations, but like any law enforcement tool, it is only as good as the backup reaction teams and the commitment from authorities. Complacency and propaganda will not make the Zambian poaching problem in neighbouring countries go away.
PokerStars.fr Exits Austria To Avoid Double Taxation

March 02 2016 Jason Glatzer

PokerStars.fr, the French-regulated client of PokerStars, announced last week to its Austrian player base that it will no longer be servicing players residing in the country starting at 10:00 ET on March 1, 2016. The notification informed Austrian players that a change in regulatory framework is the reason they will no longer be welcome to play on the French PokerStars client.

Upon the news, poker players flocked to poker forums, including TwoPlusTwo, to discuss the news along with the reasons this is taking place. The email Austrian customers received explains that players can still use their StarsCoin balances to purchase items in the VIP Store and the site will automatically convert tournament dollars and tickets into cash.

Here is the message players received last week:

We are writing to inform you that, due to the latest change in legal framework in Austria, starting at 10:00 ET on March 1 we will stop allowing players based in Austria to play on the PokerStars.fr site. Your PokerStars.fr account will remain open and accessible, and your funds can be withdrawn at any time to your registered bank account. Any tournament tickets or T balance will automatically be converted into Euro when you visit the cashier. You are welcome to use your StarsCoin to purchase cash rebates or any other items from the VIP Store, with the exception of online tickets. Please also be informed that your real money and StarsCoin balances cannot be transferred between accounts on different licenses.

Players speculated that the reason for the pullout could have related to a recent deal announced between Playtech, the owner of the iPoker Network, and Win2Day, owned by Austrian Lotteries and Casinos Austria, where the former would provide poker platform services to the latter could have been the reason of the pullout due to the timing. Even though Win2Day is currently the only online poker network licensed in Austria under its gaming regime, this news appears to be just coincidental and unrelated.

However, this is not believed to be likely the case, as Austrian TwoPlusTwo poster "DebtsNBooze" shared an email PokerStars.fr support sent when asking for an explanation.

On January 1, 2016, PokerStars started paying gaming duty taxes to the Austrian Government for play on PokerStars.FR by players who had a registered address in Austria. This additional tax was in addition to the tax that PokerStars was already paying to the French government for play by all players on PokerStars.FR. It was unsustainable for PokerStars to pay double tax  to both the Austrian and French Governments  for play by Austrians on PokerStars.fr. Consequently, we have little choice, and need to stop allowing players with a registered address in Austria to play on PokerStars.fr. Please note this is only for Austrian players. We appreciate your understanding.

The double taxation issue is a sticky one. Due to French regulations, online poker operators are taxed approximately 37 percent on gross gaming revenues. The large tax already puts a significant dent into the profit margins for any online poker company providing regulated services under a French license.

Austria, who does not exempt online gaming from the EU VAT Directive levies a large 20-percent tax on all gaming transactions. It is therefore logical that PokerStars.fr came to the decision to discontinue services to Austrian residents.

This isn't the first time PokerStars.fr pull out of a gaming market due to double taxation. In December 2014, the United Kingdom began enforcing the United Kingdom Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014 which includes a 15 percent Point of Consumption Tax to online gaming companies.

PokerStars.fr informed players in the United Kingdom in September 2014 its plans to pull out of the market ahead of the schedule plans being enforced.

Stay tuned to PokerNews for more news as it happens in the Austrian gaming marketplace.

Get all the latest PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!

Sharelines Learn why PokerStars.fr is exiting the Austrian market.
Political advisors gather in Beijing for annual meetings Updated: 2016-03-01 21:39 (Xinhua)

Members of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region wave upon their arrival at Beijing West Railway Station, in Beijing, March 1, 2016, for the Fourth Session of the 12th CPPCC National Committee. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - Members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee are headed to Beijing for the advisory body's annual session, slated for Thursday.

Political advisors from northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region and northern Inner Mongolia autonomous region were the first to arrive on Tuesday.

With only two days until the start of the two-most important weeks of the political calendar, advisors will submit proposals and insight on state affairs.

The National People's Congress, China's top legislature, will begin its annual session on Saturday.

Together dubbed the "two sessions," the meetings are the most important political events in China, where political and economic development measures are discussed and key policies adopted.

CPPCC members are elected from various walks of life and ethnic groups. They are the think tank for the government, and the legislative and judicial organs. They put forward proposals for the major political and social issues in the world's most populous nation and second-largest economy.

Ma Zongbao, head of Ningxia University's institute for Hui ethnic studies, told Xinhua that his proposal calls for better higher education in central and western parts of China as this will aid poverty alleviation in the region.

"I hope the country can improve the competitiveness of colleges and universities in central and western China to help them pull themselves out of poverty," he said.
Chinese tourist wave splashes into Japan Updated: 2016-03-02 08:18 By Wang Xu(China Daily)

Chinese visitors to Japan more than doubled their hotel stays in 2015, and they are spending more on personal items rather than on goods such as electrical appliances.

The number of nights visitors from the Chinese mainland stayed in hotels in Japan rose more than 111 percent year-on-year to 16.46 million in 2015, while the number of visitors from Taiwan who stayed in Japanese hotels climbed 34.9 percent to 10.71 million, Japan Times said on Monday.

Increased incomes, easier visa policies and more flights triggered the boom in Chinese visitors, according to a report by Ctrip, a leading online travel agency in China.

Shopping tastes have also changed. Whereas many Chinese consumers once mainly purchased household goods, such as toilet seats and refrigerators, more are opting to spend their money on clothes, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and food, the report said.

The spending power of Chinese tourists has given a significant boost to department stores and other retail sellers in Japan, while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been stepping up efforts to increase the number of foreign tourists to 20 million annually by 2020, the report said.

The tourism agency said that Chinese visitors - more than 5 million of them - visited Japan in 2015 and account for one-fourth of Abe's 2020 target. They spent $12.2 billion in the country.

Liu Xiaoxiang, a 27-year-old computer sales company owner in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, took his fiancee to Japan in January.

"I spoke Chinese all the time as the salespeople in Japan often speak fluent Mandarin. The bargain prices for luxury goods and the food there impressed me," he said.

Yu Qiang, a researcher at the University of International Relations, said China and Japan are trying to improve their relationship, and better ties will surely result in even more Chinese going to Japan.

wangxu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/02/2016 page4)
Tide of remembrance for forgotten sailors Updated: 2016-03-02 08:18 By Peng Yining(China Daily)

During World War II, more than 20,000 Chinese mariners served the British merchant fleet with distinction. However, when the war ended, most were quickly repatriated, forcing them to leave wives and children in the United Kingdom. Peng Yining reports.

At Pier Head in the port of Liverpool in the United Kingdom stands a black marble plaque that looks out over the Atlantic Ocean. Unveiled a decade ago, the plaque, in English and Chinese, is dedicated to the memory of Chinese mariners who served in the British merchant fleet during both world wars. Placed directly between the Chinese and English verses is heping, the Chinese character for "peace", written in larger script.

During World War II, Liverpool was the headquarters of the forces that guarded the Western Approaches, an area of the Atlantic that lies to the west of the British Isles, and protected the Atlantic convoys, a crucial ocean lifeline that carried desperately needed supplies to wartime Britain.

The unveiling ceremony of the plaque commemorating the deeds of Chinese mariners is held at Pier Head, Liverpool, England, on Jan 23, 2006. The plaque faces the Western Approaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Photos Provided by Han Qing / For China Daily A wedding ceremony in Liverpool in April 1943 depicts an unknown Chinese merchant seaman (front, third from left) and his new British wife. Retired Chinese and British sailors of the Blue Funnel Shipping Line raise their glasses in a photo taken in front of the company's former offices in Liverpool.

After the loss of many ships and men, the British Merchant Navy began recruiting sailors from Allied countries around the world. More than 20,000 trained mariners came from China, mainly from Shanghai, Ningbo in Zhejiang province, Hong Kong and Shandong province.

Thousands of them died as a result of attacks by U-boats, the German submarine fleet, yet their history is largely unknown - not just to the British, but also to the Chinese.

Research conducted by Luo Xiaojian, the Chinese consul in Liverpool during WWII, showed that more than 2,000 Chinese seamen lost their lives, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the death toll among Allied sailors, both combatants and merchant mariners. The average age of the dead Chinese was 35.

Merchant sailors from China first appeared in Liverpool in 1850, when the first route was established between Shanghai and Liverpool, making the city's Chinatown the oldest in Europe.

In addition to working for the British merchant fleet, many Chinese mariners also served and died in the navies of other European countries. In 1940, a Norwegian merchant vessel was attacked and sunk by a Japanese warship during a voyage from Thailand to Singapore. Only six of the 44 Chinese sailors on board survived.

Between 1940 and 1945, about 2,000 Chinese seamen worked on Norwegian merchant ships, with 252 of them dying in the course of their duties.

A good reputation

Most Chinese worked as lower-level crew members on European merchant ships, according to research by Han Qing, professor of maritime history and culture at Dalian Maritime University in Liaoning province.

Han said Chinese seamen were paid about 50 percent less than their British counterparts. In 1939, the monthly salary of a British seaman was about 9 pounds (about $12 today) and a fireman earned 10 pounds, but Chinese sailors were paid 4 pounds for the same work, while a fireman earned 6 pounds.

"Chinese sailors were not only cheaper, they were also obedient, hard working and didn't drink and make trouble," Han said. "Even before the war, Chinese sailors had earned a good reputation in Europe."

That view is endorsed by the words of D.L.C. Evans, captain of the British merchant ship Glenartney. In a letter he wrote after undertaking a rescue mission in the Atlantic in 1941, Evans said: "The Chinese crew were truly excellent, working to the point of exhaustion ... As an illustration of the spirit prevailing, the Chinese boys made it clear that any attempt on the part of the survivors to offer any reward or gratuity would be most offensive to their feelings, and would be met with disdainful refusal. I can only say with all the sincerity that I possess that I am proud to have been in command of such a ship, manned by such excellent officers, midshipmen, and crew."

Although the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the conflict continued in Asia until the Japanese surrender in early September. That, and the ensuing war between the Communists and Nationalists in China, left many of the sailors stranded in the UK.

Forcible repatriation

According to Han's research, about 6,000 Chinese sailors married or cohabited with local women, fathering more than 1,300 children. However, in September 1945, the British government began to forcibly repatriate the Chinese sailors. Many were denied the opportunity to say goodbye to their families because they were detained on the street and sent directly to the ships that transported them back to China. The men's sudden departure had a devastating effect on those left behind.

Yvonne Foley was born in February 1946, a few months after her father, who hailed from Shanghai, was forced to return to China. Foley's mother was too ill to accompany her husband, so she stayed in the UK.

"Back then, we didn't ask questions. As for my mum, she always thought she'd been abandoned, so there was that hurt that made it difficult," Foley said, in an interview with the BBC last year.

For the past decade, she has acted as the leader of a group for men and women whose fathers were repatriated, collecting any snippets of information that will help to provide a clearer picture of what happened to the men.

On the group's website, Liverpool and its Chinese Seamen, they wrote: "Some of us did not know we had any Chinese blood until we were teenagers or even adults. We knew we looked different to others around us, but we never knew why."

The prevailing conditions of the time meant that although many families tried to maintain contact, few managed to do so.

According to Han, a small number of the children traveled to China in the 1980s and '90s and found their fathers. However, as many of the children are now in their 70s and 80s, and most of the fathers have died, they are finding it increasingly difficult to trace their roots.

Han is currently helping the China Maritime Museum in Shanghai to organize an exhibition about the lives of Chinese seamen in wartime Europe. It will open before June 25, the International Maritime Organization's "Day of the Seafarer".

"The Chinese sailors played an important role in the victory in the war," he said. "They should not be forgotten."

Contact the writer at pengyining@chinadaily.com.cn

The dedication

"To the Chinese merchant seaman who served this country well during both world wars.

For those who gave their lives for this country - thank you.

To the many Chinese merchant seamen who after both world wars were required to leave.

For their wives and partners who were left in ignorance of what happened to their men.

For the children who never knew their fathers.

This is a small reminder of what took place. We hope nothing like it will ever happen again.

For your memory."

23rd January 2006

(China Daily 03/02/2016 page6)
Cost of restructuring bearable Updated: 2016-03-02 07:54 By WU YIXUE(China Daily)

A worker is pictured in Shougang Jingtang United Iron & Steel Co on Aug 28, 2014. [Photo / Xinhua]

Since China has made clear its resolve to promote the restructuring of sectors plagued by excessive overcapacity, there has been speculation at home and abroad whether the country will launch a new round of large-scale layoffs from factories.

Western media have called it "one of the largest single layoffs in history" as China's labor minister announced on Monday plans to lay off roughly 1.8 million workers in the coal and steel sectors as part of the efforts to curb industrial overcapacity. But any over-exaggeration of the number of layoffs or the threat the layoffs may cause social stability will be wide of the mark.

China has realized fast and admirable economic development over the past decades, but such kind of development was achieved by sacrificing the environment and resulted in overcapacity in a number of sectors. The blind expansion of the coal and steel industries at the time when China managed to keep its economy growing at full speed has finally caused such serious overproduction in these two sectors that a top official in North China's Shanxi province recently complained the profit from selling a ton of coal is lower than selling one bottle of alcohol. Likewise, steel manufacturers have complained that steel is sold for the same price as Chinese cabbage.

Meanwhile, "zombie enterprises" in the sectors with a serious glut of production have not only wasted huge amounts of resources, they are also a drag on the country's pursuit of more efficient, greener and healthier economic development.

The enormous economic and social resources it can now mobilize and the better-developed domestic employment market mean that China's current pressures resulting from the elimination of overproduction are no larger than those in the 1990s when widespread, large-scale reforms were launched to streamline poorly performing State-owned enterprises.

The establishment of an enormous special fund by the central government will also guarantee the appropriate resettlement of displaced workers. To lubricate the transformation from an investment and export-fuelled economy to an efficient, consumption powered one, China must bear the cost of restructuring its inefficient enterprises and reducing capacity.
Court case mirrors US world police mentality Updated: 2016-03-02 07:54 (China Daily)

Student leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung. [Photo/Agencies]

The Hong Kong government has issued a statement in response to yet another example of wanton interference by the US government in the special administrative region's internal affairs.

After the start of a trial of three leaders of radical student groups, charged with leading the illegal intrusion and occupation of the SAR government complex that triggered the "Occupy Central" movement in November 2014, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China posted a statement on its official website.

In its statement the CECC not only showers the three men who are accused of illegally breaking and entering into the official complex with praise and encouragement, it also dictates how the court should handle the case involving "political" figures that Washington apparently has a special interest in.

The HK government stressed in its response that it is committed to upholding the rule of law. The prosecution of the suspects is being conducted according to the laws of the SAR, and the three accused are being tried by the court in an independent, fair and open manner.

It emphasized that the Department of Justice handles all criminal prosecutions independently, free from any interference.

That is to say the court is impartial and there is no question of it being a political prosecution. The statement rightly concludes by declaring that prosecutions and trials in Hong Kong are entirely internal affairs of the SAR and no foreign governments should try to influence the judicial process in the SAR.

The CECC statement is further evidence Washington has no qualms about trampling on the judicial independence of other countries and regions whenever it wants to. China in particular has long been accustomed to such displays of American cowboy-ism in the US' handling of foreign relations.

As well as exhibiting the US' world police mentality, the CECC statement is also a verbal grandstanding aimed at boosting the morale of the opposition camp in Hong Kong.

Many people in China, including in Hong Kong, as well as people around the world are convinced that "Occupy Central" was another attempt at a so-called "color revolution" orchestrated by foreign forces in the hope of somehow tripping up China's modernization drive.

It is no coincidence that the "Occupy Central" campaign has been accompanied by the rise of radicalism and separatism in the SAR. In that sense, the US intervention in this court case, though outrageous, does not come as a surprise.
Efficient economy through diplomacy Updated: 2016-03-02 08:51 By YU XIANG(China Daily)

An official adjusts a Turkish national flag prior to the start of the G20 summit in Belek in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey, November 14, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

The year 2016 will usher in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), whose core economic goal is to build a high quality and efficient economy. In the current global economic and political environment, which is very different from the past, China needs to use economic diplomacy and all the economic tools at its disposal to achieve the goals.

Some goodwill initiatives taken by China have been misunderstood by some countries, which are worried China would use the initiatives as tools to achieve its geopolitical goals. Economic diplomacy will help China remove the worries of the skeptics and present the real picture to the world.

China should also use economic diplomacy to create a free and fair economic environment. The United States is pushing its initiatives to maintain its global leadership, which help some countries to maintain a strategic balance. Beijing is wary of the Washington-led initiatives because some of them are openly aimed at containing China or curbing its rising influence.

The US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was signed by 12 countries last month. And the Barack Obama administration is pushing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to deepen the economic relations between European countries and the US. The two initiatives, which exclude China, are aimed at creating a diversionary effect for China.

To counter such moves, China needs to use well-designed and efficient economic diplomacy. This will also help China keep track of other countries' economic policies and predict their changes, devise a scientific road map to pursue its policy objectives, simultaneously employ domestic and foreign economic resources, and explain the aims of its economic policies.

The Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road are part of a grand initiative. By implementing the initiative, China will earn development bonus, motivate neighboring countries to take more economic initiatives and deepen interdependence in the region. But considering the risks and difficulties associated with the Belt and Road Initiative, China should implement it carefully, for which it should push forward the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership negotiations with the help of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Malaysia's magic move Updated: 2016-03-02 07:53 By Erik Nilsson/Yang Feiyue(China Daily)

A Chinese kid dives at Pulau Redang in Malaysia.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Yesterday's announcement that the Southeast Asian destination will waive visas for Chinese visitors, effective immediately, may prove the potion that puts inbound tourism in motion. Erik Nilsson and Yang Feiyue report.

Poof! Visas vanish. Chinese crowds appear. That's the idea, at least.

Malaysia's waiving of visas for Chinese may prove the waving of a wand.

The gesture will likely, indeed, enchant growing Chinese crowds to explore the Southeast Asian nation's shores, following two years of declining visits from the Middle Kingdom.

The country officially announced yesterday in Beijing that is has, effective immediately, lifted visa requirements for Chinese staying fewer than 15 days under the visa-free program electronic travel registration and information, aka ENTRI, until 2017. Chinese can apply online, if they take direct flights from the Chinese mainland to Malaysia. The application fee is 160 yuan ($24).

Chinese who stay more than 15 days but fewer than 30 can get e-visas valid for three months within 24 hours of applying online for 200 yuan.

Both options are single entry.

The visa waiver follows an e-visa system that proved as convoluted as traditional visa procedures. It had been admonished by Malaysia's tourism leaders as "confusing" to the point of jeopardizing Chinese visitors' "loyalty".

The relaxed rules will likely unleash tidal waves of visitors from the world's biggest outbound-tourism source nation.

Malaysia hopes it's a Midas touch that conjures alchemy for its lackluster economy, which has suffered from sinking oil prices. The bet is it'll prove a golden ticket to win the 2 million inbound Chinese it hopes to lure this yearcompared with 1.3 million last year.
'Comfort women' numbers underestimated: author Updated: 2016-03-02 11:46 By Hua Shengdun in Washington(China Daily USA)

The author of a book on "comfort women" estimates that the number victimized could be above 200,000.

Caroline Norma, author of The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars, said an estimation (of 80,000 to 200,000 by some scholars) "is not based on the latest information from China, so my estimation would be definitely higher than 200,000, easily."

Norma took part in a discussion at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on Tuesday.

An estimated 200,000 women from China and many others from the Korean Peninsula, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries were forced into sexual servitude by Japanese troops before and during World War II, according to Xinhua.

"If any country was victimized to a great extent, I think it has to be China," Norma said.

Peipei Qiu, author of Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves, recounted many emotionally charged anecdotes from Chinese victims during the panel discussion.

"These kind of abductions were very common in occupied areas in China," said Qiu, director of Asian Studies at Vassar College in New York.

The testimonies of comfort women "have often been contested on the grounds that human memories are subjective", she said.

"In China, because the sexual enslavement took place in the victim's hometowns, there are many, many local witnesses. So all these testimonies are verifiable and supported by local history," Qiu said.

"One legacy is hopefully greater cooperation and research over the comfort women," Norma said. "And the second is that China will hopefully lead the world in pursuing justice for comfort women from various countries."

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.
Spring festival show hits Toronto Updated: 2016-03-03 05:26 By NA LI in Toronto(chinadaily.com.cn)

Members of the Cultures of China, Festival of Spring arts troupe gather with guests after the 2016 performance held at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Feb 27 in Toronto. NA LI /CHINA DAILY

After a successful debut in Toronto five years ago, the Cultures of China, Festival of Spring Chinese New Year celebration was back with another performance at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts on Feb 27 in Toronto.

Organizers said it brought the warmth of home to the Chinese community overseas and offered a warm invitation to local Canadians to experience the beauty of Chinese culture.

"Amazing! It was a great way to celebrate the Spring Festival with the traditional Chinese performances," a Canadian in the audience told China Daily.

To celebrate the beginning of the year of the Monkey, Cultures of China, Festival of Spring made Toronto the final stop of its 2016 North American Tour.

A state-level professional troupe of artists from China showcased the fusion of sound and visuals to present traditional and modern Chinese styles. The one-time performance in Toronto featured Shaolin Temple kung fu, acrobatics, dance, folk songs by celebrated artists, and more.

The Chinese entertainers also collaborated with local artists and performance groups to bring a more localized and varied show to the audience.

Cultures of China, Festival of Spring is organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council. Since first launched in 2009, it has been performed more than 320 times for 4 million spectators in more than 90 countries and 220 cities around the globe. It is "the largest Chinese state-level New Year Gala overseas".
Sea cucumbers slither into US market Updated: 2016-03-02 09:45 By NIU YUE in New York(chinadaily.com.cn)

Two visitors from Spain show interest in dried sea cucumber products in a drug & food store at New York's China Town on March 1. Adelina Amado (female in front), said it was her first time to see real cucumbers in life and she would have never expect that the sea cucumbers could be high-end food beforehand. LONG YIFAN/FOR CHINA DAILY

The world is the sea cucumber's oyster.

Lin Yangjie, a senior salesman in the sea cucumber business in New York, said that at least 45 sea cucumber shops exist in New York City, and he estimates that there are at least 250 in the United States.

Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea. They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body. Sea cucumbers' fellow echinoderms include starfish, sea urchins and sand dollars.

Lin said that about 90 percent of the sea cucumber business was transacted through physical stores and the other 10 percent online, on platforms such as Alipay and WeChat. Lin called the sites "a thriving and growing outlet of business".

Lin said that two main varieties of sea cucumber products are sold: dehydrated and ready-made and 85 percent of his business is focused on the Chinese mainland, where most of his customers live.

Using WeChat Moments, a photo-sharing function of the Chinese mobile messaging app, Lin displayed his newly launched products from Alaska and answered his clients' questions quickly.

Lin said his WeChat platform brought him at least 10 orders from China, with his assistant in China working to expand the business. The market share in both the US and China was equally split.

On Alibaba, the price of dried sea cucumber ranges from $435 to $1,000 -plus per kilogram.

"Sea cucumber is regarded as a highly nutritious and high-end food," Lin said. "Not everyone in China can afford to include it in their daily recipes."

There are two areas known for sea cucumber in North America, one is the cold waters of Alaska, and the other is the Gulf of Mexico.

Tina Fei, a sea cucumber saleswoman in New York's Chinatown, said the price of Alaskan sea cucumber was slightly higher than the Gulf of Mexico product.

Sea cucumbers from the gulf used to be at least $50 cheaper per 500 kilograms than their Alaskan counterparts, but the price gap has narrowed.

"Chinese consumers had such a big appetite for sea cucumber here that many sea areas now are closed for fishing sea cucumber," she said. "That's why the price of products of the Gulf of Mexico rose a lot, and the gap almost disappeared."

She said the offer price in China online was approximately twice the domestic price.

"The profitability is rather significant," Fei said.

When customs regulations were looser a few years ago, a visitor could bring dozens of bags of dried sea cucumbers to China at one time. Later, more shipping options such as parcels became more common.

Fei said most of the sea cucumber eaters in the US were Chinese, and that many other communities "would frown upon the idea of eating sea cucumber because it looks so thorny and jellish".

She said that more than 95 percent of her customers are Chinese and the other 5 percent were non-Chinese who had eaten sea cucumbers with their Chinese friends or families before. It seems even those non-Chinese who eat sea cucumber do so reluctantly.

Adam Chozick, a New Yorker who likes Chinese food, said he could only "accept" a well-done sea cucumber with a flavor-intensifying sauce covering up the fishy smell.

"Culture determines eating habits," Fei said.

Long Yifan in New York contributed to the story.
'Comfort women' numbers underestimated: author Updated: 2016-03-02 12:28 By HUA SHENGDUN in Washington(chinadaily.com.cn)

The author of a book on "comfort women" estimates that the number victimized could be above 200,000.

Previously, scholars have estimated that between 80,000 and 200,000 women were victims in China, "but that is an estimation that is not based on the latest information from China, so my estimation would be definitely higher than 200,000, easily," said Caroline Norma, author of The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars.

Norma took part in a panel discussion on the issue at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington on Tuesday.

Comfort women is a term used to describe those forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during World War II.

"If any country was victimized to a great extent, I think it has to be China," Norma said.

Peipei Qiu, author of Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves, recounted many emotionally charged anecdotes from Chinese victims during the panel discussion.

After a particularly graphic account of one comfort woman's experience, said Qiu, who is a professor of Chinese and Japanese on the Louise Boyd Dale and Alfred Lichtenstein Chair and Director of Asian Studies at Vassar College in New York. "These kind of abductions were very common in occupied areas in China. Since then, comfort women have offered testimonies. But these have often been contested on the grounds that human memories are subjective."

The dismissal of the testimonies distresses Qiu.

"In China, because the sexual enslavement took place in the victim's hometowns, there are many, many local witnesses. So all these testimonies are verifiable and supported by local history," Qiu said.

"It is disturbingly tragic that 70 years after the war, people in Japan and in the world are still struggling to figure out what really happened to compensation, leaving the aging survivors waiting for a sincere apology from the leaders of the country who have violated them during the war," Qiu said.

The responsibility also lies with China to lead the way in helping obtain redress, Norma said.

"One legacy is hopefully greater cooperation and research over the comfort women," Norma said. "And the second is that China will hopefully lead the world in pursuing justice for comfort women from various countries."

Allan Fong in Washington contributed to this story.
Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page.

Loading...

Checking your browser before accessing the website.

This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.

Please wait a few seconds.
A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, 'You are mad; you are not like us.  St. Antony the Great
For years, Wayne Simmons claimed to be a former C.I.A. operative. Then one ex-spook got suspicious.

By ALEX FRENCH, NYT, MARCH 1, 2016Kent Clizbe, a 55-year-old former C.I.A. officer and intelligence contractor, has cultivated a diverse set of interests in his later years. He loves bird watching and participates in his local Christmas Bird Count, an informal census organized by the Audubon Society. He has a patent on a device, the TimeOff, that prevents unattended-stove fires. But Clizbes true motivating force  a holdover, perhaps, from his decade with the agency  is an unrelenting compulsion to get to the bottom of things. He vets every person he meets, interrogating every fact presented to him. This perpetual need to turn everything inside out is the defining trait of Clizbes personality, and he remains faithful to it, even when it incurs him great personal expense.Clizbe grew up poor in Halifax County, North Carolina, raised by a single mother. In 1980, after failing out of East Carolina University, he joined the Air Force. Aptitude tests revealed a gift for languages, so Clizbe enrolled in intensive Vietnamese courses and then was shipped to the Philippines, where he spent three years monitoring Vietnamese radio communications. When his tour ended, he went back to school at Southern Illinois University. On campus, he fell in love with a Malaysian girl, who told him that if he wanted to marry her, he would have to convert to Islam. He converted, married her and followed her back to Southeast Asia, where he found work at a refugee camp in the Philippines. Clizbe made frequent trips to her hometown outside Kuala Lumpur, where he immersed himself in the local customs.He and his wife lived in Asia for a year before finding jobs at the business college at King Saud University in Qassim Province in Saudi Arabia. He taught English as a second language and made the pilgrimage to Mecca. It was 1988, and the war in Afghanistan was dragging on. At the mosque on Fridays, Clizbe would hear calls for young men to travel east and wage jihad against the communists.After returning to the United States in 1990, Clizbe earned a masters degree in linguistics and studied business and instructional design. While he searched for a job, he sometimes paid the bills by working the phones at a venereal-disease hotline. He was eventually hired by the C.I.A. as an operations officer.
India's Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city was attacked today with a suicide bomber blowing himself up during the terror strike but all Indians at the mission were safe, Indian foreign office said.



One local staff sustained minor injuries in the attack, nearly two months after a similar assault was carried out by terrorists on the Indian mission in Mazar-i-Sharif in January.

Read more from our special coverage on "AFGHANISTAN" Suicide bomber kills at least 10 in eastern Afghanistan

"Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission. All Indians in the mission are safe while a local staff has sustained minor injuries," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) fired after they detected some movement and gunfire near the consulate complex at about 1:30 p.m IST, according to officials.On January 3, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan security forces.Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.Afghan forces have killed four militants involved in the attack. However, an exact number of attackers was not immediately known.The combing operation is on after the attackers were killed, sources said.No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Zelenskys diplomacy masterclass outpacing dour, grey Putin in battle for hearts and minds When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 this year, there was no room for jokes or play acting, and Zelensky needed to step up. He did.

Megyn Kelly fires up at Meghan Markle over her deceptive nature Sky News Australia contributor Megyn Kelly has slammed Meghan Markle over her "abject dishonesty" after the Duchess of Sussex took a swipe at Deal or No Deal in her latest podcast episode which featured Paris Hilton.

Boris Johnsons dad tight-lipped on sons potential return Speculation has begun on who could replace Liz Truss in the wake of her resignation, with her predecessor Boris Johnson expected to stand for the Conservative leadership again.
Man breaks in, but pays for smokes

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP)  A New Mexico man is accused of breaking in to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes  then paying for them.

Police in Las Cruces say the 24-year-old man went to buy cigarettes early Sunday, but the business was closed.

Surveillance cameras show him pounding on the front door and then kicking and breaking the doors lower panel.

Police say he went inside, grabbed a pack of cigarettes and then made sure the cameras captured him leaving $6.

A witness called 911, and police say they found and arrested the man. He faces a felony charge of breaking and entering.

Damage to the stores front door is estimated at $800.

S.D. transgender bathroom bill vetoed

PIERRE, S.D. (AP)  South Dakotas governor vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have made the state the first in the U.S. to approve a law requiring transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their sex at birth.

Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who initially reacted positively to the proposal but said he needed to research the issue, rejected the bill after groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign insisted it was discriminatory.

In his veto message, Daugaard said the bill does not address any pressing issue and that such decisions were best left to local school officials.

Officer, suspect dead in North Texas

EULESS, Texas (AP)  A police officer died on the operating table after he was shot in a Tuesday afternoon gunfight with an armed suspect in a park near a Dallas-area school.

Euless Police Chief Mike Brown said the suspect also died of multiple gunshot wounds in the 3 p.m. shootout at J.A. Carr Park.

Brown said officers were responding to a report of shots fired near the park, which is in a residential area near an elementary school.

Chicago homicides double over 2015

CHICAGO (AP)  Homicides and shootings have doubled in Chicago so far this year compared with the same period in 2015, and police have seized fewer illegal guns  more possible signals officers have become less aggressive in the aftermath of a shooting video released last fall.

The statistics come almost exactly three months after the city, on the orders of a judge, released the video of Jason Van Dyke, a white officer, firing 16 shots at Laquan McDonald, a black teen killed in 2014. Since that day, Van Dyke has been charged with murder, and Superintendent Garry McCarthy has been fired.

The Department of Justice launched a civil rights probe of the police force.

Study: No sleep gives you munchies

WASHINGTON  If youve pulled an all-nighter and spent the next day feeling ravenously hungry as if you were in the movie Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, scientists may have just figured out why.

A new paper, published in the journal Sleep on Monday and partially funded by the Department of Defense, makes the case that sleep deprivation can trigger powerful changes in how you eat that are akin to the marijuana munchies. Researcher Erin Hanlon from the University of Chicago described the effect as enhancing the guilty pleasures of sweet, salty, high-fat and other potentially bad-for-you foods.
The prognosis is better than it was a week ago, but Northern Iowa punter Cael Loecher is still not out of the woods.
DES MOINES  Iowa senators launched an effort Tuesday to require more government oversight of private companies managing Medicaid for 560,000 Iowans effective April 1.

A bill, which cleared a Senate committee with bipartisan support, would enhance the responsibilities of the Health Policy Oversight Committee, review program integrity and finance improvements and support for recipients, Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, said.

Floor debate was deferred to give minority Republicans time to review changes and possibly draft amendments for consideration today.

Ragan noted federal regulators twice delayed Gov. Terry Branstads implementation of Medicaid privatization, initially to have begun Jan. 1.

It is undeniable that Gov. Branstad took a too much, too fast approach to Medicaid privatization, Ragan said. Apparently, it was designed by those who know the cost of everything but understand the value of nothing.

Branstad maintains his administration and the Legislature already have authority to monitor Medicaid. He says privatization will move the program from a fee-for-service model to a system that rewards improvements.

The whole idea of managed care companies is to provide oversight over the providers, the governor told reporters earlier this week.

So were looking at more people that oversee the overseers basically to manage the managers, Branstad said. How much of that duplication do we want, and how much will it cost? Those are the kinds of things you have to balance in determining whether this is good public policy.

The six-term GOP governor said the state insurance commissioner already is in place to oversee the MCOs and the state has ombudsmen to advocate for Medicaid participants.

In other action, senators voted 49-0 to lower to 17 the age at which Iowans can register to vote.

Sen. Jeff Danielson, D-Waterloo.

Were not moving heaven and earth, but we do believe that allowing Iowans who are 17 to begin that process so that when they are 18 on Election Day that they have had the full benefit of participating in who those candidates would be in particular primaries.
WATERLOO  Prosecutors have dropped charges against a corrections worker who was accused of interfering with police during a fight at a motorcycle club party in August.

Police initially said Marvin Dion Spencer, 50, stepped between officers and a man they were attempting to place into a vehicle following a fight at Inter City Motorcycle Club on Sycamore Street on Aug. 9. He also allegedly remained at the scene after being told to leave.

Spencer was arrested for misdemeanor interference with official acts, and trial had been set for Tuesday.

But on Friday, Assistant County Attorney Michael Hudson asked the court to dismiss the case, citing insufficient evidence to bring it to trial.

We didnt have the essential elements in order to prove interference. Although we dont condone how he acted, and officer safety is of utmost importance at all times, it lacked the necessary element to proceed with interference, said County Attorney Brian Williams.

The county attorneys motion speaks for itself, Frerichs said.

Spencer is parole supervisor with the Waterloo-based 1st Judicial District Department of Correctional Services. He is also black, and his arrest brought dozens of people to a Waterloo City Council meeting to protest the charge.

On Tuesday, one of the men behind the protest, former local NAACP director Michael Blackwell, said he was glad the case was dismissed, but it was unfortunate that it took so long.

It seemed like there wasnt enough evidence from the get-go that he acted in any way that should have resulted in his being charged with anything, Blackwell said.

Cat warns of apartment fire

CEDAR FALLS  Firefighters are now crediting a cat with alerting residents to an apartment fire Monday night.

During the investigation of the fire at 2003 College St. Apt. 8, Fire Chief John Schilling said a resident told him a pet cat was meowing at the ceiling, and the resident felt heat emanating from it.

I have often heard that animals have a sixth sense and can often sense danger or when something is not quite right, said Schilling.

Firefighters found an active fire in the attic with significant damage to several roof trusses.

They were able to extinguish the fire quickly and minimize the damage in the attic area. There were no injuries and only residents of one unit were displaced.

The investigation determined that the fire was caused by an electrical problem in the bedroom light fixture.

Police investigate sex assaults

CHARLES CITY  Police in Charles City have asked the public to stop discussing criminal investigations, including a recent sexual assault investigation, on social media platforms.

We know that it is easy to comment on different social media sites but we encourage the public to refrain from this activity as it could hinder the on-going investigation and also prosecution at a later date, according to a Charles City Police Department statement.

An alleged sexual assault believed to have occurred late Friday appears to be an isolated incident and is currently under investigation, said Charles City Police Chief Hugh Anderson.

He would not say where the alleged assault occurred, citing the pending investigation. However, he said the incident is not believed to be connected to any other crimes.

Also prompted by social media discussion, Charles City Community Schools released a statement on Monday.

The district was aware of many stories circulating on Facebook and wanted parents to know nothing happened on school property, said Superintendent Dan Cox.

Anyone with information about the case can contact Charles City police at (641) 228-3366.
its a blog about my life. I can tell whatever I want to
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 01, 2016 | 05:49 AM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

Two people have been arrested on drug and gun offenses in Lone Oak following a car crash, and a subsequent search of a home.

On Monday, McCracken County Sheriffs detectives conducted surveillance on a home on Clinton Road after receiving complaints of alleged drug activity occurring there. At approximately 8:45pm, detectives observed a vehicle leave the home. A short time later, that same vehicle was located abandoned after it struck an embankment and a tree near the intersection of Clinton and Contest Road.

Deputies searched the vehicle and located a 9mm handgun with an obscured serial number, and other items that were left behind by the driver. A Sheriffs Department K-9 was called to the scene to attempt to locate the driver who fled the accident. The K-9 eventually led deputies back to the Clinton Road home.

Detectives obtained a search warrant for the home and found several individuals inside. During a search of the home detectives seized approximately 24 grams of methamphetamine, three sets of digital scales, a marijuana plant, an AR-15 rifle, two shotguns, one with the barrel sawed off, a handgun, and what was believed to be a live hand grenade. The Paducah Police Department bomb squad responded to the home and took possession of the grenade.

Detectives arrested Tammy Abanatha and James Dowell and lodged them in the McCracken County Regional Jail. Abanatha was charged with trafficking in methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia. Dowell was charged with firearm enhanced trafficking in methamphetamine, three counts of possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Police said Dowell is a convicted felon and cannot lawfully possess a firearm.
wikipedia

Now that seemingly every other movie that opens wide in the multiplexes is a $150 million+ blockbuster-in-waiting (or, in many instances, a small fortune down the toilet for the studio), just about any movies smaller than this are liable to be classed as 'microbudget.' This label tends to be applied to the output of the likes of Blumhouse Films, the company behind a significant portion of today's mainstream horror releases (Insidious, Paranormal Activity, The Purge etc.), who famously adhere to a rule of never spending more than $5 million on a movie.

This might seem small change in a world of Marvel superheroes and near-photorealistic CGI creations, but, for the vast majority of us, $5 million is still an inconceivable amount of money. And the truth of it is, movies can, and routinely are, made for considerably less. The influx of digital technology which has all-but taken over the high end of film production has also seen a far higher standard of affordable camera equipment made accessible to a broader spectrum of people, creating new realms of opportunity in independent filmmaking.

One region of the film world where lack of funds has rarely been a concern is horror. The words 'cheap and nasty' are often associated with the genre for good reason, as they're frequently applicable to the kinds of macabre movies made at a low-to-no budget level. And they prove that money doesn't count for everything; as long as filmmakers bring enough creativity, energy and spirit to their work, they can make horror movies better than anything coming out of Hollywood of late (alas. this routinely means filmmakers working unpaid, with little chance of making much money afterwards - but that's another story).
Now that The Force Awakens is finally coming to the end of its record-breaking run in cinemas, it's time to turn our full attention to the next film in the Star Wars universe. Welcome to Disney's galaxy, where there'll be a Star Wars film every year until at least 2020, but also many more far, far beyond that. Only time - and quality - will truly tell whether that's a good or bad thing, but right now it's an incredibly exciting time to be a Star Wars fan. J.J. Abrams and co. have brought the saga roaring back to life, and mapped out a potentially great new trilogy. Along with those we've got the standalone films, or badly-named Star Wars Stories. In 2018 we'll have the young Han Solo film, directed by Hollywood's finest comedy directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, but first up it's Gareth Edwards' Rogue One. And, well, it sounds brilliant. Essentially Episode IV Opening Crawl: The Movie, it'll focus on a band of rebels who attempt to steal the plans to the Death Star, or in other words, a f***load of X-Wings flying into battle, but with the emphasis heavier on the Wars than the Stars; something that's dark and gritty. If that wasn't exciting enough, the cast includes Felicity Jones and Mads Mikkelsen, and maybe a few of these familiar faces as well.








Email me at whatdoino (at) alaska (dot) net. [Taking the actual email address out of the code in hopes of cutting down the spam. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm spending way too much time deleting spam messages.][It did cut the span enormously.] The image in the banner is from a painting by Malaysian artist Zainol Arifin Mustafa Alfandi. at whatdoino (at) alaska (dot) net. [Taking the actual email address out of the code in hopes of cutting down the spam. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm spending way too much time deleting spam messages.][It did cut the span enormously.]

All unattributed photos, videos, audio are original to this blog and all rights are reserved. Prior Permission required for commercial (including sites with ads) use of photos, videos, audio, and all but brief excerpts of text for non-commercial use. Notification of any use appreciated.
past daily news Sep 13 (1) Sep 09 (15) Sep 06 (12) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (10) Aug 31 (17) Aug 29 (14) Aug 26 (13) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (12) Aug 19 (21) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (10) Aug 10 (10) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (10) Aug 06 (10) Aug 05 (8) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (14) Jul 29 (1) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (10) Jul 22 (11) Jul 19 (16) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (10) Jul 15 (13) Jul 12 (7) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (5) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (11) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (8) Jun 28 (7) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (8) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (9) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (9) Jun 18 (8) Jun 15 (9) Jun 13 (13) Jun 11 (11) Jun 09 (19) Jun 06 (10) Jun 04 (10) Jun 03 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (5) May 30 (5) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (7) May 26 (6) May 25 (4) May 23 (6) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (7) May 19 (9) May 18 (4) May 17 (6) May 16 (5) May 15 (7) May 14 (3) May 13 (3) May 12 (9) May 10 (3) May 09 (7) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (5) May 05 (8) May 03 (9) May 02 (1) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (5) Apr 28 (4) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (4) Apr 24 (8) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (5) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (1) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (3) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (2) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (2) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (3) Apr 09 (3) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (2) Apr 03 (3) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (7) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (6) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (10) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (5) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (5) Mar 17 (4) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (7) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (8) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (12) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (8) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (8) Feb 28 (7) Feb 27 (5) Feb 26 (6) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (6) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (3) Feb 20 (1) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (2) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (3) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (6) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (6) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (2) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (1) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (8) Jan 30 (2) Jan 29 (4) Jan 28 (1) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (4) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (2) Jan 20 (2) Jan 19 (3) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (2) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (4) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (4) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (1) Dec 31 (5) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (2) Dec 17 (1) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (2) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (2) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (4) Dec 06 (4) Dec 05 (1) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (3) Dec 02 (5) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (5) Nov 29 (10) Nov 28 (6) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (2) Nov 18 (5) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (3) Nov 15 (2) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (4) Nov 10 (5) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (9) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (6) Oct 22 (4) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (4) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (4) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (1) Oct 06 (10) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (1) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (5) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (6) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (6) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (5) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (8) Sep 05 (6) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (5) Aug 31 (8) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (6) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (1) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (7) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (7) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (8) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (4) Aug 08 (8) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (8) Jul 31 (1) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (10) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (1) Jul 16 (10) Jul 14 (7) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (7) Jul 10 (5) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (4) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (7) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (2) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (5) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (3) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (8) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (10) Jun 05 (14) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (6) Jun 02 (8) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (7) May 30 (2) May 29 (7) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (4) May 25 (5) May 24 (4) May 23 (5) May 22 (5) May 21 (5) May 20 (3) May 19 (10) May 18 (6) May 17 (3) May 16 (6) May 15 (2) May 14 (3) May 13 (5) May 11 (1) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (4) May 07 (2) May 06 (4) May 05 (6) May 04 (5) May 03 (5) May 02 (1) May 01 (6) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (7) Apr 28 (8) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (14) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (1) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (1) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (1) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (2) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (6) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (9) Mar 26 (4) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (10) Mar 22 (9) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (11) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (3) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (6) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (3) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (5) Mar 08 (6) Mar 07 (13) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (6) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (5) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (9) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (3) Feb 17 (4) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (5) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (3) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (9) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (10) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (2) Feb 03 (8) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (5) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (7) Jan 26 (8) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (6) Jan 23 (5) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (12) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (8) Jan 12 (6) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (7) Jan 09 (4) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (9) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (4) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (5) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (1) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (10) Dec 13 (7) Dec 12 (12) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (6) Dec 08 (7) Dec 07 (12) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (13) Dec 04 (6) Dec 02 (8) Dec 01 (8) Nov 30 (6) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (8) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (11) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (7) Nov 17 (6) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (5) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (14) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (11) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (10) Nov 01 (8) Oct 31 (12) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (13) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (8) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (11) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (5) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (10) Oct 12 (11) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (10) Oct 09 (7) Oct 08 (5) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (14) Oct 04 (9) Oct 03 (12) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (9) Sep 30 (5) Sep 29 (7) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (10) Sep 21 (12) Sep 20 (12) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (11) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (8) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (10) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (9) Sep 07 (8) Sep 06 (11) Sep 05 (2) Sep 04 (8) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (9) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (4) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (2) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (6) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (6) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (9) Aug 07 (7) Aug 06 (7) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (11) Aug 02 (6) Aug 01 (9) Jul 31 (11) Jul 28 (7) Jul 27 (11) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (5) Jul 24 (1) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (2) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (8) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (7) Jul 15 (4) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (5) Jul 06 (6) Jul 05 (3) Jul 04 (6) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (3) Jun 30 (8) Jun 29 (5) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (4) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (5) Jun 19 (7) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (6) Jun 09 (8) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (8) Jun 06 (7) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (7) Jun 03 (1) Jun 02 (9) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (8) May 30 (7) May 29 (5) May 28 (5) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (4) May 24 (3) May 23 (5) May 22 (2) May 21 (3) May 20 (7) May 19 (11) May 18 (1) May 17 (7) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (3) May 13 (4) May 12 (4) May 11 (11) May 10 (2) May 09 (6) May 08 (6) May 07 (2) May 06 (3) May 05 (4) May 04 (5) May 03 (8) May 02 (4) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (13) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (7) Apr 26 (5) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (2) Apr 23 (7) Apr 22 (9) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (2) Apr 19 (2) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (6) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (2) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (6) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (9) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (4) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (6) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (8) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (10) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (6) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (4) Mar 12 (6) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (3) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (9) Feb 24 (11) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (7) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (6) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (2) Feb 12 (5) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (10) Feb 08 (9) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (2) Feb 05 (9) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (7) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (6) Jan 28 (5) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (7) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (14) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (10) Jan 18 (11) Jan 17 (9) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (10) Jan 06 (8) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (9) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (5) Jan 01 (14) Dec 30 (13) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (5) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (7) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (5) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (9) Dec 16 (8) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (17) Dec 09 (8) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (10) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (7) Nov 30 (9) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (15) Nov 24 (7) Nov 23 (15) Nov 22 (9) Nov 21 (6) Nov 20 (11) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (13) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (7) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (13) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (4) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (8) Nov 03 (9) Nov 02 (8) Nov 01 (6) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (15) Oct 26 (10) Oct 25 (10) Oct 24 (13) Oct 23 (9) Oct 21 (8) Oct 20 (13) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (8) Oct 16 (14) Oct 14 (9) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (13) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (15) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (11) Oct 05 (18) Oct 04 (14) Oct 03 (1) Oct 02 (10) Sep 30 (11) Sep 29 (11) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (15) Sep 26 (7) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (17) Sep 20 (20) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (11) Sep 16 (10) Sep 15 (12) Sep 14 (9) Sep 13 (12) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (8) Sep 09 (9) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (13) Sep 06 (15) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (10) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (12) Aug 31 (14) Aug 30 (14) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (8) Aug 27 (9) Aug 26 (12) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (6) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (11) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (7) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (5) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (9) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (8) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (6) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (6) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (15) Jul 15 (14) Jul 14 (5) Jul 13 (6) Jul 12 (12) Jul 11 (8) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (10) Jul 05 (4) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (5) Jul 02 (7) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (10) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (7) Jun 20 (3) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (11) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (7) Jun 13 (14) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (8) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (11) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (16) Jun 03 (8) Jun 02 (12) Jun 01 (5) May 31 (7) May 30 (15) May 28 (7) May 27 (5) May 26 (21) May 25 (14) May 24 (10) May 23 (7) May 22 (8) May 21 (11) May 20 (5) May 19 (4) May 18 (10) May 17 (11) May 16 (5) May 15 (6) May 14 (7) May 13 (12) May 12 (10) May 11 (7) May 10 (13) May 09 (4) May 08 (7) May 07 (3) May 06 (6) May 05 (9) May 04 (14) May 03 (7) May 02 (10) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (5) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (8) Apr 24 (6) Apr 23 (14) Apr 22 (16) Apr 21 (11) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (16) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (8) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (11) Apr 12 (10) Apr 11 (8) Apr 10 (12) Apr 09 (5) Apr 08 (13) Apr 07 (9) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (15) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (15) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (11) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (10) Mar 29 (8) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (12) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (8) Mar 24 (7) Mar 23 (15) Mar 22 (17) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (8) Mar 19 (4) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (19) Mar 15 (13) Mar 14 (7) Mar 13 (20) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (13) Mar 08 (13) Mar 07 (7) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (16) Mar 02 (16) Mar 01 (13) Feb 29 (8) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (16) Feb 26 (10) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (12) Feb 23 (14) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (8) Feb 19 (12) Feb 18 (12) Feb 17 (11) Feb 16 (8) Feb 15 (9) Feb 14 (7) Feb 13 (10) Feb 12 (11) Feb 11 (13) Feb 10 (5) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (13) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (7) Feb 02 (19) Jan 31 (21) Jan 29 (11) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (13) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (2) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (13) Jan 21 (11) Jan 20 (9) Jan 19 (13) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (11) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (13) Jan 13 (9) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (5) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (7) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (7) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (5) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (9) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (1) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (6) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (7) Dec 19 (13) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (10) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (11) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (9) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (10) Dec 08 (13) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (12) Dec 05 (8) Dec 04 (11) Dec 03 (12) Dec 02 (16) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (11) Nov 28 (15) Nov 27 (16) Nov 26 (11) Nov 25 (9) Nov 24 (13) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (1) Nov 21 (7) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (11) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (10) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (10) Nov 13 (14) Nov 12 (8) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (11) Nov 06 (12) Nov 05 (17) Nov 04 (12) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (12) Oct 31 (11) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (10) Oct 28 (18) Oct 27 (16) Oct 26 (11) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (12) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (12) Oct 20 (17) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (15) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (10) Oct 14 (16) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (12) Oct 09 (21) Oct 08 (22) Oct 07 (19) Oct 06 (18) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (17) Oct 03 (13) Oct 02 (14) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (14) Sep 29 (15) Sep 28 (12) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (15) Sep 25 (13) Sep 24 (9) Sep 23 (10) Sep 22 (12) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (4) Sep 19 (12) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (16) Sep 16 (21) Sep 15 (14) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (10) Sep 11 (16) Sep 10 (7) Sep 09 (8) Sep 08 (10) Sep 07 (7) Sep 06 (5) Sep 05 (8) Sep 04 (9) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (4) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (1) Aug 28 (10) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (14) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (13) Aug 20 (9) Aug 19 (13) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (8) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (12) Aug 11 (9) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (14) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (1) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (6) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (2) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (3) Jul 29 (6) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (6) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (9) Jul 14 (2) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (1) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (3) Jul 07 (13) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (7) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (7) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (9) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (3) Jun 19 (4) Jun 18 (7) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (11) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (2) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (8) Jun 03 (9) Jun 02 (6) Jun 01 (4) May 30 (7) May 29 (9) May 28 (13) May 26 (8) May 25 (5) May 24 (2) May 23 (8) May 22 (9) May 21 (7) May 20 (4) May 19 (6) May 18 (7) May 17 (8) May 15 (9) May 14 (5) May 13 (8) May 12 (6) May 11 (6) May 09 (7) May 08 (6) May 07 (11) May 06 (7) May 05 (4) May 04 (11) May 03 (5) May 02 (4) May 01 (9) Apr 30 (6) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (9) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (3) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (10) Apr 22 (8) Apr 21 (9) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (4) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (7) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (6) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (6) Apr 10 (2) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (5) Apr 07 (5) Apr 06 (2) Apr 05 (2) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (7) Apr 02 (7) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (1) Mar 28 (2) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (2) Mar 25 (5) Mar 24 (4) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (4) Mar 21 (6) Mar 20 (9) Mar 19 (9) Mar 18 (8) Mar 17 (9) Mar 16 (7) Mar 15 (11) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (12) Mar 11 (9) Mar 10 (12) Mar 09 (4) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (5) Mar 05 (5) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (11) Mar 02 (5) Mar 01 (8) Feb 27 (9) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (8) Feb 24 (6) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (3) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (3) Feb 19 (10) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (7) Feb 16 (5) Feb 15 (2) Feb 14 (8) Feb 13 (12) Feb 12 (8) Feb 11 (10) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (6) Feb 08 (3) Feb 07 (2) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (11) Feb 03 (5) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (4) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (12) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (8) Jan 26 (13) Jan 24 (8) Jan 23 (12) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (10) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (11) Jan 14 (4) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (6) Jan 10 (2) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (6) Jan 06 (4) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (3) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (3) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (4) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (3) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (4) Dec 20 (4) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (8) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (9) Dec 15 (7) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (10) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (10) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (5) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (9) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (10) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (1) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (9) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (7) Nov 25 (12) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (4) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (6) Nov 18 (10) Nov 17 (12) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (12) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (7) Nov 09 (6) Nov 08 (5) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (9) Nov 03 (6) Nov 02 (14) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (9) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (8) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (2) Oct 19 (11) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (7) Oct 15 (7) Oct 14 (8) Oct 13 (5) Oct 12 (8) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (5) Oct 09 (11) Oct 08 (10) Oct 07 (8) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (8) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (10) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (7) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (5) Sep 27 (8) Sep 26 (11) Sep 25 (11) Sep 24 (15) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (4) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (10) Sep 17 (10) Sep 16 (5) Sep 15 (5) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (8) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (11) Sep 03 (7) Sep 02 (7) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (1) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (5) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (6) Aug 24 (9) Aug 22 (11) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (12) Aug 19 (8) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (4) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (6) Aug 14 (4) Aug 13 (7) Aug 12 (8) Aug 11 (7) Aug 10 (12) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (6) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (8) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (4) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (6) Jul 30 (12) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (5) Jul 27 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (8) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (8) Jul 20 (6) Jul 19 (3) Jul 18 (8) Jul 17 (2) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (9) Jul 13 (10) Jul 11 (9) Jul 10 (8) Jul 09 (3) Jul 08 (7) Jul 07 (7) Jul 06 (7) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (1) Jun 27 (15) Jun 26 (10) Jun 25 (9) Jun 24 (16) Jun 23 (6) Jun 22 (12) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (7) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (13) Jun 12 (7) Jun 11 (14) Jun 10 (3) Jun 09 (2) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (16) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (18) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (8) May 31 (3) May 30 (6) May 29 (6) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (6) May 23 (4) May 22 (8) May 21 (5) May 20 (6) May 19 (2) May 18 (9) May 17 (1) May 16 (5) May 15 (5) May 14 (7) May 13 (7) May 12 (7) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (5) May 08 (10) May 07 (4) May 06 (13) May 05 (4) May 04 (10) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (9) Apr 29 (6) Apr 28 (3) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (9) Apr 24 (7) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (3) Apr 20 (10) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (5) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (6) Apr 15 (7) Apr 14 (11) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (9) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (6) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (6) Apr 05 (10) Apr 03 (9) Apr 02 (9) Apr 01 (12) Mar 31 (4) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (7) Mar 27 (8) Mar 26 (8) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (11) Mar 23 (8) Mar 22 (7) Mar 21 (14) Mar 20 (6) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (11) Mar 17 (12) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (8) Mar 14 (13) Mar 13 (8) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (8) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (3) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (15) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (9) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (12) Mar 02 (20) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (8) Feb 26 (11) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (14) Feb 23 (5) Feb 22 (6) Feb 21 (8) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (8) Feb 16 (11) Feb 15 (3) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (7) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (6) Feb 07 (5) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (10) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (3) Jan 30 (5) Jan 29 (2) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (3) Jan 26 (2) Jan 25 (5) Jan 24 (7) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (4) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (5) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (7) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (4) Jan 15 (3) Jan 14 (5) Jan 13 (4) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (3) Jan 10 (5) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (6) Jan 07 (3) Jan 06 (1) Jan 05 (4) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (3) Jan 02 (6) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (1) Dec 29 (5) Dec 27 (1) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (8) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (1) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (8) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (4) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (7) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (2) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (9) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (2) Dec 01 (8) Nov 29 (5) Nov 28 (7) Nov 27 (5) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (5) Nov 23 (6) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (12) Nov 20 (12) Nov 19 (10) Nov 18 (4) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (8) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (7) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (12) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (9) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (4) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (10) Oct 30 (4) Oct 29 (11) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (7) Oct 26 (7) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (7) Oct 23 (11) Oct 22 (2) Oct 21 (7) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (7) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (5) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (7) Oct 11 (20) Oct 10 (2) Oct 09 (4) Oct 08 (21) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (34) Oct 04 (24) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (3) Oct 01 (7) Sep 30 (3) Sep 29 (5) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (5) Sep 26 (6) Sep 25 (5) Sep 24 (2) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (4) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (9) Sep 19 (11) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (7) Sep 16 (6) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (7) Sep 13 (8) Sep 12 (11) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (6) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (3) Sep 07 (6) Sep 06 (10) Sep 05 (7) Sep 04 (7) Sep 03 (5) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (8) Aug 31 (5) Aug 30 (7) Aug 29 (10) Aug 28 (7) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (8) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (6) Aug 21 (8) Aug 20 (8) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (7) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (4) Aug 12 (6) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (6) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (3) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (6) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (7) Jul 23 (10) Jul 22 (8) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (7) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (10) Jul 16 (11) Jul 15 (5) Jul 13 (5) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (11) Jul 10 (12) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (8) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (10) Jul 04 (8) Jul 03 (10) Jul 02 (12) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (5) Jun 29 (6) Jun 28 (23) Jun 27 (18) Jun 26 (12) Jun 25 (14) Jun 24 (15) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (15) Jun 20 (9) Jun 19 (8) Jun 18 (11) Jun 17 (7) Jun 16 (6) Jun 15 (6) Jun 14 (6) Jun 13 (5) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (9) Jun 10 (10) Jun 09 (9) Jun 08 (6) Jun 07 (2) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (4) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (4) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (8) May 24 (7) May 23 (6) May 22 (9) May 21 (6) May 20 (5) May 19 (6) May 18 (9) May 17 (10) May 16 (11) May 15 (5) May 14 (11) May 13 (6) May 12 (7) May 11 (7) May 10 (5) May 09 (3) May 08 (10) May 07 (8) May 06 (11) May 05 (5) May 04 (9) May 03 (3) May 02 (2) May 01 (5) Apr 30 (5) Apr 29 (8) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (4) Apr 26 (9) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (11) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (7) Apr 19 (10) Apr 18 (8) Apr 17 (10) Apr 16 (8) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (5) Apr 13 (7) Apr 12 (11) Apr 11 (6) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (3) Apr 06 (9) Apr 05 (10) Apr 04 (7) Apr 03 (2) Apr 02 (6) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (3) Mar 30 (4) Mar 29 (3) Mar 28 (5) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (4) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (7) Mar 22 (6) Mar 21 (9) Mar 20 (5) Mar 19 (5) Mar 18 (9) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (8) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (10) Mar 12 (10) Mar 11 (2) Mar 10 (1) Mar 09 (6) Mar 08 (4) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (3) Mar 04 (7) Mar 03 (6) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (9) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (7) Feb 24 (3) Feb 23 (4) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (7) Feb 20 (4) Feb 19 (4) Feb 18 (2) Feb 17 (1) Feb 16 (6) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (5) Feb 13 (4) Feb 12 (7) Feb 11 (2) Feb 10 (2) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (5) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (4) Feb 05 (9) Feb 04 (3) Feb 03 (3) Feb 02 (10) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (8) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (3) Jan 27 (4) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (3) Jan 20 (3) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (3) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (8) Jan 15 (7) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (1) Jan 12 (7) Jan 11 (1) Jan 10 (3) Jan 09 (3) Jan 08 (5) Jan 07 (4) Jan 06 (2) Jan 05 (3) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (4) Jan 02 (4) Jan 01 (4) Dec 31 (3) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (5) Dec 28 (8) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (4) Dec 23 (4) Dec 22 (7) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (4) Dec 16 (5) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (8) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (8) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (4) Dec 08 (4) Dec 07 (7) Dec 06 (7) Dec 05 (6) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (7) Dec 02 (1) Dec 01 (6) Nov 30 (2) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (16) Nov 27 (7) Nov 26 (5) Nov 25 (2) Nov 24 (6) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (5) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (15) Nov 19 (8) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (7) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (7) Nov 11 (8) Nov 10 (3) Nov 09 (5) Nov 08 (8) Nov 07 (9) Nov 06 (9) Nov 05 (1) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (8) Nov 02 (6) Nov 01 (3) Oct 31 (6) Oct 30 (7) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (8) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (1) Oct 22 (6) Oct 21 (1) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (6) Oct 18 (10) Oct 17 (6) Oct 16 (15) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (1) Oct 09 (5) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (6) Oct 01 (6) Sep 30 (8) Sep 29 (6) Sep 28 (13) Sep 27 (10) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (8) Sep 24 (8) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (7) Sep 21 (9) Sep 20 (7) Sep 19 (8) Sep 18 (4) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (8) Sep 14 (5) Sep 13 (7) Sep 12 (7) Sep 11 (9) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (10) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (15) Sep 04 (5) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (6) Sep 01 (9) Aug 31 (7) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (8) Aug 28 (11) Aug 27 (2) Aug 26 (6) Aug 25 (15) Aug 24 (6) Aug 23 (8) Aug 22 (5) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (7) Aug 19 (2) Aug 18 (5) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (6) Aug 13 (9) Aug 12 (4) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (6) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (7) Aug 07 (9) Aug 06 (4) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (9) Aug 01 (10) Jul 31 (11) Jul 30 (4) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (11) Jul 27 (4) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (8) Jul 22 (5) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (6) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (6) Jul 16 (7) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (8) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (14) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (5) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (9) Jul 05 (8) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (8) Jul 02 (5) Jul 01 (5) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (3) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (4) Jun 26 (8) Jun 25 (3) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (14) Jun 22 (11) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (7) Jun 18 (4) Jun 17 (3) Jun 16 (12) Jun 15 (12) Jun 14 (10) Jun 13 (10) Jun 12 (9) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (12) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (3) Jun 07 (12) Jun 06 (6) Jun 05 (7) Jun 04 (6) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (4) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (4) May 30 (3) May 29 (8) May 28 (7) May 27 (4) May 26 (3) May 25 (5) May 24 (9) May 23 (16) May 22 (12) May 21 (11) May 20 (7) May 19 (10) May 18 (8) May 17 (8) May 16 (10) May 15 (8) May 14 (5) May 13 (1) May 12 (6) May 11 (9) May 10 (9) May 09 (10) May 08 (9) May 07 (6) May 06 (5) May 05 (7) May 04 (10) May 03 (7) May 02 (9) May 01 (10) Apr 30 (4) Apr 29 (9) Apr 28 (12) Apr 27 (9) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (5) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (4) Apr 22 (7) Apr 21 (8) Apr 20 (9) Apr 19 (6) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (2) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (10) Apr 14 (7) Apr 13 (5) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (7) Apr 09 (6) Apr 08 (7) Apr 07 (10) Apr 06 (8) Apr 05 (8) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (6) Apr 02 (4) Apr 01 (4) Mar 31 (11) Mar 30 (12) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (10) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (9) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (12) Mar 20 (14) Mar 19 (8) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (8) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (9) Mar 12 (6) Mar 11 (5) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (8) Mar 08 (10) Mar 07 (12) Mar 06 (6) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (2) Mar 03 (3) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (8) Feb 29 (11) Feb 28 (5) Feb 27 (3) Feb 26 (13) Feb 25 (10) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (10) Feb 22 (9) Feb 21 (18) Feb 20 (6) Feb 19 (7) Feb 18 (9) Feb 17 (5) Feb 16 (9) Feb 15 (7) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (5) Feb 12 (6) Feb 11 (4) Feb 10 (8) Feb 09 (5) Feb 08 (8) Feb 07 (10) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (4) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (12) Jan 30 (7) Jan 29 (7) Jan 28 (7) Jan 27 (12) Jan 26 (7) Jan 25 (11) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (6) Jan 22 (8) Jan 21 (12) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (6) Jan 18 (6) Jan 17 (11) Jan 16 (9) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (6) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (9) Jan 10 (10) Jan 09 (5) Jan 08 (10) Jan 07 (5) Jan 06 (6) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (5) Jan 03 (8) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (10) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (10) Dec 26 (4) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (7) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (9) Dec 21 (8) Dec 20 (8) Dec 19 (5) Dec 18 (1) Dec 17 (5) Dec 16 (6) Dec 15 (5) Dec 14 (13) Dec 13 (8) Dec 12 (7) Dec 11 (9) Dec 10 (12) Dec 09 (7) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (9) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (10) Dec 04 (6) Dec 03 (8) Dec 02 (6) Dec 01 (14) Nov 30 (7) Nov 29 (8) Nov 28 (8) Nov 27 (6) Nov 26 (9) Nov 25 (10) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (10) Nov 20 (4) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (8) Nov 17 (9) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (12) Nov 14 (6) Nov 13 (9) Nov 12 (3) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (10) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (8) Nov 06 (10) Nov 05 (8) Nov 04 (7) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (11) Nov 01 (10) Oct 31 (5) Oct 30 (8) Oct 29 (8) Oct 28 (8) Oct 27 (11) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (9) Oct 24 (10) Oct 23 (5) Oct 22 (14) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (8) Oct 19 (11) Oct 18 (13) Oct 17 (7) Oct 16 (6) Oct 15 (9) Oct 14 (7) Oct 13 (12) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (9) Oct 10 (8) Oct 09 (9) Oct 08 (7) Oct 07 (12) Oct 06 (8) Oct 05 (13) Oct 04 (11) Oct 03 (7) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (14) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (12) Sep 28 (11) Sep 27 (11) Sep 26 (7) Sep 25 (10) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (7) Sep 22 (8) Sep 21 (8) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (7) Sep 18 (5) Sep 17 (14) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (11) Sep 14 (13) Sep 13 (11) Sep 12 (9) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (13) Sep 08 (11) Sep 07 (11) Sep 06 (16) Sep 05 (1) Sep 04 (10) Sep 03 (8) Sep 02 (8) Sep 01 (7) Aug 31 (1) Aug 30 (6) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (6) Aug 26 (8) Aug 25 (5) Aug 24 (5) Aug 23 (6) Aug 22 (7) Aug 21 (6) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (9) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (7) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (2) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (8) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (12) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (7) Aug 03 (6) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (7) Jul 30 (7) Jul 29 (13) Jul 28 (10) Jul 27 (6) Jul 26 (7) Jul 25 (7) Jul 24 (4) Jul 23 (12) Jul 22 (14) Jul 21 (6) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (12) Jul 18 (9) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (6) Jul 15 (8) Jul 14 (15) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (10) Jul 11 (6) Jul 10 (6) Jul 09 (6) Jul 08 (6) Jul 07 (9) Jul 06 (15) Jul 05 (6) Jul 04 (10) Jul 03 (6) Jul 02 (6) Jul 01 (11) Jun 30 (7) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (8) Jun 26 (5) Jun 25 (11) Jun 24 (9) Jun 23 (10) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (8) Jun 20 (6) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (15) Jun 17 (8) Jun 16 (13) Jun 15 (15) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (6) Jun 12 (15) Jun 11 (7) Jun 10 (7) Jun 09 (18) Jun 08 (20) Jun 07 (17) Jun 06 (9) Jun 05 (9) Jun 04 (12) Jun 03 (13) Jun 02 (14) Jun 01 (8) May 31 (13) May 30 (8) May 29 (6) May 28 (8) May 27 (17) May 26 (8) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (9) May 22 (4) May 21 (4) May 20 (11) May 19 (14) May 18 (6) May 17 (10) May 16 (4) May 15 (5) May 14 (28) May 12 (9) May 11 (17) May 10 (15) May 09 (12) May 08 (5) May 07 (4) May 06 (10) May 05 (8) May 04 (10) May 03 (5) May 02 (6) May 01 (8) Apr 30 (8) Apr 29 (12) Apr 28 (6) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (12) Apr 25 (6) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (5) Apr 22 (10) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (13) Apr 19 (11) Apr 18 (11) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (11) Apr 14 (17) Apr 13 (6) Apr 12 (16) Apr 11 (10) Apr 10 (1) Apr 09 (18) Apr 08 (14) Apr 07 (6) Apr 06 (10) Apr 05 (21) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (13) Apr 01 (8) Mar 31 (10) Mar 30 (11) Mar 29 (10) Mar 28 (8) Mar 27 (6) Mar 26 (12) Mar 25 (15) Mar 24 (10) Mar 23 (12) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (8) Mar 20 (4) Mar 19 (11) Mar 18 (7) Mar 17 (7) Mar 16 (9) Mar 15 (10) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (2) Mar 12 (14) Mar 11 (13) Mar 10 (7) Mar 09 (9) Mar 08 (17) Mar 07 (5) Mar 06 (7) Mar 05 (13) Mar 04 (10) Mar 03 (14) Mar 02 (12) Mar 01 (18) Feb 28 (8) Feb 27 (2) Feb 26 (9) Feb 25 (13) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (13) Feb 22 (12) Feb 21 (11) Feb 20 (11) Feb 19 (16) Feb 18 (17) Feb 17 (15) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (15) Feb 14 (10) Feb 13 (8) Feb 12 (10) Feb 11 (15) Feb 10 (11) Feb 09 (13) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (9) Feb 06 (6) Feb 05 (15) Feb 04 (15) Feb 03 (11) Feb 02 (14) Feb 01 (15) Jan 31 (11) Jan 30 (9) Jan 29 (19) Jan 28 (9) Jan 27 (9) Jan 26 (16) Jan 25 (19) Jan 24 (17) Jan 23 (8) Jan 22 (15) Jan 21 (9) Jan 20 (11) Jan 19 (7) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (6) Jan 16 (7) Jan 15 (12) Jan 14 (9) Jan 13 (14) Jan 12 (11) Jan 11 (13) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (20) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (11) Jan 05 (8) Jan 04 (14) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (7) Jan 01 (7) Dec 31 (14) Dec 30 (15) Dec 29 (7) Dec 28 (10) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (11) Dec 24 (9) Dec 23 (9) Dec 22 (15) Dec 21 (12) Dec 20 (11) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (16) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (12) Dec 15 (14) Dec 14 (11) Dec 13 (10) Dec 12 (6) Dec 11 (10) Dec 10 (17) Dec 09 (11) Dec 08 (12) Dec 07 (16) Dec 06 (11) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (12) Dec 03 (15) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (12) Nov 30 (16) Nov 29 (7) Nov 28 (11) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (13) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (15) Nov 23 (10) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (4) Nov 20 (8) Nov 19 (9) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (11) Nov 16 (11) Nov 15 (10) Nov 14 (9) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (10) Nov 11 (12) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (10) Nov 07 (6) Nov 06 (7) Nov 05 (12) Nov 04 (14) Nov 03 (10) Nov 02 (13) Nov 01 (9) Oct 31 (9) Oct 30 (11) Oct 29 (18) Oct 28 (13) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (12) Oct 25 (14) Oct 24 (20) Oct 22 (18) Oct 21 (18) Oct 20 (19) Oct 19 (12) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (5) Oct 16 (18) Oct 15 (8) Oct 14 (11) Oct 13 (9) Oct 12 (13) Oct 11 (6) Oct 10 (7) Oct 09 (27) Oct 08 (14) Oct 07 (10) Oct 06 (9) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (10) Oct 03 (6) Oct 02 (9) Oct 01 (13) Sep 30 (12) Sep 29 (13) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (9) Sep 26 (8) Sep 25 (14) Sep 24 (4) Sep 23 (14) Sep 22 (20) Sep 21 (11) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (9) Sep 18 (14) Sep 17 (8) Sep 16 (17) Sep 15 (6) Sep 14 (11) Sep 13 (9) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (7) Sep 10 (14) Sep 09 (12) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (12) Sep 06 (13) Sep 05 (9) Sep 04 (20) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (16) Sep 01 (10) Aug 31 (13) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (9) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (8) Aug 26 (11) Aug 25 (10) Aug 24 (14) Aug 23 (12) Aug 22 (13) Aug 21 (10) Aug 20 (13) Aug 19 (15) Aug 18 (8) Aug 17 (10) Aug 16 (8) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (11) Aug 13 (12) Aug 12 (15) Aug 11 (10) Aug 10 (17) Aug 09 (6) Aug 08 (13) Aug 07 (11) Aug 06 (13) Aug 05 (11) Aug 04 (11) Aug 03 (10) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (6) Jul 31 (10) Jul 30 (21) Jul 29 (14) Jul 28 (13) Jul 27 (16) Jul 26 (10) Jul 25 (15) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (15) Jul 21 (19) Jul 20 (17) Jul 19 (9) Jul 18 (7) Jul 17 (26) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (20) Jul 14 (16) Jul 13 (19) Jul 12 (11) Jul 11 (5) Jul 10 (13) Jul 09 (11) Jul 08 (8) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (16) Jul 05 (9) Jul 04 (5) Jul 03 (15) Jul 02 (11) Jul 01 (14) Jun 30 (13) Jun 29 (19) Jun 28 (8) Jun 27 (9) Jun 26 (16) Jun 25 (22) Jun 24 (17) Jun 23 (11) Jun 22 (15) Jun 21 (14) Jun 20 (8) Jun 19 (17) Jun 18 (10) Jun 17 (10) Jun 16 (17) Jun 15 (13) Jun 14 (14) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (13) Jun 11 (15) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (10) Jun 08 (23) Jun 07 (14) Jun 06 (20) Jun 05 (10) Jun 04 (11) Jun 03 (12) Jun 02 (21) Jun 01 (14) May 31 (10) May 30 (14) May 29 (8) May 28 (23) May 27 (20) May 26 (16) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (10) May 22 (18) May 21 (14) May 20 (12) May 19 (18) May 18 (14) May 17 (13) May 16 (4) May 15 (7) May 14 (16) May 13 (13) May 12 (8) May 11 (18) May 10 (8) May 09 (7) May 08 (13) May 07 (11) May 06 (15) May 05 (18) May 04 (17) May 03 (7) May 02 (5) May 01 (11) Apr 30 (19) Apr 29 (21) Apr 28 (18) Apr 27 (16) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (11) Apr 24 (9) Apr 23 (20) Apr 22 (23) Apr 21 (5) Apr 20 (16) Apr 19 (13) Apr 18 (6) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (16) Apr 15 (18) Apr 14 (13) Apr 13 (14) Apr 12 (9) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (14) Apr 08 (12) Apr 07 (18) Apr 06 (7) Apr 05 (11) Apr 04 (9) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (16) Mar 31 (16) Mar 30 (22) Mar 29 (16) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (19) Mar 26 (31) Mar 25 (25) Mar 24 (26) Mar 23 (27) Mar 22 (22) Mar 21 (22) Mar 20 (13) Mar 19 (21) Mar 18 (20) Mar 17 (24) Mar 16 (18) Mar 15 (9) Mar 14 (9) Mar 13 (29) Mar 12 (15) Mar 11 (11) Mar 10 (11) Mar 09 (20) Mar 08 (12) Mar 07 (6) Mar 06 (21) Mar 05 (22) Mar 04 (19) Mar 03 (9) Mar 02 (20) Mar 01 (11) Feb 28 (11) Feb 27 (27) Feb 26 (15) Feb 25 (18) Feb 24 (17) Feb 23 (19) Feb 22 (24) Feb 21 (10) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (25) Feb 18 (16) Feb 17 (19) Feb 16 (23) Feb 15 (8) Feb 14 (11) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (16) Feb 11 (12) Feb 10 (18) Feb 09 (12) Feb 08 (14) Feb 07 (8) Feb 06 (27) Feb 05 (28) Feb 04 (24) Feb 03 (17) Feb 02 (20) Feb 01 (23) Jan 31 (16) Jan 30 (20) Jan 29 (26) Jan 28 (17) Jan 27 (21) Jan 26 (24) Jan 25 (16) Jan 24 (14) Jan 23 (16) Jan 22 (17) Jan 21 (19) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (17) Jan 18 (13) Jan 17 (14) Jan 16 (10) Jan 15 (21) Jan 14 (16) Jan 13 (19) Jan 12 (30) Jan 11 (14) Jan 10 (11) Jan 09 (8) Jan 08 (23) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (21) Jan 05 (15) Jan 04 (18) Jan 03 (9) Jan 02 (12) Jan 01 (15) Dec 31 (18) Dec 30 (7) Dec 29 (13) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (8) Dec 26 (6) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (28) Dec 23 (12) Dec 22 (12) Dec 21 (17) Dec 20 (19) Dec 19 (19) Dec 18 (22) Dec 17 (24) Dec 16 (17) Dec 15 (29) Dec 14 (22) Dec 13 (12) Dec 12 (22) Dec 11 (24) Dec 10 (25) Dec 09 (18) Dec 08 (15) Dec 07 (21) Dec 06 (24) Dec 05 (30) Dec 04 (28) Dec 03 (26) Dec 02 (22) Dec 01 (33) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (9) Nov 28 (18) Nov 27 (25) Nov 26 (17) Nov 25 (23) Nov 24 (27) Nov 23 (12) Nov 22 (10) Nov 21 (15) Nov 20 (23) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (24) Nov 17 (21) Nov 16 (20) Nov 15 (13) Nov 14 (15) Nov 13 (27) Nov 12 (23) Nov 11 (19) Nov 10 (21) Nov 09 (13) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (16) Nov 06 (32) Nov 05 (24) Nov 04 (20) Nov 03 (29) Nov 02 (12) Nov 01 (15) Oct 31 (20) Oct 30 (22) Oct 29 (27) Oct 28 (20) Oct 27 (23) Oct 26 (21) Oct 25 (15) Oct 24 (23) Oct 23 (26) Oct 22 (27) Oct 21 (28) Oct 20 (24) Oct 19 (13) Oct 18 (9) Oct 17 (30) Oct 16 (8) Oct 15 (20) Oct 14 (14) Oct 13 (17) Oct 12 (16) Oct 11 (8) Oct 10 (19) Oct 09 (22) Oct 08 (16) Oct 07 (18) Oct 06 (23) Oct 05 (7) Oct 04 (15) Oct 03 (21) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (22) Sep 30 (25) Sep 29 (20) Sep 28 (17) Sep 27 (13) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (15) Sep 24 (24) Sep 23 (23) Sep 22 (18) Sep 21 (20) Sep 20 (11) Sep 19 (24) Sep 18 (25) Sep 17 (25) Sep 16 (19) Sep 15 (21) Sep 14 (15) Sep 13 (10) Sep 12 (23) Sep 11 (23) Sep 10 (25) Sep 09 (25) Sep 08 (17) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (17) Sep 05 (14) Sep 04 (24) Sep 03 (16) Sep 02 (11) Sep 01 (19) Aug 31 (20) Aug 30 (11) Aug 29 (24) Aug 28 (24) Aug 27 (16) Aug 26 (26) Aug 25 (21) Aug 24 (15) Aug 23 (19) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (25) Aug 20 (27) Aug 19 (19) Aug 18 (24) Aug 17 (14) Aug 16 (10) Aug 15 (15) Aug 14 (16) Aug 13 (21) Aug 12 (30) Aug 11 (19) Aug 10 (8) Aug 09 (12) Aug 08 (17) Aug 07 (21) Aug 06 (26) Aug 05 (23) Aug 04 (21) Aug 03 (12) Aug 02 (7) Aug 01 (19) Jul 31 (21) Jul 30 (25) Jul 29 (29) Jul 28 (23) Jul 27 (17) Jul 26 (11) Jul 25 (21) Jul 24 (14) Jul 23 (15) Jul 22 (19) Jul 21 (15) Jul 20 (9) Jul 19 (10) Jul 18 (15) Jul 17 (22) Jul 16 (18) Jul 15 (21) Jul 14 (20) Jul 13 (7) Jul 12 (9) Jul 11 (29) Jul 10 (19) Jul 09 (17) Jul 08 (26) Jul 07 (21) Jul 06 (18) Jul 05 (14) Jul 04 (20) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (24) Jul 01 (23) Jun 30 (23) Jun 29 (18) Jun 28 (16) Jun 27 (16) Jun 26 (17) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (32) Jun 23 (29) Jun 22 (8) Jun 21 (17) Jun 20 (25) Jun 19 (28) Jun 18 (19) Jun 17 (25) Jun 16 (23) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (11) Jun 13 (14) Jun 12 (22) Jun 11 (19) Jun 10 (17) Jun 09 (15) Jun 08 (16) Jun 07 (7) Jun 06 (29) Jun 05 (27) Jun 04 (24) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (22) Jun 01 (13) May 31 (9) May 30 (26) May 29 (19) May 28 (15) May 27 (15) May 26 (23) May 25 (13) May 24 (12) May 23 (24) May 22 (13) May 21 (21) May 20 (18) May 19 (16) May 18 (7) May 17 (12) May 16 (25) May 15 (24) May 14 (23) May 13 (19) May 12 (17) May 11 (8) May 10 (6) May 09 (14) May 08 (21) May 07 (26) May 06 (14) May 05 (14) May 04 (3) May 03 (3) May 02 (24) May 01 (13) Apr 30 (15) Apr 29 (24) Apr 28 (24) Apr 27 (11) Apr 26 (8) Apr 25 (13) Apr 24 (27) Apr 23 (15) Apr 22 (21) Apr 21 (19) Apr 20 (17) Apr 19 (8) Apr 18 (20) Apr 17 (27) Apr 16 (27) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (8) Apr 13 (8) Apr 12 (7) Apr 11 (7) Apr 10 (22) Apr 09 (15) Apr 08 (15) Apr 07 (17) Apr 06 (14) Apr 05 (5) Apr 04 (12) Apr 03 (19) Apr 02 (17) Apr 01 (19) Mar 31 (25) Mar 30 (13) Mar 29 (9) Mar 28 (16) Mar 27 (23) Mar 26 (22) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (25) Mar 23 (16) Mar 22 (13) Mar 21 (24) Mar 20 (27) Mar 19 (20) Mar 18 (24) Mar 17 (17) Mar 16 (11) Mar 15 (6) Mar 14 (20) Mar 13 (28) Mar 12 (30) Mar 11 (20) Mar 10 (21) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (8) Mar 07 (17) Mar 06 (20) Mar 05 (19) Mar 04 (15) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (8) Mar 01 (12) Feb 28 (16) Feb 27 (17) Feb 26 (8) Feb 25 (23) Feb 24 (15) Feb 23 (8) Feb 22 (10) Feb 21 (24) Feb 20 (14) Feb 19 (24) Feb 18 (19) Feb 17 (27) Feb 16 (13) Feb 15 (11) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (13) Feb 12 (13) Feb 11 (21) Feb 10 (16) Feb 09 (15) Feb 08 (10) Feb 07 (17) Feb 06 (21) Feb 05 (17) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (23) Feb 02 (5) Feb 01 (8) Jan 31 (17) Jan 30 (22) Jan 29 (23) Jan 28 (10) Jan 27 (24) Jan 26 (12) Jan 25 (9) Jan 24 (12) Jan 23 (19) Jan 22 (19) Jan 21 (14) Jan 20 (21) Jan 19 (12) Jan 18 (8) Jan 17 (20) Jan 16 (14) Jan 15 (23) Jan 14 (8) Jan 13 (20) Jan 12 (9) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (18) Jan 09 (11) Jan 08 (18) Jan 07 (13) Jan 06 (12) Jan 05 (12) Jan 04 (11) Jan 03 (10) Jan 02 (9) Jan 01 (9) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (11) Dec 29 (6) Dec 28 (9) Dec 27 (13) Dec 26 (15) Dec 25 (8) Dec 24 (6) Dec 23 (8) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (6) Dec 20 (14) Dec 19 (17) Dec 18 (14) Dec 17 (14) Dec 16 (13) Dec 15 (9) Dec 14 (9) Dec 13 (11) Dec 12 (16) Dec 11 (18) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (24) Dec 08 (11) Dec 07 (19) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (26) Dec 04 (15) Dec 03 (20) Dec 02 (17) Dec 01 (11) Nov 30 (10) Nov 29 (18) Nov 28 (21) Nov 27 (10) Nov 26 (22) Nov 25 (16) Nov 24 (12) Nov 23 (8) Nov 22 (18) Nov 21 (9) Nov 20 (17) Nov 19 (16) Nov 18 (16) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (9) Nov 15 (21) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (20) Nov 12 (16) Nov 11 (13) Nov 10 (9) Nov 09 (10) Nov 08 (16) Nov 07 (15) Nov 06 (18) Nov 05 (19) Nov 04 (16) Nov 03 (11) Nov 02 (5) Nov 01 (17) Oct 31 (17) Oct 30 (21) Oct 29 (9) Oct 28 (16) Oct 27 (6) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (16) Oct 24 (18) Oct 23 (14) Oct 22 (17) Oct 21 (10) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (8) Oct 18 (11) Oct 17 (12) Oct 16 (14) Oct 15 (19) Oct 14 (15) Oct 13 (11) Oct 12 (9) Oct 11 (10) Oct 10 (23) Oct 09 (13) Oct 08 (15) Oct 07 (20) Oct 06 (13) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (16) Oct 03 (17) Oct 02 (17) Oct 01 (20) Sep 30 (17) Sep 29 (9) Sep 28 (8) Sep 27 (14) Sep 26 (20) Sep 25 (19) Sep 24 (13) Sep 23 (11) Sep 22 (9) Sep 21 (5) Sep 20 (8) Sep 19 (21) Sep 18 (12) Sep 17 (20) Sep 16 (16) Sep 15 (10) Sep 14 (6) Sep 13 (18) Sep 12 (14) Sep 11 (24) Sep 10 (17) Sep 09 (16) Sep 08 (16) Sep 07 (10) Sep 06 (20) Sep 05 (13) Sep 04 (23) Sep 03 (14) Sep 02 (12) Sep 01 (11) Aug 31 (11) Aug 30 (13) Aug 29 (18) Aug 28 (14) Aug 27 (21) Aug 26 (10) Aug 25 (8) Aug 24 (10) Aug 23 (17) Aug 22 (15) Aug 21 (14) Aug 20 (20) Aug 19 (20) Aug 18 (7) Aug 17 (9) Aug 16 (11) Aug 15 (12) Aug 14 (14) Aug 13 (19) Aug 12 (14) Aug 11 (6) Aug 10 (12) Aug 09 (7) Aug 08 (18) Aug 07 (16) Aug 06 (16) Aug 05 (20) Aug 04 (12) Aug 03 (8) Aug 02 (12) Aug 01 (14) Jul 31 (16) Jul 30 (16) Jul 29 (11) Jul 28 (8) Jul 27 (9) Jul 26 (17) Jul 25 (20) Jul 24 (17) Jul 23 (11) Jul 22 (18) Jul 21 (7) Jul 20 (10) Jul 19 (14) Jul 18 (11) Jul 17 (15) Jul 16 (12) Jul 15 (10) Jul 14 (8) Jul 13 (8) Jul 12 (17) Jul 11 (18) Jul 10 (16) Jul 09 (13) Jul 08 (10) Jul 07 (12) Jul 06 (8) Jul 05 (16) Jul 04 (14) Jul 03 (17) Jul 02 (13) Jul 01 (16) Jun 30 (19) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (19) Jun 27 (21) Jun 26 (27) Jun 25 (23) Jun 24 (23) Jun 23 (12) Jun 22 (9) Jun 21 (18) Jun 20 (15) Jun 19 (24) Jun 18 (21) Jun 17 (13) Jun 16 (9) Jun 15 (9) Jun 14 (18) Jun 13 (24) Jun 12 (18) Jun 11 (23) Jun 10 (25) Jun 09 (24) Jun 08 (27) Jun 07 (5) Jun 06 (25) Jun 05 (30) Jun 04 (23) Jun 03 (22) Jun 02 (16) Jun 01 (17) May 31 (18) May 30 (19) May 29 (17) May 28 (23) May 27 (15) May 26 (10) May 25 (19) May 24 (16) May 23 (16) May 22 (27) May 21 (20) May 20 (26) May 19 (6) May 18 (8) May 17 (20) May 16 (8) May 15 (18) May 14 (5) May 13 (21) May 12 (9) May 11 (8) May 10 (12) May 09 (18) May 08 (11) May 07 (27) May 06 (12) May 05 (16) May 04 (19) May 03 (14) May 02 (18) May 01 (18) Apr 30 (25) Apr 29 (27) Apr 28 (11) Apr 27 (10) Apr 26 (18) Apr 25 (10) Apr 24 (29) Apr 23 (29) Apr 22 (14) Apr 21 (15) Apr 20 (20) Apr 19 (22) Apr 18 (16) Apr 17 (32) Apr 16 (12) Apr 15 (21) Apr 14 (21) Apr 13 (15) Apr 12 (13) Apr 11 (14) Apr 10 (16) Apr 09 (20) Apr 08 (36) Apr 07 (22) Apr 06 (11) Apr 05 (28) Apr 04 (20) Apr 03 (29) Apr 02 (32) Apr 01 (18) Mar 31 (12) Mar 30 (9) Mar 29 (15) Mar 28 (22) Mar 27 (24) Mar 26 (17) Mar 25 (17) Mar 24 (13) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (12) Mar 21 (15) Mar 20 (18) Mar 19 (19) Mar 18 (16) Mar 17 (10) Mar 16 (6) Mar 15 (18) Mar 14 (24) Mar 13 (18) Mar 12 (18) Mar 11 (17) Mar 10 (13) Mar 09 (12) Mar 08 (18) Mar 07 (25) Mar 06 (16) Mar 05 (16) Mar 04 (22) Mar 03 (17) Mar 02 (6) Mar 01 (23) Feb 29 (19) Feb 28 (25) Feb 27 (26) Feb 26 (23) Feb 25 (12) Feb 24 (13) Feb 23 (15) Feb 22 (26) Feb 21 (31) Feb 20 (12) Feb 19 (21) Feb 18 (15) Feb 17 (10) Feb 16 (15) Feb 15 (19) Feb 14 (15) Feb 13 (25) Feb 12 (20) Feb 11 (9) Feb 10 (7) Feb 09 (28) Feb 08 (20) Feb 07 (22) Feb 06 (20) Feb 05 (19) Feb 04 (14) Feb 03 (16) Feb 02 (28) Feb 01 (37) Jan 31 (27) Jan 30 (31) Jan 29 (18) Jan 28 (14) Jan 27 (10) Jan 26 (18) Jan 25 (26) Jan 24 (34) Jan 23 (21) Jan 22 (21) Jan 21 (18) Jan 20 (18) Jan 19 (18) Jan 18 (26) Jan 17 (24) Jan 16 (23) Jan 15 (30) Jan 14 (20) Jan 13 (18) Jan 12 (24) Jan 11 (11) Jan 10 (23) Jan 09 (22) Jan 08 (17) Jan 07 (17) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (18) Jan 04 (15) Jan 03 (19) Jan 02 (14) Jan 01 (6) Dec 31 (12) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (15) Dec 28 (11) Dec 27 (7) Dec 26 (10) Dec 25 (16) Dec 24 (13) Dec 23 (16) Dec 22 (11) Dec 21 (26) Dec 20 (28) Dec 19 (14) Dec 18 (25) Dec 17 (23) Dec 16 (19) Dec 15 (22) Dec 14 (38) Dec 13 (26) Dec 12 (25) Dec 11 (27) Dec 10 (31) Dec 09 (15) Dec 08 (30) Dec 07 (31) Dec 06 (27) Dec 05 (38) Dec 04 (25) Dec 03 (27) Dec 02 (15) Dec 01 (36) Nov 30 (23) Nov 29 (17) Nov 28 (23) Nov 27 (13) Nov 26 (16) Nov 25 (14) Nov 24 (18) Nov 23 (21) Nov 22 (21) Nov 21 (24) Nov 20 (20) Nov 19 (23) Nov 18 (17) Nov 17 (17) Nov 16 (34) Nov 15 (25) Nov 14 (17) Nov 13 (21) Nov 12 (18) Nov 11 (9) Nov 10 (15) Nov 09 (9) Nov 08 (9) Nov 07 (12) Nov 06 (8) Nov 05 (4) Oct 29 (1) Oct 01 (1) Jul 29 (1) May 11 (1) Jul 11 (1)
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

 Popularity. Check out reviews, forums and Facebook pages to see what other people think of the casino. Also, ask around at work or friends houses who they would recommend to you. You could always take a look at the casinos website too, to see what kind of information they provide about themselves.

 Reputation. Find out what the general public thinks about the casino. Check out any customer reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Amazon and Google Play to find out more. As far as gaming goes, you can also check out the Better Business Bureau to see whether there have been any complaints against the casino.

 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.

 Payment methods. Its good to have multiple payment options available, especially if you plan to play frequently. Its also nice to find a casino that accepts cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. If youre worried about safety, you can always opt for a credit card or PayPal instead.

With all those criteria in mind, heres our top picks

Betway:

Betway is a relatively new UK casino offering online gambling to residents of the United Kingdom and European Union. They offer hundreds of games across both land based and digital platforms, with plenty of top software providers like Net Entertainment, Microgaming and Yggdrasil Gaming Network. With a generous welcome offer that gives players 100% up to 100, you really cant go wrong with Betway.

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.

Bonus: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Register Now

Betway: 100% Match Bonus up to 100  Claim Now

Coral Casino: 25% Cash Back on Deposits  Claim Now

Ladbrokes Casino: 35% Cash Back on First 3 Deposits  Claim Now

Paddy Power Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200  Claim Now

William Hill Casino: 100% Match Bonus up to 200  Claim Now

If youre interested in trying out an online casino but arent quite ready to commit to one, why not try out one of the many no deposit casinos weve reviewed? You can test drive various casinos completely risk-free, so you can feel confident about your choice before you make a single penny deposit.
Mar 2, 2016 | By Kira

A host of 3D scanning, 3D printing, and aerospace companies today joined forces to take the first ever 3D scan of the Orion crew model, an integral part of NASAs Orion spacecraft, designed to carry humans farther into space than ever before. The 3D scan will be used to 3D print roughly 150 small-scale replicas of the crew module, as well as one larger replica, which is to be 3D printed using Cincinnati Inc.s large-format BAAM technology. Participants include Lockheed Martin, FARO Technologies, Direct Dimensions, Met-L-Flo, the Florida Institute of Technology, Cincinnati Inc., and SME, along with its annual RAPID 3D printing event.

NASA's Orion Spacecract Crew Module

Industry-leading 3D scanning company FARO began yesterday by creating a 3D laser scan of the Orion crew module, which measures 5m in diameter and 3m in length, using its Focus 3D X330 Scanner. Throughout the process, students from the Florida Institute of Technology were invited to participate in the 3D scan and discuss how the next generation of manufacturing professionals are being educated on advanced manufacturing technology, including 3D printing and scanning.

Next, 3D engineering company Direct Dimensions will take the 3D scan and convert it into a 3D printable digital model. Finally, additive manufacturing firm Met-L-Flo will take care of the 3D printing, creating approximately 150 miniature replicas of the Orion crew module spacecraft, which will be put on display and handed out as free giveaways during SMEs 2016 RAPID 3D printing event.

To take this project even further, Cincinnati Incorporated, makers of the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine, will be on-site at RAPID to 3D print a larger Orion replica in several large-scale pieces. Given that the BAAM is one of the largest 3D printers in the world, it should make for an exceptional demonstration of 3D printing in action.

The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is a spacecraft currently under development by NASA for launch on the Space Launch System. Its goal is to carry a crew of four astronauts into destinations at or beyond low Earth orbit, eventually facilitating the human exploration of asteroids and Mars, and taking mankind further into space than ever before. Currently, the Orion spacecraft consists of two modules: the Service Module, provided by the European Space Agency, and the crew module (CM), which was manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

Much like the Apollo command module, which was also recently 3D scanned with surprising results, the Orion crew module will serve as the main habitat for the four astronauts onboard. It will also provide storage for consumables and research instrument, and serve as a docking port for crew transfers.

Construction and design of the Orion crew module

Throughout the Orion spacecrafts and Space Launch Systems development, 3D printing and advanced additive manufacturing have played an increasingly important role. Most notably, NASA recently signed a $1.6 billion contract for Aerojet Rocketdyne to 3D print rocket parts for the Orion spacecraft. The Space Agency has also been conducting tests on 3D printed F-1 rocket engine parts in preparation for the Space Launch System.

"Additive manufacturing and 3D printing technologies are widely used to produce aerospace and other high-performance products," said Carl Dekker, president of Met-L-Flo. "It is exciting that we are using 3D scanning and additive manufacturing to reproduce 3D models of the Oriona spacecraft which may carry these technologies to other planets."

Posted in 3D Printing Application

Maybe you also like:









J.pickens wrote at 3/4/2016 11:18:54 PM:This is a current design spacecraft. Wouldn't it be more accurate to use the CAD files to generate a 3D overall view? What is the point of scanning an already electronically designed object? Seems you would lose resolution and accuracy. Much different from the Apollo spacecraft, whose designs reside on blueprints.J.pickens wrote at 3/4/2016 11:18:54 PM:This is a current design spacecraft. Wouldn't it be more accurate to use the CAD files to generate a 3D overall view? What is the point of scanning an already electronically designed object? Seems you would lose resolution and accuracy. Much different from the Apollo spacecraft, whose designs reside on blueprints.




Mar 2, 2016 | By Tess

Everyone has heard of the black widow spider, one of the most venomous spiders in the world, whose bite could seriously harm a human and kill most animals. The spiders signature red-hourglass mark which stands out from her stark black body would surely make anyone jump back in fright. It turns out, however, that the spiders bright red mark is not just meant to scare us humans away, or to invade our nightmares, but to communicate secret warning signals to certain species of animals.

Researchers supported by Duke University recently conducted tests using 3D printed fake spiders to test what effects the black widows red mark had on different animal species, namely birds and insects, with the goal of determining how the spiders marks have different effects on the two types of animal.

The study, which was posted on February 27th in Behavioral Ecology, used 3D modeling and 3D printing technologies to create realistic black widow models. The spider models design came from a 3D model designed by video game developers, who often include the venomous spider in their game design to create fear and spooky environments.

For the tests, eight spider models were 3D printed, four of which were painted black and four of which bore the unmistakeable red hourglass mark of the black widow on their bellies. To gather data, the fake spiders were placed with their bellies facing upwards in various local bird feeders in Durham, North Carolina to see how hungry birds would react. According to the studys findings, birds were three times less likely to fly up to and try to feed on a spider bearing the red marking, with smaller birds even jumping back in fear when the mark was spotted. Lead author of the report Nicholas Brandley said, The birds would see a spider model with red markings and get startled and jump back, like Oh no man, get me out of here.

The research also found that the black widows positioning, typically with her red belly facing to the sky, deterred birds who were flying overhead, but made little difference to insects crawling towards her from below. To more thoroughly test this idea, the researchers compared two types of North American black widows, one with a red mark only on its belly and one with red marks on the belly and back, to see how their web building behavior varied. The black widow with both markings on her belly and back tended to build web higher from the ground, thus necessitating marks on her front and back to warn birds away from both sides, while the spider with marks on her belly built her web much closer to the ground, only needing to deter birds from above.

Of course, sight has a lot to do with how both birds and insects respond to the black widows marked danger as well. After testing how each species would perceive the red hue of the spiders markings using a spectrodiometer, the researchers found that birds perceived the red hues with two times more contrast than insects could, making the spider much more visible to the spiders potential predators rather than its prey.

The recent study once again demonstrates the varied and exceptional uses of 3D printing technology. This time, the ability to easily create lifelike models of a spider species has helped in to give us insight into a feared species of animal, the black widow spider.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

Maybe you also like:












Mar 1, 2016 | By Kira

Spanish 3D printer manufacturer BCN3D Technologies and Netherlands-based 3D printing filament developer colorFabb have entered a mutually beneficial co-operation to promote and develop multi-color and multimaterial 3D printing technology. As part of the partnership, colorFabb will use BCN3Ds Sigma, a dual-print-head FFF 3D printer, to develop new functional 3D printing materials and applications. Meanwhile, BCN3D Technologies will distribute colorFabbs portfolio of innovative 3D printing filaments throughout Spain and Portugal.

At the 2015 TCT Show in Birmingham UK, BCN3D unveiled its latest professional desktop 3D printer, the Sigma. The Sigmas main draw is its IDEX (Independent Dual Extruder) system, which allows it to 3D print with two different materials or two different colors in a single print, making it ideal for either creative, multicolor pieces, or for manufacturing functional parts that require PVA (water-soluble) support structures. This option provides greater complexity to the printed pieces, making them more attractive, without affecting its quality or printing time, said BCN3D.

Given this multimaterial capability, BCN3D was naturally drawn to colorFABBs wide portfolio of functional, innovative and high-tech 3D printing filaments, which includes copperFILL, corkFILL, bambooFILLL, woodFILL, colorFabb_HT, and nGen, its latest line of copolyester-based 3D printing filaments, to name just a few. At the same time, using the dual-print-head Sigma allowed colorFabbs engineers to experiment with combining 3D printing materials and even developing new ones. It only made sense then, for the two companies to officially partner-up, and to establish three main pillars of this burgeoning cooperation.

First, colorFabb will use BCN3D Sigma 3D printers in its facilities to create 3D printing profiles, and to develop new materials and applications, particularly regarding multimaterial parts and support materials.

Secondly, BCN3D Technologies will distribute colorFabbs portfolio across Spain and Portugal, providing technical support to the Spanish-speaking market. The company will also work closely with colorFabbs engineers as they develop new multimaterial 3D printing materials and applications.

Third and lastly, Fundacio CIM, a leading technological and prototyping center in Spain, and where BCN3D originally got its start, will develop a series of post-processing guides specifically for colorFabbs range of materials. These guides will be tailored to colorFabb materials, and thanks to Fundacio CIMs extensive experience in AM prototyping, will ensure that colorFabb users are able to get the absolute best results for their personal or professional projects.

Exotic and technical materials, such as WoodFill, CopperFill or ColorFabb_XT enable new uses and possibilities in the 3D Printing market, said BCN3D. Adding a BCN3DSigma to this equation allows the combination of unique materials and boosts the possibilities.

The results of this collaboration are to be revealed at RapidPro 2016, a 3D printing faire taking place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from March 1-3. If you can't make it, be sure to check out the video below to see some of the creative combinations and useful, multimaterial 3D prints made possible by colorFabb filaments and the BCN3D Sigma 3D printer:

Posted in 3D Printer Company

Maybe you also like:









Ex student wrote at 3/2/2016 11:14:17 AM:Wow, BCN Technologies is growing very fast and really well.. Especially because they are not a company, they are formed by a large "not for profit" Fundacio .. and all are owned by the University Polytechnica Barcelona. They use only university student labour/software ...while calling it all good "work experience" Releasing different products like laser-cutters, and DLP printers marketed globally as well... Maybe next year they will release an electric car?




Sophia Nguyen in Harvard Magazine:

The Dark Room Collective began with loss. As the members tell it: on December 8, 1987, Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis, and their two housemates piled into a car to make it to Harlem by noon, for the funeral of James Baldwin. More than 4,000 paid their respects at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, William Styron, and Amiri Baraka spoke at the service. Strange and Ellis, aspiring writers who first met Baraka at a reading at Tufts University, came at his invitation (It was probably very clear that we needed a lesson in Who We Owed, Ellis later reflected in an essay) and his eulogy may have left the deepest impression. Baldwins spirit will be with us as long as we remember ourselves, Baraka told the attendees. For his is the spirit of life thrilling to its own consciousness. Strange had stood in the same room as Baldwin once. He had come to Harvard for a tea, and, as she later wrote in the literary magazine Mosaic, she felt too shy to break through the thick clot of fans around him and offer the admiration he had been accustomed to for decades. She and Ellis, their mourning amplified and made vague by distance, felt their heros absence as a double negative; having never known him in person, they missed him twice over. The funeral filled them with new urgency about honoring their literary ancestors while they were still alive. They began planning the following spring.

In a third-floor room of their house used for storing old photographic equipment, theyd been building a library they christened The Dark Room: A Collection of Black Writing. At the time, 31 Inman was alreadya communal house for artists and activists. Strange worked as a community organizer in Roxbury and as a prisoner advocate through Cambridges American Friends Service Committee; Ellis was a projectionist at the Harvard Film Archive and a clerk at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. As Ellis recalls in his 2007 poem Spike Lee at Harvard, the bookshop experience was fraught, and in that way, instructive: I got my first glimpse/of the life of poetry/(through the Groliers/cinematic glass window). The life on display was orderly and monochromatic: the faces in the portraits above the shelves were nearly all white. At some point, his employer wondered if the black poets should be shelved separately so customers might more easily find their work; Ellis said he didnt think so. (An intervening line, dry but not unkind, adds: Well, at least she asked.) This homogeneity reflected the shops surrounding scene.

Literary events in Cambridge rarely featured artists of color, though a number of prominent black writers taught in the Boston area.

More here.
Michael J. Lewis at The New Criterion:

It is one of historys cheekier pranks that the first architect ever to appear on television was that thirty-year-old prodigy with the movie-star face, Albert Speer. Nazi Germany was the first country to introduce television broadcasting, just in time to cover the 1935 Nazi Party Rally in Nuremberg. If you search for it, you can watch a short clip as Speer drives his convertible into his newly enlarged rally grounds, banters with a reporter, and then speeds off with a jaunty Hitler salute.

Of course the world knows Speer from an entirely different media appearance. This was his testimony at the Nuremberg trials, where he dramatically accepted full personal responsibility for Nazi war crimes, the only one of the accused to do so. His subdued, humble demeanor could not have contrasted more with the evasiveness, self-justification, and unconcealed haughtiness of his co-defendants. It was literally the performance of his life, and it saved him from certain execution. Having stepped into the role of the good Nazi, Speer never relinquished it. Upon serving his twenty-year sentence, he published a series of fascinating though self-serving memoirs, beginning with Inside the Third Reich (1970). Through it all he played the part of the naive and innocent artist, who was guilty of nothing more than letting his childlike eagerness to build overwhelm his good judgment and moral sensibility.

That pose is no longer tenable. Archival finds in Germany and elsewhere have shown that Speer could not have been ignorant of the Nazi extermination camps, as he claimed, but was involved in finicky detail with their construction and operation.

more here.


Signs Offtake Agreement with Marubeni

Melbourne, Mar 2, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Syrah Resources Limited ( ASX:SYR ) ( SYAAF:OTCMKTS ) , Syrah or the Company) is pleased to announce that the Company has signed an Offtake Agreement for natural flake graphite with Marubeni Corporation ( TYO:8002 )(Marubeni), a major Japanese integrated trading and investment conglomerate.



Highlights:



- Three year Offtake Agreement signed with Marubeni Corporation to purchase 20,000 tonnes of flake graphite per annum for traditional applications in Japan and Korea (the Territory)



- A major global battery material manufacturer in the Territory has qualified Balama spherical graphite for its automotive customers' requirements



- Syrah has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding for Marubeni to secure spherical graphite offtake agreements with anode and battery producers in the Territory by 30 June 2016



Key terms



The Offtake Agreement is for a duration of three years and Marubeni will have the exclusive right to import and sell Balama flake graphite (Product) in Japan and Korea (Territory). Marubeni will purchase 20,000 tonnes of Product per annum across various size fractions. Marubeni will then market these Products to its customers for traditional applications such as refractory, foundry, powder metallurgy, lubricants, carbon brushes, conductive additives, construction, crucibles, sealing and expandable graphite.



Product prices will be negotiated on a quarterly basis between the parties with reference to the market prices prevailing in the Territory.

Syrah Managing Director, Mr. Tolga Kumova commented: "This agreement represents another significant Offtake Agreement that we have signed in the traditional flake graphite market. Syrah has worked closely with Marubeni for over 14 months to successfully complete product qualification and due diligence with various potential customers in Japan and Korea. We are very pleased to finalise this agreement with such a credible and well-regarded international partner."



Marubeni Assistant General Manager, Mr. Koji (Ken) Yamazaki commented: "I am very pleased to conclude this Offtake Agreement with Syrah on behalf of Marubeni. Having personally visited the Balama Project during 2014 and witnessed the scale, grade and flake size characteristics of the deposit, there is no question that it is a world class asset. We are confident that the Company will be a consistent and high quality graphite supplier to our customers in the upcoming years."



MOU for spherical graphite



Syrah continues to make significant progress qualifying its spherical graphite with major end users around the world. The Company is pleased to announce that a major global battery material manufacturer in the Territory has qualified Balama spherical graphite for its automotive customers' requirements.



Accordingly, Syrah has signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Marubeni for the company to secure spherical graphite offtake agreements with anode and battery producers in the Territory by 30 June 2016. Syrah looks forward to updating the market as further details are finalised.





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.


Sells Capitola Project for A$3.2M

Brisbane, Mar 2, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Pryme Energy Limited ( ASX:PYM ) ( POGLY:OTCMKTS ) advises that it has sold the Capitola Project in Texas for US$2.2m (A$3.2m) to a private US energy company. The sale is subject to normal closing adjustments.



The sale will leave the Company with approximately A$5m in cash as well as its Newkirk project in Oklahoma. Newkirk covers over 4,000 net acres and has certified Proven and Probable reserves of 5.1 million barrels of oil equivalent (as detailed in the announcement released to the ASX on dated 27 November 2015).



The Company first acquired an interest in the Capitola Oil Project in 2014 and subsequently suspended the development programme in 2015 due to declining oil prices and overall poor production performance from the four wells drilled by Pryme. As a result of inactivity, the Company's interest in the Project at the time of sale had reduced to a 37.5% WI in the shallow rights of the undeveloped acreage (25% WI in the deep rights). Many of the leases are also due to expire during 2016. Current production from Capitola totals approximately 100 BOE/day.



A review by the current Board concluded that the Capitola asset has limited potential to generate any meaningful value for shareholders and, as such, the Board considered that it is in the best interests of the Company to sell it. Cash reserves generated from the sale will be deployed to other projects where the potential for creating shareholder value is greater.



The book value of Capitola prior to Pryme's December 31 2015 financial year end impairments of US$3.5m, was US$5.6m.



The board of Pryme will continue its assessment of the Company's existing assets as well as new opportunities, in order to restore shareholder value.





About Indago Energy Ltd





Indago Energy Ltd (ASX:INK) (OTCMKTS:POGLY) is an Australian listed company engaged in oil and gas exploration, development and production. Indago's project portfolio includes liquid rich producing assets together with substantial oil development and exploration acreage in the United States.

The Company's Exploration and Production focus is on high growth oil and gas projects offering scalability of production, cash flows and reserves. Indago currently has several producing projects together with a significant acreage position. The Company's immediate focus is the development of its Capitola Oil Project located in an active region of the Cline Shale resource play along the Eastern Shelf of the Permian Basin, Texas. The project's core development and exploitation opportunities are shallower multiple "stacked" sandstones and limestones to depths of 7,000 feet which are effectively produced from vertically drilled wells. Indago's value driven model is executed through exploiting shallower, well defined intervals with advanced completion and stimulation technology within known produced oil fields together with exposure to the emerging Cline Shale resource play.

Indago's shares are publicly traded on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX ticker: INK) and also as American Depositary Receipts on the OTCQX (ADR ticker: POGLY).
ACAs library of educational tools help members improve their business practices. ACA also holds the most popular industry conferences and offers credentialing for collectors, attorneys, and more. ACAs Training Zone subscription gives agencies access to almost all of our education for one low cost.
Section 1 Content

ACE announced today that Santa J. Ono, president of the University of Cincinnati, will receive the 2016 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award.

The award is named in honor of Reginald Wilson, senior scholar emeritus at ACE and founding director of the Council's Office of Minority Concerns (now part of the ACE Inclusive Excellence Group), and is presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions and demonstrated sustained commitment to diversity in higher education.

The award will be presented during the closing plenary of ACE2016, ACE's 98th Annual Meeting, on March 15 in San Francisco.

"Santa Ono is an engaged diversity leader with a tenacity of spirit and conviction who consistently provides opportunities for access and advancement in higher education," said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad. "I am honored to add his name to the list of Wilson Award winners who have honored Reginald Wilson's legacy and commitment to ensuring inclusion for all students."

Ono has served as the 28th president of the University of Cincinnati (UC) since 2012. He is the first Asian American president of the university and in the state of Ohio.

During his tenure at UC, Ono has been an outspoken advocate of increasing diversity and inclusion at all levels of the university. He has created the most diverse executive team in the institution's history, with nearly 40 percent of its members African American and women. He appointed the institution's first full-time chief diversity officer.

He worked with the chief diversity officer to launch the university's Diversity Plan and designed a mechanism to monitor progress toward goals annually. Additionally, he encouraged the sale of UC's presidential residence to create the equivalent of a $3 million endowment for student scholarships supporting underrepresented minorities and those with financial need.

He has utilized his social media expertise to connect directly with students and community members about a range of diversity issues in personal and meaningful ways. He also convened a forum to discuss equity in our criminal justice system and announced that his office will provide seed funding for faculty, staff and students to conduct research, develop new courses or host speakers related to ensuring equity within our criminal justice system. He has also implemented a new safety and reform initiative and has met with African American student activists, including a group called The Irate 8, to take steps to help the university become more inclusive.

Ono also serves as chair of the Urban Serving Universities Health Strand. Under his leadership, senior leaders in UC's College of Nursing led a landmark survey of holistic review in the admissions process to increase diversity in the health professions.

An avid cellist, he has teamed with MYCincinnati, an urban-based string ensemble for Cincinnati youth, to perform together at a variety of public events.

Previously, he served as UC's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs from June 2010 until his appointment as president in 2012.

Ono served as senior vice provost and deputy to the provost at Emory University (GA) prior to arriving at the University of Cincinnati. While at Emory University, Ono served as a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Posse Foundation-Atlanta, introduced the Questbridge program into the university and helped launch the Emory Advantage program that has significantly diversified the student population at that university.

Born in Vancouver, Canada, Ono earned his Ph.D. at McGill University in Montreal and his B.A. at the University of Chicago.


TLC is all set to unleash a new culinary battle on TV with the launch of MASTERCHEF CANADA. The internationally acclaimed franchise will present an incredible line-up of 50 professional and home cooks from various parts of Canada who will compete for the title of Canadas first ever MasterChef.



The distinguished judging panel will include celebrity chef MICHAEL BONACINI who is the co-founder of one of Canadas leading fine dining restaurant companies, CLAUDIO APRILE, one of Canadas most celebrated and visionary chefs and ALVIN LEUNG, the self-proclaimed Demon Chef. In each episode, the judges will up the stakes by bringing in new hurdles and twists for the amateur cooks as they undergo a series of pressure tests, mystery box challenges and team challenges on their way to the top.



MASTERCHEF CANADA will premiere on 4th March and will air Friday to Sunday at 8 PM, on TLC.

In the quest to become Canadas first-ever MasterChef, contestants will fight each other in their bid to impress three of Canadas most popular and celebrated chefs. The judges will test contestants on their skills, creativity and their ability to withstand pressure against all odds. The series will feature contestants who will present their creatively crafted dishes with the hopes of turning their culinary dreams into reality.



After a series of nail-biting showdowns, the series will bring the culinary battle down to two cooks in the grand finale. With their families and former opponents there to cheer them on, they will fight to the finish for $100,000 and the chance to call themselves Canadas first ever MasterChef.


Over the past year, the Warc 100 has tracked over 2,000 effectiveness and strategy competition winners from around the world, and has now unveiled the 100 best marketing campaigns of the year  as well as the agencies and brands behind them.

The worlds best creative agencies 2016

Indias Mullen Lowe Lintas Group retained its position on top of the creative agencies rankings, buoyed by five separate campaigns being ranked on the top 100  more than any other agency. The agencys much awarded campaign  Kan Khajura Tesan  done for Hindustan Unilever is ranked ninth in the Warc 100 worlds best marketing campaigns 2016. Mullen Lowe Lintas Group has secured 194.5 points, much ahead of Droga5 New York which is placed second.

The worlds best media agencies 2016

MediaCom Mumbai made it to the top 10 media agencies list. The agency is ranked ninth this year, up from a rank of 32 last year. The agency has secured 48.1 points.

Country rankings 2016

The US and UK retained their positions as the top two advertising nations this year. The US also had more campaigns ranked on the Warc 100 than any other country. India climbed up a notch to No. 3, garnering 1013.4 points. China followed at No. 4. Australia, despite its first place campaign (Penny the Pirate), dropped down the rankings, from third to fifth, due to the greater consistency across competitions shown by India and China.

The worlds best digital/specialist agencies 2016

OgilvyOne Mumbai jumped to the eighth rank from 26 last year. The Digital/ Specialist Agency category as a whole ranges from pureplay digital shops, to PR, direct and shopper marketing agencies.

The worlds top agencies and advertisers

The US dominated the worlds top performing creative, media and digital/ specialist agencies lists. Elsewhere, the gap between BBDO Worldwide and Ogilvy & Mather widened at the top of the agency networks rankings, whilst the big four holding companies maintained their positions from the past two years. Coca Cola was the top ranked brand with retail, toiletries & cosmetics and automotive all well represented in the top 10. Procter & Gamble and Unilever also continued their annual battle to be the worlds best advertiser, with P&G pushing past Unilever to be ranked No. 1 this year.

Tata Group made the top 10 for the first time, and was the top Asian advertiser.
It has been said that you cant know where youre going without knowing where youve been. For some, this quote may not mean much, but for the women of the 432nd Wing/432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, who provide the Air Forces largest remotely piloted aircraft enterprise with support, this statement rings true.Womens History Month started as a national celebration in 1981, when Congress authorized the president to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982, as Womens History Week.In 1987, Congress designated the month of March 1987 as Womens History Month. Since 1995, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as Womens History Month.On a daily basis, these women provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support; maintain both the MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper; safeguard control centers; administer medications; file records and maintain secured communications capability. They also command squadrons; fly aircraft and tell the Air Force story.During March, women and their contributions to national defense are celebrated, regardless of different backgrounds, nations or creeds. Staff Sgt. Esther Blake was the first female to enlist in the newly formed Air Force on July 8, 1948, on the first hour of the first day women were authorized to join. Since that day, women all over the world have followed in her footsteps.Airmen like Lt. Col. Mackenzie, who serves as the only female commander at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. She commands 320 men and women of the 432nd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, to include two aircraft maintenance units that provide aircraft maintenance needed to sustain global RPA operations.Women of the 432nd WG serving in command positions, both past and present, have achieved historic milestones while serving their country.Women like Lt. Col. Shawna Rochelle Kimbrell, who broke racial barriers when she became the first black female fighter pilot, didnt have an easy road to success. She joined the Civil Air Patrol, worked at air shows and earned her private pilot's license. She was eventually accepted into the U.S. Air Force Academy. She did all of this despite being told there was no such thing as a female fighter pilot. She earned her pilot wings in August 1999.These women represent the caliber of women serving in todays officer corps. According to the Defense Department, there are a total of 60 female military flag officers with 21 of those belonging to the Air Force, the most in any military branch.Female Airmen also serve in key enlisted positions, including command chiefs, first sergeants and chaplain assistants. They continuously work to improve the quality of life for Airmen around the Air Force.Senior Master Sgt. Christin serves as the only female squadron superintendent at Creech AFB. She is the chief enlisted adviser for nearly 290 aviation and intelligence Airmen and aviation resource management personnel, while integrating Air Force Reserve Command members. Together they provide 24/7 combat support to combatant commanders in multiple areas of responsibility. She also served as Creech AFBs Top 3 president and vice president, and currently teaches unmanned aircraft system courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.Despite any misconceptions about women serving in todays military, in a recent statistics release from the DOD, women make up 29 percent of all Air Force military personnel and 30.5 percent of all civilian personnel, with nearly equal representation in both the officer, 20.3 percent, and enlisted, 18.9 percent, corps.Of the officers, 55 percent of the female officers are line officers, and 45 percent are non-line officers; and of the 307,001 active-duty personnel, 58,785 are women, with 676 female pilots, 288 navigators and 223 air battle managers.In a 2015 presidential proclamation, Obama said, "We honor the many patriots who have shaped not only the destinies of other women, but also the direction of our history. Let us resolve to build on their efforts in our own time."
(This feature is part of the "Through Airmen's Eyes" series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)From an early age, Airman 1st Class Shelby Bowling, a 350th Air Refueling Squadron boom operator, had an idea of what she wanted to do when she grew up."My dad is former Air Force, and I always wanted to be in the military at some point," Bowling said.It wasn't until midway through her time in college that life provided her an opportunity to take a chance."I was about halfway done with (my degree) and the school I was attending raised its tuition," said the Fairbanks, Alaska native. "I couldn't put myself into debt, so I took a couple months off."During her time off, Bowling revisited her childhood dream of joining the military and decided that it was either now or never. Her dad encouraged her to look into flying jobs as either a boom operator or a loadmaster."I knew what I wanted to do immediately," Bowling said. "I told the recruiter that I wanted to be a boom, and I got the job three weeks later."After basic military training, Bowling stayed at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, where she began her yearlong journey to become a boom operator in a flight fundamentals course. It was during this time she also found out she would be assigned to the KC-135 Stratotanker.Bowling received KC-135 specific training on the ins and outs of the aircraft down to the hydraulic and electric systems during the next several months after her flight fundamentals course.While she wasn't studying in the classroom, Bowling said she was busy in the simulator getting the hang of all the controls and learning how to refuel various aircraft in different conditions.After spending numerous hours practicing in the simulator, her instructors felt she was ready to try out her new in-flight refueling skills with real aircraft."It's mind-blowing, everything was going super fast," she said. "Now it's easy, and it's like second nature, but that first ride you're just blown away at everything that you have to do. I just remember being overwhelmed."Since then, this boom operator said she has come to love the entire aspect of aerial refueling and the adrenaline rush that comes with it. The excitement and motivation to do her job well has carried her through multiple deployments and TDYs in support of various contingencies around the world."It's the mobility," she said. "(Some aircraft) can't make it even half way across the country without us. You get to drag planes all across the world. Expanding our reach, I think is the most important."Her work ethic both in the office and on the aircraft doesn't go unnoticed."Bowling is a highly motivated, good attitude, hard-working boom operator and Airman," said Senior Airman Josh Garrett, a 350th ARS boom operator. "The Air Force needs more Airmen like her."Although her hard work may not always get her in the spotlight, Bowling said this might actually be the coolest aspect of her job."When people ask me what I do and I tell them that I refuel planes in the air, (a lot) of people don't know that exists," Bowling said. "I think that's the coolest part, doing a job that isn't really known or commonly talked about. It's exciting. There's no other job that I would want to do in the military."
Malmstrom female commander breaking barriers in engineer field

Looking down the road as a new lieutenant in 1994, Col. Yvonne Spencer never imagined she would be in the position she is in today -- a colonel and commander of one of only four active-duty RED HORSE units.



Spencer took command of the 819th RED HORSE Squadron in July and is the first African American and first female to lead her squadron. Shes also the first African American to lead an active-duty RED HORSE unit.



RED HORSE (Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operations Repair Squadron Engineers) squadrons provide the Air Force with a highly mobile civil engineering response force to support contingency and special operations worldwide.



Spencer said when she thinks back on the past and the pioneers who paved the way for females, she feels the Air Force is carrying on the legacy.



"My Air Force is getting it right," she said. "My Air Force is accepting people for what they bring to the fight and not their packaging. They are looking at skills, capabilities, enthusiasm and successes.



"We are embracing those ideals that the military is known for," she continued.



Only two other females have been civil engineer commanders including retired Col. Susanne Waylett, former 823rd RHS commander and the first military woman to enter the Air Force civil engineering career field, and Maj. Gen. Theresa Carter, the first female engineering officer promoted to the rank of brigadier general.



Spencer's success speaks volumes for people wanting to lead and be successful, even when she may not have received as much support as she would have liked.



"I was putting together my package to apply to the Air Force Academy," she said. "I asked one of my instructors for a letter of recommendation and he declined. He told me, 'I don't think you have what it takes.'



"In hearing that, it was almost additional fuel to my fire," she continued. "In the back of my mind all I kept saying was 'watch me.'"



Even though Spencer's potential may have been doubted in the beginning, she worked hard and has risen through the ranks from lieutenant to colonel, proving herself to others that it is not physical attributes that matter, but what an individual brings to the table that counts.



"If you're attempting to do something and you're thinking 'I'm a female' or 'I'm this or that,' my reply to you is 'so what?'" Spencer said. "What do you have on the inside?



"You need to look within yourself and say 'what am I bringing to the fight?' and you keep moving in that direction," she added. "Do not take 'no' for an answer."



In her more than 20 years of success in the service, Spencer recalled one of her favorite memories while serving with her fellow Airmen.



"(One of my favorite memories was) the opportunity, as a major, to be a detachment commander," she said. "I was responsible for getting my folks, preparing them for the deployment and bringing everyone back in one piece. That was my first true opportunity to be a leader.



"It was a great feeling spending time with my Airmen and getting them back to their families," she continued.



Spencer said one of her proudest accomplishments was pinning on the rank of colonel because she never knew it was going to happen.



"You sit there as a lieutenant and look and see down the road and think 'there's no way, I'm not going to be able to do that,'" she said. "But I was able to achieve that level of rank. My family and friends were there sharing that accomplishment."



She added the accomplishment was not about her, but something larger.



"It was about the folks that I looked out to in the audience," she said. "Each one of them played a part in my success, small or large, and they fed into this machine that I am and to help me be successful. I am just so very thankful for it.



"I feel so privileged and honored that the Air Force believes in me to give me this level of responsibility."



When speaking about success, people speak of keys to success. Spencer's advice is just two words.



"Be nice," she said. "When I say that, it really means to be respectful to others. Showing that you care and just being nice to folks. Treat people the way you want to be treated. At the end of the day, we're a big Air Force, we're a big machine but the machine doesn't run without the people."



Spencer's story can be relatable to anyone with potential and the nothing will stop me attitude. She said if it's something that is important to an individual, a way to achieve that something will be made, the excuses will be removed and it will be achieved.



"You just can't stop," she said.
The Indian Consulate in eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad was attacked by a group of heavily armed terrorists on Wednesday.

The blast, believed to be a suicide attack, occurred around noon. After a fierce gunbattle, the security forces managed to eliminate all five terrorists who were involved in the attack. At least 19 persons, including some policemen and civilians, were also injured in the attack.

A bomb in a car driven by one of the terrorists was detonated near the Indian consulate, shattering doors and windows and destroying at least eight other cars, even as explosions and gunfire rocked the area, witnesses said.

Their target was the Indian consulate, but our forces shot and killed them all before they reached their target, said Attahullah Khugyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said no consulate staff members were injured.The head of the public health department in Nangarhar said at least six people had been wounded in the attack.

Jalalabad is the capital of Nangarhar It faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq and is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan  challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

On January 3, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan security forces.

Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.

Afghan forces have killed four militants involved in the attack. However, an exact number of attackers was not immediately known.

The combing operation is on after the attackers were killed, sources said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Bomb blasts and gunfire were heard near the Indian consulate in Afghanistans Jalalabad city on Wednesday. There has been no report of casualties yet.



Last month, a terror attack had taken place near the Indian consulate in the Afghan city, targeted at the Pakistani consulate. The Islamic State group had claimed responsibility for the attack.

Early January, the Indian consulate in Afghanistans Mazar-i-Sharif city was also attacked, with the Afghan Police reportedly blaming the attack on Pakistan military personnel.

(With Agency Inputs)
Asserting that non-payment of loans by big borrowers will erode peoples faith in the law, the CBI on Wednesday criticized lenders for not coming forward with a complaint in the Kingfisher Airlines fraud, saying the delay helped the company divert funds and destroy evidence.

The message to the public is that the rich and powerful are able to avoid consequences of cheating and fraud, while the ordinary citizens are promptly booked. This undermines faith of people in rule of law, which has dangerous consequences in a democracy, CBI Director Anil Sinha said at a bankers conference here.

Citing the Kingfisher Airlines case, in which the Vijay Mallya-promoted airliner has defaulted on loans of Rs 7,000 crore way back from January 2012, Sinha said, Despite our repeated requests, the banks did not file a complaint with the CBI. We had to register the case on our own.

Regretting that only one among the 17 lenders who owed money had declared KFA as a willful defaulter, Sinha said the loans in question were taken between 2004 and 2012, while the CBI filed the case only in July 2015.

The comments, made before an audience comprising top bankers, including Arundhati Bhattacharya of SBI, ICICI Banks Chanda Kochhar and Axis Banks Shikha Sharma, come amid a huge spike in banks bad assets and the RBIs attempts on cleaning up the books to show a true picture of the balance sheets.

Bhattacharya refused to react on the critical comments of the CBI chief, saying she does not speak on specific accounts.

Industry lobby IBAs chairman and head of state-run Dena Bank Ashwani Kumar said there is nothing which can be called deliberate in the case of KFA. The CBI Directors view is that in some cases there is delay in filing complaints for fraud but it is not

deliberate, Kumar claimed.

Sharma of Axis Bank pointed out that there is a process, which a bank needs to follow while declaring someone as a wilful defaulter. As far as wilful defaulters are concerned, the clients should have defaulted and we should be able to prove that there was wilful default. You have to go through a process and of course, you have to give a chance to hear out the borrower because if you just unilaterally declare him as a wilful defaulter, then he can take you to the courts, Sharma argued.

So far, three banks  Union Bank of India, SBI and Punjab National Bank  have declared now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines and its promoter Mallya as wilful defaulter.

Addressing the conference organised by CBI with bankers here, Sinha said, The question is that undue delay in identifying and reporting such a fraud has jeopardised the cause of justice to the offenders benefit giving them opportunity to divert funds and destroy evidence.

He added that a large part of such funds move outside the country to tax havens through hawala and other unofficial channels, and added this hampers its investigations.

Something is indeed seriously wrong. While I fully understand that loan defaults can happen due to business risk and reasons beyond control of banks, borrowers and regulators, yet a significant part of the defaults are wilful and fraudulent. What causes greater concern is that a major part of the NPAs and frauds are in large value accounts, he said.

The CBI chief rued that resolving the asset quality stress is an unduly slow and long process in which loans are red flagged, declared NPAs, then as wilful defaulters and finally as fraudulent.

Stating that the bulk of the problematic assets have been extended loans in the periods from 2008 and 2012, the CBI chief said, Time has come to rethink and re-devise strategies so that on one hand banks and financial institutions work fearlessly to power the economy towards growth, but at the same time, fix the fraudsters and public officials who collude with such cheats.

Sinha also flagged the issues of identifying and reporting frauds, allowing borrowers to siphon off funds before investigations and monitoring end use of funds to ensure there is no diversion, as issues which need attention.

He said in the past six years, gross NPAs of state-run lenders have gone up to over Rs 3 trillion from Rs 44,957 crore and added that CBI investigated 171 cases of bank frauds entailing funds of Rs 20,646 crore in 2015. In the December quarter as many as 10 state-run banks have declared close to 9 per cent of their assets as NPAs.

Citing a recent case at Bank of Baroda, Sinha said the banking channels are being used to commit a wide variety of financial crimes at present. The agency is probing an over Rs 6,000 crore worth of forex scam in involving a branch in central Delhi.

Calling for more deliberations on bank frauds, Sihna said, We must realise that these crimes strike at the very root of our economy and weaken the faith of the public in the banking system and governance.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton rolled up a series of wins on Tuesday, as the two presidential front-runners took a step toward capturing their parties` nominations on the 2016 campaign`s biggest day of state-by-state primary contests.

Trump and Clinton turned their sights on each other after their Super Tuesday wins, with Trump promising to go after Clinton and the former secretary of state decrying what she called Trump`s divisive rhetoric.

U.S. networks projected Trump won six and Clinton seven states on Super Tuesday, when 12 states were voting. Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Virginia, while Clinton won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Trump`s rival Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, won his home state and neighboring Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the controversial Trump. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the favorite of the Republican establishment, had yet to register a win but was leading in Minnesota as the votes were counted.

Clinton`s rival Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Oklahoma and Colorado and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states that had yet to vote.

Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama. Voting stretched from eastern states to Texas and Minnesota.

Opinion polls heading into the voting had shown Trump leading in most of the 12 states up for grabs, raising the possibility of a big night that would intensify worries among Republican leaders who fear the billionaire could inflict long-term damage on the party.

I am a unifier, Trump told reporters in Palm Beach, Florida, dismissing concerns that his nomination would rip apart the party. Once we get all this finished, I`m going after one person  Hillary Clinton.

Exit polls and early results showed Vermont was still too close to call for Republicans, networks said. Alaska Republicans and both parties in Minnesota were holding contests with results expected later.

Clinton had Trump on her mind in her victory speech, although she never mentioned him by name.

The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower, Clinton, 68, told supporters in Miami. Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and were not going to let it work.

Sanders won his home state of Vermont and Oklahoma, two of five states he was targeting for victory on Tuesday. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, another state he was hoping to win.

Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.

We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us, said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up hundreds of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

Trump, 69, has worried many in the Republican establishment with proposals such as building a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants and slapping a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Even as Trump advances, many Republican Party leaders do not support him and worry that he would be easily defeated in November if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee.

Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain.
A government employee who was recently arrested along with his lady companion for allegedly trafficking women, has been in this trade for last four years, Goa Police claimed on Wednesday.

Pravin Parab has confessed that he has been trafficking girls for the last four years. We will interrogate him further, Porvorim police Inspector Jivba Dalvi said.

The accused, a pump operator with Goa Water Resources Department, and his partner Sajjiya Khan, were arrested last Saturday under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (ITA), he said.

Sajjiya, originally from Mumbai, was currently residing with the accused, Dalvi said, adding a team would be sent to Mumbai for a background check. He said some documents have been seized from the flat where both the accused were staying, the inspector said.

We have also found an Income Tax certificate from the flat and the department has been requested to furnish more information about it, the inspector said, adding police have also written to the Vigilance Department to initiate inquiry into the assets of Parab.

Three girls, two from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka, were rescued by Porvorim police on Saturday following arrest of the duo.
CCTV cameras shall be installed at the entrance only and not at the restaurant or performance areas.

The Supreme Court has asked the Maharashtra government to issue dance licences to hotels and restaurants in the city by March 15. The apex court ordered that CCTV should not be installed at places where bar dancers perform as it amounts to violation of privacy of performers. The state government had earlier imposed a condition that the live feed of performance be made available to the nearest police station for monitoring. Even though the apex court had overturned the state governments decision to ban dance bars but the latter is yet to grant licences to hotels and restaurants for dance performances. The government had enforced stringent conditions for the reopening of the dance bars which was criticised by dance bar association members. They had petitioned the apex court after Maharashtra Police imposed 24 new conditions on them before allowing them to open dance bars.

Giving three days time to the owners of the hotels and restaurants to comply with the modified conditions, the apex court bench, comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, said competent authorities would issue licences in 10 days and thereafter.

We are certain that competent authorities will not conceive of anything to stall the grant of licence, the court said and added that the authorities will comply with the command of this court and not venture to defy it.

Some of the other rules the police and state had asked for were that no person with a criminal history should be allowed to work at a dance bar, and that a three-foot wall must be built between the performance area and audience seating area.

Varsha Kale, president of Womanist Party of India said, CCTVs wont be installed near the area where bar girls perform as it is a violation of privacy. If CCTVs are installed there then customers wont visit dance bars as they are concerned about their privacy. However, cameras will be installed near the entrance area for averting law and order problem.

Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister of Maharashtra tweeted, State cant permit obscenity it has seen in the past in dance bars. We will approach the Honble Supreme Court with an alternative. But the Hon SC has disallowed the condition of live monitoring through CCTV and has asked to enforce surveillance at the entrance only.

The court order came after the Maharashtra government watered down some of the conditions for the grant of dance bar licences.

There was an ongoing tussle between the state and judiciary regarding the issue, after the state banned dance bars in 2005, and the court declared this unconstitutional in 2013. Following the verdict, the state government had again imposed a law banning dance bars in 2014. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had earlier said he supported the ban on the bars.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has taken the right step by presenting a pro-farmer budget for promoting agricultural growth. I have always mentioned through my columns that the government must take steps to revive the agricultural economy. Already farmers are committing suicide due to crop failure and weak monsoon in several parts of the country. By presenting the farmer friendly budget the government is trying to woo farmers ahead of crucial assembly election in states like West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. Often the opposition had criticized the government for being corporate friendly and anti-farmer. Through this budget the government is also sending a message to the opposition that it is serious about resolving the problems faced by farmers.

It is necessary that we empower the District magistrate and his subordinates right to the patwari (Lekhpal) level. The gram panchayats and gram sabha needs to be strengthened because they are the ones who will get the work done by mobilizing the village manpower. The government must go for decentralization of power by empowering gram panchayats. Guidance must be provided to farmers for improving the soil quality. Soil testing must be undertaken so that farmers can produce better yield at lower cost.

Steps must be taken to enhance the production of wheat, rice, pulses and sugarcane. Perishable crops should be preserved in cold storages while foodgrains can be stored in warehouses. The government must increase the minimum support price offered to farmers for the crop cultivated by him. Right now farmers are cultivating crops but they dont get better price for their produce which makes cultivation unaffordable to them due to rising costs. Minimum support price is the minimum price paid to the farmer for procuring food crops. It offers an assurance to farmers that their realisation for the agricultural produce will not fall below the stated price. The government uses the MSP as a market intervention tool to incentivise production of a specific food crop which is in short supply. It also protects farmers from any sharp fall in the market price of a commodity. The share of agriculture in the Indias GDP has fallen steadily from around 25 per cent in the early part of the century to less than 17 per cent now. But almost half of Indias population is dependent on agriculture for livelihood.

The gram sabha will provide for grazing places for cows and buffaloes and ensure that ponds and wells exist for cattle to drink water. The government must take steps to allocate more funds for improving the quality of education and initiative must be taken to address child dropout rates from schools. More funds should be allocated for primary health care needs. MPs and MLAs should regularly visit rural areas for understanding the problems faced by people residing in these areas. They should interact with farmers for knowing about the reason behind high farmer suicide rates.

Another aspect that bothers me is that eating out has become very expensive in the budget. If food becomes expensive how will the common man survive? We call ourselves as a developing nation but how will India progress if people are not able to afford two square meals? People should have access to clean drinking water but today many regions of the country are facing severe drought. The government must take steps to eliminate water scarcity.
Al Qaedas leaders were increasingly worried about spies in their midst, drones in the air and secret tracking devices reporting their movements as the US-led war against them ground on, documents seized in the 2011 raid on Osama bin Ladens Pakistani hideout and reviewed by news agency revealed this. The cache of 113 documents, translated and declassified by US intelligence agencies, are mostly dated between 2009 and 2011, the documents  the second tranche from the raid to have been declassified since May 2015  depict an al Qaeda that was unwavering in its commitment to global jihad, but with its core leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan under pressure on multiple fronts. In one document, bin Laden issues instructions to al Qaeda members holding an Afghan hostage to be wary of possible tracking technology attached to the ransom payment. In one of the declassified documents, bin Laden outlines how at least $29 million stashed in Sudan should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue global jihad. He sets down specific amounts in Saudi Riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, his uncles children and maternal aunts. He then writes: I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah.

In the recent past, Jihad or service to Allah is taken as violence. The term jihad has accrued both violent and non-violent meanings. According to John Esposito, it can simply mean striving to live a moral and virtuous life, spreading and defending Islam as well as fighting injustice and oppression, among other things. The relative importance of these two forms of jihad is a matter of controversy. According to scholar of Islam and Islamic history Rudoph Peters, in the contemporary Muslim world, traditionalist Muslims look to classical works on fiqh in their writings on jihad, and copy phrases from those; Islamic Modernists emphasize the defensive aspect of jihad, regarding it as tantamount to bellum justum in modern international law; and Islamist/revivalists/fundamentalists view it as a struggle for the expansion of Islam and the realization of Islamic ideals. Any ways here question is that, whatever Osama bin Laden has left for the service of Allah, will that be used for the betterment of Muslims community or for the spreading of violence.

Bin Laden was born to the family of billionaire Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden in Saudi Arabia. He studied at university until 1979, when he joined mujahideen forces in Pakistan fighting against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He helped to fund the mujahideen by funneling arms, money and fighters from the Arab world into Afghanistan, and gained popularity among many Arabs. In 1988, he formed al-Qaeda, He was banished from Saudi Arabia in 1992, and shifted his base to Sudan, until U.S. pressure forced him to leave Sudan in 1996. After establishing a new base in Afghanistan, he declared a war against the United States, initiating a series of bombings and related attacks. Bin Laden was on the American Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) lists of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives and Most Wanted Terrorists for his involvement in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

From 2001 to 2011, bin Laden was a major target of the War on Terror, as the FBI placed a $25 million bounty on him in their search for him. On May 2, 2011, bin Laden was shot and killed inside a private residential compound in Abbottabad, where he lived with a local family from Waziristan, during a covert operation conducted by members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group and Central Intelligence Agency SAD/SOG operators on the orders of U.S. President Barack Obama.

After leaving college in 1979, Bin Laden went to Pakistan, joined Abdullah Azzam and used money and machinery from his own construction company to help the mujahideen resistance in the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Under CIAs Operation Cyclone from 1979 to 1989, the United States and Saudi Arabia provided $40 billion worth of financial aid and weapons to almost 100,000 mujahideen and Afghan Arabs from forty Muslim countries through Pakistans ISI. Bin Laden met and built relations with Hamid Gul, who was a three-star general in the Pakistani army and head of the ISI agency. Although the United States provided the money and weapons, the training of militant groups was entirely done by the Pakistani Armed Forces and the ISI. By 1984, bin Laden and Azzam established Maktab al-Khidamat, which funneled money, arms and fighters from around the Arab world into Afghanistan. Through al-Khadamat, bin Ladens inherited family fortune paid for air tickets and accommodation, paid for paperwork with Pakistani authorities and provided other such services for the jihadi fighters. Osama bin Laden established camps inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and trained volunteers from across the Muslim world to fight against the Soviet puppet regime, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan; he would also participate in some combat activity, such as the Battle of Jaji. It was during this time that he became idolised by many Arabs.

Al-Qaeda was formed on August 11, 1988, at the meeting between several senior leaders of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Abdullah Azzam, and bin Laden, where it was agreed to join bin Ladens money with the expertise of the Islamic Jihad organization and take up the jihadist cause elsewhere after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. Following the Soviet Unions withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia in 1990 as a hero of jihad. Along with his Arab legion, he was thought to have brought down the mighty superpower of the Soviet Union. He was angered by the internecine tribal fighting among the Afghans. He took charge over many issues that were bothering followers of Islam. Osama the jihadist becomes threat to USA.

One fine day the operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was ordered by United States President Barack Obama and carried out in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation by a team of United States Navy SEALs from the United States Naval Special Warfare Development, with support from CIA operatives on the ground. The raid on bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad was launched from Afghanistan. After the raid, reports at the time stated that U.S. forces had taken bin Ladens body to Afghanistan for identification, then buried it at sea within 24 hours of his death. Even after his death many stories surfaced but there was no authentic report about those claims. When Osama was alive, he was a threat to USA and even after his death; he has made his organization financially strong to deal with Americans.
By J.B. Handley

Back in September, I wrote an AoA post where I expressed my support of Donald Trump for President for one simple reason: he stands with my son in telling the truth about what has been done to our children and the reality of the Autism epidemic.

A funny thing happens when you support a guy like Donald Trump: many of those closest to you think youve flipped a switch, and that your support must also mean you support every single thing that Donald Trump says and does.

To repeat what I said in September: Im a single-issue voter, and I really mean that. Im blind to every other policy issue and decision. Wall with Mexico? Tough talk with other countries? Xenophobic profiling? I simply dont care. While I may not personally agree with some of Trumps ideas or views (and I have faith that the most radical ones are unlikely to ever happen), none of them are as important to me as the over 1 million American children (and many more worldwide) who have had their lives destroyed by an out-of-control vaccine industry.

I voted for Barack Obama. Twice. Id argue that anyone who joins me in being a single-issue voter must agree that Barack Obama has failed our kids 100%. Under his reign, things for our community and our children have only gotten worse.

Back in September, I assumed like most that Trumps candidacy was a long shot. Like you, I squealed with delight when Trump brought up the truth about our kids in widely watched national debates. But, I figured it was just a moment in time.

How times have changed! And, Im curious if weve all really internalized whats happening here: the guy who is more than likely to be the Republican nominee for President speaks with an honesty about what has been done to our children that was nearly banned from national TV just a few years ago!!

Can we take a moment and remember just how powerful and on point some of the things Trump has said really are? Consider this:

Ive seen it, he said at the second main-stage GOP debate on

You take this little beautiful baby, and you pump  it looks just like its meant for a horse," he said of vaccines.

"Weve had so many instances ... a child went to have the vaccine, got very, very sick, and now is autistic."

The GOP front-runner said he still supported certain vaccines, but in smaller doses over a longer period of time. Under current procedures, he said it's dangerous for the public. Autism has become an epidemic, he said. It has gotten totally out of control.

Re-reading his quotes, it takes my breath away. Trump said those things with 30 million people watching!

So, as Trump heads towards a near-guaranteed Republican nomination (obviously anything can happen in politics, but its looking more certain by the day), I want to ask all of you a question: where is our community on Trump? Can we put our respective voter cards in a drawer aligning us with a single political party and all come together and endorse Trump? Can AoA, SafeMinds, Focus for Health, NAA, TTMR, Autism One, Generation Rescue, and all the other wonderful Autism organizations out there come together and support Trump for a single reason? Doesnt Trump need our support? Dont you think that Pharma is about to turn up the heat on Trump? (My personal guess is they finally roll out Bill Gates: Billionaire vs. richer billionaire.)

While Im on the topic of Trump, in case anyone is listening, I wanted to offer up my own opinions about policy and legislative initiatives that I hope the Trump camp will consider to constructively untangle the Autism mess:

Science:

Order real science to be done by the NIH on both vaccinated versus unvaccinated children and animal models to test the hypothesis that the change in the rate of Autism has been caused by the growing vaccine schedule.
WASHINGTON, March 2, 2016  U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman joined senators from the two top poultry producing states and the president of the National Chicken Council Wednesday to announce that after 15-years of unwarranted trade barriers, U.S. poultry has arrived in South Africa.

The group estimated U.S. poultry exports  which account for between 15 and 20 percent of the poultry produced in the U.S.  could reach $100 million annually as a result of South Africas new trade policy.

Todays announcement is really the result of a unified effort, said Froman on a call with reporters. Today is a great day for American farmers. Theyd been shut out for far too long.

Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Chris Coons, D-Del., co-chairs of the Senate Chicken Caucus and advocates for ending South African trade barriers to U.S. poultry, praised each other, Froman and President Barack Obama for their collaborative work over the last year.

It was an honor to be Johnnys wingman on this, Coons said of Isakson, who first suggested threatening South Africas duty-free export status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act as a way to break down trade barriers during negotiations on last years AGOA reauthorization bill.

While were giving out praise, we have to thank President Obama too, Isakson added. The president issued a suspension order to South Africa late last year, threating to revoke AGOA benefits if the country failed to open its markets to U.S. poultry, pork and beef.

Following trade? We cover it on Agri-Pulse. Sign up today for a four-week free trial subscription.





Froman said the presidents decision on the suspension order would be forthcoming, but he was comfortable that South Africa had come through on its end of the deal.

The first shipments of U.S. poultry were received in South Africa over the weekend. South Africa has also agreed to remove barriers to exports of U.S. pork and beef. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimates pork exports to South Africa could reach $40 million a year and beef, $17 million.

#30

For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com
Iraq's Crumbling Dam Could Wipe Out Cultural Treasures

The ancient Assyrian capital of Nineveh, once the largest city in the world, lies in the flood path of a potential Mosul Dam collapse. ( Randy Olson/National Geographic Creative) A new warning from the U.S. government has renewed fears for the catastrophic destruction of thousands of Iraqi heritage sites in an event that would dwarf any damage already inflicted by the Islamic State. The security message, posted on February 29th by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, urges citizens in Iraq to prepare for a possible collapse of the Mosul Dam, located about 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of the city of the same name. An accompanying fact sheet states that the dam -- the country's largest -- "faces a serious and unprecedented risk of catastrophic failure with little warning," which would result in an "in-land tidal wave" rushing 174 miles (280 kilometers) south along the Tigris River to the city of Samarra, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Approximately 500,000 to 1.47 million people would die in the inundation unless they evacuate the flood path in time. While the potential for a massive humanitarian disaster is abundantly clear, the scenario described will also wipe out thousands of archaeological and cultural sites along the Tigris River, including many that have already been damaged or destroyed by the Islamic State (commonly known as ISIS). "The Most Dangerous Dam in the World" The structural integrity of the Mosul Dam (formerly the Saddam Dam) has been a concern ever since it went online 30 years ago. The hydroelectric dam is built on a "very poor" foundation of water-soluble minerals that requires continuous grouting to support the 2.8-mile (3.7-kilometer) long, 370-foot (113 meter) high structure, which holds up to 2.7 cubic miles (11.1 cubic kilometers) of water. In 2006, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers called it "the most dangerous dam in the world," and predicted that a structural failure could inundate Mosul in more than 70 feet (21 meters) of water within three or four hours. While the Mosul Dam is currently under control of the Iraqi government, the city of Mosul has been occupied by ISIS since 2014. Preparations to retake Mosul, and associated concerns over airstrikes or an attempt to "weaponize" the dam, may have prompted the recent public warning from the U.S. State Department. An "Unprecedented Loss" The Assyrian sites of Nimrud, Nineveh and Khorsabad, once capitals of one of the world's first true empires in the first millennium B.C., are in projected path of a deluge resulting from a dam failure. All of these sites, as well as the Mosul Museum and countless religious sites, have been targets for damage and destruction by ISIS since it took Mosul in 2014. But while the damage wrought by ISIS on the cultural sites of Iraq and Syria has been a focus of global concern, researchers are struggling to calculate the destruction that would result from a failure of the Mosul Dam. "It's hard for me to come up with estimates other than thousands of archaeological sites and heritage sites would essentially be wiped away," says Michael Danti, professor of archaeology at Boston University and co-director of the Syrian Heritage Initiative at the American Schools of Oriental Research, which is documenting the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria. "It would be an unprecedented loss." Jason Ur, professor of anthropology at Harvard University, observes that a focus on the great Assyrian cities means that many other large sites along the Tigris River have not yet been properly investigated. "We don't know exactly what we would be losing," he says. Furthermore, he notes that archaeologists in the region often rely on surface artifacts to roughly determine the age and size of a site without excavation. An enormous flood sweeping across the landscape would jumble the surface record. "One of our best tools for doing investigation would be completely taken away from us. It would make work in the future extremely difficult." Even worse, he says, would be a massive deposit of silt across the Tigris River basin. "Then we wouldn't even have access to that surface jumble." Shaping Future Identities While many researchers feel uncomfortable discussing the potential damage to heritage sites when millions of lives are also at risk, they stress the importance that historical knowledge will play in shaping future generations of Iraqis. "The Kurds are asking 'What was our past like?' and the Sunnis and Shiites are doing the same," says Ur. "People form their national identities based on what came before them, so archaeology is going to be a part of that." For Danti, who tracks the destruction of cultural sites by the Islamic State, the sad irony of the potential loss of Iraqi heritage on a much, much bigger scale is not lost. "It's not very often that I think in terms of things being worse than what [the Islamic State] has done," he says. "They have destroyed hundreds of sites. But this would take everything.
March 1, 2016

CAIRO  On Jan. 26, an Egyptian court sentenced journalist Fatima Naaot to three years in jail and a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,500) for defaming religions. The judgment reflected a return to hisbah lawsuits, which are a threat to freedom of opinion, expression, thought, belief and human rights, said a Jan. 27 statement by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. Hisbah  meaning "accountability"  is an Islamic doctrine involving the ruler or government's duty to promote what is right and prevent wrong.

Naaot was accused of contempt for Islam and mocking the Islamic al-Adhiya (sacrifices) ritual. She had described the annual Islamic holiday of sacrifice  Eid al-Adha  in an October 2014 Facebook post as a massacre committed because of the startling nightmare one of the righteous ones had about his son, in a reference to the story of Abraham in the Quran.

Mahmoud Othman, a legal scholar at the Institution of Freedom of Thought and Expression, said hisbah lawsuits are based on Article 3 of the Code of Procedure, which allows anyone to file a lawsuit against any creative work by an artist, writer or public figure as long as the plaintiff has an interest in it. Also, the lawsuit must be aimed at avoiding imminent damage or at documenting evidence. Such lawsuits are submitted to the public prosecutor, who determines their merit.

Othman told Al-Monitor that hisbah lawsuits violate the Egyptian Constitution, which says, Freedom of thought and opinion is guaranteed. Every person has the right to express his opinion verbally, in writing, through imagery, or by any other means of expression and publication. The constitution also states, Freedom of artistic and literary creativity is guaranteed. The state shall encourage arts and literature, sponsor creative artists and writers, and protect their productions.  No lawsuit may be initiated or filed to stop or confiscate any artistic, literary or intellectual work.

Salah Issa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council for the Press, told Al-Monitor, All judgments handed down in publication lawsuits are a return to hisbah lawsuits and are contrary to the express provision of the constitution concerning the abolition of prison sentences for publication offenses. He added, This problem is due to a text in the constitution that says that all laws that existed prior to the ratification of the constitution remain in effect until they are amended.

Pending those amendments, Issa said, The prosecutor and the judges should apply the constitutional provisions that criminalize punishing all publication and expression cases, a move he described as judicial harmonization. He added, A judge who looks at such cases should only approve the fine, rather than imprisonment, so as not to conflict with the provisions of the constitution.

He called on parliament to quickly consider laws that complement the constitution.

A deputy in parliament who spoke on condition of anonymity told Al-Monitor, Once we finish the Rules of Procedure of Parliament, we will look at all the laws that are incompatible with Egypt's constitution. He said hisbah lawsuits that punish opinions should be stopped.

Gamal Eid, head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, talked with Al-Monitor about what effect the January 25 Revolution in 2011 had on freedom and on opinion lawsuits. Eid said that before the revolution, some hisbah lawsuits were used mistakenly to defend religion. Most such lawsuits are hypocritical, he said, noting that some people use them in attempts to become famous.

Eid questioned the role of the Egyptian parliament in addressing freedom of opinion and expression.

Unfortunately, I dont trust parliament because these lawsuits are aimed at regime critics, and parliament is the regime's parliament," he said. "The solution is having an independent judiciary.  The law requires the prosecution and the judiciary to not consider any lawsuit before making sure of the plaintiffs status and direct interest. Plaintiffs have no right filing lawsuits involving prison, but they are being accepted in violation of the law."

He concluded, Whether or not the law is applied depends on how close the defendant is to regime circles.

The Naaot case was not the first time that a poet, writer or artist has been sentenced in a hisbah lawsuit. The most famous hisbah case in the 20th century was that of Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid, an Egyptian scholar who specialized in Islamic studies. On Aug. 5, 1996, the Egyptian Court of Cassation ruled on the forced separation of Nasr from his wife, Ibtihal Younis. The court ruled that he was an apostate from Islam because of the research he did to obtain a professorship at Cairo University. Since Islamic law forbids marriage between a Muslim woman and a non-Muslim man, Abu Zeid's marriage was nullified. The court had deemed that his research was harmful to the Holy Quran and of scandalous ignorance.

Recently, an Egyptian court sentenced novelist Ahmed Naji to two years in jail on charges of offending public decency and using sexual terms in his novel "Isdikhdam al-Hayat" ("Using Life"). On Feb. 20, the court held that the novel was beyond the scope of literary writing.

On Dec. 29, an Egyptian court sentenced Islam al-Buhairi  Islamic scholar and host of the television show "With Islam al-Buhairi"  to one year in prison after accepting his appeal of a previous ruling sentencing him to five years for contempt of the Islamic religion.
March 1, 2016

The arrest Feb. 22 of former senior UN official Baquer Namazi, 80, who holds dual Iranian-American citizenship, defies any sort of logic. Baquer is the father of Siamak Namazi, who was unfortunately arrested in October after a period of intense interrogations by the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran. More than four months have passed and there is still no clear information about why Siamak was arrested and what he is accused of. The original arrest and now the incarceration of Siamaks father clash with basic human rights, core Islamic values and the overall direction that the Islamic Republic of Iran adopted when it decided to move away from its past escalatory policies in the nuclear negotiations and adopt a conciliatory approach  one that led to the historic nuclear agreement in July and to the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in January. This agreement has been hailed as a win-win solution out of the decadelong nuclear impasse.

Nonetheless, some forces in Iran, seemingly closely affiliated with the hard-line faction, may view the deal itself and the expected relaxation in Irans external relations as a threat to their interests and beliefs. This is the only logic that can explain the decisions that led to the arrest of Siamak and Baquer, who have done nothing but to promote better relations between Iran and the world. In the case of Siamak, his transparent track record has been well covered and captured by the online media, and in the case of Baquer  a former senior UNICEF official and civil society representative  he has been praised for his work in poverty eradication, childrens education and the protection provided in times of war and overall social development of those in countries such as Somalia, Kenya, Egypt and Thailand.

Considering the above, and the premise that those who decided to arrest Siamak and then to escalate the case by arresting Baquer are rational actors, the central question is what their motives may be.

There could be three possible explanations. First, there is the anxiety over the return of the Iranian diaspora in the post-sanctions era. Baquer and Siamak were both among the Iranian diaspora that returned to Iran in the late 1990s, in the aftermath of the election of Reformist President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), who promoted greater engagement with Iranians abroad. Baquer dedicated his energy to the development of the countrys civil society, and did considerable work for the victims of the 2003 Bam earthquake. Siamak joined a consulting group that helped international investors understand the Iranian market prior to investment decisions. It is possible that these arrests are linked to the desire of some hard-line elements to discourage Iranians abroad from returning. One could conclude that such elements would be concerned about a growing presence of returning Iranians, and especially Iranian-Americans, who would obviously have an influence over how Iranian society will develop in the next decade or so.

Another explanation could be the protection of existing interests. Such economic interests grew considerably under the tenure of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013), partly as a direct result of the attitudes in the Ahmadinejad government and partly due to the existence of sanctions. There are ongoing discussions of the rampant increase in corruption as a result. Though the incumbent government of President Hassan Rouhani has taken some actions to address the issue, there is no doubt that such networks remain strong and are also anxious about the economic reforms that seem to be emerging in post-sanctions Iran and that require much more transparency and a more competitive environment. Within this context, arresting Siamak could be understood as a warning shot to discourage the re-emergence and growth of international businesses  including Iranian-American investors  that may wish to develop business opportunities in Iran. In fact, such an effect can already be registered among Iranian-Americans.

A third scenario could be the intent to link Siamak to an ongoing case. Siamak was a director of Crescent Petroleum (CP), a company based in the United Arab Emirates. Iran had signed a gas export contract with CP in 2001, an agreement that ended up in the court of arbitration in Paris. In fact, over the past few years, the two sides have been locked in a legal battle in which Iran seems to claim that CP made illicit payments to facilitate the contract. A plan to link Siamak to such a case by extracting a statement from him to say that CP was engaged in corrupt dealings at the time would be another scenario.

If this is one of the aims of the arrest, it would be flawed as Siamak was neither employed by CP at the time that the CP agreement was signed, nor was he ever involved in any of CPs Iran-related matters after he joined the company. In fact, the first time Siamak became involved with CP was when he was hired about two years ago, with no Iran-related responsibilities.

Nonetheless, such a plan may explain why Baquer was arrested. His arrest may be a tactic to increase the emotional pressure to obtain some type of statement from Siamak in this respect or in relation to other potential allegations against him. However, it is clear at this stage that any statements or admissions by Siamak or Baquer would be without value, as it is evident that a father and a son would do anything to ease the pressure on the other  no matter the cost.

Regardless of which one of the above motivations is driving the hard-line forces who decided to arrest Baquer and Siamak, they are doomed to fail. What we need to understand is that the majority of Iranian society rejects the highly security-oriented, close-minded and conspiracy-driven views that produce the lies, deceit and slander that is reported on by affiliated media and websites. If anyone had any doubt, just review the results of the twin elections that were held Feb. 26 for parliament and the Assembly of Experts. These hard-line elements see that they are being marginalized by society and need to come up with justifications to continue their actions and operations. Such justifications are now reflected in the notion that the West, and especially the United States, is trying to infiltrate Iran in the aftermath of the nuclear deal. In my view, this is a flawed concept, but it is one based on which they can arrest people and clamp down on civil society and independent media.

It is sad to see that decent people such as Baquer and Siamak have fallen victim to such an unacceptable agenda  no matter what the motivation may be. It remains to be seen whether the Iranian government will be able to stop such elements, which are clearly operating against the desired government policies and especially ones depicting Iran as a more engaging and responsible member of the international community.

One thing is clear: If the Iranian government fails to address these and other arbitrary arrests, the circumstances will certainly undermine the vast potential that the Iranian diaspora and international business have in helping develop Iran.

Note: The author and Siamak Namazi were business partners from 1998 to 2007; the author is also married to Namazi's cousin.
March 1, 2016

With the majority of election results counted, officials from President Hassan Rouhani's administration are looking forward to working with a parliament that  while it continues to include conservatives  has excluded many of the more combative hard-liners.

Perhaps no one is more relieved by the election results than Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Ali Tayebnia. Tayebnia was summoned three times by this parliament and received an official warning each time. According to a report by Iranian Students' News Agency, Tayebnia was on the threshold of being Rouhanis second minister to be impeached. However, all three parliamentarians who summoned Tayebnia failed to win a seat in the future parliament.

The case of Tayebnia shows why these elections were so important for Rouhani. While many economic issues in Iran are far from being addressed, some of the criticism Tayebnia faced seemed more political in nature. He received his first summons just four months after entering the ministry to answer questions in response to comments made by the head of the Central Bank, Valiollah Seif.

Hard-line Iran member of parliament Hamid Rasaei summoned Tayebnia the second time. Though the questions were economic in nature, rumors swirled that Rasaeis issues with the Foreign Ministry and the nuclear deal were the reasons for the summons. Rasaei was disqualified from running again for allegedly secretly making recordings with government officials.

Former Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adviser and hard-line Iran member of parliament Mehrdad Bazrpash brought Tayebnia to parliament the third time to question him regarding policies to raise taxes. After the summons, a recording of all of Bazrpashs accusations was leaked. The recording did not include any of Tayebnias responses. A number of parliamentarians complained afterward that Bazrpashs summons was more political than economic.

At an international car conference March 1, Rouhani struck a conciliatory tone when discussing the election results. He said that regardless of which faction is the majority and which is the minority, more cooperation than before has to be the view of everyone.

As of the latest results, 221 seats of the 290-seat parliament have been chosen. The remaining seats will be determined in a runoff election, though the date is not yet set.

Given the lack of formal party structure in Iran and loose alliance system, the breakdown of Reformist, conservative or moderate can be misleading. For instance, Tasnim News Agency reported that conservatives have the edge so far. However, their list included Speaker Ali Larijani as a conservative. Larijani, while certainly within the traditional conservative camp, ran as an independent in the election and has been allied with the moderate Rouhani on many issues.

What is also notable in the Tasnim list is that there are many independent candidates. In smaller cities in particular, party affiliation is less significant than name recognition and reputation.

According to Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, 62% of eligible voters in the country voted and 50% of eligible voters in Tehran voted. Fazli said that before the elections there were rumors that security institutions in the country would attempt to interfere in the elections, but he said that there was no pressure applied against his ministry throughout the process.
March 1, 2016

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi called Feb. 9 for a major Cabinet reshuffle to include professional figures, technocrats and academics whose names have yet to be revealed. When Abadi was appointed as prime minister-designate on Aug. 11, 2014, he promised to submit a technocrat Cabinet line-up.

Abadis repeated call to form a technocrat Cabinet indicates that he had failed to form the said government at the beginning of his term, due to the political structure of the Iraqi government, which was established and evolved within complex sectarian multi-problematic contexts.

The political structure of the Iraqi government was formed after 2003 in accordance with the US vision for a new Iraq, according to which Iraq is not one country and one nation, but rather it is formed of scattered groups of cultures and communities that must be politically represented within a consensus government.

The provisional Iraqi Governing Council was formed according to this vision on July 13, 2003, by virtue of a decision issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority under the leadership of the United States and represented by Paul Bremer. The Governing Council represented the various Iraqi sects, in particular the three main components: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

This is indeed the essence of the problem. Priority was given to sectarian representation, rather than competence and professionalism. This situation persisted in the next stages with the formation of the Iraqi interim government in June 2004 and the first elected government in April 2006.

Political parties and entities were formed under the sectarian vision and, consequently, Iraqi voters had no other choice but to support their respective sects. This sectarian division was entrenched with time, following the rise and escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq in light of the security threats exchanged between the various sects.

Had Iraq after the US invasion adopted a political approach based on the principle of one country and one nation, it would have been possible to lay the first building block of its political system on a nonsectarian basis and according to the criteria of competence and professionalism required to manage the country's situation. Had this been the case, Iraqs political regime would have become similar to the regimes of numerous other countries with cultural diversity, where respect for diversity and the rights of religious sects is not necessarily linked to political representation in the government.

This is the model adopted in several Western countries such as Britain and the United States, as well as in some Asian countries such as India.

The sectarian quota system implemented in 2003 affected competence and professionalism in the Iraqi government, since according to this system, political blocs that are directly or indirectly associated with a specific sect are required to nominate individuals to political positions that are conferred to each of them as per the quota system.

Consequently, the designation of ministers, directors and other governmental positions became subjected to sectarian and political affiliations. Governments succeeded and the same figures moved from one position to another, irrespective of the level of competency and professionalism.

For example, Baqir Jabr al-Zubeidi, holder of a bachelor's degree in civil engineering obtained in 1969, was appointed minister of construction and housing in 2003-2004, minister of the interior in 2005-2006, minister of finance in 2006-2010 and most recently minister of transport in 2014 to date.

No individual can be specialized, competent and professional in all of those positions. Yet, Zubeidi was able to move from one position to another since he was affiliated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), which include the Citizens Coalition  in which Zubeidi is still a leading member  and the Badr Organization. ISCI is one of the main Shiite forces that participated in the formation of the Iraqi political regime after the US invasion in 2003. Each political party that gains some seats in the parliament and participates in the government has the right to appoint some of the ministers.

The political quota system is one of the main causes of the rampant corruption in the Iraqi government, since official positions are always distributed among specific figures affiliated with specific parliamentary blocs. For a political bloc to achieve a specific objective within the government and gain the parliament confidence it has to form alliances with other groups. This situation creates a suitable environment for maintaining these blocs mutual interests within such a closed structure that lacks democratic supervision and promotes corruption.

Abadis declaration of his intention to introduce a Cabinet reshuffle to reform the Iraqi government and raise the level of professionalism and competency stirred various reactions by the political blocs participating in the government. On Feb. 13, Muqtada al-Sadr, the head of the Sadrist parliamentary bloc, voiced his strong support for the formation of a government of technocrats and gave Abadi a one-year time limit to achieve this goal, or he will withdraw the confidence from Abadis government through his bloc.

Most other political entities opposed Abadis idea and were sceptical about his intentions behind the sought Cabinet reshuffle. Ammar al-Hakim, head of the Citizens Coalition, said in a Feb. 14 speech in Baghdad that Abadis contemplated ministerial change must include Abadi himself, who was designated the position of prime minister under the quota system as well.

Ayad Allawi, head of the National Coalition (Al-Wataniya), commented in a statement Feb. 16 on the prime ministers Cabinet reshuffle intention, saying, I do not find a justification for this replacement of figures; a road map must be developed and implemented.

All the political parties are afraid that the changes would undermine their political influence in favor of their rivals in power amid a prevailing mistrust between the various political partners, as concerns arise that Abadi will remove their affiliated figures and appoint new figures affiliated with him or his party. The parties in the current government  such as the Dawa Oarty, Citizens Coalition, Sadrist Bloc and Al-Wataniya  fear Abadi would gain more influence by excluding political figures affiliated with his competing political blocs and replacing them with semi-technocrats close to him.

Forming a government of technocrats seems to be a tough row to hoe, or even an impossible mission. But what Abadi can and should do is to polarize professionals, technocrats and academics within the state-owned strategic studies organizations, which shall provide the government with scientific programs and schemes applicable in Iraq, and that the country currently lacks. The reform project advocated by Abadi lacks so far a tangible program and scheme. Banking on the technocrats within national research centers may pave the way for the rise of this class to the top of the political hierarchy through the formation of nonsectarian political parties in the upcoming elections in Iraq.

In a recent development, Sadr organized a mass demonstration Feb. 26 in Baghdad against corruption and the failure of Abadis government. He repeated his demand of forming a technocrat Cabinet and ending the sectarian quota. Abadi is now under great pressure from the public and from some political parties, such as the Sadrists, to make a serious reformist change in the government  but such a step requires a fundamental change, which he may not be able to achieve.
March 1, 2016

Five months ago this week, the individual intifada erupted. Since then, Israel has been staying the course, believing that it can contain the unrest as long as armed Palestinian organizations and armed members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) stay out of it.

But two separate statements this week  one from Beirut and the other from Jerusalem  cast doubt on the assumption that this policy will be able to prevent the unrest from escalating into widespread violence. Such a shift would require Israel to dramatically change its deployment of troops and resources.

During a Feb. 29 talk at Bar Ilan University, Minister of Immigrant Absorption Zeev Elkin, a member of the security Cabinet, offered his assessment that the Oslo Accord and the PA will fall apart as soon as President Mahmoud Abbas time in office is over.

The breakdown of the PA is not a question of if, but when, and Israel must prepare itself for that inevitability, Elkin told his audience, adding that he had given up trying to initiate serious talk about the problem behind closed doors.

How, exactly, should Israel prepare itself? Is a worried Elkin planning to call on the Israel Defense Forces to retake the West Bank and annex it once the PA collapses? Or, perhaps, will he expect the security establishment to lay out a defensive strategy that includes sealing off the West Bank?

So far, Israel has taken no real steps that indicate it is worried about a PA collapse. Maybe this has something to do with Abbas comments Jan. 6 that the PA is one of the Palestinian peoples greatest achievements, and that no one should dare think of bringing it down. In response to Elkins remarks, Palestinian security spokesman Adnan al-Damiri said that talking about the PAs collapse is little more than wishful thinking.

Is that so?

This week, my Al-Monitor colleague Adnan Abu Amer wrote an article headlined, Why donor countries are giving less to the Palestinians. Examining the figures he cites from the PAs budget, it is evident there has been a dramatic drop in international donations, which is making it difficult for the government to function. The only countries that met their 2015 financial commitments to the PA were Saudi Arabia ($240 million) and Algeria ($52 million). The two of them are not enough to keep the PA alive for very long.

This is where Saudi Arabias big rival, Iran, enters the picture. Last week, Iran's ambassador in Beirut, Mohammad Fathali, announced that Tehran will pay $7,000 to the families of each Palestinian who died committing attacks in Israel and an additional $30,000 each if Israel demolished their family homes.

Iranian assistance to the Palestinians has seen its ups and downs in the past. Still, this is the first time anything like this has been announced publicly, without fear of international censure. The reason could very well be that the nuclear agreement with the superpowers has already been signed.

A Palestinian Fatah source told Al-Monitor this week that Fathalis statement can only be interpreted as a clear attempt by Iran to gain a foothold in the West Bank. According to him, the intent is so obvious, Iran isn't even trying to hide it.

It looks like Iran understands that what is happening now in the PA will have far-reaching, significant consequences. A full-blown intifada could shift priorities abruptly, and if Iran stakes a claim in the West Bank, it could influence the character of Palestine on the very next day. Irans interest in the region and its involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are nothing new, and Iran's past behavior gives some indication of the way it thinks.

When the PA was first established, Tehran transferred a few tens of millions of dollars to it per year  modest sums by Iranian standards. Once the second intifada erupted in 2000, Iran not only increased funding for PLO leader Yasser Arafat, it promised him weapons and ammunition to engage the Israelis in all-out war. Until then, Iran regarded Hamas as an impotent movement with no way of competing against Israel.

This attitude changed over time. Hamas suicide attacks during the second intifada earned it a reputation as the movement spearheading the uprising and diverted Iranian money from Fatahs pockets to Hamas. New ties between Tehran and Gaza strengthened the groups military wing, ultimately enabling it to throw the PAs forces out of Gaza in 2007 and seize the territory for itself.

Now Iran is trying yet again to get a foothold in the West Bank. Its money will probably not go into the PAs coffers, since the government is considered to be collaborating with Israel. Rather, it will go to individual families through Islamic welfare institutions that assist Palestinians in the occupied territories.

These institutions tend to be identified with Hamas and operate freely throughout the West Bank. Even when Hamas' relations with Iran chilled following the outbreak of the Syria war, Iran continued supporting the groups. Iran's generosity will make life much easier for the institutions and strengthen their influence across the West Bank. Therefore, while Abbas certainly understands the significance of an Iranian foothold in the territories, he is utterly unable to take on these charitable organizations.

Both Israel and Iran are fully capable of identifying the processes that will lead to the inevitable collapse of the PA. But while Iran is being proactive and investing resources to prepare for the day after, Israel is standing idle with its eyes tightly shut.

Many long years of diplomatic stalemate, the absence of any solution on the horizon and all of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus efforts to prove to the world that Abbas is no partner could result in the situation Israel fears most: chaos in the PA and Iranian influence in the West Bank.

After years of warning the world about Iran, Netanyahu is now practically swinging the door wide open to allow Iranians into the PA. Those who did not want Abbas as PA chairman may yet find that it is the Iranians who will pick his successor.
March 1, 2016

The repercussions of the Palestinian division have been plaguing the Palestinian scene since 2007. All previous agreements have failed to bridge the gap between the two conflicting parties, Fatah and Hamas. The first agreement was reached in Mecca in February 2007, and then in Yemen in August 2007, followed by the Cairo agreement in December 2011, the Doha agreement in February 2012 and finally the Beach Refugee Camp agreement in April 2014.

All of these agreements have failed to put an end to this division, despite being officially sponsored by Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar. Fatah and Hamas are both clinging to their positions and refuse to make the required concessions in order to reach common ground.

Fatah insists that Hamas should relinquish some of its power in the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since mid-2007, and hand over the Rafah crossing to the Palestinian presidency. Meanwhile, Hamas insists that Fatah should recognize the events that have occurred since 2007, including the salary crisis for government employees in Gaza.

On Feb. 7-8, Qatars capital Doha, through its Foreign Ministry, was able to schedule meetings between Fatah and Hamas to discuss the mechanisms of implementing the reconciliation and address the obstacles that have prevented its achievement in the past. During the meetings, both parties discussed the mechanisms and steps to implement reconciliation within an agreed-upon timetable. The talks were held in an atmosphere of media secrecy in order to avoid any media leaks.

Meanwhile, Hamas issued a brief statement Feb. 8 in which it stated that the parties had reached a practical vision that will be discussed and agreed upon in both movements leaderships, with factions and national figures, in order to start implementing it on the ground. Remarkably enough, Fatah did not comment on the meetings in Doha and no statement was issued in this regard, while the Palestinian factions issued a statement on the Doha meetings on Feb. 7.

In the statement, Palestinian factions expressed their hope that the meeting would produce serious results to end the existing differences and to start the implementation of previous agreements. They also warned against repeating the same scenario of failed negotiations in light of the worsening situation of the Palestinians, the ongoing blockade and the Israeli expanding presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Abdullah Abdullah, Fatah leader and head of the Palestinian Legislative Councils (PLC) political committee, told Al-Monitor, Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is subject to the latter ceding its control of the Gaza Strip. If it does not do so, there is no way that this reconciliation can be implemented. Although both parties have been making mistakes in Gaza and the West Bank, reconciliation should not be impeded. Even though the regional developments and the Israeli pressure on Palestinians make it imperative for the two sides to reach reconciliation, I cannot give the public opinion an inaccurate sense of optimism.

In the midst of talk about reconciliation, Fatah and Hamas exchanged aggressive statements, which could undermine the reconciliation efforts. One of these statements was made by Maj. Gen. Jibril Rajoub, member of Fatahs Central Committee, on Feb. 23 about not allowing Hamas to continue to seize Gaza.

On the same day, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that Rajoubs statements raise tension and do not serve the reconciliation.

Despite such statements, a Qatari official following up on the reconciliation talks in Doha told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Fatah and Hamas agreed not to speak to the media about the details of the reconciliation and avoid statements that could cause tension, in light of past experiences that had previously impeded reconciliation because of statements issued here and there.

Meanwhile, Yousef Rizqa, the former minister of information in the previous Hamas government, told Al-Monitor, The future of the Doha reconciliation talks does not seem positive and we cannot build [a position] upon them in light of the internal Fatah disputes over whether or not to aim for a reconciliation. It seemed to me that the meetings did not offer convincing solutions for fundamental issues, such as the future of the [government] employees in Gaza who have not been paid since 2006 or the Rafah crossing, which is constantly being closed. In addition, Egypt has not given Fatah the green light to complete reconciliation with Hamas, because it seems Cairo will not accept Qatars success in a matter in which Egypt has failed.

Although after the first round of meetings in Doha both Fatah and Hamas agreed to hold a second round by the end of February, no meetings were held and no explanations were given.

A senior official in Fatahs Central Committee, who is familiar with the reconciliation dialogue process and who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor on March 1, Any new meeting with Hamas in Doha depends on the outcome of an upcoming meeting between Fatahs Central Committee and its Revolutionary Council, which will discuss the future of interests with Hamas.

Meanwhile, Hamas leader Ismail Radwan said Feb. 20 that Fatah and Hamas will hold a new meeting in Doha in the coming days to agree on the schedule of implementation of the reconciliation issues.

Hani al-Masri, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat) in Ramallah and a prominent political analyst seeking to bridge the gap between Fatah and Hamas, told Al-Monitor, The available information does not encourage the reconciliation in light of the existing differences within each group over whether or not to go forward with a reconciliation. There are also significant obstacles facing the implementation of reconciliation, such as the call to hold a PLC session or the formation of the next Palestinian government. However, we continue to make efforts for talks to be a success this time.

Although the Palestinian people are in desperate need for reconciliation in light of the deteriorating political, security and economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza, reconciliation is being stalled, as the Doha meetings stopped after their first round. It seems that Hamas fears it would have to give up the Gaza Strip for Fatah to accept reconciliation and perhaps Fatah fears the wrath of Israel and Washington should it go for reconciliation with Hamas.

Yet more importantly, reconciliation could take a while since Egypt is not involved, while its No. 1 rival, Qatar, is. Thus, Cairo might not allow this reconciliation to crystallize as it believes the Palestinian affairs are an internal Egyptian issue in which no other country is allowed to interfere. It should be noted that relations between Cairo and Doha are currently tense as Qatar received icons of the Muslim Brotherhood. This could create rivalry between the two parties in achieving a breakthrough in the Palestinian reconciliation issue. However, Egypt seems reassured with regard to the stances of both Hamas and Fatah that have confirmed that the reconciliation will be made only under Egyptian auspices as it has been present since the beginning of the Palestinian split in 2007.
March 1, 2016

AMUDA, Syria  Amid the ongoing war ravaging Syria, particularly the Kurdish regions, infighting among the Kurds continues, as does the Kurdish-Arab conflict. As the Syrian revolution enters its fifth year, areas like Homs and Hama have been brought to ruin and their inhabitants have either been forced out or fled.

Despite the wide unrest, Kurdish regions (Rojava) affected by the spillovers of the Syrian crisis have generally been able to maintain their infrastructure and institutions dating back to the Syrian regimes rule.

Akram Hesso, a graduate of Aleppo Universitys law school, holds the post of prime minister of Jazeera canton. From Amuda, he spoke to Al-Monitor about the difficulties and problems his people are facing and the sacrifices they made to preserve the safety of the Kurdish regions.

The text of the interview follows:

Al-Monitor: Can you describe the current situation on the ground? Who are the main stakeholders? And do you believe that you are alone in this, or do you have partners?

Hesso: All the people of Rojava, including Arabs and Assyrians, are represented by the joint democratic autonomous administration under Kurdish leadership. So this is the current situation on the ground in Rojava, Kurdistan. The self-governance regime incorporates services and military institutions, in addition to the formation of a self-defense duty force. This national institution has proven effective internally and externally, as it has been able, within two years of its establishment, to overcome many challenges, while assuming a leading role throughout this period and finding a formula for building a new Syria. We are talking about a federal Syria founded upon the historical and geographical facts of these peoples.

Al-Monitor: How will you maintain control over your regions in the current circumstances?

Hesso: The autonomous administration relies on its military force, which can also protect the areas it liberates. Our main challenge is the lack of financial support and services [generally provided by the Kurdish diaspora] given the growing burdens. In the areas liberated by our forces, the autonomous administration is the one providing daily necessities and medical care for the inhabitants regardless of their ethnicity.

Al-Monitor: The Syrian National Democratic Council was proclaimed on Dec. 8-9, 2015, before the Riyadh conference held on Dec. 12, 2015. What is the purpose behind it?

Hesso: The SNDC was the product of negotiations between the key players on the ground holding the reins of any political and military decision. Although the SNDC attended the Riyadh conference, the latter is different insofar as it serves certain regional agendas and interests that are not in line with the Syrian peoples public interest. The elected council included the parties that attended the Riyadh conference, not to mention that interventions were obvious in the formation of the negotiating delegation, thus proving the unworthiness of the conferences decisions. None of the decisions reached in Riyadh have been applied on the ground and they did not benefit the Syrian people.

Al-Monitor: What is your goal now, especially since your demand to attend Geneva III was denied? Why do you think this happened?

Hesso: We support any conference that calls for a political solution in Syria, but according to certain fundamental principles. Our exclusion from Geneva III was due to regional pressure from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as other parties within the National Coalition for Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. It is fair to say that the autonomous administration is one of the parties that could really benefit from Geneva III, notably since some international parties insisted that we take part, which is actually an important accomplishment for us. By those parties I am referring to Russia and the United States, for if it werent for US support, there would not have been a high-level meeting the day after the Geneva peace talks in Rojava. The visiting delegation to Rojava included military officials headed by US presidential special envoy Brett McGurk, the commander of the international coalition against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the commander of the British special forces and the commander of the French special forces. It was a high-level delegation and meetings were held over a period of two days, in addition to a meeting with the autonomous administrations coordinating body that lasted for a whole day. The meetings discussed the proposal to establish a Syrian federal government, which the autonomous administration supports as a solution, and a new pact for a social contract. This federal state should be founded on the historical and geographical facts of these peoples, especially the Kurds.

Al-Monitor: As you tighten your grip on the Syrian part of Kurdistan and Rojava, how do you plan to provide for the welfare of the people and mitigate the effects of rising prices to avoid what happened in Madaya?

Hesso: The Turkish government is imposing an unjust blockade against us because of its policy and the failure of IS, which Turkey helped create, in the Kurdish regions. We are also suffering from a blockade and several obstacles imposed by the Iraqis, especially our brothers in Bashur in Iraqi Kurdistan, and this is the result of conflicting policies on certain issues. But we have a solid infrastructure in Rojava. And as an autonomous administration with the labor force in Rojava, we are seeking to rebuild the infrastructure after all the destruction it has sustained. As for the problem of price increases and living expenses, it is worth remembering that the Middle East region in general is facing this problem. The main reason is the appreciation of the US dollar.

Al-Monitor: Do you maintain any political relations with Kurdistan or the Turkish government?

Hesso: Ever since the autonomous administration was established, we have been extending the hand of friendship to the people of Bashur, since we consider ourselves the same people with the same geography. But due to certain positions regarding a number of issues, such as the political situation and the relations between the Kurdish parties in Rojava, differences of opinion are bound to arise. But when we say differences we do not mean disagreement, as there are no disputes between Rojava and Bashur, and it is only a matter of different views and interpretation on certain issues. We are doing the best we can to overcome the obstacles in order to establish better relations.

As for the Turkish government, the autonomous administration made sure to reach out to our Turkish brothers as part of a good neighbor policy. Despite the Turkish involvement in Rojava and Syria, the autonomous administration is keen to have good relations with the Turkish people, who should exercise more pressure on President Recep Tayyip Erdogans government, which has been harming our neighborly relations.

Al-Monitor: What is the nature of your strategic relations with Europe and the United States, particularly after the visit of the Western delegations, including those of former French Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Kouchner and the latest US delegations to the Rojava region following Geneva III?

Hesso: Since the outbreak of the Rojava revolution, we noticed a systematic marginalization from the part of several regional countries that are against any neighboring Kurdish entity  this includes Turkey, and even the Syrian opposition, which is calling for democracy, while they are far from being democratic themselves. However, the fight of the Rojava peoples under Kurdish leadership has earned international legitimacy as the true defender of democracy in the Middle East aiming to build a new federal Syria for all its people. Therefore, our relationship with Europe and the international coalition is based on mutual interests in establishing a democratic rule in Syria, defeating IS and finally establishing a new order in a new Middle East so that all the people in Syria claim their rights, especially the Kurdish people.

Al-Monitor: Are you able to lead this Kurdish region alone and independently from the Kurdish National Council? Are there any ongoing relations or talks?

Hesso: The KNC is a political umbrella that encompasses part of the Kurds in Rojava. However, some political parties took advantage of this council, stripping it of its name and status and usurping its political decisions. But the democratic autonomous administration has built everything we have now away from the KNC, and using its own powers with the support of its people and the historic resistance of the heroes of the People's Protection Units, as well as the Women's Protection Units and Asayish Rojava on the battlefields, and the sacrifices they made to build Rojava. So the democratic autonomous administration, with all its people, is capable of running not only Rojava but all of Syria.
March 1, 2016

WASHINGTON  The US State Department said March 1 it was encouraged that a partial cease-fire that went into effect Feb. 27 in Syria appeared to be largely holding, with no significant violations reported over the past 24 hours. The cautiously optimistic assessment of the three-day-old cessation of hostilities came as UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura announced that he would host resumed talks between Syrian government and opposition delegations in Geneva starting March 9, which would last up to three weeks.

The early results are encouraging, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters March 1, referring to the cessation of hostilities in Syria.

Over the last 24 hours, we have not been apprised of any claims of additional violence of any significance, Kirby said. For the first time in five years, you can actually see a notable reduction in violence of an organized nature.

The cautiously upbeat assessment came amid signs that the United States and Russia were largely satisfied with each others implementation of the partial cease-fire deal to date and the UN plans to relaunch a political reconciliation process to try to put Syria on a more lasting path to de-escalation and stability.

The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) cease-fire task force, co-chaired by the United States and Russia, held meetings Feb. 29 in Geneva. De Mistura, following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on March 1, said intra-Syrian talks would resume in Geneva on March 9.

"We are delaying it to the afternoon of [March] 9th for logistical and technical reasons and also for the cease-fire to better settle down," de Mistura told Reuters. A resident correspondent at the United Nations in Geneva, Dina Abi-Saab, said a Geneva motor show was taking up most of the citys hotel space, making it too difficult to hold the Syria negotiations before then.

Overall, things seem to be moving in the right direction, a diplomat involved in the international consultations on the cease-fire, speaking not for attribution, told Al-Monitor on March 1. The US and Russia appear to be working well together. Clearly there are issues that require more careful attention  but my impression is that they both want to make things work.

The news we are receiving from inside Syria is that the people are optimistic, the diplomat said.

This is critical for the [cessation of hostilities] to hold. There has been a significant drop in air raids and shelling as well as in casualties.

Having said that, things can still go wrong, the diplomat added. The next few days will be critical.

This is arguably the most complex cessation of hostilities that anyone has attempted to implement, with over 100 armed groups on the ground in Syria fighting an asymmetric conflict, another diplomatic observer said on condition of anonymity. Its to everyones benefit to use the ISSG and UN processes to thoroughly investigate any allegations of violations while not letting unconfirmed reports derail the progress made thus far.

As we have said from the beginning of this cessation of hostilities process, challenges are to be expected, a senior US administration official told Al-Monitor on March 1. But the United States, the UN and other partners are working hard to defuse violence where it arises. It is in all of our interests, and especially the interests of the Syrian people, to give this process a chance. This is a real opportunity to reduce the violence the Syrian people have endured for far too long.

After the White House last week said that Russia was on the hook for the success of the partial Syria cease-fire, US confidence appeared to be growing somewhat this week that Russia was serious about trying to make it work.

Randa Slim, a Middle East Institute Levant expert who attended discussions in Russia last week, said Russian officials appear to want to seize the Syria diplomatic opportunity now because they fear a quagmire, their aims have largely been met and they fear what the United States might do if the current peace effort fails.

They are really worried, Slim told Al-Monitor on March 1, referring to Russian officials. They are starting to realize they need this to work; otherwise, they will be stuck in a quagmire.

The experts meeting in Russia last week were led to believe that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin himself who made the decision that Russia would not make a big fuss about some jihadi groups, such as Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, not being included on a list of armed groups that would be formally excluded from the partial cease-fire, along with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, Slim said.

Russian officials also expressed concerns about recent American talk of a Plan B if the current process collapses.

'We dont have a Plan B,' Slim cited Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. 'We are concerned about Plan B.'

Russian officials were apparently alarmed by media reports of Secretary of State John Kerry testifying at congressional hearings last week and talking about a partition of Syria being the potential outcome if current Syria peacemaking efforts fail.

Kirby reiterated at State Department press briefings this week that what Kerry was describing was not the desired US plan but what Kerry feared could happen if the current peacemaking effort fails, the war escalates and the countrys factions become further irreconcilable.

Kerry was describing his fear of what could happen, Kirby said March 1. Not what he wants to happen.

There is only one goal: That is a whole, unified, nonsectarian Syria, administered by a government the Syrians had a hand in choosing, that does not include [Bashar al-] Assad, Kirby said. Partition is not Plan B.
March 1, 2016

President Barack Obama's legacy in Syria is one of undelivered promises and red lines crossed, according to Al-Monitor interviews with more than a dozen US decision-makers.

On the eve of the five-year anniversary of the 2011 uprising, lawmakers and former administration officials shared their reflections on the key moments that have shaped recent US policy in Syria. They paint a picture of a president who hoped to guide events on the ground but was never willing to commit the full weight of America's military and diplomatic arsenal to get his way.

A timeline of US policy in Syria. Click here for a full screen (best viewed on desktop or tablet).

The bitter fruits of the world's failure to end the Syrian slaughter  more than 250,000 dead and the worst refugee crisis since World War II  are well known. To mark the anniversary, Al-Monitor is releasing an interactive timeline featuring exclusive audio interviews with 14 key players that shed light on the main US policy inflexion points, from the half-hearted support for the Syrian opposition to last month's cease-fire agreement with Russia. The timeline, interspersed with key pronouncements from Obama and other top officials, runs for a little more than 30 minutes.

At the root of the Obama policy's failure, argues former Ambassador Ryan Crocker, was the mistaken impression that Bashar al-Assad would be as easy to dislodge as other dictators felled by the Arab Spring. As ambassador to Syria, Crocker had formed firsthand impressions of the Syrian regime's "near-perfect police state" in one-on-one discussions with the future Syrian leader in the late 1990s, but no one in the administration asked for his opinion before announcing that Assad had to go.

"It's Diplomacy 101: Never set a policy if you don't have the means to achieve it," Crocker told Al-Monitor. "That was a policy based on hope, which we all know is a fairly idiotic concept."

The Aug. 18, 2011, pronouncement was followed by a series of efforts to train, equip and later arm Syrian opposition forces in a gambit to strengthen their hand in negotiations over a political settlement. But the effort was hamstrung from the beginning by the absence of a safe zone where they could be trained in bulk instead of piecemeal, and Assad refused to make any concessions.

"Help to the opposition has always been kind of half-hearted," said Robert Ford, who was ambassador to Damascus from 2011 to 2014. "And, by contrast, the Iranians and Russians have not been so half-hearted."

Then came Obama's red line on chemical weapons, and his threat to finally bomb Assad. While the president has earned kudos for getting Assad to turn over most if not all of his arsenal, lawmakers and administration officials alike argue that failing to go through with the strike sent an unmistakable signal that Obama was keen to avoid military confrontation.

Now the United States and Russia are negotiating a cease-fire that critics say will keep Assad in power for the foreseeable future while moderate rebels continue to lose ground to the Islamic State and other radical groups.

"The strong backing of Russia and Iran have allowed him to hang on to power," House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., told Al-Monitor, "and the administration has drawn so many red lines and backed away that it no longer has the leverage  or the will  to make him go."
March 1, 2016

In an unusually candid interview with Al Jazeera Feb. 23, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu admitted to aiding anti-Assad groups in Syria, claiming that Turkey had done more than most Arab countries in this respect.

Speaking a few days after Saudi Arabias Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir put to rest speculation that Turkey and his country were preparing for a ground operation in Syria, Davutoglu made several remarks that are bound to go down badly in Moscow and Tehran, suggesting that Ankara is betting on a defeat of the Syrian regime and its principal allies Russia and Iran, much like the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He also said Turkey would not actively intervene in Syria because it was not confident of support from Arab countries, citing the condemnation by the Arab League of the deployment of Turkish troops in Bashiqa near Mosul on Dec. 3.

Davutoglus remarks revealed that the Arab Leagues reaction to the Bashiqa deployment, the complaint lodged at the UN Security Council by the Iraqi government and the lack of support from Arab countries for this deployment still rankle in Ankara.

Jubeir told Agence France-Presse on Feb. 18 that any special forces sent by Saudi Arabia to Syria would only fight the Islamic State, underlining that they would not get involved in unilateral operations against the Syrian regime unless an international coalition was established for this purpose. Jubeirs remark deflated growing expectations in some quarters of the Islamist and pro-government Turkish media that Turkey and Saudi Arabia, with their own coalition of the willing, were preparing to intervene in Syria.

Davutoglus remarks followed reports in the Turkish press that Moscow was in touch with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Turkeys principal allies in Syria, prior to the Syrian cease-fire. These reports provided further evidence for anti-government quarters' concerns that Davutoglus policies have left Turkey isolated in the region.

Asked by Al Jazeera what needs to happen for Turkey and other countries to intervene in Syria, Davutoglu defensively corrected the impression that Ankara was merely issuing condemnations over Syria and little else. He said, I salute the heroic Syrian people in Aleppo and everywhere in Syria. They resisted against the regime. They resisted against Hezbollah, they resisted against Iran, they resisted against extremist Shiite terrorism, they resisted against [IS] terrorism, now they are resisting against Russia.

He added, How were they able to defend themselves if there was no Turkish support for the Syrian people? Could they be defending Aleppo or was it possible for them to survive? So if there is today a real Syrian moderate opposition, it is because of Turkish support. If today the regime is not able to control all the territories, this is because of Turkish and some other countries' support.

Asked who will stop the Russian bombing and Irans involvement in Syria, he said, All of us, but first, the heroic Syrian people. Like the Afghans defeated the Soviets. I am sure one day the heroic Syrian people will defeat all these forces. And Turkey will be with the Syrian people.

Davutoglus remarks were taken as a confession of Ankaras clandestine involvement in Syrias civil war and condemned by opposition parties in Turkey.

This is a confession that Turkey is involved in a proxy war and the threat against Syrias territorial integrity, while working to secure the dominance of terrorist organizations there, Oktay Vural, the spokesman for the Nationalist Movement Party, said in a statement reacting to Davutoglus remarks.

Riza Turmen, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights who is currently a member of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said Davutoglus remarks reflected an intervention in Syria that violated international law, adding that the matter is under the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Bringing up the question of unilateral Turkish intervention in Syria himself during the interview, Davutoglu said he was asked about this by a very important Arab statesman. He said, We sent military trainers and some troops to defend them in order to liberate Mosul. We sent them into Bashiqa, and the Arab League has condemned Turkey. Now those who are asking us questions, they have to look at themselves. Which Arab country did more  I am not criticizing all Arab friends  did more than Turkey?

He added, And why, when Turkey went to Mosul to liberate Mosul, to help Mosul, has the Arab League condemned Turkey and asked it to withdraw? Who will guarantee us, if we militarily intervene, that Arab countries will be defending and supporting this?

Davutoglu knows, of course, that this was not the first time the Arab League has criticized Turkey for sending troops to an Arab country. It has condemned every ground operation by the Turkish armed forces against the Kurdistan Workers Party camps in northern Iraq, saying Ankara had violated the sovereign rights of an Arab country.

Al-Monitor asked Murat Ozcelik, a retired diplomat who was the governments special envoy to Iraq in 2006 prior to becoming ambassador to Iraq in 2007, what lay behind Davutoglus apparent lack of confidence in Arab countries.

Ozcelik answered from another angle, saying that the lack of confidence in Turkey by Arab countries has a long history, one that Davutoglu had chosen to disregard in the past. He said, In recent times, Davutoglu also misread the significance of Arab nationalism and viewed all of the Arab countries in the Middle East in the Islamic framework, assuming that they would fall behind an ascendant Turkey. That was a mistake and he is now trying to readjust the situation with such statements.

Ozcelik, who is currently a CHP member, said there is also a perception among Arab regimes that Turkey aided radical Islamist groups in Syria, including IS, which they consider a threat.

Ankaras support for the Muslim Brotherhood was frowned upon by most Arab regimes, Ozcelik said, adding, Their lack of confidence in Turkey has inevitably resulted in Ankaras lack of confidence in them.
March 1, 2016

Turkeys strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going the extra mile in his trajectory of authoritarianism by challenging a Constitutional Court ruling.

The Constitutional Court issued a ruling Feb. 25 on the case of two imprisoned journalists, Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar and the daily's Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul. The pair had been behind bars for the past three months, accused of espionage because of a news story that included images showing weapon transfers from Turkey to Syrian jihadi opposition factions.

Their high-profile case received international attention and became quite controversial. Even US Vice President Joe Biden, during his recent visit to Istanbul, met with the journalists' families. In a poignant show of solidarity, he told Dundars son that he could be proud of his father.

The Constitutional Court last week ruled that the men's imprisonment violated their rights. The courts ruling compelled their release. The ruling was received by rejoicing crowds in front of the prison during the early hours of Feb. 27. The court  the highest judiciary body in Turkey  set a precedent that inspires hope for some 31 journalists who are still behind bars.

There was no doubt that the Constitutional Court ruling would upset Erdogan, but few predicted that he would openly challenge it with bristling remarks. Yet he did.

I am neither obeying nor respecting the Constitutional Courts ruling, he said, as he was about to embark on a trip to West Africa covering Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Guinea. His statement was published on the presidency's website. "Let me be clear that this event has nothing to do with freedom of expression. This is a case of spying.

Although stressing that he fully supports freedom of expression, Erdogan said no one can attack the country under the guise of liberty.

"This is spying, [and] intelligence organizations in every country have almost infinite legal power  and so they cant be interfered with so easily by any ordinary prosecutor, he added.

Now, after our departure, there will be a lot of turbulence behind us over my statement, he said, signaling that he was aware of the possible dramatic ramifications of his statement.

He was right. His statement crashed onto the already-tense political agenda of Turkey like a bombshell. However, Erdogan hasnt backtracked. That means my statement was well-directed, he said.

More than being well-directed, his statement was problematic regarding the nature of the regime in Turkey. In a democratic country, the presidents disapproval of a court ruling is moot. Yet in an autocratic, totalitarian or theocratic regime, nobody can speak about the separation of powers.

Turkey has become a hybrid country in this respect  a quasi-democracy. Thus, when the strongman president announces his disapproval of a ruling by the Constitutional Court, no one knows where the resulting controversy might lead or how it should be resolved.

Contesting a Constitutional Court ruling means opening up a discussion over the constitution and consequently the legitimacy of the president himself.

A former Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights, Riza Turmen, interpreted Erdogans statement. This means nonrecognition of the state of law. This means, 'I do not care about the decisions of the state of law,' thus terminating the state of law. If such a statement is made, what if some people do not respect the constitutional status of the president? With such talk, the legitimacy of the president could be put into debate.

It is very difficult to doubt Erdogan's political savvy. So why did he make such a statement?

Most probably, he does not appreciate any action that could challenge his quest for unlimited personal power. Except for the military, the Constitutional Court is the most important institution  in terms of checks and balances  that might contain him.

Erdogan does not want any checks and balances. He feels such a mechanism could jeopardize his political survival. For Erdogan, democracy is becoming more and more a straitjacket.
Golden State Foods Rendering.jpg

A rendering of the new 165,000 square-foot, state of the art Golden State Foods meat processing facility under construction in Opelika. (Opelika Economic Development)

Construction has begun on the new 165,000 square-foot, state of the art Golden State Foods meat processing facility in Opelika.

Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller, Alabama Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield and Golden State Foods Corp Chairman and CEO Mark Wetterau participated in a groundbreaking ceremony held Wednesday morning at the Northeast Opelika Industrial Park.

The capital investment in the facility is estimated to be $63 million. GSF will create 173 new jobs in Opelika.

"Today is another great day in the City of Opelika as we welcome our new partner, Golden State Foods," Fuller said. "We know they will provide great opportunities for our citizens and be a true community partner."

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif, Golden State Foods is one of the largest diversified suppliers to the Quick Service Restaurant and retail industries. Established in 1947, GSF currently services more than 125,000 restaurants from its 45 locations on five continents. It has approximately 5,000 associates worldwide.

"Alabama's economic development team works hard every day to bring great companies like Golden State Foods to our state, and we'll continue to support this significant project in Opelika to build on the partnership we've developed with the company," Canfield said.

Last month, Wayne Morgan, Golden State Foods Corp. vice president, said Opelika was selected for its strategic location along Interstate 85, the available workforce and the atmosphere of industry and government cooperation."
Two career events will take place soon for job seekers in the Huntsville area.

(freedigitalphotos.net)

The Alliance for Opportunity and Development (AOD) said the Huntsville Housing Authority and Terry Heights Hillandale Neighborhood will host a public resume/interview workshop from 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesday at the Oscar Mason Community Center on 149 Mason Court N.W.

Attendees will learn interview skills and how to make their resumes stand out. The free event will be held a few days before the fourth-annual AOD Community Career Event so job seekers can be better prepared to meet potential employers.

The career fair will occur from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. March 16 at the Jaycee Building off Airport Road. The no-degree required event is expected to be AOD's largest career fair ever.

Last year, AOD welcomed 46 employers, 10 schools, six nonprofits and about 250 unemployed or underemployed residents. Other stats from 2015 include:

49 job offers made

87 interviews conducted

275 interviews scheduled after the career fair

994 referrals made for online applications

The AOD Community Career Event is funded by a grant from Wal-Mart and supported by volunteers with the AOD board, J.F. Drake State Community and Technical College, Quantech Services, and more.

For more information, visit aod-alabama.org and click the career fair tab.
Katt Williams

This police booking photo released by the Gainesville Police Department on Monday, March 1, 2016 shows comedian Katt Williams after being arrested following an alleged altercation with an employee of a pool supply business. Hall County sheriff's Deputy Nicole Bailes said in an email that Williams faces a misdemeanor battery charge and was being held on $5,000 bond. (AP Photo/Gainesville Police Department)

(Picasa)

Comedian Katt Williams was arrested Monday on a battery charge in Georgia after a store employee told police that Williams punched him during an argument.

Gainesville police officers responded to an assault call at a pool supply store around 11:30 a.m. and found Williams outside "lying on the ground with his hands behind his back as though he was ready to go to jail," Sgt. Kevin Holbrook said.

A store employee told officers Williams, who was in the store with two women, began arguing with the employee and threw a pair of goggles at him, Holbrook said. Williams then went behind the counter and punched the employee at least once, Holbrook said.

The cause of the argument wasn't immediately clear. When officers tried to question Williams, he told them to ask the store employee what happened, Holbrook said.

Hall County sheriff's Deputy Nicole Bailes said in an email that Williams faces a misdemeanor battery charge and was being held on $5,000 bond. Online jail records show Williams was booked into jail at 1:34 p.m.

Janice Lee, a publicist for Williams, didn't immediately respond to phone and email messages.

Williams, 44, has starred in comedy specials and appeared in films, including "Friday After Next."

Gainesville is about 55 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Like most engineers, Jerry Gregg doesn't do anything halfway - he is determined when he has a goal. After Gregg added riding in Alaska's Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to his bucket list, he not only found a way to realize his dream but to help Alaskans in need while there.

Gregg, 75, who retired in Huntsville as a lieutenant colonel from the Army Corps Engineers, leaves early Thursday morning for Anchorage, Alaska, where he will spend a week volunteering at the race, working with natives with his church group and, on Saturday, riding an Iditarod sled with musher Melissa Owens Stewart.

READ MORE: Profiles of Gregg and other Iditariders.

READ MORE: Profile of Melissa Stewart.

After an extensive trip to Alaska with his wife, Sharon, and their children and grandchildren in 2010, Gregg fell in love with the state's beauty and the ultimate challenge afforded by the Iditarod, known as "The Last Great Race." Since then, he has followed race results and began to dream of returning to Alaska for the annual sled-dog race that runs from Anchorage to Nome. Initially, he researched volunteer opportunities and decided he would participate that way. Volunteers do everything from make foot ointment for the mushers to delivering food to working with the dogs.

"Then I learned that, as a fundraiser, the Iditarod Trail Committee provides an online auction for sled rides in the first day of the run," Gregg said. "If you're willing to pay the bucks and keep bidding you can get a ride, so on kind of a whim, I put in a bid."

Gregg didn't disclose the amount of his final bid but did say rides with some of the more famous and popular mushers can go for more than $5,000.

Joining the race

Gregg's winning bid to ride with Stewart, 26, who comes from a family of mushers and became the youngest woman to complete the race at age 18 in 2008, also includes a seat at Thursday night's Mushers' Drawing Banquet in Alaska, where Iditariders are also celebrated. At the banquet, mushers draw numbers for start positions.

Gregg said he'll dine at a table with Stewart, who he knows only by reputation. "She's been doing this since she was a little girl," he said.

Saturday morning, Stewart and Gregg and her team of sled dogs will leave from downtown Anchorage, along with about 85 other teams. "Thousands of people" come to watch the start, Gregg said.

Although Saturday's run marks the official start of the race, it is a ceremonial run because timing of the racers doesn't begin until Sunday in Willow, Alaska, Gregg said. He will leave the ride at the local airport, he said, and Stewart and her team later will be transported to Willow. Mushers can take from 9 to 15 days to complete the run to Nome, sometimes riding through blizzard and whiteout conditions.

After the race

Gregg also will serve as a volunteer at the race. He will work Sunday at the start point at Willow. After completing his race duties, Gregg will return to Anchorage where his volunteer group will provide missionary services to a variety of organizations, such as food banks and children's charities.

Gregg will also volunteer one day with a missionary group from his church, Calvary Bible in Huntsville. The group works with native Alaskans, Gregg said. He will return from Alaska Thursday, March 10.
Calhoun County officials say they will shed some light Thursday on a case they promise has "twists and turns."

Officials with the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office, the U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Alabama, and Calhoun and Cleburne District Attorney Brian McVeigh have called a joint news conference for tomorrow to discuss the arrest of a fugitive in Croatia.

The "very unusual case," according to Calhoun County Chief Deputy Matthew Wade, sounds like the stuff of a spy novel. No names have been released yet, but the case involves a government employee who fathered a child with his stepdaughter, who was a minor.

Once an investigation began, the suspect left the country for Europe, where he attempted to join Syrian rebels and fight as a sniper against ISIS, or ISIL. He was eventually turned in, Wade said, by a Croatian bed and breakfast owner. The arrest apparently helped uncover information that the man's wife, who is also mother of the sexual abuse victim, was providing him with assistance.

Wade said she has been arrested for hindering prosecution. The suspect is apparently back in the United States.
Christy Leann Judd.png

Christy LeannJudd

(Shelby County Jail)

An Alabaster woman left three teens home alone for several weeks, police say, and now she faces more than a handful of charges of abuse and abandonment.

Christy Leann Judd, 34, is being held in the Shelby County Jail with bond set at $24,000. She was arrested Feb. 29, according to jail records.

Alabaster police Lt. Grant Humphries said police received a call about several children who had been left home alone. Their investigation showed the kids - ages 13, 14 and 17 - had been by themselves without any adult supervision or care for weeks.

Judd is the legal guardian for two of the teens and the biological mother of the third. Humphries said the investigation is ongoing, and they are still trying to determine where Judd was, and why she was gone for so long.

She is charged with three counts of child abandonment and three counts of willful abuse of a child. Alabama law defines willful abuse as a responsible person who shall torture, willfully abuse, cruelly beat or otherwise willfully maltreat any child under the age of 18. It is a Class C felony. The affidavits specify the willful abuse as maltreatment.

Child abandonment occurs when a parent, guardian, or person in charge of a child either deserts a child without any regard for the child's physical health, safety or welfare and with the intention of wholly abandoning the child, or in some instances, fails to provide necessary care for a child living under their roof. Child abandonment is a misdemeanor.

Humphries said the teens are now in the custody of the Department of Human Resources.
Heroin Videos.PNG

The U.S. Attorney's Office, in conjunction with students in UAB's Digital Media Department, have created a public service campaign about the ravages of opiate abuse. 's

(UAB Digital Media Department)

Ronnie Mims still tears up when he talks about the death of his son, Baker Mims.

Baker, 20, was a University of Alabama student who had graduated from Vestavia Hills High School with a near-perfect ACT, good looks and the adoration of many friends. In 2013, his friends found him unresponsive his bedroom at the student apartment complex on Hargrove Road in Tuscaloosa. He was dead from heroin overdose.

Mims has told the story of his son's death publicly, and now he tells it again in a short video featured by Know Dope, a campaign sponsored by the U.S. Attorney's Office and brought to life by students in UAB's Digital Media Department. "I went to see him because we were concerned,'' Mims says in the new video. "He said, 'Look at me. Do I look like I'm on drugs?' I said, 'No, you look great.''

Mims told Baker he would be back in several days with a drug test, just to be sure. "It was that day when I pulled into the apartment complex. I pulled in behind the ambulance,'' he said. "I kept praying, 'please don't turn toward his apartment,' but of course they did."

The tale of Baker's death is just one of several highlighted on the website. U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance today announced the website is now live and focuses on awareness and prevention of opiate addiction. As part of the community Pills to Needles Initiative, Vance said her office last year contracted with UAB to create content for the website.

Students who worked on the year-long Know Dope project with UAB Digital Media Director Rosie O'Beirne last week won Best of Show in the student competition for the American Advertising Federation Birmingham Awards, or ADDYs, Vance said.

The students designed the Know Dope campaign name and logo, along with six public service announcements and a 10-minute documentary that authorities hope will be shown in area schools as part of drug awareness programs. The documentary and PSAs, along with information and links to help educate and provide resources on drug abuse and addiction can be found at www.knowdope.org.

"My office's partnership with the talented group at UAB Digital Media has led to the production of short video clips suitable for sharing on social media that can help fight against the deadly rise of prescription drug and heroin addiction," Vance said in prepared statement. "It is critical for our community to understand the path from pill to heroin addiction, and that we focus on prevention and treatment opportunities. I hope everyone will spend a few minutes on our website. Minutes you spend may help save the life of someone you love."

Heroin deaths in Jefferson County dropped nearly 30 percent in 2015 after five years of dramatic increases, but fentanyl continued to make itself known as the newest killer on the streets with a 96 percent jump in fatal overdoses countywide last year.

Heroin deaths dropped from 138 in 2014 to 97 in 2015. That's a sharp contrast to the 140 percent increase in 2014. In that year, Jefferson County had hit the 100 mark by October, far surpassing the 2013 total of 58 deaths. Overdose from the euphoric drug directly killed 57 people in 2012 and was a contributing factor in five other deaths that year. That was nearly double the 2011 tally - 30 - and markedly up from the years before that, which saw 18 deaths in 2009 and 12 in 2010.

"One of the main aims of the Know Dope campaign was to appeal to a younger audience, while recognizing that heroin might be replaced by other drugs in the future," O'Beirne said, also in a prepared statement. "Digital assets were tested with middle and high school audiences, who are the main target audiences, and have provided a very positive response. Rollout of the campaign is planned throughout this spring."

"Pills to Needles" is a joint effort launched in 2014 to respond to the sharp spike in heroin deaths in northern Alabama. The initiative includes the UAB School of Public Health, the Jefferson County Department of Health and the Addiction Prevention Coalition. So far, the group has focused on building and planning, with future goals of creating a comprehensive and responsive community infrastructure to address this serious public health issue; develop strategies to reduce the ill-effects of heroin and prescription drug abuse; and give voice to those affected by heroin and prescription drug abuse.
Authorities are searching for a state inmate who escaped the Childersburg Work Release Center this morning.

Jeremy McCormick left his assigned job in Sylacauga about 9:49 a.m. today, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections. McCormick, 39, was serving a 30-year sentence on a conviction for manufacturing a controlled substance. He was sentenced in May 2009 in Randolph County.

McCormick is described as a white male, 5-feet, 10-inches tall and weighing 200 pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes.He was last seen wearing a colored jacket, blue jeans, a t-shirt and boots.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call state prison officials at 1-800-831-8825
Birmingham Mayor William Bell's son won the Democratic Primary nomination for a district court judgeship in Tuesday's primary.

Meanwhile, at least three other judicial races in Jefferson County are headed to April 12 runoffs with 99.43 percent of the votes counted - 175 of 176 precincts with only the provisional ballot box uncounted. The results are complete but unofficial.

In the Democratic Primary for district judge Place 4 William A. "Tony" Bell, Jr. got 38,520 votes, or 75.4 percent, and Clotele Hardy (CH) Brantley got 12,587 votes, or 24.6 percent.

Bell, who is the son of Birmingham Mayor William Bell, will face Republican Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Riggs Walker in the November general election. The winner will take the seat of retiring Jefferson County District Court Judge Shelly Watkins, who presides over district criminal cases.

One race headed to a Democratic Primary runoff is in the Circuit Judge Place 26 race.

Attorney Everett W. Wess got 20,640 votes, or 42.5 percent, and will face Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney Michael Streety, who got 16,195 votes, or 33.3 percent, in the runoff. Attorney Alaric May also got 11,770 votes, or 24.2 percent, in the three-man race.

The winner of the primary runoff will face former circuit judge Gloria Bahakel, who is unopposed in the Republican primary, in the November general election.

The winner in the general election Place 26 race will fill the judgeship being vacated by retiring Criminal Circuit Judge Tommy Nail.

Circuit Court Place 11 Democratic Primary

In another race headed to a runoff, Linda Hall got 20,227 votes, or 40.5 percent, and Brendette Brown Green had 16,081 votes, or 32.2 percent in the Place 11 race. Joe Basgier got 13,651 votes, or 27.3 percent.

The winner will face Circuit Judge Pat Thetford, a Republican, in the November general primary. Thetford, who was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Judge Houston Brown, does not face a Republican Primary challenger.

Circuit Court Place 25 (Bessemer Division) Democratic and Republican parties

A runoff also will decide the Democratic primary for Circuit Judge Place 25 in the Bessemer Cutoff.

Reginald L. Jeter got 8,003 votes, or 46.5 percent, and Roderick "Rod" Evans got 5,052 votes, or 29.3 percent. Yusuf (Jeffery Hood) Olufemi got 4,163 votes, or 24.2.

The winner of the Democratic nomination will face the winner of the Republican primary, John Tindle.

Tindle got 13,350 votes, or 78.4 percent, and Aaron L. Dettling got 3,686 votes, or 21.6 percent.

November's general election will decide who will replace Jefferson County Bessemer Cutoff Circuit Judge Gene Verin, who is retiring.

In other Jefferson County races Tuesday:

Circuit Judge Place 4 Democratic Primary

Javan Joielle Patton, got 28,407 votes, or 56.4 percent, and Charles "Chuck" Price II, got 21,947 votes, or 43.6 percent.

Patton faces Republican Bobby Lott Jr. in the November general election. Lott does not have opposition in the Republican Primary.

The winner will take the bench seat now held by retiring Circuit Judge Helen Shores Lee.

Circuit Judge Place 17 Democratic Primary

Incumbent Circuit Judge Elisabeth French handily won in a race against Monica Agee. French got 41,064 votes, or 79.3 percent and Agee got 10,748 votes, or 20.7 percent.

French will face Leeds attorney James C. Whitfield, a Republican, in the November general election. Whitfield does not face opposition in the Republican primary.

Circuit Judge, Place 22 Democratic Party

Tamara Harris Johnson won the race for the Democratic nomination outright in a three-candidate race.

Johnson got 28,048 votes, or 57 percent. Perryn Suzanne Carroll got 15,867 votes, or 32.2 percent, and Russ Parker got 5,312 votes, or 10.8 percent.

The winner will face Bentley Patrick, who was appointed last year to fill an unexpired term of Judge Caryl Privett.

Circuit Judge Place 23 Democratic Party

Agnes Chappell got 30,119 votes, or 61.7 percent, and Carnella Greene-Norman got 18,701 votes, or 38.3 percent.

Chappell will face incumbent Circuit Judge Dorothea Batiste, a Republican, in the November election. She was unopposed in the Republican Primary.

District Judge Place 5 Democratic Party

Shera Grant won the race with 26,093 votes, or 52 percent. Pamela Wilson Cousins got 15,697 votes, or 31.3 percent, John C. Hall got 4,526 votes, or 9 percent, and Bob Shores got 3,883 votes, or 7.7 percent.

Grant will face Lee Cleveland, who did not face opposition in the Republican primary.

Grant was recently appointed to this judgeship to fill the unexpired term of District Judge Jack Lowther.

District Judge Place 10 (Bessemer Division) Democratic Primary

Debra Bennett Winston got 11,103, or 62.3 percent to win the Democratic Primary nod. Rukeya "Rudy" McAdory McCullough got 6,706 votes or 37.7 percent.

The winner faces Teresa Hester, who did not face opposition in the Republican Primary.

The winner of the general election will replace District Judge Edward Vines, who did not seek re-election.

Unopposed primaries or those who have no opponents for re-election this year:
A well-known north Alabama pizza joint is making headlines for one of its most unusual creations to date.

Joe's World Famous Pizzeria owner Joe Carlucci worked recently with Athens High School student Morgan Griess to make a Donald Trump pie, which bears a striking resemblance to the Republican presidential frontrunner in the form of tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese.

Carlucci hoped the TV personality and businessman would stop at the Athens eatery for a slice of pizza last weekend during his campaign visit to Madison, but that never happened.

"Him being from New York and me being a New York native, I thought he would appreciate a slice of New York pizza in the South," he said.

Still, Carlucci is excited to bring a little lightheartedness to the election, which is a hot and often divisive topic in Alabama and the U.S. right now.

"The Donald" is available for pre-order for $59 per pie. A portion of proceeds from sales will go to Griess, the artist who helped design the pizza.

Joe's World Famous Pizzeria is in the process of developing another large sheet pan pizza featuring Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio ahead of Thursday's Republican debate with Fox News. As the election cycle continues, Carlucci said customers should expect more pizzas with a political spin.

"This is just the beginning," he said. "We're going to keep doing it of all the candidates up until Election Day."

The Trump pizza isn't the restaurant's first pie featuring a celebrity. Past pizzas have resembled Nick Saban, Tim Tebow and Bear Bryant.

While Joe's World Famous Pizzeria has received local and national media attention for "The Donald," Carlucci said they have also had some hateful phone calls and messages about the pie.

"I tend to stay away from the drama," he said. " ... I think some people are taking this whole thing as far as the election a little too far."
Bill Poole on March 2 2016.jpg

Budget committee Chairman Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, said the spending plan would increase funding for textbooks, transportation, school technology and classroom supplies, as well as in other areas, in fiscal year 2017. (Mike Cason/mcason@al.com)

( )

Most education employees would get a 4 percent raise and schools would be able to hire an additional 475 teachers in grades 7-12 under a proposed budget approved today by the House Ways and Means Education Committee.

The panel approved the bill after a public hearing.

Overall, the plan would spent $6.3 billion from the Education Trust Fund on public schools, community colleges, universities and other areas, up from $6 billion during the current year.

Much of the discussion this morning concerned whether to boost the raise for education employees to 5 percent but the committee left it at 4 percent for all K-12 employees earning less than $75,000.

Employees earning more than $75,000 would get a 2 percent raise.

Budget Chairman Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, said two-level raise is intended to recognize and prioritize teachers and employees who are in the classroom every day.

All community college employees would receive the 4 percent boost.

The budget would increase funding for pre-kindergarten by $14 million over last year, to $62.5 million.

The bill moves to the House of Representatives, where it could be considered as early as next week.

State Superintendent Tommy Bice said Tuesday that he was pleased with the proposed budget.

Poole said the funding for 475 more teachers in grade 7-12 addresses a "critical, critical need."

The spending plan would also increase funding for transportation, textbooks, classroom supplies, school technology and other current expenses for K-12 schools.

Poole said that follows up on increases in this year's budget for basic operational needs for school systems.

The budget would fully fund the request from the Public Education Employees' Health Insurance Plan and the Teachers Retirement System, Poole said.

Susan Kennedy of the Alabama Education Association asked the committee to consider boosting the raise for education employees to 5 percent, which she said would cost an additional $35 million.

Education employees have received one cost of living increase in the last eight years, a 2 percent raise for K-12 employees in 2013.

Kennedy said the 4 percent raise won't be enough to make up what employees have lost relative to the cost of living in recent years.

Some committee members, including Reps. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, and Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, supported increasing the amount of the raise.

"As a part time legislator, we make more than a teacher or educator gets working full time," Ford said.

Poole said the 4 percent figure is part of an effort to address as many needs as possible.

"In order to address other needs that are out there throughout our education system, from pre-k through four-year universities, you have to strike a reasonable balance," Poole said.

The $14 million increase for pre-kindergarten would add about 150 classrooms enrolling about 2,700 more 4-year-olds.

Gov. Robert Bentley had asked for a $20 million increase for pre-kindergarten.

The program is available to about one-fifth of the state's 4-year-olds. Bentley has set a goal of making it available statewide by the end of his term.
Actor and athlete Lee Reherman, best known for playing Hawk on "American Gladiators" died suddenly on Monday, multiple media outlets reported. He was 49.

Anthony Turk, the actor's representative told Variety that Reherman underwent hip surgery about two months ago and hadn't felt well for the past couple days. Reherman died in his California home.

The actor's cause of death hasn't been released.

In recent year's Reherman had guest starred on such shows as CW's "Jane the Virgin," Fox's "Cooper Barret's Guide to Life, "The X-Files," "Gilmore Girls," "That's So Raven" and "The Shield." He also appeared in "Colombo" and "Last Action Hero."

Reherman, a Kentucky native, was an offensive lineman at Cornell University. He tried out for the Miami Dolphins but didn't make the team.

"Lee Reherman is loved by everyone who knew him and worked with him and he will be missed by all," his publicist said in a statement to People.

[BELOW: MORE CELEBRITIES WHO HAVE DIED IN 2016]
The owners of the Arrowhead Landfill near Uniontown have agreed to help Perry County residents preserve a historic but poorly maintained cemetery that borders the landfill on three sides.

Green Group Holdings, LLC -- which owns Arrowhead and other landfills in the United States and Guam -- announced this week that the company will donate land, time and effort to help protect the historic New Hope Church cemetery, also called the Pitts Cemetery, which dates back to the 1800s.

The New Hope Church is no longer standing on the premises, but the cemetery had been used as recently as the 1990s, and some local residents have relatives buried there. The cemetery is surrounded on three sides by landfill property, but is several hundred yards from the active waste disposal operations.

Some Uniontown residents have fought the landfill since before it opened in 2007. They have complained of health problems they believe are caused by the landfill, or the roughly 4 million tons of coal ash from the 2008 Kingston, Tenn. release that is stored there. Local residents Esther Calhoun and Benjamin Eaton formed the group Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice in order to draw attention to their issues with the landfill.

The cemetery became another point of contention between Arrowhead and the Black Belt Citizens group late last year, when the group claimed work on a gravel access road may have disturbed unmarked graves in the cemetery.

Tuscaloosa-based attorney Mike Smith, who represents Green Group Holdings, said the work did not disturb any known graves, and that a 100-foot perimeter from any known graves was established after an archaeological survey conducted in 2008.

Smith said Tuesday the buffer zone around the cemetery has been increased and a wire fence will be installed to separate the cemetery grounds from the landfill. That land will be deeded to a non-profit foundation, which is bring created to care for the cemetery and will be run by a board of seven local residents who have family buried there.

Smith said Green Group will pay the legal fees for establishing the non-profit foundation, help clean up the area and install signage marking the historical significance of the cemetery.

"One of the problems has been that there hasn't been a mechanism for continuing care of the cemetery," he said. "We hope having this foundation with change that."

Conflicting claims about health impacts

Smith also said there is no evidence proving that the residents' ill health effects were caused by the landfill or the coal ash stored there, and that the landfill is a covered, lined facility with leachate collection to prevent contamination of local water supplies.

"The problem you have with coal ash is when it's mismanaged," Smith said. "If it's done properly, it can be safe, and I think my client does it the right way."

Perry County Commission Chairman Ron Miller -- who played a key role in getting Arrowhead approved as a Uniontown city councilman and later county commissioner -- said in an editorial submitted to AL.com that the landfill is "one of the safest facilities of its kind anywhere in the country," and that groups like the Black Belt Citizens are "needlessly alarming local residents with scary but false claims," about the coal ash.

Coal ash has not been headed to Arrowhead since the Kingston incident, but that may soon change. Green Group Holdings has advertised the landfill as a safe disposal site for electric utilities who are looking to close coal ash ponds due to new EPA regulations that took effect last year.

At many coal-fired power plants across the country, the combustion residuals are pumped into wet storage ponds, where the larger particulate matters settle to the bottom, but the water, potentially carrying lead, mercury or other potentially harmful substances from the ash flows untreated into a river or stream.

Smith said that kind of setup carries far more risk of contamination than the lined storage at Arrowhead.

Still, some questions remain about the landfill. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to investigate a complaint that placing the landfill near Uniontown violated the civil rights of local residents in one of Alabama's poorest communities with a population that is more than 90 percent black.

Calhoun and Smith also recently testified in Washington, D.C. at a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a fact-finding agency that makes policy recommendations to the executive and legislative branches.

Smith invited representatives of the Commission to tour the landfill and see the safety precautions taken and he believes they will do so.

"We want to be active in the community and we want to do good work, but we are also going to look out for our business interests," Smith said. "I think people appreciate that sort of openness and honesty."
A single-vehicle crash in Escambia County claimed the life of an Atmore man Tuesday afternoon.

Alabama State Troopers said a 1987 Ford Mustang left the roadway and struck a utility pole. It happened on Pouncey Road two miles east of Atmore at approximately 2 p.m.

The driver was transported to an area hospital, where he later died from his injuries.

Troopers identified him as David Lee Hudson. He was 41 years old.

No further was released Tuesday night. Alabama State Troopers continue to investigate.
Ben Carson Campaigns Montgomery

Republican hopeful Dr. Ben Carson talks with students and faculty during a campaign stop Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, at Auburn University-Montgomery in Montgomery, Ala. (Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

Dr. Ben Carson, the soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon who enjoyed an early surge among voters only to see his campaign dwindle during a vicious primary season, appears to be nearing the end of his White House bid.

In a statement to supporters Wednesday, Carson said he will not attend Thursday's Republican presidential debate in his hometown of Detroit.

"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results," Carson said. "However, this grassroots movement on behalf of "We the People" will continue. Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for president, I remain committed to saving America for future generations. We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our founders intended for this exceptional nation.

"I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America. Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances; rather by what is in the best interests of the American people," Carson said, adding he will address the issue again in a speech planned for Friday.

Carson did not officially announce he was suspending his campaign, which was championed by conservatives but has been marred by disorganization in recent weeks. Carson's reserved demeanor didn't appear to translate to voters in an election season marked by bombastic candidates who haven't shied away from attacking each other.

Carson has acknowledged his reserve likely hurt him with voters concerned about leadership and security.

"Somehow the narrative has been projected that if you're soft-spoken and mild-mannered, there is no way you can deal with terrorism, with national security, that you're not a strong person," he told The Washington Post earlier this year.

Carson eclipsed 10 percent in only two states - Alabama and Alaska - during Super Tuesday primaries, finishing no better than fourth place in any of the 11 states casting ballots on March 1.
An Indiana man will not go to prison after being convicted of molesting his 6-year-old daughter following her diagnosis of a brain tumor.

Jeremy Schwer, 41, of Indianapolis pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony child molestation, according to the Indianapolis Star. Prosecutors had argued for a nine-year prison term, followed by three years of probation, but a judge sentenced Schwer to 12 years of probation instead.

The sentence was handed down after Schwer's estranged wife wrote a letter asking the court not to send Schwer to prison so he could help financially support their children, the Star reports.

Schwer's daughter, now 7, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2013, was hospitalized for months and underwent a year of chemotherapy. The sexual abuse began when her mother and father began alternating nights caring for the girl.

The girl eventually told her mother of the abuse and Schwer was charged in 2015. Court records show the girl said she had touched her father's "peepeeluca" - the family's word for private parts - and that her father touched her "peepeeluca" and had her sit on his "cat tail."

Aside from the dozen years of probation, Schwer was also ordered to register as a sex offender, continue counseling and move out of the family's home so his wife and children could return.
A Mississippi man was arrested Monday afternoon after photos posted to Facebook of him holding puppies by the ears and tail went viral.

Charoyd Bell, 35, of Natchez was charged with carrying a creature in a cruel manner, Mississippi News Now reported.

The Natchez Democrat reported the photos reportedly show Bell holding puppies of various sizes and ages by the scruff. Bell also posted images of dogs fighting.

The images prompted Natchez police to investigate.

The Adams County Sheriff's Office found no evidence of animal abuse at the property shown in the pictures.

According to the report, the Bell family also began receiving threats since the images went viral. Those threats are also under investigation.
A proposal to name a North Carolina post office after poet Maya Angelou received a "no" vote from Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, who questioned if the late author merited the honor.

Brooks and eight other Republicans voted against the resolution to rename a post office in Winston-Salem after Angelou, a Missouri native who spent much of her life in North Carolina. Angelou died in 2014.

Brooks said he opposed the proposal due to Angelou's support of communism, particularly her backing of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

"While Maya Angelou did many good things in her life, Congressman Mo Brooks did not believe it appropriate to name an American Post Office after a communist sympathizer and thereby honor a person who openly opposed America's interest by supporting Fidel Castro and his regime of civil rights suppression, torture and murder of freedom-loving Cubans," Brooks' spokesperson Lauren Vandiver told AL.com.

Angelou's support of Cuba was cited by several of the other lawmakers who voted against the post office proposal. Others voting no included Ken Buck of Colorado, Michael Burgess of Texas, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Andy Harris of Maryland, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Alex Mooney of West Virginia, and Steven Palazzo of Mississippi. Rep. Don Young of Alaska voted present.

The bill to rename the post office in her honor passed 371-9.

Angelou, best known for her book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," was awarded America's Medal of Freedom in 2011 and has been honored by having her image on a postage stamp. She authored more than 30 books and was involved in civil rights efforts throughout her life.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-NY, issued a statement saying he was "shocked" by the vote.

"Naming post offices is one of the most benign and bipartisan duties we perform in the House of Representatives, and there is rarely any opposition," Israel said. "The fact that these nine members would cast a no vote shows a blatant disrespect and only adds to the damaging actions they've taken this year to reverse progress from long and hard fought civil rights battles."
The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency has launched an internal investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by some employees and staff related to the misappropriation of state dollars and resources.

Multiple law enforcement sources speaking on condition of anonymity tell Al.com that the investigation includes questions concerning operations at ALEA including activities of ALEA Secretary Spencer Collier.

Sources said the investigation has already resulted in the firing of several employees and the transfer of others to others duties.

Efforts to reach Collier for comment were not successful Tuesday.

Gov. Robert Bentley placed Collier on a medical leave of absence two weeks ago following Collier's decision to disregard Bentley's decision that ALEA should not provide a sworn statement sought by the state's attorney general's office related to the on-going criminal case against House Speaker Mike Hubbard.

Bentley called Collier's explanation of why he supplied an affidavit despite Bentley's order unacceptable and replaced him with acting state law enforcement secretary Stan Stabler.

Sources tell AL.com that shortly after taking command, Stabler was approached with information by staff concerned about possible wrongdoing. At that point Stabler ordered the agency's internal integrity unit to begin an investigation.

Contacted late Tuesday for comment, ALEA released the following statement from Stabler:

"Last week, as Acting Secretary of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, I ordered a thorough internal review of the operations, policies and procedures at ALEA. ALEA's Integrity Unit, comprised of seasoned law enforcement investigators, is currently conducting the review. We will work to complete the review as soon as possible, and will deliver any findings to the appropriate authorities if warranted. My priority as ALEA's Acting Secretary is to carry out the mission of the agency and ensure our law enforcement officers and support staff honorably provide service, protection and safety for all of our citizens.

"Since the full implementation of ALEA on Jan. 1, 2015, our goal has been to provide a more efficient and effective service to the citizens. Effective Feb. 29, two non-merit positions and two retired state employee positions have been eliminated. We will continue to evaluate all aspects of ALEA and make adjustments as necessary to continue to streamline our agency."
state house mug by julie.JPG

(Julie Bennett/jbennett@al.com)

Two major pieces of legislation will be the subject of public hearings today at the Alabama State House.

The House Ways and Means Education Committee will hold a public hearing at 9 a.m. on the 2017 education budget.

Chairman Bill Poole, R-Tuscaloosa, said last week the plan includes 4 percent raises for K-12 school education employees making less than $75,000, and 2 percent raises for those making more.

Employees at community and technical colleges would get 4 percent raises.

The budget includes funding to hire an additional 475 teachers in grades 7-12.

The committee is expected to vote on the budget Thursday morning.

State Superintendent Tommy Bice said Tuesday that the spending plan fits well with public school needs.

Also today, the House Ways and Means General Fund Committee will hold a public hearing on Gov. Robert Bentley's plan to issue up to $800 million in bonds to build three new men's prisons and one women's prison.

The governor said the plan, developed by Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeff Dunn, is the best way to solve the state's long-standing problem of overcrowded, understaffed prisons, a problem officials say could lead to federal intervention.

Bentley said the bonds can be paid off by money the DOC will save by replacing aging prisons with modern facilities with smarter designs.

Leaders of the Republican majority in the Legislature have expressed initial support for the plan.

The hearing is at 1:30 p.m.
10 Alabama beers to stock for your New Year's Eve party

(FILE PHOTO/Matt Wake/mwake@al.com)

Residents of Shelby County will soon be able to have a drink any day of the week they please.

Voters passed a referendum to allow alcohol sales on Sundays by 70 percent, according to initial results, with all precincts reporting. Provisional votes haven't been counted, and won't be until next week.

The law will become effective the Sunday following the election results' certification.

Until now, some restaurants and bars have been able to sell alcohol on Sundays because they were classified as private clubs. The state Alcohol Beverage Control Board stopped issuing those licenses years ago, but existing clubs were grandfathered in.

The Greater Shelby County Chamber of Commerce commissioned an economic impact study on Sunday alcohol sales, and it estimated a total impact of $10.9 million in total output, including $2.2 million in earnings and 171 newly created jobs. The monetary output is an annual number while the jobs number is aggregate.

Grocery stores might benefit the most from expanded Sunday sales - American shoppers spend 21 percent more money on groceries on Sundays than any other day of the week, according to a 2015 study by the Heartland Institute, which is a libertarian think tank.

Rep. Mike Hill of Columbiana introduced a bill to the state legislature last year that would allow for residents to vote on whether to allow alcohol sales on Sundays after noon in Shelby County. State Reps. April Weaver and Matt Fridy, both of whom represent areas of Shelby County, cosponsored the legislation.

Shelby County is one of the state's largest counties, with a population of more than 200,000.

Baptist leader Joe Godfrey, Executive Director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, fought to defeat the measure, and he said he's disappointed in the results.

"Alcohol is a mind-altering and addictive drug that needs to be restricted," Godfrey wrote in an email. "If we continue to increase its availability, the cost to society will continue to grow, as well."
U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., won his Republican primary race on Tuesday and garnered enough support among voters to avoid a primary election. According to preliminary results and with 99 percent of Alabama's precinct's reporting, Shelby was leading his closest challenger, former Marine Capt. Jonathan McConnell, 65 percent to 28 percent. The other challengers combined collected about 8 percent of the vote.

At the Embassy Suites in Tuscaloosa, Shelby thanked supporters and staff. He addressed the crowd before the Associated Press called the race in his favor, and he said he was confident he would prevail without the need for a runoff. That scenario would have been triggered if Shelby did not get above the 50-percent threshold.

"It's a great night, isn't it?" he asked a reporter as he entered the ballroom.

In addressing his supporters, Shelby said he wished his wife, Dr. Annette Shelby, could be with him to join the celebration, but said she had been in the hospital for about 90 days. He had visited her before coming to the party, and said she had been at his side for every other election.

"I owe a lot to a lot of people, starting off with my wife," Shelby said. Among those he singled out was his campaign manager, Tom Young, and his scheduler, Anne Caldwell.

"I wanted her to make my last schedule, but not tonight," he joked.

The senator, who spent roughly a third of his $18 million war chest on the race, said he wasn't taking anything for granted.

"We ran the race to win, there's a lot of turmoil in politics," he said.

Reached by phone, McConnell said he had no regrets over how he ran the race.

"I think we ran a great campaign," said McConnell, who sounded upbeat despite the result. "I think the people of Alabama spoke and we were honored to be able to give them a choice in this race."

The former Marine, who runs the Mobile-based maritime security company Meridian Global Consulting, said his plans in the immediate future include continuing to run his business.

"My next step is to go back to work and earn a living and enjoy life doing that," he said.
People casting ballots are required to produce a government-issued photo ID, a move some say targets poor black voters.

Camden, Alabama  In many ways, Alabama is the cradle of the voting rights movement, a place where Wilcox County circuit clerk Ralph Ervin says stumbling blocks have been turned into stepping stones.

But on Super Tuesday civil rights activists say those stumbling blocks are preventing black voters from going to the polls.

The issue in this state, where a quarter of the population are African American, is voter ID laws.

In 2014, the state changed the law and now requires all voters to produce government-issued photo IDs.

At first glance that does not seem like an unreasonable request and those who back the law say it prevents voter fraud.

But in sparsely populated poor communities such as Wilcox County, public transport is virtually non-existent. Compounding the problem is the partial closure of more than 30 drivers licence offices, many in predominantly black counties.

READ MORE: Angry America and the 2016 version of Hope

Presidential candidate Hilary Clinton called the law a blast from the Jim Crow past  and this is an issue Ervin has fought long and hard against.

We serve the same God as everybody else does, Ervin said, slamming his fist into his hand.

This is just as much our country and our county as it is anybody elses, he added.

State officials say any claims that they are trying to suppress the African-American vote are unfounded.

Officials say mobile units will scour the poorer communities to ensure that those who do not have the means to travel to get a government-issued ID are taken care of  but civil rights activists continue to fight for change.

According to statistics, there are a quarter of a million potential voters here who do not have approved government ID, and most of those voters are poor and black.

It is an issue on the mind of Felicia Pettway, a candidate for Wilcox County district judge.

I think this is just the epitome of voter oppression, she said as she handed out fliers in the car park of the local Piggly Wiggly supermarket.

READ MORE: Super Tuesday voting under way

Before the ruling came into force, voters without ID could cast their ballot as long as two people in the polling station could vouch for them.

Pettway says in a place like Wilcox County that was never an issue.

Im trying to figure out the need for voter ID. I just dont see that need being a necessity for you to vote.

It is unlikely that the ruling will change in the immediate future but it is not just restricted to this state.

Texas, Tennessee and Georgia, among others, have similar strict voter ID laws and campaigners say those laws all target the same demographic, a trend civil rights campaigners say set back decades of hard-won rights.
The billionaire businessman is on course to becoming the Republican partys candidate for the US presidential election.

History shows the Republican candidate who wins most of the states on Super Tuesday wins the nomination.

And so Donald Trump is now on course to stand on the stage in Cleveland, Ohio, in the summer and follow in the footsteps of Nixon, Reagan, Bush (both of them), Dole and McCain.

His rise has been spectacular and surprising.

He wondered about running for president in 2000 for the Reform Party. But eventually he decided not to seek the nomination saying it was too splintered to mount a successful run at the White House.

READ MORE: Why Super Tuesday is so important

He also didnt like the main figures in the party. One was Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter who twice attempted to secure the Republican presidential nomination himself  he was accused of anti-Semitism while disputing the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis at the Treblinka death camp.

Another was David Duke; at one point a prominent Republican politician in Louisiana, but perhaps better known as the former Grand Wizard of the racist Ku Klux Klan. Trump left saying, That is not the company I wish to keep.





Yet, when asked about David Duke expressing support for Trumps election campaign this week, the billionaire businessman said that he had no idea who Duke was. He didnt initially disavow his support. And he claimed that he didnt have enough information about white supremacist groups to reject any endorsement they might offer.

Within hours  and perhaps aware of the storm that he had created, Trump eventually rejected Dukes backing.

Visceral anger

The Southern Poverty Law Center ,which tracks hate groups in the US, were astounded by Trumps claims. Mark Potok, a senior fellow with the group, speaking from its headquarters in Alabama, said the idea Trump had to look up the Klan was astounding.

He added: Ive never seen anything like that in mean stream politics, literally, for decades.

Trump has managed to harness a visceral anger in the US, where people feel politicians have failed to deliver on promises, where they are ignored and the system and the economy is rigged against them.

A similar anger has helped propel the Bernie Sanders campaign on the Democrats side.

Potok tried to explain it like this: There is a large working-class and lower-middle-class white America who feel they are in trouble and they feel they country is changing around them and theyre angry.

And he believes Trump was initially reluctant to repudiate the Klan on the chance that would impact on the constituency he was trying to reach.

Controversy after controversy

Throughout this campaign, Trump has attacked and attacked.

He launched his campaign claiming many of the immigrants making their way from Mexico were murderer and rapists; he mocked a disabled reporter; he called Iowa voters stupid and dismissed former Republican presidential hopeful, John McCain, a man who was a prisoner of war during Vietnam, as a loser because he was captured by the North Vietnamese; he got involved in a spat with the Pope over his plans to build a border wall with Mexico; and he famously announced that he wanted to stop all Muslims temporarily entering the US.

Each and every time he has made the comments, the crowds have roared with approval.

And despite people thinking that each new controversy would finish his campaign, hes gotten stronger and bolder.

INTERACTIVE: Where do the candidates stand on foreign policy?

For many of Trumps supporters, the past eight years have brought massive changes: there is a black man in the White House; gay marriage has been legalised; and a form or universal healthcare has been introduced.

One columnist in Houston, Cory Garcia, argues that Trump is the best thing to happen to American politics, believing the businessman has exposed a dark underbelly.



Sitting in a conference room at his weekly paper, The Houston Press, he told me: Donald Trump is the answer to, I think, a lot of Republican questions about what would happen if we were just honest? What if we didnt beat around the bush about race, or immigration, or terrorism? What if we just said what we meant? Like, would we be punished for that? Would people be, would we be isolated, would we be marginalised? And the answer is, at least to Republican voters, no.'

For Trump, there is no coded language, no hidden message, no dog whistles that only Republicans understand.

Its all there, on show and the people respect his blunt, unvarnished presentation. He doesnt care who he upsets.

And the people have responded with support and more importantly, votes.

The Republican establishment thought Trumps campaign would fall apart. He didnt have the discipline. He didnt have the organisation.

Now, they are deeply worried he will be the partys standard bearer in Novembers presidential election.

And after Super Tuesday, that is more likely than not.
Naima asks what will become of her and her two daughters after border closures have left them stranded in Serbia.

Naima, 42, is stranded on the Serbian-Croatian border with her two daughters. As Afghans, they are no longer allowed to cross. This is her story told in her own words:

I arrived in the Serbian transit camp of Sid about a week ago, together with my two daughters, who are 14 and seven years old. The police took one look at my papers and said: You have no right to cross the border.

Later that night, when we were sleeping, the police suddenly came into the camp and shouted: Get up, we are going to take you across the border. All Afghans had to pack their bags and get on a bus.

We thought they would drive us into Croatia, the next country along the Balkan route, but instead they brought us to a town near the Hungarian border. They told us to get off the bus and said: Go! Walk to the border! So we all started to walk.

But at the Hungarian border all we saw was a huge fence. And behind that fence there were soldiers with guns. There was no way we could pass.

We walked for 12 hours along that fence, looking for a place where we could pass through. Finally we were met by an interpreter who spoke our language. He said: You cant cross this border. If you do, you go to jail for two years.

All we could do was turn back. We were so tired, and so hungry. My youngest daughter almost fainted. I begged for something to eat and they threw bread at us through a window in the fence.

We had to walk all the way back. When we came to the town we paid people to take us back to the transit camp by car. The whole thing took us three days. People say it was a ruse of the Serbian police to get rid of us because we are Afghans.

Life in Afghanistan was hell
Could the Republican candidates proclaimed neutrality on Israel-Palestine off-set his rhetoric about Muslims?

Property mogul and celebrity TV personality Donald Trump has fended off attacks from all sides to win big on Super Tuesday, reinforcing his lead in the race for his partys nomination.

But what would a President Donald Trump mean for the Middle East?

Well, Trump drew the anger of Muslims worldwide when he declared that he would impose a ban on Muslims entering the US. But he has also vowed to be neutral in negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, a significant break from long-standing US foreign policy favouring Israel.

The pre-Super Tuesday attacks seemed to come from almost every direction. He was denounced by President Barack Obama, and by the Republican Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Fellow Republican candidate Marco Rubio criticised him for failing to renounce support from former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke and praise from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

The Middle East: A US election battleground?

But Trumps popularity seems to stem from his position as a political outsider among those dissatisfied with the political establishments handling of the economy and security.



If Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, and Trump continue to hold on to their leads in the remaining 35 states and territories, voters may find themselves choosing not between a Democrat and a Republican, but between a veteran politician and political insider, and a successful businessman and political outsider.

The issue of Middle East peace may be pivotal in such a battle. And that could make Trumps rise bittersweet to Muslims.

While Trumps talk of a ban has undoubtedly angered Muslims, could his promise of neutrality in Israeli-Arab relations be enough to off-set this?

For the many American Muslims who are not Arab  and to whom Palestine is not such a central issue  this may mean little. But to Arab Muslim Americans, who have never experienced a US that seemed fair or balanced in its dealings with Israel, it could help to ameliorate some of that anger.

Trump would, if he were to follow through on his campaign rhetoric, be challenging the US long-standing pro-Israel bias and rejecting the influence of Israels powerful AIPAC lobby. That would be unprecedented.

Until now, presidential election contests have seen candidates arguing about who is more pro-Israel.

Republican candidates Ted Cruz and Rubio have called Trump weak on Israel. And Rubio has reportedly received massive financial support from Sheldon Adelson, the super wealthy publisher of Israels largest newspaper, Israel Hayom. Adelson also owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal Newspaper, a casino and convention centre in Las Vegas, and casinos in Macau and Singapore.

Cruz has repeatedly said that anyone who criticises Israel is un-American and asserted at a conference of Christian Arabs that those who hate Israel also hate America.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who grew up watching Communist leader Fidel Castro repeatedly embrace the late Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, told a Houston rally that the Palestinian Authority, which has strong links to terror, they teach little kids, five-year-olds, that its a glorious thing to kill Jews.

Adelsons support seemingly fuelled Rubios decision last week to attack Trumps Middle East policies, calling him anti-Israel.

It is very possible that Trumps Middle East positions may reflect his long-standing business rivalry with Adelson, whose Las Vegas hotel and casino is just a short distance from Trumps.

Trump and the Iraq war

Trump may also have appealed to Arab American voters when he criticised the Iraq war  saying that it destabilised the Middle East and fuelled the spread of al-Qaeda and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)  although his claim that he had opposed it before the invasion has been widely disputed.

Saba Ahmed: Urging American Muslims to vote Republican

Still, Trumps position on Iraq could put Clinton on the defensive. Despite criticising the Iraq War, as a senator at the time she voted in favour of the 2002 resolution introduced by President George W Bush to authorise the American invasion.

Trumps views on the Middle East could pose a problem for Clinton in other ways. Her husband, President Bill Clinton, has been accused of undermining his pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian peace when he tried to force Arafat to abandon the right of return and claims to Arab East Jerusalem during negotiations at Camp David in 2000 with the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Many believe the proposals were designed by Barak and pushed by Clinton.

It may be unorthodox, but Trumps strategy of telling voters what he thinks in the moment seems to be appealing to those disenchanted with the countrys political elite. Polls have shown a record turnout for Republicans, while Democratic turnout has slumped compared with 2008, the partys last competitive primary season. Trump is a big factor in that.

But while many things can change before the primary election process comes to a close, Trump seems to have tapped into a public desire for change. Whether that will lead to a change in how the US views the Middle East remains to be seen.

Ray Hanania is an award-winning Chicago political columnist and writer.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and may not reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Its only a matter of time before ISIL employs a dirty bomb either on the streets of the West or in the towns of Syria.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC based think tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States army.

Last November a small amount of iridium-192, a radioactive isotope, went missing from a facility in Zubair, a town in southern Iraq. After a lot of unsubstantiated  and in some cases wild  speculation by the media that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had stolen the material and was going to use it for a dirty bomb, the radioactive material turned up intact not far from where it went missing.

A radiological dispersal device, commonly referred to as a dirty bomb, is often considered to be the poor mans nuclear bomb  but this is not a very accurate description.

A dirty bomb is not a nuclear bomb because it does not rely on a nuclear reaction to trigger the explosion. Instead, a dirty bomb involves the dispersal of radioactive material by traditional explosives, such as dynamite.





The deadliness of a dirty bomb depends on a number of factors including the type of radioactive material used, the weather conditions, and where the bomb is detonated.

Weapon of psychological warfare

In most cases, a dirty bomb holds more value as a weapon of psychological warfare than a tool for mass killing.

Even so, a well-constructed dirty bomb, using the right material and detonated in the right place at the right time with the right environmental conditions, could be socially and economically devastating while relatively simple to deploy.

ALSO READ: ISIL and the misuse of the imagination

Radioactive material can be found in a range of hospital equipment. In 1998, 19 small tubes of caesium-137 went missing from a hospital in North Carolina. The caesium was never recovered.

It is no surprise that a terror group like ISIL, which has declared an intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction, would be eager to get its hands on enough radioactive material for a dirty bomb. by

For years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 130 Soviet-era nuclear-powered lighthouses were left abandoned and unguarded.

It is not unusual for such items to be stolen and then sold on because of their high value, making them very accessible on the black market.

In Brazil in 1998, two metal scavengers removed medical equipment containing caesium from an abandoned radiotherapy clinic. Not knowing exactly what they had scavenged, they took the device apart.

As a result they exposed caesium-137 and subsequently more than 100,000 people had to be examined for radioactive contamination.

Of these, 1,000 people were found to have been contaminated, with 151 having both internal and external contamination, 20 were seriously ill and five died. Large sections of topsoil had to be removed and several home demolished in the clean-up.

Imagine a similar scenario that involved a bomb to disperse the caesium-137 in a densely populated city such as London. This is why policymakers are concerned about dirty bombs.

Dirty bombs and terrorism

To date, Russia has borne the brunt of dirty bomb threats.

The first dirty bomb attack was attempted in November 1995 by a group of Chechen terrorists.

A Russian TV station was informed that 10lb of dynamite had been buried with caesium-137 in Moscows Izmailovsky Park.

Thankfully, the bomb was never denoted. The caesium-137 was found exactly where the terrorists had told the TV station they had left it.

Neither the culprits nor the source of the caesium-137 were ever found. In many ways, it didnt matter that the bomb had not exploded. The Chechen terrorists had successfully sown the seeds of fear in the minds of both the Russian population and the government.

In December 1998, a landmine attached to a container of radioactive material was found under a railway line 10 miles east of the Chechen capital of Grozny.

ALSO READ: Just the threat of a dirty bomb

It is no surprise that a terror group such as ISIL, which has declared its intent to acquire weapons of mass destruction, would be eager to get its hands on enough radioactive material for a dirty bomb. After all, it is thought that ISIL has a robust biological and chemical weapons programme and has used the latter in Iraq and Syria.

Impact of a dirty bomb

So could ISIL ever obtain material for a dirty bomb? Absolutely.

It goes without saying that radioactive material is dangerous to handle and comes with considerable health risks. The stronger the radioactive material is, the deadlier the impact of a dirty bomb would be.

In an organisation such as ISIL, which allows even the young and vulnerable to become suicide bombers, the issue of safely handling the radioactive material or a dirty bomb would no longer be a problem.

This is why ISIL and radioactive material make such a deadly combination.

Thankfully, in the recent case of the missing Iridium-192 in Iraq, the radioactive material was found.

However, it is only a matter of time before terrorists employ a dirty bomb either on the streets of the West or in the towns of Syria.

Luke Coffey is a research fellow specialising in transatlantic and Eurasian security at a Washington DC-based think-tank. He previously served as a special adviser to the British defence secretary and was a commissioned officer in the United States Army.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Jillian C York is a writer and activist whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and politics.

Buzzfeed, AJ, Vox, The Huffington Post, Business Insider, The Intercept: Despite their many differences that any media critic could point out, these fast-growing media organisations all have something profound in common  as purely digital publications, they rely heavily on analytics to determine which articles are being read and tailor their content accordingly.

A recent polemic on Al Jazeera argues that virality  a phenomenon in which a piece of information is circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another and can sometimes be harnessed by those well-versed in social media  is diminishing the quality of journalism. Specifically, the article looks at the young community managers, digital prodigies, web designers, and social media analysts that complement most modern newsrooms.





A closer reading reveals that the fight isnt with virality at all but, rather, with youth and inexperience.

As such it comes across as an admonition of innovation in the newsroom, when in fact virality is a phenomenon closely studied by psychologists and marketing experts alike, in some of the most vaunted universities in the world.

A profit-driven phenomenon

That is not to say the pieces arguments shouldnt be taken seriously; in fact, many of the points the author makes are worth addressing, if only to point out how wrong they are.

The modern media organisation is indeed dependent on digital talent. Video producers  like those who have made AJ famous  web designers, whose work has made The Intercepts new format soar, and yes, even social media mavens make sure that, in the internet age, content gets seen.

READ MORE: Viral Syndrome  the disease infecting journalism

News organisations both big and small hire these tech-savvy, often worldly young people with multidisciplinary backgrounds to ensure that, in an ever-changing media environment, their content can compete. But why is such competition necessary?

Just as in the past, when newspapers sold entire pages to companies to hawk their wares, news organisations are dependent on advertising. by

Todays media industry is still trying to find a solid revenue model. Just as in the past, when newspapers sold entire pages to companies to hawk their wares, news organisations are dependent on advertising.

But unlike those days, todays advertisements are dependent on clicks. Thats where digital analytics come in: In order for advertisers to get eyes on their products and services, they must turn to an increasingly sophisticated suite of analytics tools.

In other words, because media companies rely on advertising to stay afloat, they have an imperative to market their content in a way that reaches the most readers. Clickbaity headlines are not, therefore, the fault of young smorgs, but of the media industrys primary profit motive.

We should be more concerned with the amount of advertising content masquerading as journalism, as lampooned in a recent episode of South Park, or with the algorithms employed by social media companies that filter the information we see and tailor content to our professed or assumed interests.

By contrast, virality requires consent: No matter how much a headline baits us, we still make the choice of whether or not to click.

Virality has allowed content that is popular with the public to prevail, and should not be recognised as a net negative  a phenomenon that has allowed cute cats and celebrity gossip to float to the top, thus degrading journalism.

One need only look briefly at the modern media landscape to realise that, actually, virality has been a net positive.

From Tiananmen to Tahrir

Compare, for example, coverage of Tiananmen with coverage of Tahrir. Although the famous Tank Man photograph was snapped by an American AP photographer, overall, global coverage of the protests was limited and the lenses through which individuals in different geographic regions viewed them greatly varied.

Undoubtedly, someone who grew up in Moscow has a different view of the Cold War than someone who grew up in Los Angeles.

READ MORE: Are journalists doomed?

By and large, the modern media has levelled that playing field, and Angelenos and Muscovites alike can watch RT, read The New York Times, and view any number of other sources to make up their minds about an event.

Twenty-two years after Tiananmen and a lifetime away from the journalism of the 1980s, the 2011 uprising in Tahrir Square brought not only mainstream news crews, but smaller outlets, freelancers, and even bloggers to the table.

These varied actors were able to challenge the often Orientalist mainstream narrative, and  thanks to social media  share their content with the world.

The same rings true five years later for other movements. It seems highly unlikely that, in the days before the internet, #BlackLivesMatter would have made it to the front page of the New York Times  or, for that matter, that it wouldve happened on such a large scale at all.

It is because of virality, because of the ability of anyone to create and disseminate content or a hashtag that the world was able to stand up in solidarity with the protesters of St Louis.

This is in great contrast to the compelling stereotypes unleashed by the corporate-controlled media following the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The internets exhausting range of platforms has allowed us to push back against the colonialism of image and identity that was once forced upon us by the handful of major media companies with special access.

The internets original sin?

None of my disagreement with these notions should be taken as implicit support for the virality-seeking profit model  which Ethan Zuckerman, the director of the Center for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-creator of pop-up advertising, calls the internets original sin  or for the grabs for content control currently being made by Facebook and Google, among others.

But when anyone says that digital promotion should have a limited role in determining the seriousness, substance or even style of journalism, what are the proposers alternatives? The argument, when taken to its logical conclusion, would lead to more paywalls, more content sequestered from the broader news-consuming public.

In place of the diverse array of content that can be accessed now, by nearly anyone with a connection, we might see a redivision of resources, a re-opening of the divide that used to exist when only the elite could access or afford  much less influence  anything but their hometown paper. We may see opinions like this one and my rebuttal to it effectively disappear.

On balance, we simply have to understand virality for what it really is: a means through which truly great content and cute cat videos alike have become available to the world, as well as the means by which news organisations now make money.

We must therefore make digital literacy a priority  so as to ensure readers know how to responsibly consume the media that surrounds them  than something to be mocked.

Jillian C York is a writer and activist whose work focuses on the intersection of technology and politics.

Matthew Stender is project strategist for OnlineCensorship.org, a website that allows social media users to report incidents of content takedowns across social media platforms.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The scenarios around the Mosul Dam collapsing are both real and terrifying.

James Denselow is a writer on Middle East politics and security issues and a research associate at the Foreign Policy Centre.

While it was written that God warned Noah about the coming flood, in Iraq this week it was the US embassy who issued an alert warning that the Mosul Dam could burst. Such is the potential for catastrophic failure that the embassy advised that US citizens should leave the Tigris flood plain.

As if Iraq hasnt suffered enough the scenarios around the Mosul Dam collapsing are both real and terrifying and should provide all interested parties with an urgent wake-up call.





If the dam bursts more than a million and a half people are at direct risk of being hit by a lethal tsunami some estimate could be up to 24 metres high.

Six million more could be affected with the predicted flow taking out power stations, agriculture, countless homes and even washing up in Baghdad  some 650km downriver  with 4 metres of water shutting down the airport.

Not fit to cope

Iraq is not in a fit state to cope with this kind of scenario which would throw countries that were at peace into chaos. Already 3.3 million Iraqis are internally displaced largely in the centre and north of the country.

ALSO READ: Euphrates  river of hope or hate?

Ten million people, a third of the population, are dependent on humanitarian assistance, a number double that of a year ago. 40km down the Tigris away from the dam lies the city of Mosul that was hit by waves of ISIL fighters in 2014 and now faces a very different type of threat.

Whatever the perils of life under ISIL, Mosul residents will look nervously to what any major conflict will mean for their city. by

Despite the warnings from the US embassy, moves are being made to recapture the city with a new offensive launched this week in an area northwest of the city of Samarra looking to cut off the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) groups supply lines.

Whatever the perils of life under ISIL, Mosul residents will look nervously to what any major conflict will mean for their city. The ruins of Ramadi are a smouldering reminder of how the Iraqi Government had to destroy the city in order to win it.

A conspiracy theorist might suggest that the US embassy could have issued the warning as a way of prompting an exodus from Mosul, but the chequered history of the dam suggests otherwise.

The vast project in some respects symbolises the failed grandeur of the Saddam era. Engineers warned that it was built on dangerously unstable foundations back in the 1980s.

Water eats away at the soluble gypsum base that the dam is built on meaning that daily repairs are needed to counter erosion. ISIL briefly took control of the dam for 11 days in 2014 and reportedly many engineers havent returned.

Ticking time bomb

Yet the ticking time bomb that the dam has become has not been ignored by the government in Baghdad. Indeed, Italian forces and engineers are to be deployed to help avert a crisis.

Iraqi officials appear to be less worried than US diplomats, with the Muhsin al-Shammari, the water minister, saying the risk is a thousand to one, while Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has reassured that all necessary measures have been taken and that a collapse is highly unlikely.

It is worth remembering that unlike so many challenges facing Iraq, the collapse of the dam is an environmental disaster that takes no heed to ethnicity or sect. Saddams home town of Tikrit is in the range of any flood, as is the city of Samarra, home to Shia holy sites including the al-Askari Mosque.

Abadi may argue that he is damned if he does and damned if he doesnt. He could say that everything that can be done to secure the site is being done and that he cannot move resources from elsewhere, especially with oil exports below planned levels.

ALSO READ: The dawning of hydro-terrorism

While people cant expect Abadi to build an ark, there is certainly an argument that instead of the record-breaking tall towers being built in Basra, urgent and rapid investment could be channelled into the Badush Dam.

The incomplete Badush Dam lies downstream of the decaying Mosul Dam and if completed could help protect against the flood risk if any catastrophic failure were to occur.

So much of the Abadi premiership has been defined by the fight against ISIL that it is no surprise for him to see that as his top priority.

However, it is the mark of a statesman to make decisions that are in the greater interest of the entire country.

Ensuring the integrity of the countrys water systems against potential apocalyptic scenarios has to be at the top of Abadis agenda.

James Denselow is a writer on Middle East politics and security issues and a research associate at the Foreign Policy Centre.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
An Israeli development project threatens to swallow what remains of the Palestinian village of Ramya.

Ramya, Galilee  Abu Nazeehs home is a simple, one-floor, wood-covered structure with a corrugated iron roof. Amid the surrounding luxury apartment blocks built of pink-hued stone, it feels impermanent.

Inside, however, the overstuffed couches and kitschy knick-knacks conjure feelings of stability  as does Abu Nazeehs resolution to make this a home, despite the continuing threat of eviction.

To Israeli authorities, this home, located in the village of Ramya in northern Israel, should not exist. The Karmiel municipality does not provide any services here, and to get electricity, some residents buy their own generators and illegally connect to the citys power lines.

The Israeli government wants Abu Nazeeh, 50, a construction worker, and approximately 150 other residents of Ramya to leave.

INTERACTIVE: Building the occupation

Ramya lies inside the Israeli city of Karmiel, founded on lands expropriated in the 1950s from several Palestinian villages, including Ramya. The Karmiel municipality plans to build more apartment blocks on Ramyas lands, swallowing what remains and forcing Palestinian villagers to relocate.

They are choking and closing in on us. We've been in court for 40 years; it's a very slow struggle. Every time they take small bits and pieces. by Abu Nazeeh, Ramya resident

They are choking and closing in on us, Abu Nazeeh told Al Jazeera. Weve been in court for 40 years; its a very slow struggle. Every time, they take small bits and pieces.

Last November, Israels High Court refused to hear an appeal filed by Ramyas residents, ruling that they must sign a deal to relocate and accept the manner in which the proposed land was divided in 1995, or else be evicted by force.

Residents are living on a thin edge as a deadline to sign a deal was extended for another month this week, after which they would be given a year to move out.

Residents say the land being offered in the deal is only a fraction of what they originally owned.

Psychologically, the people of Ramya will not be able to sign this agreement without the solution that they need, the lawyer, who is filing a new appeal on behalf of Ramyas younger residents, told Al Jazeera.

A spokesperson for the Israel Land Administration (ILA), the government body in charge of administering public lands (93 percent of land in Israel is public), told Al Jazeera that they expect the court verdict to be fulfilled, noting that residents will not be given additional land blocks.

The ILA would not comment on the proposed use of the land, but residents say it is being seized for a multimillion-shekel development project. A spokesperson for the Karmiel municipality declined Al Jazeeras request for comment.

The government has offered to relocate residents to a new site  what residents call a segregated neighbourhood  at the citys edge.

Its a show, Ramya resident Salah Sawaed told Al Jazeera, as he strolled down a dead-end street in the proposed site. I knew every stone in this area. Down there, there was a well that has been destroyed. Its a humiliation you cannot express in words.

The Israeli government initially expropriated Ramyas land in 1976 as part of a mass confiscation in the Galilee area, that triggered demonstrations and strikes throughout Palestinian towns and villages.

When six demonstrators were killed during a march, the day of their death became known as Land Day, which is still marked by Palestinians around the world.

About 1.8 million Palestinians, approximately a quarter of the Israeli population, live in Israel and carry Israeli citizenship, but since 1948, Israel has passed more than 50 laws that directly or indirectly discriminate against them.

READ MORE: Bulldozers flatten Bedouin village 49 times

Karmiel was built as part of a governmental plan to encourage Jewish settlement in the Galilee, a region where most Palestinian towns and villages in Israel are located.





The plan included financial incentives and the development of industrial areas and infrastructure.

Plans to Judaise Galilee were later translated into plans to build Jewish communities and towns, most of them built in the late 70s and early 80s. These were handled through admission committees, which de-facto excluded Arabs, Suhad Bishara, a lawyer specialising in land and planning with the rights group Adalah, told Al Jazeera. Admission committees determined who could reside in communities of fewer than 500 households.

Two cities, Karmiel and Nazareth Illit (upper Nazareth) were established as part of this plan, stifling the growth of Palestinian villages. Neither Karmiel nor Nazareth Illit have Arab schools, and children are sent to study in the nearest Palestinian town.

Sawaed maintains that, even if there is no law to prevent him from buying a home in Karmiel, in practice it would be difficult.

Renting is not a problem, but buying is a problem. You have to find someone to buy on your behalf, through a back way, he said. They dont sell to Arabs.
Politician and talk show host Tawfik Okasha expelled by majority vote after meeting Israeli ambassador.

Egyptian politician and talk show host Tawfik Okasha has been expelled from parliament after meeting Israels ambassador to the country.

A majority of members of parliament voted to expel the TV personality on Wednesday just days after receiving Haim Koren for dinner at his home.

The move is the latest in an escalating row over the meeting, with one politician hurling a shoe at Okasha during an earlier meeting of parliament.

          pic.twitter.com/5NzzZOnryg    (@IsraelinEgypt) February 25, 2016

The meeting between the two men reportedly involved discussion about Ethiopias Grand Renaissance Dam and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Koren said the meeting was Okashas idea.

A former member of Hosni Mubaraks National Democratic Party, Okasha gained infamy after the uprising that brought the former president down for his vocal support for Egypts military rulers.

Despite frequently accusing his opponents of collusion with Israel, Okasha has applauded the Israeli armys operations in Gaza and has called on its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran.

1979 peace deal

Although Egypts military enjoys close relations with Israel, many Egyptians continue to harbour ill feeling towards the state.

The two countries have fought several wars but a peace treaty signed in 1979 has since thawed relations.

Both states are involved in enforcing a blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas.

The Palestinian armed movement is proscribed as a terrorist group by Israel and looked upon with suspicion by Egypt for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been the subject of a crackdown by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis government.
Government insists data will not not be abused but many are concerned move is a pretext for surveillance.

The Burundian government has launched a census to register all foreigners, sparking fears among overseas nationals that the scheme could be a pretext for state surveillance.

All non-Burundians in the country will be required to report to border police offices within the next two months, a public security ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

Several foreigners told the AFP new agency that they feared it was a pretext to track them. Many Rwandans said the process could lead to their community being victimised.

Last month, Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, Burundis public security minister, said the move was aimed at granting foreigners a biometric ID card.

READ MORE: Only mediation can stop the violence in Burundi

Foreign nationals will be required to attend police stations in person and carry their travel documents.

We dont know how the police will use this data and with the violence that has already struck the Rwandan community  I think that I will also have to leave he country, said a Rwandan national born in Burundi 40 years ago.

Thousands of Rwandans who lived in Burundi have fled the country in recent months after several arrests within their community.

Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced plans in April to run for a third term, which he went on to win.

Relations between Burundi and Rwanda are at a low ebb, with Bujumbura and the United Nations accusing Kigali of supporting Burundian rebels.

The US government released a statement on Tuesday saying that their embassy in Bujumbura was working with the Ministry of Public Security to obtain additional information about this policy to share with US citizens.
Gulf countries announce the decision amid an ongoing row with the Lebanese group over involvement in regional conflicts.

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, known as the GCC, have classified Lebanese movement Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation, citing hostile actions by the armed group.

GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said on Wednesday that the six Gulf monarchies undertook the move because the [Hezbollah] militia recruited young people [from the Gulf] for terrorist acts.



Inside Story  Lebanons deepening crisis

Hezbollah, a Shia political organisation with an armed wing, fights in neighbouring Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Sunni-dominated GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Gulf nations have taken a series of measures against Hezbollah since Saudi Arabia last month halted a $4bn programme funding French military supplies to Beirut.

Hezbollah is backed by Saudi Arabias regional rival Iran, with whom relations have worsened this year. The two nations are on opposing sides in conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

READ MORE: Lebanon and Saudi Arabias love and hate relationship

Announcing the military funding cut last month, a Saudi official said that the kingdom had noticed hostile Lebanese positions resulting from the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state.

Riyadh would be conducting a comprehensive review of its relations with the Lebanese republic, the unnamed official said.

He specifically cited Lebanons refusal to join the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in January.

Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after demonstrators set fire to its embassy and a consulate following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shia cleric.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah lashed out at Saudi Arabia during a televised speech on Tuesday.

READ MORE: Whats to become of Lebanon?

The kingdom is trying to put pressure on the Lebanese to try to silent us but we will not be silent on the crimes the Saudis are committing in Yemen and elsewhere, Nasrallah said.

Does Saudi Arabia have the right to punish Lebanon, its state and its army because a certain party has decided to raise its voice? he asked.

If they have a problem with us, let them keep it with us, and let them spare Lebanon and the Lebanese, Nasrallah added.

Last month, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain also called on their citizens to leave Lebanon or to avoid travelling there.
Security forces kill seven men in northern city of Irbid in series of raids that also left a police officer dead.

Jordan says it has foiled attempts to carry out attacks on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group during a series of raids in the northern city of Irbid.

Jordanian security forces said seven suspected ISIL fighters were killed in the raids, which took place late on Tuesday evening at a Palestinian refugee camp in the heart of the city.

One member of Jordans security forces was killed and three wounded in clashes that raged for several hours until dawn, the authorities said. Two civilians were also hurt.





Security forces said they had tracked down the suspected fighters to a residential building in Irbid, and troops opened fire with automatic weapons after the men refused to surrender.

The intelligence service said in a statement on Wednesday that the group members were planning to carry out attacks against civilian and military sites in order to destabilise national security.

It added that 13 men linked to the same group were detained in previous raids in Irbid, but did not say when those arrests took place.

Syrian war

Irbid is just a few kilometres from the Syrian border where Jordanian security forces regularly detain sympathisers attempting to join armed groups in Syria.

Jordan is part of a US-led military coalition against ISIL in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

READ MORE: Jordans ISIL campaign scares away tourists

The country is the largest host of Syrian refugees in the region after Turkey and Lebanon.

Jordanian security forces have also cracked down on suspected ISIL sympathisers in the kingdom. Some of those expressing support for the group on social media have been sent to prison by security courts.

ISIL holds large tracts of territory in Syria and Iraq but has sympathisers across the region and beyond.

Its various media publications have called upon its supporters unable to reach its self-declared caliphate to carry out attacks in their home countries.
Letter released by US appears to outline how the slain al-Qaeda leader wanted his wealth to be apportioned.

The United States has released what appears to be a handwritten will of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In it, Bin Laden asked that the majority of his $29m fortune be spent on continuing al-Qaedas operations.

The letter was part of a cache of 113 documents taken in the 2011 US Special Forces in Pakistan during which Bin Laden was killed..

The documents were translated from Arabic and declassified by US intelligence agencies.

They were part of a second tranche of documents seized in the operation and have been declassified since May 2015. A large number have yet to be released.

One document, a handwritten note that US intelligence officials believe the late al-Qaeda leader composed in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29m he had in Sudan.

One percent of the $29m, Bin Laden wrote, should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al-Qaeda member who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al-Mauritani.

WATCH: The other Bin Laden story

Bin Laden lived in Sudan for five years as an official guest until he was asked to leave in May 1996 by the government under pressure from the United States.

Another 1 percent of the sum should be given to a second associate, Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Saad, an engineer, for helping set up Bin Ladens first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co, the document said.

Bin Laden urged his close relatives to use the rest of the funds to support al-Qaedas activities.

I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah, he wrote.

He set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncles children and maternal aunts.

In a letter dated August 15, 2008, and addressed To my Precious Father, Bin Laden asks that his wife and children be taken care of in the event he died first.

It was unclear to whom Bin Laden was writing, as his natural father, Mohammed bin Laden, died in a 1967 aircraft crash. US intelligence officials were not immediately available to comment on whether he may have been referring to his stepfather, Mohammad al-Attas.

READ MORE: What we learn from Osama bin Ladens bookshelf

My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow up on their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs, he wrote.

In a final wistful paragraph, he asks for forgiveness if I have done what you did not like.

Assassination fears

In a letter to his father dated August 8, 2008, Bin Laden wrote that he was worried about being assassinated.

If I am to be killed, pray for me a lot and give continuous charities in my name, as I will be in great need for support to reach the permanent home, Bin Laden wrote.

A letter from Bin Laden to his dear wife provides a glimpse into the mentality of the most hunted man on the planet.

The wife had recently visited a dentist in Iran, and Bin Laden asks her if she is sure the physician did not insert a tiny tracking device into a filling.

Please let me know in detail about anything that bothers you about any hospital in Iran or any suspicions that any of the brothers may have about chips planted in any way, he wrote in a letter signed Abu Abdallah, Bin Ladens nom de guerre.

The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli.

A first tranche of documents released last May showed Bin Laden was worried about drone strikes, and detailed his plans to groom a new cadre of leaders.

Bin Laden also warned that conflict with regimes in the Middle East would distract his groups fighters from focusing the fight on what he considered was the the real enemy  America.
Rights groups decry attempt to arrest Najat Abu Bakr, who was summoned for questioning after accusing minister of graft.

Palestinian human rights groups have condemned attempts by the public prosecutor to question a member of parliament, who has sought refuge inside the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Ramallah for a seventh day in a row.

Last week, Palestinian Authority security services attempted to arrest Najat Abu Bakr, who was summoned for interrogation after she accused a cabinet minister of corruption.

The Fatah politician then staged a sit-in at the building of the now-defunct parliament, arguing that the Palestinian Basic Law, or constitution, makes elected parliament members immune from arrest.

Abu Bakr, who hails from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, said she was being persecuted for exercising her freedom of expression. She also said that any complaint against her must be assessed by parliament and either approved or rejected.

The current crisis started when she claimed that Hussein al-Araj, a minister closely associated with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, had used public funds to invest in a private water project  a charge the minister denies.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Abu Bakr defended her comments: I was defending the rights of the Palestinian people, she said.

It is sad to see attempts to silence those who speak for the people, and it is equally sad to see the Palestinian Basic Law being trampled over.

Parliamentary immunity

The public prosecutor said Abu Bakr was being summoned for crimes committed, and not for voicing an opinion.

She has been requested to stand before the public prosecution for committing crimes that are penalised by the existing Penal Law, the prosecutor said in a statement last week.

Immunity must not be used to commit crimes and actions violating the law, as immunity is a duty and not a personal privilege.

Abu Bakr also said she was targeted for supporting a teachers strike, which has left approximately one million Palestinian students out of school for the past three weeks.

PHOTOS: Palestinian teachers march demanding salary increases

Earlier this month, Palestinian Authority (PA) security officers arrested 20 teachers before attempting to foil a Ramallah protest by more than 20,000 others, who say that the government has not implemented a 2013 agreement that promised pay increases and promotions.

Teachers make up the second largest segment of public workers, but the PA spends around a third of its budget on security instead  more than whats allotted to the education and health sectors combined.

The Palestinian Human Rights Foundation, a Ramallah-based group said it was concerned about the deterioration of human rights in the West Bank.

It added that it was Abu Bakrs right as a legislator to combat corruption, and called on the Palestinian president to respect the human rights he always vows in his speeches to uphold.

Respect the constitution

The Palestinian Legislative Council, or parliament, has not met since 2007, when clashes erupted between the Hamas and Fatah parties, a year after the former emerged victorious in parliamentary elections. Despite this, members of parliament still make $3,000 a month, costing the PA approximately $4.7m a year.

Last week, human rights group representatives, politicians and supporters staged a demonstration outside the parliament in support of Abu Bakr.

A lot of confusion is arising from mis-interpreting the Palestinian Basic Law, said Qaddoura Fares, who heads the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a Ramallah-based rights group.

This gathering is a reminder that everyone, including the president and any regular citizen, must respect the constitution, Fares, who took part in the protest, told Al Jazeera.

Hamas politicians in Gaza also condemned the public prosecutors summons for interrogating Abu Bakr.

Every member of parliament enjoys immunity, Ahmad Abu Hilbieh told Al Jazeera. We condemn this attempt to go after Abu Bakr and silence her.
Israeli army says teenagers were shot after they wounded a Jewish settler in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces have shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers during an alleged stabbing in the occupied West Bank, as tit-for-tat violence and months of escalated tensions continue.

The two were shot dead while infiltrating Eli, a Jewish-only settlement in the central West Bank, and allegedly wounding a settler in a stabbing incident, the Israeli army said in a statement.



Spinning the occupation: Israel and the media  The Listening Post (Full)

Two assailants infiltrated the community of Eli, south of Nablus. They attacked a man outside his home, the army said in a statement. Forces arrived  [and] shot the attackers resulting in their death.

According to a report by the Palestinian Maan News Agency, the boys, both 17, were Labeeb Azzam and Muhammad Zaghlawan from the nearby village of Qaryot.

In recent months, Palestinian protests against Israels occupation have intensified. Rights groups have accused Israeli forces of responding harshly to demonstrations.

Since October 1, Israeli forces or settlers have killed 186 Palestinians, including unarmed demonstrators, bystanders and attackers.

READ MORE: How a normal day ended in tragedy for Palestinian teens

Meanwhile, Palestinian attackers have killed at least 28 Israelis, mostly in stabbing attacks.

Wednesdays incident came only a day after Israeli troops shot dead 22-year-old Eyad Omar Sajadiya, a Palestinian resident of the West Banks Qalandiya refugee camp, during clashes sparked by an incursion into the camp.

Another 10 were injured during the clashes.

Upwards of half-a-million Israelis live in more than 150 Jewish-only settlements across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli rights group BTselem.
Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump win most states in the biggest day in the race for the presidential nomination.

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton have moved closer to winning their parties nominations with a series of victories in the Super Tuesday elections .

Clinton and Trump each won at least seven of 11 state races as they distanced themselves from party rivals and looked ahead to the November 8 presidential election.

Ted Cruz, a Republican senator, won his home state of Texas, Alaska and Oklahoma as he sought to emerge as Trumps main rival.

Clintons only opponent, Bernie Sanders, also won Oklahoma, as well as his home state of Vermont, Colorado and Minnesota.





Cruz desperately needed the Texas win in order to stay in the race, and was likely to keep campaigning as the only Republican who has been able to defeat Trump in any primary contest.

Still, Trumps wins in the South were a blow to Cruz, who once saw the region as his opportunity to stake a claim to the nomination.

Instead, he has watched Trump, a brash New York real estate mogul, display surprising strength with the regions evangelical Christians and social conservatives.

For Marco Rubio, who is also seeking to emerge as the main alternative to Trump, the night was disappointing. While Republican officeholders have rallied around him in recent days, he only managed to score a campaign win in Minnesota.

His long-shot hopes now rest with his home state, Florida, which votes on March 15, but polls show him trailing Trump there.

READ MORE: Whats behind the rise of Donald Trump?

Trump won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia on Super Tuesday.

Clinton, the former secretary of state and senator, won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

The wins reflected her strength in the South, where black voters are an important part of the Democratic base and overwhelmingly support her.

Voting was continuing in other contests or the races were too close to call.

Trump has stunned the Republican political establishment by emerging as the clear frontrunner, winning three of the four contests preceding Super Tuesday.

He has seized on the anxieties of voters angry at Washington and worried about immigration and an uncertain economy.

Using simple terms, and often coarse language, he has soared to the top of polls with his pledge to make America great again.

Clinton, once seen as the all-but-inevitable Democratic nominee, has contended with an unexpectedly strong challenge from Sanders, a senator and self-described democratic socialist.

READ MORE: Clinton looks to lock out rival Sanders

But Clinton, like Trump, had also won three of the first four races.

Signalling her confidence, Clinton set her sights on Trump as she addressed supporters during a victory rally in Miami.

Its clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric were hearing on the other side has never been lower, said Clinton, who is seeking to become Americas first female president.

Trump, too, had his eye on a general election match-up with Clinton, casting her as part of a political establishment that has failed Americans.

Shes been there for so long, Trump told a news conference at his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. If she hasnt straightened it out by now, shes not going to straighten it out in the next four years.

Delegate score

Candidates are trying to win delegates who will vote for them at the parties national conventions in July.

Democrats were allocating 865 delegates on Super Tuesday, more than one-third of the 2,383 needed to become the nominee.

Clinton is now assured of winning at least 334 delegates on Tuesday and Sanders 145. Including superdelegates  party leaders who get to vote for candidates at the convention  Clinton now has at least 882 delegates. Sanders has at least 232.

For Republicans, 595 delegates were at stake, nearly half of the 1,237 needed for the nomination.

Despite Trumps string of victories on Tuesday, his delegate gains were limited by Cruzs big win in delegate-rich Texas  illustrating the importance of the March 15 primaries in Florida and Ohio in which the statewide winner gets all the delegates.

For the night, Trump won at least 234 delegates and Cruz won at least 209. Rubio was a distant third with at least 90. Overall, Trump leads with 316 delegates and Cruz has 226. Rubio has 106 delegates, John Kasich has 25 and Ben Carson has eight.

Al Jazeeras Alan Fisher, reporting from Stafford, Texas, said Trump continued to benefit from the split field in the Republican race.

Ted Cruz believes that if you make this a two-man race he has a change of overhauling Trump, although that wouldnt seem to be reflected in the results of Super Tuesday, he added.

Marco Rubio has also asked the others to drop out and allow him to go head-to-head with Trump. So, while the field is so split, Donald Trump continues to rack up delegates. Of course Rubio and Cruz do as well, but in much smaller numbers.

INTERACTIVE: Where do the candidates stand on foreign policy?

Both Cruz and Rubio have launched furious verbal attacks on Trump in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, he has appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states voting Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump.
Regime forces are accused of ignoring a ceasefire that is aimed to lead to peace talks between warring sides on March 9.

Syrian rebels have said they are under fierce government attacks near the Turkish border despite a cessation of hostilities agreement as the United States expressed concern about regime assaults on civilian areas.

The agreement drawn up by the US and Russia, which came into effect on Saturday, has slowed but not entirely stopped fighting in the conflict approaching its sixth anniversary. Both the Syrian government and rebels have accused each other of violations.

OPINION: Aleppo can be a turning point in Syrias civil war

The Reuters news agency quoted a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group as saying that government forces pressed an offensive against opposition forces in Latakia province at the Turkish border on Wednesday.

Fadi Ahmad, spokesman for the First Coastal Division, a Free Syrian Army group, said government forces had brought in reinforcements and that fighting was as intense as anything preceding the cessation of hostilities.

The battles were today very fierce, he told Reuters.

The Syrian government has prioritised securing the Turkish border through which rebel groups are supplied with weapons from states seeking Syrian President Bashar al-Assads downfall.

The area being fought over in Latakia overlooks the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in neighbouring Idlib province, and the Ghab Plain, where rebel advances last year were seen as a growing threat to Assad, Reuters reported.

Battles continue in vital areas that the regime wants, and where there was no truce in the first place. There is bombardment and battles, a rebel commander told Reuters.

We are in the fifth day and there is no change in these areas, he said, in reference to areas in the provinces of Latakia, Homs and Hama.

There was no immediate comment from Damascus, which has denied breaching the terms of the truce.

Meanwhile, the White House said it had seen a reduction in air strikes against the opposition and civilians in Syria in recent days but was concerned by reported tank and artillery attacks.

We are concerned about reports that the Syrian regime has engaged in tank and artillery attacks against civilians, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, referring to reports about strikes near Latakia.

Obviously those kinds of attacks  if confirmed  would be a flagrant violation of cessation of hostilities.

The United Nations said on Tuesday that peace talks between the warring parties in the Syrian conflict were scheduled to begin on March 9 in Geneva, urging them to ensure the cessation agreement take hold to allow them to come to the table.

But opposition official George Sabra said on Wednesday the dates for a resumption of talks remained hypothetical as long as the current truce did not fulfill humanitarian demands.

READ MORE: Aleppo can be a turning point in Syrias civil war

As long as the truce does not help implement the terms [of a UN resolution], all dates for the resumption of negotiations remain hypothetical, Sabra told Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath on Wednesday.

The opposition is pressing for full humanitarian access to rebel-held areas and for detainees to be released  terms set out in a UN Security Council resolution passed in December.

What is the value of a truce if its overseers  meaning US and Russia  do not push all sides to abide by it? Sabra said.

The agreed agreement does not include the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or al-Nusra Front groups, which are recognised as terrorist groups by the UN.
Agriculture in the country has been badly affected by the lack of rainfall in recent months.

Months of below-average rainfall have conspired to produce the worst drought in Vietnam in the best part of 100 years. It has been reported that the Mekong River is at its lowest level since 1926.

The ongoing El Nino weather pattern is thought to be the main cause of the lack of rainfall affecting the country.

Vietnam is not alone in suffering drought. Neighbouring Cambodia, and Laos, as well as Thailand and Myanmar, have been experiencing water shortages as a result of the weather phenomenon.





Vietnams need for water is partly driven by its high reliance on agriculture as a source of income. The country is the worlds second largest producer of coffee and rice, both high users of water. In addition, coffee is vulnerable to frosts and cold weather. In both 2013 and 2014 severe cold reduced the yield of the coffee crop.

The Mekong Delta has been worst affected by the lack of rainfall. The area has 2.2 million hectares of arable land. According to Le Anh Tuan, professor of climate change at Can Tho University, as much as 40 to 50 percent of this land has been hit by salinisation.

As water availability decreases, salinity from irrigation tends to increase. All water contains dissolved salts; when plants have absorbed the water, they leave behind the salts which accumulate. Over time, increasing salinity makes it difficult for plants to absorb soil moisture, and these salts can only be removed by the roots of the plants by the application of additional water.

We do not have any specific measures to mitigate the situation, Tuan told the AFP news agency. He added that residents had been asked to save water for domestic rather than agricultural use.

The countrys government has announced the equivalent of $3.8m of financial assistance for affected areas.

In the Deltas Tien Giang Province, an additional 141 public taps have been installed to provide water for up to 9,000 households affected by drought and salinisation during the dry season, which usually persists until April.
WFP says it only has about half of the funds needed to help 2.5 million people who are facing acute food shortages.

At least half of the population or 2.5 million people in the Central African Republic are facing a hunger crisis, in a situation that has become dire, the World Food Programme said.

Bienvenu Djossa, WFP country director in the Central African Republic (CAR), said on Tuesday that the number of people battling hunger had doubled from 2015 and serious interventions had to be implemented to ensure the crisis did not deteriorate.

It is serious. The situation is worse than last year, Djossa said a statement.

It is crucial that we continue helping the most vulnerable, who need emergency food assistance to survive. This is the time when people need the maximum help possible as it is also the lean season, when people struggle to have enough food to eat before the next harvest.

Three years of bloodshed and the displacement of nearly one million people from their homes have disrupted harvests and sent food prices soaring in the volatile country.

CARs forgotten crisis

The WFPs call for CAR not to be forgotten comes as the United Nations revealed that overall crop production in 2015 remained 54 percent below the pre-crisis average.

Some 75 percent of people in CAR depend on agriculture, and with the planting season starting in less than two months, boosting agriculture now is crucial to revitalising the economy and to stability in the country, the UNs Food and Agriculture Organisations country representative Jean-Alexandre Scaglia said in a press release on Monday.

The WFP said that families are so short of food that children receiving school meals under the WFPs emergency programme put part of their serving in a plastic bag to take home.

Families have been forced to sell their possessions, pull their children out of school and even resort to begging.

The country suffered the worst crisis in its history in early 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka fighters toppled then leader Francois Bozize. Christian militias responded by attacking the Muslim minority.

Killing and looting had almost halved the number of cattle and reduced the number of sheep and goats by almost 60 percent, the UN said. Damage to infrastructure and insecurity had also hit fishing.

An escalation of violence in September helped exacerbate a massive increase in food prices, the agencies said, with the price of beef almost double pre-crisis levels.

WFP said that it had only secured about half the $89m it needs until the end of July to respond to the needs of 1.4 million people in CAR and neighbouring countries hosting CAR refugees.
Baby Rima is born at a UN-run clinic to parents who married and started a family as refugees.

Zaatari camp, Jordan  The 5,000th birth at Zaataris delivery clinic was celebrated at this Syrian refugee camp, where red roses were given to all mothers, and falafel from the fathers workplace were served.

Rima, born on Tuesday, is the second child to Khoulod Ahmad Suleiman, 21, and her husband Mohammad Salameh, who is 22. Two-year-old Alaa was also born in Zaatari, a camp which houses around 80,000 Syrian refugees.

The family appears to epitomise much of the Syrian refugee experience during the war, which is soon to enter its sixth year. Rima and her big sister were both born in Jordan, where their parents were also married, and the newborn is named after the Jordanian doctor who delivered her.

Khouloud and Mohammad are both from Deraa, in Syrias south, and left the country two and three years ago, respectively.

They knew each other from home, but it is in Zaatari they got married, and have now started a family.

When we each arrived we thought we would be here for around two to three months, Mohammad said. But when we realised that it was going to be a much longer time, we decided to start a family here.

READ MORE: Syrians at Zaatari camp: We cant live here forever

Khoulod said Rimas birth went well, and that she received all the medical attention and help she needed in the run-up to the delivery.

The young woman is a little shy, and not at first totally enthusiastic about the attention her landmark baby is giving her and her family.

But she beams when looking at her newborn, and says she hopes for more children  but after a break of two or three years.





Mohammad is lucky to have work  Syrians are technically not allowed to work in Jordan, but in the camp many work in informal jobs. He works 12 hours a day, seven days a week in the falafel shop, which earns him only $211 a month  and with that he must support an extended family of six in total.

Back at the maternity clinic- officially titled the Women and Girls Comprehensive Centre  Rimas namesake is attending to other recent mothers.

Dr Rima Diab helped deliver the 5,000th baby at the clinic, and Mohammad said that when he realised their baby was a milestone, they knew they had to name her after the doctor.

The clinic is supported by the UNFPA, the UNs Population Fund, and run by the Jordanian Health Aid Society. It averages six normal vaginal births every day, Dr Diab said. There have been no maternal deaths in the clinic.

If there are complications or emergencies, including caesarean sections, the mother is taken to the Moroccan field hospital in the camp. Sometimes, if cases deteriorate, or if newborns need intensive care, they are then taken to Mafraq hospital, just outside of the tightly-guarded camp.

In the postnatal room, new mothers are given help with breastfeeding and the babies receive their first vaccinations, in line with the Jordanian programme of immunisation.

WATCH: The Syrian doctors treating refugees in Turkey

Fatima, 20, who did not want to give her last name, had just given birth for the first time, to an as yet unnamed baby girl, three hours previously.

She said that the labour had gone fine, and the staff had all been incredibly helpful.

Originally from the Ghouta area outside of Damascus, Fatima has been in the camp for two years now.

I am so happy as I have a baby now, but I am sad as I am so far away from home, she said.

Two beds along and separated by curtains, a 19-year-old who did not want to give her name, had also just given birth for the first time, to a little boy called Mohammad.





I was a little scared at first, she said, and there was some pain. But now I am so happy that this has made the pain disappear.

She said she hoped for a normal life for her son, and that he is able to attend school.

There are seven doctors, 14 midwives and six nurses at the clinic, which has four delivery beds, and six postnatal beds, where new mothers must stay for a minimum of eight hours after giving birth.

All care at the clinic is provided free of charge.

Of the 635,000 registered refugees in Jordan, some 16,000 are pregnant at any one time, according to the UN.

Around 5 percent of Syrian babies in Jordan are born to mothers under the age of 18, a number which UNFPA and other agencies are trying to tackle.

Dan Baker, regional humanitarian coordinator and head of the Jordan country office for UNFPA, speaking at Tuesdays ceremony, said that while the 5,000th birth was a joyous occasion amid the misery of the Syrian war, the number of births to child brides needs to be reduced, as it can puts girls at risk, both physically and psychologically.

READ MORE: The forgotten pocket of Syrias refugee crisis

The full number of births in the camp is unknown, Baker told Al Jazeera.

Aside from the now 5,000-plus births at the delivery centre and hundreds more at the Moroccan field hospital, there were also births delivered by various NGOs, such as Gynaecologists Without Borders and MSF in the earlier days of Zaatari, and before UNFPA began consolidating services in 2013.

Baker now estimates that the total number of births in Zaatari since it opened in 2012 to be around 10,000. (The overall population of the camp used to be a lot higher, around 120,000, but some have now returned to Syria or moved on.)

Babies born in Zaatari receive UNHCR registration cards, and a Jordanian birth certificate, although this does not equate to citizenship.

This documentation is very important because without it they do become stateless, Baker said.

However, what happens next is unclear. While legally, babies born to Syrians abroad are Syrian, it is unknown if it will be that straightforward, should these babies return to Syria, whenever that might be.
You may know organistfrom his work in TheLifetime band (with) and later with, andor you may just be hip to his Blue Note 1960's years. Nonetheless, you would certainly be surprised to learn that he lived to be just 38 years old, passing away in 1978. As the philosopher Lao Tzu said, "The flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long"Born Larry John McCoy in Newark, New Jersey in 1940, he later changed his name to Larry Young Jr., (his father's last name) because his grandfather was also an organist. Young began playing in organ trios performing soul jazz and R&B throughout New Jersey. His evolution, though, accelerated quite quickly, paralleling the 1960's music ofand blasting off into new territories via' Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) session and the aforementioned jazz-rock fusion.Resonance Records, which specializes in finding historic often unheard recordings, worked with ORTF (the Office of French Radio and Television) archives to unearth these tapes not heard since their original broadcast fifty years ago. The two-CD (or limited edition LPs) present pristine sound from the ORTF Studios in Paris and at a jazz awards ceremony at La Locomotive, where Young performed as a sideman with saxophonist, the Jazz aux Champs-Elysees All-Stars, and his own piano trio.The significance of this music is informed by the ripening of Young's approach, as these sessions recorded in 1964 and1965 were the precursors to his masterpiece Blue Note session Unity (1965) withand the teenage trumpeter, who appears here. The Nathan Davis Quartet performs a twenty-minute live version of Shaw's "Zoltan," a piece made famous from that Unity session. The piece allows the soloists to stretch-out. Davis' tenor ignites Shaw's solo before Young squares off with Billy Brooks' drums. Where organists before Young delivered a bulky soul sound, Young's affection for Coltrane's quartet led him to tailor his organ to's acoustic approach. These sides also include compositions Young recorded for Blue Note including "Talkin' About J.C.," "Luny Tune," and "Beyond All Limits."The expanded Jazz aux Champs-Elysees All-Stars band which adds trumpeter Sonny Grey, saxophonist Jean-Claude Fohrenbach, pianist Jack Dieval, Italian drummer Franco Manzecchi, and conga player Jacky Bamboo account for three pieces here. Their swinging/hipster blues piece "Discotheque" is a pause in the evolution of Young's flights, but it is evidence that he could accent even as an accompanist. Elsewhere, the All-Stars eat up "Talkin' About J.C." and "La Valse Grise" pushing soul jazz into the 1960's Coltrane revolution.The second disc ends with "Larry's Blues," a rare piece performed on piano. Young's sound could easily be mistaken here for that of a cross betweenand. Isn't that a perfect summation of modern music?The sound quality, especially the studio dates, is excellent making this a rare and, oh so precious find.
The story of(1927-1991) has to begin with. Before Young, tenor sax players seemed awash in testosterone. Their sound was full, rich, deep, blown hard out of the instrument's lower registers, with emotion pouring out in lavish swoops and honks. Then along came Lester. In the post-war 1940s, he invented a new way to play the tenor sax: softly, effortlessly, with no wasted notes, and above all, without drama. There was emotion, of course, but it was kept under wraps. Cool, in other words. And this approach didn't end with Lester. He became the musical role model for Getz and a generation of tenor sax players who aspired to coolness.Getz had a long and remarkably successful career, stretching from the very early 1950s to 1991, the year he died. After honing his skills with theandbands, it didn't take long for him to achieve fame as a tenor sax phenomenon. Getz's warm, pure tone, and the lightness of his touch, set him apart early. And with the remarkable sales of his Grammy-winning bossa nova albums, he achieved a level of commercial success seldom experienced by jazz musicians.Stan Getz was a restless artist. His music changed and changed and changed again over the years, until, near the end of his life, he came nearly full circle. T.S. Eliot described this kind of personal journey in his "Four Quartets": "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." He could have been describing the arc of Getz's career.Getz's early recordings, largely from the 1950s, are lyrical, beautifully simple. They're mainly improvisations on jazz standards, in which he concentrates on melody, on weaving countless variants on familiar themes. There's a lightness, a gentleness, even in the up-tempo numbers. The rhythm section is supportive but discrete, never intrusive.In the early 1960's, Getz became a leading light in the bossa nova movement, a blending of American jazz with Brazilian rhythms and sensibilities. His bossa nova albums were immensely popular "crossover" hits (huge sales, two gold discs, four Grammys), but that doesn't detract from the artistic value of these recordings. Getz seems truly inspired by these Brazilian composers and musicians, and they bring out in him an open display of passion that's antithetical to "cool." Depending on where your own passions lie, you may find the best of the bossa nova albums among the best of Getz's career.In the post-bossa nova period, Getz's playing took on a somewhat harder edgeno longer unrelievedly mellow, with less reliance on melodic improvisation, more on pyrotechnical display. He tried other jazz genres, including jazz-rock fusion, and played with like-minded musicians who encouraged his experimentation. This seems to have been a restless period for Getz. After two decades of recording and performing, was he worried about being considered a dinosaur of the cool jazz era? In an effort to stay current, was he incorporating the aggressive musical approach ofand other newly popular tenor sax players?Whatever might have driven him to the avant-garde, Getz eventually returned to playing straight-ahead jazz, with straight-ahead rhythm sections. Most importantly, he came back to his original focus on melody, which had been the core of his identity as a musician. His final recordings had a heartbreaking simplicity, as though he were saying, "This is how it should have been all along."Stan Getz recorded over 150 albums in a span of four decades. In roughly chronological order, here are ten to explore.Stan Getz QuartetsOriginal Jazz Classics, 1950In this album of mainly jazz standards, recorded in 1949 and 1950, the 22 year old Getz demonstrates the light approach and velvety tone that he would return to for the rest of his career. But there's more than just that special Getz sound on display here. In some of these tracks, Getz shows that he's already a master improviser, creating new melodic lines on the fly and sustaining the inventiveness for chorus after chorus. In "What's New?," he manages to stay fresh for six consecutive choruses, with no break for a piano solo. In "You Stepped Out of a Dream," played in a very high register, Getz's tone is almost wispy, as though he's barely breathing into the horn. Some will hear quiet introspection in this piece, while others will hear musical doodling. "Long Island Sound" finds Getz in a stronger mood, playing decisively in mid-register and improvising nicely on a tune that seems to be a first cousin to "Zing Go the Strings of My Heart." He brings the same satisfying approach to "Mar-CIA," which sounds very much like "When Your Lover Has Gone."Stan Getz PlaysVerve Records, 1954Getz goes to work on more jazz standards in this collection, recorded in 1952 and 1954. Whether the difference lies in the original recordings or the remastering, the sound quality here is noticeably better than in the Stan Getz Quartets recordings. Getz also seems more in control during these sessions, more focused. Although light as ever, his attack is strong and confident, as in "Time on My Hands," where he begins to improvise in the first few bars and continues effortlessly throughout. He takes "How Deep is the Ocean" at the same medium pace, improvising easily and beautifully. "'Tis Autumn" gives us a full dose of Getz's unique tone, warm and buttery. He plays this one just as written, and that's more than enough. For a slow ballad with more improvisation, listen to "Body and Soul," in which he gives us chorus after chorus of inventiveness. Less satisfying is another slow one, "These Foolish Things," in which the improvisation is mainly musical embroidery. Although "Lover Come Back to Me" is taken at a gallop, Getz's playing is precise, his improvisations logical. He's not just blowing a fusillade of notes, he's telling a story. But he does even better with the medium-fast tempo of "With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair," which gives him the perfect backdrop to spin more gorgeous stories.Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson TrioVerve Records, 1957In Getz's earlier albums, track length was restricted to about three minutes in order to accommodate the 78 rpm format. By 1957, when this set was recorded, the long-playing vinyl record had become standard in the jazz world, and this enabled Getz,(piano),(guitar) and(bass) to take long, juicy solos. But it's not just the length of the tracks that makes this set memorable. There's a palpable sense of joy in this whole proceeding, as though the four musicians were absorbing inspiration from one another. This is not a cutting contest to see who can play fastest or loudest, but a happy sharing of musical ideas. A case in point is the quiet, reflective "I'm Glad There Is You," with Getz and Ellis practically finishing each other's sentences. In the medium-tempo "I Was Doing All Right," Getz's approach is light as a feather, and Peterson picks this up with an uncharacteristically simple, and very beautiful, solo. "Pennies from Heaven," possibly the most impressive track on this disc, showcases Getz's gift for improvisation, with chorus after chorus of genuine inventionno repeating himself, no flurries of meaningless notes to fill in the spaces. "Bronx Blues" is an odd but delightful stab at playing an old-fashioned blues by musicians who aren't steeped in the blues tradition. That said, it really works. Ellis's guitar emits just the right twangy sound, and both Getz and Peterson dig in like old-timers.Jazz Samba Encore!Verve Records, 1963Getz seems absolutely inspired in this one, arguably the best of the half-dozen bossa nova albums he recorded in the early 1960s. The source of his inspiration may have been the compelling guitar work ofand the haunting voice of Bonfa's wife, Maria Toledo. Whatever the chemistry, it works. This disc fairly bursts with emotionjoy, pain, tenderness, playfulnessreflected though horn, guitar and voice. "Sambalero" is a nice, two minute introduction to the session. Toledo opens with a short vocal, followed by Getz and Bonfa, each doing the melody straight on. Then comes the track's highlight, in which Getz fills in behind Toledo's voice before closing with a nicely improvised solo. Things heat up with "Insensatez," which opens with a soft, sad vocal by Toledo, Getz filling in during the second chorus. His subsequent solo builds in intensity until he's wide open, blowing love, longing and anger out of that horncoolness having flown the coop, he's created a masterwork. "Samba de Duas Notas" is pure playfulness, from the opening interplay between sax, guitar and voice, through pretty solos by Bonfa and Getz, and then back to toying with the theme. "Menina Flor," filled with gentle joy, epitomizes the bossa nova spirit. After Toledo lightly lays out the tune, Getz does a perfectly simple solo, with Toledo singing softly in the background. Then the tables are turned, with Toledo in the foreground and Getz playing off her voice beautifully. A passionate solo by Bonfa is followed by Getz improvising on the melody. In "Ebony Samba" (play the track labeled "second version"), Getz blows with wild and wonderful abandon, Bonfa matches him in intensity, and then Getz plays call-and-response with Toledo.Stan Getz with Guest Artist Laurindo AlmeidaVerve Records, 1963Without vocals or familiar songs, this album feels more like solid jazz than Getz's other bossa nova efforts, which may make it more appealing to some listeners. Guitaristis a proficient partner for Getz in this session, but with "improvisations" that are embroidery rather than invention, his playing seems like mere accompaniment. (Compare it with Luis Bonfa's inspired output on "Jazz Samba Encore.") And so this one is all Getz. Which is not all bad, because he blows beautifully on this disc. The high point in the up-beat "Menina Moca" is Getz's long, passionate opening solothis is Getz at his best, with chorus after chorus of invention. In "Once Again," it's again Getz's opening solo that shines. Cozily languid at the start, it gradually gathers emotion as Getz opens up. "Winter Moon," taken at a slow tempo, is a beautiful piece. Getz is quiet and reflective at the start, but after a brief interlude from Almeida, he comes back with an intensity that compares with "Insensatez" in the "Jazz Samba Encore" album. "Do What You Do" has more of a jazz feel than the other tracks, with Getz driving hard right away and maintaining a swinging mode throughout. "Samba Da Sahra" is a gorgeous melody, and it seems to inspire Getz to really take off in his final, passionate solo, replete with swoops, staccato bursts and a squeak or two.Bob Brookmeyer and FriendsSony (Columbia) Records, 1965Recorded in 1963, just as the bossa nova wave was receding, this collaboration between Getz and valve trombonist, accompanied by a covey of young (at the time) jazz stars, is a marriage made in heaven. Well, sort of. There's a strange discordance among the tracks, some of them hard-edged and "experimental" (at least in the context of the 1960s), others whispery tender. There are three tracks in the latter category. "Skylark" is a gorgeous bird that features some lovely interplay between the horns and a particularly beautiful interchange between vibraphone and sax. "Misty," that old reliable make-out song, starts with the horns alternating as they play the melody straight, followed by a feather-light Getz improvisation and then one by Brookmeyer that matches its warmth. Getz does the melody again with Brookmeyer filling in, and then the two of them close with some pleasing counterpoint. But the best of the tender onesthe must-hear trackis the slow, almost solemn "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." Brookmeyer makes the opening statement, followed by the most eloquent Getz solo in the session. He then fills in beautifully behind Brookmeyer, after which the two of them do an extended duet in counterpointthe most satisfying sequence on the track, and perhaps on the disc. To turn to the not-so-tender parts, most of "Who Cares" sounds like a very long, very loud drum solo accompanied by a few other instruments. If you can tune out the percussion, there are fine solos by Getz and Brookmeyer. The Ellington/Strayhorn ballad "Daydream" features a vocal bybacked up nicely by each of the two horns. The hauntingly beautiful "Sometime Ago," taken in a relaxed, medium tempo, opens with a cerebral Brookmeyer solo, followed by a passionate one from Getz. The two horns then engage in a few discordant phrases (rush hour traffic put to music?) before joining in a harmonious finish.Getz au Go GoVerve Records, 1964Recorded in 1964 with vocalistand vibraphonist, this collection of straight jazz and bossa nova allows Getz to carry on a wonderful jazz tradition: a horn player doing call-and-response with a singer. The practice goes back toand, to Lester Young and, and, less famously, toand Tony Bennett. In this disc, the best, heart-melting example is in "It Might as Well Be Spring," in which Getz's interjections during Astrud's solos are tender, coaxing, confirmatory. That voice-horn interplay is also heard in "Corcovado," a bossa nova standard, and in the beautiful "Only Trust Your Heart," which features a quietly passionate Getz solo. Rounding out the bossa nova group are the often-heard but nicely done "One Note Samba" and the lively "Eu E Voce," with another outstanding Getz solo. Propelled by invigorating, complex rhythms, Getz is at his lyrical best on "Here's That Rainy Day," possibly the definitive version of this jazz standard.Spring is HereConcord Jazz, 1981It's been nearly two decades since the Brookmeyer recording, and the experimentation is over. Getz is back to playing straight-ahead jazz, as in this album, recorded live in 1981 at San Francisco's Keystone Korner, in which he is accompanied by just piano, bass, and drums. Think of it as the "Stan Getz Quartets" (above), but more assertive. "Sweet Lorraine" is a beautiful tune and Getz treats it with great respect, playing it as written for nearly two minutes, and returning to an almost straight version for his closing solo. In "I'm Old Fashioned," after a long, lovely opening by Levy, Getz delivers a relaxed, gently swinging solopossibly his best on the disc. Getz opens "How About You" at a relaxed lope, blowing chorus after chorus of melodic inventionlike the 1950s Getz, just less reticent. "Easy Living" was a Getz trademark for many years, and here he delivers it with his old, languid gentleness. Even his final solo is relatively hushed, and Levy follows suit throughout. Getz takes the same slow, sinuous approach to "You're Blase," practically caressing each note as he plays the entire piece without interruption. Between "Easy" and "Blase," there are almost 15 minutes of let's light the candles music on this disc.The DolphinConcord Jazz, 1981This is the companion album to "Spring is Here," taken from the same recording date. In "The Dolphin," the title tune, Getz proves he hasn't lost his gift for melodic invention, delivering a long, beautiful solo in which he's alternately insistent, tender and soaring in flight. There's plenty of room on this disc for pianistto shine. In "My Old Flame," he opens with an imaginative solo without rhythm, and then stays out front for a pretty duet with Getz. The medium-tempo "Joy Spring" is a light souffle compared with some of the spicier stews on this disc, with both Getz and Levy in a lightly swinging mode. "Close Enough for Love," played slowly, opens with an introspective solo by Levy. About mid-way through the track, Getz takes a long, lyrical solo that starts relaxed and gradually intensifies, and later does a splendid duet with Levy, sans rhythm section.People TimeVerve Records, 1992In these exquisite sessions, recorded live just a few months before he died, Getz has cast off the in-your-face tics he acquired in his middle yearsthe hard-edged tone, the pyrotechnical flights, the honking, those little three and four note repetitions squealed out for emphasis. Accompanied only by pianist, he's at ease now, reflective, his playing a distillate of lessons learned in music and in life. It's as though he has only so many notes left, and each one has to count. Has he come full circle in People Time? Yes and no. He's returned to the fluidity and gift for melody that was so appealing in his 1950's recordings. But he's not the same person. The People Time sessions have a depth, a richness, a sadness that the twenty-something Getz wasn't ready to achieve. In the slow, ruminative "I'm Okay," Getz seems to be disclosing his private thoughts, telling his story. (Does the title reflect his inner peace?) In the easygoing "East of the Sun," he turns the melody into a kaleidoscope, creating beautiful new shapes and colors, with Barron adding emphasis in just the right places. Getz gives "I Remember Clifford" a straightforward, achingly tender treatment, as if to say "This is how simple it can be." In "There is No Greater Love" and "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise," he and Barron team up for some happy, punchy, straight-ahead jazz, Barron contributing a stellar solo in "Greater Love." In the reflective "Soul Eyes," Barron matches Getz's quiet passion in a lovely final solo.There you have it, ten excellent Stan Getz discs to consider. If I were forced to choose just three, I'd grab Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio, Jazz Samba Encore and People Time. May they bring you joy.
Greased-up faux-hawks, jet-black nail polish, smudges of kohl eyeliner everywhere you look. Maybe it's fashion raging against the machine (especially with the circus that is the 2016 presidential campaign), but there's a general feeling of anarchy when it comes to the beauty this season. Gone are the usual references to Jane Birkin and Brigitte Bardot, and in their place are punk and heavy metal rock icons like Sid and Nancy and Alice Cooper. "Black is the new black," makeup artist Francois Nars joked backstage at Marc Jacobs, but he may be on to something.

In addition to Jacobs's all-black rhapsody in New York (shown above), we've seen black lipstick at Fenty by Rihanna, and look after look featuring black liner in Milan. To reinforce fashion's recent gothic tendencies, today at Giamba, makeup artist Val Garland looked to, of all people, Marilyn Manson as inspiration, giving the models menacing smoky eyes or slashes of liner across the lids. And while she didn't break out freaky contact lenses, Garland did dip into all of M.A.C.'s classic black products, including Carbon Shadow,Ebony Eye Pencil, and__Blacktrack Fluidline__.
Remember last week when a court ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay the family of a woman who died from causes linked to using the company's baby powder, which includes talc (a potentially harmful cancer-causing ingredient)? Remember how shocked you were that Johnson & Johnson has been allowed to have this product sitting on grocery store shelves for years? Well, you're not alone. A new survey reveals that many Americans believe the government regulates the chemicals that are in personal-care products, butnews flash, everyonethat's actually not the case.

The survey, which was conducted by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), asked 800 people about their beliefs regarding government regulation in personal-care products. Some results: Thirty-seven percent are under the impression that the government has cleared out all potentially harmful chemicals from products, and a whopping 67 percent believe that the government has cleared some products. The truth is far more complicated. "Under current lawa law that was passed in 1938the Food and Drug Administration lacks the power to know when someone's been injured by a product, or recall a product if they do know someone has been injured," said Scott Faber, the EWG vice president for government affairs, in a press call. "The FDA doesn't know when a product is produced, because companies are not required to tell them."

Now for a glimmer of good news: Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine plan to propose the Personal Care Products Safety Act at a Senate hearing this spring. "It's the first bill introduced on this issue to be bipartisan and to have support of consumer groups and companies," said Feinstein in the press call. "The bill would give the FDA the authority to review ingredients in personal care products to determine if they're safe. Most ingredients aren't a cause for concern, but there are questions about others. Some may not be appropriate to have in the products at all, and some may only be appropriate to have in small concentrations."

If passed, Feinstein said, the bill would require automatic review of five potentially harmfuland yet fairly commonchemicals during the first year it's in effect: lead acetate (a pigment), methylene glycol (formaldehyde used in some professional hair-straightening treatments), and quaternium-15, diazolidinyl urea, and propyl paraben (preservatives). Every year thereafter, another five ingredients would be chosen by the FDA based on feedback from science advocates and companies. "The ingredient review would create a uniform safety standard for these ingredients and others used by the industry," said Feinstein. "Companies currently use ingredients in different amounts. A uniform standard would give consumer confidence that the products they and their family use are reviewed for safety by independent experts." The bill would also allow for the FDA to have mandatory recall authority and to ensure that companies that make more than $100,000 are registered with the agency in order to be monitored.
           2005     ..        




AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank

Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War

The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool

She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold

In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners

By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him

But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63

The Deadly Assault and

Bush Administration Cover-Up

by S. Eben Kirkesby

and Andreas Harsono 5427 14th St. West, Bradenton, FL 34207 $6.99 Fish Fridays! Manatee Co.'s Only 24-Hr.

FREE Wi-Fi Paid Advertisement On Native Ground

AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World

COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground

ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words

BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance

A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum

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 often-overlooked call center is getting more attention, as banks realize that stronger security on online and mobile channels has driven cybercriminals to focus their energies on conning phone reps.

They're tricking these eager-to-please call center agents into coughing up customer information or letting them reset passwords on other people's accounts.

"Fraudsters will always use the weakest plank in the door," said Gary McAlum, chief security officer at USAA. "If you're using strong authentication security but someone can call into a call center and social-engineer through the call center representative to reset their account, then that's the weak point in the network. It has to be an end-to-end holistic approach."

This problem made news when Apple Pay came out in September 2014. There was an immediate rash of call center fraud, as cybercriminals realized they could set up accounts using stolen credit card data. The problem has steadily grown since then.

Last year, one in every 2,900 calls coming into large banks' call centers was fraudulent, according to Pindrop Security. This year, the number is closer to one in every 2,000 calls. Among regional banks, it's more like one in 700. Pindrop's software analyzes incoming calls for signs of fraud and scores them for risk. For instance, if a call is coming from Nigeria and the same caller number has called the contact center for different accounts, it will probably end up with a high risk score. (Pindrop was one of American Banker's Tech Companies to Watch in 2013 and it recently received $75 million from Google Capital. Its customers include eight of the top 15 U.S. banks.) The company will release this year's fraud report in April but gave American Banker a few numbers in advance.

The average fraud exposure caused by these hackers  that is, the average amount they could potentially steal after successfully logging in by gaming the call center  was $7.6 million per bank in a 2014-15 study. More recently, in a study that covered the 12 months through February, it was $11 million per bank, according to Pindrop.

So the attackers have been able to expand the pools of money that they can reach by over 45%.

"When we're working with customers, we're finding about 30% to 80% of all fraud has a phone component," said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop's CEO and chief technology officer.

Bankers are generally tight-lipped about sharing what technology they're using to better secure their call centers.

"The more information you provide to the fraudsters, the better [equipped] they are to perpetrate their fraud," said Brett Beranek, director of product strategy for voice biometrics at Nuance Communications. His company's technology analyzes incoming calls for fraud, detecting mismatches between the caller and previous recordings tied to the same account. It can also spot people calling about multiple accounts and fraudsters whose voices are on a blacklist. "The more information is disseminated, the less effective fraud groups can be at stopping the fraudsters."

Canada's Tangerine Bank recently invested in secure chat software to allow call center agents to have encrypted, archived chat sessions with authenticated customers, according to the bank's chief information officer, Charaka Kithulegoda.

Patience and PII

One reason call centers are facing a rise in fraud attempts is the prevalence of personally identifiable information, McAlum observed.

Fraudsters painstakingly gather information about account holders on the Web and use it to manipulate customer service agents who are trained to be helpful, not to block crime. The fraudster might say, "I don't remember my own password, let me call you right back." Then he'll go out to social media sites and figure it out.

"One call center agent completely buckled and started reading out every single account transaction on [a customer's] account for the last month," Balasubramaniyan said. "Though [the fraudster] didn't manage to get a wire at that point, now that he had all his transactions, he called back in, and when the next call center agent said, 'How do I trust you?' he started rattling off these transactions. The call center agent said, 'OK, it must be you,' and let him through."

Balasubramaniyan's all-time favorite call was from a fraudster who, when asked, "What's your mother's maiden name?" replied, "My dad married thrice, so can I take three guesses?"

"It doesn't even make sense  so what, your dad married thrice?" Balasubramaniyan said.

The call center agent allowed him to take three guesses, the last of which was "Smith," which is one of the most popular names in the world and happened to be right. After that call, he wired $97,000 out of the bank.

Beranek said by closely monitoring what goes on in the call centers, banks can learn how fraudsters operate.

"Often a fraudster will call in several times and progressively increase the complexity of their calls," he said. "So for call No. 1, they would ask for a benign piece of information that would be very easy to socially engineer the contact center agent to provide. By call five or seven, they have amassed enough information that they could completely take over the account, go online and perform a wire transfer."

Fraudsters often need several attempts to break into accounts, because as they search the Web for information on account holders, sometimes the data they get is correct, sometimes it isn't.

IVR Reconnaissance

In addition to live agents being fooled by fraudsters, there's an uptick in the gaming of automated interactive voice response systems, or IVRs. Cybercriminals can robo-call IVRs continuously to guess a PIN number. (If it's four digits, there are 10,000 possible combinations.)

In 2014, only 47% of calls to banks went through IVR systems. This year, more than 60% of calls will, according to Pindrop, as banks are cutting back on live agent calls. (It behooves Pindrop to point all this out, as it's getting ready to release an IVR security system that will act similarly to its call center software.)

There isn't always fraud happening within the IVR itself, Balasubramaniyan said. "What the IVR is great in is reconnaissance, which is finding out about an account without talking to a call center agent," he said. It's also good for trying different combinations of account numbers, PINs and card verification values (those three-digit codes on the backs of payment cards) without coming up on any radar.

"If you're able to detect that activity, you can forewarn banks on average 30 days before account takeover even starts happening," Balasubramaniyan said. "It's almost like 'Minority Report,' " the science fiction movie about a clairvoyant police force.

In addition to security software, of course, part of the answer is to make call center agents more aware of social engineering and help them look for signs of foul play. One of our cybersecurity predictions for 2016 was that banks and other companies would address the problem of fraudsters' easily being able to reset passwords.

The hard part is taking a tougher stance on such helpful call center duties, without turning away legitimate customers.

Editor at Large Penny Crosman welcomes feedback at penny.crosman@sourcemedia.com.


WASHINGTON  The Clearing House has picked Federal Reserve economists William R. Nelson and Francisco Covas to lead its research arm.

The two veteran economists will write empirical studies and regulatory analyses and make other contributions to ongoing public policy debates. Their hiring "sets us up to be an extremely credible source of industry research," Greg Baer, president of The Clearing House Association, said in an interview Tuesday.

The Clearing House is a banking association and payments company that is owned by the largest commercial banks. Its association affiliate conducts research, advocacy and litigation on behalf of its member banks.

Nelson was the deputy director of the Fed's division of monetary affairs and had been its first chief of monetary and financial stability; he worked nearly 25 years at the central bank. He will become the Clearing House's head of research and chief economist on March 7. He will replace Sujit 'Bob' Chakravorti, who stepped down last month to live with his family in Chicago.

Covas, who also served in the Fed's monetary affairs department as assistant director, joined the Clearing House last month as deputy head of research.

The move highlights the Fed's dominance in shaping regulation that affects large banks.

"The rules on capital and liquidity are the biggest needle-movers for a lot of our members," Baer said. "This clearly signifies our intention to really double down in this area and try to be more impactful -- not only with the U.S. regulators, but also with the Basel Committee and the [Financial Stability Board]."


Many conservative pundits and principled Republicans are recoiling from Donald Trump on the grounds that he is a con-man, a confidence trickster. To which my retort is: So?

Is not all politics a confidence trick? Is not Bernie Sanders a confidence trickster for conning the Millennials with the fantasy of free college? Free for whom? Students? Parents? Taxpayers?

When Democrats of all stripes hammer away on equal pay for women, are they not conning the worthy women of America? Studies show that young women in their twenties are outearning men, but many women, like humans everywhere, are attracted to politicians that treat them like victims.

When Barack Obama promised $2,500 savings in health insurance premiums and people keeping their doctor, who was he kidding? What comprehensive and mandatory government program ever cost the nation less and delivered more than a market-driven system?

And what about the Republican chestnut, that tax cuts create more revenue? It has some basis in economics, but who are we kidding? If we want to cut big government, it means cutting spending.

The novelty of Donald Trump is that he is opening a new front in the Darwinian evolution of the political confidence trick. He will build a wall; he will teach the Chinese a lesson. He will make America great again. What is not to like if you are a white working-

\class man who has seen bupkis in the way of wage gains in the last two decades?

The truth is that we all believe in the fantasies of politicians. Its just that different people believe in different fantasies.

I have my fantasies, and Id vote in a heartbeat for a politician that was offering my particular brand of unicorns and moonbeams. Like most people, I like to paint my fantasy as a fight against injustice.

For instance, I think that the current education system is an injustice worse than child labor. Id vote in a heartbeat for a politician that reintroduced child labor, because I think most children, excepting only the children of the educated and the wealthy, would do better if they quit school at twelve and went to work as an apprentice. I think the current system of mandatory child incarceration in government child-custodial facilities, where children are expected to work long hours for no pay, is monstrous.

I also think that the current Social Security and Medicare programs are simple generational injustice, and Id swoon at the feet of any politician that promised to abolish them. On my idea, a just system of pensions would require people to save their own money and retire once they had enough money to afford it. This is simple justice. Young people have no money, and so their jobs and their mortgages depend on the savings of older people. With the older generations savings the young produce the products and services that old people can pay for with the income from their savings. Nobody gets to retire until they have saved enough to create some jobs for the kids. Because justice.

I think there is a special hell reserved for the twisted people for who fighting racism means appealing for votes on the basis of race and creating programs that favor people on the basis of race and top it off by accusing other people of racism, and Id fall at the feet of a politician that said so.

But there are many Americans who would recoil in horror at a politician offering my kind of unicorn, and they would probably communicate their horror to the world by lurid reference to his parentage, his hairstyle, and his mating habits.

It is a revolting spectacle to see other people getting conned by some political confidence trickster, just as it is revolting to see a woman seduced by another man. It is revolting for conservatives to have to witness liberals being seduced by Obamas Hope and Change, or Bernies Feel the Bern. And for all kinds of people it is revolting to watch mainstream America getting seduced by the born-on-third-base thrice-married, four-times-bankrupt, thin-skinned, bullying Donald Trump.

There is another way, as Groundhog Day showed us 20 years ago.

While stuck in a time-warp Bill Murrays weatherman character grows: from denial, to cunning, to despair, to final surrender of the ego as he becomes a decent human being and goes around helping other people, and thus worthy of the love of Andie MacDowells character.

Politics is stuck in the cunning stage. Voters and politicians manipulate each other endlessly in a time-warp demanding and offering free stuff. In that time warp nobody ever learns that the meaning of life, the universe, and everything begins when you decide that you cant go for a coffee at the diner with the sweetest girl in the world because you have some errands to run.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also see his American Manifesto and get his Road to the Middle Class.
The idea that big business promotes illegal immigration so it can profit from cheap labor has been widely disseminated by the popular news media. That this is a myth, and is not founded in solid economic or political reality, is easy to show.

First, look at the history of cheap labor in the U.S. Cheap labor was desired in the late 19th and early 20th centuries not because many jobs did not require a high level of skill but because people didnt have jobs at all. They lived on farms. The best proof of this is the fact that until about 1910, 90% of the U.S. population lived in rural areas, on farms. Now the great majority of Americans live in the large metropolitan areas of the nation.

The idea that America needs illegal immigrants because there is a shortage of laborers willing to work at picking lettuce and tomatoes, backbreaking labor that no one else would otherwise do, is nonsense. The sanctuary cities of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York do not contain a single acre of lettuce or tomato fields, In fact, in these big sanctuary cities farming is banned, yet these big non-agricultural cities were the creators of official sanctuary policies.

If cheap migrant agricultural labor were needed, the Federal government would never have discontinued the agricultural guest worker program, the Bracero program. That program was first started in 1942 when migrant labor was genuinely needed during WW II.

The lack of a guest worker program forces those who truly want seasonal work to break Federal immigration law and other Federal laws. When they attempt to cross the border, rather than crossing in a guest worker program for free, they must pay coyotes thousands of dollars or, more likely, they have to agree to smuggle illegal drugs for the violent cartels. Young illegal immigrant women cannot work as legal seasonal workers and they are too often the victims of violent rape and abuse, facts that are ignored by the pro-Democrat news media.

This flatly contradicts, and permanently defeats, the argument that big agricultural business needs illegal immigrants for cheap seasonal labor. If big corporate agriculture had its choice, there would be a robust guest worker program enabling temporary workers to cross the border with valid guest worker IDs as they did from the 1940s to 1960s.

If big agricultural corporations always needed cheap labor, and they are powerful lobbyists in Washington, its difficult to explain how they allowed the Bracero program to be discontinued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Historically, the evidence shows that agricultural lobbyists gave campaign donations to Democrats in order to promote the Bracero program. The real reason the Bracero program was cancelled was that LBJ was a Democrat, and Democrats controlled all the big cities of the nation in the 1960s. All these big cities started to lose population to the suburbs and other states after 1950.

If big corporate agriculture had so much power to control immigration policy, the Bracero program would still be in effect today. It is difficult to understand how the U.S. does not have a viable guest worker program. The greatest need for seasonal laborers is in the least populated areas of the states, areas where large numbers of teenagers are not available for seasonal work. Digital IDs would make it very easy for big agriculture to exploit cheap seasonal migrant labor, yet Democrats fight the idea of a new guest worker program.

The labor situation of the big cities also argues against the idea that big business needs illegal immigrants for cheap labor. There is a surplus of citizen cheap laborers, they are the teenagers and other unemployed people. As the nations number of illegal immigrants has grown the number of unemployed people has also grown. One would predict that if illegal immigrants were needed due to a demand for cheap labor, that the explosion of cheap labor would have wiped out the need for cheap labor and more would be in the labor force.

But the opposite has happened. Those who did cheap labor jobs in the past, particularly citizen teenagers, are now unemployed at the highest rate since WW II. Since these teenagers were already available as cheap labor, illegal immigrants werent needed. That also does not make sense, it doesnt support the notion that big business is solely responsible for illegal immigration.

Also, the U.S. now has 94 million people who are not in the labor force and labor force participation for all age groups is the lowest its been since 1975. This is all proved by Department of Labor factsheets. If the U.S. had a great need for cheap labor, that implies a labor shortage and a high labor participation rate, and the teenage labor force would not be as unemployed as it is now. This proves there is no need for additional cheap labor. There was no need for cheap labor in Chicago in 1985 when Mayor Harold Washington issued his Executive Order to make Chicago a sanctuary city.

Businesses do not have the authority to issue executive orders in cities, only mayors do. Also, businesses do not have the authority to issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants as many states have now done. Big business did not pass a state law, as Illinois did, to make the matrical consular card a valid form of ID in the state.

This begs the question, if big agriculture is hurt by the ban on guest workers, and the nation is not lacking in cheap labor, why the illegal immigrants are brought to big cities. The answer lies in an analysis of the creation of sanctuary cities, the policies that enabled this creation, who the actors were who created these policies, and what they gained from it.

Briefly, the sanctuary cities were created to restore population to the big cities of the nation that are dominated by the Democrat Party. All the major players were, and still are, Democrats. President Obamas most outrageous flouting of the Constitution was an act that assisted illegal immigration; his executive order regarding deportations. Obama also sent his attorney general to interfere with Arizonas SB 1070 which intended to enforce Federal immigration law. At every step, at every stage in the growth of illegal immigration, Democrats have been there to aggressively flout Federal laws, and issue new executive orders to promote illegal immigration.

None of these acts were done by big business, nor did big business have the authority to prosecute these acts. Only government did this. To see cheap labor as a benefit to big business is to overlook the causes of illegal immigration, and the benefits to politicians. To say that big business benefits from illegal immigration requires one to overlook the great public costs; the higher property taxes, unemployment, and national debt. These drive down disposable incomes and hurt big business sales.
At the February 25 debate in Houston, Marco Rubio revisited an issue that had first come up at the previous debate. On February 13, Ted Cruz said that Marco Rubio told Spanish television he would not rescind President Obamas illegal executive amnesty on his first day in office, and Rubio responded that Cruz was lying. The transcript is unambiguous: Cruz had spoken accurately. And so it was disconcerting when on February 25 Rubio insisted that I said very clearly on Spanish television I said it will end in my first day in office as president.

Memory is notoriously unreliable: its just possible that Rubio might at first have misremembered what he said on Univision. But after the controversy on February 13 its inconceivable that Rubio didnt check what he had actually said on Univision. And when he did, this is what he would have found: I wouldnt undo it immediately But I do think it is going to have to end. And, God willing, its going to end because immigration reform is going to pass.

Cruz was clearly right. Rubio had not only said that he would not rescind DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) immediately, he also said he would not do so until it had been replaced by legislation -- which means only after a long time, if ever.

On February 13, Rubios memory could have been faulty, but by February 25 it could not have been. The more recent statement can only have been a calculated, brazen lie. On February 13, Rubio had called Cruz a liar. By February 25 at least, he knew that was not true. His failure to withdraw the accusation therefore becomes another calculated lie.

This raises a very serious problem for Republicans. Their opponent in November is likely to be Hillary Clinton, whose main liability is that she is known to be a particularly shameless liar. In 2012, Republicans ran the one man (Mitt Romney) who was unable to make a case against Obama where he was most vulnerable -- ObamaCare. Are they now going to nominate a man who cant convincingly raise the issue of Hillarys lies and deceit?

How serious is this issue for Rubio? Very serious, because these are far from isolated instances. All kinds of people have been discovering that the fresh-faced, innocent-looking Rubio makes a practice of deceiving and lying to them.

An important voice in the debate over illegal immigration is the chair of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, which represents ICE employees: Chris Crane. Crane said recently that In my opinion, Sen. Rubio absolutely knowingly mislead the American people regarding the [gang-of-8] bill. He was not telling the American public the truth about what that bill contained. Every American will have to determine on their own what that says about his character, but for me I dont think Ill ever be able to trust him again.

Another important voice on this same subject is Ken Palinkas, who served as the President of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Council when the gang-of-8 bill was under consideration. Palinkas echoes Cranes conclusion that Rubio deliberately misrepresented the bill to the American people.

The most comprehensive indictment of Rubios deceit is the detailed report released by Phyllis Schlafly on February 5, which chronicled in considerable detail Rubios persistent lying about the gangs bill, and the fraudulent PR campaign in which he falsely reassured one major conservative voice after another (e.g., Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Bill OReilly) that the things that would be deal breakers for them were not in the bill -- though they were. Schlaflys conclusion is that a man who lies so persistently should not be in consideration for the presidency at all. Rubio has made no attempt to rebut Schlaflys report. Just imagine what he would have done if what she was saying was false! People running for president dont just leave a devastating case against them unanswered -- unless there is no possible answer.

And now more and more people who used to regard Rubio as a bright new force for the good in the Republican party are catching on to a reality which is very different. Mark Levin now says (February 22 on Conservative Review): Stop the Lies Marco. On National Review Online John Fonte has just written a long piece on Rubio and illegal immigration which goes over much of the ground covered by Schlafly and leaves little doubt that Rubios integrity is seriously in question. On the Breitbart website, Julia Hahn writes that in a Friday interview on Special Report, Rubio made four demonstrably false declarations to host Bret Baier in under 90 seconds.

On the subject of immigration, Rubio just lies and lies. To adapt an old joke: how do you know when Rubio is lying about illegal immigration? His lips are moving.

If Rubio were to attempt to raise the issue of Hillarys lies, she could bury him with evidence of his own lies. To make matter worse, Rubio has tried to deflect attention from his deception by repeatedly accusing Ted Cruz of lying on grounds that are either false or trivial. Cruzs integrity is an asset to the GOP, and to save himself, Rubio has fraudulently tried to diminish it.

Many in the GOP seem willing to put up with Rubios repeated dishonesty because they think hed be the strongest candidate against Hilary Clinton. How wrong they are! When you are up against a brazen liar, you nominate a person of integrity, not another brazen liar. Nor can Rubio be the antidote to the Trump phenomenon. Trumps support comes from his opposition to politicians who, like Rubio, try to ram amnesty down an unwilling publics throat by misleading them. Establishment support for Rubio is exactly what Trump thrives on -- it will just make him stronger. The only viable alternative to Trump would be someone who, like Trump, and two thirds of GOP primary voters, stands against what Rubio represents.

John M Ellis is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and chairman of the California Association of Scholars.
BOOM BUST BOOM

Directed by Terry Jones, Bill Jones, Ben Timlett, and the Monty Python graphics loons

Here is a suitable companion piece to the exceptional film The Big Short, which should have won Best Picture from many points of view. Not only did Big Short illuminate the precursor rumblings of the housing crash of 2008, using quirky characters and mounting excitement as the viewer realized he was sympathizing with these boiler-room guys who were riding the crescendo of disaster to clean up, but it was a fast-moving, appropriately clever script that kept you glued, and it was all a story most people did not know  unlike the well-bruited tale told in the otherwise excellent Spotlight.

After all, everyone knew of the Boston priest sexual abuses of children. As opposed to the fact that few people  even now  understand what went down with the burst bubble of unsecured mortgages-a-go-go instigated by the Clintonian forced order to make mortgages more democratic. So the underemployed, the irresponsible, the assetless, the no-down-payment people all had their shot at owning homes they could not, in the end, afford.

I rarely recommend adult films to those underage, but this film, to my mind, and other reviewers expressed a similar thought, is imperative viewing for college, even high school and the older elementary school child. It should be mandatory even in assisted living communities, too, because the elderly are often gulled by the unscrupulous customer service associates of the investment houses, chop shops, and brokerages.

It makes lucid argument for a familiarity with what has been called "irrational exuberance" in markets, and the filmmakers make exorbitantly fabulous use of the Monty Python iconic graphics and sound tools to bring home the carefully edited and compiled remarks of top financiers, economists, bankers, actors, and journalists.

This is a fitting companion piece to the noteworthy but sophisticated offering of The Big Short. Together, these two form an irresistible case for investment sanity, consumer awareness of risk, banking responsibility, and fiduciary gravitas.

BBB goes back to the 17th-century Dutch tulip craze to the present, in typically kicky Python graphics that rise and fall, drop off and explode. They outline the South Seas ticket fad. They go through the periodic boom bubbles, what one well-known pooh-bah called irrational exuberance, that precede devastating busts. The Great Crash of 29 comes in, with illustrations and clips of homeless soup lines and tattered families, followed by the 2008 collapse of uncollateralized debt obligations and mortgages sold by banks across Europe as well as the U.S.

Comedy bits, vox pops, lively commentary, and B/W illustration that come to life, and a stew of financial experts like journalists John Cassidy and Paul Masson; Bank of Englands Chief Economist Andy Haldane; and Nobelists Daniel Kahneman, Robert Shiller, and even a female or two.

One wonderful, whimsical, but fascinating segment takes place on Monkey Island, where a sociologist studies the monkey inhabitants of the island for what light their irrational behavior sheds on the irrationalities of human beings.

A spectacular offering. The audience of hard-bitten New York reviewers sat rapt and riveted to the screen  and afterward, they actually applauded the film, so amazingly clever yet absolutely unmistakably factual...and sane.

It bypasses the wages of lecture and is fun, evoking laughter often. It presents nibblets from beloved cartoons like South Park, the animatronic and muppet figures are extrapolative enough not to implicate the personae they represent, and the likes of Alan Greenspan and his 40-year run of wrongness get a sharp drubbing from the Krugmans, Terry Joneses, and John Cusacks. Bernanke puts in a B/W appearance here and there.

Knowing what this film communicates, one wonders whether the film ought instead to have been titled BUST BOOM BUSTthe writers dont see crashes and collapses as anything but predictably normal, whenever people get too cozy with ever escalating prices, financial placidity while forgetting the attendant risks in all investments, and overreach.

Whatever happens next Oscar time, they should create a new category for BBB to sweep the golden statuettes off that shelf.

GODS OF EGYPT

Directed by Alex Proyas

Dont worry, next February or March, if you havent seen GoE. You wont miss anything at all. Correction: Youll miss a wall-to-wall skein of CGI special effects from wings appearing and disappearing on the gods, to fire encircling Geoffrey Rush's entire head and body on his faraway bereft space kingdom where there seems to be nothing at all to do save cast thunderbolts and wait for godson immortals to drop in unexpectedly to ask favors.

Ridiculous script, dopey story, peculiar cinematography... The one thing the film offers  okay, two things  is the animation of hieroglyphics for kids who have a visual recognition of inscribed and inked tablets in hieroglyphs, and the creation of the half-man, half-dog figures adorning so many friezes of ancient Egypt.

For what its worth, the Egyptian canine god was named Anubis, also Ienpw. In their mythology, Anubis is a dog of unknown origin, though he was most likely a jackal. But seeing the pantheon of ancient mythological gods, and the animation of Anubis in battle, is of some educational value, one hopes, to non-adults seeing this cinematic excess. There is far too much heroic posturing and sword- or leap-fighting, too much depiction of slavery under Set, played by Gerard Butler  whose career trajectory seems to be playing the person behind a metal breastplate and exhorting others to do his ferocious bidding.

Mortal hero Bek, or Beck, teams up with the reluctant and grouchy eyeless (and then one-eyed) god Horus in an alliance against Set, the pitiless god of darkness who has slain his king father and usurped the kingdom in place of his nephew Horus, plunging the once allegedly ancient prosperous empire into slavery and severe unhappiness.

The shtick here is that mortals like Bek are regular size, but the gods are 9 feet tall, can sprout and unsprout wings and talons and mad fighting prowess at the drop of a suggestion, and instead of blood, bleed gold. So every scene featuring Set or Horus, Sun-god Ra, or any of the goddesses/heteirahs (royal concubines/meritorious court whores), gods of stature, manifest a peculiar visual ratio, so humans look absurdly small, and the gods unnaturally tall. This produces an effect like an astigmatism, or the paintings of El Greco. The women in Gods of Egypt are all rail thin as a consequence of the camera elongations of the gods. Its wearying to figure out where each protagonist stood to be filmed in the 2:1 ratio aspect.

Apart from the incremental benefit of seeing a prettified Egypt of 2,500 years ago, the language is tepid, the story unremarkable  boy saves beloved girlfriend after she dies  but for the most part, unless you enjoy flying phoenixes and battles in space, its pretty much an exercise in faux-historical Haggadic vengeance. Without any helpful Jewish slaves as ballast.
A thorough repudiation of the (un-)Affordable Care Act comes from, of all places, state-run National Public Radio. Timed to be buried by Super Tuesday coverage, NPR this week released a new study that indicates that Obamacare has failed on almost all levels.

The poll, by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, shows that three quarters of Americans think health care in their state has not improved under Obamacare. The survey says more people think health care has gotten worse (26%) than better (15%). Forty-nine percent of people think health care has stayed about the same.

And I hope you havent been making plans of what to do with that $2,500 a year youll be saving on premiums. The NPR poll confirms that that was just another in Obamas litany of lies. Forty-five percent of respondents said their premiums had gone up, while 46% said their premiums had stayed about the same. Only 4% said their premiums had actually gone down, as Obama promised they would.

Along with higher premiums, co-pays and deductibles have gone up for 35% of people. Fifty-six percent say theyve stayed about the same. Again, only 4% of those surveyed said their copays and deductibles have actually gone down.

Meanwhile, the increased benefits Obama swore wed get apparently havent materialized. Seventy percent of people said their benefits have stayed about the same. Twelve percent said their benefits have actually decreased. Only 16% of people polled said they have better benefits now than before Obamacare.

NPR tried to put a predictable pro-Obama/Hillary spin on the study, with the lede on one story reading:

A series of polls in key states by NPR and its partners finds that more than half of adults in the U.S. believe the Affordable Care Act has either helped the people of their state or has had no effect. Those sentiments are common despite all the political wrangling that continues over the law.

To put Obamacare in a less unsavory light, NPR led that story by combining the figures for those who said the ACA has had no effect with those who said better, which, of course, defies logic. When Democrats committed the federal government to spending trillions of dollars on Obamacare, it presumably wasnt to keep things the same.

Although with the way this crowd in Washington  Democrats and Republicans  likes to spend our tax dollars, who knows?
Donald Trump has been claiming that he will draw substantial black support running in the general election, and now a very prominent liberal black commentator is supporting his contention.

Writing in USA Today, Tavis Smiley avers:

the conventional wisdom is that black voters have forgiven the Clintons for their attempt to diminish Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and this time around, theyve got Hillarys back. Except everyone knows that in this presidential election cycle, conventional wisdom left the building long before the train ever left the station. Something tells me that if Donald Trump is indeed the Republican nominee, it might be a miscalculation for Democrats to assume that black voters are a lock for their nominee, even with the first black president and Barack Obama both campaigning for her.

For starters, charisma, charm and likeability arent transferable. While the chance to elect the first woman president is indeed tantalizing for many, in black America specifically, its not exactly the same as watching an African-American first family taking up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Indeed, even women havent as yet rallied en masse around Hillary the way black folk did around Obama.

Second, the number of everyday black voters who we assume will dismiss Trump because of his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim attacks might well be inflated. While I certainly have had my say about Trump being a religious and racial arsonist (and he responded quickly on Twitter), not everyone in black America agrees with me. I have been taken by myriad conversations Ive had with black folk who dont find those comments by Trump necessarily or automatically disqualifying. In the coming days, we will see whether his initial refusal last Sunday on CNN to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacy might anger black voters. Interestingly, almost two months ago, CNN ran a story about a white supremacist group doing robocalls for Trump in Iowa. He didnt denounce them then and seems to not have suffered for it.

Third, though it is true that black/brown political coalitions have had strategic successes, it is also true that there have been plenty of other occasions where the interests of black and brown voters didnt exactly align.
The story that most of the media wishes to ignore, the one that could determine the outcome of the November election, is the high level of voting in the GOP contests and the correspondingly low Democrat turnout. The preliminary raw vote totals from Super Tuesday seem to continue the trend that was already evident: we are witnessing The Incredible Shrinking Democratic Party, whose support among white voters is declining rapidly (down 44% in South Carolina), while black and other minority turnout is not even rising for them.

Stephen Dinan reports in the Washington Times that the trend continued yesterday:

Virginias GOP primary tallied more than 1 million votes, shattering the record set in 2000 by more than 50 percent. Democrats, meanwhile, were 200,000 votes shy of their own record, set in the contested 2008 primary. In Tennessee, GOP turnout crossed the 800,000-vote mark, leapfrogging the previous record by nearly 50 percent. Records were also likely to be set in Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Massachusetts. Democrats, though, were struggling, seeing turnout drop by massive levels in all of their races Tuesday night. That included Vermont and Arkansas, where their two candidates had home-state advantages of sorts, yet still couldnt match the enthusiasm of the 2008 contest.

It is probably true that, as he claims, Donald Trump is drawing new voters to the Republican contests. Whether those voters would stick with the GOP if he does not attain the nomination is questionable. And there are backers of other contenders, including office holders and former office holders like Ben Sasse and Christie Todd Whitman, who vow they will not vote Trump if he is the nominee.

But will the young voters turning out for the Democrat contests to vote for Sanders be inspired to support Hillary? They are as angry at the establishment and D.C. insiders as Trumps fans. And few people embody insider and D.C. better than Hillary.

As matters stand today, and contrary to polling and most pundits, the advantage would seem to be with the GOP. This only makes sense, given the disastrous presidency of Barack Obama.
The Republican establishment, which includes people like Rich Lowry of National Review and Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal, really, really dont like Trump.

Its a matter of chivalry.

Consider the analogy to the way European nobles and the papacy objected to Holy Roman Emperor Frederick IIs performance on the Sixth Crusade.

Unlike a galaxy of other kings and other crusaders, he regained Jerusalem, access to the sea, and a host of towns in the Holy Land, but his abiding sin was that he went about it in all the wrong way. What crusaders should do in the eyes of that ages establishment was throw twenty thousand men to death in a huge battle with the Mohammedans, spend years laying siege to various cities, massacre the infidels found behind the lines, and if defeated well, just accept that as the price of doing things the way they should be done. Instead, Frederick outraged public opinion by ignoring the best political advice, even excommunication, and cut a deal with the Mohammedans.

Analogously, Trump outrageously ignores the normal conservative obsequies. The fact that he has the best chance since Reagan of accomplishing some major conservative goals is beside the point. Hes going about it in all the wrong way, and if hes successful, theyll never stop hating him for that.

Sigh.

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, Random House, BDD. See it Here. He lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York; blogs here; and can also be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com.
In short, LTE-U simply means LTE in unlicensed spectrum and is a technology originally designed by Qualcomm. Unlicensed spectrum means those parts of the airwaves where no one operator has an exclusive license, which means technology products (and ultimately companies) must co-operate in order for LTE-U to work. This is of particular importance because LTE-U operates in the same 5.0 GHz frequency spectrum that some 802.11 Wi-Fi hotspots operate in, and it would not be a great experience should a LTE-U broadcaster effectively disable Wi-Fi hotspots. LTE-U is considered to be an important technology as it may be used to provide coverage in areas where otherwise the signal is weak, or more likely congested. However, as one might imagine, this is a potential recipe for disaster because its possible that a number of different companies may build their own slightly tweaked variant of LTE-U that could block out other products. Last year, we reported on a number of developments designed to allow LTE-U to cooperate and co-exist in the same spectrum as local Wi-Fi hotspots.

The current LTE-U standard as defined by the 3GPP is known as release 12. It requires that the LTE-U spectrum is anchored in licensed spectrum and is currently suitable for deployment by carriers into selected markets (most notably including the United States of America). This means that where a carrier already has licensed coverage, it may also be permitted to broadcast in the unlicensed spectrum. This implementation of the technology means that LTE-U may be used to boost capacity over coverage; carriers may not roll out LTE-U coverage into areas where there is no anchor signal. However, it does mean that for compatible devices, they should be able to enjoy a better quality of connection. Sophisticated networking control will mean that the carrier is able to use the LTE-U spectrum for those devices able to use it, keeping the licensed spectrum free for those customers using devices unable to benefit from LTE-U. This is known as data offloading and is designed to ensure the best possible service for all customers.

Advertisement

There are several manufacturers already building small cell sites designed to broadcast in unlicensed spectrum, and there are also a number of modems and chipsets that work with the technology. LTE-U may be deployed in areas of high network congestion on either a permanent or temporary basis: the recent Super Bowl stadium and surrounding area is the sort of event that could well benefit from LTE-U deployment and we understand that Verizon Wireless is planning on trialing LTE-U in the third quarter of 2016 and China Mobile has already completed field trials with plans to deploy the technology this year.

Release 12 is actively supported across the industry and both LTE-U and Wi-Fi are seen as important standards for the mobile industry: it is important that the two technologies supplement rather than compete. The next iteration of LTE-U technology contains a technology called Licensed-Assisted Access, known as LAA, which is something of a redesign of LTE-U designed to ensure global compatibility for operating LTE networking over the 5.0 GHz spectrum. LAA is a core part of the 3GPP standard, which is not expected to be established until 2017 although some manufacturers are already supporting the technology. There is also another implementation of the technology whereby LTE operates exclusively in unlicensed spectrum, such as Qualcomms MulteFire, which has widespread support across the industry. Ultimately, next generation (known as 5G) radio technology is likely to rely on operating in both licensed and unlicensed bands, too; the foundations being set for LTE-U should provide good experience for implementing 5G technologies in the coming years.

LTE-U is not without its drawbacks, and indeed Google has in the past protested the technology. The main reason for complaints is how LTE-U operates in the same frequencies as Wi-Fi and as such, the technology could degrade the performance of Wi-Fi networking. Another issue surrounds how a carrier may increase its coverage using LTE-U over and above a technology such as Hotspot 2.0, which is not restricted by carrier but instead is readily available for more devices. Nevertheless, for some of our readers, LTE-U may be deployed in your market in the coming months and providing the technology works as designed, this should improve how responsive our cellular networks are.
Qualcomm had a pretty rough 2015, they werent the only ones in the mobile world to have a rough year, however. Their flagship Snapdragon 810 processor wasnt necessarily bad, it just generated more heat than the smartphone that it was powering could handle. Which then forced other problems with handsets, for instance the thermal throttling would kick in and slow down the device so that the temperature could decrease. The heating problems with the Snapdragon 810 actually forced Samsung out of using their chip in their four flagships (Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Galaxy Note 5) in 2015. Samsung is Qualcomms largest customer, that should be no surprise to anyone. Having their largest customer decide to go with their own Exynos processor over Qualcomms Snapdragon 810 left a huge hole in their business. In 2015, we also saw other smartphones opting for the Snapdragon 808 processor over the higher-end and faster Snapdragon 810  namely the LG G4 and Moto X Pure Edition/Style. That wasnt necessarily a bad thing for Qualcomms financials (as that is still better than buying processors from a competitor), but it definitely showed that there were issues with the Snapdragon 810 SoC.

The company knew they had to make a change in 2016, a big change. After all, they did end up laying off around 15% of their 31,000 workforce. Including over a thousand at their headquarters in San Diego, California. Qualcomm, luckily, recognized their issues and resolved them quickly. Following Mobile World Congress 2016, they are off to a pretty big year. But why? Enter the Snapdragon 820. Actually announced last fall (and teased as early as Mobile World Congress 2015), the Snapdragon 820 was present in every flagship announced at the show in Barcelona, Spain last week. LG announced their G5 with the Snapdragon 820, so did Samsung with their Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Xiaomi also announced the Mi 5, and Sonys Xperia X Performance both feature the Qualcomm flagship processor. So whats so special about the Snapdragon 820? Why are all these manufacturers flocking to this new SoC? Lets explore and find out.

Advertisement

Qualcomms Snapdragon 820 SoC is a powerhouse, as youd expect. Its a quad-core processor clocked at 2.2GHz, using Qualcomms custom-made Kyro cores, and is a 64-bit chip. Its paired with the Adreno 530 GPU, which is the latest and greatest GPU, making it the best on the market. Were looking at LTE speeds of up to 600Mbps download and 150Mbps upload on the new X12 LTE modem from Qualcomm. The companys Haven security suite is also included here which brings a ton of security features to your device. The Snapdragon 820 can also support up to a 25-megapixel camera, 4K displays, USB 3.0, NFC and a few other goodies. It really does check all of the boxes. When the Snapdragon 820 was officially announced last fall, Qualcomm did a Q&A over on Twitter, and the most popular question was about the heat in the Snapdragon 820. Their engineers stated that the new processor stays nice and cool. Which is perhaps the biggest feature on the new processor over the Snapdragon 810.

Simply put, everyone is choosing the Snapdragon 820 because its the best out there. Sure there are other competitors out there like MediaTek, Exynos, NVIDIA and plenty of others. However none of them are as popular as Qualcomm. You see, Qualcomm does more than just processors. In fact, many of the hardware parts inside your phone are still made by Qualcomm even if the processor isnt. Something that many Galaxy S6 owners found out last year when there was a Qualcomm sticker on their new Galaxy S6 that used an Exynos 7420 processor. You see, Qualcomm makes modems. They also lead the way in CDMA modems, which is why Samsung uses Qualcomm processors in the US in their devices and Exynos elsewhere. CDMA really only exists in the US and China (and China is close to having it completely phased out). So even if your smartphone doesnt feature a Snapdragon chipset, it likely has some component from Qualcomm.

Advertisement

Aside from the cooler processor, the Snapdragon 820 has another feature that consumers will really care about. And that is Quick Charge 3.0. Quick Charge started in 2013 with Quick Charge 1.0. It was a pretty small breakthrough when you think about it. The technology charged your devices a little bit faster, but many didnt see a huge difference. Quick Charge 2.0 came out later that year with the Snapdragon 800, and promised 75% faster charge times compared to conventional charging. Most flagship smartphones have Quick Charge 2.0 already, and it allows most of them to charge in under 2 hours. Take for instance the Moto X Pure Edition, it can go from 0 to 100% in just about one hour and 40 minutes. With a conventional charger, it would be closer to three hours. Now with Quick Charge 3.0, it can charge your device twice as fast as with Quick Charge 1.0, which was already 40% faster than conventional charging. This means you can charge your phone faster than ever before, great for topping off your device before leaving the house. Quick Charge 3.0 is built into the Snapdragon 820 and a few other processors that are going to be mainstream in 2016. This is perhaps the only feature from Qualcomm that most consumers are going to care about, and they should.

When we talk about the manufacturers that chose to use the Snapdragon 820, its pretty obvious for at least two of them (LG and Samsung, because their devices are coming to the US and need CDMA compatibility). What about Sony? Well Sony doesnt make their own processor like Huawei, Samsung, and a few others. So its either choose Qualcomm, MediaTek or buy from Samsung. Which is something they dont want to do. The majority of their smartphones already sport a Qualcomm chip, in fact out of the three they announced last week, only one is running without a Qualcomm chip. The Xperia XA uses the MediaTek Helio P10. While the Xperia X uses the Snapdragon 650 and the Xperia X Performance on the Snapdragon 820. We dont have a confirmed reason for why Sony opted for Qualcomm in the Xperia X and Xperia X Performance, but its pretty likely that they liked what they saw from the Snapdragon 650 and 820 when Qualcomm sampled the SoCs last year. Sony is bringing these devices to the US, so that may have played a part. Then theres Xiaomi. The company that is Qualcomms third largest customer. Xiaomi has used Qualcomm in just about every smartphone (and just about every Qualcomm processor). So they are likely going to stick with Qualcomm for the foreseeable future. Qualcomm already has a pretty large market share, and its likely going to get even bigger now thanks to Sony, Xiaomi, Samsung and LG picking up the Snapdragon 820.

Advertisement

Qualcomm may have gotten back on track in 2016, but that doesnt mean the competition is going away. Perhaps their closest competitor, MediaTek has been announcing new processors quite often. With their Helio X line of processors, they are in the race to out-do the Snapdragon 800-series processors from Qualcomm. The Helio X20 is a deca-core processor, with three clusters of cores. So you have a slower core which will do things in standby mode, a higher-speed for doing things like gaming and such and a set thats right in the middle for things like checking Facebook, Twitter, etc. Its a great idea, but a processor that we wont likely see in the US. MediaTek isnt backing down from Qualcomm though, neither is NVIDIA, or Exynos. While Samsung is using the Snapdragon 820 in their Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, some markets are seeing the Exynos 8890, including Canada and the UK. This means Qualcomm cant sit back and do nothing while the Snapdragon 820 is getting used by everyone, they need to continue innovating and making an even better Snapdragon 230 for 2017 flagships. Otherwise they could have a repeat of 2015, and thats something the chip maker doesnt want to have happen.

When we talk about Mobile World Congress, we typically wonder who won in terms of the show. Seeing as we have plenty of high-end flagships being announced at the show every year. Most were debating between LG and Samsung, and even Mark Zuckerberg who took part in Samsungs presentation at Unpacked. LG came out with their modular smartphone in the LG G5, while Samsung came out with a refined version of their Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, dubbed the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. All three of these devices are great smartphones that will be available shortly (on all of the carriers here in the US), and got some great reactions from the press as well as the public at the show last week. Now the question is who really won Mobile World Congress? That would be Qualcomm.

Advertisement

Now, dont think that this wasnt the plan for Qualcomm. They definitely had a hand in helping out their partners and in turn their partners helping them out, with these announcements. As with any other trade show, Qualcomm had been working for months in advance to release this barrage of Snapdragon 820 news. Whether that was working with LG, Samsung, Xiaomi or Sony, or by themselves, Qualcomm was making sure that they were in the spotlight this year in Barcelona. Well see later this month when the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge both launch in the US (and about 60 other countries) how well the Snapdragon 820 is really going to perform, when compared to the Snapdragon 810. But for now, it appears as if Qualcomm definitely won Mobile World Congress without announcing a single thing, themselves.
The United States Government and Silicon Valley occasionally cross paths, whether its in disagreement over encryption issues or to help regulate new technology, such as self-driving cars. Sometimes, of course, Silicon Valleys great tech minds come to the aid of the government, offering new technology to help them manage the country more efficiently or in new ways. Very rarely, however, do we see a Silicon Valley bigwig directly helping the government by doing things like serving on advisory boards. According to an announcement by the United States Defense Secretary, Ash Carter, on Wednesday, thats exactly what were seeing right now. The bigwig in question, is former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

After stepping down from the illustrious post of Google CEO back in 2011, Schmidt has recently been keeping order in the Googleplex as the executive chairman of Alphabet. Meanwhile, hes been putting his expertise to good use such as participating in the Bilderberg Group. His newest adventure is serving on a Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing the best practices, knowledge and skills of Silicon Valley to bear as innovations to serve the United States Military. Specifically, Schimidt will be the head of that board. Alongside secretary Carter, Schmidt will hand pick 12 people who have demonstrated a history of innovation and leadership to serve on the board.

Advertisement

Secretary Carter is set to meet with Schmidt during the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, which started on February 29 and is still going strong until March 4. Their discussion will center around the new board, but further details were not revealed. Its safe to assume that there will be some discussion of how the board will take shape and perhaps some initial thoughts of possible names to serve on it. One senior defense official said that Carter is trying to keep the department thinking fresh, bringing in new ideas, bringing in new voices with this new board. Further details about the way the board will work and what their role will be in the future of the Department of Defense will likely be revealed after the conference ends, but nothing has been announced as of now.
Following the tragic San Bernardino shootings, there has been a lot of debate regarding data encryption on smartphones. Apple refused FBIs request to create custom software to decrypt the iPhone 5C used by one of the attackers, and several other companies including Google, Facebook, and BlackBerry have defended Apple in their decision on account that it could set a dangerous precedent. In more recent events, Brazilian authorities have detained Facebooks VP for Latin America, Diego Dzodan, for failing to provide WhatsApp user data that could be helpful in a criminal investigation related to drug trafficking.

According to Facebook, Diego Dzodan was brought in for questioning earlier this morning and remained in custody. A Brazilian Federal Police spokeswoman claimed that Dzodan was detained four months after local authorities have obtained the first court order, asking Facebook to provide Whatsapp user data which could help in solving the investigation. After failing to provide user data, the court started fining Facebook $21,600 a day for two months, and increased the fine to $253,000 a day last month. On February 7, the court issued an arrest warrant for Diego Dzodan.

Advertisement

Reportedly, the suspects investigated by authorities used both Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to plan their crimes. However, although WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, a spokesperson for the company said that WhatsApp cannot provide this type of information because the application encrypts user information which then passes through the platform without being kept on a central server. In other words, they cannot provide information they dont have.

WhatsApp adds that they are disappointed that law enforcement took this extreme step. According to Facebook, over a period of 18 months until June 2015, the Brazilian government issued more than 3,700 requests to Facebook to provide user data from services such as Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Reportedly, the company was able to provide at least some data for roughly 37% of all the requests, the majority of which were related to criminal activity surrounding kidnappings and robberies. However, in most of these cases, the authorities have requested basic subscriber information, as opposed to encrypted user data.

In addition, Facebook claims it uses strict processes to determine whether government demands can or cannot be met. With that being said, its worth noting that theres only one Facebook sales office In Sao Paulo and its not clear whether anyone working in that office has the authority to make decisions regarding Whatsapp and Facebook products or policies.
February saw Xiaomi take to the stage at MWC and introduce their latest flagship smartphone, the Mi 5. On the same day, the company was also hosting another event in China for the Mi 5 and announced another handset as well. In addition to the Mi 5, Xiaomi also took the wraps off their latest Mi 4 smartphone variant, in the form of the Xiaomi Mi 4S. This is a smartphone which looks to bring an element of premium to the Mi 4 range and as a result, comes sporting a metal and glass build and design.

In terms of the rest of the specs, the Xiaomi Mi 4S comes boasting a number of familiar specs to some of the other Mi 4 range devices. On offer is a 5-inch display which makes use of a 1920 x 1080 resolution. Inside, the Mi 4S offers 3GB of RAM and is powered by a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 Hexa-core processor, In terms of storage, the Mi 4S comes loaded with 64GB internal storage and does also offer the option to expand thanks to the inclusion of a microSD card slot (up to 128GB). While in terms of cameras, the Mi 4S comes packing a 13-megapixel rear camera which is coupled with a 5-megapixel front-facing option. In addition, the Mi 4S is powered by a non-removable 3,260 mAh battery and comes running on Android 5.1 (Lollipop) out of the box and in the form of Xiaomis own MIUI 7 OS. Additional features on offer include a fingerprint scanner, Quick Charge 2.0 support, USB Type-C, dual-SIM and 4G LTE support. In terms of network compatibility, the Mi 4S is compatible with 2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, 3G: WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100 MHz and 4G: FDD-LTE 1800/2100/2600 MHz.

Advertisement

For those interested in a new smartphone, the Xiaomi Mi 4S is currently in its pre-order status and can be pre-ordered though GearBest for only $348.89. Pre-orders commenced at the end of February and will continue throughout March. For the specs on offer and for the price, this is a good smartphone to check out. Not to mention, you can even choose between black, white and gold color options. Those interested in finding out more or pre-ordering the Xiaomi Mi 4S for only $348.89, can do so by heading through the link below.
Meizu is a China-based company, and at the same time one of the fastest-growing smartphone manufacturers in the world. This company has introduced a handful of devices last year, and the PRO 5 phablet is their current flagship. The company has partnered up with Canonical yet again to introduce a Ubuntu-powered handset, Meizu and Canonical have unveiled the Ubuntu Edition of the Meizu PRO 5 during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona last month.

That being said, the Meizu PRO 5 Mini was in Meizus plans, but due unforeseen circumstances, that handset will probably never see the light of day. That being said, were turning our attention to the upcoming Meizu MX6 and PRO 6 handsets, and weve already seen some leaks already. Well, this time around were not going to talk about leaks, but official information, as the companys exec did tease one feature of Meizus upcoming flagship. The companys VP and Flymes chief architect, Yang Yan, actually shared a rather interesting screenshot via his official Weibo (Chinese social network) page. The companys exec shared an image which essentially confirms that the Meizu PRO 6 will sport a Force Touch (aka 3D Touch) display, just like the Huawei Mate S, ZTE Axon Mini, and the iPhone 6s / 6s Plus. The image is quite straightforward, and it obviously shows an extra gallery menu which is the result of adding more pressure to the gallery icon on the home screen (Flyme OS doesnt sport an app drawer).

Advertisement

Aside from this official confirmation, we really dont have all that much info about this phablet just yet. The Meizu PRO 6 is expected to be announced in Q3 or Q4 this year, and according to the latest rumor, the device might be fueled by the Exynos 8870. As you probably already know, the Meizu PRO 5 ships with the Exynos 7420 SoC on the inside, which is considered to be one of the best mobile SoCs of 2015. Interesting enough, this is the only non-Samsung handset to ship with that SoC, and rumors are claiming that its successor will also come with a chip from Samsung. The Exynos 8870 is still not announced, but it is rumored to be identical to the already announced Exynos 8890, but it will have a lower clock rate. The PRO 6 will almost certainly going to be made out of metal, and you can expect at least 4GB of RAM to be included here. Meizu will probably opt for an AMOLED panel once again, and Android 6.0 Marshmallow is expected to come pre-installed on this phablet.
Last November Pebble decided to try and put smartwatches on the wrists of more gadget lovers, and thus, the company began offering the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel at lower prices as part of a pre-Black Friday limited-time discount. Evidently the offer is no longer available, but the good news for bargain hunters looking for a new opportunity to buy a Pebble smartwatch at a lower price, is that the company permanently dropped the prices of both the Pebble Time and Pebble Time Round in the US by $50. Furthermore, the company also reduced the EU and UK prices for the rest of the Pebble lineup.

The Pebble Time was originally launched on the 24th of May 2015 at the price of $199.99. It was the companys first smartwatch to sport an LED-backlit 64 colors e-paper display, which features a resolution of 144 x 168, adding up to a pixel density of roughly 182 pixels per inch. It also packs a Li-Ion battery rated at up to 7 days of usage, which is something you rarely get from todays smartwatches. Following the recent price drop, the Pebble Time is now available in the US for $149.99. As for the Pebble Time Round, the smartwatch is largely powered by the same components as the Pebble Time, featuring an LED-backlit color e-paper screen similar to the rectangular model, but sacrificing battery life (rated at up to 2 days) in favor of a thinner profile and arguably a more elegant, compact design. The Time Round was first available for pre-order last year on September 23 at the price of $249.99. Now, prospective customers residing in the US can buy the timepiece for $199.99.

Advertisement

Pebble also announced improved prices for the smartwatch lineup available in the UK and Europe, with price reductions of up to 30% for all watches. The Pebble Time Round is accompanied by a new price tag of a229.95, whereas the Pebble Time now costs a169.95. The offer stands in online as well as physical stores; however prices might be slightly different depending on each region. Either way, these changes in pricing are permanent in all locations so you wont have to worry about acting fast before the discount ends.
Despite being at the top of the mobile chip game, Qualcomm has been seeing criticism from a number of sources lately, both international and closer to home. One of the organizations giving Qualcomm some trouble lately has been the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC made allegations that Qualcomms dealings outside of the United States in regards to employment and treatment of government officials did not comply with strict ethical standards set forth in applicable law. Things like paying for travel, offering gifts and hiring the friends and children of state employees or the employees of state-owned entities were on the rap sheet. Qualcomm announced today that they have agreed to pay a civil penalty in the amount of $7.5 million dollars and, in exchange, the matter will be concluded and dropped.

Qualcomm did not confirm or deny the SECs report and alleged findings in their announcement, only saying that they had opted to pay the civil penalty to have the case closed quickly and cleanly. Although the case was eligible for a possible criminal investigation, the settlement and agreement to pay the civil penalty with the SEC caused the U.S. Department of Justice to announce their investigation had been closed with no criminal findings and no proceedings on the books. For all intents and purposes, the ordeal is over, but Qualcomm will still be reporting back to the SEC on its continuing efforts to beef up their processes and ensure this sort of thing doesnt happen again.

Advertisement

Thanks to this snafu, Qualcomm will be doing a lot of close internal monitoring and, to avoid conflicts of interest, no longer hiring anybody who has anything to do with a state employee or an employee of a state-owned organization in any country. The allegations centered around Qualcomms dealings in China, with no details disclosed as to any findings elsewhere or the possibility thereof. Although this conflict is safely in the rearview, Qualcomm may still face antitrust regulators in various places, meaning their legal troubles could still be far from over. Qualcomms announcement made sure to mention that Qualcomm is committed to ethical conduct and compliance with all laws and regulations and will remain so in the future.
Samsung is, as many know, more than just a company known for their Galaxy S and Galaxy Note line of Android smartphones. The South Korean giant has been a household name in the consumer electronics world for decades now, and with big launches like the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge, this only looks set to continue. Samsung also makes a hell of a lot of computers, tablets and smartphones and these sorts of devices always need some sort of support to go along with them. Third-party companies have been making lots of money out of this sort of business for decades, but now Samsung wants to offer their customers a free service, predictably dubbed S Service.

As detailed on their official blog, it seems as though S Service is going to be a service predominantly for the likes of Windows Computers. Considering that instructions on how to access S Service start off with a description on being able to download and install the app for Windows 8 PCs and above, it certainly seems that way. For those in the United States, the S Service help desk will be open Monday to Friday from 9AM until 12AM midnight. From the get-go it appears as though this is going to be a service that offers users an online chat system, not unlike similar support offerings from Amazon and many other retailers.

Advertisement

Whether or not this service will expand to include Android smartphones and tablets is unclear. It does appear as though Samsung could be launching this service to help new users of the Galaxy TabPro S, which is running Windows 10. With the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge fast approaching the worldwide market, it wouldnt surprise us if the S Service would soon expand to new smartphones as well as tablets launched throughout the year. Regardless, this is a good offering to see from someone like samsung, and could be the start of something much bigger for the Samsung brand overall. Especially when competing against other brands like Apple, who are renowned for their customer service and retail experience.
Samsung Pay has really taken off despite being a fairly new player in the mobile payment space. This is, of course, mostly due to the fact that its a feature which comes packed in with some of the most popular flagship smartphones out there, such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, Galaxy Note 5 and the upcoming Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. On top of that, it can work anywhere a credit or debit card can work, thanks to magnetic secure transmission that emulates a magnetic strip on a card. Even with how popular Samsung Pay has become, some owners of recent Samsung flagships are still left out. One common reason for this is particular banks not being supported, which can range from small local outfits and credit unions to some of the bigger players. Members of one of the bigger banks, however, can rejoice as Wells Fargo is now on board with Samsung Pay.

Wells Fargo was one of the bigger and later holdouts, going with Apple Pay and Android Pay before finally signing on with Samsung Pay, but they are now putting their full blessing behind each Samsung Pay transaction their customers make. The transactions will carry all of the benefits of normal debit card transactions, including fraud and risk monitoring and protection, overdraft protection if youre signed up for it and of course, Wells Fargos signature Zero Liability Protection, which means that if a transaction shows up on your ledger that you didnt make, prompt reporting to their fraud department means youre not liable for a single cent.

Advertisement

With the addition of another of Americas biggest banks, Samsung Pays popularity seems to have nowhere to go but up in the United States as the service begins to pop up all over the globe. With it set to hit tons of new places over the course of 2016, its not entirely impossible to think that Samsung Pay could climb the charts in short order, perhaps even becoming the dominant force in mobile payments worldwide. Thats not to say Apple Pay will go down without a fight, but if anybody at this point can do it, Samsung Pay increasingly seems to be a viable option.
This year during Mobile World Congress, Samsung went to great lengths to raise awareness of a wider range of product aside from the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. The company seems to have greatly emphasized on the Virtual Reality segment and even promoted the aforementioned flagships as unique VR machines. In addition, the Korean tech giant also lifted the veil off a brand new product called the Samsung Gear 360 which ties into the whole VR scene. The Gear 360 is a hand-held camera and as the moniker suggests, the unit is capable of capturing 360-degree videos which can be experienced at their full potential through the Samsung Gear VR headset. But given that the Gear 360 is the companys first product in this category, Samsung has decided it would be wise to release an infographic detailing some of the cameras intended uses and specifications.

Samsungs latest infographic  which you can see below  offers a quick preview on some of the key features presented by the Gear 360 camera. It explains the three simple steps of creating, saving, and sharing 360 degrees content, and shows a couple of scenarios where one might want to have a Gear 360 at hand for capturing moments, such as when traveling, when attending festivals, or when spending time with friends and family. The infographic also details some of the specifications, including the units ability to record videos at resolutions of 3840 x 1920, and capture 30-megapixel images. It also reminds prospective customers that the Samsung Gear 360 is compatible with a wide range of camera accessories, such as selfie sticks, microSD cards, and tripods. The Gear 360 does include a small tripod of its own, which can also act as a handle when folded.

Advertisement

Its worth pointing out that there are a few other key characteristics missing from the infographic, some of which can be considered more important than others. For instance, the Samsung Gear 360 is water and dust resistant with an IP53 certificate, and conceals a 1,350 mAh battery which should be enough for several hours of continuous video recording. Pricing and release details are still missing, but broadly speaking the Samsung Gear 360 is set for a market debut sometime in the 2nd quarter of the year.
Samsungs Gear S2 has become a big hit for the firm since its release towards the end of last year, and while it might not be to everyones taste, its a lot more flexible than previous Gear wearables have been. Now that the Gear S2 works with many more Android smartphones on the market, rather than just Samsungs Galaxy options, more people than ever can enjoy Samsungs smartwatch offering. A few days ago, a Ceramic bracelet (pictured above) was announced by Samsung France, and now, its appeared online in Europe for pre-order, with stock expected around the 10th of March.

The Ceramic bracelet is similar to many black metal bracelets out there, but is of course made from a different material. Compatible with not only the Gear S2 Classic, but also all other 20mm watches out there, the Ceramic bracelet is said to be made with hypoallergenic materials, making it softer on the skin for those prone to irritation and such. It carries a model number of ET-SCR73MBEGWW and has been spotted online in Europe for prices ranging from around a90 to a105, including VAT. These prices work out at roughly $98 to $114 or so, but these prices are just straight conversions and include European VAT, so should the new bracelet makes its way stateside, wed assume itd carry a different price tag altogether. Both ICT4employees and hardware.nl have the new bracelet listed for purchase, with the former quoting March 10th for stock, while the latter is just promising 6  10 days for delivery.

Advertisement

Its unsurprising to see the bracelet be listing up for purchase across the pond in Europe, but were wondering when itll become available in the US, after all the Gear S2 is a popular product here in North America. Regardless, those adventurous enough to import from the EU can do so, and it is nice to see Samsung push more bracelets and such for a watch that trades on being a fairly good-looking device as well as something highly functional. Samsung fans will no doubt be looking forward to the launch of the new Galaxy S7 this month, and some retailers  like Verizon in the US  are even offering free Gear S2s to those that have pre-ordered or purchase a Galaxy S7.
Many users are still waiting for Android Marshmallow to be released for their own devices, and many others dont even know when might that happen. Motorola was quite fast to release this version of the Android operating system for some of their recently released smartphones. Back in October, when the final build for Marshmallow got released, the company communicated that they would be updating the second-generation Moto G in the future to Android 6.0. This device was released in September 2014, but it is still quite capable, as it shares many specs with the newer Moto G that got released last year. Today, Motorolas website has been updated to let users know that Android 6.0 is now available for the second-generation Moto G in the U.S.

Some of the changes users will notice after updating their smartphone include a new App Standby to reduce battery consumption from some apps that are rarely used. Theres a new App Permission system, so apps will ask users to enable certain permissions once a certain feature requires them. Users can choose how to open web links with the new App Links feature. Unlike some devices from other manufacturers, the second-generation Moto G will be able to use microSD cards as expandable storage, so they get treated as part of the internal storage. Do Not Disturb mode has been improved, as well as the volume controls. Google Now On Tap provides contextual information of whatever is displayed on the screen, and the new Direct Share feature makes it easier sharing things within apps.

Advertisement

Some native apps from Motorola wont be available after updating to Android Marshmallow because their functionality is now considered redundant. For example, Moto Assist will be integrated into some special modes such as Sleeping and Meeting or Driving and Home, Motorola Migrate has some alternatives at the Google Play Store and Motorola Alert will be removed, but those who want to keep using it may download it from the Google Play Store. As usual, users will receive a notification letting them known that the update is ready to download. They can manually check for the update by going into the Settings menu, then select About Phone and tap System Update.
Yahoo has not been having a good past few years. From tons of job cuts and talk of killing off their in-house moonshot factory to the company going up for sale, CEO Marissa Mayer has had to make a lot of tough decisions lately. To say that the company is on the rocks would be a bit of an understatement at this point, so much so that Verizon is hesitant to buy them. Although already on the rocks, things are looking like they could get even worse for Yahoo. With things as they are now, Verizon is unsure if the assets and brand advantage that Yahoo would bring would be worth the price tag and hassle.

Verizons CFO, Fran Shammo, was quick to point out that Yahoo is scrambling to bolster itself through some sort of outside means, but are as yet unsure of who to turn to. Verizon is discussing and exploring mergers, outright buying, divestments and all other manner of options for Yahoo. Meanwhile, they still havent decided, if they buy, whether to keep or sell Yahoos data centers. Yahoo is in less than flattering circumstances at the moment, with their assets, people and brand in decline and at serious risk of full-on irrelevancy. Should that happen, Verizon wouldnt do too well for themselves by making a purchase offer. Shammo summed up Verizons current stance on the matter, saying, Is it better off outside of our portfolio? Were looking at that.

Advertisement

Yahoo has yet to find a suitor or even fully commit to a buyout as a valid survival strategy, opting instead to post up the for sale sign, continue operating as normal and see what happens. For this strategy to play out for them, however, Yahoo would have to come back into prominence and gain a significant number of users, which would, at this point, require a new strategy. Most analysts seem convinced at this point that Yahoo is simply spinning their wheels to delay the inevitable, though their CEO remains somewhat more optimistic than that. At this point, its anybodys guess as to where Yahoo will be even as soon as one year from now.
(ANSA) - Rome, March 2 - Iraqi officials hailed on Wednesday the progress achieved by government troops on the second day of a military operation aimed at dislodging Islamic State (ISIS) militants from a key area north of the capital, Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.

On Tuesday, Iraqi troops, backed by aerial support and paramilitary forces, launched a new push to retake a sprawling desert area outside the central city of Samarra, 95 kilometers (60 miles) north of Baghdad, with the aim to cut ISIS supply lines and to tighten the grip around the ISIS-held northern city of Mosul.

"We have achieved a big success," the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, Staff General Hamid al-Maliki, said in a video distributed by the Defense Ministry adding that government forces had progressed farther than expected so far. He hailed the paramilitary forces, which are mainly composed of Shiite militiamen, as playing "a big role" alongside government security forces.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 2 - The Italian foreign ministry said Wednesday that Italy's Cesena-based Trevi construction group has just signed a contract with Iraqi authorities for consolidation work on the Mosul Dam, following "intense" negotiations with Baghdad. The project was agreed on a recent visit to Rome by Iraqi Premier Haider al-Abadi and was the subject of talks in New York between Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni and US and Iraqi representatives to speed the terms of the contract, the ministry said. The arrival of some 500 Italian soldiers to protect Trevi's restructuring work on the dam, whose urgent need for repair has been highlighted by the US, has been scheduled for late spring, either May or June, officials said Monday. The contingent could be composed of the Garibaldi Brigade bersaglieri with armoured vehicles, plus special forces, sappers and air support. Reconnaissance and analysis of the area to be secured have already been carried out. Defence ministry plans to deploy the troops are at an advanced stage.

The Iraqi government and the US Embassy in Baghdad warned local residents on Monday that the Mosul Dam may collapse, a risk the US called "serious and unprecedented".

The US said a collapse could cause the deaths of nearly 1.5 million Iraqis living along the Tigris River.

"Prompt evacuation offers the most effective tool to save lives of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," the U.S. embassy said.

The US has warned in the past of the potential for collapse.

Built in the 1980s, the dam is situated on soft mineral foundations, easily dissolved by water.

The Trevi group's contract to repair and maintain the dam is reportedly worth some $230 million.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 2 - Italy "appears increasingly more exposed" to the threat of jihadist terrorism, even though no specific terror plans have been detected, the country's intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament on Wednesday. The report said there were numerous references in extremist Islamist propaganda to Italy being an enemy for its relations with the United States and Israel and its commitment to fighting terrorism. It said that the greatest potential threats were linked to the Catholic Church's Jubilee of Mercy and to the potential activation of new generations of aspiring jihadists joining ISIS campaigns.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 2 - The Italian foreign ministry said Wednesday that a first batch of documents on student Giulio Regeni's murder sent by Egyptian authorities contain "iinformation relating to the questioning of witnesses by Egyptian authorities, the telephone traffic of Giulio Regeni's cellphone and a partial summary of elements that emerged from the autopsy".

A high-ranking source in the Egyptian president's office reiterated on Wednesday that Cairo is convinced that Islamist terrorists were behind the torture and murder of the Italian researcher. "Terrorism in Egypt is not finished and it is trying to damage relations between Egypt and other countries, as in the case of Italian citizen Giulio Regeni," the highly qualified source told ANSA.


(ANSA) - Bari, March 2 - Former Puglia governor Nichi Vendola said in an interview with Matrix talk show to be aired on Channel 5 Wednesday that the debate on stepchild adoption has become "hysterical". "I believe the reality is very simple," said the openly gay politician, founder of the small leftwing Left Ecology and Freedom (SEL) party, and new dad. "A couple with a child who is the biological child of one of the two partners, but whom both are raising - I believe it natural to safeguard their rights in case the biological father came to be missing, for whatever reason".

The birth in California at the weekend of a little boy via an American surrogate mother for Vendola and his Canadian partner, Ed Testa, has fuelled a row in Italy over adoptions for members of the LGBT community.

Tension over the issue of gays adopting children continued earlier this week even though a provision that would have allowed homosexuals to adopt their partners' biological children was stripped from a bill regulating civil unions the Senate approved last week.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 2 - Italy "appears increasingly more exposed" to the threat of jihadist terrorism, even though no specific terror plans have been detected, the country's intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament on Wednesday. The report said there were numerous references in extremist Islamist propaganda to Italy being an enemy for its relations with the United States and Israel and its commitment to fighting terrorism. It said that the greatest potential threats were linked to the Catholic Church's Jubilee of Mercy and to the potential activation of new generations of aspiring jihadists joining ISIS campaigns.

Italy's intelligence services also said Wednesday that there is a high risk of Europe suffering another major terrorist attack by Islamist extremists like those staged in Paris in November. "The risk of new actions on European territory is considered high," the intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament. The report said these could be "sensational attacks in the style of the Paris ones". It added that the Paris attacks had probably "inaugurated a strategy of attack on the West that is destined to increase". It said there was a two-fold risk of both actions by ISIS foreign fighters trained in conflict zones and by secret militants living in Europe, both lone wolves and small sleeper cells. It said the terrorists were increasingly likely to attack soft targets and that the threat posed by al-Qaeda had not disappeared with the rise of ISIS. On the contrary, the report said, "the competition with Daesh could reinforce al-Qaeda's determination to intervene on the global scene with sensational acts".

Italy's intelligence services said that there was a risk of Islamist terrorists infiltrating the flows of asylum seekers trying to enter Europe via the Balkans.

It said that no evidence had been found of infiltration of migrants and refugees reaching Europe from North Africa, but added that there was a "more concrete" risk with the Balkans route. The report said the Balkans was the region of transit favoured by foreign fighters, with over 900 leaving from it to reach theatres of war, and an area of "consolidated extremist situations".

The "proliferation of the international terror funding network is polluting financial systems and markets and consequently requires particular attention," Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told a money-laundering conference at Rome's LUISS University Wednesday. Padoan called for greater cooperation at a national and international level to tackle the emergency. Matteo Renzi's government has taken several moves to tighten up regulations against money-laundering and help close international tax havens.




(ANSA) - Rome, march 2 - Italy is increasingly exposed to terror threats, a report from the country's intelligence services said Wednesday.

They said another attack like the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 was likely, not just in Italy but also in the rest of Europe. Italy "appears increasingly more exposed" to the threat of jihadist terrorism, even though no specific terror plans have been detected, the country's intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament on Wednesday. The report said there were numerous references in extremist Islamist propaganda to Italy being an enemy for its relations with the United States and Israel and its commitment to fighting terrorism. It said that the greatest potential threats were linked to the Catholic Church's Jubilee of Mercy and to the potential activation of new generations of aspiring jihadists joining ISIS campaigns.

The report also highlighted the risk of Islamist terrorists infiltrating the flows of asylum seekers trying to enter Europe via the Balkans.

It said that no evidence had been found of infiltration of migrants and refugees reaching Europe from North Africa, but added that there was a "more concrete" risk with the Balkans route. The report said the Balkans was the region of transit favoured by foreign fighters, with over 900 leaving from it to reach theatres of war, and an area "consolidated extremist situations".

The intelligence services added that there is a high risk of Europe suffering another major terrorist attack by Islamist extremists like those staged in Paris in November. "The risk of new actions on European territory is considered high," the intelligence services said in their report. The report said these could be "sensational attacks in the style of the Paris ones". It added that the Paris attacks had probably "inaugurated a strategy of attack on the West that is destined to increase". It said there was a two-fold risk of both actions by ISIS foreign fighters trained in conflict zones and by secret militants living in Europe, both lone wolves and small sleeper cells. It said the terrorists were increasingly likely to attack soft targets and that the threat posed by al-Qaeda had not disappeared with the rise of ISIS. On the contrary, the report said, "the competition with Daesh could reinforce al-Qaeda's determination to intervene on the global scene with sensational acts".

National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Franco Roberti said terrorism was an emergency that required urgent political action.


Italy increasingly exposed to terror threat - report Intelligence services say another attack like Paris likely Rome

(By Denis Greenan).



(ANSAmed) - ROME - Italy is increasingly exposed to terror threats, a report from the country's intelligence services said Wednesday. They said another attack like the November 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 was likely, not just in Italy but also in the rest of Europe. Italy "appears increasingly more exposed" to the threat of jihadist terrorism, even though no specific terror plans have been detected, the country's intelligence services said in their annual report to parliament on Wednesday. The report said there were numerous references in extremist Islamist propaganda to Italy being an enemy for its relations with the United States and Israel and its commitment to fighting terrorism. It said that the greatest potential threats were linked to the Catholic Church's Jubilee of Mercy and to the potential activation of new generations of aspiring jihadists joining ISIS campaigns. The report also highlighted the risk of Islamist terrorists infiltrating the flows of asylum seekers trying to enter Europe via the Balkans. It said that no evidence had been found of infiltration of migrants and refugees reaching Europe from North Africa, but added that there was a "more concrete" risk with the Balkans route. The report said the Balkans was the region of transit favoured by foreign fighters, with over 900 leaving from it to reach theatres of war, and an area "consolidated extremist situations". The intelligence services added that there is a high risk of Europe suffering another major terrorist attack by Islamist extremists like those staged in Paris in November. "The risk of new actions on European territory is considered high," the intelligence services said in their report. The report said these could be "sensational attacks in the style of the Paris ones". It added that the Paris attacks had probably "inaugurated a strategy of attack on the West that is destined to increase". It said there was a two-fold risk of both actions by ISIS foreign fighters trained in conflict zones and by secret militants living in Europe, both lone wolves and small sleeper cells. It said the terrorists were increasingly likely to attack soft targets and that the threat posed by al-Qaeda had not disappeared with the rise of ISIS. On the contrary, the report said, "the competition with Daesh could reinforce al-Qaeda's determination to intervene on the global scene with sensational acts".



National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Franco Roberti said terrorism was an emergency that required urgent political action.



(ANSAmed).




Migrants: Slovenia calls for attention to Balkan problems Ljubljana aligns with Austria, limits flow and asylum requests

(ANSAmed) - LJUBLJANA, MARCH 2 - Slovenia on Wednesday called for more consistent application of Schengen zone regulations towards migrants, including rules for asylum seekers. Prime Minister Miro Cerar added after Tuesday's meeting in the Slovenian capital with European Council president Donald Tusk that the many difficulties experienced by countries on the 'Balkan route' should also be taken into consideration.



Media reports say that Slovenia is highly skeptical about the possibility to reach an EU-Turkey agreement to curb the high migration flow from the Middle East - which Germany is insisting on - and is ever closer to Austria's position and a system of daily quotas. Since last week, in line with other countries on the Balkan route on an Austrian initiative, Slovenia has allowed a single train carrying a maximum of 580 migrants pass into its territory from Croatia per day. Out of concern that migrants pushed back by Austria might request asylum in mass in Slovenia, the Ljubljana parliament on Tuesday amended a law excluding the possibility for people to request asylum that have already been in other EU countries deemed safe, including Austria. The left-wing opposition and several human rights organizations have criticized the government-proposed move, saying that refugee protection had fallen to an unacceptable level. (ANSAmed).




Migrants: Macedonia reopens borders for about four hours 170 cross, 10,000 still stranded at border

(ANSAmed) - THESSALONIKI, MARCH 2 - Macedonia's authorities on Wednesday reopened borders with Greece for approximately four hours, letting in some 170 refugees from Syria and Iraq. About 10,000 people remain stranded at the border between the two countries.



According to Greek police, Macedonia reopened its borders between midnight and 2 am for the first time, and then between 6 and 9 am. According to local media, some 70 migrants crossed into the country at around 2 am, while 100 others were allowed in between 6 and 9 am.



The situation remains very precarious with discontent and rage growing by the day among migrants who are stranded in increasingly dire environmental and hygienic circumstances.



Macedonia meanwhile, after clashes the day before yesterday, has significantly boosted security measures with hundreds additional police and military officers deployed at the border.



According to the associated Press, Skopje means to authorize the daily entry of the equivalent number of people Serbia means to accept on a daily basis. (ANSAmed).




Libya 'cannot be held hostage by minorities', UN envoy 'Political void fosters ISIS'; French navy also in targeted ops

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 2 - Most of the Libyan population supports the national unity government, UN envoy Martin Kobler said on Wednesday. He added that ''we have not yet managed to convince those against the agreement'' but Libya cannot ''be held hostage by minorities in the Tobruk parliament and the Tripoli Congress''. The humanitarian situation in the country ''was worsening further'', he noted, and the country does not yet have effective state institutions. Kobler stressed that the political void in Libya was fostering the Islamic State (ISIS), which is expanding ''to the west, east and south''. In Sirte, ISIS ''has continued with its atrocities'', and the group is a growing threat to the country and the region. On the issue of efforts to bring in the new unity government, he said that ''if the Tobruk parliament does not approve it in a confidence vote by the end of the next week, which it is expected to do, I will once again call the Libyan Political Agreement(LPA) delegations.'' The diplomat added that he intended to involve tribal leaders and city mayors in the reconstruction of the country. Libya media say that a group of Tobruk parliament MPs had arrived in Tripoli for political talks aiming to relaunch dialogue between the parties involved. French engagement in the country seems to increasing as well.



The satirical French weekly Canard Enchaine reported on Wednesday that ''as is the case with ground troops and air force, the navy is also taking part in 'targeted' operations conducted by France in Libya''. ''A few weeks ago,'' the weekly continued, ''the frigate Surcouf transported special forces troops and let them off at sea a kilometer from the Libyan coast.'' The aim is to support the Libyan army under General Khalifa Haftar against ISIS. Last week, Le Monde reported on ''Paris's secret war in Libya'', while Libyan military sources said that French special forces had been deployed in Benghazi. (ANSAmed).




Jordan: government, 7 extremists dead in commando operation Raid by special forces in various cities, 20 arrests

(ANSAmed) - AMMAN, MARCH 2 - At least seven ''criminals'' were killed, together with an agent, in an operation by Jordanian special forces carried out today against an Islamic extremist group in Jordan, government spokesman Mohammad Mommani said. Authorities did not identify the organization of the suspected militants. Police sources quoted by Petra news agency said that 20 other suspected extremists were arrested while two people with no connection to the facts were injured in the operation. Eye witnesses told ANSA that helicopters were deployed to bring special forces to the location of the operation.



One of the raids was carried out in the town of Hanin, 60 kilometers north of Amman and others in the nearby Irbid. The witnesses said they heard gunshots for hours while police evacuated residents of the areas affected by the operation.



(ANSAmed).




Tunisia: IMF calls on government to review development plan Decision on April 22 on aid to Tunisia worth 1.7 bln dollars

(ANSAmed) - TUNIS, MARCH 2 - Tunisia will need to change its development plan for 2016-202 if it wants to truly relaunch its economy, according to the new representative in the country of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Robert Blotevogel, who announced a vote on April 22 of the Fund's board on a new aid plan worth 1.7 billion dollars for the country.



According to Blorevogel, although the overall deficit remains rather contained, issues concerning the budget remain a problem, with public spending still too high at the expense of real investments.



Meanwhile a delegation of the IMF visiting the North African country met with leaders of the Tunisian Union for industry, trade and crafts to discuss progress on legislation on the partnership between private and public actors, a reform of the public administration, new rules on public tenders and investments, regional development, the possibility to access credit and future perspectives of the national economy.



(ANSAmed).




ROME - The 'Clean Sea' technology invented by Italian group Eni's laboratories will be used for the first time to monitor the marine environment and inspect offshore installations in the Mediterranean and Western Africa. Clean Sea, Eni said in a note, can be used through support vessels of limited dimension, containing logistical costs.



Eni will set up two logistical bases, in Angola and Sicily, for the Mediterranean region, managed in Gela by Enimed.



Starting from the first trimester of 2016, two teams will be in charge of maintenance and the work of robots used to recover data, providing support to underwater services in the Mediterranean.
Mideast: military, Israeli wounded, two Palestinians killed They had infiltrated a Jewish settlement in northern West Bank

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 2 - An Israeli was stabbed on Wednesday morning as he was trying to prevent two young Palestinians from breaking into his home in the Jewish settlement of Eli in the northern West Bank, a military spokesman said, adding that the two were killed by security forces.



According to Israeli media, the two Palestinians - both aged 17 - were armed with knives and rods and attacked the man as soon as he found them near his home.



Initial reports also said that the Israeli was in his army uniform at the time of the attack as he is currently on reserve duty. The two Palestinians reportedly fled after the confrontation with the Israeli but were apprehended by security forces and killed. The death was confirmed, according to Palestinian news agency Maan, by the Palestinian health minister. (ANSAmed).




Migrants: EU plan presented for 700 mln in 3 years Commission to present it to parliament and member states

(ANSAmed) - BRUSSELS, MARCH 2 - The European Commission on Wednesday proposed an emergency assistance instrument for humanitarian rescue operations. The instrument will make more targeted and quicker responses possible, at a time when the unprecedented refugee crisis in Europe has led to serious humanitarian consequences in Greece.



EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides said that the proposal would make 700 million euros available for assistance where it is most needed and that it was now up to governments and the European Parliament to respond promptly.



The EU government will propose to the Parliament and the European Council an urgent 300-million amendment to the 2016 budget, while another 200 million will be allocated in 2017 and 2018. Athens has recently presented its emergency plan to Brussels, drawn up with European Commission experts. (ANSAmed).




'EU bartering away democracy in Turkey deal', Dundar 'Ankara wants to enter Syrian war', Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MARCH 2 - The editor-in-chief of a major Turkish newspaper, recently released from detention after a constitutional court ruling, criticized on Wednesday the EU's dealings with Turkey.



''It was curious for us in prison to hear Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu say that there aren't any journalists in prison.



And it was even more so to see (German, Ed.) Chancellor Angela Merkel nod. The negotiations between the EU and Turkey on migrants are dirty bargaining, since (Turkish president, Ed.) Erdogan manipulated the situation and unfortunately Europe has bartered away its values of democracy and freedom of expression in exchange for an agreement,'' Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar said.



Dundar risks a life sentence in Turkey on charges of intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security for reporting on weapons transfers from Turkey to Syria.



The editor noted that he had sent a letter from jail on the issue EU leaders during talks with Ankara. ''The latest developments show that Turkey wants to enter the Syrian civil war, and this explains why our investigation bothered the government so much,'' Dundar said. He was released on Friday with his colleague Erdem Gul following three months in jail after the constitutional court ruled that holding them in pre-trial detention was a violation of their rights. President Erdogan reacted by saying that he did not agree with the sentence.



''I am convinced that the media,'' he said, ''should not be given unlimited freedom. Absolute freedom of the press does not exist anywhere.'' ''I would like to thank Erdogan,'' Dundar commented ironically on Wednesday, ''because if he had not threatened us, our case would not have become an international affair.'' He noted that after the president's words, ''the media from across Europe - from Italy to Poland - covered the case. Without international solidarity, we would not be here.'' The editor said that he had been barred from leaving the country ahead of the trial, scheduled for March 25 behind closed doors. (ANSAmed).




ROME - Most of the Libyan population supports the national unity government, UN envoy Martin Kobler said on Wednesday. He added that ''we have not yet managed to convince those against the agreement'' but Libya cannot ''be held hostage by minorities in the Tobruk parliament and the Tripoli Congress''. The humanitarian situation in the country ''was worsening further'', he noted, and the country does not yet have effective state institutions. Kobler stressed that the political void in Libya was fostering the Islamic State (ISIS), which is expanding ''to the west, east and south''. In Sirte, ISIS ''has continued with its atrocities'', and the group is a growing threat to the country and the region.

On the issue of efforts to bring in the new unity government, he said that ''if the Tobruk parliament does not approve it in a confidence vote by the end of the next week, which it is expected to do, I will once again call the Libyan Political Agreement(LPA) delegations.'' The diplomat added that he intended to involve tribal leaders and city mayors in the reconstruction of the country. Libya media say that a group of Tobruk parliament MPs had arrived in Tripoli for political talks aiming to relaunch dialogue between the parties involved. French engagement in the country seems to increasing as well.



The satirical French weekly Canard Enchaine reported on Wednesday that ''as is the case with ground troops and air force, the navy is also taking part in 'targeted' operations conducted by France in Libya''. ''A few weeks ago,'' the weekly continued, ''the frigate Surcouf transported special forces troops and let them off at sea a kilometer from the Libyan coast.'' The aim is to support the Libyan army under General Khalifa Haftar against ISIS. Last week, Le Monde reported on ''Paris's secret war in Libya'', while Libyan military sources said that French special forces had been deployed in Benghazi. .
Migrants: intelligence, risk infiltration terrorists Balkans Transit area foreign fighters and consolidated extremism

(ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 2 - There is no reported risk of terror infiltration in the migration inflow from North Africa while the risk "is more concrete" along the Balkan route, according to the annual report for Parliament released by the intelligence services. The report noted that the Balkan region is a privileged area of transit for foreign fighters (over 900 have reportedly travelled to conflict zones through there), as well as areas of ''consolidated extremist realities''.



"The great number of people moving towards the community area - observed the report - along with representing a humanitarian, health and public order emergency, can pose a threat on a security level". And intelligence activities have focused on the potential contamination between illegal immigration and terrorism, also in the light of the fact that "Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan, Sub-Saharan and Corn of Africa crisis contexts have in part been infiltrated by Islamist terrorist manifestations that can poison immigration channels and radicalize elements then set to emigrate to European countries".



Also worthy of consideration, according to the intelligence report, is the fact that "having lived in conflict areas, at times actively taking part in fighting, can give migrants a potentially critical profile, mostly due to the 'military' expertise acquired".



In Libya, from which 90% of migrants who land in Italy hail, "organizations of smugglers operate, structures that are flexible, mainly multi-ethnic, able to manage all phases of the transfer".



In Italy, ethnic criminal groups proliferate, mainly including Egyptians, Romanians and Horn of Africa nationals, specialized in forging documents and providing assistance to migrants for their transfer from holding centers to destinations in northern Europe.



Another issue that emerged in the report was the presence of networks from Brindisi transferring migrants from the coasts of the southern Balkan peninsula to Italy.



As far as the rise of Islamic radicalism in the Balkans is concerned, the intelligence services outlined risks "both for its destabilizing potential and the possibility of logistical bases in the region able to support terror plots against European countries, including ours". (ANSAmed).




THESSALONIKI - Macedonia's authorities on Wednesday reopened borders with Greece for approximately four hours, letting in some 170 refugees from Syria and Iraq. About 10,000 people remain stranded at the border between the two countries.



According to Greek police, Macedonia reopened its borders between midnight and 2 am for the first time, and then between 6 and 9 am. According to local media, some 70 migrants crossed into the country at around 2 am, while 100 others were allowed in between 6 and 9 am.



The situation remains very precarious with discontent and rage growing by the day among migrants who are stranded in increasingly dire environmental and hygienic circumstances.



Macedonia meanwhile, after clashes the day before yesterday, has significantly boosted security measures with hundreds additional police and military officers deployed at the border.



According to the associated Press, Skopje means to authorize the daily entry of the equivalent number of people Serbia means to accept on a daily basis.


(by Francesco Cerri)

MADRID - Outgoing Spanish Premier and PP leader Mariano Rajoy on Wednesday morning responded to the investiture speech yesterday by Psoe leader Pedro Sanchez, stating that 123 PP lawmakers out of 350 will vote against the Socialist candidate as premier. The first vote in Parliament on Sanchez's candidature is scheduled on Wednesday night with an absolute majority required. The second on Friday evening provides for a simple majority. After Rajoy's address, the leader of Podemos Pablo Iglesias is scheduled to talk.



After months of uncertainty, vetoes, more or less secret negotiations, Spain's new chaotic political scenario is facing a moment of truth with an attempt by Sanchez to obtain from Congress an investiture as head of government.



In a long address yesterday to Congress, which lasted one hour and 36 minutes, the Socialist leader presented the social, economic and constitutional reforms agreed in a pact forged with Ciudadanos last week, attempting to move the stance taken by Podemos.



The post-Indignado party has announced a no vote, de facto condemning his attempt to fail.



For the first time since the end of Franco's dictatorship, a candidate is running for the premiership without a majority, risking not to get elected. Sanchez now has the backing only of 130 lawmakers out of 350, 90 Psoe and 40 from the Ciudadanos of Albert Rivera. The pact created a rift between Sanchez and Podemos. In his speech, in a desperate move, Sanchez harshly attacked outgoing premier Rajoy and offered again to Podemos the formation of a government of change with Ciudadanos. The offer was rejected by the post-indignado leader Pablo Iglesias, who wants a 'left-wing' executive Psoe-Podemos, with the external backing of Basque nationalists and Iu and the abstention of Catalan separatists.



The Psoe rejects such a possibility because it would imply the backing of separatists. Yesterday, Sanchez said there is ''no left-wing majority'' in Spain to justify the new appeal to Podemos to join a 'government of change' with Ciudadanos.


AFC arranged the mandate with Emirates and the investment of DIB.

The financing for the Irish SPV lessor consists of a full-payout Islamic facility in an Ijarah Lease structure provided by DIB. The equity was issued through profit participation notes from the EMPs Irish Head Lessor to EMP itself and a German Institutional investor. Seraph Aviation Management provide lease management services to the lessor.

We are pleased to have completed our second A380 deal with AFC and Emirates within only two months. The high leverage allowed us to minimize the residual value risks associated with the A380, said Phillip Prior, EMP Partner. He continued, We look forward to working with AFC and Seraph, both highly flexible, efficient and professional counterparties, to develop more aviation investment opportunities for our investors.

Working together with the dedicated professionals at EMP and Emirates, a stellar underlying operator and credit provider, we were able to put together an asset backed investment structure that offers our debt and equity investors the right risk-return balance, said Douglas Brennan, Chief Executive Officer of Aviation Finance Company in Dublin. I look forward to more opportunities to partner with EMP as we plan to increase our activities in Germany, where institutional investors focus on long-term strategies with thoughtful and strategic risk-adjusted structures. With our global reach we will help EMPs deliver more well-structured bespoke investments.
A delegation of VIPs from Qatar, including Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, were met from the aircraft by Sydney Airport managing director and chief executive officer, Kerrie Mather; Official Secretary to the Governor of New South Wales, Colonel Michael Miller RFD; Destination NSW chairman, John Hartigan; and Tourism Australia managing director, John O'Sullivan.

The airline now operates a Boeing 777-300 daily from Doha to Sydney.

Al Baker said: Touching down here in Sydney for the first time today is an important milestone for Qatar Airways and for the people of Australia. We are delighted to be able to offer passengers flying from Sydney the opportunity to connect to more than 150 places on our global network via our state-of-the-art airport in Doha. We look forward to taking the people of Sydney to the places they want to go on our modern aircraft, and giving them a taste of the Arabian hospitality and comfort that earned us the aviation industrys most prestigious title of Skytrax Airline of the Year in 2015.

I would like to personally thank Sydney Airport and city authorities for welcoming us today and we look forward to strengthening our relationship with them and the people of Australia in the coming years as we all go places together.

NSW Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events, Stuart Ayres said: I am delighted to welcome the first Qatar Airways flight to Sydney, which will provide a valuable increase in aviation capacity from the Middle East and greater connectivity to Sydney and regional NSW, particularly for travellers flying from the United Kingdom and Europe via Doha.

Through our tourism and major events agency Destination NSW, we look forward to working with Qatar Airways and the opportunity to showcase our beautiful city, award-winning restaurants, stunning beaches and surrounding NSW regions to customers of one of the worlds fastest growing airlines.
Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet...
(This feature is part of the " Through Airmen's Eyes " series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)It was 1944 and the U.S. was in the midst of two battles -- a war on two sides of the world and the onslaught of cultural changes on the homefront.Meanwhile, a young African-American Soldier picked up trash on the white sandy beaches at Keesler Field, Mississippi. He had been briefed that although he was in the service and evidently may fight and die for his country, he could neither walk on this beach unless he was working nor could he swim here because it was for whites only.Now retired Maj. George Boyd, a 28-year combat veteran and Tuskegee Airman, will never forget the hypocrisy of that order. Boyd, now a resident of Wichita, Kansas, was part of the service during the transition from the Army Air Corps to the Air Force.Boyd served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He witnessed the roots of social equality shift within his country and his service; from the integration of the armed forces by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, to the Civil Rights movements of the 1960s.He recalled the era of segregation; from being refused service at local restaurants to witnessing police brutality in the streets outside the gates of his duty station."Most of the time you stayed in the culture that you knew because it was safe," Boyd explained. "It was easiest to operate within those limitations. You lived in a cultural fear. You were afraid of doing something that would get you harmed even though you aren't breaking the law."Boyd described some of these problems he and many other service members faced, such as not being promoted because they were African-American."They gave you a job, and you'd do the job, but instead of giving you the rating they gave everybody else, they'd give you just a (lower) rating," Boyd said. "Well you're not going to get promoted if they do that to you, especially if they have everybody else walking on water."Despite setbacks, the successes of African-Americans in service, like that exhibited by the Tuskegee Airmen, brought a positive light to the social struggles that inspired a push to utilize everyone's talents regardless of race."The greatest strength of our Airmen is their diversity," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh. "Each of them comes from a different background, a different family experience and a different social experience. Each brings a different set of skills and a unique perspective to the team."The Air Force developed programs and policies to ensure equality within the service, such as equal opportunity, with the mission of breaking down social or institutional barriers within the workplace.As the government and the military put in place specific policies to prevent discrimination, society began to adjust and social changes happened gradually throughout the years."It's a whole lot better now because I think they are realizing people's potential," Boyd said. "That's a learning process and it takes some time. Cultural change takes place at your dinner table, in your home. The things you teach your children -- that's culture, that's where the change takes place."Boyd served for nearly three decades as both an enlisted Airman and a commissioned officer fulfilling in a variety of positions, including detachment and squadron commander, combat management engineer and all-weather jet fighter radar intercept officer."I went into the service with two years of high school and came out with two Ph.D.s," said Boyd in regards to education. "The Air Force has a lot of opportunities. I think it's so important."Boyd continues to share his knowledge with the community. He is currently a colonel in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol and recently retired command of the unit in Wichita. He spent many years promoting the importance of education and contributing to the development of youth within the local community.Fast forward 60 years after he cleaned that segregated beach in Mississippi, Boyd is standing in a luxury hotel near what is now Keesler Air Force Base. He is standing at the window, his gaze set upon a familiar beach.A young man once forbidden from even walking on this stretch of land because of his skin color, can now freely stroll the sandy beach in peace. He heads down to the water and takes pictures with his wife. A smile crosses his face as he realizes how far the country has progressed."This is the best country in the world, because in no other country do changes take place like they take place here," Boyd said . "I have a view on life that says we can do better, and we are doing better. Try your best, do your best and be the best you can be -- aim high."
March is National Womens History Month and this years theme is Working to Form a More Perfect Union: Honoring Women in Public Service and Government.Womens History Month started as a national celebration in 1981, when Congress authorized the president to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982, as Womens History Week.In 1987, Congress designated the month of March 1987 as Womens History Month. Since 1995, Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have issued a series of annual proclamations designating the month of March as Womens History

Throughout the month, Air Force Reserve Command will feature Air Force Reserve women whose contributions to the military and community pay homage to this years theme.

Todays Air Force Reserve honoree is Maj. Christina Thumper Hopper, T-38 instructor pilot, 5th Flying Training Squadron, Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma.



Career highlights: Hopper graduated with honors and received her commission as the Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps Program at the University of Texas, Austin in May 1998.



In 1999, Hopper entered active duty and was selected to design and implement a new pilot screening program, ensuring the Air Force a qualified pool of candidates ready for flight training. She graduated Undergraduate Pilot Training in April 2000 and was selected to fly the F-16, becoming one of only two African-American females and 50 total female fighter pilots in the U.S. Air Force at that time.



Upon completion of F-16 training, Hopper was assigned to the 524th Fighter Squadron, Cannon AFB, New Mexico. Following the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, Hopper flew numerous combat air patrol missions in support of Operation Noble Eagle protecting the President of the United States and critical US infrastructure. In 2002-2003, she deployed to Kuwait supporting Operations Southern Watch and Iraqi Freedom.



During those operations, Hopper flew more than 50 combat missions and became the first African-American female fighter pilot to fight in a major war.



While on a combat mission during one of the worst sandstorms in recorded Iraqi history, Hoppers aircraft was struck by lightning, disabling her hostile threat warning system. Despite possible danger, her formation continued to the target and completed the mission successfully. The bombs she dropped that night impacted a road intersection where U.S. Army forces were engaged in battle with an Iraqi Republican Guard unit.



U.S. ground forces later told Hopper that when her bombs accurately hit their mark, the Iraqi Army retreated from the fight. For her service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, she was awarded the Air Medal (third oak leaf cluster), the Aerial Achievement Medal, and the Combat Action Medal.



For her historic contributions to the military and women in aviation, Good Housekeeping magazine named Hopper as one of the 2004 Outstanding Woman in Government. She was additionally recognized by Glamour magazine, Ebony magazine, and the 700 Club.



After her first assignment, Hopper served four years at Luke AFB, Arizona, as an F-16 Instructor Pilot and separated from the active duty Air Force in 2008 with almost 1,000 hours in the F-16.



Today, Hopper balances a busy schedule as a full-time mother of three, military spouse, and Air Force Reserve T-38 Instructor Pilot, where she trains, instructs and mentors the next generation of fighter and bomber pilots. In 2015, she launched Vance Supergirls, a mentorship group for female aviators. Through this group, Hopper forged lines of communication between female instructors and students to encourage the success of future female pilots.




315 AWs first Tuskegee Airmen Career Day inspires local teens

The 315th Airlift Wing held its first Tuskegee Airmen Career Day drawing over 130 local teenage boys to Joint Base Charleston, S.C. to learn about careers in aviation Feb. 24, 2016.



The event also celebrated the story of the first black pilots in the American military  the Tuskegee Airmen.



What were trying to show the young people today is that this is what the Tuskegee Airmen did for us and that we are standing on the shoulders of the Tuskegee Airmen, said Lt. Col Terry Troutman, guest speaker kicking off the days events, and former 317th Airlift Squadron pilot.



The 14-17-year-old boys from 17 Lowcountry schools toured a C-17 Globemaster III and participated in a military career fair to learn about career fields they may not have known exist. The boys talked to Reserve and active duty Airmen in security forces, aeromedical evacuation , aircraft maintenance, pilots, loadmasters, aerial porters, medical specialists, combat camera, and more.



A lot of times when they see aircraft they think that they need to be pilots in order to be a part of the Air Force Reserve but they dont, said Maj. Kimberly Champagne, 315th Airlift Wing Diversity Inclusion program manager.



Our Tuskegee Airmen Career day is really about showing the diversity of jobs and interests that we have here at the Air Force base, Champagne added.



1st Lt. Jarod Barnes, 317th AS pilot, is a perfect example of the success of the 315th AWs outreach programs. Through events like this, and with the help from role-models like Troutman, Barnes was once in the same shoes as the teens participating in the days events. Its important to give back, he said. This is how I got my start  going to static tours like this and talking to individuals like myself.



Jalen Lloyd, a freshman at Berkeley High School said he appreciated the event and the people he talked to. To see what people go through every day and hearing what they do is a really good benefit, he said.



Besides talking to those who wear the Air Force uniform and learning about their jobs and experiences, the students experienced hands-on demonstrations with specialist like the 315th Security Force Squadrons Ravens, who are charged with protecting the aircraft and aircrew at locations outside the United States. The students donned flack vests, helmets and held rubber training M-9, and M-4 weapons.



At the 315th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadrons table the boys saw medical litters, some bearing mannequin patients, and others stacked with medical monitors and life-saving gear.



The 628th Security Forces Squadron had a K-9 team on hand and the bases explosive ordinance disposal team showed students the 80-pound bomb suit they wear while dealing with explosives.



Everett Smith, an 8th grader from Jerry Zucker Middle School, was one of the only students strong enough to try the suit on. When a local TV news reported asked him what was the most impressive thing he learned today he responded, That they are actually able to wear this suit and walk around in it.



Event organizers created the Tuskegee Airmen Career Day in the spirit of the Joint Base Charleston Women in Aviation Career Day which has been held annually for the past eight years for local school girls.



I want boys and girls to know that they can be part of the Air Force Reserve based on any opportunity that they want for themselves, Champagne said.



During World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen  as part of the first U.S. test group that some expected to show black men were not capable of following orders and flying aircraft in a combat setting  left no doubt as to their capability and courage. They persevered and overcame the diversity challenges of the time to prove themselves beyond capable of doing the job.



They flew over 15,500 combat sorties over the skies of North Africa, Sicily, Italy and central Europe as bomber escorts. They were the only Army Air Corps unit to never lose a bomber to enemy fighters. Their actions earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses.



Twenty years after the Tuskegee Airmen, retired Chief Master Sgt. Herman Hampton, a member of the Hiram Mann Chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen in Walterboro, S.C. said their contributions were instrumental to him and todays Air Force. Without them accomplishing what they did, Id never had been able to do what I did. Hampton was a loadmaster on a C-141 Starlifter at then Charleston Air Force Base.


Air Reserve Personnel Center officials released the names of their annual A1 awards nominees here March 2, 2016. Congratulations to the following individuals who will represent ARPC against other Air Force Reserve Command nominees by year's end.

A1 Force Support Airman of the Year, Operational Level A1 Force Support Noncommissioned Officer of the Year, Operational Level A1 Force Support Senior Noncommissioned Officer of the Year, Operational Level A1 Force Support NCO of the Year, Air Reserve Component, Operational Level A1 Force Support SNCO of the Year, ARC, Operational Level A1 Personnel Field Grade Officer of the Year, ARC, Operational Level A1 Personnel Company Grade Officer of the Year, Operational Level A1 Personnel Company Grade Officer of the Year, ARC, Operational Level A1 Civilian Manager of the Year, Operational Level A1 Civilian Specialist of the Year, Operational Level A1 Civilian Technician of the Year, Operational Level Dr. Edwin C. Peterson Education and Training Manager Award A1 Special Recognition Award 
AFRC announces Aircraft Maintenance Awards

Air Force Reserve Command has announced the 2015 Lt. Gen. Leo Marquez Awards in the Aircraft Maintenance and Munitions/Missile Maintenance categories.



Field Grade Manager: Maj. Frances J. Dixon, 439th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts.



Company Grade Manager: Capt. Monica R. Lombardo, 452nd Maintenance Squadron, March ARB, California.



Civilian Manager: Gregory L. Seabrooke, 301st AMXS, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas.



Supervisor Manager: Senior Master Sgt. Ronald L. Clark, 927th AMXS, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.



Technician Supervisor: Tech Sgt. David M. Barrett, 934th MXS, Minneapolis-Saint Paul Air Reserve Station, Minnesota.



Civilian Technician: James M. Miller, 439th AMXS, Westover ARB.



Technician: Senior Airman Erin McFadden, 477th AMXS , Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.



Recipients of the Munitions/Missile Maintenance awards are:



Civilian Manager: Eugene P. Gaspar, 301st AMS, NAS JRB Fort Worth.



Supervisor Manager: Senior Master Sgt. Leslie Brandt, 482nd AMXS, Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida.



Technician Supervisor: Tech Sgt. Jason V. Almodovar, 301st MXS, NAS JRB Fort Worth.



Civilian Technician: Alan C. Colombo, II, 301st AMXS, NAS JRB Fort Worth.



Technician: Senior Airman Timothy J. Davis, 301st AMXS, NAS JRB Fort Worth.


Best Home Improvement Products and Services

Would you like to submit an article in the Home Improvement category or any of the sub-category below? Click here to submit your article.

Would you like to have your product or service listed on this page? Contact us.
Last Sunday afternoons Vienna Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall began with a Valery Gergiev moment. Mounting the podium, he turned to the concertmaster and shrugged his shoulders to acknowledge that (as sometimes happens to Gergiev in particular) he had arrived a little late and kept the musicians waiting. He then took a deep breath and launched an unforgettable reading of the Prelude and Good Friday Spell from Wagners Parsifal.

The second half of the concert, with Tchaikovskys Manfred Symphony, was incendiary  a rare musical phenomenon that bears some scrutiny and analysis.

Wilhelm Furtwangler was famous or notorious for his indistinct baton gestures. He did not wish to over-instruct his players. He invited an initiative that was partly theirs.

With his ever fluttering hands and arms, Gergiev insists that his performances, no matter how much or little rehearsed, not be over-prepared. The pay-off is an intense synergy unknown among conductors who impose submission to pre-calibrated rubatos, sharply drawing attention to themselves. A Furtwangler or Gergiev, by comparison, can unleash a primal musical force that is wholly impersonal. They can ignite a Dionysian intensity that can only be leaderless, can only be communal.

Viennas magnificent orchestra is different from Gergievs magnificent Mariinsky Orchestra. Its sounds are sweeter. Its synergy with Gergiev is dynamic. The fullness and depth of sonority, the regal low strings informing Sundays performances were Gergiev signatures. But there was more daylight than in the St. Petersburg sound. (I am not choosing, just comparing.)

The resulting performance of the Parsifal music doubtless displeased the precision-police. But Gergievs reading wasnt about precision. It feasted on color and texture. It also majestically sustained a musical line stretching to infinity.

The Manfred Symphony, after intermission, isnt much heard for a reason. A 50-minute essay in Faustian striving and redemption, it sags in places. I read in Jack Sullivans Carnegie program note that Leonard Bernstein called it trash. Certainly Tchaikovskys Manfred, estranged from humankind, at home with dark despair, requires inspired advocacy. As with Shostakovichs kindred confessional symphonies, Manfred turns banal absent maximum emotional and physical commitment. As with so much of Liszt, it needs to be made  molded, interpreted.

The Gergiev/Vienna Manfred Symphony was a performance for the ages. The first movement coda  an avalanche of grief  was titanic. Even more remarkably, the symphonys apotheosis told. I still cannot believe that this problematic note of triumph  laced with harp arpeggios, punctuated by stentorian organ chords  is an emotional state Tchaikovsky earned. But I will never hear a Manfred performance more momentarily persuasive.

The first encore was the act two Panorama from The Sleeping Beauty  so airborne, so trembling with beauty that only levitating ballerinas could have danced to it. In fact, a complete Sleeping Beauty delivered by this orchestra and conductor, in this hall, would surely surpass any possible performance by the American Ballet Theatre or New York City Ballet. Those companies do not nearly possess the musical or acoustic resources to do justice to Tchaikovsky (or Prokofiev). This is a topic

I have belabored before.

The second and final encore was the Thunder and Lightning Polka by Johann Strauss, Jr. Here Gergiev let the orchestra play by itself (with plenty of thunder). The unlikely sequence of Wagner-Tchaikovsky-Tchaikovsky-Strauss proved magically cathartic.

Musicians I know complain they cannot follow Gergievs beat. I know orchestra managers who consider him unreliable and under-prepared. I cannot imagine what priorities they pursue.
All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter.
Dharamsala (AsiaNews) - A Tibetan Buddhist monk and a 16 year old boy set themselves on fire to protest against the Chinese occupation of Tibet and ask for the return home of the Dalai Lama. The priest died while being transported to the hospital, the teenager survived but is in a terrible condition: 95% of his body is covered with burns. Meanwhile, the Nepalese government has reassured China that it "will not allow any protest" by the Tibetan diaspora during the month of March.



This time of year is especially hard for the Tibetan people, as they commemorate the many anti-Chinese uprising bloodily suppressed by the Beijing army. The first significant anniversary dates to the Maoist invasion of the province. In 1957 a rebellion broke out in eastern Tibet that spread to Lhasa in 1959. That same year, the People's Liberation Army crushed the revolt and forced the Dalai Lama to flee: March 17 the Buddhist leader left the Palace of Norbulingka disguised as a soldier and escaped to India where he formed the Tibetan government in exile.



In 1988 and 1989, again in March, hundreds of people rose up to commemorate 30 years since the Maoist repression. The insurgents were crushed by the then local Party Secretary, Hu Jintao, who later became president of the People's Republic. Among other things, via telegram, Hu was the first to compliment Deng Xiaoping for the Tiananmen Square crackdown, which occurred a few months later.



The last major uprising was in 2008. For the first time since the crackdown 20 years before, on the occasion of the Beijing Olympics, the Lhasa monasteries opened their doors to commemorate the 49th anniversary of the failed uprising against the occupation of the Beijing troops. Between 300 and 400 religious, out of two of the largest groups of study and prayer in the Tibetan capital, marched in procession demanding the release of a group of religious and lay persons arrested and the return of the Dalai Lama to his homeland. Here too, the government reacted with violence: the official number of casualties is unknown, while there were hundreds of arrests.



Both monk Kalsang Wangdu  of the Retsokha monastery - and young Dorjee Tsering decided to set themselves on fire to "do something" for the cause of Tibet. The death of the religious brings to 144 the number of victims who have self-immolated since 2009 in protest against Chinese policy in the region. For his part, the Dalai Lama has repeatedly urged his followers not to sacrifice their lives but to "find other forms of protest." However, Beijing accuses the religious leader of fomenting these acts "for his personal gain."



The Chinese government is using every means possible, including diplomacy, to avoid problems with the Tibetans. Liu Guangyuan, head of the Department for Foreign Security, visited Nepal to ask Kathmandu to clamp down on possible anti-China demonstrations. Jhabindra Aryal, a high ranking Nepalese official, reassured him: "We will work to improve cooperation and shared interests. Nepal supports of the one China policy and will not allow its soil to be used against our neighbors. "



(Christopher Sharma collaborated)
Guest Commentary

By David Keane, Chief Karen Ogen and Tom Sigurdson

With the recent TED conference wrapping up, and the GLOBE conference soon beginning there has been much talk surrounding global energy demand and Canadas role. As BC LNG Alliance members continue to move their projects forward, a vocal minority is quick to challenge British Columbias LNG aspirations. The latest is Ken Berlin, president of Al Gores Climate Reality Project. Recently, while in Vancouver, Mr. Berlin said British Columbia should abandon its plan to build a liquefied natural gas industry, calling it, a risky idea. The assertion ignores the role BC could play in the global fight against climate change.

Mr. Berlin says the dropping cost of renewables will make wind and solar competitive with conventional fuels in the near future, hence BC should drop its LNG endeavors. The US Energy Information Agency estimates presently 11% of global energy comes from renewables, and by 2040 that number will increase to 15%. Even if you believe it could reach 25%, that still means 75% of energy demand will have to be met by traditional sources like oil, gas, and nuclear. The scale and cost of changing energy infrastructure quickly is difficult because its vast and expensive. As we deal with climate change and the rising demand for energy, greater use of renewables and new technology are always welcome, but we mustnt forget traditional energy sources still have a significant role to play, and with natural gas being the cleanest source it will play a lead role in the transition.

Thanks to our vast hydro-electric system, British Columbia represents a mere 0.002% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Canada represents only about 1.6% of global GHGs. Our strong environmental laws, our globally leading carbon tax, combined with the toughest LNG emissions intensity benchmark in the world are unprecedented, guaranteeing Canada will develop an LNG industry to the highest environmental standards.

We must also remind ourselves the predominant future source of greenhouse emissions isnt BC or Canada, but Asia  home to nearly 60 percent of the worlds population and growing. Asias economies are taking tens of millions of people out of poverty and with this growth comes a huge demand for energy. The International Energy Agency estimates demand for energy could double by 2050 from its baseline just a few years ago. Already China is producing twice the GHGs of the United States, and that number is expected to rise by 7 percent per year for the foreseeable future. Breathing the air in Beijing is now equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day. If China and India increase the use of natural gas for their growing energy needs they can cut carbon dioxide emissions significantly, just like our US neighbours have done over the last few years. By replacing coal with natural gas fired power generation we can reduce emissions by as much as 65% according to a study by Pace Global.

As an American, Mr. Berlin is quick to advise British Columbians to abandon LNG. Yet in his country the exact opposite is happening. This week the United States shipped its first export cargo of seaborne LNG from the lower 48 states. The shipment, from the Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Louisiana is historic, considering the US was expected to be an importer of LNG just a decade ago. The shale gas revolution unlocked a cheap abundant supply of natural gas, and will help the U.S. transition from being a net importer of natural gas, mostly from Canada, to a net exporter by 2017. U.S. investors clearly dont view LNG as, too risky, considering four other projects have already broken ground.

BC should not abandon its LNG plans, in fact on the contrary. With its world-class natural resource base, close proximity to the large Asian market, robust environmental protection, a stable political environment, and incredibly skilled people who can build the LNG plants, British Columbia has the potential to lead the world in the fight against climate change.

David Keane is the President of the BC LNG Alliance, Karen Ogen is the Chief of the Wetsuweten First Nation and Tom Sigurdson is the executive director of the BC Building Trades.
Photo caption: Alden Habacon, a father of two, says that after watching a documentary that made a correlation between spanking and prison incarceration, he was convinced not to spank his two sons./ Photo Credit: Ibai via Flickr CC

By Florence Hwan

Special to The Post

Immigrants not only have to learn a new language when they arrive in Canada, but also adopt the values of Canadian society. This can often impact their parenting methods.

This is part of how we should be settling new immigrants into our community, says social worker Gary Direnfeld, who has 33 years of experience and works out of Dundas, Ontario. Im of the view that there should be a structured approach to that. More often its kind of a haphazard approach. They have to pick [parenting methods] up almost by osmosis and trial and error.

With the Liberal government contemplating revoking Section 43, the corporal punishment section of Canadas Criminal Code, otherwise referred to as the spanking law, some immigrants to Canada may be forced to rethink their parenting methods.

Separating discipline from anger

Alden Habacon is the founder of Schema Magazine, an online magazine described as a blend of pop culture and identity for the interculturally-minded. He was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in western Canada.

He refers to an International Parenting study that examined criminality trends of over 11,000 university students in 15 different countries, showing that spanking was associated with higher rates of criminal behaviour.

He says that after watching a documentary that made a correlation between spanking and prison incarceration, he was convinced not to spank his two sons.

The documentary found that spanking actually leads to more violent behaviour as an adult, he explains. That all incarcerated men were spanked. True? I don't know. But it won me over.

He has told immigrant parents that it is hard to separate discipline from anger when using spanking.

Spanking does not necessarily teach children about the consequences of their actions, he says. What it does demonstrate to them is physical violence [causing pain] is acceptable in some circumstances.

While Habacon says there might be a "right way" and wrong way to spank children, he wonders if it is worth the risk.

Are you disciplining or just acting out in anger towards someone who has no defence? Hard to know when you are overwhelmed with emotion, he points out.

The choice not to spank

Clara Chung Der, who was born in Malaysia, remembers being spanked until she was about 11 years old. She vividly recalls having to either stick out her hand for lighter punishment or pull down her pants and lie over the edge of the bed, face down, for more severe ones.

I remember feelings of fear and anger towards my mom and because she is not one to work through emotions, says Chung Der, who now has four children and lives with her family in Regina, Saskatchewan. It took me a long time to resolve the resentment, which is one of the main reasons I do not spank my kids.

Chung Der once tried spanking her eldest daughter when she was a toddler.

I was angry and frustrated with her actions and did not know how else to communicate for her to stop, so I slapped her arm, which took her by surprise and she ended up laughing, which woke me up to my actions, she says. We decided then, we did not want to resort to a 'violent' act to communicate with our kids.

Now, she and her husband parent based on being relational with their children.

Using strategies that dont shame

Direnfeld agrees that spanking can run the risk of children becoming resentful for being shamed or being hurt by their parents.

He notes that while spanking seems to correct the childs behaviour, they may act out in different ways.

So instead of being openly defiant, maybe now I steal from your purse. So superficially the parent thinks Ive dealt with it, he says.

He adds that corporal punishment can create a new set of behaviours for parents to correct.

Now this child goes to school and somebody offends the child, and the child believes, If my parents can hit me, then certainly I can hit another child, says Direnfeld. So were inadvertently role-modelling behaviour that clearly, if acted upon by the child, is going to be deemed inappropriate.

He recommends using other strategies that dont shame, demean or hurt the child, but continue to hold the child accountable.

Strategies could be loss of privilege, time-out, restitution, returning something or doing something on behalf of the party that was hurt, apologizing, talking with the person who may have been hurt or offended so that the offender better appreciates the impact of their actions on others and can develop empathy  you dont get any of that from a smack on the rear end, he says.

When parents spank their children, they lose opportunities to teach children lessons and learn about the impact of their behaviour on others.

Its what the child internalizes in what we call a conscience that facilitates the best behaviour, Direnfeld adds.

This is the third and final part of our series on spanking and what it means for new Canadian parents.

This piece was originally published in newcanadianmedia.com. See http://www.newcanadianmedia.ca/item/33396-spanking-immigrant-parents-weigh-in
Google Searches For 'How To Move To Canada' Spike After Trump Super Tuesday Wins

Trending News: After Trump's Big Night, People Google How To Move to Canada

Why Is This Important?

Because it's certainly one way to escape an undesirable leader.

Long Story Short

Following Donald Trump's commanding performance on Super Tuesday, Google searches for "how to move to Canada" jumped about 1,500%. The traffic was enough that the Canadian immigration website nearly buckled under the load.

Long Story

Yesterday was the first multi-state primary (aka Super Tuesday), and it's considered the earnest starting point for presidential primary elections. On the Republican side, Donald Trump had himself a hell of a night, cementing his frontrunner status and only dropping a couple of key states to the eminently punchable (but potentially dangerous!) Ted Cruz. If you're a Trump fan, you're obviously elated. But if you're not, chances are you're terrified  possibly terrified enough to seek asylum with our neighbors to the north in Canada.

"How to move to Canada" isn't a terribly popular Google search term, or at least it wasn't until last night. Looking at the last week, it barely registers at all until about 8:00 EST last night, about an hour after polls closed in many states. After that, if spikes fast:

As of now, media coverage of the potential exodus has made the term more popular, and it's only up about 300%. But when the hysteria peaked last night/early this morning, it was up an astounding 1,500%:

Where are most of the searches coming from? Lots are coming from the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, presumably due to their proximity to the northern border. But plenty come from Virginia and Tennessee, too. I know that in my small Virginia enclave, polling stations experienced a shortage of Republican ballots (our primary is an open one), and online chatter confirmed that it was largely due to Democrats crossing the aisle to vote for someone, anyone other than Trump (it didn't work):

Mashable also reports that at around midnight, a visit to Canada's website for immigration and tourism came with a warning that things might be moving a little slower than usual. It's not confirmed that the two phenomena are related, but it's not a bad guess.

Trump is now the clear leader for the Republican nomination. There's still a lot of voting and a lot of delegates up for grabs, but the latest polls don't show him slowing down anytime soon. While most people would likely be... fine under a one-term Trump presidency, I don't begrudge anyone mulling over whether living somewhere with an extra month or two of winter isn't preferable to Trump painting the White House a (tasteful) golden hue.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

How many people would actually pull the trigger if Trump wins?

Disrupt Your Feed

I don't want Trump as President any more than the next person, but we need to vote with our, uh, votes, not emigration.

Drop This Fact

Canada can handle us! They recently met their goal of resettling all 25,000 of the Syrian refugees they accepted.
Digital divorces will be implemented in the UK as early as next year, giving couples the ability to split without either party needing to head to the courtroom.



When it has been done, we will at last have escaped from a court system  moored in the world of the late Mr Charles Dickens, president of the High Courts family division Sir James Munby told The Daily Mail.



Munby said that reforming the system would improve lives and save money in a speech to the Family Law Bar Association.



We still have a long way to go to the entirely digitised and paperless court  though this is, must be, a vision not of some distant future but of what has to be, and I believe can be, achieved over the next four years, Munby said.



Uncontested divorces make up the majority of divorces in England and Wales and under the current legislation, neither the husband nor wife needs to attend court, a divorce is instead pushed through by legal officials at a regional court centre.



Under the new system, a couple who have agreed to divorce will be able to answer an online questionnaire, answering questions about their marital history, wealth and income as well as arrangements made for their children without even a district judge attending court to supervise.



But the new arrangement has family campaigners arguing that an online divorce system would devalue marriage by making divorce too easy.



Marriage is a serious business  Divorce requires time, thought and deliberate intent, not speed, efficiency and the throwaway ease of an online form. It would be wrong to relegate divorce to little more than a tweet. It should be done as it begins, in person, said The Marriage Foundations Harry Benson.



The Daily Mail reported that Ministry of Justice official had declined to comment, saying the reforms were still in an early stage.
The full Federal Court has ordered the Fair Work Commission to reconsider announced an unfair dismissal appeal by a sacked Qantas pilot who groped his female colleague in a taxi after an alcohol and drug-fuelled stopover.



The long-serving pilot Steven Gregory, who tested positive to alcohol and cannabis, was dismissed by Qantas for serious misconduct after touching his colleagues breast during a weekend stopover in Santiago in 2014.



Commissioner Cambridge found Qantas had acted fairly when deciding to dismiss Gregory and a Full Bench of the FWC denied Gregory permission to appeal, saying that the Commissioner had properly considered whether his termination was harsh or unreasonable and there had been no lack of procedural fairness.



But a ruling by the full Federal Court has granted Gregory another chance to press for an appeal against his dismissal in the Fair Work Commission.



The full Federal Court said Qantas's decision to terminate Mr Gregory's employment was based on the inappropriate touching of a female co-pilot rather than the elevated levels of cannabinoids.



However, Gregory says he didnt knowingly ingest the cannabis and claimed his drink was spiked, leading to his unusual behaviour. He claimed no memory of the event and apologised to his female colleague.



The FWC had rejected Gregory's claim that his drink was spiked with cannabis as "plainly implausible" and backed the airline's decision to fire him.



Patricia Ryan from The Workplace lawyers says employers can avoid these situations by ensuring employees are aware of what conduct is expected of them.



She says that while Qantas did not appear to lack procedural fairness when approaching Gregorys termination, the airline giant could have built a stronger dismissal case if incorporating the drug test results along with the inappropriate sexual touching.



The reason given was the sexual misconduct and not because cannabis was found in a drug test, Ryan says, adding that it is reasonable for employers to take a strong stand against sexual misconduct.



However, the grounds for dismissal may have been stronger if Qantas relied on both,



When using drug tests as evidence for disciplinary action or dismissal, HR should ensure workplace policies are followed, have reasonable cause to conduct the tests and give the employee an opportunity to respond to any findings.



HR should carefully consider the appropriate outcome based on the findings, Ryan says.



She says employers can look at alternatives such as demotion or warnings before deciding to terminate employees.



In order to succeed in his unfair dismissal case, Gregory would need to show that his dismissal was unfair in that Qantas did not take into account that his drink may have been spiked (but no evidence of this) and that this led to his conduct, Ryan says.



He would also need to show that whatever the reason for the conduct, the dismissal was harsh based on his long and good service and the consequences for him.



It is possible that FWC may find it was harsh but equally that a similar conclusion to that of Commissioner Cambridge may be reached, Ryan says.



This case could go either way.
Reforms to Australias media laws will be introduced in Federal Parliament today.



The changes mean that a rule preventing television networks from broadcasting to more than 75 per cent of the population will be abolished and that rules preventing the ownership by one company of a television station, radio station and newspaper in the same market would go.



The proposed changes may trigger a series of mergers between regionals and metro television networks.



Southern Cross Austereos chief executive Grand Blackley told the ABC this morning that the new media ownership laws will enhance and protect content across regional Australia.



The repeal of the reach rule and the two out of three rule I think will secure the services of local content being delivered into regional Australia and furthermore protect and enhance that content, he told the ABCs AM program.



It allows the regional networks to actually be more efficient and get some economies of scale as we move forth, which should secure us both financially and physically, allowing us to invest more in content for regional viewers.



Blackley said that digital streaming from the big networks, as well as disruption from other digital players has seen regional advertising revenues decline by around 6 per cent in a 12 month period.



Reports today have indicated that a change in the laws may spark a wave of mergers of regional networks with their metro counterparts.

At this point in time we have no visibility as to what the Seven, Nine or Ten networks' intentions are, Blackley said.



But, you know, we will be openly looking to see how we can improve services for regional viewers.


More students from around the world than ever before are choosing to study in Australia with numbers up 10% in 2015 compared to the previous year.The latest official figures show that almost half a million international students from nearly two hundred countries attended higher education courses last year.Richard Colbeck, Minister for International Education said that it demonstrates Australia's strong global competitiveness in education and strong ranking in the global student community.More Chinese students in particular are choosing to study in Australia with a rise of 13.3% in 2015 to 136,097 students. The figure shows that China contributed 27.3% of all international students in Australia, the highest of any nationality, while India was second with 10.8%.Other nationalities with high numbers of students include Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Brazil, Thailand, Nepal, Indonesia and Hong Kong, together contributing 66.2% of total international student numbers."These figures prove that international education is one of the five super growth sectors, it's one of our top services exports and it's supporting our economy. International education delivered nearly $20 billion to the Australian economy in 2015, confirming the importance of the sector to Australia's growing knowledge economy," said Colbeck."Australia offers high quality education services, teaching, learning and research, and we have world leading tuition protection arrangements, which is why 498,155 international students chose to enrol across all Australian education sectors in 2015," he added.Colbeck pointed out that Government reforms have cut regulatory costs for institutions by $48.2 million a year, allowing Australian universities, vocational education and training providers, English language providers and schools to focus on their core business of providing high quality education to students."The Government is continually working to improve the competitiveness of the sector by streamlining the administrative burden for education institutions while maintaining strong protections for students," Colbeck explained."I look forward to releasing Australia's first national strategy for international education later this year to facilitate further growth. The strategy will set a 10 year vision to strengthen collaboration between all stakeholders in the sector," he added.
Howdy!



Arrived in Melbourne a couple weeks ago to be with my partner and beginning the online partner migration visa process. Met my Aussie partner in Nov. 2012 and it's been a wild ride (a good one) since then. He proposed Dec 2014 and i'm one happy guy. I love Australia and I hope I get to meet and make lots of new friends here in Melbourne and across the country.



I've been reading through the forums and it has helped tremendously! I do have some questions and will ask them in the appropriate threads.



Thanks for any help you can provide!



Ray
Tatas all-new hatchback makes its international debut at Geneva; India launch soon.

Tata Motors has showcased the new Tiago hatchback at the ongoing Geneva motor show 2016. The new Tiago will see a market launch in India soon. The carmaker has displayed a slightly customised version of the hatchback at Geneva, which was earlier showcased at the 2016 Auto Expo in Delhi.

Earlier known as the Zica, the new hatchback had to be renamed owing to the unfortunate coincidence whereby its name sounded the same as a deadly virus that has recently affected millions in South America. The name Tiago was selected following an online contest where the public could submit their choice of name for the hatchback. The contest resulted in narrowing down on to three names  Civet, Adore and Tiago, of which, the Tiago name has been finally given the green light.

Highlights of the upcoming Tata include a pair of all-new three-cylinder engines  petrol and diesel, a bold new design and a strong suit of features.

The Tiago will slot in between the Bolt and Nano, effectively replacing the Indica eV2 in our market, in a segment dominated by Maruti and Hyundai with the Celerio and i10, respectively. The Tiago will also spawn a yet-unnamed compact sedan derivative which is currently known as the Kite 5 and is slated to arrive in our showrooms later this year.
A patriotic lot, arent we? Look no further than the INS Vikrant-inspired V15. Heres how the Bajaj cruiser behaves on the street.

Its been only a few months since Bajaj brought in the latest generation of Avengers in late 2015, introducing a new 150 to fill an empty market vacuum. The 150cc Avenger cruisers have since been flying off the shelf, making this the right time to bring on the V15, another 150cc, with more muscle and the added appeal of including a small percentage of steel from Indias famous warship, INS Vikrant, within its fuel-tank.

Marketing masterstroke!

The INS Vikrant angle is a marketing coup that shall undoubtedly see the Bajaj V15 warm to the massive armed forces audience, serving and retired, also drawing interest from those of us who respect our men in uniform. Thats not what we are here for although; with our test aimed solely at uncovering the un-gilded truth of how the V15 performs on urban Indian roads.

In terms of styling, we are a tad disappointed with the V15, which lacks the classic cruiser charm of the Avengers, and from the front, looks like an awkward blend of the fascia of a Discover, and some Moto Guzzi design elements, as seen from the tank region backwards. However, the rear has all the smartness and neat proportions we hoped for. A neat touch is the V15's contrast-colour grab bars. Overall quality is visibly up on the well put together V15, the bike showing off a smart pearl white shade, and neat decals and logos.

To sit on, the V15 feels like a Bajaj, with decent palm grips, a smart set of mirrors, nice control levers and smooth-functioning switches. The V15 instruments are legible, and easy on the eye, with a clever feature being the fuel-gauge doing a chameleon, to change from green to red as fuel level dips into reserve zone.

The V15 rides on a set of black wheels, the front a much larger 18-inch unit, compared to the 16-inch rear rim, and this gives the bike its unique stance. The seat comes with neat sutures in contrasting colour. Theres a removable cowl for the rear seat, which comes as a paid option, at an extra Rs 1000 and is easily removed using the key as your tool.

To V, or not to V

Most Bajaj bikes top their segment in terms of power output, which is where the V15 differs. Its all about rider friendliness and useable torque on this one, the V15 deploying a button-started, four-stroke and air-cooled, 149.5cc engine. The DTS-i, twin-spark plug fired motor is air-cooled and carburettor-fed, making 11.8bhp at 7,500rpm, considerably lower than its Bajaj segment rivals. The V15s claim to fame is 1.3kgm of torque that it puts down at just 5,500rpm.

True to its intent, the twin-valve V15 feels torque rich, an effortless motorcycle to pilot in slow speed traffic, with only a light twist-of-the-wrist enough to have you trot off from rest. Theres a wide powerband and flat torque curve, both evident on the V15 soon after revs rise past idle. Clutch feel is light, with just the right weight. The five-speed V15 gearbox shifts smoothly, whether working your way up or down through this transmission.

We didn't like the V's gearshift pattern, all-up and not the more universal 1-down, rest-up pattern.



Expect about 50kpl, real world fuel efficiency.

Performance matches the V15s cruiser character, with extra dozes of torque responding with eagerness at low- to mid-engine speeds, although you could find the V15 runs out of steam the moment you try and hustle it along, riding it like the sportsbike it isnt, and doesnt pretend to be.

As on all new-gen Bajaj bikes, the V15 comes with smooth powerplant, a good exhaust note, no vibes intruding on riding pleasure when riding sensibly, and respectable performance to tackle with and ace in the stop and go of urban India.
After all, given McLaren's approach to the market, it was only natural for Woking to adapt instantly to the industry's green propulsion trends.The go-fast machine builder has just released a six-year business plan called "Track22" (yep, the designation points to 2022) and the news is... electric.First and foremost, McLaren is considering an all-electric machine that could become its next Ultimate Series model, which means we'd be talking about a McLaren P1 replacement.While the Brits' greatest rival hasn't exactly rushed to overload the electricity grid in Maranello so far, Porsche's announcement regarding the production version of the Mission E falls perfectly in line with McLaren's strategy.We shouldn't rush to conclusions, though, as Woking still hasn't passed the early development stages for this project. "Our engineers have even started work on a one-off prototype to evaluate the possible benefits of a fully-electric powertrain in an Ultimate Series car," McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt explained.Then there's the hybrid part of the equation. While the P1 and P1 GTR were both rolling tech showcase elements, given their extremely limited production numbers, McLaren aims for at least 50 percent of its offerings to rely on gas-electric propulsion by 2022.The company is aiming to introduce both its Super Series (think 650S and 675LT successors) and its Sport Series (this slot is currently occupied by the 570 and its relatives) to hybridization.Big things are happening over in Woking at the moment, with the automaker planning 15 all-new models or derivatives for the six-year period."Our next hybrid vehicle will launch towards the latter part of our six-year plan," Flewitt said.The same period mentioned by the CEO will also see the carmaker replacing the twin-turbo 3.8-liter currently animating all its vehicles with a new engine architecture.While McLaren may be on a CO2 reduction frenzy, aiming to be one of the pioneers of the green high-velocity market, you might be wondering what the cost of such ambitions is. The Brits have been considerate enough to share their investment plans with us, announcing a cash injection of one billion pounds ($1.4 billion at the current exchange rates) in the said timeframe.It will be interesting to see McLaren achieving all those goals with the kind of money Mercedes-Benz invested in the W212 E-Class facelift (the Germans paid around $1.3 billion for the task that brought the heavily revamped E to the market back in 2013.Then again, given the young (regarding road cars) automaker's obsession for efficiency, we're not here to doubt its plans.
The stylish concept vehicle was shown at the Palexpo Hall in Geneva as a World Premiere and previews the German companys future models. Naturally, the design will be shared with its British sister brand, Vauxhall.The GT Concept marks Opels homage to the Experimental GT, the retro precursor of this car. Opels GT concept has a front-mid turbocharged engine and a rear-wheel-drive configuration with a sequential gearbox.Not just the exterior of this vehicle will be an inspiration to future Opel cars, as the interior features preview how the cockpits of upcoming models from the German brand will look.Naturally, the self-learning human machine interface that recognizes the driver and adjusts to the preset preferences will not come to market very soon. However, button-less operation through touchpad and voice controls could come to the Opel cars of the next decade.The idea behind the latest Opel concept belongs to Mark Adams, the man who penned the look of this vehicle. The British designer followed the philosophy he calls Sculptural Artistry meets Technical Precision. The name of the concept evokes the 1964 GT Concept, drawn in the Vauxhall Design&Engineering Centre in Luton. The facility was opened in 1964 as well.Opel views the GT Concept as an evolution from the 2013 Monza concept . The latter inspired the look of recent models from the German carmakers range so that we could see some features from the GT on Opel cars launched in the coming years. Most likely, cars that Opel will launch two or three years from now will carry inspiration in this concept.Opel has no public plans to make a coupe with a front-mid engine, so there are slim chances well see something like the GT Concept for sale in an Opel showroom too soon. After all, the German branch of General Motors is recovering from difficult financial times, so they cannot afford to build cars that would sell in unprofitable volumes.
LSD

HP

How can you be less than thrilled when the Racing (that's what the R stands for) one-ups the GT3 RS in terms of power-to-weight ratio and comes with one of the sweetest optional features Zuffenhausen's infinite list has ever seen, namely a single-mass flywheel?If your left foot can cope with the heavier clutch that accompanies the tech goodie, feel free to tick that box. Time to switch to the standard equipment, though, namely a "shelf" placed where the navigation (PCM Display) used to be.Fret not, cozy purists, you can undo the navigation system and AC delete can be undone when configuring the car. Speaking of which, this is one of the easiest 911s to "build yourself." And we're sure you'll appreciate the pull straps once again being used as door openers.Given the track-savvy nature of the machine, many features are what we'd called fixed. For instance, the stopping department is covered by the standard ceramics, while the rear axle gets a mechanical locking diff (we'd say it's for the linear response).That's it - you can't have the open diff (God forbid), and you can't have the electronically-controlledconnected to the brake-induced torque vectoring function.And it all makes sense, just like in the case of the transmission department, where the quicker 7-speed PDK has been replaced by the six-speed manual. You see, with technology evolving so much these days, purists no longer equal racers all the time, and while the GT3 RS is focused on the latter, the 911 R caters to the transportation needs of the first.Speaking of the comparo between the two, we have to give the 911 R a few accolades:Tipping the scales at 3.020 lbs (1,370 kg), this is the lightest 991 generation 911 to date, undercutting the also-500 PS (493) GT3 RS by 110 lbs (50 kg).Given the kind of sensations it will deliver (it packs features such as specifically tuned rear-axle steering), the R will also be the most thoroughbred Porsche you can currently buy in a showroom.With only 991 cars to be built, this is the most exclusive rear-engined coupe money can buy today.Which brings us to our final point - we are dealing with the most expensive member of the 911 Coupe range. For now, we only have the German pricing, with the 911 R kicking off at 189,544, which means it sits about 8,000 above the GT3 RS. Only the Turbo S Cabriolet is more expensive.Oh, we almost forgot about efficiency. No, not the kind of efficiency Porsche is forced to display in YouTube videos that show its machines going drifting or racing on the track.Factoring in the details mentioned above, we feel Porsche has done an awesome profit job with the 911 R. Taking a Carrera body, active rear wing included, adding GT3 front and rear fascias, a GT3 RS engine and introducing a host of motorsport solutions, such as the composite rear and side windows, is more than worth it.Do keep in mind that we are also considering the marketing effect of the pure 911. We need to look no further than our own back yard to notice the GT3 RS has generated more articles than many other Porsche models combined, and we're talking about a car that's only being produced in 2,000 units per year.With the 493 hp arriving at 8,250 rpm and the 339 lb-ft (460 Nm) of twist being delivered at 6,250 rpm, we can't wait to hear this flat-six machine screaming in the real world.This is the kind of car that doesn't even need to come close to its 3.8s zero to sixty-two sprint or its 201 mph (323 km/h) top speed to impress. Production kicks off in May, so those of us who can't get one are in for a cruel summer, especially since all 991 units have been allegedly sold before the model's unveiling.
Photo courtesy of Motive Power Systems.

Morgan Olson will begin offering its Route Star walk-in van as a battery-electric vehicle propelled by a Motiv Power System powertrain, Motiv has announced.

The all-electric Route Star, which is built on a Ford F-59 stripped chassis, features 20% gradeability, 85 miles of range, and a 50% battery charge in 2.5 hours, according to the companies.

Motiv Power System, recently delivered the first all-electric walk-in van to linen delivery fleet AmeriPride Services Vernon, Calif., facility.

Delivery trucks are central to America's economic health and by powering them with a Motiv all-electric powertrain, fleets gain some stability in their operating budgets, independence from fossil fuels and reduction of diesel particulate pollution in the communities they serve, said Jim Castelaz, CEO of Motiv Power Systems.

Motiv also has upfit packages available for the Ford E-450 and Crane Carrier Class 8 chassis.
A young English couple will start their lives together faced with the prospect of thousands of dollars in fines after the groom and five of his stag buddies were kicked off a Ryanair flight Friday. The six Englishmen, all aged 25-28, went to Berlin instead of their bachelor party destination of Bratislava. Apparently the other six members of their group had had enough of their boorish behavior, too, and carried on to Slovakia without them. The flight originated in London and the young men from Southampton face fines up to 25,000 euros and civil claims from the airline for the cost of the diversion. Meanwhile, an American man awaits his fate after being found guilty of being a one-man party diversion on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Denver in 2015. It could be a lot worse than the tongue-lashing and second mortgage that awaits the British bridegroom.

Late last week, the Department of Justice issued a news release describing the antics of Joseph Wayne Lynch, who was convicted in a three-day jury trial of interference with a flight crew. He could go to prison for 20 years and be fined $250,000. He missed his connection to Denver and apparently spent the unplanned layover in an airport bar. The airline tried to make amends by putting him in first class for the later flight but flight attendants also noticed he was drunk and decided to turn off the free drinks. He didnt like it much and the situation started to fall apart. Apparently it got so bad with Lynch that flight attendants armed themselves with a pot of coffee and an ice hammer to discourage him from escalating his behavior, which included kissing one of them on the neck and turning the air blue with profane epithets. But Lynch wasnt finished when the plane landed. He also unloaded on the police and FBI officers who turned up to take him away. Sentencing is set for May 16 and Lynch is out on bond.
image: NBC News

An object that could be a piece of a Boeing 777 has been found on a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel, between Africa and Madagascar, and is being examined by investigators searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, sources told NBC News today. The object has the words NO STEP on it and could be from the planes horizontal stabilizer  the wing-like parts attached to the tail, sources say, according to NBC News.

The object was discovered by an American who has been blogging about the search for MH370, which disappeared nearly two years ago. The find has not yet been confirmed or verified by authorities, but investigators have seen photographs of the latest object and sources told NBC there is a good chance it comes from a Boeing 777.
Representatives of the Armenian opposition have accused the government of ignoring their opinions in drafting key legislation ahead of next years parliamentary elections that will be held in conditions of the amended Constitution.

The text of the draft electoral law appeared on the governments website on Wednesday amid protests from opposition members that they were not part of the drafting process.

Despite calls from Western governments and international organizations for an inclusive process and pledges by members of the Armenian government to ensure a broad-based effort, the changes in the law were drafted without the participation of representatives of the opposition or members of the civil society.

The main demands of Armenias leading opposition parties also appear to have been disregarded in the published draft. The Armenian National Congress (HAK), Heritage and other opposition parties in and outside the parliament demand that lists of voters who take part in the polls be published after elections and other anti-fraud safeguards like electoral ink be applied. Meanwhile, the draft electoral code does not address these concerns.

The document that was submitted to the Venice Commission, a Council of Europe body of experts advising governments on legal reforms, only suggests drawing up overall voter lists also in an electronic format.

Armenian officials argue that post-election publication of the names of voters who go to the polls violates the principle of secret ballot. Opposition leaders dismiss this reasoning, insisting that the measure will practically preclude multiple voting by government loyalists, one of the most frequent forms of electoral fraud in the country.

The government-drafted legislation also suggests registering and identifying eligible voters through an electronic system to preclude attempts of multiple voting. It also suggests establishing 13 electoral districts instead of the current 41, with four of them located in capital Yerevan where about one third of the countrys population lives.

The next National Assembly will have at least 101 members. Each political party or bloc participating in legislative elections shall submit two lists of candidates  one for the nationwide elections and one for elections in districts. If as a result of the vote no political party or bloc can win 53 seats in the parliament, the forces are enabled to have consultations to form coalitions in order to secure a stable majority in the legislature. This coalition will also need to have a consensual decision on the next prime minister. Otherwise, a second round of voting will be held, with the top two political parties or blocs having a runoff.

The draft electoral code also suggests a number of changes concerning the voting procedure. In particular, no more than eight local observers and media representatives will be allowed to be present at a polling station at a time. The new draft does not envisage the right of diplomatic and consular missions accredited to Armenia to conduct an observation mission, something that the current electoral code does. While under the current laws observers and proxies can be removed from a polling precinct only by means of detention or arrest, then in the draft code it is proposed that the commission head can also make such a decision if he or she finds that an observer or a proxy violates the requirements of the electoral code.

Talking to RFE/RLs Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am) late on Wednesday, Levon Zurabian, the HAKs parliamentary leader, lamented the manner in which the government drafted and published the new electoral code. He noted that its text first appeared on the Venice Commissions website in English, and only days after that the government revealed the Armenian version.

No one would understand why we should learn about this draft electoral code from the Venice Commission and do so in English. Only after this controversy was raised the government had to make public this draft document and this time already in Armenian, said Zurabian.

The senior HAK representative accused the Armenian authorities of continuing their fraudulent behavior. Why did they not negotiate with us on this draft before sending it to experts? They could have organized negotiations on conceptual issues with the opposition, civil society to show that the government is doing what is needed for the society.

Zurabian claimed that the reason why the government drafted the electoral code on the sly was that it did not want to meet the demands of the opposition and civil society.

They wanted to get an approval from the Venice Commission first and then to all our proposals reply that the Venice Commission has already approved the draft and that our proposals did not fit the framework of the approved draft, Zurabian claimed.

As for their proposals, the HAK member insisted that they will continue to push for their inclusion in the final text of the draft.

Meanwhile, a government spokeswoman said earlier on Wednesday that the posted version of the draft was different from the one submitted to the Venice Commission and reflected the proposals submitted by different stakeholders.

Before being submitted to the parliament dominated by President Serzh Sarkisians loyalists, the draft electoral code will also need to be endorsed by the government.
2 March 2016 11:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Armenia abuses the principle of the right for self-determination in order to cover up the results of occupation of Azerbaijani territories and the ethnic cleansing committed there.

Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hikmet Hajiyev made the remark while commenting on the Armenian foreign ministers speech at the UN Human Rights Council meeting.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian presented the occupation, aggression, terror and bloody ethnic cleansing against the other state as self-determination and talked about higher values.

It is nothing but disrespect to the UN institutions and the international community, Hajiyev said.

Addressing the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council on the days of the anniversary of Khojaly genocide and political terror in Yerevan (March 1, 2008), Nalbandian talked about the prevention of genocide, protection of human rights and peoples right for self-determination, without a sense of guilt and shame, Hajiyev said.

The bloody war, which flared up in the late 1980s as a result of Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor, left 700,000 civilians of Nagorno-Karabakh, the regions adjoining it, as well as regions bordering Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh without homes.

Moreover, 250,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and became refugees due to Armenia's ethnic cleansing policy after the eruption of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Azerbaijanis who had been displaced from their homes as result of the brutal war were forced to live in refugee camps and tents under very difficult conditions.

The spokesperson noted that Nalbandians remarks were full of lies and distortions. I would like to refresh the memory of Armenias foreign minister. Helsinki Final Act, 1975, reads that all principles are interrelated to each other and reflects the importance of applying them on an equal and overall basis, Hajiyev underlined.

The document also reads that states should refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of each other. Helsinki Final Act also confirms the principles of inviolability of borders and territorial integrity of states and inadmissibility of occupation of territories, he added.

Hajiyev stressed that peoples right for self-determination shouldnt be interpreted as the right to act against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of other states.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by the U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijan and India have signed a protocol to exchange decrees ratifying the agreement on legal and judicial assistance in civil and commercial matters.

The protocol was undersigned by Azerbaijani deputy foreign minister Khalaf Khalafov and Indian ambassador Sanjay Rana.

Adressing the signing ceremony, Khalafov hailed the cooperation between the two countries in political, economic, cultural and humanitarian fields.

He voiced his confidence that a meeting of the intergovernmental commission to be held this April would contribute to the development of the bilateral relations.

Khalafov further hailed the establishment of the India-Azerbaijan interparliamentary friendship group. He praised energy cooperation, adding that the implementation of the North-South transport corridor would contribute to the development of economic and trade relations between the two countries.

Ambassador Rana, in turn, emphasized the significance of strengthening the legal framework for further development of the bilateral relations.

The ambassador voiced India`s support for the North-South transport corridor project.

The North-South corridor, from India to Helsinki, is one of the most important routes for the region. It is a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port. It is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and onward to Northern and Western Europe.

The North-South corridor with a length of 5,000 kilometers is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year, which is quite a significant figure to make it significant.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 11:08 (UTC+04:00)

During his visit to the State of Oregon, Consul General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev held a meeting with the Oregon State Governor, Kate Brown. The meeting was also joined by Oregon State Senator Floyd Prozanski.

Prospects of mutual cooperation in various fields were discussed at the meeting. Informing the Governor about Azerbaijans steady development as a free and independent nation in a strategically important region, Aghayev stressed the great potential for fruitful cooperation between Azerbaijan and Oregon in a variety of areas, especially in the fields of port services, urban development, transportation, agriculture, IT, and education.

Highlighting also Azerbaijan's long-standing traditions of tolerance and positive multiculturalism, the Consul General spoke of peaceful and harmonious coexistence of various religions and ethnicities in the country.

He expressed his hope that in light of the recent increase in religous and ethnic intolerance and violence in different parts of the world, Azerbaijans successful and internationally appreciated model of tolerance would inspire many others to follow towards a better and more peaceful world.

During his visit to the State, Aghayev also met Oregon Secretary of State Jeanne Atkins, various State Legislators, Mayor of Portland (the States largest city) Charlie Hales, as well as addressed a group of students at the Portland State University.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 13:18 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry has released a report entitled Illegal economic and other activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

The report provides sufficient and convincing evidence testifying to the continued activities in the occupied territories, in total disregard of international law, including the implantation of settlers, depredatory exploitation and pillage of and illicit trade in assets, natural resources and other forms of wealth across the occupied territories.

The evidence shows that there is an illegal traffic in natural resources across the occupied section of the international border between Azerbaijan and Armenia and that Armenia is a transport base for movement of products unlawfully produced in the occupied territories , as well as minerals and other wealth from those territories to international markets.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by the U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

On the background of the ongoing efforts towards the earliest political settlement of the conflict, the policy and practice of Armenia clearly testify to its intention to consolidate the occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan and to secure the annexation of these territories that it has captured by military force and carried out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. The lack of adequate international reaction to these actions of the Armenian side only contributes to its growing sense of impunity and permissiveness, the Ministry stated.

Baku has called on the international community to oblige Armenia to comply scrupulously with its international obligations, cease and reverse immediately the transfer of settlers of both Armenian and foreign nationality into the occupied territories, cease immediately and refrain in the future from any economic and commercial activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, stop the destruction and looting of the cultural heritage and sacred sites in those territories, including the archeological, cultural and religious monuments.

The country also urged all members of the international community to take effective measures, including through their national legislation, that would prevent any activities on their respective territories by any natural and legal persons against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including the participation in or facilitation any unlawful activity in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and other occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Armenias policy of attempted annexation of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan has no chance of succeeding. The only way to achieve a durable and lasting conflict settlement is to ensure the unconditional and complete withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh region and other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, as the United Nations Security Council demands in its resolutions.

Azerbaijan will not tolerate the violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including in particular through engaging in and/or facilitating by whatever ways and means illegal activities in the occupied territories. The responsibility for the consequences of any action, including pursuit of individuals and corporations through the national legal system of Azerbaijan and domestic courts of involved or third party States, which the Republic of Azerbaijan may be obliged to undertake in connection with the unlawful activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in order to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, as well as the rights and legitimate interests of its citizens, will lie entirely with Armenia and the engaged natural and legal persons, entities and bodies, the report stresses.

The full report is available here.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 13:08 (UTC+04:00)

The only solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani defense ministry told Trend on March 2.

The issue must be resolved by Armenias compliance with norms and principles of the international law or the Armenian armed forces must be expelled from the Azerbaijani territories by the countrys armed forces to restore the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, the defense ministry said.

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 withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 13:41 (UTC+04:00)

An OSCE monitoring was held on March 2 along the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry reported on March 2.

The monitoring was held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative on the contact line in Azerbaijans Aghdam district, the ministry said.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring was carried out by the field assistants of OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Hristo Hristov and Peter Svedberg.

On the opposite side, the monitoring was conducted by the field assistants of OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative Yevgeny Sharov and Jiri Aberle.

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.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)

Iteca Caspian has announced that it is planning to hold 16 exhibitions and 1 conference in 2016. The exhibitions will take place at Baku Expo Centre with support from government bodies, demonstrating the role and place of the exhibitions within the countrys economy.

The exhibition season begins with the 15th Anniversary Azerbaijan International Travel and Tourism Fair AITF 2016 and the 10th Anniversary Caucasus International Hospitality Fair HOREX Caucasus 2016. Applications for exhibiting are currently being accepted for the 2016 season, which will include four anniversary events.

Over the years, Iteca Caspians exhibitions have established themselves as key events in the tourism and hospitality industries throughout the Caspian region, where important meetings are held, partnership agreements are made, and new programmes and destinations are announced.

In recent years, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has attended AITF, toured the exhibitions and met exhibitors. Such attention to the industry and to the exhibition itself from the countrys government gives added impetus to the development of business relations in the tourism industry. Since its inception AITF is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The exhibition is also supported by the regular participant Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AZTA) and receives endorsement from international bodies such as the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).

This year, AITF is expected to featured more than 200 companies from 40 countries and group stands from Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Georgia, the Dominican Republic, India, Indonesia, Iran, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Montenegro, and the Czech Republic. Tourism companies and hotels from Latvia, the Maldives, Russia, Slovenia, the USA, Ukraine, Switzerland etc. are also expected. Traditionally Azerbaijan Tourism Association (AZTA) will demonstrate Azerbaijans tourism companies, hotels, and sanatoriums at its stand. Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the countrys regional stands will present Azerbaijans rich potential for domestic tourism. In addition to the usual sectors, the Medical and Health Tourism sector continues to develop.

The 10th Anniversary International Caucasus Hospitality Fair - HOREX Caucasus 2016 will take place, showcasing everything for hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. The main international hospitality trade event in the South Caucasus and Caspian region will present professional cooking and trading equipment, furniture for hotels and restaurants, textiles and uniforms, professional hygiene products as well as food and drinks products from leading local and international manufactures and distributors of the HORECA industry.

In May, the baton passes to the 15th Anniversary Caspian International Railway Infrastructure, Rolling Stock, Maritime Industry, Aviation, Transport and Logistics Exhibition TransCaspian 2016 and the 6th Caspian International Road Infrastructure and Public Transport Exhibition Road&Traffic 2016. This year, boat and yacht show CIBS 2016 will take place alongside TransCaspian and Road&Traffic for the first time.

The 6th Caspian International Power and Alternative Energy Exhibition Caspian Power 2016 and the largest specialised exhibition and conference on energy in the region, the 23rd International Caspian Oil and Gas Exhibition and Conference (1-4 June), are the best places for evaluating energy market players.

After a break for the summer, the autumn exhibition season will include international events such as the 22nd Azerbaijan International Healthcare Exhibition BIHE 2016, the 10th Anniversary Azerbaijan International Beauty and Aesthetic Medicine Exhibition Beauty Azerbaijan 2016, the 22nd Azerbaijan International Construction Exhibition BakuBuld 2016, the 9th International Exhibition for Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning, Water Supply, Sanitary, Environmental Technology, Swimming Pool and Renewable Energies, the 9th Caspian International Protection, Security and Rescue Exhibition Aqua-Therm Baku, the 22nd Azerbaijan International Telecommunications and Information Technologies Exhibition and Conference Bakutel 2016.

The exhibitions status underlines the fact that even during a global financial crisis, major market players still make a point of sponsoring the exhibitions. Sponsors already include companies such as Azeri M-I Drilling, Caspian Drilling Company, Caspian Marine Services, Global Energy, RusNeft, AZFEN J.V., Tekfen Construction, Bos Shelf, Socar Polymer, Nobel Oil Upstream, Schlumberger, SNAM, INPEX, Caspian Geophysical, Qazax Sement Zavodu, NB Group. Iteca Caspians 2016 partners include Safe Life, the safety partner; tour operators Premier Tour; the official hotels Sheraton hotel and Qafqaz Point Hotel; and official stand builder AzExpoMontage.

Nowadays, companies understand that exhibitions are an opportunity to discuss issues and find ways to resolve them. Every company needs to promote itself, take part in industry events, advertise new products and find new sales channels. It is exhibitions that open new opportunities and expand business prospects. Many companies are currently reviewing their pricing policies and looking for new contractors. It is therefore very important to be visible on the market and to make new contacts.

Full details of all the exhibitions can be found on the official website www.iteca.az , which has just had a major overhaul. The structure of the website is now clearer and more precise and includes all the necessary materials: exhibition calendar, photographs, videos and articles about the exhibition and the exhibition business. In order to focus the exhibition brands on clients and to increase awareness, a number of exhibitions in ITEs global portfolio have undergone changes. WorldFood Azerbaijan and Road&Traffic now have new brands and logos. A new logo has also been given to Azerbaijans first international trade exhibition and conference Caspian Oil and Gas. Among the autumn exhibitions that have undergone rebranding are CIS Securika and the regions largest exhibition BakuBuild.

In view of all this, a packed exhibition season awaits Baku. To mark some of the exhibitions noteworthy anniversaries, the organisers have planned a programme for exhibitors and visitors to leave a lasting impression of their time in Baku. A series of services to make the exhibitions more accessible and convenient has also been planned, such as the continuation of the Fast Track online visitor registration service. As usual, the exhibitions will all take place at Baku Expo Center. A range of services will be available for exhibitors and visitors including a free shuttle bus service between the Koroglu metro station and Baku Expo Center. The exhibition centre will have a business and press centre for exhibitors, a cafe and restaurant, Azertac state news agency reported.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 10:26 (UTC+04:00)

By Nazrin Gadimova

The number of Internet users in Azerbaijan has reached 76 percent in 2016.

Elmir Valizade, the Deputy Minister of Communications and High Technologies made the remarks during a conference entitled Internet and Users Rights.

Valizade noted that about 65 percent of the total number of Internet connections in Azerbaijan falls on the broadband access services that have an ability to transport multiple signals and traffic types simultaneously.

Stressing that Azerbaijans territory is fully covered by mobile communication, the official added that access to the Internet is completely free, while providers activities do not require licensing.

"Users in Azerbaijan have an easy access to social networks and other services of the global network, Valizade said. We can say that all the mass media have its own Internet resources, pages on social networks what indicates the formation of online media in the country. The number of popular social networking sites users are growing.

The deputy minister expressed regret that the extensive developments of the global network lead to illegal activities on the Internet, such as distributing child pornography, extremism, separatism, racism and many others.

"Often the development of a global network also contributes to the spread of such negative phenomena. From this perspective, there is a need for international cooperation to exchange experiences in determining the legal aspects, Valizade added.

Touching upon Azerbaijans role in the Eastertn Partnership program, the deputy minister said the country is interested in developing cooperation with the EU in the field of information and computing technologies.

The Ministry is engaged in the strategic initiative for the harmonization of digital markets, and, at the same time, acts as its coordinator in the country within the framework of the "Eastern Partnership".

Today, the field of ICT, including the Internet, is a rapidly developing area. The state pays special attention to this sphere, which is a priority for the economic development of the country, Valizade said.

Azerbaijans Ministry of Communications and High Technologies is responsible for establishing and enforcing policy on electronic communications, acting both as a policymaking and as regulatory body. The Ministry also formulates proposals related to the provision of public investment in the ICT sector.

--

Nazrin Gadimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @NazrinGadimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 14:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan's geographic location will allow expanding the North-South international transport route to the West.

This was stated by Economy and Industry Minister Shahin Mustafayev last week. Speaking to local media, the minister said that the North-South transport route will make it possible to realize cargo transportation to Pakistan, India, Central Asian and Northern European countries through the territories of Azerbaijan, Russia and Iran.

"I would like to mention one more feature of the project: Azerbaijan will get an access to the Black Sea by a railway through Georgia. Moreover, thanks to the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars project, a way is open to other [transport] routes of Turkey. Thus, it is appropriate to speak not about the North-South route, but about the South-West route. The North-South route intersects with other international transport corridors; therefore, it is a very important project for us," he noted.

The North-South railway, with a length of 8.5 kilometers, is expected to serve as a bridge to connect the railways of Iran, Azerbaijan and Russia as well.

The construction of Iranian portion of the North-South railway, which is a part of the North-South corridor, will become an important step towards the realization of the North-South project. Its construction will be completed by the end of 2016.

The North-South corridor, from India to Helsinki, with a length of 5,000 kilometers is designed to carry more than 20 million tons per year. It is a multimodal route for transportation of passengers and cargo from Russia's St. Petersburg to the Mumbai port. It is designed to carry transit cargo from India, Iran and other Persian Gulf countries to the territory of Russia (the Caspian Sea) and further - to Northern and Western Europe.

Speaking about the progress of works within the North-South route, Mustafayev said that Azerbaijan will complete the construction of a part of the railway to the Astara River with a length of 8.3 kilometers by late 2016, and then, Azerbaijan and Iran will jointly build a bridge across the river.

Iran will also construct a railway with a length of just over two kilometers in its territory, and the two countries will complete the construction of cargo terminals.

"We were informed that Iran has already completed more than 80 percent of the work on the construction of the Qazvin-Rasht railway. Various countries have expressed interest in this project. For example, we will hold negotiations [on the North-South route] with Russia in March-April [2016]. Azerbaijan also intends to actively participate in the implementation of this project, because it is strategically important not only for us, but also for Iran, Russia, and the Northern European countries," he stated.

Mustafayev went on to add that funds for the realization of the first stage of the project are provided in the 2016-state budget, so Azerbaijan will have no problems with its financing. He believes that Iran will also fulfill its obligations.

The North-South route enjoys several advantages compared to other transport corridors, according to the minister.

"The North-South route, which passes through Azerbaijan, is more profitable for each parameter [time, the number of procedures, etc.] than other alternative routes, such as the Suez Canal-the Mediterranean Sea-Northern Europe and the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan-Russia-Northern Europe routes. The advantages of our project are obvious," he said.

This project is expected to bring huge benefits to the Azerbaijani budget.

"Revenues will depend on the volume of cargo transportation. Initially, the volume of cargo traffic through Azerbaijan will be about 5-7 million tons [per year]. But of course, these volumes will increase many fold in the future. I think we can talk about tens of millions of tons in the future," Mustafayev concluded.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 13:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan's state oil fund SOFAZ, which accumulates and manages the energy-rich country's oil and gas revenues, has revealed its revenues and expenditures for the period of January-December 2015.

The Fund reported on March 1 that during the reported period, its budget revenues exceeded 7.721 billion manats ($4.898 billion), while budget expenditures constituted 9.188 billion manats ($5.829 billion).

SOFAZ's revenues around 7.386 billion manats ($4.685 billion) were received from the implementation of oil and gas agreements, including about 7.37 billion manats ($4.68 billion) from the sale of profit oil and gas, 2.2 million manats ($1.4 million) as acreage fees, 2.1 million manats ($1.332 million) as bonus payments and 11.6 million manats ($7.36 million) as transit payments.

The revenues from managing assets of the Fund for January-December 2015 amounted to 335.6 million manats ($212.89 million).

Last year, SOFAZ transferred some 8.13 billion manats ($5.16 billion) to the state budget.

SOFAZ's administrative and operational expenses for the reporting period were 27.9 million manats ($17.7 million).

As of January 1, 2016, the assets of SOFAZ have dropped by 9.5 percent compared to January 1, 2015 and stood at $33.574 billion. SOFAZs total investment portfolio amounted to $33.45 million as of January 1, 2016, or 99.6 percent of total assets.

The Fund went on to add that as of 2015, some 47.7 percent of its total investment portfolio, was concentrated in the USD ($15.96 billion).

Some 35.3 percent of the Funds total investment portfolio is concentrated in euro (10.79 billion euros), 5.2 percent - in British pounds (1.17 billion pounds), 1.6 percent - in Japanese yen (63.95 billion yen), 1.4 percent - in Chinese yuan (3.04 billion yuan), 1.1 percent - in Turkish lira, 0.6 percent - in Australian dollars, 1.5 percent - in Russian rubles, 1.4 percent  in Korean won, 1.2 percent - in other foreign currencies.

The remainder of the portfolio (3.1 percent, or $1.04 million) is concentrated in gold.

The Fund further reported that in 2015, some 72.9 percent of its investment portfolio was invested in financial tools for up to five years.

Around 30.76 percent of SOFAZ's investment portfolio is placed in securities for a one-year period, 26.21 percent for one to three years, 15.96 percent for three to five years and 9.19 percent for more than five years. Some 17.89 percent is kept in real estate, assets and gold.

SOFAZ assets are partially placed in securities, tools of the monetary market such as deposits and bank accounts.

Some 79.4 percent of the investment portfolio is placed in bonds. Around 14.29 percent accounted for the securities with 'AAA' ratings, 27.49 percent in 'AA', 30.59 percent in 'A', and 27.63 percent in 'BBB'. SOFAZ assets cannot be placed in securities with a lesser investment rating.

Currently, 13.2 percent of SOFAZ investment portfolio is placed in bonds of agencies and international organizations, 8 percent - sovereign debt securities, 20.8 percent - financial bonds, 44.2 percent - corporate bonds, 8.5 percent - short term commercial securities, 1 percent - guaranteed bonds.

Around 7 percent of the investment portfolio is placed in deposits and monetary market tools, gold - 3.1 percent, real estate- 4.6 percent, assets  7.7 percent, investments in the projects  2.5 percent.

The assets of the investment fund were placed as follows: 58.46 percent in European countries, 21.51 percent in North America, 3.57 percent in Australia, 11.92 percent in the Asia-Pacific Ocean region, 0.92 percent in the Middle East, 0.27 percent in South America, 3.34 percent in international financial organizations, Africa - 0.01 percent.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million. Based on SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for the construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.

The main goals of the State Oil Fund include accumulation of resources and the placement of the funds assets abroad in order to minimize the negative affect on the economy, the prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations and support of current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 15:03 (UTC+04:00)

Azerbaijans oil fund SOFAZ sold $100 million to 23 local banks through the auction held by Azerbaijans Central Bank (CBA)on March 2, SOFAZ said.

SOFAZ offered $100 million for sale through the auction, the statement said. This amount was fully sold to the banks.

Thus, SOFAZ will continue selling foreign currency through auctions in 2016.

The foreign currency is sold as part of SOFAZs transfers to the Azerbaijani state budget, which are envisaged to stand at six billion Azerbaijani manats in 2016.

SOFAZ was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.

As of October 1, 2015, SOFAZ assets reduced by 6.38 percent compared to early 2015 ($37.1 billion) and were estimated at $34.74 billion.

Based on SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for the construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.

The main goals of the State Oil Fund include: accumulation of resources and the placement of the fund's assets abroad in order to minimize the negative affect on the economy, the prevention of "Dutch disease" to some extent, promotion of resource accumulation for future generations and support of current social and economic processes in Azerbaijan.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 13:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Booktrailer festival, first time to be held in Azerbaijan in 2016, has launched the official website www.booktrailer.az.

Ruslan Sabirli, the founder and director of the festival, announced about this while talking toTrend Life.

"The Booktrailer festival is gaining popularity. I'm glad that the idea was widely supported by our society. This festival will be useful for the young generation and will encourage people to read more.

Today we have launched the official website of the Festival. Everyone who wants to participate in the Festival will be able to get all the required information such as conditions of participation, requirements for booktrailer, application form and etc. on our website", he said.

Booktrailers are short videos that promote a book or an author, providing a good illustration of the book content.

The festival aims at promoting books, supporting and developing creative forms of reading, searching talented young people in cinematography and promoting bookrailers as a part of art and business. The booktrailers selection process is currently under way.

The deadline for event is March 15, 2016.

Conditions of participation and requirements can be found here:

www.booktrailer.az

https://www.facebook.com/BooktrailerFest

For all questions, please contact: [email protected]

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 18:08 (UTC+04:00)

The art exhibition under the name of Hellas, devoted to the culture of ancient Greece, cradle of the European civilization will be held at Centro Italiano in Baku.

Held on March 7-11 from 10:30 to 17:30, the event is organized by the Greek embassy in Baku, in cooperation with the Association Argo and Centro Italiano Baku.

The exhibition presents paintings, hand-made batiks, pictures and plates realized by the young Azerbaijani artists, coordinated by Churilova Galina Nikolaevna, author and director of the Childrens Studio of Ecological Posters, founded in 1998 under the Tofig Ismayilov Children and Youth Creativity Centre.

The address of the venue is Murtuza Mukhtarov, 7.

--

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 10:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Iran have discussed ways of how to attract additional cargo flows, in particular from Russia and several European countries, to the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway line.

The discussions were held in Turkmenistan's capital Ashgabat at the trilateral meeting of Turkmen Ministry of Railway Transport, Kazakhstan Railways and Iran Railways, the Turkmen government reported on March 1.

The organization of container traffic from China to Iran through the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan was among the discussed issues as well.

This is not the first initiative to organize container trains from China to Iran via the Central Asian states. Earlier, Askar Mamin, the Head of Kazakhstan Railways JSC, and Mohsen Poursaeed-Aqaei, the Managing Director of Iran Railways, expressed interest in this issue.

The Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, which was put into operation in December 2014, is designed to facilitate the optimization of cargo traffic throughout the Eurasia continent.

Preliminary estimates show that this route, being part of the North-South international transport corridor, will manage to transport 3-5 million metric tons of cargo per year. In the long term, the transportation will increase to 10-12 million metric tons.

The new railway line opens the optimal transport route between countries of Europe and the Persian Gulf, contributing to the creation of related infrastructure, logistics centers, new points of growth, thousands of new jobs.

In February 2016, the first test container train launched on the China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway route proceeded from Turkmenistan to Iran.

It is expected that China's joining the railway will give impetus for developing trade relations and increasing the volume of trade turnover.

The total length of China-Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran route is about 10,000 kilometers, and the journey time is about two weeks.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 12:12 (UTC+04:00)

By Aynur Karimova

Romania is keen to deepen cooperation with Iran in economic and political grounds. Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu believes that cooperation between the two countries can contribute to the regional stability and security.

We need to make efforts in order to establish stability in the region, he told reporters during a joint press conference with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif in Tehran.

The Romanian delegation headed by Comanescu embarked on a visit to Iran on February 29.

Speaking about the economic cooperation with the Islamic Republic, the Romanian minister vowed to lay the ground for holding a session of a joint economic commission of Iran and Romania in Bucharest.

Earlier Iran and Romania announced their plans to organize a joint economic commission, which will be tasked with developing a road map for the expansion of economic cooperation between the two countries.

Comanescu believes that the nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers has paved the way for cooperation and the expansion of bilateral ties between Tehran and Bucharest.

We want to resume bilateral ties, he concluded.

Iran and Romania enjoy fruitful conditions to cooperate in various fields, in particular in transport, agricultural, energy and tourism.

In his remarks, Zarif said Iran and Romania enjoy proper and traditional ties, but the international sanctions had a negative impact on these relations over the past several years.

Today the leaders of the both nations have political will for the expansion of ties, he added.

Pointing to a Memorandum of Understanding signed between Iran and Romania on cooperation in the political, economic and cultural fields, Zarif said Tehran and Bucharest have agreed to hold regular political consultation sessions at deputy ministerial levels.

He also called for cooperation in maritime transport, energy sector, banking, industrial sector, automotive industry, agricultural and tourism.

I am sure that the ministers Tehran visit will lead to the resuming of close ties between Iran and Romania, Zarif concluded.

North-South corridor

Iran believes that Romania will have a chance to enjoy benefits of the North-South transport corridor after this giant project is completed.

The Islamic Republic's President Hassan Rouhani said at a meeting with Comanescuin that development of rail corridors is of significant importance for Iran, Tasnim news agency reported.

Thus, after connecting Irans railway to Azerbaijan, Romania can play a key role in boosting economic ties through the rail corridor, he added.

Comanescu, in turn, underscored his country's policy to strengthen cooperation with Iran in diplomacy, economy, culture, science and technology.

The North-South corridor is intended to connect Northern Europe to Southeastern Asia. In February, Rouhani said the railways of Iran and Azerbaijan will be connected by the end of 2016.

The railway between Azerbaijan and Iran, which is a part of the North-South transport corridor, will contribute to economic development of Azerbaijan and Iran, as well as multiplying of goods turnover from such Iranian ports on the Persian Gulf, like Bandar Abbas, Busheher, and Chabahar.

Furthermore, northern provinces of Iran, like Western Azerbaijan, Eastern Azerbaijan, Gilan, Qazvin will manage to deliver their products to the world markets, particularly, Northern Europe, Russia, Pakistan, India, as well as Persian Gulf countries in a short period of time.

--

Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 11:54 (UTC+04:00)

Customs departments of Iran and Russia have agreed on launching the 'green customs corridor' connecting the two countries.

An agreement to this effect was finalized during the visit of First Deputy Head of the Federal Customs of the Russian Federation Vladimir Malinin to Tehran and his meeting with the Governor of Iran Customs Administration (ICA) Masoud Karbasian on March 1, ICA reported.

The most important item in the agreement is export of Iran's agriculture products to Russia stipulating that such items will be placed with priority in Russia's green customs corridor, IRNA news agency reported.

Malinin said that Russia has not so far settled the customs with any country with such a speed it did with Iran.

The agreement also lays down expansion of transit between Iran and Russia which includes the facilities to be provided by the green customs corridor.

Karbasian said the agreement will increase bilateral trade between Tehran and Moscow ten times and the value of joint bilateral projects will rise to $30 billion.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 14:17 (UTC+04:00)

Today, there is a need to modernize the UN Charter by preserving the basic principles of the international law, Kazakhstans President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on March 2.

He made the remarks during the meeting with heads of the diplomatic missions accredited in the country.

It is required to increase the role of the UN and the Security Council in resolving conflicts, he said. Compliance with local laws and international obligations is a cornerstone of the modern world order.

Nazarbayev also proposed to convene a high-level UN International Conference in 2016 to reaffirm the principles of international law and restore confidence, Kazakh presidents press service said.

He noted that the geopolitical games, mutual economic sanctions and other archaic elements of the Cold War should no longer exist.

I urge to concentrate the efforts of all states on developing the cooperation at bilateral, regional interregional and global levels in economic, trade and investments spheres, said Nazarbayev.

He proposed to discuss this idea during the ninth Astana Economic Forum to be held in May.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
2 March 2016 16:12 (UTC+04:00)

Russia and Turkmenistan have discussed the possibilities of selling Turkmenistans textile and cotton products on the Russian market, the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry reported.

During the discussions, the Russian side was represented by the vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Alexander Rybakov, while from the Turkmen side, the meeting was attended by the countrys ambassador to Russia Berdymurad Redzhepov, as well as representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Textile industry.

Moreover, the meeting was attended by heads of various textile enterprises from the two countries.

Russian side is interested in purchasing textile products from Turkmenistan, but due to a large number of barriers and requirements to buyers, it is more beneficial to purchase these products through European dealers, said the message from Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

In this regard, the meeting participants discussed the steps which could improve the situation by benefiting both sides.

It was decided to discuss this issue in the near future, said the message.

Further, Turkmenistans representatives talked about the development of textile industry and its prospects.

Turkmenistan traditionally grows cotton, which serves as the basis for developing the country's textile industry.

The major part of products is exported to the US, Canada, Germany, UK, Russia, Italy, Turkey, China and Ukraine.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
 

       3.0 (      -       -         ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com
Related Info

Community members of the Kern County Hospital Authority Governing Board



Russell Bigler, retired CEO of Self-Insured Schools of California



Greg Bynum, CEO of Gregory D. Bynum and Associates



Colleen McGauley, executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates of Kern County



Philip McLaughlin, executive vice president of Valley Republic Bank



Christina Sistrunk, CEO of Aera Energy



Medical member of the Kern County Hospital Authority Governing Board



Amir Berjis, physician at Kern Medical
A new poll on a possible Kern County library tax paints a grim picture of the measures ballot chances, but supporters still say their goal is
Thank you for reading!

Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading.
Despite some feelings to the contrary, I am not out to demolish Lamont. I swear it.
A seven-figure funding package for The Cornish Bakery could create up to 180 jobs and eight new stores by spring 2016.

The funding package, from Clydesdale Bank, has introduced new branding to stores across the UK, including Gloucester, Newquay and Bath. The funding has already contributed to two new stores, at the NEC, Birmingham and Tintagel in Cornwall, with an additional eight stores planned by spring 2016. The new stores could see up to 180 jobs created.

Initial results have shown that the changes have been positive, with the company achieving an increase in turnover in excess of 10% for the last financial year.

Steve Grocutt, owner of The Cornish Bakery, said: With the bank providing the essential funding to grow the business, we have taken The Cornish Bakery to new heights.

Gold award winner

Formerly known as Pasty Presto, the bakery opened its original shop in Mevagissey, Cornwall in 1994. It now employs over 200 people.

The redesign of the outlets has seen The Cornish Bakery recognised as a Gold award winner at the 2016 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards.
Mexico Mourns the Passing of 'The Godfather of Birria'

Guadalajara, Mexico - The western Mexican state of Jalisco lost one of its most beloved culinary figures last month when Javier Torres Ruiz, better known as "El Chololo," died of a heart attack at the age of 74.





Torres, who dedicated his life to making birria, a goat or mutton stew considered one of Jalisco's most emblematic dishes, ran two restaurants, both called El Chololo, that are often recognized as the best birrierias in the state.

His death on February 16 provoked an outpouring of public grief, with both restaurants shutting down for three days of mourning. "All our clients were really sad. Many expressed their condolences and there were some who cried. People really cared for him," Torres' niece, Maria Josefina Caminos Torres, told me days later.

Having served many Mexican officials over the years, Torres was also mourned in political circles. A host of politicians, including the Jalisco governor and the mayor of Guadalajara, the state capital, all tweeted their condolences to his family.

"He used to help a lot of people. If one of his regular clients lost a close family member, he would often help pay for the funeral," noted his nephew, Hugo Israel Caminos Torres. "He also helped a lot of local merchants through a local labor union and he served two or three times as a municipal councilor."

Discussing his uncle's legacy at the older El Chololo branch in Guadalajara's working-class Tlaquepaque district, Caminos told me the closely guarded family recipe dates back approximately 100 years: "My grandfather Isidoro Torres Hernandez used to sell birria from a stall in the Tlaquepaque market. He started from the bottom but thanks to God he knew how to take care of the business and keep his recipe secret."

His uncle, Caminos recalled, used to say he was born on a plate of birria, and he sold his first batch at the age of 12. "So when my grandfather died my uncle carried on the tradition. Everyone called him Chololo, a derivative of my grandfather's name," Caminos added. "He used to sell by the side of the road in Tlaquepaque. He'd carry all his ingredients and even his oven on his bicycle each day. Then he started renting a room in this neighborhood, and eventually he bought the place, and that's when the first El Chololo restaurant was born."
Interim Polk County School Superintendent Jacqueline Byrd said the district's personnel office is reviewing the findings of an investigation into Associate Superintendent Greg Rivers while he worked at the University of Florida.

Rivers came to the public's attention because he filed formal complaints last year against former Superintendent Kathryn LeRoy. An investigation concluded last month that LeRoy had not violated district policies but the investigation questioned her judgment.

Investigators said Rivers and LeRoy had a volatile professional and personal relationship that included drinking after work and text messages with sexual innuendo.

PREVIOUS STORIES

LeRoy resigned in the wake of the investigation.

We learned that while Greg Rivers was employed by the University of Florida, he was placed on administrative leave and then resigned in 2006. A university investigation determined that he violated a number of policies.

In 2006 Rivers was the Director of Facilities Planning and Operations for the University of Florida Institute for Food and Agriculture Sciences. An employee of the agency filed a hostile work environment complaint against Rivers.

Among other things, the investigation concluded that Rivers had:

Conducted sexual relationships with three employees under his direct supervision. Two of the relationships were apparently in 1999 and another was in 2006;

Allowed employees to join him for happy hour drinks at the Gainesville Ale house without documenting their time away from work;

Hired students who were friends or children of friends and had those students perform personal errands;

Gave sexually suggestive gifts to employees during planning meetings.

Rivers resigned shortly after the investigation was concluded.

He applied for work at the Polk County School District in 2010. Our review of his personnel file finds that he checked "no" in a box that asked, among other things, if he had ever been the subject of an investigation at a previous place of employment.

READ MORE: Final report of investigation into Greg Rivers (.pdf)

He did check "yes" in a box that asked if he had resigned in lieu of discipline, termination or had been requested to resign.



In a handwritten note in his application Rivers wrote, "I dated a member of my staff in 1997. In 2006 a different member of my staff whose position I was trying to eliminate made an issue of it. My supervisor said I had lost effectiveness as the director due to past incident and requested I resign."



We contacted the Polk County School District's media relations department to request an interview with Rivers. Through a spokesperson Rivers declined to comment, but he released this statement:

I violated a policy while employed at the University of Florida. My voluntary resignation occurred in 2006. The investigation and resignation was noted on my Polk County Public Schools application and disclosed.

"I paid dearly for events that happened almost 18 years ago, and 10 years ago when I resigned from UF. I hope that since you have received the investigation, you have also received copies of my excellent evaluations from UF as part of that public records request.

A review of Rivers' personnel file at UF found he received excellent annual reviews from his supervisors.

Interim Superintendent Byrd said she was unaware of the University of Florida investigation findings.



That was prior to my arrival," she said.

Byrd said she had not read the investigation documents but had sent them to human resources for review.

Final report of investigation into Greg Rivers
An 18-year-old man has been charged in the September shooting death of a Freedom High School student.

David Alexander Brunson has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Eion Gustitis, 18.

Brunson has been in the Hillsborough County Jail since December on charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and possession of cannabis.



Police say Gustitis' body was found by a pedestrian last September in the 9700 block of Commerce Street.

PREVIOUS STORIES

Investigators say two days earlier, Gustitis had attended a party at a friend's apartment, and one of the people at the party became upset because he thought Gustitis had stolen his cell phone.

Police say the accusation was likely not true as the cell phone was later found at the apartment.

Witnesses said late that night, Brunson and others left the apartment to "take care of it." Police say Brunson arranged to meet with Gustitis under the guise of selling him a gun.

Together Brunson and Gustitis drove to Commerse Street, and the pair left the car. Witnesses say they heard a pop, and that Brunson returned to the car and said, "It's done.

In September, Brunson's 16-year-old girlfriend was arrested on charges of being an accessory after the fact and destruction of evidence for disassembling the murder weapon and throwing it in a lake. The gun was later retrieved from the lake by the TPD dive team.

Ezekial Marc, 20, was charged as an accessory after the fact to an armed robbery involving a firearm.


Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Frontier and Silver Airways are all vying to send Florida travelers to Cuba.

The five airlines were among eight that filed applications Wednesday with the U.S. Dept. of Transportation for permission to fly between U.S. airports and Cuba.

The airlines are largely sticking to major hub cities for these flights, and most of the flights would be to Havana.

Delta wants to fly to Havana daily from Orlando, Miami, Atlanta and New York.

JetBlue is looking to do four daily flights to Havana from Fort Lauderdale, two from Tampa, Orlando and New York and one daily flight from Boston and Newark.

Southwest Airlines want to fly to Havana six times a day from Fort Lauderdale, twice daily from Tampa and once daily from Orlando.

Frontier Airlines applied to fly three daily flights between Miami and Havana.

Silver Airways, a regional airline in Florida, wants to fly to Havana twice daily from West Palm Beach and once a day from Fort Myers and Fort Lauderdale. They also want to fly to Havana from Key West and Jacksonville several times a week.

Some of the airlines are proposing flights to other Cuban cities as well.

Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

With about 500 votes separating the top three Republican candidates for Hardin County sheriff, Silsbee's police chief and a Beaumont police lieutenant were the top contenders for a runoff election after 85 percent of the votes were counted Tuesday.

Silsbee police chief Mark Davis was leading with 2,339 votes or 24 percent, compared to Beaumont Lt. Bryan Skinner with 2,215 votes or 23 percent.

Davis, who has led the Silsbee PD since 2011, and Skinner, whose career at Beaumont PD spans 25 years, will likely meet in the May 24 runoff, which will determine who will run in November against J. Blake Burleson, a safety and counter-terrorism consultant running as an independent.

Skinner and Davis were among six Republican candidates in the sheriff's race, including sheriff's office investigator Mark Minton, who trailed Skinner; district attorney's office investigator Dale Williford, who was fourth late Tuesday; former Lumberton police officer Kenny Roach; and retired sheriff's department captain Johnny Westbrook.

"There's a lot of work yet to do. We plan to hit the ground running tomorrow. If we stay where we are and the numbers hold, the campaign starts tomorrow bright and early," Davis said.

Skinner, dubbed The Dark Horse, celebrated with friends and supporters at Hard Bean in Lumberton, and Davis had a party at a banquet barn in Silsbee.

Unlike the sheriff's race, Hardin County's district attorney was determined Tuesday when voters re-elected David Sheffield for his third term. Sheffield will not face a Democratic challenger.

Sheffield faced Beaumont attorney Tom Roebuck, who campaigned aggressively. The two wrangled on social media, with exchanges often becoming personal and confrontational.

Sheffield received 55 percent of the votes, with 85 percent counted.

"I'm very humbled," said Sheffield, who watched the results come in from his home in Silsbee.

Among Roebuck's criticisms of the incumbent district attorney was Sheffield's prosecution of Crystal Boyett, a Kirbyville woman sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter in the death of a pregnant Lumberton woman.

Although Sheffield secured the maximum sentence for manslaughter, Roebuck argued he should have been able to charge Boyett with murder because she was running from police when she caused the deadly wreck.

Sheffield was the county attorney from 1993 until he was elected district attorney in 2008.

Sheffield, declined to comment on the campaign.

"Some have called it brutal. I'm not sure I would describe it that way," Roebuck said from Novrozsky's restaurant in Silsbee. "Challenging is a better way of putting it. It sort of took a life of its own."

MLibardi@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/ManuellaLibardi
Weber cruising to victory

U.S. Congressman Randy Weber enjoyed an emphatic lead over challenger Keith Casey, leading on Tuesday night with 85 percent of the early vote.

Weber, whose district includes Jefferson, Galveston and Brazoria counties, will face Michael Cole in the November general election. Cole, a Democrat, ran unopposed.

Kim Brent

Bernsen wins Democratic chair

Cade Bernsen led Jefferson County Democratic Party Chair Sheila Sachitano with more than 64 percent of the vote.

Early voting figures showed Bernsen with a comfortable lead and maintained that advantage with nearly half of the precincts reporting.

Bernsen, son of former state senator David Bernsen, was running for political office for the first time. Earlier in his campaign, Bernsen said one of his main goals would be to encourage young people to get involved in the political process.

Sachitano, a Port Arthur native, was elected party chair in 2014, the county's first female chair.

Jefferson County has become a general-election county after historically voting Democractic.

In Orange County, early voting totals showed incumbent Democratic Party Chair Deborah Mitchell with a substantial lead over Donald G. Brown, with 76.5 percent of the votes counted.

The chair seat was the only Democratic race in Orange County.

Guiseppe Barranco/Photo Editor

Challenger White knocks down Saleme

Jefferson County Precinct 1 is getting a new constable.

With all but one precinct reporting, Earl White led incumbent C. "Nick" Saleme with more than 69 percent of the vote.

Early voting numbers showed White had a substantial lead before precincts reported Tuesday night.

White has been with the Beaumont Fire Department for 35 years and currently works as a captain.

Saleme, a 42-year veteran in law enforcement, was elected to the position in 2012.

Orange County re-elects Merritt as sheriff

An overwhelming majority of Orange County voters re-elected Keith Merritt to a third term as sheriff.

Merritt, a Republican, defeated David Smith, the president of the Golden Triangle Militia, with 82 percent of early votes.

Because no Democrat filed to run for sheriff, Meritt will bypass the November general election and be sworn in for his third term in January.

Merritt attributed his win to his nearly four-decade career in law enforcement and his accomplishments as sheriff, including a county-wide crackdown on narcotics and management of department during financial cutbacks.

"The results that came out show that they're satisfied with me," Merritt said, while celebrating with loved ones and supporters at the VFW Hall in Orange on Tuesday night.

Runoff for OC Precinct 1 Commissioner

Orange County voters will return to the polls in May to choose between a business owner and customer service representative for precinct 1 commissioner.

Beating out three other Republican candidates were Johnny Trahan, an Entergy customer service representative, who finished first with 36 percent of the vote, and Bobby Manshack, deputy constable and owner of a construction company, who was second with 28 percent of the vote.

Because no Democrat filed, the May 24 runoff will decide who becomes commissioner.

Manshack said he wasn't surprised by the results because he filed late.

Amy Moore

Hall close to being Newton sheriff nominee

The Newton County sheriff who sued the county and several officials after a jury cleared him of a felony charge last year may be on his way out of office.

With early votes and nine of 22 precincts counted, Cynthia Hall claimed 49.6 percent of the ballots in a three-person race, just a notch below the 50 percent threshold required to win without a runoff.

Incumbent Eddie Shannon had 33.5 percent of the vote, which would include him in the runoff if Hall fell short of the threshold.

The winner will face long-time East Texas lawman Billy Rowles, who was unopposed for the Republican nomination. Shannon was indicted in 2014 on a felony charge of making a terroristic threat. A San Augustine County jury found him not guilty early last year.

Shannon later filed a still-pending federal lawsuit accusing the county and various officials of conspiring to remove him as sheriff.

Hall served as the interim sheriff while Shannon was on leave pending his trial.

Rowles previously served two terms as Jasper County sheriff and spent six months as the city of Newton's interim police chief last year.

Fillyaw, Price head for runoff

Bobby Fillyaw and Paul Price appeared headed to a runoff to determine the Republican nominee for Newton County judge.

After early votes and 7 of 22 precincts were counted, Fillyaw led a four-person field with 36.7 percent of the vote to Price's 27.2 percent. The runoff would be held May 24.

The winner will face Precinct 4 Commissioner Leanord Powell in the Nov. 8 general election. Powell ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.

At stake is the unfinished term of Ronnie Boyett, who died last year. The term expires at the end of 2018.

Fillyaw is the former executive director for the Orange County Economic Development Corp. and the McGregor Economic Development Corp.

Price is a former U.S. Air Force officer, Vietnam veteran and ex-banker.

Interim Judge Truman Dougharty, the county's former judge, did not seek the full-time job.

Ricky Holmes, a directional supervisor for Baker Hughes, was at 18.9 percent.

Carl Ford, a local minister and a manager of Parker Lumber, had 17.2 percent.

Kim Brent

Sullins elected Constable Precinct 5

Lumberton police chief Danny Sullins was elected Hardin County precinct 5 constable and will remain head of the police force.

Sullins collected 56 percent of the early votes, beating Lamar University police officer Randy Martin and Robert Martin, the owner of a pipeline maintenance business.

Sullins said he checked with city council before running for constable and previously cited an opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton, which allowed a school district police chief to run for constable, according to Enterprise reporting.

Calling himself a "workaholic," Sullins said he usually works security jobs on the weekend.

As constable, he won't have to do that anymore, he said.

The constable's salary is 33,450.

Incumbent Greg Smith, who did not seek re-election, will become Sullins' deputy.

Sullins is eligible to retire as police chief but said he wants to continue serving Lumberton in a post he has held for nine years.

"I'm a public servant," he said. "I love serving Lumberton and Hardin County."

Embattled constable claims majority

The embattled Liberty County constable indicted two months ago on a misdemeanor perjury charge appeared headed for a second term after he claimed a majority of the early votes in a three-person race.

John Joslin, who represents the sixth precinct, collected 56.3 percent of early ballots in the race against two Liberty County sheriff's deputies.

Joslin, 47, was indicted Jan. 20 on a misdemeanor perjury charge. If convicted, he would face up to one year in a county jail and a fine of up to $4,000.

Joslin is accused of lying to an investigator about his relationship with Michael Gelagotis, a Beaumont man who pleaded guilty last month to charges of impersonating law enforcement and unlawfully possessing body armor.

Joslin over his 20-year career previously worked for the Beaumont ISD police force, the Cleveland Police Department, the Chambers County Sheriff's Office and other agencies.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Zena Stephens and Joe "QB" Stevenson will go head-to-head for the Democratic nomination for sheriff in Jefferson County after Rod Carroll, the department's former spokesman and a favorite of local law enforcement, apparently placed third.

The stunning results came on the wave of one of the highest voter turnouts in three decades, a thrust that also advanced Terrence Holmes in the race for the county Court at-Law No. 2 judgeship at the expense of Jesse Branick, brother of the county's top elected official.

Stephens, former chief deputy in the sheriff's office and Prairie View A&M chief of police, was running in first with 37 percent of the vote, just hours after Beaumont police arrested a Vidor teenager on charges that he fired a gun at her campaign headquarters Monday night.

Stephens could not be reached for comment.

Stevenson, who ran for sheriff four years ago and was an elected constable for 16 years, was running second with 34 percent of the vote. Stevenson said he has been campaigning for the job since September 2012, months after his loss in the last sheriff's election.

"This time I started campaigning 42 months early," Stevenson said. "The voters saw in me that I've been the person in this community, of this community. I've had a solid career."

Thirty-six of 40 polling locations had reported as of press time.The Democratic nomination for sheriff will be the only item on Jefferson County's May 24 runoff ballot.

Retired Beaumont Police Lt. Ray Beck ran unopposed in the Republican primary.

The Nov. 8 general election will crown Jefferson County's first new sheriff in 20 years after Sheriff Mitch Woods announced last year he would not seek a sixth term.

Carroll, a spokesman in Woods' administration, received endorsements from every municipal and county police organization in Jefferson County. He is the son-in-law of former Congressman Jack Brooks.

"We're going to see where God takes me," Carroll said.

The sheriff oversees a $13.1 million budget and runs the jail, which has a $27.6 million budget. Those departments combined represent about one-third of the county's general fund budget.

Beaumont police on Tuesday arrested a 19-year-old Vidor man accused of shooting at Stephens' campaign headquarters Monday evening.

Police said Adam Carver confessed to the crime and was charged with discharging a firearm. A bond will be set following his arraignment Wednesday.

No one was injured in the shooting.

Witnesses told police suspects in a white Jeep Cherokee shouted racial slurs before firing the weapon.

In the Jefferson County Court at-Law No. 2 judgeship race, Holmes, an attorney and associate municipal court judge, garnered 68 percent of the early votes against Branick, brother of Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick.

Branick, an attorney and former president of the Jefferson County Bar Association, raised and spent far more campaign money than Holmes.

"It's exceeded my expectations, to say the least," Holmes said of Tuesday's results. "When you go into a primary, you just don't know how people are going to vote."

Jefferson County prosecutor Luke Nichols ran unopposed on the Republican ticket.

The general election victor will serve the unfinished term of Judge G.R. "Lupe" Flores, who died early last year. The term expires Dec. 31, 2018.

Court at-Law No. 2 primarily handles misdemeanor cases.

Veteran county commissioners Eddie Arnold and Michael Shane Sinegal won re-election after fending off primary challengers by wide margins.

Arnold won his fourth term as Precinct 1 commissioner. Sinegal won his third term in Precinct 3. Neither faces a general-election opponent.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/ericbesson_news

BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/brandonkscott
The more than 19,000 Jefferson County Republican voters who turned out to Tuesday's election and the 45 percent share of total ballots they filed represented the party's best performance at the presidential primaries in at least three decades.

About 23,000 voters filed Democratic ballots, making total turnout in excess of 42,000, the third-highest since at least 1988, according to county clerk data.Republican turnout rose 67 percent from four years ago and 150 percent from 2008, the last presidential primary without an incumbent. Democrats filed 85 percent of total primary ballots in 2008.
With important local races joining an array of presidential choices in the earliest primary in 20 years, Jefferson County voters are on the cusp of one of their highest primary election turnouts in three decades.

The nearly 23,000 voters who filed early ballots already has exceeded total turnout in the gubernatorial primaries from both 2010 and 2014, and is about 3,000 votes shy of the total presidential primary turnout from four years ago.

In the past two presidential primaries combined, early and mail balloting turnout equated to 56 percent of the total turnout. Should that figure hold steady, this year's primary turnout would approach 41,000.

Presidential primaries in Jefferson County eclipsed 36,000 voters twice in the past 28 years - the 60,900 voters who turned out in '88 and the 50,400 who voted in '08.

Excitement from the presidential cycle has generated more eyeballs for local seats that will be decided outright today - two commissioners court races and a constable contest - and others where a nominee for the November election will be crowned, like sheriff and a local judgeship.

Most of the locally contested primaries are on the Democratic ticket. Democrats accounted for 62 percent of the early ballots, up from 61 percent in 2012 but down from 87 percent in 2008, according to county clerk data.

The 14,100 Democratic ballots filed early were 28 percent higher than in 2012 but 33 percent lower than in 2008. The 8,800 early Republican ballots were up 25 percent from 2012 and 182 percent from 2008.

Republican-dominated Orange and Hardin counties also posted strong early voting turnout numbers. Going into Election Day, Orange County was at 84 percent of its 2012 total turnout, and Hardin County was at 66 percent of its total from that year.

Given the high anticipated Election Day turnout, Goodness said voters who encounter long lines should remember they may cast ballots at any one of the county's 40 polling places.

EBesson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/EricBesson_news
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Primary votes across a dozen states on Tuesday night could mean the end for some Republican presidential candidates. Follow the Houston Chronicle for live updates through the night to see who will wins and who stumbles (Updating throughout the night).

Scene from Ted Cruz's victory

As the crowd assembled conservative talk radio host Michael Berry, speaking on stage, evoked Cruz's 2012 underdog campaign for U.S. Senate, which many fans in the audience recalled supporting.

"I was proud to send him to the U.S Senate," Berry said minutes after Fox News called Texas for Cruz. "But I'm prouder tonight."

Cruz came out ahead in Texas by a significantly smaller margin than he needed to claim all of the state's delegates. But in his comments to the crowd, Cruz spun it as an unambiguous victory.

He said the GOP field had been whittled down from it's original 17 contenders to two: Himself and Donald Trump, who he spent most of his speech attacking as an inauthentic Republican.

After an introduction from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Cruz noted that only himself and Trump and won a primary race this election, and encouraged his other GOP rivals to drop their campaigns and unite behind him.

"For those who have supported other candidates, we welcome you on our team," Cruz said.

An audience hundreds strong in the country-style venue whooped with vigor at every opportunity during Cruz's speech, booing any mention of his rivals.

"Nobody messes with Texas," said Carlin Mothersbaugh, a GOP activist and member of the Republican Women's Club of Katy. "Trump was not gonna mess with Texas tonight."

The press pit rang with a handful of languages after Cruz's speech, as correspondents from across the nation and world beamed home updates from Houston.

"They are deciding who will be the leader of the most powerful country in the world," said Mikel Reparaz, correspondent for EiTB channel from Northern Spain after recording a report on the election night. "There is a tremendous interest back home."

Marco Rubio wins his first state

Rubio wins Minnesota to take his first state this election season. Ted Cruz actually finished second in the state, meaning Donald Trump finished third in a state for the first time.

Also, it appears that Rubio will barely miss the 20 percent threshold needed to pick up delegates in Alabama, Vermont and Texas. That's huge for Trump and Cruz.

Your current Super Tuesday results:

GOP (Still to come: Alaska)

Trump: Ala., Ark., Ga., Mass., Tenn., Va., Vt.

Cruz: Okla., Texas

Rubio: Minn.

Dems

Clinton: Ala., Ark., Ga., Mass., Tenn., Texas, Va.

Sanders: Colo. Minn., Okla., Vt.

Lindsey Graham tells CBS that party might "have to rally around Ted Cruz"

Graham, the senator from South Carolina, failed in his own presidential bid earlier this election season. Then, he backed Jeb Bush who dropped out last week. Now Graham is suggesting the unthinkable: That the Washington establishment might need to rally around one of their biggest enemies.

Cruz has made his name in part due to his attacks on what he calls the "Washington cartel," referring to both Republican and Democrat politicians entrenched in the nation's capital.

Just last week, Graham joked about killing Cruz!

"If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you," he said at the Washington Press Club Foundation's 72nd Congressional Dinner. At the same event, he said his party has gone "bat**** crazy."

In January, Graham said party officials believe choosing between Trump and Cruz is "like being shot or poisoned."

Now it seems Graham has made his choice.

Watch the crowd go wild for Cruz

More scenes from the Redneck Country Club, where Ted Cruz held his Super Tuesday watch party.

Watch Cruz take the stage.

And a view from the pumped up crowd.

Cruz asks party to unite around him

After winning primaries in Texas and Oklahoma tonight, Cruz spoke to a crowd of supporters in the Houston area. He asked candidates who haven't won a state yet to "prayerfully consider" uniting around him to defeat Trump.

"We are the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump  once, twice, three times," Cruz says.

He also took a swipe at the GOP front-runner: "America shouldn't have a president whose words would make you embarrassed if you repeat them."

Fans of Cruz boo Trump

Supporters for Cruz at his Texas watch party at the Redneck Country Club made their disdain for the Republican front-runner clear on Tuesday night. While waiting for Cruz to give a speech at the venue, Trump appeared on TV and was lustily booed by the crowd.

Cruz's daughters are passing out copies of "Green Eggs and Ham" to members of the audience. Cruz read the Dr. Seuss classic on the Senate floor during his famous filibuster in 2013.

Victorious Ted Cruz hosts watch party at Redneck County Club

Cruz supporters are awaiting the Texas senator's victory speech at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford.

Ted Cruz scores another victory in Oklahoma

The Associated Press has given Ted Cruz his second Super Tuesday state. Even though Cruz won't sweep the delegates in Texas, two wins could mean he's in this race for the long haul.

That's bad news for Marco Rubio, who was hoping he would be in a two-man race with Trump by the end of March. Meanwhile, Rubio still hasn't won a single state this primary season.

Bernie Sanders picked up his second win of the night in Oklahoma. Clinton has already won six other states tonight (and American Samoa. Results still to come in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Colorado.

Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton win Texas

The Lone Star State goes to the Texas senator. That's a crucial win for Cruz.

Here's the downside for Cruz: He'll likely fall below the 50 percent threshold necessary for him to take all of the delegates. In addition, Rubio looks like he could reach the 20 percent threshold needed to guarantee him delegates in Texas. That's also not great news for Cruz in this winner-takes-some state.

Virginia goes to Trump as well. Oklahoma looks tight for Dems and Republicans

Donald Trump eked out a victory over Marco Rubio in Virginia. But things look much more interesting in Oklahoma and the Lone Star State. Ted Cruz holds a formidable early lead in his home state. Cruz and Trump are neck and neck in Oklahoma.

For the Democrats, Sanders holds a slight edge over Clinton in the early goings. The former Secretary of State has jumped out to a strong lead over Sanders in Texas.

Donald Trump's a winner (again and again)

The Associated Press has called Alabama, Tennessee and Massachusetts for the real estate mogul. Hillary Clinton also takes Tennessee and Alabama.

East Coast election results roll in

The first Super Tuesday results are in, and already news organizations have called a few of the Democratic races. Hillary Clinton soundly won Georgia and Virginia, while Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders took his home state. Clinton also scored a victory in the U.S. territory of American Samoa.

In the Republican races, Donald Trump is in a tight race with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Virginia and faces another close call in Vermont against Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Rubio. The Associated Press declared Trump the winner of Georgia.

Georgia

Winners: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, according to the AP

Virginia

Winner: Hillary Clinton, according to ABC News

Vermont

Winner: Bernie Sanders, according to PBS News.

Gearing up for Super Tuesday

For the Houston-based campaign of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the stakes are high: Experts agree he needs an exceptionally strong home state showing to maintain momentum. And he'll need the delegates in his camp if wants to remain a serious contender for the nomination.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones and University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus agreed Cruz needed to top 50 percent of the statewide vote to claim a resounding Texas victory.

"There is no way for Cruz or his supporters to spin any victory by a margin in the single digits as a decisive win," Jones said.

Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

RELATED: Cruz faces do or die in Texas

Cruz faced encroachment on his home turf from Donald Trump, who is largely expected to claim the overall victory after Tuesday's vote, and Fla. Sen. Marco Rubio, who has enjoyed a rise in popularity in recent weeks.

Rottinghaus said he didn't expect Cruz to top 50 percent. And virtually every poll agrees. A recent poll by the University of Houston and Houston Public Media gave Cruz 34.5 percent of the Texas vote. Authors said they didn't foresee the freshman Texas senator getting more than half the vote in any of the state's congressional districts.

Beyond the Lone Star State, voters will also cast ballots in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

In every other state, Trump is the favored candidate, and could break critical momentum in his push towards the GOP nomination.

Cal Jillson, political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said "The margin in Texas, whether big or small, does not matter if Texas is all that Cruz wins. Trump is going to have a big night and Rubio is the Republican establishment's rallying point, which likely leaves Cruz without a path forward unless he shows appreciable strength outside Texas."

Cruz supports will be gathered in near Houston tonight at the Redneck Country Club in Stafford to watch the poll results come in.

Follow the Houston Chronicle for live coverage from the Texas candidate's watch party, as well as live updates from the votes around the nation.

Most final results should be in by 10 p.m. Central Time.
There were nine new outpatient surgery centers opened or announced in February 2016.

National Spine & Pain Center opened a new pain management center in Charlottesville, Va.

Key-Whitman Eye Center moved into a new facility in North Dallas to accommodate a larger surgical volume.

Flagler Investment Healthcare announced plans to build a new ASC in Palm Beach County in Florida. Orthopedic Center of Palm Beach County, based in Lake Worth, Fla., will run the center.

Tidelands Health, based in Murrells Inlet, S.C., plans to open a new surgery center at Tidelands Georgetown (S.C.) Memorial Hospital.

The University of Minnesota Health based in Minneapolis plans to open a new 342,000-square-foot facility: the Health Clinics and Surgery Center with 10 operating rooms and 37 different specialties.

Doctors Hospital of Manteca (Calif.) opened a new $7 million ambulatory surgery center with three operating rooms, one dedicated to cataract surgery.

Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center plans to open a $500 million comprehensive care outpatient center by 2020 that will consolidate multiple campus outpatient clinic sites.

Robert Zehr, MD, and Kurtis Biggs, DO, partnered with SurgCenter Development to open the Seaside Surgery Center in Naples, Fla.

Hospital for Special Surgery in New York leased a space in White Plains (N.Y.) to open its new outpatient center with construction to begin in September 2016.
DePuy Synthes entered into a strategic alliance with Value Stream Partners to design, develop and implement a bundled payment program for hip and knee replacements.

The exclusive arrangement between DePuy Synthes and Value Stream Partners will be available to providers who want to bundle hip and knee replacements. As of April 1, 2016 CMS requires acute care hospitals in 67 regions to participate in the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model, which compensates for the 90-day episode of care.

"There are great clinical and economic incentives for hospitals, physicians and post-acute care providers to put in place the processes, procedures and alignment strategies necessary to better coordinate care," said Juan-Jose Gonzalez, president of DePuy Synthes, U.S.

Value Stream Partners has a history of designing, implementing and administering bundled payment programs, aligning incentives for success.

DePuy Synthes Companies also offers DePuy Synthes Advantage, a program that includes 20 customized, measurable solutions for healthcare providers to achieve the Triple Aim in orthopedics. The solutions include professional education, instrumentation and training to improve efficiencies and measure performance.

"This exclusive arrangement with VSP will further enable us to help providers, healthcare systems and governments face new challenges in healthcare delivery and achieve the Triple Aim of improving clinical outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction and lowering overall costs," said Mr. Gonzales. "We're focused on innovation and offering total solutions that go beyond the implant and make a real difference both inside and outside the operating room."
Saddleback Memorial  San Clemente (Calif.) has announced it will close May 31.

The primary reason for the closure is dwindling patient volumes. Hospital officials said many days there are less than 10 inpatients at the hospital, and the number of inpatient surgeries has dropped to less than one a day.

The hospital's parent system, Fountain Valley, Calif.-based MemorialCare Health System, explored other options before deciding to shut down the facility. In August 2014, MemorialCare announced plans to convert the 73-bed hospital into an outpatient medical campus. The system worked with state lawmakers on legislation that would have allowed a satellite emergency department at the outpatient campus in San Clemente. However, the legislation failed in January. The following week, the San Clemente City Council voted to rezone the San Clemente campus property to require hospital services.

"Without legislation to allow a satellite emergency department, and given this new restrictive rezoning that requires hospital services, the vision to convert the campus into a modern ambulatory care center cannot now be achieved," said hospital officials.

Saddleback Memorial  Laguna Hills (Calif.) will remain open and hospital officials said they are exploring ways to add new urgent care services in San Clemente.

More articles on healthcare finance:

South Dakota hospital to lose Medicare funding

Mayo operating income dips 36.9% as expenses rise

S&P maintains stable outlook on nonprofit hospital sector
Moody's Investors Service has maintained its stable outlook on the U.S. for-profit hospital sector for 2016, as it expects outpatient services to continue to drive volume growth.

For-profit healthcare organizations face a number of challenges, including slowing revenue growth, but Moody's believes those challenges will be offset by continued growth in outpatient volumes. The rating agency expects outpatient volume growth to outpace inpatient admissions in 2016, as for-profit hospital operators invest in urgent care centers and ambulatory care centers.

"The Affordable Care Act is changing hospital operators' investment decisions and leading them to acquire and invest in outpatient facilities in the markets and networks in which they operate," said Dean Diaz, a Moody's senior vice president.

Moody's also noted that for-profit hospital operators' earnings could be constrained by the pending acquisition of Cigna by Anthem and Humana by Aetna.

"Consolidation among health insurers will increase their scale and bargaining power, which could ultimately reduce reimbursement rates for hospitals," said Mr. Diaz. "To maintain their bargaining power, consolidation could increase among hospital providers, but this could also force the exit of providers in markets where they lack negotiating leverage."

More articles on healthcare finance:

How CHS, Tenet, UHS, LifePoint and HCA fared in Q4

3 ways hospitals can increase profitability in 2016

Mayo operating income dips 36.9% as expenses rise
CMS has terminated Rosebud (S.D.) Indian Health Service Hospital's Medicare contract, effective March 16, according to the Argus Leader.

Last year, CMS identified a number of patient safety issues at the 35-bed facility, including broken sterilizing equipment and reports of a woman giving birth to a premature baby on a bathroom floor. The hospital subsequently closed its emergency room and submitted an action plan to CMS to address the deficiencies. In February, CMS identified new violations at the hospital.

Great Plains Tribal Chairmen's Health Board CEO Jerilyn Church told the Argus Leader that the termination of the hospital's Medicare contract could create significant challenges for patients in the area.

"The GPTCHB is deeply concerned about the impact on the lives of those who rely solely on the Indian Health Service for their care," Ms. Church said. "We call on Congress, leadership within HHS and IHS to implement for long-term, systemic improvements within the IHS."

A spokeswoman for the IHS told the Argus Leader that the agency will ask CMS to enter into an agreement that would allow the hospital to restore all services by meeting safety and quality requirements. If CMS agrees, the hospital would be able to continue billing Medicare for services.

More articles on healthcare finance:



3 ways hospitals can increase profitability in 2016

Mayo operating income dips 36.9% as expenses rise

S&P maintains stable outlook on nonprofit hospital sector
The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday self-insured health plans could not be forced by a state to report claims information for use in state health pricing databases, reports The New York Times.



The case at issue, Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, began when Liberty Mutual refused to turn over claims data to Vermont for use in its insurance rate database.



About 93 million people have self-insured healthcare plans, according to The New York Times. Without data from private payers Vermont argued its database is incomplete and much less useful in tracking healthcare costs across populations.



Writing for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said Vermont's reporting law would burden insurers with inconsistent reporting requirements and interfere with health plans' federal reporting responsibilities, according to the article.



Currently, private insurance companies must disclose financial data to the federal government under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.



Including Vermont, 18 states have proposed or passed laws that require health plans to provide the state with pricing data on patient claims. Before the high court's ruling on the issue, more than a dozen other states had shown interest in compiling similar claims databases, according to The New York Times.

More articles on finance and legal issues:

This week's 5 must-reads for hospital CFOs

Florida Blue takes action after customers experience billing, coverage issues

HealthFusion to offer EHR and billing software to Florida physicians






The health insurance industry is poised on the verge of large-scale consolidation as its leaders seek to drive down health expenses and increase negotiating powers.

With the proposed Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna transactions  valued at $37 billion and $54 billion  expected to close this year, healthcare leaders and consumers are equally concerned about the possible impact on their respective pocket books.

Jim Lazarus, managing director of strategy and innovation with The Advisory Board Company's revenue cycle solutions division, spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about how unprecedented payer consolidation may change provider reimbursement practices.

Sine the transactions were first proposed, many hospital advocates and health system officials have sounded antitrust alarms, arguing the mergers may amplify payer power to the financial detriment of providers during contract negotiations.

"Bigger insurance companies mean increased leverage and unfair power over negotiating rates with hospitals and physicians," said American Medical Association President Steven Stack, which could pressure physicians into accepting unfair reimbursement terms.

Hospital CFOs and other financial leaders are right to consider how new power relations may play into payer-provider negotiations, Mr. Lazarus believes. On the other hand, value-based contracting is beginning to dominate conversations between healthcare organizations and insurers.

Under value-based payment models, payer and provider financial incentives are more closely aligned. However, if the mega-mergers move forward, Mr. Lazarus says payers may use their enhanced market power to increase pressure on hospitals and health systems to advance risk-based patient care and value-based reimbursement models maybe faster than providers anticipate.

The Aetna-Humana, Anthem-Cigna mergers also pose a concern for hospitals that rely heavily on those payers for reimbursement, as those healthcare organizations may experience extended claims processing timelines and delayed reimbursements during the transactions.

"Hospital margins are thin enough as it is, and each small change that comes down the pipeline has the possibility of making a significant impact," says Mr. Lazarus.

To help prevent an administrative backlog, hospitals are working with payers to evaluate their individual performance in claims submission, processing and denials management.

By shoring up claims inefficiencies on their end, hospitals can reduce their risk and minimize possible administrative and reimbursement challenges.

"The truly integrated affects of these mergers are two or three years down the road," Mr. Lazarus says. In the mean time, a growing impetus for collaboration and communication between payers and providers has some industry experts carefully optimistic for improved industry relations.
The Los AngelesCounty health department identified traces of ransomware on five of its computers Wednesday, but maintains operations have not been impacted by the malicious software, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The health department reported the attack to the county's chief information office and the Los Angeles district attorney, but has no plans to pay the ransom, according to the Times. A spokesperson said it was the first cyberattack of its kind to hit the health department.

Clifford Neuman, director of the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California's Center for Computer Systems Security, told the Times the software was likely a different variant from the kind that led Los Angeles-based HollywoodPresbyterianMedicalCenter to pay a $17,000 ransom earlier this month to free up its medical record systems. The health department's reliable security designed to prevent the ransomware from spreading further may have prevented the attack from doing more damage.
The term "integration" is getting tossed around quite a bit in healthcare today. Providers want integration between medical devices and EHRs, patients want integration with various apps and IT professionals need systems to share information. Ilan Sehayek, CTO of Jitterbit, has been working toward a solution to the integration problem for nearly 30 years.

"It was obvious from the beginning of my career in 1988 that, in terms of the offerings that were out there, this was a void in the marketplace," Mr. Sehayek says. " A lot of what Jitterbit was doing at the beginning was making common and modern integrations much easier for users to consume and adopt."

Prior to founding Jitterbit in 2005, Mr. Sehayek spent time at companies that tried to tackle integration early on in their respective industries, including Amazon, which needed to design a way for thousands of merchants to rapidly integrate into its platform.

"That's where the vision around Jitterbit started," Mr. Sehayek says. "There was a need for a more agile approach. I was seeing a clear trend in the market where more cloud apps would be adopted, so there was also a need not only for integration to be quick and to solve specific solutions, but a need to also be able to integrate on-premise and cloud applications."

Mr. Sehayek spoke to Becker's Hospital Review about the various hardships involving integration in healthcare, from devices, to EHRs, to building databases for insights into cancer care.

Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and style.

Q: Did you always envision Jitterbit's platform would be applicable to healthcare?

Healthcare is something I got involved with once I was injured a bit. I was aware of the need for integration in the industry, but it was only about two years ago that I became aware of many of the gaps in providing quality care to patients that stem from integration issues. There are a lot of gaps in interoperability and the type of information being shared between various parties in healthcare. Also, the lack of being able to expose certain data made it really difficult to build these new, modern cloud applications in healthcare. Building a cloud application without access to a patient's medical records, without being able to intelligently know what you can or cannot recommend to a patient, is ineffective.

It became very apparent existing integration solutions wouldn't solve the problem for all the various different types of data you need to amalgamate across different EHRs, practice management systems, customer relationship management systems, etc. We now know device manufacturers, life science companies, pharmaceuticals, as well as the payers, all need the ability to interface in a more meaningful way. So with that in mind we created a vertical within our company just to focus on healthcare, and we've grown very good relationships and quite a few production pieces the new types of integration and data needed in healthcare.

Q: Was that lack of effective solutions for integration in healthcare a surprise to you?

It was a surprise to see all of the traditional systems that we come across in healthcare really revolved around making sure that a provider got paid. Many of the EHRsand what you recorded in them were very transactional  they basically were there to record all the services performed so you got paid for those services. If you look at those systems, we don't see a lot of workflows and things in place that provide guidance to what a procedure for a given patient should be; that's all in the head of the provider, and that's all shared in various different forums, but not in the systems themselves. That was a surprise because it just seemed very transactional and it doesn't seem like anybody from a system and an application perspective sat down and thought about patient's care holistically, versus giving somebody a way to record the work they did so they could get paid. We saw opportunities there.

The whole regulatory aspect of healthcare was not a surprise, and we were ready for that. That was the first thing we started to invest in. I was certainly aware of what was going on with HIPAA and protected health information. I had come across those factors just as an individual going to my own providers with all the forms I had to sign. There were some details, though, like how you can match patient records across different providers or things you are or are not allowed to use to do that joining, [I was unfamiliar with]. There are various rules around how you can or can't use Social Security numbers, for example. Normally when you deal with systems, as a technologist, you look for any data that you can use to match records, but there are some limitations in healthcare based on regulations as to what you can do, which creates some challenges.

Q: How do you envision Jitterbit's role in healthcare in the future?

One example of what we hope to do is our recent engagement with the American Society for Clinical Oncology. They have undertaken a big initiative to work toward providing much higher quality cancer care. All of the 1,500 ASCO member practices basically came together as an organization and said, 'We want to look at the quality of our data and start analyzing it internally to know what kind of patient observations and medication and treatments and outcomes we've had. Also, as a community we want to de-identify any of the protected health information included in that data and look collectively to even derive recommendations for small practices or just look at the trends in cancer care.'

To facilitate that, Jitterbit brings a very extensive set of clinical cancer patient data into CancerLinQ  ASCO's database  from various EHR systems.

We've built knowledge around how to ontologize that data, so we know how to use all the industry codes and apply it to that data even if it doesn't come with industry codes. We can get all that data into a common semantic, and once we do that it can be used in many other places beyond CancerLinQ. So, where I see us going:we're building more and more of that knowledge, we're building more and more of those solutions, which will be needed for anyone who's going to develop a modern application in healthcare.

Secondly, healthcare providers have a number of applications that must interoperate. You can go into a provider network or an integrated delivery network and they've got multiple EHRsthat all have to be able to take patient data and consolidate it. Device manufacturers require integration too. A lot of the treatments that are performed through devices aren't integrated directly into an EHR.

Clinicians have to manually open an EHR and go through to look up patient information, asking the patient along the way for answers they couldn't find to determine whether they can perform a procedure  do they have allergies? When is the last time they had a white blood cell count test? We see a way for us to make using devices much more efficient and less prone to oversight or to errors while also updating EHRs in real time.
Joel T. Allison, president and CEO of Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health, will leave his post next year to take on an advisory role.

Here are 11 things to know about Mr. Allison and his transition.

1. Mr. Allison plans to transition from his current role as president and CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health, to senior advisor to the chairman of the Baylor Scott & White Holdings Board of Trustees, effective Feb. 1, 2017.

2. In his new role, Mr. Allison will advise the board chairman in the areas of advocacy, philanthropy and medical education.

3. Mr. Allison joined Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System as senior executive vice president and COO in 1993, and was promoted to president and CEO in 2000. He became CEO of Baylor Scott & White Health following the 2013 merger of Baylor Health Care System and Temple, Texas-based Scott & White Healthcare.

4. Mr. Allison, in the wake of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, created Baylor's Faith In Action Initiatives, which has since helped communities in dozens of countries through medical missions, disaster relief and by providing supplies to local free-access clinics and ministries, according to Baylor Scott & White Health.

5. Also during Mr. Allison's tenure, Baylor Scott & White Health created an accountable care organization  the Baylor Scott & White Quality Alliance, now one of the largest ACOs in the country.

6. Additionally, Mr. Allison has received various honors and accolades throughout his career, including the prestigious B'nai B'rith National Healthcare Award," which recognizes individuals and corporations "that set the standards for health and education initiatives that better the lives of people throughout their communities and around the world."

7. Outside of leading Baylor Scott & White Health, Mr. Allison serves nationally on the Healthcare Leadership Council, the Wall Street Journal CEO Roundtable and the United Surgical Partners International board.

8. Scott Becker, publisher of Becker's Healthcare, notes Mr. Allison is an unusally gifted leader. "He is high integrity, highly principled and an extremely thoughtful and effective leader," Mr. Becker adds.



9. Following his transition on Feb. 1, 2017, Mr. Allison will office in Temple.

10. Mr. Allison has mixed emotions about the transition. He told Becker's Hospital Review he's excited about the future and spending more time with his wife and six grandchildren, but at the same time, he says it will be difficult leaving a great organization. He added he's truly enjoyed serving with his colleagues at Baylor Scott & White Health and will miss working with them. "It's just been a wonderful wonderful experience for me. I've been blessed. I look forward to the next phase of my life. I know the organization's in great hands," Mr. Allison says.

11. Baylor Scott & White Health will conduct a national search for Mr. Allison's replacement.

More articles on executive moves:

Michael Thompson named CEO of National Business Coalition on Health: 4 things to know

Bassett Healthcare Network names new COO: 4 things to know

Capella Healthcare appoints new CXO: 5 things to know
Amy Ravi was looking for a way to merge her two passions: healthcare and education. So in 2000, she brought them together to found Evanston, Ill.-based ExtendMed.

Ms. Ravi currently continues to serve as founder and CEO of ExtendMed, an information technology company that seeks to simplify the online medical education process. The company helps its clients  medical communications agencies, medical associations and pharmaceutical companies  provide their audiences with medical education and training solutions. ExtendMed is nestled near Northwestern University in Evanston, less than 15 miles north of Chicago.

Here, Ms. Ravi shares which three CEOs she admires most, why Wednesdays are significant and how technology plays a role in healthcare.

Question: What is one of your daily routines?

Amy Ravi: I want to focus on Wednesdays. Wednesdays represent a day that's a good work-life balance. They're a great example of an opportunity to strategize with clients and external customers of ours as well as internal staff.

I start my day with a swim, and I have breakfast with my sons [ages nine and 11]. Then I have a key client meeting. In the afternoon I spend time with a changing team of people internally. We use that meeting to discuss hot projects and ways we can serve our clients, innovate with technology and see how it fits in with our overall strategy.

Q: How does ExtendMed strive to bridge the gap between technology and healthcare?

AR: I've really been interested in turning technology into solving a practical business problem.

This started in my early days after getting my degree in psychology. I was a dream researcher at [Chicago-based] Rush University [Medical Center], where I was quickly challenged by statistical limitations. I then moved into a technology role as director of corporate information. We were just starting to look at electronic health records. We were taking paper-based processes and moving them online. It was a culture shift for hospital organizations.

When I wanted to start a business, I was looking to contain that momentum and combine my interests in education and the healthcare industry. Sixteen years ago, people weren't always as ready to jump into technology as early as we had hoped. But we saw the opportunity to enter the market through some other programs supported by more of the commercial sector and pharmaceutical companies.

Q: Which other CEOs do you admire and why?

AR: I'll start with a broad leader who I think is a tremendous leader in a hard market sector: Jim Sinegal, founder of Costco. What's great about him is that he's managed to achieve high growth and create one of the strongest corporate cultures I can think of. He has an insistence in focusing on the long-term and not just trying to achieve immediate benefits. That's been shown as much in his mistakes as in his successes.

Another person is a woman leader named Katharine Graham. She ran The Washington Post at a critical time in history. What stands out for me with her is she had a lot of courage. The Washington Post was a family newspaper, and although she'd been to school and trained as a reporter and publisher, her father handed over the business to her husband. Her husband had mental health issues, and she gracefully ran the paper until she was handed over the reins when he committed suicide. She put into place some really strong editors and helped expose the Watergate scandal.

Personally, I look up to Pat Skarulis, CIO of [New York City-based] Memorial Sloan Kettering [Cancer Center]. For many years, she was my best mentor and such a strong leader. Pat taught me how to motivate teams to deliver exceptional results. She was the CIO at Rush when there wasn't a CIO before her. Within the organization, she was able to build a strong committee and consensus around being an early EHR adopter.

Q: What are some challenges you and your company have faced along the way?

AR: We've gone through several iterations of our company. One was about 10 years ago when environmental factors took hold. The industry and government cracked down on pharma companies and the role they could play in influencing accredited education. In the process, there were a number of medical education firms that shut down. Our business ended up shifting  we shifted our target market and focus within the business.

Another interesting iteration of our business is the technology shift. Sixteen years ago, when we proposed video to our clients, they gave us a deer in the headlights look. Now video is part of our solution for almost every client. What [our clients] are looking for is a more value-based offering that might include webcasts but is really offering a means of engaging physicians consistently.

Q: What is one word, phrase or idea you think should be used more in healthcare?

AR: One thing I'd like to see more pronounced in healthcare and throughout our education product is the idea of coordinating care across healthcare professions over a longer period. There have been so many pushes against coordinated care, and it's harder to think about it when EHRs don't do a lot of data sharing. But we need to be thinking about the person holistically. The challenge is to build up the systems to support that.
South Georgia Medical Center, based in Valdosta, reportedly cancelled all subscriptions to the local Valdosta Daily Times, banned newspaper sales from all of its hospital campuses and cancelled its advertising in the newspaper and its website, according to the publication.

The hospital cancelled its subscription the day the newspaper published an article about its authority violating the state's sunshine law, called "Hospital Authority violating state law." The article calls for SGMC's governing authority, the Hospital Authority of Valdosta and Lowndes County, to stop meeting privately.

The newspaper asserts that the hospital authority violated the Georgia Open Meetings Act before, and it frequently does not discuss its actions in the open public meetings.

"That must mean either deliberations are taking place illegally outside of the public purview or that decisions are being made unilaterally without the knowledge and consent of authority members," the article reads. "In either case, it is wrong, it is a violation of the law and a violation of the public trust."

The Valdosta Daily Times also claims it attempted to address its concerns with the hospital administrator to no avail.

Becker's Hospital Review reached out to SGMC for a statement, but it did not immediately respond.

More articles on leadership and management:

Making wellness a part of company culture: 3 guiding principles

After catastrophic failure, why don't some organizations learn?

NPR poll finds most Americans feel ACA had no personal impact
March 1 has arrived and voters will head to the polls this evening in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

About one-quarter of the Republican delegates are at stake and about one-fifth of Democratic delegates are at stake, according to The Hill.

Here are five trends we will be watching tonight.

1. The media is turning on Republican candidate Donald Trump  will voters? Headlines in the opinion pages like this one in The Atlantic "Why Liberals Should Vote for Marco Rubio," or CNN's "GOP's Trump revolt: Too little too late?" or The New York Times' "Inside the Clinton Team's Plan to Defeat Donald Trump" are popping up around the web, presenting a more pointed, actionable route against Mr. Trump, who currently leads the Republican race.

2. Republican hopefuls Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) could together block a Trump win. Texas holds 155 delegates and Mr. Trump does not lead in the polls there, according to The New York Times. It is a test for Sen. Cruz, as it is his home state. If Sen. Cruz cannot win Texas, Mr. Trump will have solidified a large lead. Sen. Rubio also presents a challenge  while he does not lead polls in any state, he could take second in many, and experts are pointing to Minnesota as a potential victory for him. Super Tuesday may make it clearer if one of these candidates should drop the race so their voters can unite against Mr. Trump.

3. The Democratic race hinges on minority voters. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is expected to do well with black voters in the South, as she did in South Carolina, according to The New York Times. This is perhaps the biggest threat to her challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

4. Sen. Sanders will likely focus on Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota, according to The New York Times. These three states have high populations of white liberals. He is sure to take his home state of Vermont, but will have to close the margins significantly in other states. However, The Hill notes he has plenty of funding to continue to battle it out with Ms. Clinton after March 1.

5. The "surprise" states will be Minnesota, Arkansas and Alaska. According to The Hill, no candidates have spent time or money in Alaska, minimal polling in Minnesota makes it tough to predict and Arkansas is up in the air on the Republican side, though fairly locked in for Ms. Clinton on the Democratic side.

More articles on leadership and management:

The most powerful health systems are rooted in these 5 core concepts

After catastrophic failure, why don't some organizations learn?

IASIS President and CEO named board chairman of Federation of American Hospitals
Walgreens is running from its partnership with Palo Alto-based Theranos, and fast, according to "people familiar with the matter," The Financial Times reported.

Walgreens lawyers are examining the contract to see if there is a way to terminate its deal with the blood testing startup, which hosts 40 clinics in Walgreens' Arizona stores.

The source told The Financial Times that Walgreens executives are wary of the negative publicity associated with the Theranos partnership and not confident the company can quickly clear up regulatory issues. CMS found deficient practices at Theranos' Newark, Calif.-based lab during a November inspection and the company submitted a plan of correction in February. It also faced scrutiny last fall over its "nanotainer," or tiny vial, of blood, which the FDA declared an uncleared medical device. Theranos said it addressed the issues from the FDA inspection.

If Walgreens finds a way to pull the plug, Theranos would suffer significantly. The startup's $350 million deal with grocery chain Safeway collapsed last fall, making Walgreens one of its most important partners.

More articles on leadership and management:

The most powerful health systems are rooted in these 5 core concepts

After catastrophic failure, why don't some organizations learn?

IASIS President and CEO named board chairman of Federation of American Hospitals
Nineteen civil rights groups penned a letter to Walgreens to voice concerns over the company's first partnership with a Catholic hospital system: Renton, Wash.-based Providence Health & Services, according to The Oregonian.

Through an affiliation, the retail pharmacy and the health system are jointly operating three in the Seattle area, opened three clinics Monday in the Portland area and have plans to open 19 more throughout Oregon and Washington, according to the report. The aim of the partnership is to bring more patients into the Providence system and appeal to patients who need quick appointments, according to the report.

However, the civil rights groups wrote in the letter about concerns that care will be limited by religious doctrine, according to the report.

Walgreens responded and said the affiliation won't affect the pharmacy services it provides or the policies provided at the clinics. In fact, Providence Medical Group CMO Ben LeBlanc, MD, noted that the clinics are not even designed to offer services that might fall under the concerns of the civil rights groups, according to the report. The express clinics are for common colds, cuts, rashes, stomach pains, sprains and other routine preventive care.

"The item that would be most likely to come up in these retail settings would be around birth control," Dr. LeBlanc told The Oregonian. "In all of our clinics the decisions around prescribing birth control is left to the provider and patient. They together determine what's the best course of action for that patient."

The clinics may provide a one-time refill of a birth control prescription, but are not meant to provide long-term gynecological care, according to a statement from Providence cited in the report.

More articles on leadership and management:

NPR poll finds most Americans feel ACA had no personal impact

Productivity, strategy and culture: 10 must-reads for healthcare leaders this week

7 healthcare layoffs in February
If you're a married physician, where are you most likely to work? If your spouse is well-educated, chances are that it's not in a rural, underserved area.

The discovery is from a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Here are six findings from the study.

1. The study looked at a number of physicians over the course of many years. For every decade from 1960 to 2000, researchers analyzed 1 percent of employed physicians between the ages of 25 and 70. To gather their results, they also examined 1 percent of employed physicians in the same age group every year from 2005 to 2011. The data was obtained from the Decennial Census and the American Community Survey.

2. The percentage of physicians married to a highly educated spouse increased 45.2 percentage points between 1960 and 2010. In the study, a highly educated spouse was defined as a person with six or more years of college (for data before 1990) and a person with a master's degree or higher (for data after 1990). In 1960, 8.8 percent of physicians were married to well-educated spouses, and in 2010, 54.1 percent of physicians were married to highly educated spouses.

3. Physicians with highly educated spouses weren't as likely to work in certain areas. The researchers found across the board, physicians with well-educated spouses weren't as likely to practice in rural areas, including designated Health Professional Shortage Areas.

4. Other groups were also less likely to practice in rural areas. Single physicians, young physicians, female physicians, African American physicians and Hispanic physicians were not as likely to work in rural, underserved areas. Between 2005 and 2011, only 5.3 percent of physicians worked in rural HPSAs.

5. One of the study's co-authors proposed a potential solution. Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN, a co-author of the study, said the results are indicative of the growing need for policymakers to encourage physicians to practice in rural parts of the nation. Along with the other study authors, Dr. Buerhaus suggested initiatives should be taken to address this problem. For example, telemedicine provisions could be put in place so physicians can practice in rural areas without having to relocate.

6. Dr. Buerhaus also outlined another solution. He suggested nurse practitioners can play a large role in solving the rural medical provider shortage. "Other recently published studies show that nurse practitioners are more likely than physicians to practice in rural areas and underserved areas," he said, according to Montana State University News Service. "...[P]olicymakers need to broaden their approach and consider increasing the number of nurse practitioners as a means to provide healthcare to these populations."
Intermountain's Provo-based Utah Valley Hospital teamed up with Salt Lake City-based Primary Children's Hospital to bring children in Utah County and central Utah pediatric healthcare services closer to home.

The partnership, which has been in the works for more than five years, creates the Utah Valley Hospital Primary Children's Network, which expands pediatric care at Utah Valley with 26 recruited sub-specialists.

"Local pediatricians and family medicine physicians have done an excellent job caring for children in our community. The goal of this new partnership is to have a network of Primary Childrens care throughout select parts of Utah so children can receive specialized care closer to home," Russell Osguthorpe, MD, Utah Valley's pediatric medical director, said in a statement.

The Kahlert Foundation, a charitable organization founded by the Kahlert family, pledged to give $3 million to support the launch of the pediatric partnership.

More articles on integration and physician issues:

DuPage Medical Group adds 3 physicians

Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare joins Ascension Wisconsin

In the UK, tens of thousands of nurse, physician jobs vacant
Last week, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter (R) announced the state will be getting its own private medical school: the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine. But not everyone is pleased with that decision.

Although Gov. Otter claimed the school will assist in solving Idaho's physician shortage, Ted Epperly, MD, president and CEO of the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho, thinks otherwise, according to Boise State Public Radio.

Dr. Epperly expressed three primary concerns about the medical school.

1. It will not solve the physician shortage. The state of Idaho has 41 residency positions, all of which are difficult to get due to heightened competition. Dr. Epperly believes many of the Idaho School of Osteopathic Medicine graduates will leave the state for residency due to the few positions available, and that Idaho should attempt to expand existing and form new residency programs rather than open a new medical school.

2. There aren't enough clinical training sites. Approximately 300 third-year and fourth-year medical students will need to find training sites, and they'll have to share them with the nurse practitioner and physician assistant students. Due to limited clinical training sites, students will have a difficult time completing their degrees on time.

3. The school may not give preference to students from Idaho. Gov. Otter and other officials claimed that while analyzing applications, the Idaho School of Osteopathic Medicine will give preference to Idaho students. However, Dr. Epperly thinks otherwise. He believes the high volume of applicants from around the nation will prevent the school from giving preference to Idaho students.
The following is a roundup of recently introduced legislation and legislative developments affecting the healthcare industry.

1. Conn. legislation proposes capping nonprofit hospital CEO pay at $500k

Amid increasing acrimony over hospital funding in the Connecticut state budget, a legislator proposed mandating nonprofit hospitals that pay administrators more than $500,000 per year pay municipal property taxes.

2. Wyoming Senate passes alternative Medicaid expansion bill

The Wyoming Senate passed an alternative Medicaid expansion bill, which will help form a program that will give assistance to individuals who can't afford health coverage.

3. Senators push for law to help support opioid-addicted parents

Key members of the Senate Committee on Finance are working on legislation to allow states to use some foster care funds to support parents who are addicted to opioids in raising their infants.

4. Freestanding EDs could be harder to open in Rhode Island: 4 things to know

Rhode Island lawmakers are considering legislation that would make it harder to open freestanding emergency departments in the state.

5. Why one hospital merger could be off limits to the FTC

A bill in the West Virginia legislature would allow the merger between Cabell Huntington (W.Va.) Hospital and Huntington-based St. Mary's Medical Center to go through without approval from the Federal Trade Commission.

6. Okla. nurse practitioners want to work without physician supervision

Nurse practitioners in Oklahoma are urging state lawmakers to pass legislation that would allow them to work independently.

7. New draft of Senate HELP committee's health IT bill includes proposal for EHR star-rating system

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions published an updated version of its health IT bill. The latest draft includes the addition of a new name for the bill  the "Improving Health Information Technology Act"  and has been trimmed from 68 pages to 51.

8. Fla. Senate subcommittee passes hospital price transparency bill

The "Transparency in Healthcare" bill cleared a major hurdle in January when the Florida Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services passed the legislation.

9. Nebraska bill to shield sexual assault victims from certain medical bills

A bill pending in Nebraska's legislature would create a statewide fund to protect sexual assault victims from receiving medical bills for forensic rape examinations and other sexual assault services.

10. Assault on healthcare workers a felony?

A bill crafted to help protect healthcare workers from attacks passed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives unanimously Feb. 10.

More articles on health law:

Did Blue Cross cause Alabama hospitals to close? A federal judge wants to know

US rakes in $2.4B in healthcare fraud recoveries

12 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements
The Florida teen who has been caught multiple times posing as a physician was arrested again Tuesday on charges of fraud and larceny, just two weeks after an initial arrest for practicing medicine without a license, according to NBC Miami.

In his latest run in with the law, 18-year-old Malachi Love-Robinson allegedly defrauded a woman by charging nearly $3,500 for five house calls to treat stomach pains and forging checks from her bank account, according to NBC Miami.

According to the patient's allegations, Mr. Love-Robinson called an ambulance to her residence and and advised her to leave her purse at home while she went to the hospital. Upon her return, she realized her bank account was emptied, according to the report.

Prior to these charges, Mr. Love-Robinson was held at Palm Beach County Jail in February for performing physical exams and giving medical advice to people at an illegal medical office in West Palm Beach, Fla. He was also caught at West Palm Beach-based St. Mary's Medical Center in January 2015 after pretending to be a physician there for a month.

More news:

Walgreens seeks ways to ax Theranos partnership for good

CDC confirms Zika infections in 9 pregnant US residents

Los Angeles County health department suffers ransomware attack
In a letter to the Department of Justice, the American Hospital Association said Anthem's proposed acquisition of Cigna would reduce the ability of other health insurers to compete with Blue Cross Blue Shield plans.

In its letter, the AHA raised concerns about the anticompetitive potential of the Anthem-Cigna merger, including Anthem's affiliation with BCBS.

"The acquisition threatens to both reinforce existing barriers to entry and raise new ones, further entrench dominant Blues plans, and exacerbate conditions conducive to abuse of market or monopoly power," wrote Melinda Reid Hatton, AHA senior vice president and general counsel.

Collectively, Anthem and other BCBS plans cover 105 million lives, according to the AHA. The addition of Cigna adds 14.7 million lives, representing a 14 percent increase in the lives covered by BCBS plans nationwide.

More articles on payer issues:



CMS finalizes changes to ACA marketplace: 6 things to know

Aetna CEO reverses opinion, now 'likes' ACA exchanges

Fitch: Blue Cross hit hard by ACA losses
Venous thromboembolism is a leading cause of hospital readmissions after total joint replacements. But in many cases, VTE is preventable if patients comply with postoperative protocol; they often do at the hospital, but once patients return home it's harder to monitor and ensure they're following the recovery plan.

Avoiding hospital readmissions is always preferable to achieve the best outcomes and reduce costs. However, decreasing readmissions will become even more crucial as providers switch to bundled payments, either under the CMS Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement model or private payer arrangements.

"Up to this point, there has been a tremendous amount of work done pre-surgery to improve quality and reduce costs, from driving down implant costs to preparing patients for a quick recovery, but now we are really focused on what happens in the 90 days after surgery," says John Krier, vice president of billing solutions for Breg. His company is focused on designing IT solutions and orthopedic devices for patients to use when they return home, and provide education on appropriate use.

DVT initial hospitalizations cost $30,051 and pulmonary embolism costs hospitals $37,006, according to a January 2015 Clinical Therapeutics article. Pharmacological treatment can reduce DVT to 29 percent to 53 percent while intermittent pneumatic compression prophylaxis can reduce DVT risk to 17 percent, according to an August 2000 article in The Bone & Joint Journal.

Data shows complications are more likely after patients return home from the hospital; 50 percent to 75 percent of the hospital readmissions related to VTE occur within 9.7 days of discharge for total knee replacement and within 21.5 days of discharge for total hip replacements, according to a 2012 article published in Orthopedics.

"The patients might do everything right in the hospital and when they are released home their risk of DVT goes up. But we can reduce the DVT risk by up to 75 percent with remarkably easy solutions like the VPULSE which can bring the compression technology to the home," says Mr. Krier. "We also use instructional videos that patients can play on their smart devices or from our website to learn about using the device. We have customer service available to them as well."

The technology provides intermittent compression and continuous cold therapy to address discomfort and reduce DVT. The technology also tracks patient compliance and can share with providers whether the patient is using the technology correctly.

Physical therapy is another crucial aspect of the postoperative period. Many patients return to the hospital, especially after total hip replacement, with stiffness because they weren't compliant with their PT.

"If the patient isn't active with their therapy, they return and might need more surgeries," says Mr. Krier. "Interactive solutions can help these patients stay active and surgeons are looking at new solutions that send information directly to the EMR so they don't lose sight of the patient's recovery."

Breg is focused on providing solutions for the post-surgical portion of the orthopedic episode where there is the most cost variability. In addition to VPULSE, Breg is developing a mobile health platform to help address the cost resulting from a lack of patient compliance with at-home rehabilitation.

"We have to target the major complications and cost areas post-surgically and the procedures we could avoid with our products," says Mr. Krier. "Many companies have looked at treating the issues after the fact, but we need to become more proactive."

The challenges going forward will be matching the data outcomes with the right clinicians and payers. "That will be an opportunity for us in the future; we want to make sure we're tackling the right challenges in the right order," says Mr. Krier.
Here are 12 spine surgeons and neurosurgeons that joined new organizations or received promotions in February.

Spine surgeon Glenn Trent, MD, joined Mountain Spine Care in Clyde, N.C.

Neurosurgeon Fassil Mesfin, MD, PhD, joined Osage Beach, Mo.-based Lake Regional Health System.

Dayton, Ohio-based Clinical Neuroscience Institute welcomed Jonathan Tuttle, MD.

Pediatric neurosurgeons Mark Souweindane, MD, Jeffrey Greenfield, MD, and Caitlin Hoffman, MD, joined New York Methodist Hospital.

Neurosurgeon Robert Galler, DO, joined Maine Spine Surgery at Mercy Hospital in Portland.

Houston-based Hermann Drive Surgical Center of Nobilis Health System welcomed orthopedic spine surgeon Vivek Kushwaha, MD.

Selvon F. St. Clair, MD, PhD, became the director of spine surgery at St. Rita's Medical Center in Lima, Ohio.

Franciscan Alliance in Indiana welcomed neurosurgeon George DePhillips, MD.

Fresno (Calif.) Cancer Center named Victor Perry, MD, the new medical director of neurosurgical oncology.

Juan Ronderos, MD, a minimally invasive spine surgeon, joined Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, Fla.
To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below
Some of our top brand name beds


























Leaving the EU would be "cataclysmic" for Northern Ireland companies, the Ulster Unionists' business spokesman has said.

Mark Cosgrove, director of Ireland and Scotland for logistics firm Redhead International, said a split with the EU would be the "nastiest and messiest divorce".

He added: "My strong opinion is that it would be a disaster in general, and in the case of Northern Ireland, it would be cataclysmic.

"I think that having secured 12.5% corporation tax, to leave the EU at the same time would be economic madness. What would be our unique selling point as against the Republic?

"Because of our position in the western peninsula of Europe, one of the reasons people choose to invest here is our access to the south and the rest of Europe."

Mr Cosgrove's company is an independent freight business based in England but with depots in Dublin and Belfast.

The firm employs 350 people in the UK and 45 in Northern Ireland, and it makes deliveries between the UK and Ireland and into mainland Europe. Mr Cosgrove said he was speaking as a businessperson rather than for the party, which is yet to state its official position on a Brexit.

The Antrim and Newtownabbey councillor said people cited the trade deficit with the EU as a reason to leave, with the value of our imports outweighing the value of exports to the organisation.

But Mr Cosgrove added: "That trade deficit relates largely to high-end products coming in, such as cars from Germany. That doesn't take account of the large numbers of ordinary goods being transported back and forward every day of the week from the UK to the EU, such as packaging and foodstuffs."

Renewed border controls - for example, between Northern Ireland and the Republic - could affect the profit margin on such products, he claimed. "There's no doubt that business will lose out," he said. And the logistics director said the pro-Brexit argument in general was "like looking at just one side of the balance sheet, at liabilities instead of assets". "I'll be very much arguing that the balance sheet is still in favour of staying in Europe," he added.

He also said there was a lack of clarity around from the Brexit side: "It can't tell us what this is all going to look like. It's all hypothetical."

First Minister Arlene Foster has said that the DUP has been traditionally Eurosceptic and would be supporting a Brexit.

But she added it was subjective and that DUP members and voters would have "differing views".
Northern Ireland's commercial property market has had a strong start to the year and is not feeling the effects of uncertainty over a potential UK exit from the EU, a new report has said.

A report by the CBRE says that activity for the first two months of the year has been "quite encouraging".

That was despite "turmoil on global financial markets since the beginning of 2016, increased focus on the potential implications of Brexit" as well as bad business news closer to home.

And some of the new additions to Belfast's retail landscape include the sister brand of Spanish retail success story Zara, Stradivarius.

It is launching its first Northern Ireland store at Donegall Place, with work due to begin soon.

The label, which is aimed at women aged between 20 and 35, was established in 1994. It arrived in the UK last year.

Meanwhile, Ed's Easy Diner is in the middle of fitting out its second store in Belfast's Castle Lane, after launching its first restaurant on the Boucher Road last year.

Other lettings include Danish retailer Tiger, likened to "Ikea without the furniture", also located at Castle Lane.

The CBRE says that "occupancy rates in the retail sector continue to improve, on the main high streets and better performing retail schemes".

Nationwide is also soon to move into its new home at Donegall Place, moving from the Scottish Mutual Building, which is being turned into a hotel.

Plans have now been submitted for the new location, with work expected to begin soon. The CBRE also said there had been an uplift in demand for office space and industrial buildings.

That includes Boston tech firm Cayan, which announced plans to expand into the City Quays building.

The report says "appetite also remains strong for investment assets that are currently being marketed". Some of the big commercial properties currently on the market include Tesco Extra in Craigavon.

But a number of others have already crossed the line, or are at the final stages of being sold.

They include Junction One and The Outlet. The Belfast Telegraph revealed in January that both retail sites had been sold for less than their asking price of 58m.

Meanwhile, Bloomfield Shopping Centre in Bangor was sold to investment fund Ellandi for 54m.

The report says "one of the most noteworthy investment properties to come onto the market since Christmas and which is generating considerable interest is The Gateway office building in Belfast, which is guiding 29m". And according to the CBRE, it expects a number of hotels to go on the market in Belfast over the next few months.

That includes the Balmoral Hotel in west Belfast, which is now on sale.

A lack of grade A office space in Belfast also means rents here will "continue to increase over the course of the year".
The owner of the New York Stock Exchange is considering gatecrashing the London Stock Exchange's proposed 20bn merger plan with a possible rival bid for the British bourse.

Intercontinental Exchange (Ice) confirmed it was mulling an offer for the London Stock Exchange (LSE), although it stressed it had not approached the group's board and had yet to decide whether to make a bid.

The LSE, which owns index compiler FTSE, last week announced a proposed "merger of equals" with Germany's Deutsche Borse.

But the businesses said their tie-up would see Deutsche Borse shareholders own more than 54% of the combined group and would lead to the departure of LSE chief executive Xavier Rolet.

The LSE saw its shares jump to a record high of 29.14 at one stage after Ice revealed its bid interest, surging by around 8%.

Ice now has until 5pm on March 29 to make a firm bid or walk away under City takeover "put up or shut up" rules.

Its plans could scupper the LSE and Deutsche Borse merger, which already marks a third move by the pair to join forces after two previous failed attempts in 2000 and 2004-5.

But the LSE said talks with Deutsche Borse "continue to progress", adding it had not yet received a proposal from Ice.

Their possible merger is also under a cloud of uncertainty cast by Britain's EU referendum, with both the LSE and the Deutsche Borse warning last week that it could be derailed in the event of a vote for Brexit.

The bourses said a Brexit "would put that project at risk" and have formed a referendum committee to assess the outcome of the referendum on June 23.

Their proposed all-share deal would see LSE shareholders hold 45.6% of the group and Deutsche Borse the remaining 54.4%.

It would also see Deutsche Borse boss Carsten Kengeter become chief executive of the combined company and LSE's Donald Brydon taking up the role of chairman.
The Rolling Stones have lined up a concert in Havana

The Rolling Stones will become the first British band to play an open air concert in Cuba.

Sir Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood will play for free at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana in Havana on March 25.

In a statement, The Rolling Stones said: "We have performed in many special places during our long career, but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too."

The Rolling Stones concert, which has been in the planning stages for several months, comes only days after President Barack Obama's recently announced visit to Cuba.

The band are also leading a musician to musician initiative in which musical instruments and equipment are being donated by major suppliers for the benefit of Cuban musicians of all genres.

Donors include The Gibson Foundation, Vic Firth, Zildjian, Latin Percussion, Roland and Boss, with additional assistance from the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation.

The Rolling Stones are currently on tour in South America for their America Latina Ole tour, which is receiving rave reviews.

They have played to huge audiences in cities including Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro, with Lima, Bogota and Mexico City following next week.

The Rolling Stones Concert For Amity will be filmed and produced by award winning production company JA Digital.

Paul Dugdale, the filmmaker who helmed One Direction: Where We Are is directing.

The producers will be Simon Fisher of Ed Sheeran: Live at Wembley Stadium fame, and Sam Bridger who produced The Rolling Stones: Sweet Summer Sun - Hyde Park Live.

Julie Jakobek of JA Digital said: "It's a great honour to be working with the Rolling Stones again on this hugely exciting and historic event".

In the years following the Cuban Revolution, which culminated with Fidel Castro becoming prime minister in 1959, rock music was viewed as a symbol of Western capitalism in the Communist country.

Following the Cuba concert, The Rolling Stones will fly to London to open Exhibitionism, the band's first ever exhibition, at the Saatchi Gallery on April 4.
The 1975 and Jake Bugg have joined the line-up for BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend Exeter 2016.

They will perform alongside Coldplay, Ellie Goulding, Craig David, Chase And Status and Bring Me The Horizon, who were announced in early February. The event will take place on May 28 and 29 in Exeter.

Nick Grimshaw revealed the news during his BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show, where he was joined by The 1975 and Bugg.

The two acts joined up on Monday night at Radio 1 Presents for a performance at London's O2 Forum in Kentish Town, alongside Lady Leshurr, before appearing on Grimshaw's show on Tuesday morning.

The 1975, whose hits include Girls and Love Me, played the festival when it was in Derry-Londonderry in 2013 and Glasgow in 2014.

The alternative rock band from Manchester said: "We're really excited to be playing in Exeter for Radio 1's Big Weekend. We loved playing Derry-Londonderry and Glasgow and are really pleased to be heading back for a third time."

Bugg, known for songs including Two Fingers and Lightning Bolt, also played the festival in 2013 and 2014.

Big Weekend, now in its 13th year, is Europe's largest free ticketed festival. Since 2003, the event has travelled to different cities in the UK.

Thousands of fans will be able to attend the event at Powderham Castle, while listeners will be able to tune in to the festival on Radio 1.

:: Ticketing details will be announced on March 21. The festival will be broadcast live on Radio 1 and streamed online.
The Apprentice star Dr Leah Totton has used the opening of her new cosmetic surgery clinic to take her romance with Mark Wright public for the first time.

The Londonderry entrepreneur confirmed her relationship with the former Apprentice contestant when she shared an Instagram snap showing them enjoying a romantic dinner together in Mexico as well as enjoying some quality time on Valentine's Day.

She claimed the Apprentice crown in 2013 with a plan to launch a 'Botox empire' of cosmetic clinics. Dr Totton's win resulted in Lord Alan Sugar parting with 250,000 to invest in the business.

The new couple made their debut appearance on the red carpet for Dr Leah's Cosmetic Skin Clinic event in Essex. Australian-born Mark, who won The Apprentice in 2014, was there to support his girlfriend and afterwards spoke of how proud he was of her.

The glamorous event was also attended by reality TV stars Chloe Lewis, Kate Wright, Amy Childs and Frankie Essex as well as business partner Lord Sugar. Now opening her second clinic in Essex, Dr Leah spoke about the impact celebrities have on people's image. "The access to celebrities and the increased influence of social media puts a lot of focus on appearance," she told the Daily Star Online.

"In the 90s it was all about being very thin. Victoria Beckham was a real trend leader then, but now in consultation after consultation I'm shown photos of the Kardashians."

As an industry leader of medical regulation and thorough consultation, Dr Leah said ensuring client expectations are met and carried out safely are at the forefront of her business model.

She conceded that the rise of celebrity culture can create unrealistic beauty standards and even lead to cosmetic surgery addiction. "When you're looking towards celebrities it's important to remember they typify the top 5% of the population looks-wise.

"They tend to be from model and acting backgrounds and that can be unrealistic at times."

Dr Leah joked that she's known as 'Dr No' on the cosmetic circuit because of her reluctance to work with prospective patients who might be turning to procedures for the wrong reasons, but stressed that this was something she was proud of.
Actor Bill Roache has led tributes to "the father of Coronation Street", its creator, Tony Warren, who has died aged 79.

Best-known for his role as Ken Barlow in the soap, Roache had worked with Warren since the show's first episode on December 9 1960.

He said: "When I first met Tony I couldn't quite believe he'd created and written Coronation Street because he was no more than a young boy.

"It was his boyish energy even recently when I saw him again that I'll remember. I loved Tony's energy. He was the father of Coronation Street and he gave us all so much.

"He will be so desperately missed because of who he was and what he did. We owe him so much."

ITV confirmed the news of Warren's death, saying in a statement he had " passed away peacefully last night (March 1) surrounded by his loving friends, aged 79, after a short illness".

It continued: "All who worked with Tony throughout his illustrious career had the utmost respect for his achievements and he remained a consultant on the Manchester-based soap until the day he died.

"He was considered one of the television industry's greatest minds as he devised the idea for the Weatherfield soap at the age of 24, at the very beginning of his acclaimed writing career."

Corrie actress Helen Worth, who worked with Warren for 42 years, hailed him as a "genius of our time" and " the dearest, funniest and most inspirational man of his generation".

She said he would "live on forever through Coronation Street".

Long-standing cast member Antony Cotton, who has been in the show since 2003, also remembered him, writing on Twitter: "He leaves the greatest legacy. I'll miss him so much."

Warren devised the idea for the Weatherfield soap at the age of 24, at the very beginning of his writing career.

Born Anthony McVay Simpson in Eccles, Manchester, Warren was a regular visitor to the soap's set in Trafford, Greater Manchester.

He loved catching up with the cast and crew during breaks in filming. He also offered the actors insightful feedback about their characters and storylines.

Credited with creating one of the most successful programmes in British television history, the Coronation Street creator adopted the stage surname of Warren during his early acting career as a successful child star.

He trained at the Elliott Clarke Theatre School in Liverpool and became a regular on Children's Hour on BBC Radio.

He also acted in many radio plays and performed with the actors who were later to become household names in Coronation Street, most notably Violet Carson, who played battleaxe Ena Sharples, and Doris Speed, who became famous as Annie Walker.

In 1960, Warren's initial scripts for Coronation Street were commissioned by Granada Television for the ITV network.

He went on to write the first 13 episodes of the long-running soap and, a lmost overnight, Coronation Street became a success.

Warren wrote scripts for Granada Television on a full-time basis until 1968. He then worked on other television dramas and went on to craft several critically acclaimed novels in the 1990s, although his association with Coronation Street continued.

He wrote episodes for the soap until the late 1970s.

Warren is survived by his cousin Roy, his loving and devoted friends and his colleagues at Coronation Street who in later years became like family to him.
Pallbearers carry the coffin of actor Frank Kelly at his funeral at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Blackrock, Dublin

Actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy Father Ted, was remembered at his funeral as a loving family man as well as a comic legend.

Hundreds of mourners, including stars of the stage and screen, turned out to say a final goodbye to the veteran performer at a moving, sometimes funny, service at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Dublin's Blackrock.

Irish President Michael D Higgins, Father Ted co-creators Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews as well as Ardal O'Hanlon, who played the hapless Fr Dougal in the TV series, were among those paying their respects.

In an emotional tribute, the actor's son Emmet joked: "When he gets to heaven, when they chose to let Father Jack through the duty free at pearly gates, they'll have no choice - It will be the first time anyone ever told St Peter to feck off."

Kelly's simple wooden coffin, adorned with bouquets of white lilies, was placed before the altar with a black and white photograph of the actor placed on top throughout the Mass.

Having spent 60 years in theatre and on television, Kelly, who died on Sunday aged 77, is mostly widely remembered for his feisty parody of the drunken priest Fr Jack.

Despite his role in lampooning the Catholic Church, chief celebrant Father Bill Fortune said the late actor was in fact a devoted church-goer with a deep faith.

He pointed to the exact seat Kelly took "Sunday after Sunday" and which was "probably contoured to his person".

Paraphrasing Napoleon, the parish priest said his friend and parishioner had "2 o'clock in the morning courage", not a hot-headed but a cool courage, as he battled Parkinson's disease, cancer and a failing heart over the past decade.

A number of poignant gifts were brought to the altar including the Irish Times crossword, which he undertook every day, and a picture of his beloved 40 Foot, a swimming hole in Dublin Bay where he plunged into daily.

A picture of the family pet Lucky "who is already missing him" was placed next to them.

Along with 17 flowers, representing each of his grandchildren, a copy of his recently published autobiography The Next Gig was also brought to the altar.

"Dad's next gig is in the best theatre hall," remarked Emmet.

Father Fortune told the packed congregation Kelly was many things - a son, a sibling, a friend, a husband, a father, a grandfather, actor, writer and parishioner.

"But none of those could encapsulate or define him," he added.

"He was much more than that."

Such was his renown, "Father Jack" was trending on Twitter ahead of Donald Trump and Leonardo DiCaprio for a short while after his death, quipped Emmet.

"That's pretty cool," he added.

After the service, Father Ted co-writer Matthews described Kelly as a legend.

"He was naturally very funny, he was great, he had a great life," he said.

"He packed a lot in. He'll be missed, he was a legendary figure in Irish comedy."

He is survived by his wife Bairbre, children Aideen, Fiona, Jayne, Ruth, Emmet, Stephen and Rachel, and his grandchildren.
Richard Gere attending a screening of his new film Time Out Of Mind at the Curzon Cinema in London

Richard Gere has said making his film about homelessness brought home how similar it is to "solitary confinement".

Time Out Of Mind follows the story of Gere's character George, as he survives on the streets of New York - and finds refuge and company in a homeless centre.

Speaking at a VIP screening at the Curzon Mayfair, Gere said: "I n the process of making the film, I might have learned more how quickly one can mentally deteriorate, and the isolation that one can feel in the streets.

"Even in a city like New York - 12 million people passing by - without the social interaction, it's like solitary confinement.

"How quickly those issues come up, and how difficult it becomes to be retrieved once that process of falling off the cliff of mental stability starts to happen."

But he continued: "I didn't want to play him as an eccentric, mentally ill guy acting out. It seemed a movie cliche, and we want to break those kind of cliches. It's you or me, it's any of us."

Time Out Of Mind has been a passion project for Gere, who has spent over 12 years working on the movie.

The Pretty Woman star put himself in the position of a homeless man on the streets of New York, with much of the movie shot by long-range lens. No one recognised him.

The film sees George struggle with feelings of worthlessness as he struggles to get hold of his birth certificate, find places to stay, and mend his relationship with his daughter.

At one point, George says in despair: "I'm nobody, I don't exist."

Gere, 66, said: " All of us are human beings, and none of us are beyond redemption.

"None of us are beyond concern, care, that feeling of being precious to someone - our community, our tribe, our village, our social group. We all need that desperately."

On responses to the film, which was first premiered at Toronto Film Festival in 2014, he said: "T he two reactions that I really love are homeless people themselves - they see the movie and say, that's it. That's exactly the way it is. And not just the facts, the way it feels.

"The other group is people who have seen the film and said, you know, for the first time in my life I'm actually stopping and talking to that guy, or woman, on the street. That homeless person that I just have walked by for years.

"And it's been kind of an amazing experience to realise their humanity, and in the process find more of my own."

:: Time Out Of Mind will be in cinemas from March 4.
Sheridan Smith will be taking "each day as it comes", the production said

Sheridan Smith has said she felt "pressured" to return to the stage after her father was taken ill.

The actress pulled out of Tuesday's performance of Funny Girl The Musical and initially planned to perform on Wednesday - but is now set to miss the show and "take each day as it comes", the production said.

In a now-deleted tweet, the actress wrote: "You have no idea what I'm getting pressured into. They don't give a f*** about my dad!"

A spokesperson for the production said: "Our priority at this time is to Sheridan and her family. Sheridan's primary concern is quite rightly her father's wellbeing, and we support her wholeheartedly.

"We would never ask nor expect an artist to perform in this situation, and ask that you respect her and her family's privacy at this time."

The actress, 34, shared with her Twitter followers on Tuesday: "Had shit news 2day,sorry I can't make the show for u loyal fans,if u ask they give u tix to the Savoy!"

Funny Girl is playing at the Menier Chocolate Factory theatre but will transfer to the Savoy Theatre on April 8.

She added: "it's one, hate missing shows but pappa needs me x"

The Cilla star also responded to disappointed theatre-goers with offers to arrange and fund the tickets herself.

On Wednesday, she tweeted: "People think I pulled out of funny Girl, not just yet.I mssed 1 show last night, back to finish this week @MenChocFactory then we'll see".

She added: "I'm back tonight, apologies for last night, I would've just sobbed throughout :) back tonight with dad's support x ... comin back tonight,the show is my escapism&dad wants me on.Hated missing last night,needed a min to take it all in".

But the actress is no longer set to perform on Wednesday evening.

The spokesperson said: "She will not be performing in Funny Girl this evening (Wednesday), and we will take each day as it comes. Tonight's performance of Funny Girl will go ahead with her understudy Natasha J Barnes.

"The run of Funny Girl at the Menier Chocolate Factory has been a tremendous success, and we look forward to welcoming audiences to the transfer at the Savoy from April.

"For those patrons who have tickets to any affected performances at the Menier and choose not to see the show, the producers are in agreement with Sheridan, and would like to confirm her offer of tickets to see her in Funny Girl at the Savoy.

"Tickets will be subject to availability. Patrons should contact the Menier to make arrangements."

While many fans have been supportive on Twitter, Smith also replied to negative comments directed at her.

In response to one critic, she wrote: "I hope your dad never dies!"

She also tweeted: "2 words, f*** off! Now slag me off papers! U have no idea what my dad means to me. F***. Off!"

She later switched her Twitter account to private, joking to followers: "I'm gonna go private now, tell me if u see a reporter".

In response to a fan tweeting about his tickets for Friday's show, she replied: "I'll hopefully be back to finish friday & Saturday...if they'll let me!"
Author Juno Dawson has joined the judging panel for the 2016 BBC Young Writers' Award (Book Trust/PA)

Transgender author Juno Dawson - formerly James Dawson - has joined the judging panel for the 2016 BBC Young Writers' Award.

Raised in West Yorkshire, she is the author of five novels for young adults including Say Her Name and in 2014 she won the Queen Of Teen award, which celebrates teenage fiction.

Dawson will sit alongside fellow newcomer Anthony Anaxagorou, the award-winning poet and playwright.

They join BBC Radio 1 DJ Alice Levine, who returns as a judge for a second year.

The award was created in 2015 to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the BBC National Short Story, which in turn aims to promote the best in contemporary British short fiction.

The BBC Young Writers' Award with BookTrust hopes to inspire and encourage the next generation of writers.

The inaugural award was won by Brennig Davies, 15, for his story Skinning, a tale inspired by William Golding's Lord Of The Flies and Brennig's three cats.

The Welsh teen's work was read by Sir Ian McKellen on BBC Radio 1.

Speaking about the launch of the 2016 Award, Levine said she was "honoured" to return as a judge.

"Everyone remembers a book from their childhood that moved them or made them think differently about the world and it's the essence of these stories that we want to capture with the BBC Young Writers' Award," she said.

Di Speirs, BBC Radio 4's editor of books, said: "It is a privilege to be able to champion the great talent and passion of younger writers, and heartening that the short story with all its challenges and complexities, appeals so broadly."
More than 15,000 people have signed a petition backing the Christian family at the centre of the same-sex marriage cake row.

The McArthur family - the owners of Ashers Baking Company - are appealing a court ruling that they discriminated against a gay customer, and have been heartened by the support, the Christian Institute said.

The high-profile case is due back before the Court of Appeal tomorrow after it was halted last month following a last-minute intervention by Attorney General John Larkin.

Mr Larkin raised concerns over Northern Ireland's equality legislation just hours before the appeal was to be heard.

Detailed legal submissions from the Attorney General will be made to the court tomorrow in relation to his concerns about the legislation that had been used in the case against the McArthurs last year.

A full appeal hearing has been scheduled for May.

Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute, which is financially backing the McArthurs, welcomed the petition.

"It is heartening that support continues to pour in for the McArthur family and the stand they have taken," he said.

"In excess of 15,000 people have now signed our petition backing them.

"Some people have attempted to portray this case as a minor business dispute.

"But what is really at stake here are fundamental principles - free thought, free speech and freedom from coercion by the State.

"The court is going to hear arguments from the Attorney General on why he believes the laws used against the McArthurs may be flawed."

Last year Ashers was ordered to pay 500 for refusing to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan on it.

A Belfast court found that customer Gareth Lee had been discriminated against on the grounds of his sexual orientation.

He was backed in the case by the Northern Ireland Equality Commission, which paid almost 39,000 in legal fees.

The McArthur family decided to appeal the decision.

However, last month's case was halted by the Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan, Lord Justice Weir and Lord Justice Weatherup following a last-minute request from Mr Larkin.

Mr Larkin wants to make representations in the case about any potential conflict between sections of Northern Ireland's equality legislation and United Kingdom and European human rights laws.

Legal proceedings were initially launched by Mr Lee, who is a member of LGBT advocacy group Queer Space.

In May 2014 Mr Lee ordered a cake featuring Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie, with the slogan 'Support gay marriage', for a private function marking International Day Against Homophobia.

He paid in full when placing the order at Ashers' Belfast branch.

But two days later the company phoned to say the order could not be processed and offered to pay Mr Lee his money back.

Following a three-day hearing last March, District Judge Isobel Brownlie found Ashers directly discriminated against Mr Lee, who had been treated "less favourably" contrary to the law.

Ordering the baker to pay damages of 500, the judge said religious beliefs could not dictate the law.

However, the McArthurs said they believed they were being punished for their Christian faith and that they should be allowed to retain the freedom to decline business that would force them to promote a cause with which they disagreed.
The chief suspect in the killing of Co Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson confessed to murdering a six-year-old girl, a witness told an inquest.

Robert Howard claimed he served six years in prison for the murder, according to a neighbour. He alleged he was living in a caravan in Castlederg in the early 1990s because he could not go home to the Irish Republic. There is no record of that conviction, a lawyer for the coroner said.

Arlene, 15, left her Castlederg home for a disco across the Irish border in Co Donegal in August 1994, her sister Kathleen Arkinson said. She had one Irish pound in her pocket. The schoolgirl was never seen again.

School children allegedly saw Arlene getting into Howard's car, Kathleen Arkinson said.

Neighbour Bernadette Timoney said she was frightened of Howard.

"Once Howard mentioned he had been in prison for murdering a six-year-old girl. He used to live in a hostel in Derry as he could not go home to Portlaoise (in the Republic).

"I did not like the look of him, I did not want to be in his company."

She added he was an "evil looking man with drink in him".

Howard was never convicted of murdering a six-year-old girl, although he was convicted of the attempted rape of a girl of that age.

Arlene was last seen with Howard - who was acquitted of her murder in 2005 by a jury which was unaware of his conviction for killing a south London teenager several years earlier.

He remained the prime suspect in the Arkinson case until his death in prison last year, aged 71.

Despite her concerns, Mrs Timoney never told the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). It took her 19 years to tell detectives.

She said: "I did not want to get involved with it."

Arlene, who was friendly with her daughter, rushed into Mrs Timoney's house one night saying she was pregnant and crying at the mention of Howard. .

She said: "She was crying, quite hysterical."

But she never went to police, even after Arlene disappeared.

It was only when detectives talked to her that she volunteered the information.

"I just kept it to myself," she added.

She also told the coroner's court that two months before she went missing, Arlene had told her she wanted 200 to go to England for an abortion.

She said Arlene became hysterical when she asked her if she had gone to get the money from a bank machine with Howard, or if Howard had done anything to her.

The inquest in Belfast continues.
Politicians have demanded a new investigation into Nama's controversial Northern Ireland property sale after allegations made on Monday by a BBC Spotlight programme.

In 2014, Northern Ireland's Nama loan portfolio was sold to the American company Cerberus for a sum of 1.3 billion in a deal called Project Eagle.

The BBC Spotlight investigation revealed that the businessman Frank Cushnahan claimed he was due to receive an illegal fixer's fee for helping to arrange the sale to Cerberus. Several DUP politicians were also implicated in the programme.

As a former adviser to Nama, Mr Cushnahan was not supposed to have had any involvement.

He has always denied asking for payments but was caught on camera admitting the opposite in a video secretly recorded in a Belfast hotel last year by the Spotlight team.

Following the programme, politicians on both sides of the border repeated their calls for a fresh probe.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said he wanted a commission of investigation established in the Republic of Ireland.

"Sinn Fein does not believe the taxpayer got best value for money from the sale of Project Eagle to a US vulture fund at a huge discount," he added.

"I have asked why (Irish Finance Minister) Michael Noonan failed to abandon the flawed sales process when another bidder, Pimco, made very serious disclosures to them about fixers and fee arrangements."

Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt said the "whiff of foul play and skulduggery" would haunt politics at Stormont until all the facts were known about the Nama affair.

Mr Nesbitt added that it "called into question the judgment of those at the very heart of Northern Ireland's political institutions". "Some individuals have come forward to shed some light on this dark corner of Northern Ireland society - it's now time for others to step up and do the same," Mr Nesbitt said, adding he would also be asking the Chief Constable for an update of the police investigation into the allegations.

Naomi Long, the Alliance Party deputy leader, called the Spotlight video of Frank Cushnahan "disturbing" and said: "At a time when public confidence in local politics is at an all-time low, it is vital any allegations of wrongdoing are investigated and done so urgently.

"Only by doing so can the parties implicated regain the trust of the people."

SDLP finance spokeswoman MLA Claire Hanna praised Spotlight for blowing "the lid on backroom dealings that went on around the Nama northern property deal."

She called for an independent cross-border inquiry, saying "sunlight is the best disinfectant" to get the truth about "such a shocking loss to the taxpayer".

The independent TD Mick Wallace famously made a series of allegations over fixers fees in the Irish Parliament last year.

Yesterday in typically direct style he tweeted: "Spotlight programme was good TV and shocking to many. But a bit fluffy, missed much of the core issues and showed a lack of b***s. Watch this space."
Ukip leader Nigel Farage and Labour's shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker have made a 20 bet that their respective sides will win the EU membership referendum on June 23.

The Ukip MEP and Labour MP made the light-hearted deal in Belfast yesterday as they argued for and against leaving the EU.

Mr Farage, who wants the UK out, took part in the debate at Ulster University with Mr Coaker, who is campaigning to remain in Europe.

At the event, organised by the Centre for Democracy and Peace Building, Mr Coaker said the UK was better off staying in the EU "because we achieve more together than we do alone".

Mr Farage described the upcoming referendum as "the single most important vote of our lifetimes" and accused pro-EU campaigners of scaremongering about risks to jobs and trade. He said voting for a Brexit did not mean "the sky will fall in", and that he believed the UK should be an independent nation making its own laws, controlling its own borders and making its own trade deals.

He added that he wanted to live in "a Europe of co-operation, but not centralised power".

Mr Coaker argued he had a much more positive and confident view of the UK in the EU.

"It is not unreasonable to point out that one in eight jobs in Northern Ireland is related to trade with the EU," he said,

"Nine thousand businesses are related to the trade that Northern Ireland conducts with the European Union, and Northern Ireland is much more dependent on exports to the European Union than the rest of the UK."

A recent survey of NI Chamber of Commerce members suggested that 81% would vote for the UK to remain.

Mr Farage said he did not see any negative implications for business, farmers or cross-border arrangements.

"There are a lot of scare stories," the Ukip leader added.

Mr Farage said people in Northern Ireland had nothing to fear from a Brexit and that "possibly in terms of manufacturing and areas like that, there could be some real opportunities". Addressing the Irish border arrangements in the event of a Brexit, Mr Farage said "mercifully, Ireland is not part of Schengen".

He insisted that he saw no reason why the current soft border arrangements could not continue unaffected.

But Mr Coaker warned that people were rightfully concerned about what a Brexit would mean for the Irish border and what it meant if the border between North and South became a frontier between the EU and the UK.

"There is no answer to any of that," Mr Coaker said.

"I don't think this 'it will be all right on the night' attitude is sufficient for Northern Ireland."

Labour MP Kate Hoey, TUV leader Jim Allister and the DUP's Sammy Wilson will take part in a Grassroots Out rally at Titanic Belfast on Friday.
For those of us who made it down there to Omagh on August 15, 1998, there are only the physical details which remain with you and still keep recurring.

There are the formica-topped pub tables in the street, sticky with congealed blood. There is the wail of the alarms from the blasted-out shops and the damaged cars.

There is the sight and sound of the helicopters taking off and landing in the small car park of the local hospital as the worst of the injured are airlifted to hospitals in Belfast.

And then much later, on the Sunday morning, there are the lists pasted on the walls of the leisure centre, which has been turned into a clearing house for families - many of whom had been away from town that weekend - to find out if their loved ones had died or survived.

Afterwards the seemingly endless funeral processions not only in Omagh but also across the border in Donegal, in the staunchly republican villages of east Tyrone, and in Spain.

Then the big cheeses flew in, including Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, and, much later, Bill Clinton, to pay their respects and mouth platitudes about hunting down those responsible.

Only the images survive after 18 years, while the words of the politicians and their promises that the bombers would be brought to justice have faded from memory.

After almost two decades of police investigations on both sides of the border the decision by the Public Prosecution Service to drop the charges against Seamus Daly, in a sense, marks the end of the road for the Omagh families.

Indeed, the best-known of the Omagh justice campaigners said so yesterday when he admitted that in terms of criminal prosecutions this was indeed "the end of the line".

There have been many false dawns and some dubious security decisions made since that fateful day in August 1998.

Expand Expand Previous Next Close The devastation caused by the Omagh bomb Police officers and firefighters inspecting the damage caused by a Real IRA bomb explosion in Market Street, Omagh, which killed 29 people / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The devastation caused by the Omagh bomb

We had an agent who was in Garda protective custody with inside knowledge of the Real IRA in the South whom detectives in the North were never able to use or properly interview.

We had allegations that RUC Special Branch, in the run-up to the bombing, appeared more interested in enhancing the reputation of its agents inside the terror group than in thwarting the plot.

We had case after case collapse due to unreliable witnesses and a lack of forensic evidence to link anyone to the biggest single atrocity of the Troubles.

Omagh not only stands as the worst loss of lives in a terrorist attack since 1969, but also as a monument to policing failures on a colossal scale. Which brings into play the families' demand for a cross-border, fully independent inquiry into the events leading up to and after the Omagh bomb.

In the light of what happened yesterday in Ballymena Magistrates Court, the onus must surely be principally on the British Government and David Cameron in particular to support such an inquiry.

And whenever and whoever is elected Taoiseach after the chaos and uncertainty of the Republic's general election, the new Irish premier should join Cameron in that call.

Expand Close Gonzalo Cavedo steps on to the street for what he thought was just another holiday snap, in front of the bomb car parked in Market Street, Omagh, prior to the blast / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Gonzalo Cavedo steps on to the street for what he thought was just another holiday snap, in front of the bomb car parked in Market Street, Omagh, prior to the blast

It is also election time soon here in Northern Ireland, and that should entail every political party seeking re-election to the Assembly to promise to back a cross-party motion demanding an independent tribunal into Omagh.

After all the promises made and the platitudes mouthed, it is the least the powers in London, Dublin and Belfast can do.
Aodhan O Riordain is one of the casualties of Labour's election humiliation

Irish premier Enda Kenny has vowed to work with rivals in a fractured parliament to form a government after the most divisive election of recent times.

Confusion remains over the way forward after a massive voter schism in last week's poll in which the outgoing Fine Gael/Labour coalition was trounced.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, traditionally the two dominant parties who swapped power for decades, have enough support between them to form a ruling "grand alliance".

But while there is little policy difference between the centre-right pair, their historic rivalry born out of Ireland's civil war more than 90 years ago means a match would be fraught with difficulties.

They are also wary of handing the official opposition to Gerry Adams's Sinn Fein, the third largest party, which has refused to prop up either of them.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, Mr Kenny said his Fine Gael party would work comprehensively with the manifold forces, factions and Independents to restore political stability in the "changed circumstances".

"We will engage fully and inclusively with other parties, groups and independent deputies to ensure that such a Government is established," he said.

The Taoiseach said he is leading his own rank and file to formulate a set of principles that will guide his party's participation in a future administration.

This would deal with issues "highlighted and prioritised" by voters during the election campaign, he said.

His party was also open to talking about other ideas with other parties and groups "in a new Dail that reflects the changed circumstances following the election." he added.

The Dail is scheduled to resume on March 10 to elect a new Taoiseach.

But such is the splintering of the vote, uncertainty hangs over whether the diverse parties and groupings can come to any agreement on forming a new government.

One possibility is a minority government, potentially led by Fine Gael which remains the largest party despite its humiliating losses, backed by arch-enemy Fianna Fail in return for some concessions.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin called for all the parties to sit down at the negotiating table to agree parliamentary reforms in advance of talks to forge an administration.

Ex-taoiseach Bertie Ahern has forecast there will be no new government for at least another month.

As tentative moves were made to end the impasse, ousted coalition partners Labour were facing being gagged in the next parliament such is the magnitude of their humbling downfall.

Junior minister Aodhan O Riordain is the latest to join the swelled ranks of his party colleagues who were dethroned after the seismic election.

His ejection in the Dublin Bay North constituency, one of the last to be decided under Ireland's lengthy count process, was the 26th seat lost by the party after five years in power administering austerity with senior partners Fine Gael.

Labour is looking anxiously at its last hope of being able to effectively contribute in the next Dail with party stalwart Willie Penrose in a nail-biting fight to retain his seat in Longford/Westmeath.

With just six seats retained from its 33 last time around, Labour desperately needs one more to qualify for full parliamentary speaking rights.

Despite their hammering at the ballot box, an emotional but defiant Mr O Riordain insisted his party would live to fight another day.

"Today is the first day of the comeback," he said after losing his seat to Sinn Fein's Denise Mitchell.

"Ireland needs the Labour Party and our values system. I absolutely believe we will recover from this and we will have better days again."

Less than a handful of votes separate Mr Penrose, a former junior minister, and Fine Gael's James Bannon in Longford/Westmeath, where both outgoing government TDs are scrapping for a seat.

A full recount was ordered in the constituency four days after the general election.

Mr O Riordain, Ireland's equality minister in the deposed coalition, conceded "the tide was out" for the power-sharing partners.

"We expected that maybe the government would have more support, and that maybe we would be trying to prove to people that Fine Gael needed, I suppose, partners in government," he said.

"But people made a very clear decision that they didn't want the government returned."
Aisling, a trainee make-up artist on Game of Thrones, entered a competition to win the special proposal package in conjunction with Lunns the Jewellers and proposal planning website, Propose2Me.com on The Merchants Facebook page earlier this month. Her prize package included a ring to the value of 1500 from Lunns the Jewellers, a meal for two in The Merchants Great Room Restaurant and an overnight stay in the hotels stunning C.S. Lewis Victorian suite. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

This afternoon, Aisling and Chris paid a visit to Lunns the Jewellers in Victoria Square to pick out Aislings ring  a certified single stone diamond surrounded by diamond halo from Lunns Portfolio of Fine Diamonds. Aisling and Chris have two children together, Ellie, aged four and Isabella, aged one. The couples children also had a hand in the proposal, helping Aisling pop the question with handwritten signs in a heart-warming video. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

This afternoon, Aisling and Chris paid a visit to Lunns the Jewellers in Victoria Square to pick out Aislings ring  a certified single stone diamond surrounded by diamond halo from Lunns Portfolio of Fine Diamonds. Aisling and Chris have two children together, Ellie, aged four and Isabella, aged one. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

Mum of two, Aisling Megahey, aged 30 from Belfast who popped the question to her partner of seven years, Chris Kennedy, 29, also from Belfast on Monday (29th February) is celebrating today after he said yes. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

Mum of two, Aisling Megahey, aged 30 from Belfast who popped the question to her partner of seven years, Chris Kennedy, 29, also from Belfast on Monday (29th February) is celebrating today after he said yes. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

Her prize package included a ring to the value of 1500 from Lunns the Jewellers, a meal for two in The Merchants Great Room Restaurant and an overnight stay in the hotels stunning C.S. Lewis Victorian suite. This afternoon, Aisling and Chris paid a visit to Lunns the Jewellers in Victoria Square to pick out Aislings ring  a certified single stone diamond surrounded by diamond halo from Lunns Portfolio of Fine Diamonds. Pictures by Stephen Hamilton, Press Eye.

Belfasts Merchant Hotel provided a romantic backdrop to one very special Leap Year proposal tonight (Monday 29th February 2016). Mum of two, Aisling Megahey, aged 30 from Belfast took the opportunity to flout the usual customs, popping the question to her partner of seven years, Chris Kennedy, 29, also from Belfast. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Belfasts Merchant Hotel provided a romantic backdrop to one very special Leap Year proposal tonight (Monday 29th February 2016). Mum of two, Aisling Megahey, aged 30 from Belfast took the opportunity to flout the usual customs, popping the question to her partner of seven years, Chris Kennedy, 29, also from Belfast. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Their prize package included a ring to the value of 1500 from Lunns the Jewellers, a mouth-watering meal for two from The Merchants Tasting Menu in The Great Room Restaurant and an overnight stay in the hotels stunning C.S. Lewis Victorian suite. The grand scheme was planned by proposal planners, Propose2Me, who set the scene for the surprise proposal, setting up props in the suite and arranging a photographer to capture the magical moment when Chris said yes. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Aisling, a trainee make-up artist on Game of Thrones, entered a competition to win the special proposal package in conjunction with Lunns the Jewellers and proposal planning website, Propose2Me.com on The Merchants Facebook page earlier this month. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

She had a great cover story too  using Chris 30th Birthday later this week as the excuse for their luxury overnight stay at the 5-star Belfast hotel on Monday night. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

This is the moment that two little girls helped their mummy ask their daddy a very special question.

With the 29th February Leap Year date falling earlier this week, mum of two, Aisling Megahey (30), from Belfast took the opportunity to flout the usual customs and asked her partner Chris Kennedy (29) to marry her after seven years together.

The trainee makeup artist got their two little girls Ellie (4) and Isabella (1) to help with the proposal by holding up signs with messages to their daddy.

They told him how much they loved him and how they love being Kennedys but there was a problem - their mummy wasnt a Kennedy yet.

Aisling entered a competition to win the special proposal package in conjunction with Lunns the Jewellers and proposal planning website, Propose2Me.com on The Merchants Facebook page earlier this month.

The grand scheme was planned by proposal planners, Propose2Me who set the scene for the surprise proposal, setting up props in the suite and arranging a photographer to capture the magical moment when Chris said yes.

Aisling said she felt that fate had a hand in their chance meeting and the proposal too.

I first met Chris when I still lived at home with my parents. Chris' dad had bought the house next door to my parents about a year previous but I had never seen him until one day he arrived at the door with a parcel for me, which had been delivered to his house mistakenly.

When I saw him I fancied him right away - he's gorgeous! After that we bumped into each other on a few occasions, on nights out and at parties. We had some friends in common and we became friends. One night he asked me to meet him for a night out in town, it was going to be just the two of us so I knew then he was interested too. We started seeing each other after that night and I knew even then that he was the one.

Seven years later, we have two beautiful daughters together; he is the most amazing dad and the girls and I love him to bits. I entered the competition because I've always known that I wanted to marry Chris but life has its up and downs and things get in the way of your plans. We are so busy with our girls and work we rarely have any time for ourselves, it just seemed like the perfect time to take action and go for it. For me, winning the competition seems like fate... It was like it was meant to be!

Their prize package included a ring to the value of 1500 from Lunns the Jewellers, a mouth-watering meal for two from The Merchants Tasting Menu in The Great Room Restaurant and an overnight stay in the hotels stunning C.S. Lewis Victorian suite.
Jim Allister accused Sinn Fein of trying to deny Northern Ireland 'even the right to have an Opposition'

Sinn Fein has warned against the creation of a "Frankenstein's monster" at Stormont as MLAs backed plans for an official Opposition for the first time.

The passing of a Private Member's Bill from Independent MLA John McCallister paves the way for the formation of an Opposition after the May election - likely to involve the Ulster Unionists or SDLP.

Sinn Fein voted against the legislation, which also sought to establish collective responsibility in the Executive and remove the present Assembly designation of MLAs, but it was severely diluted in debates over recent weeks.

Sinn Fein's Raymond McCartney said the current Stormont system was "designed for a particular purpose and that, when you try to move away from that or fuse it with another system, you could create Frankenstein's monster."

He said Mr McCallister "may be well intentioned, but, sometimes the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. That is why we were cautious and stood opposed."

But Mr McCallister, a former deputy leader of both the UUP and NI21, said: "There is a hunger from the people we represent to get on with governance and delivery and to move to a much more mature politics where policy matters. They expect the Executive and the Assembly to deliver.

"Most of the disagreements between Sinn Fein and me have not been about what an Opposition looks like. Instead, they have been about how we get there."

Expand Close Sinn Fein's Raymond McCartney said the current Stormont system was "designed for a particular purpose and that, when you try to move away from that or fuse it with another system, you could create Frankenstein's monster." / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Sinn Fein's Raymond McCartney said the current Stormont system was "designed for a particular purpose and that, when you try to move away from that or fuse it with another system, you could create Frankenstein's monster."

Former Ulster Unionist minister Danny Kennedy commented: "I hope that we will now see Opposition structures in place for parties to occupy should they wish following the next Assembly election."

Alliance's Trevor Lunn called it a good day for the Assembly and democracy and said the most vital part of the Bill, despite being "well shredded", had survived intact.

Jim Allister accused Sinn Fein of trying to deny NI "even the right to have an Opposition. Sinn Fein stands exposed as anti-democratic in its approaches to democratic institutions... whatever it says elsewhere (the Irish Republic)".

Green Party MLA Steven Agnew congratulated Mr McCallister, but said: "We had an opportunity to really improve governance in Northern Ireland, and it was an opportunity wasted."
More than 800 cases had been stuck in a backlog after lawyers refused to represent defendants after the Department of Justice proposed new rules for legal aid in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland's Crown Courts are fast-tracking cases in a bid to deal with the hundreds of cases delayed because of a dispute over legal aid between lawyers and the authorities.

More than 800 cases had been stuck in a backlog after lawyers refused to represent defendants after the Department of Justice proposed new rules for legal aid in Northern Ireland.

The bitter dispute, which began last August, was resolved just over two weeks ago, and judges in the various Crown Court districts have had criminal cases fast-tracked for inclusion in their lists.

Delayed cases are now flowing in a steady stream before the courts. In an effort to deal with the backlog, judges have been listing 10 to 20 cases a day in the hope of clearing the bulk of them by the Easter break in just over a fortnight's time.

In Antrim alone the court hopes to have listed, arraigned and set trial dates for more than 100 cases even before then.

In Belfast, in the past week alone, judges have formally arraigned five murder cases, and dealt with numerous others, including one of child cruelty, grievous bodily harm, and one of riot.

Yesterday, in Belfast, judges dealt with more than 30 cases involving more than 40 individuals. They included four Chinese people who between them denied drug and money laundering offences, and three rioters who pleaded guilty and will be sentenced next month.

Other arraignments covered offences of grievous bodily harm, armed and attempted robbery, burglary, possessing firearms, ammunition and drugs.
Two men are being questioned by detectives after police seized suspected high purity cocaine along with a large quantity of benzocaine.

The pair were arrested in the city centre on Monday evening as part of a joint operation between PSNI Reactive and Organised Crime Branch and An Garda Siochana National Drugs Unit.

The two men aged 25 and 30 are being questioned at Musgrave Police Station on suspicion of a number of drugs and money laundering offences.

A number of searches have also taken place in Belfast, Coleraine, Portstewart and Londonderry areas as part of the operation.

Benzocaine can be used as a mixing agent to increase the amount of cocaine available for sale. Police say the cocaine would have a minimum street value of 60,000 but this would increase greatly after bulking for sale on the street.

Detective Inspector Alan Pyper said: "These arrests are part of a pro-active investigation into the illegal drugs supply in Northern Ireland. I am delighted that we have taken these drugs out of circulation reducing the potential harm to individuals and communities.

"We will continue to work with communities and act on information about illegal drugs. Support from the community is vital in this and I would encourage anyone with information about drug dealing, supply or importation to get in touch with us on 101. With your help we can continue to keep people safe."

A 20-year-old woman arrested as part of the operation has been released unconditionally and a 37-year-old man has been released on bail pending further enquiries.
Theresa Villiers has declared she will campaign for the UK to leave the EU at the forthcoming referendum

Theresa Villiers has been accused of "avoiding" answering questions on the impact a Brexit would have on Northern Ireland's economy.

The Northern Ireland Secretary has declared she will campaign for the UK to leave the EU at the forthcoming referendum.

And Ms Villiers neatly sidestepped the issue when it was raised in the House of Commons with Minister Ben Wallace sent out to bat for many of the EU-related questions.

Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Vernon Coaker raised concerns about the impact of a Brexit on Northern Ireland's trade as he stressed the importance of the EU to the country's economy.

He asked Mr Wallace how he "keeps a straight face" as he promotes the Government's position on the EU with Ms Villiers sat behind him.

"There is no wonder the Secretary of State is not answering these questions on the economy and avoiding these questions again," Mr Coaker said.

"Can I ask the minister, has he discussed with the ministers of the executive the survey by the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce which showed that 81% of businesses in Northern Ireland support continued EU membership?

"Isn't it the case that there is little surprise in that finding given that 60% of Northern Ireland's exports go to the EU, higher than any other part of the UK?"

Mr Wallace said: "Both myself and my right honourable friend discussed that with the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce at a reception on Monday night in Northern Ireland.

"If you want to know how I keep a straight face, I look across the despatch box at two members of the Labour Party who are in favour of replacing Trident and remember that they have a leader who has no intention whatsoever of using it or replacing it."

The Speaker John Bercow then said Trident was not "germane" to the issue of exports.

Mr Coaker replied: "I think we are all amazed by that. That really was going to the bottom of the barrel to try and find something to say on that."

Ms Villiers did face a couple of questions on the EU later during Northern Ireland questions but she would not be drawn on her own position on the issue.

Labour's Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) asked what assessment Ms Villiers' civil servants had made of the impact of a Brexit and whether she was allowed to see it.

Ms Villiers said: "The Government is publishing a number of documents setting out its position on the European Union."

Mr Bercow told off Mr Brennan for being a "very cheeky chappy" because his question was supposed to be on the financial position of the Northern Ireland executive.

A spokesman for the Secretary of State rejected the idea that Ms Villiers had avoided any questions.

He said: "It is utterly misleading of the Labour Party to claim that the Secretary of State avoided any questions today.

"Out of the nine questions asked during the half-hour session, Theresa Villiers answered six of them.

"Her answers were detailed and covered a full range of Northern Ireland issues including politics, security and the Government's long-term plan to strengthen the economy."
A well-known radio phone-in contributor and "colourful character" has died after a fire broke out at his Loughbrickland home.

Fire crews from Rathfriland, Newry and Banbridge were called to the bungalow owned by Geordie Tuft, on the Legananny Road, shortly after midday yesterday.

Mr Tuft, a farmer and minor celebrity in Loughbrickland, was known for his comedy call-ins to the Gerry Anderson Show.

He is believed to have been in his 70s and was renowned for his hilarious advice on animal husbandry, particularly goats.

BBC presenter Stephen Nolan tweeted last night: "Geordie Tuft made me laugh so much. Laugh out loud so hard that it hurt. I'll miss him from the airwaves."

Described by friends as a "character and witty eccentric", Mr Tuft would offer serious-sounding advice and countryside wisdom that quickly descended into comedy.

In one Gerry Anderson Show, he discussed the issue of donkey flatulence, and he appeared in local newspapers many times, including when his prize goat 'Billy' appeared in the film Shrooms.

In 2004, he was the victim of a violent burglary. Masked men struck him on the head, handcuffed him to a table, and fled with just 5. Afterwards he told the BBC he would not be intimidated.

"I am back to my old self again and I am not a bit afraid," he said. "The half-door is lying open the way it always was. Any pensioner living on their own should not be afraid for the law is there and they are there to protect them."

In a tribute article to the late Mr Anderson, who died in August 2014, in the Belfast Telegraph, Ivan Little referred to Mr Tuft as "a slow-talking fast-thinking farmer from somewhere down around Loughbrickland, who was for thousands of listeners an oracle of all things rural including the ancient art of dunging out a bed".

Expand Close Firefighters at the scene of the blaze on the Legananny Road, Loughbrickland / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Firefighters at the scene of the blaze on the Legananny Road, Loughbrickland

DUP councillor Carla Lockhart said the community was in shock. "My condolences are with the family of the deceased," she said. "This is heart-wrenching news. Loughbrickland is a close-knit community and this will rock it.

"I commend the Fire Service for their assistance with this situation and know that efforts were made to bring the blaze under control by a large number of crews.

"The deceased, who was certainly a local character, will be sadly missed and our thoughts are with his family and friends. I pray that God will help.

"House fires have become all too prevalent and I personally will be working with the local fire authority to continue in their efforts to give advice and guidance around fire safety in the home."

People took to social media to pay their respects to the unlikely broadcasting star.

DUP Assemblyman Sydney Anderson said: "So sad to learn of the death of @bbcradioulster favourite Geordie Tuft, following a tragic fire at his home. Shared many enjoyable memories."

BBC broadcaster Mike Philpott tweeted: "Horrified to learn that Geordie Tuft, a real character on local radio, has died in a house fire."

And Belfast photographer John Baucher said: "RIP Geordie Tuft. Such a character."

The fire is not being treated as suspicious.
PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

PACEMAKER BELFAST 02/03/2016 Gizmo is a hero after he alerted a family to safety after a house fire. Two adults and six children have escaped serious injury after a fire at a house on the Falls Road in west Belfast. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press

Six children had a lucky escape from a house fire in west Belfast when their dog woke them up as it began barking.

Two adults and six children were inside the house on the Falls Road at the time and all managed to escape before the Fire Service arrived.

The fire started in one of the child's bedrooms from an extension lead plugged in behind her headboard in the early hours of Wednesday.

A mobile phone was plugged in and charging at the time.

The fire crept around her bed and was moments from setting alight her pillow and hair when their pet dog Gizmo began barking and woke her up.

She was able to jump out of bed and the whole family escaped to safety.

NIFRS Station Commander Kevin O'Neill said that while the mobile phone charging was not the cause of the fire in this incident, he warned people against it.

He said: "Whilst it is bad practice to do so, it wasn't the cause in this case.

"We recommend against charging mobile phones overnight."

Damage can be seen around the wall socket in the teenager's bedroom.

While there were smoke alarms fitted in the house, they were not working.

Mr O'Neill said there have been three fire deaths in Northern Ireland since the start of the year and that if it wasn't for the family dog he fears they would have been dealing with a tragedy today.

He told the Belfast Telegraph: "We are so grateful and relieved that we are not dealing with another fire death today with this young family and the six children that were in the house

"The fire itself was relatively small but it had produced a lot of smoke. There were no working smoke alarms in the house, there were smoke alarms present but they weren't working.

"The only thing that alerted the family in the house was the fact that their dog awakened, barked and woke up the people in the house."

He described how close the fire, which started behind a young girl's bed, was from setting alight a young girl's hair.

"The fire itself was an electrical fire and started in the plug that was in a socket right behind her headboard and the fire started in the plug, it crept up the base of the bed and alongside the matress.

"It was impinging right where she was sleeping - that's how close the fire was to her head.

"It was only because the dog wakened her that she was able to get up and escape otherwise I've no doubt the next thing that would have caught fire would have been the pillow and her hair."

He praised the family for not being tempted to re-enter their home once they made their escape.

"They evacuated out of the house, got into the car and waited on the fire service and never returned to the house," he added.

"That is positive and I would commend them for their actions in getting out and staying out and waiting on the fire and rescue service arriving.

"There is always that temptation and what we are trying to do is to reinforce the message to let us deal with the incident. If you were to re-enter there's the chance you could be overcome by the smoke so we want to emphasise the point that you get out and stay out."

Mr O'Neill once again urged people to ensure they had a working smoke alarm in their house and to test it regularly.

He said: "We would urge people that not everyone will be as fortunate and have a pet that can alert them. "

A Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service spokesperson said: "One female was treated at the scene for burns to her arm and we finished at the scene at 6:45am.

The fire is being treated as accidental.
Police at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Police at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Police at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

A police forensic officer stands near to a shattered car window at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Police escort an elderly lady past the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

A police forensic officer stands near to a shattered car window at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city, shortly before 3:15pm, whicjh left a man seriously wounded. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Monday February 29, 2016. See PA story POLICE Shooting Ireland. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

A police forensic officer stands near to a shattered car window at the scene of a shooting on McKee Road in Finglas, Dublin, in the north of the city. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

The car that Vincent Ryan was shot in was registered to a company linked to the Kinahan drugs gang it has emerged.

Ryan (25) was murdered in a white VW Golf GTI on Monday afternoon shortly after dropping his partner and baby off at a house on McKee Road in Finglas.

The 07 VW was bought by Ryan some weeks ago but was still registered to the company with links to the Kinahan gang.

The notorious mob are embroiled in a violent tit-for-tat feud which has seen criminal David Byrne and Eddie Hutch, the brother of Gerry The Monk Hutch, murdered in recent weeks.

The car is registered to a company half owned by a man who was one of Byrnes close associates, but Byrne himself was not directly involved.

Gardai are now trying to establish if the link between Ryan, the car, and the Kinahan gang is a coincidence or if there are links between the dissident republican and Christy Dapper Don Kinahans gang.

The potential links could shed new light on the killing of Byrne at the Regency Hotel on February 5 and the retaliation hit on Eddie Hutch snr three days later.

Meanwhile, armed gardai seized a car used by the crimelord nicknamed Mr Big just hours after the murder of Ryan, it can be revealed.

The car was located at a north city hotel on Monday night after members of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) were dispatched to find it.

Sources say the operation to track down the car began when detectives noticed it was not at its usual location just hours after Ryan was shot dead in Finglas. Gardai seized the car, and it was still being technically examined last night.

It is understood the vehicle was not used in the murder, but officers are trying to establish if it had been active before or after the shooting.

The Mr Big drugs gang remain the chief suspects for the murder of Ryan, but sources say gardai have not yet ruled out the involvement of associates of slain drugs trafficker Michael Micka Kelly  who was shot dead by Ryans IRA faction in September 2011.

One line being investigated is that Ryans murder was a joint operation by the two drugs gangs, who both have links to the Christy Kinahan cartel.

The Herald has learned that a number of senior criminals who were part of Micka Kellys gang are back in Dublin, having spent most of the years since his murder abroad.

These include two major north Dublin drug dealers who have been based in Liverpool and Spain. One of the gangsters witnessed the murder of his pal Micka  known as the Panda  but sped off in fear of his life.

This criminal has barely any convictions, but on one occasion he had a massive cash haul forfeited to the State.

Also back in the country is his notorious 35-year-old pal who was once one of the biggest targets of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB), who seized tens of thousands of euro of his assets.

This gangsters north Dublin home was previously firebombed by the Real IRA crew linked to slain brothers Vinny and Alan Ryan.

The incident happened when the dissident republican mob were at the height of their power in 2011.

Apart from firebombing his home, they were also involved in spraying threatening graffiti around north Dublin about the drugs trafficker.

However, shortly after this, the Ryan gang became embroiled in a separate feud with the Mr Big drugs mob, which gardai believe is the most likely reason for both brothers gun murders.

Irish Independent
Ardal O'Hanlon at the funeral of late actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy television series Father Ted, at the Church of the Guardian Angels, Blackrock Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Wire

The coffin of Frank Kelly is carried into the Church of the Guardian Angels in Blackrock, Dublin, for his funeral service. Niall Carson/PA Wire

Pallbearers carry the coffin of the late actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy television series Father Ted, at his funeral at the Church of the Guardian Angels, Blackrock Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Wire

Father Ted writers Arthur Matthews (left) and Graham Linehan arrive for the funeral of Frank Kelly at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Blackrock, Dublin. Niall Carson/PA Wire

President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina at the funeral of late actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy television series Father Ted, at the Church of the Guardian Angels, Blackrock, Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Wire

Pallbearers carry the coffin of the late actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy television series Father Ted, at his funeral at the Church of the Guardian Angels, Blackrock Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Wire

Ardal O'Hanlon (left) and Graham Linehan at the funeral of late actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy television series Father Ted, at the Church of the Guardian Angels, Blackrock, Dublin. Niall Carson /PA Wire

President Michael D Higgins and his wife Sabina warmly greeted the family of iconic actor Frank Kelly at his funeral today.

He had battled Parkinson's disease, cancer and heart failure before finally succumbing to a heart attack.

His beloved wife of 51 years, Bairbre, children Aideen, Fiona, Jayne, Ruth, Emmet, Stephen and Rachel and 17 grand children, his brothers Aidan and David, sister Pauline led mourners at the funeral.

They included Father Ted writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews, Ardal O'Hanlon and two of Dermot Morgan's sons, Don and Rob.

Frank and Bairbre first met at the Gaiety Theatre while appearing in a Brecht play and married three years later in 1964.

Gifts brought to the alter symbolising his life included a picture of the 40 Foot where he loved to swim, a picture of the family pet, Lucky who was "missing him already," the crossword he loved to do every day and his recently published autobiography "The Next Gig".

Chief celebrant Fr Bill Fortune said he had a very active, creative and worthwhile life and described him as having what Napoleon called "two o'clock in the morning courage".

He said he often thought Frank had a lot in common with classic comedy writer PG Wodehouse - with both bringing "real joy, humour and laughter to literally millions of people."

And he said he had great regard and respect for his fellow professionals.

As well as his memorable role in Father Ted, Kelly played councillor Parnell Mooney in Hall's Pictorial Weekly - which won him a Jacob's Award in 1974.

He also appeared in Glenroe between 1999 and 2001 and later spent five months on the cast of ITV soap Emmerdale.

In 2014 he appeared as the judge in Mrs. Brown's Boys D'Movie.

Irish Independent
The Government is stepping up its warnings over the dangers of leaving the EU

Campaigners for the UK to leave the European Union have put forward no "credible alternative" to membership, Philip Hammond said as he warned that Brexit could cost jobs and push up prices.

The Government has produced analysis by officials concluding that any of the alternative arrangements for relations with Europe would leave Britain worse off.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the analysis shows that the alternatives to EU membership would "damage Britain" - but the document was dismissed as a "dodgy dossier" by pro-Brexit Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith.

Foreign Secretary Mr Hammond said he was "not surprised" by his Cabinet colleague's comment and added: "The Government is mandated by Parliament to publish a series of documents and I probably could have guessed in advance what my colleague would describe them as."

The paper - which looks at arrangements adopted by countries including Norway, Switzerland and Canada as well as the option of falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules - warns that none is as good as the deal on offer with Brussels.

Mr Hammond warned that the alternatives would mean "working people would pay the price with few jobs and rising prices".

Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London, Mr Hammond said: "The fact is, none of the bilateral free trade models would offer anything like the access that we now have to the single market and many of them would require adoption of EU regulations and freedom of movement rules."

He added that as well as the terms of trade with Europe, the UK would also face renegotiating deals on a global scale if it voted to leave on June 23.

"We currently benefit from EU trade deals with over 50 different countries. These deals have been based on the negotiating muscle of a bloc with 500 million consumers and a quarter of the world's GDP.

"Renegotiating them as a single country would take many, many years - years in which British businesses would be squeezed out of traditional markets, and with no guarantee at the end of the process that we could get terms as good as we have now.

"Some have said we should focus our attention on deals with the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth, but the EU already has or is negotiating trade deals with all the biggest Commonwealth countries and none of our allies wants us to leave the EU - not Australia, not New Zealand, not Canada, not the United States.

"In fact the only country that would like us to leave the EU is Russia and that should probably tell us all we need to know."

Mr Hammond conceded it was possible that the UK would be able to negotiate a better deal with the EU than other countries had managed but warned that the other 27 countries would "aggressively" protect their own interests and the process could take many years - or in Switzlerland's case two decades and more than 100 separate agreements.

It would mean "years of uncertainty for Britain just as we are getting back on our feet".

Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Duncan Smith said the "real uncertainty" lay with the EU "project".

"As each day passes we see yet another example - from the utter failure to cope with the migrant crisis, to the increasing disaster of the euro," he said.

"This dodgy dossier won't fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU.

"The truth is we won't copy any other country's deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms - and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. That's the safer choice."

Mr Hammond claimed some Leave campaigners were prepared to "sacrifice" British jobs in order to cut ties with Brussels.

Challenged about the splits in the Conservative party which have seen five Cabinet ministers and two former leaders back a Brexit, Mr Hammond said the Leave campaigners "have to be honest and open about their priorities".

"I know people, there are people out there - they won't say this publicly - but privately they are prepared to sacrifice jobs and growth in order to be able to get the clampdown on migration from the EU, in order to stop paying into the EU.

"We need to be honest with the British people about this. My judgment is if the British people have the facts they will make up their own minds.

"But it isn't honest to pretend to the British people, as some have been doing, that we will be able to carry on as if we were still members of the EU with full access to the European markets, nothing will change, our businesses can go on selling and jobs will be safe yet we won't have to accept freedom of movement, we won't have to accept irksome EU regulations and we won't have to contribute to the budget.

"That is not going to happen, it is not a realistic scenario and the Leave campaign needs to be honest about that."

The latest official paper examines the arrangements which other countries outside the EU have adopted and finds none offers the advantages of continued membership.

"The UK Government believes that no existing model outside the EU comes close to providing the same balance of advantages and influence that we get from the UK's current status inside the EU," the report said.

A senior Downing Street source said: "The onus really now is on the Leave campaigners to give some honest answers to very reasonable questions.

"What will Leave look like? We've got a whole plethora of potential proposals coming forward. I see today one of the main Leave campaigns seems to be saying we need to remove ourselves from the single market altogether.

"It's not clear. Will there be access to the single market for British business? Will British businesses have to pay tariffs on goods? These are the sort of reasonable questions that British people have a right to get some answers to."

Asked how the PM viewed Mr Duncan Smith's description of the report as a "dodgy dossier", the source said: "It's for other people to decide. I think when people actually get a chance to read the document, they will see it's been produced by civil servants from across government and it's a very factual, sober analysis of the alternative options and the downsides that they involve."

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg told the BBC: "For the UK to think that it will get everything it wants from the EU, without giving anything back... well, that just doesn't happen in a political organisation.

"We lack influence in important decision-making processes in the EU. We have special arrangements on some issues, but basically we have lost our sovereignty."

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: "The Government is doing everything it can to falsely engineer a climate of fear about leaving the EU with ludicrous claim after ludicrous claim.

"The stream of taxpayer-funded propaganda is disappointing, disingenuous and unbecoming of the senior politicians sent out to defend it. It is undermining the open and honest debate the public want to have. The safe option is to vote Leave."

He added: "As the Foreign Secretary himself admitted this morning, of course we would be able to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU after we vote Leave."
Ex-Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton 'would have had a case to answer for misconduct' if he was still a serving officer, the IPCC said

A former police boss who controversially met an undercover officer during the Stephen Lawrence inquiry would have faced disciplinary proceedings if he had not been allowed to retire, a watchdog has said.

Ex-Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton "would have had a case to answer for misconduct" if he was still a serving officer, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found.

In January, lawyers for Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence, made a last-ditch, and unsuccessful, attempt to stop Mr Walton retiring so that he could face misconduct claims.

On Wednesday Mr Lawrence said it was "wholly wrong" that the senior officer was allowed to leave, and that it "totally undermines public confidence in the police".

In 2014 a damning report by barrister Mark Ellison QC revealed that in 1998, when Mr Walton was an acting Detective Inspector working on Scotland Yard's final submissions to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, he had met with an undercover officer known as N81.

It was alleged that Mr Walton ''obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence".

It has previously been claimed that N81 told Mr Walton that Stephen's parents had separated, although the IPCC found no evidence of this.

The watchdog said both Mr Walton and former undercover officer Bob Lambert, who helped arrange the meeting, would have had a case to answer for misconduct.

However they would not have faced claims of gross misconduct, which could have meant being sacked, because they were acting on the orders of their superiors.

Neville Lawrence called for Lord Justice Pitchford's public inquiry into undercover policing to look at the chain of command above the officers who gained information about his family.

In a statement through his lawyers, Hodge Jones and Allen, he said: "The IPCC report makes it clear that my family were wrongly spied upon by police during the Macpherson Inquiry in 1998.

"I am glad that they have made findings of a case to answer for misconduct; however, the Pitchford Inquiry now needs to look into this matter in more detail and to find out at what level of seniority within the Metropolitan Police this spying was sanctioned.

"I have made no secret of the fact that I think it is wholly wrong that former Commander Walton was so recently allowed to retire and will avoid the disciplinary process he should have faced.

"I have long felt that allowing officers to retire to avoid disciplinary action totally undermines public confidence in the police. The police and the IPCC should have ensured that this investigation was concluded in good time to ensure that former Commander Walton could not have avoided disciplinary proceedings."

Bob Lambert has faced separate claims that he entered relationships with women who did not know he was an undercover cop; appeared in court using a false name and assumed a false identity using the name of a dead child.

IPCC deputy chairwoman Sarah Green said: "During the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the honesty and integrity of the Metropolitan Police was rightly under intense public scrutiny. The force's reputation may have suffered immense damage had the meeting become public knowledge at the time.

"The IPCC found that Robert Lambert and Richard Walton both had a case to answer for discreditable conduct in that their actions could have brought the force into disrepute."

Scotland Yard said it does not accept that either officer would have faced misconduct proceedings in 1998.

A spokesman said: "The Commission's findings acknowledge the meeting may have been legitimate and that the evidence suggests Mr Walton had been asked to attend by a senior officer.

"We believe that if the evidence points towards the meeting being legitimate or there is insufficient evidence that it was not legitimate then there could be no finding of misconduct, gross or otherwise, for either officer."

The "mere possibility" of a public backlash had the meeting been revealed in 1998 is also not "sufficient in itself to have found a case to answer for misconduct", the force said.

The force has maintained that its undercover officers infiltrated protest groups that could have caused public disorder.

Mr Walton said: "It has taken the IPCC two years to investigate a single meeting I attended as a Sergeant 18 years ago.

"The report makes clear that no information was passed to me about either the Lawrence family or its campaign. The Met formally rejected the IPCC's findings about me and did not plan to bring misconduct proceedings.

"In making its finding the IPCC has failed to understand racist crime and violent public disorder in London in 1998. The public have a right to be protected from groups who commit serious violent disorder. I have always made that my priority."
Sir Ranulph Fiennes is poles apart from his former colleagues in Ukip ahead of the referendum

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has turned down an offer to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, saying a Brexit would be "utterly stupid and pathetic".

The 71-year-old explorer, once named a Ukip patron, echoed Prime Minister David Cameron by saying a move to leave would be a "leap into the dark".

He said: "I got a letter from the Out people saying 'would I help them?' and I wrote back saying 'No, but if the In people want help I would try it'.

"I can think of nothing more utterly stupid and pathetic than leaving the European Union or Scotland leaving Britain. The EU is a vast market. OK, it's got things about it - everything's got wrong things about it - but for little England to step outside the market because they think things are going to get better - to leap into the dark - is utterly stupid."

One of the greatest adventurers in British history and once described by the Guinness Book of Records as "the world's greatest living explorer", Sir Ranulph does not believe voting out is the patriotic thing to do.

"We'll have a lot less power and a lot less influence and be 'little' Britain.

"Therefore if you're nationalistic like me, you want to stick the Union Jack everywhere, you don't want to have the Scottish bit removed from the Union Jack, and you don't want us to be removed from a huge market."

The explorer was named a Ukip patron in 2004 but has since distanced himself over the issue of Britain's membership of the EU - despite still enjoying a long-standing friendship with the party's key financier Paul Sykes.

"I'm not a supporter of Ukip but there is a person who is involved with starting Ukip who helps us hugely with our charities.

"He is a wonderful helper but started Ukip whereas I desperately want to stay in the European Union, so we don't talk about that particular matter," he said.
More than 815,000 people have now signed a petition calling for the jab Bexsero to be given to all children

The Government has rejected calls for the meningitis B vaccine to be given to all children, saying it would be a waste of money.

More than 816,000 people have now signed a petition calling for the jab Bexsero to be given to all children, or at least those up to age 11.

The petition, which is the most signed online petition in parliamentary history, gathered momentum following the death of two-year-old Faye Burdett.

The toddler, from Maidstone, died on Valentine's Day after fighting the infection for 11 days.

Her mother Jenny shared pictures of her daughter just before her death on social media and said the family had endured "a pain you cannot describe".

The plight of meningitis sufferers was also raised by ex-England rugby captain Matt Dawson, who told how his two-year-old son Sam battled - and survived - meningitis C.

The Bexsero vaccine is available on the NHS for babies aged two months, followed by a second dose at four months and a booster at 12 months.

Parents who wish to have older children vaccinated must pay privately, although a worldwide shortage of Bexsero means private stocks are currently low.

In its response to the petition, the Department of Health said its priority was to vaccinate those children considered most at risk from meningitis B.

It said it was following guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises the Government on the cost-effectiveness of vaccinations.

The statement said: "The NHS budget is a finite resource. It is therefore essential that JCVI's recommendations are underpinned by evidence of cost-effectiveness.

"Offering the vaccine outside of JCVI's advice would not be cost effective, and would not therefore represent a good use of NHS resources which should be used to benefit the health and care of the most people possible.

"When any new immunisation programme is introduced, there has to be a cut-off date to determine eligibility.

"While this is extremely difficult for parents whose children aren't eligible, there is no other way of establishing new programmes to target those at highest risk without introducing inequalities."

The Department said the UK was proud to be the only country in the world to introduce a national, publicly-funded meningitis B immunisation programme for babies using Bexsero.

I t said the JCVI considered vaccinations for children aged one to four "but did not advise a catch-up programme in view of the marginal cost-effectiveness of even the infant programme".

It added: "There are many bacterial, viral and other causes of meningitis (inflammation of the lining of the brain and surrounding tissues) and septicaemia (blood poisoning).

"Successful vaccination programmes have already reduced the risk of these serious diseases. Current rates of group B meningococcal disease are low. In the early 2000s there were more than 1,600 cases in England, compared to around 400 cases in 2014."

Studies have shown that Bexsero still offers good protection to children who are older when they are vaccinated.

A spokesman for the charity Meningitis Now said it understood the need for further data to be gathered on the duration of protection offered by Bexsero and whether vaccinating teenagers would lead to herd immunity.

But he added: "We are now two years on since the JCVI recommended this study and, whilst we are pleased to read in the Government statement that there is preparatory research that has been commissioned and is under way, we still have no indication of when the full study will commence or be completed by.

"We therefore continue to call for the under-fives to be protected while we wait for the data to be gathered and because of the length of time it is taking to progress the study.

"We keenly await information about the process of MPs speaking to families and health experts prior to a debate in Parliament. We will ensure that we continue to be the voice for people affected by this devastating disease."

On Twitter, GP Neil Bhatia said the vaccine should be given to all under-fives.

But TV doctor Christian Jessen said: " Calls for meningitis B jab 4 all kids rejected as 'not cost effective' I think this is right. Most at risk group IS routinely vaccinated."

The Meningitis Research Foundation said it was disappointed by the Government's decision.

It said: " Although we understand that the NHS budget is finite, we argue that the current cost-effectiveness rules undervalue the prevention of severe illness in childhood.

"There is evidence that the public prefer prevention over cure, and would rather prevent death or severe disability in a few than mild illness among many people.

"But the rules do not reflect these preferences. Meningitis is every parent's nightmare. And the Government's cost-effectiveness calculations simply do not take this level of public concern into account.

"They must, or the meningitis B vaccine and future childhood vaccines for less common, severe illnesses will always face an uphill struggle."

The charity said it had repeatedly called for a study to show whether immunising teenagers could protect all age groups but the Government still had not agreed to this despite the JCVI recommending it in 2014.

Vinny Smith, chief executive of the charity, said: "In the past two weeks there has been an unprecedented surge in public awareness about vaccinations against meningitis and private vaccine stocks have run out.

"The demand for this vaccine is clear.

"This is an exceptional disease, with exceptional fear associated with it. For every parent who worries this could touch their family, 400 cases of meningitis each year is simply 400 too many."
Works and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith punches the air as he listens to Chancellor of the Exchequer reveal details of the 2015 Budget

Conservative proposals to cut disability benefit by 30 a week have been attacked by the Government's equalities watchdog.

On Monday, the House of Lords voted down proposed cuts to the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for a second time.

In response, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission EHCR has said the cuts will "exacerbate, rather than reduce, existing inequalities" in addition to disproportionately affecting disabled people.

Rebecca Hilsenrath, EHRC Chief Executive, wrote in a letter to Labour MP Roger Godsiff: "This makes it difficult to understand whether the changes will affect, for example, people with some types of physical disability more or less than people with particular types of poor mental health or who experience bouts of ill-health and may therefore be in and out of work.

It is also unclear whether applying the changes to new claimants will mean they have a more significant impact on younger disabled people or new migrant workers.

"These are the kinds of matters that we might have expected a more thorough analysis to have considered."

The latest benefit reductions would affect new claimants in the work-related activity group (Wrag) who are declared too ill to work but well enough to undergo work-related interviews or training from April 2017.

The cuts are projected to save 1.4 billion over four years and would reduce Wrag members weekly unemployed benefits from 102.15 to 73.10.

Read more

Read More

A DWP spokesperson said: "The current system needs reform because it fails to provide the right incentives to work, and acts to trap people on welfare.

"We are committed to ensuring that people have the best support possible, and that is what these changes are about.

"Current ESA claimants will continue to get the same level of support, and those with the most severe health conditions and disabilities will continue to get a higher rate of benefit."
Edward Maher died during a selection exercise for the Territorial Army's SAS in the Brecon Beacons (MoD/PA)

The Ministry of Defence is to be censured over the deaths of three soldiers on an SAS training exercise in the Brecon Beacons in 2013.

The Health and Safety Executive said it will issue a so-called Crown Censure following the tragedy on one of the hottest days of 2013.

But for Crown immunity, the MoD would have faced prosecution for failings identified, said the HSE.

Lance Corporal Craig Roberts died during the march and Lance Corporal Edward Maher and Corporal James Dunsby collapsed and died later.

HSE head of operations Neil Craig said: "Specialist military units rightly need to test rigorously the fitness and resilience of potential candidates.

"Health and safety is not about stopping people from doing dangerous work or being properly prepared for military duties. Military training is inherently hazardous. However, such testing needs to be managed effectively.

"The MoD has a duty to manage the risks during training exercises. It failed to do so on this occasion.

"Since the incident, HSE has worked closely with the MoD to ensure it has learned lessons and how it can reduce the risk of similar tragedies occurring in future without compromising or changing the arduous nature of the essential training and testing they need to provide."

The HSE said its investigation found a failure to plan, assess, and manage risks associated with climatic illness during the training.

These failings resulted in the deaths of the three men and heat illness suffered by 10 others on the march.

Despite its Crown status, the MoD is not exempt from its responsibilities as an employer to reduce the risks to its employees as far as reasonably practicable, it added.

The breach of law the Censure is being issued over is Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which states: "It shall be the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees."

The MoD cannot face prosecution in the same way as non-Government bodies and a Crown Censure is the maximum sanction for a government body that HSE can bring.

There is no financial penalty associated with Crown Censure, but once accepted is an official record of a failing to meet the standards set out in law.

It is thought that the group involved were carrying out an exercise known as the "Fan Dance".

It requires a soldier carrying a weighted pack and rifle to march up and down 2,900ft-high Pen y Fan mountain, then doing it again in reverse, in a set time.

On the day in question, July 13, temperatures hit 29.5C, and emergency crews were called to Pen y Fan after reports that six soldiers had collapsed suffering heat exhaustion.

Recording narrative verdicts at an inquest in Solihull in July 2015, senior Birmingham coroner Louise Hunt said all three soldiers would have survived if Ministry of Defence regulations on heat illness had been followed.

L/Cpl Roberts was originally from Penrhyn Bay in North Wales, L/Cpl Maher, was from Winchester in Hampshire, and Cpl Dunsby was from Trowbridge in Wiltshire.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The MoD acknowledges this censure and has apologised for the failures identified by the coroner and the Health and Safety Executive.

"We have made several improvements to reduce the risks on such exercises, and the Defence Safety Authority is conducting a service inquiry to identify any further lessons to prevent a recurrence of this tragedy.

"Our thoughts remain with the families and friends of Corporal James Dunsby, Lance Corporal Craig Roberts and Trooper Edward Maher."

Karl Turner, shadow attorney general, said: "There was clearly a total disregard for the safety of the soldiers on this training exercise, and the MoD must be held accountable.

"A Crown Censure in this case may expose the MoD's wrongdoing but it does nothing to punish the reckless behaviour which cost these three young men their lives, or prevent it happening again.

"We need to look at whether vicarious liability laws should apply in cases like this, and we have to ensure that no more brave soldiers die as a result of what is essentially corporate negligence on the MoD's part."
Advances in hip replacement surgery were said to have contributed to the rise

Hip replacements are no longer seen as a "last resort", with more younger patients opting for the surgery, an analysis of NHS data has revealed.

Hospitals saw a 76% increase in hip replacements for those aged 59 and under between 2004-5 and 2014-15, Royal College of Surgeons analysis of NHS data in England shows.

There was also a 47% increase in the number of hip replacements across all ages during this period.

Stephen Cannon, vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons and an orthopaedic surgeon, said advances in hip replacement surgery had contributed to the rise.

"As hip replacement techniques and prosthetics have improved, so have the numbers of younger patients undergoing this type of surgery," he said.

"Chronic hip pain can have a devastating effect on quality of life and the ability to remain active. People don't want to live with this pain if they can confidently undergo a hip replacement that's successful and lasts. It's no longer seen as a last resort."

Mr Cannon added that confidence in the longevity of prosthetic hips among surgeons had also contributed to the rise.

The analysis, based on Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data for England, showed that in 2004-5 patients under 60 underwent 10,145 hip replacements, rising to 17,883 in 2014-15.

Across this period, the overall number of patients undergoing the procedure rose from 82,919 to 122,154.
A British Airways flight is believed to have been hit by a drone while landing at Heathrow

Airline pilots are calling for tests to be carried out to discover what would happen if a drone hit a passenger jet, amid a recent spate of near misses.

The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) wants the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to back research into the possible consequences of such a collision.

Former RAF and British Airways pilot Steve Landells warned that a drone hitting an airliner could result in an uncontrolled engine failure or a smashed cockpit windscreen.

Some 23 near misses between aircraft and drones were investigated by the UK Airprox Board (UKAB) in just six months according to its latest reports, including 12 given an A rating - meaning there was "a serious risk of collision".

Mr Landells, Balpa's flight safety specialist, said there is a large amount of data on the effects of bird strikes on planes, but he insisted that this is not a true representation of what would happen with a drone because "birds don't have a big lump of lithium battery in them".

He told the Press Association it is "very likely" that the battery of a standard quadcopter drone entering the core of a jet engine would cause an uncontained engine failure, as happened to a BA plane which became engulfed in flames and smoke as it was taking off in Las Vegas in September.

"You end up with very high velocity bits of metal going anywhere they like. That could be through fuel tanks, through hydraulic lines and even into the cabin," he said.

"Losing the engine is not going to cause an aircraft to crash because they are designed to fly with one engine down.

"But an uncontained engine failure is going to be different every time. That could be very serious indeed."

Mr Landells explained that he wants testing with drones to be carried out because it appears none has been done before.

"The first thing we want to do is get a drone or at least the critical parts of a drone flying at a windscreen of an aircraft," he said.

"The indications so far with computer modelling are that you'll end up with penetration of a windscreen.

"One possibility is that the battery smashes the windscreen and the inside layer of the windscreen shatters and you end up with a lot of glass in the cockpit, probably moving at quite high speed.

"As a pilot, I don't want to be sitting there when that's going on."

He added: "There's also a possibility that it might just bounce off. We don't know at the moment."

Mr Landells said the initial tests could cost around 250,000.

Philippa Oldham, head of transport and manufacturing at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, described the consequences of a drone hitting an airliner as "such an unknown thing" that would depend on a number of factors such as the size and speed of the drone and the location of the collision.

"There's a lot of scenario planning going on around that at the moment," she said.

"The impact potentially could be anything from nothing to a destruction of an engine."

People who fly drones close to planes could be convicted of endangering the safety of an aircraft which has a maximum prison sentence of five years, the CAA said.

A CAA spokesman said the regulator has a number of ongoing schemes aimed at raising awareness of the safety requirements for using drones, such as its Dronecode campaign.

He added: "We are already working alongside the DfT and industry partners to better understand the potential risks and outcomes of a drone hitting a manned aircraft."

The DfT issued a statement which read: "Public safety is our first priority and we are working very closely with the Civil Aviation Authority, industry and airline operators to improve our understanding and knowledge of this emerging technology.

"It is important to ensure that clear and proper regulations are in place and we will set out more details in a Government strategy on the use of drones later this year."
The UK has a poor track record in the European Court of Justice, according to research

The UK has lost more than three-quarters of its cases in the European Court of Justice, according to analysis by the pro-Brexit Vote Leave campaign.

The campaign group found that since joining the European Economic Community in 1973, the UK has lost 101 of 131 cases in the Luxembourg court - some 77%.

Justice minister Dominic Raab, who is backing the Leave campaign, said the rulings "undermine a basic principle of democracy" because the judges are not held to account in the UK.

Vote Leave claimed the research cast doubt on David Cameron's assurances that the deal he has negotiated in Brussels for a new relationship with the European Union was legally watertight.

A dossier prepared by Vote Leave said that since Mr Cameron took office in 2010, the UK has been defeated in 16 cases out of 20 at the ECJ, a failure rate of 80%.

"These defeats show how little influence the UK has in the EU institutions and reveal the extent to which unelected EU judges, rather than elected British politicians, are in control of UK law," the document said.

"They also suggest that promised from the Government of 'legally binding and irreversible' changes to the UK's relationship with the EU as a result of its renegotiation cannot be taken at face value as they can be overridden by unelected EU judges after the referendum."

Cases where the UK has been defeated include a 1983 ruling which was blamed by former chancellor Lord Lawson - now the Vote Leave chairman - for having to put up the price of beer by raising duty by 2p a pint in his 1984 budget.

Other judgments highlighted by Vote Leave include the 1996 rejection of the UK's challenge to the working time directive, the inability to end the ban on the export of British beef during the BSE crisis in 1998, and the 2015 ruling against a reduced VAT rate for energy-saving materials.

Mr Raab said: "The EU has a long-track record of shifting the goalposts. Britain thinks it is signed up for one thing, only to find something very different imposed on us. In 40 years, we've lost three-quarters of cases at the Luxembourg court, when we've tried to resist these incursions.

"They affect everything from the price of beer to the cost of home insulation, and undermine basic principle of our democracy - that the British people can hold to account those who write the laws of the land."
George Osborne said that under the Tories the richest paid a higher proportion of income tax than under the last Labour government

George Osborne should slash tax for top earners further still, say senior Tories after figures showed a cut from 50p to 45p raised an additional 8 billion.

The Chancellor said income tax data for 2013/14 "completely" defied predictions made by Labour that cutting the rate would cost 3 billion and give top earners an average 10,000 tax cut.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) had previously assumed cutting the rate to 45p would cost 100 million, a stance backed by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

It is understood that the figures quoted by Mr Osborne do not take into account any changes in the way higher earners were paid, such as banks deferring bonuses until the tax cut came into force.

However the increase in revenues prompted calls from senior Tories for a further cut to "harvest" cash from top earners.

Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh told the Daily Telegraph that a further 5p tax break would benefit business and the Treasury.

He said: "These are welcome figures and I hope the Chancellor will act on the logic of them by reducing the top rate further.

"The case is unanswerable that if we reduce the top rate back down to 40p, it will not only provide a wonderful fillip for entrepreneurs but also provide us with more revenue."

David Davis urged Mr Osborne to consider a further reduction, telling the newspaper: "These figures show once again that you can choose how to deal with the well-off - you can choose to punish them, or you can choose to harvest them.

"If you want extra taxes for schools and hospitals then you should choose a tax rate that they will pay."

Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng said the figures were vindication for the Chancellor, who "took a lot of flak" for cutting the 50p tax rate set by Labour.

He told the Telegraph: "It is quite widely understood that if you push up taxes beyond a certain point then you end up getting less money. These figures show that Labour went beyond that point."

The HMRC statistics show that in first year of the reduced 45p rate, top rate taxpayers paid 46 billion in income tax, 28% of total revenues and 8 billion more than in 2012/13.

They also showed that total income tax take also increased by 8 billion, primarily driven by the increase paid by top rate taxpayers but not entirely.

HMRC conducted no analysis of whether companies changed the way they paid employees to take advantage of the tax cut.

During Treasury questions in the Commons, the Chancellor said on deficit reduction: "We want to make sure this is done fairly and under this Government the richest pay a higher proportion of income tax than under the last Labour government."
Roy Rickhuss has warned that the UK steel industry is drowning in a flood of cheap Chinese imports

The UK steel industry is "drowning" in a flood of cheap Chinese imports, which will get worse after the United States decided to impose new tariffs, a union leader has warned.

Community said the US announcement of tariffs of 266% on Chinese steel contrasted starkly with the "measly" 16% Europe introduced last month.

Commenting ahead of the first meeting of a Government-convened Steel Council, general secretary Roy Rickhuss said: "At every opportunity the Business Secretary says he supports a level playing field for UK steel producers, but his government continues to block moves to scrap the Lesser Duty Rule which stops the European Commission imposing meaningful tariffs to prevent Chinese dumping.

"Unless the Secretary of State is prepared to join others in Europe and stand up for our industry soon the debate will be over as we will have no industry left to save. We are drowning in this flood of Chinese imports and the US action will only serve to divert more Chinese steel towards Europe."

Mr Rickhuss said he will ask Business Secretary Sajid Javid how he intends to respond as another market is closed off to UK producers already "fighting for survival".

Welsh Secretary Stephen Crabb said: "The steel industry is facing a perfect storm from cheap imports and plunging prices.

"With nearly half of the UK's steel industry employed in Wales, we know all too well the human cost of this to Welsh steel workers and their families.

"The Government is fighting unfair trade practices, helping energy costs and supporting those losing their jobs to find employment.

"But we also need a long-term plan to ensure steel-making is sustainable in Britain for decades to come. Steel companies and unions need to be part of that solution, and that's why today's Steel Council is so important."

Gareth Stace, director of trade body UK Steel, said: "The US is showing the way in which to deal with under-priced, unfairly traded and state-supported imports from China.

"It is acting decisively, swiftly and at a level that stops China dumping steel with impunity. By contrast, the meek and mild response in the EU is looking increasingly inadequate.

"It begs the question why the UK Government continues to block EU-level attempts to impose higher tariffs. The UK must lift its opposition to the Lesser Duty Rule so that the EU can aspire to Uncle Sam's strong stance and stand up to the increasing threat posed by China.

"Warm words and limited incremental action are not enough given the crisis conditions faced by steel makers across Europe today."
The US government is trying to force Apple to help the FBI hack into a shooter's locked iPhone (AP)

The high-stakes legal fight between Apple and the US Justice Department over a locked iPhone is moving from the courts to Congress.

FBI Director James Comey and Apple chief lawyer Bruce Sewell are appearing before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington for a hearing on encryption on Tuesday.

The hearing comes amid two significant and conflicting court rulings in New York and California on whether Apple can be forced to help the FBI gain access to locked phones.

Mr Comey warns in his prepared testimony that technological advancements have been accompanied by "new dangers".

He says those can prevent law enforcement from collecting critical evidence in criminal and terrorism investigations.

But Mr Sewell says the FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of its products, which he says could create a dangerous precedent.

Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California Mr Comey whether his agency had asked Apple for the underlying software code to the iPhone before forcing the company to create its own digital workaround.

Mr Issa suggested the FBI hasn't exhausted its own efforts before the government went to court over a phone that federal investigators said is linked to the San Bernardino, California, mass shootings.

Mr Comey said the government has tried hard to break into iPhones like the one in California. But he seemed unaware if that method was successful, either by Apple or the government.

Mr Sewell insisted Apple has no sympathy for terrorists and the "utmost respect" for law enforcement and their work.

But he says the FBI, in seeking access to a phone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, is asking a judge to "give them something we don't have" and to create an operating system that does not exist.

He maintained that the government is "asking for a back door" that would allow the FBI to break into every iPhone and weaken security for all of them.

Mr Sewell says the US government has spent millions on supporting strong encryption used by activists and journalists, many in countries with fewer free-speech rights.
Flowers, children's toys and balloons have been left outside a subway station in Moscow (AP)

Floral tributes have been left at a Moscow subway station after a nanny was arrested on suspicion of killing a four-year-old girl and waving the child's severed head outside the station.

Russian children's rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov called on parents to ask prospective carers to provide a doctor's certificate confirming their mental health in the wake of the incident.

The suspect is a 38-year-old woman from Uzbekistan.

She wore a head covering and some witnesses said she shouted "Allahu akbar" while waving the bloody head on the street on Monday morning. In videos posted on Russian news websites, she was heard shouting "I am a terrorist" in Russian.

Investigators said the woman appeared to be mentally unstable.

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that the news was withheld from TV at the request of the Kremlin or out of concern that the killing could stoke ethnic tensions in a country with many Muslim citizens and migrant workers.

Dmitry Peskov said the television stations made the decision themselves not to air the videos, which he described as "too horrific to show on television".

Most of the TV channels carried reports on their websites and major Russian newspapers also reported the details of the killing.
Indonesian residents use a variety of transport options as they rush to higher ground in Padang late March 2, 2016, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra. A powerful and shallow earthquake struck off western Indonesia, sending panicked residents of one city rushing from their homes, and local authorities issued a tsunami warning. AFP PHOTO/STRSTR/AFP/Getty Images

Indonesian residents use a variety of transport options as they rush to higher ground in Padang late March 2, 2016, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra. A powerful and shallow earthquake struck off western Indonesia, sending panicked residents of one city rushing from their homes, and local authorities issued a tsunami warning. AFP PHOTO/STRSTR/AFP/Getty Images

Indonesian patients and relatives gather outside a hospital in Padang late March 2, 2016, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra. A powerful and shallow earthquake struck off western Indonesia, sending panicked residents of one city rushing from their homes, and local authorities issued a tsunami warning. AFP PHOTO / KARIADIL HAREFAKARIADIL HAREFA/AFP/Getty Images

Indonesian patients and relatives gather outside a hospital in Padang late March 2, 2016, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra. A powerful and shallow earthquake struck off western Indonesia, sending panicked residents of one city rushing from their homes, and local authorities issued a tsunami warning. AFP PHOTO / KARIADIL HAREFAKARIADIL HAREFA/AFP/Getty Images

Indonesian residents ride on a scooter and sidecar as they rush to higher ground in Padang late March 2, 2016, after a powerful earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra. A powerful and shallow earthquake struck off western Indonesia, sending panicked residents of one city rushing from their homes, and local authorities issued a tsunami warning. AFP PHOTO/STRSTR/AFP/Getty Images

A tsunami warning has been issued following a powerful earthquake in Indonesia.

The shallow earthquake hit off the western coast of Sumatra and the US Geological Survey (USGS) said it had a preliminary magnitude of 7.9.

It was centred under the sea at a depth of 6.2 miles.

Shallow earthquakes are more apt to cause damage, but the USGS said the quake was located quite far from land, about 411 miles from Muara Siberut.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology issued a marine warning for the distant Cocos and Christmas islands.

It did not advise evacuations, but said strong and dangerous currents were possible and people should secure boats and avoid waterfront areas.

The warning noted that a tsunami had not been confirmed.

A major quake off Indonesia in 2004 triggered a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries. Most of the deaths were in Aceh province.
Roughing it: the streets are littered with young men in sleeping bags

Another week, another homeless man dead on our streets. If there is any ray of light in this bleak saga it is that coverage of the tragic death of the man who was found several days ago in a Belfast shop doorway has reminded the rest of us of the great work being done by so many volunteer outfits working to help others like him.

If you're driving through the city after dark, you'll see them out with their soup kitchens and coffee stations supplying food and warmth and human charity.

They deserve all credit these people. As do the team behind the innovative street sleep pod, which first appeared some months back before being banned by the city council (health and safety concerns, needless to say).

This is the same team which came up with the more recent and equally brilliant "kindness drawers" initiative - a chest of drawers where locals can leave clothing and the like to be picked up by street people in need.

So far, so very heart warming.

But should the authorities not be getting a bit tougher on the streets?

I'm not talking about the genuinely homeless, the real rough sleepers, those lost, vulnerable souls who often are the least visible of the street people.

I'm referring, in particular, to the professional beggars who now haunt the city centre, especially at night, like a legion of lost Halloween trick-or-treaters.

I'm talking about the epidemic of young men in sleeping bags around the Cathedral Quarter, where, of an evening, there is now a youth with outstretched Starbucks cup installed every couple of dozen yards.

The impression given is that these are lads who will spend the night sleeping on the streets. By and large they won't. They'll be taken back home by the same blokes who bussed them into town earlier.

And the money they make? What becomes of that? Does anybody actually believe that the man doing the begging gets to keep all he collects?

Hands up, I've given them money myself. I feel so sorry for them. I suppose by giving them a couple of quid, I just want them to know that.

But these young men are being used. And judging by the explosion in numbers on our streets over the last few weeks, it's obviously a nice little earner for someone.

Why do we tolerate this? Why do the local authorities?

A city which can introduce rules on a 20mph driving speed limit should surely be able to stretch to legislation governing street collection.

Professional begging should be banned. End of.

How do you prove who is a professional beggar and who's genuinely in need? It can't be that hard to monitor the comings and goings of the sleeping bag boys. And their minders.

I've seen them arrive in town myself. Strutting older men with mobile phones, ordering their charges where to lie. And doubtless creaming off the takings.

If these were young local men lying on our streets, would we care more? Would the PSNI do more? Are the authorities loath to intervene because they're worried about accusations of racism?

And do they have any real sense of the scale of the street begging phenomenon?

Most nights now there are more sleeping bags in Hill Street than at Glastonbury.

The touching thing is there are so many good-hearted people out there doing their utmost to help the needy and the vulnerable.

But where officialdom is concerned, the most visible of the needy and the vulnerable get stepped around - no questions asked.

So many young men lying in sleeping bags on a freezing night begging for money they may not even get to keep themselves. And nobody in authority even seems to see them.

MLAs food bill leaves bad taste

Hard to stomach that, with belts being forcibly tightened all round, more than 280,000 of taxpayers money was spent last year helping subsidise Stormont MLAs feeding their faces.

For those lucky enough to dine chez Assembly, grub in the restaurant and cafes there is partly paid for by... well... you.

Nice to think that when your elected representative is chowing down on the likes of wild mushroom polenta with asparagus and truffle oil, you get to pick up part of his, or her, tab.

Because theyre worth it. Arent they?

I propose a big no to those silly videos

When and why did we all become such exhibitionists? Sometimes, you get the feeling that its no longer possible to propose marriage without organising a surprise spectacular that will be videoed.

And then shared on social media  presumably in the hope that it will go viral. Thus, what should be a private moment becomes cringey public performance.

Not surprisingly, those vids that attract most hits are the ones where the proposee says no.

Who says romance is dead? Theyre dead right.
Kanye West tweeted out a picture apparently showing him browsing The Pirate Bay, for which he has been roundly mocked. But one of his other tabs contained perhaps a far more worrying page.

MacKeeper, which could be seen in the fifth tab along on Kanye Wests computer, is a piece of software that is marketed through various pushy advertising techniques and has attracted vast amounts of complaints for not actually working.

Mr West appears to have come into contact with MacKeeper through a pop-under on The Pirate Bay website. That is one of the most popular ways of coming across the company and its app, which is advertised by opening up new tabs under the current one which are showed when the user gets round to shutting the page that theyre on.

The company also sends little pop-ups that mimic the official alerts sent by Macs. Please consider cleaning your Mac from junk, the message reads, and clicking OK prompts people to leave to the MacKeeper software page.

The companys other big advertising technique is having user reviews posted around the internet that help it appear to be receiving love from users. But many of those reviews appear to have come affiliate sites, which make money by encouraging people to buy the software.

The company has said that its advertising techniques lead to satisfied customers.

Some have suggested that the software itself is not as good as claimed, and slows down computers and causes issues for users. But the company says that much of that criticism comes from people annoyed with its advertising techniques, rather than the apps themselves.

The company told blog Cult of Mac that some people take their hatred for advertising to a level where they dedicate hours of their lives to making MacKeeper a Forum Punching Bag.

In a perfect world there would be no advertisements on radio, TV, billboards or the internet, but this is not a reality. As long as there are ads, there will be people who hate them.

Removing the software can be a difficult process. The software makes itself very hard to delete  and even once that has successfully been done, it installs itself in various parts of the operating system so that it manages to cling on.

The best way to remove the software if it is sticking around is to search for the word MacKeeper, or its developer zeobit, and remove everything that comes up.

MacKeeper was contacted to comment on this article, but had not responded at the time of publication.

Independent
Two civilians were killed in a suicide attack targeting the Indian diplomatic compound in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, March 2, 2016.

A suicide attack targeted Indias diplomatic compound in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, with explosions and gunfire rattling the area.

A suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-filled vehicle outside the entrance gates of the Indian consulate compound at about noon (local time), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

Smaller explosions and gunfire followed as other militants attempted to storm into the compound after the initial blast.

RFE/RLs correspondent reported seeing the bodies of four dead gunmen on the ground outside the compound walls after their battle with security forces ended.

Authorities said later that five gunmen and the suicide car bomber were killed.

They said two civilians were killed in the violence and 19 were injured.

In New Delhi, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the consulate has been targeted but everyone is safe within the compound, which is in a neighborhood that also includes diplomatic offices of other countries.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but both the Taliban and rival Islamic State (IS) militants have a strong presence in the area.

In fact, IS militants have had a growing presence in Nangarhar province during the past year and are challenging the Taliban there.

The diplomatic quarter in Jalalabad, the capital of the province, has been repeatedly attacked in recent months.

In January, IS militants claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Pakistan's consulate in Jalalabad  the first major IS attack in the city.

India helped overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is the largest regional provider of humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Afghanistan.

But New Delhis presence in Afghanistan has irked Islamabad, which has previously alleged that India's intelligence agency works undercover in the country to undermine Pakistan.

Indias embassy in Kabul was targeted by a suicide car bomber in July 2008 in an attack that killed 58 people.

U.S. intelligence officials suggested that Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency played a role in the attack  an allegation that Islamabad strongly denies.

Wednesdays attack in Jalalabad came as U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson formally took over command of NATO-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Nicholson replaced the outgoing Gen. John Campbell, who told reporters in Kabul that there is still much work to be done in Afghanistan.

Campbell said Afghan security forces have come far, but they still need NATOs help.

Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the United States, and Pakistan said after meeting in Kabul last week that direct peace talks between the Taliban and the government in Kabul were expected to start in Islamabad during the first week of March.

But since that announcement, Taliban militants have increased their attacks across Afghanistan -- prompting President Ashraf Ghani to say that his government would not negotiate with extremists who kill innocent Afghan civilians.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak started receiving money linked to beleaguered state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad in 2011, says a new report in the Wall Street Journal.

The Malaysian government Tuesday rejected a Wall Street Journal report saying that deposits into Prime Minister Najib Razaks private bank accounts exceeded one billion dollars and were hundreds of millions more than previously identified.

The government issued a statement accusing the U.S.-based newspaper of unethical journalism and being used by Najibs enemies to tarnish his reputation.

"They keep repeating the same old allegations without providing evidence; they keep relying solely on anonymous sources that might not even exist; and they keep choosing to omit key known facts, the state-run Bernama news agency quoted an unnamed government spokesman as saying.

The Wall Street Journal has become a willing vehicle for certain political actors who are seeking to damage the prime minister and Malaysia for personal gain. But this politically motivated anti-Najib campaign, which sought to use Western media, has failed, the spokesman said.

In its latest report on a scandal that has beleaguered Najib since last year and led to calls for his resignation, the Journal on Tuesday claimed that more than U.S. $1 billion (4.1 billion ringgit) started flowing into Najibs accounts in 2011 and 2012, and that global investigators believe that much of it originated with indebted state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

The new figure includes a previously reported deposit of $681 million (2.08 billion ringgit) to Najibs accounts in the run-up to Malaysias general election in 2013, according to the Journal.

In January, Malaysias attorney general cleared Najib of potential corruption-related charges, saying that the $681 million was a legal donation from the Saudi royal family, and most of it had been returned. Afterwards, Najib said it was time to put the matter behind him.

Similar name

Najib established 1MDB in 2009 to promote economic development in Malaysia.

That same year, the state-owned Abu Dhabi firm Aabar Investments PJS  a unit of Abu Dhabis International Petroleum Investment Co. (IPIC)  said it would help 1MDB build a finance center in Kuala Lumpur and acquire power plants, the Journal said.

1MDBs financial filings show that in 2012 it paid a cash deposit of $1.4 billion to a company called Aabar  without specifying a full name. It also paid nearly $1 billion in 2014, according to a draft report by Malaysias auditor general, the Journal said.

IPIC has denied that it or Aabar Investments PJS ever received this money, the Journal reported, quoting sources familiar with the matter.

The amount flowed instead into a company with a similar name registered in the British Virgin Islands, Aabar Investments PJS Ltd, and from there through other entities into Najibs accounts, the Journal alleged.

Investigators believe that sometime later, most of the $681 million was sent back into the web of offshore entities through which it had arrived, the report said.

International investigators have found no evidence any of this came from Saudi Arabia.

Corruption is corruption

On Tuesday, 1MDB issued its own statement rejecting the Wall Street Journal report.

The state fund said it had not paid any funds to the personal accounts of the Prime Minister. It also pointed to the attorney generals and other investigations that linked the 2013 money to Saudi Arabia.

Not once has the publication offered any conclusive evidence to support its claims, with the only justification for their continued attacks being information that they claim to have obtained from unnamed and anonymous sources, 1MDB said in a news release.

Najib has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said he never took money for personal gain.

Meanwhile, the Sultan of Perak, Nazrin Shah, said Tuesday that corrupt practices in Malaysia should be reported "without favor, without fear, without being lopsided, because corruption is corruption no matter who commits it."

He insisted that people should be educated to view corruption as a negative and to reject leaders responsible for it.

"Fighting corruption should become a struggle, a 'jihad,' as it is the responsibility and obligation of every citizen of the country to prevent the country from sliding into the valley of humilation," the sultan said at the Utusan Business Awards 2015 ceremony at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.
U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby, shown here discussing North Koreas bomb detonation on Jan. 6, 2016, issued a statement Wednesday challenging Malaysia for its efforts to block internet sites that post stories critical of the government.

In a rare rebuke of a close Southeast Asian ally, the United States on Wednesday called on Malaysia to fully respect free speech and ease restrictions on media outlets that have been reporting critically about the government in Kuala Lumpur.

The United States is very concerned by the Government of Malaysias recent actions to restrict access to domestic and international reporting on Malaysian current affairs, U.S. State Department Spokesman John Kirby said in a statement issued from Washington.

The governments Feb. 25 decision to block online news portal The Malaysian Insider (TMI) is only the latest in a series of similar efforts against media organizations.

Last week, Malaysian police questioned TMIs chief executive and four staffers, a day after telecommunications companies shut down the website under a directive from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

The site was blocked domestically after it published a report alleging there was credible evidence to frame charges against Prime Minister Najib Razak in a scandal linked to indebted state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

TMI is the second news site to be blocked this year after the Hong Kong-based Asia Sentinel suffered a similar fate on Jan. 29.

The Sarawak Report, a Malaysian news website based in the United Kingdom, has been blocked within Malaysia since July 20, 2015. Additionally, Malaysias Center for Independent Journalism claimed that blog hosting site Medium had been blocked since January, apparently because it published an article from the Sarawak Report.

Kirby said the U.S. was troubled that the Malaysian government did not act transparently nor provide due process to targeted media organizations and platforms prior to blocking access, and that the government initiated criminal investigations against reporters, editors and publishers from domestic and international media organizations.

Kirby also expressed equal concern that many Malaysian social media users face charges for postings critical of the government and national leaders. Malaysian officials have also publicly described coming amendments to its Communications and Multimedia Act that would further restrict online space.

Ally in Trade, Anti-terror efforts

The U.S. rebuke came a day after The Wall Street Journal published a report that Najib may have received hundreds of millions more than U.S. $687 million that had been deposited into his private bank accounts in 2013. On Tuesday, the Journal reported that other deposits were made into his accounts in 2011 and 2012.

A government spokesman rejected the Journals latest article about Najib, pointing to a report from the Malaysian attorney generals office that cleared him of wrongdoing related to the 2013 donation. The attorney general determined earlier this year that the money was a gift from the Saudi royal family, and much of it has been returned.

Despite the American rebuke, Kirby said the U.S. wanted to maintain its relationship with Malaysia.

Kuala Lumpur along with the U.S. and 10 other countries recently signed the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. Malaysia also is a key partner of the U.S. in efforts to counter the threat of radical Islam in Southeast Asia and the regional influence of the Islamic State (IS) extremist group.

The United States and Malaysia have built a strong comprehensive partnership, through which we hope to expand our cooperation on a range of shared challenges. In that context, we urge the government of Malaysia to ensure that all its laws, existing and future, fully respect freedom of expression, including the free flow of ideas on the internet, Kirby said.
Workers line up for compensation packets at the Golden Prize Canning Co. in Mahachai, Thailand, March 1, 2016.

With Thailand under international pressure to improve labor conditions in its lucrative seafood industry, a Thai tuna cannery has taken the unusual step of negotiating with hundreds of foreign workers over unpaid wages and benefits.

Talks with some its other workers were still under way but, as of Wednesday, the Golden Prize Canning Co. had agreed to pay out an estimated 80 million baht (U.S. $2.25 million) as compensation to 1,450 workers, a labor activist told BenarNews. Many of these workers are migrants from Myanmar.

Separately, around 150 so-called piecemeal workers, full-time contractors who normally dont receive medical insurance, vacation leave or other benefits, were demanding that the company compensate them like regular workers. They were planning to file a petition on Thursday with the local welfare and labor protection office in to order to spur Golden Prize to compensate them, the activist said.

The employer agreed to pay 65 percent of the outstanding wages and fringe benefits in the amount of roughly more than 80 million baht, Suthasinee Kaewleklai, a staffer at the Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN), which provides legal assistance and translation service to migrants from Myanmar, told BenarNews.

She said the two sides agreed on Monday to set a two-year retroactive ceiling for unpaid back wages, in accordance with Thailands labor code.

It is a payback of wages, overtime on public holidays and redemptions of deductions. When they took sick leave without showing medical certification, the employer deducted their wages, Suthasinee said.

She said the Thai government in 2013 set a minimum daily wage of 300 baht per worker (U.S. $8.43), but employees on the factory floor at Golden Prize had only been paid 240 baht (U.S. $6.75) daily, and without public holidays or overtime.

Unprecedented

The labor dispute at the factory in Samut Sakhon province, near Bangkok, which employs some 1,800 people, began in July. Last Thursday, managers at Golden Prize began to listen to their demands when workers staged a strike at the factory about 60 km (37 miles) from Bangkok.

Company representatives could not be reached for comment.

Andy Hall, a British labor rights activist involved in campaigns to eliminate exploitation of Southeast Asians in the workplace, hailed the results of the negotiations so far at the plant.

Only because workers and MWRN applied pressure [through the] media and strike did we get the result. Official systems for dispute negotiations failed and only because military and senior officials applied pressure did we get such an unprecedented result, Hall told BenarNews.

Last weeks work-stoppage led to an intervention by the provincial governor, Thai labor officials, and a Navy-run agency whose mission is to combat illegal fishing in Thailand.

We sent in a team to help mediate negotiations because this issue has been lingering for a long time. We acted like a referee, Vice Admiral Jumpol Lumpikanon, a spokesman for the Command Center for Combatting Illegal Fishing (CCCIF), told BenarNews by phone.

Golden Prize began to pay out factory workers on Monday and Tuesday, said the head of the provinces welfare and labor protection office.

The factory ran out of cash so it took [a long time] to pay [them], Boonlue Sartpetch told BenarNews by phone from Samut Sakhon.

No deadline

Thailands multi-billion seafood industry is an important sector in its economy. The country is the worlds third largest exporter of seafood products, but last years exposure in the press of allegations of the slave-like exploitation of foreign workers has caused repercussions in two huge foreign markets.

The United States, for one, was moving late last month to ban imports of products made by children or slave labor. Last April, the European Union handed Thailand a yellow card warning that the EU might ban Thai seafood imports if the country did not improve industry standards and align them with European standards on illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing practices (IUU).

The yellow cards six-month deadline was to have expired in October but, according to Vice Adm. Jumpol, the EU has yet to set a new date for Thailand to meet the IUU, or face a ban.

Instead, as of January 2016, the European Union asked Thailand to add the elimination of exploitative workplace conditions and fair labor practices to its IUU obligations, as well as have fisheries experts consult with Bangkok for the next two years on how to implement and enforce IUU-related measures, Jumpol said.

There was no deadline, but measures to follow up over the span of two years, he said.
ein Google-Unternehmen

Google-Dienste anzubieten und zu betreiben

Ausfalle zu prufen und Manahmen gegen Spam, Betrug und Missbrauch zu ergreifen

Daten zu Zielgruppeninteraktionen und Websitestatistiken zu erheben. Mit den gewonnenen Informationen mochten wir verstehen, wie unsere Dienste verwendet werden, und die Qualitat dieser Dienste verbessern.

neue Dienste zu entwickeln und zu verbessern

Werbung auszuliefern und ihre Wirkung zu messen

personalisierte Inhalte anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

personalisierte Werbung anzuzeigen, abhangig von Ihren Einstellungen

Wenn Sie Alle ablehnen auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies nicht fur diese zusatzlichen Zwecke.

Nicht personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung werden u. a. von Inhalten, die Sie sich gerade ansehen, und Ihrem Standort beeinflusst (welche Werbung Sie sehen, basiert auf Ihrem ungefahren Standort). Personalisierte Inhalte und Werbung konnen auch Videoempfehlungen, eine individuelle YouTube-Startseite und individuelle Werbung enthalten, die auf fruheren Aktivitaten wie auf YouTube angesehenen Videos und Suchanfragen auf YouTube beruhen. Sofern relevant, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auerdem, um Inhalte und Werbung altersgerecht zu gestalten.

Wir verwenden Cookies und Daten, umWenn Sie Alle akzeptieren auswahlen, verwenden wir Cookies und Daten auch, umWahlen Sie Weitere Optionen aus, um sich zusatzliche Informationen anzusehen, einschlielich Details zum Verwalten Ihrer Datenschutzeinstellungen. Sie konnen auch jederzeit g.co/privacytools besuchen.
We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message.


For Immediate Release, March 2, 2016 Contact: Wendy Park, (510) 844-7100 x 338, wpark@biologicaldiversity.org

Ted Zukoski, 303-996-9622, tzukoski@earthjustice.org Utah Lawmakers Launch Last-minute Scheme to Fund California Coal Terminal Risky Gambit Would Divert State Tax Revenues to Worsen Climate Crisis,

Risk Community Health, Sustainability SALT LAKE CITY Republican lawmakers in Utah are attempting an eleventh-hour maneuver that would use $53 million in state sales tax money to pay for a California coal-export terminal. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Senate Majority Whip Stuart Adams (R-Layton) has proposed using $53 million in sales-tax revenue targeted for highway improvements to fund a proposed coal terminal in Oakland. The scheme would ship millions of tons of coal from four Utah counties to be burned abroad, further deepening the climate crisis. Under legislative rules, Wednesday is the last day bills can be taken up in committee to be considered this session, which has eight scheduled days remaining. This is clearly a cynical maneuver to sneak legislation into the waning days of the session, said Wendy Park of the Center for Biological Diversity. It makes no sense to use highway-improvement money from Utah to build a coal terminal in California. On top of that, Utah would be doubling down on coal, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet and one of the primary reasons our climates in serious trouble. With Chinas coal consumption falling, and coal exports down more than 20%, this bill is a risky bet, said Ted Zukoski, an attorney at Earthjustice. Apparently, one of the few places its legal to gamble in Utah is at the state legislature, where its OK to raid taxpayers wallets to wager on an industry in historic decline. Utahs Permanent Community Impact Fund, designed to offset the effects of mining on rural communities, last year agreed to loan $53 million to four Utah coal-producing counties, which planned to invest the money in the coal terminal. The state agency asked state Attorney General Sean Reyes to review the deals legality. The results of the review have not been made public. The lack of transparency in the attorney generals office on this review makes one wonder whether there is a legal reason that the Community Impact Board review has not been made available and could explain this last-minute attempt to shift the burden of this scheme to taxpayers, Park said. Its clear this bill is being pushed because theres concern that the CIB loan is illegal, said Zukoski. The Attorney General should release his analysis now  before the bill is considered  so the public can know whether SB 246 is also vulnerable to challenge. In a letter to Reyes in November, environmental groups, including the Center, Sierra Club, Earthjustice and Grand Canyon Trust, argued that the $53 million loan violated federal and state laws. The proposed coal terminal that is to be built on a former Army base in Oakland has been vigorously opposed by Mayor Libby Schaaf and many city officials, faith leaders, residents and environmental groups in the Bay Area who do not want to see trainloads of dusty coal pass through their neighborhoods. Several bills have been introduced in the California legislature to block funding for the $1.2 billion terminal project over concerns about effects of transporting coal locally and the burning of coal globally. China announced last week that it is closing more than 1,000 coal mines due to a price-sapping supply glut and the governments new determination to clean up dangerous air pollution across the country. The Obama administration has also paused all new federal coal leasing until a comprehensive review of the federal coal-leasing program is completed. Some of the coal that would supply the Oakland terminal could come from the publicly owned coal from the Greens Hollow mine, but the presidents coal moratorium offers no guarantee that this coal will be mined, making the legislatures gambit to bet state sales tax revenue on the coal-export terminal a very questionable move.
Meet Ed Jardim, group investor and media executive at construction, engineering and mining contractor Murray & Roberts. He's the man behind the brand of the multi-national group. In his view, content is king.

Ed Jardim

Tell us about a day in your work life. Tell us about a day in your work life.

Depending on the projects we have running throughout the year, Im at work by 6.30am to go through early emails (we own companies in Australia and the US) and read the newspapers. By 8.30am, the team (one designer and one communications manager) is in the office and we touch base to see whats planned for the day/week. I manage our investor relations function too, so I am often in the CEO and CFOs offices working on shareholder queries. Meetings normally take up half the day, the rest is spent on planning, writing and admin. I normally wrap up around 6pm to head out for my daily 10km run.

What does brand management mean to you? What does brand management mean to you?

A brand has an identity or a personality. The way this identity is perceived, showcased and displayed should be managed in a manner that doesnt harm its personality. Its also the way in which stakeholders, internal and external, interact with its personality  which needs to be managed.

Could you explain your specific brand management strategy, and how it ties into Murray & Roberts' overall marketing/corporate communications? Could you explain your specific brand management strategy, and how it ties into Murray & Roberts' overall marketing/corporate communications?

Murray & Roberts can trace its roots back to 1902, starting as a South African engineering and construction business. Over the past 15 years, the group has transformed into a multi-national (we work on five continents) engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning and operations & maintenance business, with the construction segment only constituting about 15% of the groups profit after tax. Managing the groups brand perception against the belief that we are still a pure construction company is the main challenge we face. The plan to alter stakeholders' views on who we are is deeply integrated into all of our communications initiatives. It started internally, as we have potentially 20,000 employees/brand ambassadors globally who can tell our story. Externally, we ensure that the brand message is told through all our marcomms activities, supported by our common purpose, vision and values.

Whats on your wish list for brand objectives for 2016? Whats on your wish list for brand objectives for 2016?

A bigger budget! More group director time on brand/marketing initiatives. A brand can sometimes be compared to the long forgotten cousin living in another country. Its not often seen as a business imperative, especially if you are not a B2C brand.

Are you using content as part of your marketing strategy for Murray & Roberts? Are you using content as part of your marketing strategy for Murray & Roberts?

Absolutely. Content is king in my view  content which people can relate or have a connection to.

What do you see currently as the main challenges and or opportunities for the building & construction sector? What do you see currently as the main challenges and or opportunities for the building & construction sector?

We are the ugly duckling at the moment and have fallen out of favour with many market commentators and media. What our fellow South Africans often dont appreciate, is that this company has installed critical infrastructure in South Africa for more than 100 years. If you turn on a light, it probably comes from the power station we built. If you are ill and need to recover, youre probably doing it in a hospital we built. If you driving to work so you can provide for yourself/family, youre probably driving on a road we built. We are a large social contributor to the countrys sustainable development.

What brand marketing campaign have you noticed and been impressed by recently? What brand marketing campaign have you noticed and been impressed by recently?

The Careers24 ad campaigns - Get a career you can be proud of. Short, memorable, humorous, punchy and touches on something I believe most people want  a great job that provides you with a sense of purpose and that you can tell your friends about.

What do you love most about working on the Murray & Roberts brand? What do you love most about working on the Murray & Roberts brand?

The fact that we have a 114-year heritage. Our brand has an interesting story to tell. The story has changed significantly over the last 15 years, so only time will tell what the narrative will be going forward.
On 29 January, the commissioner of the Consumer Commission published the long-awaited draft franchise industry code under Section 82 of the Consumer Protection Act for comment.



Photographer: Noor KhamisImage source: Subway franchise.Photographer: Noor KhamisImage source: BDlive

It provides for the establishment of a specialised franchise industry ombud, and the appointment of an ombudsman to receive complaints arising from franchise agreements.

The code will help resolve franchise disputes, based on recommendations by the ombudsman, and thus avoid costly litigation. It will provide for an alternative mechanism of dispute resolution and, although the process will be prescribed and structured, the ombudsman will be more of a mediator than an arbitrator.

The ombudsman will have no power to make binding awards, but will instead make recommendations, with a view to brokering a consensual settlement.

The code will provide for a procedure to initiate franchise-related complaints, and for a procedure to ventilate the issues between the parties.

Complaints that do not meet the requirements laid down by the code will be rejected.

To create awareness of the code and the dispute-resolution mechanisms available, Section 28 of the Consumer Protection Act will require all franchise agreements and disclosure documents to include a notice that the parties are bound by the provisions of the code and undertake to comply with it.

This will make the code contractually applicable to franchisor-franchisee relationships.

The franchise agreement and disclosure document will be required to contain a notice informing franchisees that they will be entitled to refer any franchise-related disputes to the franchise industry ombud.

The process will be voluntary.

An important financial feature of the code is the proposal that the ombud will be funded through contributions levied on franchisees and franchisors.

This will be determined by the franchise industry ombud board, in consultation with a franchise industry body, representing five or more franchisors and franchisees of five or more franchises.

Stakeholders in the industry should participate in the process for determining the levies.

The code proposes that the ombudsman must be a legally qualified person with at least 10 years dispute-resolution experience.

The franchise industry ombud will have jurisdiction over a wide variety of disputes, ranging from breaches of the Consumer Protection Act to contractual disputes flowing from franchise agreements and disclosure documents. The ombudsman will have jurisdiction to entertain questions concerning the interpretation of franchise agreements, breaches and claims for payment of monies, such as royalties, marketing fund contributions, and franchise fees.

He or she will also be empowered to receive and entertain complaints concerning the supply of goods under the franchise agreement, as well as disputes relating to solicitation to enter into franchise agreements.

To better understand the issues between the parties, the ombudsman will be able to request the parties to attend a hearing, during which they will be entitled to be represented by any person of their choice, including a legal representative, and to make submissions and cross-examine witnesses. Cross-examination is a feature of an adversarial system of binding dispute resolution (such as litigation or arbitration) and may create unnecessary conflict, which may hamper the consensual resolution of disputes.

It is proposed that, instead of a hearing, provision should rather be made for a roundtable meeting between the ombudsman and the parties, to promote a spirit of co-operation conducive for consensual dispute resolution.

A mediator brokering a settlement between parties to a dispute will be far more fitting to the consensual dispute-resolution objective of the code.

The ombudsman will be entitled to provide the parties with his views on the dispute, and recommend a basis on which he or she proposes the dispute be resolved.

If the parties accept the recommendation, it will be recorded in writing, which will then be binding and enforceable. If the ombudsmans recommendations are not accepted by the parties, the dispute-resolution process will fail and the ombudsman will be entitled to close the complaint.

A curious feature of the draft code is that it provides for a party to a dispute to seek an award for damages against the other party, with the rider that the party seeking the damages award may reserve the right to request an award for damages in another forum, such as an arbitration tribunal or a high court. Considering that the ombudsman can only make recommendations, he or she will have no authority to make an award for damages, without both parties consent. It would, accordingly, be more appropriate for the code to state that the ombudsman can confirm an agreement between the parties about the liability and amount of damages to be paid.

The word "award" will cause confusion and should be avoided.

Where parties have agreed on another form of dispute resolution, such as arbitration, the dispute-resolution clause in their franchise agreement will take precedence over the mechanism provided for in the code, unless the mechanism is inconsistent with the Consumer Protection Act or excludes its application. Although there are some minor drafting aspects to be looked at in the code, it is a welcome development for the franchise industry, where good relationships between franchisors and franchisees are key to the growth of any franchised business and the franchise industry.

It is to be hoped that the non-confrontational dispute-resolution style proposed by the code will result in efficient dispute resolution, so that franchisors and franchisees stay out of court and get on with business.
The life of the humble South African coffee mug is becoming somewhat precarious. This once cherished kitchen staple, generally emblazoned with whimsical caricatures or schmaltzy aphorisms (e.g. ''World's Greatest Dad''), is slowly being cast aside, increasingly playing second fiddle to its cosmopolitan and paper counterparts.

Analysing the increasingly cultivated palate of the average South African coffee drinker, Insight Surveys latest SA Coffee Landscape Report 2016 documents this tale of reverence and repudiation by fleshing out the constituent market drivers; in so doing providing a comprehensively nuanced understanding of the domestic industry environment and market dynamics.

So how did this tale of woe begin? Well, chicory-based instant coffees (e.g. Ricoffy and Frisco) have long been South Africans preferred choice, and currently still hold a hefty 79% market share. However, this is rapidly being eroded by a culture of sophistication which has seen ground coffee register the largest growth in per capita consumption over the past three years.

Commenting on this burgeoning culture of sophistication, Chris Brown (Director of the Daily Buzz) ratifies the aforementioned, stating: "We are seeing a change in the local coffee culture - people are becoming more discerning and aware when it comes to drinking coffee.

This is manifested in the growing demand for speciality coffees (including an emphasis on organic and ethically sourced coffees). Fairtrade coffee sales alone have increased by R7 million in South Africa over the last year. Brown feels that this trend is here to stay, stating: "I believe we will [continue to] see a steady increase in the demand for Fairtrade and organic coffee." In response to this demand, niche artisanal roasteries such as Truth Coffee have introduced organic ethically sourced coffees, as well as enticing concoctions infused with the likes of butter and MCT oil.

Ground coffee is also being driven by its strong links to conviviality, with artisanal roasteries such as Truth (which recently won the title of Worlds Best Coffee Shop), providing trendy hangouts for the vogue hipster clique. This is echoed by Darren Levy, CEO of Vida e Caffe, who says, "People want to enjoy good coffee and they want it to be led by social engagement." As such, SA coffee shops peddling an array of ground coffees, have seen a sharp 7.1% increase in income since 2014 with impressive growth across the country.

However, the demand for ground coffee is not limited to coffee shops, given the exponential rise in the domestic sales of in-home single-serve coffee machines such as Nespresso. As Judith Walter, Marketing Manager of Coffee Capsules Direct says, Instant coffee is still very popular in SA, however, the demand for fresh coffee that is freshly brewed [in-home] is on the rise."

Thus, this growth in the demand for ground coffee (as illustrated above), whilst by no means sounding the death knell for the humble ceramic mug (and its implied proletariat content), is seeing it increasingly playing second-fiddle to Italian espresso minis, ornate glass chalices and brand-name takeaway cups.

The South African Coffee Landscape Report (84 pages) provides a dynamic synthesis of industry research, examining the local and global coffee industry from a uniquely holistic perspective, with detailed insights into the entire value chain  from production right through to consumption.

Some key questions the report will help you to answer:

What are the current market dynamics of the global Coffee industry?



What are the SA Coffee industry trends, drivers, and restraints?



What are the prices of Coffees at retail outlets, i.e. Lattes, Espressos, Americanos, and Cappuccinos?



What are the prices of popular Ground and Instant Coffee brands across South African supermarkets?



What are the statistics regarding the most popular Instant and Ground Coffee brands in 2015?



What are the Instant and Ground Coffee consumer trends and forecasts (2007-2019)?

Please note that the 84-page PowerPoint report is available for purchase for R25,000 (excluding VAT). Alternatively, individual sections can be purchased for R7,500 (excluding VAT). For additional information simply contact us at az.oc.yevrusthgisni@ofni or directly on (0)21 045-0202.

For a full brochure please go to: South African Coffee Landscape Report 2016.

About Insight Survey:

Insight Survey is a South African B2B market research company with almost 10 years of heritage, focusing on business-to business (B2B) market research to ensure smarter, more profitable business decisions are made with reduced investment risk.

We offer B2B market research solutions to help you to successfully improve or expand your business, enter new markets, launch new products or better understand your internal or external environment.

Our bespoke Competitive Business Intelligence Research can help give you the edge in a global marketplace, empowering your business to overcome industry challenges quickly and effectively, and enabling you to realise your potential and achieve your vision.

From strategic overviews of your businesss competitive environment through to specific competitor profiles, our customised Competitive Intelligence Research is designed to meet your unique needs.

For more information, go to www.insightsurvey.co.za.




A skills training initiative, funded by the not-for-profit Amarula Trust, with the aim to boost eco-tourism in Southern Africa and combat unemployment has exposed a total of 116 students to the demands of field guiding as a career.

The eight students at the Wilderness Safaris Damaraland Adventure Camp where the first part of the course was offered - photo by Gerhard van Niekerk.

The project saw eight students undergo a month-long training course at the Erindi Private Game Reserve and Wilderness Safaris Damaraland Adventure Camp in Namibia, ending last week. This is the fourth time Namibian candidates have benefitted from the programme that extends field guide training provided by EcoTraining in association with the Field Guide Association of South Africa (FGASA).

Namibia's travel and tourism industry set to grow

The initiative comes at a time when Namibia's travel and tourism industry is set to significantly increase its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP). According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, travel and tourism accounted for 14,9% of GDP in 2014, a contribution that is expected to rise to 21,6% by 2025. The growth of the sector will also result in more jobs. The council anticipates that the 102 500 jobs it currently generates directly and indirectly, will rise to 186 000 by 2025 to represent 25% of the country's total employment.

Hardie Basson, who is marketing manager for Amarula's parent company Distell, in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, said the building of rural skills to support eco-tourism was critical. The growth in tourism means there is an increasing demand for qualified field guides to host mostly foreign guests. By facilitating the provision of skills, the Amarula Trust is also helping to tackle unemployment.

The Amarula Field Guide Scholarship programme is a very important part of the work of the trust that focuses on promoting social sustainability and conservation. Begun in 2010 in Botswana, the programme was extended in 2011 to South Africa and, in 2012, to Namibia.

Field guides in training

Candidates with the potential to develop their careers who are currently working in entry-level positions at game lodges and private reserves are chosen by their employers for the project, he explained. When they are promoted after undergoing the course, and they vacate their positions, they also create employment opportunities for others.

The latest Namibian course involved eight candidates from six game lodges and private reserves. Students were taught about the natural, physical environment and ecology, with the accent on climate, biomes and diversity. Some of the areas they covered included arthropods, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, geology and soils. They also learned about astronomy, tracking, how to drive a 4x4 and even hosting of guests.

Some of the students come to the course with a basic understanding of their natural environment. The course builds on that and then formalises their knowledge and skills. It also teaches effective communication: how to transfer knowledge to tourists in a fun, interactive and informative manner, said EcoTraining instructor Gerhard van Niekerk.

At the prize-giving ceremony, Van Niekerk said many of those who benefited from previous training courses run in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, now worked as field guides in reserves and at private lodges. Some were in reserve or lodge management while others had continued their studies to become academic researchers.

He stressed the importance of the ongoing development and training of the candidates in order for them to become fully-fledged field guides.

Elephant tracking

For many of this year's Namibian students, elephant tracking was their highlight.

We encountered an elephant cow with her calf at the Wilderness Safaris Damaraland Adventure Camp, said Rector Tetuka, a student from the Gondwana Namushasha River Lodge in the north of Namibia. This was the first time for many of us to come across elephants on foot. We were instructed to stand very still in a non-threatening way, and then to go down on our knees while the elephant cow and her calf passed by literally a few metres from where we were.

It was exhilarating but very scary. Experiences like this teach us to truly respect animals in their natural environments. Here they set the rules, not the humans.

Students also learned to analyse elephant dung. Sheldin Naruseb, a student from the Erindi Private Game Reserve, explained: Generally speaking, if the tree bark and leaves in the dung are finely chewed, the elephant is considered young to middle-aged. This is because during their lifetime, elephants go through six sets of large teeth. When the elephants final set of teeth falls out, the animal slowly dies of malnutrition or starvation as it can no longer chew its food to release the essential nutrients.
SA is still exporting maize, despite not being able to meet local requirements, which is worsening the shortage, and contributing to the high cost of the crop, meat organisations told MPs yesterday. The deterioration of the rand-dollar exchange rate has contributed to the higher price of imported maize. The absence of a grain reserve makes users vulnerable to escalating prices.

Representatives of the South African Poultry Association (Sapa), Red Meat Producers' Organisation (RPO) and the South African Pork Producers' Organisation (Sappo) briefed Parliament's portfolio committee on agriculture, forestry and fisheries about the effect of the drought on the meat production sector.

Users of maize will have to pay the price

Sapa's Andy Crocker, who is MD of Meadow Feeds, said SA would have to import a record quantity of white and yellow maize this year, amounting to an estimated 3.5 million tonnes. It is the users of maize who will have to bear the additional cost.

"SA is a net exporter of maize, but what we often injudiciously do is to export maize when we do not have enough to meet our own requirements," Crocker said. "We may have had enough grain, but we don't anymore."

Sapa estimated that domestic users of maize in all agricultural sectors would pay an additional R22bn last year and this year, due to the higher prices, while the revenue of maize producers would remain relatively unchanged.

Government called on for support

Sapa CEO Kevin Lovell called on the government to control the export of maize and assist in the build-up of a strategic grain reserve, which would ensure domestic supply and help keep the domestic maize price as close to the export parity price as possible. SA imported on average about 1.6-million tonnes of maize on a sustained basis, he said.

Sapa also urged the government to prevent any increase in the maize tariff and to remove the tariff on soya imports.

The association has proposed the creation of a state-funded insurance scheme for grain farmers to lower costs and reduce the risks of farming. Maize farmers are expected to produce about half the five-year average tonnage this year - well short of local requirements and, therefore, requiring further imports.

The cost of feed

Sapa senior executive Charlotte Nkuna noted that maize exports in 2014 pushed up the price paid by local users by about R450 per tonne. She said feed costs represented about 70% of the cost of chicken and egg production and when they increased, profit margins were squeezed. Imports of feed added significantly to costs, which poultry producers were not able to recoup from price-resistant consumers. At the same time, profit margins in the industry were very thin and it was not able to absorb all these extra costs.

"Exports are needed, but the free market system can also lead to some undesired outcomes," she said. Nkuna said the drought would increase feed costs for the broiler industry by about R3.6bn while the new brining regulations would add an estimated R4.5bn to costs. Egg producers faced an additional R1bn in feed costs.

Meat industry hit hard

Sappo chairman James Jenkinson told MPs that the pork industry faced a year-on-year increase in the feed price of more than 70% this year. Small-scale farmers would be particularly hard hit, and government intervention was urgently needed to assist them. "Farmers are making a loss, and this will continue during 2016. Consumers will pay more for pork. It is expected that the price to the consumer will increase by at least 25%. The producer price is expected to immediately go up by at least 15%," Jenkinson said. He said the organisation expected the industry to shed at least 10% of its jobs.

RPO vice-chairman Pieter Prinsloo estimated that SA would lose 5% of its 13-million national beef herd. He noted there had been a 28% increase in cattle slaughters in November and December.

Source: Business Day
According to research carried out by the University of Iowa, a good culture fit leads to greater job satisfaction, higher levels of retention, stronger strategic alignment and superior job performance.

Kay Vittee, CEO of Kelly says, The more that beliefs, values and needs correlate, the better the culture fit and the more both the company and employee benefit from working together toward a common goal.

Successful companies consistently hire people who share their values. The starting point for any business looking to take on new staff should be defining and articulating its culture - values, goals and practices - and then melding this understanding into the hiring process.

Companies can identify their culture by participating in a culture walk to determine some of the physical signs of culture, conducting culture interviews with employees and engaging people within the organisation to complete a culture survey, based on the information collected during the previous two activities.

When hiring for cultural fit, we advise getting an idea of how candidates think and operate. Ways of eliminating or validating someone ahead of an interview include meticulously researching them and using social media tools, such as LinkedIn, to determine connections within your network  after all in the business world, as in life, we tend to gravitate toward people who similar to us and share our interests, values and behavioural norms.

One of the critical purposes of a job interview is to determine this potential cultural fit. When conducting interviews, Vittee suggests asking candidates for specific examples of traits that match your culture. For instance, you could ask them to describe the work environment or culture in which they are most productive and happy. These types of questions will enable you to cut through the typical job interview practice of people telling you what they think you want to hear. In this case, you are forcing them to share what they actually believe.

During the employee selection process, companies should involve other employees. Who better to judge a culture fit than those who will be working with the individual every day and who are already a part of the company, working towards achieving business success for the organisation.

Once you have made your decision and hired the person you believe would be the best cultural fit, it is imperative to help the new employee through the enculturation process through which he or she will adjust to and become part of the corporate culture.

While some companies assist new employees to embrace their culture through orientation, on-boarding sessions and other HR initiatives, new employees should be welcomed with a plan that helps them to learn their job and immerses them in the most important aspects of the culture.

This could involve sharing the organisations mission, vision, guiding principles and values, as well as ensuring that the new employee meets with management and other key employees who can convey the culture and accompanying expectations.

It is also advisable to assign a mentor or buddy to the new employee. This existing staff member can teach the new hire about the company's culture and introduce additional longer term employees.

There are those that feel that hiring for cultural fit can lead to prejudice against candidates and a deficiency in diversity. However, hiring for culture fit does not equate to hiring people who are all the same. The values and characteristics that comprise an organisational culture can and should be mirrored in a richly diverse workforce, concludes Vittee.
Vusi Thembekwayo and Three Ships Whisky have selected Lumko Mpande (27) from Tembisa, as the top entrepreneur in the 2016 Pioneering Spirit Competition. His prize includes a R100,000 capital injection to boost his business and an all-expenses-paid mentorship with Thembekwayo, one of South Africa's most successful entrepreneurs and motivational speakers.

Andy Watts, (Three Ships master distiller); Vusi Thembekwayo; Lumko Mpande (winner); and Liezl Dippenaar (Three Ships marketing manager)

Mpande, a call centre supervisor who started Bumka Scooter Rentals on the side, rents out four 125CC motorbikes to businesses such as Debonairs and sandwich shops within a 12km radius of Tembisa. He joined four finalists on 26 February at the James Sedgwick Distillery where they were put to the test by presenting their business plans to Vusi and Three Ships master distiller, Andy Watts.

I bought my first motorbike to save on travelling costs. With many businesses utilising motorbikes for deliveries I saw a gap in the market to rent out a few scooters and motorbikes to service the area of Tembisa. My ultimate dream is to offer my hometown KwaNdebele, in Mpumalanga, such a service, as the township does not enjoy the same benefits as most of those in Gauteng. I would like to start something there too that would improve life in the area.

I have had to make many sacrifices to make it this far. I rent a very small room in my effort to save as much money as I can to plough back into my business. I paid cash for all my motorbikes by maintaining a very simple lifestyle. Many entrepreneurs in South Africa are too afraid to take calculated risks. I believe that with the right attitude, sacrifice and belief in yourself, you can reach the highest you are destined for.

Mpande aims to use the R100,000 in realising his goal of owning 200 motorbikes, delivering online orders and small packages nationwide. He is looking forward to spending time with Vusi and benefitting from his enormous wisdom and experience.
The High Street Auction Co has announced the launch of its new property 'Sale by Tender' trading platform.

Aimed at widening market access and promoting the highest levels of governance and transparency, The High Street Auction Co already has a portfolio of assets from a listed property fund in a sale by tender process on the platform. This particular sale will close on 1 March 2016.

The property industry is the next industry set for massive disruption thanks to innovation in ICT. Sale by Tender will affect every participant in the South Africas R5.2 trillion real estate ecology - including construction and property funds to agents - by transforming how the market transacts," Lance Chalwin-Milton, joint managing director at High Street Auction Co, says.

"For the first time prospective buyers will be able to make an offer on a property via a tender process that is open for public participation. This will give both big and small buyers the opportunity to compete on a level playing field. Furthermore, it will ensure all properties on the platform remain on the market until the Sale by Tender closes as the due diligence is conducted by all purchasers at the same time.

More speedy transactions

Key advantages of the platform for prospective sellers include not just that it enables transactions to be processed more speedily, but that it also gives insight into market sentiment towards the portfolio since the property owner ultimately gets several offers that can serve as a market survey.

In addition - and unlike a traditional buyer/seller model - the property remains on the market until the tender closes and all interested buyers have the opportunity to view a property and simultaneously submit their offers, through sealed offers to purchase. All offers are then considered together and thorough due diligence is conducted to determine which offer is chosen.

Sale by Tender facilitates greater inclusion by extending access to a broader buyer pool. Like other ICT trading innovations, Sale by Tender also removes most information asymmetries associated with the property market - like knowing what assets are up for sale, to start with.

"Many of these assets have traditionally been disposed of in privileged circles. Our market-disrupting innovation will help to develop the property sector through democratisation of access to opportunity, concludes Chalwin-Milton.
Saturday, 12 March will see the 7th annual Cape Town Carnival explode onto the Green Point Fan Walk with dazzling floats, foot-stomping and dancing. Hundreds of dancers, performance groups, celebrities and dignitaries will come together under the theme "street life", taking inspiration from the energy and dynamics of Cape Town's streets.

Public transport

Getting to the Cape Town Carnival with public transport will be easy as MyCiti will offer extra buses on each of the following routes in addition to the standard schedules.

 Three trips departing from the Cape Town Stadium station every hour to Cape Town Station - at 10.30pm, 11.30pm and 12.30am please note the normal MyCiti charges with myconnect apply.

Spectators are encouraged to visit the MyCiti website for further details on the available public transport options.

Carnival-goers will have the freedom of the city streets from 3p and can enjoy the variety of food, crafts and special kids activities on offer along the Fan Walk. The streets will be closed for final preparations at 6pm before the magic begins with an explosion of fireworks at 7pm.

Road closures

Residents affected by the road closures are kindly requested to make use of  and park their vehicles in  alternative roads and side streets while the Carnival is in full swing on the Fan Walk. The following road closures will be in effect from 12pm on Saturday, 12 March to 1am on Sunday, 13 March 2016:
It is hard to paint a rosy picture of telecommunications in South Africa. The environment is dominated by two players and policed by a regulator that does not always meet its mandate. In the end all that grief is passed onto South African mobile and Internet users, who carry the brunt of some of the highest telecommunications costs in the world.

The only true solution to this impasse is an open and competitive market, made possible by a level playing field. This is why several industry players chose to oppose the planned merger between Vodacom and Neotel.

In 2014 Vodacom, South Africas largest mobile operator, announced plans to buy Neotel, the countrys second-largest fixed-line operator. If Vodacom were to acquire Neotels vast fibre networks as well as its mobile spectrum, it would render the companys iron grip on the market into an unassailable monopoly able to dictate the price consumers pay to connect.

Key concern

Spectrum is a key concern: defined as the radio frequencies used to transmit (among other things) mobile signals, spectrum is essential for delivering faster internet to a growing user base. Already this is a pinching nerve for mobile operators, as spectrum is not only scarce but licenses for it are very difficult to acquire.

Vodacoms takeover of Neotel would have delivered substantial amounts of this valuable commodity to the former, translating into an incredible and unfair advantage that could only hurt the market and ultimately consumers. Even the Competition Commission noted this, advising a number of conditions that included Vodacom be barred from using Neotels spectrum for more than two years.

Yet even though Vodacom decided to modify its deal and exclude spectrum licenses, the High Courts decision to set aside approval of the merger is a clear victory for South Africas broadband market and the consumers it serves. But perhaps even more key is the finding that the industry regulator Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) did not act appropriately. Its behaviour, incredibly, included private meetings with Vodacom. The High Court judge said that [f]or an administrator to attend a private meeting with one of the parties under these circumstances is, in my view, not only improper, but also unlawful.

ICASA failed

Given its past actions, which included fighting cuts to already-expensive mobile termination rates, there is little doubt that Vodacom would have used its acquired girth to continue forcing the market into inadvertently punishing consumers. Likewise, the High Court has laid bare how ICASA failed to meet one of its most basic requirements of its existence: the creation of competition in the telecommunications industry. By not considering the potential anti-competitive effects of the proposed merger - facts they had at hand - ICASA failed its statutory obligation to promote competition that brings about affordable prices for consumers.

But while this battle is won, the war continues. Even though the ruling puts a stop to the spectrum takeover, any merger between Vodacom and Neotel should be opposed. It would make it even harder for newcomers to compete in and grow South Africas Internet market. As the need to connect more South Africans to the Internet and the demand for affordable broadband services continue to grow, every measure should be taken to ensure a responsible and fair market - one that ultimately provides better services for less to all South Africans.

This is not simply a matter of market share, but an issue that concerns all of us. Cell C welcomes the High Courts judgment and commits itself to continue the fight for a South African Internet we can all participate in.
The second Programmatic Summit, a digital conference, will take place at the Inner City Ideas Cartel in Cape Town on 9 March 2016. The summit will take a deep-dive into the opportunities for brands and advertising agencies to engage with their desired audience using some of the industry's best platforms.

This years Summit will host eight discussions across the subject of programmatic with international representatives from Ireland, New York, Los Angeles and Singapore sharing their insights and global trends.

International guest speakers include Steven Kaufman from AudienceX, James Brown from Rubicon Project, Mihai Fanache from Chargeads, Factuals head of agency, Tyler Webster and Rob Fear, Celtras Creative product specialist; the latter two will be broadcast from New York and London respectively.

South African representatives include Mark Harris Group CEO, Kagiso Media; Vincent Maher, chief innovations officer, Kagiso Media; Jared Cinman, chairperson IAB South Africa; Mike Carter, special projects director, MaxAxion; and Daniel Courtenay, CEO, MaxAxion will unwrap the local Programmatic landscape.

Programmatic future

The digital media industry continues to accelerate as programmatic buying continues to grow exponentially and dominate industry conversation. We now see a demand for sophisticated data-driven campaigns executed with precision, and campaigns using sophisticated scoring technology to assess the users propensity to convert.

Technology now allows us to infuse creatives with real-world data from all kinds of first- and third-party sources also using signals such as weather, time and audience segments to ensure each impression is not only targeted to the right person, but also presents that person with the most relevant message. This, with highly customisable location-based audiences and geo-fencing capabilities makes for engaging and dynamic creative executions.

As the private marketplace heats up, buyers demand more localised and accurate audience data on premium titles bringing buyers and sellers closer together on more robust advertising technology platform. The summit will also expose an exciting new local private market place project (AdJoin), which sees a number of the worlds best technologies exposing audiences across some of Africas most premium publisher properties.

In addition, native advertising joins the conversation and we introduce publishers to a world of unbounded advertising executions, beautifully integrated alongside editorial content and powered by industry-standard, data driven, RTB protocols.

For more information, get in touch with Mike Carter: az.oc.noixaxam@ekim.
An extra Joburg date has been added to Nicki Minaj's Pinkprint Tour.

The American rap sensations forthcoming South African tour will be at Joburgs Ticketpro Dome on 17 and 18 March, Durbans Moses Mabhida Stadium on 20 March, and Cape Towns Grand West Arena on 22 March, 2016.

Grammy-nominated superstar Nicki Minaj is touring in support of her third album, 'The Pinkprint', which topped the Billboard 200 and Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. She will be performing a selection of hits from her three albums.

Tickets can be purchased from www.ticketpros.co.za and selected Edgars retail stores, with prices starting at R490.
In its 92-year history, Walt Disney Animation Studios has created a long and storied legacy of talking animal films - from Mickey Mouse's debut short Steamboat Willie to Bambi, Dumbo, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood and The Lion King, and returns to the wild with the feature film Zootropolis, which marks Disney Animation Studios' 55th animated feature.

We all grew up watching the great Disney animal films - we were immersed in those worlds, says director Byron Howard. (Tangled, Bolt), who directed the film with Rich Moore (Wreck-It Ralph, The Simpsons), from a screenplay by co-director Jared Bush (Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero) and Phil Johnston (Wreck-It Ralph, Grimsby).

My favourite childhood film was Robin Hood - and we wanted to honour that legacy, but in a new and different way that dives even deeper. We started by asking: What would a mammal metropolis look like if it were designed by animals? The idea was incredibly exciting to us.

The modern mammal metropolis of Zootropolis is a city like no other. Comprising habitat neighbourhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, its a melting pot where animals from every environment live together - a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything. But when rookie Officer Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isnt so easy. Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering a fast-talking, scam artist fox, Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman), to solve the mystery.

A buddy movie

At its core, Zootropolis is a buddy movie, says director Rich Moore. Judy and Nick - a rabbit and a fox - are natural enemies by definition. So these characters dont exactly get along at first. They come to the relationship with ideas about each other - beliefs that arent informed or accurate.

According to Howard, the fact that the buddies dont get along fuels the films comedy. Judy is the eternal optimist who believes anyone can be anything - its the citys motto, after all, he says. Nick is the complete opposite. Hes a cynic. He believes we are what we are. So we put this country bumpkin whos full of vim and vigour in the middle of the big city alongside Nick - the realist - and he gets to have a lot of fun messing with her. But she has a few tricks up her sleeve.

Filmmakers conceived and built the vast and detailed world of Zootropolis, populating it with 64 different species of animals that retain what makes each animal so amazing in the real world - but these animals talk and wear pants.

The team spent 18 months just researching animals, says producer Clark Spencer. We met animal experts from all over the world, including Disneys Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World. We travelled 9000 miles to Kenya for a two-week deep dive into animal personality and Behaviour. We wanted each species of animal to be real, to feel authentic and to be based on their real-world Behaviour.

Changed by our trip to Africa

I think all of us were profoundly changed by our trip to Africa, adds Jared Bush, who is co-director and one of the screenwriters. Its such an amazing experience, being around hundreds, thousands of animals. In this movie, we want to feel that density, which is a lot of work. We came back after that trip with a sincere need to make it right.

Research is the foundation for all of Walt Disney Animation Studios films - something executive producer John Lasseter believes is required to create a great story. So when the filmmakers behind Zootropolis decided to create an all-animal world, they went wild, literally, when it came to research. In addition to their trek to Africa, team members spent time at Disneys Animal Kingdom and San Diegos Wild Animal Park; they interviewed several experts and visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. We did about 18 months of really solid research into animals, says director Byron Howard. We studied how they interact in the wild, how they socialise and how their individual communities are built in the natural world.

We found that the majority of animals  90% - percentare prey, continues Howard. Only 10% are predators. So while we always assumed that predators ruled the animal world, theyre actually the minority. We talked to anthropologists and sociologists and took a look way back through human history - any time you have a majority and minority, social issues arise. We learned and observed that animals of all kinds tend to stay with animals that look like them; they find refuge and protection within their individual groups and tend to avoid animals that are different.

So the research led the filmmakers to a story that deals with stereotypes and bias. We set out to make a funny animal movie, says Howard. But the more digging we did, we saw an opportunity to talk about something important, while still having great fun with the world, the characters and the story.

Prey versus predator

According to head of story Josie Trinidad, filmmakers first looked at prey versus predator and how that would affect a community like Zootropolis. Then we leaned into animal stereotypes - elephants never forget, foxes are sly, rabbits are timid - everyone has a stereotype theyre fighting against. Thats something everyone in the audience can appreciate.

Filmmakers strived to strike the right balance in the story. We worked very hard to find that sweet spot, says director Rich Moore. The goal from the beginning was to tell a very rich story thats entertaining, has heart and says something meaningful.

Five lucky Bizcommunity readers can win a Zootropolis hamper that includes a notebook, postcard set, T-shirt and cap. All you have to do is tell us who plays the bunny and send your answer and contact details to az.oc.oidutsgnitirw@leinad before 31 March, 2016

Read more about Zootropolis and other new films opening on 4 March at www.writingstudio.co.za
Digital advice ranging from a selection of the 2016 Bookmark Awards' specialist judges: Start making use of analytics from the start of campaigns and get ready for the rise of personalised, segmented marketing.

Van Tonder, Davies, Stiles, Smith, Beale

An incredible amount of effort was put into finding the most appropriate and experienced judges for the various Bookmarks categories. For example, Alex van Tonder, creative and content director at theconceptphase.org; Leila Davies of Worldwide Creative; Graeme Stiles, group head of organic search at Quirk; Victoria Smith, head of analytics at Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize; and John Beale, owner of Eight Thinking; are just 5 of this years 20-strong judges on specialist digital aspects like organic search and email across all the entry categories. Here, they exclusively share their insights into judging this year's entries

1. What are you most looking forward to from this years IAB Digital Summit & Bookmark Awards?

Van Tonder: It's always good to see where we're doing well and where our blind spots are as an industry. I'm looking forward to awarding work that delivers results, stimulating discussion over learnings, a coming together of the industry's best minds and collectively looking at how we're going to change and grow to better help our clients achieve their business objectives in the coming year, based on our learnings coming out of the summit.

Davies: Seeing what our country is capable of with regard to ideas that bring in results. I have not been disappointed! I've been inspired, in fact.

Stiles: Im looking forward to the increased focus on the performance marketing aspect of digital marketing at this years summit. Topics like programmatic buying and native advertising still cause a lot of confusion so it will be great to hear the thoughts of industry leaders on these topics. This also goes for topics like ad blocking and click fraud that have a direct impact on the effectiveness of our campaigns. Insights from industry leaders will go a long way to dispelling some of the myths and confusion surrounding these topics.

Smith: Im looking forward to seeing exceptional talent and ideas rewarded. Since these awards are focussed on real results, I am excited to see what the brightest minds in this industry have achieved in the last year.

Beale: Im hoping to see some progression in the digital discussion from last years summit to 2016, along with that a forward view on what we can expect in SA digital media industry

2. Share some pointers on your personal judging process and what youre looking for from entrants in your category.

Van Tonder: Going through the work this year I've been focused on two things: understanding the client's objectives relative to the ideas being presented, and whether the ideas being presented work. I'm also looking for brands that are using the wealth of data available to them to drive insights and creativity: what worked in the past, what was learned, how those learnings were adapted and improved on, how the work was moved forward. Numbers without business objectives don't interest me as much. Why do you want the numbers, the views, the likes? To what commercial end?

Davies: Innovation, with the results. It's all good and well to have brilliant ideas, but if they don't bring in the needed results, they aren't doing what the client has requested or what they need  and that doesn't hit the mark for me. By the same token, simply using new ad types isn't innovative  if it's combined with a well thought-out strategy that pushes the limits and drives inspiration, then hooray! But if not, then it's not pushing the boundaries enough.

Stiles: I am excited this year that theres a focus on bringing subject matter experts into the judging process to lend insights and advice to their specific areas of expertise. This allows for a bigger focus on the metrics that matter to each discipline. Ill be looking for hard data to back up the work submitted. Its important that the work submitted not only have a clever and well-executed idea, but that it was also effective for the client and their bottom line. The campaign may look fancy, but did it deliver value to the client? That is the core question.

Smith: I believe in giving each entry due care. Therefore, I assign sufficient time to evaluate each entry on its respective strengths and place that individual performance into context. Performance is always relative, so putting the numbers into perspective ensures that I understand just how incredible the results are. Im looking for innovative work in fields that are traditionally considered rigid. Its inspiring to see the ever-changing technology at our disposal used in new and amazing ways. Innovation (adding real value to clients) really stands out as a result.

Beale: The Bookmarks have always been focused on results and Im focusing even more heavily on seeing brand-/product-/service-related results from digital campaigns. The days of fans and engagements are done. We need to see digital also delivering the business results, at the scale it can now provide, so thats what Im looking for.

3. Elaborate on the overall standard of digital work in SA. Where do we shine and whats still lacking?

Van Tonder: We shine in mobile, especially compared to work I've seen in some first-world countries. Our retail and online commerce brands are doing work on a par with international brands, and this sector seems to be leading the category as it's useful to customers  they're there to shop, it's conducive to narrative-based rather than functional content, you don't have to trick customers into seeing your posts as they're looking for them. We fall short in analytics and data-driven creative big time. We see analytics as an afterthought, something you do afterwards to measure if it worked, instead of the skeleton off which a lot of our thinking should hang and the insights that should lead the briefs. We're getting better at understanding how to engage customers without annoying them or disrupting them, but we have a long way to go when it comes to building strong narrative-driven social. All in all, we're progressing, which is a good sign.

Davies: It is quite a difficult space. There are a lot of amazingly talented people out there  technically and creatively  but often client budgets don't really allow for those to really do their thing. As a whole, companies doing the digital work for clients need to be more assertive with regards to their suggestions or recommendations  clients are hiring them for a reason and all too often campaign ideas get totally watered down to the bare minimum because the client has said it must be so. We are too scared; we need to be bolder. We need to be hungry to do things, hungry enough to push the limits, not settle for what we always have done. Then we can put more work out there that we are proud of and gets the results set out for us. It's a big shift to make, but I am seeing more agencies doing this, which is great. We just need to be authentic in what we do, while we grow as an industry.

Stiles: On the whole we are steadily improving, theres a shift from purely digital work into a more general space where campaigns play in an above- and below-the-line space. This leads to some great campaign ideas and concepts, and the quality of work is really growing in leaps and bounds. The challenge is to make sure we bring the core values of digital into this new space. We need to keep our focus on work that delivers value. Lets use the data available to us and our clients to make better decisions and increase the effectiveness of our campaigns. Lets set measurable targets and hold ourselves accountable to achieving value for clients in both a creative and performance marketing space.

Smith: Theres a great appetite for the digital space in SA, but countries abroad still hold the edge, and are more invested in using digital data at the heart of strategies. Id like to see data shine more in South Africa; not just as evidence of performance, but also as a springboard that drives strategies from the start. I believe were lacking more personalised, segmented marketing that is more relevant to individuals. All the same, Im optimistic.

Beale: Where we lack is still in being innovative in channel, and still being isolated in the digital approach, without seeing full campaign integration. But creatively were on par with anywhere else in the world, and we tap into some great insights for local relevance, especially in some unique mobile campaigns Ive seen.

Exciting times! If youre eager to delve in deeper into digital, click through to this podcast interview with Josephine Buys, CEO of IAB South Africa, to find out more about the highly anticipated IAB Digital Summit &Bookmark Awards 2016, taking place at Turbine Hall in Johannesburg on 3 March 2016. Click here for the full list of Bookmarks 2016 judges and here for the full list of finalists and watch for our in-depth coverage.
The biggest influence in the workplace right now are millennials. This first generation of savvy, digital natives are driving most organisational change - as employees and as consumers.

The importance of employer branding in recruiting the right candidates and the rise of social media as a tool for talent search, are two of the most important trends in human resources and recruitment.

Jean-Marie Guyon via 123RF

These are some of the biggest trends that will change organisations by 2020 and impact on the future of work:

1. Understand millennial mavericks

Talent expectations are different among millennials, says Merle OBrien, futurist at Lacuna Radar. Current HR trends are creating new opportunities to achieve differentiation within the corporate recruitment space. Harvard Business Review wrote about how newer, hipper, more entrepreneurial and web-savvy companies founded or run by millennials are better at reaching younger consumers who are a big part of the market and will soon be the part that counts the most. HBR recommends that established companies need significant process changes internally, even new infrastructure and definitely a new mindset, to meet the needs of this new millennial generation.

PwCs NextGen research reports that millennials value greater flexibility, appreciation, team collaboration and global opportunities. They dont work in the same way, nor are they motivated by the same things, as the previous generation: a new talent strategy is needed.

2. Hire innovators

Innovators produce 10 times more than the average worker in the same job, helping position leading brands in the marketplace, says Yolanda Gibbon, founder of Cardilogix.

Innovative firms like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon produce significantly higher workforce productivity (i.e., revenue per employee) than the average firm in the industry, because their focus is on hiring innovators. Innovators also allows a firm to be first in the marketplace, producing higher margins of profitability - which builds the product brand but also provides you with domination in your sector Start hiring innovators!

Gibbon says innovators are much more productive. They work smart and have the ability to multi-task because of a unique skill-set. These employees also have strong opinions and a great deal of self-confidence.

3. Data on demand

As with most industries, data is playing a key role in the HR and recruitment industry. Marc Privett, GM of Careers24.com says technological developments have made it possible to collect, store and share vast amounts of data which can be applied to help make business decisions. Analysing data will, among a host of other things, reveal which sources are producing quality applications, which types of interviews and questions best identify future top performers and continue to produce quality applicants and hires. Data will still have to be backed up by hard evidence.

4. Gamification and apps

Apps, mobile games and other tech are automating the recruitment industry to an extent to minimise admin and search for talented candidates. The step is necessary because so many candidates are using technology to search for jobs and apply via video interviews and social media.

CodeFights, for example, is a coding challenge developed to recruit essential tech staff.

5. Become marketers

Start telling your story, either as an employer or a recruitment agency, says Gibbon. We have so many new online channels from which to source and where we can tell the world who we are and what we do. Companies and recruiters should start using it to our advantage.

The marketing objective is easy, Gibbon says, employees and talent must buy into your brand. In an ever changing world we will have to think strategically and develop turnkey solutions just like marketers or brand managers do and add core marketing competencies into our talent acquisition toolbox to get the job done and stand out from the rest of the crowd.

6. Headhunting surge

Paul Byrne, MD of CareerJunction, says head hunting will increase and recruiters need to know where to search. Recruiters will have to work harder to source suitable candidates. It is important for them to have a good understanding of what mediums allow for a certain calibre candidate.

7. Get social

Recruiters consider social professional networks, employer branding and passive candidate recruitment as key trends, as Tanya Eksteen, director of resourcing for Sage International (Africa, Australia, Middle East, Asia and Brazil), highlights. She quotes from a recent survey on South African recruiting trends, which revealed that the common thread is the power of relationships and that 36% of recruiters will focus on employer branding; 29% on finding better ways to source passive candidates; and 27% will focus on measuring the quality of hire.

8. Be flexible with the talent

Will the Hollywood project-based way of making movies be the future of work in other industries? Fast Company seems to think so. In an article titled Why the future of work will look a lot like Hollywood, the rigid employment system is on the way out for many professionals too and freelancing and renting specialised teams is in the future of many companies, not just digital start-ups.

9. Office space

The need for physical office space at the office, is declining as teams no longer need to be in the office, and this trend will continue, says Allan Pike, CEO of Key Recruitment Group. The need for alternative workspaces that also fit the needs of the millennial workforce and are more dynamic and ergonomic, are also trending, as we see with standing desks; pause or quiet areas; and dedicated play areas.

10. Work/life co-living

The sharing economy is birthing interesting new business models, including this one by WeLive, which is launching work and living spaces for entrepreneurs who want to live where they work to economise time. Coworking company, WeWork, has launched WeLive, which plans to offer energy efficient coliving spaces in buildings above coworking and complimentary retail spaces, in New York and Washington DC at first, reports Fast Company.

11. HR: business solutions practioners

Kwezi Madondo, HR manager at SAP Africa, writing on Memeburn, says HR needs to be part of business solutions, helping a business succeed, not there to check up on employees. HR can be enabled to be the change maker, a means to shift company culture and advance the business. There is a myth that decentralised HR means the destruction of HR. This is simply not true. Companies need HR, but what they do not need are the paper-pushing cultures of the past.

12. Top candidates have choice

We are moving to a time where organisations wont choose candidates  the top candidates will choose organisations. With an overload of information available to possible new hires, they will compare organisations to each other to find one that best meets their needs, says Tanya Eksteen.

Wavebreak Media Ltd via 123RF

13. Outsourcing functionality

The outsourcing of functional roles will increase rapidly as organisations look to cut overheads. Our view is that people with specific skills will be called upon to effect various tasks and will be employed remotely. As a result a potential for stripping away corporate fixed overheads becomes an attractive option for employers. This comes with the challenge in the way business approaches its controls and measurement mechanisms to ensure they are getting a fair days work from remote employees, reports Allan Pike, MD of Key Recruitment Group.

14. Nomadic workforce

The global recession has fuelled the rise of the nomadic workforce, created when companies started cutting overheads in 2008. It is now led by millennials who prize flexibility and the management of their own career over a nine to five job. It is enabled by technology, faster bandwidth and the wifi-coffee culture, as well as the disruption to many service industries and the flexibility of companies that employ knowledge and tech workers.

15. Open plan disruption

The open office trend shows no sign of reversing, with the latest trend being the removal of partitions between desks, putting people at long tables, and shoving teams together, no matter the discipline  in the hope that communications and creativity improve and different skills are brought to bear on problem solving. What has been noted, is that productivity suffers and distractions to work are heightened in open plan offices, so a move to creating more private pause areas and flexibility in allowing employees to work at home when they need to, is growing in response, as this Washington Post article highlights.

Fast Company even predicted in 2015 that the open office trend was on its way out because it was making people miserable.

16. Work-life balance

Companies are realising that happy productive employees are employees that are happy at home, whether it is through spending time with their families, or hobbies and friends. From Swedish companies trialling a six-hour focused work day so people can spend more time with their families; to a US company forcing employees to take vacation time; to sleep pods and cocoons at work to make employees more productive so they dont have to face a commute; swings at a boardroom table and nap desks that convert into a bed underneath designers and some organisations are trying to make employees happier, as these more wacky trends highlighted by Fast Company magazine last year, showed.
This week, we find out what's really going on behind the selfie with Kevin Welman - managing director of FleishmanHillard South Africa.

Welman and family

1. Where do you live, work and play?

Welman: Jozi, Jozi and everywhere.

2. Whats your claim to fame?

Welman: I once had lunch with an African president, in a deserted house, eating with our fingers out of a polystyrene box.

3. Describe your career so far.

Welman: A frenzied blur.

I started my career as an intern at FleishmanHillard 20 years ago. At the age of 30, I was made managing director of the Johannesburg office. Over the years, I have encountered many different clients, I have experienced many countries and cultures, and have dealt with numerous issues and crises.

4. Tell us a few of your favourite things.

Welman: Some of my favourite things include Obviously my family, the off button on my laptop and my running shoes.

5. What do you love about your industry?

Welman: The diversity of people, of clients and tasks, as well as the fact that there are no real rules.

6. Describe your average workday, if such a thing exists.

Welman: It starts early, using social to take in as much news as possible. It includes a lot of meetings, planning and clients.

7. What are the tools of your trade?

Welman: Anything with a screen.

8. Who is getting it right in your industry?

Welman: More agencies than people think and of course, FleishmanHillard!

9. What are you working on right now?

Welman: Right this very moment  not at the time of publishing  I am working on a new business pitch while I travel back from a meeting in Botswana.

10. Tell us some of the buzzwords floating around in your industry at the moment, and some of the catchphrases you utter yourself.

Welman: Buzzwords: Integration, storytelling, creativity.

Catchphrases: If you can measure it, its management, not leadership.

11. Where and when do you have your best ideas?

Welman: While I run (thats why I run).

12. Whats your secret talent/party trick?

Welman: When I dance, people think Im doing my party trick.

13. Are you a technophobe or a technophile?

Welman: Techno  pardon

14. What would we find if we scrolled through your phone?

Welman: Beyonce and Obamas mobile numbers (haha).

15. What advice would you give to newbies hoping to crack into the industry?

Welman: Read everything you can get your hands on, and respect experience.

You can read more about the FleishmanHillard by clicking here, click here for more on Welman and interact with him through the following social media accounts:

Email

Twitter

Facebook

*Interviewed by Leigh Andrews
Subscribe to daily business and company news across 19 industries

#BrandManagerMonth: Cheryl Singleton from Britehouse

It's Brand Manager Month here at Bizcommunity, where we profile the people behind your favourite brands. Cheryl Singleton is the general manager/group marketing at Britehouse.

1. Explain your specific brand management strategy 1. Explain your specific brand management strategy

Singleton:

Align to the groups key business objectives



Ensure that all of the divisions not only align to their individual KBOs but also to the groups KBOs and ultimately to Dimension Datas KBOs.



Build brand consistency across all of our platforms



Social media and PR



Manage marketing budget



Carefully considering any market spend to ensure that we maximise the ROI



Comprehensive PR



Project success stories/thought leadership articles/case studies



Digital marketing



Ensuring that all of our campaigns/initiatives maximise our brand exposure and sales lead generation

2. What do you see currently as the main challenges and or opportunities for your brand sector 2. What do you see currently as the main challenges and or opportunities for your brand sector

Singleton: Challenges

Building brand engagement after the consolidation of the group companies (internally and externally)

Opportunities

Aligning to Dimension Data and utilising their global footprint. Assist in taking the lead in substantial or transformational innovation. Injecting energy and involvement into the brand.

3. What is the brand marketing budget split across ATL, BTL, digital, content marketing etc? 3. What is the brand marketing budget split across ATL, BTL, digital, content marketing etc?

Singleton: Currently probably about 50%/50%.

ATL  covers PR (paid and unpaid)

BTL  digital banners and automated marketing campaigns

TTL - Events

4. What do you love most about your brand? 4. What do you love most about your brand?

Singleton: Vibrant, humanising, identified affiliation, belief, fulfilment, sharing.

5. What do you love most about the South African consumer? 5. What do you love most about the South African consumer?

Singleton: They are brand and quality conscious, they look for the latest trends and increased innovation, exposure and competitiveness.

6. What are your own personal favourite brands? 6. What are your own personal favourite brands?

Singleton: Guess, Fossil, Woolworths, Louis Vuitton, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Coca-Cola, L'Oreal, Raymond Weil, Zara, Estee Lauder, Apple.
Nu Metro Cinemas has announced that the next 4DX cinema, the Nu Metro The Pavilion in Durban, will open on Friday, 18 March, 2016.

Durbanites will now also be able to experience the revolutionary 4DX-format with Allegiant as its opening title  releasing in 4DX from 18 March at Nu Metro The Pavilion. It promises to give cinema-goers an adrenalin-fuelled, multi-sensory, digital 4D movie experience like no other.

Nu Metro Cinemas signed an agreement with CJ 4DPLEX, creator of 4DX last year  the worlds first 4D cinema technology for feature films  a partnership that for the first time brings 4DX to Africa. 4DX, which uses motion, vibration, water, wind, lightning, scents, and more to provide movie-goers with a truly immersive experience - has been expanding at a fast pace and, with this deal, will be available in 182 auditoriums across 34 countries, with a goal to reach 300 auditoriums by the first half of 2016.

Nu Metro Cinemas would like to extend a big thank you to the thousands of customers who have supported 4DX with sold-out shows in Cape Town during the past few months. We wanted to give South Africa a truly immersive cinema experience, and it has been embraced as such, stated Nitesh Matai, GM of Nu Metro Cinemas. 4DX fulfilled those expectations as the new 4DX cinemas involve all five senses for consumers to enjoy a cinema outing like nothing else theyve seen, heard, or felt before. We are now very excited to open the second 4DX cinema in Africa at our state-of-the-art cineplex in Durbans The Pavilion shopping centre. Get ready KZN, it is going to exceed your wildest cinematic expectations!

Adding new features

4DX continues to out-deliver non-4D feature film performances around the world, as it expands into new markets, and now to its fifth continent, said Byung Hwan Choi, CEO of CJ 4DPLEX. Nu Metro Cinemas has recently been adding new features and expanding its reach, and we look forward to working with them as both companies continue to grow.

Nu Metros head of technical was sent to Seoul for three weeks specifically to train for certified status to manage the installation of 4DX technology locally. An existing cinema at Nu Metro The Pavilion is in the process of being converted to a world-class 4DX cinema. This process involves the installation of cutting-edge screen and sound technology, special seating pods and other equipment required for the 4DX sensory overload.

The films screened in 4DX will be in HD/2D and Digital 3D on a silver curved wall-to-wall screen (9.7m wide x 5.2m high). Its audio system has been upgraded to a Dolby CP750 with 7.1 full surround sound. The Barco projector used in the cinema now also uses an upgraded lamp for brighter picture in both 2D and 3D.

We had to install a complete new steel floor structure to be able to handle the 0.3G-force the unit moves with; as well as water, air and scent lines. The complete system uses 24 computers (one in each of the 21 seats, a motion PC, a monitor PC and a screen server). The force utilises Servo motors and transducers, and not hydraulics, making the movement much smoother and more active. South Africa is in for a total new way of watching movies!, explained Johan van Staden, Nu Metro Cinemas head of technical.

Additional features recently introduced by Nu Metro Cinemas at its other sites in South Africa include Scene Xtreme  which features Dolby Atmos/Auro 11.1 sound, RealDs new PWS screens, world-class digital 3D technology as well as 4K Ultra High Definition projection  and Scene VIP  adding luxurious, recliner seating, a VIP lounge/bar and an a la carte menu to the cinema experience at select locations.

For bookings and other cinema info, call 0861-CINEMA (234362) or go to numetro.co.za
The Internet has undeniably become the lifeblood of our society, providing essential access to jobs, public services and resources to citizens. Digital services and the Internet are likely to be the future of the economy and of the workforce. It follows, then, that those who are unable to engage online, or who do not know how to engage online, are excluded from the innumerable opportunities that the Internet provides. They are facing a hidden, digital poverty.

It is this digital poverty that is plaguing much of the African continent. According to the World Economic Forums Global Information Technology Report 2015, the worlds developing and emerging economies are failing to exploit the potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to drive social and economic transformation and catch up with more advanced nations. Not having access to the Internet due to lack of broadband infrastructure, data costs or because someone does not have a smartphone prevents the citizens of these countries from accessing and sharing a wealth of information and knowledge.

Government organisations across the continent have a key role to play in ensuring that citizens have access to the Internet to gain knowledge, with a long-term goal of eliminating digital poverty, by ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to get themselves online - whether its for their business, their school work or to access critical public services.

Joint initiatives

Technology companies and government need to work together to improve the digital services available via joint initiatives. Technology should be viewed as a utility, essential to every individual in the country, and needs to be provided at a very affordable rate. In a household where people are living hand-to-mouth, the priority is on fulfilling basic needs; therefore, if accessing the Internet will use up a large portion of their income, it is unlikely that adoption will occur, even if this could ultimately empower them with knowledge and skills. Governments therefore need to work more effectively with providers to drive prices down to ultimately increase the update of Internet connection.

Some African governments have taken active steps to ensure their citizens have access to the Internet at an affordable rate. An example of this would be Rwanda, which has recognised the value of the Internet and the role it can play in helping to transform its agrarian, lower-income economy into one that is both knowledge-based and middle-income.

The Rwandan government has also acknowledged that focusing purely on the development of infrastructure to access the Internet is not enough, and that they need to build the capacity to promote, develop and host content locally. Alongside this, the government also pioneered infrastructure sharing as a way to lower the costs.

In addition, when content was hosted locally it decreased delays and usage increased. The government of Rwanda has developed content to increase demand, and requires it to be hosted locally. Increasingly, international content such as YouTube videos, is available locally as well.

Need to foster learning

As well as continuing to establish infrastructure, there is a need to foster learning and education, addressing the necessary skills for Internet adoption to encourage uptake and ultimately closing the digital divide. According to an article published by The Guardian, survey evidence in many countries shows that a lack of interest, rather than affordability, is the reason for not going online.

Ultimately there is a strong need for African governments to pursue the issue of digital poverty, educate, embrace and drive interest in getting online - including working with businesses and providers to put infrastructure in place and drive down costs for increased accessibility.

Africas continued skills deficit is also being compounded by a lack of technical skills, which is having a negative impact on employment across many sectors of the countrys economy. Improving education in Africa is crucial in aiding people to develop the technical skills to grow the economy.

Governments in Africa have put together policies to offer young generations the opportunity to enhance their ICT skills - one step to start closing the digital divide. According to IST Africa, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, Sengal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda have all put together comprehensive ICT policies.

Advanced courses

In South Africa, WITS Universitys School of Electrical & Information Engineering and the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) now offer a programme of advanced courses in software engineering. This initiative is a good example of how the lack of skills could be overcome.

The good news is that from a technology perspective, the key to enabling things such as remote working and mobile communications already exist. For continents such as Africa, mobile technologies are crucial in closing the digital divide as they are not restricted by slow bandwidth, service interruptions, electricity outages or remote locations. Mobile technologies also cost a lot less as anyone can access the Internet with a smartphone or mobile device.

The continued rise in mobile penetration can make it possible to deliver data and applications virtually. It makes it much easier to provide schools, for example, with content and material, even if a device is relatively 'low tech' - as long as it is serviceable and has a web connection. By using thin client delivery methods, access to a variety of applications and resources, as well as the web, becomes possible.

Remote schools with an Internet connection can access the same courses that are being taught in city schools - if the curriculum changes, the changes are made in one place and delivered everywhere. Furthermore, learners who live too remotely to attend school can attend classes via mobile device and have equal opportunities to their less remote peers.

Mobile is ideal

Digital services are vital for the future of the continent, and mobile technology is an ideal way to provide learning. However, in order for education to be facilitated through mobile devices, there needs to be continued improvement of mobile broadband infrastructure to deliver 3G and 4G across Africa.

If digital poverty on the continent is to be addressed effectively, it is vital that governments and service providers work closely in order to enable Africans to access information in a cost-effective manner. Mobile is one such vehicle. Education on the power of the Internet is also key in ensuring communities understand the potential it offers to them personally so that they will be more likely to invest in accessing it.
The 6th Anzisha Prize ( www.AnzishaPrize.org ) application phase is now open, and the search is on to find 12 of Africa's youngest, most innovative social and business entrepreneurs under the age of 22. Organisers are calling for more nominations from the public this year to ensure they discover the very best talent on the continent.

African Leadership Academy (ALA) and The MasterCard Foundation  co-hosts of the Anzisha Prize  are also excited to announce a significant increase in the support available to selected entrepreneurs over the next five years. Each of the 12 finalists will now receive a $7,500 USD fellowship package with the ALAs Youth Entrepreneur Support Unit (YES-U) which includes the Anzisha Week boot camp, mentorship and consulting services, travel opportunities to network and business equipment.

In addition, a new $25,000 USD prize category has been created to recognize Anzisha Fellows who have created further social and economic value through their ventures by effectively leveraging the opportunities provided by the fellowship with ALA.

This brings the total prize pool to $100,000 USD annually, with the Grand Prize Winner taking home $25,000 USD, 1st Runner-up receiving $15,000 USD and 2nd Runner-up receiving $12,500 USD. The remaining nine finalists will receive $2,500 USD each.

It is essential that we nurture young, African entrepreneurial talent if we want to see the economic gains we all hope for in the future, says Koffi Assouan, program manager for the Anzisha Prize at The MasterCard Foundation. Through the provision of leadership skills, access to finance and business networking opportunities, these young entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to reach their full potential and to improve their lives and the lives of others.

The prize is open to any African national under the age of 22 with an active project, social venture or for-profit business based on the continent. Judging criteria for the prize have been refined for 2016 to better represent the entrepreneurial talent that the Anzisha Prize wants to uncover and support. These criteria can be found in all application materials.

Applications will close on 15 April 2016, and the Anzisha Prize team wants to encourage nominations from teachers, parents and community members to identify talented young people. The Anzisha Prize is one of the most accessible and inclusive pan-African opportunities for youth. Application forms and information are available in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, and the Anzisha Prize Tour team will visit key hubs across the continent and engage local media in every region. Both paper and electronic applications are accepted.

The true impact of our work is only possible if we can find the top entrepreneurial potential wherever it may be, comments Grace Kalisha, manager of the Anzisha Program at African Leadership Academy, If anyone out there has seen or heard of young people running amazing projects or businesses, we want to hear from you!

Meet 2015 Grand Prize Winners Chris Kwekowe (Nigeria), Fabrice Alomo (Cameroon) and Mabel Sugo (Ghana) and be part of our story at AnzishaPrize.org or join our growing community on Facebook.

Distributed by APO (African Press Organization) on behalf of African Leadership Academy (ALA).
It looks like you have reached this page in error ...

The content you are looking for has either moved, or if you typed in the address there might have been a mistake.

If you believe there has been a technical error  please let us know.

Most Popular Destinations
Good news -- South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard (R) has vetoed HB1008, the bill approved by the state legislature last week which would criminalize transgender bathroom use.

The governor's statement was very carefully worded and did not weigh in on the social politics or morality of policing gender identity. Instead, the governor described the legislation as governmental overreach and noted that it would open up the state to numerous lawsuits.

You can read the governor's full statement here.

This bill seeks to impose statewide standards on every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school. It removes the ability of local school districts to determine the most appropriate accommodations for their individual students and replaces that flexibility with a state mandate. [...] Preserving local control is particularly important because this bill would place every school district in the difficult position of following state law while knowing it openly invites federal litigation. Although there have been promises by an outside entity to provide legal defense to a school district, this provision is not memorialized in the bill. Nor would such defense eliminate the need for school or state legal counsel, nor avoid expenses relating to expert witnesses, depositions and travel, or other defense costs. Nor does the commitment extend to coverage over settlement or damage expenses. This law will create a certain liability for school districts and the state in an area where no such liability exists today.

It's not a total repudiation and it leaves the door open for another bill that accounts for the governor's objections, but I suppose it's the best we can expect from a Republican governor.

It's unfortunate no other Republicans objected to this big government overreach before it reached the governor's desk.
Six Gannett-owned newspapers from across New Jersey have simultaneously called on Governor Chris Christie to resign from office because, as they say, they're "fed up" with Christie's attitude.

The six newspapers including the Asbury Park Press, the Cherry Hill Courier-Post and the Morristown Daily Record  all Gannett-owned papers that are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK  were apparently spurred to editorial outrage by a Monday press conference in which Christie refused to answer questions about anything other than his nomination of a state Supreme Court judge. Asked why, Christie replied, "Because I don't want to." "Were fed up with Gov. Chris Christies arrogance," the papers wrote. "Were fed up with his opportunism. Were fed up with his hypocrisy."

Meanwhile, Christie's approval rating has reached a new record low of just 27 percent.

Twenty-seven percent of registered voters polled after Christies Feb. 26 endorsement of Trump said they approved of his job performance, compared with 33 percent before, according to a poll released Wednesday by Fairleigh Dickinson Universitys PublicMind. Joining forces with Donald Trump was hardly a vehicle for getting voters to reconsider their sour mood toward the Governor, said Krista Jenkins, a political science professor at the university and director of PublicMind.

No shit?

It's better late than never, but I can only muster so much sympathy given that New Jersey voters reelected Christie. Furthermore, many of the voices in the media now calling for his head also endorsed his reelection campaign.

Establishment Republicans are also furious with Christie for endorsing Donald Trump rather than their darling Marco Rubio.

I have no hard evidence to back it up but I believe Christie endorsed Trump because he hates Rubio, not because he truly believes in Trump.
(Cartoonist - Joel Pett)

In other news, Team Rubio reportedly plans to take their fight all the way to the convention even if Rubio doesn't win a single state. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, a bill that would roll back bans on fracking has been defeated in the Florida state Senate.

And finally, the New Hampshire Union Leader has un-endorsed Chris Christie. Newspapers rescinding their endorsements of Christie is becoming something of a tradition.

I watched the Best Picture winning film Spotlight last night. It was excellent and I highly recommend it. Now hold on to your butts as the results of Super Tuesday pour in.
Already have an account? Log in here 

A 30-year-old Winnipeg man was arrested Wednesday for impaired driving after police spotted the vehicle running a red light at First Street and Princess Avenue.

We need your support!

Local journalism needs your support!

As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed.

Now, more than ever, we need your support.

Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website.

or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527.

Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community!
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY  Outspoken political commentator Ezra Levant will no longer be able to practise law in Alberta and two complaints against him have effectively disappeared following a ruling by the body that governs lawyers in the province.

Following a three-hour hearing Wednesday, a Law Society of Alberta panel allowed Levant to resign after 16 years as a member.

The ruling means complaints against him over a column he wrote in March 2014 are moot because Levant no longer falls under the societys jurisdiction.

Outspoken political commentator Ezra Levant arrives at the Law Society of Alberta in Calgary, Alta., Wednesday, March 2, 2016.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

I feel freed from this leghold trap that Ive been in, Levant said Wednesday after the decision.

Part of me really wanted to have that hearing on my freedom of speech in the  column. They basically abandoned the fight so I think it would be a little bit much if I said, no, come back and prosecute me.'

Levant argued before the panel that he hasnt practised law in years and moved from Alberta to pursue other interests.

Im glad I went to law school and I use my legal training almost every day, but I use it to do politics or journalism, not as a lawyer, he said in his submission.

I havent had a client in years.

Levant applied to resign two years ago. But he was scheduled to face a week-long disciplinary hearing over the complaints before the law society offered a resignation hearing instead.

However, he said he would not quit the society unless the complaints against him were lifted.

The column, which ran in the Calgary Sun and its sister newspapers across the country, criticized the Alberta Human Rights Commissions handling of a case involving a Muslim man who was claiming discrimination when he was fired from his job as an electrician in Edmonton.

Law society citations had alleged comments Levant made in the column entitled Next Stop, Crazy Town were inappropriate and unbecoming for a lawyer and violated the professional code of conduct.

Levant addressed those allegations in his submission.

I acknowledge that there are some things that could amount to conduct unbecoming for a lawyer, even a non-practising lawyer, he said. Being convicted of a crime might be one example.

But having strong opinions shouldnt be. Nor should expressing them.

A law society official initially dismissed the complaints against Levant, saying he was acting as a journalist and there was no reasonable prospect of finding his conduct breached the law societys code of conduct.

That position was overturned when the complainant, an Edmonton lawyer who worked for the human rights commission, appealed.

Levant said one of the complaints against him was 1,000 pages long and he sympathized with law society staff who had to investigate.

Imagine how much time was wasted by the staff here  They had to read my columns. Imagine that punishment.

The law societys executive director said all complaints against members are taken seriously, but this was straightforward.

Its an uncontested fact he hasnt practised law, he hasnt delivered legal services for many years, said Don Thompson.

Everything he is doing is really outside the practice of law.

Levant was assessed $5,264 in costs for the hearing, but will only have to pay if he ever applies to rejoin the society.

 Follow @BillGraveland on Twitter

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said Levant had requested the resignation hearing.
Already have an account? Log in here 

REGINA - The NDP plans to call action on a new film employment tax credit if elected when Saskatchewan voters head to the polls April 4.

We need your support!

Local journalism needs your support!

As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed.

Now, more than ever, we need your support.

Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website.

or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527.

Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community!
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  A graduate of a Christian university has been awarded $8,500 by a British Columbia human-rights tribunal that found a company refused to hire her in part because of her religion.

Bethany Paquette applied in September 2014 for an assistant guide position with Amaruk Wilderness Corp., which says it is headquartered in Norway and operates an office in Vancouver.

The tribunal says the graduate of Trinity Western University received an emailed response from wilderness guide Olaf Amundsen, who informed her she was not qualified.

Unlike Trinity Western University, we embrace diversity, and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want, and this is reflected within some of our staff and management, he wrote.

In addition, the Norse background of most of the guys at the management level means that we are not a Christian organization, and most of us actually see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition, and way of life.

The universitys plans to open a law school in Langley, B.C., have drawn national criticism of its so-called community covenant that forbids sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

Paquette replied to Amundsens email with a lengthy defence of Trinity Westerns ban on sex outside of marriage.

Amundsen responded that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and opinions, but Trinity Western has engaged in discrimination by asking students to refrain from same-sex relationships.

This is nothing new: people who did not agree with your church would be flayed, burnt, roasted, quartered, etc  so you guys have a long history of intolerance.

Shortly after, Paquette filed a complaint against Amaruk and company director Christopher Fragassi-Bjornsen with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

Its decision says Fragassi-Bjornsen walked out of the tribunal hearing in November 2015 after he was denied requests to be asked questions in French and to have a security detail. The hearing proceeded without the respondents or their lawyer, James Macdonnell.

While leaving, Mr. Fragassi-Bjornsen advised that the respondents would not honour any monetary award which the tribunal might make in favour of the complainant, says a written decision released Wednesday.

The decision says a written response was filed to the complaint. In it, the respondents say Paquette did not meet the minimum requirements of the position and they specifically deny that her employment application was rejected because she was involved with Trinity Western.

Amaruk and Macdonnell could not be reached for comment.

In the decision, tribunal member Norman Trerise says religious discrimination was a factor in the companys rejection of Paquettes employment application, and that the emails sent by staff were egregious religious harassment.

He ordered the company to pay her $8,500 for injury to her dignity and self-respect, as well as $661.08 to reimburse various expenses. He also ordered the company to stop discriminatory practices.

However, Trerise also found Paquette was not qualified for the position and declined to award her lost wages.

Paquettes lawyer, Geoffrey Trotter, said in a statement the decision is a victory for Bethany and for equal treatment for everyone, regardless of their beliefs or background.

 Follow @ellekane on Twitter.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CALGARY  A TransCanada spokesman says the company was taken aback when the Quebec government announced its planning legal action over the Energy East pipeline.

Tim Duboyce says the Calgary-based firm believed issues surrounding the provinces review of the cross-Canada oil pipeline had long been resolved.

Quebec Environment Minister David Heurtel says the government sent two letters to TransCanada in late 2014 advising that Energy East must submit to a provincial environmental assessment.

Heurtel says he got no response from the company, so the government would have to ask for an injunction to force TransCanada to follow provincial rules.

However, Duboyce says there were a series of discussions with the ministers office in early 2015 and the two sides agreed on a provincial process that would not include a full-fledged environmental impact study.

Quebec announced that process last June and hearings are to begin on Monday.

At the time we were of the impression the issue raised in the two older letters had thus been resolved, an impression reinforced by the fact we did not receive any other indication there remained an issue until (Tuesday), said Duboyce.

Pipelines that cross provincial boundaries are subject to a federal environmental review process administered by the National Energy Board. The federal cabinet makes the final decision, taking into account the NEBs recommendation.

Provinces conduct their own reviews to help formulate their positions, which are considered in the NEB process.

Quebecs move was slammed in some quarters. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall warned Tuesday it would be divisive.

But Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said after discussions with Quebec and federal officials, theres no cause for alarm. She said it seems the Quebec government is not seeking a veto over Energy East, but rather wants to do a review similar to one Ontario did last fall.

I am going to leave the gun in the holster until we are actually at the gunfight, and we are not there right now, Notley said.

Follow @LaurenKrugel on Twitter
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba has announced which debates leader Brian Pallister will attend leading up to the provincial election  and only one Brandon event made the cut.

Pallister will attend the Brandon Chamber of Commerce debate on April 7, as will NDP Leader Greg Selinger and Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari. It was confirmed this week that Pallister will not attend a debate later that same day, hosted by The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group.

Its always a balancing act with campaigns in terms of how many debates we do, and we balance that with tour plans, said PC campaign spokesman Michael Richards. We have a very aggressive tour plan involving travelling thousands of kilometres, three different telephone town halls, and were doing five leaders debates, so unfortunately we just couldnt make the schedule work.

Wayne Glowacki/Winnipeg Free Press Opposition Leader Brian Pallister announces his plan for energy efficiency on Tuesday.

In addition to the Brandon chamber debate, Richards said Pallister will attend a CJOB debate on March 14, a TV consortium debate on April 12 and a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce debate on April 14.Richards pointed out Pallister attended the first debate of the pre-election campaign in Brandon last November at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention.

Weve tried to provide maximum notice to the organizations that are sponsoring these debates and  with those we couldnt accommodate, were proposing alternative PCP members who can participate, where appropriate, Richards said.

Brandon Chamber of Commerce president Jordan Ludwig is pleased that all three leaders will attend the organizations debate.

I think its an important part of the election process to have candidates debate the issues in front their constituents, he said. Were pleased to see them coming out and pleased to see the chamber is going to be able to get their business issues in front of the candidates.

The debate being organized by The Brandon Sun and WCG will still go on, as both Selinger and Bokhari have confirmed their attendance.

The Manitoba Liberal Party and Rana Bokhari take Westman very seriously and will be attending the debate even if PC Leader Brian Pallister does not, Mike Brown, director of communications with Manitoba Liberal Party, said via email.

The debate will be broadcast live on CKLQ radio and WCGtv. The Brandon Sun publisher Eric Lawson said he is glad to see the chamber debate going ahead as planned, and is still hopeful that all three leaders will attend the evening debate as well.

Our debate will cover all aspects of public policy that affect Westman, will be free to the public, will be in the evening when the public can attend, and will be broadcast and extensively reported in print, Lawson said. That means that a broad range of issues will be discussed, reflecting the interests of a broad range of citizens.

The event is booked and ready to go, the invitations will remain open until the debate itself, and we continue to hope that all three leaders will come and talk to the public.

CKLQ/Star FM general manager Cam Clark echoed Lawsons sentiments.

Personally, I am excited that all three party leaders will be in our area to participate in the lunchtime debate at the Brandon Chamber of Commerce. However, as you would expect the nature of those questions will be more business specific, where as an open and free public debate on that same date would, in my mind, be an efficient use of the leaders time, Clark said.

While we have the commitment of the leaders of both the premier of Manitoba and the leader of the Liberal party, we will continue to hold a spot to the leader of the Progressive Conservative party.

Pallister also declined an invitation to attend a debate hosted by the Winnipeg Free Press and the University of Winnipeg on April 4.

I am disappointed the Progressive Conservatives voted against the debate the provinces largest newspaper has organized, said Winnipeg Free Press editor Paul Samyn. But there is still time for them to reconsider and I hope they will change their mind and join the NDP and Liberal leaders at the forum we will live stream.

The NDP campaign team had Selinger respond to The Brandon Suns request on the debate topic. The NDP leader said hes trying to go attend as many debates as possible.

Simply, its an opportunity for the political leaders to put their policy choices forward for Manitobans and give people a chance to understand them and what a difference it will make in their lives, Selinger said. I think its important that were out there listening and talking to people and showing what were planning to do.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @jillianaustin

 Lemieux retiring from politics: Page A5

 For an editorial on the provincial election debates, turn to Page A7.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than 100 people filled the pews of St. Matthews Cathedral on Tuesday afternoon for the consecration of the seventh bishop of the Diocese of Brandon.

Rev. Canon William Cliff transitioned to Rt. Rev. Cliff during the upbeat two-hour ceremony  replacing Rt. Rev. James Njegovan, who retired on July 31 after serving 13 years with the diocese.

The congregation joined in song as the choir, clergy and guests entered the church in a long procession at the beginning of the consecration.

Colin Corneau/The Brandon Sun Anglican bishops applaud newly consecrated Bishop Rt. Rev. William Cliff at St. Matthews Cathedral on Tuesday.

The Most Rev. Greg Kerr-Wilson, archbishop of Calgary, was in Brandon to lead the service. After greeting the people gathered in the church, he offered an opening prayer.

The holy gospel was read following several more hymns and prayers  first in Cree, then in English.

The Ven. Jane Humphreys, archdeacon of Essex and longtime friend of Cliffs, was invited to the Wheat City to deliver Tuesdays sermon.

That there are so many of us here from the dioceses of Huron and Niagara and Toronto and Montreal and beyond, speaks to our love and affection for our dear friend and colleague and mentor, who youve chosen to be your bishop, Humphreys said. Its wonderful to be here.

Cliff hails from Huron University College at Western University in London, Ont., where he served as parish priest and rector of St. Johns Chapel for 13 years. He was elected from a pool of six candidates during a synod on Oct. 31.

Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun Rt. Rev. William Cliff is fitted with a new coat as other Anglican bishops look on during his consecration at St. Matthews Cathedral on Tuesday. The consecration was officiated by the Archbishop of Calgary, the Most Rev. Greg Kerr-Wilson (right).

Aside from kind words about Cliff, Humphreys offered up a bit of humour before setting into the sermon.

I have known William for a long time  and I know him well, so I do have stories, Humphreys said, eliciting a collective chuckle from the congregation. But the thing is he knows me well, too, so Ill use my time wisely.

After being introduced to the congregation, Cliff recited and signed a declaration to conform to the beliefs of the Anglican Church of Canada.

During the service, Cliff was examined by the archbishop and other bishops in a back-and-forth exchange. Cliff responded to questions like: Will you be merciful to all, show compassion to the poor and strangers and defend those who have no helper?

The grandest moment of the service was the presentation of the symbols of office.

Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun Cliff hugs friend Maria Hlibowych-Duncan during the consecration.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of London loaned Cliff a historic pectoral cross and Episcopal ring for the occasion and the new bishop was outfitted with an ornate red and gold cope (a long cloak) and matching mitre (a ceremonial headdress).

Once all the items were received, Kerr-Wilson presented the newly consecrated bishop to the crowd.

The sanctuary erupted in applause and everyone began hugging their neighbours and wishing each other well.

After communion and more prayers and singing, attendees were invited to a reception.

Cliff is the seventh bishop to be consecrated during the Diocese of Brandons 92 years.

Colin Corneau/Brandon Sun A choir awaits its entrance.

 ewasney@brandonsun.com, with files from Tom Bateman

 Twitter: @evawasney
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  The consternation surrounding an Ontario zoos decision to kill a lion that escaped from its enclosure on the weekend is raising questions on two fronts  regulations surrounding wild animals, and the purpose of keeping such creatures captive in the first place.

Some advocates say the incident shines a spotlight on Ontarios longtime failure to protect both the animals and the public, citing decades worth of minimal regulations surrounding the zoos and private properties where wild animals live.

The very fact that such properties exist is part of the problem, according to at least one animal rights lawyer.

Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice Canada, said only two types of creatures are banned in the province  orcas and pitbulls. Beyond that, she said, the provinces animal welfare rules are negligible.

You are perfectly welcome to keep a tiger or a lion or an elephant in your backyard so long as the municipality you live in doesnt have any contrary rules, Labchuk said.

Ontario has no problem with people keeping any kind of wild animal except for an orca or a pitbull in their private homeor their private zoo.

Labchuk said the lax approach extends to public zoos, including the Papanack Zoo near Ottawa where the lion died on Sunday.

According to a statement from owner Kerri Bayford, a male lion breached the fence surrounding his enclosure. The zoo was closed to the public when the lion got free, but Bayford said that staff decided to euthanize the lion within minutes of his escape.

Our staff, with police present, made the decision to euthanize the lion on our property, the statement said. The risk to the public of trying to sedate the lion was simply too high, as the sedative takes too long too kick in and this would have put everyone at risk.

Bayford did not respond to multiple requests for more detailed comment, but did indicate in the statement that the incident appeared to be the result of human error.

Labchuk said its impossible to say to what degree Ontarios Wild West approach to animal welfare regulations could have prevented the incident at Papanack, but said the escape raises questions about the rules governing the provinces zoos.

She said Ontario is the only Canadian province that allows zoos to operate without some kind of provincial licence, adding there are no rules forcing zoos to be listed on a provincial registry or subjected to randomized inspections.

The Ontario Society for the Protection of Animals has established a voluntary registry for the provinces zoos. Senior inspector Jennifer Bluhm said 52 of the 69 zoos known to the society are currently listed on the registry, including Papanack.

Bluhm said the OSPCA does conduct inspections twice a year, at least one of which would take place unannounced.

Papanack was subjected to such an inspection just last month, she said, adding no animal welfare concerns were identified at that time. Public safety concerns do not fall within the societys mandate, she added.

The OSPCA act stands as the only law governing the keeping of animals in Ontario, Labchuk said, adding the rules lay out fairly general care and shelter standards.

Describing such standards as minimal, Labchuk said they are not specific to zoos and apply equally to both public and private properties that house exotic animals.

The Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, which is responsible for animal welfare concerns, views the OSPCA standards differently.

Describing them as robust, spokesman Jonathan Rose said the government funds the society to the tune of $5.5 million a year to ensure the safety of animals.

Our government will continue to work with all our animal welfare partners to ensure that we build even stronger protections and keep all animals safe, he said in a statement.

Some animal rights activists are hoping the incident at Papanack will raise public awareness about what they see as an inherently dangerous practice  allowing zoos to exist in the first place.

Michele Thorn of Ottawa is organizing a protest to take place near the zoo on Sunday afternoon.

She said the lions death highlights the risk that zoos pose to the animals on display there, adding the animal died as a direct result of living in an unnatural environment that required him to be enclosed.

Even domestic animals are at risk from a business model that focuses on the bottom line before animal welfare, she said.

(Zoos) are not there for the animals sake, Thorn said. If they were, they wouldnt breed in captivity, they wouldnt take wild animals, they wouldnt keep animals in unnatural enclosures.

 Follow @mich_mcq on Twitter
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The Federal Court of Canada has rejected a former government lawyers claim that the Justice Department is lax when it vets proposed new laws for their ability to withstand charter challenges.

Lawyer Edgar Schmidt lost his job after he complained that the government standard for judging the constitutionality of proposed laws should be tougher.

Schmidt alleged that government lawyers were being told to warn of possible charter conflicts only when the violations were unambiguous, so that even if problems were likely, there was no need to red-flag the legislation.

Federal Court Justice Simon Noel disagreed in his formal ruling, saying the government standard is appropriate and lawful.

The suit was filed at a time when the former Harper government found itself frequently rebuked by the Supreme Court over conflicts between its law-and-order legislation and the charter.

Schmidt argued that when judging if legislation might run afoul of the Constitution, government lawyers should ask if a bill was more likely than not to be a problem.

The government argued that legislation can go ahead if there is a credible argument to be made that it would pass muster in the courts.

Simon agreed that the government position meets the legal requirements.

The law requires the justice minister to tell Parliament if a bill is not consistent with the charter.

Schmidt said the government used what he called a faint hope standard to decide if a law was consistent, rather than a high possibility that it might violate guaranteed rights.

In reacting to the ruling, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association said the Commons justice committee has agreed to study the issue.

The association said that even though the ruling upheld the legality of the standard used to judge legislation, it was not a ringing endorsement and Parliament should be able to improve the system.

The number of laws struck down for violating the charter over the last 10 years strongly suggests that a different approach is necessary, said Laura Track, an association lawyer.

She said people should not have to go to court to challenge the constitutionality of laws after they have been passed.

We expect government to get charter rights right the first time, without the necessity of protracted legal battles in the courts.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  The premiers of Canadas two most populous provinces joined forces Wednesday to push for federal help for Bombardiers CSeries aircraft.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard drew support from his Ontario counterpart in calling for Ottawa to back the airliner, saying the CSeries is important to the Canadian economy.

The CSeries is probably the most important innovative project now in Canada that will benefit all of Canada, yes Quebec, but also other parts of the country, Couillard said outside climate change talks in Vancouver.

The province wants the federal government to join it in contributing US$1 billion to the troubled jet program at Bombardier (TSX:BBD.B).

Quebec has secured a 49.5 per cent stake in the CSeries and two of five seats on a separate board after agreeing last October to the financial contribution.

The Montreal-based aircraft manufacturer would hold the three remaining seats and have the right to appoint the subsidiarys chairman.

However, Ottawa would gain two additional seats on an expanded seven-person board if the federal government joins in.

Couillard said he understands it takes time for Ottawa to consider the proposal, but he likened Quebecs case to federal support for the auto industry in the past.

This plane was designed and invented in Canada. It is the first commercial airliner certified in Canada. Made in Canada. We have to support that.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne supported Couillard.

Its an important national company and if we look at the sectors that are our strengths in this country, and in Ontario, aerospace is one of those sectors, and Bombardier is a very, very important company in Ontario, she said.

The federal government has said it was continuing to evaluate the request for funding.

The narrow-body CSeries planes, which are two years late and over budget at US$5.4 billion, are set to enter into service in the coming months.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Justin Trudeau should be barred from any role in deciding the fate of terror suspect Mohamed Harkat because the prime ministers brother is lobbying the government on the issue, a watchdog group says.

Trudeau should publicly recuse himself from involvement in the file, said Duff Conacher, a founder of Ottawa-based Democracy Watch.

Conacher, a visiting professor at the University of Ottawa, pointed to the guidance the prime minister issued to cabinet in November: ministers should avoid situations that have even the potential to involve conflicts of interest.

Mohamed Harkat, who was arrested and detained under a secret trial Security Certificate, speaks during a press conference to mark the 13th anniversary of his detention and International Human Right's Day on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2015. Justin Trudeau should be barred from any role in deciding the fate of terror suspect Mohamed Harkat because the prime minister's brother is lobbying the government on the issue, a watchdog group says.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

And he called on ethics commissioner Mary Dawson to demand to see records of the prime ministers communications with his brother Alexandre, a filmmaker with a fervent interest in global politics.

Its a situation that should be monitored, Conacher said Wednesday.

Harkat, a former gas-station attendant, was taken into custody more than 13 years ago on suspicion of being an al-Qaida sleeper agent  an accusation he denies.

The federal government has been trying to deport the Algerian refugee on a national security certificate, a seldom-used tool for removing non-citizens suspected of extremism or espionage.

Harkat, 47, fears he will be tortured if sent back to his homeland.

Alexandre Trudeau, a longtime opponent of security certificates, recently wrote to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, urging him to use his discretion under immigration law to allow Harkat to stay.

Moe considers himself Canadian: he loves this country, he came here to escape persecution and for a better life, and he does not belong anywhere else, says the Feb. 27 letter.

I am absolutely convinced that at this moment, he poses no danger whatsoever to the public or to public safety in Canada, but rather offers a positive commitment to the life he has created here.

Erin OToole, the Conservative public safety critic, expressed concern about Alexandre Trudeaus highly inappropriate role and said the prime minister and his cabinet should rely on the expertise of Canadas public safety agencies.

In Vancouver, the prime minister said his brother has the same rights as any Canadian to advocate on the issues and causes that he believes in.

We have a rigorous process on the government side, and we will be following that process with the kind of rigour and seriousness that Canadians expect us to, he said.

Robert Shepherd, an associate professor with the School of Public Policy and Administration at Ottawas Carleton University, played down any notion of controversy, saying there is no evidence of special attention being given, or favours being asked.

Alexandre Trudeau went public and was transparent about his concerns. He didnt have to do that if special attention was sought on his part, Shepherd said.

In my view, there is no evidence of ethical breaches. We want people of influence to be transparent about their activities. If that is what citizens expect, then we cannot at the same time punish them when they do what is expected of them.

In a statement, Goodales office did not address any possible conflict, but noted there are established procedures to ensure those who need protection are not whisked from Canada.

For refugees inadmissible for serious grounds, such as national security, the Canada Border Services Agency and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship assess the danger they pose to Canada and the risks to their life if they are removed, as well as humanitarian and compassionate considerations, the statement said.

Those subject to removal can provide input into this process and can seek judicial and administrative review prior to removal. Only once individuals have exhausted all legal avenues of recourse and due process are they expected to leave Canada.

Harkats wife Sophie expressed her gratitude Wednesday to everyone who has supported her husband. Alexandre Trudeau is one of many thousands of Canadian who cares about what happens to Moe, she said.

Follow @JimBronskill on Twitter
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a speech to a clean tech conference Wednesday to make a direct pitch for the expansion of Canadas oil and gas sector  a direction he later appeared to dial back in response to media questions.

Trudeau began a day-and-a-half of meetings on climate policy with the provincial and territorial premiers by heralding the promise of jobs and opportunity in a low-carbon economy.

He announced two new funds, totalling more than $125 million, to help municipalities and spur clean innovation by promoting climate friendly infrastructure projects and assist with their design.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the Globe 2016 conference in Vancouver, B.C., Wednesday, March. 2, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

But in recognition of the growing tensions bubbling just under the surface of a country divided by natural resource wealth, the Liberal prime minister attempted to quarantine the divisive politics of oil sands and pipeline expansion.

Trudeau received an effusive welcome from a packed plenary of the Globe clean tech conference, where he opened the week-long trade and networking show Wednesday morning with a speech promoting economic opportunities.

But we must continue to generate wealth from our abundant natural resources to fund this transition to this low-carbon economy, he said at the speechs mid-point.

The choice between pipelines and wind turbines is a false one, Trudeau continued. We need both to reach our goal. And as we continue to ensure there is a market for our natural resources, our deepening commitment to a cleaner future will be a valuable advantage.

It was not an applause line in this green coastal city.

Trudeau is in Vancouver to make good on an election pledge to meet with the premiers within three months of the Paris climate conference. But his promise to set new emissions targets for the country and create a pan-Canadian climate policy has morphed into finding an agreeable roadmap toward building a policy framework.

Even that process-heavy goal appears under stress this week.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall continues to torpedo any talk of carbon pricing, although he dismissed corridor talk Wednesday that Saskatchewan might boycott a proposed federal-provincial working group on carbon pricing.

Well play a constructive role, he told The Canadian Press.

But Wall continues to press the case for an expanding Canadian oil and gas industry.

We know that fossil fuels will continue to be burned around the world, certainly as a transition energy, until we get to renewables. Thats a fact, Wall told reporters, a floor up from where Trudeau was addressing a media throng in the same Vancouver Convention Centre at the same time.

He said oil and gas will continue to be a central part of economies around the world.

Do Canadians want to be a part of meeting those fossil fuel needs? Thats the question we have to ask ourselves, said Wall. And if the answer to that is yes, then we have to build some pipelines.

Trudeaus efforts to give Wall and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley some breathing room on pipelines immediately ran into opposition here.

An onstage question-and-answer session at the friendly Globe conference took a fast detour, when the first question to the prime minister noted that the global climate has already warmed by one degree Celsius.

How can we have the Energy East pipeline even on the table? demanded Ziya Tong, the host of a popular science program, to scattered hoots and applause from the audience.

Trudeau responded that we all know we have to get beyond fossil fuels, but we are simply not there yet.

The issue emerged again during Trudeaus subsequent news conference.

One of the responsibilities of any and every Canadian prime minister is to get our resources to market, he said. Canada has natural resources and we need to develop those as part our economy and part of our growth.

To do so responsibly and quickly during the transition of the next half century is the trick, said Trudeau, and that is the conversation thats taking place at the Globe conference and among the premiers during their meetings here.

There is little substitute for sitting down together, he said.

Trudeau concluded the news conference by denying his government is creating conditions for more fossil fuels to be burned.

Actually, what were trying to do is decrease consumption of oil and gas, he said.

Thats where the investments in renewables, the investments in clean tech, are such an important part of our vision for the future.

 Follow @BCheadle on Twitter

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said the $75 million for cities was a doubling of current funding.
Already have an account? Log in here 

VANCOUVER - Police in Vancouver say a suspicious device found in a vehicle downtown is not an explosive.

We need your support!

Local journalism needs your support!

As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed.

Now, more than ever, we need your support.

Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website.

or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527.

Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community!
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HALIFAX  Two men preyed upon by an elderly woman known as the Internet Black Widow say they fear for public safety as a Nova Scotia prison prepares to release her at the end of this month.

Melissa Ann Shepard, now in her early 80s, was sentenced in June 2013 to two years, nine months and 10 days of jail for spiking her newlywed husbands coffee with tranquilizers.

Correctional Service Canada says Shepard gets out of the federal womens prison in Truro on March 20, after being refused early release by the parole board late last fall.

Melissa Ann Shepard arrives at Supreme Court in Sydney, N.S., for her sentencing hearing on Tuesday, June 11, 2013. Two men preyed upon by an elderly woman known as the "Internet Black Widow" say they fear for public safety as a Nova Scotia prison prepares to release her onto the street. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Fred Weeks, who was 76 when Shepard was sentenced, said in a telephone interview from his home in Stellarton that he believes Shepard isnt trustworthy and he doesnt want her near his community.

Shes too smooth of an actor, said Weeks, now in his late 70s.

She kept me in the dark for a long time, telling me her stories. Everything was a story. Everything was a lie that she told me.  I wouldnt want her to come around myself or any friends.

Shepard pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance and failing to provide the necessities of life to Weeks after a trial in Sydney in 2013. The conviction came after the Crown dropped a charge of attempted murder, saying there wasnt enough evidence to prove the case.

An agreed statement of facts released at the sentencing said Shepard had been Weekss neighbour in a quiet retirement community, knocked on his door and told him she was lonely and shed heard he was lonely too.

A civil union ceremony was performed in Weekss living room, but the marriage was never certified by the province.

During a trip to Newfoundland after the ceremony, Shepard dissolved a cocktail of sedatives into her new partners coffee.

Evidence at the trial said after receiving the drugs Weeks couldnt distinguish between reverse and drive shifts in his car, and couldnt start the vehicle when it was time to leave the boat.

The couple returned to North Sydney, N.S., and stayed at a bed and breakfast, where Weeks tumbled out of bed and was hospitalized, with tests showing he had tranquilizers in his blood.

Shepard, born in Burnt Church, N.B., is known as the Black Widow or the Internet Black Widow because she has prior convictions stemming from her past relationships.

She was convicted of manslaughter in 1992 in the death of her second husband, Gordon Stewart, who she drugged and ran over twice with a car.

In 2005, Shepard  who has gone by several other surnames  was sentenced to five years in prison on seven counts of theft from a man in Florida who she had met online. Alex Strategos, now 83, said she stole $20,000 from him over the month that they lived together.

I just dont want her playing this game with some other guy, he said in an interview from his home in Pinellas Park, Fla., on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the RCMP said that the force had been informed that Shepard would move to Halifax.

Const. Dianne Woodworth, a spokeswoman for Halifax police, said officers have met with the community notification advisory committee, which can recommend notification of the public about high-risk offenders.

She says the ultimate decision lies with the chief of police, and this decision will be made once we know for certain that the individual will in fact be residing in Halifax.

When the parole board refused Shepards release, the decision said she has a tendency to fabricate and deny events to correctional staff, and is unable to link consequences to actions.

The board has determined her risk of reoffending in a violent way was unchanged.

A spokeswoman for Correctional Service Canada said in an email Wednesday afternoon that research shows that society is best protected when an offender is gradually reintegrated into society through supervised release, rather than released at the end of the sentence with limited controls or support.

Sabrina Nash said that offenders like Shepard still have parole officers to work with them in the community and a plan is put in place to assist them in their return to the community.

She said inmates released at the end of their sentence are let go during normal business hours on the last working day before the day of their release.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With little more than seven weeks remaining until the April 19 provincial election, Manitobas Progressive Conservative Party has officially announced those debates in which its leader, Brian Pallister, will be participating.

And while the Brandon Chamber of Commerce debate on April 7 was given the green light, the Brandon Sun-Westman Communications debate was, unfortunately, not.

It is, of course, Mr. Pallisters choice  and that of his partys  what debate invitations they accept and what invitations they decline. But we note with some concern that the party has also turned down an invitation to a Winnipeg Free Press-University of Winnipeg debate.

In a conversation with a Brandon Sun reporter this week, PC campaign spokesman Michael Richards gave us the following list of debates that the Tories have agreed to.

 a CJOB debate in Winnipeg on March 14;

 the Brandon chamber debate on April 7;

 a debate hosted by a Winnipeg television consortium on April 12;

 a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce debate on April 14;

 and two, possibly three, telephone town halls.

In the case of the Winnipeg Free Press debate, which was to be broadcast live on its website along with audience engagement through Twitter, those of us with an Internet connection in this province  i.e., most of us  are missing out on a chance to watch party leaders discuss issues from the campaign.

Those who paid attention to last years federal debates may note a slight irony  the Conservative Party of Canada had turned down television debate formats put forward by a broadcast consortium in favour of five independently staged leaders debates in the run-up to the fall election.

Of those independent debates, one was hosted by The Globe and Mail in partnership with Google Canada, and another hosted by Macleans magazine.

While this development is certainly a disappointment for our sister paper, it cannot be said that Mr. Pallister is avoiding Winnipeg media  not having agreed to both a radio and television debate. As Free Press editor Paul Samyn is quoted as saying in The Brandon Sun today, he remains hopeful that the Tory leader will reconsider his decision.

But the situation for Westman is somewhat different. We are offering residents a free public event to hear party leaders talk about issues that matter to this region, beyond the often Winnipeg-centric nature of province-wide debates. And although business questions to the party leaders are obviously important, the Brandon chamber debate is geared toward a narrower audience  the local business community.

There is also an obvious benefit to voters in having a debate in the evening, when most people are able to tune in to their cable station or on the radio  or better yet, turn up in person. Our debate format will offer audience members a chance to ask their own questions of those who aspire to form the next government. In our opinion, this is a great way to encourage public engagement.

Like the organizers of the Free Press-University of Winnipeg debate, we at The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group intend to forge ahead with our own planned debate, with or without the Progressive Conservative leader in attendance.

As of yesterday, both Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari and NDP Leader Greg Selinger have once again confirmed they will attend the The Brandon Sun and Westman Communications Group debate on April 7, as well as the Brandon Chamber debate earlier that day.

Our invitation to Mr. Pallister will remain open until the moment our debate begins. Well even save a seat for you, sir.
Malaysia, whatever you do, please, please do not ban this book. Especially I beg of my Malay Muslims, young and old to not go the way of ...
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/03/2016 (2424 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON  Analysts at Fox News casually speculated about the potential death of the Republican party. On another network, Ronald Reagans former speechwriter was emphatic: Were witnessing the shattering of a great American political party.

It was a strange Super Tuesday.

The cause of all this gloom? Fear of a historic splintering within the Republican party, with prominent members threatening to abandon it rather than support its likely presidential nominee.

The day of Donald Trumps greatest electoral triumph was disturbed by the creaking sound of a breaking coalition  with more traditional Republicans talking about bolting.

One congressman said hed never vote for Trump; a senator said hed leave the party first; a well-known conservative writer suggested joining a third party; and a Trump ally accused elites of planning to gang up and steal the nomination through procedural chicanery.

The day ended with Trump winning most states. In a jubilant meeting with reporters, he vowed to unify the party, and expand its blue-collar appeal. But the day had begun with one of the most conservative people in Congress declaring he might leave it.

The Republican party is just a tool  as all political parties are, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse told MSNBCs Morning Joe program.

I signed up for the party of Abraham Lincoln  not the party of David Duke and Donald Trump If the Republican party becomes the party of David Duke and Donald Trump, Im out. And I think lots, and lots, and lots of people are out.

Sasse is rated as the sixth-staunchest conservative in Congress by the Heritage Action group. But the final straw for him appeared not to be Trumps ideological ping-pong where he bounces around between policies linked more by economic and cultural angst than by any cohesive conservatism.

An example of his uniquely Trumpian platform came at a rally Tuesday. Trump threatened to slap a 35-per-cent import tax on an air-conditioning company that shipped jobs to Mexico  this while campaigning to lead a party that hates taxes; supposedly supports free trade; and professes abhorrence for presidential imperialism.

No, the final straw appeared to be Trump receiving the explicit support of Americas most famous Ku Klux Klansman  and Trumps coy routine over whether to disavow Duke. He actually did so, but with an uncharacteristic degree of gentleness, compared to the avalanche of abuse hes poured onto others.

Trump addressed it again Tuesday night: I disavowed, he said, referring obliquely to Duke. I mean, how many times are you supposed to disavow?

This episode has popped the boil discreetly bubbling within the Republican party in recent months, as the prospect of a Trump nomination shifted from the realm of Washington cocktail-party ridicule to real-world likelihood.

One lawmaker issued a statement: My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, and to live with a clear conscience, I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nations commander-in-chief, Scott Rigell of Virginia said in an email. If left with no alternative, I will not support Trump in the general election should he become our Republican nominee.

Trump has less than one-third of the delegates he needs to seal up the nomination. But given his polling lead there could be only two ways Republicans can stop him now: One is a sudden, mass movement toward another candidate  which was complicated Tuesday as everyone else vowed to keep campaigning.

The messier option would be to somehow limit his delegate count to less than a 50-per-cent-plus-one majority, then at the summer convention strip him of the nomination on the second ballot.

An old Trump ally suspects thats the plan. Roger Stone wrote a piece accusing his opponents of planning to collude with each other, and agree on a second-ballot alternative to Trump.

Beware Republicans: the big steal is coming, his longtime adviser wrote in a piece on the Trump-friendly site Breitbart. The DC-Wall Street cabal that has dominated the GOP since 1988 has no intention of letting the billionaire real estate mogul be nominated.

Another well-known conservative writer floated a different option: Conservatives jump ship en masse, take over a small outfit like the Constitution party, and run a more acceptable candidate.

It is time for Republicans to seriously consider an exit strategy as they grapple with the rise of Trump, Erick Erickson wrote.

It may be necessary for men and women of principle within the party to set the self-detonation sequence as they escape the ship to a new party. Trump and his angry band of supporters are starting to board and the GOP, as an entity, will be a terrible place to stay for many elected officials.

These schemes would not only be difficult  but extremely risky.

The potential exists for an explosive grassroots reaction. As detested as he is in the corridors of official Washington, a majority of Republicans tell pollsters theyd support Trump.

Trump was asked Tuesday night about the scenario of a secret Plan B to take him out: Were a democracy, he said. I think its awfully hard to say, Thats not the person we want to lead the party.'
Budget supermarket chain Aldi is launching its first range of T-shirts made from Fairtrade certified cotton.

The T-shirts will go on sale in Aldi stores tomorrow.

By buying our #AldiFairtrade products, you directly help the communities of our #AldiSuppliers. pic.twitter.com/TcnpBROg8z  Aldi Ireland (@Aldi_Ireland) March 2, 2016

@KenRooney Hi Ken, the Fairtrade t-shirts will be available in our Irish stores at 6.99 from tomorrow :)  Aldi Ireland (@Aldi_Ireland) March 2, 2016

The announcement that the company will be launching Fairtrade products in Ireland and the UK was welcomed by the Fairtrade Foundation in Britain.

Euan Venters, the foundation's commercial director, said: "Buying clothes made with Fairtrade cotton means we help the fashion business and at the same time help low income cotton farmers around the world.

Jonathan Neale of Aldi said: "We're proud to offer clothing that supports the Fairtrade project, which brings life-changing conditions, education and health care."

Consumers are being urged to buy more Fairtrade products after a new report showed that millions of farmers in developing countries are going hungry.

The foundation said there was an "ongoing crisis" of farmers struggling to feed their families.
The Taoiseach has said he has a duty to ensure Ireland gets a stable Government - and that includes talking to Fianna Fail.

But Enda Kenny would not be drawn on whether he would form a Coalition with them, or depend on their support from outside.
The Taoiseach appears to be signaling he is prepared to talk with Fianna Fail about the formation of a new Coalition Government.

Enda Kenny said last night that Fine Gael wants to form a new coalition, and it is prepared to engage "fully and inclusively" with other parties.
By Fiachra O Cionnaith

Political Reporter

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has warned rival parties it would be "a costly and seriously historic mistake" to scrap Irish Water.

The embattled Fine Gael leader made the claim in his first public comments since the weekend's devastating election results for his party and as a senior Government minister last night said Fine Gael is open to discussing the utility's future.

Speaking at a press event at Collins Barracks in Dublin City, Mr Kenny said the retention of Irish Water remains a "fundamental" issue for his party.

However, he declined to say Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney was wrong to say its future could form part of talks with Fianna Fail or other parties.

"Simon was correct in what he said, that Fine Gael wants to move on and form a government. Part of that is to listen to like minded parties.

"But I want to say in respect of Irish Water, I think it would be a seriously costly, seriously historic mistake to remove it.

"It's a fundamental issue for Fine Gael," he said, adding people should continue to pay their bills.

Irish Water is set to become a key post-election negotiations issue over the coming weeks with some parties saying it is necessary and would cost too much to dismantle and others saying the vote shows the utility has no mandate.
Former general sSecretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, David Begg, has described Labour's decline in the recent General Election as 'horrendous for the party'.

There is just six incoming Labour TDs - while the parties Willie Penrose is currently involved in a re-count in the Longford Westmeath Constituency - where he is fighting to secure a seat.
A travel agent has gone on trial accused of stealing over 18,000 from a charity he founded which sent terminally ill children to see Santa.

John, also known as Cornelius, Murphy (aged 66) set up the Children to Lapland Appeal which has flown thousands of children to Lapland.

He acted as director from its foundation in 1987 until it was liquidated in 2012.

Mr Murphy of Church Road, Killiney, Dublin has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of theft in the Dublin area.

The court heard Mr Murphy's full time job was running United Travel, a travel agent based in Stillorgan, Dublin which flew a route to Lapland.

In 1987 he devoted one of these flights to sending terminally ill children who were taken from hospitals around the country.

Garrett McCormack BL, prosecuting, told the trial that bank records show Mr Murphy lodged four cheques from the charity into his personal account between June and July 2010 totalling 18,643.

Counsel for Mr Murphy, Patrick Reynolds BL, said that Mr Murphy's personal account was also used for business purposes, including paying expenses and wages for Manorcastle Ltd which was also known as United Travel.

Mr McCormack presented evidence that four cheques written from the charity's account matched four lodgements into the accused's personal account.

The cheques had been signed by one of the directors of the Children to Lapland Appeal, Joseph Reid.

Mr Reid gave evidence that he had known the accused for 35 years and was one of three directors including Mr Murphy. He said sometimes he would get a call to come into the office to sign cheques.

He said he would sign blank cheques five at a time to save him coming back multiple times.

He agreed it was his signature on the four cheques in the charges.

Mr Reid said the money from the cheques belonged to the charity.

He said he was horrified when gardai showed him they had been paid into Mr Murphy's account and that he considered such activity fraud.

Mr Reynolds, defending Mr Murphy, asked the witness if the signing of multiple blank cheques at a time was a Charlie Haughey, Bertie Ahern scenario.

Mr Reid said he was certainly no Bertie Ahern and said he signed them in this way for convenience sake.

Counsel asked Mr Reid if the charity owed between 68,000 and 69,000 to Mr Murphy and Manorcastle.

The witness replied that money was owed but not at the time the cheques were issued.

The trial continues before Judge Patrick McCartan and a jury.
Nurses at St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, are to stage a protest this afternoon to highlight overcrowding at the facility.

Yesterday over 540 people were waiting for beds in hospitals around the country.
About Me Andrew Mulenga Andrew Mulenga is a self-taught, freelance arts journalist whose main focus is documenting the contemporary art scene of his home country Zambia. He studied Art & Design at the Africa Literature Centre, Kitwe and began his career as a graphic designer and illustrator at Mission Press in Ndola. He later joined The Post Newspapers Ltd. in the same capacity working his way to an appointment as Deputy Editor of the Education Post while establishing himself as the publications resident art critic. He is the 2012 CNN Multi-choice African Journalist of the year for Art & Culture. In 2014 he received a Media Institute of Southern Africa award for arts journalism. He completed an MA Art History at Rhodes University on an Andrew Mellon scholarship in 2014. He is currently on an Art History and Visual Culture Scholarship for a PhD at the same university. Since 2012 his articles have been regularly adapted in the modules of the Zambian Open Universitys art curriculum. Through his writing as an emerging art historian his current ambition is to encourage Zambian artists to question the sociopolitical, cultural, historical, moral and aesthetic implications of the work they produce. View my complete profile
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is effectively ending his campaign after a poor finish across the Super Tuesday primaries.

Mr Carson said on Wednesday that he sees "no path forward" to the nomination and that he will not attend Thursday's GOP debate in Michigan.
Official analysis by the British government has concluded that quitting the European Union would leave the UK weaker, less safe and with fewer jobs.

The report looked at a range of alternatives to remaining in the EU, including arrangements used by countries like Norway and Switzerland.
Riot police are controlling the so-called 'Jungle' refugee camp in Calais.

Violence has broken out since a French court ordered the eviction of families living in parts due to be demolished.

Currently around 4,000 migrants are based in the camp but between 800 and 1,000 are due to be moved.

Authorities started pulling down makeshift shelters this week and tear gas has reportedly been used on those refusing to leave.

But Paris Correspondent with the London Independent John Lichfield, has said disturbances have been exaggerated: Shots of cabins being set on fire and the security forces going in and tear gas being used it is slightly misleading.

You do have a minority of very hardline migrants who insist they are going to stay there and get to Britain and they are being helped by 150-200 young people, mostly from Britain who have a kind of far left anarchist mentality, but whether they are actually helping migrants or pursuing a political mentality.
Macedonian authorities have briefly opened their border with Greece to refugees heading for central Europe, allowing in a few score.

About 10,000 people remain camped at the crossing, awaiting their turn.
A father-of-three has been found guilty by a UK court of raping five women after meeting them on internet dating site match.com.

Jason Lawrance, described by British police as a "sexual predator", contacted thousands of women online and committed three sex attacks months after getting married to someone he met via the site.

The 50-year-old was also found guilty of attempting to rape and sexually assault two other women after chatting to them online.

Jason Lawrance trial: Man guilty of raping five women he met on dating website Match https://t.co/t9aY6S4NkW pic.twitter.com/N9Fz9WS6xb  LeicestershireLive (@leicslive) March 2, 2016

Derby Crown Court heard that four of the victims complained about Lawrance to match.com, and one of the women was told administrators could not do anything because he had not sent abusive messages through the site.

Lawrance, a former company director turned self-employed builder, texted one of his victims after attacking her apologising for "hurting her" and saying: "When you were crying out for me to stop I couldn't, I'm so mad at myself xxx."

The jury of six women and six men heard that Lawrance raped another woman in the back of a van which he had parked in a field in Northamptonshire, while a third was attacked at her home while her son was asleep in a nearby bedroom.

He was arrested after a friend of a woman who was raped in Derbyshire in November 2014 went to police.

Investigations revealed he had sexually attacked another six women he met through the site since June 2011.

Prosecuting, Shaun Smith QC told the jury that Lawrance - who used the site with the profile names KeepItStraightToday and StraightMan_Looking - was a Jekyll and Hyde character and that he targeted "vulnerable, naive, lonely women".

Detective Chief Inspector Allison Rigby, from Derbyshire Police, said the trial had been "devastating" for the victims.

She said: "I certainly think he is a sexual predator who has preyed on women through match.com that he has met who have got (some) vulnerability.

"He seems to have targeted females who are divorced and widowed.

"Only Jason Lawrance will know how many people he has sexually assaulted - it is possible that there are other people out there.

"I would say (the victims) have been very brave in the fact they have come forward to give evidence and confront him in court.

"I just hope once this case is finished, they can move forward and start to rebuild their lives."

She added that she hoped the case would give dating sites the chance to ensure they have a "robust process" for dealing with complaints and they can remove someone in a "timely manner" if issues are raised.

Lawrance had denied all the charges and said the sex was consensual in all five charges of rape, that the attempted rape was a misunderstanding and that the sexual assault where he grabbed a woman's breast was a "loving touch" which she objected to, so he apologised.
The Pope has warned benefactors that the Catholic church does not want money that comes from the exploitation of workers.

Francis railed against employers who mistreat and underpay their workers during his general audience.
The United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades.

The move reflects growing anger at Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.

The United States and North Korea's traditional ally China spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions.

They include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by sea or air, a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang, and the expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities".

The US, its Western allies and Japan pressed for new sanctions that went beyond the North's nuclear and missile programmes but China, Pyongyang's neighbour, was reluctant to impose measures that could threaten the stability of North Korea and cause its economy to collapse.

The resolution bans the export of coal, iron and iron ore being used to fund North Korea's nuclear or ballistic missile programmes - and it prohibits all exports of gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth minerals. It also bans aviation fuel exports to the country, including "kerosene-type rocket fuel".

US President Barack Obama said: "The international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programmes and choose a better path for its people."

US Ambassador Samantha Power told the council after the vote that "part of the perverse reality that has no equal in this world" is that North Korea prioritises its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes over the basic needs of its own people.

The resolution stresses that the new measures are not intended to have "adverse humanitarian consequences" for civilians, the majority of whom face economic hardships and food shortages.

In the financial and banking sector, countries are required to freeze the assets of companies and other entities linked to Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes. Under a previous resolution, they were encouraged to do so.

The resolution also prohibits all countries from opening new branches, subsidiaries and representative offices of North Korean banks, and bans financial institutions from establishing new joint ventures or establishing or maintaining correspondent relationships with these banks.

It also orders countries to close all North Korean banks and terminate all banking relationships within 90 days.

Under the four rounds of UN sanctions imposed since the country's first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea is banned from importing or exporting nuclear or missile items and technology as well as luxury goods.

The new resolution expands the list of banned items, adding luxury items such as expensive watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and lead crystal.

It also adds 16 individuals, 12 "entities" including the National Aerospace Development Agency which was responsible for February's rocket launch, and 31 ships owned by the North Korean shipping firm Ocean Maritime Management Company, to the sanctions blacklist. That requires the freezing of assets and, in the case of individuals, a travel ban as well.

The resolution bans Pyongyang from chartering vessels or aircraft, and calls on countries to "de-register" any vessel owned, operated or crewed by the North.

As with previous resolutions, the test will be whether UN member states enforce the sanctions.

A UN panel of experts monitoring the sanctions has repeatedly pointed out that enforcement in a significant number of cases has been weak.

North Korea has ignored many demands, and tried to circumvent others.

It started off the new year with what it claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on January 6 and followed up with the launch of a satellite on a rocket on February 7.

It was condemned by much of the world as a test of banned missile technology.

The resolution calls for a resumption of six-party talks leading to the goal of "the verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner."

North Korea withdrew from the talks in 2008.
The US military is holding an Islamic State (IS) leader who was captured in a raid by American special forces, officials said.

The militant has been in custody in Iraq for two to three weeks.
DOHA: The bill being paid by Qatar for the most expensive World Cup ever held is set to rise to fantasy levels in...
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian palm oil futures on Wednesday rose to their highest level in nearly seven weeks, as fears of...
SINGAPORE: US oil may test a support at $83.78 per barrel, a break below which could open the way towards...
MUMBAI: The Indian rupee recouped from its initial decline versus the US dollar and was little changed on Friday, as...
RABAT: One volunteer firefighter has been killed and another injured in a forest fire in northern Morocco, where new...
LONDON: Liz Truss came to 10 Downing Street vowing to be a disruptor. She U-turned on almost everything else, but...
TEHRAN: Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons "to be used in the war in...
Canberra residents will be able to turn to pharmacists for a flu shot without a prescription for the first time in 2016.

Assistant Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris will announce on Thursday changes in territory regulations to allow the influenza vaccine to be administered to adults at pharmacies, creating increased access to flu shots for walk-in patients and promoting a wider vaccination coverage rate in the ACT.

Labor's Transport Minister and Gungahlin representative Meegan Fitzharris did well. Credit:Melissa Adams

Changes to the Medicines, Poisons and Therapeutic Goods Regulation 2008 will see the ACT join other Australian jurisdictions including New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland. Victoria is waiting for government approval for pharmacy vaccinations.

The changes were considered in a discussion paper released by the ACT government in 2015 and will include requirements from the ACT Chief Health Officer Paul Kelly, including pharmacist training for vaccine administration, indemnity insurance and record keeping.
One car ended up on its roof after a crash at a Kingston intersection on Wednesday morning.

Emergency services were called to the two-car smash on the corner of Wentworth Avenue and Giles Street in Kingston shortly before 6.30am.

One car rolled on its roof after the crash on Wentworth Avenue and Giles Street. Credit:Anthony Croke

No one was trapped or injured, although both paramedics and firefighters attended the scene, an ACT Emergency Services Agency spokesman said.

The crash blocked one northbound lane traffic on Wentworth Avenue, a police spokeswoman said.
The Islamic School of Canberra will take its battle to restore $1 million in federal government funding to the High Court if necessary, its lawyer says, after Education Minister Simon Birmingham stood by his decision to revoke its funding.

The school in Weston lost its ACT registration after Mr Birmingham cut its funding over issues with governance by its operators the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) on Monday.

The Islamic School of Canberra's federal funding ran out on July 1. Credit:Jay Cronan

Its counterpart, the Malek Fahd Islamic School in Sydney, was stripped of its $19 million in Commonwealth funding in February.

On Wednesday Mr Birmingham said four other Islamic schools under investigation, Islamic College of South Australia, Islamic College of Brisbane, Islamic College of Melbourne, and Langford Islamic College in Western Australia would have until April 11 to show that they had addressed the concerns of the department.
Insurance comparison website iSelect has run afoul of the corporate watchdog after claiming to be "independent" while simultaneously taking commissions. Wealth manager Wilson HTM and Suncorp's Citywide Insurance Brokers and Financial Planners were also asked by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to remove advertising claiming the companies were independent while also taking commissions. iSelect's chief executive Scott Wilson rejects the AMA's criticism that comparison websites charge exorbitant fees. Credit:Peter Braig Under the Corporations Act, words like "independent", "impartial" and "unbiased" cannot be used by companies receiving commissions, volume-based payments, gifts or other benefits through sales or referrals. In 2012, ASIC announced it would publicly name entities that were found to be unlawfully making statements about the independence of the licensee or the services they provide, following an earlier surveillance project.

A spokesman for iSelect said the company had removed any reference to "independence" in all of its promotional materials. "iSelect Life does not mark up the price of our providers' products and is paid by them for the service provided through commission  at no cost to the consumer," the spokesman said. Wilson and Citywide have also removed the term "independent" from their websites and marketing material, according to ASIC. Citywide, which received commission from Suncorp, used the term "independent" on its website to describe its advisers. A spokeswoman for Wilson HTM said the company had taken steps to review and amend its marketing approval processes and has fully cooperated in responding to ASIC's concerns. Citywide's Gerald Grubwinkler said the company prided itself on being compliant with the Corporations Act. All three companies have fully co-operated in responding to ASIC's concerns, the regulator said in a statement.
Almost a decade after Rio Tinto took its first bite of Ivanhoe Mines speculation is building that Rio may seek to grow its stake in the company that is now known as Turquoise Hill Resources.

Rio is in a more acquisitive mood than at any time in the past three years, and is keen to buy quality copper assets while commodity prices and asset prices are low.

Oyu Tolgoi is in the South Gobi Desert where camel herders ply their trade. Credit:Bloomberg

Shares in Turquoise Hill, 50.79 per cent of which are owned by Rio, hit a seven-year low last month and at current prices Rio could buy the remaining shares for about $US2.3 billion ($3.2 billion).

Turquoise Hill owns 66 per cent of Oyu Tolgoi  a copper, silver and gold mine in Mongolia that Deutsche analyst Paul Young has labelled "the best undeveloped copper project globally and probably the best undeveloped asset in the industry".
Pell has no credibility as a moral leader. Pope Francis' reputation as the people's Pope  champion of the poor and powerless  is damaged by association if he fails to act decisively, and immediately.

If not, the Catholic Church in Australia is going to bleed numbers indefinitely. The Pope's statements about child sexual abuse will be seen as nothing but more words from a church whose standing has been trashed on the issue, and shockingly so over the past three days.

Cardinal George Pell has to resign. Before the week is out, and on the back of his evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the cardinal must go, and Pope Francis must be involved.

Pell was appalling in the witness box. Watching him give evidence felt almost ghoulish at times, like standing across the road from a car crash. How can any thinking, feeling, responsive  Christian for heaven's sake  human being respond the way Pell did, when questioned about Doveton priest Peter Searson's horrifying behaviour with children?

Cardinal George Pell arrives at the Quirinale hotel. Credit:Riccardo De Luca

Asked about a report of Searson stabbing a bird to death with a screwdriver in front of children, Pell conceded it came to his attention but "I don't know whether the bird was already dead but at some stage I certainly was informed of this bizarre happening".

Counsel assisting the royal commission, Gail Furness, picked up on the bleeding obvious  did it matter if the bird was dead? Wasn't the point that a priest, supposedly one of God's representatives on earth, had stabbed a bird? In front of children? If you were in a position of authority in the diocese at that time, wouldn't you have made it your business to find out if the priest should have been responsible for anyone, let alone children?

Apparently not. As Pell said about another shocking allegation involving Searson  that he held a knife to a young girl and said "If you move this will go through you"  there was nothing to be done once the girl's parents said they were unwilling to have police investigate, so the church did nothing.
Of all the countries in the Gulf, the Islamic Republic of Iran has alone proved to possess a stable, electorally legitimate political order. Although operating within an Islamic framework, the country has held regular parliamentary, Assembly of Experts and presidential elections since the establishment of its Islamic Government 37 years ago. This makes Iran the only functioning "theo-democratic" state in the region.

The Islamic Republic's latest elections for a new Parliament and Assembly of Experts  the highest clerical organ which elects and dismisses Iran's supreme religious and political leader  have just taken place at a critically transitional juncture for the country. It carries the potential to set a new course of moderation and pragmatism in the conduct of Iran's domestic politics and foreign relations. The results so far point to a substantial shift in favour of the centrist and reformist forces in Iran's very complex power structure and system of governance.

The founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who assumed power in the wake of the revolutionary overthrow of the Shah's pro-Western monarchy in early 1979, essentially forged a Shia Islamic two-tier system of governance. One tier was to represent the "sovereignty of God", personified by an Assembly of Experts-appointed jurist as Supreme Leader (Khomeini being the first), with no fixed term of office but enormous religious and constitutional powers, to preside over the polity as a whole.

Another tier was to reflect the "sovereignty of the people" through a universally elected president and national assembly within Khomeini's version of Shia Islam. Khomeini was succeeded by a devotee, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the system that he established has essentially continued to set the direction for Iran.

Yet, as both a combative and constructive cleric, Khomeini did not wish to leave behind a monolithic political system. In spite of his hardline supporters dominating the system from its beginning, he allowed a degree of political pluralism to flourish within his Islamic framework. As a result, three Islamic factions have contested power in Iran since Khomeini's death in 1989: the traditionalist, the pragmatist and the reformist.
Another factor has been the woefully inadequate funding of aid programmes to support refugees based in the region. With the exception of Britain, which has contributed about 1 billion ($1.9 billion) to funding refugee camps around Syria, the majority of world powers have fallen well short on the aid front. The same criticism applies to oil-rich Arab states, which could do much more to resolve a crisis that, after all, is taking place on their doorstep.

All that could change, though, if a proper ceasefire were to take hold in Syria, and a political framework established for resolving the conflict, thereby enabling ordinary Syrians to embark on the painful process of rebuilding their country.

Given the current situation on the ground in Syria, such a scenario might appear wildly over-optimistic. Yet the fact Washington and Moscow have managed to negotiate the outline of a ceasefire agreement is at least a step in the right direction: one that must be pursued with vigour if Europe's migration nightmare is to be brought to an end. For, ultimately, the answer to Europe's migration crisis lies in the Middle East, not Brussels.

An important first step would be to try to make the Russians understand that a ceasefire is not a ceasefire when you carry on bombing your foes. The Russians' excuse for carrying on with their air operations is that they are only targeting terrorists, rather than Syrian rebels. This is fiction. The majority of Russian air strikes are taking place against pro-Western Syrian opposition groups, such as the Free Syrian Army, in cities like Aleppo. Very few Russian bombs are being dropped on the positions of Islamic State, the group most responsible for sponsoring acts of Islamist terrorism inside Syria and beyond.

Moreover, the best way to persuade the Russians to take the ceasefire agreement more seriously would be for Western leaders to acknowledge that Moscow, together with its Iranian allies, has succeeded in its objective of saving the Assad regime. One of the West's biggest errors in this conflict has been to demand Assad's removal, when the main threat to Western security undoubtedly comes from IS.
This surplus food is distributed amongst those experiencing poverty and food insecurity and is done voluntarily by the supermarkets under the banner of corporate social responsibility.

While there is no law in Australia requiring supermarkets to donate any unsold food, both Coles and Woolworths have aligned with food rescue organisations to donate unsold or surplus food.

Last year, French supermarket chain Intermarche launched a highly successful campaign encouraging consumers to purchase ugly food. This year, France became the first country in the world to implement laws cracking down on food waste, with new legislation banning supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food. Under this new legislation, supermarkets are required to donate any unsold food to charities or for animal feed.

At a time when one billion people globally experience hunger, as much as 50 per cent of all food produced - up to two billion metric tonnes - is thrown away every year. In Australia alone, as much as 44 million tonnes of food is wasted annually.

But our research into the issue of corporate social responsibility and wastage of fresh fruit and vegetables has identified a number of tensions and contradictions, despite leading Australian supermarkets zero food waste targets.

First, the strict quality standards required by the Coles and Woolworths duopoly means that a large volume of food does not reach the supermarket shelves. This is produce that does not meet size, shape and appearance specifications  such as bananas that are too small, or apples that are too red. If producers do not agree to meet these standards, they will lose access to approximately 70-80 per cent of the fresh food market in Australia.

Second, the two major food retailers do not take ownership of produce until it passes inspection at the distribution centres. It is here where suppliers, such as farmers and growers, are invited - under the supermarkets corporate social responsibility initiatives - to donate rejected food to rescue organisations at their own cost, or otherwise pay for further transportation or dump fees.

Thirdly, in an effort to reduce the high levels of food wasted at the farm gate, Australian supermarkets have followed Frances lead by marketing ugly food, (or what Intermarche termed Inglorious Food)  food that does not meet strict cosmetic standards, but is still perfectly edible.

While a step in the right direction, this apartheid between beautiful and ugly food was criticised in this study for reinforcing values that perfection comes at premium and ugly food, which is often the way nature intended, should be price discounted. Growers are also concerned about the lower prices that ugly food attracts, and the flow-on effects to them in reduced profits.
Just days after giving a presentation on the topic "how to speak and disagree in public", I witnessed further examples of immature and dishonest debate.

In the halls of Parliament recently there was a brief and unpleasant exchange between the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten and Liberal Senator Cory Bernadi. Bernadi called Shorten a "fraud", while Shorten yelled out, "At least I'm not a homophobe, mate".

Caucasian family of four. Credit: iStockphoto

Last week on theage.com.au, Age reporter Jill Stark presented what is now an all too common false-antithesis: either we are progressive, enlightened and support gender theory, or we are conservative, culturally regressive bigots.

She wrote: "We cannot let the march of equality be held to ransom by a powerful minority of religious zealots who dress up their bigotry as concern for children."
After a record six Academy Award wins by Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller has arrived home thrilled for his team.

"To see all those smiling faces with their Oscars, it was fantastic," he told Fairfax Media. "I was really, really happy."

Director George Miller and three of his Oscar-winning team - Margaret Sixel, left, Lesley Vanderwalt and Damian Martin - arrive back in Sydney. Credit:Peter Rae

The acclaimed director arrived at Sydney Airport flanked by three of his team triumphantly carrying their Oscars  his wife Margaret Sixel, who won for best editing, and Lesley Vanderwalt and Damian Martin, who won with Elka Wardega for best hair and make-up.
In what may turn out to be a damp squib of an announcement given the bigger names already speculated about, former X Factor winner Dami Im looks set to be revealed as Australia's Eurovision contestant this year.

After strong rumours that either recent ARIA hall of fame inductee Tina Arena, who has had major European success, or current talent show judge Delta Goodrem, who has struggled to replicate the success of her debut album, would be representing Australia, Im will be a minor surprise if as expected she is named in the announcement on Thursday night.

Dami Im will represent Australia at the Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm in May.

While she has been touted for two years now as a candidate for Eurovision, Im, whose career began with some hyperbolic talk of her becoming the face of Australian music's future, has struggled to build on her TV talent show success despite an obviously good voice.

As with most who have attempted to travel from television success to chart success and then a sustainable career, the Korean-born, Queensland-raised Im has floundered without quality songs.
Melbourne Zoo's adorable pair of baby red pandas now have names.

The Zoo's keepers christened them on Wednesday, but only after a medical checkup confirmed that they were both, in fact, boys.

The first lad is called Mandu, short for Kathmandu, one of the places where the highly endangered species is found in the world. He hit the scales at 853 grams.

His brother is Keta, boy in Nepalese. The smaller of the pair weighs only 815 grams. Keepers say both are healthy for their ages.
The first openly gay member of the House of Representatives, Trent Zimmerman, has used his maiden speech to back the legalisation of same-sex marriage and target those who "peddle prejudice" against others.

Mr Zimmerman, who replaced former treasurer Joe Hockey in the blue ribbon seat of North Sydney late last year, also called for fixed four-year terms for federal Parliament to avoid distracting speculation about election timing.

Mr Zimmerman said he had rejected advice not to focus on his sexuality in the speech.

"Some have said to me this is not an issue I need reflect upon, particularly on an occasion such as this," he said.
Brie Larson has said her Oscar-winning role in Room allowed her to better understand her mother's life as a single mum, explaining that parts of her childhood more than slightly resembled the film's story of a mother and son living in one room.

The 26-year-old actress, who took out Best Actress gong at Academy Awards, said this week that the role helped her to better understand the struggles her mother went through when her parents divorced and her mother was forced to look after her and her sister solo.

Larson, whose real name is Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers, told US ABC News' Journey to the Oscars of a time when seven-year-old Larson and her mother and sister moved from their family home in Sacramento, California, to live in a one-room apartment in Los Angeles.

"We lived in just a studio apartment with just a room and a bed that came out of the wall, and my mom couldn't afford even a Happy Meal," Larson said, adding that the family's financial situation meant they often ate instant ramen.
One out of three ASX 200 companies has poor disclosure when it comes to reporting environmental, social and governance practices  a trend that is set to change as superannuation funds increase the pressure on company compliance.

Sally Loane, chief executive of the Financial Services Council (FSC), said company boards will also increasingly play a role in ramping up the ESG disclosure of Australia's 200 biggest businesses.

Sally Loane, chief executive of the Financial Services Council, says ESG reporting is a must-have for companies. Credit:Louie Douvis

"Yes, it's very much, I think, board-driven, board-led," Ms Loane said.

"ESG reporting is a journey, it started many years ago and it's getting to the point now where it's becoming a must-have for companies and I think [there is] going to be pressure from investors," Ms Loane said.
Cardinal Pell, led by his lawyer, says it was difficult to get the Archbishop to act on the paedophile priest and that auxiliary bishops such as himself were "outside the executive command".

Sam Duggan now takes us to a teachers' meeting in 1989 where a teachers' union rep, Mr Palmer, was present. It is noted that one or two teachers said at the meeting they should give Father Searson "a second chance".
Heavily armed police have stormed a home south of Brisbane to rescue a baby who was being held hostage by a man armed with a knife.

Paramedics were seen carrying the baby from the home, soon after police broke into the home in the Logan suburb of Kingston, shortly before 8am.

The man had been barricaded inside with the baby since about 5am, when a fight erupted between him and a woman who managed to escape.

The man was taken into custody and placed in a nearby ambulance a short time later.
The Crime and Corruption Commission has criticised those who chose to make a referral to the corruption watchdog public, just two and a half weeks out from the Brisbane City Council election.

Lord Mayor Graham Quirk faced questions on Wednesday over a $3.3 million council land deal with a Liberal National Party donor Tan Boon Seng, which Fairfax Media revealed had been referred to the CCC.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk has been forced to defend his council's decision to sell a $3.3m parcel of land to an LNP donor. Credit:Glenn Hunt

In a written statement, a CCC spokesman confirmed it was "assessing information relating to the BCC" but had some veiled criticism for those who made it public.

"The CCC takes this opportunity to remind the public, as it did at the commencement of the local government election period, that it is preferable that complaints are best made to the CCC confidentially," he said.
Cement mixers in backyard drug labs are being used to make synthetic marijuana on sale at Queensland shops, police say.

Ten homes and business in Brisbane, Rockhampton and the Gold Coast were raided on Monday and Tuesday.

Queensland police say drugs are being manufactured in cement mixers.

Nearly $500,000 worth of the synthetic drug and ingredients, plus manufacturing equipment and packaging, were found at the properties.

"What we found concerning was the squalid conditions ... where the chemicals were being manufactured," Detective Superintendent Jon Wacker said.
A Melbourne GP who uses homeopathy and has been treating hundreds of people for controversial condition Lyme disease is fighting for his medical licence after it was alleged he was a risk to patients.

Dr Geoff Kemp, a Camberwell GP for more than 40 years, has been given six weeks to find a doctor who will supervise his work or he may no longer be able to practise.

Dr Geoff Kemp has been giving intravenous antibiotics to people he believes have Lyme disease. Credit:Jason South

In September 2015 the Medical Board of Australia imposed conditions on Dr Kemp's licence after a complaint was made about his treatment of a patient he had diagnosed with Lyme disease. The Board indicated that it eventually wished to suspend his licence.

In an interview with Fairfax Media, Dr Kemp said he was being attacked by health authorities who were "anti-Lyme disease" and wanted to shut down doctors who recognise the condition.
The number of prisoners in Victoria's jails has blown out, with almost 40 per cent more prisoners behind bars than six years ago.

According to the latest figures almost one in four prisoners in a Victorian jail is on remand, awaiting trail or yet to be sentenced.

Truganina's Port Phillip Prison. Credit:Paul Jeffers

However in a separate report released on Wednesday figures show that as the state's prison population is swelling, courts are increasingly imposing community-based sentences allowing offenders to escape jail time.

Figures compiled by the Sentencing Advisory Council show that the Victorian Magistrates' Court imposed community correction orders 10,500 times last year  a 36 per cent increase on the previous year.
A former Station Street Markets trader is looking at taking legal action against the City of Subiaco after plans to open a new market near its old premises were knocked back.

The Tran family, which ran the popular "Tran Veggies" at the markets for 12 years before it closed in June, applied to council to run a boatshed-style market called Growers Lane on Salvado Road only a few hundred metres from their old stall.

The former "Tran Veggies" at the Station Street Markets in Subiaco. Credit:Alex Riddell

But late last month, the council rejected their bid to convert a warehouse into a new food market because it feared the new shop would drive business away from Subiaco's traditional CBD.

Diep Tran, who has taken over the running of the family business with her brother, is looking at contesting the council's decision in the State Administrative Tribunal.
Parents are considering removing their children from a WA school after learning a convicted child sex offender is among the students. Credit:AFR

Just three weeks into the 2016 school year, Education Minister Peter Collier revealed 981 children were 'missing' from WA schools.

Nearly 1000 West Australian children are missing from the state's education system while another 10,000 regularly miss more than two days of class a week, according to Department of Education figures.

Another 10,037 students, half of which hail from the Perth metropolitan area, attended school less than 60 per cent of the time in Semester 1, 2015 - equivalent to missing more than two days a week.

Mr Collier told Radio 6PR on Wednesday afternoon that the buck stopped with him.

"The education of children is paramount," he said.

The minister said the unknown whereabouts of a number of children had actually fallen from 1500 in 2011 to around 1000.

"We're also introduced a range of strategies to motivate students including engagement centres aimed at children who just don't want to be at school," Mr Collier said.
Perth's accused "Christmas Grinch" Ashton Coverley made a brief appearance in court on Wednesday but is yet to enter a plea for allegedly stealing parcels from people's doorsteps in December.

The 26-year-old's lawyer told Joondalup Magistrates Court Ms Coverley needed more time to complete counselling sessions before dealing with the five stealing charges.

Ashton Coverley wasn't pleased to see the media outside court in December. Credit:Nine News Perth

In December, Ms Coverley and her 25-year-old co-accused were charged by police a day after CCTV footage of women taking parcels from Perth doorsteps began circulating on social media.

The pair is alleged to have followed delivery vans around Perth's northern suburbs before stealing the parcels.
Police are searching for a group of men who tried to car-jack three separate victims in Perth's southern suburbs on Tuesday using a gun.

Two of the incidents occurred in Rockingham while the third was in Shoalwater.

A composite image of one of the men believed involved in a spate of car-jacking attempts in Perth's southern suburbs. Credit:WA Police

Police have appealed for the public's help to identify the men.

The first Rockingham incident occurred on Parkin Street at 9am when the men knocked on the door of a house and asked the resident to move his car.
The Australian and Malaysian governments are working to retrieve a piece of debris that washed up on the coast of Mozambique, amid reports the wreckage is "likely" from the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

News agencies, CNN, NBC and AP all on Thursday cited a US official as saying the debris is likely to belong to the Boeing 777 that went missing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai took to Twitter to urge against speculating, but said there was a "high possibility" the wreckage was from a Boeing 777.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

Broker market share has continued to gain traction over bank retail channels with new data revealing 2015 was a bigger year for mortgage brokers than 2014.According to the data commissioned by the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia ( MFAA ), mortgage brokers settled 51.8% of all new residential home loans in 2015, an increase on the 50.4% settled during the calendar year of 2014.When we compare the results for 2014 with the results for 2015, it can be seen that mortgage brokers continue to grow as an industry profession in the Australian residential market year on year, MFAA CEO Siobhan Hayden said.In the December quarter of 2015, brokers originated $49.9 billion of new home loans  which equates to 51.8% of new residential home loans settled over the quarter. This is also $6.2 billion more than the $43.7 billion originated by brokers in the December 2014 quarter.This demonstrates that consumers are choosing to partner with a mortgage broker more often than walking into a traditional bank, Hayden said.The MFAAs research was conducted by comparator, a CoreLogic business, and is based on data sourced from 18 leading brokers and aggregators.
Latest News NAB reveals six market megatrends for brokers More opportunities for investors, first home buyers

Firstmac shifts up a gear on auto loans National sales manager appointed to pursue growing market

House prices in Australias star property market, Sydney, declined over the past three months, according to new figures from CoreLogic RP Data.Sydney was the only capital city to have recorded a fall in house prices over the quarter to February 2015, down 0.2%. The cities to record the greatest price rises over the past three months were Hobart (8.5%), Melbourne (3.8%) and Brisbane (2%). Over the eight capital cities combined, house prices rose 1.4% over the quarter.Over the past 12 months, combined capital city home values have increased by 7.6%, with the annual growth rate down from a recent peak of 11.1% recorded in July last year.Despite the slowing trend, Sydney remains the second best performing capital city over the past twelve months. But CoreLogic RP Data head of research Tim Lawless says this might not be for long.A few of the smaller cities, where growth rates have recently accelerated, may start to rival Sydneys position over the coming months. The trend in home value growth is showing signs of increasing in those markets that have previously underperformed. These include Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and Canberra.Affordability constraints arent as apparent in these cities and rental yields havent been compressed to the same extent as what they have in Melbourne or Sydney.House prices in Brisbane increased by 5.5% over the past year, which is the fastest annual growth rate recorded for the city in a year. In Hobart, home values are 6.2% higher over the year, which is its fastest annual rate of house price growth since July 2010.Melbourne has maintained its number one growth position for now, with annual capital gains of 11.1% over the year to February. But the annual rate of capital gain has remained virtually level over the past three months.
Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams

94th Precinct

GreenpointNorthside

Food fight

Cops arrested a guy who they say pilfered cash from a gyro cart at N. Seventh Street and Bedford Avenue on Feb. 26, then hurled bottles and cans at the vendor and spitefully tossed the carts food supply.

The man starting hassling the vendor and his customers for a gyro around 2:56 am, despite not having enough cash, according to a police report. When the vendor refused to serve him, the guy allegedly stole a wad of cash from the back of the cart and refused to hand it over, police said. The vendor then called the cops and the man allegedly got angry, shoving and punching the victims face and body, authorities said.

The victim fled, seeking shelter in a nearby doughnut shop, at which point the guy reportedly started dumping out the carts bread and sauce supply, police said. When the victim emerged from the doughnut shop, cops say the perp allegedly hurled Snapple bottles and soda cans at him, smashing into the food cart, cops said.

The man ran off when the cops showed up, and allegedly tried to resist arrest by flailing violently, hurting the arresting officer in the process, according to authorities.

Beware of dog

A looter snatched some belongings from a Newton Street apartment on Feb. 27 before being scared off by the victims barking dog.

The victim told cops she was awakened in her place between Manhattan and Graham avenues around 3:10 am to the sound of her dog barking and growling, then sat up in bed and noticed a shadow lurking around her living room.

When she yelled Hey, the scamp hoofed it through the front door and fled, police said. The woman then noticed the thief had filched two debit cards, one of which was later used at a train station, and $80 in cash from the apartment, cops said.

Dis-car-d

A thief stole a car that was parked on Roebling Street sometime between Feb. 24 and 26.

The driver left his ride parked legally near N. Seventh Street on Feb. 24 around 9:30 pm, then came back on Feb. 26 around 11:10 pm to find it missing, according to a police report.

There was no broken glass on the scene, and the driver admitted he may have left the car unlocked by mistake, cops said.

 Allegra Hobbs
latest news

October 3, 2022

Dee Gambit

Hundreds  if not thousands  of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month  your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ...
After Super Tuesday, dont discount the underdogs just yet, UB political scientist says

Although many now see a Trump nomination as an inevitability, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the commitment of a large part of the Republican Party, probably a significant majority, to stop Trump. Many see Trump as unfit for the presidency. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  Donald Trump won seven more states on Super Tuesday, making it anything but Super for Republican rivals.

But the stakes  the potential election of Hillary Clinton, perhaps a Democrat controlled Senate, and a liberal controlled Supreme Court  are much too high for Trumps Republican rivals to concede the nomination to him, according to James Campbell, University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor of Political Science.

There is still much more of the nomination process to go and there is a firm resolve among Trumps rivals to see this through to the end of the process, says Campbell, author of the forthcoming book Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America. Although many now see a Trump nomination as an inevitability, I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the commitment of a large part of the Republican Party, probably a significant majority, to stop Trump.

Many see Trump as unfit for the presidency.

Trump now leads the Republican pack with 319 delegates. Ted Cruz has amassed 226, Marco Rubio has 110 and John Kasich has 25. A candidate must have the votes of 1,237 delegates to win the nomination.

While Cruz, Rubio and Kasich face an uphill battle, Campbell says as the field shrinks  Ben Carson announced he sees no path forward on Wednesday  other candidates will get more votes.

Additionally, the determination to stop Trump is strong, and wont go away any time soon.

With stakes this high, it looks like both mainstream and movement conservatives are ready to fight a Trump nomination, he says, to the bitter end.
1st Congressional District race sees Norcross, Gustafson rematch

U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1, is looking to repeat his win two years ago over Republican Claire Gustafson when voters turn out this November.
The UKs largest ever art exhibition dedicated to the Somerset and Dorset Railway is underway in Burnham-On-Sea next this week to mark the 50th year since the rail line closed.

West Country railway artist Alan Ward, pictured, is overseeing the exhibition, which started on Monday March 1st and runs until Sunday 6th March.

Burnham-On-Sea Community Centre in Berrow Road is hosting the show and the opening times are 10am-4pm each day.

Alan has scoured the country to gather original works from patrons and private collectors of his paintings over the many years.

There are also a nostalgic array of new original oil paintings and sketches amounting to over 100 works produced especially for this one-off event, many of which are on sale.

A comprehensive collection of limited edition Somerset & Dorset fine art prints, both framed and unframed, are also on display.

Burnham is a fitting choice for the exhibition, since it was the terminus for the Evercreech Junction/Glastonbury branch of the line, Alan told Burnham-On-Sea.com.

Notable paintings on show include the Last Pines depicting the preparation of the 9F 2-10-0 EVENING STAR for the last ever run on S&D metals to Bournemouth prior to re-routing the service in 1962.

Another painting of note is the Requiem for the Somerset and Dorset portraying Southern Pacific Battle of Britain locomotive Biggin Hill and West Country light pacific BUDE passing over Midford Viaduct on the final run south on the weekend of closure in March 1966.

Its hoped that related societies will have a presence at the show, together with other attractions and displays of 0 Gauge locomotives working the line at the time together with CD presentations of the railway and it infrastructure.

Admission is free and souvenir brochures and catalogue of works are on sale.
To have a Jag or a Merc is a dream for many. Now, the dream is coming true in Chennai, with models of luxury cars being sold at dirt cheap prices.

How? About 80,000 vehicles - including two-wheelers - were damaged during the in November last year. Of these, about 20,000 were declared to be "fully damaged" and written off by insurance .

Read more from our special coverage on "CHENNAI FLOODS" Chennai calamity: Flood-ravaged corporate jets to cost insurers Rs 500 cr

Now, the insurers who have acquired this inventory are selling off the cars - in the open market, and yard and online auctions - for 25-45 per cent of their insured declared value (IDV).

Car dealers from all over the country are flocking to the southern metropolis to buy these cars.

But why would someone buy a damaged vehicle?



Take an example: The on-road value of a Jaguar F-Type is about Rs 2.2 crore. In Chennai, if you are lucky, you could get one for as low as Rs 15-25 lakh.

Add the cost of refurbishment to it (about Rs 5-10 lakh), and it is still dirt cheap.

Of late, garage owners and dealers of used cars are flocking to Chennai - they comprise about 96 per cent of the buyers.

If the cars are beyond repair, they can be turned into scrap. Others can be repaired and sold off.

Dinesh Pathania, the managing director of Autoworld, a Delhi-based bulk used car dealer, is in Chennai. He said he had already bought and sold about 500 of these cars. Of these, 70 to 100 were luxury cars such as Mercedes and Audis.

"I'm expecting a batch of another 100 luxury vehicles in 10-15 days, and shall sell them to smaller traders and used car dealers," Pathania said.

The insurance companies, too, are benefiting from this sale, as it is helping them cut some of the losses.

A source in the sector said: "If a car is totally damaged, the insurance company might have to shell out as much as Rs 80 lakh - an IDV of around Rs 1-1.2 crore. In this case, there is no chance of recovering the money.

"However, if the insurance company does not pay the entire IDV to the consumer, there is hope that the car might even fetch 45 per cent of the IDV, thus offsetting the losses to some extent."



Ravi Mehra, president, auctions, CarTrade.com, told Business Standard, "The inventory of damaged vehicles (those that have been written off) is around 20,000. Considering the average price of a vehicle at Rs 6 lakh (it ranges from Maruti Alto to Jaguar F-Type), the size of the inventory is around Rs 1,200 crore."



Around 4,000 vehicles have already been auctioned off, and 400-450 vehicles are being auctioned every week, Mehra added.

Another online portal, CarDekho.com, however, pegs the number of lost assets to insurance at 10,000-12,000 units.

Abhishek Gautam, chief operating officer, CarDekho auctions, elaborated, "For flood-damage vehicles, there are basically in three categories: First, C-level: Water damage till floor or carpet level; second, B-level: water damage till dash-board level; and third, A-level: water damage till the roof. Depending upon the damage, cars can be sold for anything between 20 and 50 per cent of the original value."




Inc., a technology company specialising in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision, raised $54 million Series D funding round led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the Government of Malaysia.

The funding also included follow-on investment from Blippar's existing investor base.

The company is based in UK having presence in India at Delhi (head office), Mumbai and Bangalore.

The investment will support expansion of its engineering capabilities and presence in San Francisco.

"2016 is poised to be the biggest year in Blippar's history as we not only expand our breadth and depth as a business - across our team, technology capabilities and product offerings - but also reach new heights with our vision to become a true visual discovery engine for the physical world," said Ambarish Mitra, Co-Founder and CEO.

This latest funding round will allow the company to continue to capture top engineering talent, further grow company's leading global install base, create campaigns for company's brand partners, said the company.

In addition, the financing will enable to invest in its user acquisition to drive a habitual behavior.

"The company has already seen exponential user adoption with a global user base of over 65 million users, and partnerships with some of the biggest and most exciting media owners and brands in the world," said Mitra in a statement.

They include Nestle, Conde Nast, TIME Inc., Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Universal Pictures, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Disney and Jaguar.

The company will additionally use the funding to continue growing its presence within the education sector and build on early use cases to become the default platform for educators seeking to empower classrooms with interactive visual learning experiences.

Currently the company has around 60 engineers in its San Francisco and Mountain View offices and a total of more than 300 employees across 14 global offices.
Start-ups in India with high valuations are witnessing a fund crunch and drop in valuations as investors tighten their belts and look at businesses that are sound. A few of these have shut shop as these start-ups had not built a sustainable business. "India has not seen this before. This is the first time we are seeing die," says Ash Lilani, managing partner and co-founder of Saama Capital, in an interview with Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan. The venture firm is an early investor in Paytm and Snapdeal, and in traditional businesses such as Sula Wines and Chaipoint. Edited excerpts:



Is the tap running dry for start-up investments due to high valuations?



I've been doing this for 25 years and I've seen it from the Valley perspective. I don't get shocked or excited when the bubble is happening. This is a normal cycle. I've seen this happen three or four times in my career. It starts off dry, then two to three get funded, and there's a herd mentality in certain sectors. Everybody wants to have a competing play. The interesting thing is, that sector will have a lot of money coming in but if the economic models are not right, things go bad. It's a natural phenomenon because funding cannot be endless. In a time like this, investors become more selective. The newcomers vanish... they usually retreat. And, suddenly the local investors are saying the bar is higher and they want with right economic models, but you have all these orphan companies out there. So you'll see some consolidate, some will die. India has not seen this before. This is the first time that we are seeing companies die.

Has sanity returned?



What you're seeing is a correction in business models. Suddenly a view to profitability is coming in and the view of discounting and cashbacks is being rolled away. It's being done very subtly, which is why nobody is noticing it. A lot of good investors are making sure their good companies are financed for the next 18-24 months. But, it's rationalisation, it's coming back to earth. In some ways, entrepreneurs got carried away, investors got carried away, but it was sector-specific and not across the board. If you go back and look where the bubble happened, it was in a couple of sectors - foodtech and hyperlocal. Every deal we've done has been very reasonably priced, but I think it was sector-driven and I think it was a shame, because there were some good entrepreneurs in the space as well. But we believe foodtech and hyperlocal will have a 2.0 version with corrective economic models. We just have to wait.

What do you think will happen to some of these big cash-burning companies in the next 12 months?



I think the large companies won't be abandoned. There are three choices. One is, can we get an exit, which might be tough in this environment because the IPO (initial public offering) market is going to be shut. The second is taking a step back, save cash, cut out the advertising, cut out the discounts, start rationalising the business model and the cash that was going to last for 12 months will now need to last for two years. And the last option is, if you can't raise outside money at this valuation, you have to support the company. But, the question then is what is the fair price in today's market. Investors have to take a decision. Either we continue propping it up at this valuation or we do a down round, where there maybe an external investor available. But, that means everybody has to take a write down, including the founders whose stake will get diluted. Unfortunately, employees also get hurt, because they have ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans). It's a very tricky situation, but I don't think any of the large guys - I'm talking about the five or six of them - are going anywhere. Down the road, there will be consolidation - it's already happening where there are common investors on both sides.

Will we see at some point more funding coming in?



The appetite for India continues to be there. If you look at the global economy, what's happening in the US and in China, India is definitely a bright spot. When the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) was in the US, it was very clear. Every single Valley company, be it Facebook, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Qualcomm, they all came to kiss the ring because they realise India is their biggest potential market.

It's not if, it is the biggest market. Second, global investors understand the macro is good. In reality, if we want that money, we still need companies and entrepreneurs that can take that money. I don't think corporate India has a problem in raising money. None of the big industry houses has a problem, but we need a lot more younger companies.
Hyderabad-based Gayatri Projects today informed the stock exchanges about the award of Rs 4,744 crore contract for designing and building Iqbalgarh-Vadodara section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor project to the Sojitz-led consortium in which it is a partner.

Last month, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India awarded the contract to the consortium comprising Sojitz Corporation, L&T and Gayatri Projects.

Gayatri is expected to have a Rs 450-500 crore worth of EPC work share in this contract. It will be handling the earth work and concreting, according to a company official.



"The company is pleased to be associated with such notable partners as Sjitz Corporation, a major Japanese conglomerate, and L&T, India's largest infrastructure company. Winning this prestigious project shows the management's commitment to capitalise on the growing EPC opportunities across various sectors," the company said.
Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) on Wednesday said it had appointed Akito Tachibana as managing director from April, replacing incumbent head Naomi Ishii within two years of his stint in India.

Ishii moves back to Toyota Motor Corporation as the general manager of corporate planning division. Ishii headed Toyota Kirloskar Motor since January 2014.

Tachibana currently heads the technical, purchase and quality assurance functionst at TKM, the firm said.

A three-decade veteran of Toyota, Tachibanas earlier stints include leadership positions at its units in Thailand, Vietnam and in the US, heading corporate and product planning.

TKM is the second Japanese firm to replace its India head. Last month, Honda Motor Co said it is replacing its India President and Chief Executive Katsushi Inoue with Yoichiro Ueno from April.

Inoue has been elvated to be the operating officer at Honda in addition to chief operating officer of European operations.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seems to be working hard to improve its image - from a "caged parrot" to an investigating agency insulated from political interference. Its hands are full with cases on corruption in public life and also economic offences including banking and corporate frauds, Ponzi scams, serious frauds, cyber crimes, etc.

As on date, the CBI is investigating a whopping over Rs 1,20,000 crore worth Ponzi scheme scams. It investigated bank fraud cases in excess of Rs 20,000 crore in 2015.

In calendar year 2015, CBI could successfully investigate 20 major cyber crimes. It has already approached nine states including Maharashtra to open up state-of-the-art cyber crime investigation units following an alarming rise in crimes through the internet.

The Maharashtra government has been requested to notify the CBI for taking up the investigation of offences under the Information Technology Act 2000. On January 8 this year, the CBI arrested Pearls Group head Nirmal Singh Bhangoo and three others in connection with an alleged Rs 45,000 crore ($6.7 billion) ponzi scam.

Last month, it had filed a supplementary charge sheet in the Saradha scam. A senior officer, who was in Mumbai with CBI director Anil Sinha to inaugurate agency's Mumbai office, told Business Standard. "Ponzi scams are unearthed across the country.

In Jharkhand alone, there are 180 such cases. A ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where operators usually entice new investors by offering higher returns than other investments. CBI is working actively to crack such scams in a time-bound manner."
The Tamil Nadu government has issued a letter seeking the centre's views on its decision to release all the seven members convicted in the case. The State government said that it has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and to release the seven, since all have already served prison terms of 24 years and the government has received petitions from them to release them considering the years they have already spent in jail.

The move comes after an earlier proposal by the state to release these prisoners was opposed by the Central government. This prompted the Supreme Court in December 2, 2015 to durect the State not to remit the life term without the approval of the Centre.

In a letter sent by Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan, to Secretary of Ministry of Home Affairs Rajiv Mehrishi, the state government said, "We would like to clarify that this communication is being sent to you without prejudice to our right to move the Supreme Court to review its judgement dated December 2, 2015, wherein the Constitution Bench had taken the view that the word 'consultation' used in Section 435 of Cr. P. C means 'concurrence'," adding that the letter is also without prejudice to the State's rights and contentions in the writ petition.

The State government added that four of the seven persons, namely V Sriharan or Murugan, T Suthendraraja or Santhan, Jayakumar and Robert Payas are foreigners, that is Sri Lankan nationals.

The others are A G Perarivalan or Arivu, Ravichandran and Nalini.

It may be noted that the State government in February 2014 has made an announcement to release the seven persons, following a directive of the Supreme Court commuting the death sentence of the three assassins of Rajiv Gandhi to life imprisonment, holding that the 11-year long delay in deciding their mercy petition had a dehumanising effect on them. The Supreme Court, in an order issued on February 18, 2014, commuted the death sentence imposed on Sriharan, Suthendraraja and Perarivalan.

The attempt of State government to consult the Central Government seeking its views within three days. However, the centre approached the Supreme Court against the State government's decision and a bench of three judges was formed and the bench raised seven constitutional/legal questions for the consideration of a five Judges Bench.

The questions framed in the referral order of Supreme Court of India were answered in its order dated December 2, 2015, said the State government. The writ petition of centre was directed to be posted before a three Judges Bench of the Supreme Court for hearing. The writ petition is yet to be listed before the three Judges Bench for hearing, said the State government's letter.

The Constitution Bench, according to previous reports, has criticised the State government commenting that the State government cannot be allowed to exercise its power of remission considering that the case was investigated by central agencies including the Central Bureau of Investigation and the offences were relating to execution power of the Union.

Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and 14 others were killed on May 21, 1991 when a suicide bomber blew herself up after touching his feet at an election campaign rally (prior to the parliamentary elections), in Sriperumbudur, near Chennai.
While the Budget is supposed to be aiming for mass availability of low-priced indigenous drugs, indications from US pharmaceutical lobbies suggest another scenario.

It appears American industry associations have got feelers that India might not grant compulsory licensing for commercial purposes. The term is used for a government allowing someone else to produce a patented product or process, without consent of the patent owner.

There are various grounds on which such licences can be given - when a drug is not widely available, extremely expensive, etc. Many Indian companies have filed applications for such licences with the government, with the stated aim of making available affordable medicine.

"While the Government of India has privately reassured (American) industry that it would not use compulsory licences for commercial purposes, a public commitment to forgo using (this) would enhance legal certainty for innovative industries," goes a submission by the US Chamber of Commerce to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR).

USTR is the American government agency responsible for developing and recommending the country's trade policy.

"Despite compulsory licensing denials, (American) industry continues to be concerned by the potential threat of compulsory licensing. The Government of India has privately reassured us it would not use (this) for commercial purposes," goes a February 5 submission of the US-India Business Council to the USTR.

According to Leena Menghaney, a lawyer who works on the affordable medicine campaign of Medicins Sans Frontieres, the international humanitarian agency, the government can't give even an oral commitment on not giving compulsory licences. "That would be unconstitutional and illegal," she said.

The Indian government did not issue any compulsory licence for biopharmaceuticals in 2015. However, it is examining various applications under sections 84 and 92 of the Indian Patents Act. For example, a final decision in two compulsory applications under section 92 for Bristol-Myers-Squibb's anti-cancer drug, Dasatinib, and Novartis's respiratory drug, Onbrezis, is awaited.

"The Modi government should restore the confidence of innovative pharmaceutical industry by formally closing these matters and send a clear and unmistakable signal that intellectual property rights will not be disturbed unless there is a cause," added the US Chamber of Commerce in its submission to USTR.

The chamber also urged the government to formally dissolve the inter-ministerial panel appointed under the earlier government to select medicines for compulsory licences.

"Whether it is commercial or non-commercial, as per the law, Indian government has to give compulsory licences under various specific circumstances e.g. when the drug is unaffordable or unavailable, its patent holder has been found abusing its dominant position or indulging in anti-competitive behaviour by Competition Commission of India etc," said Menghaney.
The government expects total revenue from communication services to be at Rs 98,995 crore for 2016-17, but experts have raised concern over the budgeted amount for arrears from players at around Rs 21,000 crore.According to officials in the ministry for communications and IT, the arrears include realisation from one-time spectrum charge (OTSC), which though is currently under litigation.Brokerage firm Credit Suisse, in a note, also said government expects one-time spectrum fees of Rs 20,000 crore  this has been a recurring fixture for the past few years  not being realised.In 2013, the department of telecommunications (DoT) had raised demand of OTSC from operators for using spectrum over 4.4 MHz till 2013. The amount that DoT will get from OTSC is estimated to be Rs 20,000-25,000 crore, according to their calculations.The one-time charge was earlier approved by the United Progressive Alliance government to bring a level-playing field with the newer operators who had to buy spectrum through the auction. However, this was challenged by players in various courts and the matter is still pending in courts.Also, Credit Suisse said according to their calculations, the government is likely to budget Rs 1,62,500 crore spectrum sale from the auctions  25-30 per cent of which would get paid immediately and form part of revenue receipts for the year. This also means about 30 per cent of value of spectrum on offer gets sold at Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) reserve prices.This assumes at least a partial success of 700 MHz spectrum (as the value in all other spectrum bands is less than $20 billion). If the government achieves these numbers, it would be a significant negative for the sector. A realistic number would probably be half this amount, the note said.Many operators have said the prices of spectrum in 700 MHz band are unrealistic and they might not bid for it in the auction.

In 2014-15, the government had earned revenue of Rs 1.1 lakh crore from spectrum auction. Trai gave its recommendation in January this year on auction for spectrum in various bands  including the premium 700 MHz for the first time, at a reserve price of Rs 11,485 crore per MHz. This is the highest reserve price fixed for a band since the process for spectrum auction started nearly five years earlier. The 700 MHz band is considered a good one for mobile broadband and fourth-generation (4G) technology services. It is much sought after for long-term evolution deployment around the world, due to its efficiency and higher penetration inside buildings. Existing operators had opposed the auction of 700 MHz.

DoT plans to commence the spectrum auction by June-July. The total revenue at Rs 98,995 crore is the double of what DoT had expected in 2016-17. In a presentation for the Budget, it had said it expected revenues of Rs 49,214 crore for 2017, out of which Rs 16,000 crore was from spectrum auction and Rs 9,500 crore from instalment from the previous auction.
Odisha Power Generation Corporation Ltd (OPGC), the only state run thermal power producer, has urged the Ministry of Coal (MoC) to provide bridge coal linkage of 16.8 million tonne every year for four years.

The coal linkage would help bridge the gap between synchronisation of the ongoing 1320 Mw expansion plan and production of coal from its allocated blocks - Manoharpur and dip side of Manoharpur. The expansion plan is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2017-18. But coal production is set to begin only in March 2019 and reach its peak rated capacity by March 2022.

Both the blocks have been allocated to Odisha Coal & Power Ltd (OCPL), a 51:49 joint venture (JV) between and another state entity Odisha Hydro Power Generation Corporation (OHPC). OCPL was a joint venture floated by the state government since having 49 per cent equity by a private player (US-based AES Ltd), was not eligible for securing a coal block under the PSU dispensation route.

In his letter to Coal Secretary Anil Swarup, Chairman and Odisha's Principal Secretary (Energy) Rajesh Verma reiterated on the need for allocating coal linkage to cater to OPGC's expansion. He said, OPGC has already spent Rs 2,900 crore (till December end) on the expansion plan.

OPGC runs a 420 Mw (2x210) plant presently at the station.

The expansion plan would add 1320 Mw capacity to the power station. The expansion plan is being taken up at a cost of Rs 11,547 crore which also includes cost of other components like coal block development and dedicated rail corridor.

The state owned generator has already started construction work on its expansion. To fund the expansion, OPGC has already tied up funding of Rs 8,660 crore from Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and Rural Electrification (REC), by executing a loan agreement with the two Central PSUs. The balance funding is to be borne proportionately by the Odisha government and AES which hold 51 per cent and 49 per cent stake respectively in OPGC.

Power equipment major Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) has bagged Rs 4051 crore contract from OPGC for supply and erection of the main plant for 1320 Mw capacity expansion pursued by the thermal power producer.

The Balance of Plant (BoP) contract valued at Rs 1573 crore was bagged by BGR Energy Systems. The contract includes supply, erection and commissioning of the BoP for OPGC's two units to be added at its plant .
The Madras High Court has turned down a plea for a recount by a section of shareholders of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank after members from the Pioneer Group were declared members of the banks board by a division bench of the court. The Tamil Nadu Mercantile Bank Shareholders Welfare Association sought the recount after ignoring the stakes of two entities amounting to around 10 per cent of the total shareholding.

The disputed holding is related to the 4.62 per cent stake transferred by the Ramesh Vangal-founded Katra Holdings and RST Ltd to Subcontinental Equities, and the 4.95 per cent stake transferred by GHI Ltd to Robert Ardies and James Company Ltd. The association contended the votes were counted in accordance with a memo issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on October 27, 2015, as opposed to an earlier order by the central bank on March 31, 2011.

Read more from our special coverage on "TAMILNAD MERCANTILE BANK" Court asks a full-fledged Board to assume office at Tamilnad Mercantile Bank

According to P Wilson, lawyer for the association, the 2011 order issued by the deputy governor of the RBI had acquired status of statute under a section of the Banking Regulations Act, 1949. C Mohan, lawyer for the RBI, submitted the 2011 order was not a direction issued under Section 35A of the Banking Regulations Act and it could not continue to hold after the subsequent transfer of shares.

Wilson said the share transfer by RST Ltd and Katra Holdings to Subcontinental Equities had already been noted by the RBI before issuing the 2011 order and it could therefore not go back on it.

The court observed when the RBI passed its order in 2011 RST Ltd and Katra Holdings had disputed the sale but Subcontinental Equities produced original share certificates and blank share transfer forms.

The crux of the RBI order in 2011 was that RST Ltd and Katra Holdings were part of a group that attempted to take over Tamilnad Mercantile Bank. Subsequently, the dispute was resolved and the transfer was completed in December 2011. The stake sale by GHI Ltd to Robert Ardis and James Company Ltd occurred in January 2012. The transfers have taken place after the order of the RBI dated March 31, 2011, the court observed.

It was on account of the subsequent events that the RBI was constrained to file a memo in 2015, the court observed. Even this memo states it was a one-time measure.

As a matter of fact, the parties who advance the above arguments do not even know whether these transferred shares were counted or not for arriving at the results. They have just presumed that the votes of those parties must have been taken into account by the chairman to arrive at the results. It is only on this assumption that they have addressed the above arguments and we hence have not recorded a categorical finding, said the order issued by Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice N Kirubakaran.

The bench added it could have resorted to another option--keeping the results on hold--but did not do so because the bank needed an administration to oversee operations.

Shocked by this sudden volte face by the appellant, persons who set him up to file the litigation and to get interim orders, today opposed his request for withdrawal. This is not the first time that such a thing is happening in this litigation. Therefore, we would prefer to deal with the request for withdrawal later, added the order. According to the court documents, the person who filed memo for withdrawal is P S P K Maragathrajaapandian.
The Street has cheered the Reserve Bank of India's move, announced on Tuesday evening, to ease the capitalisation norms of banks, both public and private. However, this only buys time, aver observers, to address the more fundamental issues.

To align the definition of capital with Basel-III standards, RBI allowed banks to include three balance sheet items as CET-1 capital or core equity capital. These are revaluation reserves (on a banks property) at a discount of 55 per cent, foreign currency translation reserves arising out of translating revenues/earnings from foreign businesses in local currency (at a 25 per cent discount) and Deferred Tax Assets on account of timing differences (capped at 10 per cent of CET-1).

This is a step in the right direction and augurs well for public sector banks (PSBs) already reeling under capital constraints like Union Bank, State Bank of India (SBI), Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) and Bank of India (BoI), says Nilesh Parikh of Edelweiss Securities.

The reclassification will push the CET-1 ratios of banks (private and public) by 15 to 100 basis points (bps), estimate analysts at MOSL. Notably, PSBs needed $30-40 billion over FY16-19 to comply with Basel-III norms. Of these, government has allocated about $10 bn for capitalisation of PSBs. Analysts at Ambit Capital estimate that if the government stake in these falls to 52 per cent from the present average of 65 per cent, PSBs, at current valuations, can raise capital of $9 bn.

With the capital release of $4-5 bn from RBIs measures taken yesterday, PSBs' capital shortfall can shrink to $5-15 bn from $10-20 bn earlier, adds Ravi Singh of Ambit Capital.

Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities believe there is a high risk of investors or rating agencies looking at these capital structures with scepticism and to start excluding these changes. They believe smaller PSBs such as Corporation Bank, Dena Bank, IOB and IDBI Bank stand to gain from the move. Among the larger ones, SBI has indicated it could have a revaluation of Rs 20,000 crore, augmenting its CET-1 ratio by 60-70 bps.

The scepticism is because the tier-I capital of banks is expected to comprise funds that can absorb business losses. This is unlikely if it is boosted by revaluing assets that might or might not be sold, said an analyst with a domestic brokerage.

PSBs' ability to create adequate cover for bad debts, compete and grow profitably will continue to be under pressure, say analysts.

The shares of SBI, Bank of Baroda (BoB), Punjab National Bank and BoI saw gains following RBIs move to ease the capitalisation norms. These stocks were up by five to 12 per cent on Wednesday versus a two per cent gain in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex. Even so, analysts do not recommend most PSBs. They prefer larger names such as SBI or BoB, given their relatively superior financials.

While private banks will also gain from RBI's move, majority of them don't have any serious asset quality issues. Consequently, analysts remain positive on private banks, which are also better placed to gain from any recovery in economic and credit growth.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday, with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting.

On 'Super Tuesday', the 2016 campaign's biggest day of nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved the undisputed front-runners.

Now, they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties and avoid a potentially disastrous split in their ranks that could hurt them in the November 8 election.

US networks projected Trump won seven states, with victories stretching into the deep south and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests.

Clinton's victories in seven states were as impressive but in many ways predictable, propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and former president Bill Clinton began their political careers.

Trump's rivals Ted Cruz, a US senator from Texas, and Marco Rubio, a senator from Florida, emphasised their determination to remain in the race.

Cruz, 45, won his home state of Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the brash billionaire. Rubio, favourite of the Republican establishment, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory.

Clinton's rival, Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist US senator from Vermont, also won his home state, along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, a fifth state he had hoped to win.

Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the election, to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

At a news conference in a chandeliered ballroom at his seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, who has never held public office, dismissed furious criticism aimed at him by establishment Republicans.

Faced with a party in turmoil over his ideas to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the country, Trump declared he had expanded the party by drawing in disaffected blue-collar Democrats who like his tough-on-trade rhetoric.

"I am a unifier," he said. "I would love to see the Republican Party and everybody get together and unify, and when we unify, there's nobody that's going to beat us." The rivals of both Trump and Clinton aim to knock them off their pedestals in contests ahead in Michigan, Florida and Illinois.

Trump waved off criticism from the country's top two elected Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, over his delayed disavowal of an endorsement by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.

"I've disavowed," Trump said. "I'm going to get along with Congress. Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him. And, if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price" Trump said in remarks that could further inflame party tensions.

Clinton, who still faces a well-funded Sanders despite having taken control of the Democratic race, was eager to assail Trump as a way of getting Democratic voters used to the idea of her as the nominee.

"The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," Clinton told supporters in Miami. "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work."



Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.

"We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us," said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up "hundreds" of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

For Rubio, 44, it was a day of reckoning. His losses piled up after a week in which he labeled Trump a "con artist" and exchanged schoolyard taunts with him over, for example, who wet their pants under pressure at a debate last week.

Suddenly, the contest on March 15 in Florida, his home state, loomed over him as a must-win state.

"Florida, I know you're ready," Rubio said. "The pundits say we're underdogs, I'll accept that. We've all been underdogs." Rubio's plight was such that Senator Lindsey Graham, an establishment South Carolina Republican, told CBS News that Republican voters might need to rally around Cruz, who has been one of the most disliked public figures in Washington.

"I can't believe I would say yes, but yes," Graham said when asked about the idea of supporting Cruz as a way of stopping Trump.

Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a "Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain." The networks had yet to project a winner for Republicans in Alaska.
US Attorney General Loretta Lynch tried forcefully to shoot down Apple's arguments for refusing to help unlock a dead terrorist's iPhone, as the Obama administration and the technology industry waged a public battle on two coasts. "Do we let one company decide this issue for all of us?" Lynch said Tuesday in San Francisco. "Do we want one company to say this is how investigations are going to be conducted and no other way?" Lynch's remarks with Emily Chang of Bloomberg Television at the RSA cybersecurity conference were her most expansive to date in the ...
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has surged 10% to Rs 102 on the BSE after the company announced that it has won an order worth Rs 5,600 crore from Tamil Nadu government.

The Tamil Nadu Government has handed over the Letter of Award (LOA) for setting up of the Main Plant Package for the 2X800 mega watt (Mw) Uppur Supercritical Thermal Power Project, said in a press release.

The order is for setting up 1,600 Mw coal-based thermal power project with super critical parameters, involving two units of the country's highest rating 800 MW sets in Tamil Nadu, it added.

At 10:56 AM, the stock was up 8% at Rs 100 on the BSE. The counter has seen huge trading volumes with a combined 12.13 million shares changed hands so far against average sub 10 million shares that were traded daily in past two weeks on the BSE and NSE.
The benchmark indices climbed nearly 2% on Wednesday with the Sensex posting its best two-day gain in nearly seven years as strong global cues and RBI's announcement on capital adequacy norms lifted sentiment.



Banking stocks led the rally on Wednesday after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) eased tier I capital regulations. This measure, along with two other relaxations, is expected to help shore up the capital of public sector banks.



The banking index and the PSU banking index on the NSE gained 4.9% and 10%, respectively. Lenders SBI and ICICI Bank rose the most, up 12.6% and 7.6% respectively.



International investors have been pulling out from emerging markets, including India, and moving to safe assets like the US Treasury and gold. However, Wednesday was different as they bought shares worth Rs 1,437 crore worth of Indian shares.



Domestic institutions, on the other hand, sold shares worth Rs 593 crore, according to provisional data from the exchanges. In the year to date, foreign institutional investors have sold shares worth more than $2.4 billion. The rupee rose to its highest levelin six weeks against the greenback.



"Let us not celebrate too early. We have to closely watch how China shapes up, the potential amendments in the budget for giving relief to investors and how the kind of action RBI takes in the next few days," said UR Bhat, managing director, Dalton Capital Advisors (India).



India is likely to clock a GDP growth rate of 7.8% in fiscal 2016-17 from 7.6% this year, largely driven by higher discretionary demand, a Nomura report said on Wednesday.



Global equities rose on Wednesday for a second consecutive day on easing concerns about growth in the US, Australia and China. China's stocks rallied the most since.



November led by real estate firms despite Moody's Investors Service reducing the country's credit-rating outlook to negative. Most global equities, emerging market currencies, and crude oil prices had advanced on Tuesday after the People's Bank of China's cut lenders' reserve requirements and the US reported better than expected factory data.



Back home, market breadth was strong with 1964 advances compared with 712 declines. Twenty three out of 30 Sensex components ended in the green. All sectoral indices barring FMCG closed in the green. The major gainers for the day were realty and banking, which gained 5.05% and 4.92%, respectively.



On Tuesday, Indian had posted their biggest single-day jump in 30 months, following a sharp rally in consumer and banking stocks on hopes that the RBI would soon slash key policy rates. The sharp spurt in the market triggered a wave of short covering - buying stocks that have been short sold, typically to avoid losses - which further lifted prices.



A recession in China, followed by an EM debt crisis and a geopolitical crisis, remain the biggest tail risk for investors, said experts. "The global cues will still be important. The US seems to be on a mend but the jury is still out on whether China will shape up. Things in Europe are not all that rosy too, with European banks no stronger than they were earlier," cautioned Bhat.
was trading higher by 3% at Rs 220, also its fresh record high on the BSE, after the company announced a tie-up with Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC) for setting up Kendra at its retail outlets (distribution network).

This tie up would drastically increase the customer touch points at the Kendra and ensure a boost in its core objective i.e. financial inclusion, digital inclusion, social inclusion, employment generation and skill development, Vakrangee said in a statement.

Currently, the Vakrangee Kendra shall be set up in 3575 IOC Retail Outlets located Uttar Pradesh. Citizens, in these areas shall now be able to visit nearest Vakrangee Kendra and enjoy services from all the 5 business units of Vakrangee, i.e. e-Commerce, e-Governance, Banking, Insurance, and ATM, it added.

The company last month in February announced that its Corporate Agency has tied up with Tata AIG General Insurance Company, a joint venture between Tata Group and American International Group (AIG).

The tie up will help to distribute quality general insurance products through Vakrangee distribution network, the company had said in a media release.

In past one-month, the stock outperformed the market by gaining 12% as compared to 1% decline in the S&P BSE Sensex.

A combined 906,990 shares changed hands on the counter on the BSE and NSE till 10:27 AM.
Amid the see sawing developments of dialogue between India and Pakistan, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar said on Wednesday it was obvious that New Delhi's priority would be action over talks in the aftermath of the deadly Pathankot terror attack.

Speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, a joint initiative of the Ministry of External Affairs, which kicked off in Delhi, Jaishankar indicated that action took priority over talks given the present circumstances.

"After the Pathankot attack, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch through NSAs and me and my counterpart. The picture you see is of parallel processes. In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what is the priority, dealing with terror or diplomatic dialogue then the answer is obvious," he said.

Asserting that every Indian Prime Minister has tried to maintain peace with Pakistan, he said the two nations must not remain isolated from each other.

"It takes two hands to clap. Indians would like to have same relations with Pakistan as other neighbours," Jaishankar said.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that talks with India are likely to resume after a team visits Pathankot in the upcoming days, to investigate into the deadly attack on the Indian Air Force Base.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts," he said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary John Kerry.

"A case has been registered and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the Foreign Secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," he added.

Aziz also asserted that Pakistan's decision to 'reach out' to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of Islamabad's strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring nations.

"We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues - including the Kashmir dispute - is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," he said.

Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member Special Investigation Team to follow up on the leads which India had provided.
Former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had millions of dollars stashed in Sudan and wanted most of it to be used to fund 'jihad', according to a handwritten will.

In one of the declassified documents, Bin Laden outlines that at least 29 million dollars stashed in Sudan should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue the global 'jihad', reports the Dawn.

The document part of a cache of 113 documents has been described by intelligence officials as Bin Laden's will.

The documents are mostly dated between 2009 and 2011 and comprise the second cache from the raid to have been declassified.

Osama had set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle's children and maternal aunts.

Documents seized by US special forces personnel during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan have revealed that Al Qaeda leaders were increasingly worried about spies in their group, drones patrolling the skies and secret devices tracking their movements.
The Government has declassified all the available classified files and transferred these files to Archives of India (NAI) for permanent retention.

This was told by Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary in written reply to a question by Trinamool Congress leader Derek O. Brien in the Rajya Sabha today.

All declassified files pertaining to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose received in the Archives of India (NAI), are first subjected to preliminary conservation and digitization, before being released in public domain. Both of these are time consuming exercise.

The issue of handing over documents relating to Netaji has been taken up with the governments of Austria, Federal Republic of Germany, Republic of Italy, Japan, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and United States of America.

Responses from the Governments of Russian Federation, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have been received.

Meanwhile, responses from the Governments of Austria, Republic of Italy and the United States of America are awaited.
The Congress Party on Wednesday dared the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government to initiate proceedings against former union minister P Chidambaram's son Karti, but said that it must not be done with the motive of revenge.

Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said, "We are for the first time witnessing that the ruling party and its allies are not allowing the to function. The reason is very obvious that the Prime Minister's role is under suspicion following the controversy over the Gujarat land deals or be Rohith Vemula's issue or the BJP's anti-Dalit mindset or the attempt made on Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani's part to mislead the Parliament, these all issues and the anti-people budget."

"The BJP does not want these issues to be raised in the and hence is not allowing the parliamentary proceedings to take place," he added.

Karti Chidambaram has rubbished allegations in a newspaper that he had built a huge business empire for himself, saying his business was fully compliant with all laws and regulations of the country.

He has also rejected the charges of money laundering.

"One newspaper has made allegations against me, which have been adequately refuted in the past. Myself and my business are fully compliant with all laws and regulations," the AICC member, allegations against whom led to stalling of yesterday said, in a statement.

The AIADMK, which raised this issue in the Parliament yesterday, stalled proceedings in both Houses of Parliament and demanded against Karti.

The AIADMK MPs also displayed copies of the leading English daily, which claimed in a report that raids by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Income Tax had revealed Karti's investments in real estate deals as part of a "huge business empire" across the world.

The AIADMK's move came in the backdrop of assembly polls later this year in Tamil Nadu.
Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has warned his side to be wary of South Africa leg-spinner Imran Tahir in the upcoming T20 series between the two sides ahead of World T20 in India.

Describing Tahir as an 'experienced' player, Maxwell said the former is an outstanding bowler and that his side have to perform well against him.

The 27-year-old had played against the spinner while he was with Delhi Daredevils in the last year's Indian Premier League (IPL).

"He has been very successful and he played really well in the IPL last years, said. I think that was a big thing for him and for his confidence. I think he has been riding that since. He seems to grab the momentum back for South Africa every time he comes on," Maxwell was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.

Maxwell also admitted that Australia didn't have great record in the subcontinent and added that they had mostly struggled while playing excellent spin.

Maxwell, however, believes that his side would come even stronger this time and would prove that they were worth being the number one side.

"If you look at our batting order, it's suited to combat that. We've got excellent players of spin in our team and guys that have got international experience in India. It's going to be key for us to have those guys perform well for us. It felt like the Indian series we were trying a lot of players. We didn't play our main team at any stage. It's an exciting that we can get better from that. Hopefully when we hit Durban on Friday night we can show that with our No. 1 side," he added.

The two sides will lock horns in a three-match T20 series, starting from Friday in Durban.
A Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) jawan deployed at a power plant in Maharashtra's Dabhol region, killed two of his colleagues and injured himself and his wife.

Thirty-six-year old Harish Kumar Gound, who was deployed at the Ratnagiri Gas and Power Pvt Ltd (RGPPL), allegedly opened fire on two of his colleagues on Tuesday night.

Gound, who hails from Madhya Pradesh, was apparently engaged in a verbal altercation with the victims earlier.

Gound and his wife have been admitted to the hospital in Chiplun and their condition is said to be serious.
The Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) is organizing a two-day workshop on 'Management of Animals in Emergencies' here from tomorrow.

This workshop is being organised by Institute of Disaster Management in association with Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Policy Perspectives Foundation (PPF) and the World Animal Protection.

During the inaugural session, the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Radha Mohan Singh will release the Disaster Management Plan for the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries.

The plan has been developed to protect animals before, during and after disasters.

The aim of this workshop is to sensitize the key State Government Authorities of State Animal Husbandry Departments in exploring strategies for effectively managing the animal welfare needs during emergencies and protecting the livelihood of communities reliant on them for survival.
Underlining the importance of connectivity in South Asia, India's Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday night said it is key to not only India's development but the entire region and the Asian continent.

Swaraj was speaking at the inaugural panel of the maiden Raisina Dialogoue, organised by Observer Research Foundation in association with the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi.

The three-day Dialogue, organised on the lines of the famous Shangrila Dialogue held in Singapore, will see participation of more than 100 speakers from over 35 countries. It is focusing on Asia's physical, economic, human and digital connectivity, attempting to discover opportunities and challenges for the region to manage its common spaces, as well as the global partnerships needed to develop common pathways in this century.

Elaborating the development work done by India in various neighbouring countries and efforts to improve connectivity, Foreign Minister Swaraj said SAARC is still trying to live up to the its vast potential in the region.

"India preaches what it practises," the Minister said reminding the leaders from various countries present at the function that "connectivity is very important for progress" and India would work for the development of the region and win over "vested interests".

Pointing out that the present government, which came to power in May 2014, has given a "new sense of purse to its foreign policy", the Minister the Raisina Dialogue would become an important event in the calendar of foreign policy and it would provide an international platform in India to leaders and experts of the region and the world to discuss issues and come up with solutions.

Earlier, speaking first, Ms Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, former President of Sri Lanka, said there is a need for "pragmatic action plan" by the leaderships of the countries of the region to economically integrate and develop the region.

"There is no need for a grand vision, but only a pragmatic action plan," Ms Kumaratunga said.

She also stressed the need for building trust and confidence between the countries to increase cooperation and pointed out that South Asia has immense potential to increase trade and bring in development though it is the least integrated region in the world now.

Pointing out that the conflict between India and Pakistan had hindered development of the region badly, Ms Kumaratunga called for "a new paradigm shift" in the policies of the governments, saying the new generations, having born after the Partition, have left behind conflict and are looking forward to development of the region.

She called for the "enterprise of building cooperation and economic integration" between the nations in South Asia first and then with other countries in Asia.

She said that Sri Lanka, having good relations with all countries, can act as a bridge between nations.

Describing China as a big economic power in the region, along with India, the former Sri Lankan President suggested that the countries should look at China as an opportunity rather than as a threat.

Former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said even his opinions are not much different from Ms Kumaratunga, the only difference being he is looking at it from an Afghan perspective.

He also suggested that the nations should move beyond suspicions and mistrust and cooperate to solve the problems of the region. He criticised Pakistan for not cooperating with his government despite his best efforts to convince his immediate neighbour for the need for cooperation. He also accused Pakistan of the missing link while Afghanistan, Iran and India are cooperating to improve the much needed connectivity.

"The peoples in both Afghanistan and Pakistan are quite close and are cooperating, but the relations between the two governments are not conducive for integration," Mr Karzai said, adding the lack of access between Afghanistan and India have to fixed to help develop the region.

Seeking regional solutions for security concerns, Mr Karzai said the nations should move beyond the "narrow interests" and if we do that, the region can achieve peace, stability and development.

Karzai also suggested cooperation between India and China, two biggest economies in Asia, as it could lead to win-win situation for both the countries and the region.

Both Ms Kumaratunga and Mr Karzai warned of the increasing extremism and violence in the region, which is having a devastating impact on the lives of the people. Both talked about the need to check militancy through closer cooperation between the nations. Mr Karzai also talked about the increasing threat of the ISIS or 'Daesh'.

Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Abdul Hassan Mahmood Ali pointed out that South Asia being the least connected region, the future lies in regional and sub-regional cooperation .

Stressing the need to end confrontation between neighbours, Mr Ali said Bangladesh's relation with India is at "the best level now".

Former Seychelles President James Mancham made a strong case for working for peace as the wars would never solve problems. He said it was unfortunate that the spending on defence by nations are three-four times the amount spent on human resources. "The fear is where the world is moving?" he said, adding the need for Asia to get together and work together for the development of the people.

During his opening remarks, ORF Director Sunjoy Joshi thanked the Foreign Minister, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his team for the support extended to ORF for organising this Dialogue, India's first global conclave on geo-economics and geopolitics.

He told Swaraj that she is not just inaugurating a conference but is crafting a new mode of how the Indian leadership brings together thought leaders, experts, practitioners and people to successfully engage with the region and the world.

"The next three days will see debates and discussions, throw up ideas and pathways that will hopefully shape the progress of not just India and Asia but of all who are invested in and engaged with Asia.with India," Joshi said.

He said "the Asian century in effect is really about once again integrating Asia with itself, integrating Asia within itself, and integrating Asia with the world". The theme of this inaugural edition of the Dialogue is "Connecting Asia" which tries to capture the various facets of these ambitions..

"The Raisina Dialogue aspires to be one of the arenas, where the old and the new can work together, not always necessarily in agreement, but always in harmony, many times contesting, but contesting as partners and not as adversaries. This dialogue aspires to be such an amphitheatre of ideas located in India but owned by the world," the ORF director said.
In a significant development, the Supreme Court today issued notice in the petition challenging the Constitutional validity of the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) and posted the matter before a three-judge Bench.

Justice T.S. Thakur observed that it is time to reform the profession, adding that there is need to have a system where everyone in black coat can't become a lawyer.

The apex court observed that when non-meritorious people enter the profession, then malpractices occur.

The petition, which was filed in 2013, had come up for hearing yesterday when the court had enquired about the rationale behind the exam and whether it would negate the right to practice law.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) today submitted that a decision of the Supreme Court had barred a pre-enrollment exam and hence, a post-enrollment exam was being held.

The Bench, after a small deliberation, issued notice while posting the matter before a three-judge Bench for March 11.

It also said that it might consider appointing an Amicus Curiae to assist the court.
Education, innovation, and competitiveness were the three hallmarks of United States Ambassador to India, Richard R. Verma's official visit to Jaipur, his first official visit to Rajasthan.

Ambassador Verma discussed ongoing U.S.-India cooperation in infrastructure development and smart cities, particularly U.S. partner city Ajmer, with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. The Ambassador also paid a courtesy call on Governor Kalyan Singh during his two-day visit.

The Ambassador spoke with 130 American Fulbright Scholars from across South and Central Asia, who were meeting in Jaipur and shared with him their experiences across a wide range of subject areas. Ambassador Verma spoke about the importance of educational and cultural exchanges as part of our bilateral relationship. The U.S.-India program is jointly funded by the U.S. and Indian governments, illustrating how important the program is to both countries.

Ambassador Verma also spoke with regional business leaders at the Rajasthan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI). Underlining the growth in U.S-India trade, Ambassador Verma noted, "Bilateral trade has reached USD 103 billion, and is on the way to USD 500 billion. The two countries have agreed on new deals in defense and energy; and we are working hard on increasing bilateral investment flows between our two nations."

Ambassador Verma was honored to meet Mr. D. R. Mehta, Founder and Chief Patron of the Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS), also known as the Jaipur Foot organization. Verma visited the BMVSS facility where he saw firsthand the remarkable Indian-American partnership to build low-cost innovative prosthetics that are changing people's lives.

Finally, Ambassador Verma announced that Jaipur-based Consumer Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) will be holding a North India-wide symposium on state competitiveness in Jaipur this November. Working with the Embassy, CUTS will bring together experts to investment from American states, and from throughout India, to share experiences and strategies for attracting investment, and build a more competitive business environment in North Indian states.

An Embassy press release said that it looks forward to deepening and broadening its partnership with Jaipur and Rajasthan across all sectors: more two-way trade and investment, along with greater collaboration in health, science, and clean energy.
The United States and Pakistan discussed cooperation in education, science and technology, which both sides said provides a lasting foundation for ties and serves as an engine for long-term economic growth.

The discussion in this regard took place during the second U.S.-Pakistan Education, Science, and Technology Working Group in Washington D.C. chaired by US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Richard Stengel and Pakistan's Minister of Planning, Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal.

The meeting, which took place prior to the Strategic Dialogue Ministerial, provides a platform to strengthen cooperation under the 'U.S.-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor', focused on advancing academic networks, partnerships and exchanges in higher education, science and technology.

Stengel and Iqbal signed a statement at the meeting recognizing the commitment by Pakistan's Higher Education Commission to fund scholarships for an additional 125 Pakistani PhD students in the United States through the Fulbright Program over the next five years, complementing the U.S. investment in the Fulbright Program in Pakistan, which is the largest worldwide.

Both sides discussed cooperation in education, science and technology through the "U.S.-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor", which provides a lasting foundation for ties and serves as an engine for long-term economic growth.

They reviewed the substantial achievements since the last Working Group held in Islamabad in June 2015: doubling joint funding for collaborative science and technology research grants; launching U.S.-Pakistan Centers for Advanced Studies in energy, water, and agriculture/food security, part of the 23 total U.S.-Pakistan university partnerships; and the announcement of the joint Let Girls Learn initiative to expand educational opportunity for adolescent girls.

At the Working Group, Stengel announced the establishment of a new university partnership between the University of Massachusetts and a consortium of universities in Balochistan.

Iqbal noted his country's aspiration for 10,000 Pakistanis to obtain PhDs at U.S. universities by 2025. The two sides agreed to explore initiatives to expand educational opportunities for Pakistani students in the United States at the tertiary level.

They also recognized that ongoing investments in basic and higher education, including through the Let Girls Learn Initiative, will create a well-educated workforce that will drive innovation, gender equality, and a knowledge-based economy.

The United States lauded Pakistan for doubling its higher education budget since 2013 for its efforts to expand women and girls' access to education, and for pledging to increase spending on education from two to four percent of GDP by 2018.
The strategic dialogue between the United States and Pakistan while reiterating commitment to counter terrorism, has also focussed on ways to take the strategic partnership between the two countries forward.

Pakistan's Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz held strategic dialogue with United States Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington on February 29 where they met for the sixth ministerial-level Pakistan-U.S. Strategic Dialogue.

Both the nations committed to continue promoting peace, stability, and transparency in the region and to eliminate the threats posed by violent extremism and terrorism.

The two countries also looked forward to the Law Enforcement and Counterterrorism working group meeting in which both the nations will work together to further bolster the capacity of Pakistan's judicial and law enforcement authorities to enforce the rule of law and combat terrorism, including the financing of terrorism.

Both the nations agreed to further enhance cooperation between their respective counter terrorism authorities, to enhance bilateral cooperation and information-sharing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, including through joint training, to better interdict the flow of illicit materials and narcotics.

The two sides also emphasized the importance of strengthening Pakistan's capabilities to more effectively counter the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

The United States reiterated its continuing support for the Armed Forces of Pakistan in their ongoing counterinsurgency operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and disruption of militant networks.

Both sides expressed the importance of bilateral defense cooperation as serving their mutual interest and noted their willingness to explore new avenues to refine defense collaboration.

Both sides noted the challenges of enabling the return of internally displaced persons to the FATA in the wake of operations.

Pakistan expressed its appreciation for the pledge of $250 million announced by Secretary Kerry in 2015 for the relief, recovery and rehabilitation of Internally Displaced Persons from the FATA.

Both sides underscored the need for effective action against all violent extremists that threaten regional security.

The United States appreciated role Pakistan's role in helping to degrade al-Qa'ida and its affiliates.

Pakistan reaffirmed its commitment to taking action, in line with the country's National Action Plan, to ensure that the Taliban are unable to operate from Pakistani soil.

Asserting that the emerging terrorist threat posed by ISIL/Da'esh in the region, both the countries agreed to together work closely to counter the threat and affirmed their commitment to combat the extremist ideology that fuels such groups.

Pakistan reiterated its firm resolves not to allow ISIL/Da'esh to develop a foothold in its territory, and the United States expressed its appreciation for Pakistan's efforts in this regard.

Apart from that both the nations reaffirmed the importance to prevent the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery to states as well as non-state actors.

Both nations resolved to work together to achieve the objectives of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1540, and noted that both have supported and implemented relevant UNSC Resolutions.

Both countries also highlighted the constructive discussion at the 2015 meeting of the Security, Strategic Stability and Nonproliferation (SSS&NP) working group.

The United States appreciated Pakistan's proactive engagement with the international community, including through its hosting of IAEA training activities at its Nuclear Security Center of Excellence and its active participation in the Nuclear Security Summits.

The United States looked forward to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's participation in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit. It also appreciated Pakistan's commitment to ratify the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

Pakistan affirmed that it remains committed to pursuing measures aimed at building confidence and lessening the risk of armed conflict.

Both nations recognized the shared interest in strategic stability in South Asia and looked forward to the upcoming Security, Strategic Stability, and Nonproliferation (SSS&NP) working group meeting in May 2016.

The meeting of Advisor Aziz and Secretary Kerry was built on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's successful visit to Washington in October 2015, with the two sides reiterating their commitment to further strengthening the United States' and Pakistan's strong, multifaceted partnership across a range of critical issues, as exemplified by the framework of the Strategic Dialogue.

The last ministerial-level Strategic Dialogue was held in Islamabad on January 13, 2015.
Demanding an apology from Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani over her statement in the over Hyderabad scholar Rohith Vemula, the Youth Congress staged a massive protest today at the Jantar Mantar in the capital.

Heavy security was deployed at the site of the protest as water cannons were used to disperse the demonstrators, who were chanting slogans against Irani.

The protestors were also detained by the police in droves.

The Opposition created a ruckus yesterday in the Lok Sabha over Irani's speech and also moved a privilege motion against her.

Meanwhile, the Jawaharlal Nehru University students carried out a march demanding the release of students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others, who have been arrested on charges of sedition.

The students have been agitating on campus ever since Kanhaiya was arrested in a sedition case in connection with an event against the hanging of 2001 attack convict Afzal Guru.

Later in the day, the Delhi High Court is likely to pronounce its order on Kanhaiya's bail plea.

Justice Pratibha Rani had reserved the order on Monday after over three hours of hearing.

Kanhaiya, who is currently in Tihar Jail under judicial custody, was arrested on February 12 in connection with the case.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitey on Wednesday said the investigation into the alleged Aircel-Maxis scam was at a "critical stage" but refused to divulge more details about the possible money laundering case involving Congress leader P Chidambaram's son Karti's firms.

Denying that there was any political vendetta involved in the probe, Jaitley told the Lok Sabha that the government was not influenced by the opposition's stance over the issue that stalled parliament proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

He said the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had "already filed a charge-sheet into the case and that procedures were being followed in strict compliance with the law".

Let the case details go to the court and then "all the documents will become public", he said.

Raids by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and other investigating agencies were conducted in the Aircel-Maxis case, especially in Chennai, he said.

AIADMK members raised the issue against Karti in the parliament, displaying copies of an English daily which claimed that, as per investigations by the ED and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises, he had invested in real estate across the world.
Amid speculation over the possibility of foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan after the cross-border terror attack in Pathankot, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar on Wednesday hinted that action against terror took priority over dialogue.

"In the aftermath of a terrorist attack if you ask me so what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious," Jaishankar said in response to a question at an interactive session during the Raisina Dialogue, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

Talks between the foreign secretaries scheduled for the middle of January this year got derailed after the terrorist attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on January 2 that claimed the lives of seven Indian security personnel.

The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack in which all the six terrorists were also reportedly killed.

India has since sent "actionable evidence" to the Pakistani authorities to bring the perpetrators of the attack to book.

Pakistan filed an FIR in Gujranwala last month against unknown terrorists in connection with the attack.

It also said that it would send a special investigation team (SIT) to India to probe the attack.

India and Pakistan had agreed on starting a comprehensive bilateral dialogue after a meeting between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz, the Pakistan prime minister's advisor on foreign affairs, during the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad in December last year.

Following this, Jaishankar said on Wednesday that he and his Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry were supposed to meet and discuss how the modalities of the comprehensive bilateral dialogue could be worked out.

"When the Pathankot attack happened, the governments of India and Pakistan have been in touch primarily through the NSAs (national security advisors), to some extent communications between me and my counterpart," he said.

"There was also a phone call between (Pakistani) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and our prime minister (Narendra Modi). The picture you see is of really parallel processes which are working," the Indian foreign secretary said.

Jaishankar's comments come after Aziz, who is currently on a visit to Washington, said that foreign secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad's probe team visited Pathankot to investigate the attack.

Aziz said a Pakistani team would visit India "in the next few days" to investigate the attack.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Aziz on Tuesday said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.

Since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of "important steps" to facilitate resumption of the talks, Dawn online quoted Aziz as saying.
In this article I am going to explain twelve things you should know about the extreme-right hate group called Britain First. ...
Robots are unreliable in case of fire or other emergency situations but people trust them blindly, according to a new study.

People may trust a robot too much for their own safety in case of emergency situations, but the machine has proven itself unreliable.

"People seem to believe that these robotic systems know more about the world than they really do, and that they would never make mistakes or have any kind of fault," said Alan Wagner, a senior research engineer in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

In a mock building fire, designed to determine whether or not people would trust a robot designed to help them evacuate a high-rise, researchers were surprised to find that the test subjects followed the robot's instructions, even when the machine's behaviour should not have inspired trust.

The researchers recruited a group of 42 volunteers, most of them were college students, and asked them to follow a brightly coloured robot that had the words "Emergency Guide Robot" on its side.

The robot led the study subjects to a conference room, where they were asked to complete a survey about robots and read an unrelated magazine article. The subjects were not told the true nature of the research project.

In some cases, the robot, which was controlled by a hidden researcher, led the volunteers into the wrong room and travelled around in a circle twice before entering the conference room.

For several test subjects, the robot stopped moving, and an experimenter told the subjects that the robot had broken down.

Once the subjects were in the conference room with the door closed, the hallway through which the participants had entered the building was filled with artificial smoke, which set off a smoke alarm.

When the test subjects opened the conference room door, they saw the smoke, and the robot, which was then brightly-lit with red LEDs and white "arms" that served as pointers.

The robot directed the subjects to an exit in the back of the building instead of directing them towards the doorway, marked with exit signs that had been used to enter the building.

"We expected that if the robot had proven itself untrustworthy in guiding them to the conference room, people wouldn't follow it during the simulated emergency," said Paul Robinette, a GTRI research engineer who conducted the study as part of his doctoral dissertation.

"Instead, all of the volunteers followed the robot's instructions, no matter how well it had performed previously. We absolutely didn't expect this."

The research is scheduled to be presented on March 9 at the 2016 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Earlier research has shown that people often don't leave buildings when fire alarms sound, and that they sometimes ignore nearby emergency exits in favour of more familiar building entrances.
India will aim to maintain their all-win record when they meet minnows United Arab Emirates (UAE) in their final group game of the Asia Cup at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium here on Thursday.

India top the pool table with six points after winning all their three matches so far -- against hosts Bangladesh, arch-rivals Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The men in blue have assured themselves a place in Sunday's final after the five-wicket win over the Lankans on Tuesday and even an unlikely defeat against the UAE will not hamper them.

India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni may decide to make a few changes in the line-up in order to give match practice to some of the players who have not featured in the tournament till now.

"We'll definitely make a few changes in the coming games. How many we can, that's something we will have to see. Because we still want the strength and the composition of the side to be very good," Dhoni told reporters here.

"I think most of the players will definitely get a chance in the next game. Whether all the people who are sitting outside will get a chance, we're not sure. But we will try to make as many changes as possible," he added.

The Indian team management may consider including the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Harbhajan Singh, Pawan Negi and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the line-up for the UAE game.

Among the four, Rahane is the one who has the best chance to be selected. The right-hander has been in good form in recent months and may be included in place of the off-colour Shikhar Dhawan.

The Indian think tank may also decide to rest veteran pacer Ashish Nehra in order to keep him fresh for the final. The 36-year-old Nehra has been in excellent form, picking up five wickets. If the Indian team management does decide to rest the Delhi pacer, Bhuvneshwar Kumar may be included in his place.

The spin bowling combination may also witness a change as experienced off-spinner Harbhajan Singh and left-armer Pawan Negi may replace Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja for this particular game.

Negi who was the most expensive Indian player during the recent Indian Premier League (IPL) auction, will also be valuable for his ability to produce the big hits lower down the order.

The UAE will look to their captain Amjad Javed to lead from the front. Javed has bagged 12 wickets from the UAE's six matches in this tournament (including the qualifiers) and will hope to inflict some early blows on the Indian batting.

But the rest of the UAE bowlers are expected to be cannon fodder against the likes of Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni.
Bodies of six out of eight Maoists killed in a gun battle with police on the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border have been identified on Wednesday, police said here.

Bodies of four Maoists have been handed over to their relatives after autopsy at Bhadrachalam area hospital in Khammam district of Telangana.

The Maoists, among them five women ctivists, were shot dead by police in an exchange of fire on Tuesday near Guttepadu in the Chintavadu forests in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh, about 15 km from Khammam district.

Five of those identified hail from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh while the sixth one is from Chhattisgarh.

The bodies identified are Yusufbi alias Bhagya, Sujana and Sarakka (all from Telangana), G.M. Ramesh alias Lachanna and Madakambandi (both Andhra Pradesh) and Raju (Chhattisgarh).

Meanwhile, the Hyderabad High Court on Wednesday directed the Telangana government to submit a detailed report on the killing of the Maoists.

The court gave the direction on a petition filed by Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), which alleged that police murdered the eight Maoists.

Directing the authorities to preserve the bodies and hand them to relatives after identification, the court adjourned the hearing to Thursday.

Meanwhile, police in Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday arrested three Maoists. The arrests were made in West Godavari district. A country-made weapon was seized from them.
The bull run on Indian stock markets continued for the second straight day on Wednesday, with the mood lifted by perception that the national budget has some reforms push, as also by strong showing in other Asian markets and overnight gains in US and Europe.

The opening itself was quite strong with the sensitive index (Sensex) of the BSE debuting above the 24,000-point mark at 24,044.96 points, against the previous close at 23,779.35 points. The 30-share index eventually ended the day at 24,242.98 points, up 463.63 points, or 1.95 percent.

At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the broader Nifty opened at 7,321.70 points, against the previous close at 7,222.30 points. It closed then day at 7,368.85 points, up 146.55 or 2.03 percent.

A look at the Sensex basket showed that out of its 30 shares, as many as 23 ended in the green, while in the case of Nifty 40 of them out of the 50 staged a rally. In fact, out of 19 sector-specific indices of BSE only one -- that for fast-moving consumer goods -- ended lower.

On Tuesday, the Sensex had ended 777.35 points or 3.38 percent higher, while the Nifty was up 235.25 points, or 3.37 percent.

Analysts said the sentiments were also boosted by signs of a surprise rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), given that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has decided to adhere to fiscal deficit target of 3.9 percent for this fiscal, and lowering it to 3.5 percent for the next.

In fact, some more accolades came Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's way for the budget.

"In the backdrop of the headwinds both on the global and domestic front, the government has tried to address a wider spectrum of themes in the Budget while adhering to the fiscal consolidation roadmap," said Dun and Bradstreet Information Services.

"This should provide comfort to the investors and rating agencies from the macrostability perspective. This should provide comfort to the investors and rating agencies from the macrostability perspective."

"Market had taken faith in the budget and believes that the worst is over. Investors expect a positive direction for the market this month aided by European Central Bank and Fed policy meet. A sign of recovery in global market is adding optimism among the participants," said Vinod Nair, head - fundamental research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

The banking stocks were particularly sought after the central bank said it will be accommodative towards them in meeting their capital adequacy norms. The banking index of the BSE was up 4.92 percent, and each of the 10 scrips that go into it ending with gains.

Sector-wise, S&P BSE realty index gained by 5.05 percent, finance index got augmented by 4.03 percent and basic materials index went up by 2.70 percent.

Within the Sensex, State Bank of India was the main gainer, up 11.50 percent at Rs.180, followed by ICICI Bank, up 7.36 percent at Rs.220.20, Adani Ports, up 5.96 percent at Rs.218.80 and Hero MotoCorp, up 5.28 percent at Rs.2,807.75.

Mahindra and Mahindra led the losers, down 5.31 percent at Rs.1,199.05, followed by Coal India, down 1.97 percent at Rs.311.45 and Sun Pharma, down 1.75 percent at Rs.852.30.

In Asian markets, Nikkei closed 4.11 percent up and Hong Kong's Hang Sang closed 3.07 percent up and China's Shanghai Composite index closed 4.24 percent higher.

In Europe, London's FTSE 100 was down by 0.12 percent, while Germany's DAX Index was higher by 0.04 percent and France's CAC 40 up by 0.28 percent.
A CISF trooper deployed at the Ratnagiri power plant who gunned down two colleagues and injured himself and his pregnant wife here, has claimed he lost his mental balance as he was "professionally harassed".

Speaking to the media from hospital in Chiplun, Harishkumar Goud, 36, alleged that he and some others were being perpetually put on night duty by their seniors and subjected to harassment at work, resulting in the extreme step out of frustration late on Tuesday night.

He further claimed that he did not fire at his pregnant wife and she was accidentally injured by a bullet when she got in the way. He said his complaints to seniors went unheeded.

The incident happened at the Ratnagiri Gas & Power Pvt. Ltd. when Goud got into a heated argument and shot two of his colleagues around dinner time, an official of Guhagar Police told IANS.

The dead are assistant sub-inspector Balu G. Shinde, 58, of Malangaon in Sangli district of Maharashtra and P. Raneesh, 29 of Kerala.

After the firing, Goud allegedly threatened an on-duty Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) official Balwan Bajesingh to keep his mouth shut.

Later, when his colleagues brought Goud's 30-year-old wife, Priyanka, in an advanced stages of pregnancy, to calm him, he reportedly got into a fierce argument with her for almost an hour.

Suddenly, Goud fired and injured his wife and also shot himself. Later, his colleagues rushed the couple to a hospital in Chiplun early Wednesday.

Goud and his wife are now out of danger and recuperating in a private hospital.

Ratnagiri police have lodged cases including that of murder, attempt to murder and arms act against Goud, who hails from Madhya Pradesh.

An official of RGPPL -- formerly known as Enron Power Project -- said that Goud was under psychiatric treatment since sometime but denied knowledge of his allegations of 'professional harassment' at the workplace.

However, the official could not explain how Goud was deployed with arms when he was under psychiatric treatment and said it was the CISF's responsibility.

Senior CISF officials rushed to the site to enquire into the tragedy.

In May 2003, a CISF jawan posted at Mumbai Airport, Rajnarayan Namdeo had shot dead his senior who refused to grant him leave. He was later dismissed from service and charged with murder.
Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday scored two of the first three Super Tuesday contests, garnering an early advantage over Bernie Sanders, who won his home state of Vermont, according to multiple media projections.

On the Republican side, New York billionaire Donald Trump was projected by all major US cable news to win handily in Georgia.
While a formal tie-up is yet to materialise, the CPI-M and the Congress on Wednesday launched a united attack on West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress over the multi-crore-rupee Saradha scam.

Under the banner of Chit Fund Sufferers Unity Forum, CPI-M leader Sujan Chakraborty and Congress leader Abdul Mannan alleged a conspiracy between the Trinamool and the BJP to thwart the CBI probe in the Saradha scam and called for building up a mass movement to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Leaders from both the parties also insisted the talks on the proposed tie-up were on track while Congress and Marxist activists and supporters on the day painted joint symbols of the parties and took rallies in several parts of the state.

"The fight to get justice is challenging, especially when the BJP government at the Centre and the Trinamool government have been conspiring to thwart the probe," said Mannan.

Mannan, who played an instrumental role in the Supreme Court ordering the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the Saradha scam, said he will be moving the court again seeking a status report of the probe.

Probing the scam, the CBI had interrogated and arrested several leaders of the Trinamool, including former minister Madan Mitra.

Calling for indemnifying all the investors ruined by the scam, Chakraborty demanded punishment for the "big fishes", including those "sitting in the Nabanna" (the state secretariat).

Chakraborty also sought to play down Left Front partner Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) state secretary Kshiti Goswami's recent comments that Congress was a "communal party".

"I don't think RSP considers Congress as a communal party. So far as we are concerned, even during the Emergency, when our leaders were in jail, we did not call the Congress communal," said Chakraboty.

Mannan said the process for the alliance is on and in adue course of time everything will be clear'.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday defended former union home minister P. Chidambaram, saying the party sticks by its stand on Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in an alleged fake encounter in 2004.

"The former home minister and party leader P. Chidambaram has already clarified the decision taken by the then UPA government," said Gandhi.

Asked that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was targeting the Congress leadership over the matter, she replied her party was being always attacked.

Former home secretary G.K. Pillai in a recent TV interview alleged that the then home minister P. Chidambaram bypassed him and rewrote the affidavit submitted to the Gujarat High Court on the alleged gunfight of Ishrat Jahan, a 19-year-old Mumbra student, and three others on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2004.

TV reports had quoted Pillai as saying that the affidavit in Ishrat Jahan case was changed at political level.

In August 2009, the home ministry under Chidambaram submitted an affidavit in the Gujarat High Court that referred to Ishrat Jahan's alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba links.

In the second affidavit filed in September 2009, however, references to Ishrat Jahan's alleged terror links were absent.

In a recent video-conference deposition before a Special court in Mumbai, Lashkar-e-Taiba operative David Coleman Headley from the US jail said he had heard of Ishrat Jahan being a suicide bomber of LeT.
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Wednesday questioned the omission of the mention of the budgetary allocation for the defence ministry in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's general budget speech.

"For the first time, there was no mention of the defence budget. Is it so that we do not need defence budget in the National Democratic Alliance's rule? It is a serious issue," the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha said during a debate in the upper house on the president's speech.

He also questioned the government's decision to cancel the ongoing negotiations with France on buying 126 Rafale fighter jets, replacing it with 36 jets in flyaway condition.

Azad said this would hurt the flagship 'Make in India' programme of the Narendra Modi government.

"France was the lowest bidder in the (Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft) deal. The biggest thing is the technology transfer component. In the deal, 18 (Rafale) jets were to be bought off the shelf and 108 were to be made by HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited). This is called 'Make in India'," Azad said.

"Making toys will not boost 'Make in India'. Making Rafale jets in India would have made the country proud," he said.

The Congress leader said that ever since the NDA government had come to power at the Centre in May 2014, ceasefire violations on the international border and terror attacks have intensified.

Questioning the government's policy on Pakistan, he said: "When we (The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance) were in power, our dialogues with Pakistan were bad; and now when they (NDA) are doing it, it's supposed to be very good."

"Pakistan is neither your friend nor mine. Is it so that those beheaded then were beheaded and those dying now are pumpkins and potatoes? Why are you going to attend weddings there?" he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stopped over in Pakistan on his way back from Afghanistan, and met his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif amid a wedding in his family.
An object which could be debris from the missing plane MH370 was found off the coast of Mozambique, media reported.

The debris from a Boeing 777 jet was being examined by investigators following the discovery, NBC News reported.

The jet vanished almost exactly two years ago with 239 people on board and is the only missing Boeing 777 in the world.

The Malaysia Airlines plane is believed to have crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean but only small fragments of the jet have ever been found.
Well, I am starting a Wall of Shame for people who show that they have no clue about plants in general. I will be totally fair and I'm not going to expect ...

12 years ago
As Indian society grapples with the issue of intolerance and violence, genetic experts are opening up the hoary discussion on whether genetic makeup can predispose people towards anti-social behaviour.

We are back to the debate on nature versus nurture.

The answer may not be easy to find, but some experts say that the monoamine oxidase A or MAOA gene -- involved in the regulation of emotions and behaviour -- can predispose certain humans towards anti-social behaviour, if they have had adverse childhood experiences.

Many studies in the past have linked genes with offensive bevaviour, but the results have often been inconsistent. A recent study by researchers in Montreal, Canada, though, found that genetics may indeed play a key role in violent behaviour.

The team from Universite de Montreal found that certain polymorphism (change of form) of MAOA gene may disrupt the regulation of emotions and behavioural inhibition in the brain.

"The study found that men with a less frequent variant of the MAOA gene (approximately 30 percent of them) were at a higher risk of exhibiting anti-social behaviour in adolescence and in early adulthood compared to those without this variant, but who also have been exposed to violence as children," informs Dr Manish Jain, senior consultant (psychiatrist) from BLK Super Speciality Hospital in the capital.

"It implies that even when exposed to the same environment some may develop anti-social traits based on their genetics while others may not," Dr Jain told IANS.

According to Dr Sameer Malhotra, director (mental health and behavioural sciences) at Max Super Specialty Hospital, personality profile of an individual is influenced by both genes and environment he lives in.

So are we any nearer to a clear-cut answer?

"Through genes one inherits vulnerability factor. Environmental factors in conjunction with the vulnerability can influence behaviour. Anti-social behaviour is linked to conduct disorder in childhood. At times, association with family history of alcoholism or drug abuse and aggression are also observed," Dr Malhotra said.

"High levels of neurotransmitter dopamine that is involved in the regulation of emotions and problems in the frontal brain cortex are also reported in such people," he adds.

Other experts feel that people who are victims themselves or have witnessed violence in childhood are more likely to have anti-social tendencies as teenagers and adults.

"The impact on personality would depend on overall environment and positive experiences and the resolution of past experiences, but statically, this statement would be correct that there would be more chances of aggressive tendencies in the absence of support and intervention," explains Dr Samir Parikh, director, department of mental health and behavioral sciences, Fortis Healthcare.

"There are many social psychological factors which have a significant impact and to say what percentage would be genes would still need more research though," he adds.

Recently, a criminologist Dr JC Barnes from University of Texas at Dallas found that genes can be a strong predictor of whether someone strays into a life of crime.

The research focussed on whether genes are likely to cause a person to become a life-course persistent offender, which is characterised by anti-social behaviour during childhood that may later progress to violent or serious criminal acts.

"The overarching conclusions were that genetic influences in life-course persistent offending were larger than environmental influences," says Dr Barnes.

There is no specific gene for criminal behaviour as crime is a learned behaviour. "But there are likely to be hundreds, if not thousands, of genes that will incrementally increase your likelihood of being involved in a crime even if it only ratchets that probability by one percent," he points out. "It still is a genetic effect. And it's still important."

Although research has not concluded genetic basis for delinquent tendencies, the influence of genetics and environment combined cannot be ignored.

"The child's initial behaviours and learning are moulded through parenting and family interaction. The temperament with which the child is born along with parenting behaviour styles influence one another," explains Dr Shobhana Mittal, consultant psychiatrist at Cosmos Institute of Mental Health abd Behavioural Sciences in New Delhi.

Children from broken homes, single parents or from families where there is substance abuse, physical, verbal, emotional or sexual abuse tend to have poor family bonding. Disrupted family atmospheres affect the overall emotional health of the child as well as contribute to the child's personality and coping abilities.

"With immature coping skills, children at times do not understand how to manage anger, frustration resulting in anger outbursts or aggressive behaviour. This further makes the child vulnerable to external influence from their peers," elaborates Dr Sunil Mittal, director at Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences (CIMBS), in New Delhi.

"A recent genetic analysis of almost 900 offenders in Finland revealed two genes associated with violent repeat offenders were the MAOA gene and a variant of cadherin 13 (CDH13) gene. Those with these genes were 13 times more likely to have a history of repeated violent behaviour," Dr Jain told IANS.

Although the role of genes cannot be overlooked any more, the jury may still be out on a definite answer.

But as the experts point out, if a lethal gene is lurking there somewhere, it may make a person a little more prone to act out the bad experiences in life.

(Nishant Arora can be contacted at nishant.a@ians.in)
The annual International Property Show to be held in April in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will see a strong Indian participation, the event organisers, Strategic Marketing & Exhibitions, have said.

A total of 15 Indian companies, double the figure compared to last year, will be showcasing their projects and targeting the large Indian expatriate community of five million at the International Property Show to be held from April 11 to 13, Khaleej Times reported on Tuesday.

According to the organisers, Indians top foreign investments in Dubai's property market.

Between 2006 and 2015, Indian investments ballooned to over 120 billion Dirhams ($32.6 billion) through more than 57,000 transactions surpassing the largest investor groups - British and Pakistani investors - both in value and number of transactions.

"The close relations between the UAE and Indian governments have created an ideal investment climate that boosts flow of funds in both directions, especially in real estate," Dawood Al Shezawi, the president of Strategic Marketing & Exhibitions, said.

He said the Indian investors have a strong inclination to buy property in the UAE.

Meanwhile, Anurag Bhushan, Consul General of India in Dubai, said, "A total of about 26,000 Indian companies are operating in the UAE, and more than 20 of India's leading banks and financial institutions have established offices in the Dubai International Financial Center."
A policeman and two civilians were killed when militants targeted the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city on Wednesday, triggering a fierce gun battle that left all five attackers also dead, officials said. All Indian diplomats were safe.

Nineteen other civilians were injured in the mayhem and admitted to a hospital, Afghan news reports said. Officials said all diplomats and staff at the Indian consulate were safe.

Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, is often targeted by Taliban militants.

The consulate was attacked earlier in 2013 too by the Taliban. But no one claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack which involved a team of militants armed with weapons and explosives.

The dramatic attack began around noon when a suicide bomber came up to the front gate of the consulate and suddenly detonated his explosives-laden vest, stunning the guards and civilians there.

The aim was to pave the way for the other militants to storm the building, police officer Fazel Ahmad Shirzad told TOLO News.

The explosion, which was heard in a wide area, left two civilians and a policeman dead -- and triggered a massive fight as security forces rushed to the area in their armoured vehicles.

Panic gripped the area, also home to the Pakistani and Iranian missions. Civilians fled from the spot.

Journalists reported explosions and gunfire. A shopkeeper near the consulate told journalists that he saw several injured people lying on the ground after a massive blast shattered his windows.

"Four other attackers were killed after half an hour of clashes with the security forces," the police officer said.

In January, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the first major attack by the group in an Afghan city.

The attack comes ahead of direct peace talks this week between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

In January, a gun battle took place near the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad in which at least seven Afghan security personnel were killed.

The Afghan government has been battling the Taliban for over a decade. The Taliban have launched several high-profile attacks in recent months.

In September, the Taliban briefly overran the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, in one of their biggest victories since they were ousted from power in 2001.
Brazilian police arrested Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice-president for Latin America, for not complying with previous judicial decisions.

In a press release, the federal police stated that Dzodan had been arrested in Sao Paulo on Tuesday.

This followed an arrest warrant issued by a judge from the state of Sergipe, after Facebook allegedly did not release messages, sent by WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, which concerned a drug trafficking investigation.

"The arrest was made for the federal police of Sergipe, considering the repeated ignoring of judicial orders...concerning organised crime and drug trafficking," Xinhua quoted the press release as saying.

Facebook has maintained that WhatsApp is operated independently and that it has no staff in Brazil and does not store messages, making it impossible to comply with the court order.

In December, another Brazilian judge ordered the WhatsApp service to be blocked nationwide for 48 hours after the company refused to provide information as part of an investigation into a user of the app.

At the time, the judicial decision provoked a wave of criticisms in Brazil and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, stated that he was "stupefied" and called it "a sad day for Brazil".
An FIR was registered against corporator and the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kundanika Sharma and three others for hate speeches in Agra in Uttar Pradesh, police sources said.

The presence of Ram Shankar Katheria, minister of the state in Human Resource Development Ministry, and Fatehpur Sikri member of the parliament Choudhary Babu Lal has been mentioned in the FIR for alleged hate speeches in Agra on Tuesday evening at the condolence meeting for the VHP leader Arun Mahaur who was shot dead on February 25.

During investigations the two Agra MPs and MLAs could be questioned as their names were included in the FIR, the police sources said.

However, Katheria has denied the charges and questioned the authenticity of media reports.

While the local unit of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has criticised filing of the FIR and has resolved to take the "battle to the people", the Hindu Jagran Manch demanded arrest of those responsible for cow slaughter under National Security Act.

The Yuva Kori Samaj has announced "asthi kalash yatra" in a specially designed vehicle driven by seven horses, from Chitra Talkies area in the city to Bodla crossing, on the coming Tuesday.

The local leaders of the BJP incensed by the FIR have announced that the party workers would stage protests (dharnas) at the police stations in the district.

District president Ashok Rana said a strategy for mass mobilisation against the government action was being drawn up.

The FIR was registered on a complaint by Jaipur House colony police chowki incharge Anil Kumar alleging that those named had made provocative hate speeches to disturb communal harmony, the police sources said.

Meanwhile, Senior Superintendent of Police Preetendra Singh said that video clip was being monitored and all those who had given objectionable remarks will be booked under the hate speeches law.

Members of the NSUI in a memorandum to the SSP have demanded action against Katheria for allegedly giving "seditious speech" targeting sections of the society.

Congress state unit secretary Shabbir Abbas has also demanded action against the minister.

On the other hand, Purushottam Khandelwal, president of the BJP Braj Prant, has said that the local administration was clearly under pressure from the state government to file a case and compelling people to take to the streets.

Meanwhile, the VHP has clarified that Sadhvi Prachi was not an office bearer or spokesperson of the parishad, after she suddenly appeared at the condolence meeting and spit venom in her speech.

"The signals are clear. Passions are being charged and the tussle is being prolonged even after the arrest of five accused in the case. A candle light march was organised at the Shaheed Smarak on Tuesday evening for the deceased VHP leader Arun Mahaur. The locals luckily have so far shown little interest in the ongoing war of words between the BJP leaders and the opposition parties," said activist Shravan Kumar Singh.
Footage from Kumar Gaurav-starrer 1981 film "Love Story" has been used in the upcoming movie "1982 - A Love Marriage". The latter's lead actor Amit Kumar says he is extremely grateful to the yesteryear actor who allowed the filmmakers to use the footage free of cost.

"'Love Story' had created a sensation in 1981. It had also set a trend in the society of love marriage. Our film's character Prem watches the film in 1981, and after that, his mind changes and he doesn't want to do an arranged marriage," Amit told IANS.

Talking about how the team convinced Kumar Gaurav to allow use of footage, Amit said: "We met Kumar Gaurav and his secretary and told them about it. After going through our script, without any cost and without posing any obstacle, they said that if we need 'Love Story' footage so much, and if it is that important, we could use it in our film."

Amit is "extremely thankful to Kumar Gaurav" for trusting them.

"1982 - A Love Marriage" is a breezy love story with comic elements created due to the conflict between a love marriage and arranged marriage. Directed by Prashant M. Gorey, the film is produced by ShivKumar Sharma and is releasing on March 11.
The condition of ailing All India Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh, who has been on ventilator support, worsened on Wednesday, doctors here said.

Ghosh, 94, the senior-most Left Front leader in West Bengal, was on February 2 rushed to a hospital following lower respiratory tract infection.

"Ghosh remains critically ill and the prognosis is poor. He continues to be on full ventilator support. His urine output is grossly inadequate," hospital superintendent Partho Bhattacharya said.

Ghosh's condition improved briefly in February, making the doctors temporarily withdraw the ventilator support.

For decades, Ghosh has been the West Bengal unit secretary of the party founded by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.
Pakistan Army chief General Raheel Sharif made a brief stopover here on Wednesday and attended the Change of Command Ceremony for the Resolute Support Mission and met top Afghan leadership, the military's wing reported.

Gen. Sharif discussed regional security and border management in meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Joseph Dunford, Genersal Lloyd J. Austin, Commander of the US Central Command (Centcom), and Resolute Support Mission Commander General Nicholson, Inter-Services Public Relations director general Asim Bajwa tweeted.

The meetings focused on checking cross-border movement of terrorists and coordination regarding the Pakistan Army's Shawal offensive.

Sharif reiterated Pakistan's support to the Afghan leadership, who acknowledged the Pakistan Army's efforts and achievements in the war against terrorism and its role in regional stability and peace.

Sharif was on his way back to Pakistan after a day-long visit to Tajikistan, where he met Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and discussed challenges of fighting terrorism and the Afghan peace process.
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted six-month interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, but imposed restrictions on him. He was arrested for sedition.

The court held that Kanhaiya's presence at the spot on the day of incident when the alleged anti-national event was organised, "is not disputed".

Justice Pratibha Rani, however, said the thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of the JNU, who organised and participated in that programme, "cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression".

"I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering, which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic," the court said.

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters carrying photographs of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt," the court said.

It said the faculty of the JNU also "has to play its role in guiding them to the right path".

The court ordered the bail after asking the JNUSU president to furnish a personal bond of Rs.10,000 with one surety.

The court said "he (Kanhaiya) can be required to furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national".

"Apart from that, as president of JNU Students Union, he will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus," said the court.

Kanhaiya shall not leave the country without the permission of the court, it added.

In the 23-page order, Justice Rani said as a union president, Kanhaiya was "expected to be responsible and accountable for any anti-national event organised in the campus."

"Freedom of speech guaranteed to the citizens of this country under the Constitution of India has enough room for every citizen to follow his own ideology or political affiliation within the framework of our Constitution," said the court.

The court said "it has to be kept in mind by all concerned that they are enjoying this freedom only because our borders are guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces".

"Our forces are protecting our frontiers in the most difficult terrain in the world i.e. Siachen Glacier or Rann of Kutch," Justice Rani said.

"Suffice it to note that such persons enjoy the freedom to raise such slogans in the comfort of university campus but without realising that they are in this safe environment because our forces are there at the battle field situated at the highest altitude of the world where even the oxygen is so scarce that those who are shouting anti-national slogans holding posters of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt close to their chest honouring their martyrdom, may not be even able to withstand those conditions for an hour even," the court said.

The kind of slogans raised may have "demoralising effect" on the family of those martyrs who returned home in coffin draped in tricolor, Justice Rani stated in her order.

Saying that the kind of slogans raised by some of the students in JNU campus cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression, the court termed it as "infection" from which such students are suffering and which needs to be cured before it becomes an epidemic.

"The petitioner belongs to an intellectual class pursuing Ph.d. ...he may have any political affiliation or ideology. He has every right to pursue that but it can be only within the framework of our Constitution," the court said.

Saying that "India is a living example of unity in diversity", the court said the "freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution".

Justice Rani began the order with lyrics of a patriotic song from film 'Upkaar' which, she said: "Rang hara Hari Singh Nalve se, Rang laal hai Lal Bahadur se, Rang bana basanti Bhagat Singh, Rang aman ka veer Jawahar se. Mere Desh ki Dharti sona ugle Ugle heere-moti mere desh ki dharti."

Security was beefed up inside and outside the court room for the case. The entry to the courtroom of Justice Rani was restricted to lawyers involved in the case and a few media persons.

The bail order triggered wild celebrations in JNU campus where hundreds of students, dominantly from Left groups, celebrated, raising slogans to hail Kanhaiya Kumar, who was arrested on February 12.
Himachal Pradesh Health and Family Welfare Minister Kaul Singh on Wednesday informed the assembly that the government is keen to take over ESIC Hospital and Medical College in the state but it has run into a financial row.

"The state is ready to take over the college but the issue is stuck on the 10 percent interest of Rs.285 crore for purchasing college equipment," the minister said.

He said the government has agreed to pay Rs.285 crore in installments but the interest part should be waived off.

"I will request the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members to take up the issue in this regard with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government," he said.

Spread over an area of more than 31 acres on National Highway 21, the Employees' State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) near Mandi town had already spent Rs.765 crore on the building and its infrastructure.

It has not been made functional so far.

Replying to a question by BJP members Gulab Singh and Jai Ram Thakur, the minister said the medical college was announced by the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2007 but the successive BJP government had withdrawn the notification.

He said the college building was inaugurated on March 5, 2014, and a Medical Council of India team had also inspected the building.

However, later when the BJP-led National Democratic Government came into power and decided not to go ahead with the ESIC colleges.

He said the state government was willing to start the classes from August this year, if the issue is sorted out immediately.

Leader of opposition and two-time chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said the Congress government had played politics on the college and had got it inaugurated just before the parliamentary elections to take the credit before the polls.
blog of the State Geologist of Arizona
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, has launched its first Uridashi Masala Bond, mobilising Rs.300 million ($4.3 million) directly from Japanese household investors to promote private sector development in India.

The three-year bond builds on IFC's pioneering Masala bond programme, which has raised the equivalent of $1.7 billion from international investors for investment in India, IFC said in announcement from Tokyo on Tuesday.

Masala bonds are rupee-denominated instruments sold only to offshore investors, while Uridashi bonds are sold to Japanese household investors.

Proceeds from IFC's Uridashi Masala bonds will be used to support private sector investment in India.

"Thriving economies depend on efficient capital markets," said Jingdong Hua, IFC vice president and treasurer.

"IFC's latest bond opens up a new source of local-currency finance for businesses in India while enabling Japanese household investors to participate in the development of one of the world's fastest-growing economies."

IFC said it has played a prominent role in India's capital-markets development, rolling out a $3 billion rupee-denominated Masala bond programme over the past two years.

IFC has issued bonds in a sufficient range of maturities to establish a sound benchmark for rupee bond prices, it said.

The resulting investor demand for rupee bonds prompted the Indian central bank to consider permitting local companies to issue rupee-denominated bonds in offshore markets.

J.P. Morgan is the sole arranger of the bonds. Daisen Hinomaru Securities Co. Ltd is the distributor of the bonds.

IFC said India is its largest client country. IFC's committed portfolio in India totalled more than $5 billion as of June 30, 2015. In fiscal year 2015, IFC committed $1.4 billion in new investments.

In addition to strengthening local capital markets in India, IFC is focused on boosting financing in infrastructure and logistics, promoting financial inclusion, and expanding access to high-quality and affordable healthcare, it said.
Describing India as "a politico-economic opportunity" for the Asia Pacific, India's Ambassador to the US Arun Singh has said it could play an important role for growth, development and stability of the region.

India's participation in the 21-nation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum could also help consolidate India's quest to speed up growth and to integrate closer with its neighbouring Asia-Pacific economies, he said here on Tuesday.

"India represents a politico-economic opportunity for APEC," Singh said during a discussion at the Indian embassy on "India and the APEC Opportunity" over a new report brought out by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI).

The envoy noted that India was a G20 country and member of the East Asia Summit and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), "whose economic and political weight is bound to increase in the coming years".

"We believe that India could play an important role within APEC for growth, development and stability of the region," he said.

"In turn, membership of APEC would help India in integrating further with economies of the region, resulting in a win-win situation for all," Singh said.

"It can also help India become familiar and more involved with the sweeping changes taking place in the region towards reducing transaction costs, improving connectivity and supply chain linkages, strengthening human capital development, and building sustainable and inclusive communities," he said.

"Today Asia is witnessing a consolidation of competing mega regional trade agreements," Singh said, citing the US led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the RCEP, and APEC promoted Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).

"While India is part of RCEP, it is not involved in TPP or FTAAP. Yet, India has already become a 'strategic partner' of several APEC member countries and all, but four, APEC member countries already have or are pursuing trade agreements with India bilaterally or multilaterally, including China."

"India joining the APEC forum can bring India's economic integration with the region to a level-matching its strategic partnership with the APEC members and groups like ASEAN," he said.

In its new report, "India's Future in Asia: The APEC Opportunity", the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) highlights the significant benefits that would accrue to India, APEC members, and the region as a result of India joining the forum.

It also outlines the obstacles that stand in the way of Indian membership and the potential steps that India and APEC could take to address these impediments.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Ties between India and the US are blossoming as the two countries, after 12 years of talks, are closer than ever to signing an agreement to share military logistics, said a Pakistani daily.

An editorial "US-India relations" in the Daily Times on Wednesday said that two weeks ago, India was up in arms about the proposed sale of up to eight Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets, worth $700 million, from US to Pakistan.

The Barack Obama administration characterised the sale as contributing to "US foreign policy objectives and national security goals by helping to improve the security of a strategic partner in South Asia" as the fighter jets would enhance "Pakistan's ability to conduct counter-insurgency and counterterrorism operations" and thus the sale was approved.

"Despite the sale being approved, the fact that loud voices were raised so publicly against this sale by a number of US lawmakers was almost unprecedented ever since 2001's US-led war on terror began -- to be sure, such concerns have been raised by US lawmakers before, but almost always in private," said the daily.

It noted that the airing of these contrarian opinions was thus indicative of a shift in criticality of Pakistan for the US.

"Initially appeasing Pakistan was necessary for it provided the US logistical support to invade and subsequently remain in and fight in Afghanistan, but since the withdrawal of most troops the landscape has changed and a new chapter is beginning in this historically transactional relationship."

It went on to say that India's angry reaction to the sale compounded matters further, "given the context, coming as it did at a time when the US and India are starting a new chapter in their own historically fluctuating relationship".

"And now we see the results of this blossoming relationship, as India and US are closer than ever to signing an agreement to share military logistics, after 12 years of talks."

The finalisation of this Logistics Support Agreement (LSA) would allow the two militaries to use each other's land, air and naval bases for resupplies, repair and rest.

The editorial observed that already the US has offset Russia, India's historically strongest ally, as the country's biggest supplier of arms.

"Suffice it to say, the sale of eight paltry fighter jets pales in comparison to deals of this magnitude. But the world would hear nary a peep from Pakistan, in sharp contrast to India's protestations. As US lifts its focus from Afghanistan and Iraq, the lure of India as an ally has become stronger than ever, especially with the rise of China."

"...however the negative implications of shoring up India's military in a volatile region must be recognised by the US or another crisis will brew up in the near future."

The daily warned that India and Pakistan have a tenuous balance of power and "India's military strength would usher in a new destructive era of arms race that must be avoided at all costs".
At least two civilians and a policeman were killed when five militants attacked the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city on Wednesday.

Nineteen civilians were also injured and admitted to hospital for treatment, TOLO News reported.

The attack took place in Jalalabad, the capital of the Nangarhar province after a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest near the front gate of the Indian Consulate to open the way for four other attackers, local police chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad said.

"Four other attackers were killed after half an hour of clashes with the security forces," he said.

No group, including the Taliban, has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

--Indo-Asina News Service

ahm/dg
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday hit back at Rahul Gandhi over his dig that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not consult even his ministers, saying that Congress vice president's views "lacked maturity".

In an article 'How much does he know - when will he know' posted on the Bharatiya Janata Party's website, Jaitley said Modi was a "hands-on" prime minister. Jaitley's reaction came within hours of Gandhi's attack on Modi in the Lok Sabha.

"The (Congress-led) UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the prime minister, he should be reduced to being a figurehead," Jaitley said.

"Rahul Gandhi's views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a 'crowd around a family'," the minister added.

Rahul Gandhi, in his speech in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks to the president's address, took digs at Modi as also Jaitley.

Putting wit and sarcasm to good use, Gandhi attacked Modi on a host of issues ranging from his policies on Pakistan and black money to the Jawaharlal Nehru University row and the Nagaland peace accord.

Rahul Gandhi claimed that the prime minister hardly consults his senior ministers.

"If Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then (External Affairs Minister) Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Rajnath Singh was unaware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unaware of the budget proposals."

"As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know - when will he know," Jaitley said.

The BJP leader said the prime minister should be the natural leader of the party and the government.

"In the NDA it is so. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) was quite different. The prime minister is to lead by example. The present prime minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally," the finance minister said.

"Each one of us, whether the external affairs or home ministers or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each one of the departments. We do not bypass the prime minister who is always available for consultation and guidance."

"After hearing Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the prime minister who leads the government and a prime minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere," he said.

"Given a choice between a 'hands-on' prime minister or a 'nominal' head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former," Jaitley said.
Japan, Germany and Britain governments hailed early on Thursday the adoption of a new UN resolution on North Korea over its recent nuclear bomb test and rocket launch.

Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed his support to the resolution immediately after the adoption and he strongly urged North Korea not to conduct further nuclear tests and rocket launches, Xinhua reported.

The prime minister also called for close international coordination so as to resolve the nuke and rocket issues, as well as the abduction issue lingering between Japan and North Korea.

Meanwhile, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida also welcomed the UN resolution, saying the adoption expressed the international community's resolute attitude toward the issues.

German government also welcomes the resolution.

"The new sanctions are a necessary and logical response as well as an important signal to those in power in Pyongyang following the unacceptable provocations, the conduction of a nuclear test and the launch of a rocket using ballistic technology," a spokesman of the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

With a unanimous decision, noted the spokesman, the international community demonstrates that it does not accept "the blatant violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and the threat to regional security and world peace."

Britain also hailed the UN resolution on Pyongyang

"The fact that this Resolution was passed unanimously demonstrates that the international community is prepared to take tough measures in response to such violations," Philip Hammond ,British Foreign Secretary ,said in a statement.

Pyongyang "must put a stop to these provocations and take tangible steps to re-engage constructively with the international community, " he said, adding "If it is willing to change its approach and take concrete steps towards re-engagement, it will find that the international community will respond positively."

The UN Security Council on Wednesday adopted a new sanctions resolution against the DPRK with stricter measures in response to the country's fourth nuclear test in January and a rocket launch last month.
Students of Jawaharlal Nehru University erupted in joy on Wednesday at Parliament Street, soon after Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was granted six-month interim bail by the Delhi High Court.

"JNUSU welcomes the interim bail granted to Kanhaiya. We hope he will be back on the campus by tomorrow (Thursday) and will address the students," JNUSU vice president Shehla Rashid said.

Over a 1,000 students marched from the Mandi House to Parliament Street, demanding the release of Kanhaiya Kumar earlier in the day.

Various students group such as All India Students Union, All India Students Federation, Students Federation of India, Krantikari Yuva Sangathan, National Students Union of India, Democratic Students Federation and Campus Front of India participated in the march.

Later in the evening, JNUSU general secretary Rama Naga, one of the six accused in the case, addressed students in front of the administration block on the campus.

Welcoming the high court's verdict on Kanhaiya, Naga said, "This verdict is a slap on the face of the Bharatiya Janata Party. A conspiracy was hatched so that Kanhaiya could languish in jail. This verdict is a fight against the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh."

Naga also alleged that his family members were threatened by members of the BJP and RSS.

"The RSS and BJP activists went to my father and threatened him after the incident. They asked my father if I was studying in the JNU or indulging in anti-national activities," he said.

Slogans against JNUSU joint secretary Saurabh Sharma were also raised by students. Sharma, an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarathi Parishad member in the JNU, earlier issued a statement that the verdict is not a victory for the left.

"The information that we have received from the media shows that the fact that Kanhaiya has been issued an interim bail against a bond of Rs.10,000 does not mean that he is proved innocent.

"The case is still going on and he has also been instructed by the judiciary to cooperate with the police in the investigation. We have full faith in our judiciary and our constitution. This is not a victory for the left but it is a normal legal procedure," his statement read.

Kanhaiya is expected to return to the JNU campus on Thursday.
Actor-producer John Abraham, who is currently shooting in Abu Dhabi for "Dishoom" will return to Mumbai especially to promote "Rocky Handsome".

A source close to the actor told IANS: "John is extremely committed to this film. He has been shooting for 'Dishoom' in Abu Dhabi and he will be landing on March 4 especially for the trailer launch of 'Rocky Handsome'. Being the actor and producer of this film, John is giving special attention to this film."

Directed by Nishikant Kamat, "Rocky Handsome" features John with Shruti Hassan in the lead. John also took training for martial arts in Thailand for the action-packed film.
Soon after Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar was granted interim bail by the Delhi High Court on Wednesday, a sense of relief, happiness and joy swept his house in his village in Bihar's Begusarai district.

"My father's face was smeared with colours by some villagers to express their happiness after we got news of Kanhaiya was granted bail," Kanhaiya's younger brother Prince Kumar said.

Prince said that it was after a gap of over a fortnight that their mother - Meena Devi - smiled and expressed her happiness. "Some villagers put colour on her head and also smeared on her face."

He said even his father put colour on some neighbours and close relatives. "It is like as if we have celebrated Holi ahead of Holi in a simple manner. After all, we are simple people."

Prince said the mood at their village house suddenly turned celebratory.

"Hum kafi khush hain, yeh khusi ka samay hain hamere liye. Nayay ki jeet hui hai, hum sab ki jeet hai (we are delighted. This is a time of happiness for us. It's a victory of justice and victory of all of us)," Kanhaiya's mother Meena Devi said over telephone from Bihat village.

Meena Devi, who works at an Anganwadi in the village, said she was restless since Tuesday but hopeful that her son would get justice.

Sitting in their modest home in Bihar's Begusarai, Kumar's family members were glued all the day to news channels on television before they heard about Kanhaiya's bail.

Kanhaiya's father Jaishankar Singh, who is paralysed, said this was a victory of the people who stood for democratic rights and justice for poor.

"I am very happy today. From the beginning, I am saying that my son is not anti-national. He is a nationalist like other youths of his age group. The court proved it with its order. This is the victory of truth," Singh said.

"These are all false cases and ultimately he will be proved innocent. It is a political conspiracy," said Singh.

Kanhaiya's younger brother Prince said hours before TV news channel broke this news, hundreds of people gathered at their house.

"My house is full of people now. Our family members, close relatives, neighbours, villagers and people from nearby villages have gathered to give us strength and hope for justice."

He said the family, including his parents, repeatedly said that Kanhaiya was not an anti-national and that he was arrested on wrong charge of sedition.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted six-month interim bail to Kanhaiya - who was arrested on February 12 on charge of raising anti-national slogans, a charge he denied, at the JNU campus on February 9 to mark the third anniversary of the execution of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

Justice Pratibha Rani ordered the bail after asking the JNUSU president to furnish a surety of Rs.10,000.

Kanhaiya's parents have been kept under tight security ever since he was assaulted in a New Delhi court on February 15 and 17.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden outlined how at least $29 million stashed in Sudan should be apportioned after his death, requesting that most of it be used to continue global "jihad", documents, signed by the jihadi, revealed.

From "About $29 million" in the Sudan remaining of bin Laden's personal wealth, presumably inheritance from his wealthy father's Saudi construction firm, "the bulk of it was to go into the pot ... for jihad", ABC US cited a senior intelligence official as explaining.

The official spent years studying the cache of Al-Qaeda documents which were seized by the US Special Forces personnel during the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

Bin Laden lived in the Sudan and funded well-publicised road projects in the country till 1996, when he relocated to Jalalabad in Afghanistan, now under Taliban rule.

Bin Laden himself explained in the letters that he had "received twelve million dollars from my brother Abu Bakir Muhammad Bin (Laden) on behalf of Bin Laden Company for Investment in Sudan. I hope, for my brothers, sisters to obey my will and spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on Jihad, for the sake of Allah".

The documents also revealed that the Al-Qaeda leaders were increasingly worried about spies in their group, drones patrolling the skies and secret devices tracking their movements.
I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army:

T

I

P

S

1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army
Modern penguins' brains look different than their ancestors' brains, but the changes were not caused by their loss of flight, says a new study.

Leaving the sky for the ground gave ancient penguins their unique locomotion style, but losing the ability to fly did not cause major changes in their brain structure, the findings showed.

"What this seems to indicate is that becoming larger, losing flight and becoming a wing-propelled diver does not necessarily change the (brain) anatomy quickly," said lead researcher James Proffitt from The University of Texas at Austin, US.

The findings were published in the Journal of Anatomy.

The researchers conducted the study in a penguin skull kept at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The skull is from a penguin that lived in New Zealand over 60 million years ago during the Paleocene epoch.

According to Proffitt, it likely lived much like penguins today. But while today's penguins have been diving instead of flying for tens of millions of years, the change was relatively new for the ancient penguin.

"It is the oldest (penguin) following pretty closely after the loss of flight and the evolution of flightless wing-propelled diving that we know of," Proffitt said.

The shape of bird skulls is influenced by the structure of the brain. To learn about early penguin brain anatomy, Proffitt used X-ray CT-scanning to digitally capture fine features of the skull's anatomy, and then used computer modeling software to create a digital mold of the brain, called an endocast.

The researchers thought that loss of flight would impact brain structure -- making the brains of ancient penguins and modern penguins similar in certain regions.

However, after analysing the endocast and comparing it to modern penguin brain anatomy, no such similarity was found, Proffitt said.
Maharashtra is keen to promote its tourism spots like the Ajanta and Ellora caves, Mahabaleshwar and beaches along the Konkan belt to woo Russian tourists, a senior Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) official has said.

Maharashtra's potential as a tourism destination has not been fully exploited vis-a-vis 2.05 lakh Russian tourists who visit India every year.

"A large number of tourists and businessmen from Russia visited Mumbai, but the tourism potential of our state for the Russian tourists has not been fully explored. For example, Ajanta and Ellora, hill resort of Mahabaleshwar and the beaches of Maharashtra," MTDC joint managing director Satish Soni was quoted as saying in a press statement here on Wednesday.

"We are ready to take up promotional tours of Russia, to begin exchange of students, to participate in exchange of information with various Russian regions," Soni said.

As per the Goa-based Russian Information Centre, which issued the statement, Soni was speaking at the 'Indo-Russian Tourism Exchange' event held this week in Mumbai.

Neighbouring Goa attracts a bulk of the Russian tourists who arrive in India. In 2014 alone, 1,89,486 Russians holidayed in Goa, one of the country's top tourist destinations known for its beaches and nightlife.
A man shot dead his wife on Wednesday morning after she stopped him from drinking at their house in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, police said.

Sandeep, hailing from Chhapra in Bihar, had a heated exchange with his wife Rupa (23) when she saw him getting ready to drink liquor along with his brother-in-law Vikas in the morning in Agraula locality in Tronica City.

After a brief scuffle, Sandeep allegedly whipped out a countrymade pistol and shot Rupa in the abdomen. As she collapsed, Sandeep and Vikas rushed her to a local hospital where doctors declared her brought dead. The couple was married about eight months ago.

Police later arrested Sandeep and detained Vikas for questioning.

"A case has been registered against Sandeep and efforts are on to recover the pistol," said Shailesh Yadav, incharge of Tronica police station.
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) on Wednesday celebrated 58th anniversary of its revival with party lader Akbaruddin Owaisi hoisting the party flag at Darussalam, the party headquarters here.

With MIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi busy in Delhi attending the Parliament session, his younger brother and party leader in the Telangana assembly did the honours in the presence of party legislators, leaders and workers.

Speaking on the occasion, Akbaruddin recalled how his grandfather Maulvi Abdul Wahed Owaisi, a lawyer, strove hard to protect the rights of minorities enshrined in the Indian Constitution by reviving the party on this day in 1958 with a new party constitution.

Undeterred by the prevailing atmosphere of fear and misery among the Muslims in the aftermath of the Hyderabad Police Action that took place earlier, Abdul Wahed Owaisi took up the onerous task of organising the community, he noted.

Abdul Wahed Owaisi was also imprisoned for 11 months by the then Andhra Pradesh government.

Under the leadership of Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, MIM grew stronger. The party, which strongly believes in the nation's secular democracy, strove to protect and enhance its quality by effective representation from local to national level.

Recalling numerous achievements under the leadership of Asaduddin Owaisi, Akbaruddin said Muslims should get equal rights on par with the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

Referring to the work done by MIM in the field of professional education, healthcare and cooperative banking in Hyderabad, he said the party would replicate the same in other states.

He said the party would also fight for the rights of people of Kashmir, which is an integral part of India.

The MIM legislator said attempts were made to divide the country on religious lines when Babri Masjid was demolished by Sangh goons. "I want to ask why sedition charges were not made against them. Today they filed sedition charges against Kanhaiya and others," said Akbaruddin.

"Majlis is not against any religion but we are against Hindutva and we will continue our fight against communal forces in a democratic and constitutional way," he added.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday tore into Narendra Modi's Pakistan approach and said the prime minister let that country "out of the little cage" it had been put in after the dastardly Mumbai terror attacks.

Gandhi lashed out at the prime minister for not listening to anyone, including his External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

He said the United Progress Alliance government led by the Congress had scored a diplomatic victory over Pakistan and "destroyed their reputation" after the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

"Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. They trained and sent killers into Mumbai. And what does the PM do? He decides to have to go to Pakistan and have a cup of tea with (Pakistan Prime Minister) Nawaz Sharif, without any vision," Gandhi said in a fiery speech in the Lok Sabha.

He said Modi "did not bother to ask anyone" before making a sudden trip to Lahore December 25 last.

"He didn't ask Sushma ji even. He just went there as if only his opinion matters," the Congress leader said amid frequent thumping of desks by his party colleagues.

"He destroyed six years of our hard work. He gifted them (Pakistan) a status and put them out of the cage we had put them in. He disrespected the national flag, the oath, those who died in Mumbai."

The Congress leader took a jibe at the prime minister for allegedly refusing to consult others on issues pertaining to the country.

"The PM has to listen to others. Listen to Rajnath Singh ji, Sushma Swaraj ji, Advani ji?Listen to your MPs. We don't hate you. Listen to your own people, listen to the voice of next generation," Gandhi said, addressing Modi who was not in the house.
The National Green Tribunal (NGT) is expected to deliver on Thursday its verdict on the plea filed against spiritual guru Ravi Shankar's World Culture Festival.

Sources in NGT, privy to the development, told IANS on Wednesday that it is the only case lined up for hearing before the special bench of the tribunal on Thursday.

The Art of Living, headed by spiritual guru Ravi Shankar, is organising world cultural festival in the national capital between March 11 and 13 that is expected to be attended by at least 35 lakh people from 155 countries.

One of the petitioners told IANS that Sanjay Parikh, counsel for the petitioners, told NGT that Delhi Development Authority (DDA) should also be fined in the case as the permission granted by the central government's agency to Art of Living, the organising body of the event, is illegal.

"All the three committees formed on the issue in their reports have insisted that environment laws have been violated by the event organisers. Even the DDA in its order passed on December 15, 2015 has violated the norms. So the quantum of punishment for them should be the same as that of organisers of Art of Living," co-petitioner and environmental activist Ritwick Dutta told IANS on Wednesday.

Parikh is representing the activists before the NGT bench while Art of Living is being represented by counsel Rajeev Bansal.

Meanwhile, Art of Living explained to the tribunal on Wednesday that they are not doing any permanent construction on the Yamuna flood-plain which may pose a threat to flora or fauna.
The National Humnan Rights Commission on Wednesday issued a notice to the Central Bank of India for not recommending monetary relief of Rs.1 lakh to a beneficiary of education loan, who was wrongfully tagged as a defaulter because of wrong data entry.

According to the commission, one of the bank's branches in the Nilgiris district of Tamil Nadu displayed the student as well as her father's photographs captioning them wrongly as 'missing' and 'defaulters'.

"Due to erroneous data entry in the system, the victim's loan account was wrongly classified as 'Non-Performing Asset' (NPA)," said the commission.

"It was also found that the publication of her as well as her father's photographs was against the advice issued by the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, to all the banks that names and photographs of the students, who are unable to repay education loan or where there is a delay in the repayment thereof, should not be published," added the commission.

A reply has been sought within four weeks.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar arrived in Kathmandu on Wednesday afternoon to take part in the 13th general convention of the Nepali Congress.

The grand old party of Nepal will hold its third general assembly from Thursday, which will also choose its new leadership.

Leaders from various other political parties from other countries, including India, China, Bangladesh, will attend the convention of Nepal's oldest democratic party.

Nitish Kumar will participate in the general convention on Thursday. He is also scheduled to address the NC's programme.

Nitish Kumar was welcomed by leaders of the NC's foreign department and Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae upon his arrival at the Tribhuvan International Airport here.

Nitish Kumar was scheduled to meet Nepal Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli on Wednesday as well as President Bidhya Devi Bhandari during his stay in Kathmandu.

Sources said the chief minister will also meet Madhesi leaders in a five-star hotel at Dwarika.
The US State Department on Tuesday said that there has been no significant violation of a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria in the last 24 hours.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been appraised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," Xinhua quoted State Department spokesman John Kirby as saying.

"We have seen a notable reduction in violence in Syria, and certainly there has been a reduction, there is no doubt about it," Kirby said.

"It is a very fluid environment and we are just going to keep monitoring as closely as we can," Kirby added.

The US and Russia agreed on a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria that has begun on February 27.

The cessation of hostilities was largely envisaged in Munich on February 12 during a meeting of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG), which is co-chaired by the US and Russia.

The group comprises the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries including China.

Although violence in Syria has been reduced, Kirby said that the US will remain concerned about "continued reports of violations" of the ceasefire.
In an unusually candid admission, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's adviser for foreign affairs, has said that Islamabad has considerable influence over the Taliban because its leaders live in the country.

"We have some influence over them because their leadership is in Pakistan and they get some medical facilities. Their families are here," Aziz said.

"We can use those levers to pressurise them to say, 'Come to the table'. But we can't negotiate on behalf of the Afghan government because we cannot offer them what the Afghan government can offer them," an online gandhara.rferl on Wednesday quoted Aziz as saying.

Aziz made the comments at Washington's Council on Foreign Relations think tank on March 1. He added that Islamabad pressurised Afghan Taliban leaders to participate in the first-ever direct talks with the Afghan government on July 7, 2015.

"We have to use these levers and (have) restricted their movements, restricted their access to hospitals and other facilities, and threatened them that 'If you don't come forward and talk, we will at least expel you'," he said of the tough message Islamabad sent to Taliban leaders, most of whom are believed to be operating out of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Balochistan Province.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US, and China last week agreed on a road map to end the Afghan war through negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban.

Taliban representatives are expected to join Afghan officials in the first round of peace talks in Pakistan during the next few weeks.

Aziz, however, took pains to convince Washington's audience that Islamabad has abandoned its support for the Islamist militant groups.

"After our government came into power in 2013, there has been a significant change in our policy. We are now moving against all terrorists without discrimination," he said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenpress state news agency introduces on the air of Lratvakan.am all that you will read, hear and see on todays news.

A group of Armenians who were forcefully converted into Islam but today on their way to their real roots have arrived in Armenia. Some of them have come to Armenia to be baptized. Today, on March 2, they will meet with media representatives and tell about the film Pure State of the Soul made in Turkey which is about their aspiration to return to their roots.

Draft Electoral code will be publicized on Thursday. After discussion the Government will submit it to the National Assembly. Parallel to that the political sector reacts to this process. Anush Sedrakyan, the deputy chairman of the Free Democrats Party and MP Lyudmila Sargsyan will present their remarks.

First eco-tourism festival is conducted in Armenia. What is the aim of the festival and what events are planned within the framework of the festival? President of Jermuk Development Center NGO Vazgen Galstyan and vice president of Young Biologists Association NGO Sargis Aghayan will introduce details.

According to Government decision, March 2 is declared the Day of Diplomats of the Republic of Armenia. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Armen Navasardyan will speak about the role and importance of diplomats.

Representatives of taxi service voice about problems of the sphere. Vahagn Sahakyan, head of the Branch Union of Taxi Services Employers in Armenia and owner of Bravo plus taxi park Levon Avetisyan will touch upon changes in APPA (car insurance) system and licensing of taxi services.

Week of Italian films will be conducted in Yerevan from March 7-11. On this occasion the Embassy staff of Italy will meet with media representatives and will detail on the event. The film exhibition is conducted by the support of First Outsourcing Company.

March 2 is the Mid-Lent. Fr. Petros Malyan of St. Sargis Church and coordinator of thematic projects of information department of Ararat Patriarchal Diocese Hasmik Mirzoyan will speak about the importance of Mid-Lent, festive events and traditional dishes.

March 3 is the international day of writers. Publicist, translator and writer Felix Bakhchinyan, poet Arevshat Avagyan, writer Seyranuhi Geghamyan will refer to the issues of concern of contemporary Armenian writers and literature.

More on these and other topics is available on armenpress.am. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Pakistan has committed to take effective action against all terrorist groups including Lashkar-e-Taeba and its affiliates, held responsible for Mumbai terror attacks, and not let its territory be used to destabilise other countries.

Islamabad's commitment to target all terrorists without discrimination was carried in a Joint Statement issued Tuesday after ministerial-level US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue here headed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Pakistan's Advisor to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.

The US and Pakistan also "agreed on the need for effective action against all violent extremists, specifically underscoring that no country's territory should be used to destabilize other countries."

"Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to countering including by targeting all terrorists without discrimination," the statement said.

Aziz, the statement said, affirmed Pakistan's resolve to take effective action against UN-designated terrorist individuals and entities, including Al-Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e-Taeba and its affiliates.

The US and Pakistan also committed to continue promoting peace, stability, and transparency in the region and to eliminate the threats posed by violent extremism and .

The US and Pakistan will also "work together to further bolster the capacity of Pakistan's judicial and law enforcement authorities to enforce the rule of law and combat terrorism, including the financing of ."

The two sides agreed to further enhance cooperation between their respective counter terrorism authorities and emphasized the importance of strengthening Pakistan's capabilities to more effectively counter the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Kerry and Aziz also commended the progress being made on the TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) gas pipeline project.

Noting with appreciation the groundbreaking ceremony of the TAPI project at Mary, Turkmenistan in December 2015, the statement said such regional projects would greatly facilitate regional integration and cooperation.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Officials of the US and Pakistani are still deliberating on the contents of a joint statement that was supposed to be issued after the sixth meeting of their strategic dialogue.

Neither side was willing to talk about the differences that have reportedly delayed the statement, but in their opening remarks on Monday, leaders of the US and Pakistani delegations highlighted some pressing issues, Dawn online reported on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State John Kerry emphasised the need for Pakistan to reduce its nuclear arsenal, urging it to "process that reality (of reduction) and put that front and centre in its policy".

On the other hand, Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz asked the US to show a "greater understanding of Pakistan's security concerns and its desire to contribute actively as a mainstream nuclear power".

The two statements clearly underline major differences between their positions on the nuclear issue.

Pakistan insists that its nuclear programme is designed only to deal with a possible threat from India and that it will not accept any unilateral reduction in nuclear weapons.

Secretary Kerry, however, did not mention India while calling for a drastic reduction in Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Aziz not only urged the US to understand Pakistan's threat perceptions but also conveyed its desire to be treated as a mainstream nuclear power, which is so far unacceptable to Washington.

Kerry, while praising Pakistan's commitment to act against all terror groups, also named groups such as the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba that the US would like Pakistan to target.

Aziz regretted the "tendency to blame Pakistan in a simplistic fashion" for everything that goes wrong in Afghanistan. He also rejected the claim that Islamabad was "pursuing a duplicitous policy".

So far, it was not clear which issue was delaying the joint statement but the delay was obvious as on previous occasions, it was issued right after the meeting.
The army on Wednesday recovered the body of a porter who died after slipping into a 200-foot deep crevasse in Jammu and Kashmir's Siachen Glacier.

Three crevasses opened up in the northern glacier at the Siachen on February 25, and these were bridged on February 26 and 27. The porter, Thukjay Gyasket, was part of the crevasse bridging team.

"After a massive rescue effort, the army today (Wednesday) recovered the body of a porter who had fallen into a 200-foot deep crevasse in Siachen's northern glacier," Colonel S.D. Goswami, spokesman of the army's Udhampur-headquartered Northern Command told IANS in Jammu.

Gyasket was returning after completing the task on a scooter with his teammate when the vehicle slipped on ice while crossing a bridge on an old crevasse. He fell into the crevasse at an altitude of 19,000 feet around 2.30 p.m. on February 27. The crevasse was six feet long and two to four feet wide.

The army pressed five officers, 40 soldiers and 13 porters for five days on the search and rescue mission.

"The efforts were extensive and round the clock, using 20 types of rescue equipment, including oxygen cylinders, special ropes, harness, search lights, generators and mechanical ice cutters," an army statement said.

The rescue operations were hampered as blue ice had to be cut through to widen the crevasse. The body was finally recovered at 12.15 p.m. on Wednesday.

"The mortal remains of the porter have been sent in an army helicopter to the field hospital at Hunder for wreath-laying and other ceremonies," the statement said.

The tragedy comes days after 10 soldiers were buried under nearly 30 feet of ice and snow when an avalanche hit the Indian Army's Sonam post at an altitude of around 20,000 feet on the Siachen Glacier on February 3.
Congress vice president on Wednesday launched a scathing attack on the Narendra Modi government, saying it launched a "'Fair and Lovely Yojana' to convert black money into white money".

Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Gandhi said: "Nobody who has black money will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme. All those who have black money can make it white under this scheme."

Gandhi was participating on the discussion on the motion of thanks to the President on his address to the joint sitting of parliament's two houses, marking the beginning of the budget session.

He hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi: "Modi ji had promised that he will put people with black money behind bars, now they have come up with way to save those people."

"I was shocked to see Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launching such scheme."

He said the prime minister failed to fulfil his poll promise of bringing the black money from foreign countries.

Gandhi also raked up the issue of suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula and said the prime minister neither called up his mother nor did he speak on the issue.

Gandhi slammed the prime minister for his silence over the violence done with students and media persons at a Delhi court.

"Why were you silent, Modi ji, when journalists, teachers and students were beaten," he said.

On the ongoing Jawaharlal Nehru University row, Gandhi said: "I had heard (JNUSU president) Kanhaiya's whole speech, not a word in his speech was anti-national."

He said the government could not "crush the JNU" or the "poor people of the country".
A special song from Allu Arjun-starrer Telugu actioner "Sarrainodu" will be shot in Bolivia later this week, making it the first Telugu language film to be shot in this exotic country in South America.

"This song will be shot in Bolivia from Sunday. It's a romantic number featuring Arjun and Rakul Preet Singh," a source from the film's unit told IANS.

To be choreographed by Ganesh Acharya, the song will be wrapped up in five days.

"The makers were on the lookout for some exotic locations when they learnt from an agency about Bolivia and its picturesque landscapes. Director Boyapati Srinu fell in love with the place instantly," the source said.

Also starring Aadi Pinisetty and Catherine Tresa, the film is slated for a worldwide release on April 22.
South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn on Wednesday warned officials of possible cyber attacks from North Korea, instructing them to block such attacks in advance.

Hwang visited a centre in Seoul for countermeasures to internet infringement, saying that a close cooperation system should be built between the military, the government and the civilian sector to blockade the North Korea's possible attacks in cyberspace in advance, Xinhua news agency reported.

The prime minister said that top North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had ordered officials to muster up capability for anti-South Korea terrorist attacks, which raised possibility for the North Korea's cyber provocations.

South Korea's spy agency reportedly made mention of such an order without revealing where the agency got the information from.

Hwang said North Korea had staged massive cyber attacks against South Korea after conducting nuclear tests, instructing officials to detect such attacks at a right time and recover attacked networks successfully.

He also urged people to update security vaccines on their computers and smartphones and to refrain from opening suspicious emails or text messages in order to minimise possible cyber attacks from Pyongyang.

His comments came amid rising concerns about Pyongyang's terror attacks following its fourth nuclear test on January 6 when the it tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb.

On February 7, Pyongyang launched a long-range rocket using banned missile technology.
South Korea on Wednesday hailed the adoption of a new UN Security Council resolution on North Korea, calling it the toughest and most effective in UN history.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a government statement that it was a resolution including tougher-than-ever sanctions against Pyongyang, expressing a perfect welcome and support toward it, Xinhua reported.

Calling the North Korea's nuclear test and rocket launch as "intolerable", the statement said the new UN resolution was an expression of the international community's firm will to change the DPRK's "wrong calculations" by making Pyongyang pay a harsh price for its reckless provocations that came in defiance of previous UN resolutions and the international society.

The UN Security Council unanimously approved the new sanctions against North Korea, which conducted its fourth nuclear test on January 6 and went ahead with a long-range rocket launch on February 7.

South Korea vowed to make all necessary efforts, including cooperation with all UN member states, to make the resolution enforced without any setbacks, saying the country will strengthen international cooperation further to encourage Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear programme "completely, verifiably and irreversibly."

Seoul urged Pyongyang to come to a road to denuclearisation as early as possible by accepting calls from the international society as seen in the fresh resolution, warning that Pyongyang would face more severe consequences if it conducts more extreme provocations.

Seoul said new sanctions against Pyongyang would eliminate loopholes in previous resolutions to focus on cutting off resources to finance North Korea's nuclear programmes.
Two days after Alok Kumar Verma's appointment as the Delhi Police chief, Special Commissioner of Police Taj Hassan on Wednesday took additional charge as the chief spokesperson -- a first in Delhi Police.

Hassan, a 1987 batch IPS officer, was already handling a key assignment in the national capital as a Special Commissioner (Crime). He will now handle the additional charge with the assistance of the present spokesperson, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Rajan Bhagat.

Bhagat has been serving as a spokesperson of Delhi Police -- an additional charge -- since 2006.

Hassan, who formally took over the new charge on Tuesday in pursuance of an order by Police Commissioner Verma, clarified that Bhagat will assist him and he has not been replaced.

This is the first major change in the force after Verma took charge as chief of the over 80,000 strong Delhi Police force.

Hassan, who has earlier served as the chief of the traffic department of Delhi Police and joint commissioner of security unit among other important positions, clarified that the post was created to share clear and timely information with the media.

In his media interaction as a chief spokesperson, Hassan said on Wednesday that both he and Bhagat will share information with the media equally.

Asked if other senior officers of Delhi Police will not disseminate information to the media, Hassan said: "All the DCPs and Joint CPs will also be available to respond to media queries."

"If other senior officers would not be able to inform media about any query over any issue due to any reason, I and Rajan Bhagat would always be available to share information," Hassan said.
Sri Lanka aims to implement a Free Trade Agreement with China in order to gain an access to the market of 1.3 billion people, the country's state investment agency said here on Wednesday.

Both countries recognised the benefits that can be leveraged through the positive relationship between trade and investment, the Board of Investments (BoI) said in a statement, Xinhua news agency reported.

The BoI said that the Sri Lankan government also informed China that it was accelerating the implementation of ongoing Chinese project in the island nation and aimed to attract more Chinese tourists to visit Sri Lanka.

"Both sides recognised that China's Going Abroad strategy and Sri Lanka's very favourable location on the Maritime Silk Road provided a strong basis for strengthening Sino-Lanka economic relations," the BoI said.

It added that Colombo also paid its gratitude for Beijing's support during the country's 30-year civil conflict as well as assistance for infrastructure development.

China has been Sri Lanka's biggest contributor of Foreign Direct Investments. Nearly, 70 percent of the infrastructure projects in the country have been funded by China and built by Chinese companies.

Sri Lanka already has preferential trade agreements with India and Pakistan.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with her Bangladeshi counterpart Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali here on Wednesday.

"A valued neighbour, an important friend. EAM meets with Bangladeshi FM Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted.

The meeting assumes significance because of the Bangladesh government's clampdown on terrorist elements following the killing of a head priest of a Hindu temple in the country last month, the responsibility for which was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terror outfit

On Tuesday, Ali addressed the Raisina Dialogue here, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

He called for integration of the South Asian nations saying that the newly formed Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) sub-regional coordinative architecture would prove to be a game changer in the region.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. The 1st round matches of the chess festival "Aeroflot Open 2016" were held in Moscow. As "Armenpress" reports, grandmasters Robert Hovhannisyan, Tigran L. Petrosyan and international master Hayk Martirosyan won the first matches of the primary A tournament.

86 chess players participate in the A tournament, 67 of whom are grandmasters.

94 chess players participate in the B tournament. Manvel Petrosyan, Levon Babujyan, Tigran Kotanjyan, who represent Armenia in the B tournament, won the first round.

Vahe Baghdasaryan, Tigran Harutyunyan, Davit Gevorgyan, Hovik Hayrapetyan, Davit Mirzoyan and Norayr Torosyan were defeated.

Among players representing Armenia in the C tournament only Artur Gharagyozyan had a victory.

Samvel Khachatryans match resulted in a draw. Artur Davtyan and Arpine Grigoryan were defeated.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali here on Wednesday during which the two leaders discussed a number of bilateral issues.

"A valued neighbour, an important friend. EAM meets with Bangladeshi FM Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted.

According to a report from Dhaka, a statement issued by the Bangladesh foreign ministry said the two ministers discussed various issues of Bangladesh-India bilateral relations, including water resources, trade and commerce, security and border management.

It was also decided that the next meeting of the Joint Consultative Commission (JCC), co-chaired by the two ministers, will be held in Dhaka in July this year.

Wednesday's meeting assumes significance because of the Bangladesh government's clampdown on terrorist elements following the killing of a head priest of a Hindu temple in the country last month, the responsibility for which was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) terror outfit.

On Tuesday, Ali addressed the Raisina Dialogue here, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

He called for integration of the South Asian nations, saying that the newly formed Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) sub-regional coordinative architecture would prove to be a game changer in the region.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga here on Wednesday.

"Another old friend, from Sri Lanka. EAM @SushmaSwaraj meets former President Chandrika Kumaratunga," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted after Sushma Swaraj earlier on the day met with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai.

On Tuesday, Kumaratunga addressed the Raisina Dialogue, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

In her address, she said that while cooperation and economic integration proceeded very fast in the rest of the world, economic integration in South Asia was very slow.

Lamenting that the India-Pakistan conflict prevented regional integration in South Asia, she, however, said that things were likely to change now with the rise of the post-Partition generation.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai here on Wednesday.

"An old friend pays a call. Former President of Afghanistan @KarzaiH meets EAM @SushmaSwaraj," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted.

On Tuesday, Karzai addressed the Raisina Dialogue, a global conclave on geopolitics and geo-economics organised by the external affairs ministry and the Observer Research Foundation.

In his address, he said that Afghanistan wanted to be a bridge between south Asia, central Asia, India and China.

In an obvious reference to Pakistan, he said that state entities should not be encouraged to harbour terrorist elements.
The office of the Special Envoy for Syria on Tuesday said that Staffan de Mistura plans to resume intra-Syrian talks on March 9.

"In order to allow adequate time to address logistical and practical matters, the Special Envoy will now resume the talks on March 9, 2016," Xinhua quoted a statement as saying.

The diplomat had initially hoped to resume talks on March 7 after UN-led talks seeking to broker a political solution between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government and opposition forces came to a premature standstill on February 3 after parties failed to see eye to eye on a number of issues.
The India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad's probe team visits Pathankot town to investigate the January 2 airbase attack, Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz has said.

Aziz, who is on a visit here, said a Pakistani team will visit India "in the next few days" to investigate the terror attack at Pathankot airbase that left seven security personnel dead.

All six terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, were also killed in the attack which derailed the India-Pakistan "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" that started following Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's meeting in Paris.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, Aziz on Tuesday said it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.

Since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of "important steps" to facilitate resumption of the talks, Dawn online quoted Aziz as saying.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Narendra Modi immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. The two national security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts," he said.

"A case has been registered and the special investigation team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," Aziz said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue he co-chaired with Kerry.

Aziz said the government's decision to reach out to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of a strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring countries.

"We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues -- including the Kashmir dispute -- is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," said the adviser.

He added that Pakistan also had "proposed a mechanism to address our respective concerns on terrorism".

Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member probe team to follow up on the leads India had provided.

On Saturday, a court in Punjab province of Pakistan granted remand of six suspects, arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack, in police custody for further investigation.

Aziz said the Indian participation in the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad last December and the announcement to start the "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" were positive developments that augured well for peace and stability in South Asia.

"Prime Minister Modi's visit to Islamabad was welcomed by most in Pakistan. Here, I would like to express our gratitude to you and President Barack Obama for your consistent support to the revival of Pakistan-India dialogue," Aziz said in his remarks.

He said the Pakistani government was committed to acting against all terrorist groups without any distinction.
Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Wednesday expressed her disappointment over certain remarks made by agitating Congress members questioning her impartiality.

"This is not good, whatever you have done today. I am sorry to say but I am allowing you to speak with a heavy heart as you have troubled me a lot. Some members raised slogans against me," Mahajan said.

She made these remarks when Congress members trooped near the speaker's podium, asking her to move the party's privilege motion notice against Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

During the sloganeering, some Congress members accused her of "partisan" conduct.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu also objected to the remarks.

"You want to dictate; you want to question the speaker also; let us respect the speaker," Naidu said.
Donald Trump 'trumpled' through and Hillary Clinton cruised to commanding wins in seven states each in Super Tuesday's nomination contests across 12 states, but their rivals vowed to stay on in the US presidential race.

Handily winning seven states, from the liberal northeast to conservative south, the brash billionaire demonstrated broad appeal for his anti-establishment movement among the Republicans, while Democrat Clinton showed her strength with minorities in the South.

But the "most consequential night of voting so far in the presidential campaign demonstrated remarkably divergent fortunes of the two major parties vying for the White House: Democrats are falling in line. Republicans are falling apart," as the New York Times put it.

"This has been an amazing night," Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He vowed to be a "unifier" and to go after Clinton with a singular focus once he wins the Republican nomination.

"I'm a unifier," Trump said, seeming to pivot his message for the presidential election on November 8. "I know people are going to find that hard to believe but I'm a unifier."

But Trump's Republican rival vowed to fight on after Texas Senator Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, the biggest single prize of the night, and added Oklahoma and Alaska, while Rubio finally landed his first win in the Minnesota Republican caucuses.

Pointing to his three victories combined with his win in the Iowa caucuses, as proof that only he can actually beat Trump, Cruz suggested that Rubio and others "prayerfully" consider exiting the race to unite the party.

But Rubio called it a "fight for the heart and soul of the Republican Party," and vowed to "go through all 50 states before we stop fighting to save the Republican Party from someone like that (Trump)".

"The complicated delegate math meant that Trump's various competitors combined could yet prevent him from reaching the threshold needed to win the nomination," said Time magazine.

"But the path forward for the anti-Trump wing of the GOP looks increasingly tricky - and ugly," it said.

After her southern sweep in the Democratic race, Clinton declared at her victory rally in Florida: "What a Super Tuesday."

And setting her sight on the November elections, she took aim at Trump by asserting that America was already great, despite his campaign mantra, and vowing to make the country "whole again".

Clinton's self-styled Democratic Socialist rival Bernie Sanders, backed by an army of small donors and grass-roots appeal, also vowed to stay in the race after victories in his own state, Vermont, along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

"This campaign is not just about electing a president," Sanders said at a rally Tuesday night in Vermont. "It is about transforming America."

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)
Turkey has been put on high alert following a warning by the intelligence agency of possible terror attacks by the Islamic State militants, Turkish media reported on Wednesday.

"Turkish intelligent units have revealed that two IS suicide bombers, illegally crossing the border into the country, have been planning to conduct terror attacks in Turkey," the Haberturk daily reported.

According to the report, the two militants were expected to meet with a Syrian citizen in Turkey's southeastern province of Kahramanmaras.

The intelligence agency, while distributing the photos of the two IS militants to all the units in the country, had requested security forces to review the security measures throughout the country, the report said.

Ankara, Istanbul and other Turkish cities have come under deadly terror attacks over the past months, with the latest one hitting Ankara, the national capital, on February 17, in which 29 people were killed, mostly military personnel.

Turkey also blamed the IS for twin suicide bombings in Ankara in October last year, which claimed 102 lives and injured hundreds more.

A new wave of terror attacks has been hitting Iraq, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries in recent days.
Artillery fire from the Turkish side has wounded a group of foreign journalists in northern Syria near the Turkish borders on Tuesday.

A group of 33 foreign journalists from Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, the US, China, Russia and Canada was targeted by artillery fire during their tour in the recently-captured town of Kansaba, which was the last bastion of the Turkey-backed rebels and fell to the army in mid-January, Xinhua cited news agency SANA as saying.

Citing a military source, SANA said targeting Kanasaba is a violation of the recently established cessation of hostilities in Syria.

"It is a violation to the ceasefire agreement and another evidence on the involvement of the Turkish side in backing the terrorist groups which are trying to thwart the ceasefire," the military source said.

The source said the attack led to the injury of four journalists, a Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian and Canadian, who were covering the cessation of hostilities in northern Latakia.

The cessation of hostilities, which has been in place since the weekend, is still holding in its fourth day on Tuesday.

The cessation of hostilities agreement was reached by Russia and the US. The Syrian government as well as nearly 100 opposition groups announced their agreement.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on a resolution on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) after the country conducted its fourth nuclear test in January.

Diplomats on Tuesday said that the Council originally planned to vote on the resolution on Tuesday afternoon, but Russia had asked for a procedural 24-hour review of the document, Xinhua reported.

The vote is now planned for 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

The US circulated the draft resolution to the 15-nation council last week. The resolution aims to impose new sanctions on DPRK to curb the country's nuclear programme.

The DPRK conducted its fourth nuclear test in January. It has previously conducted three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, respectively.

Right after the DPRK's first nuclear test, the Security Council adopted a resolution to impose sanctions on the DPRK and set up a sanctions committee.

In response to nuclear tests conducted by the DPRK in 2009 and 2013, the Security Council adopted another three resolutions to strengthen various sanctions on the DPRK, which include an arms embargo, an embargo related to nuclear, ballistic missile, and a ban on the export of luxury goods.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. New bill criminalizing Armenian Genocide in France must stand on firm legal basis. Co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations of France, ARF Bureau member Murad Papazian told Armenpress about this.

As we know, the President of France Francois Hollande has confirmed that a new bill criminalizing the Armenian Genocide will be submitted to the parliament. President Hollande trusted former President of the European Court of Human Rights Jean-Paul Costa to prepare the bill. He is a perfect specialist, renowned lawyer. The bill is planned to be ready by April and the government will submit it to the parliament, Murad Papazian said, adding that it is already 10 years they are working in that direction, and they wish the issue to find a final solution this year. In the words of Murad Papazian, the new bill must stand on firm legal grounds, so that the Constitutional Court is unable to annul it.

After the parliament discusses and confirms the bill, our enemies will for sure take the issue to the Constitutional Court as it happened in 2012. Therefore, firm legal grounds are necessary not to be annulled by the Court, Murad Papazian added.

He informed that hard work is necessary to record success in Artsakh recognition process.

We cannot say that Artsakh will be recognized this year, but at least we must reach some milestone, make a step forward, Co-chairman of the Coordination Council of Armenian Organizations said.

He mentioned that the work of French parliamentarians with Artsakh is evident. Visits to Artsakh were organized, and change in perceptions occurred after getting acquainted with the situation and problem on site. We plan the visits of different groups to Artsakh this year as well, Papazian added.

The next important issue for French-Armenians is the support to Syrian Armenians. The Syrian Armenians are in a hard situation. Our support towards our compatriots is of key importance. Armenian community in France will extend its support to save the Syrian Armenian community, Papazian said, adding that the support can be in the form of finance or other. He also informed that not so many Syrian Armenians find shelter in France and those who do, they as a rule have relatives there.
The Uttar Pradesh government will be setting up a state university and modern library in Allahabad, an official said on Wednesday.

Chief Secretary Alok Ranjan has asked the Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) to present a proposal this week for setting up the university on a 100-acre stretch of land and 20 acres for the library.

The university will be named after the late Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Janeshwar Mishra.

"Till the new building is constructed, Allahabad divisional commissioner should arrange an appropriate building for commencement of State university classes from next academic session," Ranjan said.

The chief secretary has also asked concerned officials to ensure timely payment at proper rate of the 120 acre land identified by UPSIDC under Saraswati Hitech City at Naini, Allahabad.

He directed the Higher department to put up a proposal for allocation of Rs.50 crore to the finance department for the infrastructure development at the state university to be set up at Allahabad.

In order to operationalise the university soon, the top bureaucrat has also directed for arrangement of personnel, furniture and computers under the jurisdiction of Allahabad State University.
The Supreme Court of Ohio in the US has declined to accept an Indian-origin man's appeal in a sexual assault case.

Upholding the February 2015 conviction by a Logan County Common Pleas jury in Ohio for kidnapping and gross sexual imposition, the court refused to accept the plea of Gurwinder Singh, 28, who is serving a nine-year sentence for sexual assault on a woman, examiner.org reported on Tuesday.

The assault occurred at the Valero gas station in Stokes Township in Ohio on February 25, 2013 where he worked at the time. He was labelled a Tier-II sex offender requiring him to register with authorities for 25 years.

He had entered a guilty plea to rape in 2013 and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Singh took the case to trial in February 2015. He was found guilty of both charges and given a nine-year sentence. He is also facing deportation.
The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on a resolution on North Korea after the country conducted its fourth nuclear test, the Security Council president has said.

"We hope to adopt this resolution on Wednesday. And now the members of the council have been able to discuss, negotiate, and see how each of the country fits into this," Xinhua quoted president Ismael Gaspar Martins, also Angolan ambassador to the UN, as saying on Tuesday at a briefing on the Security Council's work plan in March, for which Angola assumes the Council's monthly rotating presidency.

The US circulated the draft resolution to the 15-nation council last week. The resolution aims to impose new sanctions on Pyongyang to curb the country's nuclear programme.

Diplomats said the vote is now planned for 10 a.m. (local time) on Wednesday.

Martins also noted the role played by China in inviting Pyongyang into a more active negotiation to get the country "gradually out of the situation", and he said "more is needed to talk, to negotiate, (and) to engage."

Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test in January. The previous three nuclear tests took place in 2006, 2009 and 2013, respectively.

Right after North Korea's first nuclear test, the security council adopted a resolution to impose sanctions on Pyongyang and set up a sanctions committee.

In response to the nuclear tests conducted by Pyongyang in 2009 and 2013, the Security Council has adopted another three resolutions to strengthen various sanctions against North Korea, which include an arms embargo, an embargo related to nuclear, ballistic missile, and a ban on the export of luxury goods.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was on Wednesday at his sarcastic best as he attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a host of issues ranging from his policies on Pakistan and black money to the JNU row and the Nagaland accord.

Speaking amid thumping of desks by Congress MPs and incessant booing from the treasury benches, Gandhi spoke both in Hindi and English to accuse Modi of disrespecting Indian interests by going to Lahore to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif without consulting even his ministers.

"Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai. They trained and sent killers into Mumbai. And what does the PM do? He decides to go to Pakistan and have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif, without any vision," Gandhi said in a 31-minute speech in the Lok Sabha punctuated with witty remarks.

Modi, Gandhi alleged, let Pakistan "out of the little cage" it had been put in after the Mumbai terror attack of 2008 which left 166 Indians and foreigners dead.

"He destroyed six years of our hard work. He gifted them (Pakistan) a status and put them out of the cage we had put them in," Gandhi said. "He disrespected the national flag, those who died in Mumbai, those who died in Pathankot, the talent of our bureaucrats (whom he did not consult)."

Looking at the BJP benches, Gandhi said Modi did not share his Lahore visit of December 25 with even External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Home Minister Rajnath Singh. The remark drew loud protests from BJP MPs.

Gandhi went on: "The PM has to listen to others. Listen to Rajnath Singhji, Sushma Swarajji, Advaniji? Listen to your MPs. We don't hate you. Listen to your own people, listen to the voice of next generation."

The prime minister was not in the house when Gandhi spoke.

The Congress vice president appeared unruffled despite the repeated attempts to interrupt him. At one stage, he looked at the BJP MPs, smiled and said: "Bolne do bhai."

Gandhi accused Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley of going back on their election pledge and helping the rich to convert their black money into white.

"Nobody who has black money will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme," he said, sparking laughter. "All those who have black money can make it white under this scheme."

Gandhi, taking part in a discussion on the motion of thanks to the President's address to parliament, was referring to Jaitley's amnesty scheme on black money.

Pointing out that Modi had in 2014 vowed to jail those with black money, he said Modi had also failed to bring back black money stashed abroad.

Gandhi pulled up Modi for not speaking to the mother of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula after his suicide in Hyderabad -- and his silence on the issue as well as the attacks on JNU students and journalists at a Delhi court last month.

Gandhi said he heard the entire speech of now jailed JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar. "Not a word was anti-national."

The Congress leader also attacked Modi for signing a peace pact with the NSCN without consulting Home Minister Rajnath Singh and chief ministers of Nagaland and neighbouring states.

Where is the accord now, Gandhi asked. "It has vanished into thin air."

When BJP members interrupted him, Gandhi hit back saying he made mistakes "because I am not from the RSS".

"I don't know everything. I listen to the people, then speak."

In contrast, he alleged, that those with the RSS do not bother about others' views. "The country is not the PM, the PM is not the country," he added.
yet again outperformed its commercial vehicle (CV) peers in February. Its medium and heavy CV (M&HCV) volumes for the month grew 31 per cent year-on-year as against the segment's 28 per cent. The performance was driven by a strong growth in south India, expansion in north and east, and export orders, says Motilal Oswal Securities. Given that the performance is likely to continue and that there are other positives in the Budget, analysts remain positive on the stock.

The over 50 per cent increase in allocation to road construction in the Budget is a positive, says Axis Capital, for CV demand, especially the tipper segment, where is dominant. A tipper is a truck with a rear platform that can be raised at its front end, enabling a load to be discharged.

Tippers and construction trucks have not grown in the CV space so far  the two could recover. The Budget has increased the defence spending for M&HCV by 75 per cent and will be a beneficiary.

The change to the Motor Vehicles Act is another positive as this will allow the private sector to participate in the passenger vehicle segment of road transport. The scrapping of the permit systems should boost bus sales, benefitting players such as Ashok Leyland. A 20 per cent spending increase in schemes such as Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (Amrut), formerly JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission), will be another positive.

The stock has gained 10 per cent in the past few trading sessions. While the replacement segment continues to be strong, the bigger positive will be new sales for the company, whose stock is trading at a reasonable 14 times its FY17 earnings estimates of Rs 6.7.
The first Tuesday in March of an American election year - "Super Tuesday" - is the peak of the primary season. Typically, candidates winning Super Tuesday, when several populous states cast their votes, go on to win their parties' nomination. The United States' long primary process has served well in the past; the exigencies of inner-party competition and months of scrutiny have traditionally meant that both parties eventually nominate relative moderates. But not this election cycle: The undisputed winner of the Republicans' Super Tuesday was New York real-estate showman Donald Trump. Mr Trump has vaulted all barriers in his way with insouciance, even with arrogance. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida - and son and brother of past presidents - told Mr Trump on stage that he couldn't "insult his way to the presidency". But Mr Trump is now the overwhelming favourite for the nomination, while Mr Bush had to drop out. In the meantime, Mr Trump has insulted not just his fellow candidates but a long list of others - ranging from journalists, to the Wall Street Journal ("dishonest", "dummies"), a Miss Universe, two former presidents - George Bush and his father, various Republican Party organisations, Germany ("a total mess"), the idea of debates ("dumb"), the Macy's department store for some reason, a telecom company (for bad service), and a podium in the White House that he angrily declared "looked odd". He even survived trading barbs with Pope Francis. It is hard to disagree with Mr Trump when he asserts that he could stand in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue, shoot someone in full view, and still not lose his support base. It is true that Mr Trump has benefited from a divided opposition within the Republican camp; but it may already be too late for the anti-Trump Republican vote to consolidate. Meanwhile Mr Trump poses a genuine threat to the Democratic Party in the general election; he is not as socially conservative as most Republicans, and his authoritarian populism can draw followers from the disaffected across party lines.
Haste has forced Anheuser-Busch InBev into a discount Chinese sale. The beer giant is offloading SABMiller's share of a joint venture that owns China's biggest brewer for just $1.6 billion. Though the price is low, at least the deal makes it easier for Beijing to approve AB InBev's huge takeover of SAB.

Shares in China Resources Beer soared as much as 30 per cent after the Hong Kong-listed brewer announced on March 2 that it was buying the 49 per cent of CR Snow it did not already own. No wonder: CR Beer is clearly getting a bargain. Before the announcement its own market value, which is based on its 51 per cent stake in the joint venture, was $4 billion. Sector-watchers had expected it to pay a big price to take full control. Back in November, analysts at Bernstein estimated that even a forced sale would fetch $5.5 billion.

Instead, AB InBev is selling out at a valuation of just 5.2 times 2016 EBITDA, on Mizuho estimates. That's very watered-down by the standards of the beer industry, where takeover multiples in the teens are the norm.

The disappointingly low valuation is offset by richer prices from AB InBev's other disposals of SABMiller brands, notably the $3 billion sale of Peroni and Grolsch to Asahi of Japan. The joint venture contract, which gave CR Beer "certain rights" following a change of control at its partner, may also have limited AB InBev's bargaining power.

But a couple of other factors are probably at work, too. There were few other obvious buyers for the stake, and CR Beer, which is backed by the Chinese government, was unlikely ever to cede control. That's a big downer for which cannot work its cost-cutting magic on minority investments.

Most importantly, AB InBev Chief Executive Carlos Brito's main priority must be to complete the acquisition of SAB and start integrating the roughly $100-billion deal. But China's competition watchdog, which must approve the mega-merger, would not have signed off while the brewing giant was quibbling with CR Beer. And if AB InBev decided to stick with the joint venture, the combined group's 37 per cent share of the Chinese market by volume would have triggered closer antitrust scrutiny. It was time to put down that drink.
The editorial, "Provident budgeting" (March 2), makes a futile attempt to justify taxing the Employee Provident Fund. It says that all those objecting to the tax are selfish and want to enjoy freebies.

Countries with tax rates equal to or lower than India's provide their citizens with several facilities for free, including quality education and excellent health care, apart from good law and order and infrastructure. In India, taxpayers have to send their children to private schools and get themselves treated at private hospitals due to lack of quality facilities at government-run institutions.

Taxpayers end up giving up half or more of their earnings in direct and indirect taxes. In such a situation is it justified to tax self-earned retirement benefits?





Sanjay Tanwani Gurgaon

can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
(TMC), the ruling party in West Bengal, uploaded an appeal for funds on its website on Tuesday. Rival parties had alleged that the TMC's campaign for the 2011 Assembly elections in the state was funded by the Saradha Group, which was later implicated in a chit fund scam. The Central Bureau of Investigation, too, had sought clarifications on the party's income under heads such as the sale of paintings by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and donations and proceeds from the TMC mouthpiece Jago Bangla. The appeal on the party website reads: "People's party Maa Mati Manush invites you to contribute generously to build a bright future for all." State education minister Partha Chatterjee explained that the party wanted to create a fund and usher in "transparency".
After sharp criticism of a Budget proposal to tax 60 per cent of the amount withdrawn from the Employees' Provident Fund, the Union finance ministry will consider suggestions for partially withdrawing it.

A finance ministry statement issued on Tuesday afternoon reiterated that 60 per cent of the amount, accumulated through deposits after April 1, 2016 would be taxed, if withdrawn as a lump sum, but also said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will have a look at it to assess if the tax would be limited to returns on the corpus and take a decision in due course.

Read more from our special coverage on "EPFO, BUDGET 2016" EPF tax: Its a healthy proposal

The statement went on to say there would, however, be no tax, if the sum is invested in an annuity. The ministry also clarified there would be no tax on Public Provident Fund (PPF). Also, if the annuity sum is withdrawn by the heirs of the contributor, there would be no tax.

The Employees' Provident Fund, or EPF, is a retirement corpus, in which employees and employers contribute equally over the years of one's employment. Till now, the contributions to EPF provided tax redemptions and withdrawals from it were not taxed either.

According to the proposal, 40 per cent of the total corpus withdrawn at the time of retirement will be exempt from tax. The remaining 60 per cent of the contributions made after 1 April 2016 and returns earned on that would be taxed if withdrawn at one go.

The move, the finance ministry said, was aimed at encouraging private sector employees to go for pension security after retirement instead of withdrawing the entire money from the fund account.

After the finance minister's Budget speech on Monday, there was a spontaneous outflow of outrage, in the media and social media, with pension fund investors claiming that the government was gnawing away their retirement savings. In fact, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), also criticised the move.

The ministry, in the clarification, also pointed out that those with an income limit of Rs 15,000 per month would also not be taxed on withdrawing their collected amount. A bulk of the EPF subscribers is in this category.

"Out of around 37 million contributing members of EPF as on today, around 30 million subscribers are in this category. For this category of people, there is not going to be any change in the new dispensation," the statement said.

The Budget proposal had evoked widespread adverse reaction. Suggestions from various quarters started pouring into the ministry, with some asking for only the interest earned on 60 per cent of the withdrawn amount to be taxed - and for the principal to be left alone. By Tuesday morning, there was some confusion, with some sources claiming that this proposal had been accepted by the finance ministry. The finance ministry was abuzz with Employees' Provident Fund Organisation employees meeting Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia. However, the ministry issued a clarification later: now, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will have a look at it and take a decision in a due course of time.

The Budget has also proposed a ceiling - Rs 1.5 lakh a year, or 12 per cent of the employee's basic pay, whichever is lesser - for employers' contribution to the EPF.

Suggestions from different quarters asked for it to be not implemented. Amit Maheshwari, managing partner, Ashok Maheshwary & Associates, said the clarification has given a partial sigh of relief to EPF subscribers. The move is aimed at bringing parity between EPF and National Pension Scheme (NPS). In the latter, all withdrawals were taxed till recently, making them uncompetitive among investors.

During the Budget speech, Jaitley had said: "I believe that the tax treatment should be uniform for defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans. I propose to make withdrawal up to 40 per cent of the corpus at the time of retirement tax exempt in the case of National Pension Scheme."



The Pension Fund and Regulatory Development Authority had requested the finance ministry to have parity between the NPS and the EPF, as far as taxation was concerned. Shiv Sena did not attend the National Democratic Alliance parliamentary part meeting on Tuesday, ostensibly because of a communication gap. It has also demanded a roll back of the government's decision to tax the EPF corpus.

COURSE CORRECTION

Budget proposal

Fears & reassurance

Clarification

Clarification

"It is proposed that 40% of the pension wealth received by an employee from the National Pension System Trust shall be exempt [from tax]. It is also proposed that the exemption under the recognised provident fund and superannuation fund will be limited to 40% of the accumulated amount arising out of contributions made in such funds on or after April 1, 2016"On Tuesday, the finance ministry issued clarifications to some of the major concerns:60% of the money withdrawn would be taxed, irrespective of whether it is put into an annuity or notTo be taxed if withdrawn at one go; no tax if the sum is put into an annuityPPF withdrawals also to be taxedNo tax on PPF withdrawals
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. On the contact line of the Karabakh-Azerbaijan opposing armies the rival fired more than 900 shots from different caliber weapons at Armenian positions on March 1 and early morning of March 2. As "Armenpress" was informed from the press service of the Defense Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh Republic, The Defense Army troops mostly refrained from response actions and confidently continued carrying out their military duty.
With pressure mounting to roll back the Budget proposal to tax withdrawals from Employees Provident Fund, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said he was reviewing the matter.

In the Lok Sabha, he said he would address it during the Budget discussion in Parliament. He was responding to Trinamool Congress (TMC) members raising the issue soon after Question Hour.

TMC Member of Parliament (MP) Saugata Roy demanded that Jaitley make an announcement on this immediately. His party colleague Sudip Bandhyopadhyay said the Budget proposal to tax the Employees Provident Fund (EPF)  a contributory retirement fund  has caused nationwide concern.

Earlier in the day, too, Jaitley had said, There have been some reactions [to the Budget proposal]. When the debate comes up in Parliament, I shall give the governments response on what decision we finally take.



In his post-Budget interactions with industry and trade chambers, the finance minister said Parliament had the first right to know how the government was treating suggestions on the Budget and the Finance Bill.

On Tuesday, a government statement had said the finance minister would consider the demand for limiting tax on 60 per cent of total withdrawn funds only on returns earned and not the principal.

The Budget has provided that 40 per cent of withdrawn funds from EPF would not be taxed. However, if the remaining 60 per cent is withdrawn lump sum, then there would be a tax to pay.

If the remaining 60 per cent is converted into annuities and the person concerned gets regular pension, there would not be any tax on withdrawn funds.

The intention is not revenue generation. That is not the principal intention here, Jaitley said.

The finance minister said the intention of the government was to make India an insured and pensioned society.

He also explained that the Employee Provident Fund Organisation has around 37 million members, of which about 30 million earns Rs 15,000 a month or less. For them, there is no tax liability.

It is only the private sector employees on whom there is an impact. And, the objective was that if, to meet your various commitments you can withdraw up to 40 per cent, you need not pay tax. The balance is converted into annuities, you get a regular pension; you dont pay tax, he said.

This was intended as an incentive to private sector employees to use the fund as a pension, and not spend it.

However, the people of the country  and even some in Jaitleys own party  dont seem to like the idea.

Financial sector professional Vaibhav Aggarwals petition to the finance minister and the prime minister, seeking a rollback of the provision, has drawn 100,000 signatures in two days.

Yet another issue that is bothering a majority of the hard-working middle class is seeing a massive outrage on the platform. We hope that the finance ministry responds positively to the concerns of all those who have signed this petition, said Preethi Herman, the country lead of Change.org, which started the petition.

Unions, too, were not convinced of the governments intentions. They said the EPFO already provided pension under its social security scheme.

Seeing the opposition, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is now trying to mince his words. The EPFO runs a comprehensive scheme which has all components  provident fund, pension and insurance, said D L Sachdev, an EPFO trustee and the secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress.

He said the government is trying to create a market for pension products offered by insurance companies after raising foreign direct investment allowance in the sector to 49 per cent from the earlier 26 per cent



Members of the Sangh Parivar, of which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is a part, also criticised the proposal.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) President B N Rai described Jaitleys contention as a lameduck argument.

There is Employees Pension Scheme, 1995, run by the EPFO, which provides for pension after the age of 58 years to its subscribers. Then, where is the need for encouraging pension?



This is an anti-worker Budget proposal. Taxing PF means double taxation. PF is deducted from a salary on which workers have already paid tax, said Virjesh Upadhyay, general secretary, BMS.

The Central Hall of Parliament was agog on Wednesday with discussions on the reversal of this provision.

Several MPs said they had heard the BMS was going to write to the prime minister and the finance minister to demand withdrawal of this scheme. BMS is particularly charged because it feels its own political autonomy has been attacked. It is a member of the Central Board of Trustees, the body that oversees the administration of EPF.

Several ministers, too, have told Business Standard, on the condition that they will not be named, that the move could hurt their party politically.

I know. I understand. I am 100 per cent with you on this, a senior minister told a roomful of journalists on the condition he would not be quoted.

At an event organised by Rajya Sabha TV, Jaitley had said, The idea was to ensure that people dont spend all their money before retirement and save some for after. The feedback that has come after the announcement is that people want to spend all their money. I will speak on the issue on the floor of the House.



Before the Budget proposal, EPF was an EEE (exempt, exempt, exempt) scheme, which means that contribution, accretion and withdrawal from the fund were tax free. On the other hand, Pension System (NPS) is EET (exempt, exempt, tax), which means withdrawal from it are taxed.

The Budget move is aimed at bringing parity between EPF and NPS.

Addressing the industry body CII, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that taxing the retirement fund withdrawal was the norm world over. I am amazed that people are blocking the reform for which the time has come. Why should the educated people oppose this? We want to create a pension security for you, and world over, EET is the norm.
Sixteen persons, including a CPI(M) leader, have been arrested in connection with the attack on Illambazar police station in Birbhum district, police said today.

A mob had yesterday attacked the police station and damaged vehicles in Illambazar and Dubrajpur areas after a college student made an "objectionable" post on Facebook.

The arrested 16 persons include Syed Mohd Iqbal, former zonal secretary of CPI(M), police said.

All of them were produced in Bolpur court that remanded them to 14 days' judicial custody.

CPI(M) state secretariat member Ramchandra Dome described the arrest of Iqbal as "mysterious" and "politically motivated".

Some stray blockades were put up on roads in the district today to protest against the "objectionable" Facebook post by a college student, who was arrested on Monday night.

A mob attacked the police station demanding that the accused be handed over to them. Later they put up a road blockade on NH-60.

Inspector General Gyanbant Singh and Deputy Inspector General, Burdwan, Rajesh Singh were in Illambazar to oversee the law and order situation while CRPF personnel were deployed in the area.

Meanwhile, the body of one person was found last evening. Local people alleged that he was shot dead by police but police denied any firing.
Border Security Force (BSF) has recently deployed 18 additional companies along the India-Pakistan International Border in Punjab, the Parliament was today informed.

"A request was received in August 2015 from the Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab regarding increase in deployment of BSF in Gurdaspur sector.

"Recently, BSF has deployed 18 additional companies on International Border in Punjab," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

One BSF company has a strength of about 100 personnel.

In a separate reply on the same subject, the Minister said BSF has taken various measures to check infiltration along this border.

"Installing laser walls is one of the integrated measures taken by BSF. The laser technology developed by BSF has been designed to cover all the shortcomings experienced in the use of laser wall at various places in the past.

"The present technology has been found working satisfactorily to cover the un-fenced riverine stretches," he said.
At least two local employees of the US consulate in Peshawar were killed in an IED blast while on an anti-narcotics mission in restive northwestern Pakistan.

Yesterday's blast caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) planted on a roadside in Mohmand Agency killed the two employees of the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) of the US mission in Peshawar, sources said.

The dead were identified as NAS official Faisal Khan and his driver Abid Shah while four others were wounded and had to be hospitalised.

Later in Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed the of the deaths of the two employees as he condemned the attack.

"The US government strongly condemns the attack. The United States stands in solidarity with the people of Pakistan and all who fight the scourge of terrorism," state department spokesman John Kirby said.

The NAS has for years been carrying out inspection of the poppy cultivation areas in the tribal areas and leading efforts in cooperation with the Pakistan government to tackle the cultivation of poppies. It earlier included Americans working at the Peshawar office but is now mostly made up of Pakistani staff.

The Afghanistan-based Jamaatul Ahrar militant group, a splinter faction of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack, the International reported.

The group has been involved in a number of terror attacks in recent days killing several security personnel.

Later, forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation to apprehend the attackers but there were no reports of any arrests yet.
Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops today after infiltrating a West Bank settlement and wounding a settler, the military said.

"Two assailants infiltrated the community of Eli, south of Nablus. They attacked a man outside his home," the army said in a statement.

"Forces arrived... (and) shot the attackers resulting in their death."



A settler was wounded trying to stop them before the soldiers arrived, an army spokesman said.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since early October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.
A man shot dead his two sisters in Pakistan's second honour killing in as many days after a filmmaker from the country won an Oscar for a documentary film on such murders.

Mohammad Asif committed the double murder in Noorshah village of Sahiwal district of Punjab province, police said today.

He had murdered his mother about five years ago but was pardoned by the family.

Police said that Asif shot his sisters during the night and fled away.

"We have launched a manhunt but he is still at large," police official Akram Sahi said.

On Monday, a father shot dead his 18-year-old daughter in Lahore after she failed to tell him where she had been for several hours, ironically on a day when Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy's documentary won an Oscar in Los Angles.

"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness", that secured Chinoy her second Oscar ever, is about a girl shot in the head by her father and brothers, and thrown into a river. She, however, survived to tell the award-winning story.

Honour-killing is a big issue in Pakistan and every year over 1,000 girls and women fall victims.
Three persons were today arrested for allegedly carrying 71 buffalo calves in a container near Sultanpur here, police said.

Ten of the calves were found dead while a few were in serious condition, they said.

Acting on a tip off, the police stopped a vehicle at a barricade on Haryana-Punjab border and found 71 buffalo calves in the container, Baldev Nagar police post In-charge Gurmail Singh said.

The alleged cattle smugglers, who belonged to Gangoh in Saharanpur, were identified as Mohammad Dilshad, Arshad Khan and Manohar. They brought the calves from Jalandhar and were taking them to Saharanpur, police said.

A case was registered under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal Act against the accused.
A key commander of an outlawed Baloch insurgent group and two of his associates were killed today in Kech district in the troubled Balochistan province.

According to Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti, the three militants were killed when security forces launched a search operation in the Dasht area of the district.

"They acted on an intelligence tip off and when they combed the area the militants retaliated," Bugti said.

He said one of the killed militants had been identified as a key commander of the Balochistan Republican Army.

A spokesman for the Frontier Corps said the militants were part of a group that was involved in the killing of outstation laborers who were working at Shadi Kor Dam.

The outlawed group is one of the major insurgent groups operating in the province and is headed by Brahamdagh Bugti, who is the grandson of the late Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and lives in self-exile in Switzerland.

Nawab Akbar Bugti was killed during a military operation in 2006 in the Dera Bugti district.
About 30 black students were ejected from Donald Trump's rally in the US state of Georgia, the latest controversy to hit the Republican presidential front-runner's campaign.

There are different accounts of who made the decision to eject approximately 30 black students who say they were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Trump's rally in Valdosta.

The group of students had been waiting to see the 69-year-old real estate tycoon at the Valdosta State University when they were told to leave the venue and then escorted out.

A Trump spokeswoman denied that the incident at Valdosta State University's campus on Monday was initiated "at the request of the candidate" or the presidential campaign, The USA Today reported.

A spokesman for the Secret Service contradicted the students' statements that federal agents led them out of the building, saying Trump staff and local law enforcement officials were in charge of handling protesters.

However, Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress was quoted as saying, "These folks were told to leave the PE complex by the Trump detail." The police chief said he thinks the Trump staff made the right call and it was not a racial issue.

Trump had rented the venue, so "he had the right to tell folks he didn't want to be there, that they had to leave. I'm not campaigning for anyone. That's not what I do. But in this case, I support them," Childress said.

The sight of the students, who were visibly upset, being asked to leave the grounds, created a stir at the university that was a whites-only campus until 1963.

The young people said they had planned to sit in silent protest but were escorted out by security officials before the presidential candidate began speaking.

"We didn't plan to do anything," said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was in the group of Valdosta State University students, many of whom were wearing all black.

"They said, 'This is Trump's property; it's a private event.' But I paid my tuition to be here," he told the the Des Moines Register.

Brooke Gladney, a 22-year-old marketing and business management major, was quoted as saying, "The only reason we were given was that Mr Trump did not want us there."



Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks was quoted as saying, "There is no truth to this whatsoever. The campaign had no knowledge of this incident."



Earlier on Monday, some black students at another Trump campaign rally, on the campus of Radford University in Virginia, were led out by security officers after they began chanting, "No more hate! No more hate! Let's be equal, let's be great!"



The incident comes after furor over Trump's refusal to disavow Ku Klux Klan (KKK) leader David Duke's support for him.
Six Indian seamen languishing in a jail in Egypt for over two years on charges of drug- trafficking have been released and returned home today.

On their return, they met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"Continuing help to Indians in distress abroad. EAM @SushmaSwaraj meets 6 seamen who have returned from Egypt," the MEA Spokesperson tweeted.

The six Indian men were arrested in February 2014 near the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, Egypt, while they were employed in a Greek-owned ship - Callisto, which was en route from the UAE to Egypt.

Subsequently, a case of drug trafficking was filed against the Captain, Engineer (both Syrian nationals), and the six Indian seamen.

Swaraj, during her visit to Egypt on August 25 last year, had met the six men and raised their issue with Egyptian Foreign Minister.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Only citizens of Syrian have the right to decide who their President will be. Armenpress reports, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told German ARD Corporation.

Question- The overwhelming majority of countries, organizations of the world, say that there might be no solution for the Syrian question with you in power. Are you willing to step back?

President Assad: For those countries and those officials? No, of course not, because its not their business. Thats why I never responded. Its been five years since they said that, and we never give a damn to what they say. Its only our business, its Syrias business. Only the Syrian citizens have the right to say who they want to be the president. As a German, you dont accept me or any other one to tell you who is going to be your chancellor, and what sort of political system. You dont accept it, and we dont accept it. So, no, regardless of whatever they say, my political fate is only linked to the will of the Syrian people.

President Assad denied the allegations that the governmental forces keep many cities besieged, what they called besieged areas have been surrounded by the army for years now, and those areas are still fighting the army and shelling mortars on the army and on neighboring cities and so on. The question: how could we prevent them from having food while we cannot prevent them from having armaments?.
Gujarat government today admitted in the Legislative Assembly that as many as 68 posts of IAS officers were lying vacant in the state.

Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, who holds the General Administration (GAD) portfolio (GAD), among others, gave this information in her written reply to a question raised by Congress MLA Ashwin Kotwal.

Kotwal, through her written query during Question Hour in the Assembly, had sought to know the number of vacant IAS posts.

In her response to a sub-question about steps taken by the government in the last one year to fill up such posts, the Chief Minister said that the power to recruit IAS officers lies with the Union Government's Department of Personnel and Training as well as with Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

Patel also added that on the basis of Gujarat government's proposal, the Centre had filled nine such posts through direct recruitment, while 12 officers were promoted as IAS in the state in the last one year.
In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, today struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, killing nine persons including an Afghan security personnel and causing damage to the chancery.

External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four militants were killed by the Afghan National Police.

"Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire.

"One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan securitymen," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.

He also said that the Consulate was damaged in the attack. The ministry has received an initial report of the attack and subsequent developments by the Afghan Army.

Eight civilians have been killed in the crossfire, the Indian security sources said based on primary reports from the attack site. They said there were as many as 1,320 explosions including bomb and grenade blasts during a nearly two-hour gunbattle.

The initial onslaught was countered by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) which was later joined by the Afghan securitymen.

According to Provincial Police Chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad, one suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the front gate of the Consulate to open the way for other attackers.

"Four other attackers were killed after half an hour clashes with the security forces," he was quoted as saying by the TOLO .

Today's attack is fourth in the series of terror strikes on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. It was attacked twice by hand grenades in 2007 and in 2013, it was attacked by three suicide bombers. In 2015, an attack on it was thwarted by the Afghan security forces.

Two months ago, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan forces.

Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.
India today suggested that action against terror by Pakistan was a greater priority for it than resumption of a bilateral dialogue in the aftermath of the Pathankot attack, which led to postponement of the Foreign Secretary-level talks.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said there are "obstacles" in improving ties between the two countries and noted that Pakistan needs to change its attitude towards a number of issues of which terrorism is "central".

"In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to, a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious," he said.

The Foreign Secretary was replying to a question during an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue -- a conclave on geoeconomics and geopolitics -- on whether FS-level talks were linked to action by Islamabad against perpetrators of the Pathankot attack, based on information given to it by India.

The comments by Jaishankar came as a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan is likely to visit India this month to probe the Pathankot terror assault. India had said Masood Azhar, head of Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, masterminded the attack and sought action against him and other perpetrators.

Jaishankar said the two countries were in touch with each other following the attack, primarily at the level of National Security Advisers, and to a certain extent between him and his Pakistani counterpart. He said "parallel processes" are at works.

On improving connectivity between India and Pakistan, he said, "It takes two hands to clap" and that India would like to have same kind of ties with Islamabad like it has with other neighbours.

"Most people in this country want to treat Pakistan as a normal neighbour. So, we would like to do with Pakistan what we do with everybody else. But the fact is that there are obstacles and we know what the obstacles are," he said, emphasising on the need need to remove them.

Talking about overall Indo-Pak ties, he said India was for a "much more modern relationship" with Islamabad but for that to happen the neighbouring country needed a change in attitude towards a number of issues of which terrorism is a "central" one.

To a question whether India and Pakistan can remain isolated, Jaishankar said they should not and that New Delhi has been making sincere efforts to improve its ties with Islamabad.

"I cannot think of any Prime Minister of India who did not strive for better relations with Pakistan. There may be differences in nuances, pace and packaging," he said.
The legal profession is "crying for reforms" and lawyers cannot be allowed to a have a "free ride as the administration of justice is a key area", the Supreme Court observed today and sought response of the Bar Council of India on a plea against the bar examination which has been made mandatory for granting advocacy license.

A bench comprising Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justice U U Lalit issued notice to the BCI on a plea seeking quashing of the 2010 notification by which lawyers will have to sit and clear the All India Bar Examination (AIBE).

The court, which has now fixed the plea before a three-judge bench on Friday, did not stay the upcoming AIBE saying that it is not "averse" to it and would examine as to whether it is permissible under the Advocates Act.

"The system is crying for reforms...There are over two million lawyers in the courts. Which means, we have enough lawyers and the future inclusion must be on merits," it said, adding, "the profession is not something where you can have a free ride".

The bench equated the profession with the likes of medical and said, "if a man is incapable then he will not be able to get and handle the cases. You (BCI) have to ensure that even a junior lawyer is capable to handle all kinds of cases".

The CJI, during the hearing, referred to past practices of Jammu and Kashmir and said that a person had to undergo various stages before becoming a lawyer who can argue in constitutional courts -- High Courts and the Supreme Court.

"There are law colleges where you may not have faculty, no library or where attendance will not be marked. I believe there are law colleges where you have to just go and pay the fees, the rest is taken care off," the CJI said.

"The more this profession gets overcrowded, the more the malpractices because people will have to survive. You have to make a mechanism so that only the best come into the profession...," the court said.

The bench also said the earlier system of "pre-enrollment" professional training for a lawyer may be re-considered.

The bench, hearing the plea filed by Karnataka resident R Nagabushana, said that it may also consider appointing senior lawyers like F S Nariman as amicus curiae to assist it in this matter.

During the hearing, the court said, "We have too many



lawyers practising the profession and this profession has become overcrowded" and there has to be a system in place to ensure that only capable professionals enter the profession.

The plea, seeking quashing of BCI's notification on AIBE, alleged that it takes away the statutory right, given to an eligible person to practice law.

The Advocates Act provides that a law graduate can practice law and introduction of AIBE is not mandated under the law, the plea said.

The BCI conducts AIBE to examine an advocate's capability to practice the profession of law and it has been made mandatory.

The apex court yesterday had observed that the right to practice law is a fundamental right for LL.B degree holder and introduction of the examination by Bar Council of India for granting advocacy license "negates" the very right.

The BCI had claimed that the AIBE assesses skills at a basic level and is intended to set a minimum benchmark for admission to the practice of law.

"It (AIBE) addresses a candidate's analytical abilities and understanding basic knowledge of law," the bar body said.

The notification bringing the AIBE into force was passed by the Legal Education Committee and the members of the Bar Council of India in meetings held on April 10 and 30, 2010.
Romania's former king Michael, 94, announced today he is seriously ill and is withdrawing from public life, handing over duties to his eldest daughter.

His office said the ex-monarch, which is currently in Switzerland, has a cancer which has spread and chronic leukaemia, and has recently undergone surgery.

"In recent weeks I have been informed of a serious medical diagnosis," Michael, who was forced to abdicate by Romania's communist regime in 1947, said in a statement.

"I am sure my daughter Margareta will have the wisdom and strength to represent me and to carry out all my public duties."



The former king is undergoing treatment "which prevents him from making public appearances," his office added, saying Michael needs "a period of recuperation."



At the end of 2007, 60 years after his abdication, the ex-king officially designated Margareta, now 66, as his successor in case the monarchy was restored in Romania.

Born on October 25 1921 in Sinaia, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Bucharest, Michael reigned twice, between 1927 and 1930 and then from 1940 to 1947, before the communists ended the monarchy in the Balkan country.

A descendant of the German Hohenzollern dynasty, he long dreamed of "serving" his people again.

After moving back to Bucharest in 2002 he led a low-profile life, making only brief appearances in public notably for his birthday and for religious festivals.

Although relatively popular among his countrymen, few back the restoration of the monarchy, according to opinion polls.

Romania saw the return of democracy in 1989 with the collapse of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship.
GE Capital India has agreed to sell its financial services business to a consortium led by Aion Capital Partners and ex-GE Capital executives Pramod Bhasin and Anil Chawla.

The sale includes financial services businesses of GE Capital India comprising auto leasing, healthcare financing and corporate lending and leasing, Aion Capital said here.

The sale is part of the global plan to exit consumer finance business announced last year. The financial details of the sale has not been disclosed.

GE Capital has a joint venture with the nation's largest lender State Bank of India for its credit card business based in Gurgaon.

The consortium has signed an agreement to acquire these businesses and the transaction is subject to statutory and regulatory approvals, Aion's statement added.

Aion Capital Partners is an India-focused fund established by an affiliate of Apollo Global Management with ICICI Venture Funds Management Company.

Bhasin is a GE veteran having headed GE Capital India. He started GE Capital's businesses in the country.

He is also considered a pioneer in the BPO industry in the country, having started GE Capital International Services which subsequently became Genpact.

Chawla was the head of the commercial business operations of GE Capital India. He has also helped DE Shaw's business in the country.

Started in 1993, GE Capital's non-banking finance company operations in the country have served over 10 million corporate and retail customers through its three key verticals of auto, healthcare (medical equipment) and corporate loans.

The statement said Aion intends to retain and build on the current management team.
A five-seater aircraft of Mumbai Flying Club today successfully landed at the Shirdi airport here, indicating that regular flight services could start from May, said Vishvas Patil, managing director of Maharashtra Airport Development Corporation.

Patil himself arrived by this flight.

This was the first time a five-seater plane landed at the airport and the purpose was testing the runway, Patil said.

Patil also held talks with the local farmers who have given land for the under-construction airport. The construction would be completed in the next two-three months, he said.
A SpiceJet aircraft with 211 passengers onboard which had departed from Bengaluru landed safely at Kolkata airport despite a few rubber pieces of the main wheel tyre coming off and falling on the runway during the departure.

The DGCA is probing the incident, which happened yesterday.

"Some worn out pieces of the main wheel tyre of aircraft of the flight SG 517 from Bengaluru to Kolkata were noticed at the Bangalore airport post departure," SpiceJet said in a statement today.

Director General of Civil Aviation M Sathiyavathy said that DGCA has started probe into the incident after it was brought to its notice.

The airline said that all necessary actions were taken immediately as per the standard Operating Procedure (SOP), adding "the aircraft landed safely at the Kolkata airport."



There was no harm to any passengers whatsoever, it added.

"The passengers and baggage were deplaned from the aircraft in normal course," SpiceJet said.
The Allahabad High Court today stayed a notificationof November 14, 2015 issued by which the central government had made installation of set-top boxes compulsory for TV viewers with effect from December 31 last year.

A division bench, comprising Justice Tarun Agarwala and Justice V K Mishra, passed the above order on a petition filed by Allahabad Cable Networks and others.

The Court also asked the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to file its reply within four weeks.

The petition has alleged that earlier, installation of set-top boxes had been made compulsory only in major cities of the country but by means of the notification the same has been made mandatory across the country.

It was further stated that at present set-top boxes were not available in adequate numbers and therefore it was not possible to provide these to all the customers within the time fixed.

In spite of this, cable network operators were being harassed by the authorities, the petition alleged.

It was also pleaded that the time limit for installation of set-top boxes in states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan has also been stayed by respective High Courts.

The High Court ordered to list the case for further hearing after one month and directed the authorities concerned not to take coercive majors against cable oprators in pursuance of the impugned notification.
Jordanian troops have exchanged fire with armed men during arrest raids in the northern city of Irbid including one group holed up in a building, security officials said.

Jordan's Public Security Directorate referred to those being targeted in the raids as "outlaws" but did not elaborate.

The directorate reported there were deaths among the gunmen but did not say how many, and that three members of the security forces were hurt.

The statement said clashes began earlier yesterday and continued in the evening.

The daily al-Ghad said more than 20 suspected militants were arrested in the operation.

Amateur video posted online showed groups of men, apparently onlookers, standing in a street as heavy gunfire could be heard in the distance.

Since last year, Jordan assumed a high-profile role in the US-led military campaign against the extremist Islamic State group which controls large areas of neighbouring Iraq) and Syria.

Jordan has also cracked down domestically, with IS sympathisers, including those expressing support for the group in social media, facing several years n prison.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. It is time for Armenian-Americans to adopt a new strategy for raising issues of Pan-Armenian importance. This is the opinion of "California Courier" Publisher and Editor Harut Sassounian, which he expressed in an interview with "Armenpress". According to him, for decades the Armenians meet the American Presidential candidates once every four years, asking them to promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide in case they become President. This, however, becomes ineffective in the future. The Presidents forget their promise under pressure and all the work is thrown into water.

"We should not only raise the Armenian Genocide issue. The US Congress passed it a number of times, and the President signed it. We have a lot of issues as Armenian-Americans, and generally as Armenians. We should put our main tasks in front of the candidates, such as the independence of Artsakh, opening the border with Turkey, and our other claims. Why not also raise questions regarding the increasing of American aid to Artsakh and Armenia and appointment of Armenian-Americans to key positions of the country. We need to put forward these issues and see which candidate offers appropriate proposals to our respective interests and see to what extent these promises are credible, Harut Sassounian noted.

Referring to one of his recent articles, the publicist noted that at this stage of the US presidential elections Armenians should not support a specific candidate, but rather wait for the campaign to intensify.

"We have to wait for the fight to become more intense. When the November elections approach, the candidates votes will be closer to each other, and they will be more eager to present proposals to us. If we go to them, we need to ask and beg, and they will give us only a promise and not do anything, but if they see that the Armenian-American votes can have a decisive role in the campaign, it will be in their interest to approach us. There is still enough time, "Harut Sassounian said.

Referring to the fact that the ANCA sent a letter to President Obama requesting the signing the contract excluding the issue of double taxation with Armenia, Harut Sassounian noted that this is a very important issue, because it may attract more US investments in Armenia.

"Armenian-Americans are lobbying in order for the White House and the Congress to make a positive decision in this direction. I am confident that this problem will be solved after the elections, "Harut Sassounian said.
For the first time in the country, people in Andra Pradesh can avail sand free of cost as the state Cabinet today decided to include it in the list of essential commodities.

A decision in this regard was taken at a meeting of the state Cabinet which gave its nod to a new policy. The state government is expected to forego a revenue of over Rs 200 crore, Agriculture Minister P Pulla Rao told reporters.

In the meeting chaired by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, it was decided that effective measures should be enforced to prevent misuse of the new policy, particularly to ensure there's no smuggling of sand out of the state.

Last week, Naidu mooted the idea of supplying sand free of cost to ease the burden especially on common people.

The Preventive Detention Act would be slapped on those who tried to illegally ship sand out of the state.

"Sand mined from different reaches should be used only for specific purposes and cannot be stored. It can't be used for landfill as well," the minister said.

Builders would have to bear only the transportation cost to carry sand from the respective reaches.

Contractors executing government construction works would have to proportionately cut the costs as sand would be supplied free.

"They may be charging Rs 500 per cubic meter for the sand component. Now that sand will henceforth be available free, contractors have to reduce this cost from the overall project cost," Pulla Rao said.

Following the Cabinet decision, the state Industries Department (Mining) is expected to issue detailed guidelines on the new sand policy in the next couple of days, official sources said.
A former Nobel Prize winner in Argentina says President Barack Obama should skip his planned March 24 visit to the country because it's the 40th anniversary of a coup that installed a military government that had US backing.

Adolfo Perez Esquivel tells The Associated Press that he plans to publish an open letter to Obama this week.

Esquivel won the prize in 1980 for his defense of human rights during the dictatorship. Obama won the prize in 2009. The two have communicated previously on issues like the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Esquivel says he welcomes Obama, but that he should not visit on the anniversary of the 1976 coup. Human rights groups estimate that 30,000 people were killed or disappeared during the 1976 to 1983 military government.
An Army Nayak who was grievously injured after his bicycle was hit by a speeding Audi A4 on station road in south west Delhi's Cantonment area succumbed to his injuries in the afternoon today.

Police said that Nayak Ram Swaroop Rajput (43), of 7 Assam Regiment, was going towards Lajwanti Chowk when his bicycle was hit by the speeding Audi near Kirbi Place at 10.30 am.

"Rajput sustained grievous injuries and was rushed to the Army's RR hospital where he succumbed to his injuries at around 1.30 pm," said a senior police officer.

Driver of the Audi Sarabjeet Singh, a resident of Ashram area, was arrested by the police and a case of rash and negligent driving causing death was registered against him, said the officer.

Rajput had participated in the Army's deployment in restoring law and order in Panipat and Hisar districts in Haryana during the recent Jat stir and had recently returned to his unit.

The deceased soldier is survived by his wife and a two-year-old daughter.
Eminent Assamese author, novelist and veteran social activist Nirupama Bargohain has been chosen for the Laadli Media for Gender Sensitivity Lifetime Achievement Award for 2015-16.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is being conferred on the inimitable Nirupama Borgohain in acknowledgement of her outstanding literary contribution spanning over seven decades, said Laadli's state coordinator for Assam and North East Jahnavi Acharya Sharma.

The award, considered the highest among the range of Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity (LMAAGS), was instituted in March 2007, and will be conferred on Nirupama Bargohain at a function at the India Islamic Cultural Centre, New Delhi, on March 17, 2016.

Borgohain is credited with creating a gallery of bold, passionate and often resilient women protagonists in her 40-odd novels as also in numerous short stories.

The LMAAGS was initiated by Population First - an NGO with a communication and advocacy initiative to help eliminate the falling sex ratio in India's population, sensitise the youth and media to gender issues and improve the quality of health and standard of life of India's rural population with a special focus on women and youth.

Instituted with the support and patronage of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the LMAAGS aims at highlighting, acknowledging and celebrating the special efforts made by various media - at providing gender-just perspectives, portrayals and analyses.
Pakistan Foreign Affairs advisor Sartaj Aziz today discussed the Afghan reconciliation process and "positive developments" in Indo-Pak relationship with US National Security Advisor Susan Rice here.

Rice appreciated the sacrifices made by Pakistan military in its successful endeavours to confront the security challenges posed by terrorist elements, according to a statement issued by the Pakistani Embassy here.

Aziz briefed Rice on the recent positive developments concerning Pakistan's relations with India, the official statement said.

Aziz, the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, reiterated the importance of reconciliation process in Afghanistan, while reassuring that Pakistan would provide the necessary support for an Afghan owned and Afghan led initiative in this regard.

He also stated that improved management of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was key to the ultimate success in efforts to root out the scourge of terrorism in the region, the statement said.

The two leaders reviewed the current state of Pak-US bilateral relations and expressed confidence that strategic partnership between the two countries would further strengthen and deepen in various areas of cooperation.

While recognising the significance of continued high-level engagements between the two countries, Rice said she is looking forward to the visit of the Prime Minister of Pakistan to Washington at the end of March for participation in the Nuclear Security Summit.
The Bihar Legislative Assembly today witnessed a verbal spat between a state minister and the Congress Legislature Party leader, much to the delight of the opposition BJP, which pointed to acrimony between members of the ruling grand secular alliance.

The embarrassing situation for the alliance happened during Question Hour in the Assembly between state Energy Minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav and Congress Legislature Party leader Sadanand Singh.

Singh, a ninth term Congress MLA from Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district, joined the issue with BJP member Sanjay Sarawgi, who had raised a question about absence of chowkidars in gram kachahris (village courts).

The BJP member supported by Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar alleged that despite a state government order, chowkidars were yet to be made available to many village courts.

Thereafter, Bijendra Prasad Yadav intervened in support of Panchayati Raj department minister Kapildeo Kamat and asked members to furnish specific names of panchayats on which the government would act.

The Congress LP leader said it was true that majority of panchayats didn't have chowkidars.

Yadav then asked Singh why was he intervening in a question of another member.

On this Sadanand Singh retorted he would not sit idle if some wrong was happening in the state.

Singh and Yadav came face-to-face for the second time when the former intervened on a question of fellow party legislator Samir Kumar Mahaseth on defective hand pumps in a village in Madhubani district.

To Minor Irrigation department minister Tej Pratap Yadav's assertion that he would look into the complaint, Sadanand Singh sought for alternative arrangements, on which minister Bijendra Yadav again asked the Congress leader as to why he was intervening in other's issues.

The Congress LP leader quipped he would point out if something was wrong in the state government.

Leader of Opposition Prem Kumar and BJP MLAs Binod Kumar Singh and Vijay Sinha were heard pointing towards acrimony among the ruling coalition members.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was not present in the House



at the time when the two ruling coalition members engaged in the spat.

JD(U), RJD and Congress constitute the grand secular alliance in Bihar, which has a strength of 178 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar House.

Sadanand Singh, a veteran Congress leader of the state and former minister, did not find place in the grand secular alliance ministry and was named as Congress Legislature Party leader by party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
The second day of Budget session of Chhattisgarh Assembly witnessed a heated exchange of words between ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress over the issue of sitting position of expelled Congress MLA Amit Jogi.

Soon after Question Hour, Marwahi legislator Amit Jogi, recently expelled by the Pradesh Congress Committee for six years, raised the point of order and sought to know from the chair whether he is the member of the Congress Legislative Party or not.

His sitting position was changed from number 63 to 89 in the current session.

Subsequently, Revenue Minister Prem Prakash Pandey requested the chair to get Jogi's position defined, saying as the MLA himself has raised the issue, the matter should be clarified once and for all.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ajay Chandrakar joined him saying such kind of issue has cropped up for the first time in the House.

"The matter should be explained whether Amit Jogi is still a member of Congress party or not," he said.

"As per the set traditions of Assembly, seats are allocated to the members after taking advice from the leader of Legislative Party.

"The sitting position of Amit Jogi has been changed. If he is not associated with Congress then the Congress legislative party leader cannot suggest his sitting position. That will be the prerogative of the Speaker. Since the confusion prevails, the Congress legislative party leader should clarify the position," he said.

Pandey further said the suggestion given by the CLP leader regarding change of Jogi's sitting position pertains to the breach of privilege of the member who is finding difficulties in discharging his parliamentary duties amid confusion.

Leader of Opposition, T S Singhdeo said he had already clarified that Jogi has been expelled from Congress for six years.

"Although Jogi had appealed to the AICC against his expulsion, the same is pending for final decision. Since no communication has been received from AICC in this direction, the situation stands that Amit Jogi has been expelled from Congress," Singhdeo said.

Pandey asked how the CLP leader can suggest change in Jogi's sitting position if the latter is not a Congress member.

State unit Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel interrupted



saying "as the opposition leader has clarified his stand, now the chair should give its ruling over the issue".

Amid chaos, Jogi said the sitting position doesn't matter for him as he can raise the issues of the people from any corner of the House.

Speaker Gaurishankar Agrawal stated in his ruling that so far as allocation of seats is concerned it is the Speaker's prerogative.

But keeping in view the choices of Leader of the House and Leader of Opposition, their opinions are sought for allocating seating arrangements for their respective legislators. The seating arrangement has been made as per suggestions given by Congress legislative party leader for its members, he stated.

The Speaker added that he will give his ruling on the issue of Amit Jogi's suspension which is under consideration with him.

Jogi, son of former state chief minister Ajit Jogi, was expelled from the primary membership of the Congress in connection with the leaked audio tapes.

The tapes reportedly contain several phone conversations purportedly between Ajit Jogi, Amit and Chief Minister Raman Singh's son-in-law Puneet Gupta, Congress candidate Manturam Pawar and former Jogi loyalists Firoz Siddiqui and Ameen Memon to "fix" the Antagarh bypoll held in 2014.
Delhi unit of BJP today filed a complaint with Delhi Police against AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan accusing him of using "abusive language" against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event last month and demanded action against him.

A delegation of BJP leaders, including party's Delhi chief Satish Upadhyay, met Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar and submitted a copy of the video it obtained from "social media".

When contacted, an AAP spokesperson questioned the veracity of the video. However, Khan defended his alleged remarks saying that he was merely criticising the "anti-Dalit" and "anti-minority" policies of the BJP-led government at the Centre.

After filing the complaint, Upadhyay alleged that the opposition's politics is surviving on a competition of using "abusive" language against the Prime Minister.

He claimed that the Okhla MLA had made the remarks at an event organised by Delhi government's Urdu Akademy last month.

Khan said, "What wrong did I say? I just said that Modi government is against Dalits. I spoke against the policies of the government considering the way it is suppressing the rights and freedom of Dalits, minorities and students and sending them to jail after framing them in false cases."



The delegation, under the leadership of Delhi BJP In-charge Shyam Jaju, demanded legal action against Khan.

Senior police officers said the complaint will be looked into and an investigation taken up to verify the charges against the MLA.

"The BJP leaders met the Commissioner and lodged their complaint. It will be looked into and appropriate action will be taken as per law," Taj Hassan, Special Commissioner (Crime Branch) and chief spokesperson of Delhi Police, said.
BJP Lok Sabha MP Ananthkumar Hegde has landed in trouble with the police registering a criminal case against him suo motu for his alleged remarks linking Islam to terrorism.

The case has been booked at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada district under section 295(A) of IPC relating to "deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs," police said.

The five-time MP from Uttara Kannada had allegedly made the remarks at a press conference at Sirsi last Sunday, drawing a link between Islam and terrorism, triggering protests from Muslim organisations.

Muslim organisations in the communally sensitive Bhatkal town in the district had held protests and submitted a memorandum to the district Superintendent of Police Vamsi Krishna, calling for action against Hegde.

Krishna said security had been tightened in Bhatkal as a precautionary step.

In the neighbouring Dakshina Kannada district also Muslim outfits had sought action.

State Health Minister U T Khader had requested Home Minister G Parameshwara to take suo motu action against Hegde for his "shocking and irresponsible" statement against Islam.
Augmented reality firm Blippar today said it has closed a USD 54 million (about Rs 364.7 crore) funding, led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of Malaysian government.

The Series D investment, which also included follow-on investment from Blippar's existing investors, will support expansion of the company's engineering capabilities and presence in San Francisco.

"2016 is poised to be the biggest year in Blippar's history... This latest funding round will allow us to continue to capture top engineering talent, further grow our leading global install base and create one-of-a-kind campaigns for our brand partners," Blippar co-founder and CEO Ambarish Mitra said.

Blippar has about 60 engineers in its San Francisco and Mountain View offices and a total over 300 employees across 14 global offices.

In addition, the financing will enable Blippar to invest in its user acquisition to drive a habitual behavior, it said.

The company has a global userbase of over 65 million users and partnerships with brands like Nestle, Conde Nast, TIME Inc., Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Universal Pictures, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Disney and Jaguar.

"The company will additionally use the funding to continue growing its presence within the education sector and build on early use-cases to become the default platform for educators seeking to empower classrooms with interactive visual learning experiences," it said.

Blippar had raised USD 45 million in funding last year.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. In general the truce in Syria is holding, excluding separate incidents. As Armenpress reports citing RT, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on March 1.

"By and large the cessation of hostilities is holding, even though we have experienced some incidents," Ban told reporters in Geneva before a meeting of the International Syria Support Group.

"But the task force and all other members of this ISSG are now trying to make sure that this does not spread any further and this cessation of hostilities can continue."

Ahead of the meeting, France demanded information about several incidents reportedly violating the ceasefire.

"All this needs to be verified. France has therefore demanded that the task force charged with overseeing the cessation of hostilities meet without delay," said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.

Russia on Sunday reported several incidents involving rebel-controlled areas. In one case, a large fighting force crossed the Turkish border and attacked a Kurdish town with artillery support from the Turkish side, the report said. The rebels and the Turks denied the report.

Pro-rebel monitors said Russian warplanes conducted several airstrikes in western Syria. Russia insists that it excludes rebel groups that had pledged to hold the ceasefire from its missions.

According to Ban Ki-moon, in the recent days the UN was able to deliver humanitarian aid to 80 thousand people and 140 thousand more will get humanitarian and medical aid in the upcoming 5-6 days.
The government of Bolivian President Evo Morales has gone to court to establish whether a child he fathered out of wedlock is alive or dead, the latest twist in a high-level scandal gripping the Latin American country.

Morales previously acknowledged he had a child with his ex-girlfriend Gabriela Zapata during a two year affair but claims she told him the infant died shortly after birth.

Zapata is now at the center of a corruption scandal shaking his administration, and in a plot worthy of a telenovela, her aunt revealed last week that the child was not dead, but alive and well.

The 56-year-old Morales, through the government and directly, has voiced doubts and is now seeking the final word on the matter through the courts.

"We are absolutely convinced that sadly, the boy has passed away," Defense Minister Reymi Ferreira said Tuesday. He said Morales asked for Zapata's family to prove any claim to the contrary.

"An appeal has been filed with the child magistrate, calling for the child to be produced by the family, privately, within five days," Ferreira added.

He also said damages were being sought "to put to rest any doubt anyone may have, and for it to be seen who is lying."



The 28-year-old Zapata is in jail orders of a prosecutor investigating allegations she used her influence with Morales on behalf of a Chinese engineering group, CAMC, which obtained USD 560 million in government contracts.

She faces charges of money laundering, embezzlement and abuse of influence, prosecutor Edwin Blanco said Sunday.

Zapata, who until recently was a senior manager at CAMC, entered into a relationship with Morales in 2005 when she was 18 years old. Morales said it ended two years later.

A reporter's bombshell disclosure last month of the previously unpublicised relationship set off an investigation into influence peddling just weeks before Bolivia was to vote on whether to change the constitution to allow Morales to run for a fourth term.

The February 21 referendum was the first electoral defeat for Morales, who has been re-elected three times and already is Bolivia's longest serving president.

A congressional committee is investigating the contracts awarded to CAMC, and opposition members of congress have called for Morales and Zapata to testify.

The opposition accuses Morales of favoring Zapata, and insists their relationship lasted at least until 2015, despite Morales' denials.

The president has said their child would now be eight or nine years old, and that he would like to raise the boy if he were alive. Morales has a son and daughter whom he has recognized, from previous relationships.
A Brazilian judge ordered the release today of Facebook's vice president for Latin America, a day after he was arrested for refusing to hand over WhatsApp messages to the police investigating a drugs case.

The judge, Ruy Pinheiro, considered the detention of Diego Dzodan in Sao Paulo on Monday "unlawful coercion," the court in Sergipe state said in a statement.

"It seems to me that the extreme measure of imprisonment was hurried," Pinheiro said.

Facebook, which owns the popular WhatsApp mobile phone messaging tool, denies it has tried to obstruct the police probe.

Dzodan had been arrested on the request of a lower court judge in Sergipe and accused of "repeated non-compliance with court orders" to share Facebook data, federal police said.

"This information was required to produce evidence to be used in an organized crime and drug trafficking investigation," police said.

According to Brazilian media reports, traffickers had been using WhatsApp to discuss their business.

When Facebook refused to comply, Brazilian authorities imposed fines, starting with 50,000 reais (about USD 12,500) daily beginning two months ago, and which rose to 1 million reais (USD 250,000) a month ago, Sergipe federal police told AFP.

US billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's companies slammed Brazil's approach.

"We are disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook," Facebook said in a statement.

"Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."



WhatsApp insisted that it had no technical means for cooperating.

"We are disappointed that law enforcement took this extreme step. WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have," it said in a statement.

It's not the first arm-wrestle between Brazilian justice authorities and Facebook.

In December, a judge ordered the suspension of WhatsApp for 12 hours after it failed to hand over information during another criminal investigation. The stoppage, which provoked widespread anger, was overturned on appeal.

Three years ago, Google was in the firing line. The search engine giant's top Brazil executive was accused of breaking election laws when he refused to remove videos on YouTube that were critical of a mayoral candidate in Mato Grosso do Sul state.

In the United States, Apple is embroiled in its own row with the government over a refusal to cooperate with the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a mass killing by a couple in San Bernardino, California, last year.
The UK government today released a study to warn that Britain would be "weaker" outside the European Union in the event of an exit vote in the June 23 referendum on the country's membership of the 28-nation bloc.

"Britain would be weaker, less safe and worse off outside the EU," the report said.

However, the camp in favour of "Brexit" branded the study a "dodgy dossier" which is resorting to fear tactics as the campaign for the referendum gains momentum in the UK.

There is a growing divide within the UK Cabinet as ministers supporting "Brexit" have been denied access to information prepared by civil servants relating to the EU referendum.

"It is important that the civil service maintains impartiality during the EU referendum," said Priti Patel, the senior-most Indian-origin member of the Cabinet.

UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond at the launch of the study here said: "Some have said we should focus our attention on the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth. But the EU already has or is negotiating trade deals with all the biggest Commonwealth countries.None of our allies wants us to leave the EU - not Australia, not New Zealand, not Canada, not the US."



"In fact, the only country, if the truth is told, that would like us to leave the EU is Russia. That should probably tell us all we need to know," Hammond said.

The report says a credible blueprint was "completely missing" from leave campaign proposals.

It claimed all of the alternative models were too risky to consider and highlighted the fact that Norway and Switzerland, which are not EU members, still had free movement of people - to counter the "Vote Leave" camp's immigration claims.

Iain Duncan Smith, UK work and pensions secretary and one of the ministers part of "Vote Leave" camp, criticised the report's approach - arguing that it was misleading.
The Border Security Force (BSF) today thwarted Pakistani smugglers' attempt to smuggle arms and ammunition into India close to Border Outpost at Metla in Gurdaspur district along the International Border.

At around 5.35 AM troops heard some sound in the field and saw two to three Pakistani smugglers crawling towards the border fence, BSF Commandant Rajpal Singh said.

BSF personnel challenged the smugglers, who opened fire. The troops retaliated but the smugglers managed to escape under the cover of wheat crops and dense fog, he said.

One pistol, a magazine, four live cartridges, a mobile handset, two Pakistani SIM cards and a plastic pipe was recovered from the spot, Singh said.

In view of heightened activities of smugglers along the border, Anil Paliwal Inspector General, BSF Punjab Frontier, has issued operational guidelines to further strengthen vigil along the border, he said.
Union Cabinet was today apprised of the Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) signed with Japan and Russia in the rail sector in December last year.

Chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Cabinet was apprised of MoC signed between Railways and Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), Japan, on cooperation in rail sector on December 11, 2015.

The MoC envisages technical cooperation with Japan for strengthening railway safety, upgradation of signalling and telecommunication system and train control system, mitigation of natural disasters, information sharing for station development and land value capture and for environment friendly sanitation technology in trams among others.

The MoC is valid for a period of three years. Thereafter it will be automatically renewed for a further period of two years, a release here said.

The Cabinet was also told about the MoU signed between Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO) and Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), Japan, on technological cooperation in railway sector on December 11, 2015 and the MoU between Railways and Joint Stock Company, Russian Railways, on technical cooperation in railway sector on December 24, 2015.

The MoU with Russian Railways provides for technical cooperation in the High Speed Rail, modernization of existing lines in order to raise train speeds up to 160-200 kmph, safety related systems based on satellite navigation and digital communication means and heavy haul transportation among others.

The MoU signed between RDSO, India and RTRI, Japan, provides for technical cooperation in the safety in train operation, advanced techniques of maintenance, use of environment friendly technologies among others.

Both MoUs are valid for a period of three years and it may be renewed for a further period of one year at a time with mutual written agreement.
The Cabinet is likely to take a call on the proposal to shut down terminally ill Hindustan Cables by offering a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) to the company's 1,500 employees within a month.

"The note related to closure of Hindustan Cables entailing details of VRS etc., has been sent and if all goes well we should have Cabinet approval within a month's time," a senior Department of Heavy Industry official told PTI.

The Heavy Industry Ministry was given the task of firming up individual proposals entailing VRS related to the central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) falling under it, including Hindustan Cables.

The Cabinet had earlier approved the closure of seven terminally sick public sector units including Hindustan Cables, which incurred a total loss of around Rs 3,139 crore over a period of time.

"We will close down Hindustan Cables after offering an attractive VRS package," Union Minister for Heavy Industry and Public Enterprises Anant Geete had said earlier.

However, reports of revival of the company had surfaced after the Defence Ministry approved its takeover by Ordnance Factory Board. The Board for Reconstruction of Public Sector Enterprises was supposed to take a call on it after taking into account views of all the ministries concerned.

Hindustan Cables, set up in 1952 at Rupnarayanpur (West Bengal), has units in different states.

However, the company's units in West Bengal and Hyderabad, that produced Polythene Insulated Jelly Filled (PIJF) cables, has not been in production since January 2003, as there is no requirement of these cables in BSNL/MTNL.

Similarly, the unit at Naini, Allahabad, producing optical fibre cable, has also become obsolete due to change in the product specification.

The PSUs where closure had earlier been approved are HMT Bearings, Tungabhadra Steel Products, Hindustan Photo Films Manufacturing, HMT Watches, HMT Chinar Watches, Hindustan Cables and Spices Trading Corporation Ltd.
A bill that would enhance compensation for air travellers in case of death, injury, lost baggage or even inordinate delay in flights was passed by the Rajya Sabha today.

The 'Carriage by Air (Amendment) Bill, 2015', was passed by the Upper House with changes. It was cleared by the Lok Sabha in December last year.

Since Rajya Sabha has made changes, the revised bill would again go to the Lower House.

Once the legislation is implemented, Indian airlines would be required to pay compensation amount that is equivalent to the rates paid by their global counterparts.

Piloting the bill in the Rajya Sabha, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said it would bring legislative character to international character with respect to compensation for air passengers.

The legislation would allow the government to revise the liability limits of airlines in line with the Montreal Convention, which was acceded to by India in May 2009.

Earlier, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi sought Deputy Chairman P J Kurien's permission to move the Bill.

Kurien said it was decided that the bill will be passed without discussion.

Jairam Ramesh (Cong) demanded that there should be a discussion. CPI (M) members Sitaram Yechury and T K Rangarajan too said there should be discussion on certain clauses.

Then the government agreed to the demand.

During the discussion, Yechury said the bill should be brought back in amended form so that there is no need to come back to amend it after five years, when the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are revised again.

He also said there is a need to further discuss the definition and intensity of bodily injury and the compensation before inking the convention.

E M Sudarsana Natchiappan (Cong) said bills where the powers of the legislature are transfered to the executive should be first brought to the notice of the House.
US Army General John W "Mick" Nicholson has taken command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, inheriting America's longest war and a vicious insurgency.

Nicholson, 58, took over today from US Army General John F Campbell, who oversaw the end of the international combat mission in 2014 and an escalation in the Taliban's war against Kabul.

In a ceremony at the headquarters of the US-NATO Resolute Support mission in Kabul, Nicholson thanked NATO representatives for standing by the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks on "the homeland."



To the Taliban, he said: "I know you. You have brought only hardship and suffering to the Afghan people."



Nicholson served in Afghanistan three times between 2006 and 2012. He takes command of around 13,000 international troops, including 9,800 Americans.
Asupplementary budgetof Rs 3,180 crorefor financial year 2015-16 was passed with a voice vote in the Chhattisgarh Assembly today.

Chief Minister Raman Singh, who also holds the finance portfolio, presented the third supplementarybudgetfor the current fiscal.

The mainbudgetwas of Rs67,546 crore, and includingthe three supplements, the budget size for the current fiscal has expanded to Rs 74,339 crore, he said.

"Compared to other states, Chhattisgarh's financial management is much better," he claimed.

The third supplementary budget includes Plan expenditure of Rs 1,155 crore and non-Plan expenditure of Rs 2,025 crore.

It includes capital expenditure of Rs 136 crore and revenue expenditure of Rs 2,404crore.

It allocated Rs 80 crore to cooperative banks for the short-term agricultural loan relief scheme, 2015, meant for the drought-affected farmers.

"Under the scheme, the farmers in villages with 50 per cent'anawari'(crop yield) who have repaid 75per centof the loan are being given 25 per cent waiver," he said.

The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna was completely funded by the Union government till recently, but after the change in sharingpatternof Centre-sponsored schemes, the ratio of Centre and state funding was60:40, and provision of Rs 80 crore has been made inthirdsupplementary budget for the scheme, he said.

An Indian Institute of Technology is being established at Sirsa Khurd village of Durg district. Premium and land lease rent for the land will be paid by Durg Municipal Corporation and Rs 17,35,000 has been provisioned in the third supplementary budget for this purpose, he said.

A provision of Rs 1.40 crore has been made for maintenance of jammer devices in the jails of the state, while Rs 24.87 crore has been provided for electricity dues of government departments.
China's official media says one Chinese citizen was killed and three injured in a shooting in Laos, also the scene of a January bombing that claimed Chinese lives.

Xinhua Agency says unknown suspects described as militants opened fire on a temporary work space being used by a Chinese company Monday night in the northern province of Luang Prabang. It says two of the injured Chinese are in serious condition, but gave no other details.

Xinhua's report today said the militants also fired on a passing bus and pickup truck, wounding five Lao nationals.

It wasn't clear whether there was any connection to a January bombing in Laos' remote mountainous province of Xaysomboun in which two Chinese were killed and one injured.

Calls to Lao government offices rang unanswered today.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Foreign Relations Artak Zakaryan sent a congratulatory message on the Day of Diplomat. The Day of Diplomat is celebrated today, on March 2 (the day Armenia became UN member) in Armenia. Armenia lacked deep diplomatic traditions and experience conditioned by historical circumstances, and much had to be started from the beginning. To create a new system from almost nothing under complicated geopolitical conditions when the state was undergoing huge social-political transformations and we resisted the enemy on the front line greatly outnumbering our human and material resources, Zakaryan said.

MP Zakaryan added that despite all the hardships Armenia managed to create a firm system of diplomatic services during years which is currently able to compete with other countries with traditions in diplomacy and foreign relations due to its professional qualities. He congratulated all the diplomats fulfilling their missions wishing them productive work, new initiatives, and success.

I take this chance to underline also the activities of the Armenian Diaspora organizations and individuals who render significant support for pan-Armenian issues in foreign relations, Zakaryan said.
China will start the construction its first floating nuclear power plant that could sail to specific sites and anchor offshore to produce power by the end of this year, officials said.

The reactor, designed to power offshore oil and gas drilling, island development and remote areas, is scheduled to be put into operation in 2019, said China National Nuclear Corporation's (CNNC) board chairman Sun Qin.

The CNNC holds all the intellectual property rights of the floating nuclear reactor, state-run Xinhua agency quoted Sun, a deputy to the National People's Congress as saying, before the opening of the annual legislative session.

Beijing is at loggerheads with neighbours including Japan and the Philippines over territorial rows in the East and South China Seas, and has alarmed rivals with its massive reclamation and construction of facilities on disputed reefs.

Currently, China has 30 nuclear power generating units in operation and another 24 units are under construction, all on land.

China aims to build 30nuclearpower units in countries involved with its Silk Road initiative by 2030, Sun said.

China is building two 1000 megawattsnuclearpower plants inKarachiat a cost of USD 6.5 billion.

More than 70 countries are now planning or are already developing their ownnuclearpower projects, and it is estimated 130 morenuclearpower units will have been built by 2020, Sun said.
China's Dunhuang Academy and Mumbai's KJ Somaiya Centre for Buddhist Studies have signed a MoU for greater collaboration to have a deep insight in the field of Buddhist art and architecture.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed here yesterday in the presence of Consul General of the People's Republic of China in Mumbai, Zheng Xiyuan, who termed it as "one of the most important development" in enhancing the academic and cultural co-operation between the two countries.

The event was jointly organised by the Chinese Consulate, KJ Somaiya Centre for Buddhist Studies and Observer Research Foundation (ORF) Mumbai, which was attended by experts and scholars from China and India.

Addressing the gathering during a discussion held on the occasion, Xiyuan said Buddhist heritage is the bond that unites Indian and Chinese civilisations.

"There are enormous similarities between the caves of Ajanta-Ellora and the caves of Dunhuang. We need to explore the other similarities by pushing up projects of academic cooperation," he said.

Dunhuang established sister-city relations with Aurangabad in May of 2015 when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid an official visit to China, he said.

"Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis also visited our city of historical importance. I believe that these initiatives would definitely strengthen the academic relationship between the two countries," he said.

Dunhuang Academy Director Prof Wang Xudong said the city, located in Gansu Province of China and a rich depository of manuscripts, and Ajanta-Ellora caves have many similarities. The Dunhuang Mogao caves are full of ancient murals while Ajanta and Ellora caves are famous for rock sculpture, and both are deeply influenced by Buddhism.

He said that over 1,500 years ago, China and India were commercially and culturally linked by the ancient silk route, whereby Chinese tea was brought to India while Buddhism began its eastern journey.

Hoping that the MoU would soon become a "memorandum of action", ORF Chairman Sudheendra Kulkarni said, "This initiative would definitely ensure to explore better ways to improve research and protect the ancient caves in China and India through international cooperation and exchanges."



Manjiri Thakoor, deputy curator of Mumbai's National Gallery of Modern Art and noted conservation architect Abha Narain Lambah were among other dignitaries present on the occasion.
Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd (CIBIL) today launched CIBIL iScan to provide banks with comprehensive details of corporate's credit history spread across all financial and credit institutions.

The move is aimed at helping financial institutions in reducing the risk and time taken in opening current accounts by providing them a concise view of all the credit relationships the entity has across other financial institutions.

******



SEI launches Under Floor Air Distribution system in India * Schneider Electric India (SEI) today said it has launched its first B2C product 'Under Floor Air Distribution' (UFAD) system in the country.

"India is one of the most promising markets for us and we are glad to be a part of this major launch. Through...UFAD, a new concept of comfort cooling, Schneider Electric will mark its entry into B2C space, as UFAD is meant for office space and other public utility structures' cooling needs," its GM (Access Floor Business) Alberto Caporali said in a statement.

Schneider Electric plans to start production of UFAD at its Bengaluru unit in June this year. SEI as an organisation has made huge investment in developing state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in India, and with a strong R&D back up it will now start production of UFAD in India, he said.

The UFAD will be developed under new line of manufacturing, which will be under the ETO (engineer-to-order), he said.

***************



MCX conducts commodity awareness programmes in eastern India * To ensure financial inclusion and raise financial literacy level in the eastern region, Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd (MCX) had organised 13 commodity awareness programmes in tier-II and III cities of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Assam.

"We have organised commodity awareness programmes in the tier-II and III cities of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Assam, in February, enabling people to learn the basics of commodity futures market," MCX said in a statement.

HealthQuad's fund raises Rs 65 crore



* Private equity firm HealthQuad today said its healthcare-focused venture capital fund has raised Rs 65 crore.

"HealthQuad announces the first close of its specialist healthcare focused venture capital fund," it said in a statement.

The fund is focused on investing in early stage healthcare companies in India, through a pre-series A/Series A round of funding with ticket size range Rs 1 crore to Rs 15 crore.

The fund investment strategy would be focused on investing in key healthcare sub-sectors namely healthcare delivery services, life sciences, devices and medical technology and health IT.

*********



Gamesa India commissions 58 MW solar projects in Q1 * Renewable Energy firm Gamesa announced commissioning of 58 MW of solar power projects in the first quarter of 2016.

The projects have been commissioned in the states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttarakhand, the company said in a statement today.

It was responsible for engineering and design, supply of inverters, erection and commissioning of the orders comprising of 58 MW of solar power, the company said.

*********



FCB Ulka Interactive bags Vero account



* FCB Ulka Interactive, a division of FCB Ulka Group, today said it has bagged the creative and media duties for Vero, which makes coffee machines.

The account will be managed from the agency's Mumbai office, FCB Ulka said in a statement.

"Post a creative and strategy presentation done by five agencies and two rounds of evaluation, FCB Ulka was finalised as the agency to manage the business," Vero Vice President Priya Gandhi said.

FCB Ulka Interactive's clients include ICICI Bank, Skoda, Amul, Tata Housing and Tata Consultancy Services, among others.

Tata Investment Corp Q1 PAT down 7.28% at Rs 34 cr



* Tata Investment Corporation Ltd today reported 7.28 per cent decline in profit after tax at Rs 33.87 crore for the first quarter ended June 30, 2016.

The company had posted a profit after tax of Rs 36.53 crore in the same period last fiscal, Tata Investment Corporation said in a BSE filing.

Total income during the period under review stood at Rs 46.88 crore as against Rs 48.86 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, down 4 per cent.

Shares of Tata Investment Corporation ended the day at Rs 495.50 apiece, down 1.32 per cent on BSE.

* * * * * *



Himalaya launches HiOwna Momz for expecting mothers * Himalaya Drug Company today launched HiOwna Momz, a nutritional health drink supplement for pregnant and lactating mothers.

"With the launch of HiOwna Momz, Himalaya is targeting 10 per cent of the current share of pregnancy and lactation ethical nutraceutical market, which is valued at approximately Rs 80-90 crore," a company statement issued in Mumbai said.

The ethical nutraceutical market, promoted via doctors, is valued at Rs 743 crore and is growing at 10 per cent.

* * * * * *



ICC plans report on FDI in food retailing, NPA * Indian Chamber of Commerce has decided to prepare a detailed report on retailing of food products in India with a special focus on West Bengal which has a potential in agriculture and food processing.

"We have decided to undertake a study on food retailing in the wake of 100 per cent FDI permitted by the Centre. The study will keep a focus on West Bengal where agricultural strength is high for harness," ICC president Aditya Agarwal said in Kolkata.

Adding further, ICC vice-president Shashwat Goenka said the report will be recommendatory in nature bring forward the issues, potential and recommendations for both state and central government.
A civic police volunteer died, allegedly after being beaten up by another civic police volunteer, at Udaynarayanpur in Howrah district.

Police said Jayanta Santra was declared dead at hospital after allegedly being beaten up his neighbour and another civic volunteer Bappa Mallick last night.

The duo had an argument over digital ration card distribution issue after which a scuffle ensued, police said quoting neighbours.

A case has been started and inquiry was on.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed victories in Georgia and Virginia, while rival Bernie Sanders won his home state of Vermont in Super Tuesday elections on the biggest day of the primary campaign.

Donald Trump won the Republican primary in Georgia, while other races were too close to call.

Clinton and Trump were pressing for sweeping victories that could distance them from their party rivals and move them closer to a November presidential election showdown.

Nominating contests were being held Tuesday in 12 of the 50 US states.

Trump, the brash billionaire and reality TV star, has stunned the Republican political establishment by winning three of the first four contests, seizing on the anxieties of voters angry at Washington and worried about terrorism, immigration and an uncertain economy. Using simple terms, and often coarse language, he has soared to the top of polls with his pledge to "make America great again."



Republican officials, fearing a Trump sweep, have been lashing out at his temperament and command of the issues in the hours before voting began.

"You've got a con man and a bully who is moving forward with great speed to grab the party's mantle to be its standard bearer," Norm Coleman, a former senator who backs Marco Rubio, said. "That's almost incomprehensible."



Clinton, once seen as the all-but-inevitable Democratic nominee, has contended with an unexpectedly strong challenge from Sanders, a senator and self-described democratic socialist. But Clinton, like Trump, had also won three of the first four races, and a landslide victory in South Carolina on Saturday bodes well for prospects in important southern states due to her overwhelming support among black voters.

Candidates are vying to win delegates who will vote for them at the parties' conventions in July. For Republicans, 595 delegates were at stake, nearly half of the 1,237 needed for the nomination. Democrats were allocating 865, delegates more than one-third of the 2,383 needed to become the nominee.

Tuesday's vote was critical for the two leading Republicans vying to be Trump's main challenger: Ted Cruz, a firebrand conservative senator from Texas, and Rubio, a Florida senator who has become the favourite of much of the Republican establishment.

Both senators have launched furious verbal attacks on Trump in recent days, but some in the party establishment fear the anti-Trump campaign has come too late.

Cruz once saw the Southern states that vote Tuesday as his opportunity to stake his claim to the nomination, given their large evangelical Christian populations, only to see Trump pick up a sizable segment of evangelicals. Now the Cruz campaign's future hinges on a victory in his home state of Texas, the biggest prize up for grabs.

Rubio's goal is even more modest. He's seeking to stay competitive in the delegate count and hoping to pull off a win in his home state of Florida on March 15.

Even before the results started flowing in, Trump was calling for Rubio to quit the race if he didn't win anywhere on Tuesday.

"He has to get out," he told Fox News. "He hasn't won anything."



Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson remain in the race, but neither is expected to be a major factor at Super Tuesday.

Republicans spent months largely letting Trump go unchallenged, wrongly assuming that his populist appeal with voters would fizzle. Instead, he's appeared to only grow stronger, winning states and drawing support for some of his most controversial proposals.

In six of the states voting Tuesday, large majorities of Republican voters said they supported a proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United States, an idea championed by Trump.

Republicans fear Trump will damage their prospects of recapturing the White House after Barack Obama's two terms. The worries appeared to grow after Trump briefly refused to disavow the apparent support of a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, during a television interview. Trump later said he had not understood the TV interviewer and he did repudiate Duke.

The disarray among Republicans comes as Clinton, seeking to become America's first female president, has tightened her grip on the Democratic race. She has increasingly turned her attention away from Sanders and on to Trump, casting herself as a civil alternative to the insults and bullying that have consumed the Republican race.

"What we can't let happen is the scapegoating, the flaming, the finger pointing that is going on the Republican side," she told voters in Massachusetts. "It really undermines our fabric as a nation."



Sanders, who has energised young voters with his call for a political revolution, was seeking to stay close to Clinton in the South and pick up victories in other states including Minnesota in addition to Vermont. But he faces tough questions about whether he can rally minorities who are core Democratic voters.

Democrats were voting in 11 states and American Samoa; Republicans were voting in 11 states.
A convict serving life imprisonment allegedly committed suicide in Morigaon District Jail, the police said today.

The prisoner, Liladhar Bordoloi, was found hanging from the hook of the fan in his cell by jail employees this morning, Morigaon Additional Superintendent of Police R K Handique said.

Bordoloi had hanged himself with a rope made from his clothes, he said.

Bordoloi was sentenced to life imprisonment last year for stabbing his wife, Rita Bordoloi, to death in July, 2014.

His body has been sent for post mortem and further investigations were on, Handique added.
A Delhi court today set aside an order forfeiting the surety of Rs 4 lakh furnished by TERI Executive Vice Chairman R K Pachauri, facing sexual harassment allegations by an ex-colleague, for overstaying abroad in violation of travel conditions imposed on him.

Additional Sessions Judge R K Tripathi while giving relief to Pachauri, who was yesterday listed in a charge sheet by Delhi Police in the sexual harassment case, said the former TERI chief "did not appear to be at fault" and had showed bona fide reasons for change in schedule of his trip.

"The organisers of the programme had changed the date due to unavoidable circumstances in which revisionist was invited to receive the award. There appears no fault on the part of revisionist inflouting directions of Metropolitan Magistrate.

"The act of revisionist for extension of his travel by one day was neither willful nor deliberate, but due to the things which were beyond his control," the judge said.

The court said, "The revisionist (Pachauri) had shown bona fide reasons for not returningonFebruary 18, 2016. Prior intimationofhis returnwasgivento court of metropolitan Magistrate. The changeofscheduleoftheAward Ceremonywas beyondcontrol ofrevisionist."



A magisterial court had on February 15 allowed Pachauri to travel to Sharjah to receive Lifetime Achievement Award on February 17 but he moved an application before it seeking extension of his trip by a day saying the ceremony was rescheduled for February 18.

The magisterial court had then forfeited the surety deposited by Pachauri observing that he "unilaterally and deliberately" violated the travel conditions by overstaying in Sharjah by one day, where he had gone to receive a lifetime achievement award.

The sessions court, while allowing the revision petition of Pachauri against the magisterial corut order, relied on documents placed on record by Pachauri's counsel advocate Ashish Dixit showing his client was given the award a day after the scheduled date.

"Intheapplicationmovedonbehalfof revisionist, metropolitan magistrate wasintimatedregardingchangeofdate of arrivalofrevisionist.

"It was submitted that due to change in the schedule of award ceremony,therevisionisthadtoextendhistripby one day and therefore, therewaschangeofonedayofhis return. Dueto changeinthescheduleof award, Pachauri was to return on February 19, 2016instead of February 18," the judge said.

(Reopens LGD 30)



In the revision plea, Pachauri had claimed the order of the magistrate was "contrary to both law and facts of the present case".

The sessions court had on February 22 stayed the order of the magisterial court forfeiting the surety, after Pachauri moved an application seeking the relief.

The Delhi Police had yesterday filed an over 1,400 page charge sheet in which he has been accused of sexually harassing and outraging modesty of a former woman colleague besides stalking and criminally intimidating her with gesture or act intended to insult her modesty.

The charge sheet, which was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Shivani Chauhan has been fixed for consideration on April 23.

On February 13, last year, an FIR was registered against Pachauri and he was granted anticipatory bail in the case on March 21.
The Madras High court has said only government officials would decide on location of offices, especially police stations, and the court could not interfere in the executive jurisdiction.

A division bench of the court's Madurai bench, comprising justices S Manikumar and C T Selvam, dismissed a PIL seeking a direction to government to locate the Pateeswaram Police Station at Ariyapadai Veedu, instead of Sholan Maligai village where government has decided to establish it.

"Officials have decided to set up the police station at Sholan Maligai," the bench said, adding, the court could not stay their decision.

Superintendent of Police and Revenue officials inspected the area and had decided to set up the police station there.

The bench said only the officials would know about the needs of the people, situation, circumstances and problems of a particular area. They assessed them and decided to set up the police station at Sholan Maligai.

The court could not interfere in executive jurisdiction, it said and dismissed the PIL filed by one Loganathan.
A former Chinese Foreign Minister today dismissed suggestions of China holding talks with the Dalai Lama to resolve the long-pending Tibet issue, accusing the spiritual leader of trying to split his homeland.

"Your friend Dalai Lama is not head of a country. He is only a political monk trying to divide his own motherland," Li Zhaoxing, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2003-2007, told a questioner at the Raisina Dialogue.

Li was asked why China was reluctant to talk to the Dalai Lama to resolve the Tibet issue.

Rebuffing the questioner, he further said Tibet had become part of China many centuries ago, adding "you should understand that for a country sovereignty is above everything."



Talks between the Dalai Lama's representatives and Chinese officials, stalled since 2010, have not resumed even after the Nobel laureate said he regarded Tibet as part of China.

Asked at an interactive session why does China block India's attempts at the UN to ban Pakistani terrorists, Li did not give a direct reply but quoted the charter of the world body to say that everyone should work for peace and justice.

"As per Buddhism, one has to be kind to the neighbours and to friends...We hope you (India) will become a good friend of Pakistan and Pakistan will become mutual friend of both China and India," Li said.

Earlier in his address, the former Chinese Foreign Minister said China welcomes participation of all countries in its Silk Route project and quoted the six-decades-old slogan of 'Hindi Chini, Bhai Bhai'.

"As two great developing countries, India and China have the responsibility to promote growth and development of the region," he said, adding regional integration in South Asia has been much slower compared to other regions of the world.

Calling India a "good friend" of China, he said his country wants its neighbours to benefit from its development.
Delhi government has suspended a chief engineer of its Public Works Department (PWD) for allegedly awarding contract to his close relative.

A senior government official said the action was taken after an inquiry.

"Delhi government has placed under suspension a chief engineer of PWD following an inquiry in which the allegation regarding misuse of power in awarding a contract to his close relative was, prima-facie established," the government said in a statement.

It further stated that major penalty proceedings will also be initiated against him.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. The Syrian army captured a terrorist of the notorious Turkish nationalist organization, the Grey Wolves, who had played a role in the killing of one of the pilots of Russia's Su-24 bomber which was downed by Turkey's Air Force on November 24, 2015, Armenpress reports, citing Iranian FARS news agency.

"The captured terrorist was among the first group of militants who arrived at the Su-24 crash scene on November 24, killing one of the pilots and stealing his personal belongings," the Arabic service of Russia Today news channel reported.

Russia's Su-24 bomber with two pilots onboard was shot down by the Turkish Air Force on November 24, 2015.

The crew of the Su-24 bomber managed to eject but one of the pilots, Oleg Peshkov, was killed by gunfire from the ground. The second pilot, Konstantin Murakhtin, was rescued and taken to the Russian air base.

In late December, leader of the Turkish nationalist organization, the Grey Wolves Alparslan Celik claimed responsibility for killing the pilot of the downed Russian bomber.

In an interview with Turkey's Hurriyet newspaper in late December, Celik openly admitted that he had directly taken part in the murder of the Russian pilot. Moscow had repeatedly called on Ankara to find and detain Celik.

Ankara made no moves to detain Celik, Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov said at the time.

"Turkish authorities have taken no steps to detain him (Celik). He appears in TV programs and a number of newspapers have published his interview so Mr. Celik walks freely in Turkey," Karlov told the Rossiya 24 TV.
Demands for an urgent CBI inquiry into the Aircel-Maxis issue was made in the Lok Sabha today, with AIADMK members alleging involvement of Karti Chidambaram, son of former Finance Minister, in the "shady deal" which they claimed had links with the 2G scam.

Participating in a special discussion on the issue, T J Venkatesh (AIADMK) also repeatedly referred to two former DMK Union Ministers and a former Finance Minister in the UPA-II by name but Speaker Sumitra Mahajan disallowed it.

Read more from our special coverage on "AIRCEL-MAXIS CASE" Aircel-Maxis scam investigation at critical stage: Arun Jaitley

Venkatesh regretted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power on the promise of unearthing black money, but his government was doing precious little to bring to book those behind the Aircel-Maxis deal which has "deep roots in the infamous 2G scam, the biggest in independent India".

Amid loud protests from Congrerss and Left members, the debate was taken up with Speaker Sumitra Mahajan saying she had got a notice of BJD leader Bhartruhari Mahtab for a discussion on the matter and she was allowing it.

Congress and Left members were protesting against the immediate taking up of discussion on the Aircel-Maxis issue when the Motion of Thanks for the President for his address was still being debated by the House. Congress members were heard protesting the "match-fixing" between a section of the opposition and the government.

Congress and Left members later staged a walkout when Venkatesh started speaking after Mahtab initiated the debate.

Mahtab claimed that no FIR has been lodged yet in the Aircel-Maxis deal and CBI and ED have not filed chargesheet so far, despite the fact that the money laundering trail in the deal has allegedly spread to 14 countries including British Virgin Islands.

Mahtab, who was interruped sometimes even by TMC's Saugata Roy, wondered whether the BJP and Congress were "doing a match fixing" by ensuring no action in the deal allegedly involving some of the powerful people in the UPA-II.

Speaker earlier allowed the discussion by overruling the points of order raised by Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and TMC's Saugata Roy.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu made a strong pitch for such a debate noting that there were umpteen number of discussions on the Ayodhya issue and those related to Gujarat earlier despite the matters being sub-judice.

Earlier, AIADMK MPs created ruckus in Lok Sabha for the second day today demanding action against former Union Minister P Chidambaram's son Karti on the Aircel-Maxis issue as Speaker Sumitra Mahajan allowed them to raise the matter later in the day.
: Aimed at serving passengers, an hypertension and diabetes booth has been set up at the airport here offering basic tests free of cost.

Airport Director Deepak Shastri inaugurated the booth established by pharmaceutical firm Eris Life Sciences, a press release said.

The booth would provide blood pressure, blood sugar and body-mass index tests free of cost while it would also educate the travellers about the growing incidence of hypertension and diabetes, it said.
On a day it came under severe attack from AIADMK in Lok Sabha on the 2G scam, DMK today slammed its arch rival for not raising issues impacting Tamil Nadu, asking how many times it had stalled Parliament like it was doing now on the Aircel-Maxis issue.

DMK Treasurer M K Stalin claimed the state had not received central funds for important projects including a seawater desalination scheme even as it lacked adequate railway projects, but AIADMK had not highlighted these.

"Attacks on Indian fishermen have become routine. Cauvery Management Board has not been constituted by the Centre so far. (Chief Minister) Jayalalithaa's demand for an ordinance for conduct of (bull-taming sport) Jallikattu has not been heeded to. These are all issues affecting Tamil Nadu.

"They (AIADMK) have not protested for these. The AIADMK MPs have not spoken on these issues. They have never resorted to stalling the Parliament earlier," Stalin said in a statement.

Stalin, whose party came under sharp attack from AIADMK member T G Venkatesh Babu in the Lok Sabha today on the 2G scam, said the people of the state were critical of the AIADMK lawmakers and had raised questions about their performance.

He charged the ruling party with failing Tamil Nadu and said it was trying to "conceal" this by its MPs creating ruckus in Parliament even as the AIADMK government "is on its way out".

"The AIADMK MPs and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa are building castles in the air so that they can show the people that they are performing by stalling both houses of Parliament," he said.

AIADMK had forced adjournments of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha yesterday on the Aircel-Maxis issue, demanding action against former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's son and AICC member Karti Chidambaram on the matter.

Karti had insisted that his business was in compliance with laws.
Shiv Sena today said it won't support destruction of Mumbai's rich forest ecosystem in the name of infrastructure development.

"The proposed metro yard, housing in buffer zone, rail freight line, all through a rich forest ecosystem will destroy Mumbai," Yuva Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray said.

"The Shiv Sena will not support this destruction of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai," he tweeted.

"The SNGP is one of its kind where Mumbai is probably the only city to have such a biodiversity rich forest within our city limits," he said.

"The party is all for sustainable development, but not ecological destruction. Not opposed to (Delhi-Mumbai) corridor, but must be realigned to save forest," he said.

"Once again, all for development. But has to be sustainable. Don't kill Mumbai, don't kill forests in Mumbai and Thane for such projects," he said.

"Destruction of Mumbai won't be allowed by the party. Delhi-Mumbai corridor is from Dadri to Nhava Sheva. Can avoid forest destruction," he said.
In a move aimed at giving further thrust to emission control measures, the Centre has almost finalised the draft norms for the 'end of life' policy that will provide at least 50 per cent rebate in excise duty on new vehicles for buyers who surrender their polluting old ones.

The Voluntary Vehicle Modernisation or the 'end of life' policy will soon be available for stakeholders' comment, suggestions and objections, if any, Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.

"Draft of the Voluntary Vehicle Fleet Modernisation policy is ready and we will be sending it for the Cabinet approval after nod from the Finance Ministry," Gadkari said.

Once the policy is through, it will result in about 40 per cent increase in automobile production, he said and added that it will significantly bring down pollution, which is a major concern.

The Highways Ministry had sought from the Finance Ministry at least 50 per cent rebate in excise duty on purchase of new vehicles by buyers who surrender their old polluting vehicles for scrapping.

On scrapping of old polluting vehicles, the Minister has already said that the government is considering giving financial incentives of up to Rs 1.5 lakh on surrender of over-ten-year-old vehicles to check pollution and address road safety concerns.

The proposed policy will follow government announcement to implement stricter emission norms for vehicles from April 2020 despite the auto industry calling it an "extremely challenging" task to move up to BS-VI fuel specifications, skipping BS-V norms altogether.

The government earlier this year had announced that India will leapfrog to BS VI fuel specifications from April 1, 2020 after Gadkari chaired a high-level meeting here.

Gadkari has said earlier that under the proposed policy, people would get an incentive of up to Rs 30,000 for discarding small vehicles like cars, while total benefits after taking into account tax exemptions could be up to Rs 1.5 lakh for big vehicles like trucks, the minister has said.

The new policy is likely to be valid for over-ten-year- old vehicles across the country.

"We are bringing such a scheme that, for example, if you sell your old vehicle, you will get a certificate which on being produced at the time of new purchase will get you a discount of up to Rs 50,000," Gadkari had said recently.

"For small vehicles like cars, it will be up to Rs 30,000. Besides, there will be exemptions in taxes. Total benefits for big vehicles like trucks will be up to Rs 1.5 lakh," he had said.

The plan is to set up 8-10 industrial units near ports like Kandla which will give certificates for accepting old vehicles and also recycle vehicles from India and abroad, thus giving a boost to employment and economy.
Actress-director Lena Dunham has apologised to Spanish magazine Tentaciones for accusing them of photoshopping her image on their March cover.

The 29-year-old "Girls" creator took to Instagram to clear the confusion.

"Hey Tentaciones- thank you for sending the uncropped image (note to the confused: not unretouched, uncropped!) and for being so good natured about my request for accuracy. I understand that a whole bunch of people approved this photo before it got to you- and why wouldn't they? I look great (sic)," Dunham wrote.

"But it's a weird feeling to see a photo and not know if it's your own body anymore (and I'm pretty sure that will never be my thigh width but I honestly can't tell what's been slimmed and what hasn't.) I'm not blaming anyone (y'know, except society at large.)," the actress wrote, adding that she has a complicated history with retouching.

Dunham had earlier posted that the magazine had done "mad photoshop" on her image.

"But this is not what my body has ever looked like or will ever look like - mad photoshop has been done to this iteration. So if you're into what I do, why not be honest with your readers? Much love, Lena," Dunham had earlier written.
NATO's top commander General Philip Breedlove has warned of a dramatic uptick in attacks along the frontlines of eastern Ukraine, including sniper activity and shelling.

Breedlove, who also heads the US military's Europe Command, yesterday spoke to lawmakers and reporters in Washington to warn of the increase in violence in Ukraine's Donbass region and of Russia's generally aggressive stance.

"In the last week, (there were) over 450 attacks along the line of contact," Breedlove said after speaking to the US ambassador in Ukraine.

"There are several disturbing trends in those attacks, and that is that some of them are now happening in places that were heretofore quiet ... And also that the type and style of the attacks reflect the weapons that were (previously) banned."



The four-star general added that Russia had put "well above" 1,000 pieces of military hardware into Ukraine in the past year including armoured personnel carriers and artillery.

Breedlove's remarks came the same day as three Ukrainian soldiers were reported killed and two wounded when their car hit a mine in the former Soviet republic's pro-Russian separatist east.

A military spokesman in Kiev said another three government troops were wounded in separate exchanges of fire near the front separating rebel-run parts of the industrial Lugansk and Donetsk regions from the rest of Ukraine.
An Egyptian military court has handed down seven death sentences for an April 2015 bombing that killed two army cadets as they waited to board a bus, an army official said.

The blast in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh was one of a spate of attacks that have hit the security forces since the 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Most have been in the Sinai Peninsula, but some have been in Cairo or the delta to its north.

The court in second city Alexandria also sentenced five people to life in prison, which in Egypt means 25 years, the army official said.

It sentenced two defendants to 15 years, and four to three years.

The defendants have the right of appeal to the Court of Cassation.

Three of those sentenced to death were tried in absentia.

Police have detained or killed scores of suspected militants in Cairo and the delta, although the security forces continue to face frequent attack in the Sinai, stronghold of jihadists loyal to the Islamic Strate group.

The jihadists say their attacks are in retaliation for a government crackdown targeting Morsi's supporters that has left hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.

Morsi himself and hundreds of his followers have been handed death sentences, many of them in speedy mass trials that have been condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups.

Some have been overturned by the Court of Cassation on appeal.
Elaborate security arrangements have been made for polling to the 28 seats of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council (Local Bodies Constituency) which would be held tomorrow.

Elaborate arrangements have been made by the Election Commission for the polling, which would from 8 am till 4 pm.

Of the total 35 seats for which the notification was issued on February 8 by EC, in seven seats candidates were declared unopposed. The elections for remaining 28 seats in 57 districts would be held tomorrow.

A total of 105 candidates are in fray and their fate would be decided by about one lakh voters, UP Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Arun Singhal had said, adding that 729 polling stations have been set for the purpose.

With a view to ensure free and fair elections, Central Para Military Forces would be deployed in sensitive polling centres, which are about half of the total number.

"External observes have been deployed on all 28 seats and to check use of money and muscle power, 11 expenditure observer have also been deployed," he said.
: An elderly couple were killed on the spot when the two wheeler they were riding was hit by a car at Kondalampatty area in Namakkal district today.

Police said the couple, aged in their 60's, had visited their daughter's house at Elampillai and were returning home on their two wheeler when the car hit their two wheeler



The car was coming from Coimbatore to this city.

The car driver fled the spot and police have launched a search to nab him.

Meanwhile members of the public blocked vehicular traffic protesting against a path not being made to provide safe passage to cross the road.

City police commissioner Smith Charan and other police officials visited the spot and assured them that suitable steps would be taken, after which they dispersed.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. On March 2, in accordance with the arrangement reached with the authorities of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, the OSCE Mission conducted a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan in the Askeran direction.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of NKR MFA, from the positions of the NKR Defense Army, the monitoring was conducted by Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk and his Field Assistants Jiri Aberle (Czech Republic) and Yevgeny Sharov (Ukraine). From the opposite side of the Line of Contact, the monitoring was conducted by Field Assistant of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Khristo Khristov (Bulgaria), as well as by Personal Assistant to the Personal Representative of the CiO Simon Tiller (Great Britain) and staff member of the Office Peter Svedberg (Sweden).

The monitoring passed in accordance with the agreed schedule. No violation of the cease-fire regime was registered. From the Karabakh side, the monitoring mission was accompanied by representatives of the NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense.
Total import of electronics goods grew over 15 per cent to reach an estimated Rs 2,25,600 crore in 2014-15 over the previous fiscal, Parliament was informed today.

"The total import of electronics goods during 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 (estimated) as per the figures of Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCIS) was Rs 1,79,000 crore, Rs 1,95,900 crore and Rs 2,25,600 crore, respectively," Minister of Communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He added that the total production of electronic goods based on figures provided by the respective Electronics Industry Associations was Rs 1,64,172 crore, Rs 1,80,454 crore and Rs 1,90,366 crore during 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 (estimated), respectively.

"The comparison of total production with import of electronic goods suggests that the indigenous production of electronic goods is not sufficient to meet the domestic demand," he added.

The minister said the government has taken steps to promote domestic research and development of electronic products in the country.

An electronics development fund (EDF) has been set up as a 'Fund of Funds' to participate in professionally-managed 'Daughter Funds', which in turn will provide risk capital to companies in developing new technologies in electronics, nano-electronics and IT.

"The EDF will also help attract venture funds, angel funds and seed funds towards R&D and innovation in the specified areas. It will help create a battery of daughter funds and fund managers who will be seeking good start-ups (potential winners) and selecting them based on professional considerations," he said.

The government has appointed CANBANK Venture Capital Funds (CVCFL) as fund manager of the EDF.

The National Centre for Flexible Electronics (NCFlexE) at IIT Kanpur, the National Centre for Excellence in Technology for Internal Security (NCETIS) at IIT Bombay and the Centre for Excellence for Internet of Things at NASSCOM Bengaluru have been launched to promote Electronics System Design and Manufacturing (ESDM) in the country and develop national capability in ESDM, Prasad said.

The government also provides financial incentives to offset disability and attract investments in the electronics hardware manufacturing under its modified special incentive package scheme (M-SIPS).

"So, far 179 proposals with investment value of Rs 1,20,294 crore have been received under M-SIPS. Out of the total proposals received, 70 proposals with investment value of Rs 17,756 crore have been approved/recommended till date," Prasad added.
Citing the infamous Kingfisher Airlines loan default case, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said there is an urgent need to ensure that the money lent by banks is put to productive use instead of helping fraudulent promoters get richer.

"In the case of Kingfisher Airlines, we could see that the company is going to the dogs...The company is getting poorer, the banks are getting poorer but those who own the company are getting richer," Fadnavis said at the inaugural event of the seventh conference of CBI and Indian Banks' Association here.

He said this money should be ploughed back for productive use, failing which the "financial flexibility of the banks will come into stress".

He also said there should be a proper framework to ensure that situations like Kingfisher are dealt with quickly and public and investors' money is put to better use.

The grounded KFA owes a consortium of 17 banks led by SBI over Rs 7,000 crore in what was described as "fraud" by CBI Director Anil Sinha earlier in the day.

Drawing from his interactions with India Inc, Fadnavis said businessmen feel the financial flexibility in the country is not commensurate with the growth aspirations.

"The economy is in a catch-22 situation. There are lots of opportunities, but the money is blocked in frauds," he said.

Financial irregularities are not a stigma and there is a need to confront them rather than pushing them under the carpet, he said.

While dealing with financial frauds, the strategy should not only be to arrest the person but also recover the money, he said.

Fadnavis warned that while global investors are interested in India, they look at the "entire framework", including enforcement of laws, while making the decision to invest in the country.

Stressing the need to acquire the capacity to handle financial crimes, Fadnavis said emerging trends in cyber crimes should be studied very seriously.

The role of consultants is also very important and we need professionals who do the work by adhering to laws rather than those who get things done, he said.
The ESIC Medical College at Ner Chowk in Mandi district would be made functional soon but the Union government has to take the final call, Himchal Pradesh Health Minister Kaul Thakur informed the Vidhan Sabha today.

Replying to a question by BJP members, Gulab Singh Thakur Jai Ram Thakur, he said that the state government wanted to take over the ESIC medical college in at Ner Chowk, Mandi and make it functional as early as possible.

The minister said the medical college in Mandi was announced by the UPA government in the in 2007, but the BJP government had withdrawn the notification.

He said later there was hunger strike in Mandi and the issue was taken up again with the Centre.

"The Labour ministry then had announced 12 ESIC medical colleges in the country, out of which one was allotted to Mandi," he said adding the building was inaugurated on March 5, 2014, just before the Parliament polls were announced and the MCI team had also inspected the building and pointed out some gaps.

Later, the NDA government came to power and decided not to go ahead with the ESIC colleges.

The Labour ministry had already spent Rs 765 Crore on the building and the state government is ready to take over the college now, but the issue is stuck on payment of ten per cent interest amounting Rs 285 crore but the government wants the interest to be waived off.

He said the government would immediately approach the MCI for its nod to start classes.

Leader of opposition, Prem Kumar Dhumal and BJP members, Rajiv Bindal and Jai Ram Thakur, however, said the Congress government had played politics on the college and got it inaugurated by the then Labour minister, Oscar Fernandes on the eve of elections only to claim credit.
Former Guantanamo prison chief Geoffrey Miller has failed to appear before a French court despite summons over accusations of torture by two ex-detainees, lawyers said.

Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, both French citizens, were arrested by US forces in Afghanistan before being transferred to the notorious prison set up in Guantanamo Bay to hold terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks.

They were held there from the end of 2001 until 2004 and 2005 respectively, before being sent home.

A French probe into their case began after they filed a complaint in court.

Miller's no-show is "a dual act of contempt against the French judiciary; he both refused to appear and to provide any explanation about his role and that of the US administration," the detainees' lawyer William Bourdon said yesterday.

"There is practically no hope of any real legal proceedings taking place in France -- that is with American military officers present," said Philippe Meilhac, lawyer of ex-Guantanamo detainee Khaled Ben Mustapha.

Despite promises by US President Barack Obama to close the prison, which is located in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay -- an area on the east of the island under US control since a treaty signed in 1903 -- it remains open and still houses detainees without charge.

In an expert report submitted to a French judge last year, lawyers for Sassi and Benchellali accused Miller of "an authorised and systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of any detainee."



Miller, who was commander of the prison from 2002 to 2004 and is now retired, "bears individual criminal responsibility for the war crimes and acts of torture inflicted on detainees in US custody at Guantanamo," according to the report.
Jewellers across Tamil Nadu and neighbouring Puducherry today commenced a three-day shut down protesting the one per cent excise duty on jewellery proposed in the Union budget 2016-17.

"Around 36,0000 traders in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have shut shops as part of the protest. Around 12 lakh people are employed in this sector. This one per cent levy as excise duty will further affect the industry", Madras Jewellers and Diamond Merchants' Association President Jayanthilal Challani told reporters here.

"We will be deciding our further course of action in few days," he said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while presenting the budget for 2016-17 said the government proposes to levy one per cent excise duty on jewellery without input credit or 12.5 per cent with input tax credit on articles of jewellery excluding silver jewellery other than studded with diamonds and other precious stones.

All India Gem and Jewellery Trade Federation, Zonal Chairman N Anantha Padmanabhan said the central government's proposal was a big disappointment for the traders and would be further intensifying the protest.

"It is a big disappointment for us. We were expecting that the condition of providing PAN Card for purchase of jewels worth Rs two lakh pan card to go above Rs five lakh.

But it did not happen. We will be meeting government officials in Delhi to express our views shortly" he said.

On an average, jewellery shops in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry handles business of 800-1000 kilos of gold every day, he said.

(REOPENS MES2)



A report from Coimbatore said more than 1,000 jewelleries remained closed in the region.

About 625 shops were closed in Coimbatore, while nearly 200 shops in Tirupur and 500 in Nilgiris District downed their shutters, police said.

Coimbatore Gold Jewellery Manufacturers' Association President Muthu Venkataram said the levy will adversely affect the industry and the association was appealing to the Centre to withdraw the proposal considering huge workforce depending on the gold business.

(REOPENS SRG21)



In Madurai, hundreds of jewellery shops remained closed, protesting the excise duty levy.

The Terku Avani Moola Street in this city, dotted with jewellery shops, wore a deserted look in view of the protest.

The jewellers are also demanding government should not insist onproduction of PAN card by customers when they purchased gold for more than Rs.Two lakh.
A 36-year-old farmer was today injured in an attack by a leopard in Yeola taluka of the district, police said.

The victim, identified as Anwar Nursab Chopdar, had gone to his field in Vadgaon-Shivar for some work yesterday, when he was attacked by the leopard, police said.

Hearing his cries, villagers came to his rescue, following which the feline ran away, they said.

The farmer was undergoing treatment at Yeola government hospital, police said.
Finance Ministry and the Reserve Bank of India will hold a meeting later this month to take a call on the government's borrowing calender for the next fiscal in a manner that would be non-disruptive.

The government plans to do a net borrowing of Rs 4.2 lakh crore during 2016-17 to meet its expenses.

"We will have a meeting in the middle of March. The (borrowing) calender would be designed in such a manner that it is non-disruptive," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das told PTI in an interview.

It may happen between March 15-20, he said, adding exact date is yet to be decided.

When asked if it would be front-loaded to avoid crowding out private sector investment, he said, that will be decided by the committee. RBI makes analysis, our middle office makes an analysis. At that time we will take a view.

As per the Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley earlier this week, the government intends to borrow Rs 4.2 lakh crore from the market in 2016-17, down from Rs 4.4 lakh crore in the current fiscal.

The budgeted target for borrowing in current fiscal was Rs 4.5 lakh crore, but the government will raise only Rs 4.4 lakh crore from markets.

However, gross borrowing has been pegged at Rs 6 lakh crore up for 2016-17 up from Rs 5.8 lakh crore in the ongoing fiscal.

Gross borrowing includes repayments of past loans and interests.

Repayment for past loans for the next fiscal has been pegged at 1.8 lakh crore.

Fiscal deficit is the difference between Revenue receipts plus Non-debt Capital Receipts and the total expenditure. This indicates the total borrowing requirements of the government from all sources.
Religious leader-poet and former Madhya Pradesh minister Pawan Diwan died today at the age of 71.

Chhattisgarh Governor Balramji Das Tandon and Chief Minister Raman Singh condoled his death here.

Diwan passed away at Gurgaon-based Medanta Hospital this morning where he was being treated for brain hemorrhage.

"Saint Diwan had dedicated his life to serve people. He was a sensitive poet and a humanitarian personality. He walked the path of spirituality and guided others towards the light. His contribution to Chhattisgarh is unforgettable," Tandon said.

Singh said Diwan's "sudden death has created a vacuum in the spiritual and cultural fields" and he had contributed a lot to the creation of Chhattisgarh state.

Through his poems in Hindi and Chhattisgarhi he expressed his emotions for the humanity at large and educated the masses about the need for separate Chhattisgarh state, Singh said, adding that Diwan spread "Bharatiya" culture among the masses through his preachings on Ramayan and Bhagawat.

The Chhattisgarh Assembly also paid a tribute to Diwan.

Chief Minister Singh, Deputy Speaker Badrinath Diwan, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ajay Chandrakar, Leader of Opposition T S Singhdeo, state Congress chief Bhupesh Baghel and others paid tributes to Diwan.

His body was brought here by a special chartered flight from New Delhi and the final rites will be performed tomorrow at Rajim town with full state honours, official sources said.

Diwan was born on January 1, 1945 at village Kirwai in (the then) Rajim district. He was well-versed in Sanskrit, Hindi and English, and had been a minister in the undivided Madhya Pradesh from 1977 to 1989, apart from being an MP two times.
Four persons were injured in a clash over land between two families at Chapali in North 24-Parganas today, a police official said.

Both sides used lathis reulting in the injuries to the four, the official said adding that several houses were also damaged in the clash.

The injured were first rushed to Meenakha Rural hospital from where they were referred tp Chhitaranjan National Medical college hospital in Kolkata, the official said.

Two poersons have been detained, Police said.
State gas utility India Ltd has again postponed its $7-billion tender for hiring nine newly-built ships to ferry liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US, by one month.

Bids for the tender, which was re-floated in September, were to close on February 29, but the last date of bidding has now been postponed to March 31.

"The postponement has been done at the request of bidders to allow them time to finalise their bids," Chairman and Managing Director B C Tripathi said here. "There are no changes in tender conditions," he added.

is seeking nine LNG ships of cargo capacity of 1,50,000-1,80,000 cubic metres to help transport LNG. It has tied up from Sabine Pass and Cove Point LNG projects in the US, with supplies slated to start from December 2017.

Bids were originally to close on December 17, but were postponed to February 29 to allow Indian shipyards to tie up technology for building the specialised vessels.

GAIL is seeking quotes in three lots of three ships each. One ship in each lot is to be built at an Indian shipyard.

After postponing the deadline thrice, GAIL had in February last year scrapped the tender to hire nine LNG carriers to ferry gas from the US, with a caveat that three of them be made in India. At that point, no foreign shipyard was willing to share LNG ship-building technology.

Negotiations that followed saw Cochin Shipyard strike a deal with Samsung Heavy Industries to cooperate in construction of the vessels. It has also been licensed by GTT of France to build LNG carriers with the 'Mark III membrane containment system'.

However, L&T Shipbuilding, which had a deal with Hyundai Heavy Industries, has pulled out of the bidding as it turns its focus to defence projects.

Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering has teamed up with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering of South Korea for ship-building.

The tender was re-floated on September 15, 2015.

Sources said while two ships will be built at the shipyards of their foreign collaborators, one carrier has to be built in India. Other Indian shipyards are looking at a similar tie-up for the same.

The tender document provides for Indian shipyards taking 5-13% in the LNG carrier that it will build. This condition was missing in the original tender floated last year.

Also, GAIL has a right to take up to 10% equity stake in any or all of the nine ships. The Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), which is to operate the carriers, will have a right to 26% interest, according to the document.

GAIL and SCI had last year signed an agreement wherein the state-owned shipping company has the step-in right to take at least a 26% stake in each of the nine LNG carriers hired by GAIL.

GAIL plans to time charter, or hire, the carriers for 18 years from fleet owners without directly ordering the vessels at shipyards. Overseas shipyards have been given time till May 31, 2019 to deliver their ships while those built at Indian shipyards are to be delivered between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, the tender document said.

All carriers will be operated by the SCI.

GAIL has tied up 5.8 million tonnes per annum of LNG from the US which the newly built ships will ferry.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Founder of Union of Dersim Armenians Mihran Savior and his wife Karin Gyultekin plan to move and settle in Armenia. Tor the purpose, they will apply for Armenian citizenship today, on March 2.

In an interview with Armenpress Karin, who was baptized in Germany 3 years ago and converted to Christianity, explained their reasons to make such a decision. We live in a country where we were massacred, forced to accept a religion that is alien for us. We do not wish to live in Turkey. After this interview I and Mihran will apply for citizenship, she said.

Karin told how they were continuously targeted in Turkey. Even when they were still Muslims, everybody pointed at them saying Look, she is Armenian. After being baptized she had to relinquish her job in a restaurant where she used to work for 15 years as they said they are not going to eat from the hands of a gavur (non-Muslim). What is the difference? You are Muslim and I am Christian. I do not want to live an enforced life. I want to be saved from all these, Karin mentioned with great anxiety.

Karin and Mihran have two sons who hail the decision of their parents to move to Armenia. Both of my sons are baptized. One of them now studies in Germany and the other one is a journalist. Both call me and often say mother, do what you want, do not be afraid. I finally made up my mind to do that, Karin said.

The day before she, accompanied by her family members, visited Armenian Genocide memorial complex and museum. It was difficult for Karin to speak, saying, it is impossible to display the grief or talk about it. Of course, we knew about the genocide, we had read and seen much. My mother used to tell about the massacres The grief cannot be forgotten. It is the only thing that cannot be swiped away from ones memory.

Though Karin has not yet decided what she will do after moving to Armenia, but she confidently says, I am a hard working woman, I will do any job, and added with a smile, I will come for sure.
Soon couples in India could marry at sea on luxury cruises that the government wants to facilitate at locations like Goa, Mumbai and Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.

The couples who can afford such luxury need not go to Sydney Harbour for a gala wedding as government is facilitating such services here and such weddings could easily accommodate about 4,000 people, Gadkari said.

He also said that the shipping ministry has sought the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's (DGCA) approval for operating 25 sea planes by an investor.

The proposal for seaplanes is at final stages and once through, at least 25 seaplanes could be seen in India in the first leg, the Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Minister told reporters here.

"We have received a proposal from an investor to operate 25 seaplanes in India at the first leg. The proposal has been sent to DGCA for approval and once it is through, the services can be started here," Gadkari said.

The minister has been stressing on promoting such ventures in India and had earlier invited global investors to tap the huge potential of sea planes in the country, a move that will boost the tourism sector.

"We are making efforts to encourage seaplanes. A small nation like Maldives has a fleet of 47 sea planes but India despite vast potential has none," the minister said.

Sea planes would boost tourism and the government will facilitate all approvals, he said.

The government's priority is also to develop its 1,300 islands and 218 lighthouses to attract tourists, he said adding it was committed to sustainable development through environment-friendly policies.

Also on the anvil are 2000 waterports across the country as India has 14,000 km of waterfront in 13 coastal areas, he said.

Expressing hope that the bill to convert 111 rivers into waterways will be passed in the current session of Parliament, Gadkari said small waterports would be set up at different locations like 15 waterports which have already been set up on the banks of Brahmaputra in Assam.

He said waterways was the priority area for his government and the major ports had shown exemplary performance this year whether in cargo traffic or revenue earning.

Also on the anvil is two transshipment hubs one at Colachel in Tamil Nadu and the other in Maharashtra at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore, he said,



The minister said there was no dearth of finances and the government has taken several initiatives for ports mechanisation and modernisation.
Government has joined hands with the World Bank to upgrade 400 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) across the country, Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

Skill Development Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy said the collaboration with the World Bank under the Vocational Training Improvement Project (VTIP) was for upgradation of 400 government ITIs in 34 states and union territories.

"The fund sharing under the project is in the ratio of 75:25 (90:10 for Northeastern States) between the central and state governments with the World Bank assistance of $280 million," he said during Question Hour.

Rudy said additionally, an amount of Rs 2-3.5 crore was allocated under VTIP for improvement of ITIs on the basis of the Institutional Development Plan submitted by the ITIs.

During implementation of the project, funds were also reallocated between ITIs within overall allocation to respective states.

"Besides, additional fund of Rs 1 crore to Rs 1.5 crore has also been allocated to the project ITIs based on their action plan. Under the project Rs 1,739 crore has been allocated to the states/union territories against which Rs 1,486 crore has been utilised till December 2015," he said.

The Minister said to associate industry sector under the project, Institute Management Committee has been constituted at ITI level with the chairmanship from the industry.

Rudy said there are two other projects which have been approved by the screening committee of Department of Economic Affairs for assistance from the World Bank.

"Skill Training for Employability Leveraging Public Private Partnership with the proposed assistance of $One billion from World Bank and skill strengthening for industries value enhancement with an estimated cost of $537.50 million to be shared by World Bank and the government on 50:50 basis," he said.
Gujarat Health Minister Nitin Patel today tendered an apology in the state Assembly for his "objectionable and inappropriate" remarks made against a woman MLA of opposition Congress.

Patel apologised to Congress MLA Kamini Rathod saying that whatever he said yesterday was objectionable and inappropriate, especially as he holds a senior position in the government.

"Though the issue was settled yesterday after the Speaker's intervention, I decided to tender my unconditional apology on the whole issue today, as I felt that my comments towards Rathod were objectionable and not appropriate," Patel told the Assembly.

The Minister also said he should not have used such harsh and unnecessary language against the woman legislator.

"Rathod is woman and a first-time MLA, whereas it is my fifth term as MLA and I am also a senior minister. Therefore, I have a greater responsibility. Though no one has sought my apology, I express my sincere apology over the whole issue before the House," said Patel.

Rathod, who represents Dehgam constituency, while speaking on the motion of thanks on Governor's address yesterday, had alleged that BJP government in the state had incurred "unnecessary" expenditure by organising DGPs and IGs meet in Dhordo of Rann of Kutch, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present.

This had led to a war of words between Patel and Rathod and the minister said that if he exposed what was going on in her constituency and her house, she would not even come to the Assembly.

However, terming it as an open 'threat' to a woman MLA, other Congress legislators staged protests in the House demanding apology from the minister. The Congress legislators were suspended from the morning session of the Assembly yesterday for creating ruckus.

The issue was later resolved after both the leaders withdrew their statements, which were eventually deleted from the official records.
Gulf monarchies today declared Lebanon's Hezbollah a "terrorist" group, in the latest regional move against the Shiite organisation fighting in support of Syria's regime.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council took the action against Hezbollah members because of "hostile actions of the militia who recruit the young people (of the Gulf) for terrorist acts," GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said in a statement.

Gulf nations have taken a series of measures against Hezbollah since Saudi Arabia last month halted a USD 3 billion programme funding French military supplies to Beirut.

Hezbollah is backed by Saudi Arabia's regional Shiite rival Iran, with whom relations have worsened this year. The two are on opposing sides in conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

Announcing the military funding cut last month, a Saudi official said the kingdom had noticed "hostile Lebanese positions resulting from the stranglehold of Hezbollah on the state".

Riyadh would be conducting "a comprehensive review of its relations with the Lebanese republic", the unnamed official said.

He specifically cited Lebanon's refusal to join the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in condemning attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran in January.

Riyadh cut diplomatic ties with Tehran after demonstrators burned its embassy and a consulate following the Saudi execution of a prominent Shiite cleric.

The Sunni-dominated GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The first 'Happening Haryana Global Investors Summit-2016' here will see the participation of 12 countries on March 7 and 8.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said entrepreneurs had assured him of their keenness in investing in the state.

The event is being organised by the Haryana government in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Khattar said China, Czech Republic, Japan, Republic of Malawi, Mauritius, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Republic of Peru, Republic of Poland, Spain, the UK and the Tunisian Republic will participate as partner countries.

Earlier, addressing the media persons, Industries Minister Abhimanyu said that Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would inaugurate the two-day event.

He said that more than 800 entrepreneurs from India and other countries would participate in the summit on the first day, adding representatives of 140 foreign companies and Ambassadors and High Commissioners of different countries would also take part.
Haryana Government today launched online services for grievances redressal and one-time Dispute Settlement Mechanism for settling long pending issues related to industries.

Haryana Chief MinisterManohar Lal launched the portal here ahead of 'Happening Haryana Global Investors Summit' to be held on March 7 and 8.

The Grievance Redressal System will be functional through e-biz portal



"http://www.Investharyana.Nic.In"www.Investharyana.Nic.In.

Elaborating the way in which the on-line grievances redressal system for existing industrial units, Principal Secretary of Industries department Devender Singh said that the Haryana Government has constituted the 'Three-Tier Grievance Redressal System' (District Level Grievances Committee, State Level Grievances Committee, Apex Level Grievances Committee) specially for existing industrial units in the State to resolve their issues related to the various departments in respect of functioning of the Industrial units.

In order to settle the long standing disputes/ litigations of existing industrial units exceeding more than one year pertaining to various departments pending at the level of Arbitrators, Tribunal and Courts, a Dispute Settlement Committee has been constituted.
Authorities in Los Angeles have filed hate crime charges against a man who brutally assaulted a Sikh bus driver and called him a "terrorist" and "suicide bomber" during the attack last November.

Balwinder Jit Singh had sustained serious injuries during the November 6 assault and was taken to a hospital with a disfigured face and infection in his eye that required weeks of recovery.

The Inglewood District Attorney's Office filed a hate crime charge yesterday against KC Tard, who brutally attacked Singh and had called him "terrorist" and "suicide bomber." Tard also accused Singh of hijacking the bus while he was viciously assaulting him.

Advocacy group the Sikh Coalition said in a statement that the local police had initially failed to take into account the hateful slurs used against Singh, instead classifying the crime as a simple misdemeanour assault. In January, the Sikh Coalition's legal team intervened and urged the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to investigate the case as a hate crime. The Inglewood District Attorney's Office filed a felony count of Battery on Transit Personnel with a Felony Hate Crime enhancement against Tard.

"I was attacked because of my Sikh religious appearance and I'm grateful that authorities re-examined my case and finally brought hate crime charges against the assailant," Singh said. "Acknowledging hatred when it occurs is the necessary first step for combating the problem."



The rights group said in recent months, as hateful political rhetoric has ramped up, it has witnessed a dramatic increase in hate crimes and backlash directed towards the Sikh community.

"The Sikh turban stands for justice and equality," said the Sikh Coalition's Senior Staff Attorney, Gurjot Kaur. "It should be celebrated, not feared, and we will continue to educate law enforcement agencies and Americans alike on the necessary steps required to combat the problem of hate in our country."



The Sikh Coalition was joined in support by nine other civil rights organisations, led by the LA chapter of Asian Americans Advancing Justice who had underscored the importance of charging this case as a hate crime.

"The decision by the District Attorney's Office to include a hate crime enhancement charge in Singh's case helps to send a strong message that targeting individuals by race or religion will not be tolerated," said Karin Wang, Vice-President of Programs and Communications for Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA.
Acknowledging that there was a "significant change" in its policy to act against terror groups without discrimination, has said it hopes the US would now consider it an "ally from heaven" and not from hell, as described in a recent book by an ex-CIA chief.

"After my government came in 2013 there has been a significant change in our policy. We are now moving against all terrorists without any discrimination. And I hope that we would qualify to be an ally (of US) from heaven," Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told a Washington audience.

Aziz's remarks during his interaction at the Council on Foreign Relations came in response to a question in which his attention was drawn to a recently-released book written by a former CIA chief in which was described as "an ally from the hell".

"There was a big divide in our thinking after 9/11 because the US suddenly changed sides from those people who they trained to fight the Russians. From holy warrior they suddenly became terrorists," Aziz said.

He conceded that from 2002 till 2012-13, there was a perception that was on one hand participating in the war against terrorism and on the other supporting some of these groups.

But, this perception and the narrative being sold in the West was not correct, Aziz said, claiming that Pakistan had arrested and handed over some 600 Al-Qaeda terrorists to the US during the same time.

"That time we were fully co-operating. At that time there was question mark on some of the groups. And that's the time when these kinds of perception came in," Aziz said. "But in my view they are out of date," he added.

"Now there has been a significant change in our policy," Aziz said.

In his latest book "Playing to the Edge", Michael Hayden, the former CIA Director and also head of Director of National Intelligence, expresses his deep frustration of the "duplicity" of the Pakistani leadership when it came to taking action against terrorist group in particular Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT and the Haqqani network.

Arguing that the Pakistani Army is built to fight against India and not terrorists, the country's top leadership particularly those from its military in the past one decade have repeatedly expressed its inability to take on the terrorist groups in the tribal regions as desired by the US, he wrote.

Narrating an incidence when the then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf refused to fill up gas in the airplane that flew him to Islamabad, where he had gone to press him to take action against terrorists Hayden wrote: "One more bit of evidence that these guys really were the ally from hell." The crew had forgotten their government credit card- you can't make this stuff up- and the Pakistanis wouldn't budge, he wrote.
The Madras High Court today commuted the death sentence awarded to an accused in a triple murder case to life imprisonment, observing that it did not fall in the "rarest of rare category."



A division bench, comprising Justice M Jaichandren and Justice S Nagamuthu, in its order, said that prosecution has failed to prove the motive for a multiple murder and modified a lower court's order of death sentence to that of life term to the accused.

The bench was passing orders on the referred trial by the government against the order of Mahila court Sessions Judge at Coimbatore on March 17 last year and also an appeal filed by the accused Selvam.

Mahila Court Judge M P Subramanian had held the accused guilty of the triple murder over enmity with his previous landlord and awarded two punishments -- one each for the murder of the children, including a 11-month old baby, and life imprisonment for killing the woman.

He was sentenced to another life imprisonment for trespassing into the house. The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 1,000 each for the murders stating that failure to pay it would attract additional six months' rigorous imprisonment. Life sentences would run concurrently, the judge had said.

Selvam was residing in the house of a old woman as a tenant at Ramakrishna Puram in Coimbatore. He had paid an advance amount of Rs.8500 and vacated the house on May 5,2014.

On June 1 of that year when Selvam demanded the advance amount, she said she owed him only Rs 3,200 and that the amount would be returned immediately after a new tenant moved in. Selvam then left the house.

But on the same day evening her daughter Vasthaladevi, and Vasthaladevi's two sons were brutally murdered in the house. Selvam was arrested on June 2.

While confirming the conviction under IPC section 302 for the murder of the children, the bench modified the death sentence to life term of 25 years each which would run concurrently.

It said the accused "is not entitled to any remission and the period of sentence already undergone shall be set off."



The bench rejected the contention of the prosecution that not returning the advance amount was motive for the murder.

"Thus, in our considered view though the prosecution has proved that a sum of Rs.3,200 was due from the landlord that would not constitute a motive for the accused to commit the murders of these three innocent people.
The Delhi High Court today dismissed a plea of an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) seeking a ban or change in the name of the controversial movie 'Aligarh', a film based on the gay AMU professor.

A bench, comprising Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath, rejected the plea saying that "no public interest is involved in this petition so it should be dismissed at the threshold itself."



"This is a personal grievance. We do not find a public interest, so we are not inclined to entertain this writ petition," the bench added.

The petition, filed by a Delhi-based lawyer Mohammad Ahsan Khan, had stated that the and reviews of the movie, published in print and social media, was lowering the image of AMU and Aligarh City among the residents.

He also argued that contents and name of the movie are not only defamatory to the students who have passed from Aligarh Muslim University but the same hurts feelings of the citizens of Aligarh and therefore the certification granted to the film is assailed.

The latest Bollywood flick directed by Hansal Mehta is based on the life of AMU professor Ramchandra Siras who was suspended from his job because of his sexual orientation. He later died in mysterious circumstances.

'Aligarh', starring Manoj Bajpayee, which released last week, focuses on the plight of the LGBT community.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Moscow airports delayed more than 100 flights due to bad weather conditions. Yerevan-Moscow and Moscow-Yerevan flights were also delayed. As "Armenpress" reports, citing the official website of "Zvartnots" International Airport, the arrival of the plane from Moscow to Yerevan at 14:20 was postponed to 14:39. Another plane was scheduled to arrive from Moscow at 15:15, but was postponed to 15:40.

There are also delays in departures. In particular the Yerevan-Moscow flight scheduled at 16:25 will depart at 16:40.
The Madras High Court today slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on a petitioner for wasting "precious judicial time" on a service dispute between Tamil Nadu government and nursing staff.

The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice MM Sundresh, dismissed the PIL filed by M Shankar, an agriculturalist from Chennai, which criticised the transfer of nurses by the Health and Family Welfare department as per a government order dated November 20, 2007.

The bench said "we have no doubt that the issue pertaining to the implementation of the G.O is nothing but service dispute between the government authorities and the agitating nurses."



"The petitioner knows nothing about the subject and has only reproduced the newspaper report relating to the agitation," the court observed.

The court also said "the petitioner, a passer-by, saw the agitation causing the road block by nurses and found they were disappointed from the transfer counselling conducted by the Director of Medical Education on February 3,2016, as the guidelines have been violated."



Stating that such a PIL was not maintainable and was only regarding a service dispute, the bench said "we cannot let the matter end at this as we find several public interest matters coming up daily, which are nothing but publicity endeavours or motivated."



"The courts' precious time is wasted on these kind of public interest litigations," it said adding "there has to be a value for judicial time and such wastage of court time must invite appropriate costs."



"We thus dismiss the petition with costs of Rs 10,000 to be deposited by the petitioner with the Tamil Nadu Mediation and Conciliation Centre within a period of 15 days from today," it said.
The Delhi High Court today sought response from the Election Commission on a plea demanding cancellation of the registration of Communist Party of India (Marxist).

A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath also issued notice to the EC asking it to take instruction on the plea filed against the poll panel's order, rejecting the demands for deregistration of the political party.

The petition filed before the high court said the EC rejected the application filed before it, without considering the contentions raised in it.

The petition before the poll panel had claimed that the party constitution of CPI(M) does not contain the provision of true allegiance to the Constitution as mandated by the law.

"CPI (M) secured its registration by misrepresentation, fraud and forgery," the petition filed by Jojo Jose, who claimed to be a social worker, said.

He added that the main object of the CPI(M) was unconstitutional and it was formed for an unlawful purpose.
The Hyderabad High Court today asked Telangana government to preserve the bodies of the eight Maoists who were killed by the police in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh yesterday as a human rights organisation has moved the court alleging that the encounter was fake.

Advocate V Raghunath, the lawyer of Telangana Civil Liberties Committee, orally mentioned the matter before a division bench headed by Chief Justice D B Bhosale and sought an order to the state to file a report.

The bench asked him to file a proper petition, scheduling a hearing tomorrow.

It also asked the state government to preserve the bodies.

Eight Maoists, five of them women, were killed in an encounter with Greyhounds, the anti-Naxal force of Telangana police, in a forest in Sukma district yesterday. The area is close to Telangana's Khammam district.
A government employee who was recently arrested here along with his lady companion for allegedly trafficking women, has been in this trade for last four years, Goa Police claimed today.

"Pravin Parab has confessed that he has been trafficking girls for the last four years. We will interrogate him further," Porvorim police Inspector Jivba Dalvi said.

The accused, a pump operator with Goa Water Resources Department, and his partner Sajjiya Khan, were arrested last Saturday under Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (ITA), he said.

Sajjiya, originally from Mumbai, was currently residing with the accused, Dalvi said, adding a team would be sent to Mumbai for a background check.

He said some documents have been seized from the flat where both the accused were staying, the inspector said.

"We have also found an Income Tax certificate from the flat and the department has been requested to furnish more information about it," the inspector said, adding police have also written to the Vigilance Department to initiate inquiry into the assets of Parab.

Three girls, two from Maharashtra and one from Karnataka, were rescued by Porvorim police on Saturday following arrest of the duo.
The Hinduja Group has formally acquired the historic 1,100-room Old War Office building in central London, once occupied by Britain's war-time prime minister Winston Churchill. It will now be restored and re-developed into a five-star hotel and residential apartments.

The heritage building at 57, Whitehall, close to the British Parliament and the Prime Minister's residence, covers 580,000 square feet spread over 7 floors connected by more than three km of corridors.

At a ceremony held on Tuesday, the key of the building was formally handed over to G P Hinduja, co-chairman of the Hinduja group, his brother P P Hinduja, chairman of the Hinduja Group in Europe and their Spanish partner Juan-Miguel Villar-Mir, chairman of the Villar-Mir and OHL Group.

The building, bought for an undisclosed sum, will be restored and redeveloped into a five-star hotel and apartments. Itwill also feature a series of private-function rooms as well as a spa and fitness facility.

The building was sold on a 250-year lease arrangement to the companies following a competitive marketing process, the Defence Ministry had said. The Hindujas, Britain's wealthiest people, acquired the building in partnership with Spanish industrial company Obrascon Huarte Lain Desarrollos (OHLD).

With our Spanish partners, we have a unique vision for the Old War Office - our ambitious plans will give it a new lease of life and add a glittering new jewel to London's crown, G P Hinduja said.

In keeping with the dynamic spirit of London we want to give this building a new lease of life, while remaining conscious of its unique heritage. We have a new vision for the Old War Office and will work meticulously to restore the distinctive and historic fabric of the building and convert it into a distinguished hotel and luxury residences, bringing a further dimension to this prominent Whitehall landmark, P P Hinduja said. Indian High Commissioner to the UK Navtej Singh Sarna, Former National Security Adviser of India were also present at the event and former Governor of West Bengal M K Narayanan, leading NRI hotelier and Chairman of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan UK Joginder Sanger, and Sanjiv Chadha of the State Bank of India who are funding the project, were also present at the occasion.
The Delhi High Court today sought response from Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister on the CBI's plea seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh High Court's interim order restraining the agency from arresting, interrogating or filing a charge sheet against him in a disproportionate assets case.

The agency moved the application before a bench of Justice Pratibha Rani, who issued a notice to Singh and posted the matter for hearing on April 4.

Read more from our special coverage on "VIRBHADRA SINGH" Virbhadra DA case probe held up due to Himachal Pradesh HC order: CBI to Delhi HC

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) P S Patwalia, appearing for CBI, told the bench that the agency is seeking vacation of the Himachal Pradesh HC's interim order of October 1, 2015.

"This application is for vacation of the interim order. A notice may kindly be issued," Patwalia told the bench.

During the hearing on February 25 on Singh's plea seeking quashing of FIR lodged against him and others in the case, the CBI had told the bench that its investigation in the case was "held up" due to the interim order of Himachal Pradesh HC.

In his plea, Singh has claimed that CBI had overstepped its jurisdiction in filing the case and had also questioned how the agency could raid his premises when the case was already pending in the Delhi High Court, as also before the Income Tax Tribunal and other tax authorities, where all documents relating to his returns had been submitted.

CBI had earlier pleaded before the high court that it has jurisdiction to register and investigate the DA case.

The agency had also sought dismissal of Singh's plea to quash the FIR against him, alleging that his prayer was "frivolous and not maintainable".

The arguments on Singh's plea would continue on April 4.

On November 5 last year, the Supreme Court had transfered Singh's plea from the Himachal Pradesh High Court to the Delhi High Court, saying it was not expressing any opinion on the merits of the case but "simply" transferring the petition "in the interest of justice and to save the institution (judiciary) from any embarrassment".

CBI had moved the apex court seeking transfer of the case from the Himachal Pradesh HC to the Delhi High Court and setting aside of the interim order granting protection from arrest and other relief to Singh.

The chief minister had filed a petition in the Himachal Pradesh High Court pleading that the searches on his private residence and other premises were conducted with "malafide intentions and political vendetta" by the central investigating agency.

Singh had sought directions from the High Court to quash CBI's FIR registered in Delhi against him and others under Sections 13 (2) and 13(1)(e) of Prevention of Corruption Act and Section 109 of IPC.
The Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) has ordered the expulsion of a student from its hostel for three weeks for posting "offensive and "insulting" rpt "insulting" remarks on social media against students belonging to the SC and ST community.

Another Dalit student, who coincidentally is a complainant in the case, has also been expelled from the hostel of the premier journalism institute for a week for using "indecent and vulgar language" against a faculty member on a Whatsapp group.

Hit by allegations of "casteist" remarks, the IIMC, run by the Information and Broadcasting Mnistry, had last month ordered a probe into the incident and had set up an inquiry committee for the same. The ministry had also ordered a probe into the case.

In the wake of the incidents, the ministry has recommended the creation of a social media policy "which should exmphasise on the dos and dont's and should be based on the code of conduct for students/employees."



The inquiry committee of IIMC has observed that the student, belonging to Hindi Journalism, had posted on Facebook issues related to reservation using "provocative and unparliamentary" words.

"The matter has been considered and it is felt that the language used by you was offensive, grossly provocative, insulting and unparliamentary. It also resulted in a great deal of dissatisfaction and unrest within the IIMC campus.

"You are hereby expelled from the hostel for a period of three weeks with immediate effect. You are hereby warned to be careful in the future," an order signed by Deputy Registrar of the institute P V K Raja said.

The student has sought a reconsideration of the punishment in a letter to the authorities and the hostel warden.

The committee was set up after a group of students, including those from SC and ST community, had approached authorities alleging that "ill will" and "hatred" against them was being spread by some of their peers after they protested over Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide.

In the second case, the Dalit student, pursuing the English journalism course, has been expelled from the hostel for a week as it was established that the student used "expletive" against a senior faculty member, which has been brought to the notice of the auhthorities on February 4.

"The inquiry officer has recommended the imposition of penalty of expulsion from the hostel of the institute for a period of one week. The matter has been considered and it is felt that the language used by you was indecent, offensive, vulgar and unparliamentary," the order said.

Among the other recommendations, Mihir Kumar Singh, Joint Secretary in the I&B Ministry, has proposed a set of institutional mechanisms to deal with such situations in future including the creation of an SC and ST cell and the post of Dean of Students Welfare.

(REOPEN CES 23)



Meanwhile, addressing the IIM-C convocation, Principal Scientific Advisor to Government of India, Rajagopala Chidambaram, said the institute can explore the possibility of taking up a research project in collaboration with an IIT on how to strengthen the government's initiative to promote hi-tech manufacturing start-ups.

Chidambaram said, "Would IIM-C be interested, perhaps in collaboration with an IIT, in taking up a research project to determine what is the best route for India for success in managing hi-tech manufacturing start-ups?"



He was referring to India's capabilities in hi-precision engineering and to the problems for manufacturing start-ups, like problems of finding factories to manufacture their products.

He also emphasised on rural entrepreneurship and asked whether the management school can take up such studies.

"India's technology needs range from nuclear to rural. We want an India where quality of life is comparable to the quality of life of non-urban areas of developed countries," he said.
Trade deficit between India and China has increased to USD 44.7 billion during April-January period of 2015-16, Parliament was informed today.

India's exports to China stood at USD 7.56 billion during the period whereas the imports has jumped to USD 52.26 billion in April-January.

In 2014-15, the deficit was aggregated at USD 48.48 billion.

The Commerce Ministry's of both the countries have signed a Five-year Development Programme for Economic and Trade Cooperation in September 2014 to lay down a medium-term roadmap for promoting balanced and sustainable development of economic and trade relations, Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

The programme recognises "that the trade deficit with China is a matter of high concern for India", she said.

"Against this backdrop and in the spirit of mutual benefit, India and China shall endeavour to strengthen cooperation and gradually achieve bilateral trade balance over the next 5 years," she said.

In a separate reply she said that, India has so far initiated 322 anti-dumping cases out of which 177 cases involve China.

"In order to boost exports and to maintain balance of trade with China, India has impressed upon China to recognise the need for reduction in trade imbalance for along term, sustainable and harmonious development of economic cooperation between the two countries," she added.
After inking a pact with Iran for development of Chabahar port, negotiations for strategically important India-Iran-Afghanistan Trilateral Transit Corridor have made progress and a meeting of experts to finalise the clauses will be held in India shortly, Lok Sabha was informed today.

Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State of External Affairs V K Singh also said RBI has sought the concurrence of Finance Ministry for reinstating Iran under the Asian Clearance Union (ACU) as the Iranian bank accounts in India can only be activated after that.

Also, requests of Iranian banks regarding reactivating their accounts in various Indian banks and opening branches in India are under consideration of the government and RBI, Singh said.

He was asked if the government has taken any action to improve trade relations with Iran in the backdrop of lifting of international sanctions.

"Negotiations on an Agreement on India-Iran-Afghanistan Trilateral Transit Corridor have made progress and the next meeting of Experts to finalise the clauses will be held in India shortly," the minister said.

The transit corridor, which will bypass Pakistan, will be significant for Afghanistan, which has expressed keenness to revitalise the Silk Road and act as a regional hub for connecting South Asia with Central Asia.
India, the US and Japan will hold this year's Malabar naval exercise in the northern part of the Philippine Sea.

Chief of US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris said, "I think it is going to be held in the northern part of the Philippine Sea. I think including another high-end military power like Japan in Malabar increases the complexities and allows India and US to work with Japanese."



Speaking at a seminar here, he added that the exercise is an important element for assessing the maritime capabilities of all the three countries.

Harris said everyone has a vested interest in ensuring the region remains secure, stable and prosperous.

He pointed out that USD 5.3 trillion in trade passes through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea each year.

"How Indo-Asia-Pacific nations employ naval forces to support these economic interests matters greatly," he said.

Reacting sharply to India's move in December last year of including Japan in the Indo-US Malabar naval exercises on a permanent basis, China had said it is hopeful Tokyo will not "provoke confrontation" and "heighten tensions" in the region.

China is in a territorial dispute with Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam over the South China Sea. There are overlapping claims over the waters.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Turkey blocked NATO ships from patrolling its territorial waters in Aegean sea in order to intercept people-smuggler boats carrying refugees to the Greek islands, from where the refugees take different directions, Armenpress reports citing France Presse.

A number of diplomatic sources in Brussels have confirmed the information for the agency.

It has been previously agreed that NATO warships would be patrolling Aegean waters between Greece and Turkey in an effort to deter human traffickers from carrying refugees and migrants from Turkey to Greece on their way to northern Europe.

NATO warships located in the Aegean under German command are to monitor the movements of smugglers. However, according to an AFP report citing diplomatic sources from Brussels, Ankara said no to the demands of the German command of the NATO naval mission. This claim was confirmed by a second diplomat.
As many as 49 Indian fishermen detained by Iranian authorities have been released and they would arrive here early tomorrow, government sources said.

The fishermen belong to Tamil Nadu and Gujarat and they were detained by Iranian authorites after they allegedly transgressed into their territory while fishing.

Due to efforts of the two states and the Centre, they have been released from Iran.

They will arrive here by an Air India 906 flight from Dubai, the sources said.
A 28-year-old Indian man's appeal to throw out a nine-year jail sentence in a sexual assault case has been rejected by a US court.

The Supreme Court of Ohio last month declined to accept the appeal of Gurwinder Singh, upholding his February 2015 conviction by a Logan County Common Pleas jury for kidnapping and gross sexual imposition.

Singh, who was charged over a sexual assault in 2013 that occurred at the Valero gas station in Stokes Township where he worked at the time, is serving a nine-year sentence as a result of the 2015 conviction.

He was labelled a Tier II sex offender requiring him to register with authorities for 25 years.

An Indian national, Singh may also face deportation, the Bellefontaine Examiner reported.

He had entered a guilty plea to rape in late 2013 and was sentenced to five years in prison. The Third District Court of Appeals issued a ruling in 2014 allowing him to withdraw that plea after serving 10 months in prison.

He took the case to trial in February 2015 and was found guilty of both charges. Singh was then given a nine-year sentence.

The Third District Court upheld the jury conviction in October.
US astronaut and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth today after spending almost a year in space in a ground-breaking experiment foreshadowing a potential manned mission to Mars.

The 340-day mission saw Kelly claim the record for the longest single stay in space by an US astronaut, while Kornienko is now fifth on the list for lengthiest mission by a Russian cosmonaut.

"We have landing," Russian Mission Control confirmed after the trio touched down southeast of the settlement of Dzhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan at around 0430 GMT.

After returning from his lengthy stint in space Kelly was clearly in high spirits as he was lowered to the ground by burly Russian rescue workers at the landing site.

"The air out here feels great. I've no idea why you guys are so bundled up," NASA TV reported him as saying as he sat upright in a chair on the steppe in temperatures just below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).

Kelly and Kornienko returned with Russia's Sergei Volkov, who was stationed at the ISS for over five months and was met upon landing by his father, retired cosmonaut Aleksandr Volkov.

The "one-year crew" mission -- which began on March 27 last year -- was the longest by any astronauts aboard the ISS and seen as a vital chance to measure the effects of a prolonged period in space on the human body.

"Scott Kelly's one-year mission aboard the Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America's Journey to Mars," NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

"Scott has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space, and in so doing, helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars."



The pair were subjected to a battery of tests before and after their ascent towards the ISS and underwent more tests soon after landing.

Weightlessness reduces muscle mass and bone density and is believed to diminish eyesight by increasing cerebrospinal fluid around the optic nerve.

Kelly, 52, was also part of an experiment comparing his development and changes in space with his identical twin brother -- Mark -- back on Earth. He will now arrive by chartered flight in Houston for a NASA medical examination.

In his year aboard the space station Kelly has been an avid Internet poster, capturing stunning views on his Instagram page and tweeting regularly to nearly a million followers while travelling some 230 million kilometres.

In one particularly eye-catching stunt, Kelly posted a short video of himself dressed up in a gorilla suit and floating through the ISS in pursuit of a colleague.

"Needed a little humour to lighten up a year in space," he wrote on Twitter on February 23, when he posted the video.

One image the bald-headed astronaut tweeted captured the economic divide between North and South Korea as visible from space, with the South aglow with electric lights and the North cast in a blanket of darkness.

Another impressive shot was one of the Milky Way which Kelly described as "old, dusty, gassy and warped. But beautiful.
Iraqi officials hailed today the progress achieved by government troops on the second day of a military operation aimed at dislodging Islamic State militants from a key area north of the capital, Baghdad.

Yesterday, Iraqi troops, backed by aerial support and paramilitary forces, launched a new push to retake a sprawling desert area outside the central city of Samarra, 95 kilometres north of Baghdad, with the aim to cut IS supply lines and to tighten the grip around the IS-held northern city of Mosul.

"We have achieved a big success," the commander of the Iraqi Air Force, Staff General Hamid al-Maliki, said in a video distributed by the Defence Ministry adding that government forces had progressed farther than expected so far.

He hailed the paramilitary forces, which are mainly composed of Shiite militiamen, as playing "a big role" alongside government security forces.

The spokesman of Iraq's counter-terrorism forces, Sabah al-Numan, told The Associated Press that the militants dispatched seven suicide car bombers, but they were destroyed by security forces before reaching their targets. Al-Numan added that two militant operations centers were bombed and a train station was recaptured.

Meanwhile, the United Nations said that continuous violence has left at least 670 Iraqis dead in February, of whom about two-thirds were civilians.

"This conflict continues to exact a heavy toll on the population," the UN Special Representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, said in the statement. "This is deeply worrying and disheartening. Civilians should not pay the price in this conflict," Kubis added.
BJP today alleged that the decision to change the affidavit in encounter case was taken at the "political level", involving the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. It has further asked Congress to come clean on the issue.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu charged that CBI was misused by the then UPA government to harass its political opponent and "defame" the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is now Prime Minister.

He said the issue needs to be debated and discussed in Parliament and appropriate action needs to be taken.

"First it was Lashkar-e-Taiba's website, secondly it was David Headley's statement and thirdly it was central government affidavit in the Gujarat High Court and Gujarat Police also said it. IB has said it. In spite of all these, they changed the affidavit."



"Now another startling revelation by former Home Secretary G K Pillai (who is) saying that the decision to change the affidavit was taken at the political level. Political level means the then Home Minister P Chidambaram, Prime Minister and Congress President. These are the three people who were at the helm of affairs," Naidu said.

He also cited former Under Secretary in Home Ministry R V S Mani's statement that he was forced and tortured.

"The torturing of government officer by other agency at the behest of political leadership, you can understand how much misuse was done by the previous government with regard to CBI. How political opponents were harassed. The entire plan was to stop Narendra Modi, defame Narendra Modi, implicate Narendra Modi," he said.

"Congress party should come clean instead of simply denying it. What do you say? What is the justification for change in affidavit? Do you have an answer? explain," he said.

Naidu further said his government was ready to discuss all matters in Parliament.

Leader of Congress party in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said it would be better if Chidambaram speaks on the matter. "I do not have details on it. It would be better if Chidambaram speaks on it. I do not want to comment on it," Kharge said.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi had accused BJP of spreading a lie about American-Pakistani terrorist David Headley and said it was "very unfortunate" that the ruling party was resorting to false propaganda.

The trigger for the recent political battle is the interview of Mani, who had filed two affidavits. In the interview, Mani alleged he was tortured to implicate senior IB officials in the case to project the encounter killing of Ishrat and other three LeT terrorists in Ahmedabad in 2004 as fake.

Mani suggested that Chidambaram was behind the decision to file the second affidavit. He alleged that the then chief of Special Investigation Team (SIT) going into the case, a CBI official, was after him and an attempt was made to question the quality of professional inputs by the intelligence agencies on Ishrat and other terrorists.

Speaking on the matter, CPI(M) Politburo member Brinda Karat said there has been an encounter killing. "Whether or not was an LeT operative is a different issue and that issue is before the Supreme Court. Let the Supreme Court come to its own conclusion. But the basic issue here is that it was an encounter killing," she said.

Road, Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said at that time, the Congress party and former Home Minister Chidambaram had done some activities which were "anti-national".

"It is sort of helping terrorists and the issue should be investigated and the culprits should be punished," Gadkari said.
Following new revelations by former officers associated with the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, Gujarat BJP today targeted Congress, which maintained these disclosures did not prove the encounter was genuine.

Commenting on former under-secretary in the home ministry R V S Mani's claim that he was 'tortured' by some police officers, Gujarat BJP chief said Congress now stood fully exposed.

"One after another the officers associated with that case are coming out. It is now established that affidavits were changed at the behest of the Congress high command. This was done as a part of political conspiracy due to which many police officers remained in jail for more than seven years," said Rupani, who is also the state transport minister.

But senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil asked why Mani as well as the former home secretary G K Pillai remained silent all these years.

"The SIT has clearly stated in its report that all the four accused including Ishrat were caught alive by police and then killed in a fake encounter. The killing itself showed that the intention of the state government was malicious," Gohil told reporters here.

"Why these officers are now coming out and giving such statements? Why they were silent at that time? They could have complained to the court if they had witnessed any misdeed or if they were tortured. They did nothing when they were in power and now making such claims," Gohil said.
The Israeli army is to return West Bank land it requisitioned nearly 40 years ago to its Palestinian owners in what a human rights group called an "extremely unusual" move.

Israeli rights group Yesh Din said that the army had taken the decision to surrender control of the land after it petitioned the High Court late last year.

The decision, which spares the army a potentially lengthy court case, will see more than 170 hectares (420 acres) of what used to be valuable farmland restored to its original owners, Yesh Din said.

The land, which had been seized for military purposes in the 1970s and 1980s, had ceased to be used by the army.

The largest of the claims involves 170 hectares of land in the village of Jalud in the northern West Bank.

Control of other tracts of land near the city of Ramallah will also be transferred.

"These are lands that have been seized nearly 40 years ago," Yesh Din spokesman Gilad Grossman told AFP. "Palestinian farmers rely on their land.

"For them to be able to return to these lands, maybe they can improve their lives."



Grossman called on the army to give up other land that it had seized but was no longer using. "We shouldn't have to go to court every time," he said.

The army did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Jalud village council leader Abdullah Hamed welcomed the army's decision to surrender control but said villagers were still waiting for a second decision allowing them to actually return to their land.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the attorney general to examine the possibility of expelling relatives of Palestinian attackers who help in assaults to the Gaza Strip, his office said today.

"Expelling family members of Palestinian terrorists who aided attacks to Gaza will lead to a significant decrease in terrorist attacks," a spokesman for Netanyahu said on Twitter.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

The Gaza Strip, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist movement Hamas, is under an Israeli blockade that severely restricts the movement of people and goods.

It also has one of the world's highest unemployment rates, and the UN development agency said in September that conditions there could make it uninhabitable by 2020.

The Palestinian enclave, separated from the occupied West Bank by Israeli territory, has remained relatively calm during the current wave of violence.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly said previously that such expulsions would violate both Israeli and international law.

Mandelblit was said to have made his recommendation after a member of Netanyahu's cabinet who is also a political rival of the prime minister requested expelling relatives of attackers to Gaza or Syria.

Netanyahu has come under heavy pressure from right-wing members of his coalition over the violence.
IT hardawre manufacturers are expected to invest USD 1 billion in the next 12-18 months if duty structure announced for products like routers, set-top-box for Internet etc is implemented in time.

"The change in duty structure will encourage manufacturing of consumer premise equipment like modems, routers, digital video recorders, set-top-boxes and IP cameras. We expect a billion US dollars worth of investment inflows for their local production," MAIT Vice President Nitin Kunkolienker said in a statement.

He said that prices of these products would go down by 8 per cent in the first year itself and by 10 per cent over 18 months.

Government has announced to impose tax on some IT accessories that are in huge demand while waived duties on parts or components used to make them.

The Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) has, however, expressed concern on government meeting only partial demand of industry.

"Budget 2016 has met our demands partially and will help the Indian ICT industry move from assembly to the next level of manufacturing. However, certain products have been missed out, most notably laptops and notebooks and populated Printed Circuit Boards," MAIT Executive Director Anwar Shirpurwala said.

He said that in order to create an effective IT-ESDM manufacturing supply chain, it is very important to exclude populated PCBs from the purview of nil rate of duty, that is, the levy of 12.5 per cent counter-veiling duty and 4 per cent special additional duty, where such differential duty benefit is currently extended.

The IT industry body also expressed concern on reduction of research and development incentives in the budget.

"We are disappointed with announcement of R&D incentives reducing because this move could be detrimental in building India as an innovation hub. I strongly urge the government to reconsider this move, as any restrictions on the R&D ecosystem are likely to decelerate innovation and restrain the ambitious Make in India and Digital India vision," MAIT President Debjani Ghosh said.
A top police official, who was part of a court-appointed SIT to go into the killing of Ishrat Jahan, today maintained that it was a fake encounter and rejected allegations that pressure was brought on them by former Home Minister P Chidamabram in this regard.

IPS officer and SIT member Satish Verma also denied an allegation by R V S Mani, who had filed affidavits in the Gujarat High Court in the case on behalf of the Union Home Ministry, that he had tortured him by burning him with cigarette butts.

"National security cannot become a defence for the pre-medidated murder of a 19-year-old girl and be branded it as collateral damage," he told India Today TV.

He was replying to a query whether he stood by the probe conducted by the three-member SIT that the encounter was fake.

"It is very unfortunate that naional security was being used as a phrase to condone the extreme illegalities of the most serious crime in the book. It cannot happen. These raise concerns...," said Verma, who is now Chief Vigilance Officer at Shillong-based NEEPCO.

He also disputed the description of Ishrat as a LeT terrorist and a suicide bomber saying she was away from her home and family for only about 10 days after she came into contact with a Pakistani terrorist Javed Sheikh.

"You would know how much time you take to train a LeT terrorist and a suicide bomber...This time (that she was away from home) was not enough," he said.

The 1986-batch Gujarat cadre IPS officer also contradicted former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai's claim of knowing the exact details of the case saying he was "no intelligence officer."



He said Mani's affidavit filings were "curious" as they did not look like the Home Ministry's version but that of the Gujarat police investigation.

"Mr Mani had no direct knowledge of the case...," he said adding that the allegations made by Mani against him were "old" and have been made by him earlier too.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan received newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Arab Republic of Egypt to the Republic of Armenia Tarek Ibrahim Muhammad Maati on March 2. As Armenpress was informed from the Information and Public Relations Department, the head of the Government congratulated the diplomat on the appointment of Ambassador of Egypt to Armenia and wished him productive work. The Prime Minister mentioned with satisfaction that the bilateral relations between the two friendly countries have actively developed during the last years, and a great potential exists for further deepening and expanding Armenian-Egyptian relations.

Ambassador Maati mentioned that he is honored to assume the commitment of strengthening the friendly relations between Armenia and Egypt and will exert maximum efforts to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation during his tenure. He conveyed the cordial greetings and best wishes of the Egyptian Prime Minister to Hovik Abrahamyan.

Referring to Armenian-Egyptian partnership and prospects for deepening it, the interlocutors highlighted high level mutual visits, active political dialogue, and frequent interactions on intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary formats. The PM and the Ambassador of Egypt stressed the importance of the activities of the joint intergovernmental commission in the context of activation of bilateral and multilateral trade and economic relations and discussed details over holding the regular session of the commission in the current year.

Hovik Abrahamyan expressed conviction that during his tenure in Armenia Ambassador Maati will manage to contribute to the development and expansion of cooperation between the two countries.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa today sacked Animal Husbandry Minister T K M Chinnayya and relieved him and Health Minister C Vijayabaskar from their party posts.

A Raj Bhavan press release said, "Governor K Rosaiah accepted the recommendation of Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to drop Chinnayya from the Council of Ministers."



Suburban Tambaram-based Chinnayya rose through the AIADMK ranks and went on to become a Minister when Jayalalithaa assumed office in 2011.

A municipal councillor in Tambaram Municipality during 2006-11, he was elected to the Assembly from Tambaram and successfully served as a Minister for nearly five years though several other Cabinet colleagues of his faced the axe.

The Animal Husbandry portfolio held by Chinnayya has now been allocated to Social Welfare Minister B Valarmathi, the release said.

In an AIADMK release, Jayalalithaa said Vijayabaskar has been relieved of Pudukottai District Secretary post. He will be replaced by AIADMK farmers wing secretary P K Vairamuthu, she said.

She also stripped Chinnayya from his post of Kancheepuram East District Secretary.

Former Lok Sabha member (2009-14) Chitlapakkam Rajendran will replace Chinnayya as party District Secretary, she said.

For Rajendran, the appointment marks a comeback as he has been lying low since 2013 when an investigative website alleged that he was among 11 Members of Parliament who had come forward to recommend a fictitious firm for money. He was also allegedly caught on a hidden camera agreeing to the deal.

Jayalalithaa also announced the dismissal of Tambaram Town party Secretary M Karikalan and Kancheepuram Central District Party Secretary Thandarai K Manoharan (sitting MLA) from their respective party posts.

Rajendran will also be in charge of party affairs in Kancheepuram Central District, she said.
Jewellers today started their three-day pan-India strike to protest proposed re-imposition of 1 per cent excise duty on gold and diamond jewellery and mandatory quoting of PAN by consumers for transaction of Rs 2 lakh and above.

More than 3 lakh jewellers participated in the strike on Day 1, an industry body claimed.

"Over 300 associations, that consists of over 3 lakh manufacturers, retainers, artisans among others, participated in the stir across the country. The strike has been 100 per cent successful," All India Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation (GJF) Chairman Sreedhar G V told PTI.

Sreedhar said the gems and jewellery industry has been forced to go on strike due to the government's apathy towards the sector reflected in the proposal to re-impose 1 per cent excise duty in the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on February 29.

"We were already facing challenges and businesses have gone down by 25-30 per cent after the Government's decision in January to make PAN cards mandatory for any transaction of Rs 2 lakh and above. Instead of increasing the slab to Rs 10 lakh from Rs 2 lakh and reducing the customs duty to 2 per cent from 10 per cent, the Government has created more difficulties by re-introducing 1 per cent excise duty," he rued.

He said in 2005 and 2012, the Centre had introduced 1 per cent excise duty in the gems and jewellery sector, but had to drop the move as it was not deemed practical with the industry comprising mostly under-educated but highly skilled people who are not equipped to handle the paper work required for it.

Jaitley proposed 1 per cent excise duty on jewellery without input credit or 12.5 per cent with input tax credit on jewellery, excluding silver other than studded with diamonds and some other precious stones.

Meanwhile, a GJF delegation plans to meet Finance Ministry officials with a representation to explain difficulties faced by the industry with these measures. Sreedhar said jewellers will take a call on future course of action after their meeting with the officials.

The size of domestic industry is estimated to be around Rs 3.15 lakh crore with the potential to grow to Rs 5 lakh crore by 2018.

(REOPENS BOM 20)



Former Union minister Milind Deora said in a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley: "I write to you sharing the deep concern of the gem, jewellery and gold traders associated with the industry from Mumbai. The Finance Bill 2016 tabled in the Parliament has proposed 1 per cent excise duty on gold and diamond jewellery. This proposal will have an adverse cascading effect on the market, traders and consumers."



He stated the market of gems, jewellery and gold is in "poor health" and its growth is challenged due to prevalent domestic economic condition, shrinking global demand and slowdown in export markets.

"Jewellery sales are at an all time low in the last two months due to higher gold prices. An import duty thus discourages a consumer from purchasing, negatively affecting the sales prospects. This has forced importers to offer a discount of up to USD 53 per ounce to clear inventory," he wrote.

He said the government, rather than introducing mechanism to boost domestic demand and usher exports, is taking steps to "destroy" the growth prospects of an industry that has tremendous potential and significant share in national growth.

"There is a great expectation from programmes like 'Make in India' which promises a regime to conduct business free from complicated tax environments and laying a red carpet for foreign investors. Your tax proposal to levy 1 per cent duty on gold and diamond has sent a contradictory message to domestic industry and has shaken their faith in your government.

"The existing taxation, state of the demand and supply, global conditions and the biggest fear of being harassed by tax authorities makes a compelling case for recalling this tax proposal. I seek your urgent and swift intervention in this matter," he said.
Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra today asked the Centre to release urgent funds for the dredging of the river Jhelum.

Vohra has requested Union Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, Uma Bharti to release urgent funds for the dredging of the river Jhelum and timely completion of its outflow channels, an official spokesman said.

The Governor has elicited the Minister's personal interest in this matter so that this time bound Project can be completed before the coming monsoon season.

He has informed the Minister about the progress of the dredging and other priority works.

The Governor is personally monitoring the implementation of this vital project to ensure that the works are completed as per the envisaged time frame.

Apart from monitoring the progress the Governor visited the dredging sites on his recent tour to Srinagar, spokesman said.

The Priority Works reflected in the aforesaid Plan include emergent works and the dredging of river Jhelum to increase its carrying capacity from 34,000 to 45,000 cusecs.

The funding for this entire Project is provided for in the Special Package for J&K State which was recently announced by the Prime Minister, he said.

Under the Prime Minister's Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Programme 2015, the DPR for "Priority Works- Comprehensive Plan for Flood Management Works on Jhelum-Phase-1" costing Rs 399.29 crore has been carved out of the main project for "Comprehensive Plan for Flood Management Works on Jhelum" costing Rs 2083 crores.

The main components of this project include re-sectioning and land acquisition to restore the width of the Flood Spill Channel, especially at Shariefabad and Naidkhai, strengthening of embankments at particularly vulnerable spots of river Jhelum and urgent dredging works in the river Jhelum and Flood spill Channel.
JNU students today marched to Parliament demanding repeal of the sedition law and enactment of a Rohith Act to end caste based discrimination in educational institutions.

The students began their march from Mandi House around noon. They shouted slogans against the government over handling of the row at JNU and were stopped by police near Parliament Street police station where they camped for rest of the evening.

"Sedition is a very archaic law and imposing them upon students for a campus debate is just splitting the hair too much. Academicians across the globe believe that there is no place for such laws in a democracy, this should go. We appeal the government to repeal it," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said, while addressing the agitating students.

"We also demand that the government formulates a Rohith Vemula Act to end caste based discrimination in educational institutions," she added.

The march was joined by students and teachers from universities across Delhi including DU, Jamia and Ambedkar University.

Families of Rohith Vemula, dalit research scholar who was found hanging in Hyderabad University hostel as well as JNU student Umar Khalid who is in custody in a sedition case, were also present at the march.

Addressing the gathering Umar Khalid's father Syed Qasim Ilyas said, "our kind of nationalism teaches human beings to love each other. They will not understand our idea of nationalism".

Umar's sister Kulsum Fatima narrated how she is sick of



hiding ever since the incident happened and how government "chose to target him" considering his "popularity" among JNU students.

Zee producer Vishwa Deepak and former ABVP member Pradeep Narwal who had resigned from their respective organisations over the JNU row also addressed the rally and were greeted with loud cheers.

CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat, said, "sedition is like a badge of honour if the charge is applicable to those who raise their voices of dissent. Our leaders have been threatened, allegations have been raised on our party being 'seditious' but we take it all with pride if that is what costs to not accept their definition of nationalism".

The agitators keenly waited for the Delhi High Court's order on Kanhaiya's bail plea.

Kanhaiya, was arrested on February 12 in a sedition case in connection with an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

He was today granted interim bail for six months by the Delhi High Court which said that he has to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and has to present himself before the investigators as and when required.
All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Gurudas Kamat has urged Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis among other senior state officials to probe alleged irregularities in the awarding of road construction contracts in Mumbai.

Kamat, in a letter addressed to Fadnavis, state Lokayukta Justice M L Tahaliyani and BMC Commissioner Ajoy Mehta, has alleged that some contractors involved in corrupt practices were bidding for road construction projects in Mumbai, and were even bagging contracts worth Rs 100 crore.

The Congress leader has made the allegations citing a report published in a city tabloid.

Kamat has accused some contractors of incomplete documentation, saying this rendered them ineligible. He said one of the "ineligible" contractors had even bagged a contract worth Rs 100 crore.

He alleged that there is a "cartel of contractors which has hoodwinked the officials or is 'hand in glove' with them."



He said that firms floated under same partner names, particularly if one of them is blacklisted, should be disallowed to take part in the bidding.

Kamat has demanded the three addressees to take note of his complaint, and sought a reversal of the contracts allotment.

He demanded that an enquiry be carried out into last 10 years of road construction contracts, and action taken against the guilty.

A close aide of Kamat claimed that the Lokayukta, in a prompt response, asked the BMC to conduct an inquiry and submit a report to him within two weeks.

Mumbai residents have supported the demand for probing the (road construction) contracts allotment of the past 10 years, Kamat said.
The Delhi High Court today granted interim bail for six months to JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar but said the FIR lodged in connection with an on-campus event that led to his arrest on sedition charge suggested it "is a case of raising anti-national slogans which do have the effect of threatening national integrity".

The high court, which gave conditional relief to Kanhaiya, said he will "not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national" and told him that as president of JNU students union, he "will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus."



It also made strong remarks about the slogans allegedly raised by the students, including other accused, saying they cannot claim protection under fundamental right to speech and expression, particularly in view of the fact that the investigation into the case was at a nascent stage.

Further, Justice Pratibha Rani was critical of the slogans raised on February 9 on the JNU campus eulogising Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, mastermind of hijacking of a passenger airline to Lahore in 1971 who was hanged in 1984.

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters, carrying photographs, of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat," the judge said while ordering Kanhaiya's release on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of the like amount with a condition that he will not leave the country without the permission of trial court.

Making it clear to Kanhaiya that he will have to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and present himself before the investigators, as and when required, the judge also considered his family background that his mother is an Anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3,000 on which the entire family survives to fix the bail amount.

The judge directed that the accused's surety "should also be either a member of the faculty or a person related to him in a manner that he exercises control on him not only with respect to appearance before the court but also to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner.
JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar, arrested in a sedition case, was today granted interim conditional bail for six months by the Delhi High Court, which said he will "not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national".

The high court also enjoined on him, as president of JNU students union, that he "will make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus."



"Taking into consideration the facts and circmstances, I am inclined to release the petitioner on interim bail for a period of six months," Justice Pratibha Rani said, while making it clear that the accused will have to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and present himself before the investigators, as and when required.

The judge also considered the family background of Kanhaiya, whose mother is an Anganwadi worker earning a paltry amount of Rs 3000 on which the entire family survives, and ordered that he be released on furnishing a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety of like amount.

The judge directed that the accused's surety "should also be either a member of the faculty or a person related to him in a manner that he exercises control on him not only with respect to appearance before the court but also to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner."



While giving monetary concession for furnishing the bond for release, the high court said Kanhaiya has to "furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national.

In the 23-page order, the judge said, Kanhaiya would not



leave the country without the permission of the trial court and the person standing surety for him shall also furnish an undertaking on the lines similar to that of the accused.

The judge also observed that "during the period spent by petitioner in judicial custody, he might have introspected about the events that had taken place. To enable him to remain in the mainstream at present, I am inclined to provide conservative method of treatment."



The judge said, "Once the decision of releasing the petitioner on interim bail is taken, now the question comes as to what should be the amount for monetary security. In his speech dated February 11, 2016, the petitioner has claimed that his mother works as Anganwadi worker and earns Rs 3,000 per month on which the entire family survives.

"If this aspect is considered, then the amount required to be filled in the personal bond and surety bond cannot be so high as to put him in a position that he cannot avail the interim bail," the judge said.

"The time is ripe that while giving some concession to the petitioner on monetary aspect for purpose of furnishing the bond, he can be required to furnish an undertaking to the effect that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national.

"Apart from that, as President of JNU Students Union, he will make all efforts within his power to control anti- national activities in the campus," the high court said.

While laying down the conditions for Kanhaiya's release on interim bail, the high court said that the personal bond of Rs 10,000 and an undertaking with surety, who should preferrebly be a faculty member of JNU, will be to the satisfaction of concerned Metropolitan Magistrate or the link Magistrate with the condition that "he shall not leave the country without the permission of the court".

The high court took strong exception to the manner in



which slogans were raised and protest staged by the students carrying photographs and posters of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat, mastermind of hijacking of a passenger airline to Lahore in 1971 who was hanged in 1984, on the campus.

"The feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters, carrying photographs, of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat," the judge said.

The high court noted that Kanhaiya belongs to an intellectual class pursuing PhD from International School of Studies, JNU, which is considered as hub of intellectuals.

The court said that his political ideology or affiliation has to be pursued within the framework of Indian Constitution as freedom of speech and expression is subject to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of the Constitution.

"He may have any political affiliation or ideology. He has every right to pursue that but it can only be within the framework of our Constitution. India is a living example of unity in diversity. Freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution," the judge said.

The high court said that the faculty of JNU has to play its role in guiding them to the right path so that they can contribute to the growth of the nation and to achieve the object and vision for which the university was established.

"The reason behind anti-national views in the mind of students who raised slogans on death anniversiry of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for attack on our Parliament, which led to this situation have not only to be found by them but remedial steps are also required to be taken in this regard by those managing the affiars of the JNU so that there is no recurrence of such incident," the judge said.

(REOPENS LGD 26)



The high court also made strong remarks on the slogans raised by the accused students, saying they cannot claim protection under fundamental right to speech and expression particularly in view of the fact that the investigation into the case was at nascent stage.

It considered the entire incident "as a kind of infection" from which such students are suffering and needs to be cured "before becoming epidemic" and "surgical intervention" is required when the first line of treatment fails.

"The investigation in this case is at nascent stage. The thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of JNU who organised and participated in that programme cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to free speech and expression.

"I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic.

"Whenever such infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical intervention also.

However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it may become gangrene, amputation is the only treatment, the judge said.

REOPENS LGD 27



While expressing reservation over the slogans raised by the students allegedly hailing Guru and Bhat as martyrs, the High Court said while dealing with the bail application of Kanhaiya, "it has to be kept in mind by all concerned that they are enjoying this freedom only because our borders are guarded by our armed and paramilitary forces."



"Our forces are protecting our frontiers in the most difficult terrain in the world i.E. Siachen Glacier or Rann of Kutch. It is a case of raising anti-national slogans which do have the effect of threatening national integrity," the court said.

"Suffice it to note that such persons (accused students) enjoy the freedom to raise such slogans in the comfort of University Campus but without realising that they are in this safe environment because our forces are there at the battle field situated at the highest altitude of the world where even oxygen is so scarce that those who are shouting anti-national slogans holding posters of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat close to their chest honoring their martyrdom, may not be even able to withstand those conditions even for an hour.

"This kind of slogans raised may have demoralizing effect on the family of those martyrs who returned home in coffin draped in tricolor," the High Court said and reminded Kanhaiya that "rights and duties are two sides of the same coin."



The judge said though Kanhaiya was claiming rights gauranteed under the constitution "he has also to be reminded that under Part-IV under Article 51A of Constitution of India fundamental duties of every citizen have been specified alongwith the fact that rights and duties are two sides of the same coin."



As President of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union, Kanhaiya was expected to be responsible and accountable for any anti-national event organised in the campus. Freedom of speech guaranteed to the citizens of this country under the Constitution of India has enough room for every citizen to follow his own ideology or political affiliation within the framework of our Constitution, the High Court said.
Security has been stepped up in the city in view of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to address students of IIT Kanpur.

"Karzai will address students and take part in the institute's 'Techkriti' festival tomorrow," Kanpur District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said today.

Karzai will reach Lucknow tomorrow, from where he will travel to the IIT campus by car or helicopter, he said.

Security has been tightened in the city with CRPF personnel called in to supplement local police force, he said, adding that the route that would be taken by the ex-Afghan president's is being properly inspected.
Congress-led UDF government has recommended to Governor Justice P Sathasivam to release 215 life term prisoners, who have completed 14 years of imprisonment.

A decision in this regard was taken by the state Cabinet, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala said in a statement here today.

The list was prepared excluding those prisoners, who were convicted for offences under sedition charges, goons, responsible for liquor tragedy and attack against women and children, the release stated.
Power procurers of the 4,000 MW Krishnapatnam project of Anil Ambani-led Reliance Power have asked it to withdraw petitions filed against them in courts, if the company wants an amicable solution to exit from the project, AP GENCO Managing Director K Vijayanand has said.

Looking to exit the stalled Krishnapatnam UMPP, Reliance Power had earlier written to Andhra Pradesh government suggesting that it could be done on similar lines to that of Tilaiya UMPP, which was acquired by procurers from the firm.

Reliance Power said Krishnapatnam UMPP, which was awarded to it in 2007, could not be taken forward due to escalated coal cost from Indonesia, among other factors. The power produced from the project was supposed to be sold to 11 procurers comprising five states.

The KUMMP is located in Andhra Pradesh while Tilaiya plant was in Jharkhand.

Reliance company is engaged in a legal battle with the procurers in Delhi High Court. The company had also approached the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission seeking appropriate relief.

"We have asked them to give a concrete proposal. Tiliaya (model) cannot be equated with us. If we have to take a decision, all the cases have to be withdrawn. We asked them to do it as early as possible," Vijayanand told PTI.

An email query to a spokesperson of Reliance Power did not elicit any response.

Reliance Power CEO N Venugopala Rao, in a letter to Andhra Pradesh government in December had said the procurers of Tilaiya UMPP -- which was stalled for over five years -- have accepted the termination of power purchase agreement and decided to purchase the entire shareholding in the project Special Purpose Vehicle from the company by way of mutual discussion with the developers.

"We, therefore, request you to kindly consider similar resolution for KUMPP by purchasing the ownership of the project SPV with its assets, including land, from the present owners on mutually acceptable terms and return the Performance Bank Guarantees furnished by us," Rao said in the letter.

Vijayanand said all the procurers will meet once after they get a reply from the Reliance Power.

"There are several steps involved in this. They should come up with a concrete proposal. All the cases are to be withdrawn. All the procurers should agree to the proposal put forward by the company," the official said.

Coastal Andhra Power Limited (CAPL), a Reliance Power Limited subsidiary, was awarded the Krishnapatnam UMPP in 2007 and the power produced by the project was to be shared by four states - Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Later, Telangana was added as it was carved out of AP in June 2014.

Southern Power Distribution Company Limited, an AP government power utility on behalf of power procurers of rest of the states, had in 2012 issued a notice to CAPL that it would encash the bank guarantee of Rs 300 crore as penalty, besides terminating the contract as the project work has been stopped for more than three months.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin aproved the government's proposal to hold negotiations with Armenia for making the country into an interstate financial-industrial group "Defense systems", which was created with Belarus.

Armenpress reports citing RIA Novosti that the corresponding order was posted on the official portal of legal information on March 2.

"Accept the proposal of the Russian Government to hold negotiations on the conclusion of the agreement on accession of the Republic of Armenia to the agreement between the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic of Belarus on the establishment of an interstate financial and industrial group" Defensive systems "- the document reads.

According to open sources, IFIG "Defense Systems was established in 1996 on the initiative of the head of design offices, research institutes and production enterprises - developers and manufacturers of tools and object air defense systems.

Russian-Belarusian interstate financial and industrial group of the same name works in parallel , created on the basis of the joint-stock company.
Sri Lanka today made it mandatory for all websites to register themselves with the government by the end of this month, a move criticised by the media organisations as reviving the censorship era of the past.

The Ministry of Parliamentary Reforms and Mass Media ran an insertion in the state-owned Daily today, warning websites that they must register before the end of this month or will be considered "unlawful".

The ministry in the advertisement, however, did not say under what law it required websites to register.

The prescribed Application for Registration of Casting Websites demanded to know the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all contributors.

Criticising the decision, several media organisations in the country accused the Maithripala Sirisena Government of revisiting the past under the former regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa when the media was subjected to restrictions.

They said the government which came to power promising media freedom has now revived the move to censor news websites.

The then Rajapaksa government's restrictions on news websites was seen as one of the main reasons for the popular democratic rise against the regime.

The media organisations claim that there was no law in the country which requires this action.
A lawyer for drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman says his client now wants to be extradited as soon as possible to the United States.

He complains that guards at a Mexican maximum-security prison won't let him sleep.

Lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez says Guzman told him to negotiate with US authorities for a lighter sentence and confinement at a medium-security prison.

Rodriguez told the Radio Formula station today he talked to Guzman Tuesday at the Altiplano prison west of Mexico City.

Guzman's lawyers once vowed to fight extradition, and officials said it would take at least a year.

But Rodriguez suggested it could be done in two months. Guards wake Guzman every four hours for a head count. He escaped the prison in July and was recaptured in January.
Of the total notified area of 45,883 hectares covering 347 special economic zones (SEZ), only 18,913 hectares has been utilised for their development, Parliament was informed today.

"The reasons for delay in operationalisation of SEZs may, inter alia, be attributed to downward trend in the industries during the recent past, imposition of MAT and DDT by the government etc," Commerce and Industry Minister said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

Out of the total notified area of 45,883.58 hectares in respect of 347 notified SEZs - including 7 central government SEZs and 11 state/private sector SEZs set up prior to the enactment of the SEZ Act, 2005 - 18,913.21 hectares of land has been utilised for the development of SEZs, she said.

In a separate reply on India-EU free trade agreement, the minister said two stocktaking meetings have been held recently and both the sides have re-engaged in discussion to address the key outstanding issues.

Top officials of India and the European Union (EU) have met on February 22 in Brussels to review the stalled negotiations for the proposed free trade agreement.

On January 18 also, chief negotiators of both the regions took stock of the outstanding issues, including duty cut on automobiles and movement of professionals.

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.

In a separate reply, she said 133 license for manufacturing various items were issued during the last 2 years under defence and chemical sectors.

"The employment expected to be generated in these projects is 35,169 mandays," she said.
A letter threatening to kill two senior railway officials on March 4 was found at Sawai Madhopur railway station this morning sending police into a tizzy.

The hand-written letter was found at a booking window at 3 AM by the person on duty, Government Railway Police personnel Satish Kumar said.

The letter, which threatened to kill General Manager, Jabalpur and DRM, Kota, was handed over to senior officials, following which the security was tightened, he said.

General Manager, Jabalpur Ramesh Chandra is scheduled to visit Kota Railway Zone on March 4 for inspecting various railways stations.

Superintendent of Police Swai Singh Godara said after of the receipt of the letter security measures are being reviewed.
Delhi government today claimed Lt Governor Najeeb Jung has "turned down" its proposal for creating dedicated bus lanes in the city streets and imposing a Rs 2,000 fine against violators of the rule.

However, the LG's office refuted the claim and said the Lt Governor has just "sought clarification" from the government on its proposal.

The Arvind Kejriwal government had in February sent to Jung for his approval a proposal regarding the slapping of fine Rs 2000 on those obstructing the plying of buses on such dedicated lanes.

"Delhi government informs the residents of the national capital with regret that the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi has declined to approve the proposal for dedicated bus lanes on Delhi roads and imposition of a fine of Rs 2,000 to the violators of this rule," the government said in a statement.

Sources in the LG office, however, said that the Lt Governor has "not rejected" the proposal but instead he has just sought clarification from the government on it.

"Before sending a file relating to the proposal to the LG office, the Transport Commissioner had suggested the government seek PWD opinion on the proposal as it is a road-owing agency. Without taking PWD's view, government sent it to the LG's office for approval.

"The LG has now sent back the file and asked the government for PWD's view on it," a source said, adding that it is a routine practice whenever LG has doubts on any proposal.

The LG has now asked the government to resubmit the proposal after complying with all the rules, the source said.

The city government said that following the demand of Delhi Traffic Police and consistent orders of the Supreme Court over the years, the Delhi government had prepared this proposal and sent it to the LG for approval.

The Lt Governor and the AAP government have been at loggerheads on a range of issues including transfer and postings of bureaucrats and formation of Commission of Inquiry.

"We have decided to impose a fine of Rs 2,000 on those who park their cars on dedicated bus lanes or encroach upon it or cause obstructions to the plying of buses," Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had earlier said.
A piece of wreckage from a Boeing 777, likely from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished nearly two years ago with 239 people, was found washed ashore on the coast of Mozambique, a media report today quoted a US official as saying.

The newly discovered debris, found over the weekend, is on its way to Malaysia for further examination. The wreckage is a piece of horizontal stabilizer skin, CNN reported, quoting an unnamed US official as saying.

A second aviation source told the network that there is no record of any Boeing 777 missing other than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board, including five Indians.

But Malaysia Airlines called the identification "speculative."



"It is too speculative at this point for MAS to comment," the airline said, using its initials.

The mystery of what happened to the plane remains unsolved. The search has turned up some aircraft debris, but also false leads.

In September, French investigators confirmed that aircraft debris found on Reunion Island in July was from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Debris found in Thailand in mid-January turned out not to be from MH370.

The disappearance of MH370 remains one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

The Beijing-bound flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia early in the morning.

At 1:19 a.M., as the plane was flying over the South China Sea, Malaysian air traffic controllers radioed the crew to contact controllers in Ho Chi Minh City for the onward flight through Vietnamese airspace.

Shortly afterward, air traffic controllers in Malaysia lost contact with the plane somewhere over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The aircraft's transponder, which identifies the plane and relays details like altitude and speed to controllers, stopped transmitting and Flight MH370 seemingly disappeared without a trace.

Malaysian authorities revealed later that military radar had tracked the plane as it turned back to the west and flew across the Malaysian Peninsula, up the Strait of Malacca, before flying out of radar range at 2:14 a.M. And vanishing once again over southern Indian Ocean.

Last week, next-of-kin of some passengers filed a slew of lawsuits over the plane's disappearance, with some hopeful that court scrutiny will help reveal answers about what befell the ill-fated plane.

Investigators believe the plane was diverted and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but neither a crash site nor cause have been found so far though millions of dollars have been spent to scour the seas to recover the wreckage.
Deputy Prime Minister of Luxembourg Etienne Schneider today called on Steel and Mines Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and discussed the proposed joint venture (JV) between state-run SAIL and ArcelorMittal.

During the meeting, Tomar pointed specific areas such as Special Purpose Vehicles for integrated steel plants, mineral exploration & mining, steel-making technology and green technologies, where Luxembourg can invest, Steel ministry said in a statement today.

"The delegation (Luxembourg) expressed keen interest in progress of the SAIL-Arcelor Mittal JV, offered to partner for coke-oven making technologies," it added.

It also highlighted how companies from Luxembourg are supporting Make in India initiative by building facilities for equipment services and coke oven battery technology.

In May last year, NRI billionaire Lakshmi Mittal-led ArcelorMittal and domestic steel giant SAIL inked a memorandum of understanding to look at the possibility of setting up an automotive steel plant in the country. The estimated cost of setting up the plant is rs 5,000 crore.

In January, Tomar told PTI: "We have signed an MoU with ArcelorMottal for a steel plant. We want to finalise the project this year. Work on it is progressing."



The proposed JV will construct a cold rolling mill and other downstream finishing facilities in India, touted as one of the fastest-growing automotive markets in the world with production expected to double between 2014 and 2020, from 3.6 million units to 7.3 million units.

Schneider explained to Tomar how the Luxembourg steel industry had played a key role in the country's formative years and that some companies are leading players the modern steel and green technology space.

In last one decade, the country has diversified into sectors like financial, information-communication-technology, space, satellite and logistics, he added.
A mob in Malawi's southern district of Nsanje burned seven people to death for allegedly possessing human bones for use in witchcraft, police said today.

The seven were "found in possession of human bones and the mob took it upon themselves to burn them with petrol," Kirdy Kaunga, police officer in charge of the district, told AFP.

A traditional chief said local people became suspicious due to the movements and telephone conversations of one of the seven men who was discovered with a bag containing the bones.

"He was chased and arrested," chief Tengani, who only uses one name, told AFP.

"The man is said to have confirmed that his bag contained human bones and that's when the mob began rounding up the seven and burned them one by one."



Police arrived after the incident on Tuesday in Nsanje, which borders Mozambique, and have made no arrests.

Officials said they were investigating whether the bones belonged to albinos, who have white skin and yellow hair as a result of a genetic disorder that causes the absence of pigmentation.

Albinos are killed regularly in some African countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania for their body parts, which are used in witchcraft rituals.
The Police are continuing with their search operation to find the killers of T Haokip, a government school teacher who was beaten to death by suspected NSCN(IM) militants on February 19, a police officer today said.

The operation was carried out at the vicinity of Aimol Khunyai and Chingningkhut areas in the hill district of Chandel and lasted for two hours since 4.30 AM.

The suspects were yet to be apprehended, but the tension which had evolved between two tribal ethnic groups have calmed down, the officer said.

Meanwhile, NSCN(IM) which was currently holding talks with the Centre, denied its involvement in the incident in a press statement made available to the media.

Earlier, the teacher's murder led to damage of houses and killings of livestock at Aimol Satu village on Monday last by a large mob of Molnom village and had resulted to a gunfight with the state forces after unknown miscreants fired at them.

Giving details of the incident Additional Superintendent



of Police Samir Saurabh said the teacher was abducted and gangraped while she was going to school this morning.

He said that the accused later dumped her at Mathurapur on the national highway and escaped.

The ASP said that medical examination of the victim was conducted late night and an FIR was lodged on the complaint lodged by her father.

"As of now Inspector CB Ganj R K Singh has been placed under suspension," he said.

The ASP said that efforts were on to identify and arrest the accused.

It is the second incident within four-days when a woman had been gangraped on the national highway.

Earlier, a woman and her daughter were gangraped in Bulandshahr on Friday night.
Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio today registered his first victory in the party's primaries as he won in Minnesota, giving a much needed boost to his campaign.

Rubio's win in Minnesota and a close second position in Virginia will be disappointment for Ted Cruz, who after two victories in Texas and Oklahoma had called him and other candidates to drop out of the race for him to defeat the Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

The Florida Senator insisted that he is in the race to the White House and is the best Republican to defeat Trump in this Republican presidential elections.

During a speech in Miami, Rubio said his aggressive campaign against Trump is now yielding results.

"Five days ago, we began to explain to the American people that Donald Trump is a con artist," he said.

"In just five days, we have seen the impact it is having all across the country. We are seeing in state after state, he (Trump) loves to talk about polls, we are seeing in state after state his numbers coming down, our numbers going up," Rubio said.

"Two weeks from tonight, right here in Florida, we are going to send a message loud and clear," he said exuding confidence that he would win the Florida primary in two weeks from now.

"We are going to send the message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan, and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist," he said.

"We will not allow the next President of the US to be a socialist like Bernie Sanders. And we will not allow the next President of the US to be someone under FBI investigation like Hillary Clinton," he added.

"I will unite this party, and we will grow it, and we will win in November, and we will turn this country around. The stakes are too high, and we will do whatever it takes," he said.

"We believe in free enterprise. We believe in a strong national defense. We believe in limited government. We believe in the Constitution of the US," he said.

"We believe the world is a better place when America is the strongest country on earth. And we know that America is strongest when it stands with its allies, allies like Israel. We will always be on their side. We stand for freedom in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Nicaragua. These things are not negotiable," Rubio said.

"When Trump was asked about whether he would side with Israel, he said he's not taking sides - he wants to be impartial. When I'm president of the US , we are taking sides - we are on Israel's side," he added.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Dersim Armenian Mihran Gultekin Savior thinks that Turkeys policies have not changed; it continues expelling Armenians and Kurds of Turkey and replaces them with Turkmens living abroad. Armenpress reports Mihran Savior who returned to his Armenians roots years ago, told the journalists about the aforesaid. Today Kurds and Turks fight in Turkey, but Armenians are always under focus. Under those conditions hidden Armenians try to keep their real identity more covert. The Turkish state regularly tries to speculate the Armenian factor in this struggle. In fact, Armenians are always to blame, the Dersim Armenian said.

As for the number of hidden Armenians in Turkey, Mihran Gultekin Savior mentioned that, according to some opinions, it reaches 3-4 millions. The reason of such a great number of hidden Armenians in Western Armenia is conditioned by the fact that they are oppressed there, and when they decide to unveil their identity, they encounter difficulties. That is why they keep it in secrecy, but when we conduct private conversations, they easily unveil their identity and say that they are Armenians, Mihran Gultekin said.

He converted to Christianity 6 years ago and his wife, Karin Gultekin, was baptized 3 years ago in Germany. They plan to settle in Armenia.
The UK-based retail giant Marks & Spencer is looking to hire up to 300 people in India next fiscal as it aims to open new stores across the country for maintaining around 20 per cent growth.

The company, which is present in India through a joint venture with Reliance Retail, is expecting robust contribution from online sales.

"Our all stores are company owned and all the staff are on our rolls. Currently, we have little over 1,300 employees and we are looking to hire 200-300 people next fiscal as per our plans to open new stores," Marks & Spencer Reliance India Head of Retail Mohit Bhayana told PTI here.

He declined to comment on the number of stores it is looking to open next year, but said, "on an average, we open 10-12 stores every year".

Bhayana said the company has opened 31 outlets across different places in the last three years.

Marks & Spencer will open new stores in Goa, Thrissur, Jalandhar and Delhi in coming months, he added.

When asked about the sales, Bhayana said: "In 2014-15, we achieved a growth of 23.1 per cent. We hope to maintain around 20 per cent growth in the next three years."



He, however, declined to share the British brand's sales revenue from its Indian operations.

"In the third quarter of current fiscal, our growth was 15.3 per cent... In the last five years, our CAGR has been 31 per cent," Bhayana said.

Talking about the online stores, he informed that the company has started selling its products through ecommerce sites like Myntra and Flipkart from October last year.

"These two sites account for huge portion of online clothing sales in India and we are present in their platform. So far we have received very good response and we hope to increase our sales in coming days," Bhayana said.

Out of the total online sales, 25 per cent is going to North Eastern locations, he added.

The company today launched the 'Spring 16' collection at its first store in Guwahati, which opened in January.

Marks & Spencer opened its first store in India in 2001 and had formed a joint venture with Reliance Retail in April 2008 to form Marks & Spencer Reliance India Pvt Ltd.

The company has 54 stores located in 24 cities, including Delhi, Amritsar, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Baroda, Kanpur, Hyderabad and Chandigarh.

Established in 1884, Marks & Spencer has over 870 stores in the UK and over 480 stores across 59 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
A week-long multinational Field Training Exercise, involving military personnel from ASEAN plus countries, commenced here today.

Christened "Exercise Force 18", the largest ground forces operation ever conducted on Indian soil, being held from March 2 to 8 at Aundh Military Station, will focus on the theme "Peacekeeping operations and humanitarian mine action", a defence release said.

Playing of national anthems of participating nations and a fly past marked the grand opening ceremony in the presence of 80 foreign dignitaries from various countries.

Speaking on the occasion, Lt Gen Bipin Rawat, Army Commander of the city-based Southern Command, said "Exercise 18" would build common understanding and achieve inter- operability among 18 ASEAN plus countries.

A 40-member Indian Army contingent at the ceremony was led by a woman officer, Lt Col Sophia Qureshi.

Ten countries from South East Asia - Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - are members of the ASEAN. India and some other countries form part of the ASEAN plus.
Delhi Metro's annual expenditure on power has increased by nearly Rs 149 crore from 2012 to 2015 due to a steep rise in electricity tariff in the national capital region where it operates, the Lok Sabha was informed today.

The net expenditure on power was Rs 319.86 crore in the year 2012-13 which subsequently rose to Rs 399.86 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 468.55 crore in 2014-15, the government said in reply to a question in the Lower House.

"DMRC (Delhi Metro Rail Corporation) has informed that due to increase in tariff since April 1, 2009, they had paid Rs 799 crore more than that would have been paid at the rate of electricity tariff as on April 1, 2009," Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo said.

Citing the rise in power tariff, DMRC has been consistently demanding its fares to be revised. The fares were last hiked in 2009.

Responding to whether the government proposes to increase fares to compensate for the loss, Supriyo said Urban Development Ministry has forwarded a proposal for constitution of the 4th Fare Fixation Committee for the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.

Replying to another query, the government said it has sought Rs 19,335 crore assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the construction of DMRC's Phase III.

Over Rs 42,000 crore has been sanctioned for the construction of Metro's Phase III, which will take the mass rapid transit to more areas of the NCR region, of which JICA is funding 53 per cent.
Returning the fire after Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi's onslaught on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, two senior ministers today contested his claim that Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not consult cabinet colleagues and raised questions about the "maturity" of Gandhi.

Rejecting Gandhi's charge that Modi hardly consulted senior ministers, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the more he hears him, the more he wonders "how much does he know and when will he know" while Home Minister Rajnath Singh condemned his attempts to "mislead" the over consultations on the Naga peace accord.

Gandhi also came under attack from BJP Secretary Shrikant Sharma who said his speech in the Lok Sabha was "devoid" of facts and "full of drama but lacked in content" and called him a "lying machine" and a "non-serious, part-time politician".

In a Facebook post, Jaitley said the prime minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government but also inspires his team to work harder.

"The Prime Minister should be the natural leader of the party and the government. In the NDA it is so. The UPA was quite different. The Prime Minister is to lead by example."



Jaitley said all ministers including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and he himself were responsible for each important decision taken by their departments.

"We do not by-pass the Prime Minister who is always available for consultation and guidance," he said.

Jaitley was reacting to Gandhi's claim that Swaraj was not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Rajnath Singh was unware of the Nagaland accord and Jaitley did not know of the Budget proposals.

The Finance Minister said Gandhi's views are "shaped" by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a "crowd around a family".

"The UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the Prime Minister, he should be reduced to being a figure-head. Given a choice between a 'hands-on' Prime Minister or a 'nominal' head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former," he said.

Taunting Gandhi, Jaitley said, "As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering 'how much does he know - when will he know'.

In the post titled 'How much does he know - when will he know', the minister went on to say that after hearing Gandhi, "I think India has made the right choice between the Prime Minister who leads the Government and a Prime Minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere."



Rajnath Singh refuted Gandhi's claim that he was not informed before signing a peace pact with Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM, saying his statement was "completely false and baseless" and he "misled" the .

"Rahul Gandhi's statement on Naga peace accord in Lok Sabha today is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Rahul Gandhi's attempt to mislead the House," Singh tweeted.
A mobile shop owner was injured



when unidentified persons fired at him near the Buddh International Circuit here, police said today.

Amit who runs a mobile phone shop was having food at a roadside stall at the BIC here last night when suddenly three men on bike came and shot at him and fled away.

A bullet hit Amit in abdomen. He was admitted at private hospital where his condition was stated to stable today, they said.

Police suspect old enmity may be responsible for the attack on Amit.
Several Congress leaders today attacked the NDA governemnt at a demonstration here, accusing it of being "anti-Dalit" and "repressing" the voice of the country's youth.

At the Jantar Mantar, senior party leaders including Digvijay Singh, Jitin Prasada, Raj Babbar, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Oscar Fernandes and Selja Kumari attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and HRD Minister Smriti Irani over alleged "atrocities" against dalits and students and "silencing" their voice of protest in the country.

Hyderabd scholar Rohith Vemula's mother Radhika also addresed the gathering at the protest venue in Telugu.

Several members of the Youth Congress then marched towards Parliament from there before being detained at the Parliament Street.

Attacking the Modi government, Digvijay Singh said, it was "fundamentally" against the dalits, tribals, farmers and workers.

"Rohith is not among us but he has awakened the society in slumber like Dr Ambedkar did," he said.

Rallying behind Rahul Gandhi who has extended support to JNU students, he said, "Some people said to me that Rahul should not have gone to JNU, but why not, we ask. Injustice was done to Kanhaiya Kumar who is innocent. Now police is saying that their is no video of him raising anti-India slogans, after sending him to jail on sedition charges."



Surjewala said the Modi government in its 22-month-rule has done the "most dangerous" thing of "repressing" the voice of youth in the country and attacking the right of poor to education.

Radhika reiterated her demand for a law that ends discrimination against students on the basis of caste in educational institutions in the country.

"Injustice was done to my son and like him several others died in other universities of the country and justice should be done. A government order should be issued to bar universities from discriminating against students on the basis of caste," she said, which was interpreted in Hindi afterwards.

"Prime Minister is anti-Dalit and anti-student and I will continue my struggle till I get justice for my son," she said.

Youth Congress president Amrinder Singh Barar launched a scathing attack on HRD minister Smriti Irani and questioned her for not going to Hyderabad University after Vemula committed suicide.

The crowd of protesters broke through two barricades on way to Parliament before their march was stalled by the police, which also used water cannon to break up the protest before detaining some of them.
The Patna High Court today granted bail to former MP and RJD strongman Mohammad Shabuddin in a case relating to the killing of two brothers by drenching them in acid 12 years ago.

A division bench of Justice Anjana Mishra and Justice R K Mishra granted bail to Shahbuddin in the case for want of evidence.

A Siwan court had on December 12 last year sentenced former Shahabuddin to life imprisonment in the 2004 double murder case.

Satish Raj (25) and Girish Raj (20), sons of a businessman, were abducted and killed on August 16, 2004. They were drenched in acid before being killed.

A case in this regard was registered with Muffasil police station of Siwan.

The victim's elder brother Rajiv Roshan (36), who was an eyewitness in the murder of his two brothers, was shot dead on June 16, 2014, three days before he was to appear as witness.

The bail would not bring out the former MP out of Siwan jail as he is facing conviction in other cases.

Shahbuddin's lawyer Y V Giri argued that the name of his client was added in the murder case after 62 months of the incident and pleaded his non-involvement in the case.
Madhya Pradesh's thermal power generation is expected to climb to 5,640 megawatts (MW) by November 2018, a top government official said today.

Right now, the state's installed thermal power generation capacity is 4,320 MW, more than double of 2,147 MW in 2003.

"With the commissioning of two coal-fired units (660x2) based on supercritical technology at Shree Singaji Power station in Khandwa by November 2018, our installed thermal power generation capacity will go up to 5,640 MW," MP Power Generating Company Limited's Managing Director A P Bhairve told PTI.

"The two units being commissioned by Larsen and Toubro India are going to be environment-friendly as supercritical technology is being employed to raise them," he said.

"The first unit is expected to come up by July 18, 2018, and the second one is scheduled to go to steam on November 18, 2018," the MD said.

"The way the commissioning work is going on, we are expecting the two units to come up earlier then their scheduled dates," he said.

He said they were exploring feasibility to set up a new thermal power generation unit, of either 500 or 660 MW, at Amarkantak thermal power station where the work of de-commissioning of two outdated units (120x2) is going to be taken up.

Bhairve said that his company's hydel power generation capacity was 915 MW. Efforts are on to increase the hydel generation capacity as well, he said.

MP gets power from other avenues, including its central share of electricity from NTPC, he added.

The state has successfully met the highest electricity demand of 10,902 MW in January 2016.
My son is not a terrorist and the entire world will know it soon, said JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar's mother Meena Devi, elated over her son being granted bail today in a sedition case.

"My son is not a terrorist and the world will know it soon. I have faith in him, he will fight the opponents who have framed him. For every mother her child is great, if he has committed mistake punish him but do not call him a terrorist. He is not one, he never will be," Devi told PTI over



phone from Bihar.

Meena, is an Anganwadi worker in Bihar's Begusarai district, earning Rs 3,500 per month, while her 65-year-old husband has been bedridden for seven years due to paralysis.

Kanhaiya's brother Prince said, "the last few days have been very stressful for us but his bail has come as a big relief. We hope things will be sorted soon and he will come out clean".

Kanhaiya, was arrested on February 12 in a sedition case in connection with an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised.

He was today granted interim bail for six months by the Delhi High Court which said that he has to cooperate in the ongoing investigation and has to present himself before the investigators as and when required.

The JNUSU president, who has been popular among students right from the day of the presidential debate held before JNUSU elections, had asserted a day before his arrest that he did not need a "certificate of patriotism from RSS".

Kanhaiya studied in R K C High School in Bihar's Barauni area before joining College of Commerce in Patna in 2004.

After completing his graduation from Nalanda Open University, Kumar moved to Delhi and subsequently joined JNU for his M.Phil in 2011. He is now a third year Ph.D student in the School of International Studies.
Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya continue to languish in "dreadful conditions" with children dying because they are refused healthcare, the UN has warned, adding that the Muslim minority risked being forgotten in the afterglow of recent elections.

The comments were made by a senior UN official following a visit to western Rakhine state, where the Rohingya have been targeted by violent attacks and state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, earning a reputation as one of the world's most persecuted peoples.

More than 100,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in Myanmar's west after communal unrest in Rahkine state left villages torched and scores dead in 2012.

They are denied full citizenship and large numbers were disenfranchised in historic November polls that saw the pro-democracy party of Aung San Suu Kyi sail to victory with a massive popular mandate.

John Ging, director of operations at the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said he was shocked to see the state of the refugee camps during his February visit.

He described a raft of temporary shelters on the verge of collapse, and told familiar stories of families denied medical care on account of their religion.

"It was heartbreaking to see so many children in these dreadful conditions," he said in a statement from New York yesterday.

"One mother told me that her baby, less than a month old, died from lack of oxygen in December after she was denied access to treatment at the nearby township hospital," he added.

In an accompanying statement, UNOCHA stressed that the Rohingya and other groups displaced by violence "must not be forgotten" as the country advances towards democracy.

"Myanmar is going through an impressive democratic transformation, which is unlocking significant economic growth and development. However, not everyone in Myanmar is benefiting in this transition," the agency said, adding that some 100,000 non-Rohingyas are also displaced in separate conflicts between the army and ethnic rebels in Kachin and Shan states.

Though Suu Kyi has said she will protect Muslims in the state, the Nobel laureate has faced international criticism for not taking a stronger stance on the Rohingya's plight, and for failing to field any Muslim candidates in November's polls.

Carving out a solution for the Rohingya and addressing strident anti-Muslim rhetoric among Buddhist nationalists across the country will be a key test of her administration.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. A leading U.S. Congressman on March 1 urged the OSCE leadership, as well as the U.S. government, to raise the issues of political prisoners and lack of media freedom in Azerbaijan during their discussions with the Azerbaijani government and with President Ilham Aliyev personally, Armenpress reports citing Contact.az website.

"I met with [President Aliyev] twice in Baku, and I'm hoping to meet him here," Congressman Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), the chairman of the Committee for Security and Cooperation in Europe, (or Helsinki Commission) and the sponsor of 'Azerbaijan Democracy Act,' told TURAN's Washington correspondent.

Aliyev is expected to attend the US-led Nuclear Security Summit in Washington later in March.

Speaking about the prospects for Azerbaijan Democracy Act, the Congressman said, the next step is probably another hearing, very shortly, followed by marked up of the legislation. We are very serious about this bill, he said, We are trying to get President Aliyev to realize that he and his government have chosen to repress individuals, journalists, opposition folks, which does not end well.

It jumps off the page when you have approximately a hundred political prisoners now, and this number seems to keep growing, the Congressman said.

Journalists, he added, sometimes write things that none of us like. But there got to be truth tellers and if they tell the truth and then it's out of source with the regime, you don't incarcerate them.

The Azerbaijan Democracy Act was introduced to the Helsinki Commission later last year, during a hearing on journalist Khadija Ismayilovas imprisonment. It aimed at denying U.S. visas to senior Azerbaijani officials due to their ongoing crackdown against independent voices.

Baku considers the Act pro-Armenian, citing Chairman Smith's long-term advocacy on recognition of 1915 events - Armenian's mass killings by Ottomans - as Genocide, something that Turkey denies.

When asked if he ever heard back from the Azerbaijani government about the bill, the Congressmen said, not much!

Congressman Smith on March 1 also made a specific appeal on behalf of Khadija Ismayil and other prisoners, during the Helsinki Commission hearing with Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Germany's Chairmanship of the OSCE.

He urged the OSCE leadership to advocate for Khadija and others prisoners' release. "If you make a visit to Azerbaijan, please request to meet with Khadija personally.

In his response Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germanys foreign affairs minister, said he recently met with President Aliyev during Munich Security Conference and announced his upcoming visit to Azerbaijan. "We'll urge Azerbaijan to respect the freedom of media and hopefully we'll find solutions on this issue one way or another," he said.
Nasscom and Tamil Nadu government today signed an agreement to set up the first 'startup warehouse' in the state.

The warehouse, to be spread over an area of 8,000 sq ft here, will accommodate upto 50 startups and provide various resources to the new companies.

Information Technology Department and Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) officials exchanged documents in the presence of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa at the Secretariat here, an official release said.

The warehouse would be set up under the 'Nasscom 10,000 Startups' initiative, which is aimed at scaling up the startup ecosystem in the country and enabling incubation, funding and support for 10,000 technology startups over the next ten years.

The selection of startups for the warehouse here would be finalised by a selection committee comprising of stakeholders from the government and industry, the statement said.

"We have immense talent and enthusiasm here and wanted to further encourage and support the entrepreneurs through our 10,000 startups programme. The warehouse will nurture nearly 200 entrepreneurs to foster innovation under one roof," Nasscom 10,000 Startups' Vice-President Rajat Tandon said.

Startups utilising the warehouse space would get a host of facilities, including 10 Mbps broadband and other facilities, it said.

The initiative by National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) aims to foster entrepreneurship and strengthen early stage support for tech startups.
The 29th National Exhibition of Contemporary Art-2016 will be held at Chitramayee State Art Gallery in Madhapur here from March 18-27.

The South Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur an autonomous institution working under the aegis of Ministry of Culture, Government of India, is organising the event in collaboration with Department of Youth Advancement, Tourism and Culture, Government of Telangana.

"This mega event in real sense is monumental in structure and perhaps the biggest-ever showcase of modern and contemporary art traditions of India. We will be exhibiting 300 art works of 223 artists selected from all over India by the distinguish jury," SCZCC Director Piyush Kumar said.

The idea to create this biggest platform is to encourage the artists fraternity to participate and to understand the national contemporary art scenario better and also for lifetime national recognition, he said adding the aim of this grand initiative is to connect contemporary art practices of the nation and to create a vibrant platform in the larger interest of arts and the artists' fraternity.

There are 5 awards of Rs 2 lakh each in Senior category and 5 awards of Rs 1 lakh each in Junior category plus citation and mementos for each besides 10 special awards of Rs 50,000 each which is open to artists in junior category.

"Some 801 entries were received out of which 300 works by 223 artists have been selected for the exhibition. The works once they are on display will be adjudicated by the jury of experts," Kumar said adding SCZCC is also putting up a National Book Exhbition on Art and Culture.
Nepali Congress, the largest opposition group in the parliament, is set to elect its new chief with three-time premier Sher Bahadur Deuba leading the pack of contestants to lead the party following the death of its president and Nepal's ex-prime minister Sushil Koirala.

A triangular contest is expected during the 13th national convention starting tomorrow for the top post in the party which lost power last year to a largely-leftist coalition under an arrangement between major parties to elect a new government after the promulgation of the Constitution.

But three-time prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, who comes from the same social democratic tradition as Koirala, is seen as the frontrunner to take over the party which has had traditionally close ties with India, media reports said.

Two other main candidates in the fray are NC vice-president Ramchandra Poudyal and general-secretary Krishna Sitaula. However, Sujata Koirala, daughter of late prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala, has also announced to contest for the top post though without forming her team.

The four-day meet has been convened just three weeks after the death of Koirala, a moderate figure in the country's troubled politics, who died of pneumonia on February 9.

Koirala had a balanced view about India and his death presented a succession problem for the Koirala dynasty.

The party will also elect new central executive committee and present its political document during the convention.

Shashanka Koirala, son of the late popular leader BP Koirala, Arjun Narsingh K C and youth leader Gagan Thapa are vying for the second-important post of general secretary from the teams of Poudyal, Deuba and Sitaula respectively.

Among 85 members of the central committee, 65 including president, general secretary and treasurer are directly elected from among 3,100 general convention members.

(Reopens FGN 27)



The convention begins with a public meeting and top party leaders addressing the meeting, followed by a closed session on Friday. During that session, party's central committee will present policy and programmes, general secretary's report as well as financial report will be presented.

The convention is likely to amend the party statute to reform its structure and make the party more inclusive and democratic. Various foreign leaders have been invited for the inugural ceremony.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, BJP vice-president Bhagat Singh Koshiyari and general secretary of Socialist International Luis Ayala will attend the inaugural ceremony.

Nepal has been in turmoil since the new constitution was adopted in September. The Madhesi community, which has close ties to India launched protests against the charter, saying it did not address their demand for a greater say in government.

The popular Nepali Congress has some 600,000 members. It led the Peoples Movement of 2006 that after years of conflict abolished the 239-year-old monarchy.

However, NC pursues the ideology of democratic socialism and is known for its centrist policies.
New Zealanders began voting today on whether to adopt a new flag, in a referendum Prime Minister John Key has called a once-in-a-generation chance to ditch Britain's Union Jack from the national banner.

About three million ballot papers are being distributed in the South Pacific nation of 4.5 million people for the vote, conducted only by post, which closes on March 24.

The result will be binding and John Burrows, the head of a panel overseeing the referendum, said New Zealanders would have to live with their choice far into the future.

"Whatever the decision, this flag will fly for generations to come and we hope all Kiwis exercise their right to vote in this historic decision," he said.

Key, a passionate advocate for a new flag, said the vote was a rare chance to update and modernise an important national symbol.

"If they don't vote for change now, they won't get another chance until we become a republic," he told Radio New Zealand this week.

"I don't think that's going to happen in my lifetime."



On one side of the ballot is the existing flag, a dark blue ensign with the Union Jack in the top left corner and four red stars representing the Southern Cross constellation.

On the other is the proposed alternative -- a silver fern on a black-and-blue background, which retains the four Southern Cross stars.

Opinion polls point to a decisive win for the existing banner, with one survey this week finding 63 per cent wanted to keep it and only 26 per cent backed the new version.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today met Nepal's top leadership and discussed various dimensions of bilateral ties and issues of mutual concern, including border-related problems and political developments in this country.

Kumar, who is here to attend the opening ceremony of the Nepali Congress' 13th national convention to be held tomorrow, called on President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli and held talks with UCPN-Maoist Chairman Prachanda.

During the meeting with President, the two leaders discussed various dimensions of bilateral relations, a statement issued by the President's Office said.

During his meeting with Oli, they discussed bilateral ties and mutual cooperation.

Kumar said he is ready to extend assistance to Nepal on developmental issues.

Oli expressed happiness about the progress made by Bihar under Kumar's leadership.

Both the leaders agreed that Bihar is the immediate neighbour of Nepal and they have very close relationship.

Bihar and Nepal share common rivers, natural resources and wildlife.

Oli briefed Kumar about the sequence of political developments in Nepal after the Madhesi-led agitation against the new Constitution.

They also discussed Oli's recent visit to India which Kumar termed as "successful".

Oli said that most of the political problems that arose after the promulgation of the new Constitution have been resolved, according to Prime Minister press advisor Promod Dahal.

"There is no problem between Nepal and India," Kumar said.

According to Prachanda's secretariat, the Indian leader expressed concerns over political developments in Nepal after promulgation of the Constitution including the Madhes agitation in talks with Dahal.

The two leaders agreed that open border-related problems between Nepal and India should be resolved together, the Secretariat said after the meeting that lasted about 45 minutes.

JDU leader K C Tyagi, Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae and senior officials of the Kathmandu-based Indian Embassy were present during the meetings.

A delegation of Madheshi Leaders is expected to meet the chief minister.
today ruled out any change in its "dynamic" policy of increasing its nuclear weapons, as it dismissed the US' request in this regard citing India's rapid military modernisation.

Secretary of State John Kerry had asked to review its policy of increasing its nuclear weapons stockpile - which currently is among the fastest growing in the world. Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs advisor to Pakistan's prime minister, however conceded that the nuclear issue was one of the areas of differences between the US and .

In addition to Pakistan's policy with certain terrorist groups like the Haqqani network, the other issue of concern is of course the issue of nuclear weapons, because non- proliferation is an important agenda for the US, Aziz said.

"In terms of the safety and security of nuclear weapons command and control system, we have made outstanding progress. Globally all the agencies and the US have acknowledged that Pakistan has developed a very good system for the safety for export control, and command and control system," Aziz said during an interaction at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"But the (American) concern remains. Our nuclear capacity is a deterrent against Indian capacity. Deterrent is not a static concept. It is a dynamic concept. If your adversary goes on expanding its capacity, then you have to respond. It is not something that you can take something for granted," Aziz said.

"We keep insisting in our relationship that India is the independent variable in this. We are the dependent variable. So if India were to restrain and US would not increase its strategic and conventional imbalance between the two countries, then our task would become easier," Aziz said.

Pakistan can't even afford this strategic and conventional imbalance with India, he said.

"In conventional terms, our imbalance has increased phenomenally. In 1990s our defence budget was $3.5 billion and India's was $11 billion. We have moved from $3.5 billion to $7.5 billion. India has moved from $11 billion to $50 billion. So it makes our task much more difficult," he said.

"So we keep telling the US. This is our complaint with them that you are welcome to develop your relationship with India the best way you can, but keep in mind that you do not increase this imbalance between the two countries, or contribute to creating the atmosphere so that we don't need all these things," Aziz said.
For the second consecutive day today, Karnataka Legislative Assembly was rocked by the controversy over a luxury watch gifted to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah with JD(S) too joining BJP in pressing for discussion on the issue.

The House that was adjourned twice, passed the Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, amidst din.

As the Assembly met for the day, opposition BJP entered the well of the House and demanded that discussion on the issue be allowed and the Speaker reconsider hisdecision on allowing an adjournment motion on the issue.

"Chair should reconsider its decision; we have lot of things to discuss on this issue of public importance. Government is trying to close the issue," Opposition Leader Jagadish Shettar said.

Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa had yesterday rejected BJP's appeal to allow adjournment motion on the issue.

Sticking to his decision, Thimmappa today said there will be noreconsideration of the decision.

BJP then continued its protest, demanding that the affidavit, documents and receipt relating to the watch be made public by Dr Girish Chandra Verma, who is said to have gifted the watch to the Chief Minister.

Ruling Congress members led by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Jayachandra countered BJP's protest, accusing it of trying to question the Speaker's ruling.

Intervening, JD(S) leader Y S V Datta requested the Chair to allow a discussion on the issue in any other form as theadjournment motion has been overruled.

When government did notrespond to the request positively JD(S) members too enteredthe well of the House in protest.

Questioning the "double standard" of the government, Shettar said Karnataka government has appealed against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa considering undeclared gifts received by her as illegal wealth in the disproportionate assets case, and questioned why no similar yardstick was being followed against Siddaramaiah.

As both opposition and treasury benches were involved in war of words, the House was adjourned by the Speaker, who called the floor leaders for a meeting.

When the House resumed, opposition members entered the well of the House and demanded that discussion on the issue betaken up immediately.

"Government is making it a prestige issue; there are lot of other issues like drought that need to be discussed. If government has nothing to hide, why are they shying away from discussion? If they have guts let them agree for discussion," Shettar said.

Criticising the attitude of the government, Shettar also



raised the issue of Power Minister D K Shivakumar reportedly directing police action against a "frustrated" individual who, on phone, rued about unscheduled power cuts.

The Speaker said there would be no special discussion on the issue, but opposition can debate it during the motion of thanks to the Governor for his address, and continued with the question hour amidst uproar in the House.

As the Speaker asked Ministers to lay the papers mentioned against their names on the table of the House and conducted proceedings, Shettar opposed it, saying the House was not in order.

He demanded that the case be investigated by a central agency so that truth is revealed.

Amidst sloganeering and protest by the opposition, the Speaker even allowed the introduction and passage of Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, aimed at making provision to providepension to family members of the member deceased beforeDecember 26, 1978 operative from February 22, 2014.

As the protest continued, the Speaker once again adjourned the House till afternoon.
Opposition today tore into the government, questioning it on schemes like Jandhan, MNREGA and 'Make in India' and slamming its defence and foreign policy, particularly vis-a-vis Pakistan, even as the ruling side cited various initiatives as its "achievements" and blamed the previous UPA regime for delaying progress.

Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad in Rajya Sabha, while participating in a discussion on 'Motion of Thanks to the President's Address', offered "help" and "coordination" even as he accused the government of "double speak" and "hypocrisy" over the initiatives taken by it and said there was no expectation that these will yield any results.

"There are so many things blown out of proportion. This is unfavourable....This is all hypocracy. Nothing is going to be done. I don't have any expectation, any aspiration," he said while moving some amendments to Motion along with party colleagues Ashwani Kumar and Moti Lal Vora.

"I am not talking about success rate. We have also worked," he said, adding "We both should work together and coordinate together... No doubt, we are in opposition. But we are ready to help you."



Earlier, initiating debate on the Motion, Health Minister J P Nadda projected crop insurance scheme, Bangladesh border pact, skill development and transparency as government's achievements and attacked the previous Congress-led regime, saying progressive measures have had to wait for decades to be put in motion.

He said when NDA government took over, the economy was gloomy and there was "policy paralysis and stagnation", and now the world accepts India as the fastest growing economy.

The government is working with a "pro-poor" and "pro-growth" approach, he said, adding that schemes like Jandhan Yojana and Atal Pension Yojana had resulted in a "financial revolution."



Questioning the government's policies, Azad accused it of neglecting the farm sector and farmers and not fulfilling the poll promise of doubling the MSP but raising it "namesake".

Attacking the government for trumpeting 'Make in India' programme, Azad said, "It has promised to create 10 crore jobs in five years. Two years have gone by. Where are the jobs?"



With regard to MNREGA and Food Security Act, he said appreciated the government for realising the importance of programmes started by UPA government and continuing them now after checking their impact at ground level. "Why don't you acknowledge them," the Congress leader asked.

On Jandhan Yojana, Azad pointed out lack of progress made in opening of bank accounts though much publicity was being done on the same across the country.

Questioning the government's "attitude" towards dalits, he alleged that "Maximum atrocities are on dalits and SCs. The intensity of atrocities are increasing.

With regard to foreign policy, Azad said the government is



in "doldrums and indicisive" with regard to Pakistan.

"Your policy on Pakistan will not yield results.. Pakistan is friend to no one, neither to us, nor you," he said.

Noting the irony of affairs, the former UPA minister said, "When we were in power, when we were engaging Pakistan, we were criticised. Now you are engaging, you consider it good. If others do, it is wrong. If you do, it is good."



Azad, who hails from Jammu and Kashmir, said several Indian soldiers have been targeted in ceasefire violations in his state and the government should give "full backing" to them irrespective of difference of opinion.

The Congress will support you when it comes to national security, the Leader of Opposition said.

Referring to the attack on Pathankot Airbase in January, he said the government had committed blunders. "Inspite of intellenge inputs, counter measures were not taken. It happened for the first time," he said.

At this, Minister Maneka Gandhi reminded him of the terrorist attack in Mumbai in November 2008.

Azad then said, "In Mumbai, it did happen. In Parliament, it did happen. Pakistan is friend to no one, neigher us nor you. I was saying it happened in our and your times."



He said, "When it happened in our times, you said we were trying to treat terrorists in grand manner..What are you doing now? The double speak will not be tolerated".

Azad said BJP had defamed Congress and UPA government. "UPA did a lot of work in its 10 years tenure. You won 282 seats by rumour-mongering against the UPA," he added.

Raising black money issue, Azad said, "The President's address says the black money has started yield results. Where are the results showing?"



The government gave an affidavit to Supreme Court saying that it cannot make public names of those stashed black money abroad, the Congress leader said.

"In the entire 10 years UPA tenure, BJP kept attacking leaders of Congress within and outside. It tarnished image. It even said the black money kept outside belongs to Congress. ...Almost two years have passed, Why are you not making public those names? BJP should apologise Congress for indulging in propaganda and tarnishing the image," he said.

The Congress leader also accused the government of neglecting the defence sector, saying "it was for the first time that there is no mention about defence in the Budget... Why it is missing? It is a very serious issue...NDA is suffering to protect borders."



To this, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "I don't think you have properly looked at it."



Azad said, "You always make tall claims about defence. We need to make a strong country by building strong borders. For which, defence procurement is necessary.

Azad questioned if ready-to-fly fighter jets are to be



bought from France, then what will happen to 'Make in India' programme. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present in the House at that time.

The Congress leader said UPA government had contracted to procure 126 Rafale fighter aircrafts from France. Out of these, 18 were to be bought off-the-shelf and the rest were to be manufactured in India using French technology.

But the NDA government scrapped the deal. "Why it was shelved? If it had been done, we would have earned name in the world. Now, we talk of procuring 36 of them as if we are buying chocolates. ...We are not sure of those 36 also. The House is not taken into confidence," he said.

Azad further said when French President Francois Hollande was here as Chief Guest for Republic Day this year he had said India will purchase ready-to-fly 36 rafale jets.

Taking jibes at the Congress, Nadda said way back in 1971, it was said that bank nationalisation would benefit the poor, "but it was only after 2014 that the government has held the hands of the poor".

He said Jandhan Yojana has increased the number of bank account holders to over 21 crore from little over 3 crore.

Claiming that India's global standing had got a boost under Modi's leadership, Nadda said the border pact with Bangladesh which had languished for nearly 41 years was resolved in only one and a half years.

He also referred to the coal scam and 2G scams over which the previous UPA regime had faced flak and said a theory of "zero loss" or "notional loss" had been floated then.

The Modi regime has in a transparent manner conducted auctions of these resources which have earned the exchequer lakhs and crores of rupees, the Minister said.

He also referred to the recently-launched Crop Insurance Scheme and said it would have long term effect and ensure security to farmers who will now be compensated speedily even when their crops face localised or post-harvest damage.

Referring to the initiative for soil health cards, Nadda said even this scheme has had to wait for 2014 to be actualised.

M J Akbar (BJP) said the Modi government's philsophy is



to eliminate poverty and the schemes are being run keeping this target in mind.

Noting that there was no greater violence than poverty, he said, "Our PM knows when people are hungry and in what manner it anguishes them," and hence his policies are focused on the poor.

He said there were stable governments after 1972 but they were not faithful to those who voted them to power.

Blaming the trickle-down theory for prevailing poverty, Akbar said, "The trickle-down theory has destroyed the country. The Modi government has put bottom to top approach. For the first time we see this change in the government which has began thrust to the poor."



Trickle-down theory is a populist political term used to characterize economic policies as favoring the wealthy or privileged.

Poverty level has come down to 30 per cent now from 66 per cent in last 70 years of the country's independence. "We can feel happy about it. It took 70 years to bring down to 30 per cent. Will poor wait for another 70 years to bring to zero? They will not wait," he added.

Akbar further said the government has come to believe that poor can also become bussinessmen and schemes like Mundra Yojana and Jan Dhan Yojana are being launched to help them.

As he was referring more to PM's speech, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy (TMC) raised a point of order, "Whether we are discussing President's address or PM's speech. Let him restrict to President's address."



"Jobs, education, medicine, village and poverty --these words may be source of amusement to cynics but they are source of hope for poor," Akbar said, adding that it is the poor who are going to find a revoluationary change in their lives.

(Reopen PAR48)



Ashwani Kumar (Cong) attacked the government for dubbing its leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi as "anti-national", saying "don't raise questions on our nationalism. Who gave that right to you?..Just because we stood with the JNU students."



He told the NDA leadership that it is not the custodian of their own principles but of the Constitution and it is this sacred Constitution which is "under siege" along with the freedom of thought and speech.

The Congress leader alleged that under this government, incidents of communalism are on the rise and atrocities on dalits are increasing. He cited examples of Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh where there has been an increase of 73 per cent and 44 percent each in incidents of atrocities on dalits.

He also said that minorities in the country are not safe and feel insecure and questioned the inflamatory statements made by BJP leaders.

Kumar said all schemes listed by this government are those of UPA which have been renamed and presented in a new form.

"It is the foundation kept by the UPA on which you are trying to build your government," he said, asking where the government stood on issues of quality, independence and brotherhood and the country was watching and will assess it.

"You will have to explain to people of India why suicides of farmers are taking place. You could not give compensation to 3,326 farmers who committed suicide in 2015. Don't excape responsibility," he said.

Talking about the Pathankot attack, he said, "You are accountable. Why the entire Army was not sent and instead NSG commandos were sent from Delhi."



Kumar said the government is not allowing the opposition to "express itself" and "spurious debate" is being orchestrated in the country on nationalism, which needs to be "debunked".

Baishnab Parida (BJD) said the President's address has not covered the tragic suicides by the farmers in the country.

Referring to the issue of alleged hate speech by Union Minister Ram Shankar Katheria, he said: "On one hand you talk of economic growth, and on the other you are dividing the society."



Parida questioned the Prime Minister's silence when there are instances like hate speeches and that of anti-nationalism.

"The Prime Minister's silence is affecting the people here and also abroad," he added.

He said that Eastern India has been neglected in the Budget for 2016-17.

Supporting the President's address, Anil Desai (SS) urged the members in the House to help the government in building the country.

Congratulating security forces in foiling the terrorist attacks in Pathankaot and Pampore, he said that Pakistan is not seroius about tackling the menace of terrorism.

K P Ramalingam (DMK) also spoke.

(Reopen PAR49)



Ashwani Kumar said the Modi Government has failed the nation on all fronts.

He said the President address is deafeningly silent on the brazen onslaughts on fundamental values of inclusion, freedom and fraternity that define the "Idea of India".

Citing facts and figures, Kumar said the BJP's promise, "Saab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas" and "Ekatma, Manavta Ka Darshan" have fallen flat when measured against the ground reality.

As on 31st December 2015, 3228 farmers committed suicide and compensation was awarded to only 1841 families. He said that we cannot place a value on life but even then no notional compensation was offered to the farmers to all the farmers. He reminded the government of the need for compassion.

Referring to JNU incidents, Kumar said no right-minded citizen believes that there was anything in Kanhaiya Kumar's speech that would invite charges of sedition. He asked the government not to breach the sanctity of higher institutions of learning by sending in police.

He said the government has failed to create an atmosphere for a constructive engagement with opposition because of its vicious campaign of calumny against its political opponents.

He said that the Gandhi family had lost its members to terrorism in the defense of the unity and integrity of India and that the Congress party needed no certificates on patriotism and nationalism from anyone else.

He concluded by saying that every Indian is a nationalist and each one of us has our own idea of nationalism.
The Opposition today urged Jharkhand Governor Droupadi Murmu to direct the Raghubar Das government to scrap the results of the 5th Jharkhand Public Service Commission and institute a high-level probe into the alleged irregularities in the examination process.

Headed by the Leader of Opposition and former chief minister Hemant Soren, the Opposition submitted the memorandum to the Governor, highlighting details of their allegations.

The memorandum also mentioned that the Assembly proceedings were disrupted for four days on the issue.

Former Speaker and Congress MLA Alamgir Alam, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) Legislature Party Leader Pradip Yadav, Marxist Coordination Committee MLA Arup Chatterjee and several JMM MLAs were the part of the delegation.
Osama bin Laden was plotting to wage a jihad against Pakistan and the slain al-Qaeda leader wanted to manipulate Indo-Pak tensions to achieve this objective, according to newly declassified files seized from his Abbottabad hideout.

In a 42-page booklet originally in Arabic recovered from the Abbottabad compound of Osama during the raid by US commandos in which he was killed, the al-Qaeda leader gives a detailed blueprint on how and where to launch the jihad against Pakistan and establish Islamic rule in the country.

In the booklet, which was released by the Office of Director of National Intelligence yesterday, Osama alleged that India was planning to attack Pakistan as part of the larger American game plan to divide Pakistan.

And then he sets his eyes on the entire region of South Asia, arguing that it is the British colonial rulers who divided the area, which in fact is one country.

"India plans to attack Pakistan," is one of the chapters of the booklet titled 'Jihad in Pakistan'.

In the booklet, Osama wrote, "India has embarked on many important initiatives, except that it is preparing for a decisive grand battle. Among those initiatives are India's bid to purchase 134 fighter aircraft from all over the world, this will be the largest military deal in the history of the whole world."



In this regard, the booklet highlights steps by India like "military training with Britain on the highest fighting fronts, in the mountainous Siachen region on the Pakistani border...America's grand steps in nuclear cooperation with India through the purchase of an Indian nuclear reactor on Indian soil...India's convening the largest 'Strategic War Games' in Hyderabad region."



The booklet also referred to India's launch of an Israeli satellite to spy on Pakistan and its alleged announcement of increasing its force size by a million, compared to its then 1,300,000 million-strong soldier force.

"These giant steps predict an incoming storm. India has focused its attention on Pakistan's internal situation. Military analysts interpreted these steps through their statements that India will attack Pakistan, sooner or later," the booklet said.

Laying out his plan of action to wage a successful jihad against Pakistan, Osama proposed four-prong action plan.

"We have to launch raids against the Pakistani army that is deployed on the Indian border, because these are vast desert battlefields areas and it will be easy to target them.

"By these operations, we will realise that these border armies will not come to the rescue of armies that are present in Sarhad and Balochistan; on the contrary, they will focus their efforts on strengthening their positions in their areas, as they are sensitive areas from the point of view of Pakistan's war with India," he wrote.

Therefore, every attack in these areas will constitute "an anchoring nail" in the foot of the army, impeding it from movement to these areas, he argued.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan sent a congratulatory message on Diplomat's Day. As Armenpress was informed from the Press, Information and Public Relations Department of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the message reads:

Distinguished Diplomats,

I congratulate you on the occasion of Armenian Republics Diplomats Day.

Armenian diplomacy has had serious achievements during the 25 years of independence. This is evidenced by the establishment of diplomatic relations with around 160 countries over the years, the membership of 90 international organizations; signing of around 2000 international treaties and agreements. It is the result of efforts and hard work of Armenian diplomats, working in 60 representative offices of Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and abroad.

Armenia's balanced foreign policy finds broad understanding in the international arena, which will enable to find solutions to the problems facing Armenia and contribute to our national interests.

Last year, the high level of holding events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in dozens of countries became possible also thanks to the efforts of Armenian diplomats. We witnessed many manifestations of solidarity with the Armenian people, which is the regular step in the prevention of such crimes in the future.

It is symbolical that we celebrate the Diplomats Day in a new building which was designed and built, taking into account the labor and representative peculiarities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I am sure that new creative ideas and initiatives will rise here which will make us closer to the realization of the goals of our state and nation.

I am confident you will continue your selfless service for the sake of our countrys secure and prosperous future.

Once again congratulating you on the occasion of Diplomats Day, I wish you further success in your patriotic work."
Chinese coast guard ships were sighted two weeks ago at a disputed South China Sea atoll, sparking fears Beijing may take control of it, but they were gone when the Philippine government checked today, the country's top diplomat said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the Ministry of Transportation dispatched ships to salvage a fishing vessel that had run aground near Jackson Atoll in late 2015 and which posed a risk to navigation.

During the operation, Chinese ships "persuaded fishing boats to leave the waters in an effort to ensure safety conditions for normal navigation," Hong told reporters, adding the Chinese vessels returned home after completing their work.

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said it's uncertain if the Chinese ships would return, adding Philippine defense authorities were monitoring the disputed region. "They might be back tomorrow, they may not," del Rosario told reporters.

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr, who heads a Philippine-claimed region in the Spratly Islands, said he also saw the Chinese ships at the atoll for two straight days last week while flying in a plane over the uninhabited, ring-shaped reef, which the Philippines calls Quirino.

Jackson Atoll lies several kilometres from the Philippine- claimed Mischief Reef, which China occupied in 1995 and has developed into an island.

A Philippine security official said an air force surveillance plane did not see Chinese vessels on a flight Wednesday. Still, the mere sighting of the Chinese vessels has set off concerns.

"I'm alarmed because we frequently pass by that atoll on our way to Pag-asa," Bito-onon told The Associated Press by telephone, using the Filipino name for Thitu Island in the Spratlys where a small Filipino fishing community and troops stay.

Filipino, Vietnamese and Malaysian fishing boats have gone to Jackson's vast fishing lagoon for years, Bito-onon said. In another concern, Bito-onon said Philippine planes landing and taking off at Thitu have been warned frequently to stay away by Chinese forces based at the nearby Subi Reef, one of seven disputed Spratly reefs that China have built into islands.

The plane that he was on last week flew to Thitu and was shooed away by the Chinese too, he said.

"When you take off or land, you'll hear their warning: 'You are flying within our security zone, please leave immediately to avoid miscalculation,'" Bito-onon said.

Those Chinese warnings are an act of intimidation and show the threat to freedom of overflight in the region, he said. The United States and Asian governments have expressed alarm over China's island construction, saying it raises tensions, threatens regional stability and could violate freedom of navigation and overflight.
Philippine authorities today said they are looking for a parish priest who allegedly damaged part of a historic cemetery chapel in search of treasure.

Father Nelson Silvela, parish priest of the town of San Joaquin in the central island of Panay, vanished after the arrest of 10 men he allegedly hired to dig up the chapel known as the 'Camposanto', said Mayor Eduardo Servidad.

"We consider the Camposanto a holy place and we did not expect a priest like him to do a thing like this," he told AFP.

The men had dug a hole about 18 metres long which had weakened the structure of the chapel located at the centre of the cemetery built in 1892, the mayor said.

The cemetery and chapel, famous for its oriental baroque architecture and ornate carvings, were declared a "national cultural treasure" in 2015 and have long been a tourist attraction.

The 10 men, armed with tools, a metal detector and a water pump, were arrested on February 24 and later identified the priest as having hired them to dig for an unspecified treasure, Servidad said.

The local archbishop, Angel Lagdameo, told AFP he had suspended the priest and would support any criminal charges against him.

He said Father Silvela's act was "a big violation" that had deeply hurt the people of his parish.

The mayor said the priest may be charged with damaging cultural treasures, a crime punishable by 10 years in jail.

The Philippines is a largely Catholic country and churches and other holy places are usually treated reverently.
Philippine authorities were today probing an assassination attempt against an influential Saudi preacher who was on an Islamic State hit list, after the gunman was killed and two suspects arrested.

Preacher Sheikh Aaidh al-Qarni and a Saudi diplomat, Sheikh Turki Assaegh, were both wounded in a shooting as they left a university auditorium in the southern port city of Zamboanga, where the cleric had been giving an address.

Their Filipino police escorts killed the lone assailant, while two other suspects who were seen with the gunman were arrested as they tried to escape, police said.

"The suspect popped up from the crowd, moved in close and shot the victim" as he was boarding his car, said city police spokeswoman Chief Inspector Helen Galvez, adding that the gunman then walked to the other side of the vehicle and shot the Saudi diplomat.

A student driver's licence and a local government ID were recovered from the man, which identified him as a 21-year-old Filipino, but police said they were not ruling out forgery.

A uniform for engineering students in the Western Mindanao State University, where Qarni was speaking, was found hidden in his backpack, but university officials could not immediately confirm the gunman was enrolled in the institution.

Islamic State militants who control vast swathes of Iraq and Syria had called on "lone wolves" to attack Qarni and several other Saudi clerics whom they accused of apostasy in the latest issue of Dabiq, their monthly online magazine.

Yesterday's shooting also came as the army quelled a rampage by an obscure armed group that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in Butig, a poor farming town some 200 kilometres northeast of Zamboanga.

At least 12 militants and five soldiers were killed while more than 30,000 people were displaced over several days of fighting, which ended as the army seized the gunmen's main camp over the weekend.

However, Filipino authorities have not linked sympathisers of Islamic State jihadists to yesterday's attack.

He has been flown to Manila for treatment, according to a Saudi government statement.

Saudi media outlets described Qarni as a senior Islamic scholar and he has more than 12 million followers on Twitter.

In his book "Awakening Islam," the French academic Stephane Lacroix included Qarni in his list of "the most famous" Saudi preachers.

Last week, the Saudi embassy in Manila asked local police for increased security for its premises, as well as for the Saudi national airline due to an unspecified threat, Philippine foreign affairs spokesman Charles Jose said.

Zamboanga, 800 kilometres south of Manila, is one of the largest cities in the southern Philippines, an area troubled by a decades-long separatist rebellion by the mainly Catholic nation's Muslim minority that has claimed more than 100,000 lives.
A Philippine official said today that he recently spotted five suspected Chinese coast guard and navy ships at a disputed atoll in the South China Sea and fears Beijing will take control of another area frequented by Filipino, Vietnamese and Malaysian fishermen.

Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon Jr., who heads a Philippine-claimed region in the disputed Spratly Islands, said he saw the Chinese ships at the Jackson Atoll for two straight days last week while flying in a plane over the area.

Bito-onon said Chinese government vessels have not been stationed at the atoll, which the Philippines calls Quirino, in the years he has been passing by the uninhabited ring-shaped reef.

Jackson Atoll lies several kilometers (miles) from the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef, which China occupied in 1995 and has turned into an island containing what appears to be a runway. It lies midway between the western Philippine province of Palawan and Filipino-occupied Thitu Island in the Spratlys.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said it was trying to verify the reported Chinese presence and a local newspaper report that the Chinese ships recently prevented Filipino fishermen from approaching the area. Chinese Embassy officials were not immediately available for comment.

"I'm alarmed because we frequently pass by that atoll on our way to Pag-asa," Bito-onon told The Associated Press by telephone, referring to the Philippine name for Thitu Island, where he frequently travels to visit a Filipino fishing community guarded by troops. "What will happen now if we sail close with all those Chinese ships?"



Filipino, Vietnamese and Malaysian fishing boats have gone to the vast fishing lagoon Jackson for years, Bito-onon said, adding that Filipino fishermen were looking forward to the start of the octopus-catching season that starts next month.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have conflicting territorial claims in the Spratlys.
All nine people on board a small plane in Nepal had a narrow escape today when their aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing at Kathmandu airport due to a bird-hit, a week after two deadly accidents highlighted the Himalayan nation's poor air safety record.

The 19-seater LET 410 aircraft had taken off from Kathmandu airport for Lukla, gateway to Mt Everest, when its right wing was hit by a bird, said officials at the Tribhuvan International Airport.

"A bird hit the right wing of the plane after the take-off. So the emergency landing was made and the crew members and all the passengers were evacuated," he said.

All the nine people including the crew on board were safe. The aircraft's wing was damaged and it will take a few days to repair it, the official said, adding that the aircraft has been inspected by engineers for the damage caused.

The incident comes just a week after two deadly plane accidents in Nepal higlighted its dismal air safety record even though air travel is hugely popular as there is only a limited road network in the country.

Several areas, mainly in the mountains and hills, are accessible only on foot or by air.

Also, birds have often posed a safety concern for Kathmandu's airport located close to forested hills.

On February 24, a Twin-Otter plane operated by Tara Air crashed in Myagdi district in western Nepal, killing all 23 people including two children and two foreigners.

Two days later, two pilots were killed and nine passengers were injured when a small passenger plane crash-landed in the country's hilly midwest.

Since 1949 - the year the first aircraft landed in Nepal - there have been more than 70 crashes involving planes and helicopters, in which more than 700 people have died.

In 2012, child actor Taruni Sachdev and mother Geeta Sachdev were among 15 people killed when a dornier aircraft crashed close to the Jomson airport. Taruni died in the Agni Air Flight CHT plane crash on her 14th birthday on May 14.

In 2013, the European Union banned all Nepalese airlines from flying there. And in 2014, a Nepal Airlines plane crashed into the side of a snow-clad mountain in the country's west, killing 18 people.
The body of a 40-year-old porter, who had fallen into a deep crevasse in Siachen's Northern Glacier at a height of about 19,000 feet, was today recovered after a massive five-day rescue rescue operation.

Thukjay Gyasket, resident of Ayee village near Sasoma in Leh District of Jammu and Kashmir, had slipped and fallen into a deep narrow crevasse while ferrying stores between forward army posts in northern glacier area on February 27.

Specialised Rescue Teams from the Siachen Battle School were immediately launched to locate the porter.

His mortal remains were located about 130 feet inside the narrow crevasse.

After locating the body, rescue teams moved inside the crevasse and anchored it to the ice wall to prevent it from further slipping down.

The opening and gap of the narrow crevasse was also widened to retrieve the body intact, Army sources said.

The mortal remains of this dedicated porter have now been brought down to Hunder near Parthapur and will be handed over to the next of kin after necessary formalities.

Thukjay is survived by his mother, wife and two daughters.

Army chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag paid rich tributes to the porter saying that it takes extraordinary courage, physical fitness and mental robustness for a civilian porter to work with the army in the torturous and unforgiving terrain of Siachen.

"For me, he is one of us," General Suhag told PTI here.

Lt General D S Hooda, Army Commander, Northern Command expressed his condolences to the family of the deceased porter and has assured all possible assistance to the family in this moment of grief.

The Army Commander also complimented the tireless efforts and unwavering commitment of the rescue team who braved freezing temperatures to locate and retrieve the mortal remains of the dedicated porter.

(REOPENS DEL 47)



Army sources said Thukjay was himself part of crevasse bridging team and while returning after completing a task on a snow scooter with his buddy, the snow scooter slipped on ice while crossing the bridge on an old crevasse.

He skidded off the snow scooter into the crevasse at 1430h on February 27.

A massive rescue effort was undertaken by the Army involving an average of five officers, 40 soldiers and 13 porters for five days.

The efforts were extensive and round the clock using 20 types of rescue equipment which included oxygen cylinders, special ropes, harness, search light, generators and mechanical ice cutters among others.

This crevasse, at an altitude of 19,000 ft, was six ft long and 2-4 ft wide.

The depth reached by the rescue team was 130 ft. However, the rescue operations were extremely slow as the width of crevasse had to be widened by cutting the blue ice.
: Opposition Congress today sought a judicial probe into 'malpractices' in implementating various welfare schemes and also in procuring household articles for distribution as freebies to cardholders in Union Territory.

Speaking to reporters here, senior Congress leader and former Union Minister V Narayanasamy alleged that no tender system was appointed in purchase of mixies and grinders for distribution and that there were several malpractices in procuring them demanding a judicial probe.

Narayanasamy said though several petitions had been presented to the Lt Governor, seeking his intervention to prevent violation of rules in posting of employees and other issues, nothing had been done by Lt Governor.

He also alleged that the Chief Secretary and heads of some departments were remaining silent even as fraudulent practices were being encouraged in operating several schemes.

Narayanasamy also demanded a judicial probe into alleged repressive measures by police against fishermen protesting the planned moved by Coast Guard to set up a hovercraft port at Veerampattinam coastal village.

The coming Assembly poll would 'teach a lesson' to the ruling AINRC as unemployed youth, government staff, weaker sections, businessmen and traders were reeling under hardship due to the 'poor performance' of the AINRC government,he said.

Leader of the Opposition V Vaithilingam was also present.
Russian prosecutors say that a nanny accused of killing and then decapitating a 4-year old girl in Moscow was not acting on her own.

The 38-year old woman from Uzbekistan was spotted outside a Moscow subway station Monday morning, brandishing the child's head.

Before a Moscow court sanctioned the woman's arrest for two months today, prosecutors told the court that they believe that individuals who "incited" her to carry out the slaying are still at large.

Investigators said the woman, who was the child's nanny, appeared to be mentally unstable.

In memory of the little girl who was killed, Muscovites have been placing flowers and children's toys outside the subway station.
Two days after the Supreme Court began hearing the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) Canal dispute upon Presidential Reference, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today said the state does not have a single drop of water to spare and will ensure there is no compromise on "inalienable" rights under the Riparian Principle.

He said this after Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar expressed hope the Supreme Court's decision on SYL Canal would be in favour of the state.

"The Supreme Court had accepted the petition filed by the state government for early hearing on the issue of the SYL Canal, on which Presidential Reference was pending," he said.

Hours after Khattar's statement, Badal said, "Punjab's stand on the subject has been consistent, clear and categorical and there can be no compromise on the rights of Punjab as a Riparian State."



While Khattar leads BJP government in Haryana, the party is an ally of Badal's SAD in Punjab.

"SAD is ready to make every sacrifice on this sacred path. No price is too high to safeguard every drop of Punjab's waters, as it is the life blood of the state, especially its farmers," said the SAD patron-in-chief in a statement.

He said the history of SAD's contribution to the cause of the state and its people is "written in blood" unlike that of opponents who have been just paying "lip service" and issuing press statements for public consumption.

"I assure the people, especially our farmers, I will leave no stone unturned to save the interests of the state, especially the interests of the farmers," Badal said.

There will be no deviation from the legacy of waging legal, political constitutional or religious struggles to safeguard the interests of the people, Badal said.

He also asked opposition parties not to act in a manner that weakens the state's case by vitiating the atmosphere through needless statements only for political publicity.

"Every Punjabi, including the Opposition, must speak in one voice on the issue, as we had done in 2004. All political parties must follow the example set by SAD," Badal said.

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member Sukhpal Singh Khaira urged



Harsimrat Kaur Badal to resign from the Narendra Modi Cabinet, if the Akalis are serious about preventing construction of the disputed Sutlej Yamuna Link Canal (SYL).

"Solicitor General of India Ranjit Kumar has urged the five member constitutional bench of the Supreme Court hearing the Presidential Reference on the validity of the Termination of Water Agreement Act, 2004, that the Modi government favours early completion of the SYL canal," Khaira said.

"The Solicitor General has filed an affidavit to this effect in the Supreme Court," he said.

"Since Harsimrat Kaur Badal, daughter-in-law of Parkash Singh Badal is a member of the Cabinet, it is presumed that the Modi government's stand favouring early completion of the SYL canal is with the concurrence of the SAD and the Badal government," the AAP leader said.

On April 6, 1982, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had made the first dig of SYL canal at Kapori village that led to chaos and bloodshed in Punjab. One of the issues that saw Punjab being engulfed in militancy was the stiff opposition to the forced construction of SYL by the then Central government, Khaira said.

"Akalis and Badal reaped huge political mileage on SYL issue by instigating the youth to vehemently oppose any kind of sharing of our river waters with Haryana or Rajasthan. While the youths took to violence and lost their lives, SAD utterly failed to safeguard the waters of Punjab," he said.

Once again Badal and SAD are shedding crocodile tears and promising to approach the Prime Minister, while the Centre has categorically made its stand clear in the Supreme Court favouring early completion of the canal, Khaira said.

AAP is of the firm view, that Punjab cannot afford to spare even a drop of water to any other state, particularly at a time when our agrarian economy is in shambles with a colossal debt of Rs 51,000 crore, due to which farmers are committing suicides, he said.

"The party will oppose tooth and nail any move on the part of Modi government to begin construction of SYL canal," Khaira said.
Author and journalist is among six writers shortlisted for the 2,000 pounds Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History 2016, which celebrates the best non-fiction on a historical subject in any period up to and including the 1960s.

Karnad has been shortlisted for his debut book The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (HarperCollins), a statement by English PEN, a registered charity, promoting the freedom to write and the freedom to read in the UK and around the world said on Wednesday.

The prize endowed by former PEN member Marjorie Hessell Tiltman's bequest is set to be announced at the Cambridge Literary Festival on April 10 this year.

Karnad's book tells the story of war through the lives and deaths of a single family and thereby attempts to weave a larger story of the lives of the millions of faceless Indian soldiers who stood against the might of the Axis forces in the great theatres of the war- from the eastern front of Imphal to the distant shores of Eritria and Africa.

Other shortlisted authors for the Hessell-Tiltman Prize include Mary Beard for "SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome", Peter Frankopan for "The Silk Roads: A New History of the World", James Shapiro for "1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear" and Nicholas Stargardt for "The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45."



Childs was awarded the Hessell-Tiltman Prize in 2015 for "God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England" and Reynolds was awarded the prize in 2014 for "The Long Shadow: The Great War and the 20th Century."



"Our shortlist seems to exemplify the exciting diversity of history writing today. Collectively, the list takes us from ancient Rome to contemporary India, combining cultural, political, social and military history," Feigel said in a statement.

"Even in the more traditional 'big books about battles', the historians have found original ways to create compelling narratives in which the stories and voices of ordinary and extraordinary individuals thread through the larger events," she said.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. On March 1 Armenian Ambassador to Iraq Karen Grigoryan met with Iraqi President Fuad Masum. During the meeting Ambassador Grigoryan conveyed greetings of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and expressed condolences on behalf of the Armenian President over the terrorist attack that took place on February 28, in a suburb of Baghdads Madinat as-Sadr, which killed 80 and wounded more than 100 people.

Armenian Ambassador noted that Armenia condemns any violence against the civilians and support the Iraqi authorities in the fight against terrorism.

Iraqi President Fuad Masum expressed his gratitude for the condolences and asked to convey his greetings to the President of fraternal Armenia. He said that he is aware of the tragic page of history of the Armenian people and personally understands the gravity of the crimes committed against the Armenian people, at the same time invoking the violence committed against the Kurds and mass slaughter, referring particularly to Halabja events.

During the meeting they also discussed the works of Armenian-Iraqi intergovernmental commission and the implementation of agreements, reached during the session in Baghdad.
Pakistan today promised support for peace efforts in Afghanistan as Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif held talks with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and discussed regional security and border management issues with him.

Raheel, who made a brief stopover in Kabul to attend the Change of Command Ceremony of the US and NATO forces, reiterated Pakistan's support to the Afghan leadership.

He discussed regional security and border management with Ghani and promised support for peace efforts in Afghanistan, army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Saleem Bajwa said.

Raheel was on his way back to Pakistan after a day-long visit to Tajikistan, where he called on Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and discussed challenges regarding fighting terrorism and the Afghan peace process.

He also met United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Gen Joseph Dunford, Gen Lloyd J Austin Commander US Central Command (Centcom) and Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen Nicholson.

The meetings focused on checking cross-border movement of terrorists and coordination regarding the Pakistani operation in Shawal area of North Waziristan.

US Army General Nicholson today took command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Nicholson, 58, took over from US Army General John F Campbell, who oversaw the end of the international combat mission in 2014 and a subsequent escalation in the Taliban's war against Kabul.

Raheel's visit took place amid hectic efforts to arrange a meeting of Taliban and Afghan representatives in Pakistan.

The meeting was announced last week when officials of Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the US met in Kabul to discuss peace in Afghanistan.

No date has been fixed for the meeting but it is expected to take place before the end of this week.

According to security officials, there are still hurdle as Taliban wants relief ahead of Talks and are pushing for release of their men held in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rahul Gandhi today launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government over the "fair and lovely" scheme on blackmoney and the raging trouble in JNU and Hyderabad University.

In acerbic remarks on Modi's style of functioning, the Congress Vice President accused him of not listening to anyone's opinion including that of his ministers and MPs.

"You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is one truth in the universe--your own and nobody else's opinion matters," he told the treasury benches while speaking on the motion of thanks to the President's address in the Lok Sabha.

"The Prime Minister cannot run the country with his opinion alone. The country is not PM and PM is not the country," he said in a 40-minute speech during which Modi was absent.

Attacking the scheme on blackmoney announced in the budget on Monday, Gandhi said, "Nobody who has blackmoney will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme. All those who have blackmoney can make it white under this scheme."



Recalling Modi's promise of putting people with blackmoney behind bars, the Congress leader said the government had instead come up with a way to help such people.

He was referring to the one-time four-month compliance window announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley under which people with domestic blackmoney can come clean by paying 45 per cent tax and penalty and get immunity from prosecution.

Gandhi was sharply critical of the government over the turmoil in Delhi's JNU and maintained that student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been charged with sedition, had not uttered a single word against the law but was behind bars while the "real culprits" were roaming free.

Questioning Modi's silence over the JNU episode, Gandhi said that he had not uttered a single word when teachers and the media were attacked in the Patiala House court complex in the capital when Kumar was brought there for a hearing. "Which religion teaches to assault teachers," he asked.

Gandhi said that 60 per cent of students in JNU



belonged to dalits, minorities and OBCs. 40 per cent of them came from a poor background.

"Why are you after the JNU? Because dalits and adivasis study there and you don't want them to grow. But we will not let this happen. We cannot crush the JNU," he asserted in the course of his speech interrupted by the ruling NDA members.

Referring to the suicide of dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in the Hyderabad Central University, Gandhi said that the prime minister had not bothered to call his mother.

He also attacked Modi's Pakistan policy and accused him of releasing that country from a "small cage" in which the UPA government had put it through its diplomacy by suddenly visiting Lahore to have tea with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharief.

"The work done by the UPA has made us all proud. We conducted Panchayat elections, created self-help groups, which generated employment. We had broken the back of insurgency in Kashmir completely.

"And what did the Prime Minister do? He decided to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif without any vision. He decided to take a detour to Pakistan. Just like the Naga Accord. He did not bother to consult anyone...The people in intelligence, the diplomats.

"Perhaps he did not even talk to (External Affairs Minister) Sushmaji (Swaraj). Only his opinion matters. He single handedly destroyed the six years of work done by the UPA," Gandhi said.

Urging the prime minister to reach out to the Opposition, Gandhi made it clear that the opposition does not consider the government as an "enemy" and "does not hate you".

(Reopen DEL57)



Gandhi said that when the Prime Minister let Pakistan out of the "little cage we had forced them into", he "gifted them a status equal to ours."



"When he stopped over at Pakistan without talking to the professionals in our government the Prime Minister disrespected our flag. He disrespected those who died in Mumbai and Pathankot", he said.

Besides, he told the Prime Minister "You cannot defend the Indian flag by destroying the relationships between Indians. You are not defending the flag when you frighten your own people into silence."



Turning to the 26-11 Mumbai terror strikes, Gandhi said that then the government of India begged the then CM of Gujarat again and again not to go to Mumbai because he would disturb the operation.

"Did he care? No. He went right ahead to Mumbai, to the Oberoi hotel itself and disturbed the entire operation. He grabbed his headlines while our people died.
Rahul Gandhi today singularly targeted Prime Minister Narendra as he led the opposition attack on government in Lok Sabha, saying a "fair and lovely" scheme had been brought to launder blackmoney and slammed it over JNU and Dalit student Rohith Vemula issue besides the Pakistan policy.

In acerbic remarks on Modi's style of functioning, the Congress Vice President, while participating in the Motion of Thanks to the President's Address, accused him of not listening to anyone's opinion including that of his ministers and MPs.

He also ridiculed Modi's ambitious 'Make in India' programme, saying the Prime Minister has "created a 'babbar sher' (Asiatic Lion)" in which "clock and wheels are seen moving" and questioned how many jobs have been created.

Hitting back, the ruling BJP said lessons on corruption should not be given by those who "looted" the country and reminded about scams like 2G and coal block allocation during the previous UPA tenure which had "tarnished" India's image among investors.

Pralhad Joshi, fielded by BJP, accused the UPA of misusing the power and compromising the national security by changing the affidavit in Ishrat Jahan case with a view to "torture Modi and Amit Shah."



He also mentioned the National Herald case involving top Congress leadership which currently is in courts.

Gandhi, while attacking BJP, said, "You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is one truth in the universe--your own and nobody else's opinion matters."



Focussing his attack on Modi, he said, "The Prime Minister cannot run the country with his opinion alone. The country is not PM and PM is not the country."



Attacking the scheme on blackmoney announced in the budget on Monday, Gandhi said, "Nobody who has blackmoney will be jailed under Modi's 'Fair and Lovely' scheme. All those who have blackmoney can make it white under this scheme."



Recalling Modi's promise of putting people with blackmoney behind bars, the Congress leader said the government had instead come up with a way to help such people.

He was referring to the one-time four-month compliance window announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley under which people with domestic blackmoney can come clean by paying 45 per cent tax and penalty and get immunity from prosecution.

Gandhi was sharply critical of the government over the turmoil in Delhi's JNU and maintained that student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been charged with sedition, had not uttered a single word against the law but was behind bars while the "real culprits" were roaming free.

Questioning Modi's silence over the JNU episode, Gandhi said that he had not uttered a single word when teachers and the media were attacked in the Patiala House court complex in the capital when Kumar was brought there for a hearing. "Which religion teaches to assault teachers," he asked.
Reserve Bank today said it will conduct the zonal round of the inaugural edition of RBI Policy Challenge competition among students on March 9.

"The zonal round of the inaugural edition of the RBI Policy Challenge - a national level competition by the Reserve Bank of India to further the spread of knowledge regarding financial, monetary and banking matters among the student community, will be held on March 9, 2016", RBI said in a release.

The zonal rounds will be held among the winning teams of the regional round. The results of the regional rounds were announced on February 29, 2016.

Rolled out in January this year, the competition has three rounds - regional, zonal and national.
: A real estate professional wanted in connection with a landgrab case has been arrested and detained under the stringent Goondas Act, police said today.

They said one Madanagopal had filed a complaint that four persons had sold his Rs 1.25 crore property at Adyar using fake documents since he had been living in Dubai for long.

They had impersonated him and given the power of attorney to one Velu to sell the property, who in turn sold off the land to another buyer, police said.

Three accused, Chokkalingam, Murugan and Lakshmanraj, had been arrested as early as in 2013 in connection with the case issue even as Velu had absconded, police said.

A special team nabbed him from Tiruvannamalai recently and he was later remanded to judicial custody.

He was detained under the Goondas Act on March 1, 2016, police said.
The has filed a complaint with the police over alleged fund fraud.

"After receiving a complaint from the honorary secretary of the Cuttack branch of Indian Society (IRCS) Sanjibita Ray, who is also the District Emergency Officer, we have registered an FIR under section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) of IPC and started investigation," Lalbagh police station Inspector Debadutta Baral said.

Baral, however, did not explain as to why the named accused in the FIR was not arrested even as the complaint was forwarded to him by the office of the District Collector, who is also chairman of the Cuttack branch of IRCS.

Although, the complaint was filed on January 25, the FIR was registered five days later on January 30.

When contacted, Ray alleged financial irregularities and misappropriation of district fund were going on for over two decades now.

"The fraud of Rs 15.64 lakh was detected only for one year. If the accounts of the previous years, particularly after the 1999 super cyclone are audited, this will turn out to be biggest charity fraud ever in the state," she claimed.

The district administration had unearthed the Red Cross fund fraud in which nearly Rs 16 lakh was embezzled in a single year.

In its FIR, the administration has requested the police to take appropriate legal action against a head clerk Sayed Naimul Hossain, who has been placed under suspension since October last.

However, Hossain was not available for comments.
Reliance Brands today announced it will bring Kate Spade New York brand to the country through a long-term distribution and retail license agreement.

The partnership will leverage Reliance Brands' market expertise in the country to establish a network of standalone stores across major Indian cities beginning later in 2016, the company said in a statement.

Under the terms of agreement, a subsidiary company of Reliance Industries will have the exclusive distribution rights to the Kate Spade New York brand in the country.

"We are confident that Kate Spade New York's strong heritage and strong design point of view will resonate with Indian consumers, bringing a new dimension to the women's wardrobe," said Darshan Mehta, President and CEO of Reliance Brands said.

The CEO of Kate Spade and Company Craig A Leavitt pointed out that expanding into India is an important next step for the company as it expands and builds global brand engagement.

"With India's rapid development and increasingly aspirational consumers, we see significant growth opportunities in the region in the long term," he said.

Reliance Brands portfolio of brand partnerships comprises the likes of Diesel, Dune, Ermenegildo Zegna, Gas, Hamleys, Kenneth Cole, Quiksilver, Steve Madden and Superdry, among others.
Egyptian security officials say a roadside bomb has killed a conscript and wounded three soldiers when it struck a convoy of Humvees during a manhunt for a prominent militant leader in the restive Sinai Peninsula.

Today's attack in the Khariza area near the town of Qasima was further south than the region where militants from Egypt's Islamic State branch usually operate, and close to the Israeli border.

The officials say the troops were searching for militant leader Mohamed Muheisen. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media.

Egypt has grappled with militant attacks that intensified after the military's ouster of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The country's extremist IS branch has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.
South Korean smartphone maker Samsung Mobiles has emerged as the most trusted brand in the country followed by Sony and LG, while Tata Group is the only Indian corporate to figure in the top five, a survey said.

The survey was conducted among 2,500 respondents, aged 21-50, across 16 cities and its findings have been compiled in 'The Brand Trust Report, India Study 2016'. The report is issued annually by TRA (formerly Trust Research Advisory).

As per the study, the top five most trusted brands are Samsung Mobiles, Sony, LG, Nokia and Tata.

Samsung Mobiles was ranked second in last year's report which was topped by LG. Sony moved up a position from third last year.

Trust ranking of Tata brand slipped from fourth last year to fifth this year, while Reliance dropped to 22nd position from 14th last year.

India's largest carmaker Maruti Suzuki came in at the 11th position, up from 16th last year, while two-wheeler giant Hero MotoCorp climbed up a place to 14.

The top 20 most trusted brands which have improved their ranking over last year include Samsung Mobiles, Sony, Nokia, Honda, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki, HDFC Bank, Airtel, Hero MotoCorp, Dove, Lux, Samsung, Pepsi and Puma.

Top 20 most trusted brands which slipped in rankings are LG, Tata, Bajaj and Apple.

"Samsung Mobiles is India's most trusted brand of 2016 as a result of its constant efforts in bringing consumer value through conscious pricing, great quality and exquisite designs.

"Samsung's strategy of focusing on the core intangibles of its brand is evident from its climb to the leadership," TRA Chief Executive Officer N Chandramouli told reporters here today.

Brands which have gone out of the top 20 are Hewlett Packard, Bata, Amul, Reliance, Philips, Dabur and LIC.

Chandramouli said in the diversified FMCG space, Cavinkare has emerged as the most trusted brand, followed by Nirma, while Patanjali claimed the fourth position.

Interestingly, Maggi leads the FMCG food category, gaining 42 ranks from 2015 to occupy the 65th position in the overall trust rank list.
Prime accused in the solar scam in Kerala Saritha Nair today appeared before a court here in connection with a cheating case filed against her by a city-based industrialist.

As one of the co-accused in the case did not appear, the 6th Judicial Magistrate Court adjourned the hearing to March 16.

Saritha is facing two cheating cases here and 27 in Kerala related to the solar scam in which scores of people were allegedly duped of crores of rupees after being promised solar panel solutions.

Later talking to reporters here, she said she was contemplating to move the Kerala High Court seeking a speedy inquiry by the Justice Sivarajan commission looking into the scam.

Saritha claimed that she had more evidence in support of her allegations that bribe was paid to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Power Minister Aryadan Mohammed, a charge already denied by them.

Deposing before the Justice Sivarajan Commission in Kochi in January, Saritha had alleged that Rs 1.90 crore had been given to a key aide of Chandy and Rs 40 lakh to the PA of Mohammed for setting up mega solar projects in the state.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. Interstate financial and industrial group" Defensive systems "can be an important partner for Armenia, political scientist Alexander Markarov said in an interview with Armenpress.

"Defense systems" can be an important partner for Armenian Republic in the implementation of the defense role, given the fact that the anti-missile system is synchronized between Armenia and Russia, as well as the fact that the two sides effectively cooperate not only bilaterally but also in the framework of the CSTO, where the missile system is considered as an essential, important and central factor for the solution of problems of joint defense, "- he said.

According to Markarov, Armenia's participation in the work of this structure strengthens Armenia on the one hand and on the other hand - this organization, because thanks to the human and scientific potential of Armenia, organization will receive multilateral positive results in future activities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin aproved the government's proposal to hold negotiations with Armenia for making the country into an interstate financial-industrial group "Defense systems", which was created with Belarus. The corresponding order was posted on the official portal of legal information on March 2.

According to open sources, IFIG "Defense Systems was established in 1996 on the initiative of the head of design offices, research institutes and production enterprises - developers and manufacturers of tools and object air defense systems.

Russian-Belarusian interstate financial and industrial group of the same name works in parallel, created on the basis of the joint-stock company.
She saw her brother approach her menacingly with a "blood-soaked butcher's knife" saying now it was her turn to be killed, the lone survivor of the Sunday's macabre killings of 14 members of a family in Thane, Subiya Barmar, told the police as she recounted the horror.

Subiya's brother Hasnain Warekar, 35, had killed 14 members of his family, including his parents, wife, sisters and children, by slitting their throats with a knife after offering them drinks laced with sedatives at the family's house in Kasarvadawali area on outskirts of Thane, and then committed suicide by hanging himself.

In a chilling testimony, Subiya, 22, told a team of investigators from Thane police at the hospital that "she saw her brother holding a blood-stained butcher's knife in his hand and approaching her shouting that he has killed everyone in the family and it was her turn now".

But as the luck would have it, as soon as Hasnain came close to his sister, she pushed him out of the door, but not before he had stabbed her on the neck and inflicted cuts on the fingers of her left hand, said police sources privy to the investigation.

Subiya, in her statement, chronicled the events of Sunday and narrated how the family members had gathered and enjoyed the 'dawat' (feast) arranged by her brother and had retired to bed when Hasnain went on a killing spree.

She said at around 3 AM, she heard some sound and in the dim light, saw her brother slit throats of family members one by one, before turning towards her.

Subiya said she locked herself in a room and raised an alarm which was heard by neighbours, who later rushed in, rescued her, and took her to a hospital, where she is still convalescing.

"I learnt my brother committed suicide later on," she told the police.

Meanwhile, a close relative of the family, Liyakat Dhole, told PTI that the Warekars were a highly respected family among the 42 villages of Kokani Muslims in Thane.

"One thing I can say, is that it was Allah's wish that she stays alive to tell everyone the story...That's why the shaitan (devil) let her go," he said.

Earlier, Joint Commissioner of Police Ashutosh Dumbare had said they are considering all the angles like property dispute, psychological disorder, etc, behind the killings.

Police had also learnt from neighbours that Hasnain used to slaughter goats for 'kurbani' (sacrifice) ritual and therefore knew how to use a butcher's knife that was used in the crime.

Hasnain, a commerce graduate, used to prepare Income Tax-related documents with a CA firm in Navi Mumbai and did not have any permanent job, according to police.
The Supreme Court today rejected certain conditions like providing live CCTV footage to Police on performances in dance bars and asked the Maharashtra government to grant licences to owners within 10 days after they comply with modified guidelines.

A bench comprising justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh gave three days to dance bar owners to comply with the modified conditions.

"We are inclined to modify the conditions of installation of CCTV cameras and providing the live footage to the police. We direct that the CCTV cameras shall be installed at the entrance only and not at the restaurant or performance areas," the bench said.

"We direct the respondent (Maharashtra government) to grant the licences within ten days hence, if they comply with modified conditions. The modified conditions shall be complied within three days from today," the bench said.

It also warned the authorities against deviating from the court directions and asked them to ensure strict compliance with the modified conditions.

It, however, clarified that modified conditions are interim in nature and would be subject to final outcome of the main petition challenging the amendments in the law governing dance bars in the state.

Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand, appearing for Maharashtra government, argued that CCTV cameras needs to be installed in performance areas as well as in restaurants for the safety of bar dancers and to prevent untoward incidents.

"Possibility of irregular behaviour will always be there if the CCTV cameras are installed at the lobby or entrance areas and not at the performance area," the ASG said.

The bench then observed that Maharashtra police can deploy its personnel over there but no CCTV cameras can be allowed in the performance areas.

The court also modified the conditions of separating the



stage and audience areas by a railing and said three feet high railing will be put up in the front.

The ASG then said that railing will be put from all sides as many a times the stage is the middle of the restaurant.

To this the bench said, "The dance performers can't be caged. You can't put them in a cage."



It further allowed that four bar dancers can be allowed in the stage at one point of time while the remaining dancers can stay in other places.

The bench also allowed for verification of criminal antecedents of dance performers and setting up of green room for them.

Among other conditions, which the court allowed was setting of non transparent partition between restaurant and permit room area after the petitioner Indian Hotels and Restaurant Association agreed to it.

The bench also said that permit area or the stage cannot be altered without the prior permission of competent statuatory authority and posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks.

Earlier, on February 24, the apex court had come down heavily on Maharashtra government for putting conditions for granting licences to dance bars across the state.

The dance bar association, represented by senior advocate Jayant Bhushan, has red flagged certain conditions.

The association had objected to the condition that makes it compulsory to dance bar owners to "ensure that adequate number of CCTV cameras which will live feed continuously to police control room be installed to cover the entire premises which will record the entire daily performance and the same would be monitored by a specially appointed person on a monitor/ display.

The apex court had in November last year pulled up the Maharashtra government for not complying with its October 15, 2015 order, asking it to consider granting licences of dance bars to hoteliers and had ordered it to process such pleas within two weeks.

(Reopens LGD 12)



On October 15, 2015, the apex court had stayed the operation of 2014 amendment in Maharashtra Police Act that had banned dance performances at bars and some other places, paving the way for reopening of dance bars across the state.

The order had come on a petition filed by Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association challenging the amendment and sought contempt of court action against the Maharashtra government.

The court had noted that the provision was brought back in Maharashtra Police Act in 2014 after being held ultra vires in 2013 by the top court.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said the state government was contemplating bringing in a legislation over the dance bar issue, asserting that obscenity cannot be permitted at these places.

Fadnavis said this hours after the Supreme Court rejected certain conditions like providing live CCTV footage to police on performances in dance bars and asked the Maharashtra government to grant licences to owners within 10 days after they comply with modified guidelines.

The chief minister also said the state government will approach the apex court with an alternative.

"State cannot permit obscenity it has seen in the past in dance bars. We will approach the Supreme Court with an alternative," he said, adding that the Maharashtra government is also contemplating a suitable legislation in the state Legislature over the issue.

"Government pleader in the SC has informed that the Supreme Court has accepted all conditions imposed by Maharashtra government on dance bars with a few modifications. But the SC has disallowed the condition of live monitoring through CCTV and has asked to enforce surveillance at the entrance only," Fadnavis said.

However, the apex court's decision to grant licenses to dance bar owners within 10 days was welcomed by Indian Hotel And Restaurant Association (AHAR), while Opposition parties alleged a nexus between the government and bar owners.

"We welcome the SC's verdict. We always knew the court will do justice to our demands and we are thankful to the SC that it has enabled bar dancers to feed their children respectfully and have a life of their own," AHAR president Adarsh Shetty told PTI.

"More than ourselves, we are happy for the dancers that they can now work and earn for their children and families," he said.

Shetty asserted that dance bar association members want to make the profession transparent, and expressed hope that the girls who resorted to prostitution after being out of profession would now be able to have a dignified life.

"There is nothing like prostitution associated with the working of dance bars. When these girls were out of profession, they were forced to resort to prostitution. We hope the government helps the girls come back and live a dignified life in society," he said.

Meanwhile, MPCC spokesperson Sachin Sawant said the



government deliberately took a soft stand against dance bars.

"Maharashtra government has failed to put forth its position because they have a hidden nexus with dance bar owners," he alleged.

"This made them (government) take a soft stand against them (dance bar owners) in the Supreme Court. Also, the conditions put forth by the government were only a face-saver," he said.

The NCP also alleged there was a nexus between the government and dance bar owners, and urged Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to bring in a legislation against the verdict.

"There is a deal between the dance bar association and the government. For 13 months between November 2013 and December 2014, they did not file an affidavit in the SC. They have failed to handle the issue properly. The CM always said he will not allow dance bars.

"We want to know if they would bring in a legislation on the issue, but we are sure they won't respect their deal with owners," NCP spokesperson Nawab Malik alleged.
Mumbai police today arrested seven members of the Students Federation of India (SFI) for protesting the arrest of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar by the Delhi police.

These students were protesting in Dadar (East) area of Central Mumbai, police said.

They were fined under the Mumbai Police Act and released later.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today ordered authorities to expedite completion of Chinese-funded Neelum Jehlum Hydel Poject in PoK to overcome the power shortage in the country.

Sharif, who chaired a meeting to review the progress on the project which is in the vicinity of Muzaffarabad, directed Secretary Ministry of Water and Power to submit a bi-weekly report on the project to his office.

"All those related to the project management of Nelum Jehlum must shift to the site of the project for ensuring effective supervision and speedy work on the project," the Prime Minister said.

He stressed that achieving economic stability is directly connected with uninterrupted power supply to the industrial sector of the country, for which timely completion of the energy projects is necessary.

"Our efforts in the shape of power projects in diverse sources of energy reflect our determination to overcome the issue of power shortage in Pakistan," Sharif said.

The project, which was launched in 2008 in Pakistan occupied Kashmir with Chinese assistance, had slowed down due to a financial crunch.

The cost had gone up to Rs 450 billion from Rs 280 billion due to delay in executing the project.

It was facing huge liability amounting to Rs 20 billion with no plans for the transmission lines when Sharif took over in 2013.

He has given special attention for the project which will contribute more than 950 MW of electricity to the national grid on completion.

India has been expressing concern over China taking up infrastructure projects in PoK.
Mired in a controversy over a luxury watch gifted to him, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today handed it over to the Speaker amid uproar in the state Assembly, declaring it a state asset.

As the Assembly was rocked by the controversy for the second consecutive day, an angry Siddaramaiah gave the watch and a letter to Speaker Kagodu Thimappa as BJP and JDS members continued to stage a dharna in the well of the House.

Siddaramaiah's dramatic gesture came when the House reassembled after two adjournments with BJP and JDS persisting with their demand for a discussion on the issue.

The Chief Minister said in the letter to the Speaker, who read it out, that he had paid "advance tax" for the watch.

"I, being the Chief Minister of Karnataka, by following the precedents set by my predecessors in Office, declare that the gifted watch HUBLOT BIG BANG.301-M as government asset...," Siddaramaiah said.

He requested the Speaker to forward the watch to the Chief Secretary to place it in the Cabinet Hall at Vidhana Soudha, the state secretariat, today.

"I, being a law abiding citizen, have paid the tax on the said gifted watch as advance tax on this day of 2nd March 2016," the letter said.

He said the pre-owned "HUBLOT BIG BANG-301-M" wrist watch was presented to him by his Dubai-based NRI friend Dr Girish Chandra Varma in July last at Bengaluru as a personal gift.

Siddaramiah also said Varma has no official dealings with Government of Karnataka or its organisations.

Opposition BJP leader Jagadish Shettar dismissed Siddaramaiah's action as "high drama" and said he was doing so thinking that the controversy would end.

A high-level probe by a central agency should be conducted, he said.

The Chief Minister is in the eye of a storm over the diamond-studded watch.

As controversy erupted, he declared last week that the watch, claimed to be worth Rs 70 lakh, would be declared as state asset and handed over to the government.

As the Assembly met for the day, BJP members entered the well of the House and demanded that a discussion on theissue be allowed and Speaker should reconsider hisdecision on not allowing an adjournment motion on the issue.

However, Thimmappa, who yesterday rejected BJP's appeal to allow adjournment motion, stuck to his decision.

Following this, BJP continued its protest, stating that affidavit, documents and receipt relating to the watch had to be made public by Verma, who is said to havegifted it.

As both opposition and treasury benches were involved in war of words, the House was adjourned by the Speaker who called the floor leaders for a meeting.

When the House reassembled, opposition members again entered thewell and demanded a discussion.

Amidst sloganeering and protest by opposition, the Speaker even allowed introduction and passage of KarnatakaLegislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, aimed at making provision to provide family pension to family members of the member deceased before December 26, 1978 operative from February 22, 2014.

As the protest continued, the Speaker once gain adjourned the House till afternoon.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel today met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over 14 Bills of the city government pending with the Centre for approval for several months.

The Bills on Delhi Jan Lokpal, MLA Salary Amendment, CrPC Amendment, Delhi School Education (Amendment), and others were passed by the Delhi Assembly and were sent by the city government to the Centre for its approval.

"In the meeting with the Union Home Minister, both Sisodia and Goel discussed the pending Bills and urged him to ensure their clearance," sources said.

The BJP-led Centre and the Arvind Kejriwal government have been at loggerheads over a range of issues including authority of Delhi since the Aam Aadmi Party has come to power.
The Crime Branch of Odisha Police today arrested six persons, including a woman, for their alleged involvement in trafficking of girls and women from the state, police said.

The six persons were arrested when the Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (IAHUT) of the Crime Branch probed a case of trafficking in Kandhamal district, police said adding that the case was made based on the complaint of a victim from Kandhamal district on February 23.

"During investigation, it came to light that one Jagabandhi Sahani alias Jaga of Kandhamal district was the mastermind who was running the racket with its tentacles spreading to different parts of the country," the police officer said.

Investigation further showed that the girls and women from different parts of the state were being transported to Delhi and Haryana through Bhubaneswar. At least six instances of women trafficking have come to the notice of the crime branch of police, he said.

The arrested persons, Jaga alias Jagabandhi Sahani (30), Amlan Kumar Pati alias Rabi (28), Ramesh Das (28), Kumari Gouda alias Gitanjali Gouda (35), Lipu Nayak (30) and Steny alias N Aliv (16) would be produced in court later today.
Sutlej Jal Vidyut Jal Nigam (SJVN) today said that it has paid an interim dividend of Rs 168 crore to the Union government for 2015-16.

"On account of its financial performance for the year 2015-16, public sector SJVN Ltd has paid interim dividend of Rs 168 crore to the government of India holding 64.5 per cent equity in the company," the a Mini-ratna PSU said in a statement.

SJVN had declared a total interim dividend of Rs 260.61 crore for FY 2015-16.

"While 25.5 per cent equity holder government of Himachal Pradesh received Rs 66.47 crore as interim dividend and 26.14 crore is paid to public shareholding," it said.

Last year, the company paid dividend of Rs 434.35 crore to its shareholders.

The dividend cheque was handed over to Minister of State for Coal and Power Piyush Goyal by SJVN CMD R N Misra, it added.
HRD Minister Smriti Irani is in the line of fire once again in the Lok Sabha with opposition members forcing Speaker Sumitra Mahajan to allow them to speak on their notice for Privilege Motion against the minister.

Congress and Left members accused Irani of using the House to "mislead" the nation with her "totally blatant untruth" during her reply last week on Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide in the Hyderabad Central University.

Their attack on the minister, who was not present in the House, came after an upset Speaker vented her anguish over the relentless slogan-shouting by the opposition members.

She said slogans were raised against her as well.

"You raise slogans against the Speaker... Whatever you have done today is not good," said an anguished Mahajan as she allowed them to speak. At the same time, she said this should not be seen as a precedent."



The Speaker relented after TMC leader Sudip Bandhyopadhyaya urged her to allow Congress members to speak on the matter.

K C Venugopal (Congress) referred to Irani's statement in which she had said that no doctor was allowed near Vemula after his suicide attempt. He cited the subsequent response of the Hyderabad health official to claim that she made "false" comments.

He added that a book which Irani said was allowed by the then HRD Minister Kapil Sibal was discontinued in 2001, long before he became a minister under the UPA government.

Mohammad Salim (CPI-M) said, "What the Minister said was totally blatant untruth. Will you allow the House to be used to mislead the nation?"



Ranjit Ranjan (Congress) accused Irani of referring to her in a "threatening" manner and said this is the difference between an "elected member" and a "selected member", an apparent jibe at the HRD Minister who lost in the last Lok Sabha polls from Amethi and is a member of Rajya Sabha now.

Saugata Roy (TMC) said it is a custom that when ministers reply they are responsible but Irani was not.

Arjun Ram Meghwal (BJP) defended Irani, saying she had quoted a police report to make her points.

The House, however, witnessed uproarious scenes when Leader of Congress Mallikarjun Kharge raised the issue of Union Minister Ram Shankar Katheria's controversial remarks made at a public meeting in Agra allegedly directed at Muslims.

As soon as he raised the issue, Speaker disallowed him amid protests by treasury benches.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. On February 3 the city council of the Brazilian city of Franco da Rocha unanimously adopted a resolution proclaiming Stepanakert and Franco da Rocha twin cities to establish friendly relations between them.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of the NKR Foreign Ministry, the decision notes that it will be the basis for the implementation of various programs and agreements that will contribute to the establishment of cooperation between the cities in the social, economic and cultural sectors.

It is also envisaged the exchange of information between the mentioned cities in the sectors of culture, tourism and sport.

The draft decision was submitted by the member of the City Council Antonio Lopes da Silva and approved by the Mayor Francisco Daniel Celeguim de Morais.

The municipality of Franco da Rocha is located in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. The population is about 145 thousand people.
The Delhi High Court today said anti-national view in the minds of JNU students who raised slogans is like a kind of infection from which they are suffering and needs to be cured even by surgical intervention.

A bench of Justice Pratibha Rani said although the probe in the case is at nascent stage but the thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some students cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and might need surgical intervention if the first line of treatment fails.

"The thoughts reflected in the slogans raised by some of the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) who organised and participated in that programme cannot be claimed to be protected as fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression. I consider this as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic.

"Whenever some infection is spread in a limb, effort is made to cure the same by giving antibiotics orally and if that does not work, by following second line of treatment. Sometimes it may require surgical intervention also. However, if the infection results in infecting the limb to the extent that it becomes gangrene, amputation is the only treatment," the judge said.

The court further said the reason behind such "anti- national views" in the mind of students need to be found and steps need to be taken.

"The reasons behind anti-national views in the mind of students who raised slogans on the death anniversary of Afzal Guru, who was convicted for attack on our Parliament, which led to this situation have not only to be found by them but remedial steps are also required to be taken in this regard by those managing the affairs of the JNU so that there is no recurrence of such incident," the court said.

It asked the JNU faculty to play its role in guiding the students to the right path so that they can contribute to the growth of the nation and to achieve the object and vision for which JNU was established.

It said, "Spring season is a time when nature becomes



green and flower blooms in all colours. This spring why the colour of peace is eluding the prestigious JNU situated in the heart of Delhi needs to be answered by its students, faculty members and those managing the affairs of this national university."



Referring to Kanhaiya, the court said he belonged to an intellectual class pursuing Ph.D. From International School of Studies of the varsity which is considered as hub of intellectuals and he may have any political affiliation or ideology.

"He has every right to pursue that but it can be only within the framework of our Constitution. India is a living example of unity in diversity. Freedom of expression enjoyed by every citizen can be subjected to reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2) of our Constitution," the court said.

The bench also said that the "feelings or the protest reflected in the slogans need introspection by the student community whose photographs are available on record holding posters carrying photographs of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt".

It said that during the period spent by Kanhaiya in judicial custody, he might have introspected about the events that had taken place.
Former President of Sri Lanka Chandrika Kumaratunga, former Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali today met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and discussed a host of bilateral and regional issues.

The three leaders are here to attend the Raisina Dialogue, a conclave organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and a leading think tank to deliberate on geo-politics and geo-economics.

A range of issues of mutual interest figured in the one- on-one meetings the leaders had with Swaraj.

"A valued neighbour, an important friend. EAM meets with Bangladeshi FM Abul Hassan Mahmud Ali," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted after the meeting between Swaraj and Ali.

Speaking at the dialogue, Ali had yesterday said relations between India and Bangladesh are at their "best" now.

In his address, Karzai called India Afghanistan's best friend and identified terrorism as major challenge facing the nation.

"An old friend pays a call. Former President of Afghanistan @KarzaiH meets EAM @SushmaSwaraj," tweeted Swarup.

Kumaratunga said national security concerns should compel major players in the region to cooperate with each to effectively deal with challenge of terrorism and violent "politicised extremism".
The US State Department has said there has been no significant violation of the fragile ceasefire in in the past 24 hours, but a spokesman noted "nobody's doing any victory dances" yet.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been apprised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," spokesman John Kirby said yesterday.

"It's a very fluid environment and we're just going to keep monitoring as closely as we can," he said.

World powers have thrown their weight behind the landmark truce, negotiated by the US and Russia, as a way to bring an end to Syria's conflict.

The cessation of hostilities between the Syrian regime and opposition groups has been in place since Saturday, and President Bashar al-Assad told German broadcaster ARD yesterday he would do his part to guarantee its success.

Kirby welcomed the reduction in violence, but noted there have been reports of violations in past days.

"The right number here is zero," he said.

"Nobody's taken their foot off the pedal here. Nobody's doing any victory dances," Kirby said.

"There are still innocent Syrian people that are suffering today. It's not just because there continues to be violence and bloodshed in Syria, although that is troubling enough. It's also because still so many of them need access to food, medicine, water and supplies."



The ceasefire does not apply to territory held by the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, and the US continues to launch air strikes against the groups.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in since the conflict erupted with anti-government protests in March 2011.
CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami has sought the intervention of Governor N N Vohra for a thorough investigation into the Sarore incident in which a Gujjar was killed in firing during an anti-encroachment drive last week.

"There should be a thorough investigation into the Sarore incident," Tarigami said.

On February 22, Mohmmad Yaqoob died of a gunshot wound during an attack on the anti-encroachment team of Jammu Development Authority (JDA) by a large number of Gujjars in Samba district of Jammu and Kashmir. During the incident, 10 people, including 7 policemen, were injured in stone-pelting.

Gujjars have encroached on a huge chunk of the land belonging to JDA in Sarore Bus stand area close to Bari Brahamana Industrial sector in Samba district in the past.

The CPI (M) leader has sent a letter to the Governor in this regard, inviting his attention towards the plight of displaced families of Gujjar community at Sarore.

"Sarore incident cannot be taken in isolation. On the pretext of cleaning forest lands, illegal construction and so on, what prompted the police to use bullets against the unarmed villagers? This needs to be probed thoroughly without any delay," Tarigami said.

The CPI (M) leader also invited the attention of the Governor towards "nefarious designs" of some forces who were hell-bent to "vitiate the peaceful coexistence and communal harmony" in Jammu.

Meanwhile, opposition National Conference (NC) also



demanded a judicial probe into the killing, saying the government's version of the incident was "full of contradictions and conjectures" and justice should be upheld at all costs.

"When mainstream political activists and former sarpanchs can be killed in the custody of the police, the Chief Minister should acknowledge the grave costs of her government's callousness and irresponsibility in dealing with the deteriorating situation in Kashmir," former cabinet minister and NC South Zone president Sakina Ittoo and party leader Farooq Ahmed Ganai said in a joint statement here.

They said the killing was "a highly suspicious issue" that "exposed" claims of Mehbooba Mufti about the government's intentions to restore normalcy in the state.

The NC leaders said the probe should take into account eyewitness accounts and testimonies of locals and relatives of Malik and try to ascertain the truth with utmost objectivity.

They said every "perceived miscarriage of justice" and every act of an alleged extra-judicial operation sets us back as a state trying to overcome the trust deficit that has taken root due to a sense of impunity that has often been encouraged by political entities that have exploited the pain and suffering in the Valley for self-seeking interests.
A 23-year-old woman working with an Information Technology (IT) company was found dead near her hostel in Gachibowli area here in the early hours today, police said.

Rani Manisha, hailing from Jharkhand, was suspected to have jumped from the fourth-floor of the hostel where she was staying, police sub-inspector Ch Venkatesh said.

"Some people noticed her body at around 5 am and alerted the hostel authorities," he said.

Preliminary probe revealed that she was under depression, Venkatesh said, adding that police have registered a case of death under suspicious circumstances.
The Telangana government today said it has reached an understanding with neighbouring Maharashtra for construction of five barrages on Godavari, Penganga and Pranahita rivers.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has invited his Telangana counterpart K Chandrasekhar Rao to Mumbai to sign an agreement on construction of the projects, a release from Rao's office here said.

Accordingly, a delegation led by Rao would leave for Mumbai on March 7, it said.

The five proposed projects include Kaleswaram, a barrage at Rajapet on Penganga, a barrage between Chankha-Kovata, a barrage at Penpahad and another one at Tammidihatti on Pranahita river in Adilabad district. A barrage would also be built at Medigadda in Karimnagar district, it said.

Maharashtra government would take up the projects at Rajapet and Penpahad, while Telangana would build the remaining three, the release said.
Even as the Congress and the CPI-M are yet to formally announce a tie-up for the Assembly poll in West Bengal, the state-level leadership of the two parties seem to have entered into an alliance mode and are holding joint local level programmes and protest marches.

State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury issued a statement recently, asking all democratic and secular forces to join hands in line with the CPI-M's call for cooperation betwee democratic and secular forces in the state to defeat the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and isolate the BJP.

However, according to TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, the Congress high command is yet to make up its mind.

Read more from our special coverage on "WEST BENGAL ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS"

Bandyopadhyay claimed that Congress president Sonia Gandhi told him that so far there was no news about a possible alliance between her party and the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal.

The TMC on its part has refused to give any importance to the proposed alliance, saying it would have no impact on TMC's prospects.

According to Left and Congress leaders, repeated statements and comments by the TMC ridiculing the alliance are a sign of the party's nervousness.

"Why is the TMC so afraid of alliance between Congress and CPI(M)? If at all they are not worried about alliance then why are they making so many statements?" Chowdhary told PTI.

"The issue of alliance is no longer limited to what CPI-M or Congress leadership is saying. The grass-root level workers of both the parties have forged a pact in their own capacity, and we don't have the capacity to stop this trend. It is spreading from one area to another," Chowdhury added.

The Congress leadership is hopeful that the party high-command will soon announce a final decision.

TMC supremo and chief Mamata Banerjee had dared the Congress and the CPI-M to make official their alliance and said that people would give them a befitting response in the upcoming Assembly elections.

"I heard that the CPI-M and the Congress are trying to forge an alliance. I want this alliance to be made official. The people will give you a befitting reply," Banerjee had stated.

Notwithstanding the CPI-M's efforts to put the tie-up in place to defeat the TMC, a major Left Front partner, the Revolutionary Socialist party (RSP), was not very upbeat about it.

"We are looking into it critically. We do accept that the people want to forge a democratic, secular front against the TMC. We have to know what their policy is, have they (Congress) changed their stand, as they had been with TMC before? We have presented our critical assessment to the Left Front chairman," RSP state secretary Khisti Goswami said.

Abdul Manan, a senior leader of state Congress, was hopeful of the two parties (Congress and CPI-M) entering into a tie-up.

"Our state president has already issued a statement, which itself proves that we have a green signal from the high command. We are hopeful about a final announcement from the high command very soon," he said.

Apart from the joint rallies, the CPI-M and the Congress last month had conducted various joint programmes across the state, including protest marches.

Election symbol of hand (Congress symbol) embedded in sickle and hammer (CPI-M) were also seen in various parts of the state calling for support to the alliance candidates across the state.

"It is the people who want to forge an alliance. It is no longer limited between parties. People and supporters outside the Left want to join this fight against undemocratic TMC and we all have to respect the aspirations of the masses," CPI-M politburo member Mohammed Salim said.

Sources in the state Congress and the CPI-M said talks regarding seat adjustments between both the parties have already started.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, which had witnessed a four-cornered fight, the TMC had secured 39.7% votes while the Left Front polled 29.9% votes.

The Congress had polled 9.7% while the BJP riding on the Modi wave had secured 16.9% votes.
Tamil Nadu Government today said it has decided to remit the sentence of life imprisonment of all the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assasination case and release them and sought the Centre's views on the move.

In a letter to Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi today, Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary K Gnanadesikan said the state government has received petitions from the seven convicts requesting it to release them as they had spent more than 20 years in prison.

The convicts are V Sriharan alias Murugan, T Suthendraraja alias Santhan, A G Perarivalan alias Arivu, Jayakumar, Robert Payas, Ravichandran and Nalini.

"Nalini has also filed a writ plea in Madras High Court requesting the government of Tamil Nadu to release her," he said.

"The Government of Tamil Nadu after taking into consideration the petitions of the seven convicts has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and to release the seven persons since all of them have already served imprisonment for 24 years," he said.

Out of the seven convicts, V Sriharan, T Suthendraraja, Jayakumar and Robert Payas are Sri Lankans.

Gnanadesikan recalled how the Centre had gone to Supreme Court after Tamil Nadu decided on February 19, 2014 to grant remission to them and also referred to the matter pending in court now.

"The then government instead of expressing their views on the remission of life imprisonment hastened to file a writ plea in Supreme Court against Tamil Nadu's decision.

"In view of the circumstances stated above, it has become necessary for us to request you to communicate your views under Section 435 CrPc on the decision of the Government of Tamil Nadu," he said.

"We would like to clarify that this communication is being sent to you without prejudice to our right to move the Supreme Court to review its judgement dated December 2, 2015 wherein the Constitution Bench had taken the view that the word 'consultation' used in Section 435 of CrPc means 'concurrence' and without prejudice to our rights and contentions in the writ plea," he said.

All the seven were convicted by a special TADA court for their role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991 during an election rally at Sriperumbudur near here.
The brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has asked Canada's public safety minister to intervene to halt the deportation of an Algerian man accused of being an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent.

Alexandre Trudeau urged the government in a letter to quash its own order to deport Mohamed Harkat, a 47-year-old former pizza delivery man who has been fighting for more than a decade to stay in Canada.

The documentary filmmaker has long supported Harkat, reportedly offering in 2005 to act as his surety in a bail application, while steadfastly opposing a provision of Canada's immigration law used to detain him.

The seldom-used national security measure allows tribunals to be held in secrecy and indefinite jailing without charge of foreigners suspected of terror ties. It has been at the center of a post-911 legal and political shakeup in Canada that has pitted security advocates against champions of civil liberties.

In a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, Alexandre Trudeau said the so-called security certificates are "fundamentally unfair."



"I am absolutely convinced that at this moment, he (Harkat) poses no danger whatsoever to the public or to public safety in Canada, but rather offers a positive commitment to the life he has created here."



A spokesman for Goodale confirmed receipt of the letter and its contents, but declined to comment on the request for leniency.

Harkat was first detained in 2002 on suspicion of links to Al-Qaeda, and spent nearly four years in jail before being released under strict bail conditions.

He has denied terror links, claiming he fled Algeria over a crackdown on a political party to which he belonged, the now-defunct and banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).

But Canadian courts ruled he was likely an Al-Qaeda sleeper agent and a security threat.

The original security law used to prosecute Harkat was struck down in 2007 as unjust. But a tweaked version meant to ensure better legal representation of defendants was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Donald Trump nailed a fifth victory in the Super Tuesday Republican primaries, US networks projected, winning the crucial swing state of Virginia.

"Thank you Virginia!" Trump tweeted immediately after the race was called in his favour.

The billionaire real estate mogul was earlier projected to win in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts and Tennessee, as a dozen states voted on this pivotal day in the White House nomination race.
YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS. The House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 2 brought Congress one step closer to properly condemning as genocide the ongoing ISIL/Daesh crimes against Christians  including Armenians and Assyrians  as well as Yezidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East, adopting H.Con.Res.75 by voice vote,Armenpress reports citing the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The ANCA welcomes the House Foreign Affairs Committees passage of H.Con.Res75 as an important step in elevating our governments response to genocide from a political choice to a moral imperative, said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. We cannot continue to treat the recognition of genocide  whether it is the systematic destruction of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in 1915 or ISILs attacks against Christians and other minority groups today  as a geopolitical commodity, to be bartered or bargained away. Our stand against genocide must be unconditional. We urge the Obama Administration and Congress to speak clearly and unequivocally on this matter.

The move paves the way for full Congressional consideration of the matter and is timed just weeks before a March 17th deadline, when the Obama Administration will be offering its official determination on the matter. The Administration has been under increasing pressure from U.S. religious leaders, human rights and civic groups  led by In Defense of Christians (IDC), the Knights of Columbus, the International Religious Freedom Roundtable and supported by the Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the ANCA and over 100 organizations  to properly characterize the attacks Christians in Syria and Iraq genocide.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) opened the March 2nd consideration of H.Con.Res.75 with an amended version of the measure which offered broader details about Christian and other minority groups targeted by ISIL, listing Assyrian, Chaldean Syriac, Armenian, and Melkite communities as well as Yezidis, Turkmen, Shabak, Sabaean Mandeans, and Kakai by name. The resolution specifically cites the ISIL crimes against these communities constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide; urges all governments  including the U.S. and U.N.  to acknowledge them as such; and calls for a coordinated international campaign to stop the violence. The measure also commends the Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq for accepting refugees from the violence and asserts that Syrias Assad regime and ongoing civil war in that country has contributed to the growth of ISIL.

During Committee debate on the resolution, Congressman Dave Trott (R-MI) cited his trip to Armenia in 2015 to mark the Armenian Genocide Centennial. I saw firsthand how painful and somber the memories of those atrocities are, even today, said Rep. Trott, who went on to state, we have failed to recognize the Armenian Genocide and I urge my colleagues not to make the same mistake again. Chairman Royce concurred, noting We cant afford the same negligence that we saw in the Armenian Genocide with respect to this genocide against the Yezidis and Christians.
With US elections entering a critical phase, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton surged ahead in the presidential race today after posting big wins in 'Super Tuesday' primaries as an epic face off between them seemed likely after the multi-state vote.

Coming within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee, Trump, who has faced intense attack from other contenders for his radical views, notched up victories in seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

68-year-old Clinton, who is the Democratic Party front-runner and is aspiring to be America's first woman president, also clinched seven states in the 'Super Tuesday' primaries -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

However, both Clinton and Trump were denied a clean sweep which many poll pundits had predicted.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz claimed Super Tuesday's biggest prize -- Texas -- along with Oklahoma and Marco Rubio landed his first win of the 2016 campaign in Minnesota while on the Democrat side Clinton's main rival Bernie Sanders registered victories in four states.

Sanders captured Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont.

Trump, 69, emerged from the contests closer than ever to the nomination and was acting more and more like a general election candidate eager to take on Clinton.

"Once we get all of this finished, I'm going to go after one person, and that's Hillary Clinton," he said in Florida. "I think that's frankly going to be an easy race."



Speaking in Miami after notching several wins, Clinton also seemed to look beyond Sanders -- taking implicit shots at Trump's 'Make America Great Again' campaign slogan.

"America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole," Clinton said.

Trump, on the other hand, asserted that he is "unifier" in the party and is bringing a cross-section of the society to the Republican Party.

"I am a unifier. I would love to see the Republican party and everybody get together and unify. And there is no one who is going to beat us," Trump said.

"I think we're going to be more inclusive...More unified, and I think we're going to be a much bigger party. (The GOP) has become more dynamic. It's become more diverse. We're taking from the Democrats. I mean, look at South Carolina," he said.

In terms of delegates, Clinton had won 873 while Sanders had secured 296. For Democrats, 1,839 delegates are needed to clinch the nomination.

On the Republican side, 1,237 delegates were needed to clinch a nomination. Trump has secured 251 delegates while Cruz has 114.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton surged ahead in the presidential race today after posting emphatic wins in 'Super Tuesday' primaries as an epic face off between the two seemed likely after the crucial multi-state vote.

Coming within striking distance of becoming the Republican nominee, Trump, who has faced intense attack from other contenders for his radical views, notched up victories in seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

68-year-old Clinton, who is the Democratic Party front-runner and is aspiring to be America's first woman president, also clinched seven states in the 'Super Tuesday' primaries -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. She won big among African- American voters and reversed a 2008 primary loss in Virginia to President Barack Obama.

However, both Clinton and Trump were denied a clean sweep which many poll pundits had predicted.

On the Republican side, Ted Cruz claimed Super Tuesday's biggest prize -- Texas -- along with Oklahoma and Alaska while Marco Rubio landed his first win of the 2016 campaign in Minnesota.

On the Democrat side, Clinton's main rival Bernie Sanders registered victories in four states. Sanders captured Colorado, Oklahoma, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont.

Trump, 69, emerged from the contests closer than ever to the nomination and was acting more and more like a general election candidate eager to take on Clinton.

"Once we get all of this finished, I'm going to go after one person, and that's Hillary Clinton," he said at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. "I think that's frankly going to be an easy race."



Speaking in Miami after notching several wins, Clinton also seemed to look beyond Sanders -- taking implicit shots at Trump's 'Make America Great Again' campaign slogan.

"America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole," Clinton said.

Trump, on the other hand, asserted that he is "unifier" in the party and is bringing a cross-section of the society to the Republican Party.

"I am a unifier. I would love to see the Republican party and everybody get together and unify. And there is no one who is going to beat us," Trump said.

"I think we're going to be more inclusive...More unified, and I think we're going to be a much bigger party. (The GOP) has become more dynamic. It's become more diverse. We're taking from the Democrats. I mean, look at South Carolina," he said.
Tunisian security forces killed five "terrorists" in clashes in the Ben Guerdane district near the Libyan border today, the defence ministry said.

"Five terrorists holed up in a house in El Aouija (10 kilometres -- six miles -- outside Ben Guerdane) were killed by troops and police," ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati told AFP, adding that five Kalashnikov assault rifles had been recovered.

An interior ministry statement said that in recent days "terrorist groups" had entered Tunisia from Libya.
As many as 1,845 cases have been opened against people accused of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to office in 2014, a top official said, while a prominent journalist today described his recent release from prison as a defeat for the president.

Erdogan has been accused of aggressively using a previously seldom-used law that bars insults to the president as a way to muffle dissent. Those who have gone on trial include celebrities, journalists and even schoolchildren.

Critics say Erdogan, who has been accused of increasing authoritarianism, even considers strong criticism as insults. Responding to questions in parliament late Tuesday, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said his ministry has allowed 1,845 cases on charges of insulting Erdogan to go ahead.

He defended the prosecutions, saying: "I am unable to read the insults leveled at our president. I start to blush." Erdogan last year also filed a complaint against the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper's editor-in-chief Can Dundar and the paper's Ankara representative Erdem Gul for their reports on alleged arms smuggling to Syria, which led to their arrests and subsequent charges of spying and aiding a terror organization. They go on trial March 25.

The two, however, were released from prison last week pending the outcome of the trial after Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated. Erdogan severely criticized the court's ruling, saying he did not respect it and would not abide by it.

At a conference in Istanbul, Dundar said the court's ruling amounted to a defeat for Erdogan who "is trying to turn it into a state crisis."



In May, Cumhuriyet published what it said were images of Turkish trucks carrying ammunition to Syrian militants. The images reportedly date back to January 2014, when local authorities searched Syria-bound trucks, touching off a standoff with Turkish intelligence officials.

The paper said the images proved that Turkey was smuggling arms to rebels.

The government initially denied the trucks were carrying arms, maintaining that the cargo consisted of humanitarian aid. Some officials later suggested the trucks were carrying arms or ammunition to Turkmen groups in Syria.
A Turkish man who led three cyberattacks against global financial institutions that caused more than USD 55 million in losses has pleaded guilty, prosecutors said.

Ercan Findikoglu, 34, whose online nicknames included "Segate," "Predator," and "Oreon," entered the plea in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.

Prosecutors said he used cashing crews worldwide to make fraudulent ATM withdrawals on a massive scale across the globe.

In a February 2011 operation, Findikoglu's cashing crews withdrew about USD 10 million through 15,000 fraudulent ATM withdraws in at least 18 countries, they said.

The government said he hacked into computer systems of three payment processing companies. It said he and co-conspirators accessed prepaid debit card accounts, inflated balances and removed their withdrawal limits between 2011 and 2013.

In a February 2013 attack, crews in 24 countries made 36,000 transactions, withdrawing about USD 40 million from ATMS, prosecutors said.

During one operation, they added, crews in New York City withdrew approximately USD 2.4 million from nearly 3,000 ATM withdrawals during an 11-hour period.

His lawyer hasn't commented.

In a release, US Attorney Robert L. Capers called the cyberattacks massive.

"By hacking into the computer networks of global financial institutions, the defendant and his co-conspirators were able to wreak havoc with the worldwide financial system by simultaneously withdrawing tens of millions of dollars," he said.

Findikoglu pleaded guilty to computer intrusion conspiracy, access device fraud conspiracy and effecting transactions with unauthorised access devices.

Although the charges carry a potential prison sentence of more than 50 years, Findikoglu is likely to face much less at a July 12 sentencing before US District Judge Kiyo A Matsumoto.

In a plea deal, the parties agreed that federal sentencing guidelines would call for a prison term of between 11 years and 15 years in prison, though he can request less.

He was arrested at Frankfurt Airport in 2013 before fighting extradition for more than 18 months. He was sent to the United States last year.

Secret Service Special Agent-in-Charge David E Beach said the prosecution showed "there is no such thing as anonymity in the cyber world.
Two lions and over 100 vultures in South Africa's Kruger National Park died after eating the poisoned carcass of an elephant, officials said today, suggesting a new poaching trend in the heavily-guarded reserve.

"It seems poachers have resorted to wildlife poisoning in the national parks and other protected areas in Southern Africa," Glenn Phillips, the park's managing executive, said in a statement.

It was unclear when the poisoning occurred, but the animals' carcasses were discovered by rangers at the weekend.

Initial investigations showed the elephant was shot in the head, its tusks removed and its carcass laced with poison. Two lions, 110 white-back vultures and two jackals then died after feeding on the poisoned carcass.

The poisoning left authorities puzzled as to the poachers' ultimate target.

Tusks and horns are smuggled to eastern Asian countries where they are highly prized.

Park spokesman William Mabasa said vultures are also in demand from traditional healers or sangomas in South Africa.

Poisoning of wildlife has occurred at a lower level in South Africa compared to its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

In Zimbabwe, more than 370 elephants have died after being poisoned over the past two years, with the deaths blamed on poachers.

Last year, an elephant, four African lions and 46 vultures also died from poisoning in the Kruger National Park.

The park, which is faced with a poaching crisis targeting rhino, is one of the most heavily-protected in the country.

Rangers are equipped with infra-red binoculars to try and catch poachers who normally operate at night.
A community and arts centre based in Bristol, south-west England, has become the first employer in Britain to introduce so-called "period leave" for women.

Coexist, which has a largely female workforce, said today that it will offer workers the option of flexible working from home during their monthly menstruation cycle and any time off for the reason would not be classed as sick leave as employees would be allowed to make up for the time lost over the course of the month.

"As a manager of staff I have seen women really suffer with their periods and I have found them doubled over in a lot of pain. Despite this, they feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell. And this is unfair.

"At Coexist we are very understanding. If someone is in pain - no matter what kind - they are encouraged to go home," Bex Baxter, one of the directors at Coexist,told 'Bristol Post'.

"Nothing like this has been done in the UK before, we believe, and if it has, it has been very small," she said.

Co-Exist employs 24 people, seven of them men, and the details of the new policy will be worked out as part of a "Pioneering Period Policy: Valuing Natural Cycles in the Workplace", seminar at the centre on March 15.

It is based on the work of Alexandra Pope, the founder and creator of women's leadership programme at Red School.

The school is base on "a radical new approach to woman's health and wellbeing; creativity and leadership; and spiritual life based on the power of our menstruality consciousness".

Baxter believes the scheme will increase productivity and hopes other firms will follow the lead of global sportswear giant Nike and introduce similar policies.

Nike had introduced menstrual leave in 2007 and makes business partners sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure they maintain the company's standards.

Countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also have similar policies around menstrual leave for female employees.
Rejecting government's contention that proposed tax on EPF withdrawals was aimed at moving towards pensioned society, trade unions today said retirement fund body EPFO which has over 5 crore subscribers already provides pension under its social security scheme.

"Seeing widest opposition to taxing the EPF withdrawals, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is now trying to mince his words. EPFO runs a comprehensive scheme which has all components -- provident fund, pension and insurance," All India Trade Union Congress Secretary and an EPFO trustee D L Sachdev said.

"They (government) are trying to create market for pension products offered by insurance companies in the backdrop of government raising FDI in the sector to 49 per cent from 26 per cent," he added.

Jaitley has said the purpose of taxing interest earned on 60 per cent of withdrawals of contribution made after April 1, 2016 was to encourage people to invest in annuity or pension schemes.

Continuing to face flak for proposing a tax on employee provident fund withdrawals, Jaitley today said he will spell out the final decision on the matter when he replies to the debate on Budget in Parliament.

RSS-backed Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh President B N Rai described Jaitley's contention as "lameduck argument".

He said, "There is Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 run by EPFO which provides for pension after the age of 58 years to its subscribers. Then where is the need for encouraging pension."



Rai argued that "there is no provision of taxing EPF withdrawals in the EPF & MP Act. It is neither law nor practice. On what basis government want to tax EPF withdrawals? It will amount to double or triple taxation."



Trade unions are up in arms against against Jaitley's budgetary proposal to tax part of the EPF withdrawals.

Breaking from the long-held practice of exemption at all stages, the Budget for 2016-17 has proposed to impose tax on EPF withdrawal on 60 per cent of contributions made after April 1, 2016, to EPF and other such schemes.

At present, social security schemes run by retirement fund body EPFO are tax free 'Exempt-Exempt-Exempt (EEE)' scheme under which deposits, accrual of interest and withdrawals are tax free.

It is also proposed to tax employers' contribution of over Rs 1.5 lakh towards a worker's EPF account in a year. At present, there is no such limit.
US airlines are looking to serve Cuba primarily from their large hub cities, with Havana being the most popular destination.

At least six carriers submitted applications to the US Department of Transportation yesterday outlining what routes they would like to fly. The government will spend the next few months reviewing the requests and is expected to award the contested Havana routes this summer.

Flights to smaller cities, if uncontested and lacking any contentious issues, could be approved much sooner.

Once routes are awarded, airlines will still need time to develop schedules and actually sell seats on the flights. And while the US government will set the routes, airlines will also need to apply to Cuba's civil aviation authority for a permit to operate in the country.

All flights operating between the two countries today are charters, but an agreement signed between the two nations last month allows for up to 110 additional flights, more than five times the current charter operations.

Only 20 of those flights can go to Havana, in addition to the current 10 to 15 charter flights a day. The rest would fly to other Cuban cities.

US tourists still won't legally be allowed to visit Cuba but the start of commercial flights will make it much easier for those who fall into one of the authorised travel categories.

Charter flights are expensive, frequently chaotic and lack many of the traditional supports of commercial aviation such as online booking and 24-hour customer service. Most of the planes proposed by US airlines would carry about 160 passengers.

Nearly 160,000 US leisure travellers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Tourism is still barred, but the number of legal reasons to go to Cuba, from organising professional meetings to distributing information to Cubans, has grown so large and is so loosely enforced that the distinction from tourism has blurred significantly.

American Airlines was the most-aggressive carrier in its approach, requesting more than half the possible slots to Havana plus service to five other, smaller Cuban cities. The airline has a large hub in Miami, home to the largest Cuban-American population.

In American's filing with the DOT, CEO Doug Parker wrote that his airline has been "the undisputed leader" in charter service, having done so since 1991.

The airline notes in its application that last year alone, it operated 1,084 Cuba charters while JetBlue Airways had 221 and Delta Air Lines had four.

Following yesterday's route application deadline, airlines and the public have a chance to comment on the flights sought. That process will conclude by March 21.
Deputy US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today condemned a surge in arrests of activists in Cuba, three weeks before President Barack Obama's historic trip to the Communist-ruled island.

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council, Blinken said Obama will stress the need for democracy and free political expression in Cuba during the March 21-22 visit, the first by a US president since 1928.

"In Cuba, we are increasingly concerned about the government's use of short-term detentions of peaceful activists, which reached record numbers in January," Blinken said.

"We call on the Cuban government to stop this tactic as a means of quelling peaceful protest," he added.

The White House has described Obama's forthcoming trip as a "Berlin Wall" moment after diplomatic relations between the Cold War foes, which broke off in 1960, were restored in July last year.

"During his historic visit... President Obama will emphasise that the Cuban people are best served by an environment where people are free to choose their political parties and their leaders, express their ideas, and where civil society is independent," Blinken told the council.

He began his speech by condemning Russia's rights record, noting the one-year anniversary of the assassination of former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow.

Nemtsov, who had become a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down near the Kremlin in February last year.

"The Russian government's attempts to suffocate civil society, suppress political opposition, and stigmatise members of minority groups, continue unabated," Blinken told the UN body.

The comments came as the two nations were cooperating on efforts to maintain a fragile ceasefire in Syria and push for a breakthrough at peace talks set to resume in Geneva next week.

Asked about his emphasis on Russia, Blinked told reporters that despite joint diplomatic efforts on Syria, it was "critically important" for the US to convey to Moscow its human rights concerns.

Blinken also chastised the UN rights council for giving disproportionate attention to alleged abuses in Israel, saying the body's work was "undermined by its persistent bias against" the Jewish state.
Delmer Berg, the last known American survivor who fought fascists in 1930s Spain, has died in northern California. He was 100.

Berg died Sunday at his home in Columbia, Marina Garde from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in New York confirmed in a written statement.

The Modesto Bee reports Tuesday that friend Pat Cervelli said Berg, who she knew for three decades, became politically active early in life.

Berg was among about 2,800 members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who sought to defend an elected government from a military rebellion led by Gen. Francisco Franco. The revolt was successful, and Franco led Spain for decades.

Berg stayed in Spain several months. He told The Modesto Bee in a November interview why he made the decision to help the Spanish working people.

"I was a worker," Berg told the newspaper. "I was a farmer. I was in support of the Spanish working people, and I wanted to go to Spain to help them."



He was wounded in a bombing at a monastery. Born in Anaheim on Dec. 20, 1915, Berg spent part of his childhood on a farm near Manteca. Later, Berg lived in Modesto and was the only white member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Berg worked on housing discrimination and other issues and was a communist most of his life, drawing inquiries from the FBI, the newspaper reported.

Berg served two stints in the U.S. Military: once in the National Guard before going to Spain and again in the East Indies during World War II.

Berg later worked as a landscaper and a stonemason. He and his wife, June, who preceded him in death, even built a home of stone and reused lumber.
Amid increasing Chinese military assertiveness in the waters of South China Sea, a top American military commander today pitched for a quad-lateral security dialogue between India, Japan, Australia and the US even as he hoped for a joint patrol in the Asia Pacific region in future.

Wooing India, chief of US Pacific Command Admiral Harry Harris said that on the security front, the US needs India's leadership in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region as there are significant security challenges that no country can tackle alone.

"We are ready for you. We need you," he said in his address at the 'Raisina Dialogue', a conclave on geo-economics and geo-politics here.

He said both countries can together develop a roadmap that leverages respective efforts to improve the security architecture and strengthen regional dialogues.

Talking about India hosting Japan and Australia for its first ever trilateral dialogue here last year, Harris said some of the topics discussed were maritime security, including freedom of navigation patrols, and tri-lateral cooperation in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

"One idea to consider is initiating a Quad-lateral Security Dialogue between India-Japan-Australia and the United States. Adding the US into this dialogue can amplify the message that we are united behind the international rules-based order that has kept the peace and is essential to all of us," he said.

Pitching for more joint military exercises, he said exercising together will lead to operating together.

"By being ambitious, India, Japan, Australia, the United States and so many other like-minded nations can aspire to patrol together anywhere international law allows... And for decades, the United States has conducted freedom of navigation patrols without incident. No nation should perceive it as a threat," he said.

On the US' re-balance to Asia Pacific, Harris said strengthening economic connective tissue through security and diplomatic partnership is what America's Rebalance to the Indo-Asia-Pacific is all about.

"Expanded cooperation with India will not only be the defining partnership for the Rebalance, it will arguably be the defining partnership for America in the 21st century," he said.

Without naming China or its military assertiveness in



South China Sea, the Admiral said freedom of navigation on the high seas and the airspace above them "are not privileges of rich and powerful countries. They're fundamental rights of all nations".

"While some countries seek to bully smaller countries through intimidation and coercion, I note with admiration India's example of peaceful resolution of disputes with your neighbors in the waters of the Indian Ocean. India, indeed, stands like a beacon on a hill in a potential Dark Age," he said.

The Admiral said that two visionary policies are now coinciding at the perfect time.

"Initiated four years ago by President (Barack) Obama, the United States is conducting a strategic Rebalance west to the Indo-Asia-Pacific. While at the same time, India is implementing Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's 'Act East' policy.

"You need look no further than last October's Malabar maritime exercise between India, Japan and the United States to see the security inter-connectedness of the Indian Ocean, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean," he said.

Harris hoped that in not too distant future, American and Indian Navy vessels steaming together will become "a common and welcome sight" throughout Indo-Asia-Pacific waters.

"Considering the USD 5.3 trillion dollars in trade that traverses each year from the Indian Ocean and through the South China Sea, we all have a vested interest in ensuring our region remain secure, stable, and prosperous. How Indo-Asia- Pacific nations employ naval forces to support these economic interests matters greatly," Harris said.

He said that by 2050, it is expected that 7 out of every 10 people who walk the planet will live in the Indo-Asia- Pacific region.

"This level of population and urbanization will present special challenges in regard to the demand for food, energy, housing and importantly, freedoms," he said.
A suspended Pennsylvania priest has been sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison for sexually assaulting poor street children during missionary trips to Honduras.

Federal prosecutors in Johnstown sought the long prison term for 70-year-old Joseph Maurizio Jr.

His attorneys argued for less time due to his age, charitable works and other factors. They have also said the priest denies wrongdoing.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown suspended Maurizio after federal prosecutors filed charges in September 2014.

Prosecutors contend Maurizio used a self-run Johnstown-based charity to travel to an orphanage for several years ending in 2009. He was convicted of promising candy and cash to two boys to watch them shower, perform sex acts or fondle them.

The defense has said it may continue an appeal for a new trial.
US Vice President Joe Biden will arrive in Israel on March 8 for a two-day visit, Israel's government said today, with talks expected to include defence aid and Israeli-Palestinian violence.

Talks between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also include the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

It was unclear whether Biden would visit the Palestinian territories.

Israel and the United States have been seeking to move past deep disagreement over the Iran nuclear accord, which Netanyahu strongly opposed, and work out a new 10-year defence aid package for the Jewish state.

But his visit comes amid a five-month wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories that has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

International efforts to end the violence have so far failed.

Biden last visited for the funeral of former prime minister Ariel Sharon in January 2014.

Another visit by the vice president in 2010 was marred by the announcement of a major Israeli settlement project in annexed east Jerusalem.

The announcement drew a public scolding from Biden and it soured relations with Washington for months.

Such settlements are seen as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace efforts.
Venus Williams will end her 15-year boycott of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells next week, following in the footsteps of sister Serena who returned to the event last year.

The 35-year-old former world number one has not played the prestigious Californian event since 2001, when she and Serena were booed by sections of the crowd.

Her father Richard Williams has long alleged the family was subjected to repeated racial slurs after Venus withdrew from a semi-final against Serena due to a knee injury.

Explaining her decision to return to the tournament in a commentary on The Players Tribune website, Williams said the criticism directed at her family had left a lasting mark on her.

"I remember the pain of my knee injury, and how badly I wanted to play in the semis against Serena - before finally accepting that I wouldn't be able to," Venus wrote.

"I remember the accusations toward me and my sister and our father. I remember the crowd's reaction, as I walked to my seat, during Serena's match in the final. And I remember how I couldn't understand why thousands of people would be acting this way - to a 19-year-old and a 20-year-old, trying their best.

"There are certain things where, if you go through them at a certain age, you simply don't forget them."



Venus said she had been prompted to return after seeing the warm reception her sister received last year, when she was given a 57-second standing ovation before her opening match on Stadium Court.

"It was in that moment, seeing Serena welcomed with open arms last year at Indian Wells, that I think I fully and truly realized what being the big sister means," Venus wrote.

"It means that, for all of the things I did first, and all of the times when I paved the way for Serena, the thing I can be most proud of is this time. When Serena paved the way for me.
Celebrations erupted on the JNU campus after JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar was granted interim bail in the sedition case today, with the varsity students and supporters now awaiting his release from jail.

University students and teachers welcomed the decision by singing songs, taking out torchlight 'victory march', amid beating of 'daflis' and chants of "azaadi".

Many students and teachers hugged each other on the campus as the spread.

The celebrations broke out first outside Parliament Street Police Station where students had been camping since noon today.

Shouting "victory" slogans for Kanhaiya, they marched from Sabarmati Dhaba, which was the venue for the February 9 controversial event, to the administration block, where the protests have been going on since then.

"I have been leading this protest against crackdown on students and branding of university as anti-national and I am glad that Comrade Kanhaiya will be back and lead the movement from now on," JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora said.

JNU Teachers Association General Secretary Bikramaditya Choudhary said, "It is a relief to see one of the students being granted bail. Our fight will now continue until the sedition charges are dropped and other two students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya".

Kanhaiya Kumar, a PhD student, was arrested on February 12 in connection with an event on the campus related to Afzal Guru.

Members of the ABVP, the students front of RSS, had objected to the event and written to the Vice Chancellor against allowing it on the campus, prompting the university administration to order its cancellation of the march apprehending that it might "disrupt" peace.

But the organisers went ahead with the programme despite withdrawal of permission and held a cultural programme, art and photo exhibition on the issue.

Five other students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Ashutosh Kumar, Anant Prakash and Rama Naga, were wanted by the police in connection with the case. After being on the run for 10 days, they resurfaced on campus last Sunday.

While Umar and Anirban later surrendered, three others have communicated to police that they are open to questioning, as and when required.

Academicians and scholars from across the globe including Noam Chomsky have come out in support of JNU students and condemned the police action against them.

While there were celebrations on campus tonight, members of ABVP said "bail doesn't mean he has been declared innocent".

"Bail against a bond of Rs 10,000 doesn't mean he has been proved innocent. The case is still going on and he has also ben instructed by judiciary to cooperate with police in investigation. This is not victory for the Left but a normal procedure," Saurabh Kumar Sharma, Joint Secretary, JNUSU said in a joint statement.
Notorious gangster and Brother-in-law of fugitive underworld don Chhota Shakeel, Salim Qureshi alias Salim Fruit, was today arrested in a 12-year-old extortion case, crime branch officials said.

Fruit, against whom a non-bailable warrant (NBW) was issued in the case, was arrested from Nagpada in south Mumbai by the Anti Extortion Cell (AEC) sleuths of crime branch.

According to police, in 2004, Shakeel's hirelings had threatened a central Mumbai-based doctor and demanded Rs 25 lakh extortion. After negotiations, the amount was settled for Rs 10 lakh.

The crime branch had then arrested two persons when they came to collect the money. Later, two more persons were held in the same case. At that time, Fruit was a fugitive. He was deported to India in 2007 from Dubai and jailed.

"In 2010, Fruit was released on bail and ever since he was in Mumbai. However, the gangster could be arrested only today," a source from the police department said.

An AEC officer, requesting anonymity, said, "Two months back, the cell launched a drive, in which they prepared a list of all the wanted, absconders and the criminals having NBW issued against them from 1980s."



So far, 26 criminals, whose name was in the list, have been held under the drive, the officer added.

One more accused, Altaf Aalam alias Vicky, is wanted in the extortion case, police said.

Fruit was produced in a local court today, which sent him in police custody till March 8.

According to police, Salim, the blue-eyed boy of Chhota Shakeel, used to export fruits to Dubai before joining the gang.
Lt Col Sophia Qureshi, a young woman officer of the Indian Army, is leading the country's contingent at Force 18, the largest ever foreign military exercise hosted by India, which began in Pune today.

Ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN,) plus eight observer states - India, Japan, Korea, China, Russia, United States, Australia and New Zealand - are participating in the eight-day exercise with themes 'Humanitarian Mine Action' and 'Peacekeeping Operations'.

In its first phase, over 28 foreign trainers were trained by the Indian Army from February 24 to March 1. These trainers will form the training backbone for the conduct of the exercise.

A grand opening ceremony was held at Aundh Military Station which was presided over by Lt Gen Bipin Rawat, Army Commander of Pune based Southern Command.

In his address, Rawat highlighted the importance of ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus forum to meet the regional aspirations of peace, security and addressing issues related to mitigating the effects of mine menace in many of the South East Asian countries.

The foreign participants also witnessed martial skills performed by the Indian Army, including drill by soldiers from the Mechanised Infantry Regimental Centre.

Lt Col Qureshi, who is leading an Army contingent of 40 soldiers, is an officer from the Corps of Signals who has the rare distinction of becoming the first woman officer to lead an Indian Army training contingent in such a large multinational exercise.

The officer also happens to be the only woman officer Contingent Commander among all ASEAN Plus contingents present for the exercise.
India today signed a financing agreement with the World Bank seeking a credit of USD 300 million for the Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Quality Improvement Project.

The objective of the project is to improve student outcomes especially of disadvantaged groups in selected Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and to increase the effectiveness of the Higher Education System in Madhya Pradesh, a Finance Ministry statement said.

The agreement was signed by Department of Economic Affairs Joint Secretary Raj Kumar on behalf of India and World Bank's Country Director Onno Ruhl.

The project has three components that include grants support to higher education Institutions, State Level Initiatives and improving system management, the statement said.

The International Development Association (IDA) is the part of the World Bank that helps the world's poorest countries.

Established in 1960, IDA aims to reduce poverty by providing loans (called 'credits') and grants for programs that boost economic growth, reduce inequalities, and improve people's living conditions.
By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Bond fund manager Bill Gross on Tuesday accused Pacific Investment Management Co of falsely claiming he suddenly decided to abandon the firm he co-founded in an effort to win dismissal of his $200 million breach-of-contract lawsuit.

In papers filed in state court in Orange County, California, Gross said Pimco's "misconduct" cost him substantial sums he earned and led to a "tarnishing of his stellar lifelong reputation."

Gross, long known as the "Bond King" for his years at Pimco when he oversaw what was then the world's largest bond fund, also accused Pimco of misconstruing his allegations when it sought to throw out his case in November. Pimco, he said, hoped to bait the court into making "inappropriate factual determinations" and lead the court to dismiss the lawsuit quickly.

"We continue to believe that this lawsuit has no merit, and we will be responding in court in due course," David Boies, a lawyer for Pimco, said in a statement.

Pimco, a unit of German insurer Allianz SE, is based in Newport Beach, California.

Gross now works for Janus Capital Group Inc, where he runs the $1.3 billion Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund.

Gross filed suit against Pimco in October, claiming that executives like Daniel Ivascyn, his successor as group chief investment officer, plotted to oust him so others could divvy up a back-loaded annual bonus expected to top $250 million.

Forbes magazine estimates Gross' net worth at $1.95 billion.

Gross' sudden departure in September 2014 followed months of negative reports about his management style and weak performance at Pimco Total Return, which he had built into the world's largest bond fund by assets, a ranking it no longer holds.

Gross on Tuesday said his ouster followed "endless misleading, false and inaccurate assaults in the press led by members of the executive committee," and came even after he offered to give up some pay and responsibilities.

"Defendants now seek to avoid the consequences of their actions by falsely claiming that Mr. Gross suddenly decided to abandon the company that he founded," he said.

A hearing is set for March 14.

The Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund has returned 0.87 percent so far this year, according to Morningstar Inc.

Total Return has about $89.3 billion of assets, less than one-third its peak of $292.9 billion three years ago. It has returned 0.34 percent to date in 2016, Morningstar said.

The case is Gross v. Pacific Investment Management Co et al, California Superior Court, Orange County, No. 2015-00813636.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Andrew Hay and Leslie Adler)
Countries I have visited Austria

Belgium

Cambodia

Canada

Croatia

Curacao

Czech Republic

Denmark

England

France

Germany

Greece

Guatemala

Honduras

Iceland

Italy

Japan

Mexico

Singapore

Sri Lanka

Switzerland

Thailand

The Netherlands

Turkey

Vietnam Countries left on my list Australia

Bali

Belize

Bulgaria

China

Costa Rica

Galapagos Islands

Indonesia

Ireland

Laos

New Zealand

Norway

Peru

Russia

Sweden

Uruguay About Me Tina Hooray travelling! I really love to hit to open road, espcially in Europe, so this is my specific travel blog for my freespirited trips. View my complete profile

Hooray Europe


By Osamu Tsukimori

TOKYO (Reuters) - Brent was little changed on Wednesday following strong gains in Asian stocks, while U.S. oil eased on industry data that showed a huge build in U.S. crude stockpiles that were already at a record high.

Oil prices have pushed higher over the last fortnight after hitting 12-year lows under $30 a barrel between late January and mid-February, fuelled by speculation the market may have bottomed out.

Brent crude for May delivery was down 7 cents at $36.74 a barrel at 0755 GMT. It was close to Tuesday's near-two-month high of $37.25, which was up 37.5 percent from a 12-year low hit in late January.

NYMEX crude for April delivery was down 35 cents at $34.05 a barrel, after marking a one-month high on Tuesday.

U.S. crude inventories jumped by 9.9 million barrels last week, data from the American Petroleum Institute showed after Tuesday's settlement. That was well above a 3.6-million barrel increase expected by analysts in a poll. [API/S] [EIA/S]

The surprise jump initially pushed U.S. crude down as much as 60 cents on worries that official data from Energy Information Administration (EIA) due later Wednesday would show a large build similar to the industry numbers.

"Strong gains in inventories in API data had some impact on prices," said Tetsu Emori, president of Emori Capital Management in Tokyo. "But with U.S. inventories staying at historical levels, the downside pressure on prices has been waning as that has been taken into account."

Another factor helping the market was increasing talk among the participants including an analyst at the International Energy Agency that oil prices may have bottomed out with Saudi Arabia and some other producers including Russia planning an oil output freeze at January highs.

Russian oil output stood at 10.88 million barrels per day in February, little changed from January, Energy Ministry data showed on Wednesday.

"Sentiment has clearly shifted for commodities in the last fortnight," ANZ bank said on Wednesday. "The price action in oil adds to the case that the bottom in the crude oil market is now in place."

But banks from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley and Barclays have suggested that without an outright cut in output, a production freeze would not boost prices much.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joseph Radford and Christian Schmollinger)
LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese investors invested $1.03 trillion in foreign property, stocks and bonds in the decade to mid-2015, British property services firm Knight Frank calculates in its annual Wealth Report released on Wednesday.

The threat of a domestic economic slowdown is encouraging Chinese citizens and companies to funnel more wealth abroad, posing a challenge for the authorities in Beijing.

Liam Bailey, global head of research at Knight Frank, said Chinese investors had stepped up their interest in British property in the last three years, in a bid to diversify their portfolios.

"In terms of foreign nationalities active in London's residential market right now, Chinese buyers - in terms of numbers of units that they are buying - are the biggest single nationality," he said.

The buying spree continues despite moves by some blue chip lenders including HSBC, Standard Chartered and DBS Group Holdings to restrict or cease offering overseas mortgages and other foreign exchange services to some Chinese nationals.

"People think we are seeing a wave of Chinese demand. No, what we have seen so far is the ripple before the wave has even begun to arrive," Stephen Muller of New York-based Kuafu Properties, said in reaction to the findings.

FUTURE INVESTMENT

Bailey said he expected more money to flow from China into British and U.S. property in the next decade than the last one, but volumes would depend on policy decisions in Beijing.

"The big issue the Chinese government faces is balancing the desire to control investment outflows against asset price bubbles within China," Bailey said.

"But giving Chinese investors the ability to diversify their wealth to other international markets could help take the pressure off domestic markets," he added.

Just four other countries and territories saw outward investment in excess of $1 trillion over the same period, the report showed.

The United Kingdom recorded cross-border asset purchases of $1.88 trillion. Ireland, flush with cash from its debt-fuelled "Celtic Tiger" economic boom, pumped out $1.32 trillion, and Hong Kong investors splashed out $1.7 trillion.

U.S. investors, however, sent more wealth overseas than peers in Britain, Ireland, China and Hong Kong put together, clocking up $7.3 trillion over the same period.

(Reporting by Sinead Cruise; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
By Sue-Lin Wong

CHONGQING, China (Reuters) - The economic success of the metropolitan area of Chongqing in central China was in the balance following the jailing four years ago of its charismatic Communist Party chief Bo Xilai, a rising star in the political elite.

But the city has continued to thrive, a feat that has some lessons for other local governments and reflects a pragmatic streak in China's leadership in allowing Bo's Chongqing model, and his economic adviser, Mayor Huang Qifan, to survive his fall.

China is trying to transform its giant economy from one led by basic manufacturing to one more reliant on services and consumption, which the government expects to provide more stable growth in the future. A slowdown in growth and slumping stock markets in the past year have raised concerns among investors about Beijing's ability to maintain stability while driving structural reforms.

Chongqing appears to have achieved that balance.

Unlike much of China, it didn't shirk the hard decisions, opting early to cut overcapacity in its steel industry and investing heavily to move up the value-chain from lower-end manufacturing to electronics, biomedical products and high-tech equipment.

Under Bo, Chongqing became one of China's fastest-growing regions, helped by a crackdown on corruption, corporate tax breaks, the pursuit of foreign investment, and rapid urbanisation and industrialisation.

And so it remains, chalking up growth of 11 percent in 2015, while the national economy slowed to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent.

While Beijing purged many of Bo's associates, Huang was left in office to oversee that success under new city party boss, Sun Zhengcai, a man tipped for top national leadership.

Even so, the scandal briefly threatened Chongqing's economic future.

Local government official Le Peng said business activity and foreign investment declined, and projects initially approved for Chongqing were moved elsewhere.

"The Bo Xilai incident had a very large impact on Chongqing's economy," he said, speaking from an office in the city's Liangjiang New Area.

Chongqing was blessed with advantages before Bo and Huang, from its handy location on the Yangtze River and arms-manufacturing history in the 1940s, to central government's decision to make it the fourth municipality in 1997, alongside Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, in a push to develop inland regions.

But it didn't rest on its laurels.

"I think we can learn from Chongqing's experience about the importance of undertaking industrial upgrading and restructuring," said Yating Xu, an economist at IHS in Beijing.

CHINA MOTOWN

Policies included a corporate income tax at 15 percent to develop priority industries in China's west compared with 25 percent in more developed parts of China; the first tax-bonded area in inland China, so importers didn't pay duties until they sold products on; incentives for investing in high-tech and green industries; reforms to encourage rural workers into the city; and policies to make more land cheaply available to industry.

The city is now one of the country's leading centres of automobile manufacturing, drawing global brands such as Hyundai, Iveco, General Motors and Ford.

One of China's biggest carmakers, Chongqing Changan Automobile, which plans to sell 4.5 million vehicles by 2020, is based there.

Huachen Xinyuan's new auto plant, which primarily supplies China's domestic market, is based in nearby Fuling district - once a six-hour boat ride from Chongqing centre but now just 40 minutes by high-speed train.

That in turn attracted businesses like Haoxiang Machinery.

"We moved out here to be closer to Huachen Xinyuan, along with 14 other component suppliers," said Ye Huagang, its boss, over the buzz of jackhammers at his new factory. Global electronics brands including Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, Acer and Asus all have operations in Chongqing, lured by tax breaks, cheap labour and land, plus a developed supply chain and logistics. The region makes one in three of the world's laptops.

The vigour of the manufacturing sector has also helped develop related technology clusters and attendant finance and logistics services.

"There's a very close connection between the development of manufacturing and services," said Tu Xingyong, chief economist at Chongqing's Economic and IT Commission. Chongqing hasn't just been successful at attracting inward investment. Chongqing firms are also outbound investors, and consular representatives from 10 countries are based there.

"We are here mainly to attract Chinese companies who want to invest in Ethiopia and Africa," said Kebede Abera, Ethiopia's consular general to Chongqing.

In the past four years, around 80 Chinese companies have visited Ethiopia, and some, including Chongqing carmaker Lifan and Chongqing Bureau of Geology and Mining Exploration, have invested there.

POLITICAL PROMISE

Fears that Chongqing might suffer for its connection with Bo, who some had considered a potential rival for leadership in Beijing, were soothed when President Xi Jinping made his first trip of 2016 to the city.

"This place is full of promise," he said in a speech looking out over a port connecting railways, waterways and roads along China's new Silk Road linking Asia and Europe.

That is in part a political calculation.

"If Chongqing's economy slowed down, the outside world would think Chongqing can't do without Bo," a source with ties to the leadership said.

As a further sign of favour, Mayor Huang was among half a dozen regional officials picked to join Xi on his visit to the United States last year.

Huang's next role could well take him to the national stage.

Two sources say he is tipped to become secretary-general of the cabinet, which would make him Premier Li Keqiang's right-hand man.

"The power he has here, even if it is local, it's a very national level experiment," said Sergio Maffettone, Italy's consul-general to Chongqing. "Chongqing is like a lab for reforms."

($1 = 6.5339 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom, Kevin Yao, Benjamin Kang Lim and Pete Sweeney; Editing by Will Waterman)
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's finance ministry and Reserve Bank of India officials will meet during March 15-20 to decide borrowing calendar for the financial year beginning from April 1, Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said on Wednesday.

The government announced gross market borrowing of 6 trillion rupees ($88.65 billion) in its annual budget for 2016/17, in line with market expectation, while sticking to the overall fiscal deficit target of 3.5 percentage of the gross domestic product. ($1 = 67.6800 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar; Editing by Anand Basu)
By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India plans to resume settling trade with Iran under a regional clearing house system after a gap of five years, the government said on Wednesday, as New Delhi seeks to promote trade ties with Tehran following the lifting of international sanctions.

The Asian Clearing Union (ACU), including India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, facilitates payments among members, economising on the use of foreign exchange reserves and transfer costs, as well as promoting trade and banking relations among participants.

The Reserve Bank of India decided in December 2010 not to facilitate oil trades through the ACU system. That left India and Iran, the only oil producer in the union, scouting for a stable payment mechanism to settle trade.

But a permanent banking channel could not be established due to pressure from Western nations, leading to a drastic reduction in India's oil imports from Tehran.

The Indian central bank has sought the consent of the finance ministry to get Iran back into the fold of ACU, junior foreign affairs minister V.K. Singh told parliament.

He said the government is also considering a request from Iranian banks to open branches in India and reactivate their accounts.

Despite Western sanctions India continued with its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that were sourcing oil from Tehran.

As ties deepen further, India has extended a $150 million credit line to Iran to help develop its Chabahar port.

The port in southeast Iran is central to New Delhi's efforts to circumvent arch-rival Pakistan and open up a route to Central Asia as well as Afghanistan where it has developed close security ties and economic interests.

"A contract between Indian Special Purpose Vehicle and Arya Bander of Iran for development of Chahbahar Port has been finalised," Singh said.

He also said in January India decided to extend the credit for the start of a contract to supply 250,000 tonnes of steel rails to Iran through State Trading Corp.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Elaine Hardcastle)
By Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's Tata Communications Ltd is looking for another buyer for its South African fixed-line subsidiary Neotel after a deal with Vodacom Group Ltd fell through, Chief Executive Vinod Kumar said on Wednesday.

Tata Communications has been looking to cut debt, and the Neotel deal would have helped the Indian company reduce some of the $1.5 billion in borrowings on its books.

On Tuesday, Vodacom, a unit of Vodafone, dropped the planned acquisition of local fixed line operator Neotel, citing regulatory complexities.

"We have been in discussions with Vodacom so there is no other potential buyer we are engaged with ... however, people in the market have expressed interest and now the time has come for us to explore those options," Kumar told in an interview.

"Our resolve is to still exit Neotel from a Tata Communication perspective but it has to be done in the right manner and making sure best financial structure emerges from the exit."

Neotel has some $350 million of debt of its own and is not able to service the debt by itself. Kumar said, Tata Communications would not need to help with more than $10 million for the unit's debt servicing.

"It's bit of a period when we need to restock, but frankly looking at the financials of the business, the shareholders are going to back Neotel till we find an alternative solution," he said.

Tata Communications provides telecom and data services infrastructure through its network of undersea and terrestrial cables, and the Neotel deal was part of the company's plan to shed non-core assets.

Tata Communications also expects to sell a stake in its data centre unit in the next few months, Kumar said, adding that the company would use proceeds to cut debt. It is currently in talks with potential partners.

"We expect that to conclude sometime in the next few months at which point we will use the proceeds to retire debt," he said.

(Reporting by Himank Sharma and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Moody's downgraded its outlook on Chinese government debt to "negative" from "stable" on Wednesday, citing uncertainty over authorities' capacity to implement economic reforms, rising government debt and falling reserves.

"Without credible and efficient reforms, China's GDP growth would slow more markedly as a high debt burden dampens business investment and demographics turn increasingly unfavourable. Government debt would increase more sharply than we currently expect," Moody's said in a note on Wednesday.

Moody's said its rating committee had discussed China's status at a meeting on Feb. 9, during which the country's institutional and fiscal strength, as well as its susceptibility to event risks, were reviewed.

The agency said the downgrade was driven by expectations that China's fiscal strength will continue to decline, and the fall in its foreign exchange reserves which have shrunk by $762 billion over the last 18 months.

It also said that policymakers' credibility was at risk of being undermined by incomplete implementation or partial reversals of some reforms.

"Interventions in the equity and foreign exchange markets over the past year suggest that ensuring financial and economic stability is also an objective, but there is considerably uncertainty about policy priorities," Moody's said.

Moody's, however, retained China's Aa3 rating, noting the country's sizeable reserves gave it time to implement reforms and gradually address economic imbalances.

But the agency warned that it could further downgrade China's rating if it saw slowing down of reforms needed to support sustainable growth and to protect the government's balance sheet.

"It's not a worrying sign yet, but rather a negative direction. That's what Moody's is flagging," said Trinh Nguyen, senior economist for emerging Asia at global asset manager Nataxis.

"But they have room to do this. They have one of the lowest government debt as a share of GDP in comparison to other emerging nations. And most importantly, as China has a current account surplus it can fund its own fiscal expansion."

Initial market reaction to the outlook change was muted, although the cost of insuring Chinese government debt against default rose slightly.

"The drivers - local government debt, capital outflows, falling reserves and concerns on the progress of reforms - are all well recognized by investors and a lot of them have arguably already been priced in," agreed Aidan Yao, Senior Emerging Market Asia Economist at AXA Investment Managers.

HIGH AND RISING CORPORATE DEBT

A major rationale for the falling outlook, Moody's said, was the large stock of contingent sovereign liabilities such as state-owned corporations' debt, local government debt, and the debt of China's big "policy" banks - the Agricultural Development Bank of China, China Development Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of China.

While Moody's put actual government debt at only 40.6 percent of GDP at the end of 2015, Standard & Poor's estimated in July that corporate debt had already risen to 160 percent of GDP in 2014, twice that of the United States and up from only 120 percent in 2013.

"There has been a lot of poor credit allocation, with too much credit directed at inefficient state firms and not enough going towards smaller efficient firms," said Julian Evans-Pritchard, China Economist at Capital Economics in Singapore.

In a separate note on Wednesday, ratings agency Fitch also highlighted rising risks to Chinese banks from accelerating credit growth.

"The 50bp cut to the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) for Chinese banks on Tuesday, together with record loan growth in January, could point to an increasing likelihood that the authorities are shifting policy to enable more credit-fuelled growth," Fitch analysts wrote.

"Rolling over more debt will only delay and not resolve an expected rise in non-performing loans."

On Tuesday, the People's Bank of China cut bank reserve ratio requirements by 50 basis points, releasing an estimated $100 billion of cash for lending.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai and Rishika Sadam in Bengaluru; Additional Reporting by John Ruwitch, Nathaniel Taplin, Michelle Price, Umesh Desai and Elzio Barreto; Editing by Eric Meijer)
By Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil fell further below $37 a barrel on Wednesday as U.S. crude stockpiles rose to a new record, underlining the extent of a supply glut and countering support from producer efforts to tackle it.

Crude inventories rose by 10.4 million barrels, the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in its weekly report released at 1530 GMT, much more than analysts had expected.

Global benchmark Brent crude was down 45 cents at $36.36 a barrel by 1548 GMT. On Tuesday, it reached $37.25, the highest in almost two months. U.S. crude, also known as WTI, was down 55 cents at $33.85.

"Today's EIA data will do very little to help oil's recent bounce," said Chris Jarvis, analyst at Caprock Risk Management in Frederick, Maryland.

"In short, it's difficult to make a bullish case. Signs that the glut in oil and reversal of the building trend will subside any time soon seems distant."

The inventory rise was even larger than the 9.9 million-barrel increase reported on Tuesday by industry group the American Petroleum Institute (API). The API report had weighed on prices earlier in the session.

Brent has risen 34 percent from a 12-year low of $27.10 hit on Jan. 20, adding to expectations that further declines may not be on the cards. An analyst at the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday prices appeared to have bottomed.

Crude has collapsed from more than $100 in mid-2014, pressured by excess supply and a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to abandon its traditional role of cutting production by itself to boost prices.

After more than a year of failing to agree any steps, OPEC and outside producers have stepped up diplomatic activity to fix the supply glut. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and non-OPEC producer Russia said on Feb. 16 they would freeze output.

The four countries have agreed to meet again in mid-March, Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino said last week. The location for the talks has yet to be decided, OPEC delegates say.

In an early sign that Moscow will stick to the plan, Russia reported its oil output was little changed in February and oil company Rosneft is even floating the idea of a domestic production cut, two industry sources said.

Saudi Arabia has yet to report its production, but a survey this week found no sign of an increase in February.

(Additional reporting by Barani Krishnan in New York and Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Dale Hudson and Susan Fenton)
By Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil edged further below $37 a barrel on Wednesday as an industry report showing a rise in U.S. crude stockpiles to a record countered support from producer efforts to tackle a supply glut.

U.S. crude inventories jumped by 9.9 million barrels last week, the American Petroleum Institute (API) said on Tuesday, much more than the 3.6-million-barrel increase analysts had forecast. [API/S]

Global benchmark Brent crude was down 19 cents at $36.62 a barrel by 1419 GMT. On Tuesday, it reached $37.25, the highest in almost two months. U.S. crude, also known as WTI, was down 35 cents at $34.05.

"The strong inventory build reported by the API would explain why WTI is falling more than Brent," said Carsten Fritsch, analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

Traders will look closely at the U.S. government's weekly supply data on Wednesday for confirmation of the inventory build. The Energy Information Administration figures are due at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT).

Brent has risen 35 percent from a 12-year low of $27.10 hit on Jan. 20, adding to expectations that further drops may not be on the cards. An analyst at the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday prices appeared to have bottomed.

Crude has collapsed from more than $100 in mid-2014, pressured by excess supply and a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to abandon its traditional role of cutting production by itself to boost prices.

After more than a year of failing to agree any steps, OPEC and outside producers have stepped up diplomatic activity to fix the supply glut. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and non-OPEC producer Russia said on Feb. 16 they would freeze output.

The four countries have agreed to meet again in mid-March, Venezuelan Oil Minister Eulogio Del Pino said last week. The location for the talks has yet to be decided, OPEC delegates say.

In an early sign that Moscow will stick to the plan, Russia reported on Wednesday its oil output was little changed in February. Saudi Arabia has yet to report its production, but a survey this week found no sign of an increase in February.

"Although the market had hoped that some of these producers would immediately cut oil production, we still see this agreement as a strong message," ABN Amro said in a report.

"By announcing a production freeze, the global oil coalition has set a floor under oil prices."

(Additional reporting by Osamu Tsukimori in Tokyo; Editing by Dale Hudson)
By Osamu Tsukimori

TOKYO (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Wednesday in the wake of industry data that showed a huge build in U.S. crude stockpiles that were already at a record high.

Early losses were trimmed, however, as the market discounted the data in line with recent sentiment that has seen crude prices push higher in the last fortnight since hitting 12-year lows under $30 a barrel between late January and mid-February.

London Brent crude for May delivery was down 12 cents at $36.69 a barrel by 0436 GMT, after settling up 24 cents on Tuesday. The contract touched an intraday peak of $37.25 on Tuesday, the highest since Jan. 5 and up 37.5 percent from a 12-year low hit in late January.

NYMEX crude for April delivery was down 40 cents at $34 a barrel, after settling up 65 cents on Tuesday on the back of a firmer close on Wall Street. U.S. crude hit a one-month high on Tuesday.

U.S. crude inventories rose by 9.9 million barrels last week, data from the American Petroleum Institute showed after Tuesday's settlement. That was well above a 3.6-million barrel increase expected by analysts in a poll.

The surprise jump initially pushed U.S. crude down as much as 60 cents on worries that official data from Energy Information Administration (EIA) due later in the day would show a large build similar to the industry numbers.

"Inventories are already at a historical high and with it continuing to inch upwards, the market has been taking a nonchalant behaviour towards increasing inventories," Daniel Ang at Phillip Futures said in a note.

Global oil prices appear to have bottomed out and are expected to rise through this year as investment cuts help to reduce a supply glut, a senior analyst at the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.

"Sentiment has clearly shifted for commodities in the last fortnight," ANZ bank said on Wednesday. "Both crude oil and iron ore prices hit a one-month high overnight. The price action in oil adds to the case that the bottom in the crude oil market is now in place."

Crude prices were supported by Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak's remarks that oil firms in the country support a pledge to average production this year at January's levels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of "more radical" measures to balance the global oil market, on top of a production freeze plan jointly pursued by Moscow with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela.

(Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Joseph Radford and Richard Pullin)
At approximately the same time Wednesday afternoon, New York's U.S. senators spoke out in support of two amendments they say would help combat the heroin and prescription drug abuse epidemic.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the Preventing Overprescribing for Pain Act last week. The bill would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue guidelines for prescribing prescription drugs to treat acute pain.

She is now seeking to include the bill as an amendment to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which is being considered by the Senate this week.

In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Gillibrand, D-N.Y., shared the story of Sean Murdick, an Albany-area man who died of a heroin overdose. He was 22.

Murdick broke his arm while working on a construction site. He was prescribed oxycodone, an opioid. He became addicted and eventually started using heroin, which tends to be cheaper and easier to acquire than prescription painkillers.

"The opioid addiction problem in our country is serve, it is growing and it's not going to end unless Congress comes together to pass a law that targets the root causes of this epidemic," Gillibrand said. "The stakes are too high to ignore."

Shortly before Gillibrand's Senate floor speech, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer held a conference call with reporters on an amendment he supported that would provide an additional $600 million to fight the heroin and opioid epidemic.

Schumer, D-N.Y., challenged his colleagues in Congress to "put their money with their mouth is" and support the additional emergency funding.

"The opioid and heroin abuse crisis in upstate New York is symptom of this national emergency, and we need to fight back now," he said.

The amendment failed by a 48-47 vote.

The scope of the heroin and opioid epidemic was highlighted in a report released by Schumer's office.

According to the report, there were 3,316 opioid-related deaths in upstate New York from 2004 through 2013.

In central New York, there were two opioid overdose deaths in 2004. The total jumped to 76 in 2013.
By Barani Krishnan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices held steady on Wednesday as buyers banked on production limit plans to counter record high U.S. crude stockpiles, keeping alive hopes the market had bottomed from the selloff that began nearly two years ago.

The U.S. government said crude inventories rose by 10.4 million barrels to a record high 518 million during the week to Feb. 26. That build reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) was almost triple the 3.6 million-barrel increase expected by analysts in a poll. [EIA/S]

Oil prices dipped on the data but recovered to trade barely changed from Tuesday's settlement.

Futures of Brent , the global crude benchmark, were down 5 cents at $36.76 a barrel by 2:14 p.m. EST (1913 GMT). Brent had fallen 71 cents to a session low of $36.10 earlier.

U.S. crude's West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures were up 10 cents at $34.50, after sliding to an intraday low of $33.55.

Some analysts think the market will not sink back to 12-year lows hit in mid-February, when U.S. crude fell to around $26, and Brent traded at just above $27.

"We believe prices will see modest gains over the course of the year and we have likely seen the worst of price declines, unless the global economy actually moves into recession," said Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management, who helps manage some $125 billion.

Anthony Headrick, energy market analyst at CHS Hedging, concurred.

"It seems more likely that $26 is in the rear view mirror at the moment," Headrick said. "Fundamentals remain bearish but prospects of OPEC freeze and downward cycle in U.S. output will likely limit a retest of the recent lows."

Oil began to sell off in mid-2014 when a global supply glut from excessive U.S. shale crude production began to pressure prices at above $100 a barrel. The slide steepened after OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia, which traditionally cuts output to support prices, started pumping oil at record highs to protect market share.

In recent weeks, however, OPEC and outside producers stepped up diplomatic activity to address the supply glut. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela and non-OPEC producer Russia said on Feb. 16 they would freeze output at January's highs. WTI futures have risen 17 percent since, while Brent has gained 14 percent.

But some traders think the selloff will return as U.S. crude inventories continue to build from the refinery maintenance season.

"We could be in store for another large move down over the next few weeks," said Tariq Zahir at Tyche Capital Advisors who bets nearby WTI contract will weaken against forwards.

(Additional reporting by Alex Lawler in London; Editing by Susan Fenton, David Gregorio and Chizu Nomiyama)
But while low gas prices are helping push up demand for larger and more powerful cars, they leave carmakers scrambling for ways to make the vehicles more efficient to meet regulations without destroying margins in the profitable segment.

For the first time, sport utility vehicles took over as the best-selling segment in Europe last year, rising 24 percent to 3.2 million vehicles, said research firm JATO.

"People favour SUVs and that's a permanent solution, especially as mileage improves on utilization of those vehicles," Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne told journalists at the Geneva auto show.

The carmaker recently shifted the focus of its growth plan even more towards its Jeep brand in response to that trend.

SUVs are expected to make up around a quarter of new registrations in Europe this year, rising to a third by 2020, according to forecaster LMC Automotive.

But pushing for SUVs needs parallel investments in new technologies to meet fuel economy levels set out by regulators and the cost to do that will be significant, analysts said.

Carmakers can develop hybrid versions, reduce weight - a move that began with aluminium bodies, make smaller engines and develop all-electric cars that qualify for special treatment.

Tougher emissions regulations have already led to carmakers moving down the SUV segment in terms of size and engines, said Felipe Munoz, an automotive analyst at JATO.

"Around 87 percent of the B segment SUVs sold in Europe in 2015 were moved by front-wheel-drive transmissions, making them just 'taller subcompact cars', and allowing them to be more fuel-efficient than larger SUVs," he said, adding that small SUVs will be the segment's main growth driver in coming years.

Audi's Q2 that debuted in Geneva is one such entry-level SUV targeting younger buyers.

Carmakers at the show pointed to efficiency improvements already achieved over the past five years. The average fuel consumption for SUVs in the UK market had dropped 16 percent in that time, Munoz said.

Manufacturers such as luxury group Bentley also benefit from being part of the VW group, which allows them to share developments in components, modules, platforms and technology across the 12 brands as they work to improve fuel consumption.

"We need to either produce more efficiently ... (or) if this doesn't work anymore, we need to increase the prices," Bentley Chief Executive Wolfgang Duerheimer said.

"With Bentayga, we realised it's possible to sell an SUV at a price of 200,000 euros, what nobody expected before. This shows the elasticity in the market."

Carmakers' ability to meet emissions limits will also depend on how quickly they develop alternative fuels, especially as using diesel to meet regulatory limits looks increasingly doubtful after last year's Volkswagen's emissions scandal.

The push into other fuels is already paying off for companies such as Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> which has been advocating for the use of hybrids for years.

"The issue is getting easier for us and we can't keep up," said Karl Schlicht, Toyota's regional sales head, adding there was a six-month backlog for its RAV4 hybrid crossover in Europe.

While meeting new European regulations after 2021 will also be challenging for Toyota, having hybrid, plug-in hybrid, fuel cells and electric applications within its portfolio will make it easier than for some rivals, Schlicht added.

"We have those four technologies and we can mix and match, so we are comfortable," he said. "It will be a challenge for us, but it's doable."

(Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer and Gilles Guillaume, editing by David Evans)
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that domestic oil producers have agreed to keep this year's oil output in line with January levels, the first time he had given his view in public on a production freeze.

"On the whole, an agreement was reached that we will keep (2016) oil output at the January level," Putin said about the outcome of a gathering he chaired on Tuesday with Russian oil producers in the Kremlin.

After months of falling world oil prices, a preliminary agreement was reached in Doha in mid-February for and several other major crude producers to freeze production, but until now Putin had not said publicly where he stood on the question of steadying its output. Read more from our special coverage on "RUSSIA" Washington advises US banks to avoid Russian bonds

Contagious ills

That had left markets uncertain about the extent to which Russia's oil industry - in which the Kremlin wields outsize influence - would throw its weight behind a deal.

Oil prices have plunged more than 70 percent from a peak in June 2014, driven by global oversupply exceeding 1 million barrels per day.

The Russian shrank by 3.7 percent last year mainly due to cheaper oil, which together with natural gas accounts for half the state budget. sanctions over Moscow's role in the Ukrainian crisis have also hurt the .

Data showed on Wednesday that Russia's oil output in February was unchanged month on month, at 10.88 million barrels per day.

Oil markets gave a lukewarm reaction on Wednesday to Russia's pledge to freeze output.

Even after Putin's comments, uncertainty remains because Iran has not signed up to a production freeze, and a Putin aide said more work was needed to get all the big producers lined up.

"It was stressed that work with other large producing nations needs to be continued," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the Kremlin meeting with top energy firms.

"There is still uncertainty about some other producers - some have joined (the Doha group) but there are countries which have not made their intentions clear enough," Peskov told a teleconference with journalists.

Iran is an obstacle to a global deal because it wants to ramp up production, capitalising on the lifting earlier this year of sanctions that had been imposed over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday that Iran may be treated separately, on an individual basis, in terms of commitments to production.

Novak also said planned to negotiate with other non-OPEC and OPEC nations for a potential meeting in March to try to agree a final decision on a freeze.
By John Whitesides and Steve Holland

(Reuters) - Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting.

On Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of state-by-state nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved themselves the undisputed front-runners to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

Now they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties before the Nov. 8 election and, in Trump's case, avoid a potentially disastrous split in the Republican ranks.

U.S. networks projected Trump won seven states, with victories stretching into the Deep South and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests.

Clinton's victories in seven states were just as impressive but in many ways predictable, propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, began their political careers.

Trump's main rivals, U.S. senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, said they were determined to remain in the race.

Cruz, 45, won Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, as well as the Alaska caucuses, bolstering his argument that he had the best chance of stopping the New York billionaire. Rubio, the Republican establishment's favorite, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory in the party's nominating contests.

Clinton rival Bernie Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma but lost to her in Massachusetts, which he had hoped to win. The democratic socialist vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote.

TRUMP WAVES OFF REPUBLICAN CRITICISM

At a conference in a chandeliered ballroom at his seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, who has never held public office, dismissed furious criticism aimed at him by establishment Republicans.

Faced with a party in turmoil over his ideas to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the country, Trump declared he had expanded the party by drawing in disaffected blue-collar Democrats who like his tough-on-trade rhetoric.

"I am a unifier," he said. "I would love to see the Republican Party and everybody get together and unify, and when we unify, there's nobody that's going to beat us."

The rivals of both Trump and Clinton aim to knock them off their pedestals this month in contests in Michigan, Florida and Illinois.

The country's top two elected Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, had chastised Trump over his delayed disavowal of an endorsement by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist group.

"I've disavowed," Trump said. "I'm going to get along with Congress, OK? Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him.

"And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, OK?" Trump added in remarks that could further inflame party tensions.

Clinton, who still faces a well-funded Sanders despite having taken control of the Democratic race, was eager to assail Trump as a way of getting her party's voters used to the idea of her as the nominee.

"The stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," Clinton told supporters in Miami. "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work."

'DONALD TRUMPS OF THE WORLD'

Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and also targeted the Republican front-runner.

"We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us," said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up "hundreds" of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

For Rubio, 44, it was a day of reckoning. His losses piled up after a week in which he labeled Trump a "con artist" and exchanged schoolyard taunts with the reality TV star.

Suddenly, the March 15 contest in Florida, his home state, loomed over him as a must-win.

"Florida, I know you're ready," Rubio said. "The pundits say we're underdogs. I'll accept that. We've all been underdogs."

Rubio's plight was such that Senator Lindsey Graham, an establishment South Carolina Republican, told CBS that the party's voters might need to rally around Cruz, who has been one of the most disliked public figures in Washington.

"I can't believe I would say yes, but yes," Graham said when asked about the idea of supporting Cruz as a way of stopping Trump.

Cruz said at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a "Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain."

Cruz added the Republican caucuses in Alaska to his victories early on Wednesday. "Thank you Alaska!" he said on Twitter.

(Additional reporting by Amanda Becker, Ginger Gibson, Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez, Jeff Mason, Megan Cassella and Doina Chiacu in Washington and Emily Stephenson in Houston; Writing by John Whitesides and Steve Holland; Editing by Howard Goller and Lisa Von Ahn)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Commerce Department has found that several companies violated anti-dumping law over cold rolled steel flat products, issuing preliminary findings in its probe of seven countries accused of distorting the market with artificially low prices.

The department's International Trade Administration, in a fact sheet released on Tuesday, said a half-dozen U.S. steel companies had requested the investigation into certain steel products from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

In its findings, the department said several foreign steel companies did not respond to its requests for information.

Still, it issued preliminary dumping margins in the case, with the following margins applicable to most exporters from the listed countries:

*Brazil: 38.93 percent

*China: 265.79 percent

*India: 6.78 percent

*Japan: 71.35 percent

*Korea: 4.53 percent

*Russia: 14.76 percent

*UK: 28.03 percent

The U.S.-based companies that called for the investigation included AK Steel Corp, Nucor Corp, Steel Dynamics Inc, United States Steel Corp, and ArcelorMittal USA LLC, a unit of ArcelorMittal SA, according the statement.

Following its findings, the Commerce Department said it would call on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency "to require cash deposits based on these preliminary rates."

Additionally, the department said it found "critical circumstances" regarding certain exporters from China, Japan, and Russia and that border agents will impose retroactive measures, but gave no other details.

(Reporting by Washington newsroom; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Volkswagen (VW) is mounting its defences in anticipation of a report next month by U.S. law firm Jones Day appointed by the carmaker to investigate those responsible for the biggest corporate scandal in its history.

Investors have lodged dozens of lawsuits at the German regional court in Brunswick, claiming that VW failed to disclose its rigging of emissions tests until about three weeks after it had admitted its wrongdoing to U.S. authorities on Sept. 3.

VW said it had filed a statement of defence with the court in Brunswick, claiming its manipulations did not have any "stock price relevance" until Sept. 18 when U.S. regulators announced that the malfeasance had violated environmental rules.

"After careful examination by internal and external legal experts, the company confirms its belief that its management board duly fulfilled its disclosure obligation under German capital markets law," the company said in a statement.

The German group's own public admission of the cheating on Sept. 20 subsequently wiped out billions of euros in VW's market value, forced out its long-time chief executive and sparked investigations and lawsuits across the world.

Law firm Nieding + Barth said in January it would lodge a case with the Brunswick court, seeking hundreds of millions of euros in damages on behalf of 66 institutional investors from the United States and Britain.

Volkswagen said it considered the lawsuits to be without merit.

A week ago, the VW supervisory board's top committee hired a German law firm to advise it on the liabilities the carmaker could face as a result of its scandal.

More than five months after the emissions scandal broke in the United States, Europe's leading carmaker has yet to come up with a technical fix for almost 600,000 diesel cars, and is facing a growing number of legal claims.

(Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer)
With a 14% rise in funding for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in Budget 2016-17, the worlds largest state-run jobs plan continues to be Indias top poverty alleviation programme, after a decade of operation.

MNREGA, which guarantees 100 days of work to unskilled labourers in villages of India, will employ at least 52 million people and provide livelihoods to their families. That means about 260 million (considering an average family of five) will depend on it over the next 20 years, according to an IndiaSpend analysis.

The table above shows that NREGA funding has risen 18% over three years. Unlike last year, though, when the programme exhausted its money by December, it is unclear what might happen this year whenwhich is more likely than ifmoney runs out.

In 2015-16, there was a buffer of Rs 5,000 crore in case the ministry finished its money, but Delhi released only Rs 2,000 crore of that money, according to Aruna Nikhil Roy of the Peoples Action for Employment Guarantee, a Delhi-based NGO.

More Indians still poor than population of Indonesia

The absolute number of poor as well as the proportion of poor below the poverty line (according to the Tendulkar poverty line) has been declining over two decades, as we reported.

But about 270 million are still below the poverty line, more than the population of Indonesia (255 million), the worlds fifth-most populated country. The poverty line is the ability to spend Rs 47 per day per person in urban areas and Rs 32 in rural areas.

260 million will depend on over two decades

is being lauded for its achievements in the past decade. There are 277.9 million registered workers under the scheme, and 98.3 million of them are active workers.

The programme covers all adults from rural households who seek employment.

The work under covers unskilled manual labour, providing an opportunity to every person who needs employment.

Without skills, young Indians in rural areas will need MNREGA

To calculate how many Indians will need employment in the coming years, IndiaSpend looked at the illiterate rural population, according to the 2011 census. There are 51.7 million illiterate people aged 16 to 30.

Since they will not benefit from the Right to Education, which guarantees free and compulsory elementary education till age 14, this population will not be a part of Indias skilled labour force.

Skills, according to this International Labour Organisation definition, require at least five years of schooling. So, for at least 20 years, MGNREGA will likely need to support this group of Indians.

A word of caution: This 52 million (rounded off) population includes only illiterates from the Census 2011 data. There are many among the literate population who have basic reading and writing skills but are not skilled enough to work in industry.

Unpaid wages, corruption, slack fundingMNREGAs problems

MGNREGA critics contend that the scheme does not help pare poverty because of corruption and poor implementation. From a policy point of view, we should be interested in the efficiency of transferring incomes to the poor, Surjit Bhalla wrote in the Indian Express recently.

With no cost-benefit assessment of MGNREGA work and no technical support, the programme struggles to create assets or infrastructure in rural areas, which it should, Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) economics professor Reetika Khera, wrote in a recent Indian Express column.

MNREGA is short of funds; 17% of its budget went into paying wages and materials from the previous financial year, according to a letter from Ministry of Rural Development to the Ministry of Finance. The actual allocation for MNREGA this year is around Rs 29,000 crore ($4.6 billion).

This fund squeeze for MNREGA is not new and has been evident under both the United Progressive Alliance II and the National Democratic Alliance regimes.

Ending the year with pending liabilities, which effectively means workers wages are unpaid, has been a consistent trend.

As much as 95% of the budgetary allocation for the current financial year (2015-16) was exhausted by December 30, 2015.

Further, as per the Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Finance calculations, state governments require at least an additional Rs. 6,300 crore to pay wages and other expenses.

The drought-affected states of Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh will provide 150 days of employmentagainst the normal 100but there is no extra money evident, from Delhi or in their budgets.

Jaitleys budget for MNREGA may not be enough

Under the devolution recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, Indias states have been given more money, and hence more powers, to decide how they want to finance social welfare.

The Planning Commission had 66 centrally sponsored schemes, reduced to 30 under the NITI Aayog, the body that has replaced the Planning Commission. MNREGA is one of these 30.

Even though the Centre has transferred social welfare to the states through devolution (transfer of powersfiscal or administrativefrom higher level of government to lower level of government), it will pay for important programmes, such as NREGA and rural roads.

Jaitley said in his speech: In spite of the consequential reduced fiscal space for the Centre, the Government has decided to continue supporting important national priorities such as agriculture, education, health, MGNREGA, and rural infrastructure including roads.

(IndiaSpend is a data-driven, public interest journalism non-profit)


Bullion dealers and jewellers, on strike this week against the proposal for additional excise duty on jewellery, have proposed a settlement formula.

They suggest an increase in the customs duty for gold import by one per cent and removal of the duty on jewellery as proposed in the Union Budget on Monday..

Read our full coverage on Union Budget 2016

.

.

Surendra Mehta, secretary of India Bullion and Jewellers Association (IBJA), says 61 per cent of gold import is used for jewellery. If the import duty is increased by one per cent, that would generate Rs 2,125 crore of annual revenue for the government. By comparison, the proposed one per cent excise duty on jewellery will generate annual revenue of Rs 1,650 crore.

IBJA had called a three-day strike from Tuesday to oppose the Budget proposal. It would, says the trade, affect 300,000 jewellers and four million artisans. Implementation would also be cumbersome.

They have support from Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari, after a delegation from his home state, of the Maharashtra Rajya Saraf Suvarnakar Federation, met him. Gadkari has asked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to review the move.

Milind Deora, Member of Parliament and former minister, has also written to Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, requesting him to consider removing excise on jewellery. He said the health of the industry is not good, and gold importers are selling it at a huge discount to reduce inventories.

IBJA says the strike might be asked to go on till the proposal in the Budget is withdrawn. Shops were closed on Wednesday. Gold with 99.5 per cent purity closed at Rs 28,710 per 10g, compared to Tuesday's close of Rs 29,040 for 10g. The price closed on Monday at Rs 29,150 per 10g, the highest since May 2014.
A Syracuse man is facing felony charges for allegedly filing false income tax returns on behalf of several clients.

Aundra Johnson, 46, of 214 Chaffee Ave., Syracuse, has been charged with grand larceny, attempted grand larceny and 18 counts of offering a false instrument for filing.

Authorities say Johnson, who is a state Department of Motor Vehicles employee, operated a tax preparation business, Johnson's Tax Service, out of his home.

According to the state Department of Taxation and Finance, Johnson allegedly filed several false and fraudulent personal income tax returns between 2010 and 2013.

The agency said the returns contained false income figures and claimed refundable credits that weren't owned to Johnson's clients.

"With the income tax season underway, this case  and the potential for up to seven years in prison  serves as a warning to tax preparers who fraudulently inflate their clients' refunds," Taxation and Finance Commissioner Jerry Boone said.

Johnson pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Syracuse City Court. He was released on his own recognizance.

If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison and more than $20,000 in fines.

Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick's office will prosecute the case.
Two Irish companies, The Little Milk Company and Cashel Farmhouse Cheese, have taken top honours at Frances premier cheese and dairy products event, the Salon du Fromage in Paris.



The Salon trade event runs from February 28th until March 2nd and showcases 190 artisan dairy producers from 12 countries. Over 6,000 buyers and visitors, primarily French, will attend the event over the four days.



The two artisan cheese makers won the Coup de Coeur prize which was awarded to eight exceptional cheeses, following a blind tasting test by a jury of nine chefs and cheesemongers. The winners were selected from a total of 72 entries from 30 producers.



Ireland has the second largest non-French presence at the show and according to Noreen Lanigan, Bord Bia Manager for France and Belgium, there has never been a better time to introduce French buyers to Irish farmhouse cheese.

Bord Bia arranged meetings with buyers for the seven Irish companies participating at the event. All exhibitors were situated on the Ireland - Origin Green stand. Furthermore, yesterday evening, Bord Bia hosted a trade reception on the stand for up to 100 guests to further develop relations between the Irish cheese makers and French buyers.



Bord Bia Manager for France and Belgium, Noreen Lanigan says, "French cheesemongers now stock on average 16 foreign cheeses from their total selection of 130, representing around 10% of their turnover.

"According to new trade research, over 30% of cheese shops intend to increase their range of imported cheese. This is already translating into a significant increase in Irish artisan cheese imports to France, which have trebled since our presence at the Salon two years ago and now amount to approximately 18 tonnes per year."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Euro zone lenders and the International Monetary Fund disagree over how much more Greece needs to do to reform its economy, a dispute that may delay new payouts and the start of debt relief talks, officials said.

Greece has been kept afloat since 2010 by IMF and euro zone bailouts. The lenders have disagreed in the past, but they have managed to resolve their issues before they got much publicity.

But after Athens had to ask for a third bailout last year, officials said that some in the IMF wanted to stay out of yet another programme unless they were sure it would get Greece back on its feet.

"The main problem now is disagreement between the institutions, because that will harm the credibility of any solution," one senior official said. "They must get their act together and agree on a scenario and on policy measures."

IMF and euro zone officials hope to reach a compromise on Greece in talks this week, before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday. Senior officials from both sides are to meet for dinner on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the issue.

Until the euro zone and the IMF agree, they cannot decide if Greece has met the first requirements for the payout of new loans. Nor can the euro zone start discussions with Athens on debt relief that would help make Greece's huge debt sustainable.

Greece has no major debt redemptions due until July, giving the lenders and Athens time to find a compromise. But the drawn- out talks undermine investor confidence.

"If we now enter a cycle of whether this review will be concluded or not, it will generate the kind of insecurity we more or less had last year ... with the loss of confidence and capital flight," a third official close to the lenders said.

The dispute focuses on what the country needs to do to reach a 3.5 percent primary surplus in 2018 and keep it there so that it no longer has to borrow from other euro zone governments to remain solvent.

Officials said the IMF had a more cautious outlook than euro zone institutions on Greek economic growth and fiscal performance, as experience showed Athens underperformed targets.

The IMF believes Greece's primary surplus in 2018 will be around 2% with the current reforms. Growth will be about a percentage point lower than forecast by the euro zone. Greece should therefore be more ambitious with reforms, especially with the most politically difficult, pension reform.

Yet Greece's commitments are spelled out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) it signed with the euro zone in August. It says the pension reform will deliver savings of 1% of gross domestic product in 2016. The draft reform prepared by Athens does that.

The IMF was involved in talks on the memorandum, but did not sign off on it and is not formally part of the bailout. It says the numbers don't add up.

"To reach its ambitious medium-term target for the primary surplus of 3.5 % of GDP, Greece will need to take measures in the order of some 4-5% of GDP," the IMF's head of the European department, Poul Thomsen, wrote on his blog on Feb 11. "We cannot see how Greece can do so without major savings on pensions."

The pension reform could be less ambitious and the 2018 primary surplus lower if the euro zone offered Greece greater debt relief, Thomsen said.

That would irk some in the euro zone who have to maintain similar surpluses to keep debt sustainable or who, like the Baltics or Slovakia, find it difficult to justify Greeks getting bigger pensions than their own citizens.

Another snag is that the IMF wants debt relief to solve the issue once and for all. The euro zone wants a staggered scheme, linked to conditions over time.

While the IMF is not formally part of the third bailout, the euro zone would very much like it to be. But the Fund will not join unless their views align.

The approval of the IMF is also a must for northern European countries like Germany, Austria or Finland, which believe the European Commission is too lenient towards Greece and too optimistic with forecasts.

"The Germans and others are warning the Commission that the conditions for concluding the review have to be sufficient to bring the Fund on board," a fourth official said.

"The French are supporting the Greek view that the MoU conditions alone should be the criteria for concluding the review," the official said. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced today that Dublin based financial technology start-up, Deposify, has raised 1.1million to fund its US expansion.



The funding has been raised from a number of sources including Bank of Irelands Start-Up and Emerging Sectors Equity Fund, which is managed by Delta Partners.

Funding was also provided by Escher Group Holdings plc, Enterprise Ireland and a number of angel investors. Deposify which has also partnered with Bank of Ireland for its banking solution and Escher Group for its technology platform, provides escrow services to landlords, tenants and letting agents.



The company was founded by Jon Bayle with the aim of bringing trust to the landlord and tenant relationship. Its payments platform allows landlords and tenants manage and control how and when rental deposits are paid and to resolve deposit related disputes quickly.

Beyond payments, Deposify is designed to provide three main services - banking, compliance and dispute resolution and one of the core elements of its technology is bank-level security and infrastructure when handling users money and information.



Head of Innovation at Bank of Ireland, Dave Tighe said of the expansion, " Support for the start-up community is one of our pillar of activities, which is very important to Bank of Ireland and we look forward to working with the team over the coming years."



Founder Jon Bayle added, "We are delighted to welcome our new investors and excited about building out our US offering. We think its very important for fintech startups to be well funded given the ongoing investment required in technology and regulatory compliance."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Irish hotel prices have increased for the fifth year in a row according to the latest Hotels.com Hotel Price IndexTM (HPI).



The HPI is a regular survey of hotel prices in major destinations across the world. The HPI is based on bookings made on Hotels.com and prices shown are those actually paid by customers around the world (rather than advertised rates) in 2015 compared to 2014.



According to figures released by the Irish Tourism Industry Confederation, the number of overseas visitor to Ireland grew by 15% in 2015.



In Dublin, hotel prices went up by 20% in 2015. The average room rate was 129, making the city the place where visitors paid the most last year. Corks prices increased by 11% to 103 per night while the tourist town of Killarney saw a rise of 8% to an average of 119.



The figures show that Waterford was the best value destination featured in the HPI. While prices increased by 6%, the average rate was 84, well below the national average. Limerick, Irelands most affordable destination last year came a close second at 85 despite seeing its price go up by 11% year-on-year.



In the north, room rates in Belfast rose by 23% year-on-year to an average of 123 per night, while prices in Derry were up 16% to 98 on average. These increases can be in part attributed to the strong performance of sterling against the euro last year.



Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Taoiseach Enda Kenny said on Wednesday for the first time he would be open to talking to Fianna Fail about the possible formation of a new government after his previous coalition was voted out of office last week.

Kenny's centre-right Fine Gael party is set to fall about 30 seats short of the 80 needed to form a majority in parliament with counting almost complete, leaving its historic rival as the only obvious partner to form a stable government.

He told reporters that all the available options of forming a government were difficult, but that he was committed to try.

"As the leader of the largest party, and as the Taoiseach (prime minister) it's my responsibility to work to see that that process is put in place, and that includes talking to the Fianna Fail party," he said.

Kenny described the election, in which voters complained of a recovery that has not trickled down to poor and rural areas, as "bruising" and said none of the deputies in parliament wanted a re-run.

With both parties completely ruling out a coalition with the third-largest party, left wing nationalists Sinn Fein, analysts say that leaves two main options: a formal coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail or a minority Fine Gael government with support from Fianna Fail on a vote-by-vote basis.

Senior members of both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail have voiced opposition to both routes.

Fianna Fail lawmaker Dara Calleary told RTE on Wednesday that a formal coalition was a "dreadful prospect", saying the last government had presided over an unbalanced recovery.

Fine Gael Minister Simon Coveney, asked about the possibility of a minority government, told RTE the country did not need a government "that is weak, that is not stable, that is likely to fall at any time."

Senior Fine Gael members are due to meet on Thursday, a week before parliament resumes, to formulate a set of principles to guide its participation in a future government.

Fianna Fail has said it will put leader Micheal Martin forward as an alternative Taoiseach on March 10, but it is unlikely that either Martin or Kenny would garner enough support to win the vote without cooperating.

Martin raised the prospect of a more protracted delay on Monday by calling for a cross-party deal on reforming parliament before any coalition talks. Several commentators have suggested a new government before the end of March is unlikely.

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
It was announced today that Cork-based enterprise IT project specialists, Aspira, are to become principal sponsors for Cork City FC for the much anticipated 2016 season.



The sponsorship deal will see the new Aspira logo adorn the back of the players jerseys.



Aspira caters for a diverse, international client base including leading players in the IT, financial services, pharma/med devices, healthcare and energy sectors. They provide end-to-end IT enterprise solutions including supply and installation of IT hardware and software licensing and support, expert consultancy, design and implementation of bespoke IT solutions and project management.



The company experienced accelerated growth of 65% in 2015 and in February 2016 announced the creation of 50 new Irish jobs, as well as the acquisition of an IT services firm.



Similarly, Cork City has also started off 2016 on the right foot, with a 20 victory over Dundalk to win the Presidents Cup at Turners Cross last week.



Cork City CEO, Tim Murphy today commented, "We are delighted with this show of support from Aspira, a company that has always been steadfastly behind our team."

Aspira CEO, Pat Lucey added, "Aspira has always been a huge supporter of Cork City and the club was a natural choice for us to sponsor. We see many parallels with our own company, particularly their resilience through the tough times and determination to succeed  which has paid off in recent years."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
It was announced today that Irish European regional airline, CityJet, have opened their new Customer Contact Centre in Swords, Co. Dublin.

The centre will operate from 7am to 7pm daily dealing with enquiries on CityJets European scheduled routes which include Dublin, Cork, London City Airport, Paris Orly, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Nantes and Florence.



The new facility has created 18 new jobs at the airline and replaces its previously-outsourced facility which was located in Mauritius.



CityJets Chief Commercial Officer, Cathal OConnell today commented, "We are delighted to create additional jobs at our Swords campus. Relocating the call centre to Dublin and bringing it in house ensures our customers are dealt with by dedicated CityJet staff and enjoy our unrivalled service and attention to detail."

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Here at Business World we love to offer market leading, thought driven content, both for ourselves and for our clients. We offer content creation services to a diverse bunch, so this means we need to keep on top of changes, both in terms of what is happening with our clients businesses and also in how we can create great content that is picked up successfully by search engines  search engine optimisation.

When we think of SEO techniques we really need to be aware of the changes that have taken place in the content world in the last few years.

Keyword density

We have seen the evolution from keyword density, where an article or blog is perhaps written as a vehicle to stick a bunch of keywords in, to a more holistic approach where content is more thought driven.

Google, who very much influence our SEO decisions here at Business World, have shifted away from the more robotic nature of keyword stuffing and now place far more emphasis on unique content, regularly updated content and relevant external links.

These, along with numerous other factors, are what Google recognise as good content; when your pages are regarded as good content by Google they will rise up the search engine rankings, making your pages / site more visible in search engines.

Duplicate content

A key pitfall that can reduce the impact of your content is when it falls into the duplicate content trap.

Imagine the scenario; you write a piece of content for your site. You share the content with an external site that doesnt include a back link. That site perhaps syndicates out your great content, again without links back to you, and then Google deems your original web site content as duplicate. This reduces your Google ranking and undoes all your hard work!

Basically if your original content is reproduced across multiple sites / pages, without a link back to your original page, then Google classes this as negative duplicate content.

Google terms duplicate content as substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

Grey Areas

So if you are getting a 3rd party to produce your content, or you are creating your own content or if you are syndicating your own content out to a few select websites be aware of good SEO rules.

If your content is across a very small number of sites, and is fully back linked, this will not be classed as duplicate content in relation to google.

If the content is posted everywhere it will reduce its impact and negatively affect your page ranking.

Be selective about where your work is published  does a partner site have syndication? This could mean your content is posted in numerous locations.

Reduce the level of spammy or heavily stuffed keyword content on your site.

Understand how your website works, particularly content management systems  not accurately listing your content, or having multiple pages with the same content, is seen as very negative by search engines.

Google recommends Minimising boilerplate repetition: instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.

Leave it to the experts?

Creating content that is interesting, and that follows all the rules of SEO, keywords, duplicate content etc. can be a tough task for the uninitiated. Here at Business World with have a good mix of news journalists, blog writers and SEO specialists that can create content that is interesting, informative, bespoke to your business and performs well in search engine rankings.

About us
It was announced today that Ricoh Ireland have invested 250,000 in a new Document Services Centre in Glasnevin, Dublin.

Ricoh Ireland hope to grow their document services revenue by 20% in the next year by focusing on customer experience.



The new centre offers the latest in production print press technology including the Ricoh Pro C7100, which supports an extensive range of media.



Furthermore, the Centre also offers full archive management scanning services, leading the way for businesses to digitise their documents and data. Archive management is crucially relevant to the global healthcare industry and its push towards digitisation.



The centre also acts as a business continuity service for customers who need an overflow facility during busy times.



CEO of Ricoh UK and Ireland, Phil Keoghan commented, "The investment in this new Document Services Centre reflects the increasing role of Ricoh Ireland in the companys global operations, as well as Ricohs growing commitment to the Irish market. Ricoh Ireland has enjoyed strong growth in recent times and has celebrated a number of notable successes.

"As we prepare to launch our next three year strategic plan, this facility will underpin and emphasise our increasingly service-led approach. Were also excited to launch our new Irish Customer Experience Centre which will mirror other Ricoh Centres of Excellence around the world. It will provide our customers and partner network with a clear insight into the future of print and document management."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The largest ever gathering in Ireland of Social Media Professionals came to an end yesterday.

The inaugural Social Media Summit had been taking place at Dublins Aviva Stadium on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Summit is certainly finished on a high after it was announced that the event knocked Happy Birthday messages for Justin Bieber, the pop music icon with over 76 million Twitter followers, off the top Twitter trending spot.

The measurement involved using Hashtracking.com which tracks Social Media activity. It measured the two-day global gathering of over 500 key influencers, leaders, investors and creators from the social media community.

The tracker found that the event generated almost 90 million shared messages of Tweets and Retweets; Snapchats; Facebook and Instagram posts. The event generated over 9,700 tweets alone from over 1,300 contributors which reached over 6 million followers.



Other highlights included the Summits keynote speech delivered by Ted Rubin, the Social Media Strategist who is one of Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers.



Social Media Summit Director and Co-Founder, Samantha Kelly commented, "Social Media is such an important element in business today and we attracted over 500 delegates to Dublin for very first event.

"We are proud to have hosted the summit in the pioneering Smart city' of Dublin and we are very much committed to seeing the Summit grow and stay in the city."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
A lack of procedures and oversight from the Office of Children and Family Services led to the theft of nearly $20,000 from Cayuga Nation minors' trust fund accounts, the state Inspector General's office announced Tuesday.

New York State Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott released her findings and recommendations following an investigation into the case. The investigation also found that the state Office of Children and Family Services failed to monitor or audit the accounts, as they left all administration to the director of the bureau, according to a release.

Kim Thomas-Muffoletto, 57, of Getzville, was sentenced in Erie County Court last year to five years probation and nearly $20,000 in restitution after she pleaded guilty to stealing money from trust found accounts held for Cayuga Nation minors.

"As a result of my investigation, the Office of Children and Family Services acted swiftly to implement new safeguards for the funds under its control and the defendant is paying restitution for all the money stolen by her," Leahy Scott said in a release.

Thomas-Muffoletto was director of Native American Services at the OCFS. Her duties included overseeing Cayuga Nation trust fund accounts, including money paid as part of treaty agreements. She admitted to stealing from the fund over a seven-year period.

"The report does not reflect current practice. Native American Services funds are now paid directly to the Tribes and Nations and disbursed from their accounts; OCFS no longer manages any trust accounts and has implemented strict internal controls," OCFS said in a statement. "OCFS thoroughly cooperated in this investigation to assist in restoring the funds to the children's accounts and is now in the process of reviewing all related policies and procedures."

Thomas-Muffoletto began working for Native American Services in 1991. She used the stolen funds to pay personal expenses such as car payments and insurance, as well as for the expenses of family members.
British lender Virgin Money Holdings Plc said full-year underlying pretax profit rose 53%, helped by growth in its core mortgages, savings and credit card businesses which outpaced the market.

The bank, which listed on London's main market in 2014, said it would increase credit card balances to at least 3 billion pounds by the end of 2017, a year earlier than it anticipated.

Credit card balances rose 44 percent to 1.6 billion pounds in the year.

Underlying pretax profit rose to 160.3 million pounds for the year ended Dec. 31 from 104.8 million pounds a year earlier. Underlying net interest margin increased to 165 basis points from 150 basis points in 2014.

Virgin Money, which counts itself among the bigger "challenger" banks in Britain, said gross mortgage lending rose 29% to 7.5 billion pounds in the year. The British housing market had been buoyant in 2015.

Mortgage balances rose 16% to 25.5 billion pounds versus market growth of 1.8%, the company said. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

About us
Map of the week: Europe surfs the Net

Published on March 2, 2016

Story by Anita Westrup Translation by: Cafebabel

en

de

pl

es

fr

it

Morning. Get out of bed and straight away check your emails. Midday. Upload a photo of your sushi lunch to Instagram. Evening. Reserve train tickets for a weekend in Amsterdam. Nowadays, everything is online. Our map of the week shows the proportion of Internet users per country in Europe. Who would have thought that the inconspicuous Luxembourg would be the most prolific web addicts?

"A day without the Internet is a day lost," say Luxembourgers  92% of citizens in the country say they use the Internet every single day. That is, in any case, the results of a survey by Eurostat, scrutinising Internet use in Europe during 2015.

Nipping at their heels, we find countries such as Norway, Denmark, and Finland, with 89%, 87% and 85% of daily users respectively. Thus, Scandinavia and Luxembourg are well ahead of the pack when it comes to the average EU level (67%). Bringing up the rear we have Romania (37%), Turkey (40%) and Bulgaria (46%).

This disparity between north and south across the continent only confirms old cliches, but also shoiws just how different web behaviour can be across Europe.

Could Internet use serve as an indicator of prosperity and innovation? Lets take the example of Estonia. This country not only said "Goodbye to Yesterday" during their last entry to the Eurovision Song Contest, it is also considered a digital pioneer when it comes to online administration. In contrast, the German and French authorities prefer to keep it old school.

If the key to success rests in l0ng hours spent surfing the Web, eastern and central European countries, as well as those closer to the Mediterranean, should consider borrowing a little of Luxembourgs geek style.

---

This article is part of our Map of the Week series: charting the stats that matter to Europe, one map at a time.

Story by Anita Westrup

Translated from Map of the week: Europa surft im Internet
The Mediterranean as a Frontier: Reality and Representation

Published on February 25, 2016

en

es

fr

it

de

pl

This afternoon saw the opening of the 'The Mediterranean as a Frontier: Reality and Representation" exhibition at the Seville Arts Centre, a multidisciplinary showcase by 'UNIA arteypensamiento', a University of Andalusia project, developed through 15 years of work with groups of artists, investigators and activists from various Mediterranean cultures.

The Seville Arts Centre (CAS) welcomes the 'The Mediterranean as a Frontier: Reality and Representation' exhibition, a showcase by the 'UNIA arteypensamiento' programme. This is an exhibition project, produced and organised by CAS from the archives created by the arteypensamiento programme, which has been developed by UNIA (the University of Andalusia) over 15 years of investigation. During this time they have held workshops, laboratories and studies in various locations in the Mediterranean basin. The exhibition has a particular focus on two lines of work: Frontier Subjectivities and Contemporary Arab Representations.

The Frontier Subjectivities archive is expressed through the exhibition of a number of constituent projects. Many of them are highly topical and illuminate specific current developments, in which the workshop to be held by the artist Rogelio Lopez Cuenca invites collaboration.

The Contemporary Arab Representations archive unfolds via the cinematic medium with documentaries by Sinan Antoon, Baz Shamoun or Maysoon Pachachi (presented in 2005 and 2006 in seminars that tackled the "Iraqi Equation") and reviews the ongoing devastating consequences of the Gulf War.

Since 2001, the UNIA arteypensamiento programme has tried to perceive the Arab World, avoiding homogenising ideas and encouraging dialogues in order to analyse different sociocultural realities and the artisitc expressions within them.

In this spirit, the exhibition will use this multidisciplinary concept to demonstrate the results of the completed works. A full catalogue of documentary records: texts, videos, communications, digital images, photographs, posters and art works, produced over the years of investigation by various groups of artists, students, investigators, sociologists and experts from the many societies that inhabit the Mediterranean. They all have potential, under the common denominator of analysis and the diversity dialogue, to articulate resistance to the official stories and geographies.

It highlights the artistic works of Rogelio Lopez Cuenca, as well as works by doctoral candidates from the Seville Faculty of Fine Arts, the posters from the social resistance groups in Syria. Further names from among the numerous individual authors taking part include: Abu Ali (Toni Serra), Javier Andrada, Ursula Biemann, Alba Citlali/Claudia Guadalupe Cordova Rojas, Carla Fibla, Jorge Dragon, Alonso Gil, Fran MM Cabeza de Vaca, Leila Nachawati, Eduardo Romero, Pepa Rubio, Salman Sayyid, Mohammed Soueid and Virginia Villaplana. The groups Zemos 98, hackitectura.net, Aljaima and El Topo Tabernario have also contributed to the exhibition.

The archive's progression through the rooms is based on the concept of the exhibition space as a centre for investigation and study, where works and documents intertwine under the same visual system. The intention is to show a kind of collective narrative of experiences and wisdoms living in harmony. Alongside the featured works, a series of computers has been scattered around the area, from which the public will be able to access the various archives found on the UNIA arteypensamiento website.

In its various phases, the programme has sought out the proximity with Europe's "Southern Frontier", in order to build links between the shores of the Gibraltar Strait and to think critically about migratory politics and the fortification of the Spanish state with the idea of empowering resistance. These 15 years have produced the "European shipwreck", the "theatricalisation of sovereignty" and the "state of migratory exception". Europe has become a frontier in itself, a complex exercise in control and subjagation of the population's movements northwards, as we can see on a daily basis.

With the presentation of the archives created in this area by the UNIA arteypensamiento programme, some materials are propagated that, by distancing themselves from the hegemonic approaches, help us to see the inequalities and asymmetries created on both sides of the Mediterranean in another way.

The Opening

The audiovisual remix collective Los Voluble took part in the opening. They have previously engaged in various audiovisual activities and projects against the frontiers, be it at the first electronic festivals on the Tijuana/SanDiego border, at Transacciones/Fadaiat or coordinating the contents of the ZEMOS98's Live Cinema urovisions and European Souvenirs.

Inspired by the opening of The Mediterranean as a Frontier: Reality and Representation, Los Voluble have pulled out the archive and presented Borderhack, an audiovisual catastrophe, live and with the idea of projecting images and sounds to "hack" the colonial fictions and fear culture surrounding the frontiers.

Documentary Film Projections

Where is Iraq?, by Baz Shamoun

Wednesday 17 February, 19:00.

2004, Jordan/Canada, 17 min., Arabic with Spanish subtitles.

Seventy-five days before the United States Army captured Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi-Canadian filmmaker Baz Shamoun tried to return to his homeland after years of forced exile. In Jordan he met other Iraqis who could not cross the border: lorry drivers, taxi drivers and anxious refugees. Worn down by years of war, arbitrary arrests or torture, these men angrily remember the darkest years of the toppled regime.

On Democracy in Iraq, by Hana Al-Bayaty

Wednesday 17 February, 19:20.

2003, United Kingdom, 52 min., Arabic and English with Spanish subtitles.

A revelatory vision by the journalist and filmmaker Hana Al-Bayaty, providing an insight into a meeting of the major Iraqi opposition groups that took place in London three weeks before the U.S. invasion. The film was presented within the context of the Russell Tribunal cultural programme, that investigated crimes commited by the occupying forces since the invasion of Iraq.

About Baghdad, by Sinan Antoon

Wednesday 2 March, 19:00.

In collaboration with Bassam Haddad, Maya Mikdashi, Suzy Salamy y Adam Shapiro

2004, Iraq/US, 90 min., Arabic and English with Spanish subtitles.

In July 2003, Sinan Antoon, Iraqi writer and poet in exile returned to Baghdad to see the condition his city found itself in after decades of war, sanctions, oppression, violence and, finally, occupation. We are taken on a journey that explores the thoughts and feelings of Iraqis on the situation they live in and the complicated relationship between Iraq and the United States.

Return to the Land of Wonders, by Maysoon Pachachi

Wednesday 9 March, 19:00.

2004, Iraq/United Kingdom, 88 min., Arabic and English with Spanish subtitles.

The documentary maker Maysoon Pachachi accompanies her father, when he returns to Baghdad to lead the commision that writes the Constitution and declaration of provisional rights, She follows this tortuous process in which he has to formulate the changes demanded by Washington and reach compromises to satisfy the interests of the community.

Exhibition 'The Mediterranean as a Frontier: Reality and Representation'

Seville Arts Centre (CAS). C/ Torneo, 18. 41002 Sevilla.

From 5 February to April 9, 2016.

Tuesday to Saturday 11:00 to 14:00 and 18:00 to 21:00.

Opening: Friday, 5 February 2016, 20:00.

Free access to the exhibition and cinema programme until capacity is reached.

Story by Redaccion Sevilla Cafebabel.com

Translated from El Mediterraneo como Frontera: Realidad y Representacion
Accelerationism: Tomorrow, we're not going to work!

Published on February 22, 2016

Story by Katarzyna Piasecka Translation by: Katarzyna Piasecka

en

pl

fr

es

it

de

What exactly is accelerationism, this mysterious theory promising the re-orientation of capitalism in a way that will make it useful for the masses and not only for oligarchs? How are accelerationists planning to free us from work in the future? I went to London to ask Nick Srnicek, the co-author of the #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO, to explain the movement. Long read.

cafebabel: Thank you for meeting me, Nick. Tell me, what is accelerationism? Can we simplify it by saying it's a political theory?

Nick Srnicek: At its most basic level, accelerationism is an idea that states that a post-capitalist future will be built on top of the advances made by capitalism. Its not a simple rejection, destruction or negation of capitalism, but rather its re-purposing. Now a key part of this, which has been controversial, is the belief that existing technology can be deployed in ways that benefit people rather than profits. We have focused on automation as one of the key examples of this, but the essential point to note is that any change in the uses of technology will necessarily require a massive political project. So the belief that technology can be used differently is only a starting point; the real challenge is in understanding the political and social dynamics of our world in order to build up a political movement that can effectuate change.

cafebabel: Could you tell me the story of the #ACCELERATEMANIFESTO that you co-wrote with Alex Williams?

Nick Srnicek: When I was studying philosophy, I became interested in speculative realism. Inevitably, I started to ponder on the question: "What is the politics of speculative realism?" How do you translate all these interesting ideas into practice? Then came the vast economic crisis of 2008. Having been trained in Badiou, Zizek, and Deleuze and Guattari, I thought: "This is the way that you are supposed to think about radical politics." But they didnt seem to offer any purchase on what was happening in the world, and I became increasingly disillusioned with these traditional touch points for radical thought.

So I started rejecting the philosophical aspect and searching for a political layer behind it. At the same time, Alex and I were participating in a bunch of occupations  for instance Occupy London  and we became involved in events in the activist scene. We could see that despite the level of passion, effort and ambition that would go into these projects, they repeatedly failed.

So the question we began to ask ourselves was: "What was going wrong?" This is where our critique of folk politics initially came from. We looked at the elements that were lacking in Occupy, but also from the point of view of philosophical and academic movements. One of the major things that stuck out to us was that there didnt exist any big vision of how a future society would look. There were plenty of critiques of existing society, but nothing that seemed capable of mobilising people towards an alternative society.

It was the combination of these elements that brought us to writing the manifesto. In the beginning, it was meant to be a summary of the book Inventing the Future, with a distribution of around 50 copies. Then the manifesto got leaked online, and ended up spreading around the world.

cafebabel: If Ive understood it correctly, one of the core assumptions of accelerationism is that capitalism can't sustain itself forever and will eventually self-destruct, giving way to a new reality. Is that correct?

Nick Srnicek: I wouldnt say that its necessary. I think that there is a tendency to lean towards this definition, but I think capitalism has an immense capacity to reinvent itself, so I dont ascribe any necessity to a crisis or final endpoint. Capitalism also has a great potential to inflict suffering on people and I think that, given that the current conditions of capitalism are unable to generate profit in traditional ways, it is in turn generating more and more exploitation. Combined with the lack of power people have nowadays, this exploitation and misery is likely to increase. This is not going to lead to the end of capitalism, however. We cant rely on historical necessity, and instead have to build our way out of it.

cafebabel: In order to accelerate the end of capitalism, is a neoliberal government, like David Camerons, more useful than a neo-Keynesian government, like the one proposed by Jeremy Corbyn?

Nick Srnicek: If you believe that accelerationism is meant to make things worse as a pathway to revolution, then Donald Trump is its biggest advocate. But my project is not about making things worse  in fact, that seems a rather naive idea of revolution to me. Im more interested in how we can use existing resources to build a better world, and I think the political imperative today is to think about how we can change existing conditions in order to make it possible for people themselves to take power. I dont think that Cameron could do that, and I think his project will simply exacerbate the worst elements of our world. Corbyn has much better chances in this regard  even if political parties inevitably have limitations.

cafebabel: In the manifesto, written in 2013, you say that the left should refuse horizontalism and embrace verticalism. However, from that moment on, lots of horizontal leftist political movements arose in Europe, for example Podemos, Syriza, and Italy's Five Star Movement. Do you think that reality contradicted your ideas?

Nick Srnicek: No, I dont think so. In the "Manifesto" we draw a (perhaps too) sharp distinction between folk politics and accelerationism. However, we also say that we have to marry the network with the plan, which points towards the necessity of thinking about hybrid organisational forms. I think that this is what you see in Syriza to some extent. Podemos is an even better example  its effectively an experiment combining horizontalism at the ground level and a vertical organisation that is trying to generate effective action at the national level. Its exactly the sort of experiment that we call for in the book, and in short, we have to learn from what happens, experiment and invent new ways to proceed without rigidly holding on to horizontalist ideas or going back to traditional vertical forms of organisation. I think both of those pathways have failed.

cafebabel: The correlation between accelerationism and the intensification of consumerism seems intuitive, but is it correct? The American version of Vice has published an article about accelerationism: "Consume like crazy, only drink from Styrofoam, and throw handfuls of dead batteries into our oceans so the impending apocalypse can hurry up and get over with."

Nick Srnicek: Yeah, the Vice article completely missed the point. Accelerationism is not about expanding consumerism and being more wasteful with the aim of (somehow) overturning capitalism. Following that idea would simply make things worse for everybody in the end and its not a revolutionary pathway. That being said, consumerism is not entirely bad  or rather, we need to distinguish between the expansion of desires generated by profit-seeking, and the expansion of desires generated by genuine human liberation. The two are conflated under capitalism  i.e. having more options for shampoo is considered freedom. But the anti-consumerist alternative seems wrong to me as well  it presupposes there are innate real needs and that anything beyond those needs is pure excess generated by capitalist consumerism. I dont think thats right  I think humanity is an open-ended project and any attempt to ascribe rigid desires to humanity is tied to conservative ideals.

cafebabel: The idea of the "jobless future" appears in both the manifesto and the book Inventing the Future. Do you think that we would be comfortable not working? For centuries, money has not only been a reward for work but also a universal point of reference as a determinant of social status, thus also of human dignity. Dont you therefore think that in order for a jobless future to be able to exist, the role of money in society would have to change?

Nick Srnicek: I think that many people could be very happy in a world where you dont have to rely on a job to survive and you dont have to make money that way. Its a common case that people take shitty jobs in order to survive  and one of the biggest challenges for management is that workers almost universally hate their jobs. In a post-work future, where something like a universal basic income had been implemented, the value of jobs that are socially necessary, but that people see as degrading, would likely increase in monetary terms. If you didnt have to take a shit job just to make ends meet, then society will have to pay more in order to get those jobs done. At the same time, the value of jobs that are pleasurable, but less socially necessary, would likely decrease. I also think that a basic income serves as recognition of unwaged labour that is socially necessary and serves to maintain the populace but is not currently remunerated. Getting rid of the coercive aspect that keeps us in jobs is a huge step in changing the power imbalances between labour and capital, and I think it entails all sorts of interesting consequences.

cafebabel: Is it a fair assessment to say that modern society has developed Stockholm Syndrome with regard to work, money and capitalism? We are haunted by the awareness that we have been trapped in capitalist lifestyles that need to be financed, but at the same time there is no other option and everyone else does the same thing, so we reconcile ourselves with it and comply?

Nick Srnicek: I think that is true to some degree, and it is a manifestation of the structure of capitalism. The fact that you need a job in order to survive means that everybody works and it becomes a focal point of our identities. There has also been a shift from the old factory job in which you worked, and then returned home at the end of the day to become somebody different. Nowadays, we have occupations that infiltrate our entire lives, and as a result work has become central to our lives and relationships. When you first meet someone new, you inevitably ask them, "What do you do?" by which you mean, "What is your job?" and not "What are your hobbies?" There is also real social shame in saying that you are unemployed, which I find quite interesting. I was unemployed last year and despite being very much for a "post-work" world, even I felt a bit embarrassed. I always felt compelled to say that I worked as a freelancer. So, yes, there is Stockholm Syndrome, but it is an objective necessity too.

cafebabel: If accelerationism means overcoming borders and liberating technology from capitalist subjugation, can we understand Wikileaks and hacking as proto-accelerationist?

Nick Srnicek: I think that open source platforms are proto-accelerationist in the sense that they are operating outside of the capitalist valorisation of commodities  something is freely available and replicable at no cost. Open source platforms are post-capitalist, but too often people jump on this idea and think it is going to undermine the hegemony of Google, Microsoft or Apple. I dont think thats a persuasive argument. I think these are still marginal tendencies and the question is: "How do you take them from the edges of capitalism and turn them into a fully functional alternative?" I havent seen any plausible vision of how that is done. You need a political force to carry it out and this force does not exist at the current time.

Nick Srnicek: How does accelerationism view the rise of the sharing economy, such as BlaBla car, Airbnb and Uber?

I think at the present moment, theyre insidious ways of imposing further exploitation. Theyre presented as a matter of turning workers into entrepreneurs, but its instead a matter of increasingly exploiting every aspect of peoples lives. The mechanism works like this: if you need more money  because there are not enough good jobs  you start driving an Uber cab in your spare time. The sharing economy creates a flexible workforce as and when the capitalist system needs it. That being said, a different reality is possible  you can imagine cutting out the actual platforms themselves and turning them into something that was owned and controlled by the workers. This way cab drivers could make use of the Uber platform and raise their wages to a meaningful amount, but any profits would go into reinvestment and improving the service rather than into the pockets of a handful of parasitical techies.

---

Nick Srnicek was born in 1982 and is currently living in London, working as a Visiting Lecturer at City University and the University of Westminster. He is the author of Postcapitalist Technologies (Polity, forthcoming), co-author of Inventing the Future (Verso, 2015, with Alex Williams) and co-editor of The Speculative Turn (Re:press, 2011, with Levi Bryant and Graham Harman).

---

Story by Katarzyna Piasecka

Translated from Akceleracjonizm: jutro nie idziemy do pracy!
Fed's Beige Book "Prepared at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and based on information collected before February 22, 2016."



Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts continued to indicate that economic activity expanded in most Districts since the previous Beige Book report. Economic growth increased moderately in Richmond and San Francisco and at a modest pace in Cleveland, Atlanta, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Philadelphia reported a slight increase in economic activity, and St. Louis described conditions as mixed. Most contacts in Boston cited higher sales or revenues than a year-ago but mixed results since the previous month. New York and Dallas described economic activity as flat, and Kansas City noted a modest decline in activity. Across the nation, business contacts were generally optimistic about future economic growth.

Residential real estate sales were up since the last report across all Districts, with the exception of New York and Kansas City where sales were somewhat weaker in part due to normal seasonal patterns. The Boston, Cleveland, St. Louis, and San Francisco Districts reported strong growth in sales, and contacts in Boston and Cleveland cited relatively mild winter weather as a positive contribution to growth. Low- to moderately-priced homes sold better than higher-priced homes in Cleveland, Kansas City, and Dallas. ... Residential construction generally strengthened since the previous survey period, with only Philadelphia and Kansas City reporting declines.



Districts characterized nonresidential real estate sales and leasing growth as flat to strong. Contacts in Cleveland cited growth in demand from the healthcare and higher education sectors and to a lesser extent the manufacturing, commercial real estate (excluding office buildings) and multifamily housing sectors. Commercial occupancy rates rose in San Francisco, spurring higher lease rates and additional construction projects. Commercial vacancy rates were nearing or below prerecession levels in Minneapolis despite significant new commercial real estate construction, and St. Paul saw more commercial net absorption in the last year than in the previous ten years combined. Similarly, industrial vacancy rates decreased across the Cleveland, St. Louis, and Dallas Districts. Demand for commercial real estate space grew robustly in Chicago across retail, industrial and office segments, but there was concern that the lack of commercial construction and increased demand would lead to space shortages and price bubbles. Commercial leasing activity in Boston was steady, and fundamentals remained strong. Richmond commercial leasing activity increased moderately for the retail market since the previous report, while activity in the office and industrial markets was tepid. Commercial rents increased in Philadelphia, and contacts in Atlanta noted generally improving rents as well as increased absorption.

emphasis added

And on real estate:Real Estate growth in most districts was decent ...
ACCC lodges appeal against Federal Court egg cartel ruling

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is appealing the Federal Courts decision that a group of egg producers did not try and establish an egg cartel.

On 10 February 2016 the Federal Court said the Australian Egg Corporation Limited (a promotional group for the Australian egg industry), Farm Pride Foods and Ironside Management Services did not encourage producers to limit the availability of eggs in order to push up prices.The ACCC today however confirmed it would appeal against this decision.

The ACCC also originally alleged that James Kellaway, Managing Director of the Australian Egg Corporation Limited, and Jeffrey Ironside, Director of Australian Egg Corporation Limited and Twelve Oaks Poultry, had encouraged cartel arrangements. The Federal Court dismissed these allegations which the ACCC will now appeal.

The ACCC said the Federal Court had dismissed its allegations saying while it had established that the respondents intended that egg producers should take action to address and correct an oversupply of eggs, it did not establish that this action was intended to be pursuant to an agreement or understanding involving mutual or reciprocal obligations by competing producers.

Chairman of the ACCC Rod Sims said detecting and deterring cartel conduct continues to be a major focus for the ACCC.

It is important that we seek clarity from the Full Court on issues of what will and will not constitute attempted cartel conduct, particularly in the context of conduct by a trade association interacting with its members, Sims stated.

Australian Food News contacted the Australian Egg Corporation Limited for comment but did not receive a response prior to publication.

Relevant article: Court finds against ACCC in Australian egg cartel accusations.
SHARE

WEDNESDAY

READING: United Way volunteers will commemorate the birthday of Dr. Seuss by reading a variety of the author's books to children at Sam Houston Elementary School, 363 Norton St.; Zavala Elementary School, 3125 Ruth St.; and Kennedy Elementary School, 1102 Villarreal Drive and early learning centers. Some of the volunteers scheduled to read include Mayor Nelda Martinez, Corpus Christi Fire Department Chief Robert Rocha and Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin. Cost: Free. Information: 361-882-2529, www.facebook.com/UWCoastalBend.

OBSERVANCE: The Nueces County Historical Society welcomes residents wishing to observe Texas Independence Day at the first floor lobby of the Nueces County Courthouse, 901 Leopard St., at 1:30 p.m. . Cost: Free. Information: 361-986-1268.

VETERANS: The Coastal Bend Troop Support Silent Auction Fundraiser will be from 5-7 p.m. at Keller Williams Realty, 1005 State Highway 35, Rockport. The auction will close at 6:20 p.m. and the raffle drawing will be at 6:30 p.m. Cost: Event is free; donations accepted. Information: 361-790-9494.

PERFORMING ARTS: The Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will present a production of Wendy Wasserstein's timeless Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, "The Heidi Chronicles," at 7:30 p.m. in the Wilson Theatre in the Center for the Arts. Cost: $10, adults; $7, students;$5 TAMU-CC students with a valid ID. Information: 361-825-2337.

THURSDAY

SEMINAR: Del Mar College Continuing Education and a local financial services professional will provide the Financial Strategies for Successful Retirement seminar from 6:30-9 p.m. Thursday at Del Mar College Center for Economic Development, 3209 S. Staples St. Cost: $59 Information: 361-888-0820.

PERFORMING ARTS: The Department of Theatre and Dance at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi will present a production of Wendy Wasserstein's timeless Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, "The Heidi Chronicles," at 7:30 p.m. in the Wilson Theatre in the Center for the Arts. Cost: $10, adults; $7, students;$5 TAMU-CC students with a valid ID. Information: 361-825-2337

FUNDRAISER: The YWCA hosts its 36th Annual Y Women in Careers Awards Banquet at 6 p.m. at 4601 Corona Drive. YWCA honors the 2016 Y Women in Careers Award winners, provides strong role models for young girls, and invests in YWCA programs. Sponsorship and ticket information: www.ywca.org/corpuschristi
Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Kindergarten students at Houston Elementary School give Alan Wilson, chairman of the board of the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, high-fives after he read to them Wednesday. The United Way of the Coastal Bend hosted a reading event at the school to celebrate Dr. Seuss birthday.

SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Robert Rocha, Corpus Christi Fire Department chief, reads to kindergarten students Wednesday at Houston Elementary School. The United Way of the Coastal Bend hosted a reading event at the school to celebrate Dr. Seuss birthday. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Michelle Unda, an employee with NuStar Energy, reads to kindergarten students Wednesday at Houston Elementary School. The United Way of the Coastal Bend hosted a reading event at the school to celebrate Dr. Seuss birthday. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Robert Rocha, Corpus Christi Fire Department chief, reads to kindergarten students Wednesday at Houston Elementary School. The United Way of the Coastal Bend hosted a reading event at the school to celebrate Dr. Seuss birthday.

By Beatriz Alvarado of the Caller-Times

CUP

PUP

Pup in cup.

Houston Elementary School prekindergarten students mouthed the word families as Corpus Christi Fire Chief Robert Rocha read them aloud from the Dr. Seuss classic, "Hop on Pop."

Wearing a "Cat in the Hat" felt hat, Rocha helped their teacher, Monica Soliz, make headway in the school year's reading objectives.

"We want them to sound the words and blend the sounds to make sentences," Soliz said. "That's the goal in prekindergarten."

The class was among five at the school that participated in Wednesday's Dr. Suess Reading Day in honor of Theodor Seuss Geisel's birthday. Volunteers, which included Rocha, Mayor Nelda Martinez and representatives from business associations and establishments, read to children at Houston, Zavala and Kennedy elementary schools. Early learning centers throughout the city that are part of United Way of the Coastal Bend's Success by 6 Initiative also participated.

United way hosted Wednesday's event. The organization's Success by 6 Initiative is meant to increase reading by widening access to books and hosting events that encourage reading.

So when Houston principal Prudence Farrell was contacted by the organization about the event, she didn't hesitate.

The former middle and high school principal said she's seen the long term effects not having a literacy foundation can have on students.

"Those foundation years are so crucial for development," she said. "(Illiteracy) doesn't happen when they get to middle or high school, they have been struggling since kindergarten."

And because literacy has started to become spotlighted as problem throughout the state, Farrell started "Drop Everything and Read Day" this school year. Every Tuesday for 20 minutes, the entire school reads.

Initiatives at the school go hand in hand with what Wednesday's event strives to instill in children: "To love to read," Farrell said.

Twitter: @CallerBetty
SHARE

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

Prosecutors and law enforcement refuse to lose drunken driving cases in court.

The Nueces County District Attorney's Office hosted a free training Wednesday for area prosecutors and law enforcement to bolster driving while intoxicated cases.

Presenters from the Texas District and County Association spoke to more than 50 attendees about challenges in prosecuting such cases and offered solutions. One of the toughest challenges is conveying to a jury what the officer observed and the officer's expertise based on training and experience, according to the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.

Last year Nueces County prosecuted more DWI cases than in 2014, District Attorney Mark Skurka has said.

One of Skurka's first initiatives as district attorney was targeting DWI cases. The district attorney's office hires phlebotomists several times a year, including New Year's, Fourth of July and spring break week, to help law enforcement.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
SHARE

By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times

Doctors who had access to medical records for patients of the Eye Institute of Corpus Christi did so with the authorization of a court order, according to one of the doctors' attorneys.

Attorneys for Dr. Ravinderan Krishnan last week said in a statement there was a database "breach from unauthorized individuals" and put out a call for patients who may have been impacted to make a report.

Krishnan is among several doctors locked in an ongoing lawsuit that began in 2015.

Attorney Douglas Allison, who represents Dr. Christopher Majka in the lawsuit, said a judge's injunction, signed in November, allowed patient records from the Eye Institute to be accessed so doctors "could continue to provide patient care."

"There was no 'breach' and there were no 'unauthorized individuals' (as proven by the court Order, and Texas Medical Board rules)," Allison said in a statement released this week to the Caller-Times.

Myra Morris, a lawyer for Krishnan, said the injunction came before the doctors reached an agreement to split the practice in January. The injunction, which is on appeal, "did not have an effect on the separation agreement," Morris said.

"Dr. Krishnan was mandated by federal law to report the unauthorized access of these individuals' records following the split of the (partnership)," Morris said.

Allison called Morris' statements "grossly inaccurate" and said the injunction is still in effect.

Twitter: @CallerKMT
SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times Jose A. Gonzalez Courtney Sacco/Caller-Times John Marez Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times John Martinez Courtney Sacco/Caller-Times Jesus Jesse H. Gonzalez

By Julie Garcia of the Caller-Times

It came down to the last three precinct boxes in the race for the next Nueces County Precinct 3 Commissioner.

But a final box of ballots from Baker Middle School made the difference, pushing one front-runner to third place and catapulting a former city councilman to the second place spot for a chance to participate in a runoff election in May.

Joe A. Gonzalez, deputy with the Nueces County Sheriff's Office and the president of the sheriffs officers union, held the top spot at the end of the night with 29.9 percent or 1,668 votes, according to complete, unofficial returns. The Precinct 3 candidate is not to be confused with Precinct 2 commissioner Joe A. Gonzalez, a former justice of the peace.

John Marez finished second with 26.4 percent or 1,472 votes for a spot in the runoff. John Martinez narrowly missed the runoff with a 25.2 percent or 1,406 vote finish.

After seeing the final tally, Joe A. Gonzalez stepped off the elevator in the Nueces County Courthouse and was greeted by a friend who asked how he did.

"Bien! Ganamos!" said Joe A. Gonzalez, meaning that he was well and he had won the race.

"I want to thank God first. I had told myself I was going to put it in God's name," Joe A. Gonzalez said. "I want to thank my family and all of my brothers and sisters in blue. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be here."

The county's most contested race was close all Tuesday night, starting with Martinez, former County Court-At-Law judge and longtime area lawyer, in the first place spot with 28.8 percent of the early votes. Joe A. Gonzalez held 27.8 percent of the early votes, and Marez followed with 25.9 percent.

"Obviously this was a nail biter and something I would rather watch on TV than actually be a part of," Marez said. "We would like to thank the people of Precinct 3 for taking the time to vote and support us. We pulled it out in the end with my old junior high (Baker Middle School) getting us numbers to come out on top to become second place."

In the fourth spot was Jesus "Jesse" Gonzalez, a county employee, with 9.4 percent or 524 votes, followed by Joel Stanley Mumphord, well-known name in the local Democratic Party with 5.4 percent or 300 votes, and Dick Mitchell, retired county employee, with 3.7 percent or 208 votes.

Mumphord watched the large projector at the courthouse all night. He said the candidates ran a good race and everyone was decent to each other.

"Now it's time to go forward and represent the Democratic Party," Mumphord said as the final numbers were streaming in.

Martinez and his wife and daughter stayed at the courthouse until the final 10 precincts reported. They decided to go home to watch the results, away from the bustle of the courthouse. He was not able to be reached by cellphone after the results were finalized.

"John Martinez ran an excellent campaign, and I'm very surprised we're not running against him in the runoff," Marez said. "He's done excellent work for our county and our party, and I want to reach out to him for support because that would mean a lot for me."

Precinct 3 is the largest in the county, as it extends from Rodd Field Road and Ocean Drive to areas west of Staples Street, including the communities of Robstown, Driscoll, Agua Dulce and Banquete. It includes the Corpus Christi International Airport, the Richard M. Borchard Regional Fairgrounds and the county airport.

Commissioner Oscar Ortiz has held the seat for more than 20 years. The salary, plus car allowance, is $85,000. The term is four years.

Joe A. Gonzalez said he believes a greater number of young people voted in the primaries than the previous elections. The runoff will be an uphill battle, he said.

Marez is looking forward to the next two months of campaigning against just one opponent, rather than five others.

"We're running because the people of Precinct 3 need someone there on Day 1 and start running Commissioners Court," Marez said. "We're going to a be a full-time commissioner. I'm going to work hard to let people know who we are about."

Nueces County Commissioner,

Precinct 3

Joe A. Gonzalez

Age: 29

Occupation: Nueces County Sheriff's Office deputy

Residence: Corpus Christi

Political experience: I do not consider myself a politician. However, I have been serving as president of the Nueces County Sheriff Officers' Association, and I have negotiated the collective bargaining agreement with the county. I have established relationships with county management and elected officials and because of this I am more familiar with county issues and have ideas on how to implement progress for the county.

John Marez

Age: 43

Occupation: Training supervisor for Texas Family Protective Services

Residence: Corpus Christi

Political experience: City councilman and mayor pro-tem, eight years; CCISD board vice president, four years; chairman, municipal court committee, four years; commissioner, Corpus Christi Charter Revision Commission
Roy Barrera (left) and Ray Madrigal

SHARE Roy Barrera 50.6% Ray Madrigal 36.2%

By Chris Ramirez of the Caller-Times

Security guard and political novice Raul "Roy" Barrera appeared to be on his way to the Democratic nomination in the District 27 Congressional race on Tuesday.

With 248 of the districts 293 precincts reporting, Barrera had 50.3 percent of the vote and was defeating Reynaldo Ray Madrigal, a retired photographer from Corpus Christi. Madrigal received 36.3 percent.

Barrera, if he avoids a runoff, will face three-term incumbent Blake Farenthold in the general election on Nov. 8.

"People who came out to voice their opinion -- they wanted a change, and they got the change," Barrera said.

Wayne Raasch, a computer science teacher from Wharton County, finished third in the Democratic race, garnering 13.4 percent of the vote.

At 65, Barrera, is a year from retiring from his job working security at the federal courthouse in Corpus Christi. He spent much of the day Tuesday driving around the city to various polling stations before heading to a family gathering, then to the Nueces County Courthouse to watch the returns.

Family members swarmed him with hugs as the Nueces County results were flashed on a screen after 9:30 p.m.

"We're going to continue to look forward for the betterment of the community," said the candidate, dressed in a dark blazer covering a tomato-red T-shirt with "Raul 'Roy' Barrera for Congress" on the front.

Barrera never served in the military, but ran a platform that pushed heavily for opening a full-service Veterans Affairs hospital in the Coastal Bend. The Robstown native also was a proponent of raising the minimum wage and safeguarding Social Security, and said his campaign intended to speak for the poor and working class.

Before becoming a police officer, Barrera and his nine siblings supported their family picking cotton.

Madrigal, who also was at the courthouse, held out hope voters in other communities in the 13-county district would support him and force a runoff.

He has run in several races in the last decade, unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2014. He ran on a campaign that focused largely on directing more resources to secure the American border with Mexico. Part of his plan involved moving military troops to communities along the border.

"Veterans, the working class. Those are the people I'm fighting for, and for everyone else," Barrera said. "This is about representing everybody and doing more to make this district flourish."

Madrigal, 73, traveled throughout Corpus Christi and surrounding communities in the hours before the polls closed at 7 p.m., planting political signs in an effort to make a first impression on voters.

He was at Nueces County Courthouse watching the vote count in his latest bid to win an elected position.

"I have nothing to complain about," Madrigal said. "The fact I've been in this a long time, I know a lot of people. But the financial part of politics is what makes it tough."

The 27th District takes in the Coastal Bend including Bastrop, Caldwell, Gonzales, Lavaca, Wharton, Matagorda, Jackson, Victoria, Calhoun, Refugio, Aransas, San Patricio and Nueces counties. Members of Congress earn a salary of $174,000 annually.

Twitter: @Caller_ChrisRam
The President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, is due in Cameroon for a four-day official visit which starts on 16 March, according to reliable sources on Tuesday.

ADS



The President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, is due in Cameroon for a four-day official visit which starts on 16 March, according to reliable sources on Tuesday.



Although the agenda of the visit has not yet been made public, the Italian leader is expected to meet local authorities and hold face-to-face talks with his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya.



Through the course of his trip Mattarella will take stock of the situation of refugees and internally displaced people settled in the East and North of Cameroon for whom Italy has already donated CFA 2 billion.



Talks between Mattarella and Cameroonian officials would also revolve around the chairmanship of the UN Security Council for which Rome seeks the support of Yaounde.



Bilateral cooperation between, Rome and Yaounde date back to 1960 while the Italian Embassy in the Cameroonian capital was established in 1962.



Since 1 April 2004, the two nations have been bound by an agreement for the promotion and protection of investments.



The Italian government has canceled Cameroon's bilateral debt estimated at around CFA 89 billion francs in October 2002.



The Italian cooperation in Cameroon is particularly felt in the areas of health, education, scientific research and the development of socio-economic infrastructures.



In addition, Italy also grants scholarships to some 400 Cameroonian students each year.









ADS
Prior to this appointment, Cuny was a partner in performance media for Mindshare Indonesia, where he lead the agency's performance team.

Arshan Saha, VP, Xaxis Southeast Asia said Cuny has been an early adopter and advocate of programmatic and expressed confidence that he will further extend the agencys lead in the space.

Cuny said that the Philippines is one of the fastest growing programmatic markets in Asia.

Programmatic is paving the way for more efficiency and more addressable digital media within the region, he added. I am excited to join this dynamic team and to leverage our data, technology and people to deliver enhanced and tailored solutions for our clients.

With over eight years digital and media experience working with global and local brands across Southeast Asia, Cuny started his career as a campaign manager with Netbooster in the Philippines in 2008.

In 2012, Cuny moved to Indonesia as media director for GroupM Interactions (now GroupM Connect) to jumpstart the digital transformation and performance marketing across all clientele.
| BY Ricki Green |

Alice Manners, CEO of IAB Australia has announced her intention to step down from her role as CEO of IAB Australia to take up a new role in Perth. Her tenure at IAB Australia will end in May.

Says Ed Harrison, chairman of IAB Australia: Alices contribution to the industry has been immense. She has driven substantial change for both the Association and our industry, delivering a suite of initiatives which have contributed to the ongoing health and growth of the digital advertising ecosystem. On behalf of the board, I would like congratulate Alice on her many achievements. She leaves the IAB in great shape and well positioned to face the future.

Manners joined IAB Australia in mid 2013 with a remit to empower the media and marketing industry to thrive in the digital economy. Her big tent transformation strategy has seen IAB Australia grow and broaden its membership and stakeholder base, while adapting to the rapidly changing digital advertising landscape, particularly in the area of mobile. Alice was instrumental in creating the Ad Tech Advisory Council and Agency Advisory Group, as well as establishing a Mobile Centre of Excellence. She also facilitated the audience measurement tender process and reappointment of Nielsen as the preferred supplier.

Manners will end her time with the IAB on a high, having launched the all-important Digital Ratings Monthly, delivering global audience measurement best-practice and providing local publishers, advertisers and agencies with greater understanding of online audiences.
| BY Ricki Green |

Leo Burnett Melbourne has won a haul of awards at the 2016 AME Awards with the agency earning the 2016 AME Regional Platinum Award/Asia-Pacific for #MyFamilyCan for client SPC as well as three Gold Medallions.

Other Aussie agencies scoring medallions include Atomic 212 with two Silver for Double Robotics Lucy the Robot and Showpony Advertising earning a Bronze for SA Health Aboriginal Immunisation.

The #MyFamilyCan campaign via Leo Burnett Melbourne successfully leveraged a national debate over contaminated imported foods that caused a Hepatitis outbreak in Australia and fueled the nations growing concern over the origin of food by creating a packaging platform for SPC, Australias largest food processor. The agency dedicated SPCs iconic advertising real estate to Australian farming families, converting 4 million cans into an educational media space. The results: one million SPC Family Cans were sold in the first month alonea 17% uplift on the sales target.
Guys, pardon the frankness, but a couple failures in the bedroom on your end could actually be a lifesaver if you put aside the enormous male ego and take action.

Erectile dysfunction  the inability to get and keep an erection suitable for sex  can be an early warning sign of heart disease.

Something like erectile dysfunction is a great avenue to get men into the clinic to see their primary care doctor so they can get screened for cardiovascular disease, said Dr. Bernard Ashby, a Mount Sinai Medical Center cardiologist.

A lot of time men dont come in, he said. They dont appreciate the implications of a poor lifestyle and are not seeing a doctor. Men dont come into the doctor until something happens.

Men, you know who you are.

Ashby gives an example of the common patient who overlooks certain things, like early heart failure and breathing problems, but when its related to sexual performance, well, attention perks up.

At least, there is good news in that respect.

They wont come into the hospital until they notice swelling in the testicles. They dont think its a problem until something is wrong down there  some of the things we place a priority on. Any way we can get them to see us is a great way for us to get guys screened, Ashby said.

The same process that creates heart disease may also lead to erectile dysfunction  only earlier, hence the importance to screen for a possible relation.

The inability of the arteries to dilate fully and to subsequently harden, through the buildup of plaques in the arteries of the body, can lead to stroke, heart attack and even sudden death. The process is called atherosclerosis, and the plaque buildup reduces the blood flow to the penis, rendering a male impotent.

But, as South Florida urologist Dr. George Suarez explains, the smallest arteries, not the heart but the arteries of the penis, which are very small, become blocked first. This shows up in the inability to become erect or to stay erect to engage in a satisfying sexual activity.

Erectile dysfunction preceding heart disease is a function of endothelium, or the dysfunction of the inner linings of the blood vessels and smooth muscle. Endothelial dysfunction leads to both poor blood flow to the heart and the penis and develops into atherosclerosis.

A report published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2008 detailed an Italian study of men with severe heart disease. Nearly all of the men, 93 percent, had erectile dysfunction two years before their heart attack or the onset of heart disease symptoms.

Impotence, however, doesnt always indicate future heart problems.

Every man is going to have a bad day, an off day, a tired day, a stressful day, a whatever day, Suarez said.

He counsels concern if impotence is happening about 25 percent of the time. One out of four, then you can say, I have a problem. Obtaining means youve got enough blood flow to the penis to have an erection, maintaining means to keep the blood flow in there. More than 25 percent, its time to start looking for some solution.

There are four things doctors and patients should then look at, he suggests.

 Is there an organic cause, which could be a history of high cholesterol, high blood pressure? Doctors can check the patients medications, if applicable, adjust them or prescribe treatment for the cholesterol and blood pressure issues and screen for heart disease.

 Is there a hormone deficiency, such as low testosterone? Simple test and fix, Suarez says.

 Are there neurological issues, any back issues, any nerve damage? Have you been injured? A physical exam could be telling.

 Is it all in your head? Then we look for psychological issues and put that as the last thing we should look at, Suarez says.

There are other risk factors for heart and erectile problems, too, such as diabetes, smoking, over consumption of alcohol, obesity and age.

However, age, when looking for the correlation between impotence and heart disease, is especially a concern for younger men under 50 who are at much higher risk for a link. In seniors 70 and over, erectile dysfunction is less likely to be a sign of heart disease.

Not that the senior set is idle.

I see more elderly people that are sexually active in my practice than I did 20 years ago, Suarez said. I have a friend who owns a nursing home and he was telling me the other day that sexual activity in the nursing home is humongous. Apparently, gone are the days of sitting on the porch, hand in hand, reflecting on memories. Now these old people just want to screw all the time.
Two men with big arms and sweat-stained shirts wheeled the piano into the living room of Yvette Martins home.

She had cleared a space along the far wall, where a console table used to sit.

The piano was barely recognizable, its appearance greatly enhanced from just a few weeks earlier. The 65-year-old piano had fallen on hard times. Its future did not look promising.

But on this warm Saturday in February, it emerged from under moving blankets looking like new.

And the pianos sound?

Mellow and warm, said Royce, Martins 16-year-old son, as he played Scott Joplins Elite Syncopations.

His mother sat on the couch, shaking her head.

From nothing to this, Yvette Martin said of her sons playing, which started just under two years ago. I cant even explain it. Its such an amazing story to me.

The piano that had seemed headed for the landfill 18 months ago was now in the hands of a promising young musician who wanted to advance what his teachers have called through-the-roof talent. But buying a piano was out of reach for the Martins.

I really want to play, Royce told his mom time and again.

OK, Royce, but we dont have that kind of money for that. We just dont have that money. If God wants you to have it, it will happen for you.

IN NEED OF SOME ATTENTION

The Janssen console piano, built in 1950, sat in the Granite City, Ill., home of Suzanne and Michael Halbrook for about 12 years. It was given to them by a friend who knew that Michael was music director at his church and thought it could be of value to him.

The Halbrooks didnt want to turn away a free piano, but as soon as they got it they realized it was in need of some attention.

The keys didnt work that great; it wasnt tuned the best, Suzanne Halbrook said. It did its job when it had to, but it was not the best.

Less than a year ago, the Halbrooks got a digital piano, leaving the fate of the old Janssen uncertain, especially with their musically inclined sons, 10 and 8, more interested in the flute and violin.

Michael Halbrook used to work at Rodgers Townsend, an advertising agency in downtown St. Louis. He knew that agency co-founder Tom Townsend had started a program pairing unwanted pianos with those who would like one but for whom the cost was out of reach.

The Halbrook piano made its way into the Pianos for People program in October 2014. It was in such poor shape that it was relegated to a back room often referred to as the morgue.

I COULD DO THAT

The desire to play piano erupted in Royce Martin.

In March 2014, the teen was watching music videos with his sister. John Legend was at the piano playing his hit All of Me.

I could do that, Royce told his sister, Rachelle.

Rachelle, now 17, had an electric keyboard she requested for Christmas, but I didnt connect at all, she said. Royce began pecking. It wasnt providing the sound that Legend made in the piano-centric ballad that has become a wedding staple.

But it didnt stop Royce from trying.

Royce attends Grand Center Arts Academy, a charter school in midtown St. Louis that draws youths with interest in visual and performing arts. The sophomore lives during the week with relatives in the city, allowing him to attend the school.

At the academy, across the street from Powell Hall, home to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Royce was playing percussion instruments in band but asked if he could start playing piano. Soon, he was coming into school on Mondays playing songs he had memorized from the radio over the weekend.

He watched YouTube videos focusing on the hand movements of piano players. He began writing his own music.

When he practices, it is for hours at a time, said Damen Martin, Royces orchestra teacher and no relation to the teen. Any time I walk down the hall and I hear the piano and its substantially good, I say: Its either Royce or a teacher. He is one of the few students here who has a real gift. Prodigy status.

CHANGE IN

PRIORITIES

The nonprofit Pianos for People, on Cherokee Street, was formed in December 2012 to honor another young talent.

Two years earlier, Alex Townsend, a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design, was killed in a car crash. He was 21. His father, Tom Townsend, who had built one of the areas largest advertising agencies, saw what can happen when a teen who never quite fit in was allowed to express himself in imaginative ways.

Alex was like a lot of young, creative kids who have years in middle school and high school where they are the round peg in the square hole, Townsend said. Not being an athlete and not being a straight-A student, his world was creating things.

Alex, who was studying graphic design, played piano and drums. His father co-founded Pianos for People with Patricia Eastman, Alexs piano teacher when he was a boy.

Creating a program like Pianos for People was something Townsend, a blues and jazz pianist, had long wanted to do, but my advertising career had me very, very busy.

When Alex died, priorities changed. Townsend took time away from the advertising agency to teach at Savannah College. He started an annual arts and music festival in Savannah in honor of his son. Saturday marked the sixth year.

Townsend looked more deeply at a way to match unwanted pianos with those who could not afford them.

You dont follow an event like that without some change in your life, said Townsend, who left the agency in June 2014. I said, Im going to do that piano thing Ive always wanted to do and started looking for others who might have interest.

2,000 WORKING PARTS

A charity centered around used pianos is rife with potential problems. For starters, it involves a massive instrument, difficult to move.

Townsend needed someone familiar with pianos to help with pickup and delivery.

He called Jackson Pianos in the Central West End. Owner Joe Jackson said he was happy to help with the heavy lifting but stressed that the donated pianos would need some work.

A piano is huge and incredibly complex, with more than 2,000 working parts, Jackson said. Piano repairs can cost several hundred dollars. Giving a free piano to a family with limited means without refurbishing it first is just passing trash along, he said. Its a recipe for failure.

Jackson said he would assist with repairs, as well. Jackson Pianos does the work at a reduced cost as its contribution to Pianos for People.

At his shop, Jackson maintains a kind of hierarchy, based on the condition of pianos. Those in bad shape tend to fall to the bottom of the donation list.

We keep some instruments around like organ donors and harvest pieces from them, he said. These pianos are kept in a cluttered, windowless room in the back of the shop, a place Jackson refers to as the morgue.

The old Janssen donated by the Halbrooks landed there. It was saved from being picked apart but sat neglected for more than a year as Jackson focused on other donated pianos that needed less attention.

This month, Jackson turned the light on in the morgue.

It was time for the old Janssen to shine.

He installed a new base bridge. The hammers were reshaped, the action recalibrated and the pitch of the harp corrected. And after a good cleaning and a tuning, it was ready for its budding prodigy.

FREE LESSONS

Pianos for People has now donated about 150 pianos. Delivery has slowed in the past year to about two a month from one a week, so the nonprofit could shift some of its expenses toward offering free piano lessons.

Since the fall of 2014, classes have been offered to all ages in a renovated storefront. Like the piano donation program, eligibility for lessons is based on household income.

With an annual budget of $130,000, Townsend said Pianos for People could not keep up the renovation and delivery pace while starting a piano lessons program. As a result, the nonprofit has put a temporary hold on accepting pianos.

The classes offered to about 80 people of all ages are a natural progression of the nonprofits mission, Townsend said. If kids have a piano but no access to lessons, the instrument likely will become little more than another piece of furniture.

A piano from the program landing in the hands of someone like Royce is just what Townsend intended.

A lot of what this is about is getting music as an option in front of young people before they find themselves without something that feels good to believe in.
Prosecutors described the accused as "extremely violent and dangerous", and opposed a move by Mr Cole's defence to have him placed in the Canberra Hospital's mental health unit because there was a risk he may escape.
"That's the sort of family structure that we'll have here because they can afford to pay the rent that we will set, which is just less than the market rent [by 25 per cent]. There is that group who can't afford private rental but can't get into public housing either."
Tuesday nights 4 to 3 vote in favor of a rezoning for The Hub may not be the end of the battle over the project. Flagstaff City Councilmember Coral Evans said that staff is still trying to validate the signatures on a citizens petition calling for a super-majority vote by Council on second reading in three weeks on March 22.

Each ordinance approved by Council requires two readings, unless its declared an emergency situation, and two votes by Council one for each reading. Tuesday night, Council approved the first reading of an ordinance approving the rezoning for The Hub, a five-story student housing project in Southside. Vice Mayor Celia Barotz and Councilmembers Eva Putzova and Evans voted against the rezoning.

Evans said because a second reading and a second vote is required, it is possible that the signatures could be validated by staff at that time. If there are enough valid signature, Council could be forced to hold a super-majority vote. A super-majority vote would require six yea votes from Council. The second read of the ordinance is set for March 22.

According to Arizona Revised Statutes and the citys Zoning Code, a super-majority vote is required if at least 20 percent of the residents living within 150 feet of the rezoning request file a petition opposing it.

Core Campus, the developer of The Hub, wants to build a 664-bed student apartment complex on 2.39 acres along Mikes Pike, Phoenix Avenue and part of Milton Road. Core was asking for a rezoning to flip-flop the existing zoning on the property to allow it to build retail shops along Mikes Pike and Milton Road instead of Phoenix Avenue. In February, Core withdrew its request for two conditional use permits to increase the amount of land the project would cover from 80 percent to 93 percent and to lease by the room rather than the apartment.

After hearing several more hours of public comments and additional information from city staff and the developer Tuesday, Mayor Jerry Nabours made a motion to approve the rezoning, which was seconded by Councilmember Karla Brewster.

Putzova also made a motion to postpone the vote on the rezoning until Council received a copy of the development agreement between the city and Core. Her motion was seconded by Barotz.

Bartoz said she could not support voting on the rezoning without first seeing the proposed development agreement between the city and Core Campus, the developer of the Hub. She said she felt it was irresponsible to move forward with the vote without seeing the agreement. The move to postpone the vote failed 3 to 4.

Nabours pointed out that Council usually doesnt see a development agreement between a developer and the city until just before the second read of an ordinance approving a rezoning.

Barotz also said she could not support the rezoning for the project because she didnt find it consistent with a long list of various rules and policies in the citys Regional Plan. She also felt that the project, as currently proposed, was not in the publics good and did not meet public safety and health standards due to how much of the lot the project would cover, parking and traffic concerns and the sheer size and mass of the building.

At 99 units per acre, this would be the most dense and intense development in the city, she said.

Putzova said she would vote against the rezoning for similar reasons.

I cant find a way to assure the public that this will not be detrimental to public safety or the public good, she said.

Evans said she had hoped that the community and Core could come to an agreement on a project that both sides felt was a benefit to the neighborhood.

She was happy with an offer from Core to give the city $500,000 to help solve the parking problems in the Southside neighborhood and an additional $75,000 to build a paved parking lot, in case Core ran into problems with having enough parking for its residents.

Lindsay Schube, the attorney for Core, said the two offers would be contingent on the city leasing to Core at least 100 parking spots somewhere close to The Hub, if extra parking was needed for the apartment complex.

Evans said she also appreciated Cores letter of intent that spelled out exactly what Core planned to do if the rezoning was not approved. Core has been a much easier to talk with than the last developer who wanted to build a student apartment complex, she said.

However, Evans said, that she felt that there were a lot of other issues with The Hub. She too had concerns about public health and safety and if the project was appropriate for the neighborhood.

Some of those issues were a direct reflection of the Arizona Board of Regents demands that Northern Arizona University increase its enrollment, she said. Evans also said it was telling that no representative from NAU had attended or spoken at the meeting.

The reason we are seeing opposition toward Core is because of a lack of partnership between the city and NAU, Evans said.

Nabours said he preferred the building that Core was presenting as part of its rezoning over what Core could possibly build under the existing zoning on the parcel. He called the rezoning a minor change and pointed out that Core had made it clear that no development of the parcel was not an option.

The Hub would be a good use of underutilized properties and the property was the perfect location for infill and redevelopment, he said. The city would also get a hand with upgrading the water and sewer infrastructure in the area by Core.

Brewster agreed.

I think it will be built either way, she said. I would rather it be built with all of the community input that has been gathered so far.

Nabours, Brewster and Councilmembers Jeff Oravits and Scott Overton formed the majority Tuesday for the rezoning.

Stacey Pearson, a spokesperson for Core, said the company was pleased with the outcome of Tuesdays meeting.

Council was very thoughtful in its deliberations on the project, she said. I think moving forward with the input from the community will create the best possible project for the site.

Marie Jones, who spoke against the project numerous times before the citys Planning and Zoning Commission and Council, said she was disappointed but the results were not unexpected.

There was a lot of emotion in the comments that were given tonight, but most of those comments were based on facts that residents researched on their own, she said.
Northern Arizona University and Dine College officials formalized an agreement between the two institutions Monday afternoon that will promote seamless student transfer, educational collaboration and sharing of resources.

The presidents of both institutions, Rita Hartung Cheng and Martin Ahumada, signed a memorandum of understanding Monday afternoon to make the deal official. The memorandum allows the partnership to exist for five years before it must be renewed.

In a ceremony before the signing, both presidents expressed their excitement for the new alliance, which both said they hope will encourage more Native American, particularly Navajo, students to pursue a bachelors degree.

The strengths of NAU match very well with what we need the most, Ahumada said. This relationship with NAU will be critical to the role we want to play both nationally and internationally.

Ahumada said the partnership will provide greater opportunities to students and the college.

What a wonderful opportunity to work with a university with the strengths of NAU that match very well with what we need the most, Ahumada said.

With the agreement, each institution will appoint a single liaison, who will be tasked with preparing recommendations for the presidents about utilization of resources between the institutions.

This liaison will then establish teams to address educational needs of the Navajo Nation, create initiatives to fulfill the partnership and provide technical assistance and support for education-related technology, according to the signed agreement.

Academic advising teams from each institution will also meet periodically, and Dine College students will have the opportunity to meet with NAU advisers.

Dine College is a two-year college with locations throughout the Navajo Reservation that enrolls nearly 1,700 students in various programs. This partnership will allow Dine College students to receive NAU credit for courses completed should they decide to transfer to NAU to further their degree.

Dine College does offer three of its own bachelors degree programs in Business Administration, Tribal Management and Economic Development and Elementary Education.

Ahumada said he hopes the partnership will expand opportunities for Native American students to not only receive bachelors degrees, but graduate degrees and experience for skilled career paths.

There are so many careers we want the Dine people to forge and pursue, and we need your help for that, Ahumada said in his speech to NAU and Dine College leadership.

Cheng said she was thrilled at the new partnership.

We share a vision of excellence with Dine College, she said. Together we can smooth the path to a bachelors degree in several different ways.

Cheng said she wanted to partnership to give students a connection to their home while they studied at NAU, and give Native American students the support and resources to be successful at a university after leaving Dine College.

We are fortunate to have an extremely diverse campus and student environment, Cheng said. Through dialogue and collaboration, we continue to find ways to promote the success of Native American students.

Cheng said the two institutions have a long history of collaboration without having a formal agreement, and said she looked forward to building on past ventures with the formalized memorandum.

Our goals align well with those of Dine College, Cheng said. We want much better access for families and communities to encourage more college completion.
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 []
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Flagstaff lost a veteran cameraman, videographer, and world traveler on Thursday, February 25, when Ed George, 70, died from an apparent heart attack.

Ed moved to Flagstaff in 1988, and was involved in numerous films about the Grand Canyon, Colorado River trips, and Southwestern wildlife. He most recently worked on Wrenched, a film about environmental activist, Edward Abbey, and he had ongoing projects with Lowell Observatory and Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra.

Ed George was born in Santa Monica, Calif., and grew up in eastern Pennsylvania and Florida. He graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park and headed for New York City, where he landed a post-production job on the iconic documentary, Woodstock. While earning an MFA in film at Carnegie-Mellon University, he interned at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, which led to work on a series of acclaimed National Geographic specials. One in particular, The Voyage of the Hokulea, about sailing a replica of a double-hulled Polynesian canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti, kicked off his globetrotting career. Over the past 40 years, Ed filmed extensively in Central and South America, Australia, India, Vietnam, China and parts of Africa and Europe. He descended to the floor of the Atlantic Ocean in a deep-water submersible. His feature film credits include Dune, A River Runs Through It, and Executioners Song.

Ed is survived by three wonderful children: Casey Schmidt (John) of Redway, Calif., Kyle George (Carrie Cooper) of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Penelope Bass of Portland, Ore. His four grandchildren are Chloe, Miles, Ava, and Sebastian. Whenever George wasnt spinning a filmmaking yarn, he was singing the praises of his family, whom he adored.

A celebration of Ed Georges truly remarkable life will be held on Saturday, March 5, 4-7 p.m., at the Gopher Hole Pub in the basement of the historic Weatherford Hotel in downtown Flagstaff.

Arrangements are being handled by Norvel Owens Mortuary.
Runners & walkers dash around Delphi The Do It In Delphi Dash was Saturday morning with the 5K walk/run beginning downtown on the Courthouse Square. The...

Special prosecutor issues report on Liggett campaign The Comet sponsored a sheriffs candidate debate on Sept. 29. After the debate, Sheriff candidate and deputy Tony Liggett provided...

Delphi Council member Conner resigns post It has been an upward struggle for Delphi City Council member Gayle Conner to represent her constituents as witnessed at...
Fifth-grade students gathered around computers, looking at photographs and commenting about use of light, color and composition as a professional photographer talked about technical aspects of the art.

The students from Puente de Hozho Elementary School had been given a week to take pictures from their daily lives, then brought the images back to show their classmates and choose their favorites to display in a future art exhibit.

Professional photographers affiliated with Through Each Others Eyes, a Phoenix-based organization focused on sharing culture through photography, taught the students the basic techniques of photography and how to operate a basic digital camera a week before. The students were then tasked to take photos of their own lives.

We wanted the kids to bring each other to their cultures, said Gina Santi, a professional photographer with the group. The mission of the project is to learn about one anothers cultures through photography.

Santi said there were not many requirements about what the subjects of the photos should be, so the returning photographs featured images of nature, family and landmarks around their school.

We gave them some basic instruction, then the kids took the cameras home for the week, Santi said. They could take pictures of whatever they wanted.

The project is in its second year at the school, and Santi and school officials said they would like to see it expand to include more students.

The school had 15 cameras for the students to use, so students were admitted to the extracurricular activity on an application basis, said art teacher Kelly Field. She said students were required to either write an essay or create a piece of art to describe why they wanted to participate.

The seven professional photographers mentored students in groups of two or three kids, and looked through each of the shots to comment on use of techniques and areas to improve. The photographers, who were from both the Phoenix area and some locally from Flagstaff, volunteer with the organization to help students learn basic photography skills.

The photographers we have are super passionate about photography, Field said. They really pass that passion on to the kids.

Field said many of the parents also got involved in the project, like taking the students out for hikes or to places like Sedona to find new settings for photography for the kids.

After working with the professional photographers Monday morning to see basic editing techniques, the students displayed their photos for the class, to decide which would be displayed at school and in a future art exhibit. Photos chosen varied from pictures of pets to younger siblings, favorite teachers and images from nature.

Zoe Sather, one of the students who worked with Santi, said she took her camera downtown and took photos of the train, as well as pictures of her brother and a sunset.

I like that we got to learn all about cool things, like how to use a camera, Sather said. I like that we got to do something for our last year at Puente.

We wanted the kids to bring each other to their cultures. Gina Santi, professional photographer
The 2017 Bentley Mulsanne made its first public appearance in Geneva, representing the tip of the arrow for the British brand.



Bentley has now three distinct models in the Mulsanne range, after the addition of an extended-wheelbase model called EWB for the first time.

The extra-long Mulsanne offers 250mm (9.8in) of extra legroom at the back, which is complimented by the airline-style extending legrests and a rear sunroof.

The completely redesigned front end gave the 2017 Mulsanne a new character, courtesy of the new fenders, bonnet, lights and of course that mega front grille. The cabin now has updated seats, new door trims and 24 available colors to choose from for your leather upholstery. Even some of the switchgear is made out of glass.

The Mulsanne Speed is the fast version of the family, with 530hp and 811lb ft of torque which allows the big Bentley to accelerate from zero to 60mph in 4.9 seconds and up to a speed of 190mph.

If you think that the Mulsanne Extended Wheelbase is still a tad too short, Mulliner can build you a Grand Limousine as well.

All in all, the new Bentley Mulsanne looks like a million bucks, giving perhaps a good headache to Rolls Royce.

Photos Carscoops.com/Brad Anderson

PHOTO GALLERY
Joining the likes of its larger family member, the Optima PHEV, the new Kia Niro HEV has arrived in Europe.



Just like its larger sibling, it will be offered for sale on the Old Continent later this year, right after it starts rolling off the assembly line in May.

The dedicated hybrid crossover uses a 1.6-liter Kappa GDI engine, with 105 PS (104 HP) and 147 Nm (108lb-ft) of torque, paired to a 32 kW electric motor and a 1.56 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery pack, for a total output of 141 PS (139 HP) and 264 Nm (195lb-ft) of torque. Power is transferred to the road through a six-speed double-clutch transmission, with Kia claiming that peak torque is available in first gear.

Engineered from the ground up as a dedicated hybrid vehicle, the new Kia Niro promises high levels of practicality and comfortable interior dimensions, despite its reduced size, with class-leading headroom and a cargo capacity of 421 liters. A full-size spare wheel can be fitted beneath the boot floor, depending on the market.

Visitors to the 2016 Geneva Motor Show will get to see the Niro on display at the companys stand, where it breaths the same air as the Optima Sportswagon and Optima Plug-in hybrid.

PHOTO GALLERY
Kias first ever plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, the Optima, has landed in Europe for the first time, straight from Chicago, where it was presented last month.



The green version of the D-segment saloon joins the Optima SW on display at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show and it employs a 2.0-liter Nu four-banger GDI at is core, producing 156 PS (154 HP) and 189 Nm (139lb-ft) of torque.

The internal combustion unit is coupled with a 50kW electric motor that takes its juice from a 9.8 kWh lithium-polymer battery pack, for a total system output of 205 PS (202 HP) at 6,000 rpm and 375 Nm (276lb-ft) of torque at 2,300 rpm. Kia claims that the Optima Plug-in Hybrid can travel in pure-electric mode for more than 54 km (33 miles) at speeds up to 120 km/h (75 mph).

A range of enhancements designed to improve its aerodynamic efficiency also help the PHEV differentiate itself from regular versions of the Optima. They include the re-profiled bumpersand a new active air flap grille, which reduces the drag coefficient to 0.25 Cd from the sedans 0.27 Cd.

Two key technologies help the car save and regenerate battery power: regenerative braking and advanced heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system.

Kia will launch the new Optima PHEV in selected European markets from late 2016. Pricing is yet to be announced.

PHOTO GALLERY
April 26th, 2016 wouldve marked Ferrucio Lamborghinis 100th birthday, and to celebrate its illustrious founder, the Italian car manufacturer decided to unwrap an early gift, with the mental Lamborghini Centenario.



Like previous limited edition Lambos, the Centenario will be available only to a select few, as the VW Group-owned company plans to build just 40 units in total. Its design is unlike anything Lamborghini currently offers, and the entire car is built and based around the Avendator SVs carbon fiber monocoque.

The naturally aspirated V12 is also borrowed from Lamborghinis flagship, although upgraded to produce no less than 770PS. An adequate power figure, to say the least, complemented by a lightweight, 1.5-ton body that adds up to a power-to-weight-ratio of just 1.97kg/hp.

Wider and taller than the Aventador, the Centenario includes an extending rear wing that provides more downforce at high speeds. The aerodynamics were thoroughly and carefully enhanced with air scoops and diffusers as well.

The interior, although familiar, can be commissioned to a unique specification and it includes carbon fiber seats, new stitching, a new steering wheel and different carbon inner door panels.

The price of owning such a marvelous car? $1.9 million, but the al fresco variant could go for a tad more.

Photos: Carscoops.com/Brad Anderson and the manufacturer

PHOTO GALLERY

Video
Mazda is definitely onto something with the striking RX-Vision Concept, but before deciding whether to put it into production, it paraded it to Europeans at the Geneva Motor Show this week.



Details on the new version of the 16X rotary engine that propels the study are still not available, with Mazdas press release just repeating the talk on the cars Kodo design philosophy and reminding us that it was named Most Beautiful Concept car of the Year, in January, at an event in Paris.

Mazda engineers are hoping that if they can solve the fuel economy, emissions and reliability issues with the constant development of the 16X wankel engine, the companys brass will give the car the green light. Heres crossing our fingers that they do

Joining the RX-Vision in Switzerland is the 2016MY Mazda3, which has received a frugal SkyActiv-D engine, borrowed from the Mazda2 and CX-3. The unit has a 1.5-liter displacement and it is capable of producing 105 PS (103 HP) and 270 Nm (199 lb-ft) maximum torque.

Accelerating from naught to 100 km/h (62 mph) takes 11 seconds in the compact car, when equipped with the 1.5-liter SkyActiv-D, and top speed stands at 187 km/h (116 mph). Average fuel consumption is 3.8 L/100 km (61.9 mpg US) and CO2 emissions are lower than 100 g/km. The 1.5-liter powered Mazda3 is already available for order in right-hand drive markets and it will go on sale in the rest of Europe this spring.

PHOTO GALLERY
MIDLOTHIAN, Va.  Sheila Covert is worried about Donald Trump.

A loyal Republican voter from swing state Virginia, Covert calls the businessman bombastic and says theres just no substance in his boastful campaign rhetoric.

But if Trump does become the GOP presidential nominee?

Well, Id definitely vote for him, said Covert, an 81-year-old from the Richmond suburb of Powhatan. After a pause, she added, But I hope and pray it doesnt come to that.

Covert is part of a legion of skeptical Republican voters across the United States coming to grips with the prospect that Trump, a candidate whose appeal they simply cant understand, may end up being their partys best chance for retaking the White House.

The real estate mogul has scored three commanding primary victories in a row, including Tuesday in Nevada, and enters next weeks delegate-rich Super Tuesday elections in strong position.

Interviews with about two dozen frequent Republican voters in Virginia  an important general election battleground and one of several states with a primary next week  reveal the complex mix of emotions Trump evokes within in his own party.

Among those who dont plan to vote for Trump in the primary, theres shock, confusion and anxiety over his candidacy.

But theres also a grudging acceptance of the billionaires political staying power and a feeling that despite his many flaws, hed be better than another four years with a Democrat in the White House  particularly if that Democrat is Hillary Clinton.

He says things you cannot imagine a president saying, said Michael Glunt, a 42-year-old landscaper from Midlothian. But if Trump faces off against Clinton in November, Glunt will cast his ballot for the GOP nominee.

In this particular case, I would vote for him, Glunt said. Hillary Clinton, I dont trust her. Theres no trust.

The voters interviewed by The Associated Press represent a tiny sliver of the electorate.

But their views illuminate the debate within both parties about how a Trump nomination would play out in November, particularly as that prospect becomes more real with each voting contest.

Democratic officials are betting that Trumps over-the-top rhetoric, particularly about women and immigrants, would turn off independents and some Republicans in battleground states like Virginia.

Some anxious GOP leaders share that concern, contributing to the sudden rush of lawmakers and other party officials rallying around Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as an alternative.

Bill Ginther, a 69-year-old retiree from Midlothian, is among the Republicans so turned off by Trump they can hardly envision voting for him if hes the nominee. Ginther, who plans to vote for Rubio in Tuesdays primary, says hes honestly shocked that Trump has come as far as he has.

I dont know if I could vote for him, Ginther said. It would make it very difficult.

While some voters joke about moving to Canada if Trump becomes president, Nancy Bradner is looking at that possibility with some seriousness.

A supporter of past GOP nominees including Mitt Romney and George W. Bush, shes now researching Canadian politics, as well as the countrys health care system and housing market.

Bradner doesnt know if shed really go through with a move north  I cant leave my grandbabies, she said  but makes clear that it would be an option.

I just dont think I could be in the midst of it, Bradner said. This is the first time in my 68 years that I have truly been scared of what is going to happen in this election.

A recent AP-GfK poll, however, suggests Ginther and Bradner may be in the minority. The survey showed far more Republicans than not say theyd vote for Trump in the general election, and 86 percent of Republican voters think he can win in November  giving him a 15 percentage point advantage over anyone else.

For Cumberland County resident Tina Shumaker, the prospect of voting for Trump is deeply unappealing.

Her top concern in the election is national security, and she cant fathom Trump engaging in diplomacy or being able to keep the country safe.

But her concerns about him pale in comparison to her dislike of Clinton. And while Shumaker sees no good options in a general election contest between the two, the 66-year-old leaves no question about who would get her support.

If it would have to come between him and Hillary, Im afraid hed get my vote, Shumaker said. I hope it doesnt turn out that way. But its beginning to look that way.
After seeing what the all-new Scenic looks like a couple of weeks ago, now we also get to know everything that went into building it as Renault is officially unveiling the car in Geneva.



The French manufacturer says that this Scenic is modern, comfortable and quite a looker, which is hard to argue against seen as how they successfully managed to infuse the compact minivan with crossover styling qualities.

This involved a bit of visual trickery, as the French fitted the Scenic with standard 20-inch wheels across the board to make it appear as if its riding on a taller suspension  which it does not.

In other words, Renault gave the new Scenic 20-inch rims for no other

reason than to look cool, though, if youre worried about potholes, rest

assured because the new wheels have a sidewall height of 107 mm 

equivalent to that of the old Scenics 17 tires, meaning the new model

should still ride pretty comfortably regardless of road conditions.

We wanted the new Scenic to break new ground. It is a sexier and more modern take on the MPV which carries over the outstanding modularity that has been paramount to the success of the models three previous generations over the past 20 years. Its proportions and large-diameter wheels draw inspiration from the R-Space concept car, explained Laurens van den Acker, VP of corporate design.

Aside from the visual, the new Scenic also boasts features such as

AEBS (Active Emergency Braking System) with Pedestrian Detection as

standard, which is a first in the compact MPV segment.

In terms of practicality, the all-new Renault Scenic comes with a sliding center console (13 liters of storage), 60/40-split second-row seats, one touch folding system for the rear seats (via R-LINK 2 screen or boot switch), 572 liters of luggage space plus a wide array of storage compartments throughout the cabin as well as the underfloor.

Tech-wise, the Scenic has the same 8.7 R-LINK 2 display that weve seen on the Espace and the Talisman, though you need to opt for a high-spec model in order to enjoy things like voice recognition and apps. Other amenities include the color head-up display and the BOSE Surround Sound system, complete with 11 high-powered loudspeakers.

Among its numerous diesel and petrol engine configurations lies the Hybrid Assist powertrain, which will debut this year and will see the Scenic target the segments lowest fuel consumption.

Renault has also announced that a Grand Scenic version will debut before summer, with both versions set to go on sale in the UK this winter.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Contributed - Evgeny Sergeev

Chronic stress changes the brain

We have known for some time that chronic stress is not good for our physical or mental health. Along with various negative effects on physical health, people who live with chronic stress are at an increased likelihood of developing mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety disorders.

Although we have seen the effect of stress on health outcomes, until recently we have had little understanding on how, exactly, stress impacts our brains to make them more susceptible to illness.

Research out of the University of California Berkeley shed some light on this topic. These findings have shown chronic stress generates long-term changes to the brain.

Doctors already knew of brain abnormalities present among individuals with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These involved differences in the amount of grey and white matter in the brain.

Without going into too much detail here, grey matter is mostly neurons and white is composed of axons (appearing white because of the myelin sheath surrounding them). Myelin speeds the connectivity between cells.

Researchers in these studies examined only the hippocampus of the brain (an area known to be important in the regulation of emotions and involved in several psychiatric conditions). Findings in rodent studies indicated that chronic stress generates more myelin-producing cells and fewer neurons than normal. This leads to more white matter and changes the way the brains cells communicate with one another.

These researchers also found chronic stress to cause changes in stem cells in the hippocampus  stress changing the cells to mature into white matter cells rather than neurons as they would in normal circumstances.

If brain matter is changed and causes different areas of the brain to connect with one another too much and others not enough, it is not too difficult to imagine how this could lead to various symptoms.

Results to date have been interesting, but this is still early days - studies are underway to test this hypothesis in people with PTSD and other conditions. The hope is to get more information and try to gain a better understanding of exactly how all of these elements interact with one another.

Along with greater understanding, we may be able to develop new ways to protect people from the harmful effects of chronic stress or to prevent these changes in the brain from occurring and thus prevent later mental illness.

For now, we can try to reduce stress as much as possible and speak to a doctor if symptoms such as anxiety or depression are interfering with life.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Contributed - Wayne McCrory

After plans to log key toad habitat near Nakusp sparked an outcry, and even a blockade, from community members, forestry work has begun south of Summit Lake.

The logging, which will include 660 hectares of the species at risk 'special concern' western toad hibernation area, began on Monday.

The Village of Nakusp owns Nakusp and Area Community Forest, the logging company responsible for the area.

Harvesting could be stopped if the Village of Nakusp council, which owns the community logging tenure, issued a stop logging order to NACFOR, wrote the Wilderness Committee in a statement. The Village of Nakusp has refused to meet with local residents opposed to the logging.

NACFOR released a statement on Feb. 25 claiming they have done extensive studies in the area in an effort to reduce their impact on the toad population.

They said they are logging in the wintertime to use the snowpack to limit the impact on the hibernating toad population.

There are a couple of times in a year that are optimum for operations, this

is one of them, reads the statement. Special interest groups are attempting to galvanize people around an anti-logging/anti-development agenda in an effort to fulfill their mandate to create parklands.

A Summit Lake resident said the pro-toad movement is definitely not anti-logging, and NACFOR is an important part of their community.

The area were talking about is only 6.8 per cent of their tenure, said Debbie Pitaoulis. Find them another area of equal size thats not a sensitive habitat. This is absolutely not an anti-logging campaign or protest.

And while NACFOR says they are taking all the right steps to minimize their impact on the toads, biologist Wayne McCrory says these practices are speculative at best.

The so-called best practice logging guidelines for toad habitat are on very shaky and speculative scientific ground, he said in a statement. Studies tell us the best way to conserve western toads is not only to protect their breeding and migration areas but the core terrestrial habitats where they spend 95 per cent of their lives.

McCrury says the area two kilometres around Summit Lake make up this habitat, which will be logged by NACFOR.

As a Summit Lake resident, I have spoken to hundreds of locals over the past two weeks  people are shocked and appalled that logging is being allowed in core toad habitat, said Pitaoulis. We still have the opportunity to save the toads, do the right thing and stop this irresponsible logging right now.
Photo: The Canadian Press

A new analysis by one of Canada's biggest banks says the federal government is on track to run $150 billion in budget deficits over the next five years.

The TD Bank report, released Tuesday, also estimates Ottawa's current fiscal path means it will take more than a decade to bring the budget back into balance  unless the government raises taxes or cuts spending.

The bank says it produced the numbers after re-calculating Ottawa's predicted shortfalls to account for the Liberal government's electoral spending vows and TD's below-consensus outlook for economic growth.

"Our estimates show deficits remain somewhat persistent, largely the result of our conservative view on long-term growth rates," reads the report, co-authored by TD economists Derek Burleton and Brian DePratto.

"A key takeaway from our analysis is that absent additional revenues or adjustments to spending relative to the status quo, the federal deficit is poised to remain stubbornly elevated over the medium term."

The Liberals are projecting a shortfall of at least $18.4 billion next year  a deficit that's widely expected to climb closer to $30 billion in the March 22 budget.

Ottawa's recent fiscal projection didn't factor in billions in Liberal spending commitments  a sizable chunk of which is expected to go towards infrastructure projects in hopes of jump-starting a struggling economy.

During last year's election campaign, the Liberals vowed to cap annual deficits at $10 billion and to balance the books in four years, a pledge they have been backing away from while citing the sliding economy.

In releasing a fiscal update last week, Finance Minister Bill Morneau insisted the government's starting point was "much further back" than the Liberals thought.

Morneau's calculations, primarily based on the estimates of private-sector forecasters, included an additional $6 billion per year for economic prudence that the government argued was necessary to account for risk.

The government's update showed the fiscal outlook for the next two years, while the TD report Tuesday broadened the projection period to five years.

The authors say the study also factors in the positive growth benefits from stimulus spending.

The analysis also warned that another key Liberal election promise is at risk: lowering Canada's debt-to-GDP ratio from about 31 per cent to 27 per cent over four years. The ratio, also known as the debt burden, represents a government's capacity to repay debt.

TD projects the debt-to-GDP ratio will grow to 36.1 per cent by 2020-21.

"This underscores the need for a credible long-term anchor on spending and revenue that helps keep the budget on a sustainable track in a low-growth world," the report said.

After the TD report's release, a spokesman for Morneau said the Liberals would stick to their promise to shrink the debt-to-GDP ratio, even as they make investments billed as leading to long-term growth.

"Canada has the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and there has never been a better time to invest," Daniel Lauzon wrote in an email.

"We will maintain this ratio on a downward track throughout our mandate."

However, Morneau's update last week contained projections that predicted debt-to-GDP would increase from 31 per cent in 2015-16 to 31.8 per cent in 2016-17, before decreasing to 31.1 per cent in 2017-18.
As tax time approaches, taxpayers are being warned not to fall for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) scam.

Fraudsters will use this opportunity to attempt to scam consumers and businesses out of their hard earned money, warns the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

Fraudsters impersonate the real Canada Revenue agents by telephone or by email.

It's a person threatening you and saying you have an outstanding balance and if you don't pay....they're going to send the police after you and they're going to arrest you, said Rachael Zubick, coordinator of the Vernon Community Safety Office. It's quite frightening for people when they are threatened with arrest.

The CRA scam is a type of phishing scam, aimed at getting money out of a person.

Phishing is a huge issue, said Zubick. People are sending you emails asking you to tap into a link that will send you to some type of website.

Often they look like legitimate letters coming from your bank, coming from the CRA or any other institution. The goal for these people is trying to get your banking information, credit card information and any names so they can continue the process of taking your funds.

The Anti-Fraud Centre urges people to protect themselves by:

Do not take immediate action. Verify that what you are being told is the truth.

Ask yourself why the CRA would be asking for personal information over the phone or email that they likely already have on file for you as a taxpayer.

Contact the CRA to confirm that you owe back taxes, or are entitled to a refund, before providing any personal or banking information.

For more information on the CRA scam go to the Anti-Fraud Centre website.
If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,...
News coverage from Israel is often distorted if measured against the 'Code of Ethics' guidelines of journalism. The origins of bad news about a country thus lie with numerous foreign media. This project exposes one of many methods used.Bad News from the Netherlands has raised major international interest since it appeared on the web in October 2007. Many thanks are due to all those who have contributed news, ideas and financing. Support us to expand this project.Act against the biased media: start a bad news blog about another country. If you want to use this layout, please contact us at the e-mail address below.

Do It Yourself

The "Bad News Movement" is not a franchise, but consists of

independent initiatives of which Bad News from the Netherlands is the first. Yet as the initiator of the movement, we would like to make a few suggestions to those who want to establish similar projects:



1. Always keep in mind the target of the blog: showing only negative items about a country makes its society aware of how some of their media distort the image of Israel.

2. Focus on items from leading sources such as the government, major media, well-known institutions.

3. Do not concentrate on one or a few areas. Deal with as many major aspects of the country as possible: government, politics, justice, media, culture, civil society, etc.

4. Do not exaggerate issues beyond what is mentioned. A collection of bad news is bad enough without blowing up the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves.

5. While one can draw part of the information from the more sensational papers, let them not dominate the blog.

6. Do not emphasize ethnicity of people where it is irrelevant to the issue.

7. When necessary, provide comments on issues which require it, but try to present the majority of issues without comment.


Published by an old curmudgeon who came to America in 1936 as a refugee from Nazi Germany and proudly served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He is a former law enforcement officer and a retired professor of criminal justice who, in 1970, founded the Texas Narcotic Officers Association. BarkGrowlBite refuses to be politically correct. (Copyrighted articles are reproduced in accordance with the copyright laws of the U.S. Code, Title 17, Section 107.)
Quinn Cement signs agreement for new cement silos

02 March 2016

Quinn Cement (NI) Ltd and Warrenpoint Harbour Authority (WHA) have signed contracts, which will see the construction five new cement silos at Warrenpoint Harbour, with a total storage capacity of 7500t dedicated to the export of bulk cement from the Quinn Cement operations in Ireland.



The 10-year renewable agreement between Quinn Cement and WHA involves a GBP2.5m investment by Quinn. Work on the project is due to commence immediately with completion expected in September of this year.



Quinn Cement is seeking to significantly expand its operations in the UK while at the same time providing additional long-term throughput at the harbour. The commencement of work on the Warrenpoint facility is one half of a larger strategic development by the company aimed at increasing its presence in the UK cement and construction markets.



Quinn Cement is also currently in the process of extending its storage and distribution centre at Crown Wharf, Rochester, where it is constructing two additional storage silos bringing its total capacity at Rochester to 7400t. Construction of that extension is due to be completed at the end of March.



Additionally, Quinn Cement is in discussions with regard to setting up a second import facility in Great Britain.



Commenting on the development Liam McCaffrey, CEO of Quinn Industrial Holdings Ltd, the holding Company for Quinn Cement, said: This is a very significant development for the business, which will allow us to provide an even stronger service offering to our UK customers as well as creating additional local job-opportunities servicing the growing UK construction sector.



"We are delighted to be associated with Warrenpoint Harbour Authority who have been extremely good to work with. I believe this is a strong message of confidence for both our organisations, the local economy generally and a clear demonstration of commitment to our customers.







Published under
Several emerging economies have made strides in the past four years in tackling corruption and bribery, according to the 2015 Corruption Perception Index.

Six of the ten emerging economies perceived least corrupt improved their scores since 2012, Transparency International reported. Lithuania, Poland, and Qatar improved the most among the top ten emerging economies.

Of the 168 countries Transparency International monitored in 2015, Greece, Senegal, and the UK improved their scores the most since 2012. The average score worldwide remained at 43, which means about two-thirds of the countries scored below 50 on a scale of 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be clean), but more countries had improving than declining scores.

Western Europe scored highest as a region; nine of the countries in the region were ranked in the 12 least corrupt countries worldwide. Asia Pacific, which had two global top scorers, came in second, followed by the Americas (the US ranked 16th with a score of 76), the Middle East & North Africa, Eastern Europe & Central Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The watchdog group also reported on other pockets of hope. In India, ranked 76th with a score of 38, a new government has come to power on an anti-corruption platform. Saudi Arabia, ranked 48th with a score of 52, has improved its score three years in a row, from 44 in 2012. Senegal, ranked 61st with a score of 44, also improved its score by 8 points after the government introduced a series of anti-corruption measurements.

Still, corruption remains a blight around the world, Jose Ugaz, Transparency Internationals chairman, said in a statement.

Sixty-eight per cent of the countries on the index have a serious corruption problem, which includes half of the worlds 20 major economies, also known as the G20.

The four countries whose scores declined the most in the past four years are Australia, ranked 13th with a score of 79 (down from 85 in 2012); Brazil, ranked 76th with a score of 38 (down from 43 in 2012); Spain, ranked 36th with a score of 58 (down from 65 in 2012); and Turkey, ranked 66th with a score of 42 (down from 49 in 2012).

Most trustworthy emerging markets

These emerging economies fared the best on the 2015 Corruption Perception Index:

Uruguay (21st)

Qatar (22nd)

Chile (23rd)

Estonia (23rd)

United Arab Emirates (23rd)

Bhutan (27th)

Botswana (28th)

Poland (30th)

Lithuania (32nd)

Sabine Vollmer (svollmer@aicpa.org) is a CGMA Magazine senior editor.
The NGage economic development group is recalling a solid 2015 for the area, and looking forward to new accomplishments this year.

Glennis McClure, director of the areas economic development group, said highlights from 2015 include announcements from Landmark Snacks LLC, DaVita Dialysis and Scooters Coffee, as well as continued plans for the opening of the Duonix biodiesel plant were all positive steps for the community.

I think as you look back, theres been some positive announcements and expansions for our area, McClure said. We continue to try and recruit businesses. Its good that Landmark Snacks which is a new company expanded by C & C Processing, looked to the community and found a location.

McClure also said expansions at Neapco and Beatrice Community Hospital and Health Center are welcome additions, while focusing on current employers in the area remains a priority.

We continue to do outreach, she said. Its important to visit with our current businesses. One thing we want to do is identify businesses that want to transition and connect them with resources that help them with that transition and find folks that can step up and take ownership. We dont want to see businesses close because someones retiring.

While the group has found success, Mayor Stan Wirth said theres still much to do.

I think were moving forward. We have a lot of work to do putting frameworks together to meet with prospects as they come into Beatrice, he said. Weve moved a step closer to putting in an action team when we get the requests and inquiries to move quick to get pertinent information the prospect is looking for.

This is something weve learned to do on the fly. Weve had some additional guidance from people that has really broadened our view of what it takes to attract a company to our community.

McClure also said the results of an ongoing housing study should give officials new insight into the areas needs, which could result in more jobs.

Its identifying developers and also funding resources that can help with new housing developments and also rehabilitation in housing, she said. Also, I believe were going to have to have some coalition. They stress that partnerships are very important in housing development, so I think theres a lot of people who are paying attention and are interested in stepping up and trying to make some things happen.

The Gage County Communities Housing Study comes at a total cost of $30,000, half of which is being provided by the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority (NIFA). The study consists of various surveys being administered by Hanna:Keelan Associates.

The study includes examination of population, income and economic data, a housing stock analysis, strategies for affordable housing development and a five-year housing action plan.

It will also include funding options for future owner and rental housing development and housing rehabilitation projects in each community throughout the county, and hopes to gather input from a wide range of participants.

The study is scheduled for completion next month.

NGage was formed around five years ago as a joint effort between Gage County and the city of Beatrice, the two groups that provide the vast majority of NGages funding.

Last year, both governmental bodies agreed to continue their investments in NGage for another three years. The groups each provide up to $100,000 annually to fund NGage, while other communities, businesses and individuals are also contributing members of the economic development group.

NGage also works with businesses submitting requests for LB840 funds, which are earmarked for economic development purposes and approved by the City Council.

The funds have been used with general success, as companies such as Dempsters have used the loans to increase short-term growth  adding jobs and increasing production  then successfully repayed the loans.

Funding for the program comes from 50 percent of the proceeds from one-half of 1 percent city sales and use tax for Beatrice with a maximum of $250,000 to be appropriated each year, totaling $2.5 million during a 10-year period. The funds are ultimately awarded by the Beatrice City Council, which examines each request before approval.

McClure added economic development often boils down to being competitive with other communities and states in hoping to draw business, a task NGage is continuously working on.

When there are companies that have an interest in locating in our area of Nebraska, we need to be competitive, she said. Sometimes it boils down to what we have available for them to utilize.  I think the challenges really are can we meet the needs that the company is looking for. I believe that we have.
A case in NC's Supreme Court will decide the fate of the 2013 law that voids teacher tenure guarantees

The court will need to decide: Is teacher tenure a protected contractual obligation?

Conservatives argue that tenure establishes a poor incentive system and harms the quality of teachers in the classroom

Earlier this week, the North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments to decide the constitutionality of legislation to phase out North Carolina's teacher tenure system.The case before the court,, will likely turn on how the court responds to two questions: Does teacher tenure confer property rights that are guaranteed by the state? Or does the legislature have the right to void tenure because public employment benefits were never intended as contractual promises by the state?It's a case laden with impact and irony. Defending the state and the 2013 law is the Office of State Attorney General Roy Cooper. In December 2015 NCAE endorsed Cooper for governor, months before the Democratic primary. Some say Cooper - the presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee - has been courting teachers and public school advocates for months.The case is by no means an easy read for judges - or conservatives.Conservatives, more than anyone else, should be committed to protecting property rights. But does tenure, properly understood, confer a property right, as the appellate court held in its ruling?Legal analysts say most tenure claims focus on due process. This claim does not. If the Supreme Court agrees with the plaintiffs, the decision will likely expand the grounds on which teachers and employee associations can defend tenure.The case holds much significance for not only teachers but also legislators who made the elimination of teacher tenure a major part of their education reform plan.Tenure opponents want the Court to review the appellate decision that held continued employment or career status to be equivalent to the promised retirement and disability rights, i.e., a form of deferred compensation.Republicans who wrote the law have long asserted that improving teacher quality was the best way to raise student achievement. As such, they sought to give school districts the ability to remove ineffective teachers. While school districts can legally remove teachers for inadequate performance - one of fifteen criteria by which a career teacher can be "dismissed or demoted" (see: General Statutes. 115C-325(e) (1) ) - history suggests that they have been very hesitant to do so.The court's specific task is to review the constitutionality of a law that repealed tenure and gave teachers one-, two- or four-year contracts for 25 percent of teachers who had at least three years' experience. A $500 raise is also included for each year of the contract for teachers who voluntarily relinquished career status before the repeal took effect.The legislation provides school boards the option of renewing each contract. Nonrenewal was an acceptable outcome so long as the decision was not "arbitrary or capricious or prohibited by law."Under the law, teachers had no right to a hearing, although if the school agreed, one could be granted.It's true tenure activists prevailed at the appellate level, but it wasn't a total victory. Wake County Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood said the repeal deprived teachers of property and contract rights and that teachers accepted their jobs under the provision that career protection was part of compensation and benefits. Hobgood also said, however, the state could eliminate career status for those teachers who had not attained it.So how might the court rule? Court watchers might do well to see if the justices consider appellate Judge Chris Dillon's dissent. In his opinion, Dillon writes that tenure repeal should not be interpreted as the end of a contractual right but rather a change in legislative policy.Dillon holds that legislation created a status for career teachers - not a contract right. As such, the legislature is free to modify the law on tenure just as it has done several times since it was passed in 1971. To assert otherwise, that a policy can't be changed, would be to drastically limit the power of the legislature.Dillon's opinion also cited case law from courts in other states that said statutes establishing tenure for public employees do not create constitutionally protected contract rights.Conservatives and Republicans in the legislature support tenure repeal for a variety of reasons. Tenure is a system based almost entirely on seniority. As such it doesn't have the best interests of children at heart. It has impeded the effective functioning of educational systems. Far too many children are trapped in classrooms with teachers protected by tenure who otherwise may no longer be suited or motivated to provide students with the education they deserve.Eliminating tenure will end this system. The move will strengthen schools by giving principals the ability to get rid of ineffective teachers and the freedom to build more cohesive faculties.Whether that will be the case in North Carolina is the decision the court will have to decide.
Critics calling Randolph County project another Global TransPark

Standing on the Norfolk Southern rail line that borders the northern boundary of the megasite, megasite opponent Alan Ferguson wonders why the North Carolina Railroad Company plans to spend $13 million to by property that it never will serve. (CJ Photo by Don Carrington)

North Carolina Railroad

Project leadership unclear

Megasite Foundation

Megasite opposition

RALEIGH The North Carolina Railroad Company has taken on a project that may be outside its core mission by announcing in January it would spend $13 million to purchase 875 acres of private land for the 1,500-acre Greensboro-Randolph Megasite project, an industrial site designed to attract a large automotive plant.The railroad company, which also goes by NCRR, owns and manages a 317-mile rail corridor connecting Morehead City to Charlotte. The stated mission of NCRR is to develop its own corridor. Since another railroad company would be serving the site, the railroad company will not receive any direct return from its spending.In addition, the $13 million NCRR has committed to purchase the land would be more than three times its net annual income, which in 2014 was $4.1 million.NCRR president Scott Saylor told Carolina Journal that his board approved the participation in the megasite project as part of the company's broader economic development mission.The property is located along U.S. 421 west of Liberty, and is entirely in Randolph County. The other organizations participating in the project are the city of Greensboro, Randolph County, and the nonprofit Greensboro-Randolph Megasite Foundation. The county has purchased about 420 acres, and the foundation plans to purchase approximately 200 acres.The city of Greensboro is planning to pay for the extension of water and sewer services to the site. If a manufacturer agrees to build a suitably large facility on the site, the assembled acreage will be donated to that company.The project has significant local opposition, including real estate attorney Alan Ferguson, who lives near the project. In an op-ed article published recently by the Greensboro News & Record titled "The megasite is a reckless gamble," Ferguson compared the megasite to the Global TransPark project near Kinston.NCRR is a unique operation because it is a private company with all the stock owned by the state of North Carolina. The governor and legislative leaders appoint the 13 members of the board of directors. Its primary income comes from leasing a share of its tracks to Norfolk Southern Railway.Norfolk Southern Railway owns the rail line bordering the site and the NCRR track is approximately 15 miles away in Greensboro.NCRR spokeswoman Megan Hoenk told CJ that the $13 million "will largely come from sales of legacy properties no longer used for railroad purposes." She said that use of money would not take away from other projects that are directly related to the NCRR corridor.Hoenk acknowledged that no legislative committee has authorized NCRR's participation in the megasite project. "However, we have kept legislative and administration leadership briefed on our plans," she said.The Joint Legislative Transportation Oversight Committee has the responsibility for overseeing NCRR activities. Committee Co-Chairman Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, told CJ that he was aware of the planned purchase but was not sure if the full committee knew about it. He said NCRR is scheduled to provide an update of its activities at an Oversight Committee meeting scheduled for March 4. Rabon also said he has confidence in the NCRR board.The N.C. Department of Commerce lists two other megasites as ready for an automaker. One is near Siler City and the other near Rocky Mount. Gov. Pat McCrory said in January that the state intends to go after a major manufacturer using North Carolina's megasite offerings."It's one of our major priorities, but we're going to go after the big dog in manufacturing, which is either going to be in aerospace or automobiles," he said speaking to an annual Economic Forecast Forum in January as reported by Triad Business Journal.To open the state for economic development, in 1848 the General Assembly passed a bill calling for an east-west railroad between Goldsboro and Charlotte. The General Assembly approved a plan under which 25 percent of the shares would be for private stockholders and the remainder would be owned by the state.In 1856 the first train ran the entire length of the line. NCRR entered into a 99-year lease with Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern) for operations and maintenance. In 1989 NCRR acquired the tracks from Goldsboro to Morehead City. In 1998 the state of North Carolina bought out the private shareholders, making NCRR a private company, fully owned by the state. The next year, NCRR and Norfolk Southern reached an agreement for Norfolk Southern to continue freight and maintenance operations for 15 years, with an option to renew the agreement for an additional 30 years.In 2001 NCRR "implemented a Corridor Improvement Plan to improve the maintenance, integrity, and economic potential of the railroad corridor." NCRR's current mission statement is, "To develop the unique North Carolina Railroad assets for the good of the people of North Carolina."Frank Rouse of Leland is the current chairman and state Commerce Secretary John Skvarla is another board member.There are other entities with a direct stake in the megasite project, however. The Piedmont Triad Partnership, a regional economic development organization, began working quietly in 2010 to identify a megasite location. Randolph County and the city of Greensboro later joined the effort. The Department of Commerce made a $1.7 million grant to Randolph County in 2012 to support the development and acquisition of a megasite. The groups eventually settled on the current location that involves approximately 60 separate parcels.David Powell, chief executive officer of the Piedmont Triad Partnership, resigned in January 2015. At the time Powell left, his annual salary was $326,000. The megasite was a high priority for PTP.In April 2015, PTP learned that Powell had been involved in "financial irregularities" and asked the Greensboro Police Department to investigate the matter. In January, the Guilford County District Attorney's office charged Powell with two felony counts each of embezzlement and obtaining property by false pretense.In February 2015, immediately after Powell's resignation, former Greensboro mayor E.S. "Jim" Melvin formed the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite Foundation with the stated purpose of acquiring land for the site - bringing an additional player to the potential management and oversight of the project.The foundation's five board members include Melvin, Greensboro City Manager Jim Westmoreland, and Randolph County Manger Hal Johnson. Melvin also is the president of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation, a Greensboro-based nonprofit that awards about $3 million annually in charitable grants to organizations in the Greensboro area. The Bryan Foundation committed $5 million to support the Megasite Foundation. The Megasite Foundation is in the process of buying approximately 200 acres.The Megasite Foundation's website lists Randolph County Economic Development Commission President Bonnie Renfro and Greensboro Partnership President Brent Christensen as contacts. Christensen's organization is a nonprofit handling economic development efforts for the city of Greensboro.Ferguson and others formed the Northeast Randolph Property Owners to fight the project. Ferguson is opposed not only to this project but also to any use of government funds to assist private companies - often called corporate welfare. The organization's website contains a considerable amount of information about the history of the project.At a Feb. 9 Randolph County Commission meeting to rezone the property from residential/agricultural to heavy industrial, Ferguson spoke against the proposal and presented commissioners a petition signed by more than 400 area residents opposing the megasite project. The commissioners voted 3-2 in favor of rezoning the 1,500 acres.Ferguson told CJ that the NCRR involvement was a surprise."After almost four years of trying to find private investors for this project, the boosters were unable to find enough," he said. "The railroad has apparently stepped in at the last minute and bailed this project out in order to save it from failing. Those of us who have opposed this project still can't figure out why NCRR doesn't spend money in its own corridor on railroad improvements."
Our hard-working, well-trained labor force and convenient proximity to leading automakers are among the many assets that make our state the ideal choice for strategic, innovation-based ventures such as GF Linamar.

There's been news in Henderson County this week about an announcement from GF Linamar that they'll build a state-of-the-art aluminum die casting plant in Mills River. And it does indeed sound pretty great. They're promising 350 new jobs, which is a lot anywhere, and particularly in a town with a population of around 7,000. Those jobs are supposed to have an average salary of nearly $48,000, which is well over the average income in Henderson County. The company is investing $217 million. I understand why folks are excited.But here's the thing: It comes at a cost. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and the cost to taxpayers across the state of this particular lunch is more than $4.7 million. There's a $4.2 million Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) , and up to $500,000 from the One North Carolina Fund . Those One North Carolina Fund dollars also require matching moneys from the local government.It all adds up to millions of dollars coming from North Carolina Taxpayers in one way or another. And all of it to lure a private company  actually a joint venture between two private companies, one Canadian and one Swiss, with combined sales of $8 billion in 2014  to come here. The Department of Commerce's press release on the announcement quotes Gov. McCrory:Apparently he thinks our "hard-working, well-trained labor force and convenient proximity to leading automakers" aren't sufficient. Another of the "many assets that make our state the ideal choice" is the access to taxpayers' money that companies are granted by the governor and General Assembly.If this were a unique situation, that would be one thing. But it's not. Even just a quick look at the Department of Commerce's website reveals a long list of similar announcements granting subsidies to private companies; I count four just this month. And all of them are paid for by my taxes and yours.Henderson County isn't particularly poor. It gets the highest designation from the Department of Commerce, Tier 3, meaning it's considered one of the 20 least economically distressed counties in the state. Which just goes to show that, far from being some sort of extraordinary measure used by the state in very specific circumstances, economic incentives have become absolutely routine. They're handed out with alarming frequency.Sure, this plant will bring jobs, and jobs are good. But it's not good that companies have come to expect a handout for locating here. Will we create a situation where no company will come here without a handout? Have we already? Doesn't that actually weaken North Carolina, allowing companies to almost hold us hostage waiting for more corporate welfare?And every dollar of that corporate welfare is a dollar taken from hard working North Carolina taxpayers. This is $4.7 million dollars that families won't be able to use to provide for their children, pay their mortgages, start their own businesses, or give to charity.Not only that, but these various incentives all distort the market. Rather than simply gauging whether Mills River has the right set of characteristics to make investment there a good business decision (natural resources, workforce, stable regulatory and tax environment), companies instead consider how much cash they can get from the government. That's because the governor and General Assembly have decided that they know best, that they should pick the companies that are right for North Carolina rather than letting the market decide. Through JDIG, One North Carolina, and the like, the government attempts to pick winners. And when they pick winners, that inevitably leaves other businesses as losers  often small, local businesses who have been in North Carolina for years.This is especially true in a place like Henderson County with very low unemployment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , unemployment in Henderson County is 4.2%, which most economists would consider full employment. That means that a big employer, subsidized by the government, bringing lots of jobs paying high wages, will drive up the cost of labor for other employers in the area. The little guy, the local small business that was doing ok, suddenly finds himself having to compete with a large employer who, with the help of the state, is providing wages he can't afford. So he'll lose workers and possibly have to shut up shop. That's the sort of loser that the governor, the Department of Commerce, and the General Assembly never set out to create, but it is the certain outcome of their actions.The state government should provide a stable regulatory environment with low taxes for all businesses. That, along with North Carolina's strong workforce, well-educated people, natural resources, and location will be enough to attract businesses to come and to stay, leaving millions of dollars in taxpayers' pockets.
Press Release:

Background:

"[Ken Spaulding's] Democratic opponent, Attorney General Roy Cooper, could not be reached for comment. His campaign did not return calls." (Jim Morrill, "One Democratic gubernatorial candidate opposes Charlotte's bathroom provision," Charlotte Observer, 2/24/2016)

Governor McCrory Urged The Attorney General To Do His Job And Defend North Carolina Against A Washington, D.C. Takeover Of Local School Districts And Force Schools To Adopt A Radical Plan To Open Sex-specific Student Locker Rooms And Bathrooms To Individuals That Are Not Of That Biological Sex ("McCrory asks Cooper to oppose transgender bathroom lawsuit," The Associated Press, 11/24/2015)

"Governor Pat McCrory has asked Attorney General Roy Cooper to protect local school districts by joining South Carolina and signing on to an amicus brief in the case of G. G. v. Gloucester County School Board. In this case, the Obama Administration has joined with the ACLU in an attempt to force local school districts to open sex-specific student locker rooms and bathrooms to individuals that are not of that biological sex." (Press Release: "Governor McCrory asks Attorney General to Protect North Carolina from Federal Overreach in Schools," Office of the Governor, 11/21/2015)

Schools Could Face Loss Of Funding If They Do Not Comply With The ACLU's Bathroom Plan

The Obama administration has also threatened schools that resist with legal action and the loss of federal funding. (Press Release: "Governor McCrory Will Join South Carolina to Protect States from Federal Overreach in Schools," Office of the Governor, 11/24/2015)

Cooper Decided To Stand With President Obama, The ACLU And Radical Special Interest Groups Over North Carolina Families And Refused To Support The Lawsuit, But Wouldn't Explain Why

"Attorney General Roy Cooper has rejected a call by Gov. Pat McCrory to side with a Virginia school district against a discrimination lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that would allow a transgender high school student to use the men's bathroom." (Tyler Dukes, "Despite McCrory's request, Cooper won't join Virginia transgender bathroom suit," WRAL, 11/23/2015)



"Talley did not provide the department's rationale." (Tyler Dukes, "Despite McCrory's request, Cooper won't join Virginia transgender bathroom suit," WRAL, 11/23/2015)



Contact: The North Carolina Republican Party

The North Carolina Republican Party communications@ncgop.org

Raleigh, N.C. First, Democrat candidate for governor and N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper refused to join a lawsuit on behalf of North Carolina against the ACLU and the Obama Administration's attempt to open sex-specific student locker rooms and bathrooms to individuals that are not of that biological sex, and wouldn't explain to the media why he made this decision.Then, after the Charlotte City Council passed a controversial new rule that would allow men to use women's restrooms and locker rooms, Roy Cooper continually dodged questions about his position even as his rival for the Democrat nomination came out in opposition to the proposed rule.Now, an analysis of his gubernatorial campaign finance reports reveals Cooper has received almost $20,000 in campaign contributions from LGBT-aligned groups that have been advocating for the dual-sex Charlotte bathroom ordinance. To see the full list of Cooper's donors, click here."This issue affects the privacy and safety of everyone in North Carolina, especially our young children, yet our chief law enforcement officer whose number one job is public safety doesn't think he owes the public an answer," said Dallas Woodhouse, NCGOP executive director. "It's clear he's either hiding the truth from the public or is afraid to take a position against his own party and campaign contributors, even though it's right for the safety and privacy of North Carolina's children."In November, Governor McCrory and other state officials urged the Attorney General to sign on to a friend of the court brief in the case of G. G. v. Gloucester County School Board. In this case, the Obama Administration and the ACLU are trying to take over local school districts and force them to open sex-specific student locker rooms and bathrooms to individuals of the opposite biological sex.Despite serving as North Carolina's top attorney, Cooper refused to challenge the Obama Administration and the ACLU's radical plan. Cooper has refused to tell North Carolinians why his office made the decision not to join the lawsuit on behalf of the state's school districts and families.Since the Charlotte City Council passed a controversial new rule earlier this month that would allow men to use women's restrooms and locker rooms, Cooper has continually dodged questions from the press when pressed for his position on this issue.
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 array 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 self-anointed pedestal; a functioning society of a good Constitutional people cannot withstand this level of "existential" favoritism as it exists now.
Associated General Contractors of East Tennessee has donated $150,000 in a matching gift to develop construction laboratories in the Center for Engineering, Technology, Arts & Sciences building to expand the Construction Management program at Chattanooga State Community College.

Roger Tuder, president and CEO of AGC East TN, noted that the construction industry is the second largest employer in the nation. These labs will provide students with hands-on experience in planning for their future in the construction industry," said Mr. Tuder. "We must provide every opportunity for individuals and embrace their desire to enter the professional construction industry."

The construction growth locally makes the Construction Management program important to the community. By providing resources toward this endeavor, we feel Chattanooga State will provide a skill necessary to preform the professional needs in the construction industry. Classroom time is simply not enough, hands-on experience will last a lifetime, said Mr. Tuder.

Chattanooga States Construction Management program is headed by Caitlin Moffitt, assistant professor of civil and construction engineering technology. She also advises the student chapter of AGC. For more information about the program, email Caitlin.moffitt@chattanoogastate.edu or call 697-4434. To request more information about the matching gift or to make a donation, contact the Chattanooga State Foundation director of college advancement, Tammy Sawyers, at 697-3359.


Parade steps off Audio Article For the first time since 2019, marching bands, classic cars, dance troupes, scouts and politicians made their way along Midlothian Turnpike for the annual Midlothian Day Parade on Saturday, Oct....
Your RSS feed from RSSFWD.com. Update your RSS ...
RIO DE JANEIRO  A judge in Brazil ruled Wednesday that a senior Facebook executive can be freed from detention as authorities move ahead with an investigation over access into a popular mobile phone messaging service.

The executive, Diego Dzodan, was taken into custody Tuesday after the company's WhatsApp cellphone chat subsidiary told Brazilian authorities it was unable to intercept instant messages in connection with a drug investigation.

Advertisement

Dzodan, Facebook's vice president for Latin America, was ordered detained on an order from a Brazilian judge, said WhatsApp spokesman Matt Steinfeld.

But a higher court ruled that Dzodan could be freed amid the ongoing legal process against Facebook, which is secret.

Advertisement

"He continues to respond to the process," said Luciano Andrade, a spokesman for the court in Aracaju in northeast Brazil. "The process is against Facebook, but as he is responsible for Facebook in Latin America the judge requested the imprisonment."

Andrade said he believed that Dzodan will be freed later Wednesday.

The case reflects the growing conflict between technology firms and governments around the world over access to customer data.

As more companies use strong encryption on their customers' devices and communication, the information becomes increasingly out of reach for law enforcement, even if officials have obtained warrants.

Compounding the issue, a U.S. firm operating overseas can often find it difficult to comply with local laws when they conflict with U.S. rules. Congress, for instance, bars American companies from providing court-ordered wiretaps to anyone except the U.S. government.

Both WhatsApp and Facebook are hugely popular in Brazil, where WhatsApp has more than 100 million users.

WhatsApp has said it is moving to strong encryption on its platform to protect users' security and privacy. Although U.S. law enforcement says it supports encryption, it has expressed frustration with its inability to gain access to user data in criminal and terrorism cases.

The FBI is wrangling with Apple in U.S. courts over access to a phone used by one of the shooters in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

Advertisement

The WhatsApp spokesman Steinfeld said that the company's platform is simply not built for wiretaps. The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., separately from Facebook, does not have an office in Brazil or store the messages on its servers. It encrypts them when they are in transit between users.

"WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have," Steinfeld said.

Facebook said in a statement that the company is "disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook."

The company added: "Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."

The Brazilian police said in a statement that it wanted the information for a probe into organized crime and drug trafficking.

The police requested the wiretap four months ago, after officers investigating a drug gang seized a car carrying cocaine on the main street in Lagarto, a city with a population of around 100,000, said Monica Horta, a spokeswoman for the Federal Police in Aracaju, the capital of Sergipe state.

Advertisement

Two months ago, the judge levied a daily fine on Facebook of $12,600, raising this to $254,000 when the data was not supplied. Frustrated, police requested the order for Dzodan's arrest.

WhatsApp was briefly blocked in December by a judge in Sao Paulo state for failing to provide information related to a separate criminal investigation, but the ban was overturned less than 24 hours later.

The service was also nearly suspended in February 2015 after a judge in Piaui, another northeastern state, ordered its suspension for not helping a different investigation, this time into pedophilia. In this case, too, the ban was overturned  this time before it came into effect.
Businesses and their leaders donate to politicians and political causes of all stripes all the time to gain influence, as Trump himself has said of his bipartisan contributions. It's one thing to write a check, quite another to actively campaign for or against something.
Once online-only, menswear brand Bonobos will soon have a store on the Magnificent Mile.

Bonobos plans to open its second Chicago shop on the second floor of 900 North Michigan Shops in April, a company spokeswoman said.

Advertisement

The company currently has a Lincoln Park store on a stretch of Armitage Avenue that is home to several online retailers with offline stores where customers can check out goods in person. Bonobos, eyewear shop Warby Parker, men's accessories shop Tie Bar and interior design company Interior Define sit within two blocks of one another.

Bonobos' existing Chicago location is doing well, and company officials decided it was "about time" to expand in the city, spokeswoman Erin Grant said. Later this year, the company also plans to open a Miami "Guideshop"  where customers try on samples of garments that then can be shipped to their homes from Bonobos' warehouse.

Advertisement

Though some 900 North Michigan Shops offer showrooms or bespoke items, Bonobos will be the shopping center's first store where shoppers can't walk out with purchased goods, said 900 Shops spokeswoman Lauren Edelman.

After customers visit the Bonobos store, their purchased items will be sent from the Massachusetts warehouse. Bonobos also sells directly through its website and through Nordstrom.

Nordstrom, which invested $16 million in Bonobos in 2012, owns Chicago-based e-commerce company Trunk Club  also a clothing company that mixes online and offline sales. Trunk Club ships trunks of clothing and accessories that customers can try on at home or at its showrooms, including its River North headquarters.

lzumbach@tribpub.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
One month into his new role as chairman of Tribune Publishing, Michael Ferro has orchestrated major organizational changes, replacing key corporate executives with handpicked talent, and consolidating leadership at each of the newspaper chain's properties.

Bruce Dold, who succeeded Gerould Kern as editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune two weeks ago, also will serve as publisher. Tony Hunter, publisher of the Chicago Tribune since 2008, was promoted to president of national revenue and strategic initiatives at Tribune Publishing, a new position.

Advertisement

At the Los Angeles Times, Davan Maharaj will expand his editor-in-chief role to include publisher and will oversee the launch of LA.com, a new website to "celebrate Los Angeles" and extend the Times brand, the company said.

Tim Ryan, who replaced Austin Beutner as publisher of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune in September, was promoted to president of publishing, a new position that will work directly with each publisher-editor.

Advertisement

The dual publisher-editor role introduced at its nine daily newspapers is being billed by Tribune Publishing as a "content-first" initiative aimed at creating "the largest global audience on all mediums," according to the company.

New editor Bruce Dold shares his thoughts on the Chicago Tribune. Feb. 17, 2016. (Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

"Content has to be king," Ferro told employees Wednesday after the announcement of the leadership changes that put journalists into the publisher role.

That combined publisher-editor role straddles the line between business and journalism, a shift that Dold, who most recently served as the Tribune's editorial page editor, said is already taking place.

"The editor at the Tribune before I came in had been involved in business initiatives," Dold said. "I served with a number of publishers here, including Tony Hunter, and every one of them understood how important our journalism was and how important it was to protect the integrity of that. So that doesn't change at all, whatever the titles are."

Dold started at the Chicago Tribune as a reporter in 1978 and was appointed to the editorial board in 1990. He earned the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1994 for his series on the murder of a 3-year-old boy by his abusive mother and the failure of the Illinois child welfare system to save him. Dold was named editorial page editor in 2000.

Ferro vowed to increase the global reach of Chicago-based Tribune Publishing's newspapers and better monetize its commerce websites such as ForSaleByOwner. The newsrooms, however, remain at the center of Tribune Publishing's "content-first" strategy, an impassioned Ferro said.

"I now understand how important it is to have real journalism in the world and we're starting here with our properties around the country," Ferro said. "Bloggers can't be the ones deciding public opinion, deciding presidential races."

Ferro, a technology entrepreneur who became the largest shareholder and chairman of Tribune Publishing last month, also announced he was donating his ownership stake in the Chicago Sun-Times to a charitable trust to avoid perceived conflicts of interest.

Advertisement

"It is a completely new charitable trust at a very large organization where I sent the shares to," Ferro told the Tribune Wednesday. "We're just not disclosing where it went right now, but it's out of my control."

During an earnings conference call Wednesday, new Tribune Publishing CEO Justin Dearborn outlined several initiatives for the company related to acquisitions, cost-cutting and digital strategy.

The company is also reviewing its real estate expenses and will look to consolidate office space, Dearborn said. Tribune Publishing leases space from Tribune Media, the broadcast parent company from which it spun off in August 2014. Tribune Media is trying to sell its real estate portfolio, including Tribune Tower in Chicago and Times Mirror Square in Los Angeles.

"We've been saddled with this horrific real estate at horrific prices and horrific layouts from Tribune Media that does not allow us to have collaborative work environments," Ferro told employees. "We are going to fix that over the next year."

Ferro's $44.4 million investment in Tribune Publishing last month provided the company a cash infusion to compete for the bankrupt assets of the Orange County Register, seen by former CEO Jack Griffin as a crucial acquisition for its California News Group. Tribune Publishing submitted one of two early bids for the newspaper, with the bankruptcy auction set for March 16.

Dearborn said the company remains interested in acquiring the Register, but with limitations. "We are still active in the process," Dearborn said. "There is a price where we would walk away."

Advertisement

Tribune Publishing projected $30 million to $35 million in capital expenditures for 2016, which might represent the price budgeted for the Register.

Also Wednesday, Tribune Publishing said it swung to a net loss of $77,000 for the fourth quarter, or zero cents per share, compared with net income of $15.5 million a year ago. Earnings were affected by a pre-tax charge of $46 million for voluntary buyouts taken by approximately 7 percent of the company's eligible 7,000 employees. The buyouts were approved in November.

Revenue in the fourth quarter grew 1 percent to $462 million, bolstered by the $85 million May acquisition of the Union-Tribune. Advertising revenue declined 1.9 percent to $268 million, but would have been down 8.7 percent without contributions from the Union-Tribune and an accounting reclassification for CareerBuilder.

Circulation revenue grew 10.1 percent to $122 million. Excluding the impact of the Union-Tribune, it would have been flat.

For the full year, Tribune Publishing reported a net loss of $2.8 million, or 11 cents a share, compared with net income of $42.3 million in 2014. Revenue declined 2 percent to $1.67 billion.

The company expects continued pressure on advertising and circulation revenues in 2016, and continuing "strategic cost management."

Advertisement

The management changes also displaced some key New York-based executive hires by Jack Griffin, who was ousted as Tribune Publishing CEO last week in favor of Dearborn, the former CEO of Merge Healthcare and a longtime Ferro associate.

Michael Rooney, a Wall Street Journal veteran who was named chief revenue officer in 2014, has left the company, according to a Tribune Publishing spokeswoman.

Denise Warren, a former New York Times executive who became president of digital and CEO of Tribune's East Coast newspapers last May, has also left the company. Technology executive Malcolm CasSelle was hired last month to head up digital initiatives.

Warren converted the newspaper websites from a premium model to a metered paywall, allowing visitors to view a certain number of stories online each month before requiring a paid subscription. The Chicago Tribune implemented the new online platform last month.

"We thank Denise for her leadership, which, in a very short period of time, has resulted in measurable improvements in Tribune Publishing's digital traffic, engagement numbers, ad impression growth and a significant pivot in the Company's digital subscription approach that is already achieving record performance," Dearborn said in a statement.

The company also announced it will begin to offer all Tribune Publishing print subscribers free unlimited digital access, beginning in April.

Advertisement

rchannick@tribpub.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
Tribune Publishing's transformation under new Chairman Michael Ferro picked up pace Wednesday with the announcement of sweeping leadership changes across the Chicago-based media company.



Ferro, a technology entrepreneur who became the largest shareholder and chairman of Tribune Publishing last month, also announced he was donating his ownership stake in the Chicago Sun-Times to a charitable trust to avoid perceived conflicts of interest.



The core organizational changes at Tribune Publishing combine the roles of publisher and editor-in-chief, leaving one less name atop the mastheads of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and the chain's other major daily newspapers.



Bruce Dold, who succeeded Gerould Kern as editor-in-chief of the Chicago Tribune two weeks ago, also will serve as publisher. Tony Hunter, publisher of the Chicago Tribune since 2008, was promoted to president of national revenue and strategic initiatives at Tribune Publishing, a new position.



At the Los Angeles Times, Davan Maharaj will expand his editor-in-chief role to include publisher, and will also oversee the launch of LA.com, a new website to "celebrate Los Angeles" and extend the Times brand, the company said.



Tim Ryan, who replaced Austin Beutner as publisher of the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune in September, was promoted to president of publishing, a new position that will work directly with each publisher/editor-in-chief.



The dual publisher-editor role is being billed by Tribune Publishing as a "content-first" initiative aimed at creating "the largest global audience on all mediums," according to the company. It also straddles the line between business and journalism, a shift that Dold, a longtime journalist who most recently served as Tribune's editorial page editor, said is already taking place.



"The editor at the Tribune before I came in had been involved in business initiatives," Dold said. "I served with a number of publishers here, including Tony Hunter, and every one of them understood how important our journalism was and how important it was to protect the integrity of that. So that doesn't change at all, whatever the titles are."



The changes also displaced some key New York-based executive hires by Jack Griffin, who was ousted as Tribune Publishing CEO last week in favor of Justin Dearborn, the former CEO of Merge Healthcare and a longtime Ferro associate.



Michael Rooney, a Wall Street Journal veteran who was named chief revenue officer in 2014, has left the company, according to a Tribune Publishing spokeswoman.



Denise Warren, a former New York Times executive who became president of digital and CEO of Tribune's East Coast newspapers last May, has also left the company. Technology executive Malcolm CasSelle was hired last month to head up digital initiatives.



Warren converted the newspaper websites from a premium model to a metered paywall, allowing visitors to view a certain number of stories online each month before requiring a paid subscription. The Chicago Tribune implemented the new online platform last month.



"We thank Denise for her leadership, which, in a very short period of time, has resulted in measurable improvements in Tribune Publishing's digital traffic, engagement numbers, ad impression growth and a significant pivot in the Company's digital subscription approach that is already achieving record performance," Dearborn said in a statement.



The company also announced it will begin to offer all Tribune Publishing print subscribers free unlimited digital access beginning in April.



rchannick@tribpub.com



Twitter @RobertChannick
Eric Scott Hunsader, of Winnetka, is photographed Oct. 14, 2015, at his Nanex financial market data firm in Winnetka. Hunsader has been handed a $750,000 whistleblower award from the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Ting Shen / Chicago Tribune)

A leading critic of high-frequency traders says he has been "vindicated" after the Securities and Exchange Commission handed him a $750,000 whistleblower award.

But Eric Scott Hunsader, of Winnetka, says he would happily have accepted just $1 if regulators had taken him seriously when he first raised the alarm about violations of securities law on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010.

Advertisement

Instead, it took the SEC two years to fine the NYSE $5 million for sending price data to customers who paid for proprietary feeds a few seconds before it shared them on the feeds used by the public. That gave the high-frequency traders who could afford the proprietary feeds an unfair advantage over the public, said Hunsader, who called the $5 million fine "way too light  it should have been $100 million."

Hunsader runs his market data business, Nanex, above a nail salon in the north suburb, and has made himself the bete noire of wealthy high frequency traders, frequently publicly accusing them of rigging markets at the expense of other investors. Some players in high-frequency trading, which dominates trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and other exchanges, have accused him of being a conspiracy theorist.

Advertisement

But he rose to prominence after he unearthed data that he said helped explain the May 6, 2010, flash crash, in which $1 trillion was temporarily wiped off the value of U.S. equities.

And while the SEC would not confirm that Hunsader received the award, citing laws that prevent it from identifying even willing whistleblowers, it said in a news release in January that an unnamed whistleblower was receiving "more than $700,000." Hunsader showed the Tribune a letter from the SEC confirming that he was earmarked to receive the award.

"After more than 2,000 days, it's better than nothing!" he said with a laugh Wednesday, adding that he would use the money to put his four daughters through college, but that the prize was less than he typically makes in a year and "less than the reputational loss I've suffered" by taking on powerful high-frequency traders.

Chicago  a center for high-frequency trading  is due later this month to host the sentencing of Michael Coscia, a New Jersey trader who last year became the first to be convicted under a new law that targets so-called "spoofing," a form of high-speed fraud in which con artists rip off other market participants in a few thousandths of a second. Navinder Sarao, a U.K.-based trader who is accused of partly causing the May 2010 flash crash in a similar case, is fighting extradition to Chicago from London.

kjanssen@tribpub.com

Twitter @kimjnews
A happy accident of tossed molasses that fermented in the Caribbean kicked off the beginning of the lucrative rum industry and thousands of rum-soaked parties. Centuries later, rum remains one of America's favorite spirits, yet sugary drinks, an iconic pirate brand and spring break dominate the image. A complex spirit worth sipping neat or on the rocks? Probably not so much. But as one of the world's most versatile and underappreciated spirits, rum may be trending up.

"People have been saying that rum will be the next big spirit for the past few years, and I think that it has been gaining traction due to the increasing popularity of its use in cocktails  primarily tropical or Tiki  and as more bartenders become educated," says Paul McGee, beverage director of Land and Sea Dept. in Chicago. Rum's shorter aging period and lower price tag compared to whiskey might also be helping it gain interest, says Wayne Curtis, author of "And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails." Allan Katz, co-founder of Temperance Beverage Co. and rum enthusiast, also cites diminishing quality bourbon and the scarcity of agave (used in making tequila) as the critical tipping point for rum's big break.

Advertisement

While most of us may only know the spirit as light, dark or spiced, it comes in many classifications and varieties based on region, raw materials used (sugar cane or molasses), fermentation and distillation method, blending techniques and aging. For instance, you'll find lighter more delicate notes with Cuban rums and sweeter fruity notes with Demerara rums from Guyana while French Caribbean rhum agricole (made from cane juice) will have grassier notes.

"I don't think there is another spirit that has the depth and breadth of rum," says Peter Vestinos, beverage manager at Chicago's rum-centric Sparrow. "From bright, citrusy, herbal, fresh rums to funky, heavy stewed fruit rums and everything in between, there is bound to be something for everyone."

Advertisement

You don't have to look outside U.S. borders to find good rum, either. Distillers like Maggie's Farm Rum Distillery (Pittsburgh, Pa.), Bartlett Spirits of Maine Distillery (Gouldsboro, Maine, near Bangor) and High Wire Distilling (Charleston, S.C.) are some of Curtis' favorites. Producers like Papa's Pilar are expanding the category by solera blending Caribbean, Central American and U.S. rum and triple aging it in bourbon barrels, port wine casks and sherry casks.

Curtis says those unfamiliar with rum can expand their vocabulary by substituting a richer, heavier rum like El Dorado or Zacapa in cocktails. Ginger beer, guava and passion fruit juice also make great mixers says Carl Grooms, general manager at Papa's Pilar. He adds that freshly shaved nutmeg will bring out the flavors from aging. Premium rums  rums meant to be sipped neat or on the rocks, and usually aged longer  have seen an uptick as producers latch onto the brown spirits drinker. But don't let that you push you in a certain direction as quality rums can be found across the age spectrum.

"Rum just needs a larger and more informed sales force," says Katz. "It's a long fuse, but the boom will come."

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Some rums to try

Bacardi 1909

Bartlett Spirits of Maine Rusticator Rum

The 86 Co. Cana Brava Panama Rum

El Dorado 21 Year Old Special Reserve Rum

Advertisement

Papa's Pilar Blonde

Brandy Gonsoulin is a freelance writer.
"She said, 'That first section, I know what that was: That was those riots (in 1980) that you experienced in Liberty City,'" says Battle, describing it as one of the poorest neighborhoods in Miami. Shortly after the riots, he says, "I was driving with my great-uncle, who I knew as my dad, and I remember seeing this Michelin tires store, which we would always pass by  one of those big buildings, flat, but for a child it was the biggest building I ever saw, with one of those Michelin men on top. I was fascinated by it.
Watching the Lifeline show Monday night, the famous naked cowboy of Times Square kept popping into my head, as he has a tendency to do. Actually, there are several of those characters in the Times Square I often inhabit, many of them only an inch or two on the right side of the law. Their hustles aren't even of the small-bore scale of Joe Buck because they mostly involve non-English speaking tourists looking for something to do with their smartphones. But it's still a reminder that the whole New York cowboy thing very much started with Herlihy's novel, an especially stylish and dark-hued application of the ever-serviceable stranger-in-a-strange-land narrative.
Donald Trump, forgoing the customary election night victory party, addresses reporters at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. With him is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. (John Moore / Getty Images)

Donald Trump rolled up big victories in the Northeast and across the South on Super Tuesday, taking a giant step toward clinching the GOP nomination as the contest moves to a series of stiff challenges for his beleaguered rivals.

Riding a wave of anger and seething frustration, Trump carried Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Virginia and Vermont.

Advertisement

Sen. Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, Alaska and next-door neighbor Oklahoma, strengthening his claim to be the last man standing between Trump and the nomination.

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

Advertisement

But even as Cruz called for others to quit the race, he faces a steep road ahead as the contest shifts away from the South and Cruz's advantage among its religiously oriented, deeply conservative voters.

Happy or not  and many Republicans are not  it appears increasingly probable that Trump will carry the GOP banner into the fall campaign, most likely against Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.

"The GOP establishment is apoplectic, but it's too late," said Don Sipple, a former GOP strategist turned independent. "If the party acts in an underhanded way to vanquish Trump, they will disenfranchise many voters who have been brought to the party by Trump. They are in deep doo-doo as an institution. They're powerless right now."

That doesn't mean, though, establishment forces were prepared to surrender.

A political action committee that spent heavily to defeat Trump in Iowa announced late Tuesday it was intensifying efforts aimed at the billionaire insurgent, promising a TV blitz and daily attacks on his record and business dealings.

Their best hope may be Trump falling short of the delegates he needs to win outright and a rival wrestling the nomination away at a contested convention, something that has never happened in modern times.

"The chances of beating Trump outright look so much tougher after these Super Tuesday contests," said Kevin Madden, a former Mitt Romney strategist who has stayed neutral in the GOP contest.

The biggest Super Tuesday losers appeared to be Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who claimed a lone victory in Minnesota, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who did not come close to winning anywhere save Vermont, where he was running second.

Advertisement

Rubio and Kasich, who has yet to place first anywhere, must now wage what amount to do-or-die campaigns in their respective home states on March 15.

Forgoing the customary candidate victory party, Trump summoned the media to a news conference Tuesday night in the regal setting of his Mar-a-Lago estate, a lavish private social club in Palm Beach, Fla.

With giant chandeliers overhead and 10 furled American flags behind him, Trump congratulated Cruz on his performance, then vowed to beat Rubio  calling him "a lightweight" and "the little senator"  in two weeks in Florida. He leads Rubio by 20 percentage points or more in opinion polls.

Trump rejected the notion that he was pulling the GOP apart. "Look, we have expanded the Republican Party," he said, adding later: "I am a unifier."

He also vowed, once he is the nominee, to have a singular focus. "Once we get all of this finished, I am going to go after one person," he said. "That's Hillary Clinton."

The Super Tuesday balloting, which extended from Vermont to Alaska, marked the single biggest day of the 2016 primary season. At stake were 595 delegates in 11 states, or close to half the number needed to secure the GOP nomination at the party's convention in July.

Advertisement

Once more, signs of an angry electorate abounded.

In Georgia and Alabama  both of which Trump won handily  nearly 6 in 10 Republican voters said they felt betrayed by their own party leaders, according to exit poll interviews.

At least half the voters across the 11 states said they believed the next president should be from outside the political establishment, a dynamic that has boosted Trump throughout his improbable presidential run.

With so much ground to cover and so little time, every candidate but Trump  with his command of a national audience  had to make tactical decisions.

Cruz, a favorite of Christian conservatives, focused mainly on carrying his home state to avoid a politically fatal loss in Texas.

Speaking to raucous supporters at a suburban Houston country club, he urged rivals to quit the presidential race so he could face Trump one-on-one.

Advertisement

"The voters have spoken," he said. "Tomorrow morning, we have a choice. So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely  and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation."

Rubio hopscotched among states, picking up Super Tuesday endorsements  from Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty  as he sought to rally the party establishment behind him as the stop-Trump candidate.

Appearing Tuesday night in Miami, he vowed to press on, looking ahead to Florida's primary.

"Two weeks from tonight right here in Florida, we are going to send a message loud and clear," he said. "We are going to send a message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist."

Kasich was mainly focused on hanging on until the March 15 primary in Ohio. The fifth candidate still running, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, was not a serious factor in any of the contests.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 Donald Trump, joined by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, speaks to the media on election night at hisMar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. (John Moore / Getty Images)

Trump campaigned as he has throughout the race, swooping into states for big rallies and dominating the discussion by nabbing his first major endorsements  among them New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who joined him at his news conference Tuesday night, and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions  and targeting his opponents, especially Rubio, with a series of scathing attacks.

Advertisement

He also weathered yet another controversy after failing to disavow the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in a Sunday morning interview on CNN. Trump distanced himself from Duke a day later, saying a "lousy earpiece" kept him from properly hearing the questions.

None of that seemed to matter to voters like Texan Shelly Wells, who spurned her home-state senator to vote for Trump.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

"He can get things done," said Wells, 59, an accountant with an oil-field services company, after casting her ballot in Katy, a Houston suburb hard hit by the recent decline in oil prices. "He's the man who can get the job done and change this back to America instead of a third-world country."

With candidates fighting for survival, an already harsh campaign has assumed an even sharper, meaner and more personal edge in recent days. At times, it seemed downright bizarre.

Cruz leveled unsubstantiated charges that Trump had Mafia connections. Trump attacked Rubio over his propensity to perspire. Rubio questioned both Trump's temperament and bladder control.

Advertisement

But the Florida senator, who began his campaign vowing to be an upbeat messenger, did not seem altogether comfortable slipping into Trump mode. He spent days calling him a con man and hypocrite, mocked his "spray tan" and even made fun of his anatomical attributes.

Then Rubio abruptly changed his tone at a Super Tuesday-eve rally in Oklahoma. When someone in the crowd shouted, "Donald Trump has small hands!"  picking up on a Rubio double-entendre  the candidate demurred.

"We're not talking about that today," Rubio said. "I want this to be a serious election."

mark.barabak @latimes.com

Twitter: @markzbarabak

Times staff writers Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Katy and Michael Finnegan and Seema Mehta in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Advertisement

MORE ON SUPER TUESDAY

After Super Tuesday, only desperate measures can stop Donald Trump

This wasn't the way Chris Christie wanted to make headlines on Super Tuesday

Voters prove Donald Trump's dominance and other takeaways from Super Tuesday
James Crowley, former senior legal counsel for Chicago State University, was fired in February 2010. He said in a lawsuit that his termination was out of retaliation for reporting misconduct. (Terrence Antonio James, Chicago Tribune)

A Cook County jury has awarded a former Chicago State University employee $2.5 million in damages and back pay after deciding he was fired in retaliation for reporting alleged misconduct by the university president and other top officials. A judge could further increase that amount at a hearing next month.

It may be the first verdict stemming from a whistleblower claim filed under the state's ethics act, a 2003 law that laid out guidelines for behavior by state employees, according to the Illinois attorney general's office. That law includes whistleblower protection for employees who disclose activities they believe violate the ethics act.

Advertisement

"We're not aware of another judgment like this," Attorney General spokeswoman Natalie Bauer said.

The lawsuit by former Chicago State senior legal counsel James Crowley alleged that he was fired in February 2010 after he refused to withhold documents about university President Wayne Watson's employment that a faculty member requested under the state's public records law. Crowley also claimed that he was retaliated against after reporting questionable contracts to the attorney general's office.

Advertisement

A university attorney argued in court that Crowley was fired for misusing university resources, including reserved parking spaces, and for giving preferential treatment in awarding a scholarship and paying for conference travel for a student.

But a jury last week agreed with Crowley's version of events and awarded him $2 million in punitive damages and $480,000 in back pay for the last four years. It also ordered that he be reinstated to his job. Cook County Circuit Judge James McCarthy is scheduled to rule March 11 whether to double the amount of back pay and require the university to pay interest, both of which are included as remedies under the ethics law. McCarthy also is expected to decide whether Chicago State should pay Crowley's attorney fees.

Crowley's lawsuit was against the university, a public institution on the city's South Side with 5,700 students; its president, Watson; and the seven trustees who were on the university board in 2010. The trial, which included testimony from Watson, lasted two weeks. A 14-member jury deliberated for less than an hour before delivering the verdict Feb. 18.

"I'm very grateful to be free of the false allegations made against me by the Watson administration, and that have negatively affected my career for the past four years," Crowley wrote in a statement to the Tribune. "Hopefully, this prevents them from treating other employees as badly as they've treated me.

"I also hope my case encourages not only employees of Chicago State, but all state employees, to report any wrongdoing to the proper state agency and know that they are protected."

Chicago State said it will appeal. An insurance policy will cover the university's damages, school spokesman Thomas Wogan said.

"The University stands behind our decision to defend this case in court. While we disagree with the decision of the jury, we fully respect the judicial process and we will pursue an appeal to their decision," Wogan said in a statement.

Bauer said the attorney general's office was "not aware of another verdict like this under the whistleblower protection provision of the ethics act."

Advertisement

The State Officials and Employees Ethics Act, enacted in 2003 by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, included a series of ethics overhauls designed to prevent and root out wrongdoing by public officials across the state. It is why state employees are now required to do annual ethics training, and why there is a state executive inspector general charged with investigating alleged corruption.

The law also established civil and criminal penalties for those who violate the ethics act, and it included whistleblower protections for state workers who report misconduct.

"The goal of the whole system was to encourage people to speak out when they see something wrong," said David Morrison, a policy adviser with the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform who helped draft the legislation. "If they suffer a harm when they are doing their job and raise a flag, they should be protected against retaliation."

Morrison said the jury's decision to award more than $2 million in punitive damages sends a message that the law intended.

"There is supposed to be a heavy hammer to discourage people from retaliating," Morrison said. "That is part of the cost of corruption that we will have to tally up. It is ultimately the taxpayers who lose, but it is the public official who should bear the fault for that. If they had run a clean ship, that would not have happened. It is up to the administration to set the right tone."

Crowley, 47, a graduate of the DePaul University College of Law, began working at Chicago State in 2000. In August 2009, when Crowley's duties included answering requests for public records, he disagreed with Watson about how to respond to requests for information about Watson's employment and the presidential residence. Watson had recently been appointed Chicago State's president, but there was disagreement about whether he had begun to take over presidential responsibilities at that time.

Advertisement

Watson's start date was a contentious issue because it determined whether he was eligible to begin drawing a pension based on his years as chancellor at City Colleges of Chicago. If he assumed the presidency Aug. 1 as originally outlined in his contract, he would have been ineligible for the pension because the law requires state university employees to wait 60 days after retiring from one job before taking another state job. His start date was later changed to Oct. 1.

According to the lawsuit, in a meeting to discuss what documents to provide in response to the requests, Watson put his hand on Crowley's wrist and said to him: "If you read this my way, you are my friend; If you read it the other way, you are my enemy."

Crowley reported the alleged incident  which Watson disputed in his testimony  to the attorney general's office. He also told the office about contracts that he thought had been improperly bid and executed. On Feb. 19, 2010, Crowley was fired.

"You have a right if you are a government employee to say to someone, 'I think you need to investigate this,'" Crowley's attorney, Anthony Pinelli, said during the trial.

Chicago State's attorney, Tiffany Ferguson, said during opening arguments that the university fired Crowley "for the right reasons," which included preferential treatment for himself and a student employee. The university claimed that Crowley improperly used a university bank account to pay for his reserved on-campus parking space, diverted scholarship money to pay for the student's textbooks and used university money to pay for plane tickets to a conference in Hawaii for himself and co-workers, including the student  a trip that was ultimately canceled.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

Crowley's attorney said his client made a mistake by not having someone else sign off on the parking expense but that he did nothing improper related to the travel or textbooks, saying they were "trumped-up charges to get (Crowley) out the door."

Advertisement

Ferguson said Crowley's firing could not have been retaliatory because Watson and others did not know that he had met with the attorney general's office. Crowley was fired for "misappropriating university funds for purposes of preferential treatment. That's it," she said.

The university also filed a complaint against Crowley with the state's Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, which declined to pursue the case.

Still, Crowley said that complaint, which he is required to acknowledge on job applications, has prevented him from securing employment. He has had one nine-month contract job in the four years since he was fired from Chicago State.

Pinelli, Crowley's attorney, called the judgment a "very significant but completely lawful amount." The jury had discretion in deciding the award. Crowley's complaint had asked for "an amount of damages sufficient to prevent further violations of the act," in excess of $50,000.

"A small amount wouldn't get their attention," Pinelli said. "They needed to do something large enough. My conversation with the jurors afterward said it was to send a message."

jscohen@tribune.com
James Crowley, seen Feb. 26, 2014, was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against Chicago State University and was awarded a multimillion dollar judgment against the university. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

In an unusually bruising opinion, the Illinois Appellate Court on Wednesday upheld a groundbreaking order to pay a former Chicago State University administrator more than $3 million as part of his whistleblower case.

A three-judge panel of the court said the school launched "a campaign designed to both economically harm ... and inflict psychological distress upon" former university attorney and administrator James Crowley after he refused to withhold documents about university President Wayne Watson's employment that a faculty member had requested under the state's open records law.

Advertisement

Crowley also claimed he was retaliated against after reporting questionable university contracts to the attorney general's office.

Calling the behavior "thoroughly reprehensible," the court suggested Watson and his top lieutenants acted with "malice and deceit." Watson stepped down as president at the Far South Side university late last year.

Advertisement

"Defendants did whatever they could to protect Watson's reputation, and they did it at Crowley's expense, when he sought only to comply with the public's right to know information about the activities of a state university," Justice Terrence J. Lavin wrote in the unanimous opinion.

In 2014, a Cook County jury found that Crowley was unfairly fired, making it the first verdict resulting from a whistleblower claim filed under the state ethics act, which includes protections for employees who disclose activities they believe are illegal.

Crowley, who is now working a temporary job as a document reviewer, praised the appellate court's decision, saying the judges' blistering language shows state employees that they will be protected if they push back against corruption.

"I think it sends an important message to Illinois residents that we can do the right thing, hold our public officials accountable and be confident that we are protected by the law," he said.

University attorneys had argued that Crowley was fired for misusing university resources, including reserved parking spaces, and for giving preferential treatment in awarding a scholarship and paying for conference travel for a student.

The appellate court, however, turned aside those accusations and upheld the jury's decision to award Crowley $2 million in punitive damages and $480,000 in back pay. Cook County Judge James McCarthy later doubled the amount of back pay and interest  a remedy allowed under the ethics law  bringing that amount to $1.02 million. The judge also ordered that the university pay more than $300,000 in attorneys' fees and that Crowley receive his $120,000-a-year salary until any appeals are resolved.

With interest, the university owes Crowley about $5 million, an amount that will climb if the school's appeal is unsuccessful.

Court records show the college has insurance to cover the judgment.

Advertisement

"The university is disappointed in today's ruling upholding the unprecedented level of punitive damages awarded in this case," the school said in a statement. "We will immediately move to appeal this decision to the state Supreme Court. The main issue of contention in this case is the question of the large punitive awards, and the question is an important one. Under the current act, the question of punitive damages has not been settled by the highest court and we look forward to making our case."

The university's appeal received support from Illinois' other public universities, which filed an amicus brief that insisted the state's cash-strapped colleges should not be responsible for paying multimillion-dollar verdicts.

In oral arguments before the appeals court last month, Judge James Smith dismissed that argument after Chicago State attorney Michael Resis argued about the "financial state of public universities." Illinois' public colleges and universities haven't received money from the state since July as a result of the budget impasse. Chicago State, which has about 4,500 students, has said it's in dire financial straits and has sent notices of potential layoff to all of its 900 employees.

Smith abruptly ended the argument.

"Let's not play games here," he said. "Stick to the case."

Resis also argued that the multimillion-dollar award was "excessive" and insisted that $2 million in punitive damages was unnecessary because the double back pay was enough of a deterrent against the school repeating its bad behavior.

Advertisement

Resis argued that if the punitive damages are upheld, "it would be without precedent."

Crowley attorney Anthony Pinelli has maintained the award is appropriate because the ethics act was intended to discourage misconduct.

"What you need is to find an amount to make them take this seriously," Pinelli told the appellate court.

Crowley's lawsuit was filed against the university, Watson and the seven trustees on the board when he was fired.

The ruling comes after several tumultuous months at the university, which recently canceled its spring break and announced it would instead hold classes then to help ensure that students can finish the semester before the school runs out of money.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

In January, a state ethics investigation found Watson violated school policy when he made false allegations against two board members as they were trying to push him out. His conduct "went against the expectation that employees act with integrity when representing the university, and raises serious questions and concerns as to his leadership of the university," according to the Governor's Office of Executive Inspector General, which investigated the matter.

Advertisement

Watson's presidency at the Chicago public university ended Dec. 31. He now has the title of president emeritus and will be paid his annual salary of about $200,000 at least until his contract ends June 30.

He recently started an executive-search firm that focuses exclusively on finding administrators for historically black colleges and universities.

jscohen@tribpub.com

sstclair@tribpub.com

Twitter @higherednews

Twitter @stacystclair
A trial to decide the fate of the Lucas Museum in Chicago would not start until fall at the earliest, the judge handling the case indicated Wednesday, and that time frame hinges upon an accelerated court schedule.

U.S. District Judge John Darrah also urged the city of Chicago and the Park District to begin turning over documents and sharing more information with the preservation group Friends of the Parks, which is suing to stop development of the project along Chicago's lakefront. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas wants to build a museum housing a collection of narrative and digital art on property between Soldier Field and McCormick Place.

Advertisement

The lawsuit has Lucas considering other cities for the museum, a city attorney said at the previous hearing, placing increased importance on the duration of the legal proceedings. No construction can begin on the project unless authorized by the court.

The city has filed a motion to lift the standstill order and wants to begin construction on the site before the case is decided. The judge has scheduled a ruling on that issue for April 21. From the bench at Wednesday's hearing, Darrah said that starting any work before he makes a decision would be risky. If Friends of the Parks prevails, he said, demolition of any building or restoration of the site to its original condition would be costly.

Advertisement

"These are complex issues, and I can understand the desire to expedite this process, but the consequences of doing this wrong are severe," Darrah said.

Sean Morales-Doyle, a lawyer for the parks group, said his side is concerned about taxpayers being left on the hook if work on the museum began and was abandoned. Friends of the Parks has been seeking information from the city and Park District about how the lakefront site was selected.

The judge also said Wednesday that while the city and Park District are now pushing for an accelerated timeline for the legal proceedings, many of the delays since the case was first filed in November 2014 have been caused by their side, especially their resistance to share discovery documents and make people available for depositions.

"My main goal is to get through discovery and get this to trial and have you decide this case on its merits," city attorney Brian Sieve told the judge.

After more than a year of back-and-forth, Darrah ruled last month that Friends of the Parks adequately states a claim and that the lawsuit can move forward.

Juanita Irizarry, executive director of Friends of the Parks, said after the hearing that she hopes the judge's words lead to better cooperation from the city.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

The organization says the museum project violates the state's public trust doctrine, will benefit a private party more than the public and will tarnish the lakefront. The group contends the land selected for the museum site is held in the public trust because it is formerly part of Lake Michigan, and that the land should be protected and preserved for the state's residents.

Lucas wants to house his collection of artwork and showcase exhibits and films at a proposed futuristic-looking building east of Lake Shore Drive, which would be surrounded by landscaped parkland. The project was approved by Chicago City Council, the Plan Commission and the Chicago Park District, which has entered an agreement to lease the land near Lake Michigan at a cost of $10 for 99 years.

Advertisement

As proposed in Chicago, the privately funded, 300,000-square-foot museum is slated to be built on 17 acres of lakefront property. It is expected to cost more than $300 million.

The museum, designed to include several theaters, a library and an observation deck, would charge an admission fee but also would have several free areas.

Irizarry said the group is not opposed to the museum coming to Chicago but that it should not be built on the lakefront site.

poconnell@tribpub.com

Twitter @pmocwriter
When the James R. Thompson Center opened in 1985, architect Helmut Jahn had hoped the glass panel building marked by an open-air atrium would serve as "a symbol for the openness and transparency of the state government."

The 17-story postmodern marvel in Chicago has proved costly and inefficient to maintain, heat and cool, and is in need of more than $100 million in maintenance that's been deferred.

Advertisement

With Gov. Bruce Rauner proposing the building's sale and comments about its unlikely rehab, the Thompson Center tops the list of Preservation Chicago's Seven Most Threatened buildings.

In its report released Wednesday, Preservation Chicago says the city "should move quickly to Landmark and protect this building and plaza, designed by one of Chicago's most famous contemporary architects of our time."

Advertisement

McCormick Place's Lakeside Center, another brainchild of Jahn and architect Gene Summers, ranks second on the list of endangered buildings. Once the largest convention halls in America, Lakeside Center is the oldest portion of McCormick Place and less frequented than much of the complex. The four-level, steel-and-glass structure also blocks views of the shoreline from the west.

In 2011, the urban design group of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the big corporate firm that designed the Willis and Hancock towers, crafted a plan to tear down the Lakeside Center and replace it with 19 acres of parkland.

Preservation Chicago contends the center's exhibition halls could be repurposed as a field house, where the large glass rooms could provide natural daylight for recreational activities.

But a spokeswoman for the agency that operates the convention center, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, said in October that the Lakeside Center remains economically important, and was used 192 days in 2014. As "an integral part of the McCormick Place campus," the center is used for major shows like the national restaurant and radiology conventions, she said.

Though it wasn't on this year's list, Preservation Chicago noted the increasing endangerment of a building on the group's 2014 list: St. Adalbert Catholic Church in the city's Pilsen neighborhood. The Archdiocese of Chicago announced last month that the church, built in 1912, would close. The church's distinguished twin 185-foot towers have been hidden under scaffolding for more than a year.

The announcement followed news last month that the archdiocese could shutter more houses of worship in Cook and Lake counties by 2030 as it confronts decaying buildings and an expected shortage of priests.

Members of the religious community have launched an online fundraiser in hopes of saving St. Adalbert's towers. However, the restoration effort appears bleak, with less than $1,900 pledged toward the $3 million target.

Richard Olszewski, a church member and volunteer coordinator, said the group's advocating for St. Adalbert's could help bring awareness to the church's situation.

Advertisement

"There's no set date (for closure) so hopefully we can raise the money before anything happens. And fix the towers  the towers are the main issues," he said. "It's a beautiful church outside and inside. It'd be a great loss to the city if we lose it."

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

On Sunday at 10 a.m., St. Adalbert members are planning a "Mass mob"  an event similar to those held in Detroit, where churchgoers from across the city were recruited to attend a Mass at a struggling urban church in order to revitalize it, Olszewski said.

In addition to the Thompson Center and the McCormick Place's Lakeside Center, other structures on the 2016 endangered list are:

Nellie Black & Martha Wilson Pavilions, the former site of Children's Memorial Hospital in Lincoln Park, at 700 and 701 West Fullerton Parkway

Washington Park National Bank, on 63rd Street and Cottage Avenue

Sears Roebuck and Co. various store locations

Advertisement

Two Queen Anne style train station houses at LaSalle and Van Buren, constructed in 1897

A stretch of buildings in the 400 block of South Clark in the Loop that was home of the city's original Chinatown.
Standing before a federal judge Wednesday, Chicago police Officer Aldo Brown said he was frazzled from years of patrolling a violence-plagued South Side neighborhood when he made a "split-second decision" in 2012 that he wishes he could change.

As security cameras rolled inside a convenience store in the South Shore neighborhood, Brown, a burly veteran tactical officer, punched a man in the face, then continued to strike and kick him after he was brought down to the floor and handcuffed. Brown said he had seen a handgun sticking out of the Jecque Howard's back pocket, but the video appeared to show otherwise.

Advertisement

"I was under tremendous stress because of all the killing," a tearful Brown said. "I'm not trying to hide from what I did. ... I'm not a bad person."

Moments later, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall sentenced Brown to two years in federal prison, saying his actions in the store  and his decision to lie about it under oath at trial last fall  eroded public confidence in the Police Department, especially in neighborhoods like South Shore where such trust matters most.

Advertisement

"We cannot have a policing community where it's us versus them," Kendall said. "It's not a sliding scale where if violence increases, constitutional rights decrease."

The prison sentence  believed to be the first in seven years for a Chicago cop for an on-duty incident of excessive force  comes amid continued fallout for the Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the release months ago of a video showing Laquan McDonald, a black teen, being shot 16 times by a white officer.

Chicago police officers rarely have been charged with excessive force on the job  and usually only when video backs up a victim's version of events, records show. The last Chicago cop to be given prison for such misconduct came in 2009, when Officer William Cozzi was sentenced to 40 months in prison for the videotaped beating of a combative hospital patient shackled to a wheelchair.

After Wednesday's sentencing, Brown's attorney, Daniel Herbert, told reporters he planned to appeal. Citing the city's startlingly high homicide statistics so far in 2016, Herbert said cases like Brown's have cast a pall on proactive policing and emboldened criminals.

"Today it was justice for the criminals," Herbert said in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. "The message that we have now sent out is that there is no reason, there is no incentive for a police officer ever to do proactive work again going forward."

Brown was convicted of a single count of using excessive force after a weeklong trial in October, a month before the release of police dash-cam video of 17-year-old McDonald's killing led to murder charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke as well as a U.S. Justice Department probe into use of force by the Police Department. The same jury acquitted Brown of two counts of filing false police reports.

Flanked by family and his attorneys, Chicago police Officer Aldo Brown leaves court after sentencing March 2, 2016, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago. Brown was sentenced to two years in prison for beating and kicking a convenience store worker. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

Brown, 39, remains free on bond and must report to prison by June 24. He was put on paid desk duty shortly after the incident and currently is suspended without pay. He faces firing because of the felony conviction.

In arguing for probation, Jennifer Russell, another of Brown's attorneys, said the humiliation of seeing news reports on his case and the constant playing of the beating video was not only punishment enough for Brown but also a staunch deterrent for other cops who might think they can get away with using excessive force.

Advertisement

"Their worst nightmare, rather than getting shot on the job, is to be standing in Aldo Brown's shoes right now," Russell said.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Romero, in arguing for up to a 2 1/2-year prison term, said the impact of Brown's actions on the community and his fellow police officers was enormous.

In addition to Howard's beating, Brown had two excessive force complaints against him sustained in 2011 and 2012, Romero said. He also was accused in a lawsuit of punching a suspect in the face during a search at a gas station. That suit was settled in 2012 for $37,000, records show.

"Police officers should be held to a higher standard," Romero said. "The very system we operate in depends on their trustworthiness and their honesty. The defendant failed in every possible way to live up to that standard."

Acting on a tip in September 2012, Brown, a plainclothes tactical officer in the South Chicago district since 2005, went with his partner, Officer George Stacker, to check out whether drugs were being sold at the Omar Salma convenience store in the 7600 block of South Coles Avenue. The tip also alleged that employees were acting as lookouts for the dealers.

The surveillance footage  which had no audio  showed Brown handcuffing store clerk Howard and several others and searching some customers' pockets. He then walked up and down the store aisles looking for contraband.

Advertisement

When Howard lifted his shirt to show his waistband, the video showed the 6-foot-3, 265-pound Brown punching the much smaller Howard in the face with a quick right hand. After Howard stumbled back into a cooler door, Brown choked him with his left hand and then cocked his right fist and delivered a blow to Howard's ribs, the video showed. Brown then dragged Howard along the floor toward the back of the aisle.

As Howard lay on his back on the floor, Brown hit him a third time in the face, according to the video. He then rolled Howard over and handcuffed him. After finding and removing a loaded .22-caliber handgun from Howard's back pocket, Brown kicked Howard in the side, the video showed.

Howard suffered scratches and bruising but was not seriously injured in the attack, prosecutors said. He later filed a federal lawsuit that the city settled for $100,000.

Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. >

Testifying in his own defense at trial, Brown told jurors he feared for his life after spotting the gun in Howard's pocket before he threw the first punch. But the video showed Brown continued to beat and kick Howard for nearly a minute before he took control of the weapon  a reaction prosecutors said proved Brown had lied about seeing the gun.

In a lengthy and emotional statement Wednesday to the judge, Brown's sister, Annette, complained that her brother was being made a "fall guy" in the fallout over the McDonald shooting and called the charges against him "a disgrace."

Brown was raised in a tightknit family of seven siblings, the sister said. He met his wife, who is also a Chicago police officer, in elementary school, she said.

Advertisement

Standing next to his sister with his hands splayed on a lectern, Brown burst into tears as she talked about his three children, including a 9-year-old daughter with special needs.

"My brother ... is not who the media and the court system is making him out to be," his sister said. "He's not a criminal. He's part of the solution, not part of the problem."

jmeisner@tribpub.com

Twitter @jmetr22b
The number of pedestrians struck and killed by vehicles rose 31 percent in Chicago last year, according to preliminary data issued by the city.

In all, 46 pedestrians died after they were struck by vehicles in 2015, up from 35 fatalities a year earlier, the data compiled by the Chicago Police Department shows.The official 2015 count will be released by the Illinois Department of Transportation later this year; though it's likely the numbers will remain the same.

Advertisement

In January 2015, seven fatalities were logged in Chicago, a number well above the 2010-14 average of two for January of those years. In February 2015, there was one pedestrian fatality. So far this year, there have been two fatalities recorded for the month of January. RedEye requested the number of February fatalities, but the information was not immediately available from police.

Joe Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, said aggressive driving might be what's causing the increase in pedestrian fatalities.

Advertisement

"They're driving faster, more recklessly, playing music and texting, and it's a recipe for disaster," Schwieterman said. "I think this is disturbing news because the public has this perception that we're making progress, but it seems the opposite is the case."

He also noted that rail ridership has increased in the past year, increasing the number of people who are out and about, walking and crossing streets to reach stations. The CTA saw more than 241 million rail passengers in 2015 and a combined 515 million between bus and rail, according to CTA data.

Indeed, more people are opting to walk and bike to get around Chicago. Since 2010, the city has seen a 14 percent increase in people walking to work and 55 percent increase in people biking, according to American Community Survey data provided by the Chicago Department of Transportation. This would mean more pedestrians are on city streets and sidewalks and closer to motor vehicles.

Taking a look at where these fatalities happened is the first thing P.S. Sriraj, the interim executive director of the Urban Transportation Center at University of Illinois at Chicago, would do to better understand why pedestrian fatalities are on the rise. RedEye requested the locations, but police did not get immediately provide the statistics.

"Typically there might be some systemic issues surrounding places that lend themselves to repeated incidents, making them more prone to certain collision types," Sriraj said. "If specific locations are appearing repeatedly, it may point to the intersection geometry or signal cycles themselves."

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Sriraj also mentioned that more people are driving across the country and the total vehicle miles traveled increased last year, leading to an increased risk of pedestrian exposure to vehicles. The cumulative estimate for 2015 was 3,147.8 billion vehicle miles of travel across the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration.

"All traffic fatalities are a cause for concern, and we believe every life lost due to a traffic fatality is one too many," Michael Claffey, director of public affairs for CDOT, wrote in an email; CDOT released the preliminary police data on pedestrian fatalities. "This is why we have set the goal of zero fatalities and we are participating in the recently announced Vision Zero Focus Cities program."

The program's goal is to collaborate with other "Focus Cities" to develop and share best practices aimed at eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries caused by traffic crashes, according to CDOT.

Advertisement

Claffey also said it's important to look at the long-term trend in pedestrian fatalities because that's where a lot of progress is being seen.

Chicago pedestrian fatalities are down 46 percent from 2005 to 2014, and the average number of pedestrians killed annually has gone down 30 percent, from 50 between 2005 and 2009 to 35 between 2010 and 2014.

Other data provided by Chicago Department of Transportation show that 65 percent of pedestrians hit between 2010 and 2014 were within 50 feet of the midpoint of an intersection, and 45 percent of pedestrian fatalities involved a hit-and-run driver.

Pedestrian fatalities in the past 5 years:
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and her husband have loaned her campaign $200,000. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield.

Topspin

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez and her husband have loaned her campaign $200,000 for the stretch run, a sign of how hard-fought the Democratic primary contest has become.

Advertisement

Dr. James Gomez helped finance Alvarez's first campaign eight years ago by loaning a total of $640,000. That year, Alvarez won the Democratic nomination in a field of six candidates vying to succeed retiring prosecutor Richard Devine. Over the years, Alvarez's campaign fund had paid back all but $33,500.

This time out, Alvarez faces two challengers: Kim Foxx, a former prosecutor and onetime chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, and Donna More, a former prosecutor and Illinois Gaming Board lawyer who's now in private practice representing gambling interests.

Advertisement

The Friends for Foxx campaign fund has received contributions of about $1.38 million. Liberal Democratic donor Fred Eychaner has contributed $400,000. Service Employees International Union affiliates have contributed $189,000 in cash and services. Preckwinkle's campaign fund chipped in $50,000.

In addition, billionaire Democratic donor George Soros has poured $220,000 into the Illinois Safety and Justice super political action committee that backs Foxx.

More so far has raised more than $1 million. That includes more than $530,000 out of her own pocket. Late Tuesday, More reported putting in another $200,000 last week.

Alvarez has been raising campaign funds years longer than her two first-time challengers. Over the past 14 months, more than $1.3 million has been contributed or loaned to Alvarez's campaign fund, with hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in recent months from construction trades unions. (Hal Dardick)

What's on tap

*Mayor Rahm Emanuel will join Chicago Shakespeare Theater officials at Navy Pier for an expansion announcement in the morning. In the afternoon, the mayor will join After School Matters to announce an addition.

*Gov. Bruce Rauner will appear at a Big Brothers/Big Sisters event at a Springfield bowling alley, hold a news conference on criminal justice reform at his Capitol office and read to 3rd graders at a school in Taylorville.



*The Illinois House and Senate are in at noon.

*The Cook County Board meets at 11 a.m. Agenda here. Livestream here.

*10th Congressional District Democrats Brad Schneider and Nancy Rotering are scheduled to debate at 7 p.m. on WTTW-Ch. 11's "Chicago Tonight." Winner takes on Republican U.S. Rep. Robert Dold in the fall.

Advertisement

What we're writing

*Cruz can remain on Illinois primary ballot, judge rules.

*City Hall's struggle to close violence-prone nightclub.

*Durbin blasts Abbott's IT layoffs.

*Jahn tower for South Michigan Avenue gets a haircut.

What we're reading

*NYT on Clinton's plan to best Trump.

*Tribune dining critics pick their best-ofs.

Advertisement

*Animals shipped out, layoffs as south suburb struggles financially.

From the notebook

*Forecasting agency questions Rauner math: Gov. Rauner's latest budget proposal relies on roughly $925 million in revenue that "can be described in varying degrees from being unlikely to uncertain," according to a new report by a nonpartisan legislative economic panel.

The analysis by the Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability noted several sources of money Rauner relies on that would require legislative approval, a tall order given his ongoing budget battle with Democrats who control the legislature.

That includes a $200 million sale of the James R. Thompson office building in Chicago, a redistribution of the hotel tax and a $275 million sweep of specialized funds. Rauner's budget also over-estimates how much the state will be reimbursed for Medicaid premiums, according to the report.

Still, the commission estimates the state will have $19 million more to spend than Rauner's budget office assumed, saying the state expects to take in more money in personal income tax receipts. That figure represents a relatively minimal accounting difference, and does little to bridge a roughly $3.5 billion spending gap in Rauner's plan.

Rauner has given lawmakers two choices to fill the hole: work with him on his pro-business, anti-union agenda that could clear the way for him to sign off on a tax increase, or give him the power to make sweeping cuts. So far, Democrats have embraced neither path. (Celeste Bott)

Advertisement

*Rauner vs. the Senate: Illinois Senate Democrats are expected to buck Republican Gov. Rauner on several fronts this week, including a vote planned for Wednesday on an override of the governor's veto of a bill to fund community colleges and scholarships for low-income students. The Senate also is scheduled to hear a labor-backed measure that would prevent a strike or lockout should negotiations with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and other unions reach an impasse, instead sending the matter to binding arbitration.

Rauner once has vetoed that plan, which Democrats tried to override but failed in the House after Speaker Michael Madigan could not keep his majority united. (Celeste Bott)

*Food workers for Raja: Schaumburg businessman Raja Krishnamoorthi got the endorsement of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 881 in his Democratic congressional bid in the northwest and west suburbs.

"Raja is the only candidate in the 8th District race with a working families agenda that offers a significant increase in the minimum wage, equal pay for equal work and guaranteed paid sick leave and maternity leave for workers," the union said in a statement.

Krishnamoorthi is vying for the Democratic nomination along with state Sen. Mike Noland, of Elgin, and Villa Park Village President Deb Bullwinkel for the seat U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth is vacating to run for the U.S. Senate. (Rick Pearson)

Follow the money

*Blair Hull, a wealthy, failed 2004 Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, continues to put money into an independent expenditure campaign fund that's backing Jason Gonzalez in his Democratic primary challenge against Speaker Madigan in a Southwest Side House district. The $170,000 loan reported Tuesday means Hull has now kicked in $320,000 to the Illinois United for Change PAC.

Advertisement

*Track campaign contribution reports in real time with this Tribune Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ILCampaignCash

Beyond Chicago

*Presidential race, Republican side: Trump racks up wins as home-state Cruz gets on the board.

*Presidential race, Democratic side: Sanders has difficult path ahead after Clinton's Super Tuesday wins.

*Obama makes case to GOP senators on Scalia vacancy.

*U.S. captures ISIS operative, ushering in tricky phase.
SPRINGFIELD  Democrats failed to override Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a bill to free up $721 million for community colleges and scholarships for low-income students in the latest political skirmish at the Capitol ahead of the March 15 primary election.

While the Senate easily voted to reject Rauner's veto, the effort came up two votes short in the House, where Democratic Speaker Michael Madigan has previously said he no longer has a working supermajority he can rely on to buck the governor.

Advertisement

Still, the roll call has some political benefits for Madigan, who also is chairman of the state Democratic Party, because he once again got Republicans on the record as voting against higher education funding. That allows his Democratic candidates to send out election-year mailers highlighting their support.

After the vote, Rauner issued a statement chastising lawmakers for wasting time "with a political vote that was never going to pass."

Advertisement

But the matter is far from over, as a Madigan spokesman said late Wednesday that the House would consider an alternative proposal to fund higher education Thursday. It relies in part on dollars from special funds, as well as a provision in Rauner's most recent budget proposal that would allow the state to forgo repaying more than $450 million it borrowed from similar funds to plug a deficit last year.

The measure also funds various programs outside of higher education, including millions for drug and alcohol treatment, autism therapy and homeless prevention programs. Madigan spokesman Steve Brown painted it as a "compromise," but Rauner's office dismissed it as "more phony budgeting" by Democrats.

In vetoing the college bill, Rauner argued that the state does not have enough money to cover the costs and said the comptroller would have to choose between paying for fragile social service programs or higher education. Rauner contends colleges and universities spend too much on administrative costs, and is pushing legislation aimed at curbing those costs, saying that money could be better spent to support higher education.

Sponsoring Rep. Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, said she agreed some changes needed to be made in how schools operate but they could not wait any longer for help.

"This is no feel-good bill," Burke said. "Yes, we have ideas going back and forth, but we don't have an agreement yet.  In absence of any movement to do that, I think we should override this veto and at least get part of this higher education funding going."

Before the House vote, Rauner singled out two House Democrats who previously voted against the measure: Rep. Jack Franks of Marengo and Rep. Scott Drury of Highwood. Rauner said the bill would pass only if they succumbed to pressure from Madigan.

"These members sided with taxpayers the first time around because this is a sham bill and an empty promise to students. We believe these members will do the right thing to ensure taxpayers are not left holding the bag," Rauner said in a statement.

Franks said he changed his mind and voted for the override after it became clear there was no larger budget deal on the horizon.

Advertisement

"If you really believe our higher education is important  this is the only bill we have to vote on," Franks said.

For his part, Drury likened the stopgap spending proposals to a heroin addiction, saying rank-and-file members who vote for piecemeal spending plans are only allowing Rauner and Democrats to keep the larger impasse going by relieving short-term pressures.

"It feels good to be off the heroin," Drury said in explaining his vote against the override. Another Democrat, Rep. Luis Arroyo of Chicago, did not cast a vote.

Under the legislation, $721 million would have gone to run community colleges and pay for low-income scholarships for students. Most schools and four-year universities were able to cover the cost of the scholarships during the fall semester, but many have said they are unable to do so this spring. On average, students who qualify receive about $2,782 a year.

Community colleges and universities have stumbled along without operating dollars since July 1 as Rauner and Democrats remain locked in a budget battle steeped in ideological differences about workers' rights and the cutting of business costs. Bigger schools like the University of Illinois have been more able to weather the storm, but smaller schools like Chicago State University have had to ponder layoffs and get creative in an attempt to finish out this school year.

The measure did not include operating money for four-year universities, but Democrats argued it would have eased some pressure by providing some money to pick up scholarship costs.

Advertisement

Republicans insisted the state's lack of funds means the measure was a false promise, noting various court orders and laws have put Illinois on track to spend billions more than it is taking in this year.

"I have never seen a more tragic case of playing games with young people's lives," said Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon. Righter argued Democrats were following Madigan "like lemmings, right off the cliff."

That prompted a fiery response from Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, who accused Republicans of blindly following Rauner's orders to repeatedly vote against spending bills.

"All we hear from you is 'womp, womp, womp, womp,'" Lightford said. "I don't even know why you come to the Capitol. Why do you even show up?"

cbott@tribpub.com

mcgarcia@tribpub.com
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday suggested that "Star Wars" creator George Lucas has his heart set on building his museum on the lakefront site near Soldier Field that's tied up in court, expressing concern that the legal imbroglio with Friends of the Parks will allow another city to swoop in and steal the project.

Emanuel did not answer directly when asked whether Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson are open to other sites and whether he has asked them to consider another location in the city for the museum in light of the delay. Instead, Emanuel pointed out the steps that already have been taken to pave the way for construction on the contested 17-acre parcel that includes a parking lot.

Advertisement

"I would just say it's only human to have your heart kind of set on something given that a task force made a recommendation, a Park District made changes, the Chicago Bears made changes, the state legislature passed a law, all part of a vision that was set out years, decades ago, of a museum campus," Emanuel said. "This fulfills it, and it not only fulfills that museum campus vision, of taking a parking lot and turning it into open space and a cultural museum, it is in the Chicago tradition of what the Adler family, the Field family and the Shedd family have done."

"And so, look, it's, unlike those efforts, other cities now are competing for their hearts and their resources for a cultural enrichment. We don't stand alone," the mayor added.

Advertisement

Emanuel's comments came as the judge in the Friends of the Parks lawsuit said Wednesday that a trial in the case wouldn't begin until fall at the earliest. If U.S. District Judge John Darrah rules against the city in a motion to begin building while the case continues, that could delay the beginning of construction for a year or longer than the spring 2016 start date museum officials had discussed. And that's assuming the city prevails.

Darrah said that while the city and Park District are now pushing for an accelerated timeline for the legal proceedings, many of the delays since the case was first filed in November 2014 have been caused by their side, especially their resistance to share discovery documents and make people available for depositions.

At an event to announce a Navy Pier theater expansion, Emanuel pointed out that Chicago became the front-runner when officials in San Francisco couldn't close the deal with the filmmaker for a museum to house his collection of artwork and showcase exhibits and films.

Lucas picked Chicago for the museum in 2014 after a national park board rejected a plan to build his museum at a San Francisco site near the Golden Gate Bridge. After Friends of the Parks filed the lawsuit in Chicago, Lucas raised the possibility that he would move the project to Los Angeles.

A spokeswoman for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said Wednesday that the Bay Area is interested in talking with Lucas again if plans in Chicago fizzle.

"Understanding that Mr. Lucas remains focused on Chicago, Mayor Lee continues to believe that the museum and investment belong in San Francisco and the Bay Area and we would welcome the opportunity to work with Mr. Lucas again," spokeswoman Christine Falvey said in a statement.

Oakland also has expressed interest in luring Lucas if the Chicago plan falls apart.

Friends of the Parks says the museum project violates the state's public trust doctrine, will benefit a private party more than the public and will tarnish the lakefront. The group argues that the land selected for the museum site is held in the public trust because it is formerly part of Lake Michigan, and that the land should be protected and preserved for the state's residents.

Advertisement

Darrah ruled Feb. 4 that Friends of the Parks adequately states a claim and that the lawsuit can move forward.

Last week, the city filed a motion asking Darrah to lift an order barring the start of construction before the legal fight is resolved. He has set a hearing on that for April 21.

From the bench at Wednesday's hearing, the judge said starting any work before he makes a decision would be risky. If Friends of the Parks prevails, he said, demolition of any building or restoration of the site to its original condition would be costly.

"These are complex issues, and I can understand the desire to expedite this process, but the consequences of doing this wrong are severe," Darrah said.

A spokesman for the Lucas Museum said museum officials had no comment on Wednesday's developments.

jebyrne@tribpub.com

Advertisement

poconnell@tripub.com
Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday drew unflattering parallels between the leadership styles of presidential candidate Donald Trump and Gov. Bruce Rauner, suggesting both Republicans tend to divide people rather than unite them.

The mayor was reacting to a question from a public radio reporter who said an Illinois delegate for Trump to the Republican National Convention told her there are similarities between the two men. "A Trump delegate said that? He clearly didn't get the talking points," Emanuel said.

Advertisement

"This is the first time at a press conference I'd like to say I'd like to go off the record," Emanuel said with a laugh as a dozen media members surrounded him on a stage after an expansion announcement at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

The mayor's winding, 5 minute, 40 second response indicated an initial reluctance to wade into the politically fraught topic  one that was overcome by his urge to take shots at a governor he has sparred with throughout the past year and a Republican front-runner who may soon be going head to head for the White House against Emanuel ally Hillary Clinton.

Advertisement

"Let me say, let me answer that question with a non-answer but a bigger point. Let me, here's what I will say: If you think Donald Trump  I don't think Bruce Rauner, I'm not going to speak for him, would see that as a compliment," Emanuel said.

"But I will say this: Obviously the delegate must have been seeing something in the sense of this, which is I don't believe in division," Emanuel said. "We have enough challenges. You know my general view, which is just try to find common ground. Our party is going to come together backing Hillary Clinton, who's also not only going to bring our party together but try to bring our country together so that we together face our challenges and seize our future.

"The reason I'm opposed to Donald Trump's candidacy, there's a lot of reasons. One particular is because he is not only dividing the Republican Party, it's exactly how his presidency will be in dividing the United States," the mayor said. "And I won't say but you know, Illinois right now, while it had its divisions before, they have been exacerbated of late. And I would hope that we come together and move forward, and what I say by that, particularly as it relates to education of our children."

Rauner and Democrats who control the Illinois legislature have been locked in a standoff as state government enters its ninth month without a budget. The governor wants pro-business, union-weakening changes in return for a tax increase to bring the state's finances into better balance. Democrats say such an agenda would hurt the middle class.

Amid the stalemate, court orders and laws mean 90 percent or so of money continues to be spent and the pile of unpaid bills is growing.

Emanuel's response marked the second time this week the mayor has been asked about Trump. On Monday, Emanuel slammed Trump for "playing with dark forces" for not strongly disavowing the support of white supremacist leader David Duke on a Sunday news show.

"Donald Trump, from 'The Apprentice' show, that was kind of a faux reality show where you audition for a job. He's now auditioning for the biggest job in America, and it's not just the biggest job in America, the biggest job in the world," Emanuel said. "And over the weekend, whether it was dealing with Mussolini or David Duke, his statements or the lack of clarity around his statements, you know, you sleep in the bed you make. And I think that playing with dark forces comes back to haunt you. And this is not a joke."

jebyrne@tribpub.com

Advertisement

Twitter @_johnbyrne
In this Jan. 8, 2016, file image released by Mexico's federal government, Mexico's most wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, stands for his prison mug shot at the Altiplano maximum security federal prison in Almoloya, Mexico. (AP)

MEXICO CITY  Drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is willing to plead guilty to any charges in the United States if U.S. authorities promise him a short sentence in a medium-security prison, one of his lawyers said Wednesday.

Guzman wants to accelerate the extradition process so he can escape harsh conditions in a Mexican maximum-security prison, where guards will not let his client sleep, lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez said.

Advertisement

Rodriguez said that he and Guzman's family are reviewing options for a U.S. defense attorney.

"We have talked about a proposal ... to plead guilty to the charges in the United States without questioning their veracity," said Rodriguez, who heads Guzman's legal team.

Advertisement

"That in exchange for a reduction in the applicable sentence like others have done in these situations, but also look for a medium-security prison so that he's not in the conditions that he has here," he said, calling the decision "an act of desperation" because Guzman had "reached his limit."

But talk of a possible deal is very premature and shows a lack of understanding of the U.S. judicial process, said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who oversaw the narcotics division at the U.S. attorney's office in Miami.

Weinstein noted that neither the Justice nor the State departments negotiate with fugitives or other wanted people who are not on U.S. soil, so any discussions could take place only following extradition. Even if Guzman were to cooperate with U.S. prosecutors, a judge would have the final say on sentencing while prison authorities would decide where he does his time.

"You can't negotiate with the Bureau of Prisons," Weinstein said. "Of all the governmental entities in the United States, they are the least flexible. Even judges can't tell them what to do with regard to placement."

Moreover, Guzman, who is considered the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, faces charges from not one but seven different U.S. attorneys' offices, in cities including Chicago, New York, Miami and San Diego among others, and authorities have not said which one will get the first crack at him.

So at this point there is no one to negotiate a plea deal. And it's highly unlikely that anyone in the United States would do so before Guzman set foot in a U.S. courtroom.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said Wednesday it does not comment on pending extradition cases. In Washington, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr also declined to comment.

Some Mexican drug suspects have reached plea deals with U.S. authorities in the past, but it is not clear that any have ever been able to negotiate terms on where they will be held.

Advertisement

Guzman's lawyers had previously vowed to fight extradition as long as possible, and Mexican officials said it could take at least a year for the process to work its way through their courts.

But Rodriguez suggested it could be done in two months, presumably if Guzman withdrew the estimated nine appeals his lawyers filed.

However, Rodriguez added, "We won't drop the (legal) defense in Mexico until we have an agreement with the United States."

Officials have acknowledged that guards at the Altilplano prison wake Guzman every four hours for a head count. He escaped the same prison in July and was recaptured in January.

The harsher regime  Guzman also has fewer visits than during his last stint in prison  seems to have broken him.

"I saw a defeated, humiliated man," Rodriguez said.

Advertisement

In February, Rodriguez gave The Associated Press a copy of Guzman's testimony in one of the cases against him. In it, Guzman accused prison authorities of torturing him by constantly waking him up, and said, "I feel like a sleepwalker."

"My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over," he said in the document.

The testimony also sheds light on the relatively permissive visitors' schedule Guzman enjoyed before his escape, now significantly reduced.

Guzman said previously he got an hour-and-a-half every day to talk to his lawyer and an hour outdoors in a prison patio. Every nine days, he was allowed a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit.

National security commissioner Renato Sales, whose responsibilities include overseeing federal prisons, said at a news conference Monday that Guzman's human rights were in no way being violated and pointed out that "El Chapo" has escaped twice from Mexican lockups.

"Shouldn't someone who twice escaped from maximum-security prisons be subject to special security measures?" Sales said. "The common sense answer is yes."

Advertisement

Associated Press
Complete specimen of Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis, which shows some of the best and most well-preserved nerves ever seen in an animal of its era. (Jie Yang/Yunnan University)

Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis wasn't exactly a beautiful animal: The crustacean-like Cambrian creature had a long, segmented body and an unholy number of legs that it used to scuttle across the ocean floor. But scientists are oohing and ahhing over the ugly arthropod anyway, and for good reason. The nervous system of one 520 million-year-old specimen shows some of the best and most well-preserved nerves ever seen in an animal of that era.

According to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the fossil may be the oldest and most detailed example of a central nervous system yet identified, with even individual nerves -- rarely preserved soft tissue -- visible enough to study.

Advertisement

Most fossil specimens are the remains of teeth (the hardest part of the body) or bones. Soft tissues, such as nerves, are much more likely to decay over time. So studying the long evolution of nervous systems can be a daunting prospect.

The fossil described in the new paper, which was found in southern China, is a rare exception.

Advertisement

Researchers from Yunnan University had to take special precautions to maintain the integrity of the delicate system.

"Using a fine needle and a steady hand, they chipped away parts of the rock to reveal the preserved internal features; they only needed a bit of nerve cord sticking out to have a good idea of where to continue excavating in the fossil," study co-author Javier Ortega-Hernandez of the University of Cambridge told The Washington Post in an email. "As usually happens with amazing discoveries, when I first saw the material it took me a bit of time to make sense of what I was looking at. After a little while, however, excitement kicked in after realizing that not only was this an exquisitely preserved nerve cord, but also that it has impossibly thin individual nerves sticking out from it!" he wrote.

(Jie Yang/Yunnan University)

That nerve cord -- analogous to the spinal cord found in modern vertebrates -- ran through its entire body. Bead-like clusters of nerve tissue called ganglia (which act like "mini-brains along the nerve cord," according to Ortega-Hernandez) each controlled a single pair of the animal's many legs.

Scientists have seen animals of similar age with preserved ganglia before, which Ortega-Hernandez believes is the result of the fatty content of that nerve tissue -- some of those chemicals may make it more prone to fossilization than other soft stuff in the body is. But Chengjiangocaris kunmingensis also shows a few dozen delicate, tiny individual nerve fibers sprouting out from the nerve cord and ganglia.

That may be an important clue in the evolutionary mystery.

"By contrast, arthropods of today only have the ganglia, but a very restricted number of the lateral nerves," he said. "The only living group today where scientists have found dozens of individual nerve fibers structured like these are priapulids (penis worms) and onychophorans (velvet worms), which are cousins of arthropods.

"Putting all of this together, the new fossils of C. kunmingensis allow us to recognize that the evolution of the nervous system in living arthropods involved the loss of some of these nerves, and that their presence in the fossil and the velvet worms is a very ancestral feature," Ortega-Hernandez explained.

The researchers will need to find even more of these intact nervous systems if they want to complete the puzzle. But that could prove difficult: After all, the specimen described in the study was a rare bird (erm, rare ancient shrimp-y thing).

Advertisement

"We have to bear in mind that each nerve strand is about 10 times thinner than a human hair," Ortega-Hernandez said, "so being able to recognize this level of neurological detail is simply amazing."

The Washington Post
Scam email awareness Blog to aware internet users of Known Identity theft, scam emails and Advance Fee Frauds. Keep your Identity safe.
With five Super Tuesday wins under his belt and more still possible, Donald Trump brushed off new concerns about a fractured Republican Party and said he was ready to take the fight to Hillary Clinton  if she's even allowed to run.

"Believe me: I am a unifier," Trump told reporters. "We are going to be a much finer party. We're going to be a unified party. We're going to be a much bigger party. Our party is expanding."

Trump opted for a prime-time news conference in an opulent ballroom of the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., instead of a traditional election-night rally.

And over the course of more than 30 minutes, the billionaire GOP front-runner opined on rival Marco Rubio  "He's nasty"  and brushed off the controversy over David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan  "I disavowed! How many times are you supposed to disavow?"

He reiterated his signature pledge to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border: "This is going to be a very serious wall," but insisted he still got along great with Latinos.

And as he has done for months, he railed against policies that he said have boosted foreign economies instead of this country's  vowing to make Apple produce computers and iPhones here  all while insisting he had the temperament to lead the country.

"I'm going to get along with the world," he said.

Trump was introduced by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie but there was not, as had been reported and speculated, an endorsement from Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

Even as Trump insisted he was growing, not fracturing, the party, he was hardly receptive to its leaders.

On House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, he said he was sure they would get along great. "And if I don't, hes going to have to pay a big price," he said.



Ultimately, though, Trump said Republicans would realize he stood the best chance of beating Clinton.

"'Make America great again' is going to be much better than making America whole again," he said, referring to the Democratic front-runner's remarks earlier in the night.
None of them mentions that the 9/11 hijackers came here legally. Nor does anyone seem to recall that in 2011, the head of Customs and Border Protection said, "We have had more cases where people who are suspected of alliances with terrorist organizations, or have had a terrorist suspicion in their background  we see more people crossing over from Canada than we have from Mexico."
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, right, with chief of staff Tasha Cruzat , center, just before delivering her budget addres in October 2015 in Chicago. Cruzat's last day as chief of staff was Wednesday. (Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune)

Hearing last week that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's chief of staff, Tasha Green Cruzat, was resigning got a few of us chattering about the chief of staff job. Cruzat, who is departing to become president of Voices for Illinois Children (certainly no demotion), is Preckwinkle's fourth chief of staff since she took office in December 2010.

What is it about that job that's just so ... well, it'd be worth pondering more but the door is revolving too quickly. Get inside and let me explain.

Advertisement

First was Kurt Summers, then G.A. Finch, then Kim Foxx and, until this month, Cruzat, whose last day was Wednesday. No word yet on who will succeed Cruzat in Preckwinkle's office.

Not to suggest that any chief of staff job is a breeze, whether it's for a city or county official, governor or president. It's a thankless job that takes a certain type, someone who can stand up to the boss without getting in the way of the boss. Someone strong yet willing to take marching orders. Someone willing to work day and night, always on, ready to jump. In short, if this isn't a "burnout" job, what is?

Advertisement

Yet it's also a power position. In Chicago, for instance, some say the mayor's chief of staff is the second-most powerful person in City Hall  though there's certainly another piece to be done about "senior advisers" who wield all sorts of behind-the-scenes influence (Mayor Rahm Emanuel aide David Spielfogel, for one, who just resigned but for the past five years was known as "mini-Rahm" for his close relationship to the mayor).

The mayor, of course, knows a thing or two about being a chief. Yet even Emanuel lasted less than two years as President Barack Obama's chief of staff. That job, reportedly described to Emanuel's successor Bill Daley as the "worst blanking job in America" by former presidential chief of staff James Baker, is so intense that a documentary series called "The President's Gatekeepers" was produced in 2013 that digs into what makes the elite club of chiefs tick. It's streaming on Amazon, if you're curious.

As mayor, Emanuel is running through his own ever-revolving roster of chiefs  his fourth, Eileen Mitchell, took over for Forrest Claypool in July. Claypool barely touched down at City Hall, spending just two months on the chief job between stays at the CTA and his current gig as CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Emanuel's previous chiefs, Lisa Schrader and Theresa Mintle, each stuck around for about two years, which suddenly seems like an eternity.

And although Gov. Bruce Rauner has, so far, stuck with one chief of staff, Mike Zolnierowicz, the governor's mansion hasn't avoided the politics of the changing chiefs. Rauner's wife, Diana, has a chief of staff  a position offered to many first wives over the years. But because Rauner's predecessor, Gov. Pat Quinn, was a bachelor, the spousal chief job had been unnecessary. When it was announced in January 2015 that the new first lady would get a chief of staff, Sara Wojcicki Jimenez, and that Jimenez would earn $100,000, a few eyebrows perked over the prudence of a cost-conscious governor's decision to restore the position. In November, Rauner tapped Jimenez to fill a vacant slot representing the 99th House District in the General Assembly. More eyebrows perked this January, when Rauner hired Emily Bastedo to fill the vacated first lady chief position, also at $100,000, despite a giant budget standoff that's causing service cuts, furloughs and layoffs across the state. Zolnierowicz, or "Mike Z" as he's known, earns about $175,000 a year, which is also about what the top city and county chiefs earn.

Not bad, but whatever the level of government, is being a chief of staff worth the burnout potential? Here's Emanuel's take, from that documentary: "Is it miserable going through it? Are you getting the wind shear, whiplash  can't tell up from down? Yeah! But would you trade it in and not have done it? And I guarantee, to every chief of staff you ask, they will say, 'I would do it again if asked.'"

Lara Weber is a member of the Tribune Editorial Board.

Twitter @lweber
Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool, shown Feb. 29, 2016, hasn't said when the school system will stop picking up 7 percentage points of the 9 percent pension contribution required of teachers. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

I may be getting a 7 percent pay cut by April 1 from Chicago Public Schools. CPS CEO Forrest Claypool is disguising it as an elimination of the school system's pension pickup instead of actually using the term "pay cut." But to a 12-year veteran nowhere near retirement, this is clearly a pay cut. Claypool should call it what it is instead of connecting it to the word "pension," which conjures up so many negative connotations from taxpayers, politicians and private-sector employees that it makes the thinly disguised action by Claypool and the Chicago Board of Education seem reasonable.

My pension is my primary retirement fund just as Social Security is the primary retirement source for workers in the private sector. Currently, the CBOE funds 7 percent of my pension, and I pay 2 percent. This type of setup is not unique to Chicago. According to the Illinois Policy Institute, more than two-thirds of school districts in Illinois pay for portions or all of their teachers' pension contributions. Yet, this year, only Chicago teachers' pension pickups are being threatened with elimination, even though many school districts in Illinois severely underfund teacher pensions.

Advertisement

Pensions are not just a local and statewide problem. According to the National Council on Teacher Quality, 40 states inadequately fund their public school teacher pension systems. Chicago's solutions surrounding this crisis are likely to set the tone for other school districts, regionally and nationally  just as the Chicago Teachers Union strike in 2012 empowered other educators around the state and nation to follow suit.

A 7 percent pay cut will not solve the long-term underfunding of Chicago's public schools, and it will continue to anger teachers who work diligently, with few resources, to support overcrowded classrooms filled with students who struggle academically, socio-emotionally and financially.

Advertisement

In my dozen years with the district, I have worked on the South Side at two neighborhood schools and one selective-enrollment school, all located in impoverished and violent neighborhoods. At each school I have received high ratings and became a major part of the schools' decision-making body. In the neighborhood schools, I overcame classroom management issues early on and pushed my students to read and write despite the struggles of their young lives. I have sat shoulder to shoulder, bleary-eyed by tears, with my colleagues at students' funerals. I have worked with amazing teachers who are committed to helping students climb out of poverty by empowering them through education.

The pay cut disregards our progress and daily efforts with students, which include both instruction and tending to their social and emotional needs with limited resources. It overlooks our recent test performance gains for National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, and ACT, and high school graduation rate improvements. It also goes against Claypool's fight for more state funding for CPS.

The city's $350 million surplus tax-increment financing funds should be used to bypass the $26 million in school budget cuts and to fund 7 percentage points of teachers' pension payments.

Chicago's property taxes are low in comparison to surrounding suburbs, which means the city needs to find money elsewhere when the state will not support our schools or solve the pension problem.

It's time for our political leaders and city government to step up and support CPS students and teachers. Forcing CPS educators to take a 7 percent pay cut by ending the contractually defined pension pickup is unacceptable and a blow to ensuring that students continue to receive top-notch instructors.

Gina Caneva is a teacher-librarian and writing center director at Lindblom Math and Science Academy. She is a national board-certified teacher and Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellowship alum.
The Tribune completes its endorsements today in contested primary races for the Illinois House.

You'll find the candidates' answers to our survey, and all of our endorsements to date, here: elections.chicagotribune.com/candidates/.

Advertisement

74th District: Three Republicans are competing to replace longtime Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Gilson, who is retiring. Wayne Saline of Rio is a farmer, co-owner of a pork production facility and Knox County GOP chairman. Daniel Swanson, retired Army lieutenant colonel, of Alpha, oversees the Henry County Veteran's Assistance Commission. Michael DeSutter of Woodhull is a farmer and owner of DeSutter Farms.

The candidates don't differ much on policy. They all support most or all of Gov. Bruce Rauner's agenda, including making Illinois more business-friendly by reducing property taxes, decreasing government regulation and reducing state debt. DeSutter is an advocate for school choice, having sent his children to both public and private schools. Swanson would streamline services for veterans. We give the nod to Saline, who served on the Knox County Board for 11 years, eight of those as finance committee chairman. He ended the practice of borrowing to meet operational expenses. When he noticed department heads were spending down their budget appropriations by buying new furniture and computers and even handing out bonuses, he cut their budgets. Springfield could use more of that. Saline is endorsed.

Advertisement

76th District: Teamsters truck driver Jerry Lee Long, a Republican from Streator, nearly beat former Rep. Frank Mautino, D-Spring Valley, in the 2014 general election. Mautino won by 337 votes of more than 34,000 cast. Mautino was recently appointed Illinois auditor general, making his former seat a potential pickup for Republicans. Long is running again, along with Jacob Bramel of Marseilles. Bramel, a recent college graduate, is rightly peeved that Republican Party officials tried to get him to drop out of the race. He refused. But Long is still the better choice here. He's a free market conservative who believes in unions  but says some public employee unions "have gotten away from personal responsibility" and demand too much from taxpayers. Long is endorsed.

95th District: The biggest issue in this race isn't policy differences. It's age. Two Republicans are challenging incumbent Rep. Avery Bourne, R-Raymond, who was appointed to the seat in February 2015 at the age of 22. Christopher Hicks of Sawyerville is highly critical of the appointment process that elevated Bourne, calling it "insider politics." Bourne was a campaign volunteer for Rauner and other Republicans. "I saw a young and immature girl put in office who doesn't deserve to be there," Hicks, 29, said. Dennis Scobbie, 62, of Litchfield is a retired teacher and school board member who says life experience is important for good leadership.

Bourne is backed by establishment Republicans. Scobbie is backed by the teachers unions. Hicks is largely running his own campaign.

Bourne favors term limits, redistricting reform, property tax relief and school funding reform, and she has voted for spending cuts and more government transparency and to protect charter schools.

We endorse Bourne, but we also note her inconsistencies on a controversial bill that would have weakened Rauner at the bargaining table with the state's largest employee union. When the bill first reached the House floor, Bourne didn't vote at all. When the House attempted to override Rauner's veto of the bill, she voted "present." When another version of the bill emerged this year, she voted against it (correctly, in our view). Point being: If Bourne is going to shake the criticism that she's not ready for prime time, she needs to start taking tough votes and ignore party "handlers" trying to protect her.

96th District: Two Republicans are running for the nomination in this central Illinois district, which is represented by two-term Democrat Sue Scherer of Decatur. We endorse Gary Pierce of Springfield, a minister and counselor with a master's degree in human services. He says government doesn't need more taxes, it needs to eliminate unnecessary jobs and freeze wages until the debt gets under control. Cynthia Deadrick Wolfer of Macon, a Decatur small business owner, also is on the ballot. She did not participate in our endorsement process.

99th District: Republican Sara Wojcicki Jimenez of Leland Grove was appointed to the seat in November after former Rep. Raymond Poe took a position overseeing the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Jimenez is well-known in Springfield circles. She grew up in town and worked for the ABC local news affiliate, WICS-Ch. 20. She was a spokeswoman for House Republicans, a local park district commissioner and most recently, chief of staff to first lady Diana Rauner. In that role, she served as a liaison with the governor's office, oversaw construction projects and staff at the Executive Mansion, and helped coordinate Mrs. Rauner's schedule.

Sara Wojcicki Jimenez is a Republican candidate for the Illinois House in the 99th District. (HANDOUT)

Jimenez says she is campaigning to stay in the seat on a premise of honesty. That means telling the many state workers who populate the district that the state is broke. "We need someone to be honest about how much money we have," she says, adding that state workers were given a series of false promises about pensions and benefits: "We never really had the money. We never did."

Advertisement

Jimenez says her job, if she's elected to a full term, is to balance the needs of her district against the finances of the state. Jimenez is endorsed over Kent Gray of Leland Grove.

102nd District: Rep. Adam Brown, R-Champaign, announced last year he would not seek a third term. Instead, he's heading back to the family farm. Three strong Republicans are competing for the chance to replace him. Brad Halbrook of Shelbyville owns a fencing company and served in the Illinois House from 2012 to 2015. Now, he wants to go back.

Brad Halbrook is a Republican candidate for the Illinois House in the 102nd District. (Campaign photo)

Randy Peterson of Paris, Edgar County GOP chairman who farms and works in construction, is Brown's choice as a replacement. James Acklin of Ogden is a former school superintendent endorsed by former Gov. Jim Edgar. Peterson is passionate and humble about the chance to serve in the House. His top priorities would be reforming entitlements, such as the Illinois Link Card, which he says is rife with abuse. Too many recipients of Link benefits misuse them, he says, "whether it's in Chicago or southern Illinois." He also wants to cap property taxes.

Peterson is a strong candidate, but we're giving the edge to Halbrook because we've seen him in action. He brought a no-nonsense approach to the Statehouse during his brief time there. He declined to take a lawmaker pension, and he voted to cut spending and reform pensions. He, too, supports limiting property taxes and term limits. Halbrook is endorsed.

109th District: Republican John Curtis of Hidalgo is a former homebuilder, now truck driver, trying to oust hog farmer and incumbent Rep. David Reis, R-Willow Hill, based on a broad theme: Reis doesn't represent the working people of the district. Curtis says Reis has gotten too cozy with Democrats, including co-sponsoring the nomination of Democrat Frank Mautino for auditor general. House Speaker Michael Madigan also co-sponsored Mautino's nomination; Mautino has come under fire for questionable campaign expenses. Curtis describes himself as a constitutional conservative who is "not against unions, but when they become too powerful, just like the government, it's time to cut it down a little bit." Curtis is endorsed.

110th District: The Illinois budget stalemate is a hot topic in this district, home to Eastern Illinois University. The economic engine fueling the community is running on fumes from a lack of state funding. Residents are deeply worried, and incumbent Rep. Reginald "Reggie" Phillips, R-Charleston, has been shoved into a pressure cooker. He and Gov. Rauner are allies, and constituents are blaming Rauner for the budget mess. Phillips stumbled by asking for, and receiving, a $53,000 campaign donation from the governor. Now Phillips says he'll donate it to charity.

Advertisement

Rep. Reginald Reggie Phillips, R-Charleston, is seeking re-election in the 110th District. (HANDOUT)

His Republican opponent is Jonathan Kaye of Toledo, a small business owner, who questions Phillips' character and independence. Kaye is running a grass-roots campaign. He started out as a proponent of most of Rauner's "shake-up" agenda, but he has backtracked on the campaign trail, unsure how to balance the state's deeply flawed finances with the promises that Statehouse politicians have made to organized labor. He wants to protect state workers but recognizes the state is deeply in debt.

When he ran the first time, Phillips vowed to serve only two terms. We'll endorse Phillips  an outspoken fiscal conservative who has supported tough budget cuts  again this time. But we'll also suggest that Kaye, who shows genuine promise and heart, stay in the political arena and firm up his platform.

Tomorrow: Tribune endorsements in contested collar county races.

Follow the Editorial Board on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.
Burger King may have been a bad choice for Aurora's fast-food bandit.

Aurora police on Monday arrested a suspect in a chain of six recent fast-food restaurant robberies after they said he robbed the Burger King near the intersection of Ogden Avenue and Montgomery Avenue, then drove away in a vehicle for which police were already searching.

Advertisement

Cord Greenwall, 27, of the 200 block of Hill Avenue, Aurora, was charged Tuesday with four counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of robbery, all felonies. He was armed with an undisclosed weapon in at least one of the robberies, said DuPage County State's Attorney's Office spokesman Paul Darrah.

Police believe Greenwall single-handedly robbed six Aurora fast-food establishments between Feb. 15 and Monday. The first four robberies - a Papa John's in the 3000 block of East New York Street; a Subway in the 2900 block of Ogden Avenue; a Dunkin' Donuts in the 1200 block of North Eola Road and a Papa John's in the 1200 block of Ogden Avenue  happened over five days ending Feb. 20.

Advertisement

On Feb. 27 police believe he struck again, at a Subway in the 2900 block of Ogden Avenue. His last robbery, at the Burger King in the 2300 block of Ogden Avenue, was two days later, according to the DuPage County State's Attorney's Office.

In each instance, Greenwall entered the restaurant, demanded an employee give him money from a cash register, got the cash and left, according to the State's Attorney's Office.

"It is alleged that within a two-week period, Mr. Greenwall entered six separate businesses intent on robbery," said DuPage County State's Attorney Robert B. Berlin.

No one was hurt during any of the robberies, Berlin said.

A surveillance video still released by police shows a man, allegedly Greenwall, wearing a black hoodie with the hood up over a black stocking mask, black gloves, dark pants or jeans, and black sandals over white socks, standing with one hand in his hoodie pocket at 11:55 p.m. Feb. 15 on a grayish tile floor in the first Papa John's he is charged with robbing.

Several Aurora police divisions including patrol, community policing and investigations shared information and collaborated to identify Greenwall as a suspect, including his vehicle and place of residence, details they say helped lead to his arrest around 4 p.m. Monday.

Greenwall is currently in DuPage County Jail with bond set at $550,000 and a court appearance scheduled for March 15.

Records show Greenwall has an extensive criminal history in DuPage and Kane counties dating back to at least 2004, the year he turned 16.

Advertisement

In December 2005, Greenwall was charged with robbery after he used force to take a purse from an Aurora woman, then rapidly drove away from the scene, according to DuPage County records.

In January 2007, he was charged with retail theft for stealing two PlayStation 2 video games from a Naperville Walmart.

In May 2007, Greenwall was sentenced to 180 days in DuPage County Jail for the 2005 robbery and 90 days for the 2007 video game theft - sentences that ran concurrently - and two years of probation.

In August 2012, Greenwall was charged with burglary in Kane County. The next March, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to make $5,218 restitution, Kane County records show. He was supposed to be discharged from parole this May 7.

hleone@tribpub.com
Michael L. Chaparro has been charged with transporting child pornography over the internet and accessing child pornography that had passed over state lines (McHenry County Sheriff's Office photo)

A McHenry man who has lived in a home that houses a day care facility has been indicted by a federal grand jury on child pornography charges related to similar accusations made by McHenry County authorities in 2014, officials said.

Federal authorities announced Tuesday that Michael L. Chaparro, 27, has been charged with transporting child pornography over the Internet and accessing child pornography that had passed over state lines.

Advertisement

The pornography included "an image of a prepubescent minor and a child under 12," according to authorities.

In December 2014, while living in his grandparents' home in the 45000 block of West Ramble where a state-licensed day care facility operates, Chaparro was arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. McHenry County Detective Michelle Asplund said the federal charges are related to the 2014 investigation and do not involve new images.

Advertisement

Police said the day care operates on a separate floor of the home and confirmed that no children cared for there were involved in the matter. At the time of the first arrest, police said, there were 10 children enrolled in the day care.

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services evaluated the situation and a safety plan was created that involved not allowing Chaparro in the home when children were present, Asplund said.

Asplund said she believes the rules of the plan have been followed and that children still attend the day care.

Chaparro has been out on $50,000 bond since the 2014 arrest. Asplund said he has been splitting his time between staying in the McHenry home and with relatives in a home in Crystal Lake.

According to online state records, the day care facility still is licensed.

If found guilty on the federal charges, Chaparro faces a maximum of 50 years in prison. He also faces a maximum fine of $750,000.

A call to his attorney was not returned Tuesday.

Chaparro is set to be arraigned at 11 a.m. Thursday in a federal courtroom in Rockford before of U.S. Magistrate Iain D. Johnston.

Advertisement

McHenry County assisted with the federal investigation.

Chaparro is set to go to trial in July on the local charges, according to the McHenry County court documents.

Chaparro was arrested in 2014 following an investigation by Illinois attorney general's office and the Pennsylvania state police.

After a subpoena was issued to search a subject's Internet service provider at Chaparro's grandparents' home, authorities identified Chaparro as being the person downloading child pornography. Child pornography was then found on a computer that belonged to Chaparro, according to authorities.

Authorities ask that anyone with information about Chaparro call 815-338-2144.

Amanda Marrazzo is a freelance reporter.
Melvin Moore is a paroled inmate being sued by the Illinois Department of Corrections to recoup the costs of incarceration. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

SPRINGFIELD  Sometimes it seems state lawmakers are determined to keep punishing people even after their debts to society have been paid.

A good case in point is a law that was put on the books back in the 1980s that allows the state to sue inmates and force them to pay for the cost of their incarcerations.

Advertisement

I remember when that law was debated more than a quarter of a century ago.

I thought the measure was mean-spirited and of little value then. And I still do.

Advertisement

In case our lawmakers haven't noticed, our prisons are full of people who were reared in poverty and whose potential for rising out of it is limited by their felony records.

Suing someone for the cost of their incarceration reminds me of the Chinese practice under Mao Zedong of billing family members of an executed prisoner for the cost of the bullet.

It's just plain mean.

Instead of trying to heap more punishment on the newly released, Illinois should do everything it can to help them get back on their feet.

But Illinois doesn't.

For example, under state licensing laws, felons can be barred from more than a hundred vocations.

We should be doing everything we can to help folks get jobs. That's why we should eliminate such barriers.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

And that's how I feel about this nonsense of suing folks for the cost of their incarcerations.

Advertisement

And apparently I'm not the only one who feels that way.

New legislation would repeal the practice of suing prisoners and parolees for the cost of their incarceration.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, and state Sen. Daniel Biss , D-Evanston, have introduced bills in the legislature that would prohibit the Illinois Department of Corrections from suing inmates for the cost of their room and board.

"The odds are stacked against the men and women coming out of our prison system and attempting to put their lives back together. Any barrier to reentry is a path to recidivism. We need to be doing everything in our power to remove those barriers, not add more," Cassidy said.

She couldn't be more right.

Scott Reeder is a veteran statehouse reporter and a journalist with Illinois News Network, a project of the Illinois Policy Institute. He can be reached at sreeder@ilnews.org.
Talk about back to the future: The city of Elgin is exploring hosting a Civil War reenactment camp during the summer of 2017.

"About three years ago at a Public Works open house, I wound up talking to a mechanic, John Braese, who is part of a reenactment group. He told me he thought it would be a good idea for Elgin to host an event," Councilman Terry Gavin said. "Then a month ago I heard Carpentersville is having one this summer, so I thought, why can't we?"

Advertisement

Gavin brought up the idea at last week's City Council meeting during a discussion of the special events Elgin already sponsors. Gavin feels that a Civil War reenactment might be able to draw hundreds and eventually thousands to the city, once the gathering gains traction. It also would be a way to educate people about the War Between the States, he said.

Braese said he went to his first Civil War reenactment 17 years ago.

Advertisement

"I used to work at United Airlines, and frequently talking with a coworker about history led to going to a reenactment in Minooka," Braese said. "As soon as I walked in I felt transported back in time. I was going 100 mph the whole weekend, and by Sunday I was hooked."

Braese wound up joining a reenactment group that portrays the 9th Virginia Cavalry Co. B and McGregor's Battery Horse Artillery, which is based in Roscoe and which has members in this state, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Braese lives in Roscoe and served in the Air Force during the first Gulf War.

The family-oriented group currently has seven women and 28 men in it, Braese said. And he typically spends 12 weekends a year traveling to camps.

"We show there is no glory in the carnage of war," Braese said. "Visitors can learn what happened during battles and how they were fought. Nobody really wins in war."

One of the other things Braese said he enjoys about the taking part in the hobby is the discussions around campfires at night at events.

"There were so many reason this war actually happened," Braese said. "We talk for hours."

Braese noted he once helped bring Lincoln reenactor Max Daniels to the Gail Borden Public Library. Elgin's own history and its convenient location off Interstate 90 would make it an ideal place to host a reenactment, Braese said.

Elgin Area Historical Society Treasurer George Rowe said the group has been involved in discussions about holding a reenactment in the city. Local historian Ken Gough could be a good resource for information about the city during that era, Rowe said.

Advertisement

A militia called the Elgin Continentals formed for the Civil War, Rowe said. Elgin and Kane County residents served in the Illinois 7th Regiment, then six other regiments as the war continued.

Elgin area residents also fought in significant battles including at Fort Henry in Tennessee, Fort Donelson near the Kentucky-Tennessee Border, Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Chickamauga in Georgia near Tennessee, Shiloh in Tennessee, and Vicksburg in Mississippi, Rowe said.

Rowe said that in the museum's collection is a cemetery marker carved by Sgt. Sam Ward, who died at Shiloh.

"Elgin also had a fairly good abolitionist movement. That's a story in itself," Rowe said.

Of holding a Civil War event in Elgin, Rowe said, "If the logistics can be ironed out, we'd be all for a reenactment. It could be a draw for the area and help out local businesses."

Based on events he's attended, Braese estimated more than 200 would participate and 2,000 to 2,500 might visit as spectators. He said it might cost less than $10,000 to stage a reenactment in Elgin. He said participants are all volunteers who sometimes do get reimbursed for some expenses such as horse keeping and ammunition.

Advertisement

Elgin Special Events and Community Engagement Manager Barb Keselica has been working on and off with Braese and others on the idea for a couple years.

"We'll be visiting sites, reviewing locations, seeing what budgets look like and could have something ready to present to the Council during the budget review process in November," Keselica said.

Lords Park and Wing Park have be ruled out as locations because of parking considerations combined with not interrupting typical seasonal activity at both, Keselica said. So, under consideration are Eagle Park  which only has one road in-and-out  as well as the partially developed Jack Cook Regional Park off Route 47 on the far west side and land on the north end of the Elgin Mental Health Center campus now owned by the city.

If a reenactment does happen it probably would be in June next year, Keselica said. The city has no big event that month, and Braese has told Keselica that there are open weekends that month that wouldn't conflict with ongoing Civil War reenactments in the region.

In Carpentersville, members of a group that portrays Stanford's Battery of the Mississippi Light Artillery are planning a reenactment for the first weekend of August.

The group's president, Chuck Wozniak of Lombard, said that the village's events committee would be meeting Tuesday to put finishing touches on what will be a free offering, and Carpentersville will be notifying residents thereafter about the plans.

Advertisement

Wozniak said the Stanford's Battery group also hosts a reenactment in Lombard in July. About 40 reenactors already have committed to attending the new event in Carpentersville, he said, and he anticipates a couple hundred will eventually sign up for it.

Wozniak said the group draws members from far and wide.

"We have one member who lives in Hawaii," Wozniak said. "Another is from Virginia, and he comes to more of the events than some of the guys from here in Illinois and the Midwest."

MDanahey@tribpub.com
Witnesses and Joliet police testified in court Tuesday about walking in on a bloody scene in an apartment building laundry room where a Joliet woman had been stabbed to death in 2014.

The testimony came during the first day of the trial in Will County court of Drumaine McKinley, who is charged with murder in the death of Joslyn Woods, 20. Woods was found dead in Sept. 3, 2014, in a laundry room of an Evergreen Terrace apartment complex building in Joliet.

Advertisement

"There was a lot of blood," said Chanika Hood, who discovered Woods' body that morning. "It was all over."

Authorities have said McKinley connected with Woods on a website to find prostitutes. Neither of the two lived in Evergreen Terrace but agreed to meet in the laundry room of one of the buildings. Video from the building showed Woods arriving in her car about 6:20 a.m. and McKinley arriving on foot a few minutes later.

Advertisement

Hood said she called police after she walked past the laundry room and saw the blood. She noted the laundry rooms in the building are typically locked between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Several Joliet police officers also testified.

When police arrived, according to testimony, they found Woods lying on the ground in her own blood. Police said she was topless. A purse and a white-handled knife lay a few feet away from Woods' body. Bloody footprints led outside the laundry room, down a hall and out a door, police said.

Prosecutors said in opening arguments that McKinley attacked Woods, but defense attorneys argued that it was Woods who first attacked McKinley and he responded in self-defense.

Shortly after his arrest in 2014, authorities said McKinley anonymously called police to tell them his "prostitute girlfriend" had been injured. When police arrested him at his mother's home  five hours after his phone call  he told family members he was "going away for murder" and "would be gone for a long time," authorities said.

On Tuesday, prosecutors also showed jurors a bloody sweatshirt belonging to McKinley. Police recovered the sweatshirt, which had a bloody handprint on it, from a trash can in downtown Joliet shortly after Woods' death. Police also found bloody socks at another trash can, at the Joliet train station.

Testimony continues Wednesday.

Prosecutors expect to show jurors video from the laundry room showing Woods' stabbing.

Advertisement

The trial is expected to last into next week.

Alicia Fabbre is a freelance reporter.
By Alexander Chipman Koty

Over the next decade, China plans to invest up to RMB 1 trillion (US$161 billion) into its domestic semiconductor industry as it seeks to become a global power in the sector. In recent years, Beijing has repeatedly stated that developing its own integrated circuit (IC) industry is of integral national strategic concern. This aligns with government goals to become stronger in areas such as high-tech, research and development, and intellectual property (IP), as outlined in Chinas 13th Five Year Plan covering the years 2016-2020.

Chinas overtures in this sector offer potential rewards for investors and producers of semiconductors, but considerable risks and obstacles as well. The necessity for large scale production and advanced research and development to compete and earn profits in this capital-intensive industry is a considerable hurdle to break through. Additionally, concerns over IP protection and cyber espionage add another layer of risk to the industry. A clear understanding of the industry and the governments incentive structure is therefore essential for success.

Snapshot of Chinas Semiconductor Industry

China is the worlds largest purchaser of semiconductors, accounting for 56.6 percent of global consumption in 2014. Its consumption market grew at an 18.8 percent compound annual growth rate from 2003 to 2014, compared to 6.6 percent worldwide. This is due in large part to its position as the worlds largest exporter of electronics, where the use of semiconductors is essential. However, over 90 percent of the semiconductors that China purchases are imported from foreign countries such as the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. As a result, China spends more money importing semiconductors than it does oil.

In order to shrink its sizable trade deficit, the Chinese government has set forth ambitious goals to reduce its reliance on foreign technology and to eventually become self-sufficient. Through its support of the domestic semiconductor industry, Beijing envisions 40 percent self-sufficiency by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025. This is part of Chinas wider Made in China 2025 Policy, which aims to not only produce goods in China, but to transform the reputation of its products from cheap, unreliable, and unimaginative to precise, high quality, and innovative. Ultimately, the Chinese government aspires for its home-grown companies to be tier-1 industry leaders by 2030.

Government Incentives

The semiconductor industry in China was fundamentally transformed in 2000 as part of the governments 10th Five Year Plan. Semiconductor companies  which were entirely state-owned  were privatized and the sector was classified as an encouraged industry for foreign investment. State Council Rule 18 introduced several tax incentives to spur growth in the industry in June 2000. While the industry grew over the following decade, its development failed to meet lofty government expectations. Foreign companies concerns over Chinas lack of IP protection, combined with government support spread too thinly across multiple industries, contributed to the less-than-expected results.

The policies of State Council Rule 18 were revised and built upon in State Council Rule 4, released in February 2011 and valid through 2017. Notable points include:

Continuation of preferential value-added tax for software products;

Business tax exemption for qualified software makers and IC design firms when engaging in software development and testing, information system integration, IC design, consulting, and operation and maintenance;

Two-year exemption and three-year half exemption or five-year exemption and five-year half exemption on enterprise income tax for IC manufacturers who meet particular design and/or investment targets;

Two-year enterprise income tax exemption followed by three-year half exemption for new IC design firms and qualified software enterprises launching in China;

Reduced 15 percent and 25 percent tax rates for IC manufacturers who meet particular design and/or investment targets; and

Preferential enterprise income tax for qualified companies engaging in IC packaging, testing or manufacturing of special materials, and manufacturers of special IC equipment.

The policies found in State Council Rule 4 differ from previous incentives in several ways. Firstly, tax incentives extend to backend testing, assembly, packaging, and specialized material and equipment companies. Secondly, there is greater emphasis on rewarding profit-making firms. By doing so, the government encourages mergers and acquisitions for successful companies to consolidate and grow by purchasing smaller and less profitable ones. Thirdly, there is a clear effort to encourage high-tech research and development. The government offers greater benefits to companies that meet high technological standards, incentivizing domestic innovation and making products more globally competitive.

There is a notable lack of support for discrete semiconductors in favor of more complex ICs as the former sector is seen as low-tech. Finally, Beijing is adopting a more market-based approach by having government investments in the industry managed by private equity firms and overseen by investors rather than run directly by the government itself.

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Partnerships

Mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships have been on the rise globally in an environment of slowing growth and rising costs for semiconductors, and Chinese companies have been particularly aggressive. In 2013, Tsinghua Unigroup, a government-affiliated private equity firm, purchased the Chinese mobile chipmaker Spreadtrum and RDA Microelectronics for a combined US $2.7 billion. Intel later bought a 20 percent stake in the two companies for US $1.5 billion, and is poised to invest another US $5.5 billion in manufacturing semiconductors in China. Other chipmakers, such as Qualcomm and NXP, have established joint ventures with Chinese companies, and the former also established a China investment fund.

While China is dependent on foreign companies for its semiconductors, foreign companies are also dependent on China to provide a market. For instance, about half of Qualcomm and NXPs revenue and 20 percent of Intels comes from China. As a result, many foreign companies are sharing technology and forming partnerships with Chinese companies to avoid being left out of the Chinese market. Through partnerships, joint ventures, and mergers and acquisitions, Beijing envisions its domestic companies acquiring the technology and expertise they need to become dominant global players.

This strategy has raised the suspicions of the U.S. government, however. In February 2016, Tsinghua Unisplendour, an affiliate of Tsinghua Unigroup, dropped a US $3.8 billion agreement to buy 15 percent of the American company Western Digital after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opted to investigate the deal. CFIUS has the power to block international deals deemed detrimental to American security interests. This surprised many observers, who did not expect any interference with a minority deal in a relatively low-tech company. Earlier that month, Fairchild Semiconductor, which holds multiple U.S. government contracts, rejected a US $2.46 billion Chinese bid in favor of a lower offer from an American company, likely due to concerns over CFIUS. Similarly, dynamic random access memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology, whose chips are used in U.S. weapons systems, rejected an informal US $23 billion offer from Tsinghua Unigroup on the presumption that it would be blocked by CFIUS due to national security concerns.

These failed deals highlight the difficulties that Chinese companies may experience with foreign governments unwilling to share technology essential for national security, and holding concerns over Chinese cyber espionage, to go along with longstanding skepticism over IP protection in China.

Key Takeaways

The Chinese government appears committed to developing its domestic semiconductor industry, offering significant capital and various tax incentives to IC producers. In the long term, discerning investors may reap the benefits of Beijings support as it strives to become a global power in the industry. Meanwhile, existing producers can continue to see China as an affluent market for its goods, though increasingly at the cost of technology and licensing. However, the capital-intensive nature of the semiconductor industry, its emphasis on costly research and development, and the necessity for increased IP protection, are significant obstacles for China. Combined with the potential for the industry to become highly politicized, there is no guarantee that Beijing will achieve its ambitious goals.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. 

An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2015

Doing Business in China 2015 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the professionals at Dezan Shira & Associates, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Chinese market, but also for companies that already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes.

Selling, Sourcing and E-Commerce in China 2016 (First Edition)

This guide, produced in collaboration with the experts at Dezan Shira & Associates, provides a comprehensive analysis of all these aspects of commerce in China. It discusses how foreign companies can best go about sourcing products from China; how foreign retailers can set up operations on the ground to sell directly to the countrys massive consumer class; and finally details how foreign enterprises can access Chinas lucrative yet ostensibly complex e-commerce market.

China Investment Roadmap: the Automotive Parts Industry

This issue of China Briefing presents a roadmap for investing in Chinas automotive industry. We begin by providing an overview of the industry, and then take a comprehensive look at key foreign investment considerations, including investment restrictions, tax incentives and manufacturing requirements. Finally, we discuss foreign investment opportunities in a part of the industry that receives substantial government support: new energy vehicles.
You are here: Home

China will make stable employment a priority as structural reform puts pressure on the job market, said Vice Premier Ma Kai on Tuesday.

Structural reform will put pressure on employment and the government should focus on stable employment along with economic expansion, said Ma at a State Council meeting.

Local governments should support mass entrepreneurship and innovation as they will create jobs. In addition, migrant workers should be encouraged to start their own businesses back in their hometown.

Workers that are made redundant as industrial overcapacity is addressed should be relocated and offered training.

Policymakers have made cutting overcapacity a top priority in supply-side structural reform, which will help the world's second-largest economy achieve sustainable growth.

In the process of capacity cuts, around 1.3 million people in the coal and steel sectors will loose their jobs, according to Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yin Weimin.

China has successfully met its employment targets for the past five years with 64 million jobs added and a low registered unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, a bright spot in China's economic and social development, Ma said.
Zhang Shouzi, a psychiatrist at Beijing Geriatric Hospital, has seen the number of patients seeking treatment for dementia in the hospital increasing over the past few years, resulting in some patients having to wait for weeks to get a bed.

"The situation may get worse in the future with the aging of the population in Beijing," Zhang said. "The incidence of dementia rises with the increase of age, and up to 40 percent of people aged 85 or older may develop the condition."

To cope with the growing number of elderly patients, the hospital is increasing the number of beds, and it opened a new complex in January, according to Yang Yingna, a publicity official of the hospital.

That complex has 400 beds and is equipped with better facilities to meet the increasing demands, she said.

With the rapid aging of the Chinese population, major cities such as Beijing are working out plans on coping with the healthcare needs of the elderly.

By the end of 2014, the number of Chinese aged 60 or older reached 212 million, more than 15 percent of the population, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Some experts predict that it will swell to more than one-third of the population by 2050, when China will become one of the countries most heavily burdened by population aging.

Beijing had 3.2 million permanent residents aged 60 or older by the end of 2014, and their number is predicted to reach 4 million by 2020, according to the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau.

President Xi Jinping said in February that coping with population aging concerns China's overall development and the interests of hundreds of millions of people. He urged the government to improve major policies such as family planning, employment and elder care to cope with the problem.

China will encourage the integration of healthcare and elderly care services to meet the challenges, according to a guideline the State Council, or the Cabinet, released in November.

Preferential treatment

Under that guideline, by 2020 all hospitals and clinics in China will give the elderly preferential treatment in medical care, and all nursing homes will be equipped to give them health and medical services.

The Beijing Commission of Health and Family Planning will require all large public hospitals in the city to set up at least a department for rehabilitative medical services this year, and will choose six public hospitals to become specialized in rehabilitative care for the elderly, Fang Laiying, head of the commission, said on Thursday.

Health authorities will also encourage private investment in care for the elderly and nursing services, and will conduct research into establishing a standard for mid- and long-term elderly care and hospice services in hospitals this year, Fang said.

To cope with population aging and a consequent decline in the productive workforce, China adopted a law at the beginning of the year allowing all couples to have two children.

"Population aging will be an irresistible trend in China in the next several decades," said Yuan Xin, a professor in population studies at Nankai University.

Already in 1999, more than 10 percent of the Chinese population was aged 60 or olderthe benchmark percentageand it has been growing ever since, he said.

China's population aging is growing faster than in most other big countries, and the current social security system for elderly care and healthcare cannot cope with the trend, he said.
A special service center was launched in Beijing on Tuesday offering permanent residence services to foreigners in the Zhongguancun high-tech hub as authorities seek to attract more overseas talent and investment.

The center will offer visa, residential permit and permanent residence services to foreigners who start businesses or are employed in the Zhongguancun National Demonstration Zone.

The center, in the capital's Haidian district, opened as 20 new measures were introduced on Tuesday to ease procedures for bringing in foreign talent.

Wang Xi, deputy head of Beijing Public Security Bureau's Exit-Entry Department, said the center would serve as a pilot program. Experience gained from the program would help to promote similar services throughout the city, or even nationwide.

"Restrictions have been relaxed to enable more foreign talent to come here to start new businesses," he said.

The policy will benefit top foreign professionals, overseas Chinese who graduate from foreign universities and start businesses in Beijing, foreign students in the capital and foreigners who work for entrepreneurial startups in the city, Wang said.

Under the evaluation system drafted by the Beijing Human Resource and Social Security Bureau, expatriates can apply for a permanent residence permit after working in Beijing for four consecutive years. They must have remained in the capital for at least six months each year.

They must also earn at least 500,000 yuan ($76,400) annually and pay at least 100,000 yuan in tax each year.

Wang said the permanent residence requirements were drafted after taking into account the average income level in the capital. "The evaluation system also includes market factors," he said.

On Tuesday, the center's service window attracted a number of foreigners making permanent residence and visa inquiries.

It also received four applications for permanent residence from foreigners, according to a staff member at the center who asked not to be identified.

Huang Ying, a United States citizen and vice-president of the Cloud and Intelligent Computing Department at Lenovo Research & Technology, was the first expatriate to apply for permanent residence at the center.

Huang said the application procedure took about one and a half hours and was simpler than he expected.

"Without permanent residence, it takes about 20 work days to apply for a work visa, and the approval process takes about a month. That means you must spend at least two months on the application process," he said.

Huang, a native of Shanghai, went to the United States in 1986 and later became a US citizen.

Andreas Haufe, a German citizen and manager at Beijing Benz Automotive, said he expects the center will help the company solve visa problems for its foreign employees.

"We appreciate the opening of the new center. We have about 250 colleagues who have to renew their visas every year. ... It is a question of time for our HR department to go to different visa offices for this task," he said.
Zhang Qin has been beaten occasionally by her husband since they married in 2012. In his most recent outburst, he broke her nose.

After being discharged from hospital on Monday afternoon, Zhang from Xuanwei City in southwest China's Yunnan Province, went straight to a support center in the provincial capital of Kunming. Living at the shelter will be the first step in breaking the vicious circle of violence.

"At home, I do the housework and look after our child, but still he beats me," said Zhang.

"I am safe here but I am worried about my child, I just hope we can be protected," she said.

The Domestic Violence Law, which took effect on March 1, offers hope for victims of abuse, like Zhang. Among the many measures to protect victims, abusers could be ordered to move out of their homes.

The law will make the public more aware of domestic violence and will act as a deterrent, according to Zhao Ling, deputy chief judge of the family affairs tribunal of Fangshan District People's Court, Beijing.

Zhang Shuang, of Xicheng District People's Court in Beijing, admitted that it is often hard to gather evidence for domestic violence cases and only 10 percent are resolved through the courts.

Huang Liling, a partner of Beijing Zhongmian Law Office, said a lack of witnesses and a reluctance to give evidence in a court of law hindered cases.

Nearly 25 percent of Chinese women have suffered violence in their marriage, according to the All-China Women's Federation (ACWF).

However, only a fraction report abuse. The ACWF only receives around 40,000 complaints a year, more than 88 percent in 2014 involved the abuse of wives.

Domestic violence is considered an embarrassing private matter and remains in the shadows in China. Even when the abuse is reported, it is often shuffled from the police to women's federations to neighborhood committees.

This mindset will take time to change, particularly for rural residents, as many believe that domestic matters should be kept private.

Wang Yuan, a law major from China University of Political Science and Law, even said that she would be reticent to report domestic abuse to the police unless it was putting someone's life at risk.

"The law is more symbolic than real," said Kong Jingnan, who works for China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co. He doubted its "deterrent affect" and said it might help to reduce physical violence, but exacerbate mental abuse.

"However, it is a progress," said Kong. "Police officers are now obliged to respond to reports of domestic violence and it is no longer seen as just a family dispute."

Until this year, there was no specialized law on domestic abuse. References to the matter were included in other laws and regulations such as the Marriage Law, the Law on the Protection of Minors, and the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Women.

Less than two decades ago, physical abuse was not even acceptable as grounds for divorce in China. In 2001 the Marriage Law was amended to explicitly ban domestic violence.

"The law shows that the government is paying more attention to the vulnerable, but it needs further improvement," said Zhang, adding that she hoped that all abusers would be punished, no matter how big or small the physical injuries are.

"Police usually ask us to go to hospital and have the doctors check our injuries. If the injury is slight, however, charges will not be filed," she said.
A court in Zhejiang Province has upheld a decision to impose fines of 78 million yuan (US$12 million) on three Zhejiang companies that worked together to dispose of 26,000 tons of hazardous waste in rivers.

The Hangzhou Intermediate Court said in a statement on Tuesday that it had upheld the ruling of a lower district court on the Second Chemical Plant of Jiande City, the Hong'an Cargo Company and the Rongsheng Chemical Company.

The Second Chemical Plant mainly produces weed-killer glyphosate.

In 2012 to 2013, it asked the Hong'an Cargo Company and the Rongsheng Chemical Company to help pour waste into rivers in Zhejiang provincial capital Hangzhou, the province's Quzhou City and in Jiangxi and Shandong provinces. Neither of the companies was licensed to dispose of dangerous waste, according to the court.

The Zhejiang environmental protection research institute estimates that as much as 80 million yuan (12.3 million U.S. dollars) will be needed to repair the damage to the rivers.

Ten suspects, including heads of the three companies, were sentenced to jail terms ranging from nine years to one year and 10 months, and fined a total of 8.5 million yuan.
Chinese sturgeons are released into the Yangtze River in Yichang in central China's Hubei Province on March 1. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's Ministry of Agriculture has extended an annual fishing ban on the Yangtze River to four months from the usual three.

The ban, which will now end on June 30, covers the spawning season for most of the river's aquatic life. It includes the entire river as well as key tributaries and lakes.

The ban also applies to the Huaihe River, which runs almost parallel between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers.

The move is to better protect fish stocks, said Li Yanliang, director of the ministry's fishery inspection and management office. "The extension marks a new phase for environmental protection along the river as the central government starts intensive efforts to protect the Yangtze," Li said.

The first ban on the lower reaches of the river was in 2002. In 2003, it was approved by the State Council and extended to the whole river basin.

The fishing restriction has helped restore fish stocks and protected the environment, but it has not prevented the broader environment along the Yangtze from degrading.

Cao Wenxuan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the amount of non-farmed fish caught from the Yangtze stands at 100,000 tons a year, a quarter of the figure in the 1950s. Over-fishing by the more than 280,000 fishermen along the Yangtze remains a problem, he said.

The river is a valuable reserve of aquatic bio-diversity, but excessive fishing has brought several species, including the river dolphin, to the brink of extinction.

"There used to be more than 30 billion fry in the 1950s, but now the number is only 100 million," Cao said.

He is advocating an across-the-board ban on fishing in the river.

President Xi Jinping has called for "green development" of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the network of economic hubs covering 11 provinces and municipalities. Xi said no large-scale development would be allowed along the river "for a rather long period to come."

Last week, China announced a plan to improve the water quality of the Yangtze as part of wider measures to balance economic activity and environmental protection.

In the years leading up to 2020, local authorities will work to ensure that more than 75 percent of the water in the Yangtze economic belt meets at least Grade III standard, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, the top economic planning agency.

China classifies water quality into six levels, ranging from level I, which is suitable for drinking after minimal treatment, to level VI, which is severely contaminated.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
Mainland panda experts have been invited to Taiwan to help a mating pair of giant pandas conceive their second cub.

Taipei Zoo residents Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan, which were given as a goodwill gift to Taiwan by the Chinese mainland in 2008, are around 11 years old. They had their first cub, Yuan Zai, on July 6, 2013.

The zoo has been attempting to assist the pair to conceive again since 2015, according to the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP).

Huang Yan, deputy chief engineer with the CCRCGP, one of the three experts sent to Taiwan, said that despite Yuan Yuan entering her fertile period the pair have failed to mate successfully.

"In addition, artificial insemination has been attempted twice," Huang said.

The experts have pinned their hopes on the artificial insemination being successful as Tuan Tuan has high quality sperm and Yuan Yuan is in a good condition, Huang added.

"After measuring Yuan Yuan's hormone levels, we know that she ovulated yesterday, as a result she is very likely to get pregnant," Huang said.

The team will know if she is pregnant by June, according to Huang.

Giant pandas have a low fertility rate because they are sexually inactive. Female pandas can only fall pregnant once a year and their litters are two cubs at most. The gestation period can last from 60 to 120 days.
Young dancers from the New Mexico Chinese School of Arts and Language perform at last year's New Year celebration in Albuquerque. Provided to China Daily

A Belgian friend, who runs a medium-sized chemical company and employs four Chinese nationals, recently said a multinational is not worth its name today if it does not employ Chinese and do business with China. His business instinct also led him to open an account at the Shanghai Stock Exchange two years ago, which, however, is being managed by his 15-year-old son. By doing so, my friend says he is guiding his son to fully understand the Chinese economy because he has to rely on it to earn his living in the future.

The urge to know China and share its prosperity have been rapidly growing among Europeans, Americans, Africans and people in the rest of the world. Many of them send their children to special classes to learn Chinese, study Chinese painting or martial arts; some even send their wards to Chinese universities for higher education.

Concurrently, Chinese communities are growing in major cities across the globe such as London, New York, Paris and Brussels as more Chinese enterprises and investors seek opportunities outside China, and more diplomats and journalists are posted overseas. Amid all this, Chinese expatriates are trying to ensure their children do not lose track of the Chinese language and culture while attending schools in foreign cities.

But this is easier said than done. I have been hunting for a secondary school in London for my son, who will finish his primary school education in Brussels in a few months, because I will soon move to the United Kingdom. But it seems my son cannot attend an English-Chinese school in London, for I couldn't find one. Instead, he can apply to about 10 bilingual schools (with either English or French as a compulsory medium), for he has mainly had French as the medium of instruction in Brussels.

Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation.
 Flash

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has described the currently-holding truce in his country as a glimmer of hope, adding that his troops have refrained from retaliating to the rebels breaches.

In an interview with German TV released on Tuesday, the president said "we will do our part so that the whole thing works," adding that "we have refrained ourselves from retaliating in order to give (a) chance for the agreement to survive."

The cessation of hostilities, which has been in place since the weekend, is still holding in its fourth day Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the president promised "full amnesty" to rebels who gave up their arms, amid reports from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group that Syrian warplanes are dropping leaflets on rebel-held areas, urging the rebels to lay down their arms and embark on a reconciliation with the government.

"That's what we can do, but at the end everything has a limit. It depends on the other side," Assad said, adding that "the terrorists have breached the deal from the first day. We as the Syrian army are refraining from responding in order to give a chance to sustain the agreement."

The cessation of hostilities agreement was reached by Russia and the United States. The Syrian government as well as nearly 100 opposition groups announced their agreement.

But the truce excluded the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, as both have been designated as terrorist organizations by the UN. Endit
 Flash

A group of foreign journalists came under artillery fire in Syria's northern province of Latakia with some of them wounded, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

"The shells were fired from the Turkish border, the area of Dama, near Idlib," the TASS news agency quoted Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

The group consisted of 33 journalists from Bulgaria, Canada, China, Germany, Greece, Russia and the United States, and was organized by the Russian Defense Ministry to visit the Latakia air base in Syria.

Konashenkov said a total of eight artillery shells were fired and they crashed at distances ranging from 150 meters to 400 meters away from the journalists.

Several members of the group, including those from Bulgaria, Canada and China, suffered light bruises, and those hurt received first aid, he added.

The Syrian army has blamed the attack on the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front organization, TASS said.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry said that in the last 24 hours the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Warring Sides in Syria registered 15 violations of the cease-fire agreement.

"Russia's airspace force has carried out no attacks against areas controlled by 'moderate opposition' groups which had joined the peacemaking agreements and have been observing them," the statement said.

The cessation of hostilities, backed by Russia and the United States and agreed by a number of armed groups and the Syrian government, came into effect on Saturday.

The deal excludes the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, both of which are listed by the United Nations as terrorist groups.
 Flash

Iran will hold the second round of the tenth Majlis (parliament) elections in mid-April to choose parliamentarians for the remaining 69 vacant seats, an Iranian Interior Ministry official announced on Tuesday.

In the first round of the elections held on Feb. 26, 221 out of the 290 seats were filled and the fate of 69 others will be decided in the run-off contests with 138 candidates, Pour Ali Motlaq was quoted as saying by state IRIB TV.

According to data available from the local media, the reformists and moderates have gained ground in Iran's Friday vote for Majlis, but none of the heavy weight political groups have been able to seize the majority in the first round.

In the ninth Majlis elections on March 2012, the principlists or the loyalists to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and powerful clerics had won the majority of about 75 percent in the first round of elections.

On Monday, Iran's Interior Ministry announced the end of vote counts on Iran's two recent key elections of the parliament and Assembly of Experts.

The Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said that the turnout, out of about 55 million eligible voters, was around 50 percent in the capital Tehran and some 62 percent across the country.

The turnout in the first round of parliamentary elections in the country in 2012 was more than 64 percent out of some 48 million eligible voters.
 Flash

A UN Security Council vote on sanctions on Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been postponed until Wednesday morning at Russia's request.

The UN Security Council vote on a resolution regarding the nuclear test of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), at the UN headquarters in New York, the United States, on March 7, 2013. [Photo/Xinhua]

Diplomats said on Tuesday that the Council originally planned to vote on the resolution on Tuesday afternoon, but Russia had asked for a procedural 24-hour review of the document.

The vote is now planned for 10 a.m. local time(1500 GMT) on Wednesday.

The United States circulated the draft resolution to the 15-nation Council last week. The resolution aims to impose new sanctions on DPRK to curb the country's nuclear program.

The DPRK conducted its fourth nuclear test in January. It has previously conducted three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, respectively.

Right after the DPRK's first nuclear test, the Security Council adopted a resolution to impose sanctions on the DPRK and set up a sanctions committee.

In response to nuclear tests conducted by the DPRK in 2009 and 2013, the Security Council adopted another three resolutions to strengthen various sanctions on the DPRK, which include an arms embargo, an embargo related to nuclear, ballistic missile, and a ban on the export of luxury goods.
 Flash

The Israeli Air Force began receiving and installing parts of the David's Sling missile defense system, the Israeli Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Israeli Defense Ministry started transferring components of the aerial protection system after it had been examined several times by Israeli and U.S. missile agencies and deemed operational in late December 2015.

"After a series of trials we have conducted the David's Sling aerial defense system... we began delivering major components of the system to the Israeli Air Force," the Defense Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The remaining parts of the system will be provided to the Israeli Air Force in the upcoming weeks, and will "allow Israel to more effectively defend against the wide range of current and future threats," according to the ministry.

The system is made out of radar and control, interception and command systems, and it is aimed at intercepting medium-range rockets and drones.

The system was developed by Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and a U.S. contractor called Raytheon.

Other systems deployed by the Israeli army as measures of defense from missile fire include the Iron Dome anti-missile system, capable of intercepting short to medium range missiles, and the arrow 1, 2 and 3 interceptor missiles.

As the Iron Dome batteries are stationed to answer the threat of rocket attacks emanating from the Gaza Strip enclave, other systems are designated to handle rocket attacks from Lebanon's Hezbollah, and from Iran's proxies in Syria.
 Flash

Artillery fire from the Turkish side has wounded a group of foreign journalists in northern Syria near the Turkish borders on Tuesday, state news agency SANA reported.

A group of 33 foreign journalists from Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, the United States, China, Russia and Canada was targeted by artillery fire during their tour in the recently-captured town of Kansaba, which was the last bastion of the Turkey-backed rebels and fell to the army in mid-January.

Citing a military source, SANA said targeting Kanasaba is a violation of the recently established cessation of hostilities in Syria.

"It's a violation to the ceasefire agreement and another evidence on the involvement of the Turkish side in backing the terrorist groups which are trying to thwart the ceasefire," the military source said, according to SANA.

The source said the attack led to the injury of four journalists, a Russian, Chinese, Bulgarian and Canadian, who were covering the cessation of hostilities in northern Latakia.

The cessation of hostilities, which has been in place since the weekend, is still holding in its fourth day Tuesday.

The cessation of hostilities agreement was reached by Russia and the United States. The Syrian government as well as nearly 100 opposition groups announced their agreement.

But the truce excluded the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front and the Islamic State (IS) group, as both have been designated as terrorist organizations by the UN.
 Flash

Greece may veto EU decisions over refugee crisis at the upcoming EU summit next week unless a fair and effective common plan to address the ongoing refugee crisis is immediately put in motion, Greek government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassilis said on Tuesday in Athens.

Faced with a looming humanitarian crisis, as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agency warns, Athens is considering the positions it will present at the EU summit, Gerovassilis said during a regular press briefing.

"Should we veto any decisions? Obviously it would not be the best option, but we must use whatever diplomatic tool so that Greece will not bear the enormous burden of the crisis alone," the Greek official stressed, according to the Greek national news agency AMNA.

It was not the first time that Greece threatened to veto EU decisions adding pressure for a better management of the refugee crisis, local media in Athens noted.

Greece requests the fair allocation of the refugees, the rapid implementation of the EU relocation program so that unilateral actions are prevented and the disbursement of emergency aid to cope with the challenge, Gerovassilis said.

Athens has submitted a plan to the European Commission requesting 480 million euros in emergency funds to set up shelters for up to 100,000 refugees, the Greek official said.

Currently more than 25,000 people are stranded in Greece over the past ten days due to the tight daily limit Austria and Balkan states imposed on the number of refugees allowed to enter their territories, Gerovassilis said.

The number of people "trapped" in Greece increases each day, as the influx from Turkey through the Aegean Sea remains steady despite the deployment of the first NATO ships in the area on Friday to help with the monitoring of the flows, she added.

The challenge is far beyond Greece's capacity to offer adequate aid. A dozen temporary shelters across the country are fully packed and thousands of refugees, including children, are spending the nights in the open in squares and fields with sparse food and water in freezing cold.

In particular along the Greek border with Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) where almost 9,000 people have gathered the past week waiting to cross over, according to Greek police figures, the situation is "very alarming", European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas acknowledged on Tuesday during a press briefing in Brussels on Tuesday.

"FYROM has the right to protect its borders; however, the pictures at the Greek-FYROM borders are very alarming and show that the solution can only be collective and European," he told AMNA confirming that on Wednesday the College of the Commissioners will put forward a plan to offer emergency financial assistance for humanitarian crises within the EU.

A day after some 500 desperate refugees who have been queuing at the Idomeni border crossing for several days broke through the metal fence clashing with FYROM forces, UNHCR officials also expressed deep concern over the situation.

Despite the fact that only a few dozen people are allowed to enter FYROM to carry on with their journey to central and northern Europe lately, refugees continue to head towards the borderline, while the Greek state and NGOs are struggling to provide as much help as possible.

The rapid build-up of people at the northern borders of the already overstretched Greece risks creating a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) warned in a press release on Tuesday.

"Greece cannot manage this situation alone. It remains absolutely vital therefore that the relocation efforts that Europe agreed to in 2015 are prioritized and implemented. It should concern everyone that despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, states have so far only pledged 1,539 spaces, and only 325 actual relocations have occurred," the UN refugee agency's spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing in Geneva.
 Flash

European Council President Donald Tusk on Tuesday said he would talk with Turkey's leader to boost the cooperation to deal over the migration crisis later this week.

After meeting with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann in Vienna, Tusk said the EU would continue to improve the cooperation with its neighbors with regard to the migration crisis.

"Europe is ready, as it has already demonstrated, to grant substantial financial support to the countries neighboring the war-torn regions," he said in a statement in a press meeting.

Tusk's visit to Vienna came on the heels of meetings of some Western Balkan states, also in Vienna, which led to agreements to coordinate their border controls to prevent the influx of migrants.

Austria has started to cap the number of migrants coming into the country, saying it's not a waiting room for Germany, as most of the migrants are passing through on their way to Germany, and the small country is reaching its intake limit.

The EU has yet to find a common solution to resolve the crisis. However, some EU member states, like Austria, have implemented their own policy to strengthen their border control within the EU's Schengen zone.

Tusk is to visit some Balkan states later this week and then talk with Turkey's political leaders.

"We expect a more intensive engagement from our partners as an absolute pre-condition to avoid a humanitarian disaster. This will be the subject matter of my talks in Turkey this Thursday and Friday," Tusk said.

It seems there is no sign of the end of the migrant influx, as thousands of migrants are still reaching Greece from Turkey by sea, and the EU is trying to cooperate with Turkey to stop the crisis by protecting the external border of EU.

Tusk also noted member states should fully apply the Schengen border code.
 Flash

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that there has been no significant violation of a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria in the last 24 hours.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been appraised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," State Department spokesman John Kirby told a daily press briefing.

"We have seen a notable reduction in violence in Syria, and certainly there has been a reduction, there is no doubt about it," Kirby said. "It's a very fluid environment and we're just going to keep monitoring as closely as we can."

The United States and Russia agreed on a plan for a cessation of hostilities in Syria that has begun on Feb. 27.

The cessation of hostilities was largely envisaged in Munich on Feb. 12 during a meeting of the International Syrian Support Group (ISSG), which is co-chaired by the United States and Russia. The group comprises the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries including China.

Although violence in Syria has been reduced, Kirby said that the U.S. will remain concerned about "continued reports of violations" of the ceasefire.
 Flash

Unknown gunmen on Tuesday abducted a retired officer of the Nigerian State Security Service in the north-central state of Taraba, local police said.

Joseph Kwaji, the state police spokesperson confirmed the abduction of Hosea Danjuma to Xinhua, adding a special police squad has been ordered to rescue him.

Steven Agya, a local government chairman in Kurmi area of the state, said Danjuma was kidnapped around 1:47 a.m. local time on Tuesday by unknown gunmen at his residence in Baisa.

"We have mobilized youths of the area to team up with security agents to comb the entire area so as to rescue him," he added.

The abduction occurred two weeks after the mother of the Deputy Governor of the state, Hajiya Beli Manu, was held for several hours before she was released.

Abduction is not unusual in Nigeria. Since 2006, over 300 foreigners and citizens kidnapped in the country's Niger Delta area have been released after ransoms were paid.
 Flash

The Syrian government is apparently working on luring the rebels into settlements, taking advantage of the recent truce, analysts say.

At first, the cessation of hostilities, which has been in place since the weekend, has excluded the Islamic State (IS) group and the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.

The exclusion came against the backdrop of the UN resolution, which designated the aforementioned groups as terrorists, given the atrocities each of them have committed during the nearly five-year-conflict.

With the IS and Nusra are out of the political settlement picture, the Syrian government and nearly 130 rebel groups have agreed to the cease-fire, which was proposed and agreed upon by Russia and the United States.

Four days into the cessation of hostilities, the truce is largely holding, despite few breaches here and there.

Maher Ihsan, a Syrian political researcher, believes the rebels on ground, which are not linked to either Nusra or IS, have faced several options; either to continue the battles, and in this way they will be put on the same page with the IS and Nusra, or to abide by the plan and be part of any future settlement.

With that in hand, Damascus has made several moves recently to try to lure the committed rebels into embarking on a reconciliations, he said.

Opposition activists said the Syrian warplanes have dropped leaflets on rebel-held areas in several parts of the country, urging the rebels reconcile with the government and kick out the foreign militants.

Also, President Bashar al-Assad promised "full amnesty" to rebels who would give up their arms.

In an interview with ta German TV aired Tuesday, Assad offered a "return to civilian life" to opposition fighters who would abandon their weapons.

"The most important thing for me, legally and constitutionally," he said, was "that you're not allowed, as a citizen, to hold machine guns and hurt people or properties."

"This is the only thing that we ask. We don't ask for anything. As I said, we give them full amnesty," he said.

While describing the on-going truce in his country as a glimmer of hope, the president said his troops have refrained from retaliating to the rebels breaches.

"We will do our part so that the whole thing works," adding that "we have refrained ourselves from retaliating in order to give (a) chance for the agreement to survive,"he noted.

Meanwhile, the president "That's what we can do, but at the end everything has a limit. It depends on the other side," Assad said, adding that "the terrorists have breached the deal from the first day. We as the Syrian army are refraining from responding in order to give a chance to sustain the agreement."

Last month, Assad issued a presidential pardon covering military crimes, and offering amnesty to draft dodgers.

In another sign of the government's desire to entice the rebels, Syria's Minister of National Reconciliation Ali Haidar said in a televised interview on Tuesday that the rebel can lay down their arms and return to their normal lives, or keep their weapons and fight alongside the Syrian army against the IS and Nusra.

Earlier in the day, state news agency SANA said 80 men, involved in the insurgency against the government, turned themselves in to take advantage of the government's offer to clear the records of those who surrender themselves and their weapons and abandon the insurgency.

In the southern province of Daraa, SANA said the authorities in Daraa on Monday cleared the criminal records of as many as 1200 rebels who abandoned their insurgency and turned themselves in.

It said the rebels were from the town of Ibta.

Late last month, the authorities in Daraa appealed to the people who have held arms in Daraa, mainly in Ibta to lay down their weapons in exchange of clearing their records.

While the government's bid to lure the rebels is working on a small scale now, analysts expect such attempts to succeed on a larger scope, as the current truce in the country is seen as a base for the political solution, during which reconciliation between warring side will be an essential one.

Anas Joudeh, a Syrian opposition figure, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the solution in Syria will be based on "no winner, no loser."

He also reads Assad's decree to hold parliamentarian elections in April as a "clear political message to the world that the Syrian state will continue to exist."

SANA said Tuesday that the number of candidates who submitted their applications for the parliamentary elections has reached at 8681 in several Syrian cities since last week.
 Flash

Two suicide bombers attacked an Iraqi army headquarters in Iraq's western province of Anbar, leaving 39 security members killed, including a senior general, a provincial security source said on Tuesday.

The blast occurred when two suicide bombers wearing explosive vests detonated themselves at the headquarters near Haditha Dam, some 200 km northwest of Baghdad, while clashes erupted between the soldiers and other militants from the Islamic State (IS) group, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The attacks killed Brigadier General Ali Aboud, Chief of Staff of Jazeera and Badiyah Operations Command, responsible for the security in Anbar province, and Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Farhan, in addition to 37 soldiers who either killed by the blasts or by the clashes with IS militants, the source said.

Iraqi security forces have been fighting for months to retake control of key cities and towns in Anbar, Iraq's largest province, from IS militants, who previously seized most of Anbar and tried to advance toward Baghdad.
You are here: Home

 Flash

Some 19 militants and two Afghan army soldiers had been killed during military operations in countryside within the past 24 hours, the country's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday morning.

The Afghan army, police and intelligence agency personnel carried out several joint raids in five of the country's 34 provinces against militants' positions, the ministry said in a statement.

"Some five militants were wounded and seven others detained. The joint forces also seized weapons, a car and a motorcycle, bedsides defusing several rounds of roadside bombs and landmines," the statement that provides daily operational updates added.

The Taliban militant group has yet to make comments.

The Taliban-led violence continues in Afghanistan. Afghan security forces have pressed on clearing the militants in restive provinces as they assumed the full security charges from NATO-led troops since Jan. 1, 2015.

The Taliban responds by bombing and armed attacks.

On Tuesday, two civilians were killed and 16 others wounded in two separate rocket attacks in northern Baghlan and eastern Kunar provinces.
 Flash

South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn on Wednesday warned of possible cyber attacks from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), instructing officials to block such attacks in advance.

Hwang visited a center in Seoul for countermeasures to Internet infringement, saying that a close cooperation system should be built between the military, the government and the civilian sector to blockade the DPRK's possible attacks in cyberspace in advance.

The prime minister said that top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had ordered officials to muster up capability for anti-South Korea terrorist attacks, which raised possibility for the DPRK's cyber provocations.

South Korea's spy agency reportedly made mention of Kim's such order without elaborating on where the agency got the information.

Hwang said the DPRK had staged massive cyber attacks against South Korea after conducting nuclear tests, instructing officials to detect such attacks at a right time and recover attacked networks successfully.

He also urged people to update security vaccines on their PCs and smartphones and to refrain from opening suspicious emails or text messages in order to minimize possible cyber attacks from Pyongyang.

His comments came amid rising concerns about DPRK's terror attacks following its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 when the DPRK tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb. On Feb. 7, Pyongyang launch a long-range rocket, which was condemned by outsiders as a test of banned missile technology.
 Flash

New York billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump scored major victories on Super Tuesday, winning at least 7 of 11 Republican primaries.

Trump was projected the winner of Republican races in Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Vermont and Tennessee while Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, two of his major rivals, won three states in total.

The result of the Alaska caucus, with only 28 delegates at stake, is yet to come.

Trump's big wins solidified his status as the GOP front-runner, and left his rivals with increasingly long odds of overtaking him in delegates.

Speaking at a rally in Florida, Trump called himself a "unifier" despite the fact that his blunt and sometimes even incendiary remarks about immigration had so far fractured the Republican party and alienated Latino voters.

"Our party is expanding, and all you have to do is take a look at the primary states where I've won," said Trump. "I think we're going to be more inclusive, more unified and a much bigger party, and I think we're going to win in November."

Meanwhile, Trump's strong showing in five of the six southern states on Super Tuesday delivered a strong blow to Cruz, who had long expected the South to be his firewall.

However, Cruz on Tuesday night looked to drive Rubio out of the race while speaking at a rally in Texas, where he won handily over Trump.

"Tomorrow morning we have a choice," said Cruz. "So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans, conservatives, and for nation."

After former Florida Governor Jeb Bush bowed out of the race after the South Carolina primary, Rubio had been stacking up endorsements overwhelmingly from Republican governors and lawmakers. However, he's only won one primary so far.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won by a landslide all the six states that make up her so-called southern "firewall" on Super Tuesday, dealing a strong blow to her Democratic rival Bernie Sanders.

Clinton also won in Massachusetts, one of Sanders' northern strongholds.

As many as 12 U.S. states and American Samoa took part in Super Tuesday contests this year, as Clinton and Trump, both of whom won three of the four early-voting contests in February, looked poised to cruise to their respective party nominations after their sweeping victories.
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
Sentiment also helped by hopes of economic reform during 'two sessions'

Stocks rallied on Tuesday, a day after the central bank cut the amount of cash that Chinese banks must hold as reserves, and the upcoming "two sessions" raised hopes of economic reform.

A strengthening yuan also overshadowed disappointing manufacturing data.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose by 1.68 percent to close at 2,733.17 points, heading for its biggest advance in a week.

The Shenzhen Component Index increased 2.47 percent, while the startup index ChiNext climbed by 2.91 percent.

Technology, materials and securities shares led the risers.

The daily amount of northbound trading through the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program totaled 757 million yuan ($115.6 million) on Tuesday.

The required reserve ratio dropped by 0.5 percentage point on Tuesday.

"The easing signal from the RRR reduction will help lift market sentiment," said Gao Ting, head of China strategy with UBS Securities Co.

He added, with the approach of the "two sessions"the annual meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference"market focus will shift to policy signals and supply-side reforms, and investor confidence could gradually recover".

Wendy Liu, chief China strategist at Nomura Securities Co, said the upcoming two sessions will strengthen investor confidence that Beijing is taking action on economic reforms.

Xu Lirong, chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Sealand Fund Management Co, called the RRR cut a positive factor for the Chinese stock market, adding that levels are already through their worst and that he expected a 10 to 20 percent rebound in the short term.
An Airbus A330 model on display at the Beijing International Aviation Expo in September 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Airbus SAS expects its new China A330 completion center to deliver a jet per month starting in 2017, rising to two per month in the following two years, the firm's China head said on Tuesday.

Airbus China President Eric Chen was speaking to media in Beijing ahead of a groundbreaking ceremony for the center in Tianjin.

Airbus said it expects China's aviation market, the world's second-largest, to come out relatively unscathed from the country's economic slowdown and provide demand for 5,400 new airplanes over the next 20 years.

The European plane maker is also considering boosting its bets on China and is studying if it should increase the production rate at its A320 assembly line in Tianjin, Chen said.

Airbus set up the A320 final assembly line in 2008, which is located adjacent to the new completion and delivery center for the A330 widebody jet.

Airbus, Tianjin Free Trade Zone Investment Co Ltd and Aviation Industry Corp of China signed an agreement in July to build the center in the northern port city. The center will work on assembled A330 aircraft's cabin decoration, painting, test flights and delivery.

Despite China's economic slowdown, aircraft manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing Co remain buoyant about the long-term demand for air travel in the country.

The number of Chinese leisure travelers going overseas topped 100 million in 2014, official data showed. Foreign travel is tipped to grow another 10 percent this year as the United States, France and Australia ease visa policies.

State-owned carriers Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines and their subsidiaries dominate the Chinese airline market, but they increasingly face stiff competition from the HNA Group subsidiary Hainan Airlines and the budget carrier Spring Airlines.

Aircraft leasing firms owned by Chinese banks and companies are also becoming an important source of airplanes globally.

Collectively, these airlines and leasing firms have placed orders for hundreds of Airbus and Boeing aircraft worth tens of billions of dollars.

Boeing and Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd signed an agreement in September to co-establish a Boeing 737 completion center in China. The center will mark the first time for Boeing to build a production facility outside the US. But no details about its location have been released yet.
Real estate developer Vanke and its US partners will convert the building at 45 Rivington Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side into a luxury condos. [Photo/China Daily]

China Vanke Co Ltd is joining forces with two US real estate investors in a $116 million redevelopment project in New York City.

Vanke Holdings USA, Slate Property Group and Adam America Real Estate will convert a 118-year-old building on Manhattan's Lower East Side into luxury condos, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The former school building at 45 Rivington Street is owned by nursing-care provider Allure Group.

Kai-yan Lee, Vanke Holdings' managing director, said the project fitted the company's three key investment criteria: the macroeconomic conditions are good, the project is doable, and the project partners have long-term collaboration potential.

In addition, the Lower East Side neighborhood has plenty of opportunity for growth and is in a transitional phase, Lee said.

"You see a lot of younger people moving into the neighborhood, generally improving the living conditions with more amenities such as hip restaurants and artisan-type stores," he said.

Furthermore, the project is a renovation upgrade and not a ground-up development deal, so it "makes sense", he said, and aligns "very well" with the company's goals in the US.

"In the US, we always envisioned ourselves as a local player. We make decisions like any other local companies here," he said.

"We came here with a long-term perspective: we want to continue to expand our exposure in the US and see potential in the market for a diversification strategy," Lee said.

China's largest residential developer is already active in the US, with projects in San Francisco and several others in New York.

It is developing a 61-story condo tower at the city's 610 Lexington Avenue and has three other deals with Slate Property and Adam America Real Estate, according to the Journal.
mortgage payments will not be added to the list of tax deductions in China's latest individual income tax reform, a move that might disappoint many people with mortgages. [Photo/IC]

A heated debate has been going on in the Chinese media about a possible reform of the income tax system this year.

Speculation abounds as to whether the new system will be household-based or individual-based, and whether the threshold can be raised for ordinary wage earners.

But in all likelihood, according to government officials and commentators close to the matter, changes won't be major and may be subject to further reforms. The final version may be subject to minor adjustments before it is implemented, most likely in the second half of the year, according to media reports.

For example, mortgage payments will not be added to the list of tax deductions in China's latest individual income tax reform, a move that might disappoint many people with mortgages.

The much-anticipated individual income tax reform plan, drawn up by the Ministry of Finance, has been presented to the State Council for final approval, according to an official with the ministry who requested anonymity.

The deduction of mortgage payments, which has been hoped for by homeowners and the real estate industry to encourage more home purchases, is absent from the revision this time, the source said.

Beijing-based China Times reported in early February that the draft revision listed education expenses as deductible items.

It also reported that taxation would be based on an individual's gross income, rather than various income streams.

Some commentators shared their views on the possible adjustments.

"Including mortgage payments for deduction is not a hard thing to do, technically. It is also in line with the general direction of the times. I'm not sure why it hasn't been included," said Feng Qiaobin, a professor of public finance at the Chinese Academy of Governance. Regarding the tax threshold, there have been opinions that it should be raised from the present 3,500 yuan ($537) per month in individual income.

Such a threshold has been characterized by some people as "taxing the working poor". Since rich people don't usually make monthly incomes, they have plenty of ways to bypass their tax duties, critics say.

China's average urban per capita disposable income in 2015 was 2,600 yuan per month. But it can be much higher in large cities. In Beijing, it is 4,405 yuan.

Finance Minister Lou Jiwei has repeatedly emphasized that the reform should focus on how to tax an individual's overall income, instead of simply raising the threshold for income tax. Taxation should also consider one's total expenditures.

"If a person earns 5,000 yuan a month, he alone could live a good life. But if he has a child to raise, it would be much tougher," Lou said at a news conference last year, apparently arguing for including family expenses, education costs and mortgage payments as deductible items.
A favorable climate for entrepreneurship has boosted startup activity in China, though the quality of business creation still needs to be improved, according to a study by the National Survey and Research Center at Renmin University of China.

According to the research, which studied startup activities in 21 Chinese cities last year, the number of startup businesses per 100,000 people far surpassed the equivalent figures in the United States.

For instance, the coastal city of Zhuhai in Guangdong province ranked No 1 with 2,822 new businesses created per 100,000 people last year, while in Miami, the top US city, the figure was 247.6.

Still, the comparison doesn't mean China has outperformed the US in entrepreneurial activity, said Yuan Wei, director of the center at Renmin University of China, because of the relatively low quality and lack of innovativeness of new businesses in China.

"It showed that the passion to start up their own businesses among college students or current employees has increased sharply in China, not necessarily that China is taking the lead," he said.

"Economic development in the US has passed the era of pursuing growth in the quantity of new business and focuses consistently on the quality of innovation, while China is still progressing."

Inspired by a series of favorable policies and government support, business creation has boomed in China as the country encourages entrepreneurship and innovation as an economic engine.

According to the State Council, the number of newly registered companies grew to 4.4 million in 2015, a 21.6 percent year-on-year increase.

Among all the 2,100 businesses it surveyed, almost a quarter started up last year, more than the combined number of companies created from 2000 to 2009.

Wang Naichen, chief executive of business incubator Alphawolf, which specializes in the IT sector, said lower taxes and simplified approval procedures for new businesses have helped more people like him start chasing their dreams.

In 2015, China cut more than 300 billion yuan ($46.1 billion) in taxes to boost entrepreneurship and innovation, according to the State Administration of Taxation.

With the reform of industrial and commercial registration, 85 percent of approval items were simplified by the end of 2015. People can now get a business license before going through administrative approvals.
The National Reform and Development Commission and the National Energy Administration announced on Tuesday the establishment of China's first electricity trading centers in Beijing and Guangzhou, Guangdong province, in a move to make power supply more efficient.

A joint statement from the two administrators said that the centers will mainly coordinate cross-province power trading and boost the consumption of clean energy.

The two major national power distribution companiesState Grid Corp of China and China Southern Power Gridare based in Beijing and Guangzhou.

The Beijing center will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the State Grid with a registered capital of 50 million yuan ($7.64 million) while China Southern Power Grid will hold a 66.7 percent stake in the Guangzhou trading center.

"The establishment of the power trading centers is part of the reform in China's electricity industry," said Cao Yin, energy analyst of Cinda Securities Co.

"They will integrate many players along the industrial chain, including electricity generation, distribution, sales and consumption. A transparent, standardized and supervised trading platform will help lower the costs and increase efficiency."

The central government issued a regulation on the establishment and operation of power trading centers in November, stressing the independence of these institutions.

Under the law, each center must have an administrative commission composed of power generation, sales and distribution companies and consumers. These administrators will not draw a salary from the center.

The Beijing center, meanwhile, announced its first cross-province trade in which 30 corporate consumers in Shandong province have purchased 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity from 824 power companies in northwestern China. More than 20 percent of the electricity is wind and solar power.

Before the trading centers were put in place, cross-province electricity trading was conducted through negotiation of power companies which designed a plan to roughly guide the volume of the trading.

Now the trading can be standardized, better regulated and put under specific and transparent contracts, said Cao. Moreover, the trading is more flexible and in tune with the demand and supply.

Yunnan and Guizhou provinces are also running pilot programs to pave the way for power trading centers.

"Electricity wears out as the distance grows. So the trade in shorter distance is more cost-efficient. In the future, trading centers in other provinces will appear," said Cao.
PARIS - China's "Belt and Road" project has mirrored the Asian country as one of the word's pioneers who will now "play its unifier and innovator role", said a French politician.

In a written interview with Xinhua, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former Prime Minister, noted the Chinese project to revive old trade routes was "the only major new and global project. The role of leaders is often to develop projects".

"In a meeting last year in Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), Chinese President Xi Jinping told me 'Be sure that in the 21st century, no country can succeed solo'. The whole world has understood this message with over seventy countries having been engaged in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). A community of interest is created," Raffarin said.

In addition, multinational investment projects were being studied in all areas including industrial, financial, agricultural, scientific fields in a way to bolster "more relevant and important multi-national investment", according to the French conservative.

"China claims its rights but assumes its duties for world peace," said the head of foreign affairs and defense committee in the Senate, adding that Paris and Beijing shared a common approach to global governance and win-win solutions to multilateral international cooperation.

"Our destiny is common because the world disorders weaken the nations. By better understanding each other and respecting differences and by analysing all the threats, a common destiny will be formed," Raffarin told Xinhua.

Raffarin praised the "excellent relations" between China and Europe, arguing that China had helped the euro area when it faced financial troubles. "It is in the difficulties that we know the quality," he added.

In a context of global crisis coupled with challenges to shift to more "inclusive" growth, "China will continue to be one of the main engines of the world economy", according to him.
A Chinese investor smiles in front of an electronic display showing prices of shares (red for price rising) at a stock brokerage house in Fuyang city, East China's Anhui province, March 2, 2016.[Photo/IC]

Stocks rallied for a second day on Wednesday after the central bank cut the amount of cash that Chinese banks must hold as reserves.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed at 2,849.68, up 4.3 percent, while the Shenzhen Component Index climbed 4.8 percent to 9,766.37.

Property developers led the gains, with an industry gauge surging 7.1 percent on Wednesday. The country's second-biggest developer Poly Real Estate Group, Cinda Real Estate Co and Shenzhen Worldunion Properties Consultancy Co jumped by the daily limit of 10 percent.

The rally came as the People's Bank of China (PBOC) lowered mortgage down payment requirements to the lowest level ever last month, while the Ministry of Finance also cut the taxes on home transactions in a bid to boost destocking in the property market.

In the latest move, the PBOC's cut on the reserve requirement ratios for banks is expected to release between 600 billion yuan ($91 billion) and 700 billion yuan of liquidity, according to analysts' estimate.

Brokerages rallied on Wednesday, with Industrial Securities, Huatai Securities and Everbright Securities gaining more than 7 percent. GF Securities surged by the daily limit.

The CSI 300 Index added 4.1 percent to 3,051.33 as of closing.

The upcoming annual legislative and political advisory sessions, also known as the "two sessions", will likely to grab more attention when the National People's Congress will sign off a new five-year economic plan.
Wang Guoqing, spokesman for the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, greets the media at a news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. Zou Hong / China Daily

China must prevent its economic growth from falling below 6.5 percent this year, leading economists said on Wednesday.

They were speaking ahead of the opening of the annual meetings of the country's top legislature and political advisory body this week.

Jia Kang, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference National Committee, said the nation's economy is likely to bottom out at about 6.5 percent this year before stabilizing.

This was a level that China must hold to and the economy could not afford growth to fall below 6.5 percent, said Jia, a former researcher at the Ministry of Finance.

China's growth target and details of reform to shore up the economy will be watched closely as the annual meeting of the CPPCC National Committee opens on Thursday.

The country's top legislature, the National People's Congress, will convene on Saturday, as lawmakers gather in Beijing to elaborate on the Government Work Report and reform policies before giving their approval.

It is widely expected that the top leadership will place priority on stable growth with the emphasis on supply-side reform, aimed at trimming overcapacity and lifting tax burdens on companies.

According to observers, lawmakers and political advisers will likely endorse a growth target of 6.5 to 7 percent for this year and a more proactive fiscal policy with a higher deficit and more tax and fee cuts.

"China will have to raise its fiscal deficit above 3 percent of its GDP this year to ensure growth," Jia said.

On Wednesday, Wang Guoqing, spokesman for the annual session of the CPPCC's National Committee, ruled out a hard landing for the economy. "China is capable of maintaining medium to high growth, as the long-term economic fundamentals remain unchanged and there is ample room for the government to maneuver," he said at a news conference in Beijing.

Chang Jian, chief China economist at Barclay's Capital, agreed with Jia's comment in a research note, saying that the top meetings would likely produce an upside surprise on China's fiscal policy.

This would be moderately expansionary, with the general government deficit remaining at about 3.5 percent of GDP for this year and next, she said.

Chang added that China's monetary policy would continue to be characterized as "prudent" but "moderately loose", and further easing could be expected to support the housing market and private consumption.
The environmental protection industry in China has been booming in recent years with government support, but companies still face many problems in developing the industry into a pillar of the economy, an industrial association said on Tuesday.

Over the past decade, the environmental protection industry has recorded 15 percent growth annually, according to a report from the China Environmental Service Industry Association.

By the end of 2015, the industry's overall output was estimated at 4.5 trillion yuan ($680 billion), according to the National Development and Reform Commission.

The industry covers areas such as technologies to control pollution, facilities manufacturing, engineering services and maintaining services for the facilities, the report said.

"China has nurtured the environmental industry as an emerging sector in a bid to better control pollution and improve the environment," Zhao Lijun, head of the association, said on Tuesday.

The industry is developing rapidly, making it one of the hottest spots of the economy, which is evident in the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions at home and abroad, he said.

In 2015, there were 120 mergers and acquisitions with total investment exceeding 40 billion yuan, the report said.

The central government has also pushed the development of the industry by encouraging cooperation between the public and private sectors.

Of the more than 9,000 public-private partnerships, 978 are in the environmental industry with total investment of 526 billion yuan, according to the commission's center on public-private projects.

However, despite rapid growth, the emerging sector has a long way to go to become a pillar of the domestic economy, it added.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/02/2016 page3)
Wang Guoqing, new spokesman of China's top meeting of political advisors. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

A veteran journalist with long experience in international publicity will debut as the spokesman of China's top meeting of political advisors.

Wang Guoqing, 63, has been appointed the 14th spokesperson for the CPPCC annual session since the first news conference of the "two sessions" was held in 1983.

"Two Sessions" are the annual meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a meeting of political advisors including members of Communist Party of China, non-Communist parties and personages without party affiliation.

Wang graduated in English major from Shanghai International Studies University in the 1970s.

From 1978 to 2000, Wang worked for China Radio International, the State-owned international radio broadcaster, serving as chief correspondent in Washington, and head of the English department successively.

Since 2000, Wang worked in country's top publicity agencies, the State Council Information Office and the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 2013, he became vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Committee of the CPPCC.

As the first major event of the two sessions, the press conference will be under the spotlight of journalists. Some of the more than 3,200 journalists, including 1,000 foreign correspondents, registered for this year's two sessions will attend the news conference.

Wang will brief journalists on this year's CPPCC session and take questions at the event.

He admitted that being spokesman of CPPCC is "no easy job".

CPPCC members are from all walks of life and ethnic groups, the nine special committees under the CPPCC National Committee cover different areas including politics, culture and economics, which means the spokesman has to do a lot of preparation to understand each issue, said Wang.

Wang said during his preparation for the press conference, he collected more than 1,400 questions and consulted more than 60 government departments.

The press conference of the CPPCC will be held at the Great Hall of the People on Wednesday afternoon. The CPPCC session will open on Thursday, two days before the start of the NPC session.
Wang Guoqing, the new spokesman of China's top meeting of political advisors, said on Wednesday the South China Sea should not be used as a tool of certain countries to contain China.

He made the remarks at the first press conference of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

"Spokespersons of the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry have repeatedly made clear their stances on the South China Sea issue. The CPPCC fully supports their views," Wang said, when asked about US accusations of China seeking hegemony in East Asia through activities in the South China Sea.

"The South China Sea should be a sea of peace, stability and cooperation. The South China Sea issue should not become an excuse and tool for certain countries to contain China's development."
The Ministry of Environmental Protection has rejected a large chemical project in Guizhou province, with an investment of 17 billion yuan ($2.6 billion) due to the risk of polluting the environment.

The ministry has released results of eight projects, including the construction of an airport, hydropower station and port on its official website.

Among those, the environmental impact assessment of the project producing polyolefin, a chemical material, in Guizhou province was rejected.

The ministry said the project planned to locate in a region adjacent to underground water channels, which could have posed huge risks of contaminating the water.

The project failed to provide solutions to control airborne pollutants including sulfur dioxide, which may have been discharged during the production process, and also had huge risks to pollute the air, the reply said.

In addition, the project did not set up a proper emergency plan to cope with other risks.

The company can apply for an administrative review within two months or file administrative lawsuits within six months, the response said.

The project was proposed by domestic energy giant Sionpec as its key project in Southwestern China, said a report on Wednesday.
CPPCC spokesman denounces Mong Kok riot in HK (chinadailyasia.com) Updated: 2016-03-02 21:14:30

A female journalist raises her hand among other journalists at a press conference for the Fourth Session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 2, 2016. [Photo/IC]

The spokesperson for the national political advisory body on Wednesday denounced mob violence in Hong Kong's Mong Kok that erupted during the Lunar New Year holidays last month.

"We firmly oppose illegal and even violent actions taken by a small number of people to mess things up in Hong Kong and sabotage cooperation and exchanges between the mainland and Hong Kong," the spokesperson for the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Wang Guoqing, said.

About 300 people rioted in the early hours of Feb 9 in Mong Kok, one of Hong Kong's busiest shopping areas, following official attempts to remove illegal hawkers from the busy commercial neighborhood.

The rioters attacked police officers and journalists, smashed police vehicles and committed arson. Nearly 90 police officers as well as four journalists were injured.

Describing Hong Kong as an "open and diversified society", Wang said it was perfectly normal that people with different backgrounds would hold different views toward economic, political and social issues.

"But it is the common aspiration of all Hong Kong residents and in the fundamental interest of the city to seek development, stability and harmony," he said.

Hong Kong's long-term stability and prosperity is an overarching mission of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, and an important part of the Chinese Dream, Wang said.

The "One Country, Two Systems" has been globally recognized, he said, and central authorities will steadfastly uphold its adherence to the principle, and ensure the principle's implementation in Hong Kong.

The countrys development blueprint for 2016 to 2020, Wang said at the annual press conference on Wednesday, focuses to promote the importance of Hong Kong and Macao in the countrys economic development and progress to open up.

He assured the central government will continue to support Hong Kong and Macao to fully use their advantages to participant in the countrys developments.

People and governments of the two regions, he said, should make concerted efforts to cement their existing advantages and explore new competitive edges, in order to meet the countrys needs with the regions unique strengths.

He urged political advisers from Hong Kong and Macao to play their due parts in its implementation.

Though the five-year plan addresses primarily the blueprint of economy and society on the mainland, Wang assured implementation of the plan is a good news for the two SARs.

Xinhua contributed to the story.
"Bird's Nest" national stadium in Beijing was built in 2008. [Photo/CFP]

When my friends at China Daily proposed that I share with its readers some impressions from my experience of living in China, I thought that one day I would like to write a book to record in detail those impressions and rich experiences I gained through living and working in this great land. However, for an article I have to be brief. Therefore, what I would like to share are some of the dimensions that I discovered about China and the Chinese people through my experiences in three different cities.

Beijing

Beijing was my home city in China. I have many fond memories of my life there, that developed to a sense of belonging to the city that makes part of me feel like a "Beijinger". Of all the cities that I had lived in around the world, Beijing was the only one that I kept returning to after leaving it.

From 2005 to 2008, I observed Beijing planning and preparing for the opening of the Olympic Games that took place at 8 pm on Aug 8, 2008. The capital city was transformed in many ways. Ancient sites were restored in a magnificent way. Many old neighborhoods gave way to new residential, shopping, and business areas that were developed with state-of-the-art architecture and landscaping. In my view, ordinary people were the champions of the event: the construction workers who came from the provinces to build the Olympic City and Beijing's new high-risers, the middle school children who hosted students from a school in Egypt to celebrate the spirit of the Olympics, and the senior citizens of the city who I used to meet in the parks. They would practice their English language with me so that they could volunteer as guides to foreign visitors during the Olympics. Needless to say, the Chinese youth who volunteered during the events from the opening until the closing ceremonies of the Olympics were equally champions.

What I realized during this period was that as much as hosting the Olympics was a goal to be achieved by the Chinese people, it was also used as a mean to upgrade Beijing's infrastructure and services. In addition to that, the Olympics were a way to develop the capabilities of the Chinese people and further integrate them with the world. It was also an opportunity to show the world what China and its people have achieved through 30 years of opening up and reform. Furthermore, the Olympics built a momentum that was built upon in subsequent years. The Beijing Olympics proved to be a successful model that was emulated throughout the country, such as when Shanghai hosted the Shanghai Expo in 2010 and when Guangzhou hosted the Asian Games in 2011. These successes show how the Chinese government is developing society by setting goals and challenges to meet. Once these goals have been achieved, they create a model to be followed and built upon in different areas.
A set of ancient chime bells is displayed at the Capital Museum in Beijing on Wednesday. Jiang Dong / China Daily

The identity of the occupant of a prominent ancient royal tomb has been confirmed, archaeologists said in Beijing on Wednesday.

The tomb in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi province, which dates to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), is that of Liu He, the first of four generations to hold the title Marquis Haihun, researchers said.

He was also a dethroned emperor whose reign lasted just 27 days.

Unearthed relics had helped greatly with the identification, said Xin Lixiang, head of an expert panel from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.

Xin said three items had been particularly important.

"A personal jade seal with Liu's full name found inside the inner coffin alongside his remains was the crucial identifier," Xin said. "The discovery of a letter by Liu to the emperor written on a bamboo slip and his name written in ink on gold ingots also reaffirmed the identification."

The identification result was announced at the opening ceremony of an exhibition at the Capital Museum in Beijing, which features more than 400 recently unearthed Marquis Haihun cultural relics.

Xin said the jade seal is not among the items on display, as it is being cleaned. "We also found several extremely delicate lacquer containers alongside Liu He's remains that held jadeware," Xin added.

About 10,000 cultural relics, including lacquerware, bronze and jade artifacts, have been unearthed at the 40,000-square-meter grave site since the archaeological project began in 2011. More than 280 gold ingots and discs as well as 2 million copper coins have been excavated.

The exhibition will run until June 2.

Only 1,000 visitors are allowed each day until March 18. After this, the quota will rise to 5,000. All quotas in the first week have been reserved.

Xu Changqing, director of the Jiangxi Archaeological Research Institution, said the 3,000 well-preserved bamboo slips and nearly 100 wood panels hold important historical clues. "It will take perhaps 10 years to decode the information to gain a clear understanding of the social structure, rituals and folklore at that time," he said.

"We aim to have the relics included in a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site."

Yang Dandan, spokesman for the Capital Museum, said no lacquerware or bamboo slips are being exhibited due to the need to preserve them.

In the Book of Han, an official chronological history compiled in the first century AD, Liu was described as a debauched man with a licentious lifestyle.

"Perhaps this is an exaggeration because history is often written by winners," Xu said. "After failing in political conflicts, it was only natural that Liu would attract a degree of notoriety. Judging from our findings, Liu appears to have been a man with well-cultivated and wide interests."

For example, a rough examination of bronzeware excavated from Liu's tomb showed it was produced in earlier dynasties. Although most of it was collected by his father, the findings possibly indicate that Liu also collected antique relics.

Lei Xiaoxun contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at wangkaihao@chinadaily.com.cn
Armed police dump bags of alkali into water to dissolve the contamination at the Nuomitan waterpower plant in Liucheng county of Liuzhou city, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Jan 27, 2012. [Photo/Xinhua]

IN APRIL 2014, more than 300 children in Dapu town, Central China's Hunan province, were reported to be ill due to lead poisoning, with the finger of blame pointed at local company Meilun Dye and Chemical Plant. Fifty-three families sued the plant, yet the local government "persuaded" most of them to withdraw the case; of the 13 that insisted, only two got a compensation of 26,372 yuan ($4,112), according to a recent ruling. Gmw.cn said on Monday:

Ever since Meilun was identified as the likely cause of the lead poisoning, local officials had been trying to protect the plant. A local official told journalists, "maybe the children put pencils in their mouths". The local court did not accept the case until last March, almost a year after the media reported on the children's plight.

Nor was that the end of local officials' interference and obstruction of the efforts by the victims' families to get compensation. Reports show that every day officials "visited" the families suing Meilun, and sometimes stayed until midnight. They threatened to cancel the minimum living expenses provided to some families and threatened to sack the relatives of others who worked in public institutions.

That is why the majority of the victim families dropped their lawsuits.

What happened in Hunan is only one of many similar incidents nationwide. Whenever environmental pollution scandals happen, local governments always side with the polluters and cast pressure upon the victims. The local judiciaries also side with the polluters, by rejecting lawsuits or creating difficulties for those trying to seek redress through the courts.

Although the top leadership has clearly vowed to introduce rule of law, some local officials show no respect for the law. They don't care anything about justice; all they care about is hiding scandals and preventing people from acknowledging them.

It is time the higher authorities did some investigations of their lower agencies, and introduced effective power regulation mechanisms so that officials pay for their illegal deeds.
Chinese tourists visit Tokyo's Ginza district for shopping in August. Japan is the second-most popular overseas destination. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Since many outbound Chinese tourists are more interested in shopping than traveling, it is fair to call them shopaholics. They spend money on virtually everything, from high-end electronic appliances and luxury goods to daily necessities, such as skin cream and anti-cold medicine.

The large number of Chinese tourists swarming to Japanese stores during Spring Festival to buy electronic toilet seats, equipped with heating and warm water shower functions, have made the headlines, sparking heated debates in the media and drawing the attention of many Chinese netizens.

Some critics even say such outbound Chinese tourists are blind worshippers of foreign products and, therefore, not patriotic. Such emotional finger-pointing is unnecessary and ignores the real issue. The real question is: If Chinese consumers could get viable alternatives in the domestic market, why would they take pains to travel abroad to shop?

Indeed, most products on the shopping lists of outbound Chinese tourists are available in the country's supermarkets, but they are often not of the same quality as those sold in some advanced countries like Japan, the United States and Germany.

Why is there such a demand-supply mismatch? Is it because Chinese producers are incapable of making high-end goods?

Not really. China may still lag behind, say, Japan, Germany or the US when it comes to making some high-grade, cutting-edge products, but it is catching up fast with these countries. In fact, it is already producing most mid-end high-tech products. And believe it or not, the toilet seats sold in Japanese markets which Chinese tourists are so fascinated with are actually made in China.

The demand-supply mismatch is, in reality, caused by the accelerated pace of consumer behavior transformation as a result of rising incomes and the failure of domestic manufacturers to prepare for and embrace that change.
BEIJING -- This Tuesday is a key date in US presidential election, when Democrats and Republicans in 12 states will choose their presidential candidates. Following is information about "Super Tuesday" and likely outcome of the primaries on the day.

"SUPER TUESDAY"

The US presidential election is divided into two parts: primary elections, where representatives of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party choose their presidential candidates, and the national election, where the entire nation votes to choose from the designated candidates.

In primary elections, party representatives of each state vote separately. Since 1988, many states decided to hold their primary voting on the same Tuesday sometime early in the year.

The day is often a deciding point in the primaries, producing a clear favorite to clinch party nomination, thus earning the name "Super Tuesday."

The number of states and the states participating in Super Tuesday vary each election season. The biggest Super Tuesday took place in 2008, when 24 states and US Samoa Islands held their primary voting on the same day.

This year's Super Tuesday encompasses 12 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

Ten states will vote for both parties while Alaska will only hold Republican caucuses and Colorado only Democratic caucuses.

Altogether the Democratic Party will allocate 865 representative votes while the Republican Party will allocate 595 votes.

A Republican candidate needs 1,237 out of 2,472 total votes to bag party nomination, while a Democrat candidate needs 2,382 votes out of 4,763.

Among the voting states, Texas, Georgia and Minnesota are considered the most important ones as they have the highest number of representatives.

LIKELY OUTCOME

Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton are projected to come out as winners of this year's Super Tuesday, as each have won in three out four states that have held primaries and are also enjoying a lead in the polls in the states that will vote.

However, both still face strong contenders within their own party that can pose a challenge to their presidential bids.

On the Democrat side, Bernie Sanders won the support of the young population, who helped him win in New Hampshire.

Sanders is less influential among the black and hispanic communities, making him weaker than Clinton in the Southern states, especially Texas.

Trump must face Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who are both Latino-Americans that were supported by mainstream Republicans.

Cruz won in Iowa and is expected to lead in Texas, a state he represents in Congress. Rubio trails in third.

Other candidates, such as John Kasich and Ben Carson may decide to drop the race if their results are disappointing.
The US House of Representatives has again passed legislation sponsored by Representative Grace Meng that would remove the term "Oriental" along with other dated references to minorities from federal documents.

Meng's bill would strike all references to the offensive and outdated term in Title 42 of the US Code and replace the word with "Asian Americans". It also removes the terms "Negroes", "Indians" and "Eskimos" and replaces them with "African Americans", "Native Americans". and "Alaska Natives". The provision is part of an energy bill being debated by the Senate.

It was the second time that the House approved the legislation to remove the terms from federal law. The House first passed the measure in December as an attachment to the North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act. That bill stalled in Congress and US President Barack Obama threatened to veto it due to unrelated provisions in the legislation. The House then voted on Meng's freestanding bill Monday night.

The bipartisan measure passed with 76 cosponsors, including every member of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC).

"The word 'Oriental' is an insulting and antiquated term and it's way past time for the United States government to stop using it," said Meng, a New York Democrat. "I thank my colleagues in the House for recognizing that, and hope the momentum to get rid of it continues to build. I now urge the Senate to pass this legislation as well. The federal government should not refer to any ethnicity in an insensitive and derogatory manner. This word must go!"

In 2009, Meng  when she was a member of the New York State Legislature  spearheaded legislation into law that eliminated the use of "Oriental' in all official New York State documents.
FBI Director James Comey arrives for a House Judiciary hearing on "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy" on Capitol Hill in Washington March 1, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - FBI Director James Comey told a congressional panel on Tuesday that a final court ruling forcing Apple Inc to give the FBI data from an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters would be "potentially precedential" in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies.

The remarks were a slight change to Comey's statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was "unlikely to be a trailblazer" for setting a precedent for other cases.

Tuesday's testimony from Comey and remarks before the same US House Judiciary Committee by Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the dueling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts.

On Feb 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting.

Sewell and Comey's remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree. Comey said the tool created for Farook's iPhone would not work on other models. But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone.

"This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today," Sewell said.

Committee members seized on Comey's statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device.

"Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?" asked the panel's ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers.
As the debate heats up over a Supreme Court justice nomination, two Asian Pacific American (APA) groups are working to urge President Barack Obama to consider and nominate an APA jurist to "enrich the court by adding a previously unrepresented perspective".

The National Asian Pacific Islander Prosecutors Association (NAPIPA), a San Jose, California-based non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the interests of the API community, and the Silicon Valley Chapter of Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA) have been holding discussions and fundraisers to promote APA judges as a replacement for the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away on Feb 13.

Their list of candidates includes Goodwin Liu, a Chinese-American associate justice on the California Supreme Court; Sri Srinisavan, an Indian-American judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; Denny Chin, a Chinese-American judge on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and Jacqueline Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American judge on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the only female Asian-American Judge in the federal appellate court system.

"With important cases regarding education, discrimination and immigration looming, the importance of having a bench that matches the diversity of the country cannot be overstated," said Paul T Jhin, president of the NAPIPA.

"The diversity of our country is one of our greatest strengths," Jhin wrote in a Feb 28 letter to President Obama. "When the men and women who deliver justice look more like our country, confidence grows in our legal system."

In January 2009, there were only eight APA federal judges in the United States, and today there are 25, including four at the Court of Appeals level. But 25 APA federal judges out of 870 positions is not enough for the NAPIPA.

These numbers still reflect a per-capita underrepresentation of the nation's fastest-growing group, and APIs make up almost 6 percent of the population and only 2 percent of the federal bench, the group said in a statement, adding that no API jurist has ever even been interviewed for the US Supreme Court.

According to a Pew Research Center report, Asians are projected to rise to 14 percent of the population and outnumber Hispanics as the nation's largest immigrant group by 2065.

The number of Asian-American voters in 2012 almost doubled from 2000, and by 2040, that number is expected to double yet again.

Asian Americans' views are often overlooked because there's a lack of voice and action from the group, according to Charlie Huang, a Chinese American and deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County, California.

"In the 227-year-history of the United States, no Asian American has even been interviewed for the position of the Supreme Court Justice," said Huang, who encouraged the entire community to get behind the movement and help promote the message to President Obama and the US Senate to at least consider the possibility of an Asian-American Supreme Court Justice.

"These guys (the four jurists NAPIPA recommended) have worked really hard. They would take us a long way to empowering our community," he said.

To Don Sun, president of the Silicon Valley branch of APAPA, it would be a significant step to have an Asian-American jurist nominated for the Supreme Court, even if he or she may not ultimately be appointed.

"If you don't even think about it, you will never make it," said Sun, who said he has been closely following the case of former New York City police officer Peter Liang.

Tens of thousands of members from the Chinese community held rallies in more than 40 cities on Feb 20 to support the Chinese-American rookie officer whose manslaughter conviction was seen by many as unfair.

"I think the rallies are only a beginning. Chinese Americans should get more involved in the nation's judiciary and, maybe, they can start by not evading jury duty," he said.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com
VIENTIANE - One Chinese national was killed and three others injured in an attack by unidentified militants in Lao Phoukhoun district of Luang Prabang Province Tuesday evening, the Chinese consulate-general in Luang Phrabang confirmed Wednesday.

The attack happened around 7 pm local time which was aimed at a shed of a Chinese-invested company, killing one Chinese worker and injuring three others. The injured were sent to the hospital of Luang Prabang for treatment, the consulate-general said.

Another attack was staged at the same district by the militants around 8 pm local time, said the consulate-general. A passing bus from Laos capital Vientiane to Phongsaly Province was attacked and three Lao nationals were hurt. A pickup was also attacked, leading to injuries of at least two Lao people.

After the attacks, the army of Luang Prabang Province was sent to wipe out the militants.
SEOUL -- The Republic of Korea's navy on Wednesday conducted maritime drills to detect and seize weapons of mass destruction (WMD) carried by ships from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Yonhap news agency reported.

The exercise assumed a situation that a DPRK vessel suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction sails past the ROK's territorial waters off the southern resort island of Jeju.

It marked the first maritime exercise for a navy unit stationed at a Jeju Island port, which was launched late in February.

The ROK's navy mobilized various battleships, including a 7,600-ton Aegis-equipped destroyer, a 4,400-ton destroyer and a 400-ton guided missile patrol gunboat, a 1,200-ton submarine, a P-3 maritime patrol aircraft and a Lynx anti-submarine helicopter.

The inspection exercise for a DPRK vessel came amid the scheduled vote on Wednesday on a new UN Security Council resolution against the DPRK's recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

The new resolution reportedly includes mandatory inspection of cargo leaving and entering the DPRK.

Pyongyang tested what it claimed was its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, and went ahead with the launch of a long-range rocket, which was condemned by outsiders as a test of banned missile technology, on Feb. 7.
The United Nations Security Council votes to approve a resolution that would dramatically tighten existing restrictions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea at the United Nations Headquarters in New York March 2, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

UNITED NATIONS - The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Wednesday that imposes a set of new sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), while calling for a resumption of the long-stalled six-party talks.

The resolution, in response to DPRK's nuclear test on Jan. 6 and a satellite launch on Feb 7, is aimed at curbing the country's ability to develop its nuclear and missile programs.

In a statement, the council condemned in the strongest terms the nuclear test on Jan 6 and the satellite launch on Feb 7, which it said used ballistic missile technology banned by previous UN resolutions. Pyongyang insisted it was a peaceful satellite launch.

The council also reiterated its demands that the DPRK abandon all nuclear weapons and other nuclear programs as well as weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.

Wednesday's resolution includes a ban on all exports from the DPRK of coal, iron, iron ore, gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth metals. It also puts out a ban on supply of all types of aviation fuel, including rocket fuel, to the DPRK.

Moreover, it requires member states to inspect all cargoes going to and from the DPRK. Previous sanction measures only required states to inspect cargo when there was reason to believe that it contained prohibited items.

The resolution imposes an asset freeze on all funds and other economic resources owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the DPRK government or by the Workers' Party of Korea, if found to be associated with the country's nuclear or ballistic missile programs or any other prohibited activities.

Noting "the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in northeast Asia at large," the resolution expresses the council's commitment to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation.

The resolution also calls for the resumption of the six-party talks, a multilateral dialogue mechanism brokered by China in efforts to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. It also involves the United States, Russia and Japan, the DPRK and the Republic of Korea.
Stranded vessel 'hampered navigation safety and infringed upon the nation's sovereignty'

A formation of the Nanhai Fleet of China's Navy finished a three-day patrol of the Nansha islands in the South China Sea. [Photo/Xinhua]

A foreign fishing boat stranded on a Chinese reef in the South China Sea for several months has been towed away, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The vessel ran aground near China's Wufang Reef at the end of last year, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing.

"The owner of the boat failed to tow it away after several attempts and abandoned it, dismantling some major equipment on board."

He said the boat had hampered navigation safety and the maritime environment, so the Ministry of Transport had cleared it from the reef and dealt with it "properly".

"To guarantee the safety of navigation and working conditions, China urged fishing vessels near the site to leave," Hong said, adding that Chinese ships had left the area after the foreign boat was removed.

Although the ministry did not specify the ship's identity, international media said the vessel was from the Philippines.

Observers said Beijing had "foiled a trap" set by Manila to use stranded boats to infringe upon Chinese territory, a tactic that had been used on China's Ren'ai Reef in the late 1990s.

"The Wufang Reef incident reminds me of the Ren'ai Reef case. They are almost the same," said Chen Qinghong, a researcher of South China Sea issues at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

Beijing says Manila deliberately grounded a warship near China's Ren'ai Reef in 1999. The Philippines refused to remove the vessel  despite repeated demands by China  and reinforced the rusting ship's hull and deck. It also sent troops to guard the reef and to occupy it illegally.

"Such actions violated the spirit and provisions of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea by changing the status quo unilaterally," Chen said, adding that the incidents also infringed upon China's sovereignty.

Xu Liping, a senior research fellow of Southeast Asia studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that this time China had learned a lesson from the Ren'ai Reef incident.

It had handled the case in a rational and restrained manner, in line with international law, he said.

Wang Guoqing, spokesman for the annual session of China's top political advisory body, said on Wednesday that the South China Sea should be "a sea of peace, stability and cooperation".

"The South China Sea issue should not become an excuse and tool for certain countries to contain China's development," he told a news briefing.
On March 10, 2016, the PRC government will impose new rules to govern online publishing in China. These are the Online Publishing Service Administration Rules (OPS Rules), promulgated by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) and the Ministry of Industry, Administration and Technology.

Under these new rules, all entities that intend to publish online in China must first obtain an Online Publishing Service Permit from SAPPRFT. The OPS Rules set out the conditions for obtaining the required permit. The Chinese government strictly regulates both traditional print publication and online publication in China and any publication done without the required permit or in violation of the terms of the permit is subject to severe sanctions.

The OPES Rules are primarily directed at controlling Chinese entities that publish online in China and it only indirectly addresses the activities of foreign entities. The reason for this is that foreign entities are already absolutely prohibited from any publication activities in China. I repeat: WFOEs, JVs and foreign entities are absolutely prohibited from carrying out any publication in China. Since this prohibition against foreign publication in China is absolute, the only role of the OPS Rules is to prohibit schemes designed to evade this absolute prohibition.

Foreign commentators have consistently misunderstood the OPS Rules and the consequences that flow from those rules. The purpose of this post is to make clear the current status of foreign publication in China.

1. The new OPS Rules do not change the basic prohibition against publication in China by foreign owned entities. The OPS Rules merely confirm the prohibition that has always existed by making absolutely clear that publishing includes publishing online. Our China lawyers never doubted this.

2. The OPS Rules are primarily focused on regulating control of Chinese entities. The treatment of foreign entities is limited to measures intended to eliminate various schemes that have been used by foreign owned entities to evade application of the prohibition. The basic scheme that foreign entities have used has been to split ownership of the publishing license (held by the Chinese entity) and ownership and control of the technology and infrastructure required to carry out the publishing work (held by the foreign entity). These are the well known schemes of VIE structures and contract partner models. The new rules prohibit these evasive schemes. The OPS rules do this by imposing the following two new requirements:

a. The entity that holds the publishing license must have complete ownership and control of the publishing platform and technology.

b. Any cooperation agreement between a Chinese entity and a foreign entity must first be report to and approved by SAPPRFT.

The effect of these rules will be that VIE/Contracting Partner schemes will be illegal going forward unless it has prior SAPRFT approval. How this will affect existing entities using this sort of structure is not clear. By the term of the new rules, existing online publishing entities must apply for a new license under the terms of the new rules. It is doubtful any existing VIE structures will survive this process.

3. The rules vaguely broaden the definition of online publishing content, making it unclear how far the new rules will extend. However, the intent of the new rules is clear. Any material that would traditionally be published in print form is clearly intended to be included. The unclear area applies only to new forms of publishing developed solely for the Internet and with no traditional print analog. It is also unclear whether the new rules will be applied to publication online that is little more than the standard company brochure and promotional materials. Simply because these publications are far more commercial than informational, we think they will survive.

The main issue with the new rules is the clear prohibition of VIE and contract partner schemes designed to evade the foreign investment requirement. Though the new rules apply only to online publication, we see them as further demonstrating the PRC governments dislike of VIE and contract partner structures everywhere, including other online businesses in China.

For example, the OPS Rules are not directed at online media publication such as film, TV and music because they are limited to the online provision of what traditionally would have been offered in print form. Though similar prohibitions on foreign investment already exist in film, TV and music, the target of these newest rules is The New York Times, not CBS or Metal Blade Records.

It appears VIEs like as Taobao and Tencent will not be directly impacted by these rules. On the other hand, Baidu and Sina may be since they publish news and other content that would traditionally be offered in print by newspaper or magazine. If Baidu and Sina are somehow exempted from the new rule, that would raise international trade rule concerns about the intent of the new program.

The issuance of the OPS Rules shows the PRC government is serious about eliminating the influence of foreign entities in Chinas publishing and online media. In assessing the impacts of these new rules, it is important to note that bulk of Internet businesses in China are foreign owned through VIE structures. If the Chinese regulators are now serious about eliminating the VIE structure, what will that mean?
(Photo : Reuters) A steelworker walks on coils of steel wire at a steel market in Shenyang, Liaoning province, China. The Chinese steel industry is expected to sustain massive layoffs and closures over the next few years.

Advertisement

Five to six million state workers in China could lose their jobs over the next two to three years as Beijing buckles down to address industrial overcapacity and weed out inefficiency amid broader efforts to restructure the country's economy, reliable sources have said.



Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources close to China's leadership told Reuters that the Chinese government has allotted some $23 billion to cover the layoffs in the country's coal and steel sectors alone.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Experts say the overall dollar figure is likely to grow as the government assumes responsibility for the massive debt left behind by inefficient state-owned-enterprises (SOEs) and as workplace closures begin to expand to other industries.



Production Cuts



Chinese minister of human resources and social security Yin Weimin said on Monday that China expects to layoff around 1.8 million workers in its coal and steel industries, but he did not specify a timeframe.



The central government has set aside more than $15 billion to deal directly with the layoffs that are expected over the next two years alone, China's Industry Vice Minister Feng Fei said last week.



"They have proposed this dedicated fund only to pay the workers," Xu Zhongbo, head of Beijing Metal Consulting, told Reuters. "But there is no money for the bad debts, and if the bad debts are too big the banks will have problems and there will be panic."



The sources said some of the companies about to be shut down will have to pay off bank borrowings and the debts they owe other enterprises to avoid crippling the country's state-owned banks with a mountain of non-performing loans.



China's state-owned enterprises provided jobs for 37 million people in 2013, according to Reuters. The sector accounted for 40 percent of the country's industrial output and half of its bank lending that same year.



Connected Issues



Bankers and investors had earlier anticipated painful but necessary reforms to China's SOE sector, which has long been blamed for the country's excess production and mounting debt. Dealing with the unwieldy sector will be the single most important step towards restructuring China's economy, say experts.



"SOE reform, debt, overcapacity and 'zombie companies' are deeply connected issues," Jianguang Shen, an economist at Mizuho Securities Asia in Hong Kong, told the Financial Times recently. "For private companies in overcapacity industries, after several years of losses there's no way to continue. The owner will shut them down or sell them off, but at SOEs, they can keep getting bank loans or government support."



Beijing has already completed plans to cut the country's crude steel production by as much as 150 million tons in the next two years. The government intends to slash 500 million tons of China's excess coal output during the same timeframe.



Yang Weimin, a deputy director at the Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, has said the next two years will be crucial in the national effort to reduce debt and shut down state-run factories that churn out unneeded goods.



"If we miss the window of opportunity, we would suffer severe consequences," Yang told a gathering of national policymakers recently.



Advertisement

TagsChina economy, China Job Cuts, China Economic Reconstruction
(Photo : Getty Images) China has reportedly invaded the disputed Jackson Atoll in the South China Sea, which is being claimed by the Philippines and other neighboring countries.

Advertisement

China has allegedly taken over another disputed atoll in the South China Sea, preventing Filipino fishermen from making a living in the area they consider their traditional fishing grounds, according to Filipino media.



Filipino media sources claim that China has deployed five ships around the disputed Jackson atoll, raising tensions anew among the claimant-countries in the region.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

According to media reports on Wednesday, China began deploying ships to the Quirino Atoll (another name for the Jackson Atoll) after a fishing vessel ran aground in the area.



Many ships



A local mayor in the Spratly islands has reportedly confirmed the presence of the numerous ships in the vacant Jackson atoll. The ships have allegedly been there for more than a month now.



"They have many ships there," the mayor is quoted as saying.



The Armed Forces of the Philippines has said it received reports about the presence of Chinese ships in the area and said it will verify the reports as soon as possible.



Permanent



Philippine military spokesman Brig. General Restituto Padilla said there have been reports about Chinese ships moving around the Spratly islands as well as near the Second Thomas Shoal. He said Filipino authorities still have to verify if these deployments are 'permanent.'



The Second Thomas Shoal has been under the control of the Philippine Navy since 1999 after a ship got stuck there. The Philippine military has allegedly been reinforcing the ship as a way to bolster its claims to the disputed reef.



In 2011, Filipino fishermen were reportedly fired warning shots by China when they were fishing near the Jackson Atoll.



Fishing grounds



A Filipino fisherman claims that he and his fellow fishermen were shooed away by Chinese boats when they went to fish in their traditional fishing grounds near the atoll recently.



"These grey and white Chinese ships, around four of them inside the lagoon, prevented us from entering our traditional fishing ground," he said.



China is claiming a vast portion of the South China Sea which is believed to have large deposits of gas and oil.



Maritime resources



Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines have overlapping claims to the islands and reefs and other maritime resources in the disputed international waterway. Around $5 trillion in maritime trade passes through the waterway every year.



The US has warned China against militarizing the region saying that such a move will have 'serious consequences.'



China has allegedly deployed missile systems and fighter jets to the region reportedly for 'defense purposes.'



Vietnam recently sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese Embassy demanding that Beijing halt its repeated violations of Hanoi's sovereignty to the Woody island in the Paracels in the South China Sea.



Advertisement

TagsJackson Atoll, Spratly group of islands, South China Sea, Chinese ships, china
(Photo : Getty Images) China will increase its defense budget by 20 percent as it plans to spend more on protecting its territories in the East and South China Seas.

Advertisement

China is set to increase its defense budget to cover massive layoffs, military reorganization, and various projects in defense of its territories in the East and South China Seas.



China is reportedly drawing up a much higher budget this year with a 20 percent increase to fund the military's modernization and its defense activities in the disputed international waterway.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

The proposed budget, which would be made public during the annual National People's Congress on Saturday, would be the highest since 2007, according to a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.



20 percent increase



"I think even an increase of 20 percent would be acceptable this time, even though would be the highest since 2007," the government official said.



Some critics had questioned the rationale behind increasing the military budget when President Xi Jinping announced in September last year that 300,000 military personnel would be slashed from the force by 2017. This reduction notwithstanding, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will still be the largest military force in the world at 2 million, the official noted. Therefore, Beijing still has to shell out money for the layoff expenses, modernization costs, and improvement of the Army's efficiency.



Troop reduction



"A big reduction in troops doesn't mean the PLA will cut the budget immediately, as it should allocate a certain proportion of spending for retirement pay or other layoff compensation in the coming two years," the official said.



Reports indicate that the defense budget will also account for the expenses China will incur in maintaining security and defending its reclaimed islands and reefs in the disputed South China Sea



China military spending in 2015 slowed - with only a 10.1 percent increase; the lowest in five years



Defense spending



In the same year, China's defense spending was a mere fraction of what the US spent on its military. The Pentagon spent $597 billion for defense and military resources while China spent $135.5 billion in 2015.



Despite the slowdown in spending, China has managed to build seven islands, ports, three airstrips and other facilities in the disputed South China Sea.



US Pacific Command Commander Harry Harris has warned that China's activities in the South China Sea region are threatening freedom of navigation.



The Admiral said that the US will continue naval and aerial patrols in the South China Sea region despite China's protests.



Advertisement

Tagsdefense budget, military spending, South China Sea, Pacific Command, china
(Photo : Getty Images) A court in Chinas Guangdong province has sentenced 24 people to jail for duping investors of over $1.5 billion.

Advertisement

A court in China's Guangdong Province has sentenced 24 people to jail for duping investors of more than 9.9bn Yuan ($1.5bn), according to state news agency Xinhua.



The ringleader of the group Jiang Hongwei was sentenced to life imprisonment by court, while 23 others were sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment.



Like Us on Facebook

Advertisement

Jiang reportedly spent millions of money on luxury items and goods.



The scam involved raising money by selling membership cards to investors, who were promised with 47 percent returns. Lured by high returns, some 230,000 investors ended up putting their hard earned money into the fraudulent scam.



Some investors claim that they were attracted by company's "novel modes of financial services" and "fancy exhibitions" put by the company.



"Their grand exhibition occupied six halls. After attending it, I felt assured and decided to invest 700,000 Yuan", one investor told Xinhua.



Many elderly investors, who put in all their savings into the scheme, reportedly burst into tears during the trial.



Most victims said that they are still unsure they will get their money back, despite the fact that a court has sent all the culprits behind bars.



In recent months Chinese authorities have been cracking down on financial scams across the country.



Last month, police in China arrested 21 employees of online financial company Ezubao for stealing more than $10 billion from millions of investors. Ding Ning, 34, the founder of Ezubao, was among 21 people arrested.



Last year, the Chinese economy reportedly lost a whopping $33 billion due to financial scams.



Advertisement

TagsFinancial scam, china
Stylish Star Allu Arjun is on a roll with his previous films Race Gurram and S/o Satyamurthy being good family entertainers as well as box-office hits. He is currently busy shooting for Mass Masala Entertainer Sarainodu in the direction of Boyapati Srinu. 

As per the latest reports, a special song, which will be choreographed by Ganesh Acharya, will be shot in Bolivia later this week. It is also learnt that the song is a romantic number featuring Allu Arjun and Rakul Preet Singh.

A source close to the unit said that the song will be shot from Sunday in Bolivia, and it will be wrapped up in five days. The source further added that Sarrainodu is the first Telugu film to be shot in the exotic locations in Bolivia, South America.

Touted to be an out and out mass entertainer, the film also stars Catherine Teresa and Aadi Pinisetty in lead roles. The audio album will be unveiled in March and the film is scheduled to hit the screens on April 22nd, 2016.
Advertising regulator says Church of Scientology humanitarian ad claims are unsubstantiated 02 March, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , |

LONDON (Christian Examiner)  The Advertising Standards Authority in the United Kingdom has banned a television ad from the Church of Scientology after ruling its claim about the number of people assisted by the group cannot be substantiated, the Guardian has reported.

According the regulator, the ad in question features on-screen text which claims the Church of Scientology works "with volunteers from many faiths to help people ... including teaching 19 million the facts about illicit drugs."

That phrase was accompanied, the regulator said, by an image of a line of school children reading one of the church's leaflets.

The ad also included images of two members of the church carrying a person on a stretcher and a medical worker holding an infant. The images were accompanied by text claiming the church was "giving aid to 24 million in times of need" and "making tens of millions aware of their human rights."

The ad concluded with the tagline, "Our help is yours. Scientology.org."

The ASA did not consider all of the ad misleading, but it said the number of people receiving disaster assistance from the church  24 million in the commercial  was far too high and not based on "direct" assistance provided by the Church of Scientology itself. Instead, the number was reached by tabulating the number of times Scientology "volunteer ministers" lent aid between 1998 and 2014.

The ASA said the church had displayed no effective means of counting the number of people it had assisted and had no method to ensure people assisted were not "counted more than once." ASA also said the evidence for the claim appeared to be "anecdotal."

"We concluded that the claim had not been substantiated and was likely to mislead viewers," the ASA said in its ruling. "The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told the Church of Scientology International to ensure they held adequate evidence for any claims that viewers were likely to regard as objective and capable of substantiation."

The ASA, an independent regulator, enforces industry standards in the UK. While not officially connected to the government, it is recognized by the advertising industry in the country as the regulator of all television and print ads and is funded by the industry itself.

The Church of Scientology has issued no official response to the regulator's ban on the ad, but according to the ASA, the church explained that the figure of 19 million figure  those who received drug education  was based on the drug education and rehabilitation assistance of 17.8 million people through Narconon, a church charity, over a span of 30 years. The church said it had offered drug education to another 1.9 million as part of their "Truth about Drugs" video campaign.

ASA said in its findings that the anti-drugs portion of the ad was not misleading. It also said the church was not misleading the public when it said in response to the inquiry that 133 million viewers had seen its short films about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and millions had visited the church's internet site to read about its efforts.

While the figures do not tally the number of viewers who saw the videos or visited the internet site more than once, the church was still cleared of intentionally misleading the public.

The Church of Scientology was founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard supposedly as a means of improving mental health. The church, however, rejects the use of mental health drugs and has earned a reputation of ridiculing those who take them. It has also allegedly physically and mentally abused its members. The abuse was documented in the film Going Clear.

Actor Tom Cruise is the most prominent spokesman for the church. Several other Hollywood actors and celebrities, such as Lisa Marie Presley and Leah Remini, left the church after calling its practices abusive and cult-like. The church, awash in wealth donated by its 45,000 followers, was founded liable for fraud in a French court in 2013.

According to the Church of Scientology, man is an "immortal spiritual being" and God is "expressed as the Eighth Dynamicthe urge toward existence as infinity. This is also identified as the Supreme Being. As the Eighth Dynamic, the Scientology concept of God rests at the very apex of universal survival."

"Unlike religions with Judeo-Christian origins, the Church of Scientology has no set dogma concerning God that it imposes on its members. As with all its tenets, Scientology does not ask individuals to accept anything on faith alone," the church's website claims.
COMMENTARY: Super Tuesday defied explanation, as did Christians' support for Trump 02 March, 2016 by Dr. Gregory Tomlin , |

FORT WORTH, Texas (Christian Examiner)  If analysts were looking for some rhyme or reason to the way Christians voted on Super Tuesday, they might just be wasting their time. There isn't any.

So far, the only thing that appears certain is that Sen. Marco Rubio did better than Sen. Ted Cruz in states where members of the mainline Protestant denominations make up more than 20 percent of the voting public (states like notoriously liberal Minnesota, which he won, and Virginia, where he finished second).

Then again, Rubio also finished second in Massachusetts, which is 50 percent Catholic. Churchgoers there may have liked the fact that Rubio has a Cuban Catholic heritage.

Sen. Cruz, the most conservative of the candidates, won only three states  but important states which put his delegate count in a position to overtake Donald Trump's in the next round of primaries. I'm convinced he would have won more states if Americans hadn't mistaken commitment to principle as political intransigence and hadn't forgotten that faithfulness to the ideals of the Founding Fathers is better than watching Celebrity Apprentice.

Statistically speaking, the voting patterns defy explanation. They also defy explanation rationally.

I am aware that yesterday's multistate primary was more than votes for individual candidates. It was a referendum on the Washington elite, or as some call it "the ruling class," who seem to disdain real, simple Americans who want nothing other than to be left alone, who want to be able to provide for their families but who can't because of the government's crushing rate of taxation, and who want to be free in their states  as the 10th Amendment requires  to exercise control over their own social compacts.

I had hoped that America would surprise me yesterday. I had hoped evangelical voters, still the largest group of voters in the country, would think soberly about their choices and choose a candidate who reflects their values.

They did not in seven states, five of which are part of the famed Bible Belt where evangelical voices are the strongest.

Instead, evangelicals, drunk on anger and fear, broke for the anti-candidate whose antics  crude speech, coarse jesting, misogyny, personal insults, egocentrism and utter lack of knowledge about the Constitution  they believe are actually a justifiable response to their discontent with Washington. Leading the chorus of miffed evangelicals in pushing Trump as a viable choice were prominent evangelical leaders.

They used phrases like, and I paraphrase, "We're not electing a Christian-in-chief," followed by effusive praise for the man who would be dictator, and without thought of the future Trumpification of their faith.

Too strong, perhaps?

Not when a candidate promises to curb freedom of the press through tortuous libel cases, threatens to reveal what people have to "hide," and approves of plans to restrict religious freedom by monitoring mosques and prohibiting "all Muslims" from entering the United States because of their faith.

Not when the candidate pulled a "John Kerry" and said he knew KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, before he didn't know him, before he knew him again. Not when the candidate finds as suitable nighttime reading the sequel to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf  a book of speeches under the English title My New Order. Not when a candidate envisions the Christian faith as a set of beliefs that are "great, just great," but that do not require him to bend his knee and ask for forgiveness.

If Donald Trump envisions a government that can limit the practice and movement of Muslims, that same government he could well use to impede or eliminate of the practice and movement of Christians. And if he envisions Hitler as the quintessential propagandist, as his ex-wife Ivana Trump has said, I think evangelical Christians have to ask probing questions about who else has influenced the candidate's playbook and, more important still, his beliefs.

Super Tuesday was about our liberty. It was about choices between Democrat candidates who promise free Bubble-Up and rainbow stew to the masses (which they could only pay for by sapping the wealth of the working Americans) and a string of Republican candidates and their varying degrees of conservatism.

It was also about our faith, which cannot be compartmentalized and ill-considered in tumultuous political times. If you want to know why, ask the German church of the 1930s. I'm sure they thought it was "just politics" and that their leader was the only possible savior of their state  until both their churches and the world lay in ruin.

Dr. Gregory Tomlin covers the intersection of politics, culture and religion for Christian Examiner. He is also Assistant Professor of Church History and a faculty instructional mentor for Liberty University Divinity School. Tomlin earned his Ph.D. at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and also studied at Baylor University and Boston University's summer Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs. He wrote his dissertation on Southern Baptists and their influence on military-foreign policy in Vietnam from 1965-1973.
Several faith leaders were asked to write brief comments about the future of Roe. I was glad to see that I was not the only person asked who sees life as beginning at conception and who is ready to see Roe overturned.
First of its Kind Raid, 11 Girls Rescued and Two Major Traffickers Arrested



FRANKLIN, Tenn., March 1, 2016 /



After receiving a tip off from an individual, whose wife had been trafficked, the Indian Police had been watching two traffickers: Rajan Adhikari and Jivan Pun. The victims husband worked with Free for Life International, Peace Rehabilitation Center (PRC), and the Indian Police to set up a sting operation with the suspected traffickers. Adhikari informed the man that if he wanted his wife released, he would need two other young women in exchange. Free for Life and Peace Rehabilitation Center used one employee and one recently rescued girl to be placed as bait for the trafficker to meet with the individual. During this sting, the trafficker was surrounded by undercover Indian police. As soon as Adhikari and Pun approached the man and two girls, in the pretext of handing the girls over, the traffickers were immediately detained. The team, comprised of Indian Police, and Free for Life and Peace Rehabilitation employees, then went to rescue 11 girls.



As the Kathmandu Post reports, "As per a tip-off received by the crime branch of the Indian Police a month ago, investigating officers raided an apartment in Basantakunja, Delhi, on Friday evening and rounded up two suspected traffickers and 11 women. The Indian authorities had initiated a probe as Shanti Punarsthapana Griha (Peace Rehabilitation Center) and Free for Life International, organizations working against woman trafficking, provided inputs regarding the trafficking of Nepali women to various Gulf countries via New Delhi and Colombo, Sri Lanka."



These 11 girls were in Basantakunja, Delhi located in a high-rise apartment building. The girls that were rescued are all Nepalese, and had been lured on the pretense of false jobs and foreign employment in Iraq and Kuwait. Later, the Nepalese Embassy provided travel documents for them to cross the border back into Nepal. All of their passports and papers had been taken by the traffickers. An official escorted them back to Nepal to the NGO's shelter in Kathmandu where they are being medically, emotionally and physically screened and repatriated with their families.



It has now been revealed that these two traffickers, Adhikari and Pun, have been sending up to 40 trafficked women a month to Iraq and Kuwait.



To learn more or to make a donation to future raids go to

Share Tweet Contact: Free for Life International , 888-335-8835FRANKLIN, Tenn., March 1, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- Free for Life International, a U.S. anti-trafficking organization, in partnership with a Nepalese NGO, Peace Rehabilitation Center (Shanti Punarsthapana Griha) just completed a first of its kind raid and arrest of two major traffickers. This is the first time in history that the Indian Police Special Task force has partnered with a U.S. and Nepalese organization to assist in this type of mission which resulted in the rescue of 11 girls and the arrest of two major traffickers in India. For the past month Free for Life International Liaison, Suman Sapkota, and his team from Peace Rehabilitation Center (Shanti Punarsthapana Griha) have been arranging this rescue operation.After receiving a tip off from an individual, whose wife had been trafficked, the Indian Police had been watching two traffickers: Rajan Adhikari and Jivan Pun. The victims husband worked with Free for Life International, Peace Rehabilitation Center (PRC), and the Indian Police to set up a sting operation with the suspected traffickers. Adhikari informed the man that if he wanted his wife released, he would need two other young women in exchange. Free for Life and Peace Rehabilitation Center used one employee and one recently rescued girl to be placed as bait for the trafficker to meet with the individual. During this sting, the trafficker was surrounded by undercover Indian police. As soon as Adhikari and Pun approached the man and two girls, in the pretext of handing the girls over, the traffickers were immediately detained. The team, comprised of Indian Police, and Free for Life and Peace Rehabilitation employees, then went to rescue 11 girls.As the Kathmandu Post reports, "As per a tip-off received by the crime branch of the Indian Police a month ago, investigating officers raided an apartment in Basantakunja, Delhi, on Friday evening and rounded up two suspected traffickers and 11 women. The Indian authorities had initiated a probe as Shanti Punarsthapana Griha (Peace Rehabilitation Center) and Free for Life International, organizations working against woman trafficking, provided inputs regarding the trafficking of Nepali women to various Gulf countries via New Delhi and Colombo, Sri Lanka."These 11 girls were in Basantakunja, Delhi located in a high-rise apartment building. The girls that were rescued are all Nepalese, and had been lured on the pretense of false jobs and foreign employment in Iraq and Kuwait. Later, the Nepalese Embassy provided travel documents for them to cross the border back into Nepal. All of their passports and papers had been taken by the traffickers. An official escorted them back to Nepal to the NGO's shelter in Kathmandu where they are being medically, emotionally and physically screened and repatriated with their families.It has now been revealed that these two traffickers, Adhikari and Pun, have been sending up to 40 trafficked women a month to Iraq and Kuwait.To learn more or to make a donation to future raids go to freeforlifeintl.org or call 888-335-8835.
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.
Baptist pastor fatally shot by own brother in Ohio church; shooter mentally ill, says his niece

A pastor at a Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, was shot and killed by his own brother during Sunday service in Dayton, Ohio, the police said.

The police identified the victim as Rev. William Schooler, 70, who was killed inside the St. Peter's Missionary Church by suspect Daniel Schooler, 68, the Montgomery County Coroner's Office and Dayton police said, according to NBC News.

Schooler was shot at around 12:22 p.m. Sunday as the choir was singing. The police said it was a domestic dispute and no other persons were injured.

The pastor was a community leader and a former Dayton Board of Education member, reported WHIO.

"I just got everybody out of the church and we just kept hearing shooting and shooting," said witness and church member Alberta Blayth.

She said she saw the suspect go to the office while the pastor and his wife were inside.

A call by a church member to 911 said, "Our pastor just got shot by his brother! ... He's still shooting him!"

The caller said the shooter was "in the back, with his brother and his wife."

Choir director Curtis Booker said she saw Daniel Schooler get up to follow his brother at the back.

"Then I heard the first pop and I thought he fell because there's a little step right there. Then I heard a second pop. And I was like, that sounds like gunshots," he said.

According to the police, Schooler was shot multiple times.

"I want to make sure the public understands this is not a random act of violence," said Sgt. Creigee Coleman. "This was somewhat of a domestic situation between family members."

The suspect was arrested at the church and is now at the Montgomery County Jail where he was booked on suspicion of murder. His arraignment is set on Monday.

Joyce Napier, niece of the pastor and suspect, said Daniel suffered from mental illness.

"Bipolar, schizophrenic. He had a lot of things going on he was dealing with. I don't think he woke up this morning and said 'I want to kill my brother.' I just think the mental state and illness goes together and that's what evil does," she said.

The Schooler family said what happened will not weaken their filial bonds.

"We stick together. And we pray. And don't turn on each other ... because he has daughters, the other one has daughters. And we loved them both, so we have to stick together. That's all we know, that's all we have," she said.
Britain First holds 'hapless' protest outside London mosque

Far-right group Britain First staged a protest outside the East London Mosque yesterday described as "hapless" by the mosque.

Only a handful of supporters joined the demonstration in Whitechapel, which saw Britain First's deputy leader Jada Fransen, who is of Dutch extraction, tell Muslims they are worshipping a false prophet and won't make it to paradise.

In a YouTube video of the incident, Fransen is recorded saying that British First would "spread the good news of the Lord" and had been "met with hostility".

Hapless Britain First in another rain-soaked FAIL outside the East London Mosque. pic.twitter.com/2NUePWDaSy  East London Mosque (@elondonmosque) March 1, 2016

She asked a police officer: "Is it within your job description to come and mock a Christian who's preaching in the street?" Fransen later accused him of having told her the Bible forbids the eating of seafood and said he needed to show her more respect.

She said: "This is what's going on in the world now people. In our country, even the police are against us. This is a Christian country but we've got our own police force turning on us, traitors to this country."

A spokesman for the mosque, Salman Farsi, told the Evening Standard: "It was a bit worrying for us because we had a school group on a tour inside the mosque.

"There was a moment when they were provoking passers-by and someone confronted them and spat in their direction, so mosque staff stepped in to move them along."
Calais 'Jungle' demolitions: Why is the camp being destroyed, and where will the refugees go?

Over the past two days, demolitions have begun in the so-called 'Jungle' camp outside Calais, which is home to thousands of refugees and migrants.

Riot police clashed with residents on Monday and Tuesday as they attempted to clear the site. Wooden shacks were set alight and teargas was fired on those who tried to resist. Bulldozers quickly followed.

The Jungle has become a not-so-temporary home to thousands trying to enter the UK but now little remains of the sprawling southern section of the camp and campaigners have condemned the way the demolitions have been carried out. Charity CalAid said: "French Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazenove [sic], promised 'humanitarian' methods of relocating the residents of the camp  there is nothing humanitarian in the actions of the authorities".

But how did we get here?

Why are so many living in such appalling conditions?

Many of the camp's residents are fleeing violence and persecution, mainly from countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iraq, which are in the grip of ISIS. Others are seeking asylum from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Some others in the camp are seeking a better life for themselves and their families after leaving poverty-stricken countries, including a large proportion from sub-Saharan Africa.

Why are they so desperate to live in Britain, why not seek asylum in France?

There are a variety of reasons why the UK is perceived as a more attractive option.

Many believe the British economy to be stronger, and therefore hope for better job opportunities. The British benefit system is also widely believed to be more generous than the French, although this is not entirely true.

However, many others want to come to Britain because they have relatives already living here or because of other pre-existing ties. For instance, English is commonly spoken in Eritrea so many want to settle in the UK where they already understand the language.

Why do the French authorities want to demolish the camp?

The French prefecture, part of the country's Interior Office, has long opposed the sprawling camp's existence, saying conditions are unsanitary, undignified and present a security risk. French police and security officials have spent millions of euros defending the Channel Tunnel from repeated attempts of residents trying to enter the UK illegally.

The demolition was given the go ahead by a court in Lille last week which ruled an eviction was legal.

Where can residents go?

French authorities say they have provided heated shipping containers in the northern section of the camp for displaced residents, or they may move to one of 98 other centres around France.

However campaigners have said there not nearly enough places. There is a dispute over the number being evicted but Help Refugees, a charity which claims to be the only organisation to have undertaken a full census of the camp, says 3,455 will be made homeless by the demolitions.

French authorities have confirmed there is alternative accommodation available for only 1,156 refugees in the whole of France. As the charity points out, this leaves 2,229 without any option for accommodation.
Christian vigilante group in Myanmar attacked during anti-poppy raid

Members of a Christian vigilante group in Myanmar have been attacked with machetes during a drug eradication drive that involved destroying opium poppies.

The group, Pat Jassan, was attacked on February 25 when 300 of its members were en route to a poppy plantation in Waingmaw Township.

The hardline Christian group, established by Kachin Baptist Church, aims to eradicate drug use in Myanmar. Members operate a no-tolerance approach, which includes a unilateral destruction of the opium poppy, despite it being often being the only source of income for the farmers that grow it.

"They first tried to stop us as we were about to enter the poppy fields there. Later they beat us and threw stones at us. Then they burnt tents and took away our food," a member of Pat Jassa, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Irrawady.

"Later they opened fire... and some soldiers and police, who were with us for security, also had to run away. The gunmen who attacked us are believed to be militants operating in the area."

One man was beaten and injured badly, he added. "We still don't know about the others. Now we are running for our lives."

The activists had divided into six groups on Wednesday to begin the destruction of poppy plantations, just one day after a week-long blockade against them at an army checkpoint was lifted.

The exact number injured in the attack remains unknown, as does the identity of the attackers.

"We will help them to search for possible missing campaigners who have run for their lives and now plan to send more security persons to help them," said an officer of the Myitkyina District police officer.

The Pat Jassan has been campaigning for more assistance from the government.

"We feel that there's no protection for us yet despite the Parliament in Naypyidaw discussing our anti-poppy campaigns. We urgently need full support and protection from the government," said Kham Thu Dan Shaung, a central committee member of Pat Jasan.

"Our campaign is to help and support the government's plan to eliminate drugs and poppy plantations. Since we were attacked like this, it is a sign that some people still want to profit out of drug production and that's not good for our country's future."

On Thursday, after an emergency discussion, the parliament approved a motion calling for more support for the group.

Myanmar is behind Afghanistan as the second largest opium producer in the world.
Christians warned government could use EU debate to slip through laws that 'undermine Christian freedom'

Christians have been warned the government may use the distraction of the EU referendum to slip through controversial plans to inspect churches and label Christians as "extremists".

Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute, said he was concerned that while public attention focused on the debate over the European Union, ministers may speed through "highly contentious legislation which harms Christian freedoms".

The Christian lobby group pointed to proposals to allow Ofsted to inspect out-of-school settings including churches and the plans for Extremist Disruption Orders (EDOs) as two particular areas of concern. Hart fears Christians could be banded as "extremists" for opposing same-sex relationships.

"Christians must not stop holding the Westminster Government to account over its proposals," he urged.

"We will be on our guard but Christians across the nation also need to be vigilant and ready to speak out to prevent this happening."

Simon Calvert, a spokesperson for the Christian Institute, told Christian Today it "would not be unknown for the government to do something controversial while people's attention is elsewhere".

"We are just encouraging Christians to keep on raising these important issues of religious liberties," he said.

The Christian Institute has found unlikely bedfellows in the National Secular Society (NSS) and the Peter Tatchell Foundation, a gay-rights campaign group. Alongside several politicians and other organisations, the unusual trio have formed the Defend Free Speech campaign which seeks to oppose the government's plans for EDOs.

The orders will be issued by a High Court when it is persuaded that someone is "participating in activities that spread, incite, promote or justify hatred against a person (or group of persons) on the grounds of that person's (or group of persons') disability, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and/or transgender identity".

Anyone receiving an EDO would be sanctioned and could face a ban from broadcasting or working with children. They could also require police approval before posting anything on Facebook or social media.

"Law-abiding citizens, such as Christians, could be caught by the vague definitions of extremism that get bandied about when ministers are trying to talk tough," Hart said.

"Broad-brush counter-extremism policies catch ordinary citizens and are actually a waste of resources. They do not make us safer. They make us less safe by distracting the authorities from focusing on genuine threats."
Colombia: Christians targeted for extortion, forced to fight for paramilitaries

Warring factions in Colombia are targeting Christians for extortion and forced military service, according to a new report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW).

The report, Colombia: Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Conscience, is based on a fact-finding visit during which CSW interviewed church leaders from five areas where there is a strong presence of illegal armed groups.

Peace talks between the government and the main rebel opposition group, FARC, are expected to end a five-decades-long conflict that has seen atrocities committed by both sides.

However, the church leaders say that restrictions on religion imposed by left-leaning guerilla movements like FARC remain. Paramilitary groups continue to threaten church leaders who refuse to cooperate with them and target churches for extortion. A number of church leaders reported having received threats from guerrillas and paramilitary groups.

Church leaders told CSW they expect to see little improvement in their situation whether or not the peace agreement is signed. One indigenous Christian leader said: "The guerrillas are making peace but as I see it, the peace they are making is for over there, but it makes it more complicated here."

The report says young people, including Christian youth, continue to be forced into illegal armed groups or the military, even when they try to declare themselves conscientious objectors based on deeply held religious beliefs. Christian converts attempting to leave illegal armed groups are forced into hiding or killed.

CSW chief executive Mervyn Thomas said: "While CSW welcomes the steps both the government of Colombia and FARC-EP have taken towards the peace agreement, which is due to be signed later this month, we remain deeply concerned at the situation on the ground in many parts of the country.

"These areas are essentially run by violent illegal armed groups, all of which restrict religious freedom and actively target church leaders. We call on the government of Colombia to take urgent steps to protect civilians and uphold the rule of law in areas of the country where the FARC-EP has until now maintained a strong presence, and we call on the international community to support them in these efforts."
Former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks wins 1.1 million Templeton Prize

Former Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks has been awarded the 1.1 million Templeton Prize for making an "exceptional contribution affirming life's spiritual dimension".

Lord Sacks, 67, who led the revival of Britain's Orthodox Jewish community during his service as Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013, follows in the footsteps of previous winners such as Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and the Dalai Lama. Last year's winner was Jean Vanier, a Christian philosopher who founded L'Arche, communities where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together.

The 2014 winner was Czech priest and philosopher Tomas Halik, following Desmond Tutu, the former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, in 2013.

Lord Sacks, author of many books on religion and public life, took the opportunity provided by winning the award to speak out on his view that the export of western secularisation has sparked religious violence.

He said secularisation has failed to provide guidance on core issues of human identity, creating a vacuum being filled by religious fundamentalism that stokes hatred. The parallel rise of social media has engulfed an ever larger swath of the population, especially youth.

The solution, he argued, is to match the violence with "a message of love as powerful as the message being delivered by the preachers of hate."

Lord Sacks said: "It really has to speak to young people and we have to use the same social networking, the same technology as the extremists and we've got to do it as well and better than they do."

He added: "Religion, or more precisely, religions, should have a voice in the public conversation within the societies of the West, as to how to live, how to construct a social order, how to enhance human dignity, honour human life, and indeed protect life as a whole.

"Each religion, and each strand within each religion, will have to undertake this work, because if religion is not part of the solution it will assuredly be a large part of the problem as voices become ever more strident, and religious extremists ever more violent."

Central to his message is appreciation and respect for all faiths. He believes that recognising the values of each faith is the way to combat violence and terrorism.

In his most recent book, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, Rabbi Sacks writes: "Too often in the history of religion, people have killed in the name of the God of life, waged war in the name of the God of peace, hated in the name of the God of love and practiced cruelty in the name of the God of compassion. When this happens, God speaks, sometimes in a still, small voice almost inaudible beneath the clamor of those claiming to speak on his behalf. What he says at such times is: Not in My Name."

Jennifer Simpson, chair of the John Templeton Foundation board of trustees and granddaughter of the award's founder Sir John Templeton, said: "After 9/11, Rabbi Sacks saw the need for a response to the challenge posed by radicalization and extremism and he did so with dignity and grace. He saw the need for the strengthening of ethics in the marketplace long before the financial crisis.

"He has always been ahead of his time and, thanks to his leadership, the world can look to the future with hope, something we are very much in need of right now."

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton, who nominated Lord Sacks for the prize, said: "There are public intellectuals and religious leaders, but few who are both at the same time. There are academic scholars and popular communicators, but he is both, reaching out far beyond his own constituency through the spoken, written and broadcast word."

Lord Sacks was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and awarded a Life Peerage in the House of Lords in 2009. He and his wife Elaine have three children and eight grandchildren.
'I thank God for secularism' says Irish Evangelical Alliance head

The head of the Evangelical Alliance in Ireland has written in defence of secularism in an article for the Irish Times.

In his article 'Rite & Reason: Separation of Church and State benefits all', EA executive director Nick Park says that while establishment churches have hemorrhaged numbers during the last 30 years, "counter-cultural forms of religion that demand intense, even fundamentalist, belief have continued to grow rapidly".

He says: "Nominal religion has declined, but convictional passionately-held religion has dramatically increased," adding that the same is true of atheism, which has also seen a decline since the collapse of communism.

Park says: "It appears that our increasingly secular and globalist world, while unfriendly to nominal religious and anti-religious institutions, is a fertile environment for both true believers and true unbelievers!"

He argues that secularism "seems to fit many religions very well", but distinguishes between "doctrinal secularism" that seeks to eradicate religion from the public sphere and "political securalism" that offers it a level playing field.

Park says: "I would argue strongly that a secular society, with a firm separation between Church and State, is beneficial for both society and the Church.

"History demonstrates that religions behave badly when they hold political power. Christianity began as a persecuted pacifist minority whose adherents were prepared to be killed for the sake of the Cross. Within a generation of joining forces with the Roman Empire it became a persecuting majority religion whose adherents were prepared to kill others for the sake of the Cross."

He concludes: "Religions and ideologies are at their best as part of a secular pluralist society where we can all share our faith, or lack of it, on a level playing field. I want the best for my country, and I want the best for my faith, so I thank God for secularism."
India: Salvation Army pastor jailed for rape of 12-year-old girl

A Salvation Army pastor in the Indian state of Kerala will serve 20 years in prison for the rape of a 12-year-old girl.

Sanil P James was also fined 20,000 rupees (200), while the victim will receive around 3,000 from the state's Victim Compensation Fund.

James was sentenced to 20 years of 'rigorous imprisonment' under the Indian Penal Code and another 20 for offences committed under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO), reports the Times of India. The sentences will run concurrently.

According to the prosecutor, Pious Matthew, this was the first time a sentence of this length had been awarded under the POCSO Act.

He said the 35-year-old pastor had raped the girl at his home when she had taken some herbal medicine for his child there. The judge, KP Sudheer, said he had distracted other children by letting them watch TV while he carried out the crime.

James has also been accused of another child rape. He is being held in the Central Prison, Kannur.
Pope Francis: Burn 'dirty money', don't give it to the Church

The Catholic Church does not want people to donate "dirty money" earned by abusing low-paid workers, Pope Francis said on Wednesday.

"Some donors come to the Church offering profits from the blood of people who have been exploited, mistreated, enslaved with badly paid work," Francis said during his regular weekly audience with pilgrims at the Vatican.

"I will say to them: 'Please take your money away, burn it'," said Francis, who has made safeguarding the poor and cleaning up Vatican finances central tenets of his papacy.

"The people of God... do not need dirty money, they need hearts that are open to God's mercy," he said.

The pope has previously branded money "the dung of the devil" and condemned the evils of unbridled capitalism, prompting criticism from some US business leaders. He told a meeting of diplomats at the Vatican in 2013: "We have created new idols" and "the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal".

According to Pope Francis, a major reason behind the increase in social and economic woes worldwide "is in our relationship with money and our acceptance of its power over ourselves and our society".

Francis has increased the power of the Vatican's financial intelligence authority (AIF) but the European finance watchdog Moneyval said last year the Holy See still needed to be much more aggressive in prosecuting financial crimes.

The December 2015 report from Moneyval, the Council of Europe's lead agency in the struggle against corruption and the financing of terrorism, said that legal reforms in the Vatican had been positive. It said that the Vatican Bank had shut down nearly 5,000 suspicious accounts but that there had been "no real results" in terms of prosecutions for serious crimes or the confiscation of assets.

The evaluators concluded: "All in all, the basically sound legal structure that has been put in place... now needs to deliver some real results on the prosecutorial side in the Holy See and the Vatican City State."

Additional reporting by Reuters.
Three questions to ask when God seems silent

Moses heard God's voice through a burning bush. Elijah heard it as a whisper. The prophet Samuel heard an audible voice, and the disciples heard it as thunder. God is a communicating God and uses a variety of ways to speak to us. But while we may celebrate in times of answered prayer, sooner or later we must face an opposite truth: sometimes God is silent too.

For ten years my wife and I tried to start a family. During that time we sought God diligently through prayer. But the dreamt-of child never came. While God has turned that around for good, what was most perplexing was God's silence on the matter. We heard him speak on other things during that time, but never about our pursuit of a family. Even having God say No to us would've been a mercy in the end, saving us much heartache. But all we got was silence.

I don't know why God speaks clearly sometimes and not others. But I have since learnt to ask three questions when he seems silent to us.

1. Am I shouting too loud to hear him?

CS Lewis's raw, vulnerable words in A Grief Observed speak for many on the topic of God's silence. Writing shortly after losing his wife Joy he said: 'Meanwhile, where is God? ...go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.' Lewis expresses the frustration of those who seek God but hear nothing.

But Lewis' mood changed as he journeyed through the grief process. Describing his experience as like a drowning man who couldn't be helped because of his frantic clutching and grabbing, he finally reflected: 'Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.'

Just as the world's clamour can drown out the voice of God, so can the noise of the heart  the sadness, confusion, angst, anger, and the frantic 'Answer me!' shouts of our prayers. As Lewis discovered, sometimes these emotions must be allowed to ebb before we can hear God again. He's ready to speak, we're just not ready to listen.

2. Do I want God or only his gifts?

Christian scripture is beautifully authentic; it covers both the joys and the frustrations of walking with God, and the problem of divine silence isn't airbrushed out. We're told Israel experienced it (1 Samuel 3:1), as did biblical greats like Job and Asaph (Job 23:1-9; Psalm 77:1-9). 'Do not turn a deaf ear to me,' David prayed during his own experience of God's silence (Psalm 28:1). 'Why do you hide when I am in trouble?' (Psalm 10:1). When we know that the heroes of the faith wrestle too, we can take some comfort.

We can also follow their example. While these saints express in unvarnished terms their dismay at God's silence, they don't walk away. They may have tears in their eyes, but they keep looking heavenward. They may rant and rave, but they stay in the room. God's silence has a way of testing whether we want him or just his gifts. If he doesn't come through with the guidance, healing, or breakthrough we seek, will we still follow him?

A friend of mine is going through one of the worst seasons imaginable. The suicide of one family member was followed by the death of another, then a third member getting critically ill. 'I'm not hearing from God at all right now,' he told me, 'and neither do I feel God's presence. At the moment I'm living by what I believe to be true of God, not my feelings about him. And despite everything, I still believe he's good.' My friend is staying in the room. He wants God, not just God's gifts.

3. Have I really heard what he's already said?

Jesus was silent once, in a way that baffled everyone. It happened as he was teaching in the Temple one day. Having enthralled the crowd with his words, he had suddenly stopped, stooped down, and begun scribbling on the ground. 'The law of Moses says to stone her,' angry voices around him shouted. 'What do you say?' (John 8:5). But Jesus had stayed as silent as the shamed and shivering woman standing half-naked before them all.

When Jesus finally broke his silence it was brief. 'All right,' he'd said, 'but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!' (8:7). Then he'd looked back to the ground, wordless once more. Silence, a few words, then silence again. One by one, people drifted away, those few words of Jesus ringing loudly in their ears.

What is God doing during his periods of silence? Preparing the answer to our prayers? Maybe. Testing the depth of our devotion? Probably. But Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery shows us something else about God's silence: Jesus may not have spoken, but he was there. God's silence doesn't mean his absence. And his lengthy pauses were meant to ensure his audience really heard what he'd already said. When God is quiet to us we can ask: what did God last say that I need to remember or act on?

***

God doesn't stay silent forever. He ultimately spoke to Israel and to Job. The morning finally dawned for Asaph and David. My wife and I may never know why God remained silent to our request for a child, but he's spoken to us since. And amid all the remaining questions I believe this: Sometimes God is speaking and we just can't hear him. And sometimes he stays silent so we'll act on what he's already said. And every moment of silence asks us if he's really worth following, even if we don't get what we ask for. I have so much to learn but still believe the answer to that is Yes.

Sheridan Voysey is a writer, speaker and broadcaster, frequently contributing to faith programmes on BBC Radio 2. His books include Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams into New Beginnings and Resilient: Your Invitation to a Jesus-Shaped Life. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter, and get his free ebook Five Practices for a Resilient Life.
We want a meeting with Pope Francis, say Australian Catholic Church abuse victims

Australian victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic Church clergy on Tuesday called for a meeting with Pope Francis after watching a high-ranking Vatican official testify that senior clergy lied to him to cover up abuse in the 1970s.

Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's treasurer, has told the inquiry that the church made "enormous mistakes" and "catastrophic" choices by refusing to believe abused children, shuffling abusive priests from parish to parish and over-relying on counselling of priests to solve the problem.

Given Pell's high rank within the church, his testimony to Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse over cases that occurred decades ago has taken on wider implications about the accountability of church leaders.

Pell's failing memory regarding questions about what he knew of abuse by clergy and claims that he was deceived by superiors about individual cases in the 1970s has angered many of the 15 abuse victims and supporters who travelled to Rome to see him give evidence.

Pell repeatedly said he could not recall particular events and, in one testy exchange, denied a suggestion from special prosecutor Gail Furness that his claims that he was not briefed properly on abusive priests was "implausible".

During a break in testimony, the victims in Rome released a statement they have faxed to the Pope: "This is about children. Children who were abused and damaged in the past. ...We would like to request a meeting to discuss the commitment to the children of the past and children of the future, to implement systems so that this is never repeated again."

The group, who travelled to Rome after Pell said he was unable to travel to his native Australia because of heart problems, said they had requested a meeting before they fly back to Australia on Friday.

Philip Nagle, who was abused as a child, said the group has become frustrated with Pell's evidence to the inquiry and no longer wanted to meet with the Cardinal at the end of his evidence as scheduled.

"We want to be heard and we want someone to show that they care about us and who can possibly help change things for children into the future," Nagle told reporters.

"See no evil"

Pell's evidence, which adds to testimony from almost 5,000 survivors according to Commissioner Peter McClellan, has received wide coverage in Australia.

McClellan repeatedly interjected to suggest that Pell could and should have done more when as a more senior cleric in the 1990s he was told about specific abuse cases.

In Australia, the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper printed a full page photo of Pell leaving the hearing with the headline "See no evil, hear no evil, stop no evil." The Sydney Morning Herald blared "Pell under fire".

Last year, Pell denied accusations made at Commission hearings that he had tried to bribe a victim to remain quiet, that he ignored another complaint and that he was complicit in the transfer of a paedophile priest.

Church sexual abuse broke into the open in 2002, when it was discovered that US bishops in the Boston area moved abusers from parish to parish instead of defrocking them. Similar scandals have since been discovered around the world and tens of millions of dollars have been paid in compensation.

The Australian hearing started on the same night that Spotlight, a film about newspaper reporters who uncovered systemic paedophilia in the Church in Boston, won the Academy Award for best picture.
Why Pakistani Christians want murdered minister Shahbaz Bhatti to be declared a martyr

Shahbaz Bhatti, the Pakistan minister for minorities murdered for his opposition to the country's oppressive blasphemy law, should be declared a martyr by the Church, Catholics there say.

In Catholic practice the process for declaring martyrdom can begin five years after a person's death. Bhatti was murdered on 2 March 2011 and local authorities have begun to collect evidence to support their claim.

Shamaun Alfred Gill, spokesperson for the All Pakistan Minority Alliance, the political party formed and led by Bhatti, told International Christian Concern: "A committee from the Vatican is reviewing Shahbaz Bhatti's struggle for equal rights and gathering information on his murder. We are hoping that this outspoken hero of the nation will soon be given the official status of martyr by the Vatican for raising his voice for the voiceless in this country."

Speaking at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the murder, the Archbishop of Karachi, Joseph Coutts, said: "He spoke with faith and demonstrated courage. Thanks to him the voice of Pakistan's Christians was heard. He paved the way for us. He was a good Catholic and gave his life for his mission."

He told Fides: "As Pakistani Christians we face numerous challenges every day. Many will have heard of the so-called blasphemy law and the emblematic case of Asia Bibi, an innocent Christian mother sentenced to death. Our daily mission is to bear witness to peace and to love where there is so much violence in this country torn apart by terrorism. As Christians our mission is love and love of Christ helps us not to lose hope."

Bhatti was shot by three masked men as he left his mother's home in Islamabad.

He had recorded a video to be released in the event of his death, in which he said: "I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of 'cross,' and I follow him to the cross."

He said: "I am a man who has burnt his bridges. I cannot and will not go back on this commitment. I will fight fanaticism and fight in defence of Christians to the death."

Bhatti's death came only months after the murder of Salman Taseer, governor of the Punjab, who was also an opponent of the blasphemy laws. Taseer's murderer Mumtaz Qadri was hanged on Monday, with thousands demonstrating at his funeral and declaring him a martyr for Islam. Bhatti's killer has never been caught, though the Tehrik-i-Taliban group claimed responsibility.
The British artist was an influential figure in Paris during the 1930s, yet much of Mosss work was lost in the 1944 shelling of her Normandy home
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The Woodland Heights apartment complex Elan Heights has begun preleasing units, the developer says.

The 326-unit community by Charleston, S.C.-based Greystar at 25 Usener near White Oak Drive and Taylor, on the site of the now-demolished Skylane Apartments. It expected to be completed in October.

The seven-story development will offer apartments from 627 to 1,427 square feet with monthly rents between $1,695 and $,3,375.

"Elan Heights will provide residents with an urban living experience, close to downtown, in a neighborhood that is rich with history," Greystar director of real estate Betsy Valdes said in a statement. "The community is minutes away from recreation at Stude Park, Buffalo Bayou Park and local walking trails."

The project was announced in 2013, during a boom of apartment construction in the Houston region, particularly in the Heights and other popular Inner Loop neighborhoods. The Chronicle reported at the time that rents would be about $1,600 for a 800-square-foot apartment, in line with the rents planned for the property this year.

The apartment market in Houston has changed since this and other high-end projects were announced, however. Economists have suggested that apartments are overbuilt in Houston, particularly given slowing job growth thanks to flagging oil prices.

Rents in the Heights have dropped 15 percent over the last three months, according to Houston-based Apartment Data Services.
Michigan craft brewer New Holland has signed with Silver Eagle Distributors to begin selling its beer in Houston and San Antonio.

"We feel connected to these markets for so many reasons, and have heard the call of demand for our beers," Fred Bueltmann, the brewery's vice president of brand and lifestyle, said in an announcement. "It's clear there is a strong and vibrant craft scene in both of these markets, with passionate and dedicated people moving it forward."
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Dance

The Sleeping Beauty: Houston Ballet performs Ben Stevenson's opulent version of the French fairy tale, with sets and costumes by Desmond Heeley, set to one of Peter Tchaikovsky's most beloved scores. Several casts rotate in the leads. 7:30 p.m. Friday, 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas; $23-$197; 713-227-2787, houstonballet.org.

Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance: "Dangerous Games" farewell tour by the creator of "Riverdance." 7:30 p.m. Sunday; Revention Center, 520 Texas; $62.25-$98.25; 713-230-1600; reventionmusiccenter.com.

Theater

Around the World in 80 Days: Jules Verne's classic 1873 novel is coming to the Alley in March. The adventure story directed by Mark Shanahan features five Alley Resident Company actors portraying 42 characters as the hero of the story, Phileas Fogg, makes his way across the globe in a race against time. 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays (no 2:30 p.m. show March 5); 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays through April 3; Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Ave; $25-$67; 713-220-5700, alleytheatre.org

Mary Poppins: The Tony Award-winning Disney musical is full of singing, dancing and toys come to life in this TUTS production. The nervous Banks children are pleasantly surprised when the new family nanny turns out to be Mary Poppins. The upbeat nanny, and her plucky sidekick Bert, bring some much needed sunshine into the Banks' home. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; through March 20; Theatre Under The Stars; $37.75 - $119.50, tuts.com

Straight White Men: Young Jean Lee's play depicts a widowed father and his three adult sons, reunited for Christmas, and their unusual ways of facing "privilege" in their lives. 7:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through March 6; Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway; $23-$49; 713-527-0123, stagestheatre.com.

End of the Rainbow: Carolyn Johnson is Judy Garland in Peter Quilter's poignant depiction, directed by Ken McLaughlin, of the star's final months that punctuated her dramatic life on and off the stage. 7:30 pm. Wednesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through April 10; Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway; $23-$49; 713-527-0123, stagestheatre.com.

Love and Information: Caryl Churchill's kaleidoscopic play features 57 brief scenes and more than 100 characters, all considering the problem of human disconnectedness in our tech-obsessed, consciousness-fragmenting era. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays, through March 6; Main Street Theater, 2540 Times; $36-$39; 713-524-6706, mainstreettheater.com.

Rabbit Hole: David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama depicts a couple's emotional struggles in the aftermath of their young son's accidental death. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays through March 12. Theatre Southwest, 8944-A Clarkcrest; $18; 713-661-9505, theatresouthwest.org.

The Trojan Women: Set in modern-day Africa, Euripides' epic tale is told through the eyes of the women of Troy, the day after the fall of the city to the Greeks. Qamara Black, Houston Press Best Actress in 2014 for Ruined, is Hecuba, Queen of Troy. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, through March 5; Obsidian Theater, 3522 White Oak; $10-$30; 832-889-7837, obsidiantheater.org.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Kim & Philip Lehl star as George and Martha in Edward Albee's classic play. Directed by Jennifer Dean, the story of a New England couple who air their sordid resentments toward each other in front of unsuspecting guests: the new professor at the university and his young wife. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays; also 7:30 p.m. March 21; through March 26. Spring Street Studios-Studio 101, 1824 Spring Street; $15-$29; starknakedtheatre.com.

Streetcar Named Desire: A haunting and beautiful play about two sisters, Stella Kowalksi and Blanche DuBois. Blanche's life has led her to destitution and isolation and at the play's beginning, she is moving in with her sister and her husband, Stanley Kowalski. She creates a dream world of delusion. 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, 5 p.m. Sundays through March 20; The Kaleidoscope, 705 Main Street, Suite B; 832-817-8656, bayoucitytheatrics.com.

Broadway in Concert: Revue of show tunes. 7:30 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays, through March 26; also 2 p.m. March 13; Music Box Theater, 2623 Colquitt; $27-$37; 713-522-7722, themusicboxtheater.com.

Classical

Beethoven 2 & 8: Andres Orozco-Estrada continues the multi-season journey through Beethoven's nine symphonies. Wayne Brooks will guest on viola for performances of Symphony No. 2 and Symphony No. 8. Also in the program will be La Llorona, a viola concerto. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana; $25-$134; 713-224-4240, houstonsymphony.org.

ROCO Brass Quintet: Repertoire ranges from modern classical music to Renaissance and Baroque eras, as well as jazz. 7:30 p.m. Friday; Midtown Arts & Theatre Center Houston, 3400 Main St., $25; $10 students. Also 5 p.m. Sunday, Woodlands United Methodist Church, 2200 Lake Woodlands Dr., Spring; $25, $20 seniors, $15 students, $5 discount for TWUMC members; 713-665-2700, rocohouston.org.

Mexicantos: Five Centuries of Mexican Choral Treasures: Music from Mexico's golden age of polyphony, the 16th century, including present-day masterpieces, plus a work not heard for 250 years; the choir's own Benjamin Geier rediscovered the piece. 7:30 p.m. Saturday; Church of St. John the Divine, 2450 River Oaks Blvd.; $40; $10 students with ID; 713-224-5566, houstonchamberchoir.org.

Cameron Carpenter: Carpenter returns to Houston for one night only, performing on his International Touring Organ. He is the first organist nominated for a Grammy Award for a solo album. 8 p.m. Friday; Cullen Theater, Wortham Center; 501 Texas Ave.; $23-$78; 713-227-4772, spahouston.org.

Vilde Frang: Norwegian violinist Frang debuted with the Oslo Philharmonic at age 12. Noted for her superb musical expression, well-developed virtuosity and musicality, Frang has established herself as one of the leading young violinists of her generation. In 2010 she was named the classical music talent of the year and received a grant by Statoil. In 2012 she was the recipient of the Credit Suisse Young Artists Award. 7 p.m. Sunday; Cullen Theater, Wortham Center; 501 Texas Ave.; $28-$63; 713-227-4772, spahouston.org.

Prince of Players: Edward Kynaston is the acclaimed Restoration era actor caught up in sweeping theater reform by King Charles II in this new opera. With the stroke a pen, the King allows women to appear on stage and forbids men from dressing up as women in service to the theater. Music and Libretto by Carlisle Floyd. 8 p.m. Saturday and March 11, 2:30 p.m. March 13; Cullen Theater, Wortham Theater Center; 501 Texas Ave.; $25-$80; 713-228-6737, houstongrandopera.org.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Jewish Film Festival

The 2016 edition of this film festival kicks off Saturday and will feature 27 films at various venues through March 20. For a schedule, go to erjcchouston.org.

Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center

5601 S. Braeswood, erjcchouston.org

THE MAN IN THE WALL: On the night her husband disappears, Shir is visited by families and friends who each share a different tale in this psychological thriller. (Hebrew with English subtitles)

8 p.m. Saturday

AFTERNOON OF SHORTS: Seven films - all less than 17 minutes long - are screened.

1 p.m. Sunday

VERY SEMI-SERIOUS: A PARTIALLY THOROUGH PORTRAIT OF NEW YORKER CARTOONISTS: Documentary follows cartoon editor Bob Mankoff as he reviews submissions from aspiring hopefuls as well as magazine icons, including Roz Chast and Sam Gross.

4 p.m. Sunday

THE KIND WORDS: Following their mother's death, three Israeli siblings learn that the Jewish man who raised them is not their biological father; their biological father is a Muslim. In turmoil, they set out for France in search of him. (German with English subtitles)

7:30 p.m. Sunday

PHOENIX: A Hitchcock-style tale of identity, illusion and deception as Nelly, whose reconstructed face is similar but not identical to her disfigured one, tracks down her husband, who may have shipped her to the Nazis. (Hebrew with English subtitles)

5 p.m. Monday

APPLES FROM THE DESSERT: The only child of ultra-religious parents, Rebecca breaks taboos and sneaks off to folk-dancing classes where she meets a secular kibbutznik. (Hebrew with English subtitles)

7:30 p.m. Monday

EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED: A young man takes a strange and unexpectedly funny journey in search of a family heroine he's never known in this screen adaptation of the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. Directed by Liev Schreiber and starring Elijah Wood.

7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Discovery Green

1500 McKinney, discoverygreen.com

CINDERELLA: Live-action take on the classic fairy tale stars Lily James and Richard James, with Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother.

7:30 p.m. Saturday

River Oaks Theatre

2009 W. Gray, landmarktheatres.com

THE FIFTH ELEMENT: Bruce Willis stars as a futuristic New York cabbie who joins "perfect being" Milla Jovovich to save the world from imminent destruction.

Midnight Friday and Saturday

Rice Cinema

6100 Main, film.rice.edu

MUSTANG: Free-spirited sisters in Turkey rebel after their parents make their home a prison where the only escape is an arranged marriage. (Turkish, with English subtitles)

7 p.m. Tuesday

SCREAMING QUEENS: Documentary about transgender women and drag queens who fought police harassment at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco's Tenderloin in 1966, three years before the famous riot at Stonewall Inn bar in New York City.

7 p.m. Wednesday

Holocaust Museum Houston

5401 Caroline, hmh.org

A NAZI LEGACY: WHAT OUR FATHERS DID: Philippe Sands, a human-rights lawyer, conducts conversations with two men whose fathers were indicted as Nazi war criminals. The two sons have starkly contrasting attitudes toward their fathers; one can't bring himself to condemn his father while the other despises his father.

5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tuesday

Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston

1001 Bissonnet; mfah.org

This will be the sixth edition of Five Funny French Films. All in French with English subtitles.

SEX, LOVE & THERAPY: Fired from an airline for his excessive womanizing, an ex-pilot works through his issues in a support group for sex addicts. Inspired by his own success, he begins a career as a couple's therapist.

7 p.m. Friday

DADDY OR MOMMY: Laurent Lafitte and Marian Fois find their relationship meandering toward friendship after years of marriage. When they each are offered new jobs overseas, the now-separated husband and wife compete for their children's affection.

9 p.m. Friday

HOME SWEET HOME: When a village is hit hard by a recession, the town's mayor intends to secure a loan, but the application requires the town to have a full-time doctor. After no response to outreach, one doctor is offered the post in lieu of being arrested for drug possession.

7 p.m. Saturday

THE ELK: Comedy fuses with science fiction in this quirky film about the chaos that ensues when an "elk" alien emerges from the forest near a small town.

9 p.m. Saturday

CHIC!: Ruthless director Helene Birk reigns over the prestigious haute-couture fashion house led by world-renowned designer Alicia Ricosi. When Alicia faces a creative block, Helene must find a quick solution to help her regain her creative mojo.

5 p.m. Sunday

Houston Museum of Natural Science

5555 Hermann Park; hmns.org

SECRET OCEAN: Jean-Michel Cousteau and marine biologist Holly Lohuis take viewers on a breathtaking underwater journey. Filmed in the Bahamas, Fiji and Bimini.

DINOSAURS ALIVE: 3-D adventure follows paleontologists around the world as they uncover evidence that the descendants of dinosaurs still walk (or fly) among us.

NATIONAL PARKS ADVENTURE: Join world-class mountaineer Conrad Anker, adventure photographer Max Lowe and artist Rachel Pohl as they bike, hike and climb their way across America's most pristine parks.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Electronic dance music, hip-hop and indie rock dominate the lineup for the 2016 Free Press Summer Festival, set for June 4-5 at Eleanor Tinsley Park.

While a host of local bands and at least one more headliner are still to be announced, acts leading the pack for the eighth annual event are deadmau5, Modest Mouse, The National, Refused, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, Violent Femmes, The Chainsmokers, Texas native Leon Bridges, Young the Giant, Zeds Dead, Jamie xx, Big Gigantic, Gogol Bordello, Matt and Kim, Big Grams and Built to Spill.

Those who are inclined to dance will be happy with this year's slate of DJ duos. EDM has been a big part of FPSF as that genre has grown in popularity in the past five years. The 2016 event will be no different.

Since debuting with attendance of about 30,000 in 2009, the festival has grown to crowds of about 100,000 for the two-day event, usually held during the first sweltering weekend of the year.

Pegstars Concerts' Jagi Katial, festival co-founder, said that he's most looking forward to seeing Bridges and Big Grams, the left-field musical collaboration between Phantogram and rapper Big Boi of Outkast.

"Leon is a friend and a Texas boy like me, so I am thrilled to see him on that big stage. I love that Gogol Bordello and Matt and Kim crushed and like us enough to come back," Katial said. Two of the headliners, deadmau5 and The National, had long been on the FPSF booking wish list.

"Those are two acts I've wanted forever. Our schedules never lined up, so we're excited," he said.

The festival returns to Eleanor Tinsley Park after spending 2015 in temporary digs at the NRG Center due to heavy rains.

Katial said that ongoing changes in Buffalo Bayou Park will bring new things, including an entrance-gate adjustment that should allow for a smoother customer experience.

The midsize Mercury stage will be in a different spot, likely out from under an Interstate 45 overpass, and Katial says that food and drink concessions will have a new home called the Grand Bazaar.

Free Press Houston editor Omar Afra said that he always expected the festival to become a major event.

"I am typically way too optimistic. I thought it was going to be three times as big as it is now," Afra joked. "I think we knew back in the Westheimer Block Party days that there was a place for a big festival in Houston."

Afra introduced the Day for Night music and art festival this past December, booking New Order, Philip Glass and hosting a fiery Kendrick Lamar set. The event was well-received, and a second edition is expected later this year.

As for FPSF, he's looking forward to seeing influential Swedish hardcore act Refused finally play here. The band split up in 1998 but re-formed in 2012 and released a sturdy collection of new music that shows it's hung onto its live mojo.

"I guarantee it will be a highlight," Afra said.

He'd like festivalgoers to make time for local act Children of Pop during the event. He's a fan of the band and sees it going places.

There is one band, though, that he's going to make sure to set aside an hour for during FPSF weekend.

"The kid in me is excited to see the Violent Femmes," he said. The appearance of the "Blister in the Sun" band, which formed in 1980, drew the interest of more than a few festival fans of a certain age.

Tickets for the two-day festival range from $148.50 for general admission and $193.50 for Fancy Pants passes. High-rollers can spring for a $999 Silk Pajama pass. Tickets are available at fpsf.com.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Police have released surveillance photographs of suspects in a robbery at a check cashing store last month in southwest Houston.

The heist happened about 8 a.m. Monday at Envios Y Mas at 6607 Ashcroft near De Moss, according to the Houston Police Department.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Go Texan Day is as good a day as any to celebrate the state that has given the world Willie Nelson, silicone breast implants, Dr Pepper, and Whataburger.

Youre welcome, world.

THE STARS AT NIGHT...: 21 things Texans do that might be weird anywhere else

A Houston tradition since the 1950s meant to herald the beginning of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Go Texan Day is a day where Texans can dress like the rest of the world thinks we dress every day of the year.

It's always the Friday just before the rodeo's official downtown kickoff parade.

Now Playing: From his days as a Bible salesman to his favorite Southern food to the story behind his iconic braids, Willie Nelson gave us little peeks inside his lifetime of experience (thats chock-full of some crazy stuff, were sure!). Video: Southern Living

Archer Romero, the president of the show who chaired the first Go Texan Committee in 1954, probably didn't know back then that over 60 years later everyone would still be making last-minute trips to western wear store Cavender's for a new belt buckle and boots just for the occasion.

Don't worry, those new boots will eventually fit after wearing them about a year or so.

ARE BIG AND BRIGHT...: If it wasn't for Texas the world would be without these amazing things

Go Texan newbies who aren't sure if you are doing it right, use this test. Look at your outfit and ask yourself "Would George Strait or Willie Nelson be caught wearing this?"

If the answer is yes, then game on. If no, you are probably really excited to see Rascal Flatts on March 5 and you are beyond help.

Go Texan Day is not as important a day as Texas Independence Day (March 2) or the premiere of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on CBS (April 21) but its up there.

Of course for some of us, every day of the year is Go Texan Day, no matter what we are wearing.

Craig Hlavaty is a reporter for Chron.com and HoustonChronicle.com.
A state appeals court has sided with Houston Community College Trustee Dave Wilson in a lengthy legal fight over whether he lives in the district he represents.

Ever since Wilson was elected to the HCC board in 2013, the Harris County Attorney's office has argued that he did not actually live in the district when he ran to represent it.

At issue is whether Wilson lived in an apartment in a warehouse on West 34th Street or with his wife at a home outside the district, which he has listed on tax forms. In 2014, a jury unanimously determined Wilson lived at the 34th Street address. A judge later upheld the ruling, and now the state appeals court has done the same.

"The State...did not conclusively establish that Wilson did not reside at West 34th Street on November 5, 2013," the ruling says. "Wilson, on the other hand, presented evidence that he started living at the West 34th Street property in early 2012; that he intends for that property to be his residence; that he spends most of his time at that property, including sleeping there five nights a week; that he keeps personal belongings and receives personal mail at that address; and that while he spends two nights a week at the Lake Lane house, he always returns to the West 34th Street property."

Wilson said he hopes this is the end of the case.

"The trial court jury ruled on all of this and you're not bringing up anything new," Wilson said. "You lost."

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan said in a statement that he was disappointed by the court's ruling, but not surprised, because " 'residency' as the court outlines, is basically where one says he or she lives with relatively insignificant requirements to establish that residency under the law."

"Arguably a person should not be able to claim the benefit of a residential homestead at one location while registering to vote at a different location," Ryan said in the statement. "We are hopeful the Legislature will address this issue in the next session."

Ryan's statement did not say whether the county would appeal.
Miss Houston's mother originally wasn't in favor of her daughter entering pageants, but now Margana Wood's mom, Cindy Wood says, "I've changed my tune."

"Initially, I said no," said the Old Braeswood resident. "I said, 'That is the stupidest thing. It is just so not who we are.' "

But as March 8 approaches, when Miss America hopefuls across the country raise millions of dollars for children's hospitals on National Pancake Day, Wood says that pageants are "one of the best things your daughter can do."

National Pancake Day "is definitely one of the most exciting days of the year for us," said Margana, 22, who will compete as Miss Houston in the June 28-July 2 Miss Texas Scholarship Pageant.

More Information Want to go? What: National Pancake Day Where: More than 1,500 IHOP restaurants across the country When: 7 a.m-7 p.m. Tuesday, March 8 Cost: Free; a $5 donation is suggested Details: www.ihoppancakeday.com See More Collapse

The winner will advance as the Lone Star State's representative to Miss America.

On National Pancake Day, titleholders will greet guests at more than 1,500 IHOP restaurants who will enjoy a complimentary short stack of buttermilk pancakes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Guests will be encouraged to contribute $5 to a local children's hospital, which is the amount they would have paid for the pancakes, and receive a coupon good for $5 off their next visit.

In most cities, the event raises funds and awareness for Children's Miracle Network hospitals, which Miss America partners with year-round.

In the Houston area, the main focus of National Pancake Day is Shriners Hospitals for Children-Houston, said Sheila Milner, who serves as executive director of the Miss Houston/Harris County organization.

"We appreciate everyone who has joined our mission to help children in need of expert, specialty medical care," said Dale W. Stauss, president and chairman of the board of trustees of Shriners Hospitals for Children. "With your support, we are able to improve the lives of thousands of children every year."

Even after Cindy and her husband, Mark Wood, allowed their daughter to compete in the teen component of the Miss America program, Cindy insisted that it "was not going to be all-encompassing. She still had school and softball and cheerleading and dance."

When Margana won the title of Miss Houston's Outstanding Teen and advanced to the state level, her mother said, "I saw how much more confident she became by doing pageants, and how she became aware of the world around her through volunteering."

Margana held the title of Miss Texas' Outstanding Teen during her senior year at Lamar High School, graduating in 2013.

She currently splits her time between Houston, where she makes pageant appearances, and Austin, where she attends the University of Texas as a junior majoring in corporate communications and a member of Beta Tau Alpha sorority.

"National Pancake Day is on a Tuesday, so I will head to an IHOP in Austin," said Margana. "I will probably team up with the Miss Austin organization."

Milner said that Margana is a diligent ambassador for the Miss Houston/Miss Harris County organization even when she's away at school.

"She's an honorary pageant mom," said Milner, to the other 11 girls and young women who represent Teen and Miss titles for communities in the Houston area.

"She is very active, especially doing a lot on social media."

Other local Miss and Teen titleholders in the Houston area represent Bryan/College Station, Katy, Fort Bend County, Pearland and The Woodlands.

For further information about the pageants, contact Sheila Milner at happymil@aol.com.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Cy-Fair Independent School District is giving juniors and seniors a head start on careers in education through courses that provide hands-on experience in elementary school classrooms.

As part of the curriculum, they are transported to nearby elementaries, where they work beside instructors and even create lesson plans.

Sue Silhanek teaches the program at Cy-Fair High School. Previously known as "Ready, Set, Teach," the three-part series of classes is also available at six other district high schools: Cypress Ranch, Cypress Falls, Cypress Creek, Jersey Village, Langham Creek and Cypress Springs.

Students spend the first six weeks studying aspects of education.

More Information Check it out For more information about the Career and Technical Education courses offered at CY-Fair ISD, visit www.cfisd.net, hover on "parents-students" and then click on "curriculum/course-descriptions." Then click on "CATE" and scroll to "Education/Training." This program is part of the Texas Association of Future Educators. For more information, visit www.tafeonline.org. See More Collapse

"We look at different theories of education," Silhanek said. "They're aware of different types of learners."

Then the teens start spending time helping teach in elementary school classrooms.

"They have the opportunity to work in three different classes with three different teachers," Silhanek said. "They can teach 12 classes before they ever go to college."

The course is ideal to help students discover whether they are suited for the field.

"This way, they know if they love it," she said.

Silhanek gets regular feedback from graduates of the program who are now in college.

"They say they really are ahead," she said. "Not only have they taught the classes, but they know the terminology. They have portfolios. They have technical training."

The students tend to have an easier time with university admission and with employment after college.

"These are cream-of-the-crop kids," Silhanek said. "They prove they have responsibility. And it's a win-win, because teachers in the elementary classrooms have experienced help. They can do whatever the teachers ask of them."

Many former students, upon graduation from college, come back to teach full-time in Cy-Fair ISD.

"It's full circle," Silhanek said. "You have a student go through your class and then come back to the district."

In fact, every graduate from the program is given a letter of intent with a pledge from the district that there will be an interview waiting for them if they want to come back.

Karisa Stokley, 17, plans to take the district up on its offer. The 12th-grader at Cypress Ranch is in her second year of the program and has discovered a passion for special education.

"This program is really good, because I had no idea what I wanted to teach," she said. "It's really helped a lot."

Stokley spends two days a week studying the course at her high school and three days weekly in elementary school classrooms.

"It's been extremely valuable," she said. "It's all about becoming a more effective teacher later."

Stokley recommends the program to students who are willing to put in the effort.

"It's a lot of hard work," she said. "There's extra responsibility, but there's also a lot of fun stuff. You get to work with kids, experience the job, actually teach the class and see if standing in front of a classroom is what you want to do."

Melissa Lubbers, a 2010 graduate of Cy-Fair High School, also recommends the course.

"I went through it and absolutely loved it," she said. "The program helped me build a lot of relationships with teachers. I was always able to go back and observe classes. I felt like that really gave me an upper hand."

Lubbers thought she was well-prepared for her time in the university.

"I already knew different teaching philosophies; I already knew how to write lesson plans," she said.

Lubbers was hired to work at Emery Elementary in Cy-Fair ISD. She credits her high school experience with helping her along her journey.

"It really showed me what an impact you can make on a student's life," she said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Teams from 10 Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District high schools put their talents on display for a Berry Center crowd at the 2016 All-District Dance Show Offs Jan. 30.

Six students received the 2016 All-District Dance Team Scholarship: Danica Renay Deaton, Cypress Creek High School; Hannah Leigh Sosa, Cypress Lakes High School; Megan Lott, Cypress Woods High School; Claire Angelyn Rogers, Langham Creek High School; Darien Elizabeth Lyons, Cypress Ranch High School; and Keeli Marie Machacek, Cypress Woods High School.

Air Force JROTC units place at drill contest

Several Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District Air Force JROTC units placed among the top three in open events at the district's Military Drill Competition Feb. 6 at the Berry Center.

Langham Creek High School placed third overall out of more than 25 Air Force JROTC programs and 1,000 cadets from across the state, who were evaluated by military training instructors from Lackland Air Force Base's 737th Training Group and district staff.

Cy-Fair High School won first place in academics and second in unarmed novice regulation. Cypress Creek High School took first place in unarmed novice regulation. Langham Creek High School won third place in unarmed regulation, unarmed exhibition and armed exhibition categories. Cypress Springs High School won third place in physical training.

Langham Creek also was named winner of the Commander's Cup, awarded to the top unit in the district.

Fourth-grader named Student of the Week

Andre' Elementary School fourth-grade student Danna Tovar, 10, came to the United States in January 2014 as a quiet and timid newcomer, but since then she has worked hard to learn new things every day, teacher Araceli Simon said.

That effort has earned her Student of the Week honors.

"She is a hard worker, always willing to do her best. As her former third-grade teacher, I am extremely proud of all her accomplishments," Simon said.

Schools head to finals in state video contest

Four Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District campuses have been named regional finalists in the Celebrate Texas Public Schools video contest.

Jersey Village High School, Salyards Middle School, Keith Elementary School and Cypress Woods High School will advance to the state level of judging.

The Texas School Public Relations Association contest offers students the chance to win $1,250 for their campus. Cypress-Fairbanks ISD's entries are available at www.tinyurl.com/CFISDCTPS2016.

Faculty Excellence Award winners named

Lone Star College-CyFair has recognized four Faculty Excellence Award winners: Aaron Alon, Blake Ellis, Carolyn Ho and Kimberly Lane.

The four will be honored for their service at upcoming employee events. Visit www.LoneStar.edu/cyfair for information.

4 LSC-CyFair adjunct faculty recognized

From student and colleague nominations, four Lone Star College-CyFair instructors have been named 2015-16 Adjunct Faculty Excellence Award winners.

Recipients include Tomoko Baker, Georges Detiveaux, Lee Glaesemann and Jennifer Heller.

For information, visit www.LoneStar.edu/cyfair.

LSC-CyFair honors staff members

Lone Star College-CyFair has recognized Kimberly Anderson, Emilio Bahena, Cristina Barron, Martha Diaz and Schandra Lewis with Staff Excellence awards for their contributions to the college.

Visit www.LoneStar.edu for information.

LSC essay winner shares personal story

Future astrophysicist Krista Garrie recently shared how her Lone Star College-CyFair experience is the cornerstone upon which she is building a future.

Garrie, along with five other Lone Star College System student essay winners, inspired guests with their stories of "How My Community College Experience Changed My Life" at the Lone Star College Foundation's 23rd annual Chancellor's Breakfast.

Garrie along with Ariana Velazco, LSC-Kingwood; Jeremy Martinez, LSC-Montgomery; Eric Thompson, LSC-North Harris; Gerald Hallford, LSC-Tomball; and Jesse Rodriguez, LSC-University Park, received a $1,000 scholarship from the LSC Foundation.

Visit www.LoneStarCollegeFoundation.org for information.
Some Lamar Consolidated ISD students at two elementary schools have been given the option to stay at their current campuses instead of moving to the district's planned 24th elementary.

The school, which will open in the fall on FM 359 in the Creekside Ranch subdivision, is meant to relieve crowding at nearby Huggins and Hubenak elementaries, where portables litter the campuses and students start lunch as early as 10 a.m. because there isn't enough room for everyone to eat at once.

The decision to allow a choice on whether to remain at current campuses applies to about 100 children living in the central and northeast part of the district.

They include Huggins students from the eastern part of that school's attendance zone and Hubenak students living south of Gaston Fulshear Road.

Trustees allowed the option to be consistent with an exception made last summer to the attendance zones of secondary campuses where Huggins and Hubenak students will attend.

Trustees gave families of the same group the flexibility to choose if students would continue in the Foster High feeder pattern or switch to the track for planned Fulshear High, which will open in the fall of 2016. Trustees did this so students could continue on to secondary school with neighborhood classmates.

Hubernak was built for an enrollment of 750, but has 1,206 students. Huggins has 780 students, which is 130 more than its enrollment capacity of 650.

Despite crowding at those schools, parents of students at both campuses didn't want their children to leave the schools.

At a Feb. 1 public meeting and a Feb. 18 trustee meeting, parents of those students asked to be given the choice to have children stay where they were.

"A big change like that would be a very tough transition," said Westheimer Lakes resident Michelene Arrowood, who has two children with special needs who attend Hubenak.

Elementary School 24's attendance zone was approved by trustees Feb. 18.

To be eligible, students must have been enrolled at either Huggins or Hubenak by Feb. 18, and their families must complete an application to remain at their current campuses by April 29.

Applications for eligible students who want to remain at their current campus are available on the district website, www.lcisd.org/about/zoning, and must be submitted to the executive director of elementary education.

If families do not act by April 29, their children will move to the new campus.

The district will not provide transportation to students who declare to stay at their current campus.

Previously, all students at Hubenak or Huggins were zoned to Wertheimer Middle School, Briscoe Junior High and Foster High, which are in the same complex.

The approved attendance boundaries for Elementary School 24 include Huggins students who live in the eastern part of the school's attendance zone. Hubenak students who live south of Gaston Fulshear Road and Bellaire Boulevard, or north of Gaston Fulshear Road and west of FM 723 are also zoned to the new school.

One other group of Hubenak students, those who live south of Bellaire Boulevard and east of FM 723, which includes Rolling Oaks subdivision, can stay at their current campus.

Demographer Pat Guseman, president of Population & Survey Analysts, said only 16 students in that area are the right age to attend Hubenak.

"We're talking about such few students," trustee Melisa Roberts said.

Roberts asked to give this area the right to stay at Hubenak so that those students could continue on to secondary campuses with classmates from their neighborhood even though it wasn't in the ATB committee's recommendation.

"Their neighbors across the street have been afforded that opportunity," Roberts said.

Parents also brought up concerns at the February public hearing about moving special education students to a new campus.

District spokesman Phil Sulak said where special education students attend school is outside of the authority of the 14-member committee of parents at the affected schools that came up with the attendance boundaries for Elementary School 24. Whether a special education student would get to stay on campus is determined on a case-by-case basis, but it would be very unusual for a student with special needs to remain at a campus if the new school offered equivalent services, Sulak said.

Unlike many other high-growth districts in the Houston area and Texas, Lamar CISD is still seeing an influx of families with elementary school-aged children because of its relatively affordable housing. In other rapidly growing areas, high property values prevent many parents of young children from buying homes, Guseman said.
The city of Houston has begun removing trees in Kingwood designated as dangerous.

Houston City Councilman Dave Martin recently met with a representative from the Houston Parks and Recreation Department to look at and discuss the 513 trees along key intersections in Kingwood that are either dead or dying, and could pose a danger to motorists in the area.

"Everything is in the median," said Jeremy Burks, supervisor with the Houston Parks and Recreation Department. "If you were to walk out there now, you'd see some blue dots on trees on the side (of the road)."

The medians evaluated include Mills Branch between Kingwood Drive and Northpark, Kingwood Drive from U.S. 59 to Mills Branch, Northpark from Woodland Hills to Mills Branch and West Lake Houston Parkway from Kingwood Greens Drive South to Northpark.

Martin's office was alerted about the trees by Kingwood residents, who felt those trees could pose a danger to vehicles and pedestrians in the area.

The 2011 drought that resulted in the death of thousands of trees in the Greater Houston area is believed to have been a contributing factor.

In 2012, as many as 8,000 trees killed or adversely affected by the 2011 drought had to be removed.

"The parks department did mention that the drought of 2011 had an impact on the existing trees and was a contributing factor to many of them dying or posing a dangerous threat to residents," said Lauren Laake, Martin's chief of staff.

Barry Ward, executive director of Trees for Houston, said a lot of those trees are still in the process of dying off.

"A tree that is 50 years old and four stories tall does not die over night," he said. "It make take three years to die from the drought. So the worst of the die-off from last summer's drought is yet to come."

Meanwhile, Martin allocated a portion of his fiscal year 2016 Council District Service Fund dollars for Parks and Recreation to hire an arborist to evaluate and identify trees needing removal.

"The amount that has currently been allocated for the removal of the trees is an estimated $69,902.50," Laake said.

"I do not have a timeline as to when this will be paid at this time.

"That is something that would have to be asked of the finance department."
Pamela Morgan of Kingwood got in the spirit of National Pancake Day recently by hosting a primer to teach her daughter, Kennedy, and Savannah Friaz and Callie Maple, whomKennedy mentors, how to make pancakes.

"My theory is that if you can fry an egg, you can learn to flip a pancake," said Morgan.

Kennedy, who is 14 and in eighth grade at Creekwood Middle School, is Miss Houston's Outstanding Teen in the Miss America scholarship program.

One of her duties will be to greet guests who visit IHOP restaurants on March 8 for a complimentary short stack of buttermilk pancakes and a possible donation to charity.

"It is definitely one of the most exciting days of the year for us," said Margana Wood, Kennedy's mentor, who will compete as Miss Houston in the June 28-July 2 pageant that will select the Lone Star State's representative to Miss America.

The Morgans learned about the event when Kennedy began shadowing Wood as a Lone Star Princess in 2012.

"I had friends in Louisiana whose daughters were Kennedy's age and they were princesses, so when Kennedy wanted to do it, I went online to find out how do we go about it here," said Morgan. "Everything is bigger and better in Texas, and sure enough, we have the Lone Star Princess program, to get younger girls interested in the Miss Texas system."

Sheila Milner, executive director of the Miss Houston/Harris County Organization, invited Morgan to bring Kennedy to the 2012 Miss Houston pageant and participate as an Lone Star Princess, escorting girls onstage during the evening wear phase of competition.

"Off we went!" said Morgan. "I didn't see Kennedy for the rest of the day. But by the end of the pageant, she had picked out Margana and said that if Margana won, she wanted to be her princess."

That night Wood won the title of Miss Houston's Outstanding Teen which is the title Kennedy now holds.

"Their dream always has been for Margana to become Miss Houston and for Kennedy to be Miss Houston's Outstanding Teen, and that came true last fall," said Morgan. "The coolest thing would be if they both win their state titles and go to Miss America and Miss America's Outstanding Teen."

Wood won the state Teen title in 2012, then placed in the top eight in Orlando, Florida. Kennedy accompanied Wood as her princess at the national pageant.

Wood is the daughter of Mark and Cindy Wood, of the Old Braeswood neighborhood in Houston. She graduated from Lamar High School and is now a junior at the University of Texas.

Kennedy's father is Scot Morgan of Richmond.

Pancake Day

Across the country, guests at more than 1,500 IHOP restaurants will be encouraged to contribute $5 to a local children's hospital, which is the amount they would have paid for the pancakes, and receive a coupon good for $5 off their next visit.

In the Houston area, the focus of is Shriners Hospitals for Children-Houston.

"We hope to exceed $1 million in contributions during this year's National Pancake Day," said Ken Flournoy, committee chairman and member of the board of governors for Shriners Hospitals for Children-Houston.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Hillary Clinton and Sen. Ted Cruz won Texas even as some Houston-area voters still waited in line to cast their votes Tuesday night.

The state was the top prize on Super Tuesday with the most delegates up for grabs in both the Republican and Democratic presidential primary races. The win helped Cruz hang on and let Clinton glide closer toward the nomination.

Local members of Congress held off challengers and incumbents took leads in other contests that will set up races for various state House seats.

Races for Harris County sheriff and district attorney took shape, as well, and the head of the Harris County Republican Party found himself headed toward an unexpected runoff.

Clinton, Trump extend leads

Clinton and Republican front-runner Donald Trump were the big winners on Tuesday.

Clinton became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president as she swept states across the South and Southwest including Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia in a Super Tuesday show of force. She also won in Massachusetts, picking up her first victory in rival Bernie Sanders' native New England.

But she still will have to face Sanders, who won his home state of Vermont, as well as Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado. The independent senator plans to stay in the race despite huge losses, especially in Southern states with large minority populations, and a virtual inability to catch up to Clinton's lead in delegates. He has the money and support to stay in the campaign, if only to keep hammering his message.

In Austin, Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa applauded Clinton's Texas win, and said Sanders had mobilized Democrats to turn out and vote in a good sign for the November general election.

"Texas is Hillary Country!" Hinojosa said. "Secretary Clinton is family to us here in Texas. She fought hard for a Texas-sized win and we thank her for it. With a Texas win, Clinton is now well on her way to secure the Democratic nomination."

Cruz fought off Donald Trump on his home turf behind the support of hardline conservatives and white evangelicals in Texas, according to a preliminary survey of voters who arrived early Tuesday to cast their primary ballot. Cruz also was declared the winner in Oklahoma.

Texas was the top prize of 12 states holding primaries Tuesday and isn't winner-take-all. That had put pressure on Cruz to win decisively and deny Trump and Marco Rubio as many of the 155 delegates as possible.

Trump, however, claimed six Republican victories on Super Tuesday as the New York businessman extended his dominance in the 2016 primary.

At the same time, the GOP leaders' search for any viable alternative to Trump suffered a fresh setback, with both Cruz and Rubio vowing to fight on despite underwhelming performances on the biggest day of voting so far.

"Tomorrow morning we have a choice," Cruz told supporters in Houston. "So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans."

Shrugging off a racially charged feud from earlier in the week, a confident Trump looked ahead to the general election in a victory speech at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida: "We're going to be more inclusive," he declared. "We're going to be more unified."

Marco Rubio, meanwhile, won the Republican presidential caucuses in Minnesota, earning his first victory in the 2016 race for president.

Congressmen hold off challengers



Powerful members of Congress held off primary challengers in Texas.

Voters craving new blood had many in Washington closely watching suburban Houston, where U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was in the political fight of his 10-term congressional career.

Months after taking the powerful tax panel previously helmed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Brady drew a challenge from three outsiders who sought to tap into Trump's outsider message. Some observers likened the race to the 2014 defeat by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, but Brady proved his durability by winning outright and avoiding a runoff.

Longtime Democratic Congressman Gene Green, meanwhile, fought off Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia in a race that many thought would test the burgeoning power of the Hispanic vote.

At the Quality Inn in the heart of Pasadena, in the middle of U.S. Rep. Gene Green's majority-Hispanic and working class district, supporters trickled in to the watch party on the eighth floor of the hotel.

Green greeted his cheering supporters for the first time at about 9:30 p.m. when he strolled through the hotel bar with his wife on his arms.

"I want to thank the folks that trusted me," he said. "I went 20 years without a primary opponent ... I'd like to think it's because we work hard."

That seemed to be the case, as supporters, including Cedric Rodriguez, a 33-year-old who works in sales and lives in Meadow Creek, said they were longtime fans of Green.

"I like him for his values, the great job he has done so far in this community, and the impact that he's had," he said.

Though he is Latino, Rodriguez said he never considered voting for Garcia.

"It's nothing against Sheriff Garcia," he said. "But if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Green said he and Garcia are "going to have to work through some things" before they resume their friendship.

"Friends don't do that to friends, not even in politics," he said, referring to criticism from the Garcia campaign that blamed the district's low educational attainment on Green and blasted him for his environmental record. "I just think he was grasping at stuff."

Garcia said in his concession speech that it wasn't personal. He said he needed to take a step back after losing in back-to-back elections.

"Will this be my last campaign?" Garcia said. "I doubt it."

At a west-side Mexican food restaurant, Culberson, a 15-year congressman, celebrating his expected win, shaking hands with his supporters and denouncing his opponents for questioning his conservatism.

"I'm very proud to represent this district," Culberson said, joined by his wife and dozens of allies. "I keep my word to represent them honestly as a consistent constitutional conservative."

Red, white and blue campaign signs that said the 15-year congressman "KEEPS HIS WORD" adorned the walls.

Culberson held onto a souvenir of his own: a printout from the first precinct results he received Tuesday night before other returns trickled in.

"For the scrapbook," Culberson said.

Republican side of Sheriff's race takes shape



Recently-appointed Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman decisively beat his two Republican primary opponents. His victory sets the stage for the main contest in November.

On the Democratic side, the race appeared headed for a runoff, with former Houston police officer and City Council member Ed Gonzalez leading the race's three other opponents.

"We seem to be off to a good start," Hickman said, after a day spent campaigning at four polling stations in north Harris County. "I know an awful lot of these people and so I felt pretty comfortable in my base area here ... and we got a very positive response."

District Attorney race shaping up to be a rematch

In early vote totals, Kim Ogg has a commanding lead over former judge Morris Overstreet and perennial candidate Lloyd Oliver in the Democratic race to challenge GOP incumbent Devon Anderson.

Anderson did not draw an opponent in the race.

Going into the election, Ogg had widespread name recognition after a hard fought campaign against Anderson in 2014.

Late last week, liberal billionaire George Soros put $160,000 into a Dallas political action committee backing Overstreet. The Texas Safety & Justice PAC which spent almost $100,000 on polling, voter lists and mailers promoting Overstreet.

If Ogg holds on to win without a run-off, she and Anderson will likely spar over the prosecution of misdemeanor amounts of marijuana and small amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine.

State House incumbents face challengers

A handful of state legislative incumbents faced challenges based on their party loyalty, something that surprised political observers in certain districts. State Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, endured criticism she was not conservative enough, spurred by a place on Texas Right to Life's Dishonorable Mentions List last year.

Your browser does not support the iframe HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

In a four-way race, Riddle was trailing Valoree Swanson in early results. Swanson, who outraised the incumbent during the primary campaign, had a majority of support among early and absentee voters. Swanson was the apparent winner by Wednesday morning, according to unofficial results.

In a tight Republican contest, moderate Sarah Davis of Houston leads challenger David Palmer in his largely urban district. Davis has been a target of some GOP interests, namely for her pro-choice abortion views. By Wednesday morning she had widened a slim lead into an apparent win.

In San Antonio, House Speaker Joe Straus won a majority of early votes in a three-way race. Straus, who has faced Republican criticism for not advancing conservative goals, will avoid a runoff if he can hold the lead.

Though he held a majority most of election night, the last few precincts to come in pushed State Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, below 50 percent. Though totals remain unofficial, Reynolds garnered 48.5 percent of the vote, coming 249 votes shy of avoiding a runoff with Angelique Bartholomew.

The winner will face Ken Bryant in November.

Reynolds, the first African-American elected to the state House from Fort Bend County, remained popular despite a misdemeanor conviction for barratry in Montgomery County - for which he could serve a year in jail.

He has called the conviction "frivolous" and politically motivated. Supporters didn't shrink from Reynolds' side, meanwhile.

"I think this is a strong message that despite the negative messaging and negative attention I received, that when you do the right thing for your community, that is the only thing that matters," he said Tuesday night.

Reynolds enjoyed backing from county Democratic Party officials, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and U.S. Reps. Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee.

Voters in northwest Houston went to the polls Tuesday  for the first time in nearly 30 years without the option of sending Turner to Austin. Turner, elected Houston's mayor last year, had represented District 139 since 1989. In early voting, it was unclear which Democrat would come out on top. Randy Bates led the four-person field, but Kimberly Willis and Jarvis Johnson were close behind.

In northeast Harris County, incumbents early voting brought different results to incumbents. State Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Kingwood, was well ahead of his challenger, Mitchell Bosworth. Next door, State Rep. Wayne Smith, R-Baytown, trailed Briscoe Cain.

Meanwhile, in an unlikely Democratic primary challenge, State Rep. Jessica Farrar of Houston is trouncing Houston Community College trustee Dave Wilson, known more for his conservative activism than Democratic party participation.

Unexpected runoff in Harris County Republican Party

The chairman of the Harris County Republican Party faces an expected runoff election, forced to fight again for the seat he took from a longtime incumbent two years ago.

Paul Simpson, in his first term leading the nation's largest county GOP, was in a tight race with attorney Rick Ramos, with neither expected to win more than half the vote, according to incomplete election results late Tuesday. Tex Christopher was in a distant third.

The close contest showed a continued divide in the local party since Simpson ran a well-funded campaign in 2014 and defeated Jared Woodfill for the unpaid position.

Simpson, an engineer-turned-attorney, blamed the tough match-up this time on powerful political slates  including one backed by GOP activist Steve Hotze  that endorsed Ramos.

"The party's stronger and bigger and more effective than it's ever been," Simpson said as he watched election results trickle in on a big screen at a west-side Mexican restaurant. "The slates want a weak party, which makes the slates stronger."

Ramos could not be reached for comment.

Long lines delay local results

Houston-area voters, who will pick Republican and Democratic contenders for offices including Harris County sheriff and district attorney and seats in the state house and in Congress, had to wait in long lines to vote Tuesday night.

Larger than expected turnout delayed results as the Harris County Clerk's office received reports of people staying in booths for 15 to 20 minutes, navigating lengthy ballots. Because it is a primary, voters can't vote straight ticket. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart said the long lines at the polls will delay the release of results from early voting.

In Spring at Zwink Elementary, which served as polling location for both the Democratic and Republican parties, people rushed to the polls before they closed for the evening.

By 6 p.m. residents were waiting 30 to 40 minutes to cast their votes for the Republican ballot. Those voting in the Democratic primary only had to wait about 10 minutes at the location.

Republican election judge at Zwink Elementary Marcie Fessler said voter turnout was much higher than expected and is more than double the amount she's ever seen in a primary election. She noted the process was slow because the site only has four voting booths for each party.

"Some people take five minutes to vote and some take 30 minutes and they are allowed to," she said.

At polling places, many politicians were running into unfamiliar faces, presumably drawn by the presidential election.

"One thing that surprised me, surprised a lot of us, was there were a lot of people who voted who never voted in primaries before," said State Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Kingwood, who spent much of Tuesday at polling sites in his district.

Huberty, who is recognizable to frequent voters in Kingwood from three terms in the legislature and a background in local education policy, said his frequent mailings and block walks didn't make a connection with many voters.

"They were coming to vote for Cruz or Trump or Rubio," Huberty said. "That drove a lot of people to the polls. As we would talk to them, they were like 'Who are you? Are you in Washington? Austin?'"

This post has been updated throughout as results come in.
A woman who allegedly bilked an elderly cancer patient out of thousands of dollars goes by at least seven different names, University of Texas police said.

Identifying herself as "Tina Mills," the woman befriended an older male patient and made up stories about needing investors for a "nonexistent business," UT police said in an advisory Friday. She also claimed to need cash for medical bills and other expenses, according to authorities.
The president and first lady are headed to SXSW this year.

President Barack Obama will be interviewed by Evan Smith, editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, on the opening day of SXSW Interactive, March 11. It is the first time in in the festival's 30-year history that a sitting president will attend SXSW, according to the Austin American-Statesman.
THE LEAD: Estimated $1.4 million anti-Straus effort largely flopped Tuesday night, as the speaker and his closest allies will head back to Austin.

-- Speaker Straus won 60 percent to Jeff Judsons 28 percent. Charlie Geren crushed Bo French, 58 percent to 41 percent. Byron Cook eked out a victory with 50.38 percent to Thomas McNutts 49.61 percent. Dan Huberty also won big, 77 percent to 22 percent.

-- Jonathan Stickland won with 58 percent, as did his buddies Tony Tinderholt and Matt Rinaldi. Debbie Riddle, however, effectively lost her seat last night, only garnering 39 percent to Valoree Swansons 52 percent.

-- TX Senate: With 89 percent reporting, Susan King leads in SD-24 with 28.9 percent and goes to a runoff against Dawn Buckingham, who won 23.8 percent.  In SD-1, Bryan Hughes won 47.9 percent and heads into a runoff against David Simpson, who had 21 percent.

-- The back mic wont be the same: Jose Menendez routed TMF in their San Antonio matchup, 59.2 percent to 40.7 percent. From the Express-News David Rauf : Early returns show Democratic primary voters in Senate District 26 delivered a body blow to Martinez Fischer, a boisterous and leading voice for the minority party in the state House. The stakes were upped considerably this go-round as the election marked a winner-take-all contest, with the loser being cast out of the Legislature.

-- Houston races >> U.S. Rep. Gene Green easily survived a fierce Democratic primary challenge Tuesday from former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia, who sought to become the Hispanic district's first Latino representative. Republican Reps. Kevin Brady of The Woodlands and John Culberson of west Houston both avoided a May runoff, fending off challenges from the right. The incumbents' leads signaled the staying power of party stalwarts in a fervently anti-Washington political climate that handed more than half of Super Tuesday's Republican primaries to insurgent Donald Trump, per the Chronicles Rebecca Elliott and Matthew Tresaugue .

-- TURNOUT, per @txelects: Combined Texas primary turnout tops 4.1 million, nears all-time high set in 2008. Turnout at least 29% of registered voters  Democratic turnout crosses 1 million mark for 3rd time since 1994 (2002, 2008). Was over 1 million for 25 straight primaries until '96   Texas Republican primary turnout has passed 2.5 million voters, more than 1 million above the previous GOP record set in 2010

RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE: SUPER TUESDAY

-- Donald Trump won Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. Ted Cruz won Alaska, Oklahoma and Texas. Marco Rubio won Minnesota.

-- Cruz won his home state to Trump, 43.7 percent to 26.8 percent. Cruz walks away with 99 Texas delegates, while Trump gets 33 Texas delegates. Marco Rubio gets three delegates from here. (Source: AP)

-- Hillary Clinton crushed Bernie Sanders, 65.2 percent to 33.2 percent. She will win 140 delegates from Texas and Sanders will get 48. Per the Chronicles Mike Ward on the Dem race: Exit polls showed that Clinton's wins in Texas and the South were powered by overwhelming support from African-Americans and union members, traditional voting bases for Democrats that helped her win the South Carolina primary last week - and could help propel her to the nomination over Sanders.

-- AN UNCHANGED GOP FIELD, with Donald Trump leading: None of the top three candidates will drop out of the race after Tuesday night. Cruz last night made his strongest appeal yet for Rubio to drop out of the race to stop Trump. This is what he told his crowd in Houston: Fifteen states have now voted, every one of those states so far has been won by either Donald Trump or myself. Republicans, we have a choice. We are blessed with a deep talented honorable field. For the candidates who have not yet won a state. I ask you prayerfully consider our coming together.

-- BUT THEN: Around 10:30 p.m., Rubio won the Minnesota caucus, which allowed him to throw cold water on Cruzs argument that the Texas senator is the only one who has beat Trump. Cruz has won many more contests than the Florida senator, yes, but that anti-Rubio talking point is effectively gone.

-- RUBIO wont quit, though. The reality is that Cruz cannot  at this point  clear the GOP field on his own, no matter how much he appeals to Republicans sense of general election viability. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, for example, said last night that Rubio needs to be out of the race by March 15 for the good of the party.

-- The downside for our home state senator: The knock against Cruz after Tuesday night is that his support looks incredibly regional after Super Tuesday and his national appeal is highly questionable at this point, as The Washington Posts Aaron Blake wrote last night.

-- SHOCK OF THE NIGHT: South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who earlier joked that nobody in the Senate would care if Ted Cruz was murdered, seemed to walk that back  if begrudgingly  in a major way Tuesday. Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means, and I don't wish him ill, Graham said on CBS . I was making a joke about Ted. But we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump. And I'm not so sure that would work.

-- TODAY: HB 2 at SCOTUS. Brian Rosenthal is in Washington, D.C., today to cover the oral arguments on the states abortion law. Here is his preview from todays front page:

On Wednesday, the justices will hear an hour of arguments about House Bill 2 in the most significant abortion-related case since the court ruled in 1992 that the government could not put an undue burden on women seeking the procedure.

The question: Exactly how far can lawmakers go in regulating abortion, and what would constitute crossing the line? The vehicle for answering the question, perhaps fittingly, is the most high-profile law to be passed in the country in recent years.

QUOTE TO NOTE

Adding his voice to the anti-Trump chorus, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay made a surprise appearance on MSNBC:

I have to search my soul. I think he's very dangerous for the country, very dangerous for the party. He will tear the Republican Party apart. If you listen to what he's saying, he wants to be king; he doesnt want to be president.

SPEED READ

Uneasy night of triumph for Bexar County Republicans, San Antonio Express-News

Years after Voter ID law, alternative IDs confuse Texas County Officials, Texas Observer

This year, I voted stickers in Dallas County include which party you voted for, The Dallas Morning News

In Texas, uneven expansion Of Obamacare sows frustration, NPR

U.S. Shale producers cut back output  Energy Journal, Wall Street Journal

Ex-Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon indicted over lease bid rigging, The Dallas Morning News

No Republican nominee has ever won all of the different states Donald Trump has, The Washington Post

Guns allowed in UH classes, banned from most dorms under proposal, Houston Chronicle

SCOTUS splits 6-2 on first cases since Scalia's death, Politico

Cruz: Im not interested in replacing Scalia on the Supreme Court, The Dallas Morning News

High on the Hog: Texas' Republican ag commissioner spent $55,000 outfitting his office with taxidermy and other bits of Wild West ephemera, Texas Observer

Judge tosses ballot challenge against Cruz in Illinois, Austin American-Statesman

South Texass only abortion clinic is battleground for major Supreme Court case, The Washington Post
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.
Changes to Canadian Citizenship Act Will Allow Immigrants to Apply Earlier and More Easily

Changes to Canadian Citizenship Act Will Allow Immigrants to Apply Earlier and More Easily

Changes to Canadian Citizenship Act Will Allow Immigrants to Apply Earlier and More Easily CIC News Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

Sans Font Size A

A

In a move that is likely to be of great benefit to immigrants to Canada who ultimately wish to obtain Canadian citizenship, the Liberal government of Canada has proposed a range of sweeping amendments to the Citizenship Act. These changes will allow people who have made the decision to immigrate to Canada to apply for and obtain citizenship sooner and more easily than is now the case.

Among the proposed amendments is a reduction in the amount of time permanent residents have to live in Canada in order to become eligible to apply for citizenship, from four out of six years to three out five years. Moreover, certain applicants who spent time in Canada on temporary status would be able to count a portion of this time towards the three-year requirement. The proposed amendments would also repeal the intent to reside provision and remove language proficiency requirements for certain applicants.

In addition, the new legislation would repeal a contentious provision that revoked citizenship from dual Canadian citizens convicted of terrorism, treason or espionage. With a majority government in place, it is expected that the proposals will become law in the near future.

Background

In June, 2014, the previous Conservative government of Canada brought into law the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (also known as bill C-24). This controversial legislation allowed the government to revoke citizenship in certain cases, and made eligibility requirements for immigrants more onerous than had previously been the case.

The now-governing Liberal Party of Canada, which came into office last November, made a public pledge in its election manifesto to repeal the unfair elements of Bill C-24 that create second-class citizens and the elements that make it more difficult for hard-working immigrants to become Canadian citizens.

Only a few months into its term of office, the government is now acting on its word.

Canada encourages new immigrants to consider becoming naturalized citizens and join the Canadian family. With Canadian citizenship, an individual may obtain a Canadian passport, vote in elections, stand for public office, and leave and re-enter Canada freely without being beholden to the residency obligations faced by permanent residents.

What is changing?

The proposed changes to the Citizenship Act run the full gamut of the act, from how an individual may become eligible for citizenship to the rights bestowed once citizenship is conferred on the person.

Repeal of revocation provision

Current act: Authority to revoke citizenship for certain acts against the national interest of Canada. These grounds include convictions of terrorism, high treason, treason or spying offences, depending on the sentence received, or for membership in an armed force or organized armed group engaged in armed conflict with Canada.

Proposed amendment: Repeal national interest grounds for revocation.

Repeal of intention to reside provision

Current act: Applicants must have the intention to reside in Canada if granted citizenship.

Proposed amendment: Repeal intent to reside provision.

Physical presence in Canada

Current act: Physical presence for 4 out of 6 years before the date of application.

Proposed amendment: Physical presence for 3 out of 5 years before the date of application.

Counting temporary status

Current act: Time spent in Canada as a non-permanent resident may not be counted.

Proposed amendment: Applicants may count each day they were physically present in Canada as a temporary resident or protected person before becoming a permanent resident as a half-day toward meeting the physical presence requirement for citizenship, up to a maximum of one year of credited time.

Less burdensome annual physical presence requirement

Current act: Minimum of 183 days physical presence in 4 of the last 6 years.

Proposed amendment: Repeal the minimum 183 days physical presence in 4 of the last 6 years.

Fewer people need to prove language proficiency

Current act: Applicants aged 14-64 must meet language requirements and pass knowledge test.

Proposed amendment: Applicants aged 18-54 must meet language requirements and pass knowledge test.

Canadian income taxes

Current act: File Canadian income taxes, if required to do so under the Income Tax Act, for four taxation years out of six years, matching physical presence requirement.

Proposed amendment: File Canadian income taxes, if required to do so under the Income Tax Act, for three taxation years out of five years, matching proposed new physical presence requirement.

Conditional sentence now a bar

Current act: Time spent serving a conditional sentence order can be counted towards meeting physical presence requirements. Convicted individuals who are serving conditional sentence orders (sentences served in the community with certain conditions) are not prohibited from being granted citizenship or taking the oath of citizenship.

Proposed amendment: Time spent under a conditional sentence order cannot be counted towards meeting the physical presence requirements; and those serving a conditional sentence order are prohibited from being granted citizenship or taking the oath of citizenship.

Canadian citizenship oath

Current act: Provision prohibiting applicants from taking the oath of citizenship if they never met or no longer meet the requirements for the grant of citizenship, but does not apply to applications received before June 11, 2015.

Proposed amendment: Provision prohibiting applicants from taking the oath of citizenship if they never met or no longer meet the requirements for the grant of citizenship also applies to applications still in process that were received prior to June 11, 2015.

New provision to counter fraud

Current act: No explicit authority for citizenship officers to seize fraudulent documents related to the processing of applications.

Proposed amendment: Authority to seize documents provided during the administration of the Citizenship Act if there are reasonable grounds to believe they are fraudulent, or being used fraudulently.

A welcome return to common sense

The day that C-24 became law, back in 2014, was a dark day in the history of Canadian immigration law and for Canada itself. It was a huge step backwards and effectively introduced two tiers of citizen  natural born and naturalized  while also making the pathway to citizenship far more convoluted than necessary, says Attorney David Cohen.

It is refreshing to see that the current government has brought forward these proposals, which I predict will become law before too long, so soon after taking office. We are back to a Canadian being a Canadian no matter what. We are back to telling foreign workers and international students that they can land in Canada and think of their long-term future here. We are back to seeing Canadian citizenship as a global responsibility, rather than as something that is so fixated on the person being physically present in Canada.

Canadians are rightly proud of their citizenship and the status, rights, and freedoms that it provides. Long may that continue.

To find out more about applying for Canadian citizenship in light of the proposed changes to the Citizenship Act, please send an email to citizenship@canadavisa.com. Please include information about your time as a Canadian permanent resident.

Non-permanent residents of Canada can learn more about Canadian citizenship by clicking here.

 2016 CICNews All Rights Reserved
Maziar Bahari would have been around 11 when he first saw a photograph by famed Iranian photographer Abbas. It was Iran, circa 1979. Bahari was flipping through a foreign magazine, brought into the country by a friend of his fathers, when his eyes landed on it.

The photo has since become an iconic emblem of the Iranian Revolution. In it, a woman runs through a street, chased by an angry crowd of men; several have grabbed the sleeves of her jacket and are brandishing sticks and umbrellas. The woman is an assumed supporter of Irans recently overthrown leader, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; the men are revolutionaries who worked to free Iran from the shahs authoritarian regime.

A. Abbas (Courtesy of Magnum Photos)

The photo was taken on January 25, 1979, after the shah had left the country but before the rise of the Islamic Republic, when the people still anticipated the victory of the revolution.* Later, after the populist revolution turned Islamist, after the purges and secret trials and executions, after the new regime became dishearteningly like the old, it was clear that on that July day, Abbass camera had seen the violence and destruction that was to come. But at 11, as he thumbed through a magazine and studied that very photo, thats not what Bahari saw.

At that time, we were blinded by the revolutionary fervor, he says, today a journalist and filmmaker, and we did not pay attention to that kind of violence.

Sign up for CJR 's daily email

The image of the woman being beaten is one of hundreds of photos published on a new site that showcases Abbass work in Iran between 1971 and 2005. The online exhibit, titled Abbas and the Revolution, was produced by Bahari and launched last month, in time the 37th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution on February 11. Abbas and the Revolution is an outcropping of Baharis other work supporting journalists in Iran; he oversees both IranWire and Journalism is Not a Crime, a campaign for press freedom in Iran today. He hopes Abbass work, which he calls a family album of Iran, will contribute to the story Iranians tell themselves about their history, as well as their present.

The bulk of photos on the site date from 1977 to 1980 and capture various phases of the Iranian Revolution. They focus on artists and peasants, rulers and revolutionaries, demonstrations and daily life. One photo depicts the shah in full regalia; another, the bodies of four executed generals from the shahs army, lying in a morgue. Ayatollah Khomeini steps off a plane, returning from France. A lone woman in a black chador stands behind a row of men with their backs turned toward her. She was one of more than two million people who took to the streets of Tehran on December 11, 1978, to call for the overthrow of the shah.

A. Abbas (Courtesy of Magnum Photos)

The photos on the site are displayed in setssome chronological, some thematicand are accompanied by Abbass marked-up contact sheets and video commentary. The contact sheets show the complete sequences of shots for many of exhibitions featured photos, with the ones selected for publication framed in red crayon. In the video commentaries, Abbas provides the backstories for many of his more famous photographs, along with thoughts on his methods, his philosophies about photography, and his life.

For Bahari, these are not just photos of a past that informs a present, they are the first claps of a long-heard echo, part of the same cavernous history. The photograph of the woman being beaten in the street, for example: Its a moment in time, a premonition, and a lesson. You can learn so much about whats happening in Iran right now by studying that photograph, says Bahari. Especially now, with the lifting of the sanctions, Iran seems poised for changebut as Iran knows only too well, times of transition are unpredictable.

Bahari also knows it well. He spent more than a decade as Newsweeks Tehran correspondent. He was arrested in Iran in 2009 after covering the protests surrounding then-prime minister Ahmadinejads reelection and imprisoned for 118 days. The story of his detainment was portrayed in Jon Stewarts 2014 movie Rosewater, which is based on Baharis memoir, Then They Came For Me. Bahari, who left Iran to study in Canada in 1988, grew up admiring Abbass photos and, later, the man.

Abbas was born in Iran in 1944, but his family moved to Algeria when he was still a child. He returned to Iran in 1971 as a photographer, and again in 1977. That trip lasted two years. He refers to those years now as the highlight of his life. Those two years were like 20 years of my life, he says. You see the best and the worst of people in a very short span of time.

For him, what was happening in Iran was personal. In the early stages, it was my country, my people, my revolution, he says. That changed when the revolution drifted into religious zeal. A pivotal moment came the day he photographed the bodies of the four generals, executed by revolutionaries the day before. A cleric entered the morgue as Abbas shot pictures.

And I remember very deeply, says Abbas, he said, This is Islamic justice. And I said, Wow, when did the revolution to come to that? At that stage, I decided it was not going to be my revolution.

Abbas left Iran in 1980, after friends cautioned him that the country was no longer safe for him, and he stayed away for 17 years. Since 1986, his work has focused on religionor, as he puts it, the stupid things men do in Gods namebefore quickly adding, and the good things, too, of course. Hes published books on Islam and Islamism, Christianity, and Buddhism, and his book on Hinduism will be released later this year. Hes currently working on Judaism. His interest in religion was sparked after the revolution, he says, when the fervor surrounding Ayatollah Khomeini, Irans Supreme Leader and the architect of the Islamist Revolution, was at its peak. I could see that passion, that religious passion, that had risen with the Iranian Revolution was not going to stop at the borders of Iran, he says.

In 1997, Abbas and Bahari finally crossed paths. Abbas was returning to Iran for the first time since the revolution, and Bahari had just moved back to the country, where hed soon begin a decade-long stint as Newsweeks Tehran correspondent. The two became friends, and whenever Abbas returned to Iran, he stayed with Bahari.

In 2009, 30 years after Abbas took the photo of the woman and the mob, Bahari was in Iran covering the Green Revolution, which arose in the wake of then-prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejads possibly fraudulent reelection. That revolution, a brief frisson of hope for Iran, fought with smartphones and hashtags, was one of the first populist revolutions to traverse the globe on social media.

That June, while the protests raged, Bahari was arrested on espionage charges held in Irans notorious Evin prison, though the charges were widely known to be baseless, and was released on bail because of international pressure. During an early scene in Rosewater, Bahari, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, crouches with a student revolutionary behind a wall, dodging a shootout during a demonstration. Bahari clutches a video camera, but the camera is off. The young revolutionary turns to him and admonishes, You have a real weapon, and you choose not to use it.

Its fitting, then, that one of Abbass most enduring photos is itself about the power of an image. Its a picture of a group of Iranian youths gathered in a street in November 1978, burning a photo of the shah. It was a time when the shah was still in power, and Iranian citizens lived in fear of him. The image of the burning photo circulated throughout Iran and reverberated across the world. It made the cover of Time, The Economist, and other foreign magazines. It may have been one of the photos Bahari saw and admired before knowing the man behind the camera.

Iranians go through these photos, says Bahari. They look at the family album, sometimes with nostalgia, sometimes with regret, sometimes with disappointment, and sometimes with pride.

Abbass collected work on Iran is a record of that conflicted history; a necessary artifact to those invested in its future.

*This story was updated to reflect the correct date on which the photo was taken, and the events at that time.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Chava Gourarie is a freelance writer based in New York and a former CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @ChavaRisa
Pennsylvania businesses will see another decrease in workers compensation insurance rates, while benefit levels for injured workers will be maintained, according to an announcement by Gov. Wolfs office. Workers comp insurance rates will drop 0.90 percent, effective April 1, reducing a key expense for many companies and saving Pennsylvania businesses an estimated $20 million this year.

Maintaining fair benefits for workers injured on the job is vital for Pennsylvania families financial well-being and peace of mind, said Governor Tom Wolf. Sticking to this responsibility, while still reducing rates on a key cost, helps business owners continue to create and support jobs that pay in Pennsylvania.

The rate reduction follows the Insurance Departments approval of the Pennsylvania Compensation Rating Bureaus annual loss cost filing. These loss costs are used to determine the premiums businesses pay for workers compensation insurance. The premium savings for an individual employer will vary based on the employers risk classification, claims experience, and other factors.

This is the fifth consecutive workers compensation insurance cut in as many years, and brings the cumulative savings to $570 million for the past five years. Workers compensation insurance covers the cost of medical care and rehabilitation for injured workers, lost wages, and death benefits for the dependents of those killed in work-related accidents.

My department is committed to supporting a vibrant and competitive market in Pennsylvania, as competition leads to more options for consumers and lower prices, said Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller. Reducing costs also frees up money for businesses to spend resources on innovation and creating good-paying jobs for Pennsylvanians.

Commissioner Miller said approximately 325 companies are writing workers comp insurance currently in Pennsylvania.

More than 11,220 state-certified workplace safety committees have been established since March 1994, protecting more than 1,463,000 workers. Additionally, employers with certified workplace safety committees have saved close to $604.2 million in workers compensation premiums. These savings in insurance costs are due solely to the 5 percent premium discount provided to businesses that have these committees.

The Bureau of Workers Compensation Health & Safety Division provides employers with the most up-to-date and relevant safety information and benefits possible for employees, said Labor & Industry Secretary Kathy Manderino. Having a certified workplace safety committee ensures safety knowledge and practices are disseminated while providing another way for employers to save money on workers compensation insurance costs.

Employers should contact their insurance company or agent for more information about how their workers compensation premiums will be affected. Not all employers will see a decrease.

Source: Pennsylvania Governors Office
Ransomware is expected to continue to be an increasing threat in 2016, according to McAfee Labs 2016 Threat Predictions report, issued late last year. The report stated that with new variants and the success of the ransomware-as-a-service business model, we predict that the rise of ransomware that started in the third quarter of 2014 will continue in 2016.

Rising attacks against financial and local government are expected because of their need to maintain critical systems operations and their willingness to pay ransoms quickly.

The malware came into the spotlight once again when a California hospital reported that its medical records had been locked down and it paid a $17,000 ransom to regain access.

A way of preventing or limiting users from accessing systems until a ransom is paid via an online payment system, is how global IT security company TrendMicro defines ransomware.

Hackers typically target wealthy countries where ransom is likely to be paid.

According to data from the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), CryptoWall is the main ransomware threat targeting private individuals and businesses in the U.S. The investigative agencys data indicated that since April 2014, various forms of CryptoWall have been used to target U.S. victims.

The agency noted that the financial impact to victims goes beyond the ransom fee itself, which is typically between $200 and $10,000. Many victims incur additional costs associated with network mitigation, network countermeasures, loss of productivity, legal fees, IT services, and/or the purchase of credit monitoring services for employees or customers. Between April 2014 and June 2015, the IC3 received 992 CryptoWall-related complaints, with victims reporting losses totaling more than $18 million.

In addition to the financial implications, businesses affected by ransomware may suffer temporary or permanent loss of sensitive or proprietary information, business interruption and reputational harm.

Tricky to avoid, ransomware can be unwittingly downloaded via visits to compromised websites, through spammed email web attachments or through a payload download. The first sign of an issue is when a computer owner or user encounters a locked screen or encrypted files. The malware was first reported in Russia around 2005, according to the IT security companys account of the history of ransomware.

When ransomware was first discovered, computers typically became infected when users opened email attachments that contained the malware, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But more recently, the agency has noted an increased number of incidents involving drive-by ransomware, where users  lured by a deceptive e-mail or pop-up window  infect their computers by clicking on a compromised website.

The way the ransom is paid is also evolving. While some earlier ransomware scams involved having victims pay ransom with pre-paid cards, the agency said there has been an increase in victims being asked to pay with Bitcoin, a virtual currency attractive to criminals because of the anonymity it offers.

The FBI also noted that mobile phones are now being targeted by hackers seeking payment to unlock them.

In its report, McAfee Labs reported that last year ransomware-as-a-service was hosted on the Tor network, which enables anonymous communication, using virtual currencies for payments. The anonymity the network offers means that there will likely be an increase in inexperienced cybercriminals using the service, the report noted.

As use of the malware increases, the company expects variations in the types of ransomware to expand.

Although a few familiesincluding CryptoWall 3, CTB-Locker, andCryptoLockerdominate the current ransomware landscape, we predict that new variants of these families and new families will surface with new stealth functionalities. For example, new variants may start to silently encrypt data, stated the reports author. These encrypted files will be backed up and eventually the attacker will pull the key, resulting in encrypted files both on the system and in the backup.

The report suggested additional variants could use kernel components to hook the file system and encrypt files as accesses them.

Applications will also be the focus of more attacks by ransomware, according to the report.

Usually only Microsoft Office, Adobe PDF, and graphics files are targeted; in 2016 we predict that other file extensions typically found in business environments will also become targets. Attacks will continue on Microsoft Windows. We also expect ransomware to start targeting Mac OSX in 2016 due to its growing popularity, stated Christiann Beek, author of the ransomware section of the report.

Researchers and investigative agencies are working to thwart these types of attacks.

James Cannady, Ph.D., a professor of Information Assurance at the Fort Lauderdale-based Nova Southeastern University College of Engineering and Computing, is working to develop new adaptive intelligent systems that can be applied to protect computer systems and networks, including the use of complex adaptive systems and advanced neural networks in the detection of network-based attacks.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team offers tips to avoid becoming a victim of ransomware. These include:
A passenger from a cruise ship that was battered by a major storm in the Atlantic Ocean filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Royal Caribbean in Miami federal court, his lawyer said Thursday.

The lawsuit filed by attorney Michael Winkleman says Royal Caribbean knew or should have known of warnings for hurricane-force winds in the Atlantic before Anthem of the Seas set sail Feb. 6 from Bayonne, New Jersey.

The 4,500 passengers hunkered down as the ship encountered 30-foot waves off North Carolina the next day. A portion of the propulsion system was damaged, and the Miami-based cruise line canceled the seven-day cruise, returning to New Jersey. Passengers received a refund and certificate for half off a future cruise.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Frank DeLuca of Cinnaminson, New Jersey, includes forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Ocean Prediction Center, which noted the possibility of storm-force winds along the coast near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on Feb. 7. The agency on Feb. 5 issued a storm warning for the area.

According to the lawsuit, passengers had to hold onto their beds or anything else to keep from falling due to the severe crashing of waves and listing of the vessel for about 12 hours. Furniture was overturned, broken glass littered the ship, elevators were inoperable and water rushed through numerous areas of the ship.

Any passenger who was on the ship can be represented by the lawsuit, which alleges gross negligence on the part of Royal Caribbean. The lawsuit seeks punitive damages for severe emotional, psychological and emotional stress endured by passengers.

At least one other lawsuit was filed over the incident  on Feb. 18 by Bruce Simpson of Delaware, who was also onboard Anthem of the Seas.

Under terms of passenger tickets, most lawsuits against cruise lines are filed in South Florida federal court.

Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez said via email that the company doesnt comment on pending litigation.

(Associated Press Legal Affairs Writer Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this report.)

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Brain Damaged Violinist Makes Music with Bergersen String Quartet, First Time in 26 Years

The painful truth of being a musician is that, like any athlete, physical limitations and perils loom around every corner. For once-rising stars like Rosemary Johnson, who in 1988 had her career as a violinist for the Welsh National Opera Orchestra cut short (after suffering brain damage from a brutal car accident), the fragility of the pastime was made especially clear. Still, despite the loss of mobility and speech, technology has recently been able to restore a portion of the music handling she had once mastered. With the help of the Bergersen String Quartet, a team from the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability and Plymouth University in the United Kingdom has discovered a way for Rosemary to make music again using her brainwaves.

According to Professor Eduardo Miranda, composer and director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research at Plymouth University, there was no better candidate for the experiment than a musician. Even better was a former virtuoso, who, although physically unable to hammer out more than a few chords at the piano, remained mentally adept. Miranda remarked, "It was perfect because she can read music very well and make a very informed choice."

The importance of music in Rosemary's life extended well into her disability. Rosemary's mother said, "Music is really her only motivation. I take her to the grand piano in the hospital and she can only really play a few chords, but that was the only time she shows any interest. She doesnt really enjoy anything else."

The culmination of a 10-yr. project by the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability and Plymouth University, the Brain Computer Music Interfacing software was designed as a means of reading a patient's brainwaves and translating that into readable music. Once Rosemary was connected to the revolutionary software, the music was performed in front of her, in real time, by the Bergersen String Quartet.

Compared to a "musical game", the new technology allows Rosemary to select musical phrases at certain times of the performance by focusing on different colored lights on a computer screen. As she focuses more intensely, she can even change the volume and speed of the piece.

Those who observed Rosemary were happy to report that she was smiling during the experience. Her mother added, "This has been so good for her. I can tell she has really enjoyed it."

The group of impaired patients who have been given this unique opportunity are called the Paramusical Ensemble. They can be seen below performing a piece called "Activating Memory" (which was composed by Prof. Eduardo Miranda):

Paramusical Ensemble from cinema iloobia on Vimeo.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsNeuroscience of Music, Bergersen String Quartet, disabled, Computer, Car Accident
Deepika Padukone Dines With XXX Stars, Cements Ties Formed

Is Deepika Padukone cementing the bonds she has formed while in Hollywood filming her debut XXX? Recently, the Bajiro Mastani star was seen out to dinner with the film's co-producer and star Vin Diesel, co-stars Nina Dobrev, former star of the CW TV show Vampire Diaries, as well as other cast members and director DJ Caruso.

Deepika tweeted the photo and Nina Dobrev heaped praise on her Bollywood co-star. From Business Standard comes Dobrev's tweet to Deepika, "'Beyond amazing to dine with you! Do you always look like you're doing a Vogue shoot? #Stunning,' the young Hollywood star tweeted." Dobrev wasn't alone in her praise of Deepika. From top to bottom of the cast, everyone has been in awe of one of India's best exports. Not only is Hollywood praising Deepika's beauty but her hard work and talent as well.

Vin Diesel, in particular has been extremely vocal in his praise for Deepika Padukone. He first wanted her for his previous hit Fast & Furious 7. Hindustan Times has this from the Hollywood hunk, "You have heard some of the casting, you have heard about Deepika, who is somebody I have wanted to work with for a long time. We were really close to working together in Furious 7 and...we are going to have a blast," Variety is now reporting that a Januiary 20, 2017 release date has been set for the film sequel, which has the tentative title of XXX: The Return of Xander Cage. The plot finds Xander, "as he comes out of self-imposed exile to recover a sinister and seemingly unstoppable weapon known as Pandora's Box."

The praise is far from one sided. Deepika had nothing but nice things to say about Diesel. Before she headed of to Canada to start film, Deepika noted about Diesel, "In the few two or three interactions that I have had with him (Vin Diesel), he is just a very warm person. He is very generous among most of my co-stars that I have worked with. I think it will be a fun experience working with him."

Now, the only thing left is to see what kind of magic Deepika and Vin made.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsDeepika Padukone, Vin Diesel, Nina Dobrev, Stars Have Dinner, Tweet , Deepika Cements Ties Formed
Indian Press Reports Deepika Padukone's Next to be With Brad Pittxx

Whether this is true or just amateur teenaged gossip reporting remains to be seen. However, the rumors are swirling around that Deepika Padukone will next star opposite Brad Pitt in a yet unnamed project. This may be way too early to even consider since Deepika has not even finished her XXX commitment yet. The idea of Deepika starring opposite Brad Pitt has many in the Indian media doing cartwheels in excitement.

Priyanka Chopra opened up the door between Hollywood and Bollywood when she traveled across the pond to star in the ABC series Quantico. Deepika seized the opportunity and signed on to star opposite Vin Diesel in the sequel, at least where Vin Diesel is concerned. Now, rumors are swirling around that Deepika has moved up the Hollywood ladder and will next do a film with A-lister Brad Pitt.

Already, Deepika has achieved something no other Bollywood star has done . She is trailblaziling a path for future Bollywood stars. Says a source to the website Mid-Day, "Deepika has bagged the lead role opposite Brad in a Hollywood romantic comedy. Last year proved immensely successful for her and going by this news, 2016 is set to be as big as, if not bigger than, 2015."

There has been no official word from anyone connected to Deepika or Brad Pitt and the very unreliable Indian press has been the only one to really run with this story without supplying any concrete details supporting the claim. India Today had this to say, "Just months after signing her first Hollywood film, Deepika has reportedly also signed her second film opposite The Fightclub star Brad Pitt. According to a report in Pinkvilla, Deepika has signed her next big Hollywood flick with Brad Pitt. It certainly seems the Piku actor has caught the eye of some Hollywood biggies and if this news is true then this would be a treat for Deepika's fans."

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsIndian Press, Reports, Deepika Padukone, Brad Pitt, Bollywood, Next Film
New Documentary to Tell Tragic Story of Talented Saxophonist Thomas Chapin

A new documentary, titled Night Bird Song, about the troubled life saxophonist/flutist Thomas Chapin will make its world premiere this month at the Real Art Ways in Hartford, Ct, on March 6 at 2 p.m. and at the SVA Theatre in Manhattan on March 13. Four years in the making, the documentary traces Chapin's ascendancy to the top and his crash and the tragedy of his death due to leukemia at the age of 40.

Chapin's tragedy has a comparable story, that of jazz musician Jaco Pastorius, both immense talented and both had bitter ends to their lives. From DownBeat online, "Both made a profound impact on musicians and fans alike-albeit Pastorius was operating in a larger arena with Weather Report and his Word of Mouth big band-and both left far too soon. Pastorius, who struggled with bipolar disease in his final years, was murdered in 1987 at age 35. Chapin lost his fight with leukemia in 1998 at age 40."

The film is directed by Stephanie Castillo. The film chronicles Chapin's rise from the New York club scene to his ascendancy at the top of the European jazz scenes. According to the project's website, the film was funded by its raising of $50,000 on Kickstarter. The true heartbreak so say the filmmakers is that of the unfullfilled potential. For director Castillo, that talent had yet to find a bottom. From the film's press release, "Destined to be among the great virtuosos of jazz, Thomas Chapin was nearing the pinnacle of his meteoric rise when leukemia took him in 1998 at the age of 40. He started his career as band manager and lead alto sax for big band leader Lionel Hampton, and then went on to form his own trio. Though fame and world recognition have eluded him despite the enduring mark he left on jazz in the '80s and '90s, his passionate life and incandescent music remain unforgettable to fans who knew him."

The film sounds well worth a look.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsNew Documentary, Tragic Story of Talented Saxophonist, Thomas Chapin, Troubled
Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra Remember 'All My Yesterdays' on Resonance Records [REVIEW]

50 years on, 'The Debut 1966 Recordings at the Village Vanguard' are now ready to be experienced properly. (Photo : courtesy Resonance Records)

All My Yesterdays by the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, sub-titled The Debut 1966 Recordings at The Village Vanguard, is a 2-CD set of jazz history celebrating a half-century of Monday night performances by one of the-if not the-greatest big bands ever. Kudos to Resonance Records for finally doing it right after a 2000 bootleg of such. Right means every single living member of the Orchestra getting royalties. It also means bringing back the original feel of what can only be described as electric shock therapy of what exactly went down on the two nights in question: February 7 and March 21 of 1966.

Resonance President George Klabin was still a teenager when he set up his microphones to record for posterity both nights. The buzz was palpable. People were dying to hear what Thad Jones had up his sleeve ever since he left the employ of Count Basie. Trumpeter Jones had been featured soloist, arranger and composer for Basie from 1954-1963. But when Basie didn't use many of his most progressive charts, Jones left, took his arrangements with him and became The In-Demand Studio Cat of them all. When he hooked up with drummer Mel Lewis to rehearse these charts at Phil Ramone's A&R Studios, the chemistry was such that the Orchestra was born. They got Hank Jones on piano, Pepper Adams and Joe Farrell on saxes, Bob Brookmeyer on trombone and a New York City A-List of jazzers for the fateful opening night you hear here.

The result was instantaneous. The whooping, hollering, shock and awe at these crazy, way-out charts was off-the-charts, as they say. Thad Jones arranged and composed 13 of the 17 tunes. It was an instant hit and Village Vanguard owner Max Gordon invited them back every Monday night. It became a Greenwich Village institution. For over 50 years-under only three names-be it the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, The Mel Lewis Orchestra (upon the demise of Jones in 1986) or The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (which continues to this day), this lion roars.

 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

TagsThad Jones, Mel Lewis, REVIEW, Village Vanguard
AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man is accused of bringing synthetic marijuana into the Oriana House halfway house, where four inmates simultaneously suffered drug-induced seizures.

Kerry Boyer, 39, is charged with illegally conveying drugs into the facility, two counts of possessing heroin and resisting arrest.

Akron paramedics were called about 5:20 p.m. to the Oriana House Glenwood Campus on East Glenwood Avenue.

Two inmates were taken to Akron General Medical Center and two were taken to Akron City Hospital. All four, including Boyer, were treated and released, an Oriana House spokeswoman said in a statement.

Police found Boyer smoked synthetic marijuana and still had some of the drug. They also found he smuggled a small amount of heroin into the building, according to court records.

He fought with officers and paramedics before being arrested, according to court records. The three others who overdosed -- A 33-year-old Clinton man, a 25-year-old Akron man and a 29-year-old Stow man -- were also arrested. They have not yet been formally charged.

Boyer is serving time for a federal heroin distribution conviction.

Inmates of the Oriana House typically are allowed to leave the campus for work and treatment. They are not held for 24 hours per day like a county jail. They receive court-ordered drug treatment and other support at the facility.

Six other inmates in January survived synthetic marijuana overdoses at the facility.

Oriana House staff members conduct pat-downs and alcohol tests on inmates when they return to the facility. Regular and random drug testing is performed, and strip searches on performed periodically, the spokeswoman said.

"As a result of these incidents, Oriana House staff restricted the movement of all the clients at the halfway house, allowing residents to leave only for approved employment and medical appointments," spokeswoman Linda Weyandt said in a statement. "Full facility searches, drug tests, and enhanced pat downs are also being done. Oriana House is working with local law enforcement in this ongoing investigation."
Brecksville Council A.JPG

On Tuesday night, Brecksville City Council removed pit bulls and canary dogs from the city's definition of vicious dogs.

(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)

BRECKSVILLE, Ohio - City Council has amended Brecksville's definition of vicious dogs so that it will no longer include pit bulls and canary dogs.

Council passed an ordinance making the change earlier tonight, as an emergency measure on first reading. It means the city will no longer automatically consider all pit bulls and canary dogs vicious and subject to tight regulations under municipal code.

Mayor Jerry Hruby said the amendment is nothing more than a housekeeping measure to reflect state code, and that, for practical purposes, it changes nothing. He said dog attacks have occurred in Brecksville but none have involved pit bulls, at least not in recent years.

Some Greater Cleveland communities, including Parma and Lakewood, ban pit bulls, saying they are naturally aggressive and dangerous. Other cities have debated whether to ban the dogs.

Last summer, a pit bull attacked and killed a 71-year-old Cleveland woman in Shaker Heights. The city administration introduced legislation to ban pit bulls, but in January, Shaker Heights City Council voted the measure down 5-2.

In January, a police officer shot and killed a pit bull in Cleveland Heights after the animal attacked him and a woman.

Hruby said it was Sergio DiGeronimo, Brecksville's prosecutor and assistant law director, who recommended excluding pit bulls and canary dogs from the city's vicious-dog definition.

That's because in 2012, the Ohio General Assembly removed pit bulls, and all breeds, from the state's definition of vicious. The new state law did not overturn local pit bull bans, like those in Parma and Lakewood.

"We're just following suit with what Ohio has done - admittedly, a little late," DiGeronimo said Tuesday.

Brecksville code defines a dangerous dog as one that, without provocation, has chased, menacingly approached or tried to bite someone while off the property of the dog's owner.

City code defines a vicious dog as one that has killed or injured someone, or has killed another dog.

Under code, owners of dangerous and vicious dogs - if someone complains about the animals, and if the animal control officer identifies the dogs as dangerous or vicious - must register and insure them. Owners must buy and post a sign warning that the dogs are dangerous or vicious, and pay an annual $25 registration fee.

Owners must keep dangerous and vicious dogs in locked pens, locked and fenced yards or in other secure enclosures. Off their properties, owners must either:
Broadview Heights Christian Brothers B.JPG

Christian Brothers Automotive, based in Houston, wants to build a repair shop on Ohio Route 82, just west of Interstate 77, in Broadview Heights.

(Bob Sandrick, special to cleveland.com)

BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio - A Houston-based national automotive repair company plans to open its first Greater Cleveland shop in Broadview Heights.

Christian Brothers Automotive would build a nine-bay, 5,000-square-foot shop next to, and east of, GetGo, on the north side of Ohio Route 82 at Interstate 77. The site measures 1 acre.

The auto repair shop would be the latest addition to a commercially growing 82-77 corridor. Bob Evans and Chipotle Mexican Grill recently opened restaurants on the south side of 82, across from the proposed Christian Brothers site, in Broadview Heights.

Meanwhile, MetroHealth System is building a $20 million outpatient health center and emergency room on 82 just west of 77 in Brecksville. On 82 east of 77, in Broadview Heights, University Hospitals is building a $28 million outpatient health center and emergency room.

The proposed Christian Brothers shop is scheduled to go before the Broadview Heights Planning Commission March 9.

Not blood brothers

Christian Brothers Automotive has more than 150 shops in 19 states, including Ohio, according to the company's website.

Josh Wall, vice president of franchise and strategic development for Christian Brothers, said the company's first two Ohio shops opened in the second half of 2015 in suburban Cincinnati.

Wall said Christian Brothers had originally targeted Avon for its first Greater Cleveland business. However, although the company still plans to build in Avon, it's taking longer than expected there, so the first Greater Cleveland shop will probably open in Broadview Heights in 2017.

Christian Brothers is not owned and operated by brothers named Christian; rather, it promotes itself as a Christian operation, offering "honest" and "genuine" auto repair service.

Houston resident and entrepreneur Mark Carr established Christian Brothers in 1982, after a fellow church member approached him about starting an auto repair shop. Just one day earlier, Carr had asked God to guide him into the right business venture.

"Mark felt it was an answer to prayer," Wall said.

Wall said Christian Brothers workers don't proselytize, but its mission statement is straight out of the Bible: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

"We are not perfect, but when we make a mistake, we take the responsibility," Wall said.

All Christian Brothers shops are franchise-owned by local residents with spiritual beliefs like Carr's. Franchise candidates endure a seven-step interview process that takes several months.

"Over that time, we get comfortable with each other, or we don't," Wall said.

Broadview Heights plans

According to plans submitted to City Hall, Christian Brothers would operate between 7 a.m. and no later than 7 p.m. Monday-Saturday. The lobby and customer-waiting area would resemble those of professional offices. Most vehicles left overnight would be locked inside.

The shop would employ three or four workers to start, plus the owner-franchisee. Service of heavy vehicles represent less than 1 percent of Christian Brothers' business.

Christian Brothers hired A & F Engineering in Indianapolis to study how the proposed shop would affect traffic in the 82-77 area. According to A & F's report, Christian Brothers would generate less new traffic than other types of businesses allowed on the site next to GetGo.

Also, A&F said Christian Brothers would not adversely affect the street system.
BRUNSWICK, Ohio --- The Brunswick City Council safety committee will consider a proposed change to the city's animal control ordinance, along with exploring whether police officers should carry Narcan - a drug used to treat the effects of an opiate overdose - as part of their equipment at its next meeting, at 6:30 March 7 at the Brunswick Recreation Center, 3637 Center Rd. Councilman-at-Large and committee chair Nick Hanek said he has been contacted by residents regarding the issue of pets - primarily dogs - being left tethered outside in the cold for long periods of time. The city currently has no ordinances addressing this specific issue, Hanek said. "Obviously when they are being left out in severe weather, something has to be done," he said. "(But) we're not sure what we can do. We will be starting that process at the meeting. We want to make sure we go through the process and do the right thing, with respect to pet owners and the safety of the animals." Hanek said the committee plans to look to other communities that do have tethering ordinances on the books. Brunswick Animal Control Officer Mike Kellums said many of these municipalities are larger ones than Brunswick. "It is kind of borderline here," Kellums said of the number of tethering instances that occur in the city. "We get it, but not as much as in a city like Cleveland (which has a tethering ordinance)." He added that in most cases, pet owners who are told by police not to leave their pet out the cold are compliant. Likewise, Hanek said, the committee will be looking into the success of other police departments' policies on officers carrying Narcan, the generic name for opiate antagonist, naloxone, in the face of a growing heroin problem. Brunswick Police Chief Carl DeForest said the department has been researching the issue and expects officers to be carrying Narcan "in the coming months."
CLEVELAND - Attention, West Side Market shoppers!

The historic food hall will undergo a controversial schedule change next month, adding Sundays to the mix after years of debate and more than a century of consistency.

Cleveland officials confirmed that the city-owned facility will be open from noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays starting April 3. The city also is preparing to combine and reconfigure two parking lots behind the market, in a project that will contribute to congestion over the next 10 months but, upon completion, will add more than 100 sorely-needed spaces to the district.

Those are the headline changes, for now.

The market's other hours, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, are staying the same. And the city is easing into Sundays, making them optional much like Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market did 10 years ago.

But the gradual transition won't make Sunday any more palatable to some purveyors.

"I'm not opening Sunday," said Melissa DeCaro of DeCaro Produce, a market mainstay since 1934. "I will never open Sunday. I don't think that Sunday's a good idea."

DeCaro and other vendors, including Diane Dever of the Irene Dever dairy stand, view the new hours as a potential burden being foisted upon small businesses by an out-of-touch landlord. Then there are vendors like Bob Holcepl of City Roast coffee and the Crepes de Luxe stand, who sees an opportunity to boost sales and attract customers on a popular shopping day.

"Here's the bottom line," said Holcepl, a market vendor since the late 1990s. "I am in retail. I'm here to serve my customers when they want to shop, not when I want to work."

In a letter distributed to vendors late Monday, the city's market manager confirmed the April 3 start of Sunday hours. The five-day-a-week debut will come with "huge announcements, marketing and some programming," wrote Felicia Hall, the manager. She also noted that the city will keep track of which businesses are open, and which are closed.

Updated market rules show that vendors can choose between Monday - the slowest day of the week - and Sunday. In a document provided to The Plain Dealer, the city said that operators of more than 100 stands - roughly 60 percent of the spaces in the main building and L-shaped produce arcade - said they might be willing to work on Sundays. And many said they'd still consider Mondays.

"We have had conversations with the tenants, and about 70 percent of them say they like the idea of being open on Sunday," said Michael Cox, director of the city's public works department, which oversees the market. "We just need to make sure that they do what they need to do in terms of regulations."

Lease agreements and market rules give the city the ability to cite, fine, suspend and eventually kick out vendors who don't follow regulations. But Cox and Ken Silliman, chief of staff to Mayor Frank Jackson, acknowledged that the city hasn't always enforced the rules. A few vendors are skeptical about whether - and when - the city is going to crack down.

"I would hope that we could have a conversation with those who have some issue with opening on a Sunday or Monday and see if we can work that out before we get to a violation state," Cox said. "We're not trying to give violation notices to everyone. We want everyone to follow the rules and regulations."

The West Side Market has maintained a similar schedule since it opened in 1912.

Longtime vendors, particularly those who sell meat or other cooking staples instead of prepared foods, have resisted any change in days. They're worried about adding staff, time and costs, especially since the city just raised market rents for the first time in a decade. And those vendors believe Sunday hours will just cut into Saturday shopping, without a net gain.

"I'll be 67 in April," said tenants' association president Vince Bertonaschi, who spends Mondays cutting meat in the market's basement and says opening his stand on Sundays or Mondays would hurt the quality of his products and service. "If [the city wants] to throw me out, I guess they'll throw me out. I like doing my job. I like my customers, and my customers like me."

Other public markets, including Reading Terminal and the Findlay Market in Cincinnati, have seen overall business increase after introducing Sundays. But it takes time for shoppers to adjust. And customers won't just show up. Such a major change requires marketing, which the city and nonprofit neighborhood group Ohio City Inc. have discussed.

"It's like everything else in Cleveland," City Councilman Joe Cimperman, who represents the neighborhood, said of consternation about the changes. "The sky is falling, and then you realize what's falling are gumdrops and jellybeans. The end isn't near. The beginning is near."

Cimperman believes the changes are necessary to ensure that the market stays relevant and lasts another century. He's leaving council in late March for a nonprofit job, so other ideas he's mentioned - online ordering; wine and cheese tastings; efforts to attract more diverse vendors; and paid parking at Market District meters on Saturdays - aren't going anywhere right now.

The city does plan to start charging for parking behind the market, though, once the lot-reconfiguration project is complete. Officials will talk about the parking lot construction and market hours during a public meeting at the Urban Community School on Lorain Avenue from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. today.

A conceptual plan shows the reconfigured and combined parking lots behind the West Side Market. The project, scheduled to start soon, includes permeable pavers and other green infrastructure. The U.S. EPA gave Cleveland a $500,000 grant for the project, and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District followed up with a matching grant. The estimated budget for the job is $3.3 million.

Silliman said the city still hasn't set a rate structure for the parking lot.

In the past, city and neighborhood leaders have mentioned free parking for anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, with a charge of $1 per hour after that. "We understand that there should be a reasonable time for people to come and shop at the market" without paying, Silliman said.

By law, the city must allocate any revenues from the main market lot toward paying off debt on parking-revenue bonds that were issued to fund construction of downtown garages in the 1990s. But parking fees from a smaller lot to the west, known as the Hicks lot, can - and will - go toward capital improvements to the West Side Market, Silliman said. That money might total $200,000 a year, he said.

The parking-lot project could start this month. The city expects to tackle the construction in phases, starting with the Hicks lot and moving to sections of the market lot between now and December. Parking fees will be implemented in late 2016 or early 2017.

The timing of the construction, coinciding with expanded hours, particularly galls some vendors. Dever, who has worked at her family's stand for 45 years, said tenants would be more open to schedule changes if the city resolved the parking shortages first. Customers gripe that it's tough to navigate the neighborhood on Saturdays, when shoppers compete for parking with patrons of nearby bars, restaurants and businesses.

Dever doesn't plan to work on Sundays.

Over at Kate's Fish, Tom McIntyre said he's undecided. He would prefer to stay open late on weeknights instead of adding more weekend hours. But evenings aren't on the table right now, based on the city's updated rules.

"It's a big decision," McIntyre said of Sundays. "We're going to take a wait-and-see approach, I think. I'm not steadfast against it, but I'm also not super-excited to get up and go to work on Sunday."

Clarification: The West Side Market has been closed on Sundays, with rare exceptions for special events, since it opened in 1912. But the market opened as early as 5 a.m. on weekdays, at times, and closed as late as 10:30 p.m., at times, during the first 50 years of its history, according to author Laura Taxel, who wrote a book tied to the market's centennial.
Cleveland Heights police

Four men stole a college student's wallet, cellphone and backpack during a robbery early Monday in Cleveland Heights.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- Four men robbed a Case Western Reserve University student as he walked home Monday in Cleveland Heights.

The incident happened shortly after noon on South Overlook Road near North Park Boulevard, according to a police report.

The 22-year-old student was walking home from the university when an SUV pulled up beside him. Four men got out of the SUV and threw him to the ground, the report says.

The men took the student's Apple iPhone 6 and a wallet containing $50, a credit card and a debit card. They also took a backpack, a pair of ear buds, a notebook, a calculator and a student ID.

One of the men threatened to harm the student if he did not provide the access code to his smartphone. The student gave him the code before the men got back into the car and drove away, the report says.

The student could not provide a description of the four men or the SUV.

Nearby security cameras showed a gray SUV -- possibly a Ford Escape -- leaving the area just after the robbery. Investigators believe the four men were traveling in that SUV, the report says.

Officers searched the area but did not find the men or the SUV.

The incident remains under investigation.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- You'd think that after 45 years The Ghoul would have grown up. Gotten serious. Gone respectable.

Or, at the very least, trimmed that crazy wig.

What, are you nutzo?

The Cleveland late-night horror legend proudly remains the titan of trash, the lord of lowbrow and a sneaky little kid at heart. So what better way to mark his 45th anniversary in showbiz than with "Ghoul Power 2016!"?

At 6 p.m. Saturday, the exhibition featuring more than a dozen artists paying homage to The Ghoul will hit A Separate Reality Records and Gallery, 2678 West 14th St., Cleveland.

Egads, an art show for a GHOUL??? Worry not: This is also an exhibition of irreverence dedicated to the warped persona of Ron Sweed, who got his start working as an assistant for Ernie "Ghoulardi" Anderson.

"We'll have a burlesque troupe called the Ghoul Girls, a DJ playing music the Ghoul used to play on his show, and people in costumes," says artist and organizer Mitch O'Connell, who grew up watching Sweed as a child. "He was such an inspiration for me and so many kids growing up in Cleveland, but also Ann Arbor and Detroit."

Sweed broke into Cleveland TV in 1971, on WKBF Channel 61 -- dressed in a lab coat and armed with an assortment of low-rent props, from Cheez Whiz to firecrackers to flying pierogi, kielbasa and slime. He would show lowbrow, Z-grade flicks like "Attack of the Mushroom People" (aka "Matango").

Within months, his Cleveland-based late-night horror show was syndicated around the country, from Boston to San Francisco.

"Even though Cleveland was my home, I was 10 times more popular in Detroit," says Sweed. "People still go nuts over Ghoul Power in Michigan."

His TV cult included horror maestros Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell -- who appeared in skits on The Ghoul's show as teenagers - not to mention Bob Seger and Kid Rock.

"Sam and Bruce tell me I warped their minds," says Sweed. "Not bad, considering I was once called 'punk rock puke.' "

The soiree will include the appearance of The Ghoul's longtime nemesis, Froggy -- not to mention a 7-foot Ghoul pinata.

"We're filling it with boom-booms instead of candy, and I'm looking forward to seeing myself getting blown up," says Sweed. "You see, I'm still a kid at heart -- because being a kid is the only way for a ghoul to survive."

For more info, go to facebook.com/events/172344229788674 or call 216-644-7934.
Medical Mutual CEO Rick Chiricosta says HealthSpan acquisition is good for customers

Medical Mutual CEO Rick Chiricosta poses for a portrait at the entrance to company headquarters, in Cleveland,OH, Friday, September 4, 2009. (Marvin Fong/ The Plain Dealer) MARVIN FONG THE PLAIN DEALER Medical Mutual President and Chief Executive Rick Chiricosta wants to lose 15 pounds and recently asked his 2,700 employees to join him in a weight-loss challenge.

Medical Mutual of Ohio's deal to acquire 105,000 HealthSpan customers is the latest shake-up in the rapidly evolving health insurance market. In an interview Tuesday, Medical Mutual chief executive Rick Chiricosta answered questions about the deal's impact on prices and customers. Here's what he had to say:

What does this mean for HealthSpan customers who have faced considerable uncertainty in recent months?

It means an element of stability for them. They're going to be in good hands with us. Our goal, as is HealthSpan's goal, is to transition as many of their members as possible to our coverage. We've been around for 81 years and taking good care of people for a long time. For [HealthSpan customers] it's good news. It means they're not going to be left to their own devices to figure out where they're going to end up.

Does anything change immediately for HealthSpan members?



People are covered. I don't think an average individual needs to do anything other than letting this thing take its course. It's going to take us a little time to figure out how to transition these members to us in terms of network composition and things like that. We've got the broadest network in the state of Ohio, so I think that will only be a positive for members who will have equal or more choices.

Are you concerned about HealthSpan members deciding to defect from this deal and sign up with an insurer other than Medical Mutual?

People always have that option. When insurers sell blocks of business from one insurer to another, there's always that potential. Someone says, 'I'm not sure I like the acquiring company. I might choose to go elsewhere.' We're not concerned about it. We think this is a real positive move for their members and we think we're going to get a great response.

How is this deal going to affect prices for consumers?

I don't think this is going to make prices go up. If you're talking about the insurance industry in general, this is a fairly minor number of members when you look at the Ohio market overall. With respect to HealthSpan customers directly, [HealthSpan] was not doing well at the rates they were charging, so there's a possibility that, individually, some people may pay more because maybe some of the prices they've been charging aren't sustainable in the long run.

Can you disclose the financial terms of the deal with HealthSpan?

I can't give you any of the numbers. Obviously there's compensation involved and there's an incentive on both sides. We're both going to be happy the more members that end up landing with (Medical Mutual.) That's going to be good for both sides, but we're not going to get into the details.

Why was this an attractive deal for Medical Mutual?

We've got an infrastructure that can handle taking on additional business without extra incremental costs. This proves something I've been saying for a number of years: I don't know why or how some of these smaller carriers, with all the regulatory aspects of Obamacare, are able to keep up with the changes. It's not the law that's the problem. It's the fact that it's changed literally dozens of times since it was passed back in 2010. I don't know how a smaller carrier can keep up. In some cases, they can't keep up because it's very very difficult.

You don't sound like a big fan of the law?

No, that's not true. Honestly, you're never going to find anything where me personally or MMO has been formally against any part of the Affordable Care Act. When I meet with politicians and other people, what I tell them is one thing: You passed a law in 2010. Our job was not to challenge the law, but to accept that it was the law of the land and let's service our members the best way we can and protect them financially and every other way we can. The part we're not happy with is that in some cases we invested millions of dollars to prepare for an aspect of the law. And literally months or even weeks before a part of the law was supposed to take effect, it was delayed, deferred, changed. Parts of the law were never implemented. When people say they need to repeal Obamacare, I laugh because the truth is, if you took all the parts that either were changed or never implemented, half of it is not in place anyway.

Does the deal to acquire HealthSpan improve any specific lines of business for Medical Mutual?

We just re-entered the Medicare Advantage market Jan. 1. We've been in that space before and we got out. Part of our strategy is, we feel we really ought to be the dominant player in the senior market in Ohio...We picked up 14,000 new lives January 1st, which makes us the largest new entrant in the Medicare Advantage Market by a pretty wide margin, so picking up the Medicare Advantage lives of HealthSpan can just build on that strategy.

Will any HealthSpan employees be hired by Medical Mutual?

The only thing I can tell you officially is that we're not taking any of their employees in the deal. But as we have job openings over the course of the year, people with strong insurance backgrounds will be great candidates.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- This is probably the deepest crop of wide receiver talent any recruiting class has had in quite some time, so of course Ohio State is involved with the top prospects at that position.

Perhaps Ohio State's top target is five-star wide receiver Donovan Peoples-Jones of Detroit (Mich.) Cass Tech.

The competition for Ohio State to land Peoples-Jones just got a little tougher, as the 6-foot-2, 192-pound prospect earned a scholarship from Clemson on Tuesday.

Rated the No. 1 prospect in the 2017 recruiting class in the 247Sports composite rankings, Peoples-Jones is nearly 20 scholarship offers.

Peoples-Jones had Ohio State in his top 10 that he released in January. That list also included Alabama, Florida, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Stanford, Tennessee, Texas A&M and USC.

But with top scholarship offers like Clemson coming in for the wide receiver, those types of lists are always subject to change.

Though Peoples-Jones is from the Detroit area, he attends a powerhouse high school that Ohio State has worked diligently to invade. The Buckeyes have landed a few top prospects from Cass Tech in recent years, including Damon Webb, Joshua Alabi and Mike Weber.

Ohio State was the first to offer Peoples-Jones a scholarship, and he's been to Columbus numerous times, so the Buckeyes are considered heavy contenders in his high-profile recruitment.
Criminal Trespassing, Mayfield Road: Police were called at 2:04 p.m. Feb. 28 to the Sunoco gas station at 5332 Mayfield Road where a boy was found on the building's roof. The boy, 14, climbed up the building and was found laying on the roof.

Police took the boy home and turned him over to his mother.

Disturbance, Edgefiled Road: On the afternoon of Feb. 28, police were called to a home where a man and his wife argued about going to church. The man had possession of his wife's car keys and would not let her leave. By the time police arrived, the situation had calmed.

Suspicion, Cedar Road: A man was attempting to sell fake gift cards on Feb. 27 at L.L. Bean at Legacy Village, 25225 Cedar Road. Police were unable to locate the man.

Suspicious person, Richmond Road: A woman was waiting at a bus stop just after 2 p.m. Feb. 27 when, she reported, a man standing nearby on a corner and holding an advertisement for a furniture store, sexually harassed her.

Police had the man leave the corner and are taking the matter up with the store.

Fraud, Winchester Road: A man was the victim of a scam when he entered into a contract with someone stating they were representing Microsoft. The man paid an agreed upon, unspecified amount of money to someone who, he found, did not represent Microsoft.

Theft, Glenlyn Road: Someone stole a girl's cell phone Feb. 26 while she was in a Brush High School class with about 20 other students.

Theft, Edgefield Road: A man informed police on Feb. 24 that he had carpet cleaners at his house that day. His wife later discovered that her pain medication was missing from the bathroom medicine cabinet.

Suspicion, Glenlyn Road: Just after 2 p.m. Feb. 24, a mother received a text message from her daughter, who was attending a class at Brush High School. The daughter stated that there was a rumor at the school that someone had a gun.

The rumor had also spread to Memorial Junior High School. The rumor had it that there might be trouble after school let out.

Lyndhurst police worked with South Euclid police after school at both locations to ensure that no incidents took place.

Fraud, Roland Road: Someone wrote a fraudulent check worth $447 on a woman's account. The incident was reported on Feb. 24.

Theft by deception, Cedar Road: A woman met a man Feb. 22 at Nordstrom Rack, 25149 Cedar Road at Legacy Village, and the man offered to sell her tickets to the Bruce Springsteen concert at Quicken Loans Arena.

The woman paid the man $600 for the tickets. At the arena on the following day, the woman learned that the tickets were fake.

Theft, Cedar Road: Two men were arrested at 4:15 p.m. Feb. 22 for shoplifting at Nordstrom Rack. They were both taken to the Lyndhurst jail.
EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The City of East Cleveland says its police officer was not responsible for the death of a 22-year-old man who died after being struck by a city police car.

The claim was part of the city's response to a lawsuit filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court by the family of Christopher Kimble Jr. The city filed its answer to the lawsuit Friday saying that Kimble's Oct. 3 death was the result of his "own actions and inactions led to his alleged injuries."

Kimble died after a police car struck him as he walked across Superior Avenue near Emily Street. Kyle Pettus, the 35-year-old officer behind the wheel, was suspended after the crash.

The response, signed by East Cleveland Law Director Willa Hemmons, denies most of the allegations in the wrongful death suit, other than that Pettus was a police officer driving a city-owned police car and that Kimble died of serious injuries.

It also says that Pettus has qualified immunity, which prevents police officers from being sued for damages unless they break the law.

The response asks the court to dismiss the suit.

Michael Goldstein, the attorney representing Kimble's family, said on Tuesday that he stands by the allegations in the original complaint.

"This is our attempt to hold the city responsible for this tragedy and show that this is not appropriate police behavior," he said.

The complaint filed Feb. 12 accuses Pettus of speeding through an intersection known to be heavily trafficked by pedestrians. He also failed to use emergency lights or sirens, and was driving a car with one broken headlight, the suit says.

The city is also at fault for failing to maintain the intersection, according to the complaint. An initial crash report from the State Highway Patrol said multiple street lights in the area were burnt out, the painted crosswalks were "worn out and difficult to see" and all of the crosswalk signals were broken.

The suit says the city failed to properly train its police officers, including Pettus, who worked on the force for a year before crash.

The complaint also cites the lack of video evidence from the incident, saying Pettus "intentionally and/or negligently destroyed or failed to record and preserve evidence, including but not limited to, body camera footage."

The family is seeking at least $25,000 in damages.
Zoo Babies

Koala mother Midgee, right, cuddles her joey in their exhibit at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Wednesday, July 2, 2008. The baby Koala is the 12th born at the zoo.

(Mark Duncan, the Associated Press)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Being 18 is not remarkable, unless you are a koala.

Midgee is both, and she became the oldest of her species in North America last weekend at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, amid modest fanfare.

Andi Kornak, the zoo's director of animal and veterinary programs, said the next oldest is four months younger than Midgee, at the San Francisco Zoo.

Cleveland's old girl has also placed the zoo on the map -- several maps, in fact -- because her offspring, called joeys, also abide in Columbus, San Diego and San Francisco.

The Metroparks Zoo has four: another female named Kirra, and two males, Bulkee and Nyoonbi, according to Rick Haase, the park system's communications director.

"We ship in eucalyptus twice a week from Arizona and Florida to feed them -- it is all they eat," he said.

They are one of the prime attractions at the Australian Adventure exhibit.

The cuddly critters are also another wonderful legacy of Fred Rzepka, the longest serving park-board member who stepped down in 2010.

Rzepka is a developer well known for keeping many park projects on track.

Alan Sironen, zoo's retired curator of large mammals and carnivores, said in 2010 that Rzepka insisted on koalas.

"When we were planning the Australian Adventure Exhibit [which opened in 2000], Rzepka said, 'Well, of course, you're going to have koalas,' " Sironen recalled.

"Fred, they're expensive," Sironen recalled telling him.

Rzepka responded, "I don't care. People want to see koalas."

Sironen said in 2010 that the zoo spends $100,000 a year to feed them (eucalyptus leaves must be shipped in), "but we have koalas."

Rzepka, confirming the conversation, said, "I lived in Australia 11 years. An Australian exhibit without koalas would have been like a North Pole exhibit without ice."

Koalas sleep 18 to 20 hours a day, Haase said in an email. "They are marsupials, not bears, as is commonly thought, and have two thumbs and three fingers to help them climb trees."

The koala has a small, compact body (28 to 32 inches), a vestigial tail and large ears. Males, at about 26 pounds, are larger than the 17-pound females. Well-adapted to its almost exclusively arboreal life, the koala is mostly nocturnal and usually solitary.

Gestation is 30 to 35 days in the womb and five to seven months in the pouch, according to the zoo's website.

"It is a huge compliment to the dedicated team that cares for her that she has lived such a long life and is doing so well in her golden years," Haase said.

"I am proud of the dedication and excellence of care our team provides not only to Midgee, but to all the animals at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo," Kornak said.

"This koala is not only a success for our team, but for the 10 other AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) accredited zoos that openly share best practices to ensure we maximize the health and wellness of koalas."

Around 15 staffers look after the koalas here, including keepers, curators and the vet team, she said.

Median age for those in zoos is about 10 years old.
opsahl.jpg

Cleveland State University student Robert Opsahl holds a sign representing his views about the high cost of a college education at a march in November. He recently started an online petition asking the university to stop funding presidential housing.

(Karen Farkas, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - More than 400 students, alumni and faculty members have signed an online petition to oppose Cleveland State University buying a new home for President Ronald Berkman.

The university said last month that it would buy a home for Berkman, who is currently living in a downtown apartment.

While tuition or state funds will not be used to purchase the home, which will be acquired by the university's foundation, "it is important to understand that this money was donated to the university with the intent that it would benefit the students, not a president who makes over $400,000 a year as a base salary," wrote CSU student Robert Opsahl, who posted the petition three days ago.

Several comments on the petition share his view. They said:

"I'm STILL paying on loans for a Masters degree to be a teacher making $33K/year, barely getting by in my little home with interest to pay and THIS guy gets a free home, HELL NO!"

"hey mr. President, want to help me with my rent?"

"we're not working out butts off to pay for an overpriced college education just to pay for a house for someone who makes more than enough money to buy his own. so greedy."

"Wow. I can not believe this. If I would have known this, I WOULD NOT have donated back to my university. This is ridiculous. Needless to say, Cleveland state will not be getting any more of my donation money. I knew things were messed up there but this is completely unreal."

The university held a "Giving Day" on Feb. 24. The third annual event "was a resounding success, with 584 donors inspired to contribute $55,615 on Feb. 24," the university said. That's compared to 380 donors last year who contributed $36,500.

The one-day fundraiser upset some alumni who oppose the house purchase.

One, who lives out of state, sent cleveland.com an email last week saying he had received 11 Giving Day emails. He said he would not donate to CSU until the housing matter is resolved.

"Although I can overlook the deluge of eleven emails sent to me over just two days this week, I find it much more difficult to overlook the apparent disconnect between the financial ramifications of the University's handling of President Berkman's housing juxtaposed with a fund-raising effort to generate monies for the direct benefit of students and programs," he wrote.

"As a small businessman I certainly recognize that a competent, 'comfortable,' and engaged executive is very important to the success of almost any enterprise...but, this is the new millennium and a university president's 'housing' should not be an 'issue' at all unless the university or its related organizations choose to make it such by appearing to excessively and/or unnecessarily dole out the emoluments at a time when the costs of higher education are under intense scrutiny around the country."
Ohio Auditor Dave Yost

Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost, a Republican, announced Monday he won't vote for Donald Trump even if he wins the GOP nomination.

(Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com)

Top stories:

Cleveland police are investigating after a man's girlfriend shot him several times in front of three children Monday night. (cleveland.com)(WKYC Channel 3)

Authorities are searching for a 31-year-old Cleveland man accused of shooting and killing a man at an Akron house party. (cleveland.com)(WAKR 1590-AM)

Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost, a Republican, announced Monday he won't vote for Donald Trump even if he wins the GOP nomination. (cleveland.com)(WOIO Channel 19)

Area crime news:

A Lake Township man is accused of meeting with a 17-year-old prostitute late Monday at a park in Green. (cleveland.com)(Canton Repository)

Two people crashed a van into an East Side Cleveland pharmacy and made off with an ATM, police said. (cleveland.com)(WKYC Channel 3)

A federal appeals court has refused to give convicted killer Alfred Cleveland permission to appeal a lower court ruling that denied him a new trial for the 1991 slaying of Marsha Blakely in Lorain. (Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

Eastlake police busted an out-of-control party with several underage drinkers on South Lakeshore Boulevard Saturday night. (WEWS Channel 5)

A Lorain mother is in trouble with the law after authorities say she left her two young daughters home alone, according to a Lorain Police Department report. (Lorain Morning Journal)

Federal agents and local police arrested a Canton man wanted on robbery and drug charges in Stark County when they found him sandwiched between a mattress and a box spring in a Wooster bedroom. (Canton Repository)

Local news - east:

Madison Township police are investigating an early morning shooting at the Sahara Trailer Park that seriously injured a man. (News-Herald)

The Youngstown Branch of the NAACP is issuing a call to action to parents of East High School students. (Youngstown Vindicator)

Five wineries in lake and Ashtabula counties, all within a 10-minute drive of one another, will collaborate the next three Saturdays -- March 5, 12 and 19 -- for the 13th annual Grand River Valley Ice Wine Festival. (News-Herald)

Local news - west:

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport drew more than 8.1 million passengers in 2015, a 6.45 percent increase over the year before, according to data from the U.S. Department of Transportation. (cleveland.com)(Associated Press)

Budget cuts may yet have effects on city services provided for Lorain residents, city officials said. (Lorain Morning Journal)(Elyria Chronicle-Telegram)

A semi took out power lines at West 38th Street and Bailey Avenue on Cleveland's West Side today, causing some power outages in the area. (WOIO Channel 19)

Akron-Canton area news:

A woman died in a fiery one-car crash Monday on Merriman Road in Northwest Akron. (cleveland.com)(WNIR 100.1-FM)

Firefighters doused a blaze in the basement of a physician's office on Everhard Road in Jackson Township about 7:30 a.m. today. (Akron Beacon Journal)

Bradyn Robinson, 5, is recovering from a 6 1/2-hour surgery performed Feb. 14 at Akron Children's Hospital. His family's car was rear-ended on Greenwich Road in Guilford Township the day before, fracturing his skull in multiple places. (Medina Gazette)
house fire

A man and his dog died in a house fire on the 3300 block of West 99th Street.

(Ryllie Danylko, cleveland.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Officials released the name of a 44-year-old man killed in a fire at his West Side Cleveland home.

Richard A. Waddell died early Wednesday after the house on the 3300 block of West 99th Street caught fire, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office said.

The office hasn't released Waddell's cause of death.

Firefighters were called to the two-story home about 4 a.m., Cleveland Division of Fire spokesman Larry Gray said.

Heavy winds and the small driveway at the house made it difficult for crews to get inside, officials said. Firefighters eventually entered through the back of the home and found Waddell and his German Shepherd on the first floor.

The man was in full cardiac arrest when firefighters pulled him from the house, Gray said. An EMS crew took him to MetroHealth, where he died.

The dog also died.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, Gray said. Waddell apparently started cooking something in his kitchen and then left the room and fell asleep.

There was a smoke alarm in the home, but detectives are still investigating whether it was working.

Waddell is the fifth person to die in a fire in Cleveland this year, Gray said. Nine people died in fires in the city in 2015.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found scant public support Tuesday night for its proposal to dump contaminated Cuyahoga River sediment into Lake Erie nine miles offshore.

The Army Corps, which dredges the six-mile Cleveland shipping channel twice a year, requires an Ohio EPA permit to perform open-lake dumping of thousands of tons of dredged river sediment.

But the signing of that permit appeared a long-shot, at best, after the EPA's Kurt Prencic addressed the crowd of about 100 people at a public hearing at St. Ignatius High School.

"Essentially, the corps wants to cover up dirty and toxic material with more dirty and toxic material," Prencic said. "The sediment from Cleveland harbor is too contaminated to store in Lake Erie."

Prencic challenged the Army Corps' argument that the lake bottom and river sediment contained essentially the same levels of PCBs. That claim was flawed, he said, because the target disposal area of the lake is the same area where toxic river sediment was dumped 50 years ago, prior to the signing of the Clean Water Act. The lake bottom is cleaner in other areas, he said.

Lt. Col. Karl Jansen of the Army Corps headquarters in Buffalo kicked off the public hearing by telling the crowd that the sediment in the Cuyahoga River is much cleaner than it was when the river caught fire 45 years ago. He said most of the sediment dredged from the upper mile of the river originated in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and is suitable for open-lake dumping.

For the past 40 years, dredged river sediment has been stored in lakefront containment dikes, but Jansen said the Army Corps is running out of room. Also, lakefront storage is more expensive than open-lake dumping.

Jansen criticized the testing methods of the EPA, which he said resulted in inaccurately high levels of PCBs and overestimated the risk they posed to human health and the environment.

Port of Cleveland President and CEO Will Friedman responded that Jansen and the Army Corps were "twisting the rules to reach a preferred outcome."

"Talk about deja vu all over again," Friedman said. "This is our new rite of spring in Cleveland, fighting the Corps to protect our shipping, jobs, and greatest natural asset. "

He continued: "I take no pleasure in saying this, but this is institutional failure of the highest order," Friedman said. "I urge decision-makers at the Corps to stop selectively hiding behind your rules and start doing the right thing. Put aside these futile games and get to work safeguarding commercial navigation in Cleveland Harbor as Congress has directed you."

Mike Foley, Cuyahoga County's director of sustainability, said it "defies logic" for the Army Corps to proceed with its open-lake dumping plan while there is a debate over the amount of toxins in the river sediment.

"We shouldn't be playing games or taking unnecessary risks with Lake Erie and its water quality," Foley said. "Yet the Army Corp is doing just that and not working in good faith with the Ohio EPA and the Port of Cleveland."

Assistant Attorney General David Emerman said he hopes U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent will decide a pending lawsuit in federal court where the port and the Ohio EPA sued the Army Corps. Last year, Nugent accused the Army Corps of blackmail and barred the open-lake disposal of dredged sediment.
police officers.jpg

Cleveland police arrested a 17-year-old boy accused of shooting a man after a fight near Ginn Academy.

(File photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland police arrested a 17-year-old boy after a shooting that investigators say was connected to a fight at a local high school.

The teen opened fire on a car with three occupants about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday at the intersection of St. Clair Avenue and Holmes Avenue, according to a Cleveland police news release.

It happened after a fight at nearby Ginn Academy, a high school designed to help at-risk boys.

The 19-year-old victim was treated at Euclid Hospital for a gunshot wound to his arm.

The man told police he was riding in a car driven by the mother of his 16-year-old friend. The friend was also in the car.

The 17-year-old boy shot at the car while it was at a stop sign, police said. A bullet went through a window and struck the man.

The woman drove him to the hospital.

Investigators think the shooting was retaliatory and connected to a fight earlier that day at Ginn Academy, Ciaccia said. The fight involved the 16-year-old boy and other boys at the school.

Cleveland Metropolitan School District spokeswoman Roseann Canfora said there were no reports of a fight at the school Tuesday.

Canfora could not say whether the suspect is a student at Ginn Academy.

The suspect is expected to face charges in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court.
A dark cloud has hung over Valeant ever since speculation began that it may use unorthodox methods to sell drugs. Cramer traced the initial charge of accounting irregularities to Andrew Left, of Citron Research.

"Accounting irregularities equals sell. That has been one of my cardinal rules for decades now, and if you want to know why, you only need to look at Valeant ," the " Mad Money " host said.

Jim Cramer always abides by one simple rule. When there are accounting irregularities, you do not ask questions, you do not make excuses, you do not wait for clarity  you just sell.

"You never want to get behind some stock when the accounting is being challenged, unless you have total comfort that the short-seller is wrong.

"While unorthodox and inflammatory, Left has done some pretty good work, and I thought his allegations seemed well documented," Cramer said, "even as it seemed a little rash to call Valeant the pharmaceutical Enron."

At the time Left's statement was published, Valeant traded in the $120s and he gave it a $50 price target. Cramer had heard a lot of talk about price gouging at Valeant, but a lot of companies were raising drug prices at the time. So, he assumed Valeant was just more aggressive.

Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer

Cramer Remix: The election stock opportunity

Cramer: Angry politics are hurting this market

Cramer: S&P could be headed for new highs

As soon as Cramer read Citron's report, he recognized that any potential upside simply was not worth it.

"You never want to get behind some stock when the accounting is being challenged, unless you have total comfort that the short seller is wrong," Cramer said.

The most promising bullish thesis on Valeant that Cramer found indicated that even if Philidor was being used to move inventory in a shady way, it would not hurt earnings that bad. And if Valeant slowed down price increases, it would still have amazing cash flow.

But Cramer stood by his rule firmly. He had not yet heard anything that the accounting was cleared, and when the stock plummeted he was glad his rule did not fail him.

Even as Walgreen's announced a deal with Valeant for discounted drugs, Cramer did not budge.

"Sorry, as much as we all may like and respect Walgreens  the fact is, they are not the U.S. government, and it is the government we need to be worried about here," Cramer said.

The second accounting bombshell dropped on Feb. 22 when the company said it had mistakenly recognized too much profit in 2014 and needed to have some of that shifted to 2015. Cramer knew to stay far away, as the SEC hates restatements and almost always opens an investigation into them.

Valeant now trades at roughly half of where it was when the first potential accounting irregularity surfaced.

Cramer has often been criticized for his rule, especially those that kept investors out of companies that were legitimate but tarred unfairly with accounting charges.

"It is true. I have been too cautious at times and have missed opportunities," Cramer said.

However, the pain in Valeant should be a constant reminder of how right his rule is. This stock has been a nightmare that simply could have been avoided by following one straightforward principle.
watch now

Jim Cramer always abides by one simple rule. When there are account irregularities, you do not ask questions, you do not make excuses, you do not wait for clarity  you just sell. "Accounting irregularities equals sell. That has been one of my cardinal rules for decades now, and if you want to know why, you only need to look at Valeant ," the "Mad Money" host said. A dark cloud has hung over Valeant ever since speculation began that it may use unorthodox methods to sell drugs. Cramer traced the initial charge of accounting irregularities to Andrew Left, of Citron Research. Cramer has often been criticized for his rule, especially those that kept investors out of companies that were legitimate but tarred unfairly with accounting charges. "It is true. I have been too cautious at times and have missed opportunities," Cramer said. However, the pain in Valeant should be a constant reminder of how right his rule is. This stock has been a nightmare that simply could have been avoided by following one straightforward principle. Read More Cramer: This signal means sell, sell, sell now



Bill Ackman at the New York Stock Exchange. Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Tuesday scored a clear market win for the bulls. Cramer saw the perfect confluence of events that allowed stocks to soar higher. The first event that took place hinged on two pieces of data that came out of China. Investors learned that things were even worse than many thought when manufacturing numbers matched the lowest level in seven years. More importantly, the shockingly dovish speech from New York Fed President Bill Dudley made the bulls happy. It was also significant that this commentary occurred shortly before the release of the Labor Department's big jobs report on Friday.

"The map played perfectly out for the bulls today, as the plethora of needle-threading news came together in a single session," Cramer said. Cramer: What made the bulls run like crazy

At a time when many furniture retailers like Williams-Sonoma and Restoration Hardware are struggling, Cramer turned his attention to Wayfair to see how it could differentiate itself from the competition. Wayfair is the online retailer that sells furniture and home goods at bargain prices for brands like Joss & Main, All Modern, Birch Lane and Dwell Studio. However, it seems that regardless of how the company is doing the stock continues to be a target of short-sellers that dismiss its ability to compete against traditional home goods retailers. With the stock down more than 16 percent for the year, Cramer spoke with Wayfair's co-founder and CEO Niraj Shah to find out what could be in store for the company going forward. "Our company was actually profitable for the first nine years, which folks tend to overlook," Shah said. Read More Wayfair CEO to Cramer: Why we are different



Niraj Shah, Wayfair CEO on set of Mad Money with Jim Cramer on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Ashlee Espinal | CNBC
Investors seemed to have put renewed faith in emerging markets over the past few weeks, with the emerging market ETF (EEM ) rising more than 7 percent and outperforming major U.S. indexes. But despite strong gains, traders say that the latest emerging market bounce is not to be trusted.

Emerging markets have been badly beaten as commodities prices have fallen to multiyear lows. Kathy Lien of BK Asset Management said Tuesday's 3 percent rise in emerging markets was spurred by optimism around China, one of the world's largest consumers of commodities.

"The only reason why these emerging market nations' stocks are rising is because China's pressing the pedal to the metal with their latest reduction in the reserves that banks need to hold," Lien said Tuesday on CNBC's "Power Lunch."

China's cut in required reserves, which is meant to increase loans and assist economic growth, will not be enough to bolster its slowing economy, she said. Lien also foresees more outflows from China, which will further weaken the yuan and the country's purchasing power. This would weigh even more on emerging markets that look to China as a key consumer and trade partner.

And while the increased liquidity in banks may help boost the stock market, Lien said it isn't enough to encourage a substantial recovery for China or other emerging markets.

Read More Don't buy into the safety stock surge: Traders



"Based upon the previous moves of this similar nature that they've taken, it has not effectively increased new investment or economic activity," Lien said. "I think the Chinese government is going to need to do more."

Along with news out of China, the bounce in oil has helped emerging markets, said Gina Sanchez of Chantico Global. However, "neither of those are actually good enough reasons to dive into emerging markets right now. They are falling knives," she said Tuesday on "Power Lunch."

Recent talk of a production cut or freeze from OPEC has driven oil's gains in the last month. But Sanchez said it's unlikely that higher crude prices will help emerging markets in the near term. The price of oil "might start to rise, but it's going to rise slowly and I think that story's going to take a long time to bear out," she said.

Still, the story may not be all bad for emerging markets. In a Tuesday note, Kevin Caron and Chad Morganlander of Stifel wrote that emerging markets have been brought up to a neutral weighting as valuations compared to the start to look more attractive.

"While there may still be some turbulence yet ahead, the reset in expectations and valuations warrants at least a small allocation for investors with a longer-term point of view," the Stifel note said.
Moody's Investors Service Wednesday lowered the outlook on China's credit rating from stable to negative, citing a weakening of fiscal metrics and a continuing fall in foreign exchange reserves.

The rating agency also noted uncertainty over the capacity of authorities to implement the reforms needed to address imbalances in the world's second-largest economy.

Moody's current Aa3 rating on China is seven notches above junk so even if the agency were to follow up on its warning and lower the rating, investors won't have to suddenly start selling the country's bonds.

Still, the warning underscores how the build-up in credit in the country's stuttering economy is making market observers nervous.



Rival Standard & Poor's assesses China's creditworthiness at similar levels to Moody's, while Fitch rates China a notch lower. S&P and Fitch both have stable outlooks on the country.

Chinese markets did not immediately react to the outlook revision. The Shanghai composite was near flat at 2,735.21,while the dollar/yuan rate was at 6.5518 against Tuesday's close of 6.5500. The bid yield on China's benchmark 10-year local currency bond was steady at 2.91 percent.

Moody's noted that government debt had risen from 32.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2012 to 40.6 percent at the end of 2015.

Moody's forecasts the metric to rise further to 43 percent of GDP by 2017 as Beijing spends more to revive growth that has slowed to the lowest in over two decades.
watch now

This entrepreneur says he's created a weapon for sleepless parents with kids haunted by frightening bouts of night terror. "It's like a terrible temper tantrum, but your child's asleep through the entire episode. And up until now, there has been no solution," said Varun Boriah. Boriah told CNBC his solution is Lully, a start-up he co-founded with Dr. Andy Rink, a general surgeon. Both were fellows at Stanford's medical device design entrepreneurship program. And, as it turned out, some of Rink's relatives had suffered from night terrors. "We saw just how many parents and children were suffering from this very common sleep disorder and we wanted to design a safe and simple solution," Boriah said.



Put to bed

The Lully Sleep Guardian goes under a mattress to help treat night terrors Source: Lully

Lully's first product is the Lully Sleep Guardian, a Bluetooth enabled device that parents plug in and slip under a child's mattress. Parents using the sleep guardian input their child's history of night terrors in the Lully app. Once the system is up and running, the device will start "learning" the child's sleep patterns. The device uses a proprietary algorithm to determine the best moment to deliver a vibration just prior to a night terror episode. These vibrations interrupt the child's sleep cycle, and the company says this blocks night terror. According to the Lully, parents start seeing results within the first week, and incidents are cut by nearly 80 percent after a month. The company has two models of Sleep Guardian. A basic version retails for $129 and a model with additional features like access to sleep experts costs $199.

Tossing and turning

Nat Burgess, president of Corum Group, a firm involved with software mergers and acquisitions, questioned if Lully would require FDA approval. According to Boriah, the device is not treating what the FDA would consider a medical condition, and therefore the agency does not recognize it as a medical device or a regulated product." Lully isn't the only sleep monitoring device; competitors include Owlet Baby, Sproutling, Sleep Number Kids and Mimo. However, Boriah claims Lully is the only product programmed to combat night terrors. New York Angels board member Alicia Syrett wondered what would prevent competitors from adding a similar feature to their products. Boriah told CNBC Lully has filed for U.S. and international patents. "We do have a proprietary algorithm that's held as trade secret," he added. According to Boriah, his team conducted a six-month clinical study at the Stanford Sleep Center, and said that Lully's 10,000 nights of testing with 15 test subjects is an advantage over competitors. "In this study, the Lully Sleep Guardian was found to stop 8 out of 10 night terrors in children ages 2 to 9," he said.



Lullys sleep system Source: Lilly
Ethan Miller | Getty Images

Japan has enlisted electronics firm Toshiba to help it try to win Asia's biggest defense contract, a A$50 billion ($36 billion) deal to build a dozen submarines for Australia, three sources said. Toshiba is considering building a factory in Australia to make lithium-ion batteries to power the vessels, said the sources who are familiar with the plan but not authorized to talk to the media. The potential investment, which is contingent on Canberra picking the Japanese design, is part of an incentive package promising commercial and defense sector work beyond the submarine program, aimed at winning over politicians who want jobs in Australia. The proposed plant, which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, will also fabricate industrial scale power packs for commercial customers around the world, said the sources. Such an investment could be an attractive proposition for Australia, which is seeking other avenues of growth as it grapples with plunging commodity prices. "Australia's prime minister (Malcolm Turnbull) is promoting innovation, and that is something Japan can do," said one of the sources.

watch now

Australia's submarine industry is based in South Australia, but the sources did not say where Toshiba was considering building a factory. Toshiba denied it was mulling a new Australian battery plant. "There is no such a fact, no such a plan," a spokesman said. A spokesman for Japan's Ministry of Defense said nothing was decided regarding which maker's batteries would be used if its bid was successful. "If Japan is chosen, then Japan and Australia would consider detailed plans over several years and the first discussion would come from there," the spokesman said. Boost for South Australia, Toshiba Without commenting on Toshiba's potential involvement, South Australia's Minister for Defense Industries Martin Hamilton-Smith said he expected new facilities associated with battery technology would be based in the state as part of any domestic-build option, regardless of who won the tender.

watch now

"This is an example of the impact the Future Submarines project would have across other industry sectors," he told Reuters in an emailed response. "It also underlines the economic effects of a local build and why such effects should be taken into account when the Federal government considers where the submarines will be built." Australia's Department of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The choice of Toshiba to supply the Australian submarine batteries would be a boost for the struggling Japanese industrial conglomerate as it braces for a net loss of 710 billion yen ($6.3 billion) this year following a major accounting scandal. It was not immediately clear if the plant would build lithium ion battery cells from scratch or be a cheaper, simpler assembly operation, offering fewer jobs and economic benefits. Toshiba's batteries were picked for the Australian submarine project over those made by GS Yuasa because they are easier to maintain, two of the sources said.

GS Yuasa declined to comment, while Japan's Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Japan's strengths Japan is offering Australia a variant of its 4,000 ton diesel-electric Soryu submarine built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries , with a lithium-ion underwater propulsion system. It is up against France's state-owned builder DCNS, which plans to make a conventional version of its 5,000-tonne Barracuda nuclear-powered submarine, and Germany's ThyssenKrupp (TKMS) , which is proposing to scale up its 2,000-ton Type 214 class vessel. Domestic political considerations, particularly jobs for Australian workers, will also weigh on the final choice. Japan was initially slow to commit to build all vessels at South Australian shipyards. But sources told Reuters in January the competition was narrowing to a race between Japan and France as TKMS loses ground over concerns about the technical challenges of scaling up the size of its sub.
Abu Dhabi stepped up its rivalry with Dubai to be the financial hub of the Middle East and diversify from oil production on Wednesday.

Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)  a financial zone in the emirate  announced that two international institutions, Macquarie Capital and Aberdeen Asset Management , would base their hubs for the Middle East and North Africa there, rather than the longer-established Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC).

The ADGM went live in October and is an attempt to imitate the success of its equivalent in Dubai, which has attracted some of the biggest names in finance over the past decade and positioned itself as a gateway between East and West.

Reasons why institutions should locate in Abu Dhabi include its political stability and security, world-class infrastructure and growing middle class, Richard Teng, CEO of the financial services regulatory authority at ADGM, said on Wednesday.

"Abu Dhabi is a natural place for international institutions," Teng told CNBC from the emirate's Global Financial Markets Forum.

The former chief regulatory officer of the Singapore Exchange joined ADGM in March 2015, with a remit to recreate the regulatory framework that made DIFC appeal to international investors.

Teng said ADGM could complement the success of DIFC, drawing parallels with the rise of successive hubs in Asia.

"All these centers will coexist and complement each other and in this region there is a lot more need for financial intermediation," he told CNBC.
watch now

watch now

watch now

Astronaut Scott Kelly is safely back on Earth, and he's already thinking about when he can leave again. Kelly, who landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan late Tuesday, has spent more consecutive time in space  340 days  than any other American. His most recent stint was aboard the International Space Station, where he's lived since March 27. In all, the astronaut has now spent a total of 520 days in orbit across four missions. Also leaving the station Tuesday were Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov.

watch now

"Physically, I feel pretty good," Kelly said at a news conference days before his return. "The hardest part is being isolated in a physical sense from people on the ground that are important to you." Those aren't idle words. Kelly is helping NASA develop protocols and techniques the agency will use for a crewed mission to Mars. His twin brother, Mark, a retired astronaut, remained on the ground while Scott circled the Earth.

The two have been subject to extensive and ongoing testing, including DNA testing, to determine how long term exposure to space radiation affects humans. NASA is also looking at mental health to help understand how long periods of near-isolation affects space travelers.
Druckenmiller continued: "[Trump] every day says China is manipulating their currency and holding it down. He doesn't know what he's talking about. What comes out of his mouth astonishes me."

"[Trump] has a kindergartner ... view of economics," the former hedge fund manager said. "The man says China is manipulating the currency. China is in the middle of the biggest currency run in history. They're losing $100 billion a month. They're intervening every day to hold their currency up."

Druckenmiller, founder and former chairman of Duquesne Capital, told CNBC's " Squawk Box " on Wednesday that Trump's got it wrong when it comes to the economy, especially in his rhetoric concerning .

Billionaires Stanley Druckenmiller and Ken Langone  both of whom support Ohio Gov. John Kasich for the GOP presidential nomination  blasted Republican front-runner Donald Trump a day after the outspoken real estate mogul scored big victories on Super Tuesday.

Langone  who switched his support to Kasich after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropped out of the race  said on "Squawk Box" that the Trump phenomenon has little to do with the candidate.

"Something is radically wrong [with the nation] and this is what's happened," Langone said. "It's got nothing to do with Trump. It's got everything to do with the American people, saying, 'Wait a minute. Bring me to the party. What about me? Let me have a future. Let my kids have a future.'"

Refraining from outright criticizing Christie's endorsement of Trump last week, Langone said, "I don't know whether [Christie] is right or wrong." But he added: "I know he didn't call me to ask me what I thought. My fingerprints aren't on that one."

Druckenmiller was far less polite. "It's disgraceful what [Christie] said about Donald Trump, to come out and endorse the man so he can be attorney general. I just find it appalling." Christie had served as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey for six years before being elected governor. It's been rumored that Christie endorsed Trump as part of a deal to get a position including attorney general.

Meanwhile, a joint editorial from six New Jersey newspapers is calling for Christie to resign or for voters to "initiate a recall effort," after the Trump endorsement.



"With Ken, I tried to get [Christie] to run in 2012," said Druckenmiller. "I got to know him well about a year ago. [But] it became clear to me about six to nine months ago that the man believed in absolutely nothing but his own ambition. If I had any doubts, he more than proved it last week," when he endorsed Trump.

Trump won seven of the 11 Super Tuesday contests, with key victories in the North as well as the South. He steamrolled his rivals in Massachusetts and Vermont, while notching fairly decisive wins in Virginia, Georgia and Alabama.

Taking stock in the voting thus far in the nominating contests, Langone said that one thing's for sure, "We've proven that America is not interested in dynasties."

Jeb Bush, former Florida governor, started the 2016 campaign with a huge fundraising lead and the early moniker of presumptive Republican nominee.

"He spent $36 million in New Hampshire, 19,000 TV ads in New Hampshire and didn't do very good," Langone said.

"This notion that money buys elections, Bernie Sanders, forget it," Langone said, firing a shot at the Democratic front-runner and dynasty candidate Hillary Clinton.

Clinton, like Trump, won seven out of the 11 primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday. But challenger Sanders won four contests, including his home state of Vermont.
An augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) start-up has raised $54 million, with the investment fund of the Malaysian government jumping on board.

British firm Blippar has created an app that can give you information about any object just by pointing your smartphone at it. It allows a user to point their phone camera at something such as a coffee mug or plant, and get detailed information about it. In the case of a coffee mug, Blippar's app will tell users about the nearest coffee shops or the closest furniture stores to buy a new set.

Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the Government of Malaysia, led the $54 million round which included Blippar's current investors, the start-up announced on Wednesday.

The company was formed in 2011 and founder Ambarish Mitra said that Google and Yahoo are not the end means of discovering information.

"People are getting more and more curious about the world yet a lot lot of their curiosity remains unanswered. As digital people we think we've made it and you think Google or Yahoo is the answer but there is still a big gap in the market. You still can't point at everything in the world and describe it and get to know more about it," Mitra told CNBC in a phone interview.

Blippar has around 60 engineers in its San Francisco and Mountain View offices in California and a lot of the money will be used to hire more people. "Infrastructure, deep learning and machine learning expertise is not cheap," Mitra said.

The cash will also be deployed on user acquisition. The app currently has 65 million users.
The Anheuser-Busch InBev NV headquarters in Leuven, Belgium Jasper Juinen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AB InBev moved a step closer to completing its 71 billion ($91.22 billion) takeover of SABMiller , after China Resources Beer agreed to buy out the London-listed group's stake in their Chinese brewery joint venture. China Resources Beer will acquire SABMiller's 49 per cent stake in China Resources Snow Breweries  the brewer of the world's top-selling beer  for $1.6 billion, ending a 22 year-old joint venture that produced voluminous vats but punier profits. Investors applauded the deal, sending China Resources Beer's share price up as much as 34.6 per cent to HK$17.20 in morning trading in Hong Kong. The price of the deal was considerably below analysts' expectations. The transaction is a key milestone for AB InBev as it has been shedding assets to win regulatory approval across the globe to close the largest beer deal in history, dubbed MegaBrew by analysts. "This announcement represents the next step in AB InBev's continued commitment to proactively address regulatory considerations in its recommended acquisition of SABMiller," said AB InBev. "The acquisition implies a total value for CR Snow of HK$25.4 billion, which is a 58 per cent discount to the valuation" implied by the market capitalization of the parent company CR Beer, wrote Jessie Guo, equity analyst at Jefferies in Hong Kong.

"This suggests the deal values CR Snow at 18 times 2014 price/earnings," she wrote, adding: "As this acquisition is priced at a deep discount, it should bring meaningful benefit to CRB's earnings." Jeremy Yeo, analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia, said CR Snow had taken advantage of ABInbev's desire to do a deal quickly, because of the need to move forward with regulatory approval. "Only one of them was in a hurry," he said. Since the Belgian-brewer made a formal offer in November last year to buy SABMiller is has agreed to sell several big brands, including MillerCoors to Molson Coors and Italy's Peroni to Japan's Asahi. More from the Financial Times:



Paul Ryan calls on Trump to reject KKK bigotry

Trump has the White House in his sights

Australia GDP growth hits 3% in 2015 Regulators around the world are looking closely at the deal as AB InBev's acquisition of SABMiller will create a megabrewer that is likely to control almost half the industry's total profits. Snow beer is already the largest beer brand in China, with 21 per cent of the market, according to Euromonitor. But Snow is pitched at the lower end of the market, where margins are slim and sales have been hit by the mainland economic slowdown and consumers' changing tastes. "This [deal] will give CR Beer more of a presence in a part of the market that has not grown well over the last couple of years and that is not likely to do particularly well this year," said Ben Cavender of China Market Research in Shanghai.

watch now
watch now

Chris Christie's endorsement of Donald Trump has not gone over well in his home state. The New Jersey governor on Friday backed the abrasive mogul's Republican presidential bid. In the following days, Christie's approval rating among registered New Jersey voters dipped by 6 percent, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released Wednesday. Overall, Christie's approval rating in the survey conducted from Feb. 24-28 hit 30 percent, matching a low reached in June 2015. Before the endorsement, 33 percent of respondents said they approved of Christie, but only 27 percent did after he backed Trump.

Former Republican U.S. presidential candidate Chris Christie (R) endorses his former rival for the Republican presidential nomination Donald Trump (L) before a Trump campaign rally in Fort Worth, Texas February 26, 2016. Mike Stone | Reuters

Backing Trump  and leaving the state for extended periods of time  are not the only drivers of Christie's low approval, noted Krista Jenkins, a Fairleigh Dickinson political science professor and director of PublicMind. However, the decision certainly does not help the governor at a time when many voters have grown disillusioned with his policies, she said.

"In the absence of any change, it may not get better for him," Jenkins said.
Voters in the presidential contests may not realize they are not directly voting for a candidate. The primaries and caucuses are a process of selecting delegates or representatives of party members in each state to send to their party's national presidential nominating convention held in the summer. At both nominating conventions, delegates cast their vote for a particular candidate based on the preferences of the voters in the state they represent. Since the major parties typically identify a nominee prior to their respective conventions, this process is usually considered perfunctory. Currently, the Republican Party has about 2,472 delegates and Democrats have around 4,764 delegates. Though the main purpose of the primaries for both parties is to choose a candidate for president, the method by which this candidate is nominated varies by party affiliation and state. Adding another layer of complexity, Republican and Democratic parties in each state select delegates based on either a primary vote or a caucus.

Voting slip David Gould | Getty Images

What is a caucus?

A caucus is a local meeting financed by the major parties in which rank-and-file voters convene to display support for the various candidates. They are usually held at a public venue, such as a school gym or a town hall. Those who take part in a caucus select delegates who will represent them in voting for their candidate at the national convention level. Marking the start of the election season, the first caucuses were held in Iowa on Feb. 1. This year, Iowa Republicans cast a secret ballot for their preferred candidate at the caucus, while Iowa Democrats physically arranged themselves based on the candidate they supported and then counted the number of supporters for each candidate. If a Democratic candidate did not get at least 15 percent of voters on his side, the candidate was not considered viable, and caucus captains for the other candidates could lobby that candidate's designated voters to join their group. In contrast, Republicans did not mandate a specific viability threshold. Only 14 states in 2016 were having caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.



What is a primary?

Different from caucuses, voters in primaries cast a secret ballot at designated polling locations. Paid for by the state, the primary system is bifurcated between closed and open primaries. Closed primaries are limited to eligible voters who are registered within the party before the primary. An open primary allows voters to register and participate in the primary election on the same day as the primary itself. "A caucus tends to bring out the 'establishment types' and the presidential primaries bring out people who are more seized by the passions of the moment," said David King, senior public policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School. "The primary may appear to be more democratic, but those who vote in it are also the easiest group to mobilize and excite." After complaints were voiced following a contentious 1968 Democratic convention, reforms were instituted several years later to make the nomination process more inclusive and transparent. A larger number of states also decided to adopt primaries rather than caucuses.



Why is the system so complicated?
New Jersey commuters are bracing for what could be the worst traffic jams in decades.

With contract talks deadlocked, New Jersey Transit workers have set a strike deadline of 12:01 a.m. on March 13 that threatens to shut down one of the New York City's three major commuter rail networks, among the busiest in the nation.



After months of stalled negotiations, New Jersey's congressional delegation stepped up efforts to head off a rail shutdown that would strand hundreds of thousands of riders and generate a surge in traffic on already-clogged bridges and in tunnels across and under the Hudson River. A federal mediation board has stepped in to try to break the deadlock, according to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.



"With a service disruption looming, risking a complete catastrophe for New Jersey commuters and the regional economy, we simply cannot afford to stand idly by," he said Monday in a statement.



The major sticking points include higher health insurance premiums and wage increases. The federal board has recommended that NJ Transit boost workers' pay by about 2.6 percent per year over the next 6  years.



The last time New Jersey commuters faced a complete shutdown of service followed the 2012 flooding brought by Superstorm Sandy, which crippled Hudson River rail service for weeks.
watch now

If Donald Trump becomes president, companies that do business overseas could see sales dips, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Wednesday. Trump moved closer to the GOP nomination by winning seven states on Super Tuesday. His campaign has taken a hard stance on trade and immigration, proposing tariffs, militarization around , cracking down on intellectual property violations and limiting visas.

Trump's rhetoric is bad for stocks that are international, like Starbucks and General Electric , Cramer said on Squawk on the Street," because companies that are representative of the U.S. could feel a backlash against Trump's policies. "If I were one of these international companies, I would be saying, 'I don't need this headache. I've got the strong dollar, now I've got the president saying these things,'" Cramer said.
Rawpixel Ltd | Getty Images

Michael Keithley has spent over two decades running IT and security for CAA, the Hollywood talent agency whose clients include Tom Hanks, Will Smith and Scarlett Johansson. Of late, his job has been particularly intense. The change dates back to November 2014, when a massive hack at Sony Pictures shut down the studio's computer system and exposed highly confidential and embarrassing employee and celebrity information. "We were Ground Zero for obvious reasons," said Keithley, who joined the agency in 1991, before many companies were even connected to the Internet.

CAA's board took up the issue, increasing the firm's cybersecurity budget. Keithley doubled the number of security vendors he uses from 15 to 30, hired more industry experts and developed tools to address today's advanced and persistent threats. It's a story that's playing out across every corporation, nonprofit and government agency, big or small, domestic or foreign. The software and systems built to protect computers and servers over the past few decades simply don't work in a world where every device is networked and exabytes (billions of gigabytes) of data are stashed in the cloud. That theme is on full display this week at the annual RSA Conference in San Francisco, the security industry's flagship event, attracting some 500 vendors and over 30,000 attendees.

One word on everyone's lips is vulnerabilities. Whether Target and Home Depot in retail, eBay in e-commerce, Anthem in health insurance, JPMorgan in banking or even the Internal Revenue Service, no industry is safe from the hacking epidemic. Juniper Research predicts that with all data going digital, the cost of breaches to companies will more than quadruple by 2019 to $2.1 trillion. For IT managers, and more specifically the growing class of chief information security officers (CISOs), the chaos has taken over their lives, and the software world isn't helping. Armed with double-digit annual budget increases, while the rest of IT grows at less than 2 percent, security chiefs are being pitched by scores of new vendors promising to protect some piece of critical infrastructure or defend against a specific type of threat. The global cybersecurity market is expected to expand almost 10 percent a year to $170 billion by 2020, according to Markets and Markets. Unprepared for the onslaught of high-profile breaches, many companies are throwing money at problems as they arise. "There hasn't been a proactive security strategy in place for a long time," said Joel Fishbein, a software and security analyst at BTIG. "Most people have been very reactive in the buying and deploying of technology. It's always been to solve a significant problem or a hole they've found."

Top security investments of past year Company Amount Lead investors Tenable Network Security $250 mln Insight, Accel Tanium $120 mln TPG, IVP, T. Rowe CloudFlare $110 mln Fidelity Zscaler $110 mln TPG CrowdStrike $100 mln Google Capital Illumio $100 mln BlackRock, Accel

Source: Source: CB Insights

In a 35-page RSA preview last week, Fishbein said that key themes for the conference and security industry broadly include threat intelligence, analytics and machine learning, anti-malware, next-generation endpoint protection and managed security services. He referred to security as a "chaotic and confusing industry undergoing rapid change." Venture capitalists have done their part to fuel the madness, plunging $3.8 billion into 332 security deals last year, up from $2.8 billion and 299 transactions in 2014, according to CB Insights. In the past 11 months, six companies have raised rounds of at least $100 million.

Among them is Illumio, which raised $100 million in April with the promise that businesses could gain visibility across all of their servers, whether in physical data centers or the cloud. The software is designed to spot any irregularities in how devices are communicating, so they can be immediately shut down and investigated. Read MoreApple vs. FBI shines spotlight on RSA CAA's Keithley calls Illumio a "game changer" for understanding the behavior of your network. "If all of the sudden a system or website is talking to a database that it didn't before or a database is being accessed in a weird way, you want to block that," he said. Another new tool that CAA has added is Vera, which allows security teams to powerfully encrypt specific types of data in the cloud and on mobile applications without interrupting how employees work. Keithley's team also uses Skyhigh Networks for monitoring activity in the cloud, Crowdstrike for protecting networked devices from breaches, and Cylance, which provides threat detection software powered by machine intelligence. Of course, none of this makes companies immune from the global network of hackers and cyber criminals. Thus, more tools are emerging to at least help IT managers spot weaknesses and quickly patch them up.

For example, Tanium has grown rapidly of late with software that shows security managers where hackers have entered so they can immediately shut off suspicious activity. The idea is to accept that the company's perimeter is compromised and focus on limiting the damage and protecting the most valuable assets. Tanium was valued last year at $3.5 billion, about one-quarter Symantec's stock market value. While Symantec remains the biggest security vendor, its outdated antivirus products are no longer in demand and largely seen as irrelevant in today's hyper-connected world. The company recently spun out its storage management division, Veritas.

There are 12 or 15 endpoint vendors going after new dollars, and the new dollars aren't necessarily there. Joel Fishbein, BTIG analyst

Businesses are instead turning to tools such as Malwarebytes, whose website says "we protect you from dangerous threats that antivirus doesn't." Earlier this year, at a time when late-stage tech investors were retrenching, Malwarebytes raised $50 million from Fidelity to support the company's growth into the corporate IT shops. Malwarebytes started as an antivirus tool for consumers and now gets about half its revenue, which totals $100 million annually, from businesses looking to protect their devices from the persistent threat of infections and malicious websites. Read MoreWhat can anonymous really do to ISIS? But for venture-backed security companies that have yet to differentiate themselves and show a working business model, 2016 could be the end of the line. Fishbein says that while corporations have been underinvesting in their security infrastructure in recent years, venture capitalists have been overinvesting in start-ups. The industry is littered with so-called endpoint solutions, designed to protect the network and every device that touches it, because when it comes to securing a company's perimeter, the old firewalls are insufficient. Still, "there are 12 or 15 endpoint vendors going after new dollars, and the new dollars aren't necessarily there," said Fishbein.

watch now

Israeli entrepreneur Shlomo Kramer knows a little something about firewalls. Kramer co-founded Check Point Software in 1993, and was an investor in Palo Alto Networks , which has become Check Point's biggest challenger. He also founded cybersecurity company Imperva . In 2015, Kramer started his latest venture, Cato Networks, because he says the new wave of mobile and cloud computing is "dissolving the perimeter." Cato raised $20 million late last year and is preparing to open up its product to the public. To protect data, Kramer says, security has to be delivered in the same ways and same places as other software. It's a firewall in the cloud and for the cloud. Kramer's thesis is that companies can use Cato to replace their existing firewall as well as networking technology that directs traffic to branch offices. "The key is how do you bring simplicity back," said Kramer. "We'll reduce the number of point solutions they need to buy."
Paid-music advocate Kanye West, landed himself in hot water again on Wednesday, after he appeared to be browsing popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay. On Tuesday night, the rapper tweeted an image of his computer screen that showed him listening to a Sufjan Stevens track on YouTube. However, it wasn't his music taste that shocked the online world. TWEET On closer look, West's second browsing tab says "Pirate Bay Torrent Xfe"; placed next to another page for Xfer Records' "Serum", an advanced wavetable synthesizer, which sells for $189.

Close up screenshot of Kanye West's "Day 3" tweet Screenshot credit: Kanye West | Twitter

This comes just two weeks after the musician was reportedly considering legal action against the file-sharing site, after his latest studio album "The Life of Pablo" surfaced on The Pirate Bay. A source told Hollywood Life in mid-February that West was going to "meet with his legal team to discuss the possibilities of starting legal action". File-sharing news site, TorrentFreak estimated that the album had been illegally downloaded over half a million times, less than two days after it was released exclusively for purchase on premium streaming service, Tidal. TWEET

Online users were quick to call out West's Twitter post on Wednesday, while music producer Deadmau5, who co-founded Xfer Records, criticized the rapper's actions. In one of his tweets, Deadmau5 said "What the f**k @kanyewest Can't afford Serum? D**k", followed by another saying "let's start a Kickstarter" to help raise $200 for West's own synthesizer. TWEET

Madonna, Deadmau5, Kanye West, and JAY Z onstage at the Tidal launch event. Jamie McCarthy | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
The businessman is known for his divisive views on immigration and was previously viewed as too maverick and extremist to succeed in his bid for the leadership of the Republican Party.

Trump surprised some pundits with his success in the Republican Super Tuesday primaries, winning in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Vermont and Alabama. Rival Ted Cruz won in his home state Texas and in Oklahoma and Alaska.

Donald Trump's wins in the U.S. primary elections are worrying and highlight the rising popularity of insurgent political movements around the world, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Blair, who governed the U.K. between 1997 and 2007, expressed bemusement and dismay at the popularity of Trump and other polarizing politicians in the U.S. and Britain.

"Sometimes I look at politics today and wonder if I still understand it," Blair said in a conference interview at the Global Financial Markets Forum in Abu Dhabi.

He added that the rise of social media had helped create "insurgent movements that are often around very polarizing political positions."

"I get really anxious when I think that policy is being made by Twitter feed," Blair said. "Those that shout loudest do not necessarily deserve to be heard the most."

Blair led the U.K.'s Labour Party to a landslide victory in 1997 after 18 years out of power, steering the party away from socialism to the center left.

The former politician has expressed surprise at the recent success of more leftist politicians like Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K. and Bernie Sanders in the U.S., doubting their electability as country leaders.

On Wednesday, he drew parallels between insurgent, populist political movements of both the left and the right.

"It is clear that these political movements can take over parties  but can they win elections?  My bet is that in the end, the public as a whole is still more center-left and center right," Blair said.
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Abercrombie & Fitch  The teen apparel retailer earned an adjusted $1.08 per share for its latest quarter, 9 cents above estimates. Revenue was also slightly above forecasts, and the company also reported its first same-store sales gain in more than three years.



Amazon.com  BMO Capital began coverage on the online retailer's stock with an "outperform" rating, saying a flight to safety away from high growth stocks has created a buying opportunity for stocks like Amazon.

CSX  Rival rail operator Canadian Pacific approached CSX about a takeover back in January. Canadian Pacific has been trying to buy rail operator Norfolk Southern , which has resisted those overtures.

Chesapeake Energy  Chesapeake's former CEO Aubrey McClendon has been charged by the Justice Department for allegedly leading a bid-rigging conspiracy involving oil and natural gas leases. The charges follow a four-year federal investigation, but McClendon said the Justice Department action is "wrong and unprecedented."

International Business Machines  IBM plans to sell up to $150 million of its shares in China computer maker Lenovo Group, according to IFR.

Valeant  Valeant triggered the Securities and Exchange Commission's probe of the drugmaker with its own request that regulators investigate claims against the company made by short seller and Citron Research founder Andrew Left, according to Reuters. Separately, Canaccord downgraded Valeant to "hold" from "buy," on growing uncertainty surrounding the internal and external probes involving the company.

Checkpoint Systems  The provider of inventory management solutions agreed to be bought by Canada's CCL Industries for $10.15 per share in cash or $556 million.

Anheuser-Busch InBev  The beer brewer struck a deal to sell SABMiller's China-based beer business To China Resources Beer Holdings. The deal is part of the company's effort to win China regulatory approval for its pending acquisition of SABMiller.

Starbucks  Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead has resigned, a year after he took a leave of absence. His resignation was effective this past Monday and the coffee chain did not elaborate on a reason for his departure.

Zynga  Zynga named Frank Gibeau as its new chief executive officer, with founder Mark Pincus becoming executive chairman of the online game creator. Gibeau is a former executive at video game maker Electronic Arts .

Ross Stores  Ross reported quarterly profit of 66 cents per share, 2 cents above estimates, with the discount retailer's revenue also slightly higher than forecasts. Ross also increased its quarterly dividend by 15 percent to 13.5 cents per share. However, the company's guidance for the current quarter and the year as a whole is somewhat shy of expectations.

Weatherford International  Weatherford announced a secondary offering of 80 million common shares, with the oilfield services company planning to use the proceeds for general corporate purposes.

American Water Works  The utility company's stock will join the after the close of trading Thursday, replacing Consol Energy . Consol will move to the S&P MidCap 400 index.

Chipotle Mexican Grill  CLSA raised its price target on the stock to $613 from $536 per share, saying the restaurant chain saw a better than expected uptick in customer traffic last month. CLSA maintains a "buy" rating on the stock.
Only 35 out of more than 2,600 emerging market equity funds managed to make money for investors over the past year, according to investment platform Rplan. The company analysed the performances of 2,654 emerging market equity funds available to U.K. retail investors and found just 35 that delivered a positive performance in the year leading to February 22.

Rplan found returns across the funds ranged from 39 percent to minus 49 percent. Despite volatility in the sector related to concerns about China and the commodities bear market, 425 new emerging market funds were launched to investors last year.



Cristian Baitg | Getty Images

According to Rplan's chief investment officer, Stuart Dyer, the range of performances and number of funds shows the emerging market sector has become very disparate.

"One common theme between them though is the high risk  apart from 11 with risk ratings of four, all of the funds falls into the higher risk category of SRRIs," he said in a press release.

"Longer term, emerging markets can deliver very attractive returns but investors should be disciplined in their exposure to this asset class and should only have a limited exposure as part of a balanced portfolio."
Talk of production cuts by global oil producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia have provided a few jolts to the price of oil this year, but the rallies have been short-lived. The dynamic in the oil market continues to be dismal, with the price of West Texas crude still hovering around $30. "It felt like we jumped off a bottom, but we've felt that before," said Stewart Glickman, an energy equity analyst at S&P Capital IQ. "Thirty dollars is an unreasonable price for oil, but sometimes extreme volatility can outweigh fundamentals."

Hugo Ciss | Getty Images

The collapse of the oil market and the plunge in stock and bond prices across the energy sector might be a great opportunity for value investors, but Glickman is still cautious. "As much as stocks have been beaten up, the fundamentals have had it worse," he said. "We're still underweight the energy sector, because there's a lot more pain to come." The reason is a stubborn oversupply of oil in the global market, thanks largely to the "fracking" revolution and the explosive growth of U.S. oil production. In the last five years, it has increased from just over 5 million barrels per day to nearly 9.5 million barrels. With Organization of Petroleum Exporting Country members, such as Saudi Arabia, and big non-OPEC producers, like Russia, refusing to cede market share to U.S. producers, the supply imbalance got worse through 2015. It may not be as bad as the supply glut in the 1980s that took more than a decade to work through, but the current situation will cause further volatility in the oil price. The oversupply is currently about 1 million barrels per day in production, according to market analysts. The International Energy Agency's forecast of 1 million to 1.2 million barrels in new demand this year may be high, but if it isn't, the excess supply could be worked off fairly quickly.

In the short term, however, the oversupply will persist. When oil refiners go offline in early spring for maintenance, crude inventories will build further. In addition, with Iranian oil set to come onto the market now that sanctions have been lifted  as much as 1 million additional barrels over the next 18 months is forecasted  the glut could grow. Between those two factors, we could see a lot more volatility in prices over the next three months," said Harish Sundaresh, a portfolio manager with the Alpha Strategies Group of Loomis Sayles. Sundaresh, however, is confident that oil will be trading above $40 by the end of the year, with the potential to rise further in 2017. A big reason for that is the looming shakeout in the U.S. production industry.

If we're right on our outlook  which includes a modest slowdown in the economy  there's room for very big improvement in the energy sector. Marshall Adkins managing director of energy equity research at Raymond James

The resiliency of the U.S. exploration and production companies has been remarkable, but 2016 will be a year of reckoning for the industry. Roughly 40 exploration and production companies and 40 oil-service and -equipment companies defaulted on their debt last year and are in some form of reorganization. Many more will soon hit the wall. "There's going to be a lot of pain this year," said Becky Roof, a managing director at global consulting firm AlixPartners. "Companies need new business models to get through the next couple of years." Research from AlixPartners on 130 publicly traded U.S. and Canadian E&P companies suggests that, at these price levels, they will have a combined $102 billion operating cash-flow shortage to cover interest expenses and capital budgets. "We advocate a zero base [capital expenditure] budget for clients now as opposed to starting with last year's budget," Roof said.

Producers have already been rationalizing resources and mothballing unproductive wells to reduce expenses. While U.S. oil production ticked up slightly last year, there was a drop in production of almost 300,000 barrels in the last two months of the year. Market analysts expect another reduction of up to 500,000 this year. With most producers getting significantly less than the $30 per barrel WTI benchmark price, the number of operating oil rigs has been falling rapidly. As of Feb. 19, there were 514 operating oil rigs in the U.S., according to oilfield services company Baker Hughes. That's almost 800 fewer than the same time last year, and the number could fall significantly further, according to Marshall Adkins, managing director of energy equity research at Raymond James. "If the current [oil price] holds for much longer, we could get down close to 300 operating rigs," he said.

Adkins, however, sees the best performers in the industry poised to thrive when market conditions improve. "It's horrible out there now, and there will be a lot more bankruptcies, but companies with good balance sheets and a clear path to get through the next six months will do well in the recovery," Adkins said. Adkins' optimism is based on the fact that horizontal drilling techniques have helped U.S. oil companies become the most efficient producers in the world. When prices recover, they will benefit most. "The U.S. industry has doubled production in the last five to six years, and the productivity of rigs is up 15 to 20 times," he said. "It's been a staggering shift in the business." Picking the winners, however, is a high-risk game for investors. Companies with the strongest balance sheets will have the opportunity to buy up competitors or at least their assets at discounted prices, but the risks in the short term remain very high. "You could hit a home run, or you could strike out," said Glickman at S&P Capital IQ.
Craig Roberts | Photolibrary | Getty Images

Energy storage has the potential to save 2.4 billion ($3.4 billion) a year by 2030 according to a new report from the Carbon Trust.

The report, released on Tuesday and based on analysis from the Carbon Trust and Imperial College London, finds that the United Kingdom could save billions by 2030 "if market arrangements for the electricity system allow for the use of energy storage." If half of this saving were passed on to domestic consumers, average electricity bills could fall by around 50 a year. There are three main types of energy storage: bulk, distributed and fast. The International Energy Agency describes energy storage as having potential in terms of helping the planet "achieving a low-carbon future."

"Energy storage has long been seen as a panacea for a low carbon energy sector in the U.K., offering a suite of services to balance the system, make electricity networks more efficient and help the U.K. to meet its carbon targets at the lowest cost," Andrew Lever, director of innovation at the Carbon Trust, said in a statement. Storage is seen as crucial in transitioning to a low carbon, renewable future, because sources such as the sun and wind do not promise a constant stream of power. "But storage turns conventional knowledge on its head as it doesn't fit neatly into existing regulatory frameworks, which have been designed around an energy system where power is supplied to consumers from large centralized power stations," Lever added. A stage had been reached where technology was promising, but challenges remained relating to deployment as the result of an "outdated market framework" Lever went on to explain. "An urgent rethink is needed so we can address and overcome the broken value chain of energy storage, which is essential if Britain is to provide low carbon energy at the lowest cost to the consumer," he said.
A Facebook executive arrested by Brazilian authorities was released Wednesday after spending a day in custody over a data dispute.

Diego Dzodan, Facebook vice president for Latin America, was arrested Tuesday after the company failed to provide WhatsApp user data for a drug-trafficking investigation, according to Reuters. Brazilian authorities told the news agency that Dzodan was being held for questioning after a court order.

An appeals court overturned the order to arrest Dzodan, Reuters reported.

"Diego's detention was an extreme, disproportionate measure, and we are pleased to see the court in Sergipe (Brazil) issue an injunction ordering his release," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC. "Arresting people with no connection to a pending law enforcement investigation is a capricious step and we are concerned about the effects for people of Brazil and innovation in the country. We remain willing to address questions Brazilian authorities may have."



The arrest follows the heated U.S. debate over privacy and encryption after Apple refused an FBI demand to unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists.
Two radio masts, each taller than the Eiffel Tower, are planned for construction on the coast of south-east England.

High-frequency trading is causing upset way beyond the City of London and Wall Street  in the leafy English countryside.

The masts would form part of a network allowing information to be transmitted at lightning fast speeds between London and Continental Europe.

That speed allows high-frequency traders to shave crucial milliseconds off the execution of trades, thereby beating competition and taking advantage of anomalies in different markets.

One application, made by Canadian IT firm Vigilant Global, is for a 324-meter mast which would be higher than The Shard, Europe's tallest building.

On their website Vigilant Global explained why the tower needs to be so high.

"Due to the distance between the two communications points over the horizon it means that transmitted signals can be blocked by the curvature of the earth," reads the statement.

Local residents have bombarded the council website with objections, slamming the mast as "an eyesore" and "a blot on the landscape."

A final decision now rests with the Dover District Council but this is not the only worry for local residents.
The Chinese economy may be slowing but tourist numbers are still growing, prompting international hospitality giants to place bullish bets on the sector by opening new hotels and cruise routes.

Marriott International and Royal Caribbean Cruises are among companies looking to cater to a rapidly growing number of wealthy Chinese who are not only spending more at home but also flocking overseas, executives from the companies told CNBC.

"Outbound Chinese travelers are still growing faster than the economy in China, so we don't see the same thing that everyone is talking with the economy happening with the Chinese travelers," said Marriott International's president and managing director for Asia Pacific, Craig Smith.

Over the week-long Lunar New Year holidays, room revenue growth in Marriott resorts within China rose 12 percent from a year ago, Smith told CNBC's Squawk Box on Wednesday.
watch now

Searches asking "how to move to Canada" are spiking on Google as U.S. voters digest Donald Trump's sweeping win in the Super Tuesday Republican contests. Trump claimed victories in seven states  Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. And it seems to have sparked a renewed interest in packing up for a life north of the border.

Google searches asking "How to move to Canada" spiked after Trump's Super Tuesday victory. Courtesy Google Trends

A quick Google search of 'How to move to Canada' brings up results including the country's main immigration page, working abroad programs and an eight-step wiki guide for how to make the move.

But this isn't the first time that Trump's candidacy has sent eyes toward the Great White North. Earlier this year, a tongue-in-cheek tourism campaign for Cape Breton Island  near Maine - attempted to lure Americans by waxing lyrical about Canada's liberal laws around religious diversity, abortion laws and affordable housing. "Don't wait until Donald Trump is elected president to find somewhere else to live! Start now, that way, on election day, you just hop on a bus to start your new life in Cape Breton," it read. The website's creator has since written on the contact page that his team has been overwhelmed by interest, adding that they welcome everyone, regardless of their political affiliation. But whether a mass exodus to Canada would potentially create a rift between the North American neighbors is unclear.

A vehicle makes its way through the Canadian border crossing in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Cole Burston | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Scott Barbour | Getty Images

If as expected Intercontinental Exchange launches a bid for the London Stock Exchange Group , it would mark a return to the city that is one of the pillars of the US company's $30 billion empire. Executives and analysts alike say the LSE is officially "in play" after it revealed last week it was in talks about an all-share "merger of equals" with Deutsche Borse. On Tuesday ICE indicated it too may make a bid. "The LSE is a pretty hot target and is a massive foothold in European financial markets. Now the LSE is in play you can't afford not to be a bidder," said Niki Beattie, head of Market Structure Partners, a consultancy. From the outset the 16-year old ICE has looked to the UK capital to help give its business scale, purchasing assets such as the International Petroleum Exchange and Liffe, whose names have disappeared under the ICE brand. However, Atlanta-based ICE faces political and regulatory hurdles and may have to make a hefty offer if it is to walk off with London's biggest exchange asset. Analysts said that the rationale for a bid is much the same as the one that drives the Deutsche Borse deal. Global regulations have forced banks to place billions of dollars of collateral and margin as insurance to back their derivatives trades. As a result, billions of dollars of capital are being held at clearing houses such as Deutsche Borse's Eurex, ICE Futures Europe and LCH. Clearnet. Bringing the clearing houses under one roof would allow customers to net their margin for swaps and futures. Ms Beattie, a former bank head of electronic trading, thinks a deal for the LSE will happen after years of unconsummated bids. "I think that's why the banks won't lobby against it this time  the cost savings [from netting margins] will be too great for banks exhausted by regulatory issues."



watch now

Adding the LSE would make ICE London's dominant market infrastructure. Besides Liffe and the IPE, it has also bought emissions trading platform Climate Exchange, energy trading platform Trayport and also opened the first new clearing house in London in more than 100 years, in 2008. Jeff Sprecher, ICE chief executive, has been a vocal critic of several of Europe's planned markets regulations, but his interest in the LSE indicates the continent is still his target. However, the LSE and Deutsche Borse have an agreement and have been working for several weeks on getting political and regulatory support from London, Berlin and Brussels. They want to use their deal as a bridge to Europe and help kick-start regional economic growth and lessen the reliance on banks for corporate fundraisings. "The company is continuing its merger talks with LSE with no change," Deutsche Borse said in a statement. More from The Financial Times :



China's state-owned zombie economy

Amazon's grocery deal with Morrisons is only the beginning

Nato accuses Russia of 'weaponising' immigrants Moody's, the credit rating agency, said an LSE-Deutsche Borse tie-up would be positive for bondholders and a credible rival to CME and ICE, "albeit at lower relative margins". But ICE's approach came as investors began to anticipate a competing bid, either from ICE or Chicago's CME Group, the ICE rival that is closely watching developments. LSE shares "had begun to trade above the implied level of the [Deutsche Borse] agreement, after adjusting for dividends," noted Owen Jones, an analyst at Citigroup.
More than 45,000 people have signed a petition calling for the arrest and prosecution of former President Bill Clinton for what they alleged were violations of Massachusetts election laws  even though state officials have said he acted legally.

Leading up to his wife's victory over U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Massachusetts primary on Tuesday, the former president went inside a polling station in Boston, according to multiple reports. Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and senator, won by about 17,000 votes, according to NBC News.

Bill Clinton talked with poll workers and took a photo with a woman at the Holy Name Parish School's gymnasium in West Roxbury,The Boston Globe reported, citing press pool reports. The petition, posted on Change.org, charges that Bill Clinton made a "clear, knowing and egregious violation of the campaign laws to swing an election in a significant way."

He also entered a polling station in Newton and attended an event outside of a polling location in New Bedford, according to the Globe.
watch now

Natural gas prices have crashed to 17-year-lows in the past week, underscoring burgeoning supply in the global market just as U.S. exports its first ever shale gas cargo. On Monday, natural gas prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled 4.5 percent lower to their lowest level since 1999 after U.S. weather forecasts signaled warmer weather in the weeks ahead, curbing demand for natural gas used for heating. The decline brought February losses in natural gas to 26 percent. Prices recovered on Tuesday but the outlook remains depressed.

Japan, the world's largest importer of natural gas, is restarting its nuclear reactors six years after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, with three out of 43 nuclear reactors brought back online since August and more expected to come.

Japan is likely to bring back more reactors online, which will make the country less dependent on liquefied natural gas (LNG, the super-cooled version of natural gas made for easier storage and shipping) for electricity generation.



In January, shipments of LNG into Japan fell the most in more than six years, according to Bloomberg calculations. This does not bode well for Australia, which has pumped more than $160 billion in LNG investments just before the commodities rout that has taken oil prices down 70 percent since the summer of 2014. Australian LNG production is expected to grow 50 percent in the five years through to 2020 even as certain producers cut capital expenditures and reduce spending on upstream activities, said Fitch Group unit BMI Research in a note last week. "A ramp-up in production from gas developments associated with mega LNG export ventures will support a large upsurge in overall gas output," BMI research said. Demand in China is also tapering off with LNG imports falling 1 percent in 2015--the first time on record--as the economy slows. Buyers have reportedly delayed previously-contracted cargoes because the sustained decline in energy prices means spot prices are now more competitive than those struck some time ago.
watch now

Hit the road, Chris Christie  or face a recall. That's the message from a joint editorial Tuesday from six New Jersey newspapers that say Gov. Christie has no standing in the state following his endorsement last week of Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination. The newspapers' demand that he steps down comes a day after New Hampshire's most influential newspaper said "boy, were we wrong" for endorsing Christie in November ahead of the state's primary. The six Gannett-owned New Jersey papers note that the governor spent part of 261 days out of state last year campaigning and then continued to travel to support Trump after he quit his own presidential bid on Feb. 10.

watch now

The papers, including the Asbury Park Press and the Cherry Hill Courier-Post, were spurred to call out Christie after he refused to answer questions Monday from reporters on topics other than the nomination of a state Supreme Court judge. "For the good of the state, it's time for Christie to do his long-neglected constituents a favor and resign as governor. If he refuses, citizens should initiate a recall effort," the editorial said. More from NBC News:



GOPNears Breaking Point as Trump Rolls Towards Nomination

Rubiois Top Choice of GOP Voters Who Want to Win in November. But ThereAren't Many of Them

SuperTuesday Exit Poll: Black Voters Play Decisive Role in Clinton'sVictories

Christie's full-throated support of Trump has also vexed the New Hampshire Union Leader after it endorsed the governor for president. The paper said last fall that he was "the one candidate who has the range and type of experience the nation desperately needs." The editorial board also liked that Christie told them he would never endorse Trump.

watch now

watch now
In a statement given to CNBC, Shell said it is at an "early stage" of reviewing the claims and that the case should be heard in Nigeria. It said it believes that many spills in those communities are caused by oil theft which damages pipelines and illegal refining.

"The two new claims against Royal Dutch Shell plc (RDS) and the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Ltd (SPDC) have now been issued in the High Court in London on behalf of residents of the Ogale Community in Ogoniland and the Bille Kingdom," Leigh Day said in a statement on Tuesday.

The communities are suing Shell's Nigerian subsidiary, Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) and are being represented by British law firm Leigh Day.

The Bille and Ogale communities, whose livelihoods are mainly based around fishing and farming, are pushing for compensation for environmental damage to the region: They say they have not had clean drinking water since 1989 because of oil spills.

Oil giant Shell is being sued again by two Nigerian communities over multiple spills in the oil-rich Niger Delta with claims that could run into "tens of millions of pounds given the impact on these communities" according to the law firm representing the claimants.

A picture taken on March 22, 2013 shows an illegal oil refinery destroyed by Joint Task Force at Nembe Creek in the Niger Delta on March 22, 2013. Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC) on April 2, 2013 said it would temporarily shut down production the Nembe Creek Truck Line (NCTL) to remove a number of bunkering points o

"Both Bille and Ogale are areas heavily impacted by crude oil theft, pipeline sabotage and illegal refining which remain the main sources of pollution across the Niger Delta," Shell said.

"Ogale is in Ogoniland and it is important to note that SPDC has produced no oil or gas in Ogoniland since 1993. Access to the area has been limited following a rise in violence, threats to staff and attacks on facilities," the company added.

A first court hearing will take place in the Technology and Construction court in London on Wednesday which will decided whether the claimants can lodge a case against Shell's Nigerian business.

Leigh Day said the Ogale community had "been subjected to repeated oil spillages across much of the community since at least 1989" whereas in the smaller Bille community made up of fishing settlements, livelihoods had been "destroyed" from spills emanating from the Nembe Creek pipeline. Laigh Day accused Shell of failing to install a leak detection system and failing to protect against third party interference.

The law firm said Shell had failed to act upon a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2011 that recommended that Shell instigate a substantial program to clean up and decontaminate the Ogale area.

"At the time, Shell stated it accepted the findings and the recommendations of the UNEP Report. However, four years later, Shell has failed to comply with the recommendations of the UNEP Report and to clean up the sites polluted by their oil," Leigh Day said.

Shell contested that claim, however, stating that following the UNEP recommendations, its Nigerian subsidiary had "initiated action to address all the recommendations directed to it in the UNEP report as operator of the SPCD Joint Venture."

"In mid-2015 SPDC JV, along with the government, UNEP and representatives of the Ogoni community, agreed to an 18-month roadmap to fast-track the environmental clean-up and remediation of Ogoniland which includes a governance framework," it added.

Commenting on the claims and potential damages that Shell could face, Daniel Leader, a partner in the International Group Claims team at the law firm, said that "given the extent of the damage, we believe that the clean-up costs for both communities will run into several hundred million pounds. The claims from the thousands of individuals affected by this pollution, could run into tens of millions of pounds given the impact on these communities."

He said it was "scandalous that four years after the UNEP Report, Shell is yet to clean up its oil in either Ogale or Bille. Our client's patience has now run out and we intend to force Shell to act since it is clear they have no intention of doing so on their own."

It will be the second Nigerian lawsuit in five years for Shell which has had a long-history of tense relations with the local community during its oil extraction operation in the Niger Delta region. Violence and militancy has hampered the oil giant while locals have felt exploited and unable to see the economic benefits of their region's oil wealth.

Shell has already had to award compensation to locals. In January, it announced a 55 million (76.8 million) payout for pollution caused by two spills in 2008 and 2009 with the compensation split between individuals (mainly fishermen) and the Bodo community which were affected by those spills. Law firm

Leigh Day also represented the Bodo community giving it a precedent in winning compensation.
Real estate magnate Donald Trump was the projected or apparent winner of at least seven states and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notched seven projected victories. But many of their competitors scored results that will keep their campaigns afloat  meaning that contests over the weekend (and those all the way through to Ohio and Florida on March 15) will likely be contentious.

Super Tuesday  the series of primaries and caucuses that will help decide the Democratic and Republican candidates for president  featured strong showings from both parties' front-runners.

Cruz remains a thorn in Trump's side

Trump had hoped he could win the home state of Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz  the only candidate who had beat him in a pre-Super Tuesday contest.

But the winner of the Iowa caucus carried Texas, and even outperformed his polling averages by taking Oklahoma from Trump. In an interview with MSNBC after those projected results, Cruz suggested he was the only candidate capable of defeating the real estate magnate, but he shied away from calling on others to drop out.

For his part, Trump twice mentioned Cruz's Texas victory in his own Tuesday address. "I want to congratulate Ted on the winning of Texas, he worked hard on it," Trump said. "I know how hard we worked actually, so I congratulate Ted Cruz on that win, it was an excellent win."

Rough night for Rubio

Trump had less kind words, however, for the other senator challenging him for the Republican nomination. In addition to celebrating his win over Florida's Marco Rubio in Virginia, he also highlighted polls showing he is likely to win the Sunshine State later this month.

"I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio  he had a tough night," Trump said Tuesday. "He worked hard, he spent a lot of money  he is a lightweight as I've said many times before. But you know what? We're going to go to Florida, we're going to spend so much time in Florida."

Rubio, who was the projected winner in the Minnesota caucus on Tuesday, his only win so far, attempted to strike an optimistic note, saying he is "so excited for what lies ahead for our campaign."

But that road ahead will be challenging for his campaign. An apparent favorite of Republican leadership, Rubio has only been able to secure one outright state victory with his endorsements and big donations.
watch now

watch now

watch now

The market has not priced in the chances of Democrats taking both houses of Congress this year, but the scenario is growing more likely due to two words: Donald Trump, policy analyst Brian Gardner said Wednesday. Trump's recent failure to clearly disavow a prominent white supremacist's endorsement has made Hillary Clinton the front-runner in a likely general election between the two, Gardner told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

The analyst for the financial services firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods was referring to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke's endorsement of Trump's campaign. Rather than disavowing him in a widely cited interview on CNN, Trump said he did not know anything about Duke. He later blamed a faulty earpiece. "I think he just gave Hillary Clinton talking points and an ability to energize the base of the Democratic Party in a way that she never could have done without those comments," he said. Neither Trump nor Clinton has secured their respective party's nomination, but both candidates cemented their leads on Super Tuesday.

Currently, investors are betting on further gridlock in Washington on the assumption that Democrats will at best take the Senate and Republicans will keep their majority in the House. "They have to be careful. I think the risk of a Clinton win is that Republicans go into meltdown," Gardner said. He raised the prospect of a contested Republican National Convention, in which no candidate has the required delegates to lock down the party's nomination. "If it goes that route and it gets really ugly, it could fracture a party that's already fractured," he added. But with investors having entered the year expecting shocks from China and the petroleum sector, the election is not the scariest thing they are grappling with, said Steven Wieting, global chief investment strategist at Citi Private Bank. "This is not even a focus. We'll be focusing on Brexit before we're focusing really on the U.S. election and whether it can really make a difference for the U.S. economy," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box," referring to this summer's referendum on whether Britain will leave the European Union.

The market will start paying attention to politics if the extremes of both parties, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, make it to the general election, he said.

Guggenheim Partners senior policy analyst Chris Krueger said one could theoretically "paint a pretty bullish scenario" that includes tax and regulatory reform if Trump were elected president, Republicans held control of Congress, and a conservative judge were appointed to a vacant seat on the Supreme Court. But there is a bearish flip side to that scenario, he said. "The problem with a President Trump is just the sheer unpredictability and volatility that would come with it," Krueger told "Squawk on the Street." If Clinton were president and the House remained Republican, Washington would probably continue to govern by crisis and face the fiscal cliff once again, Krueger said. There is some belief among investors that Trump would delegate responsibility well, and not be so rash in his decisions if he were to reach the Oval Office, said Art Cashin, UBS' director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange. However, Trump's stance on China creates risk, Cashin said. Trump has said he would threaten to impose a 45 percent tariff on China in negotiations with the country. "If he's going to call them a currency manipulator and possibly put up tariffs and things like that, that would move the market dramatically," he told "Squawk Alley."

watch now
watch now

watch now

watch now

Competition for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations hasn't ended. But it's close. Sen. Bernie Sanders has a constituency and the cash to continue challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nod. On Super Tuesday, he won four states  a primary in Oklahoma and caucuses in Minnesota and Colorado  as well as his home base of Vermont.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Reuters

But he failed to top Clinton in Massachusetts, the most significant primary he contested Tuesday night. And across the South, from Texas to Virginia, she crushed him on the strength of overwhelming support from African-American and Latino voters who represent such a large portion of the modern Democratic primary.

His longshot hopes of wresting the nomination from her grasp rest on unexpected breakthrough wins that harvest large swaths of delegates and jolt the presumption of her dominance. Sanders did not get them on Tuesday night, and now must try in the large Midwestern battlegrounds of Michigan and Ohio where the race turns next.

Rivals to Republican front-runner Donald Trump likewise retain enough energy to keep fighting for a while. Ted Cruz beat Trump in three states including his home base of Texas  the single biggest Super Tuesday prize. Along with his lead-off victory in Iowa's caucuses  not to mention significant organizational and financial resources  that allows him to credibly cast himself as the most viable single remaining alternative.



At the same time, Marco Rubio finally grabbed his first victory by winning the Minnesota caucuses, and ran a close second to Trump in Virginia on the strength of late-deciding voters. That helps him maintain that establishment Republicans need to give him more time to take the fight to Trump and overcome his polling deficit in his home state of Florida before the winner-take-all primary there on March 15.

John Kasich ran second to Trump in Vermont. And his home base of Ohio  where he runs closer in polls to Trump than Rubio does in Florida  also holds a winner-take-all primary on March 15. Notwithstanding earlier talk of pressure for Kasich to abandon the race, party leaders now see advantages that he and Rubio fight on in hopes that victories by either, or both, can help deny Trump the majority of convention delegates he needs for the nomination.

watch now
watch now

If you're looking for good value for your real estate millions, you might want avoid Monaco and head to South Africa. The Wealth Report 2016, released Wednesday by real estate firms Knight Frank and Douglas Elliman, looked at what $1 million can buy around the world. According to the report, Monaco remained the world's most expensive residential real estate market on a square-meter basis, with $1 million buying only 17 square meters, or 183 square feet. That means for $1 million you can get a 12-by-15-foot room, likely overlooking a water-treatment plant the rather than the marina. Hong Kong was the second most-expensive market, with $1 million buying 20 square meters, or 215 square feet. London ranked third with 22 square meters, or 236 square feet. New York once again ranked as the most expensive U.S. city on a per-meter basis, with $1 million buying 27 square meters, or roughly 290 square feet.

The least expensive cities on the list, which looked only at "prime" real estate (in other words, the top segment of each market) were Cape Town, South Africa, and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Brazil's economic crisis means that $1 million now buys 203 square meters, or 2,185 square feet of prime real estate. That compares with 142 square meters, or around 1,500 square feet, last year. In Cape Town, $1 million buys 255 square meters, or 2,745 square feet. The most expensive luxury real estate markets, however, weren't the ones that saw the biggest price gains. According to the report, Vancouver saw the most substantial lift, with prices up 25 percent. Sydney ranked second by this metric, with prices rising 15 percent. Shanghai ranked third, with 14 percent growth. All three markets have at least one thing in common: Chinese buyers. Brokers and real estate experts say China's economic slowdown has actually increased overseas property buying by wealthy Chinese, and they expect that wealth flight to continue or even accelerate in 2016. "Demand from Chinese buyers is stronger right now than it was last year," said Howard Lorber, chairman of New York-based Douglas Elliman.
Ed Rendell: Good and bad news for Trump and Clinton 9:21 AM ET Wed, 2 March 2016

Hillary Clinton's campaign won't admit it, but her team will soon start leaking VP names to the media in hopes of gauging how these different candidates fare with voters and donors.

The conventional VP pick would be someone who complements her weaknesses, but this is not a conventional election year.

So who are some of the VP names that will soon start appearing in the news? Or more importantly, which names are real candidates and who is pure PR spin?
One of the major pillars of his campaign is his building of the now infamous "big, beautiful wall" along the Mexican border. The wall got 10 feet taller after ex-Mexican President Vicente Fox said he was "not going to pay for that f--ing wall."

I understand some people are excited about the wall. In their mind, the wall would keep all those "illegals" away from American jobs. While Trump has said repeatedly that Mexico will pay for the wall, how does an American president make another sovereign nation pay for anything? Trump has yet to outline a concrete plan.

The only vague answer we've been able to get from Trump is that he plans to use the trade deficit with Mexico as a way to pressure Mexico to pay for the wall. The U.S. does have a trade deficit with Mexico, but it is also true that Mexico was our third largest trade partner in 2015. In 2015 alone, our total trade of goods with the rest of the globe was $3.7 trillion, of which more than 14 percent ($ 531.1 billion) was with Mexico. He puts that at risk.
March 1, 2016

 An astronaut and a cosmonaut who spent nearly one year on the International Space Station are now back on Earth.



Scott Kelly of NASA and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos touched down on the snow-covered steppe of Kazakhstan on Russia's Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft. Their landing, at 10:26 p.m. CST on Tuesday (March 1; 0426 GMT or 10:26 a.m. local time March 2), marked the historic completion of their 340-day expedition.



Sergey Volkov, who had been on the space station for the six months since Sept. 2, landed with Kelly and Kornienko southeast of the Kazakh town of Dzhezkazgan.



The three crewmates' return to Earth was met by Russian recovery forces, who assisted Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov out of their Soyuz descent capsule. Roscosmos and NASA medical teams were on hand to assess the astronaut's and cosmonauts' condition and begin collecting post-flight data from the yearlong crew members.







Soyuz TMA-18M crewmates Mikhail Kornienko (left), Sergey Volkov and Scott Kelly are seen after landing on Earth. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

"Right after we get out of the Soyuz they will put us in the chairs that people often see sitting nearby the spacecraft," Kelly described in a press conference before departing the station. "From there, we go into this medical tent [and are] given a little bit of time to adjust."



"Then we go through about an hour of what is called this 'field test' that is various different types of experiments," he said. "Some are physical  kind of like an obstacle course, where you run around obstacles, stand up from the sitting position, jump and stand  that looks at our ability to adjust to those different positions."



Stepping stone to Mars



Kelly and Kornienko launched to the station on March 27, 2015 aboard the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft. During their yearlong stay they served with four crews, Expeditions 43, 44, 45 and 46.



Their departure from the station, undocking from the Poisk module at 7:02 p.m. CST (0102 GMT), marked the end of Expedition 46. Kelly, who had commanded Expeditions 45 and 46, handed over control of the outpost on Monday to NASA astronaut Tim Kopra, who with Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Tim Peake are now beginning Expedition 47.







One-year mission crewmembers Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko spent 340 days on the International Space Station. (NASA)

Kelly's and Kornienko's March-to-March mission was flown to collect medical data in support of future, longer missions out into the solar system, including sending crews to Mars. Both Kelly and Kornienko participated in physiological and psychological studies, which will continue on the ground.



"I'd like for the legacy of this flight to be that we can decide to do hard things that will take us farther away from Earth, and this is one of them," remarked Kelly. "I am hopeful and I think we will learn a lot about longer duration spaceflight."



"I'd like to think this is another of many stepping stones to us landing on Mars sometime in our future," he added.



An eventful year



During their time on the space station, Kelly and Kornienko served with 13 astronauts and cosmonauts and conducted some 400 research investigations, including eating the first lettuce grown in space and cultivating flowers.







Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko celebrated the 300th day of their yearlong space station expedition on Jan. 21, 2016. (NASA)

"Misha [Mikhail] and I have been up here for a really, really long time and recently we've been joking with each other that we will saying something like, 'We did it!' or 'We made it!'" Kelly said during the change of command ceremony on Monday. "But we recognize it is more about teamwork and all the people that it takes to put these missions together to be successful than it is about us."



Kelly also collaborated with one other NASA astronaut, his brother Mark on the ground, as they both collected medical samples to support a first-of-its-kind study of twins.



Kelly and Kornienko also saw and assisted with the arrival and departure of nine visiting vehicles.



During their stay, three Russian Soyuz spacecraft brought crew members to and from the orbital complex. In addition, six cargo freighters delivered supplies to the space station, including three Russian Progress vehicles, a Japanese H- II Transfer Vehicle, a U.S. commercial Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft and a commercial SpaceX Dragon. (Two more launches, one Progress and one Dragon, failed while Kelly and Kornienko were aboard the station.)



Both yearlong crew members also conducted spacewalks. Kornienko ventured outside once to inspect the exterior of the station's Russian segment and retrieve an experiment, logging five hours and 31 minutes on EVA (extra-vehicular activity).







Scott Kelly took a selfie during a Dec. 21, 2015 spacewalk. (NASA)

Kelly performed three spacewalks, installing a cover on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector; restoring the space station's coolant system to its original configuration; and releasing the mobile transporter rail cart after it had become stuck. In total, he tallied 18 hours and 20 minutes on EVA.



Over the course of his 340 days, Kelly also shared online more than 1,000 photos  773 on Instagram alone  of the Earth below and of his and his crewmates activities on the space station.



For the history books



With their return to the Earth, Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov have each added 340 days, 8 hours and 43 minutes to the total time they have been in space.



For Kornienko, who previously logged 176 days on a prior space station stay, that brings his career tally to more than 516 days, ranking him 18th on the worldwide list of space explorers by the time they spent off the planet.







Mikhail Kornienko in the space station's Russian segment. (NASA)

Kelly comes in one spot above him at no. 17, adding to his 180 days accumulated on two space shuttle missions and a previous space station expedition for a total of more than 520 days. That makes Kelly the record holder for the most time in space by a NASA astronaut and the single longest mission by an American astronaut.



Volkov, returning from his third space mission, has logged a total of 548 days in space, ranking him tenth on the list.



Twenty-five days short of a full year, Kelly and Kornienko's mission was the longest in the 16 years the International Space Station has been crewed, but falls behind four other orbital expeditions.



The first humans to complete a trip around the sun while in space were Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov, who logged just shy of a full year and one day  365 days, 22 hours and 38 minutes  as crewmates on board Russia's former space station Mir from December 1987 to December 1988.







Scott in the multi-windowed Cupola on the space station. (NASA)

They were surpassed eight years later by Valery Polyakov. Living on Mir from January 1994 to March 1995, Polyakov set the record that still stands for the single longest space mission: 437 days, 17 hours, and 58 minutes.



Three years later, cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev lived on Mir for 379 days, 14 hours and 52 minutes, from August 1998 to August 1999.



Back on Earth



After their preliminary medical checks and field test, Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov will be flown to Dzhezkazgan.



From there, Kornienko and Volkov will depart for Star City, outside of Moscow, while Kelly boards a NASA aircraft for the flight back to Houston.







Patch representing Scott Kelly's and Mikhail Kornienko's yearlong mission on board the International Space Station. (AB Emblem)

Expected to touch down at Ellington Airport about 24 hours after his return from space, Kelly will be welcomed by the Second Lady of the United States Jill Biden, the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology John Holdren and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.



On Friday afternoon (March 4), both Scott and Mark Kelly, along with NASA space station scientists, will participate in a press conference from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss the mission.
Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily!

Your notification has been saved.

There was a problem saving your notification.

{{description}}

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Elementary students thrilled by Jersey cow in dairy lesson

The educational demonstration is part of a partnership between the St. Louis Dairy Council and Southwest Dairy Farmers.
By Kevin McKenzie of The Commercial Appeal

Tami Sawyer organized her first protest as part of the Black Lives Matter movement in the fall of 2014, after a Ferguson, Missouri police officer who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown wasnt indicted by a grand jury.

Sawyers activism didnt end with the criminal justice system. The 33-year-old has become an advocate for African American consumers spending dollars with African American-owned businesses, rekindling an idea her parents generation would find familiar.

I dont think its a widespread idea, Sawyer said. With integration, we lost that natural support of our businesses when we didnt need them anymore. We forgot that they also needed us, so a lot of black businesses crumbled.

But Sawyer, who is director of diversity and leadership at Teach for America in Memphis as her day job, is attempting to link African American consumers and businesses using 21st century means, a website called Power Box (ourpowerbox.com).

The website includes a database of about 900 black-owned businesses from around the country, Sawyer said. She estimated that 10 to 20 percent are in Memphis. A large number are in the nations capital, reflecting the 10 years she lived there as a contractor for Navy leadership and diversity, she said.

Many of the firms listed are online, rather than having brick-and-mortar locations.

Having a brick-and-mortar business is tough for black businesses because of the rising cost of property and real estate, but a lot do exist in the online virtual space, Sawyer said.

Shes had a taste of that dilemma herself, operating a home-based cupcake business in Washington called TamiCakes for about two years before deciding she couldnt compete with brick-and-mortar competitors.

In 2012, she competed in a Food Network show called Cupcake Wars. She didnt make it beyond the first round of the soul food challenge competition with her collard green cupcake, with whipped molasses frosting topped with a hush puppy. But it was delicious, she said.

A St. Marys Episcopal School and University of Memphis graduate who attended Howard University Law School, Sawyer returned home to Memphis in December 2013, she said.

She started Power Box with Kickstarter funding that raised $2,500, and has invested more while working with three friends in other parts of the country to build the website.

There are other sites, such as Purchaseblack.com, that are black-business oriented, but Power Box is like a black business directory rather than an Amazon.com, Sawyer said.

For years, from 1987 to 2013, Melvin Jones operated the Black Business Directory in Memphis.

History professor Juliet Walker, founder and director of the Center of Black Business History, Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of Texas at Austin, said that black Americans have encouraged supporting black businesses since the 18th century.

In the post-Reconstruction era rise of Jim Crow until the 1964 Civil Rights Act, black business operated in a virtual separate black economy, Walker said by email. Literally, there was no alternative except to buy black notwithstanding that outside of the basic necessities, African Americans were literally forced to buy from white corporate America."

Historic African American leaders including Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey encouraged black consumers to buy black, she said.

Walker pointed to The Empowerment Experiment by an African American couple in Chicago, John and Maggie Anderson, to spend only with black businesses in 2009 as a more recent example. A book about it is available, Our Black Year: One Familys Quest to Buy Black in Americas Racially Divided Economy.

At the Memphis Branch of the NAACP, executive director Madeleine Taylor said that its always important to buy in the community that you live in and applauded Sawyers initiative.

I see many things that we went out and protested on behalf of when I was a student and thought those things had been won and addressed, Taylor said. But I find that theyre back and the younger generation has picked them up again because they needed to be.

Sawyer, standing in Guilt Free Pastries, a business owned by African American chef Brandon Thomas at 344 S. Main, said a majority of black people dont know black businesses, what those businesses can do and the products they offer.

Hes making quality vegan, gluten-free products and people would be surprised that these types of businesses exist, she said.





Our weekly Business Q&A answers your questions about business and customer service in Memphis. Have a question? Submit it to Kevin.McKenzie@commercialappeal.com.
Floyd Tyler, president of Preserver Partners LLC, is pictured in his East Memphis office in 2014. (Brandon Dill/Special to The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE

By Ted Evanoff of The Commercial Appeal

A Memphis investment firm launched a mutual fund Tuesday open to smaller investors throughout much of the nation.

Preserver Partners LLC has gathered about $10 million from investors for its Preserver Alternative Opportunities Fund and commitments for an additional $5 million, said Floyd Tyler, president of the firm.

While dozens of Memphis firms invest money for clients, few operate mutual funds open to the public. These include Southeastern Asset Management Inc. and SouthernSun Asset Management LLC.

The fund did launch today, said Tyler, who started the investment firm in 2009. Its an opportunity to reach a broader group of investors.

Creating a mutual fund will enable Preserver Partners, which manages $35 million for 48 investors, to attract a larger group of smaller investors, Tyler said.

Mutual funds pool money handed over by people and companies and then buy stocks, bonds or other assets expected to rise in value. Tyler, a former University of Memphis finance professor, will serve as the portfolio manager responsible for selecting assets the mutual fund buys.

The value of the mutual fund goes up and down as the assets it has purchased rise and fall on the open market.

Preservers mutual fund will look for niches and alternative investments that promise strong returns such as various bonds that contain student loans, mortgage loans or aircraft leases, Tyler said. Preserver Alternative Opportunities Fund trades under the ticker symbol PAORX. The ticker for institutional clients, such as investment firms, is PAOIX.

The mutual fund is registered in 10 states with plans to expand nationwide,Tyler said. The minimum investment by a new shareholder is $2,000 and they can sell off their stake in the mutual fund on a daily basis.

For the service of investing the money, mutual funds typically charge their shareholders a fee, usually equal to 1 percent of assets or less.

Southeasterns Longleaf Partners mutual funds manage $3.5 billion for investors, while SouthernSun handles more than $350 million.
Thom Gonzales and Eric Gutridge (right) with the design firm Roto move an interactive exhibit piece into place in the Broooks Museum Of Art's new hands-on gallery for parents and children, called Inside Art.

SHARE

By John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal

Georgia O'Keeffe's Dole Pineapple-sponsored Hawaii painting is going into the can, so to speak, while Carroll Cloar's black tempera panther is getting a chance to curl up for more than a cat nap.

In other words, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is closing Wednesday, for two months of renovation, rearrangement and reprioritizing.

The closing will temporarily exclude art lovers from encounters with works by O'Keeffe, Cloar, Marisol and other artists while the museum re-imagines much of its third floor, its restaurant area and other spaces. The hiatus apparently marks the first for the museum since 1955, Brooks officials said.

The centerpiece of the changes is the creation of a hands-on, family-oriented third-floor "Inside Art" gallery that will be introduced May 7 during a daylong "Party for the Century," the kickoff event for a monthslong celebration of the 1916 founding of the Brooks in Overton Park.

Developed by Brooks special projects director Janet Lo and the museum's Education Department and largely funded by a Plough Foundation grant, the Inside Art gallery will occupy a 1,000-square-foot space on the third floor that previously was devoted to Antiquities, Pre-Colombian Art, African Art and Decorative Arts. The gallery is intended to teach kids "visual literacy," "critical thinking" and "meaningful" art appreciation in a fun way, Lo said.

Additional changes will be evident to visitors when the Brooks reopens April 29, a week before the party.

The well-known column-of-televisions sculpture "Vide-O-Belisk," by Nam June Paik -- which has occupied the museum's rotunda for more than a decade -- will make way temporarily for a series of rotunda projects.

Also, the future of the Brushmark Restaurant is up in the air, as the museum considers other types of food and beverage options.

Meanwhile, in a show of continuity, the film screenings and talks scheduled for the downstairs Dorothy K. Hohenberg Auditorium in March and April will continue as usual.

Judith Moore, the museum's new director of external affairs, said the reopened Brooks will offer museum-goers "an even more exciting and dynamic experience," intended to "capture the interests of the diverse communities we serve." She said some upcoming exhibitions will focus on contemporary and ethnically diverse artists.

Lo said the Inside Art gallery will be a playful space that will help make the museum a welcome destination for parents and children, while also providing art education.

The "portal walls" of the gallery will feature child-size Lewis Carroll-style doors, "so kids will feel like they are entering a portal to transport them into this whimsical, imaginative space," Lo said. Inside the gallery will be a "climbing structure" containing various art-related objectives, plus a series of activities based on some of the museum's more popular works, from ancient artifacts to modern art.

For example, Thomas Hart Benton's 1931 oil painting "The Engineer's Dream," which depicts a sleeping train engineer imagining a locomotive barreling toward a fallen bridge, has been reproduced as an almost wall-size activity board so the visitors can go "inside" the painting via cupboard-like spaces containing alarm clocks, train whistles and other objects. Said Lo: "We want children, the next generation of museum-goers, to feel a sense of ownership and pride in the collection."

Meanwhile, many of the 300-plus pre-Colombian artifacts, African masks and carvings, and other ancient and international objects previously housed in a somewhat random manner on the museum's third floor will be reinstalled in a more "coherent" fashion, to provide visitors with meaningful context for the significance of these pieces in relation to the museum's collection and to modern culture, according to Brooks curator Stanton Thomas.

Said Lo: "As the only world art collection in the region, this is a real asset to teachers and to schools that are trying to teach students about global culture."
Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal March 1, 2016 - At 7am Memphians start lining up at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church to cast their Super Tuesday ballot.

SHARE

By Michael Collins of The Commercial Appeal

Donald Trump scored a decisive victory in Tennessee's Republican presidential primary Tuesday night, helping to reinforce his status as the GOP frontrunner for the White House, while Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won the state's Democratic voters in her bid to become the nation's first woman president.

With 95 percent of precincts reporting late Tuesday, Trump captured 40 percent of the vote. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was a distant second with 24 percent, followed by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida with 21 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was fourth with 8 percent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich trailed just behind him with 5 percent.

"This has been an amazing win," Trump said in a victory speech to supporters in Palm Beach, Fla.

On the Democratic side, Clinton walloped U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 66 percent to 33 percent.

In a victory speech at her campaign offices in Miami, the former secretary of state said her victory in Tennessee and other Super Tuesday states shows that "all across our country, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together."

The campaign now moves on to Louisiana, Michigan and other states, she said, and "we're going to work for every vote."

In Tennessee, voters braved unusually long lines and, at times, heavy rain to cast their votes in what appeared likely would set a record turnout for a presidential primary in the Volunteer State.

Tennesseans  especially young and first-time voters  cheerfully posted photos of themselves and friends with "I Voted" stickers on social media and bragged about standing for up to two hours in lines made long by the heavy turnout.

Tennessee was one of a dozen states making their picks for president on Super Tuesday, and half of them were in the South, resulting in what some have dubbed the "SEC primary."

Fifty-eight delegates on the Republican side will be awarded as a result of Tennessee's election returns, but they will be distributed on a proportional basis, and party officials said it would probably be Wednesday before it's known how they will be divided up. Tennessee Democrats will award 67 delegates.

Trump's lopsided win came despite a push by Gov. Bill Haslam and other GOP leaders to stop him. Haslam threw his support behind Rubio and argued other voters should rally around the senator because he was best positioned to unite the party and win the general election.

After Tuesday's results, Haslam issued a statement saying he was encouraged that hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans had exercised their right to vote. "Now this process will play out in other states across the country," he said.

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini took to Twitter to congratulate Clinton on her victory. Clinton "did a fantastic job and put in the sweat equity that it takes to win the sate, and she was rewarded," Mancini said.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, a Clinton supporter, said the former secretary of state's win in Tennessee shows that she is continuing to gain momentum and refine her message for the general election.

"She is committed to seeing our nation operate in harmony as we work together to break down barriers that prevent America from becoming the perfect union that was dreamed of but not yet created," the Memphis Democrat said.

Though Trump and Clinton both had been considered heavy favorites, several candidates brought their campaigns to Tennessee in recent days to make last-minute pitches directly to voters.

Trump told a crowd inside a Millington Regional Jetport hangar on Saturday that he's "got to win" Tennessee's primary. Kasich told a packed town hall meeting in Memphis that he was picking up significant support.

Clinton appeared at church services in Memphis on Sunday, telling two predominantly black congregations she would work to "break down every barrier" of discrimination. Also on Sunday in Memphis, Carson said he had no plans to quit the Republican race, while visiting an organization that offers housing and other support to military veterans. And, in Knoxville, Rubio promised East Tennesseans at a rally on Monday that, if elected, he would help Americans fulfill their hopes and dreams for a better future.

On the airwaves, Cruz was dominant in Tennessee. The Texas senator and his super political-action committee spent more than $1 million on television advertising in the Volunteer State, with some of it devoted to attacking Trump. Clinton spent $180,000 on TV ads, all in the Nashville and Memphis media markets where Democratic voters are most concentrated.

Nashville Bureau Chief Richard Locker contributed information to this story.
March 1, 2016 - Porter Feild consults with the political expert in the family, Harry Feild , 10, while casting his Super Tuesday ballot at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. Feild says his son has been fascinated with the presidential race so far and can name all the democratic and republican candidates. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE March 1, 2016 - Polling Judge George Keistler tears voting stickers off a roll as Memphians start lining up at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church to cast their Super Tuesday ballot. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

By Linda A. Moore of The Commercial Appeal

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the top vote-getters in Shelby County, along with much of the state, in Tennessee's Super Tuesday presidential primary.

With only one out of 166 county precincts outstanding by press time Tuesday night, Trump stood at 30 percent of the Republican vote in Shelby County, followed by Ted Cruz with 28 percent and Marco Rubio with 26 percent. John Kasich got 8 percent and Ben Carson 6 percent.

Clinton, with 80 percent of the votes in the county's Democratic primary, sailed past Bernie Sanders, who secured only 19 percent.

Polling places in Shelby County were busy Tuesday, and election officials distributed 81 additional voting machines across the county. Lines almost an hour long were reported at some precincts in East Memphis and Bartlett just before polls closed.

"I think it's a combination of three things: voter interest, the length of the Republican ballot because they had to pick delegates, and the fact that the Election Commission may not have properly anticipated the number of voters at some precincts," said Robert Meyers, Shelby County Election Commission chairman.

A steady morning rain didn't keep voters home. At the Glenview Community Center, Pam Roberts voted in a room darkened by a power outage and lit only by a few computer screens running on backup power.

"It's just rain," she said. "If it was ice, it would be more of a burden."

Roberts said she usually voted early, but faced a tough decision this year and didn't decide who to vote for until the last minute. She cast a ballot for Ted Cruz, saying, "We need to get back to the basics of the Constitution."

By late afternoon, the sun had come out and the wind had turned cold when April Potter, 35, cast her vote for Bernie Sanders at the Orange Mound Community Center.

"In the last debate, I was impressed when he said he wasn't part of the establishment," Potter said. "She (Clinton) is the establishment."

Again, as in years past, election results were slow to come out of the Election Commission, with only 96 precincts reporting by 10:30 p.m. and no absentee results available.

The Mid-South proved to be an important campaign stop before Super Tuesday with visits from Clinton, Trump, Carson and Kasich.

It's no surprise that Shelby County went for Trump and Clinton, said Marcus Pohlmann, political science professor at Rhodes College.

"Republicans in this area are an odd lot, too. It's a constituency that's rallied behind a range of candidates," Pohlmann said. The Trump campaign is a new phenomenon, he said.

"And he's obviously really attracting across party lines, attracting people that aren't necessarily traditional Republicans," he said. "They may not be Democrats either. I think he's reaching beyond the traditional Republicans to build that base."

Clinton, he said, probably came to Memphis to seal the deal.

"I wouldn't call it a victory lap, but I think she was paying her respects because she's going to need a turnout here in the general election and it would be a slight if she didn't come," Pohlmann said. "So I think she had to, and I think she'll be back."
SHARE

By Bruce Ackerman

In the next couple of weeks, Michael Bloomberg will decide whether to launch an independent bid for the presidency. That's an enticing prospect, since the continuing strength of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders threatens to force a radical choice between two extremes. Nevertheless, before succumbing to centrist temptation, the former New York City mayor should take a hard look at the Constitution. He will find that his run for the White House could precipitate one of the worst constitutional crises in American history.

The problem is the 12th Amendment. Enacted in 1804, it establishes the rules for presidential selection if no candidate secures a majority of 270 electoral votes  a distinct possibility should Bloomberg enter the race. The sphere of competition will then move from the states to the House of Representatives, where Bloomberg will confront formidable challenges. He will have to persuade Republican and Democratic lawmakers to betray the tens of millions of loyalists who voted for their party's nominee.

But he'll have to do more than gain a majority of House members. Under the amendment's special rules, each state delegation casts a single vote, and the winning candidate must persuade 26 delegations to support him. Even if Bloomberg carries a few key states in November, his fate will be determined by representatives from regions that rejected his candidacy. In addition, there are 11 states with only one or two House members  and their idiosyncratic views will have a disproportionate say in the final choice.

Worse yet, if a state's delegation is equally divided, it can't vote at all. This means that the process will degenerate into a free-for-all as rival candidates engage in desperate efforts to nudge one or another fence-sitter in their direction.

At this point, a final factor will make for more melodrama. If the House can't pick a chief executive by Jan. 20, the amendment provides an interim remedy. It says that the new vice president will become acting president while the political bargaining continues.

The three vice presidential nominees will be in the same position as their running mates  none will have gained a majority of the electoral college. Anticipating this eventuality, the authors of the 12th Amendment designed another system for resolving the vice presidential contest.

Under this secondary scheme, it's the Senate, not the House, that does the deciding, and a simple majority of senators suffices to make the choice. But the Senate can choose only between the top two, not the top three, candidates. As a consequence, Bloomberg's running mate might be barred from the competition from the start.

In any event, the major party in control of the Senate will almost certainly install its own candidate, not Bloomberg's. Suppose, for example, that the Democrats regain control of the Senate and put Sanders' running mate, Elizabeth Warren, into office. This might shock the previously paralyzed House into action: Perhaps the Republicans would abandon Trump and support Bloomberg in a desperate effort to save the country from Warren?

The emergence of a Bloomberg-Warren pairing illustrates a larger point. Given the arcane constitutional rules, the only way for Bloomberg to win is by manipulating procedures that will be utterly mysterious to the overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens. If the multibillionaire does succeed in backroom deals that procure him the presidency, his ascent will serve only as a dramatic display of the power of Wall Street to lord it over the American people.

Such a victory will have devastating consequences. Consider how the tea party pressured congressional Republicans to make life difficult for Obama. Life will be even more difficult for Bloomberg, who will also contend with the disappointed "political revolutionaries" among the Democrats inspired by Sanders. As the struggle between Congress and the president escalates, ordinary Americans will turn away in despair. This massive wave of alienation will permit the extreme right and the far left to become even more powerful forces in the next presidential election  with Trump and Sanders, or their successors, taking over both parties and competing with each other in their radical programs to sweep away the Washington elite.

The time for Bloomberg to consider this grim future is now. He has always presented himself as a thoughtful pragmatist who disdains ideological posturing. But only the blindest follower of the late Antonin Scalia  the most adamant constitutional originalist  can fail to recognize that the 12th Amendment, passed during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, can't cope with the realities of modern politics.

If Bloomberg is a true patriot, he will not allow his personal ambition to throw the United States into a grave constitutional crisis.

Bruce Ackerman described the historical origins of the 12th Amendment in his book "The Failure of the Founding Fathers." He is a professor of law and political science at Yale. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times.
Select Commodity All Ajwan Alasande Gram Almond(Badam) Alsandikai Amaranthus Ambada Seed Amla(Nelli Kai) Amphophalus Antawala Anthorium Apple Apricot(Jardalu/Khumani) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar Dal(Tur Dal) Ashgourd Astera Avare Dal Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Balekai Bamboo Banana Banana - Green Barley (Jau) Bay leaf (Tejpatta) Beans Beaten Rice Beetroot Bengal Gram Dal (Chana Dal) Bengal Gram(Gram)(Whole) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Betal Leaves Bhindi(Ladies Finger) Bitter gourd Black Gram (Urd Beans)(Whole) Black Gram Dal (Urd Dal) Black pepper BOP Bottle gourd Bran Brinjal Broken Rice Broomstick(Flower Broom) Bull Bunch Beans Cabbage Calf Capsicum Cardamoms Carnation Carrot Cashewnuts Castor Seed Cauliflower Chapparad Avare Chennangi Dal Cherry Chikoos(Sapota) Chili Red Chilly Capsicum Chow Chow Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum(Loose) Cinamon(Dalchini) Cloves Cluster beans Cock Cocoa Coconut Coconut Oil Coconut Seed Coffee Colacasia Copra Coriander(Leaves) Corriander seed Cotton Cotton Seed Cow Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea(Veg) Cucumbar(Kheera) Cummin Seed(Jeera) Custard Apple (Sharifa) Dalda Dhaincha Drumstick Dry Chillies Dry Fodder Dry Grapes Duck Duster Beans Egg Elephant Yam (Suran) Field Pea Firewood Fish Foxtail Millet(Navane) French Beans (Frasbean) Galgal(Lemon) Garlic Ghee Gingelly Oil Ginger(Dry) Ginger(Green) Gladiolus Cut Flower Goat Gram Raw(Chholia) Gramflour Grapes Green Avare (W) Green Chilli Green Fodder Green Gram (Moong)(Whole) Green Gram Dal (Moong Dal) Green Peas Ground Nut Oil Ground Nut Seed Groundnut Groundnut (Split) Groundnut pods (raw) Guar Guar Seed(Cluster Beans Seed) Guava Gur(Jaggery) He Buffalo Hen Hippe Seed Honge seed Hybrid Cumbu Indian Beans (Seam) Indian Colza(Sarson) Isabgul (Psyllium) Jack Fruit Jaffri Jamun(Narale Hannu) Jarbara Jasmine Jowar(Sorghum) Jute Kabuli Chana(Chickpeas-White) Kacholam Kakada Kankambra Karamani Karbuja(Musk Melon) Kartali (Kantola) Khoya Kinnow Knool Khol Kodo Millet(Varagu) Kulthi(Horse Gram) Lak(Teora) Leafy Vegetable Lemon Lentil (Masur)(Whole) Lilly Lime Linseed Lint Litchi Little gourd (Kundru) Long Melon(Kakri) Lotus Lotus Sticks Lukad Mahedi Mahua Mahua Seed(Hippe seed) Maida Atta Maize Mango Mango (Raw-Ripe) Marasebu Marget Marigold(Calcutta) Marigold(loose) Mashrooms Masur Dal Mataki Methi Seeds Methi(Leaves) Millets Mint(Pudina) Moath Dal Mousambi(Sweet Lime) Mustard Mustard Oil Myrobolan(Harad) Neem Seed Niger Seed (Ramtil) Nutmeg Onion Onion Green Orange Orchid Ox Paddy(Dhan)(Basmati) Paddy(Dhan)(Common) Papaya Papaya (Raw) Patti Calcutta Peach Pear(Marasebu) Peas cod Peas Wet Peas(Dry) Pegeon Pea (Arhar Fali) Pepper garbled Pepper ungarbled Persimon(Japani Fal) Pigs Pineapple Plum Pointed gourd (Parval) Pomegranate Potato Pumpkin Raddish Ragi (Finger Millet) Raibel Rajgir Ram Rat Tail Radish (Mogari) Raya Resinwood Rice Ridge gourd(Tori) Ridgeguard(Tori) Rose(Local) Rose(Loose) Rose(Loose)) Round gourd Rubber Sabu Dan Sabu Dana Safflower Sajje Same/Savi Season Leaves Seemebadnekai Seetafal Seetapal Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) She Buffalo She Goat Sheep Snake gourd Snakeguard Soanf Soapnut(Antawala/Retha) Soji Soyabean Spinach Sponge gourd Squash(Chappal Kadoo) Sugar Sugarcane Sunflower Sunhemp Suram Surat Beans (Papadi) Suva (Dill Seed) Suvarna Gadde Sweet Potato Sweet Pumpkin T.V. Cumbu T.V. Cumbu Tamarind Fruit Tamarind Seed Tapioca Taramira Tender Coconut Thinai (Italian Millet) Thogrikai Thondekai Tinda Tobacco Tomato Toria Tube Rose(Double) Tube Rose(Loose) Tube Rose(Single) Turmeric Turmeric (raw) Turnip Walnut Water Melon Wheat Wheat Atta White Peas White Pumpkin Wood Yam Yam (Ratalu)

Select State

Select Market
Ever since Edward Snowden revealed the extent of surveillance that occurs over the Internet, there has been much attention given to encryption. Indeed, the current storm over the FBI's desire to gain access to private individuals' mobile devices would be rendered irrelevant if widespread encryption was the norm.

Encryption already tends to be more common in the enterprise, but with encryption comes some questions as to what should happen with the keys that allow those files to be decrypted. Egnyte wants to answer all permutations of that question today with a deep encryption offering.

Egnyte is, of course, the enterprise file sharing and synchronization (EFSS) vendor. Its main point of differentiation from the public cloud EFSS vendors such as Box and Dropbox is that it gives its customers choice about where their data will be stored -- on-premises or cloud options are available from Egnyte.

Given its focus on choice, it is perhaps unsurprising that Egnyte is today announcing a new encryption offering that will see it give customers the broadest choice of options around how they secure their data. Egnyte is offering end-to-end encryption and alongside that allowing customers to store encryption keys in their own data centers, or alternatively with Egnyte itself, on Amazon Web Services or on Microsoft Azure.

It should be noted that in recent years there have been other EFSS vendors that have moved to supporting both encryption and the customer control over encryption keys. I asked Kris Lahiri, co-founder and chief security officer at Egnyte, where he thinks his company has a point of differentiation from the competitors, in particular, Box.

"Box's enterprise key management (EKM) offering is very limited, as they are only able to enable cloud key management via AWS," he said. "Given our history working extensively with enterprise customers, we know they require an HSM solution robust enough to handle large-scale operations with the flexibility to work with both cloud and on-premises key management offerings across a broad range of providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, SafeNet, etc.). With the recent news around privacy, like the Apple v. FBI case and the expiration of the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor agreement, it is vital for us to provide more EKM options that give our customers control over content storage and encryption keys in their own facilities, or with the local provider of their choice."

Fighting words and, it has to be said, with more than a grain of truth in them. Clearly this granularity over control of encryption keys will, much like Egnyte's granularity around where the data itself is stored, prove attractive to customers, especially those enterprise customers with less of a propensity to be "all-in" on the cloud.
The FBI might be able to copy the hard drive of an iPhone used by a mass shooter without triggering the device's auto-erase functions, thus eliminating the agency's need to take Apple to court, a company executive said Tuesday.

Instead of forcing Apple to help defeat the iPhone password security that erases the device's contents after 10 unsuccessful attempts, it may be possible to make hundreds of copies of the hard drive, said Bruce Sewell, Apple's senior vice president and general counsel.

Apple doesn't know the condition of the iPhone used by San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, so it's unclear if mirroring the hard drive would work, but it's possible, Sewell said during a congressional hearing.

The suggestion that the FBI attempt to copy the iPhone's hard drive first came from Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and former car-alarm entrepreneur.

The design of the older model iPhone 5C may allow investigators to remove its hard drive and make multiple copies, Issa said. Investigators could then run 10 password attempts on each copy until they found the correct password, he said.

"The FBI is the premier law enforcement organization, with laboratories that are second to none in the world," Issa told FBI Director James Comey. "Are you testifying today that you and/or contractors that you employ could not achieve this without demanding that an unwilling partner do it?"

The FBI has explored other options and found none that it believes will work without Apple's assistance in defeating the password protection, Comey said. "We have engaged all parts of the U.S. government" to find ways to gain access to information on the phone without Apple's help, he said. "If we could have done this quietly and privately, we would have done it."

Sewell and Comey both faced tough questions during the hearing, which was focused on the pending court case and on smartphone encryption. Both men largely repeated their talking points from the long-running debate on device encryption, but lawmakers seemed split on whether Apple should honor the FBI's request and Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym's Feb. 16 order requiring the company to comply.

Apple has resisted the court order and called for Congress to set encryption policy, but it hasn't proposed any specific actions, noted Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. If Congress acted, it might force Apple to aid in similar investigations.

"I don't think you're going to like what's going to come out of Congress," Sensenbrenner said. "All you've been doing is saying, 'no, no, no, no.'"

Apple ultimately will follow the law, Sewell said. "What we're asking for, congressman, is a debate on this," he said. "I don't have a proposal, I don't have a solution for it, but what I think we need to do is give this an appropriate and fair hearing."

Critics of Apple's position suggested the company is ignoring public safety issues.

Apple and Google, by enabling encryption by default on smartphones running their OSes, are, in effect, setting a U.S. policy that values customer privacy over national security and criminal prosecutions, said Cyrus Vance Jr., district attorney for New York County in New York.

Smartphone security and encryption will eventually lead to a serious problem when entire segments of suspects' lives are shielded from police, Comey told lawmakers.

"I have colleagues and others who are advocating for these evidence-free zones," added Representative Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican. "There are just going to be compartments of life where [law enforcement agencies] are precluded from going to find evidence of anything ... no matter how compelling the government's evidence is."

Several other lawmakers questioned the FBI's demands, saying a court order requiring Apple to write new code to defeat the phone's security could lead to hundreds of similar requests. Vance, the New York prosecutor, said his office is now in possession of 205 locked smartphones that could be used as evidence in criminal cases.

Criminals will find ways to exploit mandated holes in encryption, said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. While the FBI worries about "a world where everything is private, it may be that the alternative is nothing is private," she said.

During the hearing, Comey acknowledged the FBI made a mistake when it asked San Bernardino County, the owner of the phone, to change the password soon after the mass shooting there in December.

Comey disputed the suggestion that the FBI was asking for an encryption key or a backdoor into the phone. "There's already a door on that phone," he said. "Essentially, we're asking Apple, 'take the vicious guard dog away, let us pick the lock.'"
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, whose names have been linked since their seminal paper introduced the concepts of public key encryption and digital signatures some 40 years ago, have been named winners of the 2015 ACM A.M. Turing Award (a.k.a., the "Nobel Prize of Computing").

The work of MIT grad Diffie, formerly chief security officer of Sun Microsystems, and Hellman, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University, has had a huge impact on the secure exchange of information across the Internet, the cloud and email.

ACM Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman

The annual Association for Computing Machinery prize carries a $1 million prize, with financial support from Google. Past winners have included Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf, database visionary Michael Stonebraker and recently deceased A.I. innovator Marvin Minsky.

MORE: Whirlwind tour of computing and telecom's top honors, awards and prizes | Why there's no formal Nobel Prize in Computing

This major recognition of Diffie and Hellman's accomplishments comes at a critical juncture for cryptography, which is at the heart of the current Apple-FBI feud and the heated international debate over security "backdoors."

"Today, the subject of encryption dominates the media, is viewed as a matter of national security, impacts government-private sector relations, and attracts billions of dollars in research and development, said ACM President Alexander L. Wolf, in a statement. In 1976, Diffie and Hellman imagined a future where people would regularly communicate through electronic networks and be vulnerable to having their communications stolen or altered. Now, after nearly 40 years, we see that their forecasts were remarkably prescient.

Not surprisingly, years after Diffie and Hellman published "New Directions in Cryptography," there are calls being made for stronger encryption schemes.

Diffie and Hellman's groundbreaking contributions to the technology industry have not been overlooked. As we documented some years back, the two have been among the most honored tech luminaries, receiving other such awards, including the 2000 Marconi Prize.

ACM has recognized numerous crypto experts over the years, including 2012 Turing Award winners Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali of MIT, and 2002 winners Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman (the RS & A in RSA).

ACM will present the 2015 A.M. Turing Award at its annual Awards Banquet on June 11 in San Francisco.

This story, "Crypto dream team Diffie and Hellman wins $1M A.M. Turing Award" was originally published by Network World .
Four U.S. senators have proposed a bill that would call on the Federal Communications Commission to study the need for more spectrum to connect Internet of Things devices.

The bill, proposed by a bipartisan group of senators, would require the FCC to look at whether there is enough spectrum to support the continued growth of IoT. The agency also would have to study regulatory barriers to providing more licensed and unlicensed spectrum for IoT. The FCC would have to report back to Congress with recommendations within a year.

IoT might benefit from a U.S. government push to make agencies give up little-used frequencies for commercial use or at least share them with other users. The Citizens Broadband Radio Service in the 3.5GHz band, created last year, will allow for unlicensed and lightly licensed use of spectrum that had been fully devoted to military use.

The bill, called the Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act, also calls for a federal IoT working group to consider issues like spectrum needs, consumer protection and security. The group would meet with enterprises, IoT vendors and consumer groups and come back to Congress with recommendations within a year.

Congress has signaled before that it thinks theres too much at stake in IoT to leave it entirely up to industry. The Senate passed a resolution last March that said the U.S. should have a national policy on IoT, and Congress has already held a hearing on IoT issues such as privacy, security and spectrum.

Industry representatives told Congress last July that heavy-handed regulation could stifle IoT innovation. But because it could bring many new devices into consumers lives and affect how industries operate, IoT touches on several areas the government regulates. And to grow as much as industry proponents like Cisco and Ericsson predict, the new technology may need more wireless spectrum from bands it cant yet use.

The new bill, sponsored by a bipartisan group of senators, would have the U.S. Secretary of Commerce convene the new working group. It could include representatives from the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Transportation and other agencies.

The DIGIT Act is sponsored by Republican Senators Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, along with Democrats Cory Booker of New Jersey and Brian Schatz of Hawaii.
Bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress on Monday calls for creating an independent, 16-member national commission on security and technology challenges.

Including its two House and Senate sponsors, the legislation has eight co-sponsors in the Senate and 16 in the House. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) are the principle sponsors.

The commission would have two members drawn from each of the following fields: cryptography, global commerce and economics, federal law enforcement, state and local law enforcement, consumer-facing technology, enterprise technology, the intelligence community and the privacy and civil liberties community.

The House and Senate leadership from both parties would equally appoint the commissioners. President Obama would appoint one non-voting member.

Three quarters of the commission must support its final recommendations. An interim report would be due in six months, with a final report due in 12 months. The full Senate bill is posted online and is similar to the House bill.

Several of the Senate co-sponsors spoke in favor of establishing the commission Tuesday on the Senate floor, around the same time that FBI Director James Comey was addressing the House Judiciary Committee on the matter of smartphone encryption. Comey's testimony included the FBIs demand in court that Apple assist in bypassing a passcode on an iPhone 5C that was used by one of the terrorists in the deadly San Bernardino, Calif., shootings.

Warner and others talked about the need to protect privacy and security at the same time.

We need to protect Americans privacy and their lives and liberty from criminals and terrorists  and promote American innovation, Warner said.

Warner and McCaul first called for the commission late last year, and elaborated in public comments in January.

Both have said that recommendations of the commission could include voluntary technology changes adopted by industry, instead of congressional action.

This story, "Legislation seeks independent panel on security and technology" was originally published by Computerworld .
Everyone should be careful about what images they post on social media. Using a hot government-monitored keyword in combination of  say an image of pot  has gotten more than one person busted. But this time metadata had nothing to do with the hot water a celebrity dove into when he tweeted a picture; hey, when you have 19.8 million Twitter followers like Kanye West and you step in a steaming dung pile, some of those followers are going to notice.

West apparently took a picture of his desktop screen, showing he was listening to Sufjan Stevens on YouTube, and then tweeted the photo. While that might sound innocent enough, other than he listens via YouTube instead of purchasing the music, its the other open visible Safari browser tabs that caused a stink.

Wests new album, The Life of Pablo, is available on Tidal where it can be streamed but not downloaded. As a result, it sparked rampant piracy as in a half million illegal downloads within the first 24 hours, Digital Music News publisher Paul Resnikoff told NPR. Its estimated to be in the multimillions now.

A few weeks ago, West was ready to sue The Pirate Bay over it. Kanye is going to meet with his legal team to discuss the possibilities of starting legal action against torrent site Pirate Bay, an unnamed source told HollywoodLife. Hes going to talk to his lawyers and see where he stands, and hopefully Tidal will partner up with him in any legal proceedings because it was supposed to be an exclusive release.

Yet when you look at the second tab where Pirate Bay Torrent Xfe is visible, it appears as if West might have been trying to pirate some music software from The Pirate Bay. TorrentFreak noted that the tab itself is not from The Pirate Bay website, which uses a different title structure, but comes from a site that uses the TPB brand. Instead it may be from a release blog, which lists a pirated copy of Xfer Records synthesizer software Serum. TF added, This suspicion is supported by another open tab pointing towards a Music Radar article listing the best VST/AU plugins, where Serum comes out as one of the winners.

Serum, an advanced wavetable synthesizer, was created by Xfer Records and is available for $189. Deadmau5, a DJ and music producer who co-founded Xfer Records, noticed the tabs in Wests tweeted picture and was not amused.

Not too much later, Deadmau5 suggested helping West out via Kickstarter.

Yeezy, a reliable provider of marketable drama, may be setting us up for a prank  who knows with a guy who claimed to be 50% more influential than the Apostle Paul and calls himself Yeezus.

A few weeks ago, West tweeted that he was $53 million in debt. He begged Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas; West said he was down for Google co-founder Larry Pages help as well.

West also has a tab open for MediaDownloader which helps folks rip music from YouTube. Ars Technica pointed out that it might be a tab opened via automatic pop-ups.

A MacKeeper tab is open as well, but whether or not he uses it for security  or if his credentials were included in the 13 million user accounts exposed in December  is not known.

Wests tweeted picture gave Samsung a free plug as the brand name is clearly visible on his monitor.

After the ruckus West raised over the The Life of Pablo being pirated from The Pirate Bay, you might think The Pirate Bay team would be miffed. Instead, they were amused, telling TorrentFreak, If he runs into difficulty he should try the forum for technical help and support.

Meanwhile, Wests actions stirred up an Internet storm with hundreds of angry tweets aimed his way. It could be that West doesnt care and all that matters is his wife Kim Kardashian said his whole album is genius.
The word Quisling has re-entered political debate. Peter Oborne is perhaps the most eminent commentator to have reached for it, in a recent tweet where he declared:

Boris unprincipled? What about the Cameron Quislings  cabinet eurosceptics who support Remain.

Oborne added a link to his denunciation in the Daily Mail of those ministers for betraying their principles in order to promote their careers. But generally speaking, we hear less of Quislings that once we did.

When Oborne and I were young (he was born in 1957, I in 1958) anyone who showed signs of getting a bit dictatorial would be called, perhaps half in jest, Hitler, a propagandist of any kind would be referred to as Goebbels, and a traitor was almost certain to be described as a Quisling. But when I asked an intelligent teenager what this last term means, she hazarded: Someone who gets quizzed?

Vidkun Quisling, who on 9th April 1940 helped the Nazis to invade Norway and with Hitlers encouragement mounted a coup detat against the legitimate Norwegian government, immediately became a synonym for the most vile and unpardonable treachery. On 19th April 1940 The Times published a leader under the headline Quislings everywhere in which it said:

To writers, the word Quisling is a gift from the gods. If they had been ordered to invent a new word for traitor they could hardly have hit upon a more brilliant combination of letters. Aurally it contrives to suggest something at once slippery and tortuous.

The Daily Mail quickly picked up the usage, so did the BBC World Service, and so too did Winston Churchill, who on 21st June 1941 declared:

A vile race of Quislingsto use a new word which will carry the scorn of mankind down the centuriesis hired to fawn upon the conqueror, to collaborate in his designs and to enforce his rule upon their fellow countrymen while grovelling low themselves.

Quisling had become the most infamous of all Norwegians. His countrymen, who were overwhelmingly pro-British rather than pro-Nazi, regarded this collaborationist puppet with detestation, and so did people around the globe.

Yet Quisling believed himself to be a patriot, who was doing his best for his country in difficult circumstances. He was so dangerous because he possessed, along with great ability, a kind of blinkered and misguided moral seriousness, which enabled him to convince himself, right up to the moment when he was executed by firing squad on 24th October 1945 after being convicted in a Norwegian court of treason, that he was innocent.

His impenitence makes him in some ways an even more objectionable figure. His obstinacy and moral vanity were such that he believed himself to be dying a martyrs death.

But his career also suggests how a gifted man could be seduced by fascism. Vidkun Quisling was born in 1887, the son of a country pastor who had married a ship-owners daughter. At school, the boy was considered a genius by his contemporaries, and in 1908, when he passed out from the Military Academy, he obtained the best marks of any cadet since that institutions foundation in 1817.

The young Quisling was a brilliant staff officer, who could attain a swift and complete grasp of the facts, or what he took to be the facts, in any given situation, and bring order out of chaos. As his biographer Hans Frederik Dahl observes, Throughout his life, he believed that anything was possible provided there was a good plan that had been elaborated in a Staff headquarters.

Norway managed to keep out of the First World War, but Quisling specialised in the study of Russia, and in 1918 was sent to St Petersburg as Norwegian military attache, where he soon realised how formidable the Bolsheviks were. A few years later, Quisling was recruited by Fridtjof Nansen, the celebrated Norwegian explorer and humanitarian, to help with famine relief in the Ukraine.

Unlike many foreigners, Quisling understood the catastrophe which was taking place in the Russian countryside, and in Dahls words, he proved himself an unusually altruistic, efficient and tolerant aid worker. He was exceptionally shy with women, but married a 17-year-old Ukrainian woman who fulfilled his need to play the role of rescuer, after which he fell in love with a second Ukrainian, Maria, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. They attempted to pass off her predecessor as their foster daughter.

Towards the end of the 1920s, Quisling served as a Norwegian diplomat in Moscow, where he also helped to represent British interests, for which he was awarded a CBE (removed from him in 1940). But at this point he returned to Norway, and set up a new, fascist, political party called the NS, or Nasjonal Samling. His leadership was marred by a kind of humourless naivety, and by a propensity to get implicated in scandals, so although he served briefly as Defence Minister, the NS was soundly defeated in the elections of 1933, after which it failed even more dismally in the elections of 1936.

Quisling had identified Bolshevism as a menace to western civilisation, and had become convinced that liberalism was no better. Both, he decided, were malign Jewish inventions. From 1935, under German influence, he became markedly anti-Semitic, though there were few Jews in Norway.

When war came, he feared Norway would end up like Poland: a battleground to be fought over by the Germans, the Russians and the British too. His own cultural preferences were, as was often the case in Norway, for Britain: English was his best foreign language, each day he would read The Times, and there were more English than German, French or Russian volumes in his library.

But his racial views brought him closer to Germany, seen by him as the power which could lead a united Europe in the battle to retrieve Russia from Bolshevik barbarism. In December 1939 he visited Berlin and contrived to meet Hitler, who realised he might be useful when Germany seized Norway.

By this point, wishful thinking had obscured Quislings ability to see straight. One of his old friends said Vidkun has gone stark raving mad, while another found him babbling in an Oslo patisserie about the apocalypse. Quisling had elaborated a personal philosophy which he called Universism, drawing on Christianity and modern physics.

He believed that if he helped Hitler take over Norway, Hitler would in turn help Norway to remain independent. Only the first part of this implausible bargain was kept. Quisling led the collaborationist Norwegian government, and urged Hitler (somewhat superfluously) to invade Russia, after which he quite correctly informed the Fuhrer that the invasion would only succeed if the many peoples subjugated by the Bolsheviks were mobilised against Moscow, not turned into Nazi vassals.

The Norwegian staff officer had arrived at an accurate analysis of the situation, except he completely failed to understand that Hitler was never prepared to treat conquered people as equals. Quisling strove for Norwegian independence, but Hitler strung him along by saying this question could only be addressed once victory had been attained.

When I started reading Dahls biography of Quisling, I hoped, with heartless frivolity, that there might be some black humour to be derived from it, and even a provocative reassessment to be offered. But the story is far sadder than that. By siding with the Nazis in April 1940, Quisling had committed an irretrievable blunder. This clever and sincere fool remained loyal to them, and under their thumb, until the bitter end in May 1945, and even then he was unable to repent.

He had accepted the execution of members of the Norwegian resistance, and a third of Norways 2,173 Jews had perished in Auschwitz. It is impossible, when one knows a bit more about him, to think of him without a shudder, or to place any present-day British politician in the same category.
Adam Simmonds is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Northamptonshire.

The Government recently introduced the Policing and Crime Bill into the House of Commons, which proposed, among other measures, changes in legislation to enable Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to take on responsibility for Fire and Rescue Services in their locality.

This is a change I welcome and that I have been long calling for since my election as PCC in November 2012.

In February 2013, I announced that I wanted Northamptonshire to become the first fully integrated Police and Fire Service in the UK; however, I also wanted to demonstrate to Government how we believed the two services could work more closely together in the interests of local people.

Funding from the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government over the past three years has enabled us to:

Develop three co-located Police/Fire Stations- Thrapston, Rushden and Mereway (Northampton)

Establish a fully integrated and co-located Prevention and Community Protection Team.

Establish a fully integrated and co-located Joint Operations Team

Introduce innovative crewing arrangements between Police and Fire in rural locations (RIVs)

Establish a joint planning and incident response team across the three emergency services through a Multi-Agency Incident Assessment Team (MIAT) vehicle.

Our Interoperability Programme which has allowed us to achieve these outcomes has not come about just because of my ambition for the two organisations to be the first fully integrated service in the country or because of an accusation that has previously been laid at my door because I want to take over the world. It has been able to achieve a lot because all of us involved in the programme, operationally and strategically, are trying to achieve the same outcomes; a safer better protected community which is served more efficiently and effectively by its emergency services.

The development of the Interoperability programme between the two organisations focused on removing areas of duplication. We have identified areas where the two services could work more closely together and established quick wins which could begin to change the culture and perceptions the two organisations may have previously held about each other.

Sharing stations between the two services was one example of this and a no-brainer. In the major towns and in some more rural locations in our county the Police, Fire and Ambulance services were located in three separate buildings often within a mile of each other. This not only meant there were efficiencies that could be made in the capital programmes across the three organisations, but also meant that savings could be made in the services revenue programmes as a result of reducing the costs of maintaining three separate buildings.

After pursuing changes such as these, the programme then began to explore other areas of duplication, which could see functions integrated between the two organisations to provide a better standard of service. One example of this is the growing prominence of preventative activities. In Northamptonshire we have integrated and co-located the Police and Fire teams in this area, streamlined the management structure and are now in a position where everybody working within that team is able to issue both crime and fire prevention advice through one contact with the public. In time there should be no reason why this cannot be expanded to include public health advice and other advisory services as collaboration with other partners continues to grow.

We have also developed a joint response pilot between the two services. We have crewed a Watch Manager from the Fire and Rescue Service with a Police Constable from the Police Force in a 44 vehicle which builds upon the Fire and Rescue Services Initial Intervention Vehicle (IIV) concept.

This pilot has been hugely successful; the operatives have been delivering heart start training to ten year olds in some of the most rural locations in our county, furthest from bluelight response. They have been training eight year olds in road safety awareness and have developed a shared mobilisation protocol to assist each other in searches for missing persons, attending incidents of suspicious circumstances, road traffic collisions, welfare checks and joint intelligence gathering exercises.

Those who have carried out the pilot have improved their understanding of how each organisation operates and have benefited from having a wider view of the world. Police Constables are now welcomed at Fire Stations across our county and vice-a-versa with the pilot significantly helping to change perceptions the two services had of each other.

Perhaps, the best thing, however, about the Rural Intervention Vehicle (RIV) pilot is the fact that these responding solutions and preventative activities came from the bottom up. The operatives themselves determined the types of incidents they thought they were capable of responding to and were also responsible for developing how best to engage with their communities.

We never asked the operatives to do something they didnt want to do, we empowered them, enabled them to make their own decisions about how best to collaborate by giving them the tools they needed, (the car and other equipment and other resources), to do their jobs and work more closely together should they wish to do so.

At no point has any of these programmes put the public at risk, in fact we believe that this interoperability programme between police and fire, and the co-responding the fire and rescue service carry out on behalf of the East Midlands Ambulance Service, has saved a significant number of lives, improved outcomes and prevented a further drain on the emergency services resources.

The Fire Brigade Union and others have vehemently opposed the transfer of governance to PCCs on the grounds that the service will be damaged by its further association with the Police. They hide behind the facade that the public see the two services completely differently and react to them differently because the Police are seen as enforcers and the Fire Service as the saviours and heroes of our local emergency services.

The reality is however, as we have seen in Northamptonshire, that when the two services do work more closely together from the bottom up, concerns over brand, identity, roles and responsibilities have failed to materialise. In fact the Community Safety Manager in South Northamptonshire attributes a rise in public confidence to the increased visibility of both services in rural locations, due to the presence of the RIV and its operatives.

Instead of thinking in the interests of the people they are supposed to serve, these opponents to change simply fail to grasp the current challenge facing public services in the UK. They dont like any form of change and dont have the best interests of the customer at the heart of their opposition.

I would go further. I would state that people that oppose changes in governance and changes to these services do not even have the interests of their own services at the heart of their opposition.

Fire and Rescue Services simply cannot stand by and think that the world around them will change, whilst the way they have always done things will remain the same.

As Sir Ken Knight pointed out in his excellent review into the efficiency and effectiveness of Fire and Rescue Services, fires have fallen by 40 per cent over the last decade and yet the size, cost and number of personnel remains broadly the same. The Fire and Rescue Service needs reform if it is to be dragged into the 21st century, but it also needs to work much more collaboratively with the other emergency services to ensure its sustainability in the longer term.

In Northamptonshire, we have been fortunate to have a forward thinking fire and rescue service, where now 25 per cent of its overall demand comes from co-responding and they have pursued collaboration with policing, but they are still being cut again this year by the County Council in spite of all their good work.

I believe that under the Governance of PCCs the two services and potentially the ambulance service in the future, can work together much more effectively to resolve some of the most complex problems the three services face. We face a shortage of 3,000 paramedics nationally, a shortage and struggle to recruit firefighters and police special constables. I believe we can make these services more of an attractive proposition if they are working much more closely together.

I believe that Northamptonshire will be a safer, more secure county by improving collaboration amongst services wherever it makes sense to do so.
From : Reggie@toptory.lidl.com

To : Desmond.Swayne@dfid.gov.uk

Subject: Confederates and Unionists

Dear Dessie,

How sensible of you to go on a great trek round your overseas empire for the next fortnight handing out HMG largesse to worthy supplicants. So we have four months of stirring up apathy before the great EU vote, and you and I are on opposite sides, with you an outer and me an inner.

It reminds me of that paper on the American Civil War for the Staff Promotion exam, with you going off to join the Confederacy and me staying with the Union  and we know how that ended!

Despite pleas on all sides to have civilised debate, it largely seems to be a political version of the Eton Wall Game between Conservatives with other parties as onlookers. My grandson asked me whether it was just a punch up between Old Etonians or could any other public school men join in?

Of course the Confederacy has been stimulated by the outing of Boris J after much soul-searching and leadership calculation. You will know that his appearance in the spotlight has seriously enraged the Outer veterans such as Cash, Redwood, Chope, Fox and Jenkin who see him as a johnny come lately. It certainly caused the PM to lose his rag and swap insults with the worst of them.

Both sides have been persuading/arm twisting colleagues to declare. The Chancellors Vicar on Earth, G.Hands, and His Cup Bearer, M.Hancock, have been bringing in penitents to the Presence where, like Ignatius of Loyola, he reveals to them the prospect of eternal love  or at the very least appointment as a PPS  or torture and damnation: no foreign trips and permanent membership of the European Scrutiny Committee.

The Outers have that strange cove D Cummings who emails Association chairmen suggesting deselection for those colleagues refusing to declare for the true faith of outers.

Most of the Tory press appear to support the Confederacy as does that blog Conservative Homeland. I see its founder Brother Timothy Montgomerie has attacked Cameron and resigned from the Party. No great loss as he appears to reside across the Pond. Remind me, Dessie, is he any relation of B.Montgomery  late Field Marshal, and a serious happy clappy Christian? Monty lost it after he retired and became more clappy than happy.

Alls not well on the home front as Lady Mary was flirting with becoming an Outer. All about her uncle Wilfred who was killed by those awful Boche during the Rhine Crossing in 1945. Actually, he was pissed as a newt on looted Hun Schnapps and fell off a landing craft and drowned. But shes now an Inner having watched sundry colleagues appear with Messrs Galloway and Farrago. Then there is that awful club tie they are all wearing  slime green, which Soames says looks as if they have collectively had a nose blow.

When the inners launched their campaign it was from some night club off Pall Mall. Soames and I arrived to be shown the tradesmans entrance (Dont you know who we are? from Soames) and were ushered into a large cavern-like cellar full of colleagues past and present. We had to sit at the back (old men not wanted by the camera crews) and clamber up over rows of chairs. With his old war wound, Soames wouldnt have made the first fence if he hadnt been literally carried by Amber Rudd, Nicky Morgan, Claire Perry and Anna Soubry all singing the Eton Boating song. Not necessarily the image the PM wanted.

Meanwhile the Comrades are pursuing their Marxist strategy of self-destruction. Comrade Corbyn has been out on a CND march with other lefties and pensioners form the 70s and now we learn he has appointed that former Bolshevik Greek finance minister, Zorba Variousfakirs, as his financial adviser. Based upon the aforementioned Greeks custody of their national finances last year which ended in tears.

Ive had a busy social calendar, having been invited by my son-in-law and the teenage grandchildren to the Brits. I thought it was a concert but found out it was more like a All Ranks Smoker, with a lot of metrosexual types hugging and kissing and some very loud music. I had a selfie taken with some buxom blonde called Adelaide. Much booze was consumed, and at the end I saw Therese Coffey carry out young Gavin Williamson, the PMs ADC, who was tired and emotional, in a firemans lift. He hasnt been seen since and the Whips have him down as AWOL.

Soames and I then went on to a memorial bash at the Turf Club (Bubbles Bingley had collapsed dead at a race meeting having lost his shirt on some broken backed filly), and the boys at the bar quizzed us on the referendum since Soames, thanks to his twittering, is regarded as something of a sage. Majority were Outers until Soames described the consequences  economic collapse, end of farm subsidies, Kent overrun with Romanians and Putins navy docked at Portsmouth. A slight exaggeration, but it made them all gulp. No 10 want Soames and I to do a double act round the country, rather like those old codgers Waldorf and Statler in the Muppets  could upstage Boris J and his impersonation of Bertie Wooster.

I see that scribbler Julian Fellowes, who we enobled and wrote that drama Downtown Abbey, is adapting some of Trollopes novels. Marvellous literature much read by H Macmillan during stressful times as PM  just the literary fodder for D Cameron who needs it after a session here listening to Cash, Jenkin, Rees-Moggie et al.

I am just off to Sir Simon Burns gaff for a boozy supper and to watch those US Primaries called Super Tuesday. Soames and I are appalled by the likely choice of that weirdo Trumpers and the virago Clinton: none of the above. Perhaps a lesson for our own leadership election before 2020.

Look forward to exchanging war stories at The Whistling Leper for the regimental reunion.

Yours till Appomattox,

Reggie
Cameron defies Sturgeon to take EU campaign to Scotland and Wales

The Prime Minister plans to wage the campaign to stay in the EU to all of the Home Nations  despite demands by nationalists that he stay away.

According to The Herald, David Cameron will time his visit to coincide with the Scottish Conservative conference on Friday. He has already visited Wales, where he warned that Brexit threatened the EU funds available to those countries.

as the battle spreads to Northern Ireland

Cameron has also paid an early visit to Northern Ireland, one of the most Europhile parts of the UK and, for once, an equally important part of a national contest.

Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, the Prime Minister set out how access to the single market was very important to Ulsters agriculture-heavy economy.

Boris Johnson has also been in the province, where he dismissed Camerons claims that leaving the EU threatened the territorial integrity of the UK.

With the pro-Brexit GO! Movement holding a rally in Belfast on Friday, the campaign looks set to be a truly national political event. Nigel Farage has also held a debate with Vernon Coaker, the Shadow Northern Irish Secretary.

In other news John Larkin, the independent Attorney General of Northern Ireland, has suggested that Brexit might enhance protections of fundamental liberties as he attacked the unaccountable nature of EU legal institutions.

and UKIP hold out hope for Holyrood

The UK Independence Party may break into the Scottish Parliament in May  a prospect that seems to be playing havoc with the Conservatives prospects.

The Scotsman relates that a Survation poll suggests the party will take seven seats in the upcoming election  with the so recently-buoyant Tories only gaining a single extra for 16 MSPs.

According to some Scottish Tories  not to mention David Coburn, UKIPs Scottish MEP  the close proximity of the EU referendum to the Holyrood election is putting wind in the sails of the Peoples Army, as the local Leave campaign suffers a leadership vacuum.

Jones challenges Crabb over next stage of Welsh devolution

The First Minister of Wales has accused Stephen Crabb, the Welsh Secretary, of failing to properly engage with his administration over the latest plans to pass power to the Assembly.

Yet the Welsh Office claim to have had regular, wide-ranging discussions with Carwyn Jones, and that recent announcements by the Secretary of State should not have come as a surprise either to him or his government.

Crabb has already announced several changes to his proposed Wales Bill  including a slimming down of reserved areas and simplification of lines of responsibility  following criticism from Welsh MPs and AMs.

Meanwhile, ahead of the Welsh elections Jones has ruled out any wholesale changes to the countrys NHS if Labour remain in power at Cardiff Bay.

The struggling health service has proved an Achilles Heel for his party, and was heavily exploited by the Conservatives to secure their impressive 11 seats in the general election last year.

Scottish Governments care pay plan could plunge sector into crisis

The perilous fallout of the stand-off between local councils and John Swinney, the SNPs arch-centralising Finance Minister, took on a new dimension this week.

The Herald reports that the Scottish Governments plan to force councils to pay the living wage to care home workers  combined with continued pressure on local budgets due to the income tax freeze  could render their services unaffordable.

Sinn Fein rules out place in Irish Government after disappointing election

Gerry Adams hopes of leading his party into office in the Republic of Ireland  and having it in power on both sides of the border in time for the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising  have been dashed.

The Daily Telegraph reports that his party have now ruled themselves out of any potential coalition after the Irish general election resulted in a hung parliament.

With their strategy of supplanting Fianna Fail as the primary party of southern Republicanism thwarted, it seems they now hope to force both the Republics major parties into a coalition and lead the opposition.

This comes as Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, dropped his broadest hint yet that he might reveal more of his history with the IRA, according to the Belfast Telegraph.

Responding to a question from the TUVs Jim Allister he claimed to be absolutely willing to take part in systems set up to investigate the past in the province, and urged others to do so.
One would not have guessed, from todays PMQs, that the Conservative Party is supposed to be tearing itself apart over Europe. Michael Fallon smothered a yawn, Bernard Jenkin failed to turn up, and David Cameron played a dead bat to a question from David Davis about the issue of National Insurance numbers to migrants, which suggests there could be many more people arriving in this country than the official statistics show.

Jeremy Corbyn did not dare allude to Conservative divisions, for fear, one supposes, that the question would be turned back against himself, with Cameron pointing out that Labour MPs disagree with their leader about almost everything.

Neal Coyle (Lab, Bermondsey and Old Southwark) asked his first ever question, which was about knife crime, but prefaced it by expressing the hope to Cameron that my suit matches his mothers high expectations.

PMQs is certainly not meeting the high expectations of those of us who watch it. There ought to be a sense of danger: a feeling that the Prime Minister could within a few words be made to look weak or disreputable or ridiculous, because some decision by the Government cannot survive public exposure.

One of these days, that will happen. But today there was no sense of Cameron being held to account. Such passivity must make the more excitable bits of the great British press wonder why they bother.
David Davis is a former Shadow Home Secretary, and is MP for Haltemprice and Howden.

It is an old cliche that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. But this week the Government has breathed new life into this rule, as they showed that they are willing to bury the true scale of immigration into the UK with the help of some very dodgy statistics.

The biggest problem with the Governments immigration figures is that they are simply unreliable. This is hardly surprising given they are based on the notoriously feeble International Passenger Survey, which is exactly as it sounds  a survey rather than an actual record. As a result, they repeatedly underestimate the true level of immigration into this country.

The official figures, for what they are worth, show that 257,000 migrants came to the UK from the EU last year. But at the same time, 630,000 EU citizens registered for a new national insurance number. In other words, whilst the government claimed that only 257,000 people arrived from Europe, 630,000 signed up for work. That is a discrepancy of some 373,000 people. Similarly enormous discrepancies show in all of the last five years. The Governments immigration figures look as airbrushed as the Chinese Governments economic statistics.

Some of this discrepancy can be explained by short term migration, such as seasonal workers who sign up for a national insurance number but leave within 12 months and so are not counted in the immigration numbers But this is nowhere near the scale needed to add up. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Governments figures are seriously underestimating immigration into the UK.

Of course, the Government could cast light on this issue by just publishing the number of non-UK holders of national insurance numbers who are actually paying national insurance. The Government certainly have this information but have consistently refused to publish it..

The reality is that HMRC have nationality information in one system and contributions information in a different system which they could put together if they wanted to, but dont  for whatever reason.

It has long been the case that the UK has had a dysfunctional immigration policy. When ten new countries joined the EU in 2004, a Home Office funded study, on which the Labour government relied, predicted that between 5,000 and 13,000 migrants would come each year. The reality was that over the next two years more than 130,000 migrants arrived.

The latest immigration figures make a complete mockery of the present Governments target of 100,000 per year. It is a policy which has been revealed as all bark, and no bite for a very simple reason: membership of the EU has removed its teeth.

And what is the Prime Ministers response to this? Staggeringly, he has not only said that he is convinced that his target is still achievable, but that leaving the EU will somehow make it harder to control immigration.

There are good reasons why immigration is often listed as voters number one concern. Immigration, for all its undoubted benefits, has significant downsides when it happens too fast, when it is as uncontrolled as it currently seems to be.

The most obvious problem is infrastructure. Just think about the Governments own net immigration figure for a moment. 323,000. That is the population of a city the size of Leicester, or Coventry, or Nottingham coming to this country every single year. An entire new city, including houses, schools, hospitals, road, rail connections, water treatment facilities, power generation, and all the other infrastructure that a community requires.

Quite apart from the sheer cost of this, none of this can be planned if we dont know the number of people coming into this country or, indeed, where they will end up living. We dont know how many new houses are required, or hospital beds we will need, or school places, or policemen to keep the peace. Yet even this figure could well be too low.

Good government is largely a matter of forward planning. By failing to collect, or by playing down, the true immigration figures, the Government has made it impossible to plan for the future.

No wonder we have a housing crisis. No wonder there is more road traffic than ever before. And it should be of no surprise that every year there is now a desperate scramble for school places.

This is before we get onto the social aspects of immigration.

We are proud to be a famously tolerant country. When people arrive in the UK the general response is one of welcome, certainly where those arrivals embrace our national values of freedom under the law and mutual tolerance. Newcomers can be successfully absorbed, but it does take time to build this national esprit de corps. The scale of immigration means that integration doesnt happen. Or it doesnt happen fast enough. And without it, community cohesion suffers. And that feeds the double headed monster of extremism and intolerance.

Immigration cannot be left to continue at a rate where infrastructure cannot keep pace, and cultural integration falls by the wayside. The fact is that the policy of unrestricted immigration from Europe has resulted in both of these dangers becoming a reality.

Despite David Camerons assertions to the contrary, the simple fact is that we currently do not have control of our borders. What the Governments failure to collect accurate information shows is that we simply do not know at present how many people are coming to the UK, except that it may well be considerably more than the ONS figures tell us.

Leaving the EU will give us back control of our borders. This does not mean that we will slam shut the door on those that want to come here  immigration is vital to our economy, and a part of the British way of life. But it will give us a say on who can come here, based on what this country needs, and on how our infrastructure can cope.

Today at PMQs, I asked the Prime Minster to publish the data. If the Government fails to do so, people will draw the conclusion that it has something to hide or fears it has something to hide. It is much better to found the debate on the real facts. The Government should publish this data immediately.
Hillary Clinton Is A Psychopath And A War Criminal: Prof. Francis Boyle

Dialogos Radio Interviews Prof. Francis Boyle

02 March, 2016

Dialogos Radio

The transcript of Dialogos Radios interview with international lawyer and professor Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois. This interview aired on their broadcasts for the week of February 18-24, 2016. Find the podcast of this interview here.

MN: Joining us today on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series is international lawyer and professor of international law at The University of Illinois Dr. Francis Boyle. Boyle has served as legal counsel to the Palestinian Authority, to Hawaiian independence groups, and served on the legal team which led to the conviction of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. Professor Boyle, welcome to our program today.

FB: Well, thank you very much for having me on, and my best to all my friends in Greece. Great country, great people. I spent about two weeks traveling around in 1974, and another two weeks traveling around in 1982.

MN: Wonderfulwell, lets get started by talking about the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and the case which led to the conviction of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez and others in absentia for war crimes. Tell us about this commission, and about this case that you were a part of, and its aftermath.

FB: Well, there were two different proceedings. The first one was against Bush and Tony Blair, for their war of aggression and Nuremburg crime against peace against Iraq. I was part of the team that helped get a unanimous conviction there. And then, the second proceeding was against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gonzalez, and several others, for torture and war crimes. Again, I was part of the team that helped get a unanimous conviction, both for torture and for war crimes. Those materials have been filed with the International Criminal Court, and Im doing the best I can to follow up on my own, tracking these people and staying in touch with all the lawyers to see if we could get them apprehended.

Now, Bush was about to go to Switzerland, and a Swiss parliamentarian aware of my work demanded that the Swiss prosecutor-general apprehend and prosecute Bush for torture and war crimes, under the domestic implementation of legislation for the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. So when word got back to Bush, he didnt go to Switzerland. So thats the way Im proceeding, and other international human rights expertsIm not the only one out there, I know the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York is involved, I believe Amnesty International is involved, and theres some other human rights lawyers I stay in contact with around the worldwell keep after these people the best we can.

MN: Now, lets look more closely at the role of United States foreign policy, its military, and the role of NATO in the world todayalmost eight years ago, President Obama came to office promising to shut down Guantanamo Bay, promising to right the wrongs of the Bush administration, but instead, weve seen Guantanamo remain open, weve seen U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East continue and, in fact, intensify, and weve seen the growth of military operations using unmanned drones, in Yemen and elsewhere. How does international law view the actions of the Obama administration and the United States today?

FB: Well, actually I wrote a book that comprehensively covered all the violations of international law, human rights, the laws of war, and United States constitutional law by the Bush Jr. administration, called Tackling Americas Toughest Questions, and in the conclusionI wrote the conclusion three weeks after Obama was inauguratedI said it looked like we very well might be getting a third Bush term, and thats what weve got here, two more Bush terms under Obama. Hes pretty much continued the Bush policies, both abroad and here at home, compounding and continuing the Bush police state here in the United States. At some point I guess Ill get around to writing a book on the Obama administrations violations of international law, but in the meantime you can read my book on the Bush violations, Tacking Americas Toughest Questions, and hes basically continued the same policies.

MN: We are on the air with international law expert Francis Boyle here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series Years ago, you had written about the plans of the United States, the European Union and NATO for the Ukraine and indeed for the world, with a stated goal of destroying specific states and listing seven countries that were slated to be taken over. What were those plans and have they come into fruition?

FB: Yes they have. In my book, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, I have in there a statement by deputy secretary of defense Wolfowitz, made right after 9/11/2001, that the United States government was going to get into the business of destroying states, and I analyze that sentence. Its genocidal. And then soon thereafter, NATO general Wesley Clark was in the Pentagon and he was told they had a list of seven Muslim states that they were going to destroy. Basically, theyve all been taken out now except for Iran. Theyve destroyed Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Lebanon has been pretty much paralyzed, and they lopped out South Sudan from Sudan. So that process continues, and now theyre moving towards the Ukraine and China. Theyre moving towards Russia from the Ukraine, and also China. Theyre moving directly to confront China.

MN: Is there, in your view, any political candidate, any political force in the United States at the present time that can put an end to this foreign policy and to the U.S. military machine overseas? For instance, theres many progressives who have placed their hope in Bernie Sanders as the man to do this. Is this hope misguided, in your view?

FB: Well Im not going to criticize Senator Sanders here, Ive dealt with him personally, but everyone had the same hope about Obama during his campaign. Now, Obama was behind me at Harvard Law School, and he moved to the Hyde Park area in Chicago with the University of Chicago, where I was an undergraduate, so I had my own sources out there in Chicago, and they told me not to trust Obama, so I never have. And indeed, I didnt vote for him two times in a row and I was not deluded by Obama, which is why I said, three weeks into his administration, in my book, Tackling Americas Toughest Question, it looked to me like we were going to get a third Bush term. You know, hope springs eternal. Maybe Bernie Sanders will actually do something, I dont know.

Hillary Clinton is a psychopath and a war criminal, [who said] we came, we saw, he died, mimicking Julius Ceasar and laughing hysterically after Colonel Kaddafi, my former client, was sodomized with a knife and beaten to death. Shes a certified psychopath and war criminal. As for the Republicans, none of them look very good at all, between you and me, so I guess maybe Senator Sanders might make a difference. The last time around I did support Jill Stein of the Green Party, I thought she was the best candidate and had the best platform, but unfortunately the Greens, with all due respect to them, didnt really get themselves organized and accomplish everything. So there we are here in America, what can I say?

MN: We are on the air with international law expert Francis Boyle here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series The ongoing and worsening conflict in Syria and all across the Middle East has led to a tremendous wave of refugees fleeing their homelands and traveling, under treacherous conditions, to Europe, with Greece often serving as the European entry point for these refugees. What do you make of the European Unions stance towards the refugee crisis and the stance of the international community, and what does international law foresee in such circumstances?

FB: All these refugees are fleeing because the United States government has been destroying their states, as weve already discussed. Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya accounts for most of them, so thats why they are fleeing, the outright terror of the aggression, war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity that the United States government is inflicting upon them. With respect to Europe, everyone there in Europe, all the states are parties to the U.N. refugees convention thats the international law. Unfortunately it appears that theyre going to be making Greece the scapegoat for all of this and confining all of these refugees in Greece, if youre reading the plans here, which is completely unfair. I dont know exactly how to advise Greece as to how to deal with the situation. The refugee convention is there, but youre being made the scapegoat for American policies here, and Europe is going along with it.

MN: You have written and spoken extensively about growing Israeli belligerence in the Middle East and about the Palestinian right of return. How does international law view Israeli actions in the region, such as the continued construction of settlements, and how can the Palestinian people defend their homeland and their sovereignty, from a legal point of view?

FB: Well Ive written three books, including Palestine: Palestinians and International Law: Breaking All The Rules, and The Palestinian Right of Return Under International Law, so Im not going to go through all that, but basically what we have here is outright genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians, with the full support of the United States government. And that is what confronts us today as citizens of the world community. Israel wants all of Palestine and they dont want any Palestinians there, so its going to get worse. I gave the best advice I can to the Palestinian leadership, Ive worked with them to get them up to the point where they are now a United Nations observer state, I have devised a means whereby they can overcome Obamas threatened veto of their membership, full-fledged state membership in the United Nations, and I have also offered to sue Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the world court, for inflicting genocide against them and trying to stop the settlements, the genocidal siege of Gaza. So, the Palestinian leadership has my recommendations and offer to help. In the meantime, Im doing everything I canI was the one who set off the Israeli divestment, disinvestment campaign of November of 2000, and then in 2005, the Palestinian civil society contacted me and asked me if I would go in with them on a BDS campaign, which I agreed to do. So the BDS campaign has taken off now all over the world, and I would encourage your listeners to work with the Palestinian BDS campaign for sure. Its having an impact.

MN: We are on the air with international law expert Francis Boyle here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series Having mentioned Israel and the Middle East, this past summer, the Greek government signed an agreement with the armed forces of Israel, a so-called status of forces accord, which Israel has apparently signed with only one other country in the world, the United States. What does this accord mean and what do you make of the Greek governments efforts to forge closer ties with Israel

FB: Well, I havent read this document, so I dont think I should comment on a document I havent read. But, it is very unfortunate to see Greece move towards working hand-and-glove with Israel, when you did have a previous history there of supporting the Palestinians, and I think the Greek people need to make it clear to the current SYRIZA government that youre not going to accept this at all, and you want the Greek government to go back and support the Palestinians.

MN: You used to be a member of the board of Amnesty International USA, back in the late 80s and early 1990s. However, you have since turned into a fierce critic of NGOs such as Amnesty International. Describe for us the relationship that exists between such NGOs and power structures in Washington and elsewhere.

FB: Yes. These western NGOs, and you probably have some of them in Greece, all operate on the basic principle: he who pays the piper calls the tune. Theres nothing objective, neutral, or dispassionate about any of them, including and especially Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, I could go down an entire list of these NGOs. So theyre really not there to help you and the people of Greece. You might have your own internal Greek NGOs that get money from Greek sources, but thats a different matter. You have to be very careful with these NGOs. For example, this summer Amnesty International adopted a resolution to the effect that it was going to promote the sex industry and sex trade on a worldwide basis, which I did my best to stop. I read the documents in support of this, and it all went back to George Soros documentation. So it seems that Soros must have made a very big contribution to Amnesty International to get this reprehensible policy rammed through their headquarters in London, and then Amnesty worldwide. I take it that Soros must have some type of investments in the sex industryyou know, hes a hedge fund managerand you know, Soros gave $100 million to Human Rights Watch, so you can figure it out from there. Its true of all of these western NGOs.

MN: We are on the air with international law expert Francis Boyle here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series Your outspoken criticism of U.S. foreign policy, against Israel, also issues such as being in favor of independence for Hawaii and for many other issues has put you on the radar of the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Describe for us an encounter you had with the FBI about a decade ago.

FB: One day, two agents of the FBI and the CIA showed up at my office, misrepresented to my secretary who they were, what they were about. I let them in to my office. They proceeded to interrogate me for one hour and tried to get me to become an informant against my Muslim clients, which I refused to do, repeatedly refused. So they went out then and put me on all the United States governments terrorist watch lists. According to my lawyer, theres six or seven of them and as far as he can figure out, I was put on all of them. You know, what can I say? My lawyer did appeal, but he was told I would remain on all of these watch lists until the FBI and CIA take me off, which course is not going to happen in my lifetime. He did make it possible for me to travel, but there we are.

MN: Now lets turn to Greece one more timeover the past six years, successive Greek governments, including the supposedly leftist SYRIZA government, have signed a series of memorandum agreements which have not only imposed harsh economic austerity, which have not only resulted in the privatization and sell-off of key public assets, but which have also essentially signed away, at least on paper, Greeces sovereignty. The EU and the troika have final approval rights over key legislation that is brought before the Greek parliament, while the memorandum agreements have been placed under the legal authority of the United Kingdom and Luxembourg. Are such agreements valid under international law, and what could Greece do to restore the countrys sovereignty? Are there any precedents in international law that Greece could turn to?

FB: It does appear that SYRIZA has abandoned and betrayed the Greek people and the promises it had made originally to get elected. You know, youre asking me this question for the first time, but certainly one could use an argument of economic duress and threats of coercion under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, to try to claw back some of these agreements that SYRIZA has made. As for this debt, there is a well-known doctrine under international law known as odious debt that I think Greece could consider to repudiate a good deal of this debt. I havent studied the elements of the Greek debt, but it does appear there are more than enough elements there that could be repudiated as odious debt. And then finally, clearly Germany owes massive reparations to Greece for the Nazi occupation and war crimes in Greece during World War II. They still have not paid up, and I think the Greek government or the Greek people need to insist on that, and that gives you a lot of leverage against Germany, which is really the most powerful country in Europe right now and is pretty much calling all of the shots here. I think there the Greek people understand this. So you have a lot of leverage, but the SYRIZA government has to use it.

MN: Are the examples of countries such as Iceland or Argentina possible precedents that could be used in the case of Greece?

FB: Well Icelands pretty small yes, you could look at Argentina, and then also Malaysia, when it was threatened by Soros with his hedge funds attack on the Asian Tigers. Malaysia was able to pull through that.

MN: We are on the air with international law expert Francis Boyle here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series We live in a global society today that is marked by increased government surveillance, police violence, an increasingly neoliberal and authoritarian world. In light of this, what can ordinary people do to not only stand up for human rights and the rule of law, but to also identify political and social movements that will truly stand up for their rights and not betray them?

FB: Well you just had a general strike in Greece. I thought that was great, it really shows the Greek people have had enough. Everyone taking to the street, I think we need to see more of that in Greece, and then some type of leadership emerge out of those general strikes. It seems to me theyre really in contact with people. SYRIZA has forfeited, in my opinion, its right to lead the Greek people. Theyre working in cahoots with the IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank, Brussels, and Berlin.

MN: Professor Boyle, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today here on Dialogos Radio and the Dialogos Interview Series, and for sharing your insights and experiences with our listeners.

FB: Thanks for having me on, and I look forward to coming back to Greece sometime when I can fit the trip in. Great country, I learned so much from your people and the history and the culture.

MN: Thank you once more, greatly appreciated.

Transcript byDialogos Radio.




Dalit-Bahujan Perspective On The Mahishasura Debate

By Braj Ranjan Mani

02 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org

A statue of Mahishasura near Sri Chamundeshwari temple off Mandya-Santhekesalagere Road

at Santhekesalagere in Mandya Photo: MAHADEVA B./The Hindu

The ruling partys despicable invocation of Mahishasura and Durga legend in Parliament recently and its castigation of the JNU students who organised Mahishasura Martyrday Day as a case of depravity and treason represents the belligerent brahmanic politics of the RSS-BJP that wants to muzzle all dissenting voices of dalit-bahujans. Such politics reduces arguments to bluff and history to myths in order to equate brahmanism with nationalism so that the dalit-bahujans can be kept enslaved to the historical frauds. But things are changing now, as a new generation of dalit-bahujans, inspired by the emancipatory ideology of Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar, are rereading history and rejecting the brahmanic deception that passes off as Indian history. This is the backdrop in which the raging debate over the Mahisha-Durga myth should be grappled and grasped.

We have several partial and contesting visions of the Indian past. But they can be broadly categorized into the twobrahmanic and dalit-bahujan. The reality of this longstanding divide is in sharp contrast to the dominant elitist discourse that serves the upper-caste interests in several ways. The brahmanic, as we know, represents the orientation of the powerful and privileged sections, while the term dalit-bahujan (under which we include the dalits, adivasis, OBCs as well as common women) stands for the perspective of the demoralised and fragmented majority. The brahmanic and dalit-bahujan visions of the past are so contrary and contemptuous of each other that the real history of India will perhaps never be authoritatively known or reconstructed. This is the tragedy of India because its troubled history is not going to become history in near future. As the past shapes our present and future in significant ways, history continues to evoke conflicting emotions in the privileged and the disadvantaged. In fact, the contest over the past is the contest over the affairs of the present that mirrors the real social fissures and distrust that divides the Indian society. Some may argue, and quite rightly, that such contestation over the past and present is not unique to India, but few can deny that social conflicts tend to turn more bitter and vicious in a more hierarchical and patriarchal society like ours.

Thus, it is not surprising that the mystery of history, as reflected in the ongoing Durga-Mahisha controversy, continues to haunt a new generation of defiant dalit-bahujans who want to grasp how and why did they become enslaved to the oppressive caste culture. But as they still continue to be by and large absent or excluded from the professional domain of knowledge-construction and history-writing, they often fall back on the stories of their remembered past that have been handed down to them from generation to generation. Such visions of their oppressive past are buttressed by the contemporary reality of discrimination and marginalization that they face in their everyday life. In my view, the remembered past and lived experience of the dalit-bahujans are much closer to the socio-historical reality than the sum and substance of various brahmanic narratives that generally pass off as standard history in the mass media as well as academia.

It is a revealing fact in itself that the modern historiography in India, save some exceptions, continues to be the fiefdom of the caste elites who variously concoct an imaginary Hindu-national or liberal-progressive history based on the selective and cunning reading of the ancient texts and sources. In their breathtaking exaltation of ancient India as a uniquely non-violent society, even the liberal-secular pundits like Amartya Sen and Romila Thapar, despite their obvious scholarly excellence and superiority over the Hindutva-type hacks, envision a make-believe past that effectively hides the historical violence of caste and brahmanism. Liberals like them glibly argue that India has a glorious history of being a wonderfully tolerant and liberal society and the problem lies only with the RSS-type distortion of this glorious history. By normalising the longstanding oppressive history of caste and brahmanism, the privileged-caste liberal scholars do not touch the fundamentals of brahmanic Hindu assumptions about Indian history. (For this point, and especially the exposure of Sen as a closet brahmanic apologist, see my Knowledge and Power [2014].) It is admirable that they oppose the hate politics of Hindutva against Muslims and Christians, but they remain blind, like the Hindutva rascals, to the sinister politics of Varnashrama Dharma and the unparalleled brutalities of caste and its consequences. Their privileged caste-class positionand the lure of getting easy praise and prizes from the brahmanic intellectual establishmentmake them obscure what is obvious to the dalit-bahujans who are at the receiving end of the most brutal hierarchy ever known to humanity. In other words, we see the normalisation of caste and brahmanism even in the best of social science writings. It can be argued that it is this stubborn refusal to recognise the brutalisation of the lowered-castes majority under the culture of caste and brahmanism in the liberal-progressive scholarship that has contributed to, if not paved, the way for the BJP-RSS rise to power and the macabre Hindutva dance that we witness today. This also makes clear why the liberal caste elites are utterly ineffective in countering the menace of Hindutva forces, and the Hindutva rascals fully enjoy and exploit this hypocrisy of their liberal caste cousins.

It seems as if the entire burden of the established knowledge and historiography about India is to somehow converge on one or other kind of brahmanical conclusion, and, thus, to variously discredit and destroy the dalit-bahujans memory of their oppressive past and their own lived experiences of caste and discrimination. This, however, is not surprising, given the fact that almost all academic researches and writings still remain the fiefdom of the caste elites. The tendency to belittle and dismiss, directly or indirectly, the dalit-bahujan perspective on history (pioneered in modern times by the rebellious thinkers like Phule, Ambedkar and Periyar) as sectarian and unscientific is pervasive in the elite-controlled academia. Such academic blindness to the historical injustices of caste and brahmanismand a longstanding struggle against themhas strengthened the Hindutva forces and deepened the distrust between the brahmanic and dalit-bahujan minds.

This, I think, is the broad historical context in which the raging debate over the Durga-Mahisha myth should be grappled. Let us first know the basic facts related to the myth and the controversy about it before we try to comprehend the larger meaning hidden behind the symbol of Mahishasura.

The religio-mythical device to conceal historical reality

The legend of Durgas killing of Mahisha, which forms the basis of Durga Puja, is fairly well known. Its foundational text is Devi-Mahatmya (Glorification of the Goddess), a long poem in the Markandeya Purana, written between the fifth and seventh centuries AD. The narrative and complexity of the myth suggest that Devi-Mahatmya incorporates the accounts of some earlier texts in Sanskrit or Prakrit languages. In the Puranic account, Durga (which literally means hard to get [to]) first appears under the name of Chandika (the Fierce). This warrior-goddess takes to a violent height the tradition of earlier supernatural enchantresses such as Mohini (Vishnu in disguise) and Tilottama (a celestial beauty) who merely seduce the Asuras (non-Aryans) so that the Suras (Aryan-brahmans) can overpower them. What makes Durga remarkable is the fact that she is the first goddess who herself kills the Asuras and their leader Mahisha.

The legend of this lion-mounted magnificent goddess with eight arms, each of which carries deadly weapons, with which she makes mincemeat of the Mahisha and his army, is celebrated in the brahmanical tradition as a triumph of virtue over the forces of darkness. In modern times, Durga, who symbolizes shakti (power) and beauty, has also been resurrected as an unparalleled feminist icon in the writing of many brahmanic-minded men and women scholars. India, they claim, is the only country that has produced an amazing range of gorgeous and powerful goddesses, who are even superior to the male gods.

The above assumptions, however, throw up the following questions.

Does Durga really represent the forces of good? Or, was she just a willing tool in the hands of the scheming gods who wanted to kill Asuras by hook or by crooks? Was Mahisha a cruel monster, as shown in the brahmanical lore? Or, was he the righteous leader of the non-Aryans who were treacherously annihilated? And, does the claim of feminist power hold any water, or is it just a figment of brahmanic imagination or an exercise in self-congratulation? Above all, is it desirable to religiously perpetuate and celebrate the politics of violence and killings?

And these are the questions or suspicions that agitate many dalit-bahujans, and they articulate them angrily and variously, often linking the oppression of the past with that of the present.

It seems quite plausible that the myth of Durga is a redacted and garbled account of some real historical events, as the brahmanical sources themselves reveal. Many Sanskrit texts also divulge the erotic relationship between Durga and Mahisha. Devi-Bhagavat Purana, for example, explicitly states that the Suras created Durga, and she seduced and then killed Mahisha. It is this treacherous killing of Mahisha that infuriates the dalit-bahujan and animates their subversive reading of the myth. They argue that the demonized Asuras such as Mahisha were actually their honoured ancestors who fought against the Aryan-brahmanic onslaughts. They link this fact with their larger argument that the brahmanic social order was constructed through a violent process, which the Puranic legends such as Durga-Mahisha try to conceal through the rigmarole of supernatural accounts. They conflate their subversive re-reading of the mythology with other brahmanic texts such as Dharmashastras which proclaim and preach that knowledge, power and prosperity of the brahman and allied castes must rest on the enforced ignorance, powerlessness and poverty of the shudra-atishudras.

This is what the students of JNU who organised the Mahishasura Martyrdom Day were trying to do by presenting a trenchant counter-narrative of the Mahishasura-Durga myth. And this is what several incisive articles in the Forward Press, a prominent dalit-bahujan monthly, had variously tried to underline. This perspective finds resonance in several dalit, OBC and adivasi communities across India which celebrate Mahishasura as their hero. And this perspective finds reflection in several historical sites in several states that have memorials built in honour of Mahishasura. Even a city like Mysuru (known as Mysore in its Anglicised form) is named after Mahishasura, as compelling historical sources prove. In other words, the brahmanical version of the Mahishashura-Durga myth is nothing but a historical misrepresentation in the eyes of dalit-bahujans.

What particularly rankles the dalit-bahujans is the fact that their shudraization or social enslavement was given a religious gloss in the brahmanical cultural tradition. But as the caste subjugation of the toiling masses was turned into the sacred laws of the brahmanic culture and religion, there has also been a long tradition of struggle against brahmanism, as the dalit-bahujan ideology variously and powerfully underlines. It is in this longstanding anti-brahmanic traditionthe tradition nurtured in modern times by Phule, Ambedkar and Periyarthat informs the new generation of dalit-bahujans who see the Durga Puja as a living symbol of the violent anti-dalit-bahujan tradition. Opposing such sacralisation of violence, they revere the martyrdom of Mahisha, who was seduced and deceitfully murdered, as many brahmanical sources themselves suggest.

Similarly, it can be argued that the claim of Durgaand other goddessesas an unparalleled symbol of stree shakti (feminist power) in ancient India is based on dubious logic. First of all, Durgas power, as Devi-Mahatmya and other texts inform us, comes not from within herself but from the energy (tejas) of the male gods. Secondly, she is not an autonomous force but merely a willing instrument in the hands of the scheming male gods who cunningly employ her to defeat their arch-rivals. To seek feminist salvation in the bosom of such goddesses is like asking for the moon which no one is going to ever get. As Wendy Doniger, who has incisively researched Hinduism and its mythology, astutely observes, The pious hope of goddess feminists, and others, that the worship of goddess is Good for Women is dashed by observations in India, where the power recognised in goddesses certainly does not necessarily encourage men to grant to womenor women to take from menpolitical or economic powers. Indeed we can see the logic in the fact that it often works the other way round (the more powerful the goddess, the less power for real women) In taking the mythology of goddesses as a social charter, the goddess feminists are batting on a sticky wicca.

Above all, it is not hard to find that the brahmanical tradition recognised and glorified goddesses in the Puranic period when it was assimilating a lot of indigenous and tribal practices in its fold in order to entice the reluctant masses to the brahmanical social order. The non-Aryan communities, many of whom had a marked matrilineal orientation, had already been worshipping their goddesses, and among them were Chandika and Durga. In other words, these names were current in the non-Aryan tradition before their brahmanic appropriation. It is notable that the Kushans, centuries earlier than the Aryan-brahmans, had put goddesses on their coins. As Doniger has pointed out, at some moment in the Puranic period, which also marked the rise of cult of devotional bhakti, the critical mass of Devi (goddess) worship already current in the local indigenous cultures forced the brahmanical custodians of Sanskrit narratives to acknowledge it. Thus, the reinvention of the goddesses in the brahmanical mould and turning them into a war machine against the Asuras (which indeed seems a code name for the ancestors of dalit-bahujans) was a masterstroke that worked excellently for the Aryan-brahmans. It helped them immensely in killing the memories of the violent Aryan-non-Aryan warfare that stretched over the centuries, the garbled and distorted accounts of which we find in the Veda-Purana and other brahmanical texts.

Conspiracy to lock up the mind and society in caste prison

It would be in order here to make some pertinent points about myth and history that can deepen our understanding of Indias troubled past. Of course, myth is not history, but myth is not simply the opposite of truth either. Intermingling fiction and fact, fantasy and reality, myth is a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events. Abounding in symbols, allusions and fantasies, mythology both reveals (leads) and conceals (misleads), and alongside the historical sources and writings helps us understand and reconstruct the human past. But the problem in India is peculiar. The ancient India has only mythography in the form of Itihaas-Purana (myth-history and legends) and hardly any historiography in the dominant brahmanical tradition. It is interesting to explore why didnt historical-mindedness develop in India? The fact that the study of history flourished in other countries such as Greece and China but not in India is quite revealing, and lends credence to the dalit-bahujan suspicion of a political-intellectual conspiracy to lock up the masses in the prison-house of caste.

It seems that the brahmanic choice of mythography over historiography was deliberate and a crucial part of a sinister strategy to suppress or misrepresent the historical events in order to keep the society closed and enslaved in the caste mould. It is true that all societies have undergone and experienced some form of hierarchy in the past, but as Donald Brown shows in his important work Hierarchy, History and Human Nature (1988), the degree of hierarchy is not the same in every society. Less hierarchical societies tend to be more open and inclusive, with more avenues and scope for social mobility, whereas rigidly hierarchical societies like Indias are by and large closed, where only those from the privileged families or castes are able to get ahead. In more open societies, success depends in a large measure on an individuals skills and initiatives, giving rise to an interest in history as a repository of facts and interpretations about why certain individuals succeeded and others didnt. Open societies have a propensity to be interested in the accurate recording of chronology, biography, and realistic portraiture as well as a common educational philosophy, social and political science, the pace and direction of change, the shape of things to come, and, above all, belief in the idea of universality of human nature.

By contrast, closed societiesof which pre-modern and caste-ridden India is a prototypetend to represent individuals symbolically, identifying persons through the symbols of their caste or rank rather than depicting their individual characteristics. A classic example is the legend of Mahisha itself, as his very name makes clear. Mahisha is a human being, but in the brahmanical eye, he is no different from the buffalo (the bovine which apparently occupied a vital place in the then pastoral society). He is reduced to a buffalo: his very name is Mahisha (Sanskrit for buffalo). In producing images, art and literature that are highly stylized, symbolic, and non-representational (which are, again, vividly visible in the art and literature on the Durga-Mahisha legend), the objective of the ruling castes in closed societies is to perpetuate illusions and mystification about society and culture, thus keeping people away from the reality of historical truth. For this reason, closed societies like India have traditionally elevated myths and legends over historical facts, hagiography over biography, iconography and symbolism over realism, superstition over rationality or science, education of the few over education of the many, and above all, casteism and sexism over humanism and egalitarianism, etc.

This explains why the brahman in India wrote only Itihasa-Purana, which, unlike historical narratives, are a make-believe account that conceals the reality far more than it reveals. The point is not that mythology is undesirable or inferior to historyit may not be an inferior mode of thought either, as many critical traditionalists arguebut it cannot be a substitute for history. By mixing the natural with supernatural and fact with fiction, myths allow us to read whatever we like to read. But if a society is left only with myths, it will be well nigh impossible to understand the pastanyone could read anything into those myths. This was however the precise purpose of the brahman literatito hide actual history and destroy as far as possible the evidence of real events and their nefarious role therein so that real history could not be reconstructed.

This understanding gives a plausible explanation to why did the brahman fictionalise and do not historicise theirand Indiashistory. It reveals the reason why they wrote all kinds of myths and legends, but no history or narrative of what had actually happened. For example, the very origin of caste was explained through a myth in the Purusha-sukta of the Rig-Veda. The tendency to base the origin of caste on a supernatural agency, fictitious claims of descent from mythic figures and similar mythifications were essential to the bigger ploy of keeping the people in the dark about how they were enslaved in the caste system. Opting for myth over history (where accurate names, facts, and chronicles are needed and understanding of the past is animated by an objective concern about what exactly happened) became necessary to hide the hideous historical truth. The literati who wrote misleading accounts kept their own identities hidden from the public eye. It is striking that most brahmanic works remain either anonymous or attributed to fictitious or false authors. Manu, for example, is not the real name of the man who wrote the Manusmriti (see my Debrahmanising History [2005] 2015: 131).

By filling the public space with misleading stories and legends, by blurring the difference between myth and reality, the brahman destroyed the very possibility of any meaningful discussion about society and its actual functioning. In many of the Puranas, statements about events were made in the future tense, although they were written much after the events had happened. Similar falsificationmystification are evident in the Dharmashastras, the Sanskritized epics of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and other sacerdotal texts in which the general design is to confuse brahmanic prescription with social description. So fraudulently was fiction interwoven with selective facts that the anti-caste and non-brahmanic traditions, especially the Buddhist-shramanic movements, were erased, suppressed, or at the best, grossly misrepresented in some fleeting references. For example, a Puranic text depicts Ashoka, one of the most benevolent kings in history, as a hated Buddhist and a despised shudra. In brahmanic eyes, the Mauryas, the dynasty to which Ashoka belonged, was shudra-prayastv-adharmikahmainly shudras and un-righteous. The brahmanic records completely ignore Ashoka until the time when, ten or twelve centuries afterwards, all danger from his influence had passed away. Expunged from the Indian history, Ashoka had to be discovered on the basis of his rock edicts and the Ceylon chronicles.

Ashokas icon, Gautam Buddha fared no better as the brahmanic forces tried to destroy the Buddhist ideology and movement through a criminal conspiracy and large-scale violence that stretched over centuries, as my Debrahmanising History ([2005] 2015) and Giovanni Verardis Hardship and Downfall of Buddhism in India (2011) have compellingly demonstrated, showing also the complicity of modern elitist historiography to hide the real history of India. Brahmanism not only succeeded in banishing Buddhism from India but also in destroying the very historicity of Buddha. So much so that there was a raging debate among historians in the first half of the nineteenth century about the historicity of Buddha and whether he was an Indian! Buddha had to be rediscovered after centuries of forced oblivion in a country whose pundits take great pride in advertising their brilliant intellectual legacy.

Not only did the brahman not keep any specific chronologies or sequences of events, they also destroyed the records and literature of their supposed adversaries. They indulged in massive forgeries to recast Indian culture in the brahmanic mould. They suppressed facts, changed names, confused places and periods, proffered false data, created fictitious dynastic pedigrees, frequently revaluated and tampered with their Vedas and Puranas, Sanskritized the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and above all, brutally censured all oppositional voices and events. (For elaboration and illustration of this point, see my Knowledge and Power (2014:194-209) and Debrahmanising History [2005] 2015: 134-8).

By obliterating historical facts, records and events when Buddhism opposed brahmanism, and the memories of the peopleconsidered enemies and hence lowered and ensnared in the caste hierarchythe brahman destroyed the possibility of a realistic understanding of what really happened. Instead, they (mis)represented India through the rigmarole of myths and legends which served the purpose of hiding the real history. Besides, Shastras and Puranas were frequently altered and rewritten over the centuries to incorporate elements (that were felt necessary for the brahmanic supremacy) that in historical terms were simply lies.

Summing up, brahmanic misrepresentation of Indian history and culture was driven by a ruthless politics of power, the kind of politics we see today in the obnoxious politics of RSS. For all this, it was essential that the people lived in ignorance and remained uninformed of historical truth. In order to establish caste order and a religion based on it, brahmanism had to promote mass ignorance and prohibit emancipatory learning for the lowered castes and women. This is the tradition the RSS valorises and wants to perpetuate under the cover of Hindu nationalism. Its aggressive reinvention and dissemination of old and new brahmanical myths about Indian society and culture constitute the new oppressive power. For the struggling dalit-bahujans, a cutting-edge understanding of this oppressive power and its outright rejection is essential for launching a liberating cultural movement. And its counter-narrative of the Mahishasura-Durga legend is a part of this liberating cultural struggle.

***

Braj Ranjan Mani is the author of Knowledge and Power: A Discourse for Transformation (2014). His earlier and challenging work Debrahmanising History (2005) has undergone many reprints, and is now available in an extensively revised edition (2015).




How The Ulema Are Perpetuating Male Hegemony In The Name Of Islam

By Zakia Soman & Noorjehan Safia Niaz

02 March, 2016

Sabrangindia.in

In our understanding the values of kindness, compassion and justice are the core values enshrined in the Quran. Clearly, hegemony is not an Islamic value and yet the experiences we have undergone in the course of our work in the last ten years give rise to certain fundamental questions.

Why are so many Muslims, particularly men, so hegemonic in their thinking? Why do most of them seem to think that reading, understanding and interpreting of the Quran is a sole male prerogative? They seem to think that Allah created men and women as unequal. This view of an unjust Allah is not acceptable to us and therein lies the crux of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolans (BMMA) existence.

Globally, eminent scholars such as the late professor Fatima Mernissi, Dr Amina Wadud, Dr Khalid Masood, Dr Ziba Mir Hosseini and several more have dedicated their lives to reading and interpreting the Quran to highlight that Allah is just and fair. Volumes have been written on the tawhidic framework about Allah as a uniting, harmonizing force. But the fact remains that these scholarly works that bring out the essence of Islam as a religion of peace and justice remain unheeded and are not referred to by large mass of people in Muslim societies.

Unfortunately, the dominant thought processes that control Muslim societies remain patriarchal. The traditions and practices followed are often in direct violation of the Quranic spirit of justice. The stranglehold of patriarchal hegemony in India and in South Asia has got exacerbated by the arrival of Salafi-Wahhabi ideologies that now threaten to become the mainstream in Muslim society. This ideology has led to further strengthening of the hegemony of patriarchal mindsets in our community. Practices such as triple talaq and halala are manifestations of this trend. But at the core of this thinking is a patriarchal mindset of male superiority and domination.

We want to refer here to the dominant common sense prevalent in the Indian Muslim community about men being superior to women. Islam gave equal rights to women over 1400 years ago; but have they been translated into reality? So long as the dominant common sense about male superiority dictates the mindsets and behavior of Muslims these rights will remain on paper.

In what has been a masterstroke the patriarchal forces have succeeded in attributing this subjugation and injustice to Islam through misinterpretations, distortions and lies. They have invented fiction, half-truths and references that equate women with cattle and allow the men to get away with the worst kind of atrocities against them. In the process they not only violate the basic tenets of Islam, they also help demonisation and stereotyping of the whole community.

They treat their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters unjustly and, even if unwittingly, help the Hindutva campaigns. The self-appointed custodians of Islam do greatest disservice to Muslims and to Islam. It is a pity that even some so-called educated Muslims blindly support these custodians thanks to the common sense about male superiority in Islam that they suffer from.

Why has there been no concerted effort so far to challenge these patriarchal custodians? Why is it that the Muslim women themselves had to initiate a challenge to these hegemonic elements? Why are the wise Muslim men not supporting Muslim womens struggle for Quranic rights of justice and equality? Or are they forever going to allow the conservative clerics to keep deciding for all 17 crore of us? Are they not aware that Islam has no place for intermediaries between Allah and believers? And lastly, what legitimacy do they have to question Muslim women who stand up and fight for their Quranic rights?

We will recount here some direct evidence about the dominant Indian Muslim male thinking being hegemonic and in violation of Islamic values of justice and fairness. This is not to say that there are no exceptional and courageous Muslim men; all of us know many of them in our respective spheres. But as a whole, it is the patriarchal conservative thought process that dominates our conduct.

All of us Muslim women had come together in the aftermath of the communal violence of Gujarat in 2002 to unequivocally oppose the communal forces and to demand rehabilitation and justice for the survivors. Our work at the time was focused around fighting discrimination on communal basis and demanding equal citizenship for the largest minority.

As we began to know and learn about each other spread across different parts of the country we could at once identify a lot of common ground and the need for coming together as a national entity. We were all bold and gutsy women who had fought with their own adverse circumstances and were struggling for equal citizenship in our respective locations and local contexts.

After informal interactions spanning over nearly two years we realised that we shared a commonality of purpose and had a shared worldview. We felt that Indian Muslims were poor and backward despite the Constitutional guarantees. We agreed that we were denied our Quranic rights thanks to the nexus between the patriarchal forces in our community and various governments. We decided that we need to change the situation.



We were clear that women needed to take up the leadership of the Muslim community in India for so-called male leadership was responsible for the all-round failure. We formed the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan in January 2007. Our name was a very deliberated and considered exercise. We felt that we needed a name that spells out what we stood for. We were as Bharatiya as anyone else and we would not offer apologies for being Muslim and Bharatiya. Nobody can appropriate the word Bharatiya and exclude others.

We put together our worldview in the form of our mission document where we clearly stated that we believe in the values of justice, equality, pluralism and democracy enshrined in the Constitution of India. We also clearly stated that we saw no contradiction between these values and the Quranic values. We set forth to work on attaining our Quranic as well as citizenship rights. We clearly stated our solidarity with all those who are working for justice and equality in the country and the world.

We also stated that we believe in secularism, religious harmony and peaceful co-existence as opposed to communalism and intolerance. We wanted to develop an alternative voice of the Muslim community that was rooted in pluralism and mutual respect between communities. And we were clear that it should be a feminine voice as the regressive male voices had failed to achieve anything for Indian Muslims in sixty years after 1947.

We embarked on a journey towards our mission focusing on the citizenship rights of our excluded community. A campaign on Sachar Committees findings and implementation of the recommendations was taken up in the initial years nationally and in various states. As soon as we found some bearings and women started becoming our members in large members we were faced with the reality of legal discrimination against Muslim women.

Across all states women began coming to us saying: I was divorced orally; I was thrown out after triple talaq, where do I go with my children; I received a post card from my husband divorcing me; I was away at my parents home for two months and learnt that my husband has married another woman; my husband divorced me and now wants me back; the qazi is asking me to undergo halala (meaning, marry and consummate marriage with another man, divorce him, only then remarry your former husband) etc etc.

The sad reality of male hegemony that rules the roost in our community ostensibly in the name of Islam dawned on us! We could not have asked the women to just go away! We realised that the long-term solution lay in the codification of the Muslim personal law based on the Quranic tenets. And this brought us into direct confrontation with the established patriarchal forces who had always spoken in the name of religion. We are not attempting here to give a summary of our work; anyone interested reader can visit our website. (www.bmmaindia.com).

Every public meeting, every seminar, every program of ours takes us on a familiar pattern of responses from Muslim males. We have women participating in large numbers, giving their testimonies, their inputs on a range of issues such as Muslim personal law, government schemes, communal harmony, different happenings in society etc. Above all, they give us their trust.

But invariably at the end of the program a Muslim male stands up and begins teaching us about Islam as he perceives it. He takes it upon himself, in spite of his apparent ignorance of the issue, to teach us about Islamic tenets. He thinks it is his prerogative since he represents the male species in a room full of women! Often such wise men beat a retreat when ordinary women start retorting with evidence and confidence.

We see another interesting response pattern at different public hearings across the country of women who have been orally divorced. After hearing heart-rending testimonies of their suffering, when there is an open discussion towards the end a male would stand up. He would say in a satiric, authoritative or sometimes angry tone that all this talk about triple talaq is uncalled for since triple talaq is un-Islamic!

Then, some of us would ask: why then does it take place in our society? Why do we not have a law against it? To this he would have no answers. Our women leaders regularly get invited to speak at various fora. It is a common occurrence, especially if the gathering has large numbers of Muslim male participants, to be told that your views are ok but we need to consult scholars. Obviously, in their opinion a scholar is someone with grey hair and maybe a beard!

Nobody asks where these scholars are when a triple talaq takes place in their respective cities or mohallas! Nobody talks about the scholars moral obligation to act when practices like halala are found rampant in our society! Another common experience is being told by a male member of a largely Muslim audience: your views are ok but why are you not dressed in Islamic way? Pray what is the Islamic way, we ask, only to receive stock replies. Again we see male hegemony at play trying to hide behind Islamic dress this time!

The problem seems to be that these men are not used to the presence of empowered women in their midst, leave alone their opinions. And they take refuge behind an imagined version of Islam for they have no real arguments.

Sometimes some well-educated persons who are sympathetic to our work end up suggesting: your draft law on Muslim Personal Law is very good; why dont you send it to some ulema for their approval? This is gross ignorance to say the least and in the ultimate analysis only strengthens the stranglehold of patriarchy.

In recent days when the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of our demands for reform in Muslim Personal Law, a well-known Muslim lawyer pleaded with the court to allow the male clerics to be party to the petition. We wonder why a Muslim lawyer of such eminence would think it fit to rope in the clerics for this. After all, is he not aware that the conservative clerics are the impediment to any solution? In fact they are not just part of the problem; they are the problem!

This section has stonewalled any talk of reform in Muslim Personal Law since 1947. In 1986 they raised a hue and cry over a pittance of Rs 125 being provided to 65-year-old Shah Bano as maintenance post divorce on the ground that this would put Islam and Muslims in danger! And yet if large sections of educated Muslims think that the male orthodoxy is the sole custodian of Islam there is something wrong here. This is rank patriarchal hegemony being passed off as Islam.

The authors are co-Founders of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan which has over 1 lac members spread across 15 states. The BMMA believes in the values of justice, equality, pluralism and democracy. It strives for equal citizenship of women as guaranteed by the Constitution of India. It works for the Quranic rights of muslim women and has been campaigning for reform in personal law. It believes in religious harmony and mutual respect between communities and works towards holding the state accountable towards its Constitutional obligations including secularism. More info at www.bmmaindia.com




Where Is S A R Geelani? Why The Silence?

By Shubhda Chaudhary

02 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org

As the uproar continues over the arrest of JNUSU President Kanhaiya, the media and politicians have been palpably silent regarding the arrest of Professor S A R Geelani on sedition charges. His arrest comes after he organized an event at Press Club of India regarding the hanging of Afzal Guru on February 10.

Not a single protest has taken place in Delhi for my father. No one wants to talk about him. Why? asks Nusrat, daughter of Professor Geelani who is currently in Tihar jail. Mr. Geelanis family resides in a nondescript south-east Delhi society. His two children, Atif and Nusrat, are pursuing law, a conscious choice they made after his arrest in 2001. The s most humiliating factor is the silence which the media and politicians have exercised regarding the arrest of Geelani, as if it is immaterial and does not need any kind of debate.

His wife was told, Your husband is in jail We will kill you. We will kill the children. You better tell him to come clean. (Except from an interview printed in In Custody: Law, Impunity and Prisoner Abuse in South Asia).

Geelani, a Kashmiri from Baramulla, was sentenced to death by the trial court on December 18, 2002. In October 2003, the high court acquitted him of all charges. In August 2005, the Supreme Court upheld the acquittal.

When Afzal was hanged in Tihar, Geelani called the UPA governments decision a cruel and politically motivated gimmick and said the police and investigative agencies fabricated evidence against Afzal and the whole system is biased and he had faced the heat of this bias. He frequently raised questions about the Parliament attack case. I have had an opportunity to closely see the workings of the courts and the police. What is most disturbing is that when the police violate procedures and even guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, the trial is held legal, he once said. For instance, the police forged my arrest memo and told lies on oath about my arrest. I was denied access to a lawyer, and almost all safeguards with regard to arrests and detention were flagrantly violated. Even my two small children were arrested and detained for several days.

What is really obnoxious in the current regime is that anyone exercising the Right to Dissent is being labeled as anti-national and imposed with the draconian charges of sedition and criminal conspiracy. The idea of an independent Kashmir is so scary for the current government, in spite of its alliance with PDP in Kashmir, which comes as a mockery.

Patriotism is a very subjective phenomenon which cannot be forcibly heaped upon the citizens of any country. So, does one have to be punished if one differs or debates, with the imposition of the aggressive nationalism that is fiercely being practiced currently in the country? What would happen to voices of that of Professor Geelani who want to narrate a different picture, a different truth? Does that make them immediate victims without any voice, vulnerable to hostility and torture? For how long with the state continue to reprimand and rebuke voices as that of Professor Geelani to manifest its own ultra-nationalist agenda?

Shubhda Chaudhary is a Phd Scholar at JNU. She can be contacted at shubhda.chaudhary@gmail.com






Asatyameva Jayate: Long Live Joseph Goebbels

By Anand Teltumbde

02 March, 2016

Countercurrents.org If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. -Joseph Goebbels

Prime Minister Narendra Modi reportedly twitted Satyameva Jayate on the stunning performance of his poster girl, Smriti Irani, the union Human Resources Development Minister, in the Lok Sabha defending herself and his government in the matters of attack on Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) in Hyderabad Central University (HCU) and radical students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students Union. The entire BJP establishment was visibly pleased over what it thought was pulping the opposition. Many political ignoramuses from the middle class also were vocally impressed by what they saw as her powerful refutation of the oppositions case with hard facts and figures. It is this lot that has pushed the country to this abysmal state. What Irani did was no better than one of her television performances as a Hindu bahu. It was more of a drama than confronting the serious issues she herself created. It characteristically reflected insensitivity of the regime to the tragedy it unleashed on people and disdain to Indias democratic institutions including the Parliament itself. Most importantly, all that she said was either irrelevant or pure lies.

The Core Issues

It will be interesting to see whether Smriti Irani touched any of the core issues involved in either Rohith Vemulas suicide in the HCU or the Kanhaiya Kumar and other students arrests in the JNU in her nearly 50 minutes speech.

Rohiths case begins with the derogatory comments made by the ABVP-HCU Unit president Nandanam Susheel Kumar on his face book calling the ASA members goons. It was in reaction to the demonstrations of the ASA condemning ABVPs attack on the screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hain, in Delhi Universitys Kirorimal College associated with arrogant statements like, main Hindu hoon, main tujhe thappad maarunga. (Im a Hindu, Ill slap you). The ABVP had even grudged the ASAs protest against the hanging of Yakub Memon earlier, along with many others across the country who were not sold to pop patriotism of the Hindutva camp. Taking offence, the ASA members had mobbed Susheel Kumar and demanded a written apology, which he gave in presence of security personnel of the HCU. However, the next morning he admitted himself into a private hospital, got him photographed and filed a police complaint that the ASA members had beaten him. This has been proved false by the statement of the security personnel who were the eye witness to the incident; doctors of the Archana Hospital in Madinaguda, where he was admitted on August 4; the affidavit of the Registrar of the HCU; and even the affidavit of the Cyberabad police commissioner C V Anand to the High Court. Even the proctorial board of the HCU, that investigated the matter, did not find any hard evidence for beating.

It is this false complaint of the ABVP leader, whipped up by the BJP leaders that culminated to Rohiths death. It is said that the BJP MLC, Ramachandra Rao had met with the then vice-chancellor Prof. R.P. Sharma asking him to take action against the ASA members. The BJP MP and union Minister of State for Labour, Bandaru Dattatreya, subsequently wrote to Smriti Irani. The letter from Dattatreya, an RSS member of 50 years vintage, pracharak for two decades, a veteran BJP leader to be a minister of state in the Vajpayee as well as in the current Modi government, to Smriti Irani, who has been infamously promoting saffron agenda in her ministry has eventually precipitated the abominable punishment to the five Dalit research scholars. Dattatreyas letter irresponsibly complained against the HCU for having become a mute spectator of the casteist, extremist and anti-national activities of the ASA. Irani, not only suggestively wrote to the VC to take action as she had done earlier in the case of an anonymous complaint against the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle (APSC) in IIT, Madras, but also ensured that action was taken with persistent follow up from her office.

It was under this political pressure that the HCU administration had suspended the five ASA members for a semester in August last year. It sparked off massive protest which forced the Vice Chancellor (VC) to revoke the order pending investigation by a new committee. Meanwhile, the new VC, Prof Appa Rao Poddile had taken the charge. With a two-decade long history of rusticating Dalit students, and with accusations from his own staff for being casteist (The News Minute, January 22, 2016), he crawled into action by appointing a new committee and eventually issuing the punishment to the five Dalit students. The punishment comprised their expulsion from hostels and banning them from accessing library, hostel and administrative building in groups. It amounted to social boycott of the students, reminding one of the reign of Manusmriti vis-a-vis the outcaste Dalits. These students--four of them being sons of agricultural labourers and one without both parents-- who had crossed countless obstacles to reach the University were pushed back right into their ostracized existence as the untouchables. Was it not a casteist action on the part of the VC and Irani herself as she has been defending it?

Nowhere to go, the students erected a shed with the banners and posters in the shopcom area of the university and began living there in the biting cold of Hyderabad winter. Without any arrangement for sanitation or food, and without money (their fellowships not being paid since last July), the VC, however, did not realize the monstrosity of the punishment. Such humiliating condition created collectively by ABVPs Sushil Kumar, BJPs Ramachandra Rao, Bandaru Dattatreya, and Smriti Irani and precipitated by the HCU administration headed by Appa Rao Poddile drove Rohith to take his life. It was a murder executed with the institutional processes and all of these honourable people were responsible for it.

The core issue therefore is the misdemeanour of these culprits for abetting the suicide of Rohith. Smriti Irani, herself an accused, did not touch upon these issues at all. Instead, she kept on patronizingly referring to him as a child.

Likewise, the JNU is sparked off by the agitation of the ABVP against the cultural evening The Country without Post Office, organized by the Left progressive students. Firstly, it had influenced the Administration to withdraw the permission for the programme. The question of permission to the programme raised by Irani craves for a counter question whether the programme of ABVPs protest had permission. The entire episode appears to have been scripted to enact the offensive strategy in face of the repeated humiliation the BJP had faced in previous confrontations with students. Earlier episodes, viz., APSC in IIT Madras and ASA in HCU involved Ambedkarite students and issues of caste and culture, which had badly boomeranged. The BJP could not afford to antagonize Dalit voters beyond a certain point. Therefore, it decided to play up an issue of antinationalism in JNU to kill several birds with one stone. JNU represents domination of radical and progressive students, and significant presence of Dalits, Adivasis and minorities, who were vocally opposed to hindutva politics. If it could take on JNU on a plank of nationalism, it would terrorize the radical students and embolden others to come under the ABVP umbrella. The manner in which the entire episode unfolded supports this speculative thesis. For instance, the crucial matter of police entering the JNU campus is attributed to a letter by JNU Chief Security Officer Navin Yadav at 4:30 pm to the duty officer of Vasant Kunj police station on 9 February. Yadav reportedly told the police that anti-national activities and anti-constitutional sloganeering might take place inside the campus. Is it plausible that a Security Officer of a University writes to the police station without the consent of the vice chancellor? How did he know that such slogans would be raised in the cultural meet unless someone had told him?

Some outsiders infiltrating the gathering of students being provoked by the ABVP into shouting those anti-India slogans; targeting the JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, the face of opposition to ABVP in the campus; the home minister, Rajnath Singh insinuating Pakistan hand behind the anti-national sloganeering based on the fake Hafeez Saeeds twit; doctoring of the video showing Kanhaiya Kumar shouting those slogans; some television channels systematically whipping up mass sentiments of people against him and JNU students; police not taking cognisance of students FIRs but pouncing upon them on a complaint made by a BJP MP Mahesh Girri; arresting Kanhaiya and terrorising the entire student community; unleashing its storm-troopers in the garb of lawyers to beat students and journalists within the court premises and repeating it again despite nationwide condemnation in the name of nationalism; attacking Kanhaiya in defiance of the Supreme Courts instruction to protect him and issuing open threats to kill him under the nose of the Delhi police, which had shamelessly become inert onlookers; and delaying grant of bail to Kanhaiya even though the expert legal opinion has long dismissed the applicability of the sedition law to him. Without a conscious strategy, perfect script and meticulous planning, such a perfect show would not be possible at all.

The issues here are the questionable role of the vice chancellor in allowing the police to raid hostels and hound the students; doctoring the evidence; arresting Kanhaiya without a shred of evidence against him except for the doctored video; slapping sedition itself in face of its inapplicability; defaming the DSU and other radical students as anti-nationals with connection with the Pakistani terrorists and Maoists; the blatant complicity of the Delhi police chief in allowing BJPs storm troopers a free hand; the omission and commission of judiciary in delaying the bail to Kanhaiya. Smriti Irani simply skipped these issues.

Then what did She Say?

She said either irrelevant things or simply lies. Marshalling all her skills in acting, she converted the parliament into a stage for her melodrama. Her paternalistic references to Rohith as child, her reference to her own persona challenging the opposition to identify her caste; her dialogue delivery that if she was proved wrong she would give up politics and place her head at the feet of the opposition could be a piece from any third rate Hindi film. While she feigned motherly concern for Rohith, she defended her actions in ensuring the university punished him along with his comrades. It was not her first act anyway. She had acted similarly on an anonymous complaint against the APSC students in IIT, Madras pushing the latter to ban it. Rohith was not some innocent child; he was a mature and educated person (unlike her) opposed to her right-wing politics, for which he paid with his life. As regards caste, her disdain for Dalits, can be easily discerned from above instances. It is irrelevant what caste she belonged to when anyone in the country can unmistakably say that she is not a Dalit. While Rohiths mother challenged brahmanical patriarchy and asserted her motherhood by lending her caste to her children, Irani invoked the latter and challenged Rohiths caste. It is utter naivete of her to speak about caste in such a superficial manner. The other challenge she threw up is rather more problematic because having proved wrong on everything she said, she should give up politics and spare the country impending mess in higher education; none being interested in her head as such.

In the case of JNU, the motherly minister did not hesitate to read out the names of suspended children in Parliament in utter disregard to the decency or law and wanted them perhaps to be hanged!

Falsehoods and White Lies

Let us check point by point how Irani lied in the Parliament: She said, The committee which suspended Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula was not constituted by our government, but by the UPA regime. While it is not relevant who constituted the committee, the action could well be influenced by the people in power. Incidentally, it is a deliberate lie. Executive Councils Sub-Committee that decided to expel the Dalit students from hostels and other common spaces was expressly constituted by the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Appa Rao, who was appointed by the BJP government and it was in response to the close follow up by the MHRD to punish the students. Earlier (before this speech), Iranis intervention in Rohiths case had similarly put her foot into her mouth when she said that the committee which awarded punishment to the five Dalit scholars was headed by a Dalit professor as though that would lessen the gravity of their misdoing. It was also a white lie which provoked the entire SC/ST professors in the HCU to resign en masse from their administrative posts. They pointed out that the subcommittee was composed of all upper caste members except for one, Prof. Prakash Babu, the sole Dalit member, who was co-opted as the Dean, Students Welfare and not as an SC/ST representative. This fact is duly recorded in minutes of meeting of the EC sub-committee dated 24-11-2015. This two member subcommittee itself was seriously anomalous insofar as the EC and its sub-committee were the very same body that recommended and ratified the decision. That the EC sub-committee did not hear out the key stake holders or consider the counter-affidavit filed by the Commissioner of Police on 3rd October 2015 and simply concurred with the much contested Proctorial Boards decision could be the matter for enquiry.

Then she tried to prey upon Rohiths suicide note that he has not blamed anyone. It only showed to what depth she could descend in trivializing the tragedy. If at all, she wanted to understand whom he blamed, she could read his sarcastic letter of 18 December to Appa Rao. He had said it all there, generalizing the harassment and humiliation of Dalit students in the HCU. He had asked the VC to provide while admitting Dalit students with poison and a nice rope. Is that not clear what he meant? At least the VC should have realized the folly of awarding such idiotic punishment and reached out to students. Irani conveniently ignored this crucial alarm bell before the impending incident. As far blame, Rohith had powerfully indicted the entire university administration being anti-Dalits and that surely included the MHRD that makes it dance to its tune.

Then there came a bigger lie about the police or doctor not being allowed to touch the body until 6.30 in the following morning. Zikrullah Nisha, an economic Ph D Scholar, who called the Health Centre of the HCU immediately after she got to know about Vemulas suicide on January 17, shouted Liar..Liar.. for Irani on her facebook wall. By now the statement as well as the report of the CMO, Health Centre, Dr. Rajashree P. is in public domain that she had reached within minutes, examined the body of Rohith and declared him dead. This and the pictures showing the Telangana police present at the time of this examination squarely nails Iranis lie.

Next, she showed the report of the security department of the university, dated February 11, 2016 with statements of 38 security guards. She read out, The crowd started to swell. Umar and Anirban stood there. Afzal Guru, Maqbool Bhat zindabad, Kashmir ki azadi tak jung rahegi, Bharat ki barbaadi tak jung rahegi, jis Kashmir ko khoon se seencha, woh Kashmir humara hai, hum kya maange azadi, bandook se lenge azadi, go India, go back, Indian Army murdabad. There were a few people present there with their faces hidden with cloth. What does the report say? That Umar and Anirban were standing and all those slogans were shouted by the crowd that had a few people with their faces hidden. Firstly, if these slogans, howsoever, reprehensible they may be, do not constitute any crime in law, least the crime of sedition. However, they have immense emotional value, which, as it transpired, was exploited in full by the BJP to create mass hysteria against the students and even the JNU. There is no way to expect her or for that matter any of her party to know that none of the Leftist students would shout that kind of slogans. They could go any length in condemning the government; ask for self determination for Kashmiris and for that matter, for any nationality. Moreover, they would say it from the roof top and not hide their faces. Who then were these masked people? If one looks at the construction of the superstructure, the foundational clues in the 9 February crowd in JNU must be paid due attention to. The suspicion that they were the BJP hirelings may not be farfetched in view of their crucial role in the script.

Next she showed the poster displayed on 10 February 2016 by the JNUSU office bearers  Kanhaiya Kumar, Shaila Rasheed, Rama Naga as president, vice-president and general secretary respectively. She read out from the poster, Supreme Court judge, Hindu Fascist State of India, the state was scared of Yakub Memon. Our media is a communal corporate media. We are a murderous republic and our cannibal collective conscience was satiated by hanging Yakub Memon's. We must rise against this judicial muder. Obviously, she and her pariwar members would take it abominable anti-national statements. Unfortunately, they are not. It only questions the government for the miscarriage of justice. It is simply a viewpoint of people who do not agree with the government. In the present system of government formation with the first-past-the-post type of elections, at least 49 percent of people are bound to be indifferent or against the government. Moreover, every citizen of the country has right of free speech enshrined in the Constitution and although there might be certain limits on them, nationalism is certainly not that because there is no such word in the Constitution.

Irani jumps on thereafter to Mahishasur Martyrdom. She challenged both Sugata Bose and Saugata Roy to speak about Mahishasur or Durga on the street of Kolkata. Why Kolkata, in any city the derogatory references to a Hindu deity may not be tolerated by the hegemonic Hindus. But then does it invalidate the existence of some other people who believe otherwise? There precisely lies the crux of the Indian diversity. The tribals for instance are known to worship Mahishasura even in West Bengal. The Hindu mythology is fraught with the conflicts between the brahmanic forces and those who opposed them. Just because the later were vanquished, there cultural existence cannot be erased. India is a museum of such diverse people representing diversity of every possible kind. The respect for all of them is a precondition of her survival. In order that India becomes a nation, it needs to survive first. Irani and her Pariwar in their folly are endangering the very survival of India. By their own definition, they become thus bigger anti-nationals than anybody else.

When the BJP cannot defend its action, it invariably brings in parallels in the Congress regime. Irani also tried to take shelter under the fact that all the VCs were not appointed by her. In order to saffronize institutions, it is not necessary that all the appointees need to be changed. Indian bureaucracy is adept at changing its colours as per the ruling party. In only a rare case, someone would be so upright as to incur the displeasure of political bosses. Still, installing people of their choice has been happening whenever the governments changed. The only accusation against the BJP is that it has gone overboard in transcending the limits of decency. Her own example could be the case in point. Then there were many by her/her government which had created controversy: Girish Chandra Tripathi as Banaras Hindu University vice-chancellor, Sudershan Rao as the Chairman of the Indian council of Historical Research, Chandrakala Padia as the chairperson of IIAS-Shimla, Kavita Sharma as the vice-chancellor of South Asian University, and of course, Ganjendra Chauhan, as Chairman of the FTII society, just to name a few prominent ones.

A Sinister Strategy

In the wake of forthcoming elections in five states, viz., Assam, Kerala, Puduchery, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, which are likely in April-May, and in the UP and Punjab early next year, the BJP wants to intensify its pet stratagem of polarizing people on communal lines. During the last elections they had largely suspended it saying sabka saath, sabka vikas, and only used it sparingly. People were cheated into voting them to have clear majority in the Lok Sabha. With dismal performance on economic front, coupled with unending controversies and misdemeanours of its monkey brigade, the people have begun to realize the mistake made in the last elections. Its attempts to establish hegemony of its students wing, ABVP, completely boomeranged in campuses. The JNU episode is clearly to recover the lost grounds using jingoism, proving Samuel Johnson, credited with saying nationalism is the last refuge of scoundrels, prophetic.

The strategy is to use Goebbles methods more intensely and deploy storm troopers to execute it. Satyamev Jayate etc. are part of this Goebblesque theorem; the Hindutva camp never cared for what truth is. As its history shows, this strategy alone has worked for it. The last elections may be taken as exception in face of the listless performance of the UPA 2 and dilapidated organization of the opposition. With BJPs non-performance, the situation has come full circle to normalcy, warranting the use of weapons in its arsenal. The year ahead is going to see some calamitous spells of this strategy in terms of communal conflagrations, the scientists of Gujarat Laboratories being at the helm!

Dr Anand Teltumbde is a writer, political analyst and General Secretary, CPDR, Mumbai.




Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press Cooking fresh fish, such as this arctic char from bonefish grill, so it's seared on the exterior and still moist on the interior, takes a bit of skill and a hot grill or nonstick skillet.

SHARE Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press Eli Haddix, who has been a manager at Bonefish Grill for five years, gave us some tips on how to cook terrific fresh fish. On the plate: grilled arctic char with lemon butter sauce and ripe mango salsa.

By Aimee Blume

Lent is the time of year when seafood gets the most attention. In the Midwest, however, good seafood comes at a premium price, and many cooks don't want to risk paying $15-$25 a pound or more for a piece of fresh ocean fish if they're not certain they'll do an excellent job cooking it.

It's true, fish can be delicate and easy to destroy. We talked to Eli Haddix, a longtime manager at Bonefish Grill (where they cook more than 1,000 pounds of fresh seafood a week), to find some simple ways to cook fish, so you know you'll get a great meal.

Bonefish gets their seafood from Bluefin Seafoods in Louisville. Bluefin sources fish from all over the world and delivers five days a week to restaurants, so their supplies are always fresh.

"We change the fish options seasonally," said Haddix, "so there are specials, and then the core options that are always on the menu. Those are salmon, trout and tilapia, then the wild options are sea bass and a rotation of grouper, mahi-mahi and swordfish. Of course we have shrimp and scallops all the time."

Seasoning and Enhancing

"There are a lot of really good seafood seasoning blends out there," said Haddix. "Every major spice brand has a seafood line. Just put it on evenly and remember, less is more. The fish has a flavor, and you only want to accent that, unless you're trying to blacken it, in which case you want to get a good thick coating on it to get the spiciness in every bite."

Haddix loves a light sprinkle of herbs with fish. They bring out the flavor of the fish, and the natural oils in the fish bring out more of the herb flavors as well. Whether to use fresh herbs or dry depends on the recipe, but some thin-leaved herbs, such as basil or cilantro, should always be used fresh and added near the end of cooking or atop the dish as a garnish.

"One of my favorite fish dishes with herbs is a dish we serve here at Bonefish in the fall," said Haddix. "It's a piece of grilled swordfish served over pumpkin ravioli with a brown butter sage sauce. We fry some fresh sage leaves with crispy shallots and garnish the fish with that and a little feta cheese. The sweetness of the pumpkin with the sage and the little bit of tang from the feta is amazing with the grilled swordfish."

Cooking seafood simply with the addition of a flavorful sauce that enhances  not overwhelms  the fish's flavor is also a great way to serve any variety.

Haddix also noted that lemon is the perfect complement for fish. Bonefish always keeps a lemon butter sauce on the menu.

"The lemon butter is the most frequently ordered of Bonefish's five house sauces, but each sauce has flavor elements that make it pair well with seafood, especially with a stronger-flavored fish such as salmon or shellfish with their characteristic sweetness," said Haddix.

Bonefish's other four sauces are herb pesto (which used to be called chimichurri and is flavored with cilantro rather than basil), mango salsa with grilled red onion and sweet red pepper, a pan-Asian sauce with a ginger-teriyaki flavor and a tomato sauce with lime and garlic.

Equipment

Seafood can be cooked successfully on the grill, in the oven or in a saute pan. Depending on which method you use, Haddix said you'll need either a good nonstick saute pan or a grill with the capability of high heat and a very clean grate. Either requires silicone-coated tongs and a thin spatula, preferably of silicone or with a silicone-coated edge.

"A more delicate touch is best," he said. "Tongs work to turn a more stable fish like trout, but for sea bass or salmon you want to have a rigid surface where you can get the fillet all the way on the spatula to support it as you flip it over."

To grill fish, make sure the surface of your grill grate has no buildup or stuck-on pieces of food.

"Always start with a very clean piece of equipment, because the less the fish sticks the less likely it is to flake and break up," said Haddix. "Oil the grill and place a light coating of oil on the fish with your seasoning, and start the fish skin-side down if it has skin. Then flip it and cook the top side and pull the skin off, then flip it again so the side that once had skin is downward on the plate. That gives you nice grill marks on the top. If you're cooking butterflied trout, it's thin enough you can start it meat-side down and never flip it until you put it on the plate."

Haddix suggests heating your grill very hot to cook seafood. At Bonefish, they use a gas grill with oak logs underneath the fire for a wood-fire flavor without excess smoke.

Fish must not be overcooked or it will either fall apart, turn rubbery or both. The time it takes to cook a filet depends on the thickness and texture of the fish. Check one piece often in the thickest portion and remove from the heat when it is just opaque throughout and flakes when you insert a fork or knife into the center and twist gently.

The exception to this rule is a fish such as salmon or tuna, which you might prefer to serve less than well done. Choose a thicker piece so it does not cook too quickly. For rare, sear the exterior over very high heat as quickly as possible and plate immediately. For more well-done pieces, increase the cooking time until the fish is at the stage you like when you insert the knife or fork into the center and twist.

Crusting

"We often cook fish with a crust at the restaurant," said Haddix. "There is a crab-crusted orange roughy and Parmesan-crusted rainbow trout on the menu right now. We have a basic seasoned panko breadcrumb base with parsley, garlic and a little Parmesan cheese. We add different seasonings to it based on the dish. For the rainbow trout, the crust has some crushed pecans and more Parmesan cheese added. For the orange roughy, we add crabmeat to the crust, then to garnish top it with lemon butter sauce and lump crabmeat."

To crust the fish, choose a fillet with no skin. You can brush an egg and milk wash over the filet to grab and hold a thick layer of crust, or brush the fish with a little oil for a lighter crust. It's your choice whether to coat the whole fillet or only the top side. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, heat a nonstick saute pan with a bit of canola oil until hot, then place the fish topside down in the pan. When the crust has browned, flip the fillet and finish in the oven until just opaque and flaky.

Other crusted recipes, such as Haddix's Parmesan Crusted Swordfish below, skip the flip in the skillet and go straight to the oven. This works best with a crust that has significant oil in it for browning, such as one heavy on cheese, or with melted butter tossed into the crumbs or drizzled liberally over the fish. A breadcrumb crust without oil will bake forever and remain white and dry.

Saute

To saute fish, you can coat it very lightly with flour or cornstarch or leave it bare for a low-carb, gluten-free dish.

"For anyone trying to avoid gluten or who has allergies to seasonings, the go-to standard is fish sauteed in oil or even without oil on a nonstick pan," said Haddix. "We use spray canola on the skillet because it has a higher smoke point than olive oil and works better for high heat cooking."

Get the skillet very hot before spraying and adding the fish. Again, if your filet has skin, start skin-side down first, then flip the fish and remove the skin while the top cooks. Skillet sauteing works best for thinner fish fillets that can finish cooking right in the skillet. If your fish is thicker, pop it into a preheated 350 degree oven for a few moments, just until it is opaque and flaky in the center but not dry.

Flip the fish again onto the plate, and serve with a sauce that complements the flavor of the fish, or just a wedge of lemon or lime for squeezing. Fish with more fat and stronger flavors, such as salmon, char, steelhead or mackerel can take a more robust sauce.

Although Bonefish Grill's recipes are proprietary, Haddix shared a recipe for crusted swordfish that he adapted from his days working for Pasta Grill. Serve it with a light salad to the side and a wedge of lemon for squeezing.

Eli Haddix's Parmesan Crusted Swordfish

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

2 teaspoons minced fresh basil

 teaspoon dried oregano, or 1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

2 6-ounce skinless swordfish steaks

1 tablespoon canola oil

Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1 Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, mix the Parmesan cheese, basil, oregano, and parsley.

2 Brush the swordfish steaks with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Push both sides into the Parmesan cheese mixture patting it into place.

3 Heat a nonstick, ovenproof skillet over a stove burner until hot. Spray with pan spray and place the fish carefully into the pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until fish is done to your liking in the center and the cheese has melted and formed a crust. Garnish with more fresh basil if desired.

Source: Eli Haddix

Grilled Salmon with Dill and Lemon Zest

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

High heat nonstick spray

4 salmon fillets, about 6 ounces each

2 tablespoons canola

Salt and Pepper

Zest of one lemon

2 tablespoons fresh dill, minced

 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon whole-grain mustard

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1-2 tablespoons heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

1 Clean grill very well, oil grate with high heat nonstick spray and preheat to high. Pat salmon fillets as dry as possible with paper towels.

2 Coat the fillets with canola oil, and sprinkle the skinless side with salt and fresh ground pepper to taste, then evenly sprinkle the dill and lemon zest over the side without skin.

3 Spray the grill liberally again with high heat cooking spray and place the salmon gently onto the grill, skin-side down. Leave on the grill 3-4 minutes, or until you can see the fish is cooked about halfway up the cut side of the filet, then carefully turn. Time will depend on the thickness of the filet. After turning, carefully lift off the skin and season the exposed meat with salt and pepper.

4 When the top of the salmon is marked, after about 1-2 minutes, insert a fork carefully into the center of the thickest piece and twist gently to see how well-done the center is. When the center is finished to your liking, use a silicon spatula to carefully lift the salmon off the grill and turn it onto a plate with the side that once had skin down.

5 While the salmon is cooking, mix the sour cream, mustard, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl. Mix in just enough cream to make a thick sauce. Serve with the salmon.

Pan-Seared Tilapia with Chili Lime Butter

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS

For chile lime butter:

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

1 tablespoon finely chopped shallot

1 teaspoon finely grated fresh lime zest

2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon minced fresh Thai or serrano chile (preferably red), (if less heat is desired, substitute jalapeno)

1/2 teaspoon salt

For fish:

6 (5- to 6-oz) pieces skinless tilapia fillet

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

DIRECTIONS

1 Make chile lime butter:

Stir together butter, shallot, lime zest, lime juice, chile, and salt in a bowl.

Prepare fish:

2 Pat fish dry and sprinkle with salt. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until just smoking, then saute 3 pieces of fish, turning over once with a spatula, until golden and just cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes, and transfer to a plate. Saute remaining fish in remaining tablespoon oil in same manner.

Serve each piece of fish with a dollop of chile lime butter.

Cooks' note:

Chile lime butter can be made 1 day ahead and chilled, covered. Bring to room temperature before using.

Source: Gourmet Magazine, 2003
Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press The ingredients for the brine that will transform your beef brisket from pot roast to gloriously pink and flavorful corned beef: salt, brown sugar, curing salt, juniper berries, allspice, mustard seeds cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, bay leaf and ground ginger.

SHARE Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press The raw beef brisket going into the cooled brine (note the remaining ice cubes) where it will sit for 10 days. Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press After emerging from the brine, the cured beef is slightly gelatinous and a clear translucent pink color. In the foreground are pink curing salt and a handful of spices we used in the brine. Aimee Blume / Special to The Courier & Press The cooked corned beef, sliced across the coarse grain of the brisket, just the way it should be: bright pink, soft yet sliceable, with lots of gelatin and a good bit of fat (you can cut that away after cooking if you like).

By Aimee Blume

In the U.S., corned beef is the most popular dish for St. Patrick's Day, regardless of the fact that corned beef has never been particularly enjoyed in Ireland.

In a way this is fitting because St. Patrick's Day is more celebrated as a cultural tribute to Irish heritage in the U.S. than it is in Ireland itself ... and corned beef has long been a favorite of the Irish in America.

Ireland was historically a country poor in money but rich in farmland. As historical sources attest, in British colonial times, the Irish themselves mostly subsisted on potatoes, dairy products and a little pork while raising beef for English landowners. Vast quantities of beef were preserved (brined or "corned") in Ireland but were then shipped off, mostly to the colonies or the British military.

In Ireland, pork shoulder or loin was brined in a fashion similar to corned beef, and still is. This product is called "bacon," although it has nothing to do with what we call bacon, and it is sometimes simmered with cabbage.

But back to the origin of "Irish" corned beef. When the potato crops failed in 1845 and tens of thousands of Irish emigrated to the U.S., many landed in New York and stayed in the city. There, they found themselves living alongside the large New York Jewish population, who greatly enjoyed beef brisket, which, in the U.S. with it great ranching west, was considered a tough cut and sold cheaply.

Corned beef brisket quickly became a favorite among them and soon was identified as an "Irish" food. Generations later, it has become labeled as old-fashioned and traditional, which it is, to the Irish in America.

Corned beef brisket can be bought at nearly any grocery store already brined, vacuum-packed and ready to be cooked with its own little package of seasonings. More sinister is the cylindrical, firm, very lean and not very flavorful "corned beef" eye of round often sliced and sold in delicatessens for serving on cold sandwiches. Everyone has their own opinion and lean meat has its benefits, but in my opinion, corned beef, either on a plate or on a sandwich, should be hot, fatty, soft and from the brisket.

It's most fun to corn your own.

You can use a brine made with spices and salt only, but this will result in a grayish-brown cooked product that looks like any boiled piece of beef. To get the pretty pink color we associate with corned beef (or bacon, or ham, pastrami or any other cured meat product) you'll need to get curing salt or "pink salt." You can find it at Dewig's Meats in Haubstadt, although you might call first to make sure they have plenty. It can also be ordered online.

The other things you need are time and space. Your meat needs to soak in its spicy brine for at least five days according to many recipes, and for 10 days according to Alton Brown's recipe that we included below. Smaller flat cuts of brisket have less fat and might weigh from 4-5 pounds. If you corn a full brisket, plan on making room in the fridge for a meat that usually weighs from 15-20 pounds.

Make sure you choose a nonreactive vessel of food grade plastic, glass, ceramic or stainless steel in which to soak your meat, or place it in a large zipper bag with the brine. It can be cooked either by boiling or roasting.

Since corning is a bit of a scientific process, we chose to print a recipe from Alton Brown, Television Food Network's guru of food science. See the recipe and pictures of the process below. We thought about making a video, but you can watch Brown himself making the recipe at foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/corned-beef-recipe.html#lightbox-recipe-video.

Also note that as Brown says, the only real necessary ingredients to corn beef are salt, sugar and curing salt for the pink color. The spices are just for flavor, so you can adapt them as you like. If you have pickling spice on hand, you can just use that. Adjust the quantity of whole cloves depending on your liking of them. Add hot red pepper flakes, a few cloves of garlic or a bit of coriander seed if you like.

Corned Beef

6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 quarts water

1 cup kosher salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons saltpeter (curing salt)

1 cinnamon stick, broken into several pieces

1 teaspoon mustard seeds

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

8 whole cloves

8 whole allspice berries

12 whole juniper berries

2 bay leaves, crumbled

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 pounds ice

1 (4 to 5 pound) beef brisket, trimmed

1 small onion, quartered

1 large carrot, coarsely chopped

1 stalk celery, coarsely chopped

DIRECTIONS

1 Place the water into a large 6 to 8 quart stockpot along with salt, sugar, saltpeter (curing salt), cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, peppercorns, cloves, allspice, juniper berries, bay leaves and ginger.

2 Cook over high heat until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Remove from the heat and add the ice. Stir until the ice has melted. If necessary, place the brine into the refrigerator until it reaches a temperature of 45 degrees F. Once it has cooled, place the brisket in a 2-gallon zip top bag and add the brine. Seal and lay flat inside a container, cover and place in the refrigerator for 10 days. Check daily to make sure the beef is completely submerged and stir the brine.

3 After 10 days, remove from the brine and rinse well under cool water. Place the brisket into a pot just large enough to hold the meat, add the onion, carrot and celery and cover with water by 1-inch. Set over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and gently simmer for 2 1/2 to 3 hours or until the meat is fork tender. Remove from the pot and thinly slice across the grain.

Source: TV Food Network, Alton Brown
JASON CLARK / COURIER & PRESS A Neighborhood Market Walmart may be built on the west side of Newburgh in the near future. Walmart Real Estate Business Trust is petitioning to rezone a parcel of land along Indiana 662 across from Casey's General Store, near the intersection of Ellersbusch Road.

SHARE

By Shannon Hall of the Courier and Press

NEWBURGH - It's been a year since the Newburgh Plan Commission first heard the petition to rezone land along Indiana 662 near Ellerbusch Road for a Walmart Neighborhood Market. And no one seems to know when the market will be built.

The rezoning caused controversy in the historic Warrick County town. Dozens of town residents opposed the rezoning, and the plan commission members unanimously gave an unfavorable recommendation twice to the Newburgh Town Council.

The Town Council still approved the rezoning in late June, however, with four of the five council members voting in favor. Councilwoman Anne Rust Aurand, who was a member of the plan commission at the time, was the lone "no" vote.

In the past year, six of the seven plan commission members have resigned and a Town Council member was ousted in the election. Still, the land for the Walmart market hasn't even been sold yet, according to the land owners' Realtor.

Ned and Helen Williams put the property up for sale several years ago, said David Talley.

"Everything takes time," Talley said, noting that the Williams family has a contract with Walmart regarding the land.

Town Council President Leanna Hughes said she knows that Walmart's attorney and the town's attorney have been in contact.

"But I have no idea, any idea, where they are in the whole scheme of things," she said. "I'm surprised it's taking so long."

She said Walmart has asked for information on utilities, so she believes things are progressing.

"It's all in (Walmart's) hands," said Christy Powell, Newburgh town manager. "They haven't even started their building permit process, none of that."

According to a March 25, 2015, email obtained by the Courier & Press, Joseph Calderon, who represented Walmart during the rezoning, told the council and the town attorney they need to get through the zoning process as soon as possible.

"Construction is planned to start in June. Otherwise, if that date can't be met, the project might not survive."

Calderon told the Courier & Press that he can't speak on behalf of Walmart, nor would he comment about the email.

Jennifer Creason, an architect for Walmart Neighborhood Markets, told former town manager Lori Buehlman in early July that Walmart planned to start construction in 2015, after it received a state building permit, according to an email obtained by the Courier & Press.

According to state records, the Neighborhood Market has filed its construction design with the state but no building permit has been finalized.

Walmart can't get the town's building permit until it receives the state's building permit, according to Newburgh Zoning Administrator Tavi Wydicks.

Anne Hatfield, a spokeswoman for Walmart, said there aren't any updates "to report at this time."

Long process

The rezoning process for the Neighborhood Market lasted longer than most. Usually, once a rezoning petition is filed, it is put on the upcoming plan commission agenda. Sometimes no one speaks against the rezoning, depending on the project.

The plan commission, an advisory board, often makes a decision the night the petition is brought to them. The petition then goes on the agenda for the next Town Council meeting. At the Town Council meeting, a rezoning petition has a public hearing, during which remonstrators can speak.

The process usually takes a little more than a month.

It took almost seven months to get the Walmart rezoning petition voted on because of various delays and one legal snafu. The Town Council was supposed to have a public hearing for the rezoning for the first time, but Calderon found a problem.

Walmart Neighborhood Market: Timeline of the rezoning process

When he got to Town Hall, Calderon was notified that the legal description wasn't correct for the zoning. Between plan commission hearings, the project moved to the east due to the position of flood plains. Once the project moved, a portion of it was located outside the original rezoning petition. Therefore, the petition had to go back to the plan commission in June, before the Newburgh Town Council could cast its final vote later that month.

Meanwhile, Walmart began seeking variances to build a second Walmart Neighborhood Market in Evansville, this one on the corner of First and Diamond avenues, in early January 2015. That store has been built, and opened on Jan. 27, 2016.

Councilwoman Tonya McGuire said she hopes to see the market begin construction sooner rather than later "to get over that hump."

"We're just kind of in a waiting game right now," she said. "Obviously I would have liked to have seen the market done during March so it would have been on the assessment for next year for taxes."

In 2015, more than 60 Walmart Neighborhood Markets opened in the U.S., according to Walmart's corporate website. The big-box company also celebrated its 500th Neighborhood Market in early January 2015.
SHARE

By Zach Osowski, zach.osowski@courierpress.com

INDIANAPOLIS  The issue of how to fund Indiana's infrastructure took another step towards conclusion when the Senate approved House Bill 1001, with the tax increases taken out.

The bill passed 39-11, essentially unchanged from the version passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, when Senators eliminated the House's proposed increases on fuel tax and cigarettes. Instead, Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, inserted Gov. Mike Pence's road plan to raise road funds by cutting the state's reserves from 12.5 percent to 11.5 percent.

Kenley left in local options for municipalities to raise wheel taxes as a way to generate more revenue. He said that, coupled with Senate Bill 67, would create funding for locals for 2016 while the state looked for a more stable source of revenue ahead of passing a budget next year.

Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, said he is in favor of much of the bill even though he voted against it. His concern stemmed from possible local tax hikes.

"I voted against the bill because of the local option tax," Tomes said. "I like the bill. I like Senate Bill 67, I like Pence's four-year program, but that was my exception."

Tomes said he was glad the original language calling for the two tax increases was taken out.

In order to find a new source of revenue going forward, the bill would set up a task force to study the issue and report back prior to the 2017-18 budget being passed. Kenley said the task force would look at 10 items, including the possibility of tolling on some of Indiana's highways.

Tomes said the idea of tolling, including on a potential Interstate 69 bridge in Evansville, is something that should at least be looked at as a revenue source.

"I'm in favor of looking all the options we have out there," he said.

HB 1001 will now go back to the House, where it is expected to be sent to a conference committee. The Indiana House has not yet voted on the Senate's road plan, Senate Bill 333, which now has the Regional Cities bill tied in. That bill is scheduled for a second reading Wednesday.
By Zach Osowski, zach.osowski@courierpress.com

INDIANAPOLIS  After almost two hours of discussion, the Indiana Senate passed a bill limiting the reasons a woman can have an abortion.

House Bill 1337, which passed 37-13, started out as a bill specifying how aborted remains should be dealt with. If the bill becomes law, fetuses could not be discarded as medical waste. Instead the bodies would have to be cremated or interred. The bill would also apply to fetuses lost due to miscarriage.

That was the gist of the House bill, but the Senate added the language of Senate Bill 313, which limited the acceptable reasons for an abortion. The bill states a physician would be prohibited from performing an abortion if his patient told him the reason for the abortion was based on the sex, ethnicity or diagnosis of a disability, such as Down syndrome.

Senators opposed to the bill said it limited the choice of women and could force them to keep a child with a disability.

Sen. Vaneta Becker, R-Evansville, was one of three Republicans to vote against the bill. She offered an amendment on SB 313 to set up a fund to help families pay for expenses related to a disability. That amendment was defeated, and Becker said she wasn't allowed to offer a similar amendment to HB 1337.

"This bill doesn't value life, as the authors claim," Becker said. "It values birth."

Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, said this was an attempt by Republicans to force their religious beliefs on everyone.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Mike Young, R-Indianapolis, said the bill was simply an attempt to respect fetal remains and to limit the reasons for an abortion.

"I think as human beings, we can support having some dignity when we lay those remains to rest," Young said.

The bill will now head to the House, where the original author, Rep. Casey Cox, will decide to agree with the changes or dissent. The language regarding the potential reasons for having an abortion was never brought up before the House.

SB 313 did not get a hearing in a House committee after Rep. Tom Dermody decided not to hear it in Public Policy Committee.
SHARE

You rush to the airport with barely enough time to get through airport screening. Then you board your plane, secure your overhead luggage, find your seat, settle in and prepare to relax. But relaxing is becoming more difficult because your seat is such a tight squeeze.

Why, exactly? Because the average distance between rows of seats has been reduced from 35 inches before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches today. The average width of an airline seat is now about 16 1/2 inches, down from 18.

Airlines have been shrinking seat sizes - and charging more for legroom - to boost the bottom line. How tight is too tight? Earlier this month, Congress shot down a proposal by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., to mandate minimum airline seat sizes.

Some consumer groups side with Cohen in seeing this as a concern for government to solve. The airlines see it as a job for market forces - that is, the choices of customers - to address.

We take the latter view - to a point. Congress shouldn't be in the business of dictating seat dimensions to airlines.

If consumers want more room, they may have to pay for it (or take the discount and tolerate the sardine-can feeling). Or they can fly airlines that offer more generous accommodations.

End of story? Not quite. The government might have a valid regulatory role in establishing minimum seat dimensions as a matter of public safety. There are two concerns:

Does the size of a plane's seats influence how quickly it can be evacuated in emergency landings, runway accidents and cabin fires or other mishaps? And does shrunken legroom make passengers more susceptible to blood clots (venous thrombosis) in legs, which in extremely rare cases causes serious, even fatal embolism in the lungs?

Despite past studies, there is no clear answer to either of these safety questions.

The airlines and the FAA have performed some mock evacuations and computer simulations to determine safety. However, neither can re-create every real-life variable: type of emergency, cabin lighting, size of passengers, staff assistance, etc. The answer is - up in the air.

So, FAA, give us more data on the evacuation question. That should be an easy test to stage with multiple aircraft and several hundred FAA employees willing to be guinea pigs. A few planes, a few scenarios, a few limitations on all those exit options, and you'd have a better database.

On blood clots: The chance of developing thrombosis is remote, but anyone traveling for long periods (generally more than four hours) is at higher risk (this is also true of travel by car, bus or train).

While there is no evidence that smaller seat size is a contributing factor to developing leg clots, the medical consensus is that to prevent clots, passengers should leave their seats and walk the aisles during longer flights.

If small seats and narrow aisles make that harder, then theoretically the risk of clot is greater.

In sum, time to update the data on these questions and see if we all can fly safer:

n As aisles diminish and seats get smaller - and let's leave aside for now the obesity epidemic where the fannies in those seats are getting larger - the airlines and the FAA should perform a new round of evacuation tests and computer modeling.

n The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should do further long-range surveillance of venous thrombosis following air travel.

n Some sound advice for the rest of us: Let's get out of our seats and walk around more on long flights.

This editorial first appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
SHARE

Judy Elfreich

Evansville

A story in the Courier & Press on March 1, headlined "House advances teacher pay measure," identifies "a measure to curtail the bargaining abilities of teachers' unions by granting Indiana school districts the authority to negotiate higher pay with individual teachers ..."

Individual teachers, pay attention!

SB10 passed out of the House Education Committee by a party-line (7-4) vote on Monday. SB10 has similar language to its partner bill HB1004. Senate Education Committee Chair Sen. David Kruse and Senate President Pro Tempore David Long have both said the Senate would not advance HB1004, hence the article's statement: "The contentious teacher pay bill moved forward despite GOP Senate leader David Long declaring the issue dead last week."

If I understand correctly, the GOP Senate and House leaders are about to allow an end run around the Senate leaders.

House Ed. Committee members Reps. Beaning (R-Indy), Thompson (R-Lizton) and Cook (R-Cicero) previously pledged to amend language about "closed door deals" in HB1004 that is currently in SB10. However SB10 passed out of the House Education Committee without Chairman Behning or others offering any amendments. If SB10 passes the floor of the house with no amendments, it automatically advances to Gov. Pence for his signature. Voil-! End run successful.

If you care about "a measure to curtail the bargaining abilities of teachers' unions" contact your Indiana House representatives to say "Vote no on SB10!"
SHARE

A.J. Evans

Evansville

Having been an Indiana teacher for 2 years, I would like to share my insight into the problems in teacher retention. Teachers have performance evaluations (just as) any other job has yearly reviews, but my yearly review must include ISTEP test scores. Those scores for every public school student take nearly half a year to be graded, compiled and distributed; we o received results from the 2014-15 only a few months ago. That means, by state law, I have been unable to have my yearly review for 2014-15, but was allowed to teach in 2015-16.

This also results in teacher contracts being a year and a half behind the current teaching year.

It's like when you get hired at a job that pays you every two weeks, but the pays are retroactive. After working two weeks, everyone gets paid except you because that pay was from the two-week before your having been hired. You won't receive your first pay till after the second two-week cycle. But, being salaried, instead of taking only four weeks to receive my do pay, a new teacher may wait a year and a half before moving up a row in the salary scale.

As a new teacher I wait 2-3 years before I am able to advance salary within the corporation even though I contribute just as much to the success of the whole. My peers from collage have received their dues for their hard work, many needing only to punch a clock for 8 hours a day. This does significantly impact decisions to continue a career in teaching.
SHARE

By Joel Mathis And Ben Boychuk, Tribune News Service

President Barack Obama on Tuesday released a new plan to shut down the detention facility at Guant-namo Bay in Cuba, where the U.S. has held hundreds of suspected jihadists since January 2002.

Upon taking office in 2009, the president said closing the facility was a top priority, but Democrats and Republicans in Congress opposed the effort, citing national security concerns.

Under the new proposal, the White House would move as many as 60 of Guantanamo's 91 remaining prisoners to the United States for trial or continued detention.

Has the time come to shutter Gitmo? Or are some detainees just too risky to move? Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis, the RedBlueAmerica columnists, weigh in.

JOEL MATHIS

Gitmo will forever be a stain on America's honor. That's true if it closes today and it would still be true even if the camp had been closed, as it should've been, seven years ago.

Understand: There's nothing wrong with taking or keeping prisoners of war.

But torture is wrong. It is illegal. And both of those facts were true in the early years after 9/11, when prisoners in American custody were tortured at the base. No less an authority than the International Committee of the Red Cross said so, reporting that the camp was designed to break the will of prisoners using "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the organization reported in 2004.

Before Gitmo, Americans knew torture was wrong. George Washington prohibited it of his soldiers. Ronald Reagan signed an international treaty making it illegal. When torture was depicted in the movies, it was almost always the bad guys performing it. Communists. Terrorists. Villains. Now? Crowds cheer Donald Trump when he tells them that "torture works."

Simply put: Gitmo has made a mess of America's claim to moral leadership in the world. We've forgotten how to be the good guys. We've forgotten to be ashamed of evil.

These days, we're told, Gitmo must remain open because its few remaining prisoners are too dangerous to bring to American soil. At best, this is cowardice on the part of our leaders; at worst, it's just cynical pandering by politicians who are all too happy to let Americans stew in fear. We've forgotten how to be ashamed of those characteristics, as well.

"I think it's in the best interest in the nation" to close Gitmo, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said this week. "And it's in the best interest in our moral authority around the world."

That authority has largely been squandered; closing Gitmo would be a modest step toward reclaiming it.

BEN BOYCHUK

The case for closing Guant-namo Bay in 2016 is no better than the case for closing Guant-namo Bay in 2009. The main difference is that President Obama has had nearly eight years to empty the facility, reducing the population to just 91 remaining detainees.

But Obama's new plan overcomes none of the longstanding objections to closing down Gitmo. Appeals to cost savings are weak. Moral appeals are weaker.

These are bad men. Of the 647 detainees who had been released through January 2015, at least 116 returned to terrorism or insurgent activity, according to a report last year by the Director of National Intelligence.

Perhaps more important than sentimental appeals to national honor is a dispassionate assessment of the national interest. The president's plan speaks vaguely of 13 U.S. prisons that might accommodate former Gitmo detainees, but mentions no names for good reason: Nobody wants them.

Don't forget why the Guantanamo prison exists in the first place. No, it wasn't set up to torture prisoners with impunity. The facility was the least bad option the United States had for holding enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. These are people who violated the laws of war, but whose crimes don't fall easily under the purview of civilian courts.

The alternative to keeping them where they are would be putting them on trial or releasing them. Some of the Gitmo detainees are working their way through the Pentagon's byzantine military tribunal system. Transferring other detainees to prisons on U.S. soil would put them well within the jurisdiction of judges who would insist the detainees be tried or cut loose. Cut loose where?

Right now, if the courts rule that the government has no good reason for holding a detainee, the government keeps the detainee in custody at Guantanamo until it has found a foreign country willing to take him. That may not be possible if a detainee is held in a federal prison.

It's easy to say that closing Gitmo would improve America's standing in the world without much in the way of evidence supporting the claim. The truth is, jihadists don't care about where the United States is holding their comrades-in-arms. They care only that we're holding them at all.

Ben Boychuk (bboychuk@city-journal.org) is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Joel Mathis (joelmmathis@gmail.com) is associate editor for Philadelphia Magazine. Visit them on Facebook: www.facebook.com/benandjoel
Defence White Paper

Making Australia poorer not safer

The United States is driving to contain and control China and maintain its domination of the fast growing Asian region. The new Australian Defence White Paper (DWP) obediently adds to US military pressure and provocation designed to achieve this goal, all carried out in the context of a dangerous, growing regional arms race.

The Turnbull government will spend almost $50 billion in the next decade to fund the biggest expansion of the Australian naval power since World War II.

At a cost of $1 trillion over the next 20 years, the DWP is leading Australia down the destabilising and risky path of military escalation, making us poorer but definitely not safer.

This money should really be used to create jobs for the 800,000 unemployed, homes for the homeless or to help the two million Australians living in poverty.

Instead the billions will go into the pockets of the armaments corporations, most of them US-based.

Strategic assumptions

The major investments contained in this White Paper are based on two key strategic assumptions. Firstly, that the US remains our most important ally and the ultimate guarantor of the liberal order upon which the security of our sea lines of communication depend.

However, alliance with the US has pulled Australia in wars it did not need to fight  Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It continues to place our nation at risk of further involvements.

Secondly, that while the rise of China continues to be a source of economic prosperity, the countrys military expansion and refusal to obey the rules-based global order create tensions that Australia must rearm in order to counter.

The rather bland phrase rules-based order (which is used 53 times in the DWP) is of course spin for capitalist rules, for what is an American creation, the rules of the jungle!

All that China actually threatens is the continuing military supremacy in and economic and political domination of the region by the USA.

Surrounded by US bases in Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, with the US taking over nearly half of Guam for a massive military base, with Australia allowing US marines to be based in Darwin, it is hardly surprising that China is moving to defend its borders.

China is asserting its role in the region, as one might expect from a growing and powerful country. It is also asserting its right to self defence. For Australia to risk making China an enemy, because it suits the interests of the USA, is the height of folly.

China

Chinese officials have commented that Australia has been encouraged, seduced and threatened into a military build-up by the United States.

Australia should try to maintain a good economic and trade relationship with China ... its military expenditure will not bring any benefit to Australia either strategically or economically.

Throwing our weight around

The DWP concedes that any attack on Australia is an extremely remote prospect but it feels able to talk about preparing the ADF to take a more active role in shaping regional affairs.

The boost in naval and air power will allow Australia to project force further and more powerfully in the region. The US Deputy Sheriff is creating the most powerful regional military force (apart from the US) so it can throw its weight around in our region.

The DWP states that the government is committed to working with the United States and like-minded partners to maintain the rules-based order by making practical and meaningful military contributions where it is in our interest to do so.

Interoperability

The full spectrum maritime forces outlined in the DWP are designed to operate seamlessly with the US in sea-lanes, cyberspace and outer space.

The maxim within Australian defence circles is interoperability with the US military.

Interoperability  the process of Australian forces becoming more closely integrated with those of the US  means that Australian forces can operate with US forces and no other. This is because internal military communications are now dependent on US-controlled systems

This ever-deepening military subservience to the United States compromises Australias security, because our support for US engagement in the Asia-Pacific adds to regional tensions and increases the risk of Australian involvement in war. It does not in any way serve our strategic interests.

Australias economic well-being, security and national independence require a foreign policy which upholds peace and supports transparency, disarmament, co-operation and mutually beneficial trade.

Fightback!

April 5 to 18 are the dates for the Global Day of Action against Military Spending (GDAMS).

Organise $1 trillion protests in your area.

September 26 to October 3 is the time to aim directly at the US as we protest the 50th anniversary of the US base Pine Gap. The facility directs US killer drone assassinations, is crucial for US nuclear war-fighting strategies and is involved in massive surveillance programs.

NAVY

12 regionally superior new submarines. Design and construction will soak up at least $50 billion, while fit-out of weapons and systems will cost at least $5 billion.

9 anti-submarine warfare frigates and weapons. Cost $ 4 billion.

3 Air Warfare Destroyers. In addition to the $9.1 billion construction bill, the destroyers will also require a further $5 billion to cover the installation of combat systems.

12 offshore patrol vessels. At a cost of $3-4 billion;

7 PA-8 Poseidon spy planes

Drones to assist warships

Mine defence and countermeasures equipment

Land based anti-ship missiles

Maritime Anti-Ship Missiles. Cost $ 5 billion;

AIR FORCE

72 F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. US manufacturer Lockheed Martin will charge $15.3 billion. The F-35 is the first Australian defence purchase with the explicitly stated intention of improving interoperability with the US. Australia will be dependent on US technicians to keep the aircraft in the air. The planes have technical problems, there are questions about their suitability and ability to operate effectively in combat. Many of the problems with the F35 relate to its extraordinary, computer-based complexity.

12 E/A-18G Growler attack planes produced by Boeing at a cost of $2.1 billion. These aircraft have unique air-to-air weapon capabilities and advanced radar detection.

New missile and missile defence systems

Cocos Islands. Airport to be upgrades to accommodate the P8 Poseidon surveillance planes, 7 new Triton long-range surveillance drones, and land-based missiles.

ARMY

Tanks. The army will upgrade its current fleet of 59 US-manufactured Abrams battle tanks at a cost of up to $15 billion.

Drones

Armed reconnaissance helicopters. Cost $5-$6 billion

PERSONNEL

Uniformed personnel to increase by 4,900 to 62,400.

An extra 1,200 civilian jobs, including 900 special positions for cyber and surveillance

SURVEILLANCE & CYBER WARFARE
Editorial

Nuke industry targets SA

South Australians are being bombarded with media messages boosting the benefits of nuclear industries and ridiculing their opponents. People with concerns over the controversial proposals being bandied about are accused of promoting the rainbow warrior mythologies of the hard left and engaging in Midnight Oil-style gesture politics, according to the Australian Financial Review. Sledging from the pro-nuclear sector has kicked up since the release of the tentative recommendations of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission headed by former SA Governor and retired Rear Admiral, Kevin Scarce.

The state is suffering high unemployment already and the situation is set to become disastrous when General Motors Holden stops vehicle production next year. The nuclear lobby is exploiting this vulnerability to sell some very doubtful goods to a wary public. To nobodys surprise, the recommendations coming from the Royal Commission are for a waste dump to be established in the state and for other nuclear options, including power generation, to remain open.

A dump (officially a storage facility or even repository) for high level nuclear waste is being sold as a jobs and finance bonanza. It is projected to cost $147 billion over the claimed 120 year life of the dump but bring in $257 billion in revenue over the same period. A handy $5 billion a year would be put into a sovereign wealth fund for the cash-strapped state. The people of SA are right to be sceptical. Last year SA senator Sean Edwards said that nuclear power would mean free electricity for residents of the state.

The Royal Commission found that nuclear energy would not be economical for the foreseeable future because of relatively flat demand for electricity and the unexpected and, for some corporations, unwelcome success of wind and solar power generation. If, at some stage, Australia needs to hurry up its efforts to get to a zero emission target for power generation by 2050, the nuclear option is back on the table.

Nuclear power is still being sold as clean and safe energy in spite of the fact that other countries are prepared to pay $1.75 million per tonne to store their waste in South Australia. Commissioner Scarce stunned an audience at the Adelaide Town Hall with the claim that even the major nuclear accidents over the decades, the most recent of which took place at Fukushima, have not resulted in serious consequences for human health.

The federal government is looking kindly on developments in SA. The Liberal party has had a pro-nuclear stance for many decades and a Howard-era inquiry into the nuclear option came back with a big thumbs up. Josh Frydenberg, the Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia, says it would be a brave federal government that stood between the people of SA and their preferred options for the future. The corporate media drum beat is that the community is changing its mind on nuclear industries and their safety record.

At odds with the claim that there is hardly the need to discuss such a benign proposition, Australias safe credentials are being sold. The country is politically and geologically stable and we have vast empty areas to dump the nuclear cast-offs. The spirit of Terra Nullius is alive and well in the current, national nuclear conversation. Assurances about Australias supposed high technical standards were undermined recently with revelations that the ship carrying treated nuclear waste back to Australia from France was a flag of convenience ship of shame of doubtful suitability with a low paid crew.

Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians would be well advised to resist state and federal government agendas, particularly the reckless proposition for a high grade waste dump in SA. Its a foot in the door for the whole nasty, antiquated industry. The argument will go seeing we currently store high grade waste, we may as well have the power generation that could use it. And, as can be seen during various diplomatic showdowns around the world, if a country has nuclear power generation, it is an open question whether they have or are developing nuclear weapons. Australia mustnt buy into this nightmare.
A death too many

Time for a renewed national Stop Deaths in Custody campaign

On Saturday August 2, 2014 Julieka Dhu, a young Yamatji woman from Geraldton WA, was arrested for unpaid parking fines and locked up in the South Hedland watchhouse. This was not unusual  in Western Australia it has become a habit to lock up those too poor to pay their fines.

Women and Indigenous people are hit hardest by this and Indigenous women  doubly so. The number of Indigenous women jailed for fine default in Western Australia soared from 33 in 2008 to 223 in 2013. One in six Indigenous people in jail in WA are there because they could not pay fines.

Within three days Julieka Dhu was dead, a death that would never happen in a decent society.

What has happened since shows how a deeply ingrained racist culture in many institutions, combined with increasingly anti-people policies by successive governments has been lethal for peoples of the First Nations.

Julieka was the 339th Indigenous person to die in custody in Australia since the Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody delivered its report and recommendations in 1991. Central to its recommendations were measures to stop Aboriginal people ending up in custody in the first place and to establish custody notification services for those cases where they did.

These recommendations have largely gone unimplemented.

Calls by the WA Aboriginal Legal Service for funding to host a 24-hour hotline have so far fallen on deaf ears. A promise by WA Premier Barnett to establish one is yet to be acted on.

Since 1991, Indigenous deaths in custody have increased by more than 150 percent, from about 10 to about 15 a year and Aboriginal people are being jailed more than ever before.

The Indigenous prison population has grown from 2,140 in 1991 to 9,300 in 2015, with Aboriginal women being the fastest growing number of prisoners.

Much of this growth must be attributed to law and order policies of federal and state governments, which predominantly entrap Indigenous people, economic-social policies that have massively cut into Indigenous programs, as well as other programs affecting the less well off, and specific, racist policies such as the Northern Territory Intervention and closure of remote Indigenous settlements, that disempower Indigenous communities and bring them under a pervasive control regime.

This is movement in the opposite direction from that the 1991 Commission recommended. It called for a transfer of resources into Aboriginal communities to develop community self-management.

Juliekas traumatised family have been campaigning for justice and to find out the truth surrounding her death. It took 16 months for a coronial inquiry to commence and this was suspended for a further three months after the first week. It looks like the police needed that time to prepare their case in response to the damning evidence of their inhumane and brutal treatment of a young woman they picked up as she was about to receive medical attention for infected injuries.

The police did take Julieka to the Port Hedland hospital three times, in response to her constant cries of pain and pleading for help, but told the staff she was faking her injuries. The staff obliged by recording her problem as behavioural issues and did not bother to take blood tests, x-rays or even her temperature.

The third time the police dragged Julieka to the hospital it appears she was already dead, possibly at police hands, according to other witnesses in the lock up.

That Juliekas family has even made it as far as a coronial inquiry in this time is exceptional in Western Australia. The normal course of action in this process, which is based on police investigating police, is that the inquiry starts only once police complete their investigation and they routinely draw this out until the heat goes out of the issue.

Only her familys relentless campaigning has kept Juliekas case alive and kept pressure on the WA government. Her uncle Shaun Harris has endlessly crossed the country and spoken at rallies organised to keep Juliekas case in the spotlight.

We had to rely massively on social media, because the mainstream media yet again fails us black people of Australia on the really important black issues, he says, adding, These arent just black issues, but Australian issues as well ... We cant keep being pushed aside or shoved under the carpet. They have to stop being in denial about how theyre treating us, how theyre murdering us.

A National Day of Solidarity is being planned for March 14, 2016, the day the coronial inquest re-commences.

Harris sees this as one more step in gaining truth and justice, not only for his niece Julieka, but for the many others who have died in custody. It is a step in the struggle to prevent all deaths in custody in future.

April 15 marks 25 years since the release of the Royal Commissions findings and recommendations. It is a good time to renew the campaign to stop Aboriginal deaths in custody, by fighting institutional and systemic racism, not only in Western Australia but Australia wide.
Culture & Life

Illegal, immoral, indefensible

UK government breaking the law supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, say leading lawyers

As Britain continues to supply weapons and related items to Saudi Arabia for the prosecution of the Arab kingdoms murderous military campaign against Yemen, a group of legal experts have warned that Britains action is in breach of national, EU and international law.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Britain should be proud of the role it had played in securing the global Arms Trade Treaty.

The UK government is breaking national, EU and international law and policy by supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia in the context of its military intervention and bombing campaign in Yemen, according to an analysis by eminent international law experts commissioned by Amnesty International UK and Saferworld, both members of the Control Arms coalition.

The lawyers, Professor Philippe Sands QC, Professor Andrew Clapham and Blinne Ni Ghralaigh of Matrix Chambers, conclude in their comprehensive legal opinion that, on the basis of the information available, the UK government is acting in breach of its obligations arising under the Arms Trade Treaty, the EU Common Position on Arms Exports and the UKs Consolidated Criteria on arms exports by continuing to authorise transfers of weapons and related items to Saudi Arabia within the scope of those instruments, capable of being used in Yemen.

They conclude that any authorisation by the UK of the transfer of weapons and related items to Saudi Arabia  in circumstances where such weapons are capable of being used in the conflict in Yemen, including to support its blockade of Yemeni territory, and in circumstances where their end-use is not restricted, would constitute a breach by the UK of its obligations under domestic, European and international law.

They also conclude that the UK government can properly be deemed to have actual knowledge ... of the use by Saudi Arabia of weapons, including UK-supplied weapons, in attacks directed against civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international law, since at least May 2015.

The UK government asserts that it is not taking an active part in the military campaign in Yemen. However, the UK has issued more than 100 licences for arms exports to Saudi Arabia since the state began bombing Yemen in March 2015. That includes more than 1.75 billion worth of combat aircraft and bombs for the use of the Royal Saudi Air Force.

In 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the Arms Trade Treaty as a landmark agreement that would save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world. He said Britain should be proud of the role it had played in securing an agreement that would make the world safer for all.

The UK has fuelled this appalling conflict through reckless arms sales which break its own laws and the global Arms Trade Treaty it once championed, said Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK Director.

This legal opinion confirms our long-held view that the continued sale of arms from the UK to Saudi Arabia is illegal, immoral and indefensible.

Thousands of civilians have been killed in Saudi Arabia-led air strikes, and theres a real risk that misery was Made in Britain.

The UK government must halt these arms sales immediately.

Saferworld Executive Director Paul Murphy said: UK government policy on Yemen is in disarray. The UK gives aid to help the victims of war while illegally supplying weapons that cause their misery.

If the UK seriously wants to sit at the heart of the rules-based international order as claimed in the recent National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review, it must itself abide by the rules to which it has signed up.

Its time the government acted as a peace broker, rather than an arms broker. The first step would be to suspend further licences and transfers of weapons to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition. With the start this week of peace talks, the UK government should help turn the ceasefire into a permanent peace by stopping its support to one side of the conflict.

Although the focus of their opinion was on the UK governments legal obligations regarding the authorisation regime for weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia, the lawyers underscored that all sides to the conflict in Yemen are accused of serious breaches of international law.

The conflict in Yemen has turned the country into one of the worlds worst humanitarian crises. Civilian targets including hospitals, schools, markets, grain warehouses, ports and a displaced persons camp have been hit in air strikes by Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces. Since the conflict escalated in mid-March 2015, more than 5,800 people have been killed and tens of thousands wounded. Two-and-a-half million have been forced to flee their homes. More than 80 percent of the population (21 million people) are in need of humanitarian aid, including two million children at risk of malnutrition.

The UK is not alone in sending arms to and supporting parties to the conflict. Several other countries have also supplied arms to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition now fighting in Yemen, with supplies to the Huthis shrouded in secrecy.

The agencies called on the government to immediately take the following steps:

Immediately suspend arms transfers and military support to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners which could be used to commit or facilitate further serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Yemen.

Carry out a thorough and independent investigation into UK arms transfers and reported war crimes in Yemen.

Make every possible diplomatic effort to help bring the conflict to an end.

Continue to push for an end to the de facto blockade so that vital humanitarian and commercial supplies enter Yemen and reach those most in need.

Fully implement the provisions of the Arms Trade Treaty, and encourage all other arms exporters to do the same.  Amnesty International.

Third World Resurgence
Sussex News

Story Saved

You can find this story in My Bookmarks.

Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right.
A condemned Florida murderer is scheduled to be the first person executed in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that its death penalty system is unconstitutional. Larry Hannan of the Florida Times-Union reports that attorneys for 51-year-old white supremacist Mark James Asay, who is set to be executed on March 17, argue that the execution should be delayed indefinitely until the Florida Legislature amends the law, which was found to be in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution because the judge rather than the jury makes the final decision of whether someone is sentenced to death. Assistant Attorney General Charmaine Millsaps disagrees, stating that the execution should proceed because the U.S. Supreme Court did not rule one way or another on retroactivity. Others argue that the decision is "merely procedural" and should not interfere with planned executions. Asay was sentenced to death in 1987 for murdering a black man and a cross-dressing prostitute he believed was a black woman, but was actually white. A Supreme Court ruling of his case is expected to be made this week.The Florida Supreme Court issued a stay on Asay's execution.The mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire publicly criticized Gov. Maggie Hassan for failing to step up and address the deadly heroin epidemic plaguing the Granite State. Bill McMorris of the Washington Free Beacon reports that last June Gov. Hassan vetoed a budget that would have significantly boosted drug program spending and two months later, she denied Mayor Gatsas' request to establish a drug court. Other critics say that Gov. Hassan has stonewalled spending on the issue, failed to appoint a top official to lead the fight and is currently more focused on her Senate campaign than governing her state. Last month, 60 people overdosed on opioids leading to 14 deaths, making February 2016 the single-deadliest month on record in the state.House Republicans are set to vote in the next few weeks on a resolution that would allow lawmakers to file a brief in the Supreme Court case that will determine if President Obama overstepped his authority with his 2014 executive action on immigration. Susan Ferrechio of the Washington Examiner reports that the vote could permit the House to file the brief in thecase "as an institution on behalf of self government," says Speaker Paul Ryan. Obama's deferred deportation program is being challenged in the brief by Texas and two dozen other states, arguing that the president "exceeded his constitutional authority" when he went over the heads of Congress to defer deportation of illegal immigrants.
After more than a month of speculation, the announcement that Dick Smith was shutting down has brought some closure to the saga. While we know that receivers failed to find a suitable buyer for the failed retailer, there are still lingering questions about the future of Dick Smith and its remaining debts.

Heres a breakdown of what we know, and what we dont about the Dick Smith collapse.

What we know

Fire sale

Already on the ropes, Dick Smith failed to turn its luck around with a fire sale in December. The company advertised discounts up to 70 percent, but the biggest savings were only on private-label products such as phone chargers. The sale was sparked by a $60 million asset write-down, which hammered shares down to just 40 cents at the time.

Administration

Dick Smith officially sunk into administration on 5 January citing pressure to attain short-term funding as a major factor. McGrathNicol was appointed as administrator representing the business, while Ferrier Hodgson was appoint as the receiver by Dick Smiths secured creditors.

Vouchers

One of the first blows to stakeholder confidence was that Dick Smith would not be honouring the value of gift cards. This came as particularly bad news for customers, as the vouchers were heavily advertised over the Christmas period.

Private equity

When Dick Smith fell to administration, eyes turned to a blog by investment analyst Matt Ryan, who had penned an article two months prior titled Dick Smith is the greatest private equity heist of all time.

Ryan claimed that private equity firm Anchorage had only paid $10 million out of its own pockets then used Dick Smiths balance sheet and liquidated assets to fund the $115 million acquisition from Woolworths in 2012, then profit from the retailer's hugely successful public float  or, as Ryan wrote, "to turn Dick Smith from a $10m piece of mutton into a $520m lamb".

Chief executive

Chief executive Nick Abboud resigned a week after Dick Smith was placed in administration. He was replaced by Don Grover, former managing director of Retail Fusion Brands to see out the administration in the interim.

Debts

During the first creditors meeting, administrators McGrathNicol revealed that Dick Smith owed $390 million in debts, $140 million secured and $250 million unsecured.

Secured creditors

The Australian reported that the secured debt consists of $60 million in overdraft fees to HSBC, $35 million in revolving working capital to NAB and another $40 million to NABs New Zealand branch for working capital.

David Jones partnership

Electronics Powered by Dick Smith, the company's joint venture with David Jones, was an early casualty, seeing 181 staff let go and 27 outlets close.

Closure

Dick Smith receivers announced the company would officially close after failing to find a suitable buyer. The remaining 372 Dick Smith stores will close over the next eight weeks.

Job cuts

All remaining 2,460 Australian and 430 New Zealand staff will be let go when Dick Smith closes its doors over.

Entitlements

When receivers announced that Dick Smith was closing, they also said that all Australian employee entitlements are "expected" to be paid in full.

Shareholders

Days before stores closed, receivers made a statement to the ASX saying that shareholders were ranked last among all creditors  and hence likely to lose out. They also advised that transferring shares was not allowed unless there was a compelling commercial or other reasons to do so.

Founder

The companys namesake, Dick Smith, was vocal in his thoughts on why the electronics retailer failed. Smith told Fairfax that: "you don't need to be very bright to realise that a company worth $90 million one moment is unlikely to be worth $500 million 12 months later just because it had a change of ownership".

"It was pretty obvious to me that anyone buying those shares would be taking quite a risk."

Gerry Harvey

Harvey Norman chief executive Gerry Harvey also took aim at Dick Smiths listing. He told Fairfax he thought the world had gone mad when Dick Smith floated for $500 million, saying: "Then five minutes later this bloke [Anchorage Capital] dresses it up and sells it for $500 million [in 2013], and I'm looking at this and saying 'I don't believe this, this business is stuffed'... I'm thinking I wouldn't buy these shares for 10, let alone $2."

Next: What we don't know
Cisco took the wraps off a new hyper-converged infrastructure product line called HyperFlex Systems on Tuesday, pitching it as a more economical and better-performing alternative to Nutanix and other startups in the fast-emerging space.

HyperFlex Systems, unveiled at the vendor's annual partner conference in San Diego, consists of Cisco UCS servers and software-defined storage technology that Cisco developed through a strategic partnership with Springpath, a California-based startup founded by former VMware storage engineers.

The technology, which Cisco is calling the HX Data Platform, pools storage from solid-state and conventional hard drives and turns it into an enterprise-grade object storage system, Todd Brannon, Ciscos director of product marketing for UCS, said in an interview.

Cisco also revealed that it led a previously undisclosed Series C round of funding in Springpath. Brannon declined to specify the amount of the investment but said Cisco has been working with Springpath since 2012, the year it was founded.

Springpath spokespeople didnt respond to a request for comment. The startup has raised US$34 million in funding to date from investors Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Redpoint Ventures and Stanford University, according to Crunchbase.

CRN USA in January was first to report that Cisco had signed an OEM agreement with Springpath and made an undisclosed investment in the startup. Cisco has the option to acquire Springpath based on revenue results, according to CRN USA's sources.

Cisco's HyperFlex pricing for a three-node HyperFlex cluster starts at US$59,000 including one year of 24x7x4 on-site support. Cisco is now taking orders and plans to start shipping products sometime this month, a spokesman said.

Cisco is a late arrival to the hyper-convergence market, where top startups Nutanix and Simplivity have collectively raised close to US$590 million over the past several years. But according to Brannon, hyper-convergence startups have taken "some real architectural shortcuts" that have slowed mainstream adoption of the technology.

"Thats what we're fixing with HyperFlex," Brannon told CRN USA.

Brannon said while hyper-converged startups like to tout their offerings as being quick to set up, they're typically combinations of compute and storage that dont account for networking. As a result, customers have to figure out how to connect all the different parts together, and getting a system up and running can take days or weeks, he said.

Cisco, with its deep expertise in networking, has made sure this won't be an issue with HyperFlex. "Were going to bring you a solution you can deploy in less than an hour, including the network, and thats crucial," he said.

One particular area of strength for Cisco HyperFlex is that customers can use it to scale their compute and storage independently, said Brannon.

Cisco is not the only established vendor to make a late foray into the hyperconverged market. VCE, the converged infrastructure division of EMC, recently announced its own appliance, the VxRail.

VxRail starts at a list price of A$60,000. An entry-level appliance would boast hybrid storage, six cores, 64GB of memory and 3.6TB storage. A top-spec, all-flash node could run up to 28 cores, 512GB memory and 19TB storage.

Programs and competitors

HyperFlex will be included in many of Cisco's channel incentive programs, including the Value Incentive Program (VIP) and Opportunity Incentive Program (OIP), and Cisco's field sales teams will also work with partners to sell HyperFlex, said Ken Trombetta, vice president of Cisco's Global Partner Organisation.

Cisco was attracted to Springpath because the startup has developed what Brannon described as "an entirely new, purpose-built file system" thats designed for hyper-convergence.

Most existing hyper-converged offerings rely on open-source operating systems such as Ext4 [a file system for Linux], which weren't intended to be used in hyper-converged environments, Brannon said.

Cisco is also touting HyperFlex's performance, which Brannon said is superior to offerings currently on the market. He told CRN USA that customers who've been testing HyperFlex through Cisco's early access program, some of which are using hyper-converged offerings from Nutanix and other startups, like what they're seeing.

"[Cisco HyperFlex] is stopping them dead in their tracks," Brannon said. After testing it out, customers "are stopping and turning around and giving us purchase orders".

Cisco HyperFlex also offers customers better cost of ownership because it includes data optimisation technology that lets them buy less infrastructure and raw capacity, according to Brannon.

Brannon said while Cisco doesn't intend to walk away from its existing UCS partnerships with Simplivity and other vendors, it does view Springpath's technology as superior and plans to lead with it in sales discussions with customers.

"Our confidence in [Springpath] technology is reflected in the fact that weve fully productized it. We're adding a product family to our company, and were going to go drive with this," Brannon said.

"This is definitely not aimed at SimpliVity," said Brannon. "This technology is going to leapfrog a lot of the incumbent players, but I think Nutanix has a lot more to be worried about here than SimpliVity does."

Chris Morgan, a Nutanix vice president in charge of channels and distribution, told CRN that the San Jose-based company isn't surprised to see new players enter the hyper-convergence space.



"Cisco is a formidable competitor with a strong channel base, but with a history of false starts entering new markets," Morgan said in an email. "Channel partners have already communicated to us that they will take a wait- and-see approach with this unproven technology from an untested startup."

This article originally appeared at crn.com
Megaport and NextDC are making competing forays into the Western Australian market with on-ramp services for Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

The timing of the launches comes within a day of one another, with Megaport hosting a launch event at the Microsoft HQ in Perth on Wednesday and NextDC also announcing its push this week.

NextDC has partnered with Nextgen Networks to bring its AXONVX product to 13 data centres in the state capital.

AXONVX is a virtual exchange that allows users "on-demand private connectivity to public clouds", such as Microsoft ExpressRoute, AWS DirectConnect and Direct Link for IBM Softlayer. AXONVX was already available from NextDC's P1 data centre  the deal with Nextgen takes the services to co-locations facilities such as Fujitsu, Metronode, Vocus and ASG.

Nextgen Networks has offered east-west 100Gbps wavelength capacity for the past year, offering support for sub-rated 10Gbps and 100Gbps Ethernet services with a full suite of connectivity options.

Megaport's "maturity"

AXONVX competes with the "elastic interconnection" offering from Megaport, the company established by NextDC founder Bevan Slattery in 2013 after he led the public float of the data centre business. Megaport doesn't own networks, but rather leases Ethernet capacity from other providers, such as the carriers, to provide its customers with contract-free access to high-speed network connectivity.

Megaport chief executive Denver Maddux told CRN: "We are finally bring our service to WA, which is kind of a big deal. No one in market today is delivering ExpressRoute from Perth to Azure in Sydney and Melbourne. We will be the first ExpressRoute partner to do that."

He outlined Megaport's flexibility. "We offer 100 percent uptime. It is up to [the customer] what they want to provision. A customer buys from us a port, whether 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps, it has only the limitation of the physical capabilities of that port.

"If someone wants 500 Mbps in Azure and 500 Mbps in AWS on a 10-gig port, they have used 10 percent of their port capability, then they are priced accordingly," said Maddux.

He was thrilled that Microsoft had opened its doors for Megaport's launch. "The Microsoft Azure team has been great to work with. Everyone uses a little bit or all of them. The Azure ExpressRoute team, especially the Azure field team, are very engaged with their communities. For us, it is great. Megaport is very focused on how we support local communities."

Megaport provides ExpressRoute access to both the Azure infrastructure-as-a-service platform as well as Office 365  essential in a state where Microsoft is the dominant cloud player.

"Microsoft has invested heavily into academic platforms" for Western Australian schools and universities, said Maddux  "a lot of time and effort in manpower and pure dollars so that universities are using Office 365 and Microsoft products. Kids at school have access to all the tools.

"A lot of people are using Google Apps, but the majority of big corporations and mining are Microsoft shops. That is what they use, what they trust."

While AWS has strong traction on the east coast thanks to its first mover advantage, Ignia's Joshua Boys agreed that Perth is very Microsoft-centric.

The director of the award-winning Microsoft partner said: "We don't see a lot of people using [AWS] Direct Connect. A couple of customers use that, but we are definitely an Azure town, especially in government."

Boys pointed to the whole-of-government Common Use Arrangement with the vendor, which gives state agencies access to Microsoft's cloud tools. "Eighty percent of the staff members have access to Office 365  part of the plans for all of them will involve ExpressRoute."

He added: "ExpressRoute is critical for performance workloads. It used to be the security discussion  we don't need that, our customers are savvy to that and not scared. What they need is performance."

For Ignia, the arrival of Megaport and AXONVX means one thing  choice. Until now, Telstra had been the only option in town.

"It take another thing off the table. Regardless of what data centre [the customers] are in, if they can connect via ExpressRoute, it takes the latency off the table. We like to choose Telstra because it is the best option, not because you have to. Telstra is well liked here [in Perth], and they have most of the government work, but options are key," said Boys.

AXONVX vs Megaport

Like Megaport, NextDC claimed to have reached Perth first, successfully delivering "Western Australias first direct connection to Microsoft ExpressRoute for Office 365" on 26 February with a partnership between the Internet Association of Australia (IAA) and not-for-profit peering exchange IX Australia, according to NextDC chief executive Craig Scroggie.

Microsoft ExpressRoute services are available to all NextDC customers and to IAA members with paid peering services on IX Australia exchanges, said IX Australia Technical manager Joe Wooller. AXONVX and IX Australia are offering a period of free, reciprocal access to each others networks.

According to NextDC, its key differentiators from Megaport in Perth are the 13 WA data centres served by Nextgen, as well as AXONVX's "dedicated carrier-delivered circuit per customer, not shared intercap, which has benefits in security, performance, and 100 percent guarantee that the customer receives the connectivity they ordered".

Megaport's Maddux was unfazed by the competition. "NextDC will manage their own business  as they are supposed to be a neutral data centre provider and they will compete with their customer, that's fine. We are generally not too fussed with AXON; we don't hear too much about it. I am sure they have a fine product but I am focused on how Megaport works."

He agreed it was "more than coincidence" that NextDC had launched at the same time as Megaport.

"We have two-year mature product, they have something they launched a few months ago. Our launch party is happening with Microsoft  not say there is favouritism but we have put in the hard yards. We have done a very grassroots campaign," said Maddux.

Maddux said Megaport would go live in Perth within the next two weeks.
The Australian arm of Dimension Data has won Ciscos Asia-Pacific partner of the year.

The solutions provider will accept the honour in San Diego, USA on Wednesday afternoon Australian time at an invitation-only event for Ciscos global partner award winners.

Chief executive Rodd Cunico and business unit operations director Pete Murray are currently in San Diego representing Dimension Data Australia at the annual Cisco Partner Summit.

"We've just celebreated being in partnership with Cisco for 25 years in Australia," Murray told CRN. "So there's a long, solid history of continued growth between the two organisations."

"We structure our solutions business through five verticals. And with the exception of our Microsoft vertical, the other four are strongly influenced by - if not dominated by - Cisco architectural framework."

Dimension Data also scored a second gong when its Asia-Pacific security unit took out the architectural excellence partner of the year award for security.

On Tuesday Australian time, Dimension Data global security group executive Matt Gyde - an Australian now based in Singapore - spoke of a previously tense relationship between his company and Cisco, and its recent thawing and goodwill.

It was a tense relationship. I think we have worked through a lot of those issues together, he said on a panel at the partner conference.

"Once again, thats one of the great things about working with Cisco. We can sit down and have an argument, but get it sorted out for the betterment of both organisations," Gyde added.

No other Australian companies scored a Cisco global award, with two Chinese resellers and two Indian companies making up the rest of the Asia-Pacific contingent. Ciscos Asia-Pacific partner award winners will be revealed early Thursday morning Australian time.

The journalist travelled to San Diego courtesy of Cisco.
Ciscos global channel manager has announced that its annual partner summit, currently running in San Diego, would repeat this year in November.

The vendors global partner organisation senior vice president Wendy Bahr said that Ciscos internal sales conference Global Sales Experience is always held in August or September every year.

We fire up the troops, talk about our strategy and we do a lot of training. And then we wait - six, seven, eight, nine... sometimes ten months to have this event with you. Thats not very aligned. I think we can do a better job.

Bahr then told the crowd of more 2,200 attendees at the Cisco Partner Summit that the conference would now switch to the northern autumn, to be close to GSX.

To drive alignment and share the exact same information - so that were in lock-step. Because when were in lock-step, we win.

The announcement means that 2016 will have two Cisco Partner Summits - the second will be held in San Francisco from 1 to 3 November.

With the speed at which things are changing, Im not concerned at all that we wont have enough to talk about in November, Bahr told the media afterwards. Almost 90 percent of the content from GSX in August will be re-purposed with a partner lens around it.
Cisco Systems CEO Chuck Robbins has had enough of startup Nutanix's trash-talking his company's entry to the hyper-convergence market, and now he's firing back.

"Someone from Nutanix said that Cisco doesn't have a track record of being very successful when they enter new markets," Robbins said during a Q&A session with press at the Cisco Partner Summit 2016 in San Diego Wednesday morning Australian time.

Robbins disputed this and said that during his 18-year career at Cisco, "We've been relatively successful entering new markets."

Cisco unveiled a new hyper-converged infrastructure product line Wednesday Australian time called HyperFlex Systems, which marries its Unified Computing System (UCS) servers with software-defined storage developed in partnership with startup Springpath.

Cisco has also led a previously undisclosed Series C round of funding in Springpath.

Earlier in the day, Chris Morgan, a Nutanix vice president in charge of channels and distribution, downplayed the competitive threat posed by HyperFlex Systems in an interview with CRN USA. He said Cisco has had "a history of false starts" when entering new markets and described Springpath as "untested" and its technology as "unproven".

Robbins said Nutanix's comments remind him of the trash-talking Cisco heard from Hewlett-Packard executives when it entered the server business with its UCS product line in 2009. At the time, HP had just begun ramping up its networking business and the fur was flying between the two vendors on a regular basis.

In a 2010 interview with CRN USA, HP enterprise executive Randy Seidl predicted that Cisco's UCS line would be dead within a year. Instead, Cisco's UCS business has grown steadily and has helped the vendor gain a 6.6 percent revenue share of the global server market, according to recent figures from IDC.

Cisco hasn't had a great track record in storage, however. Its US$415 million acquisition of flash storage vendor Whiptail Systems didn't pan out, and Cisco ended up halting development of products last summer.

Nutanix, which has raised more than US$312 million in venture funding, is seen as the leader in the small-but-growing market for hyper-converged infrastructure, which typically refers to compute and storage running together on x86 server hardware.

Nutanix has been clashing publicly with VMware for the past couple of years and has introduced technology that lets VMware customers switch to its own KVM-based hypervisor format. But the friction with Cisco is new, and partners that work with both vendors said they expect it to continue as they grapple for market share.

Robbins said Cisco took its time in vetting Springpath's technology and "actually looked at all our options" before deciding to partner with the startup. This due diligence, he suggested, will ensure that HyperFlex is unique from existing hyper-convergence offerings.

"When [Cisco's data centre product teams] actually took the time to understand the technology Springpath has created, we [realised that] it was next-generation thinking," said Robbins in the press conference.

This article originally appeared at crn.com
Cisco is changing its DNA from a hardware company to a software, service-centric leader with the launch of its new Digital Network Architecture on Thursday morning Australian time, setting the stage for a new enterprise networking sales motion for its 70,000 channel partners.

Robert Soderbery, senior vice president of Cisco's Enterprise Products and Solutions, said every Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) will eventually become an expert at selling the new digital architecture.

"We are absolutely going to change the DNA of the channel," said Soderbery, in an interview with CRN USA.

Digital Network Architecture (DNA) is an open, software-driven, service-centric solution based on automation, virtualization, analytics, managed services and open APIs that is aimed at enabling digital business.

DNA is delivered within the Cisco One Software family and includes a new automation platform and applications, an array of cloud-based management services, and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) targeting the enterprise.

New technology inside DNA unveiled at Cisco Partner Summit in San Diego on Thursday Australian time includes an automation platform, APIC-EM, which consists of a new version of Cisco's enterprise controller retooled for greater scale and resiliency, with a broad set of network services and device support.

The platform has been deployed in more than 160 customer environments running up to 4,000 devices from a single instance, according to Cisco.

The digital architecture also consists of policy services including an enhanced Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN) and a new Easy Quality of Service (QoS) that enables the network to update QoS settings consistently across the network in real time.

Another service is Plug and Play, a cloud-based deployment service that sits on routers and switches talking directly to the network controller, which reduces deployment time from weeks to days, according to Soderbery.

"We believe automation and APIC-EM is so compelling, we want every customer and ever partner to take advantage of it. So we're distributing that completely free - the platform and the base automation services are free," said Soderbery.

Cisco also revealed Enterprise NFV, which decouples hardware from software. Cisco's NFV provides a full software stack including the virtualisation infrastructure software, the virtualised network functions (VNFs) and orchestration services to enable branch office service virtualisation.

The infrastructure software can be hosted on Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) and eventually for x86 hardware. VNFs include routing, firewall, WAN optimisation and wireless LAN services, and will be expanded to additional Cisco and third-party VNFs.

"Being able to virtualise your functions and run them in the cloud or on industry-standard hardware platforms has really been a service provider conversation - we're now making it an enterprise conversation," said Soderbery.

"It's an enterprise NFV as a package solution for enterprises that want of take advantage of NFV."

The final new technology launched around DNA is CMX (Connected Mobile Experiences) Cloud, a cloud-based management service for Cisco wireless infrastructures that allows customers to take advantage of location and presence analytics to provide businesses with insights and personalised engagement.

Nirav Sheth, senior director for Cisco's Americas Partner Organization, said DNA is giving channel partners the tools to become a digital leader for customers and a way to accelerate an install-based refresh. He said Cisco is also driving closer alignment between its internal sales teams and partners around DNA.

"Looking holistically, it's an opportunity for our partners to go deeper with their customers, to have more upfront professional services, there's recurring revenue opportunities and an opportunity for our partners to accelerate because they're going to be in lockstep with their Cisco sales team," said Sheth, in an interview with CRN USA.

DNA also complements Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology by extending the policy-driven approach and software strategy throughout the entire network -- from the campus to the branch, wired to wireless, and the core to the edge, said Soderbery.

Worldwide spending on digital transformation technologies will grow to US$2.1 trillion in 2019, with a CAGR of 17 percent, according to a recent report by market researcher IDC. Cisco plans to put its channel community on the front end of the transformation with DNA, said Soderbery.

"Partners are moving to the line of business or the digital conversation They're not just technology providers, but solution providers for managed services," said Soderbery. "I can't imagine anyone being able to compete with us."

Cisco is changing its certification strategy to have more focus around DNA in order to make every CCIE and CCNA a software specialist. DNA will be included in many Cisco incentive programs including VIP (Value Incentive Program), according to the company.

"We fully expect that every single partner driving enterprise networking is going to be on this DNA journey with us," said Sheth.

This article originally appeared at crn.com
Security News

Apple-FBI Debate Center Stage At 2016 RSA Conference

Sarah Kuranda

Share this

As a government hearing on that very issue was unfolding thousands of miles away, the encryption debate between Apple and the FBI took center stage at the 2016 RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

Representatives from Apple and the FBI spoke before the House Judiciary Committee on the subject Tuesday in Washington, D.C., while every executive who took the stage for the security conference's Tuesday morning keynotes addressed the issue in some form, expressing their support for Apple and preserving the integrity of encryption technologies for the good of the industry overall.

Amit Yoran, president of San Francisco-based security specialist RSA, said policies to weaken encryption are "so misguided as to boggle the mind." Not only would those policies not better protect U.S. citizens from terrorists, Yoran said, but "you can sure bet that the bad guys will use that against us."

/**/ /**/

/**/ brightcove.createExperiences(); /**/

[Related Video: RSA President On Apple-FBI Debate: We Cannot Weaken Encryption ]

"In an era where cybersecurity is consistently cited as the single greatest threat to our way of life, above terrorism and all else, how can we possibly justify a policy that would catastrophically weaken our infrastructures?" Yoran said.

Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, said companies like Microsoft are investing billions of dollars in improving their security posture, but they also have to stand up for customers and provide transparency on who can access their personal data and when.

"There is no technology more important than encryption," Smith said to rousing applause from thousands in the RSA audience. "That is why we need to stand up, be thoughtful and be vocal.  The path to hell starts at the back door, and we need to make sure that encryption technology remains strong."

Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., has said it plans to file an amicus brief to the court in support of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple.

Chris Young, general manager of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Security, also briefly expressed his sentiments about the issue in his keynote address.

"Strong security is critical for our industry, and part of our responsibility is that we have to advocate and teach each other and balance that with our need for law enforcement," Young said.

Yoran added that it would also weaken U.S. economic interests on what he said was an "already suspicious world stage." Microsoft's Smith agreed with that, saying smartphones, in particular, contain very personal information and users will base product decisions around security.

"More so than ever before, one thing is clear above all else: People will not use technology they don't trust, and thus trust is the absolute foundation for our entire industry," Smith said. "It needs to remain that way."

The RSA Conference didn't leave out the other side of the debate. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch took the stage later in the day, urging cooperation between public and private sectors around national security issues. She emphasized how much the public sector has done to help private sector companies, calling out its threat intelligence sharing efforts, incident response assistance and help with arresting hackers in particular.

However, Lynch said recent pushes around "going dark" using encryption technologies throw a wrench in the relationship and make it challenging for law enforcement to protect national security interests. She said encryption does make people safer, but said this recent push by Apple flies in the face of the company's history of working with the government around law enforcement issues.

"This is a very real threat to law enforcement's mission to protect public safety and ensure criminals are caught and held accountable.  It's our vow to victims and the public and to all of you whose safety we must protect to ensure we have done everything under the law to intervene in terrorist threats and criminal activity on American soil," Lynch said.

"The [Department of Justice] will never sacrifice the liberties of the American people or the ideals that we cherish and make us who we are. As recent events have made clear, these stakes are not just theoretical. They bear directly on our public safety and national liberty," she said.

Lynch called for the security professionals in the audience to continue to innovate the technology, but to also keep an open line of communication and cooperation with the government around law enforcement needs. She asked the tech community to "talk, innovate and work with us," referring to the federal government.

However, Microsoft's Smith said this is "not about creating a world where tech is above the law." Smith said Microsoft has complied with 14 lawful orders in connection with the Paris terrorist attacks last fall, playing a role in law enforcement without compromising its technology.

"This is an issue that possesses timeless values that we need to move forward on. Public safety and privacy and freedom of expression are all values and principles that matter.  That balance should be struck not by those of us who are not elected, but by those of us who are," Smith said. "We need governments to strike that balance -- a well-informed balance."

Art Coviello, former executive chairman of RSA and current venture partner at Minnetonka, Minn.-based Rally Ventures, called for the security industry to educate the public sector. In drawing out the debate, Coviello said both public and private sectors stand to lose to hackers.

"We must understand that were all in this together. The digital world we're creating holds enormous potential for all of humanity and the issue of privacy and security is the defining issue of our time," Coviello said as he accepted the annual RSA Conference Lifetime Achievement Award. "Whether we solve for it or not will determine if we are its masters or its victims. In the end, I have confidence in all of you that we will be its masters."
At Bayer, we believe human ingenuity can shape the future of agriculture. For more than 150 years, weve used science and imagination to advance health and nutrition. And together, we can achieve so much more.

Whats possible begins with what we can imagine.

Were committed to a world where biodiversity thrives in harmony with humankind. Where hunger and climate change are terms relegated to history books. Where farms are more sustainable, with plants that are more adaptive and resilient, to help improve life for families and communities. In short, where agriculture is part of the solution. As a new leader in agriculture, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to grasp this moment. To continue moving humanity forward by tirelessly shaping whats possible.
Fincantieri and Huarun Dadong Dockyard (HRDD) have signed an exclusive cooperation agreement in the field of ship repair and conversions aimed at serving the cruise ships based in China.

The understanding includes the development of technical skills, project management, and logistics procedures.

Fincantieri, through its dedicated Ship Repair and Conversion business unit, will provide its technical expertise, which, combined with the first class shipyard facilities of HRDD, will offer fundamental support to the emerging Chinese cruise sector and to the main foreign cruise companies which will operate on the local market, said a joint statement.

HRDD is located near the new cruise terminal in Shanghai and has five drydocks available.

Fincantieri established a branch office in Shanghai in 2004.
The perception of physical security threats has changed drastically since Sept. 11, 2001. The terms IEDs, terrorist, extremist, and radicalization are now routinely used, and when has replaced if to identify the likelihood of a terrorist attack occurring in North America.

Attacks on critical infrastructure, specifically electric generation and transmission facilities, could be used to cause widespread panic and create economic distress in a country already on-edge in this age of terror. The August 2003 Northeast blackout demonstrated the impact to society when a portion of the North American electric grid goes black. While the 2003 blackout was attributed to an accident, it nevertheless points to the vulnerability of the grid, and with it, associated risks to North Americas health, safety, and economic security.

[ ALSO ON CSO: Public-private cyber threat intelligence sharing necessary in electricity industry ]

In reality, threats to the grid have not significantly changed from those prior to 9/11. There is however, an increased awareness of potential risks to the grid and the recognition that it is vulnerable to criminal actions. We see this interest as we monitor proposed legislation in Washington DC, to try and better regulate private industry, in the context of cybersecurity. With or without legislation, ideologically motivated terrorists, disgruntled employees, traditional criminals, and foreign states each provide unique, but manageable threats to a utilitys security program.

Currently, the most significant reliability threat to the U.S. grid is associated with squirrels and balloons, and not religiously inspired terrorists. However, and more applicable to grid operators, we have recently seen noteworthy interest in disabling or destroying critical infrastructure. Coordinated attacks specifically targeting the grid are rare, but an attack by a disgruntled former employee, ideologically motivated activist, or a criminal stumbling across a soft target, could inflict significant damage. With an interconnected grid of over 450,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines (100 kV and higher), and over 55,000 substations (100 kV and larger), the targets of opportunity are endless.

Brian Harrell

The infrastructure risk associated with criminal threats, both traditional and terrorist, is dependent on the assets importance to the grid, or the commodities stored on site. Common threats include vandalism, copper theft, and unauthorized access into the facility perimeter. Prevention and mitigation strategies for these offenses are dependent on a facilitys vulnerabilities. Recognition of criminal threats and the identification of vulnerabilities, will determine the risk to a facility.

Criminals will continue to exploit vulnerabilities at soft targets for terror, financial, ideological, or vengeful purposes. Those who wish to inflict damage have demonstrated the capability to successfully plan and execute attacks with little or no advance warning on critical infrastructure.

Electricity is perhaps the most vital of the critical infrastructures and key resources that support our society. The mission of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is to ensure the reliability of the North American bulk power system (BPS). While electric utility companies are responsible for administering the day-to-day operations of the electric grid, regulators such as NERC and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) are charged with the overall responsibility of ensuring reliability and security. NERC develops and enforces Reliability Standards, annually assesses seasonal and longterm reliability, monitors the bulk power system through system awareness, operates the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), and educates, trains and certifies industry personnel.

Normal everyday operations of the system is the responsibility of utility owners and operators. During emergencies, NERC supports industry actions to respond, mitigate, and restore the BPS to normal operation by facilitating effective information sharing and communication with and between NERC registered entities, government agencies, and the media. This information is not focused on operational decision making, but instead provides utilities data, best practices, and mitigation strategies to help recover from crisis. Obviously, NERC as a regulatory body, must stay out of emergency response until the utility has best mitigated the threat or reliability issue.

The grids infrastructure is widely dispersed across North America, and in most instances is located in unpopulated and isolated locations, making it cost prohibitive and logistically difficult to physically protect all assets. With the limited physical protection provided to some generation, transmission and distribution assets, it will come as no surprise that these assets are soft targets and are therefore vulnerable. This reality comes with an increased awareness of potential threats to the grid. With this attentiveness is the increasing recognition that it is vulnerable to disasters, whether theyre natural, accidental or criminally induced. Americans have a low tolerance for grid failure and a high expectation that system operators will ensure that there is an uninterrupted supply of energy for vital services.

Critical infrastructure protection is a cyclical process incorporating prevention, detection, mitigation, response and recovery. The key to this protection is the identification of credible threats, which will assist energy companies in assessing risks and potential vulnerabilities (weaknesses) of their facilities. Once a threat has been thoroughly analyzed, it is then possible to institute preventative measures to deter, detect, and delay an attack. Of course, critical infrastructure protection planning must always include mitigation, response and recovery actions in the event an attacker is successful.

The governments primary responsibility is to ensure the health, safety and security of its citizens, thus having a vested interest in the protection of the grid. Within the past 10 years, federal, provincial, and state statutes and regulations emphasize the importance of the development and maintenance of public/private/partnerships (PPP) to share the concern for the protection of the grid.

Within North America, the National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure (Canada) and the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (United States), establish a collaborative approach that is used to strengthen critical infrastructure resiliency. These strategies recognize that each level of government, as well as infrastructure owners and operators, have major roles and responsibilities in strengthening the resiliency of critical infrastructure and will exercise their responsibilities as appropriate and according to each respective jurisdiction.

While the security of the grid is a shared responsibility between the government and the private sector, the primary responsibility rests with utility owners and operators. Utility security staff has a responsibility to ensure they are able to receive and act upon criminal intelligence and be prepared to identify risks and vulnerabilities associated with security threats.

Significant progress has been made in the electricity industry surrounding the issue of security. Unfortunately, many do not realize the amount of reports, guidelines, standards, and assessments that have been developed for use. NERC and FERC must continue to enforce mandatory reliability standards while also providing educational opportunities for industry. A major part of this education should be focused on grid resilience with an emphases on security.

NERC and the industry have gone through multiple iterations of mandatory Critical Infrastructure Protection Standards that focus on security protections. These reliability standards are the only mandatory cyber standards enforced on critical infrastructure owners and operators. Given the political pressure to regulate critical systems, it is important for NERC and the industry to showcase these standards and demonstrate how the system is more secure. The CIP Standards, while not perfect, may be the shining example for other sectors to immolate.

NERC should continue being the central information sharing hub of the electricity sector. This established role, with federal recognition from the Department of Energy, sets up NERC as the authority for BPS expertise and real time grid status to external stakeholders. The role of the E-ISAC is to provide utilities with information regarding incidents, threats and vulnerabilities to the BPS. The E-ISAC also collects, analyzes, and disseminates alerts and incident reports to utilities and helps government agencies understand potential impacts on the grid. Lastly, and most important, the E-ISAC provides a platform for mutual information sharing and assistance during crisis.

We must assume that at some point in the future a North American utility will suffer from a planned and coordinated attack against electrical infrastructure. As an industry, we will be judged and hard questions will be asked about how serious we considered the threats and what we did to mitigate future attacks. Success will be determined by how quick we are able to respond and the swiftness of system recovery. There is no doubt that security is an all hands approach by everyone involved.
The inventors of public key cryptography have won the 2015 Turing Award, just as a contentious debate kicks off in Washington over how much protection encryption should really provide.

The Association for Computing Machinery announced Tuesday that Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman received the ACM Turing Award for their contributions to cryptography.

The two are credited with the invention of public key cryptography, which is widely used to scramble data so it can be sent securely between users and websites, and to protect information on devices like smartphones and computer hard drives.

The ability for two parties to communicate privately over a secure channel is fundamental for billions of people around the world, ACM said in a statement.

By coincidence or design, the award was announced at almost the exact moment that a hearing on encryption got under way in Washington, D.C., before the House Judiciary Committee.

Lawmakers are hearing testimony on how they should balance the right to privacy with the needs of law enforcement to access encrypted data for national security reasons and to solve crimes.

Representatives from Apple and the FBI, who are battling in court over access to an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters, are testifying at the hearing.

Diffie was chief security officer at the former Sun Microsystems and Hellman is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University. Their paper from 1976, New Directions in Cryptography, introduced the ideas of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, "the foundation for most regularly-used security protocols on the Internet today," the ACM noted.

In the system they invented, the public key is used to encrypt data, while the private key, which never leaves the receiving device, is used to decrypt it. The system is designed so that anyone who knows the public key can't calculate the private key, even though the two are linked.

The Turing Award is named for Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped crack the Enigma coding machine used by Germany in World War II, depicted in the film "The Imitation Game."

The award comes with a $1 million prize. In a blog post Tuesday, Hellman said he would use his half of the money to further a project to curtail nuclear proliferation and conflict.

ACM didn't immediately reply to a question about the timing of the announcement. It also coincided with a panel at the RSA security show in San Francisco where Diffie and Hellman were speaking.
We can't seem to find the page you are looking for.

You may have typed the address incorrectly or you may have used an outdated link.
HARTFORD  A second try at making yes means yes the law when it comes to sexual activity on college campuses got a hearing Tuesday before a largely sympathetic legislative committee.

My friends are scared, said Hannah Schmitt, one of several Yale University students to testify. Rape is a problem no matter who you are or what you do.

Others, however, cautioned that the bill could lead to false accusations.

This allows otherwise consensual sexual encounters to be recast as an assault, said Shelley Dempsey, a Wilton mother who said one of her sons was falsely accused of sexual assault and suspended from his out-of-state university. I know firsthand that girls can and do lie.

Under the bill, the absence of a no would not by itself signal consent to a sexual encounter. College students would have to either say or imply yes consciously and voluntarily during every stage of intimacy.

The bill easily passed out of the Legislatures Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee last year and went on to be approved on a 34-1 in the state Senate before failing to be taken up in the House in the waning days of 2015 session.

More Information Consent Under the proposed bill under discussion by the Connecticut General Assembly's Higher Education Committee: "Affirmative consent" means an active, clear and voluntary agreement by a person to engage in sexual activity with another person that is sustained throughout the sexual activity and may be revoked at any time by any such person. See More Collapse

Refining policies

Seen as a strengthening of 2014 legislation that required college officials across the state to respond to, educate about and report instances of reported sexual assault, the new language would also require awareness programs so that everyone on a college campus knows what affirmative consent means.

Already, the University of Connecticut  rocked by a sexual assault suit brought by several students that led to a $1.3 million settlement and prompted the 2014 legislation  and Yale University have affirmative consent policies.

Mark Ojakian, president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, told the committee he strongly supports bringing the standard to the 17 colleges and universities he represents, including Western Connecticut State University in Danbury and Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven.

I believe we have a good approach, but we can and should always seek to improve. Ojakian said. We see this legislation as a chance to improve our efforts in this area for our 92,000 students across our 17 institutions.

The state college system already has a policy that requires each participant in a sexual encounter to give consent freely, willingly and knowingly. Ojakian said the proposed bill would expand existing policy.

Affirmative consent is not a pie-in-the sky aspiration, Jacob Wasserman, a former Yale student from New Haven, told the committee. Its actually a bare minimum of sexual interaction.

Lina Volin, another Yale student, said having an affirmed consent policy on her campus gives her comfort.

Affirmative consent at Yale means enthusiastic agreement, she said.

Austin Longendyke, a UConn graduate student, agreed.

An individual feeling pressured, threatened or coerced into a sexual activity may be frightened to say no, Longendyke said.

Making signals clear

But others maintained that the policy could be harmful to students with disabilities.

Being autistic, one thing I have extreme difficulty with is reading other peoples social cues, said Stephen Mendelsohn, of New Britain.

If someone can withdraw affirmative consent with body language, Mendelsohn fears an autistic student could be branded as a sex offender.

The real problem is the hook-up culture, Mendelsohn said.

Dempsey, meanwhile, said being able to revoke consent at any time could destroy lives. She disputed federal statistics that suggest as many as one in five women is the victim of sexual assault on campuses, and she maintained that once accused of sexual assault, it is hard for students to clear their names.

I have a problem with the affirmative consent standard, period, she said, adding that she knows of 110 legal cases currently at issue across the country over the affirmed consent policy.

State Sen. Mae Flexer, D- Mansfield, challenged many of Dempsey statements, and pointed to recently released sexual assault statistics at the University of Connecticut that showed of of 59 reported cases, only 13 led to disciplinary proceedings and in six cases, expulsions.

Clearly, the vast majority of cases are never brought to disciplinary action, Flexer said.

State Rep. Roberta Willis, D-Salisbury, co-chairman of the committee, said that as far as she was concerned, the bill is a technical fix and makes enforcement easier.

Carolyn Treiss, executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women called the bill good public policy.

It ensures consistency and best practices for all institutions of higher education in the state, Treiss said.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

If Rhode Island can single out trucks as part of a tolling plan, Connecticuts governor is wondering why his state cant do the same to help raise $100 billion for a transportation overhaul.

Its the first time that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has broached the option of truck-only tolls since unveiling a 30-year blueprint to modernize the states crumbling bridges, roads and rail system in 2015.

Were going to have to raise more money, Malloy told Hearst Connecticut Media in a recent interview. Gas taxes are going away. Theyre going away because people are driving Teslas.

Malloy stopped short of endorsing a way to fund his ambitious plan, which embarks on the widening of Interstates 95 and 84 and improving Metro-North Railroad. But he did list multiple funding options that include dedicating a higher percentage of sales tax receipts to transportation, congestion pricing, fee increases and truck-only tolls.

The governor referenced a proposal by his Rhode Island counterpart and fellow Democrat Gina Raimondo to collect tolls from trucks on 17 of the Ocean States 20 highway bridges. The Federal Highway Administration still must sign off on the plan, which is being fought by truckers and could foreshadow a toll showdown in Connecticut.

If that was a proposal that would ever be officially floated, we would be vehemently opposed to that, said Joseph Sculley, president of the Motor Transport Association of Connecticut.

The lobbying group represents 700 trucking companies and aligned businesses that depend on big rigs, which Sculley said already pay federal vehicle use taxes and a 12 percent federal excise tax for the wear and tear that they inflict on roads. In the current fiscal year, Sculley said, Connecticut-based motor carriers paid $5.8 million in truck registration fees to the state. Out-of-state trucking companies accounted for an additional $19.5 million in registration fees, he said.

Connecticut is getting the revenue, Sculley said. Theres no free ride there. The same is true of fuel taxes.

State Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, vice chairman of the Legislatures Transportation Committee, said some of his colleagues have toyed with trucks tolls in the past.

I dont how you just pick on one segment of a traffic population and not toll others, Leone said. I think the only fair way to do it is that everybody participates.

Leone emphasized that hes not a fan of tolls in general.

Well, A: I dont like them, like most constituents, Leone said. But I think everyone comes to the realization that if we want a good infrastructure, tolls would be part of the conversation.

State Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, a Transportation Committee member, questioned whether truck tolls would be able to stand up to a legal challenge.

There already is a taxation scheme in place for trucks, Frantz said. I dont know if you could get away with doing anything on top of that.

Frantz said the state should delay other infrastructure projects, including some school construction, to increase bonding capacity to pay for most of Malloys transportation plan.

I dont like any toll concept or any higher taxes at all, Frantz said.

A Federal Highway Administration spokeswoman told Hearst that the agency is still waiting for Rhode Island to explain how its tolling proposal fits within existing federal tolling programs and other federal requirements that may apply.

While Connecticut lawmakers grapple with how to pay for bridge, highway and rail improvements, they are also debating the language of a proposed transportation lockbox. Without guarantees that the money wont be redirected to other areas, including to close budget deficits, they say its a moot point to raise revenues for transportation.

No ones debating whether we need to spend the money, Malloy said.

During an appearance last month on WNPR radio, Connecticuts transportation commissioner, James Redeker, tied the widening of I-95 to congestion toll pricing. As an incentive to get more commuters to use mass transit during rush hour, Redeker said, his agency is exploring congestion pricing.

Malloy has been noncommittal on congestion pricing, including during his recent interview with Hearst. The governor said that the states gridlocked highways and oft-delayed trains hurt Connecticuts ability to attract and retain companies.

Were no less of a cul-de-sac today than we were 20 years ago, Malloy said. Thats the reality and Im trying to cut through that.

neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

HARTFORD  The governor on Wednesday asked the General Assembly to reject a five-year contract for more than 1,800 non-teaching professionals at the University of Connecticut.

The proposed pact  which includes a 4.5 percent raise that would cost an $94 million itself  is scheduled to take effect next week. A memo from Ben Barnes, Gov. Dannel P. Malloys budget chief, warned Wednesday that if the UConn pact goes into effect, it would set a standard for raises that could snowball into a $1 billion cost over the next five years.

If lawmakers dont vote to overturn the deal with the University of Connecticut Professional Employees Association and restart negotiations, the contract would automatically take effect.

In reaction, the union, representing nurses, librarians, residential-life employees, academic advisers, dining-service workers and administrative staff, said the late-breaking attempt to scuttle a fairly negotiated contract is unprofessional.

We must value and support those that serve the public, Malloy said in a statement, noting that while the deal was agreed upon in good faith, a sharp decrease in tax revenue has created a new economic reality that requires the rethinking of contracts.

On Monday, Malloy used his executive authority to cancel raises for about 2,650 non-unionized state managers, including 1,950 in the executive branch he directly controls, worth about $10.4 million over two years.

It would set a precedent that would necessitate the elimination of even more jobs, Malloy wrote.

The UConn union, whose president is Kathleen Sanner, Wednesday afternoon issued a statement expressing disappointment.

The focus of the governor and some state representatives is a misdirection of the facts on a fairly negotiated agreement between UCPEA and the University, the statement said. To suggest that this contract will increase costs to taxpayers is simply wrong.

Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, indicated they would bring the contract up to a vote with a recommendation to reject it.

Last week the legislative Appropriations Committee approved it.

We are afraid that, if approved, the contract will lead to massive layoffs and painful tuition increases forcing talented Connecticut students out of state, Looney and Duff said in a joint statement.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, D-Derby, said she wishes that Malloy had persuaded the leaders of the Appropriations Committee to turn down the package last week.

I commend the Governor for reaching the conclusion a week late on what was obvious from the beginning, she said.

kdixon@ctpost.com;
BRIDGEPORT  On a day when 21 men and eight women were sworn in as recruits, the Bridgeport Police Department also got a new boss.

Mayor Joe Ganim appointed Capt. Armando A.J. Perez as Bridgeports new chief of police, replacing ex-Chief Joseph Gaudett, who has agreed to step down in exchange for a consulting job with the city.

Ganim announced Perezs new job Tuesday night.

A.J. is deserving of this promotion; he has demonstrated time and time again that he is the best person to lead the Police Department of the city of Bridgeport, Ganim said. Since he was appointed to head the new anti-crime task force, he has taken more illegal guns off the city streets, seized more contraband and made more serious arrests than this city has seen in a long time.

The move had been expected. But earlier Tuesday, when Ganim and Perez greeted what officials called the most diverse incoming class yet at Bridgeports Newfield Avenue police academy, the mayor said no change in command was imminent.

We still have a lot of paperwork to do before we can make an announcement about the next chief, Ganim said, adding that word might come by the end of the week.

As it turned out, things happened much faster than that. Hours after visiting the recruits, Ganim said Perez would be formally sworn in as chief on Thursday at 5 p.m., at City Hall.

Its with this effective leadership that we will make the citizens of this city safer, Ganim said.

Gaudett, who resigned as chief under a deal that allows him to work in the citys emergency communication center, had not attended the afternoon police academy ceremony.

Ganim and Perez were there to meet the new class, as was police union President Charles Paris, public safety adviser Wilbur Chapman, academy commander Lt. Jeff Grice and state Rep. Charles Stallworth.

The recruits could be hitting the citys streets by the second week of September.

This is a class that is a reflection of the population of the city of Bridgeport, Ganim told them.

And he said they should be ready for change.

Chief Gaudett is going to take over a new role, and I am glad to support him in that role, Ganim told the recruits.

Perez will take the helm of a department that has seen a decrease through retirements of about 100 officers in the past two years. Ganim pledged to restore the police force to its full strength of about 400 officers.

We have made this a top priority, he told the recruits. If we cant have children safe when they go out and play in the city, then there really isnt a reason to be here.

Perez offered encouragement to the recruits, too.

I remember sitting in that seat many years ago, he told them. This is the best job you will ever have. The people you will see, the people you will help, will stay with you for the rest of your lives.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

BRIDGEPORT  On a day when 21 men and eight women were sworn in as recruits, the Bridgeport Police Department also got a new boss.

Mayor Joe Ganim appointed Capt. Armando "A.J." Perez as Bridgeport's new chief of police, replacing ex-Chief Joseph Gaudett, who has agreed to step down in exchange for a consulting job with the city.

Ganim announced Perez's new job Tuesday night.

"A.J. is deserving of this promotion; he has demonstrated time and time again that he is the best person to lead the Police Department of the city of Bridgeport," Ganim said. "Since he was appointed to head the new anti-crime task force, he has taken more illegal guns off the city streets, seized more contraband and made more serious arrests than this city has seen in a long time."

The move had been expected. But earlier Tuesday, when Ganim and Perez greeted what officials called the most diverse incoming class yet at Bridgeport's Newfield Avenue police academy, the mayor said no change in command was imminent.

"We still have a lot of paperwork to do before we can make an announcement about the next chief," Ganim said, adding that word might come by the end of the week.

As it turned out, things happened much faster than that. Hours after visiting the recruits, Ganim said Perez would be formally sworn in as chief on Thursday at 5 p.m., at City Hall.

"It's with this effective leadership that we will make the citizens of this city safer," Ganim said.

Gaudett, who resigned as chief under a deal that allows him to work in the city's emergency communication center, had not attended the afternoon police academy ceremony.

Ganim and Perez were there to meet the new class, as was police union President Charles Paris, public safety adviser Wilbur Chapman, academy commander Lt. Jeff Grice and state Rep. Charles Stallworth.

The recruits could be hitting the city's streets by the second week of September.

"This is a class that is a reflection of the population of the city of Bridgeport," Ganim told them.

And he said they should be ready for change.

"Chief Gaudett is going to take over a new role, and I am glad to support him in that role," Ganim told the recruits.

Perez will take the helm of a department that has seen a decrease through retirements of about 100 officers in the past two years. Ganim pledged to restore the police force to its full strength of about 400 officers.

"We have made this a top priority," he told the recruits. "If we can't have children safe when they go out and play in the city, then there really isn't a reason to be here."

Perez offered encouragement to the recruits, too.

"I remember sitting in that seat many years ago," he told them. "This is the best job you will ever have. The people you will see, the people you will help, will stay with you for the rest of your lives."
ANSONIA  A local man was shot several times in the lower abdomen and leg Tuesday night in what he reported as an attempted robbery, and has undergone surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Lt. Andrew Cota said police had been called to the corner of State and North Cliff streets, near the Ansonia Armory at 10:20 p.m. on a report of shots fired. While officers were checking the area for evidence a second call came in regarding a male who had been shot and needed medical attention, the police spokesman said.
Consumers have trust issues with brands. They are skeptical of brand messaging and instead often turn to their peers to inform purchase decisions. They also want honest relationships with the brands they support.

Related: The Savvy Business Owner's Guide to Honesty Via Social Media

Indeed, 63 percent of global consumers said in a survey that they would buy from a company that they consider to be authentic over all other competitors. Consumers will reward the companies that communicate honestly about their products. They'll shun those that do not.

So, what makes for an authentic brand? How can your brand become more authentic? Here are seven habits of remarkably authentic brands.

1. Listen to your customers.

Your customers are talking about your brand online. Word-of-mouth has expanded to social media, and customers are voicing their opinions about your products. Find out what your customers are saying!

Social listening can help your brand learn how customers use your products post-purchase and what they like and dislike about their touch points with your brand. Some 83 percent of consumers said in a survey that they like it when a company responds to them on social media. So, join the conversation and "like," "comment" and "share" positive submissions. Also, do your best to accommodate the negative consumers.

2. Let go of who you think you are.

When you start listening to your customers on social media, you might just learn something. While your brand may see itself in a certain way, the millions of photos that customers post online may not be reflecting your brand message. Customers can do a lot to shape and enhance your brand lifestyle. Dont be afraid to let go and collaborate with customers to build a stronger and more authentic brand.

3. Stand behind your values.

In the outdoors industry, you hear a lot about representing the tribe and how outdoor brands cater to the values of their community. In particular, you hear about brands wanting customers to believe in what they stand for, not just to buy their products.

What this often means is that brands position themselves behind causes their community supports. Some 64 percent of survey respondents have cited shared values as the main reason they have a relationship with a brand. Clearly stating your values is a mark of brand authenticity.

4. Be honest.

Authentic brands represent their products in a truthful way. Some 91 percent of customers said in a survey that they believed that brands should represent their products honestly. What this means is that you dont deceive your customers with distorted reviews and product images.

Offer transparency by displaying customer-created photos collected from social media on your product pages directly, next to your stock images. That will give your customers a greater sense of transparency and trust.

Related: Leverage Honest Reviews to Rack Up New Customers

5. Personalize your outreach.

Show your customers that you care about their needs. Seventy-three percent of consumers said in a survey that they preferred to buy from brands that use personal information to make their shopping experiences more relevant.

With todays technology, you can upsell customers based on what they have bought in the past. Offer complimentary product discounts through package inserts, Instagram display ads or a tailored email marketing campaign.

6. Embrace your story.

Chances are, you have a powerful story line that you are not putting to use. It might be an amazing founders story or simply a declaration of why you believe in the brand you represent. Whatever it is, consumers want to know why you care about your brand.

If they find why you care compelling, you might convince them to care as well. Everything is about building a brand story, a story that your customers can see themselves in.

Related: 3 Things Jessica Alba's Honest Company Must Do to Stop Its Brand From Burning

7. Make every day matter.

Remember that consumers are interacting and buying from brands each and every day. When it comes to being authentic, you need to be consistent. You should actively work to ensure that every interaction a customer has with your brand leaves a positive vibe. You dont get to take a day off representing your brand. Create great marketing collateral that reflects your authentic brand voice and stay attentive, and helpful, to your customers.

Related:

7 Habits of Remarkably Authentic Brands

These 4 CRM Tools Will Make the Management Part Effortless

Can Tech-Innovations Reshape MSME Lending In India?



Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Falsely accused

This allows otherwise consensual sexual encounters to be recast as an assault.

Shelley Dempsey, a Wilton mother, regarding a proposed bill that would tighten requirements for consensual on-campus sex. Dempsey said one of her sons was falsely accused of sexual assault and suspended from his out-of-state university.

Zika

I had a patient who just came back from Martinique, and she was very anxious because she thought she might have been bitten by a mosquito.
SEYMOUR  Police arrested a former pastor of St. Augustines Church on charges that he embezzled at least $20,000 willed to the parish, as well as checks written to the church.

The Rev. Honore Kombo, 50, of Catbrier Road, Weston, was charged with first-degree larceny. He was released on $10,000 bond, pending a March 14 appearance in Superior Court in Derby.

The arrest comes after an investigation begun in April 2015, according to Seymour Deputy Chief Paul Satkowski.

In July, Kombo was placed on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Hartford, which advised him in November that he could no longer serve as a priest.

Representatives from the Hartford Roman Catholic Diocesan Corporation and officials of St. Augustines Church told police they had information that Kombo misappropriated money willed to the church by a deceased parishioner.

The parishioner had willed five annuities to the church, but only four were reported to church officials.

The police investigation found that Kombo filed the necessary paperwork to obtain the proceeds for the fifth annuity, according to Satkowski.

On May 6, 2013, a check was made payable to St. Augustines but allegedly deposited by Kombo into a bank account he created, police said. He then transferred portions of this account, as well as checks written to the church, into his personal account, according to police.

Additionally the police investigation determined that on Oct. 18, 2013, Kombo opened a line of credit in the churchs name at bank and began depositing money from it into his own account.

Satkowski said Kombo cooperated with detectives during their investigation.
Cuba detects first Zika case imported from Venezuela

Submitted by: Juana

Health and Medicine

03 / 02 / 2016



The Cuban Public Health Ministry announced the detection of a first imported Zika case on the island.

The announcement explains that the sick person is a 28-year-old Venezuelan doctor, from the Aragua state, who arrived here on February 21 this year to take a Gastroenterology postgraduate course and she was staying at a student residence in areas of the western Artemisa province along another 37 doctors, all going through epidemiological check-up or international sanitary control.

The doctor said that her husband was clinically diagnosed Zika two months ago, and her brother in law was also affected by the disease two weeks, before the doctor travelled to the island.

A first Zika test on February 25 was negative for the doctor, but a repeat of the test on February 28 proved positive, said the Health Ministry and added that the other professionals under sanitary control have not presented any symptoms.
Somerset jury finds two of three defendants guilty of murder

Now in its fifth day of testimony and seventh day overall, the double murder trial taking place in Somerset County is now over. The jury decided.
Sign up now to receive the latest Hurricane Ian updates via text
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have respectively won the Democratic and Republican Party primaries in Tennessee, according the Associated Press.

The AP called the race for both candidates shortly after the polls closed at 7 p.m. CST. Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner took home 67 percent of the vote and 37 delegates, while Trump, her Republican counterpart, took home 40 percent of the vote and 26 delegates at press time.

Victories for Clinton and Trump will not come as a surprise to most, as they were both favored by many pundits to win the Volunteer State.

Clinton owes her victory, at least in part, to a strong minority showing, while Trump rode a wave of disenfranchised voters who are tired of traditional politics.

Among the other GOP hopefuls, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) placed second with 24 percent of the vote. Also with somewhat of a strong showing, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) finished in third with 20 percent of the vote.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio governor John Kasich brought up the rear with 8 and 5 percent, respectively.

Trump was the only Republican candidate to receive any delegates at press time.

On the Democratic side, the two-person race was closer. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) garnered 32 percent of the vote and took home 13 delegates. Sanders, who has a strong following of millennial voters, was unable to topple Clintonas sizeable lead despite a stronger than-expected showing.

Tennessee was just one of 12 states and one U.S. territory to vote on March 1, which is also known as Super Tuesday, because it is the single largest delegate grab during the primary season.

Aside from the Volunteer State, Trump took home major victories in the delegate-rich states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts and Virginia. Clinton had an equally strong showing, winning Alabama, Arkansas, American Samoa, Georgia, Texas and Virginia.

Sanders and Cruz both won their respective home states of Vermont and Texas, with both also winning in Oklahoma.

At press time the results of Alaska, Colorado and Minnesota were not in.
Lifestyle | Daily Life | News | The Sydney Morning Herald

Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. Were working to restore it. Please try again later.

Dismiss
Has the PM tired of his so-called small-business tsar, brassiere baroness Michelle Mone, 44? Three months ago Lady Mone declared: Im determined to deliver a report that will actually make a difference for start-ups in the UK. Yesterday her report was discreetly slipped on to the Department for Works and Pensions website. There was no sign of the underwear-exporting Glasgow-born siren. My source says her ladyships views on the EU referendum arent known, adding: So Cameron cant take the chance that shell come out in favour of Brexit.

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Three months ago Michelle Mone declared: Im determined to deliver a report that will make a difference in the UK. Her report has now been discreetly slipped online

Now a grandfather of two, Prince Charles will offer Highgrove Baby Organic Balm in his shop. His sales pitch: With a blend of organic Roman chamomile and mandarin, developed to be calm and gentle on delicate skin, these products have a wonderful soft scent, and can be used every day. Surely not every day, at 17.95 for a 50ml jar.

Carly Simon, 70, who admitted last year that her 1972 hit, Youre So Vain, was directed at ex-lover Warren Beatty, 78, now says she was also referring to two other squeezes, but they dont know its about them. Surely the old gal has milked this one long enough.

The New York Times says: Because of an editing error, an article on February 1 about the revelation that four pebbles of moon dust the United States gave to Britain in 1970 had languished in a cupboard in 10 Downing Street for several years mis-stated the weight of the lunar dust in ounces. It weighed just over two-thousandths of an ounce, not less than one-thousandth. In the home of the dodgy dossier, whats one thousandth of an ounce of moon dust between friends?

Justice minister Michael Gove spoke at Mondays memorial service for former Chief Inspector of Schools Chris Woodhead, saying: The light he lit, the beacon calling us to battle for our childrens right to greatness, that light will never go out. Gove was sacked as education secretary by the Prime Minister, a so-called friend.

Justice minister Michael Gove spoke at Mondays memorial service for former Chief Inspector of Schools Chris Woodhead. Gove was sacked as education secretary by the Prime Minister, a so-called friend

Now shes inched closer to becoming president, will we hear more about Hillary Clintons dodgy friends? Her daughter, Chelsea, is married to Marc Mezvinsky, son of Clinton cronies Ed and Marjorie Mezvinsky. In 2001, Ed, 79, was jailed for seven years for various frauds and embezzling 7million in a Ponzi scheme. He owes more than 6million in restitution to victims. While a member of Congress, his wife Marjorie cast the deciding vote in 1993 that got a controversial Clinton tax package passed. Deep waters.
Sir Cover-Up was where he least liked: On rolling telly, at a public hearing, taking a tonking. Dog fox was caught in car headlights, hen feathers still in its chops. A glance left and right, a dart for darkness, but some still-warm giblets were left in the road. The scavenger had been forced to surrender some of his heist.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (for it was he) had a sticky hour when he tried to explain why civil servants have been told they may not fully cooperate with Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers.

This bossy, secretive, sub-Soviet ruling has ripped away the British Establishment's facade. It has dented our civil service's reputation for objectivity. They are trying to depict Leave supporters as enemies of the people, political wrong 'uns rather than the patriots they are.

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (pictured) tried to explain why civil servants have been told they may not fully cooperate with Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers writes QUENTIN LETTS

Fox Heywood had to lope away to safety. He hated having to appear before the MPs yesterday. He pinkened visibly. Sitting about ten feet away, I almost felt the heat, from his red face, of a one-bar electric fire.

At the Public Administration Committee he had to concede that his gagging attempt would not be as wide-ranging as originally laid out in a letter to Whitehall.

Heywood (pictured in May) appeared before the Public Administration Committee

In that letter Sir Jeremy banned anti-EU ministers from being shown 'official departmental papers relating to the EU'. That could have meant thousands of vital documents. Now, apparently, the ban was intended simply to refer to 'briefings and speech materials, basically'.

On one level, then, victory for openness. 'Splendid!' said committee chairman Bernard Jenkin. Why ever had Sir Jeremy not just said so in the first place? It would have saved so much trouble! Sarcastic laughter. Oooh, Sir Cover-Up didn't like that. A Cabinet Secretary's eyes smart at that sort of thing. His sweetbreads shrivel. 'I'm an extremely approachable individual,' he said, smirking just enough to show he was re-occupying the superior ground. There came a bark of crass laughter from the Press table. His little ears blushed.

Before we rejoice too much, my sans-culotted comrades, let us ring in red that 'basically' in his reply. Sir Jeremy spat it out with a Vicky Pollard pout  a surly tone, oozing resentment from a man who disdains MPs as vulgarians and blow-ins. It might yet be used as a get-out by Cover-Up's cronies.

And we should also record that right at the end of the meeting he was still, mulishly, claiming that his original edict was perfectly 'clear' and saying 'we certainly aren't withdrawing it'.

His upper lip had gone a bit red and sore, so much bitten it was. He leaned forward, rocking. He flashed glances either side, often a sign of simmering rage and imminent violence. 'I'm really struggling to understand what the problem is here,' he growled, declining to admit any legitimacy to the loud protests uttered in the House of Commons on Monday about his ruling.

In a letter to Whitehall, Sir Jeremy (pictured) banned anti-EU ministers from being shown 'official departmental papers relating to the EU'

'Sorry, was that a question?' he snarled at one MP. Repeatedly he insisted that 'the spirit of this is very clear'. It was odd to hear a man whose career has been built on such proctorial, pettifogging exactitude rely now on 'spirit'. Deep down it must have hurt to have to plead such a pathetic excuse.

And then we had a fascinating run of play when Labour's Paul Flynn quizzed Sir Jeremy on perceived politicisation of the Royal Family, not just of the Queen before the Scottish independence referendum but also of Prince William who made a clumsy speech the other day which was seen as a pro-EU effort. Had Downing Street been involved in William's text? Sir Jeremy could not say. Boy, this could be dynamite.
Whenever David Cameron uses the word reform, it is a good idea to check the fine print: as often as not, what he really wants is more control.

His latest reform aims to cull the countrys 650 Conservative associations  whose numbers have been devastated on the Prime Ministers watch  by merging them into super-associations.

This will reduce the number of constituency chairmen  many of them, by a strange coincidence, middle-class Eurosceptics  and boost the power of Conservative HQ to select candidates.

Serendipitously, the new structure could improve the chances of Mr Cameron being succeeded by his closest ally, the pro-EU George Osborne. Although a final ballot of all party members would still be required, there would be fewer local officials to influence the process.

Whenever David Cameron uses the word reform, it is a good idea to check the fine print: as often as not, what he really wants is more control

The Tory grassroots  once reportedly described by party chairman Lord Feldman as swivel-eyed loons  have been assured that the changes will be voluntary.

But they have not forgotten that the PM instructed his MPs to disregard their views on Europe, and they must be wondering what punishment lies in store if they do not voluntarily go along with his reforms.

A lesson on migration

Thousands of parents in England yesterday received emails telling them that they had not managed to get their children into their preferred school.

Instead, they must put up with their second or third choices. In some cases this means entrusting that most precious of things  their childs academic future  to schools in which they have less confidence.

Thousands of parents in England yesterday received emails telling them that they had not managed to get their children into their preferred school (stock image)

Last year, 84,000 parents were disappointed. Now the figure is heading towards 100,000.

Critics will blame the Government for not building enough schools, which may be true. But another significant cause of the problem lies in surging demand for places in metropolitan areas, caused by our open borders.

Carefully-managed immigration may benefit Britain. Unfettered immigration, which means indigenous Britons suffering from a shortage of school places for their children, is another matter altogether.

Thats out of order!

In future, the medals that the Monarch pins on the chests of our national heroes may not be made in Britain but by Arthus-Bertrand, the venerable French firm that makes the Legion dhonneur.

The French would never allow their most illustrious award to be minted in the jewellery quarter of Birmingham, the centre of English medal manufacturing.

But in Britain we slavishly follow EU directives telling us to put everything out to tender.

As a result, when the Queen invests someone as a Knight of the Order of the Bath, she could be handed a medal made by a firm that was founded to make decorations for Napoleon.

Back to the shadows

In what cynics will see as a volte-face, Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, yesterday told MPs that civil servants will not be banned from working with Eurosceptic ministers on any subject relating to the European Union.

In what cynics will see as a volte-face, Sir Jeremy Heywood (pictured), the Cabinet Secretary, yesterday told MPs that civil servants will not be banned from working with Eurosceptic ministers on any subject relating to the European Union

His reassurance is welcome. But what does perplex us is Sir Jeremys unswerving knack for attracting attention.
that she wanted to have an abortion

The mother-of-two, who wanted to finish college and start her career, said she knew

Amy Brenneman has penned a thought-provoking essay detailing the abortion she had as a 21-year-old college student as she reveals she never once regretted her decision.

The 51-year-old actress has shared her story in an essay published on Cosmopolitan.com to raise awareness for the upcoming Supreme Court case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. The case challenges a a 2013 Texas law that would force more than three quarters of the state's clinic providing abortion to shutter.

'If this law were allowed to stand, it would leave only 10 clinics remaining in a state with 5.4 million women of reproductive age, many of whom will find themselves in the same position that I was in at age 21,' she wrote.

Scroll down for video

Fighting for reproductive justice: Amy Brenneman is sharing her abortion story raise awareness for the upcoming Supreme Court case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt

Amy, who shared her story along with eight other women in an amicus brief for the case, recalled being junior at Harvard when she realized that her period was late.

She said that she had been in a relationship with her 'loving and supportive boyfriend' for almost two years, and although they used birth control, it malfunctioned.

Amy's explained that mother Frederica S. Brenneman, who is a superior court judge, was in the first class of women at Harvard Law School and the third female to be put on the bench in the state of Connecticut.

Her progressive parents raised her to believe it is a woman's right to choose, and when Amy found herself pregnant just a year into her 20s, she knew 'immediately and without question' that she wanted an abortion as she looked to finish college and start her career.

Her choice: Amy was a 21-year-old student at Harvard and in a nearly two year relationship with her boyfriend when she learned she was pregnant. She recalled knowing immediately that she would have an abortion

Rising star: After graduating from Harvard in 1987, she went on to become a critically acclaimed actress, writer, and producer. She is pictured in 1993, seven years after she terminated her pregnancy

Together she and her boyfriend looked in the yellow pages for a clinic that performed abortions, and he was with her during the entire procedure, which he paid for.

'Afterward, I breathed huge sigh of relief and thought to myself, I get my life back!' she recalled.

'I was grateful that I lived in a country where forced birth was not the law of the land and where motherhood was not a lifelong consequence for a contraception slip.

'I have never, not for one moment, regretted my abortion.'

The writer and producer went on to have two children, a 14-year-old daughter Charlotte Tucker and a 10-year-old son Bodhi Russell, with her husband of 20 years, Brad Silberling.

Happy together: Amy and Brad Silberling, her husband of 20 years, have 14-year-old daughter Charlotte Tucker and a 10-year-old son Bodhi Russell. The family is pictured together in 2013

Starring role: Most recently, Amy appeared in the HBO sci-fi thriller The Leftovers (pictured)

And according to Amy, being a parent has only made her even more committed to reproductive rights. She explained that 'legal abortion allows children a fighting chance to be born into families that desire them and can support them'.

Amy went on to say that her abortion story is 'absolutely uneventful', but today women who choose to terminate their pregnancies face violent harassment by protesters or forced to drive hundreds of miles to even reach a clinic that performs the procedure.

The mother-of-two said part of the reason why she was inclined to share her story was because of a conversation she had with Nancy Keenan, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice Amerca.

Nancy once told her that the fight for marriage equality started to flourish while the the reproductive justice movement seemed to be moving in reverse because people in the former group were sharing their stories.
Sally, who goes by Miss Hannah to her students, is arguably one of the most organised, excitable and enthusiastic teachers in Australia.

The passionate graduate teacher, from Queensland, returned to school weeks before her pupils arrived last month to tirelessly prepare her classroom and transform it into a colourful and amazingly organised learning space.

The young year six teacher, who teaches 19 'beautiful' students at a catholic school in north-west Queensland, has been sharing her polished classroom and organisational skills on Instagram since day one, and has earned praise for her eye-popping decor and optimistic attitude.

Scroll down for video

'They deserve nothing but the absolute best': Sally, a graduate year six teacher, has been sharing her polished classroom and organisational skills on Instagram since January

Keen to get started: Sally excitedly shared a picture of her room key on the day she received it (left) and then took a picture of her 'blank canvas' (right) before she decorated

Teacher toolbox: Sally spend hours creating a 'teacher tool box' with large labels in preparation

In January, Sally was so excited about her new class that she shared a picture of the room key on the day she received it.

'Wooohooo! Finally got keys to my room! Let the set up begin!' She wrote on her Instagram page.

She then shared a picture of her 'blank canvas' classroom and proceeded to style it and spend hours making it perfect - from purchasing colourful planter boxes for pencils and pens to sticking a 'job chart' on the wall.

Job chart: 'Each kiddie has their name on a peg! shall rotate each Monday,' the proud teacher said

Immaculate: The passionate graduate teacher returned to school weeks before her pupils arrived last month to tirelessly prepare her classroom and transform it into a colourful and amazingly organised learning space

Reading corner: Sally created a reading corner for students with bean bags and reading posters

'Each kiddie has their name on a peg! Shall rotate each monday. Some jobs will require two people, whilst others will only need one,' she wrote.

The proud educator also spent time sticking 'voice check' stickers on the wall, preparing a 'maths clue word wall' next to her 'maths manipulative table' and created an 'I'm stuck' wall where students could read quotes to help them with 'problem solving.'

Sally purchased a light box with 'Welcome to Year Six' spelt out on it and designed a cute reading corner where she stuck 40 reading-related posters, strategies and a Dr. Seuss quote on the wall and provided small bean bags.

Light box: The proud teacher purchased a light box to welcome her class to their new room

'Way too excited': Sally used boxes, baskets, stickers and pictures to brighten up and organise the space

'Valentines presents for my little people': The teacher made heart gifts for her students attached to glow sticks

'Hellllllo. im sally (miss hannah to the small people). im a graduate teacher who has survived her first three days of teaching year 6 [sic]!' Sally wrote shortly after class started, and admitted she was still 'finding her feet' due to having 'zero experience' with year six.

'So have been working overtimeeeeee (sadly not reflected in my pay slip) to get some units ready for my babies - who deserve nothing but the absolute best.'

Sally stuck all of her students' names on the door to welcome them in, hung her own colourful name poster up and covered the walls with unique posters, behaviour charts, literacy inspiration and little personalised name buckets.

'The children think that getting one of these is the ULTIMATE prize': Sally designed personal stickers

Welcome: Sally attached both her names and the names of her students to the door to greet them

Inspirational: Sally always writes daily quotes on the board and shares her favourites on Instagram

On Valentine's Day Sally made all of her students 'You make my heart GLOW' presents.

'Valentines presents for my little people who've stolen my heart (but then often crush it 55 times a day). Unsure whether to hand them out tomorrow or monday, considering that v-day is sunday,' she said.

Sally also regularly shares her perfect excel documents, filing methods, quotes and book layouts to inspire other teachers to do the same.
Crown Princess Mary has taken time out of her five-day tour of Saudi Arabia to play with the country's school children.

The Australian-born royal was seen smiling as she visited a playground, reaching out a hand to help a young girl as she stepped off a slide.

Mary appeared delighted to spend time with the young girls who were dressed in their red-and-white school uniforms as she toured the country with her husband, Prince Frederik of Denmark.

Scroll down for video

Fun and games: Princess Mary visited a playground where she interacted with a group of school girls

A royal meeting: The students appeared delighted to meet the Princess and gathered around her as an onlooker took photos

Talking business: The mother-of-four sipped tea while she participated in business delegations

The mother-of-four arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday where she and Frederik have planned a series of business meetings to discuss the issues of health, sustainability and design and with the goal of strengthening trade.

But talking business appeared far from Mary's mind as she engaged with the children, who appeared delighted to spend time with the Princess.

Mary dressed in a grey tweed coat for the occasion, which she paired with an all-black ensemble and black stilettos.

Royal duty: Mary dressed in a black-and-white full-length ensemble as she met with people on her five-day tour

The young girls were dressed in a white-and-white checked school dress which they wore over a long-sleeved white shirt, their hair tied up in pink ribbons.

They laughed as they slid down the slide and smiled as they gathered around Mary.

While the playground visit was light-heated, Mary's tour of Saudi Arabia has not been without controversy.

Camera ready: Mary smiled as Frederik posed for a selfie while on a business tour of Saudi Arabia

The tour was almost cancelled earlier this year after human rights groups, including Amnesty International, voiced concerns about the country's human rights record - many suggesting the royal's visit would mean they accepted the political differences.

So far their trip has seen Mary participate in business delegations and take part in tours of the country.

On the same day she visited the playground, May and Frederik donned hard hats and hi-vis vests for a tour.

In one photo Mary is seen lovingly adjusting Frederik's hard hat, smiles on their faces.

Royal meeting: The five-day trip began with Frederik and Mary meeting with the Saudi royal family

No headscarf: The Princess decided to forego a headscarf, which are not required for foreigners

Conservative: The 44-year-old Princess has remained covered up during the tour, dressing in a long black top, loose-fitting black trousers, a soft pink silk scarf and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses

Earlier in their trip, Mary and Frederik were seen together with the Saudi royal family and met with King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Royal Palace.

The 44-year-old Princess covered up for the occasion in a long black top, loose-fitting black trousers, a soft pink silk scarf and large Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and was accompanied by 44 Danish representatives.

The Princess decided to forego a headscarf, but while Saudi females are required to wear a headscarf and loose robes in public, scarves are not required for foreigners and some women choose not to wear them.

Mary was later pictured shaking hands with various representatives dressed in a stunning, conservative black Prada coat, a pastel pink scarf and black trousers with her hair pulled back in a slick bun.

Business trip: Pictures show Mary and Frederik with the Saudi royal family and meeting King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Royal Palace

Focused: Princess Mary was looking stony-faced as she sat by her husband

Optional: In 2013, Duchess of Cornwall Camilla opted for a simple blue headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia (left) and in 2012, Kate Middleton wore a white scarf in Malaysia

ARE WOMEN REQUIRED TO WEAR a HEADSCARF IN SAUDI ARABIA? Women, foreign and local, must wear an abaya (a few get away with long coats) in public places. Muslim - often equated with Saudi - women are said to have to wear a headscarf; foreigners neednt. The face need not be covered, much to the chagrin of some hardliners. The western coast of Jeddah is far more relaxed than Riyadh, with abayas often brightly coloured or worn open to expose the clothing beneath. Source: The Economist Advertisement

In January 2015, First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, was criticised by both people in America and Saudi Arabia after she visited the country and decided not to wear a headscarf.

American politician Hillary Clinton also decided to forego a scarf during her visit in 2012 and in 2013, Duchess of Cornwall Camilla opted for a simple blue headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia - but did not cover up her hair.

Clinton did choose to don a headscarf during her visit to the historical Badshahi Masjid in Lahore in 2009 and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton covered up with a white scarf at The Assyakirin Mosque in Malaysia in 2012.

Some suggest those who choose not to wear a headscarf are making a bold statement, while others believe it is impolite.

Controversy: In January 2015, First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, was criticised by both people in America and Saudi Arabia after she visited the country and opted not to wear a headscarf

To wear or not? American politician Hillary Clinton decided to forego a scarf during her visit to Saudi Arabia in 2012 (left) but did choose to don a headscarf during her visit to Badshahi Masjid in Lahore in 2009 (right)

Modern Prince: Prince Frederik appeared relaxed as the group strolled through the palace grounds, wearing a tailored navy blazer, blue striped shirt and cream trousers

Prince Frederik appeared relaxed as the group strolled through the palace grounds, wearing a tailored navy blazer, blue striped shirt and cream trousers.

He completed his outfit with a pair of gold sunglasses and simple, black leather shoes.
Most award ceremonies are ghastly  the simpering, the gushing, the over-the-top gowns, the carefully practised What, me? looks of surprise.

But this years Oscars were the worst in living memory. First, there were the frankly obscene nominees goody bags, worth tens of thousands of pounds and stuffed with cosmetic surgery vouchers and sex toys.

Then, the all-too-predictable row about the too-white shortlist, which resulted in the thoroughly unconvincing sight of Hollywood scrambling to pack the front seats with as many members of ethnic minorities as they could muster. Well, those who werent busy serving drinks, at any rate.

Costume designer Jenny Beavan and actress Cate Blanchett at the Oscars. Seeing this ordinary woman walking proudly to the stage in her Marks & Spencer jacket and jeans against a backdrop of etiolated beauties squeezed into all manner of priceless embellishments made me want to punch the air with feminist ardour

Even more predictable was Leonardo DiCaprio winning Best Actor. We all knew he would, not least because it was his sixth nomination and anything else would have been embarrassing.

Most insincere of all was that picture of Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet sharing some hilarious intimacy with smiles that didnt reach their eyes.

In fact, together with random red -carpet appearances of Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga (theyre pop stars, what were they doing there?) everything about the 88th Academy Awards made me think its time for Hollywood to invent another way to reward its stars.

Here is a woman who was not afraid to be herself, wrinkles and all. Who despite spending every hour in her job as a (now award-winning) costume designer sewing beautiful women into gowns, had not succumbed to the pressure to be perfect

Until, that is, Bag Lady stole the show. Bag Lady, you may remember, is British costume designer Jenny Beavan who won a similar award at the Baftas, recently.

At the time host Stephen Fry quipped (affectionately  only Twitter was, as ever, too thick to get the joke) that only one of the great cinematic costume designers would come to an awards ceremony dressed as a bag lady.

She was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket, accessorised with a putty-coloured scarf and stacks of jangly silver bangles. With an audience buffed and trussed to within an inch of sanity, she did indeed look a little dishevelled.

To do that in Britain is one thing. But to do it at the Oscars in Los Angeles, where even tramps have capped teeth, is positively heroic. And deeply, brilliantly, thrillingly subversive.

Seeing this ordinary 65-year-old woman walking proudly to the stage in her Marks & Spencer jacket and jeans against a backdrop of etiolated beauties squeezed into all manner of priceless embellishments made me want to punch the air with feminist ardour.

Here was a woman who was not afraid to be herself, wrinkles and all. Who despite spending every hour in her job as a (now award-winning) costume designer sewing beautiful women into gowns, had not succumbed to the pressure to be perfect.

Who had more courage, self-assurance and grace than anyone else in that room.

Most enjoyable of all were the horrified looks on the faces of the assembled great and good of Tinseltown, clearly aghast at this scruffy interloper.

Director Tom McCarthys hand flew girlishly to his mouth.

Alejandro G. Inarritu (who won Best Director for The Revenant) sat with an eyebrow raised and arms folded tightly, as though to protect from this aberration.

Some of the audience openly smirked.

Most enjoyable of all were the horrified looks on the faces of the assembled great and good of Tinseltown, clearly aghast at this scruffy interloper

Did Beavan care? Not a jot. She told the Mail: I know how to make others look beautiful on screen, but I have never been interested in that kind of look for myself.

And besides, she had made an effort this time  hadnt she? Shed changed her scarf  to a striped Egyptian number. And the M&S leather jacket had been hand-embellished (by her, of course) with Swarovski crystals. Honestly, what more did they want?

So Jenny, may I extend my heartfelt congratulations?

Not just on your win  but also for your courage, authenticity and sheer chutzpah.

In the unlikely event that Im ever asked to nominate my Feminist of the Year, its going to be you.

Hang on to that awards ceremony jacket, lady. You never know when you might need it again.

Lock up your husbands!

I was intrigued to read in Sebastian Shakespeares Diary that BBC presenter Sophie Long, 38, is once again on manoeuvres  with the emphasis on man.

Having run off with married co-presenter Tim Willcox in 2012, she has now upgraded to the BBCs rising star and new economics editor, Kamal Ahmed, 49, whose marriage broke down last year.

I was intrigued to read in Sebastian Shakespeares Diary that BBC presenter Sophie Long, 38, is once again on manoeuvres  with the emphasis on man. Having run off with married co-presenter Tim Willcox in 2012, she has now upgraded to the BBCs rising star and new economics editor, Kamal Ahmed, 49

Long had only been wed a couple of years when she took up with 52-year-old Willcox, who left his wife and four children for her, having apparently been smitten by the comely blonde after he played the trumpet at her wedding.

Quite aside from the emotional wreckage, what I want to know is where she gets the energy from. Is she superhuman? Has she discovered some new type of HRT (if so, can she please share)?

Or is she simply one of those Jezebels who sees other peoples husbands as the perfect way of advancing their career?

Divorce at a click is so sad

In a world where countless relationships are kindled online, I suppose it makes sense that soon they will also be dissolved by mobile phone or laptop.

But the fact that, as from next year, the process of obtaining a divorce will become fully digitised makes me terribly sad.

Im aware many people think marriage is outmoded, but I know from experience that it can bind two people together through difficult times, leaving their relationship closer and stronger in the long term.

My parents, for example, will celebrate their 50th anniversary later this year. Their marriage has not been perfect; but it has been permanent, something that has been a source of great strength for my family over the years.

Will todays generation of newlyweds will reach similar milestones?

Not if getting a divorce is as easy as logging on and clicking unsubscribe.

Praise be for Tory faithful

Having been an MPs wife for over a decade, I understand the frustration some Tory politicians feel towards those at grassroots level.

But for all the rubber chicken dinners, local constituency associations do perform a vital function.

They remind those who inhabit the rarified air of Westminster, with its forelock-tugging civil servants and career yes-men, of what ordinary people think  and their own political mortality.

Yes, the associations do occasionally bang on a bit (dont we all?).

But any politician, regardless of hue, who dismisses them as irrelevant is indulging in a dangerous game.

Grassroots Tories might not be the most PC people on the planet; but they are the beating heart of the party.

And no one pricks the balloon of Whitehall pomposity better than a Tory association in full cry.

After years driving super-fast cars, Jeremy Clarksons body seems to be evolving.

If the latest pictures of him enjoying a Caribbean jaunt are anything to go by, he seems to have developed his own airbag.

After years driving super-fast cars, Jeremy Clarksons body seems to be evolving. If the latest pictures of him enjoying a Caribbean jaunt are anything to go by, he seems to have developed his own airbag

As the (somewhat frazzled) owner of a soon-to-be 13-year-old girl, it comes as no surprise to read that just two in 100 teenagers use a landline.

My daughters iPhone is like an extension of herself.

She potters quite happily around the house, chatting to friends, listening to music, watching her favourite shows on Netflix  all the while making herself smoothies and doing homework as though being grafted to a small computer were the most natural thing in the world.

When I take it off her in the evenings, its like disconnecting the power supply. I used to think cyborgs  part human, part robot  were the stuff of science fiction.

Now I have one living in my house.

No one should be shocked by the fact that Cheryl Fernandez-Versinis new beau, Liam Payne, 22, is ten years her junior. Without the age gap, why would anyone care about an alleged love affair between the least memorable member of One Direction and a third-rate pop star? It couldnt be more staged if it were showing in the West End.

Without the age gap, why would anyone care about an alleged love affair between the least memorable member of One Direction and a third-rate pop star? It couldnt be more staged if it were showing in the West End

Shouldnt Simon Stevens, head of NHS England, focus on the day job a little bit more before embarking on grandiose construction plans to build healthy towns?

For as long as we live in a country where doctors fail to recognise potentially fatal conditions such as sepsis in children, it seems invidious to divert scant resources into social engineering projects that will only extend the reach of the nanny state.
Amy Slapp, a 31-year-old mother-of-three, was just 23 weeks pregnant when she experienced a frightening bleed six weeks after having her gallbladder removed.

After being admitted to hospital for observation, Ms Slapp, from Bundaberg, Queensland, explained to That's Life! that she was walking to the bathroom and realised her waters had broken...four months before she was due.'



Ms Slapp's contractions were halted by doctors but an infection was discovered and just six days later, her little girl was ready to come into the world.

Scroll down for video

First cuddle: Amy Slapp, 31, gave birth to her daughter Olivia at just 25 weeks, who weighed just 754 grams and was a mere 31 centimetres long

'Rush of love': Ms Slapp, who also experienced a relationship breakdown, stayed by her daughter's side for 10 weeks as she grew but after taking her home, Olivia was struck with meningitis and started having seizures

'I was frantic with worry. How could she survive at just 25 weeks?' Ms Slapp questioned, who had to listen to doctors explain the risks of premature birth including brain damage, chronic lung disease and developmental delays.

Due to the infection, Ms Slapp was required to go under anaesthetic for a caesarean delivery and when she woke up was told her baby girl, Olivia, was alive and in neonatal intensive care.

'When I saw her, I felt a huge rush of love. She was hooked up to a ventilator and was covered in tubes, but she was perfect,' she said, explaining that Olivia weighed just 754 grams and was a mere 31 centimetres long.

'I was desperate to scoop her up in my arms but she was too delicate to be held.'

Healthy and happy: The little girl, now five, pulled through and developed normally (pictured with a custom doll made when she was five months which is the same size as Olivia was)

Read more in Thats Life! magazine, on sale now

10 days later, Ms Slapp was able to hold her daughter for the first time, but what followed were 10 stressful and challenging weeks.

Ms Slapp's relationship broke down following the birth and she relied on the support of her parents.

Olivia's condition improved and after 2.5 months she was breathing on her own and three weeks later she was able to go home - but it was short lived.

Around the time of her actual birth date, Olivia was struck with meningitis, rushed to hospital and started having 'terrifying seizures' due to her premature brain being unable to keep up with her body's growth.

Luckily the 'cheeky' little girl pulled through and by the time she was two-years-old Olivia's seizures had stopped and she was able to develop normally without any long-term complications.

When Olivia was five months, Ms Slapp had a doll made for her daughter by a company that makes dolls the size of premature babies.

'We keep her special doll on a shelf in her room and take a photo of her with it on every birthday as a reminder of her progress,' Ms Slapp said.
The pair smiled and laughed as they fitted their hard hats

flirted during an official engagement

Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark appear to be enjoying their controversial tour of Saudi Arabia in new pictures.

The royal couple we seen flirting with each other, laughing and smiling as they donned hard hats to be given a tour of a building site in the new King Abdullah Financial District in Riyadh.

The master plan for the new development, which is being constructed over 3 million square metres, was designed and overseen by Danish architectural firm Henning Larsen Architects.

The royal couple were accompanied around the building site by the health minister and the growth and development minister of Saudi Arabia.

Scroll down for video

Hats off: Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik laughed as they tried on hard hats during a tour of a building site in Saudi Arabia's new economic quarter

Building relationships: The royal couple visited the King Abdullah Financial District, which is currently under construction. The master plan for the area was created by Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects

The Princess had previously taken time out of her five-day tour of Saudi Arabia to play with the country's school children.

The Australian-born royal was seen smiling as she visited a playground, reaching out a hand to help a young girl as she stepped off a slide.

Mary appeared delighted to spend time with the young girls who were dressed in their red-and-white school uniforms as she toured the country with her husband, Prince Frederik of Denmark.

A royal meeting: The students appeared delighted to meet the Princess and gathered around her as an onlooker took photos

The mother-of-four arrived in Saudi Arabia on Sunday where she and Frederik have planned a series of business meetings to discuss the issues of health, sustainability and design and with the goal of strengthening trade.

But talking business appeared far from Mary's mind as she engaged with the children, who appeared delighted to spend time with the Princess.

Mary dressed in a grey tweed coat for the occasion, which she paired with an all-black ensemble and black stilettos.

The young girls were dressed in a white-and-white checked school dress which they wore over a long-sleeved white shirt, their hair tied up in pink ribbons.

They laughed as they slid down the slide and smiled as they gathered around Mary.

While the playground visit was light-heated, Mary's tour of Saudi Arabia has not been without controversy.

The tour was almost cancelled earlier this year after human rights groups, including Amnesty International, voiced concerns about the country's human rights record - many suggesting the royal's visit would mean they accepted the political differences.

So far their trip has seen Mary participate in business delegations and take part in tours of the country.

On the same day she visited the playground, May and Frederik donned hard hats and hi-vis vests for a tour.

In one photo Mary is seen lovingly adjusting Frederik's hard hat, smiles on their faces.

Royal meeting: The five-day trip began with Frederik and Mary meeting with the Saudi royal family

No headscarf: The Princess decided to forego a headscarf, which are not required for foreigners

Conservative: The 44-year-old Princess has remained covered up during the tour, dressing in a long black top, loose-fitting black trousers, a soft pink silk scarf and Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses

Earlier in their trip, Mary and Frederik were seen together with the Saudi royal family and met with King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Royal Palace.

The 44-year-old Princess covered up for the occasion in a long black top, loose-fitting black trousers, a soft pink silk scarf and large Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and was accompanied by 44 Danish representatives.

The Princess decided to forego a headscarf, but while Saudi females are required to wear a headscarf and loose robes in public, scarves are not required for foreigners and some women choose not to wear them.

Mary was later pictured shaking hands with various representatives dressed in a stunning, conservative black Prada coat, a pastel pink scarf and black trousers with her hair pulled back in a slick bun.

Business trip: Pictures show Mary and Frederik with the Saudi royal family and meeting King Salman bin Abdulaziz at the Royal Palace

Focused: Princess Mary was looking stony-faced as she sat by her husband

Optional: In 2013, Duchess of Cornwall Camilla opted for a simple blue headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia (left) and in 2012, Kate Middleton wore a white scarf in Malaysia

ARE WOMEN REQUIRED TO WEAR a HEADSCARF IN SAUDI ARABIA? Women, foreign and local, must wear an abaya (a few get away with long coats) in public places. Muslim - often equated with Saudi - women are said to have to wear a headscarf; foreigners neednt. The face need not be covered, much to the chagrin of some hardliners. The western coast of Jeddah is far more relaxed than Riyadh, with abayas often brightly coloured or worn open to expose the clothing beneath. Source: The Economist Advertisement

In January 2015, First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, was criticised by both people in America and Saudi Arabia after she visited the country and decided not to wear a headscarf.

American politician Hillary Clinton also decided to forego a scarf during her visit in 2012 and in 2013, Duchess of Cornwall Camilla opted for a simple blue headscarf while visiting Saudi Arabia - but did not cover up her hair.

Clinton did choose to don a headscarf during her visit to the historical Badshahi Masjid in Lahore in 2009 and Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton covered up with a white scarf at The Assyakirin Mosque in Malaysia in 2012.
New research has revealed the huge variety of terms that women in different countries around the world use to describe their monthly cycle.

While Japanese women might refer to their period as the 'red panda', the French - not quite in the spirit of entente cordial - say they use the phrase 'Les Anglais ont debarque', literally translated as 'The English have landed'.

Conducted by The International Womens Health Coalition and female health app Clue, the study questioned 90,000 women across 190 countries and found more than 5,000 pet names for periods emerged.

Scroll down for video

What do you call yours? A survey of 90,000 women unearthed some 5,000 euphemisms about periods from around the globe

Portuguese women who responded to The International Womens Health Coalition's survey said they might call their period 'My ketchup'

In the UK, there's a raft of terms that we employ to describe the menstrual cycle, with the more eccentric including 'Aunt Flo is visiting', 'the painters are in' and 'Bloody Mary'.

Other names popular in the UK included the 'blob', 'satan's volcano' and 'girl flu'.

In central and northern European countries, names of local fruits seem to be popular choices with the Germans using erdbeerwoche, literally strawberry week, and the Swedes talking of Lingonveckan (Lingonberry week).

Norwegians apparently might ask 'How's the volcano?' when enquiring if a woman has her period while in the Ukraine it could be referred to it as wolf week.

Across the pond, there's also a huge variety of terms used including 'Uncle Tom', 'Japan is attacking', being 'on the rag', 'the communist party' and the 'Red Sox are playing at home.'

A Canadian woman might reference the 'Napoleonic war' when talking about her period and Australians could call it 'shark week'.

Colour-themed phrases appeared frequently with women in Portugal, Denmark, Singapore, Iran and Hong Kong all using the term 'my ketchup' in their native languages.

The communist party also proved popular in US, Australia, the UK and Mexico.

More pedestrian phrases such as time of the month (TOM on social media), my monthly visitor, the scarlet curse and women's problems were common across the globe.

More creative terms, from women who didn't specify their country also included the 'red waterfall', 'code red', the 'red scare', the 'red fairy' and 'the circus is in town.'

According to the research, nearly three quarters of British women said they had encountered slang terms for periods.

The survey also discovered that while 85 per cent of women in the UK said they felt comfortable discussing their periods with female work colleagues, they were much less at ease talking to the men they worked with, with just 32 per cent saying they would raise the issue of their monthly cycle.

Female employees at a Bristol company will be entitled to paid leave if their period is causing them pain. Pictured: Company director Bex Baxter (centre) with staff members

Social community group CoExist, which employs 31 staff - seven male, aims to change the stigma around 'women's issues'

Earlier this week, Bristol social community group Coexist announced that it was introducing a 'period policy' to give long-suffering women time off work during their monthly cycle.

PET NAMES FOR PERIODS UK: 'Aunt Flo', 'the painters are in', 'Bloody Mary' and being 'on the blob' USA: 'Uncle Tom', 'Japan is attacking', being 'on the rag' and 'the communist party' FRANCE: 'Les Anglais ont debarque' (The English are coming) CANADA: 'Napoleonic war' JAPAN: 'The red panda' AUSTRALIA: 'Shark week' PORTUGAL: 'My ketchup' SWEDEN: Lingonveckan (Lingonberry week) GERMANY: Erdbeerwoche (Strawberry week) NORWAY: 'How's the volcano?' Advertisement

The new initiative aims to tap into female staff's 'natural rhythms' in order to create a happier and more productive work environment.

Company director Bex Baxter, who employs 31 staff - seven male - said she wants to change the stigma around 'women's issues'.

She said of the policy: 'I have managed many female members of staff over the years and I have seen women at work who are bent over double because of the pain caused by their periods.

'Despite this, they feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell.

'And this is unfair. At Coexist we are very understanding. If someone is in pain - no matter what kind - they are encouraged to go home.
A diamond and sapphire brooch owned by Princess Margaret for most of her life is expected to reach up to 20,000 at auction.

The dazzling piece of jewellery was owned by the Queen's younger sister from 1948 when she was 18 until her death in 2002 aged 71.

The early Art Deco pave-set diamond bow is decorated with openwork sapphire and diamond wheel motifs and calibre-cut sapphire detail.

A diamond a sapphire brooch owned by Princess Margaret is expected to reach 20,000 at auction. The early Art Deco pave-set diamond bow is decorated with openwork sapphire and diamond wheel motifs and calibre-cut sapphire detail

It is mounted in platinum and gold, was made in around 1920 and is about 2 inches wide. Although it is an exquisite piece, it is the fact that it belonged to the princess which has quadrupled the value.

Princess Margaret, the second daughter of Prince Albert Duke of York, later King George VI, and Elizabeth, Duchess of York, was a hugely popular member of the Royal family, both in the UK and abroad.

She began her public duties at the age of 18 when she already owned the glamorous piece of jewellery and wore it for a royal engagement.

The hefty price tag is in part due to the fact that the princess regularly featured in best dressed lists in the 1950s and 60s.

Margaret is said to have first been seen wearing the brooch at the age of 18 when she met members of the New Zealand Women's Association in London. Pictured: Margaret at a young age

The piece of jewellery was owned by the Queen's younger sister from 1948 from the age of 18 up until her death in 2002 aged 71

The royal was well known for her love of jewellery and amassed an impressive collection of inherited heirlooms, pieces that were presented to her both personally and for state occasions, and items she commissioned from British craftsmen.

She was known to have owned this brooch from at least 1948 and was pictured wearing it, aged 18, in November of that year when she met members of the New Zealand Women's Association in London.

But it is not known who gave her the brooch and the maker also remains a mystery.

It was one of 800 items sold off by her estate in 2006, four years after her death, when it was bought by the current owner.

It is now being sold through auctioneers Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Jonathan Edwards, head of jewellery at the auction house, said: 'Princess Margaret loved jewellery and she had the most wonderful collection.

Despite extensive research both the brooch's maker and who gifted it to the royal remain a mystery. Pictured: Jewellery collector Margaret in later life (left) and the brooch (right)

It is now being sold through auctioneers Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury, Wiltshire and being owned by a princess is said to have increased its value by 16,000

'This brooch is a beautiful thing and it's an interesting piece itself - in between Edwardian and Art Deco - but it's Princess Margaret that makes it valuable.

'If it came over the counter it would probably be worth about 4,000, it has four times that value because of its connection to the princess and its incredible provenance.

'It's stamped on the back with her cipher, all her jewellery was stamped in this way. It's a little script M with her coronet on top of it.'

Edwards added that after extensive research the origin of the brooch remains a mystery to the experts.

'We have researched it and haven't been able to pin down a maker. We've found similar ones, and it is almost certainly French, but we haven't been able to narrow it down more than that.

'It's a very beautiful brooch so I'm sure she would have worn it lots and it's incredibly collectible. As soon as anything royal comes up that adds huge interest to buyers.'
Twitter is divided with some claiming it is a step back for equality

Natasha, from Wokingham, hit back at man who slammed the idea on radio

Employees will be entitled to paid leave if in pain during their cycle

A woman who suffers with agonising period pain pulled no punches during a heated radio debate over whether female employees should be given monthly leave.

Natasha, from Wokingham, was left fuming when caller Stephen suggested the move was 'unnecessary' and accused women of playing the 'girly card'.

The debate aired on radio station LBC following news that UK company Coexist would introduce period leave to create a happier and more productive working environment.

Scroll down for video

Female employees at a Bristol company will be entitled to paid leave during their period cycle but the policy has caused nationwide debate. Pictured: Company director Bex Baxter (centre) with staff members

Company director Bex Baxter, who employs 31 staff - seven male - at the Bristol-based social community group Coexist, announced the move, saying she hoped to take the stigma out of 'women's issues'.

After furious debate erupted on Twitter, Stephen called up the LBC station to voice his opinion on the controversial topic.

Stephen said: 'It's a very convenient girly card, at times, where women can throw this into the mix.

'The period pain and the 'I'm having a difficult time at the moment,' and we blokes have to win wars and live in trenches.

'It get to a point where we've always made allowances for the wonderful things women have done in our lives.

'But from my experience, men have no way of combating this type of emotional stuff that comes from women' and instead simply get on with it.

His comments prompted Natasha to call the show in anger, saying: 'I am annoyed I'm really annoyed what that man is saying. Men have no idea what us girls go through.

Bex, 40, (pictured) wants to take the embarrassment and taboo out of period pains for women in work

Twitter users were divided over the issue of menstrual leave with some women agreeing serious period pain should qualify for time off

'Having suffered from the minute I started my period at [the age of] ten until I had a hysterectomy about five years ago, which was the best thing I ever did, some days you just cannot move, a) because of the pain and b) because the flow that you have is so heavy.

'And men being men, "oh no I have a hurt finger, oh no I have a cold or a flu". What is he talking about?'

Stephen replied: 'That is a very small minority of women and if they have that, that is definitely a serious medical condition.

Natasha said: 'No it's not a medical condition, I didn't have endometriosis. I just had periods that were absolute agony I had to take painkillers all my life for. Pharmaceutical companies must have made a fortune out of me.'

Stephen then told her she was shouting down the phone, which further angered Natasha, and he also asked: 'Would you go to bed with a woman shouting like this?'

But many Twitter users also felt the idea was sexist while some women argued it would cause issues for employability

Stephen revealed he had previously had three wives and six children, three of which were daughters.

Natasha said: 'You're saying women use it as a tool, it's a fact, it's a reality. Your daughters will be enraged with you, they will agree with me.'

However unperturbed Stephen continued: 'For it to become a universal network of ailments for work or whatever. Then where do we end up? When my testicles swell up?'

But Natasha quickly replied: 'I think they might if a woman got hold of you!'

Bristol-based Coexist employs mostly women and wants to acknowledge the monthly pain many experience - and hopefully increase workplace productivity.

Bea and Cecilia at work in the office at Coexist. The social community group, which employs 31 staff - seven male - aims to change the stigma around 'women's issues'

Flo pictured at work in the office at Coexist, Bristol. The idea has been welcomed enthusiastically by staff of both genders

Unveiling the plans, Bex, 40, said: 'I have managed many female members of staff over the years and I have seen women at work who are bent over double because of the pain caused by their periods.

'Despite this, they feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell. And this is unfair.'

The subject has proved controversial with Twitter users divided on the subject.

@Haylxxy wrote: 'Considering I throw up and or pass out from being in so much pain I think menstrual leave is perfectly reasonable idea not to go to work.'

@ArcticSupernova posted: 'For all you feminists out there I do "man up" and carry on but I would like the option when doubled over in pain.'

@cupcakesparkle posted: 'If feminism isn't fighting for a woman's right to a menstrual leave when she suffers harsh menstrual conditions, I'm glad I'm not one.'

But Kayleigh Holley opposed it because it will make women appear 'less employable'.

Coexist have 31 members of staff and seven are male and all support the decision to allow the women time off during their period

@user_unlisted posted: 'I have had periods worse than first-stage labour,' and agreed there should be leave for women.

But Megan Gadsby Robinson wrote: 'We can't fight for equality then want to be treated for equality.'

And Tyler Martyn complained it would be 'sexist' and called women hypocritical.

Bex said: 'There is a misconception that taking time off makes a business unproductive - actually it is about synchronising work with the natural cycles of the body.'

Bex stressed that it was a cause close to her heart as she too suffers from bad cramps every month.

SIGNS THAT YOUR PERIOD PAIN IS NOT NORMAL 1. Severity: Extreme pain that over the counter medication can not ease 2. Location: Lower back or leg pain 3. Timing: Pain during first two days of bleeding is normal, any other time during the cycle is not 4. Other factors: Pain during sex, bleeding between periods can be other symptoms of endometriosis Advertisement

She continued: 'My team here have always been very generous - I've been able to take time off when I've needed it, but always put it back in again. But until now there haven't been any formal guidelines.'

But the company said the idea has been welcomed enthusiastically by staff of both genders.

Bex said: 'I was talking to someone the other day and they said if it were men who had periods then this policy would have been brought in sooner.'

But 'period policies' are no new thing. Menstrual leave began in Japan in 1947 and other countries including South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia also have laws in place allowing women to take time off work when they are on their period.

Most recently, the Chinese province Anhui has agreed to give women paid monthly leave if they produce a doctor's letter.

And sportswear giant Nike is thought to be the only worldwide company to officially include menstrual leave as part of their Code of Conduct.

Bex and her team plan to formulate the policy together as part of a seminar at Hamilton House, Stokes Croft on March 15 called 'Pioneering Period Policy: Valuing Natural Cycles in the Workplace'.
The Swedish Royal Court has revealed that Crown Princess Victoria has named her baby boy Prince Oscar Carl Olof, her second child with husband Prince Daniel.

The eagerly-anticipated announcement was made today following a cabinet meeting held by the king where the young boy's official title was also decided. He will be known as the Duke of Skane.

The excitement on 38-year-old Victoria's face was clear to see as she prepared to leave the maternity ward with all four family members in tow, including her adorable daughter Princess Estelle.

The baby boy was born at the Karolinska University Hospital in the Swedish capital of Stockholm at 8.28pm local time on Tuesday, the court confirmed.

Scroll down for video

It's a family affair! Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Daniel and Princess Estelle leave hospital with their new addition, Prince Oscar Carl Olof

A little prince! Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, pictured earlier this month, has given birth to a baby boy with her husband Prince Daniel

Celebration! According to the palace, the 38-year-old, who showed off a sizable bump at an event in Stockholm earlier this month, and her baby, who weighs eight pounds and measured 22 inches, are both doing well

Proud father: Prince Daniel confirmed the couple's happy news with the media on Wednesday, noting that he had cut his son's umbilical cord himself

The court added that Victoria's husband, Prince Daniel, was at the hospital during the entire birth, with the prince later addressing the media personally to confirm that his newborn son was born weighing eight pounds and measuring 22 inches long.

The royal baby is third in line to the throne after his mother and elder sister, four-year-old Princess Estelle, who was born in February 2012.

While addressing the media, Daniel revealed that the couple kept the sex of their baby a surprise, sharing his happiness upon discovering that they had welcomed a son, saying that he had tears streaming down his face when his child was born - just as he had done during the birth of Estelle.

Everyone is obviously very happy,' Prince Daniel said, according to Expressen. I havent had time to feel yet how it feels to be a father of two, but it obviously feels good.

He then added: Estelle is of course really enthusiastic and happy about being a big sister.'

Vistors: Prince Carl Philip leaves the maternity ward after paying a visit to his sister Crown Princess Victoria

Proud uncle: Prince Carl Philip visited his new nephew at the Karolinska University Hospital

Sweden's King Carl Gustaf announces his grandson, will be christened Oscar Carl Olof, during a council meeting with Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and the Swedish government at Stockholm Royal Palace

Speaker Urban Ahlin, Kirstine von Blixen-Finecke, permanent secretary Svante Lindqvist, and prime minister Stefan Lofven give a press conference announcing the birth of Prince Oscar Carl Olof

Overjoyed: The prince also confirmed that he had tears streaming down his face in the delivery room, just as he did when his daughter Estelle was born

Saying thanks: The royal can be seen shaking hands with Dr Lennart Nordstrom, one of the doctors who was present during the birth, and who also assisted with the delivery of Princess Estelle

The royal, who married Princess Victoria in June 2010, then thanked the media for allowing the family privacy following the birth of their daughter Estelle, suggesting that they would appreciate the same respect this time around.

We asked for respect for our privacy four years ago, which I think you have shown,' he said. 'I want to give a big thank you for that.

As per tradition in Sweden, a Te Deum celebration will also be held in the next few days, which is a formal thanksgiving service that takes place in church. The Te Deum for Princess Estelle was held the day after her birth at the

The news that Crown Princess Victoria was expecting her second child with her husband Prince Daniel, a former personal trainer, was announced in a statement released by the Swedish Royal Court on Friday September 4 and confirmed by the princess herself over that weekend.

Happy news: It is the royal's second child with her husband; the couple already have a four-year-old daughter, Princess Estelle. The family is pictured together in October

Expanding family: Princess Victoria's brother, Prince Carl Philip, and his wife Sofia, pictured earlier this month, are expecting their first child together next month

Victoria shared her happy news personally on the royal family's official website, declaring herself 'happy' at the prospect of becoming a mother again, after being plagued by pregnancy rumors for months over the summer.

'Their Royal Highnesses Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel are happy to announce that the Crown Princess is expecting their second child,' read the statement.

Victoria's baby bump was first seen on the weekend of the announcement in early September.

Excitingly for the royal family, the couple's newborn child will soon be joined by another young royal; Princess Victoria's sister-in-law Sofia, 31, is expecting her first child with husband Prince Carl Philip, 36, next month.
Women from ethnic minorities more likely to believe cancer is deadly and down to fate than white women

Women from ethnic minorities are up to 10 times more likely to believe cancer is down to fate than white women, new research has revealed.

They are also more likely to think the disease is incurable, the study found.

Researchers believe this may be why women from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to attend cancer screening or see their doctor about symptoms.

Nearly a quarter of Caribbean women (23 per cent), and at least half of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi women (50 per cent, 52 per cent, and 63 per cent respectively) believed that getting cancer was 'fate'.

This was compared to just 6 per cent of white British women.

Worryingly, at least a quarter of women from ethnic minorities believed cancer was incurable, while no white women thought the same.

The study also looked at fear of cancer and found that about a third of Indian and African women (34 and 33 per cent) feared cancer, compared with only 15 per cent of Bangladeshi women.

Those women who had migrated to the UK as children were twice as likely to feel uncomfortable about thinking about cancer than women born in the UK (30 per cent compared with 15 per cent).

The same was true for those who did not speak English very well (31 per cent compared with 19 per cent) and those who found it difficult to understand health information (35 per cent compared with 18 per cent).

Previous research of the same women showed that those from ethnic minority backgrounds were less likely to attend cervical screening

The new study, of 720 women, was carried out at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at University College London (UCL).

Lead author Charlotte Vrinten said: 'We know that fearing cancer means some people avoid taking part in cancer screening or seeing their doctor with symptoms, and there's evidence that this is true for white women and those from ethnic minority backgrounds too.

'This may be especially true when women also believe that nothing can be done about cancer.'

Cancer charities urged people to attend cancer screenings and see their doctor about symptoms

She continued: 'Undue fear of cancer may cost some people their lives if it means they avoid cancer screening or seeing their doctor with symptoms.

'So it's important that we get the message out there that cancer outcomes are improving and that cancer doesn't have to be dreaded like it used to be.'

Dr Julie Sharp, Cancer Research UK's head of health information, said: 'Spotting cancer early is important as it means treatment is more likely to be successful.

'Symptoms are more likely to be caused by something much less serious than cancer, but if you spot something that isn't normal for you, getting it checked out promptly could save your life.'

The research was published in the British Journal of Cancer.
Most people would consider the bodies of men and women equally valuable.

But, when it comes to circumcision, that clearly isnt true - which is odd considering the procedure removes functional tissue, causes extreme pain, permanently disfigures and forever damages sexual response, regardless of gender.

Oh, and in most cultures where female circumcision is routinely performed, the male equivalent is also done with equally dirty, blunt apparatus.

Meaning it's less a competition of suffering and more a universal issue of genital integrity.

So, you can imagine my disdain when medical experts recently re-asserted the myth that clamping a boys foreskin without his consent and cutting it off with a scalpel is meritorious.

Fortunately, as someone with 30 years experience of having a penis, Im more than qualified to explain why its not OK to modify a person's body without consent.

Peter Lloyd , author of Stand by Your Manhood, says infant circumcision a multi-million pound industry shrouded in misinformation, monetary gain and foreskin folklore

The first circumcision is thought to have happened in Egypt centuries ago and, since then, has been performed for religious reasons across the Middle East - but it only became popular in the West during the nineteenth century when Victorian kill-joys wanted to discourage people from masturbating.

Not to put you off your breakfast, but one of the biggest advocates was Michigan physician Dr John Harvey Kellogg  yep, the man behind your corn flakes.

A medical practitioner and businessman, he also doubled as a sex prude.

Not content with his own monastic life, he also wanted to discourage everybody else from pleasure too, so suggested young girls receive a dab of carbolic acid to the clitoris, while boys have the hoods of their foreskins cut off.

Both methods were designed with one specific, leg-crossing aim: to tame lust in the young.

Fortunately, the former didnt catch on  but the latter did...and has now become a multi-million pound industry shrouded in misinformation, monetary gain and foreskin folklore.

So, to combat this, here's a definitive, six-point reality-check on circumcision:

1) THE BODY HAS FORESKIN FOR A REASON

IntactAmerica - a leading voice of the rising 'intactivist' movement - note that 'the foreskin is a normal, sensitive, and useful body part.

In infant boys, it serves a protective function, and throughout a mans life, it keeps the glans moist, shields it from injury, and enhances sexual pleasure.

'By crushing and severing the foreskin, you damage the healthy penis, cause unnecessary pain and bleeding, create a risk of infection and complications, and permanently remove viable erogenous tissue.'

In fact, the foreskin has a whopping 16 functions. These include:

Providing bacteriostatic action around the head (inhibits bacterial growth)

Protecting the nerves to keep the penis sensitive during sex (where the foreskin also acts as a rolling device  otherwise thrusting would hurt more and feel a bit pinched),

Distributing natural lubricants

Storing pheromones for releases on arousal  making us more attractive to our other halves on a chemical level 

Acting as a sleeping bag for the shaft, keeping it safe and warm

Besides, if we didn't need it, evolution would've got rid by now.

Oh, and no professional medical association in the world recommends routine circumcision, so there.

THE ARGUMENTS SUPPORTING CIRCUMCISION In December, it was recommended all boys in the US have the controversial procedure Medical experts are increasingly divided over whether circumcision should be performed. On one side of the debate is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - America's leading public health organisation. In December it issued draft guidelines recommending the procedure for all boys. This argued circumcision protects against the risk of urinary tract infections in infants and sexually transmitted diseases in adulthood. The CDC guidelines also suggest that circumcision lowers the risk of men contracting herpes and the human papilloma virus, in turn protecting them against penile cancer - and cutting the risk of their passing the virus on to women, reducing their risk of cervical cancer. It concluded that 'the scientific evidence is clear that the benefits outweigh the risks of physical or mental harm that may be involved'. And last month, surgeon Dr Paul Turek, of The Turek Clinic in California, told Daily Mail Online that circumcision prevents the spread of viral STDs, including HIV, Herpes and HPV  which is known to cause genital warts and cervical cancer. Dr Turek said: That data is indisputable. It comes from three US government sponsored trials conducted in three locations. Scientists are still working to determine just how circumcision is able to reduce the spread of those viral infections. However, according to Dr Turek, the current theory is that the foreskin acts as a reservoir for secretion. And those secretions contain viruses, such as HIV and herpes. Furthermore, with those secretions residing on the hood of the penis, contact time with someone who does not have the virus can be increased. He added: Penile skin  foreskin  is like eyelid skin. Its very thin. Increased contact time of potential viral pathogens can be important. However, circumcision reduces that reservoir and limits the contact time.' (However the procedure has not been found to have any effect on the spread of viral STDs, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea.) Futhermore, he claimed penile cancer is virtually nonexistent in circumcised men - and the 'snip' can also help men with fertility issues. The World Health Organisation advocates circumcision in regions with high levels of heterosexual HIV transmission - such as in Africa.However it also warns it can cause pain, excessive bleeding, excessive skin removal, scars and deformation. Advertisement

2) CIRCUMCISION CAN CAUSE PERMANENT INJURY AND INFANT DEATH

More worryingly, boys who have their foreskin removed often suffer complications  some of which are not revealed until the victim is sexually mature.

Sadly, an additional 117 babies are estimated to die from botched procedures in the US alone, each year.

In September 2012, a two-week-old infant died at a Brooklyn hospital after contracting herpes through a circumcision ritual called metzitzah bpeh, which involves the bleeding foreskin coming into contact with the mouth of the mohel, who sucks it dry.

In November 2012, Manchester Crown Court heard how a four-week-old boy bled to death after a DIY home circumcision went wrong. Nurse Grace Adeleye was paid 100 to carry out the procedure, using only scissors, forceps and olive oil, at the family home in Chadderton. Adeleye was later found guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence.

Likewise, Californian baby Brayden Tyler Frazier died in 2013. The newborn child, who was only a few days old, suffered serious complications as a result of the procedure and died from his injuries on 8 March. Ironically, his death coincided with International Womens Day.

3) IT'S SEXIST TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN FGM & MGM

One look in the comments section of Dr Turek's article shows a huge empathy gap - and utter contempt for anyone who tries to align the issues.

Laws across the West rightly prohibit girls from undergoing FGM, but the same protection isnt extended to boys.

Even the NSPCC, Save the Children and Barnados have no initiative to protect boys. Of course, gender warriors justify this by claiming one is about hygiene and the other the oppression of women, but is there actually a link between male circumcision and FGM?

Oh, theres absolutely a comparison, says Rebecca Wald, creator of Jewish campaign group Beyond The Bris, which advocates against boy-cutting.

Fortunately, as someone with 30 years experience of having a penis, Im more than qualified to explain why its not OK to modify a person's body without consent

'Theres a continuum of FGM [female genital mutilation] and the equivalent of male circumcision is definitely on there, whether people like it or not. Some forms of FGM are just a pin-prick, which is obviously still bad, but its nowhere near as terrible as complete foreskin removal. The whole thing has become political.

'As a mother, Im amazed that there are people dedicated to saving girls genital integrity who couldnt care less about boys. Its definitely a mens rights issue. One hundred per cent.

Interestingly, she also sees it as a womans issue.

Most of my audience are women, she adds. Which is interesting, because its a sons mother who hands him over to be operated on in the first place. Her boy is taken with her full consent, when  like a lioness  she should be opposing it. But where are the feminists?

Jonathon Conte, a Californian campaigner whos also part of a radical new generation of anti-cutting activists across the USA, agrees.

Regardless of the sex of the victim, a healthy individual being restrained without their consent and having their genitals removed is a violation.

In its purest form the removal of the prepuce, which is the same structure anatomically in men and women, its entirely an analogous procedure.

Besides, we shouldnt be arguing about whats better or worse. It shouldnt be a competition of suffering, everybody has the right to grow up with their whole body.

As an adult if you want to have a body modification  a tattoo, a piercing, cosmetic surgery or circumcision  great, go for it, but children arent property.

4) UNCIRCUMCISED MEN ARE NOT DIRTY

Is there a hidden financial reason why were encouraged to cut our sons, asks Peter Lloyd?

Perhaps one reason for the on-going tolerance of male circumcision is the hygiene excuse.

The World Health Organization says circumcised boys help reduce the risk of heterosexually-acquired HIV infection by 60 per cent. But, last time I checked, baby boys werent having sex.

And, anyway, when that time eventually does come theres always a condom.

Besides, if circumcision prevented HIV so much, why is America still a nation with high transmission rates? In 2011, 49,273 people were diagnosed with HIV in the United States. In that same year, more than 32,000 people had full-blown AIDS.

More importantly, let me reiterate what any sane person already knows: rolling a foreskin back in the shower is not rocket science. Mother Nature is smart and knows exactly what shes doing.

And while Dr Turak asserts that circumcision can help prevent penile cancer, a simpler solution is surely to offer all young men the HPV vaccine - something thats currently only given to women.

Job done.

5) BOY-CUTTING OFTEN CAUSES PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE

The appropriately named Catherine Hood, a counsellor from the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine, knows about the mental scarring, too.

By crushing and severing the foreskin, you damage the healthy penis, cause unnecessary pain and bleeding, create a risk of infection and complications, and permanently remove viable erogenous tissue

She sees many men who are angry about having been circumcised as a boy - and explains that they experience feelings of invasion, self-loathing and shame.

The issues that men are angry about are very individual, she says from her clinic in LA.

But often they are angry with the fact theyve had the procedure and this can lead to a sense of loss or of being different to the other men.

This can cause a drop in sexual confidence, avoidance of relationships, or I have seen one man who felt he had reduced sensation and so didnt enjoy sex as much as a result.

'Obviously parents make the decision to get their children circumcised and the child doesnt have a say. If the child then grows up with any grievance against their parent then this is an obvious focus.

6) THE CIRCUMCISION INDUSTRY THRIVES BECAUSE IT GENERATES MILLIONS

In addition to the fee for private procedures (of which there are more than a million US cases each year) there are the people who make money off the tools used  the clamps, the boards used to strap down the children, the cutting utensils and the anaesthetic.

On top of that theres the tissue-harvesting industry, where a number of companies make a profit on neonatal foreskin. The tissue, after amputation, is sold to biotech companies and its used for skin grafts, burn victims, diabetic patients, scientific research and anti-wrinkle cream.

Its a huge multi-million-dollar industry, so theres a lot of financial incentive to keep the circumcision train rolling, adds Jonathan Conte.

There are many people who are making a lot of money when it happens, who would make no money if it didnt. Forget human rights, its all about the mighty dollar.

Which begs the question: is there a hidden financial reason why were encouraged to cut our sons? Is this just a cash-generator  straight from his pants? The answer, with the exception of medically-correcting phimosis in consenting adults, is always yes.

Meaning practitioners and parents should cut it out, not off.
Patients who only rarely visit their GP face being struck off surgery lists, under NHS plans to cut costs.

Practices are being encouraged to remove anyone who has not had an appointment within five years and fails to respond to two warning letters.

The measures have been put forward by NHS bosses in the East of England to save money and free up space on growing surgery registers.

Patients who only rarely visit their GP face being struck off surgery lists under plans by NHS bosses in the East of England in order to cut costs and free up space on doctor's registers (file image)

But experts say patients will be punished for being too healthy or for simply not wanting to bother their doctor with trivial complaints.

Surgeries across England are in crisis and struggling to cope with an exodus of GPs quitting the profession, on top of a rising and ageing population. Those in East Anglia are under particular pressure due to high rates of immigration and an influx of pensioners moving into retirement homes there.

Surgeries are handed an average of 136 a year to provide care for every patient on their list, regardless of whether they make appointments.

Officials say the latest measures are part of a list-cleansing drive to spare the NHS from wasting millions paying GPs for non-existent patients who have moved away or died  and that no one will be removed from the lists if they wish to stay registered.

But Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the policy would discriminate against good patients who were deliberately avoiding troubling their busy surgeries.

In 2014, a practice in Watton, Norfolk, began striking patients from its list  including 95-year-old great-grandmother Lily Dove (pictured)  amid rising levels of immigration in the area

Its a slippery slope  patients may receive the letter but not understand what they need to do, she said.

What mechanisms have they put in place to allow patients to respond to these letters, given how difficult it is to get through to GPs? What if a patient has been in extremely good health, understands the pressures GPs are under and has deliberately not used the service? I think patients will be unfairly discriminated against.

MP Barbara Keeley, Labours spokesman for care, carers and older people, said: These proposals are deeply troubling and could leave a number of patients without a GP. Patients should be confident that when they need to see their GP, they can. Its completely irresponsible to arbitrarily strike people off a practice list because they are considered too healthy.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chair of the British Medical Associations GPs committee said: Patients should not be punished for being too healthy and being careful about how they use NHS services. Schemes like this just add to GP workload and irritate patients.

Many patients understandably believe that this is something the practice has done to them and dont realise that this has been carried out by NHS England. It therefore needlessly undermines the relationship between GP and patient.

The plans, uncovered by Pulse magazine, have been put forward by NHS Englands East region, which covers just under six million patients in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex.

Officials said they were still finalising how the striking off process would work and could not confirm when it would start.

But surgeries would be told to identify any patient who has not seen a doctor within five years and send them two successive warning letters. If they failed to respond, they would be struck off and forced to register elsewhere. Those most likely to be removed are middle-aged men. Previous figures have found one in five men do not see their GP in any given year. The proposals are one of the largest ever list-cleansing drives. Previously, surgeries or local NHS bodies have struck patients off on an ad hoc basis.

In 2014, a practice in Watton, Norfolk, began striking patients from its list  including 95-year-old great-grandmother Lily Dove  amid rising levels of immigration in the area.

Widow Mrs Dove said at the time: Ive been with the Watton surgery all my life, as were my parents before me.

This letter from the surgery just came out of the blue. There was no question of discussing it with you or anything.

Officials from NHS England are currently in discussion with GPs from regional Local Medical Committees (LMCs) about how the plans will work.

But doctors from the Cambridgeshire LMC are so opposed that they have written to surgeries warning that the measures will discriminate against men and children, who also tend not to see a GP very regularly.

Surgeries are handed an average of 136 a year to provide care for every patient on their list, regardless of whether they make appointments (file image)

Their letter states: We are very concerned about this  on grounds of discrimination, on grounds of workload, on grounds of making care for children and middle-aged men less accessible.

Dr Guy Watkins, chief executive of the LMC, said the two groups at risk were men aged 20-45 and children between the ages of eight and 15, who did not need routine check-ups or vaccinations.

A spokesman for NHS England East said it was still finalising the process and that patients would not be struck off until it had had further discussions with local GPs.

Ruth Derrett, locality director for NHS England East, added: List validation is something which routinely takes place to ensure GP practices have the correct numbers of patients registered.

NHS England in the East is currently looking at a validation process whereby patients who have not accessed their GP in five years are contacted.
The majority of people diagnosed with the deadliest form of skin cancer have fewer than 20 moles on their body, experts today warned.

The discovery is significant because changing or irregular moles are thought to be a key sign of melanoma.

Past studies have suggested the number of total moles and atypical moles is associated with a heightened risk of the disease.

But the relationship of those mole patterns with tumor thickness and cancer prognosis is complex.

Now, scientists at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health suggest doctors cannot rely on moles as the only warning sign for the disease.

A new study by scientists at Harvard has found the majority of patients diagnosed with melanoma, pictured under the microscope, have fewer than 20 moles on their body and no irregular, or dangerous, moles

Their results showed two in three melanoma patients had fewer than 20 moles on their body.

In addition, very few melanoma patients were found to have 'dangerous' moles.

And almost three-quarters of those analysed had no irregular moles.

Dr Alan Geller, who led the study, said it is still thought the number and type of moles on a person's body is linked to their risk of developing the disease.

But his team's findings show the relationship between those patterns is complex.

Researchers looked at the link between total number of moles and 'atypical' moles, and the development of melanoma.

They examined 566 patients with melanoma - and, of those, the majority (66.4 per cent) had zero to 20 moles in total on their body.

Meanwhile, 73.3 per cent (415 patients) had no irregular moles.

Physicians and patients should not rely on the total nevus (mole) count as a sole reason to perform skin examinations or to determine a patient's at-risk status Dr Alan Geller, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

In patients younger than 60, having more than 50 moles actually reduced the risk of developing thick melanoma - a more advanced form of the disease.

Melanoma is staged according to its thickness in the skin.

In general, tumors less than 1mm thick have a very small chance of spreading.

But as melanoma becomes thicker, it has a greater chance of spreading, according to the American Cancer Society.

Dr Geller and his team also found in patients younger than 60, having more than five atypical moles - compared with none at all - still increased the risk of melanoma.

He said: 'Several public health messages emerge from our study including that melanomas are more commonly diagnosed in individuals with fewer nevi (moles) compared with those with a high mole count.

'Therefore physicians and patients should not rely on the total nevus (mole) count as a sole reason to perform skin examinations or to determine a patient's at-risk status.'

Dr Alan Geller, who led the study, urged patients and doctors to be aware that changes to moles are not the only sign of melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer

Past research has found people with more than seven moles on their right arm are nine times more likely to have more than 50 moles on their entire body.

Up to 60 per cent of susceptibility to moles is believed to be inherited.

Risk factors for melanoma include having red or fair hair, fair skin, light-colored eyes or having suffered sunburn in the past.

But less than half of melanomas develop from existing moles.

They can develop anywhere on the body and are most commonly found on the trunk in men and legs in women.

Melanoma accounts for just one per cent of all skin cancers, but is by far the most deadly form of the disease.

The American Cancer Society estimate the disease will be diagnosed in 76,380 people this year, while around 10,130 people will die from melanoma in 2016.

In the UK, malignant melanoma is the fifth most common cancer, causing more than 2,000 deaths each year.

The study was published in the journal JAMA Dermatology.
A brother and sister have been diagnosed with a rare condition which meant they chewed their fingers off - without feeling a thing.

Manisha Patel, seven, and her five-year-old brother Dinkal, from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, eastern India, both have congenital insensitivity - meaning they are unable to feel pain.

The pair are also prone to infections as they can suffer injuries - that would be unbearable for any other child their age - without noticing.

They have had their hands wrapped in bandages to prevent them causing further injury and have thick dressings around their legs.

Dinkal Patel, five, has been diagnosed with congenital insensitivity - meaning he is unable to feel pain. His parents said he and his sister Manisha, seven, had chewed their fingers off

Dinkal shows the tops of his fingers are missing. It is thought he chewed them off because he cannot feel pain

The condition, which is also known as congenital analgesia, is genetic and caused by mutations in the SCN9A gene.

Their case is so severe, they cannot feel any sensation or pain in their limbs and are very vulnerable to infections.

Their father Gopal Prasad Patel, 32, said he came home from his work labouring to find the pair covered in blood.

Speaking to a reporter in India, he claimed: 'I cannot believe they ate their own fingers. The incident happened when they were playing at home.

'My wife and I were out in fields working and my mother was taking care of the children.

'She only learnt about it when she came to feed them and saw blood oozing out of their fingers.

'It was a horrible sight. Their fingers looked as if a rat had nibbled on them. I could not believe they had eaten their own fingers,' he said.

Manisha, seven, from Raipur, eastern India, has had her legs bandaged to stop infections caused by wounds as she cannot feel pain

Doctors have bandaged the brother and sister's legs to avoid more injuries and stop them getting infected

He took the children to a local hospital before they were transferred to a more advanced facility.

Prasad, who makes just 50 a month, says he has no idea how the family will pay for the treatment.

WHAT IS CONGENITAL INSENSITIVITY TO PAIN? Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) is a rare genetic condition that means a person cannot feel pain. People with the condition are able to feel touch and temperature but cannot feel pain. Young sufferers may chew on fingers and tongue, or burn hands without realising. They often suffer unnoticed infections and injuries which can become serious as they are not treated. The condition can be caused by a gene mutation but it can also be caused by the brain over-producing endorphins. CIP is so rare it affects fewer than one in a million people. Advertisement

'Even managing two meals a day is a task for us. I do not know how I will manage their treatment,' he said.

'I just can't see my children in this condition. Seeing them in the terrible condition just breaks my heart.

'My wife and I have been praying to God all the time because nothing else seems to be working out for us.'

The family, who had never heard of the rare condition, thought the children were brave because they did not cry when they got injured.

Mother Anita, 28, said: 'Ever since they were born, they never cried if they hurt themselves.

'But we thought they had amazing endurance to tolerate any pain. But this incident unfolded the truth in front of us.

'Now that I have learnt about it, this terrifies me and I am hoping to get help from authorities for the treatment of my kids.'
If you feel old before your time, it is easy to blame a stressful day at work or a late night out.

But answer may lie much further back in time.

Cambridge University research suggests that the seeds of ageing are sown while we are still in the womb, with everything from our mothers fruit and vegetable intake to whether she smokes affecting us for decades to come.

In fact what our mother does before we are born may be even more important than anything we do ourselves.

Similarly, our mothers habits may have a bigger effect on whether we suffer a heart attack than whether we do lots of exercise or take care to keep to a healthy weight.

While the ideas may seem bizarre, the study is part of a growing body of research that points to a childs health being programmed early in life, including the womb and pre-conception.

The seeds of ageing are sown while we are still in the womb, with everything from our mothers fruit and vegetable intake to whether she smokes affecting us for decades to come, a study has found

Researcher Dino Giussani compared adult rats from normal pregnancies to creatures from difficult ones in which oxygen levels were restricted, to mimic the effect of being exposed to cigarette smoke in the womb.

Being obese in pregnancy can also reduce the babys oxygen supply, as can conditions such as pre-eclampsia.

To judge how quickly the creatures were ageing, Professor Giussani zeroed in tiny structures called telomeres.

These are biological caps which are found at the ends of chromosomes and protect the DNA in them from damage, much like the caps on the ends of shoelaces prevent fraying.

As we get older, our telomeres get shorter and shorter, leading to DNA becoming damaged and raising the odds of age-related illness.

Shorter than average telomeres are seen as a sign of ill health and premature death and the structures are considered so important that the scientists who discovered them seven years ago were awarded a Nobel prize for medicine.

Here, the telomeres were shorter in the adult rats that had lacked oxygen in the womb, meaning they were old before their time.

However, if the expectant mother was given anti-oxidants, health-boosting nutrients found in high levels in fruit and vegetables, their telomeres were longer.

Researchers mimicked the effect of being exposed to cigarette smoke in the womb in rats,and found they

Even pups born from normal pregnancies got an anti-ageing effect in adulthood from anti-oxidants in the womb, the FASEB Journal reports.

The researchers said that while the study was in rats, the findings likely apply to people.

And so a woman who feasts on fruit and vegetables in pregnancy might have a child that is younger than their years as an adult.

And the benefits may not just be cosmetic.

The study also suggested smoking or being obese in pregnancy has long-term effects on the unborn childs heart, raising their odds of heart disease as an adult.

Staying younger for longer should also stave off other age-related illnesses, such as diabetes.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, said: Although conducted in rats, this research emphasises the need for pregnant mothers to maintain a healthy lifestyle for the sake of their babys future heart health.

Encouraging pregnant women to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, or giving them anti-oxidant supplements, may have an anti-ageing effect in their children, researchers said. Anti-oxidants are health-boosting nutrients that may prevent cell damage

The researchers are now trying to formulate anti-oxidant supplements that could be given to mothers-to-be who smoke, are overweight, or suffer pregnancy complications, to help ensure unborn children receive the best start in life.

Professor Giussani said that when it comes to ageing and heart health, the die may be cast before we are even born.

However, far from being a gloomy message, we should seize the opportunity to improve the health of the next generation.

He said: In a sense, the toast is burnt and we cant do anything about it.
Nicole LaCentra spent most of her life struggling to breathe.

The 28-year-old had been diagnosed with severe asthma as a child.

Yet, typical asthma treatments  including inhalers, steroids and nebulizers  offered her no relief.

After years of struggling with the condition, Ms LaCentra finally learned she had been wrongly diagnosed, after watching an episode of the CBS medical talk show The Doctors.

The episode focused on a condition called subhlottic stenosis, a narrowing of the airway.

Recognizing the signs and symptoms, as being similar to her own, Ms LaCentra immediately went in for testing  and finally received a proper diagnosis.

She was underwent surgery on her airway shortly thereafter  and was told she'd have likely suffocated in her sleep if she didn't have the operation.

The East Meadows, New York, resident told The Doctors today: If it wasnt for you, I wouldnt be up here.'

Scroll down for video

Nicole LaCentra, 28, was diagnosed with severe asthma as a child. She had difficulty breathing, but typical asthma therapies - including inhalers, steroids and nebulizers, offered her little relief. However, watching a January 2015 episode of 'The Doctors' changed her life - by informing her about a rare airway disorder

Ms LaCentra was diagnosed with asthma at around the age of 10.

Her breaths made an audible noise, which sounded like a whistle.

The breathing problems affected every aspect of her life  and stopped her from being able to play sports or walk long distances.

She said on today's episode of 'The Doctors': From the moment I woke up, until the moment I went to sleep, an elephant was sitting on my chest.

And so, for much of her life, she was always within arms reach of her inhaler.

But, her inhaler only offered relief for a moment  and her breathing problems would return within a few hours.

And she had even been hospitalized for her troublesome breathing.

WHAT IS SUBGLOTTIC STENOSIS? Subglottic stenosis is a narrowing of a specific portion of the windpipe (trachea) known as the subglottis (just below the vocal cords). The underlying cause of this narrowing is unknown. Most cases are associated with the formation of scar tissue and inflammation in the affected area. Symptoms may include shortness of breath upon exertion, hoarseness, and a high-pitched wheezing sound when breathing in or out. The disorder occurs almost exclusively in women. The condition often recurs despite treatment. There are no standardized treatment protocols or guidelines for affected individuals. However, there are some surgical options, which include using balloons to dilate the airway and open neck surgery. Source: National Organization for Rare Disorders Advertisement

However, the East Meadows resident's life changed on January 13, 2015, after seeing an episode of 'The Doctors' about subglottic stenosis.

The condition causes a narrowing of the airway below the vocal cords (which are also called subglottis) and above the trachea).

This narrowing is often caused by scarring in the larynx.

But, when a patient has difficulty breathing, doctors dont always examine the airways for blocking.

While asthma is known to come and go - Ms LaCentra's symptoms were consistent and continuous.

And so, Ms LaCentra immediately realized that she must also be suffering from the condition.

After she went in for testing, doctors discovered that her throat was over 70 per cent closed.

Ms LaCentra was told shed need to have surgery to make the airway larger.

If left untreated, she was told, the airway could get smaller and smaller  and even an infection could cause it to swell to the point where she could not breathe.

Her doctors also warned that if she didnt undergo surgery, she could die in her sleep.

She said: After being told I was having surgery, I was relieved and scared at the same time.

Her surgeons went in through her mouth to release the scarring.

They also injected steroids to absorb the scar  and then used a balloon to stretch the airway open.

Waking up after surgery, Ms LaCentra coughed and pressed on her airway.

She could instantly tell that there was a difference.

Ms LaCentra told her mother, Karen: I can breathe through my mouth.

After healing from the procedure, Ms LaCentra went onto The Doctors to thank them for saving her life.

The disorder, called subglottic stenosis, causes a person's airways to be narrow. Ms LaCentra immediately went in for testing after viewing the episode - and was properly diagnosed with the condition. Her airway (left) was found to be 70 per cent blocked, so she went in for surgery to clear the blockage (right)

After the surgery, Ms LaCentra was finally able to breathe through her mouth. She appeared on the March 2 episode of 'The Doctors' to thank the host Dr Travis Stork (pictured) for informing her about the disease - and saving her life

She appeared on today's episode looking healthy and happy.

Ms LaCentra told The Doctors host Dr Travis Stork and co-host Dr Andrew Ordon: Im 28 and I can finally start living  and do everything that everyone else takes for granted.

Its not uncommon early in life to get stuck with a diagnosis. And unfortunately that diagnosis you carry with you, and that diagnosis may not always be a correct one Dr Travis Stork, The Doctors

Dr Stork replied: Youre the reason we do this show.

I tell people all across the country, Im so proud of this show, because we get to share information with millions of people out there.

The doctor also cautioned viewers to take Ms LaCentras story as a prime example of the dangers of early misdiagnosis.

Dr Stork said: Its not uncommon early in life to get stuck with a diagnosis.

And unfortunately that diagnosis you carry with you, and that diagnosis may not always be a correct one.

If you feel youve been given a diagnosis as a child, and its stayed with you through your life, but youre not having any resolution, thats when you have to go back to your ground zero and say lets start over, theres something else going on.
The emphatic victory of the Grand Alliance in the 2015 Bihar assembly polls has made election strategist Prashant Kishor a much sought-after man today.

His successful election campaigns - first with Narendra Modi and then with Nitish Kumar - have enhanced his reputation as a know-all strategist who delivers the perfect recipe for electoral success in the largest democracy in the world.

Time will tell whether he will hit the bulls-eye in future elections as well. As of now, he is in for a far bigger test in his home state.

Nitish Kumar (left) with his poll strategist Prashant Kishor, who helped him win the Bihar elections

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has entrusted him with huge responsibility by appointing him as his advisor on policy and programme implementation. In his latest role, his primary job is to ensure the implementation of the seven-point development agenda known as saat nishchay (seven-point resolutions) that Nitish had unveiled in the run-up to the assembly polls.

In an apparent bid to counter Prime minister Narendra Modis package of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for Bihar during the polls, Nitish had announced his own ambitious roadmap for all-round development of the state.

His agenda focused on seven key areas such as 24-hour electricity, potable water, toilet at each home, and concrete lanes in all the villages, besides 35 per cent quota for women in all government jobs, subsidised loans for students, and establishment of a chain of technical institutions across the state.

A sum of Rs 2.70 lakh crore was estimated to be the actual cost for fulfilling these goals.

Nitish had promised that he would implement all the seven programmes in the next five years if he was re-elected in the polls.

After getting a massive mandate, Nitish set out to accomplish his mission soon after taking the oath as the chief minister.

The Cabinet subsequently approved the proposal for fixing 35 per cent reservation to women in all jobs in no time. The government followed it up by providing budgetary allocations for the implementation of the rest of his resolutions.

The state government also set up Bihar Development Mission quickly to oversee its implementation exclusively. Kishor has, of course, been appointed one of the members of the new body.

Nitish obviously kept faith in his abilities not merely as an election strategist but also as an advisor and administrator. This has left Kishor, who has a ministerial rank, with a gigantic task to ensure effective implementation of Nitishs seven-point guarantee for development in Bihar.

However, he may well have to face two main hurdles in his new assignment. First, the fund crunch may not help him give the schemes the desired push. Second, he may have to face strong opposition from a section of bureaucrats in the state over his interference.

Kishor is not known to have worked under bureaucrats even during his stint with Modi. During the Bihar elections too, he had reported to Nitish alone. He apparently wants to function independently without any bureaucratic strings attached to his job. This might cause heartburn for many senior officers at the state secretariat who are already viewing his entry as an encroachment on their territory.

The recent decision of a 1983-batch IAS officer Sudhir Kumar Rakesh to seek voluntary retirement on health grounds a year before his superannuation is already being linked to Kishors growing influence in the corridors of power.

Kishor, therefore, needs to take the bureaucrats into confidence and work in tandem with them without treading on their toes as a rank outsider. Many of them have worked under Nitish for years and delivered results time and again.

They should not get an impression that Kishor has been imposed on them merely to overrule them in their work.

Nitish, on his part, also needs to reassure his senior bureaucrats that Kishor has not been brought to usurp anybodys authority but to provide his professional expertise for Bihars development in his role of an advisor.

Any confusion over Kishors role within the bureaucracy will adversely affect Nitishs growth agenda.

Another Minister gets robbed

Kautilya Nagar, near Patna Airport, is considered a VIP locality in Bihar. A large number of ministers, MPs, MLAs and other political bigwigs have built their houses there. But the local thieves and burglars do not appear to be intimidated by their political stature.

Every now and then, a prominent leader in the area falls prey to their unscrupulous designs.

Former Union minister and senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh is the latest to get a feel of lawlessness in Patna.

Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh at his house, which was robbed while he was away in Muzaffarpur

Unidentified miscreants broke into his house on Sunday night and took away valuables worth lakhs of rupees when he was away in Muzaffarpur.

The theft took place less than a week after burglars struck in the house of a Rajya Sabha MP of the Janata Dal (United) Ghulam Rasool Baliyawi and decamped with cash and ornaments worth Rs 13 lakh in the Gardanibag police station area.

High-profile politicians such as Union minister Giriraj Singh, Sadhu Yadav and Brishin Patel have had similar experiences in the past in different localities of the state capital.

But it is the Kautilya Nagar locality which has emerged a happy hunting ground for the burglars. The police have so far failed to protect the houses of VIP leaders despite regular patrolling in the locality.

US ambassador to India, Richard Verma

Rickshaw ride for US ambassador

The US Ambassador to India, Richard Rahul Verma, had a cycle-rickshaw ride during his recent visit to Patna.

The envoy was accompanied by Irfan Alam, the young entrepreneur from Bihar who had set up a voluntary organisation, Samman Foundation, for the socio-economic uplift of rickshaw-pullers in Bihar.

In 2010, Irfans work had caught the attention of US President Barack Obama, who invited him to the White House with other young entrepreneurs from across the world.

Obama met him again during his visit to India.

In appreciation of his efforts, US officials have been motivating him.

Five years ago, the then US envoy to India, Timothy J. Roemer, pulled a rickshaw at Irfans institute in Patna to express solidarity.

Tough measures for exams

The Bihar government is under tremendous pressure to conduct matriculation and Intermediate examinations in a fair manner.

Last year, a picture of the guardians of the examinees climbing the wall of a school in Vaishali to help them use unfair means had caused huge embarrassment to the Nitish Kumar government while putting a big question mark over the education system.

It has always been a challenge for the administration to hold free and fair exams in Bihar

This year, the government has deployed 70,000 officials, including teachers, to monitor the Intermediate examinations which commenced last week. It has also installed CCTVs at all 1,105 examination centres to keep check on cheating at the examination centres.
The twists and turns in the Ishrat Jahan case are far from over. The latest come with the revelation that in 2011 the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had refused to share its interrogation report of David Coleman Headley with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Gujarat High Court to probe the alleged fake encounter of Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives.

The NIA claimed that Headleys reference to Ishrat Jahan was only hearsay and not admissible as evidence.

The NIA had interrogated David Headley in Chicago in 2010 for his alleged involvement in the 26/11 case. The SIT, looking for clues in the alleged fake encounter case, had sought details of the questioning from NIA.

The NIA reportedly told the SIT that David Coleman Headleys reference to Ishrat Jahan (right) was hearsay and not admissible as evidence

A letter dated May 5, 2011 written by NIA to SIT chief Karnal Singh, said: The relevant portion of the statement made by David Coleman Headley with reference to Ishrat Jahan is in the nature of hearsay and will not be admissible as evidence. Therefore sharing of this portion of the statement may not serve the purpose of investigation.

There were reports suggesting that Headley, during his interrogation by the NIA team that visited Chicago in 2010, had named 19-year-old Mumbra girl Ishrat as a suicide bomber who was on a mission for the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

A letter dated January 1, 2011 was written to the NIA by IPS officer Karnal Singh who was heading the SIT then. The letter asked for Headleys statement regarding Ishrat as part of the probe.

Mastermind

Headley, one of the masterminds of the 26\11 Mumbai attack, recently deposed via video conferencing to a Mumbai court. He picked up Ishrats name from the three choices given to him by the special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, to identify a woman LeT member who was part of a botched-up mission in Gujarat.

Ishrat, 19, was killed along with Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai from Kerala, and two alleged Pakistanis - Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana - on June 15, 2004 on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

Headleys claims once again kicked up a storm and questions are being raised about the intentions of the UPA government.

The CBI had filed a charge-sheet in 2013 against four officials of the Intelligence Bureau and officials from Gujarat Police for plotting a fake encounter to kill Ishrat Jahan and three others.

While the Union home ministry did not give a prosecution sanction against the IB officials citing lack of evidence, the police officials are currently out on bail.

Former Home Secretary GK Pillais comments that ex-home minister P Chidambaram had changed an affidavit, which originally described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives, has kicked up a political storm.

Even RVS Mani, then under secretary in the home ministry under whose name the affidavit was filed, has reportedly claimed that he was asked forced to do so.

Speaking to a news channel, he said the affidavit in question was not drafted by him and if it was not drafted by the home secretary it was clear who was behind it - hinting at Chidambarams role.

Sources said the home ministry is all set to examine files relating to the controversial Ishrat Jahan case again in view of the revelations made.

The UPA government had submitted two affidavits  one that said the four killed in the alleged fake encounter were terrorists, and the second said there was no conclusive evidence  within two months in 2009.

CBI Director Anil Sinha on Tuesday refused to be drawn into the issue of American-Pakistani terrorist Headleys recent testimony in 26/11 case that Ishrat was an LeT terrorist, saying the matter is sub-judice.

"The matter is sub-judice. We have already submitted charge sheet in the case. Hence, I would not like to comment anything on this," said Sinha, who was in Mumbai for inauguration of the new CBI office in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC).
AIADMK members on Tuesday disrupted proceedings in both Houses of Parliament, demanding action against former Union minister P Chidambarams son Karti Chidambaram for his alleged role in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

Both the Houses were adjourned twice in the first hour itself till noon.

As soon as the Lok Sabha met for the day, AIADMK members rushed to the Well demanding action on the Aircel-Maxis deal. They raised slogans like We want action, Aircel-Maxis why delay, why delay and NDA sarkar take action.

AIADMK members rushed to the Well demanding action against P Chidambarams son Karti (right) for his alleged role in the Aircel-Maxis deal. The younger Chidambaram insisted that his business is fully compliant with all Indian laws and regulations.

The AIADMK members displayed copies of an English daily which claimed that Karti has invested in real estate across the world, as per investigations by the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises.

Karti P Chidambaram said his business was fully compliant with all laws and regulations of the country, and rejected charges of money laundering.

Following allegations that he had amassed a huge business empire, Karti, who is a member of the Congress party, said: My businesses are fully compliant with all the laws and regulations. One newspaper has made allegations against me, which have been adequately refuted in the past. All filings are up to date. All statutory regulatory filings are completely up to date. That is all I have got to say.

The news report alleged that he had built a huge business empire for himself in different parts of the world and that this had come to light through documents recovered during raids by the Enforcement Directorate and the investigation wing of Income Tax in a scam case.

As soon as the House reassembled, AIADMK members trooped into the Well again to raise slogans.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said if they give proper notice, the issue could be discussed in the House and the government was open to a debate.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) sedition row seems to have taken a toll on the functioning of Delhi University.

The joining of new DU vice-chancellor Yogesh Kumar Tyagi has been delayed, with the Ministry of Human Resource and Development now stuck with the JNU uprising.

Sources in the HRD Ministry told Mail Today that it will take another week for the new V-C to officially resume work.

The post of vice-chancellor at DU has been vacant ever since Dinesh Singh completed his tenure in November

Everything was supposed to be wrapped up by February 20 but the entire process got delayed due to the ongoing JNU row. We are expecting the final orders to be out within the next 10 days, a senior HRD official said.

Tyagi was working as a dean of the Law faculty with South Asian University (SAU).

With the delay in joining, other pending issues in DU have also taken a back-seat. For instance, the promotion and appointment of teachers, a decision on the reservation policy, and the confusion over the new grading policy under the Choice-based Credit System (CBCS) have been put on hold.

These issues will only be addressed once the new V-C joins. About 4,000 positions need to be filled in colleges and various departments of the University. Appointments have been sluggish and sporadic so far, one of the teachers from DU told Mail Today.

The newly-introduced Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) has also left the faculty in limbo.

One semester has passed since the implementation of the Choice-based Credit System (CBCS) in DU.

The CBCS allows the students seamless mobility across higher education institutions and transfer of credit earned by them.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) had in September last year asked all Central universities to implement CBCS from the ensuing academic session following a meeting of vice-chancellors from all universities.

Students have alleged that results of the first semester show massive glitches in the grading system, with discrepancies in various results of varied courses. The post of the vice-chancellor at DU has been vacant ever since Dinesh Singh completed his tenure in November 2015.

The last lap of his tenure was marred with controversies, with the University Grants Commission directing the university to withdraw its four-year undergraduate programme that was rolled out with much fanfare.

The new vice-chancellor will inherit the mess left behind by the last V-C. He will have a bag full of responsibilities, a DU official told Mail Today.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his camp are not too keen on caste combinations - but the party high command favours such tactics

With elections for the Karnataka Assembly two years away and the Siddaramaiah government fast losing popularity, the Congress has resorted to its age-old tactics - caste combinations to woo its vote bank and retain power.

However, the Siddaramaiah camp is opposed to the caste combination, as it believes its followers will be undermined.

Firstly, the Congress High Command is keen on appointing Energy Minister DK Shivakumar (a Vokkaliga) as the president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), which is currently headed by Home Minister G Parameshwara (a Dalit). He has already completed his mandatory 5-year-term, and Shivakumar too is keen on taking over the reins.

Vokkaligas form the second largest community in Karnataka after the Lingayats, and the two communities have dominated state politics for years.

The Congress has its own logic for handing over the KPCC to Shivakumar because the Janata Dal (Secular), often termed as the political platform for Vokkaligas, is fast losing its base.

In the recently concluded polls in the Zilla Panchayats, Taluk Panchayats and the Assembly by-polls, the JD(S) received a poor drubbing.

The Congress sees an opportunity to woo Vokkaliga votes, which are decisive in the south and central districts of the state.

Former CM and Union Minister SM Krishna was the last Vokkaliga stalwart in the Congress. With Krishna almost retiring from active politics, Shivakumar has emerged as the ideal choice for the KPCC presidents post.

Besides, traditionally KPCC presidents, who have led the party during the polls, are automatically elevated to CM after the partys victory.

However, Siddaramaiah is not in favour of Shivakumar taking over the KPCC because that would create a parallel power centre.

As CM, Siddaramaiah continues to call the shots within the party, but if Shivakumar becomes KPCC president, he could start asserting himself.

Also, Siddaramaiah had not inducted Shivakumar into the Cabinet in view of the cases pending against him. The two do not share a great rapport.

Several senior Congress leaders are keen on Siddaramaiah being replaced by leaders from the backward classes in the wake of the recent controversies. BK Hariprasad as well as former Union Minister CK Jaffer Sharief have given a clarion call to replace Siddaramaiah.

The former in particular is angry as he is holds the CM responsible for his grandsons loss in the by-polls from Hebbal.
The Union health ministrys struggle for funds to drive public health programmes continues unabated as the budget for the National Health Mission remained stagnated at Rs 19,000 crore.

The union budget announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday focused on health insurance schemes and Public Private Partnership (PPP) instead of providing free healthcare services on a larger scale in the country.

As per the 12th Five Year Plan document, the total public funding by the Centre and states on core health is envisaged to increase to 1.87 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by the end of the twelfth plan. The Draft National Health Policy 2015 also envisages raising progressively the public health expenditure to 2.5 per cent of the GDP, Shripad Yesso Naik, Minister of State, Health and Family Welfare, told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.

The latest Budget emphasises health insurance schemes and public-private partnerships instead of providing more free healthcare services

Least spending

India is one of the countries that spend the least on the healthcare sector with a public spending of around one per cent of GDP as compared to three per cent in China and eight per cent in the UK.

Consecutive governments and expert groups have recommended that at least 2.5 per cent of the GDP must be devoted to public expenditure on health because of the huge burden of diseases in India.

WHO statistics state that more than 52 lakh lives are lost annually in India and the death rate in urban India is expected to rise by 42 per cent by 2021.

While one person dies of a stroke every minute in India, every sixth patient below 40 years is a victim of cancer and cardio vascular disease. The economic burden of Non Communicable Diseases in India will be $6.2 trillion over the period of 2016-2030.

The total expenditure for health is only 1.62 per cent of the whole budget out of which the National Health Mission has a share of less than one per cent. The government is deviating from the core strategies of the National Health Mission  there is no increase in allocation for the health sector. It appears to move towards a public-private partnership mode of operation, said Ameer Khan from the Society for Community Health Awareness Research and Action.

The Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade association, has said that it is disappointed to see no increase in public healthcare spending.
Actress Salma Hayek is mourning the loss of her beloved dog Mozart

Salma Hayek is mourning the loss of her beloved dog Mozart, who was found shot dead last Friday.

Police are said to be investigating exactly what happened after Mozart was found shot close to her Washington ranch, 55 miles south of Seattle.

Deputy Lt Cliff Ziesemer, from the Thurston County Sheriffs department told CBS news that a caretaker had been riding a horse around Hayeks property on Friday with two dogs following him. He said the dogs had barked before taking off running at the end of the road and eventually came back, as was typical.

However when the caretaker returned home later she realised one dog was missing, she later found Mozart dead and reported it to authorities.

Ziesemer added a veterinarian determined a pellet from a pellet gun had nicked an artery and that the dog slowly bled to death internally.

On Instagram Hayek shared the sad news of Mozarts death, writing: I havent posted for a week as I have been mourning the death of my dog, Mozart who I personally delivered out of his mothers womb, Hayek wrote. contactmusic.com

Red Granite drops lawsuit

Red Granite Pictures, the financier of such films as The Wolf of Wall Street, Dumb and Dumber To, and Daddys Home, has withdrawn a lawsuit against several anonymous individuals who were accused of a malicious hack.

The legal action was filed last July by the company co-owned by Riza Aziz, the stepson of Malaysian prime minister Najib Abdul Razak.

According to the complaint, employees at the film company were targeted by daily harassing emails, including ones consisting of blog postings and other reports of improper activity. hollywoodreporter.com

500m-year-old nervous system found

Researchers have found one of the oldest and most detailed fossils of the central nervous system yet identified, from a crustacean-like animal that lived more than 500 million years ago.

The fossil, from southern China, has been so well preserved that individual nerves are visible, the first time this level of detail has been observed in a fossil of this age.
HRD minister Smriti Zubin Irani has been threatened with privilege motions

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) top leadership has come out in support of HRD minister Smriti Zubin Irani after her comments in Parliament landed her in trouble with the Opposition.

Opposition parties have been haunting her with privilege motions in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Sources said the BJP high command has specifically instructed the party MPs to solidly back Smriti Irani in Parliament as the party will not tolerate any backstabbing.

Lawyers oppose transfer of HC judge

Senior lawyers Soli Sorabjee, Fali S Nariman, and KK Venugopal have come together against the sudden decision to transfer Justice Rajiv Shakdher, a Delhi High Court judge, to the Madras High Court.

According to sources, the lawyers have written to Chief Justice TS Thakur asking him to review the decision. They said the transfer has really shocked the members of the bar.

Justice Shakdher is well known for his integrity, boldness and hard work. He had joined the bench after giving up lucrative legal practice as a Senior Counsel.

BJP MPs to reach out to farmers

After scoring big with the farm sector in the new budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi now wants his MPs to hit the streets and take the message of governments pro-farmer policies to the people on the ground.

The government will showcase its new crop insurance policy aimed at addressing farmers distress. The PM told MPs from the BJP and the ruling alliance that big takeaways from the budget should be highlighted.

Kerala: Now dogs' own country?

As the Supreme Court took up hearing pleas seeking urgent measures to deal with the crisis of stray dogs in Kerala, there were jokes galore inside the court.

The lawyer for a Kerala-based organisation working for the rehabilitation of street children who were the latest victims of the dogs, took a dig at the states tourism catchphrase and said that Kerala was changing from Gods own country to dogs own country drawing peals of laughter in the courtroom.

Bassi jokes about becoming a guru

At his farewell on Monday, outgoing police commissioner Bhimsen Bassi asked the cops who will follow him if he becomes a guru.

The response was impressive as a lot of hands went up.

The reference to the guru came when Bimla Mehra, another senior IPS officer who retired with Bassi, quoted her guru while talking about post retirement plans.
Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli has arrived in India on his maiden foreign trip after assuming charge in October.

The timing of the visit clearly demonstrates the importance Kathmandu places on restoring normalcy to its ties with Delhi.

This was the first bilateral visit by a Nepalese PM to New Delhi since Baburam Bhattarais visit in October 2011.

Nepalese PM Oli was accompanied by a high-level delegation, with deputy PM Kamal Thapa, finance minister Bishnu Prasad Paudel and home minister Shakti Bahadur Basnet, in support.

Scroll down for video

Mending Ties: Prime Minister Narendra Modi joins Nepalese PM Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli at a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi

Mission

Oli was explicit that the main mission behind this bilateral visit to India was to clear the misunderstanding and to take ties between the two countries to the same level as in 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Nepal.

And after his discussions with Modi, Oli said: The misunderstanding that persisted in the last few months is no longer there. I believe our relationship will greatly benefit from our discussions. It is high time to look at India-Nepal relations with a forward-looking approach in the interest of the two countries and their people.

The two nations also signed nine agreements, ranging from infrastructure to rail and road transit.

This visit assumes great significance as the India-Nepal ties had been strained in the wake of agitation by the communities opposing Nepals Constitution, saying it failed to address their concerns over representation and homeland.

The protesters had blocked the trading points for almost four months, crippling supply of petroleum products, medicines and other commodities.

Olis government had accused India of imposing an unofficial blockade to support the Madhesis and there were even suggestions that the PM might visit Beijing first instead of New Delhi, thereby breaking a longstanding tradition.

The misunderstanding that persisted in the last few months is no longer there. I believe our relationship will greatly benefit from our discussions. It is high time to look at India-Nepal relations with a forward-looking approach in the interest of the two countries and their people. Nepalese PM KP Sharma Oli

But after the blockade ended earlier this month, PM Oli reached out to India.

Before his visit to India, Oli addressed Indian concerns by suggesting that his government wanted close ties with both New Delhi and Beijing and that he didnt believe in using one neighbour against another.

India had raised concerns over Nepals Constitution through back-channels to avoid being accused of interfering with the process.

There was a sense that Nepalese parties ignored the concerns, along with a suggestion to delay promulgation for a few days, in view of protests.

India conveyed a list of seven amendments to make the constitution amenable for alienated groups living mostly in the Terai region bordering India.

The Nepalese government argued that Nepals Constitution is better than the Indian Constitution and is in fact, the most progressive in South Asia.

Blockade

Communist leaders in Nepal have taken a strong anti-India stand, underlining that the new constitutions promulgation is a, matter of conscience and self-respect, for their people and, any act from anywhere that amounts to undermining our sovereignty is not acceptable to the Nepalese.

India-Nepal relations have taken a nosedive, with Kathmandu blaming Delhi for growing fuel shortages, implying that India had imposed an informal blockade by not allowing fuel trucks to cross the border into Nepal.

Delhi blamed this disruption on the mass protests.

Nepal imports almost all of its oil from India, and road links to China through the Himalayas have been blocked since last years earthquake.

As tensions with India mounted, China reopened its border with Nepal in Tibet.

The disruptions underscore the Himalayan states profound economic vulnerability, further inflaming anti-India passions.

China is likely to be a beneficiary of this turmoil in Indias periphery.

Uncertainty

Historically, Nepal has had close ties with India. But political uncertainty in the country has fueled anti-Indian sentiments, allowing China to increase its presence and even offer financial assistance for drafting the Constitution.

China overtook India as Nepals biggest foreign investor in 2013 with its funding of a $1.6 billion hydropower project - one of countrys biggest outside investments.

With this in mind, Prime Minister Modi has made Nepal a priority.

Modi visited Nepal in August 2014 and also pledged $1 billion for reconstruction after the earthquake.

Modi visited Nepal in August 2014 and also pledged $1 billion for reconstruction after the earthquake (pictured) that left Kathmandu in ruin and claimed over 8000 lives

It was the first bilateral visit to Nepal by an Indian prime minister in 17 years.

Nepalese polity - cutting across party lines - had welcomed the assumption of power by Modi, with most expressing hope that Nepal would be a beneficiary of his developmental agenda.

The Nepalese parliament invited Modi for an address, the first by a foreign head of state to that body since 1990, and the Nepalese gave him a rousing welcome.

Modis speech was a graceful reflection on the trials that have shaped Indo-Nepalese ties in recent years, with a promise of a change of course.

Now, with India welcoming the amendment of the Constitution to accommodate the demands of Madhesis, and the lifting of the blockade, the Modi government has another opportunity to reshape the contours of New Delhis relations with Kathmandu, especially at a time when India seems to be losing ground in Nepal to China.

The Nepalese prime minister has reached out to India, and India reciprocated well. The challenge will be to ensure that this momentum is not lost in the coming years.
Sufi establishments across India, the All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), are set to organise the first World Sufi Forum in New Delhi.

The four-day event at Vigyan Bhawan on March 17, will be attended by more than 200 international dignitaries from 20 countries.

The inaugural ceremony, organisers claim, will be attended and addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In light of "repeated attacks on moderate Islamic thought, Sufi establishments across India are set to organise the first World Sufi Forum in New Delhi

March 18 and 19 will be days for discussions to be held at the India Islamic Cultural Centre (IICC), while the programme will conclude with a declaration at Ramlila Maidan on March 20.

The event is focused on finding constructive ways to spread the Islamic message of peace and tolerance as a counterpoint to the global rise in violent extremism.

PM Modi is expected to address the four-day event

The meeting will underline the rich composite culture of India and the communal harmony that has existed due to the influence of Sufism in Islam.

Hazrat Syed Mohammad Ashraf, the founder president of AIUMB, said: There are three ideologies at work in Islam in India: Shia, Sunni-Sufi and Wahabi. The Wahabi ideology has converted a peace-loving religion such as Islam into one of conflict and extremism. The Wahabi ideology is un-Islamic and we need to defeat it and the extremism that it encourages. Till now, Sunni-Sufis that comprise the majority of followers of Islam in India have been neglected by subsequent governments of the past.

The world needs to see India as an exporter of moderate Islam and not as an importer of extremist ideologies within Islam from outside, Ashraf added.
The Agra police have registered a case against three people for, hurting religious sentiments, and inciting communal tension, during a Sangh Parivar meeting following the murder of a Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader in the city.

Among the BJP and Hindu leaders who gave speeches were Agra MP and Union Minister of State for HRD Ram Shankar Katheria, Agra (Rural) MP Babulal, Sadhvi Prachi and several other BJP leaders.

Sadhvi Prachi said the Samajwadi Party was plotting to turn Uttar Pradesh into another Kashmir from where Hindus would be systematically ethnically eliminated.

Sangh Parivar: Community tensions are high in Agra following the murder of a Vishva Hindu Parishad leader in the city. (File picture.)

She said that in Mantola alone, 250 Hindu families have left the locality and settled elsewhere.

Katheria said if the cow murderers were not brought under the thumb of the law, it was certain that every locality of the city would be holding such condolence meetings soon, grieving for the Arun Mahores of their area who died protecting the cows.

Babulal said the Hindus were ready to fight the decisive battle with Muslims in the interest of the community.

If the administration does not listen to the demands of the grieving community, the BJP will take this movement to the roads, he added.

He said the extent of partiality in the Samajwadi Party government was clearly evident as Dadri victim Mohammed Akhlaq got Rs 45 lakh as compensation, whereas Arun Mahore got only Rs 15 lakh when both died in communal incidents.

The BJPs decision to politicise the case has created communal tension in the city, with Muslim leaders now meeting in secret to develop a strategy to counter any moves against the community by Hindu outfits.

The three people named in the complaint - Ashok Lavanya, Kundika Sharma and Prashant Chaudhary - have been booked under Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code, IG (Law & Order) Bhagwan Swaroop said on Tuesday.
Ivan Glasenberg has stared into the abyss and emerged far less damaged than expected.

Amid the carnage of the commodities and natural resources sector, Glencore shares have been one of the strongest stock market performers this year as investor anxiety shifted from the miners to the banks.

Glencores shares have climbed more than 45 per cent and Barclays have plunged by around one-third along with other weak banks.

The 2015 figures from the Swiss-based mining and trading giant do not make for pretty reading, after it turned in a 3.5billion loss.

Turnaround: Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg has reduced the companys debt pile from 21billion in June to a more manageable 13billion by the end of this year

But the markets have been impressed by the way that the irrepressible Glasenberg has carried out the task of cutting costs, selling assets and reducing the companys debt pile, which it plans to reduce from 21billion in June to a more manageable 13billion by the end of this year.

Glasenberg looked to have his rose-tinted spectacles on in presenting his latest results. At a time when most people are still bemoaning the slowdown in Chinas economy and the impact it has had on commodity prices, he suggested that the price slump for key metals such as copper has bottomed out.

The company has cut spending and production at its coal, copper and zinc mines. Importantly, some 300,000 metric tons of copper output has been cut, which has helped to stabilise prices.

Thats better for Glencore but not the hard-pressed countries in Africas copper belt which are suffering serious hardship.

Glencore has better vision of the market than most of its competitors because it is not just a copper and metals producer but also one of the worlds largest and most ubiquitous commodity trading groups.

Indeed, analysis of its poor 2015 figures shows that while its mining operations lost heavily, its trading operations  the bedrock of the company before the badly timed merger with Xstrata  was handsomely in the black with 1.9billion of earnings before charges.

It is tricky to marry up Glasenbergs optimism with the gloom still emanating from others in the sector, most notably Anglo America which is closing or selling almost every mine it owns and rushing back to its diamond roots.

The five largest independent mining concerns, all quoted on the London Stock Exchange, ran up alarming losses of 22billion over the past year, causing havoc for share portfolios and index funds.

With so many miners cutting back operations and selling assets, Glencore faces an uphill task in achieving the 3billion to 3.5billion of sales it is promising to achieve in 2016.

Glasenberg seems unfazed by the task and, having managed to outperform targets last year, has the track record to do so again. His is a counter-cyclical view.

But if he is right then maybe the deep gloom which has descended on natural resource-producing countries will start to lift, improving the mood across financial markets.

Atlantic alliance

Anyone watching Churchills Secret on ITV in the past few days might have reason to doubt anything he said in the early 1950s as he struggled with strokes and ill-health.

Nevertheless, one couldnt help but be reminded of his famous words of 1953: If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea, after the disclosure that the Atlanta-based ICE group might be ready to bid for the London Stock Exchange.

Investors may be licking their lips at the possibility of a bidding war for the LSE, which has seen its shares more than treble since Xavier Rolet took the helm.

Faced with a choice between a bid from the overstretched Deutsche Boerse and ICE, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, the candidate from across the open seas would seem preferable.

After all the US and Britain broadly agree on free market, laissez faire capitalism even if it sometimes runs out of control.

Much of this is likely to prove academic. Past efforts to forge a grand transatlantic merger of exchanges have failed on competition grounds.

A go-it-alone strategy for the LSE would be the better course for the City and UK plc.

Asset swap

First Michael McLintock at M&G (part of the Pru) and now Michael Dobson, the veteran chief executive of asset manager Schroders, is ready to stand down after 14-years in the top job.

Both have shown enormous survival skills through periods of change. Both also have taken pay in fund management to extraordinarily high levels.
The Americans and the Germans are poised to battle it out for control of the London Stock Exchange.

The owner of the New York stock exchange yesterday confirmed it is mulling an offer for the LSE Group, threatening to blow its proposed 20billion merger with Frankfurts Deutsche Boerse out of the water.

In a statement yesterday Atlanta-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) stressed it had not approached the LSEs board, and it had not decided whether to press ahead with an offer.

But the prospect of a bidding war was greeted with a rapturous reception from financial markets.

Leaving: LSE boss Xavier Rolet has offered to retire to ensure the deal goes through  with Deutsche Boerses supremo Carsten Kengeter taking the helm at the enlarged group

Having traded hands at around 8 five years ago, LSEs share price soared almost 9 per cent to a record high of 2914p in early trading.

By the time markets closed, shares were still up 7.2 per cent at 2870p.

City sources who have expressed alarm about the proposed tie-up with Deutsche Bank last night said they would be more comfortable if the LSE joined forces with the New York Stock Exchange.

The prospect of the Frankfurt wresting power from London has caused disquiet in some circles  with fears that Brexit could encourage Deutsche Boerse to shift trading and jobs to Germanys financial centre.

One veteran, who asked not to be named, said: The City will be thrilled that the Americans are galloping over the hills like a knight in shining armour.

But one top investor begged to differ. Guy de Blonay, who runs Jupiters 432million Financial Opportunities fund, told the Mail he welcomed the prospect of a counter bid from the Americans.

This could push Deutsche to make a more attractive bid which would be good for investors in the London Stock Exchange.

Some people will have nationalistic views, but I want the best price for investors. It is second on my list of priorities whether the Americans or Germans come out as winners.

The likelihood of a bidding war emerged late on Monday night amid reports that ICE was preparing an offer and had appointed advisers Morgan Stanley.

It has also been reported that Chicago-based CME Group is considering entering the fray. Under UK takeover rules, Deutsche Boerse has until March 22 to make a firm offer or walk away.

The Americans are expected to wait until the offer is on the table before declaring their hand.

ICE has until March 29 to make a counter bid.

The prospect will be deeply unsettling for the Germans who appeared to have won their power struggle with London.

Deutsche and the LSE Group have been anxious to present their potential all-share deal as a merger of equals  despite the fact that Deutsche will have a controlling 54.4 per cent stake.

Last week concerns that Frankfurt would gain the upper hand were confirmed when the two firms announced that LSE boss Xavier Rolet has offered to retire to ensure the deal goes through  with Deutsche Boerses supremo Carsten Kengeter taking the helm at the enlarged group.

The combined group would be listed and domiciled in London, with head offices in London and Frankfurt. It would have an equal number of Deutsche and LSE members on the board. ICEs boss Jeff Sprecher clearly has other ideas.

But City analysts warned that both deals could be blocked by competition authorities in Brussels. Frances economy minister Emmanuel Macron has said the potential marriage between London and Frankfurt could pose competition issues for Paris as a financial centre.
Mortgage deals: Today the average two-year rate stands at 2.56 per cent

A ferocious battle between the banks over mortgages could help millions of homeowners to pay off their debts up to four years early.

Mortgage rates were thought to have hit the floor when the Bank of England cut the base rate to 0.5 per cent in March 2009.

But over the past seven years banks and building societies have chipped away at their cheapest deals to woo customers from rivals.

In March 2009 the average two-year fixed rate was 4.79 per cent, according to data experts Moneyfacts.

On a typical 150,000 mortgage monthly repayments were 859.

Today the average two-year rate stands at 2.56 per cent, meaning repayments would have dropped to 677 a month - a fifth lower.

Fierce competition is still driving rates down, with experts predicting two-year deals could plunge below 1 pc within months.

You could use the savings from these extraordinarily low repayments on shopping or treats.

But if, instead, you ploughed the extra cash into your mortgage - known as overpaying - you could be even better off in the long run.

First, you can save thousands of pounds in interest as the debt falls more quickly. Second, youll be mortgage-free years earlier.

If you had used this tactic over the past seven years, you would have reduced your mortgage debt by 3,519, according to figures compiled for Money Mail by broker London & Country.

To do this you would have needed to switch to the best rate available every two years since March 2009.

In 2009 the best two-year fixed rate was 2.99 per cent, in 2011 it was 2.79 per cent, in 2013 it was 1.89 per cent and in 2015 1.18 per cent.

Monthly repayments on a typical 150,000 loan would be 711 to start with and then drop to 695, 628 and 578 respectively.

Instead of banking or spending the savings you made each month, you would have simply pretended your mortgage repayments were still 711 and handed the extra cash to your lender.

The 3,519 reduction does not take into account any fees you would have had to pay to remortgage, as these would have applied regardless of how you used the savings.

If rates stay low and you continue to channel this extra cash into your home loan, you could knock three years and seven months off your mortgage term.

For those who havent overpaid over the past seven years, it is not too late to start.

If you are locked into a fixed deal, you can typically overpay up to 10 per cent of your total loan each month without any early repayment fees - but check the small print first.

If you are on a tracker mortgage there shouldnt be any restrictions on the amount you can overpay.

With a 25-year 150,000 mortgage at a rate of 3.5 per cent you could shave two years and four months off the term with an overpayment of just 50 a month. You would also save 7,986 in interest.

Opportunity: If rates stay low and you continue to channel this extra cash into your home loan, you could knock three years and seven months off your mortgage term

For those able to set aside more, a 150 monthly overpayment on the same loan would reduce their mortgage term by five years and 11 months and save 19,663.

Stretch even further to overpay by 200 a month and you would save 24,073 and be mortgage-free seven years sooner.

Rates are falling again because the base rate rise that was supposed to happen this year has been delayed.

Bank of England governor Mark Carney has even hinted that base rate could fall below 0.5 per cent if global uncertainty hits Britain.

It has given banks and building societies the confidence to reduce their rates even further as they vie for business.

Competition between lenders has steadily grown in the seven years since the credit crunch.

There are now more than 17,000 different mortgage products on the market. This is the highest number since 2008.

Among the latest cuts is the top two-year fix at the Yorkshire Building Society being slashed to 1.14 per cent.

This takes it below First Directs 1.15 per cent. For these you would need a deposit of 35 per cent and 40 per cent respectively for each deal.

Last week Chris Pilling, Yorkshire BS boss, said he expects the battle between lenders to push two-year fixed-rate mortgages below 1 per cent for the first-time.

According to brokers the cheapest-ever two-year fix was 1.05 per cent, which was offered by the Post Office in July of last year.

The lowest five-year fix is 1.99 per cent with HSBC - which is still on the market. You need a 35 per cent deposit to qualify for this deal.

Monthly repayments on a 150,000 loan are 635 and the total cost, including a 1,499 fee, is 39,599.
A row has broken out between Britains biggest car makers and the Government at the Geneva Motor Show.

Vauxhall owner General Motors and 11 of the UKs biggest manufacturers have written a letter to Chancellor George Osborne complaining about the UK tax system which they claim is hammering business.

The band of 12 warn the business rates regime acts as a barrier and a deterrent to investment.

They make their case as some of Britains biggest car makers unveil a raft of new models at Europes first major car show of the year.

Snarled up: Vauxhall owner General Motors and 11 of the UKs biggest manufacturers have written a letter to Chancellor George Osborne complaining about the UK tax system

And it will heap added pressure on the Chancellor just two weeks before his next Budget is due to be unveiled.

In the letter, seen by the Mail, the firms say: As a group of leading manufacturers in the UK we are again using our collective voice to remind you of the urgent need to implement fundamental reform of the UK Business Rate system.

Business rates are a fixed cost and are given substantial prominence by businesses, such as ours, when choosing in which country to make important investment decisions.

Manufacturers with squeezed margins and competition for production will typically seek low fixed-cost environments in which to base themselves.

Rory Harvey, the boss of Vauxhall in the UK, told the Mail there was a risk that firms would shift investment away from the UK: Other countries such as Poland have lower rates and this has a bearing when car manufacturers come to make decisions over future investment.

Business rates are charged to firms based on the estimated value of the property they use.

The problem for car manufacturers is that if they invest in new machinery this increases the rental value of their property.

The manufacturers asked the chancellor to remove plant and machinery investments from the calculations.

They claim this would cut tax bills by around 1.6billion over five years, but generate additional economic activity worth more than 8.7billion and support an estimated 33,000 additional jobs per annum.

The letter continues by saying that firms which have sister plants in Europe have found the tax rate to be ten times cheaper and this puts at risk the UKs manufacturing base.

Punished: The problem for car manufacturers is that if they invest in new machinery this increases the rental value of their property

It complains that UK manufacturing is at a large competitive disadvantage due to the heavy burden of business rates.

The bosses argued that the reforms would help the Government deliver more balanced and more sustainable growth by boosting investment and exports.

They said business rates should be used to support the economy rather than as a revenue raising tool for the cash-strapped exchequer.

We urge you to take action on our concern in the 2016 Budget, the letter concluded.

A Treasury spokesman said: The Government is continuing its review of business rates and the views of stakeholders are being considered as part of the review process.
Travel website eDreams has been panned by the advertising watchdog for giving customers the 'misleading' impression they were booking flights with Ryanair or easyJet.

The Spanish firm was wrong to use the airlines names in web addresses for its online adverts, the Advertising Standards Authority said.

When a customer searched for Ryanair and easyJet flights the top results on Google were links to eDreams sites  www.ryanair.edreams.co.uk and www.easyjet.edreams.co.uk.

Travel website eDreams has been panned by the advertising watchdog for giving customers the 'misleading' impression they were booking flights with Ryanair or easyJet

The watchdog also criticised eDreams for mimicking airlines branding.

The ASA is to ban eDreams from using this type of advert to avoid confusing customers in future.

While acknowledging eDreams could use relevant search terms like 'easyJet' to boost online traffic, the company 'still needed to ensure they did not imply they were the official site for the airlines for which they sold tickets.'

easyJet and Ryanair's corporate branding featured 'more prominently' than references to eDreams on the web pages in question, 'leading consumers to think they were visiting the official sites for these airlines', the ASA said.

While acknowledging eDreams could use relevant search terms like 'easyJet' to boost online traffic, the company 'still needed to ensure they did not imply they were the official site for the airlines for which they sold tickets'

In a statement, eDreams said: 'We are encouraged by the ASAs acknowledgement that eDreams can use relevant search terms and that it can promote its services as an Online Travel Agency (OTA) through the use of search engine optimisation.

'We are keen to work with the ASA to ensure that there is never any potential confusion for customers when they search for flight availability on the eDreams website.

'There is no intention to imitate the appearance of specific airlines, as eDreams clearly indicates to its customers that they are on one of its own websites, rather than that of any airline, allowing them to view thousands of flight combinations in a matter of seconds to find the best value flights.'

When a customer searched for Ryanair and easyJet flights the top results on Google were links to eDreams sites  www.ryanair.edreams.co.uk and www.easyjet.edreams.co.uk

Kenny Jacobs, Ryanair's chief marketing officer, said: 'Todays ruling by the UK Advertising Standards Authority, conclusively proves that the eDreams advertising through deceptive Google adverts is misleading consumers into booking higher priced tickets through the eDreams website.

'eDreams continues to advertise Ryanair fares that do not exist, and continues to hit unsuspecting consumers with hidden fees, and in many cases is not booking additional services such as checked in bags. These deceptive practices mean that customers who think they have paid for a checked in bag arrive at the airport and end up having to pay on the double.'
Threat: A court ruling last month may make it easier for criminals to scam savers

Savers are in greater danger of losing their retirement nest eggs to criminals as a result of a recent court case, a major pension firm has warned.

Until recently pension companies were allowed to block savers requests to move cash if they suspected the money was being moved to a rogue firm.

A court ruling last month means its much harder for pension companies to block customers requests  even if the firm suspects a customer is handing their cash to criminals.

Equiniti, a company which runs many of Britains major schemes, warned that criminals could be poised to cash in on the ruling.

The customer in the court case had wanted to move their money from their workplace pension into property investments in Cape Verde.

The move was blocked by her pension firm Royal London. But the saver took her case to the Pensions Ombudsman, which found in Royal Londons favour.

She then launched an appeal in the High Court, which last month overturned the Ombudsmans findings. Experts say the knock-on impact of the court ruling will be to make it harder for pension firms to refuse to transfer savers cash.

Peter Scott, head of pension regulation and compliance, Equiniti Pension Solutions, says: This judgment leaves the gates wide open for criminals.
Security risk? But banks are quietly phasing out standard debit cards

Banks are quietly ditching standard debit cards that dont have tap-and-go technology.

All major banks now automatically send customers a contactless debit card when they need a new one.

This lets you  or anyone with the card  spend 30 without entering a PIN. You simply swipe it on a card-reader.

Most banks claim customers can request a non-contactless version if they are worried about security.

But Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest admit their customers cannot use the non-contactless version at petrol pumps or on trains and planes.

Santander says customers who opt out of contactless cards face a small number of restrictions on use.

In a letter to a customer, seen by Money Mail, RBS said the only debit card it offered without contactless technology was a socalled full authorisation card.

This is essentially a stripped down version of the debit card for its basic bank account.

Before a payment goes through, the bank checks there is money in the account. But that means you cant use it if a payment terminal cant connect to the banks computer.

This is often the case on trains, planes or at unmanned petrol pumps.

Money Mail asked all the major banks and building societies to commit to offering customers a choice of card for at least five years.
Unfamiliar banks are grabbing savers attention by offering better rates than the more traditional High Street names.

Many now appear in our best buy tables  but its important to do your own research before you sign up.

In most cases, your money is covered by the UK Financial Services Financial Compensation Scheme up to 75,000 (150,000 for joint accounts) if the bank goes bust.

However, two of the new banks cover your funds under European schemes, which give 100,000 (around 77,000 at todays exchange rate) per individual. So which bank would you choose?

Build quality? Ikano Bank, which has been in the UK since 1994, is owned by the Kamprad family, which also owns Ikea.

Ikano Bank

ikano.co.uk, 0371 880 6182

Based in Nottingham, the Swedish-owned Ikano Bank has been in the UK since 1994 but has only recently started offering fixed-rate bonds here. It plans to add more savings accounts this year.

Its savings department is in Newcastle. Run by Dan Joy, who has worked for Zurich and Capital One banks and his own start up Medi-Fi, Ikano was founded by the Kamprad family, which also founded Ikea.

Your deposits are lent out in the UK as personal loans for buying cars or to fund home improvements. The bank is covered by the Swedish Deposit Insurance Scheme, which gives 100,000 cover.

It currently offers 1.6 per cent (2 per cent before tax) for one year, 1.72 per cent (2.15 per cent) fixed for two years or 1.96 per cent (2.45 per cent) for three years.

The Access Bank UK

sensiblesavings.co.uk, 01606 815440

Launched in April 2008, it is owned by a subsidiary of the Nigerian stock-exchange listed Access Bank plc, based in Northwich, Cheshire. It offers fixed-rate bonds available online or by post.

It is run by Jamie Simmonds, an alumnus of Harvard Business School, who has nearly 40 years experience in financial services at NatWest, Coutts, RBS, Gerrard Investment Management and Close Brothers.

Your money is lent out as mortgages and loans and is protected by the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). Latest savings deals include 1.92 per cent after tax (2.4 per cent before), fixed for two years.

Charter Savings Bank

chartersavingsbank.co.uk, 0800 032 9999

Set up in January 2015, this bank offers top fixed-rate bonds, notice and easy-access accounts through its slick website. It is based in Wolverhampton, with a contact centre in Newcastle.

It is owned by Charter Court Financial Services and run by director of savings Paul Whitlock, who has nearly 20 years experience in banking with First Direct, HSBC, OneSavings Bank and Shawbrook Bank. Your money provides its mortgage lending and is covered by the FSCS.

Its fixed-rate bonds are consistently among the best buys. It pays 1.41 per cent (1.76 per cent) for one year, 1.45 per cent (1.81 per cent) for 18 months or 1.48 per cent (1.85 per cent) for two years.

Caution: Its important to do your own research before you sign up to an unfamiliar bank

Aldermore Bank

aldermore.co.uk, 0345 604 2678

Based in, Cambridgeshire, this independent UK bank is quoted on the stock exchange.

Since its launch in 2009, it has been run by Philip Monks, who has more than 30 years industry experience in senior roles at Barclays, Gerrards and Arab Bank.

It offers easy-access accounts, fixed-rate bonds and cash Isas by phone, post or the internet, which often feature in Money Mails best buys.

Your money is used to lend to small businesses and homebuyers in the UK and is covered by the FSCS. Its easy-access account pays 1 per cent (1.25 per cent).

Milestone Savings

milestonesavings.co.uk 0345 600 3350

Launched in March last year, this is the trading name of London-based Gatehouse Bank plc, itself set up in 2007.

Milestone, based in Wallsend, Newcastle, is a Shariah-compliant bank and your money is used for property investment and finance.

It is run by Abdulaziz Al-Duweesh, who has 15 years experience in investment banking, including the National Investment Company in Kuwait.

It offers online fixed-term bonds with an expected profit return rather than fixed-rate interest. If it looks like it wont obtain the expected return, you can cash in the bond without penalty.

Your return is taxed in the same way as savings interest and it is covered by the FSCS. Profit rates include 1.68 per cent (2.1 per cent) over one year and 1.88 per cent (2.35 per cent) over two years.

RCI Bank

rcibank.co.uk, 0330 2000 300

This French-owned bank launched in the UK last year and offers top easy-access and fixed rate bond rates.

Based in Watford, Hertfordshire, with its savings centre in Newcastle, it is run by Steve Gowler, who has more than 30 years experience in finance and lending. He led the 2007 merger of Nissan and Renault Finance. It is the UK arm of RCI Banque group, which is part of the Renault Group.

Your money is used for loans to UK customers wanting to buy a new or used Renault, Nissan, Dacia and Infiniti cars.

It is covered for up to 100,000 by the French deposit protection scheme, part of the pan-European scheme. Its online easy-access Freedom Account, currently at 1.24 per cent (1.55 per cent) and fixed-rate bonds at 1.4 per cent (1.75 per cent) for one year and 1.72 per cent (2.15 per cent) for two years, are consistently among the top deals.

Paragon Bank

paragonbank.co.uk, 0800 052 2222

Solihull-based Paragon Bank was set up in 2014.

It is owned by Paragon Group of Companies plc, which is listed on the stock exchange and has been a buy-to-let mortgage lender since 1985. Managing director Richard Doe was previously boss of ING Direct UK.

It offers easy-access and fixed-rate bonds online and plans to launch cash Isas this year.

Your money is lent to small businesses and individuals in the UK and covered by the FSCS. It pays 1.6 per cent (2 per cent) fixed for two years or 0.8 per cent (1 per cent) on its easy-access account. It periodically launches a top-paying limited issue easy-access account.

Shawbrook Bank

shawbrook.co.uk, 0345 266 6611

Launched in 2011, this UK bank is based in Brentwood, Essex, and its shares were launched on the stock exchange last year.

It is run by Steve Pateman, who became chief executive in January this year, before which he headed UK banking at Santander.

It offers fixed-rate bonds, cash Isas and launched its first easy-access account in December. Accounts are available online, by post or over the telephone.

Your money is lent to small businesses and consumers in the UK and covered by the FSCS. Its accounts often appear in Money Mails best buys, with its easy-access account paying 1.04 per cent (1.3 per cent) and its two-year fixed rate cash Isa 1.85 per cent.

United Trust Bank

utbank.co.uk, 020 7190 5555

This London-based UK bank is mainly owned by its management team and a few private shareholders.

It was launched in 1955, but only in the last couple of years has it started offering fixed-rate bonds online, by post or by phone. It is run by Graham Davin, who was previously an Investec Bank executive.

Your money is loaned out to property developers and small businesses, and is covered by the FSCS. Its range currently includes a one-year bond at 1.36 per cent (1.7 per cent) and a two-year deal at 1.6 per cent (2 per cent).

Vanquis Bank

highyieldaccount.co.uk, 0191 505 0033

Launched in 2011, Vanquis Bank High Yield savings is part of Provident Financial plc, a stock-exchange quoted firm which specialises in credit card lending to UK consumers with debt problems. It is based in Newcastle.

Chris Sweeney, previously with Barclays and Standard Bank, took the helm in January.

It offers fixed-rate bonds online. Your money is used for credit card lending and is covered by the FSCS. Bonds include a one-year deal at 1.12 per cent (1.4 per cent) or 1.52 per cent (1.9 per cent) for two years.
She has been dubbed the academic Robin Hood after pirating 48million highly-prized scientific research papers and offering them on the internet for free.

Alexandra Elbakyan, 27, infuriated major publishers including Elsevier who, despite winning a legal battle against her in New York, were powerless to stop the revolution she started from her laptop 'somewhere in Russia'.

By uploading research reports worth anything from 23 to hundreds of pounds for free, she claimed she is bringing unaffordable information to the masses.

Students from every corner of the world - including third world countries that cannot afford the articles - download up to 55,000 documents from her site every day.

Alexandra Elbakyan (pictured), 27, pirated as many as 48million academic documents worth between 23 and hundreds of pounds, and uploaded them onto a website

Alexandra - Sasha to her friends - takes great care to make her location as confusing as possible.

One of her social media account places her in Kuala Lumpur, her Facebook profile claims she is in Kazakhstan's largest city Almaty, and another source has her down as a postgraduate student at a prestigious Moscow university.

Friends and critics alike believe the 'pirate girl' is shielding herself from American justice by holing herself in Russia, much like Ed Snowden, the American who leaked Washington's national security secrets onto the internet.

When MailOnline tracked her down, she very clearly said: 'I don't tell anyone where I am.'

She denied being part of any kind of shadowy conspiracy with sinister intent. On the contrary, she claimed to be on a one woman crusade.

Alexandra also vowed that while she is openly flouting copyright laws: 'I will not stop what I am doing.'

She is believed to have downloaded almost the world's entire stock of paywalled scientific knowledge - almost 48million academic papers - from university libraries using passwords and security keys 'donated' to her.

For this reason, she is feared by publishers who hold the copyright for the research papers.

Social media photos of Alexandra, who is seen eating candy floss on a park bench or posing gleefully by a harbour, hardly give the impression of your typical grand-scale thief, but looks can be deceiving.

When a New York court ordered her to take down her Sci-Hub site temporarily last year, she uploaded the same content from a new domain outside US jurisdiction.

Alexandra (pictured) is believed to have downloaded almost 48million academic papers from university libraries using passwords and security keys 'donated' to her

Had she been in the reach of US justice, she might now be in jail.

Alexandra explained that her mission began when - as an impoverished student in Kazakhstan - she could not afford to access vital research papers she needed for her studies.

She said: 'When I was at university, I ran into a problem. I couldn't access research papers while I was writing my paper on "neurocomputer" interfaces.

I needed to read a few dozen articles and practically all of them required paid access. I had no money to buy a single paper, so I had to find out how to get them in a different way. I learned to do it manually Alexandra Elbakyan

'I needed to read a few dozen articles and practically all of them required paid access. I had no money to buy a single paper, so I had to find out how to get them in a different way. I learned to do it manually.'

In fact, earlier, while still at school, she found a route to download papers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology having spotted a hole in their security.

Alexandra brands 'just insane' a normal $32 - or 23 - payment for single research papers, seeing it as punitive tax on learning.

Later, she found she was far from alone - others all over the globe were trying to access the raw material of essays and theses.

Calling herself a 'freelance programmer', she boasted: 'It turned out that I could do it better than others. I could find practically any paper.

'I had access to practically everything. I was emailing people papers they wanted.'

She used 'anonymizer programmes' aimed at hiding her identity and location.

'These are sites where you paste a link you can't open because it is blocked for some reason. I thought: 'OK, something like that can be done for research papers so that I don't do all this manual work myself. Something where you put a link and the article opens'.

Alexandra told MailOnline that her mission began when, as a poor student in Kazakhstan, she could not afford to access the papers she needed for her studies

'It took me literally about two or three days to make a draft of the script. I posted it on a forum and told people to use it to open quickly research papers they needed.

'I also sent personal messages to a few dozens of people about the script. And all of a sudden this script became popular, a lot of people started using it. It started growing. In the course of five years it grew into quite a complex site.'

It took me literally about two or three days to make a draft of the script. I posted it on a forum and told people to use it to open quickly research papers they needed Alexandra Elbakyan

As of last month, she has had eight million unique users and 37 million visits.

Research papers have been downloaded some 70 million times from her site by students and others.

Some 30 per cent of those using the site are aged between 18 and 24, while 60 per cent are between 25 and 34, presumably including many undertaking second or third degrees.

'Over time, there are more and more young visitors,' she said proudly.

Some 200,000 users visited the site in January.

She now expects more legal action in New York against her pirate operation, but appears unfazed, although she admits: 'My mother asks me: 'Aren't you afraid of getting arrested?'

'The biggest publisher, Elsevier, a monopolist in this sense, filed a case against us in the court of New York in the beginning of June 2015,' she said.

Other sites accused of breaching copyright laws were included.

Photos on Alexandra's (pictured, aged three) social media pages hardly give the impression of your typical grand-scale thief

She said: 'Under the verdict in the autumn, the sites were temporarily suspended. I'm not a lawyer but I checked Wikipedia and breaching such a verdict can cause more serious sanctions.'

Not that this will deter her, she said.

She has continued to publish in a different domain and in an earlier letter to the court she alleged Elsevier 'operates by racket: if you do not send money, you will not read any papers.

On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder? Alexandra Elbakyan

'On my website, any person can read as many papers as they want for free, and sending donations is their free will. Why Elsevier cannot work like this, I wonder?'

She said: 'In January I received a (new) letter from the lawyers of Elsevier.'

This suggests new legal moves in March 'regarding the fact that none of the defendants is executing the verdict'.

Far from bowing to the courts, Alexandra is determined to spearhead a campaign to ensure students have free access to research papers.

'I hope that the project will become a cause for wider changes,' she said.

'The abolition of copyright as well as a shift to openness in publication of research papers. That is, I won't stop at being Robin Hood.'

She stated: 'Seriously, I feel more like a revolutionary because the final goal is not only to download all the articles and books and give open access to them, but to change legislation is such a way that free distribution of research papers will not face any legal obstacles.'

Alexandra (pictured) has said paying 23 for a single research paper is 'just insane' and classes it as punitive tax on learning

She feels support from her users whose identities she is keen to protect and argues that under the current system publicly funded research is out of the public's reach.

She said: 'I have received letters and positive feedback including from renowned scholars. I can't remember the names now - but why name them anyway?'

They include American academics.

I have received letters and positive feedback including from renowned scholars. I can't remember the names now - but why name them anyway? Alexandra Elbakyan

She added: 'The UK is using the service. Over the last week, Britain was in 14th place with 27,639 downloads.

'India - with 183,756 downloads - and China come first, which is logical given the population.'

She insisted she is a lone operator, even though she has depended on students all over the world to furnish her with access to libraries and other sources.

'I myself do the code, ideas and public relations of Sci-Hub.io - for some time I was thinking of expanding, getting a team with volunteers involved, but so far it hasn't yet result into something serious.

'Perhaps, there will be more people because of the site's expansion.'

She made clear: 'I am a freelance programmer so I am flexible about my working hours and have quite a lot of free time. Now, given Sci-Hub is becoming popular, it takes more time.'

Many academics have gone along with the current system, giving over the copyright to publishers, because the authors - whether junior researchers or top professors - have their work shop-windowed in prestigious journals.

When a New York court ordered her to take down her Sci-Hub site (pictured) last year, she uploaded the same content from a new domain outside US jurisdiction

Elsevier argued to the court that its pay walls 'protect the delicate ecosystem which supports scientific research worldwide.' And it's true that publishers add value, namely in facilitating peer review to ensure the published research meets rigorous standards.

But Alexandra has smashed the system to such an extent that it may never be possible step back.

She also claims that publishers are flouting Article 27 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which states: 'Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.'

'There should be no obstacles to accessing knowledge,' she said.

She insists she makes no money from her website.
A woman dubbed the 'ice queen' because of the multi-million dollar drug ring she ran in north-east Victoria has been jailed.

Jessica Fogarty, 26, was left 'crying and shaking' as she was sentenced to seven years behind bars at Wangaratta County Court on Tuesday.

Fogarty, who has one child, was the ring-leader of a huge ice and cocaine syndicate that she ran from Wangaratta - a small town in Victoria near the NSW border, the Border Mail reported.

Scroll down for video

Jessica Fogarty, 26, was left 'crying and shaking' as she was sentenced to seven years behind bars this week

She sat at the top of the syndicate supplying drugs to the small rural town, and also provided drugs to dealers in Sydney and Melbourne

Wangaratta is unofficially known as the 'ice capital' of Australia, where addiction to the damaging drug runs rife in the rural town.

From 2010 to 2014 Fogarty traded drugs and guns as part of her multi-million dollar ring, often settling debts with firearms.

During sentencing Judge Frank Gucciardo said that for someone who had built an 'empire', she was 'left with precious little at the end of the day'.

The mother-of-one ran a multi-million dollar ice and cocaine ring in regional Victoria that also supplied to Melbourne and Sydney

She had paid more than $1.3 million for 170-plus ounces of ice from a co-accused over 18 months

According to the judge the 26-year-old had impacted the 'very fabric of the community' and her drug dealing was fuelled not only by greed but also her own addiction.

She had paid more than $1.3 million for 170-plus ounces of ice from a co-accused over 18 months, and was taking up to 3.5 grams of the drug per day herself, the court heard.

Fogarty initialy fell into addiction following an abusive relationship and a back injury that left her addicted to pain-killers, The Age reported.

Wangaratta has a known problem with drugs, and last year teenager Jordy Hurdes revealed he struggled to speak after taking party drugs

In the same town schoolgirl Zoe Buttigieg, 11, (left) was murdered, with Bowe Maddigan (right) charged with her murder and rape

Her addiction was reignited after the birth of her child in June 2014, and the toddler is being cared for by her parents.

The 26-year-old was sentenced to seven years behind bars, with a non-parole period of four and a half years.

When handing down her sentence Judge Gucciardo said if she had not pleaded guilty and assisted with police investigations he would have considered jailing her for at least 14 years.

In recent years Wangaratta has become one of many regional Victorians towns now known as a hot-bed for drug use, with locals saying more and more people are using ice and other methamphetamines.

In recent years Wangaratta has become one of many regional Victorians towns now known as a hot-bed for drug use

One woman's ice addiction led her to start rummaging through bins every day

Matty was just out of jail when he appeared on TV to speak about his ice addiction in 2006

In November last year Wangaratta teenager Jordy Hurdes posted a confronting video showing him stuttering and struggling to speak after he took party drugs.

Just a few weeks earlier schoolgirl Zoe Buttigieg, 11, was found dead by her mother Janelle Saunders, in a bedroom at their family home.

Bowe Maddigan was charged with one count of murder, sexual penetration of a child under 16 and indecent act with a child under 16 over the child's death.

In 2014 a Four Corners investigation looked at the ice epidemic sweeping through Australia, revealing that children as young as 11 were becoming hooked on the drug.
Former President Bill Clinton was among those advising his wife Hillary Clinton's campaign who suggested a run against Republican frontrunner Donald Trump would be no cake walk.

Bill Clinton 'dismissed those conclusions as denial,' wrote the New York Times, in a story outlining the former secretary of state's general election strategy.

As millions of Americans head to the polls in 'Super Tuesday' states today, both Clinton and Trump could wake up tomorrow morning as their parties' presumptive nominees.

Scroll down for video

Bill Clinton (left) was among those advising Hillary Clinton's campaign (right) who said that Donald Trump would be a formidable opponent in the general election if both frontrunners are nominated

Donald Trump is not your typical presidential candidate and so the Clinton campaign is trying to figure out how exactly to beat him in the general elections if both campaigns succeed

What that means for Clinton is that she'll find herself the first female nominated by a major party in the country's history.

But even with that 'first' under her belt, she'll be challenged with running against a non-traditional political outsider who bested 16 other Republicans in a year where the electorate is angry and ready for change.

'Hillary has built a large tanker ship, and she's about to confront Somali pirates,' Matthew Dowd, the former chief strategist to President George W. Bush's 2004 campaign told the Times, of the candidates' two different styles and operations.

Clinton's rigidity as a candidate is expected to be contrasted by former President Clinton, as he'll be the one to push out the anti-Trump attacks, the Times reported.

Letting Bill Clinton off the leash will help suck up some of the air time from Trump, how has excelled at dominating the election news cycles.

Trump, just today, laughed at Clintonland's plans to label him as a misogynist, one of several attack lines the Clintons are expected to deploy.

'If Bill tries to portray me as a sexist, he's going to have a hard time,' Trump said today on Fox & Friends.

The Republican has already had no qualms with bringing up Bill Clinton's sex scandals from the '90s and hinted that he would do so again.

Dowd also warned of this problem in contrasting the styles of Clinton and Trump.

'Can you imagine what he'll do?' Dowd mused. She will bring up equal pay for women and abortion rights, he told the Times, 'and [Trump will] turn to her and say, 'You can't even handle your stuff at home.''

But Clinton has another powerful surrogate in her pocket  the sitting President Barack Obama.

Obama, according to the Times report, 'has told allies he would gleefully portray Mr. Trump as incapable of handling the duties of the Oval Office.'

It was Obama, too, NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out last week, who's had the most luck against Trump and it was in one of the most unlikeliest of venues.

Nearly five years ago, in front of an audience of thousands and C-SPAN's viewers at home, Obama mocked Trump at the podium of the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

Trump had been beating the birther drum, suggesting that President Obama had been born in his father's home country of Kenya, instead of in the United States in Hawaii like he was.

The Donald had also been testing the waters thinking of launching a 2012 presidential bid and was invited by the Washington Post to attend the 2011 dinner.

Obama, who had been forced to publicly release his long-form birth certificate, suggested that Trump was happy to put the issue behind them.

President Obama took on Donald Trump in a memorable White House Correspondents' dinner roast. 'Ultimately you didn't blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf, you fired Gary Busey,' Obama said. 'And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night'

Ted Cruz tried to execute a similar line against Donald Trump mocking his reality show past at the last Republican debate in Houston, but the attempt fell flat

'And thats because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter: Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?' Obama mused.

'All kidding aside,' the president continued. 'Obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.'

Obama the detailed a recent episode of Celebrity Apprentice in which the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.

'And there was a lot of blame to go around,' Obama noted. 'But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership, and so ultimately you didn't blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf, you fired Gary Busey.'

'And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night,' the president smugly added.

While the comedy act seemingly dashed Trump's presidential hopes that cycle, when Ted Cruz, who stands to take Texas in tonight's Super Tuesday primaries, deployed a similar attack at the GOP debate last week in Houston, it fell flat.

That could signal that not even a good line could down The Donald.

'I really find it amazing that Donald believes that he is the one who discovered the issue of illegal immigration,' Cruz began. 'I can tell you, when I ran for Senate here in the state of Texas, I ran promising to lead the fight against amnesty promising to fight to build a wall.'

'And in 2013, when I was fighting against the "Gang of Eight" amnesty bill, where was Donald?' Cruz asked the debate audience.
Ben Carson insists he is not ready to end his campaign despite failing to win a single state on Super Tuesday

Trump congratulated Cruz for Texas but said it had been a 'tough night' for Rubio who he called a 'lightweight'

Marco Rubio took his only win of the night in Minnesota - a state which his rivals largely ignored, but he vowed to continue his campaign

Advertisement

Donald Trump romped through the second biggest day in American politics  only November presidential elections are grander  etching his name on seven trophies in the Republican party's Super Tuesday display case.

Three states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska, eluded his grasp and went to Ted Cruz, a senator from the Lone Star State.

And Marco Rubio had a dismal night, claiming only Minnesota's caucuses.

In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton swept seven states over Bernie Sanders - a commanding performance that will settle nerves in her campaign.

But the rest of the night belonged to The Donald.

The billionaire real estate tycoon has been declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

Cruz held on to claim Texas on the strength of an almost single-minded campaign strategy that ceded other southern territories to Trump.

Partly as a result, the GOP front-runner's early victories set a blowout pace.

The tea party senator later added Oklahoma to his column in an unexpected development: Trump had out-polled him there a week ago by a dozen percentage points. And early in the morning Cruz won Alaska by 2.6 per cent.

SCROLL DOWN FOR STATE BY STATE RESULTS

Victory: The billionaire real estate tycoon, pictured with his son Eric Trump (right) and Gov. Christie, (left), has been declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia on Super Tuesday

Ally: The Donald was accompanied at his victory speech by Chris Christie, who looked awkward standing behind his ally as he spoke. Trump lost out in three states - Oklahoma and Texas went to Ted Cruz while Marco Rubio won Minnesota

Surprise victory: Ted Cruz scored an upset win in Oklahoma, where polling had put him far behind Trump. He also won in his home state of Texas. Cruz told supporters that he is the only candidate who has a chance of beating Trump

Bragging rights will go to the senator in the year's first 'closed' GOP primary, where voters were required to register as Republicans weeks earlier, could go either way.

But the front-runner Trump broke Cruz's serve in return, winning in Arkansas despite trailing there in recent polls.

Eleven states in all hosted Republican presidential primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, and pre-election polling showed Trump with solid leads in eight of the contests.

The results will determine how many delegates who are 'bound' to each candidate will attend this year's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Associated Press declared Trump the victor in Georgia  the first decision of the night  almost immediately after polls closed at 7:00 p.m.

With 77.2 per cent of the votes counted in the Peach State, The Donald had a 40-24 lead over Cruz, his nearest competitor. Rubio was just a hair's breadth further back.

By 8:00 p.m. the former reality TV star had punched his nomination ticket in three more states just minutes after their polling places closed for the day.

Virginia jumped into Trump's win column at around 8:45 p.m. Arkansas came at 10:25.

But Cruz's two victories establish that Trump's brand of populism hasn't yet penetrated fully into cowboy country.

In a Super Tuesday speech, Trump congratulated Cruz on his Texas win but took a swipe at Rubio.

'I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio. he had a tough night,' Trump told a packed room of journalists and well-wishers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

'He is a lightweight as I've said many times before.'

He blasted the first-term senator who is 25 years his junior, saying that the decision to go negative in the past week doomed his chances.

'I always liked Marco until about a week ago when he decided to go hostile,' Trump said as chuckles filled the room.

'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'

'At least you could say that Ted Cruz has won something,' he boomed from a gilded posium set up on a small stage in front of a row of American flags.

'He hasn't won anything. And he actually hasn't come very close.'

Rubio would be named the victor in Minnesota an hour later.

After tonight's significant win, Trump told DailyMail.com during a press conference that his string of triumphs will make it difficult for Republican Party insiders to argue that he shouldn't be their standard-bearer.

'I have millions and millions of people,' he said, describing the army of peasants wielding political pitchforks on his behalf.

And as a result, he claimed, 'the Republicans have tremendous energy. The Democrats don't. ... Their numbers are down. Our numbers are through the roof.'

'We could win nine states today,' Trump mused. 'If I'm going to win all of these states with tremendous numbers, and if I'm going to come in, the worst is second, in the two or three that I might not win, I think, you know, we're a democracy.'

'I think it's awfully hard to say that's not the person we want to lead the party.'

He spoke too soon, it turned out, as he placed third in Minnesota  the one state Rubio carried.

Trump also warned that when Super Tuesday is over, 'I'm going to go after one person: Hillary Clinton.'

He pegged much of his support to a nationwide financial crisis that's unfolding at the level of individual households, and said Clinton's own victory speech after her string of Democratic primary victories shows that she 'doesn't have a clue' how to reverse it.

'In her speech she just said, "They're making less money",' Trump observed.

'Well, she's been there with Obama for a long period of time. Why hasn't she done anything about it?'

And her record at the helm of President Obama's state department was 'abysmal,' he charged, in a likely test balloon of general election messaging.

'You look at what's going on with Syria. You look at what's going on with everything. It's a disaster!'

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

And in a momentary detour on Clinton's classified-email scandal, he paused and looked into the sea of cameras and reporters.

'I don't know that she's going to be allowed to run. What she did is a criminal act,' he said.

'If she's allowed to run, honestly it would be a sad day for this country. Because what she did was wrong. And other people have done far less than her and they paid a very, very big price.'

Ted Cruz positioned himself as the Republicans' only viable alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump during his speech after the results came in.

'Tonight was another decision point and the voters have spoken,' Cruz said. 'Tomorrow morning we have a choice.'

Cruz then said that as long as the field was still 'divided'  with Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson still hanging on  'Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation.'

'And after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,' Cruz claimed.

Rubio went on CNN later in the evening and suggested that Cruz's performance was underwhelming and said he wouldn't be dropping out.

'Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night, not a night where he won two states, he was supposed to have that Southern firewall and it didn't happen,' Rubio said.

Some of Tuesday's races hold implications beyond the simple question of how many delegates to the summer GOP convention each candidate will control.

In the key November swing state of Virginia, for instance, pundits were watching vote totals for signs of whether a Republican nominee could challenge Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton there.

Turnout was on pace to set a new record, and Trump needed every advantage. He won by just 30,000 votes among more than 1 million cast.

Trump also scored a gold medal in Vermont.

With 93 per cent of precincts reporting, the front-running businessman won with 32.7 per cent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich came running second with 30.4 per cent.

Rubio stood in third with 19.6 per cent, ahead of Cruz's 9.8 per cent.

And Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, was in the basement at 4.1 per cent  the same fifth-place position he occupied in most of Tuesday's races.

Kasich's rise to the number two slot in Vermont was a rare bright spot for him.

Everywhere else, Rubio and Cruz seemed to be returning to a role they learned in South Carolina: jostling for second place behind Trump.

And Trump ended the night finishing in first or second place everywhere his name was on the ballot.

Rubio's only hope was to notch a win is in Minnesota, a state his rivals have largely ignored. And he managed to do so. The young Floridian rushed there immediately after the February 20 South Carolina primary to shore up his one beachhead.

Instead of a secret-ballot election, Minnesota holds caucuses  neighborhood meetings where voters try to persuade each other to declare their support for one White House hopeful or another.

A win anywhere for Kasich or Carson would have been a long-shot miracle.

Lashing out: Trump hit out at Marco Rubio in his victory speech after the Floria Senator launched a series of vicious attacks on him in the days leading up to Super Tuesday. Trump said: 'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'

Second place: Ted Cruz told supporters 'after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump'

Cruz is pictured kissing his wife Heidi. He added in his speech: 'We are the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump once ... twice ... three times'

Only victory: Marco Rubio addresses supporters in Minnesota on Super Tuesday, the only state where he won

Clinging to the race! Ohio Gov. John Kasich's best result was second in Vermont. He says he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win Ohio on March 15

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson insists he won't be bowing out of the race during an election night party in Baltimore, despite not winning a single state

The Republican front runner was sporting a Make American Great Again umbrella, decorated with the stars and stripes, at an earlier rally in Columbus

Kasich has said he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win his own state, Ohio, on March 15.

Carson insists he's in it for the long haul, crediting his social media followers for inspiring his tenacity.

Fox found that 32 per cent of all Super Tuesday voters chose a candidate in just the last few days.

Of that group, Rubio got the lion's share with 38 per cent. Trump was fourth with just 15 per cent of last-minute deciders.

Rubio struck an aggressive tone with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting his goals are to beat Ted Cruz for second place and to keep as many Republican National Convention delegates out of Trump's hands as possible.

'His whole campaign for months has been built on winning Iowa, winning South Carolina, and winning big on Super Tuesday,' he said of Cruz.

'He won Iowa but he came in third in South Carolina, and he's not going to win big on Super Tuesday. So I think there's a lot of questions.'

'We're going to have a lot of delegates after tonight,' Rubio added, 'and you're going to see very clearly after tonight that Donald Trump has no chance of ever getting the delegates he needs to be the nominee.'

'We feel great about Minnesota. We feel great about Virginia. We feel great about a bunch of them,' he said.

Asked if he had a sense of controlling his own political destiny, Rubio said: 'All these things are in God's hands, God's will is going to be done.'

By the time all the votes are counted Tuesday night, the Republican field will have split up 595 delegates to July's Republican National Convention.

The first four high-profile contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada  all told  put just 126 delegates in play. Trump led the field at the beginning of Tuesday with 82 delegates in his corner.

The GOP convention will seat a total of 2,472 delegates from all 50 states and every U.S. territory, making 1,237 the magic number of votes a candidate needs in order clinch the presidential nomination.

All of the Super Tuesday battleground states will award delegates according to the proportions of the vote won by the candidates. In a few places they must reach a threshold  usually 20 per cent  in order to claim any delegates at all.

HIGH STAKES: Five GOP candidates and two Democratic candidates sparred over delegates on March 1, also known as Super Tuesday. Here's how they were distributed  according to population

But most follow arcane formulas that allocate their delegates by district, and put a large pot of them up for grabs according to statewide totals.

Cruz awaited Tuesday's results in the Houston suburb of Stafford, Texas, and celebrated his victories there.

Trump held a press conference, not a party, at his sprawling, opulent Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

Dozens of his high-society friends occupied the front two rows. Son Eric Trump appeared on stage with the candidate and a handful of staffers.

But wife Melania and daughter Ivanka remained in New York, as Ivanka is due to give birth any day.

Rubio was in Florida, too, but by default: With no one state appearing to a sure victory, he chose to frame it as a kickoff party for the March 15 primary there  a must-win contest if Rubio has any hope of ever surging to the front of the pack.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other conservatives had kicked off the day urging their party to side with establishment candidates.

Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject racism.

The GOP is the party of President Abraham Lincoln, he told reporters, adding: 'this party does not prey on people's prejudices.'

Ryan was grinding an axe on Trump's Sunday CNN appearance in which he declined to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and other white supremacists.

Trump had disavowed Duke on several other occasions and later blamed a faulty IFB  a television interview earpiece  for his lack of a forceful response Sunday on the air.

While Trump seems on course for a win, the question of who will take home the votes for the Vice Presidency remains uncertain.

Carson got the biggest chunk of support, at 11 percent, in a scattershot poll published by the Morning Consult.

Another 38 percent of respondents indicated they didn't yet know who they would like to see take Joe Biden's place.

Right behind Carson are the remaining candidates in the Republican field.

Rubio and Cruz each get 9 percent support for the vice presidency, while former Ohio Gov. John Kasich received 8 percent support.
A mother was forced to watch her 16-year-old son be tasered by police outside his school after he 'slashed the tyres of a car and threw around bins'.

The woman had been asked to attend Casuarina Senior College with police after a report her 16-year-old son had slashed the tyres of a car, before he was apprehended by police and subsequently tasered, NT News reported.

The ABC reported the teenager had been involved in an altercation with a female friend at the weekend and that he had thrown bins as he arrived at school on Monday morning. The report also claims that some had fears the teenager had a weapon.

A Darwin mother maintains her son 'did nothing wrong' as she was forced to look on as was tasered by police at his school

The mother of a teenage boy who was tasered at school says her son only became aggressive after a police officer grabbed the boy from behind

The mother told NT News her son was 'angry' when he asked the police officers if he was under arrest before attempting to leave the school office. She said he became aggressive after a police officer 'grabbed' the boy from behind.

'I saw the whole thing. I'm going to take it further,' the woman said.

However, a short statement released on Tuesday by NT Police said a 16-year-old boy was tasered after he caused a 'violent disturbance'.

An NT Police spokesperson said taser was used 'in order to control the situation and ensure the safety of the attending officers, staff, students and members of the public'.

The statement said police initially attended the school after reports of a disturbance. He was subsequently charged with assaulting police.

Police would make no further comment.

The Police Federation of Australia states that a taser is used when a person poses an imminent threat of serious harm to a police officer or member of the public but when use of a firearm is not warranted.

There are no guidelines that prevent police from using a taser on a child.

Darwin police say that a taser, similar to the one pictured, was used to control the situation and ensure the safety of those involved in the incident

Students who spoke with NT News said the teenager was generally a good kid.

The Northern Territory Education Department confirmed the incident in a statement and said the 'safety and wellbeing of students, staff, parents and visitors at all schools is of highest priority for the department'.
Commentator Andrew Bolt - who previously referred to Cardinal George Pell as the 'victim of a vicious witch hunt' - appears to have changed his tune, slamming the church official for failing to protect vulnerable children who were abused at the hands of a notorious pedophile priest.

Mr Bolt, who was sent to Rome to cover the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, had previously called the coverage on Cardinal Pell 'shameful, disgusting and frightening'.

But after the Cardinal described the prolific sexual abuse of children at a Victorian parish 'a sad story' that 'wasn't of much interest' to him, Bolt proclaimed he had 'stained his reputation forever'.

'His fate was sealed. That quote will be hung around Pells neck forever. The priest who went by the book, not the heart,' Bolt wrote in an article published in the Herald Sun on Wednesday.

Scroll down for video

Commentator Andrew Bolt who earlier defended Cardinal George Pell has now slammed the church official for failing to protect vulnerable children who were abused at the hands of a notorious pedophile priest

He goes on to explain the systematic failure of church leaders to act when Father Gerald Risdale was moved from parish to parish after being identified by members of the church and community as a child molester in the 1970s and 1980s.

The conservative commentator, who has reportedly secured an exclusive interview with the Cardinal, questioned if Dr Pell, who he labels the 'prince of the Catholic Church', had been 'dangerously indifferent to his responsibilities' or simply a liar who is now protecting himself.

Bolt cites a shocking instance where a 14-year-old boy, Paul Levey, who he incorrectly named Paul Levi, was allowed to live with the pedophile after the parents of an abuse victim had complained to Dr Pell's superior, bishop Ronald Mulkearns, about his unsavoury behaviour.

He went on to assert that the best that Dr Pell's 'defenders' could argue is that the Cardinal had been happy to blindly follow orders and not seek out abused children who desperately needed his care.

Mr Bolt, who was sent to Rome to cover the Royal Commission into Insitutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, had previously called the coverage on Cardinal Pell 'shameful, disgusting and frightening'

But after the Cardinal described the prolific sexual abuse of children at a Victorian parish 'a sad story' that 'wasn't of much interest' to him, Bolt proclaimed he had 'stained his reputation forever'

He goes on to explain the systematic failure of church leaders to act when Father Gerald Risdale(pictured) was moved from parish to parish after being identified by members of the church and community as a child molester in the 1970s and 1980s

Bolt cites a shocking instance where a 14-year-old boy, Paul Levey(centre), who he incorrectly named Paul Levi, was allowed to live with the pedophile

The commission heard that this occured after parents had complained to Dr Pell's superior, bishop Ronald Mulkearns(pictured), about his unsavoury behaviour

Bolt went on to assert that the best that Dr Pell's 'defenders' could argue is that the Cardinal had been happy to blindly follow orders and not seek out abused children who desperately needed his care (Pell pictured with Risdale)

'How Pells supporters would have choked on one of his final answers yesterday about the responsibility of priests to the children being molested by his colleagues.

He has a moral responsibility to do what is appropriate to his position.

'Really? Nothing more?,' Bolt asked.

In February, the conservative columnist penned an article on Dr Pell for the Herald Sun claiming that he had been vilified by the people who were victims of sexual abuse as children in the Ballarat diocese and those who defended their right to be heard, like comedian Tim Minchin.

'People pretending to be moral have competed with each other to slime Pell as the defender of paedophiles, if not a paedophile himself,' he wrote.

'There is no mercy and no attention to the facts. There is just the joy of hatred,' he added.

In February, Bolt penned an article on Pell for the Herald Sun claiming that he had been vilified by the people who were victims of sexual abuse as children in the Ballarat diocese

'There is no mercy and no attention to the facts. There is just the joy of hatred,' he said of the victims speaking out against Pell (pictured Dominic Ridsdale, Phil Nagle, Paul Auchettl, David Ridsdale, Tony Waroley, Stephen Woods and Peter Blenkiron - survivors and relatives of priestly sex abuse)

He went on to say that the Cardinal had been a 'target for the Left' as he is conservative and had defended traditional marriage and attacked global warning 'alarmism'.

Bolt, who reported from Rome, also used his time on air as a 'Sky News contributor' to point out 'incorrect allegations' against the Pell from victims and relatives of victims, stating that Dr Pell needs 'more benefit of the doubt.'

'We have to remember that in these cases of these priests we're talking about, (Pell) was not in the position of authority over them, he was not in the direct line of communication. There are allegations that some people told him but at least three or four of those allegations are clearly not right,' Bolt said on Sky News.

'He was in Oxford for a year when one victim's brother said he warned Pell There's a lot of claims but I'm not sure there's the smoking gun about his direct knowledge.'

Sky News is being slammed for their bizarre choice to send controversial commentator Andrew Bolt to report on the royal commission into sex abuse in Rome

Bolt has previously referred to Cardinal George Pell as 'the victim of a witch hunt.' Cardinal Pell is appearing via video link from Rome at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse

Assuming the role of 'Sky News contributor', Bolt has spent much of his time on air defending Pell and speaking against 'the enormous hate campaign' against the cardinal

Last month Bolt wrote a column for News Corp proclaiming: 'Cardinal George Pell is the victim of one of the most vicious witch hunts to disgrace this country. It is shameful. Disgusting. Frightening'

'I think George Pell's problem is that he's the most senior Catholic around. He's a tough, tall figure with a booming voice - he looks a perfect villain in a sense.'

'One would hope that this inquiry can go forward in the spirit of actually finding the truth, not being a witch hunt and perhaps giving George Pell more benefit of the doubt than a lot of media has given him.'

Social media has responded with bewilderment at the choice to send Bolt to Rome.

'Miranda Devine defending George Pell and Andrew Bolt reporting from Rome. What kind of fresh media hell is this?' tweeted Em Rusciano.

'Whaaaaat? Andrew Bolt is in Rome reporting on the George Pell headings? He's on Sky right now. Breathtaking bias,' tweeted Bevan Shields.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, pictured at the Vatican in 2015

'Thank goodness Andrew Bolt is there in Rome covering George Pell #Spindoctorattheready,' tweeted Seb Lacey.

Cardinal Pell is appearing via video link due to his ill health and on Tuesday admitted the offences of Australia's worst pedophile priest were sad, but not of much interest to him.

During a day of tough questioning before the child abuse royal commission, the cardinal repeatedly told the hearing he knew nothing of the predatory activities of notorious pedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale around Ballarat in the 1970s and 1980s.

'It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me,' the cardinal said via video link from the Rome hotel where he is giving his evidence.

'I had no reason to turn my mind to the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated.'

The statement drew incredulous laughter from survivors of sexual abuse who have travelled from Australia to witness Cardinal Pell giving evidence.

Australian Cardinal George Pell is seen on a screen via video link from Rome holding a bible, as he prepares to testify at Australia's Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse

He laid blame on former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, saying his then superior had known of the complaints about Ridsdale interfering with children but had lied to him about them.

Abuse survivor Phil Nagle said outside the hearing that Ridsdale's offending was well-known in two Victorian communities.

'Cardinal Pell is a very astute, very bright man, so how can he say he didn't know?' he said.

Ridsdale's nephew and victim, David Ridsdale, said Cardinal Pell was 'either culpable or an ignorant buffoon'.

'I don't believe he's the latter and we have no evidence of the former so we have to wait for the commission to do its job,' he said in Rome.

Mr Ridsdale said the survivors weren't convinced by the evidence.

'We feel like we've watched a performance rather than evidence,' Mr Ridsdale said.
A man will spend up to 32 years in prison for brutally attacking his pregnant ex-girlfriend, causing her to lose the child.

Torey Branch, 35, of Brooklyn, was sentenced today to 25 years in prison for first-degree burglary and up to seven years for first-degree abortion.

'Torey Branch deserves to spend every day of the next 27 years locked away in a prison cell for his cowardly, brutal and simply inhumane attack on a pregnant woman that caused the victim to suffer horrific injuries, left her unconscious and needing two blood transfusions  all because he did not want her to have their baby,' Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson said.

Branch and another man attacked Branch's ex-girlfriend Mia Jones, 35, when she was almost seven months pregnant in March 2014.

Torey Branch, pictured (left) in court in December last year, was sentenced to up to 32 years in prison for attacking his ex-girlfriend Mia Jones, pictured (right) after Branch was found guilty last month, when she was almost seven months pregnant. Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson called the attack 'inhumane'

Jones and Branch had been in a relationship for nine years when she became pregnant. Branch told her he didn't want a child and was angry when she decided to keep the baby.

On March 28, 2014, Jones and Branch agreed to meet at Jones's apartment in Brooklyn.

She came in around 1:15pm and two masked men, caught by surveillance cameras, followed her inside. One of them hasn't been apprehended.

Jones, pictured after the attack, was badly beaten up and the baby died in utero a few hours later

The two masked men choked her, punched her in the head and on her body and then repeatedly hit her pregnant belly, eventually knocking her unconscious.

She was hit approximately 22 times and suffered severe injuries, including an orbital fracture.

Her unborn child died in untero a few hours after the attack and eventually had to be removed during an emergency cesarean.

Jones recognized Branch's voice when she heard him say 'move, move' during the attack.

It later emerged that Branch had researched miscarriages before the assault.

A search of Branch's cell phone revealed approximately 51 incriminating online searches, including 'can being hit in the stomach cause a miscarriage' and 'what happens if you punch a pregnant woman in the stomach.'

The searches occurred between January 19, 2014 and March 9, 2014  approximately three weeks before the attack.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alexander B. Jeong sentenced Branch today to 25 years in prison on the charge of first-degree burglary and an indeterminate sentence of up to seven years in prison on the charge of first-degree abortion. He ordered the sentences to run consecutively.

Branch was also sentenced to one year in prison on the charge of third-degree assault, to run concurrent.
Aldi stores are opening across Adelaide and have forced competitors to use aggressive marketing tactics.

The discount supermarket opened four stores in the South Australian capital in February, open two more on Wednesday, and a further three later this month  adding heat to the market.

Competitor Foodland, a partner of IGA, has focused their attention on the 'blast zone', a term they coined to describe the zone within a 10-minute drive of any new Aldi store, Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Scroll down for video

Discount supermarket Aldi opened four stores in the South Australian capital in February, open two more on Wednesday, and a further three later this month  adding heat to the market

Foodland CEO Con Sciacca said they are yet to see 'a material impact as the result of the [Aldi] stores' which opened last month

Foodland CEO Con Sciacca said they had an edge over larger supermarket giants through micro-marketing because they can cut prices at individual stores  whereas Woolworths and Coles cannot be so agile with a national approach.

'We've taken a more aggressive position in some segments of what we sell,' Mr Sciacca told Daily Mail Australia.

The CEO said Foodland will 'keep doing what we've done so well for such a long time' by providing good service and products.

Mr Sciacca said they are yet to see 'a material impact as the result of the [Aldi] stores' which opened last month, though he conceded it was likely too close to call.

Foodland CEO Con Sciacca said they had an edge over larger supermarket giants through micro-marketing because they can cut prices at individual stores  whereas Woolworths and Coles cannot be so agile with a national approach

'We will see the typical, I suppose what I call, 'new entrance impacts' when people go and have a look [at a new store].

'But when it normalises we appear, without sounding too cocky, to be progressing well.'

Mr Sciacca said Foodland did not see Aldi as a direct competitor as their stores are not a direct substitute.

However, he said 'Woolworths and Coles react to a new entrant so the market becomes heated'.

'We're reacting to the market becoming more heated.'

An Aldi spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the site of new stores are chosen after considering long-term potential of an area and population numbers.

Aldi stores are opening across Adelaide and have put heat on the market for competitors like Coles (pictured), Woolworths and Foodland, who are partners with IGA

'We work closely with local planning bodies such as council, other businesses and community groups to ensure Aldi's presence positively impacts the local area'.

An Adelaide Foodland store in Frewville was this week given the title of the best retailer in the world by the Independent Grocers Association.

A Coles spokesperson said they had been 'reducing the price of groceries for customers across Australia for the past seven years and we have continued this deflation in the first half of this financial year.'

Woolworths declined to answer questions from Daily Mail Australia, but a spokesman told Sydney Morning Herald they are 'working very hard to offer our customers the best possible prices'.

An Aldi spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia they are 'committed to being the price leader and have consistently led the market in pricing'.

They said their shopping experience is smarter, convenient, fast and efficient.

South Australian Aldi managing director Viktor Jakupec told Sydney Morning Herald they are 'pleased with the performance' in their first month of trading in South Australia.

A Coles spokeswoman said they had been 'reducing the price of groceries across Australia for the past seven years'
A husband-to-be was killed in broad daylight in a shootout with an armed suspect in a residential park.

Officer David Hofer, 29, who proposed to fiancee Marta Danylyk in his uniform last year, had responded to reports of shots fired around 3pm yesterday near J.A. Carr Park, in Texas.

Upon arrival, the suspect immediately fired at the officers, fatally striking Hofer.

Officers returned fire and the suspect - who was not immediately named - died of multiple gunshot wounds.

This Facebook post from January 30 last year shows David Hofer, proudly dressed in his uniform, proposing to his girlfriend Marta Danylyk - he was killed in the line of duty yesterday

Several phone videos captured the chaos, showing cops surrounding the park and commanding the suspect to drop to the ground.

Footage obtained by the Dallas Morning News captured the sound of four quick gunshots followed by another three, then shouting.

After a few more single shots, someone can be heard shouting: 'Put your hands up! On your knees!

Witness Nelson Leka told WFAA News 8: 'About three police officers were running around the corner holding guns, and I noticed they were chasing something, someone.'

Hofer was rushed to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Grapevine, but he died in surgery.

The young couple had bought a house together in Plano and had moved in just before Christmas

The 29-year-old served in the NYPD for five years before coming to Euless in 2014. He was a 2008 graduate of New York University.

The New York Post reported Hofer, the son of European immigrants, previously worked in the 9th Precinct on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

A Facebook post from January 30 last year showed Hofer, in his uniform, proposing to his fiancee Marta Danylyk on one knee with a huge grin on his face.

The couple had purchased a house in Plano, Texas, in November, public records show.

They moved in just before Christmas after sharing an apartment together, neighbor Julie Kilgore said.

She told the New York Daily News: 'They were just starting their lives together, really.'

His fiancee was out of town at the time of the incident and had to be called home and given the devastating news.

Hofer had responded to reports of shots fired at J.A. Carr Park (pictured), which is close to Oakwood Terrace Elementary school

Officers had responded to reports of an armed gunman around 3pm yesterday near J.A. Carr Park, in Texas

Hofer was rushed to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Grapevine, but he died in surgery

His mother, Sofija Hofer, said: 'He was a wonderful child, a wonderful police officer.

'He was working this very difficult precinct and he had a lot of traumatic experiences...so he decided to go to a safer place.'

She said her son had wanted to write a book about his experience with the NYPD.

'I thought he might be a scientist, like his father, but he always wanted to be a policeman, ever since he was a little boy,' she said.

In a statement following the officer's death, Euless police chief Michael Brown said: 'This community will not forget David's servant heart and dry wit.'

'Euless is one big family,' Mayor Linda Martin added. 'Honestly, I'm having trouble controlling my tears.'

Hofer is survived by his parents, fiance, sister and brother, city officials said.

He is the second officer to die in the line of duty in Euless, a suburb of more than 53,000 residents about 17 miles west of Dallas and 15 miles east of Fort Worth.
Harris-Perry wrote in on tweet; 'One of the unintended consequences of salary inequity- harder to get us to take non-disclosure payoffs huh?'

She also accused MSNBC of racial inequity and apologized for giving in to a '

Melissa Harris-Perry is accusing her bosses at MSNBC of leaking emails and the network of racial inequity on Twitter two days after it was announced her show had been cancelled.

Harris-Perry tweeted on Monday links to stories reporting the network's decision to cancel a show hosted by Burmese-American Alex Wagner and sideline Hispanic host Jose Diaz-Balart during the Florida primary,.

Then, on Tuesday evening she unleashed a wave of tweets after writing; '5pm. Pushing back from pointless "negotiations" like ...'

One of these tweets also stated; 'One of the unintended consequences of salary inequity-- harder to get us to take one of those non-disclosure payoffs huh? #freedomovermoney'

Scroll down for video

Hitting back: Melissa Harris-Perry (above in August) accused her bosses at MSNBC of leaking emails in a Twitter rant on Tuesday

Shade: Harris-Perry seemed to suggest that it was MSNBC boss Phil Griffin (above in October) who leaked the email that appeared last week in which she vented about losing control of her program

Harris-Perry first apologized to Pakistani-British journalist Martin Bashir, African-American writer and journalist Toure and African-American political adviser Karen Finney on Twitter, saying; 'I am sorry for and ashamed of my earlier silence. I gave into to culture of fear at #msnbc'

She did not explain further, but Toure and Finney are two of the people The Washington Post named in a story on Monday who had either been let go by MSNBC or seen their appearances on the network diminished according to people close to Harris-Perry.

Next she went after the president and vice president of the network, Phil Griffin and Yvette Miley, writing; 'Note to @YvetteMiley & Phil if I cc u on email Tue & it's leaked to press on Friday maybe I'm not the unpredictable one #GetYourLeaksPhil'

This tweet seemed to suggest that it was her bosses who leaked the email that appeared last week in which Harris-Perry vented about losing control of her program and revealed she would be boycotting her own show over the weekend, saying; 'Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.

'The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes.

'I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I dont want back on air at any cost.

'I am only willing to return when that return happens under certain terms.'

Harris-Perry shared a graph showing how her show had more gender and race diversity than other prgrams

Harris-Perry also shared a graph showing how little diversity was on most morning shows

Harris-Perry then tweeted her thanks to her 'brilliant team of producers, researchers, interns' and said hosting her show' was one of the greatest joys of my professional life-a weekly privilege for 4 years.'

She also said that she alone was responsible for any failures on the show.

Harris-Perry closed with two graphs detailing how she had the only show on weekend television that featured a group of 'diverse' voices and ended with a tweet that said; 'So #MSNBC y'all keep making cable great again. I'll be staying challenging & unpredictable.'

She included with that a GIF of Angela Basset's character setting her husband's car on fire in the film Waiting to Exhale.

A spokesperson for MSNBC said on Sunday that Harris-Perry would not be returning to the weekend discussion show she has hosted since 2012 after she refused to host over the weekend.
Stereosonic may become the first music festival in Australia to allow for on-site pill testing after the organiser Totem OneLove Group gave its in-principle support to the plan.

The group behind the popular music festival has revealed support for a plan to check the purity of drugs like Ecstasy and MDMA after two people died last year.

Music company Totem OneLove Group said if key stakeholders sanction the initiative they would support it to 'minimise harm and reduce drug use.'

Stefan Woodward, 19, from Adelaide and Sylvia Choi, 25, from Sydney both died from suspected drug overdoses at Stereosonic last December.

Scroll down for videos

Organisers of the Stereosonic music festival (pictured) have revealed they would support on-site pill testing

Police search a detained patron's bag before entry into the Stereosonic music festival at Melbourne in 2015

Leading doctors say police blitzes at dance festivals like Stereosonic are not the answer and have advocated pill-testing for purity of drugs outside the venues. Organisers of the event have given in-principle support

Music company Totem OneLove Group, which runs the Stereosonic event across Australia will back the initiative if key stakeholders support it to 'minimise harm and reduce drug use' (stock image)

'In principle pill testing would have our full support as long as all the key stakeholders sanctioned the initiative to ensure its effectiveness,' said the music company in a website statement.

'We would strongly support any policies or initiatives that would minimise harm, reduce drug use and make events a safer environment for patrons.

'Unfortunately drug use is an issue effecting all Australians and is not limited to events.'

The ABC claims that seven people died after allegedly consuming drugs at different Australian music events in the last year.

Last month, a prominent Sydney doctor vowed to defy an official ban and start testing pills at music festivals across Australia.

Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation President Alex Wodak announced a testing trial to be rolled out at some music festivals in Sydney - even though it is not backed by NSW Police or the state government.

'The idea is to save lives. I am prepared to break the law to save young people's lives,' Dr Wodak said, the Sydney Morning Herald reports. 'We are going to do this.'

Organisers of Stereosonic have revealed they support on-site pill testing. Totem OneLove Group said it would 'minimise harm' and 'reduce drug use'

Stefan Woodward (left), 19, from Adelaide and Sylvia Choi (right), 25, from Sydney both died from suspected drug overdoses at Stereosonic last December

Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation President Alex Wodak (pictured) announced he would defy authorities to undertake a drug testing trial to be rolled out at music festivals

Dr Wodak is partnered in the program by medical specialist David Caldicott, who said the trial would be 'straight forward'.

'We want to run a trial at a place where everyone is using drugs anyway,' Mr Caldicott said.

'It's time for our politicians and elected representatives to catch up with what the majority of parents want for their children, which is for them to return home safe.

However, NSW Premier Mike Baird slammed the move, labelling it 'ridiculous'.

'We are not going to be condoning in any way what illegal drug dealers are doing,' he said in response.

In total, more than 120 people were treated for drug-related symptoms at Sydney's festival last year, with nine taken to hospital and almost 70 charged for drug-related offences.

Up to 60 people were arrested at the Melbourne event.

139 people faced charges (most for drugs) at Stereosonic's Brisbane event and 20 more were treated for overdoses.
As Tony Blair entered his final months in office as Prime Minister, his thoughts were clearly on Europe  and his chance to become the first President of the Union.

For years, he had scoffed at Britains anti-European prejudice as hopelessly, absurdly out of date . . . a kind of post-empire delusion.

In a bid to prove his European credentials, he had even agreed to forgo 1 billion of the annual rebate that Margaret Thatcher had obtained from the EU. Now he was preparing to go even further.

In early March 2007, shortly before Blair was due to fly to Brussels for a European summit, William Rickett, the Governments energy specialist, discovered an alarming EU development.

Tony Blair agreed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's (pictured together at the summit in 2007) demands on green subsidies despite the fact it meant British consumers would be paying 7.6million extra every year

Rickett had learned that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, intended to propose that every European country should agree to generate 20 per cent of all its energy from renewable  green  sources.

Given that engineering such an enormous change would cost Britains consumers billions of pounds a year, disfigure the countryside with many more wind farms, and wreck its energy market to boot, Rickett assumed Blair would reject Merkels proposal.

But to his horror, he heard from Downing Street that Blair intended to bow to her demands. He alerted his boss at the Department of Trade and Industry, Alistair Darling, who duly spoke to Blair after a Cabinet meeting. Dont sign up to the European renewables targets in Brussels, Darling told him. Itll cost us an arm and a leg.

Right, said Blair. I wont. On reflection, Darling was not sure whether Blair was even listening. As so often, although their conversation lasted only a few seconds, his eyes wandered.

He wont be so stupid as to agree to it, Darling told Rickett.

Blair arrived at the summit knowing his presence would count as a farewell appearance. By then, he had decided to resign on June 27.

Here was his last opportunity to seal his reputation as a good European. In that cause, Blairs self-interest triumphed over that of Britain.

Oblivious as usual to money, Blair made no move to sidle his way out of the commitment and fully agreed to Merkels demand. The pair are pictured together in June 2007, just three months after agreeing the deal

Oblivious as usual to money, he made no move to sidle his way out of the commitment and fully agreed to Merkels demand. To help fund his pledge, British consumers would be paying 7.6 billion extra every year in subsidies to the power-generating companies.

Youre mad, Darling told Blair on his return to London.

Oh, replied Blair, I got confused. I thought it was 20 per cent of all our electricity, not 20 per cent of all our energy.

But as he later told a special adviser in Downing Street: There were lots of negotiations here. I couldnt stand out on that issue.

The bigger issues were not explained, but were assumed to be his bid for the European presidency.
Immigration from within EU added 170,000 to population last year, figures showed

Tory grandee Lord Lamont last night said Britain must leave the EU to regain 'control of our borders'.

The declaration is a bitter blow to Number Ten  which has now lost the support of both the Prime Minister's early political mentors.

Along with Michael Howard, former Chancellor Norman Lamont employed David Cameron as a special adviser.

Last week, Lord Howard said he backed Brexit because Downing Street's renegotiation had 'failed'. Lord Lamont has now made it plain that the PM's deal is not good enough for him either.

Along with Michael Howard, former Chancellor Norman Lamont (left) employed David Cameron (right) as a special adviser

He told the Mail: 'Economically, it will make very little difference if we leave  but it is about controlling our own affairs, our own borders. It is absolutely right that we should vote 'leave'. I will be doing everything I can to try to achieve Brexit.'

Number Ten will be alarmed that Lord Lamont focused on the need to control Britain's borders after official figures showed immigration from within the EU added 170,000 to the population last year.

Mr Cameron was a special adviser to Lord Lamont during his time in the Treasury, including on Black Wednesday in 1992 when the Tory government had to take the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

UK EXPORTING MORE FOOD AND DRINK TO NON-EU COUNTRIES UK tea exports to China jumped by more than 46 per cent last year, as food and drink sales to non-EU countries fared better than those to Europe. Non-EU markets, including Canada and the US, now buy 30.8 per cent of the UK's branded food and non-alcoholic drink exports, with overall exports to China growing by 9 per cent. By contrast, exports to the European Union fell by 1.3 per cent last year. Advertisement

Last week Lord Howard  who employed Mr Cameron as a special adviser at the Home Office in the mid-Nineties  also urged voters to back Brexit. The former party leader supported Mr Cameron in the 2005 Tory leadership contest  making his decision hard for Number Ten to swallow.

Lord Howard said Mr Cameron's renegotiation had been a failure because the EU had refused to properly engage. He added: 'There is just one thing that just might shake Europe's leaders out of their complacency: The shock of a vote by the British people to leave.'

Lord Lamont has long argued that the economic benefits of EU membership are 'vastly overstated' and the UK could survive after leaving.

In 2013, the peer said it was worth 'one final attempt' at re-negotiating Britain's links with Brussels.

At the time, he called on the PM to disentangle Britain from all EU social, employment, crime and justice laws and aim for just a trade relationship.

Lord Lamont had insisted that any deal had to be 'fundamental and very far-reaching', adding: 'We would want to be out of almost everything apart from having a commercial relationship with Europe.'

Last week, Lord Howard (left, with Cameron in 2005) said he backed Brexit because Downing Street's renegotiation had 'failed'

But Mr Cameron did not make these demands in his talks with Brussels  ending in last month's controversial deal, which has been dismissed as 'thin gruel' by Tory MPs.

Today, Number Ten will hit back by insisting that all alternatives to EU membership will 'damage' Britain. In the latest dossier from the Government, officials examine four issues for the UK outside the EU.

The report claims the experience of Norway and Switzerland suggest that, even after leaving, Britain would have to pay into the EU's coffers to gain access to the single market. Both countries also accept the free movement of people, according to the study.

It points out that Canada is still struggling to secure a trade deal with the EU seven years after talks began.

Officials insist that joining the World Trade Organisation would lead to tariffs of up to 50 per cent on some foods.

But Leave campaigners say that even the pro-EU CBI has said 'the UK is highly likely to secure a free-trade agreement with the EU' and have accused No10 of 'scaremongering'.
Solo player: Tony Blair plays guitar in his den in 1997. He is said to have made decisions in the den with a handful of like-minded friends instead of consulting the Cabinet on government matters

One of the first things Blair told the Cabinet Secretary after moving into Downing Street was that he'd decided to make the Bank of England independent.

'The Cabinet will want to discuss and decide that,' observed Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler.

'Oh, they won't mind,' said Blair. 'We'll ring round and they'll agree.'

Butler was surprised. Since Robert Walpole had become Britain's first prime minister in 1721, his successors had always consulted the Cabinet on major decisions.

But Blair had little interest in collective government. Assuming presidential powers, he intended to govern with a handful of like-minded friends who'd meet regularly in what became known as his den.

These comprised his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, spin-doctor Alastair Campbell, fixer-in-chief Anji Hunter, pollster Philip Gould and Peter Mandelson  the man who'd invented New Labour. No member of the Cabinet, let alone the Cabinet Secretary, was included.

'Do you realise,' Blair said to Campbell in his first year, 'we are carrying the whole show  you, me, one or two others?'

Ministers were appointed on the strict condition that Blair's orders were obeyed unquestioningly. And Cabinet meetings  at which he expected complete loyalty  were limited to 40 minutes.

That, Blair mistakenly assumed, had been Margaret Thatcher's modus operandi.

The cynicism involved could be breathtaking. In the first week, a senior civil servant approached Jonathan Powell, asking if the euro would be discussed at a Cabinet meeting.

He was told: 'Don't worry about that. We'll tell them what the line is.'

Documents and briefings bored the PM, and he had little interest in detail. Instead, he relied almost solely on instinct and his ultra- loyalist 'sofa government' team.

As David Omand, the most senior civil servant at the Home Office, reflected later: 'Blair never understood what was going on outside his office.'

Certainly, the PM had little confidence in most of his Cabinet. The quality of his ministers, he confided to a senior civil servant after 100 days in office, was dire  though he made exceptions for Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson.

Sir David Omand (right), the most senior civil servant at the Home Office, reflected: 'Blair never understood what was going on outside his office.' The former PM is said to have had little interest in collective government

When it came to making a reshuffle, he turned to his inner circle  each of whom was given a piece of paper and asked to write down their nominations for each department.

As well as disparaging his ministers, Blair remained deeply distrustful of civil servants, suspecting that most of them were unimaginative conservatives out to sabotage New Labour.

His second Cabinet Secretary, Richard Wilson, was reduced to creeping into the PM's office to look at his diary and discover what was going on.

Like so many others, the longer that Wilson observed the PM, the harder he found the task of identifying what he represented. Besides generalities, there was no defined objective.

'I want change,' the PM repeatedly told the Cabinet Secretary.
A civil servant from the Ministry of Defence yesterday defied the ban on talking about Brexit by admitting it would help manufacturers if Britain voted to leave Europe.

Andy Markham, part of a team in charge of buying weapons for the Armed Forces, told an audience of budding defence specialists that the UK would benefit when it came to purchasing military equipment.

Speaking to a staff college course of around 150 people at the Defence Academy in Shrivenham, he said: 'From a procurement option, we're better out.

'If you looked at taking away process and adding value into acquisition, we're probably better out of the EU.'

Andy Markham, part of a team in charge of buying weapons for the Armed Forces, said leaving the EU would help the UK when it came to purchasing military equipment (file photo)

Mr Markham was speaking in his role as corporate deputy to the head of commercial in the weapons operating centre in DE&S, the MoD's body in charge of equipment.

The Ministry of Defence said his view  given during an internal presentation - did not reflect the views of the department.

His stark comments are likely to infuriate Number Ten officials who have said the civil service machine is required to give its full support to the Government.

Britain's top mandarin Sir Jeremy Heywood  who is known as Sir Cover Up  said civil servants had a 'constitutional duty' to support the official position.

Sir Jeremy has instructed civil servants across Whitehall to produce reams of propaganda on why the UK must remain inside the Brussels club.

Last night Labour MP Khalid Mahmood applauded the civil servant's defiance of the rules.

He said: 'I applaud him for voicing his opinions on this. It is about time we stood up for British manufacturers and industries. No other country in the world would allow all of their industry to be decimated.'

Lord West, former head of the Navy, added: 'There is no doubt that working with other nations makes procurement more expensive.

'You can't drive down the costs. In terms of general security it makes sense for us to stay in Europe but they should be more desperate to keep us in. We saved them twice in the last one hundred years.'

UKIP MEP Mike Hookem said: 'We've had a deluge of propaganda from the MoD and Number 10 telling us we need to be in the EU to be more secure.

'But here we have clear proof that EU rules on what equipment our troops use in warfare or to defend our country is being hamstrung by EU membership.'

Britain's top mandarin Sir Jeremy Heywood (pictured)  who is known as Sir Cover Up  said civil servants had a 'constitutional duty' to support the official position

Labour MP Frank Field, who is voting out, added: 'He should encourage his colleagues to speak out as well.'

His comments came after ministers were accused of turning their backs on British steelworkers when it emerged the MoD will use Swedish steel in a multi-billion pound contract for armoured cars and ships.

Defence Minister Philip Dunne revealed in a written Commons answer that hundreds of military vehicles will be made using Swedish steel.

The MoD has placed a 3.5billion order for 589 Ajax armoured vehicles, and will spend a further 348million on three new Royal Navy offshore patrol ships, to be built with steel imported from Sweden.

During defence questions on Monday, Labour MP David Hanson asked Mr Dunne to explain why 60 per cent of the steel for the new Royal Navy offshore patrol ships was being procured from Sweden, when Wales has a 'real crisis on our hands with the steel industry'.

Mr Dunne said 20 per cent of the steel was sourced from the UK after 24 companies fought for the contract  including only one British company.

MoD purchasing of equipment operates under European law, which means EU contractors can compete in the same way British companies can for British contracts.

Asked about the impact leaving the European Union would have on UK businesses that rely on MoD contracts, Mr Dunne said: 'We continue to place contracts on the basis of open competition.

'EU procurement directives apply to our procurement, which means the EU contractors are eligible to compete for our contracts in the same way as UK and other international companies, other than when we declare an article 346 exemption for warlike stores.'

In 2013, Philip Hammond, the defence secretary at the time, vowed to resist plans by the European Commission to centralise Europe's defence procurement.

In July that year, the EC presented a paper proposing measures to create more competition in a market dominated by big companies such as BAE Systems.

But Mr Hammond said extending the commission's role on defence was not in the best interest of the UK industry and would be resisted.

An MoD spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister and Defence Secretary have been clear that Britain would be safer, stronger and better off inside the EU.

'This was an internal MOD presentation at a staff college course, and does not reflect the views of the department.'
Advertisement

An out-of-use theme park, an untouched telephone exchange and a run-down homestead.

These are the scenes of abandoned South Australia taken by a property manager who moonlights as an amateur photographer.

Scott McCarten started his Autopsy of Adelaide Photography Facebook page three years ago to showcase the photos he took of abandoned houses, hospitals, churches and factories he found on his urban exploring adventures.

He has been an explorer for about 15 years but only recently started taking an interest in photography.

These are the scenes of abandoned Adelaide taken by a property manager who moonlights as an amateur photographer. This house was ravaged by a fire 10 years ago in the suburbs

Scott McCarten started his Autopsy of Adelaide Photography Facebook page three years ago to showcase the photos he took of abandoned houses, hospitals, churches and factories he found on his urban exploring adventures. Above is a trashed church in Adelaide

This is an old Telstra telephone exchange in Adelaide, with the machine still intact and wires hanging off it

A Simca Aronde in an abandoned car yard where 1,000 pre-1970 cars were sitting in country South Australia

Fairyland Village in Lobethal, east of Adelaide, has closed down and these photos were taken before the displays were dismantled

Inside an abandoned early Germanic house in the backblocks of Woodside, east of Adelaide

The 43-year-old said he loved to take images of these ruined buildings because he felt a connection with the people who once occupied these spaces.

'These were places once filled with people working or living and once you go into a place that has been left like that - not restored or demolished - you sort of feel a connection with people who were there before,' he said.

'What was their life like and what happened? Particularly with houses. One of the houses [I photographed] in the Adelaide Hills had a Christmas tree still up. What happened to the people?'

McCarten said the bigger industrial sites were the buildings that struck a chord with him.

An old dentist chair lies unused inside Gawler Chambers, in central Adelaide

This is one of the photos that are not taken in Adelaide. The abandoned Wolston Park Asylum, which is located in Wacol, near Brisbane in Queensland

This is the Box Hill Brickworks in Melbourne's east. The walls are covered in graffiti and some of the original machinery is intact

An abandoned laboratory in Adelaide still has chemicals and jars with pipettes inside, ready to be used

Another display at the abandoned Fairyland Village located in Lobethal. A snowman stands guard of his house

Four mannequins, which appear to be a nod to Alice In Wonderland, stand tall underneath the moonlight

An old organ inside an abandoned baptist church in country South Australia. The church was built in 1880

Gladstone Gaol in rural South Australia. It is thought to have been built between 1879-81 at a cost of 21,640

McCarten has been an urban explorer for about 15 years. Here he is pictured inside an abandoned train

'I've been blown away by the scale of these places and the story that's been left behind,' he said.

'[Another example is] The Gallerie shopping arcade in Adelaide which has basically been abandoned for 20 years and it takes up a city block and five storeys high.

'How does a building of that scale stand there for 20 years? Is it the changing face of retail, particularly when you have people sleeping outside like that - how does that happened?

'It's quite sad really.'

McCarten has also started a blog also named Autopsy of Adelaide where he posts about the different locations he has visited - including a lone dentist chair inside Gawler Chambers which was used by medical professionals, a movie theatre with a metres-tall giraffe statue inside and a home with a Christmas tree left behind.

A house in the Adelaide Hills. McCarten thinks the home was abandoned sometime in 1983 as the calendars on the wall showed that year

A bedroom in the same house. The family who lived there left behind an army hat and an old wedding photo on the floor

Another abandoned car in a farm yard in country South Australia. This one is covered in cobwebs and even has its 'Please Fasten Your Seat Belt' sticker still on it. The farming property had about 20 cars on it

An abandoned Adelaide cinema that was built in the 1930s still has the red carpet on its stairs

Inside an abandoned homestead in country South Australia

This family did not even have time to take down their Christmas tree. The house is described as one that is 'hidden in plain sight in the Adelaide Hills', and it was originally a shop before becoming a residence in the 1940s

Books lay untouched with a framed picture falling off the wall. The house is on the back roads of the Adelaide Hills, with McCarten saying the floor beneath his feet gave way more than once in the grand home

This unremarkable house had been stripped except for a baby carriage and children's toy, like the teddy bear on the floor. It would have been built circa early 1900s

Another location is The Gallerie shopping arcade, which used to house John Martin's department store before it closed in 1998.

'The Gallerie building comprises five floors and three separately linked buildings, including the heritage listed G&R Wills Building,' McCarten wrote on his blog.

'In recent years, the building has been heavily vandalised internally. However, the majority of this is cosmetic damage, with shop fittings, electrical wiring, plumbing and escalators removed years ago.'

The photographer's images capture the expansiveness of the empty space of the concrete-floored building which has been vandalised with graffiti.

McCarten also showcases the derelict Fairyland Village in Lobethal, east of Adelaide, which closed after 10 years of operation.

A train graveyard in Tailem Bend in South Australia where many trains go after they are decommissioned

An old car at an old farming property in the town of Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills

A house that was built around the 1910s and 1920s on the main street leading to and from Mt Barker and Hahndorf

An abandoned train yard that does not exist anymore in Killburn, in Adelaide's north

An abandoned rail tunnel in Littlehampton, in the Adelaide Hills. The track has been unused for about 20 years

Before the displays were dismantled the photographer was lucky enough to capture some of the mannequins and scenes still in place.

Another rare insight McCarten discovered was Adelaide's old Telstra telephone exchange that has sat unused and intact for about 30 years.

The old switchboard sits abandoned inside an empty room with wires still plugged into the machine.

McCarten said each place he visited held a part of rich history.

'It's that connection with history. It's not a building that has been built up or restored. It's about preserving history, it's a bit more raw,' he said.

'It's about connecting with those stories, that's what fascinates me about it.'

A piece of machinery remains unused inside this factory in the South Australian countryside

An derelict house in Eudunda, which is estimated to have been built in the late 1800s

This photo was snapped in the early hours in Monteith, south-east of Adelaide, in South Australia

Electricity meters at an abandoned site in Adelaide that was a power station
This is the heartstopping moment two off-road bikers were given quite a fright when a bear in a hurry suddenly bolted across the woodland trail in front of them.

One of the riders is seen instinctively braking at the sight of the black bear, while the other is a little slower to react and narrowly misses careering into it.

The lead biker then turns to watch the bear race off through the trees. It appears unfazed by its close encounter with the pair of motorcyclists as it disappears from view.

Unsuspecting: Two off-road bikers were given quite a fright when a bear suddenly bolted out in front of them

This is the heartstopping moment the bear came running across the woodland trail the pair were driving along

Look out! One of the riders is seen instinctively braking at the sight of the black bear, while the other is a little slower to react and narrowly misses careering into it

Camera footage of the fear-inducing near-miss was captured by the second of the two riders in the Irkutsk region of Russia.

Bear attacks have long been a problem in Russia in years when their food supplies run low. In the most extreme case, 270 bears were reportedly killed in four villages in Irkutsk province in 1968.

Meanwhile, six months ago it emerged a Russian town had come under siege from at least three dozen ravenous bears, leaving many locals too terrified to open their doors and go outside.

In a month-long blockade last August, the hungry beasts attacked residents in Luchegorsk - population 20,000 - and there were reports of one man being killed.

Inhabitants said at the time that at least eight Asian black bears had been shot as they stalked the streets and terrorised the town in the country's extreme east, close to the Chinese border.

The black bear races across the dirt track in front of the two off-road bikers as the pair slow down to avoid it

Caught on camera: Footage of the near-miss was captured by one of the riders in the Irkutsk region of Russia

Oblivious: The bear appears unfazed by its close encounter with the motorcycles as it disappears from view

Shock: The lead biker glanced back to look at his friend after watching the bear race off through the trees

One woman likened the bear threat to being under siege from an army.

'Hunters say that they looked at the area from a helicopter - there are crowds of these bears, like army units,' she said.

'We are scared to walk outside.
A tornado in Alabama injured four people, seriously damaged 12 homes, and left thousands across the state with power outages.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Holmes said the storm hit at around 6pm on Tuesday evening near Bessemer, about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham.

Firefighters responding to the area found four people who needed to be treated at the hospital, but there were not serious.

No fatalities were reported, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff.

A tornado in Alabama injured four people, seriously damaged 12 homes, and left thousands across the state with power outages. Pictured, a tree that fell on top of several cars

The storm hit at around 6pm on Tuesday evening near Bessemer, about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham. Pictured, a garage appears to be destroyed

The Sheriff's Office reported 12 significantly damaged homes, some of which lost roofs and doors. A number of other houses sustained less serious destruction.

Many trees collapsed, crushing cars, littering the streets with debris, and toppling power lines.

About 6,800 power outages were reported across the state, according to Alabama Power spokeperson Katie Bolton. Around half of those outages occurred in the Birmingham area.

Homeowner Ben Allison told WIAT he didn't have time to grab his dog. He and his wife took refuge in the laundry room while his roof caved in.

He also nearly lost his front door.

Sheriff's Sergeant Jack Self said emergency response teams went door to door to make sure people were safe.

About 6,800 power outages were reported across the state, with half occurring in the Birmingham area
A ban on women soldiers fighting on the frontline is likely to be lifted this summer.

Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt and General Sir Nicholas Carter, the head of the Army, are due to give speeches that will celebrate the role played by women in the Armed Forces.

They will mark International Womens Day next Tuesday and indicate that the Ministry of Defence is moving closer towards the historic change.

Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt and General Sir Nicholas Carter, the head of the British Army, are due to give speeches that will celebrate the role played by women in the Armed Forces

It follows a six-month review into whether women should be able to serve in infantry and tank regiments.

The review quashed doubts within the MoD that allowing females to serve in frontline roles would damage the cohesion of the Armed Forces on the battlefield.

However, the review said there needed to be further research into the physiological demands placed on those in close combat roles.

During the speeches, Miss Mordaunt and General Carter are expected to refer to research on the impact frontline infantry duty would have on the female body, which is due to be concluded in June.

It will help inform discussion about opening up the full range of combat jobs in the Army to women and allow for a final decision to be made within months.

David Cameron has spoken out in support of allowing female soldiers to take on infantry combat roles. But some senior officers have mounted concerns that it will lead to a drop in standards in the Armed Forces.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, said that putting women in what were once all-male, close-combat units would damage their effectiveness and the decision was being driven by political correctness.

David Cameron has spoken out in support of allowing female soldiers to take on infantry combat roles. But some senior officers have mounted concerns that it will lead to a drop in standards in the Armed Forces

It is dangerous to make a decision of that sort on an ideological basis, he said. I believe it would undermine the effectiveness of the military to have women serving on the frontline.

Women can already find themselves on the frontline while serving as medics, intelligence specialists, artillery spotters, signallers or in logistics. They also serve with distinction as combat pilots.

It is understood that only a small minority of the 16,000 women serving in the Armed Forces would want to take  or be capable of passing  the tests for infantry units.

Britain is behind the times on the matter compared to other countries. Of the 28 members of Nato, just two others, Turkey and Slovakia, still bar women from combat roles.

The US lifted its ban in 2014, joining countries including Germany, Canada, France and Israel.
From the outset, the mission was flawed - but the military supported PM

was out of the blue to

Blair decided he wanted to go to Afghanistan without

Without consulting either his Defence Secretary or the military top brass, Blair had already made up his mind. Summoning them for a meeting, he declared: 'I want to go to Afghanistan.'

The announcement seemed to come out of the blue. Had he thought it through? After all, with troops still dying in Iraq, British forces were already overstretched.

But Blair wasn't interested in this line of thought. 'We're doing it,' he insisted.

Without consulting either his Defence Secretary or the military top brass, Tony Blair had already made up his mind about sending British troops to Afghanistan. Pictured: British soldiers in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

The year was 2004. Once again, the Prime Minister wasn't bothering with the traditional channels before making a commitment overseas. There'd be no proper debate at the Ministry of Defence or Foreign Office, and no Cabinet committee had been tasked to examine his objectives.

According to Downing Street, British troops would protect Nato teams as they reconstructed Afghanistan  still in chaos following the post 9/11 American bombings.

The aim was to create new education and legal systems, transforming the country within three years. As a secondary objective, the UK military would destroy the local narcotics trade, a Blairite passion.

From the outset, the mission was severely flawed  but the military loyally supported the Prime Minister.

'Let's do some proper soldiering!' Army chief General Mike Jackson enthused to his fellow generals. And Air Marshal Glenn Torpy, the chief of joint operations, confidently assured them that British troops wouldn't be facing danger.

It hadn't crossed his mind that the American counter-terrorist units already in Afghanistan were buying peace from the local drug-traders with suitcases full of dollars. Just as in Iraq, Britain's intelligence services had failed to report the danger accurately. Nor did anyone consider how British soldiers were going to win the hearts and minds of Afghan tribesmen if opium crops  their main income source  were to be destroyed.

Among the military chiefs, there was a lone voice of dissent. 'I can tell you that there's a lack of intelligence about the truth on the ground in Helmand,' protested Admiral Alan West. 'This is a leap in the dark. Do we really want to get involved in this?'

And why, he asked John Reid  the new Defence Secretary  were troops being ordered to cut poppy production? After all, the Americans had been combating drug operations in Colombia 'for decades'.

'The Prime Minister wants to do it,' was Reid's short reply. Blair was also determined to do it his way  so an uncritical official, Margaret Aldred, was appointed to head up a new Cabinet committee on Afghanistan. This conveniently silenced critics of Blair's 'sofa' government, and neutralised any opposition.

'Aldred's committee just stapled papers together,' observed a Treasury official. The only rebel on the committee was Des Browne, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who questioned the idea of 'nation-building' in a medieval country.

The former Prime Minister didn't bother with the traditional channels before making a commitment overseas and sending British troops to Afghanistan

'What happens when we stop a convoy carrying heroin?' he asked John Reid.

'We hand over responsibility to the sovereign government,' replied the Defence Secretary.

Did Afghanistan actually have a sovereign government, Browne wanted to know.

'These are sensible questions,' said Reid. 'I'll ask the chiefs and come back with their answers.' But he never did. To appease Browne, Blair asked his deputy, John Prescott, to head up another committee to examine the decision to send troops. The committee never met.

'Shouldn't we have a war cabinet?' Lieutenant General Rob Fry asked Blair one day over Sunday dinner.

In response, Blair rolled his eyes and pointed at the wall of 11 Downing Street. This was his very own big adventure, and he had no intention of including Gordon Brown.

Finally, the Cabinet was asked to vote  after a brief presentation by John Reid. 'This is essentially peacekeeping,' he told ministers, 'and we'll be surprised if there are more than a handful of British casualties.'

No minister recorded his or her dissent. It was left to Air Marshal Torpy  a fighter pilot with no experience of land warfare  to work out the details of the deployment.

Ignoring pleas from the mission commander for 10,000 men, he sent out just 3,150 lightly equipped troops, without surveillance drones and with only a few helicopters.

Not long after this deployment, Reid paid his first visit to Afghanistan on April 23, 2006. He was briefed by the mission commander, Brigadier Ed Butler, that his 600 ill-equipped paratroopers were being outgunned by the Taliban.

'What Taliban?' asked Reid. 'No one told me there are any Taliban left. It's the first I've heard about this.' And what about nation- building, he added  was that going ahead as planned?

Brigadier Butler couldn't figure out whether Reid was genuinely ignorant  or just posturing.

A month later, Butler flew back to London to brief the defence chiefs, the Ministry of Defence, MI6 and Margaret Aldred's committee about the unexpected dangers in Helmand and the inadequacy of the British military force.

At the end of his presentation, no one suggested any change of policy or even started a discussion. His audience departed with barely a word. None the wiser, Butler returned to Afghanistan. Soon afterwards, Butler proposed moving troops to Sangin, where an Afghan governor was asking for protection of his family and loyal tribal chiefs. Britain's ambassador and the local MI6 head were in favour.

Back home, some generals agreed, and others  like new chief of defence Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup  were happy to defer to the knowledge of those on the ground.

It was a disastrous decision. Hours after the paras arrived in Sangin, they were met with incoming fire and retaliated, killing several locals.

Next, the Taliban joined the battle  and British soldiers, unable to communicate with the people they were supposed to be protecting, found themselves shooting at drug barons and Islamic extremists.

Tony Blair is seen addressing troops after arriving in Basra for a surprise visit to UK soldiers in Iraq in 2009

To survive, platoons summoned air strikes. But, inevitably, the pilots occasionally missed their targets and hit the homes of civilians.

At the same time, in accordance with Blair's instructions, British anti-narcotic teams were starting to burn the opium crop. 'You've just taken the food out of my children's mouths,' a tribal elder told the troops.

By July 2006, Britain's peaceful 'nation-building' had turned into another war. Later, Blair would say he was never told by Stirrup about the Sangin plan. Yet, the Prime Minister was himself to blame.

He had committed the Army to a remote war under the command of an air marshal and a vice-admiral who had no personal experience of land warfare; a rookie minister; Bill Jeffrey  newly appointed permanent secretary at the MoD with no prior knowledge of defence; and two brigadiers acting without intelligence on their own initiative.

Blair's own security co-ordinator, Richard Mottram, should have been supervising the mission  but he'd been excluded from the decision-making process by the PM, who had ignored the lessons of Iraq.

Without proper discussion, Britain was slipping into a major conflict that would cost 38 billion, cause the deaths of 453 personnel and maim hundreds of servicemen with life-changing injuries.

Blair held workshops on education and immigration but never a single day's conference on Iraq or Afghanistan Des Browne

On his return from holiday at the end of August 2006, the Prime Minister showed no interest in reassessing the situation.

'Blair held workshops on education and immigration,' recalled Des Browne, 'but never a single day's conference on Iraq or Afghanistan.'

By September, the British Army was in crisis. Soldiers were dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there was a severe lack of helicopters and bombproof vehicles.

'Whatever package they want, we will do,' said Blair. But Gordon Brown refused to approve additional money, so the PM's promise remained unfulfilled.

The politicians, however, didn't bear all the blame. The Army chiefs had spent months inconclusively bickering among themselves about the ideal bombproof vehicle.

Indeed, by this point, the generals were falling out with each other. 'Everyone hated each other,' complained an official.

At the same time, Blair ferociously fought off Gordon Brown's plots for the succession. During the whole of that September, the battle for Downing Street took precedence over those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In early October, during a meeting to discuss Afghanistan, Nato chief General David Richards noticed Blair was no longer listening.

No one questioned why Britain had launched yet another war in the name of nation-building. And no one asked why the Army was unable to protect Afghan civilians, who were now being slaughtered.

At least Blair had stopped claiming the troops were engaged only in peaceful reconstruction. Instead, he proudly proclaimed that Helmand had become another front in the war on terror. He ignored the consequences for Britain's military of his last ill-considered war.
Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas gave moving and, at times personal, tributes to Antonin Scalia at a memorial for the 79-year-old on Tuesday.

Along with the justices, three of Scalia's nine children and former law clerks spoke in front of about 500 people at the service for Scalia, who was found dead February 13 at age 79.

Thomas, who sat next to Scalia during oral arguments at the court, said he will miss Scalia's under-his-breath commentary and lunches where he'd order anchovy pizza.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at the memorial service for Justice Antonin Scalia

When Scalia finished an opinion he was particularly pleased with he would say, 'Clarence, you have got to hear this. This is really good', and then give a dramatic reading, Thomas said.

Thomas, who delivered a reading at Scalia's Feb. 20 funeral, said Scalia 'worked hard to get things right', and that he cared about both broad principles and details like grammar and syntax.

'He was passionate about it all, and it was all important to him,' Thomas said during the memorial at the Mayflower Hotel, which all eight justices and several hundred other people attended.

Thomas paused to collect himself at one point in his speech when he quoted from the eulogy for an influential pastor killed by the Nazi regime: 'With him, a piece of my own life is carried to the grave.'

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at the memorial service for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Scalia and Thomas were close friends on the bench and said the two would pass notes back and forth during oral arguments

The two were ideological soul mates, believing the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted in its 18th Century context, which often put them on the losing side of cases.

Scalia was always ready to do battle.

Thomas said that as he sat between Scalia and liberal Justice Stephen Breyer on the bench during oral arguments, the two would pass notes back and forth.

Becoming more somber and choking back emotion, Thomas, who joined the court in 1991, spoke of the bond arising from their shared Roman Catholic faith and Jesuit education: 'We walked together for a quarter century.'

John Manning, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, spoke to approximately 500 people at the service

Catherine Courtney, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remembered her father as someone who always made time for family dinners

The service was held a day after Thomas ended a decade of self-imposed silence during court arguments.

Ginsburg, Scalia's ideological opposite on the court, remembered Scalia giving her a draft of a dissent she called a 'zinger' and how her 'final draft was much improved thanks to Justice Scalia's searing criticism'.

Ginsburg, who became friends with the conservative justice in the early 1980s when they served together as federal appeals court judges, said she will miss his 'eminently quotable opinions' and acts of friendship, like bringing her roses on her birthday.

Scalia was no fan of eulogies, and his funeral Mass contained few stories about a larger-than-life personality who served on the court for nearly 30 years.

Tuesday's memorial was a time for stories about the justice that were poignant or funny, or both.

His daughter Catherine Courtney remembered her father as someone who always made time for family dinners, was a poor estimator of travel time and commanded burgers to 'be juicy' when he grilled.

His daughter Mary Clare Murray said that the only way she or her siblings got out of attending church on Sunday was if they were sick and stayed in bed all day.

One of Scalia's former clerks, Joan Larsen, now a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, remembered Scalia singing in his chambers and whistling in the court's corridors.

Scalia's death, on February 13, has left an open seat in the U.S. Supreme Court and an evenly-split bench

She said she was once scolded for citing the third edition of Webster's Dictionary; Scalia liked the second edition.

Larsen, who was one of the clerks who stood watch over Scalia's casket at the Supreme Court on the day before his funeral, said that clerks found that the most challenging thing to do while standing there and thinking about him was not to keep from crying but to keep from grinning.
Ministers want to scrap rules which require phone companies to seek approval before building transmitters taller than 49ft

Giant mobile phone masts 'as tall as three double decker buses' could soon be built without planning permission across the countryside.

Ministers want to scrap rules that mean any phone firm wanting to build a transmitter taller than 49ft requires planners' approval.

The Government's proposal is intended to improve mobile phone coverage in so-called 'not spots' where signal is poor.

But the Local Government Association, which represents more than 370 councils, warns today that this could mean huge phone masts cropping up in beauty spots, historic locations and next to schools.

Giant mobile phone masts 'as tall as three double decker buses' could soon be built without planning permission across the countryside (file photo)

The LGA said councils approve nine out of ten planning applications for phone masts anyway, showing that the current system is not a barrier to development.

Mark Hawthorne, chairman of the LGA's people and places board, said: 'More than a fifth of the UK's land mass has no mobile phone connection and councils are committed to boosting mobile phone coverage in rural and more remote communities to ensure they are not left behind. This must never come at the expense of the views of local people and to the detriment of local communities.

'It would not be right for large phone companies to be able to build phone masts wherever they like. It is alarming that a phone mast more than the height of three double decker buses could be put up outside the front of someone's home without them having any say in the matter.

'Relaxing planning rules in this way risks mobile network operators being able to build huge masts in places where local residents and councils will have no say.'

He added: 'Building mobile phone masts is not a straightforward process. Planning controls exist to give people the power over developments that impact on their quality of life, and they should be respected. It is vital that councils are able to work with network providers to ensure local areas get the best possible coverage in a way that residents are happy with.'

The Government has admitted that its efforts to build 600 phone masts across the UK to eliminate not spots has been a failure.

The Local Government Association warns today that this could mean huge phone masts cropping up in beauty spots, historic locations and next to schools (file photo)

Its Mobile Infrastructure Project has built just 28 masts  and spent just 11.55million of its allotted 150million funding since it was set up in 2012.

One of the masts was put up in Polzeath, North Cornwall  after the Prime Minister complained about the poor signal in the area while he was on holiday.

The scheme is now being wound up, and a total of just 50 masts are expected to have been erected by the time it ends. The remaining funds will be returned to the Treasury.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said: 'We are exploring whether changes are needed to ensure that consumers are getting the connectivity they want and need in the digital age, whilst balancing that with the ability for councils and communities to have their say.
Ministers have announced a new dash for gas with the building of gas-fired power stations to ensure the lights stay on.

Measures to encourage new power stations, many likely to be built by the Chinese or French, are being brought forward.

The plan is designed to head off fears that Britain could soon face an electricity shortfall in the winter months, threatening blackouts.

Measures to encourage new power stations are being brought forward to head off fears that Britain could soon face an electricity shortfall in the winter months, threatening blackouts. (Pictured: National Grid power plant at the Isle of Grain, Kent)

Old coal-fired power stations are being shut down to meet EU carbon emissions targets, leaving a black hole in the nations energy supply.

This problem has been made worse by the fact the building of new nuclear power stations has been delayed.

At the same time, there is no chance that there will be enough green energy from wind farms, solar and the waves to fill the gap.

Wind farms provide useful power when the wind is blowing. However, gas fired power stations are needed to ensure the lights stay on at other times.

there is no chance that there will be enough green energy from wind farms, solar and the waves to fill the gap

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced yesterday that a regime designed to ensure there is enough power in the system to meet peak demand will be brought in a year earlier.

The so-called capacity market, where generators are guaranteed payments to ensure there are enough power plants on stand-by, will come into effect in 2017/18.

Importantly, there are also plans for the National Grid to buy more electricity capacity and to buy it earlier from power companies. This will encourage them to spend billions of pounds building new gas-fired power stations.

It is not clear who would build these new power plants. Centrica, which owns British Gas, and the British-owned SSE are likely to be involved, but investors from China, France, Germany and other nations may also invest if the prices offered guarantee a good profit.

Regardless of who builds the power stations, the costs will flow through to families and businesses through their bills.

The decision by the Government to concentrate on gas for producing electricity will boost companies looking to use fracking to extract shale gas in the UK.

In addition it will encourage the building of new pipelines bringing gas to the UK from the Continent. American companies also want to export shale gas in liquefied form via tanker to the UK.

However, the proposals will alarm green campaigners, who want to move away from fossil fuels and would prefer much greater support for wind, solar and wave energy.

Energy Secretary Amber Rudd announced yesterday that a regime designed to ensure there is enough power in the system to meet peak demand will be brought in a year earlier

Greenpeace energy campaigner, Hannah Martin, complained: The Government is planning to subsidise old and polluting industries like gas and coal whilst slashing support for the cheapest forms of clean energy, like onshore wind.

This shows the clear hypocrisy of George Osbornes energy strategy which makes little economic or environmental sense.

If the government supported the renewable energy sectors with as much zeal as the fossil fuel industries, investment and jobs in the young, price competitive and booming solar and wind sectors would be pouring into the UK.

These clean, renewable industries can help to power the country in the future and our carbon reduction targets would be in easier reach.

Just last week, a body representing 60 local authorities warned that closures of large coal-fired power stations have left Britain heading for power cuts next winter.

For example, three out of four coal-fired generators at the Fiddlers Ferry power station in Cheshire are set to shut despite having secured a contract to provide power through until 2018/19.

The Industrial Communities Alliance (ICA), an all-party association of councils from across Britain, said National Grid needed to act immediately to fill the supply gap by sending out new contracts for at least 2,500 megawatts (MW) of additional generating capacity  enough to power 2.5m homes.

It warned: The problem  and it is a problem for every electricity consumer in the country  is that if all these closures go ahead, there wont be enough generating capacity to keep the lights on next winter.

Yesterday (tue) Miss Rudd responded to the warning, saying: Ensuring that our families and businesses have secure energy supplies they can rely on now and in the future is not negotiable and Ill take no risks with this.

She added: The capacity market has driven down costs and secured energy at the lowest possible price for bill-payers, but Im taking further action to tackle the legacy of under-investment and ensure our countrys long-term energy security.

By buying more capacity earlier, we will protect consumers and businesses from avoidable spikes in energy costs.

The Energy Secretary said it would send a clear signal to investors that would encourage the construction of new energy sources including gas and interconnectors which link up the UK grid with supplies in other countries.
A store with live music, a tasting display, cheese bar, coffee bar, and a focus on locally sourced organic produce with competitive prices has been named the best supermarket in the world.

Frewville Foodland, a 10-minute drive south-east of central Adelaide, won the International Retailer of the Year excellence award at the IGA Conference held in Las Vegas this week.

Judges consider merchandising, produce, employee development, leadership, innovation and community engagement  all things the supermarket owned by the Chapley family has excelled in.

We run a masterclass for the supermarket trade in Australia, managers told Channel Nines Today. Everybodys trying to do what we do, but very few can.

Scroll down for video

Adelaide's Frewville Foodland has live music every day - one of the reasons it was awarded best supermarket in Australia by Independent Grocers Alliance

The supermarket also has an extensive cheese bar, hard to find Asian foods, tasting displays (pictured), and European-style baked goods cooked on-site in a hearth oven

The Adelaide supermarket has live music every day, an extensive cheese bar, hard to find Asian foods, and European-style baked goods cooked on-site in a hearth oven.

At the front of the store is Mr Nicks, a kitchen and coffee bar.

I guess we have all these creative things because were trying to delight our customers, the team told Today.

Weve got over 20 piano players from the community who come and play in our store and our customers love that.

Weve tried to bring a hospitality mentality to the store so you can taste, you can see, you can sample, to create this European-feel in the store.

Owned by the Chapley family, the supermarket was awarded the title by the Independent Grocers Alliance after winning the national award last year for the chance to compete internationally.

CEO Con Sciacca told Daily Mail Australia the win indicates how focused Foodland is on the quality of their produce.

This gives an indication of what were about. We want to give customers an experience.

Weve got over 20 piano players from the community who come and play in our store and our customers love that,' the managers and owners said on Wednesday

Nick Chapley, of the Chapley family who own the Frewville Foodland, received the award (pictured) in Las Angeles by the Independent Grocers Alliance

Weve tried to bring a hospitality mentality to the store so you can taste, you can see, you can sample, to create this European-feel in the store,' the team said
A Goldman Sachs employee linked to hats inspired by Donald Trump's campaign slogan has been put on leave.

Luke Thorburn, a financial adviser in the wealth management division, made two donations to Trump's campaign worth $534.58 in total, the New York Times reported.

He also has ties with a website that sells hats with the slogan 'Make Christianity great again', echoing Trump's catchphrase, 'Make America great again'.

Thorburn filed a trademark application for 'Make Christianity great again' in January according to public records.

Luke Thorburn, a financial adviser at Goldman Sachs, has been put on administrative leave. He filed a trademark application for 'Make Christianity great again' and hats with the slogan (pictured) are sold on a website registered at Thorburn's zipcode

The hats are sold online at Makechristianitygreatagain.com, a website registered at Thorburn's zipcode.

They are available in red and blue with white letters and resemble those sold on Trump's campaign website.

Goldman Sachs interviewed Thorburn after the New York Times wrote he had donated to Trump's campaign and was selling the hats, the newspaper reported.

According to the New York Times, Thorburn was placed on paid administrative leave last week due to inconsistencies in his stories.

Sources briefed on the case told the New York Times Thorburn had tried to distance himself from the website.

He hadn't received permission from Goldman Sachs before developing it, even though the company requires employees to seek approval before pursuing business outside of the office.

Make Christianity Great Again says on its website that it aims to 'combat the war on Christianity' in a peaceful manner.

'Violence and corruption in society come at a time when faith in Jesus Christ has lost its luster,' the organization says in an online manifesto.

'Unsavory media, a lack of biblical education and global political corruption are just a few key parts in creating the misshapen world we see today. A Godless World is an Ending World, and worldwide Christian persecution can no longer be tolerated.'

Make Christianity Great Again denied being owned by Thorburn in an email to The Gothamist.

Thorburn has worked at Goldman Sachs since March 2014.

Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trump, told the New York Times: 'We are not involved in any way and do not wish to be.'
A 15-year-old girl with a mild intellectual disability has been missing from her home for almost a month sparking serious concerns for her safety.

Tanekia Carey-Halson was last seen wearing a dark hoodie jumper and denim shorts at her Bendigo home, two hours north-west of Melbourne on the afternoon of Sunday February 7, about 4.30pm.

Victoria Police believe the teen has made contact with her family, but are concerned for her safety as Tanekia has never stayed away from home for this long and has a mild intellectual disability.

Tanekia Carey-Halson was last seen wearing a dark hoodie jumper and denim shorts at her Bendigo home, two hours north-west of Melbourne on the afternoon of Sunday February 7, about 4.30pm

She has not been seen in almost one month.

However, police are investigating suspected sightings at Broadmeadows and Shepparton - both more than 100 kilometres away in different directions.

Police are appealing for public assistance in finding the 15-year-old girl, described as having long brown hair, brown eyes and a slim build.

Anyone who sees Tanekia is urged to call Bendigo Police on 5448 1301.
A 26-year-old man who worked at a daycare center and advertised his services on a babysitting website pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.

Jason Janatsch of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, admitted he took sexually explicit photos with a 1-year-old toddler he was babysitting, according to Kfor.com

He then reportedly sent them to a man in New Zealand through the anonymous messaging app Kik under the username 'TheLoverOfTheLittle' .

Janatsch is charged with sexual exploitation of children, the receipt and transportation of child pornography, and possession and production of child pornography.

Scroll down for video

Jason Janatsch of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is accused of taking sexually explicit photographs of a 1-year-old girl and sending them to a man in New Zealand

Homeland Security launched an investigation through the New Zealand man and in December, they tracked Janatsch down and issued a search warrant.

Janatsch, who admitted to exchanging the explicit images, messaged the man writing, 'Yo I have a kid.'

When the man responded: 'Yo :) Same :) You fool with her?,' Janatsch wrote: 'Yep I have a few pics.'

He also opened an account on Sitter.com, writing: 'I come on this site to look for a parent out there willing to give a guy a shot at babysitting.'

'Some people think that men can't babysit due to things other men did to children. I am not one of those men, I am compassionate as well as caring. I myself have a daughter...'

According to KFOR, the website is based in Canada and does not perform background checks on potential babysitters. Janatsch's profile appears to have been deleted.

According to The Oklahoman, a woman accused Janatsch of abusing her 3-year-old daughter in a 2014 police report, but he was never charged due to insufficient evidence.

Janatsch is in custody at Grady County jail and faces a minimum sentence of 15 years.

The man in New Zealand has also been charged with child pornography.
Syrian President Bashar Assad is promising a 'full amnesty' to rebels who lay down their arms as efforts continue to bring peace to the war-torn country.

Assad said the truce provided a 'glimmer of hope' for Syria, where more than 270,000 people have been killed since the complex conflict erupted five years ago.

Asked in an interview yesterday what a moderate rebel could do to be accepted by him as a Syrian civilian again, he said: 'Just give up your armament'.

President Bashar Assad (pictured yesterday) is promising a 'full amnesty' to rebels who lay down their arms as efforts continue to bring peace to Syria, where more than 270,000 have been killed in the complex conflict

He added that the most important thing for him is that citizens don't carry around machine guns.

'This is the only thing that we ask,' he said. 'We don't ask for anything. As I said, we give them full amnesty.

'Whether you want to join the political process or (are) not interested about the political process.'

Assad has made similar gestures in the past, but opposition and rebel groups have rejected such offers saying he has no role to play in the future of Syria.

His comments came after a series of artillery shells exploded near the main street of a Syrian village close to the border with Turkey yesterday, sending a group of visiting international reporters running for cover and underscoring the limits of Syria's partial ceasefire.

The journalists were visiting the government-controlled village of Kinsibba, in the coastal province of Latakia, on a trip organised by Russia's defence and foreign ministries.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov, who was on the trip, said the projectiles came from positions held by the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria, which is excluded from the Russian and U.S.-brokered ceasefire, along with ISIS.

The journalists were traveling in armoured trucks provided by the Russian military, and were escorted by Russian special forces.

Reporters were walking across the village, which was seized in a recent government offensive, and talking to locals when the first shell struck a hillside a few hundred metres away.

Russian officers yelled at journalists to lie down, and they ducked as more shells fell and landed closer to the group. A Russian armoured personnel carrier rushed forward to screen the reporters from direct hits.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (left) is pictured answering questions during an interview with German public broadcaster ARD in the Syrian capital Damascus yesterday. He offered 'full amnesty' to Syrian rebels

A couple of journalists suffered minor scratches as they ran for cover and were quickly treated by Russian military medics. No other casualties were reported.

Just after the reporters left, more shells landed in the area, killing three Syrian troops and wounding eight others, Konashenkov said.

The partial ceasefire, which began at midnight on Friday, has brought a notable reduction in hostilities for the first time in the five-year war that has displaced half of Syria's population.

Yet the truce has remained fragile, with violations reported in many areas and the opposition and Syrian government blaming each other.

Russia's defence ministry said last night the ceasefire has been violated 15 times in the past 24 hours.

Opposition activists and state media reported some violence in different parts of Syria, including the southern city of Daraa, where residential areas were shelled.

World powers have thrown their weight behind the landmark truce as a way to bring an end to Syria's conflict, which began in 2011 with anti-government protests.

'We will do our part so that the whole thing works,' Assad told German public broadcaster ARD, referring to the cessation of hostilities reached by the U.S and Russia.

'We have refrained ourselves from retaliating in order to give [a] chance for the agreement to survive. That's what we can do, but at the end everything has a limit. It depends on the other side.'

A Russian soldier keeps watch as local residents receive humanitarian aid in the Syrian village of Ghunaymiyah, about 15 kilometres from the Turkish border yesterday as the ceasefire continues

Syrian government, Russia, the US and rebel forces have all been accused of breaching the fragile ceasefire

The much-lauded ceasefire has brought relative calm to swathes of territory in Syria's north, south, and around the capital.

It does not include areas where the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, are present.

The complex patchwork of territorial control has made the truce difficult to monitor, particularly in areas where Al-Nusra Front has formed close ties with non-jihadist rebel groups.

Civilians in central Homs province say their towns are not being targeted as often, but violence has not stopped.

'There are much fewer airplanes, which is very good, at the same time, we can't move around completely comfortably,' said Hasaan Abu Nuh, an activist in the flashpoint town of Talbisseh.

'There's still artillery, mortar fire, and we hear the airplanes flying above us,' he told AFP.

'People still have the same routine - they still go down to the shelters when they hear the planes.'

Residents of the besieged rebel town of Daraya, southwest of Damascus, took advantage of yesterday's quiet to resume their tradition of daily demonstrations.
Parents who upload pictures of their children on social media could be sued by their sons or daughters under France's privacy laws.

Mothers and fathers face a year in prison and a fine of 35,000 if they are convicted of publicising details of their children's private lives without their permission.

Experts claim French children could sue their parents for posting pictures of them on websites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Parents who upload pictures of their children on Facebook and Twitter could be sued by their children

'In a few years, children could easily take their parents to court for publishing photos of them when they were younger,' Eric Delcroix, an expert on internet law and ethics, told Le Figaro newspaper.

'Children at certain stages do not wish to be photographed or still less for those photos to be made public.'

And adults who sue their parents for breaching their right to privacy when they were children could receive compensation, experts say.

In February, the French Gendarmerie - concerned about the security of children - posted a message on Facebook, which read: 'Please stop posting pictures of your kids on Facebook.'

'Remember that posting pictures of your children on Facebook is not safe,' it added, according to The Local. 'It is important to protect the privacy of minors and their images on social networking sites.'

Adults who sue their parents for breaching their right to privacy when they were children could receive compensation, experts say

A 2015 survey of social media awareness, conducted by the University of Michigan, found that more than 74 per cent of respondents claimed they had doubts about posting baby images on the web, however they followed the crowd and did it anyway.

Worryingly, 51 per cent of parents offered up personal information alongside their photos that could identify a child's location.
Texas gave favorite son Ted Cruz a victory - and Oklahoma and Alaska did too - giving the U.S. senator just enough momentum to position himself as the Republicans' only viable alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump.

'Tonight was another decision point and the voters have spoken,' Cruz said. 'Tomorrow morning we have a choice.'

Cruz then said that as long as the field was still 'divided'  with Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson still hanging on  'Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation.'

Trump had already won five states by that point, going on to win two more.

'And after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,' Cruz claimed.

Scroll down for video

Sen. Ted Cruz went home to Texas and gave a victory speech where he suggested that the other three candidates, besides himself and Donald Trump, drop out

Out of the race? Marco Rubio, who won only Minnesota, told CNN his results will improve after a disappointing Super Tuesday

Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted his thanks when Texas was called for his campaign, alongside Oklahoma - which was a surprise victory for the U.S. senator

Texas did not let favorite son Ted Cruz down tonight.

At the top of his speech, Cruz congratulated Trump on his wins.

'But we are the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump once ... twice ... three times,' Trump said, adding his victory in the Iowa caucuses to the equation.

Cruz is the only Republican besides Trump to have won a state.

'15 states have now voted, everyone of those states so far has been won by either Donald Trump or myself,' Cruz said.

Republicans, together we have a choice, Cruz said, suggesting that the other candidates 'prayerfully' consider letting Cruz, and Cruz only, go on.

'For those of you who supported other candidates, we welcome you on our team,' Cruz said. 'Standing united as one, that is the only way to beat Donald Trump.'

Cruz quoted Democrats John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and ended his speech with GOP favorite Ronald Reagan.

'Americans shouldn't have a president whose words would make you embarrassed if you children repeated them,' Cruz said.

Ted Cruz cleanly beat Donald Trump and also Marco Rubio in his home state of Texas tonight during the Super Tuesday primaries

Cruz also won Oklahoma. Two other states with closed polls have yet to be called - Arkansas and Vermont - but both were leaning Trump

Donald Trump gave Ted Cruz a shout-out for his win in Texas calling it 'an excellent win'

He called Trump's language 'profane' and 'vulgar' and said the billionaire businessman had used the government's power only for personal gain.

When it was Trump's turn to talk, he was nice to Cruz after spending weeks labeling the senator a 'liar.'

'I know how hard he worked actually, so I congratulate Ted Cruz on that win,' Trump said once he got onstage in Florida. 'That was an excellent win.'

Rubio went on CNN later in the evening and suggested that Cruz's performance was underwhelming and said he wouldn't be dropping out.

The Florida senator won just Minnesota tonight.

'Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night, not a night where he won two states, he was supposed to have that Southern firewall and it didn't happen,' Rubio said.

Cruz had indeed hoped to pick up Southern states with high numbers of evangelical voters, but that plan began falling apart when he was bested by Trump in South Carolina.

Cruz had relied on the strength of his 'SEC state' strategy to propel him to the nomination.

Tonight, it failed him as Alabama and Georgia went to his biggest rival.

'The terrain gets better for us now,' Rubio said, with his home state of Florida voting in two weeks.

There, Trump is ahead in the polls.

Rubio said his campaign was 'really start[ing] to catch fire,' and he was 'prepared for the extended haul.'

'We are going to be in this race even if it takes 50 states and every territory,' the Florida senator reiterated.

Trump won a total of seven states tonight so far, taking Arkansas over Cruz a little bit after 11 p.m. Vermont was called for him around 12:30 a.m.

While Cruz's home state win will help his campaign, his failure to win other southern states tonight will muddy his pathway to victory.

Presented with Rubio's Minnesota win, later in the evening on CNN, Cruz said his logic of being the best Republican to beat Trump still applied.

'Well, but nobody has beaten him in three states,' Cruz told Wolf Blitzer. 'And three very, very different states of Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas.'
High school students, who sparked outrage after they started wearing anti-gay stickers on their identity badges, have been told to take the images off 'for now'.

The symbols in question show a rainbow pattern crossed out with a red circle and a line.

They started popping up in the hallways three weeks ago, prompting concern by classmates and teachers.

Students at Shadow Hills High School in Indio, California, have sparked outrage after they started wearing anti-gay stickers (pictured) on their identity badges. They have caused concern among staff, but the school has said the teenagers have a right to wear the controversial stickers

Both anti-gay stickers and pro-gay rights symbols were allowed as a matter of free speech at Shadow Hills High School in Indio, California, according to The Desert Sun and FOX News.

But Superintendent Gary Rutherford said new information instigated an additional review he said on Monday but didnt say what the new information was.

'Recently some information has been brought forward that requires additional investigation and follow-up to determine a proper course of action.

'Pending further investigation, we are going to ask students who are displaying the symbol showing a rainbow pattern with a circle and a line, at least for now, to remove symbols while at school,' Rutherford wrote.

Faculty at Shadow Hills High School in Indio, California, had insisted they couldn't force the teenagers to remove the labels because it would violate their right to freedom of speech.

However, federal courts allow some limits on student speech, allowing schools to prohibit items like banners and T-shirts that mentioned drug use.

People also slammed the labels as homophobic when images of them were uploaded to Facebook.

The school initially released a statement to the Desert Sun when the symbols started cropping up saying: 'After consulting with district level personnel and our legal counsel, it was determined that these students do have the protected right to freedom of speech, just as students portraying rainbows in support of the LGBT would.

'If at any point students are interrupting class time to express their beliefs, they are to be sent to the discipline office with a referral for disruption.

'We all have a right to freedom of speech, but students also have a right to be educated without fear. This has always been our policy, and we will continue to enforce it.'

In response to the anti-gay stickers, students including eighth-grader Paige Labayog started coloring in rainbow smiley faces to wear on their ID badges.

Some teachers have also gone against their school district, insisting they aren't happy with the decision.

Amy Oberman, an AP U.S. History teacher at Shadow Hills, told the newspaper: 'Yes, there is freedom of speech established by Tinker, but at least in my view, it's a hate crime because a group was targeted.

The labels started popping up in the hallways of the school (pictured) three weeks ago, prompting concern by classmates and teachers. Some teachers have gone against the school's decision

In response, students including eighth-grader Paige Labayog started coloring in rainbow smiley faces to wear on their ID badges

'I'm Jewish, and if that had been a little swastika on my window, what's the difference?'

Michelle Bachman, a senior at Shadow Hills and vice president of the Gay Straight Alliance, said she feels the anti-gay symbols 'rise to the level of bullying and intimidation.'
Washed and cleaned, the family dog's toy was eventually returned

Veterinarians were forced to perform surgery on a snake that ate a toy

A hungry python needed to be taken to the veterinary hospital for emergency surgery after it decided a stuffed teddy bear would make for a good meal.

Snake catcher Tony Harrison arrived to remove the snake from the family home on the Gold Coast when they told him the serpent had decided to eat their dogs toy.

After immediately taking the snake to the veterinary clinic an X-ray was conducted confirming an intact bear inside the snakes belly.

Scroll down for video

Veterinarians at The Vet Lounge performed the unusual surgery of removing a teddy bear from a snake

Gold Coast snake catcher was surprised after the family told him the snake had eaten the dog's toy

They [the family] watched the snake eat the dogs toy, snake catcher Tony Harrison told Daily Mail Australia.

Ive seen them [snakes] eat tea towels, plastic bags and fake chook eggs, if it smells good theyll eat anything.

Although the serpent is recovering now Mr Harrison believes the incident could have taken a very different turn.

The teddy bear would not have digested and eventually would have compacted in the snakes intestines infection will eventually set in and the snake will die, he said.

An x-ray at the veterinary clinic confirmed that the python had indeed eaten the family pet's toy

After the surgery the python was left with 15 stitches and is currently taking antibiotics as it recovers in the clinic

The python's mistaken food choice could have resulted in it's death

Kylie Barba the practice manager at The Vet Lounge said although it is rare to remove objects from serpents it does happen.

Retrieving a teddy bear form a snake is definitely a first but our veteran surgeon has removed objects from a number of animals, she said.

If the people who found the snake didnt tell Tony they saw him eat the teddy bear the snake would have most definitely died.

Tony would have taken the snake and relocated it because it just looks like a big rat and wouldnt have rung any alarm bells so the general public wouldnt have had any idea that the teddy bear inside him wasnt going to digest.

After the surgery the python was left with 15 stitches and is currently taking antibiotics as it recovers over the next two weeks before being released again.

The python is believed to have had a lucky escape as the bulge could have been mistaken as a big rat

Although it is a rare incident for surgeons to remove objects from serpents, it does happen
Manhattan delis and bodgeas are selling antibiotics under the counter, no questions asked, potentially contributing to the development of so-called 'superbugs,' an investigation by PIX11 revealed today. And the authorities say they don't bother to investigate illegal antibiotic sales.

Undercover reporters from the station, some speaking Spanish, approached clerks at small stores in the city with hidden cameras and requested antibiotics for sore throats, and were given pills with no prescription straight from the shopkeeper's stash.

'I know it's illegal,' one unnamed shopkeeper told a PIX11 reporter. 'It's what people are looking for, [what] they are asking me for, and I say, "Well I want to make people happy."'

Scroll down for video

Illegal: Clerks at New York delis are selling antibiotics under the counter, PIX11 reported. This clerk told a reporter 'It's what people are looking for... and I say, "Well I want to make people happy."'

Concerns: This pharmacist was concerned by the inaccurate dosages recommended by one clerk. But a bigger problem with the phenomenon is the development of superbugs, which are resistant to antibiotics

But even though such sales are illegal, the State Department of Health, NYPD, FDA and DEA all admitted that no investigations are made into the sale of under-the-counter antibiotics.

That's how deli workers get away with buying up medication from strangers and selling it without any approval or medical knowledge.

And that's a danger for the buyer, says PIX11  two experts they talked to said that the dosages suggested by the deli workers were completely wrong.

Such mistakes could increase the risk of accidental overdose, allergies or complications for the person taking the medication.

The promise of cheap, easily accessible drugs attracts many, but the issue is complicated by the fact that people from Latin America and the Caribbean are culturally conditioned to buy antibiotics from corner stores, PIX11 said.

But the problems with taking unknown, unprescribed medications are greater than the risks to individuals - they can affect the wider public too, by contributing to the development of 'superbugs,' diseases that are resistant to traditional antibiotics.

And that's a problem for everyone. 'The misuse and overuse of antibiotics is contributing to what really is an epidemic of antibiotic resistance,' Dr Lisa Saiman of Columbia Medical told PIX11.

'We're running out of antibiotics and it's very difficult to make new antibiotics that will actually kill these superbugs. It's what keeps me awake at night.'

Epidemic: A superbug 'epidemic' is occurring, Dr Lisa Saiman told PIX11, due to overuse of antibiotics. A form of salmonella (pictured) emerged in December in the UK that is resistant to all antibiotics

Fears: Dr Saiman (pictured) told PIX11, 'We're running out of antibiotics and it's very difficult to make new antibiotics that will actually kill these superbugs. It's what keeps me awake at night.'

Superbugs are created by random mutations in bacteria DNA lead to just one bacterium being resistant to antibiotics. That wouldn't usually be an issue, but when antibiotics wipe out all competing bacteria, that one bacterium is able to reproduce and spread easily.

An average bacterium takes 10-30 minutes to split into two bacteria. That means one bacterium that splits every 20 minutes could become more than two million bacteria in seven hours.

A World Health Organization report released in 2014 called superbugs a 'serious threat' and 'a major threat to public health' that is 'happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.'

And in December, two new, potentially lethal superbugs - related to salmonella and E. Coli - that were resistant to all antibiotics were found to have infected 12 people in the UK.

But scientists are working on methods of tackling superbugs, including a three-minute test to identify them, 'quantum dot' nanoparticles that are 20,000 times smaller than human hairs and even experiments with ancient clay remedies.
Mr Cenci had paint sprayed in his eyes and was nearly run over by the pair

He was attacked by man and a woman who trespassed to graffiti the home

Paul Cenci, 50, was doing maintenance on a derelict property in Melbourne

A good Samaritan is recovering after being bashed with a brick and bitten

A good Samaritan is recovering after being bitten and bashed with a brick when he tried to stop a pair of vandals spraying graffiti on a house.

Paul Cenci, 50, was doing maintenance on a derelict property in Fitzsimons Lane, Templestowe in Melbourne on February 15 when he was attacked by a man and a woman, both aged in their 20's, who were graffiting.

Although Mr Cenci managed to break free and call emergency services, police were unable to locate him and as he ran down the property's driveway, he was again attacked by the pair, this time with wooden planks and bricks, The Age reported.

Scroll down for video

The vile attack Paul Cenci, pictured, left the 50-year-old man with serious injuries after he was set upon by his attackers with a concrete brick

Police are hunting two people - a male (pictured left) and a woman (pictured right) who assaulted a 50-year-old man with a large piece of timber and a concrete brick

The woman also sprayed paint in Mr Cenci's eyes and the man bit him on the shoulder.

The pair then tried to run the 50-year-old over in a white Hyundai as he lay in the driveway.

'These people were not going to end without seeing me in a horrid state,' Mr Cenci said.

After finally locating the injured caretaker, paramedics rushed him to The Alfred hospital with severe gashes and bruising. He amazingly suffered no lasting injuries to his head.

Mr Cenci said his car, which was parked in the driveway of the property, was broken into while he was recovering in hospital and had tools stolen. He believes it was the same man and woman who attacked him.

The first offender is a man perceived to be of Caucasian appearance, about 20-years-old, 160-165cm tall with a fair complexion and fair to brown coloured hair.

At the time of the incident he was wearing a light t-shirt and dark shorts.

The pair were attempting to graffiti the derelict property when Mr Cenci stepped in

Police were told the woman sprayed silver paint into the victim's eye before trying to run him over with a car - not before the man bit him on the shoulder and stole his mobile phone

The second offender is a woman perceived to be of Caucasian appearance, about 20-years-old, 160cm tall, with a pale complexion, thin build and long blonde hair tied back.

At the time of the incident she was wearing a long patterned dress.

Police said the investigation is ongoing and anyone with any information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Mr Cenci said his car, which was parked in the driveway of the property, was broken into while he was recovering in hospital and had tools stolen




It's only in Manhattan, and cops can still arrest 'for public safety reasons'

Police in Manhattan will no longer arrest people for drinking alcohol or urinating on the city's streets, it was announced today  but don't get too excited: they will still hand out summonses for these and other low-level offenses.

Those summonses will demand offenders pay a fine, but they will not get a criminal record or be processed by the system, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr's office announced.

But the police still have the option to arrest offenders if it's 'necessary for public safety reasons,' and the rule is restricted to Manhattan, as it originated with Vance.

New rule: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr introduced the new rule, which sees cops doling out fines, not arrests, for small offenses, in the hopes of lowering the numbers of arrests by 10,000 per year

Summons: Officers can now only give out summonses to pay fines to people caught committing minor offenses like drinking or urinating in public, unless an arrest is 'necessary for public safety reasons'

The summons rule is not just restricted to open-container and public urination offenses  it will cover many small-time offenses including littering, riding between subway cars and occupying more than one subway seat.

The move was described in a statement by Mayor Bill de Blasio as a way to help police concentrate on more serious issues. 'Todays reforms allow our hardworking police officers to concentrate their efforts on the narrow group of individuals driving violent crime in New York City,' he said.

His thoughts were echoed by Vance, who said in a statement, 'By giving cops the discretion to issue summonses instead of requiring them to make arrests, we ensure they do not spend hours processing cases as minor as littering, and we enable officers to get back to patrolling, investigating, and keeping our neighborhoods safe.'

It is estimated that it will result in 10,000 fewer arrests each year.

The new rules also mean that anyone with an outstanding warrant who is picked up on a minor offense will not receive two arrests to their name  they will only be arrested for the warrant and still be given a summons for the minor offense.

And someone who hasn't paid off a previous summons and is pulled up for a new offense will be 'detained' and brought before a judge to pay up, but they will not be arrested and put through the system.

Subway rules: Other minor offenses include riding between the cars in subways, occupying more than one subway seat (pictured) and littering. This rule only applies in Manhattan, however

However, Police Reform Organizing Project Director Robert Gangi told The Gothamist he was concerned about complications arising from the new law. 'If in Manhattan that practice stops, that is a good thing, and that is a positive step toward curtailing one of the current abusive NYPD practices,' he said.

'Now, highly problematic is that apparently this change  relatively modest change  will only take place in Manhattan... this will result in a significant discrepancy in practice, where if you're caught for a second time being in the park after dark in Brooklyn, the police can arrest you.'

Observer noted that the move followed calls by Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito to use summonses for low-level crimes citywide, as well as to wipe out 700,000 old warrants that she says are clogging up the criminal justice system.
A bite-sized restaurant has opened in Manhattan, promising fierce competition among New Yorkers looking to secure one of its nine seats.

Mr Donahue's, located in Nolita's Mott Street, only has five bar stools and one table for four people, Fox5 reported.

It opened last month after married restaurateurs Matt Danzer and Ann Redding decided to give American classics a go.

Their Thai rotisserie, Uncle Boons, also located in Nolita, earned a Michelin star in September last year.

Mr Donahue's (pictured), a new restaurant in Nolita, Manhattan, only has one table for four people and five bar stools. Married restaurateurs Matt Danzer and Ann Redding opened it last month

Danzer and Redding named Mr Donahue's (pictured) after Danzer's grandfather, a veteran who also worked as an NYPD officer and as a cab driver. Danzer described him as an 'old-school American, New York guy'

Now, Danzer and Redding are offering their own version of a 'meat and three' restaurant, a dining format popular in the south of the US. It usually lets customers pick between several meat options, with three assorted sides.

Mr Donahue's menu takes a slightly different approach, with four meat and one fish options, each served with one side.

It includes American classics such as rotisserie chicken, roast beef and Swedish American meatballs, Danzer told Fox5.

He and Redding named the diner after Danzer's grandfather, a veteran who also worked as an NYPD officer and as a cab driver.

Danzer described his grandfather as an 'old-school American, New York guy' who had a Purple Heart.

'Kind of a meat and potatoes guy - Irish-Italian,' Danzer told Fox5.

He and Redding hope to double Mr Donahue's capacity over the spring and summer by adding outdoor seating.

Mr Donahue's (pictured) is inspired by 'meat and three' restaurants, a dining format popular in the south of the US. It lets customers pick between several meat options, traditionally with three assorted sides
Did you know Mr Jefferies? Email news@mailonline.co.uk or call 0203 615 1866

Police believe they knew each other, but neighbours said he had no friends

Boy, 17, arrested on suspicion of murder and appeared in court yesterday

Believed to be former HMRC employee who worked advising the Treasury

Paul Jefferies, 52, was found dead in his East Sussex cottage on Thursday

A 17-year-old boy has appeared in court for the murder of a gay 'loner' and a senior advisor to Chancellor George Osborne who was found dead in his home this week.

Police believe that Paul Jefferies, 52, knew the 17-year-old from nearby Crowborough, who appeared at Brighton Magistrates Court charged with murder yesterday.

Neighbours said Mr Jefferies used to live in London and had barely set foot outside his door since moving to the house in Mayfield, East Sussex, where he was found dead on Thursday.

A 17-year-old boy has appeared in court for the murder of a gay loner who was a senior advisor to Chancellor George Osborne found dead in his home (pictured) this week

Police believe that Paul Jefferies, 52, knew the 17-year-old from nearby Crowborough, who appeared at Brighton Magistrates Court charged with murder yesterday

Neighbours said Mr Jefferies used to live in London and had barely set foot outside the door of his home (pictured) since moving to the house in Mayfield, East Sussex, where he was found dead on Thursday

He had worked at HMRC for 20 years, and had helped shape Government policy, working with the Treasury, reports The Sun.

Neighbours said that he had been obsessed with his own privacy, never had any visitors, and was never seen in the village.

His father said that he had left home in Newport, Gwent. when he was 21, claiming he was going away for the weekend but then never returning.

He has not spoken to his family since, his father John, 77, told MailOnline: 'It's really tragic but I hadn't seen him in so long.

'He left home in the 1980s and we had no idea where he went or what he was doing.

'He never got in touch. I had no clue he was living in that village in Sussex.'

Paul was estranged from his parents after leaving home in Newport, Gwent, at the age of 21 and never returned. He failed to attend his mother's funeral in 1999.

His retired father said: 'It is very difficult to take in that he's been murdered. We found him on the internet after his mother died but we didn't get in touch.

Detectives launched a murder investigation after being called to the site in Coggins Mill Lane at 6.15pm on February 25 'after a call from an employer expressing concern for the welfare of a member of their staff who lived there' and had not arrived at work.

A spokesman said: 'They found a man, the 52-year-old sole occupant, dead at the house. A post-mortem revealed the man had died from multiple injuries.'

Officers were earlier seen standing guard outside the detached red-brick home as forensics teams passed the police cordon to gather evidence inside the property

A file is being prepared for the local coroner and an inquest is due to be opened and adjourned

Detective Chief Inspector Tanya Jones, from the Surrey and Sussex major crime team, added: 'This has been a fast moving investigation and we are still making enquiries'

Detective Chief Inspector Tanya Jones, from the Surrey and Sussex major crime team, added: 'This has been a fast moving investigation and we are still making enquiries.'

'We have arrested a suspect on suspicion of murder who is being questioned.

'We want to do all we can to reassure the local community and there are officers in the Coggins Mill Lane area to speak to residents about their concerns.'

DID YOU KNOW PAUL JEFFERIES Email news@mailonline.co.uk or call Martin Robinson on 0203 615 1866 Advertisement

The youth was taken into custody on Sunday night and a 17-year-old girl from Eastbourne was also being held on suspicion of assisting an offender.

Officers were seen standing guard outside the detached red-brick home as forensics teams passed the police cordon to gather evidence inside the property.

A black forensic tent was set up at one end of the cottage, which has a tiled roof and two chimneys, and suited forensic officers hunted for clues.

A file is being prepared for the local coroner and an inquest is due to be opened and adjourned.
Girl from Fairfax, Virginia is charged with threatening Sidney Lanier Middle School and computer

A 12-year-old girl from Fairfax, Virginia has been charged with a felony after she wrote: 'Watch out, I'm coming' in an Instagram message, followed by a gun, bomb, and knife emoji.

A law enforcement officer at Sidney Lanier Middle School began an investigation, and issued an emergency request trying to determine who was behind the social media account.

The girl, who also wrote 'killing' and 'meet me in the library Tuesday' in the social media post made in December, is due to appear in juvenile court at the end of the month.

A 12-year-old girl is charged with threatening her school after she posted the gun, knife, and bomb emojis to a fake Instagram account

The young girl, who admitted to making the posts, is charged with threatening the school and computer harassment.

Police issued a search warrant, taking her cell phone and gaining log-in details to her social media accounts.

They found out that the girl had created a fake account under another person's name, and posted a 'hate list' with other students' names on it. It also said an attack was planned on December 15.

According to a search warrant, the girl 'threatened death or bodily injury to other students'.

A statement released by the school district said: 'Fairfax City Police identified and interviewed the individual who posted the threat and determined the threat is not credible.

'Unfortunately, these kinds of anonymous threats can be concerning and disruptive even when they are not credible.'

Principal Erin Lenart said the investigation found that the girl was trying to get another student in trouble, and the 12-year-old's mother explained that her daughter was being bullied at school.

She told NBC: 'It wasn't just one boy, it was a group of boys bothering her. As a mom, I don't know what to tell you. She wasn't thinking like an adult.'

The mother thought the social media posts didn't warrant criminal charges, adding: 'She's a good kid. She's never been in trouble before.'

A statement released by the school district said: 'Unfortunately, these kinds of anonymous threats can be concerning and disruptive even when they are not credible. Pictured, Sidney Lanier Middle School

Emojis have become an increasingly prevalent method of communication, and legal issues have arisen trying to decipher what the symbols represent.

In 2015, Osiris Artisy, 17, of New York City, was arrested after posting an emoji of a policeman, followed by three gun symbols.

A grand jury decided not to indict him on terror charges, and his attorney Fred Pratt said the teenager 'expressed a dislike of the police' but didn't actually count as a threat.
Social media users began cruelly taunting one of the girls about her weight

Video has been viewed 23,000 times after being posted on social media

Girls, believed to be 14-years-old, are seen violently hitting each

A sickening video of at least three teenage girls in a vicious school yard fight has been posted online, resulting in a 14-year-old girl featured in the clip being 'fat shamed' by social media users.

The clip, which was posted to Facebook on Tuesday, shows two students from Cranbourne Secondary College, in Melbourne's south east, in a brutal scuffle as the majority of their peers stand around, encourage the violence or attempt to capture the fight on film.

The fight starts when two students - a blonde and a brunette - start wildly throwing punches but the scrap escalated soon after when another girl, believed to be 14-years-old, pulled the brunette out and started laying into the blonde teen.

Scroll down for video

A sickening video of at least three teenage girls in a vicious school yard fight has been posted online

After several punches and kicks are thrown, two girls step in and attempt to pull the brawling students off each other as the girl removed from the original fight appears to be involved in a secondary scuffle with a number of other pupils.

The fight continues with male students laughing from the sidelines, making comments about the 'fat a**' of a girl involved.

Two shadows of students holding mobile phones are cast over the fight as they move closer to get a better angle of the altercation - doing nothing to end the violent clash.

Another boy can be seen darting into the affray - attempting to capture footage of the secondary brawl, like many others had from a distance.

The fight starts when two students - a blonde and a brunette - start wildly throwing punches

The scrap escalated soon after when another girl, believed to be 14-years-old, pulled the brunette out and started laying into the blonde teen

The young girls, believed to be 14-years-old, fall to the ground during the tousle

They continued to punch and grab at each other as their peers stood around and watched

Two girls eventually step in and attempt to pull the brawling students off each other

While the girl removed from the original blue appears to be involved in a secondary scuffle with a number of other pupils

A boy can be seen darting into the affray - attempting to capture footage of the secondary brawl, like many others had from a distance

While some of the more level-headed witnesses try to separate the aggressors- other students egg them on yelling 'Go [name withheld]'.

A male student appeared pleased by the unfolding violence and can be heard shrieking with delight in the closing minutes of the clip, shortly after the fight had broken up.

The clip was posted to Facebook on Tuesday night and has now been viewed almost 24,000 times.

Hundreds of people started commenting and while some condemned the violence others chose instead to 'fat shame' one of the teens involved.

'Hear the fat chick come running in!!! I thought bombs were hitting the school!! Then u see her fat a** run past,' one man wrote.

For a minute I thought a horde[sic] of rhinos was[sic] running towards the school ended up being an overweight chick, wrote another.

The clip was posted to Facebook on Tuesday night and has now been viewed almost 24,000 times

Hundreds of people started commenting and while some condemned the violence others chose instead to 'fat shame' one of the teens involved

One man suggested sticking his foot out to trip the 'fat b***h' over, while other male students who say they featured in the clip appear to take pride in their involvement proclaiming it had put them 'on the map' and that they would put the 'proud moment' on their resume.

Principal Ken Robinson said the behaviour observed in the footage is 'totally unacceptable' and that the students involved had been disciplined.

'I cannot overstate to you that the safety of students and staff at our school is our number one priority,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'We do not tolerate violence of any sort in our school and I can assure you that appropriate disciplinary action is being taken against the students who were involved in this incident.'

He said first aid was provided where necessary and counselling was offered to help with any emotional pain felt by the students involved.
A man has been found dead inside the home of disgraced union boss Kathy Jackson.

The man, aged 40, was found inside the house in Womborra, south of Sydney, on Wednesday morning.

A NSW Police spokesman said they attended the home about 11.30am where a '40-year-old man was found deceased.

A man, aged 40, has been found dead inside the home of disgraced union boss Kathy Jackson (pictured)

The home where the man was discovered belongs to former Health Services Union (HSU) Kathy Jackson, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Police told Daily Mail Australia the man - a friend of the family - is believed to have suffered a medical episode and his death is not being treated as suspicious.

It is however the same house that was raised in October last year when Ms Jackson was under investigation by Victorian Police and the Australian Federal Police in the operation Task Force Hercules, which is investigating union corruption.

In August, the Federal Court ordered Ms Jackson to pay back to the HSU $1.4 million for misappropriating funds she spent on shopping, groceries, travel, artworks and dining, and even her divorce.

HSU whistleblower Ms Jackson is pictured here arriving at the Royal Commission into Union Corruption with supporter Michael Smith in June 2014

In August 2015, Ms Jackson (above) was ordered to pay back $1.4 million in unions funds she spent on shopping, groceries, travel, artworks and dining, and even her divorce

Police commenting on the raid at Ms Jackon's Wombarra home said no arrests had been made.

In 2011, Ms Jackson made a formal complaint to the NSW Police naming former HSU national secretary Craig Thompson and national president Michael Williamson as key players in the corruption controversy.

In August, it was revealed that the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott had in 2014 praised the disgraced union official for this action.

Referring to Ms Jackson's airing of the Craig Thompson affair, Mr Abbott had described Ms Jackson as 'a brave decent woman and she is speaking up on behalf of 70 thousand members'.
Salihin Kondoker, who nearly lost his wife Anies in the San Bernardino attack, wrote a letter in support of Apple

A man who nearly lost his wife in the San Bernardino shooting has penned a letter expressing his support for Apple as the company refuses cooperate with the FBI's demands to unlock the terrorist's iPhone.

Salihin Kondoker wrote a letter to Judge Sheri Pym, weighing in on the debate between privacy and national security after his wife Anies survived three gunshot wounds in the December terror attack.

In a letter obtained by Buzzfeed, Kondoker said he was initially frustrated by Apple's stance.

But he eventually came around, writing: 'I believe privacy is important and Apple should stay firm in their decision'.

The IT consultant said he shared Apple's fear that the government would use the security breach to set a dangerous precedent.

He wrote: 'I support Apple and the decision they have made. I don't believe Tim Cook or any Apple employee believes in supporting terrorism any more than I do.

'In my opinion it is unlikely there is any valuable information on this phone.'

Syed Rizwan Farook, who killed 14 people and injured 22 more with his wife Tashfeen Malik in December, worked for the health department.

The iPhone investigators are trying to access was issued to Farook as a work phone.

Kondoker said his wife, who was also a government employee, did not use her work phone for personal purposes.

He argued it was 'common knowledge' that San Bernardino could track the phone and gain access to the iCloud and carrier accounts.

He said: 'Why then would someone store vital contacts related to an attack on a phone they knew the county had access to? They destroyed their personal phones after the attack. And I believe they did that for a reason.'

FBI director James Comey (left) issued an emotional letter calling for a thorough investigation after Tim Cook (right) refused to follow orders to write a software to hack the phone's pass code

Syed Rizwan Farook (right) killed 14 people and injured 22 more with his wife Tashfeen Malik (left) in December

Instead of blaming 'one of America's greatest companies', Kondoker called for stricter gun laws.

He said: 'In the wake of this terrible attack, I believe strongly we need stronger gun laws. It was guns that killed innocent people, not technology.'

The ongoing standoff has divided the family members of victims, with many others swinging their support behind the FBI.

Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles ordered Apple to provide 'reasonable technical assistance' to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook.

That assistance includes disabling the phone's auto-erase function, which activates after 10 consecutive unsuccessful passcode attempts, and helping investigators to submit passcode guesses electronically.

However, Apple says this is akin to 'a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks - from restaurants and banks to stores and homes.'

The stand off between Apple and the FBI have sparked a nationwide debate between privacy and national security. Pictured above, protestors in support of Tim Cook's stance

Tim Cook issued a letter to its customers arguing in favor of privacy, only for the FBI director James Comey to offer an emotive rebuttal, writing: 'We can't look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don't follow this lead.'

Apple chief Tim Cook told ABC News on Tuesday the FBI is asking him to develop 'the software equivalent of cancer' in order to hack an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters.

He said: 'The only way to get information (...) would be to write a piece of software that we view as sort of the equivalent of cancer.

'We think it's bad news to write. We would never write it. We have never written it - and that is what is at stake here. We believe that is a very dangerous operating system.'

Both sides brought their cases to a House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
classified information on a private email server while she was Secretary of State

James Comey, FBI Director, (pictured) was being questions in regards to Apple's encryption policy when Hillary Clinton's email investigation came up

James Comey, FBI Director, discussed Hillary Clinton's email investigation during a congressional hearing regarding Apple's encryption policy.

Comey said he is 'closely involved' in the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of State.

The FBI Director was being questioned by the House Judiciary Committee when representative Steve Chabot began asking Comey on the progress into the email investigation.

'A few weeks back, the FBIs general counsel James Baker acknowledged the the FBI is, quote, working on matters related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons use of a private email server, end quote,' Chabot said to Comey during the hearing.

Chabot quoted White House press secretary Josh Earnest, saying Clinton is 'not a target of this investigation and that it's not trending in that direction', according to The Hill.

He also noted President Obama's comments about there not being any 'national security implications', in his opinion, in Clinton's emails.

'This is a matter of considerable import,' Chabot said.

Clinton is being investigated for possibly mishandling classified information on a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

'Is there anything that you can tell us as to when this matter might be wrapped up one way or the other?'

Comey said he couldn't talk about the Clinton case during the hearing about Apple.

'I can't, congressman, as you know we don't talk about our investigations.

'What I can assure you is that I am very close personally to that investigation to ensure that we have the resources we need, including people and technology, and that it's done the way the FBI tries to do all of it's work: independently, competently and promptly.

'That's our goal, and I'm confident that it's being done that way, but I can't give you any more details beyond that.'

The FBI is investigating if Clinton mishandled classified information on a private email server while she was Secretary of State.
Police in south Philippines believe he had heart attack 7 days before death

A German sailor whose mummified body was found on his drifting yacht off the southern Philippines died from a heart attack just one week before his body was discovered, an autopsy has revealed.

Veteran seaman Manfred Fritz Bajorat was found dead on his 40-foot long vessel by two fishermen last Friday, with his mummified body pictured hunched over a table in the yacht's main cabin.

It was not known at the time how he died, but police confirmed today that an autopsy had revealed he suffered a heart attack about seven days prior to his body being discovered.

Scroll down for video

Manfred Fritz Bajorat, 59, who was found dead (pictured) on his yacht off the coast of the southern Philippines last Friday, died from a heart attack just one week before he was found, an autopsy report revealed today

German native Manfred Fritz Bajorat (left) left his native Germany two decades ago and spent the last 20 years of his life sailing around the world having lost his long-time wife Claudia (right) to cancer several years ago

'The cause of death is acute myocardial infarction based on the autopsy by (the) regional crime laboratory,' national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Wilben Mayor said.

'The German national is estimated to have been dead for more or less seven days,' he added, citing a statement by police in the southern Philippines.

Police had earlier confirmed Mr Bajorat's identity based on documents found aboard the yacht but said they had no idea where he was heading or had sailed from.

He left his native Germany two decades ago and spent the last 20 years of his life sailing around the world having lost his long-time wife Claudia several years ago.

Police in the town of Barobo, on the east coast of Mindanao island, where his body was taken, said the German embassy was currently in the process of arranging for a relative to fly to the Philippines.

'It appears he has a daughter based in Germany and the embassy is to fly her here to identify the dead body,' Chief Inspector Dominador Plaza, the Barobo police chief, said.

Police earlier launched an inquiry to determine whether Mr Bajorat had been the victim of a crime, but the autopsy result now indicates otherwise.

The area where his white-hulled 44-foot yacht boat was found is some 100 kilometres (60 miles) off Barobo. The vessel was discovered by fishermen who found it with a broken mast adrift on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean on Friday.

Veteran seaman Manfred Fritz Bajorat was found dead on his 40-foot long vessel by two fishermen last Friday after the yacht (above) was seen drifting off the coast of Barobo on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao

The vessel was found with tins and rubbish strewn around, with the main cabin having taken on sea water

Germany's Bild daily newspaper published pictures of Mr Bajorat's mummified corpse hunched over a table in the main cabin, and cited forensics experts who explained that a combination of tropical heat, dry wind and salty sea air can quickly preserve or mummify a corpse.

German-language documents, old pictures of a family visiting Paris landmarks, rice and tinned food also lay scattered in the cabin of the boat, which had taken in water and was listing, police said.

One document photographed by police indicated the boat had obtained clearance from maritime police in Sao Vicente in 2013, although it was unclear if it was issued in Cape Verde or Brazil, as both have ports of the same name.

Bild quoted an old friend as saying Mr Bajorat 'emigrated 20 years ago, first to the Netherlands, then he wanted to travel around the world with his wife'.

'I haven't seen him since then,' said the friend, who added that he had stayed in contact with Mr Bajorat via Facebook once or twice a year.

The mystery as to where he had been and where he was going remains as baffling as the moment Mr Bajorat was discovered. This picture is one of a number of haunting photographs found in albums aboard his yacht

This is one of the many water-damaged photographs found aboard Mr Bajorat's stricken yacht last Friday

'The last time was a year ago. At the time he said he wanted to go on (another) around-the-world trip,' said the friend.

The sailor's wife of some 30 years, Claudia, died from cancer aged 53 on May 2 2010, most likely on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

Paying tribute to his wife at the time, Mr Bajorat wrote online: 'Thirty years we're been together on the same path. Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. You're gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred.'

He went on to sail the Atlantic, the Pacific, around the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Agean.

People stand on the yacht believed to be owned by German Manfred Fritz Bajorat after his body was found
The son of America's most famous televangelist is calling for a boycott on Girl Scout cookies.

Reverend Franklin Graham, whose father is Billy Graham, says that people should show how upset they are with the group's leadership supporting gay and transgender rights by refusing to buy the treats sold annually by the young girls in the organization.

He made this statement on Facebook while supporting St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson, who called on all priests to severe ties with the Girl Scouts because their values are 'incompatible' with Catholic teachings.

Shortly after Archibishop Carlson made this declaration, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri raised a record amount of money at its annual fundraiser.

Scroll down for video

Angry man: Reverend Franklin Graham, the son of televangelist Billy Graham, has called for a boycott of Girl Scout cookies (Billy and Franklin Graham above)

Really angry: He said in a Facebook post he is upset that the group's leadership supports gay and transgender rights

St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson isnt worried about being politically correct in letting people know about it either,' wrote Reverand Graham in his Facebook post.

'He told church members and scout leaders that the Girl Scouts is wrong in their support of transgender rights and homosexuality and is not aligned with the teachings of his church.

'The archdiocese also revealed that a Girl Scout troop in Utah was formed specifically to reach out to transgendered youth and that the Girl Scouts celebrated the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage on its Instagram and Twitter accounts.

'Archbishop Carlson is exactly right - the ways of the world are incompatible with biblical values. More church leaders need his boldness in speaking the truths that set those who follow Gods Word apart from the rest of the world.

'I dont know about you, but I wont be buying any Girl Scout cookies this year.'

The Girl Scouts have been far more supportive and inclusive of both gay and transgender rights than their male counterparts, the Boy Scouts.

Earlier this year, a transgender 9-year-old Girl Scout named Stormi was out selling cookies when a man a few blacks over told her; 'Nobody wants to buy cookies from a boy in a dress.'

Her mother decided to set up an online portal for her daughter to sell cookies and shared her story. The young girls has now sold close to 10,000 boxes and received countless letters of support.

Angry holy man: He made this statement while supporting St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson (above), who called on all priests to severe ties with the Girl Scouts

Also showing some support for the Girl Scouts this week were Chris Rock and Samantha Bee.

Rock used his gig as Oscar host to sell $65,000 worth of the cookies during the ceremony, while Bee did a segment on Archbishop Carlson during her show Full Frontal With Samantha Bee on Monday.

In that segment Bee revealed that in just 2014 when the Archbishop was being questioned in a child molestation case about one of his priests and asked if he knew it was a crime for an adult and child to have sex, he responded by saying; 'Im not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not.'

She then cut to hundreds of boxes of Girl Scout cookies she had purchased, saying; 'If you think were going to let you financially hurt the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri, you have underestimated our love of girl power. And our love of cookies.'
Mystery still surrounds the death of a 10-year-old girl who died after she was found face down in a backyard swimming pool as her family insist she was a strong swimmer.

Sophie Bombski was rushed to hospital after she was pulled from the pool at Caloundra on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Sunday and then transferred to Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital.

She passed away due to the extent of her injuries on Tuesday about 12pm, a hospital spokesman told Daily Mail Australia.

Scroll down for video

10-year-old Sophie Bombski (pictured) has become the second Queensland drowning victim in less than a week after she was found face down in a backyard swimming pool

Her mother Karina Bombski (left) wrote on Facebook she believed Sophie (bottom right) hit her head and suffered a brain injury

Sophie Bombski was rushed to hospital after she was pulled from the pool at a house in Caloundra (pictured) on Queensland's Sunshine Coast on Sunday

A report into her death will be prepared by the coroner.

Daily Mail Australia understands Sophie was a strong swimmer and a medical condition may have contributed to her death.

She was in the pool with her sister while her mother, Karina, was at the supermarket and her father, Andre, was doing housework before he was planning to join them for a swim.

Ms Bombski wrote on Facebook she had called the house and Hannah had got out of the pool to answer, and during this time she believed Sophie hit her head and suffered a brain injury.

The grieving mother took to Facebook and paid tribute to her 'beautiful Sophie' who had 'flown to heaven'.

'Words cannot explain how gutted we are feeling,' Ms Bombski said.

'We are grateful for everyone's kind words and prayers for our Sophie.

'We know Sophie will be looking over us and will be looked after in heaven by angels.'

The 10-year-old girl was the second person in Queensland to die in a pool-related incident.

On Monday, a three-year-old girl was pulled unconscious from a public pool in Logan, south of Brisbane.

Witnesses took to social media to pay respect to the three-year-old girl and offer their condolences to the family.

Sophie is the second victim of drowning in Queensland this week, after a three-year-old girl was pulled unconscious from a public pool in Logan (pictured)

Melissa Stephens, who witnessed the tragedy, said she would never forget the father's distressed attempts to save his daughters life, The Courier Mail reported.

'Her poor dad [was] just crying saying: "Come on baby, come on",' she said.

'We are struggling so much, and we were just bystanders. I really can't imagine the pain of her family. It's devastating.'

Ms Stephens said she had spoken to the little girl only moments before the tragedy, while there with her own family.

'I was there with my family too and saw it all unfold  anyone who was there doesn't blame the family one bit,' she said.

A father's desperate battle to save his three-year-old daughter was witnessed by family and horrified bystanders (pictured) as he pulled her unconscious from the water at a busy public pool in Queensland

Sophie fought for her life in hospital after being rushed to hospital (pictured) but tragically died later surrounded by family

Logan City Council said in a statement a detailed investigation is being undertaken to review all systems and procedures surrounding the circumstances of this tragedy.

'At the time of this incident, Logan City Council had two lifeguards on the pool deck, which is twice as many lifeguards as what is recommended by the Royal Lifesaving Guidelines' standard.'

'Logan City Council is providing support to all staff involved,' the statement read.

The Queensland Police Service is preparing a report for the coroner.

In a third incident two boys, aged three and four, came close to drowning at a private pool in the Brisbane suburb of Rochedale.

CPR was performed on the children, who were in a serious condition when they were rushed to Brisbane's Lady Cilento Children's Hospital.
Diego Dzodan (pictured), Facebook's vice president for Latin America, was arrested after the company's app, WhatsApp, was unable to release information the government wanted

Facebooks most senior executive in Latin America has been arrested after the authorities asked for users' private information from an app the company owns.

Police in Sao Paulo arrested Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice president for Latin America, a news release on Tuesday said.

Dzodan was arrested on an order from a judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe, Brazil.

The executive was sent to the Provisional Detention Centre in Sao Paulo, Brazil

The executive is accused of ignoring a judicial order in an investigation involving organized crime and drug trafficking.

However, the problem is not with Facebook, but rather with WhatsApp, a messaging app that Facebook bought in 2014.

Approximately half of the 200 million people in Brazil use WhatsApp.

The decision to arrest comes after Dzodan refused to surrender infromation from WhatsApp, causing Judge Marcel Montalvao to call for the arrest.

Facebook said in a written statement released Tuesday that the two companies operate independently 'so the decision to arrest an employee from another company is an extreme and unwarranted step'.

WhatsApp said in its own statement that it had 'cooperated as much as we could given the architecture of our service'.

The executive was sent to and is being detained in the Provisional Detention Centre (pictured) in Sao Paulo

Dzodan has nothing to do with WhatsApp, as it is an entirely separate company, and Facebook said it is 'extreme and unwarranted' to arrest someone from a completely different company

It said the company was 'unable to provide information we do not have'.

A separate judicial order forced Brazils telecommunications companies in December to block WhatsApp over its refusal to cooperate with a police inquiry.

The move snarled communications for many of its 100 million users in Brazil for around 12 hours.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the time said he was 'stunned' by the 'extreme decision'.
A woman says she has been 'entombed' and feels like she's living in 'a concrete coffin', because a huge apartment block has been built just centimetres from her balcony.

The Western Australian reports that Hellen Barnaby's plight is the latest example in what has been a series of planning fights that has taken place in Mill Point Peninsula in south Perth.

Ms Barnaby's apartment balcony once had a great view of the Perth CBD, but now all she can see his a massive wall built just inches away from her property.

Scroll down for video

Perth woman Hellen Barnaby said she has been 'entombed' in her own home because of a new apartment development

The huge apartment block has been built just centimetres from Ms Barnaby's balcony (pictured)

She now finds herself virtually bricked into her own home as the property being built next door is erected right on the boundary of her home  with barely centimetres between the two.

'I don't own the view and I don't expect to own the view but I am being entombed,' she said.

'I feel like I am in a concrete coffin. We had no idea it was going to be built this close. It's heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking.'

Ms Barnaby and her husband, who have lived in their home for 26 years, had no idea that the property next door was being built so close and on such a scale until it was too late.

In 2012 the couple hand-delivered a letter of protest against the new development to the South Perth council, but the letter was apparently lost, and now it is too late for them to have their say.

Nine high-rise towers are planned in the city, many of them more than 20 stories high and has caused many residents to protest over the past year, but to no avail.

Ms Barnaby and her husband have lived in their south Perth home (pictured) for 26 years
Savage grew up Roman Catholic has often been critical of the church

ABC's upcoming sitcom The Real O'Neals hasn't aired yet, but it's already ruffling feathers at The Catholic League, which took out an advert in The New York Times on Monday criticizing ABC and its parent company, Disney, for hiring 'vulgar bigot' Dan Savage as its executive producer.

Savage, a columnist and satirist, also executive produces the show, which follows a Roman Catholic family that stops trying to be perfect and 'gets real' when the parents start considering divorce and one of its sons comes out as gay. Savage, who is gay, grew up Roman Catholic.

It was his role in the production which the League seemed particularly displeased with, due to his negative remarks about the Catholic church over the years, many of which centered around the child abuse scandals that have plagued the church.

Scroll down for video

For real: The cast of The Real O'Neals, ABC's new sitcom about a Catholic family. Columnist Dan Savage's role as exec producer sparked the ire of The Catholic League, as he has been critical of the Catholic church

'Vulgar': The League compared Savage with ex-KKK 'Grand Wizard' David Duke, calling him 'vulgar'. Savage is famous for his no-holds-barred criticisms of the church and anti-LGBT-rights figures

'For those not acquainted with [Savage] his maniacal hatred of Catholicism is so strong that it would be as though David Duke were hired to produce a shot about African-Americans,' it reads, referring to the ex-'Grand Wizard' of the Ku Klux Klan.

The advert, written by League president Bill Donohue, continues: 'That comparison is an understatement: Duke may be a bigot, but he is not known for his foul comments. By contrast, Savage [is] vulgar.'

As a testament to Savage's alleged vulgarity, the published ad says a previous version that featured quotes from several of Savage's articles was not accepted by The New York Times because it was deemed 'too incendiary for readers' even with offending words asterisked out.

That version included remarks about various popes, Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. Most in some way reference the child abuse scandals.

However, the League's core complaint is that although the first episode of The Real O'Neils had yet to air, it felt that ABC had been more careful with its previous sitcoms Modern Family (which featured two gay parents), Black-ish (which portrays a wealthy black family) and Fresh Off the Boat, which is about a Taiwanese-American family.

'When it comes to Catholics,' it says, 'ABC delivers Dan Savage.'

Out there: Noah Galvin plays a gay Catholic who comes out to his family in the show. Savage is credited with the idea, but producers say the show 'changed during development' due to pressure from Catholic groups

Savage's actual role in the finished sitcom is not clear. Last month Deadline described the show as being based on his 'idea' about a Catholic family with a gay son, but said that the show 'changed during development' due to pressure from Catholic groups, becoming more like the channel's other 'wacky family' sitcoms.

Savage was also notably absent from a promotional question-and-answer session for the show, and another executive producer, Todd Holland, said, '[The O'Neals are] my family except my father wasnt as caring as Pat [ONeal, the patriarch].'

Holland, the article notes, is also gay, and has a husband and triplets.

IMDB lists the creators of the show as David Windsor and Casey Johnson, whose previous credits both include ABC's edgier sitcom Don't Trust the B---- In Apartment 23.

The Real O'Neals premiere airs on ABC, Tuesday at 8.30pm.
The truck driver was behind the car at a safe distance before being stopped

In an 'unprovoked' attack a motorist allegedly assaulted a truck driver after he cracked the windscreen, kicked the door and spat in the driver's face.

The violent road rage incident took place in Caboolture, north of Brisbane, against an employee from Clayton's Towing, reported the Courier Mail.

The driver is believed to have been driving behind the vehicle at a safe distance before being stopped by the motorist and harassed.

Scroll down for video

A truck driver was allegedly violently harassed during an road rage attack in Brisbane's north

The footage which was captured on the truck driver's dashboard camera was forwarded to police

It was not posted online to protect the driver's identity and for safety reasons

The footage which was captured on the truck driver's dashboard camera was forwarded to police but not posted online to protect the driver's identity and for safety reasons.

'This man went into a severe rage episode, turning his vehicle towards our truck, cracking the windscreen, kicking the door in and assaulting our staff member through the driver window,' said Clayton's Towing on their Facebook page.

The local business called on anyone with information to contact them in order to help police with their investigation.

'We want to do all that we can to make sure that this guy is found. We would hate to see this happen again with a worse result to someone else'.

The footage was captured on the truck driver's dashboard camera

The truck driver's employer's posted stills from the footage on their Facebook page in hopes of finding the man

Since posting the images online the public is believed to have helped the employers identify the person and the information was passed on to the authorities.

'We have been inundated with messages and phone calls informing us of who the man is in the photos posted one hour ago.

'We have now informed police who the person is. It is so great to see that so many people in our community do care, and want to work together to stop rage incidents like this happening again,' read Clayton's Towing facebook post.

Although they are yet to confirm the culprit has been found, a spokesperson from Queensland police told Daily Mail Australia the incident is still being investigated.

In the 'unprovoked' attack the motorist allegedly cracked the truck's windscreen and kicked the door

The man cracked the windscreen, kicked the door in and assaulted the driver through the window
Ted Cruz held a Super Tuesday victory party at a club that has hosted a blackface 'comedian' and has a full-size replica of the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee car.

Cruz, who won in Texas last night, used the Redneck Country Club in Stafford as his campaign headquarters, converting the bar into a victory party.

The bar was founded by controversial radio host Michael Berry, who once compared black teenagers to 'jungle animals' and has reportedly been friends with Cruz for two decades.

Ted Cruz held a Super Tuesday victory party in Texas at the Redneck Country Club, which is owned by Michael berry who once compared black teenagers to 'jungle animals'

The Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Texas, has hosted a blackface 'comedian' called Shirley Q. Liquor

Berry has come under fire in the past for derogatory comments about black people.

He has mocked black victims of gun violence in Chicago and once said 'the dirty little secret is black people don't believe that black lives matter'.

A regular so-called comedian at the Redneck Country Club is Shirley Q. Liquor, who portrays stereotypes of black women while sporting a blackface.

The club has a full-size replica of the Dukes of Hazzard's General Lee, including its Confederate flag emblazoned across the roof, Media Matters reported.

Berry has previously said the flag represents the 'heritage of the state'.

He has also claimed that most white people 'would like to get as far from black people as they possibly could and never have to see another black person'.

Shirley Q. Liquor portrays stereotypes of black women while sporting a blackface at the bar that hosted Cruz's campaign headquarters on Tuesday

Cruz held his party at the venue last night as he won the Republican primary in the Lone Star state - but some guests (bottom left) did not look so amused

Cruz, who is a senator in Texas, took 43.4 per cent of the vote, leaving Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in his wake

Cruz held his party at the venue last night as he won the Republican primary in the Lone Star state.

Cruz, who is a senator in Texas, took 43.4 per cent of the vote, leaving Donald Trump and Marco Rubio in his wake.

He also won in Oklahoma, but Trump took seven other states and Rubio won in Minnesota on Super Tuesday.

Cruz is emerging as the second-placed man in the race for the Republican nomination and said he is the only man who can beat Trump.

'Tonight was another decision point and the voters have spoken,' Cruz said. 'Tomorrow morning we have a choice.'

Cruz said that as long as the field was still 'divided'  with Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson still hanging on  'Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation'.
In a packed recital hall at his ornate south Florida oceanfront estate Mar-a-Lago, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump basked in the glow of his Super Tuesday victories and pledged that he would bring the GOP together while preparing to do battle with Hillary Clinton in the fall.

'I'm a unifier,' he told more than 100 journalists, dozens of high-society rubberneckers and a global television audience during a press conference that required most of the day to engineer.

'I know people are going to find that a little hard to believe.'

'I think we're going to be more inclusive, I think we're going to be more unified, and I think we're going to win in November,' Trump said while camera shutters clicked and reporters competed for the chance to ask questions.

Scroll down for video

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, basking in the glow of his Super Tuesday victories, pledged that he would bring the GOP together while preparing to do battle with Hillary Clinton in the fall

Tuesday night's Trump show was an event in a category of its own: an election victory lap with no voters in attendance. The public wasn't invited

In the space of a half-hour, the billionaire whose unlikely White House run has captivated global media markets and spawned a thousand late-night monologue jokes recast himself as the party's one hope, and made his case that the Republican National Committee  long a calibrated roadblock  has no business standing in his way.

'I don't know that I've been treated fairly or not,' he said of the RNC. 'What I really have is a great number of people. I have millions and millions of people.'

Marveling at the surge of energy his candidacy has substituted for the lethargy that turned Mitt Romney and John McCain into election losers in 2012 and 2008, Trump said during a press conference that winning most of the day's primaries and caucuses should be proof enough that he's for real.

'If I'm going to win all of these states with tremendous numbers ... I think, you know, we're a democracy. I think it's awfully hard to say that's not the person we want to lead the party,' he told Dailymail.com during the media spectacle.

Trump was speaking before a packed recital hall at his ornate south Florida oceanfront estate Mar-a-Lago

With him as the political world's Greatest Show On Earth, he argued, 'the Republican Party has become more dynamic. It's become more diverse. We're taking from the Democrats. We're taking from the independents. We have a lot more people.'

But even as he struck a combative tone with the Republican Party, he made efforts to dissolve his image as a swashbuckling china-shop bull.

Claiming that he gets his political news in equal parts from CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, he grinned. 'See?' Trump said. 'I'm becoming diplomatic.'

Tuesday night's Trump show was an event in a category of its own: an election victory lap with no voters in attendance. The public wasn't invited.

Instead it had the feel of a White House press conference held in the East Room, with equal parts gravitas, gold leaf and glittering chandeliers.

Trump used his gilded podium to offer congratulations to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ended the night with wins in his home state of Texas and in neighboring Arkansas.

'I do congratulate Ted Cruz because I know how hard Ted worked in Texas,' Trump said of the man who went from being 'my good friend' to 'lying Ted' as his stock rose in opinion polls.

But in the next breath he flayed another young senator, Marco Rubio of Florida, for a poor showing that would net him few delegates and only a single state-level victory in Minnesota.

'I always liked Marco until about a week ago when he decided to go hostile,' Trump said, reflecting on a week filled with caustic attacks at Rubio's hands.

Trump used his gilded podium to offer congratulations to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, (right) who ended the night with wins in his home state of Texas and in neighboring Arkansas but laid into Marco Rubio after his single state-level victory in Minnesota

The Republican front runner was joined onstage by his supporter, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his son Eric Trump

'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'

Trump, as usual, held the mass media in the palm of his hand, playing the role of a political Svengali who believes he has already won the Republican nomination but needs help to actually make it so.

Focusing his rhetorical guns on the Democrats' front-runner made the sales pitch stick.

'Once we get all of this finished I'm going to go after Hillary Clinton, on the assumption she's allowed to run, which is a big assumption,' he said.

In the process of bashing the former secretary of state for the legal jeopardy associated with an FBI investigation into classified documents found on her private email server  'What she did was a criminal act!'  Trump articulated for the first time what might be a winning general election argument.

'People in the middle income groups are making less money today  less money!  than they made 12 years ago,' he observed.

But in Clinton's election-night speech, Trump said, she limited herself to merely observing that 'They're making less money.'

'Well, she's been there with Obama for a long period of time. Why hasn't she done anything about it?' he thundered.

Answering a question about how he could coax minority voters under the GOP's tent, he made it sound like a foregone conclusion.

'We're gonna bring 'em back. We're gonna bring 'em back,' Trump said.

'First of all, we're going to do great with the African-Americans.'

he also pledged to 'do great with the Hispanics.'

'I'm going to do great with virtually every group,' he said. 'The reason is I'm going to bring jobs back.'

One group who may require an extraordinary level of persuasion are the Republican Party bosses who blanch at the thought of a coarse-talking former reality television star as their standard-bearer.

'I have a lot of respect for Reince and the group,' he said, referring to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

But he also hinted that he expects credit where credit is due.

'The Republicans have tremendous energy. The Democrats don't,' Trump said calmly.
A geriatric platypus has defied the odds of nature and been revealed to be the oldest found in the wild - at the ripe old age of 21 years.

The platypus was discovered on Melbourne's eastern outskirts by senior wildlife ecologist Josh Griffiths and a team of Monash University students as part of a program with Cesar, a wildlife conservation and pest control organisation.

Mr Griffiths told Daily Mail Australia the male platypus' longevity could be attributed to a lack of competitors for territory due to a decline in the population during the drought that ravaged Victoria.

Senior wildlife ecologist Josh Griffiths (pictured holding the platypus) said Australia's oldest wild platypus was out of the water for just 15 minutes - enough time to micro-chip, weigh and measure him and say goodbye

Mr Griffiths was accompanied by Monash University students in capturing platypus in Monbulk Creek last October

'Hes probably just a strong healthy male,' Mr Griffiths said.

'Who knows how long he will go, but its hard to tell why he's lived for that long.

Senior wildlife ecologist Josh Griffiths

'The fact the population declined (during the drought) means he hasnt had some young ones competing for his territory.

'In the last few years weve seen the number (of platypus) bounce back since the drought, but litter in waterways and nets to catch yabbies have drowned them,' Mr Griffiths said.

He said Australia's oldest wild platypus was out of the water for just 15 minutes - enough time to micro-chip, weigh and measure him and say goodbye.

Mr Griffiths said platypus in the wild generally live between seven and 12 years, but those in captivity have been known to reach 21 years.

'Until recently we thought males only lived to 10 years,' Mr Griffiths said.

The animal's age had been measured since the first time he was micro-chipped - way back in 1996.

The platypus, who is yet to be named, has been caught six times since.

Cesar, which has been running since 1995, has identified around 20 platypus living in Monbulk Creek, where the platypus was found. The surveys are held twice a year, in autumn and spring.

The catch and release program worked to monitor platypus populations in the region last October.

A bridge in the Monbulk Creek area on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne, near where the platypus was found
It was the story that spread fear across the globe: a cranky chainsaw-wielding crocodile that can leap six metres into the air.

It's now nearly a decade since Brutus the 4.4 metre croc launched himself from a pond to rip a chainsaw from the hands of a maintenance worker who was clearing debris inside his pen in Corroboree Park Tavern, south west of Darwin.

And it seems old habits die hard, because Daily Mail Australia has learned the mammoth Top End beast is still one of the crankiest reptiles in Australia.

It was the story that terrified people across the globe: a cranky chainsaw-wielding crocodile that can leap 6 metres into the air

Park co-owner Linda Francis said Brutus has 'grown up a bit' since his chainsaw outburst but he still has a short temper.

He still has tantrums where you can hear him thrashing around in the water. Apparently this means he would rather be out chasing girls.

But Brutus has a bad track record when it comes to love, after making a meal out of his last two partners.

'When he was first captured he was put into a breeding program but he promptly ate his two girl friends, Ms Francis said.

The apex predator has since lived at the popular tourist site for almost 15 years, with a legendary status that renders him a crowd-favourite.

He first made a splash in 2006 when ill-fated maintenance worker Freddie Buckland was cutting a tree which had fallen over Brutus's boundary fence in the wake of a severe cyclone which swept through the park.

It's now nearly a decade since Brutus the 4.4 metre croc launched himself from a pond to rip a chainsaw from the hands of a maintenance worker

He first made a splash in 2006 when ill-fated maintenance worker Freddie Buckland was cutting a tree which had fallen over Brutus's boundary fence

Saltwater crocodiles are known to attack small boats, but this is believed to be the only recorded instance they have lashed out at a mechanical saw

'He was standing on a ladder and leaning over the pen to cut the tree, all the while keeping a keen eye on Brutus. But suddenly he launched himself up and snatched the saw'

''I think Brutus was a bit upset with all the noise, and crocodiles are very opportunistic feeders. If something looks like food they grab it while you can, bt this time he bit off more than he could chew.'

Mr Buckland naturally took flight off the ladder, leaving Brutus to demolish the machinery with his powerful jaws.

'Once we got down there the big fella happily was munching on the chainsaw, a small trickle of blood running down his jaw: the chainsaw had been going the whole time.'

Mr Buckland still reportedly curses the old reptile for destroying his beloved saw but was grateful to escape the brush with almost certain death in the creatures jaws..

Saltwater crocodiles are known to attack small boats, but this is believed to be the only recorded instance they have lashed out at a mechanical saw.

You can check the official Corroboree Park Tavern page here

Mr Buckland still reportedly curses the old reptile for destroying his beloved saw but was grateful to escape the brush with almost certain death

Park co-owner Linda Francis said Brutus has 'grown up a bit' since his chainsaw outburst but he still has a short temper
A $40million lawsuit accusing Donald Trump's defunct Trump University of ripping off customers can go ahead, an appeals court panel ruled Tuesday.

A motion to dismiss New York Attorney General Eric T Schneiderman's 2013 lawsuit, which claimed that Trump University - later known as Trump Entrepreneur Initiative - lied to customers, tricking them out of a total of $40million, was dismissed by The New York State Supreme Courts Appellate Division.

Trump's lawyer had made the argument that the statute of limitations had expired on the claim had passed, but the justices disagreed and gave Schneiderman the green light to pursue the case.

Going ahead: New York Attorney General Eric T Schneiderman (pictured) launched the lawsuit in 2013, but Donald Trump's lawyers made a motion to dismiss it, saying the statute of limitations had expired

Lawsuit: The appeals court denied the motion, meaning that the $40million suit will go ahead. It alleges that customers were told lies about what the 'university' would teach, and promises of meetings with Trump

In a statement on Tuesday, Schneiderman called the decision a 'clear victory in our effort to hold Donald Trump and Trump University accountable for defrauding thousands of students.'

'We look forward to demonstrating in a court of law that Donald Trump and his sham for-profit college defrauded more than 5,000 consumers out of millions of dollars,' he concluded.

The New York Times reported that one of Trump's lawyers, Jeffrey L Goldman, as saying the ruling was 'intellectually dishonest,' claiming that the statue of limitations should have expired three years ago. 'For some unexplained reason the Appellate Division says, "No, now it should be a six-year statute,"' he said.

Trump University was launched in 2005, promising to turn 'anyone into a real estate investor' and saying that customers would learn 'how to profit from the $700 billion bailout that has opened the door for unprecedented investment opportunities,'

Claims were allegedly also made that some students would have the opportunity to meet Trump himself.

However, claimants in the lawsuit say that the 'University' - it was made to change its name to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010 as it did not hand out university degrees - failed to deliver on those promises.

Displeased: One of Trump's lawyers said the appeal's result was 'intellectually dishonest.' A website to exonerate the name of Trump University has been set up

One former 'student' in the lawsuit, Robert Guillo of New York, told the New York Daily News last year that an initial three-day group seminar costing $1,495 was used to 'upsell' the more expensive Trump 'Elite' programs.

He says he had been told to get his credit card limit raised to buy real estate, but that the real purpose was to pay $35,000 for the next round of seminars.

Stories such as these form much of Schneiderman's lawsuit. It also alleges that Trump University ignored warnings from New York's Department of Education that it was violating state law by calling itself a 'University' without being a licensed educational institution.

It also alleges that students were told that Donald Trump himself would make an appearance, but that the closest they got was a photography with a life-size cardboard cutout of the businessman.

The ghost of Trump University has hung over Trump's election, with Marco Rubio getting good political capital out of the suit in a debate with Trump on Saturday, and again on Tuesday.

Shadow: Trump University - which was forced to change its name to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010 as it was not an official educational establishment - has cast a shadow over Trump's presidential campaign

'Customer': 'Bob,' allegedly a customer of Trump University, speaks in a political TV ad by the conservative American Future Fund, which has created the campaign to make voters aware of the lawsuits

And a series of ads were made for TV and YouTube by the conservative American Future Fund featuring interviews with alleged unhappy customers of Trump University.

In one video, an elderly man identified only as 'Bob' says, 'I was trumped by Trump, I was duped by The Donald. I paid $35,000 to Trump University and all I got was a picture of myself with a cut-out of Donald Trump.'

A counter-attack was set up in the form of 98percentapproval.com, an online defense of Trump University, ostensibly named after the percentage of happy customers the university had.

Schneiderman's lawsuit is in fact only one of two aimed at Trump University. The other is a class-action lawsuit instigated by California yoga instructor Tarla Makaeff. She later accused Trump of 'financially threatening' her, Yahoo! News reported in February.
Gareth Vincent Hall, 22,was sentenced to 50 years for grooming a ten-year-old girl then flying to the US to sexually assault her

A British lifeguard has been jailed for fifty years for flying to the US and repeatedly raping a 10-year-old girl he had groomed in an online chatroom.

Gareth Vincent Hall, 22, was employed at a council leisure centre in North Wales - where he was entrusted to watch children in the pool - when he groomed the girl online.

He flew to Eugene, Oregon, and took his victim to a several motels to carry out a series of serious sexual offences, the court heard.

Hall returned to the village of Talysarn, near Caernarfon, where he worked as a children's swimming instructor.

But he was arrested three weeks later flying into O'Hare airport, Chicago, after apparently arranging to meet a different under-age girl.

Hall admitted four charges of rape, two serious sexual offences and the online sexual corruption of a child. A charge of kidnapping the girl was dropped.

Hall's first language is Welsh and interpreters were brought in to help him understand legal terms when he was sentenced on Tuesday.

His parents and relatives of his schoolgirl victim were in the public gallery at Lane County Court in Eugene.

The hearing was told the girl said she was aged 17 during internet chats with Hall before he flew to America in April last year.

John Volmert, defending, pleaded for a lenient sentence saying: 'Hall believed that she appeared to be 16 or 17. The age of consent in Hall's homeland is 16.'

The court heard Hall stayed in several local motels and met the girl on 'multiple occasions' during his five-day stay in the US.

Her grandmother told the hearing: 'She fell into a trap. Hall was a terrorist - his actions have decimated our family.'

Hall returned to Talysarn, near Caernarfon, where he worked as a children's swimming instructor at the Arfon Leisure Centre (pictured), but was arrested in Chicago where he had flown to meet another girl

Through his interpreter Hall apologised for his crimes and said he would not have gone to Eugene if he had known the victim's true age.

But Lane County Circuit Judge Jay McAlpin jailed Hall for 50 years, saying: 'I don't think it was an innocent mistake.'

Lane County Circuit Judge Jay McAlpin jailed Hall for 50 years, saying: 'I don't think it was an innocent mistake'

Hall's five-page plea bargain statement said: 'I know that the following mandatory minimum sentences apply: 25 years.

'Therefore, I understand that I must serve the entire sentence, and will not be eligible for any good time credit, and will not be eligible for any type of temporary release, and will not be eligible for any program that reduces my sentence below the mandatory minimum.'

Police in the US said they were shocked by Hall's determination and planning to meet up with the girl 5,000 miles from his home.

Investigating officer Jed McGuire said at the time of his arrest: 'Hall met the girl through an online chat program.

'They spoke for two months before meeting when he picked her up in a rental car and took her to a hotel.'

Police said Hall had 'regular access' to children at Arfon Leisure Centre in Caernarfon which gives free swimming lessons to under 16s.

Gwynedd Council, who run the leisure centre, suspended Hall from work after he was arrested by North Wales Police in 2014 'on suspicion of offences committed online'.

He was sacked in May 2015 after his crimes against the 10-year-old girl came to light.
A nanny accused of murdering a child in her care and brandishing the child's severed head outside a metro station smiled after admitting 'Allah ordered' her to carry out the act.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a 38-year-old mother of three sons, also replied 'yes' when asked if she accepted her guilt as she entered the courtroom in Moscow, Russia.

In scenes that shocked the world, the hijab-wearing nanny was seen walking the streets of Moscow brandishing the head of Nastya Meshcheryakova for an hour before she was detained by police.

Her appearance in court comes a day after a police source revealed the babysitter had kept her schizophrenia a secret and was 'kicked on to the streets' after a divorce.

New pictures have also emerged showing the inside of the flat where the four-year-old's headless body was discovered.

The girl's father Vladimir Mesheryakov said today there were 'no words to describe the feeling of hatred, weakness and helplessness' his family felt.

Scroll down for video

A nanny accused of murdering a child in her care and brandishing the child's severed head outside a metro station smiled after admitting 'Allah ordered' her to carry out the act

The burka-clad babysitter was arrested in Moscow after she walked through the streets carrying the severed head of a four-year-old girl

Pictures have emerged showing the burnt our interior of the Moscow flat where the child's headless body was found

He said: 'Everyone, perhaps, knows about our terrible grief. There are no words to describe the feeling of hatred, weakness and helplessness.

'There is no way to understand the insanity that surrounds our world but I am sure that there are people who went through something similar - and I am grieving for Nastya with them.'

He also begged residents to help find the family's dog - loved by little Nastya - which went missing during the blaze Bobokulova started at their flat.

As she walked into court today, Bobokulova, who the Russian press has dubbed 'the bloody nanny' was asked if she wanted the parents of the girl to forgive her. She replied, pointing her finger to the sky: 'I will ask nobody. Only Allah'.

Another journalist asked her: 'What did Allah order you to do?' She replied: 'To kill.'

The judge Tatyana Vasyuchenko told the court that Bobokulova stabbed the girl causing her 'mortal neck injuries', and then beheaded her.

Earlier, it was reported that she had been strangled before the beheading.

And asked in court if she pleaded guilty, she nodded yes. Questioned if she felt sorry about the girl, she shook her head, evidently meaning no. Inside the court cage, she smiled and waved to journalists.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a 38-year-old mother of three sons, also replied 'yes' when asked if she accepted her guilt as she entered the courtroom in Moscow, Russia

Her appearance in court comes a day after a police source revealed she had kept her schizophrenia a secret and was 'kicked on to the streets' after a divorce

A radio journalist asked Bobokulova (pictured) as she walked towards court room handcuffed to a police officer why killed the child, and she replied: 'Allah ordered me'

Speaking in broken Russian from the suspect's cage, Bobokulova said: 'Allah is sending a second prophet to give news of peace' and also complained that she was 'hungry', had not been fed and would 'die in a week'.

'Hi to everyone,' she said, waving at the crowd of journalists in the courtroom.

Investigator Olga Lapteva, who was clearly emotional, told the court that Bobokulova was suspected of committing an 'extremely serious crime' and that she should face 'a mandatory prison sentence of considerably more than three years.'

It has also emerged today that a mystery boyfriend may have been with her in the apartment at the time the child, Nastya Meshcheryakova, was killed.

Police apparently now believe that she was not the instigator of the crime.

She has confessed to killing the child but police are now searching for the mystery man who evidently had a relationship with her - and is suspected of radicalising her.

It was revealed today that police suspect a boyfriend or husband visited her at the Meshcheryakov family flat on the day the girl was killed.

Inside the court cage, Gulchekhra Bobokulova (pictured) smiled and waved to journalists

Gyulchehra Bobokulova is escorted by police as she arrives to the Presnensky district coort in Moscow, Russia

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova sits inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow

In scenes that shocked the world yesterday, the hijab-wearing nanny was seen walking the streets of Moscow brandishing the head of Nastya Meshcheryakova

Questioned if she felt sorry about the girl, she shook her head, evidently meaning no. Inside the court cage, she smiled and waved to journalists

Moscow police are urgently seeking the nanny's boyfriend or unofficial husband named as Mamur Dzhirakulov, 46.

The child was killed between 8am and 8.40am so it suggests an early visit and police are 'checking if it is true that a stranger was in the flat at that time and if he has something to do with the murder'.

An investigator told the court: 'The accomplices of the suspect, or we better say the instigators, are currently at large.'

One theory is that the woman is mentally ill and that she may have been exploited by a man or men she knew.

It is believed she had a serious argument with her current partner on the phone the day before the murder.

A relative of the dead girl said that Bobokulova - known as Gulya to the family - had married a man during a trip to Uzbekistan around 18 months ago.

'Gulya seriously changed after this,' said the relative. She started wearing hijab, she began to pray in her room.

It is believed the nanny set the apartment ablaze after strangling the four-year-old child then severing her head

Fire crews rescued a number of people from the block of flats after smoke was seen billowing out of windows

Bobokulova had been registered at a psychiatric clinic in her homeland Uzbekistan - and her condition had been deteriorating in recent months, the source said

Emergency crews discovered the child's body after they were called in to tackle a fire in the flat

'Before she was never religious, she wore ordinary clothes, sports clothes, shirts. But when he left the flat, she always put on a hijab.'

Nastya's mother Ekaterina - or Katya - treated the change 'with understanding - it was Gulya's religion'.

'I know she was arguing with her new husband on phone very often recently,' said the relative.

'The day before the murder they had a particularly loud argument that Katya even asked Gulya to slow down.'

Bobokulova had been registered at a psychiatric clinic in her homeland Uzbekistan - and her condition had been deteriorating in recent months, the source said.

Pictures emerged yesterday of her being interrogated in a police station in the Russian capital as conflicting reports continued to emerge about her personal life.

Escorted by armed police, handcuffed Bobokulova - herself a mother of three - earlier showed officers the Moscow flat where she apparently strangled Nastya , who had learning difficulties, before cutting off her head with a kitchen knife. The little girls remains were left in her cot.

The child, who has been identified as Anastasia (Nastya) Meshcheryakova, whose nanny Gyulchehra Bobokulova is thought to have killed her

Arrested: Pictures show the moment a babysitter took Russian police to the grisly scene where she beheaded a four-year-old girl she was looking after

Escorted by armed police, handcuffed Gyulchekhra Bobokulova - herself a mother of three - showed officers the Moscow flat where she killed Nastya Meshcheryakova

It emerged yesterday that the nanny had been married for 12 years and divorced 'not long ago' in her native Uzbekistan, according to LifeNews, which obtained brief footage of her confused interrogation in a Moscow police station.

After the marriage she was 'kicked into the street', it was claimed, with her three children all going to different relatives in the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan.

She met a new partner a year ago, and agreed to be his 'second, unofficial wife' but four months ago he returned to his home country and she has not seen him since.

'My second husband was born in 1967. I was just seeing him,' she said. 'But he hasn't been around for four months, he left.

'He took me as his second wife and is now living with his first wife. I have no husband officially now. My first husband was born in 1975.'

Meanwhile, MK claimed that Bobokulova's relatives have undergone interrogation in a village in Samarkand region.

A police source in the ex-Soviet republic said: 'The parents of Bobokulova and her husband were called to police for interrogation.

'They spent full day in police, and on Tuesday morning the interrogation continued.

he 38-year-old babysitter (picttold them she was haunted by 'voices' on the day of the murder

It is also claimed she was angry because her husband in Uzbekistan had started a new family while she was away working in Russia

In scenes that shocked the world, the hijab-wearing nanny was seen walking the streets of Moscow brandishing the head of the dead girl for an hour before she was detained by police

The woman - a citizen of Uzbekistan - is seen talking to police, and appears to understand where and why she is at the location

'I can tell you only one thing - the relatives are shocked with the cruel murder but they were not surprised. They know very well why Gyulchekhra did it.'

He continued: 'Everybody here knew Gyulchekhra. She was a strange woman, to put it mildly.

'There is an explanation: she had schizophrenia. She was registered in the local psychiatric clinic for a long time and had special medical documents. Everybody knew it.

'She failed to find a job here for this very reason. Strange things often happened to her in spring time. Her parents watched her and tried to send her to the psychiatric clinic when spring came.

'Her condition was gradually deteriorating. Before it was not that noticeable but as time was going, it got worse.'

He claimed that 15 years ago she was in hospital for two years, and she had been back since.

'Soon after that she left for Moscow and easily found a job there. She often visited her family, for new year and other holidays.

'Probably she fooled the medical commission in Russia, if she had to face it.

'People here were talking about it. She did not take any medical documents with her. She did not tell anybody about her condition.'

Eyewitnesses say the woman shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as she appeared near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in the northwest of the Russian capital and threatened to blow herself up

Sources say the babysitter told interrogators she did not want to hide from police, and aimed to draw maximum attention to what she has done

He said she had three children, in their late teens or early 20s.

'She did not live with her husband for good while. In 2000 Gyulchekhra was officially registered as an insane.

'She was very ill then, she often suffered from attacks. It was dangerous to live with her, so her husband Radmin left her.

'Officially they divorced in 2002. Radmin quickly remarried, and he has two more children. The eldest son lives with Gyulchekhra's parents, the younger ones are with their father.

'So Radmin and his second wife take care of four children. Radmin is not working now, neither his wife. It is very hard to find a job here now. Gyulchekhra did not support her relatives with money.'

The policeman added: 'I don't know what her parents think now. The daughter was not under their control for a long time. All villagers are talking about it now but they are surprised she did not do anything like that before.'

Bobokulova is believed to be co-operating with investigators and showed how she killed the child, with sources saying she strangled the girl before using a kitchen knife to behead her.

She shouted 'I am a terrorist' and threatened to cause an explosion but, despite the FSB security service leading the probe, the Russians so far have no evidence of a link to extremist groupings.

Bobokulova was taken to the flat in western Moscow at around midnight - only 16 hours after the appalling killing to which - say police sources - she has confessed.

The woman was seen pulling the severed head out of a bag and walking around near the entrance to the metro station as police moved in

'Initially, she seemed insane, but then agreed to the investigative experiment,' said a police source.

'She was brought to the apartment where the murder was committed. She pointed to the block, the entrance and the apartment by herself.'

The woman - a citizen of Uzbekistan - is seen talking to police, and appears to understand where and why she is at the location.

She spoke to her police escorts but was only overheard once, saying: 'Here is the house, that way.'

She entered the block with officers who escorted her to the fifth floor flat where she lived with the Meshcheryakov family whose daughter was killed.

A police source claimed she said: 'I came here and took off my skirt, threw it in a rubbish bin. Got changed into what we wear to have prayer. A voice told me to wear so.'

As she came out a women in the crowd shouted: 'You killed a child! Your head needs to be torn off!'

Police tried to calm the woman as Bobokulova was bundled into a police van.

'SHE BECAME INCREASINGLY DEVOUT': HOW NANNY'S BEHAVIOUR CHANGED Beheading nanny Gyulchekhra Bobokulova had become 'almost a member of the family' of the young girl she murdered and was caring for her all day while the mother and father worked. But sources close to the devastated parents say the babysitter's behaviour changed after finding out a boyfriend she had met was already married. She spent long periods on the internet and spent 'a long time praying' and Ekaterina and Vladimir Meshcheryakov considered replacing her just weeks before the murder. The source said: 'All of a sudden she found out that (her boyfriend) was actually married,' said a source. 'It was a shock for her. She came back to Moscow in shock. They said she became detached, silent and devout. 'She started spending a lot of time on the internet, reading in social networks, writing. It wasn't in Russian so Volodya and Katya could not understand. And there was a prayer carpet in the apartment.' Beheading nanny Gyulchekhra Bobokulova had become 'almost a member of the family' of the young girl she murdered and was caring for her all day while the mother and father worked This source told Komsomolskaya Pravda she became more devout and spent a long time praying. 'Not very long ago they had a serious conversation with her. 'Like, "are you tired, perhaps? If you want, we can find someone else"... But Gulchekhra said: "No need". 'She kept spending time in the social networks. 'At one point Volodya cut off the internet at home and when they got home, they saw that Gulchekhra somehow got it working again and was at the computer again, and wasn't looking after Nastya. 'They had decided they would look for a replacement nanny. 'Perhaps, in one or two weeks there would have been a new nanny. Who could have guessed that it would happen?' Advertisement

A source said she told police: 'I came here and took off my skirt, threw it in a rubbish bin. Got changed into what we wear to have prayer. A voice told me to wear so.'

The parents were being comforted by friends and relatives after their daughter's horrific death. Nastya - or Anastasia - had special needs after problems during her birth.

The nanny 'cared for her like her own child', according to one source.

The beheaded remains of the four-year-old were found in a cot in the family flat, dressed in her night clothes, a T-short and shorts. On her blanket was a picture of a kitten.

The Kremlin backed decisions by Russian media organisations not to show gruesome pictures of the crime scene inside the flat.

Bobokulova told police that she went home to Uzbekistan less than two months ago and found her husband had a new wife and had started a family.

Tributes: A man leaves a flower site near the Oktyabrskoye Pole underground station in Moscow, Russia

Floral and toy tributes were left by mourners outside the apartment block at Narodnogo Opolcheniya Street

A source told LifeNews: 'In her first testimony Bobokulova said that just over a month ago, she went to her homeland, to Uzbekistan to renew her passport.

'When she got to her home, she learned that her husband had started a new family. She was invited to become a second wife. In total, she spent 25 days there.'

It is reported that when she returned to Russia, she complained to Nastya's family about her spouse, accusing him of cheating on her.

The family problems caused her 'acute manic psychosis', claimed the report.

Nastya's parents, Vladimir and Ekaterina, noticed her 'unstable mind' but believed it was caused by fatigue, according to one account.

The nanny had worked for the family in Moscow for around three years.

A family friend denied that Ekaterina - known as Katya - had noticed anything strange in the nanny's behaviour.

'Believe me, if something was wrong, Katya would not miss this moment,' she said. 'She is a shrewd woman, she would notice.

'She trusted Gyulchekhra fully. More than this she considered her family member. Everyone called her just Gulya.

'They all lived in one flat. That is why Katya and Vladimir rented a big flat with two bedrooms, so they all had enough space.'

The victim was a girl identified as Anastasia (Nastya) Meshcheryakova - and the child's 38-year-old nanny Gyulchehra Bobokulova (left), from Uzbekistan, has been arrested. The girl's mother Ekaterina is pictured right

The friend told MK newspaper that the nanny had looked after the child since she was a baby.

'The child was seriously ill. Katya simply could not cope by herself,' she said.

They hired the nanny 'on recommendation' and she had previously worked for another Moscow family.

'She had the best recommendations. Do you think that Katya would have entrusted the child to some unreliable people? She checked the woman on all counts.

'Many famous people hire Tajiks or Uzbeks as nannies. They care for children very well. Any child care agency will confim this.

'So what happened does not fit in our heads. And the parents have no answer why Gulya did this.

'How was it possible to live with the child, and then burn the house down and kill her? And after all that to go out and shout: 'I am a terrorist?'

'Gulya herself is a mother of three. Her children live in Uzbekistan. There were no jobs there, so she worked in Moscow and sent them money home.'

Mother Ekaterina and father Vladimir Meshcheryakov of four-year-old Anastasia

She did not normally wear a hijab.

'We were surprised when we saw the pictures near the metro. Where did Gulya take all these rags?

'Most of our friends have never seen even a scarf on her. But those who are very close to Katya and Vladimir said that she had these clothes.

'She kept it in a wardrobe and wore it very rarely. She was not very religious. It was said that she prays, but quietly, not for show. We all thought that she loved Nastya as her own child.'

She added: 'The parents state can not be described in words. This is a terrible grief for their family.

'Katya is very bad. I do not know how long it will take her to get over this.'

Investigators claim she murdered the girl after starting a fire at the child's family home in a block of flats.

One eyewitness at the underground station told MK how the woman (pictured left and right holding the severed head) screamed: 'I will blow up everyone'

The suspect shouted that she had killed the child and was seen praying shortly before officers swooped at Oktyabrskoe Pole

They say she then murdered the girl and left, before heading to the metro station.

According to local media, Bobokulova shouted in the street: 'I hate democracy. I am a terrorist. I want you dead.

'You have become so hardened, you have eliminated so many of us. Look I am a suicide bomber, I will die, doomsday will come in a second.'

She pulled the severed head out of a bag and walked near the metro station entrance in north-west Moscow.

Video of the dead girl's mother, Ekaterina Meshcheryakova, collapsing in the street upon hearing the horrific news has emerged. She was taken to hospital in an unconscious condition.

Anastasia also had a father, Vladimir Meshcheryakov, who is a technician at a mobile phone company, and a brother Konstantin, 15.

The main entrance to the block of flats was being guarded by armed police yesterday.

Eyewitness Alexandra Shuvalova, a student from the capital, said: 'When I got close to the metro, I saw a woman running along the street.

'I could see that she had hair in her hands or something like that.

'She was waving this thing and screaming something and drawing some shapes in the air.

Dramatic footage shows the moment police sprinted in towards the woman and tackled her to the ground

The woman was surrounded by police officers and bundled to the ground during the dramatic arrest in Moscow

'This woman either had a birthmark or a wart on her right cheek. It was a distinctive feature because she was dressed in entirely in black.

'I realised it wasn't a wig as I thought initially, but a head - that's why blood was dripping on her shoes and skirt.

'I stopped, had a cigarette, tried to get my breath back to normal because I was so shocked.'

She claimed a security guard and two policeman missed the chance to detain her.

Alexandra added: 'People ran away from her. I saw five people fleeing. And no one tried to stop her - not security guards at a cafe, nor at a shop.

'One of the guards who saw her, ran to the building to tell someone about her. He didn't try to do anything on his own.'

'I heard her yelling 'Allah Akbar' at least three times. And hitting herself on her chest.

'She was yelling something in her language. She ran to a cafe and started shouting: 'It's all you! All you!'

The station was closed to passengers for some time, but no explosives were found on her.

Another eyewitness said: 'She came to the entrance of the metro station Oktyabrskoye Pole with a red bag, from which she pulled out the child's head.

Emergency services had earlier been called to an apartment nearby amid reports of black smoke billowing out windows

Firefighters rescued four people and put out the blaze - but then found the child's beheaded body

'She walked down the street for a long time and was shouting something. But no one challenged her. Everyone was afraid.'

Dramatic footage shows the moment police sprinted in towards the woman and tackled her to the ground.

Emergency services had earlier been called to an apartment nearby amid reports of black smoke billowing out of windows.

Firefighters rescued four people and put out the blaze - but then found the child's beheaded body

Witness Alyona Kuratova told independent Dozhd TV that the woman was holding the head by its hair.

Kuratova described scenes of chaos, with police cars and ambulances arriving at the scene and some people yelling: 'terror attack, terror attack.'

She said she could not make out what the woman shouted but some media reported that she yelled 'Allah Akbar''- Arabic for 'God is greatest' - and threatened to blow herself up.

The dead girl suffered damage because of birth problems in August 2011.

The family took her for treatment to China - and were saving money to travel for subsequent care in Germany.

The parents told police the nanny had been working for them for 18 months.

Sources say the babysitter told interrogators she did not want to hide from police, and aimed to draw maximum attention to what she has done.

Police descended on the scene as an investigation got underway at the metro station in the wake of the arrest

Detectives cordoned off the station to investigate. The nanny faces up to 20 years in jail if she is deemed psychologically fit to stand trial.

A Russian police officer stands at the site where a woman suspected of murdering a young child was detained

Employees of the Russian Investigative Committee near an entrance to Oktyabrskoye Station

She had not intended to ignite the flat deliberately and destroy evidence, she said, according to the source, and wanted the parents to know who had killed their daughter.

The woman had a valid residency permit for Russia but was working illegally. She had no work permit, said officials.

The nanny faces up to 20 years in jail if she is deemed psychologically fit to stand trial.

Last night the investigation was taken over by the FSB, Russia's powerful domestic secret service, once headed by Vladimir Putin. Police are not currently treating the incident as terrorism.

LifeNews claimed: 'Investigators suspect that Gulchekhra had manic psychosis developing for a period of time.'

A law enforcement source said the woman was suspected of handling 'explosive elements' at the flat which was engulfed in flames.

But 'it might be an inflammable liquid that she used to set the apartment on fire where she killed four-year-old Nastya M.'

The security services are hunting for the woman's husband. A source said she may have been on 'light drugs'.

Russia's children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov called the killing 'Monstrous and inexplicable', urging parents to carefully check on the mental state of nannies when they are hired.

Meanwhile, Nastya's father Vladimir Mesheryakov today spoke for the first time about the family's loss and appealed for members of the public to help find the family's dog which fled during the fire.

'I am grateful to residents of Khoroshovo-Mnyovniki (their district) and have a big favour to ask them. Our dog escaped during fire.

'She's also member of our family, we love her a lot and we will be very grateful for help in her search...'

The family's pet Chihuahua called Lyusya was lost after the fire that engulfed the flat.
An increasing number of Iraqi migrants are leaving Germany and returning to their home country after becoming disillusioned with their new lives Europe.

Having been sold the idea of a flourishing jobs-market, good housing and an opportunity to have their families join them, they are finding the reality of life in Germany disappointing.

The huge influx of migrants has taken its toll on Germany's resources, and new arrivals complain of overcrowded refugee centres, 'terrible food' and Germans 'looking at us like bums'.

Struggle: Refugees and migrants at a jobs fair for refugees in Berlin, Germany, where an increasing number now opt to return to their home countries

In 2015, Germany took in more than 1.1million refugees and migrants, and as a result, the asylum application process has become increasingly ardous.

Struggling volunteers buckle under the pressure of the sheer numbers, refugee centres have become overcrowded and integration into German society is taking longer.

A tightening of rules last autumn also made it more difficult to send for family members after being given asylum, something which many had counted on when making the journey across the Mediterranean.

In addition, there has been growing anti-immigrant sentiments in Germany and across Europe, with Muslims the main targets of far-right hatred.

Now, a growing number of asylum seekers are returning home, having found themselves bitterly disappointed with Europe.

Having been sold the idea of a flourishing jobs-market, good housing having families join them, migrants are finding the reality of life in Germany disappointing - and are going home.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been criticised over her 'open border' police after the country took in more than 1.1million refugees and migrants last year

'What I've seen in Europe is not what I dreamed about. It's not what [the smugglers] told me it would be,' Gazwan Abdulhasen Abdulla, a 37-year-old who had worked as a truck driver in Iraq, told the LA Times.

After paying a substantial sum to smugglers to travel to Europe, he is now returning to his wife and four children in Basra, along with 150 others on a one-way ticket to Iraq.

'The food was terrible, so disgusting that not even animals should be fed it. They made us sleep in these cold, empty buildings and when someone said they were sick, they just ignored us.

'You could feel it everywhere that Germans looked down at us like we were bums. I miss my family and can't wait to get home.'

Similar trends have been seen in Scandinavia, with an increasing number of refugees and migrants withdrawing their applications and returning home.

In Sweden, the number of withdrawn asylum applications has risen in recent months, from an average of 300 per month to nearly 630 in November last year. In the first ten days of December, 239 withdrew their applications.

Returning home: Two Iraqi migrants kneel down and kiss the ground upon arrival in the capital of Baghdad after seeking asylum in Finland

Hundreds of refugees given seats on a flight from Finland make their way through the airport

Refugees who had claimed asylum in Finland but voluntarily returned to Iraq wait at the baggage claim

In addition, the Swedish Migration Authority reported writing of a growing number of applications, where the applicant has disappeared and is presumed having left.

In November, 1,275 asylum applications were written off for various reasons, including many who never turned up to their first meeting, SVT reports.

Denmark recently tightened legislation in a similar way to Germany, making it more difficult to bring family members into the country once asylum has been granted.

Last month, thousands of Iraqi migrants who had fled to Finland, were pictured kissing the ground as they returned to their home country.

Almost two thirds of these were young Iraqi men, but some changed their mind and returned after the Finnish government offered chartered flights to Baghdad.

Europe is facing it's biggest wave of immigration since the Second World War, with millions risking their lives to leave war and terror behind, or simply to seek a better life on another continent.

The latest UN report shows that in the first two months of 2016, more than 130,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea - more than the total number for the first half of 2015.
Boris Johnson holds a more than 20 point lead over George Osborne in the race to be the next Prime Minister.

Tory activists will choose the resident at No 10 for the first time ever when David Cameron stands aside. He has already made clear he will quit before the next election and his career could be brought to an abrupt end by defeat in the EU referendum on June 23.

Party rules require Conservative MPs to whittle down the field to just two contenders before Tory members make the final choice.

And today's YouGov poll for The Times shows Mr Johnson is the clear front runner.

The YouGov poll of 1,005 Conservative Party members indicated Mr Johnson had a big lead over all his rivals, including a more than 20-point advantage over George Osborne

He stands far ahead on 43 per cent, leading Mr Osborne's score of 22 per cent.

Assuming both men made the run off, a forced choice in the poll shows Mr Johnson sweeping to victory Mr Osborne by 56 per cent to 38 per cent.

In the overall poll, Theresa May is a close third on 19 per cent, according to the survey of more than 1,000 party members.

Newer choices, who only entered Parliament in 2010 and reached the front rank of government in the second half of the last Parliament, were far behind.

Sajid Javid scored 7 per cent in the poll and Nicky Morgan, who has already declared she would like to run, scored just 1 per cent.

Mr Johnson would beat Mrs May by 20 points if they contend the final run off.

Mr Osborne appears set for a narrow win over Mrs May if they are chosen as the final candidates - the poll suggests he leads 46 per cent to 42 per cent.

As Chancellor and a key ally of the Prime Minister, Mr Osborne has long been seen as the strongest contender to take over from Mr Cameron.

But he had a dangerous run in with Conservative MPs - particularly newly elected MPs - over planned cuts to tax credits.

A rebellion on his own benches forced him to an expensive u-turn as he threw out the whole 4.4billion cut at November's autumn statement.

Assuming the two men make it into the run off, both pick up ground - but the poll suggests Mr Johnson still wins the race for No 10 by 56 per cent to 38 per cent

Mr Johnson, pictured campaigning for Brexit in Northern Ireland on Monday, appears have become the front runner to take over as Tory leader, overtaking George Osborne, pictured at the G20 in Shanghai last week

By contrast, London Mayor Mr Johnson was seen as having boosted his chances by declaring for the Vote Leave campaign last month.

The decision, which was said to have 'absolutely infuriated' Mr Cameron, has made him the standard bearer of the Brexit camp.

But the YouGov findings suggested the move handed Mr Johnson a five point bump compared to all his rivals by making the announcement.

In other findings, the poll confirmed the Tory grassroots remain firmly eurosceptic despite the campaign by the Prime Minister to keep Britain In.

Some 59 per cent of Tory members appear ready to back a Brexit while just 31 per cent plan to follow Mr Cameron's recommendation.

Europe was ranked as the second most important issue facing Britain today by 55 per cent of the sample. It was only beaten by concern over asylum and immigration, which was ranked as most important by 58 per cent.

More than half of Tory members, 54 per cent, continue to back the Prime Minister's plan to step down as Tory leader and Prime Minister in 2019 or before - but 20 per cent say he should stay on.
She can usually be seen giving her expert opinion on antiques for BBC shows Bargain Hunt and Flog It!

But auctioneer Kate Bateman, 38, has a saucy sideline writing X-rated historical romance novels set in Renaissance Italy and Napoleonic France.

Her first book, To Steal a Heart, which follows the story of an aristocratic spy and a circus thief, has just been released by publisher Random House Loveswept.

It is the first novel in her Secrets & Spies trilogy, with her second - A Raven's Heart - expected to come out in August.

Auctioneer Kate Bateman, 38, (pictured) has a saucy sideline writing X-rated historical romance novels set in Renaissance Italy and Napoleonic France

The mother-of-three has admitted that there are some 'embarrassing full-on sex scenes' and raunchy passages, but she did not classify it as 'X-rated erotica'

'I hate old-fashioned romantic novels where they close the bedroom door and nothing happens,' she told the Daily Mirror.

She has released an extract of her first novel which is billed as a 'dazzling historical romance' which is 'perfect' for fans of Sabrina Jeffries, Lisa Kleypas, and Courtney Milan.

In this, her heroine Marianne Bonnard is introduced wearing a 'flamboyant pink-frilled corset that made her look like a silk-encased bonbon just waiting to be unwrapped.'

She can usually be seen giving her expert opinion on antiques for BBC shows Bargain Hunt and Flog It, pictured (left) with Tim Wonnacott

QUOTES FROM KATE BATEMAN'S ROMANCE NOVEL 'TO STEAL A HEART' 'At the circus she wore a flamboyant pink-frilled corset that made her look like a silk-encased bonbon just waiting to be unwrapped.' 'His eyes bored into hers, full of wood smoke and shadows, and she had the unnerving thought that he was reading her soul.' 'He couldn't resist the temptation. He gave her arm a deliberately hard tug. She fell against his chest with a satisfying little 'oomph' and dropped her parasol. He used her momentary imbalance to search her, slipping his fingers under her shirt to brush the warm skin of her lower back.' 'She was a neat, lethal, little package. ' Advertisement

She is also described as a 'neat, lethal, little package.'

Her protagonist meets Nicolas Valette - a master spy - in the second chapter.

'His eyes bored into hers, full of wood smoke and shadows, and she had the unnerving thought that he was reading her soul,' Kate wrote.

'He couldn't resist the temptation. He gave her arm a deliberately hard tug. She fell against his chest with a satisfying little 'oomph' and dropped her parasol.

'He used her momentary imbalance to search her, slipping his fingers under her shirt to brush the warm skin of her lower back.'

Kate revealed she wrote her first historical romance in response to a $1 bet with her husband, Matt, 38, who claimed she' would 'never finish the thing'.

When asked how her husband reacted to the more risque passages, she said: 'He'll be like, 'Crikey, that's way more interesting than what we do. You really do have a great imagination, darling.'

The couple, who have three children together, split their time between the UK and Chicago, Illinois.

Her first book has attracted 4* reviews on Goodreads which many describing it as a 'strong debut'.
Theassaults occurred when Peter Stande, pictured, was a teacher and dormitory master at St Patrick's in the late 1970s and early 1980s

A Christian Brother used his position to routinely sexually abuse boys in his care under the guise of tuition or discipline, court documents show.

William Peter Standen, also known as David Standen - the former principal of Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral College - pleaded guilty on Wednesday to indecent assaults on seven boys during his time at St Patrick's College in Goulburn.

The 66-year-old has previously pleaded guilty to indecent assaults or acts on 11 other boys at the school.

They occurred when he was a teacher and dormitory master at St Patrick's in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to facts tendered in Sydney's District Court.

The statements detail a pattern of abuse in which Standen's victims - mostly boys aged 12 - were summoned to his quarters after 'lights out' under the guise of discipline or tuition.

Directed to bend over, or to lay face-down on Standen's bed or across his knee, the victims described how he would smack or rub their often bare bottoms.

During the abuse the boys were sometimes asked to answer maths questions and smacked for giving wrong answers.

Other victims recalled being admonished for so-called bad behaviour.

Some detailed how 'Brother David' - as Standen was known - watched them shower, punished them with a leather strap, and fondled their genitals.

Standen (left) was arrested at Sydney Airport in 2014, and will face a sentencing hearing in April

The boys, who were aged around 12, were called to his dorm quarters for punishment or tuition and were then abused, one boy was called to Standen's room up to 20 times (Standen under arrest, centre)

Standen was principal of Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral College until he retired in 2010

'Do not tell anyone about this,' one victim recalled being told after Standen assaulted him.

Another victim, who was targeted on a school camp, said he was woken up in his tent by Standen's hand pressing on his crotch area.

Some of the boys were routinely targeted, with one recalling being called to Standen's room up to 20 times.

One boy was forced to stand with his pants down in Standon's bedroom he was told it was punishment for leaving an empty chip packet on the ground,Fairfax reports.

During the abuse the boys were sometimes asked to answer maths questions and smacked for giving wrong answers (Standen being arrested, left)

When the young boy turned around, Standen was staring at him masturbating.

Standen was arrested at Sydney Airport in 2014.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Christian Brothers reiterated an apology to all who have suffered past abuse.

'It is a matter of deep sorrow and regret that children were abused in our care,' a spokesman said.

The organisation intends to comment further once Standen's case is finalised.

He is due to face a sentence hearing on April 15.
It comes after he'd been watching a TV report on the Syrian refugee crisis

Rhys Atkinson, 8, sparked a social services probe after he told a teacher he wanted to 'fight terrorists'

A school called in social services after an eight-year-old boy told a teacher he wanted to 'fight terrorists' after watching a news report on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Teachers referred Rhys Atkinson to Wirral Council's children's safeguarding hub over fears he could be 'radicalised' and turn into a terrorist.

Rhys, a pupil at St Michael & All Angels in Upton, on the Wirral, Merseyside, had been watching a TV news report on the Syrian refugee crisis.

Father Mark Atkinson said: 'I was called in for a meeting with the head and couldn't believe what she was telling me.

'I was so much in shock I could barely speak. How could the school believe my eight-year-old child could be a terrorist?'

He says he was approached by staff as he waited at the school gate for his children to finish their day.

He said: 'The school has been raising money to help with the refugee crisis. My son came home and told me his form teacher had explained how the crisis had begun.

'I sat him down and we discussed it. The next day he went into school and said that he wanted to fight terrorists.

'Then all of a sudden it's being implied by his teachers that he is one.'

Mr Atkinson said staff informed him that several schools in Wirral had been visited by anti-terrorism police and have been told to 'look out for signs of radicalisation.'

Wirral Council's children's social care multi-agency safeguarding hub was then informed of the comments.

A letter sent from the department to Mr Atkinson states it has information 'in relation to some comments made by your son in school in relation to terrorism.'

The letter continues to claim 'it has also been brought to our attention he plays a violent video game' - an accusation that has been strongly denied by the child's mother.

Teachers referred Rhys (pictured with his father Mark) to Wirral Council's children's safeguarding hub over fears he could be 'radicalised' and turn into a terrorist

Teachers referred Rhys Atkinson to Wirral Council's children's safeguarding hub over fears he could be 'radicalised'. Mr Atkinson is pictured with a letter which was sent to him by the school

Mother Louise, who has separated from Mark, explained her son has never played this type of game and had only seen packaging after her partner left one out.

She said the 'terrorism' ordeal had been very distressing: 'He is very shocked.

'He is putting on a brave face but was confused and didn't understand if he can still go to school.

'I think they should react to a young child's naive comments like adults and not jump to crazy conclusions. It is idiotic.'

The school referred inquiries to Wirral Council, where Julia Hassall, director of children's services, said: 'Because there is a child at the centre of these claims we cannot comment other than to say we will be looking into Mr Atkinson's claims.

Rhys, a pupil at St Michael & All Angels in Upton, on the Wirral, Merseyside, had been watching a TV news report on the Syrian refugee crisis

'We will be looking to get the parents, school, and a representative of the multi-agency safeguarding hub together so that we can resolve what has happened to the satisfaction of all concerned.

'The education and well-being of our pupils is paramount and will be the focus of our discussions.'

Mr Atkinson said the school has since telephoned him to request a meeting but the family did not feel comfortable attending.

The Prevent Duty initiative is a counter-terrorist strategy that aims to put a stop to the radicalisation of an individual before it becomes a criminal matter.

The hope is that by noticing possible signs of radicalisation, the scheme can prevent more schoolchildren and young adults becoming lured in by the Islamic States ideologies.

The scheme came into force in June.

It aims to offer practical help to prevent people being drawn into terrorism, and ensures that they are given appropriate support and advice.

Teachers play a vital role within the scheme, as increasing numbers of schoolchildren are being targeted by ISIS recruiters via social media.
An award-winning author has spoken out about how he was asked not speak about his new book at a Catholic school just days after he came out as gay.

William Kostakis, 26, penned an admission about his sexuality on his blog last week after his former boyfriend - who he secretly dated for eight months - was diagnosed with cancer.

Just days later, Mr Kostakis received an email from a staff member at De La Salle College in Revesby Heights, south-west of Sydney, over concerns about the content of his latest book - The Sidekicks - which features a gay character.

Author William Kostakis (pictured) has spoken out about how he was asked not speak about his new book The Sidekick at a catholic school just days after he came out as gay

The school claims in an email they were concerned about the content of his latest book - The Sidekicks - which features a gay character

'We have a concern about promoting your new book at our school as it is a Catholic school,' the staff member said in an email, which has been shared on the blog on Wednesday.

'We were reading over your blog and I think it might not be appropriate, and parents might not be happy.

'I have nothing personally against you and it sounds like a touching story that would love to read, however I feel it isn't appropriate.'

The Sydney-based author previously appeared at the school last year to promote another novel The First Third, which also featured gay themes.

After a successful speech, Mr Kostakis was invited back to the school to do another meet and greet this year in March and June.

However, just days after publishing his admission on the blog, the school asked Mr Kostakis in an email not to speak about his new book - and they offered him another alternative.

'If you want to promote The First Third on March 30, you are more than welcome however I have been advised we can't promote your new book,' the email reads.

'I understand this isn't in your best interest so we can cancel the meet and greet.

'I spoke to [your agent], we still absolutely want you in June, but if possible can you please do the same talk as last year with focus on becoming an author and The First Third?'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Association of Catholic School NSW for comment.

The Sydney-based author received an email from a staff member at De La Salle College in Revesby Heights, south-west of Sydney, over concerns about the content of his latest book

After a successful speech, Mr Kostakis was invited back to the school to do a meet and greet this year

Mr Kostakis told BuzzFeed News that he asked his agent to cancel the school appearances, adding that he would happily forego the $460 speaking fee.

'That's not how much it costs to sell myself out,' he told BuzzFeed News.

'The most anyone [The Sidekicks] does is kiss. Its mostly a book about the fear of closets, and why teenagers in real life have to stay in the closet. And they just proved my thesis.

'I understand that a lot of schools are Catholic, and I would like my books to be read by as many people as possible,' he said. 'I'm always careful about the way I represent any kind of sexuality.'

Mr Kostakis said he initially feared that coming out publicly would affect his chances of speaking at schools

The Sydney-based author appeared at the school last year to promote another novel The First Third, which also featured gay themes

Following the email exchange, the 16-year-old author has weighed in on the issue on social media

In a response to the school via email, Mr Kostakis said both The First Third and The Sidekicks 'dealt with queerness in a careful and respectful manner'.

'The First Third was acceptable, but now I have a blog post saying I like men, The Sidekicks is not,' he said.

Mr Kostakis said he initially feared that coming out publicly would affect his chances of speaking to students at schools as it played a big part of being a young Australian author.

'Coming out publicly was difficult,' he wrote in the response to the school.

'I feared I would have to choose between doing what I love/earn a living from - engaging kids to read and be truthful in their writing - and not having to hide my partners from colleagues as "friends".

'I had hoped, having spoken at some Catholic schools, those schools would be comfortable with my revelation knowing what I bring to my presentations and workshops.
A mother-of-two suffered life-changing burns after her ex-boyfriend tortured her at home in one of the worst domestic violence cases ever seen by police in Britain.

Suzanne Thomas, 33, had boiling water poured on her arms, legs, stomach and crotch by Jason McLean, 36, on the day after she broke up with him.

McLean, who was later jailed for 14 years, broke into her home and held Ms Thomas at knifepoint before kicking her to the ground, stamping on her head and dousing her in boiling water.

The domestic abuser then calmly filled up the kettle and put it on again but a friend of his victim also in the house managed to flag down a police car outside and McLean fled.

Shocking: Suzanne Thomas, 33, left today, had boiling water poured on her as she was tortured by Jason McLean, 36, right, who was upset when she broke up with him

Terror: Ms Thomas has released these pictures of her scorched legs, stomach, legs and crotch described by police as one of the worst domestic abuse cases ever seen

Protection: As McLean poured boiling water from the kettle on to her body she used her arms to protect herself, which were also badly burned

Helpless: McLean went on the run and somehow managed to sneak into his victim's hospital room and threaten her again

The 33-year-old suffered 27 per cent burns all over her stomach, legs and crotch and scalding marks all down her arms as she tried to protect herself from the water.

McLean, 36, went on the run but chillingly tracked Suzanne to the hospital where she was being treated.

He sneaked into her hospital room and told her: 'You haven't seen anything yet - if you think this is bad see what comes next.'

But he was finally arrested before he could carry out his threats and is now serving a 14-year sentence after being jailed in 2014.

Suzanne, a full-time mother to two girls, is trying to rebuild her life and is still receiving treatment for the third-degree burns and has bravely released photos of her injuries for the first time.

She said: 'It was absolutely the worst pain I have ever been in. It felt like someone was ripping sheets of skin off me - but slowly.

'He was in a complete rage - staring straight through me. He was in a total and blind rage.

'At first I was angry, and then after seeing him smirking in court all I wanted was to see him get a good sentence - and I think he did.

'What Jason did to me that night has completely changed my life - I can't even face having a bath as a fear of water still haunts me.

'I don't feel ashamed and I don't feel angry any more; I just feel sad. I feel sad that a man could do that to someone.

'I couldn't do that to my worst enemy.'

Suzanne met McLean in a nightclub in March 2013 and they instantly hit it off and he moved into her home in Nottingham six months later.

But within days he had become controlling and jealous and she threw him out after a few weeks living together.

She then went out with friend and returned with one girlfriend in the early hours to find her living room window open and McLean inside with a knife.

He jumped out of the window and forced her to open the door while her friend ran for help.

Suzanne recalled: 'I was trying to calm him down, but he just wasn't hearing it.

'He started kicking me and I fell to the ground and he carried on with the kicking, and stamping on my head.

Result: Suzanne spent three weeks in hospital wrapped chest to toe in bandages and needed a cocktail of drugs to manage the pain

'That's when I don't know if I passed out briefly because when I went to sit up he was holding a kettle above me.

It was absolutely the worst pain I have ever been in. It felt like someone was ripping sheets of skin off me - but slowly. What Jason did to me that night has completely changed my life - I can't even face having a bath as a fear of water still haunts me. Victim Suzanne Thomas

'He poured that directly on my lap, all down my legs and my stomach.

'I was screaming.

'He said 'do you want another one?' and he went back to the kitchen, but that's when the police came.

'I went straight into shock and then it felt freezing cold. The pain was horrific.'

Suzanne was rushed to the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham where she spent three weeks wrapped chest to toe in bandages and on a cocktail of painkillers.

Doctors said had if McLean had poured another kettle of water over her the extra burns would probably have killed her.

McLean eventually handed himself into police and was jailed in March 2014 after being convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of causing grievous bodily harm with intent.

Detective Inspector Peter Queen said: 'This is one of the most horrific cases of domestic violence I have seen and the injuries to Suzanne will leave scars for the rest of her life.

'Unfortunately, it doesn't end there for Suzanne or for anyone who is a victim of abuse as the psychological scars run just as deep.'

Suzanne has since moved to Skegness, Lincolnshire, where she is trying to start a new life with her two school-aged daughters.
Residents were evacuated from homes nearby while other people in the area were urged to stay indoors

Hazmat teams had to try and contain

Dozens of homes were evacuated after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed overnight in upstate New York.

Hazmat crews were still working to contain ethanol leaking from a tanker on Wednesday morning just outside Ripley, which is 60 miles southwest of Buffalo.

Three cars out of 16 on the Norfolk Southern freight train were carrying dangerous chemicals that came off the tracks.

Scroll down for video

Dozens of homes were evacuated and many more were told to stay indoors after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed overnight (pictured) in upstate New York

Hazmat crews (pictured) were working to contain ethanol leaking from a tanker on Wednesday morning just outside Ripley, which is 60 miles southwest of Buffalo

Residents within 1,000ft of the crash site were told to leave their properties, while those living nearby were urged to stay indoors, according to Time Warner Cable News Buffalo

A spokesman for Norfolk Southern says a train derailed on the rail company's line around 9:30pm

Emergency services officials say that no one was injured and there was no fire.

But two of the derailed cars contained ethanol that leaked.

Officials say one tanker has been contained and crews are working on the other.

A derailed tanker containing propane is intact.

Officials say between 25 to 30 people have been evacuated from their homes. Other residents near the site have been urged to remain inside their homes.

Ripley is on the Pennsylvania border in western Chautauqua County, on Lake Erie.

Governor Andrew Cuomo released a statement saying: 'While there is no fire or reported injuries at this time, three rail cars carrying hazardous liquids, including ethanol, were turned on their side, and one is confirmed to be leaking.

'As a result, emergency response officials evacuated several homes in the immediate vicinity and instructed other nearby residents to stay inside while authorities continue to assess the situation.

'I have directed the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services' Office of Emergency Management, the Office of Fire Prevention and Control, the Department of Environmental Conservation as well as foam equipment to assist in suppressing the spill and provide support to hazmat teams that will be working to patch the leak.

'We will continue to respond to the situation as it develops and take all necessary actions to keep people safe.'

Residents within 1,000ft of the crash site were told to leave their properties while those living nearby were urged to stay indoors. Ripley is on the Pennsylvania border in western Chautauqua County, on Lake Erie
NATO's top commander in Europe has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of deliberately 'weaponizing' the refugee crisis in order to overwhelm and destabilize the continent.

General Philip Breedlove said the massive flow of migrants from Syria has had a disruptive effect on the European countries where they found refuge, and that this has worked to Russia's advantage.

Overnight, Macedonia briefly opened their border with Greece to allow just 170 of the thousands of refugees and migrants waiting at the recently erected razor-wire fence.

About 10,000 people remain camped at the crossing near the small border-village of Idomeni, Greece, with hundreds more arriving every day.

More and more tents are put up each day near the Greek village of Idomeni, near the Macedonian border

Migrants wait to cross the border into Macedonia hours after the country allowed 170 people in from Greece

These families arrived at the transit camp in northern Greece today, hoping for a chance to continue north

The way is shut: A Greek police officer checks registration papers as refugees crowd to cross the border from the Greek side to Macedonia where just 170 people were allowed across overnight

General Breedlove warned US lawmakers Tuesday that Russia is helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turn the refugee crisis into a 'weapon' against the West.

'Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve,' Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Breedlove, who also heads the US military's European Command, suggested this creates a distraction for Western powers as they grapple with the crisis and are forced to take their eye off its root cause.

'These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can't find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem,' Breedlove said.

Further complicating the refugee crisis, he added, is that increasing numbers of foreigners who have fought in Syria are heading home again, bringing battlefield skills and sometimes extremist ideologies.

General Philip Breedlove, pictured in October, accused Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad of deliberately fuelling the refugee crisis, turning it into a 'weapon' against the West.

Hope: A young migrant looks through a fence while waiting for food at one of the refugee camps near the Greek-Macedonian border

No more room: Refugees from Iraq sleep on the ground as the nearby camps have become too overcrowded, while they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia

'What we have seen growing in the past months and year is that in that flow of refugees we see criminality, terrorism and foreign fighters,' he said.

At least 25,000 people are currently stranded in Greece, the country a majority of migrants and refugees arrive in after making a perilous crossing over the Mediterranean Sea.

As individual European countries, led by Austria, have imposed immigration caps, this has caused a domino effect down the Balkan 'immigration corridor', where more than a million people have passed through in the past year on their way to Germany or Scandinavia.

Greek police say Macedonia opened the crossing from midnight Tuesday to 2am Wednesday, and from 7am to 9am Wednesday, admitting 170 people from Syria and Iraq.

Macedonia says it will only allow in as many refugees as Serbia, its northern neighbour, accepts each day.

Hundreds, including many families with small children, are arriving every day at the Idomeni crossing in northern Greece.

Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions

Hundreds, including many families with small children, are arriving every day at the Idomeni crossing

The first two refugee camps are now so full that thousands have set up tents in fields nearby

The first two refugee camps are now so full that thousands have set up tents in fields nearby, living in appalling conditions.

'I've been at Idomeni for ten days and it's the fourth day I've been waiting to cross over,' Hassan Rasheed, 27, from Iraq, said.

'Conditions are very bad. There are many ill children who are coughing, and we spent the night in this tent under heavy rain.'

The barbed barrier, built of razor wire and thick fencing, now stretches for 19 miles along the Greek-Macedonian border near Idomeni.

Earlier this week, a mob of refugees and migrants attempted to push through the barriers and were forced back by Macedonian riot police using tear gas and stun grenades.

Before that, sporadic closures since February 19 had slowed the number allowed through to just dozens a day.

Overnight, rain soaked many families, who hung up clothing to dry Tuesday on the border fence.

A field official with the United Nations refugee agency on the Macedonian side of the crossing said authorities will soon send a train with about 500 people from the nearby town of Gevgelija to the Serbian border.

Jasmin Rexhepi, head of the aid group Legis, said that a group of about 50 Pakistanis remain trapped for a fourth day on the Macedonian side of the border between two razor-wire fences. He said Macedonian authorities are trying to send them back to Greece because the group crossed the border illegally.

Rexhepi also said that about 1,000 refugees - 750 Afghans and 250 Iraqis - are stuck at Macedonia's border with Serbia, which has refused them entry.

Domino effect: Macedonia says it will only allow in as many refugees as neighbouring Serbia accepts each day

As individual European countries have imposed immigration caps, this has caused a domino effect down the Balkan 'immigration corridor', leaving more than 25,000 people stranded in Greece

A young migrant stands by the Greek-Macedonian border fence, near the village of Idomeni, Greece

About 2,000 migrants are still reaching Greek islands from nearby Turkey every day, despite the recent deployment of NATO ships in the east Aegean Sea.

In Athens, the government said it has requested 480 million euros (372.7million) in aid for the refugee crisis from the EU, under an emergency plan to cope with as many as 100,000 stranded refugees  roughly three times the number now stuck inside Greece.

Athens is pressing EU countries to honor pledges to accept asylum seekers directly and for Turkey to help speed up deportations.

The government said 69 people from North Africa considered ineligible for asylum were deported to Turkey, with another 230 people due to be sent back by Wednesday.

The impasse in Greece drew strong criticism from the United Nations refugee agency, which warned that Europe 'is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis.'

A UNHCR statement said inconsistent policies on the continent 'are causing unnecessary suffering and risk being at variance with EU and international law standards.'

Europe is facing it's worst immigration crisis since the Second World War, with millions risking their lives to leave war and terror behind, or simply to seek a better life on another continent.

The latest UN report shows that in the first two months of 2016, more than 130,000 refugees and migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea - more than the total number for the first half of 2015.

These statistics do not take into account the thousands or men, women and children who have died while attempting to make the crossing.

A view of the barbed wire fence along the Greek-Macedonia border on March 01, 2016 near Idomeni, Greece

Migrants and refugees wait to cross the Greece-Macedonia border near the village of Idomeni on Tuesday
Ayeeshia Jane Smith died at Burton's Queen's Hospital on May 1, 2014. She had suffered a cardiac arrest, triggered by a laceration to her heart, caused by a stamp to the chest

The parents accused of murdering their 21-month-old daughter by stamping her death broke down in court today when their panicked 999 call was played to the jury.

Kathryn Smith, 23, and former partner Matthew Rigby, 22, both wept in the dock as the harrowing tape was broadcast publicly.

A distraught Smith could be heard crying uncontrollably as she told the female operator toddler Ayeeshia Jane Smith had stopped breathing after having a seizure at their family home in Stretton, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.

'It's my daughter, she's had a seizure. She's not breathing. She's seizing,' the young mother was heard saying.

'She's on the floor. She has a seizure when she gets too hot.'

As Mr Rigby performed CPR in the background, Smith then said: 'There's nothing. She's gone, she's gone. You need to be here.'

The mobile phone was then put on loudspeaker as the call handler instructed Rigby to put his finger in his daughter's mouth to try and remove any obstructions to her airway.

He can be heard counting to five repeatedly while performing chest compressions on the little girl as her mother wails in the background.

Smith then says: 'Nothing's happening. There's no heart beat,' before hanging up.

The distressing recording was provided in court the day after the couple's former neighbour Tracey Roberts gave evidence in which she claimed to have heard a child's voice screaming 'stop mummy, stop daddy!' just days before young Ayeeshia's tragic death.

The toddler died at Burton's Queen's Hospital on May 1, 2014. She had suffered a cardiac arrest, triggered by a laceration to her heart. A post-mortem concluded the injury was caused by a powerful foot stamp on her chest.

The court today heard how the couple performed CPR on Ayeeshia for several minutes as the 999 emergency call handler gave them instructions down the phone.

As the phone recording was played through the court's speaker system, Smith, wearing a grey hoodie, dark leggings and glasses, sat with her head in her heads, sobbing and wiping her face with a tissue as the audio.

Rigby, sitting beside her in a white unbuttoned shirt and black jeans, turned his face away and wept.

Marcus Bailey, of West Midlands Ambulance Service, was the first paramedic on the scene following the 999 call, arriving at the couple's home at 4.10pm.

He told the court: 'I saw a lady standing in the doorway, she looked distressed. She ushered me into the living room.

Ayeeshia had only been returned to Ms Smith six months before her death, having previously been taken into care by social services. Smith (pictured leaving court) and Rigby both deny murdering the toddler at their home in Stretton, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire

Smith and Rigby, both from Nottingham, deny killing their daughter - who was also found to have sustained a large bruise to her back and buttocks, bruising to her head, neck, left eyelid and left leg on the day she died.

'The place looked reasonably well-kept and I didn't hear any shouting that I can recall.

'My initial vision was the adult male performing CPR on the child. The child was laid on the floor, flat on her back on a fluffy blanket. She was naked in front of the fireplace.

'She looked incredibly pale. I instructed the male to stand to one side so I could start treatment. When I touched the child I noticed how cold she was, it was unusually cold. There was blueness around the extremities which indicates a lack of oxygen in the body.

'I didn't observe any markings to the child.

I overheard a comment from them that there was a five-minute delay in calling an ambulance because they thought they could handle the situation themselves. Marcus Bailey, West Midlands Ambulance Service

'I started chested compressions and my colleague put a tube in her mouth to try and get some oxygen into her. We gave her adrenaline but there was no heart rhythm at all. She was flat-lining.

'We conveyed her to the ambulance and drove to hospital. The female was in the front and the male was in the back with myself and a colleague as we continued resuscitation.

'There was a full team waiting for us when we arrived and I was still at the hospital when I later heard the child had died.'

Mr Bailey said that when he was at the couple's home, Mr Smith told him he had heard a thud in the bedroom. He told the paramedic that his daughter had previously suffered a febrile convulsion - a common seizure among children.

He added: 'I overheard a comment from them that there was a five-minute delay in calling an ambulance because they thought they could handle the situation themselves.'

Paramedic Mark Chiles, who also attended the scene, said: 'The mother appeared very distraught and said "do something, do something". It was mentioned the child had had a couple of seizures in the past.

'The male said that the child had taken herself off to bed and they heard a scream. He said went in and found her purple and she started to twitch and then went limp.

Matthew Rigby (left), 22, and partner Kathryn Smith (right), 23, are accused of murdering their daughter Ayeeshia Jane Smith in May 2014. The toddler died from a laceration to her heart that a pathologist concluded was caused by a powerful foot stamp on her chest, which triggered a cardiac arrest

'Her skin was white and waxy when we got there and she was very cold.'

As well as the recording from the day of Ayeeshia's death, the jury also heard three other of 999 calls made by Smith - one from March 11, 2014, and two dated April 14 that year.

In the first tape, Smith pretended to be a neighbour and reported 'arguing and shouting' going on at her address and 'things being smashed'.

When asked by the operator if she has children, she hung up.

On February 3, 2014 - three months before her death - Ayeeshia was treated in hospital after becoming 'floppy and unresponsive'

In the second call - made just over a month later - she asked for 'someone to be sent to my address'.

When the operator asked why a child could be heard crying in the background, Smith shouted: 'Put it down'. She could then be heard arguing with a man, adding: 'Stop it, Matt. Stop taking my daughter off me. I'm not letting you get into trouble. No, I'm not.'

Hours after that call, Smith phoned 999 again. In that instance she claimed Rigby had threatened to have her killed.

On February 3, 2014 - three months before her death - Ayeeshia was treated in hospital after becoming 'floppy and unresponsive.'

Following her death in May, a pathologist ruled that her brain was 'starved of oxygen' shortly before she died.

Doctor Safa Al-Suraj, consultant neuropathologist at Kings College Hospital, told the court: 'Microscopic examination showed bleeds consistent with those of several weeks or months old duration.

'There was also an old healed thin subdural haematoma in the spinal cord. It was consistent with bleeding of several weeks to months' duration.

'She was starved of oxygen in the period immediately before death.

'It is possible these could have been caused by one or more episodes of trauma.

'Such trauma could occur in a fall where there's more than one impact but it would need to be a significant fall.

'A possible cause for the injuries would be hyper-flexing and hyper-extension of the neck which involves excessive moving of the head forward and back.

'This can be caused by shaking and can result in strain of the blood vessels and bleeding.'

Birmingham Crown Court (pictured) heard Smith called 999 at around 4pm on May 1, 2014. She told an operator that Ayeeshia was barely breathing. The toddler was declared dead at Burton's Queen's Hospital an hour later. The couple - who have since split up - told doctors she had suffered a seizure

Ayeeshia had only been returned to Ms Smith six months before her death, having previously been taken into care by social services.

At yesterday's opening day of the trial, Prosecutor Christopher Hotten said: 'No child, certainly under the age of two, should suffer bruising at the hands of those who should be caring for her.

'However, that is precisely what we say happened to Ayeeshia in the eight months or so these two people were jointly looking after her.

'We say there was a consistent pattern of non-accidental bruising that must have happened when one or both were looking after Ayeeshia and about which both must have known.'

Mr Hotten said a post-mortem examination revealed Ayeeshia had suffered a fatal wound to her heart and had three broken ribs.
Advertisement

This is the moment a cheeky male lion chased after his partner - before catching up with the lioness and playfully biting her on the rear.

The big cats were captured on camera playing around at the Mbumazi lion farm in the town of Vyrheid in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Pictures show the male sprinting after the lioness and using his paw to stop her from getting away - before clamping down with his jaws.

The scene was captured by Romano Volker who said: 'These photographs happened by surprise and I'll likely not witness this again soon.'

Giving chase: An amorous male lion chased after his partner - before catching up with the lioness and playfully biting her on the rear

Moving in: Pictures show the cheeky lion chasing the lioness around before opening its jaws and giving her a playful bite

Biting issue: The male sprinted after the petite lioness and used his front left paw to stop her from getting away - before clamping down with his jaws

Catch me if you can: The big cats were captured on camera playing around together at the Mbumazi lion farm in the town of Vyrheid in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

On the prowl: The scene was captured by 60-year-old photographer Romano Volker who said: 'These photographs happened by surprise and I'll likely not witness this again soon'

In for the kill: The cheeky lion gives chase as the lioness tries to bound away. But the male catches up and gives her rear a nibble

Pictures show the moment the lion caught up with the lioness during part of their mating ritual at Mbumazi lion farm in the town of Vyrheid in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

After playing around at the lion farm the pair paused to relax with the lioness lying down in the grass and the male standing next to her
This is the astonishing moment sailors witnessed the birth of an island when an underwater volcano created a desert before their very eyes in the middle of the ocean.

The crew of the yacht Maiken were sailing through the south Pacific near the Vava'u Islands in Tonga when they noticed that the water in the distance had gone a strange colour.

Then, as they approached, the sea mysteriously turned to stone.

This is the astonishing moment sailors witnessed the birth of an island when an underwater volcano erupted in the middle of the ocean. The crew of the yacht Maiken were sailing through the south Pacific near the Vava'u Islands in Tonga when they noticed that the water in the distance had turned a strange colour (above)

As the crew approached, the sea mysteriously turned to stone as the volcano pushed up new land

A beach in the middle of the sea: Before long, the land mass had, as one of the crew described it, bubbled up out of the ocean 'like the Sahara with rolling hills of sand as far as the eye could see'

They hadn't run ashore, but had instead found themselves surrounded by a huge raft of floating pumice stone

Before long, the land mass had, as one of the crew described it, bubbled up out of the ocean 'like the Sahara with rolling hills of sand as far as the eye could see'.

The crew documented the phenomenon in a series of remarkable pictures as they sailed into formation to investigate it.

They hadn't run ashore, but instead found themselves surrounded by a huge raft of floating pumice stone.

Mystery: The crew documented the phenomenon in a series of remarkable pictures as they sailed into the formation to investigate, not knowing at that time that a volcano was erupting just a few miles away

Recalling the event, sailor Fredrik Fransson said: 'We looked out and it was as if there was no more sea'

Recalling the event that took place in August 2006, Swedish sailor Fredrik Fransson told Discover magazine: 'We looked out and, in front of us, it was as if there was no more sea.

'It was like the Sahara, with rolling hills of sand as far as the eye could see.'

What they didn't yet know was that, just a few miles away, a volcano was erupting under the surface, spewing out the new land.

'Then we saw a black pillar (of smoke) shooting up into the air, and we understood that it had to be a volcano,' said Mr Fransson, adding that they navigated cautiously towards the plume.

What they didn't yet know was that, just a few miles away, a volcano was erupting, spewing out the new land

The crew navigated cautiously towards the plume and found an island being created before their very eyes

'It was kind of a smouldering, smokey stuff. It looked like coal, and when there was an eruption, we could see the new material piling up on it.'

They then watched as an island grew before their eyes with each explosion in an area where there should be an underwater seamount called Home Reef.

Underwater eruptions are thought to occur dozens of times a year, but normally in remote areas or at depths inaccessible to humans.

They then watched as an island grew with each explosion at an underwater seamount called Home Reef

Underwater eruptions are thought to occur dozens of times a year, but in remotes areas or at depths inaccessible to humans

As such, this event excited scientists, but by the time researchers reached the site six months later, much of it had been washed away by waves

As such, this event excited scientists, but by the time researchers reached the site six months later, much of it had been washed away by waves.

The eruption is thought to have had a more lasting impact on the environment, however, by attracting barnacles, corals, algae and oysters.

Eight months after the island's birth, some of it had washed up in Queensland, Australia, some 2,000 miles away.
Samuel Rogers, 45, from Walsall, has been jailed for 20 years after deliberately ploughing into his ex-girlfriend and her father and leaving him paralysed

A jealous ex-boyfriend deliberately ploughed into his estranged girlfriend's car while their two young children were inside before mowing down her father and leaving him paralysed for life.

Drunk Samuel Rogers, 45, had phoned Helen Edwards, 27, and told her he 'wanted her dead' before tailing her car and ramming into the back at nearly 40mph after she had stopped to talk to her father Paul Maloney.

Moments later, Rogers revved his engine and smashed into her parents' car, catapulting Mr Maloney - who had got out of his car and was standing by his daughter's window - 40m through the air.

The 52-year-old was knocked unconscious and was airlifted to hospital after having a heart attack where he spent six weeks fighting for his life.

The impact also seriously injured Mr Maloney's 51-year-old wife Jacqueline - who already had multiple sclerosis and relied on a wheelchair - who was sitting in the passenger seat at the time.

Rogers, the father of Ms Edwards's son and daughter, has now been jailed for 20 years after pleading guilty to grievous bodily harm, two charges of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and driving with excess alcohol.

After the sentence, detectives warned that Rogers could have been tried for murder if Mr Maloney - who had worked in the postal service and was a carer for his wife before the horror crash - had died.

Passing sentence at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Patrick Thomas QC said the consequences of his actions had been 'truly appalling'.

He said: 'The principal person injured was Mr Maloney. He suffered grievous injuries which have left him wheelchair-bound. Before that he was a healthy and hard-working man.'

The court heard how Rogers, an engineer from Walsall, and Miss Edwards had been in a 'volatile' relationship. They had two children but split up in mid-2014 when Rogers returned to his native Australia.

But the court was told how, when he moved back to the UK in July last year, he began sending Miss Edwards threatening texts because he believed she had started a new relationship.

Then, in September last year, he began tailing Miss Edward's Vauxhall Corsa and her parents' Ford C Max as they drove through Kings Norton, Birmingham.

When the two cars stopped, and Mr Maloney got out of his car to talk to his daughter, Rogers drove towards the two vehicles. The court heard he deliberately drove into the back of Miss Edwards's vehicle, before ramming into Mr and Mrs Maloney's car.

Mr Maloney was then thrown into the air and suffered 'catastrophic injuries'.

Rachel Brand QC said: 'He suffered injuries to the top of his spine and damage to the spinal cord. He will never walk again. His legs are completely paralysed.'

The court heard Mr Maloney had worked all of his life in the postal services and was a carer for his wife. She was also injured in the crash, while Miss Edward suffered whiplash injuries.

All three attended the court hearing, with Mr and Mrs Maloney both arriving in wheelchairs.

The court was told how Rogers was breathalysed two-and-half hours later he was still almost twice the driving alcohol limit.

When the two cars stopped, and Mr Maloney got out of his car, Rogers drove towards the two vehicles, deliberately driving into the back of Miss Edwards's vehicle before hitting Mr and Mrs Maloney's car (right)

Michael Duck QC, defending, said: 'This is a man who has clearly had a significant problem with alcohol over the years.

'At the time of the offence he was employed in a very significant and responsible role with a local company. This was born out of a loss of temper over a short period of time.'

After the hearing, West Midlands Police Detective Inspector Paul Joyce said: 'This was far more than a case of dangerous driving. Rogers flew into a rage and used his car as a weapon to cause very serious injuries.

'His ex's father was resuscitated on several occasions - we could easily have been looking at a murder enquiry - and he has been left paralysed.

'It is beyond belief that someone could deliberately plough into a vehicle containing their own young children. Fortunately they didn't suffer any serious injuries.

'I hope this lengthy custodial sentence gives his victims some comfort that he has paid a heavy price for his actions that day.'
A cruise ship that was previously battered by a major storm in the Atlantic Ocean has returned to port early - cutting short another cruise.

Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, on Wednesday morning.

The ship was scheduled to return from a southern Caribbean cruise on Friday.

However, cruise line spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez says planned stops in Barbados and St. Kitts were skipped so the 1,141-foot ship could avoid predicted strong winds and rough seas.

RCLcorp tweeted Wednesday: '#AnthemoftheSeas returned home safely after activating our enhanced storm avoidance policy. We are glad that guests got a smooth ride home.'

Scroll down for video

Message: A TV screen in a stateroom aboard the Anthem of the Seas shows cruise director Abe Hughes and Captain Anders Ingobrigtsen explaining to passengers that the cruise was being cut two days short

The cruise ship was scheduled to return from a southern Caribbean cruise on Friday. A tweet from RCLcorp, which said the ship 'returned home safely,' is seen here

Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas docked in Bayonne, New Jersey, on Wednesday morning

Royal Caribbean tweeted (pictured) and posted to their Facebook page that the Anthem of the Seas cruise ship would be turning around due to a severe storm

Royal Caribbean International wrote on Facebook Saturday: 'Anthem of the Seas update: the ship will head back to Cape Liberty immediately to avoid a severe storm and provide guests with a comfortable journey back home.

'We've been closely watching a large storm off the coast of Cape Hatteras.

'We want to be extra cautious when it comes to weather in the area.'

On Monday, RCLcorp tweeted: '#AnthemoftheSeas is returning early bc of severe forecast storm.

'Captain followed our new storm avoidance policy and consulted with experts.'

Another tweet from that day said: '#AnthemoftheSeas sail home has been smooth. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our guests and crew.'

The company says the captain was following a new storm avoidance policy that was instituted after the ship was damaged last month when 4,500 passengers hunkered down for hours because of 30-foot waves and hurricane force winds. Four sustained minor injuries.

A map from weather.com shows weather Wednesday around Cape Hatteras

The ship was damaged last month (pictured) and 4,500 passengers hunkered down for hours because of 30-foot waves and hurricane force winds

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) recently called for the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the February Anthem of the Seas voyage when parts of the ship sustained damaged during the storm-hit voyage

Martinez also says a small number of the ship's 6,000 passengers and crew on the latest trip have been treated for what's believed to be norovirus.

RCLcorp tweeted Monday: 'Some #AnthemoftheSeas guests have experienced norovirus symptoms.

'About 10 per day from 6,000 total pop. Didn't affect decision to return.'

On Wednesday, it tweeted: 'When #AnthemoftheSeas arrived there were only a few active cases of norovirus.

'The ship will now go through an enhanced & thorough cleaning.'

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) recently called for the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the February Anthem of the Seas voyage, DailyMail.com reported.

He said: 'The thing about this storm was that it was forecast for days.

'So why in the world would a cruise ship with thousands of passengers go sailing right into it?'

A passenger from Anthem of the Seas awaits transportation after arriving at Cape Liberty cruise port on February 10. The ship returned early from a seven-day cruise to the Bahamas after it was battered by a major storm in the Atlantic Ocean

Royal Caribbean last month said in a statement: 'We apologize for exposing our guests and crew to the weather they faced, and for what they went through.

'Our ship and our crew performed very well to keep everyone safe during severe weather.

'Of more than 6,000 people on board, only four minor injuries were reported.

'Despite that fact, the event, exceptional as it was, identified gaps in our planning system that we are addressing.
Osama bin Laden was planning more attacks on the U.S. days before his death in 2011, it has emerged

Osama bin Laden was planning more attacks on the U.S. just days before his death in order to mark the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, it has emerged.

A cache of letters written by the former Al-Qaeda leader reveal he wanted to continue the organisation's attacks, and had dedicated his own $29million fortune to jihad.

The documents are among the dozens of pieces of correspondence to be declassified after having been seized during the 2011 raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

'We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes,' says a letter, apparently written by bin Laden, to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of Al Qaeda's Yemen branch.

Bin Laden 'was still sort of thinking in very kind of grand schemes, and still... trying to reclaim that 9/11 'victory',' said one of the senior intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But he was 'somewhat out of touch with the [actual] capabilities of his organization,' the official said.

He also outlined in letters and other documents how at least $29 million of his funds and possessions should be apportioned towards global jihad after his death.

One of the letters was described by U.S. intelligence officials as what they believed was a last will.

Reuters and ABC Television were given exclusive access to the documents, which were translated from Arabic and declassified by U.S. intelligence agencies.

They were part of a second tranche of documents seized in the operation and have been declassified since May 2015. A large number have yet to be released.

One document, a hand-written note that U.S. intelligence officials believe the Saudi militant composed in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29 million he had in Sudan.

One percent of the $29 million, bin Laden wrote, should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al Qaeda militant who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al Mauritani.

'By the way, he [al-Walid] has already received 20,000-30,000 dollars from it,' bin Laden continued. 'I promised him that I would reward him if he took it out of the [Sudanese] government.'

Bin Laden lived in Sudan for five years as an official guest until he was asked to leave in May 1996 by the then-Islamic fundamentalist government under pressure from the United States.

Another 1 percent of the sum should be given to a second associate, Engineer Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa'ad, for helping set up bin Laden's first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co, the document said.

Bin Laden urged his close relatives to use the rest of the funds to support holy war.

'I hope for my brothers, sisters and maternal aunts to obey my will and to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on jihad, for the sake of Allah,' he wrote.

Pakistani media and locals gather outside the building where Osama bin Laden was killed in a raid in 2011

Pictured in this grainy image is part of the wreckage of a U.S. helicopter that crashed outside the compound

bin Laden watches television in a still frame taken from tapes found inside the former Al Qaeda leader's home

He set down specific amounts in Saudi riyals and gold that should be apportioned between his mother, a son, a daughter, an uncle, and his uncle's children and maternal aunts.

In a letter dated August 15, 2008, and addressed 'To my Precious Father,' bin Laden asks that his wife and children be taken care of in the event he died first.

It was unclear to whom bin Laden was writing, as his natural father, Mohammed bin Laden, died in a 1967 airplane crash.

U.S. intelligence officials were not immediately available to comment on whether he may have been referring to his step-father, Mohammad al-Attas.

'My precious father: I entrust you well for my wife and children, and that you will always ask about them and follow up on their whereabouts and help them in their marriages and needs,' he wrote.

In a final wistful paragraph, he asks for forgiveness 'if I have done what you did not like.'
Strippers gyrate naked in front of 200 leering men in these scenes - filmed inside a maximum-security jail.

Inmates at Izalco Jail in El Salvador wrote to prison chiefs asking for permission for a disco and a show by a female dance group so they could celebrate a South American religious festival.

But the footage taken by a prisoner on his mobile showed the women dancers were strippers - and now an investigation is underway.

Video shows strippers gyrating naked in front of 200 leering men in these scenes - filmed inside a maximum-security jail

On inmate can be heard shouting: 'Dance, dance, come here, don't worry no-one's going to touch you' as three women end up naked in the prison patio'

The video, which has surfaced on social media sites, is already causing a headache for government officials.

Prisons Minister Rodil Hernandez has been quick to shift the blame onto his predecessor Nelson Rauda, insisting the controversial party took place in September 2012.

The official request to stage the party, sent by then-prison chief Jose Abarca on behalf of inmates to the country's former Prisons Director, has also been leaked to local press.

It shows how they asked for permission for cells to remain open all day to mark Virgin of Mercy Day, celebrated through the Spanish-speaking world, before the raucous party.

One of the men sat on the ground near to the strippers has his entire face and forearms covered with tattoos, an unmistakeable sign he belongs to one of the dangerous gangs or maras that El Salvador's prisons are filled with.

The video , which has surfaced on social media sites in the past few days, is now causing a headache for government officials who have promised to investigate.

The official request to stage the party, sent by then-prison chief Jose Abarca on behalf of inmates to the country's former Prisons Director, has also been leaked to local press

Another inmate can be heard shouting: 'Dance, dance, come here, don't worry no-one's going to touch you' as three women end up naked in the prison patio, lapdancing on the wolf-whistling men's laps.

The 41-second video is understood to have been found on a phone confiscated from a criminal gang member as part of a separate investigation.

The celebration has already been dubbed the Izalco Pornoparty.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman confirmed in a statement: 'Following the publication of a video showing a party at Izalco Jail, the Head of the Prisons Service has ordered an internal investigation to clarify what happened and hold those responsible accountable.

'We are currently awaiting the results of that investigation.'

Patricia Valdivieso, an MP for the opposition ARENA party, said: 'We don't know if these women were forced or threatened to perform and how many of these types of parties there've been.

The 41-second video is understood to have been found on a phone confiscated from a criminal gang member as part of a separate investigation

'The video shows there's even a prison officer enjoying himself at the party and that can't be tolerated.

'And it goes without saying that if it happened at this prison, it could have happened at others.'

One local complained on Facebook: 'So this is how people in our country pay for their crimes!'

Another added: 'The real tragedy is that honest law-abiding citizens in this country get crucified by taxes while these idiot criminals enjoy themselves.'

Prisons in some south American countries are famed for their policies of letting inmates do whatever they like inside jail - except escape.
David Cameron's latest report on the warnings of leaving the EU has been dismissed by his own ministers as more 'scaremongering' and was even mocked as 'like Halloween come early'.

The fresh analysis from government officials claimed a Brexit would lead to rising food and clothes prices and fewer jobs.

But human rights minister Dominic Raab hit out the Government report on the alternatives of EU membership, saying it was just the latest 'scare story... about the ghoulish prospects outside the European Union'.

And Iain Duncan Smith, one of the leading Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers, branded the document a 'dodgy dossier'.

David Cameron (pictured left leaving Downing Street this morning) was accused of publishing more 'scaremongering' warnings by his own justice minister Dominic Raab (pictured right), who said the 'scare stories' circulated by the Government was 'like Halloween come early'

The paper - which looks at arrangements adopted by Norway, Switzerland and Canada as well as the option of falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules - will say each would carry serious risks if they were adopted by the UK.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted the report showed the UK enjoys the 'best of both worlds' and warned negotiations to set up free trade agreements following a Brexit could take longer than the Second World War.

He also claimed that Leave campaigners were prepared to 'sacrifice' British jobs in order to cut ties with Brussels.

'Hard-headed analysis shows that every alternative to remaining in a reformed EU would leave Britain weaker, less safe and worse off. Working people would pay the price with few jobs and rising prices,' he told the Today programme.

The publication of the report indicates the Prime Minister is undeterred by accusations that he is running an unrelentingly negative campaign - dubbed 'Project Fear' by critics, including Boris Johnson - as he leads the fight to keep Britain in.

Iain Duncan Smith (pictured right) dismissed the latest document released by Philip Hammond (pictured left) as a 'dodgy dossier'

It follows hard on the heels of another Government paper earlier this week which warned the country would face a 'decade or more of uncertainty' if it chose to leave as it painstakingly negotiated new trade deals.

And it also warned that after the initial two-year transitional period after cutting ties with Brussels, UK citizens living or on holiday abroad could be left stranded.

BORIS STORMS AHEAD IN THE RACE FOR NUMBER 10 Assuming the two men make it into the run off, both pick up ground - but the poll suggests Mr Johnson still wins the race for No 10 by 56 per cent to 38 per cent Boris Johnson holds a more than 20 point lead over George Osborne in the race to be the next Prime Minister. Tory activists will choose the resident at No 10 for the first time ever when David Cameron stands aside. He has already made clear he will quit before the next election and his career could be brought to an abrupt end by defeat in the EU referendum on June 23. Party rules require Conservative MPs to whittle down the field to just two contenders before Tory members make the final choice. And today's YouGov poll for The Times shows Mr Johnson is the clear front runner. He stands far ahead on 43 per cent, leading Mr Osborne's score of 22 per cent. Assuming both men made the run off, a forced choice in the poll shows Mr Johnson sweeping to victory Mr Osborne by 56 per cent to 38 per cent. In the overall poll, Theresa May is a close third on 19 per cent, according to the survey of more than 1,000 party members. Newer choices, who only entered Parliament in 2010 and reached the front rank of government in the second half of the last Parliament, were far behind. Sajid Javid scored 7 per cent in the poll and Nicky Morgan, who has already declared she would like to run, scored just 1 per cent. Mr Johnson would beat Mrs May by 20 points if they contend the final run off. Mr Osborne appears set for a narrow win over Mrs May if they are chosen as the final candidates - the poll suggests he leads 46 per cent to 42 per cent. As Chancellor and a key ally of the Prime Minister, Mr Osborne has long been seen as the strongest contender to take over from Mr Cameron. But he had a dangerous run in with Conservative MPs - particularly newly elected MPs - over planned cuts to tax credits. A rebellion on his own benches forced him to an expensive u-turn as he threw out the whole 4.4billion cut at November's autumn statement. Advertisement

The latest paper examines the arrangements which other countries outside the EU have adopted - and finds none offers the advantages of continued membership.

Pointing to the example of Norway, the document says Oslo still has to make a significant contribution to EU spending and accept three-quarters of EU laws with no votes or vetoes.

It also has to accept the free movement of people, with EU migrants accounting for a higher proportion of the population - 6 per cent - than they do in the UK where it is 4 per cent.

But Mr Raab, mocking the latest government report, told the BBC: 'I think that there has been far too much scaremongering.

'It's like Halloween come early; we have a scare story each week about the ghoulish prospects outside the European Union.

'I don't believe in ghosts and I'm not afraid of these ghoulish stories of life outside the EU.'

Warning the Prime Minister of running a negative campaign, he added: 'I think there's been far too much scaremongering. I think there are brighter opportunities for Britain in terms of lower food bills, lower energy costs, freer trade from Latin America to Asia, which of course are the growth areas for the British economy and exports. That's where the real advantages lie.'

Mr Hammond, challenged about the splits in the Conservative party which have seen five Cabinet ministers and two former leaders back a Brexit, he said the Leave campaigners 'have to be honest and open about their priorities'.

'I know people, there are people out there - they won't say this publicly - but privately they are prepared to sacrifice jobs and growth in order to be able to get the clampdown on migration from the EU, in order to stop paying into the EU.

'We need to be honest with the British people about this. My judgment is if the British people have the facts they will make up their own minds.

'But it isn't honest to pretend to the British people, as some have been doing, that we will be able to carry on as if we were still members of the EU with full access to the European markets, nothing will change, our businesses can go on selling and jobs will be safe yet we won't have to accept freedom of movement, we won't have to accept irksome EU regulations and we won't have to contribute to the budget.

'That is not going to happen, it is not a realistic scenario and the Leave campaign needs to be honest about that.'

The Government report cites Switzerland and Canada as countries that have only limited access to the European single market, despite trade deals which have taken years to negotiate.

The paper says that if similar arrangements were adopted by Britain, the UK financial services sector would face increased costs as they would no longer have 'passports' allowing them to sell to the EU market.

Like Norway, Switzerland has to accept the free movement of people with almost four times as many EU nationals living in the country as a percentage of the population as there are in the UK.

The most drastic option, if the UK failed to reach a deal with the EU, would be to fall back on WTO rules, the paper states, which would mean new tariffs on UK exports hitting companies with supply chains in Europe.

Mr Hammond said: 'It is not credible to suggest that you could have continued access to the single market without having to accept freedom of movement of labour, without having to accept EU regulations, and without having to contribute to the EU budget.

'Now maybe the Leave campaign wants to say they are prepared to accept all of those things, but if you accept all of those things surely we are better off inside the European Union with our seat at the table, helping to shape those rules as well as being bound by them.'

Mr Cameron also challenged the Leave camp to set out 'what their detailed plan for Britain outside the EU is - and its impact on the economy and prices'.

But in a further deepening of Conservative divisions, Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Duncan Smith said the 'real uncertainty' lay with the EU 'project'.

'As each day passes we see yet another example - from the utter failure to cope with the migrant crisis, to the increasing disaster of the euro,' he said.

'This dodgy dossier won't fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU.

'The truth is we won't copy any other country's deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms - and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. That's the safer choice.'

Responding to Mr Hammond's publication of the report today, Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott said: 'The Government is doing everything it can to falsely engineer a climate of fear about leaving the EU with ludicrous claim after ludicrous claim.

'The stream of taxpayer-funded propaganda is disappointing, disingenuous and unbecoming of the senior politicians sent out to defend it. It is undermining the open and honest debate the public want to have. The safe option is to Vote Leave.

'When we Vote Leave we will negotiate a free trade deal based on friendly co-operation with the EU, but end the supremacy of EU law.

'We will be free to spend our money on our priorities. The UK is the fifth largest economy in the world. As the Foreign Secretary himself admitted this morning, of course we we would be able to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU after we Vote Leave.'

THE QUEEN'S SPEECH IS DELAYED AS DAVID CAMERON THROWS EVERYTHING AT WINNING THE EU REFERENDUM The Queen, pictured with Prince Philip during last year's State Opening, does not yet have a date for her next visit to Parliament for the State Opening The Queen's Speech is set to be delayed until after the EU referendum as the Government throws everything at the historic poll. The set-piece constitutional occasion has generally been held in May following the move to fixed term Parliaments in 2010. It is an annual occasion for the Government to announce its legislative plans for the year ahead and sees a full display of Royal pageantry as the Queen visits Parliament to read out the remarks. But the ceremony has reportedly been pushed back to after the June 23 referendum as David Cameron plans for how he will bring his party back together. The Times said the event would be accompanied by the expected post-referendum reshuffle as the Prime Minister bids to get back on the front foot. When it comes, the speech is thought likely to include prison reforms, an expansion of health devolution and further legislation to end discrimination. Advertisement

Control-freak Cameron demands to vet speeches planned by WORLD LEADERS to make sure they don't undermine his bid to keep Britain in the EU

Downing Street officials have demanded world leaders send them speeches that could affect the referendum campaign in advance so they can be vetted.

In an extraordinary bid to control what the public is told in advance of the vote, the Prime Minister's aides have asked that countries consult them and are careful not to say anything that could boost the Brexit side.

One of David Cameron's advisors at a lunch in London last week told diplomats from the 27 other EU countries they had already made a similar request to the White House.

Downing Street officials are demanding to see speeches planned by world leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured with David Cameron at last month's EU summit) to check they won't undermine David Cameron's efforts to keep Britain in the EU

'The people need to be aware that there's an impact in the UK debate about what they're saying in their own countries,' a No10 source said, according to influential Brussels website Politico Europe.

'If a leader stands up and says something to their own parliament  it won't just play in their own domestic media, it will make it to the UK.'

Diplomats were warned that EU politicians should think twice before publicly belittling the deal secured by Mr Cameron in Brussels a fortnight ago.

Eastern European leaders have already been caught boasting at home about how they prevented Mr Cameron from getting all his demands to restrict payments of benefits to EU migrant workers.

Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orban last week triumphantly told his MPs: 'We have succeeded in ensuring that these social benefits cannot be taken away.'

The Polish prime minister Beata Szydlo also tweeted that the agreement was 'good for Europe', adding: 'We took care of the interests of Poles using social benefits in EU countries.'

Barack Obama, who last July made a carefully choreographed intervention calling on British people not to leave the EU, is thought to be planning a speech on Britain's membership in the coming months.

UK Government officials have even requested to check Barack Obama's speeches to ensure it does not boost the Brexit campaign

Meanwhile it was reported that Mr Cameron is facing a dilemma at home over how to reach out to Labour voters in the EU referendum campaign.

He is unsure how to deal with Jeremy Corbyn. A Downing Street source told Politico: 'We're working with lots of Labour politicians on this, like Alan Johnson [head of Labour's In campaign]

'We've got lots of contacts with people who are supporting this from Labour.'

Despite committing to Britain to staying in the EU Mr Corbyn last night distanced himself from Downing Street's campaign efforts and asked whether he would consider sharing a platform with the Prime Minister he simply replied: 'No'.

Barack Obama, who last July made a carefully choreographed intervention calling on British people not to leave the EU, is thought to be planning a speech on Britain's membership in the coming months.

Meanwhile it was reported today that Mr Cameron is facing a dilemma at home over how to reach out to Labour voters in the EU referendum campaign.

Despite committing to Britain to staying in the EU Jeremy Corbyn (pictured on ITV's Agenda) last night distanced himself from Downing Street's campaign efforts and asked whether he would consider sharing a platform with the Prime Minister he simply replied: 'No'

David Cameron is reportedly facing a dilemma over how to reach out to Labour voters but is struggling to find a way of dealing with Jeremy Corbyn (pictured on ITV's Agenda alongside host Tom Bradby)

He is unsure how to deal with Jeremy Corbyn. A Downing Street source told Politico: 'We're working with lots of Labour politicians on this, like Alan Johnson [head of Labour's In campaign]

'We've got lots of contacts with people who are supporting this from Labour.'

Despite committing to Britain to staying in the EU Mr Corbyn last night distanced himself from Downing Street's campaign efforts and asked whether he would consider sharing a platform with the Prime Minister he simply replied: 'No'.

And the long-time Eurosceptic appeared to describe Mr Cameron's EU deal 'legally questionable' during his appearance on ITV's Agenda.

'We are not on the same side of the argument,' Mr Corbyn said of his and Mr Cameron's stances on the EU referendum.

'He wants a free market Europe. I want to see a Europe that is about protecting our environment and ensuring we have sustainable industries across Europe, such as the steel industry and high levels of jobs and social protection across Europe. His agenda is the very opposite.'

Downing Street officials are also trying to encourage small business leaders to publicly call for the country to remain in the EU.

An anti-Brexit letter from FTSE 100 bosses backfired last week after only 36 signed it despite aides hoping for around 80 signatures.

'The Leave campaign is trying to portray that we're in bed with big business, and that this is a campaign of big business vs. small business,' the No10 source said, according to Politico Europe.

'But the point is that big and small businesses will be affected by Brexit.'
Advertisement

In between two office buildings in Adelaide, South Australia, there is a quaint little bar that is just like the house in Pixar's 'Up'.

The Pink Moon Saloon on Leigh Street in the CBD is a bar, kitchen, and outdoor courtyard designed by local firm Sans-Arc Studio. Located in a narrow alley, the bar measures just 3.66 x 28 metres.

To maximise the limited space, lead designer Matiya Marovic says they adopted a Japanese-style spatial arrangement, allowing for a well-lit and cosy atmosphere.

In between two office buildings in Adelaide, South Australia, there is a quaint little bar that is just like the house in Pixar's 'Up'

The Pink Moon Saloon on Leigh Street in the CBD is a bar, kitchen, and outdoor courtyard designed by local firm Sans-Arc Studio

Located down a narrow alley, the bar measures just 3.66 x 28 metres and is described as a 'cosy' venue

'The hut needs to embrace its surroundings, not dominate them, but embellish and appreciate them', he said. 'Creating a moment of warmth and shelter within whatever context'.

But unlike the house in 'Up', the property is 'layered' in three parts with the hut for the bar, the courtyard in the middle, and the dining hut at the back to give variety in ambiance as customers pass through.

Inspired by outdoor themes, Pink Moon Saloon was built to look like a modern cabin with a high ceiling and exposed ceiling trusses. Local materials such as Tasmanian oak, spotted gum, and ironbark were used and finished with colour combinations common in Himalayan mountain huts.

'The hut needs to embrace its surroundings, not dominate them, but embellish and appreciate them'

But unlike the house in 'Up', the property is 'layered' in three parts with the hut for the bar, the courtyard in the middle, and the dining hut at the back

The owners wanted to make the venue reminiscent of a cabin in the woods and bring a nostalgic camping feel

It is broken up into sections, with the four metre wide bar located directly behind the front door, offering craft beers, wine, cocktails and spirits

Inspired by outdoor themes, Pink Moon Saloon was built to look like a modern cabin with a high ceiling and exposed ceiling trusses.

The bar opened for business in November of last year and fills with patrons each night

The owners wanted to make the venue reminiscent of a cabin in the woods and bring a nostalgic camping feel.

It is broken up into sections, with the four metre wide bar located directly behind the front door, offering craft beers, wine, cocktails and spirits, The Advertiser reported.

The rear cabin provides a sit down dinner of slow-cooked meat and vegetables. A quiet courtyard is placed right in the centre for patrons to enjoy some greenery.

The bar opened for business in November of last year.

Although the bar measures only four metres in width, the interior appears to be quite spacious with there even being an extra room for toilets

Local materials such as Tasmanian oak, spotted gum, and ironbark were used and finished with colour combinations common in Himalayan mountain huts
Two California sheriff's deputies and a former colleague have been charged with forcing inmates to compete in 'Game of Thrones'-style fights and betting on the outcome.

Former San Francisco sheriff's deputy Scott Neu, 42, is accused of forcing 150lb inmate Ricardo Garcia to fight 350lb Stanley Harris and threatening the men with beatings if they did not agree.

Neu is then accused of training the men, housed at the County Jail in downtown San Francisco, for five months for the bouts on March 5 and 6, 2015,

District Attorney George Gascon (left) announced Tuesday that former sheriff's deputy Scott Neu, 42, and current deputies Eugene Jones, 45, and Clifford Chiba have been charged with overseeing prisoner fights

Deputy Clifford Chiba is accused of overseeing the first fight and giving one of the inmates advice on the second bout, while Eugene Jones, 45, allegedly oversaw the second fight and failed to report it.

Prisoners have also accused the officers of forcing them to gamble their food, bedding and clothing on the fights.

Neu has been charged with eight felonies and nine misdemeanors, including assault by an officer and criminal threats to handcuff, Mace, Taser and beat the inmates if they did not comply.

Neu is accused of forcing 150lb inmate Ricardo Garcia (pictured) to fight 350lb inmate Stanley Harris while Jones and Chiba turned a blind eye

Deputy Eugene Jones was charged with two felony counts of assault by an officer and three related misdemeanor counts.

Meanwhile Deputy Clifford Chiba faces three misdemeanor counts of cruel and unusual punishment of an inmate and failing to report the alleged fights.

Neu was fired last year, while Jones has been suspended as protocol for an officer charged with a felony. Chiba, who only faces misdemeanors, will be allowed to keep working but in an area that does not allow contact with the public, ABC 7 reports.

Back in 2006 Neu was accused of sexually assaulting two transgender inmates and another inmate, a case the city settled in 2009 while allowing Neu to continue working.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said the three suspects are expected to turn themselves in over the next two days.

Gascon said the three suspects showed 'grossly inhumane treatment' toward the two inmates, one of whom he said suffered an injured rib.

He said: 'These are serious crimes that damage the moral authority of law enforcement.

'Subjecting inmates who are in the care and custody of the state to degrading and inhumane treatment makes a mockery of our justice system and undermines any efforts towards rehabilitation.'

Public defender Jeff Adachi, who was informed of the bouts after Garcia complained to his father, called them 'Game of Thrones gladiator fights'

Public Defender Jeff Adachi added: 'We called this sort of a Game of Thrones Gladiator Fight because it really was done for jest and they were betting money on a winner.'

The fight, which was not caught on CCTV, was only uncovered when one of the inmates complained about it to his father, who informed public defenders.

The ensuing scandal and investigation damaged the reputation of new Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, who was voted out of office in November.

Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, who took office in January, said she hopes to purchase body cameras for deputies in the Hall of Justice jail, which typically houses 300 inmates.

Harry Stern, the attorney for Neu, claims the former officer only allowed the two men to wrestle to settle a dispute between them, and denies claims they were forced into a fight.

Eugene Cerbone, president of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs Association, said the allegations against Chiba and Jones have already been investigated and no wrongdoing was found.
A sheriff's deputy in Columbia, South Carolina was fired this week after making a racist slur and stealing from a domestic violence victim's home.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced Tuesday that he had fired 25-year-old deputy Kaleb Broome, who he also arrested and charged with misconduct in office.

The sheriff says Broome was responding to a domestic dispute on February 23 and that when deputies helped the victim, Broome circled 'Niger' in the word Nigeria on a poster map of Africa and turned it into a racial slur.

Kaleb Broome, 25 (pictured left and right in his uniform and mug shot), was fired from his job as a sheriff's deputy in Richland County, South Carolina on Tuesday. He was also arrested and charged

Lott says Broome also took a piece of double-sided tape. The sheriff says Broome committed a crime by taking the tape that was worth less than a dime, and broke department rules by writing the slur.

Lott said another deputy told him not to take the tape, but Broome did anyway. That deputy later reported the incident to his superior officer.

'When he took that piece of tape he crossed the line, he tarnished the badge,' Lott said.

Broome reportedly circled 'Niger' of the word 'Nigeria' on a poster map of Africa while helping other deputies move a domestic violence vicitm out of her home on February 23. Above, a post Broome made on Facebook three days after the incident

In December, Broome's wife posted this picture of him holding up an award for 'Deputy of the Quarter'. For stealing tape from the domestic violence victim's home, Broome could face a year in prison

He added: 'When you hear and see something like this you just shake your head and say "why". There's really no explanation, no reason, except you just had someone who didn't deserve the badge.'

Broome turned himself in Tuesday afternoon and was released on $10,000 bail. He faces up to a year in jail if he is found guilty of the misconduct in office charge. It was not clear if Broome has a lawyer.

Before he joined the police force, Broome was an offensive lineman for the University of South Carolina, mostly playing for special teams in his senior year.

Three days after the alleged racist incident he wrote on his Facebook page: God has blessed me and my wife tremendously. I just want to tell that hard working man or woman out there with big dreams to keep dreaming and working hard because anything is possible. Just stay positive, pray and remember the golden rule.'
A piece of metal believed to be debris from the missing Flight MH370 has washed up off the coast of Mozambique.

The object, thought to be part of the plane's horizontal stabilizer, was found on a sandbank in the Mozambique channel, which separates the African continent and Madagascar.

The only other piece of debris confirmed to be from MH370, which went missing in March 2014, was found on an island on the other side of Madagascar in July.

The object, thought to be part of the plane's horizontal stabilizer (seen on the tail of this Boeing 777), was found on a sandbank in the Mozambique channel

The discovery is being analysed by investigators in Malaysia, Australia and the U.S., who say there is a 'good chance it derives from a Boeing 777,' NBC News reports.

Early analysis indicates that the object could be a part of the missing Boeing 777's horizontal stabilizer, the reports states.

The news comes nearly two years to the day since the disappearance of the Malaysia Airline's flight, which vanished enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.

Last July a two-metre-long wing part known as a flaperon washed up on a beach on the island of Reunion, located in the Indian Ocean, across Madagascar from where the latest debris was found.

French authorities subsequently confirmed 'with certainty' two months later than the wing part found on the remote island was from MH370.

The only other piece of debris confirmed to be from MH370, which went missing in March 2014, was found on an island on the other side of Madagascar in July (pictured)

Officers carrying pieces of debris washed ashore in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, eastern La Reunion island, which was later confirmed as being from 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.

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.

Last month, a large chunk of metal found washed up on a Malaysian beach in the Gulf of Thailand was believed to be from MH370, but was soon dismissed as being from a Japanese rocket.

It was the second time January that Malaysian authorities dismissed speculation that wreckage from the jet had been found, after a similar piece of ocean debris recovered from a beach in Southern Thailand proved not to be from MH370.

The news comes nearly two years to the day since the disappearance of the Malaysia Airline's flight, which vanished enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
The family of a woman from Washington DC arrived at her funeral last week to pay their final respects, only to discover the body of a stranger resting in her casket.

Virginia Ernestine Gray, 83, fell unconscious in her home on Dix Street Northeast on February 19 and was taken to Prince George's Hospital Center, where she passed away later that day.

Ms Gray had a daughter, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Scroll down for video

Mistaken identity: Virginia Gray, 83 (pictured left and right), passed away in Washington DC on February 19. A week later, her family discovered a stranger laying in her casket during her viewing

Switched: The deceased was wearing Virginia Gray's clothes, which her grandchildren had brought to Horton's Funeral Home (pictured) ahead of the viewing

The woman's relatives made arrangements with Horton's Funeral Home on Kennedy Street Northwest to host a viewing for Virginia Gray on February 26, reported the station NBC Washington.

Virginia Gray in her younger years. Her family are now searching for her body

The solemn event was supposed to be followed by a religious service at New Covenant Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Maryland on Saturday, with the burial scheduled for later that day in Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

But when the family of the deceased arrived at the DC mortuary to bid farewell to the octogenarian matriarch, they found another woman in her place.

According to Gray's relatives, the stranger was reposing in their grandmother's casket, dressed in the clothes they had brought to the funeral home for the viewing.

I saw the body of another female that wasn't my grandmother, Gray's granddaughter Tawana Murphy told the local station. My heart dropped. I was in disbelief.

Gray's grandson, Quentin Gray, described the bizarre predicament the family have found themselves in as 'lunacy' ripped straight out of a bad film script.

He says his only hope now is that his grandmother has not been buried somewhere else.

Administrators at the Prince Georges Hospital Center said they were looking into the matter.

Daily Mail on Wednesday reached out to the funeral home and are awaiting a response.
The two killed Rachel's father and Diane's husband Mark Staudte, 61 and his son Shaun Staudte, 26, by spiking their drinks with

Rachel Staudte (pictured last year) has been sentenced to two life prison terms plus 20 years

A Missouri woman has been sentenced to two life prison terms plus 20 years for helping kill her father and brother by poisoning them with antifreeze in 2012.

Rachel Staudte teamed up with her mother to poison three family members by putting antifreeze in their drinks in 2012.

The 25-year-old admitted to poisoning her father, Mark Staudte, 61, who died in April 2012 and her brother, Shaun Staudte, 26, who died five months later.

She was sentenced on Tuesday

Staudte pleaded guilty last May to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree assault, according to the Springfield News-Leader.

Her mother, Diane Staudte, pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in January and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Rachel and Diane Staudte almost got away with murder because of the unique way they killed their family members.

The third family member that the two poisoned was Staudte's sister, Sarah, 27, who survived being poisoned but suffered serious brain damage, according to prosecutors.

Rachel (pictured left with her mom Diane Staudte (who is also pictured right on her own) almost got away with murder because of the unique way they killed their family members

For more than a year, the murders went undetected by police and medical examiners as the deaths were classified by the Greene County Medical Examiner's Office as due to natural causes.

It wasn't until a pastor made an anonymous call to authorities and police started looking a little harder.

When Sarah Staudte was hospitalized in June 2013, the family's pastor came forward and told police Diane Staudte was responsible for Sarah's sickness, as well as the deaths of her husband and son.

Rachel Staudte will be eligible for parole after 42 and a half years behind bars.

Diane Staudte pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in January and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the News-Leader.

Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson told the judge that Sarah suffered physical and brain injuries after being poisoned.

He said the college graduate has a guardian and lives in an assisted living facility.

In a statement that Sarah Staudte read in court, she said she forgave her mother during her testimony in January.

'Not only she took away my dad and brother, she also took away my livelihood and my independence,' the statement said. 'I prefer to be a survivor than a victim.'

Mark Staudte (pictured), 61, who died in April 2012, was poisoned by his wife Diane Staudte because she hated him, prosecutors say

Diane Staudte told investigators she poisoned her son Shaun (pictured), because he was 'worse than a pest'

Diane and Rachel Staudte were charged with murder in 2013 and prosecutors said they believe Diane Staudte planned the murders, but needed her daughter's help.

Sarah Staudte (pictured) was also poisoned by her mother over four days because 'she would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid'

Diane Staudte told investigators that she poisoned her husband, Mark, with antifreeze because she hated him, and that she killed her son, Shaun, because he was 'worse than a pest', according to a probable cause statement.

She also admitted poisoning her daughter Sarah over four days because 'she would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid,' investigators said.

When Rachel Staudte pleaded guilty in May, prosecutors read a chilling poem that was found in her purse at the time of her arrest.

The poem ended with, 'Only the quiet ones will be left, my mother, my little sister and me'.

A third daughter in the family, age 11 at the time of the charges, was not harmed and she was placed into foster care.

Diane Staudte entered an Alford plea in January, which is when a person pleads guilty but at the same time he or she maintains that they're innocent.

She claimed she suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and did not have a full memory of the events.

At the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Sarah Staudte told the courtroom she has forgiven her sister.

Rachel Staudte also spoke and said that 'despite the bad, there are those who forgive', according to News-Leader.
David Cameron has refused a request to release statistics that Eurosceptics say will prove how many EU migrants actually enter Britain every year.

HMRC issues thousands more national insurance numbers to EU migrants than officially arrive in Britain but the tax office has repeatedly refused to publish the figures on the grounds that it might influence the outcome of June's EU referendum.

Leading Eurosceptic Tory MP David Davis demanded the Prime Minister step in to tell HMRC to release the figures 'immediately' so voters are given the 'truth' about EU immigration.

Figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) last month found 257,000 EU migrants came to the UK last year but over the same period 630,000 EU citizens registered for a national insurance number

Leading Eurosceptic Tory MP David Davis (pictured left at Prime Minister's Questions today) demanded the Prime Minister (pictured right) step in to tell HMRC to release the figures 'immediately' so voters are given the 'truth' about EU immigration

A national insurance number is needed to get a job or claim benefits in the UK and whereas UK-born nationals are automatically assigned a number, those arriving from abroad must register with the Department for Work and Pensions, meaning the Government holds the data on record.

Figures published by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) last month found 257,000 EU migrants came to the UK last year but over the same period 630,000 EU citizens registered for a national insurance number.

In the last five years 2.25million EU nationals have registered for a national insurance number but according to the ONS just one million EU citizens have arrived in the country in the same period.

HMRC has refused to say how many of those national insurance numbers given to EU workers are active and have left the gap between the two sets of data unexplained.

ROMANIAN AND BULGARIAN IMMIGRATION UP BY 38 PER CENT The latest immigration figures from the Office for National Statistics found that in the 12 months to September 2015: 617,000 people arrived in the UK. This is up 0.3 per cent on the previous year. 257,000, or 42 per cent, arrived from the European Union. This figure is up 4 per cent on the year. 130,000, or 21 per cent, arrived from the 'EU15' group of countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. This figure is up 5 per cent on the previous year. 69,000, or 11 per cent, came from the 'EU8' group of countries: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. This figure fell on the year by 9 per cent. 55,000, or 9 per cent, came from Bulgaria and Romania. This was up 38 per cent on the year. The remaining 2,00 (0.3 per cent) came from Malta, Cyprus and Croatia. This figure was down by 60 per cent on the previous year. Advertisement

'For five or six years national insurance numbers issued to EU migrants have been hundreds of thousands higher than the official immigration figures,' he said at Prime Minister's Questions today.

'This implies the official immigration figures may be a dramatic underestimate.

'We can only know the truth of the matter if HMRC release their data on active EU national insurance numbers, which has HMRC has refused to do.'

But Mr Cameron dodged the question, insisting that the reason why the national insurance numbers and official migration figures do not match is because workers can get a national insurance for a 'very short-term visit'.

'People who are already here but without a national insurance number can apply for them. So these numbers are quite complex,' he added.

But former civil servant Jonathan Portes, who has had several requests for the figures rejected by HMRC, said the 'huge discrepancy' between the number given national insurance numbers and the number who officially enter the UK could not be explained by short-term visits.

'It is massive and it did not used to be this big,' he said, and accused the Government of trying to cover up the true extent of migration from the EU.

'The Government is hiding this data. They claim it would interfere with the renegotiation. It is genuinely outrageous.

Which ever side of the argument you are, on immigration or on the EU, the electorate deserves to have the facts and the data.'

Figures published by the Office of National Statistics last month found 257,000 EU migrants came to the UK last year but over the same period 630,000 EU citizens registered for a national insurance number.

Writing later on his website, Mr Davis said: 'It is an old cliche that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

'But this week the Government has breathed new life into this rule, as they showed that they are willing to bury the true scale of immigration into the UK with the help of some very dodgy statistics.'

THE QUEEN'S SPEECH IS DELAYED AS DAVID CAMERON THROWS EVERYTHING AT WINNING THE EU REFERENDUM The Queen, pictured with Prince Philip during last year's State Opening, does not yet have a date for her next visit to Parliament for the State Opening The Queen's Speech is set to be delayed until after the EU referendum as the Government throws everything at the historic poll. The set-piece constitutional occasion has generally been held in May following the move to fixed term Parliaments in 2010. It is an annual occasion for the Government to announce its legislative plans for the year ahead and sees a full display of Royal pageantry as the Queen visits Parliament to read out the remarks. But the ceremony has reportedly been pushed back to after the June 23 referendum as David Cameron plans for how he will bring his party back together. The Times said the event would be accompanied by the expected post-referendum reshuffle as the Prime Minister bids to get back on the front foot. When it comes, the speech is thought likely to include prison reforms, an expansion of health devolution and further legislation to end discrimination. Advertisement

'It's like Halloween come early': Latest document released by David Cameron warning of Brexit risks dismissed by his own ministers as a 'dogy dossier' and 'yet more scaremongering'

David Cameron's latest report on the warnings of leaving the EU has been dismissed by his own ministers as more 'scaremongering' and was even mocked as 'like Halloween come early'.

The fresh analysis from government officials claimed a Brexit would lead to rising food and clothes prices and fewer jobs.

But human rights minister Dominic Raab hit out the Government report on the alternatives of EU membership, saying it was just the latest 'scare story... about the ghoulish prospects outside the European Union'.

And Iain Duncan Smith, one of the leading Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers, branded the document a 'dodgy dossier'.

David Cameron (pictured left leaving Downing Street this morning) was accused of publishing more 'scaremongering' warnings by his own justice minister Dominic Raab (pictured right), who said the 'scare stories' circulated by the Government was 'like Halloween come early'

The paper - which looks at arrangements adopted by Norway, Switzerland and Canada as well as the option of falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules - will say each would carry serious risks if they were adopted by the UK.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted the report showed the UK enjoys the 'best of both worlds' and warned negotiations to set up free trade agreements following a Brexit could take longer than the Second World War.

'Hard-headed analysis shows that every alternative to remaining in a reformed EU would leave Britain weaker, less safe and worse off. Working people would pay the price with few jobs and rising prices,' he told the Today programme.

The publication of the report indicates the Prime Minister is undeterred by accusations that he is running an unrelentingly negative campaign - dubbed 'Project Fear' by critics, including Boris Johnson - as he leads the fight to keep Britain in.

Iain Duncan Smith (pictured right) dismissed the latest document released by Philip Hammond (pictured left) as a 'dodgy dossier'

It follows hard on the heels of another Government paper earlier this week which warned the country would face a 'decade or more of uncertainty' if it chose to leave as it painstakingly negotiated new trade deals.

And it also warned that after the initial two-year transitional period after cutting ties with Brussels, UK citizens living or on holiday abroad could be left stranded.

BORIS STORMS AHEAD IN THE RACE FOR NUMBER 10 Assuming the two men make it into the run off, both pick up ground - but the poll suggests Mr Johnson still wins the race for No 10 by 56 per cent to 38 per cent Boris Johnson holds a more than 20 point lead over George Osborne in the race to be the next Prime Minister. Tory activists will choose the resident at No 10 for the first time ever when David Cameron stands aside. He has already made clear he will quit before the next election and his career could be brought to an abrupt end by defeat in the EU referendum on June 23. Party rules require Conservative MPs to whittle down the field to just two contenders before Tory members make the final choice. And today's YouGov poll for The Times shows Mr Johnson is the clear front runner. He stands far ahead on 43 per cent, leading Mr Osborne's score of 22 per cent. Assuming both men made the run off, a forced choice in the poll shows Mr Johnson sweeping to victory Mr Osborne by 56 per cent to 38 per cent. In the overall poll, Theresa May is a close third on 19 per cent, according to the survey of more than 1,000 party members. Newer choices, who only entered Parliament in 2010 and reached the front rank of government in the second half of the last Parliament, were far behind. Sajid Javid scored 7 per cent in the poll and Nicky Morgan, who has already declared she would like to run, scored just 1 per cent. Mr Johnson would beat Mrs May by 20 points if they contend the final run off. Mr Osborne appears set for a narrow win over Mrs May if they are chosen as the final candidates - the poll suggests he leads 46 per cent to 42 per cent. As Chancellor and a key ally of the Prime Minister, Mr Osborne has long been seen as the strongest contender to take over from Mr Cameron. But he had a dangerous run in with Conservative MPs - particularly newly elected MPs - over planned cuts to tax credits. A rebellion on his own benches forced him to an expensive u-turn as he threw out the whole 4.4billion cut at November's autumn statement. Advertisement

The latest paper examines the arrangements which other countries outside the EU have adopted - and finds none offers the advantages of continued membership.

Pointing to the example of Norway, the document says Oslo still has to make a significant contribution to EU spending and accept three-quarters of EU laws with no votes or vetoes.

It also has to accept the free movement of people, with EU migrants accounting for a higher proportion of the population - 6 per cent - than they do in the UK where it is 4 per cent.

But Mr Raab, mocking the latest government report, told the BBC: 'I think that there has been far too much scaremongering.

'It's like Halloween come early; we have a scare story each week about the ghoulish prospects outside the European Union.

'I don't believe in ghosts and I'm not afraid of these ghoulish stories of life outside the EU.'

Warning the Prime Minister of running a negative campaign, he added: 'I think there's been far too much scaremongering. I think there are brighter opportunities for Britain in terms of lower food bills, lower energy costs, freer trade from Latin America to Asia, which of course are the growth areas for the British economy and exports. That's where the real advantages lie.'

The Government report cites Switzerland and Canada as countries that have only limited access to the European single market, despite trade deals which have taken years to negotiate.

The paper says that if similar arrangements were adopted by Britain, the UK financial services sector would face increased costs as they would no longer have 'passports' allowing them to sell to the EU market.

Like Norway, Switzerland has to accept the free movement of people with almost four times as many EU nationals living in the country as a percentage of the population as there are in the UK.

The most drastic option, if the UK failed to reach a deal with the EU, would be to fall back on WTO rules, the paper states, which would mean new tariffs on UK exports hitting companies with supply chains in Europe.

Mr Hammond said: 'It is not credible to suggest that you could have continued access to the single market without having to accept freedom of movement of labour, without having to accept EU regulations, and without having to contribute to the EU budget.

'Now maybe the Leave campaign wants to say they are prepared to accept all of those things, but if you accept all of those things surely we are better off inside the European Union with our seat at the table, helping to shape those rules as well as being bound by them.'

Mr Cameron also challenged the Leave camp to set out 'what their detailed plan for Britain outside the EU is - and its impact on the economy and prices'.

But in a further deepening of Conservative divisions, Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Duncan Smith said the 'real uncertainty' lay with the EU 'project'.

'As each day passes we see yet another example - from the utter failure to cope with the migrant crisis, to the increasing disaster of the euro,' he said.

'This dodgy dossier won't fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU.
The BBC has backed the change to give it

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale today said he would close the iPlayer loophole shortly

TV viewers slammed the Government's 'outrageous' announcement today that it will close a loophole allowing people to watch BBC iPlayer without a TV licence.

Culture Secretary John Whittingdale said the BBC only worked if everyone who watched it paid for it and vowed to end the chance for people to get a 'free ride' to watch hit shows such as Sherlock or the Great British Bake Off.

He said he would press ahead with changes to the law and the loophole - which is thought to cost the BBC around 150 million a year - is expected to be closed within months, meaning iPlayer viewers who do not have a licence will face fines of up to 1,000.

But viewers reacted angrily to the news and vowed to abandon BBC programmes altogether in favour of private TV streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Others questioned how the BBC will enforce the charge for iPlayer viewers and the move also resurfaced calls for the BBC to change its payment model so it only charges viewers for the programmes they watch.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who has campaigned for fundamental reform of the BBC's funding, told MailOnline that the move was 'not a sustainable model for the BBC going forward' and suggested it should only start charging for its iPlayer if it put its whole back catalogue online, which could raise money for the corporation from across the world.

The iPlayer, which pioneered online streaming for a mass audience when it launched in 2007, is freely available in the UK to anyone who visits the site. No log in details are required.

Today's announcement comes amid on-going talks over the future of the BBC charter, its governance and funding model - based on the 145.50 a year licence fee.

Speaking at the Oxford Media Convention today, the Culture Secretary said: 'When the Licence fee was invented, video on demand did not exist.

Viewers were outraged by the decision to start charging for the iPlayer and some questioned how the BBC would enforce the new charge

'And while the definition of television in the legislation covers live streaming, it does not require viewers to have a licence if they watch BBC programmes through the iPlayer even if it is just a few minutes after transmission.

'The BBC works on the basis that all who watch it pay for it. Giving a free ride to those who enjoy Sherlock or Bake Off an hour, a day or a week after they are broadcast was never intended and is wrong.

'So, having discussed this with the BBC and the BBC Trust, I will be bringing forward, as soon as practicable, secondary legislation which will extend the current TV licensing regime not only to cover those watching the BBC live, but also those watching the BBC on catch-up through the iPlayer.'

He said he would fast-track the change through by the end of May by using so-called secondary legislation, which does not require lengthy Parliamentary debates.

Closing the iPlayer loophole will mean viewers will no longer be able to access the site, pictured today, without a TV licence

Viewers suggested the BBC only charge for the programmes they watch while others called for the corporation to put its whole catalogue online if it starts charging for the iPlayer

The BBC today backed the proposed law change.

A spokeswoman said: 'We are happy to have reached an agreement with the Secretary of State on how to close the iPlayer loophole.

'Its swift closure will help give the BBC funding certainty.'

One viewer, Kevin Watkins, said on Twitter: 'So Im going to be forced to buy a TV licence to watch iPlayer? Why not just charge me a subscription fee for the stuff.'

Another raised doubts over the BBC's ability to enforce the online charge. 'Nice idea but good luck implementing it,' tweeted one viewer named 'Tim'.

And Daniel Barnes said the move would drive him to other online streaming services. He tweeted: 'Thank you @JWhittingdale for pretty much confirming that I wont ever be paying for a TV license, Netflix and Amazon Prime here I come.'

Mr Whittingdale said online viewers who do not also have a TV licence would no longer get a 'free ride' to watch shows such as Sherlock, left, and the Great British Bake Off, won last year by Nadiya Jamir Hussain, right

The crackdown will affect almost 1.5million people in 700,000 households and businesses who can legally watch major series such as War And Peace and The Great British Bake Off.

Students and other young people are thought to be the main culprits  effectively relying on older generations to subsidise their viewing. The BBC could use different methods to police online viewers.

WHITTINGDALE NAMES STRICTLY AND BAKE OFF WHEN CHALLENGED ON BBC 'DISTINCTIVENESS' Strictly Come Dancing has been a huge hit for the BBC but prompted concern from some it damaged commercial outlets Culture Secretary John Whittingdale today named Strictly Come Dancing and the Great British Bake Off when challenged about BBC 'distinctiveness'. Mr Whittingdale insisted such decisions would not be for him but were a judgement for whoever was appointed to 'assess' programmes. The Culture Secretary has also focused on 'soft news' as potentially being outside the BBC's public service remit. He praised new drama The Night Manager today as an example of something clearly 'distinctive'. While a backbencher, Mr Whittingdale was criticised for suggesting populist BBC shows including the Voice should not be made by the publicly funded broadcaster. Shortly after he was appointed to the Cabinet, he was forced to defend the remarks and insisted he was not an 'enemy' of the BBC. Advertisement

Top of the list of options would be a Netflix or Sky Go-style password linked to each television licence, which users would have to enter before they are able to watch programmes on the iPlayer. Bosses have resisted this so far, fearing the move could turn the BBC into a subscription service.

The broadcaster would have to decide how many gadgets it should allow people to access for every television licence bought. Too few, and large families may not have enough for everyones televisions, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Too many, and they are likely to be abused and shared too widely.

An alternative would be to ask viewers to enter their personal details before using the service, and simply cross-check these with addresses whose residents have paid the annual 145.50 licence fee. If the details dont tally, the BBC could send warning letters and even enforcement officers to get miscreants to pay up.

Although this is not the most sophisticated method, the BBC has successfully used it to scare people into paying the licence fee. In fact, it is frequently criticised for being heavy-handed.

Yesterday Mr Whittingdale received a detailed review on the future of the BBC which suggested an overhaul of the organisation's governance as part of the on-going charter renewal process.

The report by Sir David Clementi recommended scrapping the BBC Trust, handing regulation to Ofcom, and establishing a single BBC board to run the BBC.

Mr Whittingdale said today: 'Sir David has not only characterised the current arrangements very fairly  both in terms of its strengths and weaknesses.

'He has also set out a clear, sensible, vision for how the BBC can be reformed for the better.

'And his ideas for the principles of simpler Governance structures and streamlined regulatory arrangements that have public interest and market sensitivity at their heart, are ones that it would be very difficult for this  or indeed any  Government to overlook.'

Mr Whittingdale said a further report had identified a lack of 'distinctiveness' in the BBC's mainstream offering.

He said today: 'The report also shows that in some areas the BBC has become less distinctive in recent years  particularly on BBC 1.

'It also flags up that Radio 1 and Radio 2 are less distinctive than the BBC claim and that the soft news element of the BBC's online services is of limited public value.

'The report goes on to suggest that a more distinctive BBC would provide benefits both for the organisation itself, and for the wider media sector

Because not only would it deliver greater variety for licence fee payers, it could also have a positive net market impact and increase commercial revenue by over 100m per year by the end of the next Charter period.'

Mr Whittingdale added: 'But what the headline figures show, is that the Director General's drive for greater distinctiveness can be good for the BBC, good for Licence Fee payers, and good for the wider sector, and that is something that the next Charter should encourage and embrace.'

Speaking after his speech, Mr Whittingdale told the Guardian said: 'Whether or not Strictly or Bake Off or other programmes are too removed or absolutely distinctive that is for the judgment of whoever will have the task of assessing BBC programming.'

BBC2 'IS BRITAIN'S WHITEST TV STATION' BBC2 is the whitest television channel, race campaigner Trevor Phillips has claimed. The former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission criticised the station for failing to attract enough viewers from ethnic minorities. BBC2... is by some distance, Britains whitest TV station, he said. His comments come 15 years after the BBCs then boss, Greg Dyke, branded the broadcaster hideously white. It has since tried to boost the number of black presenters and actors, as well as those from other minority ethnic backgrounds. Research shows 5.7 per cent of TV viewers watch BBC2. However, that figure falls to 3.3 per cent among black and other ethnic minority audiences. The figures are worse for current affairs programmes  30 per cent of the TV audience watches the BBC Six OClock News, compared with 15 per cent of ethnic minority viewers. A BBC spokesman said: 'BBC Two has been growing its Black, Asian, and ethnic minority audience over the last year. 'Major seasons of programming on India and China have aired recently and a new season on Black Britain is being shown this Autumn. New and established talent such as Liz Bonnin, David Olusuga, Dr Saleyha Ahsan, Anita Rani, Romesh Ranganathan, Javone Prince, Rory Reid, Patrick Ayree, Monica Galetti, Jing Lusi and Reggie Yates all feature in a wide range of BBC Two programmes. 'Three quarters of BAME audience households feel that the BBC serves them well and BBC One is the most popular channels across all BAME audiences. Advertisement

A BBC spokeswoman today said: 'We agree with improving distinctiveness, but not with shrinking the BBC.

'The BBC's services are distinctive and have become more distinctive in this Charter period.

'The response to the Government's Green Paper shows that licence fee payers overwhelmingly agree.

'The BBC's services must continue to be run in the interests of audiences, not for the benefit of competitors.

'We are concerned that some of the report's proposals would risk undermining the universal appeal, reach and quality of the BBC's main services, BBC1, BBC2, Radio 1, Radio 2 and BBC Online.'

Shadow culture secretary Maria Eagle yesterday slammed the proposed changes to the BBC regulatory structure.

She said: 'Any replacement of the BBC Trust must stand up for license fee payers and viewers, not the Government of the day.

'The BBC currently handles around ten times more complaints than Ofcom.

'If Ofcom is to take on entire regulatory oversight of the BBC, the Government must provide sufficient resources for them to do a proper job.'

The BBC backed Sir David's report.

A spokeswoman said: 'We share his view that external regulation and a unitary Board for the BBC will bring greater clarity to the Corporation's governance.

'If delivered, these proposals will bring about the most significant change in governance and regulation of the BBC in its lifetime.

'That is why it is important they are implemented in a way that strengthens the BBC's editorial independence and ensures that future decisions about the Corporation are made very clearly in the best interests of audiences, who own the BBC.'

BBC Trust Chairman Rona Fairhead: 'Sir David Clementi proposes a strong BBC board and a strong external regulator  a change we have argued for.

'It will be important to get the details right, and we now want to work with the Government to ensure roles are clear, the structure is effective and the BBC's independence protected.'

Ad-blockers are a 'protection racket' and content will disappear if media companies can't make money, Culture Secretary admits

Mr Whittingdale today warned new albums from artists such as Muse would be impossible if media firms could not sells adverts around otherwise free content

The Government could intervene over online ad-blockers, the Culture Secretary said today.

John Whittingdale said he shared the concern about the impact of the software - which hides adverts on websites automatically - had on industries from music to news.

He told the Oxford Media Convention research suggested the public advertising funded media but objected to instrusive advertising.

But the Secretary of State said ad-blockers were running what some saw as a 'modern day protection racket'.

And he warned: 'If people don't pay in some way for content, then that content will eventually no longer exist.

'And that's as true for the latest piece of journalism as it is for the new album from Muse.'

Mr Whittingdale continued: 'What (consumer) dislike is online advertising that interrupts what they are doing. They don't like video or audio that plays automatically as soon as a web page has loaded.

'Or pop-ups that get in the way of their browsing experience.'

The Culture Secretary added: 'If we can avoid the intrusive ads that consumers dislike, then I believe there should be a decrease in the use of ad-blockers.

'I am not suggesting that we should ban ad-blockers but I do share the concern about their impact.

'And I plan to host a round table with representatives from all sides of the argument to discuss this in the coming weeks.
A 21-year-old student one semester away from graduating is suing University of Texas-Austin to stop the school from expelling him based on an unproven sexual assault accusation.

The physics major, identified as John Doe in legal papers, claims the sex with a woman who did not attend the university was consensual - while the woman, identified in papers as Jane Roe, claims she was drunk and unconscious during the encounter.

Doe's alleged victim never filed a police report following the incident, according to the man's lawyer, but the school took action against Doe based on a complaint made by the woman's father.

The student now faces a disciplinary hearing that could result in his expulsion for violating the institutional rules of the college. He filed his lawsuit about two months ago in hopes of clearing his name.

A 21-year-old student at University of Texas- Austin (pictured) is suing the school in hopes of stopping it from expelling him based on an unproven sexual assault accusation

Doe claims in his lawsuit that UT-Austin is violating his Constitutional right to due process.

'What we're seeing here is a nationwide movement that has gone too far in what the system sees as victims of campus assaults,' Doe's lawyer Brian Roark told Fox News. 'Give us a fair hearing, and we'll deal with the consequences.'

The incident between Doe and his alleged victim occurred on March 6, 2015, after a night of heavy drinking at a house party.

Doe met Jennifer Smith and non UT-Austin student Jane Roe (names changed to protect privacy) and the three spent the night at an off-campus party at an apartment belonging to one of them, according to the lawsuit.

Roe was drunk and incoherent when they arrived at the apartment, and Smith told Doe that if he had sex with her it would be rape, court documents state.

But he and Smith had sex on the woman's bed while Roe slept next to them, according to court documents, The College Fix reported.

The following morning, Smith left the bed and Doe and Roe began touching each other in suggestive manners, the lawsuit said.

'While collecting her things, Ms. Smith heard Ms. Roe talking, saw her responding to the plaintiff's touching, and believed that Ms. Roe intended to have consensual sex with the plaintiff as she was about to leave,' the suit states.

'At no time during sex was Ms. Roe unconscious,' it added. 'She was an active sexual participant at all times during the intercourse that took place that morning.'

Roe's father reported the encounter to campus police a month later, which prompted an investigation by the university.

Doe told investigators that Roe talked about being in a pornographic movie and was enthusiastic about the encounter.

The student, who is one semester away from graduation, claims that he believed the sexual encounter was consensual, while the woman claims she was drunk and unconscious. The woman never filed a police report, and the school (pictured) took action against the student based on a complaint made by the woman's father

'It's not just me raping this drunk girl,' Doe told investigators, according to the lawsuit.

But Roe told Smith that she was intoxicated from the previous night when the encounter occurred and that she was in fact unconscious.

'I don't remember throwing up, or coming home, or having this random guy in my bed,' the alleged victim texted her friend, according to the lawsuit. 'I didn't want this guy. At all. This guy wanted me and got me when I wasn't conscious.'

Smith reportedly responded, 'Dude I didn't realize you were unconscious, you were talking to me,' according to the lawsuit.

In the weeks following the incident Doe and Roe texted one another, and at first Roe indicated she was upset with Doe, saying she thought the sex was non-consensual because she was unconscious.

But Roe was eventually satisfied 'that both the plaintiff and Ms. Smith believed Ms. Roe was awake and sober during the sex that took place, despite her own lack of memory,' the suit states.

Doe's lawsuit states that UT-Austin has 'been placed under enormous political pressure' when it comes to sexual assaults.

'The university has been placed under enormous political pressure to appear tough on those accused of sexual assault and as a result have adopted a practice of expelling males from the university without regard to the rights of the accused student of the evidence,' the lawsuit states.

Doe and Roe discussed meeting up, but never met face-to-face again following the encounter.

Roark said that UT-Austin's policies have barred Doe from having legal representation during the disciplinary hearing.

He added that it also barred a cross-examination of the witness and calling on testimony from corroborating witnesses, including the other woman who had sex with Doe after the party.
The family of Elliott Johnson today came face-to-face with a boyfriend the Tory activist accused of betraying him before he killed himself.

The 21-year-old was found dead on railway tracks in Bedfordshire in September last years, weeks after making allegations about bullying in the Conservative Party.

A suicide note left by the 21-year-old named former activist Mark Clarke as an alleged bully, adding that he felt betrayed former political adviser Andre Walker - said to be his lover 'until the day he died'.

Mr Walker has always denied he betrayed Elliott and has blamed his state of mind.

Face-to-face: Ray and Alison Johnson, parents of Tory activist Elliott Johnson who killed himself last year, came face-to-face with Andre Walker, who Elliott named in his suicide note as betraying him

Elliott killed himself on a railway line in September, leaving a suicide note accusing senior election aide Mark Clarke, 38, of bullying him (pictured together in October 2014)

Elliott's parents Ray and Alison today sat close to Mr Walker, as he attended a pre-inquest review in Bedfordshire.

Tragedy: Elliott Johnson, 21, killed himself by lying on train tracks after a bitter row with former parliamentary candidate Mark Clarke, 38, who was tipped as a future cabinet minister by Tatler magazine

As the hearing started coroner Thomas Osborne admonished Mr and Mrs Johnson for saying yesterday that if Mr Walker attended it was like 'the murderer returning to the scene of the crime'.

He said: 'That is unacceptable. Can I just reiterate that anyone who has an interest in this can attend. Everyone is entitled to be treated with respect.'

Elliott Johnson, 21, killed himself by lying on train tracks after a row with former parliamentary candidate Mark Clarke, 38, who was tipped as a future cabinet minister by Tatler magazine.

Elliott wrote a suicide note, which said: 'I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker. I had to wrongly turn my back on my friends. Now all my political bridges are burnt. Where can I even go from here?'

His death sparked a widespread allegations of bullying within the Tory party.

Elliott's family want his inquest to look at allegations of bullying within the group of young Tories in the months leading up to his death.

But they will have to wait until Friday to hear whether the coroner agrees.

Family lawyer Heather Williams QC, told the coroner in the last weeks of Elliott's life his experiences amounted to the 'inhuman or degrading treatment' needed to trigger a widening of the scope.

Acting on behalf of the Johnson family she argued at the pre-inquest hearing in Ampthill, Bedfordshire, for the full inquest be broadened to explore the culture in the Conservative Party at the time.

Upset: A tearful Alison Johnson and husband Ray Johnson leave the Bedfordshire inquest this afternoon

The tragic last message written by Elliot Johnson to his parents before killing himself

Ms Williams said: 'There is a prospect when evidence is heard that some of the treatment that he experienced in the last weeks of his life, particularly the bullying would cross the article three threshold and amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.

'If it is or capable of doing so then the threshold to increase the scope of the investigation into his death is crossed.

Denial: Mr Walker, who is understood to have been in a relationship with Elliott, says he did not betray him

'It is a situation where if the allegations of bullying that you will be familiar with were made good then it could well be worth the conventions of investigation being engaged.

'Firstly, his family as you know believe that his death on September 15 was directly linked to a series of events that occurred in the last few weeks of his life.

'And in particular bullying he experienced by Mark Clarke and those acting with him'.

George Alliott, representing Conservative Way Forward, said only selected parts of the suicide note had so far been made public.

He quoted from a British Transport Police report which said the note also referred to a 'failure to give his parents children', a reference to Elliott's homosexuality.

'If the scope were to be widened, it is going to have to include reference to Elliott's mental health and his sexuality,' he added.

After this morning's hearing Andre Walker said that they were good friends and insists he played no part in his death.

Speaking after the inquest, lobby journalist and friend Andre Walker, who is named as betraying Elliott in his suicide note, said he hoped the full circumstances of his state of mind would be heard.

'I'm glad more of the suicide note came out today, particularly reference to homophobic discrimination,' he said.

'I think it's important the mental health report is made public as any allegations of bullying are only part of the story.' The Johnson family declined to comment as they left the hearing

Later Deighton Pierce Glynn, the law firm representing the family, released their skeleton argument submitted to the hearing.

They list a number of people they wish to call as witnesses, including Mr Clarke and Mr Walker.

It includes further details about an alleged incident on August 12 which led to Elliott making a formal complaint about Mr Clarke.

In this complaint he wrote: "I was genuinely fearful that he was going to attack me."

The legal document added: "He (Elliott) said that Mark Clarke went 'ballistic' at him, that he 'grabbed my chin' and told him that he had sued hundreds of people and he 'squashes them like ants when they are small and young'."

It continues to describe how Elliott researched suicide websites for the first time on August 20.

The lawyers argue that there is a public interest in the inquest exploring these events and the response to Elliott's complaint to prevent any risk to other young people.
The AFP have been ordered to investigate leak of classified Defence papers

The Australian Federal Police have been ordered by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to investigate a leak in classified Defence documents regarding the release date of new submarines.

The papers show that under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's reign, the plan was to bring new 12 submarines into service by the mid-2020s.

But, Mr Turnbull said Defence had consistently advised the government it was highly unlikely the first of the new submarines could be delivered by 2026 and instead claim they always expected them to arrive in the early 2030s.

The classified documents were leaked to The Australian's foreign editor Greg Sheridan and Mr Abbott has denied any involvement, saying he was 'flabbergasted' to discover there was a delay on the arrival of the subs.

The Australian Federal Police have been ordered by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (left) to investigate a leak in classified Defence documents that show new submarines will not arrive until 2030 - a revelation former Prime Minsiter Tony Abbott (right) is 'flabbergasted' by

The papers show that under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's reign, the plan was to bring new 12 submarines into service by the mid-2020s and Mr Abbott denied any involvement in the leak

He said he does not 'background against colleagues.'

Mr Sheridan's article quoted a number of drafts of the white paper from when Mr Abbott was in office, according to The Conversation. Mr Sheridan also denied Mr Abbott was his source.

On Wednesday, Mr Turnbull told parliament Defence department secretary Dennis Richardson had initiated an AFP inquiry into the apparent release of the documents.

'The secretary and the Chief of the Defence Force further advised us that a study commissioned by the Defence Minister confirmed in 2012 that an extension of life for the Collins submarine was feasible and practical,' he said.

Since that time the department and the Australian Defence Force had worked on the basis that an extension of life was the only practical option to ensure there was no capability gap between the Collins and the future submarines, the prime minister told parliament.

Mr Turnbull said the actual delivery date of the first new submarine would depend on the outcome of the competitive evaluation process now underway.

Mr Turnbull said Defence had consistently advised the government it was highly unlikely the first of the new submarines could be delivered by 2026

Cabinet Minister Mitch Fifield (pictured) said the alleged leaking of the documents was 'unhelpful' and 'serious,' admitting they had no idea where the leak came from

A decision is expected later this year.

Cabinet Minister Mitch Fifield said the alleged leaking of the documents was 'unhelpful' and 'serious,' admitting they had no idea where the leak came from, The ABC reported.

'It's important that governments, regardless of persuasion, can have confidential deliberations, particularly on issues of defence and national security,' he said.

'It is entirely appropriate the secretary of the Department of Defence has initiated an inquiry.'

Mr Abbott said pushing delivery of the new subs out this far will require upgrades and life extensions for some or all of the six Collins boats to ensure they can remain in service for as much as a decade longer.

Mr Abbott said the Collins subs, constructed between 1990 and 2003, were a fragile capability at the best of times and keeping them operational was difficult.

Mr Turnbull said the delivery date would depend on the outcome of the competitive evaluation process, set to announce the winning submarine design later this year.
Mike Abdullah watched as a young woman lay shot in the street in a corner of north Philadelphia known as the Badlands, spitting up the blood that gradually choked her to death.

The fatal shooting was one of many he says he has seen in the city over the years and felt helpless to stop. Recently, Abdullah  who also lost a younger brother and four nephews to gun violence  joined more than 50 of his neighbors at an elementary school to learn how to help the next victim in time.

Abdullah, 61, said of his brother: 'He did what most young men do, tried to run to the hospital. He made it right up to the door and died because there was nobody to do these procedures on him.'

Mike Abdullah, pictured, recently participated in a class hosted by a Philadelphia hospital using military battlefield tactics to teach residents in violent neighborhoods how to help gunshot victims

Temple University Hospital is enlisting neighborhood residents  most of them poor, black and living in violent areas  in the program, called 'Fighting Chance' (file image)

The doctors and nurses conducting the training have plenty of experience, as the hospital treats at least 400 shooting victims a year (file photo)

Temple University Hospital is enlisting neighborhood residents  most of them poor, black and living in violent areas  in the program, called 'Fighting Chance.' The doctors and nurses conducting the training have plenty of experience, as the hospital treats at least 400 shooting victims a year.

The moments after a shooting are critical. A gunshot victim hit in the upper arm or thigh can bleed out in two minutes. Borrowing from battlefield tactics, the trainers teach neighborhood residents how to tighten a tourniquet around someone's arm, drag them to safety, apply pressure to major arteries to stop bleeding, and position victims in a vehicle before rushing them to a hospital.

The program is part of a national campaign by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called 'Stop the Bleed,' which recognizes that no matter how fast emergency responders get to a scene, bystanders will be there first. But most of the efforts elsewhere are aimed at teaching the public how to respond to mass shootings or mass accidents like a plane or train crash.

Fighting Chance organizers are hoping to find funding to help pay for gunshot-treatment kits to distribute to people who have completed the program and to leave in places that could be adjacent to gun violence (file photos)

Fighting Chance is run by volunteer hospital staff. Organizers are hoping to find funding to help pay for gunshot-treatment kits to distribute to people who have completed the program and to leave in places that could be adjacent to gun violence, from recreation centers to late-night takeout restaurants.

At the recent training, grandmothers, uncles, young women and boys as young as 10 years old paid close attention as hospital volunteers demonstrated techniques before practicing on one another. Absent were young black men  the most likely group to be shot and killed.

Homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between 18 and 34 years old in the U.S., including in Philadelphia. Police recorded more than 1,240 shootings across the city last year, including 690 involving young black men. Of those, 236 were fatal, and 51 percent of those killed were young black men.

Recently, Abdullah  who also lost a younger brother and four nephews to gun violence  joined more than 50 of his neighbors at an elementary school to learn how to help the next victim in time

Scott Charles, trauma outreach coordinator at Temple University Hospital and one of the program's organizers, suggested part of the challenge could be a mutual wariness between the young men and some in the community.

'The guys who are sometimes engaged in the kinds of activities that put them in harm's way are sometimes reluctant to interact with folks that they see as being people who would tell on them,' Charles said. 'We have to be creative in how we get to them, because they need to be here.'

Marquita Harrington, a 32-year-old mother of two who attended a recent class, also noted black men her age are not part of the conversation.

'We need to make them feel like a person and start letting them know we do care about them and that we don't think they're a nuisance,' she said.

In Fairhill, the neighborhood where the most recent class was taught, there have been 730 shootings since 2011. The approach might seem surreal but is a logical response to daily reality, Abdullah said.

'This shouldn't be, that we're learning war zone tactics to save lives,' Abdullah, 61, said. 'This has been the best answer so far to save our children. The better solution is to get them jobs and education.'

The mood was enthusiastic, reflecting residents' investment in the training and a sense of urgency, said Ricardo Rose, who lived in the neighborhood as a child and moved back three years ago.

'Everybody wants to talk about the lead crisis in Flint,' Rose said, referring to the Michigan city where lead has tainted drinking water for months.
Apple has quietly filed an appeal to reject the US District Court order to hack one of the San Bernardino shooters' iPhones, a report claims.

The firm is in the midst of proceedings in Congress, with lawyers fighting to overturn request as they claim it could affect the privacy of all iPhone users.

But at 11pm on Tuesday, lawyers for Apple Computer also filed a formal objection to the ruling 'out of an abundance of caution', Politico reports.

Such a move, which is optional, typically escalates a case to be seen by a life-tenure judge rather than a magistrate.

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Senior vice president and general counsel for Apple Inc Bruce Sewell prepares to testify before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy', on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on Tuesday

FBI director James Comey told the panel on Tuesday (pictured) that the final court ruling forcing would be 'potentially precedential' in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from companies

It is not clear what impact the filing will have on the verdict.

On February 16, a federal court in California instructed Apple to write special software to unlock the iPhone 5c used by gunman Rizwan Farook, an order the company is contesting.

During the congressional panel on Tuesday, Apple was awarded a small victory as Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled that government lawyers had not made clear that the outcome of this case could be used as a precedent for other iPhone and privacy-related cases.

FBI director James Comey told the panel on Tuesday that the final court ruling forcing would be 'potentially precedential' in other cases where the agency might request similar cooperation from technology companies.

The remarks were a slight change to Comey's statement last week that ordering Apple to unlock the phone was 'unlikely to be a trailblazer' for setting a precedent for other cases.

Tuesday's testimony from Comey and remarks before the same U.S. House Judiciary Committee by Apple's general counsel, Bruce Sewell, brought to Congress a public fight between Apple and the government over the dueling interests of privacy and security that has so far only been heard in the courts.

Gunman Rizwan Farook shot and killed 14 people

Sewell and Comey's remarks also clarified some areas where the two sides fundamentally disagree.

Comey said the tool created for Farook's iPhone would not work on other models.

But Sewell said the tool that Apple was being asked to create would work on any iPhone.

'This is not about the San Bernardino case. This is about the safety and security of every iPhone that is in use today,' Sewell said.

Committee members seized on Comey's statement that the case could set a legal precedent allowing the agency access to any encrypted device.

'Given... that Congress has explicitly denied you that authority so far, can you appreciate our frustration that this case appears to be little more than an end run around this committee?' asked the panel's ranking minority member, Michigan Representative John Conyers.

Comey responded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not asking to expand the government's surveillance authority, but rather to maintain its ability to obtain electronic information under legal authorities that Congress has already provided.

He also acknowledged that it was a 'mistake' for the FBI to have asked San Bernardino County officials to reset the phone's cloud storage account after it was seized.

The decision prevented the device, which was owned by the county, Farook's employer, from backing up information that the FBI could have read.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others on December 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police.

The government has said the attack was inspired by Islamist militants and the FBI wants to read the phone's data to investigate any links with militant groups.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) listens to testimony from Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey during a House Judiciary Committee hearing titled 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy,' on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on Tuesday

Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey is sworn in left during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, and senior vice president and general counsel for Apple Inc Bruce Sewell is sworn in, right

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik (pictured), shot and killed 14 people and wounded 22 others on December 2 before they were themselves killed in a shootout with police

Comey told a congressional panel last Thursday that the phone could have 'locator services' that would help the agency fill in a gap in its knowledge of the route the couple traveled as they fled.

'We're missing 19 minutes before they were finally killed by law enforcement,' Comey said. 'The answer to that might be on the device.'

A federal judge handed Apple a victory in another phone unlocking case in Brooklyn on Monday, ruling that he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said on Tuesday at the RSA Cybersecurity conference in San Francisco that she was 'disappointed' by the Brooklyn ruling, and rebuffed Apple's claim that its Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination was being violated.

The Justice Department is 'not alleging that [Apple has] done anything wrong,' Lynch said, but is treating the company as a third party holding data valuable to an ongoing investigation.
Bernie Sanders lost seven out of 11 of last night's contests to Hillary Clinton.

On their face, the Super Tuesday defeats were crushing. Clinton has locked in 544 of the delegates need to win the Democratic Party's nomination to Sanders 349.

Over at the Sanders campaign headquarters, though, his top aides were telling a different story: 'I think it's fair to say last night we had a fantastic night,' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said.

The campaign targeted just five of the states on the calendar yesterday and it won '4.9,' he said, referring to the senator's one percent loss in Massachusetts and wins in Oklahoma, Colorado, Vermont and Minnesota.

'So we're going forward, and this is a campaign to win.'

In Portland, Maine, later in the day, the candidate served up a similar message: 'We were up against the candidate supported by the entire political establishment, someone who had been anointed by the pundits.

'Well guess what? It doesn't look like she's so inevitable now,' he said to loud cheers from a loyal group of supporters.

Scroll down for video

Bernie Sanders lost seven out of 11 of last night's contests to Hillary Clinton. On their face, the Super Tuesday defeats were crushing. Clinton has locked in 544 of the delegates need to win the Democratic Party's nomination to Sanders 349

Over at the Sanders campaign headquarters, though, his top aides were telling a different story: 'I think it's fair to say last night we had a fantastic night,' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said. Weaver's seen here at Sanders' rally last night in Vermont, on the right. On the left is senior strategist Tad Devine. Both briefed reporters this morning

On Saturday, Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska hold their contests. The following day Maine Democrats will conduct their caucuses. Then, Tuesday, Michigan and Mississippi cast their ballots.

Sanders expects to win four of the six based on his performance so far - Kansas, Nebraska, Maine and Michigan.

He's visiting them all today and tomorrow, and he'll be back in Michigan on Sunday for the Democratic Party debate in Flint.

At stake over the next week are 300 delegates. To pull ahead of Clinton, he'd need to win all but 100 of them, roughly.

'We're behind,' Weaver admitted this morning, speaking about the delegate count generally, and Clinton 'has a substantial advantage. We believe that we can make that up.'

The campaign chief said 'as late as this morning,' senior staff was running the numbers.

They believe they can pick up many of the 247 delegates awarded late in the race by New York, where Sanders was born and Clinton claims as her adopted state, on April 19.

It's also relying on uber-liberal California to boost its delegate count. The West Coast state does not hold its contest until June 7 and is the second to last primary, but it controls 495 delegates. If Sanders is able to hold on until then, he could pull an upset over Clinton and clinch the nomination.

It's a big 'if' though.

'We'd have to win a lot of states beginning with this weekend,' Devine said of the possible path to victory.

Devine contended at the briefing that Super Tuesday was the 'single best day on the calendar' for Clinton, however.

She had 'real momentum' after Nevada and South Carolina, he said. 'We do not think the calendar ahead looks nearly as good as yesterday.'

'I believe there's going to be a lot of good days ahead,' he insisted.

And for all the talk of the super delegates Clinton has locked in - party leaders who can give their vote at the convention to whomever they want - Devine said, 'The truth is you will not win a nomination in the Democratic unless you consistently win throughout the calendar.'

'If Hillary Clinton does not consistently win in the weeks and months ahead,' he said, 'questions will arise around her candidacy.'

'We've got a long way to go,'he said. 'I think we have a very good plan. Our plan is to win, and win consistently between now and June.'

By that time, their financing operation 'which is unprecedented' and other factors working in their favor, such as Sanders' popularity against potential Republican nominees, 'will take hold on the delegates and influence them,' Devine said.

'I believe there's going to be a lot of good days ahead,' Devine said this morning. Sanders supporters are seen cheering on their candidate last night just outside his home town in Vermont

Sanders raised $42.7 million in February - beating Clinton's total for the second month in a row.

Her campaign had already said he'd come out ahead this month but formally disclosed this afternoon that she came up far short of his tally. She brought in $30 million and has $31 million at her disposal.

The U.S. senator's grassroots support will allow him to continue competing against her nationally for at least another month.

The Sanders campaign is banking on Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee.

A CNN general election poll released yesterday showed Sanders beating Trump in November by 12 points. Clinton would also win against the billionaire, but the margin is a tighter eight points.

'I think Trump is going to run a vicious campaign. I think we can all recognize his tactics. They've succeeded thus far in the Republican process,' Devine said.

'I believe that Bernie Sanders will much be a stronger candidate against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton.

In the campaign's most poignant criticism of the ex-secretary of state this morning, Devine directed reporters to Sanders' scores on 'critical attributes, honesty and integrity for example, caring about people and compassion for them.'

'I think it gives a huge advantage in dealing with the incoming against somebody like Trump, where integrity is going to be the central issue...against him in this election.'

Clinton remains under a cloud of scrutiny brought on by her revelation last year that she ran her government emails through a private server she kept at her home in New York.

'I believe Democratic Party voters are going to, in the course of the next few months, come to the conclusion that if they want to beat Trump, they're going to need Bernie to be the nominee,' he said.

In the campaign's most poignant criticism of the ex-secretary of state this morning, Devine directed reporters to Sanders' scores on 'critical attributes, honesty and integrity for example, caring about people and compassion for them'

Michigan alone has 130 pledged delegates to pass out. The Sanders campaign believes it has a strong chance of winning the 'critical show down state,' in Weaver's words, in spite of polling that puts Clinton ahead by double digits.

Weaver argued that trade deals supported by Clinton have 'gutted' the local economy and hurt middle class and black residents of the state.

His candidate, on the other hand, has been a 'consistent opponent' of those agreements, Weaver said.

Michigan is a state with a large African-American population, and Sanders has not performed well with that demographic in states that have already voted.

Last night Clinton won 80 percent of the black vote or more in Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. In South Carolina she outperformed Barack Obama's 2008 score with black voters and set a new record for turnout among voters in the demographic.

'We stipulate that we have to do better with African-American voters,' Sanders chief strategist, Tad Devine, told reporters camped out in the campaign's Burlington, Vermont, office this morning. 'But we think that we can do a lot better.'

Devine said the 74-year-old lawmaker who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, 'has an incredible personal story' to tell about his civil rights activism in his youth, and as black voters 'get to know him better, we think we're gonna do better.'

Sanders also failed to win strong support among Hispanics last night in Texas, according to exit polling. His campaign pointed to its win in Colorado, though, which had no exit polling.

'I don't know how you're going to win Colorado' without doing well with Hispanics, Weaver said.

'If Hillary Clinton does not consistently win in the weeks and months ahead,' he said, 'questions will arise around her candidacy,' the Sanders campaign said today

Sanders' supporters were slightly less convinced after last night's beating that their candidate would prevail.

But they said they were proud of the campaign he's run and what it's done for the progressive movement.

'I feel like even if he loses the states, he's still changing the way that people think,' Emily Kluppa said as the results rolled in. 'And even if he doesn't win this election, and take it to the end, he's still changing the dialogue and making people think about the issues.'

Her husband, Mike, added, 'We just hope the movement continues.'

Obama's movement 'petered out but this can keep the momentum,' Emily said as her husband interjected, 'I'd like to think there's a lot more Bernies than Trumps in the world.'

'I think that Trump just managed to get a lot of media attention and make it appear like there are a vast majority of Americans who are racist.'

His wife said, 'But I think that he's the minority. He's just the loudest one, so it sounds like majority.'

As far as Sanders' prospects in the Democratic primary are concerned, Mike said, 'We're optimistic still...' as his wife chimed in, ..for the future, if not for right now, for the future.'

'No, we're optimistic for right now,' he told her. 'We are optimistic for right now, but if we're wrong, which never happens....'

Both said that if it comes down to it, they'll vote for Clinton in the general election though.
The marriage of one of Princess Charlotte's godfathers has ended less than three years after he tied the knot in a lavish ceremony dubbed the 'society wedding of the year'.

Thomas van Straubenzee, 33, who has known the Duke of Cambridge since prep school, married Lady Melissa Percy, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, in Northumbria in 2013.

Princes William and Harry were both ushers at the ceremony while Chelsy Davy, Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend, was a bridesmaid.

Wedding of the year: Thomas van Straubenzee, 33, who has known the Duke of Cambridge since prep school, married Lady Melissa Percy, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, in Northumbria in 2013

Marriage breakdown: Mrs van Straubenzee, pictured with her husband on their wedding day, filed for a divorce, citing his 'unreasonable behaviour'. Pictured right, Mr van Straubenzee, who is Princess Charlotte's godfather

Celebration: Prince William, left, stands next to bridesmaid Chelsy Davy to applaud the newlyweds

The Duchess of Cambridge was heavily pregnant with Prince George and so could not attend but her sister Pippa, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie and Prince Harry's Cressida Bonas, Prince Harry's then girlfriend, all celebrated the nuptials at Alnick Castle, the bride's ancestral home.

But court papers reveal the couple parted ways in October last year, just months after their second anniversary, and were today granted a divorce at the Central Family Court, in London.

Mrs van Straubenzee, 28, filed for a decree nisi on the grounds of her husband's 'unreasonable behaviour'. The couple were not present when it was granted by District Judge Anne Aitken.

Among the court papers made public was a sworn statement signed by Mrs van Straubenzee in December, which said that they had separated two months earlier.

Close: Princes William and Harry were both ushers at the 2013 ceremony. Pictured, at the wedding

Daddy's girl: The bride with her father, the 12th Earl of Northumberland, and bridesmaid Chelsy Davy, right

The paperwork stated that a judge found that Mrs van Straubenzee was 'entitled to a decree of divorce, the marriage having irretrievably broken down, the facts found proved being the respondent's unreasonable behaviour'.

Mr Straubenzee, a property consultant, has known William since both attended Ludgrove prep school in Berkshire, and he accompanied the Prince to New Zealand on his gap year.

Known simply as 'Van' to his friends, he is a key figure in the Duke and Duchess's inner circle and was one of five people named Princess Charlotte's godparent.

Glittering guestlist: Cressida Bonas, left, and Pippa Middleton, right, both made the journey to Northumbria

He worked at Strutt & Parker estate agents, and as a property finder, and in 2012 set up VanHan, a London estate agency, which has offices in London, Dubai, Moscow and Hong Kong.

Mr van Straubenzee's friendship with both William and Harry made headlines in 2011 when he was mugged at knifepoint in Battersea while talking on the phone to Harry, and concerned the Prince drove across town to check on him.

The princes are also patrons of a memorial fund dedicated to Tom's brother Henry, who was killed in a car crash in 2002.

Childhood friend: Mr Straubenzee, a property consultant, has known William since both attended Ludgrove prep school in Berkshire. Pictured above, the Cambridges arrive for the christening of Princess Charlotte
Failing tomato crops have disappointed would-be revelers hoping to throw handfuls of the fruit at strangers while getting drunk and listening to music.

The Tomato Battle events, which aims to blend the tomato throwing of Spain's La Tomatina with the drinking culture of Germany's Oktoberfest, planned for Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth have all been cancelled.

Event organisers cancelled the Perth event on Wednesday, just three days before it was due to be held because of an apparent tomato shortage.

Scroll down for video

The Australian Tomato Battle has been canceled in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide for 2016

The Perth battle was canceled days before the event to be held on March 5, because of a lack of fruit

The battle aims to mimic La Tomatina (pictured) the world'd biggest tomato throwing festival held in Spain

'We regret to inform that due to harsh weather conditions in WA recently, this has led to a destroyed tomato supply, prompting us to cancel the upcoming Perth Tomato Battle,' the event organisers Ausome Productions wrote on Facebook.

But this isn't the first time they have cancelled their Tomato Battle event in Australia this year - in fact none of the planned events will run.

Adelaide's event was cancelled by the promoter due to 'lack of interest' on February 19.

A Facebook post was made to notify revelers.

The post announcing the Brisbane date's cancellation noted there was not enough Roma tomatoes available for use.

'Attention Brisbane! Unfortunately due to a lack in tomato supply, the Brisbane battle has been postponed to a later date in the year,' the post read.

'Our policy in using only tomatoes marked for disposal means that in order to maintain our social responsibility it is necessary for us to move the date in order for the right tomatoes to be utilised.'

More than 300,000 tomatoes are needed per event, in Western Australia and Queensland organisers could not get enough

Brisbane's event was set to be postponed, but no date has been set and no Australian locations are schedule on the event website

Would-be tomato throwers are outraged by the multiple event cancellations

The event organisers promise to only use tomatoes marked for waste during the event

That post was made on January 20, the organisers are yet to announce the new date.

The Tomato Battle Australia websites shows no available dates for the festival this year.

Facebook users were outraged with the cancellation of the events, some calling the company out on the fact that a number of their event would not run.

Tomato Battle promises to use fruit not suitable for consumption which is marked for waste.

The Tomatina (pictured) style event promised more than 1million tomatoes to be thrown Australia wide

The Adelaide event was cancelled due to a lack of interest in the South Australian city

They claim profits from each event go toward feeding 100 children for a month.

Each event promised more than 300,000 tomatoes would be available for revelers to attack each other with.

But those promises were broken, and none of the one million estimated pieces of fruit will be thrown.

Ticket holders have expressed their anger at the speed of refunds on the event Facebook Page.
American Special Forces have captured a 'significant' ISIS operative in northern Iraq as part of a new mission to increase pressure on the terror group.

The detainee, who has not been identified, has been in custody for the last two or three weeks at a temporary structure in the norther Iraqi city of Erbil.

U.S. forces, who are holding the prisoner, will interrogate them for the next several weeks before turning them over to Iraqi or Kurdish authorities,

The operative is the first target to be captured by a 200-strong team led by elite Delta Force troops, which is known as the 'expeditionary targeting force', since deploying in Iraq in recent weeks.

American Special Forces have captured a 'significant' ISIS operative in northern Iraq as part of a new mission against the terror group. Pictured, U.S. and Iraqi special forces inside a makeshift prison in the town of Huwija last year, nine miles west of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The Islamic State flag hangs on the wall (file image).

Although US commandos have captured ISIS members in Iraq before, the 200-member Special Operations team is the first major American combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.

It is believed that the team arrived in the region a number of weeks ago and has been establishing intelligence networks and gathering information on targets ahead of this raid, though it is not known exactly when the operation took place.

The hope is that the new detainee will provide information on the location of other ISIS figures, allowing for more hostages to be taken in the coming weeks and months. The raid was first reported by the New York Times.

The detainee is being held in a temporary structure in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil, where the American unit is based and which is currently held by Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the creation of the Special Forces unit in December

Defense Department officials have notified the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the treatment of detainees, though a spokesman for the organization declined to comment.

Obama officials have ruled out transporting the detainee to an American detention facility, including Guantanamo Bay, as the President seeks to close the jail before his term in office ends.

It is not known how long American forces plan to hold the detainee, though sources said the interrogation could take weeks or even months.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that a force was being deployed to Iraq and Syria in December last year amid criticism that the Obama administration was not doing enough to thwart ISIS in the wake of the Paris attacks in which 130 people were killed.

At the time, he said: 'We're deploying a specialized expeditionary targeting force to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and to put even more pressure on ISIL.

'These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture ISIL leaders.'

The force is the first significant deployment of American troops inside Iraq since combat units pulled out at the end of 2011.

Special Operations troops killed ISIS leader Abu Sayyaf during a raid in eastern Syria back in May last year and captured his wife, Umm Sayyaf.

The target is being held at a temporary detention center in Erbil, a Kurdish-controlled town in northern Iraq, and will be interrogated by U.S. forces before being handed over to the Kurds or Iraqi government (file image of a makeshift prison in Huwija)

Information gleaned from her, as well as data taken from computers, files and hard drives used by ISIS, convinced Carter of the need to put a permanent force together.

Sayyaf is still being held by the Kurdistan Regional Government an was charged last month with being part of a conspiracy resulting in the death of Kayla Mueller, 26, an American aid worker.

Mueller had been captured by ISIS in 2013 and was kept as a sex slave by the Sayyafs and repeatedly raped by ISIS' self-proclaimed emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while in his custody.

Then, in November last year, U.S. special forces were recorded taking part in a raid to free prisoners held by ISIS at a compound in Hawija, northern Iraq.
A Texas couple has been indicted for allegedly enslaving a Nigerian nanny for more than two years while they forced her to work without pay and abused her.

Chudy Nsobundu, 56, and Sandra Nsobundu, 50, who are also Nigerian, have been charged with forced labor, withholding documents, visa fraud, conspiracy to harbor and harboring an illegal alien, according to KHOU.

The couple, who live in Katy, a city in Houston, Texas, physically and verbally abused the 38-year-old woman and often referred to her as 'the idiot', according to a criminal complaint filed on February 4.

Chudy Nsobundu, 56, and Sandra Nsobundu (pictured), 50, who are also Nigerian, have been indicted for allegedly enslaving a Nigerian nanny for more than two years while forcing her to work without pay

The nanny alleged that Chudy Nsobundu (pictured) and his wife promised her a monthly salary of $100, but never gave it to her. She also alleged that the couple was abusive. If charged they could face up to 60 years in federal prison

She allegedly worked for more than 20 hours each day from 5.30am until 1am cleaning, cooking and taking care of five children.

The woman claims that the couple initially promised her a $100 per month salary which she says they never gave her.

She alleges that the family did not allow her to eat fresh food and that she was only allowed to eat leftovers from their meals.

If she wanted milk for her tea, the nanny said she would have to strain milk from the children's cereal bowls.

The employee said she was severely abused in the home.

Her complaint also claims that Sandra Nsobundu dragged her by her hair and hit her across the face because she did not like the socks the woman put on one of her children.

She also said she was hit by the couple several times and that they threatened to kill her.

The Nsobundus must also forfeit their Katy residence (pictured), according to the indictment. And they could face up to a $250,000 maximum fine

The complaint alleges the woman was not allowed to watch TV, nor was she allowed to sit down while working.

She claims that the couple made her sleep on the floor and she couldn't use warm water to bathe.

The nanny's complaint alleges that she was not allowed access to communicate with her family and could only leave the house for walks with the children.

After a tip to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, the alleged victim was rescued in October of last year, according to CW39.

The couple could face up to 60 years in federal prison if convicted.

The Nsobundus must also forfeit their Katy residence, according to the indictment.
A father-of-two from Indiana has been spared prison time at the request of his estranged wife after pleading guilty to repeatedly molesting their cancer-stricken daughter.

Jeremy Schwer, of Indianapolis, was sentenced to 12 years' probation on Tuesday after entering a guilty plea to charges of felony child molestation.

As part of his sentence, 41-year-old Schwer will have to register as a sex offender, move out of his family's home and enter a counselling program.

Jeremy Schwer (left and right), of Indianapolis, was sentenced to 12 years' probation after pleading guilty to molesting his seven-year-old daughter, who is battling brain cancer (pictured with her dad right)

Vulnerable victim: Court records indicate the molestation began after Schwer's eldest daughter was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. This image shows the father feeding the girl in the hospital

Schwer and his wife of eight years have two children together, a seven-year-old and a three-year-old (the family are pictured above)

The prosecution had been seeking a nine-year prison sentence for Schwer, followed by three years' probation, but the man's wife asked a judge to keep him out of prison so that he could support their two children financially.

Schwer was arrested in 2015 after his wife of eight years contacted the Indiana Department of Child Services saying that their daughter, then six years old, told her she had touched her father's 'peepeeluca' - the family's word for genitals, reported the Indianapolis Star.

When interviewed by caseworkers, the little girl revealed that her father also touched her 'peepeeluca' and made her sit on his 'cat tail'.

According to court records, Jeremy Schwer began fondling his eldest daughter after she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in 2013. Schwer and his wife, who is a native of Nepal, also have a younger daughter.

In 2013, the Schwer family learned that their oldest daughter had a malignant growth on her brain (pictured left in a scan). Later that year, the child (pictured right with her father in hospital) underwent a surgery to remove most of it

The young victim said her father instructed her not to tell anyone about what was happening between them, or he would be sent to jail, according to court documents.

The child eventually spoke out about the molestation, telling her mother that Schwer would touch her privates every night he slept in her bed at St Jude's Children's Hospital in Memphis, where she has been undergoing cancer treatment.

Deputy Prosecutor Courtney Curtis on Tuesday said she disagrees with Schwer's lenient sentence but understands why the presiding judge chose to listen to the mother's plea to keep her estranged husband out of prison.

This is the most horrific circumstance of a child molest case that Ive ever seen, Curtis said after the sentencing hearing.

Schwer's defense attorney said in court his client is determined to dedicate the rest of his life to supporting his two daughters.

Disturbing facts: The little girl, pictured in her hospital bed next to her mom, later revealed that her dad touched her 'peepeeluca' and made her sit on his 'cat tail'

Schwer's now-estranged wife asked the judge to keep Schwer (left) out of prison so that he cold help support the victim (right) and her young sister financially

An article written about the family in Nuvo.net mentions that Schwer had been working as a 3D rendering artist. His lawyer said he was fired from his job after his arrest last year, and that he had been unemployed until two weeks ago.
The Florida teen who was busted last month for allegedly pretending to be a medical doctor is back in jail again just weeks after his initial arrest.

Malachi Love-Robinson, 18, was arrested and booked into Palm Beach County Jail on Tuesday around 11pm, according to police records.

He was arrested on one count of larceny of at least $20,000 and five counts of fraud using another person's identification without consent, according to WPTV.

During a court appearance Wednesday morning, a judge said he would release the teen on supervised release, but he must have a mental health assessment, WPTV reported.

Scroll down for video

Busted again: Malachi Love-Robinson, 18, was arrested and booked into Palm Beach County Jail on Tuesday around 11pm. He is facing charges of fraud, larceny of at least $20,000 and using someone's identity without their approval

He was also ordered to stop practicing medicine and not to contact any of the victims.

Police say an 86-year-old woman claims that the teen defrauded her after a series of at least five visits to her home when she contacted him online for treatment of severe stomach pain.

She also claims that he called an ambulance to transport her to the hospital and suggested for her to leave her purse behind, NBC reported.

By the time she was released, her bank account had been emptied and police say he forged three checks from her account.

In addition, investigators say that Love-Robinson charged her $3,494 for the visits to her home.

Separately, Grieco Mazda in Delray Beach has filed a lawsuit seeking roughly $7,200 in damages and interest claiming that he wrote them a bad check for a new car.

A lawsuit, seen by the Palm Beach Post, claims that in June, Love-Robinson gave a salesman a Wells Fargo check for $1,800 as a down payment for a 2016 red Mazda 6 costing more than $27,000.

Police say an 86-year-old woman claims that the teen defrauded her after a series of at least five visits to her home when she contacted him online for treatment her of severe stomach pain (above he is pictured during his first arrest)

NOW: Malachi Love-Robinson, accused of impersonating a doctor, makes 1st appearance on charges stemming 1st arrest, pic.twitter.com/JiFOavbcvi  Andrew Ruiz (@AndrewNRuiz) March 2, 2016

The bank refused to cash the check, saying the account was closed.

Records show Love-Robinson responded to the suit in writing in August. He claimed the bad check was a mistake, and that the dealership didn't give him enough time to fix it.

The teen was first arrested February 16 when an undercover police officer went to his office, The New Birth New Life Medical Center and complained of lethargy, sneezing and a sore throat.

He took the undercover officer's temperature and also used a stethoscope to check her heart and lungs.

He then told her she was suffering from allergies and recommended she take an over-the-counter medication, police say.

The police report said that Love-Robinson told the officer he was a doctor of homeopathic medicine and said he had a medical doctor on staff to prescribe antibiotics.

Separately, Grieco Mazda in Delray Beach has filed a lawsuit seeking roughly $7,200 in damages and interest claiming that he wrote them a bad check for a new car (similar pictured)

He was then arrested on grand theft charges but posted bail later and was released.

Love-Robinson has defended his actions in several interviews and claims that he never told anyone he was a medical doctor.

However, he has claimed to have a PHD, but has never shown documentation or said what field it is in.
After losing every state except one to GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio suggested the delegate math was in his favor over the brash billionaire's.

'I think the question is how does Donald Trump get to 1,237 delegates?' Rubio told NBC News last night.

Rubio explained to Chuck Todd  who suggested there was no way for the Florida senator to take the nomination now unless there was a brokered convention  that usually the party calls on the other candidates to come behind the frontrunning candidate and throw their delegates his way.

'That's not going to happen with Donald Trump, no one is going to call for us to get behind him,' Rubio said. 'They know the nomination of Donald Trump means the end of the modern conservative movement and the end of the modern Republican party in a very devastating way.'

Scroll down for video

Marco Rubio appeared on NBC News last night and asked how Donald Trump planned to get enough delegates to clinch the nomination as other Republicans in the race wouldn't be supporting him

Sen. Marco Rubio said the delegate math only gets better for him going forward - even though he's only won one state

'People are saying you have to fight on because what's at stake is the soul of the Republican party,' Rubio added.

The Florida senator won just one state last night, while Trump commanded Super Tuesday by winning seven and Sen. Ted Cruz received three.

Since delegates from these states are doled out to candidates proportionally, Rubio argued that he's not that far behind.

Rubio told Todd that the math only gets better for his campaign.

'I think especially once we get to the winner-take-all phase the math gets a lot friendlier for us especially as the race narrows down,' Rubio said.

The candidate was looking ahead to the March 15 primaries when Florida, Illinois, Missouri and Ohio all vote and each state's delegates are all assigned to the winner of that state.

North Carolina also votes, but those delegates are divvied up proportionally.

Rubio said in recent days that he would win his home state of Florida, but polls indicate otherwise.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has Trump ahead of Rubio by 19.5 points.

And with Ohio Gov. John Kasich still in the race, it might be difficult for Rubio to pick up Ohio.

Rubio argued on NBC that his shift in tone was working.

Since last Thursday's GOP debate, he's taunted Trump at every turn, after spending eight months playing nice with the businessman.

'We've only had five days to explain to people what a con artist Donald Trump is,' he explained.

Rubio pointed to his second place finish in the swing state of Virginia as proof this new strategy is working.

'In fact, in the state of Virginia, a state where we were trailing by 15 points in the last polls that were taken, we basically have as many delegates as Donald Trump has at the end of the night,' Rubio boasted.

When Rubio slid over to CNN, the network's Jake Tapper didn't believe the spin.

'You're talking about Virginia, and that's another state Donald Trump won. And I'm just wondering if there's a certain amount of denial that you're in about this race?' Tapper asked.

Rubio scoffed and said no.

'You know this is about delegate count.' Rubio replied.

Also on CNN, Rubio said he felt his campaign was starting to 'catch fire' and so he would not be dropping out of the race as Cruz suggested.

During Cruz's victory speech, which took place in his home state of Texas, the first state the senator wrapped up last night, he called on others in the race to pull out because a 'divided' field would only strengthen Trump's bid.

'And after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,' Cruz claimed, before Rubio won Minnesota.

Rubio suggested that Cruz's performance was actually underwhelming.

'Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night, not a night where he won two states, he was supposed to have that Southern firewall and it didn't happen,' Rubio said.

Cruz had indeed hoped to pick up Southern states with high numbers of evangelical voters, but that plan began falling apart when he was bested by Trump in South Carolina.

Cruz had relied on the strength of his 'SEC state' strategy to propel him to the nomination.

Tonight, it failed him as Alabama and Georgia went to his biggest rival.

For Rubio, this looked like a win.

'We are going to be in this race even if it takes 50 states and every territory,' Rubio said defiantly during a late night interview on CNN.
The FBI has arrested a South Florida man in relation to the heist last year of $4.8 million in gold bars from a truck along Interstate 95 in North Carolina.

Miami FBI spokesman Mike Leverock says 46-year-old Adalberto Perez was taken into custody Wednesday at his home in Opa-Locka.

Details about the charges and Perez's alleged role in the robbery were expected to be released later.

Scroll down for video

The FBI has arrested 46-year-old Adalberto Perez from South Florida in connection with the heist last year of $4.8 million in gold bars from a truck along Interstate 95 in North Carolina

The truck shipment of 275 pounds of gold bars was intercepted in March 2015 by three armed thieves on its way from Miami to Massachusetts.

The men bound the hands of the driver and fled with the gold in a white van.

Court records didn't list an attorney for him.

A Miami man previously pleaded guilty to extortion by attempting to sell one gold bar.

Miguel Bover, 49, was not involved in the March 1, 2015 robbery, but was sentenced to more than three years behind bars for trying to facilitate the sale of the stolen bar on the black market.

Bover pleaded guilty in July 2015 to an attempted extortion charge after his cellphone was used to make threats when the gold sale fell through.

Bover did not make the threats himself but knows who did and fears for his family's safety, he said in court.

The truck (pictured) shipment of 275 pounds of gold bars was intercepted in March 2015 by three armed thieves on its way from Miami to Massachusetts. The men bound the hands of the driver and fled with the gold

At the time police releases sketches of the suspects thought to be male and possibly Hispanic who allegedly bound the hands of the driver and the passenger - there are three suspects altogether

'I do not know what is going to happen to them. I fear for them,' Bover said. 'These are very dangerous people.'

During the heist, after first claiming in Spanish they were police officers, the men bound the hands of the driver and another employee with plastic ties, forced them into the woods and sped off with the gold in a white van. No one was hurt.

Leverock said the investigation is ongoing.

Perez is the only person believed to be involved in the theft who has been arrested.

Authorities have also only recovered one gold bar.

Before Bover's April arrest, the pawnbroker failed to sell the gold bar to the metals refinery when employees there became suspicious.

The FBI was summoned and, as agents arrived, the pawnbroker returned with a piece of the gold bar that had been sawed off the main portion.

The bureau confiscated all the gold, which bore distinctive Republic Metals identifying markings, and the shop owner agreed to cooperate.
As America relives the trial of the century on the new FX series, prosecutor Marcia Clark has said the decision to have O.J. Simpson try on those infamous bloody gloves was not her call - and that he got away with murder.

Clark, 62, who is played by Sarah Paulson in The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, was the lead prosecutor in the trial of Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

She said she was against the decision to have Simpson try on the gloves during his 1995 trial but said her fellow prosecutor Chris Darden had insisted.

Scroll down for video

Marcia Clark, who prosecuted O.J Simpson in his 1995 murder trial, says 'he got away with murder' and that it was not her call to have him try on the infamous bloody gloves

Prosecutors had earlier decided not to have Simpson (pictured in June 1995) try on the gloves as they were soaked in blood and had been frozen and unfrozen multiple times

That was not my call, she told Datelines Josh Mankiewicz in an interview set to air on Sunday.

I didnt want [OJ Simpson] to try on the evidence gloves, I never did. I was miserable from the moment Chris [Darden] said No, Im doing this.

I never expected anything good to come of it.

One of the gloves had been found at the scene of the murders in Brentwood and the other at Simpsons home.

The prosecutors had earlier decided against having Simpson try on the gloves because they were soaked in blood and had been frozen and unfrozen numerous times.

Clark said fellow prosecutor Chris Darden apologized to her afterwards, but she told him: 'If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway

As a result, they appeared too tight when Simpson tried them on, over a pair of surgical gloves  leading his attorney Johnnie Cochran to quip to jurors numerous times: If it doesnt fit, you must acquit.

But Clark added that Darden apologized to her for the mistake, but she doesnt blame him or attribute it to losing the case.

Darden said to me Im sorry and I said OK. If that lost the case for us, we were never going to win anyway, she said.

Clark also admitted that she feels personally responsible for the not guilty verdict that was reached in October 1995.

I was the one trying the case, she said, but she insisted that there was no way to reach that jury.

There was no way to make them believe. There really wasnt.

Marcia Clark is played by Sarah Paulson (pictured) in the ten-part FX series 'The People V. O.J. Simpson'

Now, she hopes that the ten-part FX series, based on the book 'The Run of His Life: The People V. O.J Simpson' by Jeffrey Toobin, will help viewers learn from the past.

I thought, If they tell the true story and hit the big issues, then maybe thats a good thing, she told People, of the series, which stars Cuba Gooding Jr., John Travolta and David Schwimmer.

There are people who need to know about what happened, she added. He got away with murder.
A Canadian plumber discovered a gold bar worth more than $50,000 while renovating a bathroom last month.

Alif Babul was tearing apart a bathtub in a Calgary home when he and his apprentice, Dean Materi, came across the gold bar in mid-February.

Neither of the men realized that the one-kilogram, stamped brick of gold was real and worth more than $50,000, and it nearly ended up in the dump, Babul said.

Alif Babul was tearing apart a bathtub in a Calgary home when he and his apprentice, Dean Materi, came across the gold bar last month

'I seen a gold shimmery thing on the ground and I thought it was a copper light fixture,' Materi, who was on his second day of work, told the Calgary Herald. 'But when I went to shovel it up, it seemed kind of heavy. I picked it up and it was a gold brick.'

Babul, owner of Perfection Plumbing & Gas Ltd, said he and Materi did not expect to discover such a find while tearing apart the home's bathroom.

'Who stores gold bars underneath their tub, right? Kinda crazy,' he told CBC.

As per company policy, Babul, who has worked in plumbing for 12 years, returned the gold bar to the owners of the house.

'My wife and I had a long chat about that. I said to my wife, "I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's the right thing to do",' he said.

This is just the latest of Babul's valuable finds - on a previous job in Calgary he discovered several rare original Daredevil comics.

Babul said that the owners of the home had lost track of the gold brick and were delighted to have it back in their hands.

'Hopefully karma comes our way. Good karma,' he joked.

The bar is inscribed with the letters JM and a pair of crossed hammers - the stamp of Johnson Matthey, a British multinational chemical company that started out as a well-known and respected precious metals refinery business that started life in 1817.

The company produced gold and silver bars of 99.9% purity weighing one, 10 and 100 troy ounces from its refineries in Salt Lake City, USA and Brampton in Canada. Also inscribed on each bar is the number of troy ounces and often a serial number.

In 2014 Johnson Matthey sold to a Japanese industrial conglomerate Asahi Holdings.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has admitted the NHS does not do enough to claw back money it is owed

The amount of money the NHS got back from Europeans to pay for their treatment fell last year  despite the massive rise in immigration.

Under EU arrangements, UK citizens can be treated by other nations health services and the bill is sent back to Britain.

In theory, these European nations should also be billed when their citizens are treated by the NHS.

But in a further blow to the Remain case, official figures showed that hospitals recouped just 49.7million in 2014/15.

This is a reduction on the previous years total of 50.3million  even though net migration, mainly from the EU, has increased over the past year to record levels.

In the same year, British taxpayers handed 674.4million to European governments to pay for the care of UK citizens abroad.

It means Britain pays out almost 14 for the healthcare cost of Britons who fall ill abroad for every 1 it gets back for the NHS treatment of European visitors.

The statistics are a massive embarrassment for Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who says 500million a year can be reclaimed from health tourists if only the NHS was more efficient.

Those campaigning for Brexit said the figures strengthened their argument that the UK needed to regain control of its borders  and that this could only happen if we leave the EU.

It has long been that case that British taxpayers are being ripped off to the tune of hundreds of millions a year because hospitals are too lax at charging Europeans for their treatment.

The so-called health tourism gap between the amount the NHS collects from EU patients and the total hospitals on the continent receive from the UK stands at more than 600million.

Last month cancer specialist Professor Angus Dalgleish warned that British membership of the EU is putting intolerable strain on the NHS.

The principal of the Cancer Vaccine Institute said: The NHS is on its knees and could collapse completely.

NHS trusts were not prepared for the millions of EU migrants who have poured into Britain because the government estimate was nowhere near the reality.

The damning figures were released in a parliamentary question asked by Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee.

They showed that, in 2014/15, British taxpayers handed 674.4million to European governments to pay for the care of UK citizens abroad.

In the same year, the NHS managed to collect just 49.7million from European countries to pay for the care of their citizens who needed treatment here. That is down on the 50.3million total in 2013/14.

It leaves the health tourism gap at a massive 624.7million, with Britain paying out 13.57 for every 1 it gets back.

Mr Mann said: Sorting this scandal out would transform the financial situation of the NHS. This is a shambolic state of affairs and we are being played for fools.

This is money that should directly be going into the NHS and it would make a huge annual difference to its finances.

Ministers believe part of the problem is that hospitals do not ask enough questions to identify patients who should be paying for treatment.

Migration figures released last week showed net migration to Britain remained at near record levels. The arrivals included 257,000 from the EU, according to Office for National Statistics data

Part of the gap is due to the fact that so many British pensioners retire to the continent. There may also be more tourists travelling from Britain to mainland Europe than the other way round.

But there are more than a million migrant workers from the EU here, against far fewer Britons employed in other European countries.

Last month Mr Hunt admitted that the Health Service was not doing enough to collect the money it is due.

He told MPs that at least 500million a year could be recovered if hospitals were more efficient.

When it comes to the EU, the biggest problem that we have is that we are able to reclaim the costs of people temporarily visiting the UK, but we do not do as much as we should because the systems in hospitals are not as efficient as they need to be.

Despite the massive influx of Polish migrants, the figures show that our government pays Poland 4.3million towards the treatment of Britons who visit that country. But the NHS only got 1.5million for the costs of Poles treated in our hospitals.

While Britain paid France 147.6million last year, France only paid 6.7million back. We paid Germany 25.8million, but only got 2.1million back.
A mob in Malawi burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human bones for use in witchcraft, police said today.

The victims were 'found in possession of human bones and the mob took it upon themselves to burn them with petrol,' said Kirdy Kaunga, head of the Nsanje district police.

A traditional chief said suspicions were aroused as a result of movements and phone conversations of one of the seven, who was found with a bag of bones feared to be those of a butchered albino.

A mob in Malawi burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human albino bones for use in witchcraft. Albinos, who have white skin and yellow hair as a result of a genetic disorder, are regularly killed for their body parts, which are used in witchcraft rituals in African countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania

Chief Tengani, who only uses one name, said: 'He was chased and arrested.

'The man is said to have confirmed that his bag contained human bones and that's when the mob began rounding up the seven and burned them, one by one.'

Images from the scene showed the men being burned on a patch of grass surrounded by locals, with some children looking on.

Police arrived after the incident, which took place on Tuesday in Nsanje, the southernmost district of Malawi. So far, there have been no arrests.

James Kadazera, police spokesman for the southern region, said experts would conduct a postmortem on the bones in the bag 'to establish whether they are albino humans or not'.

An albino boy sits between his two parents at their home in Malawi. At least six albinos have been killed in Malawi since a surge in attacks which began in December 2014, although UN agencies put the figure at nine

Albinos, who have white skin and yellow hair as a result of a genetic disorder, are regularly killed for their body parts, which are used in witchcraft rituals in several in African countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania

'We also want to find out who actually torched these people,' Kadazera added, saying police condemned 'mob justice' where members of the public took the law into their own hands.

Identification of the victims was proving difficult due to their severe injuries, he said.

At least six albinos have been killed in Malawi since a surge in attacks which began in December 2014, although UN agencies put the figure at nine.

Last summer, Malawi launched an investigation into the root cause of the albino murders, in a move backed by the United Nations Children's Fund.

In September, a teacher was arrested on suspicion of trying to sell an albino schoolgirl for $10,000, and several others are awaiting trial in connection with albino-related crimes, including murder, abduction and possession of their bones.
Look out, here comes the Spider-Man!

A 29-year-old New Jersey man dressed as the comic book superhero in New York City's Times Square has been charged with aggressive panhandling.

Jose Aguin was outfitted as the webslinger on Tuesday morning when he took a photo with a 13-year-old boy, the New York Post reported.

29-year-old Jose Aguin (pictured) dressed as the comic book superhero in New York City's Times Square this week and has been charged with aggressive panhandling

Jose Aguin (seen left and right in these photographs) was outfitted as the webslinger on Tuesday morning when he posed for a photo with a 13-year-old boy

When the youngster started walking off, the Passaic man reportedly grabbed on to the boy and wouldn't release him.

Aguin allegedly sought a $10 payment from the 13-year-old's father, the New York Post reported.

A police officer saw what was happening and nabbed Aguin, who does not have a criminal record, its report said.

Aguin was snapped leaving Midtown Criminal Court on Wednesday and holding an envelope.

The alleged incident comes just a week after a costumed Batman was arrested in Times Square after he allegedly swiped $50 from an Irish tourist, DailyMail.com reported last week.

Jose Esaclona-Martinez allegedly took the $50 bill from the woman's wallet as she was tipping him for taking a picture, according to the Post.

Meanwhile a different Spider-Man was caught on camera fighting a man in Times Square not far from Toys 'R Us, in a video posted on Twitter in August 2015.

Phillip Williams was dressed as Spider-Man in Times Square when he allegedly punched a woman in February 2013. Williams was convicted of harassment in June 2014.
A VAT inspector and her husband swindled the taxman out of 170,000 while earning 1.2million from their buy-to-let property empire.

Savita Seth and husband Naveen, both 47, failed to declare their rental income on as many as 16 properties - often split into bedsits to maximise profits - between 1995 and 2012.

When the couple were caught they owned nine homes in London and Berkshire, two business premises in West Yorkshire and Cumbria, a static caravan and holiday homes in Spain and the US.

They also had two commercial buildings - a restaurant and takeaway with flats - cost 111,000 and 135,000, which they had paid for with cash.

Tax fraud: VAT inspector Savita Seth and husband Naveen, both 47, pictured, failed to declare their rental income on as many as 16 properties - often split into bedsits to maximise profits - between 1995 and 2012

The Seths rented out the majority of the properties, including rooms in their own eight-bedroom home in Uxbridge, north west London, and even let out a parking space in their driveway.

While building their property empire the couple falsely claimed 63,983 in Job Seeker's Allowance.

At the same time, Naveen presented himself as a high-earning IT consultant in order to secure mortgages on two properties in Colindale, Barnet, north London and Hillingdon, west London.

The couple were further convicted of avoiding a tax bill of 90,000 by concealing profits made from the sale of three properties.

Previously prosecutor Ailsa Williamson said: 'They lied about their incomes. They rented out most of the properties and got income but never told the tax man about it.

'They sold three of the properties but did not declare their profit. The icing on the cake was tax credits they claimed by lying about their income.'

Naveen was also found guilty of forging a lawyer's letter and Savita of wrongfully disclosing information.

They lied about their incomes. They rented out most of the properties and got income but never told the tax man about it. They sold three of the properties but did not declare their profit Prosecutor Ailsa Williamson

Today Savita sobbed and said 'bless you' as the judge at Isleworth Crown Court sentenced her to two years in prison, suspended for two years.

Naveen was jailed for three years and eight months on Friday.

Judge Nicholas Wood said today: 'Although you were working in HMRC you didn't use the particular knowledge or inside skill in order to further this offence.

'I've listened to various points in particular your good character, your own health problems, your role as a carer for two generations of the family and in particular health problems and behavioural problems of your youngest son.

'I take the view this is very much a borderline case but in the circumstances I feel able to suspend the sentences of imprisonment.'

The court also heard how her father-in-law has dementia and she would have to act as carer to her own parents as well as her husband's now that he is in jail.

The judge also declined to impose a curfew order or hand her any hours of unpaid work.

He said: 'Rather bluntly you have an awful lot on your plate for the foreseeable future considering I sent your husband to prison on Friday. Giving you unpaid work would be setting you up to fail.'

Empire: The Seths rented out the majority of the properties, including rooms in their own eight-bedroom home in Uxbridge, north west London, and even let out a parking space in their driveway (pictured)

Joff Parsons, Head of Internal Governance Criminal Investigations at HMRC, said: 'As an HMRC employee Savita Seth was in a privileged position and knew better than to hide her income.

'But she was motivated by greed and betrayed the trust that was placed in her and cheated the tax system she was employed to uphold. HMRC will not tolerate misconduct.

'We will thoroughly investigate any allegation of wrong doing and bring those responsible before the courts so justice can be served.'

The pair were found guilty of cheating the public revenue by failing to declare tax on rental income and capital gains tax, as well as with fraudulently obtaining tax credits. Savita Seth was also conviced of wrongful disclosure of information and her husband of forgery.
A Guinness heiress repeatedly battered her 65-year-old mother with her own handbag as she lay in bed at her 1.7million home.

Eliza Irby, 35, has been issued with a restraining order after leaving mother Emma Irby lying in her own blood-soaked bed sheets after the attack in the middle of the night at her home in Fulham, west London.

Hammersmith Magistrates' Court was told the pensioner was so scared that she 'thought she was dead' and had taken the matter to court because she desperate for her daughter to get help with her mental health problems.

Eliza Irby, 35, left Emma Irby (pictured with her other daughter, Clare) lying in her own blood-soaked bed sheets after an attack in the middle of the night

Eliza Irby was convicted of common assault at an earlier trial.

She appeared in the dock with a bright red face and wearing no make-up. It looked as if she had been crying before the sentencing hearing.

Magistrates ordered her not to contact her mother Emma, except via telephone and email and to not to go to her mother's five bedroom home in Fulham where the savage attack took place last November.

The court heard how Emma had taken the matter to court because she was desperate for her daughter to get help with her mental health issues.

Kate Shilton, prosecuting, said: 'On November 9th the victim went to bed alone in her bedroom and at 4am she was woken up with her daughter hitting her very hard with her handbag.

'The victim had left her handbag by her bed. Eliza had picked it up and had whacked her with it, the victim said approximately eight times.

'She said she was so scared she thought she was dead.'

She said once the savage attack was over, Emma examined her injuries in the mirror.

Ms Shilton said: 'The victim stayed in bed with blood all over her sheets.

'She went to look in the mirror and was covered in blood and had blood all over her pyjamas.'

In a statement read to the court, the victim said: 'I don't believe Eliza is a horrid person, but she needs help with her mental health.

Hammersmith Magistrates Court was told the pensioner was so scared that she 'thought she was dead' and had taken the matter to court because she desperate for her daughter to get help with her mental health problems. Pictured is Emma Irby's house in Fulham, west London

'During the assault I received bruising to my arm and cuts to my head. This is not the first time I have been attacked by Eliza. I wanted Eliza to get help for her mental health problems.'

She is related to the Guinness family via her father, a banker called David Aschan. His mother was Marit Guinness, a daughter of Samuel Guinness, a partner in the Irish merchant bank Guinness Mahon, which was started by a cousin of the founder of the brewing dynasty.

Samuel's mother and father were both Guinnesses by birth. Marit married a Swede, Carl Aschan, who came to Britain as a teenager and was recruited to MI6 during the war for his fluency in all the Scandinavian languages and German.

Ms Shilton added: 'It is a repeated and sustained assault on a vulnerable victim in her own home.'

Andrew Moxon, in mitigation, said: 'I have seen why my client has been convicted for assaulting her mother and there have been problems between them for some time.

'My client has not had any contact with her mother.

Hammersmith Magistrates' Court heard how Emma had taken the matter to court because she was desperate for her daughter to get help with her mental health issues

'She wants the restraining order in place because she says she doesn't want her mother in her life.

'She is adamant that this assault did not happen, but she accepts the decision of the court.

'She does have mental health issues. She suffers from anxiety and depression and she is in regular contact with her GP and is having support in that area.'

He added: 'She doesn't have any drink or drug problems and having met her she presents herself as a very intelligent and pleasant young lady although clearly somebody who has mental health issues.

'My client is on disability living allowance and ESA.'

Chair of Magistrates Janet Smith said: 'We have decided the offence is serious enough to take a community order.

'The community payback order will focus on improving your ability to understand and regulate your emotion and ensure you work with the violent project.

'If you change your address you will need to notify us and if you don't attend an appointment you will need a medical certificate.

'You need to pay a victim surcharge of 60.'

Ms Irby will serve the order in West Lothian, Scotland, where she lives. The court did not specify the number of hours she needed to work.

It is not the first time the family have found themselves in court.

In 2009, Eliza's sister, Clare Irby, was acquitted of being drunk on a Kingfisher Airlines flight from India to Heathrow.

Emma Irby descended on her mother's side from a hereditary peer, the third Baron Annaly. The current holder of the title was a minister in the House of Lords under John Major. Emma's father, Robert Henderson, was deputy chairman of British Airways.

He was also chairman of the private bank Kleinwort Benson and a long-running deputy chairman of major confectionary and beverage company Cadbury Schweppes. When he died in 2000 he left an estate worth more than 3million.
A unanimous decision to raise the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21 was made by San Francisco supervisors on Tuesday.

Despite arguments from opponents that cities and counties cannot trump California law, San Francisco becomes the second largest city after New York City to raise the minimum age to 21 to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

Hawaii and Boston residents also have to be 21 to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

Officials voted Tuesday to increase the minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 in San Francisco, even as opponents argue that cities and counties cannot trump California law. Pictured: A man smokes in San Francisco on Tuesday

Supervisor Scott Wiener, chief sponsor of the legislation, tweeted yesterday that raising the age is a 'key step to improve heath'

Supervisor Scott Wiener, chief sponsor of the legislation, said raising the age will discourage young people from turning into lifelong smokers.

The issue is gaining traction nationally. A report last year by the Institute of Medicine found that 90 per cent of daily smokers first tried a cigarette before 19.

Opponents argue that California law sets a minimum age of 18 and that the provision prohibits municipalities from setting a higher limit.

The small city of Healdsburg has suspended enforcing its new tobacco-age limit of 21 after a national tobacco retailer group threatened to sue. Santa Clara County, on the other hand, has not done so.

Thomas Briant, executive director of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets, had urged San Francisco to hold off on voting until the state attorney general can issue a decision.

Briant said 18-year-olds are adults when it comes to voting, serving in the military or signing a contract - and smoking should be no different.

Attorney General Kamala Harris has no legal opinion pending, a spokeswoman said.

San Francisco's city attorney called the proposed ordinance legally sound. The ordinance goes into effect June 1.

Thomas Briant, executive director of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets, said 18-year-olds are adults when it comes to voting, serving in the military or signing a contract  and smoking should be no different

Last year, Hawaii became the first state to raise its smoking age to 21.

In Hawaii, around nine out of 10 smokers start before the age of 21 and many report receiving cigarettes from friends or relatives of legal age, according to the governor's office.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said that tobacco use kills 1,400 people and costs some $526million in medical bills annually in Hawaii.

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, accounting for more than 480,000 deaths annually, or one of every five deaths overall, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Michael Meanza (pictured) is facing life behind bars for battering a care worker to death after becoming annoyed that she had asked him to turn down the volume as he watched a film

A mental health patient is facing life behind bars for battering a care worker to death after becoming annoyed that she had asked him to turn down the volume as he watched a film.

Michael Meanza, 47, had been living in support accommodation in Acton, west London, for three months before he bludgeoned Jenny Foote, 38, over the head with a fire extinguisher.

He admitted manslaughter but denied murder based on the grounds of him having anger issues.

But a jury at the Old Bailey found him guilty of the more serious charge.

In the early hours of July 7 last year, Ms Foote had gone to the defendant's room to speak to him after receiving a complaint from a neighbour about the noise from his TV, the court heard.

Meanza had been watching the 1991 psychedelic biopic The Doors starring Hollywood star Val Kilmer as the late rock star Jim Morrison.

The defendant chatted with Ms Foote in the doorway of his room for about five minutes before she returned to her office, the court heard.

Prosecutor Brian O'Neill QC told jurors: 'There is nothing further of relevance for the next three hours until just before 6am when Meanza left his room, made his way downstairs and killed her.'

When he was interviewed by police, Meanza claimed the incident with Ms Foote was 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.

He told officers that care workers had interfered in his life with his girlfriend "trying to tell me how to have my relationship because of the section I am in."'

Asked if he had any regrets, he smiled and said: 'I have some regrets in my life but then again too few to list.'

In further interview, he explained: 'I couldn't take any more. They said I can be with her and then after a while they pull us apart. That would drive you bonkers. I snapped.'

Meanza, who had been the subject of a hospital order since the 1990s, argued that he was suffering from a 'severe anger pathology' - a personality disorder which affected his ability to exercise self-control.

Meanza, 47, had been living in support accommodation in Acton, west London, for three months before he bludgeoned Jenny Foote (pictured), 38, over the head and face with a fire extinguisher

But Mr O'Neill said: 'In our submission it cannot be right either as a matter of law or on the grounds of public policy that Michael Meanza - or any defendant - should be able to escape full responsibility for an unlawful killing on the basis he is too angry an individual to be guilty of murder.'

Following his conviction, Meanza buried his head in his hands.

The court heard he had 16 previous convictions for 79 offences, mainly in the 1980s and 1990s.

Meanza murdered Ms Foote after she told him to turn the volume of his TV down - something he said was the 'straw that broke the camel's back'. Her brother Michael (right) - a retired policeman - had to break the news to his elderly parents

They included an assault on a hospital member of staff and an assault on a female patient on a psychiatric ward after she refused to perform a sex act on him in exchange for cigarettes.

Collette House in Perryn Road, Acton, is owned by mental health charity Cyrenians London and provides accommodation for a number of residents with varying mental health issues.

Ms Foote's brother Michael told the court that nothing prepared him for having to break the news of his sister's murder to his elderly parents - despite a police career spanning 30 years, including 10 in homicide.

Police are scene outside the hostel in Perryn Road, Acton, the morning after Ms Foote was killed

Collette House in Perryn Road, Acton, is owned by mental health charity Cyrenians London and provides accommodation for a number of residents with varying mental health issues

He described his sister as having 'a heart of gold', saying she wanted to help others less fortunate.

As Mr Foote described the 'traumatic' impact on the close knit family, Meanza stood up in the dock to interrupt and say: 'I'm sorry'.

In mitigation, Bernard Richmond QC said: 'It would be easy to demonise Mr Meanza and label him as Mr Angry. That would be too simplistic.

'Whether Collette House was the appropriate place for a man with his difficulties is a question others will have to ask themselves.

'The reality was a woman who should not have had to deal with a man like Mr Meanza alone was in a position where she had to do just that.'

Victim's family say important lessons must be learned following her brutal killing

The family of care worker Jenny Foote has called for lessons be learned after a man with a history of violence was convicted of murdering her for simply doing her job.

Retired senior police officer Michael Foote spoke on the steps of the Old Bailey after Michael Meanza was found guilty of bludgeoning his sister to death at charity-run mental health accommodation in Acton.

Ms Foote's brother Michael (pictured) believes his sister's death could have been prevented

He said: 'We are overwhelmed and very pleased with the verdict. It was tragic circumstances in which Jenny died - someone who was doing her job and vocation.

'She worked hard, studied hard and the rewards were a degree and she recently qualified to be a social worker just two months before she was tragically killed.

'In my 30 years as a police officer, investigating a number of homicides, I have never been fully prepared for a situation like this and it is tragic that someone who is working in the health care profession should be put in such a difficult position. It could have been anybody.'

Mr Foote went on: 'It's quite clear lessons need to be learned.

'They knew what he was capable of and we also know from the evidence which was given he knew how to play the system.

'So maybe he should have been in a more secure environment, given the way he was put in Collette House.'

On his 38-year-old sister, the former officer said: 'She was beautiful, very caring, very loving.
Two fly-tippers who were caught on CCTV dumping 42 tonnes of waste including 15 rotting sheep carcasses in the middle of a road have been jailed.

Ionut Muti, 24, and Augustin Dobre, 23, were caught repeatedly driving to an industrial estate in Birmingham and leaving fridges, mattresses and rubble in the road.

On one occasion, the pair were spotted dumping the bodies of 15 sheep on Priory Road, Aston, in the middle of the night before driving off in their battered red people carrier.

They admitted fly-tipping and Muti also pleaded guilty to failing to have a scrap metal dealer's licence when they appeared at Birmingham Crown Court.

Two fly-tippers who were caught on CCTV dumping 42 tonnes of waste including 15 rotting sheep carcasses in the middle of a road have been jailed

Ionut Muti, 24, (left) and Augustin Dobre, 23, (right) were caught repeatedly driving to an industrial estate in Birmingham and leaving fridges, mattresses and rubble in the road

Dobre, from Aston, was jailed for six months on Tuesday and Muti, from Handsworth, Birmingham, was sentenced to 11 months in prison.

Shocking video footage shows the fly-tippers dragging large fridges, heating pipes and other rubbish on a road.

The pair were found to have dumped 42 tonnes of waste over 15 visits between August and October last year.

They were arrested following an undercover operation by Birmingham City Council's Waste Enforce Unit.

Cameras recorded the men dumping rubble, fridges, mattresses and carcasses at the site.

Police raided their homes in December and they were arrested and charged with fly-tipping.

Shocking video footage shows the fly-tippers dragging large fridges, heating pipes and other rubbish on a road

They admitted fly-tipping and Muti also pleaded guilty to failing to have a scrap metal dealer's licence when they appeared at Birmingham Crown Court

The pair were found to have dumped 42 tonnes of waste over 15 visits between August and October last year

The court heard Muti and Dobre dumped the waste on behalf of another man who promised to reduce their rent by up to 40 per cent a month.

The pair earned 1,000-a-month fruit picking but were said to be struggling to make ends meet.

After the case, Cllr Lisa Trickett, Cabinet Member for Sustainability at Birmingham City Council, said: 'None of our neighbourhoods should have to suffer the misery associated with fly-tipping.'

Cllr Barbara Dring, Chair of the Birmingham City Council Licensing and Public Protection Committee, added: 'This case highlights how some ignore their responsibility by blighting their area and neighbourhood.

'This case was all about some incredibly blatant fly-tipping.'

On one occasion, the pair were spotted dumping the bodies of 15 sheep on Priory Road, Aston, in the middle of the night before driving off in their battered red people carrier

The court heard Muti and Dobre dumped the waste on behalf of another man who promised to reduce their rent by up to 40 per cent a month
An 18-month-old girl was snatched from her living room by her next-door neighbour while her mother was preparing to go out.

Zorita Stanca, 24, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was getting her two children ready downstairs to visit her mother when she went upstairs to get her handbag.

But she returned to find her toddler Contessa was missing, before rushing outside and being told by a nine-year old girl that she had seen a man come out holding the child and go next door.

Child abduction: Zorita Stanca (left), 24, of Oldham, Greater Manchester, was getting her daughter Contessa (right) ready downstairs to visit her mother when she went upstairs to get her handbag

Mrs Stanca stormed round and could see the man - who turned out to be her neighbour Michael Keeton - inside, trying to stop Contessa screaming by holding his hand over her mouth.

Police later arrested Keeton, 27, and he pleaded guilty to child abduction. He was given a 12-month community order in court yesterday but avoided jail having been in custody since October 2014.

Mrs Stanca, now a mother-of-three, explained how she frantically searched her home on the day of the abduction in September 2014 before rushing outside and seeing Keeton with her daughter.

In desperation she tried to open the front door and when she yelled at Keeton to let her in, he ran out of the back door. She then ran round to confront him and wrestled the child from his grasp.

Mrs Stanca, who had only spoken to Keeton on a few occasions prior to the incident, said: I went round and started banging on the door. I could see her through a gap in the curtains.

He was holding her really tight with his hand round her mouth. I started banging on the door trying to break it down and break the windows to get her back. He ran round the back and I chased him.

I shouted Why have you taken her? He told me she was outside and he brought her in. I said Dont lie, youve taken my little girl, give her back before I call the police.

Decision: A judge at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court (above) said Michael Keeton would not receive a prison sentence because he had already served sufficient time in custody since October 2014

She added that she was eventually able to get hold of Contessa, and was in shock when the police arrived - unable to speak or think and left scared and angry.

Mrs Stanca, whose now sister-in-law was in the kitchen at the time of the abduction, continued: She was screaming mum, mum. She was okay when I took her back apart from some bruises.

He was holding her really tight with his hand round her mouth. I started banging on the door trying to break it down and break the windows to get her back Zorita Stanca

'Ive no idea why he did it. He used to come round when Id just moved in and ask me how many children I had and whether my partner lives with me. He said your little girl came into my house. So then why not come back to my house and tell me?

When the police came I couldnt speak. I nearly had a heart attack. After hed been arrested, he came round trying to talk to me, but I just told him to go away. He said Ill be back.

Ms Stanca was single at the time but is now married to her partner Vasile, 25, with whom she lives, along with her children Contessa, who is now three, Emmanuel, 18 months, and Yosef, nine months.

She added: I dont mind whether he goes to prison or not. I just want him to stay away from my house. I hope someone can check on him to keep him away from the street... He might come again. I dont want him near my house, or to touch me or my children. I am scared to be honest.
A Labour MP raged at David Cameron and demanded he step in to stop a French firm being awarded a contract to make British medals.

The Government has approved Arthus-Bertrand - a French company that made medals for Napolean's army as he battled against the British - to manufacture 20 top honours that the Queen awards to British citizens in recognition of service to the monarch and country.

Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North, told the Prime Minister that members of the public were 'absolutely furious to learn that the Government had awarded the contract to 'some French company'.

Scroll down for video

Ian Austin (left) asks David Cameron (right) at Prime Minister's Questions today to intervene to stop a contract to make British medals going to French firm Arthus-Bertrand, which made medals for Napolean's army

Honours such as the CBE given to Olympic champion Jessica Ennis (pictured receiving her award from the Queen in 2013) will be made by French firm Arthus-Bertrand in the future

David Cameron responded by saying: 'Where we can make something in Britain, we should make something in Britain' but refused to say whether he would intervene to stop the contract going to the French.

And under EU competition law, he is powerless to stop foreign firms bidding for government contracts.

Among the medals to be made by Arthus-Bertrand will be the Distinguished Service Order - given for outstanding leadership during active military service - the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, and the Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

It will be the first time that the awards handed out by the Queen will have been made overseas.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, an angry Mr Austin said: 'People in the Midlands are absolutely furious to learn that the Government's awarded a contract to make British medals to some French company.

The CBE nedals (left) and the Distinguished Service Order (right) are among the 20 British honours which will be made by French medal maker Arthus Bertrand after they were handed the contract

'Imagine it Mr Speaker, imagine it, you open your Distinguished Service Order or your CBE and it says "Fabrique en France",' he said in his strong Black Country accent.

'Now I've visited Midlands medal manufacturers in Birmingham's jewellery quarters, they are the best in the world.

'He should go back to Downing Street, call in the Cabinet Office minister and get this scandal sorted out.'

Mr Cameron responded: 'The only point I would make to him, is I'm sure all of those in the Royal Mint in Wales would want to contest the fact that they make the finest medals in the UK and I'm sure the competition between them and Birmingham is very intense.

'I'll certainly take away what he says, I wasn't aware of this issue, but I'm always in favour where we can make something in Britain, we should make something in Britain.'

Arthus-Bertrand was founded in Paris in 1803, the year after Napoleon Bonaparte established the Legion d'honneur, France's most illustrious medal, and 12 years before his defeat at Waterloo.

The Order of the Bath (left) and the Order of St Michael and St George (right), handed to senior civil servants, will be made by the company which makes the Legion d'honneur, France's most illustrious medal

The company's website says that by providing the new medal it became over time a 'witness to history'. Now it has been shortlisted as a potential manufacturer of 20 honours presented by the Queen including the medal of the Distinguished Service Order, given for outstanding leadership during active military service, and medals for citizens honoured by the Queen every year.

Colonel Bob Stewart, a Conservative MP and himself a holder of the DSO (pictured when he received it in 1993) was outraged by the decision

Arthus-Bertrand has been named on the shortlist with seven British businesses following a tendering process by the Crown Commercial Service, a branch of the Cabinet Office.

British medal makers criticised the move, blaming the European Union and its tendering rules.

'Europe states that these things have to go out to tender to everyone,' one said.

'Unfortunately the UK seems to obey all these rules, yet somehow we've never been able to find a tender offer for French state honours.' A Cabinet Office source yesterday said no contracts have yet been awarded and it was not guaranteed that all the firms on the shortlist would get work.

But the spectre of British honours being made overseas has struck a sour note with military veterans and British manufacturers.

Colonel Bob Stewart, a Conservative MP and former British commander in Bosnia in the 1990s who was awarded the DSO, told The Times: 'My argument is rather emotive but I think that a medal awarded to a UK citizen should be made in the UK  personally I'm very glad that my DSO was made in Britain.

'Can you imagine the French allowing the Legion d'honneur to be made in Germany? When this country awards medals to its soldiers, sailors, airmen and citizens they should be made in the UK.'

Peter Duckers, author of more than a dozen books on British medals, said many early Legion d'honneur medals would have been awarded to French soldiers who were fighting against Britain, but some later ones would have been awarded to Britons when we fought alongside the French in the Crimean War, First World War and Second World War.

He said some British medals were struck during the First World War to be given to French people for their service to Britain but such a move was 'unheard of' outside of a wartime emergency.

He said: 'It won't look right to have 'Bertrand of Paris' embossed on the inside of the box.'

Julian Lewis MP, Conservative chairman of the defence select committee, said: 'It does seem a little bit inappropriate if an honour from a grateful nation for heroic endeavour can't even be manufactured in the UK.

'Even value for money considerations ought to have their limits.'

The Cabinet Office said the shortlisting of Arthus-Bertrand was subject to the usual public sector procurement legal framework which encourages 'free and open competition and value for money'.

Jean Charles Rocher, Arthus-Bertrand's sales director, confirmed that the French company is awaiting its first order and said they were very proud at the prospect of becoming the first foreign company to be able to supply medals to the English market.
The former M&S boss running the main campaign to keep Britain in the EU was caught in a furious row at Parliament today after a senior MP accused him of a 'scandalous abuse of data'.

Lord Rose, chairman of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, repeated a statistic generated by the CBI that claimed EU membership was worth 3,000 a year to every household.

But during an appearance at the treasury select committee, chairman Andrew Tyrie urged him to withdraw the figure on the basis it was 'misleading'.

In tense exchanges, Lord Rose said he regretted the MP was suggesting he was 'intellectually dishonest' and said it was an 'incredible' attack.

Britain Stronger in Europe chairman Lord Rose, left at today's committee, became embroiled in an angry clash with senior Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, right during the grilling, over his use of statistics

Mr Tyrie insisted it was a key figure in the BSE campaign and claimed Lord Rose did not understand how the figure was reached.

Conservative MP Mr Tyrie said: 'I think it's a great shame that the campaign should have begun with claims being made on the basis of scandalous abuse of data.

'I deeply regret that you are persisting in defending such blatant and misleading data. '

Lord Rose said: 'You make it quite clear you think the information I have put out is absolute rubbish.

'You are obviously entitled to your own opinion.

'I stand by what I have said. You are perfectly entitled to call my credibility into doubt.'

Lord Rose continued: 'But what you are effectively saying is that the CBI, which is a much respected organisation in the UK, is putting out propaganda which is actually untrue.

'I find that quite incredible.'

Mr Tyrie insisted the statistic - based on a series of old research papers - was bogus.

He said: 'This isn't just apples and pears, this is apples and elephants.

'The range of creatures involved in these studies are so different as to be absurdly incomparable.'

Lord Rose, who runs the Ocado online grocery store, added: 'I deeply regret that you are impugning my integrity. We will never arrive at a number we agree on.

'What we are saying is there is a benefit. I believe that.'

After the hearing Vote Leave spokesman Robert Oxley said: 'The BSE campaign have been found out after campaigning using 'dishonest' figures, selective quotations and ludicrous claims about trade and jobs.

'People recognise that Project Fear is built on hollow bluster rather than hard facts with the in at-all-costs brigade trying to hide the risks of remaining in the EU.

'The safe option is to Vote Leave and spend our money on our priorities.'

Lord Rose, pictured at the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign launch, insisted in January the Remain camp would win by 'beating the drum' and giving out 'reliable information'

The disputed figure embroiled Lord Rose in a row in the earliest stages of the campaign as we was challenged on its accuracy in media interviews.

He told the BBC in January: 'The CBI is a reputable organisation, they represent British industry and they wouldn't be putting out numbers if they didn't feel there was some veracity to that number and no I won't withdraw that number.

'I'm going to let the statisticians argue among themselves, we have independent people who say to us our facts are correct, so listen, we could spend all morning arguing about the facts.'

Last month the Tory peer made a confident prediction ahead of the referendum.

Speaking at lunch in Westminster, he said: 'We will win by a substantial margin.'

Asked about the In campaign's path to victory, he said: 'We have to make sure we give out accurate information, reliable information.
Dozens have since been smuggled abroad, said the mayor of one village

ISIS terrorists have set up an international sex ring by smuggling kidnapped Yazidi women to foreign countries, rescued captives have revealed.

Dozens of women who were snatched from Yazidi villages across northern Iraq are said to have been taken to nations including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Chechnya, where they are being held as sex slaves.

The terror group abducted hundreds of women and young girls when it laid siege on the undefended towns in August 2014, killing thousands of men in the process.

Dozens of women who were snatched from Yazidi villages across northern Iraq are said to have been taken to nations including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Chechnya (file photo of Yazidis fleeing ISIS attack in 2014)

'At this moment we do not know how these girls were moved outside of Iraq or Syria but we believe they could have smuggled them out of the countries overland,' said Mihemma Xelil the mayor of Shingal, one of the Yazidi villages attacked by ISIS.

Many of the women were moved to the nearby cities of Mosul and Tal Afar but they were soon taken to the groups strongholds, the Rudaw news agency quoted him as saying.

Survivors have told of how the 'most beautiful' women are sent to horrendous auction houses in ISIS's de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, where they are stripped naked and sold to the highest bidder.

Xelil said: 'Many of the abducted women still have access to their cellphones and speak to their families and ask for ransoms to be paid for their release.'

Of around 6,000 people abducted by ISIS in Sinjar province, almost 4,000 are still thought to be imprisoned by the terror group, local government officials have claimed.

Ransoms have been paid for 'many' of the victims, according to Hussein Koro who manages the office on behalf of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Koro told Rudaw: 'In many cases, when we could not verify a source and therefore decided not to pay the ransom, the relatives of the victim paid it themselves and many times it turned out to be false sources who were after the ransom money.'

Xudeda Misto, 75, from Shingal, has not seen his wife, three daughters or his son since they were abducted by ISIS thugs in 2014.

He said: 'They have asked for $15,000 for my eldest daughter who is now in Syria, but I have only $5000 and could not make the rest.'

Of around 6,000 people abducted by ISIS in Sinjar province, almost 4,000 are still thought to be imprisoned by the terror group (file photo of Yazidis fleeing ISIS attack in 2014)

Amnesty International has said hundreds - possibly thousands - have been forced to marry, been 'sold' or given as 'gifts' to ISIS fighters or their supporters - and many held as sexual slaves are girls younger than 14.

In May, ISIS released a chilling document in which it justified the kidnapping and rape of Yazidi girls it enslaved.

The shocking admissions were made by a jihadi bride in the ninth edition of Islamic State's propaganda magazine Dabiq in a feature entitled: 'Slave girls or prostitutes.' She describes the cruel sex crimes as Sunnah which roughly translates as 'a way of life'.

The hate-filled rant was penned by a suspected jihadi bride named Umm Sumayyah Al-Muhajirah, who has called for her 'sisters' to emigrate to Syria and become wives to Islamic State extremists.

The Yazidis, whose religion has elements of Christianity and Islam, pray to a being known as Melek Taus - which translates to 'Peacock Angel'.
Judge rules wife's 'fear, suspicion and dislike' had gotten the better of her

A 'paranoid' wife is facing a staggering 1million lawyers' bill for dragging her ex-husband to court and wrongly accusing him of plundering their 18million fortune.

Maya Kanev-Lipinski wept in court after hearing a judge rule that her 'fear, suspicion and dislike' of her multi-millionaire ex-husband, Shahar Lipinski, had got the better of her.

'Shahar and Maya are engaged in a hostile and vituperative dispute and they remain bitterly opposed to each other,' Mrs Justice May told the High Court.

But she said there had been 'no dispersal' of the former couple's 18million student housing fortune by the tycoon, 45, since their 17-year marriage ended in 2012.

Legal battle: Maya Kanev-Lipinski, 44, pictured left outside the High Court, claims ex-husband Shahar Lipinski, 45, pictured right, has been on a 'spending spree' since their divorce in 2012

Mrs Kanev-Lipinski, 44, had earlier accused her ex of 'frittering' away their fortune on rich boys toys, including penthouse flats and a 70,000 convertible Bentley.

She insisted he was spiriting away the millions they made from their East Midlands student accommodation businesses whilst keeping her completely in the dark.

Her barrister, Andrew Hunter QC, claimed he had treated the family fortune 'as his own personal wallet' and had vowed to leave his ex-wife 'parked and penniless'.

But the judge has now refused to grant her a freezing order that would have given her control of her ex's financial affairs pending finalisation of their divorce.

And the decision leaves Mrs Kanev-Lipinski facing paying the bulk of legal bills approaching 1million.

'I am not satisfied that there is a real risk of dispersal generated in fact, rather than fear, suspicion and dislike,' the judge said.

The wife had made 'an illegitimate attempt to obtain security by a freezing order' and had 'failed to establish a basis for freezing injunction relief.'

The judge backed protestations by Mr Lipinski's lawyers that the asset stripping he was accused of would only have hurt him as much as his ex.

'Mr Lipinski asks whether he hates his ex-wife sufficiently to destroy his business and make himself bankrupt?

'There has been no actual dispersal of assets by the husband in the three and a half years since the divorce,' the judge ruled.

Claims that Mr Lipinski had 'misled' accountants engaged in valuing the ex-couple's hotly disputed assets were also rejected.

Buying the penthouses was far from 'frittering', said the judge, who added:

'The husband needs somewhere to live and the properties are an asset within the UK.'

Fenner Moeran QC, who represented the couple's businesses in court, slammed Mrs Kanev-Lipinski after the judge gave her ruling.

'The reason she applied for a freezing injunction was her paranoia,' he told the court.

'The application was made in the context of a warring couple and was generated by irrational fear.

'Maya applied on a factually incorrect basis for a freezing injunction. There was never any real risk of dispersal of the companies' assets.

'What has happened over the last three days should never have happened,' he said, calling her case 'a paranoid application.'

The couple used to live with their two daughters in this 2million home near Nottingham

Mr Moeran said the companies had spent 280,000 fighting the case and Elizabeth Jones QC, for Mr Lipinski, said it had cost him 423,000.

And they told the judge that Mrs Kanev-Lipinski must now pay those bills as she had 'lost.'

Her own lawyers told the judge their fees had reached 'two hundred-odd thousand as at January 8 2016' - prior to the three-day hearing.

The judge told Mr Hunter that the bulk of the costs 'are inevitably going to be against' Mrs Kanev-Lipinski, although she agreed to consider further arguments in writing.

The court heard earlier that an Israeli court is due to finalise the ex-couple's divorce within the next few months - and Mrs Kanev-Lipinski expects a payout of about 9million.

Mrs Justice May expressed relief that the Israeli court, not her, would now be dealing with the Lipinskis' 'many grievances'.

'That court has considerable experience of this couple,' she said.

'It will be better placed to pick its way through the invective and hyperbole and find if any of their representations are justified or not.'

Although the dispute may well return to London for a further hearing, the judge commented: 'I'm hoping that it's never going to happen.'
An amateur dancer who became an internet celebrity after starring in a rap video as the 'Blue Fairy' of prescription pill addiction has been found dead from an apparent drug overdose.

Sharissa Turk, 25, who was eight months pregnant, was discovered unresponsive with no visible signs of trauma in her home on Jefferson Boulevard in Staten Island just before 3pm on Tuesday, according to police.

Turk's boyfriend reportedly found her lying in the hallway and called 911.

Scroll down for video

Tragic end: Sharissa Turk, 25, who played the 'blue fairy' (pictured) in a viral music video about painkiller addiction in 2012, has been found dead from an apparent drug overdose

Turk was fond unresponsive in her home (pictured) on Jefferson Boulevard in Staten Island on Tuesday

Turk's boyfriend (pictured left and right with Turk) made the sad discovery and called 911. She was pronounced dead on the scene

Paramedics who responded pronounced her dead at the scene, reported Staten Island Advance.

On Facebook, a friend of Turks shared a photo of the two of them and mourned the 25-year-olds untimely passing, writing that she has just received an invitation to her upcoming baby shower.

According to a post left by a friend on her boyfriend's page after her death, Turk was expecting a girl. In October, she shared an ultrasound image of the baby accompanied by the hashtag '#cantwaittomeetYOU.'

The medical examiner will determine Sharissa Turk's exact cause of death.

Ms Turks landlord told the New York Daily News that she moved into 535 Jefferson Boulevard about a month ago and 'smiled a lot'.

In 2012, Turk appeared in an off-beat music video called 'My World Is Blue' by the Staten Island band White Trash Clan.

Mother-to-be: The 25-year-old was reportedly eight months pregnant at the time of her death

Expecting: In October, Turk shared this ultrasound image depicting her unborn baby, said to be a girl

Turk plays a pixie dancing around with blue wings and a wand, and blowing fairy dust at the camera as the group raps about prescription pill addiction in Staten Island, which they call 'painkiller paradise'.

Some of the lyrics of My World Is Blue include: I can stop when I want to/ Im not addicted/ I dont take pills/ crush and sniff it/Blue is my world in the life how I live it/ Come out to Staten Island/ pay a little visit.

The chorus is sampled from Love Is Blue, a song written in 1967 by Andre Popp that was made famous by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat.

The amateur rap video went viral in early 2013 after Turk was arrested in a massive drug sweep and charged with selling Oxycodone to undercover officers.

The sting operation resulted in 32 arrests across Staten Island and netted hundreds of narcotics, as well as three handguns, a shotgun and $17,000 in cash.

YouTube sensation: In 2012, Turk (center) appeared in an off-beat music video called 'My World Is Blue' by the Staten Island band White Trash Clan

Life imitating art: She was arrested in early 2013 during a massive drug sweep for selling Oxycodone to undercover cops. Her case was sealed and dismissed after she completed a drug treatment program

The raid netted hundreds of narcotics, as well as three handguns, a shotgun and $17,000 in cash (pictured)

Turk pleaded guilty to criminal sale of a controlled drug, but her case was sealed and dismissed after she completed a court-mandated treatment program involving regular drug testing and a 6pm curfew.

She landed in jail again in August 2015 on suspicion of criminal possession of a controlled substance. Turk pleaded guilty to the charge in that case and was sentenced to two days of community service.
A 24-year-old man has been charged with raping a woman at Denmark's largest asylum centre.

Police in North Zealand said they believe the woman was attacked at Center Sandholm in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

A Danish police officer was stabbed several times in the stomach inside the centre last year.

Denmark's largest: Police believe the woman was raped at Center Sandholm (pictured) early on Wednesday

The Red Cross notified police of the alleged rape at the centre in Allerd and a 24-year-old man was arrested, according to The Local.

'It happened somewhere inside Sandholm,' detective Kent Rmer told Ekstra Bladet. He did not not say whether the suspect and the victim were known to each other.

Rmer told Danish news agency Ritzau the man had pleaded not guilty to the attack. The suspect was due to appear in court in Hillerd on Wednesday.

Both the victim and the suspect are foreign nationals, but police did not say whether they were asylum seekers.

Center Sandholm is the largest asylum centre in Denmark - home to more than 500 people representing 49 nationalities.

There is already a highly charged debate over immigration in Europe, which increased following the wave of sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve.

A mob of men - believed to be of North African and Arab origin - were said to have molested and robbed women after congregating at the city's central station.

Denmark received more than 21,000 asylum applications in 2015, a 44 per cent jump from 2014. Stock image: Syrian refugees pictured at a train station in Copenhagen, Denmark

Last month, Denmark's immigration Ministry said it had extended random identification checks along its border with Germany until March 4 in a move aimed at discouraging the arrival of more migrants.

The controls were introduced on January 4, shortly after Swedish legislation went into force requiring rail and ferry companies to verify the identities of people travelling from Copenhagen across the Oresund Strait. Danish border controls were then extended on February 2.

Since the controls were introduced, the number of migrants arriving in Denmark has dropped by about two-thirds.

Denmark received more than 21,000 asylum applications in 2015, a 44 per cent jump from 2014, though significantly fewer than its neighbour, Sweden.
Two weeks after a 106-year-old woman's unbridled excitement upon meeting President Barack Obama went viral, her friends have created a fundraising page for those who asked to donate to the centenarian.

More than $7,500 of the $50,000 requested has been raised for Virginia McLaurin on YouCaring.com since the fundraiser was launched Tuesday afternoon.

The elderly woman brought smiles to thousands of people online after she started dancing when meeting the president and first lady during a Black History Month reception on February 18 at the White House.

The funds being raised for McLaurin, who grew up in a sharecropping family, will help with the cost of her living expenses and will also ensure that she can remain active in her Washington, D.C., community, according to the donation page.

Scroll down for video

When Virginia McLaurin first saw President Obama in the White House (pictured) she yelled 'Hi!' to him as he came over and took her hands. A fundraiser has been launched to assist her after the video went viral

Virginia McLaurin said that she can finally die happy after meeting President Barack Obama. The funds being raised for McLaurin, who grew up in a sharecropping family, will help with the cost of her living expenses

At 106 years old, McLaurin (pictured right in 1969) has seen more than a dozen presidents come and go. The money being raised will also help ensure that she can remain active in her Washington, D.C., community

'She wants to maintain her independence and be close to her church,' McLaurin's friend and neighbor Deborah Menkart told ABC News.

'In order for her to stay close to her church and have a place that's accessible to a person of her age, she needs to raise funds.

'We've been getting an outpouring from people that said they want to help.'

Menkart was the person who helped McLaurin's dream come true of meeting the Obamas.

She reached out to a few White House employees who made the treasured meeting happen.

'I think it just took us all by surprise,' Menkart, who also attended the event, recalled to ABC News. 'Her own excitement was just overwhelming and it was contagious.'

Of the meeting with the Obamas, McLaurin said that she was so happy she just started dancing

Of the meeting with the Obamas, McLaurin said that she was so happy she just started dancing.

'I've come a long ways, a long ways,' McLaurin told the Associated Press. 'I just didn't think I'd ever live to go this far in the world.'

Now that she's met the president, she said she could 'just die happy.'

After the video of McLaurin dancing with the Obamas went viral, many people inquired with how they could assist her and give back to such an inspirational woman.

McLaurin, who has lived through 18 presidents, is very active in her community, as she volunteers in an early childhood classroom as a foster grandmother every week for about 40 hours.

McLaurin said: 'I've come a long ways, a long ways. I just didn't think I'd ever live to go this far in the world.' Above she is pictured during her meeting with the Obamas

In 2012 she was honored with a volunteer community service award from Mayor Vincent Gray.

'I love the kids,' McLaurin told WJLA. 'You ought to hear them in the morning when I come in and they say, 'Grandma! Grandma!' and I say, 'I'm here, I'm here.''

Taking it a step further, McLaurin is also an advocate with the Latino Economic Development Center, a tenants' right organization.

'She says that's what gives her energy; number one is the Lord's looking out for her and number two is the energy she gets from working with young children,' Menkart told ABC News.

'We all saw she's very spry now, but she needs to be in a building that's wheelchair accessible and meets the needs of an elder.'

Menkart also said that the community hopes to help get McLaurin comfortable housing that's wheelchair-accessible.

The apartment, that she has lived in since 1939, has been infected with bedbugs several times in the past including as recent as December.
Marco Rubio took his only win in Minnesota - a state which his rivals largely ignored, but he vowed to continue his campaign

Advertisement

Republican presidential candidates will have another opportunity to take Donald Trump down a few notches tonight.

They'll debate yet again but this time in Detroit, Michigan.

It's one of two final fight nights before the calendar day that could end it all - March 15, when Florida holds its winner-take-all contest. GOP candidates will debate there next Thursday in Miami.

Ben Carson's departure from the GOP presidential race means the quartet of remaining Republicans on the debate stage Thursday night get more time for attacks as Donald Trump treads a path to the GOP nomination and his three rivals try to trip him up.

Cheered on by many Republican leaders, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich are racing the primary clock to March 15, likely their last chance to stop Trump in a series of winner-take-all contests.

Trump has uttered barely a peep about the fact that Fox News Channel is hosting the debate, and that his sometime-nemesis Megyn Kelly, is one of the moderators.

This is a marked change from the upheaval that led to Trump boycotting Fox's debate just before the leadoff Iowa caucuses. Trump had demanded that Kelly be removed; Fox refused and Trump headed a few miles away to host his own event.

He later said that could have been one of the reasons he lost Iowa to Cruz.

Trump has not tweeted about Kelly in weeks. In an interview with the Associated Press this week, Kelly said she thinks Trump has more confidence now.

'He knows he can handle me. He can handle any interviewer,' she said.

SCROLL DOWN FOR STATE BY STATE RESULTS

Victory: The billionaire real estate tycoon, pictured with his son Eric Trump (right) and Gov. Christie, (left), was declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia on Super Tuesday

Ally: The Donald was accompanied at his victory speech by Chris Christie, who looked awkward standing behind his ally as he spoke. Trump lost out in three states - Oklahoma and Texas went to Ted Cruz while Marco Rubio won Minnesota

Surprise victory: Ted Cruz scored an upset win in Oklahoma, where polling had put him far behind Trump. He also won in his home state of Texas. Cruz told supporters that he is the only candidate who has a chance of beating Trump

Trump romped through the second biggest day in American politics earlier this week on Super Tuesday  only November presidential elections are grander  etching his name on seven trophies in the Republican party's display case and forcing Ben Carson out of the race.

Three states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska, eluded his grasp and went to Ted Cruz, a senator from the Lone Star State.

Marco Rubio had a dismal night, claiming only Minnesota's caucuses. Ben Carson and John Kasich claimed none.

The rest of the night belonged to The Donald.

The billionaire real estate tycoon was declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.

Ted Cruz positioned himself as the Republicans' only viable alternative to frontrunner Trump during his speech after the results came and asked his opponents to 'prayerfully' consider letting him make the journey toward November with the billionaire alone.

'Tonight was another decision point and the voters have spoken,' Cruz said. 'Tomorrow morning we have a choice.'

The Texas senator said as long as the field was still 'divided', 'Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation.'

'And after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,' Cruz claimed.

He reiterated the point in a fundraising email to his supporters on Wednesday afternoon. 'Our campaign is now in second place in the delegate count, and I am the ONLY candidate who can unify grassroots Republicans and defeat Donald Trump. We must not elect a candidate in Donald Trump who agrees with Hillary Clinton on issue after issue,' he said.

Cruz's rivals did not heed his advice. Rubio went on CNN later in the evening and suggested that Cruz's performance was underwhelming and said he wouldn't be dropping out.

'Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night, not a night where he won two states, he was supposed to have that Southern firewall and it didn't happen,' Rubio said.

On Fox News in the morning he was equally defiant.

'What I have said, is we are going to campaign in all 50 states and we are going to do whatever it takes to ensure that I am not only the nominee, but the Republican Party does not fall in the hands of someone like Donald Trump,' he stated. 'That said, that is not our plan. Our plan is to get to the White House with 1237 delegates.'

'Florida is going to be huge obviously. It is my home state and I feel good about it,' Rubio said. 'If this was anybody else as a front runner, there would be people now saying let's rally around the front runner. That will never happen with Donald Trump.'

Kasich remained in the race. Carson called it quits, though said he wouldn't formally suspend his campaign. Rubio and Kasich intend to stay in until at least March 15, when their respective native states, Florida and Ohio, go to the polls.

Cruz's last stand was Texas. In winning it on Tuesday, he was able to claim strength in an almost single-minded campaign strategy that ceded other southern territories to Trump.

Partly as a result, the GOP front-runner's early victories set a blowout pace.

The tea party senator did add Oklahoma to his column in an unexpected development: Trump had out-polled him there a week ago by a dozen percentage points. And early in the morning Cruz won Alaska by 2.6 per cent.

But Trump broke Cruz's serve in return, winning in Arkansas despite trailing there in recent polls.

The Associated Press declared Trump the victor in Georgia  the first decision of the night  almost immediately after polls closed at 7.00pm.

By 8.00pm the former reality TV star had punched his nomination ticket in three more states just minutes after their polling places closed for the day.

Virginia jumped into Trump's win column at around 8.45pm. Arkansas came at 10.25.

But Cruz's two victories establish that Trump's brand of populism hasn't yet penetrated fully into cowboy country.

In a Super Tuesday speech, Trump congratulated Cruz on his Texas win but took a swipe at Rubio.

'I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio. he had a tough night,' Trump told a packed room of journalists and well-wishers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

'He is a lightweight as I've said many times before.'

He blasted the first-term senator, who is 25 years his junior, saying that the decision to go negative in the past week doomed his chances.

'I always liked Marco until about a week ago when he decided to go hostile,' Trump said as chuckles filled the room. 'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'

'At least you could say that Ted Cruz has won something,' he boomed from a gilded podium set up on a small stage in front of a row of American flags.

'He hasn't won anything. And he actually hasn't come very close.'

Rubio would be named the victor in Minnesota an hour later.

After Tuesday night's significant win, Trump told DailyMail.com during a press conference that his string of triumphs will make it difficult for Republican Party insiders to argue that he shouldn't be their standard-bearer.

'I have millions and millions of people,' he said, describing the army of peasants wielding political pitchforks on his behalf.

Trump also warned that when Super Tuesday is over, 'I'm going to go after one person: Hillary Clinton.'

He pegged much of his support to a nationwide financial crisis that's unfolding at the level of individual households, and said Clinton's own victory speech after her string of Democratic primary victories shows that she 'doesn't have a clue' how to reverse it.

'In her speech she just said, 'They're making less money',' Trump observed.

'Well, she's been there with Obama for a long period of time. Why hasn't she done anything about it?'

And her record at the helm of President Obama's state department was 'abysmal,' he charged, in a likely test balloon of general election messaging.

'You look at what's going on with Syria. You look at what's going on with everything. It's a disaster!'

And in a momentary detour on Clinton's classified-email scandal, he paused and looked into the sea of cameras and reporters.

'I don't know that she's going to be allowed to run. What she did is a criminal act,' he said.

'If she's allowed to run, honestly it would be a sad day for this country. Because what she did was wrong. And other people have done far less than her and they paid a very, very big price.'

Some of Tuesday's races held implications beyond the simple question of how many delegates to the summer GOP convention each candidate will control.

In the key November swing state of Virginia, for instance, pundits were watching vote totals for signs of whether a Republican nominee could challenge Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton there.

Turnout was on pace to set a new record, and Trump needed every advantage. He won by just 30,000 votes among more than 1 million cast.

Trump also scored a gold medal in Vermont with 33 percent of the vote. Kasich came running second at 30 percent in front of Rubio, Cruz and Carson, in that order. It was the only state aside from Massachusetts the Ohio governor received double digit support - a rare bright spot for him.

Everywhere else, Rubio and Cruz seemed to be returning to a role they learned in South Carolina: jostling for second place behind Trump.

And Trump ended the night finishing in first or second place everywhere his name was on the ballot.

Rubio's only hope was to notch a win is in Minnesota, a state his rivals have largely ignored. And he managed to do so. The young Floridian rushed there immediately after the February 20 South Carolina primary to shore up his one beachhead.

Instead of a secret-ballot election, Minnesota holds caucuses  neighborhood meetings where voters try to persuade each other to declare their support for one White House hopeful or another.

A win anywhere for Kasich or Carson would have been a long-shot miracle, and neither were able to pull it off.

Lashing out: Trump hit out at Marco Rubio in his victory speech after the Floria Senator launched a series of vicious attacks on him in the days leading up to Super Tuesday. Trump said: 'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'

Second place: Ted Cruz told supporters 'after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump'

Cruz is pictured kissing his wife Heidi. He added in his speech: 'We are the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump once ... twice ... three times'

Only victory: Marco Rubio addresses supporters in Minnesota on Super Tuesday, the only state where he won

Clinging to the race! Ohio Gov. John Kasich's best result was second in Vermont. He says he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win Ohio on March 15

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson insisted he wouldn't be bowing out of the race during an election night party in Baltimore, despite not winning a single state. He changed his mind on Wednesday afternoon

The Republican front runner was sporting a Make American Great Again umbrella, decorated with the stars and stripes, at an earlier rally in Columbus

Kasich has said he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win his own state, Ohio, on March 15.

His campaign sent a memo to reporters on Wednesday justifying that decision titled: 'Analyses Show Stopping Trump Requires Kasich Winning Ohio.'

'Today, polls show John Kasich is in a statistical dead heat in his home state versus Trump. Polls also show Kasich with far superior favorability numbers over Trump among Ohio Republicans,' it said. 'Meanwhile, both Rubio and Cruz are losing in Ohio by double digits, and a recent poll by Baldwin-Wallace even shows both losing Ohio to Trump one-on-one.'

Carson insisted he was in it for the long haul, crediting his social media followers for inspiring his tenacity. He changed his mind this afternoon and sent a note to supporters saying there was no 'path forward' to the nomination.

Fox found that 32 per cent of all Super Tuesday voters chose a candidate in just the last few days.

Of that group, Rubio got the lion's share with 38 per cent. Trump was fourth with just 15 per cent of last-minute deciders.

Rubio struck an aggressive tone with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting his goals are to beat Ted Cruz for second place and to keep as many Republican National Convention delegates out of Trump's hands as possible.

'His whole campaign for months has been built on winning Iowa, winning South Carolina, and winning big on Super Tuesday,' he said of Cruz.

'He won Iowa but he came in third in South Carolina, and he's not going to win big on Super Tuesday. So I think there's a lot of questions.'

'We're going to have a lot of delegates after tonight,' Rubio added, 'and you're going to see very clearly after tonight that Donald Trump has no chance of ever getting the delegates he needs to be the nominee.'

'We feel great about Minnesota. We feel great about Virginia. We feel great about a bunch of them,' he said.

Asked if he had a sense of controlling his own political destiny, Rubio said: 'All these things are in God's hands, God's will is going to be done.'

The Republican field split up the 595 delegates available yesterday to July's Republican National Convention.

The first four high-profile contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada  all told  put just 126 delegates in play. Trump led the field at the beginning of Tuesday with 82 delegates in his corner. By the end of Super Tuesday, that number had jumped to 316.

Cruz is in second nationally with 226. Rubio is far behind at 106, while Kasich and Carson have near to none. The governor ended the night with 25 delegates an the retired neurosurgeon had a mere eight.

The GOP convention will seat a total of 2,472 delegates from all 50 states and every U.S. territory, making 1,237 the magic number of votes a candidate needs in order clinch the presidential nomination.

All of the Super Tuesday battleground states will award delegates according to the proportions of the vote won by the candidates. In a few places they must reach a threshold  usually 20 per cent  in order to claim any delegates at all.

HIGH STAKES: Five GOP candidates and two Democratic candidates sparred over delegates on March 1, also known as Super Tuesday. Here's how they were distributed  according to population

But most follow arcane formulas that allocate their delegates by district, and put a large pot of them up for grabs according to statewide totals.

Cruz awaited Tuesday's results in the Houston suburb of Stafford, Texas, and celebrated his victories there.

Trump held a press conference, not a party, at his sprawling, opulent Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.

Dozens of his high-society friends occupied the front two rows. Son Eric Trump appeared on stage with the candidate and a handful of staffers.

Wife Melania and daughter Ivanka remained in New York, as Ivanka is due to give birth any day.

Rubio was in Florida, too, but by default: With no one state appearing to a sure victory, he chose to frame it as a kickoff party for the March 15 primary there  a must-win contest if Rubio has any hope of ever surging to the front of the pack. Hillary Clinton did the same as her opponent Bernie Sanders held a homecoming party in Vermont.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other conservatives had kicked off the day urging their party to side with establishment candidates.

Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject racism.

The GOP is the party of President Abraham Lincoln, he told reporters, adding: 'this party does not prey on people's prejudices.'

Ryan was grinding an axe on Trump's Sunday CNN appearance in which he declined to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and other white supremacists.

Trump had disavowed Duke on several other occasions and later blamed a faulty IFB  a television interview earpiece  for his lack of a forceful response Sunday on the air.

While Trump seems on course for a win, the question of who will take home the votes for the Vice Presidency remains uncertain.

Carson got the biggest chunk of support, at 11 percent, in a scattershot poll published by the Morning Consult.

Another 38 percent of respondents indicated they didn't yet know who they would like to see take Joe Biden's place.

Right behind Carson are the remaining candidates in the Republican field.

Rubio and Cruz each get 9 percent support for the vice presidency, while former Ohio Gov. John Kasich received 8 percent support.
Study could lead to industrial workers being able to claim earlier

Fears white collar staff may be forced to wait longer for their pensions

Scottish workers should be able to retire earlier than the rest of the UK because Scots are less healthy and die younger, the SNP said today.

Responding to the demands, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith said Scotland's lower life expectancy and health variations will be considered as part of the Government's review of the state pension age.

Despite an improvement over the last three decades life expectancy in Scotland still lags behind the rest of the UK, with boys born around 2013 expected to live to the age of 77.1 in Scotland - compared to 78.9 for the UK as a whole - and girls expected to live until 81.1 north of the border and 82.7 for the UK as a whole.

Despite an improvement over the last three decades life expectancy in Scotland still lags behind the rest of the UK, with boys born around 2013 expected to live to the age of 77.1 in Scotland - compared to 78.9 for the UK as a whole - and girls expected to live until 81.1 north of the border and 82.7 for the UK as a whole

The so-called 'Scottish Effect' is caused by higher rates of alcohol and drug-related deaths, suicide, violence, heart disease, stroke and cancer, according to the Glasgow Centre for Population Health.

SNP welfare spokeswoman Dr Eilidh Whiteford demanded the Government take into account the regional variations in its first ever independent review of the state pension age, announced by ministers yesterday.

The review has raised concerns that white collar staff may be forced to wait longer for their pensions than manual workers.

Its remit will examine the idea of linking payments to variations in life expectancy.

Sources said this could lead to industrial workers, who have shorter lifespans, being allowed to claim their pensions earlier.

Under one scenario, those who start work at 16 would qualify for a pension at a lower age than graduates who join the labour force in their 20s.

SNP welfare spokeswoman Dr Eilidh Whiteford (pictured left in the Commons today) demanded the Government take into account the regional variations in its first ever independent review of the state pension age, announced by ministers yesterday. Iain Duncan Smith (right) said Scotland's lower life expectancy and health variations will be considered as part of the Government's review of the state pension age

Another possibility would be to favour people living in areas of low life expectancy because they are unlikely to claim for as long as residents in more affluent areas.

John Cridland, the former head of the CBI, was appointed by ministers to lead a 12-month review, aimed at delivering 'fairness' while being 'affordable in the long term'.

Challenging Mr Duncan Smith in the Commons today, Dr Whiteford said: 'Life expectancy in Scotland still lags around two years behind the rest of the UK, a gap that persists across all social demographics and costs the average Scottish pensioner around 10,000.

'However, I am just as concerned about healthy life expectancy, the age at which people start to experience illness and disability that limits their capacity for work.

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith (pictured) warned that the review will worry British workers planning for retirement

'Healthy life expectancy is not rising at the same speed as life expectancy. In fact the gap between the two is widening.

'Given the Government's reductions in support for sick and disabled people of working age ... can we have any confidence that further increases in state pension age will not simply condemn thousands of older people with serious health conditions to an impoverished old age on state benefits prior to their official retirement?'

Mr Duncan Smith said she had posed 'legitimate questions' and that the issues in Scotland are 'well known' and the SNP should raise them as part of the review.

'The point about this independent review, because he is independent and he can look at various aspects of whether or not there are demographic changes, whether or not there are changes in the types of work that people have done in the past, he will look at all of this and take a view about that,' he said.

'But the point is he is independent, we have asked him to look at all of that and he may come back with no change, he may come back with recommendations for change.

'I do not prejudge that.'

No decisions have been made about changes to the standard pension age, according to pensions minister Baroness Altman. But figures from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility suggest it will have to rise to 70 by 2050 to keep pace with longer lifespans.

Tom McPhail, of financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown, said: 'We fully expect state pension ages to go up faster than currently planned, and those joining the workforce today are likely to find themselves waiting until their mid-70s to get a payout from the state system.

'This is simply a function of the big jumps we continue to see in life expectancy, which the state pension can't hope to support without costs spiralling out of control.'

Pensions minister Baroness Altmann (left) has appointed former CBI chief John Cridland (right) to lead the first independent 12-month review of the state pension age, which is aimed at delivering 'fairness'

Paul Green of Saga urged ministers to learn from the 'mistakes' of rapid increases in the women's state pension age that have left many from the 'mistakes' of rapid increases in the women's state pension age that have left many women in their fifties short-changed.

'Reviews to the state pension age are understandably very emotive,' he said. 'We urge the pensions minister not to repeat past mistakes and promise that any changes will not affect those within ten years of the current expected retirement age to give both men and women a fair amount of time to properly plan.'

The state pension age for women is already rising from 60 to 65 in line with men. It will then rise to 66 for both men and women in 2020  a move forecast to save the Treasury more than 5 billion a year.

The pension age is due to rise to 67 from 2026 and is set to hit 68 by 2044

Reforms already in the pipeline are due to slash 30 billion from the forecast pension bill by 2050.

But without further reforms, the cost of providing state pensions to Britain's ageing population will rise from 5.5 per cent of GDP to almost nine per cent by the 2060s.

Even raising the pension age to 70 by that point would only reduce the bill to a little under eight per cent of GDP.

Increases to the state pension age are highly controversial, with critics warning that variations in life expectancy mean that some people will die before claiming pensions that others will enjoy for years.

Ministers are also keen to examine ways of encouraging older people to remain in the workplace for longer.

The study will look at whether the state pension age could be replaced by an age range, allowing some people to retire relatively early on a lower pension, while others stay working for longer in return for a more generous pension a few years later.

Those forced out of the workplace early by medical problems could qualify for a lower 'ill-health pension'.

Ministers have ruled out setting a higher pension age for women, even though they have longer life expectancy. A Government source said the move would be 'politically unacceptable', and probably illegal under equality laws.

Owen Smith, shadow work and pensions secretary, said: 'People are right to worry that the terms of this review may suggest that the Tory Government is set to speed up rises in the state pension age, throwing into chaos the retirement plans of millions of British workers.'

The Department for Work and Pensions said that the existing timetable for raising the pension age to 67 would not be accelerated as part of the review.
Sir John Major, pictured today in London, has had a hip replacement surgery

Sir John Major appeared in public on crutches today after under going a hip replacement.

The former prime minister, who is rarely seen in public, was photographed leaving the Goring Hotel in Victoria, central London.

A spokeswoman for the former Tory leader said: 'It is a matter of fact that Sir John has recently undergone hip replacement surgery.'

Sir John, who is 72, last appeared in public in December with a strident intervention on Britain's membership of the European Union.

Speaking long before David Cameron finished his controversial renegotiation of Britain's membership, the former PM said the details did not change the central question of Britain's membership.

He told the BBC in December: 'If there is anyone in the United Kingdom who really ought to be anti-European and thoroughly frustrated with them, perhaps it ought to be me - I am not a starry eyed European.

'I am sceptical of a great deal of European Union policy.

'But flirting with leaving at a moment when the whole world is coming together seems to me to be very dangerous and against our long term interests.'

Sir John, who left Downing Street in 1997 and retired from front line politics four years later, said America and Japan were creating common standards across the Pacific and insisted: 'The whole world is coming together'.

He continued: 'For the United Kingdom, 67 million out of a world population of seven billion, to break off and head into splendid isolation doesn't seem to me to be in our interests now or perhaps more important in the interests of our children, our grandchildren and future generations.'

Sir John said even if Britain decided to stay in there would always be some who refuse to accept it.

And he accused eurosceptics of being misleading about Britain's 'sovereignty' outside of the EU.

Sir John said: 'Many of the things we are told we could achieve with a regaining of sovereignty are illusory.

'People say we can save all our net contribution - not true. We would have to pay at least half and possibly more of it simply for entry to the single market.

'They say we can easily negotiate entry to the single market. That's very disingenuous - if we leave the European Union, it won't be a friendly departure, it will be very acrimonious.

'Negotiations with an irate ex-partner could be very difficult. We may get a very substandard deal.'

Sir John warned Britain would not get full control of its borders, questioning whether France would continue to hold migrants at Calais.

He said: 'In or out we can't keep the world at bay.
Bernie Sanders lost seven out of 11 of last night's contests to Hillary Clinton, but he's beating her on one front: fundraising.

Clinton took in $30 million in February, her campaign announced today. Sanders' team said yesterday he raised $42.7 million in the same time period.

'Donald Trump is going to have plenty of money to compete in November,' Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in a statement announcing his candidate's haul. 'Secretary Clintons reliance on maxed-out mega-donors isnt sustainable and should scare Democrats who want to keep the White House in November.'

The Democratic front-runner's second-place finish in the money game this month was not unexpected. Her campaign had already admitted that Sanders and his team would outraise them, just like he did the month prior.

In January Sanders took in $21 million to Clinton's $15 million.

Bernie Sanders lost seven out of 11 of last night's contests to Hillary Clinton, but he's beating her on one front: fundraising

Clinton took in $30 million in February, her campaign announced today. Sanders' team said yesterday he raised $42.7 million in the same time period

Despite the Super Tuesday losses, aides at the Sanders campaign headquarters were telling a different story this morning. 'I think it's fair to say last night we had a fantastic night,' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said. Weaver's seen here at Sanders' rally last night in Vermont, on the right. On the left is senior strategist Tad Devine. Both briefed reporters this morning

Regardless, the Super Tuesday defeats were crushing for Sanders. Clinton has locked in 544 of the delegates need to win the Democratic Party's nomination to Sanders 349.

Over at the Sanders campaign headquarters, though, his top aides were telling a different story: 'I think it's fair to say last night we had a fantastic night,' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said.

The campaign targeted just five of the states on the calendar yesterday and it won '4.9,' he said, referring to the senator's one percent loss in Massachusetts and wins in Oklahoma, Colorado, Vermont and Minnesota.

'So we're going forward, and this is a campaign to win.'

On Saturday, Kansas, Louisiana and Nebraska hold their contests. The following day Maine Democrats will conduct a caucus. Then, Tuesday, Michigan and Mississippi cast their ballots.

Sanders expects to win four of the six based on his performance so far - Kansas, Nebraska, Maine and Michigan.

He's visiting them all today and tomorrow, and he'll be back in Michigan on Sunday for the Democratic Party debate in Flint.

At stake over the next week are 300 delegates. To pull ahead of Clinton, he'd need to win all but 100 of them, roughly.

'We're behind,' Weaver admitted this morning, speaking about the delegate count generally, and Clinton 'has a substantial advantage. We believe that we can make that up.'

The campaign chief said 'as late as this morning,' senior staff was running the numbers.

They believe they can pick up many of the 247 delegates awarded late in the race by New York, where Sanders was born and Clinton claims as her adopted state, on April 19.

It's also relying on uber-liberal California to boost its delegate count. The West Coast state does not hold its contest until June 7 and is the second to last primary, but it controls 495 delegates. If Sanders is able to hold on until then, he could pull an upset over Clinton and clinch the nomination.

It's a big 'if' though.

'We'd have to win a lot of states beginning with this weekend,' Devine said of the possible path to victory.

Devine contended at the briefing that Super Tuesday was the 'single best day on the calendar' for Clinton, however.

She had 'real momentum' after Nevada and South Carolina, he said. 'We do not think the calendar ahead looks nearly as good as yesterday.'

'I believe there's going to be a lot of good days ahead,' he insisted.

And for all the talk of the super delegates Clinton has locked in - party leaders who can give their vote at the convention to whomever they want - Devine said, 'The truth is you will not win a nomination in the Democratic unless you consistently win throughout the calendar.'

'If Hillary Clinton does not consistently win in the weeks and months ahead,' he said, 'questions will arise around her candidacy.'

'We've got a long way to go,'he said. 'I think we have a very good plan. Our plan is to win, and win consistently between now and June.'

By that time, their financing operation 'which is unprecedented' and other factors working in their favor, such as Sanders' popularity against potential Republican nominees, 'will take hold on the delegates and influence them,' Devine said.

'I believe there's going to be a lot of good days ahead,' Devine said this morning. Sanders supporters are seen cheering on their candidate last night just outside his home town in Vermont

The Sanders campaign is banking on Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee.

A CNN general election poll released yesterday showed Sanders beating Trump in November by 12 points. Clinton would also win against the billionaire, but the margin is a tighter eight points.

'I think Trump is going to run a vicious campaign. I think we can all recognize his tactics. They've succeeded thus far in the Republican process,' Devine said.

'I believe that Bernie Sanders will much be a stronger candidate against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton.

In the campaign's most poignant criticism of the ex-secretary of state this morning, Devine directed reporters to Sanders' scores on 'critical attributes, honesty and integrity for example, caring about people and compassion for them.'

'I think it gives a huge advantage in dealing with the incoming against somebody like Trump, where integrity is going to be the central issue...against him in this election.'

Clinton remains under a cloud of scrutiny brought on by her revelation last year that she ran her government emails through a private server she kept at her home in New York.

'I believe Democratic Party voters are going to, in the course of the next few months, come to the conclusion that if they want to beat Trump, they're going to need Bernie to be the nominee,' he said.

Michigan alone has 130 pledged delegates to pass out. The Sanders campaign believes it has a strong chance of winning the 'critical show down state,' in Weaver's words, in spite of polling that puts Clinton ahead by double digits.

Weaver argued that trade deals supported by Clinton have 'gutted' the local economy and hurt middle class and black residents of the state.

His candidate, on the other hand, has been a 'consistent opponent' of those agreements, Weaver said.

Michigan is a state with a large African-American population, and Sanders has not performed well with that demographic in states that have already voted.

Last night Clinton won 80 percent of the black vote or more in Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. In South Carolina she outperformed Barack Obama's 2008 score with black voters and set a new record for turnout among voters in the demographic.

'We stipulate that we have to do better with African-American voters,' Sanders chief strategist, Tad Devine, told reporters camped out in the campaign's Burlington, Vermont, office this morning. 'But we think that we can do a lot better.'

Devine said the 74-year-old lawmaker who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, 'has an incredible personal story' to tell about his civil rights activism in his youth, and as black voters 'get to know him better, we think we're gonna do better.'

Sanders also failed to win strong support among Hispanics last night in Texas, according to exit polling. His campaign pointed to its win in Colorado, though, which had no exit polling.

'I don't know how you're going to win Colorado' without doing well with Hispanics, Weaver said.

'If Hillary Clinton does not consistently win in the weeks and months ahead,' he said, 'questions will arise around her candidacy,' the Sanders campaign said today

Sanders' supporters were slightly less convinced after last night's beating that their candidate would prevail.

But they said they were proud of the campaign he's run and what it's done for the progressive movement.

'I feel like even if he loses the states, he's still changing the way that people think,' Emily Kluppa said as the results rolled in. 'And even if he doesn't win this election, and take it to the end, he's still changing the dialogue and making people think about the issues.'

Her husband, Mike, added, 'We just hope the movement continues.'

Obama's movement 'petered out but this can keep the momentum,' Emily said as her husband interjected, 'I'd like to think there's a lot more Bernies than Trumps in the world.'

'I think that Trump just managed to get a lot of media attention and make it appear like there are a vast majority of Americans who are racist.'

His wife said, 'But I think that he's the minority. He's just the loudest one, so it sounds like majority.'

As far as Sanders' prospects in the Democratic primary are concerned, Mike said, 'We're optimistic still...' as his wife chimed in, ..for the future, if not for right now, for the future.'

'No, we're optimistic for right now,' he told her. 'We are optimistic for right now, but if we're wrong, which never happens....'

Both said that if it comes down to it, they'll vote for Clinton in the general election though.
speech to be the first openly gay man to win an Oscar

But he caused controversy when he incorrectly claimed during his

Sam Smith has quit Twitter, just days after his Oscars acceptance speech sparked outrage online.

On Tuesday, the British crooner posted on his account: 'I'm logging off for a while. Some Martinis shaken not stirred are definitely in order.'

Smith was widely condemned online after he wrongly claimed to be the first openly gay man to receive an Oscar when he and and his writing partner Jimmy Napes accepted the prize for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards on Sunday.

Mistake: Sam Smith has quit Twitter just days after causing controversy by claiming to be the first openly gay man to win an Oscar

An honor: Smith and his writing partner Jimmy Napes won the Best Original Song award at the Oscars on Sunday for their Bond theme 'Writing's on the Wall'

The British star said: 'I stand here tonight as a proud gay man and I hope that we can all stand together as equals one day.'

He continued: 'I read an article a few months ago by Sir Ian McKellen, and he said that no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar.

'If this is the case, even if it isn't the case, I want to dedicate this to the LGBT community all around the world.'

Sam's faux pas caused a stir on Twitter, with fan Andy Herren saying: 'Do your homework, Sam Smith. LOTS of openly gay people have won Oscars. Gaga would have known that. #Oscars.'

Apologies: Smith directly responded to criticism from Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and promised to watch the writer's films which include Milk

Hair of the dog: Smith also posted this picture of himself partaking in a little 'hair of the dog' after his big night of celebrations

Sir John Gielgud was the first openly gay actor to win an Oscar for his turn in classic 1981 comedy Arthur.

Among the other openly gay men to be awarded the top honor include Sir Elton John who took Best Original Song for Circle Of Life in 1994 and Alan Ball, who took honors for Best Original Screenplay for American beauty in 2000.

One of the winners, 'Milk' screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, hit out at Smith in a tweet that included a link to his 2008 acceptance speech.

'Hey Sam Smith, if you have no idea who I am, it may be time to stop texting my fiance,' Black wrote, referencing his boyfriend, British Olympic diver Tom Daley.

Following the controversy, Smith apologized for the mix-up on Monday and promised to see Black's films.

Remember me? Dustin, 41, shared a video of his own Oscars acceptance speech from 2009 as he gave Sam a reminder about his own achievements

Dustin Lance Black wrote another tweet on Monday morning, clarifying his thoughts on Smith's speech

Ouch: Dustin Lance Black (left) has accused Sam Smith of texting his fiance, Olympic swimmer Tom Daley (right) in an epic social media put-down

'Second openly gay man to win an oscar or third or fourth or 100th, It wasn't my point,' Smith wrote.

'My point was to shine some light on the LGBT community who i love so dearly.

'Apologies for the mixup @DLanceBlack I'll be sure to check our your films now x Belated Congrats on the Oscar x.'

On a lighter note, Smith also posted a picture of himself to Instagram, showing him partaking in a little hair of the dog after his big night of celebrations.
Rafael McCloud escaped from the Warren County jail in Vicksburg early Wednesday

A manhunt is underway for a capital murder suspect who escaped from a Mississippi jail.

Rafael McCloud escaped from the Warren County jail in Vicksburg early Wednesday morning around 5.30am.

The 33-year-old briefly took a jail guard hostage with a makeshift weapon and forced the jailer to give him his clothes, according to WLBT.

Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said McCloud used a homemade shank - a crude knife made from a piece of metal - and attacked him, according to the Vicksburg Post.

'He forced the guard to disrobe and then put on his clothes,' Pace told the Post.

Pace said that McCloud 'held the shank against the guard' as they went downstairs. McCloud left through a side door.

He said that McCloud also took a radio and keys. Both items were recovered later in the grounds of the jail. McCloud's orange jail shoes were also found.

Police said that McCloud is considered 'armed and dangerous'.

Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong said between 25 and 30 officers, including the departments K-9 officer, Thor, are involved in the search, along with multiple units from the county sheriff's department.

Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong said police are concentrating the search along Martin Luther King Boulevard, an area where McCloud previously lived. Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace (pictured right) is leading a search team on the manhunt for McCloud

Sheriff Pace (right) said McCloud used a homemade shank, a crude knife made from a piece of metal, and attacked the jail guard. Police (left) are still searching for McCloud after he escaped Wednesday morning around 5.30am

Armstrong told the Post that they are going to 'keep people on duty until this man is caught.

'It's important that we catch him. He is armed and desperate and extremely dangerous.'

Metro One is also searching by air, according to the Clarion-Ledger.

A handful of schools in western Mississippi are locked down as authorities search for McCloud.

Armstrong said police are concentrating the search along Martin Luther King Boulevard, an area where McCloud previously lived.



McCloud was last seen wearing the jailer's green pants and black jacket.

According to the Warren County School District's Superintendent Chad Shealy, the following schools are on lockdown: Academy of Innovation, Vicksburg Junior High School, Warren Central High School, Bowmar Elementary School and Vicksburg High School.

Sheriff Pace led officers into a home in Vicksburg while on the hunt for McCloud

McCloud was being at the Warren County jail (pictured) for the kidnapping and slaying of 69-year-old Sharon Wilson, who police say was badly beaten and raped before her death last June

The search is centered about a half mile northeast of the jail. Armstrong said police are concentrating on the area along Martin Luther King Boulevard, an area where McCloud previously lived.

McCloud was being held for the kidnapping and slaying of 69-year-old Sharon Wilson, who police say was badly beaten and raped before her death last June.

Her body was dumped at Kuhn Memorial Hospital, an abandoned hospital building.

She was found by ghost hunters who told police they noticed a trail of blood, according to WLBT.
A suspended Pennsylvania priest convicted of sexually assaulting poor street children during missionary trips to Honduras was sentenced Wednesday to nearly 17 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors in Johnstown had sought up to 30 years in prison for Joseph Maurizio Jr., 71. But defense attorneys for Maurizio, who maintains his innocence, argued for leniency based on the priest's age, charitable works, his U.S. Navy service during the Vietnam War, and other legal factors.

U.S. District Judge Kim Gibson also fined Maurizio $50,000 and ordered him to pay $10,000 in restitution each to his two victims.

Joseph Maurizio Jr., pictured left in February 2016 and on the right in a file photograph, has been sentenced to nearly 17 years in prison

Gibson, Philly.com reported, told Maurizio: 'You abused a position of public trust.'

U.S. Attorney David Hickton said in a statement: 'It is important to recognize the courage of the victims, the tenacity of the investigators and the resolve of the prosecutors to bring this child predator priest to justice.

'This sentence ensures that Joseph Maurizio will never again have the opportunity to travel beyond our nation's borders to victimize children.'

The sentencing came a day after the Pennsylvania attorney general issued a report saying two former bishops in the Altoona-Johnstown diocese covered up, or were slow to respond to, child-sex abuse by more than 50 priests over more than 40 years, with local law enforcement officials often deferring to church officials.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane said in a statement: 'These predators desecrated a sacred trust and preyed upon their victims in the very places where they should have felt most safe.

'Just as troubling is the cover-up perpetrated by clergy leaders that allowed this abuse to continue for decades.'

The diocese said in a statement: 'As noted in the report, the Diocese cooperated fully with authorities throughout the investigation, and will continue to do so as part of our commitment to the safety of all children.

'At this time, the Diocese is reviewing the report.'

Prosecutors contend Maurizio used a self-run Johnstown-based charity to travel to an orphanage for several years ending in 2009. Maurizio was convicted of promising candy and cash to two boys to watch them shower, perform sex acts or fondle them (file photo)

According to the report, a whistleblower accused Maurizio in 2009 and the diocese conducted its own investigation, including hiring a translator to review the victim's claims.

'Documents obtained from the Diocese show a high-ranking Diocesan official concluding the alleged conduct was 'impossible,'' the report said.

A federal jury disagreed, convicting Maurizio in September of molesting three boys, though Gibson eventually agreed to throw out one charge involving a victim who recanted at trial. Maurizio was convicted of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places - also known as sexual tourism - money laundering and possessing child pornography.

Several supporters sent letters to the court, and 13 of Maurizio's friends, family and former parishioners testified at his sentencing, defense attorney Steven Passarello said.

Daniel Thomas, Philly.com reported, said: 'I know men who are child molesters, and Joe doesn't fit the profile.'

'The bottom line basically is this: This man lived a life of good works for an extended period of time,' Passarello said. 'We asked the court to balance that against this one instance' in which he was convicted.

But federal prosecutors contend the molestations were not merely an isolated incident.

Rather, they say Maurizio created a charity - Honduras Interfaith Ministries - funded by the community and Our Lady Queen of Angels Church, which Maurizio pastored in Central City, about 75 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The charity paid for 13 trips to Honduras from 2004 and 2009, during which he molested the boys, prosecutors said.

Maurizio has been suspended by the diocese since his rectory was raided and he was charged by federal Homeland Security Investigations agents in September 2014.

Passarello said the priest will appeal his conviction and sentence.

'It's potentially a life sentence,' Passarello said. 'Even though we got it decreased ... it's still a lengthy sentence for someone who's 71.'
Mitt Romney will give a 'state of the 2016 race' speech tomorrow in his home state of Utah

The Republican party's 2012 nominee Mitt Romney plans to deliver a speech tomorrow on 'the state of the 2016 race.'

NBC News is reporting that Romney won't endorse a candidate or get in the presidential race himself, but the remarks 'will be worth covering' a top aide told the network's Andrew Rafferty.

Romney has turned GOP frontrunner Donald Trump into a political punching bag in recent weeks, suggesting there's a 'bombshell' waiting in the billionaire's tax returns, which is why Trump has yet to release them.

Scroll down for video

Trump, at Thursday night's GOP debate in Houston, said he wasn't releasing his tax returns yet because he's being audited.

He pledged to release them once the Internal Revenue Service was done.

Romney returned to Twitter to tell voters that he wasn't buying Trump's excuse.

'No legit reason [Donald Trump] can't release returns while being audited, but if scared, release earlier returns no longer under audit,' Romney wrote.

'[Donald Trump's] taxes for the last 4+ years are still being audited,' Romney continued. 'There are more #bombshells or he would release them.'

Romney, who has dedicated his last six tweets to taking down Trump, also inserted himself into the debate over Trump's comments about KKK leader David Duke.

Duke endorsed Trump and the billionaire gave a tepid response, not disavowing the racist, when asked about it by CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday.

Mitt Romney rolled his eyes at Donald Trump's excuse for not releasing his tax returns. Trump, on Thursday night, said he was being audited by the IRS and would release the returns afterward

Mitt Romney sent out a barrage of tweets slamming frontrunner Donald Trump in recent days after making initial comments that suggested there were 'bombshells' hiding in The Donald's tax returns

After Donald Trump didn't forcefully push back an endorsement from the KKK's David Duke, Mitt Romney lashed out again

Mitt Romney attacked Donald Trump yet again, suggesting that he release the transcript of his off-the-record comments said to the New York Times' editorial board

'A disqualifying & disgusting response by [Donald Trump] to the KKK,' Romney chimed in on Twitter. 'His coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America.'

Romney also called on The Donald to release the transcript of his off-the-record meeting with the New York Times' editorial board, which is rumored to contain quotes from Trump that show the businessman wavering on immigration.

The former GOP nominee was rumored to be throwing his support behind Rubio, who many other establishment Republicans have endorsed, but that report was quickly discredited.

It was Rubio himself who appeared on the Sunday shows a week ago and denied that Romney was coming on board.

'That report is false,' Rubio said. 'I have no reason to believe he's anywhere near endorsing ... we'd love to have his endorsement. We'd love to have the help of everyone because we've got to bring the Republican party together.'

'We'd love to have his endorsement, but there's nothing forthcoming,' Rubio added.

Tomorrow Romney will speak in his native Utah, which hosts a Republican debate on March 21.

The next GOP debate is scheduled for tomorrow night in Detroit, Michigan.

Meanwhile, conservative Republicans will be gathering just outside of Washington as the annual Conservative Political Action Conference kicks off.
Advertisement

Emergency crews have responded to the scene of a major disaster on the Tube as part of another day of a training exercise testing their response to a mass-casualty incident.

Hundreds of volunteer 'victims' covered in fake blood and with a variety of severe injuries were spread across a disused power station in Dartford, Kent, for the third of a four-day exercise involving firefighters, police officers and ambulance staff.

A total of 2,000 volunteers are involved over the course of the exercise, which involved recreating an entire Tube station emergency, with London rescue crews joined by representatives from Italy, Hungary and Cyprus.

The event, the largest ever disaster training exercise carried out in Europe, has involved thousands of tonnes of rubble and seven Tube carriages at a reconstructed Waterloo station.

Called Unified Response, the exercise took a year to plan and was coordinated by the London Fire Brigade working with more than 70 partner agencies including local councils, utility companies and specialist search and rescue teams.

Hundreds of volunteer 'victims' covered in fake blood and with a variety of severe injuries were spread across a disused power station in Dartford, Kent, for the third of a four-day exercise

On the ground: Police officers attend the scene of the fictional attack, carrying a mock body bag out of the reconstructed station

An actor pretends to be suffering from injuries sustained in a mock emergency at Waterloo station. More than 2,000 are taking part over the four days

Casualties: Actors with stage make up lie slumped in a reconstructed Waterloo station as they wait for rescue workers to help them

Wounded: Actors had lifelike injuries, including a nose wound as shown, painted on to their bodies to make the scenario more realistic

A total of 2,000 volunteers are involved over the course of the exercise, which involved recreating an entire Tube station emergency

Crews from the London Fire Brigade were joined by fellow emergency services such as ambulance staff and police for the drill

A young girl does her bit to help prepare emergency crews for a possible disaster, with crews shown evacuating her from the danger

London rescue crews joined by representatives from Italy, Hungary and Cyprus for the mass-casualty training drill in Dartford, Kent

Emergency response: Workers from a number of different agencies are seen working together to treat a casualty recovered from the scene

Called Unified Response, the exercise took a year to plan and was coordinated by the London Fire Brigade, with help from other agencies

Emergency service workers handle a baby doll as part of the exercise. Several dummies were used to practice administering breathing aid

Underground treatment: In a room created to look like the Waterloo Tube station, emergency workers tend to the 'wounded'

Realistic props, such as this dummy, and state-of-the-art make-up was used as part of the drill, which is in its third of four days

Disaster strikes: The drill allows rescue workers across Europe to practisce the skills they would need in the event of a terror attack

The event, the largest ever disaster training exercise, has involved thousands of tonnes of rubble and seven Tube carriages

Co-ordinated response: Different agencies work alongside each other as they help Tube passengers trapped on the platform escape

The scenario, which involves a tower block collapsing on to the bustling Waterloo Tube station, has been built in a disused power station

The London Fire Brigade worked with more than 70 partner agencies including local councils, utility companies and specialist search and rescue teams to create the realistic conditions of the exercise

Crews were forced to work in demanding and realistic conditions to help prepare them for the possibility of a huge disaster
Shocking footage showing a real-life 'Christian Grey' carving his initial into his submissive lover's inner thigh with a scalpel have been found on his phone.

The discovery comes after millionaire property broker Alexander Boettcher was jailed after seducing an intelligent and beautiful student with kinky sex and forcing her to throw acid into the faces of her former lovers to 'purify' her.

The Milan court heard how he insisted on being called 'The King' during sado-masochistic sex games, and transformed 'serene' Martina Levato into his sex slave who obeyed his every order after just a year of meeting him.

Scroll down for video

Shocking: Footage has emerged showing Alexander Boettcher carving his initial into Martina Levato's thigh

Alexander Boettcher was jailed after seducing an intelligent and beautiful student with kinky sex

Boettcher, 30, exercised so such control over the submissive Levato, 23, that she had even allowed him to carve his initial into her cheek and leg with a scalpel to prove her 'eternal devotion'.

At the time he was married to Croatian model Gorana Boettcher Bulog, and he would visit the elite Milan club scene with large sums of cash when he was not working out in the gym.

When he was arrested, his locked iPhone was seized. Police in Italy said they had been examining the phone for two years, but without the pin and the cooperation of Apple were unable to see the contents.

Prosecutors were offered assistance by an Israeli firm that developed software which managed to open the device.

The shocking images included the footage of him carving the letter on her inner thigh with the scalpel. Another photo shows him with blood on his body.

Also found were recordings of conversations with Martina and other girls, as well as explicit group sex videos of him with Martina and other young women.

The court heard how Boettcher insisted on being called 'The King' during sado-masochistic sex games

Submissive lover: Alexander Boettcher transformed 'serene' Martina Levato (pictured left and right) into his sex slave who obeyed his every order after just a year of meeting him

In one of the conversations, he said he needed to put his mark on Martina's skin because 'The King has to mark his cattle'.

It was only when the couple began to carry out attacks on Levato's former lovers in order to 'purify' her that anyone outside of her immediate circle realised the terrifying extent of what she would do for him.

The pair were only stopped after they ambushed Levato's ex-boyfriend Pietro Barbini, her school sweetheart, and hurled hydrochloric acid in his face and hit him with a hammer.

Mr Barbini, a student from Northeastern University, in Boston in the United States, had 10 skin grafts and operations to rebuild his eyelid and nose after the attack. Other victims included men she had simply kissed.

Psychologists labelled Boettcher, 30, a sadistic control freak who habitually belittled economics student Levato, called her 'ugly' and ordered her to lose weight.

Branded: In one of the conversations, Boettcher said that he needed to put his mark on Martina's skin because 'The King has to mark his cattle'

Vile: Martina shows off Boettcher's branding on her inner thigh. She was transformed into his sex slave who obeyed his every order after just a year of meeting him

Police found BDSM equipment akin to Grey's dungeon at his home, including whips, handcuffs and chloroform as well as combat knives, acid and a scalpel.

The intelligent brunette, the daughter of two maths teachers, first met handsome stock exchange broker Boettcher in 2013 at a Latin dancing night.

She had already completed an economics degree at Milan's Catholic University, and was by then studying for her MBA at the Bocconi, Italy's top university.

After discovering Levato had slept with other men to make him jealous, Boettcher came up with a plan to 'purify' his lover - by erasing the faces of her former conquests with acid.

Levato's broken-hearted father later said his hardworking and studious daughter had changed overnight after getting together with Boettcher.

Bloody: A picture of Boettcher covered with blood was found on his phone, which has now been unlocked

The pair are serving a 14-year prison sentence for their sordid crimes after being sentenced last year.

A judge told them they are 'more dangerous than any Mafioso or terrorist' because there is 'a vacuum where their souls should be'.

Boettcher had denied all responsibility saying she had planned everything and her obsession with him had continued because she backed up his claim.

Her blind obsession with him meant that when her baby boy was born, he was immediately taken away from her and judges have said the baby can be put up for adoption.
Cardinal George Pell says it is 'just not true' that he attempted to bribe or silence the victim of a pedophile priest or that the victim swore at him in anger.

Cardinal Pell has rejected the claim that he asked David Ridsdale, a family friend who was abused by his uncle, notorious pedophile Father Gerald Ridsdale, what it would take to 'keep quiet' when David told him of the abuse in a 1993 phone call.

On Thursday, David Ridsdale's lawyer asked Cardinal Pell if it was true he had offered Mr Ridsdale financial assistance and that Mr Ridsdale had angrily responded 'F*** you George and everything you stand for'.

Scroll down for video

Cardinal George Pell has arrived at the Quirinale Hotel in Rome for his last night of giving evidence by videolink to the child abuse royal commission sitting in Sydney

Cardinal Pell, facing a fourth day of questioning via video link from Rome, said the swearing never happened.

'I don't think in fact it's ever happened to my face in 50 years of priesthood and secondly, I would have been absolutely shocked,' he said.

The commission heard David Ridsdale called Cardinal Pell in 1993 to tell him he had been abused.

Cardinal Pell said he offered to help Mr Ridsdale but did nothing because he wasn't asked and the offences occurred in Ballarat diocese, while he was now an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne.

Cardinal Pell accompanied Father Gerald Ridsdale into court in May 1993, three months after the call.

Cardinal Pell said there was a radical misunderstanding between himself and Mr Ridsdale over their 1993 telephone conversation.

'I'm not even sure what keeping quiet means,' he said. 'I do dispute that.'

'But for a man who was expressing a preference for a church hearing rather than going to the police, I wouldn't have had any dispute with him on that score, although I have never impeded or discouraged anyone from going to the police.'

Cardinal Pell said Mr Ridsdale's claim he tried to bribe him was implausible.

Cardinal George Pell has again denied asking a nephew and victim of pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale (pictured) what it would take to keep him quiet

David Ridsdale (pictured) has told the child abuse royal commission when he told Cardinal Pell in 1993 he had been abused by his uncle Gerald Ridsdale, he asked him: 'I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.'

Cardinal Pell said David Ridsdale's claim he tried to bribe him was implausible. Mr Ridsdale is currently in Rome with other victims of child sex abuse to hear Cardinal Pell's testimony

Ridsdale has been jailed for abusing 53 children but is the subject of 78 abuse claims to the diocese

'I was aware that the police were already speaking to his uncle and so therefore I would have no motive in trying to prevent him going to the police,' he said.

'I've never discouraged anyone from going to the police.

'It's implausible because I was an auxiliary bishop and I had no access to money or no access to significant resources.

'It's implausible because I was an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne and this was a matter for the Ballarat diocese.

'And it's implausible because, of course, the attempt to bribe someone is criminal.'

Cardinal Pell said he did not have access to significant church funds to do anything significant that was legal, much less something that was illegal.

'I can't remember him stating that he wanted money or anything exactly like that.'

Commission chair Justice Peter McClellan said although Cardinal Pell was a Melbourne bishop and said it was a Ballarat issue, he could have offered to approach the Ballarat bishop and asked him to help.

Cardinal Pell replied: 'Yes, and I offered to do whatever David would like to suggest. 'Let me know whatever I might do to help' - I think that's very plausible that I said that.'

Cardinal Pell said the whole tenor and nature of the discussion with Mr Ridsdale was to express his desire to help and find some way of doing so, and if Mr Ridsdale wanted him to contact the bishop he would have done so.

WALKING WITH RIDSDALE A MISTAKE: PELL Cardinal George Pell says it was a mistake to walk pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to court in 1993. A photograph of Cardinal Pell, who was then an auxiliary bishop in Melbourne, and Ridsdale walking together is often used by critics of the Catholic Church as evidence it was more inclined to support pedophile priests rather than victims of child sexual abuse. This photograph of Cardinal Pell and Ridsdale walking together is often used by critics of the Catholic Church as evidence it was more inclined to support pedophile priests Giving evidence on Thursday, Cardinal Pell said he was asked in May 1993 to either give evidence or give Ridsdale a reference. There were prolonged discussions with Ridsdale's lawyer, he told the child abuse royal commission by audio visual link from Rome. "I made it quite clear that I was not going to dispute any of the allegations, that I was not going to imply any disrespect for the victims, the survivors," Dr Pell said. "I certainly was proposing to say that although I was unaware of much of what he'd done, that already it had done great damage to the church." The cardinal said he told the lawyer the only thing he would say was that, as a priest, Ridsdale had done good things like burying the dead and celebrating the sacraments. The lawyer then said he wouldn't call Dr Pell to give evidence and asked him to walk Ridsdale to court instead. "And I said yes. I now realise that was a mistake," he said. Cardinal Pell explained he walked with Ridsdale believing - in line with Christian teaching - in being kind to prisoners. The photograph led to the formation of Broken Rites, a Melbourne-based support group for victims of clergy abuse. The group uses the image on its internet homepage. Advertisement

The 74-year-old cleric has been grilled over his knowledge of offending by pedophile priests in the Ballarat and Melbourne dioceses when he served there in the 1970s and 1980s

Australian survivors of clergy sex abuse have been in Rome to attend the cardinal's testimony and have expressed dismay at his denials and explanations

Cardinal Pell told the commission he regretted his choice of words when he told the commission on Tuesday he had no interest in Father Ridsdale's offending in the mid-1970s.

Cardinal Pell said he completely messed up the sequence of events while giving evidence and had believed he was responding to questions about when he was a Melbourne official in 1993.

'I regret the choice of words. I was very confused. I responded poorly,' he said.

'I have never enjoyed reading the accounts of these sufferings and I tried to do that only when it was professionally and absolutely appropriate because the behaviour is abhorrent and painful to read about.'

Cardinal Pell - who was then a Ballarat priest - had said he didn't know Ridsdale's offending was common knowledge in the Inglewood parish in 1975 and did not know about the allegations.

'It's a sad story and it wasn't of much interest to me,' he said on Tuesday to gasps of surprise from some of those watching the commission hearing.

'The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that, but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated.'

Mr Ridsdale's lawyer Stephen Odgers SC asked: 'Was it the case that you didn't have much interest in what David Ridsdale told you about the crimes of Gerald Ridsdale?'

Cardinal Pell replied: 'That's completely untrue and David has never claimed that.'

Asked if his primary interest was to protect the church, Cardinal Pell said 'not in the slightest'.

Cardinal George Pell has arrived at the Quirinale Hotel in Rome for his last night of giving evidence by videolink to the child abuse royal commission sitting in Sydney

The 74-year-old cleric has been grilled over his knowledge of offending by pedophile priests in the Ballarat and Melbourne dioceses when he served there in the 1970s and 1980s

Cardinal George Pell has denied knowledge of most pedophile activity and blamed others in the church for mistakes made and cover-ups of such offending

Cardinal Pell's claims that he was deceived by an archbishop, a bishop and Catholic Education Office officials were challenged by counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness SC and commissioner Peter McClellan on Wednesday.

Ms Furness described his claim to have been deceived by at least four people across two dioceses as implausible and extraordinary.

The cardinal said he was telling the truth.

'This was an extraordinary world - a world of crimes and cover ups and people who did not want the status quo to be disturbed,' Cardinal Pell replied.

Cardinal Pell accused former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little and CEO officials of not telling him about accusations made against priest Peter Searson, while on Tuesday he made similar claims against Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns and his knowledge of the crimes of pedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale.

The commission heard that a delegation of teachers from the Melbourne parish of Doveton went to Cardinal Pell - then an auxiliary bishop - in November 1989 about Searson harassing children, staff and parents, showing children a body in a coffin, committing acts of animal cruelty and unnecessarily using the children's toilets.

Cardinal Pell is facing a fourth day of questioning via video link from the Hotel Quirinale in Rome on Thursday

Cardinal George Pell gave his testimony from Rome saying on Monday he is 'not defending the indefensible' in the Catholic Church's handling of child sexual abuse by clergy

Cardinal Pell said the CEO did not brief him adequately about Searson and that Archbishop Little had also deceived him by not revealing the complaints he had received.

Ms Furness suggested the cardinal's claims about not being properly briefed were 'completely implausible' because the education office had acted to pass on complaints to other senior figures.

'I can only tell you the truth,' the cardinal replied.

Cardinal Pell said he believed the CEO hid details from him because he was known to be outspoken and they were 'very keen to keep the lid on the situation'.

Cardinal Pell has maintained he did not know about pedophile priests in Ballarat, where he was a priest and advisor to Bishop Mulkearns in the 1970s, and the episcopal vicar for education in diocese schools.

He told the commission he had heard 'unfortunate rumours' about Christian Brother Edward Dowlan who abused children at schools in the diocese but said he was not concerned when Dowlan was moved from one school to another because he did not know the exact accusations against him.

'More than 40 years ago I did not think that was unusual or inappropriate,' he said.

Survivors of sexual abuse who have travelled to Rome to watch Cardinal Pell give his evidence say they've given up on reaching any satisfaction from his evidence and now want to speak to the Pope.
For six months nobody could figure out what was wrong with Khloe Russell after her left nostril started pouring with smelly green mucus.

Mother Katelyn Powell, from Hemet, California, was unable to explain it - as were the two doctors, an ear nose and throat specialist, and the dentist she took her daughter to see.

But one day while blowing her nose a 1.5 inch safety pin popped out and Khloe was forced to admit the truth - she got the metal object stuck up there while playing, then 'forgot' about it.

Mother Katelyn Powell has told of how daughter Khloe (pictured together, left and right) got a 1.5 inch safety pin stuck up her nose for six months after pushing it up there and then 'forgetting' about it

Katelyn said two doctors, and ear nose and throat specialist and a dentist were all unable to work out what was wrong with Khloe after failing to spot the pin (pictured)

Katelyn said the problems started around September last year when Khloe's nose began to run uncontrollably.

Speaking to ABC 13, she said: 'About six months ago, her nose just started (running) out of this one side. Green, green, green constantly and it stunk.'

Katelyn said she took her daughter to a doctor who examined the offending nostril but couldn't find anything wrong, so assumed it was a sinus infection and sent her home with antibiotics.

After ten days, with no success, Katelyn took her to another family doctor and a ear nose and throat specialist, who also failed to spot the pin, as it was wedged so far up her nose.

The panicked mother even took her daughter to the dentist, afraid that a problem with her teeth was causing the nasty discharge.

Despite repeated trips to the doctor, and various rounds of medication, Khloe insisted she didn't know what was wrong and said she felt no pain.

Khloe was repeatedly diagnosed with a sinus infection until her uncle forced her to blow her nose especially hard, at which point the pin popped out and Khloe admitted what she had done

But the answer eventually came after the girl's uncle, Katelyn's brother, got her to blow her nose really hard and the pin popped out.

Khloe had been regularly blowing her nose before, but it was only on this occasion that the pin decided to make an appearance.

Confronted with the rusting metal object, Khloe admitted that she had tried putting the object up her nose while building a fairy castle by herself.

Katelyn added: 'It was a huge object. It was bigger than her nose. We were horrified. I was like, "Did you put this up there?" She did, but she forgot to tell me.'

Katelyn says she doesn't blame the doctors for missing the pin, and is simply relieved the problem is finally solved.
Ben Carson admitted he has no chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee  but will not actually quit the race.

The retired neurosurgeon released a statement this afternoon saying that he planned to skip tomorrow night's GOP debate in Detroit as there is no 'path forward' for him in light of last night's Super Tuesday results.

He said he'll use his speech Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference to 'discuss more about the future of this movement.'

Carson's business manager and closest aide, Armstrong Williams, told the Associated Press: 'There's only one candidate in this 2016 election on the GOP side, and his name is [Donald] Trump.'

Williams added that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz also 'have no path' and should drop out.

But confusingly Carson is not yet expected to actually quit the race.

Scroll down for videos

No hope: Ben Carson, pictured in his adopted hometown of Baltimore last night, will tell supporters on Friday that he has no 'path forward.' He will not take part in tomorrow night's Republican debate

Ben Carson returned to Maryland last night to address supporters and seemed poised to stay in the race, but a meeting Wednesday with key aides had him changing his tune

Personally popular: Ben Carson, with this wife Candy, could not translate his inspirational rise from working-class black Detroit to being a renowned neurosurgeon into votes, but remains popular, making his endorsement valuable

Carson, 64, performed dismally in the Super Tuesday primaries and had made little impact on recent debates, being marginalized almost completely in last week's by Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump attacking each other.

He will use a scheduled speech at the CPAC, being held in just outside Washington, D.C. in Maryland to talk at length to supporters.

He issued a statement today saying that his 'grassroots movement' would continue.

'I have decided not to attend the Fox News GOP Presidential Debate tomorrow night in Detroit,' it said.

'Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America. I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's primary results.

'However, this grassroots movement on behalf of 'We the People' will continue.

'Along with millions of patriots who have supported my campaign for President, I remain committed to Saving America for Future Generations.

'We must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our Founders intended for this exceptional nation.

'I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America.

'Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances; rather by what is in the best interests of the American people.

'I will discuss more about the future of this movement during my speech on Friday at CPAC in Washington, D.C.'

He was the only one of the five remaining Republican candidates not to walk away from Super Tuesday with at least a second place somewhere  with John Kasich coming in second in Massachusetts and Vermont.

And he had picked up just eight delegates in the primaries and caucuses so far, compared to frontrunner Trump's 319.

Ben Carson wasn't able to get much air time at last week's Republican debate in Houston, Texas, as Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio all attacked one another

Donald Trump (left), the party's frontrunner, has been fairly nice to Dr. Ben Carson, even saying the retired neurosurgeon wasn't getting enough time to speak at debates

Carson's endorsement, however, will be much sought-after among the remaining candidates.

Although he could not translate personal popularity into votes and polling numbers, his inspirational story and his breakthrough moment at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast would combine to make an endorsement a valuable asset.

Carson's own strong religious views would suggest that he would lean towards endorsing Ted Cruz but he could also be under pressure from the Republican establishment to throw his weight behind Marco Rubio, who continues to be their preferred candidate to take on Donald Trump.

However his business manager's views are seen as having the most influence on Carson, and that could point to a Trump endorsement.

Trump himself had gone out of his way to be positive about Carson, saying after the last debate that he felt the retired neurosurgeon had been treated badly by the moderators by not getting enough airtime.

And in a survey out this week conducted by Morning Consult, Carson beat out all the other candidates for Republican voters' top vice presidential pick, with Trump being the hypothetical nominee.

Carson's political career could continue in another way too, as Florida Republicans are reportedly thinking about pitching Carson on a Florida Senate run, CNN reported, to fill the seat being vacated by Rubio, whose running for president instead.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is planning to use his appearance at CPAC this year to explain where his 'movement' goes from here

Carson only briefly saw success in his presidential bid, but then hopes of his outsider candidacy taking hold tumbled down.

Around Halloween, Carson was polling ahead of frontrunner Trump in Iowa, where the country's first contest is held.

But as the polls peaked for the retired neurosurgeon, the media started poking holes in some of the colorful anecdotes the doctor would tell on the campaign trail.

One story - involving a young, brooding Ben Carson stabbing someone - was revised several times. Was it a close relative? A best friend? Carson changed the script, while associates of the Detroit native came forward and said they never remembered this type of anger coming from a young Ben.

Trump capitalized on it, releasing an Instagram video on Friday the 13th, which described Carson as a 'violent criminal' or a 'pathological liar.'

'We don't need either as president,' the Trump ad boasted.

Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America. I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's primary results. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of 'We the People' will continue Carson's confusing statement about leaving - or not leaving - the race

Losing ground thanks to some sluggish debate performances, pronouncing Hamas like 'hummus,' the chickpea-based spread, when talking foreign policy and suggesting the pyramids in Egypt were built to store grain, Carson's 2015 holiday season consisted of a big staff shake-up.

Carson called two batches of reporters, from the Associated Press and the Washington Post, to his home unbeknownst to his campaign manager Barry Bennett.

To those reporters he hinted that he might make some changes in staffing to his campaign.

The retired neurosurgeon then immediately went on CNN and told Don Lemon that he wasn't firing anyone.

That was over Christmas.

Before the ball dropped to mark 2016 Carson's campaign announced 'enhancements,' with Bennett and Communications Director Doug Watts resigning 'effective immediately.'

More than 20 other staffers followed the duo out the door.

The campaign moved retired general Bob Dees, who was Carson's foreign policy adviser, into the role of campaign chairman.

A senior strategist for Carson, Ed Brookover, became the campaign manager.

'As we enter a new phase of the campaign cycle, it is necessary to invigorate my campaign with a strategy that more aggressively shares my vision and world-view with the American people,' Carson said in the statement.

'I commend Barry Bennett and Doug Watts for their efforts to help me share my vision for America,' Carson said.

Parting words aside, NBC News sources suggested the split was, in part, because of Bennett and Watts' inability to get along with Armstrong, a longtime business adviser of the candidate.

After the shake-up the campaign, again, never gained back its footing.

When CNN reported that Carson planned to head to Florida - to pick up more clothes for the campaign trail - just a day after the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz's volunteers spread the misinformation that Carson was on the cusp of dropping out, trying to recruit his voters to choose Cruz, another evangelical favorite, on their Iowa ballot instead.

The move may have helped Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses in a somewhat surprising victory over Donald Trump, who had led there since Carson's November fall and had only been neck-and-neck with the Texas senator in recent weeks.

Ben Carson briefly was sitting at the top of the polls in Iowa, where he's pictured here, but was quickly toppled by long-time frontrunner Donald Trump

The gossip didn't do any favors to Carson who came in fourth.

In the next two contests, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Carson came in last.

Carson made another controversial comment last week, that President Obama was 'raised white' and didn't embody the typical black American experience, in the run-up to Nevada's caucuses.

He returned to the fourth place position in that state, though this time in a field of just five candidates, and again pledged to stay in the race.

In the run-up to Super Tuesday, he said again and again he was staying in.

'I have millions of social media fans and they're begging me not to get out,' Carson said on Morning Joe.

He also told a familiar tale.

'If you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare,' Carson said during several media appearances a week ago.

'If you give up on the tortoise too early, you're only going to have the hare who is exhausted and not very effective,' he said on Fox & Friends.

Jeb Bush had used a similar line to explain to reporters his style of campaigning.
A street entertainer who found fame balancing upside down with his head in a bucket killed himself after suffering depression, an inquest heard.

Travis Linton Galleymore was well-known in Plymouth, Devon, after upending himself with his head in a metal pail in the city centre.

The 31-year-old committed suicide at Brockley train station, south east London, on August 4.

Travis Linton Galleymore was well known in Plymouth, Devon, after upending himself with his head in a metal pail in the city centre

An inquest at Southwark Coroners Court has now heard the South African-born entertainer, who moved to the UK and started performing in 2009, had experienced an angry outburst during a trip to India with his girlfriend in recent years.

On another occasion he was sectioned by police, assessed by a mental health team and discharged, it was said.

Detective Constable Tony Gittens also told the inquest Mr Linton Galleymore had been found by British Transport Police threatening to jump in front of a train once before.

His family were unable to attend the inquest as they live in Australia but a statement from his mother Jacqueline Galleymore was read to the court.

She said: 'We are not sure why he chose to end his life. He was responsible and hard-working and will be sorely missed.'

She cited visa difficulties as an ongoing problem and added that it had not been an easy life for any of the family.

His family were unable to attend the inquest as they live in Australia but a statement from his mother Jacqueline Galleymore, who described her son as 'responsible' and 'hard working', was read to the court

Speaking about his act before his death, Mr Linton Galleymore said: 'Its difficult to explain, I had no alternative.

'When I first came here I sold the Big Issue for a while, then I had a job getting cash in hand, then I had a problem with my visa, so I decided to put my head in a bucket.'

A note previously written by Mr Linton Galleymore said people could take photographs and added that they should not try it at home

His mum also expressed concern about the drugs he was prescribed for his diagnosed bipolar affective disorder.

She said: 'Traviss death was caused by a lapse in logical thought.'

His doctor, Dr Samuel Rodgers, told the inquest his patient was prescribed three different medications, which he was suspicious of and reluctant to take.

Travis appeared to have stopped seeing his psychiatrist and the toxicology screening found no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of death.

Senior Coroner Harris told the court text messages sent at around 2pm on the day of his death by Travis were retrieved by police from his phone and showed his intention was to take his own life.

One read, 'My death will be a self-sacrifice' and another referred to 'Amma', thought to be a 'spiritual body of some sort'.

It added: 'Amma loves me even if I kill myself. Thank you for everything.'

Senior Coroner Harris, who recorded a verdict of suicide, said: 'He was seen by two witnesses, the train driver and a staff member of the station.'
Williams later claimed Love treated him like a thief and called him the 'N-word'

He was charged with battery on Monday after allegedly punching Paul Love, 54, inside Leslie's Pool Supplies store

The 42-year-old was not arrested because no one was injured and there were no independent witnesses to the melee

Williams told police the five friends were harassing him and yanked a chain from his neck

Accused of punching a woman and confiscating her and her friends' cellphones

Comedian allegedly became upset when he caught one of the women filming him without permission in Atlanta on Sunday

More allegations: Five women have spoke out accusing Micah 'Katt' Williams, 42, of holding them at gunpoint on Sunday. The next day, he was arrested for allegedly punching a store clerk

Five women have come forward accusing embattled comedian Micah 'Katt' Williams of physically attacking them and stealing their cellphones at gunpoint during a melee in Atlanta on Sunday.

A day later, Williams was arrested on an unrelated battery charge for allegedly punching a clerk at a pool supply store.

Williams was booked into the Hail County Jail on Monday afternoon in the battery case and was later released on $5,700 bail.

The latest allegations against the troubled comic emerged on Wednesday when the Atlanta Journal Constitution obtained a police report detailing the incident involving Williams and 15 members of his entourage.

According to the report, a group of five female friends, among them Salena Boston, spotted Williams and his posse walking outside at around 2.30am, approached them and asked for a photograph.

Williams reportedly agreed to take a selfie with the women, but when he noticed that one of them was filming him, he allegedly became livid. What started as a verbal dispute quickly escalated to physical violence.

The report states that the irate comic punched Ms Boston, pulled a gun on her and her friends and confiscated their cellphones.

When police arrived on the scene and questioned Williams, he claimed the women were harassing him, videotaping and taking photos of him without permission.

The entertainer also accused the women of snatching a chain from his neck, which led to the brawl.

Williams said at one point during the fracas, one of the women threatened to go to her car 'to get something to pop somebody' - a slang term that means 'to shoot someone.'

One of Williams' security guards then pulled a gun and placed it on a concrete pillar as a warning, Williams told police.

The comedian was briefly handcuffed by the responding officers, but no one was arrested and no charges were filed because none of the people involved in the clash suffered any injuries.

Less than 36 hours later, at around 11.30am on Monday, Katt Williams was arrested for attacking 54-year-old Paul Love, a store clerk at Leslie's Pool Supplies.

The comedian, who was in the store with two women, threw a pair of goggles at Love before walking round the counter and punching him, according to Sgt. Kevin Holbrook.

Police arrived at the scene to find Williams outside 'lying on the ground with his hands behind his back as though he was ready to go to jail,' Holbrook added.

Scroll down for video

The incident that landed Williams in jail took place Monday inside Leslie's Pool Supplies in suburban Atlanta

The comedian (pictured left) claimed salesman Paul Love (right) called him the 'N-word' and treated him like a criminal. Love, 54, insisted that the attack was unprovoked

'Surreal' situation: Love said Williams knocked over a display case and threw a pair of goggles at him

Speaking to TMZ on Tuesday outside a courthouse in Los Angeles, where he arrived for a hearing in an unrelated case, Williams claimed that he struck the salesman for calling him the 'N-word.'

An indignant Williams, sporting a fur coat, alleged that Paul Love treated him as if he were trying to rob the store, and when he placed fifteen $100 bills on the counter to pay for his purchases, the clerk stuffed the money in his pocket before proceeding to ring up the items.

When Williams protested, the salesman allegedly told him that he has been working at the store for seven days, that he did not care about losing the job, and that the comic should leave.

'I said, "I can't get out of the store without my packages or without my money,"' Williams told TMZ. 'He said, "Oh, you can get out the store, or you can go to jail."'

That is when Paul Love allegedly hurled the racial epitaph at the African-American comedian.

'He used the N-word on the last day of Black History Month,' Williams fumed.

Referring to himself in the third person, the performer went on to say that at that point, 'Katt Williams did what Katt Williams had to do as a black man that is self-employed.'

Williams also explained why he then laid down in the middle of the street with his hands behind his back in preparation for his arrest, saying that he did that 'so that the hard-working police officers that ran up on him with nine police cars and guns drawn understood that they weren't dealing with a criminal.'

When the station WSB-TV went to interview Love about the incident, the salesman offered a very different version of events, which he described as 'crazy' and 'surreal.'

Love, 54, said he had no idea why Williams attacked him, knocked over a display and punched him in the face, two months after he had brain surgery.

Williams (pictured with rappers Nelly and Jermaine Dupri) has starred in several comedy specials and appeared in films such as First Sunday and Friday After Next

At the end of last year, Katt Williams appeared in court alongside former rap mogul Marion 'Suge' Knight where they pleaded not guilty to robbery charges.

The pair had been accused of taking a camera from a celebrity photographer during a confrontation in Beverly Hills in September 2014.

Leslie Redden claimed she suffered a concussion and injuries to her hands and wrist, as well as having her camera stolen, after she tried to take a picture of Suge's then six-year-old son.

Williams' attorney, Shawn Holley, admitted the comedian briefly took the camera to erase any images of the boy, after the equipment was taken by an unidentified woman in Knight and Williams' entourage. Both Knight and Williams denied the charges. A trial date has not been set.

The comedian was accused of assault twice in 2012 - the first when he was sued for allegedly hitting his former assistant with a 'closed fist'.

He was later arrested for one for allegedly attacking an 18-year-old Berkeley, California man with a bottle aboard his tour bus

Not so funny now: Williams appeared in court last October accused of stealing a camera from celebrity photographer Leslie Redden

Later that year he found himself in trouble for his involvement in a bar dispute in South Lake Union, before he was arrested in December 2012, on charges of gun-related child endangerment.

The L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services had claimed that numerous guns and illegal drugs in his house created a safety hazard for the kids and four children were put in protective custody.

The case later fell apart and all charges were dropped.

Williams rounded out the year by announcing the end of his stand-up comedy career on December 3. Just three days later, Williams announced he was coming out of 'retirement.'
Former Chesapeake Energy Corp CEO Aubrey McClendon has died in a car crash less than 24 hours after being indicted on conspiracy charges

Aubrey McLendon, the former Chesapeake Energy Corp CEO, has died in a car crash less than 24 hours after being indicted on conspiracy charges.

The crash happened on Wednesday morning around 9am in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma when the 56-year-old's car struck an overpass bridge.

'He pretty much drove straight into the wall,' said Capt. Paco Balderrama at a press conference. 'The information out there at the scene is that he went left of center, went through a grassy area right before colliding into the embankment.

'There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway and that didn't occur'.

He added that McClendon was not wearing a seat belt and was driving his 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe well over the 50mph speed limit before it was 'engulfed in flames immediately'.

Police would not say whether the death was a suicide or not yet. The crash remains under investigation and authorities say it will be at least two weeks until more information is released but he added at this point it appeared 'pretty cut and dry' as to what had happened.

Balderamma says it is 'possible' that McClendon could have suffered some sort of medical event.

He was supposed to turn himself into jail at 11am.

McClendon, who was dubbed 'America's Most Reckless Billionaire' by Forbes, is survived by his wife Katie - a Whirlpool heiress and relative of the model Kate Upton - and their three adult children Jack, Callie and Will.

He was a part owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder where he could frequently be seen courtside during games, and the great-nephew of former Oklahoma governor and U.S. Senator Robert Kerr.

Scroll down for video

'Engulfed in flames': The 2013 Chevrolet Tahoe of Aubrey McClendon erupted in a fireball after he drove it straight into a wall. He was supposed to turn himself into jail just hours later

Up in smoke: Authorities said that although they had not determined what happened exactly, it appeared 'pretty cut and dry'

'He pretty much drove straight into the wall' at a 'high rate of speed,' Oklahoma City Police Capt Paco Balerrama said, adding he was going well above the 50mph limit

The incident happened early on Wednesday morning in Oklahoma City; it has not been confirmed yet whether or not his death was a suicide and police said they would investigate further

Authorities stopped short of labeling McClendon's death a suicide, adding that it was possible he suffered from some sort of medical event

He founded Chesapeake Energy with business partner Tom Ward in 1989 when he was 29 years old turning it from a tiny company into the second-biggest gas producer in the US behind only Exxon Mobil. He was forced to leave the company under a cloud in 2013 however amid a shareholder revolt over concerns he mixed personal dealings with company operations.

McClendon was charged on Tuesday with conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in the state.

Clayton Bennett, the chairman of the Oklahoma Thunder said: 'I am overcome with grief. Aubrey McClendon was a visionary community leader, a trusted business partner and a passionate member of the Thunder family. But more than anything, he was a brother and a dear friend.

'His love of his community and his desire to make Oklahoma a better place will forever inspire all of us. Louise and I offer our love and prayers to Katie and the McClendon family.'

Carl Icahn, the largest Chesapeake shareholder, said he was 'saddened' to hear of McClendon's death.

McClendon was a part owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Pictured above attending a game in 2012 with his wife Katie, who is a relative of Kate Upton

'Aubrey McClendon was one of the brightest men I've ever dealt with. I personally always found him to be a gentleman in our interactions,' he wrote on Twitter.

Jim Cramer, of CNBC, said McClendon was a 'character' and a 'visionary' who 'made mistakes'.

'He had tremendous ideas about what our country was going to do to be energy independent. He loved that,' Cramer told CNBC.

The indictment follows a nearly four-year federal antitrust probe that began after a 2012 Reuters investigation found that Chesapeake had discussed with a rival how to suppress land lease prices in Michigan during a shale-drilling boom.

Although the Michigan case was subsequently closed, investigators uncovered evidence of alleged bid-rigging in Oklahoma.

In addition to the federal probe, the Michigan attorney general brought criminal charges against Chesapeake, which the company settled in 2015 by agreeing to pay $25 million into a compensation fund for land owners.

McClendon was a shale drilling evangelist who was once among the highest paid U.S. CEOs. He co-founded Chesapeake with fellow Oklahoma oilman Tom Ward in 1989. In 2013, McClendon stepped down from the helm of Chesapeake amid a liquidity crunch and corporate governance concerns. Ward left Chesapeake in 2006 and founded competitor SandRidge Energy Inc the same year.

McClendon, who was with American Energy Partners (AEP) at the time of his death, was charged with one count of conspiracy to rig bids, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Justice Department said.

In a statement released after his indictment, McClendon said: 'The charge that has been filed against me today is wrong and unprecedented.

'Anyone who knows me, my business record and the industry in which I have worked for 35 years, knows that I could not be guilty of violating any antitrust laws.

'All my life I have worked to create jobs in Oklahoma, grow its economy, and to provide abundant and affordable energy to all Americans.

He pretty much drove straight into the wall. There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway and that didn't occur Capt. Paco Balderrama

'I am proud of my track record in this industry, and I will fight to prove my innocence and to clear my name.'

hesapeake itself is unlikely to face criminal prosecution, the company said.

'Chesapeake has been actively cooperating for some time with a criminal antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice regarding past land leasing practices,' said Chesapeake Energy spokesman Gordon Pennoyer. 'Chesapeake does not expect to face criminal prosecution or fines relating to this matter.'

Chesapeake shares declined 3.6 percent in after-hours trading to $2.66

The seven-page indictment alleges that McClendon set up a conspiracy of two energy companies which agreed not to bid against each other in purchasing oil and natural gas leases in northwest Oklahoma from 2007 to 2012. The indictment did not name either company.

McClendon, pictured center, co-owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder, cheers along with his wife during Game 1 of the NBA basketball finals against the Miami Heat in Oklahoma

Family man: Aubrey McClendon pictured center with his son Will, right, and wife Katie

The couple had two other children together, daughter Callie, left, and son Jack, right

The indictment comes at a time when energy executives across America are already facing considerable distress. Oil and gas companies like Chesapeake, SandRidge, and McClendon's new venture AEP, have struggled as the price of oil plummeted by 70 percent since late 2014.

Both Chesapeake and SandRidge, once storied firms in Oklahoma's oil industry, have recently engaged restructuring experts as they scramble to pay off billions in debt and avoid potential bankruptcy. Chesapeake's stock price has tumbled more than 80 percent in the last year. SandRidge was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in January, and closed Tuesday at 4 cents per share.

Much of the companies' debt was accrued in the period from 2007 through 2012 when McClendon was allegedly engaged in an antitrust conspiracy, a time when Chesapeake was snapping up millions of acres of land leases nationwide to expand its shale drilling.

McClendon was also embroiled in a lawsuit with Chesapeake which alleged that he took sensitive company data from his former company to build his new business.

The Justice Department said that McClendon's indictment was the first case in an ongoing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anti-competitive conduct in the oil and natural gas industry.

'His actions put company profits ahead of the interests of leaseholders entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights on their land. Executives who abuse their positions as leaders of major corporations to organize criminal activity must be held accountable for their actions,' said Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, head of Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

Chesapeake, SandRidge, and McClendon had previously disclosed in securities filings that they were being investigated by the Justice Department's Antitrust Division.

In a bizarre coincidence, McClendon's death is the second fatal crash this year connected to the Thunder basketball team. The wife of Assistant coach Monty Williams, Ingrid, died on February after she was involved in a crash in Oklahoma City.

MIXING PRIVATE AND PROFESSIONAL: HOW AN ENTIRE OFFICE MANAGED MCCLENDON'S PERSONAL BUSINESS AT CHESAPEAKE In a 2012 Reuters report on McClendon, it was revealed that Chesapeake had an entire office within the company dedicated to managing McClendon's personal business. According to internal documents reviewed by Reuters, the 'AKM Operations's' accountants, engineers and supervisors handled about $3 million of personal work for McClendon in 2010 alone. Among other tasks, the unit's controller once helped coordinate the repair of a McClendon house that was damaged by hailstones. The report also revealed that the company's fleet of planes were being used by the McClendon family for personal holidays. On one trip, the family took flights to Amsterdam and Paris that cost $108,000; McClendon counted the trip as a business expense. In another case, Chesapeake logs show, nine female friends of McClendon's wife flew to Bermuda in 2010 without any McClendons aboard at a cost of $23,000. McClendon's vested interest in the Oklahoma City Thunder, which he partially owned, was also detailed in the report which showed that Chesapeake signed a $36 million sponsorship deal, and it paid up to $4 million annually to brand the stadium Chesapeake Energy Arena. McClendon also mortgaged his future proceeds from the team to secure two bank loans. McClendon, 52, put longtime friends on the Chesapeake board and showered them with compensation. Beyond the mixing of personal and professional, another theme emerged from interviews and records: McClendon's seemingly insatiable desire to own more and more - of everything. Said a contemporary who knows McClendon well, 'If you're competitive like Aubrey, you just always want to own more.' For Chesapeake, McClendon has overseen a spree of more than 100 real estate purchases in Oklahoma City worth more than $240 million, property records show. On land steps from the corporate campus, he directed his natural gas company to develop a luxury shopping center. For himself, McClendon bought his neighbor's house near Oklahoma City and then the one behind that. He acquired a mansion on 'billionaire's row' in Bermuda and later added a larger estate. He bought properties in Minnesota and Maui and near Vail, Colorado. He filled cellars in three states with trophy wines, and purchased 16 antique boats valued at $9 million. Then McClendon mortgaged much of it - and bought more. Advertisement

 For confidential help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or click here
Schmidt is now executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet and is worth an estimated $11billion

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been chosen to head up the Pentagon's new innovation board.

The software engineer, who is worth an estimated $11billion, will head up an advisory group along with Ash Carter, the Defense Secretary, aimed at bringing Silicon Valley practices to the military.

Schmidt, who is now executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet and a tech adviser to the president, will select 12 people to bring in new technology concepts.

Carter is due to discuss the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt during the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been chosen as head of the Pentagon's new innovation board

The new board is Carter's latest effort to kick-start innovation across the U.S. military by building bridges to the U.S. technology industry.

The U.S. defense chief announced the board's creation on Wednesday during his third trip to Silicon Valley since taking office just over a year ago.

Carter and Schmidt will focus on selecting on people who have led large private and public organizations, and excelled at identifying and adopting new technology concepts, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Modeled on the Defense Business Board, which provides advice on best business practices from the private sector, the new panel is intended to help the Pentagon become more innovative and adaptive in developing technology and more nimble.

Members will draw on their experience in Silicon Valley to advise on rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis, the use of mobile and cloud applications and organizational information sharing.

'The secretary is always looking at ways to ... keep the department thinking fresh, bringing in new ideas, bringing in new voices, and he sees this as another opportunity to do that,' said one senior defense official.

Details of how often the board will operate were still being worked out, the official said.
until June 27 and bail was granted with conditions

A male model assaulted a security guard at a five star hotel in the heart of Londons West End, a court heard today.

Danny Blake, who is signed to agency D1 Models, is accused of attacking Mark Craven after being asked to leave the swanky W London in Leicester Square last December 3.

The 23-year-old, who has modelled for the likes of ASOS and menswear brands MA.STRUM and Soviet, has denied one count of common assault at Westminster Magistrates' Court. A trial has been adjourned until June 27.

Danny Blake, who is signed to agency D1 Models, is accused of attacking Mark Craven after being asked to leave the swanky W London (pictured) in Leicester Square last December 3

Magistrate Kay Walker told Blake: If you do not [surrender to City of London Magistrates Court on June 27] so you could be in breach of bail and maybe committing a further offence.

If you do not attend, the trial could go ahead in your absence and you will not get to tell your side of the story.

Ms Walker granted Blake bail on the grounds he does not attend the W London Hotel or contact Mr Craven.

She added: 'If you do see him in another bar, the onus is on you to turn around and walk the other way.'
An 86-year-old woman from Pennsylvania died in a 'freak accident' when she fell and got her medical necklace caught on her walker, strangling her, a corner has ruled.

Roseann J. DiFrancesco, a retired federal government worker from New Cumberland, was found dead inside her home on February 12 by a visiting nurse.

Unable to get DiFrancesco to come to the door by knocking, the worker let herself in and made her way to the bathroom, where she found the body. It is unclear how long she had been dead.

Roseann J. DiFrancesco, 86, a retired government worker from Pennsylvania, died after her medical alert necklace got caught on her walker after she fell, strangling her (file image)

Coroner Charles Hall said the lanyard, which was not fitted with a breakaway feature, caused DiFrancesco's body to be suspended above the floor after she slipped and fell.

The resulting pressure on her neck cut off the air and blood flow to her brain, causing her death, Hall said in a report seen by Pennlive.com.

Hall said it is unclear whether the alert necklace was not fitted with a safety feature allowing it to detach to begin with, or if the lanyard was a replacement.

While Hall called the death a 'freak accident', the Food and Drug Administration previously issued a warning about the dangers of medical alert lanyards.

Between 1998 and 2009, the FDA said six people were killed or seriously injured by a lanyard made by electronics firm Philips which did not have a breakaway feature.

Coroner Charles Hall, at the Cumberland Coroner's Office (pictured), said a nurse discovered DiFrancesco's body on February 12 in her bathroom after she failed to come to the door

At the time Philips defended the product, saying the greater risk was that the button would detach unexpectedly, causing it to be out of reach when needed.

The FDA wrote: 'These widely used devices provide critical and immediate access to emergency care for those at risk of falls or who may be more likely to need outside assistance.

'While the number of adverse events reported is small compared to the number of people who use this device, the severity of these events is of concern.

'It remains important that users, along with their health care providers, assess the options provided by each style of button, and choose the option that best fits their condition.'
A man who took his pet snake Dora for a swim in a creek while drinking a bottle of beer may have his beloved reptile removed from his care.

Police are investigating Steven Brimelow for animal cruelty after bizarre footage emerged of him taking his pet carpet python for an afternoon dip at Queensland's Tallebudgera Creek, reported the Gold Coast Bulletin.

The 35-year-old was captured on camera playfully swimming and tossing his snake - named Dora because 'she's always exploring' - while holding a beer in the other hand before bringing his friend in for a loving embrace.

But the RSPCA has condemned the 'disturbing' act saying the water is not a snake's natural environment.

Scroll down for video

Steven Brimelow is currently being investigated for animal cruelty after he took his snake for a swim

'I imagine it would be causing a great deal of stress to the animal to be hurled through the air like that and then to slap down on the water,' said RSPCA reptile handler Shannon Beagan.

'Snakes do not attach to their owners, or come when called  it looks like a stressed animal trying to get out of the water. Quite a disturbing display'.

Owner of snakehandler in Victoria, Sean McCarthy said Mr Brimelow's actions are illegal as he has violated the conditions of his licence by taking the snake out of his premises.

The only people that can do that are wildlife demonstrators and they have a different licence, Mr Brimelow told Daily Mail Australia.

Although Mr Brimelow believed the snake was swimming back to him out of enjoyment Mr McCarthy was quick to dismiss the claim.

He [Mr Brimelow] is a physical object in the water and so the snake was swimming back to him in order to rest.

Its the same as having a log in the water, the snake would swim towards it  he [the snake] wasnt heading back because of friendship.

A snake can swim but a carpet python prefers to be on the ground or in a tree  it also needs to rest which is why it was swimming back.

Mr McCarthy also said although the serpent is not considered dangerous 'wildlife and alcohol should not be put together'.

The bizarre video shows the man tossing his pet carpet python in the water before giving him a big kiss

The RSPCA has labelled the 35-year-old's actions as 'disturbing' and says the snake looks stressed in the footage

Mr Brimelow who refers to the snake as his 'love' spends all his free time with the serpent.

'She's never bitten me  she's the love of my life,' Mr Brimelow told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

'I feed her a dead rat once a week and she's happy with that.'

The Palm Beach man purchased the reptile from Gumtree after his dirt bike was stolen from his home last October.

'I bought her after my bike was stolen  to kill the pain and have a good time together,' he said, adding that he was 'overwhelmed' by the video going viral.

This comes after the footage - taken by aspiring musician Indy Davies - made a splash on social media, with millions of views worldwide.

'I was flat out impressed. We thought we were rock n roll, spending the day on the beach, but this guy was drinking a beer, with his snake out in public,' Mr Davies said.

The 35-year-old was captured on camera playfully swimming and tossing his snake - dubbed Dora

The footage - taken by aspiring musician Indy Davies (pictured) - made a splash on social media

Mr Davies said he and his father were both snake-lovers but he'd never come across anyone taking their pet reptile for an intimate swim.

The snake reportedly divided the crowd, proving a big hit with children but sparking concerns from their parents.

'There was one woman screaming the whole time to get out of the water,' Mr Davies said.

After Mr Brimelow and the Dora tired themselves out, the proud pair took to the sand to make some friends with their fellow beachgoers.




There are grave concerns for an easily misled 25-year-old woman who has been missing for almost a week in dense bushland where temperatures are threatening to hit 40C.

Rocky Eiao was last seen about four kilometres deep in bushland after walking off from a man believed to be her boyfriend about midday last Friday in western NSW.

Its believed the pair had argued after the car they were driving got a flat tyre, in Girilambone, about eight hours north-west of Sydney, Daily Telegraph reports.

Scroll down for video

Rocky Eiao was last seen about four kilometres deep in bushland after walking off from a man believed to be her boyfriend about midday last Friday in western NSW

The sheep shearer is from Nyngan, about 80km from where she went missing, but knows the Girilambone area well as its where she works.

Where she has gone missing is where she works and knows the area very, very well, her cousin Tori Eiao said.

The only thing she hates are spiders and there would be a lot out there.

Its believed Ms Eiao is wearing only thongs amongst the treacherous terrain where temperatures are expected to hit 39C on Thursday.

She has young dogs with her, unconfirmed reports from Sydney Morning Herald said.

Friends and family searched for the 25-year-old until notifying police late on Saturday afternoon when she failed to show up (pictured searching for her on bikes)

Its believed Ms Eiao is wearing only thongs amongst the treacherous terrain where temperatures are expected to hit 39C on Thursday (search helicopter pictured)

Friends said the 25-year-old and the man had gone hunting for goats before she went missing, 7 Prime News reported.

Im starting to get real scared, a man told the television network. Were going in circles, we dont know what to do anymore.

Friends described her as outgoing, very energetic, really sweet but gullible, and said she was easily led astray by people.

She believed everyone was honest, I guess, Adrian Newton also told 7 Prime News.

Mr Newton raised concerns that water is difficult to find if you didnt know where you were going and could have tragic consequences.

Old friend Katrina Lahay, from Queenslands Gold Coast, said she misses the 25-year-old so much.

Praying that ur [sic] safe and okay I love [you] to the moon and back bub just want u home safe.

Friends and family searched for the 25-year-old until notifying police late on Saturday afternoon when she failed to show up.

Tori Eiao said the womans mother, Rita, had been out searching for her daughter every day.

Im starting to get real scared, a man (pictured) told 7 Prime News. Were going in circles, we dont know what to do anymore'

Where she has gone missing is where she works and knows the area very, very well, her cousin Tori Eiao said

The rest of the family live in Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand, so theres not much we can do but just pray for Rocky to come home safe and healthy, the cousin said.

We are all very upset and overwhelmed. The worst part is not being there to help search.

Extensive air and land searches began at first daylight on Sunday and have continued through the week.

Grave concerns are held for Ms Eiao due to the extreme temperatures in the area, NSW Police said on Wednesday.

Police are considering extending their search from the 36,000 acre property.

She was reportedly wearing black shorts, red thongs, and a faded blue collared tee-shirt when she was last seen.

Roxy Eiao is described as having dark, shoulder-length hair, and as being thinly-built between 155 and 165cm tall.

Police are also urging local farmers to check their properties for the missing woman.

Police are urging anyone with information which could assist their search to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

Adrian Newton (pictured) said she was easily led astray by people. She believed everyone was honest, I guess'
A three-year-old child was beaten to death by his mother's lover in Quanzhou, southeastern China's Fujian province.

The child's mother Chen was married and was having an affair with the man surnamed Liu, the People's Daily Online reports. Liu was so annoyed that the woman's young son was crying while they were trying to have sex that he beat him with wooden sticks and electric cables.

Both have now been detained by the police over the death.

Liu's house: The man turned himself in after he beat to death his lover's three-year-old child with sticks

According to reports, Liu invited Chen to spend the night with him on February 23.

She took her three-year-old son Xiao Xiao with her to the man's house.

However Xiao Xiao would not stop crying.

According to reports, Liu beat Xiao Xiao with sticks, wire and other items.

Chen Weihong, a doctor at The First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University said that the child was brought to the hospital by his mother and another man.

He said the child had a lot of bruises on his hands and feet and showed no signs of life when he came into the hospital.

He was pronounced dead and the local police were informed.

The scene of the crime: The door of Liu's house (above) in Quanzhou has now been sealed by local police

At midday on the 24th February, Quangang police launched an investigation into the child's death.

According to Chinese media, Liu was married once before but later divorced.

Police told reporters that after the child was pronounced dead, Liu handed himself in.

During questioning, he confessed to beating Xiao Xiao on previous occasions.

According to the boy's father, his wife had allegedly told him that she didn't know the man who beat her child and that she was spending time at a family member's home.

By the time he found out about Xiao Xiao's death, the child had been dead for two hours.
A Chinese pop star suffered severe burns to 80 per cent of her body after accidentally setting herself on fire with a lighter following an argument.

Tang Anqi, a member of the all-female girl group SNH48, was with a friend at the Shanghai Boashan Wanda cafe when the incident happened, reports the Peoples Daily Online.

At around 8pm on March 1, Tang rushed down the stairs of the cafe screaming and engulfed in flames. She is currently in intensive care and the case in under investigation.

Scroll down for video

Up in flames: Within a matter of seconds Tang's whole body was on fire at around 8pm in Shanghai, China

Terrifying: Chinese pop star Tang Anqi reportedly set herself on fire in a cafe in Shanghai after an argument

The manager at the cafe said Tang, 23, and a friend walked in for some food at around 7pm.

They sat down at a table on the second floor, at the time Tang was said to be in a very bad mood and very rude to the staff.

Speaking to reporters, the manager said a staff member took a round chocolate cake to the table.

When the star saw the cake, she told him that it was really ugly.

Tangs friend, who has not been identified, reportedly explained to the staff member that Tang wasnt in the best mood.

The manager added: She [Tang] was quite aggressive and in a bad mood.

Not long after this, she ran down the stairs covered in flames and screaming for help.

Charred: The stairs in the cafe after the incident which saw pop star Tang Anqi accidentally set herself on fire

Accident: The cafe in Shanghai where Tang allegedly set herself on fire using a lighter at 8pm on March 1

Witnesses outside the cafe posted pictures of Tang on fire. In the images she is covered in orange flames from head to toe.

According to the report, because Tang was sitting in a corner table, she was in a blind spot.

It was not captured by the security cameras, so it is hard to know how she ended up on fire.

The manager said she was wearing tights or stockings which were extremely flammable, so the fire spread rapidly. He tried to help her and called the emergency services for help.

The Shanghai Baoshan authorities confirmed they were called to an incident where a woman had been set on fire after a dispute with a companion.

There was a lighter involved and somehow she accidentally ignited her own clothes.

After the news of Tangs accident broke on Chinese media, the hospital in Shanghai where she is being treated confirmed she is in a critical condition.

Icon: Tang joined Chinese pop group SNH48 with two other female students in 2012 making her famous

Girl power: Tang is a member of the Chinese all girl group SNH48 known for their energetic dancing on stage

However, a doctor at the hospital has confirmed that the star has woken up.

Around 80 per cent of her body is covered with burns and she is currently not out of danger.

This morning SNH48 released a statement on their official Weibo account, China's equivalent of Twitter, that said: After an unfortunate event when Tang Anqi was out with friends, she accidentally set herself on fire leading to severe burns.

She has been receiving treatment at the hospital.

The cafe she was eating in also released a statement on their social media page to explain what happened: A girl set on fire when inside the cafe, it only took a few seconds for the flames to spread from her hair to her body. The staff and emergency services responded as quickly as they could.

Pop stars: SNH48 the pop group Tang is a part of are well known female icons across China and Japan

Tang joined Chinese pop group SNH48 with two other female students in October 2012. They have since become huge female idols in China.

The group consists of dozens of young female artists. As well as singing and dancing, they perform in theatres and interact with fans predominantly via handshake events across China and Japan.

It is reported that the group were due to attend a number of upcoming events in Shanghai this month.
It is thought the microbiome of each person is as unique as a fingerprint, and it comes from our environment

The results were photographed as an exhibit called 'Invisible You - The Human Microbiome' at the Eden Project

Along with two biologists, the Brooklyn-based artist grew the bacteria in petri dishes in a lab

Advertisement

Living in your belly button, and across your body, are bacteria that make up your unique 'microbiome'.

To reveal just how unique it is, Brooklyn-based artist Joana Ricou has teamed up with biologists to photograph samples of bacteria found in people's navels, collected from swabs and 'fluff.'

As part of an exhibition called 'Invisible You - The Human Microbiome', she has created more than 400 portraits from the individual mix of microbial life from cultivated samples handed to her by the subjects.

As part of an exhibition called 'Invisible You - The Human Microbiome', artist Joana Ricou has created more than 400 portraits from the individual mix of microbial life from cultivated samples handed to her by the subjects. A sample taken from a participant called Darren is pictured left, the right-hand picture is from a subject called Eleri

The artist said she is inviting people to think about the other parts of their bodies, that aren't human, including the bacteria living inside their belly buttons.

'Each portrait is a living painting, created with the other selves of the portrait's subject,' Ricou explained. The living painting is a culture of the bacteria and other living things collected from the subject's bellybutton.

'It is thought the microbiome of each person is as unique as our fingerprint, and that it comes from our environment and from our mothers.'

Ricou teamed with Rob Dunn and Holly Menninger at North Carolina State University. The pair had been looking into what grows inside the belly button.

The Brooklyn-based artist teamed up with biologists to collect samples from swabs and 'fluff'. The left-hand sample comes from 'Clive, while the right-hand image is made from bacteria found on 'Celine. The microbiome of each person is said to be as unique as a fingerprint

The belly button bacteria portraits were developed as an exhibit for 'Invisible You  The Human Microbiome' at the Eden Project, funded by a commission from the Wellcome Trust. A sample from 'Esther' is shown left, and 'Derwent's' sample is pictured right

HOME IS WHERE THE BACTERIA IS A persons home is their castle and they populate it with their own subjects - millions and millions of bacteria. Scientists have found that when we move, or even spend time in a hotel, we take all of our bacteria with us, and 'colonise' the space around us within a matter of hours. These bacterial signatures are unique and could be used to uncover crimes in future, just as todays investigators rely on fingerprints. Scientists from the US Department of Energys Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago examined the complex interaction between humans and the microbes that live on and around us. Advertisement

Dunn and Menninger previously led a public science project called Belly Button Biodiversity where they involved the public in research on the belly button microbiome to find out about what species live in this tiny patch of skin.

The artist was aiming to give a different meaning to the collection of bacteria that can become routine and mundane.

'In the study of the microbiome and many other scientific studies, large collections of samples are routine' said Ricou on her website.

'The same experience, taken out of the context, can take on a special meaning and become transformative.'

The project was developed as an exhibit for 'Invisible You  The Human Microbiome' at the Eden Project, funded by a commission from the Wellcome Trust.

Her work is on show in Nonhuman Subjectivities, Art Laboratory Berlin, until 30 April.

Ricou has been inspired by science throughout her entire artistic career.

In 2013 she held an exhibition called '98% of 60 kilos of human being' in which she displayed substances that represented the amount of each element that would be found in her body.
Advertisement

The world's youngest islands, located off the coast of Japan, formed in two explosive phases, says researchers.

Two underwater volcanoes erupted forty years apart to form one active volcanic island, but researchers have discovered exactly how it formed in two explosive phases.

After witnessing creation of a volcanic islet and investigating the 'emplacement of lava flows in the sea', researchers reveal it was created by 'Surtseyan' and 'Strombolian' eruptions.

Scroll down for video

Two years ago, a volcanic eruption in the Pacific Ocean took place, creating a small island off the coast of Japan. The tiny islet came to the surface in November 2013, next to the island Nishinoshima, and kept growing until the two merged into one island. In this aerial image, volcanic eruption continues at Nishinoshima island, in Ogasawara Chain islands, on March 4, 2015 in Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan.

HOW WAS THE ISLAND FORMED? In 1973, an underwater volcano erupted, shootings mounds of molten lava to the surface 620 miles south of Tokyo and over time the island of Nishinoshima had formed. However, this piece of rock was just the top of an even larger underwater volcano, about 1.86 miles high and 58.5 miles wide, reports IFL Science. During the first part of formation, steam formed along the molten edges before 'explosively expanding into the water and sending blobs of lava into the air'. This is known as a 'Surtseyan' eruption, which named after an Icelandic island that formed the same way in 1963. When the older lava had cooled into twists, bumps, tubes and grooves on the surface of the island This forced the newer lava into the grooves before it had a chance to reach the water and cool. This 'Strombolian' eruption phase produced intense fountains fires from the volcano and built lava up on the pre-existing rock. Instead of traveling directly from the vent of the volcano to the ocean, the lava made its way through the grooves in the rock before it cooled. Advertisement

'We investigated the creation of a volcanic islet and emplacement of lava flows in the sea by analyzing data from the island-forming eruption at Nishinoshima, Japan, that has been continuing since November 2013,' reads the study published in The Geological Society of America.

'Aerial observations and satellite images were used to perform a quantitative analysis of the eruption processes.'

'The most intriguing characteristic of the lava flows is the development of lobes and tubes from breakouts and bifurcations of andesitic 'a'a-type lava flows.'

In 1973, an underwater volcano erupted, shootings mounds of molten lava to the surface 620 miles south of Tokyo and over time the island of Nishinoshima had formed.

However, this piece of rock was just the top of an even larger underwater volcano, about 1.86 miles high and 58.5 miles wide.

Forty years later, more volcanic activity occurred, which left behind a different island 82 feet above sea level just southeast of Nishinoshima.

'The 2013 eruption began with Surtseyan-type eruptions and the formation of a cone in a shallow sea of ~20 m depth, ~400 m southeast of the existing Nishinoshima Island,' stated researchers.

'When a small islet was discovered by the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force on 20 November 2013, it was 150  80 m in size.'

The first part cause sudden bursts of lava into the cool water.

Steam then formed along the molten edges before 'explosively expanding into the water and sending blobs of lava into the air'.

This is known as a 'Surtseyan' eruption, which named after an Icelandic island that formed the same way in 1963.

When the older lava had cooled into twists, bumps, tubes and grooves on the surface of the island

This forced the newer lava into the grooves before it had a chance to reach the water and cool.

This 'Strombolian' eruption phase produced intense fountains fires from the volcano and built lava up on the pre-existing rock.

Instead of the lava traveling directly from the vent of the volcano to the ocean, it made its way through the grooves in the rock before it cooled.

As of today the islands are still spewing out 80 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of lava every single day.

The new Nishinoshima now measures 1,900 meters east to west, about 1,950 meters north to south and more than 100 meters tall, the Japanese Coast Guard told Japan Today

Eruptions from the volcano keeps adding land, and scientists believe this activity won't fizzle out anytime soon.

The first part cause sudden bursts of lava into the cool water. Steam then formed along the molten edges before 'explosively expanding into the water and sending blobs of lava into the air'. Then 'Strombolian' eruption phase produced intense fountains fires from the volcano and built lava up on the pre-existing rock

'We investigated the creation of a volcanic islet and emplacement of lava flows in the sea by analyzing data from the island-forming eruption at Nishinoshima, Japan, that has been continuing since November 2013,' reads the study published in The Geological Society of America . 'Aerial observations and satellite images were used to perform a quantitative analysis of the eruption processes'

Video courtesy : earthspace

On a recent aerial survey of the island, the Coast Guard observed a 1,200-meter plume of smoke stemming from the eruption as well as volcanic rock spouting from the volcano several times per minute.

Initially, scientists were unsure how long it would last because volcanic islets of that type tend to be reclaimed by the sea after a short time.

Its also been years since this volcano has seen any action, as the last major eruption took place just a little less than 60 years ago, from 1973 to 1974.

Scientists view this island as a rare opportunity to study how life begins to colonize barren land.

Small beginnings: Left is a satellite image of the volcanic activity from Nishinoshima (Ogasawara) island collected on November 21st, By December 31st, 2013, it had grown significantly (right image).

In this aerial image, a new islet (bottom) is seen connected with Nishinoshima island on December 25, 2013 in Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan. With the new islet merging with the existing Nishinoshima island, there is little possibility it will be named as a separate entity.

Left: NASA Earth Observatory satellite image acquired on 8 December 2013 from the EO-1 ALI sensor, and right, the same area on 24 December 2013.

Even though the its almost all bare rock formed from the cooling lava, scientists say it will one day be humming with plant - and possibly animal - life, as nature moves in to what is being called a 'natural laboratory' on one of the latest bits of real estate in the Pacific.

'We biologists are very much focusing on the new island because we'll be able to observe the starting point of evolutionary processes,' said Naoki Kachi, professor and leader of Tokyo Metropolitan University's Ogasawara Research Committee told AFP.

After the volcanic activity calms down, 'what will probably happen first will be the arrival of plants brought by ocean currents and attached to birds' feet,' Kachi said.

Those seabirds, who could use the remote rock as a temporary resting place, could eventually set up home there.

In this aerial image, the recently formed islet, which is connected to neighboring Nishinoshima island, continues its volcanic activity on April 7, 2014 in Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan.

In this aerial image, volcanic eruption continues at Nishinoshima island, in Ogasawara Chain islands, on March 4, 2015 in Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan.

Their excreta - along with their dropped feathers, regurgitated bits of food and rotting corpses - will eventually form a nutrient-rich soil that offers fertile ground for seeds carried by the wind, or brought in the digestive systems of overflying birds.

'I am most interested in the effects of birds on the plants' ecosystem - how their bodily wastes-turned-organic fertilizers enrich the vegetation and how their activities disturb it,' said Kachi .
Crashing thunder and blinding flashes of lightning are one of the most powerful and impressive phenomena in nature, lighting up the night sky with a deafening roar.

While the familiar flashes and forks of electrical light are known to follow a gradient of charged particles, exactly how the initial spark forms has been unclear.

But a rare, powerful type of lightning is helping scientists to unravel how such strikes begin during a thunderstorm.

Scientists in New Mexico observed a rare type of lightning, called narrow bipolar events (NPEs). Their findings offer clues as to how lightning flashes are sparked and how clouds develop so much current. Stock image

When storm clouds develop they become highly charged, with the uppermost layer accumulating more positively charged ions, while the lower parts of the clouds become more negative.

As the charges separate it creates an electric field, with the air acting as a buffer stopping the flow from negative to positive.

The charge builds until it overcomes the insulator, forming lightning either within the cloud, known as sheet lightning, or striking the ground, known as fork lightning.

However, a rare type of lightning called narrow bipolar events (NPE), which can be far more powerful than typical lightning strikes, is caused by the flow of positive charge.

It typically occurs when charge jumps from the positive top of the storm clouds to pools of negative charge on the ground.

The team believes the findings show the initial sparks in these rare lightning events are the result of 'positive breakdown' of charge moving downwards through the cloud, rather than a 'negative breakdown' which moves upwards, as had been previously thought

By studying this lightning, scientists at the Institute of Mining and Technology in New Mexico discovered the spark which kicks off these ferocious strikes are caused by a 'relatively unknown' type of discharge called fast positive breakdown.

FAST POSITIVE BREAKDOWN Scientists focused on a rare type of lightning, called narrow bipolar events (NPE). The sparks are fast, travelling at up to 100 million metres per second, and are one of the most powerful sources of radio frequency radiation on the planet. The team discovered that the spark which kicks off these ferocious strikes is caused by a 'relatively unknown' type of discharge called fast positive breakdown. Computer modelling has shown that as the charges in storm clouds separate and the electric field develops, the energy of electrons grows exponentially - as part of a 'negative breakdown' - which ultimately causes the initial spark of the lightning. But the researchers found that NPEs moved downwards rather than upward. This, they say, shows the initial sparks in these rare lightning events are the result of positive breakdown moving charge downwards through the cloud, rather than negative breakdown which moves upwards. Advertisement

These sparks are fast, travelling at up to 100 million metres per second.

And they are one of the most powerful sources of radio frequency radiation on the planet.

Speaking to Phys.org, co-author William Rison, a professor of electrical engineering, explained the difficulties in recreating lightning in the lab due to the scale of the strikes.

'It is impossible to simulate thunderstorm conditions in a conventional laboratory,' he explained.

'The sparks in thunderstorms are hundreds of meters to kilometres long, a scale that is orders of magnitude larger than in any laboratory environment.'

Scientists previously believed the culprit for the initial lightning spark may be 'relativistic electrons'.

These are charged particles which come about as a result of high energy from either cosmic rays or an 'electron avalanche'.

This is when the energy of the electrons grows exponentially as they move across an electric field, causing it to become more intense.

But the New Mexico group's findings question this.

According to Professor Rison, computer modelling has shown that as the charges separate and the electric field develops, the energy of electrons grows exponentially - as part of a 'negative breakdown' - which ultimately causes the initial spark of the lightning.

'Theorists have been trying to simulate these conditions in computer experiments, and the most plausible results have suggested that the sparks are initiated with relativistic electron avalanches, which is a type of negative breakdown,' Professor Rison added.

'Our results clearly show that the initiation is with a positive breakdown, not a negative breakdown.'

Computer modelling had shown that as the charges in storm clouds separate and the electric field develops (pictured left), the energy of electrons grows exponentially  as part of a 'negative breakdown'  which ultimately causes the initial spark of the lightning

Professor Rison continued that if relativistic electron showers were the starting point for lightning flashes, the motion of electrical breakdown would be upwards for lightning inside clouds, as it moved from a negative to positive charge.

But the researchers found that NPEs moved downwards rather than upward.

According to Rison, this shows the initial sparks in these rare events are the result of positive breakdown moving downwards through the cloud, rather than negative breakdown which moves upwards.

Writing in Nature Communications, the authors explained: 'The observations show that many or possibly all lightning flashes are initiated by fast positive breakdown.'

The researchers are now set to investigate just how these fast positive breakdowns occur.

Their results could help scientists better understand exactly how the initial sparks develop and how storm clouds can generate so much electrical current.
Based on the scenario, to promote video game 'Division', it would take less than a month for the world to 'collapse'

It shows how the virus would spread locally and then globally, infecting and killing neighbours

to become 'patient zero' and begin to spread smallpox

Advertisement

The prospect of a zombie apocalypse may send a shiver down your spine, but we are at a much greater threat from the spread of a deadly pandemic than people coming back from the dead.

To reveal just how quickly a disease, in this case smallpox, can spread, designers have created a simulator that shows how the world could collapse in less than a month.

It imagines you are 'patient zero' and shows how the disease would spread rapidly through your locality, infecting and killing your neighbours.

After inputting a postcode, players are asked to make a series of choices about which hospital they would choose to use, for example, to make the simulation seem more real, and ultimately terrifying.

Scroll down to try the Collapse simulator on a desktop. Mobile users can use the simulator from the Collapse website. The simulator plays music but this can be muted on the opening screen

A simulator shows how the world could collapse in less than a month from the spread of smallpox. It begins by asking players to input a postcode (screenshot shown above) before mapping how the virus would spread in their local area and beyond

The 'Collapse' simulator was created by advertising firm BETC Paris to promote the new Tom Clancy video game, 'The Division,'Campaign Live reported.

The game is a third-person shooter set at a time where smallpox has decimated societies on Earth.

The simulator first greets users with the foreboding message: 'You have been infected by an unknown breed of smallpox. You are patient zero.

'Because of you, a worldwide pandemic s about to start. Based on real data, discover how long it takes for the world to collapse.'

On day one, users are told they are feverish and decide to go to hospital. They are prompted to choose one nearby (a list of options is shown in this screenshot). The tool then reveals how many people they infect on the way to their emergency appointment

The 'Collapse' simulator was created by advertising firm BETCParis to promote the new Tom Clancy video game, 'The Division,' - a third-person shooter based in a future after humanity is decimated by a new strain of smallpox. Smallpox lesions on the hands of a patient in Ghana in 1971 are pictured left and the virus under a microscope, right

The simulator uses data from Open Street Map, Nasa open source data and IATA Flight routes. It asks a user to input a chosen location, which could be their home, for example.

On day one, they are told they are feverish and decide to go to hospital. They are then prompted to choose one nearby from a list.

Throughout the simulation, the tool reveals how many people the user is infecting along the way.

In the case of travelling from MailOnline's office to Charing Cross Hospital, 23 people were infected, for example.

On day five, the simulator says the infection is spreading fast and hospitals are overcrowded, with nine people dead at this point. In the scenario, the player is discharged from hospital with a prescription for a flu jab and instructed to go to a pharmacy, but with 498,737 people infected (screenshot shown above), the medication has run out

Despite the distribution of a vaccine, on day seven in the scenario, people are beginning to die in larger numbers and a state of emergency is declared (screenshot shown). A counter on the bottom left of the simulator says 1,130,530 have now been infected and 59 are dead

COUNTDOWN TO COLLAPSE Day one: Patient zero is told to go to hospital, infecting people along the way. Day two: Paramedics are exposed and spread it to other hospitals. Day five: Hospitals are overcrowded and nine people are dead. Day seven: State of emergency is declared. Day nine: Patient zero flies abroad, spreading the disease globally. Day 11: Countries close their borders and death toll reaches 847,000 people. Day 17: First nuclear power station closes. Day 23: The world officially collapses. Advertisement

On day two, paramedics were exposed to the virus and were quickly infected, spreading the disease to other hospitals.

On day five, the simulator said the infection was spreading fast and hospitals were overcrowded, with nine people dead at this point.

In MailOnline's scenario, the player was discharged from hospital with a prescription for a flu jab and instructed to go to a pharmacy, but with 498,737 people infected, medication had run out.

Later that day, authorities announced they were organising vaccine distributions, meaning the player had to choose a nearby venue to receive the vaccine.

Despite this, on day seven, people started to die in larger numbers and a state of emergency was declared.

A counter on the bottom left of the simulator said 1,130,530 had been infected and 59 were dead.

In this scenario, the player decided to risk going to the supermarket to pick up supplies before barricading themselves in.

But lootings began and the shelves were cleared, after which riots broke out in the street.

On day nine, patient zero decided the city was no longer safe and decided to escape abroad. The player was given a choice of destinations to fly from, including San Francisco in California.

On day 11, infected people taking flights had accelerated the spread of infection and many countries chose to close their borders.

The official death toll reached 847,000 people and soldiers were overwhelmed, abandoning their positions. Vulnerable countries such as Eritrea fell and chaos ensued, according to the simulator.

In the scenario, the player decides to risk going to the supermarket to pick up supplies before barricading themselves in. But lootings begin (screenshot shown above) and the shelves are cleared, after which riots break out in the street

On day nine, patient zero decides the city is no longer safe and decides to escape abroad. The player is given a choice of destinations to fly from, including San Francisco in California. A screenshot showing the effects of such a decision is pictured

On day 11, infected people taking flights have accelerated the spread of infection and many countries choose to close their borders. Armed forces are overwhelmed and some leave their posts, leading to chaos breaking out in a number of countries

By day 17, more than half of people were not going to work and the first nuclear power station stopped working.

Two days later, when nuclear power stations automatically shut down without human intervention, the Earth was plunged into darkness.

On day 23, the world officially collapsed, according to the simulator, which recorded the total number of deaths as more than 710 million and more than one-and-a-half billion infected, meaning more misery would surely follow.

By day 17, more than half of people are not going to work (screenshot) and the first nuclear power station stops working. Two days later, when nuclear power stations automatically shut down without human intervention, the Earth is plunged into darkness
A primitive mushroom (shown) that was key to kickstarting life on Earth has been unveiled as the oldest fossil of a land-dwelling organism found

A primitive mushroom that was key to kick starting life on Earth has been unveiled.

The fungus lived 440 million years ago and is said to fill an important gap of the evolution of life.

It is the oldest fossil of a land-dwelling organism ever found, and its discovery suggests dry land was first colonised by primitive mushrooms before life could bloom.

The early pioneer - known as Tortotubus - played an important role in laying the groundwork for complex plants and then animals to exist out-of-the-sea by beginning the process of rot and soil formation.

Dr Martin Smith, of Durham University, said: 'During the period when this organism existed, life was almost entirely restricted to the oceans - nothing more complex than simple mossy and lichen-like plants had yet evolved on the land.

'But before there could be flowering plants or trees, or the animals that depend on them, the processes of rot and soil formation needed to be established.

'This fossil provides a hint that mushroom-forming fungi may have colonised the land before the first animals left the oceans.

'It fills an important gap in the evolution of life on land.'

He worked with a range of tiny micro-fossils from Sweden and Scotland - each shorter than a human hair is wide, first identified in the 1980s.

From these, the scientist was able to show they represented parts of a single organism at different stages of growth.

By reconstructing its growth, Dr Smith was able to show the fossils represent mycelium - the root-like filaments that fungi use to extract nutrients from soil.

It is generally agreed life first migrated from the oceans to land early in the Palaeozoic era - between 500 and 450 million years ago.

But before any complex forms could emerge, there needed to be nutrients there to support them.

The early pioneer, known as Tortotubus (magnified filament shown) played a key role in laying the groundwork for complex plants and then animals to exist out-of-the-sea by beginning the process of rot and soil formation

By reconstructing its growth, Dr Smith was able to show the fossils represent mycelium (stock image) - the root-like filaments that fungi use to extract nutrients from soil

Fungi played a key role by kickstarting the rotting process meaning a layer of fertile soil could eventually be built up.

This enabled plants with root systems to establish themselves, which in turn could support animal life.

WHY FUNGI IS IMPORTANT Fungi play a vital role in the nitrogen cycle, in which nitrates in the soil are taken up by roots and passed along food chain into animals. Decomposing fungi convert nitrogen-containing compounds in plant and animal waste and remains back into nitrates, which are incorporated into the soil and can again be taken up by plants. These early fungi started the process by getting nitrogen and oxygen into the soil. Advertisement

Fungi play a vital role in the nitrogen cycle in which nitrates in the soil are taken up by plant roots and passed along food chain into animals.

Decomposing fungi convert nitrogen-containing compounds in plant and animal waste and remains back into nitrates, which are incorporated into the soil and can again be taken up by plants.

These early fungi started the process by getting nitrogen and oxygen into the soil.

Dr Smith, who was at Cambridge University when he carried out the study, said Tortotubus had a cord-like structure similar to some modern fungi in which the main filament sends out branches that stick back on and eventually envelope it.

This is often seen in land-based organisms allowing them to spread out and colonise surfaces.

In modern fungi the structure is associated with the decomposition of matter allowing a fungus colony to move nutrients to where they are needed - a useful adaptation in an environment where nutrients are scarce and unevenly distributed.

The fungus (filamnets shown left and right) lived 440 million years ago and fills an important gap of the evolution of life, suggesting dry land was first colonised by primitive mushrooms before life could bloom

Dr Smith worked with a range of tiny micro-fossils from Sweden and Scotland - each shorter than a human hair is wide. A fossil site at Husryggen, Gotland, a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea is shown

In contrast with early plants which lacked roots and therefore had limited interaction with activity beneath the surface, fungi played an important role in stabilising sediment, encouraging weathering and forming soils.

'What we see in this fossil is complex fungal "behaviour" in some of the earliest terrestrial ecosystems, contributing to soil formation and kick-starting the process of rotting on land,' said Dr Smith

He believes it is likely there were bacteria or algae on land during this period for Tortotubus to decompose but these organisms are rarely found as fossils.

Its pattern of growth echoes that of the mushroom-forming fungi although unambiguous evidence of these has yet to be found in the Palaeozoic fossil record.
Shame can rear its head in any number of situations, from poor choices, lying, or carrying out actions we know are wrong.

But in terms of human evolution, an emotion which makes us feel bad about actions such as lying or cheating  which could give us an edge  seems counter-intuitive.

New research suggests this powerful, and even painful emotion, may have evolved as a survival mechanism to help to defend us against social isolation and emotional pain.

Scientists believe that shame isn't a an 'ugly' emotion, but instead evolved as a defense mechanism, just like a pain response, to help us make the most of a bad situation. Stock image

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) believe that shame isn't a 'maladaptive' emotion, but offers us a defence, just like pain response, and helps us make the most of a bad situation.

'The function of pain is to prevent us from damaging our own tissue,' Dr Daniel Sznycer, an evolutionary biologist and lead author of the study, told UCSB news.

'The function of shame is to prevent us from damaging our social relationships, or to motivate us to repair them,' he explained.

The UCSB team believes that shame is a mechanism with three functions.

It deters us from making bad choices where the cost outweighs the benefit, it prevents negative information about ourselves from reaching others, and it minimises the effects of damage when it does happen - such as others viewing us badly.

SHAME AS A GUIDE FOR LIFE Scientists at UCSB recruited 900 people in the US, India and Israel, to test the theory of shame as a protective mechanism. People were asked to say either how negatively they would view a person if they exhibited negative traits outlined in the scenarios  such as infidelity or being stingy  or how much shame they would feel if those traits were true for themselves. They found a close match between how negatively people viewed the characteristics in others and how much shame people would feel if the traits were true for themselves if the had the characteristics or committed the acts. Advertisement

Professor John Tooby, an anthropologist at UCSB and co-author of the paper, explained: 'Our ancestors lived in small, cooperative social groups that lived by hunting and gathering.

'In this world, your life depended on others valuing you enough to give you and your children food, protection and care.

'The more you are valued by the individuals with whom you live - as a cooperative partner, potential mate, skilled hunter, formidable ally, trustworthy friend, helpful relative, dangerous enemy - the more weight they will put on your welfare in making decisions.

'You will be helped more and harmed less.'

According to this view, the more devalued a person is, the less likely others are to help them or look after them, and may actually be more likely to cause them harm.

By recruiting close to 900 people in the US, India and Israel, the team was able to test the theory of shame as a protective mechanism across different cultures, based on a number of fictional scenarios.

The team was able to test the theory of shame as a protective mechanism across different cultures, based on a number of fictional scenarios - using actions such as infidelity (stock image) and stinginess

People were asked to say either how negatively they would view a person if they exhibited negative traits outlined in the scenarios  such as infidelity or being stingy  or how much shame they would feel if those traits were true for themselves.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF SHAME? From an evolutionary point of view, the researchers believe shame has three main functions: 1) To deter us from making bad choices where the cost outweighs the benefit 2) To prevent negative information about ourselves from reaching others 3) To minimise the effects of damage when it does happen - such as others viewing us badly. Advertisement

They found a close match between how negatively people viewed the characteristics in others and how much shame people would feel if the traits were true for themselves if the had the characteristics or committed the acts.

'This is just what you would expect of a defensive system engineered to balance the competing demands of effectiveness and economy,' explained Sznycer.

In addition, follow up studies showed that shame is unique among other 'negative' emotions, such as sadness or anxiety - which often come with shame.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors wrote: 'Because shame, like pain, causes personal suffering and sometimes leads to hostile behaviour, this emotion has been called 'maladaptive' and "ugly".

'However, an evolutionary-psychological analysis of the existing evidence suggests a different view: this ugly emotion may be the expression of a system that is elegantly designed to deter injurious choices and to make the best of a bad situation.'

They found that if negative traits, such as stinginess (stock image) weren't necessarily seen as 'shameful' across all groups, they could still be used to track how negatively those within that same group viewed them

They found that when the values of different cultures aligned, shame in one culture could be used to track how negatively actions were viewed in other cultures.

But when an action wasn't seen as shameful across all groups, it could still be used to track how negatively those within that same group viewed them.
Many couples live towns and countries apart and have to travel long distances to spend time with each other.

But their journeys pale into insignificance to the mating voyages of the tiny globe skimmer dragonfly.

Genetic analysis has revealed that the dragonfly, officially known as Pantala flavescens, covers more distance than any other insect, as well as many migrating birds and whales.

In fact, it crosses entire continents - making a trip believed to stretch 4,400 miles (6,440km) - in the search for love.

Genetic analysis has revealed that the dragonfly, officially known as Pantala flavescens, covers more distance than any other insect, as well as many migrating birds and whales. In fact, it crosses entire continents - making a trip believed to stretch 4,400 miles (6,440km) - in the search for love

Scientists at Rutgers University in the USA studied the genetic variation in Pantala dragonflies, that measure just an inch and a half long, from locations in North America, South America, and Asia  and found there was none.

Populations as far apart as Texas, eastern Canada, Japan, Korea, India, and South America were found to have genetic profiles so similar that they must have bred with each other.

'If North American Pantala only bred with North American Pantala, and Japanese only with Japanese, we would see genetic results that differed from each other,' said Jessica Ware, assistant professor of biology at Rutgers.

'We don't see that. This suggests the mixing of genes across vast geographic expanses.'

Professor Ware believes that moisture must be the key driver of these perilous trips, with dragonflies embarking on what she calls a 'kind of suicide mission' in search of places to mate.

Scientists at Rutgers University in the USA studied the genetic variation in Pantala dragonflies from locations in North America, South America, and Asia. Populations as far apart as Texas, Canada, Japan, Korea, India, and South America were found to have genetic profiles so similar that they must have bred with each other

The insects have evolved large wings to enable them to make epic voyages, which involve crossing oceans. Individual dragonflies are not thought to survive long enough to complete these vast treks across the globe, but as long as enough manage to mate and breed the species will survive. Stock image

The insects have evolved large wings to enable them to make epic voyages, which involve crossing oceans.

'They stroke, stroke, stroke and then glide for long periods, expending minimal amounts of energy as they do so,' says Ware.

The dragonflies will dive Earthwards when they spot an open stretch of fresh water, even if this is just a rainwater puddle on an island, she adds.

Within a few weeks, assuming the insect finds a mate, their eggs will hatch and the new generation will set off to continue the intercontinental voyage.

Individual dragonflies are not thought to survive long enough to complete these vast treks across the globe, but as long as enough manage to mate and breed the species will survive.

Dragonflies have been seen crossing the Indian Ocean from India to Africa, but the routes and techniques used to cross the Pacific remain a mystery. Tracking devices are too large and heavy for the insects to carry. This map shows the distribution of the dragonfly

Dragonflies have been seen crossing the Indian Ocean from India to Africa, but the routes and techniques used to cross the Pacific remain a mystery.

One difficulty the scientists will face in their further research into these impressive journeys is that tracking devices are too large and heavy for the insects to carry.

The research is published in the journal Plos One.
It may have seemed like a long time coming, but graphene - hailed as a 'wonder material' - could soon offer a real-world use.

Scientists in Italy have been looking at the germ-killing properties of graphene oxide in a bid to provide a safer and more environmentally-friendly way of protecting against infection.

In particular, it could offer surgeons and healthcare workers a means to fight back against hospital superbugs.

Scientists have been looking at the germ-killing properties of a type of graphene oxide to provide a safer and environmentally friendly way of protecting against infection in and out of the hospital. Stock image

By coating surgical tools, catheters and medical devices with the material, researchers believe it could kill bacteria in the operating theatre, reduce the need for antibiotics, decrease the rates of infections and speed up recovery.

Graphene is an ultra-thin layer of carbon just a one atom thick.

Its discovery won two researchers at the University of Manchester - Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov - the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics.

The so-called wonder material has promised to revolutionise a number of fields, from engineering and medicine to commercial manufacturing.

GRAPHENE OXIDE AND BACTERIA Researchers in Rome have said that using graphene oxide in a hospital setting could transform the ability to fight infections acquired in the hospital and elsewhere. By coating surgical tools, catheters and medical devices with the material, researchers believe it could kill bacteria in the operating theatre, reduce the need for antibiotics, decrease the rates of infections and speed up recovery. It could also offer a safer way to fight infection rather than using antibiotics or silver coating, which are increasingly ineffective and could be toxic. Advertisement

However, putting it to good use has proved difficult.

Now, researchers in Rome have said that using graphene oxide in the hospital setting could transform the ability to fight infections acquired in the hospital and elsewhere.

It could offer a safer way to fight infection rather than using antibiotics or silver coating, which are increasingly ineffective and could be toxic.

As graphene oxide is stable in a water solution, the researchers say it is safe to interact with human cells, and only attacks bacterial cells.

The team said it is most effective in combination with salt.

Dr Valentina Palmieri, a biotechnologist at the Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, said graphene oxide wraps around the bacteria, puncturing its membrane and preventing it from growing and often kills it.

Bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to antibiotics used to kill them, leading to greater rates of infection from 'superbugs'.

Scientists and health experts have warned of the overuse of antibiotics as one of the culprits behind the rise in infections from antibiotic resistant strains of common bacteria, such as Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile (C.diff).

Graphene is an ultra-thin layer of carbon just a one atom thick which has promised to revolutionise a number of fields, from engineering and medicine to commercial manufacturing. Stock image

Tests show that tiny sheets of the material (in green on the left image) could be used to coat biomedical instruments. In particular, the sheets were found to immobilise the potentially harmful bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (right)

'The bacteria lose their complex structure and die,' said Dr Palmieri.

'And since graphene is just carbon - a building block of life - its cytotoxicity against human cells is much lower compared to any drug-based antimicrobial therapy.'

But scientists are puzzled why this is the case.

It has been suggested the material interacts more favourably with the bacterial cell wall, or that mammalian cells have evolved multiple repair mechanisms to survive the chemical oxidation damage which graphene induces.

The next step is to test the material's effectiveness against fungi which can cause significant problems if they infect an open wound.

Up until this point, though, fungi cells are too big for graphene oxide to wrap all the way around them.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Biophysical Society in Los Angeles.

Coating surgical tools (stock image) and medical devices with the material could kill bacteria, reduce the need for antibiotics, decrease the rates of infections and speed up recovery, say researchers

Common bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to antibiotics used to kill them, such as MRSA (pictured left) and 'C.diff' (pictured right) leading to greater rates of infection from 'superbugs'
Advertisement

The British Navy has fired its first torpedo using a radical new 'brain' fitted to a nuclear submarine.

The Royal Navy's latest and most advanced Astute class submarine, Artful, used the Common Combat System for the first time.

It acts as the submarine's 'brain'  controlling its 'eyes', 'ears' and 'nervous system'.

Scroll down for video

The Artful Astute Class submarine exiting docks prior to the test. It is the first to use this new technology which is now being retrofitted to earlier Astute class submarines.

HOW IT WORKS The Common Combat System acts as the submarine's 'brain'  controlling its 'eyes', 'ears' and 'nervous system'. The new system, provided by VMware, Dell and Aish, processes information from submarine sensors to enable crew members to make important command decisions. It was used during the test to interpret sonar readings and then attack a moving target with a practice weapon. Advertisement

Artful, the third in the Astute class family, is the first to use this new technology which is now being retrofitted to earlier Astute class submarines.

Work will soon begin to also retrofit Vanguard class submarines.

Paul Beavis, Combat Systems & Support Director for BAE Systems Submarines, said:

'We worked with partners to design an innovative solution that adapts commercial off-the-shelf products to provide the Royal Navy with a step-change in technology - ensuring greater security and resilience at a significantly reduced cost.

'The new command and control system was integrated ahead of schedule so it was ready for the third submarine, rather than the fourth.

It is proving itself to be highly capable and will be rolled out across the rest of the fleet  equipping the Royal Navy with the best, most advanced technology available.'

The new system, provided by VMware, Dell and Aish, processes information from submarine sensors to enable crew members to make important command decisions.

It was used during Artful's torpedo test to interpret sonar readings and then attack a moving target with a practice weapon.

Artful is the latest to be handed over to the Royal Navy, joining her sister submarines, HMS Astute and HMS Ambush.

Astute can hunt down submarines and ships, but it is also designed to lurk concealed off coasts for covert surveillance and intelligence-gathering.

The four remaining submarines are at various stages of construction at our site in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.

Astute can hunt down submarines and ships, but it is also designed to lurk concealed off coasts for covert surveillance and intelligence-gathering.

The traditional periscope has gone, to be replaced by a digital optical mast that can record 360 degrees with a zoom and produce infra-red and thermal imaging.

The video can then be sent on to the rest of the fleet.

Another mast is powerful enough to listen in on mobile-phone conversations far inshore.The Royal Navy and BAE Systems (which is building the vessel) are reticent on the subject, but can also carry special forces to deploy from the submarine on secret operations using underwater sledges.

Astute can move in quietly, act, then leave, and no one will know she's even been there.

The 97m long, 7,400 tonne nuclear-powered attack submarine has cost taxpayers more than 1billion but, along with its sisters, sets a new standard in weapons load and stealth.

Astute class submarine Artful, designed and built by BAE Systems for the Royal Navy, as it rolls out of the Devonshire Dock Hall in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. It was later famously grounded (right) after it hit rocks off the Isle of Skye

Armed with both Spearfish heavy torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles, Artful's design marks a shift away from a Cold War focus on anti-submarine warfare to a concept of 'Maritime Contributions to Joint Operations'.

The Tomahawk cruise missiles she will carry are claimed to have an accuracy of just a few metres over a range of within 1,240 miles, giving Artful the ability to support ground forces anywhere in the world.

More than 39,000 acoustic tiles mask the vessel's sonar signature, meaning she slips through the seas with less noise than a baby dolphin.
An airline pilot is calling for tests to be carried out to discover what would happen if a drone hit a passenger jet, amid a recent spate of near misses.

The British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa) wants the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority to back research into the possible consequences of such a collision.

Former RAF and British Airways pilot Steve Landells warned that a drone hitting an airliner could result in an uncontrolled engine failure or a smashed cockpit windscreen.

Steve Landells, Balpa's flight safety specialist, said there is a large amount of data on the effects of bird strikes on planes, but he insisted that this is not a true representation of what would happen with a drone because 'birds don't have a big lump of lithium battery in them

Some 23 near misses between aircraft and drones were investigated by the UK Airprox Board in just six months according to its latest reports, including 12 given an A rating - meaning there was 'a serious risk of collision'.

Mr Landells, Balpa's flight safety specialist, said there is a large amount of data on the effects of bird strikes on planes, but he insisted that this is not a true representation of what would happen with a drone because 'birds don't have a big lump of lithium battery in them'.

He said that it is 'very likely' that the battery of a standard quadcopter drone entering the core of a jet engine would cause an uncontained engine failure.

An uncontained engine failure on a British Airways plane in September saw the aircraft engulfed in flames and smoke as it was taking off in Las Vegas.

An uncontained engine failure on a British Airways plane in September saw the aircraft engulfed in flames and smoke as it was taking off in Las Vegas

Landells said: 'You end up with very high velocity bits of metal going anywhere they like. That could be through fuel tanks, through hydraulic lines and even into the cabin.

'Losing the engine is not going to cause an aircraft to crash because they are designed to fly with one engine down.

'But an uncontained engine failure is going to be different every time. That could be very serious indeed.'

The Balpa flight safety specialist explained that he wants testing with drones to be carried out because it appears none has been done before.

He added: 'The first thing we want to do is get a drone or at least the critical parts of a drone flying at a windscreen of an aircraft.

'The indications so far with computer modelling are that you'll end up with penetration of a windscreen.

'One possibility is that the battery smashes the windscreen and the inside layer of the windscreen shatters and you end up with a lot of glass in the cockpit, probably moving at quite high speed.

'As a pilot, I don't want to be sitting there when that's going on.

'There's also a possibility that it might just bounce off. We don't know at the moment.'

An airline pilot is calling for tests to be carried out to discover what would happen if a drone hit a passenger jet

'A' RATED DRONE NEAR MISSES IN UK BETWEEN APRIL AND OCTOBER 2015 Some 23 near misses between aircraft and drones were investigated by the UK Airprox Board in just six months according to its latest reports, including 12 given an A rating - meaning there was 'a serious risk of collision'. April 25 A military Lynx helicopter was forced to conduct an 'evasive manoeuvre' to avoid hitting a drone over Hambrook, Gloucestershire. The pilot said the object passed just one rotor span down the side of the helicopter. June 17 The pilot of an autogyro was on a training flight over Detling, Kent at 1,500 feet when he encountered a drone. The aircraft missed the drone by around 20 metres and the pilot assessed the risk of collision as 'high'. July 9 Both members of the flight crew on an RJ1 aircraft spotted a drone at an altitude of 4,000 feet over Detling, Kent. It passed 60 feet below the left wing. The UKAB concluded that it would have been 'impossible' for the drone to have been flown legally because at that height it could not be seen by an observer on the ground. July 26 A silver drone passed within two wing lengths of a BE200 aircraft as it was coming in to land at Southampton Airport. Investigators found that 'chance had played a major part' in a collision being avoided. August 11 A Chinook pilot was carrying out a simulated engine malfunction near RAF Odiham, Hampshire when a quadcopter drone with an attached camera was seen around 75 feet to its side. August 27 The pilot of a Dornier Do328 short-haul jet - which typically has capacity for around 30 passengers - was at 2,800 feet on the approach to Manchester Airport when he spotted a bright blue drone. The UKAB determined that the drone was not permitted to be within that airspace. September 13 A Boeing 737 suffered a near miss with a drone shortly after taking off from Stansted Airport, Essex. The incident happened 'so quickly' that there was no time to take avoiding action, the pilot said. September 13 In the skies above the Houses of Parliament a drone came within 20 metres of an Embraer 170 jet on its approach to London City. The UKAB considered that the drone operator was the cause of the near miss. September 22 Shortly after a Boeing 777 had taken off from Heathrow Airport a drone narrowly passed down the right hand side of the airliner. Investigators concluded that the drone was at the same height and within 25 metres of the jet. A report was made to police but the drone operator was not traced. September 30 A drone was flown within a few metres of a passenger jet landing at Heathrow. The pilot of the Airbus A319 stated that the drone may have been just 20 feet above and 75 feet to the left when it passed by the aircraft. The jet was flying at an altitude of 500 feet and was on the final approach to the west London airport when the drone was spotted. October 2 A Dornier Do328 pilot assessed that there was a high risk of collision when a drone passed his left wing by less than 50 feet. The incident occurred at an altitude of 3,000 feet shortly after take off from Manchester Airport. October 4 A PA28 light aircraft pilot was flying over Otherton Airfield, Staffordshire as a drone passed about 20 feet from his wing-tip. Advertisement

Landells said the initial tests could cost around 250,000.

Philippa Oldham, head of transport and manufacturing at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, described the consequences of a drone hitting an airliner as 'such an unknown thing' that would depend on a number of factors such as the size and speed of the drone and the location of the collision.

She said: 'There's a lot of scenario planning going on around that at the moment.

'The impact potentially could be anything from nothing to a destruction of an engine.'

People who fly drones close to planes could be convicted of endangering the safety of an aircraft which has a maximum prison sentence of five years, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said.

Former RAF and British Airways pilot Steve Landells warned that a drone hitting an airliner could result in an uncontrolled engine failure or a smashed cockpit windscreen

A CAA spokesman said the regulator has a number of ongoing schemes aimed at raising awareness of the safety requirements for using drones, such as its Dronecode campaign.

He added: 'We are already working alongside the Department for Transport and industry partners to better understand the potential risks and outcomes of a drone hitting a manned aircraft.

'Public safety is our first priority and we are working very closely with the Civil Aviation Authority, industry and airline operators to improve our understanding and knowledge of this emerging technology.
Her partner Ben Cohen became the latest casualty of reality show The Jump when he knocked out two of his teeth during filming.

But Kristina Rihanoff has been putting on a brave face while her partner conquers the slopes in Austria, stepping out solo to attend the DotCom Children's Foundation event in London.

The 38-year-old former Strictly dancer - who is expecting her first child with Ben - was looking lovely in a black maxidress that emphasised her baby bump as she put in an appearance at the gala on Monday night.

Scroll down for video

Stepping out: Kristina Rihanoff looked lovely in a plunging black maxidress to attend the DotCom Children's Foundation event in London on Monday evening

Kristina covered up the plunging number with a smart cream coat, paired with matching peep-toe heels.

The blonde beauty accessorised with an amber beaded necklace and earrings, while carrying a suede handbag in one hand.

She upped the glamour thanks to dark red lipstick, heavy eye make-up and plenty of bronzer, styling her locks in glossy curls.

Pregnancy chic: The 38-year-old star - who is expecting her first child with her partner Ben Cohen - displayed her growing baby bump in the stylish dress

Kristina is the Patron of the DotCom Children's Foundation, which aims to support and empower children, helping them achieve their dreams.

The Siberian Siren has previously showcased her ballroom dancing skills at fundraising events, but stayed on the sidelines this time due to her pregnancy.

Her outing comes after Ben lost two teeth and was forced to have 20 stitches after landing face first during a skiing session this week.

Good cause: Kristina is the Patron of the DotCom Children's Foudnation, which aims to support and empower children, helping them achieve their dreams

Ben, 37, revealed visual evidence of his injury on Twitter on Friday as he shared a selfie which showed his bleeding lip after having it stitched up.

He required medical attention after he ploughed into the pads - placed at the side of the slopes to prevent serious injury - on the Austrian ski run while whizzing down the course in practice for Sunday night's live show.

'I actually used my face to stop me. Totally unplanned though (sic),' he added by way of explanation.
Her slim yet busty physique has graced the pages of Maxim, Zoo and Penthouse magazines.

And now shapely Gabi Grecko flaunted her incredible cleavage in a waist-cinching corset in her latest selfies before sharing a video of her smoking a dubious-looking cigarette on Tuesday.

The racy photos come just days after the 27-year-old announced she found romance with a 30-year-old American businessman Jason Skrobe.

Scroll down for video

Putting it out there! Gabi Grecko showed off her slim waist in a corset while revealing her busty chest in a string of saucy selfies on Tuesday

Judging by Gabi's social media posts, it's clear that Jason is one very lucky man.

In the new string of photos that the American-born beauty posted, she is seen wearing a leather jacket and corset with no bra underneath, leaving her sizable assets bare.

At one point she left her jeans undone, revealing her orange underwear beneath.

In another photo, the former Celebrity Apprentice wears a revealing grey cotton bodysuit over the top of her corset.

Whose hand is that?! As the 27-year-old flaunted her cleavage yet again, a man's hand could be seen beside her holding a pair of jeans

Peek-a-boo! The former nude Penthouse model flashed her orange panties as she left her jeans unzipped

Up close and personal! Just in case you didn't catch her busty breasts the first time, Gabi zoomed in on her impressive chest - much to the delight of her loyal fans

The bodysuit's top buttons are undone to reveal an eye-popping look at her famous chest, while a man's hand can be seen on the side clutching a pair of jeans.

She also posted a bizarre Instagram video of herself smoking a strange-looking cigarette in fast forward with her breasts spilling out for all to see.

The raunchy bombshell recently changed her relationship status on Facebook to 'taken' after meeting Miami based business owner Jason.

Speaking to the Daily Mail Australia on Saturday about the budding romance, the controversial model said: 'It's really new, it's been two days. I met him a week ago in Miami and I just really liked him. It's good.'

Puffing away: The controversial reality star also posted a bizarre video of herself smoking in fast forward

Wardrobe malfunction: A close inspection of the video showed that the Celebrity Apprentice star almost flashed a little too much flesh

She explained: 'My friend Krystle went to school with him and I met him through her. It's good because she can vouch for him.'

And when asked about how the new couple were going to make their bi-coastal romance work Gabi explained: 'All my family lives in Miami and he's from here.'

While Gabi appears optimistic about her new flame, her 72-year-old estranged husband Geoffrey Edelsten isn't exactly singing the same tune.

The septuagenarian told Daily Mail Australia on Monday: 'Good luck to her...it won't last,' before adding,'I'm happy for her, thank God she's out of my hair.'

He added: 'Fair enough, he's more her age.'

'I met him a week ago in Miami and I just really liked him:' Gabi has found romance with 30-year-old businessman Jason Skrobe
She's used to being the centre of attention on the catwalk.

And model Devon Windsor certainly had all eyes on her when she attended the Coach Fashion Party in Paris on Tuesday night, flashing far more than onlookers bargained for in a risque, graphic print dress.

The 21-year-old Victoria's Secret beauty made a serious faux-pas by forgoing underwear altogether, leaving little to the imagination as she arrived at the bash.

Scroll down for video

Risky business: Victoria's Secret model Devon Windsor flashed more than onlookers bargained for in her daring dress as she arrived at the Coach Fashion Party in Paris on Tuesday night

Devon's white dress boasted a seriously high asymmetric split, showing off her long legs to their best advantage.

But the cut proved to be a touch too risky as it became apparent the blonde had forgotten to wear the most vital part of her attire.

The stunning star covered up in a chic black coat and set off her daring dress with a pair of simple strappy heels.

Oops: The model of the moment made a serious faux-pas by forgoing underwear underneath the garment

Fashionable appearance: Devon dressed down the barely-there ensemble with a tailored black blazer and strappy heels

Upon arriving at the star-studded fashion party, Devon ditched her blazer, revealing that she had also omitted a bra in the barely-there dress.

She opted for pretty, natural make-up including a pale pink lip as she mingled with the likes of Chloe Moretz and Charli XCX at the bash, which celebrated the start of Paris Fashion Week.

Devon - who has fronted campaigns for the likes of Balmain, Jean Paul Gaultier and Max Mara - has seen her profile soar in recent years, including appearances on the Victoria's Secret catwalk

Best foot forward: The 21-year-old model showed off her long legs to their best advantage in her cool dress

Blonde bombshell: Devon has fronted campaigns for the likes of Balmain, Jean Paul Gaultier and Max Mara

The model previously opened up about her personal style in an interview with Harper's Bazaar, explaining that she was a 'laid-back' kind of girl.

'Some days I'm more moody and edgy, and I'll wear all black and leather. Then some days.. [it's] kind of preppy', she said.

'I guess it all depends on my mood and the weather and whatever's clean, overall I'm more of a jeans and T-shirt girl.'
Ten years before he became a national heart-throb, a fresh-faced James Norton hams it up on the student acting scene.

Photos have emerged of him playing the clown in a show called Circus put on by Cambridge Universitys famous Footlights comedy group.

In other pictures, he takes on a more serious part in Another Country, the 1981 play by Julian Mitchell, at the university theatre. Tonight Norton returns to our screens as dashing, crime-fighting clergyman Sidney Chambers in ITVs Grantchester.

Ten years before he became a national heart-throb, a fresh-faced James Norton hams it up on the student acting scene. He is pictured, above, playing a clown in a Cambridge University show in March 2006

Tonight Norton returns to our screens as dashing, crime-fighting clergyman Sidney Chambers in ITVs Grantchester

The episode will see him rival Colin Firths iconic swimming scene in Pride And Prejudice as he strips off to take a dip in a river.

But without Mr Darcys wet shirt to conceal his muscular torso, others will compare him to a topless Aidan Turner in Poldark.

Earlier this year Norton left viewers swooning when he starred in War And Peace as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.

Hes also currently appearing as the terrifying psychopath Tommy Lee Royce in Happy Valley.

In other early pictures, he takes on a more serious part in Another Country, the 1981 play by Julian Mitchell, at the university theatre

Earlier this year Norton left viewers swooning when he starred in War And Peace as Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, pictured with Lily James, who played Natasha Rostova

At Cambridge, Norton studied Theology from 2004 to 2007 and acted in almost back-to-back productions.

In February 2006 he followed in the footsteps of Rupert Everett and Daniel Day-Lewis playing Guy Bennett in Another Country, based on one of the Cambridge Spies. The next month he was in student-written Circus.
Making photo shoots look fun and easy, swimwear and fashion blogger Natasha Oakley has given fans a sneak peak of the new range coming to her Monday Swimwear line.

Hanging by the pool at the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel with best friend and Bikini A Day co-founder Devin Brugman, Oakley looked relaxed in an fitted ivory one-piece while Brugman opted for the black version.

Smiling as they faced each other, the pair had a busy day taking promotional shots for Monday Swimwear and teased that fans of the line can expect 'Seriously cute stuff coming soon'.

Scroll down for video

Pool day: Swimwear bloggers Natasha Oakley and Devin Brugman had a busy day hanging by the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel pool as they took promotional shots for their Monday Swimwear line

Not strangers to showing off their curves, the tanned beauties sported flattering one-pieces that drew attention to their ample cleavage.

Two white robes can be seen around their waists and they completed their pool day look with a pair of sunglasses.

Famous location: Natasha and Devin looked excited as they arrived at The Beverly Hills Hotel for their Monday Swimwear photo shoot

Photo ready: The bloggers pose outside of the hotel

Natasha, 25, also gave her 1.7 million Instagram followers a preview of her days activities, posting a picture with Devin outside the famous Beverly Hills Hotel lobby.

Wearing sunglasses and an orange and white polka dot playsuit that showed a small section of her toned stomach and tanned heels, Natasha arrived with Devin who wore a black off-the-shoulder patterned maxi dress.

The Sydney-born blogger and her American bestie have been kept busy recently preparing for the launch of their active wear line. They launched Monday Swimwear in 2013 and continue to work for their the Bikini A Day blog.

'Chillin between shots': Devin shares a picture with her 1.2 million Instagram followers in between shots during the Monday Swimwear shoot.

Monday Swimwear: Both girls opted for a flattering one-piece which highlighted their curves and cleavage
It was his last night of freedom before spending his evenings on lock down due to house arrest.

And rapper Meek Mill decided to live it up one last time by partying with a cadre of rappers at a strip club in Philadelphia on Sunday.

The convicted drug dealer's girlfriend Nicki Minaj was nowhere in sight as he danced and threw money into the air with his sidekick Chino MMG at an after party for hip hop favourite Future at the Vanity Grand Cabaret venue.

Scroll down for video

There goes his royalties: Convicted drug dealer Meek Mill threw bills into the air at a Philadelphia strip club on Sunday on his last night of freedom before his house arrest takes effect

The 28-year-old looked like he was having a great time as he watched the young ladies down below going through their paces next to a strategically placed pole, and posted a series of videos of their night out on his Instagram page.

His flunky, who seemed to be well over almost being killed in a shooting just a few days ago, was also throwing cash like confetti.

Meek, real name Robert Williams, paid tribute to his henchman in one of his Instagram posts, saying: 'Never let "they" shatter your dreams! @chino_mmg I love you and I promise we gone beat these streets!'

A rapper's delight: The hip hop star was joined by underling Chino MMG at Future's after party

A fistful of dollars: He was photographed chatting with a lackey as he got ready to throw more cash

He also showed off his collection of chunky gold medallions in a still shot he posted on Instagram, which he captioned: 'I represent the bottom! These diamonds don't mean shit just motivation for my young bulls! GOD BLESS YOU .... DO WHAT THEY SAID YOU CANT! If you don't I'll show you the way! #BIGDREAMS.'

However he does at least have the excuse of not wanting to spend the evening alone, as Nicki has been recently seen in LA and it is unclear when she is going back to Philadelphia.

The pair had been said to have been feuding, however the former American Idol judge took to her Twitter account to say was was 'so over these fake stories/'

On February 5 Mill escaped a custodial prison sentence but was dealt a critical blow to his hip hop career.

Sidekick: He was joined at the event by his fellow money tosser Chino MMG

Bling it on: Meek, real name Robert Williams, posted an image of himself as he got ready to hit the club

Common Pleas Judge Genece Brinkley also ordered him to spend six more years on probation.

The judge sentenced the House Party rapper to between six months to a year in a county jail but, in perhaps his only break, is allowing him to serve his time at home.

After his first 90 days of house arrest, Judge Brinkley - whom Meek once branded a b***h' in one of his songs - will evaluate the rapper and decide if the house arrest will continue.

While being stuck in Nicki's mansion may not seem too bad, the rapper will not be able to work, meaning no recording or touring, and can leave home only to do community service with groups serving adults.

How will she Minaj: Nicki was nowhere to be seen as her man cavorted with a room full of strippers

Life's a cabaret old chum: He seemed to have a great last night of freedom at the gentleman's establishment

This comes at a crunch time in Meek's career as he battles to keep fans after he publicly feuded with rapper Drake, as well as indulging in yet another embarrassing clash with 50 Cent.

Prosecutors successfully argued he violated the conditions of his probation for a drug and gun conviction from 2009.

Prosecutors told the judge that Meek took a trip without obtaining a travel voucher, namely to go to New York for a concert and also to join Nicki in various cities including going to the American Music Awards with his love.

Standing by her man: Nicki testified on Meek's behalf at court before he was placed under house arrest

In a previous hearing, an emotional Meek pleaded with judge saying: 'I'm not a gangsta. I'm not a criminal. I have my queen, Nicki, now. I'm trying to do better and feel like I can be the best rapper out there.'

During the court case, Meek's lawyer revealed the All Eyes On me rapper planned to marry Nicki but she 'would not marry a criminal or a bum'.

Nicki also testified on Meek's behalf telling the judge that she will take over all the 28-year-old rapper's scheduling to make sure he does not leave the state without obtaining a travel voucher.

She told the judge: 'He's not perfect but I can't believe how much he's changed.'
A grieving Salma Hayek reached out to her 1M Instagram fans on Monday following the shocking death of her beloved dog Mozart in Washington State.

'I am very moved by all your stories you have shared with me in regards of Mozart's death. I am trying to figure out a way to use technology so we can have a chat and shares my feelings with you,' the 49-year-old Oscar nominee wrote.

According to People, a neighbour named Lund shot Salma's nine-year-old Belgian Malinois with an air rifle after the pup attacked one of his dogs in his garage on February 19.

Scroll down for video

'I am very moved by all your stories': A grieving Salma Hayek reached out to her 1M Instagram fans on Monday following the shocking death of her beloved dog Mozart in Washington State

The Mexican-American beauty was outraged and ordered a necroposy which determined Mozart bled out after a .177 caliber bullet hit an artery.

'[The Thurston County Sheriff] determined that there was no crime that occurred and he was justified in what he did. The case is closed,' Lt. Cliff Ziesemer told the mag.

According to TMZ, Hayek - born Jimenez - is still 'furious' over the decision, despite Yelm police ruling it was her dog that trespassed.

The Septembers of Shiraz star still has around 50 pets - including horses, aplacas, bunnies, and parrots - remaining on her ranch.

Justified killing? A neighbour named Lund shot the 49-year-old Oscar nominee's nine-year-old Belgian Malinois with an air rifle after the pup attacked one of his dogs in his garage on February 19

Outraged: The Mexican-American beauty - who's reportedly 'furious' over the Thurston County Sheriff's decision not to convict Lund - still has around 50 pets remaining on her ranch

Seven years strong! Hayek - born Jimenez - can also seek comfort from her billionaire husband Francois-Henri Pinault and their eight-year-old daughter Valentina (pictured November 30)

I believe in Angels. Merry Christmas #believe #Angels #merry #Christmas Creo en Angeles. Feliz Navidad #creo #Angeles #feliz #Navidad A photo posted by Salma Hayek Pinault (@salmahayek) on Dec 24, 2015 at 10:20am PST

The Daytime Emmy-winning director can also seek comfort from her billionaire husband Francois-Henri Pinault and their eight-year-old daughter Valentina.

It's unclear if Salma will head to Austin's Paramount Theatre on March 14 for the SxSW premiere of her 3D animated comedy Sausage Party, in which she voices Theresa the taco.

The Prophet actress will also play the jealous Queen of Longtrellis in the Baroque fantasy horror flick Tale of Tales.

The 17th century fairytale - also starring John C. Reilly - will begin streaming in the States on April 22 and it hits UK theaters on July 1.

Headed to Texas? It's unclear if Salma will head to Austin's Paramount Theatre on March 14 for the SxSW premiere of her 3D animated comedy Sausage Party, in which she voices Theresa the taco

Eat your heart out! The Prophet actress will also play the jealous Queen of Longtrellis in the Baroque fantasy horror flick Tale of Tales
Born to be different

Rating:

Back in time for the weekend

Rating:

More than six million people in the UK are carers, looking after sick or disabled loved ones. That's 10 per cent of the population. If carers were a political party, their votes would outmass Ukip, the SNP and the Greens combined.

Even more shocking, according to the latest Carers UK charity figures, six out of ten Britons will be carers at some point  feeding, dressing, bathing, fretting over someone they love dearly, but too often powerless to make them well again.

This vast swathe of the country is all but invisible on television. When was the last time you saw a carer portrayed in a sitcom or a drama? Even in soaps, they are a rarity  and when they do appear, they are exhausted, heartbroken people.

I felt a lurch of recognition for Nick and Paula, whose boy William (pictured) has severe learning difficulties, tumultuous teenage hormones and an anarchic sense of humour

That's nonsense. The burden of love turns mild-mannered folk into the toughest, most bloody-minded, determined, tireless characters on the planet. Carers are the commandos of civilian life.

Born To Be Different (C4) gave us a glimpse of this, as it revisited five disabled teenagers and their families who have been the focus of this documentary series for 15 years.

Over that decade-and-a-half, those children's parents have become unbreakable, able to cope with life at a shocking intensity. And it's so normal to them now that they can describe the experience without any sugar-coating.

Vicky, whose daughter Shelby has a chromosome disorder, has to provide care round the clock, as well as keeping an eye on her other six children. It has been, she says, like looking after a sickly baby for 15 years  'except at least with a newborn you know it's only gonna last for a few months'.

But Shelby's bone marrow is failing, and doctors are struggling to keep her alive. 'To expect her to be here into adulthood is wishful thinking,' says Vicky. She isn't being melodramatic or maudlin, just matter-of-fact. 'I can't imagine life without her, she's the centre of our family.'

Vicky, whose daughter Shelby (pictured) has a chromosome disorder, has to provide care round the clock, as well as keeping an eye on her other six children

That's what people don't seem to understand, until they have lived through it.

The cameras captured one man at a hospital, whispering to Vicky: 'I would have let her go a long time ago if she was mine.' Such vile sentiments aren't uncommon, spoken in a sympathetic tone, as though people expect to be thanked for wishing a child dead.

I do know about it: my younger son, David, who at 19 is a bit older than the children in this documentary, is profoundly autistic. I felt a lurch of recognition for Nick and Paula, whose boy William has severe learning difficulties, tumultuous teenage hormones and an anarchic sense of humour.

HEARING TEST FOR THE WEEK Every Tuesday at 9pm, I appear to go deaf. Happy Valley (BBC1) opened with a searing scene as Sgt Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) interviewed a rape victim, but the dialogue was inaudible until I turned the volume up to 11. Then the title music blew my ears off. Advertisement

These parents have an ironclad resistance to other people's disapproval. If passers-by are embarrassed by William's mischievous behaviour, that's their problem.

This was superbly frank film-making. It didn't try to be inspirational or tear-jerking. It didn't pretend the children were angels, or their parents saints. It just got on with the job  like these families.

By contrast, Back In Time For The Weekend (BBC2) was pitifully shallow. The Ashby Hawkins family, recreating a different decade each week, arrived at the Nineties, in an episode obsessed with technology  Game Boys, dial-up internet, clunky mobiles.

The trouble is, that stuff hasn't really changed: it's just become slicker and faster. Britain has become a sharply different place over the past 25 years, but this programme made no attempt to reflect that. Previous episodes have emphasised the impact of rationing, and how families used to go to church together.

The Ashby Hawkins family, recreating a different decade each week, arrived at the Nineties, in an episode obsessed with technology  Game Boys, dial-up internet, clunky mobiles

We've seen the divide between the sexes in the Fifties, and the growing generation gulf of the Sixties and Seventies.

The Nineties brought huge cultural shifts, too: multiculturalism, health and safety, political correctness, the proliferation of drugs.

Presenter Giles Coren made no attempt to tackle these topics. Instead, he kept plying the family with gadgets, until they reached the nirvana of Apple iMacs.
She may be holidaying in Hawaii without her boyfriend Blake Garvey by her side.

But instead, Louise Pillidge has her lookalike mother Patricia to keep her company.

And while they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, the mother-daughter duo proved the old adage to ring true as they showed off their equally impressive bikini bodies whilst soaking up the sunshine on Waikiki Beach.

They could be sisters! Louise Pillidge and her mother Patricia showed off their equally impressive bikini bodies whilst soaking up the sunshine on Waikiki Beach

Appearing to be relishing in their down time, the pair bathed in the balmy climes whilst both parading their figures in matching two-piece swimsuits.

Louise, 28, donned in a white string bikini which featured a plunging neckline and halterneck detail and was teamed with a pair of thigh-skimming briefs.

She pulled her blonde tresses off her face into a sleek topknot and enhanced her striking features with a bold red lip and a light dusting of foundation.

Ensuring to keep sun safe, Louise added a pair of gold-rimmed aviators to her summery ensemble.

They even dress the same! Appearing to be relishing in their down time, the pair bathed in the balmy climes whilst both parading their figures in matching two-piece swimsuits

Beach babe: Louise, 28, donned in a white string bikini which featured a plunging neckline and halterneck detail and was teamed with a pair of thigh-skimming briefs

Lying next to her on the sun-soaked beach was her equally stunning parent, who showed off her impressive figure in the same bikini, albeit opting for a black shade.

The mother-daughter duo look almost identical with their glossy blonde buns, flawless complexion, big blue eyes and bright smiles.

Making the most of their rest and relaxation, the pair appeared to be in great and content spirits as they kicked back on the shore during their girls trip.

They were seen taking refreshing dips in the enticing water as well as making sure they topped up on their sun screen whilst working on their tan.

Matching: Lying next to her on the sun-soaked beach was her equally stunning parent, who showed off her impressive figure in the same bikini, albeit opting for a black shade

Down time: Making the most of their rest and relaxation, the pair appeared to be in great and content spirits as they kicked back on the shore during their girls trip

The holiday marks the second international trip Louise has taken in four months without Blake.

Patricia also joined her daughter on her last holiday in the absence of Blake, travelling to the UK together in November.

During the holiday, Louise admitted that despite the 11 hour time difference, she made sure to keep in touch with her One And Only by FaceTiming him every day.

Best of friends: Louise also shared a sweet snap of her mother in Hawaii

Twinning: The mother-daughter duo look almost identical with their glossy blonde buns, flawless complexion, big blue eyes and bright smiles

Travelling partners: The holiday marks the second international trip Louise has taken in four months without Blake, with Patricia also travelling to the UK with Louise in November

Louises vacation without Blake may come as a surprise, since the pair are rarely seen without one another.

Their relationship has been under much scrutiny after meeting on Network 10's The Bachelor.

Blake evicted the blonde from the dating show after she reached the final three, before dropping to one knee for Sam Frost.

But he later shocked the entire nation when he publicly dumped Sam just weeks after filming wrapped up to reignite a relationship with Louise.

At the time, Blake admitted he had made a 'mistake' and was in love with Louise, which lead to him being labelled 'the most hated man in Australia'.

'The love I felt for Lou [didn't end] and as much as I tried to file it away, it kept growing,' he told Woman's Day magazine in a paid tell-all interview.

Joined at the hip: Louise and Blake have rarely been apart since they went public with their relationship following their appearance on the Bachelor in 2014




While fans may still be hotly awaiting James Norton's forthcoming shirtless scenes in Grantchester, producers served up a clip to quite literally whet the appetite on Wednesday.

In a behind-the-scenes video of filming the swimming trunks episode, the 30-year-old television hunk gets the surprise of his life, courtesy of Robson Green.

As they try to acclimatise to the freezing cold lake with a splash of the sub-par temperatures, James inadvertently backs himself into the water after slipping off the river bank.

Scroll down for video

The calm before the storm: A behind-the-scenes clip of Grantchester sees James Norton (right) fall backwards into the lake behind him when Robson Green (left) throws a bucket of water at him

While the cameras are still rolling, the acting double act aren't quite in character as Sidney Chambers (James) and Geordie Keating (Robson).

After realising the mishap, an apologetic Robson - also dressed in nothing but a tiny pair of swimming shorts - rushes over to help the actor, covering up his mischievous smirk.

And keen to get his own back, James grabbed the actor's extended hand of help to drag him in - something Robson transformed into an elegant swan dive.

Where did he go? Robson wasn't quite expecting James to disappear...

Making a splash: James got the shock of his life when he slipped off the bank and into the lake

Luckily for the Grantchester pair, a stuntman submerged to waist was on hand to help the duo if they were to get into any trouble.

The clip cuts just short of a glimpse of shirtless James pulling himself out of the water to reveal his gym-honed physique.

Speaking recently about his apprehension towards showing off his shape on television, the War & Peace actor described the standard Aidan Turner's Poldark shirtless scene had established.

Oops! Realising the mishap, an apologetic Robson ran over with his hands covering his face

In you come! Seeing the funny side, James decided to pull Robson in with him

James told Radio Times: 'That Poldark shot made me feel incredibly inadequate and emasculated. Theres always been a body beautiful thing with television, but the focus has been more on women over the last however many decades.

'So its probably right that the tables should turn, but I dont know if its a healthy pressure. There is now a sort of expectation on men.'

He added: 'I cant deny that Robson and I were in the gym doing press-ups the night before we shot that scene. Of course we were! We were freaking out thinking, oh god, ten million people are going to be watching us in our swimming trunks.'

Yikes: James and Robson were trying to acclimatise before taking a dip into the water
It's a TV show that attracts some of the biggest stars in the world.

And British rapper Tinie Tempah looked thrilled to join the roll call of famous faces to appear on Top Gear, as new host Matt LeBlanc shared a picture of the two of them working together on Wednesday.

Matt, 48, shared the snap showing himself and the musician, 27, sat in a car after having spent time together in recent days as filming commences for the forthcoming revamped series.

Scroll down for video

Star in a reasonably priced car? Matt LeBlanc revealed he was filming for the new series of Top Gear with rapper Tinie Tempah on Wednesday, in South Africa

Along with the snap - which showed the former Friends star looking a tad fatigued - he wrote: 'My co driver for a few days. @TinieTempah goin low.'

Tinie - whose real name is Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu - appeared in far better spirits with his thumbs up and a beaming smile on his face for the anonymous snapper.

While it isn't clear exactly what is happening with the celebrity guest and Matt for the BBC series, it seems they have been working long and hard over the weekend on the show, which is known for its 'star in a reasonably priced car' segment.

See Top Gear updates as Matt LeBlanc is joined by guest star Tinie Tempah in South Africa

How's that for a selfie! Earlier in the week, rapper Tinie, 27, shared a funnier shot of himself, seemingly driving at night with Matt, 48

The Written In The Stars hitmaker has also been keeping his fans up to date with his goings on while in the African nation, and shared a funnier snap of the two of them on Monday.

Showing off his lovely big smile in the selfie, the Joey Tribbiani actor feigned a funny stunned face in the background while behind the wheel of the motor.

Directing his tweet at Radio 1 DJ Greg James, he wrote: 'How's this for a selfie @gregjames? #GirlsLike.'

And the radio host repsonded: 'OK now I believe you. Also, I wonder what you could filming?!'

Tinie - who is currently in the midst of releasing his comeback single, Girls Like - has been sharing plenty of photos from his time in the picturesque country, as has Matt, who revealed they had travelled by helicopter to a stunning location on Tuesday.

'Shooting on TopGear in South Africa. Great day,' he added to his 167, 000 Twitter followers.

Running commentary: New host Matt also shared a snap of a helicopter arriving on location in a stunning setting while in South Africa

On Wednesday morning, Tinie gushed: 'Woke up early this morning to catch this view. Be grateful and stay blessed #GirlsLikeOutNow'

Tinie, meanwhile, was utterly in awe on Wednesday morning as he awoke to a stunning sunrise.

With a picture of himself looking over the horizon while taking a break from his Top Gear filming duties, he gushed: 'Woke up early this morning to catch this view. Be grateful and stay blessed #GirlsLikeOutNow.'

Meanwhile, also joining them in South Africa is Matt's fellow new host Chris Evans, who last week posted a shot of Matt on board a plane with US blues musician Seasick Steve.

'Look who I bumped into on the plane. I wonder what they're up to,' he wrote.

Although the group appear to be enjoying themselves as they film ahead of the all-new Top Gear's release in May, the show has been plagued with speculation that the series will be shorter due to delays in filming.

So star studded! Last week, Matt's fellow new host Chris Evans posted a snap of the former Friends star joined by blues icon Seasick Steve on their flight

S.

BBC bosses had hoped the new eight-episode series would premiere on May 8, but this date is said to have been abandoned.

TV chiefs now hope the team will broadcast the first show featuring the new line up - which also includes German racing driver Sabine Schmitz and journalist and Sky television presenter Rory Reid - on May 22.

However, due to filming difficulties, they have been forced to reduce the length of the series from eight episodes to just six.

Chris, Matt and the other new additions appear in the popular series following Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond's exit from Top Gear in 2015.
Georgia May Foote felt 'furious' after boyfriend Giovanni Pernice squeezed mayonnaise in her hair on Tuesday night.

The Strictly Come Dancing couple were enjoying something of a playful food fight when things turned ugly and professional dancer Giovanni reached for the creamy condiment.

Posting a video to his fan following on Twitter, the cheeky 27-year-old shared the moment a giggling Georgia, 25, squirmed under fire from her partner.

Scroll down for video

Food fight: Georgia May Foote was attacked with mayonnaise when she had a playful food fight with her boyfriend Giovanni Pernice on Wednesday night

He wrote: 'When she thinks she can play games this is the consequence of ice cream in my face mayonnaise in hair@georgiafoote'

Retweeting the video to her own fans, Georgia joked with the retort: 'I am furious! Ur so annoying Gio.'

Though slightly seeing the funny side, the brunette looks physically repulsed and eventually backs into a door as she tries to avoid having any more food thrown her way.

See more of the latest updates on Strictly's Georgia May Foote and Giovanni Pernice

Happy couple: Strictly couple Giovanni and Georgia moved in together last month

Cheeky: When Georgia threw ice cream at her beau, he retaliated with mayonnaise

Grossed out: Georgia looked appalled at having the food thrown at her, later responding to joke that she was 'furious'

Giovanni and Georgia moved in together in London last Wednesday with Georgia celebrating on Instagram when she said: 'We did it! Hello london life'

The couple will have been together for six months when this year's Strictly Come Dancing tour comes to an end.

They struck up a bond during the BBC One dancing competition, when they were dance partners, and when her eight-month relationship with her former co-star Sean Ward came to an end.

Georgia and Giovanni confirmed their relationship at New Year with a romantic trip to Paris, France, when the four-month dancing show had come to an end.

Ouch! She backed into the door as she tried to get away from the professional dancer
The rumour mill went into overdrive with claims they had split after he was pictured out with supermodel Naomi Campbell on Saturday.

But Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk proved they're still very much a couple as they enjoyed a romantic stroll together in Paris on Wednesday, ahead of the city's Fashion Week.

The genetically-blessed duo silenced speculation that they were no more as they sauntered around the City of Love arm-in-arm.

Scroll down for video

Still an item! Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk proved they're still very much a couple as they enjoyed a romantic stroll together in Paris on Wednesday

Irina looked suitably chic for her turn in the French capital as she wandered around the city in an all-black ensemble.

Her monochromatic style consisted of a black sweater and skinny jeans, layered beneath an over-sized trench coat which looked to provide a welcome source of warmth as the model kept her hands firmly in her pocket during the walk.

The statuesque beauty gave herself some added height with knee-high black boots that boasted a small heel.

Smitten kittens! The genetically-blessed duo silenced speculation that they were no more as they sauntered around the City of Love arm-in-arm

Pared-back: Irina's monochromatic style consisted of a black sweater and skinny jeans, layered beneath a trench coat which looked to provide a welcome source of warmth as she slipped her hands into her pockets

Extending her casual style to her mane, Irina wore her brunette locks in effortless waves, while her flawless face looked to be free of make-up beneath the large shades she modelled.

Bradley also cut a relaxed figure for his stint in the city in a knitted navy jumper and grey skinny jeans, which he teamed with distressed boots.

Despite the grey skies, Bradley also chose to partly conceal his face beneath a pair of reflective blue aviator shades as he attempted to keep a low-profile during their afternoon saunter.

Elegant: Irina looked suitably chic for her turn in the French capital as she wandered around the city in an all-black ensemble

Gorgeous: Extending her casual style to her mane, Irina wore her brunette locks in effortless waves, while her flawless face looked to be free of make-up beneath the large shades she modelled

Their outing came just days after the Silver Linings Playbook actor enjoyed a breakfast date with British beauty Naomi, 45, in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The 41-year-old actor dressed casually for the outing with the 45-year-old supermodel, after which they were seen leaving together in the same vehicle, sparking claims that the two were more than just friends, despite Naomi recently being linked to Luther star Idris Elba.

At the end of January it was rumored that Bradley had hit a rough patch with Irina due to the star not getting along with his mother, Gloria Campano, with whom he is very close.

Just friends: Their outing came just days after the Silver Linings Playbook actor enjoyed a breakfast date with British beauty Naomi, 45, in Los Angeles on Saturday

'They spent Christmas together in Los Angeles but arguments started, mainly centering around the fact Irina and Bradleys mum werent getting on very well,' The Sun had reported.

Prior to his relationship with Irina, Bradley previously dated British model Suki Waterhouse and Avatar actress Zoe Saldana.

The American Sniper star was also previously married to Jennifer Esposito, but the actress filed for divorce in May 2007, after around five months of marriage.

Catching up: The 41-year-old actor dressed casually for the outing with the 45-year-old supermodel, after which they were seen leaving together in the same vehicle

Casual: Bradley cut a relaxed figure for his stint in the city in a knitted navy jumper and grey skinny jeans, which he teamed with distressed boots
Kanye West has taken to Twitter to taunt Deadmau5's 'Minnie Mouse' costume and ask him if he'll play North West's birthday party, after the producer accused him of stealing a production program.

On Wednesday, Kanye taunted back: 'Do you do birthday parties??' And he took a jab at the producer's mouse mask costume, adding: 'My daughter loves minnie mouse.'

The producer didn't mince his words, shooting back: '@kanyewest perform at your own daughters parties. You're a bigger f***in clown than anyone I know.'

Scroll down for video

Twitter spat: Kanye West mocked DeadMau5 on Twitter on Wednesday, asking him if he'd play North West's birthday party

Pithy: The producer hit back with a suggestion the rapper perform at his own kid's party as a clown

'Can you please bring the minnie mouse head... not yours,' wrote Kanye. 'She specifically likes minnie mouse...I need you to perform at her party with specifically a minnie mouse dead-mow-five head... not a mickey mouse dead-mow-five head.'

And he offered to stream the birthday bash on streaming service Tidal if Deadmau5 dressed up as Minnie correctly.

'I want to stream you performing in a Minnie Mouse head on @Tidal,' wrote the Waves rapper.

'I'm very detail oriented and I will know the difference to don't try to just throw a bow on the original head...' he cautioned.

Not happy: The rapper offered to stream DeadMau5 performing in a 'Minnie Mouse' head at North's birthday party on Tidal

Not impressed: Deadmau5, Kanye and rapper Jay Z on stage at the Tidal launch in New York in March

It all started when Deadmau5 criticized Kanye on Twitter after Yeezy shared a photo of his laptop, which showed open tabs for illegal downloading site Pirate Bay and the production program Serum.

Deadmau5 , who also cofounded Xfer Records, tweeted to Kanye - who recently said he was $53 million in debt - on Tuesday: 'What the f*** @kanyewest ... Can't afford serum? D***.'

Kanye hit back, beginning his latest Twitter outburst by poking fun at the producer's mouse head costume.

'Ok very serious question...' he began. 'Who's (sic) job is it to carry the head on the plane... do you check the mickey mouse head or carry on?'

'Does it get hot?' he pondered.

'Ok another super serious question... is there a portable fan situation?'

Disney fan? Kanye said his two-year-old daughter North West, seen with her dad on the way to dance class in November, is a big Minnie Mouse fan

Offer: The rapper said he'd stream the birthday party gig on Tidal, after joking that Deadmau5 had increased subscribers to Tidal by three mice emojis

The 'bored' rapper continued: 'When you get married will your wife have a giant minnie mouse head? That brightened up my day thank you dead-mow-five.'

The Ultralight Beams rapper also took at jab at Deadmau5's connection to streaming service Tidal, joking that he had raised subscriptions by a 'whopping' three mice emojis.

Kanye exclusively released new album The Life of Pablo on the streaming site, which doubled subscriptions for Tidal as fans signed up to listen.

Wants answers: Kanye took to Twitter after the producer accused him of illegally downloading a production program and called the rapper a 'd***'

Loving it: Kanye's sister-in-law Kourtney Kardashian backed the musician on Twitter

Kourtney Kardashian also weighed in on her brother-in-law's latest social media outburst.

'I want everyone to know I live for @kanyewest's tweets,' the 36-year-old reality star Tweeted.

Earlier on Wednesday, Kanye also announced that he would be releasing a new project with rappers 2Chainz and Lil Wayne on Friday.

The news comes as Saturday Night Life producer Lorne Michaels broke his silence on Kanye's 'meltdown' backstage at the comedy show.

The rapper was secretly recorded reacting angrily after crew members dismantled part of his set shortly before he was set to perform on February 13.

Ultralight beams: Kanye performs on Saturday Night Live last month

'That happened in his dressing room,' Lorne told E! News.

'Kanye's been on the show a lot of years, and it's always different. He's an artist, you know? A great artist.'

The social media spat with DeadMau5 began when the rapper took to Twitter to share a photo of his laptop screen to show that he was listening to a Sufjan Stevens song.

Uh oh: Kanye West has upset several fans as he appeared to be using illegal file sharing site Pirate Bay

But eagle-eyed fans found something much more interesting about the snap. One of the tabs Kanye had open in his web browser read 'Pirate Bay Torrent Xfe...' which lead many to believe that he could have been downloading an illegal torrent.

Others, including EDM producer Deadmau5, even accused him of stealing wavetable synthesizer programme Serum by Xfer Records as 'Xfer Records Serum t..' could be seen in another one of the tabs.

The music production programme, which retails for $189, is used to produce high-quality sound with an easy-to-use interface.

Oversight: The 38-year-old posted this photo of his laptop screen to show that he was listening to a Sufjan Stevens song but hawk-eyed fans found something much more interesting about the snap

Caught red handed? Kanye's screenshot shows two tabs one that reads 'Xfer Records Serum t...' and the other 'Pirate Bay Torent Xfer...' which led many to think he had downloaded the music production programme Serum illegally

Not happy: EDM producer Deadmau5 accused Kanye of illegally downloading the wavetable synthesizer plugin which is sold by his friend Steve Duda

Taking it personal: The 35-year-old music producer - real name Joel Thomas Zimmerman - took to Twitter to not only accuse the rapper of stealing the programme but also offering to create a collection to get Kanye a legit copy

The 35-year-old music producer - real name Joel Thomas Zimmerman - did not stop there as he continued: 'Let's start a Kickstarter to help @kanyewest afford a copy of Serum.'

The Ghost & Stuff hitmaker finished off the social media rant with: 'He needs a small loan of 200$ #prayforyeezy.'

One user posted: '@kanyewest torrenting serum? nice. @steve_duda congrats you've made it.'

Steve Duda is a musical artist who is close friends and often works with Deadmau5, who also creates plugins used for music production under his Xfer Records brand which sells Serum.

Affordable: The music production programme, which retails for $189, is used to produce high-quality sound with an easy-to-use interface

Another Twitter user wrote: '@kanyewest DOG IM SURE U CAN AFFORD SERUM CMON MAN.'

This comes just weeks after it was reported that the Good Life hitmaker was considering a lawsuit against the file-sharing site Pirate Bay.

'Kanye is going to meet with his legal team to discuss the possibilities of starting legal action against torrent site Pirate Bay,' a source told HollywoodLife.com.

Within 24 hours of it's release, Kanye's latest album The Life Of Pablo was reportedly pirated 500K times and the husband of Kim Kardashian was not happy about losing those profits.

More problems: At least 500,000 people illegally downloaded his latest album The Life of Pablo (above) during its first day of release

The insider for the gossip site also explained that Kanye is 'furious because he's potentially lost millions of dollars.'

Just a few weeks ago the artist who refers to himself as Yeezus claimed to be $53 million in debt.

This all comes to a head as the tension over money and power has been thrust into the public eye after he took to Twitter last month to open up about his debt and even make a public plea to Mark Zuckerberg to 'invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas.'

After making the public appeal, he then claimed he had a great response, with 'billionaires and hedge fund guys' quickly getting in touch.

However, he has launched into another late night Twitter rant where he said he wouldn't 'let people use my debt against me.'

Fighting back: A recent report from HollywoodLife.com claims that he was going to 'meet with his legal team to discuss the possibilities of starting legal action against torrent site Pirate Bay'

He started the rant by saying: 'For the past 3 years people who knew about the debt tried to use it against me in negotiations.

'You can't control me or use the debt against me no more.

'Money doesn't make me who I am. I wanted the world to know my struggle.

'You can point fingers and laugh, but for all entrepreneurs with families this country was built off of dreamers  never give up on your dreams, bro my dreams brought me into debt and I'm close to seeing the light of day.'

And he continued his rant by saying: 'Perhaps Adidas will do some big Lebron style deal or perhaps a fashion group will cover the 53 that I've invested over the past 13 years.'
Sarah Paulson made headlines in December when it was revealed after months of speculation that she was in a relationship with much older actress Holland Taylor.

And now the American Horror Story star, 41, has spoken for the first time about her feelings for Taylor, 73, and why she prefers to be with older people in an interview with the New York Times.

'What I can say absolutely is that I am in love,' she says.

Scroll down for video

In love: Sarah Paulson, 41, and Holland Taylor, 73, have been dating for about a year. They're pictured together at a party in New York last October

The couple first met 10 years ago and Paulson described how she thought then that the veteran of The Practice and Two And a Half Men was 'probably the most exquisitely beautiful woman Id ever seen.'

The actresses kept in touch but only began dating about a year ago.

Previously Paulson was in a relationship for seven years with Cherry Jones, who is 18 years older than she is, and she has also previously dated men, and was once engaged to actor and playwright Tracy Letts, nine years her senior.

Honest: Paulson has said she is 'absolutely in love' with Holland but doesn't want to be 'straitjacketed' when it comes to her sexuality

'Theres a poignancy to being with someone older,' she told the NY Times. 'I think theres a greater appreciation of time and what you have together and whats important.'

'It puts a kind of sharp light mixed with a sort of diffused light on something. I cant say it any other way than theres a poignancy to it, and a heightened sense of time and the value of time.'

Paulson, who is winning accolades for her portrayal of prosecutor Marcia Clark in the FX series The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, explained that since childhood, she has always preferred the company of older people.

Smitten: Paulson explained there's poignancy to being with someone much older than herself and described Talyor as 'probably the most exquisitely beautiful woman' she had ever seen. They're pictured in December

Previous love: Before getting together with Taylor, Paulson was in a seven-year relationship with actress Cherry Jones, who is 18 years her senior. They're pictured together in April 2009 in New York

'I had a complicated home life, and my teachers, predominantly my theater teachers and my English teachers, were very dedicated to taking care of me in a particular way,' she said. 'And in doing so, I think I developed a very easy rapport with people older than myself.'

As for her sexuality, she accepts that her romantic choices seem fascinating to outsiders.

But she doesn't want to be labeled, she says.

'If my life choices had to be predicated based on what was expected of me from a community on either side, thats going to make me feel really straitjacketed, and I dont want to feel that,' she explained.

Fluid: The actress was also once engaged to actor and playwright Tracy Letts. Letts, second from left, is seen with Paulson, right, and director Josh Mond and actor Emile Hirsh at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011
He's currently dominating the British TV scene and his hunky roles have seen him quickly adopt heartthrob status.

And James Norton proved he is worthy of his title as the 30-year-old actor cut a suave figure when attending the Bright Young Things Gala 2016, held at The National Theatre on Wednesday evening.

The War and Peace stand-out was sharp-suited as he mingled with equally esteemed actors, including Broadchurch's Olivia Coleman and Poldark's Heida Reed, at the biennial fundraiser, which supports emerging talent.

Scroll down for video

Looking good! James Norton proved he is worthy of his heartthrob status as the 30-year-old actor cut a suave figure when attending the Bright Young Things Gala 2016, held at The National Theatre on Wednesday evening

The Happy Valley star looked incredibly dapper in a tailored dark grey suit, which was offset with a crisp white shirt and pocket square.

The talented thespian broke up the look with a royal blue tie emblazoned with polka dots, though the look was no match for his dashing smile.

The actor was joined by some of the biggest names in British television during the evening, each of whom also dressed to impress.

Very dapper! The War and Peace stand-out was sharp-suited as he mingled with equally esteemed actors, including Broadchurch's Olivia Coleman and Poldark's Heida Reed

Super suave: The Happy Valley star looked incredibly dapper in a tailored dark grey suit, which was offset with a crisp white shirt and pocket square

Poldark beauty Heida showcased her fashion prowess in a cream jumpsuit which boasted pleated culotte flares.

Fellow actress Olivia opted for a demure black gown which was rendered in an alluring silk fabric around the torso before trailing into a black lace skirt, which conceded conservatively below the knee.

The TV favourite instilled a splash of colour into the look with a striking red lipstick while her brunette locks were worn in an elegant up-do as she spent the evening chatting to a host of British talent, including Spectre star Andrew Scott.

A dream in cream! Poldark beauty Heida showcased her fashion prowess in a cream jumpsuit which boasted pleated culotte flares

Reunited! The stunning actress made sure to share a snap with her sharp-suited Poldark co-star Kyle Soller

Strike a pose: The actress showed off her statement jumpsuit and silver heels as she posed outside

Finishing touches: Heida completed her look with a slick of glossy deep red lip colour

Meanwhile, James recently made headlines after appearing in a behind-the-scenes video from his forthcoming shirtless scenes in TV series Grantchester.

In a behind-the-scenes video of filming the swimming trunks episode, the television hunk gets the surprise of his life, courtesy of Robson Green.

As they try to acclimatise to the freezing cold lake with a splash of the sub-par temperatures, James inadvertently backs himself into the water after slipping off the river bank.

Gorgeous! Olivia opted for a demure black gown which was rendered in an alluring silk fabric around the torso before trailing into a black lace skirt, which conceded conservatively below the knee

Mingling: The TV favourite spent the evening chatting to a host of British talent, including Spectre star Andrew Scott (pictured)

Furry nice! The Broadchurch star banished the cold in a brown faux fur coat before making her way into the bash

While the cameras are still rolling, the acting double act aren't quite in character as Sidney Chambers (James) and Geordie Keating (Robson).

After realising the mishap, an apologetic Robson - also dressed in nothing but a tiny pair of swimming shorts - rushes over to help the actor, covering up his mischievous smirk.

Turning heads: Actress Susannah Fielding highlighted her enviable figure in a skintight black bardot gown

Bad Education's Sarah Solemani (L) dressed to impress in a blushing pink gown with embellished sleeves, while film actress Rachael Stirling kept it glitzy in a plunging black gown

The brighter the better! Games of Thrones' Laura Pradelska made sure to stand out in a vivid red halter-neck frock

Star-studded crowd: Game Of Thrones star Hannah Murray and Romola Garai both glammed up for the party

Dapper: Downton Abbey star Ed Speleers was suited and booted for the celeb gala

All dressed up: Actress Sarah Solemani was dressed to the nines in a glam white gown

Glam: Stage and screen star Kate O'Flynn added a pop of colour to her black ensemble with orange heels

Dressed to the nines: Olivier-award nominated actress Rachael Stirling put on a leggy display in her split gown while French-English actress Stacy Martin clashed her prints in a bold combo

And keen to get his own back, James grabbed the actor's extended hand of help to drag him in - something Robson transformed into an elegant swan dive.

Speaking recently about his apprehension towards showing off his shape on television, the War & Peace actor described the standard Aidan Turner's Poldark shirtless scene had established.

James told Radio Times: 'That Poldark shot made me feel incredibly inadequate and emasculated. Theres always been a body beautiful thing with television, but the focus has been more on women over the last however many decades.

The calm before the storm: A behind-the-scenes clip of Grantchester sees James Norton (right) fall backwards into the lake behind him when Robson Green (left) throws a bucket of water at him

'So its probably right that the tables should turn, but I dont know if its a healthy pressure. There is now a sort of expectation on men.'

He added: 'I cant deny that Robson and I were in the gym doing press-ups the night before we shot that scene. Of course we were! We were freaking out thinking, oh god, ten million people are going to be watching us in our swimming trunks.'

Where did he go? Robson wasn't quite expecting James to disappear...
Abbas eyes French peace initiative on Iran deal model

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas voiced hope Tuesday that a French initiative to hold an international Middle East peace conference could lead to a solution like breakthrough talks on Iran's nuclear deal.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in April 2014 and since then, the situation has deteriorated, with the prospects of fresh dialogue appearing more remote than ever.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 178 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas heads a meeting at his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah on March 1, 2016 Fadi Arouri (Pool/AFP)

In January, then French foreign minister Laurent Fabius announced plans by Paris to revive plans for an international conference to "bring about the two-state solution" to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Abbas said he hoped the proposal "would allow the creation of a mechanism for a political solution on the model of what happened between the Europeans, Americans and Iran".

Last year Iran struck a historic deal with world powers, that agreed to provide Tehran relief from crippling sanctions in exchange for limits on its atomic programme.

The July 15, 2015, accord concluded in Vienna ended 12 years of crisis and was reached after 21 months of protracted negotiations.

Should efforts to breathe life into the moribund peace process fail, France would move to unilaterally recognise Palestine as a state, Fabius said in January.
Scott Kelly heads home after nearly a year in space

After nearly a year orbiting the Earth, US astronaut Scott Kelly was on the cusp of coming home Tuesday after spending more time in space than any other American.

The 52-year-old is due to leave the International Space Station after 340 days together with his colleague Mikhail Kornienko and catch a ride back to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

"Physically, I feel pretty good," a slightly wistful Kelly told reporters via video link just days ago.

US astronaut Scott Kelly, pictured on March 27, 2015, is due to leave the International Space Station after 340 days together with his colleague Mikhail Kornienko and catch a ride back to Earth on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft Kirill Kudryavtsev (AFP/File)

"I could go another 100 days," he said. "I could go another year if I had to."

Following a farewell ceremony, Kelly and Kornienko, who is Russian, are scheduled to enter the Soyuz capsule docked with the ISS around 2100 GMT.

They are set to undock several hours later, at 0105 GMT Wednesday.

The Soyuz will then orbit the Earth and about two hours later it will begin its 53-minute plunge.

The men are expected to land in the steppes of Kazakhstan at 0427 GMT Wednesday.

Kelly and Kornienko, 55, arrived at the ISS on March 27, 2015.

Their mission has been part of an effort to study the physiological effects of long-term space travel on the human body.

They have been subjected to a battery of tests and other experiments in preparation for a future manned mission to Mars and beyond.

Kelly's identical twin brother, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, has been participating on the ground, providing comparisons that will help study how space changes humans.

Weightlessness reduces muscle mass and bone density and is believed to diminish eyesight by increasing cerebrospinal fluid around the optic nerve.

Command of the ISS will pass from Kelly to his fellow American astronaut Tim Kopra as soon as the Soyuz undocks from the space station, marking the beginning of a new mission, expedition 47.

- "Like camping" -

Besides human contact with family and friends, Kelly said, he misses the earthly pleasure of a shower.

In the absence of gravity, drops of water float in the air and stick to the skin upon contact.

Astronauts must instead wash with wet towelettes and use a toilet equipped with a suction tube.

"It's kind of like I've been in the woods camping for a year," he told reporters.

Kelly and Kornienko have logged the longest stay on the ISS since the first astronaut arrived in 2000.

However, the record for the longest single spaceflight is held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov, who spent more than 437 consecutive days aboard the Mir space station in the mid-1990s.

In addition to breaking the record of uninterrupted time in space for an American, Kelly will also have logged 520 cumulative days in space over four flights, surpassing the previous record of 382 days by astronaut Mike Fincke.

Russia's Gennady Padalka holds the world record for total time spent in space with 879 days.

US astronaut Scott Kelly and his spaceflight record S. Ramis-J.-M. Cornu / P. Defoss (AFP)

Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly on a December 21, 2015 spacewalk
Syria ceasefire holding but no 'victory dances' yet: US

The US State Department said Tuesday there has been no significant violation of the fragile ceasefire in Syria in the past 24 hours, but a spokesman noted "nobody's doing any victory dances" yet.

"Over the last 24 hours, we have not been apprised of any claims of any additional violations of any significance," spokesman John Kirby said.

"It's a very fluid environment and we're just going to keep monitoring as closely as we can," he said.

A Syrian man and his children carry sacks of aid provided by the World Food Programme in Kafr Batna, in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on March 1, 2016 Amer Almohibany (AFP)

World powers have thrown their weight behind the landmark truce, negotiated by the US and Russia, as a way to bring an end to Syria's conflict.

The cessation of hostilities between the Syrian regime and opposition groups has been in place since Saturday, and President Bashar al-Assad told German broadcaster ARD on Tuesday he would do his part to guarantee its success.

Kirby welcomed the reduction in violence, but noted there have been reports of violations in past days.

"The right number here is zero," he said.

"Nobody's taken their foot off the pedal here. Nobody's doing any victory dances," Kirby said.

"There are still innocent Syrian people that are suffering today. It's not just because there continues to be violence and bloodshed in Syria, although that is troubling enough. It's also because still so many of them need access to food, medicine, water and supplies."

The ceasefire does not apply to territory held by the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, and the US continues to launch air strikes against the groups.
Cosby's criminal sex charge on ice, pending appeal

A US appeals court on Tuesday postponed until further notice legal proceedings aimed at putting disgraced TV legend Bill Cosby on trial in Pennsylvania for alleged sexual assault.

It comes after the pioneering black comedian, 78, appealed a judge's refusal to dismiss what is the first criminal assault charge against the megastar turned pariah, for which he posted $1 million bail last December.

More than 50 women have publicly alleged sexual abuse at the hands of the once treasured comedian, who attained his greatest fame for his role as a lovable obstetrician and family man in the hit 1980s sitcom "The Cosby Show."

Comedian Bill Cosby arrives at the Montgomery County courthouse for pre-trial hearings in the sexual assault case against him in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 2016 Kena Betancur (AFP/File)

The allegations span four decades, but the vast majority cannot be prosecuted because they have expired under statutes of limitations.

But last month, Judge Steven O'Neill paved the way for Cosby to stand trial for alleged abuse in 2004, rejecting an attempt his lawyers to dismiss the case. Cosby appealed immediately to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.

"The trial court proceedings shall be temporarily stayed pending disposition of the Commonwealth's motion to quash appeal," the superior court ruled Tuesday.

Cosby had been next due to appear in court in Norristown, just outside Philadelphia, on March 8 in connection with the 2004 case and was initially settled in 2006 by a civil suit.

Cosby's lawyers say reopening the case violated a 2005 agreement that he would never be prosecuted over the allegation of assault made by Andrea Constand, a former employee of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Prosecutors in Montgomery County reopened the case last year, claiming that new evidence came to light in July. Cosby posted bail of $1 million on December 30.

Constand says Cosby forced himself on her at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. Prosecutors say he urged her to take pills and drink wine, leaving her unable to resist as he made his move on her.

Cosby has admitted giving Constand a pill but said all relations with her were consensual and accused her of lying about the assault.

If found guilty, Cosby -- who has surrendered his passport to the court but has yet to enter a plea -- could face up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.
Colouring craze poses headache for crayon makers

Colouring books for grown-ups may be the new lifestyle craze, promising ways to combat stress, unleash our creative spirit and generally take time out from our increasingly tech-frazzled, gadget-obsessed lives.

But for the makers of crayons and colour pencils, the trend also poses a fundamental strategic question: is the current boom in demand just a passing fad or is it a new sustainable trend?

"I dream about crayons at night," says Andreas Martin, who manages a factory of the manufacturer Staedtler in Nuremberg, southern Germany.

Staedtler is a small family-run firm employing a workforce of around 2,000 and has seen demand for some of its coloured pencils explode, more or less overnight Christof Stache (AFP)

Staedtler is a small family-run firm employing a workforce of around 2,000 and has seen demand for some of its coloured pencils explode, more or less overnight.

"These are models we've been making for years and demand always chugged along unspectacularly," Martin said.

"But then all of a sudden, we weren't able to manufacture enough. It's incredible."

Just behind him, a machine spits out yellow ink pens at a rate of around 6,000 per hour. Another next to it is currently programmed to produce orange ones.

On the next floor down, finished crayons in a kaleidoscope of different colours are packed into boxes of 20 or 36 for shipping to the United States, Britain or South Korea.

Those are the countries at the centre of the current adult colouring craze, said Staedtler chief, Axel Marx.

In the USA, nine colouring books are currently among the top 20 best-selling products on Amazon.

- A slice of the cake -

Gradually "we're seeing a similar development in European countries, too," said Horst Brinkmann, head of marketing and sales at rival Stabilo Schwan, which makes fluorescent marker pens and coloured pencils as well.

All the players in the sector are keen to get a slice of the cake. Stabilo has launched a set of crayons and book with spring motifs. Swiss upmarket maker Caran d'Ache has published its own colouring book of Alpine scenes.

Without revealing any figures, Brinkmann said Stabilo's sales of crayons had risen by more than 10 percent while the colouring craze enabled Staedtler to lift its sales by 14 percent last year to 322 million euros ($350 million).

"That's remarkable, in this age of digitalisation," said Marx.

But the hype also constitutes something of a headache for factory chief Martin.

"No-one knows how long it will last," he admits.

"We need to strike a balance", so as to know much to sensibly invest to be able to ride the wave, while still keeping in mind that the trend could vanish as quickly as it started.

"At the moment, we're making use of adjustable working hours," adding shifts, say, at night or on Saturday mornings. In addition to the 350 regular employees, the factory had taken on around 30 temporary workers.

But ultimately, the decision is whether to invest the 300,000 euros needed for a new machine.

- Fundamental trend? -

Staedtler is ready to stump up the cash, with the hope that "if the market falls again, we can use the machines for different types of products," Martin said.

But rival makers are betting on the durability of the new trend.

At Caran d'Ache, "we have invested in production equipment and extended working hours," said president Carole Hubscher.

The company sets great store by being a "Swiss Made" brand and "there is no question of relocating to boost production," she said.

Hubscher is convinced that writing and drawing "won't disappear."

And "our growth targets are not solely built on trends," she argued.

Stabilo's Brinkmann insisted that adult colouring "is part of a fundamental and universal trend towards slowing down."

Nevertheless, "it's important to continue to innovate in this area" to maintain market momentum, he said, pointing to the new "fashion within a fashion" of "Zentangling" or drawing images using structured patterns.

Staedtler chief Marx is more fatalistic, saying that a trend such as colouring is not predictable.

"But we're keeping our fingers crossed that it'll continue," he said.

Colouring books for grown-ups promises ways to combat stress, unleash our creative spirit and generally take time out from our tech-frazzled, gadget-obsessed lives Jewel Samad (AFP/File)

A Staedtler employee makes graphite blocks during the the production of colour pencils at the company's factory in Nuremberg Christof Stache (AFP)

A Staedtler employee pours material to make colour pencils at the company's factory in Nuremberg Christoff Stache (AFP)
Japan's silver-haired seniors still punching the time clock

Many people his age would be happy to slip on a cardigan and put their feet up, but not Teruo Sugiura.

The 86-year-old makes his way to a seniors' work centre in Tokyo several days a week where he repairs traditional Japanese sliding doors.

It doesn't pay much, but that hasn't stopped Sugiura from turning up for the last 20 years -- one of millions of elderly Japanese still collecting wages into retirement age.

Workers repair clothes at a seniors' work centre in Tokyo Toru Yamanaka (AFP)

"I'm working to keep my body in good shape," said Sugiura, a former sweets salesman at a high-end department store.

"I think it's wrong not to be doing anything. There's no point staying at home twiddling my thumbs."

Japan's silver-haired workforce is everywhere these days -- from wrinkled men waving glow sticks at construction sites to checkout counter clerks or caregivers for the very old.

And this geriatric working class shows no sign of shrinking -- more than 20 percent of Japanese older than 65 still work.

That is the highest proportion among developed economies and a figure likely to soar as the pool of younger workers falls and the fast-ageing population squeezes a strained social welfare system.

People over 65 are expected to account for nearly 40 percent of the greying population by 2060 as Japan wrestles with a low birth rate.

Meanwhile, the country's labour force -- the number of employed and unemployed people aged 15 to 64 -- is at risk of losing more than 27 million workers in the same time frame, a drop of about 42 percent from current levels, according to a government advisory panel.

Demand for workers is high and Japan's unemployment rate for January, published on Tuesday, was an enviable 3.2 percent, a two-decade low and well below the United States or many European nations.

- Market pressure -

In response to demographic shifts, the government is gradually raising the official retirement age and starting ages for state pension payments to 65. The official retirement age will be raised in steps from 61 to 65 by 2025. It will be raised to 62 next month.

"This is enough incentive for (seniors) to push back their retirement and keep working," investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a recent report on Japan's labour market.

And Tokyo is putting the pressure on firms to keep workers on longer, or by hiring older employees.

Some firms have responded, including automaker Honda which has said it would raise its working age by five years to 65 starting in April, a move that could affect tens of thousands of workers.

Meanwhile, in northern Japan, nationwide convenience store chain Circle K Sunkus has trained a handful of elderly people in a nod to the ageing labour pool.

Electronics giant Ricoh has called on retired technicians to get its computers ready to be installed at companies, schools and government departments.

"There is very strong market pressure for employers to keep older people," Atsushi Seike, a professor of labour economics and president of Tokyo's Keio University, told AFP.

"The drastic decline of the workforce will have a significant impact on the behaviour of employers.

"Many are willing to boost the number of older workers, even at major companies, and I think this trend will continue -- or even accelerate -- in the future."

More than half a million older Japanese find work through the government-subsidised National Silver Human Resources Center Association, including door repairman Sugiura and 63-year-old Junko Kondo.

Kondo's government pension isn't enough to let her do everything she wants.

"I'm saving the money I make here," Kondo says, as she assembles packages for wrapping up high-quality salt sold at luxury stores.

"I'll use it to buy presents for my grandchildren, or a sweater, or maybe just lunch for myself."

The reasons for Japan's elderly staying in the workforce vary, but keeping mentally and physically fit is key for many people.

It also puts some extra money in seniors' pockets, although the wages paid by the Silver Centres are low -- they pay an average of 37,000 yen ($330) a month.

Some seniors only get paid per task they complete while others volunteer their time without getting paid.

But for people like Taeko Mishima, the extra money could be a lifesaver.

The 74-year-old worries she and her husband's pensions are not enough to cover the cost of nursing homes with medical care, which could add up to as much 300,000 yen a month, said Mishima, who formerly worked at a travel agency.

"My pension isn't high enough to pay for that."

Geriatric working class shows no sign of shrinking - more than 20 percent of Japanese older than 65 still work Toru Yamanaka (AFP)

Demand for workers is high and Japan's unemployment rate for January 2016 was an enviable 3.2% Fred Dufour (AFP/File)
Two Palestinians killed after attacking settler in West Bank

Two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops Wednesday after infiltrating a West Bank settlement and wounding a settler, the military said.

"Two assailants infiltrated the community of Eli, south of Nablus. They attacked a man outside of his home," the army said in a statement.

"Forces arrived... (and) shot the attackers, resulting in their death."

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since early October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean Ahmad Gharabli (AFP/File)

Roy Harel, a resident of the settlement, was lightly wounded during the knife attack and was evacuated to hospital.

He told the Ynet news site he had managed to repel the attackers and lock himself in his home where his wife and five children were also located.

The two Palestinians killed were identified by Palestinian police as Labib Azzam and Mohammed Zaghlwan, aged 18 and from the village of Qaryut near the settlement.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence.
Militants mount deadly attack on Indian consulate in Afghanistan

Gunfire and an explosion echoed Wednesday as militants attacked India's consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, killing three people in the latest in a string of assaults on Indian installations in the country.

No group has so far claimed the brazen attack, which coincided with a NATO change-of-command ceremony that saw US army general John Nicholson take charge of international troops in Afghanistan.

Indian diplomats were not hurt, the foreign ministry in New Delhi said, after a suicide bomber blew himself up at the consulate's entrance and four other attackers breached the compound.

An Afghan soldier inspects the site of an attack in front of the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, on March 2, 2016 Noorullah Shirzada (AFP)

"All four of them were killed by our security forces," government spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP after the two-hour assault ended.

"Three others -- two civilians and one policeman -- were killed and 19 other people were left wounded."

The powerful explosion sent a column of smoke rising in the sky and blew out windows of nearby buildings, as Afghan troops hauled away bodies from the area littered with charred debris.

The attack highlights the worsening security situation in Afghanistan as Taliban insurgents step up nationwide attacks and Islamic State jihadists make inroads in the volatile east.

"There is still much work to be done. We now find ourselves at an inflection point in our campaign," outgoing NATO commander General John Campbell told reporters in Kabul.

"(Afghan security forces) have come far but they still need our help. (Their) desire to improve and their resilience warrants our continued support in the critical years ahead."

Wednesday's assault was reminiscent of a 25-hour gun and bomb siege near the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif in January.

India has been a key supporter of Kabul's post-Taliban government, and analysts have often pointed to the threat of a "proxy war" in Afghanistan between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan -- the historic backer of the Taliban -- has long been accused of assisting the insurgents, especially with attacks on Indian targets in Afghanistan, but denies the claims.

- Uptick in violence -

Direct peace talks are expected to start this week in Islamabad between the Western-backed Afghan government and the Taliban, which has been waging a deadly insurgency for more than 14 years.

Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the US and Pakistan recently met in Kabul for a fourth round of talks aimed at paving the way for the nascent peace process.

But the Taliban have intensified their insurgency in an apparent attempt to gain leverage before the planned negotiations.

Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, also faces an emerging threat from loyalists of the Islamic State group, which controls territory across Syria and Iraq and is making gradual inroads in Afghanistan -- challenging the Taliban on their own turf.

The jihadists have managed to attract disaffected Taliban fighters increasingly lured by the group's signature brutality.

In January IS fighters claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege of the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the first major attack by the group in an Afghan city.

The violence tearing the country apart is having a devastating impact on Afghan civilians.

A recent UN report highlighted more than 11,000 civilian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, a new record since 2009 when the agency began tabulating the statistics.

Afghan security personnel stand guard after an attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, on March 2, 2016 Noorullah Shirzada (AFP)

Militants attack the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan AFP (AFP Graphic)
Thai army summons politician who lambasted junta's 'sexism'

Thailand's junta Wednesday summoned an opposition politician for "attitude adjustment" after he berated a senior general for making "sexist" remarks about ousted premier Yingluck Shinawatra.

Military officials said Watana Muangsook, a prominent figure in the Pheu Thai party that was toppled by the 2014 army takeover, would be held in custody for up to seven days.

His detention follows a Facebook post attacking the Thai junta's deputy leader for saying that soldiers continued to photograph Yingluck, two years after she was toppled from office, because she is good-looking.

Thai General Prawit Wongsuwon, seen in Bangkok Pornchai Kittiwongsakul (AFP/File)

"The soldiers took photos of Ms Yingluck probably because she is pretty," General Prawit Wongsuwon said. "It's not a big deal. Don't think too much about it or be anxious about it."

In a post calling on the military to cease their monitoring of Yingluck, Watana said it was "unbelievable to hear such comments" by Prawit. "They were sexist comments," he added.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday General Prawit confirmed Watana had been "invited to talk" -- the Thai junta's Orwellian euphemism for a period of compulsory detention -- for "expressing false information".

"The invitation is not related to him blaming me but he expressed an opinion that misled society, so we invited him for talks," Prawit said.

Since seizing power in May 2014 the junta has crushed dissent, banning political discussion, locking up opponents and dramatically increasing prosecutions under laws covering lese majeste, sedition and computer crime.

So-called "attitude adjustment" sessions have also been instituted, with critics arbitrarily detained by the military -- often for days.

They are released once they sign a form promising to refrain from criticising authorities, sometimes under the threat of asset seizures.

According to local rights group iLaw, which monitors detentions, more than 800 people have been ordered to attend such sessions since the coup.

While junta chief and Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-O-Cha is very much the frontman for Thailand's coup, his colleague Prawit is seen as an equally influential backroom operator.

A former army chief and defence minister, Prawit is often described as the "Big Brother" of the Eastern Tigers, a clique of powerful generals who were prominent in both the 2014 and 2006 coups.

Prawit is not alone in making gaffes about women.

Prime Minister Prayut had to apologise in 2014 for comments suggesting beautiful foreign women wearing bikinis in Thailand should not expect to be safe, following the brutal rape and murder of a British backpacker.
Malawi mob burns 7 to death over suspected witchcraft

A mob in southern Malawi burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human bones for use in witchcraft, police said on Wednesday.

The seven were "found in possession of human bones and the mob took it upon themselves to burn them with petrol," Kirdy Kaunga, head of the Nsanje district police, told AFP.

A traditional chief said local suspicions were aroused as a result of the movements and telephone conversations of one of the seven, who was found to have a bag containing the bones.

A mob in Malawi burned seven men to death for allegedly possessing human albino bones for use in witchcraft. Albinos, who have white skin and yellow hair as a result of a genetic disorder, are regularly killed for their body parts, which are used in witchcraft rituals in African countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania

"He was chased and arrested," chief Tengani, who only uses one name, told AFP.

"The man is said to have confirmed that his bag contained human bones and that's when the mob began rounding up the seven and burned them, one by one."

Images from the scene showed the men being burned on a patch of grass surrounded by locals, with some children looking on.

Police arrived after the incident, which took place on Tuesday in Nsanje, the southernmost district of Malawi. So far, there have been no arrests.

James Kadazera, police spokesman for the southern region, said experts would conduct a postmortem on the bones in the bag "to establish whether they are albino humans or not".

Albinos, who have white skin and yellow hair as a result of a genetic disorder, are regularly killed for their body parts, which are used in witchcraft rituals in several in African countries including Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

"We also want find out who actually torched these people," Kadazera added, saying police condemned "mob justice" where members of the public took the law into their own hands.

Identification of the victims was proving difficult due to their severe injuries, he said.

At least six albinos have been killed in Malawi since a surge in attacks which began in December 2014, although UN agencies put the figure at nine.

Last summer, Malawi launched an investigation into the root cause of the albino murders, in a move backed by the United Nations Children's Fund.

In September, a teacher was arrested on suspicion of trying to sell an albino schoolgirl for $10,000, and several others are awaiting trial in connection with albino-related crimes, including murder, abduction and possession of their bones.
N. Korea likens South's president to an 'ugly bat'

North Korea launched a fresh personal attack on South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Wednesday, calling her an "ugly female bat" in an article apparently penned by a satirising zoologist.

The article, published by the official KCNA news agency, also painted a picture of a panic-stricken Park losing her dress and shoes as she ran to a bunker after hearing of North Korea's January 6 nuclear test.

It followed an equally aggressive diatribe in the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun on Sunday which described Park as a "crazy old bitch" and triggered an angry response from Seoul that condemned the use of such "base, vulgar language."

South Korea's President Park Geun-hye has been in power since 2013 Kim Hong-Ji (Pool/AFP/File)

The attacks come amid escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula with Park taking a markedly tougher stance with Pyongyang following its nuclear test and last month's long-range rocket launch.

Wednesday's article was attributed to a North Korean zoologist, Pak Ryo-Un, and was, it's headline suggested, meant to be read as a satire.

The main theme was a running and rather forced comparison of Park to a bat, in terms of both looks and behaviour.

The choice was a play on Park's surname which is a partial homonym for the Korean word for bat "bakjwi".

"She behaved like a bat which lives in such dingy place as cave," the article said.

Upon hearing the news of the North's nuclear test, "she hastily ran down to the underground bunker... unaware that the waistband of her skirt slipped down and her shoes came off, stunning even her confidants," it said.

It variously described Park as an "ugly female bat" and someone with a bat's "twisted point of view" and "twisted skinny body."
Key US Supreme Court rulings on abortion

There a few issues that have roiled American political life as much as abortion.

As the US Supreme Court hears Wednesday one of the most high-profile cases in decades on the issue, here is a list of its most significant rulings since its 1973 landmark decision that legalized the procedure nationwide.

- Roe v. Wade, 1973 -

A young anti-abortion activist chants slogans during a march to the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on January 22, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP/File)

In a 7-2 vote, the court ruled that a woman's right to privacy under the US Constitution protects her decision to end a pregnancy, and that regulations to limit abortion must be justified by a "compelling state interest."

The decision also outlined the legitimate interests of states to protect a pregnant woman's health and the viability of a fetus at various stages of pregnancy.

In the first trimester, the decision would be left to a woman and her doctor.

The state could regulate abortions in the interest of the mother's health in the second trimester.

And in the third trimester, when the fetus is considered to be viable, the state could regulate or even outlaw abortions in the interest of protecting potential human life, except when needed to preserve the mother's life or health.

- Bellotti v. Baird, 1979 -

In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court justices ruled that teenagers do not need parental consent in order to have an abortion.

- Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992 -

In a 5-4 vote, the court upheld women's fundamental right to abortion but introduced a new standard.

Under the test, a state can impose regulations only if they do not pose an "undue burden" defined as placing a "substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion" before the fetus develops to the point of becoming viable.

- Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York, 1997 -

The justices ruled that fixed buffer zones were constitutional, preventing protesters from approaching people entering and leaving abortion clinics. The order keeps demonstrators at least 15 feet (4.5 meters) from clinics' doorways and driveways.

- Stenberg v. Carhart, 2000 -

In a 5-4 vote, the court found that Nebraska's ban on so-called "partial birth abortion" late in a pregnant woman's term violates her right to abortion.

Under the procedure, part of the fetus is removed before it is killed and delivery completed.

The court criticized the ban for failing to include an exception for when a woman's health is threatened, and because it was unclear about exactly what type of abortion procedure was outlawed.

The justices said the Nebraska law violated the US Constitution's due process clause, under which the government must operate within the law and provide fair procedures at all levels of government.

- Gonzales v. Carhart, 2007 -

In a 5-4 vote, the court found that the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was constitutional.

The justices writing for the majority distinguished this decision from their 2000 ruling because it applied to a more specific partial birth abortion procedure, known as "intact dilation and extraction."

Despite the court's precedent in requiring abortion regulations to contain exceptions for a woman's health, the justices writing for the majority said it was not necessary here because there was "medical uncertainty" as to whether the procedure was ever necessary to protect a woman's health.

It did, however, leave open the possibility that the ban could be challenged if the procedure was ever shown to be medically necessary.
Two lions, 110 vultures poisoned at S.Africa's Kruger park

Two lions and over 100 vultures in South Africa's Kruger National Park died after eating the poisoned carcass of an elephant, officials said Wednesday, suggesting a new poaching trend in the heavily-guarded reserve.

"It seems poachers have resorted to wildlife poisoning in the national parks and other protected areas in Southern Africa," Glenn Phillips, the park's managing executive, said in a statement.

It was unclear when the poisoning occurred, but the animals' carcasses were discovered by rangers at the weekend.

Poisoning of wildlife has occurred at a lower level in South Africa compared to its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique Christophe Simon (AFP/File)

Initial investigations showed the elephant was shot in the head, its tusks removed and its carcass laced with poison. Two lions, 110 white-back vultures and two jackals then died after feeding on the poisoned carcass.

The poisoning left authorities puzzled as to the poachers' ultimate target.

Tusks and horns are smuggled to eastern Asian countries where they are highly prized.

Park spokesman William Mabasa said vultures are also in demand from traditional healers or sangomas in South Africa.

Poisoning of wildlife has occurred at a lower level in South Africa compared to its neighbours Zimbabwe and Mozambique.

In Zimbabwe, more than 370 elephants have died after being poisoned over the past two years, with the deaths blamed on poachers.

Last year, an elephant, four African lions and 46 vultures also died from poisoning in the Kruger National Park.

The park, which is faced with a poaching crisis targeting rhino, is one of the most heavily-protected in the country.
Siemens to cooperate with Iran's MAPNA in energy sector

German engineering giant Siemens said Wednesday it has signed a far-reaching agreement with Iranian group MAPNA to help modernise Iran's energy infrastructure.

Siemens and MAPNA had signed a memorandum of understanding "to jointly develop the roadmap for the extension and optimization of the overall Iranian power and electrification system," the German company said in a statement.

As part of that agreement, MAPNA would acquire technological knowhow to manufacture Siemens gas turbines in Iran and the parties would cooperate to deliver more than 20 gas turbines and associated generators over the next decade.

Siemens and MAPNA had signed a memorandum of understanding "to jointly develop the roadmap for the extension and optimization of the overall Iranian power and electrification system," the German company said in a statement John MacDougall (AFP/File)

"As a first project under the license agreement, both companies signed a contract for the Bandar Abbas power plant for which Siemens will deliver two F-class gas turbines and generators. The first unit will be shipped to Iran shortly," the statement said.

"With these important agreements we reinstall the long-term energy partnership between MAPNA and Siemens," said Siemens chief executive Joe Kaeser.

He said the German giant would "help the Iranian people to develop a sustainable, affordable and modern electrification system to support the countrys economic and social development."

The contracts and the MoU were signed in the presence of Joe Kaeser, MAPNA CEO Abbas Aliabadi, and witnessed by German economy minister Sigmar Gabriel and Iranian energy minister, Hamid Chitchian.

Siemens said it had been active in Iran since 1868.
Israel PM wants to expel attackers' relatives to Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure over a five-month wave of violence, said Wednesday he wants to expel to Gaza relatives of Palestinian attackers involved in their assaults.

Netanyahu asked the attorney general to examine the possibility of carrying out such expulsions, his office said, while rights groups immediately denounced the move.

"Expelling family members of Palestinian terrorists who aided attacks to Gaza will lead to a significant decrease in terrorist attacks," a spokesman for Netanyahu said on Twitter.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem on February 28, 2016 Ronen Zvulun (Pool/AFP/File)

The proposal could prove to be a fresh source of tension ahead of a visit by US Vice President Joe Biden next week.

The White House said Wednesday Biden would visit Israel and the West Bank, beginning on March 8.

Talks with the Israelis are expected to include defence aid, Israeli-Palestinian violence and the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

A wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories since October has killed 180 Palestinians as well as 28 Israelis, an American, a Sudanese and an Eritrean, according to an AFP toll.

Most of the Palestinians who died in the violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, according to Israeli authorities.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

The Gaza Strip, hit by three wars with Israel since 2008 and run by Islamist movement Hamas, is under an Israeli blockade that severely restricts the movement of people and goods.

It also has one of the world's highest unemployment rates, and the UN development agency said in September that conditions in the strip could make it uninhabitable by 2020.

The Palestinian enclave, separated from the occupied West Bank by Israeli territory, has remained relatively calm during the current wave of violence.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has reportedly said previously that such expulsions would violate both Israeli and international law.

Mandelblit was said to have made his recommendation after a member of Netanyahu's cabinet who is also a political rival of the prime minister requested expelling relatives of attackers to Gaza or Syria.

Netanyahu has come under heavy pressure from right-wing members of his coalition over the continuing wave of violence.

- Political pressure -

Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman for Israeli rights group B'Tselem, said "it seems obvious that the prime minister is under a lot of pressure from the right now, from politicians accusing him of being soft against the wave of attacks."

"Any form of collective punishment is illegal and in this case the point is trying to punish the relatives of attacks who aren't actually accused of anything," she said.

"This is a complete breach of international law and the Geneva Convention."

Legal analyst Moshe Negbi said he did not think the attorney general would agree to the proposal.

Expulsions of those directly involved in attacks had occurred in the past under defence regulations dating back to British mandatory Palestine, said Negbi.

"I find it hard to believe that the attorney general would agree to legislation which is even more draconian than the mandatory law," he told public radio.

Further violence occurred Wednesday when two 18-year-old Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops after infiltrating a West Bank settlement and wounding a settler, the military said.

Later in the day, the army said, "two assailants stabbed two soldiers" guarding another settlement, Har Bracha, near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

"The assailants fled the scene," it said in an English-language statement, adding that troops were sweeping the area.

Palestinians said soldiers searched the neighbouring Palestinian village of Burin.

Israeli rescue services said one of the soldiers was moderately wounded and the other lightly hurt.

Many analysts say Palestinian frustration with Israeli occupation and settlement building in the West Bank, the complete lack of progress in peace efforts and their own fractured leadership have fed the unrest.

Israel blames incitement by Palestinian leaders and media as a main cause of the violence.

Many of the attackers have been young Palestinians, including teenagers, who appear to have been acting on their own.

Israeli security forces monitor the area where a Palestinian man tried to stab Israeli soldiers before being shot dead at a checkpoint near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, on February 26, 2016 Abbas Momani (AFP/File)

Palestinian children on January 27, 2015 in Gaza City's al-Shejaiya neighborhood Mohammed Abed (AFP/File)

Palestinian protesters burn tires during clashes with Israeli security forces following a demonstration on February 19, 2016 in the village of Kfar Qaddum Jaafar Ashtiyeh (AFP/File)
Three girls kidnapped from school in Lagos, Nigeria: police

Nigerian police were on Wednesday hunting three girls who were abducted by armed men from their school on the outskirts of the country's biggest city, Lagos.

The abduction of students from school is rare in Lagos, Nigeria's sprawling megacity of 20 million people and the country's commercial hub.

"A serious rescue mission for the three students is ongoing. We have launched a manhunt for the abductors and we are making a headway," Lagos state police spokeswoman Dolapo Badmus told AFP.

The abduction of students from school is rare in Lagos, Nigeria's sprawling megacity of 20 million people and the country's commercial hub Pius Utomi Ekpei (AFP/File)

In Nigeria's northeast, Boko Haram Islamists infamously abducted 276 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in April 2014. Fifty-seven escaped in the days that followed but 219 are still being held.

Several thousand women and young girls have been captured since the start of the insurgency in 2009.

No group yet has claimed responsibility for the latest abduction in Lagos and the exact motive is unknown.

But kidnapping for ransom by armed criminals in southern states is common.

Police spokesman Badmus said the kidnapping happened on Monday in the eastern suburb of Ikorodu at the Babington Macaulay Junior Seminary School, which is a popular choice for wealthier Nigerians.

The gunmen were said to have broken a portion of the secondary school's fence to gain access to the grounds before taking away the girls.

School uniforms and wrist watches purportedly belonging to the abducted girls were later found in bushes around the school.

"We are working discretely in carrying out our mission and we are hopeful to succeed," Badmus said.
Rwanda prosecutors demand 22 years in jail in sedition trial

Rwandan prosecution lawyers called for 22-year jail sentences Wednesday against two senior military figures on trial for inciting rebellion against the central African nation's strongman, President Paul Kagame.

Both men, once close to Kagame's inner circle, former presidential guard chief and serving colonel, Tom Byabagamba, and retired brigadier-general Frank Rusagara, were arrested in August 2014.

They were charged with inciting rebellion by "spreading rumours" and "tarnishing the image of the country and government". They deny all charges.

Both men, once close to President Kagame's inner circle, former presidential guard chief and serving colonel, Tom Byabagamba, and retired brigadier-general Frank Rusagara, were arrested in August 2014 Zacharias Abubeker (AFP/File)

"They should be punished with 22 years in jail," military lawyer Faustin Nzakamwita said.

According to military prosecutors, the pair had attempted to turn military officials against the government, while Rusagara had been relaying "propaganda" from the dissident Rwanda National Congress (RNC), an exiled opposition group that includes several former top members of Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The prosecutor said Rusagara had been heard saying Rwanda "is a police state and a banana republic", and that he had described Kagame as a "dictator".

For his part Byabagamba had allegedly said that the FDLR, a Hutu extremist group based in Democratic Republic of Congo that includes former 'genocidaires', was no longer a major threat to the country.

Critics of Kagame, however, say the trials expose the workings of a paranoid state that is increasingly nervous over the activities of the RNC.

A co-founder of the RNC, Rwanda's former intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya, once a comrade-in-arms of Kagame's, was murdered on New Year's Eve 2013 in Johannesburg.

Prosecutors have also called for a six year sentence for Rusagara's driver, Francois Kabayiza.
US VP Biden to visit Israel, West Bank next week

US Vice President Joe Biden will visit Israel and the West Bank next week, the White House said Wednesday -- a rare trip amid fears about escalating political violence.

"The Vice President and (his wife) Dr. (Jill) Biden will travel to Jerusalem and Ramallah" on March 8, the White House said in a statement.

Biden's visit comes as the White House considers how it could help restart the moribund peace process before President Barack Obama leaves office early next year.

US Vice-President Joe Biden, pictured on February 25, 2016, will hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Yuri Cortez (AFP/File)

Obama has acknowledged that there will be no comprehensive agreement between Israelis and Palestinians before then, or even Camp David or Oslo-style summits.

But a five-month wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories that has left more than 200 dead, according to a AFP toll count, has worried the White House and prompted thinking about steps that could help reduce tensions.

Biden will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, as well as with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, to "discuss our shared regional interests," the White House said.

With the Middle East already in turmoil, the last thing Washington wants is another widespread conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians who have died in the recent wave of violence were killed by Israeli forces while carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.

Others were shot dead by Israeli forces during clashes or demonstrations.

But steps to reduce tensions have been halting.

Obama has so far failed to convince Netanyahu to halt settlement building activity, which is seen as illegal under international law and poses a major stumbling block to peace efforts.

Relations between the pair, which have been strained for a long time, were virtually destroyed by Netanyahu's opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran.

But Biden's trip comes as the United States and Israel negotiate a massive new 10-year defense agreement, and both sides are trying to show they can still be partners.

Biden last visited for the funeral of former prime minister Ariel Sharon in January 2014.

Another visit by the vice president in 2010 was marred by the announcement of a major Israeli settlement project in annexed east Jerusalem.

The announcement drew a public scolding from Biden and it soured relations with Washington for months.
Egypt court sentences 7 to death over cadet bombing

An Egyptian military court has handed down seven death sentences for an April 2015 bombing that killed two army cadets as they waited to board a bus, an army official said.

The blast in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh was one of a spate of attacks that have hit the security forces since the 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

Most have been in the Sinai Peninsula, but some have been in Cairo or the delta to its north.

Egyptian police have detained or killed scores of suspected militants in Cairo and the delta, although the security forces continue to face frequent attack in the Sinai, stronghold of jihadists loyal to the Islamic Strate group

The court in second city Alexandria also sentenced five people to life in prison, which in Egypt means 25 years, the army official said.

It sentenced two defendants to 15 years, and four to three years.

The defendants have the right of appeal to the Court of Cassation.

Three of those sentenced to death were tried in absentia.

Police have detained or killed scores of suspected militants in Cairo and the delta, although the security forces continue to face frequent attack in the Sinai, stronghold of jihadists loyal to the Islamic Strate group.

The jihadists say their attacks are in retaliation for a government crackdown targeting Morsi's supporters that has left hundreds dead and thousands imprisoned.

Morsi himself and hundreds of his followers have been handed death sentences, many of them in speedy mass trials that have been condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups.
Erdogan says Turkey 'ready' to fight terrorism in Nigeria

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he was ready to help combat terrorism in Nigeria, where Boko Haram fighters have killed thousands of people in a bloody campaign for a hardline Islamic state.

He also signed a memorandum on trade and economic cooperation, which Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said was "just the beginning of what we have in the pipeline."

Speaking after talks with Buhari in Abuja, Erdogan commiserated with Nigerians fighting insurgents, saying he felt their pain.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (C) walks past a parade of presidential guards, at the presidential Villa in Abuja on March 2, 2016 Philip Ojisua (AFP)

"As a country combating terrorism for a long time now, every reprehensible terrorist attack that takes place here in Nigeria deeply hurts our heart," Erdogan said to reporters at the presidential villa.

"We are always ready to cooperate with Nigeria when it comes to combating terrorism."

Security was a recurring theme in the Turkish leader's stops in Ivory Coast and Ghana ahead of his stay in Nigeria during a tour designed to strengthen economic ties with members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

On Tuesday, Erdogan told Ghana's parliament that Turkey can "contribute tremendously to the establishment of global peace and security."

He will cap off his visit to the region with a stop in Guinea.

Traditionally focussed on North Africa, Turkey in the past decade has paid increasing attention to the fast-growing economies of sub-Saharan Africa.

"Erdogan wants to build a case that Turkey is not just a regional power, but aspires to be a global one," David Shinn, Africa professorial lecturer at The George Washington University, told AFP.

"The primary connection with Africa is commercial, especially investment," Shinn said.

"Turkey can rarely compete head-to-head with China in Africa but can fill niche markets such as small construction projects, smaller manufacturing companies and even some services."

The country has more than tripled its embassies in Africa since 2009 while flag carrier Turkish Airlines has dozens of destinations on the continent.

"Turkey is not currently a major trading partner for either Nigeria or Ghana, nor is Turkey one of the main foreign investors," Cobus de Hart, economist at NKC African Economics in South Africa, told AFP.

"That said, any bilateral agreements that would facilitate increased investment in West Africa would certainly be welcome," he said.

"Nigeria especially would do well to utilise opportunities such as these, with the aim of diversifying the economy away from its dependence on oil."

Nigeria, Africa's number one oil producer, has been hit hard by the slump in oil prices, which has squeezed government revenue and severely weakened the naira currency.

Boko Haram still remains a threat in the country's northeast, where the group has reverted to attacking "soft" civilian targets such as markets, bus stations, and mosques using suicide bombers.

The insurgency has left at least 17,000 people dead since it began in 2009 but over the last year Nigerian forces have recaptured territory lost to the rebels.
Car bomb kills 18 rebels in southern Syria

A car bomb killed at least 18 members of a Western-backed rebel coalition in southern Syria on Wednesday, a monitoring group said.

Four leaders of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front were among the dead after unknown assailants targeted the group in a village in Quneitra province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The rebel coalition, which is also backed by Arab countries including Jordan, is one of the most powerful in Quneitra province along with Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front.

Syrians gather at the site of a double car bomb attack in the Al-Zahraa neighbourhood of Homs, on February 21, 2016

Together with other rebels, it drove Islamic State group jihadists from the province a year ago.

The United States announced in September 2014 it wanted to support and train members of the Syrian Revolutionaries Front.

The alliance was created in late 2013 after the establishment of the Islamic Front which brings together various strains of Islamists.
Ben Carson signals he will withdraw from US election race

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said Wednesday he sees no viable path forward for himself in the 2016 Republican presidential primary race, essentially ending a campaign that soared last year only to steadily lose steam.

"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results," Carson said in a statement, referring to the busiest day of the nomination process that saw 11 states vote for their Republican standard-bearer.

The night was dominated by frontrunner Donald Trump, with Carson finishing fourth or fifth out of five candidates in every state.

Dr. Ben Carson, pictured on March 1, 2016, the only African-American in the race to succeed President Barack Obama, said he will discuss his political future in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference Jessica Kourkounis (Getty/AFP/File)

Carson, 64, said he would not participate in Thursday's Republican debate in his home city of Detroit.

Although his statement made no official mention of shutting down his campaign, it was a clear signal that he was dropping out of the race.

"I appreciate the support, financial and otherwise, from all corners of America," he said. "Gratefully, my campaign decisions are not constrained by finances; rather by what is in the best interests of the American people."

He said he remained committed to "saving America" for future generations, adding that "we must not depart from our goals to restore what God and our founders intended for this exceptional nation."

The religiously conservative Carson, the only African American in the race to succeed President Barack Obama, said he will discuss his political future on Friday in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, near Washington.

The soft-spoken, mild-mannered Carson once rivaled the bombastic Trump in the quest for the nomination. He was the second-place candidate from early September through November, attracting substantial support from evangelical conservatives.

But he struggled to maintain the momentum. Carson's challenge for the White House stumbled over questions about the veracity of aspects of his compelling life story, notably his claim in books and speeches that he had been offered a scholarship to the prestigious West Point military academy.
Tunisia kills five militants near Libyan border

Tunisian security forces killed five militants near the Libyan border on Wednesday in a gunbattle in which one civilian also died and an army commander was wounded, the government said.

Troops had been on alert after receiving reports that militants had slipped across the border over the past three days in response to a US air strike on an Islamic State group training camp in Libya on February 18 that targeted a senior Tunisian commander, the interior ministry said.

The militants were killed after being surrounded by troops in a house in El Aouija, 10 kilometres (six miles) outside the town of Ben Guerdane, the defence ministry said.

Tunisian soldiers stand along the Libyan border on February 6, 2016, near the Ras Jedir crossing point Fethi Belaid (AFP/File)

The army commander was wounded in the head during the operation but was in a stable condition, ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati told AFP.

The civilian was killed by a stray bullet, the interior ministry said in a statement.

Explosive vests, improvised grenades and a large quantity of munitions were recovered from the slain militants, it added.

Search operations were continuing late Wednesday, the defence ministry said.

Tunisia has built a 200-kilometre (125-mile) barrier that stretches about half the length of its border with Libya in an attempt to prevent militants from infiltrating.

A series of deadly attacks by IS on foreign holidaymakers last year, which have dealt a devastating blow to the country's tourism industry, are believed to have been planned from Libya.

Last month's US strike on the IS training camp outside the Libyan city of Sabratha targeted the suspected mastermind of two of the attacks, Noureddine Chouchane.

Washington has said that Chouchane was likely killed along with dozens of other militants.
LAPD shoot blacks, mentally ill disproportionately

LOS ANGELES (AP)  When Los Angeles police officers fire at suspects, their targets are disproportionately black or mentally ill, according to the most comprehensive data on the use of force ever compiled by the department and released to the public Tuesday.

Of the 223 people shot at by Los Angeles police between 2011 and 2015, 77 were black, according to the report. That means 35 percent of those shot at by police were black, while blacks make up just 9 percent of the city's population.

Meanwhile the number of mentally ill people shot by police increased from five in 2014 to 14 last year. The 14 mentally ill people represent 37 percent of all the people shot by Los Angeles police in 2015, according to the report, which the police department presented Tuesday to the city's police commission, a civilian oversight panel.

Protesters interrupt a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, to decry the shooting of a homeless black man by the LAPD exactly one year ago. The protest came the same day the police department released a report showing that when LAPD officers fire at suspects, their targets are disproportionately black and mentally ill. (AP Photo/Amanda Lee Myers)

The report emphasizes that "a vast majority of police interactions with the public do not involve use of force."

In 2015, for example, officers used force 1,924 times among more than 1.5 million contacts with members of the public, or 0.13 percent of the time, according to the report.

Police Chief Charlie Beck told the commission that he hopes the report informs discourse about police use of force.

"This is the framework upon which we will build a discussion that I think needs to happen not only in LA but probably in the whole country," he said.

Capt. John McMahon told the commission it's also important to look at crime and victim statistics for context when looking at the percentage of black people shot by police. For example, he said 42 percent of homicide victims in the city and 39 percent of those arrested for those crimes were black.

"Hopefully that provides some type of backdrop as to why that number is the way it is," McMahon said of the percentage of black people shot at by police. "Obviously that number being lower than overall crime figures  that may be perceived as a good thing, but this department won't rest until we get to zero."

As for the sharp increase in the number of mentally ill people shot by police last year, Beck said there's no one explanation but that overall, officers had more interactions with the mentally ill as the number of homeless people in the city has increased.

He said the department has stepped up training officers on how to handle the mentally ill and on less-than-lethal force options but added that "it's going to take a lot of time" for every officer to get all the additional training needed.

Tuesday's commission meeting was disrupted for several minutes after two dozen protesters stood up when Beck began speaking. They angrily shouted about the death of Charly "Africa" Keunang, a homeless black man shot by Los Angeles police six times a year ago Tuesday.

The commission found the shooting was justified, and Beck has said Keunang grabbed for a rookie police officer's gun after ignoring commands and becoming combative.

Protesters shouted "Can't kill Africa!" while one demonstrator yelled that officers have a "shoot-to-kill policy."

The demonstration grew tense but remained peaceful. Protesters were escorted out of the meeting and no arrests were made.

___

Follow Amanda Lee Myers on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AmandaLeeAP. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/amanda-lee-myers.
Mexico to confront criticisms from US political campaigns

MEXICO CITY (AP)  The Mexican government has come up with a plan to confront criticism of the country during the U.S. presidential campaigns, but it doesn't include getting into verbal duels with the candidates.

The government instead will approach the campaigns of the Republican and Democratic nominees once they are chosen and share information about how the U.S. relationship with Mexico is an opportunity and not a threat, Francisco Guzman, an official in President Enrique Pena Nieto's office, said Tuesday.

Outlining the plan to journalists, he said Mexican consulates in the U.S. have been instructed to start meeting with organizations and public opinion leaders to discuss the contributions Mexicans make to the United States.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump, in particular, has drawn attention in Mexico by talking about Mexican migrants being rapists and bringing drugs to the United States, and he has repeatedly promised to build a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

Two former Mexican presidents struck back at Trump in the past week. Vicente Fox called him crazy and a false prophet, while Felipe Calderon compared Trump to Hitler in the way he plays on people's anxieties.

Guzman said Mexico's current administration will not get into confronting individuals.

"We could win the front page of all the newspapers here or in other places with a swear word and the next day that would not be good for anyone," he said.

"What the government will do is deploy a greater effort to counteract the misinformation about the bilateral relationship, about the contributions of Mexican immigrants to the United States, but in a very neutral way," Guzman added. "It is not to go against one candidate."

Annual trade between the two countries amounts to more than $500 billion.

Guzman's comments came on Super Tuesday in the U.S. with each party's candidates competing in 11 states. He said he expected comments by American candidates to become more moderate as the contest advances.
What We Know: Homicides, shootings double in Chicago

So far this year, Chicago has seen about twice as many homicides and shootings as in the same period in 2015, according to police, and the number of illegal guns seized has dropped. Here's what we know about the crime figures:

___

MORE VIOLENCE: At the end of February, the city had recorded 95 homicides and more than 400 shootings for 2016. Those are double the numbers from last January and February. February alone saw 165 shootings and 43 homicides.

___

FEWER GUN SEIZURES: Police seized at least 110 fewer illegal guns than in the same period last year, a sharp contrast from the administration of former Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who often displayed seized weapons at news conferences. Officers made many fewer street stops, too.

___
Defense disputes murder charge in grandmother's slaying

FREDERICK, Md. (AP)  Blood spatter on a young woman's arms and clothing mark her as the killer of her 67-year-old grandmother, who was stabbed 20 times in the rural Maryland home they shared, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

But Hestina Harris' lawyer said the state has no evidence of a motive and no DNA linking Harris, 20, to the kitchen knife that was used to stab Lillie Morris in the home near Burkittsville they shared with four other family members, including Harris' then-4-month-old daughter, on Dec. 22, 2014.

"She didn't murder her grandmother," Assistant Public Defender Ashley Kemerer told the jury during opening statements. Harris told police she saw a masked man running from the house into the woods after the attack.

This Dec. 24, 2014 photo provided by the Frederick County, Md., Sheriffs Office shows Hestina Harris, who is charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing of her grandmother Lillie Morris. (Frederick County, Md., Sheriffs Office via AP)

Kemerer also seemed to subtly lay a foundation for the insanity argument Harris' lawyers say they'll make if the jury convicts her of first-degree murder. In court filings, they have said they're prepared to call an expert to testify Harris had a psychotic breakdown, disputing a state expert's finding that she is mentally competent and criminally responsible.

She said Harris had "no logical reason to murder her grandmother" and "it just doesn't make any sense."

Assistant State's Attorney Erin Pearl said Harris is a liar whose inconsistent statements to investigators evolved to fit the mounting evidence against her. Harris initially denied having changed clothes that day but after investigators found her bloody T-shirt in a laundry pile, she said her arms and clothing became stained with blood as she embraced her dying grandmother, lying on the lawn outside their home.

Pearl said the evidence doesn't fit that story. She said an expert will testify the bloodstains were spatter, just like those on the home's walls and furniture.

"You will hear an evolving story, a lie that keeps growing," Pearl said. "You will see that the defendant, Hestina Harris, was the one who picked up that kitchen knife and stabbed Lillie Morris over and over again."
Scalia remembered as dad, colleague, friend at memorial

WASHINGTON (AP)  Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia liked to drive fast, maybe too fast. He was a stickler for precise language and pulled no punches in his writing. He was demanding as a father and boss, but he also liked to laugh.

Those were some of the memories shared Tuesday by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas, some of Scalia's nine children and former law clerks at a memorial service for Scalia, who was found dead Feb. 13 at age 79.

Thomas, who sat next to Scalia during oral arguments at the court, said he will miss Scalia's under-his-breath commentary and lunches where he'd order anchovy pizza. When Scalia finished an opinion he was particularly pleased with he would say, "Clarence, you have got to hear this. This is really good," and then give a dramatic reading, Thomas said.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks at the memorial service for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)

Thomas, who delivered a reading at Scalia's Feb. 20 funeral, said Scalia "worked hard to get things right," and that he cared about both broad principles and details like grammar and syntax.

"He was passionate about it all, and it was all important to him," Thomas said during the memorial at the Mayflower Hotel, which all eight justices and several hundred other people attended.

Thomas paused to collect himself at one point in his speech when he quoted from the eulogy for an influential pastor killed by the Nazi regime: "With him, a piece of my own life is carried to the grave."

Ginsburg, Scalia's ideological opposite on the court, remembered Scalia giving her a draft of a dissent she called a "zinger" and how her "final draft was much improved thanks to Justice Scalia's searing criticism." Ginsburg, who became friends with the conservative justice in the early 1980s when they served together as federal appeals court judges, said she will miss his "eminently quotable opinions" and acts of friendship, like bringing her roses on her birthday.

Scalia was no fan of eulogies, and his funeral Mass contained few stories about a larger-than-life personality who served on the court for nearly 30 years. Tuesday's memorial was a time for stories about the justice that were poignant or funny, or both.

His daughter Catherine Courtney remembered her father as someone who always made time for family dinners, was a poor estimator of travel time and commanded burgers to "be juicy" when he grilled. His daughter Mary Clare Murray said that the only way she or her siblings got out of attending church on Sunday was if they were sick and stayed in bed all day.

One of Scalia's former clerks, Joan Larsen, now a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court, remembered Scalia singing in his chambers and whistling in the court's corridors. She said she was once scolded for citing the third edition of Webster's Dictionary; Scalia liked the second edition.

Larsen, who was one of the clerks who stood watch over Scalia's casket at the Supreme Court on the day before his funeral, said that clerks found that the most challenging thing to do while standing there and thinking about him was not to keep from crying but to keep from grinning.

___

Follow Jessica Gresko on Twitter at twitter.com/jessicagresko. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jessica-gresko

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks at the memorial service for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool)
Terror expert describes Islamic State tactics, recruiting

PHOENIX (AP)  An expert for the U.S. Justice Department told a jury in a terror trial on Tuesday that Islamic State targets individual American troops and reaches new recruits through social media.

Terrorism expert Evan Kohlmann testified at the trial of Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, a 44-year-old moving company owner accused of orchestrating a thwarted attack at a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest on May 3 in Garland, Texas.

Two of Kareem's friends, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi, took bulletproof vests and semiautomatic rifles to the event and were killed by a police officer.

Kareem is accused of helping plan the attack and providing support to Islamic State. He denies the allegations.

Kohlmann said Islamic State keeps a list of 100 U.S. military service members whom the group wants attacked.

Authorities have said Simpson accessed the list six weeks before the cartoon contest, and that Simpson and Soofi drove to Yuma and elsewhere in Arizona near military installations after discussing plans to attack a base.

Kohlmann said the name of a service member from Phoenix was written in a notebook found at the apartment of Simpson and Soofi after the Texas attack.

Islamic State wanted the American service members targeted because "they are soldiers of the enemy," he said.

Kohlmann also explained al-Qaida promotional materials that authorities say were found on Kareem's laptop and an attached flash drive. Kareem has denied the flash drive was his.

Kohlmann also gave jurors a short course on influential leaders in al-Qaida and Islamic State; how the groups use social media to recruit followers; and the influence of lectures delivered by violent jihadists such as Anwar al Awlaki.

Authorities have said a copy of "Defense of the Muslim Lands," a book written by Sheik Abdullah Azzam, was found at the Texas scene.

Kohlmann said Azzam's book explains why people should become mujahedeen, or holy warriors, and calls for the liberation of Muslim lands through jihad.

He called Azzam the "godfather of contemporary jihad."
The Latest: San Francisco raises tobacco buying age to 21

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The Latest on an effort to raise the tobacco buying age to 21 in San Francisco (all times local):

3:20 p.m.

San Francisco officials unanimously approved an ordinance boosting the legal age to buy tobacco products from 18 to 21.

A man smokes a cigarette Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in San Francisco. Officials will vote Tuesday on whether to increase the minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 in San Francisco, even as opponents argue that cities and counties cannot trump California law. If the measure is approved, San Francisco would join Boston, New York City and Hawaii in raising the minimum age to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

The ordinance approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday applies to all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. The city joins New York City and Boston in setting the minimum age at 21.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, chief sponsor of the legislation, said raising the age limit will discourage young people from turning into lifelong smokers.

Opponents argue that California law set the age at 18 and that provision prohibits cities and counties from setting a higher limit.

A 2015 report by the Institute of Medicine found that 90 percent of daily smokers first tried a cigarette before age 19.

___

1:50 a.m.

Supervisors in San Francisco are voting Tuesday on whether to increase the minimum age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21, even as opponents argue that cities and counties cannot trump California state law.

The ordinance would apply to all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.

The issue has gained traction nationally as lawmakers try to discourage young people from starting to smoke. A 2015 report by the Institute of Medicine found that 90 percent of daily smokers first tried a cigarette before the age of 19.

Opponents argue that California state law already has a minimum age of 18, and that provision prohibits cities and counties from setting a higher limit.

The minimum age to buy tobacco is 21 in New York City, Boston and Hawaii.
Former US Rep. Cao enters Senate race in Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Another Republican is joining the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana.

Former U.S. Rep. Joseph Cao announced his candidacy Tuesday in a news release.

Cao became the nation's first Vietnamese-American congressman with his unexpected defeated of a scandal-plagued incumbent Democrat, William Jefferson, in 2008. Two years later, he lost the New Orleans-based seat to another Democrat, Cedric Richmond.

FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2010 file photo, U.S. Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, R-La., listens to a question during a debate for Louisiana's 2nd district House seat in New Orleans. Cao announced his candidacy Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in a news release for the U.S. Senate race in Louisiana. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Four other Republicans have announced plans to compete for the seat on the November ballot: U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, U.S. Rep. John Fleming, state Treasurer John Kennedy and retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness.

A Democrat, New Orleans lawyer Caroline Fayard, announced her candidacy a month ago. Another Democrat, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell, has not made a formal announcement but has begun telling news outlets that he will be a candidate.

The seat is being vacated by David Vitter, who announced he would not seek re-election after losing last year's governor's race.

Cao, a soft-spoken attorney, first became known in the New Orleans area as an activist in the Vietnamese community of eastern New Orleans as the area struggled to recover after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In a hurricane-delayed election in 2008, he defeated Jefferson, who would later go to prison for corruption.

Cao's defeat of the once-powerful Jefferson in a strongly Democratic district made him a rising star in the GOP.

So did his compelling life story: As a child, he fled Vietnam with family members ahead of the fall of Saigon.

He broke with the party at times to vote with President Barack Obama. But his votes against the 2009 economic stimulus bill and his eventual vote against Obama's health care legislation didn't play well in the district. Richmond, then a state legislator, defeated him in 2010 to return the seat to the Democrats.
AP News Guide: Decision night, Super Tuesday

WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump scored delegate-rich Super Tuesday victories across the nation as they bid for clearer sailing in a tempest-tossed campaign for the presidential nominations.

Voters in a dozen states put their imprint on the race, and in the bulk of contests rewarded the national front-runners, stretching their leads in delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont scored late-night victories in Colorado and Minnesota, building on wins in Oklahoma and his home state earlier in the night. But he failed to extend his support beyond the younger, white voters that have spurred his challenge against Clinton, still a heavy favorite.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters as she arrives to speak at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Republicans in the main advanced Trump's ambitions. But Ted Cruz won Oklahoma as well as his home state, Texas, and Marco Rubio, the long-promising but underachieving mainstream hope of the Republican Party, won Minnesota for his first victory of the 2016 campaign.

A look at biggest day in the calendar of presidential primaries and caucuses.

THE FRONT-RUNNERS

With some races still unsettled, Clinton won Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts and Arkansas, the state her husband, Bill, served as governor on his way to the presidency.

Trump took Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia and Arkansas.

___

HOW THEY WON

Clinton dominated again with older people and cut into Sanders' support among the 30-to-44 crowd. Sanders had a clear advantage with only one age group: his devoted under-30 followers.

Trump and his rebel yell against the status quo attracted nearly two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House. Those who cared more about political experience split about evenly between first-term Sens. Rubio and Cruz, according to early results of exit polls.

___

WHAT'S THE SCORE?

With results still coming in, Trump had won at least 139 Super Tuesday delegates, while Cruz picked up at least 52. Overall, Trump leads the Republican field with 221 delegates. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Clinton was assured of gaining more than 334 delegates from Super Tuesday, with Sanders getting more than 145. Counting superdelegates, the Democratic insiders who can choose any candidate, Clinton now more than 882 delegates, with more than 232 for Sanders. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.

Clinton has won at least 10 states since the nomination contests began, with Sanders victorious in at least five.

Among Democrats, Trump has won at least nine states, with three for Cruz and one for Rubio.

___

RUBIO'S RUBICON?

For all the endorsements, money and attention rallied behind Rubio as the GOP's only hope to stop Trump, he had yet to win a state before Tuesday and he remains short on time to stage a turnaround.

His home state will be a battleground royale on March 15, with part-time Floridian Trump running hard to knock him out of the race and avenge the lacerating taunts coming almost constantly from the senator since the last debate.

___

EXIT POLLING

In six states (Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas), large majorities of Republican primary voters expressed support for temporarily banning all non-citizen Muslims from entering the U.S., a Trump proposal, according to early results of exit polls.

But Republican voters were more divided on another of his contentious ideas, to deport all people who are in the U.S. illegally. The proposal won majority support only in Alabama, among seven states where that question was asked of GOP voters.

___

VOTERS SAY...

"Ultimately, if we have to elect someone who is borderline crazy to get people to understand what's going on, then that's what we have to do."  Tyler Murphy, 26, of Boston, explaining his vote for Trump in the Republican contest. His backup choice was Clinton, a Democrat.

"I'm so appalled at the choices." Gillian Gattie, 72, also of Boston. After 2008 and 2012 votes for Barack Obama, she was voting this time in the GOP race, for Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

"I can't get excited for Bernie Sanders."  Gillian's twin sister, Vivien Gattie, who reluctantly voted for Clinton.

"I stood in line for six hours the other day at a Trump rally because to me he's just the man. He is the one that is going to make the country great again."  Jeanie Lindsey, in Helena, Alabama.

___

WHY IT MATTERS

Immigration policy, the swollen U.S. debt, the uneven spread of wealth and hard questions about how to approach the Islamic State, terrorism and civil liberties are all in play for voters.

So is the fate of fundamental social policy as the Supreme Court stands ideologically divided. A vacancy may not be filled until after the next president takes office in January.

___

TEXAS AND THE SOUTH

The South enjoyed more influence in this campaign because of several states added to the Super Tuesday roster, giving this subset the nickname "SEC primary," a nod to the Southeastern Conference of college sports. Clinton once again demonstrated her pull with black voters, as she did in overwhelming fashion in South Carolina over the weekend.

The biggest Super Tuesday state overall was Texas, where Cruz prevailed with his home-state advantage, prime endorsements from the governor down the political chain and a veritable army of some 27,000 volunteers.

___

Associated Press writers Phillip Marcelo in Boston, Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, and Jay Reeves in Helena, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, accompanied by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, left, and his son, Eric Trump, third from left, speaks during a news conference on Super Tuesday primary election night in the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, holds his daughter Catherine after speaking during an election night watch party Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Stafford, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Parents drop civil lawsuit in gym mat death of Georgia teen

VALDOSTA, Ga. (AP)  The parents of a south Georgia teenager found dead inside a rolled-up gym mat at school have dropped a wrongful death lawsuit accusing two brothers of killing their son.

Classmates found 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson's body at Lowndes High School in January 2013 and sheriff's investigators concluded he died in a freak accident. Last year, Johnson's parents filed a $100 million civil suit saying he was killed and authorities covered up the crime.

Chevene King, the Johnsons' attorney, told The Valdosta Daily Times (bit.ly/1VPextB) Tuesday the family eventually plans to refile the lawsuit.

FILE- In this Dec. 13, 2013 file photo, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson stand next to a banner on their SUV showing their late son, Kendrick Johnson in Valdosta, Ga. The parents of Kendrick Johnson, who was found dead inside a rolled-up gym mat at school, have dropped a wrongful death lawsuit accusing two brothers of killing their son. Chevene King, the Johnsons attorney, told The Valdosta Daily Times, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, the family eventually plans to refile the lawsuit. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum, File)

Federal prosecutors announced an investigation into Johnson's death in October 2013, but have filed no charges and released no findings.
Ohio school shooting suspect's family says it's 'devastated'

CINCINNATI (AP)  The family of the 14-year-old boy charged in a southwest Ohio school shooting said Wednesday it is "devastated" by his alleged actions and is praying for the quick recovery of the injured students.

The statement also said the family is praying for everyone involved "including Austin, whom we still deeply love."

James Austin Hancock remained held in juvenile detention two days after authorities said he opened fire inside a Madison Local Schools cafeteria. Two students were shot and two others hurt.

Parents run to see if they are allowed to pick up their kids at Madison Local Schools, Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Madison Township in Butler County, Ohio, after a school shooting. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in the school shooting that wounded multiple classmates is in custody. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

"Our family has lived in this community our entire lives and we never expected anyone to experience the event that occurred on Monday, and we certainly did not expect that one of our family members would be involved," said the statement emailed to news organizations by the boy's aunt for "the whole family."

Defense attorney Charles Rittgers confirmed that the statement was on behalf of Hancock's family.

Hancock faces six charges, including two counts of attempted murder. He denied the charges through an attorney in a brief court appearance Tuesday. Butler County authorities are considering whether to seek to move his case to adult court before a juvenile court hearing scheduled for April 5.

The family's statement came the same day Madison Local Schools students returned to classes. School officials said the day went well, although attendance was slightly below normal.

Teachers and staff greeted students as they arrived for school and uniformed police stood by as classes resumed at the campus just west of Middletown. Staffers joined children on their bus rides and had a first-day-of-school style welcome for the district's approximately 1,600 students. Crisis counselors were available, while teachers and other staff lunched with students in the cafeteria where the shooting took place.

"The energy was positive in there," Superintendent Curtis Philpot said about the cafeteria.

Philpot told reporters attendance was at about 90 percent, "a little lower" than usual, and that absences would be excused. Students were sent home with letters with tips and information for their families.

Authorities said all the wounded were recovering from injuries not considered life-threatening.

One of those hurt was Brant Murray, 13, with bullet fragments in a leg. He told reporters Tuesday evening he was sitting at a cafeteria table with friends Cameron Smith, 15, and Cooper Caffrey, 14, who were both shot.

"All of a sudden the kid stood up and started shooting at us, at our table," Murray told WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, adding he just tried to "stay calm and not die. It was just weird; couldn't believe what was happening."

He said he didn't realize he was hurt until he and others ran from the cafeteria into the choir room, where he rolled up a pants leg. His parents said they'll consult with a surgeon on what to do about the bullet fragments.

Murray was among hundreds of people at the Tuesday evening event for a walk-through school officials set up to help families and students feel comfortable about the resumption of classes.

Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said authorities believe they know a motive for the shootings, but aren't discussing it while the investigation continues.

Investigators have said Hancock told other students he had a gun and showed it to one just before the shooting. They said someone was going to tell administrators just before the shooting. They said Hancock got the .380-caliber handgun from a family member some time earlier and that he was carrying extra ammunition.

___

Follow Dan Sewell at http://www.twitter.com/dansewell

To see some of his other recent stories: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-sewell

A child is comforted Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, near Middletown, Ohio after a school shooting at Madison Local Schools. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in a school shooting that wounded four classmates, including two who were shot, is in a juvenile lock-up and facing several charges. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says the boy has been charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, inducing panic and making terrorist threats. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

Butler County Sheriff Deputies stand on the scene at Madison Local Schools, Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Madison Township in Butler County, Ohio, after a school shooting. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in the school shooting that wounded multiple classmates is in custody. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

Butler County Sheriff Deputies stand on the scene at Madison Local Schools, Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Madison Township in Butler County, Ohio, after a school shooting. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in the school shooting that wounded multiple classmates is in custody. (Cara Owsley/The Cincinnati Enquirer via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT; NO SALES

A child is comforted Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Madison Township in Butler County, Ohio after a school shooting at Madison Local Schools. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in the school shooting that wounded multiple classmates is in custody. (Marshall Gorby/Dayton Daily News via AP)

Parents and community members form a prayer circle as they wait to pick up their kids Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in Madison Township in Butler County, Ohio, after a school shooting at Madison Local Schools. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in the school shooting that wounded multiple classmates is in custody. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

A child is comforted Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, near Middletown, Ohio after a school shooting at Madison Local Schools. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in a school shooting that wounded four classmates, including two who were shot, is in a juvenile lock-up and facing several charges. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says the boy has been charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, inducing panic and making terrorist threats. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

A child is comforted Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, near Middletown, Ohio after a school shooting at Madison Local Schools. An Ohio sheriff says a 14-year-old suspect in a school shooting that wounded four classmates, including two who were shot, is in a juvenile lock-up and facing several charges. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones says the boy has been charged with two counts of attempted murder, two counts of felonious assault, inducing panic and making terrorist threats. (Nick Graham/Dayton Daily News via AP)

People look on as James Austin Hancock is arraigned in Butler County Juvenile Court, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Hamilton, Ohio. An Ohio sheriff says Hancock, the 14-year-old suspect in a school shooting that wounded multiple classmates on Monday, is in a juvenile lock-up and facing several charges. (Greg Lynch/The Journal-News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Clinton, Trump widen their leads; Republicans desperate

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republican leaders searched on Wednesday for a last-chance option that could derail Donald Trump's momentum in the presidential nominating contest that gained strength with his seven Super Tuesday victories.

While a Republican split widened between Trump supporters and the party's more establishment mainstream, Democrats showed increasing cohesion as Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, won seven states on the way to regaining her status as the inevitable nominee.

Clinton's dominance with black voters carried her to wins across the South. Still, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders picked up wins in his home state and in Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado, and he vowed to fight on.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters as she arrives to address supporters at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Overshadowed by Trump's wins, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rolled to a close second in the night's delegate count with a victory in his home state. That showing bolstered his case to be the party's Trump alternative, even as rival Florida Sen. Marco Rubio promised to continue his fight. He hopes to win his home state on March 15.

After a poor showing in Republicans contests so far, retired surgeon Ben Carson effectively pulled out of the race, saying he saw no path forward and announcing he would not be at the next Republican debate on Thursday.

The Republican division represents the party's biggest crisis in years, with the prospect of nominating a presidential candidate it can't control. Some party leaders are considering the once unthinkable option of aligning behind the conservative firebrand Cruz, whom many dislike. Others are talking of a contested convention, where none of the candidates has won sufficient delegates in primaries and caucuses to assure nomination.

Some influential power brokers even raise the option of forming a new party.

Republican leaders also fear that a Trump nomination could damage party incumbents in the Senate who could be voted out of office in swing states known to support either major party, costing Republicans their majority in Congress.

An Associated Press delegate count indicates Trump will have to do better in future contests to claim the nomination before the party's July convention. So far, he has won 46 percent of the delegates awarded, and he would have to increase that to 52 percent in the remaining primaries.

The next round of voting in a busy March comes Saturday, with Louisiana's primary, Republican caucuses in Kentucky and Maine, a Democratic caucus in Nebraska and caucuses for both parties in Kansas.

Trump won handily in Super Tuesday primary and caucus states as politically opposite as Massachusetts and Alabama, a sign of his broad, outsider appeal.

Along with Texas, Cruz took neighboring Oklahoma as well as Alaska. Rubio won only liberal Minnesota.

Despite Trump's victories, many Republican leaders remained deeply skeptical he could beat Clinton in a head-to-head matchup in November.

"Ted Cruz is not my favorite by any means," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told CBS. "But we may be in a position where rallying around Ted Cruz is the only way to stop Donald Trump, and I'm not so sure that would work."

The comments came as the #NeverTrump hashtag spread across Twitter.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee four years ago, announced plans to speak on the "state of the 2016 presidential race" Thursday in Utah. The former Massachusetts governor has moved aggressively to take on Trump in recent days, saying the billionaire's unreleased tax returns might contain "bombshells." However, he was not expected to endorse a candidate or announce a late entry into the race himself.

In his victory speech, Trump sent a clear message to the Republican establishment, warning House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had declared earlier Tuesday that "this party does not prey on people's prejudices," that if the two don't get along, Ryan is "going to have to pay a big price."

Trump won at least 234 delegates on Tuesday, and Cruz won at least 209. Rubio was a distant third with at least 90. There were 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states. There were still 40 delegates left to be allocated. Securing the nomination requires 1,237 delegates.

Overall, Trump leads with 316 delegates and Cruz has 226. Rubio has 106 delegates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich has 25 and Carson has eight.

The math was also tough for Sanders. Clinton was assured of winning at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake Tuesday. Sanders gains at least 286. When including party leaders, Clinton has at least 1,005 delegates and Sanders has at least 373. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during an election night watch party Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Stafford, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during a campaign rally, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Andover, Minn. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)
Islamic State group in competition for recruits in Pakistan

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP)  Trying to lure him into the Islamic State group, the would-be recruiter told Pakistani journalist Hasan Abdullah, "Brother, you could be such an asset to the Ummah" the Islamic community. Abdullah replied that he was enjoying life and had no plans to join the jihadis.

"The enjoyment of this life is short-lived. You should work for the Akhira"  the Afterlife, the recruiter pressed.

IS had its eye on Abdullah not because he adheres to any extremist ideology but because, as a journalist, the group believed he could be a boon to its propaganda machine, Abdullah told The Associated Press, recounting his meeting with the recruiter.

FILE--In this Wednesday, May 13, 2015 file photo, people look at a bus with blood-stained seats after 45 people were killed by attackers in Karachi, Pakistan. It was the first appearance of the Islamic State group in Pakistan, in which gunmen targeted Shiites, ordered them to bow their heads, then opened fire. The gunmen left behind a tattered piece of paper proclaiming, Beware ... We have entered the battlefield for retribution and the implementation of Shariah. (AP Photo/Tariq Saleem, File)

His encounter was a sign of how the Islamic State group is looking for sophisticated skills as it builds its foothold in new territory: Pakistan. It is courting university students, doctors, lawyers, journalists and businessmen, and using women's groups for fundraising. It is also wading into fierce competition with the country's numerous other militant groups, particularly the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida in the Subcontinent, the new branch created by the veteran terror network.

Here in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, IS loyalists have set up their strongest presence, carrying out multiple attacks in the past year and setting up networks.

The port city of some 20 million people on the Arabian Sea has always been a favorite for militants to operate. Wealthy districts running on the city's profitable commerce hold potential for fundraising, while the crowded, cramped poorer districts that have spread around the city provide recruits and places to hide. It also gives recruiters links to other parts of the country, since its population is full of people who have migrated from tribal regions or Afghanistan, looking for work.

The Karachi police's top counterterrorism official, Raja Umer Khitab, warns that IS has great potential to grow in Pakistan, not only because of its large reservoir of Sunni extremists but also because of the virulent anti-Shiite sentiment among their ranks. Hatred of Shiites and attacks against them are a keystone of the Islamic State group's ideology and one source of its appeal among some hard-line Sunnis as it set up its self-declared "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria.

IS first announced its presence in Pakistan with a bloody attack in May in Karachi in which gunmen boarded a bus carrying Shiites, ordered them to bow their heads, then opened fire, killing 45. The gunmen left behind a tattered piece of paper proclaiming, "Beware ... We have entered the battlefield for retribution and the implementation of Shariah."

Since then, it has killed more than 35 policemen in targeted attacks, attacked two schools and killed rights activist Sabeen Mehmud, who was gunned down in her car with her mother at her side.

IS was able to expand into two tribal regions near the border with Afghanistan  Bajour and Orakzai  when Taliban leaders there switched allegiance to the Islamic State group. The IS branch in neighboring Afghanistan is also aggressively trying to expand its presence, putting it in direct competition with the Taliban.

The number of IS loyalists in Pakistan is not known. Government officials only recently admitted that they have a presence and insist loyalists here have no known operational links to the IS leadership in Iraq and Syria. Still, in one of the first warnings by an official about IS, intelligence chief Aftab Sultan told a Senate committee earlier this month that hundreds of Pakistanis have gone to fight in Syria, and some are now coming home to Pakistan to recruit.

One way IS militants are trying to recruit and build is through women. One academy for women in Karachi's Baloch Colony neighborhood recruited women by playing IS videos in the classrooms, Khitab told the AP. The 20 female students then reached out to middle-class and wealthy Karachi women, urging them to donate their religious tithes to the IS cause of establishing a caliphate.

Several women were detained, including the wife of a suspected IS operative, and were released after questioning, Khitab said.

IS recruiters have been stalking university campuses. For example, the suspected mastermind in the bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.

A professor at the Institute, Huma Baqai, said there are radicalized professors teaching in some of the country's top universities. They "are using the classrooms to mold (students') minds," she said. "There is no scrutiny in what happens in the classroom."

An intelligence official told the AP that security officials have interrogated several university professors suspected of supporting IS and trying to recruit students. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk to the press.

"Finding people who are willing to strap on a suicide vest and blow themselves up is easy. There are hundreds, thousands," said Abdullah, the journalist. But the educated are a bigger prize. He said he knows two other journalists whom IS tried to enlist. Abdullah said IS probably sought him because he was known from his work writing on extremism in the region and has met many militants personally.

Abdullah said his courtship by IS began when he received a message on social media from someone offering information for him for a story. Abdullah didn't hear from him again until weeks later, when a man using the same name approached Abdullah as he had lunch in a park outside his office. The man told Abdullah he closely followed his writings  then said he was from the Islamic State group. Abdullah quizzed him about militants he knew to verify his claims. Near the end of the conversation, the man noted that many professionals were joining IS.

"This was basically his invitation to me to join their rank," Abdullah said. And the man made his pitch.

Professionals can hold leadership posts or be involved in the group's prolific and powerful propaganda machine, which includes sophisticated videos produced with the latest technology and vigorous use of social media.

Al-Qaida in particular is pursuing a similar caliber of recruits. Khitab said it isn't clear who is winning the competition but there are known instances of al-Qaida militants in Pakistan crossing over to IS. Most notably, Khitab said, al-Qaida operatives Abdullah Yusuf and Tayyab Minhas defected to IS and are believed to have orchestrated much of the group's violence in Karachi.

The past stereotype of a militant as a tribesman from the mountains in traditional garb with bandoliers of ammo slung over his shoulder has been replaced, said analyst Bruce Hoffman, director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

The new generation comes from "well-educated, cosmopolitan, university educated Pakistanis from middle-class backgrounds who can navigate our globalized space whether virtually or physically with facility and confidence." They can use social media, cross borders and fit "seamlessly into global societies."

"They are the new force multipliers of terrorist groups," he said.

_____

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to the report.

FILE--In this Wednesday, May 13, 2015 file photo, people mourn the deaths of their family members, gunned down on a bus in what was the Islamic State group's first appearance here, at a local hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Here in Pakistans largest city, IS loyalists have set up their strongest presence, carrying out multiple attacks the past year and setting up networks. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil, File)

In this photo taken on Friday, Jan. 29, 2016 Hasan Abdullah talks to the Associated Press in Karachi, Pakistan. Abdullah told AP that he was approached by the Islamic State group to join its ranks. The journalist and adviser on militancy to two governments, including one western government, said he knows of two other journalists they sought to enlist in Pakistan. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016, Dr. Huma Baqai, a professor at the the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration talks to the Associated Press in Karachi, Pakistan. Baqai said there are radicalized professors teaching in some of the countrys top universities and they are using the classrooms to mold (students') minds. There is no scrutiny in what happens in the classroom." (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

In this photo taken on Saturday, Jan. 30, 2016 photo, Pakistani students stand in the U.S.-funded Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, Pakistan. Islamic State recruiters have been stalking university campuses. For example, the suspected mastermind in a May 2015 bus attack, Saad Aziz, was a graduate of the Institute of Business Administration. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)
Apple, FBI stake out conflicting positions before Congress

WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. government calls it a "vicious guard dog" that hurts national security. Apple says it's critical to protecting consumer privacy against increasingly sophisticated hackers.

As the debate over built-in iPhone encryption has deadlocked in the courts, law enforcement and the world's second-largest cellphone maker agreed on one point Tuesday: It's now up to Congress to set boundaries in a long-simmering fight over who can legally access your digital life.

"We're asking Apple to take the vicious guard dog away and let us pick the lock," FBI Director James Comey told a House judiciary panel Tuesday, referring to a locked iPhone tied to the deadly December shooting in San Bernardino, California.

Empty reserved chairs are marked before the arrival of FBI Director James Comey, and others, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, prior to the House Judiciary Committee hearing on 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy.' ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

"The FBI is asking Apple to weaken the security of our products," Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell countered later that afternoon.

Tuesday's hearing shifted attention from the courts  where judges in the last month have issued significant but conflicting opinions  to Congress, where both sides say the broader policy debate belongs.

It also provided an extraordinary public forum for the Obama administration and Apple Inc. to stake out competing positions that could have sweeping ramifications. Apple's recent opposition to bypassing security features for the government has pushed that dispute from tech circles into the mainstream.

The strong positions articulated Tuesday make clear the deep divide between Silicon Valley and the government, even as the administration advocates open dialogue and resolution.

"Is it the right thing to make our society overall less safe in order to solve crime?" Sewell asked. "That's the issue that we're wrestling with."

On Monday, a federal judge in Brooklyn said the government couldn't force Apple to help it gain access to the phone in a drug case. U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein said Justice Department attorneys were relying on the centuries-old All Writs Act to "to produce impermissibly absurd results."

But two weeks ago, a different magistrate judge in California, Sheri Pym, directed the company to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone used by one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, which killed 14 people. Apple's lawyers, in court papers filed Tuesday, formally objected to Pym's order, a procedural move intended to ensure an appeal.

With those two conflicting rulings in mind, Congress needs to get involved to address the broader collision between privacy and public safety, Comey said.

The Obama administration last year decided against a legislative fix.

Now, though, "Congress must decide this issue," said Sewell, while also criticizing the U.S. government for simultaneously supporting encryption used by activists and journalists in countries with fewer free-speech rights.

The San Bernardino case involves an iPhone 5C owned by San Bernardino County and used by Syed Farook, who was a health inspector there. He and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, later died in a gun battle with police. The FBI wants specialized software that would bypass security protocols on the encrypted phone so investigators can test random passcode combinations in rapid sequence to access its data.

Should Apple create the specialized software to allow the FBI to hack the iPhone, Comey said it would take 26 minutes to do what's known as a brute force attack  testing multiple passcodes in quick succession.

Comey also acknowledged Tuesday there "was a mistake made" shortly after the San Bernardino attack, when the FBI asked the county  which owned the phone  to reset the password for Farook's iCloud account.

That data, stored on Apple servers, kept backups of his phone. Had the password not been reset, the phone may have made a fresh backup available to investigators for further examination. Still, Comey said, "The experts tell me there's no way we would have gotten everything off the phone from a backup."

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a critic of the administration's domestic surveillance practices, asked Comey whether the FBI had first asked Apple for the underlying iPhone software  called source code by developers  before trying to force the company to create its own digital workaround.

Issa suggested the FBI hadn't exhausted its own efforts before the government went to court. Comey said the government has tried hard to break into iPhones, like the one in California, but he seemed unaware if those methods were successful.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance told the House panel Tuesday that there are 205 phones his investigators can't access in criminal investigations.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said technology is moving toward newer generations of encryption and security, and "we're going to have to figure out a different way to help law enforcement."

Whatever emerges from debate as the legislative response to the controversy will "not change the fact that law enforcement is going to have to change the way it investigates and gathers evidence," said Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican.

Alex Abdo, a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy and technology project, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the larger debate is "ultimately about whether we trust our devices."

"If the government prevails, then there is nothing to stop it from turning every major tech company into a tool of government surveillance," Abdo said. "Companies will be required to spy on, rather than secure, their customers."

___

Associated Press writer Jack Gillum contributed to this report.

___

Follow on Twitter: Eric Tucker at https://twitter.com/etuckerAP and Tami Abdollah at https://twitter.com/latams

FBI Director James Comey is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, prior to testifying before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy.' ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Apple Senior Vice President and General Counsel Bruce Sewell testifies n Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy.' ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on 'The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy.' ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

FILE - In this July 27, 2014 file photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and her husband, Syed Farook, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. A schism has emerged among family members of victims and survivors of the San Bernardino, California terrorist attack, with at least a couple supporting Apple Inc. in its battle against a federal court order to help the FBI hack into a shooters locked iPhone. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection via AP, File)

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter speaks at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Carter discussed encryption at a speech before the Commonwealth Club and referenced Apple's court fight with the government, warning against future policy being determined by any one case and said a law hastily written in "anger or grief" would be the wrong approach. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Exit poll: GOP voters seek change; Dems want Obama sequel

WASHINGTON (AP)  Sorry, Marco Rubio: Republicans seem more interested in finding a presidential candidate who is a change agent or shares their values than selecting somebody who can win in November.

Sorry, Bernie Sanders: Democratic primary voters seem more interested in continuing President Barack Obama's policies than in shifting in a more liberal direction.

Exit polls show Donald Trump piled up victories in Super Tuesday states with strong support from voters who want a candidate who "tells it like it is" and with backing from 4 in 10 voters who want change. Ted Cruz dominated among those looking for a candidate who shares their values. And Rubio led on electability  but only about 1 in 10 GOP voters put a priority on finding a candidate who can win in November.

Republican District 25 Chair Rebecca Mahaney looks over paperwork in a presidential polling place Tuesday, March 1, 2016 in Anchorage, Alaska. Alaska Republicans are poised to decide which of the remaining GOP presidential candidates will get their support. (AP Photo/Michael Dinneen)

Among Democrats, Clinton amassed Super Tuesday victories by drawing support from three-fourths of voters who want a president who will continue Obama's policies. Sanders got 6 in 10 voters who are looking for more liberal policies, but only about 3 in 10 Democratic voters felt that way, according to the exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.

Other highlights from the exit polls:

___

PORTRAIT OF A TRUMP VOTER

Nearly 9 in 10 of Trump's voters are looking for an outsider. Half are angry with the government. Four in 10 want a candidate willing to "tell it like it is." Four in 10 said they were born again, cutting into Cruz's efforts to claim the evangelical vote. Trump, who has professed mutual admiration with "poorly educated voters," was favored by 4 in 10 voters without a college degree. His followers are nothing if not loyal: Nearly 6 in 10 of his voters made up their minds more than a month ago.

___

PORTRAIT OF A CLINTON VOTER

More than 90 percent of Clinton's voters want a candidate with political experience, and four in 10 say experience is the quality they are looking for in a candidate. Two-thirds of her voters want to continue President Barack Obama's policies, rather than shift in a more liberal direction. And, just as with Trump, 6 in 10 of her backers made up their mind more than a month ago. Nearly two-thirds of her supporters are women, and two-thirds are 45 or older.

___

SOUR ON WASHINGTON

GOP voters across the nine Super Tuesday primary states were in a sour mood toward Washington. If they weren't angry, they were dissatisfied: At least 9 in 10 Republican primary voters had negative thoughts toward Washington. Democrats were not quite as critical: Just under 6 in 10 had negative opinions about the federal government.

___

SANDERS' BRIGHT SPOT

Oklahoma turned out to be a rare bright spot for Sanders beyond his home base of Vermont. What was his magic formula so far from home? He held on to the 30-to-44-year-olds who divided their votes about evenly elsewhere on Super Tuesday. Sanders claimed 8 in 10 voters under age 30, and 7 in 10 of those aged 30-44. Clinton got only about half the votes of those 45 and older.

Go figure: Sanders did the best in the night's most liberal state (Vermont) and the least liberal state (Oklahoma), where less than half of Democratic voters described themselves as liberal.

___

CRUZ'S CORNER

With victories in his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, Cruz did well in the two states with voters who were looking for someone who shares their values. More than half of Texas GOP voters who placed importance on shared values, and nearly half of those in Oklahoma, said they voted for Cruz. Cruz also drew support from white born-again Christians, who represented two-thirds of voters in Oklahoma and half of Republicans in Texas. In both states, Cruz was backed by at least 4 in 10 of them.

___

RUBIO'S REALM

In addition to doing well with voters interested in electability, Rubio did well with voters looking for experience. That mattered to about 4 in 10 GOP voters. Late-deciders also were an encouragement to him: More than half of Rubio's supporters were people who made up their minds in the last week, when he went on the offensive to try to take down Trump.

___

CLINTON'S COALITON

Women, blacks and older voters all bolstered Clinton's standing. She showed the same strength among African-Americans that she did in South Carolina, supported by at least 80 percent of black voters in Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas. Black voters made up more than half of voters in both Alabama and Georgia, a third in Tennessee and about a quarter of Virginia and Arkansas. In Texas, where a third of voters were Hispanic, 7 in 10 of them voted for Clinton.

Clinton made inroads on Super Tuesday with young-ish (30-44) voters, nearly 6 in 10 of whom supported her. Sanders, by contrast, had led among all voters under age 45 in the first three contests of the year, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

___

HONESTY v. EXPERIENCE

Democratic voters across each of the nine primary states had very different priorities as they chose between Clinton and Sanders.

Nearly half of Clinton's voters said experience was the quality they were looking for, while only about a fifth or less selected electability, empathy or honesty.

Nearly half of Sanders' voters said honesty was the most important quality and about a third said they were looking for someone who cares.

___

The surveys were conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research as voters left their polling places at 20 to 40 randomly selected sites in nine states holding primary elections Tuesday. Preliminary results include interviews with 821 to 1,491 Democratic primary voters and 536 to 1,943 Republicans primary voters in each state contest. In Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, the results also include telephone interviews early and absentee voters. The results among all those voting in each contest have a margin of sampling error ranging from plus or minus 4 percentage points to plus or minus 5 percentage points.

___

Follow Nancy Benac and Emily Swanson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac and http://twitter.com/EL_Swan

Election workers register participants before the start of the Democratic caucus in Boulder, Colo., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Voters from Vermont to Colorado, Alaska to American Samoa and a host of states in between took to polling places and caucus sites Tuesday, on the busiest day of the 2016 primaries. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)
Greece prepares to help up to 150,000 stranded migrants

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP)  Greece conceded Wednesday it is making long-term preparations to help as many as 150,000 stranded migrants as international pressure on Balkan countries saw Macedonia open its border briefly for just a few hundred refugees.

"In my opinion, we have to consider the border closed," Greek Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas said. "And for as long as the border crossing is closed, and until the European relocation and resettlement system is up and running, these people will stay in our country for some time."

At the moment, some 30,000 refugees and other migrants are stranded in Greece, with 10,000 at the Idomeni border crossing to Macedonia. On Wednesday, hundreds of more people, including many families with small children, continued to arrive at two official camps by the border that are so full that thousands have set up tents in surrounding fields.

Greek police and migrants help a migrant who fainted after being turned back by Macedonian border authorities at the Idomeni crossing because of irregularities in his identity papers, near the northern Greek village of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees Wednesday, leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greek police helped one man who fainted after being turned back by Macedonian authorities. Others waited stoically for rain covers, or food and other essentials in chilling temperatures, some expressing frustration with bureaucratic errors by Greek officials.

Syrian Ramasan Al Hassan said he was stopped from crossing the border after Greek police took down his details wrong, which meant the date of birth on his official papers and passport didn't match.

"I showed Greek authorities my papers  I was born on July 24, 1963  and they recorded my date of birth as Jan. 1, 1963. As a result, I was unable to cross the border ... It's happened to others too," he said, adding that the error was eventually corrected.

Mouzalas, the migration minister, met for several hours with mayors from across Greece, examining ways to ramp up shelter capacity. The ministers of health and education also held emergency talks to provide health care and basic schooling for children, who make up about a third of arrivals in Greece.

Nikos Kotzias, the foreign minister, said the country could handle a capacity of up to 150,000.

"No one in Europe predicted this problem would reach such a giant scale," Kotzias told private Skai television. "But this is not a cause for panic. The problems must be addressed soberly."

Macedonia intermittently opened the border Wednesday, letting hundreds of people in, as European Council President Donald Tusk arrived in the country as part of a tour of the region for talks on the migration crisis.

Tusk, who is due to travel onto Greece and Turkey Thursday, is hoping to ease tension among European Union leaders  notably neighbors Austria and Germany  before they hold a summit on migration on Monday with Turkey.

"We must urgently mobilize the EU and all member states to help address the humanitarian situation of migrants in Greece and along the western Balkan route," he said.

Greece has asked for 480 million euros ($522 million) in emergency aid from the European Union to deal with the crisis.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said he wants to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in aid for the refugee crisis, with 300 million euros ($325 million) paid out this year.

___

Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, Macedonia, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia contributed. Gatopoulos reported from Athens.

___

Follow Kantouris at http://www.twitter.com/CostasKantouris and Gatopoulos at http://twitter.com/dgatopoulos

Greek police and migrants help a man who fainted after being turned back by Macedonian border authorities at the Idomeni crossing because of irregularities in his identity papers, near the northern Greek village of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees Wednesday, leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 tents with refugees and migrants stand at the Greek-Macedonian border near the northern Greek village of Idomeni. Macedonia intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 , leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily. (Vassilis Ververidis/Motion Team via AP) GREECE OUT

Children play at a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Children sit outside at a shelter area for migrants at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A banner is held up that reads: "Who Spreads Fear is a Terrorist", near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, as the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico visits Macedonia. Fico visited the Gevgelija border crossing where Slovak policemen are helping manage the flow of migrants between Greece and Macedonia. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant family walks towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A man sits by the sea, outside a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A man sits covered in a blanket at a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Migrants wait to enter Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant man in a wheelchair enters Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A child holds a prosthetic leg while waiting with others to enter Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija,, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant couple with their children enter Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Refugees wait next to the fence on the Macedonian side of the border as they wait to go back to Greece near southern Macedonia's town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A man sleeps on the ground as refugees and migrants wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

People sleep on railway tracks as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees from Iraq sleep on the ground as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

In this photo taken on Tuesday, March 1, 2016 tents with refugees and migrants stand at the Greek-Macedonian border near the northern Greek village of Idomeni. Macedonia intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees on Wednesday, March 2, 2016 , leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily. (Vassilis Ververidis/Motion Team via AP) GREECE OUT
Super Tuesday takeaways: Trump, Clinton tighten grip

WASHINGTON (AP)  After the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in a dozen states, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had tightened their grasp on their party's presidential nominations.

As Wednesday began, the Democratic establishment was pleased. The Republican establishment was in panic mode.

GOP governors and sitting senators across the nation feared aloud that Trump was close to an insurmountable delegate lead, with little sign that Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz was emerging as the clear Trump alternative.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Here are the top takeaways from Super Tuesday:

___

TRUMP SURGES

The billionaire businessman did not sweep Super Tuesday, but he turned in another dominant performance nonetheless.

Trump won seven of the 11 states in which Republicans voted. He charged past days of insults from Sen. Marco Rubio and intense criticism from leading Republican officials across the nation. The strong performance adds to his delegate lead, and the unfortunate reality for GOP leaders is that his grasp on the party's presidential nomination is growing stronger by the day.

The establishment's last opportunity to stop the former reality television star is likely a series of winner-take-all states on March 15. But given Trump's dominance so far, there's little reason to believe he will struggle, especially as his Republican rivals continue to divide the rest of the electorate.

___

CLINTON BUILDS DELEGATE LEAD

Strong in the South, Hillary Clinton used the Super Tuesday contests to build an advantage over Bernie Sanders that will be difficult to overcome.

When added to her massive lead among the party's superdelegates, Clinton is now in as strong a position to win the Democratic nomination as she's ever been.

Her sweeping victories in large states like Texas, Virginia and Georgia give her an edge that is reminiscent of Barack Obama's delegate lead over Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Obama used a South Carolina victory to build momentum in Super Tuesday and never relinquished his advantage.

Clinton is poised to do the same.

With large states like Florida, Illinois and Ohio looming on the calendar, she is poised to parlay victories that could elevate her to presumptive nominee status.

___

DESPERATELY SEEKING ANTI-TRUMP

It was a very bad night for the Republican establishment, which is desperately seeking one candidate to emerge as the leading Trump alternative.

That's why no one was happier than Trump to see both Cruz and Rubio score wins Tuesday night.

With Rubio's sights set on Florida's March 15 election, the wins all but ensure that both candidates will continue to fight for the anti-Trump mantle for the foreseeable future. It didn't matter that Cruz dramatically underperformed his original Super Tuesday expectations, or that Rubio's win in Minnesota was his first in 15 contests.

Cruz declared Tuesday night that only he can defeat Trump. Rubio declared that his Trump attacks have only begun.

Meanwhile, Trump started talking about unifying the GOP in the general election.

___

SANDERS STRUGGLING TO BREAK THROUGH

Sanders picked up at least four wins on Super Tuesday, taking the stage early in the evening to celebrate his victory in his home state of Vermont.

On a night that could have been worse, however, his inability to broaden his base was on painful display.

A week after a South Carolina shellacking fueled by his struggle with black voters, Sanders continued to have difficulty drawing minorities. The performance raised new questions about whether he can put together a diverse coalition to capture the Democratic nomination. Most of Sanders' wins have come in states with large populations of white voters.

Sanders is vowing to take his campaign to the Democratic National Convention in July.

But his limited appeal with the diverse set of voters who twice elected Obama will make it difficult to seize the nomination.

__

CARSON, WHY?

It's unclear why Ben Carson is still in the 2016 race.

The retired neurosurgeon picked up only three of the 595 delegates up for grabs Tuesday.

He exceeded most peoples' expectations by outlasting the likes of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Scott Walker. But Carson risks tarnishing his image further by staying in a race he has no chance of winning.

___

Follow Steve Peoples on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sppeoples

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kthomasdc

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters as she arrives at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Dena Cottle of Virginia Beach, left, Gary C. Byler, center, and Maria Williams, 74, celebrate as GOP Donald Trump is announced as the winter in Virginia at Pembroke Pizza in Virginia Beach, Va., on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. The party is organized by GOP activist Byler. Voters from Vermont to Colorado, Alaska to American Samoa and a host of states in between took to polling places and caucus sites Tuesday, on the busiest day of the 2016 primaries. (The' N. Pham/The Virginian-Pilot via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
German court rejects far-right party's call to drop ban case

BERLIN (AP)  Germany's highest court has rejected a call from a far-right party to drop the case for its prohibition.

The Federal Constitutional Court is considering a bid by Parliament's upper house to outlaw the National Democratic Party, which officials accuse of promoting a racist, anti-Semitic and anti-democratic agenda.

It's the second attempt at a ban. In 2003, the court rejected a previous application because paid government informants within the group were partially responsible for evidence against it.

The Second Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court, including Peter M. Huber, Peter Mueller, chairman Andreas Vosskuhle, Herbert Landau and Monika Hermanns, from left, stand in the courtroom in Karlsruhe, southern Germany, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Germany's highest court on Tuesday begins three days of hearings on a bid by state governments to ban the country's biggest far-right party, the National Democratic Party, NDP. (Marijan Murat/dpa via AP)

Officials say there are no longer informants in the party, but its lawyer argued there was no evidence of that and sought the case's closure.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP)  The Latest on Europe's migration crisis (all times local):

2:20 p.m.

The European Union's head office wants to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to deal with the refugee crisis.

A migrant family walks towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides says Wednesday that 300 million euros ($325 million) would be earmarked for this year and be used "where it is most needed," alluding to Greece and the nations along the Balkan trail that refugees use to move into the heartland of the 28-nation bloc The overall total would cover three years.

Stylianides says the funds would not be diverted from aid programs aimed at non-EU nations.

His proposal will still need to be approved by the European parliament and the member states. EU leaders meet Monday for a summit focusing on the migration issue.

___

1:40 p.m.

Macedonia has intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily.

The border bottleneck has left at least 25,000 people stranded in Greece, the first European country that migrants reach in smuggling boats from Turkey. As the prosperous but divided continent flails in search of a solution to the migration crisis, individual countries led by Austria have imposed refugee caps that have caused a domino effect down the Balkan migrant corridor, which was traversed by a million people over the past year.

Greek police say Macedonian police opened the Idomeni crossing at midnight Tuesday and at 7 a.m. Wednesday, each time for two hours. They admitted a total of 170 people from Syria and Iraq  the only nationalities allowed to continue north.

Macedonia says it will only allow in as many refugees as Serbia, its northern neighbor, accepts each day.

___

Testorides reported from Skopje, Macedonia. Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed.

___

Follow Kantouris at http://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos

A family walks towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A family walk towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant man in a wheelchair enters Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant mother feeds her baby after she entered Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant couple with their children enter Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Refugees wait next to the fence on the Macedonian side of the border as they wait to go back to Greece near southern Macedonia's town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A man sleeps on the ground as refugees and migrants wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

People sleep on railway tracks as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees from Iraq sleep on the ground as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A Greek police officer checks registration papers as refugees crowd to cross the border from the Greek side to Macedonia at the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees crowd before crossing the border from the Greek side to Macedonia at the northern Greek border station of Idomeni Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees stand near makeshift fires as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees stand near a makeshift fire as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A woman lays down in a tent as refugees and migrants wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni on, Tuesday, March, 1 2016. Some 7,000 migrants, including many from Syria and Iraq, are crammed into a tiny camp at the Greek border village of Idomeni, and hundreds more are arriving daily. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Bart Kowalski, a Polish member of the search and rescue team from the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), a Malta-based organization, aimed to rescue migrants on sea, uses the binoculars to scan the sea as he stands on the deck of the rescue vessel patrolling between the eastern Greek Island of Agathonisi and Turkish shores, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Border restrictions further north in the Balkans have left thousands of refugees and other migrants stranded in Greece, unable to seal its lengthy sea border with Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A stranded migrant asks for food as he sits behind a fence reinforced with razor wire, on the border line with Greece near the southern Macedonia's town of Gevgelija, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Thousand of refugees and migrants wait to cross from Greece to Macedonia to continue their journey to central and northern Europe.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
UN approves toughest sanctions on North Korea in 20 years

UNITED NATIONS (AP)  The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, reflecting growing anger at Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity.

The United States and China, North Korea's traditional ally, spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions, which include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang; and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea fired short-range projectiles into the sea just hours after the sanctions were approved.

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi, right, talks with United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power before a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The U.S., its Western allies and Japan pressed for new sanctions that went beyond the North's nuclear and missile programs but China was reluctant to impose measures that could threaten the stability of the neighboring country and cause its economy to collapse. Nonetheless, Beijing did agree to several measures aimed at shutting down financing for nuclear and missile programs.

"The international community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these dangerous programs and choose a better path for its people," President Barack Obama said in a statement.

North Korea started off the new year with what it claims was its first hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6 and launched a satellite on a rocket on Feb. 7. The launch was condemned by much of the world as a test of banned missile technology.

North Korea ignored the chance to address the Security Council and a spokesman for the country's U.N. mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But South Korea's Defense Ministry said North Korea fired several short-range projectiles into the sea on Thursday, just hours after the sanctions were approved.

The North's launches also came shortly after Seoul approved its first legislation on human rights in North Korea. The South Korean bill's passage was ahead of the Security Council's approval of the sanctions.

Defense spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said the projectiles were fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, and authorities were trying to determine whether the projectiles were missiles, artillery or rockets.

On Monday, the official KCNA news agency published a commentary saying "it is nothing but a pipe dream for the U.S. to expect the DPRK to collapse due to 'sanctions.' This is as foolish as waiting the missions of the sun and stars to come to an end." DPRK are the initials of the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

China, Russia and others expressed hope Wednesday that the sanctions will lead to the immediate resumption of six-party talks aimed at the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. North Korea withdrew from the talks in 2008.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that "by shutting down, as much as possible, the financing of DPRK's nuclear-ballistic programs, the idea is to ensure the return to the table of negotiations all the interested parties."

The resolution bans the export of coal, iron and iron ore being used to fund North Korea's nuclear or ballistic missile programs but not for general economic use. It prohibits all exports of gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth minerals and bans aviation fuel exports to the country, including "kerosene-type rocket fuel."

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said it's estimated that the DPRK earns approximately $1 billion annually from coal  a third of its export income  and at least $200 million a year from iron ore exports.

In the financial and banking sector, countries are required to freeze the assets of companies and other entities linked to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

The resolution also prohibits all countries from opening new branches, subsidiaries and representative offices of North Korean banks, and bans financial institutions from establishing new joint ventures or establishing or maintaining correspondent relationships with these banks. It orders countries to close all North Korean banks and terminate all banking relationships within 90 days.

The resolution stresses that the new measures are not intended to have "adverse humanitarian consequences" for civilians, the majority of whom face economic hardships and food shortages.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said that "part of the perverse reality that has no equal in this world" is that North Korea prioritizes its nuclear and ballistic missile programs over the basic needs of its own people.

South Korea's U.N. Ambassador Oh Joon said North Korea's six missile tests and four nuclear tests, according to some estimates, have cost at least $4 billion. Meanwhile, he said, the U.N. is spending a little over $100 million annually on humanitarian aid to the country.

"It pains all of us to think about how the regime has been developing weapons while people were starving, how the human potential has been wasted away in North Korea," Oh said.

Under the previous four rounds of U.N. sanctions imposed since the country's first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea is banned from importing or exporting nuclear or missile items and technology as well as luxury goods. The new resolution expands the list of banned items, adding luxury items such as expensive watches, snowmobiles, recreational water vehicles and sports equipment, and lead crystal.

It also adds 16 individuals, 12 "entities" including the National Aerospace Development Agency which was responsible for February's rocket launch, and 31 ships owned by the North Korean shipping firm Ocean Maritime Management Company to the sanctions blacklist. That requires the freezing of assets and, in the case of individuals, a travel ban as well.

Initially there were 17 individuals on the list, but diplomats said Russia insisted on dropping Jang Song Chol, the Russia representative of the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation. An annex to the resolution on "Items, Materials, Equipment, Goods and Technology" that can be used in missile and nuclear activities was also eliminated at Russia's insistence, diplomats said.

The resolution also bans Pyongyang from chartering vessels or aircraft, and call on countries to "de-register" any vessel owned, operated or crewed by the North.

As with previous resolutions, the test will be whether U.N. member states enforce the sanctions. A U.N. panel of experts monitoring the sanctions has repeatedly pointed out that enforcement in a significant number of cases has been weak.

Power, the U.S. ambassador, said North Korea will undoubtedly "try to drive a truck through any loophole they find," but she expressed confidence that the resolution eliminated them.

The United Nations Security Council votes on a resolution during a meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

United States ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power votes on a resolution during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi, left, and Russian ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin confer before the U.N. Security Council voted to approve a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, Wednesday, March 2, 2016 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

South Korean ambassador to the United Nations Oh Joon, right, United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, center, and Japanese ambassador to the U.N. Motohide Yoshikawa speak to members of the media after a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin, right, votes on a resolution during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

South Korean ambassador to the United Nations Oh Joon, right, United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, center, and Japanese ambassador to the U.N. Motohide Yoshikawa speak to reporters after a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

South Korean ambassador to the United Nations Oh Joon, left, United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, right, and Japanese ambassador to the U.N. Motohide Yoshikawa speak to reporters after a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

South Korean ambassador to the United Nations Oh Joon, right, United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, left, and Japanese ambassador to the U.N. Motohide Yoshikawa speak to reporters after a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi, left, and Egypt ambassador to the U.N. Abdellatif Aboulatta, right, vote on a resolution during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi, speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin speaks after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, Wednesday, March 2,2016 at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

South Korean ambassador to the United Nations Oh Joon speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

British ambassador to the United Nations Matthew Rycroft speaks after a vote during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

United States ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, right, and British ambassador to the U.N. Matthew Rycroft vote on a resolution during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

United States ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power speaks after a vote during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi speaks after a vote during a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Japanese ambassador to the United Nations Motohide Yoshikawa, left, talks with United States ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power before a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi, right, talks with Russian ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin before a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Japanese ambassador to the United Nations Motohide Yoshikawa, right, talks with Russian ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin before a Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. The U.N. Security Council voted Wednesday on a resolution that would impose the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
AP News Guide: Super Tuesday's finishers by the numbers

WASHINGTON (AP)  Super Tuesday was a big night for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, while Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz won their home states and a little more. About a quarter of Americans had their say in the second-biggest day on the presidential election calendar.

___

THE FRONT-RUNNERS

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters as she arrives to speak at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Clinton won Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts and Arkansas, the state her husband, Bill, served as governor on his way to the presidency.

Sanders won Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and home state Vermont, maintaining a credible challenge to Clinton in the Democratic race but failing to broaden his appeal with minority voters who are crucial to the party in presidential elections.

Trump took Alabama, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas and Vermont, showing geographic breadth in 2016's first truly national contest and cementing his Republican front-runner status.

Ted Cruz won Oklahoma as well as his home state, Texas, and Alaska. Marco Rubio, the underachieving mainstream hope of the Republican Party, won Minnesota for his first victory of the campaign.

___

THE SCORE

Clinton and Trump both won a majority of Super Tuesday delegates.

Her wins in seven states earned her at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake for the evening. Sanders was on track to win at least 286. Including superdelegates, Democratic insiders who can choose any candidate, Clinton now has at least 1,005 delegates in the overall AP delegate count, with at least 373 for Sanders. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.

With results in, Trump had won at least 203 Super Tuesday delegates, while Cruz picked up at least 144. Overall, Trump leads the Republican field with 285, Cruz has 161 and Rubio 87. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination

Clinton has won at least 10 states since the nomination contests began, with Sanders victorious in at least five.

Among Republicans, Trump has won at least nine states, with three for Cruz and one for Rubio.

___

HOW THEY WON

Clinton dominated again with older people and generally cut into Sanders' support among the 30-to-44 crowd. Sanders had a clear advantage with only one age group: his under-30 followers.

Trump and his shouting against the status quo attracted nearly two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House. Those who cared more about political experience split about evenly between Rubio and Cruz, according to early results of exit polls.

___

EXIT POLLING

In six states (Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas), large majorities of Republican primary voters expressed support for temporarily banning all non-citizen Muslims from entering the U.S., a Trump proposal, according to early results of exit polls.

But Republican voters were more divided on another of his contentious ideas, to deport all people who are in the U.S. illegally. The proposal won majority support only in Alabama, among seven states where that question was asked.

___

Associated Press writers Phillip Marcelo in Boston, Betsy Blaney in Lubbock, Texas, and Jay Reeves in Helena, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, accompanied by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, left, and his son, Eric Trump, third from left, speaks during a news conference on Super Tuesday primary election night in the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, holds his daughter Catherine after speaking during an election night watch party Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Stafford, Texas. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
The Latest: Austria: Bulgarian convicted of human smuggling

THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP)  The Latest on Europe's migration crisis (all times local):

7:35 p.m.

A Bulgarian national arrested after Austrian police found 20 migrants packed into the nearly airtight back of his truck has been found guilty of human smuggling and sentenced to five years in prison.

A migrant family walks towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Austrian broadcaster ORF cited police as testifying that they found 20 Syrian, Iranian and Afghan nationals pressed tightly against each other in a shared space of less than 7 square meters (about 7 square yards) when they stopped the refrigeration truck in August.

The court in the city of Linz, west of Vienna, didn't identify the 41-year-old, in keeping with Austrian confidentiality laws. He was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty.

The truck was stopped only after a chase in which two patrol cars were rammed, injuring one officer.

___

5:35 p.m.

EU Council President Donald Tusk says the first priority in the European migrant crisis is to stem the flow and reduce illegal migration, while helping Greece and Macedonia where thousands of migrants have been stranded.

Tusk said Wednesday in Croatia the EU must restore the implementation of its Schengen rules that grant free movement inside the bloc's borderless zone, but envisage entry control on the outer rim.

Tusk says EU member states should "refuse entry to third-country nationals who do not meet the necessary conditions or who, although they were able to do so earlier, did not apply for asylum."

Tusk was visiting the nations along the so-called Balkan migrant corridor where tensions have risen over migrant pileup. Tusk says the crisis is pushing the EU "to the limits."

___

3:20 p.m.

The U.N. refugee agency is praising Greece's effort to take in refugees while scolding some of its European neighbors for suddenly slamming shut their borders and not keeping their promises  causing a "looming humanitarian crisis" on the continent.

UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said 25,000 people have been stranded in Greece after neighboring Macedonia and other European countries closed their borders to refugees, many trying to reach more welcoming countries like Germany and Sweden.

That's caused a backlog with some 1,800 people  mostly Syrians and Iraqis  pouring into Greece from Turkey across the Aegean each day.

Fleming said Wednesday that only 325 people have been relocated under a European Union agreement last year in which members pledged to relocate 160,000. So far, 1,539 places have been made available.

____

3:05 p.m.

Germany says the number of migrants coming across the border with Austria daily is now in the hundreds, a sharp reduction from last fall.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said Wednesday that while the figure fluctuates greatly "lately it's been in mid-three digits."

The drop from several thousand migrants daily last year is partly due to the closure of land borders along the so-called Balkan migration route to Germany. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Berlin now plans to step up its efforts to warn migrants of the financial and health risks they are taking on when they set out for Germany.

Information campaigns in the migrants' home and transit countries will also note that "many of them won't have a realistic chance of staying here in Germany."

___

2:20 p.m.

The European Union's head office wants to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to deal with the refugee crisis.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides says Wednesday that 300 million euros ($325 million) would be earmarked for this year and be used "where it is most needed," alluding to Greece and the nations along the Balkan trail that refugees use to move into the heartland of the 28-nation bloc The overall total would cover three years.

Stylianides says the funds would not be diverted from aid programs aimed at non-EU nations.

His proposal will still need to be approved by the European parliament and the member states. EU leaders meet Monday for a summit focusing on the migration issue.

___

1:40 p.m.

Macedonia has intermittently opened its border with Greece to a tiny trickle of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, leaving about 10,000 more people camped on the Greek side, with more arriving daily.

The border bottleneck has left at least 25,000 people stranded in Greece, the first European country that migrants reach in smuggling boats from Turkey. As the prosperous but divided continent flails in search of a solution to the migration crisis, individual countries led by Austria have imposed refugee caps that have caused a domino effect down the Balkan migrant corridor, which was traversed by a million people over the past year.

Greek police say Macedonian police opened the Idomeni crossing at midnight Tuesday and at 7 a.m. Wednesday, each time for two hours. They admitted a total of 170 people from Syria and Iraq  the only nationalities allowed to continue north.

Macedonia says it will only allow in as many refugees as Serbia, its northern neighbor, accepts each day.

___

Testorides reported from Skopje, Macedonia. Nicholas Paphitis in Athens.

___

Follow Kantouris at http://www.twitter.com/dgatopoulos

A family walks towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A family walk towards a registration camp after entering Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant man in a wheelchair enters Macedonia from Greece, near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant mother feeds her baby after she entered Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A migrant couple with their children enter Macedonia from Greece near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Refugees wait next to the fence on the Macedonian side of the border as they wait to go back to Greece near southern Macedonia's town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Macedonia is restricting the entry of refugees to match the number of those leaving the country, allowing in only refugees from Syria and Iraq, in response to bottlenecks further up along the Balkans migrant route. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

A man sleeps on the ground as refugees and migrants wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

People sleep on railway tracks as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees from Iraq sleep on the ground as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A Greek police officer checks registration papers as refugees crowd to cross the border from the Greek side to Macedonia at the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees crowd before crossing the border from the Greek side to Macedonia at the northern Greek border station of Idomeni Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees stand near makeshift fires as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Refugees stand near a makeshift fire as they wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A woman lays down in a tent as refugees and migrants wait to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni on, Tuesday, March, 1 2016. Some 7,000 migrants, including many from Syria and Iraq, are crammed into a tiny camp at the Greek border village of Idomeni, and hundreds more are arriving daily. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Bart Kowalski, a Polish member of the search and rescue team from the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS), a Malta-based organization, aimed to rescue migrants on sea, uses the binoculars to scan the sea as he stands on the deck of the rescue vessel patrolling between the eastern Greek Island of Agathonisi and Turkish shores, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Border restrictions further north in the Balkans have left thousands of refugees and other migrants stranded in Greece, unable to seal its lengthy sea border with Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A stranded migrant asks for food as he sits behind a fence reinforced with razor wire, on the border line with Greece near the southern Macedonia's town of Gevgelija, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. Thousand of refugees and migrants wait to cross from Greece to Macedonia to continue their journey to central and northern Europe.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A doll lies in the mud at a refugee camp in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni on, Tuesday, March, 1 2016. Some 7,000 migrants, including many from Syria and Iraq, are crammed into a tiny camp at the Greek border village of Idomeni, and hundreds more are arriving daily. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Children sit outside at a shelter area for migrants at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Children play at a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

Newly arrived migrant children peer form behind the tinted window of a bus driving migrants to a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A woman tries to comfort a crying child at a shelter area for migrants at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A member of the Swedish Sea Rescue Society organisation, targeted to rescue migrants at sea, walks on the team's speedboats as they visit the rescue vessel MOAS, Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a Malta-based organization, also aimed to rescue migrants on sea, patrolling on the Aegean Sea, between the eastern Greek Island of Agathonisi and Turkish shores, Wednesday, March 2, 2016.The Greek government said it has requested 480 million euros in aid for the refugee crisis from the EU, under an emergency plan that foresees about 100,000 people being stranded in the country. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Dr. Alessandra Milazzo, centre, of Italy, a member from MOAS, Migrant Offshore Aid Station, a Malta-based organisation, aimed to rescue migrants at sea, places ice on the head of Jan Pontho, 50, right, of Sweden, a crew member of the Swedish Sea Rescue Society organisation, targeted also to rescue migrants on sea, during a visit at the MOAS rescue vessel, patrolling on the Aegean Sea, between the eastern Greek Island of Agathonisi and Turkish shores, Wednesday, March 2, 2016.VThe Greek government said it has requested 480 million euros in aid for the refugee crisis from the EU, under an emergency plan that foresees about 100,000 people being stranded in the country. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

A man sits by the sea, outside a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A banner is held up that reads: "Who Spreads Fear is a Terrorist", near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, as the Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico visits Macedonia. Fico visited the Gevgelija border crossing where Slovak policemen are helping manage the flow of migrants between Greece and Macedonia. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Migrants stand in front of their dwelling facing French riot police in a makeshift camp near Calais, France, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

A man sits covered in a blanket at a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
Super Tuesday takeaways: Trump, Clinton tighten their grip

WASHINGTON (AP)  After the Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses in a dozen states, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have tightened their grasp on their party's presidential nominations.

The Democratic establishment is pleased. The Republican establishment is in panic mode.

Republican governors and senators across the country worry that Trump is close to an insurmountable delegate lead, with little sign that Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz is emerging as the clear Trump alternative.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Here are the top takeaways from Super Tuesday:

___

TRUMP SURGES

The billionaire businessman won seven of the 11 states in which Republicans voted. The strong performance adds to his delegate lead, and the unfortunate reality for Republican leaders is that his grasp on the party's presidential nomination is growing stronger by the day.

The establishment's last opportunity to stop the former reality television star is likely a series of winner-take-all states on March 15. But given Trump's dominance so far, there's little reason to believe he will struggle, especially as his Republican rivals continue to divide the rest of the electorate.

___

CLINTON BUILDS DELEGATE LEAD

Strong in the South, Hillary Clinton used the Super Tuesday contests to build an advantage over Bernie Sanders that will be difficult to overcome.

When added to her massive lead among the party's superdelegates, party insiders who can vote for whoever they like, Clinton is now in as strong a position to win the Democratic nomination as she's ever been.

Her sweeping victories in large states like Texas, Virginia and Georgia give her an edge that is reminiscent of Barack Obama's delegate lead over Clinton in the 2008 primaries. Obama used a South Carolina victory to build momentum in Super Tuesday and never relinquished his advantage.

Clinton is poised to do the same. With large states like Florida, Illinois and Ohio coming up, she is poised to collect victories that could elevate her to presumptive nominee status.

___

DESPERATELY SEEKING ANTI-TRUMP

It was a bad night for the Republican establishment, which is desperately seeking one candidate to emerge as the leading Trump alternative.

No one was happier than Trump to see both Cruz and Rubio score wins Tuesday night.

With Rubio's sights set on Florida's March 15 election, it seems certain that both candidates will stay in the race. It didn't matter that Cruz dramatically underperformed his original Super Tuesday expectations, or that Rubio's win in Minnesota was his first in 15 contests.

Cruz declared Tuesday night that only he can defeat Trump. Rubio declared that his Trump attacks have only begun.

Meanwhile, Trump started talking about unifying the Republicans in the general election.

___

SANDERS STRUGGLES TO BREAK THROUGH

Sanders picked up at least four wins on Super Tuesday, but his inability to broaden his base was on display.

Sanders continued to have difficulty drawing minorities. The performance raised new questions about whether he can put together a diverse coalition to capture the Democratic nomination. Most of Sanders' wins have come in states with large populations of white voters.

Sanders is vowing to take his campaign to the Democratic National Convention in July. But his limited appeal with the diverse set of voters who twice elected Obama will make it difficult to seize the nomination.

___

Follow Steve Peoples on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sppeoples

Follow Ken Thomas on Twitter at http://twitter.com/kthomasdc

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reacts to supporters as she arrives at her Super Tuesday election night rally in Miami, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Dena Cottle of Virginia Beach, left, Gary C. Byler, center, and Maria Williams, 74, celebrate as GOP Donald Trump is announced as the winter in Virginia at Pembroke Pizza in Virginia Beach, Va., on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. The party is organized by GOP activist Byler. Voters from Vermont to Colorado, Alaska to American Samoa and a host of states in between took to polling places and caucus sites Tuesday, on the busiest day of the 2016 primaries. (The' N. Pham/The Virginian-Pilot via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Image of Asia: Protesting in front of water cannons in India

In this photo by Altaf Qadri, a supporter of the opposition Congress Party holds a portrait of Indian independence leader and renowned pacifist Mohandas K. Gandhi as police use water cannons to stop thousands of protesters from marching through New Delhi's center to rally in front of the Indian Parliament. The crowd was protesting recent comments made in the assembly by Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani suggesting that a university in the Indian capital was a hotbed of anti-national thought and activity. The university has been at the center of nationwide protests against the arrest of its student union leader on sedition charges.
Turtles are key as Kenya balances ecology and development

WATAMU, Kenya (AP)  A turtle drags itself along a white sandy beach, splashes through the gentle warm Indian Ocean and then vanishes with a plop, becoming one of 13,750 turtle success stories on a stretch of Kenyan coastline facing pressure from developers.

Kenya is striving to strike a balance between developing its 330 miles (530 kilometers) of coastline for a billion-dollar tourism industry that employs a half-million people and preserving the environment that attracts those visitors. As the East African nation does so, some experts say that turtles are key, because they are so picky when it comes to laying eggs that if the right environment is maintained for them, then things are going well.

Kenya's record is mixed in protecting endangered turtles, but is going pretty well, a top wildlife official says.

In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 photo, an endangered turtle is released back into the warm waters of Watamu on Kenyas coast. Kenya is striving to strike a balance between developing its 330 miles (530 kilometers) of coastline for a billion-dollar tourism industry that employs a half-million people and preserving the environment that attracts those visitors. (AP Photo/ Ilya Gridnnef)

One of several sore spots for conservationists and locals  and not least of all, the turtles  is a hotel of former Renault F1 tycoon Flavio Briatore, 25 kilometers (16 miles) north of here.

The dispute centers around Briatore's Billionaire Resort on Malindi beach and its 100-meter concrete seawall to protect the property and guests from the elements.

Malindi resident David Kirk said the resort has been an "absolute environmental disaster," in which forests full of nesting birds were destroyed and soil erosion because of the seawall had stopped turtles from coming ashore to lay eggs.

Resort general manager Stephanie Ravessoud said the seawall was built following all government requirements and respects the environment.

"Erosion has been there for decades. Everybody knows that sand in our area is being washed away long before the building of our wall," she said.

Marine biologist Casper Van de Geer said turtles need quiet, sandy beaches to lay eggs and large tourist resorts or housing developments disturb that process.

"Light and noise scare them off," he said. "They lay their eggs above the high water mark. The nest has to be warm and above the water, so erosion affects that."

Local Ocean Trust runs a rehabilitation center in Watamu that Van de Geer manages where sick or injured turtles are nursed back to health. The group also compensates local fishermen for turtles caught in their nets or found sick or injured.

"A big adult turtle can fetch up to $500 on the black market," Van de Geer said. "Fisherman earn about $100 a month, in a good month. So one turtle is almost half a year of work

"Turtle conservation is crucial because it also protects the habitat for thousands of other species, including sharks, dolphins and whales," Van de Geer said. "By protecting turtles you are protecting beaches, mangroves, open ocean, reefs and sea grass, which is virtually every ecosystem in the tropical ocean."

Dr. Richard Leakey, chairman of the governmental Kenya Wildlife Service, said that while tourism and humans have invariably affected the environment, locally run projects on Kenya's coast have sustained endangered turtle population over the past decade.

"The situation these days is much better," Leakey said. "We still have problems with turtles getting stuck in trawler nets but we've seen very positive signs regarding turtle numbers."

The Local Ocean Trust has rescued and sent back to the ocean turtles 13,750 times over the past 20 years of working in Watamu, according to Van de Geer. A turtle tagged in Watamu was later found in the Chagos archipelago 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) away, he said.

"From Mozambique, to Australia, to India and Thailand, we all have a stake in this," he said. "The beach here has an impact on the entire ocean, that's the weird and amazing thing about turtles."

Of species found in Kenya, the Hawksbill turtle is critically endangered and the Green turtle is endangered while the Leatherback, Olive Ridley and Loggerhead turtles are vulnerable to becoming extinct, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

"Despite our efforts, man remains the turtle's most serious enemy," Van de Geer said.

In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 photo, local ocean marine scouts who are trained on sea conservation by Local Ocean Trust, carry a rehabilitated turtle from their Watamu centre on the Kenyan coast to release back into the Indian Ocean. Kenya is striving to strike a balance between developing its 330 miles (530 kilometers) of coastline for a billion-dollar tourism industry that employs a half-million people and preserving the environment that attracts those visitors. (AP Photo/ Ilya Gridnnef)
Police chief: Texas officer killed in park was ambushed

EULESS, Texas (AP)  A man who had just been released from jail burglarized a North Texas house, stole a cache of guns and fired into the air before hiding in a drainage ditch and ambushing responding officers, fatally wounding one of them, the city's police chief said Wednesday.

Police Chief Mike Brown said David Hofer, 29, who was among the officers responding to the "shots fired" report at J.A. Carr Park in Euless, spotted movement in the ditch and ordered the person to come forward.

Jorge Brian Gonzalez, 22, then rose and opened fire on the officers, fatally wounding Hofer before the other officers brought Gonzalez down with multiple gunshots, Brown said.

DFW Airport Police officer Robert Woodward kneels in front of a makeshift memorial for a slain officer at the Euless Police Department Wednesday, March 2, 2016, in Euless, Texas. Officer David Hofer died after he was shot in a Tuesday afternoon gunfight with an armed suspect in a park near a Dallas-area school, police said. Hofer, who previously worked for the New York Police Department, died during surgery. The suspect was also killed. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Gonzalez had been arrested Monday on a public intoxication charge and was released late Tuesday morning after being sentenced to community service, Brown said.

After that, Gonzalez forced his way into a house on a street adjoining the park, leaving with guns that he took to the park and fired several times, Brown said. Three officers were dispatched about 3 p.m. to the park where Gonzalez had taken cover in a drainage ditch, Brown said.

"It is our belief, based on the facts known to us, that the suspect took this position to ambush the responding officers," he said. Brown later added, "In my honest opinion, he was there to do as much damage to the responding officers as he could possibly do."

The park is in a residential area near an elementary school, and two nearby schools were placed on lockdown until the situation was resolved.

Brown said Gonzalez did not appear intoxicated at his court hearing Tuesday, but was calm and responsive. That is at odds with what his family contends.

Jorge Antonio Gonzalez, the gunman's father, described his son to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a drug addict who was high on methamphetamine when he was jailed.

The elder Gonzalez said Hofer had been called to the family's apartment before and knew his son. Brown said he could not confirm that.

The father was remorseful for his son's actions but also questioned why he was released from jail if he was still under the influence of meth.

"It's their fault," Gonzalez said. "Why would they let him out when he was on that stuff?"

Tarrant County court records show the younger Gonzalez had a criminal record that included charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and threatening family members.

Many people paid tribute to Hofer on Wednesday by leaving flowers, stuffed animals and other items in front of the Euless police station, with some saying quiet prayers.

Hofer had moved from New York to the Dallas area in 2014 because he wanted to be somewhere safer, his mother has said. A 2008 graduate of New York University, Hofer served in the New York Police Department for five years before coming to Euless, Brown said.

"He was wonderful child, a wonderful police officer," his mother, Sofija Hofer, told the New York Post. "He was working this very difficult precinct, so he had a lot of traumatic experiences ... He decided to go to a safer place."

Hofer's fiancee was out of town on Tuesday and needed to be called home and given the news, the Post reported.

Sofija Hofer said her son wanted to write a book about his experience with the NYPD.

"I thought he might be a scientist, like his father, but he always wanted to be a policeman, ever since he was a little boy," she said.

David Hofer is the second officer to die in the line of duty in Euless, a suburb of more than 53,000 residents west of Dallas and east of Fort Worth. The other officer was Michael Williamson, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1982, according to the city website.

Alllie Love, who's mother is a Euless Police officer, places a candle at a makeshift memorial for a slain officer at the Euless Police Department Wednesday, March 2, 2016, in Euless, Texas. Officer David Hofer died after he was shot in a Tuesday afternoon gunfight with an armed suspect in a park near a Dallas-area school, police said. Hofer, who previously worked for the New York Police Department, died during surgery. The suspect was also killed. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

A group of people say a prayer at the Euless Police Department for a Euless police officer killed in a gunfight at J.A. Carr Park in Euless, Texas, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. A police officer died on the operating table after he was shot in a Tuesday afternoon gunfight with an armed suspect in a park near a Dallas-area school. (Khampha Bouaphanh/Star-Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Trophy Club, Texas, police officer Keith Burris, front left, and his family bring flowers to the Euless police station in Euless, Texas, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. A police officer died on the operating table after he was shot in a Tuesday afternoon gunfight with an armed suspect in a park near a Dallas-area school. (Khampha Bouaphanh/Star-Telegram via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Police officers work the crime scene at J.A. Carr Park & Simmons Center in Euless, Texas, Tuesday, March 1,2016. A police officer died on the operating table after he was shot in a gunfight with an armed suspect in the park near a Dallas-area school. (Ron Baselice/The Dallas Morning News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Euless, Texas, resident Terry Recer drops off a miniature police motorcycle at the J.A. Carr Park & Simmons Center entrance in Euless on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, where a Euless police officer and a suspect died during a brief gun battle at the park earlier in the day. (Ron Baselice/The Dallas Morning News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

A crime scene technician works the scene after a fatal shooting at J.A. Carr Park, Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Euless, Texas. A police officer and an armed suspect have been killed in the shootout at the park according to authorities. (Khampha Bouaphanh/Star-Telegram via AP) MAGS OUT; (FORT WORTH WEEKLY, 360 WEST); INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
Outside groups' spending pays off in Arkansas court races

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  With a vow to represent "conservative values" and the backing of the National Rifle Association, Courtney Goodson seemed poised to take advantage of the trend to the political right in Arkansas and become the first woman elected to lead the state Supreme Court.

Instead, the sitting justice became a prime target for conservative groups that shattered Arkansas spending records to defeat her as part of a bid to reshape the nation's state courts. The effort paid off, with two circuit judges reaping the rewards in a pair of high court races that were overshadowed by a barrage of attack ads and campaign mailers that rivaled the vitriol of the presidential race.

Circuit Judge Dan Kemp defeated Goodson in the race to lead the seven-member court, succeeding interim Chief Justice Howard Brill. A circuit judge and former lawmaker who had once advocated banning gays and lesbians from fostering children won the race for another open seat on the court.

FILE- In this undated file photo provided by the Arkansas Secretary of State's office, Arkansas Supreme Court justice Courtney Goodson poses for a photo. Circuit Judge Dan Kemp won the race against Goodson to lead the Arkansas Supreme Court Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in a campaign that had been marked by a record amount of outside spending targeting his rival. (Jerry Davis/Arkansas Secretary of State via AP, File)

Goodson, who has two years left on her term on the court, said she planned to focus on trying to eliminate the outside spending that ultimately doomed her bid.

"I plan to continue serving (voters) by upholding our state constitution and finally ridding Arkansas of anonymous dark money judicial campaigns," Goodson said in a statement.

Nearly $1.3 million was spent on television ads in both races by the candidates and groups, more than double the previous record in Arkansas for a judicial election. Goodson herself had loaned her campaign nearly half a million dollars in her bid for the seat.

The bulk of the TV spending came from outside groups, with the Judicial Crisis Network spending more than $600,000 on television ads portraying Goodson as an insider for accepting gifts and contributions from trial attorneys. A mailer called the justice President Barack Obama's "rubber stamp" for the court's 2014 ruling striking down Arkansas' voter ID law.

In the final days of the campaign, Goodson had pushed back against the ads and accused Kemp of coordinating with the group. Kemp said he had no prior knowledge of the ads, and said Tuesday night he didn't need the outside help.

"I'm confident we would have won even without these outside groups pumping this much money and these ads into the state," Kemp said.

Watchdog groups have said the Arkansas campaign may signal that outside spending will be a growing influence on judicial races nationwide this year, a trend strengthened since the 2010 Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling opened the door for unlimited political spending by corporations, unions and other interest groups.

Outside group spending also overwhelmed the other high court race, with Circuit Judge Shawn Womack defeating a Little Rock attorney Clark Mason to succeed retiring Justice Paul Danielson.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which had also sent out mailers targeting Goodson, bought $250,000 in television airtime to run ads criticizing Mason. The 30-second spots accused Mason of charging high fees to his clients, dubbing him "Clark 'Ka-Ching' Mason."

The spots were a turnoff to Larry Wheeler, who cast his vote for Goodson at Bauxite City Hall, about 25 miles southwest of Little Rock.

"The bad money is with the other one, that's why I voted for Goodson," Wheeler, 67, said. "It was the person that won my vote. It wasn't the money."

___

Associated Press Writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report

___

FILE- In this March 27, 2007, file photo, Arkansas state Sen. Shawn Womack, R-Mountain Home, left, introduces his bill to ban gays and unwed couples from serving as foster or adoptive parents during a House Committee on Judiciary hearing at the Capitol in Little Rock, Ark. Circuit Judge Shawn Womack defeated Little Rock attorney Clark Mason on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in the race for Arkansas' Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Mike Wintroath, File)
Facebook executive released from jail in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  A Facebook executive detained for refusing to give law enforcement information about users of the WhatsApp message service was released from jail on Wednesday, part of a tussle between authorities and technology companies that recalls the U.S. dispute between Apple and the FBI.

Facebook's most senior representative in Latin America, Diego Dzodan, left a jail in Sao Paulo after one night in custody. A judge ruled he was wrongly detained because he was not named personally in the legal proceedings.

Another judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe had issued an arrest warrant accusing Dzodan of repeatedly failing to comply with a judicial order to cooperate with an investigation into drug trafficking and organized crime. Monica Horta, a spokeswoman for the federal police in Sergipe, said investigators have requested content from a WhatsApp messaging group as well as other data, including geo-location.

Investigators first contacted WhatsApp  which was bought by Facebook in 2014  about four months ago but have yet to receive a response, Horta said. Starting two months ago, WhatsApp began to incur a daily fine of 50,000 Brazilian reais ($12,700) for every day it ignored the order. The company has not yet paid the fine, which has risen to 1 million Brazilian reais ($250,000) in recent weeks, she said.

Brazilian police argue that Facebook's stance is at odds with those of Yahoo, Google and local telecommunications companies, which have been willing to hand over user information to help investigations.

WhatsApp has been rolling out a so-called end-to-end encryption system under which only the sender and recipient can access the content of messages and it insists it doesn't have the information requested.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the company said, "arresting people with no connection to pending law enforcement investigation is a capricious step and we are concerned about the effects for the people of Brazil and innovation in the country."

The standoff has drawn comparisons to the FBI's battle with Apple following its request that the company unlock the iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists who carried out killings in San Bernardino, California.

"The Apple vs FBI case and the WhatsApp case are in many ways exactly the same thing," said Zaki Manian, a California-based cryptography engineer and privacy activist. "The encryption systems employed by these companies is such that they do not have access to encrypted data. The only way the company could access the data would be to employ a malicious update to allow access."

Brazil has cast itself as a defender of Internet freedom since revelations in 2014 that the U.S. National Security Agency had spied on President Dilma Rousseff, her close advisers and Brazilian commercial interests, including the state-run oil company Petrobras. Rousseff canceled a state visit to the U.S. during a diplomatic row over the disclosures, the result of leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Rousseff also pledged to promote more home-grown Internet services and make Brazil's piece of the global Internet less U.S.-dependent.

Some analysts say that stance is at odds with actions such as the Dzodan detention.

"The Brazilians have spent several years complaining about the NSA. Technology companies have now delivered products to their customers that are much more secure from the NSA and the Brazilians are now complaining that they're too secure," said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist of the American Civil Liberties Union. "So maybe you should be careful what you wish for."

"It seems like what governments want is ways to communicate that are secure from foreign governments, but that allow their own government to spy," Soghoian said. "And the fact is that those tools don't exist.

"If you want your communications to be secure from the NSA then they will also be secure from your local law enforcement."

Brazilian authorities also clashed with Facebook in December, when a judicial order forced Brazil's telecommunications companies to block WhatsApp over its refusal to cooperate with a police inquiry. The move shut down communications for many of its 100 million users in Brazil for around 12 hours. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the time said he was "stunned" by the "extreme decision."

Robert Muggah, research director at Iguarape, a Rio de Janeiro-based think-tank, said the latest conflict over the WhatsApp messages could bolster support for proposed legislation that would allow judges to make more demands of tech companies.

"The danger with these cases is that the pendulum is swinging too far away from digital rights to law enforcement," Muggah said.

___
EU proposes to spend $760 million on aid to migrants

BRUSSELS (AP)  The head office of the European Union on Wednesday sought to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to improve the situation for migrants in need of shelter.

EU Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said 300 million euros ($325 million) would be earmarked for this year alone and be used "where it is most needed," alluding to Greece and the nations along the Balkan migrant trail. The overall total would cover three years.

The EU Commission proposal for funding will still need to be approved by the European parliament and the member states.

European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides gestures while speaking during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, March. 2, 2016. The European Union's head office wants to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to deal with the refugee crisis. (AP Photo/Thierry Monasse)

Since the beginning of 2015, over a million refugees and other migrants have entered the EU, mainly through Greece, to seek a better life in wealthy EU nations like Germany and Sweden.

The commission also announced Wednesday that Greece is in the process of sending back 308 migrants, deemed not to be in line for international protection, to Turkey where they came from. Even though only a start, the initiative is seen as essential to alleviate the migration pressure on the bloc.

"It has to be clear as well that those who have no right to stay in the EU will be quickly and effectively returned," said EU migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos.

With the rise in numbers, protests have increased in many EU nations and some have started taking independent measures through stringent quotas and barbed-wire fences to contain the influx. The go-it-alone approach has increasingly raised bad blood among the 28 EU members.

EU President Donald Tusk is traveling the Balkan region to drum up support for a unified response ahead of a summit on the issue in Brussels next Monday. And Tusk called for greater support for Greece as it struggles with the continuing inflow of people from Turkey.

"We must urgently mobilize the EU, all member states to help address the humanitarian situation of migrants in Greece and along the western Balkan route," Tusk said Wednesday in Zagreb.

European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides gestures while speaking during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, March. 2, 2016. The European Union's head office wants to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to deal with the refugee crisis. (AP Photo/Thierry Monasse)

A man sits by the sea, outside a shelter area at the Athens' port of Piraeus, Wednesday March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

A Syrian refugees places his shoes outside his makeshift tent as he waits to be allowed to cross the border to Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Greek police said up to 10,000 mostly Syrian and Iraqi refugees were stuck at the country's Idomeni border crossing in deteriorating conditions.(AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
Visiting the Aran Islands in Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way

KILRONAN, Ireland (AP)  Give up Paris, the Irish poet W.B. Yeats told fellow writer J.M. Synge, and go to the Aran Islands in order to "express a life that has never found expression."

The budding playwright took the advice and traveled to the Aran Islands off Ireland's West Coast. He returned full of ideas, incorporating island ways and dialect into works such as his lyrical play, "Riders to the Sea."

Things have changed a bit since Synge made his pilgrimage in 1898, but even today this rocky outpost in Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way remains a place to find respite from modern life and move to a simpler rhythm.

This Sept. 13, 2015 photo shows a pony-and-trap awaiting its rider on Inishmore in the Aran Islands in Ireland. A cart tour is a good way to take in the sights of Inishmore in sunny or stormy weather. (Michelle Locke via AP)

Many visitors treat the islands as a day trip, taking the ferry or flight from Galway. But to really experience the islands' charms, consider spending a few nights. Multiple B&Bs offer reasonable rates.

There are three islands. Most visitors go to the largest, Inishmore. The other two, Inisheer and Inishmaan (the latter is the setting for "Riders to the Sea"), are smaller and less-visited, and can be reached by ferry for day trips from Inishmore.

Here are some basics on planning your trip.

___

SET THE MOOD

Synge's "The Aran Islands," a book of essays, is fun to dip into. Another classic is the 1934 fictional documentary, "Man of Aran," which took some liberties with historical accuracy. More recently, island scenery was featured in the opening to the '90s sitcom "Father Ted," which is commemorated by the annual Tedfest, held each February, http://www.tedfest.org.

Need an adrenaline rush with your research? The Red Bull Cliff Diving series has twice held events at Inishmore's Serpent's Lair, http://www.redbullcliffdiving.com/en_US/event/inis-mor .

___

GETTING THERE

Aran Island Ferries run from Rossaveal, a one-hour drive from Galway, and take about 45 minutes for the crossing. There's also ferry service from Doolin near the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of County Clare. Aer Arann offers short flights from Connemara with shuttle service from downtown Galway to the airport and a shuttle on the other end to the village of Kilronan. However you go, book in advance.

___

GETTING AROUND

You can rent a bike at the harbor in Kilronan and go your own way. Or you can take a minivan tour; vans meet the ferries. For a more leisurely approach, try a pony trap tour.

If you have enough time, there's a lot to be said for simply walking and stopping to smell the wildflowers  and say hello to the occasional sheep. The islands are strewn with ruins and miles of stone walls. Be prepared for all types of weather: Bring layers and waterproof outerwear. It may pour in the morning, then turn sunny and warm by afternoon.

___

SIGHTSEEING

The big attraction on Inishmore is Dun Aonghasa, (aka Dun Angus), a prehistoric clifftop stronghold with four sets of dry stone walls and a "chevaux-de-frise," a band of jagged upright stones meant to deter attackers (open daily 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. in winter and until 6 p.m. in summer, admission, about $5).

Also worth a look is Dun Duchathair, the Black Fort. Not much is left of the fort but it has a breathtaking coastal setting. The Serpent's Lair, of Red Bull fame, is a naturally formed pool connected to the ocean by an underwater channel. The rocks can be slippery; wear shoes with good soles.

The Aran Sweater Market in Kilronan sells garments knit in the famous Aran pattern as well as yarn and patterns for the crafty.

In Inishmaan, you can visit the cottage where Synge stayed, http://www.discoverireland.ie/Arts-Culture-Heritage/teach-synge-john-millington-synge-s-cottage-museum/48987 .

___

FOOD

The quality of the food may come as a pleasant surprise. You'll find delicious fresh fish and hearty specialties like Irish stew and Guinness chocolate cake. Popular spots on Inishmore include Teach Nan Phaidi and Ti Joe Watty's, which has live music weekends and throughout the summer. The economically named The Bar pub serves a stew that will restore you if you've spent the day hiking. The Pier House Restaurant has an elegant dining room with a view.

___

ACCOMMODATIONS

The Aran Islands Hotel has rooms with balconies and views, starting at around $85. The Seacrest B&B has rooms with baths for about $60 a night including a full Irish breakfast. Seacrest co-owner Thomas Faherty gives excellent pony-and-trap tours of the island.

Will your stay in the islands awake your inner genius? Hard to say. But you may find yourself feeling the way Synge did one evening as he strolled along Galway Bay and looked westward.

"The sort of yearning I feel towards those lonely rocks," he wrote, "is indescribably acute."

___

Online: http://www.visitaranislands.com/

___

Michelle Locke tweets at https://twitter.com/Locke_Michelle

In this Sept. 13, 2015 photo, aaves pound the naturally formed pool known as the Serpent's Lair on the island of Inishmore in Ireland. This pool has twice been the site of the Red Bull Cliff Diving tour. (Michelle Locke via AP)
He is accused of killing Gary Glueck, 71, a resident at Scottsville Manor after they allegedly got into a fight over him playing

A man who calls himself The Reverend dialed 911 to say he was the father of the human race just a week before he allegedly killed an elderly resident of a nursing home facility.

The phone call last month was the first time the Scottsville Police Department had heard of the 35-year-old self-avowed devil worshipper born Robert Reynolds, who had legally changed his name to reflect his status in the Reynoldsianism faith of his invention.

The police department checked on The Reverend at the Scottsville Manor nursing home, where he lived because of a long battle with schizophrenia.

But he'd made no threats and committed no crimes, said Scottsville Police Chief Jeff Pearson. He only insisted he was the patriarch of civilization.

The Reverend, a 35-year-old self-avowed Satanist accused of killing his elderly roommate at a Kentucky nursing home spoke to a judge Wednesday in Kentucky (Above)

The judge advised that The Reverend shouldn't make a statement and ordered him to undergo a mental evaluation before the case against him can continue. Above he is pictured in his mug shot from last month

About a week later, he walked to the nurse's station and announced he'd killed his 71-year-old roommate Gary Glueck, police said.

According to WBKO, Scottsville Police Chief Jeff Pearson said: 'The gentleman who changed his name, his legal name is The Reverend, came to the nurses station to say he was thirsty and he wanted a drink of water.

'He said he had killed Gary. He used a cord from a lamp in the room to do the strangulation.'

The Reverend was ordered Wednesday to undergo a mental evaluation before the murder charge against can continue through the court system.

Handcuffed in an orange jumpsuit, he told Allen County District Judge Martha Harrison repeatedly that he wanted to make a statement.

She advised him against it and appointed a public defender, who met with The Reverend and promptly asked the judge to order a competency assessment.

The Reverend legally changed his name from Robert Reynolds. He lived at the Scottsville Manor nursing home because of a long battle with schizophrenia

The Reverend's family declined to comment on the record about his struggles with mental illness. Scottsville Manor is pictured above

The Reverend didn't make his statement.

He had a website and several Facebook pages, where he described himself as a devil worshipper, schizophrenic and the star of the 'easy-listening satanic' genre of music, which he said he created.

The argument he had with his roommate started when he wanted to listen to the satanic music and Glueck, who shared room No. 15, objected, The Bowling Green Daily News reported.

He later told police he stabbed Glueck with an ink pen then tied the cord of a lamp around his neck, according to court records.

He said the elderly man tried unsuccessfully to fight him off, court records say.

The Reverend's family declined to comment on the record about his struggles with mental illness.

He posted dozens of rambling poems, essays and videos online. In the videos, he smoked cigarettes and stroked his beard and talked illogically to imaginary companions.

Scottsville Police Chief Jeff Pearson (above) said that on the day of the murder, The Reverend 'came to the nurses station to say he was thirsty and he wanted a drink of water. He said he had killed Gary'

In one, he said he'd found a way for the impotent and gay men to reproduce. He had invented a drug called Zexifor, made from tree moss, aged particles and honey for taste. He gave birth to an invisible infant, he said, and would meet the 'infant' on the porch of his house again 20 years in the future.

In another, he strummed a guitar, without a shirt on, a giant star tattooed on his shoulder, and sang of 'Satan, the father.'

He wrote over and over that he is a 'Reynoldsian music star' and an 'easy listening satanic star.' He said he was standing in for God and offered to be interviewed by the media.

He created his own holidays, alphabet and a system of mathematics he called Reynoldsiantics.

The suspect has at least two Facebook pages and in a post from January he declared himself a satanist

He also wrote that he is the 'Spiritual Grandson of American Church of Satan Founder Anton LaVey'

He expressed admiration online for Charles Manson, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, and the Marquis de Sade, the 18th-century French aristocrat, whose writings of brutal sexual cruelty spawned the word sadism.

But court records indicate he does not have a history of violence. The police chief said they'd received no complaints of violations from the nursing home, which cares for the physically and mentally disabled.

His writings and videos do not center on ritualism, Satan or brutality. Rather they maunder on about his inventions, delusions and his quest for personal awakening.

On Facebook, he acknowledged his condition and his living arrangements at Scottsville Manor.

'Living here would be difficult if I didn't have a disability too, but since I do, it's alright,' he wrote in January. 'Everybody here is disabled in some way. Scottsville Manor is a home.'

He later posted about supporting assisted suicide.

'I'm schizophrenic and there's no cure,' he wrote on Jan. 27. 'Everyday folks here at the home have to do everything for me, but I need it. With no thought that life will ever improve why must I live this way?'
Clinton's Super Tuesday wins narrow Sanders path

MIAMI (AP)  Bernie Sanders' political revolution may be turning into a more modest uprising.

Sanders' insurgent campaign caught fire this fall, drawing huge crowds and raising questions about the breadth of Clinton's appeal within her own party.

But as the contest has expanded past the largely white electorates of Iowa and New Hampshire, Sanders has struggled to capture support from minority voters. And he's shown no sign of changing his economic-focused message to do so  a strategy that hurt his chances in a swath of primaries held across the country Tuesday.

Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, speaks during a rally at Michigan State University, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, in East Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

After her wins on Super Tuesday, Clinton is nearly halfway to claiming enough delegates to win the nomination, when you include her superdelegates, the party insiders free to pick either candidate. If she keeps her superdelegates  they can change their minds  Clinton has to win only 40 percent of the remaining delegates to be the presumptive nominee.

Sanders' road is much tougher. He would have to win 60 percent of the remaining delegates  including superdelegates  to claim the nomination. So far, he is winning just 29 percent.

On Tuesday, Clinton carried the four largest contested states in terms of delegates  Texas, Georgia, Virginia and Massachusetts. She won sweeping victories across the South and her narrow victory in Massachusetts denied the Vermont senator a large state he had sought near his home turf.

"Hillary has shown real strength in the Super Tuesday voting, establishing an impressive foundation going forward in the delegate race," said Jeff Berman, Clinton's delegate guru.

Beyond Vermont, Sanders' wins came in Minnesota, Colorado and Oklahoma, where working-class white voters play a bigger role in Democratic contests.

The Democratic contests award delegates in proportion to the vote, meaning that even the loser wins some delegates.

With 865 delegates at stake, Clinton is assured of gaining at least 508 for Super Tuesday, having won seven states and the American Samoa. Her double-digit wins in delegate rich states in the South were able to overcome Sanders, who won four states. He picks up at least 342 delegates.

"We have no doubt that as long as Sen. Sanders remains in the primary, he will continue to win elections along the way, but it will make little difference to Hillary's pledged delegate lead," campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in a memo released Wednesday morning. "In order to catch up, Sen. Sanders doesn't just have to start winning a few states, but he needs to start winning everywhere and by large margins."

Sanders and his team showed no signs of exiting the race, with senior strategist Tad Devine saying he sees no scenario where Sanders gets out before the party convention in July.

In Portland, Maine on Wednesday, Sanders lashed out at his opponent, saying there is one candidate who takes millions of dollars from big banks, the fossil fuel industry "and perhaps weirdo billionaires. And that one candidate is not me."

Later, before 10,000 supporters at Michigan State University, Sanders signaled he would make trade a big difference in the state's March 8 primary, pointing to Clinton's support of "disastrous trade policies" such as the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But Clinton has already set her sights beyond the party convention, taking aim at Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

"We have to make America whole again," she said Wednesday at a rally in New York, trotting out her now-familiar rebuttal to Trump's rallying cry of "Make America Great Again."

But Sanders has another reason to keep going  money. His campaign reported raising more than $42 million in February  $12 million more than Clinton and enough to keep going well into the spring. Clinton aides believe any effort to push Sanders out of the contest could backfire with his liberal base, whose support they'll need in the general election.

"We are going to be in this thing for the long run," said Devine.

But there is a historical precedent for Clinton's argument: In 2008, then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama used a post-Super Tuesday winning streak to set up a 100-delegate lead that Clinton never could surmount.

With that defeat still fresh in her mind, Clinton moved quickly to hire Obama's team to run her delegate operation. Their plan was to use a big win on South Carolina as a springboard into the Super Tuesday contest, where they'd establish a sizeable enough advantage to push Sanders out of the race.

Exit polls showed Clinton backed by at least of 80 percent of black voters in the Southern states  a key demographic.

While she made inroads with voters between the ages of 30 and 44, but her strong showing among older and minority voters looks like it will be sufficient to outmaneuver Sanders in the primary, who's staked his campaign on increasing turnout among white working-class voters.

Sanders' campaign is planning a major push in Michigan, where Clinton and Sanders will attend a debate Sunday in Flint and then compete in the state's primary two days later.

Sanders aides are also looking ahead to caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska on Saturday and Maine's caucuses on Sunday, hoping that liberal voters in the mostly white states will bolster the senator's cause. Clinton is expected to fare well in Saturday's Louisiana primary, helped by the state's black voters.

___

Thomas reported from Burlington, Vt., and Yen reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher in Washington and Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, left, greets Aleatha Williams before speaking during a rally, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton waves before speaking at a campaign rally, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, in New York. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)
Environmental protection of Colorado River called disjointed

DENVER (AP)  Environmental protection for the Colorado River  the lifeblood of the Southwest  is disjointed and too often gets a low priority in the management of the waterway, independent researchers said in a new report.

Four, multimillion-dollar conservation programs do valuable work but would have more impact if they treated the entire 1,450-mile river as a single, integrated system, the report said.

"We can have something different and better than the existing patchwork of programs," it said.

FILE - In this March 5, 2008 file photo, water flows from the jet tubes as seen from atop the Glen Canyon Dam, in Page, Ariz. In a new critique by the Colorado River Research Group, environmental protection for the 1,450-mile-long Colorado River, the lifeblood of the American Southwest, is disjointed and too often takes a back seat to to other needs. (AP Photo/Matt York, file)

The research group is an independent organization of academics with expertise in water, agriculture, law and other fields.

Their report said the river is managed primarily as a "plumbing system" to provide water for cities and agriculture and not as an ecosystem.

"I would assert that we can meet water supply needs and have a much healthier and restored river," Jack Schmidt, a professor of watershed sciences at Utah State University and a member of the research group, said in an interview.

The river supplies water to about 40 million people and 6,300 square miles of farmland in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. The river basin  all the areas that eventually drain into the river  covers about 246,000 square miles.

The river starts in the Rocky Mountains and flows southwest through the Grand Canyon toward the Gulf of California in Mexico. It's so heavily used that it usually dries up before reaching the ocean.

The Upper Colorado River Endangered Fish Recovery program, the Lower Colorado River Multi-Species Conservation Program and the San Juan River Recovery Implementation Program focus on saving endangered species and restoring habitat along the river and its tributaries.

The Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program concentrates on mitigating environmental impacts in the Grand Canyon and other areas downstream from Lake Powell in Utah.

Combined, the programs spend about $54 million a year. The money comes from federal, tribal and state governments and from conservation groups.

The programs are administered by federal agencies with guidance from various partner agencies. The programs recognize the need for better communication and are working on that, said Marlon Duke, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation, which administers two of the programs.

Representatives of several state, federal and tribal agencies met last week and more meetings are planned on a regular basis, he said.

Tom Chart, director of the Upper Colorado Endangered Fish Program, said each program was created for a specific purpose and noted environmental threats and the people affected by them vary from place to place.

The report didn't suggest who should be in charge of coordinating conservation work.

Ken Neubecker of the conservation group American Rivers also advocated a more unified approach toward the river environment.

"It's facing a pretty interesting situation," he said. "I don't want to say dire, but it could well be."

___

Online: http://www.coloradoriverresearchgroup.org/

___

Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/dan-elliott.
Democrats object as House GOP holds hearing on fetal tissue

WASHINGTON (AP)  House Democrats suggested on Wednesday that a special House panel investigating Planned Parenthood could be complicit in future assaults or even murders of abortion providers at the Republican-led committee's first hearing on the ethics of fetal tissue research.

The investigative panel was created last year following conservative furor over secretly recorded videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing how they sometimes supply fetal tissue for medical research. In February, the panel subpoenaed documents from groups that GOP lawmakers said were withholding information. Those include abortion providers and a company that supplies fetal tissue from abortion clinics to researchers.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the panel's chairman, said the subpoenas are necessary as part of the investigation to answer questions "that the American people are asking." The subpoenas seek information on people involved in procuring tissue, where it came from and where it was sent.

Paige Comstock Cunningham , executive director The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity Executive Director, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, before the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

"There is something going on, something that deserves investigating and that demands our best moral and ethical thinking," Blackburn said at the hearing.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, repeated her call for the special committee to be disbanded and called the investigation a "partisan and dangerous witch hunt." She also said there were no rules in place to protect the names of those subpoenaed.

"The chair's abuse of her position as chair to compel this information is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy's abusive tactics," Schakowsky said, referring to the Wisconsin senator's anti-communism crusade in the 1950s.

Other Democrats echoed the concern that if the investigation reveals the names of people who work in fetal tissue research, they could be targeted by protesters. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the panel could be "complicit with physical assaults or murders of these people" and moved to quash the subpoenas. The Republican-led panel voted 8-6 against Nadler's motion.

Republicans and conservatives have denounced the practice of fetal tissue research after abortion and some have accused Planned Parenthood of illegally selling the organs for profit. They unsuccessfully tried to block the federal money that the women's health organization receives in spending legislation last year.

Planned Parenthood has denied wrongdoing. Investigations by several congressional panels and states have not produced evidence that it acted illegally.

At the hearing, Republicans circulated emails from doctors and researchers seeking specific fetal tissue for research in graphic terms. Combative Democrats grilled witnesses who criticized fetal tissue research after abortion.

"We are a nation justly proud of the progress and achievements of our biomedical research, but lifesaving research cannot and should not require the destruction of life for it to go forward," said G. Kevin Donovan, director of the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University.

A witness supporting the research  law and ethics professor Alta Charo of the University of Wisconsin  said it is important for developing vaccines and research on disease, including Ebola, HIV, Alzheimer's and even Zika, a spreading virus with links to a spike in babies born with abnormally small heads in Brazil.

Charo said cutting off the research could result in more abortions if women are unsure whether the Zika virus is affecting their unborn babies.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives Chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., presides over the committees investigating Planned Parenthood, Wednesday, March 1, 2016, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Gerard Kevin Donovan, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Senior Clinical Scholar at Georgetown University, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 2, 2016, before the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Egypt parliament expels lawmaker over meeting with Israeli

CAIRO (AP)  An Egyptian lawmaker and popular TV talk show host was expelled from parliament Wednesday over a meeting he had with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt.

Egypt became the first Arab country to make peace with Israel in 1979, and the two governments work closely together on security issues, but anti-Israel sentiment runs high among most Egyptians, who view any direct interactions with Israelis as taboo.

The controversy over the meeting began when the ambassador, Haim Koren, posted a picture on the embassy's Facebook page last week of himself and Egyptian lawmaker Tawfiq Okasha during their meeting.

FILE - In this Saturday, Sept. 1, 2012 file photo, Tawfiq Okasha, center, a popular Egyptian TV presenter accused of inciting the killing of the country's new president on air, flashes the victory sign as he arrives for the opening of his trial, in Cairo, Egypt. Okasha has been expelled from parliament over a meeting he had with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel. (AP Photo/Mohammed Assad, File)

Okasha's expulsion from the 596-seat legislature was decided in a vote Wednesday by an overwhelming majority of lawmakers and came three days after another lawmaker hit him with his shoe inside the chamber to protest his meeting with Koren. A total of 490 lawmakers took part in the vote, with 465 supporting the motion to kick him out. Sixteen voted against and nine abstained.

Among those who voted against Okasha's expulsion was lawmaker Mohammed Anwar Sadat, a nephew of the late Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, who signed the groundbreaking 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Okasha, who has a reputation for being a maverick, was kept out of the chamber during the vote. He declined to speak to reporters when he left the building with the vote almost completed. Speaker Ali Abdel-Al, with whom Okasha has had several run-ins, declared his seat vacant.

Abdel-Al, seeking to head off charges that the legislature was anti-Israeli, told lawmakers that Egypt respected the country's diplomatic commitments, including the peace treaty with Israel. Lawmakers who supported Okasha's expulsion said he was punished for meeting with a foreign diplomat without the legislature's authorization or advance coordination with "relevant" agencies.

"He has behaved in a manner unbecoming of a deputy or the legislature," said lawmaker Ahmed Nashaat Mansour.

Okasha said he met with Koren in order to serve Egypt's interests, and that they discussed the Grand Renaissance Dam being built by Ethiopia, which Egypt fears will cut into its share of the Nile.

"They (Israel) are the ones building the Renaissance Dam, are we fooling ourselves?" Okasha claimed, alluding to a conspiracy theory that Israel is helping Ethiopia build the dam to harm Cairo's interests.

Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said at the time that the meeting had taken place at Okasha's invitation. "The importance of the meeting was in the fact that it took place," he said.

Egypt and Israel closely coordinate on security issues, particularly those having to do with the Sinai Peninsula, a mostly desert area that borders Israel and whose northern part is torn by an insurgency waged by Islamic militants.

Hardly a week goes by without Israeli security officials flying to Cairo to meet with their Egyptian counterparts.

But most Egyptians associate Israel with the four wars the countries fought against each other from 1948 to 1973 and are deeply opposed to Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Okasha, who has long trumpeted anti-Western conspiracy theories, has been at the center of a series of controversies since his failed bid to win the speaker's job at the 596-seat legislature.

He has recently claimed that Egypt's security agencies are running the country and that a close confidante of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is directly intervening in politics.

He has also claimed that the Egyptian leader had sought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's help to convince President Barack Obama to improve relations with Cairo following the 2013 military overthrow, led by el-Sissi, of Egypt's first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi.

Okasha was thrown out of the chamber for unruly behavior late last month. He later complained that he was being consistently denied the floor by Abdel-Al, the speaker. Asked why that was the case, he replied: "Because Tawfiq Okasha is popular in the streets and people love him, but they want just one person to be loved in Egypt: His Excellency President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi."

FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016 file photo, Tawfiq Okasha, a pro-government TV anchorman who was elected to parliament, sits in an anteroom after he taped his mouth shut in protest at not being given the floor during a parliamentary session, in Cairo, Egypt.Okasha has been expelled from parliament over a meeting he had with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Arabic writing reads, "Banned from speaking inside and outside the house by government orders." (AP Photo/Said Shahat, File)
After corruption reports, Malaysian PM visits Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP)  Malaysia's premier thanked King Salman for his support in a speech before meeting with the monarch Wednesday during a visit to Saudi Arabia meant to deepen ties between the two major Muslim countries.

Najib Razak's visit came after Malaysia's attorney general in January decided not to prosecute the prime minister, saying the $681 deposited in his accounts were a "personal donation" from the Saudi royal family. The chief prosecutor also said most of the Saudi donation had been returned.

Razak's critics, however, accuse him of corruption and claim hundreds of millions of dollars channeled into his accounts came from the indebted 1MDB fund, which he founded in 2009.

In this Wednesday March 2, 2016 photo released by the Saudi Press Agency, SPA, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, right, receives the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamed Najib Abdul Razak in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Saudi Press Agency via AP)

The fund is mired in $10 billion in debt and has been selling its assets to clear its books. Najib became embroiled in the scandal after documents were leaked last year suggesting that money deposited into his accounts may have come from entities linked to 1MDB.

Najib has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Speaking at an economic forum Tuesday in the Saudi city of Jiddah, Najib expressed his gratitude.

"I would like to personally thank the royal family of Saudi Arabia for all their support over many decades," he said.

"I am proud to say that we are like brothers," he added, referring to Saudi-Malaysia relations.

Malaysian forces are taking part in joint military exercises by a 34-nation, anti-terrorism alliance of Muslim majority countries that are underway in the kingdom.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency gave little details about the king's meeting with Najib, saying only they discussed bilateral relations and ways to strengthen cooperation.

___
Obama praises Oregon's new landmark minimum wage law

SALEM, Ore. (AP)  Oregon's governor on Wednesday signed trailblazing legislation that will raise the minimum wage to nearly $15 in six years and do so through a three-tiered system that has not been tried anywhere else in the country.

"I'm proud to sign into law my top priority of the 2016 Legislative session - raising the minimum wage," Gov. Kate Brown said in a statement. She said the new law "is a path forward - so working families can catch up, and businesses have time to plan for the increase."

President Obama said Congress needs to follow Oregon's example and raise the federal minimum wage  now at $7.25 an hour.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signs Senate Bill 1532, increasing Oregon's minimum wage according to a tiered system, at the State Capitol in Salem on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Portlands minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, suburban areas to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50. The tiered approach is based on economic factors. (Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

"I commend the Oregon Legislature and Governor Kate Brown for taking action to raise their state's minimum wage," Obama said in a statement. The president said 18 states and the District of Columbia have acted since he first called on Congress to increase the federal standard in 2013.

Oregon's plan follows moves in states such as Massachusetts, California and Vermont that recently boosted statewide minimums above $10.

The Oregon increases over six years surpass those adopted by any other state so far. Oregon's current minimum wage is $9.25 an hour.

What makes the Oregon plan especially different is that the minimums will be based on where workers are employed. The approach aims to balance the needs of the rapidly growing urban powerhouse of Portland with the state's struggling farming communities, which have long been deeply divided by their economic, cultural and political differences.

Portland's minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, smaller cities to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50.

The first increases will occur in July, when the wage minimum goes up by 50 cents in Portland and smaller cities and 25 cents in rural communities.

Sen. Michael Dembrow celebrates before Gov. Kate Brown signs Senate Bill 1532, increasing Oregon's minimum wage according to a tiered system, at the State Capitol in Salem on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Portlands minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, suburban areas to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50. The tiered approach is based on economic factors. (Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown celebrates before signing Senate Bill 1532, increasing Oregon's minimum wage according to a tiered system, at the State Capitol in Salem on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Portlands minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, suburban areas to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50. The tiered approach is based on economic factors. (Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

People take photos as Gov. Kate Brown signs Senate Bill 1532, increasing Oregon's minimum wage according to a tiered system, at the State Capitol in Salem on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Portlands minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, suburban areas to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50. The tiered approach is based on economic factors. (Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown celebrates before signing Senate Bill 1532, increasing Oregon's minimum wage according to a tiered system, at the State Capitol in Salem on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Portlands minimum will rise to $14.75 by 2022, suburban areas to $13.50 and rural areas to $12.50. The tiered approach is based on economic factors. (Anna Reed/Statesman-Journal via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Iranian migrants sew mouths shut in French camp protest

CALAIS, France (AP)  Six Iranian migrants have sewed their mouths shut to protest the mass evictions and destruction of a large swath of a migrant camp in northern France in a desperate bid to bring attention to their plight.

The unusual protest Wednesday came on the third day of an operation to dismantle the makeshift camp on the edge of Calais. Most of the several thousand living there hope to sneak across the English Channel to Britain.

Some camp dwellers have stood on roofs to try to save their huts, others set them afire.

A hooded unidentified migrant from Iran demonstrates with his sewn lips, in an attempt to prevent the dismantling of makeshift dwellings at a camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

The Iranians held a sign asking for a U.N. representative to visit the camp.

Clare Moseley of the Care4Calais British volunteer group said the protest was "a cry for help because they don't know what else to do."

A court ruled last month that the destruction of the large southern sector of the camp is legal but common spaces like houses of worship must be spared.

State Prefect Fabienne Buccio told reporters on Wednesday that it will take about a month to complete the process. Authorities estimate that 800-1,000 individuals live in the sector being dismantled, but humanitarian groups say there are more than 3,000.

The state has offered to house displaced migrants in space remaining in nearby heated containers or send them to temporary welcome centers so they can consider applying for asylum in France.

French riot police secure an area where French officials tell migrants they must leave in a makeshift migrants camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. The slow tear-down of the encampment in Calais continues Wednesday, angering migrants who live there, although they have to cope with squalid conditions. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

A migrant from Iran demonstrates with his sewn lips, in an attempt to prevent the dismantling of makeshift dwellings at a camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Migrants and activists sit on the roofs of dwellings in an attempt to prevent them from being dismantled, as police patrol, in a makeshift camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Migrants stand in front of their dwelling facing French riot police in a makeshift camp near Calais, France, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French riot police secure an area near a makeshift migrants camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. The slow tear-down of the encampment in Calais continues Wednesday, angering migrants who live there, although they have to cope with squalid conditions. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Migrants from Iran demonstrate in an attempt to prevent the dismantling of makeshift dwellings at a camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016 More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

A migrant from Iran demonstrates with his sewn lips, in an attempt to prevent the dismantling of makeshift dwellings at a camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French riot police secure an area where French officials tell migrants they must leave in a makeshift migrants camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. The slow tear-down of the encampment in Calais continues Wednesday, angering migrants who live there, although they have to cope with squalid conditions. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French riot police secures an area while workers conduct the dismantling of makeshift shelters in a migrants camp near Calais France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

A migrant walks between containers set to replace a makeshift migrant camp near Calais, France,, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

French riot police secure an area while workers conduct the dismantling of makeshift shelters in a migrants camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Migrants and activists stand on the roofs of dwellings in an attempt to prevent them from being dismantled, as police patrol, in a makeshift camp near Calais, France, Wednesday March 2, 2016. More than a dozen humanitarian organizations on Tuesday accused authorities of brutally evicting migrants from their makeshift dwellings in a sprawling camp in northern France, as fiery protests of the demolition continued. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)
Astronomers, billboard companies clash over signs that shine

PHOENIX (AP)  Arizona has long been a haven for astronomers who take advantage of its mountain peaks and vast stretches of dark, desert sky to gaze at stars and planets. The state is also home to a thriving billboard industry whose signs light up a vast network of freeways.

The two industries have long clashed, and they are in the midst of another fight in the Arizona Legislature.

A bill would allow electronic billboards to shine in two counties in the western part of the state, where they have been banned under a 2012 agreement. The deal designates a corridor for dark skies to limit light pollution around observatories.

Sarah Conant, creative specialist at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., adjusts one of the telescopes on the campus Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Arizona has long been a haven for astronomers who take advantage of its mountain peaks and vast stretches of dark, desert sky to gaze at stars and planets. Astronomers and advocates for dark skies say a proposal to allow electronic billboards in the northwest of the state threatens Arizona's billion dollar star-gazing industry. (AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca)

Astronomers say the exemption will threaten dark skies, but billboard makers don't believe it will hurt the industry. The House passed the bill on a 32-26 vote Tuesday, and it now moves to the Senate.

Here is a look at the battle between billboard makers and astronomers:

___

WHAT IS ARIZONA'S DARK SKY CORRIDOR?

It is a zone created to protect the night sky from street lights, electronic signs and other sources of excess artificial light, known as light pollution. It is basically a buffer surrounding the state's main observatories.

Astronomers and others use the corridor to observe the night sky for research, stargazing, GPS monitoring and even national defense purposes, said Jeffrey Hall, director of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff.

The 2012 agreement allows electronic billboards in Phoenix and some western parts of the state along Interstates 8 and 10. Phoenix billboards were exempt because the metro area already emits vast amounts of light, so a change would not make a difference for dark skies.

___

WHAT'S AT STAKE FOR ASTRONOMERS?

Arizona is home to three of the country's largest telescopes  at Lowell Observatory, Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson and Mount Graham National Observatory near Safford.

The astronomy industry has capital investments totaling $1.3 billion in Arizona as of 2008, and it spends an additional $250 million annually, Hall said.

Hall says the measure would renege on the 2012 compromise and could lead to fewer limits on light pollution in the future.

"It sends a very bad message to future, potential investors that Arizona is slowly loosening its restrictions that the Arizona dark sky community depends on," he said.

The proposal would allow electronic billboards along the Interstate 15 corridor in the northwest corner of the state that could impair a park with a dark sky designation, said John Barentine, program manager with the Dark-Sky Association.

___

WHY NOT ALLOW ELECTRONIC BILLBOARDS?

Dark sky advocates are concerned light that the signs emit could affect the sensitive technologies used to look at distant celestial bodies.

Concessions made in the 2012 agreement force the billboard industry to dim their displays at night and shut them off after 11 p.m.

Billboard companies, including industry giant Lamar Advertising, now want to loosen some of those restrictions. Tim La Sota, who lobbies for the company, said Mohave and La Paz counties fall outside the buffer zone for observatories and were largely left out of discussions on the deal.

La Sota said dark sky advocates don't have to worry about electronic billboards in rural areas.

"People aren't going to put these billboards out on an untraveled country road. It doesn't make any commercial sense," he said.

Billboard companies would most likely build new electronic signs along Interstate 40, Interstate 15 and U.S. Highway 93 around Kingman and Bullhead City.

This Oct. 10, 2014 photo, Dr. Nicholas Moskovitz, an Astronomer at Lowell Observatory, looks up at the McAllister telescope, which is used for public star gazing on the Lowell campus in Flagstaff, Ariz. Astronomers and advocates for dark skies say a proposal to allow electronic billboards in the northwest of the state threatens Arizona's billion dollar star-gazing industry. Lawmakers worked with the electronic billboard industry and astronomers to negotiate a compromise in 2012 that sets up buffer zones for the state's observatories including Lowell Observatory, Kitt Peak National Observatory outside of Tucson and Mount Graham National Observatory near Safford. (Taylor Mahoney/Arizona Daily Sun via AP)
Ben Carson says 'no path forward' in his bid for White House

WASHINGTON (AP)  Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson said he is effectively ending his bid for the White House Wednesday, concluding a roller-coaster campaign that briefly took him to the top of a chaotic GOP field but ended with a Super Tuesday whimper.

"I do not see a political path forward," Carson said in a statement posted on his campaign website, though he added, "I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America" and promised to offer details of his future when he speaks Friday at a conservative conference in Washington.

He did not explicitly say that he's ending his campaign, only noting that he does not plan to take part in Thursday's Fox News debate. But his longtime businessman and friend, Armstrong Williams, confirmed that the soft-spoken candidate would no longer be asking for votes.

FILE - In this March 1, 2016 file photo, Ben Carson speaks during an election night party in Baltimore. Carson says 'no path forward' in 2016 race after Super Tuesday results. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

"There's only one candidate in this 2016 election on the GOP side, and his name is Trump. That's the reality," Williams said, adding that Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz also should drop out, as they "also have no path" to the nomination.

Carson's exit reduces the active Republican field to four candidates, though billionaire Donald Trump remains the clear leader in earned delegates and voter preference polls.

Carson, 64, was one of several anti-establishment candidates who shaped the early stages of a Republican race defined by conservatives' wide-ranging disgust with the nation's direction and GOP leaders' perceived inability to alter it.

He ran as an outsider, offering a poverty-to-fame autobiography, his unabashed Christian faith and an unceasing indictment of conventional politics, styling his bid as an effort to combat "political correctness" and what he described as a creep toward "socialism."

That formula fueled a steady climb in the polls and a powerful fundraising effort. But his success also brought intense scrutiny. Carson lashed out publicly at questions about his life story, having to explain anecdotes like his claim to have been offered a "scholarship" to West Point. He made foreign policy flubs, from a mistaken suggestion that China is militarily involved in Syria's civil war, to a high profile speech in which he repeatedly mispronounced the name of the Palestinian political and military organization Hamas.

And he endured public sniping among some of his closest advisers, some of whom contributed to questions about his overall fitness for the job.

The only African-American among the presidential contenders of either major party, Carson announced his bid in May from his native Detroit, where he was raised in a poor neighborhood by a single mother. Though she could not read, Carson said, his mother saw to it that he and his brother received formal educations.

Carson attended Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School. He 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 rose to political prominence with his address at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast, where he offered a withering critique of the modern welfare state and the nation's overall direction. The speech restated themes from Carson's 2012 book "America the Beautiful," but he excited conservatives by doing so with President Barack Obama sitting just feet away.

He would often tell voters that he viewed his candidacy as a way to honor the American founders' view of the "citizen-statesman."

"If I am successful in this endeavor," he said Dec. 8 in Georgia, "then a lot of other people who are not career politicians but who are very smart will start thinking, maybe I can do that, too, and we will expand the pool from which we selected our leadership."

___
Mainz upsets Bayern 2-1 in Bundesliga, Dortmund cuts gap

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)  Jhon Cordoba scored late to give Mainz a stunning 2-1 upset win at front-runner Bayern Munich and put some suspense into the Bundesliga season on Wednesday.

Borussia Dortmund won 2-0 at Darmstadt ahead of Saturday's showdown at home to Bayern. If Dortmund wins, it will cut Bayern's lead from five to only two points.

Cordoba fired home in the 86th minute to end Bayern's run of 11 straight home wins this season. He also spoiled the return to the stadium of former Bayern president Uli Hoeness, who was released from prison two days ago after serving a sentence for tax evasion.

Mainzs Jhon Cordoba celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Bayer Leverkusen fell to its third straight loss, Claudio Pizarro scoring a hat trick in the 4-1 win on the road for Werder Bremen.

Also, Hertha Berlin consolidated its hold on third place by beating Eintracht Frankfurt 2-0, Schalke beat 10-man Hamburger SV 3-2, Hoffenheim beat Augsburg 2-1 and Borussia Moenchengladbach routed Stuttgart 4-0. Werder escaped from the relegation zone, while Eintracht dropped into it.

In Munich, Mainz used a clever defense to keep Bayern at bay. Although Pep Guardiola's team as usual had more possession, Mainz ran a lot and looked for its chance in the counterattack.

Such a break allowed Mainz to go ahead in the 26th. Giulio Donati crossed from the right and Jairo Samperio was left unmarked at the far post to knock the ball in.

Guardiola started the match with only one German player  goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. Franck Ribery made his first start in a year and created Bayern's best chance when he fed Arturo Vidal at the edge of the penalty area. Vidal's mighty volley was turned away by Mainz goalkeeper Loris Karius.

Bayern pulled level when Arjen Robben fired low inside the post from about 20 meters (yards) in the 64th. But Mainz remained calm and Cordoba got the winner. Julian Baumgartlinger shook off Vidal and crossed for the Colombia striker to drive home past Neuer.

"We knew we would score, but we also knew that we would concede," Mainz coach Martin Schmidt said. "And we knew how to win here, with an extraordinary defensive performance and with precise counters."

Mainz is now fifth, equal on points with fourth-place Moenchengladbach.

Robben said Bayern made mistakes before Cordoba's goal that shouldn't happen.

"But when you win many matches one after the other, the time will come when you lose one," he said.

Guardiola's team has not looked convincing in the past few matches in the build-up to the showdown in Dortmund.

Dortmund had few problems in the routine win in Darmstadt on goals from Adrian Ramos and Erik Durm in either half.

"Everything went our way today, we won and Bayern lost," Durm said. "We can beat Bayern at home."

Pizarro, the 37-year-old veteran, raised his Bundesliga total tally to 99 goals and is now Bremen's top scorer of all time, ahead of Frank Neubarth and Rudi Voeller with 97 each.

Fin Bartels also scored for Werder, while Leverkusen's only strike was an own goal from Papy Djilododji.

Former FC Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness, left, arrives for the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Mainzs Jhon Cordoba celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Mainzs Jhon Cordoba, right, scores his side's second goal during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Mainzs Jhon Cordoba, right, and Bayern's Arturo Vidal challenge for the ball during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Bayern's Arjen Robben, center, celebrates after scoring his side's first goal during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Bayern's Arjen Robben, left, celebrates with teammates Douglas Costa (11) and David Alaba after scoring his side's first goal during the German Bundesliga soccer match between FC Bayern Munich and FSV Mainz 05 at the Allianz Arena stadium in Munich, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Hammond: Brexit supporters have 'no credible alternative' to being inside EU

Campaigners for the UK to leave the European Union have put forward no "credible alternative" to membership, Philip Hammond said as he warned that Brexit could cost jobs and push up prices.

The Government has produced analysis by officials concluding that any of the alternative arrangements for relations with Europe would leave Britain worse off.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the analysis shows that the alternatives to EU membership would "damage Britain" - but the document was dismissed as a "dodgy dossier" by pro-Brexit Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond supports remaining in the EU

Foreign Secretary Mr Hammond said he was "not surprised" by his Cabinet colleague's comment and added: "The Government is mandated by Parliament to publish a series of documents and I probably could have guessed in advance what my colleague would describe them as."

The paper - which looks at arrangements adopted by countries including Norway, Switzerland and Canada as well as the option of falling back on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules - warns that none is as good as the deal on offer with Brussels.

Mr Hammond warned that the alternatives would mean "working people would pay the price with few jobs and rising prices".

Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think tank in London, Mr Hammond said: "The fact is, none of the bilateral free trade models would offer anything like the access that we now have to the single market and many of them would require adoption of EU regulations and freedom of movement rules."

He added that as well as the terms of trade with Europe, the UK would also face renegotiating deals on a global scale if it voted to leave on June 23.

"We currently benefit from EU trade deals with over 50 different countries. These deals have been based on the negotiating muscle of a bloc with 500 million consumers and a quarter of the world's GDP.

"Renegotiating them as a single country would take many, many years - years in which British businesses would be squeezed out of traditional markets, and with no guarantee at the end of the process that we could get terms as good as we have now.

"Some have said we should focus our attention on deals with the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth, but the EU already has or is negotiating trade deals with all the biggest Commonwealth countries and none of our allies wants us to leave the EU - not Australia, not New Zealand, not Canada, not the United States.

"In fact the only country that would like us to leave the EU is Russia and that should probably tell us all we need to know."

Mr Hammond conceded it was possible that the UK would be able to negotiate a better deal with the EU than other countries had managed but warned that the other 27 countries would "aggressively" protect their own interests and the process could take many years - or in Switzlerland's case two decades and more than 100 separate agreements.

It would mean "years of uncertainty for Britain just as we are getting back on our feet".

Work and Pensions Secretary Mr Duncan Smith said the "real uncertainty" lay with the EU "project".

"As each day passes we see yet another example - from the utter failure to cope with the migrant crisis, to the increasing disaster of the euro," he said.

"This dodgy dossier won't fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU.

"The truth is we won't copy any other country's deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms - and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. That's the safer choice."

Mr Hammond claimed some Leave campaigners were prepared to "sacrifice" British jobs in order to cut ties with Brussels.

Challenged about the splits in the Conservative party which have seen five Cabinet ministers and two former leaders back a Brexit, Mr Hammond said the Leave campaigners "have to be honest and open about their priorities".

"I know people, there are people out there - they won't say this publicly - but privately they are prepared to sacrifice jobs and growth in order to be able to get the clampdown on migration from the EU, in order to stop paying into the EU.

"We need to be honest with the British people about this. My judgment is if the British people have the facts they will make up their own minds.

"But it isn't honest to pretend to the British people, as some have been doing, that we will be able to carry on as if we were still members of the EU with full access to the European markets, nothing will change, our businesses can go on selling and jobs will be safe yet we won't have to accept freedom of movement, we won't have to accept irksome EU regulations and we won't have to contribute to the budget.

"That is not going to happen, it is not a realistic scenario and the Leave campaign needs to be honest about that."

The latest official paper examines the arrangements which other countries outside the EU have adopted and finds none offers the advantages of continued membership.

"The UK Government believes that no existing model outside the EU comes close to providing the same balance of advantages and influence that we get from the UK's current status inside the EU," the report said.

A senior Downing Street source said: "The onus really now is on the Leave campaigners to give some honest answers to very reasonable questions.

"What will Leave look like? We've got a whole plethora of potential proposals coming forward. I see today one of the main Leave campaigns seems to be saying we need to remove ourselves from the single market altogether.

"It's not clear. Will there be access to the single market for British business? Will British businesses have to pay tariffs on goods? These are the sort of reasonable questions that British people have a right to get some answers to."

Asked how the PM viewed Mr Duncan Smith's description of the report as a "dodgy dossier", the source said: "It's for other people to decide. I think when people actually get a chance to read the document, they will see it's been produced by civil servants from across government and it's a very factual, sober analysis of the alternative options and the downsides that they involve."

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg told the BBC: "For the UK to think that it will get everything it wants from the EU, without giving anything back... well, that just doesn't happen in a political organisation.

"We lack influence in important decision-making processes in the EU. We have special arrangements on some issues, but basically we have lost our sovereignty."

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said: "The Government is doing everything it can to falsely engineer a climate of fear about leaving the EU with ludicrous claim after ludicrous claim.

"The stream of taxpayer-funded propaganda is disappointing, disingenuous and unbecoming of the senior politicians sent out to defend it. It is undermining the open and honest debate the public want to have. The safe option is to vote Leave."
Ex-police boss 'would have faced misconduct probe' over Stephen Lawrence case

A former police boss who controversially met an undercover officer during the Stephen Lawrence inquiry would have faced disciplinary proceedings if he had not been allowed to retire, a watchdog has said.

Ex-Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton "would have had a case to answer for misconduct" if he was still a serving officer, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found.

In January, lawyers for Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence, made a last-ditch, and unsuccessful, attempt to stop Mr Walton retiring so that he could face misconduct claims.

Ex-Metropolitan Police Commander Richard Walton 'would have had a case to answer for misconduct' if he was still a serving officer, the IPCC said

On Wednesday Mr Lawrence said it was "wholly wrong" that the senior officer was allowed to leave, and that it "totally undermines public confidence in the police".

In 2014 a damning report by barrister Mark Ellison QC revealed that in 1998, when Mr Walton was an acting Detective Inspector working on Scotland Yard's final submissions to the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, he had met with an undercover officer known as N81.

It was alleged that Mr Walton ''obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence".

It has previously been claimed that N81 told Mr Walton that Stephen's parents had separated, although the IPCC found no evidence of this.

The watchdog said both Mr Walton and former undercover officer Bob Lambert, who helped arrange the meeting, would have had a case to answer for misconduct.

However they would not have faced claims of gross misconduct, which could have meant being sacked, because they were acting on the orders of their superiors.

Neville Lawrence called for Lord Justice Pitchford's public inquiry into undercover policing to look at the chain of command above the officers who gained information about his family.

In a statement through his lawyers, Hodge Jones and Allen, he said: "The IPCC report makes it clear that my family were wrongly spied upon by police during the Macpherson Inquiry in 1998.

"I am glad that they have made findings of a case to answer for misconduct; however, the Pitchford Inquiry now needs to look into this matter in more detail and to find out at what level of seniority within the Metropolitan Police this spying was sanctioned.

"I have made no secret of the fact that I think it is wholly wrong that former Commander Walton was so recently allowed to retire and will avoid the disciplinary process he should have faced.

"I have long felt that allowing officers to retire to avoid disciplinary action totally undermines public confidence in the police. The police and the IPCC should have ensured that this investigation was concluded in good time to ensure that former Commander Walton could not have avoided disciplinary proceedings."

Bob Lambert has faced separate claims that he entered relationships with women who did not know he was an undercover cop; appeared in court using a false name and assumed a false identity using the name of a dead child.

IPCC deputy chairwoman Sarah Green said: "During the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the honesty and integrity of the Metropolitan Police was rightly under intense public scrutiny. The force's reputation may have suffered immense damage had the meeting become public knowledge at the time.

"The IPCC found that Robert Lambert and Richard Walton both had a case to answer for discreditable conduct in that their actions could have brought the force into disrepute."

Scotland Yard said it does not accept that either officer would have faced misconduct proceedings in 1998.

A spokesman said: "The Commission's findings acknowledge the meeting may have been legitimate and that the evidence suggests Mr Walton had been asked to attend by a senior officer.

"We believe that if the evidence points towards the meeting being legitimate or there is insufficient evidence that it was not legitimate then there could be no finding of misconduct, gross or otherwise, for either officer."

The "mere possibility" of a public backlash had the meeting been revealed in 1998 is also not "sufficient in itself to have found a case to answer for misconduct", the force said.

The force has maintained that its undercover officers infiltrated protest groups that could have caused public disorder.

Mr Walton said: "It has taken the IPCC two years to investigate a single meeting I attended as a Sergeant 18 years ago.

"The report makes clear that no information was passed to me about either the Lawrence family or its campaign. The Met formally rejected the IPCC's findings about me and did not plan to bring misconduct proceedings.
Al Qaeda leaders made plans for peace deal with Mauritania - documents

By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leaders discussed a plan to arrange a peace deal with the government of Mauritania, according to documents seized by U.S. Navy Seals when they raided Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout in 2011 and made public by the U.S. government on Tuesday.

According to a document outlining al Qaeda's 2010 discussions about the peace plan, al Qaeda's North African affiliate - known as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)-would commit itself "not to carry out any military activity in Mauritania" for a year. The peace plan could then be renewed, the document says.

In return, the proposal says Mauritanian authorities would release all al Qaeda prisoners and would commit not to carry out any attack on AQIM from Mauritanian territory.

Under the al Qaeda proposal, the Mauritanian government would also agree to pay AQIM an annual "sum of between 10 to 20 million euros" ($11 million-$22 million) in order to compensate the militants and "prevent the kidnapping of tourists."

Senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the documents recovered from bin Laden's hideout said they had no evidence that any such peace deal was ever reached with authorities in Mauritania, or whether the militant group ever contacted anyone in Mauritania to discuss the plan directly.

El Housseine Ould Nagi, legal counsel to Mauritania's president, strongly denied his government had anything to do with such a deal.

"We have always been against paying ransoms and indirect financing of terrorism. Consequently, there has never been a secret accord between us and those people," he said, referring to AQIM.

AQIM, a spinoff of what was originally an Algeria-based Salafist militant group, first publicly appeared in January 2007. It rose to prominence among militant groups mainly through its involvement in kidnapping Westerners for ransom in Sahel region countries including Mauritania, Niger and Mali.

In July 2012, the head of the U.S. military's Africa Command described AQIM as al Qaeda's "wealthiest affiliate."
China's green push gives clout to once "embarrassing" ministry

By Sui-Lee Wee and Brenda Goh

BEIJING/LINYI, China, March 2 (Reuters) - An affable academic who cracks jokes and cycles to work, Chen Jining is the face of China's clean-up, turning his environment ministry from "most embarrassing" to a powerhouse that has taken on those driving growth at all costs.

Chen is no free agent - his message is tightly controlled in a country where the environment remains a sensitive issue. He is monitored and chaperoned, and many question how much of the push comes from Chen himself, a quiet professor.

His enthusiasm last year for "Under the Dome", a documentary about pollution, saw the film go viral and sparked a national debate, but Chen was quickly silenced and the film blocked.

Regardless, Chen's power base continues to grow, industry executives and environmental observers say, as China cracks down on factories and polluting industries.

His elevation to the cabinet post was seen by ministry insiders and campaigners as a symbolic appointment, chosen by a government keen to appease public anger over damaging smog levels and environmental degradation with a young, telegenic outsider.

That anger coincides with a collapse in commodity prices and a corruption crackdown that has hit powerful players in oil, gas and resources, hurting those who campaigned for rapid economic growth.

That has left Chen, and the ministry that his predecessor called China's "most embarrassing" government department, in the spotlight, and won him unusually broad public support.

"This is very rare," said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a Chinese environmental group, who has attended conferences with Chen. "The environment ministry used to give people the impression that they didn't do anything. There's been a major change in the past year."

The ministry did not respond to a request for an interview with Chen.

BATTLING LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Chen has made his mark by taking on local government officials who long shielded companies that brought in much-needed tax revenues.

Last year, his ministry summoned officials from 34 provinces and municipalities to account for environmental failures, according to a Reuters review of official data.

He now wants to keep up the pressure on local governments to implement environmental policies, revealing that as many 191,000 firms breached environmental rules last year.

"Provincial leaders - both party heads and governors - have felt the pressure of a more aggressive ministry, backed up by China's top leadership," said Li Yan, Beijing-based deputy programme director at Greenpeace, which has held discussions on pollution with the ministry.

Pushing on reforms started by his predecessor, Chen has overhauled a graft-plagued environmental impact assessment system by cutting the link between his ministry and its affiliated agencies that conducted the assessments.

GROUND ZERO

But his 'clean up' message remains sensitive and painful on the ground, such as in the eastern city of Linyi, earmarked for environmental action within a month of Chen's appointment.

For years a steel hub and scrap copper processing centre, Linyi was told last year to improve its air quality by moving factories - reversing years of new plant and industrial expansion.

Since then, local media has reported the shuttering of dozens of factories and the loss of at least 60,000 jobs. Official data shows economic growth slowed last year to just over 7 percent from 10.4 percent a year earlier. By one gauge, air pollution fell by around a fifth.

"Linyi is a strong exhibition of the government's determination to achieve air pollution improvement targets," said Greenpeace's Li.

But at The Huasheng Jiangquan Group, an aluminium, steel and ceramics maker, the cost has been a six-month operational shutdown and around 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) spent on meeting stricter environmental regulations.

"Our company still hasn't recovered from shutting down production this one time," said one of the firm's representatives in charge of environmental protection, a man surnamed Liu. "The losses were great."
Samarco to pay at least $5 bln in Brazil dam spill deal - source

By Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA, March 1 (Reuters) - Samarco Mineracao SA will pay at least 20 billion reais ($5 billion) over 15 years as part of a deal reached with the Brazilian government to settle a lawsuit for damages caused by a deadly dam spill at a mine in November, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday.

Samarco, a joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, will pay 4.4 billion reais in the three years following the agreement that will be signed on Wednesday, said the official who requested anonymity since the information was not yet public. The rest of the funds will be released in the following years.

Regarded as Brazil's worst environmental disaster, the burst dam killed 19 people, forced hundreds to leave their homes and polluted one of the country's main rivers.

The deal comes after Vale announced a fourth-quarter net loss of $8.57 billion, its worst ever as a private company, and BHP recorded its first loss in more than 16 years for the six months to Dec. 31.

BHP Billiton declined to comment on terms of any agreement, but reiterated that an agreement was close.

Press representatives with Vale and Samarco were not immediately reachable for comment.

The dam burst revealed a series of mistakes by under-funded mining and environmental regulators in one of the world's top iron-ore producer, triggering a debate over harsher mining controls in Congress.
Chongqing blazes economic trail as Bo scandal recedes

By Sue-Lin Wong

CHONGQING, China, March 2 (Reuters) - The economic success of the metropolitan area of Chongqing in central China was in the balance following the jailing four years ago of its charismatic Communist Party chief Bo Xilai, a rising star in the political elite.

But the city has continued to thrive, a feat that has some lessons for other local governments and reflects a pragmatic streak in China's leadership in allowing Bo's Chongqing model, and his economic adviser, Mayor Huang Qifan, to survive his fall.

China is trying to transform its giant economy from one led by basic manufacturing to one more reliant on services and consumption, which the government expects to provide more stable growth in the future. A slowdown in growth and slumping stock markets in the past year have raised concerns among investors about Beijing's ability to maintain stability while driving structural reforms.

Chongqing appears to have achieved that balance.

Unlike much of China, it didn't shirk the hard decisions, opting early to cut overcapacity in its steel industry and investing heavily to move up the value-chain from lower-end manufacturing to electronics, biomedical products and high-tech equipment.

Under Bo, Chongqing became one of China's fastest-growing regions, helped by a crackdown on corruption, corporate tax breaks, the pursuit of foreign investment, and rapid urbanisation and industrialisation.

And so it remains, chalking up growth of 11 percent in 2015, while the national economy slowed to a 25-year low of 6.9 percent.

While Beijing purged many of Bo's associates, Huang was left in office to oversee that success under new city party boss, Sun Zhengcai, a man tipped for top national leadership.

Even so, the scandal briefly threatened Chongqing's economic future.

Local government official Le Peng said business activity and foreign investment declined, and projects initially approved for Chongqing were moved elsewhere.

"The Bo Xilai incident had a very large impact on Chongqing's economy," he said, speaking from an office in the city's Liangjiang New Area.

Chongqing was blessed with advantages before Bo and Huang, from its handy location on the Yangtze River and arms-manufacturing history in the 1940s, to central government's decision to make it the fourth municipality in 1997, alongside Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, in a push to develop inland regions.

But it didn't rest on its laurels.

"I think we can learn from Chongqing's experience about the importance of undertaking industrial upgrading and restructuring," said Yating Xu, an economist at IHS in Beijing.

CHINA MOTOWN

Policies included a corporate income tax at 15 percent to develop priority industries in China's west compared with 25 percent in more developed parts of China; the first tax-bonded area in inland China, so importers didn't pay duties until they sold products on; incentives for investing in high-tech and green industries; reforms to encourage rural workers into the city; and policies to make more land cheaply available to industry.

The city is now one of the country's leading centres of automobile manufacturing, drawing global brands such as Hyundai, Iveco, General Motors and Ford.

One of China's biggest carmakers, Chongqing Changan Automobile, which plans to sell 4.5 million vehicles by 2020, is based there.

Huachen Xinyuan's new auto plant, which primarily supplies China's domestic market, is based in nearby Fuling district - once a six-hour boat ride from Chongqing centre but now just 40 minutes by high-speed train.

That in turn attracted businesses like Haoxiang Machinery.

"We moved out here to be closer to Huachen Xinyuan, along with 14 other component suppliers," said Ye Huagang, its boss, over the buzz of jackhammers at his new factory.

Global electronics brands including Hewlett-Packard, Foxconn, Acer and Asus all have operations in Chongqing, lured by tax breaks, cheap labour and land, plus a developed supply chain and logistics. The region makes one in three of the world's laptops.

The vigour of the manufacturing sector has also helped develop related technology clusters and attendant finance and logistics services.

"There's a very close connection between the development of manufacturing and services," said Tu Xingyong, chief economist at Chongqing's Economic and IT Commission.

Chongqing hasn't just been successful at attracting inward investment. Chongqing firms are also outbound investors, and consular representatives from 10 countries are based there.

"We are here mainly to attract Chinese companies who want to invest in Ethiopia and Africa," said Kebede Abera, Ethiopia's consular general to Chongqing.

In the past four years, around 80 Chinese companies have visited Ethiopia, and some, including Chongqing carmaker Lifan and Chongqing Bureau of Geology and Mining Exploration, have invested there.

POLITICAL PROMISE

Fears that Chongqing might suffer for its connection with Bo, who some had considered a potential rival for leadership in Beijing, were soothed when President Xi Jinping made his first trip of 2016 to the city.

"This place is full of promise," he said in a speech looking out over a port connecting railways, waterways and roads along China's new Silk Road linking Asia and Europe.

That is in part a political calculation.

"If Chongqing's economy slowed down, the outside world would think Chongqing can't do without Bo," a source with ties to the leadership said.

As a further sign of favour, Mayor Huang was among half a dozen regional officials picked to join Xi on his visit to the United States last year.

Huang's next role could well take him to the national stage.

Two sources say he is tipped to become secretary-general of the cabinet, which would make him Premier Li Keqiang's right-hand man.

"The power he has here, even if it is local, it's a very national level experiment," said Sergio Maffettone, Italy's consul-general to Chongqing. "Chongqing is like a lab for reforms." ($1 = 6.5339 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Stuck in limbo, Mauritania's Syrian refugees dream of the West

By Kieran Guilbert

NOUAKCHOTT, March 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Terrified of being dragged out of university and thrown into civil war like many of his fellow students, 23-year-old Amer fled Syria, hoping for a new life free of suffering and strife.

Amer escaped to Lebanon in May 2013 - two years into the conflict - before flying to join his father in the West African nation of Mauritania, one of the few Arabic-speaking countries to allow Syrians to enter and move freely.

But life in Nouakchott, the capital of the poor, mainly Muslim nation, has been a deep disappointment to the young refugee.

"I left my studies, my family and my life behind for nothing - there is no life here," said Amer, slumped in a chair on the patio of a local community centre in the sweltering midday heat.

"I wish I could have returned to Syria... I would have suffered, but it would be better than suffering here," added the former management student, sitting next to his father Tiseer.

Amer and Tiseer are among the thousands of Syrians to have arrived in Nouakchott since the war in Syria erupted in 2011, most having flown to the country from Lebanon or Turkey.

While Syria's neighbours have become overwhelmed with refugees, other Arab countries like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have enforced visa restrictions on Syrians and Europe has tightened its land borders, Mauritania has kept its doors open.

The West African nation has a small but growing number of Syrians seeking refuge, yet most of the arrivals see the country as a stop-gap or gateway to Europe, rather than a new home.

The majority cross the border to Mali and head through the Sahel on long, dangerous journeys, often with people smugglers.

Many go to Libya and Tunisia before setting off across the Mediterranean on perilous boat journeys to Italy, or apply for asylum in the North African Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

"Mauritania is not the ideal destination for Syrians... in fact it is often their last resort," said International Organisation of Migration (IOM) representative Anke Strauss.

"HERE, LIFE IS HELL"

While Syrians who stay in Nouakchott have been welcomed, due to a common language in Arabic and sympathy over the war, many complain of a lack of work, and poor education and healthcare.

Many former professionals, including architects, doctors and lawyers, work in restaurants to eke out a living, said United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) representative Mohamed Alwash.

"Syrians in Mauritania feel like they are stuck in limbo. They struggle to adapt to the culture, and to poorer living conditions and quality of life than they once enjoyed in Syria".

Outside the community centre, traffic and traders pushing vegetable carts inch down crowded, dusty streets strewn with litter. The Syrians describe the ramshackle city of more than one million inhabitants as "hot, dull, bleak and lifeless."

Tiseer, who worked as a labourer in Syria's capital Damascus before fleeing in 2011 and arrived in Mauritania after being denied entry to Tunisia, does odd construction jobs but said bogus contracts and disputes meant he often did not get paid.

The 50-year-old refugee said as neither his heart condition nor the post-conflict trauma suffered by his son Amer could be treated in Nouakchott, they were often too ill to work, and not strong enough to attempt the journey across the Sahel.

"Life in Syria before the conflict - with my family, my car and secure work - was paradise. Here, it is hell," added Tiseer, who did not give his full name for fear of retribution towards his wife and seven other children who are still in Syria.

The UNHCR helps Syrian refugees and asylum seekers to access education and healthcare, offers psycho-social counselling and provides cash grants towards schooling, health and food costs.

But for some families such as Mohammed, a former mason who says he cannot work due to health problems, his wife Amal and their three children, such support is not enough.

"We only receive $50 per month... we rely on food from our neighbours to get by," said Mohammed, who also asked not to be identified as his family fled Syria in 2014 to avoid compulsory military service for their eldest son.

DREAMING OF THE WEST

The number of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in Mauritania has increased tenfold to 340 since March 2015, when Algeria became the latest Arab nation to impose visa regulations for Syrians, cutting off a popular gateway to Ceuta and Melilla.

But given that most of those arriving in Nouakchott do not register, as they plan to travel through Mali and towards Europe or have the wealth to live independently, the number of Syrians now residing in Mauritania is probably far higher, experts say.

There are at least 3,000 Syrians living in Nouakchott, its suburbs and certain southern towns, said the Alwava Initiative of Tayerett Youth, a local group which works with Syrians.

"Most who arrive either head straight on (through Mali) if they have the means, or stay in Nouakchott to earn money until they can afford to move on," said Strauss of the IOM.

The vast majority of Syrians registered with the UNHCR in Mauritania have flown from Turkey, which has won international praise for hosting more than 2.5 million refugees.

Yet Turkey has closed most of its border crossings amid pressure from the EU to prevent refugees travelling on to Europe, which could lead to more Syrians flying to Nouakchott.

Campaigns have been launched to inform Syrians of the dangers of crossing Mali's lawless desert north towards Europe. Most arrivals are unaware of the risks, the IOM and UNHCR said.

"We are not just talking about young men, but families with small children," said Alwash of the UNHCR. "It is a harsh journey, taken in desperation due to a lack of alternatives."

Conscious of the dangers, Mohammed and Amal dream of being resettled in Europe, like some of their Syrian friends and relatives who have been granted asylum in Germany and Sweden, to give their children a better education and future.

But the process can take years and only one percent of refugees worldwide are given the opportunity to start new lives in countries including the United States, Britain and Australia.

Tiseer and Amer exchange fleeting smiles as they discuss the prospect of being resettled in Europe or further afield.
Spring rains bring some relief to Ethiopia's hunger crisis

By Katy Migiro

ADDIS ABABA, March 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rain in parts of Ethiopia is bringing some relief to Africa's second most populous nation, which is in the grip of its worst drought in 50 years.

More than 1 in 10 Ethiopians will require food aid this year, prompting the Ethiopian government and United Nations to appeal for $1.4 billion to respond to the emergency.

"Overall, the crisis is going to worsen up until August or September," said John Graham, country director for Save the Children. "We have not seen the worst yet."

Here are some facts about the spring and summer rains.

SPRING RAINS

The March to May rains, or Belg, have begun.

"We are so optimistic," said Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia's National Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Committee. "The meteorological forecast indicates that the coming belg will be promising."

These rains will help herders in the worst-hit eastern Afar and Somali regions, whose livestock has been decimated.

"They can recover quite quickly once there's rain because the forage starts to grow quickly," Graham said.

The Belg contributes 10 percent of annual food production.

In April and May, the government and agencies will reassess the hunger situation across the country and update their humanitarian response plan.

Good spring rains will enable 1 million people receiving food aid to feed themselves by July, the United Nations said.

SUMMER RAINS

Most people depend on the June to September Meher rains, which account for 90 percent of food production.

"For most of the country, we are waiting to see what will happen with the main summer rains, which last significantly longer and produce the most harvest," said Paul Handley, head of the United Nations Office for the Cooordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Ethiopia.

Many farmers will need to be provided with seed and fertiliser before the rains start in order to plant.

"By September, they'll be hoping to get some crops in order to cope until the main harvest comes in December," said Graham.
Mexico to counter negative tone of U.S. presidential race

By Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY, March 1 (Reuters) - Mexico's government is planning a diplomatic push to counter aggressive rhetoric against its nationals in the U.S. election race, a senior official said on Tuesday, after calls by Donald Trump for a massive wall to divide the two nations.

Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have also proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but it is Trump who has taken the hardest line against the United States' southern neighbor.

The Republican front-runner has labeled Mexican migrants as drug runners and rapists, proposed mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and said Mexico is "killing" the United States with cheap labor.

Francisco Guzman, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's chief of staff, on Tuesday said it was time for the government to push back against these negative images.

Mexico plans to use its extensive network of U.S. consulates to highlight the benefits of U.S.-Mexican relations to the U.S. economy and the American people, Guzman said.

The initiative will include forums with U.S. business people, politicians and public figures to get Mexico's opinions heard.

"Mexico's positioning in the U.S. election debate is not generally adequate," Guzman told a group of foreign correspondents. "It doesn't reflect the constructive relationship between Mexico and the U.S."

Trump rolled up a series of primary wins on Tuesday and looked set to take command of the Republican nomination battle.

The Mexican government has up till now avoided a direct confrontation with the billionaire real estate developer, though the country's top diplomat has called his policies and comments "ignorant and racist."

Former Mexican presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon have publicly condemned Trump, both comparing him to Adolf Hitler.

"We're not going to involve ourselves in the (U.S. presidential) debate. We don't want to polarize, but we do want to have a positive institutional relationship as we've had in the past," Guzman said.

"The U.S.-Mexico relationship requires more bridges and fewer walls. The isolationist solution is not a solution at all," he added.

The United States is Mexico's top trade partner, the destination for about 80 percent of its exports, in addition to sharing many cultural and family links.

To promote stronger ties, Mexico's government plans to meet with the final contenders for the White House once the two major parties have selected their candidates, Guzman said.
Philippine officials say China blocked access to disputed S. China Sea atoll

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA, March 2 (Reuters) - China sent several ships to a disputed atoll in the South China Sea, preventing Filipino fishermen from accessing traditional fishing grounds and raising tensions in the volatile region, Philippine officials said on Wednesday.

China had sent as many as seven ships to Quirino Atoll, also known as Jackson Atoll, in recent weeks, said Eugenio Bito-onon Jr, the mayor of nearby Pagasa Island in the Spratly Islands.

The Spratlys are the most contested archipelago in the South China Sea, a resource-rich region and critical shipping lane linking North Asia to Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

"This is very alarming, Quirino is on our path when we travel from Palawan to Pagasa. It is halfway and we normally stop there to rest," Bito-onon told Reuters.

"I feel something different. The Chinese are trying to choke us by putting an imaginary checkpoint there. It is a clear violation of our right to travel, impeding freedom of navigation," he said.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China's Ministry of Transport had sent vessels to tow a grounded foreign ship and they had since left the surrounding waters.

"To guarantee safety of navigation and of work conditions, China urged fishing vessels near the site to leave," Hong said, adding that China had indisputable sovereignty over the atoll.

The Philippines Foreign Ministry said Chinese coast guard vessels had been seen at the atoll two weeks ago but were not in the area on Wednesday.

"The Department is monitoring reports on the situation on the ground and reiterates its call for China to exercise self-restraint from the conduct of activities that could complicate or escalate disputes in the South China Sea and affect peace and stability in the region," the ministry said in a statement.

TENSIONS ON THE RISE

Earlier, the Philippine military said it was looking into the situation around Jackson Atoll, where a Chinese warship allegedly fired warning shots at Filipino fishermen in 2011.

"We know there are Chinese ships moving around the Spratly area," spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla told Reuters. "There are also ships around Second Thomas Shoal, so we want to make sure if the presence is permanent."

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department said it was trying to confirm the latest reported incident.

Mark Toner told a regular news briefing that the United States, a treaty ally of the Philippines that has repeatedly expressed concerns about Beijing's methods in pursuit of maritime claims, did not want to China using its ships "to intimidate ... fishing vessels in that region."

Second Thomas Shoal is where the Philippine navy has been occupying and reinforcing a rusting ship it ran aground in 1999 to bolster its claims to the disputed reef.

A military source from Palawan said a surveillance plane had seen four to five ships in the vicinity of Jackson Atoll last week.

"There are no indications China will build structures or develop it into an island," said the source, who was not authorised to speak to the media about the South China Sea.

The Philippines Star newspaper, which earlier reported the story, quoted an unidentified fisherman as saying Chinese boats chased them away when they tried to enter the area last week.

Along with China and the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims on the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year.

Tensions have been building recently, with the United States and others expressing concerns about China's land reclamation in the Spratly Islands and deployment of surface-to-air missiles and fighter jets in the Paracel Islands.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned China on Tuesday against what he called "aggressive" actions in the region, saying there would be "specific consequences" to militarisation of the South China Sea.

In response, Hong urged Washington on Wednesday to "stop exaggerating and sensationalising" the issue.

For its part, Beijing has been angered by "freedom of navigation" air and sea patrols the United States has conducted near the islands it claims in the South China Sea and says it needs military facilities for its self defence.
Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on March 2

PRAGUE, March 2 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Wednesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 1 hour) ===========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Real-time economic data releases................... Previous stories on Czech data............ Overview of economic data and forecasts......... Updates on CEE currencies........................... ==========================EVENTS================================ PRAGUE - The lower house of parliament continues a session. Related news: ===========================NEWS================================= TAKE A LOOK-Slovak leader Fico favourite to win third term in March 5 election. Story: Related news: PMI: Poland's manufacturing sector growth jumped to a seven-month high in February and Hungary's purchasing managers' index also rose as Central European economies continued their robust start to 2016, shrugging off a slowdown in the euro zone. Story: Related news: COALITION: A Czech opposition proposal to clip the ability of powerful Finance Minister Andrej Babis to own companies and to win public contracts has won unexpectedly strong support in parliament and threatens to rattle the ruling coalition. Story: Related news: BUDGET: The Czech central state budget showed a surplus of 27.69 billion crown ($1.11 billion) at the end of February, higher than a year ago thanks to rising tax revenue, Finance Ministry data showed on Tuesday. Story: Related news: CEE POWER: Central and southeastern European day-ahead power was mixed on Tuesday with forecasts for more wind supply pushing Czech and Slovak lower while declining renewables drove up Hungarian and Romanian prices, traders said. Story: Related news: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2016 vs Euro 26.998 27.053 0.2 0 vs Dollar 24.888 24.537 -1.43 -0.11 Czech Equities 871.89 871.89 1.67 -8.83 U.S. Equities 16,865.08 16,516.5 2.11 -3.21 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1600 GMT ===========================PRESS DIGEST========================= NEGATIVE RATES: Analysts from the main banks active on the Czech market said that the Czech National Bank is more likely to cut rates into negative territory. The key factor is, whether the European Central Bank would cut its deposit rate further to the negative side, which is expected to happen already in March. Hospodarske Noviny, page 1 CSOB: KBC banking group set aside 500 million euros for digitalisation of its business, large part of it will go to its Czech subsidiary, CSOB, KBC chief executive Johan Thijs said. Hospodarske Noviny, page 10 Reuters did not verify the stories, nor does it vouch for their accuracy. For Instant Views of key economic data click on For summary of economic data and forecasts For diary of forthcoming Czech events For calendar of east European economic indicators TOP NEWS -- Emerging markets TOP NEWS -- Convergence watch For an economic indicator diary for the euro zone, the United States and other Group of Seven countries see For real-time stock market index quotes click in brackets: Warsaw WIG20 Budapest BUX Prague PX Prague Newsroom: +420 224 190 477 E-mail: prague.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com ($1 = 24.8170 Czech crowns) (Reporting by Prague Newsroom)
Hungary, Factors to watch, March 2

BUDAPEST, March 2 (Reuters) - Following is a list of events in Hungary and the region, as well as news stories and press reports which may influence financial markets.

(For any queries: Budapest editorial +36 1 327 4745)

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN HUNGARY (ALL TIMES GMT)

BUDAPEST - No events of note.

IN THE REGION

ROMANIA - PPI, Jan (0700)

SLOVAKIA - T-bond calendar, March

IN THE NEWS REUTERS

Europe seen on cusp of new humanitarian crisis at Greece-Macedonia border

The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greece's northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said on Tuesday as the European Union prepared to offer more financial aid.

Hungary's ruling party passes law limiting public access to cbank data

Hungary's ruling party on Tuesday pushed a bill through parliament limiting public access to financial data of companies owned by the National Bank, such as the Budapest Stock Exchange, ignoring critics who said it was violating the constitution.

INTERVIEW-Hungary bad loans vehicle could turn profit in a few years -CEO

The vehicle set up by the National Bank of Hungary to buy up bad corporate loans from banks could turn a profit in three to four years after an initial period of expected losses, its chief executive told Reuters on Tuesday.

Slovakia's Fico set for election win, reinforcing central Europe's EU dissenters

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is on course to win another term in parliamentary elections on Saturday, maintaining an anti-immigration alliance with his European Union neighbours, Hungary's Viktor Orban and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

CEE economies robust, Polish factory output at seven-month high
Jordan says foils Islamic State plot to attack civilian, military targets

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN, March 2 (Reuters) - Jordan's security services said on Wednesday they had thwarted a plot by sleeper cells of Islamic State militants to blow up civilian and military targets in the U.S.-allied Arab kingdom.

One of Jordan's biggest security operations in years tracked down militants with suicide bomb belts to a hideout in the northern city of Irbid near the Syrian border, according to a statement carried by the state news agency Petra.

Seven militants were killed in clashes that began on Tuesday night and lasted until dawn and a police officer was also killed, it said. Security forces seized automatic weapons, munitions and explosives from the Islamic State cell.

"After diligent and detailed intelligence gathering the intelligence department was able soon to thwart a criminal and destructive plot linked by the terrorist Daesh group aimed at destabilising national security," the statement said, using the pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

No details were given on the targets or the plot.

Two security sources said dozens of special forces had been involved in the operation and that the militants had been holed up near a Palestinian refugee camp in the centre of Irbid.

Militants who refused to surrender engaged in heavy exchanges of fire with special forces that also injured five policemen, the security services statement said. "They showed heavy resistance with automatic weapons and so the security forces dealt with the situation with the necessary force."

King Abdullah, a key Middle East ally of Western powers against Islamist militancy who has also safeguarded Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, has been among the most vocal leaders in the region in warning of threats posed by Islamic State, which has seized swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

The monarch, in ceremonial military attire, attended the funeral of the dead police officer along with several thousand people near the city of Zarqa.

BATTLING ISLAMIC STATE

Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour told lawmakers that the security operation had fully achieved its goals, saying the targeted "terrorist group" had forged organisational ties with Islamic State in an attempt to destabilise Jordan.

Jordan has tried and sentenced dozens of suspected militant, mostly Jordanians returning from neighbouring Syria's civil war. Some of them were recruited by Syria's al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front or by Islamic State insurgents.

"We live in a neighbourhood that is full of terrorist organizations ... All of our effort is directed towards stopping these terrorist organizations from attacking us and undermining the security of our country," government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani told Reuters.

Intensifying its crackdown on followers of radical Islamist groups since last year, Jordan has also arrested dozens of sympathisers who show support for such groups on social media.

International rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, have accused Jordan of using the crackdown on Islamist militants as an excuse for harsher curbs on freedom of speech by civil activists and dissidents.

Jordan's military has also conducted some raids on Islamic State hideouts in Syria. Since Syria's war erupted in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have joined Sunni Muslim militant groups fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have meanwhile fled across the border and are now living in Jordan, some in refugee camps.
Nigeria to start new talks on $3.9 bln MTN fine 'very soon' -minister

By Alexis Akwagyiram

ABUJA, March 2 (Reuters) - Nigeria will start new talks with South African mobile phone operator MTN "very soon" to settle a dispute over a $3.9 billion fine but the final decision rests with President Muhammadu Buhari, the communications minister said.

Last week, MTN said it had withdrawn a lawsuit against Nigeria over the fine, which originally stood at $5.2 billion, and aimed for a settlement. MTN was fined for failing to disconnect unregistered SIM users and has paid $250 million towards a settlement.

"It is (now) for government to meet with them and conclude negotiations," telecommunications minister Adebayo Shittu told Reuters late on Tuesday, the first reaction from the ministry.

MTN shares, which had been down 2.8 percent on Wednesday, trimmed losses after the comments although they were still down 1.8 percent by 1045 GMT.

Shittu said President Muhammadu Buhari would make the final decision on any settlement over the penalty. "It is within his power and jurisdiction to do that if he feels that it would be in the interests of Nigeria to so do," he said.

The issue could come up when South African President Jacob Zuma visits Nigeria next week for talks with Buhari.

Nigeria has been trying to halt the widespread use of unregistered SIM cards, fearing they are being used for criminal activity, including by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram.

Last week MTN, which makes 37 percent of its sales in Nigeria, said it would withdraw its court challenge in an effort to reach an amicable settlement and make a "good faith payment".

A judge in Lagos last month gave both parties until March 18 to reach a settlement, after MTN had asked the court to arbitrate over the dispute, saying the Nigerian telecoms regulator had no legal grounds to order the fine.

The fine came months after Buhari took office last May following an election campaign in which he pledged to impose tougher regulations and fight the corruption that had stunted development in Africa's biggest economy.

Shittu also said Nigeria was in advanced talks with an Indian firm to lay fibre optic cables from Kogi state to the capital Abuja. He declined to name the firm.
South Korea demands more sanctions on "serial offender" North

By Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles

GENEVA, March 2 (Reuters) - South Korea's foreign minister called on the U.N. Security Council to expand sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday to punish what he called an escalating and increasingly threatening nuclear programme.

Yun Byung-se called North Korea a "serial offender" and denounced Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test and latest long-range missile launch, carried out in January and February.

North Korea's Ambassador Se Pyong So said his country's nuclear programme was designed to ensure peace on the divided Korean peninsula, and warned that more sanctions would bring a "tougher reaction".

Both men addressed the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament in Geneva hours before major powers were scheduled to vote at the U.N. Security Council across the Atlantic on a resolution to expand sanctions on North Korea.

The United States also condemned Pyongyang's actions.

"The international community stands united in its firm opposition to the DPRK's development and possession of nuclear weapons," Christopher Buck, deputy U.S. disarmament ambassador, told the Geneva talks.

"We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state."

LANDMARK RESOLUTION

After nearly two months of bilateral negotiations, China last month agreed to support new measures in the Security Council to try and persuade its ally North Korea to abandon its atomic weapons programme.

Pyongyang has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 because of its nuclear tests and multiple rocket launches.

"It's no wonder that the Security Council will very soon put up a landmark resolution with the strongest ever non-military sanction measures in seven decades of U.N. history," South Korea's Yun said.

The credibility of the nuclear non-proliferation regime needed to be protected, he added.

"Even at this moment, Pyongyang is accelerating its nuclear weapons and missile capabilities from nuclear bombs and hydrogen bombs to ICBMs and SLBMs," he said referring to intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

"We have heard Pyongyang officially state its intention not only to further develop its nuclear weapons and missiles but also to use them."

Japan's parliamentary vice-minister for foreign affairs, Masakazu Hamachi, said North Korea's actions had undermined the security of Northeast Asia and the rest of the world.

North Korea's envoy retorted that the nuclear programme was "not directed to harm the fellow countryman but to protect peace on the Korean Peninsula and security in the region from the U.S. vicious nuclear war scenario."
Palestinians turn to makeshift guns in escalation of street violence

By Dan Williams and Ismael Khader

JERUSALEM, March 2 (Reuters) - During previous rounds of Palestinian violence, Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank would turn up small arsenals of military assault rifles. Now hauls more often include what look like toy guns and the tools required to make them lethal.

After years of seizures that have choked the supply of unlicensed M-16s and Kalashnikovs in the territory and raised black-market prices, some Palestinians are turning to improvised firearms to carry out street attacks on Israelis.

Five months into a series of killings by Palestinians that have mainly involved stabbings and car-rammings, some are stepping up the assaults by using such makeshift guns.

This escalation could pose problems for authorities on both sides, who are seeking to keep the bloodshed from spilling over into another uprising that could draw in armed Palestinian factions and trigger sweeping Israeli crackdowns.

The shift was illustrated by the haul from an Israeli raid on a foundry in the occupied West Bank this week; photos released by Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service showed a sniper rifle held together by duct tape, a Wild West-style long gun with a silencer welded on, as well as a lathe machine tool.

The foundry may be a testament to the effectiveness of past raids, by both Israeli and Palestinian security services.

"A genuine M-16 now costs 60,000 to 70,000 shekels ($15,000-$18,000) on the street, whereas an improvised gun can cost as little as 2,000 shekels ($512)," one Palestinian with knowledge of the trade told Reuters. "For a young person looking to carry out an attack with limited resources, the choice is obvious."

The crudity of the cobbled-together guns may offer scant comfort to Palestinian and Israeli security officials.

Palestinian leaders and international powers have already said Israel has often used excessive force against assailants, many of them youths, though Israel has rejected this, saying it has prevented lethal attacks on civilians and security forces.

Security experts cautioned that Israel was likely to be even less restrained should its forces or citizens come under regular attack with guns, regardless of how lethal they are.

"It's one thing for a soldier to face someone who is trying to stab him with scissors, quite another to face a gunman - he can never know whether if there is more ammunition, if the gun is still a threat, so he is likelier to shoot," said Amy Ayalon, who headed the Shin Bet between 1996 and 2000, when the last Palestinian revolt against Israel erupted.

"So the response, on site, tends to be harsher, and the political echelon will be forced to back it up."

OVER 200 KILLED

Palestinian attackers have killed 28 Israelis and a U.S. citizen since October. Israeli security forces have killed at least 172 Palestinians, 114 of whom Israel says were assailants, while most others were shot dead during violent protests.

Tensions have been stoked by various factors including a dispute over Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque compound and the failure of several rounds of peace talks to secure the Palestinians an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory.

Palestinian leaders have said that with no breakthrough on the horizon, desperate youngsters see no future ahead. Israel says young Palestinians are being incited to violence by their leaders and by Islamist groups calling for Israel's destruction.

Two Palestinians who killed an Israeli policewoman and wounded another in Jerusalem last month before they were shot dead were armed with improvised guns known as "Carlos", Israeli authorities said.

Carlos - simple knock-offs of Swedish-made Carl Gustav machine-pistols made in metal foundries - are among the cheapest makeshift guns to buy on the black market, say the authorities.

According to one Israeli security source, the relatively low Israeli death toll in the attack was partly due to the gunmen's failure to fire rapidly, possibly due to the Carlos jamming.

Israel is also holding two Palestinian brothers from the West Bank city of Hebron for four gun attacks that wounded two soldiers and two civilians. The Shin Bet says they used a Carlo and an improvised sniper rifle with a silencer fashioned out of an oil can as instructed by a video they found on the Internet.

A spokesman for the Palestinian Security Services in the West Bank said they were aware makeshift weapons were being manufactured there.

"Making weapons locally is common everywhere in the world and we are moving against the sources of such weapons because they represent a risk," Adnan Al-Dmairi told Reuters.

Improvised guns can be air-rifles converted to shoot real bullets rather than pellets, the Palestinian source said. According to one Shin Bet official, some West Bank armourers cannibalise parts from broken M-16s or Kalashnikovs and reassemble them as workable composites, with missing components manufactured in private workshops. These can sell for around 5,000 shekels ($1,280) on the Palestinian black market.
Mass murdered Anders Behring Breivik is suing the Norwegian state of his prison conditions, claiming that his solitary confinement is 'violating his human rights'.

Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, claims he is a 'a victim of cruel and inhuman treatment' in Skien prison, 87 miles south-west of Oslo, where he has an entire cellblock to himself and access to a computer and a PlayStation.

His lawsuit has been slammed by the Norwegian Attorney General, who says there is no evidence of the murderer suffering from his prison conditions.

Murderer: Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011, is suing Norway, claiming his solitary confinement in Skien prison, south of Oslo, is 'cruel and inhuman treatment'

Breivik, 37, murdered 77 people and injured more than 300 - many of them teenagers - in July 2011, by detonating a bomb in downtown Oslo and carrying out a mass shooting on Utoya Island.

The Norwegian Correctional Service denies Breivik is held in solitary confinement, preferring the phrase 'excluded from the company of other prisoners' - as he disposes of an entire block.

At Skien prison, Breivik lives in three different cells - for living, study and exercise - between which he can move freely.

He also access to a computer, which is not connected to the internet, as well as his own television and a PlayStation.

The right-wing anti-muslim extremist is also free to take walks in a yard at his leisure and he can cook his own food and do his laundry should he so wish.

'Cruel and inhuman'?: Breivik has an entire cellblock to himself at Skien prison, with three cells, access to a computer and a PlayStation, as well as a yard and permission to cook his own food

'There is no evidence that the plaintiff has physical or mental problems as a result of prison conditions,' the Office of the Attorney General, the Norwegian state's legal office in civil lawsuits, wrote in a document sent to the Oslo District Court and released on Wednesday.

Breivik was sentenced to 21 years' imprisonment with preventive detention in 2012, and has been kept in isolation since his arrest.

There is no maximum time for how long he can be held in such 'extra high security', a Norwegian prison service official said.

Breivik, whose case will be heard at Skien in two weeks time, argues the regime is degrading and is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Breivik's lawyer says his client only has had contacts with professionals, such as prison staff, his lawyers and his mother, when she was alive, according to a separate court document published late on Tuesday.

The Norwegian Attorney General has denied Breivik's claims, saying there is no evidence of the murderer suffering from the conditions under which he is being held at Skien (pictured)

'According to the information available, they (Breivik and his mother) only had five minutes together when they could hug each other,' it said. Breivik's mother died from cancer in 2013.

The document also said Breivik's mail was being monitored to a degree where 'he doesn't feel he could form relationships through letters'.

He considers this a breach of 'his right to respect for his private life and his correspondence', also part of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Norway says control over prisoners' communication is not in itself a violation, because it could uncover information about the planning or commission of criminal offences.

Breivik wrote in his extreme right-wing manifesto discovered after the killings that prisons were considered ideal recruitment places, the Attorney General's document said.
Italy may recall student murder probe team from Egypt over lack of cooperation -judicial source

By Steve Scherer and Massimiliano Di Giorgio

ROME, March 2 (Reuters) - Italy is considering recalling a legal team sent last month to Cairo to investigate the murder of an Italian graduate student because Egyptian authorities are not cooperating, a judicial source said on Wednesday.

Giulio Regeni, 28, disappeared in January and his tortured, battered body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital on Feb. 3.

The case has stirred outrage in Italy and strained relations between two countries that share major strategic and economic interests, with widespread speculation in the media that Regeni was killed by either police or security services.

Egypt has denied any such suggestion. The case has put a spotlight on alleged police brutality in Egypt, a strategic ally of the United State and other Western powers.

The Egyptian authorities invited Italian police to join the inquiry, but the judicial source said there was little point in keeping the team in Cairo because they had not received any relevant evidence to work with.

In particular, the investigators have not received Regeni's mobile phone records and cell data that would allow them to pinpoint Regeni's movements before his Jan. 25 disappearance.

The murder of Regeni, who was studying Egypt's independent labour unions and wrote critical articles about the government, continues to be followed closely by Italian media.

On Wednesday, Milan officials hung a banner from city hall reading "The Truth for Giulio Regeni", in response to a campaign by human rights group Amnesty International. Other cities around the country started to follow suit.

BUSINESS TIES

Calling the legal team home would be a joint decision by the Rome court that is leading the Italian investigation and the government, the source said, because it would signal growing frustration with Egypt - an important Arab ally for Italy.

A spokesman in Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's office said he did not know whether the investigators would be brought home, while a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An Egyptian forensics official has told the public prosecutor's office the autopsy he conducted showed Regeni was interrogated for up to seven days before he was killed, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing two sources.

The findings, which were denied by Egypt's Justice Ministry, are the strongest indication yet that Regeni was killed by security services because they pointed to interrogation methods which human rights groups say are their hallmark.

With no sign of the furore abating soon, the case has caused serious friction between Egypt and Italy, though it looks unlikely to drive a permanent wedge between two countries.

Italy exported some 3 billion euros ($3.25 billion) in goods to Egypt last year, Italian export credit agency Sace said.

State-controlled oil producer Eni is leading the way for Italian firms, developing Egypt's giant Zohr gas field.

In a letter to Amnesty International seen by Reuters, Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi expressed his support for Regeni's family.

"We are confident in the work being done by the Egyptian and Italian governments and we can't but hope, like everyone, that the question marks regarding this affair are cleared up as soon as possible," Descalzi wrote last month.
EU launches emergency refugee aid scheme for Greece

By Gabriela Baczynska and Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS, March 2 (Reuters) - The European Union, faced with a growing refugee crisis in Greece, launched a new aid programme on Wednesday worth an initial 700 million euros that mirrors the kind of disaster relief it offers developing nations.

European states have tightened border controls following the arrival of more than a million migrants by sea last year and the Athens government has appealed for help to house and care for tens of thousands still arriving and now stranded in Greece.

"We are ... really worried," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said of the build-up of migrants on the now-closed Macedonian border, adding that the new plan had been prompted by fears of "a huge humanitarian crisis in Greece".

The Commission's proposal, if approved, will channel 300 million euros ($325 million) this year from its 155 billion euro annual budget to the new emergency assistance scheme and 200 million euros both next year and in 2018.

Officials stress that the programme will not divert funds from the EU's 1.1 billion euro annual budget allocated to helping the world's poorest. Relieving the suffering of refugees closer to their homes is a key part of an EU strategy to deter people from making dangerous journeys to Europe, they say.

More than 400 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean this year as they tried to reach Europe, most of them on the short but perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Turkey is at the heart of the EU's efforts to slow the influx of refugees and migrants and the bloc wants Ankara to ensure that daily arrivals fall below 1,000 from 2,000-3,000 at present.

Two officials told Reuters that Germany, the principal destination for those arriving in Europe, is looking for flows to be "in the realm of three digits, not four" per day. Should that happen, Berlin would start taking refugees directly from Turkey for resettlement - an attempt to promote legal migration rather than continuing the chaotic influx of 2015.

The new EU money, to be spent in conjunction with the United Nations and charities working in Greece and other EU states, will help to fund shelter, medical aid and other basic services.

Greece, which now houses about 25,000 migrants, has hitherto received EU funding under other programmes to bolster its border and security systems, though Athens has complained that the offers have been inadequate.

"The number of refugees continues to rise, so do their humanitarian needs," Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said.

At a single border point, the Idomeni crossing between Greece and Macedonia, between 12,000 and 15,000 stranded people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, he said.

"OVERWHELMED"

EU officials said the aim was to have the new programme operational on the ground "within weeks rather than months".

It will become a permanent feature of the EU budget and is intended for use by any EU state that is "overwhelmed" and cannot cope with a wide range of emergencies, including accidents, militant attacks and epidemics. It will need approval by the European Parliament and member states.

Greece, the migrants' main gateway to Europe, would initially be the main beneficiary of the emergency scheme for "tackling wide-ranging humanitarian crises within the EU".

The money would also be available to other EU countries along the Balkan migration route used by migrants. Macedonia and Serbia, which are on that route, are not in the EU.

Greece, its economy blighted by the euro zone debt crisis, has asked for 480 million euros to help it cope with some 100,000 migrants. EU officials said on Wednesday they were still looking at that request.

More than a million people reached Europe last year and some 133,000 arrived on the continent so far in 2016 in what has grown to be a major crisis for the bloc, that now also risks turning into a humanitarian disaster. ($1 = 0.9212 euros)
Syrian opposition casts doubt on U.N. peace talk plan

By Lisa Barrington and John Davison

BEIRUT, March 2 (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said on Wednesday they were under fierce government attack near the Turkish border despite a cessation of hostilities agreement and a representative cast doubt on whether U.N.-backed peace talks would go ahead on March 9 as planned.

The agreement drawn up by the United States and Russia came into effect on Saturday and has slowed but not entirely stopped a conflict that has been going on for almost five years. Both the government and rebels have accused each other of violations.

The agreement does not include Islamic State or al Qaeda's Nusra Front, which is widely deployed in opposition areas.

The United Nations said on Tuesday a new attempt at peace talks would begin on March 9 in Geneva, urging warring sides to ensure the cessation agreement take hold to allow them to come to the table.

But opposition official George Sabra said the date for a resumption of talks remained "hypothetical" as long as the truce did not fulfil humanitarian demands including a release of detainees held by the government.

"What is the value of a truce if its overseers - meaning America and Russia - do not push all sides to abide by it?" Sabra told Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath on Wednesday.

The White House said it had seen a reduction in air strikes against the opposition and civilians in Syria in recent days but was concerned by some reported tank and artillery attacks.

Washington was also aware of reports of possible chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, the State Department said, adding that it could not confirm them but that they were being investigated. Israel said on Tuesday Syrian forces had been dropping chlorine barrels on civilians over the past few days.

There was no immediate comment from Damascus, which has denied breaching the terms of the truce.

The opposition is pressing for full humanitarian access to rebel-held areas and for detainees to be released - terms set out in a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in December.

Opposition officials say an increase in aid access has fallen short of what is required.

A senior U.S. official said Washington was working with Moscow to improve access to besieged areas and the World Health Organisation said it had delivered medical supplies to the besieged town of Mouadamiya on Wednesday, after reporting some medicines had been removed from a previous aid delivery.

CHALLENGING

President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday that insurgents had breached the deal from day one, and the Syrian army was refraining from responding to give a chance for the agreement to last, warning that there "are limits".

Five months of Russian air strikes have turned the momentum Assad's way in the war that has killed more than 250,000 people and created refugee crises in neighbouring states and Europe.

Antony Blinken, deputy U.S. Secretary of State, said in Geneva that major and regional powers were monitoring the cessation of hostilities to "prevent any escalation" but it was a "challenging process".

"The best possible thing that could happen is for the cessation of hostilities to really take root, and to be sustained, for the humanitarian assistance to flow and then for the negotiations to start," he said.

While residents of some parts of Syria are describing an unusually calm spell, rebels say government forces backed by Russian air strikes have continued offensives in areas of strategic importance in northwestern Syria.

The Syrian government is saying very little about military operations in those areas, where the Nusra Front is widely deployed in close proximity to groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army that have accepted the agreement.

A rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said government forces pressed an offensive against insurgents in Latakia province at the Turkish border on Wednesday.

Fadi Ahmad, spokesman for the First Coastal Division, an FSA group, said government forces had brought in reinforcements for the battle and that fighting was as intense as anything preceding the cessation of hostilities.

"The battles were today very fierce," he said.

The Syrian government, backed on the ground by Iranian forces and Lebanon's Hezbollah, has prioritised securing the Turkish border through which rebel groups are supplied with weapons from states seeking Assad's downfall.

The area being fought over in Latakia overlooks the rebel-held town of Jisr al-Shughour in neighbouring Idlib province, and the Ghab Plain, where rebel advances last year were seen as a growing threat to Assad.

A rebel commander in northern Syria said: "Battles continue in vital areas that the regime wants, and where there was no truce in the first place. There is bombardment and battles."

"We are in the fifth day and there is no change in these areas," he said, in reference to areas in the provinces of Latakia, Homs and Hama.

Fighting also flared anew in Aleppo between insurgents and an alliance including the Kurdish YPG militia, the Observatory said.

A report by the Institute for the Study of War showed Russian strikes in support of government forces and their allies had hit a number of areas in Aleppo, Idlib, Homs and Hama provinces since the truce deal took effect.
U.S. says does not want China use navy to intimidate fishing vessels

WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - The United States does not want China to use its navy to intimidate fishing vessels from other countries in a disputed area of the South China Sea, the State Department said on Wednesday.

"We are aware of these press reports regarding the Chinese vessels operating near Jackson Atoll in the contested areas of the South China Sea," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said at a news briefing. "We don't want them using ... their navy to intimidate other fishing vessels in that region."
(OFFICIAL)-UPDATE 2-Samarco to pay $5 bln in damages for dam disaster

By Anthony Boadle and Stephen Eisenhammer

BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO March 2 (Reuters) - Mining company Samarco and its owners, BHP Billiton and Vale SA , reached a deal with the Brazilian government on Wednesday to pay an estimated 20 billion reais ($5.1 billion) in damages over 15 years for a deadly dam spill in November.

Considered Brazil's worst environmental disaster, the burst tailings dam in the state of Minas Gerais killed 19 people, left hundreds homeless and polluted a major river.

Of the total, Samarco will pay 4.4 billion reais through 2018 into a fund to cover the cleanup of the spill from the tailings dam. From 2019 to 2021, payments will be between 800 million reais and 1.6 billion reais.

"We want to build new life on the rubble of an unprecedented tragedy," President Dilma Rousseff said at the signing ceremony in Brasilia.

Beyond 2021, the amount will be decided depending on how much work remains to be done. The government estimates the total cost of the lengthy environmental plan, including replanting and dredging, will reach about 20 billion reais.

The 20 billion reais figure was, however, noticeably absent from statements sent by Samarco, BHP and Vale. The obligations outlined by the companies instead came to about 12 billion reais. The difference, the government explained, was due to estimates of amounts that can be only decided in the future.

"This is not about a dollar amount, this about a program to remediate, to restore and where we can't restore to compensate and also to leave some positive legacies behind," Dean Dalla Valle, BHP's Chief Commercial Officer, told Reuters at the ceremony.

"Besides straight remediation, we are talking about actions like sewage, landfill, reforestation, water treatment," he said.

Vale, in a statement, said that in the event Samarco is unable to pay its obligations, Vale and BHP would be responsible for covering the costs.

The miner said the accord does not cover private civil suits, other public civil suits or criminal investigations.

Preferred shares in Vale were trading 7.5 percent higher following the announcement, boosted on the accord and a rise in iron ore prices.

Dalla Valle said he hoped Samarco would be in a position to restart its mine in the final quarter of the year. The company has already taken the first steps to get its licenses in place to restart.

"We will only start when it is absolutely safe, we will need to learn from the investigation. The way it will start won't involve the current tailings dams," Dalla Valle said.
Xinjiang steel collapse casts shadow over China's western ambitions

By Ruby Lian and Michael Martina

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, March 3 (Reuters) - As China slims down its bloated steel sector, the western region of Xinjiang is feeling the pain even more than the industry's heartland to the east, threatening efforts to develop a restive area that is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur people.

Over 10 million tonnes of steel production capacity in Xinjiang - enough to produce about a tenth of annual U.S. output - has shut in an area where Beijing has encouraged investment in industries ranging from steel to textiles, in the hope of stimulating growth and curbing unrest by boosting jobs.

The decline in the fortunes of Xinjiang's steel sector highlights the challenge Chinese policy makers face ensuring job cuts do not strain social cohesion or undermine stability.

China aims to lay off 5-6 million workers over the next two to three years in the country to curb industrial overcapacity and pollution, and will spend nearly 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) to cover layoffs in just the coal and steel sectors, sources told Reuters.

"The situation is very severe. There are many newly built steel mills being closed and steel prices have tumbled," said a sales official at a unit of Xinjiang Ba Yi Iron and Steel Co., Ltd, noting the unit was losing 300-400 yuan ($45.95-$61.27) a tonne.

The official declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to media, but at least seven mills were built in western regions under Beijing's investment drive.

Thousands of steel jobs are estimated to have gone in Xinjiang after some "irrational" investments from 2010, said Chen Ziqi of China International Engineering Consulting Corporation.

Human resources' minister, Yin Weimin, said on Monday that China expects to lay off 1.8 million workers in the steel and coal sector, or 15 percent of total.

But Xinjiang is particularly vulnerable given its relatively sparse population and limited export opportunities, even with China's ambition to create a new Silk road and economic belt stretching from Western China to Central Asia and Europe.

"Xinjiang's location is a big problem. Its internal demand hasn't picked up sufficiently to match the expanded capacity," said Jiang Feitao, a policy researcher at the China Academy of Social Sciences, a state thinktank.

SOCIAL IMPACT

With Beijing leading a "war on pollution", traditional steelmaking provinces such as Hebei in the north and Shandong in the east are seen as priorities to cut capacity, but Xinjiang has suffered far more so far.

This could concern Beijing, which has blamed violence in the area on Islamist militants seeking an independent state for Uighurs.

With most of the workforce in Xinjiang's mainly northern steel mills Han Chinese, the closures are unlikely to have any immediate impact on stability, though Beijing will monitor the situation closely, experts say.

"Any time there is a decline in employment it will have some kind of social impact, even if it's the case that not very many people lose their jobs, because it will mean diminished prospects for future employment," said Barry Sautman, an expert on China's ethnic politics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Xinjiang's 2015 steel output tumbled 39 percent to 7.40 million tonnes, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed, while industry sources said capacity utilization had fallen as low as 30-40 percent versus a nationwide average of 65-70 percent.

On the other hand, despite promising to cut capacity by 60 million tonnes over 2013-2017, Hebei's 2015 steel output rose 1.3 percent to 188.3 million tonnes, according to NBS data.

"Given the premium on stability in Xinjiang is even higher because of the ethnic issues, then the government will try to ensure there is no visible social tension coming out of this," said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's East Asia director and an expert on Xinjiang.

JOURNEY TO THE WEST

The prospect of new steel demand in China's central and western regions was also used by miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton to justify expansion, creating an iron ore glut that has sent prices <_.IO62-CNISI> plunging 60 percent in two years.

Xinjiang had planned to more than triple crude steel capacity to 32 million tonnes by last year, but capacity may have exceeded 40 million tonnes before the latest closures, according to industry website Lange.com.

Xinjiang Ba Yi Iron & Steel Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Baosteel Group, shut 3 million tonnes of capacity last summer and Reuters calculations based on reported mill closures show that more than 10 million tonnes has been lost since 2013.

Xinjiang's Communist Party chief, Zhang Chunxian, told media in January it would not approve new projects and stop subsidising inefficient plants or power prices.

The province also aims to shut another 3 million tonnes of capacity over the next two years.
Updated at 8:38 p.m.

Its been nearly 18 months since John and Sue Graham last heard from their only daughter. For Gil and Dan Harrington, its been more than six years. In a courtroom on Wednesday, both sets of parents finally told the man convicted of killing their daughters just how much pain he has caused.

Every seat was filled in Albemarle County Circuit Court on Wednesday when Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., 34, pleaded guilty to two counts of first degree murder and two counts of abduction with the intent to defile in the cases of Hannah Elizabeth Graham and Morgan Dana Harrington.

On each charge, Judge Cheryl Higgins sentenced Matthew to life in prison. Combined with the sentencing from a Fairfax judge last October, Matthew now faces seven consecutive life sentences in prison.

As predicted by law experts before the trial, the agreement may have spared Matthews life. By taking the deal, prosecutors agreed to drop the charge of capital murder from the Graham case, which carried the possibility of the death penalty.

Matthews capital defender said Wednesday that despite preparing a vigorous, robust defense, his client made the decision to plead guilty in the hopes of dodging the death penalty and bringing a sense of finality to the cases that have kept him behind bars since September 2014. The agreement also stipulated that Matthew cannot apply for any type of parole or release, and that the prosecution can re-indict him on the capital murder charge if he violates the terms of the agreement.

The plea deal offered plenty of advantages, according to the countys head prosecutor: Matthew would no longer be a threat to the safety of the community; the family and friends of the victims would be spared from reliving the nightmarish crimes through trial testimony; and there would be a legal certainty as to Matthews fate.

It provides the families, community and commonwealth with legal finality and clarity in cases that would have been subject to extended appellate review, Commonwealths Attorney Robert Tracci said. While no outcome will ever produce closure, this agreement promotes resolution.

Even with both sides of counsel agreeing to the plea deal, Higgins listened to two pre-written victim impact statements from Dan Harrington and Sue Graham. Speaking first, Harrington spoke of his daughter Morgan, a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who went missing after a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia in October 2009, only for her remains to be found the following January on a property in Albemarle.

Harrington said that for every second of every day, for the past six and a half years since Morgans disappearance, he and his wife, Gil, have been living in a world [that] has gone grey and flat.

By their own admission, the Graham family has been tight-lipped since their daughter Hannah, an 18-year-old UVa student, vanished from the Downtown Mall in September 2014, only for her remains to be found weeks later on a vacant property about six miles from where Harringtons remains were found. Yet on Wednesday, Sue Graham was surefooted and strikingly acerbic as she described the loss of her daughter to the court.

Our family is devastated  our pain is acute, Graham told Higgins. Matthew dumped her body like a bag of trash  to be picked over by buzzards.

Graham added that a year after Hannahs death, her grandfather died of a stroke, but that [Hannah] was on his mind until the end.

He died of a broken heart, she said.

After being handed four life sentences, Matthew elected not to give a final statement himself, but instead opted for capital defender Doug Ramseur to say on his behalf that he was sorry for what happened, and that he loves his family very much.

Speaking to a throng of reporters after the hearing, John Graham said that he and his wife had been consulted about the plea agreement prior to its public announcement two days earlier, and that it had the Grahams full support.

Our overriding priority was that Matthew will never be able again to inflict his depravity on young women, John Graham said. The agreement meets this objective, which we regard as a public safety imperative: Matthews deeds show that he is far too dangerous ever to be allowed to be free.

That said, the agreement does not bring Hannah back to us, of course, Graham said, adding that he was proud of the accomplishments Hannah had achieved in her short life mercilessly cut short by Jesse Matthew.

His evil deprived the world of a great talent, but Hannahs enduring gift to us all is that she enabled this wicked man to be apprehended and convicted, he said. She did change the world, but at a terrible price.

Gil Harrington, known for her vocal presence in the media regarding her daughters case, also spoke after the hearing, saying the trials conclusion would allow [her] family to redirect energy into healing and recovering.

Both are areas that we have neglected during our quest for justice for Morgan, Harrington said. It has been a very long journey to this point.

She further thanked the law enforcement officers and prosecutors who have worked toward solving Morgans case for so many years, and having created the nonprofit organization Help Save the Next Girl in the wake of Morgans death, Harrington used the moment to ask communities to know your neighbors, [and] look out for one another.

Together we can help save the next girl, Harrington said before using her hands to sign 2-4-1, a series of numbers she has often used to denote her enduring love for Morgan.

While Matthews family members quickly vacated the court square after the hearing, the Rev. Louie Carr spoke on behalf of the Matthew family, telling reporters that it is difficult for us to understand how a gentle soul transformed into this type of individual.

We want to express to the Harrington family and Graham family our sorrow over what our family member, Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr., chose to do to your daughters, Carr said. We know there is nothing that we can do to erase what Jesse has done, but we pray that you will find in your hearts to someday forgive our loved one for the act committed against your loved ones.

At the conclusion of Wednesdays hearing, authorities released two statements of facts related to each of the cases, detailing what evidence the prosecution had planned to bring to each of the trials, including DNA matches and testimony from several witnesses who put Matthew with both Harrington and Graham on the nights of their disappearances. The bottom of each statement includes signatures from the prosecution, Ramseur and Matthew himself.

Matthew already was handed three life sentences last year after being convicted of a 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax, to which he was connected by DNA evidence recovered from the Harrington and Graham cases. Charged with sexual assault, abduction and attempted capital murder in that case, Matthew signed Alford pleas, meaning he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to convict him.

Matthews pleas in the Harrington and Graham cases were not Alford pleas. When asked by Higgins on Wednesday if he had in fact committed the crimes alleged against him, Matthew simply replied, yes, maam.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Virginia man has avoided a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to first-degree murder and abduction with intent to defile for the slayings of two college students.

Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. entered the pleas Wednesday in Albemarle County Circuit Court and received four consecutive life terms.

Matthew already was serving three life terms for a 2005 sexual assault in Northern Virginia.

The former hospital orderly pleaded guilty in the September 2014 killing of 18-year-old University of Virginia student Hannah Graham and the 2009 slaying of 20-year-old Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, who vanished after a Metallica concert at the University of Virginia.

Through his attorney, Matthew said he was sorry and loves his family very much.

Jesse Leroy Matthew Jr. has entered guilty pleas to:

First-Degree Murder of Hannah Graham

Abduction with Intent to Defile Hannah Graham

First-Degree Murder of Morgan Harrington

Abduction with Intent to Defile Morgan Harrington

Matthew has been sentenced to 4 consecutive life sentences, which are in addition to the three life sentences following Alford pleas in a 2005 Fairfax case.
RICHMOND  Donald Trumps march toward the Republican nomination did not slow as it came through Virginia as rural voters propelled the business mogul to a victory Tuesday over Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whose support in the states population centers was not enough to turn the Trump tide.

Virginias status as a centrist bellwether led many to believe it offered the best chance for the Republican establishment to lift Rubio to his first win. Rubio carried the large Northern Virginia counties of Fairfax and Loudoun, but Trump won military-rich Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Hampton, Chesapeake and Newport News.

Trump was particularly dominant in Southwest and Southside Virginia, as je added a key swing state to his growing list of first-place finishes.

With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Trump had 35.3 percent of the vote, to 31.5 percent for Rubio and 17 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Ohio Gov. John Kasich was in fourth at 9 percent, while retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson had almost 6 percent.

Anne Hemenway, vice chairwoman of Charlottesvilles electoral board, said elections went very smoothly and the city had a good turnout. Albemarle County Electoral Board Secretary James Heilman said there were no major problems reported in the county.

In the Richmond area, Rubio led Trump in suburban Chesterfield and Henrico counties, while Trump prevailed in more conservative Hanover County. Rubio easily won the city of Richmond, which has relatively few Republican voters.

Because Virginia is not a winner-take-all state, Rubio's finish will earn him a substantial number of delegates. But the Super Tuesday results gave little indication that Trump's momentum will fade.

Turnout for the GOP primary surged across the state, easily exceeding vote totals for the 2008 primary that pitted Sen. John McCain of Arizona against former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Trump and Rubio held rallies in the state in the run-up to the primary, lobbing insults at one another in an extended performance of a personal clash that began at a televised debate last week.

George Anderson, a financier who voted Tuesday at Richmond's Republican-heavy Windsor Farms precinct, said he cast his ballot for the one man who has the guts to stand up to a career Congress and who will make America great again.

Thatd be Trump, said Anderson, the 88-year-old former head of Richmond-based brokerage firm Anderson & Strudwick, which was sold a few years ago.

Henrico County resident Mike Lantz said he would have voted for Trump, but he was drawn to Rubios disciple of Reagan thing.

"There's just so many things I can say about Donald Trump that are bad versus good, said Lantz, who voted at Three Chopt Elementary School. I don't know anything bad about Rubio. I don't even like looking at Cruz.

A 50-year-old draftsman with an associate degree, Lantz said he doesnt buy Trumps professed love for the uneducated. He said he sees the billionaire as more of the hoity-toity.

I really dont think hes the blue collar guy he says he is, Lantz said.

Ellen Buoyer, a 55-year-old homemaker who runs a lifestyle blog called The Gracious Posse, said she voted for Kasich because she could be proud to have him in the Oval Office.

I think he would represent all Americans, said Buoyer, who voted in Windsor Farms. I think hes very level-headed and fair.

Buoyer said she considered Rubio, but chose Kasich due to his executive experience.

I think his years lend a certain amount of maturity to his stature, Buoyer said.

Pre-printed Republican ballots listed 13 candidates, though all but five have ended their campaigns.
Washington: Identifying the "strategic and conventional imbalance with India" as the topmost security threat to it, Pakistan today rejected America's call to reduce or cap its nuclear weapons arsenal, believed to be the fastest growing in the world.

"I think (Pakistan's top) security concern is strategic and conventional imbalance with India," the Pakistan Prime Minister's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz told Defence Writers Group in a breakfast meeting this morning.

Terrorism comes only after that, he said.

"Terrorism is something our own domestic (concern). It is overflow of terrorism from Afghanistan that becomes the second (top security concern for Pakistan) within our borders, which hopefully we would be able to control it in the next few years," he said, responding to a question on what was Pakistan s top security concern or threat.

Mr Aziz also ruled out America's desire that Pakistan reduce or cap its fast expanding nuclear weapons arsenal and put the onus for it on India.

"If India does (caps its nuclear weapons program) we would think about it," he said when asked at this point of time Pakistan is not thinking of capping or reducing its stockpile of nuclear weapons, as asked by the United States.

"But if India does not, how can we cap?" Aziz asked.

Citing the example of the US and Russia which are working to further reduce their nuclear arsenals, Secretary of State John Kerry had asked Pakistan yesterday to understand this reality and review its nuclear policy.

"I think, it is important for Pakistan to really process that reality and put that front and center in its policy," he said in an apparent reference to the reports that Pakistan has the fastest growing stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.

The nuclear and non-proliferation issue is among the six topics that was discussed during the sixth US-Pak Strategic Dialogue co-chaired by Mr Kerry and Mr Aziz in Washington yesterday.

"Our nuclear program is a deterrence. It is India which is expanding its nuclear arsenal at a much faster rate than we are," Mr Aziz alleged.

"The concept of deterrence is a dynamic one. Deterrence has to be effective and our deterrence is India centric. If India would not have started its nuclear program, we would have never done this," he said.

"India is developing its nuclear stock. Its ability after the (civil nuclear) agreement with the United States to divert more stocks to it, more fissile materials to nuclear weapons has increased much more," he claimed.

Mr Aziz said the visiting Pakistani delegation had a very good interaction with the US.

"They (US) broadly accept out need of an effective nuclear deterrence. I do not think; we have any major issues in this. We keep discussing these things," he said.

"If India were to accept this importance of resolving disputes, improving relations, both of us would not need this. But unfortunately that is not happening. And so we have no option but to have what we call minimum effective deterrence," he said.

When referred to Mr Kerry's remarks in this regard in which he cited the example of US and Russia wherein they reduced the number of nuclear weapon stock piles from 50,000 to now just 1,500, Mr Aziz pointed out that they improved their relationship.

"When dialogue (between India and Pakistan) begins, we have a frank discussion on some of these things. Our ceasefire line or Line of Control we want to keep (it) quite, and an agreement to make sure that there is no firing or other thing. That's why the importance of having a regular dialogue between the two countries so that things do not flare up," he said.

"You can't define like that," he said when asked how he would quantify minimum effective nuclear deterrence as Pakistan is estimated to have more than 100-120 nuclear weapons, according to some experts.

"It is a dynamic concept. If you (India) keep expanding every month, every six month, obviously you can't define at this particular point of time," Aziz said.
Meerut Protestors demanding reservation for Jats in government jobs burn an effigy of Haryana Chief Minister. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: All Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs in Haryana will be contributing a month's salary to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund for providing financial assistance to those affected during the recent Jat quota stir.

The decision in this regard was made in a meeting chaired by Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with all the Haryana BJP MLAs.

State Transport Minister Krishan Lal Panwar, who had earlier decided to contribute his one month's salary to the fund, had appealed to his cabinet colleagues, MLAs and officials of the state government to come forward and help the affected people.

Urban Local Bodies Minister Kavita Jain has already decided to contribute her one month's salary to the Chief Minister's Relief Fund for the same cause.
New Delhi: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha on Wednesday over the issue of black money and JNU.

Gandhi said Modiji brought a 'Fair and Lovely Yojna' to convert black money into white and further blamed him of destroying UPA's work against insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and terrorism.

Here are the live updates:

5:30 pm: On India-Pakistan relations, Gandhi says that Pakistan sent trained killers into the heart of Mumbai, who killed and butchered 200 people.

Our government begged the then CM of Gujarat, not to go to Mumbai. And he went there and grabbed his headlines while our people died, says Gandhi.

It is the work in J&K that the UPA did, that makes us proud. By the end we had broken the back of insurgency. But what does the PM do? He decides to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif. PM destroyed our work in J&K when he went to meet Pakistan PM Nawaz, because he thinks only his opinion matters. He did not consult the country's able bureaucrats and experts. He disrespected the flag and destroyed the conversations with the country's citizens. PM just has to listen to his country, listen to Rajnath, Smriti, Sushma, listen to your MPs. We are not your enemies, listen to us as well, we don't hate you. Just give the people the dignity of their word, says Rahul.

5:25 pm: On the Naga Peace Accord, Gandhi says, PM said that he'd solved the Nagaland crisis. Our CMs had not briefed us about anything, so we called them and they said they hadn't heard anything of the sort. Even the Home Minister had no idea about this. Did the Home Minister know about the accord? Did the Naga CM know about the accord? And where has it gone now? Gone with the wind?

5:20 pm: Gandhi says, You have been taught by your RSS teachers that there's only one truth in the universe - your own. That nobody's opinion matters. PM can't run the country based on his own opinion. Country is not the PM, and PM is not the country.

5:15 pm: On JNU row, Gandhi said the students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar gave a 20-minute speech on the campus, in which he never said a word against the country, and still has been put in jail.

40 per cent students of JNU, their parents income is less than Rs 6,000. Why are you behind JNU? Because they are poor, weak, Dalits and Tribals. You want them to stay behind? We will not let this happen. You will not be able to crush JNU or the poor of the country. I want to speak a little bit about religion. Tell me, which holy book says that we should thrash our teachers. Why were JNU teachers, students and media beaten outside the Patiala House courts? And when they were, why did your government not even say a word? says Gandhi.

5:10 pm: There's Modi Ji 'Fair and Lovely Yojna', kale dhan to kaise gora banaya jaye (How to convert black money into white), says Gandhi.

"Modi ji had promised employment. When you ask people have they been given employment, nobody is raising their hands. Modi ji said I have not seen a scheme as bad as MGNREGA. He said it is a failed scheme and it has destroyed the nation but I will not remove it so people can see UPA's mistake. But Arun Jaitley came to me and said that it's a very good scheme. I told him, why don't you say this to your boss. When money was allotted to MGNREGA, I closed my eyes and thought it was Chidambaram presenting Budget'," says Rahul Gandhi.

5:00 pm: Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi attacks Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha over the issue of black money. "Country is not the PM, and PM is not the country," says Gandhi.

3.35 pm: "We have no holy cows to be protect," says Arun Jaitley on Aircel-Maxis case.

3.30 pm: "Allegation that the probe is slow is incorrect. If in any scam, a person is found connected or cornered, no one will be spared," says Jaitley.

3.22 pm: Arun Jaitley informed the Lok Sabha that the CBI had already filed a chargesheet in the matter and the Aircel-Maxis case would now proceed to trial. "As result of series of raid conducted by Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax Department, lot of incriminating things have been seized," informed Jaitley.

3.20 pm: Cannot disclose details of the Aircel-Maxis deal case, says Arun Jaitley.

3.15 pm: Guilty will be punished, says Arun Jaitley in LS on Aircel-Maxis case.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament on Wednesday. (Photo: Video grab)

1.07 pm: Lok Sabha takes up debate on Aircel-Maxis issue amid loud protests from Congress MPs who said that it is not on the agenda.

1.05 pm: Rajya Sabha adjourned till 2 pm amid ruckus.

11.50 am: Rajya Sabha has been adjourned till noon following uproar by AIADMK MPs on Chidambaram issue. The Congress party members, meanwhile, protested over alleged Gujarat land scam.

11.30 am: Amid protests, Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told Rajya Sabha that there should be a inquiry in the Gujarat land issue involving Chief Minister Anandiben Patel's daughter.

11.10 am: "We are ready for discussion on Karti Chidambaram issue, AIADMK should give notice," says MA Naqvi in Rajya Sabha.

11.00 am: AIADMK members continue protest against Karti Chidambaram in Rajya Sabha.

Read: Ready for discussion over Chidambaram issue: BJP

In a major revelation on Tuesday that has the potential to spark a fresh political row and disrupt the functioning of the Parliament, Mani claimed that he did not draft the second affidavit and had been ordered to sign the file in the Ishrat Jahan case. His claims came days after former home secretary G.K. Pillai alleged that Chidambaram bypassed him and rewrote the second affidavit submitted to a court in this connection.

As soon as the House met on Wednesday, AIADMK MPs trooped into the Well of Lok Sabha shouting slogans and demanded action from the government. Amid the din, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the government has no problem in discussing the matter in any manner and also take necessary action.

AIADMK members were earlier raising slogans like 'NDA sarkar take action' and displaying copies of a newspaper which has claimed that Karti has invested in real estate in various countries, as per investigations by Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises.

Protesting against the Speaker's decision to allow discussion on the matter, Congress members rushed into the Well. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge wondered how can it be allowed.

The Congress members were heard shouting 'we want privilege motion'. Congress and other party members have given notices for privilege motion against HRD Minister Smriti Irani for allegedly misleading the House.

In response, Mahajan said, "I want to make it clear that there is a procedure (related to privilege motion notice)".

Left members were also seen vociferously demanding something which could not be heard amid the din. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present in the House.
The researchers suggest that the impacts on net global wealth may not be that straightforward (Photo: Pixabay)

Washington: A new study has warned that global warming will drive vast and unpredictable shift in natural wealth by taking from the poor and giving to the rich.

Many studies have shown that critical natural resources, including fish stocks, are moving poleward as the planet warms. The study from Yale, Rutgers, Princeton, and Arizona State universities suggests that these biophysical changes are also reallocating global wealth in unpredictable, and potentially destabilizing, ways.

On its surface, these biophysical movements will shift resources from communities and nations closer to the equator into places closer to the poles. In many cases this would seem to exacerbate inequalities between richer and poorer communities.

The researchers suggest that the impacts on net global wealth may not be that straightforward. In fact, they make the case that changes are more likely than not to produce an overall net loss in global wealth.

The reason, says lead author Eli Fenichel, is the inevitable and unpredictable price impacts in places where the quantities of fish stocks increase depending on the quality of its resource management, existing institutions, and fishing regulations.

Co-author Malin Pinsky said, "We tend to think of climate change as just a problem of physics and biology. But people react to climate change as well, and at the moment we don't have a good understanding for the impacts of human behavior on natural resources affected by climate change."

To illustrate their case, the authors model potential outcomes in two fictitious fishing communities (Northport and Southport) in the face of climate-driven shifts in fish populations. Southport's fish stocks decline as the climate changes while Northport's stock increases; it's a scenario that reflects changes anticipated in areas such as the mid-Atlantic and the waters off New England in the eastern US.

According to their analysis, if fish quantities increase in a northern community, for instance, it will likely cause a devaluation of that resource locally, particularly if that community isn't equipped to manage the resource efficiently. "If the northern community isn't a particularly good steward or manager, they're going to place a low value on that windfall they just inherited," Fenichel said. "So the aggregate could go down."

"To be clear, the 'gainers' here are clearly better off," he said. "They're just not more better off than the losers are worse off. The losers are losing much more than the gainers are gaining. And when that happens, it's not an efficient reallocation of wealth."

The analysis suggests that policy discussions around climate change should address how the physical changes will affect wealth reallocation, rather than allowing nature to redistribute this wealth in an unpredictable, "willy-nilly" manner.

The study appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter.
A migrant mother with her children await on the Greek side of the border to enter Macedonia near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija on Tuesday. (Photo: AP)

Idomeni: Hundreds of refugees on Tuesday tried to break through a border fence into Macedonia from Greece, where more than 7,000 people are stranded, as anger mounts over barriers to entry imposed on migrants flooding into Europe.

In a sign of deepening divisions within Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lashed out at Austria and Balkan states for introducing tight limits on migrant entries, leaving Greece with a growing bottleneck as refugee boats continue to arrive from Turkey.

And Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov warned that once Austria reaches its cap of a maximum 37,500 migrants transiting through this year, the refugee route through the Balkans will have to close. At Idomeni on the frontier, Macedonian police fired tear gas as some 300 migrants forced their way through a Greek police cordon and raced towards a railway track between the two countries.

Open the borders! they shouted as a group of men used a metal signpost to bring down a section of barbed wire fencing, prompting police to fire volleys of tear gas and block them from crossing. At least 30 people, many of them children, requested first aid in the stampede that ensued, the charity Doctors Without Borders said.
Stefanias body was found barbarically mutilated with her eyes gouged out and her ears cut off. (Photo: Facebook)

Moscow: In a horrific incident, 17-year-old Russian model, Stefania Dubrovina, was brutally murdered by her older sister, 19-year-old, Elizaveta Dubrovina, in St Petersburg, Russia.

Stefanias body was found barbarically mutilated with her eyes gouged out and her ears cut off. The models older sister was allegedly under the influence of drugs when the incident took lace, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Elizaveta allegedly stabbed her sister 140 times.

The murder took place at the St Petersburg residence of 43-year-old showman Stas Baretsky.

According to reports, the girls were visiting Baretsky. The three of them had 'a great party' and by midnight they ran out of alcohol and the man went out to buy some more.

But as soon the man had shut the door behind him, it is alleged that Elizaveta attacked her sister with a knife.

Baretsky said, Although she posed for naked photographs he denied she had taken part in any porn movies, and also insisted rumours that she worked as an escort girl were untrue. 'Stefania was never involved in it,' he said. 'She was not filmed in porn film either. She simply tried to boost her career in modelling.'
In a gruesome act, a 20-year-old youth killed his elder sister by slitting her neck on Tuesday morning. The incident happened in outer Delhis Shahbad Dairy, and the accused has been arrested.



Around 7 am in the morning, Vandana, 25, was arguing with her parents over some family matter in morning, which gradually led to heated exchange of words between Vandana and her parents, police said.



Umesh, a third year student pursuing his graduation through correspondence, was watching his sister and parents fight.



Suddenly he got incensed after seeing his parents being humiliated by his sister and in a fit of rage slit her neck with a knife, police said.



According to police, the woman was seen lying in a pool of blood when the police reached the spot. She used to live in the ground floor of the two-storey house, while her parents and brother live in the first floor. She used to make her food separately, and there was tension in the family due to some family reasons, said a police officer.



The main reason behind the murder is being speculated as family dispute over property and arguments between Vandana and Umesh.



According to sources, Vandana used to demand her share of property from her parents. Heated arguments and fights were a regular scene in this family. Vandana had also filed a case against her own parents and police was often called to solve their family disputes.



Apart from studying, Umesh, also works in a factory and his father owns a tea stall. Vandana used to take tuitions and worked at a property dealer's office. She was unmarried.



Police have registered a case of murder and the body of the deceased has been sent for postmortem.



Police are currently interrogating Umesh and trying to ascertain about the reasons behind the murder.


Four persons died and six others were injured in two fires in industrial units in Delhi on Tuesday evening. Three workers were killed in a fire which started due to spillage of paint thinner in a godown in north Delhis Gulabi Bagh.



Earlier in the evening, another fire in Wazirpur Industrial area killed a woman and injured six others.

Four fire tenders took an hour to douse the Wazirpur fire which started after a gas cylinder exploded on the first floor of an aluminium factory.



According to sources, several gas cylinders were being used there to melt aluminium scrap. Soon after the explosion, the fire spread to the entire building.



Several fire service people worked for over an hour to douse the fire. They had to break a factory wall to drag the injured out from the building, said a police officer.



All the seven injured were taken to the nearby Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital where a woman, Poorbha Devi, 48, was declared brought dead.



Her husband, Rampyare, 53, who was working in the factory, was among those injured. Other injured are Poonam, 22, Omkar, 22, Shahid, 22, Mohammad Ikhlakh, 22, and Makhlookh, 20.



Police have started the investigation and a case against the factory owners Parimal Jain and Rajender Jain under section 304(A) is being contemplated, said police.



Three dead

In the other major fire at a godown in Gulabi Bagh, three persons died of burns while unloading containers filled with paint thinner from a truck on Tuesday evening.



Six fire tenders were still at the spot till late night, trying to douse the fire. During the process of unloading, one container slipped from the hands of a worker, and fell on the ground. After that the entire combustible liquid spread on the area, and immediately caught fire. Three workers, who were there at the time, got severe burn injuries, said a police officer.



They were taken to the nearby hospital where they were declared brought dead, the officer added. The victims included Dhruv, 26 and Shamsher, 35. The third victim was not immediately identified yet, police said.


Locals told police that they tried to snatch Akrams bag. Akram, however, refused to give the bag. The men opened fire when locals began to gather there, another police officer added.



Akram sustained multiple gunshot wounds, but still managed to run with the bag for some distance. Police were informed and he was taken to Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital. An emergency surgery was conducted there.



Akram was hit thrice in his abdomen and right thigh. His condition remains to be critical, the officer added.



A case of attempt to murder under Indian Penal Code and Arms Act has been filed with Ghazipur police station. As part of initial investigation, police have questioned Akrams family members and Qureshi.



Akram had informed his family about a threat call that he received on his mobile phone on Monday evening. It is alleged that a man named Anish had threatened to kill Akram. Police have analysed the call data records of Akrams mobile phone and questioned Anish. The investigators are waiting to record Akrams statement.

A cashier sustained three gunshot wounds on resisting robbery by motorcycle-borne assailants in east Delhi on Tuesday. Akrams condition is stated to be serious, police said.The attackers are yet to be identified. According to police, Akrams family also suspects that he may have been attacked over personal enmity. Their statement have been recorded and a man named Anish has been detained for questioning. No arrest has been made so far.Akram works with a Ghazipur-based milkman named Umar Qureshi. On Tuesday, he was told to withdraw Rs 10 lakh from a Vijaya Bank branch in east Delhi.Akram had withdrawn the cash and was traveling on a motorcycle. The incident occurred at 3.45 pm, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) BS Gurjar.Akram was near Qureshis office when the accused forced him to stop the motorcycle. They were traveling in two motorcycles and armed with pistols and knives.
Police arrested four armed men, wanted in several cases, after a shootout in northwest Delhi's Rohini area on Monday evening. One of the four men was injured, police said.





The injured man, Ashish, 23, is undergoing treatment at the AIIMS Trauma Centre, where his condition is reported to be serious.



The other three are Deepak, 23, Pradeep, 22, and Sunil, 32. Ashish, Deepak and Pradeep were wanted in cases of murder and robbery, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) Vikramjit Singh.

According to police, a team led by the Assistant Commissioner Police of Bawana sub-division, which was tracking Deepak, intercepted their car on a busy road in Begumpur.



Instead of surrendering, Deepak and his associates opened fire on the police team, forcing it to retaliate. During the exchange, a bullet hit Ashish near the chest, before all four accused were overpowered by police, said a senior police officer.



No bystander or policeman was injured in the exchange of fire, police said. Out of the four, two are accused in the murder of a cable operator in January.



The arrested persons disclosed that they were on their way to rob a property dealer, police said. They were running short of money as they had been in hiding after being identified in the murder of cable operator Davender Rathi.



According to police, they also disclosed their involvement in several other cases of attempt to murder and robbery which they had committed in the recent past. Police have seized some weapons and ammunition from their vehicle.


A three member committee has been set up by the AAP government to review the existing policy on aided schools in Delhi.



The government provides grants-in-aid to 211 aided schools which receive a maintenance grant of 95 per cent of recurring expenses. There is also a provision for non-recurring grants for contingency, rent, equipment, library, etc, according to a statement by the government.



In 2015-16, the government spent more than Rs 390 crore on such aided schools. However, even after spending such large sums of money in supporting aided schools, most stakeholders are dissatisfied with the outcomes, it said.



Managements of these schools complain of a lack of autonomy, while the government feels it has no say in their management. Teachers complain of arbitrary and ad-hoc decisions made by managements and the absence of any grievance redressal mechanisms, the statement added.



The decision was taken on the directions of Education Minister Manish Sisodia. The committee will examine the relevant provisions of Delhi School Education Act and Rules, and conduct an in-depth analysis of the issues involved, in order to recommend long term solutions in the best interest of students who are the prime stakeholders of any academic institution, the government said.



The committee will be chaired by Amit Kaushik, former director of Ministry of Human Resources Development and will have Shashi Kaushal, Special Director in Directorate of Education and Hemanth Pothula of Delhi Dialogue Commission as its members.
Out of the 13 Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) in Delhi, five were recently found to be not meeting prescribed norms.



The findings are of a joint inspection carried out by Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and IIT Delhi of CETPs of Delhi from October 21, 2015 to November 28, 2015.



The 13 CETPs treat the effluents generated by industries in various parts of the capital so as to prevent the toxics from flowing into the Yamuna River.



However, the inspection has found that only eight out of these 13 plants are complying with the prescribed standards.



According to a report prepared after the inspection, the composite samples were analysed for general parameters i.e. pH, Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) at the CPCB laboratory.



As per the report, out of the five CETPs, values at two (Mayapuri and GTK) were found marginally exceeding prescribed norms, two (Okhla and Naraina) were moderately exceeding and one CETP at Lawrence Road was found grossly exceeding prescribed norms.



For example, the CETPs at Lawrence Road, Okhla, and Naraina are releasing treated water with BODs of 146 mg/l, 76 mg/l, and 75 mg/l respectively as against the prescribed standard of 30 mg/l.

The reason for non-compliance of CETP at Okhla and Naraina may be attributed to receipt of domestic sewage by both for which biological treatment is needed and in case of CETP at Lawrence Road, it may be attributed to the strong quality of effluent received by it for which also biological treatment is needed, the report said.



Besides, out of these 13 CETPs, seven were found receiving influent quality with concentration of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead, zinc, etc, more than the prescribed standards.



Toxics from industries and untreated sewage choke the river as the existing infrastructure to treat water before it flows into Yamuna does not work efficiently.



Optimum capacity

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) had last year imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Delhi government for its failure to give a clear picture on CETPs and had constituted a team to carry out the inspection to see if they are operating to their optimum capacity.



The NGT was also told that the 13 treatment plants together treat the effluents from only 17 industrial clusters out of a total of 28 in Delhi and the remaining 11 do not have CETPs.



However, an official of Delhi State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) on Tuesday said the remaining 11 do not need to have CETPs.



The 11 clusters which are left out only have sewage and not industry effluents, so they do not need a CETP and the sewage can be treated through Sewage Treatment Plant (STP), he told Deccan Herald.
Gearing up for a likely clash with Donald Trump for US presidency, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton today attacked the controversial Republican front-runner's campaign slogan of 'Making America Great Again', saying the country never stopped being great.



"We know we've got work to do. But, that work, that work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole. We have to fill in what's been hollowed out," a confident Clinton said in her victory speech in Florida after winning big in the multi-state 'Super Tuesday' primaries.



Clinton won in seven states -- Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Massachusetts and Virginia -- while her rival Bernie Sanders posted victories in four states of Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota.



"We have to make strong the broken places, re-stitch the bonds of trust and respect across our country," Clinton said.



"Now it might be unusual, as I've said before, for a presidential candidate to say this, but I'm going to keep saying it, 'I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness," the 68-year-old said amidst applause from her supporters.



"Because you know what? It works. Instead of building walls we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment so every American can live up to his or her potential, because then and only then can America live up to its full potential too," Clinton said in an apparent jibe at Trump who has said he will build a wall on the Mexico border if he becomes President.



69-year-old Trump also won at least six of the 11 state primaries of the Republican party as the possibility of a November presidential election showdown between him and Clinton seemed likely.



"Now it's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher. And the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower. Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work," Clinton said in another jibe at Trump.



Sanders said he would continue his fight to rest of the states. "At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain. And let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states," he said.



This campaign, Sanders stated, is not just about electing the president, it is about transforming America.



"It is about making our great country the nation that we know it has the potential to be. It is about dealing with some unpleasant truths that exist in America today and having the guts to confront those truths," Sanders said.



"It is about recognising that in our state, we have town meetings and people come out, they argue about budgets, and then they vote. One person, one vote," he said.



Sanders said his campaign is about making a political revolution. "What that revolution is about is bringing millions of millions of people into the political process. Working people who have been so disillusioned, they no longer vote. Young people who have never been involved," he said.



"What the political revolution is about is bringing our people together. Black and white, Latino, Asian-American. Gay and straight. People born in America, people who have immigrated to America. When we bring our people together, when we do not allow the Donald Trumps of the world to divide us up," Sanders said.



"When we bring our people together and when we have the courage to stand up to the billionaire class and tell them they can't have it all," he added.
Heavy sloganeering by AIADMK members seeking action against P Chidambaram's son Karti on Aircel-Maxis issue and by Congress MPs over alleged Gujarat land scam led to two adjournments in Rajya Sabha, even as the government said it was ready to discuss the matter raised by AIADMK.



No sooner did the House meet for the day, AIADMK members, carrying copies of an English daily, trooped into the Well demanding action on Aircel-Maxis deal and raising slogans like "We want action".



At the same time, Congress members too were seen waving copies of another English daily and shouting slogans regarding an alleged scam related to land allocation in Gujarat in 2010 to partners of the Chief Minister's daughter.



The proceedings of both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha were virtually washed out due to the uproar by AIADMK.



Amid loud slogans by both AIADMK and Congress members, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said if AIADMK members gave a notice for discussion, the government was ready to take up the issue relating to action against the former Union Minister and his son.



"We are ready for discussion on the issue of Chidambaram's known and un-known assets. The Minister will also give reply. Our opinion is that action should be taken on those found guilty," he said, adding that members of AIADMK and probably some from Congress want a discussion, leading to further protests by Congress MPs.



Deputy Chairman P J Kurien made futile attempts to pacify the agitating AIADMK members and adjourned the House first for ten minutes.



When the House met again, Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad raised the issue of alleged land scam in Gujarat and said the issue related to 2010 when the land was allotted in an eco-sensitive zone. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister then.



Some BJP members also raised slogans on some issue from the aisle which could not be heard. As Congress members raised slogans from their seats and the aisles and some were heard seeking a CBI probe in the issue, Kurien said Congress should give a notice to raise the matter in the House.



"I am not able to understand why you (Congress members) are shouting. So many things will appear in newspapers. ... The House can take up only notices... House cannot take cognisance of newspapers," he said and adjourned the House till noon.



During the first adjournment of ten minutes, heated exchanges were seen between some AIADMK and Congress members including V Maitreyan (AIADMK) and Jesudasu Seelam (Congress). The reason for the altercation could not be known. Later however the tension between the two sides eased and they were seen exchanging pleasantries.


The government has imposed fines of Rs 323.56 crore on telecom operators in nine months of the current fiscal for violating rules pertaining to verification of subscribers.





It has however recovered only Rs 62.15 crore from them. "Total financial penalty imposed on different telecom service providers (TSPs) for violation of customer acquisition form (CAF) verification norms during current financial year 2015-16 (from April 1, 2015 till December 31, 2015) is Rs 323.56 crore," Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to Lok Sabha today.



He said a penalty of Rs 73.76 crore was imposed on BSNL, Rs 50.25 crore on Vodafone, Rs 43.73 crore on Tata, Rs 41.76 crore on Idea, Rs 40.20 crore on Reliance, Rs 38.70 crore on Airtel and Rs 1.44 crore on Uninor among others.

The government has recovered Rs 62.15 crore from the operators for the reported period, he added.



"Telecom Enforcement Resources and Monitoring (TERM) Cells carry out sample verification of CAF and related documents of the acquired customers, by all TSPs, which brings out non-compliant cases where DoT guidelines pertaining to verification of subscribers were violated by TSPs," Prasad said.



The minister further said for non-compliant cases, TERM Cells impose applicable financial penalties on erring TSPs as per the guidelines issued from time to time.

Regarding a query on quality of service provided by operators, Prasad said sectoral regulator Trai has been monitoring the performance of service providers.



"Wherever the quality of service benchmarks are not met, Trai has also been imposing financial disincentives on service providers for failure to comply with the benchmarks, in accordance with the provisions of the regulations," he said.



He added to create further deterrent against consecutive non-compliance with the benchmarks, Trai had recently notified 'The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2015' on October 15, 2015, providing for increased financial disincentive in such cases.



"The penalties amounting to Rs 10.70 crore has been imposed so far on defaulting service providers for not meeting the QoS benchmarks," he added.
In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, today struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad city, killing nine persons including an Afghan security personnel and causing damage to the chancery.



External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four militants were killed by the Afghan National Police.



"Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire.



"One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan securitymen," MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.



He also said that the Consulate was damaged in the attack. The ministry has received an initial report of the attack and subsequent developments by the Afghan Army.



Eight civilians have been killed in the crossfire, the Indian security sources said based on primary reports from the attack site. They said there were as many as 1,320 explosions including bomb and grenade blasts during a nearly two-hour gunbattle.



The initial onslaught was countered by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) which was later joined by the Afghan securitymen.



According to Provincial Police Chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad, one suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the front gate of the Consulate to open the way for other attackers. "Four other attackers were killed after half an hour clashes with the security forces," he was quoted as saying by the TOLO news.



Today's attack is fourth in the series of terror strikes on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. It was attacked twice by hand grenades in 2007 and in 2013, it was attacked by three suicide bombers. In 2015, an attack on it was thwarted by the Afghan security forces.



Two months ago, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan forces.



Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.


Home Minister Rajnath Singh today refuted Rahul Gandhi's claim that he was not informed before signing a peace pact with Naga insurgent group NSCN-IM saying the Congress Vice-President's statement was "completely false and baseless" and he "misled" the Parliament.





"Rahul Gandhi's statement on Naga peace accord in Lok Sabha today is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Rahul Gandhi's attempt to mislead the House," Singh tweeted.



The Home Minister's strong reaction came hours after Rahul told the Lok Sabha that Singh was not aware of Naga peace accord which was signed in August 2015 in presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



Rahul Gandhi today launched a stinging attack in the Lok Sabha on Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of releasing Pakistan from a small "cage" in which it was put after the 26/11 attacks by his sudden visit to Lahore and bringing a "fair and lovely" scheme to launder black money.



He alleged that Modi did not listen to anyone's opinion, including his ministers and party MPs, on issues like his visit to Pakistan and the Naga accord.
I was born and brought up in Thailand in a small town named Phathalung situated in the south of Thailand and close to the sea and the Malaysian Border. My father was in the Indian National Army and posted at Burma (now Mynamar ) during the Second World War from where he travelled to South of Thailand and settled in Phathalung. Therefore, though being an Indian by origin, I grew up amongst Thais as we were the only Indian family in this town. Our family virtually lived on Thai food, which we cherished.





Following my marriage to an Indian, I settled into India in the year 1980 and ever since then I have been living in India. We had a small restaurant in Thailand and as mentioned above, we were virtually living on Thai food. It was, therefore, easy for me to learn about commercial Thai cuisine. My husband and my two children also developed a palate for Thai cuisines and thus cooking Thai food at home has also become a pleasure.



I joined Holiday Inn (Now The Lalit) at Babar Road near Connaught Place, New Delhi as a Thai food consultant during the year 1994 for their Thai Restaurant, Silk Orchid.

Thereafter I was sent to England for a couple of months by the management to train for their new restaurant, Blue Elephant to be opened in place of Silk Orchid in the year 1996. After the Blue Elephant was opened, I left the organisation to join Hotel Imperial as their consultant chef for the yet to be opened Spice Route  The South Asian Restaurant, in the year 1996.



Ever since then I have been attached to the Spice Route kitchen as their chef de cuisine creating various menus for different seasons and occasions all round the year. I also continue to create different versions of the cuisine for the neo-thai food lovers owing to the ever increasing popularity of the cuisine.



I was also awarded the Best Lady Chef by Ministry of Tourism in India for my outstanding achievement and contribution to the promotion of tourism in the country. I was presented with this dream award by the former President Pratibha Patel.



Looking at the surge in healthy habits among food lovers, I am sharing vegan recipe Tauhu Nerng (chilled silky bean curd with basil). As we will be offering vegan

special at the Spice Route from March 12-20, this easy recipe is a window to what lays in store for food lovers.



Recipe



Tauhu Nerng

(Chilled silky bean curd with basil)



Ingredients



Bean curd silky: 1

Lemon grass:  tsp

Basil: 5 gms

Light soya sauce: 5 ml

Gelatin:  sheet

Kaffir leaves: 5 gms



Method



Soak gelatin in water and heat it

Blend the bean curd

Blend the lemongrass

Put kaffir leaves into a very thin thread

Mix all the above ingredients and light soya

Take a mould and line it with clean wrap and pour the above mixture

Chill it for 3 hours and serve it on a bed of basil.









Chef Veena

(As told to Shilpa Raina)


Bulls continued their dream run on Wednesday from where they left off on Tuesday with both the benchmark indices ending nearly 2% higher and posting their biggest two day gain in seven years.





While the S&P BSE Sensex closed 463.63 points (1.95 %) higher above the 24,000-mark at 24,242.98, the Nifty 50 gained 146.55 points (2.03%) to end at 7,368.85.



Market had taken faith in the Budget and believes that the worst is over. Investors expect a positive direction for the market this month aided by ECB & FED policy meet. A sign of recovery in global market is adding optimism among the participants, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services Head-Fundamental Research Vinod Nair said.



Data showing heavy buying from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) during the previous trading session also gave a fillip to sentiment on the bourses. Market participants welcomed the RBIs easing of rules to allow lenders to bolster capital ratio by including reserves associated with property revaluations and foreign currency translations in the calculation of common equity tier I capital, BNP Paribas MF Manager  Equities Shreyash Devalkar said.



Banking stocks were the major gainers following RBIs move to change Basel III capital regulations with respect to treatment of certain balance sheet items. SBI zoomed 12.56% to Rs 182.40 with volumes of 5.33 crore shares. Other major gainers included ICICI Bank (up 7.59% to Rs 220.50), Punjab National Bank (up 7.54 per cent to Rs 79.20), Bank of Baroda (up 6.43% to Rs 144.80).



It was a mixed bag in terms of sectors as far as losers on Nifty 50 were concerned. M&M was the top loser, ending down 5.29% at Rs 1201. Other losers included Sun Pharma (down 1.96% to Rs 851.40).




The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday gave approval for winding up of National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) with immediate effect as the council has fulfilled the mandate for which it was constituted.





The NMCC was established in 2004 as a part of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the UPA government to provide a continuing forum for policy dialogue to energize and sustain the growth of manufacturing industry.



Meanwhile, the Cabinet gave its approval for organising 36th International Geological Congress (IGC) in year 2020. The event will be held in National Capital Region from March 2-6, 2020.



A budgetary allocation of Rs 52 crore has been already approved by the Cabinet to carry out preparatory activities up to 2018-19 and additional funds will be sought on revising the estimate a year before the main event.



The 36th IGC will be hosted jointly by the ministry of mines and the ministry of earth sciences with an active support from the science academies of India and co-host neighbouring countries.


When unscheduled power cuts have become the order of the day in the City, around 75 sheds at Meenakaliya in Panambur, occupied by migrant workers enjoy uninterrupted power supply during the night.





An initiative of Subrahmanya P Aithal, who owns these sheds, has also helped the children of the worker continue their studies while the parents can now stop spending money on the purchase of kerosene to burn the lamps during the night.



The SELCO Solar Light Private Ltd, a unit of SELCO India, set up its first mini solar power grid project two years ago to supply power to migrant workers who eke out their living by working on road construction and fishing activities in the region.



Speaking to Deccan Herald, Fathima, a native of Badami, who is studying in a school nearby, said that the uninterrupted power supply from 6 pm to 7 am is very helpful to them.



We are using two lights and a fan, along with the mobile charger. My brothers, younger sister and I live here while our parents are at the native place. I wake up at 4 am and prepare the breakfast and lunch. Without the solar power, we had to depend on kerosene lamps for reading and other household chores. Even during monsoon, we get continuous power supply now, she explained.



As the sheds are situated on a private property and do not have door numbers, it is a difficult process to get power connection from the Mescom. The SELCO had to approach the land owner and convince him to allow them to set up a solar power grid in his house to supply power to the sheds.



Explaining the working of the system that has been set up, Subrahmanya P Aithal, the owner, said, Initially, I was apprehensive of the solar power project. I visited Shivamogga and Theerthahalli and studied the functioning of the solar panels during rainy season and then agreed to install the mini solar grid. The inverter can be used for three days for supply power.



Aithal concurred that the uninterrupted power supply has become a boon for the residents. There are 27 schoolchildren residing in these sheds, who have to study at night. There are 22 women in these sheds who wake up at 2 am to prepare breakfast and lunch before venturing out for fishing, he said.



Renuka, another native of Badami, who stays here, said, Before we were given the solar power connection, we had to get kerosene from our native places to ward off the darkness. Even kerosene is also not available in the market and is expensive.



The project cost Rs 4.50 lakh, of which, a nationalised bank released a Rs 4.14-lakh loan to the land owner, while he bore the balance. He collects Rs 160 as monthly electricity charge from the residents of sheds having single lights and Rs 300 a month from those with more than one light and using fans or television.



I have to repay the loan in instalment every month. The money collected from these migrant labourers help me do so. After repaying the loan fully, I will collect 50 per cent of the electricity charges that I now collect from these migrant workers, for the maintenance of the battery and panels, he said.



The mini solar grid with four solar panels or modules of 300 watts each and eight batteries of 200 ampere hour (Ah) capacity each was set up in the house of Aithal, said consultant for SELCO N A Lakshminarayana Rao.



All the houses were fixed with LED lights of three-watt capacity. Some sheds have two lights and some even have a fan. In fact, one shed had even a television. However, the labourer who was staying there had left for his native place, he added.




The two most powerful oil producers in the world  Saudi Arabia and Russia  reached an agreement to freeze oil production at its current levels about a fortnight ago. While the overbearing intent is economic, there are several geopolitical considerations too, primarily related to Iran and Syria.





As part of the economic rationale, joined by Qatar and Venezuela, this is the first deal between OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and non-OPEC members in 15 years. It is a step aimed at tackling the growing production and oversupply of crude amid a global slowdown and helping prices recover from their lowest in more than a decade (from more than $110 a barrel in 2014 to about $30 at present).



The deal is unlikely to yield the desired results. The OPEC members themselves have been at odds for decades over output levels. In addition, non-OPEC member Russia, which last agreed to cooperate with OPEC in 2001, never kept its word.



Analysts also feel that a mere freeze in production is not enough to shore up prices; production cut is the real remedy, which is not easy to agree upon at this stage.



Saudi Arabia is facing a budget deficit of between 15-20% and drawing from its reserves and savings abroad to make up, while Russia is also widening its deficit to cover its expenditure. Notwithstanding this factor, the deal denotes a mini Russian turnaround. In December 2015, Russia had said it is making plans based on oil prices fluctuating between $40 and $60 until 2022, which was a veiled challenge to Saudi Arabia.



Moscow indicated that it could withstand very low oil prices indefinitely because of a floating rouble that provides a safety net to its internal budget. On the other hand, Moscow argued that since Riyadh has a fixed exchange peg to the US dollar, it would have to dig into its reserves.



The script, however, gets murky because of Iran. The Islamic Republic is waiting to ramp up production and increase oil exports as soon as sanctions are completely lifted in accordance with the nuclear deal signed with the West last year. After first welcoming the freeze, Tehran ridiculed the deal, saying it would not give up its appropriate share of the global oil market.



Tehran is unfazed by the possibility of prices falling further when more of its oil gluts the market. While Tehran feels that in spite of its quantitative increase in output, additional sales and revenue will offset the low price factor, the Russian-Saudi deal is aimed precisely to stop that.



The script gets murkier when politics mixes with oil. The freeze agreement is not only aimed at offsetting Irans revenues, but also about reining in Tehrans political influence in the region, especially in Syria and Yemen, which has been a huge concern for Riyadh.



The Saudi frustration with US failure to neutralise Irans regional influence was evident even in 2011 when former director general of the intelligence agency Prince Turki Al Faisal warned that Riyadh was considering using its oil wealth as a tool against Tehran  by oversupplying the international oil markets and reducing the price of crude unless Tehran halted its controversial nuclear programme.



With the nuclear deal done and dusted, Riyadh is now also keen about limiting the Tehran-Washington bonhomie, apart from checking Irans gains after sanctions are lifted.



The deal has a Syrian angle too. It is notable that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia, which have been supporting different groups in Syria, are attempting economic cooperation, which is bound to have some political spinoff as well. The current ceasefire in Syria that took effect last week is a case in point. While chances that the truce will hold are slender, it would at least result in much-needed humanitarian relief operations throughout the war-torn country.



Politico-economic battle



Another example of the battle of economic wits for political gains is that while Russia believes it can withstand low prices better for a sustained period, Saudi Arabia also equally believes it can outdo Russia economically and gain political concessions in Syria in the bargain.



Riyadh has been trying to pressure Moscow to end its support to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. While abandoning Assad is certainly not on Russias cards, it may certainly be amenable to a face-saving compromise.



Initially, Moscow rejected the idea of linking oil prices with international politics. We see eye to eye with our Saudi colleagues in that we believe the oil market should be based on the balance of supply and demand and that it should be free of any attempts to influence it for political or geopolitical purposes.



But the possibility of a political compromise following the oil freeze deal was evident about two weeks ago when Moscow warned Assad against harbouring hopes of retaking all the territory he has lost since the war began. Russia has invested very seriously in this crisis, politically, diplomatically and now also militarily.



Therefore, we would like Assad also to respond to this, Moscow said, reiterating that Assad must follow Russias leadership to end the civil war. Assad had earlier stated that a ceasefire would not stop him from reclaiming all Syria.



Another indication of a possible Russian compromise crystallised just a few days ago. After Washington warned that Syria would be partitioned if the civil war prolongs, Moscow responded by saying it supports the solution that the participants of the Syria negotiations decide on, including the idea of creating a federal state. Overall, whichever way you look at the Saudi-Russia oil deal, politics overrides economics, at least for now.



(The writer is a Dubai-based political analyst, author and Honorary Fellow of the University of Exeter, UK)
Pushed to a corner over allegations of financial irregularities by Karti Chidambaram, the Congress on Wednesday hit back at the BJP by raking up the issue of land allocation made to associates of the daughter of Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel.





The Congress demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the allegations of nepotism during the tenure of Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat.



Shocking facts reveal that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat, had sanctioned nepotism, conflict of interest and blatant plundering of public land to promote commercial and business interests of entities closely connected to Anar Patel, daughter of the then Revenue Minister and present Chief Minister of Gujarat Anandiben Patel, Randeep Surjewala, in-charge of the AICC communications department told reporters here.



The Congress had raised this issue last month following reports in a section of the media about irregularities in allocation of land near the Gir Lion Sanctuary to Wildwoods Resort, who reports stated had extensive business dealings with Anar Patel.



Surjewala said that allotment of 250 acres of the government land next to Gir Lion Sanctuary was done for a pittance without following any procedure or valuation or price determination.



Former finance minister P Chidambarams son Kartis purported business dealings have come under attack from political rivals the AIADMK and the BJP.



They accused Karti of having businesses across the globe which were funded by kickbacks received by him for facilitating the Aircel-Maxis deal.



Sonia comes to PCs defence



Beleaguered former finance minister finally got some backing from the Congress leadership, but it was confined to only the 2004 Ishrat Jahan encounter case, DHNS reports from New Delhi. Chidambaram has already explained. We stand by that. What is new? We were targeted when we were in power, said Sonia, when asked for her reaction on the BJP demanding an inquiry. The BJP has accused Chidambaram of altering the affidavit at the directions of his political masters, hinting at the Congress first family. Realising that the issues have come out as a political handle to checkmate the Congress, the BJP continued to be aggressive on it.


Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley rejected Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis claim that senior ministers were not in the loop when Prime Minister Narendra Modi took major decisions.





Singh denied Rahuls claim in the Lok Sabha that the home minister was not informed about the peace pact with Naga insurgent group NSCN(IM) as completely false and baseless.



Rahul Gandhis statement on Naga peace accord in Lok Sabha today (Wednesday) is completely false and baseless. I had several rounds of consultations with the PM on Naga peace process. I strongly condemn Rahul Gandhis attempt to mislead the House, Rajnath tweeted.



The home ministers reaction came hours after Rahul told the Lok Sabha that Rajnath was not aware of the Naga peace accord which was signed in August 2015 in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.



Jaitley also took a dig at Rahul on the issue. If Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Rajnath Singh was unaware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unaware of the Budget proposals, Jaitley said.



As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know  when will he know. Jaitley also said that the prime minister is the natural leader of the party and the government.



Guilty wont be spared, says Jaitley



Finance Minister Arun Jaitley informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday that the government will not spare anyone who is found guilty in any scam, DHNS reports from New Delhi.

We have no holy cows wholl be spared, said Jaitley when the members sought to know what action had been taken against former finance minister P Chidambaram and son Karti for acquiring properties in 14 nations as an outcome of the scam-ridden Aircel-Maxis deal.


Paramilitary and armed forces personnel who lose their lives in action are not described as martyrs, the government said on Wednesday.





Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said neither Defence Ministry nor paramilitary forces use the word martyr.



In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, he said, the Defence Ministry has informed that the word martyr is not used in reference to any of the casualties in armed forces.



Similarly no such term is used in reference to the Central Armed Police Forces and Assam Rifles, including Border Security Force (BSF) personnel, who die during their fight against infiltrators and terrorists from across the border, he said.



He was asked whether the government intends to write martyrs in place of killed for such personnel.



To another question, he said it may be seen from Union Home Ministrys Annual Report 2014-15 that the word killed has not been used for those BSF personnel who died during thier fight against infiltrators and terrorists from across the border.

Rather the term laid down their lives has been used, he said.
The BJD-AIADMK tango with the government in the Lok Sabha on the issue of former finance minister P Chidambarams role in the Aircel-Maxis deal caught the Congress completely unawares on Wednesday.





Congress members were reduced to mere onlookers as Speaker Sumitra Mahajan quickly accepted the notice given by BJD leader Bhratruhari Mahtab to discuss the Aircel-Maxis deal after doing through the motions of seeking the sense of the House.



Trinamool Congress member Saugata Ray did raise a point of order contending that persons mentioned in the notice were not members of the House and that the matter was before courts.



The Speaker gave her ruling that the notice given by Mahtab did not refer to any person and hence a discussion can be taken up in the House.



As Mahtab started narrating the chain of events that led to the acquisition of Chennai-based Aircel by Malaysian company Maxis in complete violation of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board rules by the then finance minister, Congress members rushed to the well of the House to register their protest.



Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, K C Venugopal, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhary, gathered around party president Sonia Gandhi discussing the next move.



Later, Kharge led a walkout by Congress members from the House alleging that injustice was being meted out to them by not allowing them to put their views.



Mahtab and AIADMK member T G Venkatesh Babu accused the BJP government of delaying the prosecution of those accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday restrained the Maharashtra government from installing CCTV cameras at dance bars and restaurants with live feed to the nearest police station.





The court rejected the plea that the move would help the administration in curbing illegal activities and harassment of women.



A bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh, however, allowed the government to set up such cameras at the bar entrance.



The court asked the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association to comply with other conditions, like having three feet railing on the stage and no concealed room, within three days and directed the state government to grant licences for dance bars by March 15. As Additional Solicitor General Pinky Anand pleaded with the court that several restaurant owners agreed to install CCTV cameras as these are considered public area under the law, the bench told her, You cant have CCTVs, for present now, lets not have live feed to the police station. It is not a security issue. We also want law and order. We have already said the performance should be bereft of obscenity.



The court also said that there would not be any non-removable partition between the restaurant and the permit room area. The bench, however, allowed the state government to verify criminal antecedents of bar employees. Senior advocate Jayant Bhushan, appearing for bar owners association, had objected to the condition of examining character of the staff.



With regard to the condition put by the state government that there would not be any concealed or cavity room in the bar, the bench gave its stamp of approval for it but said there should be a room which can be utilised as a green room, as understood in the classical sense.



The court put the matter for further consideration after two weeks, allowing senior advocate Rajeev Dhawan, appearing for dancers, to file an intervention application.

The bar dancers claimed that they have a right to earn their living, which cant be restricted by imposing public order conditions.



It could be judiciary vs legislature



Hours after the Supreme Court ordered the Maharashtra government to grant licences to dance bars by March 15, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said that it would bring in a legislation, DHNS reports from Mumbai.



The government pleader in the Supreme Court informed that the court has accepted all conditions imposed by Maharashtra government on dance bars with few modifications, but the court has has disallowed the condition of live monitoring through CCTV and has asked to enforce surveillance at the entrance only, Fadnavis said.




The TDP, an active member of the ruling NDA, has expressed its displeasure over the paltry budget allocations made by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.





The Politburo has asked Nara Chandrababu Naidu to seek remedial measures from the centre as pressure from the people of the state is mounting on the two-year-old government to perform.



The ruling party was in shock as the Budget made no mention about the special category status assured in the Reorganisation Act, no assistance to fill in Rs 12,000-cr budgetary deficit that accrued following partition. What hurt the state and the TDP is the pittance of Rs 100 crore allocation for Polavaram project which requires an estimated Rs 36,000 cr to be completed by 2019. The AP government even failed to secure Rs 2,300 that it has spent on Polavaram canal work of the project last year.



It is also reported that union civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju also offered to quit in protest and was to be convinced by the party president that the issue will be taken up at the right forum



Fissures between the TDP and the state BJP started appearing over allocations to Polavaram project after former Union minister and BJP leader Daggubati Purandeswari made it clear that there is no role for the Union government in Polavaram, as per the tripartite agreement between AP government and the Transstroy (India) Limited, to which the project was given.


The US is keen to start a quadrilateral security dialogue with India, Japan and Australia  a move, which appears to be in response to growing maritime assertiveness by China in Indian Ocean region.





One idea to consider is initiating a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between India, Japan, Australia and the US, commander of US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry B Harris, said in New Delhi on Wednesday. Adding the US into this dialogue can amplify the message that we are united behind the international rules-based order that has kept the peace and is essential to all of us, he added, delivering a keynote address in Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi. He also said that the next Malabar Naval exercise could take place in north of Philippine Sea. China is understood to be upset over inclusion of Japans Maritime Self Defence Force as a regular participant in Malabar Exercise, which hitherto remained a war drill by the navies of India and US.



The US move to build greater synergy with India, Australia and Japan in maritime domain came at a time when Chinas dispute with its neighbours  Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines  over South China Sea escalated. Amid reports about China deploying surface-to-air missiles in one of the disputed islands in South China Sea, New Delhi recently joined US and other nations to ask Beijing to refrain from taking any unilateral action in the region.



India and the US of late also concluded the roadmap for greater maritime cooperation in Asia Pacific and Indian Ocean regions.




The BJP on Wednesday said Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was playing to the gallery and misusing the floor of the Legislative Assembly by handing over his controversial Hublot wristwatch to Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa.





The veracity of the watch is still under question. The Speaker has been unnecessarily dragged into the controversy by the chief minister. What if the investigations confirm that the watch is indeed a stolen article. The reputation of the entire House will be at stake, leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Jagadish Shettar, told reporters in Bengaluru.



Shettar questioned the need for the chief minister to hand over the watch to the Speaker in the House. The chief minister could have handed it over directly to the chief secretary, he said.



The watch has now become the property of the House as it has been handed over to the Speaker inside the Assembly hall, Shettar said.



Speakers take



Replying to queries from reporters, Kagodu said he had discharged his duty by handing over the watch to the chief secretary after it came into his possession.To a question that doubts had been expressed that the watch was a stolen article, Kagodu said, Its irrelevant.



He said no documents were required to declare any article a government asset.Shettar said that declaring the watch a government asset, would not put an end to the controversy as the party would continue to demand an inquiry. Siddaramaiah should step down till the completion of the investigation, he added.



Both the Opposition BJP and the JD(S) have refused to buy Siddaramaiahs contention that the watch was gifted to him by his Dubai-based friend Dr Girish Chandra Varma.



JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy said it was a matter of time before the truth behind the watch came out. We will take the issue to its logical end, he said.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who has been on the defensive over the watch controversy, on Wednesday called upon the Congress legislators to effectively counter the Opposition attack on the issue in the legislature.





Siddaramaiah, who chaired the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting at the Vidhana Soudha, gave a detailed clarification on the controversy and tried to convince them that he had not violated any law by accepting the expensive watch as a gift.



The chief minister raised the issue on his own and none of the legislators spoke anything against their leader in the meeting, sources in the party said.



Siddaramaiah reiterated what he had been saying all these days: That the watch was gifted by his NRI friend Dr Girish Chandra Varma in July last year. It was a pre-owned watch bought by Varma in Dubai for an estimated Rs 14 lakh.



He also claimed that he had all the documents pertaining to the watch. The Opposition parties are making baseless charges in order to tarnish the governments image, he said.



The chief minister informed the legislators that he had decided to declare the watch a government asset, following in the footsteps of former chief minister, the late Devaraj Urs. The watch will be on display at the Cabinet Hall on the third floor of the Vidhana Soudha, he said.



Reservation issue



The sources said many legislators took exception to Minister for Municipal Administration, Qamarul Islam, fixing reservation for the urban local bodies without consulting them. Siddaramaiah directed Islam to explore the possibility of changing the reservation roster without violating the rule book.



Many legislators stayed away from the CLP meeting as well as the dinner hosted by the chief minister on Tuesday, the sources said.
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday approached the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Bengaluru seeking the arrest of former UB-group head Vijay Mallya and also impounding of his passport.





The move came to light hours after CBI Director Anil Sinha questioned the delay by banks in acting against Mallya-founded Kingfisher Airlines Ltd at the 7th CBI conference on Combating Financial Crimes here.



Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines owe Rs 7,800 crore to a consortium of 17 lenders led by SBI which had an exposure of over Rs 1,600 crore to the now defunct airline. The loan was not serviced since January 2012. According to sources, the SBI has moved four applications, seeking Mallyas arrest, impounding his passport, securing the lenders first right on the $75-million severance package from Diageo and getting full disclosure of his assets in the country and abroad.



An SBI official confirmed to PTI that the bank has moved the DRT seeking right on the $75-million severance package, as the borrower Mallya, who has already been declared by the bank a wilful defaulter, has decided to leave the country and settle down in London.



Other lenders include the Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Central Bank of India, Federal Bank, Uco Bank and Dena Bank among others.



Late into action



Earlier in the day, the CBI chief said: ...The CBI has recently registered a case of cheating and fraud against Kingfisher and its erstwhile management involving allegations of defrauding banks to the tune of nearly Rs 7,000 crore. This case was registered in July 2015, but the loans/advances were taken during 2004-2012. However, despite our repeated requests, the banks did not file a complaint with the CBI. We had to register the case on our own initiative.



Coming to the issue of PACL Group, Sinha said: The second case relates to PACL Group which has reportedly collected over Rs 51,000 crore of illegal deposits from nearly 5.5 crore investors spread across nearly all states. It needed the Supreme Court to step in to order investigations and later order return of money to the depositors under its supervision. Should not the regulator have suo moto stepped in?




JD(S) leader and former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday accused the State government of tapping his telephones.





Speaking to reporters in Bengaluru, Kumaraswamy claimed that his telephones were being monitored more closely ever since he questioned the controversial Swiss-made Hublot watch worn by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.



He said his telephones were being tapped ever since Siddaramaiah government came to power. I had called Union minister Ghulam Nabi Azad when the UPA government was in power. Azad had cautioned me that I should not call him from my phone, Kumaraswamy said.



He said if not for the phone-tapping, he would expose more scams of the State government. The intelligence wing was tapping his telephones using sophisticated gadgets, he said.



Replying to queries by the media, BJP leader Jagadish Shettar said his phones and also those of the Opposition leaders were being tapped. There is a distinct echo and static during calls, which is an indication that phones are being tapped, he said.
The State government is all set to launch the Mukhyamantri Santwana Yojana, that will provide free relief to accident victims, on March 8, Minister for Health and Family Welfare U T Khader said here on Wednesday.





Speaking at an event organised by the Federation of Karnataka Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FKCCI), Khader said that the State government will provide Rs 25,000 relief to the accident victims for the first 48 hours under the scheme.



It is not just the people of this State, others too are eligible to avail treatment. Even if an outsider meets with an accident in the State, he will also be eligible to avail the benefits under this scheme, he added.



A total of 280 hospitals across the State have been identified to offer the scheme. Apart from taluk-level hospitals, district-level hospitals and medical college hospitals, 80 private hospitals have been empanelled under the scheme.



Khader added that fully equipped blood banks would be set up in all districts and blood collection centres would be set up in all talkus across the State. However, the minister did not divulge details on the amount set aside for these under the State budget.



Following recommendations by the FKCCI for more dialysis centres in rural areas, Khader said that the State would soon have dialysis centres set up on a public-private-partnership model basis at all taluks.



The government can have several dialysis centres but finding manpower has remained a challenge. Hence, to address this, we will partner with NGOs, he said.



Garbage crisis



When representatives of the FKCCI spoke about the garbage crisis in Bengaluru, the minister said that until a solution is found to address the garbage issue, there can be no end to communicable diseases.



There are so many lakes in the City. How many of them are cleaned at regular intervals? Not even 40 per cent of what we consume as drinking water is fit for human consumption. Even the civic body has to do its bit, he remarked.



Meanwhile, P S Ramkumar, member, FKCCI urged the government to improve tele-medicine to save the a patients travel cost and time. On an average, if people in Bengaluru have to avail treatment, Rs 5 crore is spent on travel alone. If tele-medicine can be improved, at least 80 per cent of the travel can be cut down, he said.
Villages around the two garbage-processing units at Seegehalli and Kannahalli on the northern outskirts of Bengaluru are again on the boil, as residents want the facilities to be shut down immediately.





They have formed an organisation called Kannahalli, Seegehalli Waste Processing Unit Protest Committee, and declared to lock out the facilities on Thursday to prevent the entry of garbage vehicles. The agitation will start at 9.30 am with the villagers holding a protest at the entrance.



Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, the committees president, Prof Ramachandra Bhat, said villagers lives had become miserable as the units had become the breeding grounds for mosquitoes and flies, not to speak of the overpowering stench. People living in 100 villages under seven gram panchayats of Kodigehalli, Solikere, Channenahalli, Kadabagere, Machohalli, Kachohalli and Tavarekere are suffering.



These facilities are right in the middle of residential layouts and not far away from the proposed Kempegowda Layout. People have to live with the stench round the clock, he said.



Secretary of the committee P L Mohan Raju criticised the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), saying it never sought peoples consent before setting up these units. The BBMP had tried to start a garbage-processing unit around 15 years ago but gave up after public protests, he said. It has again taken an anti-people stand.




The Catholic bishops of India on Wednesday said the Union government, driven by fundamentalist ideology, had weakened the secular fabric of society.





Presenting the biennial report at the 32nd general body meeting of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), Archbishop Albert DSouza, secretary-general, CBCI, said certain factions posed a threat to the religious minorities in the country.



Without naming any right-wing Hindu organisation and the Bhratiya Janata Party, he said, There have been instances of a series of attacks on sacred places and churches. Similar factions of people are also engaged in a militant form of Ghar Wapsi, which involved forcing religious minorities to join the majority religion under the explicit call for a Hindu nation.



The inhuman acts on an elderly nun in Ranaghat (West Bengal) and a nun in Raipur (Chhattisgarh) have been alarming, just as other cases of attacks on women and minors. False allegations to the extent of implicating a priest of a school in the Diocese of Ambikapur have baffled us. A priest of Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) was in similar way accused and imprisoned, the report said and added that certain states did face the effects of the anti-conversion Bill.



Archbishop DSouza also raised suspicion over the new Education Policy and the trends of saffronisation of education. The Child Adoption Policy of the government caused, especially the Missionaries of Charity, a concern, he said. The Church hails the Bills on Harassment of Women in workplace and the Child Protection Policy (Pocso Act), which are meant to maintain moral order in society, he added.



Earlier, Popes ambassador to India, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, in his inaugural address urged the bishops to show active commitment and concern for the poor, particularly the dalits, and their situations.



Besides, he asked the CBCI Plenary to consider it opportune to prepare a pastoral care programme for the estranged families so that they may better respond to the emerging challenges.



Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl said Indias character was evident from the life of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. These great people are the gifts of India to the world. CBCI president Baselios Cardinal Cleemis also spoke on the occasion.



The plenary, which is held at the St Johns Medical College campus in the City, will conclude on March 9. As many as 180 bishops from different dioceses across the country are attending the meet.
The Railways had ignored missives and warnings by the Government Railway Police (GRP) about the 16 ramshackle Railway buildings in the State, which resulted in the death of seven people and critical injuries to seven others when the parcel office building at the Hubballi station collapsed on February 8.





It has emerged that in November 2014, the then Additional Director General of Police (Railways) Dr Rajvir Pratap Sharma had written to the General Manager (GM) of the South Western Railway (SWR), listing out 16 railway buildings which were in a dilapidated state and could collapse any moment. The list included some GRP station buildings, police quarters and some outposts.



A month after the missive, the ADGP had raised the matter during the railway officers conference in Delhi, chaired by the traffic member of the Railway Board and the Director General of the Railway Protection Force (RPF), but the matter was not taken seriously.



Speaking to Deccan Herald, the present ADGP (Railways) Amar Kumar Pandey said the matter of building collapse that killed seven people was under investigation. He said that the investigating officer would look into the communication between the Railway police and the Railway administration and those guilty of ignoring the warnings would not be spared.



Pandey said, I too wrote many strong letters after the incident, regarding the buildings which warrant urgent attention.



He said there were 18 police stations, 25 police outposts and 200-odd staff quarters which are almost in ruins and could lead to accidents. In his letters, he has asked the Railway officials to either renovate them or raze them to rebuild them.



The police brass refused to divulge details of the investigation into the Hubballi building collapse, but said the investigation was headed in the right direction.



A Railway police officer said there was a police outpost beneath a water tank. Not only the outpost, but also the water tank is in bad shape. Ignoring it will cause another Hubballi-like accident.



He said that many police and Railway quarters were unfit for human habitation, but the Railway authorities never took interest, since their repair or replacement would require huge investment. The condition of the buildings is bad and the accountability will finally rest with the Railway officials.
Two brothers running a telecom service agency kidnapped one of their own employees who had siphoned off Rs three lakh from them and asked his family to repay the money as ransom for his release, the police said.





Maruthi and his brother Kalyan have a distributorship for Aircel and had employed one Muniraju, 38, from Sunkadakatte. Six months ago, Muniraju reportedly siphoned off Rs three lakh from them. The fraud came to light only a month later. The brothers demanded their money back, but Muniraju promised to repay them in instalments, a senior police officer who was part of the investigation said.



Muniraju, however, failed to repay them even after several months. The brothers got angry and gave him a week to repay. But Muniraju defaulted again. This time, the brothers threatened to go to the police if he didnt pay up. Muniraju asked for some more time and started avoiding them.



The brothers ran out of patience and decided to teach him a lesson. On February 29, they spotted him near Sunkadakatte. They went up to him, bundled him into a mini goods vehicle and drove to a far-off place near their hometown, Bagepalli, and beat him black and blue. Muniraju was then confined to the goods vehicle, the officer said.



The same night, the brothers called up his wife, Pavithra, and asked her to pay up Rs three lakh or they would kill him. In order to avoid being recognised by Pavithra, they got their parents to speak to her and make the ransom demand.



A panicked Pavithra went to the Kamakshipalya police station. The police registered a case and swung into action. Suspecting the brothers, the police questioned their landlord in Electronics City. He told the police that the brothers were from Bagepalli town in Chikkaballapur district. The police started tracking their mobile phone numbers. They learnt that the call received by Pavithra originated in Tadipatri town in Anantapur district.



The police went there and caught Kalyan who told them Muniraju was held hostage in Bagepalli and Maruthi was watching him. The police went to Bagepalli and rescued Muniraju. They also arrested the brothers.




The Third Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court on Wednesday granted bail to Alliance University Vice-Chancellor Madhukar G Angur, his wife Priyanka and brother Yogesh in connection with rape and other cases.





Angur is accused of raping his relative between 2011 and 2013. He was arrested by the Anekal police based on a complaint filed by the victims mother.



Eight cases were registered against him with Anekal police. The cases were transferred to the CID about two weeks ago after the complainant met the top police officers and made a request in that regard. Dr Angur was arrested on February 6 this year.



The police suspect that disputes in Angur family have led to complaints and counter-complaints.



The cases of rape and financial misappropriation against Dr Angur (60), who holds a doctoral degree from the University of Texas, Arlington, are now being probed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).


A four-member gang looted gold jewellery worth Rs two crore and Rs three lakh in cash from the Jayanagar branch of Muthoot Fincorp here in broad daylight on Wednesday.





According to police, the gang entered the first-floor office around 11 am in the guise of customers. The four men threatened the staff with lethal weapons and decamped with 12 kg of gold and cash of Rs three lakh. The looters fled the spot on two-wheelers.



They had cut the CCTV camera wires before entering the building. Superintendent of Police Amit Singh, who visited the spot, said that four teams had been formed to nab the robbers. The MB Nagar police have registered a case.
The liver of a 59-year-old brain-dead woman was transplanted into a patient at the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY) super-speciality hospital here on Wednesday, making it the third such operation at a government facility.





The donor, Lingamma, hails from Kotappanapalya village in Magadi taluk, Ramanagar district. She was rushed to a hospital in Magadi on Sunday after complaining of dizziness.



She was referred to Nimhans but doctors there said they could not perform a corrective surgery to treat her intracranial bleeding as her blood pressure was high.



We asked the doctors at Nimhans for her discharge summary and admitted her to KIMS for treatment. Doctors there counselled us on organ donation and we gave our consent, said her son, Basavalingiah T.



Doctors at the PMSSY hospital, which is located on the Victoria Hospital premises, were alerted at 2 pm on Tuesday about a possible donor liver at KIMS.



The woman was then wheeled into the PMSSY hospital. A team of four surgeons performed the liver transplant. We started at 1 am and worked until morning to complete the procedure. The transplant was successful, said Dr Nagesh N S, head of the transplant team, PMSSY hospital.



One of her kidneys was sent to the JSS Hospital in Mysuru and another to Manipal Hospitals in Bengaluru, but her heart could not be harvested given her age, according to officials in the Zonal Co-ordination Committee of Karnataka for Organ Transplantation.



While the recipients family has paid Rs 5,500 as initial deposit, they would be asked to foot a minimal bill of Rs two lakh. According to senior doctors in the hospital, Rs one lakh has been sought from the chief ministers fund.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiahs much-talked about Rs 70-lakh wristwatch figured in a Lok Sabha debate on Wednesday with BJP member Pralhad Joshi demanding a comprehensive inquiry into the episode.





Speaking immediately after Rahul Gandhi, Joshi slammed the double standards of the Congress on issues of corruption putting top Congress leaders in a tight spot.



The chief minister claims an NRI gifted the watch to him. He should make it public from where it was purchased, whether customs duty and other taxes were paid, and whether FEMA guidelines were followed, Joshi said.



The Karnataka chief minister is wearing a Rs 70-lakh watch. We want to know whether the chief minister is a socialist, a Lohiaite or a mere pleasure-seeking person, Joshi said, demanding that the Centre order an inquiry into the issue.



Leader of the Congress Mallikarjun Kharge jumped to Siddaramaiahs defence claiming that the BJP member was discussing issues related to the State government in the Lok Sabha. He also wanted AIADMK member P Venugopal, who was in the chair, to expunge the remarks made by Joshi from Parliamentary proceedings.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tried to wriggle out of the watch controversy on Wednesday by handing over the diamond-studded Hublot to Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa on the floor of the House.





Siddaramaiah also requested the Speaker to declare the watch as government property amid uproar by BJP members.



After facing embarrassing questions from the Opposition over the last few weeks, Siddaramaiah finally handed over the gifted watch in a paper cover to the Speaker along with a one-page letter.



In his letter, which was read out by the Speaker, Siddaramaiah stated that as a law abiding citizen he had paid advance tax for the gifted watch.



He further stated that the pre-owned Hublot Big Bang 301-M wrist watch was presented to him by his friend Dr Girish Chandra Varma during his visit to Bengaluru in July 2015. Further, the chief minister has stated that the watch be handed over to the chief secretary so that it could be placed in the Cabinet hall in the Vidhana Soudha as a government asset.



Siddaramaiahs action in no way helped him to buy peace with the Opposition.

Proceedings in both Houses of the Legislature continued to be stalled with the Opposition raising slogans against the chief minister and vociferously demanding a probe by a Central agency into the issue.



The Opposition members have refused to buy Siddaramaiahs contention that the watch was gifted by his friend Dr Varma.



Within minutes after the watch came into his possession, the Speaker handed it over to Chief Secretary Aravind Jadav in full glare of the media. The Speakers office also took an acknowledgement from the chief secretary.



However, there is no rule which stipulates that an MLA or MLC should declare a gift as government asset by submitting it through the presiding officer. The watch will now be displayed in the Cabinet hall.



In an interaction with a section of the media, Dr Varma had stated that the watch was worth Rs 14 lakh.



Sources in Siddaramaiahs office said the chief minister has paid an advance tax of Rs 4.25 lakh.






In the fourth attack since 2007, heavily-armed terrorists, including suicide bombers, on Wednesday struck the Indian Consulate in Afghanistans Jalalabad city, killing nine people including an Afghan security personnel and causing damage to the chancery.





The External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi said all Indians in the mission were safe and six terrorists, who carried out the attack, were dead. While two terrorists blew themselves up, four militants were killed by the Afghan National Police. Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire.



One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan securitymen, MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.



He also said that the Consulate was damaged in the attack. The ministry has received an initial report of the attack and subsequent developments by the Afghan Army.



Eight civilians have been killed in the crossfire, the Indian security sources said based on primary reports from the attack site. They said there were as many as 1,320 explosions including bomb and grenade blasts during a nearly two-hour gunbattle.



The initial onslaught was countered by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) which was later joined by the Afghan securitymen.



According to Provincial Police Chief Fazel Ahmad Shirzad, one suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the front gate of the Consulate to open the way for other attackers.

Four other attackers were killed after half an hour clashes with the security forces, he was quoted as saying by the TOLO news.



Wednesdays attack is fourth in the series of terror strikes on the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad. It was attacked twice by hand grenades in 2007 and in 2013, it was attacked by three suicide bombers. In 2015, an attack on it was thwarted by the Afghan security forces.



Two months ago, heavily-armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Indian mission in Mazar-e-Sharif which lasted for over 25 hours with all the attackers who attempted to storm the building getting killed by the Afghan forces.



Soon after that also in January, Islamic State jihadists claimed responsibility for a deadly gun and bomb siege targeting the nearby Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad.
Suspected drug addicts and petty thieves left motorists caught in a chaotic jam in Connaught Place on Tuesday morning.





At around 11:30 am, the traffic signals unexpectedly went on the blink due to removal of the battery and power supply inverter of the traffic light system.



Blaring horns and fuming drivers waited helplessly as the Delhi Traffic Police tried to sort out the mess manually near the Regal cinema in the outer circle of Connaught Place.



An inspection of the signals junction box solved the mysterious malfunction during office rush hour. The theft was found by head constable Pramod after which a case was filed with Connaught Place police station.



The traffic signal at the trouble spot is close to the Hanuman Mandir area on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, a notorious hub of vagabonds addicted to substance abuse.



On Tuesday, head constable Pramod was on duty between PTC circle and PTC-10. I was surprised to notice all the traffic signals not functioning at 11.45 am, Pramod told Deccan Herald.



He then went to check the junction box at a nearby subway. The lock of the box had been broken and the traffic light systems inverter and battery were missing, Pramod added. It was fixed after the head constable informed his traffic inspector and the police control room.



Connaught Place police station recorded Pramods statement to file the case under Section 379 (theft) of the Indian Penal Code.



The spot is barely 100 metres away from Connaught Place and Barakhamba Road police stations, and near the office of Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central Range).

Around the same time, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) constable chased and overpowered a man who tried to snatch his mobile phone around 2 km from Connaught Place.



Contable Rajesh, a resident of Vasant Vihar, had come to Patiala House Courts Complex with a senior officer. The incident occurred when he was waiting on the drivers seat of the car. The constable was trying to catch up on some sleep and kept a Samsung mobile phone on his chest. Soon, a man tried to grab the phone, but failed to hold it firmly. The phone fell from the snatchers hand, said a police officer.



The man, Sunil, tried to flee, but Rajesh managed to nab him after a brief chase. Sunil is a resident of Jharera village in Delhi Cantonment area.
Students protesting for the release of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar turned jubilant as news of his getting interim bail from the Delhi High Court reached them late on Wednesday evening.





The protesters, comprising students, teachers and activists, were waiting in front of police barricades near Parliament police station when the news broke.



Immediately after the announcements, some chanted slogans, while many others hugged and congratulated each other. We at JNU had been fighting for the soul of India, we were fighting for the truth. The government has been arraigned against JNU, but the courts have ultimately told everyone who was speaking the truth, Professor Ayesha Kidwai said.



Chanting Comrade Kanhaiya ko Lal salaam and singing Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna, many students join the celebration and danced.



However, JNUSU general secretary Rama Naga while hailing the courts decision as only a beginning, called on all student parties to devise a strategy to counter ABVPs false propaganda.



This is just one decision. The struggle must continue for Anirban and Umar. At the same time, the organisation will devise a strategy towards countering ABVPs false propaganda and the kind of politics it is engaging in, the JNUSU leader said.






In the last of the Switzerland series, heres a peek at a celebrity favourite. Gstaad and Saanen are two small towns in the Bernese Oberland, and together form the pretty-as-a-picture Gstaad-Saanenland region. I spent a couple of days in this lovely part of Switzerland last year, and I wrote about Gstaad for National Geographic Travellers Swiss Special issue of February 2016. Heres the unedited version of my article, plus my recommendations on where to stay and eat.

The High Life

Theres more to Gstaad than its reputation as a playground for billionaires

Julie Andrews lives here and so did Elizabeth Taylor. Madonna visits often and so does Kareena Kapoor Khan. Gstaad has always been the playground of the rich and the famous. From a small village in the Bernese Oberland to a luxury destination choc-a-bloc with designer boutiques, the town has undergone a glamorous transformation. Yet, its a place that holds its history and traditions dear  authentic chalets made with weathered wood, working dairy farms, thriving folk arts  you will find all these and more, if you step beyond Gstaads enticing high street.

Natures Bounty





The Gstaad-Saanenland region is dotted with small chalet villages, sitting pretty against the backdrop of green pastures, flower-dotted fields and snow-clad mountains.

Head over to the village of Lauenen, from where you can take a horse carriage ride to Lauenensee (Lake Lauenen), a serene lake located in a nature reserve. Do the (very easy) circular hike around the lake or go boating on it. If youre looking for a more active holiday, the mountains around Gstaad and Saanen are excellent for leisure and adventure hiking, mountain biking and mountain boarding. In winter Gstaad is one of the most popular ski resorts in the country.

Adrenaline Kicks

Fancy walking across the only suspension bridge in the world connecting two mountain peaks? The 107-metre-long Peak Walk is the highlight at Glacier 3000. It connects View Point (2,971m) with Scex Rouge (2,976m), and offers a stunning view of 24 summits in the Alps, including Mont Blanc, Matterhorn and Jungfrau.

Glacier 3000 has other adventures in store as well  go on a glacier walk, take a snow bus or a husky sleigh ride, or try cross-country skiing. The Alpine Coaster is not for the fainthearted  the worlds highest toboggan run is a thrilling ride of action-packed jumps and heart-stopping steep curves.

Fondue Fun

Switzerland and cheese are almost synonymous, and Gstaad is particularly known for its local, specialty cheeses. In Fondueland Gstaad you can enjoy a delicious fondue outdoors, while seated in a massive, wooden caquelon (fondue pot) and admiring the spectacular alpine view. Pick up your fondue kit from designated dairies, complete with a caquelon, a warmer, two types of cheese, crusty bread, plates and forks. Theres one fondue pot in Schlittmoos and two in Vorderi Wispile, each of which has room for 8 people.

Sound of Music

Summer is time for music festivities in the Alps. In Gstaad the dairy farmers celebrate Suufsunntig or Drinking Sunday, which begins with a glug of schlugg (a yoghurt-like by-product of cheese), followed by mountain prayers, yodelling and alpine horn playing. At the beginning of summer, if youre lucky, you may witness the annual zuglete or transhumance, when the farmers drive their cattle up to the alpine pastures. The cows are decorated with wreaths of flowers and the air is filled with the tinkling of their cowbells. Gstaad also hosts the annual Menuhin Festival, a celebration of classical music with more than 50 concerts being held over seven weeks, between July and September.

Folk Arts & Crafts

The pretty chalet village of Saanen is the historical heart of the region and is steeped in traditional handicrafts and arts. Dont miss the Museum der Landschaft in Saanen, which traces the regions history and culture through its arts and crafts. Peasant style ceramics, woodcarving and paper cutting are some of the most popular handicrafts.

Paper cutting or scherenschnitte is the art of creating delicate, lace-like designs by cutting paper. The designs usually depict alpine scenes or geometric motifs. You can watch an artisan create these artworks in Lauenen, and you can also try your hand at it. Read more about paper cutting here.

Where to stay

Theres no dearth of excellent hotels in Gstaad, with lots of luxury stay options. I stayed at the charming chalet-style, 5-star Grand Hotel Park, where the rooms have private terraces that look out over stunning alpine views. The rooms are luxurious, with good quality amenities and come equipped with fancy facilities such as a Bang and Olufsen entertainment system. The hotel has six restaurants (including a sushi bar), and I had a lovely Mediterranean dinner one night. Theres a fancy spa at your disposal as well.

Posthotel Rossli, the oldest hotel in Gstaad. The building dates back to 1823 and at one time also served as the towns post office. The building has been a guesthouse since 1845 and has been run by the same family since 1922. Its located on the main street of the town, and its just a short walk from Grand Hotel Park. The restaurant Alti Poscht serves some interesting local dishes  Id recommend the sauteed calf liver with a pungent vinegar-based sauce, as well as the house salad with Roquefort cheese, bacon and croutons. For dessert, the plum sorbet is the bomb  try it; you wont be disappointed! For another meal, I headed to, the oldest hotel in Gstaad. The building dates back to 1823 and at one time also served as the towns post office. The building has been a guesthouse since 1845 and has been run by the same family since 1922. Its located on the main street of the town, and its just a short walk from Grand Hotel Park. The restaurant Alti Poscht serves some interesting local dishes  Id recommend the sauteed calf liver with a pungent vinegar-based sauce, as well as the house salad with Roquefort cheese, bacon and croutons. For dessert, the plum sorbet is the bomb  try it; you wont be disappointed!



This feature was commissioned by National Geographic Traveller, India, and was published in the Swiss Special accompanying the February 2016 issue. Read it here.



Have you visited Gstaad? What was the highlight of your trip? Leave us a comment below.

Disclosure: My stay in Gstaad was courtesy Gstaad-Saanenland Tourism.
After wrapping up the week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, one thing has become clear5G is on everyones mind and the race to develop enabling technologies to make 5G a reality in the next 5 years is underway. During the conference, in between meetings and demos, I was able to tour the halls and view a series of 5G technologies, innovations and use cases which not only make 5G more real but exploit the promises that 5G will bring, namely low latency, high data rates, on-the-go connectivity, high user density, and highly reliable and secure communications.

Touring the tradeshow floor it felt as though the possibilities were endless for the fifth generation of mobile networks. Cellular carriers and WiFi companies were spotlighting their 5G solutions and a whole range of chipset offerings for the Internet of Things (IoT) proving that, although convergence on a common 5G specification is still some years away, weve reached the stage where the pipeline of 5G applications is well ahead of the standard, thus creating new business models and use cases. Many of the use cases leveraged technologies such as virtual reality, location awareness services, and push advertising addressing applications like real-time gaming to autonomous vehicles, just to name a few. And, the recent announcements from US telecoms to test 5G networks in real-world conditions mark the official entry into the 5G race. Many experts used the 2018 Olympics in Seoul as a proof point for 5G infrastructure deployment, with media and communications to fully exercise the network. One memorable moment of the show was during the panel keynote when Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg pulled a multi-element steerable phased array radio front end plus antenna out of his pocket. No larger than a deck of cards, Vestberg explained that three of these would make up a three-sector 5G base station to support multi-GBps data rates in a massive MIMO environment.

Click here to read more ...




By Peter Clarke, EETimes Europe

March 01, 2016

Intellectual property licensor ARM Holdings plc (Cambridge, England) has a research interest in machine learning and neural networks but is not yet prepared to say whether it can be turned into commercial business.ARM is the global leader in the licensing and supply of hardware in the form of IP. The company had about a 46 percent share of the global market with $1.2 billion worth in business in 2014, according to market research company Gartner. ARM's 25 years of existence have seen it expand from the supply of 32bit CPU cores with the addition of GPUs, video processors and crypto-acceleration processors. Expanding ARM's processor domain is something the company is always looking at, James McNiven, general manager of ARM's CPU group, told EE Times Europe during the Embedded World exhibition in Nuremberg. - See more at: http://www.analog-eetimes.com/news/arm-has-rd-interest-neural-network-cores#sthash.7NZa9CrH.dpuf

Click here to read more ...














Digital Financial Services (DFS) have the power to transform the lives of millions living in poverty.

However, the lack of merchant acceptance presents a significant obstacle to its success. Sacha Polverini, Chairman of the International Telecommunication Unions (ITU) Focus Group on Digital Financial Services and Carol Benson, Managing Partner at Glenbrook Partners, look at how to overcome these challenges and promote wider uptake of DFS in the communities that need them most.

Digital Financial Services have taken off at speed in many developing countries. An increasing number of poor and unbanked are receiving funds electronically, whether through government benefits, salary payments or money transferred from a family member. However, if they are unable to use this electronic money in their daily lives in the same way they use cash  to buy their essential daily items  they are forced to cash-out this money, converting it back into paper and coins. This is time consuming, risky and costly and can create disincentives to receiving electronic payments in the first place.

In order to promote uptake of DFS and achieve a fully operational digital ecosystem, mobile money needs to be as easy to use and as flexible as cash. This means ensuring as many merchants and retailers as possible accept customers payments in digital form. It is one of the key elements driving the cashless society.

However, merchant acceptance remains a challenge in many countries. In some regions it is non-existent. Technical and fiscal issues, consumer awareness, education, and protection all remain barriers - but the single biggest challenge is cost.

While a clear commercial model exists for larger merchants to use digital payments, its a bigger challenge for smaller traders who often predominate in developing countries. Until very recently there was an assumption by governments and payment service providers that they would follow suit. The reality is that it is highly unlikely that smaller merchants have the scale to cover any costs associated with digital transactions. Perceptions become harder to shift when they still see cash as a free alternative.

If merchant acceptance is to be universally realised, costs need to be reduced significantly and much more needs to be done to promote the broader benefits. Governments also remain key. They have a continuing role to play by shifting more of their operations onto digital platforms and promoting digital payments as the future of payments, moving away from cash altogether.

The International Telecommunication Unions Focus Group on Digital Financial Services has been looking into what can be done to address this challenge, bringing together both private and public sector organisations from across the world. The group met in Geneva in December to pool its expertise, share its learnings and discuss three potential solutions.

The first is cross-subsidisation by payments service providers. By making a return on operations with the larger merchants, it is possible services could be offered for free to small merchants. While tricky in a competitive market place, the economies of scale could deliver a bigger and more profitable market place for all parties involved.

The second is adjacency. A provider delivering additional services such as loans or data marketing can cover the cost of simple payments. This model has been successfully rolled out on a smaller scale in several countries including Kenya.

The third may not require a commercial model at all  digital money could be promoted as a public good. Just as governments are currently printing, distributing and managing cash today, they could take responsibility for a proportion of the costs of digital payments, making it more commercially appealing to both merchants and consumers.

Mobile Money and DFS are widely recognised as a tangible means to bring financial services to populations previously excluded, currently almost a quarter of the worlds population. Merchant acceptance remains a major barrier and one that must be addressed.

Raising awareness of the challenges and identifying incentives and potential solutions is only the first step. There is no simple answer which will solve these problems immediately and more research and analysis needs to be done.

Over the next year the ITU Focus Group will explore additional factors that could contribute to lowering costs. One of these could be bulk payments, which include government pay-outs. In Kenya it has been observed that an increase in government distributions has led to increased trust in DFS, which in turn has led to an increased number of payments taking place. Higher volumes could reduce the cost of payments for merchants. To explore this further, the Focus Group will be running several surveys across different geographies to assess its feasibility and identify best practices.

Ultimately, to overcome these challenges policy makers, financial institutions, service providers as well as NGOs must work more closely together to develop the right tools and flexible solutions that work in individual markets. Only then will DFS be able to flourish to benefit the communities that need them most.

Sacha Polverini is the Chairman of the ITUs Focus Group on Digital Financial Services.

Carol Benson is a Managing Partner at Glenbrook Partners.
Right and Left, from a Cuban Perspective Without freedoms and rights for its citizens, Cuban society will be neither socialist or capitalist, left-wing nor right-wing, but rather remain a kind of disastrously managed private Estate.

From Havana I get an email seeking to address the challenges facing the country applying the binary axis of "Left" and "Right." I imagine that two factors lead to this interest. One is an incipient ebb in regional populism. Another is the congress in April of the island's only legal party - the same one that imposes on Cuba these dubious semantics and focus, exercising a monopoly over all State institutions.

But the language of the Jacobins and Girondins from the 18th century does not allow us to understand what is happening in the 21st century, in any geographical region.

The dilemmas facing humanity today cannot be solved applying the outmoded concepts of Left and Right. Neither do the labels of socialism or capitalism apply. As I stated in Tercer Milenio (Havana, 1993) what we are experiencing today is a change of eras, not an era of changes. This period is characterized by the rapid obsolescence of all that we knew. As Moises Naim recently reminded us, everything is now extraordinary. From the fall of the USSR and the Eastern bloc, to Kodak being sunk by Instagram, and taxis by Uber.

Discussing the future of Cuba - or of any country - based on the conceptual coordinates of the last century is a futile and even dangerous exercise. It is not possible to address and resolve these current challenges if they are not designated lucidly.

Cuba today is simply a poor country, disconnected from global processes; with a dreadful physical, communications and financial infrastructure; two decades behind in the acquisition of reliable and fast internet connections; public services (health, education, transport, water, electricity, sewage), whose quality is plummeting; degraded land, and the lowest wages in the hemisphere. It is also a closed society, where there is no basic freedom to exercise the right to free expression, association, movement, the forming of unions, or political choice, such that citizens have no way to peacefully alter this sorry state of affairs and achieve prosperity.

The policies that could resolve this mess are not socialist or capitalist, but rather good or bad, efficient or inefficient. Those in force today are terrible and counterproductive.

Revolution? The "Cuban Revolution" was already being quashed even as forces were fighting Batista, when a group of totalitarians yearning for a caudillo began to plot how to liquidate their comrades after their victory. Talking about this in 2016 is a big scam. What exists in Cuba is a totalitarian regime in the hands of a family, a clan.

Sovereignty? How can one uphold it in the 21st century to oppose citizens' civil rights when Cuban society as a whole is deprived of the right to self-determination?

Nationalism? It is difficult to defend the government's administration based on this outdated concept, nurtured in the late 18th century, when Havana prefers to negotiate with foreign powers and refuses to even dialogue with its own citizens.

I do not share the idea that the "bureaucracy" is the Big Culprit. Power in Cuba is held by two families with the same surname: Castro. Around them is a select military cadre. Together they constitute a permanent elite wielding power. Below them is a bureaucracy that serves only to "manage" their interests, not to make key decisions that benefit the country.

Lage, Robaina and Diaz Canel today were never members of the governing elite. They are simply CEOs, always expendable. Cuba's real owners exercise their privileges as if the island were a private company registered under the trade name "Cuban Revolution." They attach to this corporate appellation a series of qualifiers "progressive," "leftist," "anti-capitalist" and others which only serve to distract from reality.

I laugh when I think about Bernie Sanders and Podemos speaking, terrified, of a casta that represents 0.1% of the population but owns more than half of the economy. In this regard, as in others related to human rights, they suffer from a severe moral hemiplegia by selecting the victims they prefer to "defend." When the offender is in their political camp, they choose to look the other way. In Cuba some 100 people rule the roost, lording it over the rest of the island. What percentage do they represent in relation to the 11.5 million citizens on the island, and the other two million off it?

Invoking the abstraction "state ownership of the means of production," the "shareholders" of this dubious corporation, and the family presiding over it, claim permanent and unlimited exploitation rights over Cuba, not even needing to be the formal owners of work or recreational facilities, or real estate. They also have unlimited powers to do whatever they please vis-a-vis all other Cubans. The demand for freedom and human rights is the only solution that goes to the heart of the problem.

Modernity died in the ovens of Auschwitz. Absolute respect for the sovereignty of Germany allowed Hitler's government, first, to deprive citizens of their freedoms and rights, and, then, under the shadow of a closed society, to undertake a forbidden process of rearmament. The Soviets and the Cuban government were able to secretly install nuclear missiles on the island because there existed no basic freedoms to denounce that operation in time. The Khmer Rouge initiated a national genocide which rendered any dissent impossible, even within the party and then turned on its former ally and neighbor: Vietnam. Hanoi, incidentally, did not hesitate to adopt a policy of "regime change" to install, at gun-point, a government that would be friendly to it in Cambodia.

The human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of 1948 take as their reference point those adopted by the French Revolution, but with a substantial difference: thereafter it was established that such rights were not just a national affair, but a good that was to be protected by the international community. It is not a question of moralizing. Respect for these rights is vital for international stability and security. The signers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the various international agreements for the protection of citizens' rights have recognized that their sovereignty in this regard has limits.

Without freedoms and rights Cuban society will be neither socialist or capitalist, left-wing nor right-wing, but rather remain a sort of disastrously managed private Estate, employing slave labor. And a country whose owners can again pose a serious danger to their neighbors.

This, I think, is what we need to talk about.
The Hound app was made available in the US yesterday and will hopefully be available elsewhere soon.

Remember SoundHounds voice assistant from last year, called Hound? The company, which is known for its music recognition app for smartphones, has made the app available on Google Plat and Apples iTunes store now. Although the app is available only in the US at the moment, initial reports suggest that its voice recognition software is faster than Google Now, Siri or Cortana. In fact, some have said that Hound may be far ahead of anything other voice assistant in the market right now.

Of course, its achilles heel is in the fact that it has to be run using an app, which means it cant currently be in the always on mode, a major step back for any voice assistant. The companys video (above) shows a really fast and intelligent assistant, although the video is of course sped up artificially as well. That said, the queries given to Hound are quite convoluted and the its response is still worth noticing. Theres also the Ok Hound voice command, which allows users to operate it without touching the phone. According to CEO, Keyvan Mohajer, the app does what he calls speech-to-meaning, which makes it faster than current voice assistants. This means it translates what youre saying, while you speak, instead of the traditional method, where the software first translates your speech into text and then deciphers its meaning, to give you a response. Of course, it's performance in other languages is yet to be seen.

We have contacted the company about their plans to make the app available outside the US, and will update this story as soon as we hear from them.
The HTC One M10 name was spotted on a drop-down list in HTCs online survey, while a sample image and EXIF data of the phone have also surfaced

The name of HTCs next flagship has possibly been confirmed as One M10. The name of the device was spotted by Techtastic, a Dutch website, on an online survey by HTC. Earlier reports had suggested that the company may change the name of the device.

Techtastic also posted a image which it claims to be a camera sample taken from the HTC One M10, along with its EXIF data. The image shows a grimy keyboard, with good details of the dirt. The camera data mentions the camera model name as HTC_M10h with an f/1.9 aperture lens. The image is shown in 16:9 aspect ratio with a resolution of 2250x4000 pixels. In 4:3 aspect, it would make for a 12MP image with a resolution of 3000x4000 pixels. Earlier rumours have suggested that the phone may come with a 12MP UltraPixel camera and a 5MP front camera. It is also rumoured that HTC plans to launch the device on April 11 in London.
The start-up warehouse will be located in Chennai, and will cover an area of 8,000 sq. ft, housing up to 50 start-ups.

The National Association of Software & Services (NASSCOM) has partnered with the Tamil Nadu Government to open a startup warehouse in Chennai, which will be its first in the state. The warehouse covers 8,000 sq. ft. of ground area, and can house up to 50 start-ups. At the warehouse, entrepreneurs will get to attend connect sessions to hone their skills. Besides this, they will also get early stage mentoring and access to resources from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM cloud, Kotak, etc. The startups would be finalised by a selection committee that comprises of stakeholders from the government and the industry.

Rajat Tandon, Vice President of NASSCOM 10000 Startups, said, Over the years, Chennai has been home to a lot of promising startups. We have seen immense talent and enthusiasm here and wanted to further encourage and support the entrepreneurs through our 10k program. The warehouse will nurture nearly 200 entrepreneurs to foster innovation under one roof. A co-working space like this is necessary in order to boost the startup ecosphere of the city. NASSCOM would like to thank the state Government for their support in building a conducive environment for the startup founders.

Startup Warehouse was introduced in August 2013 by 10000 Startups, and offers space for entrepreneurs to learn, work and accelerate their companies. Facilities offered at the warehouse include broadband connection and infrastructure. It allows for early-stage technology start-ups to work for six to twelve months, during which the startups will get showcased at select NASSCOM events and other events by partner organisations.
Just Eat has confirmed the departure of two of its non-executive directors.

In a statement the company said Benjamin Holmes and Michael Risman had stepped down as revealed at the publication of its results on Tuesday.

Just Eats takeaway ordering platform saw orders rise 57% during the year to 96.2m. Revenues increased 58% to 247.6m, from 2014's 157m. Underlying EBITDA was up 83% to 59.7m, and the group underlying EBITDA margin rose 330 basis points to 24.1%.

Adjusted earnings per share were up 57% to 6.6p, from 4.2p, while basic earnings per share were down 61% to 3.8p, from 9.8p in 2014.

Just Eat's net operating cash flow improved 95% to 74.2m during the year.

During the year, Just Eat said it processed orders worth 1.7bn for its restaurant partners, and active users were up 65% to 13.4m.

Group orders placed via mobile devices accounted for 66% of all orders, up from 53% in 2014. Just Eat reportedly achieved market leadership in Italy in 2015, and acquired market leading brands in Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.
Poundland have announced former Dixons and Kingfisher finance director Kevin O'Byrne will replace chief executive Jim McCarthy when he retires in July.

Having mooted his intentions to the board last year, McCarthy confirmed he will retire at the age of 60, after 10 years in the job, on 1 July.

Analysts at Shore Capital said the news surprised them, describing McCarthy as "hugely likeable, successful, experienced and charismatic"

Irishman O'Byrne, who has held a divisional CEO role at B&Q and is well known to the City, will join as CEO designate on 4 April as McCarthy oversees the completion of the conversion of the acquired 99p Stores business.

Chairman Darren Shapland praised McCarthy's guiding of the business from a small private operation in 2006 to the 900-stores, 1bn-plus revenue business today.

He added: "I am delighted that Jim is succeeded by an executive of Kevin's calibre. Kevin's retail experience, in both the UK and many international markets, together with his clear leadership skills, make him the outstanding candidate to lead the business as it continues to grow as a public company."

For his part, O'Byrne said: "I am very excited about joining Poundland, a business with a strong brand and great potential. Jim and his team have built a very good business. I look forward to working with the talented and experienced management team to deliver its ambitious plans."

Broker Peel Hunt noted that "there may be some concern that the well-regarded FD, Nick Hateley, will be miffed by being passed over, but we understand that by choice he wasn't part of the process", adding that they continue to be "big believers in the story".

Investors seemed relatively impressed, with shares in Poundland up 0.9% to 182.9p just before 0900 GMT on Wednesday.
Oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell is facing legal action in London over spills in the Niger Delta, for the second time in five years.

Two communities have launched claims demanding compensation and costs for the clean up of their land in the Rivers State, on the coast of Nigeria.

According to filings by City law firm Leigh Day, which is handling the claim, spills since 1989 have meant the affected communities do not have clean drinking water, farmland or rivers.

In response, Shell said it is at an "early stage" in reviewing the claims, but that the case should be heard in Nigeria, and not the UK. It also says a clean-up plan had been agreed for 2011.

The company also said pipelines in the area have been targets for thieves who steal crude oil and try to refine it locally. This has led to more spills and damage though explosions.

"Both Bille and Ogale [affected areas pertaining to the claim] are heavily impacted by crude oil theft, pipeline sabotage and illegal refining which remain the main sources of pollution across the Niger Delta.

"Ogale is in Ogoniland and it is important to note that Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria has produced no oil or gas in Ogoniland since 1993. Access to the area has been limited following a rise in violence, threats to staff and attacks on facilities," Shell said.

But the communities said Shell pipelines lack the technology to detect and shut off leaks, whatever the cause.

In January last year, Shell agreed to an $84m (55m) settlement with residents of the Bodo community in the Niger Delta for two oil spills, a case also handled by Leigh Day.
Results from Virgin Money 's first full year as a listed company impressed investors, with pre-tax profits much higher than forecast and a healthier balance sheet.

The 'challenger' bank lifted underlying profit before tax 53% to 160.3, well ahead of a consensus for 151m, as costs and impairments were both lower than expected.

Revenues of 268.7m were as expected, with underlying net interest margin rising 15 points to 165 basis points over the year.

Year-end capital ratios were strong, as expected, with a core tier 1 ratio of 17.5% and a leverage ratio of 4.0%.

This was thanks to strong asset growth, with mortgage balances growing 16% to 25.5bn, the migration of credit card accounts to Virgin's own platform resulted in 44% growth to 1.6bn almost entirely in the second half.

Chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia said the success of the new credit card business has been such that she now expects to grow card balances to at least 3bn by the end of 2017, a year earlier than planned.

"Growth in our mortgage book outpaced the market as we continued to support demand for housing in the UK," she added, with internal analysis of the government's buy-to-let changes not expected to have much adverse effect. BTL lending represents 17% of the groups mortgage book.

Virgin's savings franchise continued to flourish, with retail deposit balances up 12% to 25.1bn, versus market growth of 7%.

Management are conducting a feasibility study into personal current accounts with a view to expansion into the broader market.

On outlook, Gadhia said the bank would be able to absorb the impact of the new bank tax surcharge and was "well placed to achieve a mid-teens return on tangible equity by the end of 2017", versus the 10.9% reported for 2015.

Analysts were impressed, with Shore Capital's Gary Greenwood saying he expected the strong set of results to drive reasonable upgrades to his own and consensus earnings estimates and thus result in a positive share price reaction.

Numis's Jonathan Goslin said he believed there was a near-term opportunity for investors to benefit from a significant improvement in Virgin Moneys underlying fundamentals whilst markets remain favourable and mainstream competition is distracted/restricted.

"The groups strategy is based on steady mortgage stock expansion and accelerated credit card growth, combined with a modest improvement in the NIM and a sharp reduction in the cost income ratio. We believe this will generate a steady improvement in the ROTE and EPS CAGR of circa 20% over the next three years."
South Africa's Steinhoff International has sealed its reputation as a serial gatecrasher with a 125p offer for European electricals retailer Darty , even though it is in the midst takeover by France's FNAC .

Darty confirmed on Wednesday that it had received a non-binding conditional takeover proposal from Steinhoff's French furniture retail subsidiary Conforama at 125p per share in cash, versus Tuesday's closing price of 115.25p.

The Conforma/Steinhoff offer values Darty at 610m, close to the current value of FNAC's agreed offer in November, which has since been stuck in the mire of the European Union regulatory clearance process.

FNAC offered one share for every 37 of Darty's, or a small partial cash alternative, which was originally worth around 558m but has improved as FNAC's shares have risen.

Like Sainsbury's, FNAC is much smaller than the 14bn Steinhoff, which is backed by South African billionaire Christo Wiese.

Darty said: "The company is currently reviewing the proposal received from Conforama. There can be no certainty that any firm offer will be made by Conforama, nor as to the terms on which any firm offer might be made. The board will issue a further statement if and when appropriate."

The Darty board advised its shareholders to take no action in the meantime.

Independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said: "Not content with barging into the Sainsbury/Argos deal, now Steinhoff are trying to break up the Darty/FNAC party."

He added: "Why theyve decided at this late hour to intervene is unclear, but the Darty/FNAC merger agreed back on November 20th is still bogged down in the process of EU regulatory clearance. Conforama is, of course, a combined electrical and furniture retail chain in France so it makes eminent sense to takeover Darty, given the synergies, although they too will have regulatory issues.

"FNAC is obviously a much smaller business than Steinhoff and its bid for Darty is in shares, so they will be hard pressed to beat away this rival bid."
Save my User ID and Password

Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site.

Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site.
Digitimes Research: CEC Panda LCD may become less competitive in China smartphone panel market if Foxconn bails out Sharp

If Foxconn Electronics bails out Sharp, China-based Nanjing CEC Panda LCD Technology is likely to be at a disadvantage competing for smartphone panel orders from China-based vendors, according to Digitimes Research.

CEC Panda LCD acquired a 6G a-Si TFT-LCD factory from Sharp, has invested in a 8.5G factory on a joint venture basis with Sharp, and transferred IGZO TFT-LCD technology from Sharp.

CEC Panda LCD started production of IGZO TFT-LCD panels for use in smartphones in October 2015, but few China-based smartphone vendors have adopted such panels due to low yields.

If Foxconn bails out Sharp, Sharp may withdraw from the already crowded smartphone panel market in China and focus on high-end panels for the international market. If Sharp withdraws, its market share is expected to be occupied by Taiwan-based Innolux, of which Foxconn is the major shareholder, as well as China Star Optoelectronics Technology and newly established LTPS TFT-LCD factories in China, which would make CEC Panda LCD a second-choice supplier of IGZO panels for use in mid-range smartphones.

Content from this article was part of a complete Digitimes Research Chinese-language report that has not yet been translated into English. If you are interested in an English version of the report or wish to receive more information about the report, click here to contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Digitimes Research also provides quarterly tracking services for market sectors such as China Smartphone, China Smartphone AP, Taiwan ICT and Taiwan FPD. Click here for more information about Digitimes Research Tracking services.
Arace: MLS announcers signed off, don't know if they can sign back on
Army green inspires Air Force blue: Reservists help wounded warrior

A crew chief yells out which wrench is needed to tighten a bolt as another maintainer reads the technical instructions on the next step of the job. A few guys laugh and tease their friend who looks for the drill hole on a piece of sheet metal. All the men look strikingly similar in their matching T-shirts as they diligently work. The scene undeniably resembles the typical Air Force flight line.



This time though, there are no aircraft to be repaired. There is no rank on the sleeve, and there are no jet engines running.



Instead, the crew chiefs from the 459th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron from the 459th Air Refueling Wing wear matching Patriots Honor shirts as they spend their Saturday unpacking tools, building tables and outfitting a home garage in Annapolis for U.S. Army Sgt. (ret.) Adam Keys, a wounded Operation Enduring Freedom veteran, Feb. 27.



Keys was severely injured in the Southern Province of Afghanistan in July 2010 when his Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle was hit by several Improvised Explosive Devices, causing him to lose both legs and his left arm. Since then, Keys has undergone nearly 140 surgeries, said his mother Julie Keys.



Keys served as an airborne combat engineer with the 20th Engineer Brigade, and before his accident he enjoyed spending his time building RC model cars, tinkering with tools and wood working. Since July 10, 2010 however, Keys' days have been full of surgeries, doctor appointments and therapy sessions, leaving no time for building RC cars.



This is where Patriots Honor stepped in. The organization, a nonprofit started by three Air Force chief master sergeants, helps combat veteran amputees by supplying the warriors with equipment, gear and resources to help them get back to their favorite hobbies and activities.



"There are amazing organizations out there that help wounded vets with houses and finances, but there was nothing to help these guys get back to doing what they love," said Lt. Col. David Lineback, an instructor at the Joint Forces Staff College and a member on the Patriots Honor Board of Directors. "Patriots Honor provides Adam and others with the resources to continue their hobbies and passion, and ultimately help rehabilitation as they integrate back into civilian life."



Keys was an instant inspiration to the organization.



"One of our members met Adam a year ago, and he was just so positive," he said. "Adam and these guys motivate us. I mean, look at how he approaches life. The chiefs Instantly leapt into action to help him."



According to a study conducted by Pew Research, approximately 44 percent of veterans who served in the years following Sept. 11, 2001, have had a difficult time integrating back into daily life and hobbies - a problem that Patriots Honor, with the help of military and other volunteers, is looking to help fix.



"What these Airmen and volunteers are doing for Adam is helping him get back to what he loves to do," said Julie, Keys' mom. "It never gets old seeing the kind-heartedness and giving spirit of people who want to be there for my son. It comes from their heart, and it's something I will never get over."



Patriots Honor raised money to help purchase Keys two steel worktables, top-of-the-line toolboxes, dozens of high quality tool sets and a $1,000 gift card to an online model-car store to buy parts for his RC cars.



Keys, with an unwavering smile of appreciation, expressed his excitement for the new addition to his garage and the help of the volunteers.



"This is absolutely great," he said beaming. "These guys coming out to help are amazing. I'm humbled, grateful and will probably never leave my garage."



To set up the event, Rodney Hick, a flight chief at the 459th AMXS, who also volunteers with Patriots Honor Organization, got word of the intent to help Keys and put out the call out to his work center for volunteers to help unpack, build and set up the garage for the wounded warrior.



Ten Airmen volunteered and spent a half-day building the set-up. Even though it was an early Saturday start time, there was nothing but words of gratitude from the volunteers.



"Look at everything Adam has done for us," said Senior Master Sgt. Ed Hrabosky, 459th AMXS flight chief. "He needs help, and this is the least we can do for him. I'm incredibly happy to be here."



Although Keys is not a stranger to the spotlight and has been recognized by other veteran organizations, his continued humbleness of the volunteers' support was apparent.



"These guys who are taking their time to come out here think they are helping just me, but they are doing more," he said. "When people help me like this, it just motivates me to help others in need. They are having a bigger impact than they know."



It wasn't only the Keys' family that was touched by the acts of kindness. Hrabosky said this was his first time volunteering for an event like this, but the experience changed his outlook and inspired him to do even more to help other wounded veterans in need.



"I've already talked to people I've met here about helping others," he said. "I would absolutely like to start getting more involved to help these guys more. They need it."



The Keys' story brought together the military and community on one day for the wounded warrior. A local Eagle Scout troop helped with landscaping and clearing brush from Keys' front yard, while 459th members built tool tables and outfitted his garage.



At the end of the day's work, it was a different sort of joint-force operation that was successfully executed. In his final thank you and good-bye, Keys included a hard-hitting message that prompted a round of applause from the 459th Airmen.



"This is incredible," he said. "I know we all joke and take jabs from one branch to the other, but at the end of the day we are all brothers and sisters, and your work has motivated me to do more for someone else in need. Thank you all."



No Adam, thank you.



If interested in volunteering to help a veteran in need, log on to volunteer.va.gov or contact the local Airman and Family Readiness Center to help make a difference.
AFRC announces Logistics Readiness Awards

Air Force Reserve Command has announced Logistics Readiness Awards for 2015.



Logistics Readiness Unit Award recipients are:



The Daedalian Maj. Gen. Warren R. Carter Logistics Effectiveness Award: 439th Logistics Readiness Squadron, Westover Air Reserve Base, Massachusetts.



LRS of the Year (Non Flying Unit): 944th LRS, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.



Air Reserve Component Base Logistics Activity of the Year: 934th LRS, Minneapolis-St Paul Air Reserve Station, Minnesota.



ARC Air Transportation Activity of the Year: 67th Aerial Port Squadron, Hill AFB, Utah.



Logistics Readiness Individual Award recipients by category are:



Logistics Readiness Senior NCO -- Senior Master Sgt. Charles F. Carlin, 439th LRS, Westover ARB.



Logistics Readiness NCO -- Tech Sgt. Robert M. Brown-Griffin, 914th LRS, Niagara Falls ARS, New York.



Logistics Readiness Airman -- Senior Airman Tyler J. Olson, 934th LRS, Minneapolis-St Paul ARS.



Logistics Readiness Field Grade Officer -- Maj. Mark E. Johnson, March ARB, California.



Logistics Readiness Company Grade Officer -- Capt. Robert M. Orallo III, 433th LRS, Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas.



Logistics Readiness Civilian Category II -- Ms Bonnie L. Pijanowski, 914th LRS, Niagara Falls ARS.



Logistics Readiness Staff Enlisted -- Master Sgt. Lakisha L. Ware, Headquarters, Air Force Reserve Command/A4, Robins AFB, Georgia.


Militants attacked the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Jalalabad town with a suicide bomber blowing up near the consulate in the afternoon today, in what is the latest terrorist assault in the eastern Afghan city.

No casualties were reported in the blast, which shattered windows and doors in nearby buildings and destroyed at least eight cars.

The attack comes nearly two months after a suicide attack on the nearby Pakistani Consulate in Jalalabad in January.

"Our consulate has been targeted but everyone is safe," MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said, adding that the Indo Tibetan Border Police and Afghan security forces are engaged in a gunbattle with terrorists.

At least two explosions amidst gunfire were heard near the Indian consulate in Jalalabad today.

The area houses other foreign consulates, including that of Pakistan.

India's ministry of external affairs (MEA) has confirmed that it was a suicide explosion, which targeted the Indian consulate.

However, all Indian consulate officials are safe, the MEA said.

MEA is also gathering more information regarding the blasts.

The ITBP and Afghanistan security forces are currently engaged in a fierce gunbattle with terrorists who are believed to be hiding in a nearby building.

Early in January, the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's Mazar-i-Sharif city was also attacked. Afghan Police had reportedly blamed Pakistan military personnel for that attack.


Legume, I said.

Lay  what?

LEgUme, I repeated, accentuating both long vowels.

Leeeguuuuume, said my 10-year-old daughter. She seemed to savor the word, as she might a hot, crispy piece of bacon. I was encouraged, thinking that my explanation of legumes, essentially an umbrella term for peas, beans, lentils, and even some nuts, was somehow intriguing her, opening her mind and heart to the delights of an aromatic lentil soup or hearty bean stew.

Not quite. Before I knew it she added: Legume  it kinda reminds me of the word lagoon. Isnt that like a pond, mamma? A dark, stinky pond?

Thats not exactly how Id describe tonights dinner, dear, I answered. Quickly about-facing, I retreated to the kitchen, which was now thick with the earthy fragrance of the braising lentils I had the delusional optimism of preparing for my family that evening.

Shaking my head, I questioned my judgment. What was I thinking? My girls pitch a fit every time I serve anything containing those pesky little pulses. Whatever nutritional benefits eating them may bring to their growing bodies must surely be offset by their mothers level of acidity and indigestion at their blustery pushback.

The whole situation reminds me of the time I bought my 5-year-old daughter day-of-the-week socks. It seemed like a cute idea at the store  until a Wednesday rolled around and we couldnt find one of the matching socks. Screams. Despair. I can give you Tuesday or Thursday, baby, its only one day off, I offered hopefully, and a little desperately, only to be squashed by yet another round of inconsolable screams. I asked myself the same question back then: What in the blazes was I thinking?

Unlike my days-of-the-week sock fiasco, however, I am not willing to throw in the towel on this one. The socks, which mysteriously disappeared the moment I brought home a brightly colored package of Tinker Bells, didnt offer any inherent value beside cuteness and foot coverage, the latter of which was competently executed by good ol Tinker Bell. In other words, it didnt take much to fill their void.

Legumes, while not necessarily cute (except, arguably, for black-eyed peas), add an invaluable nutritional profile that is difficult  if not impossible  to replace with another food. Short of eating a whole cow and an entire field of spinach, where else are you going to get so much protein and fiber? Plus, temperamental girls aside, I believe legumes are one of the few viable options at our disposal for healthfully feeding billions of people while being kind to our planet and our arteries. The latter of which is not inconsequential when you consider, as I recently learned from National Public Radio, that people under 50 are having strokes at an increasingly higher rate than older adults due to obesity.

Still. I dont want to have a fear-based argument with my girls about the benefits of downing a pinto bean. Thats not whats going to bridge our legume divide. I always assumed the flavor of food would be the final judge, but that was before motherhood and before discovering a pit-like resistance to foods deemed unworthy in my girls. While Im fairly certain that many of the legume dishes Ive served them throughout the years have been quite delicious, some even company-worthy, all Ive ever gotten for my trouble was two cute little noses turned way up high in the air.

But you will not see me waving a white flag anytime soon. Ill continue experimenting with our friends the legumes, as occasionally I do prepare  as far as theyre concerned  a winner. In the meantime, I take solace in knowing of at least one bean-filled dish that both my girls devour: their Aunt Nancis BBQ vegetarian chili.

---------------------

Port-Nanci & Jons BBQ Vegetarian Chili

Eureka! Vegetarian meals filled with beans can actually triumph as a family meal. Thanks, uber sister-in-law Nanci and her partner-in-crime, Jon, for sharing your oh so tasty vegetarian chili recipe with us. The girls, much to my disbelief given their hesitant relationship with beans, appreciate it most of all!

Makes 14 servings.

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 chopped red or orange peppers

2 chopped white onions

8 minced garlic cloves

salt and pepper

1 bottle of the beer of your choice

1  tablespoons of Vegetable Better Than Bouillon

2, 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes

1, 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes

1/3 cup tomato paste

3 chopped chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, plus all the juice left in the 7.5-ounce can

1, 14-ounce package of Chorizo-style Tofurky

1, 12-ounce package of Trader Joes Beef-less Ground Beef

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 tablespoon chili powder

1/4 cup molasses (or to taste)

1, 15-ounce can of black beans, rinsed well under cold water and drained

1, 15-ounce can of red kidney beans, rinsed well under cold water and drained

 of a 14-ounce package of sweet kernel corn

Zest of 2 lemons

Optional toppings: sour cream, chopped green onions, crumbled tortilla chips, chopped fresh cilantro and sliced avocado

To begin, heat oil on medium heat in a large pot, and then add the chopped peppers, onions, garlic cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook slowly for 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until the vegetables have softened. Increase heat to medium-high and continue to cook until the vegetables begin to brown and you see some brown bits sticking to the bottom of the pan. See that stuff on the bottom of the pot? Its packed full of savory flavor.

Add beer. Oh, and you can replace the beer with vegetable broth if you so desire. Scrape the bottom with a wooden spoon to free up all the stuck bits of vegetables and bring to a boil.

Add 2 cups of water, the Better Than Bouillon, the diced and crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, chipotle peppers, Tofurky, beef, cumin, chili powder, and molasses. Bring to a boil, turn down heat and simmer for at least 40 minutes. Add the beans, corn, and lemon zest, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Ladle out into bowls and top with any (or all!) of the optional toppings.

---------------------

Chickpea Chocolate Chip Cookies

A delight for alliteration lovers everywhere, these cookies are about as guilt free as you can make anything that is sweet and delicious. Eat them warm whenever possible, which can mean nuking them for a few second in the microwave to get the chocolate chips nice and melted. Or, you can make a batch, freeze the dough, and just pop a few in the oven. Baked, they will store in an airtight container for 2-3 days.

Makes 20 cookies.

1, 14-ounce can (1  cups) of chickpeas, drained and rinsed well

 cup peanut, cashew, or almond butter; only natural butters  no Skippy or Jif-type brands

1 large egg

 cup light brown sugar

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

 cup oats (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 F and cover a baking tray with parchment paper.

Remove the skin from the chickpeas and then blend them in a food processor, along with the nut butter, egg, brown sugar, molasses, cocoa powder, vanilla, baking powder and sea salt, until you cannot see any pieces of chickpeas in the dough.

Transfer to a bowl and stir in the oats and chocolate chips and mix until well combined. Add a couple more tablespoons of oats if the mixture seems too wet, as the oats will absorb the liquid.

Roll the cookie dough mixture up into small, 1-inch balls, spread out evenly on the baking tray and press cookies down with the palm of your hand to flatten. Place tray in the oven and lower the temperature to 350 F. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden.

Serena Cosmo is a writer, food educator and blogger. You can find her on www.rusticplate.com and on Facebook at Rustic Plate. A native of the Piedmont region of Northwest Italy, she lives in Auburn with her husband, two daughters, a dog, a cat, two goldfish, 3 freshwater snails, and 27 wooden cooking spoons.
Lets talk about our educational system and why I believe it should be redefined and privatized. The average cost to educate a child in public schools is $10,700, and some schools in the northern part of our country cost as much as $18,000 dollars per child.

Illiteracy rates have not changed in the last 10 years. The following are statistics from the Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy: 32 million adults in the U.S. can't read, 21 percent read below a fifth grade level, only 13 percent of U.S. adults are proficient in reading, and 19 percent of high school graduates cannot read.

So, the average cost of private education is $8,549 dollars. I believe the federal government should contribute $6,500 dollars per child, and our business community would be fully responsible to staff and operate the schools. There would be no tenure. The schools would compete for the best teachers driving cost down. Students could attend their school of choice. Each school would have a choice concerning religious liberties. Federal oversight would be responsible for curriculum of basic education. This would save more than $210 billion dollars annually.

This is called capitalism, and it is our system of government. Due to our system of government, turning schools over to the business community would create competition reducing the cost of education to about $6,500. Politicians could care less. In fact, I believe they do not want a fully educated population. We have 32 million adults who can't read but can vote.

We must fully educate every child. It should be a basic human right. We must end the bureaucracy.

Teachers must have control in the classroom. The unions and special interest groups have tied educators hands. We must reintroduce discipline in public school. All students should read, and at the very least, read at a fifth-grade level before graduating.

We must do more in early childhood development. A good place to start would be to have first or second year college students, tutor any child identified with reading deficiencies. College students assisting would be given some type of credit for their results.

George Barbrey

Newton
dpa ElectionsData

With dpa ElectionsData you get access to a unique collection of data. Via a programming interface (Rest-API), your developers can access detailed information, candidate profiles and live results for all national elections in the European Union and important international elections, like the US Midterm elections etc.

The data pool also includes all heads of state and government as well as about 20,000 elected members of parliament throughout the EU. In addition to their data (name, party, constituency or list position), we collect social media profiles and official websites of individuals and parties.
Since 1997, DR1 has been covering the Dominican Republic in English. A site overhaul had long been due. Here is the beta version of the first phase of the new DR1. We have upgraded the website with user-friendly software to serve our community better. We have kept the up-to-date content. Now it is your turn to give the new DR1 a test run!

We are tough-skinned. Go ahead and tell us what we are doing right, wrong, and what we need to change asap or work on next. Tell us what you would like to see less or more of, and what we shouldnt change!

Imagine we have bought a new house for DR1. The house comes with:

New server that ensures DR1 can handle peaks in traffic

New DR1 Forums

Improved Search

New DR1 Calendar

DR1 News and DR1 Calendar are integrated into the DR1 Forums

New DR1 Wiki for frequently asked topics

New Trending Topics emails

We now need to furnish the house. It is YOUR DR1! We invite you to collaborate in adding valuable content. What content or services should we add? Check out the new resources, but get creative, too. You can contribute and play a key role in helping people connect, enjoy and be productive in the Dominican Republic.

Dolores Vicioso, founder

Write to support@dr1.com
EXCLUSIVE

Full coverage: 2016 Geneva motor show

Alfa Romeo Giulia revealed

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles boss Sergio Marchionne admits the company is now losing money in Australia after sales slumped by more than a quarter last year, but the global boss of the car giant has vowed to remain in the country for the long haul.

FCA sold 34,234 vehicles across all its marques last year, down 26 per cent on its record year in 2014, when sales hit 43,100.

Significant falls were recorded across all of the company's major brands, including Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat and Alfa Romeo.

Speaking exclusively to Fairfax Media in Geneva, Mr Marchionne admitted the company had stopped the planned delivery of some new models to Australia, in order to stem the losses.

Fiat Chrysler does not want the added expense of supplying right-hand drive versions of some of its models.

"Right now we can't lose money importing vehicles so we've restricted the flow into the country," he said.

Mr Marchionne also said the scandal involving former Australian bosses Clyde Campbell and Veronica Johns had not impacted sales, and instead blamed the slumping Australian dollar.

"I think the biggest problem we have in the market today is the falling Australian dollar," Mr Marchionne said.

"That's what's making our product uncompetitive, because of import costs. The Aussie dollar is at historical lows now, we've had similar issues in Canada. Anything like that with the currency ends up hurting imports."

In 2014, FCA sold a record 43,100 vehicles in Australia according to official VFACTS figures, up 27 per cent from its 2013 total and previous record, 33,968.

Despite the sales slump, Mr Marchionne said there were no plans to abandon the market.

That will come as good news for current owners of Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat and Alfa Romeo cars, who may fear the loss of after-market support, should FCA pull the pin on Australia.

"We need to really lift this, I haven't given up in Australia and I won't," he said. "I love the place. We're there and we'll continue to be there."
Maserati's Australian arm hopes to double its sales on the back of its new Levante SUV.

Unveiled overnight at the Geneva motor show, the Levante represents a reply to prestige SUVs such as the Porsche Cayenne that are taking the luxury car market by storm.

The marque's local chief operating officer, Glen Sealey, says the new model is already resonating with Australian enthusiasts.

"We had terrific interest from customers," he says.

"We had immediate take up with people wanting to put deposits on the car, [which[ is an absolute testament to the strength of the brand.

"It's been huge."

The Levante represents an important chapter in Maserati's local renaissance. The brand sold fewer than 600 cars in Australia last year, well up from the 50 or so it delivered annually a decade ago.

Sealey expects that the new car will outsell all other combined Maserati models when it arrives in 2017, doubling the brand's sales.

"Levante will be our biggest selling model in 2017," he says.

"Diesel is by far the dominant drivetrain for the segment, so our hand is up for the diesel. Who would have thought?"

The Levante is available with a choice of three engines.

The 3.0-litre turbo diesel V6 core to local plans uses 7.2L/100km to produce 202kW and 600Nm, making it the most efficient of the trio.

A pair of 3.0-litre V6 petrol models offer 257kW and 316kW outputs respectively, using 10.7L and 10.9L/100km to do so. The car is not available with a traditional V8 powerplant.

Even so, Maserati's high-output Levante S can rip to 100km/ in 5.2 seconds before reaching a top speed of 264km/h.

All three models use eight-speed automatic transmissions that drive all four wheels.

The brand has not locked down prices for the car, which will be positioned above the existing Ghibli sedan, putting entry-level models between $150,000 and $200,000.

Maserati joins the likes of Bentley, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce and Lamborghini in preparing a luxury SUV to tackle an increasingly competitive market.

"Everyone is going to have an SUV," Sealey says.

"It is a busy segment but it's a growing segment, while the large sedan segment is a declining segment.

"If you want to be a profitable car producer you have to be in the growth segments... we've had the vision for this product for a long time."
Mercedes-Benz has the Audi A5 Cabriolet and BMW 4-Series Convertible set squarely in its sights with its fifth dedicated open top model, the new C-Class Convertible



Revealed at a media reception on the eve of the 2016 Geneva motor show in Switzerland on Monday, the classy new four seater extends the C-Class line-up to four individual models for the first time since its introduction to the Mercedes-Benz line-up in 1993; the new convertible joins the existing fourth-generation C-Class sedan and Estate and second-generation C-Class Coupe in a renewed assault on the German car maker's premium brand competition.



"Our new C-Class Cabriolet is the entry into the world of premium cabriolets from Mercedes-Benz," said Thomas Weber, Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler board member responsible for research and development. "Sporty and youthful in character and styling, it offers unadulterated open-air driving pleasure all year round."

The new price leading Mercedes-Benz convertible is planned to reach Australian showrooms later this year.



Headed by a 270kW twin-turbocharged 3.0-litre V6-powered C43 4Matic Convertible four-wheel drive flagship model from Mercedes-Benz AMG performance car division, the new C-Class Convertible builds off the recently launched C-Class Coupe, alongside which it will be produced at Mercedes-Benz's Bremen manufacturing facility in Germany.



The more sporting of the current generation of C-Class models share the same platform architecture and mechanical package. The commonality between the two is also reflected in their dimensions; both stretch to 4686mm length and 1810mm width.



Predictably, the likeness extends to the exterior styling, with the new C-Class Convertible endowed with the svelte design and traditional two-door layout as the C-Class Coupe.



Mercedes-Benz says the multi-layered fabric hood of the C-Class Convertible was also designed to mirror the curvaceous roofline that graces the C-Class Coupe.



Yet while the two more recent C-Class models share a similar profile and structured body side detailing through to the trailing edge of their long doors, the new open top receives a more upright rear window and more defined trunk lid than its fixed roof sibling owing to the added space required at the rear to stow its hood.



The electrically operated structure, which is claimed to provide class leading aerodynamic efficiency with a drag co-efficient of just 0.28, automatically folds and stows beneath a plastic tonneau cover within the upper section of the trunk in a claimed 20sec at speeds up to 50km/h.



Trunk space is put at 360 litres with the hood up and 285 litres when the hood is stowed. This compares to the 355 litre luggage capacity of the C-Class coupe.



In a move allowing longer items such as skis or snowboards to be transported within the new Mercedes-Benz at all times, a compact stowage process allows the rear seats to be folded in a 50:50 split when the hood is either up or down.



As with the larger S-Class Convertible, customers can order the fabric hood in either standard black or optional brown, blue or red hues.



With the hood up, the C-Class Convertible offers 4mm less front headroom but 12mm more rear headroom than the C-Class Coupe, with which it otherwise shares its interior appointments.



Among them is a navigation system capable of detecting when it is approaching a tunnel and switches the standard climate control air conditioning from fresh to recirculated mode, then switches back again at the exit.



All C-Class Convertible models receive Bluetooth compatibility, allowing internet capability, including the use of Mercedes-Benz apps for both audio and video functions, via a smart phone - although this has yet to be cleared for use in Australia.

Also included is a range of autonomous driving technology, including a system that allows it apply the brakes autonomously at up to 200km/h when a windscreen mounted stereo camera and various radar sensor detect a potential collision. The C-Class Convertible can also brake autonomously to standstill at city speeds up to 50km/h when stationary traffic is detected.

Unique to the new open top within the C-Class line-up, albeit optional, are Mercedes-Benz's neck-warming Airscarf ventilation and Air Cap wind-deflection systems. In an example of the detail Mercedes-Benz has gone into with the development of its latest soft-top, the air conditioning system has also been programmed to detect whether the hood is up or down and automatically adjusts its air delivery to suit.



Mercedes-Benz has made a number of modifications to the platform of the C-Class Coupe in the creation of the C-Class Convertible, including the adoption of additional stiffening within the front and floor sections of its high-stength steel body structure.



A reinforced windscreen and two sturdy roll over bars that deploy from behind the rear seats when sensors detect a possible roll over also compensate for the lack of a fixed roof structure, providing the new model with what Mercedes-Benz describes as class leading safety credentials. As with the C-Class Coupe, it also boasts a total of seven airbags as standard.



The new C-Class Convertible rides on a four-link front and five-link rear suspension with steel springs and a selective damping system. Like its fixed roof sibling, though, an air suspension, with a sports-direct steering setup, is an option.

Rolling on standard 17-inch alloy wheels, it also receives the same ride height as the Coupe, sitting 15mm lower than the C-Class sedan.



The new drop top also bolsters the number of dedicated Mercedes-Benz convertible models to five, complimenting the existing E-Class convertible  a new model of which is due out in 2017 - the recently unveiled S-Class convertible as well as the two seat SLC and SL roadster models.



The new C-Class will offer the choice of up to four turbocharged engines, including three petrol and one diesel unit, in eight differing outputs when European sales get underway in June.



Included is a base 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with 115kW in the entry level C180 Convertible as well as a 2.0-litre petrol engine offering 135kW, 155kW and 180kW in the C200 Convertible, C250 Convertible and C300 Convertible respectively.



The two four-cylinder petrol engines are joined by a more powerful 3.0-litre V6 petrol powerplant delivering 245kW in the C400 4Matic Convertible and, in a more highly tuned state, producing 270kW in the range topping C43 4Matic Convertible, which receives a series of unique styling touches, including more aggressive looking bumpers, wider sills beneath the doors and standard 18-inch wheels.



The sole diesel engine in the new C-Class Convertible line-up, a 2.1-litre four-cylinder unit, produces 125kW in the C220 Convertible and 150kW in the C250 Convertible.



Gearboxes include either a standard six-speed manual (available only in Europe) or nine-speed automatic depending on the engine. Along with rear-wheel drive, four of the new C-class Convertible models, the C200 and C220d come with the optional of Mercedes-Benz's 4Matic four-wheel drive system, with the C400 4Matic and C43 4Matic receiving it standard.



So equipped, the performance leader of the new line-up, the C43 4Matic Convertible, is claimed to boast a 0-100km/h time of 4.2sec and limited 250km/h top speed. The most economical model in the line-up, meanwhile, is the C220d Convertible, which returns a claimed 4.6L/100km on the combined cycle, giving it a CO2 rating of 116g/km.



Details to the planned Australian C-Class Convertible line-up are yet to be made official, although Mercedes-Benz officials suggest engine choices and equipment levels will mirror those of the new C-Class Coupe.




Garrett Weldon, the People Before Profit candidate, did very well in his first general election.

The popular project worker at Muirhevnamor Dundalk, polled 3,462 first preferences, 5.1 per cent of the vote.

This put him ahead of Fianna fail's Emma Coffey, the Green Party's Mark Dearey, Mary Moran of the Labour Party and Independent alliance candidate Maeve Yore.

This was a personal success for somebody who has been active in campaigns against water charges and property tax.

People Before Profit sees itself as an alternative to the political establishment and in that sense it captured the mood of the electorate.

Another candidate, one who moved away from the political establishment was Kevin Callan.

A former Fine Gael member and Mayor of Drogheda resigned from the party in opposition to the Government's handling of the water charges.

The now independent county councillor stood as an Independent Alliance candidate.

He polled 3,541 first preferences, 5.2 per cent of the vote.

This put him ahead of the other Independence alliance candidate Maeve Yore.

Louth did not return an Independent Alliance candidate, but this was never really expected whereas in other parts of the country did really well.

Shane Ross, founder of the alliance was the first TD to be elected in the country.

A third of voters opted for an independent candidate as their first choice.

But of course there was nothing like the Healy-Rae conquering of The Kingdom down in Kerry.

Now that was something for the smart Alecs up in Dublin to think about.
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.

Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.

If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .

Support our mission and join our community now.
The startup world is alive and bustling with entrepreneurs, investors, accelerators and a growing network of support industries. The Startup Economy study undertaken by PwC and commissioned by Google highlights that with the right support and growth, this could contribute over $100 billion to GDP and create over half a million new jobs by 2033.

One of the key pillars supporting this growth is a robust network of angel and early investors willing to take risks and empower big ideas. As KPMG noted recently, unlocking the pathways to angel investors in Australia is key to fostering a vibrant startup ecosystem in Australia.

Concurrently, both pitching opportunities and the number of pitches are growing exponentially. As an individual investor focusing primarily on women entrepreneurs, I get over 300 ideas pitched to me each year. Other, more broad-based entities get over 600 ideas presented. Hitting the right pitch note is therefore crucial  and often very daunting.

Here are a few tips based on my experience.

The art of storytelling

Storytelling is at the heart of every good pitch. Entrepreneurs should paint a picture of the landscape and take potential investors on a journey of the change.

Too often, people get caught up in the technicalities of the business and numbers, forgetting to create a sense of excitement for us. Investors are people. And we, much like everyone else, love a good story  especially one that we can be part of.

Perfecting the length

I see a good pitch for funding as an extension of the traditional elevator pitch  a delicate balance between brevity and detail. If you can get my attention in 10  15 minutes or less, its a job well done. If I want more details on the points youve raised, Ill ask after the pitch. Entrepreneurs should leave investors wanting for more rather than overloading them with information.

Format

Most people are visual beings and like seeing images and videos in a pitch. It is widely noted that people usually remember 10% of information delivered verbally. Including a picture increases their retention to 65%. While charts and graphs are important and we do need to see them, presentations can be broken up visually.

Only use visuals to link back to the story. It should be done well and with relevance or not at all. Its all about balance.

Showcasing personality

I invest in people just as much as their businesses. While entrusting my money on an idea that hasnt had proven market success as yet, I look to the personality of the entrepreneur to see if they have the ability to scale the startup to growth.

Personality traits such as a natural curiosity, agility, resilience and creative thinking are important to investors. For example, Springboard, the hub for investors and innovators, looks for members who can thrive in ambiguity and change, have agility, curiosity and emotional intelligence.

Lead message

There is no set pattern as to what should take precedence in a pitch. It should be whatever is most relevant to the business and its growth. If marketing is important, then it should be given due importance, and likewise- revenue or technology. Dont try to fit everything in just because you have to.

Pitch deck considerations

Beyond the obvious areas such as market overview, business plan, growth and exit strategies, other important elements to consider are:

Competition  Investors often hear the sentence there is no competition for our product / service. While a competitive product or service might not exist in its current shape, competition could stem from consumer adoption challenges, resistance to change in a legacy-based environment, outsourced models, battle for share of wallet, etc.

 Investors often hear the sentence there is no competition for our product / service. While a competitive product or service might not exist in its current shape, competition could stem from consumer adoption challenges, resistance to change in a legacy-based environment, outsourced models, battle for share of wallet, etc. Succession plan and team dynamics  While the founder is the heart of the business, I want to know what happens if they step out. I also look at how well partners and teams work together.

 While the founder is the heart of the business, I want to know what happens if they step out. I also look at how well partners and teams work together. Strong financial model: One of the common challenges we face in Australia is the startups ability to scale after reaching a certain growth point. I noticed that in the US, startups scaled and grew their businesses much quicker. Although this phase typically involves the next round of funding (Series A, B or venture capital), I look for startups with sound scaling strategies that can sustain the growth momentum. Those entrepreneurs that, after a certain point, can convert their startup to a successful business and corporatise it.

Ultimately for me, it is the founder and their commitment and passion to the business that nails the pitch. How this is presented and is ultimately brought to life is the key selling point.

About the author:

Renata Cooper is the founder of Forming Circles Global, a unique angel investment and mentoring organisation that predominantly invests in female-led technology startups. Renata Cooper primarily invests in women founded / led technology startups and her portfolio includes US-based CloudPeeps and StorReduce, Australia-based iVvy, Our Little Foxes, Workible, Good360 and Handkrafted.
Foods of fall: Sweet potatoes

There are many great foods that we enjoy in the fall. Apples, leafy greens, and of course, one of my favorites, sweet potatoes. Best known...

Planning for Santas visit

Here at the Early County Museum, weve jotted down our wish list for Santa, and we all wished for the same thing  snow! We...

A visit to Lake Kolomoki

Ranger Lauren Bryant couldnt help but notice young Khalil's casting skills while making rounds Saturday morning. When visiting from Atlanta his grandparents say this is...

Fall weather brings unwanted guests

We welcome the cooler temperatures of fall, but the unwanted house guests that often appear are not so welcomed. Insects including roaches and other types...
Tonbridge apartments hit the right note with Kent buyers

Buyers in Kent will need to move quickly if they want to secure themselves a dream home at Ward Homes Blossom Bank development. The new community has almost completely sold out, with just two houses and a few apartments remaining.

For those looking for apartment living Bailey House is the perfect choice, thanks to its range of contemporary apartments that all come with their own allocated parking space. The modern and spacious apartments feature large halls and bathrooms as well open-plan kitchen, dining and lounge areas. While buyers have been quick to snap up properties within Bailey House, a small number of two bedroom apartments are still available.

Anyone looking to secure themselves a special deal on a house need look no further than Plot 104, a four bedroom Larkfield style house which will be sold complete with window treatments, lighting, carpets and furniture for 389,995. The Larkfield style offers a modern mix of materials, textures and finishes. The contemporary feel continues inside with the ground floor hosting a separate kitchen and roomy lounge/dining area with French doors. Upstairs there are two bedrooms and the second floor hosts a further two bedrooms.

Blossom Bank boasts enviable commuter links while enjoying riverside views and parkland nearby. With the high street, historic castle, great schools and parkland nearby, life at Blossom Bank combines the urban and rural ideal. Tonbridge Station is within easy walking distance and London Bridge station is only 33 minutes away by train.

Pam Reardon, sales and marketing director at Ward Homes, said: Both the houses and apartments at Blossom Bank have been popular with such a wide range of buyers. Many are available through Help to Buy, which has been a hit with first time buyers looking to get onto the ladder, and investors have also shown great interest in the site, as evidenced by how quickly homes have sold.

Prices for two bedroom apartments at Bailey House range from 249,995 to 258,999. To find out more or arrange a visit head to wardhomes.co.uk.


Check out East Niagara Post videos on YouTube, Vine and Periscope.



YMCA Camp Kenan will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt and Brunch on March 19.Pre-sale tickets are available at the Lockport Family YMCA for $6 per person, while day-of tickets will be available for $7 per person.The Egg Hunt will begin at 10 a.m. and is open for children ages 1-12. Brunch will run from 10:30  11:30 a.m. and family activities will open until 12:30 p.m.All money raised benefits YMCA Camp Kenan and helps to support the Camper Scholarship program.For additional information, contact the Lockport Family YMCA at 434-8887 or visit www.campkenan.com
Last week, I wrote about the connection between Congressman Fred Upton, the Emergency Financial Manager takeover of Benton Harbor and Aubrey McClendon, a millionaire developer and owner of the Chesapeake Oil natural gas company. In the piece, I talked a bit about McClendons lawsuits against Saugatuck Township in their efforts to prevent McClendon from developing a piece of duneland at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River known as the Dennison property. I also said this: After McClendon purchased a large tract of duneland there, the Township rezoned the area making it impossible for him to develop it into a condo/recreation mecca similar to Harbor Shores.

This was incorrect. The rezoning process of the area of land at the edge of the Saugatuck Dunes State Park that McClendon owns began in 2001 and continued two years later when the Township started their Master Plan revision. During the Master Plan update process, input was solicited from all interested parties for a period of time before the Plan is finalized. McClendon himself participated when his lawyers requested that the Township table the process. McClendon purchased the property in 2006, several years after the process had already begun. This is important to remember when considering what follows.

Last May, facing financially-draining lawsuits from McClendon, Saugatuck Township held an election asking its residents to approve a tax increase to pay for legal costs. The measure was approved by only two votes. However, due to an error by Township Clerk Jane Wright and her deputy, Lori Babinski, a recount was not possible. The two opened a sealed box containing ballots to inspect it under the direction of Allegan County Deputy Clerk Julia Ryan. Breaking the seal on the ballot box made a recount impossible. Ryan denies directing the two clerks to inspect the box.

McClendon tried to have the election voided but was unsuccessful when a judge ruled their was no evidence of fraud, illegal voting or tampering. However, Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican, took it upon himself to charge the women with a criminal offense of vote tampering. The odd thing about this is that while he is going after the two Township clerks, he is allowing the County Deputy Clerk Julia Ryan and her boss, County Clerk Joyce Watts off the hook, despite suggestions that they gave improper instructions to the two Township officials.

And this is where it gets VERY shady. Court documents show that Julia Ryan was assisted in giving her statement on what happened by attorneys Jason Watts and Kathleen Bruinsma. Jason Watts is an employee of Aubrey McClendon, his eyes and ears in Saugatuck Township, if you will. He is also the son of County Clerk Joyce Watts. Kathleen Bruinsma is married to Jim Bruinsma, yet another of McClendons attorneys. So these two lawyers who work for McClendon came into a County building, used County resources, and helped Ryan to craft her statement. She is subsequently given a free pass while the two women she allegedly gave bad advice to are being facing criminal charges from our Republican attorney general.

Keep in mind that this all over an election to ask taxpayers to raise taxes to defend themselves from lawsuits by Aubrey McClendon. McClendon seems intent on bankrupting Saugatuck Township so that he can move forward with his plans to develop the former Dennison property. A great overview of all the players in McClendons web by the Holland Sentinel can be found HERE (pdf).

Saugatuck Township residents have good reason to fear any development of this land by Aubrey McClendon. He is part of a development in Oklahoma on Lake Tacoma called Pointe Vista. His group convinced a Republican governor Frank Keating to sell off a portion of the very-popular Tacoma Lake State Park to McClendon and his development company. McClendon, after promising to preserve the cultural history of the area promptly tore down an historic lodge on the land. He also managed to convince the local municipality to create a Tax Increment Financing district on the property so that he gets 90% of all tax revenue generated to help improve the property. Frank Keating now sits on the board of Chesapeake Oil, McClendons natural gas company.

McClendons suit against the Township continues and judge Paul Maloney, a man with ties to McClendon (see my previous post on this), has ruled in his favor on a couple of occasions including allowing the suit to go to federal court. Some question why Maloney has not recused himself in this case given his connections to McClendon.

One final piece to this is that the State of Michigan was considering moving 25 additional acres that are part of McClendons land into a protected dune status. The new head of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources & Environment, Dan Wyatt, a man appointed by Republican governor Rick Snyder, has shelved that proposal, a process that has been ongoing for two years, saying he needs additional time to evaluate this matter.

Aubrey McClendon appears to have powerful, mostly Republican friends. He is supported by the right-wing think tank, The Mackinac Center. Allegan County Clerk Joyce Watts and her Deputy Clerk Julia Ryan are helping him. Hes got Congessman Fred Upton in his corner. Attorney General Bill Schuette is assisting his efforts. A federal judge, Paul Maloney, regularly rules in his favor. Even the head of the MDNRE, Dan Wyatt is weighing in on his behalf.

In the meantime, with these odds and a seemingly endless amount of money stacked against them, Saugatuck Township continues to battle to save the Saugatuck Dunes from the sort of slash and burn development that Aubrey McClendon is well known for. As is often the case, McClendon can lose repeatedly in his efforts and can keep on trying. If the Township loses even once, the Saugatuck Dunes will be forever irreparably impacted to make a very rich man even richer.

David Swan, the President of the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance, describes the Saugatuck Dunes in this way:

Within the Saugatuck Dunes there are many resources  historical, ecological, cultural, recreational, spiritual and educational. These resources are the pistons of the regional economic engine.

For the sake of our unique and wonderful shoreline, I am fervently hoping Saugatuck Township continues to win.

For more on the effort to protect the Saugatuck Dunes along with a timeline of what has transpired, visit the website of the Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance.

Im just sayin
TheEuropean Commission on Monday released a draft of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement, which would replace the controversial Safe Harbor provisions that regulated U.S. access to the data of European residents.

The legal texts aim to finalize the reform of EU data protection rules, which apply to all companies doing business in the region, EC officials said. An umbrella agreement between the U.S. and the EU would establish high data protection standards on data transfers across the Atlantic.

Protecting personal data is my priority both inside the EU and internationally, said Commissioner Vera Jourova. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is a strong new framework, based on robust enforcement and monitoring, easier redress for individuals, and, for the first time, written assurance from our U.S. partners on the limitations and safeguards regarding access to data by public authorities on national security grounds.

The plan also calls for an ombudsman within the U.S. State Department as a possible redress against any allegations of privacy violations.

Complaints against companies must be resolved within 45 days, a free alternative dispute resolution process will be available, and EU members will be able to file complaints with their own national data protection authorities, the EC said.

President Obama signed the Judicial Redress Act on Feb. 24, and the commission is expected to propose the signature of the umbrella agreement.

Lack of Privacy Protections

They tried to put 10 layers of lipstick on a pig, but I doubt the court and the DPAs now suddenly want to cuddle with it, said Max Schrems, who filed a lawsuit challenging the transfer of private data to Facebooks European subsidiary in Ireland.

The agreement fails to protect against access to private data, among other shortfalls, he told the E-Commerce Times.

It allows companies to self-certify and fails to provide adequate protection for the private data of individual users, according toAccess Now.

The flow of data might go on for now, but there remains insufficient protection for users private data, insufficient legal certainty for companies. said Estelle Masse, EU policy analyst at Access Now.

The bigger news embedded in this deal is the failure to address the issue of how non-EU countries should deal with EU data, said Kapil Raina, a vice president atHyTrust.

The entire reason the EU invalidated the previous Safe Harbor laws was the revelation that government entities may be able to in fact look at noncitizen data via international U.S. companies, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Transatlantic Commerce

The deal is a strong agreement that enables transatlantic commerce while safeguarding privacy for individuals, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker said.

The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is a tremendous victory for privacy, individuals and businesses on both sides of the Atlantic, she said. We have spent more than two years constructing a modernized and comprehensive framework that addresses the concerns of the European Court of Justice and protects privacy.

It underpins more than US$260 billion in digital services trade across the country and will allow U.S. and EU businesses and individuals to continue to access online services, Pritzker said.

The agreement would grant the U.S. access to data, while providing enough safeguards to the EU and offer a self-regulating mechanism at the State Department, according to theInformation Technology Industry Council.

After our initial review, said Josh Kallmer, senior vice president for global policy at ITIC, it appears the two sides have achieved the objective of securing an agreement that both enhances privacy protections and provides the certainty needed to promote innovation and economic growth.
FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday testified before the House Judiciary Committee that the government has the legal right to gain limited access to the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters and other suspected terrorists.

Congress and the judicial system can create a mechanism to protect the safety of the American people while preserving constitutional rights against government overreach, he said in prepared testimony.

New methods of electronic communications have transformed society, Comey noted, adding that he supports the creation of strong encryption technology that protects large institutions and private citizens against cybercriminals and others who might attempt to gain access to proprietary data.

At the same time, terrorists and others criminals have used this technology to stay one step ahead of law enforcement, he said.

We have always respected the fundamental right of people to engage in private communications, regardless of the medium or technology, Comey testified. Whether it is instant messages, texts or old-fashioned letters, citizens have the right to communicate with one another in private  without unauthorized government surveillance  not simply because the Constitution demands it, but because the free flow of information is vital to a thriving democracy.

Clear and Present Threat

However, groups like the Islamic State have used social media to recruit and radicalize individuals to commit terrorist acts, he warned. Law enforcement needs additional tools to gather evidence to prosecute cases and in some instances prevent the acts from occurring.

The FBI is seeking only limited steps from Apple to help it open the San Bernardino shooters encrypted iPhone. It wants the ability to bypass the encryption and spread out the time between individual attempts to guess a password, Comey said during a question-and-answer session with House members.

He likened the request to removing a group of guard dogs so that investigators could access the iPhone and get enough time to essentially break into the device themselves.

Asked repeatedly if the FBI had gone to other private companies or agencies to try to use alternative methods for unlocking the phone, Comey admitted that he was not an expert on the technology and that the FBI and other agencies had been stymied in their attempts to break into the phone.

Agency Assistance

The FBI asked San Bernardino County, where the shooter was employed, for assistance in retrieving data from the iPhone in December, county spokesperson David Wert said.

The statements that have been made contending that resetting the Apple ID password is what made the backup impossible are incorrect. The fact that the phone was off and PIN locked is what made a cloud backup impossible before the Apple ID password was reset, he told the E-Commerce Times.

An iCloud backup requires a WiFi connection, and an iPhone thats turned off wont link to WiFi until the phone is unlocked, Wert said.

At that point, the county said the best that could be done was to check the cloud for any past data uploads, but we would need to reset the Apple ID password because no one knew it. The FBI asked the county if it would do that, and the county agreed, unlocking the cloud and providing the FBI with the data that was in the cloud, he said.

Can of Worms

Granting the backdoor software request in the San Bernardino case will open the door for countless other requests by the Department of Justice  and foreign governments  in far less important circumstances, according to Eli Dourado, director of the Technology Policy Program at theMercatus Center at George Mason University.

This isnt a trade-off between security and privacy  its a trade-off between two kinds of security, he told the E-Commerce Times. One type of security is the kind provided by the FBI; the other is the security that iPhone users can get from encryption on their phones.

In a world with repressive regimes as well as cybercriminals, the latter takes on greater importance, Dourado said.

A U.S. magistrate judge in New Yorkruled Monday that Apple did not have to assist the government in accessing the phone of a drug dealer whose encrypted iPhone was seized along with other mobile devices in a 2014 raid by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

The government did not have the legal authority under the All Writs Act to make Apple provide a way to bypass the encryption built into the phone and give law enforcement the ability to search for additional evidence, the judge ruled.

The dealer in that case pleaded guilty last year, and any new evidence would be used at sentencing or to pursue co-conspirators or others involved in the drug ring, according to court documents.

We are disappointed in the magistrates ruling and plan to ask the district judge to review the matter in the coming days, DOJ spokesperson Emily Pierce said.

As our prior court filings make clear, Apple expressly agreed to assist the government in accessing the data on this iPhone  as it had many times before in similar circumstances  and only changed course when the governments application for assistance was made public by the court, she told the E-Commerce Times.

This phone may contain evidence that will assist us in an active criminal investigation, Pierce added, and we will continue to use the judicial system in our attempt to obtain it.
CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday brought Apples dispute with the FBI to the public. Cook penned an open letter explaining the companys resistance to a federal magistrates order to create software that would let authorities access data in an iPhone used by the shooters in last years San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Carrying out the order could undermine the security of all iPhone users, Cook argued.

The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand, he wrote.

Apple has complied with the FBIs request for information regarding Syed Farooks iPhone, having provided all of the data in the companys possession, according to Cooks letter.

The problem surrounds the FBIs request that Apple provide a back door to the iPhones encrypted data, something Cook said is too dangerous to create.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software  which does not exist today  would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someones physical possession, Cook said.

Even though the FBI promised that the custom software would be used only in the San Bernardino investigation, Apple is concerned that it might be leaked or used later. That could undermine encryption for millions of other users, according to the letter.

Electronic Privacy

One of the issues raised by the FBIs request concerns the publics expectation of privacy regarding data stored on a phone, which could include everything from bank account information to medical records. The stakes are high for companies that promise to protect their customers sensitive data.

This is definitely a question of privacy, said Michael E. Dergosits, a partner in Dergosits & Noah.

Already there are programs that run on our phones  like Google Maps  that ask for personal information like your location or current position, so right now theres a great sharing of personal private information on the phone amongst applications, he told TechNewsWorld.

Presumably, the owner of the phone can change settings to block this transmission of information or install security software, Dergosits continued. Those kinds of issues are already prevalent. But I think what were talking about is balancing interests between personal and public safety and personal privacy  whether the federal government or state and local law enforcement should be in a position to be able to demand access to those kinds of capabilities.

The big issue here is the publics perception of whats private, he said. Right now, theres a high expectation of privacy regarding information stored on a persons cellphone. Thats not the case when it comes to other types of searches, such as airport scans or voluntary background checks.

If you have a document on the front seat of your car when you get pulled over, you cant have an expectation of privacy  because its in plain view. But if you have it an envelope in your trunk inside a piece of baggage, then it would seem that your expectation is that you wouldnt want it to be within plain view or where anyone could see, Dergosits explained.

If youre randomly stopped, the law enforcement [official] has to have some sort of probable cause for opening up a closed container that might have something private in it, he said. If they dont have probable cause, then they have to get a warrant. The same goes for going to a venue like an airport or concert venue, or somewhere where youre subject to search. Thats your personal choice to submit to that search.

Talking to the People

Cooks tactic of publishing an open letter was a smart way to democratize the issue and communicate Apples message directly, sidestepping the media spin, suggested Burghardt Tenderich, associate director at the USC Center for Public Relations.

The strategy is to create a grassroots feeling to this, he told TechNewsWorld. They want to take it away from a discussion between the CEO of the worlds second most valuable company and the FBI, and really take it to the people.

Because this issue directly affects Apples customers, it makes sense for the company to talk to them directly, Tenderich reasoned. It also gives the company complete control of its message.

I would say the intention is probably to prevent this from happening, because according to Tim Cook, they have good technical reasons to believe that this isnt in the best interest of the public, said Tenderich.

Maybe its also a defense strategy in case they are forced to develop this software, he added. They can point to this letter to say look, we fought this battle on your behalf.'

Apple did not respond to our request for further details.
Blog Archive June 2021 (1) May 2021 (77) April 2021 (77) March 2021 (82) February 2021 (68) January 2021 (64) December 2020 (67) November 2020 (66) October 2020 (66) September 2020 (67) August 2020 (74) July 2020 (83) June 2020 (92) May 2020 (86) April 2020 (104) March 2020 (105) February 2020 (74) January 2020 (75) December 2019 (75) November 2019 (70) October 2019 (89) September 2019 (69) August 2019 (81) July 2019 (77) June 2019 (73) May 2019 (110) April 2019 (110) March 2019 (102) February 2019 (85) January 2019 (123) December 2018 (116) November 2018 (112) October 2018 (121) September 2018 (107) August 2018 (150) July 2018 (163) June 2018 (190) May 2018 (145) April 2018 (112) March 2018 (124) February 2018 (113) January 2018 (164) December 2017 (150) November 2017 (144) October 2017 (169) September 2017 (171) August 2017 (135) July 2017 (131) June 2017 (147) May 2017 (160) April 2017 (138) March 2017 (156) February 2017 (143) January 2017 (203) December 2016 (208) November 2016 (185) October 2016 (173) September 2016 (194) August 2016 (232) July 2016 (225) June 2016 (238) May 2016 (231) April 2016 (215) March 2016 (246) February 2016 (226) January 2016 (252) December 2015 (230) November 2015 (250) October 2015 (234) September 2015 (222) August 2015 (253) July 2015 (275) June 2015 (279) May 2015 (223) April 2015 (226) March 2015 (243) February 2015 (258) January 2015 (281) December 2014 (292) November 2014 (296) October 2014 (413) September 2014 (472) August 2014 (506) July 2014 (483) June 2014 (488) May 2014 (512) April 2014 (497) March 2014 (531) February 2014 (482) January 2014 (535) December 2013 (482) November 2013 (441) October 2013 (416) September 2013 (491) August 2013 (521) July 2013 (491) June 2013 (470) May 2013 (457) April 2013 (426) March 2013 (420) February 2013 (414) January 2013 (489) December 2012 (433) November 2012 (504) October 2012 (469) September 2012 (430) August 2012 (427) July 2012 (360) June 2012 (336) May 2012 (362) April 2012 (322) March 2012 (263) February 2012 (224) January 2012 (291) December 2011 (295) November 2011 (325) October 2011 (330) September 2011 (319) August 2011 (333) July 2011 (318) June 2011 (387) May 2011 (373) April 2011 (389) March 2011 (375) February 2011 (335) January 2011 (400) December 2010 (445) November 2010 (395) October 2010 (312) September 2010 (262) August 2010 (277) July 2010 (323) June 2010 (386) May 2010 (360) April 2010 (333) March 2010 (351) February 2010 (336) January 2010 (384) December 2009 (353) November 2009 (300) October 2009 (308) September 2009 (350) August 2009 (298) July 2009 (255) June 2009 (203) May 2009 (193) April 2009 (186) March 2009 (197) February 2009 (173) January 2009 (148) December 2008 (181) November 2008 (197) October 2008 (236) September 2008 (304) August 2008 (314) July 2008 (273) June 2008 (27) May 2008 (1) April 2008 (6) October 2007 (1) May 2007 (1) April 2007 (6) March 2007 (2) February 2007 (1) October 2006 (1) September 2006 (1) August 2006 (4) July 2006 (4) June 2006 (1) July 2005 (1) May 2005 (2) March 2005 (1) June 2004 (2) May 2004 (1) April 2004 (4) March 2004 (2) February 2004 (2) July 2003 (2) June 2003 (5)
(Photo: GCF / Kim Cain)Global Christian Forum participants at September 2014 meeting on mission and proselytism.

A plan for global talks on one of Christianity's most enduring and complex issues - that of 'mission and proselytism' - was set in motion at a Global Christian Forum-convened meeting in Strasbourg, France, recently.

A working group of representatives from the Catholic Church (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), the Pentecostal World Fellowship, the World Council of Churches, and the World Evangelical Alliance as well as members of GCF have agreed on a series of aims and approaches for tackling concerns associated with mission and proselytism.

The GCF and these four bodies together will carry primary responsibility for the three-year process. They agreed to the process in a series of meetings on 10 and 11 September.

A primary aim of the global conversation will be to develop a companion statement to Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World, including recommendations for relationships between churches living and working in the same communities.

Another aim is to encourage and resource reconciliation and 'healing of memories' between churches which have experienced tension and pain due to conflicting perspectives and practices on mission and evangelism.

The concept of 'mission' is well understood by churches and Christian organisations; however proselytism - the accusation that one Christian tradition, church or denomination is 'converting' or taking members from another Christian group - is often contentious and divisive.

'Proselytism' - sometimes referred to as "sheep-stealing" - in the context of the mission of the church has led to hurtful and deep-seated ruptures in some communities.

The GCF-based initiative will take the form of a global 'facilitated' conversation over three years, covering many continents.

It follows and builds on the landmark and widely received statement Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World, (2011) developed and published conjointly by the Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches, and the World Evangelical Alliance.

Members of the working group come from a variety of Christian traditions: African Independent, Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, Mennonite, Oriental Orthodox, Orthodox, Pentecostal and Reformed.

They originate from such places as Brazil, France, Finland, Germany, Ghana, India, Kenya, Poland, Russia, UK, and the United States.
(Facebook/FastandFurious)Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez) and Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) in "Furious 7"

Actors Vin Diesel, Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson will be on their way to film scenes in Iceland.

Ripsaws, Rally Fighters, Lamborghinis and Imprezas that are going to be used in the movie were being shipped to Iceland, as pictured on Jalopnik.

Akranes, Iceland Mayor Regina Asvaldsdottir said she expects the cast and crew of the movie in their place by April, Visir reported (via Google Translate). The mayor further expressed her interest in the project saying it would help boost the town's economy.

Akranes is located on the west coast of Iceland where fishing is the main industry. It has been reported that the movie will be filmed mostly in Manhattan, New York and the "Fast and Furious" franchise has always used several locations for their shoot. Talks have it that Cuba is also being eyed as another setting for the film.

No official plot has been released yet but rumors have it that the Deckard Shaw arc will still be a major part of the upcoming movie, taking a cue from the seventh installation where Deckard was caught but promised to take revenge. In his last scene, he was behind bars looking determined to get out the prison cells. He also bravely told Hobbs to wait for him.

Viewers are still waiting for confirmation whether or not actress Charlize Theron has been casted to play the female villain.

The untimely death of actor Paul Walker has affected the whole "Fast and Furious" team, who successfully made adjustments to the seventh film in order to include him until the movie ended. Part of the adjustment was changing the role Mr. Nobody played in the sequel. He was portrayed to be an ally but was originally written to be an antagonist.

Mr. Nobody will appear again on the upcoming movie and this time, according to rumors, he will be the villain he was supposed to be.

"Fast and Furious 8" is scheduled to hit the cinemas on April 14, 2017.
(Photo: Reuters /Rebecca Cook)Imam Sayed Hassan Al-Qazwini (R) and Father Rani Abdul-Masih (2nd L) stand with other religious leaders in front of the Islamic Center of America, during an interfaith peace rally calling for an end to the violence triggered by a privately made anti-Islam video, in Dearborn, Michigan Sept. 21, 2012.

The United Nations' top expert on religion and belief has called on countries to repeal blasphemy and apostasy laws that can lead to persecution and severe punishment in some countries.

"States should repeal any criminal law provisions that penalize apostasy, blasphemy and proselytism, as they may prevent persons belonging to religious or belief minorities from fully enjoying their freedom of religion or belief," the U.N.'s special rapporteur on religion and belief Heiner Bielefeldt said in his yearly report to the Human Rights Council.

Addressing journalists on Thursday after he had spoken to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Bielefeldt a German professor on human rights politics, would not be drawn into singling out specific countries engaging in persecution.

He said nations should enact legislation to protect members of religious or belief minorities, noting the universal status of freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief for individuals and communities.

He agreed that the blasphemy law in Pakistan is used against religious minority groups such as Christians, Ahmadis or against Shiah Muslims.

Bielefeldt reiterated comments he made at a meeting the previous day outside of the rights council in which he argued that criminalizing notions such as blasphemy could endanger free speech because there is not a clear definition of it.

For some people it is viewed as mild criticism, but others as criminally insulting of some religious entity.

He noted that often individuals from religious minorities face discrimination, banning from key areas of society, bigotries based on national myths, acts of vandalism and defilement, interruption or closing of religious ceremonies, and acts of violence.

"In my daily work, I receive many reports of grave violations of freedom of religion or belief of persons belonging to religious minorities in all parts of the world," said Bielefeldt who is independent of the United Nations.

He warns in the report that human rights violations against people belonging to religious minorities include disparate bureaucratic limits, and rejection of fair legal status necessary to build up or uphold a religious infrastructure.

These discriminatory rules can invade family laws, and the indoctrination of children from minorities in public schools.

"The human rights-based approach," explained Bielefeldt, "takes respect for the self-understanding of human beings as its systematic starting point."

He added, "The rights of persons belonging to religious minorities cannot be confined to the members of certain predefined groups.

"Instead, they should be open to all persons who live de facto in the situation of a minority and are in need of special protection to facilitate a free and non-discriminatory development of their individual and communitarian identities."
Federal Education Minister, Simon Birmingham , has told ABCs Lateline that he expects new school funding agreements to be in place from 2018 onwards as existing agreements had led to inconsistencies and inequities in schools.We expect new funding agreements to exist from 2018 onwards. Funding agreements in between the Commonwealth and the States have historically been done on a four-yearly basis, but if we can strike something longer term, thats great, he said.I want to make sure that any future agreement is fair and needs-based, but also focuses on the areas where we can actually achieve changes in the classroom to improve student outcomes.Birmingham said Australias international performance in education had been going backwards in real terms despite a dramatic increase in school funding.In the lead up to the last election, the Coalition said it was on a unity ticket with Labor regarding Gonski funding. However, there are signs the Coalition may now scrap existing funding agreements that had been struck between the Commonwealth and the States.Birmingham told Lateline that Labors 27 different funding agreements had resulted in inconsistencies and inequities in the education system.Every state got a different deal and different approaches, and then left out three jurisdictions completely when it came to what was funded in the election, he said.States negotiated on a whole range of different factors and for some of them it depended on when states were willing to put in extra funding themselves.This means that we currently have a model that is applying different funding regimes across different jurisdictions and what I would hope in the future is that as a Federal Government we can iron out those problems.Birminghams comments come days after the Australian Education Union (AEU) announced it would spend $2m on an advertising campaign to pressure the Federal Government to match Labors $4.5bn school funding pledge In a speech to the AEU federal conference in Melbourne, the unions federal president, Correna Haythorpe, revealed that the AEU would soon be launching a free-to-air TV and print ads in the next two weeks.
'Joe Biden can have them': Mastriano vows to bus migrants to Delaware
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
2 March 2016  Today, the World Health Organization delivered urgently needed medicines to the besieged city of Mouadamieh, 10 km south of Damascus.

Today we were able to bring in antibiotics and painkillers, exactly what local health workers told me they needed a few days ago, says Azret Kalmykov, WHO health cluster coordinator in Syria, after completing the delivery inside the besieged city of 40 000 people.

On 17 February, WHO delivered 15 tonnes of medical supplies to Mouadamieh but some vital medicines were removed.

We hope that surgical equipment will also be approved for prompt dispatch in the coming days," says Elizabeth Hoff, WHO Representative in Syria.

In 2015, WHO reported 9 incidents of removal of medical supplies destined for Homs, Aleppo, and Rural Damascus governorates. As a result, more than 140 000 people were deprived of vital medical support.

WHO continues to call on all parties to this conflict to allow unhindered access and unconditional delivery of medical aid to all areas across Syria, says Hoff.

Since January 2016, WHO has delivered medicines, medical supplies, and vaccines to a number of hard-to-reach areas in Syria, such as eastern Aleppo city, Douma, Madaya, Kafraya, Foah, Az-Zabadani, Kafr Batna, and Mouadamieh.

For more information:

Tarik Jasarevic

Media Relations

World Health Organization

Mobile: +41 793 676 214

Tel: +41 22 791 5099

e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Related links

Better access to besieged areas in Syria needed to deliver life-saving medicines, 29 February 2016

WHO reaches 5 besieged areas in Syria with life-saving medicines, 19 February 2016
St Helens man admits 'wild animal' hotel attack on lover



Douglas Courthouse

A St Helens man has admitted attacking his lover in a Castletown hotel room - leaving her "frightened for her life" - after finding text messages from another man on her phone.

46-year-old Iain Plant grabbed his girlfriend of seven months by the throat, threw her against a wall and bit her during an assault at the Sefton Express on February 22nd.



At Douglas Courthouse yesterday he pleaded guilty to one charge of assault - a previous charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm was withdrawn.



The court was told the couple had been for a meal and had returned to the hotel where the woman fell asleep - shortly after midnight she was woken by Plant shouting abuse.



In the subsequent assault he was likened to a "wild animal" - his advocate said both had been drinking heavily and Plant was also injured saying they were "both as bad as each other".



Social enquiry reports were requested by the Magistrates - Plant who's spent a week on remand at the Isle of Man Prison was released on bail; he's due to be sentenced on April 12th.
Man who thought drugs were 'legal' to be sentenced



Douglas Courthouse

A Polish man who told police he thought heroin and cannabis were legal on the Isle of Man after being caught with drugs will be sentenced next month.

32-year-old Tomasz Pasternak was stopped by police on Woodbourne Road in Douglas on December 18th last year.



They followed his car and after noticing he was "fidgeting with his clothing" stopped and searched him - they found 3.5 grams of heroin, 1 gram of cocaine and 0.2 grams of cannabis bush.



At Douglas Courthouse yesterday he pleaded guilty to three charges of unlawful possession of the drugs.



A social enquiry report has been requested before he's sentenced on April 12th - Pasternak has been bailed until then.
Re: New Gay Running Group





















of which

and the bisexual Forum at



Depending on your interests, you might like to have a look at some of the following. While I always urge people to learn the local language, I think it is probably fair to say that while most of these sites are run in German, anything you post in English might well be read by quite a lot of others. www.gayromeo.com (for gay men) www.purplemoon.ch (mainly for gay men and lesbians, also for bisexuals, also gently heterofriendly) www.shoe.ch (for lesbians and bisexual women) http://www.gaysport.ch/ (for gay men and lesbians) www.cool-schweiz.ch (for Christian lesbians) www.queer-zh.ch (for anyone identifying as GLBTIA and Christian) www.haz.ch (for many different aspects of queerness)of which www.haz.ch/Queer_Migs.htm (for immigrants)and the bisexual Forum at http://biforum.haz.ch/ http://pinkcross.ch/de/ueber-uns (for GLBTIA, and with contact to legal advisors)
Bellinzona: trial on ISIS cell discussion



I don't know if you know what I am talking about so I Will say what we know so far.



4 Iraqi nationals are accused of being part of a terrorist organization (Islamic State)



The leader is also accused of abusing of Swiss healthcare to recover from a injury, (he claims the IS shot him, while he is accused of being a IS members and probaly shot by curds/syrian army/rebels.



They are accused of trying to organize a terrorist attacck in Switzerland.



Bellinzona center is close to traffic and 100 policemen are deployed, the federal court entrance is guarded by Police SWAT armed with machine Guns and assault rifles, there are also snipers on the roofs.



The 4 Iraqi nationals are not cooperating with the court.



The cell leader risk up to 7 years jail time (-2 years*)

The other 3 risk up to 5 years prison (-2 years*)



Deportation is unlikely to happen due to human rights.



Edit: There is a interception of the cell leader calling the Swiss "infidels dogs" because of Swiss troops killing 5 talibans in Afghanistan. The suspect says it was a mistake and the troops were americans, but tough they were Swiss since he saw them in a Swiss TV channel.



*They have been in prison for 2 years for security reasons.



Sorry for any grammar or English errore I can't write with Phones Here we goI don't know if you know what I am talking about so I Will say what we know so far.4 Iraqi nationals are accused of being part of a terrorist organization (Islamic State)The leader is also accused of abusing of Swiss healthcare to recover from a injury, (he claims the IS shot him, while he is accused of being a IS members and probaly shot by curds/syrian army/rebels.They are accused of trying to organize a terrorist attacck in Switzerland.Bellinzona center is close to traffic and 100 policemen are deployed, the federal court entrance is guarded by Police SWAT armed with machine Guns and assault rifles, there are also snipers on the roofs.The 4 Iraqi nationals are not cooperating with the court.The cell leader risk up to 7 years jail time (-2 years*)The other 3 risk up to 5 years prison (-2 years*)Deportation is unlikely to happen due to human rights.Edit: There is a interception of the cell leader calling the Swiss "infidels dogs" because of Swiss troops killing 5 talibans in Afghanistan. The suspect says it was a mistake and the troops were americans, but tough they were Swiss since he saw them in a Swiss TV channel.*They have been in prison for 2 years for security reasons.Sorry for any grammar or English errore I can't write with Phones Last edited by Leonardo from Sonnenstube; 02.03.2016 at 12:31 . Reason: See "Edit"
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice star Henry Cavill took his 19-year-old girlfriend with him to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party this Sunday.

Was Ben Affleck Intimidated By 'Batman v Superman' Co-Star Henry Cavill's Body?

Cavill, 32, brought his young girlfriend, Tara King, to the Oscars this year. This was touted by the Daily Mail as a "red carpet debut" for the couple. Cavill and King have been dating for several months.

Cavill spoke with Elle Magazine about the age difference and what happened when he first met King.

Is Warner Bros. Nervous About 'Batman v Superman' Potentially Failing?

"People say age is just a number. It's actually real and true sign of someone's maturity. But in this case, she's fantastic," Cavill noted. "When I met my girlfriend, I was super intimidated. I wanted to impress her. I was thinking, Don't mess this up, man."

King is a college student at Bristol University in the U.K.; she and Cavill reportedly met at a London nightclub called Mahiki.

Cavill did not walk the Oscars red carpet with King. Alongside Kerry Washington, the actor presented two Best Picture nominees at the ceremony, The Big Short and The Martian.

Meanwhile, Cavill is getting ready to see his face on the big screen yet again at the end of the month in Batman v Superman. The highly anticipated blockbuster features Cavill's reprisal of Superman/Clark Kent and introduces Ben Affleck's version of Batman/Bruce Wayne and Gal Gadot's introduction as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is scheduled for release on March 25.
Peter Gunz of VH1s Love & Hip Hop New York has taken a drastic step to ensure he has no more children.

Tara Wallace Unbothered By Critics, Talks Amina Buddafly

The reality star and father of nine has decided to undergo a vasectomy after getting his wife, Amina Buddafly pregnant (she later terminated the pregnancy), only for his ex-girlfriend Tara Wallace to tell him she is pregnant as well. On top of that, rumor has it that Amina is pregnant again.

If true, this will be baby number ten for Peter, who now has three sons with Wallace and one daughter with Amina. The remaining six children are from previous relationships.

Tara Wallace Confesses She Still Has Feelings For Peter Gunz

Peters daughter Whitney, who is very well aware of his recent drama, told him that he needs to get a vasectomy in a previous episode of the show. He agreed and in Monday nights episode told Wallace that he would be getting it done. Interestingly enough, he said it while he went to the doctor with her to find out the gender of their child.

As for Amina, she refuses to talk to Peter on the show because of him not only cheating with Wallace, but getting her pregnant.

Still, it might be safe to say she came around and changed her mind considering she and Peter celebrated their third wedding anniversary just two days after Wallace delivered the child, baby boy Gunner.

Amina still has yet to confirm or deny speculation that she is pregnant. But word is shell make the big reveal at the reunion special.
Hindu religious practices may have influenced present day monotheistic Christinatity prevalent among the Khasis. However the cultural and religious linkages between Hinduism and Christianity in Khasi Hills need to be investigated keeping in mind that there was no defined centre for the Hindu faith and the influence may have been more syncretistic than partisan.

Perhaps this article is ill-timed. Perhaps in the current scenario with various right wing groups actively seeking a Hindutva agenda it is not the best time to be writing about things which could be used for their own benefit. This is particularly true after the recent procession carried out by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Shillong (its first in the city) that has evoked so much reaction. However, these events cannot forestall the need for articulating important things.

It has been repeated over and over again especially by the Christian clergy and its fraternity that Khasis were and are not Hindus. They often say, in very vague terms, that essentially Khasis worshipped One God (U Nongbuh U Nongthaw) through his ambassadors here on Earth. So in a sense Lei Shyllong and other ancient deities might be suitably placed within a pre-Christian monotheism. This seems contradictory in more than one way.

Why only Khasis?

The most obvious is that it seems the Khasis are the only ones who profess this. Other tribes around us who have undoubtedly influenced and been influenced by the Khasis worship multiple gods, not one god. These are full framed figures, resplendent in their distinct tribal garb, not simple allusions to a one universal deity. This aspect is something we need to interrogate further because this pre-Christian Christianity (monotheism) appears to be revisionist. The frequency of the articulation of this idea among the Christiansespecially Catholic priestsseems to betray its origins and motives. After all, it is much easier to convert people by drawing comparisons to that which they are already acquainted with. It is convenient to argue that the new gods is in reality just a change in nomenclature and ritual, that essentially they have always been worshipping the same god.

However if the Khasis claim to be a matrilineal culture, why is U Nongbuh Nongthaw (The Keeper/ Creator) a male deity? Shouldnt he be a she? I realise that this is not necessarily a water-tight hypothesis, but we could still argue for it to be questioned.

The Pnars and Bhois, interestingly, seem to place more importance on female divinitiesthe goddess Riang Khangnoh, goddess Myntdu and Lukhmi are more popular than any of their male counterparts. And they are not simply goddesses of the homestead either, they can wonder outside from spring to spring, blessing the families that stay along their path, they can serve as guardians (lei khyrdop) protecting Jowai like Myntdu does and they can also guarantee a good harvest like Lukhmi. They seem to have more character, more nuance than the Nongbuh Nongthaw. To simplify the pre-Christian era has been one of the major projects of the missionaries of various faiths. These include both the Christians and the Hindus. Both have, in their own manner, drawn attention away from the differences and harped on the similarities that were allegedly shared. The Christians have been vague about it while the Hindus have embraced the nitty gritties of the idiosyncratic Khasi myth pantheon as their own.

Danger in Simplification

When we talk of Hinduism we have been warned time and again about the dangers of centralising it: that there are, in fact, many Hinduisms. This is a convenient starting point for interrogating the Hindu processes that went on in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills before the coming of Christianity. To simply state and defend the Khasis were not Hindus tenet with no evidence except popular belief is bad logic. On the contrary, there is substantial material evidence to support the claim that they were, indeed, Hindus. In Syndai, you will find a large Ganesha sculptureamong othersof some age carved onto a large rock; the local people call it U Khmi (interestingly the word means earthquake in Pnar). Dawki has a number of old rock carvings which seem to be influenced by Hindu traditions. Legend has it that the Kamakhya Temple in Assam was originally a sacred Khasi sitea point acknowledged by temple management in publicationswhere a type of mother goddess supposedly resided. She was called Ka Mei Kha by the Khasis, which over time morphed into Kamakhya. The phonological shift is noteworthy. Nartiang and Iale Falls were important locations for Shakti human sacrifices. The former is still an important shrine for pilgrims to visit. Mahadek,also known as Laittyra, was called that because of the presence of a Mahadev temple within the village. Mawsynram still draws a decent number of Hindu pilgrims who suffer the horrible roads in order to perform puja at the mawjymbuin cave, which they consider to be a shivling. Interestingly, these sites are all near borders, either with Assam or Bangladesh. There are undoubtedly other similar sites and shrines throughout these hills and valleys which await re-discovery.

Beyond the ostensible spaces, there are also a number of cultural borrowings that seem to have been directly influenced by Hinduism. This should not surprise (or anger) us. The North East is basically a land bridge (possibly one of the most important in history). Materials, skills and ideas have flowed through this region for a very long time from East to West and vice versa. The isolation of the North East and the xenophobia of mainland India should not fool us into believing otherwise. Many important festivals like Behdeinkhlam, Lukhmi have strong links with larger Vedic currents. The references to Lukhmi/Lukhimai are quite clearly to a tribalised Hindu goddess Lakshmi. During Behdeinkhlam, the rot (tower-like structures made of wood, bamboo) must be cast away after the religious festivities are over. This is interesting because the worship of the (non-Classical) Hindu deity Jagannath (Odisha mostly) also involves similar structures which are called rath (chariot). One should also note the similar names. The casting away of the rot is akin to the casting away of the idols at Durga Puja after their roles as cleansers have been fulfilled. Even the ritualistic animal sacrifices at Shad Pomblang might be seen in the light of other festivals like Gadhimai, Bali Jatra and others. When I was to be married, there was some discussion about putting up banana stalks in front of the entry way which is a very common Hindu practicethis in spite of the fact that my in-laws household is almost exclusively Christian. This ultimately did not happen but it was interesting nonetheless.

Conclusions

I am not attempting to locate a centre from which all Hindu authority emanates (which is what Hindutva groups seek). This automatically assumes the position that the tribal people are always the ones who take ideas and concepts and divorces them of a knowing and conscious exchange with Hindu missionaries, maybe even resistance to them. Hinduism has always been shifting and de-centering itself according to contexts and areas. The question were/are Khasis, Hindus is inextricably linked to the notion of who a Hindu is in the first place. The flexible and assimilative nature of Hinduism ensured its success from Cambodia and Bali through to Kabul etc, it spread through a huge geographic expanse. However, this strength, this mutability is also what permits the right-wing groups to go about proclaiming everything and everyone as being Hindu, everything from proper religions like Buddhism and Jainism to smaller belief systems like Niam Khasi (Meghalaya), Donyi Polo (Arunachal Pradesh) and Meiteism (Manipur). Their success in redefining the latter practice as their own is something the Niam Khasi followers should be wary of. Politics has always been used to influence religious practices, and it is no different this time.
The prevalence of Wi-Fi has been accelerating for two decades, but in the last two years, it's surged even further as so many people were forced to work from home. That trend led to many strengthening...
Baltimore, February 23, 2016--A novel unit to care for critically ill patients significantly speeds access to specialized care, according to a new study by physician scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC).

Transferring patients with time-sensitive critical illness from community hospitals to academic medical centers is a common practice in American medicine - not all hospitals are able to provide the highly specialized and complex critical care that tertiary or quaternary care facilities such as UMMC are known for. While organized trauma systems are in place for transferring patients from the scene of an accident to a specialized trauma center, no formal systems have been in place for transferring non-trauma patients in need of often lifesaving critical care.

Patient access to specialty care in the academic medical center setting is largely dependent on the availability of intensive care unit (ICU) beds in the receiving hospital; without an open bed to receive the patient, wait times for transfers can mean the difference between life and death, or the necessity for the patient to go to another hospital. UMMC, recognizing these limitations, has seen success with a novel solution with the opening of the nation's first Critical Care Resuscitation Unit (CCRU), in July 2013. During its first full year of operation, for the subset of adult patients admitted for critical care, transfers increased 64.5 percent compared to a previous year (2,228 vs. 1,354) and patients arrived in nearly half the time (129 vs. 234 minutes), according to data published online today in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

"When we built the CCRU, we envisioned a unit mid-way between an emergency department and intensive care unit, similar to our Trauma Resuscitation Unit but for non-trauma patients," said lead author Thomas M. Scalea, MD, FACS, the Honorable Francis X. Kelly Distinguished Professor of Trauma Surgery, Director of the Program in Trauma at UMSOM and Physician-in-Chief of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at UMMC. "It has been phenomenally successful in its intended mission to serve critically ill patients, and we believe it should serve as a model for other institutions." Despite UMMC's operation of an inter-hospital call center for the transfer of critically ill patients for over 20 years, Dr. Scalea noted prior to the opening of the CCRU, patients needing immediate critical care were sometimes unable to be transferred if a specialized ICU bed was unavailable, or transfer times were longer than desired, delaying access to lifesaving diagnostics, specialty care and surgery.

The CCRU is a 6-bed, short-stay ICU located within the Shock Trauma Critical Care Tower at UMMC. Because the unit must be able to provide services at any time across a wide spectrum of diseases, it is staffed 24/7 by physicians and nurses with broad and diverse critical care experience. Together with UMSOM sub-specialists, the CCRU team provides consultations to referring physicians. Recommendations for patient management are provided even before the patient is transferred. Based on information provided by the referring physician, patient rooms are prepped in advance with the appropriate equipment and therapeutics needed for each arrival - a model historically used for incoming trauma patients and a departure from the average transfer procedure. After initial resuscitation and possible surgical care, patients are then moved to the appropriate sub-specialty ICU for ongoing care.

"We've discovered a new niche for resuscitation medicine," said co-author Lewis Rubinson, MD, PhD, an Associate Professor of Medicine at UMSOM and Director of the CCRU. "It's a paradigm change but easily adaptable for other academic medical centers. While we were fortunate to model the CCRU on a similar system already in place for our trauma patients, the fundamental principles are universal."

In addition to decreasing the time to arrival and increasing transfers, the CCRU also significantly decreased the percentage of lost admissions from 25.7 percent to 14 percent in this subset of transfer patients requiring critical care. Significantly more transfer patients required an operation during their hospital stay (46 percent vs. 31.1 percent) and a higher percentage were in the operating room within 12 hours of arriving (41 percent vs. 21.4 percent).

"We admitted nearly 1,000 additional transfer patients in the first year alone since opening the CCRU," said senior author James O'Connor, MD, Professor of Surgery at UMSOM and Critical Care Chief at UMMC. "Adding just six beds and borrowing practices we had honed in the Shock Trauma Center made our entire system more efficient."

"We built the CCRU to address the inefficiencies inherent in relying on a particular ICU to accept a transfer," added Dr. Scalea. "ICUs are designed to manage patients for the entire course of their stay and they are highly specialized according to disease. The CCRU is for the immediate resuscitation, evaluation and disposition of all transfer patients. That is only part of what an ICU can do, but it's the only thing the CCRU does."

The authors are hopeful that continued research will produce definitive data showing that the CCRU lowers mortality for patients. Previous studies have shown that getting patients to the hospital faster improves outcomes, and data in this study did show a trend towards lower mortality, though not statistically significant. Of note, patients who were transferred to the CCRU and required surgery had a significantly shorter length of stay (13 vs. 17 days), demonstrating the value of expedited stabilization in the CCRU and admission to the appropriate subspecialty care unit.

"This is a major advance in clinical science akin to a fundamental discovery," said UMSOM Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, the John Z. and Akiko Bowers Distinguished Professor at UMSOM and Vice President of Medical Affairs at the University of Maryland. "It is exciting to see another example of our faculty's commitment to discovery-based medicine."

###

About the University of Maryland Medical Center

The University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) is comprised of two hospitals in Baltimore: an 800-bed teaching hospital -- the flagship institution of the 12-hospital University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) -- and a 200-bed community teaching hospital, UMMC Midtown Campus. UMMC is a national and regional referral center for trauma, cancer care, neurocare, cardiac care, diabetes and endocrinology, women's and children's health, and has one of the largest solid organ transplant programs in the country. All physicians on staff at the flagship hospital are faculty physicians of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. At UMMC Midtown Campus, faculty physicians work alongside community physicians to provide patients with the highest quality care. UMMC Midtown Campus was founded in 1881 and is located one mile away from the University Campus hospital. For more information, visit http://www.umm.edu.

About the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center

The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center was the first fully integrated trauma center in the world, and remains at the epicenter for trauma research, patient care, and teaching, both nationally and internationally today. Shock Trauma is where the "golden hour" concept of trauma was born and where many of the life-saving practices in modern trauma medicine were pioneered. Shock Trauma is also at the heart of Maryland's unparalleled Emergency Medical Service System.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The University of Maryland School of Medicine, chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States, continues today as a leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland, and is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Maryland's Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists, plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S.A., with top-tier faculty and programs in vaccine development, cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the U.S.A., but also has a global presence, with research and treatment facilities in more than 35 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://medschool.umaryland.edu.
The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology and conducted by researchers at the BGU Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, the BGU Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and the Israel Geological Survey

Beer-Sheva, Israel...March 2, 2016 -- Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have determined that saline groundwater from coastal aquifers is a better alternative water source than seawater for reverse osmosis (RO) desalination due to reduced membrane fouling and pre-treatment costs.

The study was published in Environmental Science & Technology and conducted by researchers at the BGU Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, the BGU Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences and the Israel Geological Survey.

"Decision-makers in both California and Israel can use this research to seriously consider saline groundwater as a realistic alternative when planning future large-scale seawater desalination facilities," explains Dr. Roni Kasher, a senior lecturer in the BGU Zuckerberg Institute's Department of Desalination and Water Treatment. "In Israel, seawater desalination accounts for 60 percent of the total freshwater supply, so these findings are significant."

BGU researcher Shaked Stein adds," Saline groundwater results from seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, shifting the fresh-saline water interface upward and landward, and replaces fresh groundwater with saline groundwater. The RO process in coastal aquifers will be helpful in restraining seawater intrusion."

Other saline groundwater benefits include consistent annual water temperatures, and lower levels of dissolved oxygen, silt density and phytoplankton. It also decreases the cost of desalination. The RO desalination process of seawater requires significant energy and large plant area by valuable shorefront property, both of which increase the product water cost.

"The study showed that aquifer filtration increases the feed water quality and reduces the need for extensive pre-treatment processes," explains Stein. "RO desalination with saline groundwater as feed water is also more efficient, with higher freshwater recoveries, less chemical use and maintenance, and therefore less overall operational costs."

Due to seasonal seawater characteristic fluctuations, Stein specifically recommends using saline groundwater in the summertime rather than seawater since the research identified higher membrane fouling in summer. "Salt rejection decreases in elevated temperatures due to changes in membrane permeability and mass transfer."

According to Dr. Kasher, "In our study, we used normal (vertical) wells to take samples from the saline groundwater. All the wells were a maximum of 300 feet (100 meters) from the shoreline. However, the water intake can be accomplished using several different types of wells."

###

Other researchers involved in the study include Drs. Amos Russak and Orit Sivan, BGU Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences; Dr. Yoram Oren BGU Department of Desalination and Water Treatment, Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research; Dr. Yoseph Yechieli, Geological Survey of Israel; Dr. Eyal Rahav, Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research, National Institute of Oceanography.

Saline Groundwater from Coastal Aquifers as a Source for Desalination research received support from the Water Authority of Israel (a research grant to O. Sivan, R. Kasher, Y. Yechieli, Y. Oren, and a student fellowship to S. Stein). (DOI) 10.1021/acs.est.5b03634.

About Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research

The Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, Israel's largest and leading water institute, conducts interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research and graduate education in water sciences, aimed at improving human well-being through technologies and policies for sustainable use of water resources. World-renowned Zuckerberg researchers are focused on desalination technologies and water groundwater production, water quality and microbiology, as well as water resource economics and management. Zuckerberg graduate programs attract students from all corners of the world who are involved in research projects and collaborations in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Named for New York philanthropist Roy J. Zuckerberg, the Institute was founded in 2002 within the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer Campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org/water

About American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (AABGU) plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion's vision, creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the University's expertise locally and around the globe. With some 20,000 students on campuses in Beer-Sheva, Sede Boqer and Eilat in Israel's southern desert, BGU is a university with a conscience, where the highest academic standards are integrated with community involvement, committed to sustainable development of the Negev. AABGU is headquartered in Manhattan and has nine regional offices throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://www.aabgu.org
Geneticists at the University of Helsinki and the National University of Singapore have teamed up to explore the evolution of musical aptitude in the first-ever empirical study of the evolution of music. The Finnish scientists in the project were supported by funding from the Academy of Finland. The study was published in Scientific Reports, a peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Nature Publishing Group.

In the study, the researchers applied genomic methods to identify candidate regions in the human genome showing positive selection regions with musical aptitude. They found that the associated regions contained numerous candidate genes, among them genes known to affect ear function, language development, memory, bird song and the brain's reward mechanism.

"We started out from the hypothesis that genetic variants associated with musical aptitude have a pivotal role in musical practices. This assumption is based on the idea that the evolution of the human genome progresses much more slowly than cultural evolution. The structure and function of the auditory system is very similar in modern humans and the first primates, suggesting high evolutionary conservation of auditory perception among species," says Docent Irma Jarvela, the principal investigator of the study.

FOXP1, one of the candidate genes discovered, has been previously found to affect both human language development and songbirds' singing. The researchers also identified RGS9 as another gene that is implicated in song learning and singing in songbirds. RGS9 is expressed in the corpus striatum together with dopamine receptors. The striatum is activated by expectations in music. When those expectations are met, dopamine is released in the striatum giving the mind a sense of satisfaction. Another member of the RGS gene family, RGS2, is known to become activated when musicians play music. "Based on their functions, these genes are suitable candidate genes for further studies into the evolution of music," says Jarvela.

The results of the study suggest that music and language have common roots in human evolution. An improved understanding of the biological background of musical aptitude can contribute new insights into, for instance, genes that affect normal brain functions, the interactions between genes and the environment and the significance of music as a form of therapy.

"The study opens new avenues to study the evolution of music. However, more studies are needed to dissect the role of the candidate regions and genes identified in selection regions," says Jarvela.

###

The article "Detecting signatures of positive selection associated with musical aptitude in the human genome" was published in Scientific Reports, an open-access scientific journal: Scientific Reports 2016 Feb 16;6:21198. doi: 10.1038/srep21198. PMID:26879527.

More information:

Docent Irma Jarvela, University of Helsinki, tel. +358 50 544 7030, irma.jarvela(at)helsinki.fi

Academy of Finland Communications

Anna-Riikka Oravakangas, Communications Specialist

tel. +358 295 335 056

firstname.lastname(at)aka.fi
Over the past three decades, representatives of all major Mesozoic bird groups have been reported from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of northeastern China. A new species, Chongmingia zhengi, reported in the journal of Scientific Reports on 25 January 2016, sheds light on the early evolution of birds. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that it is basal to the dominant Mesozoic avian clades Enantiornithes and Ornithuromorpha, and represents a new basal avialan lineage. This new discovery adds to our knowledge regarding the phylogenetic differentiation and morphological diversity in early avian evolution.

This new species, represented by a single new skeleton from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of the Jehol Group in Dapingfang, Liaoning Province, China. The generic name is from the Mandarin word Chongming, referring to a Chinese mythological bird. The specific epithet is in honour of Mr. ZHENG Xiaoting for his generous contribution in the establishment of the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature.

The new specimen is a partial skeleton with associated soft tissues and gastroliths, missing the skull and most of the caudal vertebrae. Comparative studies indicate that it is a large non-ornithothoracine bird distinguishable from the known basal avialans by a combination of features.

The furcula of Chongmingia is rigid (reducing its efficiency), consequently requiring more power for flight. However, the elongated forelimb and the large deltopectoral crest on the humerus might indicate that the power was available. The unique combination of features present in this species demonstrates that numerous evolutionary experimentations took place in the early evolution of powered flight.

Histological studies indicate Chongmingia had a moderately elevated growth rate relative to the long-tailed Archaeopteryx and Jeholornis. Furthermore, other morphological features, along with the evolutionary pattern drawn from other basal birds, reveal mosaic evolution and numerous evolutionary experiments relating to powered flight early in the evolution of birds.

The occurrence of gastroliths further confirms that herbivory was common among basal birds. The Jehol birds faced competition with pterosaurs, and occupied sympatric habitats with nonavian theropods, some of which consumed birds. Thus, avialan herbivory may have reduced ecological competition from carnivorous close relatives and other volant vertebrates early in their evolutionary history.

"Although our analysis suggests that the new specimen may represent the most phylogenetically basal Cretaceous bird known to date, this phylogenetic hypothesis should be treated with caution given the incomplete preservation of the skeleton and low phylogenetic support values", said lead author Dr. WANG Min, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

###

The research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association (CAS), the State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Aurora, Colo. (March 1, 2016) - From August to September 2014, a typically slow time for respiratory viruses, a nationwide outbreak of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) left resources constrained for Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) and pediatric organizations throughout the nation.

Due to the lack of a widely available test for the virus at the time, only 1,153 EV-D68 infections in 49 states were confirmed, though experts felt the true magnitude and impact of EV-D68 was much larger.

Researchers and operational experts looked at the change in hospital resources utilized during the outbreak periods and compared the data to what would have been expected during a calm respiratory season, which allowed the team to indirectly estimate the impact of the virus. Their findings were published online on January 19, 2016 and will appear in the March issue of JAMA Pediatrics. The methods used and data collected have created a guide for other hospitals to measure and prepare for potential outbreaks.

During the EV-D68 outbreak of 2014, Children's Colorado saw significant increases across all sectors, including respiratory patient volumes, asthma medication use, respiratory equipment use and respiratory therapist demands. Without being able to test more accurately for the virus during the actual outbreak, a cross-hospital team, led by Kevin Messacar, MD, hospital medicine and infectious diseases specialist at Children's Colorado, developed a new, quantifiable way to measure the impact of outbreaks after they occur.

"The enterovirus D68 outbreak affected every aspect of our hospital," said Messacar. "We created an EV-D68 consortium to look at how this outbreak strained resources. Through this study, we demonstrated that the number of confirmed infections grossly underestimates the true burden of this outbreak on children's hospitals."

The study suggest that EV-D68 had a much larger impact on children's hospitals in the United States in 2014 than previously estimated from confirmatory testing on a limited number of samples. The study also illustrates the importance of resource utilization monitoring in future unexpected outbreaks of emerging pathogens.

"It is important to understand the burden of an emerging respiratory virus like enterovirus D68 so that children's hospitals can be prepared if, and when, it returns," said Messacar. "We are fortunate that enterovirus D68 did not return to cause widespread disease in 2015, but if it does return to cause this extent of disease in the future, development of vaccines or therapeutics against this virus will become scientific priorities."

"The heroic efforts of the medical, nursing, and other clinical staff at Children's Hospital Colorado to provide expert care to affected children during this outbreak should be commended," said Messacar.

###

The team who worked on the study represented infectious disease, epidemiology, pulmonary, respiratory therapy, hospital medicine, emergency medicine and critical care. Joining Messacar, hospital medicine and infectious disease, as authors of the study were Sarah Parker, MD, and Samuel R. Dominguez, MD, PhD, infectious disease, Stephen M.M. Hawkins, MD, pulmonary medicine, Joyce Baker, MBA, RRT-NPS,AE-C, director of respiratory therapy, Kelly Pearce, data analyst in epidemiology, and Suhong Tong, biostatistician in pediatric medicine. Additional support was provided by Suchitra Rao, MD, hospital medicine and infectious disease, Rakesh Mistry, MD, emergency medicine, Gina DeMasellis, MD, critical care and Jerrod Milton, vice president of operations.

About Children's Hospital Colorado

Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) has defined and delivered pediatric health care excellence for more than 100 years. Founded in 1908, Children's Colorado is a leading pediatric network entirely devoted to the health and well-being of children. Continually acknowledged as one of the nation's outstanding pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report and ranked 5th on its Best Children's Hospitals 2015-16 Honor Roll, Children's Colorado is known for both its nationally and internationally recognized medical, research, education and advocacy programs, as well as comprehensive everyday care for kids throughout Colorado and surrounding states. Children's Colorado is the winner of the 2015 American Hospital Association-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize, and is a 2015 Most Wired hospital according to Hospitals & Health Networks magazine. Children's Colorado also is recognized for excellence in nursing from the American Nurses Credentialing Centers and has been designated a Magnet hospital since 2005. The hospital's family-centered, collaborative approach combines the nation's top pediatric doctors, nurses and researchers to pioneer new approaches to pediatric medicine. With urgent, emergency and specialty care locations throughout Metro Denver and Southern Colorado, including its campus on the Anschutz Medical Campus, Children's Colorado provides a full spectrum of pediatric specialties. For more information, visit http://www.childrenscolorado.org and connect with Children's Colorado on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Researchers report on studies using innovative approaches, such as cell transplantation and genetic engineering, to address Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, peripheral nerve pain, and improve motor function following stroke

Putnam Valley, NY. (March 2, 2016) - Studies scheduled to be published in the April, 2016 issue of Cell Transplantation (issue 25(4)) were presented in 2015 at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair (ASNTR), a society for scientists whose research is focused on understanding the causes of various neurological injuries and diseases and developing potential therapies such as cell therapy, gene therapy, and pharmacological interventions.

Among the presentations were studies using cell therapies to address peripheral neuropathic pain, motor function deficits following stroke, and the neurological symptoms of both Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease.

MSCs for treating neuropathology in Alzheimer's disease

Current treatments for Alzheimer's disease (AD) are only moderately effective and target only a few symptoms or pathways associated with AD. Now, researchers are testing adult mesenchymal cells (MSCs) to see if they offer potential AD treatments.

"MSCs offer an excellent source of stem cells for transplantation in AD patients," explained study co-author Dr. Gary Dunbar of Central Michigan University, and the outgoing 2015 ASNTR president. "They are multipotent cells, which means that they are able to differentiate into many different cell types such as blood, bone, muscle, fat and neural cells."

The goal of their study was to transplant MSCs into brain regions of mice modeled with AD and compare the behavioral and pathological effects to those of AD mice not transplanted with cells. They found that the transplanted MSCs reduced learning deficits in the mice, especially when the cells were transplanted into the lateral ventricles as opposed to the hippocampus.

This study, scheduled to be published in the 25(4) special ASNTR issue of Cell Transplantation, is freely available on-line as an unedited, early epub, at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT-1529_Matchynski-Franks_et_al

Contact: Dr. Gary L. Dubar, Health Professional Bldg, HP 2182, Central Michigan University, 1280 E Campus Dr., Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859

Email: Gary.dunbar@cmich.edu

Ph: (989) 774 3282

Fax: (989) 774-2552

Citation: Matchynski-Franks, J. J.; Pappas, C.; Rossignol, J.; Reinke, T.; Fink, K.; Crane, A.; Twite, A.; Lowrance, S. A.; Song, C.; Dunbar, G. L. Mesenchymal stem cells as treatment for behavioral deficits and neuropathology in the 5xFAD mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. Appeared or available online: February 2, 2016.

Recombinant GABAergic cells and peripheral neuropathic pain

The underlying mechanism of chronic neuropathic pain involves changes in several pain signaling pathways. Knowing this, researchers have focused on cell therapies and gene manipulation to affect events in the spinal cord where signaling takes place. As a proof-of-concept study for the management of chronic pain through intraspinal transplantation following injury to peripheral nerves, in this study the researchers employed recombinant (genetically engineered) cell therapy using GABAeric cells. They evaluated the therapeutic effect of GABAeric cells that produce the pain-reducing peptide Serine1-histogranin (SHG). They found that test animals experienced a reduction in sensitivity to heat and mechanical stimuli when compared to controls that did not receive the cell therapy.

This study is scheduled to be published in the 25(4) special ASNTR issue of Cell Transplantation, and is freely available on-line as an unedited, early epub, at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT-1522_Jergova_et_al

Contact: Dr. Stanislava Jergova, Miller School of Medicine, Miami Project, University of Miami, Miami, FL 1095 NW 14th Terrace, Miami, FL 33136 USA

Email: sjergova@miami.edu

Ph: +(305) 243 6038

Fax: (305) 243-3923

Citation: Jergova, S.; Gajavelli, S.; Varghese, M. S.; Shekane, P.; Sagen, J. Analgesic effect of recombinant GABAergic cells in a model of peripheral neuropathic pain. Appeared or available online: January 26, 2016.

Huntington's disease and mutant alleles

Huntington's disease (HD) is a debilitating, inherited neurodegenerative disease for which there is no cure. Symptoms of HD include cognitive impairment affecting memory and reasoning and personality changes, manifested as depression and anxiety. HD is caused by abnormal gene repetitions and the only therapies available are palliative therapies aimed at symptom reduction.

However, using mouse models of HD, scientists have begun to uncover the effects of the mutant huntingtin gene and make attempts at repressing the gene associated with the disease. Researchers are targeting gene abnormalities using "transcription activator-like effectors" (TALE) to target gene variations (single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, in mutant genes, 190 of which have been associated with the mutant gene (huntingtin). "We targeted the mutant huntingtin gene with TALES to affect unique DNA sequences," said Dr. Kyle Fink of the University of California Davis' Institute for Regenerative Cures. "The targeting approaches have the potential to become potent therapies that can be adapted to a wide range of gene repeat disorders and other disease for which there is a known gene mutation."

This study is scheduled to be published in the 25(4) special ASNTR issue of Cell Transplantation, and is freely available on-line as an unedited, early epub, at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT-1537_Fink_et_al

Contact: Dr. Kyle Fink, Institute for regenerative Cures, Rm 1300, 2921 Stockton Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95817

Email: kdfink@ucdavis.edu

Ph: (916) 703-9300

Fax: (916) 703-9310

Citation: Fink, K. D.; Deng, P.; Gutierrez, J.; Anderson, J. S.; Torrest, A.; Komarla, A.; Kalomoiris, S.; Cary, W.; Anderson, J. D.; Gruenloh, W.; Duffy, A.; Tempkin, T.; Wheelock, V.; Segal, D. J.; Nolta, J. A. Allele-specific reduction of the mutant huntingtin allele using transcription activator-like effectors in human Huntington's disease fibroblasts. Appeared or available on-line at: February 4, 2016.

Human ganglionic eminence grafts improve motor function in rat model of Huntington's disease

In this study, brain tissue from human and rat whole ganglionic eminence (hWGE and rWGE, respectively) were grafted into rat models of HD. The results demonstrated that the clinically applicable hWGE grafts and the rWGE grafts were comparable in their ability to improve motor deficits in HD rats. The researchers suggested that fundamental differences between human and rodent brain development may account for some of the observed differences in how the WGE grafts matured and integrated into the host. The researchers concluded that further studies are needed to determine optimal timing for transplantation and the effect of these grafts on cognitive functions of HD animals.

This study is scheduled to be published in the 25(4) special ASNTR issue of Cell Transplantation, and is freely available on-line as an unedited, early epub, at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT-1513_Lelos_et_al

Contact: Dr. Mariah J. Lelos, School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Museum Avenue Cardiff CF10 3AX, Wales, UK

Email: lelosmj@cf.ac.uk

Fax: + 44 (0)2920 876749

Ph: + 44 (0)2920 874112

Citation: Lelos, M. J.; Roberton, V. H.; Harrison, C.; Eriksen, P.; Torres, E. M.; Clinch, S. P.; Rosser, A. E.; Dunnett, S. B. Direct Comparison of Rat- and Human-Derived Ganglionic Eminence Tissue Grafts on Motor Function. Cell Transplant. Appeared or available on-line: December 29, 2015.

Combination of growth factors improves motor function and brain pathology following stroke

Stroke is a brain injury caused by ischemia, a blockage of blood vessels that can result in neurological and motor deficits and long-term disability. Since stroke predominantly affects the elderly, this study focused on the effects of hematopoietic (blood-derived) growth factors on ischemic stroke in aged mice. Two growth factors - stem cell factor (SCF) and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) - were administered to mice daily for different periods of time (one week and two weeks) after a stroke was induced. While treatment for two weeks did not appear to be more effective than one week of treatment, there was decreased fibrinogen (a component in plasma that is linked with stroke) in both groups and motor function seemed to improve as well. Results from the study suggested that factors derived from stem cells may be able to exert therapeutic effects similar to those offered by the cells themselves.

This study is scheduled to be published in the 25(4) special ASNTR issue of Cell Transplantation, and is freely available on-line as an unedited, early epub, at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-CT-1544_Liu_et_al

Contact: Dr. Li-Ru Zhao, Department of Neurosurgery, State University of New York Upstate Medical University, 750 E. Adams St., Syracuse, NY 13210

Email: ZHAOL@upstate.edu

Fax: + 1 315 464 5504

Ph: + 1 315 464 8470

Citation: Liu, Y.; Popescu, M.; Longo, S.; Gao, M.; Wang, D.; McGillis, S.; Zhao, L-R. Fibrinogen reduction and motor function improvement by hematopoietic growth factor treatment in chronic stroke in aged mice: a treatment frequency study Cell Transplant. Appeared or available on-line: January 26, 2016.

"These manuscripts from studies presented at the 22nd annual ASNTR meeting are representative of the excellent progress in neural therapy as well as the mission of the society itself," said Dr. Cesario V. Borlongan, president of the 23rd ASNTR, and Distinguished Professor at the Department of Neurosurgery and Brain Repair, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. "We look forward to hosting another successful annual meeting in which colleagues can share recent breakthroughs and advances in neural therapy for various neurological conditions."

###

The 23rd ASNTR Annual Meeting will be held in Clearwater, Florida April 28-30, 2016. Contact Donna Morrison at dmorriso@health.usf.edu

The Coeditors-in-chief for CELL TRANSPLANTATION are at the Diabetes Research Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and Center for Neuropsychiatry, China Medical University Hospital, TaiChung, Taiwan. Contact, Camillo Ricordi, MD at ricordi@miami.edu or Shinn-Zong Lin, MD, PhD at shinnzong@yahoo.com.tw or David Eve, PhD or Samantha Portis, MS, at celltransplantation@gmail.com
March 2, 2016 (NEW YORK CITY) -- Nearly half of children in the United States live dangerously close to the poverty line, according to new research from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Basic Facts about Low-Income Children, the center's annual series of profiles on child poverty in America, illustrates the severity of economic instability and poverty conditions faced by more than 31 million children throughout the United States. Using the latest data from the American Community Survey, NCCP researchers found that while the total number of children in the U.S. has remained about the same since 2008, more children today are likely to live in families barely able to afford their most basic needs.

"These data challenge the prevailing beliefs that many still hold about what poverty looks like and which children in this country are most likely to be at risk," said Renee Wilson-Simmons, DrPH, NCCP director. "The fact is, despite the significant gains we've made in expanding nutrition and health insurance programs to reach the children most in need, millions of children are living in families still struggling to make ends meet in our low-growth, low-wage economy."

According to NCCP researchers, the number of poor children in the U.S. grew by 18 percent from 2008 to 2014 (the latest available data), and the number of children living in low-income households grew by 10 percent. NCCP defines a low-income household as one where incomes fall below 200 percent of the Federal Poverty Threshold (e.g., $48,016 for a family of four with two children in 2014). A family is considered poor if its earnings are below 100 percent of the poverty threshold (e.g., $24,008 for a family of four with two children in 2014).

Published annually since 2009, Basic Facts about Low-Income Children profiles demographic and socioeconomic conditions of poor and low-income children in fact sheets for five age groups, from infants and toddlers to adolescents. Fact sheet data are widely cited by policymakers, researchers, advocates, and the media as authoritative. NCCP's annual fact sheets on child poverty in America are available online at http://www.nccp.org/publications/fact_sheets.html.

These are some of the findings in the 2016 edition of Basic Facts about Low-Income Children:

More than four in ten U.S. children are living close to the poverty line. In 2014, 44 percent of children under age 18 (31.4 million) lived in low-income households and 21 percent lived in poor families (15.4 million). This is still much higher than at the start of the Great Recession in 2008, when 39 percent of children were considered low income and 18 percent lived in poor households.

Children remain more likely than adults to live in poverty. While 44 percent of children live in low-income households, only one-third of adults between 18 and 64 years of age live in these households. In addition, children are more than twice as likely as adults 65 years and older to live in poor families.

America's youngest children are still those most likely to live in low-income or poor households. Some 47 percent of children age 5 years or younger live in low-income families, compared to 45 percent of children age 6 to 11 years (10.8 million), and 40 percent of children age 12 to 17 years (9.7 million).

Disparities in child poverty persist along racial lines. More than 60 percent of black, Hispanic, and Native American kids live in low-income families, compared to 30 percent of Asian and white children -- a dynamic largely unchanged since 2008.

Many children living in poverty have parents with some higher education, and many live in two-parent households. While higher parental education decreases the likelihood that a child will live in a low-income or poor household, nearly half of children living in poverty (48 percent) have a parent with at least some college education. Though data shows that children who live with married parents are much less likely to be poor or low income compared to children who live with a single parent, nearly half of children (47 percent) in low-income families and 36 percent of children in poor families (5.5 million) live with married parents.

Part of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) is the nation's leading public policy center dedicated to promoting the economic security, health, and well-being of America's low-income families and children. Visit NCCP online at http://www.nccp.org. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter via @NCCP.

About Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Mailman School is the third largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its over 450 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change & health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with over 1,300 graduate students from more than 40 nations pursuing a variety of master's and doctoral degree programs. The Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers including ICAP (formerly the International Center for AIDS Care and Treatment Programs) and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit http://www.mailman.columbia.edu
RCW 106 is a sprawling cloud of gas and dust located about 12 000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Norma (The Carpenter's Square). The region gets its name from being the 106th entry in a catalogue of H II regions in the southern Milky Way [1]. H II regions like RCW 106 are clouds of hydrogen gas that are being ionised by the intense starlight of scorching-hot, young stars, causing them to glow and display weird and wonderful shapes.

RCW 106 itself is the red cloud above centre in this new image, although much of this huge H II region is hidden by dust and it is much more extensive than the visible part. Many other unrelated objects are also visible in this wide-field VST image. For example, the filaments to the right of the image are the remnants of an ancient supernova, and the glowing red filaments at the lower left surround an unusual and very hot star [2]. Patches of dark obscuring dust are also visible across the entire cosmic landscape.

Astronomers have been studying RCW 106 for some time, although it is not the crimson clouds that draw their attention, but rather the mysterious origin of the massive and powerful stars buried within. Although they are very bright, these stars cannot be seen in visible-light images such as this one as the surrounding dust is too thick, but they make their presence clear in images of the region at longer wavelengths.

For less massive stars like the Sun the process that brings them into existence is quite well understood -- as clouds of gas are pulled together under gravity, density and temperature increase, and nuclear fusion begins) -- but for the most massive stars buried in regions like RCW 106 this explanation does not seem to be fully adequate. These stars -- known to astronomers as O-type stars -- may have masses many dozens of times the mass of the Sun and it is not clear how they manage to gather, and keep together, enough gas to form.

O-type stars likely form from the densest parts of the nebular clouds like RCW 106 and they are notoriously difficult to study. Apart from obscuration by dust, another challenge is the brevity of an O-type star's life. They burn through their nuclear fuel in mere tens of millions of years, while the lightest stars have lifetimes that span many tens of billions of years. The difficulty of forming a star of this mass, and the shortness of their lifetimes, means that they are very rare -- only one in every three million stars in our cosmic neighbourhood is an O-type star. None of those that do exist are close enough for detailed investigation and so the formation of these fleeting stellar giants remains mysterious, although their outsized influence is unmistakeable in glowing H II regions like this one.

###

Notes

[1] The catalogue was compiled in 1960 by three astronomers from the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia whose surnames were Rodgers, Campbell and Whiteoak, hence the prefix RCW.

[2] The supernova remnant is SNR G332.4-00.4, also known as RCW 103. It is about 2000 years old. The lower filaments are RCW 104, surrounding the Wolf-Rayet star WR 75. Although these objects bear RCW numbers, detailed later investigations revealed that neither of them were HII regions.

More information

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 16 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is a major partner in ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre European Extremely Large Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".

Links

* Photos of the VST - http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/surveytelescopes/vst/

Contacts

Richard Hook

education and Public Outreach Department

Garching bei Munchen, Germany

Tel: +49 89 3200 6655

Cell: +49 151 1537 3591

Email: rhook@eso.org
New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that neutrophils internalize C. neoformans in the brain vasculature and circulate them back into the bloodstream for removal

Researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, and Nanjing Medical University, China, have discovered a new way that white blood cells (neutrophils) defend our brains from infection--they move the microbes from our brains' blood vessels or vasculature so they can be disposed elsewhere instead of just killing them at the site of infection. The final version of the report appears in the March 2016 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.

"We hope our study opens a new field by using in vivo imaging to investigate how white blood cells interact with microbes in the brain, providing the scientific basis for targeting white blood cells as preventive and therapeutic interventions in brain infections," said Meiqing Shi, D.V.M., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Division of Immunology, Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland.

To make their discovery, the University of Maryland and Nanjing Medical University scientists used a form of microscopy, known as intravital microscopy, to visualize in mice the dynamic interactions of neutrophils with C. neoformans arrested in the brain microvasculature. This process enabled the observance of events in real time in living animals. They found that a therapeutic strategy aimed at enhancing the accumulation of neutrophils could help prevent cryptococcal meningoencephalitis.

"New technologies, including the ability to microscopically visualize and watch the behavior of germs and immune cells in living tissues, are revolutionizing our understanding of infections and other diseases," said John Wherry, Ph.D., Deputy Editor of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology. "These new studies that demonstrate the ability to neutrophils to move dangerous germs away from the brain makes us rethink the coordination in the immune response since these cells were previously thought to simply be soldiers killing germs wherever they found them."

###

The Journal of Leukocyte Biology publishes peer-reviewed manuscripts on original investigations focusing on the cellular and molecular biology of leukocytes and on the origins, the developmental biology, biochemistry and functions of granulocytes, lymphocytes, mononuclear phagocytes and other cells involved in host defense and inflammation. The Journal of Leukocyte Biology is published by the Society for Leukocyte Biology.

Details: Mingshun Zhang, Donglei Sun, Gongguan Liu, Hui Wu, Hong Zhou, and Meiqing Shi. Real-time in vivo imaging reveals the ability of neutrophils to remove Cryptococcus neoformans directly from the brain vasculature. J. Leukoc. Biol. 99:467-473; doi:10.1189/jlb.4AB0715-281R ; http://www.jleukbio.org/content/99/3/467.abstract

Early Online Version: October 1, 2015. Final Version: March 1, 2016,
Vehicle fuels made of plant waste are sustainable and climate friendly. Unfortunately the energy in stems, bark and twigs is locked up in cellulose, which is tough to crack open by the enzymes used to transform cellulose into sugar, which can then be fermented into alcohol.

One family of enzymes, lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs), ease the transformation of cellulose. They are the way forward. Chemists at the University of Copenhagen have now taken a leap ahead in understanding how LPMOs work by showing how these enzymes bind to cellulose. This can be incredibly important for, among other things, the development and production of sustainable biofuels.

Kristian Frandsen is a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Chemistry. Together with Associate Professor Lo Leggio and Laboratory Manager Jens-Christian Navarro Poulsen, he is part of CESBIC, an international research consortium that includes the Danish company Novozymes and others. Today, the research team will have their article 'The molecular basis of polysaccharide cleavage by lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases'published in the prestigious journal Nature Chemical Biology.

In large part, plant waste consists of cellulose, an energy rich polymer made up of sugar (glucose), bound together in chains. Glucose is fermented into alcohol that can be used as fuel. Kristian Frandsen, the article's first author, explains that LPMO eases the path to cellulose for other enzymes, thus making it easier for them to ultimately break the cellulose down. Indeed, understanding the mechanics of this process is crucial.

"We are the first ones to get a picture of an LPMO in the first stage of the breakdown process, and in high resolution no less. Combined with our colleagues' biochemical and spectroscopic insights, the entire team of researchers has been able to attain a detailed appreciation of the chemical mechanisms. That is, how the enzyme is able to hack away at cellulose at the sub-atomic level." Frandsen hopes that these insights will make it easier to optimise production of new and even more effective enzymes. "Additionally, the project has provided me with contact to many international experts," says Frandsen.

Frandsen's PhD supervisor, Associate Professor Lo Leggio, refers to the work as a breakthrough. While the first LPMOs were identified at the end of the 1990's, they were first suspected to be glycoside hydrolases, a type of enzyme that breaks bonds using water molecules. It was later discovered that these enzymes used oxygen (known as oxidation). At the same time, it was also discovered that a copper ion was essential to the process.

"We had known what the enzymes looked like on their own for quite some time. This knowledge was important as form controls function. But many in the LPMO field consider the understanding of how LPMOs bind to cellulose as some sort of "Holy Grail". Without that knowledge, it is impossible to understand the details of what controls the reaction. With X-ray crystallography, we have now been able to take a few snapshots in crystals of LPMOs that were soaked with bits of cellulose, allowing us to witness detail at the atomic level," explains Lo Leggio.

The UCPH researchers have used X-ray crystallography to shed light on the LPMO enzymes' interaction with cellulose. In order to do this, the cellulose fragments needed to be bound into crystals of the enzyme. Jens-Christian Navarro Poulsen, the group member responsible for the crystallization laboratory, explains:

"Our group had already conducted unsuccessful attempts with other LPMOs to create a crystal in which the substrate, cellulose, was bound. And we know that many other groups have conducted similar experiments. Therefore, it was a great moment when we received the good news from Kristian that cellulose fragments were apparent in the structure," says Poulsen.

The vital X-ray experiments were conducted at the MAXlab in Lund, Sweden and at the ESRF facility in Grenoble, France.

In addition to UCPH's Department of Chemistry and Novozymes, the company that identified and produced the enzyme for the experiments, the partners of the international consortium are the University of Cambridge, Aix-Marseille Universite and the University of York.

###
High-grade glioma is the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Despite improvements in surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, this type of brain tumour is still notoriously hard to treat: less than 10% of patients survive beyond five years. Researchers from KU Leuven, Belgium, have now shown that next-generation cell-based immunotherapy may offer new hope in the fight against brain cancer.

Cell-based immunotherapy involves the injection of a therapeutic anticancer vaccine that stimulates the patient's immune system to attack the tumour. Thus far, the results of this type of immunotherapy have been mildly promising. However, Abhishek D. Garg and Professor Patrizia Agostinis from the KU Leuven Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine have now found a novel way to produce more effective cell-based anticancer vaccines.

The researchers induced a specific type of cell death in brain cancer cells from mice. The dying cancer cells were then incubated together with dendritic cells, which play a vital role in the immune system. The researchers discovered that this type of cancer cell killing releases 'danger signals' that fully activate the dendritic cells.

"We re-injected the activated dendritic cells into the mice as a therapeutic vaccine", Professor Patrizia Agostinis explains. "That vaccine alerted the immune system to the presence of dangerous cancer cells in the body. As a result, the immune system could recognize them and start attacking the brain tumour."

Combined with chemotherapy, this novel cell-based immunotherapy drastically increased the survival rates of mice afflicted with brain tumours. Almost 50% of the mice were completely cured. For the sake of comparison: none of the mice treated with chemotherapy alone became long-term survivors.

"The major goal of any anticancer treatment is to kill all cancer cells and prevent any remaining malignant cells from growing or spreading again", Professor Agostinis continues. "This goal, however, is rarely achieved with current chemotherapies, and many patients relapse. That's why the co-stimulation of the immune system is so important for cancer treatments. Scientists have to look for ways to kill cancer cells in a manner that stimulates the immune system. With an eye on clinical studies, our findings offer a feasible way to improve the production of vaccines against brain tumours."

###
A study by researchers at Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center confirmed that teens who attend classes about relationships have lower tolerance for aggression and dating violence. Healthier dating attitudes can be acquired after even brief involvement in an anti-violence curriculum.

Co-authored by Meredith C. Joppa, Ph.D., and Christie J. Rizzo, Ph.D., researchers and colleagues on behalf of the BHCRC, the study was published in the Journal of School Health.

"Adolescent dating violence is a huge problem in the United States, and schools are being urged to address this issue," said Joppa. "Some states have even legislated this type of training. Given the limited time available to implement prevention programming during the school day, brief programs are needed, and we tested one such curriculum to gauge its effectiveness."

Researchers learned that even as few as five lessons from a community-based dating violence prevention program can effect changes in student attitudes and behaviors.

According to the Centers for Disease Control in 2012, nine percent of U.S. high school students reported physical dating violence in the previous 12 months. It is a significant public health problem that characterizes a large percentage of teen-dating relationships. Male youth victimization rates vary by study, from 6 to 38 percent, and their perpetration rates vary from 11 to 20 percent. Female youth victimization rates range from 8 to 57 percent and their perpetration rates are higher than the males, varying from 28 to 33 percent.

"Violence ranges from emotional and verbal abuse to physical and sexual abuse," said Rizzo. "The good news is, good relationship skills can be taught. Measuring behavior change is a critical component of dating violence prevention research and is rarely found in studies of adolescent dating violence prevention programs. This study demonstrates that teens can modify their cognitions and behaviors about dating violence."

In this study, 225 tenth-grade students in a large public high school in Massachusetts, who had their parents' consent, were enrolled in the Katie Brown Educational Program's five-session, dating violence prevention curriculum. The control group continued to take health class as usual, without discussions of dating violence. At the conclusion of the program and three months later, the teens in the anti-violence program showed changes in their attitudes, behaviors and knowledge about relationships.

The Katie Brown Education Program is based in Fall River, Massachusetts and works with schools throughout Southern New England to deliver their dating violence prevention curriculum. Their curriculum uses observational learning, discussion, role-play and modeling of health relationship skills. Each session included lecture, discussion, group and individual activities, handouts and worksheets. The materials included educational components such as identifying types of violence, rights in relationships, and warning signs of dating violence, as well as key skills components such as conflict resolution, communications skills, and taking responsibility for choices and actions. For example, the facilitator engages the group in a game called "agree/disagree" to help the teens realize their conceptions about wants and needs in a relationship. She will then lead them in a discussion about the traits of healthy and unhealthy dating relationships.

"We found important changes in attitudes and knowledge among students who received the Katie Brown Educational Program curriculum in comparison to those teens taking the usual health class," said Rizzo. "Identifying an efficacious and brief curriculum is crucial, as brief programming may offset the burden of dating violence education on school resources and can be incorporated into any high school health curriculum."

###

The study was supported by a training grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (T32 MH078788) to Rhode Island Hospital and the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown Center for AIDS Research (P30 AI042853)

Meredith C. Joppa, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey. She was a fellow in child/adolescent biobehavioral HIV research at Rhode Island Hospital and the Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University during the study period. Other researchers involved in the study include Christie J. Rizzo, Ph.D., department of applied psychology at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts; Larry K. Brown, M.D. and Amethys V. Nieves, B.S., Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center at Rhode Island Hospital.

About The Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center

Established in 2002, The Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center (BHCRC) encompasses a broad spectrum of research programs that share a commitment to studying the impact of psychological factors on the growth and development of children and their families. Based in Providence, R.I, the collaborative group draws child mental health researchers from Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital, both teaching hospitals for Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Annually, investigators direct more than 50 externally funded projects, and annual external support averages nearly $10 million.
DENVER, CO - A new study published in Behavioral Sleep Medicine shows that children who are taught at home get more sleep than those who go to private and public schools. The findings provide additional evidence of teens' altered biological clocks and support an argument for starting traditional high school later in the morning.

"We have a school system that is set up so that the youngest children, who are awake very early in the morning, start school latest, and our adolescents, who need sleep the most, are being asked to wake up and go to school at a time when their brains should physiologically be asleep," said Lisa Meltzer, PhD, a sleep psychologist at National Jewish Health in Denver, and lead author of the study.

"Adolescents need nine hours of sleep a night and if they're only getting seven hours, on average, by the end of the week they are a full ten hours of sleep behind schedule," said Meltzer, "and that impacts every aspect of functioning."

Meltzer and her colleagues charted the sleep patterns of 407 students. They found that adolescent homeschooled students slept an average of 90 minutes more per night than public and private school students, who were in class an average of 18 minutes before homeschooled children even awoke.

"That cumulative sleep deprivation adds up," said Meltzer. "The ability to learn, concentrate and pay attention is all diminished when you haven't had enough sleep. But more than that, a lack of sleep can also impact a teenager's mood and their ability to drive early in the morning," she said.

If your teenager needs more sleep, why not just send them to bed earlier? "It's not that simple," said Meltzer. Melatonin, the hormone that helps regulate our sleep, shifts by about two hours during puberty. So, even if they wanted to get to sleep earlier, teenagers are battling biological changes in their bodies that are nearly impossible to overcome.

"It's not that they don't want to go to bed, but physiologically they simply can't fall asleep earlier. So, the logical solution, is to allow them to sleep later," said Meltzer.

Fifteen year old Caelin Jones couldn't agree more. Jones, who lives in Denver, says he sets his alarm every morning for six o'clock to get to school on time, though he never quite felt fully awake until several hours later.

"Most days I would get to school and pretty much be the same as all the other kids. We were all just bleary-eyed and wondering why we had to be here at this time," he said.

Jones' sleep problems became so consuming that he sought sleep counseling through Dr. Meltzer at National Jewish Health. "It's made a big difference for me," said Jones, who has learned habits to help him wind down at night.

The study concluded that more than half (55%) of teens who were homeschooled got the optimal amount of sleep per week, compared to just 24.5% of those who attend public and private schools. Conversely, 44.5% of public and private school teens got insufficient sleep during the school week, compared to only 16.3% of homeschooled teens.

"The differences are stark," said Meltzer. "Across the country, public and private schools that have changed their high school start times see considerable benefits. Students are tardy less often and graduation rates are actually higher," she said.

While you may not be able to change teenagers' biology, you can help them develop healthier sleeping habits. Meltzer offers this advice:

Get all electronics out of the bedroom. TVs, computers, video games and phones are major distractions for teens and often delay sleep.

Don't look at any screens 30-60 minutes before bed time. Though turning off media is as simple as flipping a switch, the human brain does not work the same way. Being stimulated by media just before bed can make the brain too active to sleep.

Set up family charging stations, where mom, dad and the kids plug in their phones at night so they are out of reach.

Most importantly, set a consistent routine. Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, even on weekends. This one habit can help regulate your body's internal clock and improve the quality of sleep you get.

###

National Jewish Health is known worldwide for treatment of patients with respiratory, cardiac, immune and related disorders, and for groundbreaking medical research. Founded in 1899 as a nonprofit hospital, National Jewish Health remains the only facility in the world dedicated exclusively to these disorders. U.S.News & World Report has ranked National Jewish Health the number one respiratory hospital in the nation for 15 consecutive years.
Astronomers for the first time have detected repeating short bursts of radio waves from an enigmatic source that is likely located well beyond the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. The findings indicate that these "fast radio bursts" come from an extremely powerful object which occasionally produces multiple bursts in under a minute.

Prior to this discovery, reported in Nature, all previously detected fast radio bursts (FRBs) have appeared to be one-off events. Because of that, most theories about the origin of these mysterious pulses have involved cataclysmic incidents that destroy their source - a star exploding in a supernova, for example, or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. The new finding, however, shows that at least some FRBs have other origins.

FRBs, which last just a few thousandths of a second, have puzzled scientists since they were first reported nearly a decade ago. Despite extensive follow-up efforts, astronomers until now have searched in vain for repeat bursts.

That changed last November 5th, when McGill University PhD student Paul Scholz was sifting through results from observations performed with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico - the world's largest radio telescope. The new data, gathered in May and June and run through a supercomputer at the McGill High Performance Computing Centre, showed several bursts with properties consistent with those of an FRB detected in 2012.

The repeat signals were surprising - and "very exciting," Scholz says. "I knew immediately that the discovery would be extremely important in the study of FRBs." As his office mates gathered around his computer screen, Scholz pored over the remaining output from specialized software used to search for pulsars and radio bursts. He found that there were a total of 10 new bursts.

The finding suggests that these bursts must have come from a very exotic object, such as a rotating neutron star having unprecedented power that enables the emission of extremely bright pulses, the researchers say. It is also possible that the finding represents the first discovery of a sub-class of the cosmic fast-radio-burst population.

"Not only did these bursts repeat, but their brightness and spectra also differ from those of other FRBs," notes Laura Spitler, first author of the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists believe that these and other radio bursts originate from distant galaxies, based on the measurement of an effect known as plasma dispersion. Pulses that travel through the cosmos are distinguished from man-made interference by the influence of interstellar electrons, which cause radio waves to travel more slowly at lower radio frequencies. The 10 newly discovered bursts, like the one detected in 2012, have three times the maximum dispersion measure that would be expected from a source within the Milky Way.

Intriguingly, the most likely implication of the new Arecibo finding - that the repeating FRB originates from a very young extragalactic neutron star - is at odds with the results of a study published last week in Nature by another research team. That paper suggested FRBs are related to cataclysmic events, such as short gamma-ray bursts, which can not generate repeat events. "However, the apparent conflict between the studies could be resolved, if it turns out that there are at least two kinds of FRB sources," notes McGill physics professor Victoria Kaspi, a senior member of the international team that conducted the Arecibo study.

In future research, the team hopes to identify the galaxy where the radio bursts originated. To do so, they will need to detect bursts using radio telescopes with far more resolving power than Arecibo, a National Science Foundation-sponsored facility with a dish that spans 305 metres and covers about 20 acres. Using a technique called interferometry, performed with radio telescope arrays spread over large geographical distances, the astronomers may be able to achieve the needed resolution.

"Once we have precisely localized the repeater's position on the sky, we will be able to compare observations from optical and X-ray telescopes and see if there is a galaxy there," says Jason Hessels, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy as well as corresponding author of the Nature paper. "Finding the host galaxy of this source is critical to understanding its properties", he adds.

Canada's CHIME telescope could help unravel the puzzle, adds Kaspi, who is Director of the McGill Space Institute. Thanks to the novel design of the soon-to-be completed apparatus, it is expected to be able to detect dozens of fast radio bursts per day, she says. "CHIME will further our quest to understand the origin of this mysterious phenomenon, which has the potential to provide a valuable new probe of the Universe."

###

The McGill researchers were supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Canada Research Chairs program, the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics & Cosmology and the Fonds de recherche du Quebec - Nature et technologies.

"A Repeating Fast Radio Burst," by L. Spitler et al, Nature, published online March 2, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature17168
(ORLANDO, Fla.) Computed Tomography (CT) scans are one of the most frequently-used imaging tools in medicine. In fact, more than 72 million scans are performed each year to diagnose various medical conditions. But public health concerns persist about radiation exposure from these tests -- especially when given to children and young adults. Now, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center report in a new study that they successfully performed CT scans for joint fractures with one-fourteenth the amount of normal CT radiation -- without compromising image quality or a surgeon's ability to effectively diagnose an injury.

Specifically, the researchers reduced the average amount of radiation from 0.43 msV to 0.03 msV, or down to the average dose given in a routine chest x-ray. Equally important, the researchers were able to accurately identify the presence of typical fractures 98 percent of the time.

"We have taken a frequently used and necessary imaging test and made it safer," says lead study author Sanjit R. Konda, MD, assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at NYU Langone and director of orthopaedic trauma at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center. "Providing patients with a CT scan with 14-times less radiation could have significant implications from a public health and safety standpoint."

The findings are being presented Wednesday, March 2, at the 2016 American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) Annual Meeting.

Radiation in CT Scans: A Public Health Concern

CT scans help diagnose medical conditions including broken bones, cancers, internal bleeding, or signs of heart disease. Yet, despite its prevalent use, medical societies and federal agencies have been increasingly trying to reduce the number of unnecessary scans due to radiation's link to an increased risk for cancer. While the overall risk is considered low, there is particular concern in performing CT scans on children. Approximately 600,000 head and abdominal CT scans are annually performed in children under 15.

In orthopaedic trauma, CT scans help diagnose injuries around a joint, particularly if the fracture involves the joint's surface. The scans also help clinicians assess joint displacement and aid in surgical planning to put the joint back in position. An X-ray, while a good initial screening tool, does not provide the same level of detail.

Protocol Put to the Test

Dr. Konda's team worked with radiologists from NYU Langone, led by study co-author Soterios Gyftopoulos, MD, an assistant professor of radiology, to reduce the amount of CT radiation while maintaining image quality. Together, they developed a protocol called REDUCTION (Reduced Effective Dose Using Computed Tomography In Orthopaedic Injury).

Previously, the group applied this protocol to examine air around a knee joint where infections easily could develop. Its application was so successful that the researchers set out to use the protocol to reduce radiation for traumatic joint fractures, such as those caused by a car accident or fall.

Between August 2014 and March 2015, 50 patients showing clinical symptoms of joint fractures received ultra-low dose radiation CT scans. Images from these ultra-low dose CT scans were compared to a sample of age-matched, similar fracture injuries where patients were evaluated with a standard CT scan.

The results were impressive: researchers achieved 98-percent sensitivity and 89 percent specificity with the ultra-low dose CT scans. In other words, if a person has a joint fracture, it would be detected on the ultra-low dose CT scan 98 percent of the time, while a negative finding - no fracture having occurred -- was determined 89 percent of the time. Equally important, these findings were comparable to the conventional CT-scans (98 percent sensitivity and 85 percent specificity with occult fractures removed). Image quality was rated moderate to near perfect by the orthopaedic surgeons.

"The ability to perform ultra-low dose radiation CT scans without compromising image quality demonstrates the comprehensive capabilities of this protocol," says senior study author Kenneth A. Egol, MD, professor of orthopaedic surgery and chief of the division of orthopaedic trauma surgery at NYU Langone. "Patients who undergo a traumatic injury or suspected fracture have enough to worry about. Our research makes radiation exposure among the least of their concerns."

Next, the researchers will continue to follow-up patients who underwent the ultra-low dose CT scans to ensure patient outcomes haven't changed in the hopes of expanding the protocol to other departments.

###

In addition to Drs. Konda, Egol and Gyftopoulos, NYU Langone researchers included Abraham Goch, BS; Philipp Leucht, MD, PhD; Anthony Christiano, BA, and Gideon Yoeli, MD, provided support from Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.
Around five million people in the UK are currently being treated for asthma. Of these, a quarter of a million are unable to get good control of their condition, resulting in frequent, severe, or even life-threatening attacks. A new study brings hope to these patients by investigating whether the drug Omalizumab can be better targeted.

The study is being run by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Translational Research Partnership with support from global pharmaceutical company Novartis. It will investigate whether the antibody treatment Omalizumab could be targeted at those people with severe asthma who will benefit most. Omalizumab is an approved therapy for people who do not respond to steroid treatment and it is hoped that better targeting could save both lives and money in the NHS. It is important to individual patients to know whether the drug, which is given by injection, is likely to work for them.

The study into Omalizumab is enabling researchers to identify which biomarkers are changed by the treatment. This should make it possible to quickly identify those patients who will get the most benefit from Omalizumab treatment, giving them relief from severe symptoms. The NIHR Translational Research Partnership, which brings together the country's leading investigators working in inflammatory respiratory disease, has made it possible to carry out this in-depth biomarker research with this group of severe asthma patients. The study was developed by the NIHR Southampton Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit and is being managed by the NIHR funded Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Southampton.

Life Sciences Minister George Freeman MP said: "Severe asthma has a huge impact on people's lives, so by targeting treatments more effectively it will not only support patients but make better use of NHS resources.

"We invest over 1 billion each year in the National Institute for Health Research which is helping us to better understand these treatments. It is great news that Novartis has teamed up with the NIHR's expert researchers to ensure that the right treatment is given to the right patient at the right time."

Mark Samuels from the NIHR's Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure, which runs the Translational Research Partnership, said: "With around five million people suffering from asthma in the UK, it is something we can all relate to. We are collaborating with the life sciences industry to beat debilitating illnesses that affect so many of us. Our experts are working closely with companies to bring new treatments to patients faster for a range of inflammatory diseases. This is yet another example of global pharma recognising that Britain has some of the world's best research talent and expertise. It is well recognised that the pharmaceutical industry's drug development model is broken, so companies need to collaborate with us to tackle major diseases."

Study lead Professor Ratko Djukanovic, from University Hospital Southampton and the University of Southampton, said: "Finding better therapeutic approaches for people with severe asthma remains a real unmet health need. Omalizumab is an effective and widely used treatment for this group of patients and it is important to be able to predict which patients are likely to get maximum benefit from it. This new study should help identify the biomarkers that will help us to target this treatment more effectively. It is using sophisticated state-of-the-art laboratory technologies and builds on the collaborative spirit we have developed in the Partnership."

The study brings together some of the UK's leading asthma researchers across 14 research centres and will recruit 200 patients. It uses novel data from U-BIOPRED, a major Europe-wide research programme establishing innovative testing methods to classify patients into distinct severe asthma types and speed up the development of better treatments for patients with severe asthma. The Translational Research Partnership was a key driver to apply the biomarkers discovered in U-BIOPRED in this new study.

###
Breeding birds that nest above alligators for protection from mammalian predators may also provide a source of food for the alligators living in the Everglades, Florida, according to a study published March 2, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lucas Nell from the University of Florida and colleagues.

For many bird species, nest predation is the greatest threat to raising chicks. Long-legged wading birds, like herons, egrets, ibises, storks, and spoonbills may choose nesting sites above resident American alligators, likely to take advantage of protection from nest predators such as raccoons and opossums. While the benefits to the bird species of having alligators nearby are well-documented, few studies have explored the effect on the protector, the alligator. Specifically, some previous research has shown that wading bird nesting colonies could provide substantial food for alligators in the form of dropped chicks, which are chicks ejected from the nest when a bird lays more eggs than they can raise. In this study, the authors compared the body condition of ~40 female alligators living with and without long-legged wading bird nesting colonies in similar habitat in the Everglades, Florida. To measure body condition, they took blood samples and measured the mass and length of the alligators.

The researchers found that the body condition of alligators found near wading bird nesting colonies was higher than those in similar habitat without active colonies, independent of a range of environmental variables. The mean body condition based on size and shape for colony-associated alligators captured for the study ranked as the 63rd percentile, while that for non-colony females ranked as the 17th. The authors suggest that there appears to be a beneficial interaction between the alligators and nesting birds, where birds nest above alligators for protection, but chicks that fall from the nest may also provide a food source for the alligators. The authors indicate that further studies are needed to analyze a wide variety of alligators living in a different habitats, but since nesting birds and crocodilians co-occur in many tropical and subtropical wetlands, the results highlight a potentially widespread beneficial interaction between two ecologically important species groups.

Dr. Nell added, "Our study is the first to demonstrate a mutually beneficial relationship between nesting birds and a crocodilian: nesting wading birds provide nutrition for alligators that, by their mere presence, create predator-free space for birds. Crocodilians and nesting birds co-occur throughout the tropics, so these may be globally important ecological associations."

###

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149572

Citation: Nell LA, Frederick PC, Mazzotti FJ, Vliet KA, Brandt LA (2016) Presence of Breeding Birds Improves Body Condition for a Crocodilian Nest Protector. PLoS ONE 11(3): e0149572. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0149572

Funding: This work was supported by a grant to PCF from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, grant number W912HZ-10-2-0013. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
A new, less expensive, and faster method now has been developed and used to determine the DNA sequence of the male-specific Y chromosome in the gorilla. The technique will allow better access to genetic information of the Y chromosome of any species and thus can be used to study male infertility disorders and male-specific mutations. It also can aid in conservation genetics efforts by helping to trace paternity and to track how males move within and between populations in endangered species, like gorillas.

A paper describing the method and the discovery resulting from its use in comparing the sequence of the gorilla Y chromosome to the sequences of the human and chimpanzee Y chromosomes will be published on March 2, 2016 in the Advance Online edition of the journal Genome Research. The article also will be published in the April 2016 print issue of the journal.

"Surprisingly, we found that in many ways the gorilla Y chromosome is more similar to the human Y chromosome than either is to the chimpanzee Y chromosome," said Kateryna Makova, the Francis R. and Helen M. Pentz Professor of Science at Penn State and one of two corresponding authors of the paper. "In regions of the chromosome where we can align all three species, the sequence similarity fits with what we know about the evolutionary relationships among the species -- humans are more closely related to chimpanzees. However, the chimpanzee Y chromosome appears to have undergone more changes in the number of genes and contains a different amount of repetitive elements compared to the human or gorilla. Moreover, a greater proportion of the gorilla Y sequences can be aligned to the human than to the chimpanzee Y chromosome."

The Y chromosome of mammals is incredibly difficult to sequence for a number of reasons. One reason is that the Y chromosome is present in only one copy and makes up only about one to two percent of the total genetic material found in a cell of a male. To reduce this difficulty, the researchers used an experimental technique called flow-sorting to preferentially select the Y chromosome for sequencing based on the chromosome's size and genetic content.

"Flow-sorting increased the amount of the Y chromosome in our dataset to about thirty percent," said Paul Medvedev, assistant professor of computer science and engineering and of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, the other corresponding author of the paper. "To further enrich our data for the Y chromosome, we developed a computational technique -- called RecoverY -- to sort the data into Y and non-Y sequences based on how frequently similar sequences appeared in our data."

The Y chromosome, like all DNA, is composed of a series of molecules called "bases" that are represented by the letters A, T, C, and G. Current genetic sequencing technologies produce "reads" of sequence that are much shorter than the entire length of the chromosome. These reads need to be placed in order and pieced together by finding places where they overlap into longer and longer chunks. The research team used two different sequencing technologies to help with this assembly of the DNA sequence of the Y chromosome.

One sequencing technology used by the researchers produces massive amounts of very short reads -- about 150 to 250 bases in length. Using this method, the researchers sequenced enough reads to cover the entire length of the Y chromosome about 450 times. The researchers assembled these short reads into longer chunks that they then further connected using the second sequencing technology that produces longer reads -- about seven thousand bases in length on average.

"By reducing non-Y chromosome reads from our data with flow sorting and the RecoverY technique that we developed, and by using this combination of sequencing technologies, we were able to assemble the gorilla Y chromosome so that more than half of the sequence data was in chunks longer than about 100,000 bases in length," said Medvedev.

Another reason that determining the genetic sequence of the Y chromosome is so difficult is that it is composed of an unusually high number of repeated sequences -- regions where the sequence of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs are identical, or nearly identical, for thousands or millions of bases in a row. Many of these repeats, including some genes, appear as back-to-back series of the same repeated sequence or as long palindromes which, like the word "racecar," read the same forward and backward. The researchers used an experimental technique -- "droplet digital polymerase chain reaction" -- to determine the number of copies of the genes that appear in these series.

"Sequencing the Y chromosome is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, without knowing the final picture, from a pile of pieces where only about one out of every hundred is useful, and most of the pieces you do need look identical," said Makova. "We've developed a pipeline for sequencing the Y chromosome that is more efficient than previous methods and reduces a number of the difficulties associated with determining the genetic sequence of the Y chromosome. Our method will open the door for studying the Y chromosome for more labs, more species, and more individuals within those species."

To demonstrate the utility of the gorilla Y chromosome sequence they generated, the researchers designed genetic markers that can be used to differentiate the genetic relatedness among male gorillas and thus to aid in conservation genetics efforts targeted at preserving this endangered species.

###

In addition to Makova and Medvedev, the research team includes Marta Tomaszkiewicz, Samarth Rangavittal, Monika Cechova, Rebeca Campos-Sanchez, Howard W. Fescemyer, Robert Harris, Danling Ye, and Rayan Chikhi at Penn State; Malcom A. Ferguson-Smith and Patricia C. M. O'Brien at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom; and Oliver Ryder at the San Diego Zoo.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (award numbers DBI-ABI 0965596, DBI-1356529, IIS-1453527, IIS-1421908, and CCF-1439057); the Penn State Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute; the Pennsylvania Department of Health; Computation, Bioinformatics, and Statistics Predoctoral Training Program funded by the National Institutes of Health and Penn State; the John and Beverly Stauffer Foundation; the Alice B. Tyler Charitable Trust; and the Leverhulme Trust.

CONTACTS

Kateryna Makova: kdm16@psu.edu, (+1) 814-863-1619

Barbara Kennedy (PIO): science@psu.edu, (+1) 814-863-4682

PHOTO

A photo to illustrate this story is available for download at https://psu.box.com/Makova3-2016

PHOTO CAPTION: Jim (on the right), whose Y chromosome was sequenced, together with Dolly, his mother, and Binti, his sister.

PHOTO CREDIT: San Diego Zoo Global

ARCHIVE

After the journal's news embargo lifts, this press release will be archived at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2016-news/Makova2-2016
A dragonfly barely an inch and a half long appears to be animal world's most prolific long distance traveler - flying thousands of miles over oceans as it migrates from continent to continent - according to newly published research.

Biologists at Rutgers University-Newark (RU-N) who led the study - which appears in the journal PLOS ONE - say the evidence is in the genes. They found that populations of this dragonfly, called Pantala flavescens, in locations as far apart as Texas, eastern Canada, Japan, Korea, India, and South America, have genetic profiles so similar that there is only one likely explanation. Apparently - somehow - these insects are traveling distances that are extraordinarily long for their small size, breeding with each other, and creating a common worldwide gene pool that would be impossible if they did not intermingle.

"This is the first time anyone has looked at genes to see how far these insects have traveled," says Jessica Ware, an assistant professor of biology on the faculty of RU-N's College of Arts and Sciences and senior author of the study. "If North American Pantala only bred with North American Pantala, and Japanese Pantala only bred with Japanese Pantala," Ware says, "we would expect to see that in genetic results that differed from each other. Because we don't see that, it suggests the mixing of genes across vast geographic expanses."

But how do insects from different continents manage to meet and hook up? These are not large birds or whales that one would expect to travel thousands of miles. Ware says it appears to be the way their bodies have evolved. "These dragonflies have adaptations such as increased surface areas on their wings that enable them to use the wind to carry them. They stroke, stroke, stroke and then glide for long periods, expending minimal amounts of energy as they do so."

Dragonflies, in fact, have already been observed crossing the Indian Ocean from Asia to Africa. "They are following the weather," says Daniel Troast, who analyzed the DNA samples in Ware's lab while working toward his master's degree in biology, which he earned at the university in 2015. "They're going from India where it's dry season to Africa where it's moist season, and apparently they do it once a year."

Moisture is a must for Pantala to reproduce, and that, says Ware, is why these insects would be driven to even attempt such a perilous trip, which she calls a "kind of suicide mission." The species depends on it. While many will die en route, as long as enough make it, the species survives.

Flight patterns appear to vary. The hardiest of the dragonflies might make the trip nonstop, catching robust air currents or even hurricane winds and gliding all the way. Others may, literally, be puddle jumpers. Pantala need fresh water to mate and lay their eggs - and if while riding a weather current they spot a fresh water pool created by a rainstorm - even on an island in the middle of a vast ocean - Ware and Troast say it's likely they dive earthward and use those pools to mate. After the eggs hatch and the babies are mature enough to fly - which takes just a few weeks - the new dragonflies join the swarm's intercontinental and now multi-generational trek right where their parents left off.

For the moment, the details of this extraordinary insect itinerary are an educated best guess, as are specific routes these migrations might take. Much more work is needed to bring many loose ends together. But now that their work has established a worldwide population of intermingling dragonflies, Ware and Troast hope that scientists can work on plotting those routes in earnest. They would need to be innovative, because tracking devices that can be attached to larger animals are far too big to put on insects.

What the Rutgers scientists have discovered puts this dragonfly far ahead of any identified insect competitor. "Monarch butterflies migrating back and forth across North America were thought to be the longest migrating insects," traveling about 2,500 miles each way, says Troast, "but Pantala completely destroys any migrating record they would have," with its estimated range of 4,400 miles or more. It also exceeds Charles Lindbergh's celebrated solo flight from New York to Paris by at least several hundred miles.

Pantala leaves many of its fellow dragonflies even farther behind. The mysteries of evolution are such that while Pantala and its cousin the Green Darner (Anax junius) have developed into world travelers, Ware says that by contrast, other members of the family "don't ever leave the pond on which they're born - traveling barely 36 feet away their entire lives."

###
Most death and destruction inflicted by tornadoes in North America occurs during outbreaks--large-scale weather events that can last one to three days and span huge regions. The largest ever recorded happened in 2011. It spawned 363 tornadoes across the United States and Canada, killing more than 350 people and causing $11 billion in damage.

Now, a new study shows that the average number of tornadoes in these outbreaks has risen since 1954, and that the chance of extreme outbreaks --tornado factories like the one in 2011--has also increased.

The study's authors said they do not know what is driving the changes. "The science is still open," said lead author Michael Tippett, a climate and weather researcher at Columbia University's School of Applied Science and Engineering and Columbia's Data Science Institute. "It could be global warming, but our usual tools, the observational record and computer models, are not up to the task of answering this question yet." Tippett points out that many scientists expect the frequency of atmospheric conditions favorable to tornadoes to increase in a warmer climate--but even today, the right conditions don't guarantee a tornado will occur. In any case, he said, "When it comes to tornadoes, almost everything terrible that happens, happens in outbreaks. If outbreaks contain more tornadoes on average, then the likelihood they'll cause damage somewhere increases."

The results are expected to help insurance and reinsurance companies better understand the risks posed by outbreaks, which can also generate damaging hail and straight-line winds. Over the last 10 years, the industry has covered an average of $12.5 billion in insured losses each year, according to Willis Re, a global reinsurance advisor that helped sponsor the research. The article appears this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Every year, North America sees dozens of tornado outbreaks. Some are small and may give rise to only a few twisters; others, such as the so-called "super outbreaks" of 1974 and 2011, can generate hundreds. In the simplest terms, the intensity of each tornado is ranked on a zero-to-five scale, with other descriptive terms thrown in. The lower gradations cause only light damage, while the top ones, like a twister that tore through Joplin, Missouri, in 2011 can tear the bark off trees, rip houses from their foundations, and turn cars into missiles.

For this study, the authors calculated the mean number of tornadoes per outbreak for each year as well as the variance, or scatter, around this mean. They found that while the total number of tornadoes rated F/EF1 and higher each year hasn't increased, the average number per outbreak has, rising from about 10 to about 15 since the 1950s.

The study was coauthored by Joel Cohen, director of the Laboratory of Populations, which is based jointly at Rockefeller University and Columbia's Earth Institute. Cohen called the results "truly remarkable."

"The analysis showed that as the mean number of tornadoes per outbreak rose, the variance around that mean rose four times faster. While the mean rose by a factor of 1.5 over the last 60 years, the variance rose by a factor of more than 5, or 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5. This kind of relationship between variance and mean has a name in statistics: Taylor's power law of scaling.

"We have seen [Taylor's power law] in the distribution of stars in a galaxy, in death rates in countries, the population density of Norway, securities trading, oak trees in New York and many other cases," Cohen says. "But this is the first time anyone has shown that it applies to scaling in tornado statistics."

The exponent in Taylor's law number--in this case, the exponent was 4-- can be a measure of clustering, Cohen says. If there's no clustering--if tornadoes occur just randomly--then Taylor's law has an exponent of 1. If there's clustering, then it's greater than 1. "In most ecological applications, the Taylor exponent seldom exceeds 2. To have an exponent of 4 is truly exceptional. It means that when it rains, it really, really, really pours," says Cohen.

Extreme outbreaks have become more frequent because of two factors, Tippett said. First, the average number of tornadoes per outbreak has gone up; second, the rapidly increasing variance, or variability, means that numbers well above the average are more common.

Tippett was concerned that the findings could be artifacts of tornado observational data, which are based on eyewitness accounts and known to have problems with consistency and accuracy. To get around this, he re-ran his calculations after substituting the historical tornado data with environmental proxies for tornado occurrence and number of tornadoes per occurrence. These provide an independent--albeit imperfect--measure of tornado activity. The results were very nearly identical.

As for whether the climate is the cause, Tippett said, "The scientific community has thought a great deal about how the frequency of future weather and climate extremes may change in a warming climate. The simplest change to understand is a shift of the entire distribution, but increases in variability, or variance, are possible as well. With tornadoes, we're seeing both of those mechanisms at play."

"This paper helps begin to answer one of the fundamental questions to which I'd like to know the answer," says Harold Brooks of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Severe Storms Laboratory. "If tornadoes are being concentrated into more big days, what effect does that have on their impacts compared to when they were less concentrated?"

"The findings are very relevant to insurance companies that are writing business in multiple states, especially in the Midwest," says Prasad Gunturi, senior vice president at Willis Re, who leads the company's catastrophe model research and evaluation activities for North America. "Overall growth in the economy means more buildings and infrastructure are in harm's way," said Gunturi. "When you combine this increased exposure because outbreaks are generating more tornadoes across state lines and the outbreaks could be getting more extreme in general, it means more loss to the economy and to insurance portfolios."

Insurance companies have contracts with reinsurance companies, and these contracts look similar to the ones people have for home and car insurance, though for much higher amounts. The new results will help companies ensure that contracts are written at an appropriate level and that the risks posed by outbreaks are better characterized, said Brooks.

"One big question raised by this work, and one we're working on now, is what in the climate system has been behind this increase in outbreak severity," said Tippett.

###

This research was also supported by grants from Columbia's Research Initiatives for Science and Engineering, the Office of Naval Research, NOAA's Climate Program Office and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The paper, "Tornado outbreak variability follows Taylor's power law of fluctuation scaling and increases dramatically with severity," is available from the authors.

Scientist contacts:

Michael Tippett 212-851-5936 mkt14@columbia.edu

Joel Cohen 212-327-8883 cohen@mail.rockefeller.edu

More information: Kevin Krajick, Senior editor, science news, The Earth Institute kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.earth.columbia.edu.
The Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE) -- the educational branch of The Gerontological Society of America -- is proud to announce its awardees.

The presentation of the awards will occur at AGHE's 42nd Annual Meeting and Educational Leadership Conference, taking place from March 3 to March 6 at The Westin Long Beach in Long Beach, California. This event provides a forum for professionals in the field of aging to present their work and share ideas about gerontological and geriatric education and training. Visit http://www.aghe.org for complete details.

Clark Tibbitts Award

Presented to Case Western Reserve University

Friday, March 4, 4:30 p.m.

This award was established in 1980 to recognize individuals who and organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the advancement gerontology as a field of study in institutions of higher education.

Hiram J. Friedsam Mentorship Award

Presented to Jan Abushakrah, PhD, Portland Community College

Saturday, March 5, 8:30 a.m.

This award, named for an outstanding mentor in gerontology, is given to an individual who has contributed to gerontological education through excellence in mentorship to students, faculty, and administrators.

Administrative Leadership Award

Presented to Pinchas Cohen, MD, University of Southern California

This award, honors administrators on AGHE member campuses who have made exceptional efforts in support of gerontology or geriatrics education.

Mildred M. Seltzer Distinguished Service Recognition

Presented to Lynne G. Hodgson, PhD, Quinnipiac University; Sheldon E. Steinhauser, Honorary DPS, Metropolitan State University of Denver; Bob G. Knight, PhD, University of Southern California; Barbara Gillogly, PhD, American River College; and Leslie A. Morgan, PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Friday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.

This award honors colleagues who are near retirement or recently retired. Recipients are individuals who have been actively involved in AGHE through service on committees, as elected officers, and/or have provided leadership in one of AGHE's grant-funded projects.

David A. Peterson Gerontology & Geriatrics Education Best Paper of the Volume Award

Presented to Ariadne Meiboom (MD, PhD student), VU University Medical Center Amsterdam; Chantal Diedrich (MD, PhD student), VU University Medical Center Amsterdam; Henk de Vries, MD, PhD, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam; Cees Hertogh, MD, PhD, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam; and Fedde Scheele, MD, PhD, VU University Medical Center Amsterdam, for "The Hidden Curriculum of the Medical Care for Elderly Patients in Medical Education: A Qualitative Study"

The purpose of this award is to recognize excellence in scholarship in academic gerontology in AGHE's official journal, Gerontology & Geriatrics Education.

Distinguished Faculty Award

Presented to Elizabeth M. Zelinski, PhD, University of Southern California

Friday, March 4, 8:30 a.m.

This award recognizes persons whose teaching stands out as exemplary, innovative, of impact, or any combination thereof.

Part-Time Faculty Honor

Presented to Gregory D. Bearce, MBA, MAG, University of Southern California

Friday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.

This award recognizes part-time and/or adjunct faculty for their contributions to gerontological education at an AGHE member institution.

Rising Star Junior Faculty Honor

Presented to Pamela Pitman Brown, PhD, Winston-Salem State University

Thursday, March 3, 4:30 p.m.

This award recognizes new faculty whose teaching and/or leadership stands out as impactful and innovative.

Student Leadership Award

Presented to Amy J. Plant, MA, Youngstown State University

Friday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.

This award recognizes students whose leadership has advanced the goals and mission of AGHE as well as the respective goals of their AGHE-affiliated institutions.

Graduate Student Paper Award

Presented to Reath M. Melendez, MLIS, California State University Long Beach

Friday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.

This award recognizes excellence in scholarly work by a student at an AGHE member institution who presents his or her work at the annual meeting.

Book Award for Best Children's Literature on Aging

Presented to Laurence Anholt for "Papa Chagall, Tell Us a Story" (2014) in the Primary Reader Category; Lauren Castillo (honorable mention) for "Nana in the City" (2014) in the Primary Reader Category; and Naomi Shihab Nye for "The Turtle of Oman" (2014) in the Elementary Reader Category

Friday, March 4, 5:30 p.m.

This award recognizes positive portrayals of older adults in children's literature.

###
Thomas Pilgrim, M.D., of Bern University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues conducted a study to determine the prevalence and incidence of clinically silent and manifest rheumatic heart disease in Eastern Nepal. The study was published online by JAMA Cardiology.

Three in 4 children grow up in parts of the world where rheumatic heart disease (RHD) is endemic. Nearly eradicated in high-income countries, RHD ranks among the important noncommunicable diseases in low- and middle income countries. It is a sentinel of social inequality and a physical manifestation of poverty and continues to be a substantial health care challenge in less privileged regions of the world. This study included 5,178 children, 5 to 15 years of age, from Eastern Nepal. A focused medical history was followed by a brief physical examination. Cardiac auscultation (listening to the heart with a stethoscope) and transthoracic echocardiography were performed by 2 independent physicians.

The prevalence of borderline or definite rheumatic heart disease was 10.2 per 1,000 children and increased with advancing age from 5.5 per 1,000 children 5 years of age to 16.0 in children 15 years of age, whereas the average incidence remained stable at 1.1 per 1,000 children per year. Children with rheumatic heart disease were older than children without rheumatic heart disease and more often female. Silent disease (n = 44) was 5 times more common than manifest disease (n = 9).

"Early detection of silent disease may help prevent progression to severe valvular damage," the authors write.

###

(JAMA Cardiology. Published online March 2, 2016; doi:10.1001/jamacardio.2015.0292. This study is available pre-embargo at the For The Media website.)

Editor's Note: The study was funded by research grants from the UBS Optimus Foundation and the Foundation Coeur de la Tour from Switzerland. All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were reported.

Note: An accompanying commentary, "Screening for Rheumatic Heart Disease in Eastern Nepal," by Bongani M. Mayosi, D.Phil., F.C.P.(S.A.), of Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town, South Africa, is available pre-embargo at the For The Media website.
Older patients, minority patients, and men are substantially more likely to have untreated goiters that grow so large surgery becomes risky

(PHILADELPHIA) -- Older patients, minorities, and male patients are more likely to develop substernal thyroid goiters that are difficult to remove surgically, putting them at risk for treatment complications and death, say researchers in the January 6 online in the American Journal of Surgery. A substernal goiter is so large it extends below a person's collarbones into the upper chest.

The study, which looked at almost 111,000 patients from the National Inpatient Sample years 2000-2010 who had surgery to remove their goiters, documents what investigators say appears to be disparity in demographics and outcomes. The findings "raise issues of potential access to care or delays in treatment," says the study's senior author, Alliric I. Willis, M.D., an associate professor of surgery at Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

"This is the first study to thoroughly describe the demographic and clinical disparities associated with substernal goiters," he says. "Awareness of such disparities may allow health care providers to better identify patients at risk for this distinct issue and provide more timely care -- before the goiters grow so large that they risk health and life."

A goiter is an enlargement of a thyroid gland that swells the neck. In much of the world goiters are caused by a lack of iodine, but in the U.S., where salt is enriched with iodine, goiters develop due to a number of factors -- which may include an overactive thyroid (Graves' disease), an underactive thyroid (Hashimoto's disease), family history, or differences in anatomy. Substernal goiters grow slowly but steadily over time, and the incidence of these large goiters is between 3 to 13 percent of all goiters, according to different studies that examined goiter surgery.

The research team, which included investigators from the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University, examined data on 110,889 patients who underwent thyroidectomy for goiters. In this group, 5,525 patients were diagnosed with a substernal goiter. These patients were substantially more likely to be older, male, Black, Hispanic, or to have Medicare insurance. While the vast majority of goiters occur among women, men were significantly more likely to present with substernal goiters.

Compared to patients with typical-sized goiters, researchers found that patients with substernal goiters had higher comorbidity (such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity), were more likely to be admitted to a hospital on an emergency basis, and to have postoperative complications including hemorrhage, lung collapse, and pulmonary embolism.

Furthermore, substernal patients were 73 percent more likely to die during hospital admission. "Reasons for the increased risk of complications and death may be due to the increased complexity of surgery associated with substernal goiters," says Dr. Willis. He adds that the risk of dying from the surgery is very low overall.

Researchers found that there was a significant difference in the frequencies of substernal goiters across different regions of the U.S. Substernal goiters were most common in the South followed by the Northeast.

"These findings raise the possibility of disparate access to surgical care for black and Hispanic patients as well as possible delays in seeking treatment along ethnic and gender lines," says Dr. Willis.

###

The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health (K23ns081087). Study co-authors include Ambria S. Moten, M.D., from Temple University School of Medicine and Dylan P. Thibault, M.S., and Allison W. Willis, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania.

Article Reference: Demographics, disparities, and outcomes in substernal goiters in the United States. Moten AS, Thibault DP, Willis AW, Willis AI. Am J Surg. 2016 Jan 6. pii: S0002-9610(16)30003-4. doi: 10.1016/j.amjsurg.2015.11.022. [Epub ahead of print] PMID: 26813846

For more information, contact Colleen Cordaro, 215-955-2238, Colleen.cordaro@jefferson.edu

About Jefferson

Our newly formed organization, Jefferson, encompasses Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health, representing our academic and clinical entities. Together, the people of Jefferson, 19,000 strong, provide the highest-quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, educate the health professionals of tomorrow, and discover new treatments and therapies that will define the future of health care.

Jefferson Health comprises five hospitals, 17 outpatient and urgent care locations, as well as physician practices and everywhere we deliver care throughout the city and suburbs across Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks Counties in Pa., and Camden County in New Jersey. Together, these facilities serve nearly 73,000 inpatients, 239,000 emergency patients and 1.7 million outpatient visits annually. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital is the largest freestanding academic medical center in Philadelphia. Abington Hospital is the largest community teaching hospital in Montgomery or Bucks counties. Other hospitals include Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience in Center City Philadelphia; Methodist Hospital in South Philadelphia; and Abington-Lansdale Hospital in Hatfield Township.

Thomas Jefferson University enrolls more than 3,800 future physicians, scientists, nurses and healthcare professionals in the Sidney Kimmel Medical College (SKMC), Jefferson Colleges of Biomedical Sciences, Health Professions, Nursing, Pharmacy, Population Health and is home of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center.

For more information and a complete listing of Jefferson services and locations, visit http://www.jefferson.edu.
Research into the science behind ultrasonic scalers, used by dental professionals to remove built up plaque, has identified that the formation of tiny bubbles around the head is key to the cleaning process.

The bubble formation, or cavitation, of water around the head of the scaler was observed using high speed cameras. Scalers of differing power, and head shape, were used and compared to quantify the patterns of cavitation.

The team believe that the methods developed in the study will help to test new instrument designs to maximise cavitation, with the aim of designing ultrasonic scalers that operate without touching the tooth surface. By doing so, the process of teeth cleaning at the dentist would become both less painful and more effective.

The findings, published in PLOS ONE, are the first to prove that cavitation takes place around the free end of ultrasonic scalers.

Professor Damien Walmsley, from the School of Dentistry at the University of Birmingham, explained, "Removing dental plaque and calculus, that is the build-up of what we know as tartar or hard plaque, is a big part of maintaining oral health and a regular occurrence in dental check-ups. These findings will help us to understand how to make the tools as effective as possible."

A Satelec ultrasonic scaler, operating at 29 kHz with three different shaped tips, was studied at medium and high operating power using high speed imaging at 15,000, 90,000 and 250,000 frames per second, and the tip displacement was recorded using scanning laser vibrometry.

The team were not only able to show that cavitation occurred at the free end of the tip, but that it increases with power, and the area and width of the cavitation cloud varies for different shaped tips.

Nina Vyas, lead author of the paper from the University of Birmingham, said, "Other studies we have done, using electron microscopy, have shown that removal of plaque biofilm is increased when cavitation is increased. Putting the pieces together, we can therefore say that altering the shape and power of these commonly used tools make them more effective, and hopefully, pain-free."

###
How will the dead be disposed of and remembered in years to come?

A recent design competition, organised through the University of Bath's Centre for Death & Society, which sought to reimagine a future cemetery drawing on architectural and technological innovations has been won by researchers at Columbia University for a design that could revolutionise future memorialisation.

The proposal, entitled 'Sylvan Constellation' which was submitted by Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, envisages a network of memorial vessels which would transform biomass into an elegant and perpetually renewing constellation of light which could illuminate pathways.

The team, based in New York, won a 5,000 prize and a month long summer 2016 residency during which they will research the historic 42-acre Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol (UK) and work with the University of Bath's Centre for Death and Society.

The aim is to work towards a feasible design for a future prototype.

Dr John Troyer, Director of Bath's Centre for Death and Society and co-founder of the Future Cemetery explains: "The Sylvan Constellation design by Columbia University's GSAPP DeathLAB and LATENT Productions in New York City is an outstanding mix of both respectful disposition for human remains and longer term thinking around the disposal of digital data.

"The proposal captured the Future Cemetery design competition's larger themes by presenting a mix of different sustainable technologies. It is also a great opportunity for Columbia University's DeathLAB, LATENT Productions in New York City, the University of Bath's Centre for Death and Society and Arnos Vale Cemetery to collaborate.

"By working together on this project, collaborators will establish networks for longer-term projects involving innovative, sustainable design around end-of-life planning. The collaboration will also demonstrate how Arnos Vale Cemetery is a sector leader in creating new possibilities for heritage site cemeteries while continuing to operate as a working cemetery.

"This is an exciting time to be working on design projects that fully embrace topics like death, dying, and dead bodies and I very much look forward to seeing collaborations like this develop."

Karla Rothstein, founder and director of Columbia University's DeathLAB and design director at LATENT Productions will be visiting Bath and Bristol in spring 2016.

She says: "Our team at DeathLAB and LATENT Productions is honoured to have Sylvan Constellation at Arnos Vale selected as the 'first future cemetery.' Our goal is to offer elegant options at death that are commensurate with the social and environmental values we respect while alive. Our proposal aims to secure civic space for the future metropolis, allowing one's last impactful act to gracefully and responsibly celebrate the vitality of life.

"DeathLAB was founded to produce environmentally responsible projects that reweave the ubiquity of death into the fabric of our cities, reminding us of our mortal finitude and the responsibility the living share to fortify our collective future. We appreciate Future Cemetery and Arnos Vale's optimistic support of the cultural shifts that our work embodies."

Mike Coe, Chief Executive of Arnos Vale in Bristol (UK) added: "We are looking forward to hosting Sylvan Constellation at Arnos Vale and welcome the opportunity this provides us. As a recognised centre of future focussed, sustainable cemetery enterprise, I believe the work of Karla and her team fits with our pioneering but respectful objectives and values."?

###
Irvine, Calif., March 2, 2016 -- With findings that could have been taken from the pages of a spy novel, researchers at the University of California, Irvine have demonstrated that they can purloin intellectual property by recording and processing sounds emitted by a 3-D printer.

The team, led by Mohammad Al Faruque, director of UCI's Advanced Integrated Cyber-Physical Systems Lab, showed that a device as ordinary and ubiquitous as a smartphone can be placed next to a machine and capture acoustic signals that carry information about the precise movements of the printer's nozzle. The recording can then be used to reverse engineer the object being printed and re-create it elsewhere. Detailed processes may be deciphered through this new kind of cyberattack, presenting significant security risks.

"In many manufacturing plants, people who work on a shift basis don't get monitored for their smartphones, for example," Al Faruque said. "If process and product information is stolen during the prototyping phases, companies stand to incur large financial losses. There's no way to protect these systems from such an attack today, but possibly there will be in the future."

Al Faruque's team achieved nearly 90 percent accuracy using the sound copying process to duplicate a key-shaped object in the lab. They will present their results at April's International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems in Vienna.

State-of-the-art 3-D printing systems convert digital information embedded in source code to build layer upon layer of material until a solid object takes shape. That source file, referred to as G-code, can be protected from cyberthievery with strong encryption, but once the creation process has begun, the printer emits sounds that can give up the secrets buried in the software.

"My group basically stumbled upon this finding last summer as we were doing work to try to understand the relationship between information and energy flows," said Al Faruque, an electrical engineer and computer scientist. "According to the fundamental laws of physics, energy is not consumed; it's converted from one form to another - electromagnetic to kinetic, for example. Some forms of energy are translated in meaningful and useful ways; others become emissions, which may unintentionally disclose secret information."

The emissions produced by 3-D printers are acoustic signals that contain a lot of information, he said, adding: "Initially, we weren't interested in the security angle, but we realized we were onto something, and we're seeing interest from other departments at UCI and from various U.S. government agencies."

"President Obama has spoken about returning manufacturing to the United States, and I think 3-D printing will play a major role because of the creation of highly intellectual objects, in many cases in our homes," Al Faruque said. But he cautioned that with the convenience of these new technologies come opportunities for industrial espionage.

He suggested that engineers begin to think about ways to jam the acoustic signals emanating from 3-D printers, possibly via a white-noise device to introduce intentional acoustic randomness or by deploying algorithmic solutions. At a minimum, Al Faruque said, a fundamental precaution would be to prevent people from carrying smartphones near the rapid prototyping areas when sensitive objects are being printed. Today's smartphones, he noted, have sensors that can capture a range of analog emissions.

###

The study was funded by a cyber-physical systems research grant from the National Science Foundation (CNS-1546993).

About the University of California, Irvine: Currently celebrating its 50th anniversary, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $4.8 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UC Irvine faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UC Irvine news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

PHOTOS AVAILABLE AT: https://news.uci.edu/research/bad-vibrations-uci-researchers-find-security-breach-in-3-d-printing-process/
Eating meat from animals grazed on land treated with commonly-used agricultural fertilisers might have serious implications for pregnant women and the future reproductive health of their unborn children, according to a new study involving sheep.

The study by British and French scientists from the universities of Nottingham, Aberdeen (UK) and Paris-Saclay (France), The James Hutton Institute (Aberdeen) and UMR BDR, INRA, Jouy en Josas (Paris, France) published in the journal Scientific Reports, has shown striking effects of exposure of pregnant ewes - and their female lambs in the womb  to a cocktail of chemical contaminants present in pastures fertilised with human sewage sludge-derived fertiliser.

Dr Richard Lea, of the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at The University of Nottingham, was lead author on the paper.

He said: "The study highlights potential risks associated with the common practice of grazing livestock on pastures on which human sewage sludge-derived fertiliser has been used.

"More worryingly, since low-level chemical exposure poses a threat to human reproductive development, the consumption of products from animals grazing such pastures may be of considerable environmental concern."

The research group investigated development of ovaries in the foetal sheep, which is very similar to ovary development in humans, exposing the pregnant sheep to sewage sludge-derived fertiliser to simulate 'real-life' exposure. Since the number of eggs present in the ovary at birth is determined while still in the womb, the research shows that the implications of disrupted ovary development could be significant. It suggests that chemicals that interfere with this development process, particularly those that mimic sex steroids, may have long-lasting effects on adult female fertility.

The researchers report that the number of eggs in the foetus' ovary was reduced even if the period of exposure was limited to 80 days corresponding to early, mid or late gestation. However, a period of mid or late gestation exposure had a greater effect on the development of the foetus and the number of altered genes and proteins in the foetus' ovary.

Professor Paul Fowler of the University of Aberdeen, who coordinated the 2.9m study funded by the European Commission, said: "The biggest effects on the foetal ovary were seen when the sheep were switched to sewage sludge fertilised fields in the last two to three months of pregnancy. While this suggests that changing exposures to chemical mixtures may be worse than always being exposed to these mixtures, steps to reduce contamination of sewage sludge-derived fertiliser are welcome."

###

The study, entitled The fetal ovary exhibits temporal sensitivity to a 'real-life' mixture of environmental chemicals, is published in Scientific Reports, was funded by the European Commission Framework 7 Programme (REEF: Reproductive Effects of Environmental chemicals in Females, contract number 212885).
A large clinical trial to assess the benefits or otherwise of inducing labour in pregnant women of 35 years or older has found there was no significant effect on the rate of caesarean sections and no adverse effect on the mother and newborn baby.

The large, randomised, controlled study was carried out by researchers in Nottingham with the help of around 600 older first time mothers from all over the UK. It was designed to explore whether induction is an effective obstetric intervention that is currently being underused.

The results of the NIHR-funded trial was carried out by a research team led by The University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals Trust and is being published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The average age of women giving birth in industrialised countries has been increasing for the past 30 years. In the 10 years until 2006, births to women 35 years or older in the UK went from 12 per cent to 20 per cent of all deliveries. The risks of stillbirth, pre-eclampsia, pregnancy diabetes and problems with the placenta are all higher in pregnant women aged 35 or over and they are more likely to deliver premature and underweight babies.

These women are also more likely to have problems in labour with 38 per cent ending up with caesarean sections, rising to 50 per cent of women over 40 years of age having their first baby.

The Nottingham trial randomly assigned pregnant women who volunteered to take part either to labour induction at 39 weeks or to 'expectant care' -- waiting until the spontaneous onset of labour or the development of a medical problem that warranted intervention. Induction of labour was achieved by the insertion of a pessary or an intravenous hormone drip.

Of the 619 women who took part there were no significant differences between the two groups in how many ended up having caesarean sections or in the percentage of women who had a vaginal delivery with forceps or vacuum-assisted delivery.

There were no maternal or infant deaths and no significant differences between the groups in the women's experience of delivery or in the frequency of adverse outcomes for mother and baby.

Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at The University of Nottingham, Jim Thornton, said: "We were fairly surprised by our main result in that overall there was no significant effect on the rate of caesarean section in the group of mums who were induced at 39 weeks. Our trial was not set up to test induction as a way of avoiding stillbirth but it does prove the safety of performing a much larger trial to test this further.

"Some people say why not just induce everyone at 39 weeks and prevent some stillbirths. Others say that would medicalise many normal pregnancies, increase intervention rates and may have long term unintended harms. Ours is the first clinical trial to provide some hard evidence to help decision-making among doctors and older first-time mothers-to-be. The results support the 'induce more women' advocates, although there are still reasons for caution."

One of the women who took part in the trial said: "Having chosen to start a family later in life, we were very much aware of the increased risk of complications, so when asked to take part in the trial, given the reasons for the research it was an easy decision. I was completely supported by the trial team throughout my pregnancy, which was very reassuring."

Lay member of the research team, Chris Wild smith, who lost a baby through stillbirth said: "I'm really encouraged by the results of the study, especially as it has covered such a difficult subject and area that isn't easy to suggest studies or research without creating more angst or worry among future parents. I really hope the work can generate more discussion to the clinical approach and how to address risk groups. I do hope for all our stillborn children that the evidence will avoid more families going through the traumatic pain and hurt that we endured."

The Randomised Trial of Labour Induction in Women 35 Years of Age or Older was carried out by the Divisions of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at The University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust; Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity, London; and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge University.

The work was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research for Patient Benefit Programme.

###
Penn Nursing's Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, RN, FAAN, Selected for Induction to the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame

PHILADELPHIA (March 2, 2016) - Barbara Medoff-Cooper, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Ruth M. Colket Professor in Pediatric Nursing in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) has been selected for induction to the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame by Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI).

The STTI Hall of Fame was developed to recognize nurse researchers for their lifetime achievements in and contributions to research and to mentoring future nurse researchers. Medoff-Cooper was selected for her pioneering research work in infant development, feeding behaviors in high-risk infants, and infant temperament which has had a national and international impact on the care of preterm infants.

"I feel truly honored to be selected to be a member of Sigma Theta Tau's International Honor Society," said Medoff-Cooper. "The selection by my peers for this prestigious honor is especially gratifying since STTI's mission is to advance world health and celebrate nursing excellence in scholarship, leadership, and service."

Medoff-Cooper is the developer of the Early Infancy Temperament Questionnaire which is widely used around the world. Another innovation, which she developed with a colleague at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering, is the Neonur device, a patented feeding device used to assess newborn sucking. Medoff-Cooper's research has changed the way clinicians across all disciplines and around the world care for premature and chronically ill infants resulting in improved developmental progress and the infant's ability to feed and grow.

"The impact of Dr. Medoff-Cooper's scholarly work has been well-documented through her record of funding, her strong publication record, her global consultations and presentations, her numerous honors and awards, and, most importantly, through her dedicated mentorship," said Penn Nursing Dean Antonia M. Villarruel, PhD, RN, FAAN. "She is sought out by faculty and students from around the world for her mentorship and guidance. We congratulate her for this important milestone in her distinguished career."

Medoff-Cooper will be one among 19 STTI members who will be celebrated at the 27th International Nursing Research Congress, which will take place July 21-25, 2016 in Cape Town, South Africa.

###

Editor's Note: For a high-resolution image of Dr. Medoff-Cooper, please contact Ed Federico in Penn Nursing's Marketing & Communications Office.

About the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing is one of the world's leading schools of nursing and is ranked the #1 graduate nursing school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. Penn Nursing is consistently among the nation's top recipients of nursing research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Penn Nursing prepares nurse scientists and nurse leaders to meet the health needs of a global society through research, education, and practice. Follow Penn Nursing on: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube.
PHILADELPHIA, PA (March 2, 2016) - A new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) shows that patients, who undergo elective hip and knee surgery in hospitals with inadequate nurse staffing and poor nurse work environments, are more likely to require re-hospitalization. The results are set for publication in a future issue of the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, but are available now online here. The cross-sectional study analyzed data of more than 112,000 Medicare patients in nearly 500 US hospitals and points to hospital nurses as a likely answer to the need for reducing postoperative readmissions.

The most common reason patients were readmitted was for postoperative infection. Hospital nurses are essential to the prevention of infection. They are responsible for administering antibiotics prior of surgery, caring for the surgical wound, monitoring for signs and symptoms of infection or sepsis, and maintaining diligent hand washing practices. However, when nurses are inadequately staffed and resourced, time demands detract from the diligent work of nursing.

These study findings come at a time when hospitals' reimbursements are contingent on demonstrating satisfactory performance on patient outcomes. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandatory Hospital Readmission Reduction Program and Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Program are placing hospitals financially accountable for patient outcomes including readmission rates following elective hip and knee replacements.

Accounting for patient characteristics and hospital features, every additional patient in a nurse's workload is associated with an eight percent increased likelihood of a patient being readmitted within thirty days of discharge following the surgery. Patients who underwent surgery in hospitals where nurses reporting having supportive environments, including strong collegial relationships with physicians and autonomy in clinical practice, were 12 percent less likely to be readmitted.

"These study findings are consistent with decades of prior research demonstrating the role hospital nurses play in ensuring safe outcomes for surgical patients," said the study's senior author Matthew McHugh, PhD, JD, MPH, RN, Associate Director of CHOPR. "Nurses work around-the-clock providing care to patients before, during, and after surgery, making them the likely healthcare providers to identify and intervene on early warning signs that could lead to a negative health outcome."

While only six percent of Medicare patients undergoing elective hip and knee replacements are readmitted to the hospital within thirty days, every hospitalization puts patients at risk of acquiring serious complications and injury. "This study supports the notion that hospital nurses are fundamental to ensuring high quality care and outcomes for patients," said the study's lead author Karen Lasater, PhD, RN, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at CHOPR.

###

This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Nursing Research (R01-NR04513, T32-NR0714 and R01-AG041099-01), and from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars Program.

About the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing

The University Of Pennsylvania School Of Nursing is one of the world's leading schools of nursing and is ranked the #1 graduate nursing school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. Penn Nursing is consistently among the nation's top recipients of nursing research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Penn Nursing prepares nurse scientists and nurse leaders to meet the health needs of a global society through research, education, and practice.
Japanese researchers call for increased interdisciplinarity and internationalization in Japanese energy and environment research to provide effective scientific advice and invigorate Japanese energy and environmental policy five years after Fukushima.

In less than two weeks, it will be five years since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami killed over 15,000 people and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. While Japan has implemented new energy and environment polices after the March 11 disaster, many issues remain unsettled surrounding nuclear safety, renewable energy policy, and reactor decommissioning.

In a forthcoming comment in Nature, Assistant Professor Masahiro Sugiyama and his colleagues at the University of Tokyo's Policy Alternatives Research Institute (PARI) argue for increased interdisciplinarity and globalization of Japanese energy and environment research to develop a solid scientific foundation that can inform and invigorate energy and environmental policymaking.

"There is a tendency or custom for Japanese researchers working on policy-relevant research to publish only in Japanese," says Sugiyama. "This is natural. Japanese is the native language of the Japanese policymakers their research targets. However, unlike traditional disciplines where Japan boasts Nobel laureates, there is a limited pool of researchers in Japan who can scrutinize and critique this interdisciplinary research. Internationalizing Japanese research will expand the pool of researchers who can contribute to this process."

Sugiyama and his colleagues also decry the lack of interdisciplinarity in Japanese research, citing probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) research as an example. PRA is a tool used to evaluate accident risk employed in Japanese nuclear power plants, but prior to the earthquake, PRA research focused on mechanical failures and human error from an engineering perspective and did not incorporate perspectives from seismology, geology, atmospheric science and ecological modeling. This is in contrast to PRA research in other nuclear-reliant countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and France.

"Hearing the difficulty of interdisciplinary research, people often imagine the gap between the natural and social sciences. This is indeed a challenge. But in Japan, even efforts to connect the natural sciences and engineering disciplines have not been successful," says co-author Professor Hideaki Shiroyama of the Graduate Schools for Law and Politics.

The authors suggest that Japanese publishers and major Japanese granting programs such as KAKENHI should include non-Japanese researchers in their review process, Japanese funding agencies should require scientists working on policy-oriented research to publish part of their results in international journals and that strategic, policy-oriented research programs should be designed so that projects can benefit from international experience and experience can be shared globally.

"The worldwide impact of March 11 is just one example," says PARI's Professor Taketoshi Taniguchi, another co-author. "I hope the research community will take the lead in globalizing research, which can then provide a stepping-stone to globalizing policy discourse."

###

Journal article/Conference paper

Author(s): Masahiro Sugiyama, Ichiro Sakata, Hideaki Shiroyama, Taketoshi Taniguchi, Hisashi Yoshikawa

Title: Five years on from Fukushima

Journal, Issue, Date: Nature Vol. 531, Issue 7592

URL: http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/531029a

DOI: 10.1038/531029a

Links

Policy Alternatives Research Institute, The University of Tokyo http://pari.u-tokyo.ac.jp/eng/index.html

Research contact

Name: Assistant Professor Masahiro Sugiyama

Affiliation in full: Policy Alternatives Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Address: 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 JAPAN

Tel: +81-3-5841-0933

Fax: +81-3-5841-0938

Email: masahiro@pari.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Press officer contact

Name: Takako Sato

Affiliation in full: Policy Alternatives Research Institute, The University of Tokyo

Address: 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033 JAPAN

Tel: +81-5841-1708

Fax: +81-3-5841-1709

Email: t-sato@pari.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Funding:

Part of this research was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science under the Social Scientific Survey of Great East Japan Earthquake.

About PARI

The Policy Alternatives Research Institute (PARI) is an interfaculty research organization established to contribute widely to future society and the global community by proposing new policy alternatives through the integration of the varied and advanced knowledge accumulated at the University of Tokyo.

About the University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo is Japan's leading university and one of the world's top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world's top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 2,000 international students. Find out more at http://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.
A researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington is working to better understand thermal transport in lithium ion batteries so that they will be safer, more efficient and more reliable.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a five-year, $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER grant to Ankur Jain, an assistant professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, to develop a fundamental understanding of how heat flows in materials within a Li-ion battery so that those batteries can be used safely in more applications.

Jain has carried out significant research alone and in collaboration with others energy storage, and he hopes to improve the technology based on his own findings and others' contributions to the knowledge base.

"Li-ion batteries are used widely in electric vehicles, consumer electronics and other applications," Jain said. "The current performance of these batteries is limited by the fact that a battery tends to overheat when discharged. Improvement in heat removal from a battery will directly improve its performance, as well as its safety and reliability.

"The end goal is to develop a fundamental understanding of the nature of how heat flows in energy conversion devices such as Li-ion cells and what impedes the flow of heat in those devices."

Jain's CAREER Award showcases UTA's increasing commitment to research with potential results that can impact a broad range of theoretical and practical applications, said Anand Puppala, associate dean for research for the College of Engineering.

"Dr. Jain's CAREER Award is well-deserved, and exemplifies the quality of UTA's early-career faculty," Puppala said. "His research could have a broad impact on industries that rely on Li-ion batteries to power devices, with applications from military uses, to the cars we drive, to our personal computers. That type of innovative thinking is how UTA researchers are able to change the world for the better."

Jain's work is representative of how UTA is advancing research in the areas of sustainable urban communities and global environmental impact under the Strategic Plan 2020: Bold Solutions | Global Impact.

He is one of three UTA CAREER Award winners announced so far this year: Alice Sun, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, received a five-year, $500,000 award for a project titled, "Optofluidic Lasers at the Liquid/Liquid Interface: A Versatile Biosensing Platform." Yi Hong, an assistant professor of bioengineering, also received a five-year, $500,000 award for a project titled, "Dopant-Free Conductive Bioelastomer Development."

Five other UTA assistant professors have been awarded NSF CAREER Award grants recently:

Majie Fan of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department received $485,627 in 2015 to enhance understanding of how the Rocky Mountains and how their modern, elevated landscape came to be.

W. Ashley Griffith, also of Earth and Environmental Sciences, received $400,000 in 2014 to study rock structures' reaction to earthquakes, meteor impacts and explosions.

Hyejin Moon of the Mechanical and Aerospace Department received $400,000 in 2013 to support her work with microfluidic devices, which promise to improve 3D tissue and cell sample analyses.

Baohong Yuan in the Bioengineering Department received $407,163 in 2013 to more accurately create images for deep tissue, which could lead to earlier cancer detection.

Fuqiang Liu in the Materials Science and Engineering Department received $400,000 in 2013 to improve methods for capturing, storing and transmitting solar energy.

The College of Engineering has offered support for the last year in a push to increase the success of early-career faculty. Several of those assistant professors visited with program directors in Washington, D.C. to discuss how to successfully get their research funded.

In addition, the College hosted a workshop where young faculty reviewed successful CAREER proposals and worked with NSF program directors to write proposals in such a way that they'd have a good chance of success. Each of the CAREER winners this year took advantage of this program.

Including his CAREER Award, Jain has been the primary investigator or co-PI on research grants totaling more than $2.2 million since beginning his UTA career in 2011, including a share of a $225,000 NSF EAGER grant in 2015 as a primary investigator to find ways to harness heat energy lost from automobiles, buildings and other devices.

Jain directs UTA's Microscale Thermophysics Laboratory, where he and his students conduct research on microscale thermal transport, energy conversion systems, semiconductor thermal management, bioheat transfer and related topics. Jain's research and education activities have been supported by grants from National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, Indo-U.S. Science & Technology Forum and the UTA Research Enhancement Grant.

Jain earned his Ph.D. and master's of science degrees from Stanford University. He has authored or co-authored 33 journal articles and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Jain's research adds to UTA's work with heat transfer, energy efficiency and developing batteries that are highly powerful and can store large amounts of energy.

In addition to Jain, Dereje Agonafer, a professor of mechanical engineering and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Society of Mechanical Engineering, is inventor of eight U.S. patents and one pending U.S. patent application. He also is one of the world's leading authorities on energy efficiency through cooling of computer servers.

David Wetz, an associate professor of electrical engineering, leads UTA's Pulsed Power and Energy Lab and has worked extensively with the Office of Naval Research, Argonne National Labs and other government and private interests to create batteries that operate safely, store greater amounts of energy and operate at very high power rates. The Faculty Early Career Development Program is the NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty. Winners are outstanding researchers, but also are expected to be outstanding teachers through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research at their home institutions. The goal of the program is to identify faculty who have potential to become leaders in their fields and give them a significant grant to begin to realize that potential.

###

About The University of Texas at Arlington

The University of Texas at Arlington is a comprehensive research institution of more than 51,000 students in campus-based and online degree programs and is the second-largest institution in The University of Texas System. The Chronicle of Higher Education ranked UTA as one of the 20 fastest-growing public research universities in the nation in 2014. U.S. News & World Report ranks UTA fifth in the nation for undergraduate diversity. The University is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and is ranked as the top four-year college in Texas for veterans on Military Times' 2016 Best for Vets list. Visit http://www.uta.edu to learn more, and find UTA rankings and recognition at http://www.uta.edu/uta/about/rankings.php.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. -- A small stand of poplar trees harvested from a University of Tennessee AgResearch Center is set to help scientists progress further down the path toward low-cost, high-quality biomass and a bioeconomy.

Located on UT's East Tennessee AgResearch Center in Blount County, the 10-acre plot of hybrid poplars was planted just over four years ago and the now 30-ft trees are expected to produce some 60-100 tons of woody biomass -- a crop Tennessee and other Southeastern farmers could potentially sell to biorefineries for conversion into advanced fuels or other biobased products.

The harvest is part of a five-year $15 million multi-disciplinary research and development effort funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to reduce barriers to the development of the Southeastern bioeconomy. UT's CRC, located within the UT Institute for Agriculture, leads the effort, which is called the Southeastern Partnership for Integrated Biomass Solutions, or IBSS. Partners in the broad-based effort include Auburn University, North Carolina State University, the University of Georgia, ArborGen, and Genera Energy Inc.

Tim Rials, director of the CRC explains, "The goal of the IBSS partnership is to demonstrate the production of advanced biofuels from sustainable sources of lignocellulosic biomass, that is, biomass made from designed herbaceous and woody crops." IBSS has focused on perennial switchgrass and short-rotation woody crops like eucalyptus, pine and hybrid poplar.

"It's important for the industry and producers to have a portfolio of crops that can supply the cellulosic biomass for the biorefineries," Rials said. "Very little information is available on the performance of hybrid poplar in the Southeast. This project is designed to identify the effect of both genetic differences and management practices on the growth and yield of this potentially important energy crop. The data should provide the basis for future productivity improvements."

The harvest included plots of several hybrid poplar varieties, called clones. Although genetic differences clearly impacted the overall yield, research has shown little difference in the chemical composition of the different hybrid poplar clones. "This information provides valuable guidance for continued enhancement of this new energy crop," Rials said.

Similar field trials, some with the same varieties, are also underway in Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina to evaluate environmental impacts on biomass yield.

IBSS partner Genera Energy, a biomass supply company based in Vonore, Tenn, led the harvesting effort for the poplars. The harvester utilized in the project is a standard self-propelled forage harvester with a very unique harvesting head attached to it. Only two of these woody harvesting heads exist in the world, and proving new harvesting technologies and logistics are at the core of improving the biomass supply chain for woody crops. In addition to the Knoxville harvest, Genera Energy also conducted additional harvesting of poplars in Mississippi with IBSS and Greenwood Resources.

Reducing the risk of supplying lignocellulosic feedstock and ensuring a sustainable, predictable supply of feedstocks with desirable properties for optimal performance during industrial processing is a challenge that must be confronted to make the Southeast a more attractive location for a new industry, Rials maintains. "The IBSS Partnership is working with that end in mind," he says.

A portion of the harvest from the UT AgResearch poplar stand, along with similar samples from the harvests at other sites, will be sent to different partner labs at the CRC, Auburn University and North Carolina State University for physical property analyses such as moisture content analyses and specific gravity examinations - important measurements to gauge the materials' usefulness for industry. Scientists with the CRC will also use NIR (near infrared) technology to examine the chemistry of the wood with an eye toward the development of future bio-based products.

The IBSS partners are working to match the economic and environmental performance of each feedstock with a preferred conversion platform so that the ultimate product, whether it's a biofuel or chemicals derived from the distillation of the biomass into its component parts, will be reliable, available and affordable.

Once the samples for examination at the CRC are set aside, additional samples from the harvest will be delivered to Genera Energy for pre-processing and further analysis, including spectroscopic monitoring. Genera's facility, which is the country's largest and most comprehensive industrial biomass management and processing facility, employs real-time feedstock monitoring technology to improve feedstock pre-processing, which reduces the risk of delivering material that fails to meet specifications. "The biomass preprocessing step helps guarantee to potential biomass users a consistent and uniform feedstock from which they can refine fuels and other products," said Sam Jackson, Genera's vice president for business development.

While the feedstock needed for biorefineries to produce biofuels and other biobased industrial products is currently readily available in the Southeast because abundant supplies of forest and agricultural residues, dedicated bioenergy crops will be needed to meet industry requirements for a sustainable industry to develop.

"The beauty of the poplars we are harvesting is that they will regenerate and continue to grow," said Rials. "In just 2 or 3 years they could be harvested again as a biomass crop. This makes them attractive to both producers and industry."

###

Through its mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. ag.tennessee.edu

About the UT Center for Renewable Carbon:

The Center for Renewable Carbon, in the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, is an internationally recognized leader in the development of new and improved bioenergy sources, biorefinery processes, bioproducts, and biomaterials that coordinates the science and knowledge transfer and trains the workforce required to develop a sustainable and economically viable bioeconomy. For more information, see renewablecarbon.org

About Genera Energy, Inc.:

Genera Energy Inc. supplies biomass feedstocks for the advanced biobased industries, offering scalable industrial scale agriculture biomass supply solutions ranging from full service energy crop production to customizable supply chain solutions and managing biomass supply. Genera's proprietary Supply ASSURE feedstock management system and its BIN-SPEC material handling and milling system offer Genera's customers maximum feedstock reliability and quality while minimizing variability and cost. Based in Vonore, Tenn., Genera operates the country's largest and most comprehensive industrial biomass management and processing facility. Focus on innovation and sustainability in delivering industrial biomass supply systems has earned Genera the World's Biofuels Market's prestigious 2013 Sustainable Feedstock Innovation Award. For more information, visit http://www.generaenergy.com
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a design accessory for monitoring the indoor air quality in facilities such as offices and classrooms. It detects carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity, and uses light signals to quide people to healthy space.

The monitor resembles a sailing boat, and it is ideal for facilities where staff welfare and productivity are especially important. The sensor can also be programmed to detect other gases, movement, sound, and the amount of light.

The monitor, which is based on IoT technology, uses comfort light signals to quide people if, for example, carbon dioxide levels in a room become too high. LEDs of different colours indicate when the level of gas measured by the sensor exceeds a certain threshold.

'The light changes from green to amber to red as the level of gas increases, and vice versa when it drops', explains Senior Scientist Markus Tuomikoski from VTT.

VTT's Tiny Node platform can also be used to monitor the indoor air quality remotely and to communicate with other similar IoT devices.

The sensor inside the device is based on infrared radiation at wavelengths that many gases (such as carbon dioxide) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) absorb.

Users can access the data transmitted by the device using their mobile phones. The device can also be linked to cloud services and used, for example, to collect and send regular carbon dioxide readings to the cloud, where the data can be analysed.

The indoor air monitor combines elements of VTT's sensor, LEDs, and wireless communication technology. The hybrid integration technology makes the product cost-effective to manufacture on an industrial scale.

###

For more information, please contact:

VTT

Markus Tuomikoski, Senior Scientist

Tel. +358 40 730 9084

markus.tuomikoski@vtt.fi

Further information on VTT:

Olli Ernvall

Senior Vice President, Communications

358 20 722 6747

olli.ernvall@vtt.fi

http://www.vtt.fi

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd is the leading research and technology company in the Nordic countries. We use our research and knowledge to provide expert services for our domestic and international customers and partners, and for both private and public sectors. We use 4,000,000 hours of brainpower a year to develop new technological solutions. VTT in social media: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @VTTFinland.




The official presentation of a "Program" respecting People's choices voted in the June 7, 2009 EU Elections, to be debated in EU Council and EU Parliament during its 1st Session on July in Strasbourg, is the No 1 Priority, according to Democratic principles, for the Franco-German axis, said the main winners at the ballot box, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angie Merkel.

They stressed that the New EU Commission's President must have a "Program" in favor of an EU which "protects" its Citizens, regulates financial markets and aims at a "Political" Europe" : a wording they have used as incompatible with Turkey's controversial EU bid.

They also declared ready for a "political" endorsment of "Mr. Barroso's candidacy" in June's EU Council, considering that an official decision would have to be made after EU Parliament's debates and votes, possibly from next month (July), with the legally necessary final acceptance shortly after Lisbon Treaty's entry into force, hoped for September or October.



- "A Program, and Mr. Barroso" : This resumes, in substance, the anouncements made by Sarkozy and Merkel, on the question of current EU Commission's President, Barroso's declared wish to succeed to himself for a second mandate, to be extended during the following 5 years.



In their 1st meeting after EU Elections, they observed that "the Franco-German axis counted in European Elections' campaign... But, we both keep a realistic view : We saw the number of those who abstained, and we must absolutely give them an answer. We also see the disilusionment of an important number of Europeans vis a vis Europe, and we are aware of the responsibilities we have".





- The "Duty" of the new EU Commission's President, after June 7, 2009 EU Elections' result, "is to act for a Europe which protects the Europeans, to commit himself into working for a better Regulation of Financial transactions, ... and to have a Political will for Europe", underlined Sarkozy.



Therefore, "we have asked M. Barroso... to clarify, to officialy present the intentions he has", he anounced.



- "We want to speak also about the Programme", explained Merkel.



- "It's important that for the next EU Parliament's mandate (2009-2014) we take the right Decisions for Europe. Obviously on Persons, but mainly Decisions on Issues", she stressed.



- "It's not simply a question of a Person, it's also a question of a Programme". We are "really asking Mr. Barroso to commit himself on a Program, and on Principles, on Values", Sarkozy added.



EU President-in-office, Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer, accepted the Franco-German stance :



- "Barroso must present his Programme. The Czech Presidency agrees with that", Fischer reportedly said later, after meeting Sarkozy.



But Press reports from Brussels claimed that Barroso had preferred to be officially appointed by EU Council since June, (i.e. next week), "because this was implied by the current Treaty of Nice, according to him", and considered any delay until the possible ratification of the new, Lisbon Treaty on September/October, as "undemocratic".



- "At any case, independently of what Germany and France ask, it's also EU Parliament's wish". "We shall propose Mr Barroso's candidacy... But even in the framework of Nice Treaty, EU Parliament has to be associated in this Decision", the French President observed.



If this is correctly done, then "we support Mr. Barroso's candidature", and "if the (EU) Parliament agrees, we might ratify this decision since July", (i.e. next month), they both said.





- "France and Germany support Baroso's candidacy, But we want to speak also on the Program. We believe that this Program should be established in close cooperation with EU Parliament, and that's why we have followed an appropriate way", said Merkel. - If EU Parliament wants, this election can take place on July, but this must be done in full agreement.

- "We shall support Mr. Barroso's candidacy, without doubt", said Sarkozy. "But we have asked from Mr. Barroso, as I told him yesterday, to put into detail.. his intentions, at the eve of his 2nd mandate, if the situation avails itself.



France and Germany "don't want to take an Official Legal Decision by writting" during "the next (EU) Council" (on June 18-19), declared Sarkozy. Because they prefer, at this stage, only "a Political decision" on June, "so that we (EU Council) can work together with EU Parliament", which starts to meet only Next Month, since July in Srasbourg, "leaving a Legal decision by writting for later".



- "If the Conditions are fuillfiled in EU Parliament, we (EU Council) are ready to give the agreement and make it offficial", said Merkel



- "But, now we are working in the base of Nice Treaty. If tommorow we want to work in the spirit of Lisbon Treaty, we have to find a proper way", she added.



- "Of course it's Legally complicated, because we are going to make a Political proposal to the forthcoming Council, for an EU Commission's President, on the basis of Nice Treaty : So, we (EU Council) will not appoint the Commissioners. Only the President. If EU Parliament agrees, it could endorse this position on July", explained Sarkozy.



But, on Autumn, "if Ireland ratifies Lisbon Treaty, there will be, at any case, a 2nd Decision, to appoint the Commission's President, this time on the basis of Lisbon treaty, and then, we, the EU Member States, would have to appoint (also) the EU Commissioners", he added.



As for the precise Timing : - "Everything is suspended until the Irish vote... Now, we must all make everything possible to help Ireland to say "Yes"" to Lisbon Treaty... The Irish Referendum, ..will take place either on September or on October. It's a Question which depends on the Irish. And, then, we shall have the Choice of the Candidates for the permanent Institutions of Europe".



However, "if Ireland says No, we, French and Germans, have to assume our responsibilities, and we'll do so", he concluded.



But British and Swedish governments were reportedly eager to have a final EU Council decision on Barroso since this month, on June's European Council. While the other EU Member Countries are divided, several of them preferring to wait until EU Parliament pronounces itself, on July, and/or until Lisbon Treaty might be ratified by Ireland at the beginning of the Autumn. Barroso's current mandate ends on November.



There are also various, contradictory and/or unpredictable reactions inside EU Parliament vis a vis Barroso's wish to continue a 2nd mandate, because many MEPs are openly or secretly opposed, reluctant, or hesitating.



In the biggest EU Countries, as France and Germany, EU Citizens voted on June 2009 EU Elections for a renovated, non-technocratic but Political Europe which cares for its Citizens, with an Identity, Values and Borders, declared incompatible with Turkey's controversial EU bid, by mainstream, pro-European Governing Parties. Similar choices were also supported in several other small or medium EU Countries.



On the contrary, whenever, in other Countries, Governing and other mainstream Parties didn't make these choices or eluded them, EU Citizens massively voted for euro-Sceptics whenever they were the only ones to to promise anti-bureacratic change and oppose Turkey's demand to enter into the EU, (f.ex. in the UK, Netherlands, etc).



It's seems to be an Open Question whether Sarkozy and Merkel's conditions will be really accepted by Barroso, who was appointed on 2004 in a different political context, (with Socialist Prime Ministers in Germany, France, etc), had rejected in the Past the idea of EU becoming "equal to the USA" as "ridiculous", and pushed for Turkey's contoversial EU bid, trying to "soften" or contain the changes desired by the People who voted for Merkel and Sarkozy with another policy vis a vis Turkey on 2005 in Germany and on 2007 in France, as they did all over Europe on 2009.



In addition to many EPP Governments, it's 3 remaining Socialist Prime Ministers : Gordon Brown in the UK, Zapatero in Spain, and Socrates in Prortugal, who support Barroso, as well as Liberal Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt. But their Parties lost the June 2009 EU Elections.



Questioned whether there was still "Time" for "other" possible "Candidates", Sarkozy and Merkel did not deny, nor made any comment on that, but simply said that "it's not for us to make publicity for any candidates. We anounced our choice ("A Program, and Mr. Barroso"). But we respect any other candidate".



Among various other names cited are former Belgian Prime Minister Verhofstadt, former UNO's Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson of Ireland, Italian former EU Commission's vice-President Monti, etc. Meanwhile, Luxembourg's PM Juncker, (who had been unanimously accepted by EU Council for EU Commission's Presidency on 2004, but refused), announced his intention to resign from "EuroGroup"'s Chair. Thus, he might be available for another Top EU job.



As "EuroFora"'s "opinion" said (See publication dated 9/6/09) : - "If the current candidates (i.e. Barroso, etc) to the Top EU jobs promise and guarantee to respect People's democratic choices, then, it's OK".



"Otherwise, Europe must find new candidates, really motivated and able to implement these democratic choices of the People."



Because, "in Democracy, the forthcoming choices for EU's Top Jobs,...should be made according to EU Citizens' Votes in June 7, 2009 European Elections, and main EU Governments' strategic policies".





***


Written by ACM





EU Rapporteur on Enlargment Strategy, maistream German MEP Elmar Brok, speaking to "EuroFora", welcomed the proposal made earlier this week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy for the EU to"start Now Talks with Turkey to create a common Economic and Security area", instead of full Accession, at a period when Ankara looks more and more unfit and/or unwilling to respect EU conditions.



- "For Europe to have strong Political will, it must stop dilutiing itself in an endless Enlargement. It must have borders...Diversities enrich, on the condition that they don't undermine European Cohesion, and don't weaken EU Unity", Sarkozy stressed.



- "Countries like Turkey share a part of common destiny with Europe, with which they have a vocation to build a Privileged Relation, to be closely associated, but not to become Member of the EU" : "Noone respects his friends by telling them lies. Noone respects his friends by making them promises that will be never kept", he added.



That's why "we'd better start, from now, negotiating with Turkey to create a common Economic and Security area", Sarkozy proposed.

Significantly, the French President was repeatedly and largely applauded by EU citizens, 3 times, when he made the Turkey point, (strategically placed between Europe's "Political Will" and its cultural heritage, historically open to mutually enriching dialogue with all the World, but never diluted).

- "We could propose such a great ambition also to Russia, which must not be percieved as an Adversary of Europe, but as a Partner. Thus, we'd create a wide area, of more than 800 Million inhabitants, sharing the same Security, the same Prosperity", he concluded.





Sarkozy's move was anounced at the eve of a Franco-German Top meeting with Chancellor Angie Merkel in Berlin on Sunday, to jointly launch the EU Elections campain, after an EU Summit at nearby Prague, to launch a new kind of relations, called "Eastern Partnership", with neighboring countries such as Urkaine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaidjan, etc, (to which Russia, reportedly, is not - and does not want to be - included).



As for Ukraine, which has already expressed her wish to join the EU in future, "Kiev will have a special place, and a very important role to play", replied earlier this week in Strasbourg, to an "EuroFora" question EU Chairman in office , Czech vice-Prime Minister Alexander Vodra.



- "This direction is more Realistic for Turkey than Accession negotiations", reacted immediately EU Parliament's Rapporteur for Enlargment Strategy, mainstream German MEP Elmar Brok, commenting Sarkozy's idea for "EuroFora"



Particularly "as far as it concerns the respect of EU Rules by both sides", he added, hinting at Turkey's now obvious inability and/or unwillingness to abide with EU Acquis, EU Commitments (fex. on Cyprus, etc), and European Democracy/Human Rights rules. (Comp. infra).



Brok added that, in his view, a similar proposal might be made also to Ukraine and other neighbouring Countries, regardless if they have, or not, a "European vocation". This would not necessarily mean that there couldn't be any accession prospects at all." for all the countries that might be included in this area, according to Brok. But it's preferable, particularly for Turkey, "because it's a more Realistic approach than full Membership".



On this point, Sarkozy's proposal, (which he'll share with German Chancellor Merkel), seems more crystal-clear.







- "Turkey does not fullfil EU Criteria, and will never fullfil EU Criteria" on Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law. "Some have been lying to Ankara, but we must tell the Truth, and have honest and close relations with her", said meanwhile to "EuroFora" on the same issue also the President of EU Parliament's largest Group of MEPs (ChristianDemocrats/EPP), Joseph Daul.

------------------------------

"Hot" Debate at EU Parliament reveals CHANGE of mood towards "Suspension" of EU - Tukey talks.

------------------------------

Earlier this week, many MEPs, and even some of those who were previously in favor of Turkey's controversial EU bid, strongly criticized the persistance and even aggravation of serious Human Rights violations in the country, that ECHR continues to "unanimously" condemn ":

- "After winning a big victory in the latest Local Elections, the pro-Kurdish party DTP almost doubled its Elected Mayors from 52 to 98", but afterwards "more than 400 politicians were thrown to Prison and prosecuted" by the Turkish Authorities, denounced on behalf of the ChristianDemocrat/EPP Group, Belgian MEP Frieda Brepoels.

At the same time, "more than 1.500 Children are closed in Turkish Prisons", she added. "What will the EU Commission do" against these facts ?

- "Turkey appears to be at greater Distance away from Copenhagen Criteria after 4 Years of accession Negotiations, than when they started !", denounced on behalf of the Liberal Group, German MEP Alexander Lambsdorf.

"On the central issue of Press Freedom, Critical Journalists face obstacles for their accreditation, others are prosecuted, condemned, fined and/or jailed, Media blocked or closed", he denounced.

- "EU Made 2 grave Mistakes with Turkey : To start accession negotiations, and to continue them", despite everything, criticized Dutch MEP Bastian Belder, on behalf of the Ind/Dem group.

(../..)



(../..)

- "A 14 year old boy is in the Coma after being hit by a Turkish Policeman. Another 14 years boy died falling into a River to escape from Turkish Police. 2 Human beings were killed on April by the Turkish Police's fire against demonstrators. 185 Children are in prison at Diyarbakir. Hundredrs of democratically Elected politicians and activists of DTP Party have been arrested. More than 207 judicial procedures were launched against the DTP. (etc). All this started when the DTP won many democratic victories at the Local Elections on the End of March 2009, while Mr Erdogan's AKP Party was losing grip over the Kurdish regions. Once again, Turkey sends a message that it doesn't really want a Political Solution of the Kurdish problem inside the democratic system, denounced German MEP Feneleca UCA on behalf of the EuroLeft Group.

- "It's obvious that Turkey is a country with very Grave Problem of democratisation : We have 15.000 Children in Prison.: Hundreds of Arrests with dubious accusations. The Kurdish and Armenian Problems have not been resolved. Priests and Missionaires were murdered these last 2 Years, etc. The Number of Problems is without end. : It's scandalous to exclude Bielorussia, a European Country, and to claim that Turkey will enter the EU !", criticized Italan MEP Roberti Fiore (Right).



"Some Lobbies absolutely want Turkey's entry in Europe. But nobody can deny that there is a problem, when Cyprus, an EU Member, has part of its Territory Occupied by a Candidate Country, which contines its Occupation and Domination, exerting an absolutely Anti-Democratic force on the People of the island".



"Thus, inevitably, will emerge in the Consience of the European People the need for a Decision Contrary to the entry of Turkey in the EU !" "Turkey was always opposed to Europe in History. ...Its entry would mean the loss of any European Identity", Fiore added.



- For German ChristianDemocrat MEP Richard Seeber, "it's obvious, from all these Facts, that Turkey should be brought "closer", but NOT "IN" the EU !"



"The list of unresolved Problems has not become shorter. .. On Human Rights and Democracy, control of the Military, etc. Turkey still has a very, very long road to go before it approaches European standards", while "it has not even signed the UN Convention against Torture". EU Commission must become much more strict", he concluded.



- "The recent Victory of DTP at the Kurdish Regions of Turkey proves that it is democratically popular. But, instead of starting Negotiations with the DTP, on the contrary, Erdogan replied with more Oppression, more Police, more Autoritarianism, more Imprisonments", denounced Italian EuroLeft MEP Vittorio Agnoletto.



"Our Group (EuroLeft) wants to launch a very Strong Political message to Erdogan : Eithet he starts tio search a negotiated Political Solution to the Kurdish Problem as a matter of Priority, or, otherwise, we ask to SUSPEND the Accession NEGOTIATIONS with the E.U. !", concluded a former supporter of Turkey's controversial EU bid..



- "Turkey still remains far away from European Values : Cyprus remains a country under Military Occupation for 35 Years, contrary to International Law. The situation of Kurds does not ameliorate. Relations with Greeks and Armenians are constantly under Pressure. Religious Minorities are oppressed and the rights of various Minorities trumbed underfoot, (etc), in front of a blatantly Indifferent EU Commission, which persists to push for the Accession of such a Country inside the EU", denounced French MEP Patrick Louis (Ind/Dem)

=> "So, let's be Frank : Any attempt to integrate Turkey must be made with due respect of European Democracy, i.e. by REFERENDUM!", he concluded.



- "It was absolutely wrong to hope that .. by being nice to Turkey this country will change its Kemalic Fascism into Democratic-like behaviour". In fact, "Democratic reforms in Turkey have been moving with the pace of a 3-legged Turtle !.. The Governing regime in Turkey has proven itself totally Incapable and Unwilling to get its country into the state of a 21st-century Civilisation", denounced Cyprus' Liberal MEP Marios Matsakis.



"The vast Majority of the European Citizens we represent have run out of patience. We've had enough. Commissioner, the "carrot" technique failed .... The time has now come to use the stick !", he concluded.

----------------------

- British Liberal MEP Andres Duff was alone to find all his collegues MEPs "rather ..fickle on Turkey", as he said.. Duff found the "Ergenekon affair" as a "welcome sign" that "is starting" the "cleansing of the stables" and "attack (againsty the ) deep corruption inside parts of the Turkish State".



- Only a controversial Turkish businesman from Germany, Vural Oger, speaking on behalf of the "Socialist Group", was rather anxious of Erdogan's reported attempts to at least unearth a few Violent Extremists hidden under the Nationalistic Turkic organisation "Ergenekon". While also accused ...the EU to be responsible (!) for the deadlocks in Turkey's so called "Democratisation process", (desperately longer than that of Spain's swift from Franquism, Eastern Europe's swift from Stalinism to the EU, etc)..



He was almost echoed, on behalf of the "Green" Group, (chaired by a Turkish origin MP in Germany), by Dutch MEP, Jost Langendjik, Chair of EU - Turkey JPC, who went as far as to ... find even "some .. improvements" in the ways in which Turkey f.ex. continues to oppress demonstrators on May 1st, adding a mild criticism.

------------------

- "The Critical Yardstick" are "Human Rights", replied to MEPs EU Commissioner Oli Rehn.

- "The Pace of negotiations with Turkey will ..depend on the progress and intensity of the reforms enhancing fundamental freedoms , .Progress in the ..negotiations will depend on whether there is serious progress in, and .. implementation of ..reforms enhancing fundamental freedoms, human rights and democratic secularism. These are enshrined in EU Treaty and in our common European Values", he said.



- "It feels like two steps forward and one step Backward", the outgoing Socialist Finnish EU Commissioner found, nevertheless. "We (EU) must be Fair and Firm", he added. "We have to be fair in the sense of maintaining the EU perspective as the critical Driver of reforms in the country, ..At the same time, we have to be firm by applying Rigorous Conditionality, especially as regards fundamental freedoms and democratic principles; "I am concerned about Media freedom ..in Turkey", he reiterated, (but without adding anything concrete).....

-----------------------

- "Between 14 and 18 April 2009, more than 200 officials and members of the Democratic Society Party have been arrested", observed the EU Commissioner.



But, "the Commission cannot interfere in ongoing legal cases", Rehn claimed. "We support the fight against terrorism", "conducted by respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms". "Condemning the use of force and violence is a Duty for all Parties involved. All must..be committed to peaceful means and peaceful means only", he added



Rehn simply will "continue to encourage the Turkish authorities to address the problems of the South-East", and "to ensure cultural diversity", promissing anew to "continue to monitor the situation ..and .report in our upcoming progress Report", i.e. Six (6) Months later.. In the meantime, the jailed Mayors and Children got Rehn's promise to "..continue to follow up developments", asking to respect "the rights of Defendants", (in jail)..



Astonished Strasbourg observers heard Rehn make a dubious "joke" by assimilating the evening "debate on Democracy in Turkey" with the ..."Wine Reform during the 2nd half of Arsenal v Manchester United", claiming that this was "a snapshot of Europe in 2009" !...

----------------------------------------

ECHR "unanimously" condemns Turkey for "Unfair Trials" and for "Violating Freedom of Press"

---------------------------------------

Meanwhile, ECHR "unanimously" condemned Turkey anew for "Unfair Trials" and for "violating the Freedom of Press", in a way which highlighted differences between the Turkish and the European Democracies :



* Meanwhile, ECHR "unanimously" condemned Turkey for throwing a person to Jail for more than ...12 Years (accused only to be "member of an illegal organisation"), after an "Unfair Trial", by a tribunal with legitimate "Doubts" for its "independence and impartiality", and on the sole basis of a so-called "confession" taken in custody while the victim was illegaly "deprived of any assistance by a Lawer", (and afterwards denied).. ("Celic case).



* At another judgement issued this same week, ECHR also "unanimously" condemned Turkey for "violating the Freedom of Expression" of a Monthly Newspaper Editor, persecuted and repeatedly condemned to Prison (later trasnformed to Heavy Fines), for publishing 2 articles strongly critical of Ankara's methods vis a vis kurdish women and other people.

For the European) Court, the accused texts only launched "Political Calls", which "cannot be taken as calls to use violence". F.ex. a "political speech" which simply includes terms such as "revolution" or "just struggle", "was not equivalent to "war", and was used in relation to a struggle for the recognition of rights".

Revealing a Gap between Turkey and European Democracies, ECHR observed that, if "such Political calls are believed to be incompatible with the Turkish State's oppressive legislation, this does not make them contrary to (European) Democratic rules". Because, "such wording is similar to that used by political movements freely expressing their views in other CoE member countries", ECHR denounced, (fex. France's PC, ou le facteur Besancenot, etc, currently candidates to EU Elections) ...

"The main fact" for ECHR is that Turkey was unable to find "any abstract indicating that the authors might have advised violence, or call to a bloody violence or justified terrorism". "Neither did they .. provoke a deep and irrational hate against identified persons", the Judgement explains.

Moreover, Turkey was also condemned for "Unfair Trial", mainly because the victim hadn't even been informed about what the Public Prosecutor had claimed against him...

In conclusion, ECHR ordered Turkey ro pay 7.600  to the victim for Material and Moral Damages, as well as Costs and expenses. (Affair "Ozer").

More ECHR condemnations for Torture or "Inhuman and degrading treatments" were pronounced the previous weeks, prolonging an already ...long list of condemnations of such violations by Turkey...

----------------------------------------

EU FUNDS' SUSPENSION "NOT EXCLUDED" : German MEP

---------------------------------------------

- In these conditions, and if nothing changes, "it's not excluded that at least part of EU FUNDS earmarked to Turkey might be SUSPENDED, if such Grave Human Rights Violations persist or even aggravate", said to "EuroFora" German MEP Ingeborg Grassle, an experimented and influential member of EU Parliament's Committee on Budget Control (COCOBU).

Grassle, who had already tabled previously an Amendment on EU Budget asking to suspend EU Funds earmarked for Turkey over Democracy, Human Rights and International Law violations, told us that, "in fact, this could be done legally at any moment, even without a specific Clause. Because, as a matter of principle, all EU Agreements with 3rd Countries contain a Human Rights Clause".

Indeed, a Resolution on EU's Human Rights Policy adopted on Thursday by EU Parliament in Strasbourg, asks for "continued Maximum Vigilance as regards Respect for Human Rights Clauses in the Agreements signed by the EU and its 3rd Country partners", and "calls for this Clause to be systematically accompagnied by a genuine Enforcementt Mechanism".
Written by ACM







EU Commissioner on Economy and Finance, Joachin Almunia, replying to 3 "EuroFora" questions in Strasbourg before next week's London Global Summit, made it clear that all EU Member States must, more or less, respect EU Rules on the Monetary Stability Pact when they draft their Economic Stimulus policies, unless they want to "Opt-out" of EuroZone, as the UK has already done...

Several EU Countries must correct imbalances in rather strict Time deadlines, and this is not an "impossible task", but "a very possible and attainable task", as Almunia told us. But it's only the UK which could practically ignore EU's calls, "because of the Opt-out they have"....

The issue got a larger, EU-wide and even Global Political dimension, one day later at EU Parliament, when USA's new President, Barack Obama's call on Europe to augment Spending against the Economic Crisis at the eve of G-20 Summit, was considered by some EU officials, (as EU chair, Czech Prime Minister Topolanek or EU Commission's President Baroso, etc), as partly deviant to Euro-Zone rules of the EU, whose priority now seems to be a new, multi-polar agreement on the Regulation of World's Financial Markets, to avoid similar abuses and crisis in the Future.

Even if he appeared as partly sparing for the moment some of EU's driving forces, as France or the UK, Spain, etc, who got more Time than others, Almunia stressed that, as a matter of principle, all EU Member States should comply with the same rules, applied according to the particular situation of each one of them.



The results of EU Commission''s check on 5 EU Countries : France, the UK, Spain, Greece, Ireland and Cyprus, gave, at first, an impression to some that a "difference" was made "between EU Countries", as an Italian journalist said.



F.ex. paradoxically, Greece seems to have, in comparison, some better indicators than other EU Countries checked this week :



* Deficit in Greece, after reaching 3,7% of GDP in 2007, is estimated at 3,7% in 2008, over 3% in 2009, and exceeding 4% in 2010, according to EU Commission's forecast, (while the Greek Government tabled on just 3,2%). Only Cyprus does better, with a lower deficit than the threshhold of 3%.



France comes next, whose deficit aims for 2009 and 2010 were revised upwards at 5,6% and 5,2%. In Spain, it's expected to arrive at 6,2% in 2009 and 5,7% in 2010.



But in the UK, Deficit estimates mount at ..9,5% in 2009/10. In Ireland, the deficit already reached 6,3% in 2008, and is expected to rise up to 11% in 2009, and 13% in 2010 !

(../..)

* On Growth, Greece "has a higher percentage ..than the EU average", observes EU Commission : "Real GDP Growth reached +4% in 2007, before decelerating at +3% in 2008", the year of the Global Crisis, revealing that "Greece enjoyed a Good Economic period in 2007 and 2008".





In the other 5 EU Countries, Growth figures are less good, for the moment : Cyprus, after a +1% Growth in 2008, may fall in recession in 2009 with -1%. In Spain, after a + 1,2% GDP Growth in 2008, estimates give a - 2% contraction in 2009. In France, after a +2,2% GDP Growth in 2007, the 2008 estimate was +0,7%. But Ireland's GDP decreased - 2% since 2008. And for the UK, EU Commission forecasts a "sharp contraction" all over 2008-2010.



- Despite that, Almunia asked from Greece "to bring the deficit down from 3%" as soon as in 2010, and wants to see efficient measures on October ! And Cyprus is asked to "stop" its Stimulus plan "next year".



On the contrary, from Spain and France he asks results only in 2012, i.e. 2 Years later, and from Ireland in 2013, i.e. 3 Years later. As for the UK, Almunia replied to "EuroFora"'s question by asking measures only .."when the revival of the economy will allow"...



This difference made some Journalists (from Italy, France, etc) suspect some kind of "differenciation" between EU Countries :



- "This gives the impression that there might be a Difference inside the EU between some Big Countries, which get more Time, and some Small Countries, which are asked to comply with Stricter rules", criticized an Italian Journalist.



- "In Greece, the estimated Deficit is Lower then in the other countries, while Growth also continues". On the contrary, "in Ireland, the Deficit is much Higher, and is due to worsen, because there are more pesimistic forecasts on Growth, with a faster and larger Downfall of production", Almunia replied.



"In Spain and France, the deficits are between Greece's and Ireland's", while revival is still awaited. Thus, "we (EU Commission) dont' ask the same things" in the other 3 countries as in Greece, which "can move faster".



But, in fact, the real cause of this otherwise astonishing difference, seems to be an "old problem of Debt, which exists since Many Years from the Past" (i.e. since previous governments, before 2004), as "EuroFora" asked Almunia, who did not deny : The problem in Greece clearly is that it inherited from the past a gross public Debt which "remained at 98,4% of GDP in 2007", diminished a bit in 2008 (94,6%), but is estimated to grow at 96%in 2009 and 98%in 2010, according to EU Commission's data.



On the contrary, in Ireland the Debt was only 40,6% of GDP in 2008, and wouldn't breach the 60% reference before 2010. In Spain it's 40,3% in 2008, and 53% for 2010. In the UK it's expected to rise to 70% in 2013/14. In France it's estimated at 67,1% in 2008 and 73,9 in 2009, 77,5% in 2010.



- "Why this Acceleration in Greece ? It's not only because it has less deficit, and not only because it has a Positive Growth percentage, and, thus, can act earlier, with accessible measures". "But also because there are 2 Facts on which is needed the utmost Care, during this period of (Global Crisis) : An External Imbalance, with a big and persisting Current Accounts' Deficit, and also a very big level of Debt, compared to its GDP", Almunia added



However, the EU Commissioner looked optimist in reply to an "EuroFora"'s question if he believed that "such an old problem, which exists since many years, could be settled in 1 year" :



- "It's not an impossible task. It's a very possible and attainable task", replied Almunia to our question, reminding that "in a previous occasion", when "Greece had received a recommendation for the correction of an excessive deficit, ..it was corrected", between 2005 and 2007. .And "the Greek Government is convinced that, for their own interest, not only because they want to comply with the EU framework, but for the interest of the Greek Economy, this correction of the deficit is warrant".



But even Cyprus, whose Debt, estimated at only "49.3% of GDP in 2008, is projected to decline to 44.2% of GDP in 2012", is advised to stop its Economic Revival Plan in 2010, in order to prevent risks imbalances in the future, because of the current Global Crisis' environment. Asked by "EuroFora" to "explain, in a crystal-clear way", why Cyprus, with a lower deficit than the 3% threshhold and a diminishing debt, according to EU Commission, should take Restrictive Measures now, Almunia focused on the Crisis' impact :- "In the case of Cyprus, we (EU Commission) consider that the Fiscal Stimulus should not continue Next Year (in 2010)", he confirmed. Because "we think that the figures on the Economy of Cyprus from 2009 to 2012, ..can become a little bit worse, given the evolution of the (Global) economic Environment". And "Cyprus' Pulic Finances, over the Long term, have problems of Sustainability : We have analyzed that in the Past, and the situation has not changed from the Structural point of view". "At the same time, as Greece, it has a Current Account Deficit, and in this moment, in this (Global) Crisis, the persistence of a current accounts deficit is an important macroeconomic imbalance, that requires the contribution of adequate fiscal policy to be corrected".In other words, in itself, nothing new...In contrast, UK's particular situation among the 5 EU Countries checked, revealed more clearly the main issue :The EU Commissioner was asked by "EuroFora" to explain the "strange example given to other Countries" by the UK, where, despite some negative figures (see above), even if the measures earlier advised by the EU were "not taken", and a Time "Deadline wasn't met", EU Commission does nothing else than simply .. issue a new recomendation, advising again to take more such measures and ..postponing the Time Deadline for later.After insinuating that "the UK case", might not be the right, but a "bad example" for other EU Countries, Almunia admitted that he asks from London to simply "correct the imbalances..... as soon as possible, once the recovery will come back" !But he explained "the repetition of recommendations in the case of the UK", by observing that "we (EU) cannot go beyond this step, because of the Opt-Out they have"....However, it's the "own interest of the British Economy to correct" that, he concluded.Indeed, some MEPs teased, the same day, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, (who visited Strasbourg to discuss the preparation of the forthcoming Global London Summit), for keeping too many "Opt-Outs" from EU Rules, as fex. the Leader of "Greens/ARE" Group, Italian MEP Monica Frassoni. Going even further British Liberal MEP Graham Watson, leader of the "Liberal/Democratic" Group, launched a call for UK's entry to the EuroZone !..More pragmatic, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, has already declared that it seems always possile and desirable to forge a special status for the UK to get together with EuroZone. Thus, he reminded the useful, even if partial, participation of Gordon Brown to the decisions taken by the 1st, Historic EuroZone's Heads of State and Government Summit, in Paris, on October 12, 2008, which was the first to be succesful in starting to make Stock Markets move in a positive direction.
George Osbornes announcement that the government would publish a comprehensive analysis of the UKs EU membership weakened Pound Sterling (GBP) vs the JPY, TRY and the RUB peers recently.

Friday's markets find the British pound is holding firm against the Japanese yen today, just 0.04 per cent down on the day.

GBP is fairing better in relation to the Turkish lira though, with investors seeing a 0.24pct push higher.

Economic activity in the UK slowed in February, according to the latest Purchasing Managers Indexes from survey compiler Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, weakening GBP today.

Both the services and composite PMIs fell further than expected, showing a significant slowdown in growth during the course of the previous month.

After last weeks significant losses in the wake of Brexit speculation, Pound Sterling has become a highly attractive buy for investors this week.

Heightened demand has seen GBP extend bullish gains against TRY, RUB and JPY today thanks to correctional trading, which has ignored the news that UK construction sector activity dropped to a ten-month low.

The news that George Osborne will prepare a detailed dossier of analysis on EU membership and alternatives weakened GBP exchange rates recently as it rekindled the Brexit debate which had died down after the previous weeks frenzy.

Osborne announced the document, explaining,What people are asking for in this referendum campaign is a serious, sober and principled assessment from the government setting out the facts, and I can announce today that the Treasury will publish before the 23rd of June a comprehensive analysis of our membership of a reformed EU and the alternatives.

However, Chief Executive of Vote Leave Matthew Elliott has dismissed the document, claiming it will be another attempt at scaremongering, just like comments made by Peter Mandelson, explaining, Peter Mandelson told us the British economy would fall off a cliff if we didnt join the euro and now he is indulging in the same scaremongering about the referendum. He was wrong then and he is wrong now. He is starting to resemble a man wearing a sign saying the end is nigh.'

The latest poll of polls is showing clear support for remaining in the UK, with 45% of voters intending to vote Remain while 38% will vote Leave, while aggregated betting odds put the chances of a Brexit at 2/5 and the chance of a Bremain at 9/4.

Before we continue with the news, heres an update on today's FX rates for your reference;

On Saturday the Japanese Yen to British Pound exchange rate (JPY/GBP) converts at 0.006

The pound conversion rate (against japanese yen) is quoted at 166.939 JPY/GBP.

The GBP to TRY exchange rate converts at 21.022 today.

FX markets see the pound vs russian rouble exchange rate converting at 69.692.

Please note: the FX rates above, updated 22nd Oct 2022, will have a commission applied by your typical high street bank. Currency brokers specialise in these type of foreign currency transactions and can save you up to 5% on international payments compared to the banks.

Ratings agency Standard & Poors have claimed the strong Japanese Yen could remove external support for the Japanese economy.

Standard & Poors, who have already cut Japans credit rating from AA- to A+, four tiers below the best AAA rating, have now warned that the government will struggle to stimulate the economy without causing alarm.

The Japanese government is looking to increase its already heavy debt burden in order to prevent a slowdown in household consumption, but S&P believe this will serve to alarm investors and damage confidence.

Kim Eng Tan, S&Ps Asia Pacific Senior Director of Sovereign Ratings, explains, The size of any stimulus will have to be carefully calibrated. At this point I don't think the government can put out a package big enough to support the economy without triggering concerns.

Pound to Lira Exchange Rate Today: Fitch recently affirmed Turkeys credit rating as BBB- and noted that political uncertainty had lessened, boosting TRY exchange rates.

Turkey has managed to hold on to its BBB- grade, meaning debt issued by the Government remains investment grade, or low to moderate risk.

Fitch was of the opinion that the internal uncertainty had abated to a degree, despite two elections.

Elections in November 2015 resulting in another term for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) have eased domestic political uncertainty, although the prospect of constitutional reform in order to strengthen the powers of the presidency means some uncertainties linger.

While the agency noted worsening global conditions, it claimed they were unlikely to downgrade Turkeys rating in the next couple of years.

Russian Ruble (RUB) Sinks as Russia Announces 6.64 Billion Anti-Crisis Plan

The Russian government has unveiled a 120-point plan to develop the economy in order to create stability in 2016.

The measure comes after figures showed that the Russian economy contracted -3.7% in 2015, with S&P predicting a further -1.3% contraction in the coming year.

Experts are already arguing that the RUB 684.8 billion (6.6 billion) plan wont be sufficient, with Russian Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev claiming RUB 880 billion (8.5 billion) is needed.


The cost of accommodation for expat employees working for multi nationals in London is more than double that of Sydney, Los Angeles or Chicago according to new research.The average total cost of accommodation per worker, per year in 20 key cities around the world is US$56,855, the latest Live Work index from international real estate firm Savills shows.The index, which measures the combined cost of residential and office rental per person per year across leading world class cities, found they vary from US$16,500 in Rio de Janeiro to US$112,800 in London. San Francisco saw the greatest price rise over 2015, up by 13%, compared to a 9% fall in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro.Overall in second place is New York at US$111,300, then Hong Kong at US$103,200, then a considerable drop to Paris at US$78,200 and Tokyo at US$69,800. Sydney comes in at US$49,500, Los Angeles at US$48,600 and Chicago at US$44,700."The productivity of cities and their value to global businesses clearly has a pronounced effect on demand and hence rental costs. The highest ranking global cities, London and New York, are also the most expensive for businesses and workers to occupy. Arguably both are achieving a fair price in relation to their composite world city scores, but Hong Kong looks more fully valued," said Yolande Barnes, head of Savills world research."However, world cities can become a victim of their own success when rents rise to the point where affordability becomes an issue. Rapid urbanisation demands supply elasticity, the test for the top Alpha cities is to supply new business quarters and residential neighbourhoods while capturing the characteristics that made the city attractive in the first place. Growth without social, economic or environmental loss is perhaps one of the biggest challenges facing our world cities today," she explained.The report points out that while some of the larger and most prominent world class cities struggle to replicate their most successful city fabric in new places, other cities are emerging into the global spotlight.It says that real estate recovery has not been universal, but rather concentrated in the cities favoured by occupants and investors in the growing digital and creative economies. This means some relatively small cities, such as Berlin and Dublin are quickly moving into the realm of world class city status and competing with the giants in a new digital age, while San Francisco's place in the top 10 now looks secure.Furthermore, real estate growth has shifted back from east to west. From 2005 to 2011 new world BRIC cities, Brazil, Russia, India and China, countries such as Shanghai, Mumbai and Moscow as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, significantly outperformed London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney.But in the years to 2015 this trend has reversed as economic growth and wealth creation has slowed in the new world, economic revival has driven real estate recovery in Europe and, most especially, in the United States."Looking forward, increasing the supply of high quality workspace will be crucial for emerging cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai and Lagos but this stock might not have to be international style office blocks if a more local low or mid-tech solution is more appropriate. The vast majority of workspaces across the globe in both emerged and emerging economies remain small scale, informal and local buildings rather than international architectural style, plate glass fronted offices," said Barnes."The choice between a fine-grain city of mixed use neighbourhoods and grand masterplans of big blocks faces virtually every world city today and will make a huge difference to the way of life of citizens in their houses as well as work places," she concluded.
I am a British citizen and have been living with my Colombian partner in Colombia since the end of 2010. We intend to apply for an unmarried partner visa in order to settle in the UK. We are unable to make an immediate application seeing as we don't meet the financial requirements. As a result, I have decided to return to the UK to secure employment with a salary that meets the requirements - this is something that could take up to 10 months when factoring in the period of time spent looking for work along with staying in employment for the minimum period of 6 months.



We have plenty of evidence to prove that we have been living together including utility bills and correspondence from a variety of sources along with numerous photos throughout this period.



According to the gov.uk website, I gather my partner would be eligible for ILE based on her passing the IELTS life skills B1 test and the fact that we have been living together abroad for more than 4 years. Have I read that correctly?



Having read the requirements on the gov.uk website under the 'unmarried and same-sex partners: SET05' section, I have a couple of doubts. Under point 12, it states that 'living together' is evidenced by demonstrating that the couple have been living together in a relationship akin to marriage which has subsisted for 2 years or more. When reading point 13 regarding types of evidence, it states that the applicant must provide 6 pieces of correspondence as evidence that they have been living together during the past 2 years. Is it a period of 2 years or more or at least the last 2 years?



I would like to know if our application would be jeapardised by virtue of me returning to the UK first to secure employment in order to meet the requirements. In that case we would need to be seperated (not through our own choice) during that period and wouldn't be able to demonstrate evidence of living together during the last 2 years.



I would appreciate any feedback or tips.



Thanks in advance,



Alex
High school football scores, live updates Week 10 in Fayetteville

Cumberland County high school football scores and North Carolina live updates from Week 10 of the NCHSAA 2022 season in the Fayetteville area.
First-hand details of the global pay to play kickback scheme at Olympus were brought to the governments attention by the companys former corporate compliance officer.

John Slowik filed a federal lawsuit in New Jersey under the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claim Act and similar state laws.

Lawyers at the Kenney McCafferty law firm represented the whistleblower.

Slowiks court filings were unsealed Tuesday.

He was awarded $51 million as part of the settlement of his qui tam action under the False Claims Act. The FCA permits private parties to sue for false claims against government entities and to share in any recovery.

The whistleblower became Olympuss first compliance officer in company history in 2009, Slowiks lawyers said.

The newly-minted compliance officer quickly discovered that kickbacks formed the fabric from which Olympuss sales and marketing success was woven, they said.

Olympus settled three separate bribery-related federal cases Tuesday.

In the first case, the companys Latin America unit paid a criminal fine of $22.8 million for FCPA violations. The DOJ said Olympus employees bribed doctors across Latin America to buy Olympus endoscopes, a device usually used to examine the digestive tract.

In the second case, Olympus Corporation of the Americas or OCA paid a $312.4 million criminal penalty for violating the federal Anti-Kickback Statute. The DOJ said the company bribed doctors in the United States to increase sales.

In the third case, based on Slowiks whistleblower lawsuit, OCA paid an additional $310.8 million to settle civil state and federal charges under the False Claims Act.

For that settlement Slowik was awarded $51 million  $44 million from the federal share of the settlement amount and $7 million from the state share.

Our client offered Olympus the chance for redemption by reporting internally first, Slowiks lawyers said. Unfortunately, Olympus chose to elevate profits above corporate responsibility.

They said Slowiks court filings revealed a corporate culture of fraud and herd mentality at Olympus.

Olympus fired Slowik in 2010.

In 2011, Olympuss Japanese corporate parent, Olympus Corporation, ousted the second executive whistleblower in as many years: President and CEO Michael Woodford, the lawyers said.

According to court documents, the Olympus Corporation board fired Woodford after he refused to perpetuate the cover up of a massive accounting scandal.

Slowiks allegations included:

Olympus giving key customers permanent loans of Olympus medical equipment whenever requested by Olympus sales and marketing personnel to maintain customer loyalty and promote more sales.

Funneling cash payments of up to $100,000 a year to certain VIP doctors for consulting services at the discretion of Olympus sales and marketing representatives.

Annual cash payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars characterized as grants to fund educational or research programs made at the discretion of a grant committee comprised solely of Olympus sales and marketing personnel and based on sales potential.

Funding luxury, all-expense paid vacations to Japan and other international destinations for VIP doctors and sometimes their spouses in exchange for purchases and promotion of Olympus medical products.

Olympus admitted the allegations as part of Tuesdays settlements.

Lawyer Kathryn Schilling said, Our client is the only person to ever step forward and alert corporate executives, and then the government, to the kickback schemes Olympus commenced a decade ago. These schemes . . . most likely would have continued unabated had our client not alerted the New Jersey U.S. Attorneys Office and DOJ to all he knew.

The qui tam case was United States ex rel. John Slowik et al. v. Olympus Corporation of the Americas, et al., Civ. No. 10-cv-5994 (D. N.J.).

John Slowiks 90-page second amended complaint filed on February 4, 2016 is here (pdf).

The settlement agreement of his action is here (pdf).

* * *

Compliance officers have also become whistleblowers to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In April 2015, the SEC awarded about $1.5 million to a compliance professional who provided information for an enforcement action against the whistleblowers company.

The award went to a compliance officer who had a reasonable basis to believe that disclosure to the SEC was necessary to prevent imminent misconduct from causing substantial financial harm to the company or investors, the SEC said.

The SEC is prohibited by law from identifying whistleblowers.

And in September 2014, the SEC awarded about $300,000 to a company audit and compliance employee who complained to the SEC after the company didnt act on the same information.

The SEC launched its whistleblower award program in 2011 as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act.

In cases with financial penalties of more than a $1 million, whistleblower awards can range from 10 percent to 30 percent of the money collected.

The SEC program is separate from the qui tam or whistleblower provisions of the False Claim Act.

_____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here.
The 2nd Annual Veterans Legal Career Fair will be held on April 29-30, 2016 in Washington, D.C.

This event  the only one of its kind in the United States  provides a unique opportunity for legal employers to interview lawyers who are veterans or active-duty service members preparing for a transition out of the military.

The career fair will arrange one-on-one interviews and informational sessions for veterans (including active duty JAG Corps members and reservists) seeking positions as lawyers, including with corporate legal departments, law firms, other private sector employers and government agencies.

Spouses of active-duty service members and veterans are also eligible to participate.

Last years inaugural event drew 150 candidates from around the world and 45 employers, including two dozen leading law firms as well as representatives of legal departments at major companies such as Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, American Express, PwC and Prudential.

Veterans, lawyers transitioning out of military service and their spouses traveled from all over the country and international military bases to attend last years event. One candidate called it a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Sponsors include Orrick, The American Legion, Microsoft Corporation, Morgan Stanley, Shearman & Sterling, the D.C. Diverse Partners Network, and ALM.

More information and registration for employers and candidates is here.
Rayna Campbell is one of the actors making the leap into the director's chair this year as she makes her feature film debut this week with Lapse of Honour.

Rayna Campbell

Campbell, who is best known as an actress, has directed, written, and produced the film, which has already been playing well on the festival circuit around the world.

We caught up with the actress turned filmmaker to chat about Lapse of Honour, how she found the transition into the director's chair, and what other projects she has on the horizon.

- Lapse of Honour is set for a UK release this March, so can you tell me a bit about the film?

Lapse of Honour is a film that is set in Manchester and it is the story of Tom and Eve, who are both at college studying their A-Levels with the aim of going to university in a different city to escape their abusive parents. Eve finds out that she is pregnant, which would spell trouble if their parents found out.

They make a pact to try to get as much money as possible as quickly as possible, so they can get out of Manchester. Eve is an aspiring rapper and starts entering talent contests with the aim of getting a record deal. Tom goes job hunting, it doesn't really work out and ends up getting in with the wrong crowd.

- The movie sees you serve as director, writer, and producer, so where did this project start for you? What inspired the idea for the story?

It actually started as a poem. When I was at college studying my A-Levels, there were some guys in my class who were pretty cool and intelligent, and then one day they would disappear; you would find out that they had been arrested or put in prison. It was really a shock. They led these double lives.

They were not your typical gangsters in any way and I was fascinated by that and wondered what would make them separate from college and the potential to have this amazing career, amazing choices, and do what they wanted to do. I have been working on this since 2000. It started off as a poem and then a play, and then I turned it into a film script.

- That does lead me to my next question actually. Can you talk a bit about the writing process? How much did the story and the characters change from the initial idea that you had, to the final film?

The main character of Tom doesn't really change much because he is an amalgamation of different people and there's a lot of truth in his story. The other characters certainly changed. There were some points where there were other people attached to produce it, and so, as the writer on the project, they would be giving me different notes according to their idea of the story.

I picked it up and be really fervent with it and then I would be 'I hate this, get it out of my face.' It was very painstaking at times. Also, because it was the first thing that I had done, I was learning how to tell stories as I was going along. I had written plays in the past but I had never written a screenplay; I was teaching myself as I was going along. I did some courses, which helped, and then I would go back. In the end, I worked with a really great story editor who helped me to shape the story.

- Lapse of Honour marks your feature film directorial debut, how have you found the transition into the director's chair? What made now the right time to make that transition?

I am an actress and found myself frustrated at not getting roles. I am the type of person who doesn't like complaining, I always like to look for solutions; even if it is not conventional. So I started writing. I originally wrote this so I could play Eve but it took so long I outgrew the character (laughs). It met someone at the Film Council in Manchester and she suggested that I direct it. I said 'I am not a director I am an actress, I would not have a clue what to do.' But she was like 'you really should direct this.' She put that seed in my head and I started thinking about it.

I bought a couple of DVD courses on how to make low budget films and they really did make it seem more possible. I got the lead role in this film that we shot in South Africa and I just watched how the director worked and how she communicated her ideas. That is really when I thought that I could definitely do this. Because of my acting background, it felt a very easy and natural transition.

- I was actually going to ask how you felt your background as an actor helped you make the leap into becoming the director?

I think it was easier for me to communicate with the actors because I had been in their shoes. I also feel that I know how to get performances out of them or how to push them to get the right emotions from them. I spent a lot of time with the actors and was quite intense in my way of working. Nobody complained (laughs).

Afterwards, they were like 'man, you were so hard,' but I needed that to get what I wanted. Sometimes - not with every director - if they haven't got an acting background, it can be difficult to understand what they are trying to get out of you. I feel like I did have that advantage.

- The movie brings together a great cast as Gary McDonald, Tom Collins, Lady Leshurr, and Louise Emerick are all on board. Can you talk about the casting process and what you were looking for when you were casting the central roles?

Because it was low budget and set in Manchester, I wasn't looking for any A-list actors and I wanted to make it seem as authentic as possible. When I wrote the character of Bruce, Louis Emerick immediately popped into my mind as a northern actor who could play the role of the dad.

Gary McDonald was another actor that popped into my head when I was thinking of someone menacing, who could do this Caribbean accent, and had the stature. I had never met these two actors, it was literally just what I had seen them in on TV. Gary is living in Los Angeles and he hadn't been on the screen for a while, but, from what I had seen, he was just the person that I was looking for.

For the other characters, I knew the essence of what I wanted but I didn't who which actor that I was going to choose to fill those roles. I was also adamant about using unknown talent. Many people said 'that's not going to help you when you are trying to sell the film' and I was like 'there're so many examples of films where you didn't know anyone in the cast.' It was so important if we were going to come into Manchester - I live in London now - and use the community to film this, we should also use the people; there are a lot of people who want to get into acting but don't have the means. We did open auditions.

For Lady Leshurr's role, we were looking for a female rapper who could also act and really convey the emotions of the character. We found her on YouTube actually. Someone sent me a link, I watched her and was like 'I have to get in touch with her because she is perfect.' I stalked her basically (laughs).

- How did you find working with the actors? How collaborative a process was it between them and yourself?

It was quite collaborative. I think everyone was on tenterhooks because the cast was a mix of experience talent and less experienced talent and we didn't know how well we were all going to work together. I had an amazing cinematographer and we had the same vision. We would get the actors, I would roughly block out the scene and I told them that I wanted them to interpret it in a way they thought was right; sometimes they were spot on and other times we needed to tweak it. Between myself, the cinematographer and the actors, we would work on it to get it right. I didn't want the actors to feel like they didn't have any room to bring to the table their own talent and I really wanted it to be a collaborative process.

- The movie has been playing at a string of different festivals, so how have you been finding your festival experience? And what about the response to the film?

To be honest, in the beginning, because of the nature of the film and the fact that it is set in a working class part of Manchester and most of the cast were African/Caribbean, I didn't know what to expect from the festivals. I thought it would be a film that would only appeal to young urban audiences. It totally blew my mind because we were invited to some amazing festivals.

For example, we went to the Dinard Film Festival, which is a low-key British film festival in France and most of the audience is made up of middle class and upper-class French people. I really thought that they were not going to like this film. They packed the place out and they loved it. They would come to me and say 'you remind me of Shane Meadows, I love Shane Meadows,' and I was thinking 'you like Shane Meadows? You look like you should be eating caviar and drinking champagne. It was crazy.

In Croatia, we didn't have the subtitles ready so they had to watch it in English and, even though they didn't understand what was going on, they really connected with the emotion in the film. It has been a very nice surprise.

- We are always hearing about how difficult it is to get films made in this country, so how tough was it getting Lapse of Honour off the ground and made?

I always say, if I was able to look back and see what I would have to go through to get this film made, I don't think I would have bothered (laughs). I just took one step at a time and I knew that I had to do this. I set out to make the best film that could and then I was prepared to do whatever it took to get the film out there. I didn't have any expectations because, as you said, many people make films but they don't get anywhere. It all just came together but it was hard.

Raising the money is always an issue. I had a figure in mind but I didn't get anywhere close to raising that amount. I just said to myself 'I am going to have to make the film with the money that I have managed to raise and beg, borrow and steal to get the rest done,' which was literally what I did (laughs).

- Now that you have made the leap into the director's chair, how much is it where you want to stay?

Yes, I definitely want to do some more directing. I feel like I have found another thing that I love to do and it is something totally different to my acting. I enjoyed the whole experience. I loved working with the actors. Some of the actors who had never acted before came up to me and said 'thank you so much, this has changed my life.' It was just amazing to be able to give other people that opportunity.

- Finally, what's next for you both in front of and behind the camera?

I am currently attached to this historical TV series, which I can't say too much about at the moment. That is coming up next.

In terms of directing, I have a friend in Los Angeles who is a filmmaker with his own production company and is churning films out like a factory. When I was over at the film festival in LA, he was like 'we need to make films together. Let's have a meeting and think about how soon we can make one.' I think that is what is going to happen next. I have got three scripts written and it is about deciding which would be the best and easiest one to make next.

Lapse of Honour is out now on Vimeo and on Demand.

by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk

find me on and follow me on
Britain's Duchess of Cambridge will celebrate Mother's Day (06.03.16) "privately" with her two children.

Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their children

The 34-year-old royal is planning to spend the annual occasions with her kids George, two, and Charlotte, 10 months, whom she has with her husband Prince William, rather than attend any royal engagements on the weekend.

A palace source told HELLO! Online: "The Duchess of Cambridge will be spending the day privately."

It's believed the brunette beauty will see in the day at Anmer Hall in Norfolk, where she lives with her family, before travelling to Berkshire to see her mother Carole Middleton.

Meanwhile, George and Charlotte may only be little but Catherine's husband Prince William recently admitted his children are already starting to become a bit of a handful.

He said: "[Charlotte is] very sweet, but all fathers say, 'Just you wait, when you get to nine, 10, 11 they go crazy.' I'm looking forward to it, there will be some drama. No broken bones yet, but they're trying. [They're] running around, pushing things, jumping. Please tell me it gets easier."

However, the handsome royal, 33, is determined to bring up the little ones the same way he was raised by his father Prince Charles and late mother Princess Diana.

But he fears Charlotte will never see a wild elephant when she's a bit bigger because of the illegal ivory trade.
Britain's Prince Edward launched the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) Diamond Challenge at Heathrow airport yesterday (01.03.16).

Prince Edward

The 51-year-old royal - who is the youngest child of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip - rocked up at the busy airport in London to celebrate the launch as 100 workers abseiled down the inside of Terminal 5 from departures to arrivals.

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: "It was an honour to host HRH The Earl of Wessex at Terminal 5 to launch our DofE Diamond Challenge activities. We are proud to support The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, because it helps young people to fulfil their potential. This year we are encouraging people of all ages from across the Heathrow community to do the same by taking part in a Diamond Challenge."

The Diamond Challenge marks the charity's 60th anniversary of the gold, silver and bronze youth achievement award, which was founded by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1956.

But the royal's duties didn't just stop at watching daring workers abseil down a building as he also met with 20 youngster from Heathrow who have completed the Gold DofE award scheme, which has been offered to airport employees under the age of 25 since 2012.

The Prince was also given his own FITBIT - a fitness tracker - and was challenged to cover the distance to Manchester, where the next leg of his Royal Diamond Tour will take him.
The Nepalese government is preparing to develop a garment processing zone (GPZ) within Simara Special Economic Zone (SEZ), located in Bara district, to enhance the competitiveness in production of readymade garments, The Himalayan Times has reported.The government's move is expected to bring down the production and export costs. Production cost in Nepal is considered to be relatively high in the region.

The Nepalese government is preparing to develop a garment processing zone (GPZ) within Simara Special Economic Zone (SEZ), located in Bara district#

The GPZ concept gained traction after the US extended zero tariff preference for 66 products, including apparels, into its market through ' Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act'. The world's largest economy is all set to provide preference for Nepali products through a separate act to support the country 's aspiration to graduate to the league of developing nations by 2022 through sustainable and robust economic growth.Nepali apparel entrepreneurs are excited with the recent development because the US was a major export market for Nepali apparels until Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) was phased out on January 1, 2005. Nepal had exported readymade garments worth Rs 12.5 billion in fiscal 2001-02. The country's garment industry, which is on the verge of collapse after MFA was phased out, is expected to revive once again, the report said.As per SEZ Development Committee, the GPZ in Simara SEZ will be completed within three years, will house 69 blocks for garment industries and will be equipped with all required facilities -power, road connectivity, water supply and sanitation, among others.However, apparel entrepreneurs have also been demanding for a separate labour law within SEZ. The SEZ Development Committee has sought Rs 2.5 billion with Ministry of Finance for the development of GPZ, according to Chandika Prasad Bhatta, Executive Director of SEZ Development Committee.According to the report, the GPZ is expected to compensate high transport and shipment costs due to Nepal's landlocked status because the proposed zone is located near the country's only rail-linked dry port in Birgunj. Apparel entrepreneurs are also optimistic about the government's initiative to develop separate zone for garment factories and its ancillary industries.A separate GPZ will also help lure foreign direct investment, said Chandi Prasad Aryal, acting president of Garment Association Nepal.Entrepreneurs have also sought implementation of 'cargo ambulance' concept that Bangladesh has been extending to exporters. Neighbouring Bangladesh is a giant exporter of readymade garments in the markets of developed economies. Apparel entrepreneurs here are confident they can compete with the products of other exporters in the US market by utilising zero tariff preference.
Kate Spade & Company and India based Reliance Brands Limited have joined hands to bring the Kate Spade New York brand to India through a long-term distribution and retail license agreement.Under the terms of the agreement, Reliance Brands Limited will have the exclusive distribution rights to the Kate Spade New York brand in the country , a Kate Spade press release informed.

Kate Spade & Company and India based Reliance Brands Limited have joined hands to bring the Kate Spade New York brand to India through a long-term#

The newly formed partnership will leverage Reliance Brands in-depth market expertise in India and the increasing global demand for Kate Spade New York products to establish a network of standalone stores.CEO Craig Leavitt said, "Expanding into India is an important next step for Kate Spade & Company as we continue to progress along our geographic expansion axis of growth and build global brand engagement.With India's rapid development and increasingly aspirational consumers, we see significant growth opportunities in the region in the long term," Leavitt added."Reliance Brands is the ideal partner to help us open standalone stores in India, given its experience and success in launching premium brands," he informed."We look forward to working with Kate Spade & Company to bring the world of Kate Spade New York to India, said Darshan Mehta, president and CEO of Reliance Brands Limited.We are confident that Kate Spade New York's strong heritage and strong design point of view will resonate with Indian consumers, bringing a new dimension to the women's wardrobe," Mehta noted.Kate Spade & Company operates principally under two global, multichannel lifestyle brands: Kate Spade New York and Jack Spade.The company's four category pillars; women's, men's, children's and home span demographics, genders and geographies.The Kate Spade New York collection includes the Madison Avenue, Broome Street and on purpose labels.Jack Spade offers a versatile assortment of bags, sportswear and tailored clothing founded on the aesthetic of simple, purposeful design.Reliance Brands Limited began with a mandate to launch and build international and domestic brand equity in the premium to luxury segment across apparel, footwear and lifestyle businesses.Its current portfolio of brand partnerships comprises of Bcbgmaxazria, Brooks Bros, DC, Diesel, Dune, Ermenegildo Zegna, Gas, Hamleys, Hunkemoller, Iconix, Juicy Couture, Kenneth Cole, Muji, Paul & Shark, etc. (AR)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
Bangladeshi experts have stressed on adopting latest technologies to get maximum output of high yielding local variety of jute, quality jute seeds and retting jute plants amid water scarcity, according a news agency report The experts' opinion came at a day-long training workshop in Rangpur on 'Production of high yielding local variety jute, jute seeds and improved retting technology'. Bangladesh is the second largest jute producer in the world.

Bangladeshi experts have stressed on adopting latest technologies to get maximum output of high yielding local variety of jute, quality jute seeds#

The Directorate of Jute under the Ministry of Jute & Textiles and Upazila Jute Department with assistance of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) organised the workshop for 100 selected farmers for extension of the technologies.Upazila Jute Development Officer Dilip Kumar Malakar said adoption of ribbon retting technologies for rotting and separation of the fibre helps the farmers in getting maximum production of high yielding local variety jute with upgraded quality fibre.He said expanded and multidimensional use of jute products has been increasing its demand faster following adverse effects of synthetic fibre on environment throughout the world ushering new hope for reviving past glory of the 'golden' fibre.Upazila Agriculture Officer Rezaul Karim spoke about the lowest-cost ribbon retting method of the fibre during droughts or water scarcity also to improve quality and grade of jute-kenaf-mesta fibre to ensure higher market price.Horticulture Specialist Khondker Md Mesbahul Islam said large-scale adoption of the lowest-cost ribbon-retting technology might be crucial in future amid climate change that continues affecting agriculture sector and creating water scarcity.Senior Assistant Project Director Mossarraf Hossain discussed various traditional and low-cost retting ways, including ribbon retting of the fibre during water scarcity in only nine days, to improve quality and grade of jute-kenaf-mesta fibre.Badarganj Upazila Nirbahi Officer Kazi Abeda Gulshanwho was the chief guest at the function, called upon the experts and farmers for achieving self-reliance on locally produced quality jute seeds to increase cultivation of the crop adopting the latest technologies to further enhance production of the quality fibre. (SH)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Manmade Fibres segment which makes up for 30 per cent of Oerlikon Group sales is being aligned with current market dynamics.According to an Oerlikon Group press release, the Manmade Fibres Segment will build on its leading technology position, while adapting its operating model to near-term market realities.Meanwhile, at constant exchange rates, Group order intake for full year increased by 1.6 per cent and sales came in at around prior year's level.Currency impact on top-line was around 6 per cent and including currency impacts, order intake was lower by 4.2 per cent at CHF 2,537 million and sales by 5.5 per cent at CHF 2,671 million for 2015.Regionally, Europe accounted for the largest proportion of Group sales and accounted for 38.3 per cent at CHF 1,023 million, reflecting a 2.4 per cent increase compared to 2014.Asia followed with a share of 37.7 per cent at CHF 1,007 million, representing a reduction of 10.7 per cent versus 2014, and North America contributed 19.5 per cent at CHF 520 million, a decline of 5.8 per cent over 2014.Despite lower sales, Oerlikon was able to achieve a strong normalised EBITDA margin of 16.9 per cent at CHF 450 million, excluding restructuring costs.Including the one-off restructuring impacts, EBITDA stood at CHF 338 million, correlating to an EBITDA margin of 12.7 per cent.EBIT for 2015, due to the restructuring and impairment charges, was a loss of CHF 306 million, the Germany based company informed in the press release.Excluding impairments, restructuring costs, amortisation of acquired intangibles from Metco, the normalised net result was CHF 207 million in 2015.Following the inclusions of all the above-mentioned charges, reported net result for 2015 was a loss at CHF 418 million, and loss per share at CHF 1.24.Cash flow from operating activities before changes in net current assets remained strong at CHF 393 million.Excluding the restructuring and impairment effects, the Group's normalised return on capital employed (ROCE) amounted to 11.1 per cent, it stated.The Oerlikon Group had equity attributable to shareholders of the parent of CHF 1,554 million, representing an equity ratio of 38 per cent in 2015 as against 44 per cent in 2014.The year-on-year decrease in the total balance sheet and equity primarily reflected the goodwill impairment related to the Drive Systems segment, the company added. (AR)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
Preity Zinta who kept tweeting about media interfering in her life and concocting stories about her marriage, has in fact got married!

After much hullabaloo about the topic, Preity Zinta has got married to Gene Goodenough in a small private ceremony in Los Angeles.

Her friends Sussanne Khan and Surily Goel attended the ceremony in LA, while her best friend Salman Khan chose to skip it due to his prior work committments.

But turns out Salman himself has been given a deadline to marry by his parents and family. The entire Khan pariwar has apparently asked Salman to take a decision about marriage with Iulia Vantur by the end of April.

HALF-NAKED Shirtless Pics Of Shahrukh Khan That Will TURN YOU ON!

Spotboye.com's sources have found out this information and we wonder what Salman's answer will be. The sources have also revealed that, the Khan pariwar has also chosen the possible months for marriage if Salman decides to marry Iulia.

The Khandhan has charted out auspicious months for Salman's marriage and they are July, November or December.

TRULY DIVINE! Jacqueline Fernandez Looks Like A Diva On Hello Magazine Cover

This means that Salman has got just two months time to make up his mind. Will he marry Iulia Vantur or will he continue his bachelorhood, only time wil tell!

But if Salman does decide to get marry then his fans will be super thrilled and so will the entire Bollywood fraternity who have been waiting eagerly for the actor to tie the knot.

This super rich actor celebrates his birthday in the most luxurious way possible then imagine how lavish his wedding would be that to with a huge celebrity of Romania.

What confirms this news is the fact that Salman Khan was spotted in a jewellery store, in the diamond section doing some shopping. Was he buying the ring to pop the question to Iulia? Most proabably the actor will wrap up Sultan movie shoot and take a call on the matter.

Take a look at some of candid pictures of best friends, Preity Zinta and Salman Khan.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Aaradhya Bachchan were in Delhi yesterday, where Aishwarya launched the first look of her upcoming film Sarbjit. The cute mother-daughter duo returned to Mumbai recently and was spotted at the airport. And as usual the super adorable Aaradhya stole all the limelight form Aishwarya.

Aardahya Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are inseparable. Aishwarya is very attached to her little bundle of joy and goes an extra mile to take care of Aaradhya.

In an interview to Subhash K Jha, Aishwarya Talked about her soul connect with Aaradhya Bachchan, ''Aaradhya and I have a soul connect. My day begins and ends with her. From the moment I wake up my entire perspective on the day is centred on her.''

LOVELY WIFE: You Will Not Believe Gauri Khan Makes This Dessert For Shahrukh Khan

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan further added, ''Her constant presence in my life is not even something I consciously think about it. It's just there! And I wonder how I lived before she was born. Only a parent would understand how I feel.''

''To me my world changed the day Aaradhya was born. Everything is the same around me. But she has changed the way I look at the world. The world that I now occupy with my daughter is my reality. Everything else is a secondary,'' Aishwarya Rai Bachchan said.

On the work front, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is busy with the shooting of Sarbjit, which is based on a true story. Sarbjit tells the story of Sarabjit Singh, an Indian farmer who was convicted of terrorism and spying in Pakistan and was sentenced to death.

The film will be narrated through the perspective of the victim's sister Dalbir Kaur, played by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan.
A casual look into Tamannaah Bhatia's instagram feed made us stay on the page for hours, seeing the less explored side of the gorgeous beauty. We of course know that she is a stunner and a huge talent, but her insta feed tells you so many untold stories.

Apparently, it reveals how big a foodie is Tamannaah and her love for pups, while a few beauty tips and cooking lessons come in bonus. Needless to say, she is a darling of all in the industry and the mandatory selfies are anyways there. Go through the slides below to have a glimpse at Tamannaah, who is much more than a pretty face.

It is also easily understood that she is extremely close to her parents and loves spend her leisure time with them.

Interesting enough, right?! Well! On the work front, Tamannaah is in a happy place with a couple of exciting projects in her kitty. Her immediate Telugu and Tamil release, Oopiri starring Nagarjuna and Karthi, had its audio launch yesterday in Hyderabad and the team is planning to release the film on 25 March.

The actress is currently busy shooting for her Tamil Dharma Durai,after which she is expected to move to the sets of Baahubali The Conclusion, to shoot her part in the magnanimous project.
Citigroup has agreed to sell its 20% shareholding in China Guangfa Bank to China Life Insurance for $3 billion, fine-tuning its business in China as the cost of holding stakes in other banks grows.

After a decade-long investment, Citi is selling its Guangfa stake for Rmb6.39 a share, or a total of Rmb19.684 billion, according to a stock exchange filing by China Life on Monday.

The cash deal comes as banks globally reassess their equity holdings in the light of new capital rules, which are making it more expensive for banks to own minority stakes in other banks.

But Basel III is only part of the story as Citi looks to recalibrate its banking strategy globally.

This transaction is consistent with the simplification of Citi and allows us to focus our resources in China on growing our core franchise further, Francisco Aristeguieta, chief executive officer of Citi Asia Pacific, said.

In recent years Citi has zoomed in more on affluent consumer banking clients living in cities, selling them a mix of financial products via bank branches and digital platforms. It is a global strategy for the New York-headquartered bank and one it wants implemented in China too.

In 2007 Citi was among the first international banks to locally incorporate in China. In 2012, Citi became the first global bank to launch a sole-branded credit card in China. Citi has operations across 13 cities in China.

Citi first bought into Guangfa in 2006 for about $620 million when it was known as Guangdong Development Bank, leading a consortium that acquired 85% of the lender. The investment provided Citi with knowledge of the China market.

IBM, which formed part of that consortium along with China Life Insurance, Citic Trust, and State Grid, is selling its 3.686% stake to China Life concurrently with Citi for $553.6 million.

IPO route closed

The sale price for the 20% stake of Rmb6.39 per share represents a multiple of 1.01 times its book value per share, based on Guangfa's net asset book value on December 31 of Rmb97.54 billion. That is broadly in line with other recent bank deals in China, which have closed at a median price-to-book-value ratio of 1.14 times.

The agreed price also represents a 15% premium to the average book-price-to-share-price multiple of China A-share-listed commercial banks and a 60% premium over H-share-listed commercial banks, which currently trade at a share price multiple of 0.63 times book value.

The Guangfa stake sale is expected to close in the second half of 2016, subject to regulatory approvals. UBS advised China Life while Citi advised itself on the transaction.

Citi had hoped to spin off Guangfa via an initial public offering but choppy Chinese stock markets made a trade sale a more viable option.

Chinese bank price-to-book ratios  a measure of market price relative to net asset value  are trading at around their lowest levels since the Asian financial crisis of 1998. The ratio, Bloomberg data shows, rose to as high as 3.5 times in early 2000 and barely touched 1.1 times during the global financial crisis of 2008.

Price-to-book ratios are a widely tracked valuation measure for banks and insurance companies alike because they provide some indication of a financial group's ability to use its capital to create value. They also reflect its underlying financial condition relative to its market price.

Chinese banking stocks have been hit particularly hard for some time in Hong Kong, trading well below book value due to worries over slowing Chinese economic growth and rising non-performing loans.

Citi success

Guangzhou City-headquartered Guangfa, which has 759 outlets across the PRC and the Macau Special Administrative Region, lost about $300 million in the year before Citi got involved but made roughly $700 million in the first year after the consortium began running it.

"It was a very challenging period, and probably one of the hardest jobs I've ever had," Michael Zink, Citis head of Asean told FinanceAsia when he announced his retirement. Zink was president and executive director of China Guangfa Bank between 2006 and 2010. "Citi learned a lot about operating in China and we made a contribution to turning the bank around."

Since then Citi has grown its China business and now employs more than 8,000 people in the country. China is also one of the eight markets in Asia where Citi generates in excess of $1 billion in revenues.

The US bank has generated over $2 billion of profit from its investment in Guangfa, but was carrying the stake at book value, so the sale will not be material to earnings.

Citi is due to announce its first quarter results on April 15.
Lightyear Capital, the private equity powerhouse that is buying AIG Advisor Group with PSP, the Canadian pension investment manager, is expanding its reach within the RIA market.

Wealth Enhancement Group, a $4.5 billion hybrid advisory firm bought by Lightyear last year, is set to acquire wealth management firm HHG & Company, with over $1 billion in assets under management.



The HHG acquisition extends WEG's footprint to the northeast and "marks another important step toward our ongoing goal of building a leading national wealth management and financial planning brand," said Jeff Dekko, the firm's president.

'IMPORTANT STEP'

Minneapolis-based WEG, which is affiliated with LPL Financial, expanded into the Chicago market in 2013 and has 12 offices in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

In addition to organic growth, WEG is on the lookout "for potential acquisition candidates that can fit seamlessly within the broader firm and can help us extend our strategy to new geographies," Dekko said.

Lightyear managing partner Mark Vassallo noted the "ongoing consolidation" in the RIA market.

Indeed, M&A activity in the RIA industry in 2015 hit an all-time high of 123 transactions in a single year, according to DeVoe & Co., the San Francisco-based consultancy and research firm.

Founded by former PaineWebber CEO Donald Marron, Lightyear, which sold the Cetera IBD network to RCS Capital for $1.15 billion three years ago, has a dozen financial services companies in its own portfolio.

STAPELTON STAYS

Under the terms of the agreement to buy Darien, Conn.-based HHG, all of its existing personnel will remain with the firm. HHG will continue to be led by George Stapleton, who has been named regional president.

Joining WEG, Stapleton maintained, allows HHG to offer its clients "a significantly expanded value proposition  including advanced investment management and planning recommendations, as well as sophisticated back-office capabilities  without diluting the level of service we already provide."

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed and the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016.

Read More:
According to Sky News, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, Santander, RBS and Nationwide are willing to guarantee around 17bn of financing to the purchasers of the loans.

The lenders are currently liable for interest on the deposit protection program borrowed from the treasury to fund the rescue of Bradford & Bingley.

Britains largest banks have collectively paid over 2bn as part of an FSCS levy. since 2009. Bradford & Bingley interest totalled 400m in 2015 alone.

In November, George Osborne agreed a 13 billion sale of Northern Rock mortgages in what is currently the largest ever financial asset sale by a government in Europe.

Earlier this year, UK Asset Resolution, which manages Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley's assets, reduced its balance sheet by a further 8.8bn, bringing the total reduction to 49.7bn - down almost 43% since formation of UKAR in 2010.

Osborne announced during the Autumn Statement that the Government plans to offload a further 7.5bn of assets held in UKAR, but the Bradford & Bingley sell-off is expected to be in addition to this.
(2) Reflects the number of positions in issuers: (a) in which the Company has previously, publicly disclosed an investment, (b) in which the Company has invested more than 5.0% of its AUM (as defined below), or (c) in which the Company has invested more than 1.0% of its AUM and for which it has completed its accumulation strategy. Cash, cash equivalents, direct or indirect currency or other hedges and income/expense items are excluded. Multiple financial instruments (for example, common stock and derivatives on common stock) associated with one (1) issuer will count as one (1) position. A position will be removed from the table only if: (a) the investment is less than 1.0% of the AUM of the Company, and (b) the Company has previously, publicly announced a disposition of the investment, or otherwise becomes 0.0% of the portfolio.

(3) Investments for purposes of valuation are valued as follows: (a) issuer equity or debt is valued at market value, (b) options referencing such issuer equity or debt are valued at market value, and (c) swaps or forwards referencing such issuer equity or debt are valued at the market value of the notional equity or debt underlying the swaps or forwards. Long position is determined by whether an investment has positive exposure to price increases; therefore, long puts count as short exposure.

(4) Includes all issuer equity and debt securities and derivatives related to issuer equity and debt securities and associated currency hedges. Cash, cash equivalents, direct or indirect currency or other hedges and income/expense items are excluded. The market values of associated currency hedges are added to the associated investment. In the event that there is a change in market cap category with respect to any non-publicly disclosed position, this information is not updated until such position is publicly disclosed.

(5) Portfolio composition is reflective of the portfolio positions as of the date of this report, but is not necessarily indicative of the composition of the portfolio in the future which may be significantly different than that shown here. A position in an issuer investment is only assigned to a sector (including the "Undisclosed Position" sector) once it meets the criteria of Footnote 2.

(6) "Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. AUM" is the assets under management of Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. Performance fee crystallized as of the end of the year will be reflected in the following period's AUM.

(7) "Total Strategy AUM" is the aggregate assets under management of Pershing Square, L.P., Pershing Square International, Ltd., Pershing Square II, L.P. and Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. Redemptions effective as of the end of any period (including redemptions attributable to crystallized performance fee/allocation, if any) will be reflected in the following period's AUM.

(8) "Total Firm AUM" is the aggregate of the Total Strategy AUM and the assets under management of PS V, L.P., PS V International, Ltd. and affiliated entities (collectively, "PSV"), less amounts invested in PSV by the entities listed above (as applicable).
LONDON, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Global hotel prices paid by travellers worldwide rose by just 1% in 2015, according to latest Hotel Price Index from Hotels.com

British globetrotters enjoyed lower prices in over half of the destinations featured in the Index due to the increased strength of the Pound

Continued strength of the US Dollar saw price rises in all but one of the popular destinations in the US, while Asia proved to be the continent with the best value for money

There was good news for UK travellers coming from the latest Hotel Price Index' (HPI') from Hotels.com' with average prices paid* per night for hotel accommodation up only 1% globally in 2015 as compared to 2014. Specifically, British travellers enjoyed lower average hotel prices in over half (64) of the 100 popular destinations with the strength of the Pound increasing across the globe.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150901/262984LOGO )

The global Index sat at 114 for 2015 and is closing the gap on the previous peak of 117 in 2007, the year before the global economic crisis. North America drove the global increase as the only region to see hotel prices rise (up 3%) throughout 2015 with the Index hitting 119, exceeding its pre-recession high of 117 in 2007.

The HPI is a regular report on hotel prices in major destinations across the world, tracking the movement in prices that people actually paid* for their accommodation and providing valuable insight into the reasons behind these changes. The data is drawn from bookings made on the hundreds of thousands of hotels on the Hotels.com websites worldwide.

Isabelle Pinson, VP Marketing for EMEA of the Hotels.com brand, said: "The value of Sterling may have dropped this year but there are still plenty of bargains to be found out there for anyone wanting to stretch their wings beyond these shores. Our HPI data provides consumers with easy access to information on hotel prices paid around the world to enable them to do just that."

Europe proves popular

Many European hotspots from Russia and Estonia in the North, to Mediterranean favourites such as France, Italy and Spain in the South saw a modest decrease in average prices paid. Due to the falling Rouble, Moscow in particular saw a significant decrease, which dropped over a quarter (-27%) from the previous year. In total, Britons paid less in 42 of the 57 most popular European destinations compared to the previous year.

North America continued to increase

It was a different story in the US however, due to the continuing strength of the US Dollar. In fact, it was only New York out of the 13 most popular US destinations that saw a marginal decrease in average prices paid (down 2% to 177). Lake Buena Vista near Orlando, Florida meanwhile saw the most significant rise jumping 21% (122 in 2014 to 148 in 2015).

Best value destination for British travellers

UK travellers were able to part with less throughout numerous Asian destinations in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan and Singapore. It was predominantly popular destinations throughout Thailand that saw a decrease in rates, including areas such as Pattaya (-15%), Chiang Mai (-6%), Phuket (-16%), Krabi (-5%) and Koh Samui (-3%).

The Pound also stretched significantly further last year for those visiting popular Australian destinations as room rates paid dropped 7% in Sydney and 6% in Melbourne.

Isabelle Pinson added: "Following a record year for world tourism in 2015, Brits can look forward to another season of globetrotting this year. A little knowledge goes a long way and we hope that our HPI data provides travelers with the inspiration and the knowledge to help make a decision on where to go that little bit easier."

Average prices paid per night by UK travellers in selected European destinations in 2015 as compared to 2014

City Country 2015 2014 % Change Paris France GBP111 GBP125 -12% Barcelona Spain GBP97 GBP102 -5% Rome Italy GBP90 GBP98 -7% Vienna Austria GBP82 GBP92 -11% Warsaw Poland GBP60 GBP65 -8% Krakow Poland GBP57 GBP61 -6% Riga Estonia GBP52 GBP63 -16%

Average prices paid per night by UK travellers in selected North American destinations in 2015 as compared to 2014

City Country 2015 2014 % Change Boston USA GBP182 GBP158 15% New York USA GBP177 GBP180 -2% San Francisco USA GBP165 GBP156 6% Los Angeles USA GBP149 GBP134 12% Lake Buena Vista USA GBP148 GBP122 21% Chicago USA GBP137 GBP126 9% Vancouver Canada GBP115 GBP107 7% Las Vegas USA GBP101 GBP92 9% Toronto Canada GBP101 GBP103 -1% Orlando USA GBP92 GBP79 16%

Average prices paid per night by UK travellers in selected Asia Pacific destinations in 2015 as compared to 2014

City Country 2015 2014 % Change Singapore Singapore GBP121 GBP129 -6% Hong Kong Hong Kong GBP113 GBP121 -7% Shanghai China GBP103 GBP90 15% Tokyo Japan GBP102 GBP110 -7% Mumbai India GBP96 GBP89 8% Beijing China GBP86 GBP82 6% Seoul South Korea GBP82 GBP92 -12% Bali Indonesia GBP77 GBP84 -9% Koh Samui Thailand GBP74 GBP76 -3% Krabi Thailand GBP66 GBP70 -5% Kuala Lumpur Malaysia GBP61 GBP69 -11% Bangkok Thailand GBP54 GBP53 2% Phuket Thailand GBP50 GBP59 -16% Hanoi Vietnam GBP40 GBP36 11% Chiang Mai Thailand GBP38 GBP41 -6% Pattaya Thailand GBP34 GBP39 -15%

Average prices paid per night by UK travellers in selected global destinations in 2015 as compared to 2014

City Country 2015 2014 % Change Dubai UAE GBP142 GBP151 -6% Sydney Australia GBP114 GBP123 -7% Abu Dhabi UAE GBP108 GBP105 3% Rio de Janeiro Brazil GBP107 GBP150 -28% Melbourne Australia GBP87 GBP93 -6%

Please visit hpi.hotels.com for more information and to view reports in additional currencies.

*Average prices paid per night inclusive of taxes and fees.

About Hotels.com

Hotels.comL.P. operatesHotels.com, a leading online accommodation booking website with hundreds of thousands of properties ranging from international chains and all-inclusive resorts to local favorites and bed & breakfasts, together with all the information needed to book the perfect stay.

 2015Hotels.com, LP.Hotels.com, The Obvious Choice, Hotel Price Index, HPI, and theHotels.comlogo are either registered trademarks or trademarks ofHotels.com, LP in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.



Youcanalsofollowuson:



Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/Hotels.comEurope



Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/user/HotelsEU



Twitter:https://twitter.com/HotelsdotcomEU



Pinterest:https://www.pinterest.com/hotelsdotcom/



Instagram:https://instagram.com/hotelsdotcom/



Google+:https://plus.google.com/+hotelscom/



LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/company/2757


WHISTLER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/01/16 -- Department of Canadian Heritage

Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, Member of Parliament (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country), on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage, today announced $489,500 in funding over two fiscal years to the Whistler Arts Council for the Cultural Connections project.

This joint initiative will allow the Whistler Arts Council and five community partners (Audain Art Museum, Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre, Whistler Chamber of Commerce, Resort Municipality of Whistler and Tourism Whistler) to collaborate on a project that will link diverse cultural attractions along the Cultural Connections pathways in Whistler Village and throughout the Whistler Valley.

The Government of Canada is providing this funding through the Strategic Initiatives component of the Canada Cultural Investment Fund. This component provides funding for projects supported by multiple partners and benefiting many organizations. These initiatives help arts and heritage organizations diversify their revenue streams and improve their business practices.

Tweet

Canada's arts and heritage sectors represent an important part of our economy and contribute significantly to our national identity culture

Quick Facts

-- The Whistler Arts Council is an arts service organization and multi- disciplinary presenter whose mandate is to enrich Whistler by cultivating and celebrating artistic creativity, supporting artists, collaborating with resort stakeholders, and engaging residents and visitors in arts. -- Since 2010, 64 partnership-based projects have received a total of close to $18 million through the Strategic Initiatives component of the Canada Cultural Investment Fund.

Quotes

"The Government of Canada is proud to be contributing to our cultural and creative sector. This initiative will benefit several facilities, art galleries and studios. It reflects our unique Canadian identity and strengthens the social and economic vitality of our communities."

- The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage

"We are pleased to provide funding to the Whistler Arts Council for this collaborative project. This type of partnership-based project contributes to the success of the cultural sector in Canadian communities."

- Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, Member of Parliament (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country)

"This is wonderful news for the Whistler Arts Council, and for the entire Whistler community. The Government of Canada's financial support will enable us to work with our community partners in strengthening the cultural sector, diversifying our local economy and growing cultural tourism. It recognizes our past successes and sets the stage for building a stronger, more resilient arts and heritage sector in our community."

- Maureen Douglas, Interim Executive Director, Whistler Arts Council

Associated Links

Strategic Initiatives

Whistler Arts Council

Stay Connected

Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr.

Contacts:

Pierre-Olivier Herbert

Press Secretary

Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage

819-997-7788



Media Relations

Canadian Heritage

819-994-9101

1-866-569-6155

pch.media-media.pch@canada.ca




LOEWEN (dpa-AFX) - Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (AHBIF.PK, BUD) or AB InBev said that it has entered into an agreement to sell SABMiller plc's (SBMRY.PK, SAB.L) 49% interest in China Resources Snow Breweries Ltd. Or 'CR Snow' to China Resources Beer (Holdings) Co. Ltd. Or 'CRB', which currently owns 51% of CR Snow. The agreement values SABMiller's 49% stake in CR Snow at US$1.6 billion. The transaction has been approved by the Board of CRB as well as by its majority shareholder and thus no extraordinary general meeting will be required for approval. Upon completion of the transaction, CR Snow will become a direct wholly-owned subsidiary of CRB. AB InBev noted that the sale represents the next step in its continued commitment to proactively address regulatory considerations in its recommended acquisition of SABMiller. The agreement with CRB is conditional on the successful closing of the recommended acquisition of SABMiller by AB InBev as announced on 11 November 2015, which itself contains certain regulatory pre-conditions and conditions. In addition, the agreement is subject to any applicable regulatory approval in China, and AB InBev and CRB will work closely together through any such process. CRB's acquisition of SABMiller's stake in CR Snow is expected to close in conjunction with AB InBev's acquisition of SABMiller. 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.
DUBAI, UAE, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

ghd partners with Blowout and Go



ghd and Blowout&Go have joined forces to take on the world of beautifully styled hair together.The at home styling phenomena has taken the US and Europe by storm, kicking off the competitive industry we see today and filling the niche for the modern woman on the go who wants to have the salon experience in the comfort of their own home.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160301/339065 )



Ever since the Dubai launch in the summer of 2015, over 4000 women across the UAEhave taken advantage of Blowout&Go 'beauty at your door' service. The Blowout&Go team of more than 25 style agents will cater to any of your hairstyling needs with the highest quality of professional products.

The Founder and CEO of Blowout&Go Paria Ghorashi added:

"We are excited to be partnering with ghd who was the missing piece of our quest to deliver the highest quality blowout experience in the UAE, as I also believe that every women deserves a good hair day!"

Blowout&Go provides a menu featuring a wide array of hairstyles and exclusively carries the full collection of ghd's newest products for its skilled blowouts and updos. With its breakthrough, and patented tri-zone technology, ghd stylers will leave your hair not only beautiful but also healthy!

The full range of ghd tools is now shipping across the UAE and available online at shop.blowoutandgo.com

Ladies, now you know where to experience a good hair day, every day!

Blowout and Go Location

Website: http://www.blowoutandgo.ae

https://www.facebook.com/ghd blowoutandgo

https://www.instagram.com/ghdhairhk/ blowoutandgo

Please download high-resolution images from the following link:

Download link

http://we.tl/xhXkFPFAlU

Follow ghd on:

https://www.facebook.com/ghd ghd

https://www.instagram.com/ghdhairhk/ @ghdhair

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About ghd

An iconic British brand favoured by stylists and celebrities, ghd is the No.1 brand used and recommended by professional hair stylists*. Established in 2001, ghd re-invented the professional hairstyling tool market with the launch of its ground-breaking styler, replacing flat irons, straighteners and curlers with a professional styling tool designed for salon use that could also be used easily by women at home.

ghd is always written in lower case and stands for "good hair day".

At launch, ghd's ceramic stylers became an overnight success with the brand growing virally, initiating a cult following around the globe that has grown over the last decade. The brand is now at the forefront of the competitive fashion styling sector in which it is renowned as one of the leading hair styling brands around the world.

*amongst leading hairstyling tools brands, 2012/2013 salon channel market share (UK, Australia, Spain, France, Italy, Denmark)
The General Meeting of Shareholders of Heijmans N.V., to be held on 13 April 2016, will start at 2:00 p.m. and will take place in De Verkadefabriek, Boschdijkstraat 45 in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands.

The agenda with enclosures for the AGM of Heijmans N.V. is available on the website of Heijmans N.V. as of today.

Furthermore, Heijmans N.V. is announcing that the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Heijmans N.V., Mr A.A. Olijslager, pursuant to the information provided during the AGM of 2014, intends to transfer the chairmanship of the Supervisory Board to Mr Sj.S. Vollebregt, appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board as at 15 April 2015, at the end of the above-referenced AGM, after which he will step down as a member of the Supervisory Board. This will be further clarified during the AGM.

About Heijmans

Heijmans is a listed company that combines activities related to property development, residential building, non-residential building, roads and civil engineering in the working areas living, working and connecting. Heijmans is active in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany and as a technology partners delivers know-how and concepts in various markets. Our constant focus on quality improvements, innovation and integrated solutions enables us to generate added value for our clients. Heijmans realises projects for private consumers, companies and public sector bodies. With over 6,500 employees and almost  2.0 billion in revenues in 2015, we are building the spatial contours of tomorrow. You will find additional information on www.heijmans.nl (http://www.heijmans.nl)

For additional information:

Media:

Marieke Swinkels-Verstappen

+31 73 543 52 17

mswinkelsverstappen@heijmans.nl (mailto:mswinkelsverstappen@heijmans.nl)

Analysts:

Guido Peters

+31 73 543 52 17

gpeters@heijmans.nl (mailto:gpeters@heijmans.nl)





Press release (http://hugin.info/130707/R/1990600/731484.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: Heijmans NV via Globenewswire



HUG#1990600


LONDON, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN), a division of the Expedia Group, one of the world's largest travel companies, today has confirmed presence at the upcoming ITB Berlin show. This year's event, held on 9-13 March, will mark the 50th anniversary of what the ITB Berlin website dubs as "the world's leading travel trade show" and will include more than 115,000 trade visitors from over 185 countries.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160301/339238LOGO

"ITB Berlin allows EAN the opportunity to get in front of many of our partners and prospects in one setting. We look forward to connecting with companies from across the globe to discuss how to advance their business needs and to share some upcoming exciting new releases we have planned from our product and technology teams," explains David Fulton, vice president Sales, EMEA.

"It's going to be a big year for EAN and we are excited to start building that momentum at ITB Berlin."

Joining Mr. Fulton in Berlin will be nine other representatives from the company including Ariane Gorin, EAN's senior vice president and general manager. Find Ms. Gorin, Mr. Fulton, and the rest of the EAN team at the Expedia booth located in Hall 9, booth 322.

Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) is a division within the Expedia Group, one of the world's leading travel companies. EAN works with hundreds of managed partners per region in 33 countries to turn their web traffic into hotel bookings and happy customers. EANprovidespartners withthe tools and technology that help millions of travelers find the perfect hotels for their next trips.

Contact:

Becky Wofford

1-469-335-1397

bwofford@expedia.com
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The Swiss franc weakened against the other major currencies in the late Asian session on Wednesday. The Swiss franc fell to 113.97 against the yen and 0.9993 against the U.S. dollar, from an early near 2-week high of 114.47 and a 2-day high of 0.9955, respectively. Against the euro and the pound, the franc edged down to 1.0854 and 1.3961 from early highs of 1.0828 and 1.3896, respectively. If the Swiss franc extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 112.00 against the yen, 1.02 against the greenback, 1.10 against the euro and 1.42 against the pound. 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.
VIENNA (dpa-AFX) - Kuehne + Nagel Group (KHNGY) reported that its earnings for the year 2015 increased to 679 million Swiss francs from 644 million francs, last year. EBITDA increased by 3.6 percent to 1.04 billion francs compared to the previous year; negative currency effects had an impact of 7.8 percent. In 2015, earnings before interest and tax, or EBIT, improved to 850 million francs from 819 million francs, whereas foreign currency effects impacted negatively by 7.1 percent. The company said the increase was mainly due to a further improvement in profitability. Gross profit was 6.25 billion francs in 2015; down 0.6 percent from previous year. The Kuehne + Nagel Group achieved a net turnover of 16.73 billion Swiss francs in 2015, which represents a decrease of 4.4 percent compared to the previous year. Negative currency effects impacted net turnover by 8.0 percent. The Group said, for the 2015 business year, its Board will propose a dividend of 5.00 Swiss francs per share to the Annual General Meeting. 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.
MUNICH, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

First Visa Simply One combined card

Available from many retailers

A new prepaid Visa card from Wirecard is now available to consumers: mycard2go is easy to top up and can be used in a variety of scenarios, for example online, in high street retailers or abroad. Issued by Wirecard Bank AG, it is the first Visa Simply One combined card, bringing together the functionality of a traditional credit card with that of a V PAY debit card. The solution combines high-level security in the form of PIN entry with global acceptance. In this way, users of the mycard2go prepaid card can make cashless payments at over 24 million Visa acceptance points.

Alexander von Knoop, Executive Board member at Wirecard Bank: "The mycard2go prepaid card offers state-of-the-art functionality. In developing these features, the focus was on the needs of end consumers. We look forward to consistently further developing the product in collaboration with our customers and partners in the coming years. Our goal is to establish our appealing prepaid Visa card solution throughout Europe in tandem with retail partners."

Albrecht Kiel, Regional Managing Director Central Europe at Visa, adds: "Our objective is to fulfil the needs of our customers by leveraging innovations. Our collaboration with Wirecard has enabled this. We are delighted to launch the mycard2go prepaid visa card solution, a modern product which also represents the first Simply One Visa solution on the market."

Consumers are able to obtain the mycard2go prepaid visa card at numerous outlets across Germany - including petrol stations and kiosks - where they can also conveniently top up the cards with cash. One important partner is wholesaler Lekkerland, which supplies more than 58,000 convenience stores, petrol stations and kiosks throughout Germany.

After purchasing, customers simply need to activate their mycard2go by SMS or online, which takes just seconds. This allows them not only to make payments at conventional payment terminals and online, but also to benefit from a range of other services: there is no additional international service fee for payments made outside of the Eurozone. Moreover, there are flexible product levels. For example, mycard2go LIMITED upgrade allows users to top up their card by bank transfer or cash, while the mycard2go ULTIMATE upgrade means that they can withdraw cash at ATMs and make go2go payments between mycard2go cards.

Discover more about the mycard2go Visa prepaid card at: http://www.mycard2go.com/en/.

About Wirecard:

Wirecard AG is a global technology group that supports companies in accepting electronic payments from all sales channels. As a leading independent supplier, the Wirecard Group offers outsourcing and white label solutions for electronic payments. A global platform bundles international payment acceptances and methods with supplementary fraud prevention solutions. With regard to issuing own payment instruments in the form of cards or mobile payment solutions, the Wirecard Group provides companies with an end-to-end infrastructure, including the requisite licences for card and account products. Wirecard AG is listed on the Frankfurt Securities Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE0007472060, WDI). For further information about Wirecard, please visit http://www.wirecard.com or follow us on twitter @wirecard.

Wirecard media contact:

Wirecard AG

Maren Brandt

Tel.: +49(0)89-4424-1425

Email: maren.brandt@wirecard.com



About Visa:

Visa Europe is a payments technology business owned and operated by member banks and other payment service providers from 38 countries. Visa Europe is at the heart of the payments ecosystem providing the services and infrastructure to enable millions of European consumers, businesses and governments to make electronic payments. Its members are responsible for issuing cards, signing up retailers and deciding cardholder and retailer fees. Visa Europe is also the largest transaction processor in Europe, responsible for processing more than 18 billion transactions annually. There are more than 500m Visa cards in Europe, while 1 in every 6 spent in Europe is on a Visa card. Total expenditure on Visa cards exceeds 2 trillion annually, with 1.5 trillion spent at point-of-sale. Visa Europe is an independent business with an exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence to use the Visa brand in Europe. Visa Europe works in partnership with Visa Inc. to enable global Visa payments in more than 200 countries and territories. For more information, visit our website (http://www.visaeurope.com ), the Visa Vision blog (vision.visaeurope.com), and @VisaEuropeNews

Visa media contact:

Adel & Link Public Relations

Sabine Karl / Matthias Adel

Tel.: +49(0)69-153404535

E-Mail: visa@adellink.de


2 March 2016

Clinigen Group plc (AIM: CLIN, 'Clinigen' or 'the Group'), the global pharmaceuticals and services company, has today published its half year results for the six months ended 31 December 2015.

FINANCIAL SUMMARY

Growth Six months ended 31 December 2015 2014 Actual Pro forma** m m Reported gross profit 40.3 22.0 83% Adjusted gross profit 44.1 22.1 100% 4% Adjusted EBITDA 23.5 13.5 74% Cash generated by operations 22.1 11.3 96% Adjusted earnings per share 15.1p 12.5p 21% Dividend per share 1.3p 1.1p 18%

HIGHLIGHTS

Adjusted gross profit* doubled, reflecting change in scale following acquisitions

Adjusted EPS* up 21% to 15.1p (2014: 12.5p)

Interim dividend up 18% to 1.3p (2014: 1.1p)

22.1m cash generated from operations, up 96%

Revitalisation of newer products has driven strong Specialty Pharmaceuticals performance

All commercial and most of operational integration complete for Idis

Link Healthcare acquisition builds global footprint, adding capability in Australia, Africa and Asia

Further extension of Dexrazoxane product line with the acquisition of Totect from Biocodex, opening up the US market for Clinigen (see separate announcement for further details)

Positioned for good growth in H2, in line with Board expectations

Peter George, Chief Executive Officer of Clinigen, said:

"We have made significant progress towards meeting our strategic objectives as a result of the acquisitions of Idis in April and Link Healthcare in October last year, and our alliance with US Specialty Pharmaceuticals company, Cumberland Pharmaceuticals.

"We are firmly established as the global market leader in the management and supply of unlicensed and clinical trial medicines. We now have the platform to realise considerable organic growth opportunities across a number of markets.

"We have also delivered good organic growth with the revitalisation of the newer products in our Specialty Pharmaceuticals business being a key highlight. The acquisition of Totect from Biocodex announced today further extends our Dexrazoxane product line, opening up the US market to Clinigen.

"Our strategic priorities are focused on completing the integration of both Idis and Link, driving organic growth across all our divisions, and developing the international potential of our Global Access business to take advantage of the growing demand for unlicensed medicines around the world. We will also continue the search for niche hospital only products to add to and strengthen our Specialty Pharmaceuticals division."

*The adjusted results exclude share based payment costs, amortisation, non-underlying costs and include the 50% share of the unaudited results from the Joint Venture in South Africa.

**Year on year comparisons, referred to as 'pro forma' are calculated from the aggregated unaudited results taken from i) six monthly management information for Clinigen and Idis, and ii) for Link Healthcare, the two months ended 31 December 2015 and for the two months ended 31 December 2014.

-Ends-

For the full release, please visit the Group website at www.clinigengroup.com.

An analyst briefing will be held at 9:30am on Wednesday, 2 March 2016 at the offices of Instinctif Partners, 65 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7NQ.

An audio replay file will be made available shortly afterwards via the Group's website: www.clinigengroup.com.

About Clinigen Group

Clinigen Group plc (AIM: CLIN) is a global pharmaceutical and services company with a unique combination of businesses focused on providing access to medicines. Its mission is to deliver the right drug to the right patient at the right time.

The Group consists of five synergistic businesses focused in three areas of global medicine supply; clinical trial, unlicensed and licensed medicines.

Clinigen Clinical Trial Services is the global market leader in the management and supply of commercial medicines for clinical trials.

The Group is also the trusted global leader in ethically sourcing and supplying unlicensed medicines to hospital pharmacists and physicians for patients with a high unmet need, through three of its divisions: Idis Managed Access runs early access programs for innovative new medicines. Idis Global Access and Link Healthcare work directly with healthcare professionals to enable compliant access to unlicensed medicines on a global basis and niche essential licensed and generic medicines across Australasia, Africa and Asia (AAA region).

Clinigen Specialty Pharmaceuticals acquires global rights, revitalises and markets its own portfolio of niche hospital commercial products.

For more information, please visit www.clinigengroup.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160301007224/en/

Contacts:

Clinigen Group plc

Peter George, Group Chief Executive Officer

Shaun Chilton, Group Deputy Chief Executive Officer

Martin Abell, Group Chief Financial Officer

+44 (0) 1283 495010

or

Numis Securities Limited

Michael Meade Freddie Barnfield (Nominated Adviser)

James Black Tom Ballard (Corporate Broking)

+44 (0) 20 7260 1000

or

Peel Hunt LLP Joint Broker

James Steel/Dr. Tom Burt

+44 (0) 20 7418 8900

or

Instinctif Partners

Adrian Duffield/Melanie Toyne-Sewell/Jayne Crook

+44 (0) 20 7457 2020

Clinigen@instinctif.com
2 March 2016 - Kvaerner North American Construction Inc. ("Kvaerner NAC"), a subsidiary of Kvaerner, and Amec Foster Wheeler North America Corp. have reached a settlement of all claims related to the Longview Power Project. The final settlement will result in a cash payment to Kvaerner NAC of USD 70 million, and an anticipated positive currency accounting effect of approximately NOK 200 million within discontinued operations in Kvaerner's income statement.

This settlement concludes the arbitration awarded in October 2015. This agreement also terminates the court proceedings instituted by Kvaerner NAC to confirm and Amec Foster Wheeler North America Corp's motion to vacate/modify the arbitration award.

ENDS

For further information, please contact:

Investor Relations:

Ingrid Aarsnes, SVP Investor Relations & Communications, Kvaerner, Tel: +47 67 59 50 46, Mob: +47 950 38 364, email: ir@kvaerner.com (mailto:ir@kvaerner.com)

Media:

Torbjoern Andersen, VP Communications, Kvaerner, Mob: +47 928 85 542,

email: torbjorn.andersen@kvaerner.com (mailto:torbjorn.andersen@kvaerner.com)

About Kvaerner:

Kvaerner is a leading provider of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services, and delivers offshore installations and onshore plants for upstream oil and gas production around the world. Kvrner ASA, through its subsidiaries and affiliates ("Kvaerner"), is an international contractor and preferred partner for oil and gas operators and other engineering and fabrication contractors. Kvaerner and its approximately 2 800 HSSE-focused and experienced employees are recognized for delivering some of the world's most amazing and demanding projects.

In 2015, the Kvaerner group had consolidated annual revenues of NOK 12 billion and the company reported an order backlog at 31 December 2015 of NOK 14.3 billion. Kvaerner is publicly listed with the ticker "KVAER" at the Oslo Stock Exchange. For further information, please visit www.kvaerner.com (http://www.kvaerner.com/).

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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: Kvrner ASA via Globenewswire



HUG#1990589



To subscribe or unsubscribe to our press releases, please see our web page: http://www.kvaerner.com/en/toolsmenu/Media/Subscribe-to-releases/ (http://www.kvaerner.com/en/toolsmenu/Media/Subscribe-to-releases/)
ABINGDON, England, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

OmPrompt, an award-winning British software automation company, has today announced its global expansion, with a suite of new customers and expanded deals with existing customers.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338584LOGO )



OmPrompt adds a new global meat distributor to the illustrious list of globally-recognised brand names in its portfolio, as well as yet another alcoholic beverage company.

"Our expanding footprint demonstrates our increasing momentum in an industry that is hungry for automation. Not only are we providing high-tech solutions to companies that identify the need to make cost-savings, we also provide a managed service that enables our existing customers to gain more out of our solutions the longer they work with us," says CEO, John Wakeman.

For example, one of OmPrompt's largest customers - a drinks producer and distributor - has recently expanded its use of OmPrompt to encompass 13 different countries, while a globally recognised household brand continues its rollout to 35 countries worldwide. A third player in the renowned family-brand sphere is expanding the way in which it is using OmPrompt - to go beyond order automation into other elements of the order-to-cash supply chain. Wakeman attributes OmPrompt's success to its successful partnerships as well as its effective customer automation management solutions.

Wakeman continues, "Our partnership with business process outsourcers such as the innovative GenPact demonstrates that we are not only growing momentum in this space - we are also proud to celebrate joint successes as our partners help their customers move from running operations 100% manually, to automating processes - partially and fully."

GenPact are not alone in embracing a trend towards automation, many BPOs are realising that in order to stay ahead of the curve, automation is the new black.

Analyst house, Gartner, predicts that,

"Finance and accounting BPO buyers' focus on cost reduction will continue with the adoption of automation, specialized software and smart machines. To drive market adoption, business unit leaders must create clear value propositions beyond productivity improvements and demonstrate business outcomes."

As BPOs and global B2B manufacturing brands turn to automation as a way of life, it looks likely that OmPrompt will be a brand to watch.

About OmPrompt

OmPrompt Customer Automation Management software is provided as a managed service. We help global brands in 35 countries and across six continents who have complex supply chains by removing the pain of manual transaction processing for FMCG, healthcare and technology manufacturers.

The benefits of using a cloud-based document process automation solution like OmPrompt include improved efficiency, visibility and time to serve customers as well as reduced errors and cycle times across the order-to-cash supply chain.

http://www.omprompt.com

Contact:

Gina Balarin, Senior Marketing Director

+44(0)1235436000

info@omprompt.com


BUCHAREST (dpa-AFX) - Romania's producer prices continued to decline at the beginning of the year, figures from the National Institute of Statistics showed Wednesday. The producer price index fell 2.0 percent year-over-year in January, faster than the 1.7 percent drop in the previous month. Prices have been falling since October 2014. Domestic market producer prices dipped 2.3 percent in January from a year ago and prices in the foreign market slid by 1.4 percent. Among the main industrial groups, energy prices declined the most by 6.6 percent, followed by intermediate goods industry with 3.5 percent fall. At the same time, capital goods sector registered an increase of 0.5 percent. On a monthly basis, producer prices dropped 0.6 percent in January, which was worse than the 0.2 percent decrease a month earlier. 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.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Erasing early losses, the Japanese yen slipped against its major rivals in pre-European trading on Wednesday. The yen fell to a 2-day low of 124.10 against the euro, 8-day low of 159.84 against the pound, 2-week low of 114.36 against the greenback and more than 8-week low of 82.78 against the aussie, off its early highs of 123.61, 158.74, 113.74 and 81.53, respectively. The yen edged down to 85.21 against the loonie, after having advanced to 84.70 at 7:20 pm ET. The yen fell back to 114.44 against the franc, from its prior high of 113.97. This may be compared to its early near 2-week low of 114.47. The yen reversed from its early high of 75.37 against the kiwi, sliding back to 75.83. The yen is heading to pierce its early 5-day low of 75.92. The yen is likely to challenge support around 78.00 against the kiwi, 84.00 against the aussie, 87.00 against the loonie, 116.00 against the greenback, 161.00 against the pound, 116.00 against the franc and 126.00 against the euro. 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.
LONDON, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

GigawattMozambique announced this weeka$200-millioninvestment into Mozambique's power sector,alongside several global stakeholders including Standard Bank and the World Bank, amongst many others.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338680 )



The investmentwill assist in harnessing Mozambique's natural-gas resources, which will further benefit many of Mozambique's neighbours in the southern Africa region.

This - along with several other projects in the SADC region - will bepresented and discussed atEnergyNet'supcoming Southern Africa Energy and Infrastructure Summit (SAEIS), taking place in Maputo, Mozambique 4-6thMay 2016. The summit will celebrate regional co-operation, and promote energy and infrastructure projects that require both private- and public-sector support in order to be realised.

EnergyNet'sRegional Directorfor East and Southern AfricaVeronica Bolton-Smith commented that 'regional development is the key to unlocking Africa's energy investment potential - SAEIS will bring together countries from the SADC region to discuss live infrastructure and energy projects which require investment'.

This vibrant region has experienced many positive developments in recent years, both in energy and infrastructure development. Progress in governance, institution-building and democratic consolidation are contributing factors to the positive indicators that long-term investors seek.

The Summitwill explore some of southern Africa's success stories, and how these can be replicated. Southern Africa has witnessed local private-sector led initiatives, and wider participation in exciting projectssuch as South Africa's ground breaking REIPPPP programme - an initiative which will be explored at the SAEIS.

The Summit will also hear from key stakeholders participating in theMoatize/Nacalarailway project,which will runbetween Malawi and Mozambique: aninfrastructure project set to re-define southern Africa and its investment potential.

For more information about this meeting:

Contact Patti Carbonell at patricia.carbonell@energynet.co.uk

+44(0)20-7384-8891

Visit http://www.southern-africa-summit.com

Event dates: 4 - 6 May

Location: Maputo, Mozambique
Representatives of Plattform Industrie 4.0 and the Industrial Internet Consortium met in Zurich, Switzerland to explore the potential alignment of their two architecture efforts respectively, the Reference Architecture Model for Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) and the Industrial Internet Reference Architecture (IIRA). The meeting was a success, with a common recognition of the complementary nature of the two models, an initial draft mapping showing the direct relationships between elements of the models, and a clear roadmap to ensure future interoperability. Additional possible topics included collaboration in the areas of IIC Testbeds and I4.0 Test Facility Infrastructures, as well as standardization, architectures business outcomes in the Industrial Internet.

State Secretary, Matthias Machnig, Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy: "We welcome the cooperation of both initiatives as an important milestone in the cooperation of companies internationally. The combined strengths of both IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0 will substantially help to pave the way for a mutually beneficial development of a digitized economy for our international businesses."

Prof. Dr. Siegfried Russwurm, Technical Director of Plattform Industrie 4.0, CTO and Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG, said "Collaborating with other initiatives is important, especially for Germany's export-oriented economy. We are highly interested to cooperate intensively with others in order to pave the way for global standards. Cooperating with IIC and with other consortia is an important step in the right direction."

Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Executive Director of the Industrial Internet Consortium, commented, "The effort shows that smart technical people can bridge any gap and find a way to solve problems that might otherwise have created barriers to entry in the adoption of IoT technology for industrial applications. I applaud the participants and thank them for their initial work, and look forward to a successful collaboration moving forward."

Dr. Werner Struth, member of the Bosch board of management: "This is a huge accomplishment for industry adoption of the Industrial Internet of Things, as it will simplify technology choices immensely and lead to greatly enhanced interoperability."

Bernd Leukert, Member of the SAP Executive Board emphasizes the importance of alignment between IIC and Plattform Industrie 4.0-initiated testbed initiatives: "This will allow for a much smoother international cooperation between smaller companies and larger enterprise to test out use cases and to initiate standards."

Greg Petroff, Chief Experience Officer for GE Digital, said: "Breaking down the barriers of technology silos and supporting better integration of these architectures efforts will be key to advancing the Industrial Internet. This collaboration will help build a vibrant, united community around standards that drive integration toward solving the world's toughest challenges."

Robert Martin, Senior Principal Engineer in Cyber Security Partnership, The MITRE Corporation and member of the IIC Steering Committee, said "Bringing together the work of the Industrial Internet Consortium and the Plattform Industrie 4.0 Konsortium will dramatically increase the international value of both efforts and help to clarify and resolve the problems and concerns facing the global Industrial IoT marketplace quicker and more effectively than either could do alone."

"I'm excited to see the two premier Industrial Internet of Things organizations aligning their efforts," states Stan Schneider, CEO of Real-Time Innovations (RTI) and a member of the IIC Steering Committee. "Industrie 4.0's strong foundation in industrial manufacturing and process combines well with the IIC's emphasis on emerging IIoT applications in healthcare, transportation, power, and smart cities. We are working aggressively to align the connectivity infrastructures of the underlying DDS and OPC UA connectivity standards. We look forward to driving the rapid growth of the IIoT across all industries."

The Zurich meeting was originally proposed by Bosch and SAP as members of the steering committees of both organizations. The meeting constituted an informal group which will continue their work on exploring potential alignment between I4.0 and IIC. The open, informal discovery group included Bosch, Cisco, IIC, Pepperl Fuchs, SAP, Siemens, Steinbeis Institute and ThingsWise.

For more information on the Industrial Internet Consortium, please visit www.iiconsortium.org or contact Kathy Walsh, Industrial Internet Consortium Director of Marketing at walsh@iiconsortium.org.

For more information on the Plattform Industrie 4.0, please contact Henning Banthien, Plattform Industrie 4.0 Secretary General at h.banthien@plattform-i40.de.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005377/en/

Contacts:

Industrial Internet Consortium

Kathy Walsh, +1-781-444-0404

walsh@iiconsortium.org
Register now to attend World ATM Congress, the largest international aviation exhibition dedicated to the advancement of air traffic management (ATM) and next generation technologies.

MADRID, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Register now for World ATM Congress 2016, the world's largest ATM exhibition, opening on the morning of 8 March at IFEMA, Feria de Madrid. The event will bring together aviation leaders from 125 countries, including high-ranking regulators and officials; CEOs of airports, airlines, and air navigation service providers (ANSPs); trade associations; and leaders of the commercial companies that provide products and services to the aviation industry. The event runs through 10 March.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151217/297118LOGO

Registration is on track to exceed last year's 6,300 attendees, and includes:

Air traffic controllers and representatives from air traffic control (ATC) service providers, airports, airlines, governments, armed forces, NGOs, manufacturers, suppliers, and more.

Seventy-nine ANSPs.

Thirteen embassies.

A record-breaking 225 exhibitors, an increase of 22 since last year.

Five education theatres with over 80 hours of programming, including product demonstrations and launches, panel discussions, and presentations on recent trends and developments from over 55 leading organizations across various segments of aviation.

The award-winning World ATM Congress, now in its fourth year, is produced by the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) in partnership with the Air Traffic Control Association (ATCA). The theme of the Conference of World ATM Congress is Leadership, Change, and Implementation. Four sessions over two mornings explore the industry leadership challenges that ANSPs, airlines, and airports currently face, as well as a glimpse at what the industry will have implemented in the next five years. Industry leaders will examine the impact of new technologies, such as remote towers, and new entrants to airspace, including remotely piloted aircraft systems and commercial space vehicles.

World ATM Congress 2016 will also play host to several events, including the European Commission Single European Sky (SES) Awards on 8 March and several press events throughout the three days. The IHS Jane's ATC Awards, presented during the CANSO ATM Dinner on 7 March, celebrate and reward efforts to improve airspace management.

For more information about World ATM Congress 2016, please visit www.worldatmcongress.org. Online registration closes Thursday, 3 March. Onsite registration is available at no additional cost.
BARCELONA, Spain, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Researchers at the University of Barcelona have found evidence that hominids may have entered Europe through the southern Iberian Peninsula between 900,000 and 850,000 years ago. TheJournal of Human Evolutionhas published a study based on new dating of human and African primate fossil remains found in Cueva Victoria (Cartagena, Murcia), in Spain. The results suggest humans arrived from Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar. "Until now, the dominant theory was that humans dispersed from Africa to Europe northwards around the Mediterranean and entered the peninsula through the Pyrenees; but our work, as well as other previous studies, suggest that hominids entered from the south on different occasions," explains Lluis Gibert, a researcher in the Faculty of Geology at the University of Barcelona and director of the study that included collaboration with the experts Carles FerrA ndez and Maria Leria.



(Photo:http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338614)



Cueva Victoria, an early Pleistocene hyena den with three kilometres of tunnels, was key in the research. Some ninety species of vertebrates, including a human phalanx and the remains ofTheropithecus oswaldi, an African primate similar to the modern baboon, were found. "These are the only remains ofTheropithecusthat have been found in Europe. Their presence in North Africa during the Pleistocene, together with their absence at other European sites, is the first indication of hominid dispersal across the strait," explains Carles FerrA ndez. The phalanx and primate remains are about 900,000 years old, the same age as a hand axe found at the Cueva Negra site in the Quipar River gorge, 50 kilometres from Cueva Victoria. "These are the first remains of Acheulean technology found in Europe, a form of lithic culture that appeared in Africa 1.6 million years ago and which, until the Cueva Negra dating, was not thought to have arrived on this continent until 600,000 years ago," says Lluis Gibert.

The experts say that previous studies on hominid discoveries at sites in Orce (the Baza basin, Granada) already suggested that a dispersal through the south-east of the Iberian Peninsula had taken place about 1.3 million years ago "independently of the fact other humans were trying to go around the Mediterranean," explains Lluis Gibert.

About the University of Barcelona

The University of Barcelona is the leading public university in Catalonia in terms of the size of its student body, which is made up of approximately 66,000 students, as well as the number of study programmes it offers. It is the top university in the country in scientific output, which makes it the leading university research centre in Spain and one of the major players in Europe, both with regard to the number of research programmes it has and to the excellence it has achieved in this arena.

The University of Barcelona is the leading higher education institution in Spain in the primary international rankings: It is the only Spanish university to feature among the 200 best universities in the world in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), better known as the Shanghai ranking. In the 2014-2015 QS World University Rankings, it was also the top Spanish university and one of the 200 best in the world. Additionally, according to the 2014 QS World University Rankings by Subject, it is the only university in the country to enjoy a position on the elite list of the 200 best universities in the world in 27 of the 30 different knowledge areas.

A member of the most significant university of excellence networks on an international scale, such as the League of European Research Universities (LERU), the University of Barcelona has been chosen to lead a new knowledge and innovation community in Spain focusing on healthy living and active ageing: EIT Health. The University of Barcelona has 301 consolidated research groups and, according to a report by BiGGAR Economics commissioned by LERU, it has an impact worth 1.4 billion euros in gross value added (GVA) in Catalonia, which represents 72% of the Catalan total, and has a direct impact in the form of 21,870 jobs (2014 data).

http://www.ub.edu

University of Barcelona Expert Guide:http://www.ub.edu/experts/en
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - March 02, 2016) - Public relations and reputation management leader, IC Media Direct, attended this year's the Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conference (now Connect Search Engine Watch) in Miami. Hosted each February, the event aims to bring together prominent companies and established leaders within the SEO and online marketing industry. Having reached its 20 th year, SES Conference helps businesses share the most useful customer-centric tactics in the new era of online advertising. The forum welcomes all SEO specialists, digital marketers, webmasters, developers, entrepreneurs, and other professionals for quality presentations and networking. See your Online Reputation Report now, by visiting http://www.icmediadirect.com

Held over two days at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne in downtown Miami, attendees had access to unique insights and information that will help them excel in specific marketing careers. This included learning how to execute intent-based targeting, which aids in adapting techniques to overcome obstacles in an ever-changing marketplace. The conference was sponsored by leading businesses such as Bing and Ignition One, and included speeches from people at Google, Wordstream, and The Washington Post. As an expert in the field of online reputation management, IC Media Direct helps hundreds of companies better understand how to successfully evolve and develop new strategies, depending on the needs of each business and consumer in the 21 st century.

The conference has also provided an opportunity for SEO diagnostics to be demonstrated by those who help companies improve their skilled-search abilities. New advertising methods were a large focus, due to mobile searches surpassing the number of desktop searches for the first time in Internet history. This year, it will become more important to understand exactly how businesses can expand on their online tactics to build credible and sustainable messages for their appropriate demographic. IC Media Direct explained the significance of mobile marketing and advertising, as well as its various possibilities, emphasizing on how to use big data to help bring new opportunities to promote a particular service.

Established in 1996, IC Media Direct is an online reputation management agency dedicated to brand repair for individuals and companies across the world. Clients range from Fortune 500 CEOs to celebrities, delivering effective results to help businesses and individuals gain control over their online search results. IC Media Direct has been awarded the New York Excellence Award from the Small Business Institute for Excellence in Commerce (SBIEC) twice due to their results each year. The firm attends a variety of esteemed marketing conferences and events throughout the year, including ad:tech, Affiliate Summit, and LeadsCon. To see your Online Reputation Report, visit http://www.icmediadirect.com

IC Media Direct -- PR and Marketing News: http://icmediadirectnews.com

IC Media Direct -- Reputation Management -- How SEO and Reputation Management Will Change in 2016: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstories/ic-media-direct-reputation-management-how-seo-and-reputation-management-will-change-in-2016/ar-BBpYYJa

IC Media Direct -- Presents Advanced Google Reputation Management Solutions at ad:tech 2015 in San Francisco: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSnMKWhbKxQa+1ca+MKW20150525

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/3/1/11G085480/Images/IC_Media_Direct_-_Reputation_Management_-_Attends_-9490990fab1db87f859f6f3cbf237ce3.jpg

Embedded Video Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3QHOeY8qAM

Contact Information

ICMediaDirect.com

TEL: 1.800.595.0821

www.ICMediaDirect.com

pr@icmediadirect.com
WEST CONSHOHOCKEN, Pennsylvania, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth who has spent decades bringing spiritual insight to the public conversation through mass media, popular lectures and more than two dozen books, has been awarded the 2016 Templeton Prize.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160229/338403 )



The announcement was made this morning at the British Academy in London, attended by Rabbi Sacks.

Rabbi Sacks, 67, first gained attention by leading what many consider the revitalisation of Britain's Jewish community during his service as Chief Rabbi from 1991 to 2013, a feat he accomplished in the face of dwindling congregations and growing secularisation across Europe. During his tenure he catalysed a network of organisations that introduced a Jewish focus in areas including business, women's issues and education, and urged British Jewry to turn outward to share the ethics of their faith with the broader community.

Central to his message is appreciation and respect of all faiths, with an emphasis that recognising the values of each is the only path to effectively combat the global rise of violence and terrorism.

Valued at 1.1 million (about $1.5 million or 1.4 million), the Templeton Prize is one of the world's largest annual monetary awards given to an individual. The Prize, which will be formally awarded on 26th May in London, honours a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, through insight, discovery, or practical works.

The 2016 Prize Laureate will join a group of 45 former recipients. Last year the Prize was awarded to Canadian philosopher and theologian Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche. Czech priest and philosopher Tomas Halik was the 2014 Laureate, preceded by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2013 and the Dalai Lama in 2012.

Established in 1972 by the late global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton, the Templeton Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.

Still pictures and video highlights of the press conference will be shortly afterwards from http://filetransfer.ctn.co.uk

User ID: tp2016 Password: accessTP2016


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Researchers have taken an important first step towards finding a better treatment for T-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia 1 type, a severe form of childhood leukemia, for which the cure rate is only 50% with the main treatment - i.e. chemotherapy. In the quest for finding a better drug, Ottawa researchers have uncovered a weak spot that triggers this aggressive form of childhood cancer, and have also identified a possible new treatment that exploits this vulnerability.



T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or T-ALL, accounts for 15% of childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia cases. A common form of T-ALL involves a gene called TAL-1, which under certain circumstances can transform the T-cells into cancer cells. As you may know T-cells in our body play a key role in the human immune response.



In preclinical studies with mouse models, the researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa found that TAL-1 required an enzyme called UTX in order to transform the T-cells into cancer cells. The growth of TAL-1 type cancer cells was completely stopped when the enzyme UTX was turned off using an experimental compound GSK-J4, developed by GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK).



As part of the research, mouse models were injected with cells from human TAL-1 type leukemia and then treated with GSK-J4 for over three weeks. At the end of the study period, it was found that the number of cancer cells in the bone marrow of the mouse models were down by 80%. The healthy cells were untouched by GSK-J4, and there were no short-term effects on other organs of the body associated with that compound.



GSK-J4 specifically worked only for TAL-1 subtype, and not any other types of T-ALL, say the researchers.



Commenting on the findings, senior author Marjorie Brand who led the study said, 'Learning how a disease works at a molecular level needs to happen before any kind of successful drug can be developed. You need to do laboratory studies to find the right treatment and prove it works.'



The study is published in Genes & Development.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - Ryanair (RYA.L, RYAAY) said that it welcomed today's ruling by the UK Advertising Standards Authority which found that eDreams advertising on Google was 'misleading' consumers and breached the CAP code. Ryanair now calls on Google to ban this deceptive eDreams advertising until such time that eDreams stops misleading consumers by passing itself off as Ryanair. The UK ASA reviewed a series of complaints from consumers who were deceived by eDreams masquerading as Ryanair and Easyjet using the airlines name, brand and logo in a blatant attempt to dupe consumers into booking higher priced tickets on eDreams than those available on the Ryanair.com website. Ryanair believes that Google has allowed this advertising, which the ASA now confirms breaches the CAP code, because it directly boosts the number of 'click-throughs' on Google's paid for advertising search engine, thereby maximising Google's advertising revenues at the expense of consumers. Ryanair noted that it has repeatedly written to Google at the highest levels, including Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, enclosing hundreds of complaints by real customers who have been misled by eDreams false advertising on Google, and yet Google has failed/refused to take any action to prevent this deceptive advertising. 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.
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution levels among Canadians have remained steady from last year, according to BMO Financial Group's annual Post-RRSP Deadline Study issued today. The study found that 53 per cent of Canadians contributed to their RRSP before the February 29 deadline, down from 57 per cent this time last year and 65 per cent in 2014.

While the number of Canadians who contributed is down slightly from last year, the amount that Canadians have contributed has increased. On average, Canadians contributed $4,117 this year compared to $3,737 in 2015 and $3,518 in 2014.

The BMO study also looked at the impact that recent market volatility had on Canadians' decisions to contribute. Forty-two per cent reported that market volatility played no role while 37 per cent stated that it did; 19 per cent indicated that market volatility caused them to contribute more, while 18 per cent said they contributed less.

"RRSPs are one of the most tax-efficient ways one can save for retirement so it's great to see that the majority of Canadians are taking advantage of the program this year," said Robert Armstrong, Vice President, BMO Global Asset Management. "Market volatility can often create confusion and uncertainty about whether or not to invest. Rather than avoid making a contribution and losing out on potential returns from your RRSP investments, it's a good idea to consult a financial professional who can provide guidance on how to navigate the current market environment."

Mr. Armstrong added that, to help Canadians save for retirement and build their wealth, BMO Investments Inc. offers BMO SelectTrust Portfolios and BMO ETF Portfolios. The Portfolios are professionally managed and designed to fit different investment styles and risk levels, which allows clients to choose a portfolio that is best suited to their individual investment goals.

How will Canadians spend their RRSP tax refund?

The study also found that one third of Canadians who expect to receive a tax refund from the Canada Revenue Agency after making an RRSP contribution will save or invest the money. This is down slightly from 34 per cent in 2015 and 36 per cent in 2014. Other ways they will spend their tax refund include:

-- Paying down a mortgage (16 per cent, compared to 15 per cent last year) -- Home renovations (14 per cent, compared to 13 per cent last year) -- Travel or leisure items (13 per cent, up slightly from 11 per cent last year)

"Receiving a tax refund as a result of RRSP contributions is always a welcome bonus to one's cash flow. It's important for Canadians to have a strategy for how they will spend this money. It could be an excellent opportunity to grow savings or get ahead on paying down outstanding debt," said Mr. Armstrong.

Regional Breakdown:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- % who did % who said not have market enough money % who plan to % who made an Average $ volatility to save or RRSP amount impacted contribute invest tax contribution contributed their (2015 tax refund (2015 (2015 tax (2015 tax decision to year vs. tax year vs. year vs. 2014 year vs. 2014 contribute to 2014 tax 2014 tax Region tax year) tax year) their RRSP year) year) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- National 53/57 4,117/3,737 37 37/38 33/34 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Atlantic 45/46 3,467/3,657 28 24/44 22/29 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quebec 47/56 3,539/2,961 36 44/23 31/40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ontario 56/58 4,761/3,717 36 33/45 38/31 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prairies 53/51 3,668/4,467 34 39/45 29/38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alberta 59/60 3,907/5,574 36 54/35 31/37 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- B.C. 53/61 3,704/3,470 41 31/42 32/29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The survey was conducted by Pollara with an online sample of 1,000 Canadians 18 years of age and over, between February 22th and 24th, 2016. A probability sample of 1,000 would yield results accurate to +/- 3.1 per cent, 19 times out of 20. Results have been weighted using the latest census data to be representative of Canadians as a whole.

For more information on planning for retirement, please visit www.bmo.com/retirement.

For more information on investing, please visit www.bmo.com/selecttrust.

Get the latest BMO press releases via Twitter by following @BMOmedia. Also, get additional timely updates, related articles and insights on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.

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 $699 billion as of January 31, 2016, 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.

Contacts:

Media contacts:

Amanda Robinson, Toronto

416-867-3996

amanda.robinson@bmo.com



Valerie Doucet, Montreal

514-877-8224

valerie.doucet@bmo.com




DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cmz7xk/european_market) has announced the addition of the "European Market for Flame Retardant Chemicals Segmented by Application, Composition and Geography (2015-2020)" report to their offering.

The European market for flame-retardant chemicals is expected to grow at a healthy pace of 5.3% from $1.56 billion in 2013 to over $2.1 billion during the forecast period. Europe is the third largest global market for flame-retardants, occupying 22% of the global market share.

Flame-retardants can be divided into sectors by their application: electronic and electrical appliances, construction, wire & cable, automotive, textiles and others. The largest two sectors are construction and electronic & electrical appliances, together occupying more than 45% of the total market.

Electronic & electrical appliances along with wire & cable are the fastest growing markets; this growth can be credited to the rise in consumer electronics goods. Stringent fire safety standards and legislations in Europe also act as a growth driver for the use of flame-retardants.

Chlorinated flame-retardants that occupy a major part of the European market share are facing a reduced dependence and a gradual phasing. This is due to their unfavorable health effects and emergence of alternative raw materials including metal hydroxides. In Europe, the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and the EU Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) has banned several halogenated compounds and other materials from use as additives in plastics.

Reasons for Buying this Report:

Have valuable insights on trends and prospects.

Gain an exhaustive understanding of the worldwide market.

Recognize industry players and possess key industrial financial information.

Have an in-depth understanding on the factors driving and restraining the market.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Introduction

2. Key Findings of the Study

3. Market Overview

4. Market Dynamics

5. Technology Overview

6. Market Analysis & Forecast

Companies Mentioned:

BASF SE

Akzo Nobel N.V.

Clariant AG

Chemtura Corporation

Albemarle Corporation

DuPont

Sherwin-Williams Co.

Tosoh Corp.

Israel Chemicals Ltd (ICL-IP)

Arkema S.A.

Chemtura Corporation

AMCOL International Corp.

TOR Minerals International Inc.

Interplastic Corporation

DAIHACHI Chemical Industry Co., Lt

Lanxess AG

DIC Corporation

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/cmz7xk/european_market

Media Contact:

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
DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The global consumer electronics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 3% by 2020, according to a report available from Research and Markets. The report states that consumer electronics is one of the largest segments in the manufacturing industry and has strong potential, and today Steinhoff International Holdings NV Group made an unsolicited bid for French electronics retailer Darty Plc.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 )



Steinhoff proposed a USD 924 million bid for Darty, offering to pay 125 pence a share in cash for the retailer. The bid is believed to be a direct challenge to Groupe Fnac SA's agreement to purchase Darty, and is the second takeover in Europe Steinhoff has intervened in. On Feb. 22 it was revealed that Steinhoff had made a USD 1.95 billion offer for Home Retail Group Plc in an attempt to impede a bid from UK supermarket chain J Sainsbury Plc.

The European consumer electronics market is forecast to reach a value of USD 55.6 billion by 2019, as stated in an industry report. The report notes that growth in this particular market will decline by -0.8% during the forecast period of 2014-2019. The lack of foreseeable growth in this market supports the suggestion that Steinhoff bid on Darty mainly to upset Groupe Fnac's buying agreement.

The European electrical and electronics market will reach a value of USD 380 billion by 2019, as stated in a market report. The report notes that consolidation is a key trend among major retailers in this market, helping retailers to expand market shares and remain profitable. While Steinhoff's bid may be designed to disrupt, the offer could help Darty achieve greater stability and a bigger market share.

For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the Electronic Device Retailing section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/MKOM.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-02/darty-says-it-s-reviewing-takeover-proposal-from-steinhoff

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.





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: +1-646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716


DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gb67pv/global_genomics) has announced the addition of the "Global Genomics Market Outlook: 2015-2020" report to their offering.

With the significant decrease in the sequencing costs and rising investments in the pharmaceutical industry, the global genomics market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 15.1% to be worth $19,938.6 million by 2020.

This growth is further driven by the technological innovations in bioinformatics, increasing clinical capabilities, and more clinically relevant sequencing timescales. However, need of significant clinical investment, lack of funding in the emerging markets, rising consolidation mainly in the instruments market, and ethical and legal challenges will act as a constraint to industry growth during the forecast period.

The global genomics market is segmented by methods, technology, instruments, consumables, services, and geography. The genomics industry is still at a nascent stage with many untapped markets present across the globe. However, the sequencing method is relatively at a mature stage, especially, in the developed markets. As, the scale of genomes data grows, the data analysis and interpretation market is expected to grow at a significant rate in the near future.

Next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) technology has transformed biomedical research, making genome and RNA sequencing an affordable and commonly used tool for a wide variety of research applications. As a result, the market has been stressed to manage the enormous data output from this process. Therefore, the complexity and sheer amount of data generated by NGS has led to a need for genomic centers to form bioinformatics teams in order to analyze the output data.

North America is the major market in the global genomics market and is expected to dominate this market during the forecast period, with the U.S. contributing a major share, followed by Europe, and Asia-Pacific. On the other hand, the Asian market, especially India and China, is expected to witness a boost in demand for genomics market during the forecast period, as a result of their economic development, increasing genetic research and development activities, drastically reduced mass scale genetic testing costs, and the growing focus of the major players in this region.

The key players in the global genomics market are Affymetrix, Inc., Agilent Technologies, BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute), Illumina, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Cepheid, GE Healthcare, Qiagen N.V, Roche Holding AG, Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc., Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd., Beckman Coulter Genomics, Inc., Perkin Elmer, Inc., DNASTAR, Inc, Genomatix Software Gmbh, and GenoLogics Life Sciences Software, Inc.,

The global genomics market is segmented by methods, technology, instruments, consumables, services, and geography:

Genomics Methods/Stages:

- Sampling, - Sequencing, - Analysis, - Interpretation - Application

Genomics Technology:

- PCR - Sequencing - Microarray - Nucleic acid Extraction & Purification

Genomics Instruments:

- PCR - NGS Platforms - DNA Microarrays - Nucleic acid Extraction and Purification Systems - DNA Sequencers - Others

NGS Platforms:

- Illumina - Thermo - Roche - Pacific Biosciences

Genomics Consumables:

- PCR - DNA Sequencing - Nucleic acid extraction and purification systems - Genechips - Microarrays - Others

Genomics Services:

- Laboratory Services - Software

Genomics Market, By Geography:

- North America -- U.S. -- Canada - Europe -- U.K. -- Germany -- France -- Italy -- Spain -- Rest of Europe - Asia-Pacific -- Japan -- China -- India -- Rest of Asia-Pacific - Rest of the World -- Latin America -- Middle East and Africa

Key Questions Answered in the Report:

- Which are the high growth market segments in terms of genomics instruments, methods, consumables, services, regions, and countries? - What is the historical market for genomics across the globe? - What are the market forecasts and estimates from the period 2015-2020? - What are the major drivers, restrains, threats, and opportunities in the global genomics market? - What are the burning issues of the global genomics market? - Who are the major players in the global genomics market and what share of the market do they hold? - Who are the major players in various regions (North America, APAC, Europe) and what share of the market do they hold? - What are the competitive landscapes and who are the market leaders by sub-region in the global genomics market? - What are the recent developments in the global genomics market? - What are the different strategies adopted by the major players in the global genomics market? - What are the geographical trends and high growth regions?

Companies Mentioned

- Affymetrix, Inc. - Agilent Technologies - BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute) - Beckman Coulter Genomics, Inc. - Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. - Cepheid - DNASTAR, Inc, - GE Healthcare - GenoLogics Life Sciences Software, Inc - Genomatix Software Gmbh - Illumina, Inc. - Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd. - Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. - Perkin Elmer, Inc - Qiagen N.V - Roche Holding AG - Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/gb67pv/global_genomics

Media Contact:

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
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 --RSA Conference 2016, Booth No. 607 South Hall - DB Networks, a leader in database cybersecurity, today announced that Info Security Products Guide, the industry's leading information security research and advisory guide, has named the company and its Layer 7 Database Sensor, as a Grand winner of the 2016 Global Excellence Awards. The security industry celebrated its 12th Annual 2016 Global Excellence Awards earlier this week in San Francisco by honoring excellence in every facet of the industry, including products, people behind the successes, and best companies.

DB Networks' solutions protect mission critical databases through its patented machine learning and behavioral analysis security technologies. Operating non-intrusively at the database tier, directly in front of database servers, DB Networks is in the optimal location to conduct deep analysis of the database traffic. DB Networks' innovative database cybersecurity products deliver:

Non-intrusive discovery of all databases, including undocumented ones

Extraction and in-depth analysis of layer 7 activity in the data tier

Ability to pinpoint compromised credentials

Immediate identification of database attacks through machine learning and behavioral analysis

"We are truly honored to be recognized by the Info Security Products Guide team for our innovations in cybersecurity," said Brett Helm, Chairman and CEO of DB Networks. "Our new Layer 7 Database Sensors immediately identify data tier threats through deep protocol analysis and machine learning. Our technology is being integrated into a variety of existing information security products offered through OEMs. Our OEM partners can now quickly enter the new era of machine learning and behavioral analysis-based information security without investing significant capital and time in the effort."

For a personal demonstration of DB Networks' products and the opportunity to meet with members of the team, visit the company at the RSA Conference 2016 -- front row booth #607 South Hall at the Moscone Center in San Francisco through March 3. Or see DB Networks at the HIMSS 16 Conference & Exhibition -- booth #9908-13 at the Venetian Palazzo Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas through March 4.

About Info Security Products Guide

Info Security Products Guide plays a vital role in keeping end-users informed of the choices they can make when it comes to protecting their digital resources. It is written expressly for those who are adamant on staying informed of security threats and the preventive measure they can take. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including tomorrow's technology today, best deployment scenarios, people and technologies shaping info security, and market research reports that facilitate in making the most pertinent security decisions. The Info Security Products Guide Global Excellence Awards recognize and honor excellence in all areas of information security. To learn more, visit www.infosecurityproductsguide.com and stay secured.

About DB Networks

DB Networks innovates database cybersecurity products. Its customers include the world's largest financial institutions, healthcare providers, manufacturers, and governments. DB Networks technology non-intrusively assesses database infrastructures through deep protocol extraction, machine learning, and behavioral analysis. Customers gain insights by discovering all active databases, identifying tables being accessed, and the specific applications accessing the databases. In addition, analyzing application database access that deviates from the model of normal application behavior immediately identifies database attacks. DB Networks is a privately held company headquartered in San Diego, Calif. For more information, call (800) 598-0450 or visit the DB Networks website, Twitter page, LinkedIn page, Google+ page, and YouTube channel.

DB Networks is a registered trademark of DB Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Contact:

Dan Spalding

Email Contact

(408) 960-9297




TEL AVIV, Israel, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

- Sale is part of ICL's strategy to divest its non-core businesses -

ICL (NYSE and TASE: ICL), today announced that its ICL Industrial Products segment has sold its Clearon Corp. business unit ("Clearon") to Hui Yu Xin American Corp., a subsidiary of Dalian Hui Yu Xin Technology Development Co., Ltd., a Chinese specialty chemicals company ("Dalian").

Clearon is a leading manufacturer and supplier of water treatment chemicals for the pool and spa industry. The sale does not include ICL's brominated biocides business for industrial applications which is a core activity and which ICL will continue to operate separately from Clearon. Clearon intends to continue to sell brominated biocide products to the pool and spa industry.

The sale of Clearon is part of ICL's 'Next Step Forward' strategy to divest its non-core businesses to focus on its core businesses in the agriculture, food and engineered materials markets and to optimize its positioning in those markets.

Commenting on the transaction, ICL Industrial Products President, Charles Weidhas, stated, "We are delighted to sell Clearon to an industry leader like Dalian which intends to further develop Clearon's world-class pool and spa water treatment business. We view Dalian as an optimal owner for Clearon, and believe it will build on Clearon's strong reputation as a market leader with premier water treatment products and service capabilities. This is an optimal transaction for ICL and Dalian, as well as for Clearon's dedicated managers and employees. We wish them much success going forward in the future."

About ICL

ICL is a global manufacturer of products based on specialty minerals that fulfill humanity's essential needs primarily in three markets: agriculture, food and engineered materials.

ICL produces approximately a third of the world's bromine, and is the sixth largest potash producer, as well as the leading provider of pure phosphoric acid. It is a major manufacturer of specialty fertilizers, specialty phosphates and flame retardants. ICL's mining and manufacturing activities are located in Israel, Europe, the Americas and China, and are supported by global distribution and supply networks.

The agricultural products that ICL produces help to feed the world's growing population. The potash and phosphates that it mines and manufactures are used as ingredients in fertilizers and serve as an essential component in the pharmaceutical and food additives industries. The food additives that ICL produces enable people to have greater access to more varied and higher quality food. ICL's water treatment products supply clean water to millions of people as well industry around the world. Other substances, based on bromine and phosphates, help to create energy that is more efficient and environmentally friendly, prevent the spread of forest fires and allow the safe and widespread use of a variety of products and materials.

ICL benefits from a number of unique advantages, including its vertically integrated activities and complementary and synergistic downstream operations for the production of unique end products; its balanced and varied product portfolio in growing markets; broad presence throughout the world and proximity to large markets, including in emerging regions.

ICL operates within a strategic framework of sustainability that includes a commitment to the environment, support of communities in which ICL's manufacturing operations are located and where its employees live, and a commitment to all its employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.

ICL is a public company whose shares are dual listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (NYSE and TASE: ICL). 46.2% of ICL's equity is held by Israel Corp., 13.9% by Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan and the remainder by the public.

The company employs approximately 14,000 people worldwide, and its sales in 2015 totaled US$5.4 billion. For more information, visit the company's website at http://www.icl-group.com.

Forward Looking Statement

This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements", many of which can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "expect", "should", "plan", "intend", "estimate" and "potential" among others. Forward-looking statements are based on our management's current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to various factors, and those in "Item 3. Key Information-D. Risk Factors" in the Company's annual report on Form 20-F filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on March 20, 2015.Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we do not undertake any obligation to update or revise them or any other information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise.

PRESS CONTACT

Amiram Fleisher

Fleisher Communications

+972-3-6241241

amiram@fleisher-pr.com



INVESTOR RELATIONS CONTACT

Limor Gruber

Head of Investor Relations, ICL

+972-3-684-4471

Limor.Gruber@icl-group.com


QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Junex Inc. (TSX VENTURE: JNX) ("Junex" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received a Completion Permit from the Quebec Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources that authorizes Junex to proceed with the evaluation of its Galt No. 5 Horizontal well as announced by the Company in a press release on October 1, 2015.

Junex intends to start field operations in the Galt No. 5 well this spring to further evaluate the horizontal leg where abundant natural fractures and oil shows were recorded in the lower portion of the Forillon Limestone and the upper portion of the Indian Point Formation. Junex chose to perform these evaluation operations during the spring season in order to optimize efficiency while minimizing costs.

Mr. Peter Dorrins, Junex's President & Chief Executive Officer, said: "If the planned evaluation operations indicate that the horizontal leg drilled in the lower portion of the Forillon Limestone and the upper portion of the Indian Point Formation in the Galt No. 5 well can be commercially produced, then we will proceed with production testing operations. If the results from the evaluation indicate the contrary, then we have the option to drill a second horizontal leg into the upper portion of the Forillon Limestone reservoir from the vertical portion of the well."

Junex's Galt Oil Property is situated approximately 20 kilometers from the town of Gaspe in eastern Quebec. Netherland, Sewell & Associates, Inc., ("NSAI") a firm of worldwide petroleum consultants based in Texas, has previously established their Best Estimate of the total Oil-Initially-In-Place ("OIIP") resources at 557 million barrels for the Forillon and Indian Point formations on the Galt Oil Property. This 557 million barrel figure includes Discovered OIIP volumes of 81 million barrels and Undiscovered OIIP volumes of 476 million barrels (see press release from August 31, 2015 for details of the NSAI report).

Junex holds a 70 % interest in the Galt Oil Property. Junex also holds 100% interest in the adjacent acreage that has not yet been independently evaluated for its resource potential.

About Junex

Junex is a junior oil and gas exploration company that holds exploration rights on approximately 5.2 million acres of land in the Appalachian basin in the Province of Quebec, including the Galt Oil Property on the Gaspe Peninsula in eastern Quebec, landholdings on Anticosti Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and landholdings in the St. Lawrence Lowlands between Montreal and Quebec City. In parallel to its exploration efforts in Quebec and expansion of its exploration activities elsewhere, the company operates a drilling services division.

Forward-Looking Statements and Disclaimer

Certain statements in this press release may be forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are based on the best estimates available to Junex at the time and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Junex's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. A description of the risks affecting Junex's business and activities appears under the heading "Risks and Uncertainties" on pages 7 to 10 of Junex's 2014 annual management's discussion and analysis, which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. No assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking information in this press release will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that Junex will derive therefrom. In particular, no assurance can be given as to the future financial performance of Junex. Junex disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in order to account for any new information or any other event. The reader is warned against undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

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:

Junex Inc.

Mr. Peter Dorrins

President & Chief Executive Officer

418-654-9661



Junex Inc.

Mr. Dave Pepin

Vice President - Corporate Affairs

418-654-9661




ORLANDO, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Today, nearly half of the Realtors in U.S. and Canada -- some 500,000 real estate professionals -- now have access to Tech Helpline, a service owned by the Florida Realtors that provides technical support services for a wide range of software and hardware, from smartphones and tablets to desktops, laptops, email problems, virus issues and more.

Dubbed "the Genius Bar for real estate," Tech Helpline is the real estate industry's number one technology support service and in just 50 days, it has contracted with 9 local and state Realtor Associations, including Arizona Association of Realtors, Northern Virginia Association of Realtors, Oregon Association of Realtors, St. Louis Association of Realtors, Glenwood Springs Association of Realtors, North San Diego County Association of Realtors, Great Falls Association of Realtors, South Okanagan Real Estate Board, and the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. Membership in these Associations total more than 89,600, making support from Tech Helpline available to almost half the Realtors in the U.S. and Canada.

"The growth of Tech Helpline has been stunning," says Tricia Stamper, Director of Technology Products at Florida Realtors. "But we attribute this record growth to what we offer other Realtor Associations, Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) and real estate brokerage firms: A service built for Realtors by Realtors and no nonsense technical advice from a warm and friendly U.S.-based customer services staff. This is a high-skilled group with over 250 combined years of experience who deeply understand what agents need, offering support in both English and Spanish."

According to Stamper, Tech Helpline's growth rate from December 14, 2015 to February 1, 2016 has exceeded by an incredible 20 percent. Stamper notes that Associations, MLSs and brokerages all want to give their members and agents the benefits that they value "and tech support consistently has proven to be one of the most valued benefits," she explains.

Stamper notes that Tech Helpline's growth also has been buoyed by the growth of Florida Realtors Form Simplicity transaction software and retention of highly satisfied clients, as Tech Helpline provides technical support for Form Simplicity. "Arkansas Realtors Association, which recently renewed Form Simplicity as a member benefit and its Ultimate Edition as a member service, has a nearly 80 percent adoption rate among its 7,000 members for Form Simplicity and also has been a client of Tech Helpline since 2011," she notes. Stamper says these "built by Realtors for Realtors" services are beginning to attract the attention of the real estate brokerage community.

"Both Form Simplicity and its sister service Tech Helpline have long been a staple of dozens of state and local Associations and MLS offerings, but because Form Simplicity can be 'white labeled' or customized to a brokerage's brand, we are now gaining the attention of brokerages. Because of our affordable price point and heavy broker-centric feature, for the first time, brokerages are beginning to consider Form Simplicity for their own transaction management system, one they can offer and their competitors can't," Stamper says.

Because Form Simplicity's technical support comes from Tech Helpline, Stamper believes Tech Helpline will begin to also garner the attention of brokerages in markets where the local MLS or Association does not offer it as a member benefit. "Broker-owners managing listings in a hot market know that they can't afford for their agents to be left stranded when a laptop fails or a smartphone freezes, especially when the solution could be just a click or call away," Stamper adds.

More information about Tech Helpline is available online at www.techhelpline.com.

About Tech Helpline

Tech Helpline began almost fifteen years ago as a service for members of Florida Realtors. Known for its no-nonsense technical advice and warm, friendly, customer service, Tech Helpline rapidly grew by offering its service to other Realtor Associations, Multiple Listing Services (MLSs) and real estate brokerage firms. Tech Helpline is the real estate industry's #1 tech support service, available to one in three Realtors in North America -- more than 500,000 in the U.S. and Canada. Tech Helpline's office and staff of professional tech analysts, with more than 250 years of combined IT experience, are located in Orlando, Florida, and are available to provide technology support by phone, chat or email. More information is available online at www.techhelpline.com.

Florida Realtors, formerly known as the Florida Association of Realtors, serves as the voice for real estate in Florida. It provides programs, services, continuing education, research and legislative representation to its 155,000 members in 56 boards/associations.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2972664



Media Contact:

Tricia Stamper

Director of Technology Products

Florida Realtors

Email Contact

407.583.2714



or



Kevin Hawkins

for Form Simplicity and Tech Helpline

(206) 866-1220 cell/txt

Email Contact




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Flinders Resources Limited ("Flinders" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: FDR), provides an update on its two key initiatives to produce high purity spherical graphite and graphene to position its 100% owned Woxna graphite mine as a leading supplier to the current and future graphite and graphene industries.

Mr Blair Way, President and CEO states, "The past 12 months has been a challenging time in the resource sector and the graphite market has not been immune. Low graphite demand for the last 6 months has led to deflated prices. Nevertheless, with a tight control on our costs and a focus on value adding strategies, our initiatives provide cost effective means to grow our business and provide shareholders with a realistic vision for the future. With a production-ready, fully permitted graphite mine and processing facility, Flinders continues to maintain its position as the only graphite producer in the junior space that is positioned to react quickly to the anticipated increases in demand."

The first initiative underway is the High Purity Graphite Project (see Flinders' News Release August 18, 2015), which seeks to value add to its product stream via working with a strategic Chinese technology partner with a well-established design, build and operate capability in high purity graphite production. The second, the Swedish Graphene Project ("Svenskt Grafen") (see Flinders' News Release September 21, 2015), a Swedish-government funded program to research and commercialize the production of graphene from Swedish-sourced Woxna graphite.

Product from the Woxna graphite plant in Sweden was shipped to the Company's Chinese technology supplier for detailed bench-scale test work to refine our existing high-purity flowsheet (see Flinders' News Release June 25, 2015). The Company is pleased to advise that our Chinese engineering team has defined a process to upgrade Woxna graphite through standard acid alkali chemical purification techniques to battery grade graphite. Work is now underway to produce a larger quantity of high purity spherical graphite to commercial specifications, for end users to internally test for suitability in their battery manufacturing processes. Meetings with these consumers will take place during Q2 2016. A number of auto manufactures in the European Union ("EU") are pursuing the development of electric vehicles more aggressively and we believe the Woxna production facility is well positioned to be an integral part of the EU supply chain for battery manufacturing.

The second initiative is the Swedish Graphene Project, which falls under the EU Graphene Flagship Project, a ten-year, EUR1 billion (US$1.1B) project to research graphene commercialization. The project is investigating Woxna's Swedish flake graphite, and its suitability to produce graphene on an industrial scale. The project is progressing well and it is anticipated that further updates will be provided in the coming months. Woxna, as one of Europe's two graphite mines, and Sweden's only graphite producer, can supply domestically sourced natural flake graphite which provides a clear strategic advantage for Sweden.

Flinders also remains in discussion with a number of industrial companies to explore synergies which may exist to help grow the business.

Flinders will be attending the 2016 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) International Convention and Investors Exchange in Toronto on March 6-9. Please drop by and visit us at booth 2939.

The qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 for the Woxna project, Blair Way, President and Chief Executive Officer and a director of the Company, and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has reviewed and verified the contents of this release.

On behalf of the Board,

Blair Way, President and CEO

About Flinders Resources

Flinders Resources is the 100% owner of the Woxna graphite mine and processing facility located in Sweden. The fully permitted Woxna facility was restarted in July 2014 and produced natural flake graphite concentrate until spring 2015. Much of this concentrate inventory was stockpiled instead of sold due to declining global flake graphite demand during 2015 that pushed prices to a four year low. The Woxna processing facility can be restarted very quickly (a matter of days), but will remain in a "production ready" status until improved graphite prices return allowing the company to conserve working capital and work on value adding initiatives for the processing facility. Flinders Resources is exploring all available opportunities to enable value adding products and improving the business economics

Forward-Looking Information

Certain information in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "Forward-Looking Statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future are Forward-Looking Statements. Forward-Looking Statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek," "anticipate," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may," "will," "can," "should," "could," or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions. Forward-Looking Statements are based upon the opinions and expectations of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-Looking Statements are subject to a number of factors, risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the Forward-Looking Statements including, among other things, the Company has yet to generate a profit from its activities; there can be no guarantee that the estimates of quantities or qualities of minerals disclosed in the Company's public record will be economically recoverable; uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future; competition with other companies within the mining industry; the success of the Company is largely dependent upon the performance of its directors and officers and the Company's ability to attract and train key personnel; changes in world metal markets and equity markets beyond the Company's control; mineral resources are, in the large part, estimates and no assurance can be given that the anticipated tonnages and grades will be achieved or that the indicated level of recovery will be realized; production rates and capital and other costs may vary significantly from estimates; changes in corporate goals and strategies, the Company's preliminary economic assessment is no longer current or valid and the Company has no plans to complete a new preliminary economic assessment, a pre-feasibility or feasibility study on the project, as a result there is an increased risk of technical and economic failure for the Woxna graphite project; unexpected geological conditions; delays in obtaining or failure to obtain necessary permits and approvals from government authorities; all phases of a mining business present environmental and safety risks and hazards and are subject to environmental and safety regulation, and rehabilitation and restitution costs; the Company does not maintain insurance against environmental risks; and management of the Company have experience in mineral exploration but may lack all or some of the necessary technical training and experience to successfully develop and operate a mine. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the Forward-Looking Statements, and the assumptions on which such Forward-Looking Statements are made, are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on Forward-Looking Statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which the Forward-Looking Statements are based will occur. Forward-Looking Statements herein are made as at the date hereof, and unless otherwise required by law, the Company does not intend, or assume any obligation, to update these Forward-Looking Statements.

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 the accuracy of this news release.

Contacts:

Flinders Resources Limited

+1 604 685 9316

info@flindersresources.com

www.flindersresources.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Magellan Minerals Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: MNM) ("Magellan") is pleased to announce that it has renegotiated its arrangement with Troy Resources Ltd. ("Troy") to acquire the Andorinhas processing plant and mining fleet.

The previously amended arrangement with Troy gave Magellan until February 29, 2016 to complete the current payments totaling US$2,850,000 for the acquisition of the 800 t/d Andorinhas processing plant and mining fleet (see the Company's news releases dated August 26, 2015 and December 17, 2015). The revised agreement requires Magellan to pay US$855,000 to Troy by March 15, 2016 and pay the remaining US$1,995,000 within 10 days of the closing of the proposed Plan of Arrangement with Anfield Nickel Corp. ("Anfield") (see the Company's news release dated February 16, 2016). Pursuant to the revised agreement, Magellan has agreed to pay Troy all current payments in cash as opposed to a combination of cash and shares as had been previously agreed.

Magellan has thus far paid Troy a total of US$650,000 as partial consideration of the original US$4,500,000 purchase price. A final payment of US$1,000,000 will be made to Troy following the production of 20,000oz of gold or February 23, 2017, whichever comes soonest, thereby bringing the total cost of the assets to US$4,500,000.

Separately Magellan is pleased to announce that it has closed the secured convertible debenture financing (the "Financing") with Anfield announced in Magellan and Anfield's joint news release dated February 16, 2016. Pursuant to the Financing, Magellan issued a secured convertible debenture in the principal amount of C$500,000 (the "Debenture") to Anfield. The Debenture bears interest at the rate of 8% per annum and will mature 30 days following closing of Magellan's previously announced transaction with Anfield whereby Anfield will acquire Magellan by way of a plan of arrangement. The Debenture is convertible (as to both principal and interest) into Magellan shares at any time at the option of Anfield at a conversion price of C$0.0564 per share. The proceeds from the Financing will be used by Magellan to fund working capital.

The Debenture and any shares acquired on conversion of the Debenture will be subject to a four-month hold period ending on June 27, 2016.

John Kiernan P.Eng, Magellan's VP Project Development and a "qualified person" within the definition of that term in NI 43-101, has reviewed the technical information contained in this news release.

Magellan Minerals (TSX VENTURE: MNM) is a TSX Venture Exchange listed exploration and development company with two advanced gold properties in the Tapajos Province of northern Brazil. The Coringa project contains underground Measured resources of 110,000oz of gold (0.27Mt @ 12.8g/t gold) and underground Indicated resources of 443,000oz of gold (1.91Mt @ 7.2g/t gold) as well as Inferred resources of 360,000oz of gold (2.0Mt @ 5.4g/t gold) at a cut-off of 2.5g/t gold. (See the Company's news release dated April 8, 2015). The Cuiu Cuiu project contains 100,000oz of gold in the Indicated category (3.4Mt @ 1.0g/t gold) and 1,200,000oz of gold in the Inferred category (31Mt @ 1.2g/t gold). (See the report entitled "Resource Estimate and Technical Report for the Cuiu Cuiu Project, Tapajos Region, North Central Brazil" dated April 19, 2011 and filed on Sedar on April 21, 2011, and the Company's news release dated March 8, 2011).

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:

Magellan Minerals Ltd.

Alan Carter

President and CEO

604.676.5663

info@magellanminerals.com




MONTREAL, CANADA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- (NYSE: CAE)(TSX: CAE) - CAE today announced that it has appointed Sonya Branco as the Company's Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, effective May 23, 2016, after the Company has reported its fiscal 2016 year-end results. She succeeds Stephane Lefebvre who has recently accepted a leadership position with le Cirque du Soleil, a company held by private equity.

"I am very pleased to welcome Sonya Branco in her new role of CFO. Sonya is a highly skilled and successful financial executive and a strong leader within CAE," said Marc Parent, CAE's President and Chief Executive Officer. "We are fortunate to have someone of Sonya's caliber to join the executive team and to provide continuity to the good financial stewardship of her predecessor. This transition is testament to our executive succession plan. Stephane has been a valued member of CAE's executive management team and he leaves the Company in a position of financial strength and with a solid footing to pursue our training partner of choice vision. I believe I speak for all at CAE in wishing him great success in his new venture."

Sonya Branco has more than 15 years' experience as a financial officer. She joined CAE in 2008 and her most recent role was Vice President and Corporate Controller. Her diverse background includes valuable experience in public accounting and financial reporting, strategic planning and mergers and acquisitions.

Prior to joining CAE, Ms. Branco worked at BCE in Mergers & Acquisitions and at PricewaterhouseCoopers where she practiced in Audit and Advisory services. She is a chartered professional accountant and she holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Concordia University and a Master's degree in Business Administration from McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management. Ms. Branco has received numerous awards and is a Gold Medalist of the Ordre des comptables agrees du Quebec.

About CAE

CAE is a global leader in the delivery of training for the civil aviation, defence and security, and healthcare markets. We design and integrate the industry's most comprehensive training solutions, anchored by the knowledge and expertise of our 8,000 employees, our world-leading simulation technologies and a track record of service and technology innovation spanning nearly seven decades. Our global presence is the broadest in the industry, with 160 sites and training locations in 35 countries, including our joint venture operations, and the world's largest installed base of flight simulators. Each year, we train more than 120,000 civil and defence crewmembers, as well as thousands of healthcare professionals worldwide.

Contacts:

Media

Helene V. Gagnon, Vice President,

Public Affairs and Global Communications

1-514-340-5536

helene.v.gagnon@cae.com



Investor Relations

Andrew Arnovitz, Vice President,

Strategy and Investor Relations

1-514-734-5760

andrew.arnovitz@cae.com




3,000-Square-Meter Factory to House MERKE IV RPD Machine Final Assembly Test Operations as well as to Showcase Norsk's Ultra Lean Manufacturing Production Line

Norsk Titanium AS, the world's leading provider of aerospace-grade, titanium additive manufacturing technology, today announced the groundbreaking of a new European assembly and test center outside Oslo, Norway.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005420/en/

Norsk Titanium Chief Commercial Officer Chet Fuller, Chief Executive Officer Warren M. Boley Jr., and Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann break ground on the company's new Oslo Norway facility. (Photo: Business Wire)

Norsk Titanium Chief Commercial Officer Chet Fuller, Chief Executive Officer Warren M. Boley Jr., and Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann were on hand to kick off construction of the new facility, which is scheduled to be completed October 2016.

"Customer demand for our additive manufacturing technology is growing to the point where we need significantly more space to assemble and test our MERKE IV RPD machines prior to worldwide shipment," said Senior Vice President of Operations Chris Bohlmann. "This new factory will enable us to better serve our manufacturing partners and aerospace customers while expanding our footprint in this innovative region of Norway."

Norsk Titanium also plans to install the world's first end-to-end aerospace Ultra Lean Manufacturing line in the facility. A MERKE IV Rapid Plasma Deposition machine paired with a heat treating oven and a multi-axis CNC machining center will demonstrate the conversion of titanium wire into finished aerospace parts in a production line length of approximately 30 meters.

"The new Ultra Lean Manufacturing line allows our customers to do hands-on development of new part programs on the same campus as our worldwide technology center," said CEO Warren M. Boley Jr. "Titanium wire comes in one end, the CAD drawing is input, and finished aerospace parts that are fully tested, heat treated and ready for installation are produced in a matter of days. RPD truly is a game-changer in terms of cost reduction, speed to market and production line efficiency."

About Norsk Titanium AS

Norsk Titanium AS is the world's pioneering supplier of aerospace-grade, additive manufactured, structural titanium components. The company is distinguished in the aviation industry by its patented Rapid Plasma Deposition (RPD) process that transforms titanium wire into complex components suitable for structural and safety-critical applications. The Norsk Titanium research and development team is committed to displacing the inefficient forging process with a precision wire deposition technology embodying substantial savings for aerospace, defense and commercial applications. www.norsktitanium.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005420/en/

Contacts:

Norsk Titanium AS

Chip Yates, VP of Marketing

+1-949-735-9463

media@norsktitanium.com
The new leadership team, to be led by new CEO Matthew Seymour, brings a wealth of experience from the financial services, actuarial and technology arenas. The team will be responsible for setting the company's future strategic direction as it seeks to maintain the leading position of risk management platform PFaroe in the UK and US pensions markets, as well as drive growth into new markets.

RiskFirst creators of the defined benefit (DB) pension industry's leading risk management platform PFaroe, has appointed a new leadership team in order to drive further growth in core and prospective markets.

Matthew Seymour has been appointed to the newly-established role of Chief Executive Officer and will lead the senior leadership team, comprising Matthew Bale, Chief Strategy Officer, Darren Best, Chief Financial Officer, Nick Francis, Chief Technology Officer, and Rob Stuart, General Counsel.

Seymour comments: "Collectively, our senior management team brings a wealth of experience and a strong track record from the financial services, technology and actuarial worlds, which puts us in a unique position to drive the business forward growing within our core DB market, and outside of it."

Seymour adds: "Our approach has always been to place our clients' needs at the heart of everything we do, and that will not change. We will continue to apply the latest advances in technology to meet these evolving needs. In addition, we are increasing our focus on identifying opportunities and providing solutions to similar challenges faced by other related industries."

Seymour joined RiskFirst in 2009 and most recently held the position of Commercial Director. He has 17 years' experience in the technology industry, 14 years specifically in Financial Technology (FinTech). Prior to joining RiskFirst, he was co-owner and Chief Technology Officer of FundWorks, a global FinTech serving the Investment Management industry.

Matthew Bale joined RiskFirst in 2009. Prior to RiskFirst, Bale worked across both the actuarial and investment arenas, most recently in Citi's Insurance and Pensions Structured Solutions Group. His experience has guided the evolution of PFaroe into both the consulting and asset management industries.

Prior to joining RiskFirst in 2008, Darren Best worked as a qualified actuary, advising on pension fund design, management and reporting, both in the UK and US.

Nick Francis moved to RiskFirst in 2009, having spent 17 years as Technical Director of his own technology consultancy, where he ran large projects for large blue-chip companies throughout the UK and Europe.

Rob Stuart joined RiskFirst in 2009. Prior to RiskFirst Stuart was an in-house lawyer for a London-based hedge fund and general counsel for a multinational insurance and reinsurance company.

RiskFirst is the market-leader in the UK and US. It has a joint venture with PwC, called Skyval, and clients including Callan Associates, Cambridge Associates, Capita, John Hancock, JLT, Manulife Asset Management, NEPC, Northern Trust, Punter Southall, Rocaton, Transamerica and Xafinity. Over 1,200 pension plans and $750 billion of pension liabilities are now modelled on RiskFirst's technology.

-END

About RiskFirst

RiskFirst is a financial technology business that provides intuitive, user-friendly risk analytics and reporting. Its core product PFaroe is web-based, available anytime and anywhere, and allows users to evaluate risk from multiple perspectives and to perform real-time scenario stress testing.

Since being launched, PFaroe has established itself as the industry standard benchmark for risk management technology. Over 1,200 pension plans and $750 billion of pension liabilities are now modelled on RiskFirst's technology.

For more information please go to www.riskfirst.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302005793/en/

Contacts:

For RiskFirst

Thomas Morris, London

+44 20 7377 4998
Travel Inspiration and Cheap Flights App is now Available Across the World

DALLAS, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- FareCompare announced today the availability of its Eventurist' app to 15 additional countries and Puerto Rico. Released in October of 2016, Eventurist is a mobile application created to inspire travelers to discover new events around the world, and to find cheap flight deals to their favorite domestic and international destinations.

"Travel is a way to connect people to new experiences around the world," said Rick Seaney, CEO and Airfare Expert at FareCompare. "The expansion of Eventurist gives us the opportunity to broaden our mobile footprint, offering great travel content our users value and proprietary deals detection tools. As we continue our global growth, we will add additional features to the app, and expand further into new countries."

Eventurist is now available for iPhone and Android devices in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, as well as in the United States.

After extensive user-research and interviews, FareCompare found a strong need and opportunity to provide not only great fares for travelers to fly to events, but also personalized information and recommendations from travelers like them. Eventurist offers a curated collection of great events, practical information, and constructive advice that will help travelers find amazing experiences and deals that they would have never stumbled on otherwise.

In addition to events, the app also has a deals section displaying current deals to interesting destinations. The fare deals are individualized by the user's home city, and are detected according to FareCompare's proprietary tools that scour more than 6.13 billion flight itineraries daily. Each deal is labeled according to historical and recent comparisons of available fares.

For more information, visit FareCompare.com/App.

About FareCompare

Headquartered in Dallas, FareCompare makes shopping for airfare easy and simple, by comparing currently available fares from a vast variety of sources through one simple search. The company's multiple products allow customers across the world to keep track of their favorite destinations and specific travel dates. Through its best-in-class deal detection algorithms, the company is able to detect great low price deals that are often not publicized by airlines or online travel agencies. FareCompare.com is the trusted source of 6 million global users every month.

CONTACT: Alexandria Williams, 1-972-588-1448, Alex.Williams@farecompare.com
DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9xqw94/specialty_cros) has announced the addition of the"Specialty CROs Market, 2016 - 2025" report to their offering.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 )



The Specialty CROs Market, 2016-2025 report delivers a comprehensive study on Contract Research Organizations (CROs) that provide a specialized set of research capabilities centred on a particular stage of clinical development or a range of services in a focused therapeutic area. The outsourcing model has proven to be extremely beneficial to drug developers catering to the unmet research, clinical development and even regulatory needs of both established players and start-ups in the market.



The concept of specialty CROs continues to evolve as these organizations adopt new strategies to provide their sponsors improved services in terms of both quality and efficiency. Novel business models and strategic partnerships among established and emerging players have opened new avenues to effectively tackle issues such as rising development costs, inefficient protocols and unorganized business processes.



The report assesses key drivers that have governed the evolution of specialty CROs over the past several years, along with an elaborate discussion on the upcoming trends that will likely shape the market in the coming years. In fact, one of the primary objectives of this study is to develop an understanding of the likely future evolution of the market for specialty CROs over the short-term and long-term.



The study presents an in-depth analysis of a diverse set of specialty CROs on some of the key parameters such as geographical location, types of services being offered and focused therapeutic areas. In addition, it captures the potential growth areas that will likely present opportunities for these companies and sustain the pace of growth. It is worth highlighting that despite the fact that established pharmaceutical companies have in-house R&D and clinical development capabilities, the opportunity for specialty CROs is growing.



The future evolution of this market will be primarily driven by the relatively fast paced growth of the overall pharma industry and the innovations / developments taking place in R&D. The report provides short-midterm and long-term market forecasts for the period 2016-2020 and 2020-2025, respectively. To add robustness to our forecast model, we have provided three market scenarios. The conservative, base and optimistic scenarios represent three different tracks of market evolution.



The research, analysis and insights presented in this report are backed by a comprehensive survey on capabilities of several specialty CROs. For the purpose of our analysis, we also interviewed important stakeholders in this market to solicit their opinions around the future opportunities and challenges that must be considered for a more inclusive growth.



Example Highlights



- Over the last few years, a structural transformation in the primary CRO business model to a more strategic approach has revolutionized R&D outsourcing. Newer players providing specific capabilities in the R&D value chain have witnessed a gradual acceptance.

- During our research, we have identified over 200 specialty CROs after detailed due diligence of more than 1,000 CROs based on their specific capabilities and the range of services they provide. These specialty CROs collectively cater to the multitude of research services required by drug developers.

- The US, with -115 speciality CROs, has emerged as the primary hub of specialty CROs; this is followed by Europe with -60 CROs. India and China, where CROs offer a relatively higher cost optimized service portfolio, are emerging as new destinations; the level of activity, however, has been fairly limited so far.

- Though the broader contract research market is highly consolidated and dominated by a handful of bigger CROs, the market within the specialty CRO segment is highly fragmented. This is unlikely to change as biotech companies will continue to prefer outsourcing specific requirements of the clinical trials instead of outsourcing the entire clinical trial programme to an individual CRO.

- We expect the overall market of specialty CROs to more than double in the coming decade, growing at a CAGR of 8.6%. Specific areas of growth are likely to be driven by novel services and upcoming technologies resulting in cost optimization and improved outputs.

- Some of the niche opportunity areas / approaches include Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR), adaptive trial designs, and eClinical solutions. Specifically, these areas typify a growing unmet need and represent untapped areas making outsourcing an attractive option.





Key Topics Covered:



1. Preface

1.1. Scope Of The Report

1.2. Research Methodology

1.3. Chapter Outlines



2. Executive Summary



3. Introduction

3.1. History

3.2. Traditional Contract Research Organisations

3.3. Specialty Contract Research Organisations



4. Specialty CROs: An Introduction

4.1. Chapter Overview

4.2. Importance Of Specialty CROs



5. Market Overview

5.1. Chapter Overview

5.2. Methodology

5.3. Specialty CROs: Global Landscape

5.4. Specialty CROs Focused On A Specific Service Capability

5.5. Specialty CROs Focused On Specific Therapeutic Area(S)

6. Specialty CROs: Focused On Services

6.1. Chapter Overview

6.2. CROs Focused On Preclinical Service Capabilities

6.3. CROs Focused On Clinical Service Capabilities



7. Specialty CROs: Focused On Therapeutic Areas

7.1. Chapter Overview

7.2. Specialty CROs Focused On Oncology

7.3. Specialty CROs Focused On Cardiovascular / Cardiology

7.4. Specialty CROs Focused On Metabolic Disorders

7.5. Specialty CROs Focused On Cns



8. Case Study I: Virtual CROs

8.1. Introduction To Virtual CROs

8.2. Frestedt

8.3. Insymbiosis

8.4. Osiris Pharma

8.5. Projectpharm

8.6. The Harte Group

8.7. Vxp Pharma



9. Case Study Ii: Full Service CROs

9.1. Introduction To Traditional CROs

9.2. Covance

9.3. Medis Research Group

9.4. Quintiles

9.5. Triclinium Clinical Trial Project Management



10. Market Forecast

10.1. Chapter Overview

10.2. Forecast Methodology

10.3. Global Specialty CROs Market, 2015-2025

10.4. Regional Specialty CROs Market, 2015 - 2025



11. Future Opportunities

11.1. Chapter Overview

11.2 The Changing Scenario Of Outsourcing

11.3. Health Economics And Outcomes Research (Heor) Studies

11.4. Adaptive Trial Design

11.5. Eclinical Solutions

11.6. Risk Based Monitoring (Rbm)

11.7. Digital CRO (DCRO)



12. Conclusion

12.1. A Widening Portfolio Of Services Governed By Industry Constraints

12.2. Closer Working Collaboration Is The Key To Success

12.3. Within Therapeutic Areas, Oncology Is The Flagbearer

12.4. Due To Several Niche Offerings, Specialty CRO Market Remains Fragmented

12.5. The Market Of Specialty CROs Is Likely To Sustain The Growth Momentum

12.6. Untapped Opportunity Areas Will Emerge As Key Growth Drivers In The Long-Term

12.7. Concluding Remarks



13. Interview Transcripts

13.1. Chapter Overview

13.2. Raf Magar, President, CRO And Outcomes Research, Ahrm

13.3. Jeffrey P. Kiplinger, President, Averica Discovery Services



14. Appendix 1: Tabulated Data



15. Appendix 2: List Of Companies And Organisations



16. Appendix 3: Service Map Glossary



Companies Mentioned



- Abiogenesis Clinpharm

- Accell Clinical Research

- Accelovance

- Aclires

- Acquipharma

- Afraxis

- Agence Africaine de Recherche en Sante Humaine

- Agility Clinical

- Agilux Laboratories

- AHRM

- AIT Bioscience

- Aklima Clinical Research

- Alera Labs

- Alimentix

- Alliance Pharma

- Allied Clinical Management

- Allostem Therapeutics

- Almedis

- Alpha CRO

- Alpha Stats

- Altair Clinical

- Altiora CRO

- Altree Healthcare

- Alturas Analytics

- Amarex Clinical Research

- Amclin Life Sciences

- American Physical Therapy Association

- AMSlab

- Anolinx

- APEX Research

- Appletree CI Group

- Applied Clinical Research & Consulting Group

- Applied Healthcare Resource Management

- Apricus Biosciences

- ARAC

- Arete Clinical Research

- Argonaut Private Equity

- Aris Global

- Arkios BioDevelopment International

- Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International

- Association of Clinical Research Organizations

- Association of Clinical Research Professionals

- Aston University

- Athena Discovery

- Atlantic Bone Screen

- Atuka

- Audubon PM Associates

- Auxilis Pharma

- Averica Discovery Services

- Avitacor

- Axonal

- B. McLaughlin Associates

- Banook Group

- Betagenex

- Biaffin GmbH & Co

- Biogen

- BioLink Life Sciences

- BioPharma Services

- Bio-Quant

- BioSkin CRO

- Biospective

- Biotrofix Preclinical CRO

- Bordeaux University

- Boston Biomedical Associates

- Boston Regulatory Consulting

- BRI Biopharmaceutical Research

- BTS Research

- Burrill & Company

- Cambridge Biomedical

- Canadian Council of Animal Care

- CAP Trials

- Cardialysis

- Cardiomedex

- CDIB Capital Investment

- Center Point Clinical Services

- Cerafor

- Charles River Laboratories

- Chimera Biotec

- Cica Biomedical

- CIDP Biotech India

- Cirion Clinical Trial Services

- CirQuest Labs

- ClinAudits

- ClinBAY

- ClinDatrix

- Clinical Research Consulting

- Clinilabs

- CliniRx Tangent Research

- ClinIST Research Education and Consulting

- Clinitrial CRO

- ClinROC

- Clinvest

- CMX Research

- CNBE

- Concentrics Research

- Courante Oncology

- Covance

- CPR Pharma Services

- CRC Pharma

- CRDE

- Creagen Biosciences

- CRO Solutions

- Cros NT

- Crown Bioscience

- Crownbio Taicang Biologics Division

- Crystal Pharmatech

- Cu Tech

- CuriRX

- Cyprotex

- Cytespace Africa

- DATATRAK International

- David H Murdock Research Institute

- DaVita Clinical Research

- DiaVacs

- Dinox

- Diverse Lynx

- DOCRO

- Dorizoe Lifesciences

- DSP Clinical Research

- DZS Clinical Services

- EarlyPhase Sciences

- Eastern Clinical Trials

- Eckert & Ziegler Vitalea Science

- Ecron Acunova

- Elucid Bioimaging

- EmpiriStat

- EMRI CRO Greece

- Encore Health Services

- Ephoran

- ERA Clinical

- Erudita Biotechnical

- EthosExcel

- Euprotec

- European Cardiovascular Research Institute

- European Food Safety Authority

- European Medical Writers Association

- Federation of European Laboratory Animal Science Association

- Fermish

- First Clinical Network

- Flow Contract Site Laboratory

- FlowMetric

- FluoFarma

- Foster Delivery Services

- Frenova Renal Research

- Frestedt

- Frontline Monitors

- Gadea Grupo Farmaceutico

- Gateway Pharmacology Laboratories

- Getz Pharma Research

- Global Specimen Solutions

- Greenville Health System

- Gubra

- Harlan Laboratories

- Health Canada

- Health Sciences Authority

- HealthLinx

- Hengrui Medicine

- HJ-Clinical Trial Consultancy

- Horizon Discovery

- Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires

- Huntingdon Life Sciences

- IBT Management Corporation

- ICE Bioscience

- ICRC-Weyer

- IMMR

- Impact Pharmaceutical Services

- Inamed

- Inclinix

- Innova CRO

- Innovaderm Research

- InrexTest

- Institute for Translational Oncology Research

- InSymbiosis

- Integral Biosystems

- International Drug Development Institute

- Ionic Transport Assays

- IonsGate Preclinical Services

- IPSEN

- Iris Pharma

- Jasco Pharmaceuticals

- JV AgroBiotech

- KalVista Pharmaceuticals

- Karolinska Development

- KCAS

- KCRI

- Kiyatec

- Klinikos Consulting

- KPS

- LabCorp Clinical Trials

- Lekoko PMC

- LEMI

- Life Science Alley

- Lilly Asia Ventures

- Lotus Clinical Research

- LU Bioscience

- Marsico Lung Institute

- MCT

- Medelis

- Medepha

- Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency

- Medicon Valley Inhalation Consortium

- Medis Research Group

- MedSource

- Merck Serono

- Mercodia

- Michigan Life Science and Innovation Center

- MicroConstants

- Midwest Melanoma Partnership

- miRagen Therapeutics

- MMS Holdings

- Modoc Research Services

- Molecular Imaging

- Molecular Response

- Montrium

- NAMSA Medvance

- Nanjing Biotech Innovation Corporation

- National Cancer Institute

- National Institutes of Health

- National Resource Center for Mutant Mice

- Neuregenix

- NeuroDiscovery

- Neuron Experts

- NeuroSciences

- New England Research Institute

- New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences

- NexMed

- Next Generation Clinical Research

- Novella Clinical

- NSF International

- Numira

- Nutrition Coordinating Center

- Octagon Research Solutions

- Oncotherapeutics

- Oneiric International

- OnkoDataMed

- OnPoint CRO

- OrbiMed Advisors

- Orbis Data Solutions

- Organon

- Osiris Pharma

- Oss lab

- P3 Research

- Pacific Nutritional Research

- PAIRimmune

- Panacea Pharmaceuticals

- Pfizer

- PharmaLegacy

- PharmaPhase Management

- PharSafer Associates

- Phenotype Expertise

- PhylogenX

- Physiogenex

- PhysioStim

- Pioneer Clinical Data

- Pneumolabs

- Preclinical Oncology Services

- Profil Institut fur Stoffwechselforschungh

- ProjectPharm

- Prologue Research

- Prometrika

- ProNoxis

- ProQinase

- ProTrials

- Provonix

- QED Clinical Services

- QuailCRO

- Quanticate

- Quest Diagnostics

- Quintiles

- Redoxis

- Renaissance Associates

- RenaSci

- Research Dynamics Consulting Group

- Research Point Clinical

- Roche

- RxGen

- SAGE Labs

- Sahana Clinical Research

- SBH Sciences

- SCIderm

- Scimega

- SDS Clinical

- Servier

- Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica

- Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories

- Simbec Research

- Skills Alliance

- SMS-oncology

- Spirovation

- Sristek

- Stat Pro

- Surpass

- SwedenBIO

- Symbiance

- Symmetry Biosciences

- Synchrogenix

- SynCon International

- Synergo BioPharma

- Synergy

- Synsight

- Sysmex Corporation

- TAB Clinical Trials

- Tandem Labs

- TCNSC

- Team WomenMN

- Techtrials International

- TFS Trial Form Support

- The CID Group

- The Harte Group

- The Medical Affairs Company

- The Total Approach

- Therapeutic Goods Administration

- Therinova

- Tillvaxtverket

- Topstone Research

- Toxikon Corporation

- Translational Research Institute

- Trial-IN

- Triclinium Clinical Research

- Tufts University

- Universidad de Valladolid

- University College Dublin

- University of Erlangen

- Vanton Research Laboratory

- Velesco Pharmaceutical Services

- Vinnova

- VirtualScopics

- Visionar Preclinical

- Voxcan

- VR Analytical

- VxP Pharma

- Wildcat Pharmaceutical Development Center

- William Harvey Research

- World Health Organization

- Xenometrics

- Xerox Corp

- Xstrahl

- YAKUMED

- 2KMM



For more information visithttp://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9xqw94/specialty_cros





Media Contact:

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


CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- NEW WEST ENERGY SERVICES INC. ("NWE") (TSX VENTURE: NWE) today made a number of important announcements, including a new acquisition strategy, a proposed non-brokered private placement and the calling of a special meeting of shareholders.

NWE President and Chief Executive Officer, Gerry E. Kerkhoff, commented: "NWE has a long and trusted track record in oil and gas services throughout western Canada. These are very challenging times for the oil and gas industry but thanks to our strong customer base we have shown resilience and believe that now is the time to look at strategic acquisitions. We intend to focus on transactions that provide additional service capacity, both in scale and geographic scope, to our current and future customers. While our core business will remain tied to drilling waste and water management, including transport and disposal, we intend to explore opportunities that would allow NWE to expand its service offering to a broader range of customers."

"We are confident that by strengthening our balance sheet now through a private placement financing and completing transactions of strategic importance, we will be well positioned to create significant shareholder value when oil and gas prices rebound and field activity levels improve," noted Mr. Kerkhoff.

Acquisition Strategy

NWE announced that it will pursue acquisitions or mergers with operating businesses that strengthen its market presence throughout western Canada. As part of these efforts, NWE has engaged PwC Corporate Finance, which specializes in providing M&A related investment banking advisory services, as its exclusive advisor to assist with target identification, valuation analysis, structuring and negotiations.

While NWE cannot give assurances of any acquisition or merger ultimately being consummated, the company has had initial discussions with several companies that fit its target profile. NWE's target profile for acquisition or merger candidates includes companies with synergistic operations, stable or increasing revenues, sustainable cash flows and manageable debt levels.

Non-Brokered Private Placement

In order to strengthen its balance sheet, NWE announced that it intends to complete a non-brokered private placement of up to 33,333,333 common shares of NWE to be issued at a price of $0.03 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of up to $1,000,000.

William A. Rand, the Chairman and a Director and insider of NWE, has noted his intention to subscribe for a minimum of one-third of the offering (i.e., 11,111,111 common shares). Mr. Rand may purchase additional shares in the financing. Mr. Rand currently holds 18,459,070 common shares of NWE, being approximately 19.07% of the outstanding common shares of NWE. Assuming completion of the full amount of the private placement and sale to Mr. Rand of 11,111,111 common shares, Mr. Rand will hold upon closing approximately 22.73% of the issued and outstanding common shares of NWE.

Mr. Rand would upon closing become a "control person" pursuant to the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV") and his participation in the private placement constitutes a "related party transaction" as such term is defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions and Policy 5.9 of the TSXV.

To comply with the minority shareholder approval requirements of the TSXV and MI 61-101, the private placement will be subject to the approval of the shareholders of NWE by ordinary resolution at a special meeting scheduled for April 7, 2016, excluding the votes attaching to the common shares held by Mr. Rand and any other NWE directors participating in the financing.

NWE intends to use the proceeds from the private placement to repay certain bank indebtedness ($200,000), for equipment purchases and financing (up to $160,000) and for general operational purposes (up to $640,000). Such use of proceeds is an estimation based upon information currently known to NWE and management's actual use of proceeds may vary materially from those noted here depending upon changing circumstances and/or any corporate mergers or acquisitions or other strategic transactions that the company may undertake.

The directors of NWE, after giving due consideration to market conditions and the capital needs of NWE, have determined that the private placement is in the best interests of NWE.

The closing of the private placement is subject to applicable regulatory approvals, including approval of the TSXV and is expected to close shortly after the special meeting of NWE scheduled for April 7, 2016. All common shares issued pursuant to the private placement will be subject to a hold period of four months and one day.

Special Meeting Scheduled for April 7, 2016

NWE announced that it will be holding a special meeting of shareholders on April 7, 2016 at 10:00 a.m. (Pacific Time) at Suite 2200, 885 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, British Columbia.

At the meeting, the shareholders of NWE will be asked to consider and, if thought fit, to pass an ordinary resolution approving the private placement and the creation of a new control person.

To pass, this ordinary resolution requires the approval of a majority of the votes cast in person or by proxy at the meeting, excluding the votes attaching to the common shares held by Mr. Rand and any other NWE directors participating in the financing.

A notice of meeting and information circular in respect of the special meeting will provide further details regarding the private placement and will be mailed to the shareholders of NWE in due course.

ABOUT NEW WEST ENERGY SERVICES

NWE management and operations personnel have over 20 years of experience in oil and gas services throughout western Canada. The company uses advanced technology and processes in drilling waste and water management, including transport and disposal. Through its subsidiaries, NWE services the drilling, completions and production sectors and operates a fleet of modern straight, combo and hydro vac trucks as well as end dumps, water and tank trucks with bulk transport trailers. NWE is a recognized leader in comprehensive environmental services, with management contributing to the establishment of the first guidelines in Alberta for Landspray While Drilling. NWE's main service centres are located in Beaverlodge and Medicine Hat, Alberta, and its head office is in Calgary, Alberta.

Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, certain information presented herein constitutes "forward-looking statements". More particularly, this press release contains statements concerning the terms of the private placement, the use of proceeds, the anticipated sizes of individual subscriptions to the private placement, obtaining TSXV and regulatory approvals and the timing of closing. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are solely opinions and forecasts which are uncertain and subject to risks. Forward-looking statements include but are not limited to uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Corporation to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, readers are cautioned that the assumption used in the preparation of the forward-looking statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation may prove to be imprecise and, as such undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, the Corporation disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, the Corporation undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made, by third parties in respect of the matters disclosed in this press release.

Contacts:

New West Energy Services Inc.

Gerry E. Kerkhoff

President & Chief Executive Officer

403.984.9798 or 1.888.977.2327 (BEAR)

403.984.9799 (FAX)

gkerkhoff@newwestenergyservices.com

www.newwestenergyservices.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- SnipGold Corp. (TSX VENTURE: SGG) ("SnipGold" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on the upcoming KSP exploration program.

Colorado Resources Ltd. ("Colorado") recently announced a planned 5,000 metre drill program on SnipGold's KSP Property, as part of Colorado's exploration expenditure commitments pursuant to an earn-in option signed in December 19, 2013 (the "Option Agreement").

Under the terms of the Option Agreement, Colorado's 2016 expenditure commitment is $2 million, which is the requirement in the third of a four-year term, whereby Colorado can earn a 51% interest in the KSP Property. The required expenditure in 2017 is $2.5 million. Colorado must also make cash payments totaling $275,000 to SnipGold in order to complete the vesting requirements. Colorado can further increase its ownership to 80% with an additional $4 million in expenditures by December 19, 2018. More information concerning the Option Agreement is available in SnipGold's most recent MD&A posted on the Company website.

John Zbeetnoff, President and CEO of SnipGold comments, "We are pleased that Colorado is undertaking a significant exploration program on the KSP Property this year. Over the past two field seasons, Colorado has made considerable advancements in the geological understanding of the eastern half our Iskut holdings."

Colorado's news release dated February 29, 2016 summarizes the Inel target where the 2016 drill program is expected to be carried out:

..."1.27 g/t Average Gold in Soil Anomaly Over 1.5 km2 at Inel

At Inel, a compilation of 1,215 soil samples (492 taken by CXO) in a 8.5 km2 area averaged 800 ppb gold and also highlighted a 1,000 m x 1,500 m area with 628 soil samples averaging 1,270 ppb gold (1.27 g/t gold) with a maximum value of 31,200 ppb gold (31.2 g/t gold). This 1.5 km2 anomalous gold in soil area is considerably larger than the areas tested by previous drillholes (Discovery Zone 0.35 km2 and AK Zone 0.25 km2). In many instances strong gold in soil anomalies occur greater than 500 m from, and often uphill of, historical drilling (see Figure 1).

Colorado's Geological Compilation Confirms Three Favorable greater than 1 km Trends

Colorado's surface geological work and review of historical drill logs indicate that in the Inel area there are at least three north trending greater than 1km long, gently dipping, stacked target zones within the 1.5 km2 Inel soil anomaly that are associated with the margins of mafic intrusions. Other, as of yet unidentified trends are likely to occur that would explain the gold in soil anomalies upslope of known mineralization.

Significant Historical Drilling Results- Only 1/4 of Favorable Trends Tested

Historical drilling at Inel was completed from 1984-1991 and consisted of both small AQ and BQ sized underground and surface drillholes with only approximately 40 % of the drillcore sampled. A review of these drill hole results in the context of new geological understanding, indicates that the favorable trends have only been drill tested over approximately one quarter of their combined +3 km prospective strike lengths. Significant results were historically encountered such as drillhole IS130 returning 423.8 g/t gold over 3.5 m at the Inel Creek Zone, drillhole IS116 returning 20.9 g/t gold over 7.4 m at the AK Zone and drillhole IU040 returning 30.3 g/t gold over 4.0 m at the Discovery Zone(i)..."

(i)(These historic assay data are part of SnipGold's and Colorado's historic exploration records. The Company's qualified person has not verified these historic data).

About SnipGold

SnipGold Corp. is a Canadian company focused on the exploration and expansion of gold resources in northwest British Columbia. SnipGold's board and management have significant experience in discovery, exploration and development of gold projects.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

SnipGold Corp.

John Zbeetnoff, President and Chief Executive Officer

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

Statements in this release may be viewed as forward-looking statements. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events to differ materially from those projected. There are no assurances the Company can fulfil such forward-looking statements and the Company undertakes no obligation to update statements. Such forward-looking statements are only predictions; actual events or results may differ materially as a result of risks facing the Company, some of which are beyond the Company's control.

Contacts:

SnipGold Corp.

John Zbeetnoff

CEO

604-681-3989

604-681-3557 (FAX)

info@snipgoldcorp.com

www.snipgoldcorp.com




ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

Two research teams have received federal funding to study the effects of climate change on soil and the impact of environmental change on oceans. While touring Newfoundland and Labrador, the Honourable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism, stopped at Memorial University to meet the teams and learn more about their research projects.

Dr. Paul Snelgrove, Director of the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network, and his team are receiving a Strategic Partnership Grant for Networks of $5 million over five years through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This funding will support their development of tools to protect Canada's three oceans. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is also supporting the network with an investment of $1 million over five years and is providing researchers with access to specialized equipment and laboratory space.

Dr. Susan E. Ziegler is receiving an NSERC Strategic Partnership Grant for Projects of over $590,000 to study the impact of climate change on natural organic matter in boreal forest landscapes and associated aquatic ecosystems. The objective of her research is to reduce the potential negative interactive effects of climate change and harvesting.

Quotes

"The Government of Canada is investing in Newfoundland and Labrador's forestry and ocean industries. I look forward to seeing the new ideas generated by Memorial University researchers that will improve Canada's environmental sustainability."

- The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism

"Science is critical to the protection of our aquatic environments and the sustainability of our marine resources. The knowledge and expertise created through this partnership will increase Canada's marine science base and will inform our decisions for sustainable oceans management."

- The Honourable Hunter Tootoo, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

Quick facts

-- On March 1, 2016, the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, announced more than $48 million in funding for 76 teams of researchers at universities across the country. -- Through these strategic partnerships, Memorial University will connect with companies and government organizations to increase research and training in areas that could strongly enhance Canada's economy, society and/or environment.

Related products

- Government of Canada Invests Over $48 Million for Strategic Partnerships in Science and Engineering

- Backgrounder

Associated links

- List of Strategic Partnership Grants Recipients

- Strategic Partnership Grants Program Overview

- Memorial University

Follow Minister Chagger on Twitter: @MinofSBT

About NSERC

NSERC invests over $1 billion each year in natural sciences and engineering research in Canada. Our investments support a brain trust of over 11,000 professors-world-leading researchers in their fields-in delivering discoveries and valuable world firsts in knowledge. Our investments enable partnerships and collaborations that connect industry with discoveries and the people behind them. Researcher-industry partnerships established by NSERC help inform R&D, solve scale-up challenges and reduce the risks in developing high-potential technology.

Our investments provide scholarships and hands-on training experience for the next generation of science and engineering leaders in Canada, more than 30,000 post-secondary students and post-doctoral fellows.

Contacts:

James Fitzmorris

Director of Communications

Office of the Minister of Small Business and Tourism

343-291-2700



Media Relations

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada

343-291-1777

ic.mediarelations-mediasrelations.ic@canada.ca



Media Relations

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

613-990-7537

Media.XNCR@dfo-mpo.gc.ca




CENTREVILLE, VA--(Marketwired - March 02, 2016) - Fully engaging a website visitor and making the experience mirror, as closely as possible, a trip to that establishment has always been a challenge for business owners around the world.

Words and pictures can never fully describe the experience of being in a high-tech dental center. But, how can a business owner truly communicate what it feels like to enter their establishment?

Google has come up with a solution to this problem with their new business mapping software -- Google Maps Business View. This new product from Google offers a seamless virtual tour of any business. With Google Maps Business View on a website, visitors can see a 360-degree smooth, fast-loading virtual tour.

For a business owner, this new product from Google offers a new and exciting way to engage the audience. For the public, it offers a wonderful way to experience a business location before you even decide to go.

Here is how Aunon Dental Group is using Google Maps for Business View to help them in showcasing their practice' location.

Take a Virtual Tour: http://www.virginialaserdental.com/virtual-tour-aunon-dental-group-office/

Jose Aunon DDS, the lead Aunon Dental Group dentist on the virtual tour, stated, "We wanted our patients to have a feeling of familiarity before their first visit to our practice. The first dental visit in a new environment can be intimidating."

Dr. Aunon is an established dentist on the forefront of laser, cosmetic and general dentistry located in Centreville, Virginia, serving Northern Virginia since 1988. Practice' ultimate goal for their patients is to incorporate the latest technology that dentistry has to offer, including laser dentistry. Dr. Aunon can offer a full range of dental treatments without pain, needles or numbness. The practice works to greatly reduce and ultimately eliminate any fear of going to the dentist for adults, teens, and children. Patients enjoy the convenience of having a full range of services, including General Dentistry, Pediatric Dentistry, Dental Implants, Cosmetic Dentistry, Orthodontics/Invisalign.

Advances in dentistry enable the practice to provide their patients with the latest techniques and materials available in cosmetic dentistry. Dr. Aunon provides patients with laser dentistry. Using the Waterlase' iPlus, a revolutionary new dental device that uses laser-energized water to cut soft (gums) and hard (teeth) tissue. The Waterlase' system significantly improves patients' comfort in the dentist's chair: 98.5% of patients treated with the Waterlase' system reported no discomfort during the procedure in a clinical trial. Unlike traditional drills, dental laser doesn't generate heat during treatments. The heat can induce discomfort and irreversibly damage the soft tissue of pulp underneath.

Dr. Aunon's practice is also equipped with the Cerec' system that allows for the fabrication of all ceramic dental restorations on one office visit. With the Cerec' method there is usually no need for impressions or a 2-3 week wait for your restoration to come back from the lab. You don't have a second visit that might require numbing the area again because the procedure is completed in a single visit! Find out more about advanced technology used by Dr. Aunon!

Contact:

Aunon Dental Group

6134 Redwood Square Center

Centreville, VA 20121

Phone: (703) 348-9609
BELLINGHAM, WA--(Marketwired - March 02, 2016) - eXp Realty International Corporation (OTCQB: EXPI) today announced that it officially welcomed its 1000th real estate professional into its family of agent-owners on Leap Day, February 29, 2016. The Company had 467 agents at the end of 2014 and approximately 650 agents last June.

The achievement positions the Agent-Owned Cloud Brokerage among the top 50 real estate brokerages in the United States based on agent count in the context of data furnished by RISMEDIA in its 2015 PowerBroker 500 Report which contained 2014 agent count statistics for the top 500 brokerages in the country.

"We're humbled and honored by this achievement and the relatively short timeframe within which we've reached the 1000 agent number," said eXp Realty Founder and CEO, Glenn Sanford. "More than anything though, we're excited by the passion with which our agent-owners have embraced the concept of brokerage ownership, brand development, and business building, and the spirit with which they are sharing the eXp opportunity with other good professionals."

eXp Realty launched in October of 2009 with an aggressive revenue sharing program that pays agents a percentage of gross commission income earned by fellow real estate professionals whom they attract into the Company. In 2013 the Company transitioned into being a public company and in 2014 its initiative of sharing equity with its agents and brokers catapulted it to an accelerated rate of growth and retention.

eXp Realty is also one of if not the fastest growing real estate brokerages in a number of cities in the United States most notably Austin and San Antonio, Texas as well as Lafayette, LA and Atlanta, Georgia. Austin, San Antonio and Lafayette all opened in the last 12 months and have attracted some of the best and brightest in their prospective marketplaces. eXp Realty is also achieving net year over year agent growth in most of the markets it is operating in.

About eXp Realty International Corporation

eXp Realty International Corporation is the holding company for a number of companies most notably eXp Realty LLC, the Agent-Owned Cloud Brokerage' as a full-service real estate brokerage providing 24/7 access to collaborative tools, training, and socialization for real estate brokers and agents through its 3-D, fully-immersive, cloud office environment. This effectively reduces agents' overhead, increases their profits, and provides greater service value to consumers.

As a publicly-traded company, eXp Realty International Corporation uniquely offers agents and brokers the opportunity to earn equity awards for production and contributions to overall company growth. eXp Realty, LLC and eXp Realty of Canada, Inc. also feature an aggressive revenue sharing program that pays agents a percentage of gross commission income earned by fellow real estate professionals whom they attract into the Company.

From its inception, eXp Realty has been engaged in the marketing and sale of residential real estate with the goal of being the first truly cloud-based, full-service, global real estate brokerage company, delivering around-the-clock access to collaborative tools and professional development for managing real estate brokers and agents. The business model was created to increase brokers' and agents' listings and sales, while reducing their overhead and capital requirements. eXp Realty can now be found in approximately 31 states and parts of Canada. For more information, visit: www.exprealty.com or investors.exprealty.com.

You can also follow eXp Realty International on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube channel.

The statements contained herein may include statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements.Such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update them. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the Company's expansion, revenue growth, operating results, financial performance and net income changes. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those expressed in forward-looking statements include changes in business or other market conditions; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels while increasing revenues; and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including but not limited to the most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/3/2/11G085538/Images/Pic_1-547f01ae1e26a2ea9f3b7a8886371b71.jpg

Investor Relations Contact Information:

Glenn Sanford

Chairman & CEO

eXp Realty International Corporation

glenn@exprealty.com

360-389-2426



Trade and Media Contact Information:

Jason Gesing

President

eXp Realty International Corporation

jason@exprealty.com

617-970-8518
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Randy Boissonnault, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, will announce support for the Rendez-vous de la Francophonie on Thursday. Mr. Boissonnault will make this announcement on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage.

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.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - New York city authorities have announced that petty offenses such as public consumption of alcohol, public urination or putting your feet on the seat in the subway will no longer invite arrest or prosecution in Manhattan. Officials say the city is introducing the reform, to come into effect next Monday, to give police more time to focus on serious crimes. Overall crime fell 1.7 per cent in the largest US city, but major crimes, including homicides, gang-motivated shootings, rape and robbery rose three per cent in Manhattan in 2015. 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.
WARRINGTON, England, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Warrington based IT Recruitment Consultancy is first organisation to receive Investors in People Platinum Accreditation

Evolution Recruitment Solutions, a Warrington based IT Recruitment Consultancy, is the first ever organisation to receive a Platinum accreditation against the Investors in People Standard, demonstrating their commitment to high performance through good people management and development.

(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160302/339651 )



Established in 2000, Evolution provides permanent and contract recruitment solutions to the IT industry. With a growing global network of offices, including established offices in Germany, Singapore and Australia, their niche focus on specialist IT technologies and skillsets has seen the organisation go from strength to strength.

Commenting on the award, Gareth Morris, Managing Director (UK & Europe), Evolution Recruitment Solutions Ltd said:

"When we formed Evolution 16 years ago, one of our key goals was to create a company that values and invests in its employees. We've invested in our people year-after-year and this accreditation is testament to our people's hard work. With world class training and development facilities at the centre of the company's culture, we are perfectly placed to offer ambitious people a fantastic career. As an employer of over 135 people across the group, we're an exciting organisation to join and we are always looking for talented employees, from trainee to senior levels. I am extremely proud of all of our employees across Evolution and our engineering brand, Real Time Recruitment Solutions, for making this accreditation possible."

About Investors in People and the Platinum Accreditation:

Investors in People is the international Standard for people management, defining what it takes to lead, support and manage people effectively to achieve sustainable results.

With a community of 14,000 organisations across 75 countries, successful accreditation against the Standard is the sign of a great employer, an outperforming place to work and a clear commitment to sustained success.

Introduced in 2015, Platinum is the highest level of accreditation available and recognises truly outperforming organisations. It represents the top percentile of Investors in People organisations worldwide.

Paul Devoy, Head of Investors in People, said: "We'd like to congratulate Evolution Recruitment Solutions on being the first company to achieve the platinum Investors in People accreditation. This is the sign of a great employer, an outperforming place to work and a clear commitment to success. Evolution Recruitment Solutions should be extremely proud of their achievement."

About us:

Evolution Recruitment Solutions Ltd is a specialist permanent and contract IT recruitment consultancy. Established in 2000, Evolution has grown continually and now has established offices in the UK, Germany, Singapore and Australia. For more information about Evolution visit http://www.evolutionjobs.co.uk.

Real Time Recruitment Solutions (RTRS) is an Evolution brand, purely focused on the fields of real-time systems, embedded software, electronics, mechanical, electrical, quality, and related engineering disciplines. For more information about RTRS visit http://www.rtrs.co.uk.

For more information, please contact Kieron Mayers on +44-(0)1925-820-555 or email kieron.mayers@evolutionjobs.co.uk.


MOUNTAIN VIEW (dpa-AFX) - Ryanair (RYA.L, RYAAY) said it welcomed today's ruling by the U.K. Advertising Standards Authority, which found that eDreams advertising on Google was 'misleading' consumers and breached the CAP code.



Ryanair called on Google to ban this deceptive eDreams advertising until such time that eDreams stops misleading consumers by passing itself off as Ryanair.



The U.K. ASA reviewed a series of complaints from consumers who were deceived by eDreams masquerading as Ryanair and Easyjet using the airlines name, brand and logo in a blatant attempt to dupe consumers into booking higher priced tickets on eDreams than those available on the Ryanair.com website.



Ryanair believes that Google has allowed this advertising, which the ASA now confirms breaches the CAP code, because it directly boosts the number of 'click-throughs' on Google's paid for advertising search engine, thereby maximizing Google's advertising revenues at the expense of consumers.



Ryanair noted that it has repeatedly written to Google at the highest levels, including Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, enclosing hundreds of complaints by real customers who have been misled by eDreams false advertising on Google, and yet Google has failed/refused to take any action to prevent this deceptive advertising.



Meanwhile, a statement from an eDreams spokesperson said the company is encouraged by the ASA's acknowledgment that it can use relevant search terms and that it can promote its services as an Online Travel Agency through the use of search engine optimization.



'We are keen to work with the ASA to ensure that there is never any potential confusion for customers when they search for flight availability on the eDreams website,' the spokesperson said.



The spokesperson added, 'There is no intention to imitate the appearance of specific airlines, as eDreams clearly indicates to its customers that they are on one of its own websites, rather than that of any airline, allowing them to view thousands of flight combinations in a matter of seconds to find the best value flights.'



eDreams said it continuously aims to ensure compliance with regulators and to operate in the best interest of consumers.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Technavio's latest report on theglobal airfreight forwarding market provides an analysis of the key trends expected to impact the global airfreight forwarding market 2015-2019. Technavio defines an emerging trend as a factor that has the potential to significantly impact the market and contribute to its growth or decline.

Airfreight forwarders are intermediary agents that arrange shipments for industries from manufacturers to the final point of distribution. They are usually used in the movement of light, expensive, and perishable cargo that needs quick transportation. These freight forwarders have long-term contracts with major airlines, and provide consolidation services that allow them to secure cheaper freight rates.

The global airfreight forwarding market is expected to exceed USD 33 million metric tons by 2019, growing at a CAGR of over 3%. "The global airfreight forwarding market is highly fragmented and competitive. A number of international players dominate the forwarding business. These forwarders provide integrated solutions involving customs clearance, warehousing, and distribution as well as source consolidation and destination deconsolidation," says Sriram Mohan, lead research analyst at Technavio for logistics

The top three emerging trends influencing the global airfreight forwarding market according to Technavio's transportation and logistics analysts are:

Implementation of e-freight programs

The airfreight industry is increasingly implementing e-freight programs. E-freight allows for the paperwork to take place out of cargo and replace it with electronic data exchange and messaging. Air waybill (AWB), which is the most important document in the transportation of air cargo, is being issued electronically. The required documents are issued by the carrier directly or through integrated forwarding agents, and they include information about booking, current position of the shipment, and status of delivery.

According to IATA, implementation of e-freight can increase the operational efficiency by reduction in end-to-end transfer time by approximately 24 hours, elimination of manual entry errors and adherence to all international and local regulations required by regulatory authorities.

Consumer preference for forwarders over airline carriers

The customers of both air and sea freight are increasingly becoming dependent on third party logistics (3PL) service providers, such as forwarding companies, which provide integrated solutions. Although the majority share of the freight market is held by independent carriers, there is a growing shift in consumer preference for forwarders over carriers.

"Forwarders have long-term relationships with carriers, and manage to get better freight rates and provide consolidation services. This trend is set to continue over the forecast period until forwarders dominate the market," says Sriram.

Industry consolidation

Although the global airfreight forwarding market is fragmented with a large number of players operating worldwide, the overall market is dominated by a handful of players. Carriers and large forwarders are increasingly acquiring regional freight forwarders in an attempt to integrate a range of services, thereby broadening their portfolio of offerings and gaining access to regional markets.

Some of the top vendors in the global airfreight forwarding market, as researched by Technavio analysts are:

Agility

BDP International

Damco

DB Schenker

Deutsche Post DHL

DSV

Kuehne Nagel

Nippon Express

UPS

Browse Related Reports:

Air freight Forwarding Market in the EMEA Region 2014-2018

Global Freight Forwarding Market 2014-2018

Global Secure Logistics Market 2016-2020

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/20160302005073/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - March 02, 2016) -GFMI will host the Commercial Real Estate Lending for Banks Conference on April 25-27, 2016 in New York City. This GFMI conference will analyze the key issues with understanding the current regulatory requirements. Delegates will learn the best practices to classify loans as HVCRE and how to manage capital to meet the requirements and avoid the HVCRE classification. They will understand the impact of the Basel III regulations on the real estate lending market and strategies to best compete with non-bank lenders in this profitable line of business.

Learn from key practical case studies:

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency explain the current risks facing the commercial real estate market

Mortgage Bankers Association discuss the current state of affairs in real estate lending

PNC Real Estate create a practical policy from the HVCRE regulation

Barclays evaluate the effect of regulation on underwriting standards for commercial real estate lending

First Niagara Bank explore the unintended consequences of the HVCRE regulation

Testimonials:

"Well exceeded my expectations, topics were exactly what I wanted to hear and apply. Speaker selection was excellent. As with all the GFMI events I attend, I bring back practical tools that will help me do my job better. Moreover, I established new contacts with whom I will consult in the future." -- BOK Financial

"I am very pleased to be associated with GFMI. The breadth of attendance from different countries who are engaging Basel and other challenges at various paces presents powerful opportunities for fresh revelations." -- Bank Performance Strategies

"The event was well structured with a mixed group of attendees and topics. The format was conducive to an open discussion." -- US Bank

Check out the conference brochure here or email Tyler Kelch, Digital Marketing Manager at tylerke@global-fmi.com.

About Global Financial Markets Intelligence

GFMI is a specialized provider of content-led conferences for the financial markets. Carefully researched with leading financial market experts, our focused quality events deliver key bottom-line value through targeted presentations & interactive discussions.

Featuring Case Studies from Leading Commercial Real Estate experts, including:

Grant Wilson

Director, Commercial Credit Risk

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Joseph M Bassil

Managing Director, REI Institutional Markets

MUFG Union Bank

John Sipple

Senior Vice President, Commercial Real Estate, Wealth Management

Wells Fargo Bank, NA

William Lashbrook

Senior Vice President, Real Estate Banking

PNC Real Estate

Dev Strischek

Senior Vice President, Senior Credit Policy Officer, Corporate Risk Management

SunTrust Bank

Clifford Rooke

Managing Director

Bank of the West

Tyler Kelch

Digital Marketing Manager

tylerke@global-fmi.com
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 --Accordence, a negotiation training and consulting company, today announced that founder Grande Lum, most recently Director of the U.S. DOJ Community Relations Service (CRS) from 2012 to 2016, has returned to the organization in the role of Senior Advisor. During his tenure, CRS won its first-ever Association of Conflict Resolution Peacemaker Award, in 2013 and an American Bar Association Problem Solver Award, in 2014.

Accordence is a global training company that teaches the skills necessary to strategically negotiate, persuade, resolve conflict, communicate, and demonstrate personal effectiveness and engagement on the job. As Senior Advisor, Lum will work with the company to expand its services, audiences and offerings in the realm of conflict resolution and the ability to effectively collaborate with others. Founded over a decade ago, Accordence uses principles and frameworks which work across organizational cultures, issues and divisions.

"I'm very proud of the work we did at CRS during my tenure," said Grande Lum. "And I see an even greater need for giving people the tools for mediation and conflict management in their careers and lives."

With the growing polarization of viewpoints, perhaps accelerated by the popularity of social media and the ability of its participants to take a more "removed" stance, Accordence will enhance its offerings of tools and practices to minimize disconnection and enhance problem solution skills for minimizing tensions in the workplace.

Lum will present on Peace and Justice in our Communities and share best practices from CRS at the International Conference on Conflict Resolution Education June 11 in Columbus, Ohio.

About Grande Lum

Grande Lum is Senior Advisor at Accordence, Inc., a research fellow and lecturer at the Gould Center for Conflict Resolution, Stanford Law School, and the executive director of The Divided Community Project at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. More recently he served as the Community Relations Service (CRS) Director of the Department of Justice, nominated by President Obama. Lum guided CRS through prominent conflicts between law enforcement and race during his tenure, including addressing communities after tragedies in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore. Lum renewed focus on staff training and development, specifically on the CRS conciliation services of mediation and dialogue facilitation, and expanded CRS' services in the areas of Transgender and Law Enforcement interaction, Intellectual Disabilities, and Restorative Practices. Before CRS, Grande Lum was a clinical professor at the University of California Hastings School of the Law, as Director of the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. Lum has more than two decades of conflict negotiation experience, beginning with the Harvard Negotiation Project, followed by a partnership with Conflict Management Inc., founded by Getting to Yes coauthor Roger Fisher. Lum authored The Negotiation Fieldbook and Tear Down the Wall: Be Your Own Mediator in Conflict. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

About Accordence

Accordence is a global training company that helps employees to develop the aptitude and attitude to maximize the outcome of every interaction and situation they encounter. The firm teaches important skills and memorable frameworks through proven methods delivered by practitioner experts, for managers, leaders, sales and procurement, high potentials and associates. The firm's world-class consultants provide corporations and public sector entities with programs that result in vastly improved individual and organizational capacity for creating innovative and successful outcomes.

Media Contact:

Heather Meeker Green

Accordence, Inc.

Email Contact

781-396-3102




Technavio has announced the top four leading vendors in their recent global articulated robots market 2015-2019 report. This research report also lists numerous prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.

Competitive vendor landscape

According to Bharath Kanniappan, lead research analyst at Technavio for robotics, "The top four vendors in the global articulated robots market concentrate on the development of application-specific and industry-specific articulated robots, which help them to have a competitive edge."

ABB is the market leader in the global industrial robotics market. Fanuc is one of the leading industrial automation vendors and offers various industrial robots under its robotics business unit. KUKA is one of the key leading robotics providers to the automotive industry and Yaskawa has a major market presence in APAC. The vendors based in APAC have a strong presence in the market. However, the market also includes various US-based and Europe-based vendors.

Apart from these vendors, many other automation and robotics vendors have a significant presence in the market, including Kawasaki Robotics, Adept Technology, American Robot, Denso Wave, and ST Robotics.

Request sample report:http://goo.gl/vtrhKu

ABB

ABB was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. The company provides automation and power technologies to diverse industries, including utilities, transport, infrastructure, and other industries. Its products are sold in over 100 countries worldwide.

ABB robotics solutions are used in the metal fabrication, foundry, plastics, food and beverage, chemical and pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics, solar, wood, welding, material handling, painting, picking, packing, and palletizing industries.

ABB supplies robots and robot systems in 53 countries across 100 locations. It also manufactures and supplies robot software, peripheral equipment, process equipment, and modular manufacturing cells. ABB has installed more than 200,000 robots worldwide. It has manufacturing and R&D facilities in Sweden, Czech Republic, Norway, Mexico, Japan, China, and the US.

Fanuc

Fanuc was founded in 1956 and has its headquarters in Oshino-mura, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It manufactures automation products and services such as robotics and CNC systems. The company also provides maintenance services and spare parts (for automation products) to its clients worldwide. It has more than 230 offices in 45 countries.

The robotics division of Fanuc focuses on manufacturing robots such as Genkotsu, learning, palletizing, and arc welding robots. These robots increase productivity with quality and give security to the labor force. These are used for arc welding, loading/unloading, bin picking, assembly, deburring, medical goods handling, food packing, error proofing, polishing, washing, and painting.

KUKA

KUKA was established in 1977 and is headquartered in Michigan, US. The company designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of industrial robots, PC-controlled robots, and components.

The Robotics division of KUKA is one of the major suppliers in the field of industrial robotics in the automotive industry. The company is the number one supplier of robots and automated production systems and solutions in the European market.

Yaskawa Electric

Yaskawa Electric was established in 1915 and is headquartered in Kitakyushu, Japan. The company designs, manufactures, and markets a wide range of mechatronic products in Japan and also globally.

Yaskawa Electric is a global robotics-based automation supplier. The company sells industrial and mobile robots to OEMs, distributors, and end-user companies. It offers its products to various markets: semiconductor, packaging, electronics, automotive, industrial, logistics, warehouse, food, and flexible manufacturing.

Its R&D division focuses on launching new products and solutions from time to time to have an edge over its competitors. Its MOTOMAN-L10 sells at the rate of around 1,000 units per month.

Browse related reports:

Global Industrial Robotics Market in the Automotive Industry 2015-2019

Global Healthcare Robotics Market 2015-2019

Global Cartesian Robots 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/20160302005075/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630-333-9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
KINGS MOUNTAIN, NC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- T5 Data Centers (www.t5datacenters.com), innovators in providing state-of-the-art, customizable and highly reliable computing support environments, has been granted tax exempt status by the state of North Carolina for its new build-to-suit project at the company's King's Mountain Data Center campus. The tax incentive was awarded under the recently enacted HB 117, the North Carolina Competes Act, which grants tax privileges specifically to data centers, and will provide tax exemption for both data center construction and operations.

Under the tax exemption umbrella, T5 Data Centers is exempt from paying sales or use taxes on major equipment and supporting infrastructure during construction of the new build-to-suit data center. The savings during construction are expected to be significant for T5 as well as for T5's customers. It also means that T5 Data Centers and its new customer will be exempt from taxes related to data hall IT deployments and facility operations, which includes expenses for servers, hardware, equipment, and taxes on electricity. To qualify for the tax exemption, a cumulative anticipated investment of $75 million has to be made in the data center over five years.

"With the new data center tax incentives, North Carolina becomes an even better location for companies seeking to build a high-performance data center facility," said Robbie Sovie, Vice President of Construction Services. "The tax savings during the construction phase are substantial, and our customers are already talking about reallocating those tax savings to assist with continued investment in the Kings Mountain data center. This new tax incentive package continues to make North Carolina one of the most cost-effective locations to build and operate a data center."

The tax exemption savings new Kings Mountain tenants receive under HB 117 are in addition to the agreements T5 Data Centers has negotiated with the City of Kings Mountain and Cleveland County for 30-year rebates on real and personal property. The combined tax incentives make T5's Kings Mountain campus an attractive location for data center investment.

For more information about T5's data center services, visit www.t5datacenters.com.

About T5 Data Centers

T5 Data Centers (T5) is a leading national data center owner and operator, committed to delivering customizable, scalable data centers that provide an "always on" computing environment to power mission critical business applications. T5 Data Centers provides enterprise colocation data center services to organizations across North America using proven, best-in-class technology and techniques to design and develop facilities that deliver the lowest possible total cost of operations for its clients. T5 currently has business-critical data center facilities in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Portland and Charlotte with new projects announced in New York, and Colorado. All of T5's data center projects are purpose-built facilities featuring robust design, redundant and reliable power and telecommunications, and have 24-hour staff to support mission-critical computing applications.

For more information, visit www.t5datacenters.com.

Contact:



Aaron Wangenheim

T5 Data Centers

(415) 292-7700

aaron@t5datacenters.com




Regulatory News:

Arkema (Paris:AKE)

At its meeting on 2 March 2016, the Board of Directors decided to propose to the Annual General Meeting on 7 June 2016 the renewal of the term of office of Mr Thierry Le Henaff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Company.

The Board also decided to continue combining the roles of Chairman and of Chief Executive Officer taking account of the efficient functioning of the Company's governance structure since its stock market listing and the existence of robust mechanisms ensuring a strict balance of powers.

Furthermore, in a constant drive to further improve its governance and in accordance with best practice, the Board decided, on a proposal by the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer supported by the Nominating, Compensation and Corporate Governance Committee, to create a role of Senior Independent Director whose main duties will be to oversee the efficient running of the Company's governance structure and the absence of conflicts of interests and to ensure that shareholders' concerns on corporate governance matters are taken into consideration.

The Board of Directors has appointed as Senior Independent Director, Francois Enaud, independent Director since 2006 and a member of the Nominating, Compensation and Corporate Governance Committee.

The various duties and responsibilities of the Senior Independent Director are set out in the internal rules of the Board of Directors, available on the website arkema.com.

A designer of materials and innovative solutions, Arkema shapes materials and creates new uses that accelerate customer performance. Our balanced business portfolio spans high-performance materials, industrial specialties and coating solutions. Our globally recognized brands are ranked among the leaders in the markets we serve. Reporting annual sales of 7.5 billion in 2014, we employ approximately 19,200 people worldwide and operate in close to 50 countries. We are committed to active engagement with all our stakeholders. Our research centers in North America, France and Asia concentrate on advances in lightweight materials, renewable feedstocks, energy generation and storage, water treatment, electronics and 3D printing. For the latest, visit www.arkema.com

Arkema

420, rue d'Estienne d'Orves F-92705 COLOMBES Cedex - France

Standard: +33 (0)1 49 00 80 80 Fax: +33 (0)1 49 00 83 96

Societe anonyme au capital de 744 721 010 euros 445 074 685 RCS Nanterre

www.arkema.com

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160302006019/en/

Contacts:

Arkema

PRESS CONTACTS

Sophie Suc, Tel: +33 1 49 00 83 72

E-mail: sophie.suc@arkema.com

or

INVESTOR RELATIONS

Sophie Fouillat, Tel.: +33 1 49 00 86 37

E-mail: sophie.fouillat@arkema.com

or

Francois Ruas, Tel.: +33 1 49 00 72 07

E-mail: francois.ruas@arkema.com
TURIN, Italy, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- FPT Industrial has extended its range of power generation solutions to now support applications from 31 kW to 582 kW with the launch of two new G-Drives at Middle East Electricity. The new Cursor 16, based on award-winning architecture, providing up to 582 kW, enlarges FPT's portfolio at the top end of its power range, while the S8000 satisfies lower power requirements with an output of up to 36 kW.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323658LOGO

Energy solutions provider FPT Industrial developed the Cursor 16 G-Drive to offer up to 582 kW, delivering the power of a 18-litre engine within the architecture of a 13-litre one. The six-cylinder engine is derived from the award-winning 2014 Diesel of the Year and delivers excellent load acceptance, best in class fuel consumption, service intervals and quiet running, and being the most compact G-drive on the market, it is the only 600 kVA in a 400 kVA package.

It's the only 16-litre on the market that has been specifically designed to withstand off-road missions and has had over 22,000 hours of bench validation to prove its durability and reliability. It has heavy duty and high resistant components, such as steel pistons and a compact graphite iron (CGI) cylinder head rather than cast iron.

Total cost of ownership is reduced thanks to best in class fuel consumption that is 11% better than the competitor average, delivered through second generation Common Rail fuel injection system with pressures of up to 2,200 bar and a displacement right-sizing approach. This is supported by best in class oil service intervals of up to 600 hours, while it also boasts the smallest oil system capacity on the market that is 38% smaller than the competitor average.

The Cursor 16 has best in class quiet running due to its double re-entrant bowl piston design that optimizes the combustion process and minimizes the output of engine noise. It is also the most compact G-Drive on the market at 32% smaller than the 16-liter competitor average. At 2,300mm x 1,105mm x 1,600 mm, it is the smallest on the market, allowing FPT Industrial to pack a 600 kVA within the casing of a 400 kVA.

Available as standard, it also has a dual speed mode with the capability to operate it both in 50 Hz (1,500 rpm) or 60 Hz (1,800 rpm).

At the lower end of the range the S8000 G-Drive combines a high power output with lower cost of ownership in a compact design. The 2.9-litre, three-cylinder, naturally aspirated engine has been developed to FPT Industrial's renowned reliability standards and best in class maintenance intervals of up to 600 hours, while offering excellent fuel consumption that's on average 6% better than its four-cylinder competitors. Its reduced complexity and compactness (11% smaller than a four-cylinder engine equivalent) delivers an effective solution for all emergency and prime power applications that do not require compliance to emission regulation.

The new S8000 and Cursor 16 G-Drives were unveiled at the Dubai World Trade Centre in Dubai, UAE, on the first day of the world's largest power event, Middle East Electricity (MEE), which runs until 3 March 2016 and can be seen on FPT Industrial's stand in Hall Sheikh Saeed 3, S3, stand E40, alongside a selection of solutions from its power generation offering, including bare engines, G-Drives, soundproof and open gensets from the NEF Series range.

S8000 NA specification

Architecture: In-line 3-cylinder engine Intake: Naturally Aspirated (NA) Injection: Mechanical injection, rotary pump with electronic speed governor Valves per cylinder: 2 Displacement (l): 2.9 Bore (mm): 104 Stroke (mm): 115 Flywheel: 11"  Flywheel housing: SAE 3 Power range (rated kW): 32-36 Service interval (hrs): 600



C16 TAA specification

Architecture: In-line 6-cylinder engine Intake: Turbocharged Aftercooler (TAA) Injection: Heavy duty Common Rail (up to 2,200 bar) Valves per cylinder: 4 Displacement (l): 15.9 Bore (mm): 141 Stroke (mm): 170 Flywheel: 14" Flywheel housing: SAE 1 Power range (rated kW): 559-582 Service interval (hrs): 600 Dimensions (mm) L / W / H: 2,300 / 1,105 / 1,600

FPT Industrialis a brand of CNH Industrial, dedicated to the design, production and sale of powertrains for on and off-road vehicles, marine and power generation applications. The company employs approximately 8,200 people worldwide, in ten manufacturing plants and six R&D Centers. The FPT Industrial sales network consists of 93 dealers and over 900 service centers in almost 100 countries. A wide product offering, including six engine ranges from 31 kW up to 740 kW and transmissions with maximum torque of 200 Nm up to 500 Nm, and a close focus on R&D activities make FPT Industrial a world leader in industrial powertrains. For further information, visit www.fptindustrial.com.

Press Agency of FPT Industrial

c/o RSM

Tel. +44 190 8635300

Email fptindustrial@rsm-auto.com

Web FPTIndustrial.com
According to the latest market research study released by Technavio, theglobal industrial wearable devices marketis expected to exceed USD 5 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of over 144% during the forecast period.

This research report titled 'Global Industrial wearable Devices Market 2015-2019', provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes an up to date analysis and forecast for various market segments and all geographical regions.

Request sample report: http://goo.gl/0LRMPJ

The report segments global industrial wearable devices market by product and can be divided into five broad categories being Smart glasses, Smart watch, Fitness tracker, Wearable camera, and Others. The most popular industrial wearable devices among these are:

Smart Watch

Smart Glasses

Fitness tracker

Smart Watch

The global industrial smart watch market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 402%. Smart watches look very similar to traditional watches but have functions far beyond the old analog ones. Smart watches are computerized wristwatches.

Most of the smart watches are companion devices paired with a smartphone through Bluetooth or NFC to connect to the Internet. There are also some standalone smart watches that connect directly to the Internet. Such features are used in various industries. For instance, a smart watch paired to a manufacturing machine displays the production output in real time. It will also notify or alert the user if any error occurs in the machine.

Smart watches are also used in warehouse management. They allow warehouse managers to gather information like resource planning, inventory management, shipping lists, and many such key performance indicators to better manage their distribution.

According to Abhay Sinha, lead research analyst at Technavio for health and wellness, "Smart watches facilitate quick decision making in enterprises and industries as a result of which the demand for smart watches is increasing at a rapid rate globally."

Smart Glasses

The global industrial smart glasses market is expected to reach USD 877 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR of over 143%.

Augmented reality (AR) gives a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are supplemented by computer-generated sensory input such as graphics, video, sound, or GPS data. Smart glasses are used for the purpose of AR. Smart glasses are a kind of wearable computer that can reflect the projected digital images and also help the user to see through it or see better with it. Smart glasses even come with cellular technology, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi capability that can run self-contained mobile apps.

Some of the smart glasses can communicate with the internet via voice commands or with an activity tracker. Such applications of smart glasses are used for industrial purposes in the automation and manufacturing industries.

"Smart glasses are becoming popular in the aviation industries where people in the industry are working on apps for flight attendants and passengers. For instance, Virgin Atlantic is one of the early adopters of Google Glass and has permanently implemented these at its Copenhagen airport. Japan Airlines uses Google Glass to inspect planes," says Abhay.

Fitness Tracker

The global industrial fitness tracker market is expected to exceed USD 587 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR of over 66%.

Fitness trackers are generally used for employee wellness programs in enterprises. The increasing health awareness has encouraged companies to provide fitness trackers to their employees as they help employers to contain the healthcare expenses of their employees.

Fitness trackers monitor fitness-related metrics such as heart beat, quality of sleep, and distance walked, along with other factors. These devices are synced to a computer or smartphone to track the data. Various apps are being developed that sync with fitness trackers and monitor various health metrics of the end-user.

Technavio analysts highlight the following six vendors as the top contributors to the global industrial wearble devices market:

Apple

Epson

Fujitsu

Google

Microsoft

Vuzix

Browse Related Reports:

Global Smart Wearable Lifestyle Devices and Services Market 2015-2019

Global Smart Wearable Entertainment Devices and Services Market 2015-2019

Global Smart Wearable Healthcare Devices and Services 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/20160302005085/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.com
MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Yorbeau Resources Inc. (TSX: YRB.A) (the "Company" or "Yorbeau") is pleased to report on recent diamond drilling results at its 100% owned Scott Lake project in Quebec.

Drill hole SC-83 intersected two distinct massive sulphide intervals which constitute the deepest intercepts yet in the Gap Lens. These mineralized intervals, as were all intercepts released by the Company since June 2015, are located outside of the mineral resources as currently estimated (see attached Figure 1) at the Scott project.

Assay results are shown below:

DDH SC-83 Section 1950W (weighted averages)

=========================================================================== From To Length Cu Zn Au Ag (m) (m) (m) % % g/t g/t Remarks --------------------------------------------------------------------------- massive sulphides 988.2 996.0 7.8 0.1 9.9 1.0 30.8 (Gap Lens) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- including --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 992.0 996.0 4.0 0.1 13.7 1.4 39.8 massive sulphides =========================================================================== and =========================================================================== massive sulphides 1033.0 1039.4 6.4 0.3 17.4 0.6 28.5 (Gap Lens) ===========================================================================

As this is still preliminary drilling on the above mineralization, the exact shape and true width cannot be determined with certainty. The core lengths obtained may not reflect the true width of the mineralization.

Borehole geophysics completed in SC-83 indicates that there is still additional conductive material downdip from the deepest intercept yet on the Gap Lens. However, while this is seen by Company management as very encouraging, testing downdip from SC-83 is not part of the objectives of the current program.

Company president Gerald Riverin stated: "We are very encouraged with the high grade results of SC-83 and particularly the higher gold grades when compared to previous holes. This augurs well for the future. We also would like to highlight the skills of our technical team which has been able to control deviation in deep holes and thus allow the Company to fully capitalize on deep drilling with a series of wedge-cuts that generate accurate pierce points at very competitive costs. We are looking forward to pursuing drilling in this sector."

The Scott Lake property, 100% owned by Yorbeau, already hosts a number of polymetallic massive sulphide lenses. These represent combined inferred resources of 5.45 million tonnes grading 1.2% copper, 4.6% zinc, 0.2 g/t gold and 34 g/t silver, using an NSR cut-off of $80 per tonne (Technical Report prepared by Roscoe Postle Associates and filed by Cogitore Resources in 2011).

A wedge-cut from hole SC-83 was also completed updip of SC-83 and sampled recently. Assays are pending and expected to be released around March 15. A new hole is in progress to the west of SC-83.

All drill core discussed in this press release was logged and marked up for assay at the Company's secure facility in Chibougamau, Quebec. Drill core for assay was split in half. Half of the core was shipped in sample bags to Techni-Lab S.G.B. Abitibi Inc. (ACTLABS) of Ste-Germaine-Boule, Quebec, with appropriate standards, duplicates and replicates used for quality control purposes. The other half of the core is retained for future reference.

Work is carried out by the personnel of Yorbeau, under the supervision of Gerald Riverin, PhD, P. Geo. He is a qualified person (as defined by National Instrument 43-101) and has reviewed and approved the content of this release.

About Yorbeau Resources Inc.

The Company's 100% controlled Rouyn Property contains four known gold deposits in the 6-km-long Augmitto-Astoria corridor situated on the western half of the property. Two of the four deposits, Astoria and Augmitto, have substantial underground infrastructure and have been the focus of NI 43-101 technical reports that include resource estimates. The Company has recently expanded its exploration property portfolio by acquiring strategic base metal properties in prospective areas of the Abitibi Belt of Quebec and Ontario that also feature infrastructure favourable for mining development.

More information on the Company may be found on the Company's website at www.yorbeauresources.com.

Forward-looking statements: Except for statement of historical fact, all statements in this news release, without limitation, regarding new projects, acquisitions, future plans and objectives are forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

Contacts:

Gerald Riverin, Ph D., P. Geo

President

Yorbeau Resources Inc.

griverin@yorbeauresources.com

819-279-1336



G. Bodnar Jr.

Director

Yorbeau Resources Inc.

gbodnar@yorbeauresources.com

514-384-2202

Toll free in North America: 1-855-384-2202




CAYENNE, FRENCH GUIANA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- La Societe des Mines de Saint-Elie, a wholly-owned subsidiary of La Compagnie Miniere Esperance ("SMSE" or the "Company") is pleased to announce positive results from its 2015 diamond drilling program on its 99km2 mining concession Saint-Elie in French Guiana.

Highlights 2015

-- 15 HQ & NQ diameter diamond drill holes; -- 1,252 meters of drilling; -- 7 of the 15 holes intersected gold mineralization, hole SE-15-99 was redrilled and called SE-15-99 bis due to low core recovery; -- Oriented cores were analyzed for structural data; -- An airborne LIDAR survey was conducted in July and; -- SMSE was granted in January 2016 a PER (PEDRAL) of 53 km2 located to the northwest of the Saint-Elie concession.

Saint-Elie mine, history and current situation

Saint-Elie region has a long history of gold mining. Gold was discovered on the property in 1873 when two placers were discovered on the limit of the current concession. La Societe Anonyme des Gisements d'Or de Saint-Elie, owner of the concession from 1878 to 1923, produced approximately 354,000 ounces of gold. After an ownership changes in 1923, a mill was installed and produced around 116,500 ounces of gold until 1955. From 1956 to 1993, small-scale intermittent mining was conducted on the site. In the mid-1970's, the Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Miniere (BRGM) started its scientific work on the property. In 1998, Guyanor Resources, a subsidiary of Golden Star, bought the concession and changed the name of the operating society to Societe des Mines de Saint-Elie (SMSE). 2,224 ounces of gold were produced from the concession between 1998 and 2000. Production stopped from 2000 to 2002.

In 2002, CME acquired SMSE and proceeded exploration works. In 2005, production restarted.

In the last three years, SMSE produced 8,900 ounces (276.8 kg) of gold in 2013, 8,216 ounces (255.5 kg) in 2014 and 8,777 ounces (273 kg) in 2015. Since 2005, SMSE produced almost 70,000 ounces (2.167 tonnes) of gold.

The actual gravimetric recuperation plant processes 1,300 tpd of primary mineralized material. Two wash plants process 1,000 tpd of eluvial material each.

Attached table of the results from the first diamond drilling campaign conducted by SMSE on the Saint-Elie concession.

Main Gold Intersection by fire-assay ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole From To Length Au ((i)) (m) (m) (m) g/t Zone ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-98 52.05 64 11.65 0.78 Michel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-99bis 35 37.15 2.11 1.11 Michel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-100 45.2 56.25 11.05 0.49 Michel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-100 69.55 76.50 6.95 2.45 Michel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-105 42.0 52.20 10.2 4.16 Michel ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-107 9.45 18.90 9.45 1.64 St-Auguste ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-108 13.5 25 11.5 2.25 Pedral ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- SE-15-109 26.15 30.44 4.29 1.02 Pedral ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i)Gold by fire-assay Filab Surinam - Core length, true width must still be determined.

Holes were drilled to test zones previously identified by trenches and/or historic drill hole. Some holes were drilled to test the structural model and others were drilled to confirm the continuity of the mineralization. 2 two-holes scissors sections on Pedral, 1 test hole on St-Auguste and 10 holes on Michel were realized in this campaign. Over half of the holes intersected gold mineralization. Core recovery of altered material on the St-Elie property is difficult and on multiple occasion, there was a complete loss of the sample of the zone of interest.

No significant gold mineralization was intersected on holes SE-15-101, SE-15-102, SE-15-103, SE-25-105, SE-15-106, SE-15-110 and SE-15-111.

The first attached map shows the Saint-Elie mine location and the second shows the different drilling sector: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/GraphsGoldminds.pdf

The analytical control program QA/QC included blanks and standards and are satisfactory to allow the release of the results.

Alexandre Cailleau, Chief Geologist, declares: "We are extremely pleased with the results of this preliminary diamond drilling program at Saint-Elie. They allowed us to challenge our idea of the control of the mineralization and to anticipate a different approach for the next phase, which will be significantly more ambitious. The deposits are complex and highly deformed in those zones, we must adapt our work methods. The key point is that almost all of our pits in the southeast quarter of the concession are successes, it's very impressive! A global structural model is starting to emerge from our filed mapping works, which only started 6 months ago. Taken into account the history and the large area of the property, the Saint-Elie potential is important. Less than 20% of the area has been worked. We started a mineral resources update in compliance to the NI 43-101 Canadian standards to communicate with potential partners the seriousness of our works. Meet us at PDAC, stand 3034 for further information..."

The technical content of this press release was prepared and revised by Claude Duplessis, geological engineer at GoldMinds Geoservices Inc., an Independent Qualified Person as defined in NI 43-101 standards.

About CME and SMSE

CME is a private Guyanese company owner of two mining sites:

-- ESPERANCE in the town of Apatou; -- SAINT-ELIE in the town of Saint-Elie; the mining title is held by SMSE (Societe des Mines de Saint-Elie), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CME. This concession was acquired from Golden Star.

For more information on SMSE visit: www.esperancegoldmine.com, SMSE tab.

Contacts:

Claude Duplessis, Ing.

GoldMinds Geoservices

1-418-653-9559

c.duplessis@goldmindsgeoservices.com




PRESS RELEASE





TiGenix submits MAA to EMA for Cx601 for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients

Leuven (BELGIUM) - March 2, 2016, 19:00h CET - TiGenix NV (Euronext Brussels: TIG), an advanced biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising novel therapeutics from its proprietary platforms of allogeneic expanded stem cells, announced today the submission of a centralized Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for Cx601 for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in adult patients with Crohn's disease.

TiGenix has submitted a European MAA for its lead product Cx601, consisting of a suspension of allogeneic expanded adipose-derived stem cells (eASC), following the positive results from the pivotal ADMIRE-CD Phase III study in Crohn's disease patients suffering from complex perianal fistulas.

A complex perianal fistula consists of abnormal tracts between the rectum and the skin surface near the anus, and is commonly associated with Crohn's disease. It is a serious clinical condition leading to pain, discharge and that can cause severe incontinence. Complex perianal fistulas are associated with depression and may constitute a risk for anorectal carcinoma. Up to 120,000 adult Crohn's disease patients in Europe and the United States may eventually benefit from Cx601 in an indication for which there is no alternative satisfactory treatment.

"The submission of this application to the EMA represents another important achievement in TiGenix efforts to bring Cx601 to those Crohn's disease patients who currently lack an effective treatment for this serious and debilitating condition," said Maria Pascual, VP Regulatory Affairs of TiGenix. "Meeting this milestone brings us one step closer to fulfilling our ultimate goal of making our therapy available to European patients in the second half of 2017."

"The EMA filing is the culmination of the milestones set by TiGenix over the last eight months," said Eduardo Bravo CEO. "This achievement follows the completion of the ADMIRE-CD trial in August, the recently granted license to manufacture Cx601 commercially in Europe and the agreement from the FDA through a Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) on our proposal to conduct a Phase III pivotal trial in the United States. Our capacity to execute timely on these objectives reassures us about our ultimate goal of launching Cx601 in the coming years at both sides of the Atlantic."

As recently announced, the results of the ADMIRE-CD have been accepted for oral presentation at the upcoming Annual Congress of European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) in Amsterdam on 17th and 18th March 2016. The acceptance of the abstract confirms the relevance of the results and positions Cx601 as a truly innovative treatment for complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients, a severe, debilitating and difficult to treat condition.

For more information, please contact:

TiGenix

Claudia D'Augusta

Chief Financial Officer

T: +34 91 804 92 64

claudia.daugusta@tigenix.com

About TiGenix

TiGenix NV (Euronext Brussels: TIG) is an advanced biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercialising novel therapeutics from its proprietary platforms of allogeneic, or donor-derived, expanded stem cells. Two products from the adipose-derived stem cell technology platform are currently in clinical development. Cx601 is in Phase III for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients. Cx611 has completed a Phase I sepsis challenge trial and a Phase I/II trial in rheumatoid arthritis. Effective July 31, 2015, TiGenix acquired Coretherapix, whose lead cellular product, AlloCSC-01, is currently in a Phase II clinical trial in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). In addition, the second product candidate from the cardiac stem cell-based platform acquired from Coretherapix, AlloCSC-02, is being developed in a chronic indication. TiGenix also developed ChondroCelect, an autologous cell therapy product for cartilage repair of the knee, which was the first Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). From June 2014, the marketing and distribution rights of ChondroCelect were exclusively licensed to Sobi for the European Union (except for Finland, where it is distributed by the Finnish Red Cross Blood Service), Norway, Russia, Switzerland and Turkey, and the countries of the Middle East and North Africa. TiGenix is headquartered in Leuven (Belgium) and has operations in Madrid (Spain). For more information, please visit www.tigenix.com.

About Cx601

Cx601 is a suspension of allogeneic expanded adipose-derived stem cells (eASC) injected intra-lesionally. Cx601 is being developed for the treatment of complex perianal fistulas in Crohn's disease patients. Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory disease of the intestine and patients can suffer from complex perianal fistulas for which there is currently no effective treatment. In 2009, the European Commission granted Cx601 orphan designation for the treatment of anal fistulas, recognising the debilitating nature of the disease and the lack of treatment options. Based on positive Phase II results, TiGenix sought scientific advice from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on the future development path of Cx601. TiGenix then initiated a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III trial in Europe and Israel designed to comply with the requirements laid down by the EMA (the ADMIRE-CD trial). 'Madrid Network', an organisation within the Autonomous Region of Madrid which helps companies to grow through high-technology innovation, issued a soft loan to help finance this Phase III study. The programme is funded by The Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) within the framework of the INNTEGRA plan. The study's primary endpoint was combined remission, defined as clinical assessment at week 24 of closure of all treated external openings draining at baseline despite gentle finger compression, and absence of collections >2cm confirmed by MRI. In the ADMIRE-CD trial, the results of which were reported in August 2015, Cx601 achieved statistically significant superiority (p<0.025) on the primary endpoint with 49.5% combined remission at week 24 compared to 34.3% in the placebo arm in the ITT[1] (#_ftn1) population. These results translate into a relative risk of 1.44, meaning that patients receiving Cx601 had a 44% greater probability of achieving combined remission than placebo patients. Efficacy results were robust and consistent across all statistical populations. Treatment-emergent adverse events (non-serious and serious) and discontinuations due to adverse events were comparable between Cx601 and placebo arms. The ADMIRE-CD trial has a follow-up analysis to be performed at 52 weeks post-treatment. Based on the positive Phase III results, TiGenix has submitted a Marketing Authorisation Application to the EMA in early 2016. TiGenix is preparing to develop Cx601 for the US market after having reached an agreement with the FDA through a special protocol assessment, or SPA, procedure on its proposed protocol on August 7, 2015.

Forward-looking information

This press release may contain forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of TiGenix and the market in which it operates. Certain of these statements, forecasts and estimates can be recognised by the use of words such as, without limitation, "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "intends", "plans", "seeks", "estimates", "may", "will" and "continue" and similar expressions. They include all matters that are not historical facts. Such statements, forecasts and estimates are based on various assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable when made but may or may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict and may depend upon factors that are beyond the Company's control. Therefore, actual results, the financial condition, performance or achievements of TiGenix, or industry results, may turn out to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements, forecasts and estimates. Given these uncertainties, no representations are made as to the accuracy or fairness of such forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates. Furthermore, forward-looking statements, forecasts and estimates only speak as of the date of the publication of this press release. TiGenix disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statement, forecast or estimates to reflect any change in the Company's expectations with regard thereto, or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement, forecast or estimate is based, except to the extent required by Belgian law.



[1] (#_ftnref1) ITT: Intention to treat population i.e. randomized patients.

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: TiGenix via Globenewswire



HUG#1990906


DUBLIN, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d4nzjj/2015_network) has announced the addition of the "2015 Network Security Platform Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) Vendor Rankings for North America" report to their offering.

Every service-delivery platform used by a managed security service provider (MSSP) requires a significant investment in training and ongoing support by the MSSP. The decision of which vendors' platforms to utilize as the basis for commercial services is significant in balancing the expense of training with revenue opportunity. This research provides insight into the network security service-delivery platforms employed by MSSPs in North America including the number of platforms employed by each MSSP, ranking of each network security platform, ranking of each platform vendor, and keys to success for network security platform providers with MSSPs.

Key Findings

- Every service-delivery platform used by a managed security service provider (MSSP) requires a significant investment in training and ongoing support by the MSSP. The decision of which vendors' platforms to utilize as the basis for commercial services is significant in balancing the expense of training with revenue opportunity.

- FireEye made the most dramatic move from 2014 to 2015, from not being ranked in the top 15 in 2014 to commanding the #2 spot in 2015.

- Fortinet Fortigate Firewall/NGFW/UTM was the most supported platform among MSSPs.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary

- Key Findings

2. Introduction - Definitions - Market Overview

3. MSSP Platforms Supported Comparisons

- Methodology

- MSSP Platforms Utilized Comparisons

4. Security Platform Rankings - Methodology for Security Platform Rankings - Top Network Security Platform Rankings Overall - Top Network Security Platform Aggregated Rankings2014 versus 2015 - Top Firewall Platform Rankings - Top Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Platform Rankings - Top Endpoint Protection Platform Rankings - Top Web Application Firewall (WAF) Platform Rankings - Top Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Mitigation Platform Rankings - Top SIEM & Forensics Platform Rankings - Top Web Security Platform Rankings - Top Vulnerability Management Platform Rankings - Top Advanced Malware Protection Rankings - Top Identity & Access Management Rankings - Top Enterprise Mobility Management Rankings - Cumulative Rankings by Network Security Platform Category

5. Aggregated Vendor Ranking

- Aggregated Vendor Ranking Methodology

6. Keys to Success with MSSPs - Overview - Recommendations

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/d4nzjj/2015_network

Media Contact:

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


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Providing a potential boost for Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., in a contentious primary, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have both endorsed the congressman's Senate campaign.



Murphy, a former Republican, is facing liberal firebrand Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., in the Democratic primary in the race for GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio's, R-Fla., Senate seat.



In a statement, Obama described Murphy as a tireless champion for the middle class and a defender of the economic progress American workers and business have made.



'In Congress, he's fought to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, reform our criminal justice system, and protect a woman's right to choose,' Obama said. 'Floridians can count on Patrick Murphy to stand up for them every day as their next Senator.'



Biden, who will campaign with Murphy later this month, also claimed the congressman has the progressive values, work ethic, and youthful energy the Senate needs.



The support for Murphy was not well received by the Grayson campaign, which called the endorsements a last-ditch effort by the D.C. establishment to try to blunt their growing command of the race.



The campaign noted the endorsements came a day after the release of a Public Policy Polling survey showing Grayson with a 32 percent to 22 percent lead over Murphy.



'The anti-Democratic Party Establishment is desperate to drag Grayson's opponent - their do-nothing, errand boy for Wall Street - over the finish line,' Grayson's campaign said. 'But Florida voters in both parties are fed up with egregious manipulation by outside forces to dictate our candidates.'



'These arrogant Empire-Strikes-Back efforts by the Democratic politburo will be no more successful than the similar failed attempts by Republican party bosses,' the campaign added. 'This is the year when the voters decide.'



Meanwhile, the race for Rubio's seat has the potential to get even more interesting if Republican operatives have their way.



CNN reported that GOP operatives will push retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson to drop out of the presidential race and instead run for the Florida Senate seat.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Evolving Gold Corp. (CSE: EVG)(FRANKFURT: EV7)(OTCQX: EVOGF) (the "Company") -

By news dated July 29, 2015 the Company announced it had sold its Rattlesnake Property of GFG Resources (US) Inc. ("GFG") for a combination of cash, shares and promissory note. As an update to that release, the Company advises:

1. it has received US$270,937.50 from the US$286,000 that was held in escrow;

2. it continues to hold 2,000,000 shares of GFG, and continues to have the right to hold at least 9% of the outstanding shares of GFG upon it obtaining a public listing of its shares on a North American stock exchange;

3. GFG extended its deadline to show significant progress toward obtain a public listing, from November 15, 2015 to February 15, 2016; and

4. the Company has requested and expects to receive an additional 200,000 common shares of GFG as a result of GFG not meeting its public listing progress deadline (and thereby be entitled to hold at least 9.9% of the outstanding shares of GFG upon it obtaining a public listing).

The Company continues to look forward to GFG obtaining a public listing of its shares; however the Company intends to dispose of its equity interest in GFG in advance of such date, including exercising its contractual right to put its shares to GFG on March 31, 2016 at US$0.25 per share, or other means.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

EVOLVING GOLD CORP.

"R. Bruce Duncan"

CEO and Director

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. Specifically, there is no guarantee as to the future value of the GFG shares held by the Company; that GFG will ever obtain a listing of its common shares on any stock exchange; or that GFG will have the means to acquire the GFG shares held by the Company in accordance with its contractual obligations. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com).

Contacts:

Investor Relations:

Tel: 604.685.6375

TF: 866.604.3864

info@evolvinggold.com

www.evolvinggold.com




NEW YORK, NY and SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- Balabit (www.balabit.com), a leading provider of contextual security technologies, best known as "the creator of syslog-ng" today announced the release of Blindspotter version 2016.03 at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The new version of its User Behavior Analytics (UBA) solution features several new and unique machine learning algorithms that help security teams to quickly identify hijacked accounts or discover forbidden account sharing, thereby avoiding large-scale data breaches or compliance problems. Blindspotter not only reveals previously unknown threats, but also precisely visualizes them, enabling organizations to dramatically reduce the time to discover, investigate and respond to insider and outsider threats.

"Besides the existing set of several sophisticated machine learning algorithms, the new release of Blindspotter further improves behavior analysis by adding the capability of detecting scripted activity on accounts and by performing a biometric analysis of keystroke dynamics and mouse movements," said Peter Gyongyosi, Product Manager of Blindspotter at Balabit. "Blindspotter enables CIOs and CSOs to get a comprehensive, unique visualization of their IT ecosystem. Gaining a better understanding on how IT services are used by specific users or user groups, IT professionals can get immediate, actionable and tangible insight. Overall, Blindspotter improves IT decisions, helps optimize IT resources and business efficiency."

Key new features of Blindspotter 2016.03:

Detection of system accounts used by humans and personal accounts used by scripts

System accounts used by humans, shared accounts and personal accounts used by scripts are typical red flags of potential security risks for the company. When an attacker gains access to stored credentials used by a script, particularly if those are the credentials of a privileged account, this can lead to a large-scale data breach. Blindspotter is able to distinguish between human and automated activity and allows the security team to discover the misuse of personal or service accounts.





System accounts used by humans, shared accounts and personal accounts used by scripts are typical red flags of potential security risks for the company. When an attacker gains access to stored credentials used by a script, particularly if those are the credentials of a privileged account, this can lead to a large-scale data breach. Blindspotter is able to distinguish between human and automated activity and allows the security team to discover the misuse of personal or service accounts. Screen Content Analysis

Based on the technology of Shell Control Box, Balabit's market leading activity monitoring solution, Blindspotter has already been able to analyze commands issued in SSH and Telnet administrative sessions and find potentially risky activities. In version 2016.03, this capability is extended to Windows users (including both privileged and business users) using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). By analyzing the textual content seen in graphical protocols on the screen, hijacked accounts and malicious insiders can also be found in a mainly Windows-oriented environment.





Based on the technology of Shell Control Box, Balabit's market leading activity monitoring solution, Blindspotter has already been able to analyze commands issued in SSH and Telnet administrative sessions and find potentially risky activities. In version 2016.03, this capability is extended to Windows users (including both privileged and business users) using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). By analyzing the textual content seen in graphical protocols on the screen, hijacked accounts and malicious insiders can also be found in a mainly Windows-oriented environment. Biometric analysis of user input

The way we interact with our computers is part of our digital fingerprint and the dynamics of our keystrokes and our mouse usage patterns identify us just as well as our signature does. With this latest version, Blindspotter is able to analyze keystroke and mouse movement patterns and identify cases when an account is used by someone else, other than the authenticated user. Biometric analysis provides a new way of authentication: on one hand, it relies on something the user is instead of something they know or something they have. Also, instead of a one-off authentication at the beginning of the session it provides a continuous verification of identity. The new features help security teams to quickly identify hijacked accounts or discover forbidden account sharing even if attackers managed to pass the first line authentication -- thereby avoiding large-scale data breaches or compliance problems.





Blindspotter, a key component of Balabit's Contextual Security Intelligence (CSI) Suite Blindspotter is integrated with the company's leading system and application Log Management and Privileged User Monitoring tools and is able to ingest data from various additional sources such as leading SIEM and IAM solutions, LDAP/AD information, cloud apps and other data sources. Working in conjunction, the CSI Suite helps save costs, provides value for compliance audits and support business continuity by Security Risk Assessment and Policy Enforcement.

Infographic: Why do companies need User Behavior Analytics?

For more information about Blindspotter and its recent Awards, please visit

Blindspotter, part of Balabit's Contextual Security Intelligence Suite honored as Gold winner in the 12th Annual 2016 Info Security PG's Global Excellence Awards in Security Products and Solutions for Finance and Banking (US)

Blindspotter is the Most Valuable Product for Innovation and Usability by CTR (US)

or the product page at https://www.balabit.com/network-security/blindspotter

About Balabit

Balabit -- headquartered in Luxembourg -- is a leading provider of contextual security technologies with the mission of preventing data breaches without constraining business. Balabit operates globally through a network of local offices across the United States and Europe together with partners.

Balabit's Contextual Security Intelligence strategy protects organizations in real-time from threats posed by the misuse of high risk and privileged accounts. Solutions include reliable system and application Log Management with context-enriched data ingestion, Privileged User Monitoring and User Behavior Analytics. Together they can identify unusual user activities and provide deep visibility into potential threats. Working in conjunction with existing control-based strategies Balabit enables a flexible and people-centric approach to improve security without adding additional barriers to business practices.

Founded in 2000 Balabit has a proven track record including 23 Fortune 100 customers amongst over 1,000,000 corporate users worldwide.

For more information, visit www.balabit.com.

Media Contact:

Dan Chmielewski

Madison Alexander PR

714-832-8716

949-231-2965

dchm@madisonalexanderpr.com




PEMBROKE, Bermuda - March 2, 2016 - Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:ENH), a Bermuda-based specialty provider of property and casualty insurance and reinsurance, announced today that Mr. Giles Quartly has joined the company this week as Senior Vice President, Head of International Casualty Insurance. Mr. Quartly will be responsible for Endurance's international general liability insurance business and establishing a presence for Endurance in the London casualty market. Mr. Quartly will be based in Endurance's London office and will report to Mr. Richard Housley, Chief Underwriting Officer and Active Underwriter, Endurance at Lloyd's.

Mr. Quartly joined Endurance from CV Starr where he was Chief Underwriter General Liability. Mr. Quartly joined CV Starr in 2012 and achieved considerable growth and diversification in their general liability book of business over his tenure. Mr. Quartly has worked for the past 20 years in casualty insurance, including similar casualty underwriting roles at Argo, Allianz and QBE. He is a graduate of Sheffield University.

Mr. Housley commented, "Giles is a hands-on leader with strong relationships among brokers in the London market, considerable experience in the Lloyd's market, and a demonstrated track record of growing a diversified global portfolio. I look forward to working with him as we build an international casualty team and add yet another important product line to our growing capabilities within the London market."

About Endurance Specialty Holdings

Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. is a global specialty provider of property and casualty insurance and reinsurance. Through its operating subsidiaries, Endurance writes agriculture, professional lines, property, marine and energy, and casualty and other specialty lines of insurance and catastrophe, property, casualty, professional lines and specialty lines of reinsurance. We maintain excellent financial strength as evidenced by the ratings of A (Excellent) from A.M. Best (XV size category) and A (Strong) from Standard and Poor's on our principal operating subsidiaries. Endurance's headquarters are located at Waterloo House, 100 Pitts Bay Road, Pembroke HM 08, Bermuda and its mailing address is Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd., Suite No. 784, No. 48 Par-la-Ville Road, Hamilton HM 11, Bermuda. For more information about Endurance, please visit www.endurance.bm (http://www.endurance.bm/).

Contact

Investor Relations

Phone: +1 441 278 0988

Email: investorrelations@endurance.bm

# # #





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: Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd via Globenewswire



HUG#1990718


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Federal appeals court judge Jane L. Kelly is being vetted by the White House as President Barack Obama's potential Supreme Court nominee, according to a report from the New York Times. Citing a person with knowledge of the process, the New York Times said the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been conducting background interviews on Kelly. A former public defender, Kelly currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Her nomination to the court was approved unanimously three years ago. However, Republican Senators have repeatedly said they will not hold hearings on any nominee made by Obama, arguing that the decision should be left up to the next president. Since Kelly spent much of her career in Iowa, nominating her could put pressure on Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who serves as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The New York Times noted Grassley effusively praised Kelly in a Senate floor speech in 2013, urging his colleagues to join in supporting her nomination. In a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday, Grassley claimed considering a Supreme Court nominee during a presidential election campaign would make the court even more political than it already is. 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.
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.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 03/02/16 -- This document corrects and replaces the media advisory that was sent today, March 02, 2016 at 9:46 am ET

Randy Boissonnault, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, will announce support for the Rendez-vous de la Francophonie on Thursday. Mr. Boissonnault will make this announcement on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Please note that all details are subject to change. All times are local.

The details are as follows:

DATE: Thursday, March 3, 2016 TIME: 2:00 p.m. PLACE: Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery, Charles Lynch Room Centre Block Ottawa, Ontario

Stay Connected

Follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Flickr.

Contacts:

Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage

Pierre-Olivier Herbert

Press Secretary

819-997-7788



Media Relations

Canadian Heritage

819-994-9101

1-866-569-6155

PCH.media-media.PCH@Canada.ca






CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Australia will on Thursday release January figures for imports, exports and trade balance, highlighting a busy day in Asia-Pacific economic activity.



The trade balance is tipped to show a deficit of A$3.20 billion following the A$3.535 billion shortfall in December. Imports were worth A$28.78 billion in the previous month, while exports were at A$25.25 billion.



Australia also will see February results for the Performance of Service Index from AiG; in January, the index score was 48.4.



China will see February data for the services and composite indexes from Caixin; in January, their scores were 52.4 and 50.1, respectively.



Japan will see February results for the services and composite indexes from Nikkei; in January, their scores were 52.4 and 52.6, respectively.



South Korea will release February numbers for consumer prices, with forecasts suggesting an increase of 0.2 percent on month and 1.0 percent on year. That follows the flat monthly reading and the 0.8 percent yearly gain in January. Core CPI was up 0.2 percent on month and 1.7 percent in the previous month.



Hong Kong will provide January figures for retail sales. By value, sales are expected to fall 8.5 percent - steady from the previous month. By volume, sales are tipped to slip 4.1 percent after losing 6.1 percent in December.



Hong Kong and Singapore will see February results for the manufacturing PMI from Nikkei; in January, their scores were 46.1 and 52.5, respectively.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Blippar, Inc., a global technology company specializing in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision, closed a $54m in Series D funding.

The round was led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the strategic investment fund of the Government of Malaysia, with participation from existing investors.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the expansion of its engineering capabilities and presence in San Francisco and invest in its user acquisition.

Led by Ambarish Mitra, Co-Founder and CEO, Blippar provides an augmented reality and visual search app which utilizes proprietary technology to enable users to scan objects and unlock useful and entertaining content.

Launched in the UK in 2011, the company has partnered with media owners and brands including Nestle, Conde Nast, TIME Inc., Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Anheuser Busch, and Jaguar.

Blippar also includes Blippar Lab, an innovation and R&D unit as well as Blippar Education, which focuses on the educational sector.

FinSMEs

02/03/2016
Influitive, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of an advocate marketing software platform, raised an additional $8.2M in an extension of a Series B funding round.

This additional financing, which brought the total Series B round to more than $38M and the total amount raised by the company to date to approximately $50M, came from new investors Leaders Fund and Export Development Canada (EDC), existing investors including Georgian Partners, Relay Ventures, BDC Capital IT Venture Fund and OurCrowd, as well as othr angel investors.

Influitive is also announcing the acquisition of Ironark Software, the company behind mobile applications Hub, a home and family organizer, and Workbase, a business task and schedule manager. Ironarks founders (including CEO Jonathan James) and lead developer will join Influitives product division, and contribute their expertise to expanding the power of advocate communities to mobile.

Founded in 2010 by Mark Organ, CEO, Influitive provides the AdvocateHub software that allows marketers to build advocate communities in which members gain recognition and status in exchange for activities that help promote the brands interests and reputation.

Customers include Acquia, Atlassian, DocuSign, HireVue, Hootsuite, HP Software, Marketo and Oracle.

The company also has offices in Boston, Palo Alto and San Francisco.

FinSMEs

02/03/2016
New Delhi: Intense lobbying by incumbent airlines against any move to ease overseas flying restrictions may have miffed the Tatas and civil aviation experts but it has achieved one thing: the Civil Aviation Policy is once again delayed as ministers of the Modi government try and understand the intense objections to any such move.

The draft policy has been in the public domain for months. But its passage is further delayed now after recent statements by the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) - this lobby group of incumbent airlines has made various allegations, even threatened court action if the 5/20 rule is removed.

This rule bars airlines from flying overseas unless they have completed five years of domestic operations and have a fleet of 20 aircraft. Incumbents - Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir - want this rule to stay whereas new airlines Vistara and AirAsia India (in both Tatas have equity stakes) want the rule to be abolished.

A senior official in the ministry of civil aviation said there is intense "Manthan" or churning within the government over a decision on the 5/20 rule. He said after the intense lobbying by incumbent airlines made headlines recently where some decision makers have sought additional clarifications on the rule.

Civil Aviation Minister A Gajapathi Raju told Firstpost another "informal" meeting of ministers is expected on the policy. Last month, the first such meeting was held under the chairmanship of Home Minister Rajnath Singh and it was attended by the two ministers of civil aviation besides ministers of road transport and highways, railways, defence and skill development.

Raju said today that only after the ministers' meet will the civil aviation policy be sent for inter-ministerial consultations and thereafter taken to the Cabinet. Though the ministry of civil aviation today set itself a deadline of March end for the policy to get to the Cabinet, this seems a little tough to achieve.

We have said earlier that there is no plea which could lend support to the incumbent airlines' plea to keep the 5/20 restriction. Today, senior ministry officials also rubbished claims by the FIA that the lobby group has not been granted meetings to sort out this issue. Secretary R N Choubey said the airlines were given two dates in December to send in their representatives.

"We do not send out letters to promoters of airlines but wrote to the FIA. Who they choose as their representatives is their call," he said when asked why airline promoters were not called for meetings. He also reiterated that the FIA has sent two batches of written communication to the ministry on the subject so where was the question of not including this body in consultations?

We have suffered, so should others. This seems to be the guiding principle of incumbent airlines which made various dire pronouncements to select media last month about the fate of the Indian aviation industry in case the 5/20 restriction is lifted. Some of these predictions are plain silly, others seem to be part of a tactic to divert attention from key issues.

All incumbent airlines have been constrained by the 5/20 restriction which came into force during UPA I and now can't bear to see the two new airlines, Vistara and AirAsia India, get permission to fly overseas without the mandatory five-year domestic grind. Tata Sons is an equity investor in both the airlines and the 5/20 fracas has pitted the incumbents against the Tatas.

Ratan Tata set the cat among the pigeons by becoming vocal, for the first time, on 5/20 removal with his tweets last month. This lead incumbent airlines to step up attacks against Vistara and AirAsia India, with media reports quoting one airline promoter threatening to drag the entire matter to the court, another wanting a link between 5/20 removal and existing norms on providing domestic connectivity to remote areas whereas a third speaking of imminent rise in air fares, under-utilisation of airport infrastructure if the 5/20 restriction were indeed to be abolished.

The incumbents have already knocked several doors including the PMO's, with allegations that the norms of substantial ownership and effective control were being violated by both the Tata airlines. Singapore Airlines owns 49% of Vistara whereas AirAsia BhD owns 49% in AirAsia India.

The senior ministry official quoted earlier pointed out that there is no question of removing or relaxing RDG - Route Dispersal Guidlines - which mandate how much of an airline's capacity on trunk routes is to be deployed on less viable routes within the country. In simple words, this rule mandates that an airline must deploy 10% of its available seat kilometers (ASKMs) on category II routes, 2% on category IIA and so on. The official explained that this requirement is only a function of an airline's capacity on trunk routes and the airline's liability decreases as it reduces capacity on trunk routes.

What this means is if, theoretically speaking, an existing airline were to withdraw its operations from all trunk routes in the country (the high density routes like Delhi-Mumbai), it would have no obligation to comply with RDG norms either. The official pointed out that incumbents were wrong in alleging that if RDG norms continued even after 5/20 removal, this would distort a level playing field. He also said the tweaking of RDG norms proposed in the draft policy was only meant to clarify categorisation of category I routes.

As we have said in these pieces earlier, the 5/20 restriction was a UPA legacy which needs to be removed.

The Civil Aviation Policy proposes many changes like creation of an entire infrastructure for enhancing regional connectivity. It should not be held ransom to demands of a few airlines over a single rule, however powerful they may be. If ministers of the Modi government need more meetings to understand the issues at hand on 5/20, let them have these meetings. But any misgivings on its removal should be laid at rest and the rule should be consigned to history.
New Delhi - Facing strong opposition from different quarters over the proposal to tax 60 percent of withdrawals from provident fund, the government issued detailed clarification on the matter on Tuesday evening. At the same time, it has also hinted at a partial rollback of the proposal.

Speaking at an event Budget Verdict jointly organised by CNBC-TV18 and Mint, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said that "FM has the liberty to review EPF tax". He, however, added that he would not like to speculate on the rollback of the proposal. He also asked for encouraging people to buy annuity products after retirement."

Following the budget announcement of taxing 60 percent of the corpus of the provident fund at the time of withdrawal, on prospective basis there have been major opposition from the salaried class.

Clearing the air, Adhia said there is no change in the status of public provident fund (PPF) and that EEE (tax exempt at the time of contribution, tax exempt on returns and tax exempt on withdrawals) scheme will continue for PPF.

Also, the government on Tuesday said PPF withdrawals will continue to be fully exempt from tax and only interest accruing after April 1 on 60 percent of the contributions made to employee provident fund will be taxed.

Revenue secretary made it clear that out of the 3.7 crore active contributors in EPF, about 70 lakh corporate sector employees with high salary would be impacted by the proposed taxation of EPF interest on withdrawal.

Through a detailed press release the government tried to further clarify the issue. There seems to be some amount of lack of understanding about the changes made in the General Budget 2016-17 in the tax treatment for recognised Provident Fund & NPS stated the press release and clarifications are given on following matters:

(i) The purpose of this reform of making the change in tax regime is to encourage more number of private sector employees to go for pension security after retirement instead of withdrawing the entire money from the Provident Fund Account.

(ii) Towards this objective, the Government has announced that Forty Percent(40%) of the total corpus withdrawn at the time of retirement will be tax exempt both under recognised Provident Fund and NPS.

(iii) It is expected that the employees of private companies will place the remaining 60% of the Corpus in Annuity, out of which they can get regular pension. When this 60% of the remaining Corpus is invested in Annuity, no tax is chargeable. So what it means is that the entire corpus will be tax free, if invested in annuity.

(iv) The Government in this Budget has also made another change which says that when the person investing in Annuity dies and when the original Corpus goes in the hands of his heirs, then again there will be no tax.

(v) The idea behind this mechanism is to encourage people to invest in pension products rather than withdraw and use the entire Corpus after retirement.

(vi) The main category of people for whom EPF scheme was created are the members of EPFO who are within the statutory wage limit of Rs.15,000 per month. Out of around 3.7 crores contributing members of EPFO as on today, around 3 crore subscribers are in this category. For this category of people, there is not going to be any change in the new dispensation.

(vii) However, in EPFO, there are about 60 lakh contributing members who have accepted EPF voluntarily and they are highly - paid employees of private sector companies. For this category of people, amount at present can be withdrawn without any tax liability. We are changing this. What we are saying is that such employee can withdraw without tax liability provided he contributes 60% in annuity product so that pension security can be created for him according to his earning level. However, if he chooses not to put any amount in Annuity product the tax would not be charged on 40%.

(viii) There is no change in the existing tax treatment of Public Provident Fund (PPF).

(ix) Currently there is no monetary ceilings on the employer contribution under EPF with only ceiling being that it would be 12% of the salary of the employee member. Similarly, there is no monetary ceiling on the employer contribution under NPS, except that it would be 10% of salary.

(x) Now the Finance Bill 2016 provides that there would be monetary ceiling of Rs1.5 lakh (Annul) on employer contribution considered with the ceiling of the 12% rate of employer contribution, whichever is less.

(xi) We have received representations today from various sections suggesting that if the amount of 60% of corpus is not invested in the annuity products, the tax should be levied only on accumulated returns on the corpus and not on the contributed amount. We have also received representations asking for not having any monetary limit on the employer contribution under EPF, because such a limit is not there in NPS. The Finance Minister would be considering all these suggestions and taking a view on it in due course.

Commenting upon the proposal Nirupama Nirupama Soundararajan, Senior Fellow, Pahle India Foundation On the change in taxation of EPF and PPF, contrary to public outrage I believe this is an excellent idea. The budget states that our citizens must move towards a society that adopts pensions. Today, most of middleclass tends to withdraw the corpus when possible instead of using it to obtain a monthly income of retirement. While it will still be possible to withdraw the entire corpus a tax component on 60 percent may well be a healthy deterrent."
By Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Budget 2016 is a budget where Prime Minister Modis economic philosophy is now becoming clear, and with this third budget, he has hit his stride. This budget continues to take forward a core belief that youth and entrepreneurship are key to transforming the economy and the country.

As I have said before, enabling young entrepreneurs not only increases Indias innovation potential, but also creates employment and creates an alternate to the conventional economic model of depending only on a few, large corporate groups for both investments and jobs. The focus, therefore, is on investing in the youth by improving skills of over one crore youth over the next 3 years under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana and improving the access to capital for entrepreneurs, particularly those in the rural areas.

The National Skill Development Mission has already trained 76 lakh youth. Setting up 1500 Multi-skill Training Institutes, as proposed under the budget, will only increase these numbers. The focus on digital literacy through the National Digital Literacy Mission and the Digital Saksharta Abhiyan is a powerful empowerment of youth, enabling a greater proportion to enter the formal sector. Tax reliefs to companies hiring those who are unemployed with salaries below Rs 25,000 will also help in creating job and employment opportunities for young India.

The Start-up India plan, which was announced earlier this year, has been given form under the budget by the tax benefits and one-day company registration schemes. The step to give start-ups 100% tax deduction for 3 out 5 years is one of the important incentives the Start-up India Action plan had promised. As I had written before the Start-up Plan was even launched, the focus on start-ups and entrepreneurship is important as it taps into Indias demographic dividend and makes job creators out of job seekers.

Within the focus on youth and employment, the budget has singled out support for SC/ST, women entrepreneurs, and minorities by giving form to the Stand-up India initiative. Under this scheme, Rs 500 crore is to be allocated to provide financial support for such entrepreneurs. It also requires two projects to be promoted per bank branch in each category of entrepreneur under the scheme. This can be seen as a continuation of the Mudra Bank initiative, which was allocated Rs 20,000 crore in order to provide credit facilities to SC/ST businesses.

In summary, Budget 2016 takes forward Prime Minister Modis belief that the future of India can be scripted only by empowering and developing the youth of India, and have them and their energy lead the change in the coming years, with skills, jobs and enterprise.

The writer is a Member of Parliament & Technology Entrepreneur. He can be reached at rajeev.c@nic.in
Nasscom (National Association of Software & Services) has set up its first warehouse in Chennai today. Chennai is known to be quite popular for its automobile and IT industry. One of the fastest growing cities in the world, Chennai is home to more than 20 Indian companies that have a net worth of more than $1 billion. It is often seen as the secondary financial hub following Mumbai. The city is emerging as the SaaS Hub as it has a large base of B2B SaaS product companies triggered by the success of few startups supported by right set of domain talent, according to a press release.

The warehouse which is spread across 8000 sq.ft can house up to 50 start-ups allowing them to learn, work, and accelerate their companies. The entrepreneurs will be provided with early stage mentoring, connect sessions, access to resources from Google, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM cloud, Kotak etc. The selection would be finalized by a selection committee comprising of stakeholders from the government as well as the industry, viz. Government of Tamil Nadu and NASSCOM.

A MoU was signed between Department of Information Technology, Tamil Nadu, and Nasscom today.

The warehouse will nurture nearly 200 entrepreneurs, said Rajat Tandon, Vice President, Nasscom 10,000 start-ups, adding, We have seen immense talent and enthusiasm here and wanted to further encourage and support the entrepreneurs through our 10k program. A co-working space like this is necessary in order to boost the startup ecosphere of the city.

Chennai has a strong entrepreneurial culture and we definitely want to back this culture and support these entrepreneurs in every possible way. We hope that this initiative will bring a new dynamism to its entrepreneurs, said J Jayalalitha, chief minister.

Start-up warehouse is a premium co-working space introduced by 10,000 start-ups in August 2013. It incubates start-ups from a diverse range of verticals. The warehouse has a number of facilities, including a 10 Mbps broadband leased line, quality infrastructure with AC, chair, tables, tea/coffee, logistics etc. The co-working space allows early-stage technology start-ups to work for 6-12 months during which start-ups will get showcased at select Nasscom events and other events of partner organizations.

Nasscoms 10,000 Start-ups aims to scale up the start-up ecosystem in India by enabling incubation, funding and support for 10,000 technology start-ups in India over the next ten years. The programs vision is to foster entrepreneurship, build entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and strengthen early stage support for tech start-ups. The initiative brings together key stakeholders of the ecosystem including start-up incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, start-up support groups, mentors, and technology corporations.
NEW DELHI India plans to resume settling trade with Iran under a regional clearing house system after a gap of five years, the government said on Wednesday, as New Delhi seeks to promote trade ties with Tehran following the lifting of international sanctions.

The Asian Clearing Union (ACU), including India, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Sri Lanka, facilitates payments among members, economising on the use of foreign exchange reserves and transfer costs, as well as promoting trade and banking relations among participants.

The Reserve Bank of India decided in December 2010 not to facilitate oil trades through the ACU system. That left India and Iran, the only oil producer in the union, scouting for a stable payment mechanism to settle trade.

But a permanent banking channel could not be established due to pressure from Western nations, leading to a drastic reduction in India's oil imports from Tehran.

The Indian central bank has sought the consent of the finance ministry to get Iran back into the fold of ACU, junior foreign affairs minister V.K. Singh told parliament.

He said the government is also considering a request from Iranian banks to open branches in India and reactivate their accounts.

Despite Western sanctions India continued with its engagement with Iran and was among a handful of countries that were sourcing oil from Tehran.

As ties deepen further, India has extended a $150 million credit line to Iran to help develop its Chabahar port.

The port in southeast Iran is central to New Delhi's efforts to circumvent arch-rival Pakistan and open up a route to Central Asia as well as Afghanistan where it has developed close security ties and economic interests.

"A contract between Indian Special Purpose Vehicle and Arya Bander of Iran for development of Chahbahar Port has been finalised," Singh said.

He also said in January India decided to extend the credit for the start of a contract to supply 250,000 tonnes of steel rails to Iran through State Trading Corp.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Elaine Hardcastle)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
GENEVA Luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover will post lower fourth-quarter profit than a year earlier, its chief executive told Reuters, leaving its full-year pretax figure at around half of the 2.6 billion pounds ($3.6 billion) made in 2014/15.

The firm, owned by India's Tata Motors Ltd, has been hit by sliding sales in China, a blaze at the port of Tianjin and heavy spending on new sites and models.

In an interview at the Geneva car show, Ralf Speth said the Britain-based brand would fall short of the almost 400-million-pound profit posted in January-March 2015.

"It was a sensational quarter (in 2015) ... We will not achieve (that)," he said.

In the first three quarters of the current financial year, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) made a pretax profit of just under 1 billion pounds, meaning the annual total is set to come in at around half of 2014-15's level.

JLR had previously said it expected a lower profit this financial year, without giving details.

The firm took a 245 million pound charge in its second quarter after up to 5,800 cars were damaged or destroyed by an explosion at the Chinese port of Tianjin, though it has since recouped a small portion of the money in insurance and hopes to receive more.

Speth said China, once the carmaker's fastest-growing market but which has seen growth slow sharply as the economy cools, was showing signs of revival.

JLR's third-quarter retail sales fell 10 percent in the world's biggest car market, but January volumes were up 5 percent.

"China has seen the bottom and is bouncing back and therefore I am cautiously optimistic that we will see a stronger performance," Speth said.

Tata bought both the Jaguar and Land Rover brands in 2008 and has ploughed billions into the two marques, with Jaguar launching the F-Type SVR coupe on Tuesday, the latest in a series of new models to refresh and widen its line-up.

JLR, which built almost one in three of the 1.5 million cars Britain made last year, also warned there would be great uncertainty were Britons to vote to leave the European Union in a referendum on June 23.

"We will not have free and fair trade, or it will take years to come to new contracts and new tax schemes," Speth said.

($1 = 0.7150 pounds)

(Editing by Mark Potter)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
New Delhi: Government on Wednesday allayed apprehensions that the already strained finances of Air India might see further pressure following reduced allocation of funds for the carrier in the next fiscal budget and said it is committed to infuse more equity based on the requirement.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his 2016-17 Budget speech on Monday had said national carrier Air India will get Rs 1,713 crore funding from the Government for FY17, against a demand of Rs 4,300 crore.

"There is not any cause of worry. The immediate requirement of Air India has been fully factored in the

budget. Any additional requirement will be placed in the supplementary budgets," Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said.

Choubey said that in the current fiscal also, funds have been infused in phased manner with the bulk of equity allocated in the main budget and additional requirements met through the supplementary demands.

The then UPA government had approved Air India's turnaround plan in April 2012, with a committed public funding of Rs 30,231 crore, staggered over a period of nine years, with some specific riders.

Air India was allocated Rs 2,500 crore in the Union Budget for 2015-16 as against a demand of Rs 4,300 crore. To make up the shortfall, the Ministry had sought Rs 1,800 crore through supplementary demand for grants.

The government-run carrier has till date received Rs 22,280 crore as part of the bailout package.

He said payment of salaries at Air India will not be impacted as "at any point of time we (civil aviation ministry) can go to Finance Ministry to seek additional funding." Choubey said in the current fiscal the funds have come less through the budget and more by way of supplementary, adding this year it will be the other way round.

The Government has pegged Air India's losses at Rs 3529.80 crore for this fiscal, down from a net loss of Rs 5,859.91 crore in FY 15.

However, its debt burden stood at Rs 51,367.07 crore in the financial year ended March 2015. \

PTI
New Delhi: Rejecting government's contention that proposed tax on Employee Providend Fund(EPF) withdrawals was aimed at moving towards pensioned society, trade unions on Wednesday said retirement fund body EPFO which has over 5 crore subscribers already provides pension under its social security scheme.

"Seeing widest opposition to taxing the EPF withdrawals, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is now trying to mince his words. EPFO runs a comprehensive scheme which has all components -- provident fund, pension and insurance," All India Trade Union Congress Secretary and an EPFO trustee D L Sachdev said.

"They (government) are trying to create market for pension products offered by insurance companies in the backdrop of government raising FDI in the sector to 49 per cent from 26 per cent," he added.

Jaitley has said the purpose of taxing interest earned on 60 per cent of withdrawals of contribution made after April 1, 2016 was to encourage people to invest in annuity or pension schemes.

Continuing to face flak for proposing a tax on employee provident fund withdrawals, Jaitley today said he will spell out the final decision on the matter when he replies to the debate on Budget in Parliament.

RSS-backed Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh President B N Rai described Jaitley's contention as "lameduck argument". He said, "There is Employees' Pension Scheme, 1995 run by EPFO which provides for pension after the age of 58 years to its subscribers. Then where is the need for encouraging pension."

Rai argued that there is no provision of taxing EPF withdrawals in the EPF & MP Act. "It is neither law nor practice. On what basis government want to tax EPF withdrawals? It will amount to double or triple taxation," he said.

Trade unions are up in arms against against Jaitley's budgetary proposal to tax part of the EPF withdrawals. Breaking from the long-held practice of exemption at all stages, the Budget for 2016-17 has proposed to impose tax on EPF withdrawal on 60 per cent of contributions made after April 1, 2016, to EPF and other such schemes.

At present, social security schemes run by retirement fund body EPFO are tax free 'Exempt-Exempt-Exempt (EEE)' scheme under which deposits, accrual of interest and withdrawals are tax free.

It is also proposed to tax employers' contribution of over Rs 1.5 lakh towards a worker's EPF account in a year. At present, there is no such limit.

PTI
Mumbai: Asserting that non-payment of loans by big borrowers will erode people's faith in the law, the CBI on Wednesday criticized lenders for not coming forward with a complaint in the Kingfisher Airlines "fraud", saying the delay helped the company "divert funds and destroy evidence".

"The message to the public is that the rich and powerful are able to avoid consequences of cheating and fraud, while the ordinary citizens are promptly booked. This undermines faith of people in rule of law, which has dangerous consequences in a democracy," CBI Director Anil Sinha said at a bankers' conference here.

Citing the Kingfisher Airlines' case, in which the Vijay Mallya-promoted airliner has defaulted on loans of Rs 7,000 crore way back from January 2012, Sinha said, "Despite our repeated requests, the banks did not file a complaint with the CBI. We had to register the case on our own."

Regretting that only "one among the 17 lenders" who owed money had declared KFA as a "willful defaulter", Sinha said the loans in question were taken between 2004 and 2012, while the CBI filed the case only in July 2015.

The comments, made before an audience comprising top bankers, including Arundhati Bhattacharya of SBI, ICICI Bank's Chanda Kochhar and Axis Bank's Shikha Sharma, come amid a huge spike in banks' bad assets and the RBI's attempts on cleaning up the books to show a true picture of the balance sheets.

Bhattacharya refused to react on the critical comments of the CBI chief, saying she does not speak on specific accounts.

Industry lobby IBA's chairman and head of state-run Dena Bank Ashwani Kumar said there is nothing which can be called "deliberate" in the case of KFA. "The CBI Director's view is that in some cases there is delay in filing complaints for fraud... but it is not

deliberate," Kumar claimed.

Sharma of Axis Bank pointed out that there is a process, which a bank needs to follow while declaring someone as a wilful defaulter. "As far as wilful defaulters are concerned, the clients should have defaulted and we should be able to prove that there was wilful default. You have to go through a process and of course, you have to give a chance to hear out the borrower because if you just unilaterally declare him as a wilful defaulter, then he can take you to the courts," Sharma argued.

So far, three banks -- Union Bank of India, SBI and Punjab National Bank -- have declared now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines and its promoter Mallya as wilful defaulter.

Addressing the conference organised by CBI with bankers here, Sinha said, "The question is that undue delay in identifying and reporting such a fraud has jeopardised the cause of justice to the offenders' benefit giving them opportunity to divert funds and destroy evidence."

He added that a large part of such funds move outside the country to tax havens through hawala and other unofficial channels, and added this hampers its investigations.

"Something is indeed seriously wrong. While I fully understand that loan defaults can happen due to business risk and reasons beyond control of banks, borrowers and regulators, yet a significant part of the defaults are wilful and fraudulent. What causes greater concern is that a major part of the NPAs and frauds are in large value accounts," he said.

The CBI chief rued that resolving the asset quality stress is an "unduly slow and long process" in which loans are "red flagged, declared NPAs, then as wilful defaulters and finally as fraudulent."

Stating that the bulk of the problematic assets have been extended loans in the periods from 2008 and 2012, the CBI chief said, "Time has come to rethink and re-devise strategies so that on one hand banks and financial institutions work fearlessly to power the economy towards growth, but at the same time, fix the fraudsters and public officials who collude with such cheats."

Sinha also flagged the issues of identifying and reporting frauds, allowing borrowers to siphon off funds before investigations and monitoring end use of funds to ensure there is no diversion, as issues which need attention.

He said in the past six years, gross NPAs of state-run lenders have gone up to over Rs 3 trillion from Rs 44,957 crore and added that CBI investigated 171 cases of bank frauds entailing funds of Rs 20,646 crore in 2015. In the December quarter as many as 10 state-run banks have declared close to 9 per cent of their assets as NPAs.

Citing a recent case at Bank of Baroda, Sinha said the banking channels are being used to commit a wide variety of financial crimes at present. The agency is probing an over Rs 6,000 crore worth of forex scam in involving a branch in central Delhi.

Calling for more deliberations on bank frauds, Sihna said, "We must realise that these crimes strike at the very root of our economy and weaken the faith of the public in the banking system and governance."

PTI
New Delhi: The Central Information Commission on Wednesday recommended HRD Minister Smriti Irani to "positively" consider plea of a whistleblower against his dismissal after he exposed alleged corruption in EdCIL, saying it will instill moral courage among whistleblowers.

"The Commission also finds that the appellant is a recognised whistleblower by CVC and deserves protection. He was subjected to unnecessary harassment for the last two years," Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu pointed out.

The case related to one Rajesh Gauhari, who claimed to have exposed corruption in EdCIL following which he was dismissed from service.

He claimed that his appeal against the dismissal from the service was not put up to the President inspite of the same recommended by the then Human Resources Minister.

The then Additional Secretary Amita Sharma had dismissed the appeal, saying it was time barred whereas Gauhari claimed that appeals before the President do not have any time limit.

Gauhari filed an RTI application to know the status of his representation. After not getting satisfactory reply, he approached the Commission to know what had happened to his representation, why it was not placed before the Minister and why was it wrongly claimed that his representation was time barred, especially when there was no time limitation in such cases.

"There is merit in the appeal of the appellant against imposition of disproportionate penalty against him for certain irregularities.It appears that the representation of the appellant was not placed before the Minister for the last 2 years," Acharyulu noted.

The appellant alleged that some unknown people are obstructing placement of his representation before the Minister.

"The appellant has the right to know the action taken on his representation which depended upon bringing the same before the Honble Minister for HRD. If the whistleblower like the appellant is not protected, and bureaucratic redtapism prevents his representation from being considered by the Hon'ble Minister, it will be impossible for the political executive government at the Centre to fulfill its

commitment to fight against corruption," he said.

Acharyulu termed it a "fit case" to be considered by the Minister for HRD and said the respondent authority (ministry officials) has a duty both moral and legal under the RTI Act, to bring the representation of the appellant before the Minister.

"The Commission also recommends the Minister for HRD, Smriti Irani, to positively consider representation of the appellant Rajesh Gouhari and instill moral courage among whistleblowers to expose corruption and irregularities and at the same time discourage forces who try to facilitate inaction and delay by raising technical obstructions," he said.

The Commissioner also issued a show cause notice to the Ministry officials to explain why compensation should not be awarded to the appellant for causing a delay of two years in placing the representation before the Minister, inspite of several endorsements by higher officers.

PTI
New Delhi: India has approached several countries, including Japan, Russia and the UK, for handing over of documents relating to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and some of them have responded, Rajya Sabha was told on Wednesday.

Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said the issue of handing over documents relating to Netaji

had been taken up with governments of Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"Responses from the governments of Russian Federation, Federal Republic of Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have been received. Responses of Austria, Republic of Italy and the USA are awaited," he said in a written reply.

Chaudhary said the government has declassified all the available classified files and transferred these files to National Archives of India for permanent retention.

All declassified files pertaining to Netaji received in the National Archive are first subjected to preliminary conservation and digitisation, before being released in public domain. PTI
By Devendra Jalihal and Shreepad Karmalkar

[Editor's note: A group of 56 faculty members from IIT Madras wrote to President Pranab Mukherjee on 23 February (Tuesday) voicing a concern that institutions of higher learning in India have been turned into warzones. Devendra Jalihal and Shreepad Karmalkar, professors of Electrical Engineering Department, IIT Madras, and signatories of this petition, explain the rationale of their petition.]

A university is a place of universal knowledge related to the world inside and outside human beings. For practical purposes, this universal knowledge is divided into a variety of disciplines, namely  humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, formal sciences and applied sciences. The goal of universities across the world has been to absorb, store, generate and disseminate this universal knowledge, and transmit it from one generation to the next. This is the reason for funding a university from tax payers' money.

India has a huge young population. Young minds are impressionable. Hence, educating them and ensuring social justice without them falling prey to the language of abuse and hate is a major challenge. This challenge can be met not by agitations, but by dialogue and debate among various perspectives in a calm atmosphere. If instead of the above lofty ideals, debate and dissent based on unfettered freedom speech becomes the foremost goal of a university, dialogue and debate may slip into hate and abuse as has happened in some Indian universities. These universities would then cease to attract talent or be crucial national assets in addressing problems; they would nurture despair rather than hope. This is what we alerted in our petition to the president.

The Presidents of India notably Pranab Mukherjee and Late Abdul Kalam are patrons of knowledge and have been calling for Indian universities to reach landmark successes and to be renowned in the world. For this purpose, universities ought to have a metric of success. This metric could be different for different universities and disciplines. For example, IITs are trying to promote a metric based on the contributions of IIT graduates to the national or global economy. A Pan IIT study conducted in 2008 came out with a figure of Rs 20 lakh crore as the the total wealth generated by IITians. Eventually, the tax payer will judge the performance of a university by such metrics and not by agitations and protests.

(Inputs from KK Mukherjee and Narayanan N are gratefully acknowledged.)
Thrissur: A 35-year old pastor was on Tuesday sentenced to 40 years rigorous imprisonment by a court in Thrissur for sexually abusing a minor girl in Peechi two years ago.

Pronouncing the verdict, Judge K P Sudheer of Special Additional Sessions court, trying cases under Protection of Children From Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, observed the accused deserved no leniency as he brutally raped a hapless school girl and deserved maximum punishment.

He also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on accused Sanil K James who had raped the seventh standard student in the Peechi church premises where he stayed.

The accused, hailing from Nedumkandam in Kottayam district, was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment under IPC 376 and 20 years rigorous imprisonment under various sections of POCSO Act. The court ordered that the sentences would run concurrently.

The Judge also ordered the government to pay Rs three lakhs to the 12-year-old girl from its Vicitm Compensation Fund.

According to the prosecution, the pastor, who then belonged to the Peechi Salvation Army Church, had raped the girl during the summer of April 2014.

It also said another case was pending against the pastor for raping another minor girl.

Police filed a case based on complaint received by Thrissur Child Welfare Committee.

PTI
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the decks for the issuance of dance bar licences to hotels and restaurants in Mumbai as it modified the conditions for the permit and excluded installation of CCTV from restaurants and dance performance place.

Giving three days' time to the owners of the hotels and restaurants to comply with the modified conditions, the apex court bench, comprising Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Shiva Kirti Singh, said competent authorities would issue licences in 10 days and thereafter.

"We are certain that competent authorities will not conceive of anything to stall the grant of licence," the court said and added that the authorities will "comply with the command of this court and not venture to defy it".

The court order came after the Maharashtra government watered down some of the conditions for the grant of dance bar licences.

The petitioner Indian Hotels and Restaurant Association had told the court on 24 February that some of the conditions being imposed for the grant of licence were unreasonable.

On 24 February, the court had asked the Maharashtra government to revisit the conditions.

IANS
If there is one arm of the Indian democracy that is totally a law unto itself, it is the judiciary. The executive is accountable to the legislature, the judiciary can vet executive and legislative decisions, and the elected legislature is accountable to the people, but the judiciary is accountable to no one. The judiciary selects it own judges and barring an improbable case of impeachment, there is no process by which the judiciary can be held accountable for its actions and follies.

So when the Chief Justice of India, TS Thakur, is quoted by The Times of India on 28 February of complaining about a two-month delay in clearing the process for the appointment of high court judges, he should ask himself: how much is this delay the result of the Supreme Court's own self-serving decision to strike down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), a constitutional amendment backed nearly unanimously by parliament and by 20 state legislatures?

CJI Thakur is quoted as saying the government "can't be "sitting over the proposal (on judges' appointment) for more than two months". He also said: "...It is actually (for) the protection of the rights of the people for whom the laws were made that you (must) act. It is not for any personal glorification that the court act(s), it is for the enforcement of these laws. I don't know, but I think time has come when you do audit of the performance of the government, when we need to do audit of the government by some processes."

It is surprising that the CJI, who would surely have read the constitution in law school, should think government processes are beyond audit. There are several constitutional processes, including CAG audits, scrutiny by parliamentary committees and the opposition, testing of government decisions by the judiciary, some level of advisory interventions by the President, and final approval or disapproval by the humble citizen in elections.

So to pin the blame for delays in appointing judges on the government strains credulity, especially when the Supreme Court itself took seven months to examine the NJAC and then rejected it when it would have been more appropriate to just read it down - by prescribing checks that could insulate the judiciary from political pressures.

Consider all the ways in which the judiciary itself lacks effective scrutiny and accountability.

First, it scuttled a clear constitutional provision that said higher judiciary judges will be appointed by the government after consulting the chief justice. The Supreme Court decided it would itself select judges. This was what the NJAC was meant to correct, but the court struck it down, thus voting for itself when it was an interested party in the litigation.

Second, in sector after sector, the court has encroached into executive and law-making terrain, the latest being the decision to ban diesel SUVs from being registered in the capital. Is it the court's job to decide what cars can be sold in Delhi?

Third, the apex court has no internal mechanism to monitor or check corruption or malfeasance in the judiciary.

Fourth, the long delays in courts have less to do with government and more to do with the long vacations courts give themselves and the corruption in the lower judiciary which helps moneyed litigants prolong cases indefinitely.

Fifth, the two-month delay in appointing judges is largely because the Supreme Court itself asked the government to work out procedures for the appointment of judges. If the court can take seven months to deliver a judgment on NJAC, surely it can wait three months for government to evolve a procedure for short-listing candidates after consulting interested parties?

CJI Thakur said: "Today there are 450 vacancies in the high courts across the country. 450 is a large number which is almost 50 percent of working strength of the high courts... You also know there is a delay in filling those vacancies, which was been halted due to the bringing of National Judicial Commission."

This is an unfair statement. If the bringing in of NJAC that can be blamed for delays, surely the court's decision to scuttle it also shares the guilt for it? What stopped the Supreme Court from accepting the NJAC as valid temporarily while the case was being decided? This would have allowed judges to be appointed while the case was being heard.

CJI Thakur should introspect. The judiciary is largely unaccountable and has become a law unto itself. This can't continue indefinitely. It continues only because the polity is deeply divided right now and the judiciary is using this opportunity to enter areas that are not in its domain. It is effectively negating the people's mandate by disempowering the executive.
New Delhi: Delhi Police has urged the Director General of Health Services to form a medical board to examine test reports in connection with Sunanda Pushkar's death.

A letter was sent to the DG Health Services after the Special Investigation Team probing the case failed to draw any conclusion from the AIIMS medical board's opinion vis-a-vis the FBI report on Pushkar's viscera sample and other evidence in the case, a police source said on Tuesday.

The SIT had earlier written to the AIIMS medical board seeking further clarification on their opinion, but the response of the board is still awaited.

Even a day before his retirement, Delhi Police chief BS Bassi had said the case will be taken to its logical conclusion.

The AIIMS medical board's opinion on the FBI report had suggested that Sunanda, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, died of poisoning with the presence of Alprax found in her stomach.

Last month, the police questioned Tharoor for the third time in connection with his wife's death.

51-year-old Sunanda was found dead in her room at a five-star hotel in south Delhi in January 2014. A case of murder was registered in the matter around one year later following which her viscera sample and some other evidence in the case were sent to an FBI laboratory in the USA.

PTI
With forensic investigators unable to conclusively identify human remains among the charred mass that was recovered at the site of the 2 January Pathankot attack, official sources told The Indian Express on the incidents two-month anniversary on Wednesday that its not yet possible to ascertain whether there were four terrorists involved or six.

The National Security Guard (NSG), which had to be called in to quell the terror strike at the air force base during the attacks, initially believed there were six attackers involved. However, with no material evidence to back up this claim, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) now believes there might have been only four. The investigators say that not only were there no human remains left, like teeth and bones at the spot, there were also no traces of any weapons or grenades, which are likely to be used in a terror attack.

For the sake of argument, Im willing to concede the fire was intense enough to reduce corpses to dust, a senior NIA officer was quoted by the paper as saying. However, the fact is that assault rifles or pistols dont melt in fires. Even exploding ammunition leave behind metal shrapnel.

According to the NSG, firefighting began shortly after dawn on 2 January, 2016, resulting in the killing of four terrorists. However, even as New Delhi believed the attack had been successfully neutralised, information from the Jammu and Kashmir police indicated the presence of two more gunmen. NSG commandos searched nearby buildings and reached a door which was found to be locked from inside. And while they couldnt detect the presence of anybody inside, a grenade was lobbed at them, injuring five commandos, one of them seriously.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has reacted strongly to Defence Minister Manohar Parrikars claim that non-state actors may have acted with the support of the establishment. Foreign Affairs Advisor Sartaj Aziz, during a visit to Washington on Tuesday, said, I think it is out of date. This is the old narrative which India has been following. The situation (in Pakistan) is now very different.

He further added that Islamabad may make Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the terror attack, available to Indian investigating agencies for questioning, but only after he has been investigated by the Pakistan authorities themselves. "First of all, we have to investigate ourselves and (find out) what it is... if he (Masood) does something (wrong), we would move against (him), Aziz said.

Pakistan has also set up a five-member team which would be visiting Pathankot in the coming weeks to conduct its own independent probe. Following this, India-Pakistan foreign secretary-level talks would also take place, Aziz added. A case has been registered and the special investigation team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon, he said.

We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues  including the Kashmir dispute  is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India, he said, adding that Pakistan had also proposed a mechanism to address concerns on terrorism.

New Delhi too took note of the action taken by Pakistan. Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju informed Lok Sabha on Wednesday that Islamabad has, for the first time, registered a case to investigate the role of its citizens in the Pathankot attack.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: The World Culture Festival of the Art of Living (AOL) Foundation headed by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar threatens to leave the ecologically sensitive and fragile Yamuna floodplains with irreparable damage. Environment activists are shocked over the brazen disregard for the health of the dying river, which holds a significant place in the Hindu mythology, from the organisers. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has already recommended a fine of Rs 120 crore on them for violation of ecological norms but it has hardly deterred preparations. The three-day international event, which is expected to attract 35 lakh visitors from across the globe, begins from 11 March.

Why NGT finds it alarming

This is what the report of a four-member committee of the NGT led by Shashi Shekhar, secretary, ministry of water resources, has found:

 The entire area of the flood plain between river Yamuna and DND Flyover levelled.

 Small water bodies that existed earlier have been filled up and all natural vegetation has been removed. Most of the trees have been removed or lopped.

 Construction debris dumped on some of the roads constructed along the river margin for the festival.

 Two ramps have been constructed joining the DND flyover with flood plains for providing access to VIPs up to the stage constructed on flood plains.

 One pontoon bridge has been constructed on river Yamuna and another under construction. Few more are proposed on the Yamuna and Barapullah drain (a total of five).

 Parking sites and 650 portable toilets on both eastern and western sides of the river. Thousands of vehicles are expected to be parked.

 An enormous stage (about 1,200 feet long x 200 feet wide x 40 feet high) is being erected with steel pipes, wooden planks and fibre glass domes, where thousands of artistes are expected to perform. The site littered with construction material.

 The western side of the river  50 to 60 hectares floodplain completely destroyed; natural vegetation comprising reeds, shrubs, trees, etc has been completely removed. Large numbers of birds and other natural life on the floodplain have vanished.

What it sees as the potential long-term damage:

 The site is a meeting point of Barapullah drain and river Yamuna. Itll get blocked.

 The floodplains where the Yamuna water gets recharged will get damaged.

 The natural life in this bio-diversity region will either move out or perish.

 The birds will leave the place.

 Have cascading effect on nearby Okhla Bird Sanctuary.

The Yamuna floodplain is a highly sensitive ecological zone. To organise its culture festival, the AOL Foundation has illegally cleared the entire stretch of wetland and marshy area. Its total devastation and we fail to understand how the person (Sri Sri Ravi Shankar), an apostle of non-violence and spiritualism can allow it, Manoj Kumar Misra, convener of Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, an NGO working for the restoration of river Yamuna, told Firstpost.

Besides Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan, there are several groups who have joined hands and mobilising citizens and activists to oppose the event.

Swechha India, a New Delhi-based organisation working in the field of environmental protection, has launched an online signature campaign Sign the petition: Say NO to World Culture Festival. Using the platform of change.org, it has petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Chief Justice of India, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar urging them to shift the venue and save Yamuna floodplains from being destroyed.

Vimelendu Jha, executive director, Swechha India met Ravi Shankar on Tuesday to personally convince him to call-off the event, but to no effect.

I had an hour-long meeting with Ravi Shankarji but failed to convince him of the devastating effect the event would have later. They were dismissive and gave strange logic in favour of organising the festival on floodplains. Weve been working on these floodplains for the past 15 years, but this event will negate all our efforts. Weve launched an online campaign and fight it till the end, Jha said.

The Delhi governments minister for water resources Kapil Mishra, who once took part in saving the Yamuna, has now lent his support to the controversial festival stating it to be a good idea and it would connect lakhs of people with the River Yamuna. Environmentalists have criticised ministers statement, calling it vote-bank politics.

Its so unfortunate that Kapil Mishra, who took part in the Yamuna Satyagraha a year ago to make Yamuna clean, is now supporting this anti-environment event. Its all due to vote-bank politics. The Delhi Development Authority, which is supposed to implement the judgment of NGT has given permission to organisers although it doesnt have the authority to do so, remarked Misra, a forestry and wildlife expert.

In March 2015, around 1,000 people comprising religious leaders, devotees, farmers and activists had marched from Vrindavan to Delhi to protest against pollution of the Yamuna and launched Yamuna Muktikaran Abhiyan (save Yamuna campaign) and the march had ended in Delhi on 22 March on World Water Day. Now a spiritual guru is organising an event that would completely destroy floodplains of Yamuna. It has violated the courts order delivered in the past, when a similar event was organised. Declaring it a sensitive zone, the court had ordered a ban on such large-scale events. Our Yamuna, one of the most worshipped rivers in India, exits as a drain in Delhi. Its Delhis lifeline and even a little misstep might turn into a big disaster in the future, said Jha.

AOL Foundation refutes allegations

Its incorrect to say that were damaging the floodplains. AOL Foundation, which is equally concerned, has been involved in river and environment conservation projects. In 2010, we organised Meri Delhi, Meri Yamuna campaign for the protection of Yamuna, which was followed by the Clean Delhi drive. The government has spent crores (of rupees), but the river has turned into a dirty nullah. The vegetables growing on floodplains are poisonous.

To the best of our knowledge we have taken permission from authorities concerned. This process has been going on for the past seven to eight months, but the NGOs have raised objections only now when hardly 10 days are left for this international festival. Instead of damaging the river and its floodplains, well revive it, green it up, Rashmi Paliwal, apex member of AOL Foundation told Firstpost.

But, activists are not ready to budge and waiting for the next hearing of NGT.

Read the report by the NGT-appointed Shashi Shekhar Committee below:

Report of Committee Named by NGT - Shashi Shekhar Committee
New Delhi: AIADMK members created ruckus in Lok Sabha for the second day on Wednesday demanding action against former Union Minister P Chidambaram's son Karti on the Aircel-Maxis issue as Speaker Sumitra Mahajan allowed them to raise the matter later in the day.

As soon as the House met, AIADMK MPs trooped into the Well shouting slogans and demanded action from the government.

Amid the din, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the government has no problem in discussing the matter in any manner and also take necessary action.

When Mahajan said she was ready to allow discussion on the issue after Question Hour, the protesting AIADMK members returned to their seats satisfied by the Speaker's assurance.

AIADMK members were earlier raising slogans like 'NDA sarkar take action' and displaying copies of a newspaper which has claimed that Karti has invested in real estate in various countries, as per investigations by Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises.

Protesting against the Speaker's decision to allow discussion on the matter, Congress members rushed into the Well. Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge wondered how can it be allowed.

The Congress members were heard shouting 'we want privilege motion'. Congress and other party members have given notices for privilege motion against HRD Minister Smriti Irani for allegedly misleading the House.

In response, Mahajan said, "I want to make it clear that there is a procedure (related to privilege motion notice)".

Left members were also seen vociferously demanding something which could not be heard amid the din.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present in the House.

PTI
With a session of Parliament on in the National Capital, a corruption scandal can never too far away. While the initial part of the Budget Session saw much political posturing over Rohith Vemula's suicide and the police action on JNU students, both Houses of Parliament saw chaos over allegations of financial misdemeanor against Karti Chidambaram.

Both the Lok Sabha speaker and the Rajya Sabha PJ Kurien repeatedly expressed their dismay over the disruptions in the proceedings, with the latter going to the extent of saying that it was a 'murder of democracy.' However, as the protests continued on Wednesday, Kurien's outburst appears to have had no effect.

For the second day in a row, AIADMK MP's have raised slogans of 'we want justice' while waving a report from the Pioneer on allegations against Karti Chidambaram, the son of former home minister P Chidambaram. The newspaper has alleged that Karti has 'built a huge empire' by making investments in real estate across the world, as revealed in a joint raid of the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax department. It was interesting that the AIADMK MPs cited the newspaper Pioneer, known to be a mouthpiece of the BJP, while making their charges against the Congress. Not surprisingly, the Congress questioned whether the AIADMK was discreetly helping the BJP.

Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said: "This is a deliberate attempt on the part of the AIADMK so that we don't discuss the privilege motion (against HRD minister Smriti Irani)." The AIADMK's protests also assume significance in view of the elections to be held in Tamil Nadu to be held later this year.

However, the AIADMK was not the only party which launched an attack on Chidambaram's son. On Tuesday, the Odisha-based Biju Janata Dal (BJD), also submitted two notices in the Lok Sabha over the alleged Aircel-Maxis scam, according to a report in The Indian Express. Apart from Karti Chidambaram, a leader from the Congress' UPA ally DMK, Dayanidhi Maran, is also being investigated for his role in the alleged Aircel-Maxis scam.

Later in the day, P Chidambaram also faced allegations over his role in the Ishrat Jahan encounter. After the ruckus in Parliament, union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad held a press conference accusing him of changing an affidavit related to the case, as per a report in Business Standard.

The first of the two affidavits filed by the home ministry in 2009 had stated that Ishrat was a woman activist of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, while the second one said that 'media reports do not constitute intelligence inputs and intelligence inputs do not constitute conclusive proof,' as per a report by NDTV. While the first affidavit stated that it was not a fit case for a CBI probe, the subsequent statement said that the ministry did not have any objection to the CBI probe.

Facing the political heat on multiple issues, the Congress too has launched a counter attack on the BJP. In the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, Congress members referred to a newspaper report which said Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel's daughter's partner was given land at around 92 percent concessional rate.

As per a report, business associates of Gujarat chief minister's daughter Anar Patel got 422 acres of land in 2010 from the state government at Rs.15 per square metre  a huge 91.6 percent discount on the government's stamp duty rate of Rs 180 per square metre.

As corruption allegations fly thick and fast, the ongoing Parliament session may well be held hostage to political point-scoring, rather than being allowed to conduct legislative business.

With inputs from IANS
The sequel to the hilarious 2010 satire, Tere Bin Laden, could very well have been a great YouTube gag, starring Sikander Kher, the most comical villain.

The superb casting has a hands down winner in Kher, who plays a whacky double role of an American agent, DavidDoSomething and Punjabi Haallywood producer, Chadda.

In the story, we have President Obama (perfect look alike actor) rapping about his victory over Osama to an America who wants proof about Osamas death. However, Khalil (Piyush Mishra), an arms dealer from Pakistan wants to show Osama alive to his own people. Sharma (Manish Paul), a film director ends up getting kidnapped, along with Paddi (Pradhuman Singh, also the co-writer), on the pretext of making a Hollywood film, by Obamas man, David turned into Kitthe Otthe Chaddha ( Kher), in the most unbelievable sequence.

The film gets too whacky for its own good at times. David, a white guy, turns brown; his makeover involves choosing between various wigs which include a Bengali wig and a Punjabi wig. Sure enough, he opts for the latter and lo and behold, turns into Chadda . The man actually has a screw (huge mole) on his neck, which he uses to change accents. In a strange way, this gag works for a screwball comedy, made totally howlarious by Khers performance.

Unrecognisable in the Punjabi wig, with amazing make-up and a huge paunch, Kher is a revelation. It is to writer/director, Abhishek Sharmas credit that he conceives a completely original character who transits from a Yankee special agent to a Punju pot-bellied Hollywood producer, by simply switching accents. As the best line in the film goes, somewhere in somewhere, you dont care where is what, when Kher interacts with his co-stars, his comic timing perfect.

Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive is a series of some delightful and laugh out loud moments, forcibly strung together into a feature film. It reminds you of a lovely evening spent goofing around with friends and snatches of funny conversations are replayed, which of course, end up in repeat laughter. The kind, where everyone is an insider on a silly joke and an outsider might understand bits of it and be just mildly amused by the ongoing bonhomie.

Those familiar with the film, and the chances are there are many  despite the small scale and reach will enjoy the brief recall scenes from the previous film, introduced in the beginning.

We see Ali Zafar this time in a bit role, as the successful hero of the first film, now turned too big for his starry boots. The story in the first film revolved around Zafar playing a young Pakistani reporter who sells a video about a fake Osama, in a bid to get a U.S visa. Abhishek Sharma, takes the story forward to a time when Osama is actually killed.

In the sequel, Manish Paul replaces Zafar who in his brief appearance, does an entertaining parody number,  six pack abs, sporting the trademark Bollywood torso, complete with a tattoo.

The film begins well showing terrorism as some sort of a sport by introducing Khalil practicing ineffectively with his weapons and using terms like landmine jumps. Likewise, the Americans are shown attacking the terrorists, as if participating in a video game. Obama, meanwhile is shown having nightmares and visions of Osama and landing in a psychiatric couch.

The newness of the concept quickly wears off. Dialogues and good performances come to the rescue. Osama is shown as gulabi gaalon waala and someone quips, director kya hota hai while a female actor (Sugandha Garg) claims, I want to do.. in the best climax sequence of the film.

Irrespective of the films occasional flaws, two people are definite contenders for film awards this year: Sikander Kher and his make-up artist.
The New York Times chief art critics have hailed the Nasreen Mohamedi odyssey at the Met Breuer as a beautiful survey of the closely related drawings and photographs of an artist finally becoming known for her visionary, culturally inflected vision of Minimalism. Even reviews that pan the Met for "botching it up" are singling out the Mohamedi retrospective for acclaim.

Supported by the Nita Ambani-led Reliance Foundation, which is pushing for more Indian art on a global stage, the Mohamedi exhibition will be open to public from March 18 to June 5 at Met Breuer - a new branch of the iconic Metropolitan museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art.

Links: Business Standard on Reliance Foundation toasting Nasreen Mohamedi in NY

On the day of the press preview March 1, the Met-led Facebook walkthrough with Nita Ambani and Sheena Wagstaff got worldwide viewership and proved the strength and reach of a great museums fourth outpost - online.

The oldest and most widely circulated art magazine in the world - ARTnews picks the Mohamedi show as one of the reasons to be optimistic about the Met's contemporary reboot, a sign of what's to come in giving art shows a wide angle that embraces more than just the western.

"Another fine sign is the elegant, understated retrospective of Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (19371990) on the Met Breuers second floor, which signals that the institution is staking a claim as a vital venue for presenting alternate strains of modernism, developed by artists from beyond the United States and Europe, which remain too little seen in the citys museums."

"The reopening of Marcel Breuer's iconic building on Madison Avenue represents an important chapter in the cultural life of New York City," said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Met said the opening represents an important chapter in the cultural life of New York City.

"Whether frequent or first-time visitors to our Fifth Avenue building or The Met Cloisters, we look forward to welcoming everyone to The Met Breuer, which provides an unparalleled opportunity to experience modern and contemporary art through the lens of the global breadth and historical reach of The Met's collection."

In other words, more art that looks more like a changing America itself.

Which is how the Nasreen Mohamedi retrospective found its place in the sun as New York warms to yet another powerhouse who has found a global career after life.

Generous with its nod for #IndiaAtTheMet and its place in the larger context of the epic transformation at the Met, the New York Times says the museum is on solid ground with its Mohamedi survey and also when bringing older art to life.

Spanning Mohamedi's entire career and bringing together more than 130 paintings, drawings, photographs, and rarely seen diaries, the exhibition traces the conceptual complexity and visual subtlety of the artist's oeuvre.

Nasreen Mohamedi is not the only artist embedded in the #IndiaAtTheMet push. Theres the workaholic Vijay Iyer, the the jazz pianist and composer who will hold court in the lobby-level gallery, playing concerts  sometimes as many as six sets a day  with a rotating crew of guests. Iyer performed at the inaugural press preview March 1 to ringing applause from around the world which played live on @firstpost via Periscope.

The Gothamist has put together a charming mosaic of images from all the galleries open during the press preview. On Mohamedi, Gothamist has this to say: "...used repetition and elegant straight lines to create captivating graphite and paper pieces. Her clean, high-contrast art recalls the music of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. It's deceptively simple but draws you in to a very deep and quiet place."

Another piece in the New York Times on the Breuer says that of the two opening exhibitions, "the Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990) is the more venturesome, introducing a figure whose name will be new to many Met visitors, though the art-language she speaks, abstraction, will not."

Writing in art net news, Ben Davis says the Met botches its first outing in contemporary art but singles out the Mohamedi display on the second floor as worthy of applause: "An exhibition dedicated to the late Indian painter Nasreen Mohamedi, on the Met Breuer's second floor and curated by Wagstaff herself, seems a more promising gesture towards telling new kinds of art histories. But that deserves a separate review."

More Links:

The Art Newspaper's sneak peek inside Met Breuer

More Asia, more India at one of the world's great museums

Asian treasures inside a 146 year old museum

The New Yorker on the Met finally embracing the 'now'
Beijing: A Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire and died in protest against the Chinese rule, in the first such action this year, a US government-funded radio station said on Wednesday.

Kalsang Wangdu self-immolated Monday afternoon near the Retsokha monastery in western Sichuan province's traditionally Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Kardze, Radio Free Asia reported. It said the monk called out for Tibetan independence while he burned, then died on the way to a hospital in the provincial capital of Chengdu.

Tibetan exile sources say at least 114 monks and laypeople have self-immolated over the past five years, with most of them dying. Radio Free Asia puts the number of self-immolations at 144 since 2009.

Information from the region, which is largely cut off from the rest of the province by security checkpoints, is extremely hard to obtain, and local officials are reportedly under orders to remain silent about self-immolations. An officer who answered the phone Wednesday at Kardze police headquarters and gave his surname as Li said no such incident had been reported.

"We are now in a period of preserving stability. If such a thing happens, we will make it known to the public," Li said over phone.

Radio Free Asia and other groups also reported that a 16-year-old Tibetan living in India also set himself on fire on Monday as a protest, but that he survived.

The protests are seen as an extreme expression of the anger and frustration felt by many Tibetans living under heavy-handed Chinese rule. Many protesters also call for the return of the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 amid an abortive uprising against Chinese forces who had occupied the Himalayan region a decade earlier.

Tibetan monks and nuns are among the most active opponents of Chinese rule in the region and the strongest proponents of Tibet's independent identity, prompting the authorities to subject them to some of the harshest and most intrusive restrictions.

Last year, Tibet's Communist Party chief, Chen Quanguo, demanded that Buddhist monasteries display the national flag as part of efforts to shore up Chinese patriotism.

Beijing blames the Dalai Lama and others for inciting the immolations and says it has made vast investments to develop the region's economy and improve quality of life. The Dalai Lama says he is against all violence.

AP
Maiduguri: Dozens of emaciated-looking Boko Haram members begging for food have surrendered in northeast Nigeria, the military and a civilian self-defense fighter said Wednesday.

Seventy-six people including children and women gave themselves up to soldiers last Saturday in Gwoza, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Maiduguri, according to a senior officer.

All are being detained at military headquarters in Maiduguri, the birthplace of Boko Haram and currently the command center of the war against the Islamic extremists, according to the officer. He insisted on anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to journalists.

The detainees said many more fighters want to surrender, a self-defense civilian fighter who helped escort them to Maiduguri told The Associated Press.

Food shortages could indicate that Nigeria's military is succeeding in choking supply routes of the Islamic extremists who have taken their fight across Nigeria's borders. Some 20,000 people have died in the six-year-old uprising. Boko Haram was declared the deadliest of all terror groups in 2014, surpassing the Islamic State group to which it declared allegiance in 2015.

Nigeria's military reported that dozens of Boko Haram fighters were surrendering in September and October last year. It promised those who give themselves up voluntarily that they will be rehabilitated through a de-radicalization program.

In the 10 months since he took office promising to halt the insurgency, President Muhammadu Buhari has replaced the leadership of the military, moved the headquarters for the fight from the distant capital, Abuja, to the heart of the northeastern insurgency and resupplied soldiers.

The military has driven the insurgents from the towns and villages where they had set up an Islamic caliphate but Boko Haram has returned to hit-and-run tactics and suicide bombings.

AP
DUBLIN The leading party after Ireland's election last week will try to form a government with other parties, including its nearest rival, after its outgoing coalition was rejected by voters, senior Fine Gael members said on Wednesday.

Punished last week by voters angry at the patchiness of Ireland's recovery, Prime Minister Enda Kenny's centre-right party is set to fall about 30 seats short of the 80 needed to form a majority in parliament, with two seats yet to be filled.

With the second- and third-largest parties, Fianna Fail, and Sinn Fein, ruling out a coalition with Fine Gael, analysts say Kenny will not reach a majority without eventually striking some sort of agreement with Fianna Fail.

"Despite the disappointing outcome, which did not return the outgoing Fine GaelLabour government, Fine Gael will be the largest group and we are determined to play our part in providing the Irish people with a government," Kenny said in a statement.

"We will engage fully and inclusively with other parties, groups and independent deputies to ensure that such a government is established."

Fine Gael minister Simon Coveney told national broadcaster RTE that included potentially talking to Fianna Fail. A senior Fianna Fail lawmaker, Barry Cowen, said his party may be willing to back a minority Fine Gael government under certain circumstances.

Kenny said that Fine Gael would meet on Thursday, a week before parliament resumes, to formulate a set of principles to guide its participation in a future government.

Fianna Fail has said it will put leader Micheal Martin forward as an alternative prime minister on March 10 but a senior member of the party said it was unlikely that either Martin or Kenny would garner enough support to win the vote.

Kenny would then have to resign and remain in place as caretaker premier until he or a replacement is voted in.

"It's quite possible, probable in fact, that nobody will be elected to the position of taoiseach (prime minister) and nobody will therefore be in a position to form a government on March 10," Fianna Fail's Willie O'Dea told RTE.

Martin raised the prospect of a more protracted delay on Monday by calling for a cross-party deal on reforming parliament before any coalition talks, a process he said could take more than a month. [nL8N1685NL]

Analysts believe it will take even longer to form a government. If the parties cannot agree, a second election would be required, potentially hampering any response to a possible exit by Britain from the European Union in a referendum in June.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth, Bernard Orr)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Moscow: A nanny accused of decapitating a young girl in her care then walking through the street brandishing the head, on Wednesday said "Allah ordered" the killing as she appeared at a Moscow court.

Suspect Gyulchekhra Bobokulova from Muslim-majority Uzbekistan  whom the press have dubbed "the bloody nanny"  was detained on Monday as she was waving the child's severed head outside a Moscow metro station. She was sent for psychiatric examinations.

"It was what Allah ordered," the 38-year-old told journalists as she was brought into the district court to have her arrest confirmed and extended.

Speaking in broken Russian from the suspect's cage, Bobokulova said: "Allah is sending a second prophet to give news of peace" and also complained that she was "hungry", had not been fed and would "die in a week".

"Hi to everyone," said the mother-of-three, waving at the crowd of journalists in the courtroom.

Investigator Olga Lapteva, who was clearly emotional, told the court that Bobokulova was suspected of committing an "extremely serious crime" and that she should face "a mandatory prison sentence of considerably more than three years."

The court confirmed the nanny's arrest and ordered her held in custody for two months as investigations continued.

Investigators said they were still trying to establish if Bobokulova had any accomplices.

Bobokulova has been undergoing psychiatric examinations since her detention over the murder of the girl, Nastya, whom the judge said was born in 2011. Investigators had initially estimated she was three or four years old.

She is suspected of butchering the girl, who had suffered from learning disabilities and epilepsy, at the family's apartment in northwestern Moscow, before torching it and fleeing the scene.

'Too monstrous for TV'

Witnesses reported seeing an agitated woman dressed in black who threatened to "blow everyone up" with one media report saying she shouted "Allahu Akbar"  Arabic for "God is greatest"  as she paced up and down outside a metro station.

The shocking incident has shaken usually hard-bitten Muscovites and people have flocked to the Oktyabrskoe Pole metro station to lay flowers and pray.

Russia's national television channels have, however, refused to cover the killing in a controversial move that the Kremlin defended as the subject was "probably too monstrous to be shown on television".

Many have questioned the professionalism of police after Bobokulova was allowed to pace up and down outside the metro station with the head for about 20 minutes.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the General Prosecutor said a probe would be launched into the matter.

The mass-circulation Moskovsky Komsomolets, citing Uzbek police, said the woman had suffered from schizophrenia for about 15 years.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing a close family friend, said the live-in nanny had recently become very religious, spent a lot of time online and had brought home a prayer mat.

AFP
Washington: Top NATO General Philip Breedlove on Tuesday warned US lawmakers that Russia is helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turn the refugee crisis into a "weapon" against the West.

Breedlove, the supreme allied commander in Europe for the 28-member military alliance who also heads the US military's European Command, said the massive flow of migrants from war-torn Syria has had a destabilizing effect on European countries they are fleeing to, and that worked to Moscow's advantage.

"Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve," Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Speaking of Russia's six-month air campaign in support of Assad, and the Syrian leader's use of barrel bombs in civilian areas, Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians.

"These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can't find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem," Breedlove said.

Breedlove, who was due to brief Pentagon reporters later Tuesday, is in Washington partly to drum up support for a proposed sharp increase in money available to US forces in Europe.

The coming year's budget includes $3.4 billion  quadruple last year's amount  for the so-called European Reassurance Initiative.

The four-star general also accused Russia of posing a growing threat to the United States itself.

AFP
Washington: Pakistan is "anxiously waiting" for the Indo-Pak Foreign Secretary-level talks, a top aide of Pakistan Prime Minister said on Tuesday and asked India not to give the non-state actors "a veto" over bilateral ties.

Sartaj Aziz, the foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that his government's policy direction with regard to fight against terrorism is "clear" but conceded that the "implementation is not very easy".

He said a Special Investigative Team (SIT) is scheduled to visit India to investigate the Pathankot terrorist attack and collect samples and evidences.

But the progress on the investigation depends on the co-operation from India, he said in response to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations  a top US think-tank.

"As our policy of peaceful neighbourhood, we have reached out to India. We are anxiously waiting for the dialogue to be resumed. The Pathankot incident disrupted the process of the two foreign secretaries' meetings," Aziz said.

"Once we begin the dialogue, I am sure we would be able to deal with some issues even if we are not able to solve all the issues at dispute. Our main purpose is that Line of Control should be peaceful, normal relationship should start, sporting links should resume so that tension decreases. That prepares the ground for dealing with more difficult issues," Aziz said.

Responding to a question on how Pakistan would manage the "ability of the spoilers" to take off track the peace efforts of the government in particular with that with India, he conceded that this is a tough task at their disposal.

"The question is obviously people who want to disrupt these talks, non-state actors of course. No country has totally controlled them. So for somebody to orchestrate an incident, with people on both sides of the border, these kinds of incidents would always take place. We have been urging India not to give a veto to these non-state groups.

"There is one incident and the whole relationship collapses," Aziz said.

Observing that a great deal of the problem being faced by Pakistan today is the result of fighting other people's war, including the war against Russia by Afghan Mujahedeen and the US.

"Should, we have done that in retrospect, I do not know. Look at the cost to us.. both guns and drugs. We have destroyed our economic potential in last 20-25 years because of the one decision that we took," he said.

Ironically military rulers of that time took such decisions to stay in power.

"We have now decided enough to enough. We must look after our own borders, look after our own country, must develop our economy and not become part of anything that does not directly affect us," he noted.

Pakistan, he argued, has shown to India that it wants to strongly deal with terrorist groups.

"Terrorism is a common threat. In India they have one or two incident a year. We have an incident every week. Therefore, we have suffered much more from terrorism that anybody else. We have told them that in our relationship they have been interfering not through non-state actors but through state actors. So therefore, let's improve our relationship," he said.

Aziz hoped that India would provide Pakistan necessary evidence to carry the investigation of those involved in the Pathankot terrorist attack.

"In one interview in an Indian newspaper, what I said was that so far the information given is telephone call, is numbers which are linked to some. Out of those three-four (numbers), one was traced to one particular organizations head office. That persuaded us to take action against that (organisations) and preventive detention of their leaders and sealing (of its office)," he said.

"The next step is to identify the four people who carried out the attack. And there the photograph provided, finger prints provided are not enough to link with our database.

"The Special Investigation Team which is going to India soon, will try to get proper photograph of the face, because they are people lying underground and you can't match them with your database and proper finger prints which would also enable us to find out whether they are Pakistanis or not. That is step number one," he said.

"The link of those with the telephone number and the organisations would be the next step. Right now we can't pre-judge as to who is responsible.

"Anybody can dial that particular number from India. That is not very difficult. We know what the number of that organisation is. But to establish (the links), we require further evidence. Whether they were using the kind of communication...because they were using the phone of someone who were murdered," he said.

"In a very short time we have prepared the requirement we have for additional evidence. It would depend on the visit of the SIT team to Delhi next week. As a result of that hopefully India would cooperate fully, give us provide us additional evidence, which would then enable us to proceed against whosoever is suspected," Aziz said.

PTI
Washington: A piece of wreckage from a Boeing 777, likely from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that mysteriously vanished nearly two years ago with 239 people, was found washed ashore on the coast of Mozambique, a media report on Wednesday quoted an US official as saying.

The newly discovered debris, found over the weekend, is on its way to Malaysia for further examination. The wreckage is a piece of horizontal stabilizer skin, CNN reported, quoting an unnamed US official as saying.

A second aviation source told the network that there is no record of any Boeing 777 missing other than Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared on 8 March, 2014, with 239 people on board, including five Indians.

But Malaysia Airlines called the identification "speculative."

"It is too speculative at this point for MAS to comment," the airline said, using its initials.

The mystery of what happened to the plane remains unsolved. The search has turned up some aircraft debris, but also false leads.

In September, French investigators confirmed that aircraft debris found on Reunion Island in July was from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.

Debris found in Thailand in mid-January turned out not to be from MH370.

The disappearance of MH370 remains one of aviation's greatest mysteries.

The Beijing-bound flight took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia early in the morning.

At 1:19 am, as the plane was flying over the South China Sea, Malaysian air traffic controllers radioed the crew to contact controllers in Ho Chi Minh City for the onward flight through Vietnamese airspace.

Shortly afterward, air traffic controllers in Malaysia lost contact with the plane somewhere over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The aircraft's transponder, which identifies the plane and relays details like altitude and speed to controllers, stopped transmitting and Flight MH370 seemingly disappeared without a trace.

Malaysian authorities revealed later that military radar had tracked the plane as it turned back to the west and flew across the Malaysian Peninsula, up the Strait of Malacca, before flying out of radar range at 2:14 am and vanishing once again over southern Indian Ocean.

Last week, next-of-kin of some passengers filed a slew of lawsuits over the plane's disappearance, with some hopeful that court scrutiny will help reveal answers about what befell the ill-fated plane.

Investigators believe the plane was diverted and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but neither a crash site nor cause have been found so far though millions of dollars have been spent to scour the seas to recover the wreckage.

PTI
Rawalpindi: Tens of thousands of Islamist supporters of Mumtaz Qadri chanting provocative slogans on Tuesday attended his funeral, a day after the ex-police commando was executed for killing liberal Punjab governor Salman Taseer who sought reforms in Pakistan's controversial blasphemy law.

"Qadri, your blood will bring the revolution" and "The punishment for a blasphemer is beheading" were heard as supporters of Qadri threw flowers at the casket and flocked the historic Liaquat Bagh ground in the heart of Rawalpindi, less than 20 kms from Rawalpindi.

While a police official said that over 15,000 people were present inside the sprawling ground in the garrison city, private estimate put the number of those attending the funeral nearly 1,00,000.

The roads to Liaquat Bagh were blocked off but thousands arrived on foot. Roads around government buildings, the Parliament and diplomatic compounds were also closed.

The gathering was peaceful as the ambulance carrying the body inched through the sea of supporters to the burial site at Qadri's ancestral village near Bhara Kahu in suburbs of Islamabad.

Pakistan remained on high alert as security personnel were deployed at all main junctions and sensitive areas in the capital and the adjacent Rawalpindi to avoid any untoward incident as some supporters were also seen carrying sticks.

"Special measures have been taken to check any untoward incident," said an Interior Ministry official.

Fearing violence by Qadri's supporters, most of the private schools in twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have been closed for a second day.

Former police commando Qadri, who shot Taseer 28 times in broad daylight in an upmarket locality of Islamabad in 2011, was hanged in Adialia jail in Rawalpindi on Monday.

His execution triggered protests by thousands of Islamists who called it a "black day". Within hours of the hanging, street protests broke out in several cities by the supporters of Qadri, who considered him as a hero for defending the faith.

The supporters blocked roads and forced many shopkeepers to close down their stores.

The biggest protest was held in Karachi with around 8,000 people taking to the streets.

After the execution, Qadri's body was handed over to his family living in Sadiqabad area of Rawalpindi where hundreds of his supporters belonging to radical religious groups gathered to mourn his death.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, with even unproven allegations often triggering mob violence.

The controversial law was introduced by former military dictator Zia-ul Haq in 1980s and so far hundreds of people have been charged under it.

PTI
KAMPALA One of the candidates who sought to end Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's thirty years in power in last month's presidential vote filed a petition on Tuesday seeking to nullify Museveni's victory due to widespread irregularities.

Museveni, 71, who came to power in 1986 and is one of Africa's longest-serving rulers, won the Feb. 18 vote with 60 percent of the votes.

Former prime minister Amama Mbabazi, Museveni's ally-turned-challenger, won less than two percent of the vote, but has accused Uganda's security services of intimidating candidates and has questioned how the votes were tallied.

Opposition candidate Kizza Besigye, who won 35 percent of the vote but has dismissed the tally as fraudulent, missed Tuesday's deadline, with officials from his party saying Besigye's repeated detentions had made it impossible to mount a challenge.

Mbabazi's lawyer, Severino Twinobusingye said that delays in getting ballot material to constituencies, which delayed the voting process for hours in some places, improper supervision of voting, and voter-bribery had all tainted the results.

"The offences committed and the non-compliance with the law substantially affected the result," he said, adding the court should annul the results and hold "another election."

The European Union's observer mission said the vote had been conducted in an "intimidating" atmosphere, while the United States has voiced concerns about Besigye's frequent detentions.

Under Uganda's electoral laws, a loser in a presidential election has ten days from the day the results are announced to lodge a challenge in Uganda's Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Registrar, Tom Chemutai, confirmed that Mbabazi had filed a petition, and said the chief justice would form a panel to hear the petition and give a verdict within 30 days.

Deputy government spokesperson, Shaban Bantariza said they welcomed Mbabazi's court challenge but did not comment on the specific assertions.

Francis Mwijukye, a senior official from Besigye's party, said that Ugandan security personnel had repeatedly blocked Besigye from leaving his home or receiving visits from lawyers and party officials in recent days, impeding the party's ability to build its challenge.

"We were failed by the state... We couldn't take a petition to the supreme court," he said.

Besigye, who has challenged Museveni and lost in three previous elections, also challenged the election results in 2001 and 2006. Although justices agreed that there had been vote rigging, they said it had not been enough to affect the overall result.

(Reporting by Elias Biryabarema; editing by Edith Honan and Richard Balmforth)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
JEDDAH Saudi Arabia's aviation regulator is in talks with government agencies to set up free zones at Jeddah and Riyadh airports as part of a long-term plan to diversify the kingdom's economy away from oil, its chairman told Reuters on Wednesday.

"This is not a simple development of a free zone; there's a lot of agencies involved. The starting point would be one in Jeddah Airport and one in Riyadh Airport," Faisal al-Sugair, vice-chairman of the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), said in an interview.

The free zones would aim to attract foreign businesses through relaxed licences, visa and taxation rules, available to various industries and services. They would be large enough to include manufacturing facilities, Sughair said.

The authority, which oversees all the country's 27 airports, announced plans in November to privatise Saudi Arabia's international and domestic airports by 2020 as the kingdom seeks foreign investment to support state finances.

Sugair said the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA) and Public Investment Fund (PIF) were working on the free zones as part of the National Transformation Plan, a package of reforms meant to boost the non-oil private sector.

"It's led by CEDA and the PIF, working together with the Ministry of Commerce and obviously GACA to develop the right concept for these free zones, but that's going to take some time," he said.

Saudi Arabia, with finances hit by low oil prices, announced plans last year to shrink a record state budget deficit with spending cuts, reforms to energy subsidies and a drive to raise revenues from taxes and privatisation.

Sugair said he expected bids for Jeddah's King Abdulaziz International Airport, Saudi's busiest, by the end of April.

Work on the new Terminal 5 at Riyadh's King Khaled International Airport would be completed in May, he said. T5 will be run as a concession by Dublin Airport Authority before the rest of the airport is itself privatised.

Sugair said he expects approval from CEDA's privatisation committee to come in April, after which point fundraising for upgrades at the kingdom's other airports would come exclusively from non-governmental sources.

"Once we corporatise, no more government funding. That's fundamental. If we cannot get that, we're wasting our time," he said.

(Writing by Nadia Saleem and Katie Paul, editing by David Evans)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
ACCRA Turkey stands ready to help fight the growing threat of terrorism in west Africa under a new strategic partnership that aims to boost trade and other ties with the continent, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.

Addressing members of Ghana's parliament during a two-day visit to Accra, Erdogan said Turkey was well placed to help African countries combat terrorism, an allusion to its decades-long fight against Kurdish separatist rebels as well as other groups including Islamist militants.

"Turkey has a vast experience in combating terrorism and we understand those countries suffering at the hands of terrorism best," he said, citing recent attacks by Islamic militants in Mali and Burkina Faso.

At least 28 people from 12 countries were killed in January when Islamist jihadists attacked a hotel and a restaurant in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou. The attacks followed a similar raid on a luxury hotel in Mali's capital Bamako in November which left 20 dead.

Erdogan said developing countries, including in Africa, needed to push harder for reforms of the United Nations Security Council to make it more responsive to their needs in times of crisis, adding that the body as currently constituted only served the interests of a few "elite" countries.

The Security Council's five permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

"The Security Council of the United Nations is not active in Syria, in northern Africa, or northern Iraq ... and its failure to interfere in troubled countries should be of concern to all and that's why we need to push for reforms in the Council," he said.

Erdogan, accompanied by some 150 Turkish businesspeople, is keen to open up new markets for his country's exporters, to seek new investment opportunities in fast-growing African economies and boost Ankara's diplomatic profile on the global stage.

Turkey is set to significantly expand its trade with Africa, Erdogan said, though he gave no figures. His tour of west Africa also includes Ivory Coast, Guinea and Nigeria.

(Reporting by Kwasi Kpodo; Editing by Gareth Jones)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: The US and Pakistan have emphasised on the need for peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue and called on "all parties" in the region to act with "maximum restraint" for reducing tensions.

"The US and Pakistan emphasised the importance of meaningful dialogue in support of peaceful resolution of outstanding issues, including Kashmir," said a US-Pakistan joint statement, issued a day after the two countries concluded their sixth Strategic Dialogue.

The dialogue was co-chaired by US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz.

"The delegations underscored that all parties in the region should continuously act with maximum restraint and work collaboratively toward reducing tensions," the joint statement said.

"Noting the steps taken by Pakistan to date, including the detention of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) leader Maulana Masood Azhar, the US appreciated PM Sharif's stated commitment to take prompt and decisive action on this investigation and to bring the perpetrators of the January 2, 2016 attack on the Pathankot air base to justice," it said.

However, there was no mention of India in the entire joint statement, in which the US acknowledged Pakistan's ongoing efforts to harmonise its strategic trade controls with those of the multilateral export control regimes.

The US also lauded Pakistan's "proactive engagement" with the international community, including through its hosting of IAEA training activities at its Nuclear Security Centre of Excellence and its active participation in the Nuclear Security Summits, it said.

The US looked forward to Sharif's participation in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit and appreciated Pakistan's commitment, in principle, to ratify the 2005 Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

According to the joint statement, Pakistan affirmed that it remains committed to pursuing measures aimed at building confidence and lessening the risk of armed conflict.

Both sides recognised the shared interest in strategic stability in South Asia and in pursuing increased transparency. The two sides look forward to the upcoming Security, Strategic Stability, and Nonproliferation (SSS&NP) working group meeting in May 2016, it said.

During the strategic dialogue, both countries reaffirmed their commitment to countering terrorism including by targeting all terrorists without discrimination.

Aziz affirmed Pakistan's resolve to take effective action against UN-designated terrorist individuals and entities, including al-Qaida, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and its affiliates, as per its international commitments and obligations under United Nations Security Council resolutions and the Financial Action Task Force.

The two countries committed to continue promoting peace, stability, and transparency in the region and to eliminate the threats posed by violent extremism and terrorism.

PTI
Micromax CEO Vineet Taneja has officially resigned from the company following a report in January earlier this year. Taneja had joined Micromax in June 2014 from Samsung India where he served as country Head for IT & Mobile businesses. Prior to Micromax and Samsung, he had previously served in Bharti Airtel, Nokia India (between January 2008 to April 2010) and Hindustan Lever.

Vineet has moved on to pursue other interests. We would like to thank him for his contribution and wish him good luck, a Micromax spokesperson told ET. This is not the first executive that has put his papers at Micromax as a bunch of other senior officials have also exited the company in past two months. Last year, Sanjay Kapoor stepped down as Micromax Chairman.

The latest leadership changes are happening as the four promoters of the homegrown smartphone maker are gearing up to take control of the company. As per a previous report, the promoters are dropping the idea of appointing a top executive and are willing to take the entire charge of the company including day to day operations. Micromax recently became the third largest smartphone player in Russia. However, the company is struggling to maintain a top position in India owing to a tough competition from a large number of Chinese smartphone makers.
Who would have thought that the world would thank an island full of felines later?

The Japanese Island of Aoshima gained its popularity over the globe after reports that cats dominate the whole island, even if humans still inhabit the place. More than 140 cats and 16 people are occupying the tiny island, greatly outnumbering their human counterparts, 1:8.

Due to this, people all over the country and all over the world called this the Cat Island.

However, their cuteness can't combat the inevitable-food is not enough. The island alone can solely accommodate a few human beings, let alone a whole clowder of our purring friends? Soon enough, the cats are licking their paws as a plea for food.

Of course, the Japanese people could not say no to their whiskered cuteness and food donations flooded the island.

"Food began pouring in from all over Japan," Kazuyuki Ono, 59, whose tweet raised the alarm, told AFP. "There's so much of it now we can't store it," he added. "We're asking people to stop sending donations. But the cats couldn't be happier."

Hundreds of boxes of cat food arrived at the island's dock in time for the country's celebration of Cat Day last February 22.

Ono said that tourists usually feed the cats when they visit the remarkable island. But, during the lean season, some of the cats end up starving because of the scarce resources available in their location.

"In spring and summer, tourists bring food to feed the cats but when it gets cold, the sea is rough and nobody comes. Sometimes boats can't cross in the rough seas. It's a mysterious little island," Ono said.

Because of this extraordinary phenomenon, people are looking to the possibility that this might somehow aid the alarming problem of global food waste.

Despite various efforts of different countries like Denmark and France, there is no doubting that the world trashes so much food collectively per year, ironic that many people are still hungry in some parts of the earth.
It seems like the food world has found its new craze: everything rainbow-colored.

After the much talked-about and lined upon rainbow colored bagels, lo and behold, the rainbow-colored pizza is here to please your eyes and taste buds.

Giovanni Bartocci, co-owner of Via Della Pace Pizza, has been experimenting with brightly colored pizza dough to stand out from the competition.

Bartocci is a self-professed pizza addict. ""I'm pizza addicted! I could keep talking about pizzas for hours. I think about it all the time. I'm from Rome, so I've been making pizza most of my life," he declares to The Daily Meal.

"We're thinking big, thinking crazy," Bartocci told The Village Voice. "We only use natural coloring of course. We started by using the same ingredients we would use to color pasta dough. Squid ink for black, spinach for green, saffron for yellow, etc."

He said he knew that there are a lot of competition, especially in their location, so he should offer something different. "I just thought, how about trying something new?"

The rainbow colored pizza is like everybody's dream come true. Following the methods of its inspiration, colorful layers of dough are being prepared. But, unlike the previous, the pizza dough is not as bright and neon-looking, as much as they resemble the Play-doh.

Also, each pizza pie has only one crazy color, compared to the rainbow bagel that seemed psychedelic due to the combination of all the bright colors in one piece of bread.

He recently added a red pizza dough made by using beets and Barolo wine to create the burgundy hue in the dough. Bartocci also experiments with colorful, fresh ingredients to top each rainbow pizza.

"The dough is light, and the toppings sing out," he said. "Right now, I love the black ink pizza with salmon, red cabbage, poppy seeds, sour cream, and chive. Not at all traditional, but very interesting and beautiful, and most important of all - delicious!"
Yes, you read it right. You can now munch an edible, chewable glass!

Imagine yourself with a glass of classic margarita and munching the glass after you finish drinking your favorite cocktail. Wouldn't it be cool or simply weird? Perhaps, your friends will find you with too much to drink for the night!

Brace yourselves because this fancy, interesting and environment-friendly innovation is brought to you by the creators of a London-based startup who just won a $22,500 European sustainability award by the World Technology Award (environment) held in association with Fortune and TIME.. The Ooho team of researchers is comprised of by Dr Koon-Yang Lee, Dr Maria Jimenez-Solomon and Dr Keeran Ward while Ooho is cofounded by Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, Guillaume Couche and Pierre Paslier.. They have several years of experience working in polymers engineering, with a special focus on sustainability, alginate and membrane science.

Ooho! is the first project of Skipping Rocks Lab, a European startup introducing a new kind of packaging made from seaweed that proposes an alternative to plastic bottles. The spherical water container is easy and cheap to make, strong, hygienic, biodegradable and yes, edible!

The container holds water in a double membrane using "spherification," the technique of shaping liquids into spheres first pioneered in labs in 1946 and more recently popularized by chefs at elBulli in Spain. It works a little like an egg yolk, which also holds its shape using a thin membrane.

"We're applying an evolved version of spherification to one of the most basic and essential elements of life-water," says Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, who designed the Ooho with fellow design students Pierre Paslier and Guillaume Couche.

Ooho is an edible water "bottle" that turns your disposable drink into something more like an overripe fruit. To make one, a blob of water is frozen then coated with a transparent, dual-layer membrane made of brown algae and calcium chloride. When it's done, the water is held in the bag, and you just take a bite to drink it.

So next time you drink from a glass, try biting the glass. For all you know, it can be an Ooho!
We are all guilty of committing a huge crime. On a regular basis, we are cleaning our kitchens, our refrigerators and chopping away half our vegetables to bring out the best.

What we don't realize is that, though we are throwing away a minuscule portion of our food daily, we are throwing away tons and tons of food in the long run.

According to the Consumer Reports magazine, about 10 cents from every 1$ is being wasted by every American. Over time, this is a lot to waste, especially considering the fact that it can feed thousands starving around the world.

When talking about food wastage, the first thing that comes to our mind is that there are many who are dying without food. Well, food wastage has many more aftermaths than financial problems, it's also affecting the environment in a great way. The food that we throw away produces different gasses and leads to global warming, thus affecting the system in a bad way.

There are many smart ways to end food wastage. First, be very attentive while shopping. Storing food for another item is a bad way to shop. You end up throwing so much of food that has gone past the expiry date. Be a mindful eater. When you eat always start by serving a small quality food. This helps you finish all you take, and you can take more if needed.

There are food banks to which you can donate your excess food. This way you can make sure that excess food is also going into the right hands.

Food wastage is a great problem in the world, especially in America. With consumerism creating a muddle in America, it's high time to support the environment and also many who need the portion of food that goes into the bin every day.
A woman executive and two other cheese businesses that her family runs in Pennsylvania will plead guilty this Friday for the Misbranding and Mislabeling grated Swiss and Mozzarella as parmesan and Romano. It also contained more percentage of wood pulp than allowed.

As per the food and drug administration, the reported cheese is produced at the castle cheese owned by the family. According to the reports from the Bloomberg News the produced cheese were sold in the target stores and local stores in the name Market Pantry, Always Save and Best Choice.

In addition, the mislabeled product sold contained more than 4% cellulose in the cheese which is higher than the amount allowed by the FDA.

Mitchell Myrter, the woman executive associated the case will receive a probation instead of the one year imprisonment which can be given as the maximum punishment for the charge said the attorney of the executive.

Apart from that Myrter's slippery rock companies, International packing and universal Cheese drying and packing will be paying a penalty of $500,000 each.

Lauren Sucher, an FDA representative intimated through an e-mail to "The Associated Press" that where the reported goods are sold are still unknown.

Sucher in a statement said "Consumers have a right to expect that products they purchase are what they purport to be." Sucher further added, according to ABC News, "In this case, products that were labeled as containing 100 percent parmesan or 100 percent Romano cheese contained no parmesan or Romano cheese."

The Woman executive, Myrter, who is vice president of castle and also an officer in other companies pleaded guilty for trying to introduce the adulterated and misbranded products in to the market. The associated companies of the family pleaded guilty for the same and also money laundering.

Myrtle will appear before the federal judge on Friday morning in Pittsburgh to plead guilty for the above said issue and on behalf of the companies run by her family.
According to a recent study, adolescents who are living in households with a limited or uncertain amount of nutritious foods are more likely to have emotional and mental and conduct problems.

"These findings add to our growing understanding of food insecurity and its implications, and demonstrate that food insecurity is an independent risk factor for mental health problems among adolescents," said lead author Dr. Elizabeth Poole-Di Salvo of Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, according to Yahoo News.

"According to the most recent data, food insecurity affects nearly 20 percent of U.S. households with children under the age of 18 years," Poole-Di Salvo told Reuters Health by email.

The researchers used data from a study of about 8,600 kids from ages 12 to 16 years, which was conducted in 2007. In most cases, one of the parents, usually the teenager's mother was interviewed on the phone.

The parents were asked questions about their economically - based difficulties in meeting food needs over the past year, and also asked to complete a 25 - item measure of their child's emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, conduct problems, social fit and peer problems.

Having access to free or reduced-price school lunch programs did not change these results, the researchers note.

"While we cannot infer causality from this study, we suspect that exposure to food insecurity during adolescence, a period of rapid brain growth and development, may lead to suboptimal nutrition as well as increased psychological stress for the family and adolescent, and may adversely impact adolescent mental health," Poole-Di Salvo said.

Teens dealing with food insecurity may be experiencing stress from the uncertainty of not knowing where their next meal is coming from, from being hungry or from deficiencies in specific nutrients, added senior study author Dr. Ruth E. K. Stein of Albert Einstein College of Medicine and The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in Bronx, New York.

"We cannot definitively rule out that mental health problems also cause household food insecurity, but that seems less likely, especially since we controlled for stressful life events and maternal mental health," Stein told Reuters Health by email.

"Early identification of risk factors for both food insecurity and mental health problems are critical, and pediatricians can be instrumental in connecting families to available resources in their communities," Poole-Di Salvo said.
Twelve out of 500 young women were selected to participate in a study involving genetically modified bananas in Des Moines, Iowa. The participants are to be paid $900 each to eat three bananas, one of which has been modified to contain high levels of beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is associated with the production of Vitamin A in the body, so this study aims to address the problem of Vitamin A deficiency.

The bananas were genetically modified at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The study, however, will be conducted at Iowa State University later in the year.

Purpose and Conduct of the Trial

Should the trial be a success, the bananas will hopefully address the Vitamin A deficiency problem in Uganda. Wendy White, the food science professor behind the study, stated "In Uganda and other African countries, Vitamin A deficiency is a major contributor to deaths in childhood from infectious diseases. Wouldn't it be great if these bananas could prevent preschool kids from dying from diarrhea, malaria or measles?".

The twelve participants in the trial would each be given three bananas to eat in a span of four days, and would thereafter undergo blood tests. Only one of the bananas will be genetically modified. As for the compensation, the Food and Drug Administration states that this amount should be treated not as a benefit, but as a recruitment incentive, and is acceptable as long as the risks will be disclosed to the participants.

Controversy

Last week, GMO critics delivered a petition containing over 57,000 signatures asking for the suspension of the trial to the Gates Foundation and the Colleges of Life Science and Agriculture at Iowa State University. They asked that the entities behind this study be more transparent about the study in general and its possible risks.

The type of bananas used in the study was also questioned by some critics, who claim that other kinds of bananas could be utilized in the study instead of the ones currently used. However, the scientists explained that the bananas being recommended are of a sweet variety that Ugandans normally do not consume. That is why for the study, they used a type of banana that was less sweet and was often used for cooking in Uganda.

Overall, the goal of the study is to provide a principal source of Vitamin A for developing countries. Its triumph has a great potential in resolving a key nutrition problem.
Here is some bad news for seafood aficionados. Two recent reports have warned that climate change is resulting in the decimation of their favorite seafood including lobsters. In fact, saltwater diseases are more prevalent in oceans with warmer temperatures.

Despite the fact that lobsters are adapting to the threat by developing a shell that protects them from diseases causing lesions and rendering them inedible, divers in San Juan Island have reported that these days they hardly find any lobsters these days.

Climate change has caused the temperatures of the waters in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans to go up leading to increased diseases that are killing lobsters. These diseases penetrate the shells of lobsters causing lesions and turning them into "goo," Washington Post reported quoting the findings of two new studies. Biologists have stated that these outbreaks are not only lethal but have led to the disappearance of at least one sea star species off the coasts of Washington as well as British Columbia.

The co-author of one of the two studies has warned that while the lobster fishery has already been ruined in southern New England, it may threaten Maine soon.

According to the findings of these studies, a wasting disease is responsible for the Technicolor sunflower sea star vanishing from the Pacific Ocean. Scientists at the University of Puget Sound, Cornell University and the Northeastern University have warned that these wasting saltwater diseases may also wipe out the ochre sea star soon.

According to these scientists, they first noticed lobsters being affected by these wasting diseases off the Long Island Sound as well as other places along the East Coast way back in the '90s, Huffington Post reported. Apparently, warmer seas have helped to spread the diseases rapidly. In fact, female lobsters are more vulnerable to these wasting diseases since they shed their shells more frequently.

The worst part is that the scientists themselves are not certain regarding the steps that need to be initiated to stop the situation from deteriorating further. However, they have said that they would be reviewing the situation again during this spring.
What happened?

Citigroup (C 3.12%) announced that it will sell its 20% stake in Chinese regional bank China Guangfa Bank for $3 billion to China Life Insurance Company. The bank had been trying to unload this stake for several months, as China Guangfa bank abandoned its plans to go public in Hong Kong. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2016, and is the latest development in an ongoing effort by Citigroup to simplify its operations. Citigroup originally paid $610 million for the stake in 2006, so the deal represents a pretty nice $2.4 billion return on its investment.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is also unloading its stake in the Chinese bank, although IBM's stake is considerably smaller at a still-significant $554 million. When this is combined with Citigroup's sale, China Life will own 43.7% of the bank, making them the lender's largest shareholder.

Does it matter?

Aside from the obvious investment profits, the sale benefits Citigroup in a few ways. First, it frees up a significant amount of capital that Citigroup can now use to expand its core business in China, which it plans to do with the proceeds, according to a statement by the bank. Also, Basel III rules make it disadvantageous for banks to keep minority stakes in other lenders, as they are treated unfavorably when calculating capital ratios. So, this sale allows Citigroup to put this money to work in a manner that's more beneficial to its capital structure.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it helps to mitigate one of Citigroup's largest risks: foreign uncertainty. Citigroup has the most international exposure of the "big four" banks, with about $280 billion in international loans out of the bank's $645 billion loan portfolio. This adds another layer of risk to the bank's operations, as it makes the bank more vulnerable to currency fluctuations as well as political and economic uncertainty.

Earlier in February, Citigroup announced that it was exiting its retail banking operations in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, so this is another step in the right direction. Yes, Citigroup plans to use the proceeds in China, but it's certainly less risky to invest in Citi's core Chinese businesses than it is to maintain a large stake in a bank whose operations it doesn't control.
Chatter has surfaced recently of a potential IPO on the Saudi stock exchange for the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the state-owned company better known as Aramco. In January, Aramco discussed the potential for an IPO, which has many in the banking industry salivating at the opportunity. With oil reserves more than 10 times than that of ExxonMobil (XOM 1.86%), Aramco could have a market cap measured in trillions of dollars.

Aramco's IPO plan, if it happens, appears to be inspired by an agenda to take out the marginal producers of oil and gas in the U.S. shale plays. With Aramco putting itself up for sale at such low prices, it implies that they're having a difficult time making money or they expect not to make money for some time. This might be great for Saudi Arabia, but it's not necessarily great for investors when state-owned companies make decisions that put the company at risk.

The perils of investing in state-run oil companies

State-owned companies are notorious for political interference, corruption, bad hiring and under-investment.

Petrobras (PBR 3.95%) may be a perfect example of the mismanagement caused by state-owned businesses. Over the past 10 years, investors in Petrobras have seen shares decline almost 90% amid the decline in oil and gas prices. Even scarier is the corruption and mismanagement scandal at this once iconic company. Politicians and lawmakers are fighting the company on how poorly management has run the company in recent years. Even famed short-seller Jim Chanos said the company is a "scheme, not a stock." Bottom line: Amid the slowdown in global economies, Petrobras has become the poster child on the perils of investing in state-owned companies.

What about the successes?

Successful long-term investing in state owned companies are few and far between, but, of course, there have been winners. For example, Warren Buffett's investment in quasi-state owned Petro China (PTR 0.26%) generated returns in excess of 600%. When he bought the stock at a $35 billion market cap, he thought the company was worth at least $100 billion after oil shot up from $30 to $75 per barrel in the early 2000s.

Barring a short-term opportunistic type investment, I think we've painted a fairly negative picture of investing in state-owned companies for the long haul.

Bottom line

As a general strategy, I'd stay away from most of the state owned oil companies. Many do not hold themselves accountable to shareholders, and between the carnage at Petrobras and Buffett's success with PetroChina they seem to be, at best, a mixed bag.

Ultimately, the potential Aramco IPO is part of the bottoming process in commodity markets. Countries don't just seek equity stakes in their massively profitable state-owned companies for fun. The Saudis are losing billions of dollars, and that number could climb into the trillions. Recent estimates have Saudi Arabia running out of cash in 5 years and the country needs oil around $106 to balance it's budget. .

The question is, how long will the Saudis be able to hold out? My guess is we're getting closer to the end. Essentially, they're selling a part of their business at multi-year lows to keep the spigot running regardless of the fundamentals and profitability. That's never a good sign, and I don't think it will last because of the government's social obligations to the country. Something will have to give.
In August of 2021, Republican Steve Doan was named to an empty seat on the Erlanger City Council. Just over a year later, he's heading to the general election...
During an interview with Neil Cavuto on the FOX Business Network, Home Depot (NYSE:HD) co-founder Bernie Marcus said Donald Trump needs to change his behavior on the campaign trail, in order to gain the support of more GOP voters.

I think Trump had better get his act together if hes going to get Republicans to vote for him, Marcus said.

Marcus, who was supporting Jeb Bush, offered his own advice to Trump.

My advice to him would be start changing your tone and start trying to correct what youve done in the past that has alienated a lot of people, he said.

The Home Depot co-founder added: The only thing that Donald Trump can start doing is start mending fences, which he doesnt seem to be doing. I think he has to do it as quickly as possible. Hes a very bright guy, hes very smart, and hes calculated. This is not a dumb guy and hes usually a winner at what he does, but this is a case of not dealing with another contractor. Hes dealing with the American people and he better understand that the American people are very diverse and they dont like to hear some of the things that are coming out of his mouth.

Marcus touched on how Trump needs to talk about how hell work with Congress to pass legislation.

I never hear any comments from him talking about the fact that he has to work with Congress to pass all these things that he wants to do, and I think its a very essential part of our democracy.
In many ways midsized business owners are the heroes of the U.S. economy. Despite representing only one percent of the companies in the U.S., the middle market makes up nearly 26.5%, or 48 million, of all U.S. jobs, which is about one-third of private sector GDP.

Midsized companies also led hiring in January, adding 82,000 employees, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

Despite their contributions to the improving job market, midsized employers (those with 50-999 employees) report growing angst about recruiting, engaging and retaining top talent.

The latest ADP Midsized Business Owners Study found that concern over employee engagement, which has remained flat since 2012, spiked 25 percent in 2015, with two of five business owners and senior executives now expressing high levels of concern.

This may come as little surprise considering that Gallup reported the percentage of U.S. workers engaged in their jobs averaged only 32.5 percent in January, and hasnt topped one-third over the last four years.

Whats concerning is that while employers acknowledge that increasing engagement is an issue, only slightly more than half surveyed feel they currently have a good, repeatable process to facilitate it, according to the ADP study.

If employees arent engaged, companies may eventually lose their most talented workers, potentially leaving behind a workforce of lesser-skilled employees working longer hours and delivering fewer results. Further, the costs to replace employees who leave are considerable. For mid-level employees, it can cost upwards of 150 percent of their annual salary to replace them, and for high-level or highly specialized employees, it can cost 400 percent of their annual salary.

Even worse: Once those employees leave, midsized business owners arent really confident in the quality and skills of the candidates available to replace them. About half of those surveyed said theyre concerned about the available talent pool, and less than 20 percent are confident they have the right tools to find, grow and retain talent.

Here are a few things business owners can do to lessen their talent concerns.

Embrace Analytics

Employers need to consider the insights that data analytics can provide to better inform their talent decisions. By using analytics, companies can benchmark their compensation, turnover and retention rates against similar companies in their industry and gain insight into where they may have competency gaps. If employers discover theyre losing talent to competitors because their compensation and benefits are below the industry standard, they can then take action to remedy the situation.

Ensure Employees Know Their Value

Employees will likely be more engaged if they know how their day-to-day work contributes to the companys overall success. People want to feel that what theyre doing is meaningful, so its important they see linkages between their work and the companys mission. Engaged associates also feel theyre continuing to learn, and often see opportunity for career advancement. So its important to offer training in leadership, skill development and mentoring so they know the companys invested in their future success.

Be Social and Mobile

According to a Pew Research Center report , 28 percent of Americans, including 53 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds, reported using a smartphone in one way or another as part of a job search. With that in mind, employers need to ensure their communications and outreach efforts attract mobile job seekers. Its also important to have a social media presence to connect with candidates and spread the word about job openings. The online conversation also helps job seekers gain a sense of what its like to work for the company.

As the job market heats up, companies need to adapt to the most effective methods for recruiting, engaging and retaining top talent. If business owners refine and improve the strategies they use now, theyll likely sleep better at night knowing they have the tools to keep existing talent and build a better workforce in the future.

Tom Perrotti is President of ADPs Major Account Services which provide Human Capital Management services to businesses with 50 to 1,000 employees across the United States and Canada.
Handset giant Xiaomi isn't looking quite asmenacing.

The firm, which was founded just over five years ago, had experienced rapid growth in recent quarters, soaring to the top of Chinese handset sales charts with attractive, reasonably priced handsets. But 2015 was a year ofdisappointmentfor the company (commonly referred to as the "Apple of China" for itsenthusiasticfan baseandtendencyto mimic the Cupertino tech giant), as it's failedto achieve itsambitioussales targets. Xiaomi remains a threatto rival firms, notablyApple and Samsung , but its recent struggles suggest it isn't as unstoppable as it once appeared.

Xiaomi's Mi4. Image source: Xiaomi.

Underperforming even a modest estimateXiaomi sold 61.1 million smartphones in 2014, up from just 18.7 million in 2013. The company had expected that rapid growth to continue: Early in 2015, it projected that it would sell between 80 million and 100 million handsets over the course of the year. But in January, it announced that it had failed to achieve even its more modest target -- Xiaomi sold just over 70 million handsets in 2015.

That was still good enough to put among the world's top five handset vendors, according to research firm IDC. Xiaomi shipped 70.8 million handsets in 2015, capturing 4.9% of the market. Apple and Samsung, however, were considerably more successful, shipping 231.5 million and 324.8 million smartphones, respectively. To its credit, Xiaomi saw its smartphone shipments rise 22.8% on an annual basis, outperforming the broader market (which rose just over 10%). But it was overshadowed by its Chinese rival, Huawei, which saw its shipments rise a massive 44.3%.

Facing tough Chinese competitionHuawei may be the primary culprit behind Xiaomi's sluggish growth, as both employ a similar strategy and target the same markets, most notably China. Huawei's Chinese handset sales overtook Xiaomi's in the third quarter last year, according to research firm Canalys. Xiaomi and Huawei both sell unlocked handsets that use the Android operating system. They generally retail for around $100-$400, but sport mostly quality components.

This strategy has made their phonesimmenselypopularin China and other emerging markets, but both firms remain generally unknown in the U.S. (though Huawei became the second-largest seller of Android handsets in Europe last year).

With the iPhone occupying a different price bracket, and Apple experiencing solid growth last year, Huawei and Xiaomi likely had much more of an effect on Samsung in 2015, with the Korean tech giant's smartphone sales coming in virtually flat over the year. Still, with China playing an increasingly important role in driving iPhone sales (greater China generated almost one-quarter of Apple's revenue last quarter) Xiaomi and Huawei stand as major competitors.

Xiaomi, in particular, could also pose somewhat of a risk to Apple's nascent wearables business. It captured more of the wearables market last quarter (9.7%) than it did the smartphone market, coming in third place worldwide, according to IDC. Apple sold about 50% more wearables than Xiaomi last quarter, but Xiaomi outsold it over the course of the year. Of course, Xiaomi's Mi Band, which retails for around $15, costs only a fraction as much as the Apple Watch, but Xiaomi could move upmarket in time.

Surging growth moderatesWith Xiaomi experiencing such tremendous growth in 2014, there was palpable fear that the firm could eventually displace Apple and Samsung over time -- not just in China but perhaps throughout the globe. Xiaomi isn't going anywhere (in fact, it plans to expand into western markets in the near future), but in light of its relativelydisappointingyear, the possibility that it could eventually topple the world's leading smartphone vendors is looking increasingly unlikely.

The article The Apple of China Has Crashed Back to Earth originally appeared on Fool.com.

Sam Mattera has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The new-for-2016 Ford Edge has been a hit for the Blue Oval. Sales jumped again in February. Image source: Ford Motor Company.

Ford Motor Company said on Tuesday that its U.S. sales increased 20% in February, on a big jump in sales of the Blue Oval's well-regarded SUVs -- and on a surprising increase in sales to rental-car fleets.

SUVs, SUVs, and more SUVs Car-buyers all over the world are turning toward the new generation of car-based "crossover" SUVs, and Ford's entries continue to be among the cream of the mass-market crop.

All of the Blue Oval's SUVs posted gains, from the compact Escape (up 14%) to the new midsize Edge (up 91%) and the bigger Explorer (up 18%), through the full-size truck-based Expedition (up 22%). Even the quirky Flex, a station-wagon-shaped sibling of the Explorer that has struggled to find a following, managed a big 77% year-over-year increase last month.

It was a similar story at Ford's luxury brand, Lincoln, where Ford is making a long-term effort to remake the brand as more than an airport-limo provider. Overall Lincoln sales are still small, but they're growing thanks in large part to -- again -- SUVs.

The Edge's upscale sibling, the all-new 2016 Lincoln MKX, is also selling briskly. Image source: Ford Motor Company.

Sales of Lincoln's SUVs as a group rose 41% in February, giving the old brand its best month for SUV sales in 15 years. The big driver was the new-for-2016 MKX, a plusher and well-regarded sibling of the new Ford Edge. MKX sales were up 109%, while sales of the compact MKC rose 12% and the big Navigator was up 11%.

Commercial vans continue to shineFord's commercial-fleet sales continue to be strong as well. Sales of the popular Transit commercial van were up 70%, and the smaller Transit Connect gained 9%. Overall, Ford's sales of commercial vans were up 32% over last year, giving the company its best month for commercial vans since 1979.

Commercial-fleet sales made up 12% of Ford's overall U.S. sales in February. That's roughly in line with Ford's year-ago results.

And the F-Series? February sales of Ford's full-size pickups totaled 60,697 vehicles, up 10% from a year ago. That's not exceptional, but it's a solid result that looks a bit better when we consider this: Sales of the F-Series' biggest-selling rival,General Motors' Chevrolet Silverado, weredown 5% last month.

Better news: Ford U.S. sales chief Mark LaNeve said that average transaction prices (ATPs) for the F-Series were up about $1,800 from a year ago, as buyers opted for more option-rich models. That's good news for Ford's bottom line: Higher ATPs almost always translate into fatter profit margins.

Ford's sedan sales were good*U.S. sales of Ford-brand cars as a group rose 19% in February. Sales of the overhauled-for-2016 compact Focus (up 33%) and big Taurus (up 42%) were the stars of the group. Sales of the high-volume midsize Fusion sedan were up 12%.

Sales of the revamped Focus jumped 33% in February. Image source: Ford Motor Company.

But there's a big asterisk on those results: Ford's sales to rental-car fleets also jumped in a big way in February, to 19% of Ford's overall sales total from just 12% a year ago. LaNeve said the big jump was due to the timing of some deliveries, which will be much earlier in 2016 than in 2015. He said that Ford's deliveries to rental-car fleets will be high through the first half of the year and will taper off later on. For the full year, LaNeve said, Ford's sales to rental-car fleets should be "in the same range" as in 2015.

That's a concern, because sales to rental-car fleets generally carry low profit margins. Ford has in recent years cut back significantly on its rental-fleet sales, choosing to emphasize more profitable retail sales instead.

If LaNeve's explanation pans out, if it's just a timing fluke and not a sustained increase, it's no big deal. We'll watch it closely.

The upshot for Ford shareholdersFord is selling a lot of its most profitable products, namely well-optioned SUVs and trucks. Sedan sales were stronger than expected, but that might have been related to its jump in deliveries to rental-car fleets.

Two-thirds of the way through the first quarter, all signs continue to suggest that Ford's profits (and profit margin) in North America will be strong once again.

The article Ford's Sales to Rental-Car Fleets Jumped: Time to Worry? originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Rosevear owns shares of Ford and General Motors. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Ford. The Motley Fool recommends General Motors. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Owning strong dividend stocks can be a great way to beat the market long-term. Companies that pay dividends have to focus on cash flows, and that keeps management focused on cash generation and adding value to the business long-term.

But sometimes dividends aren't as stable as investors would like to think. Operations can go south, and if they do for too long dividends can be reduced or even eliminated. Here are three high dividend yields that I wouldn't count on lasting too long.

TerraForm Power Yieldcos like TerraForm Power are built to be dividend machines. The company buys renewable energy projects with long-term contracts to sell energy to utilities, and then pays out those cash flows in the form of a dividend. The problem for TerraForm Power is that its sponsor, SunEdison , is in a world of financial trouble.

On paper, TerraForm Power should be able to keep up its dividend payment -- but that's assuming the company is acting independently of SunEdison. But that's not necessarily the case. As part of the Vivint Solar acquisition by SunEdison, TerraForm Power is supposedto buy 523 MW of residential solar projects for $799 million, which come with a single digit cash yield and a less stable cash flow than typical contracts with utilities. It'll also further leverage a balance sheet that already has $2.5 billion in debt.

The main reason I think a reduced payout could be in the cards is that it would be best for the business. A 17.3% dividend yield is incredibly high, and the cash could be used to pay down debt, or even buy projects at strong rates of return. I just wouldn't count on this extraordinary payout if I were a shareholder.

Transocean Partners Low energy prices have caused a world of hurt for offshore drilling companies, but so far Transocean Partners' dividendhas been untouched. That's in large part because the three rigs the company owns had long-term contracts when Transocean Partners was formed, and it's still operating under those contracts.

But the contract covering Development Driller III, which is currently drilling for BP in the Gulf of Mexico, comes to an end at the end of 2016. And when it does, $422,000 per day in revenue will go with it.

Offshore drilling contracts are tough to come by today, and even if Development Driller III finds a new contract it won't likely be as lucrative as the one it's currently operating under. That could lead to a reduced dividend for Transocean Partners, so investors shouldn't count on the 18% dividend yield forever.

Icahn Enterprises There haven't been a lot of positive developments lately for Icahn Enterprises . The company's investment portfolio has plummeted (major holdings shown in the chart below), energy bets have gone sour, and the S&P recently warned that its bond rating may be reduced to junk status.

CVI data by YCharts

Still, Icahn Enterprises is paying $1.50 per quarterin dividends. I don't think that will last, and after reporting $0.53 per share in losses in the first three quarters of 2015 and paying out $4.50 in dividends it may be time to use cash elsewhere.

One good plan would be to pay down the $4.5 billion due to brokers, or just to maintain a larger cash hoard. Both would be good for borrowing rates until investments in energy and other assets start to improve. No matter what Icahn does with the cash, I don't think a 12% dividend yield will last much longer.

The article A Reduced Payout Could Be in the Cards for These High-Yield Dividend Stocks originally appeared on Fool.com.

Travis Hoium has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: iStock/Thinkstock.

After shares of Bank of America have lost nearly a quarter of their value since the beginning of the year, a United Kingdom-based research firm, Atlantic Equities, downgraded the bank on Tuesday from an "overweight" rating to "neutral." Aside from being late to the party, the move defies logic.

The implication that Bank of America's stock was overweight before the drop -- meaning that it appeared to offer a better value than other stocks -- but neutral now doesn't make sense. At the end of last year, Bank of America's shares traded for an 8% premium to the bank's tangible book value. Fast forward to today and its shares trade for a 28% discount to tangible book value -- and that's after Tuesday's 5% increase.

If you think about this logically, the drop in Bank of America's stock indicates two things. First, as my colleague Rich Smith pointed out, it means there's a larger margin for error if you were to buy the bank's stock today relative to two months ago. This isn't to say that Bank of America's stock couldn't fall further, because it could. But it's in the bargain bin as is, and its markdown is already very steep.

The second and related point is that Bank of America's stock is less risky today than it was at the end of last year. Risk boils down to how much an investor stands to lose by buying a stock. Doing so after a stock has fallen is thus necessarily less risky than buying it at its peak. This makes sense in theory, but our emotions lead us in the opposite direction, as we tend to underestimate risk when stocks are soaring and overestimate it when they're crashing.

It was this exact type of behavior that gave Warren Buffett an opening to buy shares of Wells Fargo at the beginning of the 1990s. There was a widespread belief at the time among analysts that banks were in trouble thanks to a downturn in the commercial real estate market. A prominent writer for The New York Times even intimated that the bank industry could "go the way of the savings and loans, becoming a government ward."

This void gave Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway the opportunity to become Wells Fargo's biggest shareholder at a steep discount to its historical valuation. "Our purchases of Wells Fargo in 1990 were helped by a chaotic market in bank stocks," Buffett wrote at the time.

Getting back to Bank of America, then, it's worth keeping in mind that the bank has meaningfully improved its operations and profitability over the past year. Its 2015 results marked the first time since the financial crisis that it reported four consecutive calendar quarters of respectable profits, producing its highest annual earnings in nearly a decade.

Just as significantly, Bank of America was able to partially slay two particularly pernicious demons last year. First, a judicial decision in the second quarter allowed the bank to slash its outstanding legal liabilities by $7.6 billion dollars. The holding also reduced the inflow of new crisis-related claims from around $2 billion a quarter to roughly $200 million. And second, Bank of America's debt rating was increased by a notch, which will ultimately result in a lower cost of funds and thus higher profits at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank.

To be fair, the world economy is in disarray. China's economy is teetering on the brink of an economic cataclysm, evidenced by the recent decision of its central bank to ease bank reserve requirements in an effort to reignite lending. Europe is also perched on the precipice of an unknown disaster, with voters in the United Kingdom set to vote in June on whether to remain in the European Union. And oil prices continue to spur fear among investors that banks could soon see a wave of defaults emanating out from the energy industry.

But with the exception of the upcoming referendum in the United Kingdom, none of these concerns are new. And the fact that Bank of America's shares already trade for a substantial discount to tangible book value suggests to me that the potential fallout from these events have been priced into Bank of America's stock. This isn't to say that they won't fall further, but they certainly look cheap to me.

In short, investors shouldn't allow themselves to be swayed by a belated downgrade of Bank of America's shares at the very same time that savvy investors see them as a bargain.

The article Why It Was Silly to Downgrade Bank of America Stock originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Maxfield owns shares of Bank of America and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Berkshire Hathaway and Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool has the following options: short March 2016 $52 puts on Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool recommends Bank of America. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Source: Whole Foods Market.

Food delivery is all the rage in tech circles these days.

Fresh off tech giant Alphabet's recent move to challenge Amazon.com in grocery delivery, Whole Foods recently reportedly deepened its own relationship with grocery delivery unicorn Instacart.

But will Whole Foods' moves make sense amid rising competition from Alphabet and Amazon? Let's take a look.

Whole Foods and Instacart make a deal According to recent reports, Whole Foods is finalizing an investment in grocery delivery start-up Instacart. Though the size of the investment remains private, Instacart most recently raised a Series C in December 2014 that valued the 4-year-old start-up at a whopping $2 billion. Whether Whole Foods' investment is financial or strategic isn't clear, though the move is clearly intended to deepen the current relationship between the grocer and start-up.

Source: Instacart.

Beyond the latest reported investment, Whole Foods and Instacart also reportedly are signing a five-year delivery partnership that will make the Instacart the sole delivery outlet for all Whole Foods stores. Though additional details of the deal remain private, Instcart's delivery deals with other grocery partners have typically included a revenue-sharing component.

This presents Whole Foods investors with the prospect of a new, and much-needed, revenue source, as the company has struggled to counter increased interest in organic products from many of its rivals. So while the revenue-sharing portion of this deal should immediately benefit Whole Foods and its shareholders, how should investors view the long-term potential within Instacart's business model?

Source: Google.

A wise deal for Whole Foods? Instacart's awe-inspiring rise coincides with wider renewed interest in grocery delivery from Amazon and Alphabet. Importantly, though, as a start-up predicated entirely on grocery delivery, Instacart shares little in common with massive, relatively diversified tech giants such as Alphabet and Amazon. That matters immensely in terms of projecting Instacart's long-term viability, especially after acknowledging the long history of now-defunct grocery delivery start-ups that have come and gone over the years.

Online grocery delivery was a hot topic of interest during the original dot-com boom around the turn of the millennium. Grocery delivery start-ups, most notably Webvan and HomeGrocer, attracted huge sums of private capital but spectacularly imploded when the high fixed costs common to nearly any delivery and distribution business combined with the recession of financing as the bubble burst. In fact, some remnants of the largest dot-com-era delivery start-ups now make up the technology powering Amazon's budding grocery delivery ambitions.

The fact remains, though, that grocery delivery remains a dubious business. In fact, noted venture capitalist Bill Gurley, who has funded successful start-ups including Uber and many more, cited the massive amounts of venture capital money funding grocery delivery start-ups such as Instacart as a sign of a potential bubble forming in the venture capital community. During an interview last year, Gurley commented on Instacart:

As a private company, Instacart has financials that are a black box for investors. However, the fact that standalone grocery delivery businesses have a well-documented history of failure should perhaps raise some eyebrows among Whole Foods' investors.

At the same time, it remains unclear how or to what degree Instacart's business model differs from past standalone delivery flameouts. Only time will tell whether Whole Foods' reported investment represents money well spent. To be sure, Whole Foods is certainly feeling the pressure from other grocery retailers that are increasingly incorporating organic offerings into their own stores.

As such, Whole Foods' Instacart investment will prove an interesting experiment into whether grocery delivery indeed is ready to take a more prominent place in our increasingly tech-driven lives.

The article Would an Instacart Investment Be a Wise Move for Whole Foods? originally appeared on Fool.com.

John Mackey, co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Andrew Tonner has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Amazon.com, and Whole Foods Market. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image Source: Exelon corporate website

Exelon Logo. Source: Exelon

Exelon Corporation (NYSE: EXC) is a large U.S. utility with heavy exposure to the northeast. But it stands out among its peers because of the power plants it runs. And that's exactly why there are three reasons Exelon stock could rise.

Nuclear freezeExelon generates about 60% of its electricity from nuclear power plants. After the Fukushima disaster in Japan, that's been something of an image liability. But there's a lot to like about nuclear power.

For example, nuclear power plants don't emit carbon dioxide. They are, thus, an environmentally friendly source of electricity. In addition, unlike many renewable power options, nuclear plants are designed to be base-load providers, running constantly at high utilization levels. And, once built, nuclear power plants are relatively inexpensive to operate.

But, today, the hot power options are solar and wind, not nuclear. With so much of its power coming from nuclear, however, a changed view of the fuel's desirability would probably lead investors to rethink their view of Exelon stock. That change could be led by government or regulatory shifts, or a realization that nuclear, despite some high-profile disasters, is a relatively safe fuel option.

Indeed, nuclear power suffers from the same image issue as air travel. When there's a problem it's headline news, but all of the other times, when things go well, no one cares. With an increasing push to clean our carbon footprint, the world could soon take a different view of nuclear and, by extension, Exelon.

EXC data by YCharts

Low gasA dim view of nuclear power isn't the only reason Exelon's stock is off some 30% over the past five years. In fact, it probably isn't even the main reason. The big issue of late has been natural gas, which makes up a scant 20% of the company power plants. Essentially, natural gas prices that have plumed historical lows have kept a lid on how much electric power companies get paid. That's particularly true in the Northeast, Exelon's prime market, where a high percentage of power comes from natural gas.

The end result is that Exelon's margins have been under pressure for years. For example, in 2010 the company's operating margin was around 25%, and last year it was 15%. And that's the highest the operating margin has been in four years. The relationship between Exelon's stock price and the price of natural gas is pretty interesting, actually. When the price of gas goes up, Exelon's price usually follows.

So the second reason Exelon stock could rise is a prolonged increase in the price of natural gas. However, investors will probably reward Exelon with a higher price before the benefits of improving margins start to show up on the bottom line. So this is one you'll have to watch closely.

DiversificationAlthough it's impossible to ignore Exelon's nuclear-heavy business model, the company has been changing its business mix around a little. For example, through a series of mergers, the utility has shifted from a 30% regulated utilities/70% power generation mix to something around 50%/50% today. The next big change is the nearly $7 billion deal to buy Pepco Holdings (NYSE: POM). That should leave the company with a 60% regulated utility/40% power generation mix.

Change has been an ongoing theme at Exelon. Source: Exelon.

Increasing the percentage of Exelon's business that comes from regulated utilities helps to make earnings more predictable. Increasing that percentage should help change the market's perception of the company. However, the Pepco deal, which is really the next big step in this process, is facing significant push back in Maryland and Washington, D.C., where regulators are opposing the deal even after Exelon's concessions.

As long as the Pepco acquisition is in limbo Exelon's stock is likely to face market headwinds. So this is the third big issue to watch today. If the deal gets approved, investors will likely award Exelon a higher valuation as its business gets more predictable. That said, the outcome remains murky today.

Not your boring old utilityExelon is not a boring utility -- it's really something else entirely. The heavy exposure to nuclear power, its competition with natural gas, and the up-in-the-air merger with Pepco are all issues that you need to be aware of and watch. If anything changes with this trio, for the positive, Exelon's shares are likely to rise.

That said, rising natural gas prices would probably have the most immediate impact on the shares, with the Pepco deal coming in a solid No. 2. The desirability of nuclear power is more of a long-term issue, but it's one of the most important simply because Exelon has bet so heavily on the technology.

The article 3 Reasons Exelon's Stock Could Rise originally appeared on Fool.com.

Reuben Brewer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
For decades, coal has been stoking the nation, but regulation over the past seven years has dealt a huge blow to the industry, spawning big job losses and bankruptcies.

The FOX Business Networks Jeff Flock spoke with coal miners from 200 feet beneath the surface at the Rosebud Mining Company's Tusky Mine, in Jefferson County, Ohio, the "heart of Ohio coal country. This mine has been idle since Thanksgiving but is still required to spend money in order to maintain it.

More than 30,000 coal miners have lost their jobs during the Obama Administration and coal foreman Steve Stewart is afraid his may be next.

My coworkers and [I] feel like we are under attack by this government with all the regulations theyve imposed on us, he said.

Coal mining stocks have also taken a big hit -- with some losing almost 100% of their value, in addition to some companies filing for bankruptcy.

The assault from Washington with our over-regulation, and in addition to that, we are facing very low natural gas prices that are causing us competition, said Rosebud mining manager Gary Alkire.

Although the Supreme Court has put a hold on President Obamas clean power plan to cut emissions from power plants, the natural gas industry is taking off, generating just as much power as coal.

Theres not a big demand for electricity, theres not a lot of manufacturing going on, so the actual demand is down -- so its bad news for coal, added Alkire.
What happened? Citigroup announced that it will sell its 20% stake in Chinese regional bank China Guangfa Bank for $3 billion to China Life Insurance Company. The bank had been trying to unload this stake for several months, as China Guangfa bank abandoned its plans to go public in Hong Kong. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2016, and is the latest development in an ongoing effort by Citigroup to simplify its operations. Citigroup originally paid $610 million for the stake in 2006, so the deal represents a pretty nice $2.4 billion return on its investment.

IBM is also unloading its stake in the Chinese bank, although IBM's stake is considerably smaller at a still-significant $554 million. When this is combined with Citigroup's sale, China Life will own 43.7% of the bank, making them the lender's largest shareholder.

Does it matter?Aside from the obvious investment profits, the sale benefits Citigroup in a few ways. First, it frees up a significant amount of capital that Citigroup can now use to expand its core business in China, which it plans to do with the proceeds, according to a statement by the bank. Also, Basel III rules make it disadvantageous for banks to keep minority stakes in other lenders, as they are treated unfavorably when calculating capital ratios. So, this sale allows Citigroup to put this money to work in a manner that's more beneficial to its capital structure.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, it helps to mitigate one of Citigroup's largest risks: foreign uncertainty. Citigroup has the most international exposure of the "big four" banks, with about $280 billion in international loans out of the bank's $645 billion loan portfolio. This adds another layer of risk to the bank's operations, as it makes the bank more vulnerable to currency fluctuations as well as political and economic uncertainty.

Earlier in February, Citigroup announced that it was exiting its retail banking operations in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, so this is another step in the right direction. Yes, Citigroup plans to use the proceeds in China, but it's certainly less risky to invest in Citi's core Chinese businesses than it is to maintain a large stake in a bank whose operations it doesn't control.

The article Instant Analysis: Citigroup Sells Stake in Chinese Bank for $3 Billion originally appeared on Fool.com.

Matthew Frankel has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Image source: Encana Corporation. All rights reserved.

While the shale drilling boom might still be gasping for air amid a devastating plunge in oil and gas prices, the land rush that preceded it has been dead for a few years now. It's a bubble that burst after natural gas prices peaked and subsequently crashed, leaving companies like Chesapeake Energy with more land than they could ever afford to drill. That being said, while the land rush has long since been deceased, its ghost continues to haunt Chesapeake Energy. That's after a new revelation this week that its former CEO, Aubrey McClendon, has been indicted by the Justice Department for his alleged role in trying to suppress land lease prices.

The mastermindAccording to the Justice Department, McClendon masterminded a conspiracy with another large oil and gas company to not bid against each other for leases in Oklahoma from 2007 to 2012. In doing so, he and his yet unnamed co-conspirator decided ahead of time who would win the bids and then gave an interest in the leases to the other company. That kept them from bidding against each other, which thus kept a lid on lease prices. According to Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, McClendon's "actions put company profits ahead of the interests of leaseholders entitled to competitive bids for oil and gas rights on their land."

It's a very serious charge because it puts him in violation of the Sherman Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Having said that, it is important to note that the indictment is against McClendon and not Chesapeake Energy, which doesn't expect to face criminal prosecution or fines, according a the company spokesman. Still, the whole ordeal is another black eye for the company, which continues to be haunted by McClendon's past actions.

A pattern of haunting actionsThis isn't the first time Chesapeake Energy nor McClendon have been accused of antitrust violations stemming from aggressive leasing practices. Just last year, the company reached a $25 million settlement after the state of Michigan brought antitrust, fraud, and racketeering charges against it. In that case, it pleaded no contest to charges that it andEncana discussed dividing up their bids for leases in Michigan to avoid driving up lease prices. Encana, likewise, settled by agreeing to pay $5 million in a civil settlement in 2014 to close its involvement.

On top of that, Chesapeake Energy has been settling a myriad of lawsuits stemming from alleged miscalculation of royalty payments to landowners who have gas wells on their properties. For example, in Texas it settled a number of cases, including one with the city of Fort Worth, whereby Chesapeake Energy allegedly breached contracts, resulting in $33.5 million in damages. Meanwhile, another lawsuit in that area involving several land owners, including a school, were owed at least $8.6 million from the company due to improper royalty calculations. There are similar claims in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio stemming from its alleged improper calculation of the price of gas sold at the wellhead and then wrongly deducting expenses, including those paid to Chesapeake affiliates, resulting in lower royalty payments for landowners. In fact, last year, more than 400 lawsuits, involving 25,000 property owners, were consolidated into a massive case with upwards of $1 billion in unpaid royalties potentially being at stake.

Investor takeawayWhile it has been a few years since McClendon walked the halls of Chesapeake Energy's corporate headquarters as its CEO, his past actions are still haunting them today. The company is devoting quite a bit of its time dealing with his past dealings, including his liberal use of large sums of debt to grow itself. That debt, as well as the legal overhang, won't stop spooking the company until it can finally bury its past by settling these lawsuits and paring its debt to a more manageable level. That said, both are getting much harder to do in the current environment, which is increasing the odds that Chesapeake Energy could suffer the same fate of the leasing boom and go bust.

The article An Old Ghost Comes Back to Haunt Chesapeake Energy Corporation originally appeared on Fool.com.

Matt DiLallo has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
It's March 2016. Three monthsfrom the start of hurricane season in America. If you're an investor, that means that right about now is a good time to start thinking about hurricanes, the damage they can do -- and the stocks that go up after a big storm strikes.

One such stock is PGT, the leadingmanufacturer of impact-resistant glass windows and doors in the U.S. Southeast, along the Gulf Coast, and in the coastal mid-Atlantic states. And for better or for worse, PGT stock just got a bit cheaper.

Don't look now, but one analyst is throwing stones at PGT's glass houses. Image source: PGT, Inc.

The newsYou can thank (or blame) the analysts at KeyBanc for this, because early this morning KeyBanc announced a downgrade of PGT stock that sent the stock tumbling nearly 5% in early Wednesday trading.

That seems like a pretty big slide for the stock to take just on the word of one analyst. And yet, according to our data here at Motley Fool CAPS, KeyBanc is not just any analyst. Rather, over the 10 years we've been tracking this stock picker's performance, KeyBanc has proven itself to be one of Wall Street's best analysts. KeyBanc not only gets most of its stock picks right, it also outperforms the S&P 500 by an average of 15 percentage points per pick -- and outperforms better than 95% of all investors we track. Knowing this, you might be curious to know a bit more about what KeyBanc has to say about PGT,

Here are three of those things.

Thing No. 1: PGT is profitableBefore getting around to cutting PGT (from overweight to sector weight, according to Streetinsider.com), KeyBanc prefaces its downgrade with a few words of commendation. PGT, says KeyBanc, beat estimates in its Q4 financial report last week, earning $0.07 per diluted share. This, notes the analyst, is an indication that show certain "issues" that concerned investors in Q3, when PGT missed guidance, "have passed."

Guidance looks good, too, with PGT promising to grow sales 20% year over year in 2016, and to increase earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization an even more impressive 26%. According to management, "Revenue achieved in fiscal 2015 [was] a company record, and a level we have not seen since 2006."

Thing No. 2: Things may not be as good as they seemThat all sounds pretty good for PGT. And yet, according to KeyBanc, the future might not be quite as bright as PGT's guidance makes it seem. In particular, TheFly.com highlights a KeyBanc warning that "existing home sales appear to be decelerating in Florida," which is "PGT's most significant geographic market."

Thing No. 3: Costs are rising KeyBanc also notes that rising selling, general, and administrative costs are going to weigh heavily on profits in the year ahead. This wasn't an issue in Q4, when SG&A spending rose only 8% on a 12% rise in revenue, but it could be a problem in the year ahead.

These worries take the analyst's best guess at 2016 profitability down from $0.75 per share to only $0.59. That's more than a 20% drop.

And one more thing...Is KeyBanc right to be forecasting potential disappointment at PGT, after such a successful Q4? The analyst's strong record of outperforming the market lends confidence that it KeyBanc may be right. What's more, the numbers appear to back this up.

Consider: Valued on trailing profits, PGT stock costs 21 times earnings. That doesn't seem too unreasonable. Rival building glass producer Apogee Enterprises costs about 20 times earnings itself. And according to Yahoo! Finance figures, Apogee is only expected to grow its earnings 10% annually over the next five years, whereas PGT is pegged for a 30% growth rate.

And yet, if you look a little closer, the picture here is not quite as rosy as it seems. S&P Global Market Intelligence, for example, predicts not a 30% growth rate for PGT, but only 20% (a number that, if correct, would take PGT out of undervalued territory and make the stock look only fairly priced at its current P/E). S&P Global's estimate for growth at Apogee, meanwhile, confirms the 10% guess.

S&P Global figures also show that, over the past three reported quarters, free cash flow at PGT amounted to only $7.7 million -- less than 40% of reported net income. Granted, PGT has not yet released full-year cash flow figures, and it's possible that Q4 will show the company to have made up the difference. Based on what we know now, though, there do appear to be grounds for worry that PGT stock is not quite as profitable as it seems.

Long story short: We'll probably have to wait for PGT's 10-K filing to come out before we can confirm that free cash flow is an issue at the company. Until then, however, KeyBanc's suggestion that you curb your enthusiasm about the stock, and take growth predictions with a grain of salt, seems like sound advice.

The article PGT, Inc. Downgraded: 3 Things You Need to Know originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributorRich Smithdoes not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him onMotley Fool CAPS, publicly pontificating under the handleTMFDitty, where he's currently ranked No. 270 out of more than 75,000 rated members.The Motley Fool recommends Apogee Enterprises. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
U.S. private employers added 214,000 jobs in February, above economists' expectations, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.

Economists surveyed by Reuters had forecast the ADP National Employment Report would show a gain of 190,000 jobs, with estimates ranging from 160,000 to 225,000.

Private payroll gains in the month earlier were revised down to 193,000 from an originally reported 205,000 increase.

The report is jointly developed with Moody's Analytics.

The ADP figures come ahead of the U.S. Labor Department's more comprehensive non-farm payrolls report on Friday, which includes both public and private-sector employment.

Economists polled by Reuters are looking for U.S. private payroll employment to have grown by 185,000 jobs in February, up from 158,000 the month before. Total non-farm employment is expected to be 190,000.

The unemployment rate is forecast to stay steady at 4.9 percent from the 4.9 percent recorded a month earlier.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Image source: Checkpoint.

What: Shares of Checkpoint Systems were up 29.8% at 11:20 a.m. ET on Wednesday after Canadian label and packaging company CCL Industries agreed to acquire the anti-theft tag maker for about $422 million.

So what: The all-cash deal values Checkpoint at $10.15 per share and represents a premium of about 29% to its Tuesday closing price. CCL is making the move to expand its international presence while creating meaningful cost savings, and judging by CCL's own 10% pop on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Mr. Market is pleased with the price being paid to do it.

Now what: The deal is expected to be immediately accretive to CCL's earnings and to generate annual synergies of up to $40 million. "We have admired Checkpoint for many years as they built a unique, leading global position providing technology-driven label solutions to the retail & apparel industry," said President and CEO Geoffrey Martin. "We are very pleased to welcome their deeply experienced people to CCL where they will continue to focus on this important industry for emerging 'smart label' technologies." So while Checkpoint's upside is likely limited at this point, CCL's newly bolstered breadth and scale might be worth looking into.

The article Why Checkpoint Systems, Inc. Shares Soared originally appeared on Fool.com.

Brian Pacampara has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders isnt running out of money anytime soon. His campaign raised more than $42 million in the month of February alone, the most raised in a single month by any candidate running for president in 2016, according to a campaign statement.

Working Americans chipping in a few dollars every week are changing the way campaigns in our country are financed, said Jeff Weaver, Sanders campaign manager. Not only are we going to smash Secretary Clintons personal goal of raising $50 million in the first quarter of 2016, our supporters are putting Bernie on the path to win the nomination.

Winning the nomination wont be easy; With 865 delegates on the line for Democrats on Super Tuesday, Sanders must continue to garner supporters to secure state wins. According to data of poll averages from Real Clear Politics, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is poised to win 10 out of the 11 states included in Super Tuesday. Two states, Oklahoma and Massachusetts, are a close toss-up, leaving Sanders with a certain win in his home state of Vermont.

There are still many states, many delegates out there and more on March 15. There is a lot of enthusiasm around Sanders campaign. Obviously to be able to raise all that money in one month with average increments of $30, it just shows he has been able to build a lot of support, said Penny Lee, Democratic strategist and senior adviser to Venn Strategies, LLC.

Lee says with the amount of resources Sanders has coming in and momentum hes been gaining, he will be able to stay in the race for the long haul. With a win in New Hampshire and a close race in Iowa, she says Sanders must continue to build upon that success.

Sanders needs to win some states, but we in the Democratic Party allocate our delegates based on the percentages of which you perform. So, he could keep the race going for the delegates for a long time if he keeps close to Hillary or wins the states.

Lee, who is backing Clinton and has donated to her campaign, says there is no way to truly predict who the nominee will be in the end.

Nothing is assumed and its not over until its over. He [Sanders] has a legitimate fight left for every delegate, she added.

In hypothetical matchups with the top three Republican contenders, Sanders beats businessman Donald Trump 55-43, Texas Senator Ted Cruz 57-50 and Florida Senator Marco Rubio 53-45, according to a new CNN poll. Clinton doesnt do as well against the GOP field, winning 52-44 over Trump but losing to Rubio 50-47 and Cruz 49-48.
The GOP establishment is dusting off its old playbook and is once again discussing a coordinated advertising blitz in a last-ditch effort to weaken Donald Trump enough to prevent him from getting the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the FOX Business Network has learned.

In August, FBN reported that various Republican political action committeessome directly affiliated with major GOP candidates and some not  began discussions about a major attack ad blitz against Trump to begin sometime after Labor Day.

The effort fizzled as PAC organizers worried about Trump launching his own attacks  in his trademark vitriolic styleand officials believing that his outrageous statements and strident positions on issues like immigration would eventually short-circuit his campaign.

But Trumps campaign didnt fizzle, and in fact, it only got stronger to the point that even with several candidates dropping out of the contest -- like former Florida Governor Jeb Bush -- he remains solidly ahead in the race to be the 2016 GOP nominee. Some analysts say without a major change, Trump is on the verge of winning the nomination outright.

With that, the Republican PACs have begun to mobilize once again, and officials running these organizations have begun to coordinate their efforts to derail Trump, major GOP fundraisers tell FOX Business. At least publicly, the PACs directly affiliated with GOP candidates like Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich are mum about these discussions and say they arent directly coordinating with the other.

We are working independently to draw a clear contrast between Marco Rubio's positive vision for the country and Donald Trump's con-artist scam," said Jeffrey C. Sadosk, spokesman for Rubio's Conservative Solutions PAC. Connie Wehrkamp, spokeswoman for Kasichs New Day for America PAC said: "We have not have not been involved in any such discussions."

But major GOP fundraisers say the discussions are ongoing, and they involve the timing of the PAC ads around the Florida primary on March 15, and to some extent content.

The campaigns themselves arent coordinating against Trump because theyre still in the heat battle amongst themselves, said one major GOP money man. But the PACs are talking about how best to take Trump on, so the plan is to focus their fire power on the front-runner

At least part of the ad blitz has already begun, these fundraisers say, with an ad from Our Principles PAC, which takes aim at the controversy surrounding Trump University.

The eponymously named educational for-profit school charged students thousands of dollars for seminars in how to make money in real estatethe line of business that Trump specialized in before he became a reality TV star. But some students of the school say they were duped into believing the courses offered by Trump University were being taught by real estate professionals hand-picked by Trump himself.

Trump is facing a civil fraud suit from New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman over the controversy, and while Trump has denied charges, these former students say the instructors delivered generic information about real estate they could have received for free and that Trump himself did not personally select the instructors; the students testimonials are part of the Our Principles ad.

Tim Miller, spokesman for Our Principles, told FOX Business that the PAC is focusing its ad buys on upcoming primaries in Michigan, Illinois and Florida. The Trump University ad is up now and we expect more ads in the coming days," he added. "Right now, over a million dollars has already [been] committed in advertising. And we expect more to come."

Hope Hicks, spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, labeled the ad-blitz as yet another desperate attempt by the out of touch establishment elites and dark money that control the weak politicians to maintain control of our broken and corrupt system. Mr. Trump will continue to stand for the people and the issues they care about."

Aside from the Trump University controversy, Republican insiders say they have no shortage of controversies to highlight in their future ads. They say the main part of the blitz will likely come during the GOP Florida primary on March 15, which is considered by many political analysts a must-win state for Marco Rubio, who trails Trump in most polls.

Florida is a so-called winner-take-all state, meaning all 99 of its delegates will be handed over to the candidate with the most votes.

If Trump can win Florida, he will move significantly closer to the 1,237 delegates needed to achieve the GOP nomination. Likewise if Rubio prevails, he can possibly deny Trump the necessary delegate total going into the Republican convention  to be held on July 18 through 21 in Cleveland  and possibly try to join forces with other GOP candidates such as Kasich and Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz to contest a Trump nomination, even if he has compiled the most delegates.

For that reason, Florida becomes a key focal point of this ad war, GOP fundraisers say. The PACs are in the process of coordinating and plan to hit Trump hard in Florida, another major GOP fundraiser told FOX Business.
Six months ago, a California girl suddenly started experiencing strange symptoms and the mystery cause of the green discharge from her nose was finally solved last weekend a safety pin thatd been stuck up her nose.

Khloe Russell, 5, of Hemet, Calif., had to stop every five minutes to blow her nose.

"About six months ago, her nose just started (running) out of this one side. Green, green, green constantly and it stunk," Khloe's mother Katelyn Powell, told ABC7.

Powell took her to three different doctors to figure out the source, but all thought she had a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics. Khloe never had pain.

The solution came last weekend.

"My brother was like, 'Your nose, it's disgusting. Blow your nose, blow your nose.' And she blows it and out comes the safety pin," Powell told ABC7.

The safety pin was 1.5 inches long and was black and disintegrating.

5-year-old SoCal girl gets safety pin stuck up nose for 6 months https://t.co/jAsqYwyh24 pic.twitter.com/eG1ByoT3zF  ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) March 2, 2016

We were horrified. I was like, 'Did you put this up there?' Powell told the news channel. She did, but she forgot to tell me."

Khloe revealed that she had been making a castle with safety pins six months ago when the object went up her nose.

The family said they werent mad at doctors who were unable to see the pin with a scope, instead, Powell is relieved they found the source.

Khloe is scheduled to go to the doctor on Wednesday to check for injury or infection and shes learned her lesson.

No way, not again, she told ABC7.
In a new initiative aiming to sync up with female staffs natural rhythms, a British social community group is allowing women to take time off of work during their monthly cycles.

Coexist, which employs 31 people seven of which are men hopes their policy can change the stigma around womens issues, community director Bex Baxter told the Mirror.

Baxter said that by allowing women to miss work during their periods, the company may be more productive.

"There is a misconception that taking time off makes a business unproductive - actually it is about synchronizing work with the natural cycles of the body, she told the Mirror. Immediately after a period is a time when women are actually three times as productive as usual.

The idea of a period policy isnt new menstrual leave began in Japan in 1947 and other countries, including South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia, have laws in place, the Mirror reported. Nike is thought to be the only worldwide company to officially include menstrual leave as part of their code of conduct.

The idea has been enthusiastically received by all employees, Bex noted.

"For too long there's been a taboo surrounding periods - I have women staff telling me their ashamed to admit they're in pain, she said. I want us to break down that shame and replace the negativity with positivity.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued new recommendations to reduce the risk of potential transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus from human cells, tissues, and cellular and tissue-based products (HCT/Ps).

There is a potential risk that the Zika virus can be transmitted by HCT/Ps used as part of a medical, surgical, or reproductive procedure, the FDA said on Tuesday.

Donors should be considered ineligible if they were diagnosed with Zika virus infection or were in an area with active virus transmission, or had sex with a male with either of those risk factors, within the past six months, the agency said.

U.S. health officials said last week they were investigating 14 reports of the Zika virus that may been transmitted through sex, including to several pregnant women, raising new questions about the role sexual transmission is playing in the growing outbreak.

Brazil has declared a public health emergency over Zika, which may be linked to thousands of cases of the microcephaly birth defect that is marked by undersized heads and underdeveloped brains.

There is no cure or treatment for the virus, which is usually transmitted by mosquitoes and has spread to more than 30 countries.
In the first documented case of its kind, a man taking an effective antiviral medication still contracted a drug-resistant strain of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a new report finds.

The 43-year-old man in Canada was taking Truvada, the medication approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reduce HIV risk among HIV-negative people, according to the FDA.

The case suggests that people taking Truvada can still get HIV if they're exposed to a strain of the virus that is resistant to the two antiviral medications contained in the pills  tenofovir and emtricitabine, the researchers said. [7 Devastating Infectious Diseases]

The man had been taking Truvada daily for the past two years. Normally, HIV-negative people who are at high risk of contracting HIV, including those who have sex with HIV-positive partners, take Truvada on a daily basis to lower their chances of getting the virus, according to the FDA.

The man, who reported that he has sex with men, got tested for HIV, according to the report. The test showed that he was HIV-positive, the researchers said, according to the February report, presented at the 2016 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Boston in February.

A genetic analysis of the viral strain the man was infected with showed that he had likely acquired it recently, and from a single source, the report found. Moreover, tests showed that it was multidrug-resistant.

The case is concerning, but likely rare, experts told Poz, a news outlet that covers HIV and AIDS.

"I certainly don't think that this is a situation which calls for panic," report co-researcher Richard Harrigan, the director of the lab program at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada, told Poz. "It is an example that demonstrates that [pre-exposure antiviral medication] can sometimes be ineffective in the face of drug-resistant virus, in the same way that treatment itself can sometimes be ineffective in the face of drug-resistant virus."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Truvada can reduce by 92 percent the risk of HIV infection in people who are at high risk of contracting the virus. The drug is more effective when it is taken consistently and used with other HIV-prevention methods, such as condoms.

Two large clinical trials of Truvada show that it lowered people's HIV risk substantially, according to the FDA. In one trial, of about 2,500 HIV-negative gay and bisexual men and transgender women, Truvada lowered HIV risk by 42 percent. In another study of 4,800 heterosexual couples in which only one was HIV-positive, it reduced the risk of HIV infection in the HIV-negative partner by 75 percent.

Although the man's HIV strain is resistant to multiple drugs, doctors have still found a way to treat him. The man is on a regimen of other drugs, including dolutegravir (brand name Tivicay), darunavir/cobicistat (Prezcobix) and rilpivirine (Edurant), and has "a fully suppressed viral load," according to Poz.

Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
A man believed to be in his early 60s was found in Jersey City, New Jersey, on February 20, and remains unidentified after hospitalization. Doctors at Jersey City Medical Center-Barnabas are seeking any information on the patient, The Jersey Journal reported.

The mans name may be Thomas Sheridan, according to the hospital. Any information would be helpful in his medical treatment, a hospital spokesman said.

Those with information can contact Colleen Reilly at 551-226-0393 or the JCMC Department of Social Services at 201-915-2070.
A Pennsylvania woman who found out she was pregnant while vacationing in Las Vegas with her husband decided a pre-flight surprise would be the best way to break the news. Lisa Sadiwnyk had kept the news to herself for two days before the trip home, Fox 29 reported.

While waiting to board their flight back to Philadelphia, Lisa sought out two crew members and let them in on her plan. She wrote a secret message on a note that was slipped to the pilot during pre-boarding checks, the news site reported. Before taking off, the pilot came over the PA system with a special message.

Okay folks, ready or not here we go. I got a note handed to me, Im going to read it verbatim, the pilot says in a video that has now gone viral. Can I have your attention please, we would like to do something special for a lucky winner who won big here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Now, wed like to turn your attention to seat 29E, where youll find Eric who is traveling with his Lisa, the pilot said. Well Eric, although you didnt strike it rich here in Las Vegas, you did hit the jackpot. Congratulations youre about to be a dad!

Fellow passengers erupt in applause as Eric can be seen smiling and kissing Lisa.
Though weve done a great job moving the needle for better heart health with men, women are still at high risk with cardiovascular disease being the No. 1 cause of death among women here in the U.S.

There are a number of reasons, so Im challenging all women with a three-pronged approach to ensuring their heart health.

Step 1: Get Educated

Women often manifest symptoms of heart disease differently than men, and people may not immediately think they are related to the heart. Men feel the symptoms most often associated with heart disease, like intense chest pain, while women often feel other milder symptoms such as:

Tightness or pressure in the throat, jaw, shoulder, abdomen, back or arm, or a burning sensation in the upper body;

Shortness of breath;

Generalized weakness, dizziness or lightheadedness;

Nausea, with or without vomiting;

Abdominal discomfort;

Awareness of heartbeat (palpitations).

Since these symptoms are not well known and can signal other, less threatening health issues, women -- and sometimes their doctors -- often overlook or attribute the symptoms to other conditions.

Women often put off seeing a doctor or downplay their symptoms. For instance, they describe chest pain as a bit of discomfort. But in order for doctors to really take notice, it is best to use the word pain. Doctors know that pain needs attention. And of course, it is important to actually make the appointment and go see your doctor in the first place. Only you can make sure you put your health first.

Step 2: Get Heart Healthy

You hear this all the time, but it doesnt mean its any less important!

Its simple: Eat right with lots of fruits and vegetables and a reduced focus on meat, and exercise regularly.

Step 3: Get Tested

You and your doctor need to agree on the most appropriate tests based on your symptoms or suspicions. There are many tests available, and they all have their uses.

Since it is harder to diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD) in women, we often undergo multiple -- and sometimes unnecessary -- repeat tests exposing us to additional risks. You should also be aware of risks associated with each test and talk with your doctor about the best approach for you.

Some tests come with risks such as radiation, some with risks associated with surgery. For instance, a nuclear stress test exposes a person to the equivalent of 39 mammograms or approximately 13.6 years worth of natural radiation. This is especially important for women to know, and for doctors to consider when deciding which test or tests to use because breast tissue is sensitive to radiation. Since 1980, patients in the U.S. have experienced an increase in radiation exposure from medical imaging at six times what it was previously.

And then there is the fact that certain parts of womens bodies -- such as smaller hearts and breast tissue -- can impact the accuracy of common CAD imaging tests, leading to higher rates of false-positive and false-negative test results.

For those experiencing non-urgent symptoms, there is a simple sex-specific blood test called Corus CAD -- which is especially beneficial for women  in helping doctors rule out obstructive coronary artery disease, the most common form of heart disease. It is a simple blood test, and is the only test of its kind that takes cardiovascular differences between men and women into account.

By working with your doctor you can determine which of these tests is right for you, and when, during your care. Knowledge really is your guiding principle here.

You are the lead person responsible for your care. Being informed when you talk with your doctor is part of the process. Learn more today so you can take action when you need to. A campaign called "Spread the Word" offers a great website with a ton of resources to help you. We want you to join in and share this information with those you love. After all, we cant take action if we arent informed.

For more information, visit GoSpreadtheWord.com.

Dr. Annabelle Santos Volgman a board certified cardiologist who serves as McMullan-Eybel Chair for Excellence in Clinical Cardiology Professor of Medicine at Rush College of Medicine in Chicago and Medical Director of the Rush Heart Center for Women.


Americans havent agreed on much during these long months of the presidential primary, but one thing seems clear: they are frustrated with the federal government and are eager to embrace outsiders, candidates without traditional political backgrounds who are willing to change how Washington works.

This wide-spread frustration stems from a sense that the Washington establishment is ignoring not only the will of the people, but also the vision of a limited federal government set forward by our Constitution.

That fear over federal overreach is justified. The president subverts Congressional power with executive orders that make or change laws. The Supreme Court reinterprets and disregards the clear meaning of statutes and the Constitution. Federal agencies run by un-elected bureaucrats have so much power that Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) calls them the fourth branch of government. Congress, meanwhile, shows little interest in curbing these abuses.

What can be done? Electing candidates who understand the proper role of the federal government is a start, but its not enough: recent years have shown us that what someone says when running for office may not hold true when the office is won.

Instead of relying on politicians in Washington, Americans should use the power they already have to push the federal government back within its constitutional bounds. The Founders knew that the closer power lies to the people, the safer liberty is. Thats why they gave states the ability to restrain the federal government through the amendment process.

Many people are under the false impression that the only way to amend the Constitution is with a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, followed by ratification of 38 states. But Article V of the Constitution makes clear that theres another way, one that puts the power in the hands of state legislatures: Congress ... on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments. Amendments proposed at this convention would then be subject to ratification by three-fourths of all states.

Simply put, state legislatures can call a convention to propose an amendment regardless of what Congress wants. This power was integrated into the Constitution at the insistence of George Mason, who wanted to ensure that Congress couldnt obstruct attempts to curb its power. These resolutions have been filed in over thirty states, with Indiana this week becoming the sixth state to pass the measure.

This is no mere historical footnote but a cause with real momentum. Thats why constitutional scholar Robert Natelson and others believe there is a significant chance that an amendments convention will meet within the next few years.

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas expressed his support for a convention of states to propose Constitutional amendments that would realign the federal government with the will of the people. He joins an impressive list of supporters, including Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Ben Carson. Marco Rubio also declared that he would put the weight of the presidency behind a constitutional convention of the states to pass a balanced budget amendment and impose term limits on both Congress and the Supreme Court.

Those are two promising antidotes for the poison of federal overreach. Another is to limit federal spending and taxing to only those matters for which individual states do not hold jurisdiction. That would help control federal spending and prevent federal over-reach into issues that are best left to local governments.

Polls and primary results are starting to show what Americans want: major constitutionally-guided changes to the federal government. No matter who wins the presidency, citizens should encourage their state legislatures to call for a convention that will help restore the freedom that is our birthright as Americans.
Hillary Clinton had a Super Tuesday, winning seven of eleven states. In her victory speech, she promised to Make America Whole, slamming Donald Trump for dividing the country.

The New York Times was practically giddy with relief that Clinton had triumphed, thus kneecapping the quixotic but popular Bernie Sanders.

The Times was equally joyous to report a deep chasm dividing the GOP, claiming the Republican Party was falling apart.

Nowhere did the Times mention the most stunning aspect of the primary season to date. Far from falling apart, GOP participation is growing like topsy, while the number of people turning out to vote Democratic has cratered.

In Texas, about 2.8 million Republicans turned out, about twice the number in 2012. Thats in sharp contrast to the Democrats, where 1.4 million votes were cast, about half the number in 2008.

In Massachusetts, nearly 20,000 voters quit the Democratic Party in order to sign up for the GOP. In the four first states to vote, the number of participants on the GOP side was ahead by 26 percent, while Democratic turnout was down across the board.

The GOP may be falling apart, but its doing so in a growing tent. Ironically, Donald Trump, who has been scorned for dividing the country, appears to be bringing together a disparate group of Americans tired of liberal policies and fed up with government incompetence. Theyve waited for Democrats to fix whats broken  for nearly 8 years  and now theyre ready to try something new.

And, they dont like Hillary Clinton. Clinton may be able to beat a 74-year-old Socialist, but running against Donald Trump will be tough. Word is that her camp thinks facing off against Trump will be a walk in the park. Her husband, who has keen political instincts, knows better.

One warning shot comes from a recent CNN/ORC International poll. Though the survey suggests that Hillary is her partys preferred candidate  by a margin of 55 percent to 38 percent over Bernie Sanders  it also reveals an enthusiasm gap wide enough to drive a houseboat through. This is her challenge.

When asked the question Compared to previous elections, are you more enthusiastic about voting than usual, or less enthusiastic? Forty-six percent of registered Democrats said more enthusiastic while 42 percent said they were less pumped up. In November 2007, by comparison, 68 percent of Democrats, ecstatic about the possibility of dumping George W. Bush and about Barack Obamas candidacy, answered that they were more enthusiastic, while only 24 percent said they were less so. The readings are the worst since 2000.

Drilling down, women are overall less excited about this election, as are minorities. The folks most enthusiastic about voting are males and older Americans. Hillary needs young people, minorities and women to rally to her cause -- the old Obama coalition -- if she is to beat the Republican nominee.

Asking the same question of Republicans, 58 percent say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, while only 30 percent responded that they were less excited. Welcome to the Donald Trump effect. Or maybe to the Seven Years of Obama is Enough phenomenon.

In this poll, conducted at the end of February, 49 percent of Republicans and right-leaning independents indicate they are behind Trump, the highest level in the past six months. Only 16 percent line up behind Rubio, and 15 percent are for Cruz. This shatters the thought that there were at most 30 to 35 percent of Republicans willing to back the billionaire. It also shatters the previous record of 41 percent set in late January. Trumps support has gained steadily since mid-September.

However, its not all good news for Trump backers. In another question, respondents are asked if they would support a particular candidate, should he be nominated. While 69 percent say they would definitely or probably support Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, only 52 percent say they would line up behind Trump. Worse - only 11 percent say they would definitely not support Cruz and 12 percent wont back Rubio; a full 35 percent say they will definitely not vote for Trump. Trump will have to mend some fences.

By contrast, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, 65 percent of Democrats and left-leaning independents surveyed say they will definitely or probably support her; only 20 percent say they absolutely will not.

Though Trump walks away with the overall GOP vote, it looks like backers take a more jaundiced view of the tycoons capabilities, while still placing him above his rivals. A slim majority (51 percent) of Republicans thinks Trump would be the most effective at solving the countrys problems; Cruz comes in second in the problem-solving department with 17 percent of the poll. As for handling the duties of commander-in-chief, Trump again leads, but with the confidence of less than half of right-leaning voters.

In assessing whos most honest and trustworthy, Trump only gets 35 percent of the votes, compared to 22 percent for Carson, 14 percent for Cruz and 13 percent for Rubio. After all the charges and counter-charges that the candidates have flung at each other in recent weeks, a lack of credibility is understandable.

Hillary Clinton flunks the character issue by a huge margin: only 36 percent think she is the most honest and trustworthy candidate, compared to 59 percent that credits Sanders with those characteristics.

This is only one poll, but its a revealing snapshot. As the campaigns plow onward, positions may change. However, Hillarys problems with how voters view her honesty and trustworthiness appear durable.

The same may be true of The Donald.

If the country is presented with two flawed candidates, the enthusiasm gap could prove decisive.
Government pretends its the cause of progress. Then it strangles innovation.

We know government understands that new technologies are important. The military invests in robots and traffic cops use radar guns. But when the rest of us use robots or fly drones, government gets eager to put rules in place before things get out of control.

When its hard to innovate in the U.S., innovation happens elsewhere. The Japanese already offer largely automated hotels. At the Henn-na (or Weird) Hotel, the front desk clerk is a robot dinosaur -- popular with the kids. Another robot stores your luggage, and another takes you to your room.

This may sound like an expensive stunt, but the robot hotel is cheaper than others nearby -- partly because it employs fewer people.

That alarms politicians who fear change. Whenever theres been innovation, experts predict massive unemployment. They react to what they see. Fewer receptionists work at that Japanese hotel. Military robots will replace soldiers, and self-driving cars will take away delivery peoples jobs. Often politicians pass rules to stop this job destruction.

But the more efficiently we can do things, the more human energy is free to be turned toward the unseen, tasks we havent even thought of yet but which may be more pleasant to do, and these jobs will create new opportunities.

If we crushed every machine that did things humans used to do, wed still be living in caves and hunting tigers with spears. Every time theres a new invention, some people lose jobs, and theres a period of adjustment.

But we come out ahead.

You dont believe employment recovers? Remember that 200 years ago, 90 percent of Americans worked on farms. Now fewer than 2 percent do. But that doesnt mean that 90 percent of the population has been left unemployed.

We saw the car displacing horses, buggies and buggy whips, but we dont lament that passage, do we? says Max Borders, author of Superwealth.

The blacksmiths of old had to figure out something else to do, observes Borders. They all found jobs. The economy evolves. Its an evolving ecosystem.

Some dont want it to evolve. Cab drivers and their unions demand that government protect their jobs from competition by ride-hailing services such as Uber.

But if government stepped in to protect jobs, wed be stuck with the jobs and industries of the past, millions of buggy-whip makers and all those extra farmers.

I think were better off celebrating new ways of doing things -- and the inventors and entrepreneurs who keep thinking them up. That gives us choices that are better, faster, cheaper and cooler, says Borders.

But today, with Americas ever-increasing regulation, its often tougher to create new things. Uber offers obviously better and safer service, but to succeed it has to overcome protests and break government rules.

It was legally questionable, says Borders, but people did it anyway. Uber thrived only because it grew popular and rich before the politicians and regulators noticed. By then, Uber had millions of customers and billions of dollars, so they could bully politicians back.

In New York City, Uber defeated my anti-progress mayor by telling its customers: Waiting too long for a car? Blame the politicians.

We are better off because Uber won, but the battles continue. Some airports, to protect their taxi monopolies, recently banned Uber.

Uber is fortunate that its most important innovation is just an app on phones. It didnt need to first get government permission to create that.

More traditional innovators, however, ones who want to build big, visible things like a better nuclear plant or chemical plant or invent a lifesaving new drug, are often crushed by todays byzantine rules -- crushed before they can make our lives better.

When that happens, we may never know what good things we miss. The future is going to be full of surprises, full of awesome things that almost fall from the sky, says Borders. We cant even imagine it today.

Its easier to imagine if government stays out of the way.
In 1973, the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion throughout pregnancy. The text of that Roe vs. Wade decision states: Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. (Roe at 153).

In 2007, when the same Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, the following words appeared in the Courts Gonzales vs. Carhart decision: It seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow

These two assertions by the Supreme Court give a snapshot of what we have learned as a nation from our policy of legalized abortion. It hurts. What was marketed and sold as something "liberating" actually can enslave. What was presented to women as a tool to solve their problems actually creates problems of its own.

And the voices of those who have learned this by painful experience continue to grow, through the Silent No More Awareness Campaign (www.SilentNoMore.com). For over four decades, groups advocating for legal abortion have urged us to listen to the voices of women. And now, those voices say with increasing clarity, "I regret my abortion." Nor does this simply reflect a psychological regret or guilt. It reflects numerous physical damages, as well as malpractice and abusive treatment from abortion providers.

The Silent No More Campaign, a project of Priests for Life and Anglicans for Life, has submitted one of the Friend of the Court briefs being considered by the US Supreme Court as it argues, on March 2, the case of Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. This case is not about making abortion illegal. In reality, it is about implementing more fully a provision, ironically, of Roe vs. Wade itself, a provision that says,

"The State has a legitimate interest in seeing to it that abortion, like any other medical procedure, is performed under circumstances that insure maximum safety for the patient. This interest obviously extends at least to the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that might arise" [410 U.S. 113, 150].

Yet the abortion industry is challenging the right of Texas to pursue that legitimate interest, as it has been trying to do for the last several years by passing legislation that is meant to increase the professional competence of both the doctors who perform abortions and the facilities where they are performed. The Texas law, HB2, that is under review, requires, among other things, that abortion practitioners have hospital admitting privileges at a hospital within thirty miles of the abortion facility, and that the facility itself meet the standards of ambulatory surgical centers.

The fact that the abortion industry complains that this will shut down the majority of clinics in Texas is not a negative reflection on the law. It is a negative reflection on the abortion industry. It is not about imposing an 'undue burden' on women seeking abortion; it is, in reality, a complaint about an 'undue burden' on abortion practitioners. This complaint is an yet more evidence of what I have been involved in documenting for two decades: that abortion clinics and those who run them are both unwilling and unable to measure up to the most reasonable standards of medicine and health care facilities.

This is not an abstract debate. The abortion industry has a track record, and has proven to be the most unregulated surgical industry in the nation. While Roe indicated, as quoted above, that there should be "maximum safety for the patient," the fact that this is a court decision -- and not a law -- means there is no enforcement mechanism for that provision. In many states, veterinary clinics are better regulated than abortion facilities. And even where regulations are in place, the abortion industry gets away regularly with evading them, as we say in Pennsylvania in the gruesome, but not unusual, case of Kermit Gosnell. In fact, twenty years ago I helped put together the book Lime 5 which documents scores of Gosnells, allowing high school students to administer anesthesia, putting wounded girls in private cars to take them to hospitals far away where the abortionist could cover his tracks, using expired medications, altering medical records, and much more. And the testimonies of our "Silent No More" women corroborate atrocities like this.

Meanwhile, one of the amicus briefs supporting the abortion clinics in the Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt case also shared personal testimonies: over a hundred women in the legal profession who claim they could not have advanced in their professional lives without their abortions. I'm glad they are successful. But what exactly that has to do with clinics living up to fire codes or proper staffing policies, or provisions to be able to handle medical emergencies, I'm not sure.

The bottom line is simple. If advocates of the abortion industry want it to be considered a standard element of heath care in America, then start acting like it, rather than using the courts to fend off every effort to apply to the industry reasonable medical regulations.
Its an election year and, not surprisingly, the national debate over abortion is heating up. However, this years dominant battle is taking place not on the campaign trail, but in the Supreme Court.

On March 2, the Court will take up its first abortion case in nearly a decade when it hears oral arguments in Whole Womans Health v. Hellerstedt, a challenge to health and safety standards for abortion clinics. At issue in this landmark case is the abortion industrys right to remain and operate in the proverbial back alley."

The Supreme Court arguments will mark the culmination of the nearly three-year legal battle over a Texas law requiring abortion clinics to meet the same high-quality and medically endorsed standards as other outpatient surgical facilities and mandating that individual abortionists maintain hospital admitting privileges to facilitate emergency care and the treatment of post-abortive complications.

In challenging this commonsense law, the abortion industry is essentially advancing the argument that it should be allowed to keep its profits high and patient care standards low.

Specifically, the abortion industry and its supporters have repeatedly asserted that, if the Texas law is enforced, many abortion clinics will be forced to close their doors and women will suffer. In advancing these arguments, abortion supporters have unwittingly exposed the rotten core of their profit-motivated abortion business.

First, by alleging that the enforcement of this protective law will force abortion clinics out of business, the abortion industry is implicitly admitting that abortion clinics either cannot meet or are unwilling to meet basic health and safety requirements such as employing qualified medical personnel, maintaining clean and sanitary procedure rooms, and ensuring that patients have access to appropriate post-surgical care. In either circumstance, the abortion industry is prioritizing mere access to abortion facilities over the health and safety of the very women it claims to champion.

The abortion industry callously believes that simple access to a facility providing abortions is sufficient to protect maternal health.

They give little to no thought or concern to what happens to women behind the closed doors of these often substandard facilities.

Convicted Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell provided mere access to abortion in a clinic where a woman died because a stretcher could not fit through the hallways, where unsterilized instruments spread infections, and where parts of unborn babies were stored in jars and cat food cans like macabre trophies. Unfortunately, Gosnell is not an aberration, but is instead emblematic of a duplicitous industry desperate to avoid meaningful regulation and oversight.

Second, by alleging that current abortion facilities will have to

expend a significant amount of money to come into compliance with the physical plant and other requirements of the Texas law, the abortion industry is tacitly confirming that it prizes profits over patient health and safety. If the abortion industry was truly committed to women, it would, without complaint,

expend whatever amount of money is necessary to ensure safe facilities and competent care. Clearly, that is not the path that the increasingly litigious abortion industry has chosen.

Instead, abortion advocates have publicly questioned the necessity of many of the mandates in the Texas law, alleging that requirements such as maintaining a hallway wide enough to accommodate a stretcher are unnecessary for abortion patients. Presumably then, the abortion industry does not believe that women seeking abortions are entitled to the protection of the medical communitys best practices.

The arguments being advanced by the abortion industry are not

new. Abortion advocates made these same arguments nearly 20 years ago when states began requiring abortion clinics to meet minimum health and safety standards. What has changed is the increasingly perilous position that the abortion industry now finds itself in after have been repeatedly exposed as more interested in safeguarding its profits and the ability of unsafe abortion mills to remain in business than in protecting maternal health and safety.

Currently, 29 states prescribe specific health, safety, and administrative standards for abortion facilities. If the Supreme Court finds in favor of the Texas law, more states will certainly follow suit, and the abortion industrys days of operating substandard facilities while simultaneously raking in substantial profits will be at an end.

To uphold the Texas law, the Court needs only affirm what it said in Roe v. Wade: a states legitimate interest in regulating abortion obviously extends at least to [regulating] the performing physician and his staff, to the facilities involved, to the availability of after-care, and to adequate provision for any complication or emergency that may arise.

This is an uncomfortable truth for an industry that celebrates this

controversial decision while demanding that it be permit to remain in the back alley that Roe was supposed to eradicate.
The mainstream media and the conservative media are in a state of shock on the day after Super Tuesday.

They are still unable to come to terms with Donald Trump's massive appeal.

Still unwilling to acknowledge that Ted Cruz is actually a viable candidate for the White House.

Click here to join Todds American Dispatch: a Must-Read for Conservatives!

They still just can't seem to understand why American voters will not do their bidding and support Marco Rubio.

Theres plenty of book smarts among that crowd -- but no street smarts.

So let me explain what this election is all about.

It's about the hundreds of Indiana workers who just found out their jobs are heading to Mexico.

It's about the Disney employees who were fired -- and then forced to train their foreign replacements.

It's about a systematic invasion of our nation by illegal aliens -- while our government turns a blind eye.

It's about people like Kate Steinle -- murdered on American soil -- by an illegal immigrant.

It's about a war on religious liberty -- and our right to bear arms.

It's about a feckless government that refuses to acknowledge we are at war with radical Islam.

For the past eight years -- we have been told that America is no longer an exceptional nation -- that we are responsible for global chaos.

That Old Glory is a sign of racism and xenophobia.

The American people are fed up. And now we're serving notice on both parties: We are beholden to no one -- Republican or Democrat -- and if we have to burn down the village to save village -- then burn, baby, burn.

That's what this election is all about.
Hillary Clinton cant lock up the Democratic nomination just yet  but she seemed to be well on her way Tuesday, building a large delegate lead against her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Fox News projected Sanders winning primaries in Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont, as well as caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota.

However, Clinton was projected to win primaries in the delegate-rich states of Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Many of those victories came by convincing margins, with results showing Clinton beating Sanders by 60 percentage points in Alabama, 40 percentage points in Arkansas, 43 percentage points in Georgia and 33 percentage points in Tennessee.

Tuesday's results considerably narrowed Sanders' path to the Democratic nomination. Mathematically, he can still win his partys nod, but it will be an uphill climb.

Sanders told supporters in Vermont that he was up for the challenge and vowed to keep fighting until the Democratic convention in Philadelphia in July.

This campaign is not just about electing a president. It is about transforming America, Sanders said Tuesday night at a rally in Essex Junction, Vt. It is about making our great country a nation it has the potential to be.

Sanders added that the election is about dealing with some unpleasant truths and having the guts to confront those truths.

In a verbal jab at Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Clinton told a cheering crowd of supporters that the goal was not to make American great again but to make America whole again.

She made her victory speech in Florida, ahead of the key March 15 primary there.

Democrats in 11 states weighed in on whom they want on the November ballot. Clinton aimed for a clean sweep of six states, while Sanders set his sights on five states, including two with caucuses.

Tuesday was the busiest day on the primary calendar so far. For Democrats, 859 delegates will be up for grabs  more than a third of the 2,383 needed to clinch the nomination.

Sanders started the day by casting a ballot for himself in Vermont and said he felt great about his prospects.

After a lot of deliberation, I know that Bernie Sanders here in Vermont got at least one vote, Sanders joked to reporters with his wife Jane by his side. I was working on my wife. So I probably got two. So we are feeling pretty good.

Clinton spent her morning talking to local residents at a Minneapolis coffee shop and local market. She was expected to spend the evening in Miami.

Clintons victory over Sanders in the southern states hinged on turning out the states large black population. About 4 in 10 voters in Georgia's Democratic primary were black, and about 8 in 10 of them favored Clinton. That mirrors her strong showing among black voters in South Carolina over the weekend.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won the battle for second place against Sen. Marco Rubio in the GOP presidential race on Super Tuesday, increasing the pressure on the Floridian to either turn his campaign around or drop out.

Cruz won his home state as well as Oklahoma and Alaska, big victories in his quest to catch front-runner Donald Trump and pull ahead of Rubio.

Thank you Texas, Cruz said at the start of a rally in Stafford, Texas. God bless the great state of Oklahoma.

Without pause, Cruz then tried to make his double victory a rallying cry for Republicans to come together so he can have a one-on-one battle with Trump.

After tonight, weve seen this is the only campaign that can beat, has beaten and will beat Donald Trump, Cruz said. For those of you who have supported other candidates, we welcome you. United, its the only way.

A loss in delegate-rich Texas would have been a major blow to the future of the Cruz campaign. He has now won four races, including the Iowa GOP Caucus last month.

Cruz was unofficially in second in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota and Tennessee shortly before midnight EST. Eleven states held a Republican primary or caucus Tuesday.

Rubio notched his first victory of the campaign with a win in the Minnesota caucus, and was narrowly ahead of Cruz for second in Georgia Wednesday morning, but his hopes for a breakout night were dashed when Trump narrowly won Virginia.

Rubio had invested significant time and resources toward a victory in the swing state, but proved unable to garner enough support outside the Old Dominion's wealthy Washington D.C. suburbs to overtake Trump.

Despite the disappointment, Rubio waved off any suggestion of dropping out.

No one is taking home all of the delegates, he told Fox News, arguing that Cruz was supposed to win five states. We never said this was going to be the night that we surge. Were going to be in this race for a long time.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich had an up-and-down night. He finished second to Trump in both Vermont and Massachusetts, but came in fifth in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Alaska. He has vowed to keep his campaign going until at least March 15, when his home state holds a primary he expects to win.

But the night belonged to Donald Trump who won seven of the 11 states contested Tuesday. As of Wednesday morning, Trump had amassed 285 Republican National Convention delegates, well ahead of Cruz's 161 and Rubio's 87.

I think (the GOP) is going to be more unified, he said a press conference in Palm Beach, Fla. I think we are going to win it now.

With many precincts still out, all of the delegates have yet to be awarded. However, in Texas, Cruz has at least 57 to Trump's 20, with no other candidate reaching the required 20 percent vote threshold.

In Georgia, Trump had 36, Cruz had 14, and Rubio had 11. In Massachusetts, Trump had 22, while Kasich and Rubio each had eight. Virginia's results gave Trump 17 delgates, while Rubio had 16 and Cruz had eight.

In all, the GOP field was competing Tuesday for a total of 595 delegates. The other candidate in the GOP field is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who finshed no better than fourth in any race Tuesday.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton each scored a string of impressive primary victories Tuesday night that sent an emphatic message to voters and their respective political rivals that the primary season might be all but over, and the race for the White House is on -- though Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, with victories in delegate-rich Texas and in Oklahoma and Alaska, is far from conceding anything.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, too, found reason to press on, with Super Tuesday wins in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Colorado and his home state of Vermont. Even Marco Rubio, after a string of second- and third-place finishes, found his first win in Minnesota.

But with Clinton amassing a huge delegate lead, the more competitive race is on the Republican side  where Cruz clearly edged Rubio in the Super Tuesday battle for second and quickly positioned himself as the better candidate to take on Trump.

Tonight was another decision point, and the voters have spoken, Cruz said in Texas, urging voters to unite behind him so he could take on Trump head to head.

Even with the senators' victories, Trump emerged from Tuesdays contests closer than ever to the nomination, and acting more and more like a general election candidate eager to take on Democratic front-runner Clinton.

Once we get all of this finished, Im going to go after one person, and thats Hillary Clinton, he said, at an unusual primary night press conference in Florida. I think thats frankly going to be an easy race.

Speaking in Florida after notching several wins, Clinton also seemed to look beyond Sanders  taking implicit shots at Trumps make America great again campaign slogan.

America never stopped being great, Clinton said. We have to make America whole.

She also mocked his proposal for a southern border wall, saying, Instead of building walls, were going to break down barriers.

Trump answered right back, quipping: "Make America great again is going to be much better than making America whole again."

With results still coming in, Trump is projected to win in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. Clinton is projected to win Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Across 11 states, 595 Republican delegates were up for grabs Tuesday  nearly half the number needed to clinch the nomination. And on the Democratic side, Clinton and Vermont Sen. Sanders were battling for 865 delegates in 11 states  roughly a third of the number needed to clinch the nomination.

No matter how the delegate math shakes out, the primary races are not over  yet.

While the Super Tuesday contests marked the biggest day of primary season voting to date, the states were mostly allocating delegates proportionally, meaning even the runner-ups could add to their totals.

Rubio stressed that point, as he began to focus on the March 15 contest in his home state.

We never said Super Tuesday was going to be our night, he told Fox News.

Cruz clearly had the better night.

Texas was the biggest prize on the Super Tuesday map, offering 222 Democratic delegates and 155 Republican delegates. A win for Cruz in his home state was considered critical, and he was able to thwart any potential late-hour surge by Trump there.

While Cruz put subtle pressure on Rubio to step aside, Trump openly mocked the Florida senator after earlier calling on him to drop out  a call Rubio rebuffed. Trump again called him a "lightweight" while threatening to take on the Florida senator in his home state in two weeks.

Clinton entered Super Tuesday with a head of steam following her landslide win over Sanders in South Carolina this past Saturday.

Sanders, though, savored his home-state win all the same, rallying cheering supporters in Vermont Tuesday evening.

"It is good to be home," he said, before shifting to his stump speech slams against a "corrupt campaign finance system."

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who expressed low expectations for Super Tuesday, remains in the GOP race in hopes of making it to the Ohio contest in two weeks, though his presence continues to frustrate efforts by Rubio and Cruz to consolidate support.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, meanwhile, has defended his continued presence in the race.

People have asked for somebody who is not a politician, who was a member of we the people, who has an outstanding life of achievement and who thinks the way they do, he told Fox News.
The Clinton campaign was reminded of Massachusetts election laws Tuesday after the former president wandered into a Boston school and began shaking hands with voters and polling workers.

According to The Boston Globe, Bill Clinton strolled into the Holy Name Parish School in West Roxbury alongside Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. But state law restricts electioneering (soliciting for or against any person, party or ballot question) within 150 feet of a polling place.

A video shows Clinton shaking hands inside the school gym where the voting was taking place, and reports say he was glad-handing everyone -- even kissing an old woman on the head - and stopped at a bake sale near the entrance and bought a cup of coffee. At one point, according to MassLive.com, he was asked by a woman inside to pose for a picture.

As long as were not violating any election laws, he said. The report said he spent 45 minutes at the West Roxbury location. It was one of several stops he made in Massachusetts, where his wife was locked in a Super Tuesday primary battle with opponent Bernie Sanders. Massachusetts is one state where the Vermont senator has given the former first lady a fight, according to the polls.

MassLive.com said Bill Clinton did not take press questions, nor did he appear to mention the election. At one point a woman told the former president that she had voted for Republican Ted Cruz, but that her 98-year-old mother voted for Hillary Clinton. He then took a piece of paper out of his pocket and wrote the mother a note.

While the Boston Globe confirmed with the Secretary of States office that the campaign had been reminded of the 150-foot rule, it was not clear when or where the reminder took place.

When asked by by Fox News whether the ex-president was violating election rules, a spokesman for Secretary of State Brian McNiff said simply, I don't know. He was just in there shaking hands and there's no law against that."

He did mention that there were problems with traffic being obstructed and "quite a crowd in New Bedford" when Clinton stopped there earlier, but it did not shut down the polls.

Fox News Molly Lion contributed to this report
Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned China Tuesday against making increasingly aggressive moves in the disputed South China Sea region, days after satellite images revealed Beijing had placed surface-to-air missiles on one of its claimed artificial reefs.

China must not pursue militarization in the South China Sea, China said in a speech in San Francisco. Specific actions will have specific consequences.

Carter said if China doesnt heed the warning, the U.S. was prepared to increase military deployments to the Asia-Pacific region and would spend an additional $425 million to pay for more joint military exercises with countries that feel threatened by Chinas actions.

Additionally, Carter said the Pentagon is planning to spend more than $8 billion next year to expand its fleet of powerful submarines and undersea drones.

"There is no question that there are consequences for these actions," Carter said. "We have plans in all three of these categories. You'll see them unfolding."

Meanwhile, a mayor who heads a Philippine-claimed region in the disputed Spratly Islands, said he saw five Chinese coast guard and navy ships at the Jackson Atoll last week while flying over the area.

Eugenio Bito-onon said Chinese government vessels have not been stationed at the atoll, which the Philippines calls Quirino, in the years he has been passing by the uninhabited, ring-shaped reef.

Jackson Atoll lies several miles from the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef, which China occupied in 1995 and has turned into an island containing what appears to be a runway. It lies midway between the western Philippine province of Palawan and Filipino-occupied Thitu Island in the Spratlys.

The Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said it was trying to verify that reported Chinese presence, as well as a report by the Philippine Star newspaper that Chinese ships recently prevents Flipino fishermen from approaching the area.

A Philippine security official said the air force was preparing to fly a surveillance plane to verify the Chinese presence. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the military does not discuss such covert missions publicly.

"I'm alarmed because we frequently pass by that atoll on our way to Pag-asa," Bito-onon told The Associated Press by telephone, using the Philippine name for Thitu Island, where he frequently travels to visit a Filipino fishing community guarded by troops. "What will happen now if we sail close by with all those Chinese ships?"

Philippine planes landing and taking off at Thitu have also been warned frequently to stay away by Chinese forces based at the nearby Subi Reef, one of seven reefs in the disputed Spratlys that China has transformed into islands in the last two years using dredged sand. The plane that Bito-onon was on last week that flew to Thitu was shooed away again by the Chinese at Subi, he said.

"When you take off or land, you'll hear their warning: 'You are flying within our security zone, please leave immediately to avoid miscalculation,'" Bito-onon said.

The U.S. and other Southeast Asian governments with rival claims, have expressed alarm over China's island construction, saying it raises tensions, threatens regional stability and could violate freedom of navigation and overflight.

Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have conflicting territorial claims in the Spratlys.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from Reuters.
Theres a scene in the science fiction/comedy film Galaxy Quest where the crew is desperate to rescue Tim Allens character from the surface of an alien planet. You see, a gigantic creature called a pig-lizard is about to maul Allen while the crew watches in horror from the spaceship in orbit.

The crew wants to beam Allen back to the ship. Problem is, theyve never tested the transporter device which dices someone into a million pixels during transit. So the crew tests the transporter on the pig-lizard instead.

This doesnt work out too well. They beam the pig-lizard aboard the ship. But it arrives  inside out. And then the pig-lizard explodes, all over the transporter deck, innards and gizzards and plasma everywhere.

This macabre scene may well describe the state of the Republican Party after Super Tuesday. An inside-out, ruptured pig-lizard, strewn about a spaceship. It is ugly. But this is the GOPs reality.

Not only is Donald Trumps bid for the nomination soaring against all early expectations, but the phenomenon could hold consequences for the congressional contests.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for his part, worries about retaining the majority part in his title. So McConnell must help incumbent Republican senators in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Illinois retain their seats. The Kentucky Republican reportedly vowed that his party would drop [Trump] like a hot rock this fall.

But so far, most Republicans are freaking out about what they can do to save their own hide at the ballot box in November, with the possibility of being caught up in a fight involving Trumps base and its foes.

This problem is especially acute when so many congressional Republicans publicly backed Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has now won only Minnesota. Others still support Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. But the worst news for the GOP from Super Tuesday? Everyone did just well enough to keep running. No ones dropping out. That further muddles things. Cruz and Rubio could keep running to build a firewall thats just thick enough to deny Trump from mathematically securing the GOP nomination. That could prompt a brokered convention in Cleveland this July.

Talk about an exploded, inside out, pig-lizard.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., repeatedly talks about the presidential sweepstakes in his prepared remarks at press conferences. Ryan speaks about how the stakes are so high this fall. The consequences are so grave. Yet Ryan chatters about the presidential race without directly addressing the presidential race.

Ryan usually says something like this:

I've also said 100 times I'm not going to comment on what's up and what's down in the day-to-day of the presidential election contest, proclaims the Wisconsin Republican. He adds that Ive said 100 times we're going to be able to work with whoever our nominee is. We're going to be able to present a unified front.

But Ryan periodically deviates from this purported agnosticism. He did so last fall when he upbraided Trump for comments about Muslims. Ryan again chastised Trump this week.

When I see something that runs counter to who we are as a party and a country, I will speak up, said Ryan.

Trumps initial refusal to disavow white supremacist David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan (something he has since done) is what forced Ryans hand this time.

If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on peoples prejudices, said the speaker.

McConnell echoed Ryan.

Senate Republicans condemn David Duke and the KKK in the strongest terms possible, said McConnell.

Democrats barely react to this as the GOP seemingly ruptures from the inside.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tells CBS that the GOP should put its weight behind Cruz, because, well, even the Texas Republican is better than Trump.

This is the same Cruz who engineered the 2013 government shutdown, called McConnell a liar on the Senate floor and repeatedly claims that the nation is governed by the Washington cartel.

There is consternation about what Trump or Cruz means down-ballot for Republicans. The Senate was already in play before all of this. Democrats must collect a net gain of 30 seats to reclaim the House. Thats a tall order. Multiple sources say Democrats could inch into the high twenties for seats they flip if Trump is the Republican standard-bearer  but still falling short. Winning the House entails a significant suppression of the GOP vote across the board. That puts otherwise safe Republican House seats in play.

But the real trouble could be the future of the party. This may be the moment where the fractured GOP finally splits. After all, Republicans have only secured a majority in a national election once since 1988.

The bigger question is what becomes of the Republican Party  let alone, how its members govern.

For now, its ugly.

Capitol Attitude is a weekly column written by members of the Fox News Capitol Hill team. Their articles take you inside the halls of Congress, and cover the spectrum of policy issues being introduced, debated and voted on there.
**Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.**

GOP NOMINATION FIGHT RUMBLES FORWARD

The Republican Party is getting ready to do something it has never done before.

The GOP is either going to nominate a candidate that has run his entire campaign against the party itself or it will unite around the goal of denying that candidate a win.

Donald Trumps Super Tuesday performance was good  certainly good enough that if he was a conventional candidate, he would already be the presumptive nominee. But it wasnt the knockout that he and his supporters had hoped for.

Trump racked up big wins in his strongholds but lost four of 11 contests. More significant than the win/loss record for the night is the delegate count. And in that measure, little changed.

After Tuesdays contests, Trump is forecast to gain only about 20 delegates in his lead over Sen. Ted Cruz. Even with more than a quarter of the 2,340 delegates already allocated, a 20-delegate bump isnt much. But, again, if Trump was an ordinary frontrunner, it would still be enough to break down resistance among the holdouts.

But Trump is not ordinary. Rather than acceptance, the despair among conservative and establishment Republicans is deepening; conservatives for fear of the dissolution of their movement, establishmentarians for fear of polls that show a general election wipeout that crushes the party all the way down the ballot.

Trumps general election strategy is a comfort to his supporters and to some anxious Republicans. His argument that his mix of showmanship and left-right hodgepodge of positions can win enough blue-collar Democrats to pull off a victory goes against consistent head-to-head polling that shows him at a substantial deficit to presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

For most Republicans, however, this morning brought uncertainty and anxiety. The two choices facing the GOP seem unthinkable for a party that has long prided itself on orderly nominations. No nominee has gone to the Republican convention without enough delegates to win outright in 40 years, and there hasnt been a floor fight at a convention in 68 years.

But the choices couldn't be clearer today. Option one: a quick capitulation to Trumps takeover bid. Option two: push forward into an intentionally messy delegate fight and likely a contested convention.

The uncomprehending look on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies face as he stood behind Trump during the front runners election-night speech said it all for a party that has been forced to confront realities heretofore unimaginable.

When he backed Trump, Christie no doubt imagined himself the vanguard of an establishment that would make the best of an unusual nominee and get busy trying to save the general election.

That may yet happen, and Christie may look like a guy who bought Apple stock at $22 a share in 1980 instead of how he looked Tuesday: like a guy who accidentally walked in on a cockfight. But he will at least have to wait a while longer for his revenge.

Conventional wisdom says that Republicans will fall in line and accept the reality of having a populist renegade as their partys standard bearer. With all people, the path of least resistance is usually the safest bet. In politics, it is doubly so.

But the establishment and conservatives will act out of mutual self-interest for the next two weeks and do as their respective champions, Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, did in their remarks Tuesday night and focus their fire on Trump.

Every year, trailing candidates and hyperventilating pundits talk breathlessly about open conventions and floor fights. And for 40 years they have been wrong. But this time, its fully in the realm of possibility.

The best news for Trump out of Tuesday is that it seems far less likely that he will face a single opponent with unified support before the contests switch to winner-take-all on March 15.

Cruz had a very good night; more than good enough to erase his troubles of the previous two weeks. The problem for Cruz is that Tuesday was the best day on the primary calendar for him. Southern Republicans intentionally frontloaded their contests in a bid to give a favorite son a boost in the early going. It worked. But now Cruz faces many tough contests in more moderate states outside the South.

Marco Rubio had a long night. He notched his first victory but fell short in Virginia and now trails Cruz substantially in the delegate count. For Rubio, however, the road looks smoother from here. While he faces a make-or-break test two weeks from now in Florida, Rubio can at least say that his hardest day on the calendar is behind him.

Thats all good news for Donald Trump in the sense that neither Cruz nor Rubio came out of the night as the consensus favorite for the rest of the party.

But the bad news for Trump is that the emphasis for the party has shifted away from picking a nominee and toward blocking a nominee. The next two weeks will see an all-out assault on Trump with the aim of letting voters check their assumptions one more time and perhaps denying Trump the delegates he needs to win outright.

Its going to get weird out there, America.

Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.
Donald Trump, whose big Super Tuesday night brings him one step closer to the November ballot, has been running a general election campaign from the beginning.

Trump and his inner circle never advertised this, of course, and are amused by how the media have largely missed the strategy.

While Hillary Clinton, who also had a big day yesterday, had her aides leak details to the New York Times and Washington Post of how shes planning a general-election assault on Trump, the Republican front-runner has had his eye on the fall since day one.

People familiar with his approach say some strategic elements evolved as the campaign unfolded. There was no 100-page memo plotting it out in advance. But this mindset explains why Trump has done certain things that are wildly unorthodox in a Republican primary race, much to the anger and consternation of leading conservative politicos and pundits.

One linchpin of this strategy came in Trumps announcement speech, when he stirred controversy by saying that illegal Mexican immigrants included criminals and rapists. That, and his vow to build a wall across the border, gave him credibility with the conservative base. Whenever Trump would take a more moderate stance that might alienate that base, he could just pivot back to his tough immigration stance.

Trump declared early on that there should be no cuts to Social Security and Medicare. That, as his campaign knows full well, is not the standard Republican line. Conservatives believe deeply in shrinking the size of government and that entitlement programs must be reined in because they eat up a major chunk of the budget.

But Democrats have been accusing Republicans of wanting to gut the programs for a generation. Trumps positionthat people paid into the program and deserve to reap the benefitsplays well in a general election, especially since he hopes to peel off some working-class Democrats and independents.

In his press conference last night, Trump again sung the praises of Planned Parenthood, saying he would only defund the groups abortion servicesdespite what the so-called conservatives think. This may be anathema to conservative Republicans who despise the group and are ardently pro-life. But his stance could appeal to suburban women who might otherwise view a Republican nominee as hostile.

Trump, at his rallies, routinely tries out different narratives and drops the ones that dont work. But he has settled on a mix of conservative and moderate positions that partially explains why Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio keep attacking him as an inauthentic conservative.

Trump has never run as a doctrinaire right-winger. He has, after all, spoken repeatedly about raising taxes on hedge-fund executives, which is usually a Democratic talking point.

Trump certainly sounded like a general-election candidate last night, taking a more subdued tone and talking about sitting in the Oval Office and making deals with Democrats and Republicans. The press conference setting yielded a more subdued tonehe even said nice things about the press!and got him 40 minutes of precious cable airtime.

The general-election strategy was also evident in Trumps travel schedule. While some pundits questions why he wasnt spending more time in Iowa or New Hampshire, he would jet off for rallies in Alabama and Mississippi or Massachusetts and Vermont. This was in part because he would need those states later in the primaries, but also to lay the groundwork for November.

Most Republican candidates move right during the primaries and then slide to the center a bit during the fall campaign, while Democrats do the opposite. If the Super Tuesday results indeed mean that Trump is close to becoming the partys standard-bearer, he may not have to pivot as much as most nominees.
Donald Trumps seven Super Tuesday wins helped pad his substantial delegate lead  but not enough to dispirit his top rivals, who still see a path to toppling the Republican front-runner and taking the fight to the convention if necessary.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, at the very least, seem determined to compete for every vote through the March 15 contests, which could make for the most consequential night of the GOP campaign.

Thats when the home states of Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich vote. And both states award every delegate on the table to the winner.

If I win Florida, what does that math look like? Rubio told Fox News on Wednesday, brushing aside pressure to drop out.

Heres where the delegate math stands now:

It takes 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination. Trump has 319; Cruz has 226; and Rubio has 110.

According to Associated Press estimates, Trump needs to lock down 52 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the party nod.

March 15 may provide the best clue as to whether thats likely.

On one hand, if Rubio were to win Florida and Kasich were to win Ohio, they would continue to hold down Trumps numbers even if he wins elsewhere.

On the other, a Trump victory in those states and beyond would truly give him an aura of inevitability  not to mention put immense pressure on Rubio and Kasich to drop out.

Rubio already is facing that pressure from Trump and Cruz, who wants non-Trump voters to unite behind his campaign, which he claims is the only one that can confront and defeat the billionaire businessman.

So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives, and for the nation," he said Tuesday night. "And, after tonight, we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump."

Cruz and the rest of the candidates will have their next chance to make their case to the American public on Thursday, when they face off for a Fox News debate in Detroit, their first post-Super Tuesday showdown.

One candidate has already bowed out of the event, Ben Carson -- who, after a disappointing Super Tuesday, announced he sees no "political path forward," while stopping just short of suspending his campaign. The debate Thursday could see Rubio and Cruz ratchet up their fight for the not-Trump mantle, with Rubio clearly lagging right now in the race for second.

Cruz won in his delegate-rich home state of Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska on Tuesday. Together with his leadoff win in the Iowa caucuses, Cruz has claimed wins in four states.

Rubio, who has seen GOP establishment figures line up behind his campaign especially since Jeb Bush dropped out, has struggled to account for his performance to date.

The senator did claim his first win Tuesday night in Minnesota. And  while touting the fact hes picked up delegates even in states he didnt win  he implicitly questioned Cruzs ability to win in some of the upcoming contests, claiming several states coming up look more like Virginia where Rubio beat Cruz in the race for second Tuesday.

Hes referring to states like Illinois and even Michigan, with a more moderate primary electorate.

But Deep South states like Mississippi and Louisiana also are fast-approaching on the calendar.

There are some states that are going to be favorable to [Cruz], Cruz supporter and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News. While a voting bloc thought to be Cruzs strong suit  evangelicals  are still breaking for Trump in some Southern states, Abbott suggested those voters will start shifting soon to Cruz.

One scenario is for Rubio and Cruz to stay in the race if only to prevent Trump from achieving the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Asked about that possibility, Rubio told Fox News were going to do whatever it takes to prevent the nomination from falling into Trumps hands  but said the plan is to clinch the nomination, not simply prevent Trump from doing so.

Rubio is putting it all on the line in Florida, meanwhile, vowing Wednesday that hell win.

Trump is threatening to crush those hopes, and cites polls that show him well ahead of Rubio.

We're going to go to Florida. We're going to spend so much time in Florida. We've got about a 20-point lead, Trump said Tuesday night, at a post-primary press conference in the Sunshine State.

Trump already is positioning himself as a general election candidate, increasingly taking swings at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who also had a good night on Tuesday with seven wins to Bernie Sanders four.

But he allowed, with the GOP race still open, that another candidate might also be able to take her on  taking another swipe at Rubio in the process.

I don't think Marco is going to be able to beat her.  I think Ted's going to have a very hard time. But Ted at least has a shot because at least he's won a little bit, Trump said.
A bill that would ban local bans on plastic bags and other auxiliary containers appears poised for passage during the state Senates last floor day, slated for March 15.

Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, the bills co-sponsor, said he expects the Committee on Elections and Local Government, will approve the Senate version of the bill this week.

The Assembly passed the legislation Feb. 16 on a party-line 63-35 vote.

Banning these everyday products, whether it is the sleeve for your morning coffee, the take-out container you bring home after a dinner out or the bag you bring your groceries home in only serves to hurt consumers, Roth told Wisconsin Watchdog.

He and the bills Assembly sponsor Mike Rohrkaste, R-Neenah, say such bans popping up across the country would also hurt Wisconsins economy, particularly the packaging industry.

Rohrkaste said he can speak from first-hand experience as a former executive with packager Menasha Corp. He said the patchwork of different municipal laws would drive up production costs, ultimately hitting the consumer.

We provided packaging to a lot of consumer goods companies. If we would have been required to do different packaging in one part of the state compared to another, that would have increased costs, the lawmaker said. Is that the right thing to do, particularly when these products can be recycled?

Click for more from Watchdog.org
Astronaut Scott Kelly says that his epic year in space will help fuel longer-term space missions, paving the way for NASAs ambitious plan to send humans to Mars.

I think that expanding our envelope and our ability to operate is something that will take us further from the planet, he said, during an interview with NASA TV shortly after landing in Kazakhstan early Wednesday. Developing technology to do so is very important for our economy and our way of life.

Related: Astronaut Scott Kelly back on Earth after yearlong space mission

By going to Mars one day, we will make things better for us here on Earth, he added.

NASAs goal is to send a manned mission to Mars by 2035, prompting extensive research ahead of an epic roundtrip journey that could take 2-years. Radiation poses a major challenge for Mars missions, along the durability of astronauts bodies and minds.

Related: How NASA crews could sleep for 6 months on the journey to Mars

The astronaut conducted hundreds of experiments during his 340 days in space. Scientists also studied the differences between the Kelly and his twin brother, Mark, back on Earth. They provided blood, saliva and urine samples, underwent ultrasounds and bone scans, got flu shots and more, all in the name of science.

The Soyuz capsule carrying Scott Kelly and his 340-day roommate, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, landed in the central Asian nation at around 10:25 a.m. local time (11:25 p.m. Tuesday ET). They were met by freezing temperatures, just like when they launched on March 27 of last year.

Related: NASA releases stunning 360-degree Mars video

The cold air was amazing, said Kelly, during his interview with NASA TV. Theres nothing like cold air coming into the capsule.

Kelly, who handed command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Tim Kopra Monday, admitted that he had mixed feelings leaving his orbital home. I cant say that it was a relief, he said. Leaving the space station was bittersweet  I had been there for a long time and looked forward to leaving, but it is a remarkable place.

Related: Mars has flowing liquid water, NASA confirms



A year is a long time  it felt like I had been up there my whole life my first six months, he added. I am definitely encouraged in our ability to go even longer  if it was for the right reason, I could have stayed however long it took.

During a press conference shortly after his return, Kelly, who had completed his fourth space mission, was asked whether he would take another trip. I would always consider flying in space again, without a question, he replied.

Related: Scott Kelly set to return to Earth after spending a year in space

With his return to Earth, Kelly now has spent 520 days in space, more than any other U.S. astronaut. Kornienko has accumulated 516 days across two flights, and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov, who returned to Earth with Kelly Wednesday, has 548 days on three flights.

Data curated by FindTheData

During their 340 days on the space station, Kelly and Kornienko traveled 144 million miles through space, circled the world 5,440 times and experienced 10,880 orbital sunrises and sunsets.

Kelly is scheduled to return to Houston around 11:45 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to NASA.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Cunning tech-savvy pirates hacked a shipping companys systems, enabling them to carefully target cargo on the firms vessels.

A report released by Verizon RISK (Research, Investigations, Solutions and Knowledge) Team reveals that a global shipping conglomerate fell victim to the high-tech pirates. The unnamed company contacted the Verizon cyber specialists after the pirates adopted a new strategy.

Related: US official says '16-year-old computer nerd' behind high-profile hacks

Rather than spending days holding boats and their crew hostage while they rummaged through the cargo, these pirates began to attack shipping vessels in an extremely targeted and timely fashion, the report said. Specifically, they would board a shipping vessel, force the crew into one area and within a short amount of time they would depart.

Hours later, when the ships crews left their safe rooms, they discovered that the pirates had targeted certain cargo containers. It became apparent to the shipping company that the pirates had specific knowledge of the contents of each of the shipping crates being moved, the report explained. Theyd board a vessel, locate by bar code specific sought-after crates containing valuables, steal the contents of that crateand that crate onlyand then depart the vessel without further incident.

Related: Identity thieves used thousands of stolen SSNs to generate IRS e-filing pins

Armed with this information, the Verizon RISK Team examined the companys systems. The shipping firm used a homegrown Content Management System (CMS) to manage its shipping inventory and the documents required for shipping freight. We then honed in on the network traffic surrounding the CMS managing shipping routes, said Verizon RISK Team. We discovered that a malicious web shell had been uploaded onto the server.

Web shells can compromise legitimate web apps on a server. The threat actors used an insecure upload script to upload the web shell and then directly call it as this directory was web accessible, noted Verizon RISK Team. Essentially, this allowed the threat actors to interact with the webserver and perform actions such as uploading and downloading data, as well as running various commands.

Related: Hospital pays nearly $17G in bitcoins to hackers who disabled computer network

Chillingly, the hackers were able to pull down documents for future shipments, identify specific crates and the vessels scheduled to carry them. Verizon RISK Team did not reveal specific details of how it tackled the hackers but said that it capitalized on several mistakes made by the high-tech pirates.

The report did not reveal the location of the incidents or when they happened, although there been frequent attacks by Somali pirates on commercial shipping off Africas east coast in recent years.

Related: 3 biggest security threats of 2016

Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly brazen in their attacks on critical systems. Identity thieves, for example, recently targeted the Internal Revenue Service with malware and personal information stolen from elsewhere, which they used to generate 101,000 e-filing PIN numbers. Last month a Hollywood hospital paid nearly $17,000 in bitcoins to hackers who disabled its computer network.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Brazilian authorities arrested a senior Facebook executive in Sao Paul Tuesday in the latest clash between the social media giant and the government over the companys refusal to provide private information about its users to law enforcement.

Diego Drozdan, Facebooks vice president for Latin America, was arrested on an order from a judge in the state of Sergipe, according to a news release. Dzodan is accused of ignoring a judicial order in a secret investigation involving organized crime and drug trafficking.

Facebook has refused to release information from the WhatsApp messaging service to the Brazilian authorities. Judge Marcel Montalvao issued the decree.

Facebook said in a statement that the two companies operate independently "so the decision to arrest an employee from another company is an extreme and unwarranted step". WhatsApp said in its own statement that it had "cooperated as much as we could given the architecture of our service." It said the company was "unable to provide information we do not have".

But Monica Horta, a police spokeswoman in Sergipe, said that the arrest was made because neither Facebook nor WhatsApp responded to the request for information first issued four months ago. Two months ago, Montalvao started to fine the company $12,700 for every day it ignored the order, an amount that rose to 250,000 daily over the past month.

With more than 100 million users to its service, WhatsApp has said it is moving to strong encryption to protect its users security and information, according to The Washington Post.

The company had previously been blocked in Sao Paulo in December for not providing information to authorities in a separate investigation. It was also blocked briefly in February for not helping officials in a pedophilia investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A 65-year-old man pulled a gun and shot two men who were beating him near his home in Philadelphia on Tuesday, police said.



It happened around 8:30 p.m. in the city's Queen Village neighborhood.



Authorities said a 20-year-old man and a 21-year-old man started accosting the man and his wife and the altercation soon turned physical. That's when police said the man pulled his .45-caliber handgun and shot both of the younger men.



Police said the younger men were taken to a hospital and the 65-year-old man was treated for injuries to his mouth and head. Investigators said the older man had a license to carry.

It's unclear if the men will face any charges.
The feds have rogue rancher Cliven Bundy behind bars, but corralling his million-dollar herd of ornery cattle is proving to be a much more daunting task.

The 69-year-old landowner, whose ranch 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas was the scene of a 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management, was arrested last month on charges related to the Nevada incident when he left his ranch to travel to Oregon, where his sons were involved in another standoff with federal officials. Meanwhile, his 1,000 head of cattle are still roaming federal lands due, in part, to his absence and also to what officials call his "unconventional, if not bizarre ranching methods.

It is not just the land that is being trampled on, but the animals are hurt.  Annette Magnus-Marquart, Battle Born Progress

"Rather than manage and control his cattle, he lets them run wild on the public lands with little, if any, human interaction until such time when he traps them and hauls them off to be sold or slaughtered," said court documents filed by federal prosecutors last month. "He does not vaccinate or treat his cattle for disease; does not employ cowboys to control and herd them; does not manage or control breeding; has no knowledge of where all the cattle are located at any given time; rarely brands them."

Although federal authorities backed off from the 2014 standoff, the FBI monitored Bundys movements and nabbed him at Portland International Airport Feb. 10 as he attempted to travel to Burns, Ore., to join his sons and others at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He was charged with crimes related to the Nevada standoff, including assault with a deadly weapon on a federal officer, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and other counts. He is being held without bail.

With Bundy in prison, his cows are "left to fend for themselves year-round, fighting off predators and scrounging for the meager amounts of food and water," according to federal prosecutors. In addition, the authorities maintain that the surviving cattle are "wild, mean and ornery" and are destroying fragile plant species and even destroying sacred Indian artifacts.

"Mr. Bundy's cattle continue to be in trespass, BLM spokesman Jeff Krauss told FoxNews.com in a statement. There are no plans for a gather at this time as we continue to cooperate with the Department of Justice on the ongoing legal matter."

State and federal officials are trying to figure out what to do about the unruly herd. Flint Wright, animal industry administrator at the Nevada Department of Agriculture, said the problems have been ongoing for many years and will only continue to worsen if action is not taken in the coming months and years.

When and if they do take action we will provide our services just as we have in the past, which includes brand inspections and identifying any stray cattle.

A roundup of the cattle on public land could mean they would become the property of the Bureau of Land Management, which could then potentially sell the herd.

The Bundy family has long refused to pay federal fees to allow their livestock to graze on public lands, despite court orders that culminated in a 1998 ruling that barred the family from ever utilizing federal lands for grazing. When federal officials finally moved in to round up cattle (the government said they were trespassing), the Bundys were joined by other protesters in a standoff that lasted several weeks and ended when the BLM released the cattle and backed off.

The Bundy Ranch is located on 160 acres in Bunkerville and surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of federal public lands known as the Gold Butte area. Bundy family members disputed accusations they mistreat their cattle, and said the size of the herd has been greatly exaggerated.

Our cattle is our livelihood, we take good care of them. They are well-fed and receive plenty or water, one family member told FoxNews.com, dismissing claims that the herd was destroying government lands and property. The manure fertilizes the ground, their grazing prevents fires. I would invite anyone to come out here and see for themselves that the cattle is well looked after. The government wants to paint us as inhumane, but we are a God-fearing family. We wouldnt have a livelihood if we destroyed our own land and cattle.

Bundys sons, Ammon and Ryan, are also in prison, where they each face up to six years and hefty fines for their role in the six-week occupation of the wildlife refuge in Oregon, also a protest of alleged federal government overreach on public lands.

With the Bundy men behind bars and the ranch largely unmanned, some local activists say the government must step in to protect public lands  as well as the animals.

But according to Annette Magnus-Marquart, executive director of the Nevada-based Battle Born Progress, a non-partisan advocacy organization for equal opportunity for the people of Nevada, something needs to be done about the Bundy herd  and soon.

It is not just the land that is being trampled on, but the animals are hurt, said Marquart. They are roaming free and it is not how you take care of your animals. That land doesnt belong to Cliven Bundy; it belongs to all of us.
A California school district told students Tuesday it cannot wear anti-gay symbols while on campus for now, reversing a decision previously allowing students to place stickers on their identification cards disapproving of gay rights.

Administrators had previously said that asking students to remove the anti-gay symbols was a violation of their free speech, the Los Angeles Times reported. They said students have the same right to wear anti-gay stickers as those who support gay rights.

However, the Desert Sands Unified School District said in a statement it will ask students to stop wearing a rainbow pattern sticker with a line through it, until a proper course of action can be decided.

Last month, many students and teachers complained the stickers made gay and lesbian students feel unwelcomed at the school. Amy Oberman, a History teacher at Shadow Hills High School in Indio, told the Orange County Register the gay and lesbian community was targeted.

Yes, there is freedom of speech established by Tinker, Oberman said referring to the 1969 Supreme Court case, Tinker vs. Des Moines that said students dont shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. But at least in my view, its a hate crime because a group was targeted.

The district didnt say why it changed its stance and officials didnt specify what the punishment would be for those who didnt remove the stickers. However, nearly a dozen students complied with the rules as of Tuesday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Superintendent Gary Rutherford told the Times the district doesnt tolerate any kind of bullying and that schools educate diverse communities with many points of view.

The free expression of these views is protected, within certain limits, he added.

Click for more from the Los Angeles Times.

Click for more from the Orange County Register.
The manhunt is on for a capital murder suspect who escaped from a Mississippi county jail Wednesday and is considered armed and dangerous.



Rafael McCloud, 34, used a makeshift weapon to briefly hold a jail employee hostage and forced the employee to give McCloud his clothes, Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace told the The Clarion-Ledger.

He forced the guard to disrobe and then put on his clothes, Pace told The Vicksburg Post. He then held the shank against the guard as they went downstairs and he left through a side door.



McCloud also took a radio and keys, the sheriff said. Both items were recovered later on the grounds of the jail.

McCloud was indicted in January for capital murder, burglary, rape, sexual battery without consent, attempted arson, larceny-motor vehicle and possession of a weapon. He's suspected in the death of Sharon Wilson, 69, whose body was found outside an abandoned hospital by ghost hunters.



Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong told The Associated Press between 25 and 30 officers are involved in the search along with multiple units from the sheriff's department. He said the search is centered about  mile northeast of the jail.

Armstrong said police are concentration the search in along Martin

Luther King Boulevard and area where McCloud previously lived.

The Vicksburg-Warren School District has place several schools in the search area on lockdown.

We are going to keep people on duty until this man is caught," Armstrong told The Vicksburg Post. "Its important that we catch him. He is armed and desperate and extremely dangerous.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The city of Chicago is witnessing its deadliest start to a year in nearly two decades -- 102 people have been killed and 475 people were shot in the city since January 1st.

The official police homicide count sits at 97, which includes only murders as opposed to what police consider justified homicides such as self-defense. 2016 is the most violent start to a year in the city since 1997, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The level of violence is unacceptable and CPD continues to aggressively target those responsible, especially in neighborhoods where gang activity is most active, CPD spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi wrote in an email.

Police blame some of the surge in violence on gang conflicts and retaliatory crimes, many of which officers now say begin on social media before spilling out onto the streets.

A recent study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab concludes that combining the high level of gun carrying in Chicago with impulsive behavior and drug use has also contributed to the extreme bloodshed. Last year over 7,000 guns were recovered from the streets of Chicagomore than New York and Los Angeles combined--according to police.

To complicate matters, the hubs of Chicagos crime, the citys west and south sides, potentially have become even more dangerous as the so-called Ferguson Effect is impacting how police patrol the streets. Analysts say officers are engaging less out of a fear of lawsuits or being labeled racist. Even Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in October 2015 that officers have become fetal.

In Chicago, like a lot of other cities, the surfacing of videos and protests against police has had at least the short term impact on some of making them more passive than one would like, former Chicago Tribune Managing Editor and Poynter Institute Media Correspondent, Jim Warren, tells Fox News.

Adding to the Ferguson Effect, the Chicago Police Department is also dealing with an ACLU effect. In an exclusive new agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union, Chicago Police officers are now required to fill out a two-page contact card after every engagement ranging from a simple ID check to an arrest.

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police says the ACLU contact cards are burdensome and officers worry the compiled statistics could somehow be misconstrued and used against them. As a result, Chicago Police reported officers engaged a staggering 80 percent less in the month of January.

They dont want to be the next headline, Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President, Dean Angelo, told Fox News. Its the amount of the above and beyond type of activity that officers were engaged in that we may not see at that same level ever again.

The ACLU, however, denies its contact cards have anything to do with Chicagos violence and tells Fox News since March 1st officers are filling out a more streamlined report with changes made based on police feedback.

In response to the skyrocketing crime CPD has formed a Gun Violence Task Force, teaming up with the Cook County Sherriffs office and other local and federal agencies including Homeland Security.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says he hopes the committee can implement some type of small emergency changes without legislation, commenting that he gets hives when he hears about another task force.

If we can generate four, five, 10 small things to help our communities we will have accomplished something, Dart said.

One of the challenges the task force faces is identifying who the big gun brokers are that deliver firearms in large quantities to the citys streets. The University of Chicago Crime Lab findings indicate most gun offenders arent participators in the illegal gun market and many gun offenders admit to police they buy guns simply to protect themselves against everyone else who already carries a weapon.

Another common complaint heard in Chicago is that its judicial system is soft, especially in comparison to a city like New York where people reportedly drop their weapon and run from police. Dart says the task force will look into a potential gap between police and the state attorney's office.

People in New York know theyre going away if they get locked up with a gun. Here, its happened before and Im back out. I make bond and Im back out, Angelo said. Theres really no serious repercussion and I hope that changes.

The uptick in violence on the streets of Chicago comes as City Hall is dealing with its own turmoil. Chicago is in the midst of months of historic protests and unrest amid strong demands for Mayor Emanuel to resign.

Emanuel, working under record low approval ratings, has faced fierce criticism about the delayed release of previous CPD videos depicting white officers shooting unarmed black teens. Critics and protestors have alleged Emanuel tried to bury the tapes to secure his re-election last year.

In November, a judge ruled Chicago Police must release a video depicting white police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting unarmed black teen Laquan McDonald to death. The video sparked outrage and the former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired. Van Dyke was charged with murder but has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.

In an effort to be more transparent since, Emanuel recently announced CPD videos depicting shootings will now be released within 60 to 90 days, which is also a concern to police who might feel releasing the tapes too soon could impede an investigation or exacerbate any allegations.

Angelo argues the city should be taking more input directly from police who patrol the streets.

Everyones become the expert in policing although theyve never had a weapon on their hip, theyve never got into a squad car, theyve never put a badge on their chest and they never went into a situation when people were running from it but they all have an opinion and they all have a reason and they all have a design on police work, Angelo said.

Chicago police announced in early March that among some of its immediate solutions to combat crime, the interim police chief is deploying 100 newly trained sergeants, working with the Chicago Department of Buildings to expedite the demolition of abandoned buildings that can serve as a hub of gang activity, and saturating high crime areas with added police.

Police say the increased enforcement is already seeing results: since the middle of February, gun arrests are up by 43%, and for the entire month of February, arrests for murder are up by more than 40% from last year.
James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Tuesday conceded that a mistake was made in the early days of the investigation into the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorism attack, making it harder to get data from one of the shooters phones.

Mr. Comey said, however, that even without that error, the government would still need Apple Inc.s help to open the locked iPhone.

The FBI directors discussion of the San Bernardino case came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue of encryptionthe subject of a major legal battle between the FBI and Apple about the companys refusal to help investigators open a phone seized in the probe of the California shooting that left 14 dead in December.

The hearing created the unusual spectacle of Mr. Comey, one of the nations highest-ranking law-enforcement officers, squaring off against Bruce Sewell, the top lawyer for Apple, one of the worlds most visible technology companies. Mr. Comey testified first, followed by Mr. Sewell.

Apple is fighting a court order to help the FBI bypass the passcode-security measures on the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two assailants. The FBI wants to disable a security feature that erases the phones memory after 10 failed password attempts.

Apple has argued that if San Bernardino County officials had not reset the cloud storage account connected to that phone, the FBI might have been able to access much more of the data on the phone by connecting the device to the Wi-Fi system in Mr. Farooks apartment.

Mr. Comey conceded Tuesday that there is some truth to that argument, though he noted that even if the account hadnt been reset, the two sides would still be in court.

There was a mistake made in that 24 hours after the attack, where the county at the FBIs request took steps that made it impossible later to cause the phone to back up to the iCloud, Mr. Comey told the congressional committee, adding that, We would still be in litigation, because there was no way we would have gotten everything off the phone from a backup.

Apple and privacy experts are likely to seize on those comments to make the case that the company shouldnt be forced to compensate for investigators mistake.

Separately, at a technology conference in San Francisco, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said she was disappointed by a federal judges ruling on Monday in New York that the government cant compel Apple to help investigators extract data from a locked iPhone in a drug probe.

Ms. Lynch said Apple had agreed to help the government in similar instances in the past but pushed back in the New York case. She said she believes technology companies are subject to a social compact to comply with the law, but said law enforcement also needed to be clear and specific in what data it wants from devices.

In prepared remarks, Ms. Lynch took a conciliatory tone, saying Washington and Silicon Valley should work together. But the subsequent question-and-answer session reflected the tension between Apple and law enforcement.

Do we let one company, no matter how great the company, no matter how beautiful their devices, decide this issue for all of us? Ms. Lynch asked.

The Justice Departments argument that law enforcement must be able to open phones when it obtains a valid court order was met by skepticism from some lawmakers.

Rep. John Conyers, (D., Mich.), the Judiciary Committees top Democrat, said he has been reluctant to support the Justice Department and the FBI on the issue. The growth of encryption means we will all have lockboxes in our lives that only we can open and in which we can store all that is valuable to us, he said. There are lots of good things about this.

Others were more open to law-enforcements viewpoint.

The question for Americans and lawmakers is not whether or not encryption is essential, but instead, whether law enforcement should be granted access to encrypted communications when enforcing the law and pursuing their objectives to keep our citizens safe, said Rep. Robert Goodlatte, (R., Va.), the committees chairman.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal.
A New Mexico man got five years in prison for breaking and entering -- without ever stepping foot inside the home.

According to court documents, Anthony Holt partially removed a window screen from a resident's home in Las Cruces on Dec. 19, 2010. While removing the screen, he reportedly placed his fingers behind the screen and inside an outer boundary of the home." He then "promptly" ran from the scene after the homeowner noticed. Holt was arrested and later indicted by a grand jury on one charge of breaking-and-entering, according to the Las Cruces Sun-News.

Defense lawyers argued at trial that no entry had occurred because Holt was interrupted by the homeowner and never did get inside." The court, however, found Holt guilty of the fourth-degree felony and sentenced him to five years and six months in prison.

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Feb. 25 affirmed the conviction of Holt, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.

The state's highest court ruled that placing ones fingers behind a window screen constitutes an intrusion.

Holt, who had appealed the conviction with the New Mexico Court of Appeals, argued that there was no "entry" based on New Mexicos breaking-and-entering law, the paper reported. But the appeals court upheld the conviction in a divided opinion, and, in October 2015, the state's Supreme Court decided to review the case.

In their Feb. 25 ruling, the justices determined that the home begins at the window screen.

 (W)e determine that putting ones finger behind a window screen affixed to a residential dwelling is an intrusion into an enclosed, private, prohibited space and constitutes an entry for the purposes of New Mexicos breaking-and-entering statute, Justice Judith K. Nakamura wrote in the courts opinion. It is reasonable for the citizens of New Mexico to expect that their window screens afford them protection from unauthorized intrusions.

A spokeswoman for the New Mexico Department of Corrections told Las Cruces Sun-News that Holt was released from prison in December 2014 and has already completed his parole. He's expected to finish his probation by June, according to the newspaper.

Click for more from Las Cruces Sun-News
The Rev. Brady Boyd believes there is no safer place to be Sunday morning than inside his church.

When Boyd takes to the pulpit at New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, Colo., he and the faithful are well protected. The 30-acre grounds are patrolled by uniformed police officers and an armed safety team made up of about 20 people, including Special Forces soldiers from one of four nearby military bases. One of Boyd's personal secuirty guards is a 24-year veteran Green Beret.

Its not like Soviet Russia, he said. But you plan for the worst, and pray for the best.

" ... you plan for the worst, and pray for the best.  The Rev. Brady Boyd

New Life is one of a growing number of churches around the country that embrace armed security to protect the flock as they worship. A disturbing increase in shootings inside churches, including the shooting last Sunday of a pastor in Dayton, Ohio, and the tragic killing of nine last year at a South Carolina church has prompted extreme measures.

New Life was one of the first in the nation to embrace armed security, and it has already proven provident.

Boyd was in his office at the church following Sunday services Dec. 9, 2007, when a gunman killed two people outside and then entered the building armed with an assault rifle, two handguns and up to 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

The 24-year-old killer, Matthew Murray, was about 80 feet inside the building when his rampage was brought to an end by Jeanne Assam, an armed volunteer security guard.

I saw him coming through the doors, and I took cover, and I waited for him to get closer, Assam said afterward. I came out of cover, I identified myself and engaged him and took him down.

No one can say how many lives Assam saved, but there were several thousand people on the church's campus after Sunday's services. But Boyd estimated that over a hundred lives were saved.

I love the people that I pastor," Boyd said ... I want to protect them."

The argument about whether more guns in the hands of good guys make everyone safer is being played out in public schools, college campuses and workplaces around the country. Critics say a proliferation of firearms ultimately puts more people at risk, and say a house of worship is the last place for weaponry.

The Rev. Kristine Eggert, co-founder of God Before Guns, said there is no credible evidence to suggest that allowing guns inside churches would lead to a safer enviornment.

Concealed weapons have typically been banned inside churches, either by law or by church policy. But some states, including Arkansas, Louisiana and North Dakota have all passed laws explicitly allowing permit holders to carry concealed weapons in churches.

The Rev. John Elford, of University United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas, told KXAN.com it discourages guns in his pews.

We feel the open carrying of weapons is part of a violent culture and we kind of want to push back against open carry and gun violence, he said. We welcome you to worship. We love the fact that youre here, but please leave the gun in the car."

Church shootings have been a disturbing fact for decades, according to BuckeyeFirearms.org, which listed instances dating back to 1974. The most notorious shooting occurred last June, when a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Storm Roof gunned down nine strangers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, S.C., after praying with them for more than an hour.

Last month, the FBI provided security training for 165 faith leaders at its Dallas headquarters.

"The key is to be proactive and plan for it ahead of time and train for it ahead of time, so in the unlikely event something does happen, you're ready and prepared to deal with that situation," John Smith, risk management director with the Catholic Diocese of Dallas, said.

Michael Lanford, co-owner of SC Firearms Training, provides firearm training and consulting for churches throughout South Carolina. He helps clients hiring outside security teams or to form their own.

Lanford, who has a background in the military and law enforcement, said taking down an active shooter in a church requires unique reactions, and that safety and training are critical.

When you fire a bulletfrom when it leaves your gun, to when it stopsyou own that bullet, he said. These are split-second decisions.

Boyd said worshipers may be especially vulnerable because their unarmed presence on Sundays is predictable. That's why domestic confrontations often unfold inside what should literally be a sanctuary.

That was the case in Sunday's shooting in Dayton, where the brother of the Rev. William B. Schooler, 70, fired a fatal shot inside the St. Peters Missionary Baptist Church while the choir was still singing.

But Eggert said the Dayton shooting is an example of how guns inside churches would do little to prevent a similar crime.

"It's the person who shoots first," she said. "If someone had a gun inside that church it would not have prevented that."
Whether you spend a long weekend or months sharing your home with a foster pet, its easy to get attached. The secret to letting go when the time comes  and it will  is focusing on the many positives.

Ask anyone who fosters a cat or a dog, and youll hear over and over again that they do it because fostering saves lives. When a person fosters one or more pets from an animal shelter or rescue group, he or she is opening up cage space for more animals  offsetting the some 2.7 million animals in shelters that are euthanized each year.

When people foster pets, they are getting them ready for their forever homes by socializing them, said Bridgett Knote, the intake and foster care program coordinator at the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in New York. Socialized pets spend less time in our adoption center. They get adopted quicker because they are comfortable being around people. Whats equally important is the feedback we get from our foster parents about the behavior of the animals in their homes.

Foster parents are required to take notes about the animals behaviors, temperaments and health, and share that information with the rescue group.

"In even the best animal shelters, pets are stressed," said Marc Peralta, executive director at Best Friends Animal Society in Los Angeles. "In a loving home  even though its temporary  pets can relax and be themselves. Our foster parents see the pets true nature. Foster pets benefit because they get more attention, care and exercise, and they learn how to behave around people and, in some cases, other pets."

Both the ASPCA and Best Friends Animal Society provide foster parents with veterinary care, pet food and pet supplies. (Not all animal welfare agencies can afford to cover the costs of pet food and pet supplies  and many foster parents working with the larger agencies tend to pay for the food and supplies out of their own pockets.) Foster parents must be 21 years of age or older, and need to provide temporary housing, water, exercise and lots of love. They also must complete an orientation, which usually takes an hour.

"The foster parent and animal welfare agency stay in close contact through emails and phone," said Knote. "The satisfaction from fostering a pet in need is huge."

Laurette Oldewurtel, 54, adopted two dogs and two cats and wanted to do more. She lives within easy walking distance of the ASPCA in New York City, and started fostering three years ago. Now, 70 animals later, she is caring for Lola and Aura, kittens in need of socialization.

Seventy sounds like a lot of pets! Yet that number was spread out over three years, and some of those animals were litters of kittens. Some weeks, she cared for litters of five or six foster kittens at a time. "For kittens, socialization isnt long," she explained. "Some of them are here between two and six weeks. Kitten season starts in spring and can last through early fall. Thats the time when animal shelters and rescues are in desperate need of temporary foster homes."

For Oldewurtel, who runs a financial consulting business in her home, fostering is hugely rewarding. "Kittens are so entertaining. When its time to give them back, I know they will be placed in loving homes. That is what I focus on. Im helping more animals by fostering than by adopting."

Kiem Sie, 48, has "let go" four times. A volunteer at Berkeley Care Animal Services in Berkeley, California, Sie is on her fifth foster, and she credits her two adopted dogs  Leo, a pit bull mix, and Bimo, a Chihuahua terrier mix  with making the good-byes less difficult. "Having them here makes it a bit easier to let go of the foster," she said.

She also keeps in touch with the owners of her fosters. "Sometimes we hang out at the local dog park."

A member of the IT department at Mills College in Oakland, Sie can work from her home office, so shes able to keep an eye on Leo, Bimo and her newest foster, Winston, a pit bull mix from Home at Last Animal Rescue. "I tell myself each time I place a dog in a good home, Im able to save another dog," she said. "If I keep this dog, I wouldnt be able to help a lot more."

There are thousands of animal shelters and rescue groups in need of foster homes throughout the U.S. To find one near you, check with your local animal control or animal shelter.

More from LifeZette.com:

Teens Should Get Off the Cell and Get a Job

This Policewoman Called the Shots

Homeschooling 101: The Best Online Resources

Helping Hand for Mentally Ill
After a number of recent slashings across New York City, including an attack at a school in Brooklyn this week, parents are concerned about the city's policy on reporting violence in the classroom, according to Fox 5.

The incident at Legal Studies High School in East Williamsburg reportedly started when a 16-year-old girl went up to an 18-year-old in the hallway, punched her in the face, and then slashed her with a box cutter.

The union leader for the school safety agents warns lax discipline has created an unsafe environment.

"There is a reclassifation of crimes and we don't have the true sense of what is going on in schools," Gregory Floyd of Teamsters Local 237 says. Fox 5 News reports that school officials more often are giving written warnings to troublemaker students instead of suspending them.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials say school violence is on the decline. The city reports crimes and similar incidents in schools dropped 1 percent drop in 2015 compared to the previous year.

Click here for more from Fox 5.


A World War II soldier's gift to his wife -- a small sweetheart bracelet lost for some 70 years -- is now in the hands of his family in Georgia.

Ron Stowe's father, Joe, who died 20 years ago, served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Iceland during the war.

The younger Stowe, who lives in Gainesville, Ga., recently received an unusual message from a stranger -- an 80-year-old British woman who claimed to have a bracelet belonging to his father.

The gold, linked bracelet -- with his father's name engraved on the front and his name and his mother's on the back -- had been in the woman's possession for years, Stowe told Fox affiliate WAGA-TV.

Stowe, whose mother died two years ago, said he had no knowledge of the bracelet's existence. He said the British woman, identified as Audrey Jackson, had somehow received the bracelet from her father, who served in the British Royal Air Force and who was also stationed in Iceland during the war.

Some 70 years later, Jackson used the Internet to track down Stowe's family.

"The bracelet has been in my family since the war," Jackson wrote to Stowe.

"I don't know how my father came to have it, but as a child I do remember him saying that it belonged to an American," Jackson said.

"It didn't have any sentimental value to her, but she said she couldn't bring herself to throw it away," Stowe told the station.

When the bracelet finally arrived in the mail, Stowe said he was overwhelmed by memories of his late father -- and the bracelet he never knew about.

"He was just about to go to England and the invasion of Normandy," recalled Stowe.

"I was wondering what went through his mind. Did he wonder, 'Will this be the last thing I'll send to my wife?'" he said.

Stowe treasures the bracelet as a piece of history -- and his father -- and plans to pass it down to his own son and grandson someday.

"They'll look at it and remember the story and remember World War II," he said.
After nine robberies over the course of one month, Florida deputies arrested the suspected 'Batman' robber, according to Fox 35.

Orange County detectives caught Juan Carlos Nieves Morales Jr. in a car in East Orange County on Monday morning. They say they plan to charge him in at least five of the nine cases.

Authorities say in two of the robberies, Morales wore a Batman hoodie, and gained national attention with his style.

Investigators say witnesses followed Morales after he allegedly robbed a pizza place late Friday night. They helped detectives find the suspect's cell phone leading to his arrest.

Sheriff Jerry Demings says Morales appears to have a $1,000-a-day heroin addiction which fueled the crime spree. He says this case shows how heroin addiction can cause people to commit potentially violent crimes putting innocent people at risk.

Click for more from Fox 35.
A Texas police officer died Tuesday from an injury sustained in a shooting with an armed suspect near a Dallas-area park.

Euless Police Chief Mike Brown said the suspect also died of multiple gunshot wounds in the shootout, which occurred around 3 p.m. at J.A. Carr Park. According to the New York Post, the officer was identified as David Hofer. Hofer was a former NYPD officer.

Hofer and others encountered the gunman who was shooting erratically at officers. Authorities fired at the suspect and killed him, the Post reported. The suspects identity has not been released.

"Upon arrival, officers encountered a suspect with an unknown weapon," Brown said. "The suspect immediately fired upon officers, striking one of them. Officers returned fire, striking the suspect."

Two nearby schools were placed on lockdown until the situation was over.

The officer is the second to die in the line of duty in Euless, a suburb of more than 53,000 residents about 17 miles west of Dallas and 15 miles east of Fort Worth. The other officer who died was Michael Williamson, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1982, according to the city website.

Hofer was engaged and he and his fiance were in the middle of planning their wedding and their future, Hofers mother Sofija Hofer told the paper.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Click for more from the New York Post.
Forecasters say a tornado that severely damaged homes and trees in a Birmingham suburb has been determined as an EF2, with winds of between 120 and 125 mph.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Holmes told The Associated Press that survey teams are still evaluating damage in the McCalla area where the tornado struck Tuesday. Officials have said storm damage was concentrated in southern Jefferson and northern Shelby counties.

Authorities have said four people were injured in the tornado. Jefferson County sheriff's Chief Deputy Randy Christian has described the injuries as minor. Christian says 12 homes sustained major damage.

Jefferson County Emergency Management Director Jim Coker told Al.com two of the injured were taken to hospitals, and two others were treated at the scene.
Super Tuesday wasnt a clean sweep, but it was a good night for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton won Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Arkansas. Bernie Sanders won Vermont, Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma.

It wasnt a terrible night for Bernie Sanders, but Clintons delegate lead now seems to put the nomination out of reach for the Vermont Democratic Socialist. Indeed, Hillary Clinton appears to be moving on to argue her case against Donald Trump.

Heres how John Wagner put it in todays Washington Post, The senator from Vermont walked away with four victories to Hillary Clinton's seven, and most of hers were more decisive. She finished the evening with a significantly larger lead in the delegate count than when it started. With Tuesday's results, Sanders risked reverting to his original role as a message candidate, influencing the conversation with his relentless focus on income inequality but holding little hope of becoming the Democratic nominee for president.

Donald Trump won seven states: Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia.

Ted Cruz won Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska. Marco Rubio won Minnesota.

Unfortunately for GOP unity, no one is dropping out and it appears it will be a long fight.

Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post today,

The window for stopping Donald Trump closed almost completely Tuesday night, leaving the demoralized anti-Trump forces with two weeks and no agreed-upon strategy for denying the New York billionaire the Republican presidential nomination.

Trump was on his way to a series of victories in a majority of the 11 contests that made up the biggest single primary-caucus night of the nominating season. His remaining rivals - Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich - and their allies were left to cling to the flimsiest of hopes that a reversal of his fortunes still lies on the near horizon.

For Rubio, the hope of many in the establishment, Super Tuesday turned into a super disappointment. He made a run at Trump in Virginia but fell short. Late Tuesday, he was declared the winner in the Minnesota caucuses. Still, that left his win-loss record this year at 1-14. Meanwhile, he was running third in at least half the states, and in some of those states his percentage of the vote was low enough that he was in danger of winning few or no delegates.

But it wasnt all good news for Mister Trump, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker write today in the Washington Post Tuesday's results exposed some vulnerabilities for Trump: He lost late deciding voters in many states by wide margins to rival Marco Rubio, a sign that the senator from Florida may have had some impact with his withering assault on Trump's character. Ohio Gov. John Kasich also came close to beating Trump in Vermont.

Patrick O'Connor and Janet Hook write in todays Wall Street Journal,

New York businessman Donald Trump won Republican primaries Tuesday from the Deep South to New England, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took his home state and Oklahoma, ensuring that the race for the GOP nomination will stretch into the spring.

The Republican front-runner won contests in at least seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia -- bolstering his claim on the nomination. Still, the pockets of resistance in others gave a glimmer of hope to detractors desperate for another candidate to take on likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who also rolled to a series of victories on Super Tuesday.

The problem for Mr. Trump's rivals -- as it has been since the voting began -- is that there are too many of them for voters to coalesce behind a single alternative to the New York billionaire. In the past week, opponents have dramatically intensified their attacks on Mr. Trump after he steamrolled rivals in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Heres a couple of other headlines I found intriguing about the race so far:

Politico says Hillary Clinton is pushing Sanders to the brink.

The New York Times says Donald Trump rolls on in a race that could drag on.

Washington Post says Trump owns Super Tuesday but Cruz and Rubio see glimmers of hope.

Political Wire says Teds not Dead Yet, and Rubio left gasping after Super Tuesday.

Theres a couple of live events to keep an eye on today:

1300EST -- Sen Sanders holds a rally. The State Theatre, Portland, ME. LIVE via LiveU

0900EST -- Sen Rubio makes an OTR stop. Miami, FL.

1000EST -- OH Gov Kasich holds a town hall meeting. Univ of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. LIVE via LiveU

The Supreme Court takes up a controversial Texas abortion law today.

1000EST -- House Armed Services Cmte holds hearing on "World Wide Threats". DIA Dir Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart and Joint Staff Dir for Intelligence Maj. Gen. James Marrs testify. LIVE

U.S. special forces captured an ISIS operative in Iraq.

Apparently the government messed up a chance to gain access to the iPhone of one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino terror attack.

The United Nations set to vote on new sanctions against North Korea.

A train carrying hazardous material derailed in southwestern New York forcing some evacuations.

The cruise ship Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas has returned to port again to avoid more storms. The giant ship was battered by rough seas a few weeks ago.

Astronaut Mark Kelly is back on terra firma after nearly a year in space.

U.S. stocks had their best day in more than a month yesterday. We get a read on jobs today.. the ADP employment report.

For more news, follow me on Twitter: @ClintPHenderson
An ISIS operative captured in Iraq by U.S. Special Operations forces will only be detained for a "short term," U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. Pat Ryder said Wednesday.

Ryder would not specify exactly how long the unidentified militant would be held, or whether substantial intelligence could be acquired during that time.

The ISIS operative was seized during a recent raid in northern Iraq, a U.S. official confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday. The operation was first reported on by CNN. A report in The New York Times described the operative as a "significant" member of the terror group.

In December, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that a special operations task force was headed to Iraq. Fox learned the 200-man unit, which included an assault force, intelligence cell and aviation element would be based in Irbil in northern Iraq.

In October, Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler, a Delta Force Commando, was killed during a mission to rescue of dozens of mostly Kurdish prisoners held by ISIS in northern Iraq.

In May, a Delta Force raid in eastern Syria resulted in the death of an ISIS commander, Abu Sayyaf, and the detention of his wife Umm. U.S. forces hope to gather evidence about the terror group's operations from its latest captive, as it did in the case of Umm Sayyaf.

Umm Sayyaf remains held by the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. She was charged last month by the Justice Department with being part of a conspiracy resulting in the death of Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old American aid worker kidnapped by ISIS.

Mueller was held as a sex slave by the Sayyafs and repeatedly raped by ISIS' self-proclaimed emir, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while in his custody.

Mueller was sexually abused by Baghdadi, who forced her to have sex with him, according to a Justice Department statement.

A U.S. official told Fox News the latest so-called "kill or capture" mission follows the template of the raid that targeted the Sayyafs and will be the model for such missions going forward.

The official also said there was "no plan to make a detention center," in Iraq, adding that captured ISIS operatives would be held either by the Kurds or the Iraqi government.

Carter reiterated his desire to close the military detention center at the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba during a Pentagon press conference Monday.

But Carter acknowledged closing the prison is currently against the law and that some prisoners are too dangerous to transfer to other counties.
Israel on Tuesday accused Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons against civilians since the start of a cease-fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia aimed at ending the bloody conflict.

"The Syrians used military grade chemical weapons and lately have been using materials, chlorine, against civilians, including in these very days, after the supposed cease-fire, dropping barrels of chlorine on civilians," Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in Tel Aviv, without providing further details.

A fact-finding mission by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a global chemical weapons watchdog, concluded in 2014 that the use of chlorine gas has been systematic in the war, even after the Syrian government handed over a stockpile of chemical arms, Reuters reports.

Both Syrian rebel groups and President Bashar Assads forces have denied using barrel bombs, which the OPCW says are being dropped out of helicopters. Syrias air force is the only side in the conflict known to have helicopters, according to Reuters. The United Nations and the OCPW have been investigating the attacks.

The fragile truce also has been dogged by opposition charges of non-compliance by Assads forces, which Damascus denies.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the Syria cease-fire efforts, but said Israel may still carry out attacks to counter any threats to its national security, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, Syrian opposition activists and state media said Wednesday that a Kurdish-led fighting alliance has captured a hill overlooking a main road in Aleppo from the Nusra Front and its allies, in a surprise offensive aimed at encircling the northern city.

The predominantly Kurdish U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces' offensive Wednesday likely does not break the cease-fire that came into effect Friday, because the Nusra Front and ISIS are excluded from the agreement.

Syrian troops and the SDF had halted their offensive in northern Syria for days after the cease-fire began.

Syrian state TV reported that pro-government gunmen captured Castello hill, "cutting supply lines for terrorists" in eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo with southern parts of the Aleppo province.

Sami al-Raj, an Aleppo-based opposition activist, confirmed via Skype the SDF advances.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Despite the fragile cessation of hostilities over much of Syria, a steady barrage of Russian air strikes is still aimed at moderate and U.S.-supported rebel forces, further complicating desperately strained humanitarian relief efforts and preparing the way for a renewed offensive by the dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad, say experts keeping tabs on the air assault.

The air strikes definitely seek to give regime forces a tactical advantage says Genevieve Casagrande, an analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which monitors and confirms the Syrian attacks. The question is when they intend to make use of it.

The air assault is a strong indication that the Assad regimes Russian allies do not intend to be deterred or even delayed in their military planning and battlefield preparations by the on-again, off-again peace talks between the regime and the non-radical opposition forces in Syria, which are now slated to start on March 9, two days later than originally planned.

United Nations special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told wire services that the delay was for logical and technical reasons and also for the ceasefire to better settle down.

In fact, according to Casagrande, the bombings never ceased, but instead were reduced in tempo and altered in terms of targeting. They are continuing at a steady rate, she told Fox News. A lot of it is just not being talked about.

Indeed, that is currently something akin to the official position of the U.S. State Department. Queried about the assaults, a State Department official pointed to a Monday statement by Secretary of State John Kerry, who reported, after a couple of conversations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, that we have agreed that while there have been some number of violations reported on both sides and we take them all very seriously, we do not want to litigate these in a public fashion in the press.

Kerry added, We want to work to eliminate them, and we have agreed on a process by which we will do that.

So far, however, the major difference is that the Russian strikes are now taking place behind the front lines of combat between regime forces and the non-radical opposition, and thus have less visibility than waves of Russian air attacks late in Februaryright up to the Feb. 27 start of the cessation-- that indiscriminately hit civilian targets and caused tens of thousands of additional Syrian refugees to flee toward the northern Syrian border with Turkey.

The assaults appear to be hitting rural towns along opposition supply routes especially to the west of Aleppo, Syrias second largest city and an increasingly encircled stronghold of opposition to the Assad regime, Casagrande told Fox News.

They are largely aimed at logistics and communications, Casagrande told Fox News and could facilitate the eventual movement of regime ground forces.

In fact, some of those movements may already be taking place. A spokesman for The Syria Campaign, a media group with ties to non-radical Syrian opposition forces, told Fox News that on-the-ground observers were charging that the air strikes were part of a deliberate strategy to quietly gain more territory.

The spokesperson said the observers claimed Russian and regime forces were bombing roads so that they are disconnecting some parts of the liberated areas controlled by the opposition. Meantime, the spokesman claimed that hundreds of regime soldiers were massing in various areas, notably moving toward the near-destroyed western provincial city of Homs and had taken control of formerly rebel areas south-west of Damascus.

In the shorter term, the attacks are crimping the movement of supplies and humanitarian assistance into Aleppo from the west, after the earlier attacks shut down major supply routes into the city from the north.

For international non-governmental organizations that deliver cross-border humanitarian aid into SyriaUnited Nations relief organizations inside the country work under the say-so of the Assad regime itself the earlier round of assaults proved especially stifling.

The U.S.-based aid organization Mercy Corps, which has no links with Assad, reports that in February it could only deliver humanitarian supplies of food and emergency shelter to about 180,000 people monthly, vs. its previous average of 500,000.

While saying that the organization needed more time before we can say the cessation of hostilities is holding, Christine Bragale, Mercy Corps director of media relations, told Fox News that the group was making daily, sometimes hourly, assessments of the dangers posed to the relief effort.

Despite the pressure, Mercy Corps continues to deliver humanitarian support into northern Syria, she said, including Aleppo, where some 66,000 people are dependent on the organizations help.

We have seen some of our access routes exposed, she added, and a number of Mercy Corps aid workers in Syriawho are all Syrian citizensare themselves living with their families in refugee camps.

Overall, humanitarian aid remains drastically insufficient: We are delivering every last piece of supplies that we can, and its not enough, she said.

Moreover, she added, Mercy Corps absolutely believes that humanitarian access cannot be used as a bargaining chip in any negotiations. We cannot use the lives of men, women and children as part of this process. The situation in Syria is morally unacceptable.

The situation is far worse in areas of Syria where at least 100,000 Syrians, and perhaps many more, are holding on in more than a dozen besieged areas that are in the overwhelming number of cases cut off by Assad regime forces (and, in a couple of cases, by the radical jihadists of ISIS and other organizations).

In the long-besieged suburb of Moadamiyyah, outside Damascus, a local resident who calls himself Dani Qappani told Fox News that a much heralded one-time aid delivery by a United Nations convoyone of a handful approved by the Assad regime in advance of the cessation of hostilitieshad made a difference, at least for a time.

People have food for one month, he told Fox News in a long-distance interview. But today they were supposed to bring medicine but we didnt get it. His town was still besieged by a combination of Assad regime forces and fighters from Hezbollah, the radical militia supported both by the Assad government and by Iran.

The nearby southern city of Daraya is still cut off completely from outside humanitarian aid, he reported, and there have been many violations of the ceasefire by Assad in rural areas.

Nonetheless, he added, rebels were adamant that the bombings must stop and sieges before lifted before true peace talks could start.

And one other demand remained non-negotiable: Assad has to go.

George Russell is editor-at-large of Fox News and can be found on Twitter: @GeorgeRussell or on Facebook.com/GeorgeRussell
Kumon Math and Reading Centers Expand in Southwest Markets

New Kumon Centers open in Colorado and Nevada

TEANECK, N.J. - Feb. 16, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Kumon, the world's largest after-school math and reading program, opened new centers in the Southwest this month. Thousands of parents in Colorado and Nevada will now have access to nearby Kumon learning centers for their pre-school to high school aged children.

New centers have opened in the following cities:

Erie, Colorado

Las Vegas, Nevada

"We are excited to bring the Kumon method of learning to even more families throughout Colorado and Nevada," said Larry Lambert, vice president of franchise recruitment at Kumon North America.

Kumon has seen a 28 percent increase in student enrollments in the West region in the past five years. With nearly 300,000 students enrolled in math and reading programs at 1,500 Kumon centers nationwide, Kumon continues to lead the way in the education franchise industry. Kumon has seen a 25 percent growth in the number of franchise Kumon Centers opened in the U.S. during the last five years and a 44 percent growth in the last decade.

Today in 49 countries and regions, the Kumon Method is helping millions of children succeed in the classroom and in life. The Kumon Method empowers children to become self-learners and is designed to advance children's math and reading skills while fostering a love for learning. Kumon sparks critical thinking, establishes a pattern of success and builds confidence that can lead to accelerated learning throughout life. Parents can visit kumon.com to find their nearest Kumon center.

About Kumon Math & Reading Centers

Kumon is an after-school math and reading enrichment program that unlocks the potential of children, so they can achieve more on their own. As a comprehensive program, Kumon serves children in preschool through high school. Founded inJapan in 1958, the learning method uses an individualized approach that helps children develop a solid command of math and reading skills. Through daily practice and mastery of materials, students increase confidence, improve concentration, and develop better study skills. Kumon has 26,000 centers in 49 countries and more than four million students studying worldwide. The company's North American headquarters is located in Teaneck, N.J. Visit www.kumon.com to learn more.

SOURCE Kumon North America

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Bennigans Celebrates St. Paddys Day with Worlds Greatest Irish Toast!

40th anniversary Blarney Blast sweepstakes offers chance to win trip to Ireland

March 02, 2016 // Franchising.com // DALLAS, TX  While its true that Every Day is St. Paddys Day at Bennigans, its even more true when its actually St. Paddys Day!

And as this singularly Irish holiday approaches, Bennigans is pulling out all the stops to make their 40th anniversary celebration the most Legendary ever!

Beginning Tuesday, March 1, Bennigans is inviting its friends and family across the globe to join in the Worlds Greatest Irish Toast! Simply post a picture of your Cheers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #40YearCheers and youll be entered for a chance to win a fabulous trip for two to the Emerald Isle!

Its all part of the month-long Blarney Blast promotion, during which guests at every Bennigans restaurant across the U.S. will receive scratch-off sweepstakes cards offering the chance to instantly win a free GoPro camera, along with dinners for two, appetizers, desserts and Coca-Cola products. Cards will be available at Bennigans restaurants while supplies last.

One thing has become eminently clear over the last 40 years: Aside from Ireland itself, theres no better place to celebrate St. Paddys Day than Bennigans, said Legendary Restaurant Brands Chairman & CEO Paul Mangiamele. Everywhere I go, I meet raving fans who have a great Bennigans story to tell. This March, those stories are going to multiply, and one of our guests will even celebrate the true luck of the Irish with a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Ireland!

Throughout March, Bennigans is also featuring several Irish-inspired menu items, including Beer Cheese Soup, Irish Street Tacos, Corned Beef & Cabbage, Irish Whiskey Glazed Grilled Salmon and Irish Cream Cheesecake. And in addition to the traditional green beer, you wont want to miss these drink specials:

Irish Apple

Ruby Red Fireball

Skinny Leprechaun

Irish Mule

Irish Coffee

Long Ireland Iced Tea

Not Your Fathers Root Beer Float

Irish Beer Blaster

And of course, every Bennigans restaurant across the globe will be hosting the biggest St. Paddys Day party in town, with live music, contests and drink specials  just dont forget to wear green!

Now with more than 150 restaurants open or under contract worldwide, Legendary Restaurant Brands LLC is continuing to experience strong growth while simultaneously redefining casual dining. Since the end of 2012, the company has opened new franchise locations in Clarksburg and Frederick, Md; Santa Clara and Fremont, Calif.; Melbourne, Fla., Saddle Brook, NJ; Tysons Corner, Va.; Veracruz, Mexico; Larnaca, Cyprus; and Dubai, UAE.

Additional restaurants are planned for California, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Tennessee, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia; and internationally in Mexico, Central America, Cyprus, Egypt, Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and South America.

For your nearest location, menu, hours and additional information, visit Bennigans.com.

About Legendary Restaurant Brands

Legendary Restaurant Brands owns the iconic Bennigans and Steak and Ale brands  the pioneers of casual dining  as well as the non-traditional, fast-casual concept, Bennigans On The Fly. Bennigans is a high-energy neighborhood restaurant and tavern that is redefining casual dining. With chef-driven food, innovative drinks and warm, friendly Irish hospitality, this Legendary brand delivers memorable dining experiences to every guest and compelling returns to all its franchisees. Steak and Ale is another American classic poised for a triumphant return. Redefined as a 21st Century polished-casual concept, the new Steak and Ale will once again set the standard for affordable steakhouses. Bennigans and Steak and Ale will be celebrating their 40th and 50th anniversaries, respectively, in 2016.

For franchising information, visit Bennigans.com or call 855-GOT-BENN.

SOURCE Legendary Restaurant Brands

Contact:

Ladd Biro

Champion Management

Founder & Principal

O: 972.930.9933

C: 817.675.3499

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Brinker International Names John Cywinski As Executive Vice President of Strategic Innovation

DALLAS - March 1, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Brinker International, Inc. (NYSE: EAT) today announced that John Cywinski has been named Executive Vice President of Strategic Innovation, effective March 7, 2016.

Cywinski brings a wide range of industry experience to Brinker, having held multiple leadership positions atYum! Brands, Inc., Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar, McDonald's Corporation, BURGER KING and The Walt Disney Company. Most recently, he served as President of KFC U.S. where he was responsible for the brand vision, consumer strategy, operational excellence and innovation for over 4,500 restaurants. Prior to that, Cywinski owned and operated his own restaurants in Chicago as a franchisee for Dunkin' Brands Group, Inc. and SONIC Drive-In.

"We are excited for John to join our team and his extensive industry experience will be instrumental in delivering a differentiated guest experience across our brands," said Wyman Roberts, CEO and President ofBrinker International and President of Chili's Grill & Bar. "As we continue to pursue initiatives focused on an enhanced guest experience, John will lead the strategic thinking and innovation around aligning all guest touch points."

About Brinker International, Inc.

Brinker International, Inc. is one of the world's leading casual dining restaurant companies. Founded in 1975 and based in Dallas, Texas, as of Dec. 23, 2015, Brinker owned, operated or franchised 1,646 restaurants under the names Chili's Grill & Bar (1,595 restaurants) and Maggiano's Little Italy (51 restaurants).

SOURCE Brinker International, Inc.

Contact:

Brinker International

media.requests@brinker.com

1-800-775-7290

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Perkins Announces 2015 Franchisee Of The Year

JDK Management Receives Top Honors

Business Partner of the Year and Give Kids The World Award Recipients Also Named

MEMPHIS, Tenn. March 2, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Perkins Restaurant & Bakeryrecently named JDK Management as its Franchisee of the Year, at the company's Annual Franchise Conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Perkins & Marie Callender's President and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Warne, "This coveted award is bestowed on the franchisee that epitomizes excellence in operations and brand standards; inspires others through leadership by example; and contributes to the success of the Perkins brand both within the restaurants and the communities it serves." In addition to the Franchisee of the Year, Perkins also recognizedMinneapolis based Seating Consultants, as Business Partner of the Year, and awarded franchisee Homer "Scotty" Scott, from Wyoming and Angela Sherman, General Manager of Perkins Black River Falls, Wisconsin, as recipients of the Give Kids The World Award for their outstanding dedication, commitment and tireless fundraising for the Company's designated charity, Give Kids The World.

Franchisee of the Year: JDK Management

Founded in 1983, the JDK Management Group operates 31 Perkins Restaurants inPennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. JDK Management finished 2015 up 3.0% in same store sales; successfully implemented the Perkins remodeling initiative with 7 remodels completed to date and on track to complete all locations by the end of 2018. They opened a new restaurant in State College in 2014 and will be opening another Perkins in Lewisburg, PA in October 2016. JDK Management has served on Perkins Advisory Council for the past 25 years and embodies a culture that is caring and community focused, contributing significantly to Give Kids The World.

Jeff Warne explained, "It is hard to find the appropriate words to extend appreciation and gratitude for the JDK team's unwavering commitment to the brand." Upon accepting the Franchisee of the Year Award, Russell Berner, Vice President, JDK Management stated, "Being named Perkins Franchisee of the Year is an incredible honor and we are grateful for the recognition." He added, "We work tirelessly to promote the brand and be a leader in all aspects of the business as we believe the largest franchisee should. We are extremely proud of our entire team for their efforts in representing the Perkins brand for close to thirty years."

About Perkins Restaurants & Bakeries

Founded in 1958, Perkins system consists of 403 restaurants in 33 states andCanada, which includes 132 company-owned and operated restaurants and 271 franchised units. The Perkins Franchise Conference is an event that draws franchisees, vendors, and team members from Perkins system-wide. It includes specialized business sessions, seminars, networking events and a culminating awards ceremony that recognizes those who have distinguished themselves through their performance, dedication, commitment and overall contributions to the goals and objectives of the brand.

Information about Perkins franchise opportunities can be found atwww.perkinsrestaurants.com or by calling Cassandra Bremer / Franchise Dynamics at #417.612.9217.

SOURCE Perkins Restaurant & Bakery

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Retail Food Groups Global Platform Drives Record Performance

March 02, 2016 // Franchising.com // GOLD COAST, AUSTRALIA - Strong organic growth, acquisition synergies and revenue driving initiatives have delivered Retail Food Group Limited (RFG, the Company or Group) record 1H16 underlying Net Profit After Tax (NPAT) of $32.1m, an increase of 27.1% over the previous corresponding period (PCP), as reported in the Companys recently released half-year accounts.

The Companys strong profit result was a product of record 1H16 EBITDA of $53.5m, representing a 36.4% increase on PCP, and demonstrating the robust potential inherent in the Groups unique business model.

RFG Managing Director Tony Alford said the Companys impressive track record of performance, investment in growth and strong shareholder rewards since Listing in 2006 had it well-positioned to capitalise on further global expansion.

In terms of network scale and penetration, RFG has now surpassed the 2,500 outlet milestone, has Brand Systems licensed across 63 international territories, and has exponentially increased the global opportunities now available to the Company from both franchise and supply-side standpoints, he said.

RFG is now indisputably a leader in its industry, not just domestically, but across the globe.

Contributing circa 17% (or $9.0m) of 1H16 Group EBITDA, RFGs international operations were driven by the commissioning of a record 73 new outlets and the grant of six new Master Franchises to experienced local partners in New Zealand and Myanmar.

RFGs international operations provide the Company with a platform for relatively low risk, sustainable growth, Mr Alford said. Significant opportunity for penetration of new markets remains, with the Company focused on extending its presence within India, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the USA.



In terms of international coffee operations, the Companys Los Angeles Roasting Facility has been refaced as Di Bella Coffee with an online store established to harness the USAs emerging espresso coffee culture.

The Company has plans to rollout additional international coffee roasting and distribution hubs, with the first such facility programmed for commissioning later in 2016.

With increasingly diverse global operations, strong growth-driving initiatives across all business units, and several new revenue streams being pursued, Mr Alford said RFG remains buoyant in its outlook for FY16 and beyond.

About Retail Food Group Limited

RFG owns the Donut King, Brumbys Bakery, Michels Patisserie, bbs Cafe, Gloria Jeans Coffees, Its A Grind, The Coffee Guy, Cafe2U, Esquires, Pizza Capers and Crust Gourmet Pizza Bar franchise systems. The Company is a significant wholesale coffee roaster supplying existing Brand Systems and third party accounts under the Di Bella Coffee, Evolution Coffee Roasters Group and Roasting Australia coffee manufacturing brands. For more information visit www.rfg.com.au.

SOURCE Retail Food Group Limited

Contact:

Amy Smith

Corporate Communications Manager, RFG

+61 400 137 704

amy.smith@rfg.com.au

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
sweetFrog To Celebrate Maine Shop Opening

Belfast Location Set To Open March 4

RICHMOND, VA (PRWEB) March 02, 2016 - sweetFrog Enterprises, LLC. is pleased to announce the reopening of its location in Belfast, Maine. The Belfast location is the fourth sweetFrog store operating in this Pine Tree State. The premium frozen yogurt chain was listed as #22 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies in 2014. sweetFrog offers a wide selection of frozen yogurt flavors, along with fresh topping choices and a self-serve model.

The store, located at 1 Belmont Avenue, Belfast ME 04915, will begin opening festivities at 5:00pm on March 4, to include free t-shirts to the first 25 guests every day until their Grand Opening festivities on March 11. During this time, customers can also win a free sweetFrog party for 6 through a Like and Share Facebook contest.

The grand opening celebration will feature prizes, balloons, stickers, lots of giveaways and appearances by the ever-popular sweetFrog mascots, Scoop and Cookie. The first 100 guests will receive free t-shirts and every purchase comes with a return-visit BOGO card. In addition, guests can get their frozen yogurt free if they can guess the weight of their cup. There will also be a drawing for one lucky guest to win free froyo for a year.

"Our goal is to be a strong community partner in Belfast, and the place to people choose to gather with friends and family for fun and celebrations," said Patrick Galleher, CEO of sweetFrog.

From March 14-18, sweetFrog will celebrate Belfasts medical professionals, schools, fire and rescue, local businesses and churches with 50% off purchases on their designated day. In addition, there will be a 50% donation of sales to non-profit organizations who book benefit nights and 50% discounts on birthday party bookings before April 1, 2016.

About sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt

sweetFrog (http://www.sweetfrog.com) is the fastest growing premium, all natural, self-serve frozen yogurt restaurant company in the country. sweetFrog currently has 340 stores including both company-owned, franchise and independently licensed locations either open or under contract in twenty-four states in the U.S, Dominican Republic, United Kingdom and Egypt. The company was founded in 2009 and is based in Richmond, Virginia. sweetFrog prides itself on providing a family-friendly environment where customers can enjoy soft-serve frozen yogurt, gelato and sorbets with the toppings of their choice. The company was founded on Christian principles and seeks to bring happiness and a positive attitude into the lives of the communities it calls home.

SOURCE sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt

Contact:

Matt Smith

Chief Marketing Officer

matt.smith@sweetfrog.net

(804) 835-6796

Pat Galleher

sweetFrog Enterprises LLC

+1 8043433441

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
ToysRUs, Asia Pacific President Monika Merz To Retire In May

March 02, 2016 // Franchising.com // WAYNE, NJ and TOYKO, JAPAN  Toys"R"Us, Inc. announced the retirement of Monika Merz, president of Toys"R"Us, Asia Pacific, effective May 31, 2016. Her successor will be named at a future date.

As President, Toys"R"Us, Asia Pacific, Monika Merz oversees all operations and business activities for the companys more than 300 stores in Japan, Southeast Asia, Greater China and Australia. In this role, she has been responsible for the continued growth, profitability and success of the company in these markets. Since she started working at Toys"R"Us, Ms. Merz has been instrumental in the development of new store formats and merchandising concepts that have been successfully translated to other markets, ultimately strengthening the companys position in the global marketplace.

Dave Brandon, Chairman and CEO, Toys"R"Us, Inc. said, "I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to Monika and to acknowledge her many contributions during her years with the company. She is a highly regarded leader who has inspired new ideas, demonstrated innovative thinking and unwavering passion for the business and grown our Toys"R"Us brand internationally, even through challenging times and market transitions."

Ms. Merzs retirement will bring to a close a remarkable career of nearly 20 years of continuous service to the company. She joined in 1996 as Vice President and General Manager, Toys"R"Us, Canada and was promoted to President, Toys"R"Us, Canada four years later. In 2007, Ms. Merz assumed leadership of Toys"R"Us, Japan. Her role was expanded to include responsibility for the companys stores in Australia in 2011, and, later that year, Ms. Merz gained oversight of the companys locations and corporate offices in Southeast Asia and Greater China when the company entered a joint venture agreement with Li & Fung to operate these formerly licensed stores.

"During my time at Toys"R"Us Ive had many experiences and challenges, but Ive always been supported by exceptional teams and leaders," said Ms. Merz. "Im proud of all that we have accomplished and confident that the work we have done to provide a fun and memorable shopping experience for customers will continue after my retirement. After more than eight years in Asia Pacific, Im now looking forward to returning to Canada and a new stage in my life."

About Toys"R"Us, Inc.

Toys"R"Us, Inc. is the worlds leading dedicated toy and baby products retailer, offering a differentiated shopping experience through its family of brands. Merchandise is sold in 856 Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us stores in the United States, Puerto Rico and Guam, and in more than 755 international stores and more than 250 licensed stores in 38 countries and jurisdictions. In addition, it exclusively operates the legendary FAO Schwarz brand and sells extraordinary toys at FAO.com. With its strong portfolio of e-commerce sites including Toysrus.com and Babiesrus.com, it provides shoppers with a broad online selection of distinctive toy and baby products. Headquartered in Wayne, NJ, Toys"R"Us, Inc. has an annual workforce of approximately 66,000 employees worldwide. The company is committed to serving its communities as a caring and reputable neighbor through programs dedicated to keeping kids safe and helping them in times of need. Additional information about Toys"R"Us, Inc. can be found onToysrusinc.com. Follow Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us on Facebook at Facebook.com/Toysrus and Facebook.com/Babiesrus and on Twitter at Twitter.com/Toysrus and Twitter.com/Babiesrus.

SOURCE Toys"R"Us, Inc.

Media Contacts:

Elizabeth Gaerlan

Toys"R"Us, Inc.

973-617-5632

Elizabeth.Gaerlan@toysrus.com

Alyssa Peera

Toys"R"Us, Inc.

973-617-5634

Alyssa.Peera@toysrus.com

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
Visiting Angels CEO Receives Prestigious Industry Honor

Company Co-Founder Inducted into NAHC Hall of Fame

PHILADELPHIA, PA (PRWEB) March 02, 2016 - Visiting Angels CEO Larry Meigs is among the newest inductees into the Home Care & Hospice Hall of Fame. In 1998, Meigs co-founded Visiting Angels, one of the nations largest in-home senior care companies. He helped grow the company from one location to more than 500 private duty agencies across the United States, as well as in Mexico.

Every year, the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) honors those who have dedicated their lives to the care and service of others. Meigs is known as a leader who provides care and support for his employees and insists that they provide the highest-quality services to the patients and families they serve.

We started Visiting Angels with the goal to always put caring first, and we continue to fulfill that vision daily, adapting to client needs, as well as constantly providing our caregivers with the tools and education to provide the quality of service that matches our reputation, Meigs said.

The Home Care & Hospice Hall of Fame was created in 2011, and the inductees are honored at the associations largest meeting of the year. Past inductees include a number of famous names: Mother Teresa, President Bill Clinton, Lillian D. Wald, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-KS), Hon. Rosalynn Carter, Dame Cicely Saunders and Mike Vance.

At NAHC, we have always aspired to excellence which is why we established the Hall of Fame, said Val J. Halamandaris, NAHC president. Halamandaris describes the new honorees as great role models who have made a significant contribution to the industry.

About NAHC

NAHC is a nonprofit organization that represents the nations 33,000 home care and hospice organizations. NAHC also advocates for the more than 2 million nurses, therapists, aides and other caregivers employed by such organizations to provide in-home services to some 12 million Americans each year who are infirm, chronically ill and disabled. Along with its advocacy, NAHC provides information to help its members provide the highest quality of care and is committed to excellence in every respect.

About Visiting Angels Living Assistance Services

Visiting Angels began franchising in 1998 in the Philadelphia area. Today, Visiting Angels has more than 500 private duty agencies throughout the United States. Visiting Angels agencies employ only experienced caregivers and conduct the most comprehensive background screenings to ensure that their caregivers meet or exceed the companys high standards. For companion care, Alzheimers care, dementia care and the countrys best palliative care program, make Visiting Angels your choice in senior home care. For more information on Visiting Angels or to find a location near you, please visit http://www.visitingangels.com.

SOURCE Visiting Angels Living Assistance Services

Contact:

Nancy Bostrom

Visiting Angels

+1 (919) 459-8163

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
@Work Group to Open in Cary

National staffing franchise expands into Cary, North Carolina market, answers growing job market demands.

March 02, 2016 // Franchising.com // CARY, NC.  @Work Group, an award-winning national staffing franchise, has signed an all-new franchise location to Cary, North Carolina professional, Gail Phillips, extending the companys national reach. The staffing agency will help serve the regions staffing needs in the rapidly growing hospitality and light industrial trades, in addition to numerous other industries, and add to the nearly 100 already open @Work locations across the United States.

Relationships and customer satisfaction have always been the foundation for success to me, said Phillips. Ive established connections within the Cary and Raleigh community and by emphasizing this focus, my goal is to nurture current and new relationships with area companies and professionals with the hiring process.

Phillips comes to @Work Group with more than five years assisting candidates in their job search. With the majority of her career being in education, her most recent position was program manager at Education Data Systems Inc. (EDSI). At her position at EDSI, Phillips focused on contracts with state agencies to help those who were unemployed to find a job. While working with a literacy program for a community college in New Jersey, Phillips worked with students and those seeking additional education obtain degrees, learn English and secure jobs.

Pursuing entrepreneurship, Phillips found @Work Group and its business ownership opportunities through extensive online research. Throughout her career, Phillips noticed a pattern of helping people improve and change their lives. She found, through research and speaking with corporate executives directly, that @Works business model sets owners up for success by providing the necessary tools and workshops to grow and nurture business relationships. Phillips also has the advantage of a vast network of connections through her previous positions and participation in various committees and groups. She plans to staff the technology, administrative and support sectors initially through her staffing franchise.

Gail embodies determination and expertise and truly has a passion for helping people. She is supportive and resourceful, said Jason Leverant, president and COO at @Work Group. The Cary and Raleigh market is booming with an array of industry opportunities. Gails commitment to her clients and personnel will immensely improve the quality of candidates for Cary and Raleigh businesses to staff.

@Works Cary franchise will provide the companys signature personnel service in order to supply area companies with temporary, temp-to-hire, payroll and full-time placement services.

@Work provides companies with flexible employment solutions with the highest level of service available and was recently named No. 349 on Entrepreneur Magazines 2015 Franchise 500 List, as well as an Inaveros 2016 Best of Staffing Client and Talent Award winners list. @Work Groups list of accolades also includes: Workforce Magazines Temporary Staffing Providers Hot List for 2013, the Staffing Industry Analysts Largest U.S. Staffing Firms List for 2013, the Franchise Times Next 300 Franchise Systems, and a 2015 Inc. 5000 ranking.

For more information about @Works franchise opportunities, visit www.@Work.com/@Workfranchising/.

About @Work Group

Leading the staffing industry since 1992, @Work Group has grown its franchise to more than 90 locations nationwide. Each location provides employers and employees with the @Work range of services including: @Work Personnel Services, @Work Medical Services, @Work HelpingHands Services, and @Work Search Group. @Work has been cited as one of Staffing Industry Analysts' top U.S. staffing firms. They rank on Entrepreneur Magazine's 2015 "Franchise 500" list, the Staffing Industry Analysts' "Largest U.S. Staffing Firms for 2015" and "Fastest Growing Staffing Firms" lists, and the "Inc. 5000 2015" list. @Work Group's remarkable growth is fueled by the vision of founders John and Glenda Hall: "Think ahead, create opportunity, give exceptional support to franchise offices and always look for the better way, every day." For more information, visit www.@Work.com or call 800.383.0804.

SOURCE @Work Group

Media Contact:

Heather Ripley

Ripley PR

865-977-1973

hripley@ripleypr.com

###

Comments:

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Disqus
MIAMI  Hillary Clinton widened her lead over Democratic rival Bernie Sanders as minority voters helped her secure key victories in seven states in the Super Tuesday contests. Sanders won four states and pledged to stay in the race, but failed to broaden his appeal beyond whites.

Clinton carried Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Massachusetts while Sanders won his home state of Vermont as well as Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.

Clinton had aimed for a sweep of Southern states in the delegate-heavy series of primaries and caucuses Tuesday before losing Oklahoma. Voting continued in Alaska.

"We will need all of you to keep volunteering, doing everything you can, talking to your friends and neighbors, because this country belongs to all of us," Clinton told supporters in Miami as the results arrived.

Clinton and her allies have already shifted some attention to Donald Trump, casting the Republican front-runner as divisive and unprepared to lead the country. "It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," she said.

All told, Clinton and Sanders were competing for 865 delegates in 11 states and American Samoa on Tuesday, the biggest single-day prize of the 2016 campaign.

With 91 delegates at stake in Massachusetts, the two candidates were on track to split the spoils fairly evenly. Clinton will pick up at least 44; Sanders will gain at least 41.

For the day, Clinton has now won at least 421 of the 865 delegates at stake, and Sanders at least 232.

Including superdelegates, Clinton now has at least 969 delegates. Sanders has at least 319. It takes 2,382 delegates to win.

Black voters gave Clinton a huge advantage throughout the South.

Of the seven Southern states that voted Tuesday, Clinton got more than 8 in 10 black votes everywhere but Oklahoma, where three-quarters of blacks backed her. Blacks made up made up more than a quarter of the votes overall. But that ranged from nearly half in Alabama and Georgia to about 15 percent in Oklahoma and Texas.

Greta Lewis voted with her mother at the Central Christian Church in Memphis. Both women are black and chose Clinton.

"She has been the one who has stepped out to at least try to identify with most of the minorities, whether they're women, black, Asian, Hispanic," said Lewis, a 31-year-old receptionist at her mother's dental office.

Clinton also expanded her base. She made inroads on Super Tuesday with voters between 30 and 44 years old, a group that was about evenly split between the two candidates. Sanders had led among all voters under age 45 in the first three contests of the year, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Exit polling showed voters pushing to continue President Barack Obama's policies rather than the kind of leftward shift championed by Sanders.

Sanders decamped to his home in Burlington, Vermont. He has vowed to stay in the race until the party's convention  and he showed no signs of retreating as he addressed a raucous rally of supporters.

"Thirty-five states remain and let me assure you that we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace, to every one of those states." Sanders said.

Despite his obstacles, the Vermont senator has little incentive to fold. He reported raising more than $42 million in February, a sign that he will have the money to go deep into the spring.
MIAMI  Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump seized decisive Super Tuesday victories with math and momentum on their side, leaving rivals scrambling for last-chance, long-shot strategies. For the Republican establishment, the search was increasingly dire.

Trump's seven victories in states across the country amounted to a GOP establishment collapse with no clear sign of rapid recovery. While his rivals promised to fight on, the party remained deeply divided over the preferred Trump alternative. Marco Rubio won only liberal Minnesota. Sen. Ted Cruz took his home state of Texas, neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska.

Clinton also won seven of the nearly a dozen states that weighed in Tuesday. Rival Bernie Sanders won his home state of Vermont, as well as Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado.

In his victory speech, Trump sent a chilling warning to the GOP establishment. A moment after Trump professed to have good relationships with his party's elite, he issued a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had declared earlier Tuesday that "this party does not prey on people's prejudices." Trump said that if the two don't get along, Ryan is "going to have to pay a big price."

Clinton, meanwhile, called for "love and kindness"  a contrast to hard-edge Trump  while her rival Bernie Sanders promised to fight on to the convention.

Both victors spoke from Florida, which did not vote on Tuesday, but where the general election is often won or lost.

Both Rubio and Cruz said they would fight on.

"Our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump," Cruz thundered to supporters gathered at the wood-paneled Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Texas.

Still, he'd been counting on more appeal in the Southern states and among evangelical Christian voters. Trump, who dubs his surging campaign the "Trump Train," has derailed those plans.

Rubio and the other Republicans still in the race, John Kasich and Ben Carson, struggled Tuesday to convey optimism even as they vowed to fight on.

Simple math reinforces a bind for the Republicans who reject Trump, as the brash billionaire businessman carried seven states and continues to barrel toward the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination.

Trump won at least 203 delegates Tuesday. Cruz collected at least 144 delegates and Rubio picked up at least 71. Overall, Trump leads with 285 delegates, Cruz has 161, Rubio has 87, Kasich has 25 and Carson has eight. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Increasingly, leading Republicans talk of a contested convention in July as their best remaining option for stopping Trump, whose divisive rhetoric about immigrants and ethnic and religious groups has some fearing a GOP wipeout in November.

Sanders assured supporters he'd take his fight to "every one" of the remaining contests. With a staggering $42 million raised in February alone, Sanders has the campaign cash to do just that  though Clinton is well on her way to the 2,383 delegates needed on the Democratic side.

Clinton collected wins in seven states, and Trump swept up victories in seven, including Virginia, another important general election battleground.

She is assured of winning at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake Tuesday. Sanders gains at least 286. When including party leaders, Clinton has at least 1,005 delegates and Sanders has at least 373.

Clinton held on to older voters and strongly prevailed among Hispanics and African-Americans, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research. Trump, a political newcomer, pulled in two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House, while GOP voters seeking an experienced candidate were split between Rubio and Cruz, both first-term senators.

Speaking from his gold-flecked Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump asserted that his candidacy is a "movement" and he claimed he would unify the party was by training his fire on Clinton.

He said she should be disqualified from even running for office because she broke from government protocol by using a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Clinton tried to turn Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan on its head, saying the country instead must be made "whole again."

"What we need in America today is more love and kindness," she said. "Instead of building walls, we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment."

Trump ridiculed her comments. "She's been there for so long," he said. "If she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years."

Rubio said his supporters would never rally around Trump. He and Kasich showed little sign of relenting, especially with their home states of Florida and Ohio voting on March 15.

"We are so excited about what lies ahead for our campaign," Rubio said at his Tuesday night rally in Miami, his hometown. "You see, just five days ago we began to unmask the true nature of the front-runner in this race."

He portrayed his attacks on Trump as having an impact already, though that wasn't evident in Super Tuesday's results.

"Two weeks from tonight right here in Florida," Rubio said, "we are going to send a message loud and clear: The party of Lincoln and Reagan will never be held by a con artist."
Hunter E. Fortney, 93, passed away peacefully on Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, at home with his family present as Christ ushered him from the perishable to the imperishable.

Hunter was born on June 9, 1922, in Preston County, W.Va. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the 99th Infantry Division in the European Theater, including the Battle of the Bulge. He returned home to West Virginia in February 1946 and continued his education at Fairmont State College, where he graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Arts in History. He later earned his Master of Education from West Virginia University. While at Fairmont College, Hunter met Eleanor Judy who became his wife on Aug. 13, 1950. They began their life together in Alexandria. Their lifelong commitment to and love for one another was a testament to their family.

Hunter taught 34 years in elementary education, primarily in the Arlington County School system. He was a gifted teacher who brought a lot of creativity to his classroom. He led one class in the construction of a geodome that was used to learn about the constellations. He also developed a nature trail behind Oakridge Elementary School. Hunter had a love for nature and practiced conservation years before its importance was generally recognized.

Left to honor his memory are his wife of 65 years, Eleanor; his daughters, Judy Fortineux (Lou) and Diane Richards (Scott); five grandchildren; and seven great- grandchildren.

A service to celebrate Hunters life will be held at 11 a.m. March 5, at Lebanon Evangelical Presbyterian Church, 8312 Brooksville Road, Greenwood, VA 22943. Online condolences may be left for the family at storkefuneralhome.com.
DTS Service Centre Proves its Commitment to Breast Cancer Awareness

Servicing a vehicle at DTS Service Centre in northern Queensland in February 2016 commits $5 to Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA).

--

The team at DTS Service Centre, an auto repair service based in Charters Towers, QLD, proudly announces they are donating $5 to Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) for each vehicle serviced in February 2016.

The owners of DTS, Shane and Tanya Downes, have a personal reason for their ongoing support and fundraising for BCNA. Tanya willingly shares, "this is a cause very close to my heart, after being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 36, just two months after starting the business in 2007."

As an outspoken cancer survivor, Tanya has inspired their service team to help raise awareness of the need for support for all Australians affected by breast cancer. On Fridays, the DTS men wear their bright pink shirts, sporting the clear message: Real Men Wear Pink!

This month, the DTS Service Centre team is raising the stakes by committing funds to the essential work done by BCNA. For every car, 4WD, ute, bus, truck or other vehicle serviced by one of the DTS professionals, the company will contribute $5 to the resources and services of BCNA.

The men and women of DTS Service Centre have been providing fast turnaround service on all types of vehicles for more than nine years. They understand the need to use state of the art diagnostic tools and components in order to ensure customer satisfaction and safety.

With this philosophy of service, the DTS specialists appreciate the way BCNA is committed to serving its network with the most up to date information, ensuring quality of care and ongoing support.

BCNA is a stellar advocate for all Australians affected by breast cancer. The network not only provides free information and support to patients, survivors, family and friends, but also makes resources available to breast care nurses and other healthcare professionals. The dedicated staff and many volunteers of BCNA work diligently to ensure treatment and care appropriate to individual needs from diagnosis to treatment and aftercare.

DTS Service Centre management and employees are pleased to do their part in raising awareness and funds for such a necessary service as Breast Cancer Network Australia. They know their $5 donation for every vehicle serviced at DTS in February 2016 is helping fund excellent work supporting those affected by breast cancer across the country.

See DTS Service Centre's website for more information on their commitment to Breast Cancer Network Australia.

For more information about us, please visit http://dtsservicecentre.com.au

Contact Info:

Name: Tanya Downes

Email: info@downtimesolutions.com.au

Organization: DTS Service Centre

Address: 7 Hugh Quinn Crescent, Cunningham Industrial Estate, CHARTERS TOWERS, Queensland

Phone: 07 4787 8782

Release ID: 104817

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Digital Marketing Firm Releases Project Management System

New Orleans based SEO firm, DEAN Knows rolls out their custom build Client Portal, a Project Management System for use of all customers, employees and subcontractors.

--

February 29th 2016

New Orleans based Digital Marketing firm, DEAN Knows, has released its custom built Client Portal due to increased demand. After reviewing a plethora of project management systems over the last six months, DEAN Knows has chosen to custom build their own Client Portal to give their customers an unprecedented level of transparency in their projects. Each project, from Website Design, SEO and Content Marketing to adding IDX to real estate websites has its own unique interface.

Dean Cacioppo, President of DEAN Knows said: "After experiencing massive growth over the last year, we recognized we needed a robust project management system for our clients. Upon testing many of the major project management systems we found each one was missing, what we considered to be, major aspects of what we wanted to provide. We knew we wanted the system to be easy for the end user and be robust enough for our internal team. We needed the system to give an overview of their project as well as the ability to drill down to individual tasks. We wanted a system in which our clients could access all of their critical project information such as invoices and credentials as well as monitor their project. We simply couldn't find an off-the-shelf product to do it all".

Although the Client Portal is offered free of charge to all customers on any Digital Marketing Package, it falls in line with the companies slogan of "Enterprise Digital Marketing for the Small Business".

The custom built project management system will provide:

*Client access to review their projects from a 10,000 foot view

*Access to every task completed and planned in real time

*An easy to use graphical interface providing insight on progress at a glance

*The ability for the client to directly communicate with the project team

*Tracking of all correspondence

*Easy access to all paid invoices as well as outstanding invoices

*Access to all pertinent credentials with dual layers of security

*Training documentation and videos

*A powerful and flexible guide for the DEAN Knows internal team to complete projects on time

The Client Portal is currently being tested with ten customers with intended release to their entire client base within the next 60 days. The new project management system is being systematically delivered to all clients at no additional cost.

About DEAN Knows:

DEAN Knows is a Digital Marketing Firm based out of New Orleans and specializing in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Website Development, Social Media Advertising, and Real Estate Technology and Consulting.

For more information about us, please visit http://deanknows.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Dean Cacioppo

Email: info@deanknows.com

Organization: DEAN Knows

Address: 3858 Oxford St. Slidell LA 70458

Phone: (985) 250-0787

Release ID: 105456

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
International Day of Happiness Dates Set

The two California events will focus on community connectivity and the record of the country of Bhutan.

--

The founding members of the Brotherhood Lions Club San Diego is pleased to announce the schedules for the Happy Fun Fest in Mission Viejo and San Diego have been set. Mission Viejo's celebration will be held on Saturday March 12th from 11 am to 5 pm and the San Diego event begins at 11 am and lasts until 4 pm on March 19th. The International Day of Happiness in the two cities is based on the United Nations resolution calling for a greater focus on happiness in daily life.

The two California events will focus on community connectivity and the record of the country of Bhutan. In 2011, the government of Bhutan launched the National Organic Program to focus the country on its goal of 100 percent organic by the year 2020. The progress which has been made in Bhutan has made it one of the greenest nations on Earth. The country is already carbon-neutral and plans to reach 100 percent organic and zero waste. It is one of the few nations which have negative carbon emissions.

The events are free to the public and each of the events promotes sustainability and reduction of greenhouse gas emission. The underlying United Nations Day of Happiness proclamation is inspired by Bhutan, where citizens are considered to be some of the happiest in the world. The government of Bhutan recognized the importance of national happiness over income. The government adopted the goal of Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product.

Activities during the two events are intended to be a collective conscious experience where in person or virtual streaming is promoted to celebrate causes and express happiness. The Crazy Hat for Happy contest is one example. Various local businesses and organizations are participating in the activities, exhibits and displays. Norman P. Murray Center in Mission Viejo is the location for the March 12 festivities.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.happyfunfest.com

Contact Info:

Name: Jacklyn Flowers

Organization: Happy Fun Fest

Address: c/o The San Diego Children's Coalition, 4191 Balboa Avenue, San Diego, CA 92117

Phone: (888) 250-8861x2

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/international-day-of-happiness-dates-set/105544

Release ID: 105544

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Level Sensors Market to Hit a CAGR of 5.4% to 2022 Led by Industrial Manufacturing Segment

Level Sensors Market by Technology (Contact Type and Non-Contact Type), End-User Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemical and Others), Monitoring Type (Point & Continuous) and Geography - Global Trends & Forecast to 2022.

--

The overall level sensors market is expected to reach USD 4.89 billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.4% between 2016 and 2022. The increasing government regulations for controlling pollution, gradual decrease in sensor sizes, increasing production of vehicles, and the economic growth of Asian countries such as China and India are the major factors driving the growth of this market.

Complete report on overall level sensors market across 171 pages, profiling 11 companies and supported with 79 tables and 68 figures is now available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/level-sensors-market-global-forecast-analysis-focus-on-technologies-contact-type-magnetostrictive-vibratory-probe-hydrostatic-magnetic-float-and-non-contact-type-ultrasonic-radar-optical-market-report.html .

The market for industrial manufacturing is expected to grow at the highest CAGR among all end-user industries. The growth in the industry can be attributed to the increasing integration of automation systems in the manufacturing sector. The increasing worldwide production of vehicles is also a major contributor to the growth of this market.

APAC is expected to be the fastest-growing market for level sensors during the forecast period. Industrial manufacturing and oil & gas are major sectors driving the growth of the level sensors market in APAC. China and India are the leading countries in the level sensors market in this region. The growing industrialization and government initiatives in these countries are further expected to drive the market in APAC. Currently, North America holds the second-largest share of the level sensors market. It is the most technologically-advanced market for level sensors owing to the greater penetration of these systems in this region. Furthermore, the U.S. invests heavily in the petroleum and aerospace sectors.

To determine and verify the market size for several segments and subsegments of the level sensors market gathered through the secondary research, extensive primary interviews have been conducted with key people. The break-up of the profiles of primary participants is shown below:

o By Company Type: Tier 1 - 55%, Tier 2 - 20%, and Tier 3 - 25%

o By Designation: C level - 60%, Director level - 25%, Others - 15%

o By Region: North America - 10%, Europe - 20%, APAC - 40%, RoW - 30%

The geographic segmentation in the report covers four major regions, namely, North America, Europe, APAC, and RoW. The report also profiles the major players in the level sensors market, namely, ABB Ltd. (Switzerland), AMETEK, Inc. (U.S.), Emerson Electric Co. (U.S.), Endress+Hauser AG (Switzerland), First Sensor AG (Germany), GEMS Sensors and Controls Co. (U.S.), Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.), KROHNE Messtechnik GMBH (Germany), Pepperl + Fuchs GmbH (Germany), Siemens AG (Germany), VEGA Grieshbaer KG (Germany), and Nohken Inc. (Japan). Get a discounted copy of Level Sensors Market by Technology (Contact Type and Non-Contact Type), End-User Industry (Oil & Gas, Chemical and Others), Monitoring Type (Point & Continuous) and Geography - Global Trends & Forecast to 2022 report at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/contacts/discount?rname=68047 .

This report caters to the needs of leading companies, end users, component manufacturers, and other related stakeholders in this market. Other parties that could benefit from the report include government bodies, environmental agencies, consulting firms, business development executives, C-level employees, and VPs. Our report would help analyze new opportunities and potential revenue sources and enhance the decision-making process for new business strategies. The quantitative and qualitative information in the report, along with our comprehensive analysis, will help the player gain a competitive edge in the market.

On a related note, another research titled Temperature Sensors Market Global Forecast to 2022 says, the increasing demand for temperature sensors among industrial end users would drive the temperature sensors market. The totsl market is expected to grow from USD 5.13 billion in 2016 to USD 6.79 billion by 2022, at estimated CAGR of 4.8% between 2016 and 2022. Hermocouple-based temperature sensors are to gain maximum traction during the forecast period. Companies like Texas Instruments Incorporated, Analog Devices, Inc., ABB Ltd., Honeywell International Inc., Maxim Integrated Products Inc., Siemens AG, Danaher Corporation, Kongsberg Gruppen, TE Connectivity Ltd., Emerson Electric Company, Panasonic Corporation, General Electric Company, STMicroelectronics N.V., Microchip Technology Incorporated and NXP Semiconductors N.V. have been profiled in this 202 pages research report available at http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com/temperature-sensor-market-a-study-of-sensor-types-temperature-ics-thermistor-resistive-temperature-detectors-rtds-thermocouple-and-ir-sensor-applications-global-forecast-analysis-2011-market-report.html .

About Us:

RnRMarketResearch.com is your single source for all market research needs. Our database includes 500,000+ market research reports from over 100+ leading global publishers & in-depth market research studies of over 5000 micro markets.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.rnrmarketresearch.com

Contact Info:

Name: Priyank Tiwari

Organization: RNR Market Research

Address: UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar

Phone: +1-888-391-5441

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/level-sensors-market-to-hit-a-cagr-of-5-4-to-2022-led-by-industrial-manufacturing-segment/105547

Release ID: 105547

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Social Tech Trader Review Released By Binary APP 810

Social Tech Trader Review website has been launched by Binary APP 810. Social Tech Trader Software APP designed by Albert, is a Social Trader System to assist trading binary options.

--

Social Tech Trader Review details are revealed in the new website launched by Binary APP 810 to describe new binary options trading strategies and features of the Social Tech Trader binary trading system and in-depth software. Social Tech Trader Software is designed to trade binary options with more success and assurance. For novice traders, it can be difficult to get started in the market because of lack of information. The Social Tech Trader binary options trading Software provides the necessary education to improve performance in the market. In addition, Social Tech Trader signals are offered to traders which the algorithms show have the best likelihood of good performance.

Social Tech Trader software, which is free to download, provides traders with the system which will reduce the risk level involved in trading binary options. A simple five-step process is required to establish a trading account with a Social Tech Trader binary options broker. The cost to download Social Tech Trader software is Free. The download from the website is easy and convenient to accomplish.

In addition to Social Tech Trader systems required to identify appropriate trading signals and the educational materials to teach inexperienced traders the necessary information about the procedures involved in trading binary options, the system is backed up by a highly experienced and knowledgeable customer support staff. The mathematical algorithms which the Social Tech Trader system offers to traders will benefit new traders, as well as those who are much more experienced.

Watching the experts make trades is a benefit to those newly in the market. The monitoring of binary options market is possible from desktops, laptops and mobile devices. As binary options traders are more accomplished and knowledgeable, the use of Social Tech Trader Software signals from the software system serves as a confirmation tool that a particular trade is recommended. While not every trade will be successful, the track record is positive for identifying movements of the market. Social Tech Trader signals which are defined by the system are the result of monitoring and reviewing thousands of market movements from around the world.

For more information about Social Tech Trader APP, please visit http://binaryapp-810.co/social-tech-trader-review-is-social-tech-trader-software-scam

Contact Info:

Name: Albert

Organization: Social Tech Trader

Email: Info@binaryapp-810.co

For more information about us, please visit http://binaryapp-810.co/social-tech-trader-review-is-social-tech-trader-software-scam

Contact Info:

Name: Albert Branson

Organization: Social Tech Trader



Source: http://marketersmedia.com/social-tech-trader-review-released-by-binary-app-810/105569

Release ID: 105569

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Five O' Clock Steakhouse Makes "Best of Milwaukee" List

Vintage steakhouse pleased to be nominated to "Best of Milwaukee" list

--

Every year, the "Best of Milwaukee" list is released, along with the winners in every type of food category imaginable. French restaurants, southern food, the best burgers, and of course, the best steaks, are all categories to vote on. The Five O'Clock Steakhouse has been nominated as the best steakhouse in Milwaukee, beating out the three other runner ups and honorable mentions for the coveted number one placing.

The restaurant is well-known for its supper club dining experience, giving a glimpse of its extensive history in the area since the 1940s. Vintage cocktails also give a nod to the olden times when the restaurant first opened and was called the Five O'Clock Club. Specialized item menus are often added, and the general menu has customer favorites such as the ribeye steak or the filet mignon.

This isn't the first time the famous steakhouse has been nominated among the best. The restaurant received national attention when Rachel Ray gave the food her praise. The Travel Channel as well as OpenTable has both given the Five O'Clock their approval, giving the managing partner Stelio Kalkounos credit for excellent service, delicious food, and a well-run establishment.

The food at Five O'Clock is the biggest customer draw, and the steaks are nationally known as some of the most tender and juicy. Facebook comments state "even if you didn't win that vote, we know you're the best," showing the customer appreciation and popularity of the Milwaukee steakhouse. Votes are taken from customers, residents, and general public that have visited, eaten, or used the establishments or their services and then ranked into the number one establishment, a runner-up, and a few honorable mentions. The list and winners are released every year, letting regulars and potential new customers know where the best places in Milwaukee are.

The Five O'Clock Steakhouse currently has special menu items. Try the Tomahawk steak, a 32 ounce, bone-in ribeye steak served with au jus and mushrooms. The Steak Diane has filet medallions in a cognac mushroom sauce, complete with rice and asparagus. Visit http://www.fiveoclocksteakhouse.com for a complete menu list and specialty items available.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.fiveoclocksteakhouse.com/wi/

Contact Info:

Name: Stelio Kalkounos

Organization: Five O'Clock Steakhouse

Address: 2416 WEST STATE STREET MILWAUKEE, WI 53233

Phone: 414-342-3553

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/five-o-clock-steakhouse-makes-best-of-milwaukee-list/105560

Release ID: 105560

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
2nd Chance Water Restoration Celebrates Top Honor From Better Business Bureau

The company has received an A+ rating for their commitment to meeting and exceeding customer expectations, reports 2ndchancewaterrestoration.com.

--

2nd Chance Water Restoration, a premier provider of water removal services currently serving Chicago and the surrounding areas, is celebrating their new status as a recipient of the highest possible rating from the Better Business Bureau. The company has received an A-plus rating with the esteemed organization, an honor bestowed upon companies who score at least 97 on the Better Business Bureau's 100-point scale.

Patrick O'Connor, a spokesperson for 2nd Chance Water Restoration, stated "We are honored to receive an A-plus rating from such a well-known and highly trusted organization like the Better Business Bureau. Our team is especially proud of the rating because exceptional customer service is the main thing that our company prides itself on. We know how harrowing it can be when a family is in need of water damage restoration, and we do everything we can to be there for them throughout the restoration process and get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible. We love that this mission is recognized by the BBB and reflected in the rating that they have given us."

The Better Business Bureau is an independent organization, which means that companies cannot pay for high ratings. The organization takes into account a number of factors when rating businesses, including the length of time that a company has been in operation, how transparent their business practices are, how accurate their advertising is, and the business' complaint history with the Better Business Bureau. Each category is assigned a point value, and those who receive at least 97 points are awarded the honor of an A-plus rating.

As O'Connor continues, "Whether it's flooded basement cleanup or restoring a home after it has been damaged by smoke, we want our current and future customers to know that we always strive to put them first in everything we do. We work hard to let them know that they can count on us to be there in their time of distress, and our A-plus Better Business Bureau accreditation helps us do just that."

About 2nd Chance Water Restoration:

In business since 2010, 2nd Chance Water Restoration has become the leading authority on issues related to water, fire, and mold damage in the greater Chicago area. Their team of professional service providers offers a complete range of restoration services, from water extraction and drying, mold removal, fire restoration and storm damage repair, as well as structural restoration, all designed to return a homeowner's property its pre-loss condition as soon as possible. They offer same-day emergency service, the industry's most comprehensive guarantee, and IICRC-certified personnel.

For more information about us, please visit http://www.2ndchancewaterrestoration.com

Contact Info:

Name: Patrick O'Connor

Organization: 2nd Chance Water Restoration

Address: Chicago, IL 60101

Phone: (630) 546-2239

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/2nd-chance-water-restoration-celebrates-top-honor-from-better-business-bureau/105613

Release ID: 105613

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix Launches New Website To Promote Extermination Services Online

Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix has created a new website in order to help them generate new business online using the power of targeted, localized SEO strategies.

Phoenix, AZ -- March 2, 2016 (FPRC) -- Spring is coming, and with it the birthing of a new generation within the animal kingdom. While this will lead to a great many cute and adorable creatures being born out in the wilds of nature, in urban spaces this means the rapid and large scale proliferation of pests; insects and rodents that look to claim human habitats as their homes. As a result, people in the warmer climes of the US will soon require extermination services to get these populations under control, and Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix has launched a new website to help them attract some of the business organically online.



The website ( http://www.bestpestexterminator.com ) has been created with a strong visual brand identity and the latest web design techniques, offering a full responsive platform that loads seamlessly on any device. The site uses a combination of high quality imagery, multimedia video content and original copy to describe their services in a succinct and compelling manner.



The website ( http://www.bestpestexterminator.com/phoenix/bed-bug-exterminator/ ) also has a secret weapon, with integrated on-page SEO designed to target local markets in Phoenix and the surrounding areas. Individuals searching for an exterminator through major search engines like Google and Bing will discover the company of their own accord, and be able to benefit from the best and most experienced exterminators in the area as a result.



A spokesperson for Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix explained, Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix is pleased to be able to launch a new website that will promote our services to a whole new online audience in our local area. Our business has traditionally thrived through customer referrals and recommendations, but we believe it is now time for individuals outside that gradually expanding network to know about the work we do. This is especially important as spring approaches, as more people will need these services than at any other time of the year, and we are happy to provide them effectively, and at a great rate.



About Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix: Best Pest Exterminator Phoenix offer quick and painless solutions to bed bug problems and other infestations. Their experienced team of highly trained professionals provide a wide range of solutions including heat treatment, chemical and freezing methods to create the safest, most efficient and economical solution for clients. For more information please visit: http://www.bestpestexterminator.com/







Send an email to Samual Redon of r

(602) 497-4770

Recent Press Releases By The Same User

ShapeHost Launches New Spring Sale Offering Savings Of Up To 35% On VPS Packages (Tue 8th Mar 16)

Paypro Finance Launches their Consumer Financing for Small Business Program (Mon 7th Mar 16)

Kuber Ventures Publishes New Infographic To Show Difference Between EIS for Pensions and SIPP (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Pregnancy Exercise Publishes New Guide Into Training For Fitness While Pregnant (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Centex Hosting Launches Newly Redesigned Website To Herald Expansion Into VPS Hosting (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Royal Cliff Receives ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Certification (Wed 2nd Mar 16)
Jacuzzi Hot Tubs Portland Oregon Wins Exceptional Customer Service Award

Jacuzzi Spas Dealer in Portland and Beaverton OR Wins Prestigious Award at National Dealer Conference. Offers Free Hot Tub Test Soaks to Local Oregon Residents.

--

Jacuzzi Hot Tubs of Portland Oregon is proud to announce that they were recently presented the Exceptional Customer Service award from Jacuzzi Hot Tubs at their annual conference. Winning dealers of the year were honored at the recent Jacuzzi Dealer Conference.

The Jacuzzi brand of hot tubs is manufactured by Jacuzzi Hot Tubs, the world's largest manufacturer of acrylic spas. Jacuzzi hot tubs and home spas are consistently top-rated in product comparisons because of their stylish designs, innovative technology, state-of-the-art features, consistent quality and value.

Recipients of these coveted awards compete with hundreds of other high quality Jacuzzi dealers from all over the United States. Winning dealers are considered to be "best of the best" across the country and have provided outstanding consumer service and support with factory trained technicians. In addition, all Jacuzzi dealers must represent themselves and Jacuzzi Spas with professionalism and integrity.

"Winning this award is great honor," said Sue Rogers, company's CEO. "The company works hard to earn the confidence and trust of all their clients, before, during and most importantly after the sale. High quality customer service is not only good for hot tub owners, it's also good for the overall business because it gets many referrals from satisfied clients. That's why the company provides a 6-Point Risk Free Total Satisfaction Guarantee." http://www.jacuzzihottubsportland.com/customer-satisfaction-guarantee/

To celebrate winning this award and encourage local residents to check out the benefits of using a Jacuzzi hot tub to help improve their overall health and well-being, Jacuzzi Hot Tubs of Portland is providing free hot tub test soaks at their Outlet Store and Beaverton showrooms. They do recommend however that people wanting to schedule their free 30-minute soak call them ahead of time at 503-277-2170 to reserve their spot.

To learn more, pick up a copy of their free hot tub buyer's guide. It provides useful information that will help consumers make an informed buying decision. Just call 503-277-2170 or visit www.JacuzziHotTubsPortland.com

About Us

Jacuzzi Hot Tubs Portland is the area's exclusive dealer of Jacuzzi Hot Tubs and Portable Spas.

At Jacuzzi Hot Tubs of Portland, their experts will help customers find the perfect hot tub to fit their backyard, lifestyle and budget! They feature only the most innovative and best-in-market products at all their convenient locations.

To learn more, pick up a copy of their free hot tub buyer's guide. It's jam-packed with useful information that will help customers make an informed buying decision. Just give them a call at 503-277-2170 or visit www.JacuzziHotTubsPortland.com

Contact Info:

Name: Sue Rogers

Email: beaverton@JacuzziPDX.com

Phone: 503-277-2170

Organization: Jacuzzi Hot Tubs Portland

Source: http://www.prreach.com/pr/22795

Release ID: 105674

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Signworld America To Attend The Globalshop 2016 Show In Las Vegas On March 23 - 25, 2016

Signworld America has now secured Booth 3867 at the Globalshop 2016 Show in Las Vegas, to help them promote their best-selling signs and newest innovations to influential industry clients.

San Francisco, CA -- March 2, 2016 (FPRC) -- Even in the digital age, signage is still essential to branding, and the impact of physical signs is now becoming even more important as consumers seek companies with bricks and mortar outlets to trust with their money. Signworld America helps people throughout the United States secure the best signage available to strengthen their brand presence throughout the physical realm. The company has just announced their attendance at the Globalshop 2016 Show in Las Vegas in March, where they will showcase their range of items and help businesses get access to the best branding solutions.



Their new innovations include Expanded PVC CNC Router Cutting and Engraving ( http://www.signworldamerica.com/product-p/bb4pvc.htm ), which allows the company to create impactful three dimensional lettering in all shapes, sizes and fonts on behalf of clients, heling them establish their brand identity immediately and emphatically.



The company has created a huge range of different accessories that can help people make the most of their signage, including a new range of stand-offs ( http://www.signworldamerica.com/Sign-Standoffs-s/1832.htm ), using different materials and finishes to help signage create a bigger impact by standing separately to the surface it is mounted to.



A spokesperson for Signworld America explained, Signworld America is committed to helping businesses access the best signage solutions available in the industry today, and the Las Vegas Globalshop Show will be an amazing opportunity for us to connect with businesses throughout the country who are looking for innovative ways to create amazing impact with their brand for an affordable investment. Our booth will also give away free merchandise and offer special trade show pricing on all products ordered at the show, meaning individuals can get unbeatable deals on great pieces. We are looking forward to attending the show, and cant wait to introduce our products to new potential clients.



About Signworld America: Signworld America has over 50 years of signage experience offering the best prices on signage products as well as great quality. Located in Rancho Cucamonga, CA we are able to stock a large inventory of hundreds of different products. All the printing is done in house allowing us to have one of the fastest turnaround times in the industry. For more information please visit: http://www.signworldamerica.com/







Send an email to Joe Bragg of r

(415) 632 1664

Recent Press Releases By The Same User

ShapeHost Launches New Spring Sale Offering Savings Of Up To 35% On VPS Packages (Tue 8th Mar 16)

Paypro Finance Launches their Consumer Financing for Small Business Program (Mon 7th Mar 16)

Kuber Ventures Publishes New Infographic To Show Difference Between EIS for Pensions and SIPP (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Pregnancy Exercise Publishes New Guide Into Training For Fitness While Pregnant (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Centex Hosting Launches Newly Redesigned Website To Herald Expansion Into VPS Hosting (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Royal Cliff Receives ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Certification (Wed 2nd Mar 16)
Royal Cliff Receives ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Certification

Royal Cliff Hotels Group has recently been certified with the Food Safety Management certificate which is issued in conjunction with ISO 22000 accredited by the British Standard Institute.

Pattaya, Chonburi -- March 2, 2016 (FPRC) -- Royal Cliff has also implemented good manufacturing practice and a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system according to the Codex Recommended International Code of Practice  General Principles of Food Hygiene demonstrating its commitment to achieving high quality standards on an international level.



ISO 22000 sets out the requirements for a food safety management system. It maps out what an organization or a company needs to do to demonstrate its ability to control food safety hazards in order to ensure that food is safe at the time of human consumption. The accreditation makes Royal Cliff Hotels Group a Food Security Management System audited and certified organization and is one of only a few hotel properties in Thailand to have received this prestigious certification.



Situated on a 64 acre private parkland estate overlooking the stunning Gulf of Thailand, the Royal Cliff Hotels Group has been honored with multiple awards and recognition from organizations of national and international repute such as TripAdvisors and Travel Trade Gazettes (TTG) Hall of Fame awards. It is home to four award winning 5-star hotels offering a sensory experience defined profoundly by its style, culture and elegance - all presented with the distinctive spirit of the State of Exclusivity and Fascination.



For more information on the Royal Cliff Hotels Group and PEACH, please visit www.royalcliff.com and www.peachthailand.com .



About Royal Cliff Hotels Group: The Royal Cliff Hotels Group operates four award-winning hotels providing tourists from home and abroad with the ultimate experience. The Royal Cliff Hotels Group is consistently voted among the best hotels in Thailand thanks to their amazing features, incredible views of the gulf of Thailand and a team of staff dedicated to making the experience unforgettable. For more information please visit: http://www.royalcliff.com/







Send an email to Maria Gequillana, PR & Marketing Communications Manager of r

(66 38) 250421

Recent Press Releases By The Same User

ShapeHost Launches New Spring Sale Offering Savings Of Up To 35% On VPS Packages (Tue 8th Mar 16)

Paypro Finance Launches their Consumer Financing for Small Business Program (Mon 7th Mar 16)

Kuber Ventures Publishes New Infographic To Show Difference Between EIS for Pensions and SIPP (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Pregnancy Exercise Publishes New Guide Into Training For Fitness While Pregnant (Thu 3rd Mar 16)

Centex Hosting Launches Newly Redesigned Website To Herald Expansion Into VPS Hosting (Thu 3rd Mar 16)
MVR Cash & Carry Unaffected By Mars Recall

MVR Cash & Carry clears up any concerns customers may have over the impact of the Mars product recall.

--

MVR Cash & Carry (MVRWholesale.com), the largest restaurant and convenience store wholesaler in Ontario, wishes to assure consumers, customers, and members that its stock of Mars chocolates is not being affected by the recent recall.

On February 23rd, 2016, Mars, Incorporated issued a voluntary recall of all Snickers, Mars, Milky Way, and Celebrations chocolate products that had been manufactured in a Netherlands factory between December 5, 2015 and January 18, 2016. The decision came in response to the discovery of plastic fragments within a Snickers bar that had been purchased in Germany.

"The recall is largely focused in Europe, but potentially, any retailer in other parts of the world could be affected if they received shipments," explains Mike Commisso, co-owner and operator of MVR Cash & Carry. "This places wholesalers or third-party retailers in a potentially awkward situation since they can get their stock from a number of different sources."

Commisso wishes to make it clear that MVR has not been affected by this recall.

"Upon receiving a letter from the Mars company about the recall, management quickly double-checked its Mars stock and can confirm that all of MVR's Mars products are manufactured within Canada and the United States. This recall, which will hopefully not find other contaminated products, will not impact MVR's stocks or the quality of the products," he explains. "This means that vending machine operators, gas stations, convenience stores, and other outlets that get their stock from MVR will not be seeing any Mars shortages any time soon."

MVR Cash and Carry is a family-owned and -operated wholesale food distributor in Toronto serving retailers, independent grocery stores, catering companies, and many small businesses.

For more information about us, please visit http://mvrwholesale.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Mike Commisso

Organization: MVR Cash and Carry

Address: 3655 Weston Rd North York ON M9L1V8

Phone: 416-739-8411

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/mvr-cash-carry-unaffected-by-mars-recall/105593

Release ID: 105593

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Carbon Monoxide Detector Product Launch Described In New Website

Carbon monoxide detector descriptions and benefits are described in a new educational website launched by Anthony Adams. The former gas engineer offers warnings and solutions about the danger of carbon monoxide.

--

Carbon monoxide detector choices, symptoms, placement of alarms and dangers are all covered in an educational website hosted by Anthony Adams. A home CO detector is critical for the safety of humans and pets in any home that has gas appliances. A good value alarm in encouraged for every location with the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. The website describes the dangers of the gas, what type of alarm is most effective and the optimum placement of such alarms.

CO is called the "silent killer" it is a highly poisonous by-product of burning gas and LPG. The substance is invisible, tasteless and odourless. Only two percent saturation is enough to kill a human. Even air with a concentration of less than one-half percent will kill in about thirty minutes. A lower concentration can lead to nausea, dizziness and headaches. Inhaling low rates of carbon monoxide can lead to serious health problems later in life. Annually, the deaths attributed to CO in the UK is 50 and in the US, about 500.

Gas appliances are often the reason for CO production. Gas appliances produce carbon dioxide, oxygen and energy when they are operating correctly. When the combustion is incomplete, carbon monoxide and oxygen are produced. A carbon monoxide detector will recognize the presence of CO and sound an alarm. Incomplete combustion occurs when the appliance has been fitted incorrectly when it has been poorly maintained or repaired, or when the vents, flues or chimneys are partially blocked.

There are different types of alarms. The least expensive is the patch or pad. It doesn't produce an audible alarm, but rather changes colour. The disadvantage of these is that the device could be forgotten and the gas accumulates without the homeowner noticing. These must be replaced about twice a year. Electronic alarms are available in several types and are manufactured by several reliable firms. The website describes the models and versions and how to find the best deals.

For more information about us, please visit http://cheapcarbonmonoxidedetector.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Anthony Adams

Organization: Carbon Monoxide Detectors

Address: Wheal Carrington, Red Lane, Penzance Cornwall UK

Phone: 07833780532

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/carbon-monoxide-detector-product-launch-described-in-new-website/105733

Release ID: 105733

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
Avi Weisfogel DDS Launches GoFundMe Campaign Set Up To Benefit Operation Smile

Avi Weisfogel is lending his support to the launch of an Operation Smile GoFundMe campaign in the amount of $2000. Operation Smile is an international charitable organization.

--

Avi Weisfogel is pleased to announce the launch of a GoFundMe campaign set up to benefit Operation Smile. The organization is an international medical charity providing for free surgical procedures for children. The services also are available to young adults who suffer from cleft palate, cleft lips and other facial deformities. The goal of the campaign set up by Avi Weisfogel is set at $2000. The support for Operation Smile is dedicated to providing every child hope for a healthier and brighter tomorrow.

Avi Weisfogel spoke in a recent interview, "Operation Smile believes that every child deserves exceptional surgical care and that all children deserve to be treated as if they were our own. The organization wants to ensure that every child knows no matter what life throws at them, they will always have hope."

He continued, "My passions and background led me to select Operation Smile as the beneficiary of the GoFundMe campaign I'm running. Children deserve access to the very best care available."

Operation Smile works with local medical professionals, hospitals, governments and other organizations to create various surgical care models. The goal is to identify the most effective solutions which will reach as many children as possible.

Each year, Operation Smile conducts medical missions in locations around the globe. The specific mission may require importing equipment or medical expertise, depending upon the on-site resources. The organization always works with local heal providers to provide patient care in their own culture and language.

The charitable organization was founded in 1982 by Bill and Kathy Magee. Their first mission was to help children in the Philippines. Over the intervening years, the organization has built a global network with thousands of volunteers from 80 nations. The team has provided more than 220,000 free surgical procedures. In addition, the charity builds long-term sufficiency through training local medical professionals.

For more information about us, please visit https://www.gofundme.com/aviweisfogel

Contact Info:

Name: Avi Weisfogel

Organization: Avi Weisfogel

Address: Old Bridge, NJ



Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0BEWJeD5w8.

Source: http://marketersmedia.com/avi-weisfogel-dds-launches-gofundme-campaign-set-up-to-benefit-operation-smile/105734

Release ID: 105734

For more information visit r



Recent Press Releases By The Same User

Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)

Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17)
With-profits providers actively pursuing new customers are predominantly mutuals and friendly societies, Ned Cazalet, chief executive at Cazalet Consulting, has said.

Research conducted by Mr Cazalet revealed that just a handful of providers are still chasing new business: LV=, NFU Mutual, Police Mutual, Prudential, Scottish Friendly and Wesleyan.

To put with profits into context, in 2014 (the last year for which we have detailed data), new with-profits business (including increments to existing contracts) amounted to 161m of new regular premiums and 4,078m of new single premiums, of which 43m of the regular premiums and 3,227m of the single premiums were written by Prudential.

In aggregate in 2014, with profits accounted for 2 per cent of all regular premiums and 6 per cent of all single premiums.

He added his understanding was both the new and old versions of Avivas with-profits sub funds, were still open but that the provider writes little new with-profits business at present.

A spokesman from Aviva confirmed this was correct, but said it does still market business in these with-profits funds and provides material to support those this business.

According to Mr Cazalet, other funds remain open to new business, but are not actively pursuing it. For example, Standard Life Heritage With Profits fund has stated it has no plans to close to new business but has set low limits on the new business that can be written.

As such Standard Life said it expects the fund to become smaller over time.

An extract from Standard Lifes Understanding With Profits booklet, stated: We have no plans to stop selling new with profits business, but we set low limits on the new business that can be written in the Heritage With Profits fund.

This means the fund is expected to become smaller over time. Even so, we expect to continue to manage the Fund for many years.

As at 1 January 2016, Mr Cazalet said the only new business into the Scottish Widows with-profits fund would be by new members to existing group pension schemes, additional single premiums paid into existing policies, and increases to levels of existing regular premiums.

Scottish Widows Principles and Practices of Financial management document backed this up, and said: The levels of new business being written at the date of this document are low and are expected to remain low.

Mr Cazalet said: Alongside the likes of Aviva, Scottish Widows and Standard Life, there are some other with-profit funds (such as the Royal London Main fund) that similarly are technically open to new business but not actively pursuing it.

Gareth Evans, head of corporate affairs at Royal London, said Royal London does still market its with-profits funds and they are still open, adding: Its a specialist option that not many people are going into, but it is still open.

Adviser View

Dan Farrow, independent financial adviser at Sbn Wealth Management, said: I think its a shame that with-profits got such a bad press due to them being the funds that underpinned failing endowment plans, because as Prudential have just shown with results just published, if run correctly a well-diversified, multi-asset with-profit fund can produce decent returns, even outperforming the FSTE All Share over a 10-year period.
The phoney war over what deal David Cameron might strike with the EU is over and the referendum debate has now begun in earnest.

The outcome of this debate will impact every financial adviser and every client, for good or ill. It is a debate I urge you not to ignore, and you should consider how best to position your clients affairs for either outcome.

There will be strong views from both camps, as I well recall from 1975 when I was an active campaigner for a yes vote to stay in the common market. However, the EU of today is not what we were asked to vote for in 1975.

Then, there were just nine members working together as a trading group compared to todays 28. There were no expectations of political or monetary union, nor of an EU Court of Justice and an EU Parliament with supremacy over our own UK laws, all of which we have now.

Indeed, if staying in the EU was a pitch on TVs Dragons Den, then all of the dragons would soon be out because, in my opinion, it simply does not stand up to analysis as a business proposition.

Why would any business, let alone the UK, which is one of the worlds largest and most successful economies, want to have its freedom to trade across the world in whatever way it wished handicapped by all the rules and regulations of the EU?

Mr Cameron rightly wanted to achieve fundamental changes, and I believe he has worked extremely hard to try to get them. Unfortunately, though, he was up against entrenched EU positions and closed minds that were stuck in a time warp. Mr Cameron wanted to achieve fundamental changes and has worked extremely hard to try to get them

The financial sector and your clients have absolutely nothing to fear from leaving the EU. We sell less to Europe than they sell to us, and they are certain to be enthusiastic about wanting to continue to trade with us.

In addition, our security comes, not from our membership of the EU, but from our prominent membership of Nato and the UN Security Council.

We have had almost one thousand years of independence, and little more than 40 years in the EU. The 23 June is the last opportunity we will ever have to have to take back control of our countrys destiny. I believe that the generations to come will forever judge us harshly if we fail to grasp this opportunity to leave the EU.

Ken Davy is chairman of SimplyBiz Group
The UKs largest pension scheme administrator has warned of floodgates being opened for criminals because of a recent High Court ruling.

Equiniti said schemes will now find it difficult to prevent pension transfers to any registered pension scheme - regardless of whether they think it is a potential scam.

Peter Scott, head of pension regulation and compliance at Equiniti Pension Solutions, said: This decision to overrule the Pension Ombudsman has come as a major blow to pension schemes and their administrators, many of which had restructured their anti-scamming processes in the light of the Pensions Ombudsmans determination.

In our view, the High Courts decision has deprived the industry of a valuable tool in the fight against pension scamming and has further stretched the meaning of an occupational pension scheme.

Not for the first time, we have to ask ourselves if the only way to bring an effective end to the pension scamming phenomenon is for fundamental changes to be made to the legislation underlying the transfer process.

Last month a High Court judge ruled in favour of Donna-Marie Hughes right to transfer her pension into a new scheme despite her existing providers concerns about it.

Ms Hughes contested the decision by complaining to the Pensions Ombudsman who found in favour of Royal London but she has now successfully appealed the decision in the High Court.

The vehicle Ms Hughes was planning to put her 8,359.71 savings in would have allowed her to invest in places such as Cape Verde.

Adviser view

David Trenner, technical director at Glasgow-based Intelligent Pensions, said: As a trustee it is not about making decisions for a consumer, it is about what a reasonable duty of care is.

At the end of the day if a consumer wants to do a stupid thing, then providing you have sent out a disclamer then the trustees have done their job as far as I am concerned.

damian.fantato@ft.com
Life companies have begun capping exit fees on their pension products, pre-empting the result of a consultation by the regulator on the charges.

Standard Life said from January thousands of its individual and workplace pension savers had any exit penalties they faced limited to 5 per cent.

Prudential has also revealed it will be implementing a cap, of less than 5 per cent, with further details due in its inaugural Independent Governance Committee report.

LV= has also hinted it will bring in a cap earlier than required by the government.

The life companies have been spurred to act by Chancellor George Osborne announcing in January that the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) would undertake a consultation on the charges.

Pension early exit penalties will be limited from March 2017, Osborne said, but the FCA is currently consulting on the issue and has yet to set a level, expected in the next few months.

Scottish Widows had led the charge in making its decision to cap exit fees on workplace pensions public, announcing the move yesterday.

Jamie Jenkins, head of pensions at rival Standard Life, said his company decided to act after internal discussions, prior to the announcement by Osborne.

If the FCAs consultation findings requires further changes on charges, Standard Life will make them in due course, Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he did not believe exit charges are inherently wrong, but admitted, in light of pensions freedoms significant fees could be quite restrictive.

Less than 7 per cent of Standard Lifes pension savers are impacted by exit charges, the company said, on products from the 1980s and 90s.

Standard Life said the average charge is less than 1 per cent of the fund value, and in return customers have benefitted from a lower annual management charge and traditionally most will have remained invested until their retirement date.

Pension providers had not shown any intention to cap exit fee charges prior to government intervention.

But John Perks, managing director, retirement solutions at LV=, said the clampdown on excessive exit fees is the right thing to do, as these are one of the reasons people arent shopping around at retirement.

At LV= we only have exit fees for a limited number of legacy pensions. To help create a more transparent world for our members, we are committing to the removal of all our residual exit fees by the end of 2017, and are actively looking at whether we can do this sooner, he said.

Royal London said in a statement: Royal London constantly reviews the number of customers impacted by exit fees and has identified that 97 per cent of members who accessed their pension between April 2015 and 31 December 2015 did not incur an exit fee.

Royal London will ensure that if a deduction needs to be made it is fair and only the underlying costs are recovered. Royal London does not profit from exit charges.
Unacceptable delays to support payments are piling the pressure on farmers already battling low commodity prices, MPs have warned the government.

Farmers are at risk of suffering further cashflow problems unless the Rural Payment Agency (RPA) commits to fixing ongoing issues with its IT systems, the MPs said.

The warning is contained in a report published after a farmgate prices investigation by the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

See also: MPs launch inquiry into farmgate prices

The report blames the RPAs inadequate electronic application system for delaying English farm grants administered by the agency.

Committee chairman Neil Parish said: Many producers rely on CAP payments to turn a profit, so it is unacceptable that our farmers are still facing lengthy delays to financial support.

He added: The RPA introduced an IT system that wasnt fit for purpose and subsequent errors made in the attempt to fix the problem only caused further delays and confusion for applicants.

Mr Parish said the committee welcomed efforts being made by the agency to resolve the problem and reduce delays in payments to farmers.

But he warned: It is crucial that the RPA works to at least match the target achieved by the previous scheme of 90% of payments made by the end of December each year.

The past five years have seen an unprecedented period of price volatility, with the most recent period showing a downward trend, says the report.

MPs on the committee examined the UK dairy, lamb and pork industries in particular.

Average farmgate milk prices in the UK had fallen by more than 10p/litre from their peak in late 2013 to 23.71p/litre in December 2015.

Sheep producers had been similarly hard hit, with average farmgate lamb prices about 20% lower than in 2014.

In addition, British pig prices were 15-20% lower than they were a year ago.

The report says the government had recognised many farmers have been suffering financial difficulty as a result of low farmgate prices.

But market volatility was causing significant concern for farmers who needed the right set of tools to manage fluctuating prices.

Recommendations in the report include the need for farmers to work together to create opportunities for themselves.

The agricultural industry has a significant responsibility for its own future and is generally better placed than the government to lead change and build a strong, resilient industry, it says.

It adds: In order to stop price volatility affecting them long term, farmers may need to change their thinking and develop mechanisms that allow them to develop long-term stability.

Exports represents a huge opportunity for revenue expansion, the report suggests.

The agricultural industry must move to new and innovative products that respond to new consumer needs and add value to the benefit of the whole supply chain.

Producers, processors and purchasers must work together and develop a trust relationship, it adds.

Now is the time for all parts of the supply chain to show their support for the agricultural industry. They must work together to develop a strategic relationship and to maintain a competitive edge.

A Defra spokeswoman said it recognised many farmers were suffering financial difficulty in the face of volatile global prices.

It had pursued a range of measures to help farmers, including introducing a fairer tax system.

The department had also backed a futures market and the creation of producer organisations, and opening up new export markets.

More than 70,800 farmers  80% of all those eligible  had now received their Basic Payment Scheme payment, totalling 1.11bn.

Almost all farmers in England will be paid by the end of this month, said the spokeswoman.
Poultry farmers are finding it harder than ever to get planning applications for new buildings through the system.

Local authorities are making too many mistakes in the planning process and are then failing to fight judicial reviews, planning consultants have claimed.

Local pressure groups opposed to such developments are also being invigorated by organisations highlighting the potential animal welfare and human health implications of intensive poultry production.

Agricultural planning consultant Ian Pick said he was aware of five recent applications that had been approved at committee level only to face legal challenges in the High Court, leading local authorities to back down.

See also: Key advice for successful poultry planning

Part of the problem, he said, was that cash-strapped planners were not checking with solicitors or barristers to ensure that they had a water-tight case until they faced Judicial Review.

Elementary mistakes were being made, such as failing to notify local residents or putting incorrect details on the advertisement.

Rather than fight the cases and incur costs, local authorities are asking the applicants to resubmit, leaving the farmer with having to go through the process all over again.

Brian Barrow of consultants Acorus agreed that often small technical details were being missed by local authorities and that it was easier and cheaper to have the application resubmitted.

Mr Barrow added that he was concerned by the lack of knowledge among some planners about the need to highlight the EU Environmental Impact Assessments. We have had a couple of cases where the council has failed to advertise that there was an EIA linked to the application, which in itself has delayed the process.

Outside influences

Duncan Priestner, NFU poultry board chairman, acknowledged that farmers had a duty to ensure that their applications were on the best possible sites, and that they should keep the local community informed and updated of all developments.

But he was concerned by the interference of outsiders. We have had cases of people abroad objecting to planning applications, which makes a mockery of an independent system.

Concerns have also been raised about the way some organisations are whipping up opposition to poultry applications.

The Soil Association has been quite active, though policy director Peter Melchett said the organisation focused on large-scale applications. It had already fought plans for a so-called mega-dairy at Nocton in Lincolnshire and a large-scale pig development at Foston in Derbyshire.

In the process, it had collated a great deal of scientific evidence about their potential impact, much of which applied to poultry farms, he said.

Based on this, he has circulated a report in opposition to a number of planned poultry expansions, arguing that the high number of chickens housed in one location may increase the level of disease, posing a threat to the local community.

Lord Melchett claims that antibiotic resistant bacteria from farms can be spread in the air to people living several hundred metres away and can also pass to people in cars when they have to travel behind lorries transporting chickens to abattoirs.

There is also, the Soil Association claims, a considerable risk of contamination of the area with pathogens such as salmonella, campylobacter, MRSA and E coli.

Research suggests that, within a certain distance of poultry sheds, there are likely to be emissions such as ammonia and bio-aerosols in concentrations that are potentially harmful to human health.

Lord Melchett has used this evidence to oppose plans put forward by egg packer Fridays for a 64,000-bird unit at Horsmonden in Kent, and against the Newcome-Baker Farms proposal for four new broiler sheds at Sedgeford in Norfolk.

Lord Melchett believes it is fair to use this evidence in consultation responses. Indeed it would be both unfair and unprofessional not to make scientific evidence which we have collated as a public interest charity available to the public, he told Poultry World.

Research from other EU countries and indeed from the US, where intensive, indoor livestock farming has been in place for longer than in Europe, is both relevant and can provide an early warning of problems we are likely to face in the UK if we follow a similar pattern of development.

Scaremongering

However, Mr Barrow suggested the additional information was actually doing the local community a disservice.

What all this does is cloud the democratic process to some extent, he said. People are absolutely entitled to have a view in their area on how an application will affect vehicle movements on their roads, but some of the information being put forward is scaremongering and over the top.

For example, a local opposition group has been set up in relation to the Sedgeford application, which has printed and distributed thousands of leaflets to local villages including a photo of an unscreened poultry farm three times larger than the one proposed and 10,000 miles away in Australia.

Lord Melchett said that whether the associations input was helpful or unhelpful to local communities was for residents to say. In all cases where we have been involved in objecting to a planning application, we have only done so with the support and encouragement of local people.
Story Highlights Job creation levels off after November and December drops

41% of workers say their employer is hiring

12% say coworkers are being let go

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- U.S. workers' reports of hiring in their workplaces were steady in February. Gallup's Job Creation Index measured +29 last month, the same as in January, but down slightly from the record high of +32 recorded from May through October of last year.

Gallup's Job Creation Index, established in January 2008, fell sharply at the end of that year and bottomed out at -5 in February 2009 as the U.S. economy reacted to the global financial crisis. It slowly improved over the next few years and reached an eight-year high of +32 in May 2015. It remained at that level until October before falling slightly at the end of the year and has since leveled off at +29.

The results are based on interviews with 16,955 full- and part-time U.S. workers conducted from Feb. 1-29 as part of Gallup Daily tracking. Gallup asks employed workers nationwide each day whether their employer is increasing, reducing or maintaining the size of its workforce.

The U.S. Job Creation Index score of +29 in February reflects 41% of workers saying their employers were hiring and expanding the size of their workforce, and 12% saying their employers were letting people go and reducing the size of their workforce. The remaining 42% of workers in February said the size of their workforce was not changing.

The percentage of workers who say their workplace is hiring is down slightly from where it was over the summer, but is similar to what was found in January. However, the percentage of workers who say their workplace is letting people go has been largely consistent for the past year.

Regionally, job creation remained highest in the West, at +32, and lowest in the East, at +26. Job creation among government workers was +25. Among nongovernment workers, who make up the bulk of the U.S. workforce, it was +30. These subgroup differences are consistent with what Gallup found in January. Typically, government workers and workers in the East have been less likely than their nongovernment and West, South and Midwestern equivalents to say their employer is hiring. Since the high of +32 in the national Job Creation Index was first reached in May, the index has fallen among all groups except government workers.

Bottom Line

Workers continue to remain somewhat upbeat about hiring activity at their place of employment, as they have over the last year, compared with less positive reports in 2014 and preceding years.

While Gallup's Job Creation Index suggests little change in hiring activity over the past few months, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' job creation report for January fell slightly short of expectations. Many economists are eagerly awaiting the U.S. government's next jobs report as analysts try to assess if this may be the norm for 2016 or if it was an isolated incident. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its next report on Friday, March 4. Gallup's Good Jobs Rate, which measures the percentage of U.S. adults who are employed full time by an employer, will be released tomorrow, March 3.

These data are available in Gallup Analytics.

Survey Methods

Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Feb. 1-29, 2016, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 16,955 employed adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of workers, the margin of sampling error is 1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.

Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

Learn more about how Gallup Daily tracking works.
The Billie Jean King Main Library initially closed because of increased "mental health-related episodes" around the facility, official said.
The city of Corvallis has a new community development director.

City Manager Mark Shepard on Tuesday announced the hiring of Paul Bilotta of Roseville, Minnesota, after a lengthy search.

Ken Gibb, who had served in the position for nearly 20 years, retired June 30, 2015. Housing and Neighborhood Services Manager Kent Weiss held the post on an interim basis for eight months.

As director, Bilotta will supervise city activities in land-use planning, building permits and housing services. His salary will be $114,338 per year and he will begin work in mid-April.

Paul has considerable experience with many of the challenges and opportunities that face Corvallis today, said Shepard. I will count on him to help the city find new, innovative ways to address these issues and serve our community.

Bilotta, who served in a similar position in Roseville, holds a bachelors degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Illinois and a masters in business administration from the University of Michigan.

His background includes experience in planning and community development in the Midwest in both the public and private sectors. He will report to Shepard.

I am honored to have been selected to serve Corvallis, Bilotta said. I look forward to getting to know the community better and doing my part to support the quality of life that makes the city such a special place.

It took Shepard two separate tries to fill the position. Three finalists were introduced to the public at a Sept. 15, 2015, meet-and-greet, but the candidate Shepard chose, Andrew Crabtree of Morgan Hill, California, elected to stay in California.

A second applicant pool produced five finalists who met with the public Feb. 4. Also in the pool were Jason Greenspan, manager of regional sustainability for the Southern California Association of Governments; Bryan Pohl, community development director in Tillamook; Stuart Ramsing, building and permit services division manager in Eugene; and Derrick Tokos, community development director in Newport.
ALBANY Three downed power poles knocked out power to 10,000 customers and closed Highway 20 near Scravel Hill Road east of Albany shortly after noon Tuesday.

The outage affected customers in eastern Albany and in Jefferson, Millersburg, Scio and Turner, Pacific Power spokesman Tom Gauntt said. Power was restored by 4 p.m. to about half the customers, and by 5:15, only two dozen were left.

Officials with the Oregon Department of Transportation closed the highway about 12:30 p.m. and Oregon State Police troopers said they had cleared the area by 4.

Initially, the outage was reported as affecting nearly 9,300 Pacific Power customers east of Albany. That grew to 10,960 as some areas had to be turned off to fix other areas, Gauntt said.

Clover Ridge, Timber Ridge, Fir Grove, South Shore and Waverly elementary schools all were affected. Timber Ridge has a backup generator and had phones and heat working, but no lights or computers. Jim Haggart, executive assistant to the superintendent, said schools continued with their normal day as best as possible and dismissed at the usual time.

It is unclear if weather caused the poles to topple. However, the National Weather Service had issued a wind advisory for the south Willamette Valley, with south winds expected at 20 to 30 mph most of the day, plus gusts of 40 to 50 mph.

Gauntt said wind is a likely scenario, but passing trucks sometimes can snag a guy wire and continue on without even realizing theyve done so. The weakened pole then can fall later, dragging down others.

Sometimes with three, all you need is one to go and itll pull the other ones down, he said. We suspect weather, but they dont just fall down.
In 20 years as a housing specialist with the city of Corvallis Bob Loewen has seen the good, the bad and the ugly.

Lately, however, it has been mainly good.

Loewen, 55, who spent his final day with the city Tuesday, played a key role with the Corvallis Rental Property Managers Group, which organized to work on self-regulation and training amid neighborhood livability concerns raised by the Collaboration Corvallis project.

When the RPMG started up (in early 2013) that was an important step, Loewen said. We wound up with more boots on the ground and a different atmosphere.

The RPMG brought in lawyers, firefighters, police officers and others to talk to the group. Training sessions were organized. The impact of state legislation was discussed. Landlords worked with the Corvallis Police Department to develop a system in which landlords received email notifications of police calls to their properties. And Loewen always was on hand to give the city perspective.

On Feb. 23, in his swan song before the RPMG, Loewen offered some final thoughts on landlord-tenant relations in a talk he called Playing Nice. Loewen noted his key pillars of respect and communication.

These two things solve so many problems, Loewen said. They always come up in my mediations. If you have these two things  life would be so much easier for all of us and my phone would ring a lot less.

Another key? Annual inspections, which Loewen illustrated with a chilling true story of a property owner who wanted to move back into a Corvallis property that was begin rented. The owner had not done annual inspections and didnt know that the two tenants had experienced financial setbacks and shut off the garbage service.

But the garbage had to go somewhere. So, first the tenants filled up the garage with trash. Then the back bedrooms. Then the kitchen and the living room. By the time the owner got involved four years of trash had piled up and thoughts of the houses quick return to owner-occupied status were dead amid perhaps five figures of repairs and remediation.

Always inspect, Loewen said.

Loewen, who grew up in Portland, graduated from Oregon State University in 1983 with a teaching degree. But the experience of being one of 100 applicants for one opening in Sherman County convinced him that his timing was bad. So he worked at a Mervyns department store, served as a substitute teacher and sold real estate before taking the housing position with the city.

Loewen shared other  interesting  tales on the housing beat in an interview with the Gazette-Times, including the property owner who chose to replace the foundation of a house while it was still occupied. The owner did not want to lose the rental income during remodeling so he gave the tenants discounts. But the scheme tanked when the doors of the house stopped opening because of the jacks that were lifting the house off the foundation.

The cracks were phenomenal, Loewen said.

Or there was the property owner who asked Loewen if he should be concerned that his tenants only had furniture in the kitchen and that he kept seeing individuals rolling out of the house by rolling under the slightly ajar garage door.

How do you tell if someone is starting to cook meth on the property, Loewen was asked. Loewen told him he needed a property manager and an attorney.

Loewen emphasized, however, that the challenges came from both directions.

Its not just bad landlords, he said. There are bad tenants, too. There are professional tenants who know the law better than landlords.

Loewen will continue working part-time for the city until his replacement is hired. He plans to launch a website on housing issues and might do some consulting work in the housing field.

He also is scheduled for a trip to Hawaii, hopes to learn to play the guitar and plans to devote a lot of his new free time to his photography hobby. Loewen works in a number of styles, including black and white, infra-red, landscapes and fractal images. A gallery in Lincoln City, 101 Coast Creations, exhibits his work.

Ive got a new lens coming in the mail, Loewen said. My wife said give yourself a treat. 
Mid-valley hospitals welcomed seven leap day babies on Feb. 29 this year, including four in Corvallis and twins born at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital.

Aaron Thomas Myers and Austyn Taylor Myers were born at 10:22 and 10:33 a.m. Feb. 29, respectively, in Lebanon to Sherrie Duncan and her fiance, Aaron Myers of Lebanon. They were 6 pounds, 8 ounces, and 6 pounds, 4 ounces, respectively.

They join two big sisters and a brother in the family.

Twins run in the family  Aaron Sr.s sister has them, too  but leap day babies dont.

I think its awesome, Sherrie said, adding that hospital staff said the same. They dont get twins here that often, and then leap year, especially.

Duncans rising blood pressure prompted her doctor to recommend labor inducement on Feb. 28.

We didnt even think about the leap year thing until the doctor said he wanted to induce on Sunday, Sherrie said. They always get to be young.

The family isnt sure yet whether Feb. 28 or March 1 will be the celebratory date on non-leap Years.

The best part is they got here safely, Aaron Myers Sr. said. Its a real blessing. No complications whatsoever.

February has just 28 days most years, but a 29th gets added to help keep the Gregorian calendar synchronized with the solar year. Theyre possible only if the year number is divisible by 4  which is why 2016 qualifies  but century years are not leap years unless they are divisible by 400.

The odds of being born on leap day are 1 in 1,461.

The Myers twins were two of seven leaplings, as some publications refer to them, born in the mid-valley this year.

In Corvallis, Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center documented four little leaplings.

Mahdi Almuslim was the first, born at 1:15 a.m. to Sajjad and Sarah Alhadhari. Its the first child in the family, and hell likely celebrate his birthday March 1, his father said, because my birthday is March 1.

After Mahdi came Lillyana Loren, born at 8:01 a.m. to Melynda Downard, who deliberately scheduled her cesarean for that day.

The 29th was the earliest day that they would let me have her. I was ready, Melynda quipped. I just thought it might be neat. Unusual, different.

Lillyana has a 7-year-old brother.

Dorothy Dotty Lee came next, born at 8:53 a.m. to Jessica and Sam Goodrich. She came a week late to the day and was named for both the Dorothy grandmothers on her mothers side and the Lee grandmother on her fathers side.

Dotty joins brothers James and David and sister Hattie.

We think its lucky, Jessica said of the leap day birth. As to which day theyll celebrate, she said the family may just pick one that is nowhere near the actual date. It makes things flexible and fun.

The fourth leapling, Jamie Rey Bell-Chien, was born to a local surrogate at 1:16 p.m. and will go home to New York City with dads Robert Bell and Jack Chien. She takes her first name and middle initial from Roberts father, James Russell, and her middle name from the powerful female lead in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Jamie was due on the 25th but came by cesarean a few days later.

Of the date, Robert said, I think its very special. My partner, Jack, he wasnt as thrilled about it at first. He thought, oh my God, shes going to have a birthday every four years, thats going to make her so weird. I said no, thats going to make her special.

Jamie is the first child in the family, which already makes her special, Robert added. Now shes even more special with a 29th birthday.

In Albany, Desiree and Jeremy Miller welcomed daughter Delaney Raeann at 8:20 a.m. Feb. 29 at Samaritan Albany General Hospital. She was 9 pounds 12 ounces and stuck in a breech position, and when the doctor tried to turn her, she was having none of it.

Desiree said her physician scheduled her for a cesarean section and told her to come to the hospital at 7:30 a.m. on the 29th.

A lot of my friends were, That would be different. I cant wait to be 40 and only turning 10, she said, laughing.

Delaney joins older brother Marcos Vazquez, 11.

Desiree said she and Jeremy havent discussed yet when the non-leap birthdays will be. I think the end of February, and maybe just have a bigger birthday on her actual birthday. Or my husband just says tease her about it.
Sarah Hewett didnt need a virtual reality driving simulator to learn the consequences of distracted driving  her high school friend was killed by a distracted driver six years ago.

But Hewett, a 20-year-old senior at Oregon State University who took part in AT&Ts It Can Wait driving simulation Tuesday at OSUs Memorial Union, said she was hopeful the virtual-reality simulator will prevent even one more person from texting while driving.

Hewett was one of nearly 100 students who tried out the simulator Tuesday as part of the AT&T cross-country campaign asking people to pledge not to text or look at their phones while driving.

It can go a lot further than you think it will, Hewett said. You think its one text and that its only going to affect you. But it can affect multiple lives. Its not just you.

AT&Ts simulator used the Samsung Gear VR powered by Oculus, a pair of headphones and a vibrating seat in a single-seat makeshift car to present a 3-D virtual world to safely recreate a scenario in which a real-world driver is constantly distracted by looking at a phone. During the simulation, a driver goes through a neighborhood and onto the freeway while being constantly distracted by a phone, eventually ending in a crash.

I didnt know what was going to happen but it just jumps at you out of nowhere, Hewett said. Its cool to see. Its not fun because of the reality behind it, but its immersive and its good for people to see what can happen.

OSU junior Demetrius Watts said he was familiar with the distracted driving scenario, but offered a different perspective than Hewetts.

It was when I was texting and driving, the 20-year-old said while recalling a car accident in which he was involved. We were on I-5 in Sacramento and I checked my phone and everybody went from like 80 (mph) to 20. And I hit the back of the car in front of me. No one was hurt, but you could see the screws on my license plate in their bumper. And five seconds ago I was fine. Thats all it took. It was scary.

Watts said he knows how lucky he was that no one was injured; he said he has stopped texting while driving. And the simulator, he said, was a good reminder of how quickly the situation can get worse.

All of the experiences in the simulator feel real. Ive experienced a lot of that myself  except for that accident at the end, he said. It was very impactful. We who get to live to see another day havent experienced that before and we just dont think its going to happen. But it can.

And that was the whole idea, said Christopher Johnson, AT&T tour spokesperson. Johnson said the companys research has shown that 7 in 10 people admit to using their smartphones while driving, 4 in 10 use social media and 1 in 10 video chat. Of the small sample size surveyed at OSU on Tuesday, Johnson said around 95 percent of participants admitted to using their phones while driving.

In the simulation, you become the virtual driver but you cant stop the accident from happening, Johnson said. You go by children and families and then the freeway and the whole time you see these close calls until the end where it hits you. Its very effective to personally see what its like and to see what could happen to you.

Johnson said many people admit to texting and driving and do it despite hearing statistics because they separate themselves from thinking about the possible dangers.

Its one of those things where we all agree its unsafe, but for a lot of people its become a habit, he said. Weve been all over the country and weve found most people have never even been asked if they use their phone while driving. We want to save lives and were hoping that by doing this people will think about those very real dangers. No glance at your phone is worth your life. Or anyone elses life.
F.Y.I. is a community calendar. To accommodate demand for the print edition, we ask that items be brief and include time, date, place, address, admission cost and a contact number for publication. Inclusion of items is at the discretion of the Gazette-Times. Further information is available at 541-758-9524 or jane.stoltz@lee.net.

Assistance

THURSDAY

Emergency food boxes, by appointment, North Corvallis Ministry Center, 5050 N.E. Elliott Circle. Appointments: 541-220-1040.

AARP Foundation Tax-Aide, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Philomath Community Library, 1050 Applegate St., appointments only, 541-602-5829; 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Corvallis Elks Lodge, 1400 N.W. Ninth St., walk-ins and appointments, 541-602-5829. Free tax service open to taxpayers of all ages and backgrounds, with special attention to those 60 or over; AARP membership not required. Information: 888-227-7669 or www.aarp.org/taxaide.

Emergency food boxes, 1:30 to 4 p.m., St. Vincent de Paul Society Corvallis Conference Food Pantry, campus of St. Marys Catholic Church, 501 N.W. 25th St. No appointment needed. Information: 541-757-1988, ext. 317.

Stone Soup dinner, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., gymnasium, St. Marys Catholic School, 501 N.W. 25th St. Free meal for those in need.

Classes

THURSDAY

Academy for Lifelong Learning, 9:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., First Congregational United Church of Christ, 4515 S.W. West Hills Road. At 9:30: Thomas Sharpton presents The Human Microbiome. At 1:30: Boone Kauffman presents Interactions of Ecosystems, Land Use and Climate Change in Indonesia. Information: 541-737-9405 or admin@academyforlifelonglearning.org.

Strength and Endurance, 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Recreation Room, North Star Manufactured Housing Community, 2601 N.E. Jack London St. Full-body, gentle, effective. Cost: $20 per month, or $4 drop in; first class free. Information: 541-754-6554.

Layered Painting with Yupo Paper, 6 p.m., Studio262 Gallery and Art Supply Store, 425 S.W. Madison Ave., Suite H-1. Information: 541-829-3701 or studio262gallery@jenniferlommers.com.

Closures

THURSDAY

Vina Moses Center will be closed for shopping and donations Thursday through Monday, and March 10 through 14. It will be helpful if donors wait till after March 14 to bring items, as new carpet is being installed at the center.

Events

THURSDAY

Toddler story time, 10 a.m., Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave. For ages 2 and 3.

Cole Porters Kiss Me, Kate, 7:30 p.m., main stage theatre, Withycombe Hall, 2901 S.W. Campus Way. Tickets: $15 general admission; $10 seniors, youth, students; $5 for Oregon State University students; 541-737-2784 or http://bit.ly/1wgmtkj.

Government

THURSDAY

Benton County Board of Commissioners meeting with health department and community health centers directors, 9 a.m., commissioners office, meeting room, 205 N.W. Fifth St.

Benton County Environmental Issues Advisory Committee, noon, Avery Large Conference Room, 360 S.W. Avery Ave.

Philomath Public Works Committee, 3 p.m., city hall, 980 Applegate St.

Public meeting, 5:30 p.m., Corvallis Senior Center, 2601 N.W. Tyler Ave. About the proposed renovation and expansion of the center. The Parks and Recreation Department is in the very beginning stages of planning the renovation and expansion, so this is a good opportunity for community members to offer input and feedback. Information: 541-766-6468.

March 2016 Listening Tour, 7 p.m., Alpine Community Center, 25184 Webster Ave., Monroe. The Benton County Planning Division and the Public Health Department are gathering public input on marijuana land-use regulations for the county. Information: 541-766-6394.

Health

THURSDAY

Food handler classes, 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., Benton County Environmental Health, Sunset Building, 4077 S.W. Research Way. Information: 541-766-6841.

American Red Cross mobile blood drive, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m., First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op South Store, 1007 S.E. Third St.

How to Increase Energy, 6:30 p.m., Nutritional Healing Center, 2721 N.W. Ninth St. Nancy Lach speaks. RSVP: 541-207-3330 or www.nrthealing.com/events.html.

Organizations

THURSDAY

Heart of the Valley Runners, 6 a.m.; meet in the parking lot next to the Midge Cramer Bike Path, Benton County Fairgrounds, 110 S.W. 53rd St. Information: http://hotvrunners.com.

Kiwanis Club of Corvallis  Sunrisers, 7 a.m., Osborn Aquatic Center, 1940 N.W. Highland Drive. Information: 541-752-2563 or mccannc@pacifier.com.

Linn-Benton Chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association, noon lunch, 1 p.m. meeting, VFW Hall, 1469 Timber St. S.E., Albany. All Korean War veterans and family members welcome.

Corvallis Bicycle Collective, noon to 4 p.m.; for location, call 541-224-6885 or go to www.corvallisbikes.org. The group welcomes all to volunteer or to work on their own bikes.

Corvallis Lions Club, noon, Papas Pizza, 1030 S.W. Third St. Information: 541-752-1920.

Rotary Club of Corvallis, noon, Corvallis Country Club, 1850 S.W. Whiteside Drive. Tom Wogaman will present Obscure Historical Events Which Made a Difference for Our Country. Lunch reservations: lee.strandberg@comcast.net.

Plant-Based Food Group, 6 p.m., fellowship hall, Seventh-day Adventist Church, 3085 Grand Prairie Road S.E., Albany. Bring a plant-based (vegan) dish to share in a potluck, plus copies of the recipe, a place setting and a beverage. Information: 541-928-6640 or reefman64@comcast.net.

Corvallis New Horizons Band, 6:15 p.m. Rehearsals are open to all players. For rehearsal location, call 541-231-0052.

Reiki Healing Circle, 7 p.m., Seichim Center; call 541-754-3595 for directions. Gathering for reiki students and those interested in experiencing reiki and sending healing energy to the world. A donation of $5 to $10 is requested, if possible.

Plan ahead

Childhood obesity summit, 9 a.m. April 20, Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, 525 N. Santiam Highway. The summit will address the growing epidemic of childhood obesity in Benton, Linn and Lincoln counties. Registration: www.childhoodobesitysummit2016.eventbrite.com.

Schools

THURSDAY

Philomath School District Board of Directors, 6 p.m., district office, Clemens Primary School, 535 S. 19th St. Special session to review and discuss district board policies and personnel adjustments. Executive session at 5:30 p.m.

Support groups

THURSDAY

Alcoholics Anonymous:

7 a.m., noon, room 11, First Christian Church, 602 S.W. Madison Ave.

5:30 p.m., upstairs, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Corvallis, 2945 N.W. Circle Blvd.

6:30 p.m., basement, New Life Fellowship, 1412 Applegate St., Philomath.

7 p.m., Crossroads Christian Fellowship, 2555 N.W. Highland Drive.

8:30 p.m., room 125, McNary Hall, 1220 S.W. Jefferson Way (enter at north side).

Information (24 hours): 541-967-4252 or www.aa-oregon.org.

Caregivers Support Group, 1:30 p.m., Fireside Room, First Congregational United Church of Christ, 4515 S.W. West Hills Road. Information: 541-768-5254.

Support After Suicide, 4 p.m., room 121, Linn-Benton Community College Benton Center, 757 N.W. Polk Ave. Free support group and resources for those who have lost a loved one to suicide. Information: 541-905-9787.

Out-N-About, 6:30 p.m., room 218, First United Methodist Church, 1165 N.W. Monroe Ave. For high school aged youths who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, and their allies. Information: 541-231-4440.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, 6:30 p.m., Grant Avenue Baptist Church, 1625 N.W. Grant Ave. Information: docclarence@comcast.net.

Gamblers Anonymous, 7 p.m., North Albany Community Church, 1273 West Thornton Lake Drive N.W. A 12-step support group for people with money-related problems. Information: 541-704-0223.

Overeaters Anonymous, 7 p.m., Round Table Room, room no. 106, First United Methodist Church, 1165 N.W. Monroe Ave. No dues, fees or weigh-ins. Information: 541-231-0494 or www.oa.org.

Alanon, 7:30 p.m., room 12, Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, 333 N.W. 35th St. Support group for families and friends of alcoholics. Message center: 541-967-6262.
An earthquake, birth of a daughter and his wifes family background all came together at the right time to provide Tom Miller with a gentle push into the firefighting profession.

Twenty-six years later, Miller has launched into a new direction by taking over as Philomath Fire & Rescues new chief. His first day on the job was Feb. 19.

I walked into my first fire station on Jan. 2, 1990, Miller, 50, said about his first gig as a volunteer, which occurred not long after a notable earthquake hit northern California in 1989. I went from going to the lake and camping and doing all the things you do as a couple without children to all of a sudden, being home all the time because we had a new child.

Millers wife, Melissa, suggested an activity in Felton, the California community where they lived.

My wife grew up in fire service  her dad was the volunteer captain, her grandfather was the town constable back in the day  so she encouraged me to get involved in the volunteer fire department so I could get out of the house once in a while.

The temblor also led Miller down the path.

I saw them going through the community and helping them board up and take care of windows, he said. They were a small group, I think we had 20 volunteers, but we always banded together, we always got the job done. So seeing those guys out there doing all that, it made me realize I could just give a little more to my community.

An electrician by trade, Miller continued to volunteer over the years.

Then once I got my certifications lined up to where I could make the swap over and not take too much of a financial hit, thats when I started to become paid, Miller said.

Eventually, Miller ended up teaching fire service on college campuses in Oklahoma and Texas.

Then I got into fire service full-time as a training officer for District 7 Fire, which is in Helotes, Texas, just outside San Antonio, he said.

There, Miller worked as assistant chief and then fire chief. Before taking the Philomath job, Miller had worked as fire chief at North Hays County Emergency Services District No. 6 in Texas.

Miller didnt pause for long when asked about what he likes to see in his firefighters.

You have to be very civically minded and be willing to help others, Miller said. I would say integritys a big one, being an honest and forthright person is probably at the top of the list. We hold ourselves to a very high standard and we know that the community does, we want people that come in and be a good spokesperson for us and be a good example to others.

Volunteers dont have to be well-versed on firefighting when they join.

I think its important that people coming into fire service know we work hard, we play hard and theres a lot of training thats involved, Miller said. They dont have to be trained to walk in the door, well do that for them, but it does take some time to get them to where they can go out on calls, drive vehicles and be able to do fire protection duties safely.

Outgoing fire chief Tom Phelps will stay on through a transition period.

Obviously, we have a pretty nice, tight-knit group here and its nice to inherit something thats in good shape and has been taking care of business before I got here, he said. I feel very privileged to follow Tom and turn me over to a well-prepared, well-equipped and just has a good, positive image in the community type of department.

In my last job, that was not necessarily the case and so I had to come in and do a lot of work right away to kind of work through some things, he added.

Miller said as far as operations go, many things are the same, a good outcome from national standards now in place in fire service.

It doesnt matter where you go, we all operate under the same guidelines, he said. So those are always the same.

Differences seen in different departments usually involve things like equipment, such as the use of a water tender.

I had the opportunity to always be in a similar environment to this where some areas were hydrated and other werent, he said. We always had to haul water, use water tenders, all those kinds of things that we do here. Most city guys dont know what a water tender is.

Miller said the fire department could use updated equipment, including front-line engines that are aging.

It would be nice to update those, he said. Hopefully this bond issue that coming up, thats something we can use that money for and upgrade those older pieces of equipment.

The fire board has been talking for several weeks about placing a bond issue on the ballot.

Obviously the bond issue is a big deal for us, Miller said. Chief Phelps will continue to go out and educate and talk to people about it as well. Thats one of the things hell be doing as hes stepping out and Im stepping in.

Miller said Philomath Fire & Rescue will continue to assess how they are responding to calls.

I know Chief Phelps has done a really good job of analyzing those things as far as getting people to the fire station and getting them into the vehicles and getting to a scene and getting them out on time, he said. The 24-hour shifts that we just went to have made a huge difference on our response times because we have people right here in the fire station instead of waiting for people to come in from the house.

As for the immediate future, Miller was planning to meet with officials last week to start discussion on the scope of work and costs involved with the fire departments seismic upgrade.

Miller planned on no immediate changes with the department.

This place is pretty solid and obviously, Philomath should be really proud of this group and what theyve done over the years, he said.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Cologne Philharmony : Speak German!

Cologne Hecklers at the Cologne Philharmony disrupt performance of Iranian musician and tell him to Speak German!

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

An Iranian musician was forced to stop playing at the Cologne Philharmony on Sunday due to loud expressions of displeasure and heckling from the audience. Harpsichord player Mahan Esfahani asked the disrupters in English, What are you afraid of? Some yelled back to him, Speak German!

Concert promoter CEO, Jochen Schafsmeier said on Wednesday that he had never experienced anything like that in his career. The incident provoked a strong response in social media. People discussed whether the vulgarity seen in the concert hall was a new display of xenophobia. Schafsmeier said it is normal for an audience to react when a piece isnt well received but this was over the top. While Esfahani performed the quiet piece, the audience would break into applause or laugh and call out to interrupt him.

On social media, the Cologne Philharmony put out a message in response: Artists from all around the world are regular guests at the Cologne Philharmony. In addition to classical music, it is also natural that contemporary music, jazz and world music have their place here, alongside Symphony music, recitals and chamber music. We provide a forum for cultural diversity; we are committed to the field of music education and we support social projects and a welcoming culture. With us, its all about the music and the people. We are stunned at the reaction of some of the people in the audience on Sunday and could have not anticipated something like that. We expect people to behave in a respectful manner. It cannot be that a small part of the audience disturbs and destroys the performance for all the others. We have invited Esfahani back on March 1, 2017 to play the piece from (Steve) Reich again.

Esfahani continued by playing the other scheduled pieces. At the end of the concert, one guest went to the microphone and in English, offered an apology to Esfahani for the bad behavior on the part of some audience members. This got a big round of applause. Curiously, some of the older concert goers who contributed to the heckling, also applauded the apology.
Donations for refugees : Deutsche Post organizes central drop-off station

Bonn Deutsche Post is providing a hall for central collection of items for refugees, making it easier for people to donate.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

For those who want to donate items to refugees living in Bonn, it has just become easier. Drive in, drop off and drive out again. Dirk Merz of Deutsche Post handed over keys Tuesday to volunteer Jan Erik Meyer of Sankt Petrus church who helped initiate the establishment of a central donation station. Deutsche Post is providing use of a 700-square-meter hall for collecting donations of clothing, shoes, bed sheets, towels and other articles needed by refugees.

The project is welcomed by city officials, who see it as a successful collaboration between city, private corporation, church and volunteers. The city of Bonn will pay electricity and heating costs, and many volunteers will help. The German Red Cross (DRK) is also a partner in the project and said their goal is to have one central donation station where all refugee centers can go to get whatever they need. Currently, Bonn has around 3800 refugees from 44 different countries.

For those who have items in good condition, the donation center is open Thursdays and Fridays from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m., and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The entrance to the hall (Kaiser-Karl-Ring) is on Vorgebirgsstrae across from Frankenbad. More information can be found at www.sachspenden-bonn.de (in German). People who want to volunteer to help at the donation center can check out the website ehrenamt@sachspenden-bonn.de (also in German).
Health : Flu wave hits Bonn and the region

Flu wave hits Bonn and the region. Foto: dpa

Bonn and region Many people across Germany are sick with the flu and an increased number of cases are being seen in Bonn and the region.

Teilen

Teilen Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Tweeten

Tweeten Weiterleiten

Weiterleiten Drucken

It starts with a headache or swollen glands and then comes the fever and sore throat. The flu virus is making its way around Germany at the moment and cases of the flu are increasing in Bonn and the surrounding areas.

Since October, Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) has recorded 13,300 cases of the flu. Waiting rooms are filling up again now as more infected people are heading to the doctor. Some school classrooms are half empty.

RKI says the virus is making a similar run as in previous years but early signs show an increase in the occurrence and intensity of flu in middle aged persons. The reason is the dominance of the Virus A (H1N1) which first circulated in 2009. It seems to cause a more severe case in young adults and those without chronic pre-existing conditions than the A (H3N2) virus which was dominant in the last year.

Internationally, there were also many cases of severe influenza reported from hospital Intensive Care Units. A culprit for the serious flu is the H1N1 virus which many still remember as swine flu. RKI says the flu usually begins abruptly with headache and body aches or fever before a sore throat or cough sets in. They cannot predict the course of the flu wave but say it usually takes three to four months.
The content you are looking for has either been removed or requires you to login to view

Please login below or register for an account With Naijapals.com
"Patronize Made In Nigeria Women" - Senator Dino Melaye Urges Senators & Politicians

kejguv at 2-03-2016 03:17 PM (6 years ago) (m)

With the toga of alleged wife-beater hanging over his head, the senator representing Kogi West on the platform of All Progressives Congress, Dino Melaye, took his colleagues to task on the need to patronize what he called made in Nigeria women.

With the toga of alleged wife-beater hanging over his head, the senator representing Kogi West on the platform of All Progressives Congress, Dino Melaye, took his colleagues to task on the need to patronize what he called made in Nigeria women.









Melaye had while contributing to the motion on the need to patronize made in Nigeria goods, said the campaign should not be limited to goods alone, but women should be included.

The motion was sponsored by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP, Abia South). According to Daily Trust, the contribution of the Chairman, Senate Committee on the FCT elicited general laughter, which made him pause awhile. But he later continued by saying, With due apology to my Comrade Governor of Edo state, we must start to campaign for made in Nigeria girls. It is time for my colleagues to start patronising made in Nigeria women. It was after he stated this that the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki cut in and said that the motion was clear enough. Earlier while moving the motion, Sen. Abaribe said until Nigeria adopts a pro-made in Nigeria procurement policy, locally produced goods would continue to lag behind both in competition and acceptability.Economic indicators have confirmed that unless we produce what we consume, the Nigerian economy will be worse off for it, he said.

In adopting the motion, the Senate urged the Federal Government to initiate and implement the first option policy on purchase of locally manufactured products for any government procurement in all arms of government and every public funded organization. Melaye had while contributing to the motion on the need to patronize made in Nigeria goods, said the campaign should not be limited to goods alone, but women should be included.The motion was sponsored by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP, Abia South). According to Daily Trust, the contribution of the Chairman, Senate Committee on the FCT elicited general laughter, which made him pause awhile. But he later continued by saying, With due apology to my Comrade Governor of Edo state, we must start to campaign for made in Nigeria girls. It is time for my colleagues to start patronising made in Nigeria women. It was after he stated this that the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki cut in and said that the motion was clear enough. Earlier while moving the motion, Sen. Abaribe said until Nigeria adopts a pro-made in Nigeria procurement policy, locally produced goods would continue to lag behind both in competition and acceptability.Economic indicators have confirmed that unless we produce what we consume, the Nigerian economy will be worse off for it, he said.In adopting the motion, the Senate urged the Federal Government to initiate and implement the first option policy on purchase of locally manufactured products for any government procurement in all arms of government and every public funded organization.

Post Reply Writing is my passion and facts-proofing is my hobby, I have been writing at Gistmania for close to a decade now and It is one of the most exciting things I do. Outside writing, I love enjoying time with my loved ones - if you have any tip for me, please do get in touch Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:17 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac

Mykie010 at 2-03-2016 03:22 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Shut up dino meleye,have u bought made in Nigeria bf?u used looted fund to but a car last week,have u not heard that we have made in Nigeria car??oleshi Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:22 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Shut up dino meleye,have u bought made in Nigeria bf?u used looted fund to but a car last week,have u not heard that we have made in Nigeria car??oleshi Reply

nwaafoigbo at 2-03-2016 03:24 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Top Secret of 1914 Amalgamation Document Finally EXPOSED (PHOTOS) attached - The Truth every one must know about the contraption called Nigeria. Biafra Sovereignty is Eminence.

Fredrick Lugard Created Nigeria to Last for 100 Years Only  IBB 

Most of the nations with ethno-religious and inter-ethnic disagreements and failed to do a Sovereign National Conference, are either in armed conflict (Congo DR) or have since disintegrated  Yugoslavia, Sudan, Eritrea (from Ethiopia), and even Scotland, from the UK, was on the verge of opting out of an unpleasant union and had a failed referendum.

December 31st 2013  January 1, 2014, was the last 24 hours for an amalgamated Nigeria according to records trumpeted by significant Nigerians, not excluding ex-military ruler Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).

Perhaps that was why we heared things like: A Northerner Must Emerge in 2015 Or Nigeria Will Divide - Lawal Kaita

But long before then was this quote: Since 1914, the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite  Nigerian unity is only a British invention  Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who was reported by the TIME MAGAZINE of October 10, 1960 to have said there was no basis for Nigerian unity and it was only a wish of the British.

Late Harold Smith apologized to Nigerians with this landmark confession:

Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa. Nigeria was my duty post. When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and aspirations the East is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power at all cost to the northerner. They seemed to be submissive and silly of a kind. Our mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts.

The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria! Harold Smith confessed that the Census results were announced before they were counted. Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 Million. This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power bid. He stated that the West without Lagos was the most populous in Nigeria at that time but we ignored that.

The north was seriously encouraged to go into the military. According to him, they believe that the south may attend western education, but future leaders will always come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made influential and super human. The northerners were given accelerated promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south. We truncated their good plan for their future.

I was very sorry for the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned to destroy Awolowo and Azikwe well, the west and the east and sowed a seed of discord among them. We tricked Azikwe into accepting to be president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater Nigeria. Looking at the northern leaders now , If they have any agenda in Nigeria at all, sadly it is only for the north, and nothing for Nigeria.

Now this same census figures, very important in allocation of positions and power within the Sovereign called Nigeria, have been disputed historically:

 On the conduct of the census in the East, Dr. M.I.Okpara (Photo:) says he gave strict instructions that the figures were to be absolutely true to the actual population and he is sure that this was done. To those who tried to ridicule him by saying that he had announced the discovery of a new village in the course of the census so as to inflate the figures in Eastern Nigeria, Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara says,  It as a little fishing village in Eket that had been overlooked. It was not discovered and it was a village of only sixty people or more, which could not have made much difference in our overall population. The real test was that when the exercise was repeated, our figure was the same and the figure for the North had almost doubled.  ~ Dr. M.I. Okparaa biography ( C. Offodile) in Eket, Nigeria.

And recently we have heard, No credible census in Nigeria since 1816 NPC boss

We thank God for technology, 95% geographic facts can be ascertained with use of satellites

By Lugards 1914 Amalgamation Document, Any Region Can Secede in 2014 - Shuluwa

The word NORTH (AREWA), in Nigeria, is the most echoed in the polity. It must have be echoed a zillion times since January 1914 when allocation of political and economic resources in this vast land with vast opportunities and natural endowments, began.

The British needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South should be amalgamated.

What is critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the South has resources and have educated people

When the amalgamation took effect, the British government sealed off the South from the North. And between 1914 and l960, thats a period of 46 years, the British allowed minimum contact between the North and South because it was not in the British interest that the North be allowed to be polluted by the educated South.

Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) recounted not long ago, I entered Parliament on December 12, 1959. When the North formed a political party, the northern leaders called it Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). They didnt call it Nigerian People's Congress. That was in accordance with the dictum and policies of Lugard. When Aminu Kano formed his own party,

it was called Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) not Nigerian Progressive Union. Northern Peoples Congress was, back then, still exists in one form or another in 2011- not without a Northern-prefix! Sometimes, you still read Northern Elements Political Forum! Indeed, these elements have not changed! 50 years later, we are still being confronted with a Northern Consensus Candidate. YarAduas purported message to Nigerians from his deathbed via Hausa BBC in Hausa language! Northern this, Northern that! Not Nigerian!

See more at:

Foto de Radio Biafra.

Foto de Radio Biafra. Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:24 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming Top Secret of 1914 Amalgamation Document Finally EXPOSED (PHOTOS) attached - The Truth every one must know about the contraption called Nigeria. Biafra Sovereignty is Eminence.Fredrick Lugard Created Nigeria to Last for 100 Years Only  IBB Most of the nations with ethno-religious and inter-ethnic disagreements and failed to do a Sovereign National Conference, are either in armed conflict (Congo DR) or have since disintegrated  Yugoslavia, Sudan, Eritrea (from Ethiopia), and even Scotland, from the UK, was on the verge of opting out of an unpleasant union and had a failed referendum.December 31st 2013  January 1, 2014, was the last 24 hours for an amalgamated Nigeria according to records trumpeted by significant Nigerians, not excluding ex-military ruler Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).Perhaps that was why we heared things like: A Northerner Must Emerge in 2015 Or Nigeria Will Divide - Lawal KaitaBut long before then was this quote: Since 1914, the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite  Nigerian unity is only a British invention  Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who was reported by the TIME MAGAZINE of October 10, 1960 to have said there was no basis for Nigerian unity and it was only a wish of the British.Late Harold Smith apologized to Nigerians with this landmark confession:Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa. Nigeria was my duty post. When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and aspirations the East is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power at all cost to the northerner. They seemed to be submissive and silly of a kind. Our mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts.The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria! Harold Smith confessed that the Census results were announced before they were counted. Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 Million. This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power bid. He stated that the West without Lagos was the most populous in Nigeria at that time but we ignored that.The north was seriously encouraged to go into the military. According to him, they believe that the south may attend western education, but future leaders will always come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made influential and super human. The northerners were given accelerated promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south. We truncated their good plan for their future.I was very sorry for the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned to destroy Awolowo and Azikwe well, the west and the east and sowed a seed of discord among them. We tricked Azikwe into accepting to be president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater Nigeria. Looking at the northern leaders now , If they have any agenda in Nigeria at all, sadly it is only for the north, and nothing for Nigeria.Now this same census figures, very important in allocation of positions and power within the Sovereign called Nigeria, have been disputed historically: On the conduct of the census in the East, Dr. M.I.Okpara (Photo:) says he gave strict instructions that the figures were to be absolutely true to the actual population and he is sure that this was done. To those who tried to ridicule him by saying that he had announced the discovery of a new village in the course of the census so as to inflate the figures in Eastern Nigeria, Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara says,  It as a little fishing village in Eket that had been overlooked. It was not discovered and it was a village of only sixty people or more, which could not have made much difference in our overall population. The real test was that when the exercise was repeated, our figure was the same and the figure for the North had almost doubled.  ~ Dr. M.I. Okparaa biography ( C. Offodile) in Eket, Nigeria.And recently we have heard, No credible census in Nigeria since 1816 NPC bossWe thank God for technology, 95% geographic facts can be ascertained with use of satellitesBy Lugards 1914 Amalgamation Document, Any Region Can Secede in 2014 - ShuluwaThe word NORTH (AREWA), in Nigeria, is the most echoed in the polity. It must have be echoed a zillion times since January 1914 when allocation of political and economic resources in this vast land with vast opportunities and natural endowments, began.The British needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South should be amalgamated.What is critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the South has resources and have educated peopleWhen the amalgamation took effect, the British government sealed off the South from the North. And between 1914 and l960, thats a period of 46 years, the British allowed minimum contact between the North and South because it was not in the British interest that the North be allowed to be polluted by the educated South.Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) recounted not long ago, I entered Parliament on December 12, 1959. When the North formed a political party, the northern leaders called it Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). They didnt call it Nigerian People's Congress. That was in accordance with the dictum and policies of Lugard. When Aminu Kano formed his own party,it was called Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) not Nigerian Progressive Union. Northern Peoples Congress was, back then, still exists in one form or another in 2011- not without a Northern-prefix! Sometimes, you still read Northern Elements Political Forum! Indeed, these elements have not changed! 50 years later, we are still being confronted with a Northern Consensus Candidate. YarAduas purported message to Nigerians from his deathbed via Hausa BBC in Hausa language! Northern this, Northern that! Not Nigerian!See more at: http://www.otimestv.com/ /explosive-secret-1914-amalgamatioFoto de Radio Biafra.Foto de Radio Biafra. Reply

nwaafoigbo at 2-03-2016 03:24 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Top Secret of 1914 Amalgamation Document Finally EXPOSED (PHOTOS) attached - The Truth every one must know about the contraption called Nigeria. Biafra Sovereignty is Eminence.

Fredrick Lugard Created Nigeria to Last for 100 Years Only  IBB 

Most of the nations with ethno-religious and inter-ethnic disagreements and failed to do a Sovereign National Conference, are either in armed conflict (Congo DR) or have since disintegrated  Yugoslavia, Sudan, Eritrea (from Ethiopia), and even Scotland, from the UK, was on the verge of opting out of an unpleasant union and had a failed referendum.

December 31st 2013  January 1, 2014, was the last 24 hours for an amalgamated Nigeria according to records trumpeted by significant Nigerians, not excluding ex-military ruler Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).

Perhaps that was why we heared things like: A Northerner Must Emerge in 2015 Or Nigeria Will Divide - Lawal Kaita

But long before then was this quote: Since 1914, the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite  Nigerian unity is only a British invention  Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who was reported by the TIME MAGAZINE of October 10, 1960 to have said there was no basis for Nigerian unity and it was only a wish of the British.

Late Harold Smith apologized to Nigerians with this landmark confession:

Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa. Nigeria was my duty post. When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and aspirations the East is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power at all cost to the northerner. They seemed to be submissive and silly of a kind. Our mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts.

The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria! Harold Smith confessed that the Census results were announced before they were counted. Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 Million. This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power bid. He stated that the West without Lagos was the most populous in Nigeria at that time but we ignored that.

The north was seriously encouraged to go into the military. According to him, they believe that the south may attend western education, but future leaders will always come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made influential and super human. The northerners were given accelerated promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south. We truncated their good plan for their future.

I was very sorry for the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned to destroy Awolowo and Azikwe well, the west and the east and sowed a seed of discord among them. We tricked Azikwe into accepting to be president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater Nigeria. Looking at the northern leaders now , If they have any agenda in Nigeria at all, sadly it is only for the north, and nothing for Nigeria.

Now this same census figures, very important in allocation of positions and power within the Sovereign called Nigeria, have been disputed historically:

 On the conduct of the census in the East, Dr. M.I.Okpara (Photo:) says he gave strict instructions that the figures were to be absolutely true to the actual population and he is sure that this was done. To those who tried to ridicule him by saying that he had announced the discovery of a new village in the course of the census so as to inflate the figures in Eastern Nigeria, Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara says,  It as a little fishing village in Eket that had been overlooked. It was not discovered and it was a village of only sixty people or more, which could not have made much difference in our overall population. The real test was that when the exercise was repeated, our figure was the same and the figure for the North had almost doubled.  ~ Dr. M.I. Okparaa biography ( C. Offodile) in Eket, Nigeria.

And recently we have heard, No credible census in Nigeria since 1816 NPC boss

We thank God for technology, 95% geographic facts can be ascertained with use of satellites

By Lugards 1914 Amalgamation Document, Any Region Can Secede in 2014 - Shuluwa

The word NORTH (AREWA), in Nigeria, is the most echoed in the polity. It must have be echoed a zillion times since January 1914 when allocation of political and economic resources in this vast land with vast opportunities and natural endowments, began.

The British needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South should be amalgamated.

What is critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the South has resources and have educated people

When the amalgamation took effect, the British government sealed off the South from the North. And between 1914 and l960, thats a period of 46 years, the British allowed minimum contact between the North and South because it was not in the British interest that the North be allowed to be polluted by the educated South.

Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) recounted not long ago, I entered Parliament on December 12, 1959. When the North formed a political party, the northern leaders called it Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). They didnt call it Nigerian People's Congress. That was in accordance with the dictum and policies of Lugard. When Aminu Kano formed his own party,

it was called Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) not Nigerian Progressive Union. Northern Peoples Congress was, back then, still exists in one form or another in 2011- not without a Northern-prefix! Sometimes, you still read Northern Elements Political Forum! Indeed, these elements have not changed! 50 years later, we are still being confronted with a Northern Consensus Candidate. YarAduas purported message to Nigerians from his deathbed via Hausa BBC in Hausa language! Northern this, Northern that! Not Nigerian!

See more at:

Foto de Radio Biafra.

Foto de Radio Biafra. Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:24 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming Top Secret of 1914 Amalgamation Document Finally EXPOSED (PHOTOS) attached - The Truth every one must know about the contraption called Nigeria. Biafra Sovereignty is Eminence.Fredrick Lugard Created Nigeria to Last for 100 Years Only  IBB Most of the nations with ethno-religious and inter-ethnic disagreements and failed to do a Sovereign National Conference, are either in armed conflict (Congo DR) or have since disintegrated  Yugoslavia, Sudan, Eritrea (from Ethiopia), and even Scotland, from the UK, was on the verge of opting out of an unpleasant union and had a failed referendum.December 31st 2013  January 1, 2014, was the last 24 hours for an amalgamated Nigeria according to records trumpeted by significant Nigerians, not excluding ex-military ruler Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB).Perhaps that was why we heared things like: A Northerner Must Emerge in 2015 Or Nigeria Will Divide - Lawal KaitaBut long before then was this quote: Since 1914, the British Government has been trying to make Nigeria into one country, but the Nigerian people themselves are historically different in their backgrounds, in their religious beliefs and customs and do not show themselves any signs of willingness to unite  Nigerian unity is only a British invention  Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa who was reported by the TIME MAGAZINE of October 10, 1960 to have said there was no basis for Nigerian unity and it was only a wish of the British.Late Harold Smith apologized to Nigerians with this landmark confession:Our agenda was to completely exploit Africa. Nigeria was my duty post. When we assessed Nigeria, this was what we found in the southern region; strength, intelligence, determination to succeed, well established history, complex but focused life style, great hope and aspirations the East is good in business and technology, the west is good in administration and commerce, law and medicine, but it was a pity we planned our agenda to give power at all cost to the northerner. They seemed to be submissive and silly of a kind. Our mission was accomplished by destroying the opposition at all fronts.The west led in the fight for the independence, and was punished for asking for freedom. They will not rule Nigeria! Harold Smith confessed that the Census results were announced before they were counted. Despite seeing vast land with no human but cattle in the north, we still gave the north 55 million instead of 32 Million. This was to be used to maintain their majority votes and future power bid. He stated that the West without Lagos was the most populous in Nigeria at that time but we ignored that.The north was seriously encouraged to go into the military. According to him, they believe that the south may attend western education, but future leaders will always come from military background. Their traditional rulers were to be made influential and super human. The northerners were given accelerated promotions both in the military and civil service to justify their superiority over the south. Everything was to work against the south. We truncated their good plan for their future.I was very sorry for the A.G; it was a great party too much for African standard. We planned to destroy Awolowo and Azikwe well, the west and the east and sowed a seed of discord among them. We tricked Azikwe into accepting to be president having known that Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his genius plans for a greater Nigeria. Looking at the northern leaders now , If they have any agenda in Nigeria at all, sadly it is only for the north, and nothing for Nigeria.Now this same census figures, very important in allocation of positions and power within the Sovereign called Nigeria, have been disputed historically: On the conduct of the census in the East, Dr. M.I.Okpara (Photo:) says he gave strict instructions that the figures were to be absolutely true to the actual population and he is sure that this was done. To those who tried to ridicule him by saying that he had announced the discovery of a new village in the course of the census so as to inflate the figures in Eastern Nigeria, Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara says,  It as a little fishing village in Eket that had been overlooked. It was not discovered and it was a village of only sixty people or more, which could not have made much difference in our overall population. The real test was that when the exercise was repeated, our figure was the same and the figure for the North had almost doubled.  ~ Dr. M.I. Okparaa biography ( C. Offodile) in Eket, Nigeria.And recently we have heard, No credible census in Nigeria since 1816 NPC bossWe thank God for technology, 95% geographic facts can be ascertained with use of satellitesBy Lugards 1914 Amalgamation Document, Any Region Can Secede in 2014 - ShuluwaThe word NORTH (AREWA), in Nigeria, is the most echoed in the polity. It must have be echoed a zillion times since January 1914 when allocation of political and economic resources in this vast land with vast opportunities and natural endowments, began.The British needed the Railway from the North to the Coast in the interest of British business. Amalgamation of the South (not of the people) became of crucial importance to British business interest. He said the North and the South should be amalgamated.What is critical and important are the reasons Lugard gave in his dispatches. They are as follows: He said the North is poor and they have no resources to run the protectorate of the North. That they have no access to the sea; that the South has resources and have educated peopleWhen the amalgamation took effect, the British government sealed off the South from the North. And between 1914 and l960, thats a period of 46 years, the British allowed minimum contact between the North and South because it was not in the British interest that the North be allowed to be polluted by the educated South.Chief Richard Akinjide (SAN) recounted not long ago, I entered Parliament on December 12, 1959. When the North formed a political party, the northern leaders called it Northern Peoples Congress (NPC). They didnt call it Nigerian People's Congress. That was in accordance with the dictum and policies of Lugard. When Aminu Kano formed his own party,it was called Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) not Nigerian Progressive Union. Northern Peoples Congress was, back then, still exists in one form or another in 2011- not without a Northern-prefix! Sometimes, you still read Northern Elements Political Forum! Indeed, these elements have not changed! 50 years later, we are still being confronted with a Northern Consensus Candidate. YarAduas purported message to Nigerians from his deathbed via Hausa BBC in Hausa language! Northern this, Northern that! Not Nigerian!See more at: http://www.otimestv.com/ /explosive-secret-1914-amalgamatioFoto de Radio Biafra.Foto de Radio Biafra. Reply

Sdee01 at 2-03-2016 03:26 PM (6 years ago)

(m) nonsenss politiciant Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:26 PM (6 years ago) | Newbie nonsenss politiciant Reply

Fran6ixfox at 2-03-2016 03:35 PM (6 years ago)

(m) politicians eeeeeeeeeeehhh Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:35 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac politicians eeeeeeeeeeehhh Reply

nonsovin at 2-03-2016 03:38 PM (6 years ago)

(m) I hear u! Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:38 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac I hear u! Reply

kp45 at 2-03-2016 03:45 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Park well Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:45 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Park well Reply

gogoman at 2-03-2016 03:47 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Oga do your life make i do mine!! na GHANA WOMAN I WON MARRY SELF Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:47 PM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Oga do your life make i do mine!! na GHANA WOMAN I WON MARRY SELF Reply

patrickudefuna at 2-03-2016 04:01 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Contribution to debate indeed. Posted: at 2-03-2016 04:01 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming Contribution to debate indeed. Reply

slimmygal at 2-03-2016 04:18 PM (6 years ago)

(f) foolish woman, no b u and ur friends dey import ashawo from europe kon pay dem in dollars. yeye man, i wonder how many made in nigeria he don buy. Posted: at 2-03-2016 04:18 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac foolish woman, no b u and ur friends dey import ashawo from europe kon pay dem in dollars. yeye man, i wonder how many made in nigeria he don buy. Reply

Novic at 2-03-2016 05:06 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Lolsss.... All this nigerian senator with there yeye talk. Am happy that you knw una no patronage nigeria woman before. So mak una start making use of them nw. Useless people. Posted: at 2-03-2016 05:06 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Lolsss.... All this nigerian senator with there yeye talk. Am happy that you knw una no patronage nigeria woman before. So mak una start making use of them nw. Useless people. Reply

vickie_guz at 2-03-2016 05:16 PM (6 years ago)

(f) That one follow for passing of the bill. Nonsense talk. Posted: at 2-03-2016 05:16 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming That one follow for passing of the bill. Nonsense talk. Reply

charisVEC at 2-03-2016 05:24 PM (6 years ago)

(m) I see..issokay Posted: at 2-03-2016 05:24 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac I see..issokay Reply

zoe61 at 2-03-2016 05:36 PM (6 years ago)

(f) hehehehehehehe Posted: at 2-03-2016 05:36 PM (6 years ago) | Hero hehehehehehehe Reply

jasperjahsy at 2-03-2016 06:10 PM (6 years ago)

(m) I don't blame the devilish and corrupt politicians you have in your chambers. I blame the failed youths of Nigeria who fail to ask questions and stick to get the answers. youths that fail to be corrupted. rise up the youths and stop making mockery of everything. Posted: at 2-03-2016 06:10 PM (6 years ago) | Upcoming I don't blame the devilish and corrupt politicians you have in your chambers. I blame the failed youths of Nigeria who fail to ask questions and stick to get the answers. youths that fail to be corrupted. rise up the youths and stop making mockery of everything. Reply

dickieponga at 2-03-2016 06:42 PM (6 years ago)

(m) Do as he says not as he does...That's wat e mean.... Posted: at 2-03-2016 06:42 PM (6 years ago) | Hero Do as he says not as he does...That's wat e mean.... Reply

kison at 2-03-2016 06:43 PM (6 years ago)

(m) MELAYE be careful,be very very careful, CAREFULLLLLLLLL............... Posted: at 2-03-2016 06:43 PM (6 years ago) | Hero MELAYE be careful,be very very careful, CAREFULLLLLLLLL............... Reply

Oworen25 at 2-03-2016 06:58 PM (6 years ago)

(m) When they don win election and begin to eat enough money they will come out here and say anything they want. Posted: at 2-03-2016 06:58 PM (6 years ago) | Hero When they don win election and begin to eat enough money they will come out here and say anything they want. Reply
kejguv at 2-03-2016 03:54 PM (6 years ago) (m)

Ese Rita Oruru, the 14 year old girl from Bayelsa state who was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow is about 5 months pregnant, according to Vanguard reports.

Ese Rita Oruru, the 14 year old girl from Bayelsa state who was abducted by Yunusa Dahiru, alias Yellow is about 5 months pregnant, according to Vanguard reports.

The white Hijab she wore when she arrived on Tuesday, was used to disguise the alleged pregnancy. Her pregnant condition was what made the IGP, Solomon Arase to give instructions to fly her to by air after she was rescued, rather than by road. This was after she had been handed over to the Gender and Child Protection Unit where a team from the Medical Department of the Force carried out a comprehensive medical examination of her at the Police Medical Facility in Area 1, Garki and confirmed her pregnancy.

Yellow is currently being investigated.



The white Hijab she wore when she arrived on Tuesday, was used to disguise the alleged pregnancy. Her pregnant condition was what made the IGP, Solomon Arase to give instructions to fly her to by air after she was rescued, rather than by road. This was after she had been handed over to the Gender and Child Protection Unit where a team from the Medical Department of the Force carried out a comprehensive medical examination of her at the Police Medical Facility in Area 1, Garki and confirmed her pregnancy.Yellow is currently being investigated.

Post Reply Writing is my passion and facts-proofing is my hobby, I have been writing at Gistmania for close to a decade now and It is one of the most exciting things I do. Outside writing, I love enjoying time with my loved ones - if you have any tip for me, please do get in touch Posted: at 2-03-2016 03:54 PM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces Google I/O dates: Android N, Self-Driving Cars and More! Features oi -Ankit

Google today announced that their annual developer conference, the Google I/O 2016, would be taking place from May 18 till the 20th, registrations for which start on March 8. A completely developer-focused event, Google I/O is the place where the Mountain View giant announces all the major developments on the software front.

SEE ALSO: Top 5 Word Game apps that are must play for every Word Game Lover

As we get closer to the software jamboree, here is a list of things we expect from this year's Google I/O. Read on to find out.

Android N announcement

After confirmation from Google regarding the fact that every major Android update will be announced at each year's I/O conference, this one is a no-brainer. Google I/O 2016 will witness the launch of Android N, the company's latest mobile operating software. Preview mode of the OS is expected to reach developers, with the final build launching with the Nexus devices around September/October.

We have already done a roundup of what all is expected from Android N. Quick Notifications, Tap To Wake and Multi-Window may be some of the exciting new features coming with this new Android update.

Android Wear

Another futuristic software system from Google is Android Wear. Initiating a uniform and similar interface for smartwatches, Android Wear hasn't been updated for a long time and WatchOS from Apple and Samsung's Tizen OS seem to be taking the lead in terms of market share. With Google I/O, the company should be expected to launch major upgrades to their long neglected Android Wear, as OEMs threaten to abandon it in favor of custom platforms, sooner than ever.

Self-Driving cars

Google has had Self-driving cars in the making for a couple of years now. With the company promising to get them onto the road by mid-2016, what would be a better time than to do so in front of the top developers from across the globe. With competition from Tesla Motors on the rise, Google has been rumored to be working aggressively on launching a self-driving vehicle really soon. Having advertised 36 new jobs in their automobile division, it surely is an indicator to the pace of developments.

Project Ara

Project Ara has been in the pipeline for Google, since they sold Motorola to Lenovo back in 2014. With LG recently making the modular design mainstream with the G5 flagship smartphone, Google must now be rethinking its strategy regarding Project Ara. With no hints from the company at MWC 2016, there surely will be some stage appearance for the ambitious modular smartphone project at Google I/O 2016.

Project Tango

Source 1

Resultant of a unique collaboration between Lenovo and Google, Project Tango is expected to be announced during Google I/O 2016. Recently, at MWC 2016, Lenovo announced that the project - which involves use of augmented reality for a mature consumer audience - will debut its first device in July 2016. While no more updates regarding the smartphone were given, we can expect more hints and specifications as we get closer to the launch.

Project Aura

Source 2

Succeeding the infamous Google Glass, Project Aura is a second attempt at making portable augmented reality a possibility. While the original Google Glass didn't quite see the light of the day after the Explorer Edition, Project Aura is expected to be the Enterprise Edition of the Glass, with a revised design with a hinge and a larger prism on the front. As Google has explicilty clarified earlier, there will not be a consumer edition for the Google Glass so we'll have to wait and see what unfolds with this Project.

Chrome OS

Denying rumors of the Chrome OS folding into Android OS, Google might have some announcements up their sleeves for this hybrid software. While no major updates are expected on the lines of Chrome OS, we can expect a design refresh, with Material Design being the key upgrade for Google at the moment. Also, as the company's management has confirmed the launch of new Chromebooks by the end of this year, we won't be witnessing any announcements on that front at Google I/O 2016.

Virtual Reality

Google has tried to experiment with Virtual Reality a lot of times in the past with the Google Cardboard and Google Glass. Now, that Google has officially set up a sub-division in their smartphone department, named Virtual Reality, we can expect some exciting announcements from them at this year's I/O conference.

SEE ALSO: 8 Hot Motorola Devices Available On Amazon India At Discounted Price

Rumors are pointing towards the integration of Android VR into stock Android to provide all users with an opportunity to experience VR firsthand. The company will also come up with a slightly-premium version of Cardboard for the improving the experience. Google might have been late to the show but it is promising to pack a punch with these interface-connecting announcements slated for Google I/O 2016. Oculus and HTC, better watch out.

Best Mobiles in India
Huawei P9: 10 ways it could be a flagship killer! Features oi -Harshita

Huawei is readying its new flagship smartphone, to be called the Huawei P9, for the first half of 2016. The upcoming smartphone is yet to be announced officially, but it has been spotted in various leaks and conjectures. Details of the phone were scarce until recently when a leakster gave it a hands-on treatment, as exclusively reported by the VentureBeat. The new leak gives a very close look to the upcoming Huawei flagship, revealing its design elements, and features and specifications.

Xiaomi Mi5 vs Samsung Galaxy S7 vs LG G5 vs Sony Xperia XP

The Huawei P9 will be the latest member in the company's 'P' series of smartphones, and is the successor to the last year launched P8. The report suggests that Huawei will come up with at least 4 models of the phone marking as the fifth generation versions in the 'P' series family that included 'Ascend' branding till last year when the company dropped the branding from P8 smartphone's name.

Up Close And Personal With Samsung Galaxy S7 [First Look]

The report has revealed quite a lot of information about the Huawei P9. Here we take a look at the top rumored specifications of the Huawei P9 smartphone to know if this will be the next flagship killer phone:

4 new variants in the making:

Huawei this year is adding 4-variants of the new generation Huawei P smartphone to its P series family. The P9 models will include a more budget-friendly regular model of the P8 Lite, a bigger 'Plus' version of the P8 Max, a top end model with high end specs, and a fourth model.

One with Bigger and Other with Better Display:

As mentioned in the report, the premium model of the P9 will be available in 5.2-inch version. However, the Plus variant should boast a bigger display while the regular version will most likely have a comparatively lower resolution. The display resolution and features will be confirmed once the company launches the phones.

20 Best Android smartphones that made their way to India in February





Powerful Chipset on Board:

The P9 base model is believed to be powered by a Kirin 950 octa-core chipset with Mali-T880 GPU, and 3GB of RAM. This chipset has ARM big.LITTLE configuration with four cores for high power and other four for low power, running at 2.53GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively. The higher end version, on the other hand, is expected to be powered by the company's native HiSilicon's custom Kirin 955 chipset paired with 4GB of RAM.

Higher Storage Space:

The phone has been tipped to feature 32GB on the regular model and 64GB/128GB on the premium version. Though, there is nothing confirmed and we will ony get to know about its actual storage capacity details once it gets official.





Dual-Camera Set Up:

Huawei has been quite experimental on the camera front. The company used a dual-camera set up on the Honor 6 Plus to let users play with the additional sensor-lens that was capable of doing some additional imaging tricks like post-capture refocus, simulated aperture adjustment, and filter application. The company now seems to be coming up with the improved version of this technology on the Huawei P9 smartphone. It is believed that the camera on the P9 will feature the second generation of this dual-camera set up, which will also be a key highlight of the smartphone. There will be dual 12MP sensors and Leica-made lenses.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces Google I/O dates: Here's What's coming!

Android Marshmallow Goodness:

The upcoming smartphone will be flavoured with Android OS Marshmallow 6.0.1 version topped with Huawei's native skin that will brings an array of features, customizations, and tweaks.

USB Type-C in Tow:

Speaking of connectivity port, the forthcoming P9 will be Huawei's first flagship smartphone to boast a USB Type-C v port. The USB Type C is one of the most trending features amongst smartphone makers.

Fingerprint Scanner for better security:

To take the security a level high, the Huawei P9 will also boast fingerprint reader placed on the backside, near the camera. The company first launched the fingerprint scanner on the Mate7, launched a couple of years back.

LeEco Le 1S vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 3: Which one is more value for money?

Massive Battery Pumping Power:

This phone will be big on battery. The report mentions that the phone could carry a battery capacity of 3900mAh. The higher battery capacity will be quite an advantage considering that battery is one of the major issues faced by most Android smartphone users.

Release and Availability:

This will be Huawei's flagship smartphone that is believed to be placed in the mid-range. As far as the launch and availability is concerned, expect this phone sometime in the second quarter.

Best Mobiles in India
Lenovo K5 Plus to launch in India on March 15 to counter Xiaomi Redmi Note 3: All Details Are Here! Features oi -Sayan

Lenovo made a bang in India with their "Killer Note" smartphone last year. Packed with features at a highly competitive price tag the smartphone did wonders for Lenovo. Incidentally though, the recently launched Lenovo K4 Note failed to achieve the excellent sales figure of its predecessor.

The Chinese company, however, isn't ready to bog down. In fact, they have come up with a new budget smartphone to fit into the mid-range market in India. Launched in China as Lenovo Lemon 3, the smartphone was showcased at the MWC 2016 a week back as the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus.

SEE ALSO: Top 5 Word Game apps that are must play for every Word Game Lover

Well, Lenovo has now sent out invites for the launch of Vibe K5 Plus in India on March 15. For those unaware, Xiaomi has scheduled a launch event on March 3 to launch their budget phablet offering namely the Redmi Note 3. Looks like the industry will witness a tough battle between Lenovo and Xiaomi with their respective pawns K5 Plus and Redmi Note 3, with the present market topper viz. LeEco Le 1S.

The phone that was a #KnockOut at MWC 2016 will reach India soon. How excited are you? #LenovoMWC pic.twitter.com/ck8iLunNZO  Lenovo India (@Lenovo_in) February 23, 2016

Metal for the Masses

Metal construction were quite rare in the mid-range a year back. In fact, an all metal built was reserved for a handful of flagship smartphones. However, the Chinese brands like Lenovo are planning to bring the metal to the masses and Lenovo K5 Plus epitomizes the company's vision. It's worth noting that the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the LeEco Le 1S both come with a metal body.

'Vibe'rant 5-inch FHD display

Lenovo K5 Plus sports a 5 inch Full HD (1920x1080p) IPS display upfront. The company claims that the display has a peak brightness of 450 nits. This is in fact quite bright can suit your purpose even in bright sunny days. On the contrary the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the LeEco Le 1S both features a 5.5 inch Full HD display.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 chip on the inside

Under the hood Lenovo's 'Lemon' packs an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 SoC which uses a cluster of four Cortex A53 clocked at 1.2Ghz each and another four Cortex A53 cores at 1.5GHz. The chip comes with support for 64-bit processing and is supported by an Adreno 405 GPU.

2GB RAM not at par with the competition

The Lenovo K5 Plus makes use of 2GB RAM and 16GB of onboard storage. Going by today's standards the RAM is on the lower side, especially considering the fact that the LeEco Le1S comes with 3GB RAM. In terms of memory, the smartphone packs 16GB of internal storage which can further be expanded via MicroSD card slot (up to 32GB).

Capable rear camera without 4K support

In terms of cameras the Lenovo K5 Plus sports a 13MP rear camera which comes equipped with LED Flash. Incidentally, the rear camera isn't capable of shooting 4K videos unlike the LeEco Le 1S and the about to be launched Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. On the front, the Lenovo K5 Plus packs a 5MP selfie snapper.

Battery on the smaller side

Unlike its Chinese competitors the Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus sports a markedly small battery, 2750mAH to be precise. While it's true that the smartphone lacks the real estate and the CPU power of its competitors including the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the LeEco Le 1S, there's no denying that the battery is on the lower side. It would be interesting to see how the device fares once we at GizBot check it out.

Presence of Dual SIM is a boon

To please the budget consumers, the Lenovo K5 Plus comes with a Dual SIM slot (micro + micro). Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi, 4G LTE, A-GPS and Bluetooth 4.1.

Lollipop flavoured Vibe

Despite being launched at the MWC 2016; the smartphone runs on Android Lollipop 5.1. As usual, the Lenovo K5 Plus runs Vibe UI on top of stock Android. Lenovo has however announced that they will be pushing the Marshmallow update to the device soon.

Pricing will be key factor

The Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus comes in Platinum Silver, Champagne Gold and Graphite Grey colours and was launched at $149 (Rs 10,240 approx.) at the MWC. It would be interesting to see Lenovo's pricing strategies for the smartphone in India. Going by the international price tag it appears that Lenovo might price it at Rs 10,999. Well, that will pit it onto a head on collision with the Vibe K4 Note and the LeEco Le 1S.

Best Mobiles in India
Apple can't be forced by FBI to unlock iPhone News oi -GizBot Bureau

A federal magistrate-judge in New York city has ruled that the government can't force Apple to hack an iPhone to investigate a drug dealer.

It's a win for Apple, which is being pressured by federal law enforcement agents to help it break into iPhones in at least 13 instances across the country. Apple says doing the federal government's bidding would undermine the security features in hundreds of millions of iPhones around the world, CNN reported.

SEE ALSO: Apple to Unveil Lighter Variant of iPhone and iPad on March 21: 10 Things you Need To Know!

So far, the justice department was relying on the All Writs Act, 1789, which gives judges broad discretion in carrying out the law. On Monday, Judge James Orenstein said federal investigators cannot use that law to pull this off.

The US government's argument does not justify "imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government's investigation against its will", the judge said. The judge said law enforcement was inappropriately trying to use powers that it had not been given by the US Congress.

"The question is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device," Orenstein said. "It is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come... I conclude it does not," the judge ruled.

The case involves a methamphetamine dealer, Jun Feng, who was arrested in 2014 and cut a plea deal with prosecutors.

The Drug Enforcement Agency in 2015 got a search warrant to look through Feng's iPhone 5C to track down his fellow drug dealers and customers, but the device was running the iOS 7, and agents could not crack the passcode to see the data inside.

The agency sought Apple's help. Apple initially said it would help. The US Department of Justice claims Apple was being inconsistent. "Apple... only changed course when the government's application for assistance was made public by the court," the department said on Monday.

SEE ALSO: Hottest Tech Rumor Roundup: Apple iPad, iPhone SE, Samsung Galaxy A9 Pro And More

An Apple senior executive said on Monday that the company did offer to help -- but only if the US government makes a lawful request. "We will produce information when there is a lawful order to do so," the executive said. "But Judge Orenstein, on his own behalf, said he would not issue this order."

Source IANS

Best Mobiles in India

Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications
USNS Grapple Deploys to Africa

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160301-09

Release Date: 3/1/2016 1:20:00 PM

By Bill Mesta, Military Sealift Command Public Affairs

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS) -- Military Sealift Command's USNS Grapple (T-ARS 53) departed from Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia Beach Feb. 29 to begin a deployment in support of U.S. Navy and allied operation in the 6th Fleet's area of operations.

With a crew of approximately 45 U.S. Navy divers and Civil Service mariners, Grapple is primarily going to provided dive salvage services in support of emergent situations such as requests to salvage and recover ships and aircraft, clear harbors and tow vessels.

'Our primary mission will be to work with our Africa partners,' said Chief Navy Diver Daniel Laube, master diver for Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 (MDSU 2). 'We will be training with them on how to further their diving programs. 'It is not going to be an easy deployment, but I am confident everything will get done.'

'When we are conducting diving operations, the Navy divers are responsible for salvaging things that go down such as ships, aircraft and small boats,' said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chad Miller, the MDSU 2 company commander. 'We are also responsible for providing diving training with our partner countries in Africa.'

The MDSU Navy divers deployed aboard Grapple are capable of performing a variety of missions to include underwater construction and demolition projects, search and rescue missions, and provide support for military and civilian law enforcement agencies.

Grapple is specially designed to support diving and salvage operations at sea.

'Should there be an aircraft or a vessel which sinks, we arrive on scene to rescue the pilots and crew,' said Capt. Curtis Smith, Grapple's master. 'We also are capable of recovering pieces of debris from the both the oceans' surface and sub-surface of the sea.'

'We are planning on working with several countries in Africa,' said Smith. 'We are planning on spending time in Morocco, Algeria, the Ivory Coast and many additional African ports working to enhance and improve the practices of our African partners.'

The civil service mariners who crew Grapple will be critical to ensure the deployment is a success.

Much of Grapple's crew has deployed multiple times while for some this will be their first deployment.

'The Grapple's deployment is very important and unique because with a small crew of civil service mariners and Navy divers on board, it will be easier for us to make an impact in some of the smaller countries we plan of working with,' added Smith. 'Our footprint is much smaller than an aircraft carrier or a destroyer where there are many people arriving in a port. So it is easier for us to assimilate with local residents.'

The civil service mariners who crew Grapple will be critical to ensure the deployment is a success.

'The crew of the USNS Grapple is phenomenal,' said Smith. 'The leadership did a great job making sure everyone was trained and that we had all the stores and repair parts we would need to be ready to go.'

'The civil service mariners operate the Grapple,' added Smith. 'The engineers provide hotel services such as electricity, water, heat and air-conditioning. The mariners maintain the engine running gear, bow thrusters and top-side equipment.'

'The mariners from our deck department stand watches in the wheel house,' added Smith. 'They steer the ship and avoid heavy seas. Our Steward department operates the ship's galley and the berthing services on board as well.'

It will take approximately two week for Grapple to travel to Africa. Grapple is expected to complete its current deployment in late summer.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UN Seeks Durable Solutions for DRC Displacement Crisis

by Lisa Schlein March 01, 2016

The United Nations reports that efforts are under way to bring an end to the long-standing displacement crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

DRC remains the longest and most protracted humanitarian crisis on the African continent, with ongoing conflict in North and South Kivu, Ituri Province and north Katanga.

Instability in neighboring countries has forced thousands of people to seek refuge in DRC. The U.N. refugee agency reports there were more than 2.5 million internally displaced people and more than 100,000 refugees in DRC at the end of last year.

It is beyond time to bring the crisis to a close, said Mamadou Diallo, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in DRC.

'We have now started the conversation with the government of Congo to discuss the issue of durable solutions to the issue of displacement as a way of ensuring  where feasible  the dignified and safe return of displaced people into their areas of origin," he said, "or else ... looking for other durable solutions through settlement or resettlement of some of these displaced people into the host communities as a way of ending this long-term displacement.'

The United Nations has launched a $690 million appeal to assist 7 million people in DRC, of whom more than half are going hungry. Priorities include health care, water and sanitation, aid for millions of victims of rape and sexual violence, and assistance for the displaced.

Diallo, however, said peace can bring huge economic potential to the country  in particular, eastern Congo.

North and South Kivu, the breadbasket of the Congo, have the potential to feed the entire nation and export crops to neighboring countries, he told VOA.

'But, because of the insecurity, people in the displacement, some of the people no longer have the possibility of going to their fields, attending to their crops and doing other things," Diallo said. "So, they remain in the camps and rely on handouts.'

The situation can be reversed with political will from the government and the necessary resources to help the millions of displaced leave their lives of dependency and resume a normal life, he said.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, March 2, 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 seven strikes in Syria:

-- Near Hawl, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Raqqah, a strike struck an ISIL security headquarters.

-- Near Manbij, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL buildings and two ISIL mortar positions.

-- Near Mar'a, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.

Strikes in Iraq

Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 14 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Qaim, a strike struck an ISIL headquarters.

-- Near Albu Hayat, a strike suppressed an ISIL artillery piece.

-- Near Beiji, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.

-- Near Fallujah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL fighting position.

-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.

-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck an ISIL vehicle bomb-making facility and an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicles and two ISIL assembly areas.

-- Near Ramadi, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units.

-- Near Sinjar, two strikes destroyed two ISIL fighting positions.

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 one 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, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the group's ability to project terror and conduct operations.

Coalition nations which have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations which have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Mount Whitney Participates in SAR Exercise

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS160302-02

Release Date: 3/2/2016 9:25:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael Wright, USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) Public Affairs

MEDITERRANEAN SEA (NNS) -- The U.S. 6th Fleet command and control ship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) and the Republic of Cyprus Joint Rescue Coordination Center (JRCC) Lanarca conducted a combined search and rescue (SAR) exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, Feb. 29.

The purpose of the exercise was to increase response capabilities of Cypriot emergency personnel and rescue units and to enhance interoperability with the U.S. Navy to conduct these types of missions within the rescue region of the Republic of Cyprus and Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Quotes:

'The SAR exercise conducted between the Joint Rescue Coordination Center of the Republic of Cyprus and USS Mount Whitney demonstrated an increased readiness for effective response in SAR and other humanitarian assistance missions. It was a pleasure to cooperate with the Cypriot rescue unit personnel.' - Capt. Carlos Sardiello, USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) commanding officer.

'I appreciated the opportunity to work closely with the Cypriot military, police, and coast guard units. Coordination was great, and they were very professional and courteous. I am confident that in a real-world emergency, we could work together to save the lives. I hope to work with them again in the future.' - Lt. Jean Paul Bertram, USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20)

Quick Facts:

Mount Whitney provided the training equipment by dropping human replicas into the water as the ship pulled out of port. Personnel involved in the exercise practiced MEDEVAC coordination procedures, recovery procedures using a helicopter, and combined communications to locate and track missing persons at sea.

Mount Whitney is currently underway conducting unit-level training, performing duties as the fleet command and control ship, and working to strengthen ties with partners and allies in the region.

Mount Whitney, forward deployed to Gaeta, Italy, operates with a combined crew of U.S. Navy Sailors and Military Sealift Command civil service mariners. The civil service mariners perform navigation, deck, engineering and supply service operations, while military personnel support communications, weapons systems and security. It is one of only two seaborne Joint Command Platforms in the U.S. Navy, both of which are forward deployed.

U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Egyptian warplanes kill 22 militants in Sinai Peninsula: Military

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 11:25AM

Security sources in Egypt say nearly two dozen Takfiri militants have been killed in an airstrike against a militant base in the country's restive Sinai Peninsula.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the aircraft targeted a training camp for members of the Velayat Sinai militant group south of the town of Sheikh Zuweid, situated 334 kilometers (214 miles) northeast of the capital, Cairo, on Tuesday evening, leaving 20 extremists dead and 30 others injured, Arabic-language Arabi Press news website reported.

The incident came only two days after unidentified assailants fatally shot four Egyptian policemen in the country's northern province of Qalyubia as the latter were conducting an anti-drug operation in the area.

A citizen got caught in the exchange of gunfire between Egyptian police forces and armed men, and lost his life. Police have launched a search operation to arrest the attackers.

Separately, masked gunmen shot dead an Egyptian police officer as he stood in front of his house in the city of el-Arish, situated 344 kilometers (214 miles) northeast of the capital. The victim was later identified as Captain Abdullah Khalil.

Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, following a deadly terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 33 soldiers.

Over the past years, militants have been carrying out anti-government activities and deadly attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil caused in Egypt after democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the military in July 2013.

Velayat Sinai terrorists have carried out most of the attacks, mainly targeting the army and police.

In November 2014, the group pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is wreaking havoc mainly in Iraq and Syria.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Yemen army ballistic missile hits Saudi camp in Ma'rib

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 6:34AM

Yemen's army has carried out a ballistic missile attack against a Saudi military camp in the Yemeni province of Ma'rib, local media say.

The missile hit a target in al-Tadaween camp, where Saudi forces had gathered, killing a number of Saudi forces and injuring several others on Wednesday, Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah news website reported.

Yemeni forces have fired several ballistic missiles into Saudi targets since Riyadh launched military aggression against its impoverished neighbor.

Also on Wednesday, Yemeni forces attacked Saudi troops and military equipment in Jabal al-Musharaf region in the southwestern province of Ta'izz.

Saudi warplanes also bombed several districts in the cities of Bani Hashish and Nihm in Sana'a Province, al- Ghayl city in al-Jawf Province as well as Hairan city in Hajjah Province.

Meanwhile, Yemeni forces captured over 100 Saudi forces in Ma'rib over the weekend. Riyadh has deployed several hundreds of forces to the region to boost its presence in its neighboring country.

Yemen has been under military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March last year. At least 8,300 people, among them 2,236 children, have been killed so far and more than 16,000 others have sustained injuries.

Saudi Arabia seeks to bring the country's fugitive former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a Riyadh ally, back to power.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Captures IS Operative in Iraq

by Carla Babb March 02, 2016

U.S. Special Operations forces have captured a suspected Islamic State operative in Iraq, U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.

The captive is the first known detainee since a U.S. expeditionary targeting force began conducting operations in Iraq and Syria. The force was sent to carry out raids for gathering intelligence and targeting high-ranking IS leaders.

Officials say Americans are interrogating the detainee, who is expected to be turned over to Iraqi officials in the coming days.

'Any detention would be short-term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities,' Col. Pat Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command that oversees U.S. operations in the Middle East, told reporters. He would not elaborate further.

So far, the raids of the U.S. expeditionary targeting force have been shrouded in secrecy in order to protect future missions.

'Raids beget follow-on operations,' a defense official told VOA. "As you learn something from one, you can get follow-ons that lead to another."

'Aha moment'

The targeting force in Iraq was formed after a successful raid last year in which a U.S. Delta force crossed into Syria and killed IS commander Abu Sayyaf. The commander's wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured during the raid.

Umm Sayyaf's interrogation provided the U.S. with valuable information about IS leadership organization, according to officials. It also provided information about Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old American aid worker whom the Sayyafs allegedly held prisoner in their home.

Umm Sayyaf eventually was turned over to Iraqi authorities.

A defense official told VOA the Abu Sayyaf raid led to an 'aha moment' for the Pentagon.

'There was this recognition afterward that leaving a pile of smoking rubble might not always be the best way to go. If you're willing to take a little risk and raid, then you can get information that is very valuable,' the official said.

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department charged Umm Sayyaf for her alleged role in Kayla Mueller's death in February 2015.

U.S. officials say Mueller was subjected to repeated sexual abuse by IS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during her captivity.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Bin Laden Predicted 'Islamic State' Would Fail

by Ken Bredemeier, Jeff Seldin March 01, 2016

Osama bin Laden predicted the demise of the Islamic State (IS), warning before his death that any effort by jihadists to declare a caliphate before defeating the West would be doomed to fail.

The insight is one of several emerging from 113 newly declassified documents, part of a trove found by U.S. Navy SEALs during the 2011 raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the al Qaida leader was killed.

Written in Arabic and translated by U.S. intelligence, the notes and letters portray a hands-on administrator who had grown increasingly paranoid while struggling to keep the terror organization he founded from falling apart.

"The movement is nothing like unified. It disagrees with itself all the time," a senior U.S. intelligence official said of the documents, most of which date from 2009 to 2011. "You got to see the mess it was behind the scenes."

Schism

One of the biggest struggles was the growing schism between al Qaida's central leadership and that of al Qaida in Iraq (AQI), the forerunner to the IS terror group, which was already expressing the strong desire to declare the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate before defeating the U.S. and the West.

"Bin Laden argues not only is it illegitimate to do it this way but if it's done in this order it will fail," the official said.

"We should realize by now that in order to establish an Islamic State, we should destroy the international infidels because they are against an Islamic State no matter how little it is," bin Laden wrote in a letter addressed to Abu Basir, an alias for Nasir al Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Bin Laden also expresses more practical concerns about setting the necessary conditions for a successful Islamist state, especially given AQI's penchant for using extreme brutality while failing to avoid attacks on fellow Muslims.

"It would fail because it had not earned popular support," the official added. "He's very critical of AQI attacking locals."

Another senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the declassified documents said bin Laden and other core al Qaida officials also had practical concerns about long-term sustainability.

"They were very strident about not declaring an Islamic state, particularly if you could not hold territory and provide for people," the official said.

Among other concerns was whether mujahideen could "bear the burden of running a country," the officials said, adding bin Laden had come to the conclusion that they could not.

And while bin Laden clearly foresaw a time when there would be an Islamic caliphate, his letters and notes provide little to indicate he saw himself playing a vital role.

"Bin Laden never made reference to or indicated at any point that he would lead anything once this was over," a senior intelligence official said. "He saw himself as a visionary."

Paranoia

The documents released Tuesday also show Osama bin Laden had become increasingly paranoid and restless while in hiding in Pakistan.

In one instance, bin Laden, writing under the pseudonym Abu Abdallah, worried the U.S. might have followed his wife's visit to a dentist in Iran, and possibly implanted a tracking chip in a filling.

'The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli,' he wrote. At the end of the note, he instructed: 'Please destroy this letter after reading it.'

In another instance, the al Qaida leader expressed concern that a tracking device might have been placed in a suitcase filled with cash in a ransom exchange for an Afghan prisoner who al-Qaida was holding.

'It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it,' bin Laden wrote in a letter to an aide identified only as 'Shaykh Mahmud.'

Worried about U.S. drones tracking al-Qaida activities, bin Laden told al-Qaida fighters they should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, 'except on a cloudy overcast day.'

Losing touch

An undated, unsigned document admitted that al-Qaida had executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to realize later they were probably innocent. 'I did not mention this to justify what has happened,' the writer said, adding, 'We are in an intelligence battle, and humans are humans and no one is infallible.'

It also appears that despite bin Laden's hands-on management style, he was also increasingly out of touch "with his organization's capabilities" according to senior intelligence officials, even looking for pilots to carry out more attacks like the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed more than 3,000 people.

At the time, officials say, al Qaida was struggling to house and feed recruits, and even to get them into the fight.

U.S. intelligence officials say one of the oldest documents released Tuesday was a hand-written will, dating to the time when the al Qaida founder lived in Sudan, between 1991 and 1996.

In it, he claims to have about $29 million in personal wealth, most of which he wanted spent 'on jihad, for the sake of Allah.'

The U.S. intelligence community released a first set of 103 declassified documents, as well as a list of English-language books that the terror mastermind had at his compound, in May 2015.

Officials say they plan to disclose still more documents later this year.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Afghanistan Welcomes Chinese Anti-terror Proposal

by Ibrahim Nasar, Jafar Haand March 01, 2016

China's military chief General Fang Fenghui is in the Afghan capital, Kabul, talking to the Afghan leadership about a four-nation regional alliance against terrorism.

China's proposed anti-terror plan includes China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The three countries in the proposed alliance share borders with the western regions of China, where anti-Beijing sentiment is prevalent in the Muslim Uighur ethnic group.

The Turkic ethnic group living in Xinjiang province has been looking since the early 1990s for greater political and religious autonomy. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan to some extent have been plagued by religious militancy for decades.

Chinese Uighurs are believed to be operating inside China from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas.

Speaking to VOA, Sayed Zafar Hashemi  deputy spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani  said the Chinese military chief asked for Afghanistan's participation in the Chinese-proposed anti-terrorism mechanism with Pakistan and Tajikistan. 'President Ghani has endorsed the proposal,' he said.

Hashemi added that Ghani told Fang that no distinction should be made between 'good and bad terrorists.'

Afghanistan has long accused Pakistan of targeting only those who are involved in terrorist activities inside Pakistan, and turning a blind eye to those operating out of Pakistan and fighting inside Afghanistan.

Pakistan denies these claims and points to terrorism activities with alleged roots to groups inside Afghanistan.

US reaction

In response to a question by VOA, a spokesperson for the State Department said the United States would support any role that China or other nations can play in bringing long-term stability to Afghanistan.

'China's a neighbor, and they have an interest in a strong, stable, terrorism-free Afghanistan," the spokesperson said. "And so we certainly  I mean, I'm not in a position to comment specifically about this proposal, since, as I understand it, it's just recently been set forth. And I understand President Ghani had some positive things to say about it. Again, we'd welcome any effort by the international community and members of the international community that would lead to a strong, prosperous, stable Afghanistan in the future. '

New mechanism

Not many details have been revealed about the new anti-terrorism mechanism.

The four countries are concerned about the existence and spread of terrorism in the region. The concerns are further exacerbated by the withdrawal of international combat forces from Afghanistan.

Afghan political analyst Matiullah Abbasin sees the security situation in the Chinese province of Xinjiang as the main reason behind China's push for a regional anti-terror alliance.

'Taliban is not the only concern in Afghanistan. We [also] have ISIS, and their target is Central Asia," Abbasin said, using an acronym for Islamic State. "This worries China, and that's the reason they are trying to combat terrorism at the regional level.'

Peace negotiations with Afghan insurgent groups are expected to resume sometime this week in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. The U.S., China, Afghanistan and Pakistan are part of the peace negotiations.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Suicide Attack Targets India's Consulate In Eastern Afghanistan

March 02, 2016

by RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan

A suicide attack targeted India's diplomatic compound in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on March 2, with explosions and gunfire rattling the diplomatic district.

RFE/RL's correspondent in Jalalabad reports that a suicide car bomber detonated an explosives-filled vehicle outside the entrance gates of the Indian consulate compound at about noon (local time) on March 2.

Smaller explosions and gunfire followed as other militants attempted to storm into the compound after the initial blast.

RFE/RL's correspondent reported seeing the bodies of four dead gunmen on the ground outside the compound walls after their battle with security forces ended.

Authorities said later that five gunmen and the suicide car bomber were killed.

They said two civilians were killed in the violence and 19 were injured.

In New Delhi, India's Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said the 'consulate has been targeted but everyone is safe' within the compound, which is in a neighborhood that also includes diplomatic offices of other countries.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but both the Taliban and rival Islamic State (IS) militants have a strong presence in the area.

In fact, IS militants have had a growing presence in Nangarhar Province during the past year and are challenging the Taliban there.

The diplomatic quarter in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar Province, has been repeatedly attacked in recent months.

In January, IS militants claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Pakistan's consulate in Jalalabad -- the first major IS attack in the city.

India helped overthrow the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and is the largest regional provider of humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Afghanistan.

But New Delhi's presence in Afghanistan has irked Islamabad, which has previously alleged that India's intelligence agency works undercover in the country to undermine Pakistan.

India's embassy in Kabul was targeted by a suicide car bomber in July 2008 in an attack that killed 58 people.

U.S. intelligence officials suggested Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency played a role in the attack  an allegation that Islamabad strongly denies.

The March 2 attack in Jalalabad came as U.S. Army General John Nicholson formally took over command of NATO-led coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Nicholson replaced the outgoing General John Campbell, who told reporters in Kabul that there 'is still much work to be done' in Afghanistan.

Campbell said Afghan security forces have 'come far, but they still need' NATO's help.

Delegates from Afghanistan, China, the United States, and Pakistan said after meeting in Kabul last week that direct peace talks between the Taliban and the government in Kabul were expected to start in Islamabad during the first week of March.

But since that announcement, Taliban militants have increased their attacks across Afghanistan -- prompting President Ashraf Ghani to say that his government would not negotiate with extremists who kill innocent Afghan civilians.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/afghanistan-jalalabad- indian-consulate-suicide-attack/27584637.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






UNSC Sanctions on N. Korean Do Not Target Kim Jong Un  White House

Sputnik News

21:50 02.03.2016(updated 21:52 02.03.2016)

The latest UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions against Pyongyang do not target North Korean leader Kim Jong-u n personally, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, the UNSC unanimously adopted the resolution expanding sanctions against North Korea.

'My understanding is that based on the sanctions that have been put in place, they are not sanctions that target him [Kim Jong Un] personally,' Earnest stated when asked whether the new sanctions would target the North Korean leader.

The sanctions imposed by the resolution are slated to affect multiple sectors of North Korea's economy, make all cargo going to and from the country subject to inspection and limit or prohibit the nation's export of coal, iron, gold, titanium and rare natural minerals. The resolution also bans conventional arms sale as well as delivery of aviation and rocket fuel to Pyongyang.

On January 6, North Korea said it had successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test, which triggered a wave of condemnation from the international community. On February 7, Pyongyang conducted its fourth nuclear test, and launched a ballistic missile in February in violation of the Security Council resolutions.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






DPR Korea: Ban welcomes Security Council measure tightening and expanding sanctions

2 March 2016  The United Nations Security Council today unanimously adopted a resolution that imposes new sanctions and tightens some of its existing measures against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), due to the country's ongoing nuclear and ballistic missile-related activities that "threaten international peace and security."

"Today's unanimous action by the Security Council has sent a clear message that the DPRK must return to full compliance with its international obligations," said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a statement issued by his spokesperson, in which the UN chief urged the East Asian country to abide by the resolution and called upon all UN Member States to ensure its implementation.

"This firm response by the Security Council should put an end to the cycle of provocation and lead to the resumption of dialogue in accordance with the unified view of the international community," he added.

The Secretary-General also reiterated the critical role of international assistance in safeguarding the lives of millions in the country, while renewing his call on the DPRK to do more for the lives of its people. "Genuine improvement in human rights is a necessary basis for long-term security and stability," he stressed.

In the resolution, which was sponsored by the United States, the 15-member body condemned "in the strongest terms" the nuclear test conducted by the DPRK on 6 January, noting that it was "in violation and flagrant disregard" of the Council's prior resolutions. It further condemned the country's launch of 7 February, which used ballistic missile technology and was a "serious violation."

As a result of such incidents, the new measure expands sanctions against the DPRK by imposing a ban on all exports including coal, iron, iron ore, gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth metals, and banning the supply of all types of aviation fuel, including rocket fuel.

The new resolution also requires States to inspect all cargo to and from the DPRK, not just those suspected of containing prohibited items, as was previously the case. It also bans leasing or chartering of vessels or airplanes and providing crew services to the country, and registering vessels, while calling on States to de-register any DPRK owned or controlled vessels. Additionally, it decides that States shall ban any flights and deny entry into their ports of any vessel suspected of carrying prohibited items.

Regarding financial sanctions, the resolution broadens their scope by imposing an asset freeze on all funds and other economic resources owned or controlled by the DPRK government or by the Worker's Party of Korea, if found to be associated with its nuclear or ballistic missile programme or any other prohibited activities.

An additional 13 individuals are designated in the resolution as subject to the travel ban and asset freeze, including several representatives of the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation and the Tanchon Commercial Bank. It designates 12 new entities as subject to the asset freeze, including the Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Reconnaissance Energy Bureau, described as the DPRK's premiere intelligence organization.

The text also tightens existing financial restrictions by banning the opening and operation of any offices of DPRK banks abroad, as well as the opening of new offices of foreign financial institutions in the DPRK under all circumstances, unless approved by the Sanctions Committee in advance.

Turning to the arms embargo, which has been in effect since 2006, the resolution broadens its scope to include small arms and light weapons, which had previously been excluded. It includes a provision that imposes a ban on the transfer of any item, except food and medicine, if a State has reason to believe that it can contribute to the development and capabilities of the DPRK's armed forces.

Finally, the 19-page text underlines several times that measures imposed by it are not intended to have negative effects on the country's citizens. "Measures imposed [] and this resolution are not intended to have adverse humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of the DPRK or to affect negatively those activities, including economic activities and cooperation."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Iran's Future Leadership: Not Just Up To 'Experts'

by Cecily Hilleary March 01, 2016

The issue of succession to the supreme leadership is generally a taboo subject in Iran. It probably would not have been discussed at all in recent weeks if the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hadn't alluded to his inevitable demise in a speech last September.

Now that voters have selected a new Assembly of Experts, the topic is very much on minds both inside and outside of Iran. Comprising 88 clerics tasked with naming, monitoring and possibly even dismissing Supreme Leaders, the new assembly may be called on to name Iran's next leader.

Election results issued Monday stunned Iran's ruling elite: The first 30 seats went to reformists and moderates. Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani won the top seat, and President Hassan Rouhani the third highest.

Adding insult to injury for the establishment, two prominent conservative clerics lost their seats altogether, and the current head of the Guardian Council, the man who barred thousands of mainly reformist candidates from running in last week's elections, made it onto the assembly by the skin of his teeth only, finishing last place among Tehran's 16 representatives.

"I think that once you put these factors together, it sort of communicates to the Supreme Leader where the public stands on a lot of these issues," said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Chair and Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. "So I would say the significance of it really is as a wakeup call at this point -- but not necessarily something radical in terms of how the next leader will be selected."

Iranian king-making

Deciding the most powerful man in Iran is still a somewhat untested process. Khamenei assumed office in 1989 on the recommendation of his successor, the founder of the Islamic Republic, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Iran's constitution tasks the assembly with selecting a new leader who is grounded in Islamic theology and jurisprudence, politics and social issues and possesses "prudence, courage, administrative facilities and adequate capability for leadership."

In case of a tie, the assembly should select the man with more legal and political expertise.

It's not a decision the assembly is likely to make in a vacuum; Khamenei could handpick his own successor.

"And because so many of the sitting members of the assembly are his 'boys,' his personal representatives, we might say it's a fait accompli," Boroujerdi said.

Other influential groups could have a say in matters, said lawyer, political analyst and commentator Saam Borhani. "One is the Revolutionary Guard. The other is business interests, which we don't really hear about that much."

Iran's traditional business class represents a power base itself that is mostly friendly to the technocrats and moderate conservatives aligned with Rafsanjani and Rouhani, he explained.

"These groups, along with the reformists, have loudly complained about military overreach in the economy and they are an important factor in Iranian politics,' he said.

Analysts agree it isn't likely a reformist will be named as supreme leader any time in the near future, as they have been banished from the system.

But that doesn't mean they don't still have influence.

Potential contenders

Originally, only the top-ranking religious clerics were eligible for supreme leadership, but in 1989, Khomeini appointed a review council who amended the constitution to accommodate his choice for successor, Khamenei. While many clerics meet the position's qualifications, a few names stand out:

Grand Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the former head of the judiciary, Iraqi born, considered to be a moderate conservative that could appeal to both the left and right in Iran. However, because he was born in Iraq, analysts say he may not be eligible to lead.

'If I were a betting man, the current head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, is a good candidate," said Syracuse University's Boroujerdi, "in the sense that he is young, 56 years of age and smart. He has been very, very loyal to the Supreme Leader, functioning as his 'pack dog' in many ways."

Larjani is a member of a politically-prominent family; his brother is speaker of the parliament, and he is married to the daughter of a heavyweight Grand Ayatollah.

There has been talk that either reformist Hassan Khomeini, the founder's grandson who was disqualified from running in last week's vote, or Khamenei's own son Mojtaba could qualify for the job.

"But I wouldn't put too much stock into him," said Borhani.

After all, he added, the whole point of the Islamic revolution was to oust a dynasty.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






US Intel: Iran Likely to Develop More Lethal Missiles With Sanctions Easing

Sputnik News

21:43 02.03.2016

Iran is expected to accelerate its ballistic missile development with the end of most sanctions, by producing rockets with greater range and accuracy, US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart told the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  Moreover, Stewart explained that past sanctions have done little to slow Iran's missile program.

'As we lift sanctions, in fact, there's increasing likelihood that they will find ways to improve lethality, mobility, range of all their missile systems,' Stewart said.

'Our sanctions in the past have not kept the Iranians from developing the most sophisticated ballistic missile capability in the region, capable of reaching all of their potential adversaries, capable of reaching into Europe,' he pointed out.

Oil and financial sanctions against Iran were lifted by the United States and Europe on January 16 after Tehran met its obligations under a July agreement to keep a peaceful nature of its nuclear program.

However, a series of Iranian missile tests as Western nations prepared to end those sanctions prompted the United States to impose new penalties, mainly targeting individuals and companies responsible for upgrading Iran's missiles.

 Sputnik

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Pakistan army chief makes surprise visit to Kabul

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Islamabad, March 2, IRNA -- Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif on Wednesday made a surprise visit to Kabul and reiterated support for the Afghan reconciliation process, a military statement said.

The visit came at a time when US Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Joseph Dunford is also in Kabul.

"Pakistan army chief reiterated whole hearted support to Afghan leadership for peace and stability in Afghanistan," head of the military's media wing Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said on Twitter.

General Raheel Sharif discussed regional security and border management in meetings with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, United States (US) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Gen Joseph Dunford, Gen Lloyd J. Austin Commander US Central Command (Centcom) and Resolute Support Mission Commander Gen Nicholson.

The meetings focused on checking cross-border movement of terrorists and coordination regarding the Pakistan Army's Shawal offensive.

Pakistan army chief reiterated his country's support to the Afghan leadership. President Ghani also acknowledged the Pakistan Army's efforts and achievements in the war against terrorism and its role in regional stability and peace.

General Raheel was on his way back to Pakistan after a day-long visit to Tajikistan, where he met with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon and discussed challenges regarding fighting terrorism and the Afghan peace process.

*272*1723**1312

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Syria: UN-mediated peace talks to resume on 9 March

1 March 2016  The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, today announced that intra-Syrian peace talks he has been mediating in Geneva will resume next Wednesday, 9 March.

According to a press statement from Mr. de Mistura's Office, while 7 March had initially been set as the target date, the Special Envoy will now resume the talks two days later, allowing "adequate time to address logistical and practical matters."

Mr. de Mistura had been mediating the Geneva-based talks, which officially kicked off last month, but on 3 February called for a pause following differences between Government and opposition delegations on the priority of humanitarian issues.

The announcement of the resumption of the intra-Syrian talks comes just days after the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the joint statement announced last week by United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, as co-chairs of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) Ceasefire Taskforce, on the terms of a nationwide cessation of hostilities, which has been in effect since Saturday, 27 February.

Adopting a resolution, the Council also demanded that all parties involved in the cessation of hostilities fulfil their commitments, and urged all Member States, especially ISSG members  the Arab League, the European Union, the United Nations, and 17 countries, including the United States and Russia, who have been seeking a path forward for several months  to use their influence with the parties to ensure fulfilment of those commitments and support efforts "to create conditions for a durable and lasting ceasefire."

The Council also demanded the "full and immediate" implementation of its resolution 2254 (2015) to facilitate a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition in order to end the conflict, stressing once again that the nation's people "will decide the future of Syria." That text, unanimously adopted in December, gave the UN an enhanced role in shepherding the opposing sides to talks for a political transition, endorsing a timetable for a ceasefire, a new constitution and elections.

Today, the statement from Mr. de Mistura's Office said that he is looking forward to Syrian participants' engagement in serious discussions with a view to implementing resolution 2254 (2015).

Earlier today, as part of his official visit to Geneva, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon inaugurated the newly renovated Russian Salon at the Palais des Nations, at an event attended by Foreign Minister Lavrov. After the event, Mr. Ban held a meeting and the two agreed on the importance of urgently moving forward simultaneously on implementing the cessation of hostilities agreement, providing vital humanitarian assistance to civilians, and returning to political negotiations.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Over 200 killed in Kurds-Daesh clashes on Turkey-Syria border

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 6:42PM

Fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) have clashed with the Takfiri Daesh terrorists near the Turkish border over the weekend, leaving a total of 206 people dead, among them civilians.

YPG official Redur Xelil said on Wednesday that 43 of the group's members lost their lives during the battle, which began on Saturday and ended on Monday, in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad.

The YPG have 140 bodies of Daesh elements killed in the fighting, with the Kurdish forces keeping control of the town, Xelil added.

The official said the Tal Abyad confrontation claimed the lives of 23 civilians as well.

The YPG, which is nearly in control of Syria's entire northern border with Turkey, has been fighting against Daesh. The Kurdish fighters liberated Tal Abyad from the grips of Daesh last year.

Angered by the rapid advance of Syrian Kurdish fighters in areas near the Turkish frontier, Ankara shelled their positions inside Syria last month.

Ankara fears further expansion by the YPG will foment what it calls separatist sentiment among Turkish Kurds.

The Turkish government regards the YPG and its affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as allies of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months. However, activists argue that clashes have led to the death of civilians and inflicted major damage to the buildings and infrastructure in the southeastern region of the country.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Syria truce violated 31 times in three days: Russia

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 2:8PM

Russia has announced that a truce it engineered with the United States for Syria has been violated on numerous occasions after it took effect.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that the ceasefire agreement in Syria has been violated 31 times over the past three days.

Zakharova did not specify which side of the conflict in Syria had broken the truce reached last week and agreed by the Syrian government and some militant groups.

The Russian official, who was speaking at her weekly briefing, said Moscow has informed a Jordan-based US group responsible for truce monitoring of the violations.

The tentative truce, which officially began on February 27, is generally holding across Syria although both the government and its opponents have reported minor breaches.

Zakharova denied speculation that the truce in Syria will only last for two weeks.

"This is untrue. We draw your attention to the fact that we're not talking about a two-week timeframe for the cessation of hostilities, but the truce will not be limited in time," she said, adding that reaching an agreement on truce has cost Moscow and other sides "lots of efforts."

Zakharova once more warned the US about its obligations under the truce agreement in Syria. She said speaking about the potential failure of the ceasefire and the so-called alternative solutions could have serious consequences for Syria, including the disintegration of the Arab country.

"We hope that all statements made by senior officials in Washington on some sort of a 'plan B', or any other alternative for Syria  remain just words," Zakharova said, adding, "We call on our US partners to adhere to their obligations."

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Russia, Syria Said Using Migrant Crisis As 'Weapon' Against West

March 02, 2016

by RFE/RL

NATO's top commander warned that Russia and Syria have turned the refugee crisis into a 'weapon' against the West at a time when it lacks resources to counter a 'resurgent, aggressive' Russia.

U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who commands the 28-member military alliance, said the flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants from war-torn Syria into Europe has had a destabilizing effect throughout Europe, from the Balkans to Scandinavia, and that has worked to Moscow's advantage.

'Together, Russia and [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve,' Breedlove told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Breedlove said Moscow and Damascus are deliberately fueling the mass displacement of Syrians, including through Russia's indiscriminate bombing of opposition targets and the Syrian leader's use of barrel bombs in civilian areas.

'These indiscriminate weapons used by both Bashar al-Assad, and the non-precision use of weapons by the Russian forces, I can't find any other reason for them other than to cause refugees to be on the move and make them someone else's problem,' said Breedlove, who is also the commander of U.S. troops in Europe.

'This is putting great pressure on the nations of Europe,' he said.

The massive flow of refugees is also bringing with it potential Trojan horses in the form of criminals and terrorists -- some of them Europeans who got training in Syria and may be planning attacks on the West, he said.

'This criminality, the terrorists, and the returning foreign fighters are clearly a daily part of the refugee flow in Europe,' Breedlove said.

The Islamic State group is 'spreading like a cancer' within the flow of migrants, 'taking advantage of paths of least resistance, threatening European nations,' he said.

In addition to the dangers posed by terrorists, Breedlove warned that opposition to the large influx of migrants among nationalists in Europe could lead to violence.

NATO last month got involved in the refugee crisis for the first time through a new mission to patrol the Aegean Sea and stop people smugglers who have been ferrying migrants from Turkey to Greece.

The four-star general reaffirmed the assessment of other Pentagon top brass that Russia poses a growing threat to the United States itself.

'Russia has chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies and partners,' Breedlove said.

'Russia is eager to exert unquestioned influence over its neighboring states in its buffer zone... so has used military force to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia, and others, like Moldova.'

He said the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the last week had gotten reports of 450 attacks along the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists are fighting with government forces.

'The report from the ambassador is there are several disturbing trends in those attacks, and that is that some of them are now happening in places that were heretofore quiet,' Breedlove said.

He said Russia has put 'well above' 1,000 pieces of military hardware into Ukraine in the past year, including armored personnel carriers and artillery.

Breedlove said Russia has been increasingly aggressive in the Arctic as well, militarizing the region. It has been testing sophisticated submarines in the Atlantic between Britain, Iceland, and Greenland, he said.

Breedlove was in Washington partly to lobby for support for a proposed sharp increase in money available to U.S. forces in Europe to counter the Russian threat.

U.S. President Barack Obama proposed quadrupling the coming year's budget to $3.4 billion to carry out NATO's European Reassurance Initiative.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-syria- said-using-migrant-crisis-as-weapon- against-nato-west-breedlove/27584179.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






HDP lawmakers collaborating with terrorists: Davutoglu

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 4:33PM

Turkey's prime minister has once again lashed out at the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), accusing its lawmakers of working with 'terrorists.'

Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday that members of the opposition HDP, the third-biggest party in the Turkish parliament, have sought to drag the country into chaos.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports legal action against members of the HDP. He has already called for the removal of the immunity of Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, the two leaders of the HDP over their recent calls for autonomy.

He also accuses the HDP of backing the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s and is branded as a terrorist organization in Turkey. The pro-Kurdish party, however, denies the accusation of being an extension of the PKK.

Back in February, Demirtas said in an interview with the Greek Efimerida Ton Syntakton newspaper that the Turkish army is cooperating with two extremist groups in Syria and is protecting militants as well as al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front Takfiri group operating inside the Arab country.

Ankara is accused of actively training and arming Takfiri elements and buying smuggled oil from territories held by Daesh terrorist group in Syria.

Elsewhere in his comments, Davutoglu said Ankara is planning to make it easier for civilians to leave areas under curfew in the country's mainly Kurdish southeast, which has been the scene of deadly clashes between the army and PKK militants over the past several months.

Authorities say the curfew is in place to help them root out PKK militants. However, activists argue that clashes have led to the death of civilians and inflicted major damage to the area's historic mosques and other buildings.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the group in northern Iraq.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, prompting the Turkish military operations.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Pentagon approves contract to sell smart bombs to Turkey

Iran Press TV

Wed Mar 2, 2016 2:2AM

The Pentagon has signed a deal to sell nearly $700 million worth of smart bombs to Turkey as tensions are escalating between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq.

The sale, announced on Tuesday, comes at a crucial time for Turkey's military, which continues to be heavily embroiled in attacking the Kurds in the volatile northern part of Iraq.

"The deal came timely, as we are deeply engaged in asymmetrical warfare and need smart bombs," a Turkish military official said.

The Pentagon granted the contract to Ellwood National Forge and General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems for the sale of BLU-109 bunker busting bomb bodies and components, the first reported sale of such bombs to Turkey.

Ankara expects the transaction to be completed by 2020.

Based on reports, BLU-109 bombs have been in the Pentagon's inventory since 1985 and are said to have been used on militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bomb contains 550 pounds of high explosive Tritonal, a combination of 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder. The BLU-109's tail fuse delays the bomb's detonation until the bomb has penetrated the targeted bunker, ensuring complete destruction.

This is while Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the Kurds in its southern border region in the past months. Activists argue that clashes have led to the death of civilians and inflicted major damage to the buildings and infrastructure in the southeastern region of the country.

Since late July 2015, Turkey's southeastern regions have witnessed a spike in violence amid heavy confrontations between army forces and the PKK, an outlawed group that have been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since 1980s.

Ankara's military has also been involved in an offensive against positions of the Kurdish group in neighboring Iraq.

The development came at a time that Syria was experiencing a shaky ceasefire backed by the US and Russia.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Ukraine Raises Electricity Rates For Households

March 01, 2016

by Tony Wesolowsky and Olha Komarova

Viktoria Sydorenko makes do with just one light bulb instead of five to light her apartment in the Ukrainian city of Odesa on the Black Sea.

'I used to use at least two for normal lighting,' Sydorenko told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.

She and millions of other Ukrainians are thinking twice these days about when to flick the switch and when not to.

That's because the country's electricity regulator has just hit them all with a 25 percent rate hike effective March. And it won't stop there. Another rate increase is due in September.

For more than 10 ten years, electricity rates for consumers hardly changed, and costs for power generation and distribution were passed on to industry, small businesses, and government agencies, Vasyl Kotko, the chairman of Ukraine's National Energy Regulatory Commission (NERC), explained to RFE/RL.

Echoing what experts have said in the past, Kotko said that high energy prices have made Ukrainian businesses uncompetitive, while low prices have given consumers little reason to save power.

When it comes to wasting energy, Ukraine is literally at the top of the global charts. The country's energy intensity -- the ratio of energy used relative to economic output -- is twice that of Russia and 10 times that of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average. According to the UN, there is no country in the world more energy intensive than Ukraine.

'We are a very poor country that is using energy at much higher rates than other Europeans,' said Kotko.

Showdown With Moscow

And energy also looms large in Kyiv's showdown with Moscow. Russia has cut supplies to Ukraine several times in the past over disputes over pricing. To free itself of Russia's energy grip, Kyiv is not only looking for resources abroad, but at ways to save at home.

In 2014, Carl Bildt, then Sweden's foreign minister, said: 'If Ukraine improved its energy efficiency to reasonably EU levels, I doubt it would need to import any gas at all.'

Some experts say energy conservation makes more sense for Kyiv than increasing energy supplies  particularly supplies of natural gas, which account for about 40 percent of Ukraine's energy pie.

'The same as in Russia, it would be cheaper to work on efficiency than on additional gas production. Bearing in mind that there is huge potential for efficiency in housing, that's the way to go first,' explains Christian Cleutinx, a senior associate fellow at the Clingendael International Energy Program in The Hague.

The rate hikes, however, come at a time when Ukraine is facing its most serious challenges since achieving independence in 1991. The conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the southeast forced more than 1 million people to leave their homes.

According to the UN Development Program, the relative poverty rate in Ukraine is 24.3 percent. Some 5.5 million Ukrainians now qualify to receive state subsidies to pay utility bills, according to Ukraine's Ministry for Social Policy.

'For those families receiving subsidies, they will not be affected by the rate increases, whether they are 10, 20, or 30 percent. They will continue to pay a fixed rate, and all increases will be covered by the state budget,' Vitaliy Muzhychenko, an official at the ministry.

But for people like Viktoria Sydorenko, who are struggling as it is, the rate hike couldn't come at a worse time.

Sydorenko said she was already paying about $100 a month during the winter since she was forced to switch to a boiler after Odesa halted centralized hot water in 2014.

'I tried to lower the temperature of the boiler; tried turning if off after it warms up. That didn't help. It ended up running for a longer time than when I had it switched on all the time,' Sydorenko lamented.

But she and the rest of the country of some 44 million will have to get used to higher energy prices.

Kotko said the energy regulator plans to gradually raise rates until they meet market levels, still a ways off.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-raises- electricty-rates-household/27583618.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.

NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address






Icelandic English

Today, Marel announces changes in its Executive Team, organizational structure, and corporate identity. The changes will simplify and clarify the market approach and position Marel for future growth and success.

Marel is the leading global provider of advanced processing systems and services to the poultry, meat and fish industries. Marel management is redefining how it views and manages the business and serves the customer needs and will from now on report sales and operational results in poultry, meat and fish industries. Further Processing will operate as a business unit within Marel that works across all aforementioned industries. Marel Poultry, Marel Meat and Marel Fish will focus on standard solutions as well as full line offering throughout the process from primary, secondary, and further processing.

Marel has a commercially strong product portfolio stemming from its continuous focus on innovation and strategic acquisitions. Marel has enjoyed success and growth in primary and secondary processing and will now seize to capture growth in the further processing of poultry, meat and fish. This is in line with Marels strategy of being full line provider and with its vision to partner with customers to transform the way food is produced in a sustainable way. Unity, Innovation and Excellence are Marels values. Poultry, Meat and Fish are united under common Marel brand, with one Marel logo, tag line and a redefined vision and set of values.

The following changes have been made to Marels Executive Team:

Meat: Remko Rosman, CEO of MPS meat processing system, which was acquired by Marel in January, will join the Executive Team as the new Managing Director of Marel Meat. Decisive steps will be taken in integration of the two companies to strengthen the market approach and utilize full potentials of being full line provider. A migration plan is in place to fully merge the branding of the two companies under the Marel brand and logo. This will be finalized in January 2017.

Further Processing: David Wilson, former Managing Director of Marel Meat will lead Marels activities in further processing as Managing Director. Marel announced, with its full-year 2015 annual results, that operational results were unacceptable in Further Processing and streamlining and step up in investments in innovation were needed to strengthen the position in that part of the value chain. David Wilson has lead transformation of Marel meat in recent years with good success and established Marel as key player in the secondary processing of meat that will now be integrated with MPS, the global leader in primary processing of meat. Gerrit den Bok who has been in charge of Marels Further Processing industry is leaving Marel.

Commercial:Commercial function works across all industries and leads the Regional Management, Service and Product management in Marel. To simplify its structure it has been decided to combine roles and responsibilities within Commercials management. Petur Gudjonsson will now lead Commercial and Sigsteinn P. Gretarson, EVP Commercial is leaving the company.

Arni Oddur orarson, CEO of Marel:

Marel has enjoyed good growth and success in recent years. We live in a dynamic world, where Marel is serving the basic consumption needs of the fast growing population. We are now streamlining the organization to serve better our customers needs.

I want to welcome Remko Rosman as the new Managing Director for Marel Meat and a new member of our Executive Team. I have high expectations of his leadership and experience which will undoubtedly benefit Marel.

We are delighted that David Wilson has agreed to lead the changes in further processing. David has a proven track record within Marel where he restored profitability in the Meat organization and was instrumental in the acquisition of MPS. There are significant growth opportunities in further processing and we will continue to focus on innovation and further investments to be able to harvest this opportunities, now under the leadership of David Wilson.

Petur Gudjonsson, has lead great transformation from former Global Sales and Service units into more industry focused approach around the globe. Marel is a global company with sales and service units in more than 30 countries and as EVP Commercial he will lead Regional management, product management and services.

I want to thank Gerrit den Bok and Sigsteinn P. Gretarsson for their long service and valuable contribution to Marel and wish them success in their future endeavors.

Marels Annual General Meeting will be held today, March 2, where the organizational changes will be presented in more detail.
A highway marker in front of the Sutherlin Mansion will be restored, thanks to the efforts of the city government and one member of city council.

The marker details the Sutherlin Mansions role as the last meeting place for the Confederate government during the closing days of the Civil War; its the reason some in Danville call the Sutherlin Mansion the Last Capitol of the Confederacy.

Seven months ago, we wrote about the highway sign: Time has taken a toll on the marker, and its starting to rust. It could use some attention.

Just a few feet away flies a Confederateflag that some local people have vowedto defendeven at the cost of a protractedlegal battle with the city government.We havent heard what those folks arewilling to do for the humble-yet-rustinghighway marker.

The flag came down a few days after that editorial was published, and in the seven months since we wrote those words, Danville has fought off a legal challenge from the flaggers who have, in turn, put Confederate flags on private property all over the Dan River Region.

Last year Danville was just one of many local and state governments that decided that the Civil War was over and it was time to put Confederate flags and other symbols of the Lost Cause in museums where they belong. The Confederate flag  and there are a lot of different kinds  has never been threatened. What has changed is that governments are getting out of the business of promoting the Confederacy.

Member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans can still have customized Virginia license plates, but the groups logo wont be on them. In Pittsylvania County Circuit Court, historic items from the Civil War have been removed so that the peoples courtroom doesnt try to double as a museum.

And in Danville, the only Confederate flag that was taken down was the one on city-owned property. Inside the museum, the Confederate flag is still on display. That hasnt changed, nor should it.

Last year was a tough one for local descendants of Confederate veterans, but it was tough because opportunities were missed. Restoring the highway marker was a project everyone could have supported.

As it turns out, it was Councilman Fred Shanks  who has supported the flaggers  that got the ball rolling on the marker restoration.

It had been pointed out to me that it was in horrible shape, Shanks said Monday. It looks horrible.

Shanks drives by the marker every day and he first heard about it during last summers Confederate flag debate. The marker restoration was the correct thing to do  no matter who suggested doing the work.
To the editor:

Pittsylvania County was recently visited by a kind of evil which rarely shows itself in our community, when Hargrave Military Academy received an alarming and disturbing threat to the safety and security of our campus, our cadets and our faculty and staff.

The first call we made upon receiving the threat was to Pittsylvania County Sheriff Mike Taylor. The response from Sheriff Taylor and his colleagues in the sheriffs office has been nothing short of phenomenal.

Sheriff Taylor and his team quickly began the process of analyzing the situation, but more importantly for Hargrave and the surrounding community, immediately implemented a plan to keep the campus and its surroundings safe. At the same time, Sheriff Taylors outreach to other state and federal law enforcement agencies ensured that the appropriate resources were brought to bear to contain the threat. Pittsylvania County Commonwealths Attorney Bryan Haskins, for example, cut short a meeting in Richmond to assist with the investigation and support the work of the sheriffs office.

It was very reassuring to us that so many different branches of law enforcement seamlessly came together so quickly to assess the situation, and then take action (visible and less public) to ensure the communitys safety. The kind of professionalism, collaboration and expertise that Sheriff Taylor and his associates brought to bear from the very beginning of this investigation is not found in every community every day. The sheriff and his law enforcement colleagues have been unbelievable partners as we all work to keep Hargrave and the surrounding community safe and bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice.

Thank you, Sheriff Taylor, for all that you and your team have done for Hargrave Military Academy during these very difficult last few days.

DOYLE D. BROOME JR.

Chatham
The House of Delegates voted Tuesday to reject Gov. Terry McAuliffes request to delay a bill allowing high-proof grain alcohol to be sold at state ABC stores.

The governor had asked for another year of review to study how the sale of Everclear and other 151-proof grain alcohol would impact college campuses. The Republican-controlled House rejected the request on a 31-63 vote.

Nine Democrats joined with Republicans to reject McAuliffes amendment, while six Republicans voted to accept it.

The bill allowing the sale of flavorless and colorless grain alcohol has passed the House and Senate by wide margins, but the rejection of the governors proposed amendment leaves McAuliffe with a decision either to accept or veto House Bill 143.

Well review it, McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said. The governors going to have to make a decision. But well have some time to do that.

Del. Barry D. Knight, R-Virginia Beach, said the objections to the bill were appearing late in the process, and he encouraged colleagues to reject the governors amendment.

There are 48 other states in the United States of America that have this product, said Knight, adding that all of the states that border Virginia allow it.

The governor had recommended having the state Commission on Youth study the issue and report back in the fall. McAuliffe also called for the legislature to vote on the bill again in 2017.

Opposition to the bill came mainly from higher education groups that deal with alcohol abuse.

House Minority Leader David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, said the state has heard testimony about alcohol fueling things that rise to criminal conduct and are inappropriate.

Its difficult to detect. And its powerful, Toscano said of flavorless grain alcohol. And it makes it easier to spike punches on a college campus. Thats why the governor weighed in, and thats why he thinks we should wait a little bit.

Knight said data show that 64 percent of customers who buy the product in other states are age 31 or older. Government-run ABC stores near college campuses could choose not to sell high-proof spirits.

Thats totally at their discretion, Knight said.

The legislation would allow for the sale of Everclear, but the operation of ABC stores is controlled by the Virginia ABC Board, which consists of three people appointed by the governor.

Luxco, the St. Louis-based manufacturer of Everclear, sought the legislation. In December, the company gave $5,500 to legislative political action committees for both parties.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 2, 2016 / Defiance Silver Corp. (TSXV: DEF) (OTC: DNCVF) ("Defiance") is pleased to report the results of a further three holes drilled at the San Acacio silver deposit. Drilling 550m southeast of the last 8 reported drill holes intercepted wide zones of mineralization in both the Veta Grande and Veta Chica veins. Results from these holes extend the known mineralization to 140m below the current resource (see News Release Dated January 15, 2015) with mineralization still open to depth and along strike.

Drill hole SAD15-10 intersected the San Acacio vein over a length of 11.95m. Three zones straddling two old mine workings returned; 2.1m grading 333.87 g/t AgEq, 5.5m grading 187.06 g/t AgEq, and 1.6m grading 99.55 g/t AgEq. Hole SAD15-09 intersected the San Acacio vein over a length of 7.65m that includes a 3.05m wide old working where it is believed the high-grade portion of the vein had been mined.

Both drill holes SAD15-09 and SAD15-10 intersected the hanging wall Veta Chica Vein. SAD15-09 returned 15.65m grading 68.76 g/t AgEq with a 4.85m section grading 128.71 g/t AgEq. SAD15-10 returned 1.6m grading 110.50 g/t AgEq.

The workings intersected in both holes SAD15-09 and SAD15-10, are believed to represent the higher grade portions of the 7.65m and 11.95m long intersections of the San Acacio vein that were historically mined.

Bruce Winfield, CEO of Defiance stated, "I am very encouraged by the drill results having again extended the high grade, wide zones of mineralization to 140m below the base of the current resource. These drill intersections demonstrated the robustness of the vein system as we move over 550m along strike. "

In all three holes, SAD15-09, SAD15-10, and SAD15-11, the vein intercepts were hosted within a zone defined by long intersections of 55.6m, 110.3m, and 136.4m respectively of a quartz pyrite breccia that is anomalous in silver, zinc and copper. This breccia represents a previously unrecognized hydrothermal event which may indicate a larger hydrothermal system at depth.

Results for holes SAD15-09 through SAD15-11 are provided in the following table:





Hole # From

(m) To

(m) Length

(m) Ag,

g/t Au,

g/t Cu,

% Pb,

% Zn,

% AgEq,

g/t* SAD15-09 221.00 224.05 3.05 Mine opening on Veta Chica SAD15-09 226.15 241.80 15.65 65.22 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.04 68.76 Including 226.15 231.00 4.85 118.32 0.02 0.07 0.01 0.04 128.71 SAD15-09 263.70 266.75 3.05 40.38 0.09 0.01 0.15 0.52 72.00 266.75 269.80 3.05 Mine Opening on Veta Grande 269.80 271.35 1.55 4.90 0.04 0.01 0.15 0.51 31.02 SAD15-10 282.70 284.30 1.60 100.03 0.11 0.01 0.01 0.03 110.50 SAD15-10** 331.50 343.45 11.95 Veta Grande vein Including 331.5 333.6 2.1 283.31 0.17 0.01 0.38 0.70 333.87 ** 333.60 335.65 2.05 Mine Opening on Veta Grande Including 335.65 341.15 5.5 96.65 0.26 0.03 0.61 1.34 187.06 ** 341.15 341.85 0.7 Mine Opening on Veta Grande Including 341.85 343.45 1.60 19.44 0.12 0.02 0.40 1.58 99.55 SAD15-11 283.50 285.00 1.50 136.03 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.06 142.73



*Reported for comparison only, with no assumptions regarding metal recovery or smelter payments. Prices used are Au: $1210.50/ounce, Ag: $16.33/ounce, Cu; $2.80/pound, Pb; $0.83/pound and Zn $0.95/pound. US dollars.

1 Gram = 0.03215074657 Troy ounce

** Grade not calculated because of no data for open mine workings

***True Widths are approximately 70% to 80% of each intersection

Exploration efforts are being conducted under the direct supervision of Rick Tschauder, B.Sc. Defiance's Vice President Exploration. President and CEO Bruce Winfield P.Geo, a qualified person as defined by NI 43-101, is responsible for the program and preparation of the above information.

A Panoramic Video on the San Acacio Deposit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEqtbHzMeYw) is available on our website, or Click Here to visit our Defiance YouTube Channel (http://www.defiancesilver.com/media/video). Defiance Silver Corp. is a silver explorer and developer advancing the San Acacio Deposit, located in the historic Zacatecas Silver District of central Mexico. Defiance is managed by a team of proven mine developers with a track record of exploring and developing 11 operating mines to date. Defiance's corporate mandate is to expand San Acacio to become one of Mexico's premier high grade wide vein silver deposits. For more information on the property or Defiance, please visit Defiance's website at www.DefianceSilver.com.

On behalf of Defiance Silver Corp.

"Bruce Winfield"

President and CEO

1610 - 409 Granville Street

Vancouver, BC V6C 1T2

Tel: 604-669-7315

www.defiancesilver.com

Email: info@defiancesilver.com

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.

SOURCE: Defiance Silver Corp.
Vancouver - Alta Vista Ventures Ltd. (Alta Vista or the Company) (AVV-CSE, YRLLF-OTC) reports that the March 1, 2016 deadline for the signing of the definitive agreement for the acquisition of RedeCan Pharm (see news release dated January 29, 2016) has passed, however the parties remain in communication.The Company also reports the following changes to management and the board of directors.George Smitherman is the Companys new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and will remain a director. As CEO Mr. Smitherman will have oversight on the operational aspects of Alta Vista. Mr. Smitherman had a long successful political career until 2010 when he returned to his pre-politics roots as an entrepreneur. He is the founder of three companies and is an advisor to several others. Most recently a candidate for the Mayor of Toronto, Mr. Smitherman has previously been elected three times as a Member of the Provincial Parliament where he served as Ontarios Deputy Premier, Health Minister, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure as well as many other roles. Over a career spanning almost 25 years Mr. Smitherman has been active in all three levels of government. Mr. Smithermans interest in Medical Marijuana started when he was Ontarios Health Minister. He has since become a vocal advocate of Medical Marijuana and the legalization of recreational marijuana nationally.Donald Shaxon has been appointed President of the Company and has also joined the board of directors. Mr. Shaxon brings with him 20 years of experience in the capital markets with 10 of those years working for public companies such as Cannabis Science, Lexaria, Aurora Cannabis and THC BioMeds. Mr. Shaxon is also the founder, partner and senior person in charge (S/PIC) of Thor Pharma a early stage MMPR application that Alta Vista has signed a definitive agreement to acquire. Mr. Shaxon was instrumental in bringing the fully licensed, MMPR opportunity, RedeCan Pharm to Alta VistaIn addition, Jason Springett has joined the board of directors. Mr. Springett has been associated with public companies since 2009. Mr. Springett received security clearance from Health Canada in 2015 and as such can work directly for a Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR) licensed producer. He has been growing marijuana under the Marijuana Medical Access Regulations (MMAR) program for five years.To accommodate these changes Ian Foreman has stepped down as president, CEO, and director and Ron Shenton and Edmundo Uribe have stepped down as directors.The purchase of Redecan Pharm is a critical step in Alta Vistas goal of becoming a significant player in Canadas medical marijuana marketplace. Under the terms of the LOI, subject to satisfactory due diligence and the signing of a definitive agreement, Alta Vista Ventures can purchase a 90% interest in RedeCan Pharm by paying $8,000,000 in cash and issuing a total of 9,000,000 shares over a one year term.In addition to the right to purchase RedeCan, Alta Vista has the right to purchase Thor Pharma, an early stage MMPR applicant that could add up to 75,000 square feet of growing space. Alta Vista cannot guarantee nor estimate the timing for the issuance of an MMPR license to Thor Pharma.As part of its ongoing efforts to expand in the sector Alta Vista continues to evaluate additional opportunities.On behalf of the Board,"Don Shaxon"Don Shaxon, PresidentFor information on Alta Vista Ventures, Thor Pharma and RedeCan please contact Don Shaxon at 289-697-8625.Neither Canadian Securities Exchange (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.Statements in this press release, other than purely historical information, including statements relating to the Companys future plans and objectives or expected results, may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions and are subject to all of the risks and uncertainties inherent in such statements. As a result, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
SUDBURY, ON, March 2, 2016 /CNW/ - Transition Metals Corp. (XTM  TSX.V) ("TMC" or "the Company"), is pleased to announce the formation of a new private subsidiary named Canadian Gold Miner Corp. ("Canadian Gold Miner"). The subsidiary was formed to acquire, advance and finance a large portfolio of high quality gold exploration projects situated along key breaks/faults in the southern Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Historical gold production within this region from camps including Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Val D'Or, and Malartic is estimated to exceed 170 million ounces from over 100 mines. Canadian Gold Miner has entered into agreements with the Company to acquire a 100% interest in an approximate 60 square kilometer portfolio of early stage gold exploration projects located along the Cadillac Larder and Ridout structures in the Larder lake Mining District of Ontario. In addition, Canadian Gold Miner has entered into discussions and agreements with third parties to further expand and consolidate its land holdings in the southern Abitibi Greenstone Belt.

Company CEO and President Scott McLean explained: "Transition Metals Corp. is taking advantage of the current down cycle in exploration by leveraging our investment and expertise in the southwest Abitibi to assemble a district scale portfolio of very prospective gold exploration projects in one of the world's premier and politically stable gold mining districts. We think now is the right time to consolidate quality gold exploration projects in the Abitibi. The formation of Canadian Gold Miner is consistent with the Project Generator business model that Transition Metals Corp. follows and is a proven mechanism to bring value to our shareholders while minimizing equity dilution in the parent."

Summary of Assignment Terms

Canadian Gold Miner has entered into a series of Purchase and Sale Agreements with Transition to acquire a 100% interest in five property groupings; West Matachewan, Jumping Moose, Elephant Head, Golden Elk and New Kirkland, totaling 5,952 hectares in consideration of 15 million common shares of Canadian Gold Miner, with this stock representing an initial 100% of the issued common stock. In addition, Transition will retain a 2% Net Smelter Return Royalty (NSR) on all properties not already encumbered by underlying royalties, of which Canadian Gold Miner can buy back 1% by making a payment of $1.5 million to Transition at any point up until a production decision. Transition is also entitled to receive a milestone payment of $1.0 million for each transferred property upon a production decision. The properties host a number of gold occurrences but have no defined reserves or resources. The locations of the properties included in the transactions are shown in Figure 1.

Canadian Gold Miner has also entered into a separate agreement with Kiska Metals Corp. (Kiska) to acquire a 100% interest in approximately 2,432 hectares located in Midlothian Township. The Midlothian property hosts an undrilled gold occurrence named after prospector Ruth Bjorkman discovered in 2013 that has returned assay values from grab samples up to 12.7 kilos gold per tonne (as stated in news releases issued by Laurion Mineral Exploration Inc. dated July 23 and August 7, 2013) and is located adjacent to the west along the Cadillac Larder break from Canadian Gold Miner's West Matachewan Property. Subject to the terms of the Kiska Agreement, Canadian Gold Miner may earn a 100% beneficial interest in and to the property subject to underlying agreements with Laurion Minerals Inc. by issuing 1,000,000 shares of Canadian Gold Miner upon signing, with an additional $200,000 worth of additional shares or units (as the case may be) upon the earlier of the first anniversary of the agreement, or CGM completing a minimum $2M financing. Additionally, Kiska retains the right to receive a $2.5M milestone payment within 6 months of Commercial Production from the property.

About Canadian Gold Miner Corp

Canadian Gold Miner Corp is a private controlled subsidiary of Transition Metals Corp. It was founded to acquire advance and finance a consolidated portfolio of high quality gold exploration projects in the prolific gold producing Abitibi Greenstone Belt. Canadian Gold Miner plans to pursue the acquisition of additional high quality early to advanced stage gold projects. Third parties with dormant gold exploration projects are encouraged to approach the Company to see if they might benefit from participating in the pool. Information about Canadian Gold Miner is available at www.transtionmetalscorp.com.

About Transition Metals Corp

Transition Metals Corp. (XTM -TSX.V) is a Canadian-based, multi-commodity project generator that specializes in converting new exploration ideas into Canadian discoveries. The award-winning team of geoscientists has extensive exploration experience in established, emerging and historic mining camps and actively develops and tests new ideas and techniques for discovering mineralization in places that others have not looked, which often allows the company to acquire properties inexpensively. The team applies a combination of traditional mapping and trenching field methodology with newer geophysical and geochemical techniques to help unearth compelling prospects and drill targets. The Company uses the project generator business model to acquire and advance multiple exploration projects simultaneously, thereby maximizing shareholder exposure to discovery and capital gain. Joint venture partners earn an interest in the projects by funding a portion of higher-risk drilling and exploration, allowing the Company to conserve capital and minimize shareholder's equity dilution. The Company has an expanding portfolio that currently includes high quality gold, copper, nickel and platinum projects primarily in Ontario, Nunavut and Saskatchewan.

Transition at the 2016 PDAC

Transition will be exhibiting in the PDAC Investor Exchange from Sunday March 6th to Wednesday March 9th at Booth 2344. As well, the Company will be showcasing core samples and drill sections from its Sunday Lake Platinum discovery located near Thunder Bay Ontario in the Core Shack, on Sunday March 6th and Monday March 7th at Booth 3108A.

Transition's private subsidiary, Sudbury Platinum Corporation will be providing an update on exploration progress advancing the Aer Kidd Project in the Investor Exchange at Booth 2623A on Sunday March 6th and Monday the 7th and will be exhibiting core samples and drill sections from its Aer Kidd Ni-Cu-PGM Project in the Core Shack on Tuesday March 8th and Wednesday March 9th at Booth 3118B.

Qualified Person

The technical elements of this press release have been approved by Mr. Greg Collins, P.Geo. (APGO), a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Information

Except for statements of historical fact contained herein, the information in this news release constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities law. Such forward-looking information may be identified by words such as "plans", "proposes", "estimates", "intends", "expects", "believes", "may", "will" and include without limitation, statements regarding estimated capital and operating costs, expected production timeline, benefits of updated development plans, foreign exchange assumptions and regulatory approvals. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from such statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, among others, metal prices, competition, risks inherent in the mining industry, and regulatory risks. Most of these factors are outside the control of the Company. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as otherwise required by applicable securities statutes or regulation, the Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

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.

SOURCE Transition Metals Corp.
From

(m) To

(m) Length

(m) Cu

% Zn

% Au

g/t Ag

g/t Remarks 988.2 996.0 7.8 0.1 9.9 1.0 30.8 massive sulphides

(Gap Lens) including 992.0 996.0 4.0 0.1 13.7 1.4 39.8 massive sulphides and 1033.0 1039.4 6.4 0.3 17.4 0.6 28.5 massive sulphides

(Gap Lens)

MONTREAL, Mar 2, 2016 - Yorbeau Resources Inc. (TSX:YRB.A) (the "Company" or "Yorbeau") is pleased to report on recent diamond drilling results at its 100% owned Scott Lake project in Quebec.Drill hole SC-83 intersected two distinct massive sulphide intervals which constitute the deepest intercepts yet in the Gap Lens. These mineralized intervals, as were all intercepts released by the Company since June 2015, are located outside of the mineral resources as currently estimated (see attached Figure 1) at the Scott project.DDH SC-83 Section 1950W (weighted averages)

As this is still preliminary drilling on the above mineralization, the exact shape and true width cannot be determined with certainty. The core lengths obtained may not reflect the true width of the mineralization.

Borehole geophysics completed in SC-83 indicates that there is still additional conductive material downdip from the deepest intercept yet on the Gap Lens. However, while this is seen by Company management as very encouraging, testing downdip from SC-83 is not part of the objectives of the current program.

Company president Gerald Riverin stated: "We are very encouraged with the high grade results of SC-83 and particularly the higher gold grades when compared to previous holes. This augurs well for the future. We also would like to highlight the skills of our technical team which has been able to control deviation in deep holes and thus allow the Company to fully capitalize on deep drilling with a series of wedge-cuts that generate accurate pierce points at very competitive costs. We are looking forward to pursuing drilling in this sector."

The Scott Lake property, 100% owned by Yorbeau, already hosts a number of polymetallic massive sulphide lenses. These represent combined inferred resources of 5.45 million tonnes grading 1.2% copper, 4.6% zinc, 0.2 g/t gold and 34 g/t silver, using an NSR cut-off of $80 per tonne (Technical Report prepared by Roscoe Postle Associates and filed by Cogitore Resources in 2011).

A wedge-cut from hole SC-83 was also completed updip of SC-83 and sampled recently. Assays are pending and expected to be released around March 15. A new hole is in progress to the west of SC-83.



All drill core discussed in this press release was logged and marked up for assay at the Company's secure facility in Chibougamau, Quebec. Drill core for assay was split in half. Half of the core was shipped in sample bags to Techni-Lab S.G.B. Abitibi Inc. (ACTLABS) of Ste-Germaine-Boule, Quebec, with appropriate standards, duplicates and replicates used for quality control purposes. The other half of the core is retained for future reference.



Work is carried out by the personnel of Yorbeau, under the supervision of Gerald Riverin, PhD, P. Geo. He is a qualified person (as defined by National Instrument 43-101) and has reviewed and approved the content of this release.





About Yorbeau Resources Inc.



The Company's 100% controlled Rouyn Property contains four known gold deposits in the 6-km-long Augmitto-Astoria corridor situated on the western half of the property. Two of the four deposits, Astoria and Augmitto, have substantial underground infrastructure and have been the focus of NI 43-101 technical reports that include resource estimates. The Company has recently expanded its exploration property portfolio by acquiring strategic base metal properties in prospective areas of the Abitibi Belt of Quebec and Ontario that also feature infrastructure favourable for mining development.



More information on the Company may be found on the Company's website at www.yorbeauresources.com.





Forward-looking statements: Except for statement of historical fact, all statements in this news release, without limitation, regarding new projects, acquisitions, future plans and objectives are forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate; actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.







Contact



Gerald Riverin, Ph D., P. Geo, President

Yorbeau Resources Inc.

griverin@yorbeauresources.com

819-279-1336



G. Bodnar Jr., Director

Yorbeau Resources Inc.

gbodnar@yorbeauresources.com

514-384-2202

Toll free in North America: 1-855-384-2202


Ngan Ho/Standard-Times The passenger terminal at San Angelo Regional Airport/Mathis Field sported a fresh new look after completion of a $6 million renovation project in late 2015. Officials recently disclosed that a second major airline could soon begin a scheduled service to Houston.

SHARE

By Federico Martinez, federico.martinez@gosanangelo.com/ @federico_SAST

San Angelo airport and city officials may have their heads in the clouds, but that's a good thing in this case.

Officials in December celebrated the completion of a $6 million renovation project at the San Angelo Regional Airport/Mathis Filed. And officials recently announced the city has reached a tentative agreement with a second airline that is interested in providing services to San Angelo. City Council is expected to review the agreement in March or early April, said Luis Elguezabal, the airport's director.

"We have spoken to an airline that is interested in serving San Angelo and would provide direct flights to Houston," Elguezabal said recently. "I can't release the name of the airline yet because it needs to go before City Council first and the company must also receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration."

Mayor Dwaine Morrison said the improvements to the airport, which was built in 1955, were long overdue.

Renovations included interior and exterior remodeling such as new canopies installed at the entrance and more open space throughout, according to airport officials who allowed the public to tour the improved facility in December. The baggage claim area was expanded, a new baggage belt system was installed, and the airport now includes two indoor restaurants. The renovations were meant to improve the airport's aesthetics and create more space for passenger flow.

"It's a beautiful airport, I'm very proud of it," said Morrison, who noted that a top notch airport is vital to the city's economy.

"We have got to have it," Morrison said."We're at the end of the world out here. We'll never be a major hub. But we have a military, university students, businesses and residents who depend on it."

Planning for the renovations began in 2012, Elguezabal said. The project was initially expected to be completed by spring 2014. But completion was delayed for nearly a year because of several unexpected problems.

The major problems included the realization that an electrical line had to be relocated, an exit lane for airplanes had to be removed and the runway redesigned, Elguezabal said. The problems caused some disagreements between the city and contractor about who was to blame and who would pay for the changes. The city ended up relocating the electrical line and trimmed some other minor renovation plans to keep the project under budget, he said.

Elguezabal, who was charged with overseeing the renovation project acknowledged there were some unexpected challenges in the project.

"We had to work with change orders, with changes (while) maintaining our operations all the time," Elguezabal said during the December event. "All of that lead to extra time, but we finished it. And I'm very proud of this facility. It looks wonderful."

"What have I learned? I need to coordinate a little bit better on the up front, that's it. Just better coordination."

The Federal Aviation Administration provided 90 percent of the project's funding, $500,000 came from the city's half-cent sales tax revenues  which voters approved to dedicate to the project  and the rest came from a $4.50 airport factuality fee paid by airport passengers, Elguezabal has said.

"It's a great addition to the city of San Angelo," said Elguezabal, who noted 10 percent of the airport's customers are military personnel going to and coming from Goodfellow Air Force Base.

The Mayor said the city for years has been trying to lure a second airline to the airport, but have been unsuccessful. Those efforts aren't a reflection on American Airlines, he said, which has provided San Angelo "tremendous service."

One reason the city would like a second airline, is because American Airlines does not offer direct service to Houston or anywhere other than Dallas-Fort Worth, Mayor Morrison said.

"With American, you have to go through Dallas first before you can go anywhere else," he said.

Morrison and Elguezabal cautioned that the tentative deal to bring a second airline to San Angelo still faces many hurdles. The deal still needs approval from City Council and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Elguezabal remains optimistic and committed to attract a second airline.

"It will happen," he said. "I won't stop trying until it becomes a reality."
Monique Ching/Standard-Times Zoilo Ibarra, a contractor with Encino Landscape, walks along what will be a parking lot on the Red Arroyo Trail, helping to take measurements that ensure the parking lot is level. In San Angelo, 2015 saw a healthy mix of public and private building projects.

SHARE

Education for tradespeople underway

By Denise Morris, denise.morris@gosanangelo.com 325-659-8263 / @denise_SAST

Construction continues around town, with numerous projects already in the works and new permit requests rolling in to the city of San Angelo.

The brisk construction activity continued on the strength of hotel projects completed, medical facilities, single family homes and a few large retail projects. Single family home sales did not reflect the softer economy we felt in 2015, and were on tap to finish with perhaps the second or third best year on record when December figures are counted.

"San Angelo never let themselves get enslaved to the oil industry," said Michael Biggerstaff, immediate past president of the San Angelo Home Builders Assocation. "Our unemployment is far less than most of Texas.

"The oil boom allowed us to build more homes," he said.

In the post-oil boom present, there is a slowdown in residential construction due to increase resale of existing homes  a direct result of the downturn in the oil industry. But the demand for new homes never goes away, he said.

"We are so confident about continuing new home construction, the homebuilders association is going to host a parade of homes in October  the first one since 2007," Biggerstaff said. "The general public loves these, and it creates a lot of excitement in the community."

Residential construction is brisk in the southwest part of San Angelo, particularly in Bentwood Country Club and Buffalo Heights, up SH 2288.

Phil Neighbors, president of the San Angelo Chamber of Commerce, hesitated to make a broad forecast for 2016 but said that projects at the city and county level will continue, along with arts projects such as the renovation of the glorious, historical performing arts center downtown.

"Commercial construction will continue, though we believe at a slower pace than recent years," Neighbors said.

Commercial and residential building permits (through November) ended the year soundly at $155 million, only 7 percent behind the record 2014 permits year-to-date. By comparison, during banner year for oil prices in 2014, commercial and residential building permits increased 24.9 percent.

Gross sales in the construction industry are reported on the Texas State Comptroller's website, with the second quarter listed here because of the most recent available data for year 2015. Showing an upward curve, the second-quarter figures are as follows:

2012  $49.3 million

2013  $50.5 million

2014  $55.8 million

2015  $68.1 million

Some of the large projects being completed currently include a remodel at the county courts building, a $12 million expansion project by Shannon Medical Center and two new extended-stay hotels.

"It seems like construction has slowed down in the (sheer) number of large projects still going on," said Al Torres, with the city of San Angelo permits office. "However, construction has not really slowed, because we are still seeing a lot of permit applications."

There is enough construction going on locally to create a shortage of skilled labor to meet the demand.

Bob Schneeman, business retention expansion coordinator with the city of San Angelo Economic Development Department, said the city is working with Howard College and the Home Builders Association of San Angelo to create a training program specifically to this end.

"We have a shortage of construction services and are working toward a program for basic construction skills," Schneeman said. "We need tradesmen, craftsmen, framers, electricians.

"We've gone for so many years telling our kids they need a college education and the schools have catered to that sort of background as well. When I went to school, people got a little bit of wood shop or mechanic training. Obviously there needs to be some kind of training program besides the apprenticeship where you just get a job and learn from there."

Michael Biggerstaff highlighted the urgency of such a program.

"If we don't support our tradesmen, there won't be any tradesmen," he said.
Happy Texas Independence Day! Today marks 180 years since Texas declared itself independent from Mexico while still in the midst of the Battle of the Alamo. William Barret Travis, the Texas commander, wrote a letter during the siege addressed to "the People of Texas and all Americans in the World," and closed with "Victory or Death," a phrase he underlined three times. That courage, resilience and independent spirit represents all that is Texas and should be remembered, honored and celebrated.

I learned about Texas Independence Day from my former editor Perry Flippin, who grew up in Tahoka and is a proud West Texan. He and his wife, Ingrid, threw a party every year to celebrate the day  you got an education with good eats and beer. Life changed as it's wont to do  with retirements, death, marriage and kids  and the parties stopped.

For a while I was too busy to notice, but this year I found myself missing that old tradition. So I decided to call up some of the Texans in my life and pick their brains about how they celebrate Texas Independence Day. What I found out was that a lot of San Angeloans didn't celebrate the day growing up, and still don't.

"I'm a Texan all the way through. I cry every time I visit the Alamo," said Mayor Dwain Morrison, who is known for his rattlesnake-banded cowboy hat and drawling Texas plain speak. "But we really didn't celebrate it. We should have.

"Maybe we take it too much for granted."

Two famous Texans who did celebrate the day were President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, and they celebrated it in the White House. In "A White House Diary," Lady Bird said the "gathering had three ingredients for a convivial party  guests who have something in common, music and cocktails."

Of course, there was food. A little later Lady Bird continued, "The buffet table was laden with a steamship-round roast of beef, fresh shrimp, Fritos with chili con queso dip, ham in hot biscuits, and brownies and eclairs."

This year I plan to celebrate Texas Independence Day with a small party of four with my family. We'll have Fritos, chili, and Texas sheet cake  all the foods that say Texas to me. We'll put on some Willie Nelson and Robert Earl Keen, two-step around the room, and the adults will drink a couple of cold ones for Texas.

Rashda's Quick Texas Chili

When you take the time to toast a few different kinds of chilies and make your own chili powder blend, then simmer and slow-cook the chili, you reap the reward of rich, complex flavor. However, a busy family life  especially on weeknights  doesn't always allow you the time. So while this recipe uses commercial chili powder, the addition of the beer, cinnamon and/or coffee helps create a nice depth. Serves 4 to 6.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or bacon grease

2 pounds beef chili chuck, OR coarsely ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or instant coffee (Rashda's note: if you're feeling brave, add both)

1 can Rotel tomatoes with chilies, juice and all

1 Shiner Bock beer and some hot water

- salt and black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons masa harina or cornmeal (optional)

Directions

1 In a large skillet heat oil over medium high heat. Saute the meat, onion, and garlic. Continue cooking until meat is browned and in crumbles.

2 Add the oregano, cumin, chili powder, and cinnamon to the meat mixture. Stir to distribute and mix spices throughout the mix and cook for about 5 minutes, until you can smell the aroma of toasted spices.

3 Add the tomatoes, beer and enough water to cover the meat.

4 Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

5 Add salt and pepper to taste, add any extra spicing you think it needs, stir.

6 If you want to thicken the chili, add a little water to the masa harina or cornmeal in a small bowl. Mix well until it forms a smooth slurry and stir it into the chili.

7 Cook for about 15 minutes more, stirring from time to time.

8 Serve over Fritos, or with cornbread or crackers. Gussy it up with shredded cheddar cheese, sliced scallions, sour cream and lime wedges on the side.

Texas flag sheet cake

Traditionally a Texas Sheet Cake has a chocolate icing and is often sprinkled with toasted pecan pieces. However, a Texas flag decoration seems to fit the occasion better in this case and you can involve the kids. Serves 12

Ingredients

1 cup butter

1 cup boiling water

5 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

ICING

1 8-ounce container frozen whipped cream topping or prepared cream cheese icing

2 pints strawberries, washed and sliced

2 pints blue berries, rinsed and drained

Directions

1 Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour a 9-by-13-inch pan.

2 Over low heat, melt the butter in a saucepan. While the butter is melting, microwave a cup of water until boiling.

3 Add the cocoa powder to the melted butter, mix thoroughly. Add the hot water, stir and let simmer for 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and set aside to cool.

4 In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour through baking soda).

5 Pour the cocoa and butter mix over the flour mix, stir to combine.

6 Stir in eggs, buttermilk and vanilla, and mix until blended into a batter.

7 Pour batter into a prepared pan and bake for about 22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool to room temperature.

8 Frost cooled cake with whipped topping or icing. Using a toothpick to outline the Texas flag.

9 Fill in the part that should be blue with the blue berries (remember to leave the star unfilled!). Use strawberries to fill in the part that should be red. Stick a few toothpicks into the cake and loosely drape with plastic. Chill in the refrigerator before serving.
Sheen announced Nov. 17 that he had contracted HIV.

SHARE

Revelation spurred Google search record

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

When Charlie Sheen went on national television last fall and told the world he had HIV, he said he hoped his predicament would prompt others to protect themselves against the virus that causes AIDS.

They certainly did. A research letter published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine says Google searches about HIV hit an all-time high after the former "Two and a Half Men" star made his announcement Nov. 17.

On that day, Americans Googled "HIV" about 2.75 million times more than researchers would have expected if Sheen hadn't revealed his medical news.

Among those Web searches, about 1.25 million also included terms related to condoms, HIV symptoms and testing. The study authors consider these searches "directly relevant to public health," according to their report.

Sheen disclosed his HIV status in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" show. He said he had become infected four years earlier  though he was not "entirely sure" how it happened  and that he paid millions of dollars to a prostitute who threatened to go public with pictures of his antiretroviral medications.

"I have a responsibility now to better myself and to help a lot of other people," Sheen told Lauer. "Hopefully with what we're doing today, others may come forward and say, 'Thanks, Charlie, thanks for kicking the door open.'"

To see if they did, researchers examined all Google searches related to HIV that occurred between Jan. 1, 2004, and Nov. 24, 2015. That allowed them to estimate how many times Google users would have searched for "HIV" if Nov. 17 had been a typical Tuesday.

The team, led by San Diego State University public health expert John Ayers, calculated that the actual number of searches was 417 percent higher than would have been expected, according to the report.

In addition, the researchers found that searches about condoms were 72 percent more common than usual in the first 24 hours after Sheen's news broke; searches about HIV testing were 214 percent higher than usual; and searches about HIV symptoms jumped by 540 percent.

Altogether, Sheen's interview was followed by "the greatest number of HIV-related Google searches ever recorded in the United States," according to the study.

The researchers have a name for this sudden interest in HIV: the "Charlie Sheen effect." That is an apparent reference to the "Katie Couric effect," a documented increase in screening colonoscopies after the journalist had one on live TV to raise awareness about colon cancer prevention.

But Google searches are only the beginning, and public health experts should conduct further studies to see whether this spike in online research translates into a higher rate of HIV testing, the study authors said.

"While no one should be forced to reveal HIV status, Sheen's disclosure may benefit public health by helping many people learn more about HIV infection and prevention," they wrote. "More must be done to make this benefit larger and lasting."
Dementia rates in the United States dropped by 44 percent from the late 1970s to 2010, according to the Boston University study. Fotolia

SHARE

Rates down 44% since 1970s

By Allie Shah, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

Despite fears that the coming silver tsunami will trigger a dementia epidemic, a surprising new study suggests that it may be possible to delay  or even prevent  some kinds of dementia.

Dementia rates in the United States dropped by 44 percent from the late 1970s to 2010, according to the Boston University study.

In addition, the average age when people showed symptoms rose from 80 to 85, researchers discovered.

Their findings were published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The report analyzed data from a long-running study of thousands of people in a small Massachusetts town.

While scientists don't know the exact reason for the decrease in dementia cases, they highlight two contributing factors: education level and heart health.

People in the study who earned at least a high school diploma had a much lower dementia risk than those with less education. Other studies have revealed a link between higher levels of education and better overall health.

The largest decrease was reported in dementia cases caused by stroke and other vascular diseases. People in the study who improved their heart health saw a reduction in their dementia risk.

Currently, about 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia.
SHARE COURTESY PHOTO A tire from Shannon Rodgers vehicle shows the head of a large sheet metal screw that punctured it on U.S. 67 near Ballinger on Sunday night.

By Mike Kelly of the San Angelo Standard-Times

Shannon Rodgers and her husband were driving home to San Angelo from Brownwood on Sunday night when they began to notice disabled vehicles along the side of U.S. 67 just west of the Ballinger city limits.

Their Cadillac joined the crowd a few miles later.

"Our tire blew out," she said. "We needed a tow truck, and it took three hours because they were looking after all the other cars with flats. One car had all four of its tires flattened."

The culprit, she discovered after making phone calls to the Ballinger Police Department the next day, was a crate of industrial screws that fell off a construction truck, littering the westbound side of the four-lane highway with hundreds of sharp objects.

Dusty Thompson of Southern Industrial Towing said his drivers towed "seven or eight" cars from the area.

Toby Taylor of Home Motors said his drivers towed four vehicles and assisted motorists in changing flats on three others.

"Multiple cars could be seen on the side of the road changing flats," he said. "It went on all evening."

The cars that were towed "had more than one flat, so the spare didn't do them any good," he said.

Ballinger Police Chief Mark McNulty said after the department learned about the incident the Texas Department of Transportation was notified and sent workers to clean up the highway. The cleanup took about 30 minutes, McNulty said.

According to investigators, a large box of screws fell from a Mueller Metal Buildings truck and scattered across the road.

"It was a mess," McNulty said. The police chief said he wasn't sure how many vehicles were damaged; four motorists so far have filed complaint reports.

Mueller officials have pledged to compensate any motorists whose vehicle tires were punctured, McNulty said. Motorists should contact Mueller to report the damage, he said.
SHARE Best 56% 7,815 votes Graves has had a private law practice in San Angelo since 2005.

By Federico Martinez, federico.martinez@gosanangelo.com / @Federico_SAST

John Best, who has served 14 years in the district attorney's office, bested his opponent, longtime Texas attorney Andrew Graves, by more than 1,500 votes to win the 119th District Attorney position. Best received 7,815 votes (55.53 percent), and Graves garnered 6,259 (44.47 percent).

Best will replace George McCrea, who did not seek re-election.

"I'm very pleased that the voters would give me the opportunity to lead the prosecution team," said Best, who has served as the first assistant for the 51st District Attorney's office. "I've been training for this position for 14 years."

Graves, a former assistant for the Fort Worth District Attorney's office, could not be reached by phone.

No Democrats ran for the 119th District Attorney position, so Best wins the job by default because he will face no opposition in November.

Best, 47, has served as a felony prosecutor in the Tom Green County District Attorney's Office for 14 years. He previously has said that he is committed to communicating with law enforcement and the public and is proud of his record as a prosecutor.

During his campaign he touted his extensive experience as the best reason voters should elect him.

In 2015 he was involved in several high-profile cases, including ones that resulted in a 28-year sentence for child sexual abuse, a 99-year sentence for aggravated assault, a 20-year sentence for intent to distribute meth and a 50-year sentence for continuous sexual abuse of a young child.

Best campaigned at a frenetic pace for several months prior to the election, despite receiving several high-profile endorsements, including one from McCrea.

"I wasn't going to take anything for granted," he said. "You never know what voters will do.

"I would especially like to thank my wife and children for going through this with me. It was very time-consuming and stressful at times, but they were there to support me."
Low-maintenance West Texas landscaping takes thoughtful planning

Believe it or not, a beautiful yard is possible in the Concho Valley without excessive water and fertilizers and labor.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to rule on a legal dispute between Governor Christie and New Jersey public labor unions suing over billions of dollars in missed payments to the state pension system.The courts announcement Monday capped a furious two-year legal battle in New Jersey over one of its biggest financial problems: the notoriously underfunded pension system for nearly 800,000 public workers and retirees.The decision means that  unless New Jersey voters approve a constitutional amendment to guarantee pension funding  New Jersey governors and lawmakers have discretion over how much money to send to the troubled retirement funds every year. For the coming fiscal year, Christie has proposed a $34.8 billion budget with a $1.86 billion pension payment, around 40 percent of what state actuaries say is necessary.Mondays ruling left both sides digging in and defending their positions, with the governors office calling on the unions to work with Christie to find a solution that is fair for all taxpayers and the head of the New Jersey Education Association, the states largest teachers union, saying his organization will continue to work toward a constitutional amendment.
Description

GIS - 02 March, 2016: The Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Marie-Aurore Perraud, announced yesterday that a plethora of concrete measures to address the issue of child violence is underway. She was speaking at a ceremony organised in the context of the Going-live of the Child Protection Register at the Child Protection Service in Vacoas. The Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Marie-Aurore Perraud, announced yesterday that a plethora of concrete measures to address the issue of child violence is underway. She was speaking at a ceremony organised in the context of the Going-live of the Child Protection Register at the Child Protection Service in Vacoas.

Among the measures, stated the Minister, is the operationalisation of the Child Protection Strategy which incorporates the professionalization of Foster Care System and the deinstitutionalisation of the Residential Care Institutions. With a view to expediting the rehabilitative needs of children in distress and further giving the foster parents the required support and guidance, Government has taken a laudable decision, last week, to increase the foster care allowance from Rs 1,500 to Rs 5,250, added the Minister.

According to Mrs Perraud, an average of 6,000 cases of child violence are reported yearly at the six outstations of the Child Development Unit (CDU) across the country where the cases are processed and handled manually, making retrieval, tracking and management of case files tedious. Recalling that the computerised Child Protection Register is an innovative tool that will enable the CDU to effectively record and address cases of children in distress with increased efficiency, Minister Perraud stressed that the digital database will contribute to a harmonisation of data collection, thereby reducing paperwork as well as a better follow-up of cases.

The Minister is of the view that the Register is in line with her vision for the reinforcement of the institutional mechanism geared towards child protection and welfare, and the provision of an enabling environment to ensure fluid and efficient service delivery. The Going-live of the Child Protection Register in Vacoas is an improved transformation regarding intervention and processing of child violences cases which will be replicated in other Child Protection Services shortly, affirmed Mrs Perraud.

It is noted that the Child Protection Register is part of the e-Government strategy project and is designed to provide an integrated database to record all cases of children in distress that are reported to the Child Development Unit of the Ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare. The main objectives of the Child Protection Register are, amongst others, to improve record keeping, and overall management of cases of children in distress, facilitate generation of statistical data for informed decision making, and ensure tracking and monitoring of relapse cases.
Charlie Catlett, director of the Urban Center for Computation and Data, is working with Chicago to place sensors on city-owned infrastructure to demonstrate the Internet of Things potential. Photo by Alex Garcia

SENSEABLE CITY LAB: UNDERWORLDS

Carlo Ratti believes the world is letting a vast and valuable data resource slip away unmined. That resource is sewage  sewage carries a sampling of the collective bacteria that act as markers of public health. Working with the city of Cambridge, Mass., Ratti and the SENSEable City Lab hope to demonstrate the potential of collecting and analyzing bacteria in sewage and trying to identify where it comes from. The first application is to predict disease outbreaks, which could help contain them and reduce health-care costs, but the lab sees more possibilities for the project in the future. For instance, sewage-based data could be isolated to individual neighborhoods. Eventually the data could act as a new kind of human census. Photo via Shutterstock.

The SENSEable City Labs HubCab project creates an interactive visualization of the millions of taxi rides in New York City each year, providing insights into mobility and efficiency.

CENTER FOR URBAN SCIENCE AND PROGRESS: THE URBAN OBSERVATORY

Working from downtown Brooklyn, researchers from CUSP headed up to the roof of a building in 2014 and set up an 8-megapixel camera pointed at the Manhattan skyline. The camera, which takes pictures every 10 seconds, builds an aggregate view over time of the citys infrastructure. The idea is to combine the information contained in the visible spectrum of light with radar, infrared and more to identify problems, patterns and trends  for example, plumes of gas released from buildings. CUSP has partnered with an array of public agencies  city, transit, the port authority and others  to get access to data that can supplement the information gleaned from the observatory and broaden its application. Photo via Shutterstock.

GOVLAB: DOCKER FOR DATA

Much of what GovLab does is about opening up access to data, and that is the whole point of Docker for Data. The project aims to simplify and quicken the process of extracting and loading large data sets so they will respond to Structured Query Language commands by moving the computing power of that process to the cloud. The docker can be installed with a single line of code, and its website plays host to already-extracted data sets. Since its inception, the website has grown to include more than 100 gigabytes of data from more than 8,000 data sets. From Baltimore, for example, one can easily find information on public health, water sampling, arrests, senior centers and more. Photo via Shutterstock.

Government produces a lot of data  reams of it, roomfuls of it, rivers of it. It comes in from citizen-submitted forms, fleet vehicles, roadway sensors and traffic lights. It comes from utilities, body cameras and smartphones. It fills up servers and spills into the cloud. Its everywhere.And often, all that data sits there not doing much. A governing entity might have robust data collection and it might have an open data policy, but that doesnt mean it has the computing power, expertise or human capital to turn those efforts into value.The amount of data available to government and the computing public promises to continue to multiply  the growing smart cities trend, for example, installs networks of sensors on everything from utility poles to garbage bins.As all this happens, a movement  a new spin on an old concept  has begun to take root: partnerships between government and research institutes. Usually housed within universities and laboratories, these partnerships aim to match strength with strength. Where government has raw data, professors and researchers have expertise and analytics programs.Several leaders in such partnerships, spanning some of the most tech-savvy cities in the country, see increasing momentum toward the concept. For instance, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in September helped launch the MetroLab Network, an organization of more than 20 cities that have partnered with local universities and research institutes for smart-city-oriented projects.The focus of those projects was disparate: In Houston, one of Rice Universitys ideas was to help the city collect data to better determine where it should place bicycle-sharing racks. The University of Washington sought to help Seattle install weather sensors to track hyperlocal precipitation in an effort to predict when residents will strain the power grid with higher electricity demand.The network included some partnerships that had already existed for at least a few years. One of them was the Urban Center for Computation and Data (CCD), a collaborative involving faculty from the University of Chicago and researchers from the Argonne National Laboratory, which partnered with Chicago officials to put data to work enhancing municipal knowledge and solving problems.The partnership has focused largely on big data and breaking down silos among city agencies. In 2013, the Urban CCD helped the city win $1 million from the Bloomberg Mayors Foundation Challenge to expand situational awareness data. During major events  Chicago plays host to more than a few  Urban CCD Director Charlie Catlett wants to ensure the citys platform can scale up to include more situational awareness data than ever before, as well as support more users and run predictive analytics programs.Its a project that might have forced the city to inflate its technology budget if it werent for the partnership, Catlett said.That was to look at the analytics the city does and see if we could accelerate new innovations in that area without having to hire an army of additional data scientists, he said.The $1 million award is an example of another benefit that people with backgrounds in academia can help cities with, he said: grant applications. As part of its smart cities initiative, the White House and several federal agencies offered $160 million that city-research institute partnerships can reach for.Some of that money has already gone to the Urban CCD for a project called the Array of Things. The idea, Catlett said, is to construct a real-life metropolitan demonstration of what the Internet of Things can be. Chicago is gearing up to place an array of sensors on city-owned infrastructure  the number of sensors grew from 30 to 500 after the project won $3.1 million from the National Science Foundation  that will be capable of taking environmental measurements as well as recognize objects.The potential applications for the project, from a municipal and research perspective, stretch as far as the technological capabilities of the sensors because the collaborative plans to crowdsource ideas for how to use the array. Some early applications include air pollution maps, congestion tracking and flood damage prediction.And the Array of Things is just one project. Catlett has biweekly meetings with Chicagos tech officials. Thats the thing about partnerships: They establish ties that allow the projects to keep on coming.of city-research institution partnerships is the idea that both parties bring something to the table that the other is lacking. The cities bring data that researchers otherwise would not have, while the researchers bring expertise and ideas.In general, we believe in feedback loops from city officials and citizens while developing a project, wrote Carlo Ratti, director of the SENSEable City Lab hosted within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an email to Government Technology. By working in the same city, these flows of information speed up, with great benefits for all the parties involved.The cities often get very tangible benefits from the partnerships: They outsource labor to the research institutions involved, they get ideas for how to use data, and they can uncover trends that help make operations more efficient or perhaps cut down on wasteful spending. For instance, if Chicago were to send out work crews to replace old light bulbs with LEDs, Catlett suggested that the city might save some money by asking those same crews to perform other maintenance while theyre out.Big data is impacting many dimensions of our society. In cities, it can help us better understand the world around us and plan its transformation, wrote Ratti. Over a century ago, Elisee Reclus stated that good surveying, i.e., data collection, is the first fundamental step in city planning. It is not different today  if not for the fact that we know our cities much better and can plan their transformation accordingly, [then in] opening the data to citizens. Universities have a lot to offer here  both in terms of helping with the data management platforms and providing ideas for its usage.The benefits cities offer to universities can be a little less tangible. They can offer access to data, which allows researchers to peer into things they otherwise might not be able to. They also present a unique opportunity for students to learn and gain practical experience.The students know that there are job opportunities in data analytics, so being able to get their hands on city data is a wonderful opportunity, said Steven Koonin, director of New York Universitys Center for Urban Science and Progress.Catlett said government officials also bring a perspective into the conversation that researchers might not have  a perspective that can help shape the applications researchers pursue.Researchers are not familiar with the challenges that a city has, from the point of view of an official making [a] decision, he said. They may be users of cities as individuals, but what cities offer in terms of a partnership is a glimpse into the complexities of the challenges theyre facing.in projects that universities and research organizations take on in cooperation with government are project evaluation and impact analysis. Thats at least partially driven by the very nature of the open data movement: One reason to open data is to get a better idea of how well the government is operating.A lot of the open data laws were motivated by a desire for transparency, which is a great thing, but putting data out there so that the government is more transparent is a much different exercise than putting the data out there so that its usable  so the public sector can benefit from it, the private sector can benefit from it, said Mike Holland, CUSPs executive director.That means that sometimes inefficient or broken systems will be uncovered. When that happens, Koonin said, it helps push public servants toward creating better systems.If services end up not working, that can be embarrassing, he said. But its a tool for creating better government.A large-scale example happened in September when the University of Southern California released a study examining data points from traffic monitors across Los Angeles in an attempt to discover whether a light rail expansion had truly reduced congestion like its proponents thought it would when pitching the project to the city. The study, which its authors believe to be the most extensive and granular of its kind ever conducted in the U.S., showed that the light rail expansion didnt actually cut down highway congestion. It did, however, increase overall transportation along that corridor of the city  a benefit unto itself, according to the researchers.The takeaway, study co-author Sandip Chakrabarti toldin November, was that good data analysis enables city officials to have more informed conversations about major projects like light rail expansions.But there are other considerations that can go into a major transportation investment, which is part of the reasoning behind the Urban CCDs Plenario project. Plenario pulls together open data sets covering a wide range of agencies and allows users to compare and map them. The result, said Catlett, is an ability to peer into various possible outcomes for city operations.Lets say its rapid transit or a new park or a new road in a part of a city, he said. Youd like to know what the impact of that investment is. Lets say its $50 million. You want to know: Did it create more jobs? Did it help the neighborhood be safer?the impetus for city-university partnerships, in that the availability of more data lured researchers wanting to work with it and extract value. But those partnerships have, in turn, led to government officials opening more data than ever before for useful applications.Sort of.I think what youre seeing is not just open data, but kind of shades of open  the desire to make the data open to university researchers, but not necessarily the broader public, said Beth Noveck, co-founder of New York Universitys GovLab.Thats partially because researchers are a controlled group who can be forced to sign memorandums of understanding and trained to protect privacy and prevent security breaches when government hands over sensitive data. Thats a top concern of agencies that manage data, and it shows in the GovLabs work.It was something Noveck found to be very clear when she started working on a project she simply calls Arnold because of project support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The project involves building a better understanding of how different criminal justice jurisdictions collect, store and share data. The motivation is to help bridge the gaps between people who manage the data and people who should have easy access to it. When Novecks center conducted a survey among criminal justice record-keepers, the researchers found big differences between participants.Theres an incredible disparity of practices that range from some jurisdictions that have a very well established, formalized [memorandum of understanding] process for getting access to data, to just  you send an email to a guy and you hope that he responds, and theres no organized way to gain access to data, not just between [researchers] and government entities, but between government entities, she said.and the launch of the MetroLab Network are both big boosts to the concept of government-research institution partnerships. But the people involved in those partnerships see more reasons to be optimistic.One of them is the self-sustaining nature of those partnerships. When students at universities are offered the chance to do the duties of data scientists, it puts them in good position to pursue jobs handling data, IT or other related jobs within the public sector.The rising number of chief information officers, innovation officers, data officers and data scientists springing up across the country also lends itself to supporting such partnerships, according to several sources. People in those positions, with resources at their disposal and easy access to government databases, are more likely to seek out researchers who can help them put raw data to good use.When you have a data scientist in-house, thats what leads to the recognition that you need to do more data-driven projects  and you need to turn toward partners, Noveck said.Ultimately what that means is that there are more people working to help government get smarter  even though not all of them work directly for the government.Open data by itself doesnt necessarily translate into smart decisions unless smart people are willing to work on them, she said.
(TNS) -- Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla has introduced a bill to allow the Contra Costa Transportation Authority to test a driverless electric shuttle during a two-year pilot project.Under existing law, autonomous vehicles operating on public streets must have a steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator and a driver who can take control in an emergency.Bonilla's bill would give CCTA the authority to test a 12-passenger, low-speed autonomous shuttle that has none of those features at the Bishop Ranch Business Park in San Ramon, and GoMentum Station on the Concord Naval Weapons Station property."Given our state's crumbling infrastructure, combined with our commitment to reduce climate change, these people movers can be a viable alternative to personal automobiles," Bonilla, D-Concord, said in a statement. "They have the capability of conveniently connecting riders to larger transit networks and local destinations, while alleviating traffic and parking congestion, and improving mobility."This summer, the transportation authority expects to receive two shuttles from EasyMile, a joint venture between a European vehicle manufacturer and a technology company. The shuttles seat six, with room for another six passengers to stand and travel at a top speed of 35 mph. CCTA plans to test the vehicles at 25 mph, said Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the agency.EasyMile shuttles may provide a solution for residents from eastern Contra Costa County who don't commute to work on BART because it's difficult to find a parking space, Iwasaki said."You walk a block to the local bus stop and this little shuttle takes you six miles to the BART station," he said.This is the latest autonomous vehicle project to take advantage of the 2,100-acre GoMentum Station, a research and testing hub for self-driving cars, vehicles equipped with technology to communicate with each other, "smart" traffic signals and other new technologies.Mercedes-Benz and Honda were the first automakers to use the testing site, which simulates the many challenges self-driving vehicles might encounter in an urban environment, including railroad crossings, parking lots, curved roadways, tunnels and streets laid out like a city grid.
The ancient debate that pits the value of privacy against that of public safety and security is bestowed new shades of gray with each mention of the San Bernardino shooters encrypted iPhone.Testifying before a House judiciary committee called The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy" on March 1, FBI Director James Comey and Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell fielded questions and stated their cases regarding the ongoing legal battle between their two entities. Comey demanded justice, but Sewell said Apple's compliance would precipitate violations of safety, security and trust.Comey said he didnt fault Apple for protecting their innovations and even lauded the privacy that encryption affords the public, but noted that he would be negligent in his duties as a law enforcement agent not to pursue every tool possible to uncover clues that might reveal who else was involved in the San Bernardino shooting last December that wounded 20 and killed 14 people.In the past two centuries, public safety has depended in large measure on the ability of law enforcement agents going to courts and obtaining warrants to look in storage areas or apartments, or to listen with appropriate predication oversight to conversations, Comey said.  Our job is simply to tell people that there is a problem. Everyone should care about it, everybody should understand if there are warrant-proof spaces in American life, what does that mean, and what are the costs of that, and how do we think about that? I dont know what the answer is.The FBI is asking Apple to create an anti-encryption tool that would allow the government to access the San Bernardino shooters iPhone, and in his testimony, Comey preferred to focus on the technology as it pertains to this single case. But Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell said the issue is much broader."Should the FBI have the right to compel a company to produce a product it doesn't already make, to the FBI's exact specifications and for the FBI's use?" Sewell asked. The FBI has asked a court to order us to give them something we don't have, to create an operating system that does not exist because it would be too dangerous. They are asking for a backdoor into the iPhone  specifically to build a software tool that can break the encryption system which protects personal information on every iPhone.There are no evil actors in this play, Comey said  private companies, law enforcement and the public are each looking out for their respective interests, and its the job of the courts to decide where the privacy line should be drawn. Comey testified that the FBI holds many encrypted iPhones and agreed that if the courts rule in the FBIs favor, it would create a precedent that allows law enforcement to crack more encrypted phones. But if an anti-encryption tool were created, some committee members noted, how could the FBI guarantee that tool remained safe and not jeopardize the privacy of all iPhone users?Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said encryption is a good thing that needs more development from the private sector to increase its efficacy.It prevents crime. It prevents terrorist attacks. It keeps our most valuable information safe," he said. "Yet it is not used as effectively today as is necessary to protect against the ever-increasing sophistication of foreign governments, criminal enterprises and just plain hackers. We see this manifest almost every week in the reports of losses of massive amounts of our most valuable information from government agencies, retailers, financial institutions and average Americans.Judiciary committee ranking member and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked why the FBI continues to force this issue when the request had been repeatedly denied by the courts.I suspect that part of the answer lies in an email obtained by theand reported to the public last September, Conyers said. In it, a senior lawyer in the intelligence community writes that, Although the legislative environment towards encryption is very hostile today, it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement. He concluded that there is value in keeping our options open for such a situation. Im deeply concerned by this cynical mindset and I would be deeply disappointed if it turns out that the government is found to be exploiting a national tragedy to pursue a change in the law.The FBI is using the All Writs Act of 1789, which was passed in its current form in 1911, to push its case forward. When asked why such an old document should be viewed as relevant in such a modern case, Comey quipped that the U.S. Constitution is also an old document, but that doesnt negate its relevance.Apples main objection to the FBIs request isnt that the company is being asked to hand over something they have possession of, but rather that they would be forced by the government to create something that undermines their intellectual property and potentially the privacy of many Americans, while also violating Apples constitutional rights, and potentially the safety and security of all of their customers.Were being asked to write code and code is speech. The supreme court has held that that speech is protectable, Sewell said. So, were being asked to speak by the government. That speech is not speech that we want to make. And the First Amendment provides us with protections against being compelled to speak by the government.  The Fifth Amendment provides us with protection from conscription, protection from being forced into labor at the governments will.When asked if it would be possible for Apple to unlock the shooters phone and tell the FBI what it contained, Sewell responded that its not possible, except by creating the tool that they are unwilling to make.From the perspective of TechFreedom Founder Berin Szoka, Apple is being put in a strained position.The whole point of the All Writs Act is that it applies anywhere there are gaps, so the only time the All Writs Act does not apply either where Congress has created some other statutory scheme, or maybe if theres some evidence that Congress did act in an area but chose not to cover something deliberately," he said. "In other words, it really boils down whether Congress specifically intended Apple not to be covered by CALEA [Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act] and not by the All Writs Act to create a kind of complete gap in the law.But the crucial battle will be on the legislative front, Szoka said.I think the case itself is a distraction, because the real issue is legislation, he said. I dont think the case really matters, because in the end, its going to be about legislation; the case really only determines how the chess board is set up for the legislative battle.
SAN FRANCISCO  U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced a potential cooperative agreement between the United States and the British government during a talk focused on changing cybersecurity threats at the 2016 RSA Conference Tuesday afternoon.While much of her speech and discussion with Bloomberg anchor Emily Chang fell to general issues in the space and the FBIs legal fight to obtain information from the Apple iPhone belonging to to the December 2015 San Bernardino shooter, Lynch did unveil discussions that could pave the way for better information sharing between American companies and the British government.As it stands, Lynch said, technology companies operating in both countries are often stuck when law enforcement in the United Kingdom orders data that cannot be handed over because of U.S. implications. Lynch said the ongoing discussion, which would need to be vetted by Congress before taking effect, would open the door to more fluid data transactions surrounding criminal investigations.This agreement that we are working on would release American companies from conflicting legal obligations in clearly and carefully defined circumstances, she said. It would help one of our oldest allies perform high-priority criminal investigations that keep its citizens safe and many of which, in this age of transnational crime and terrorism, would also further American interests.The negotiations stipulate the data could not pertain to Americans or people located within American borders, but would provide a reciprocal framework for data sharing between both governments and private industry.Lynch also touched on many of the challenges facing law enforcement and the private sector as they relate to cybersecurity and efforts to thwart violent extremism online.As for the legal dispute between Apple and the federal government, Lynch said it has not deterred from productive conversations around cybersecurity. She called the dispute a disagreement in a fundamental area, but said it is a conversation that needs to be had.We live in such a digital age now that these issues have to be dealt with and have to be addressed, but I think its a great conversation to have, Lynch said. We know, devices are more and more the repository of all types of information and they are so essential to investigating and solving serious crimes. Having the inability to actually obtain evidence that could save lives is a real risk. Another issue we have to face is how are we going to decide these issues and essentially how are we going to determine the scope of what law enforcement can and cant do? And those are other risks that I think have to be part of the national discussion."Despite media reports and concerns voiced by Apple CEO Tim Cook, Lynch said the FBI is not interested in an all-access pass to smartphones, simply to access the information contained on those at the center of criminal investigations. She also noted that the legal conflict is a departure from the companys past willingness to assist law enforcement.This has been going on for years and we have not had the parade of horribles that Apple is now asserting," she said. "What were asking you to do is to help us with this one device, but not to give the technology to us, they could keep itThe attorney general said she believes the use of device data is not dissimilar from other investigative searches, like homes, and should be well defined and carefully adhered to.As for her priorities moving forward to the end of her appointment, Lynch said she is committed to a concentration on protecting vulnerable people and thwarting human trafficking, improving law enforcement community relations and cybersecurity.Were focusing more obviously on national security and terrorism. As I mentioned earlier, the threat has changed, it has morphed, but the fact that America remains a target has not. We are, in fact, seeing new ways of targeting American interests here and overseas all the time, she said. When you think about the threats that we face to our intellectual property, to our infrastructure, as well as to the personal safety of every American, these are huge issues.
The Colville Tribes will gain millions from an agreement approved last week that settles the claims of nearly 700 tribes nationwide against the federal government.

The nearly $1 billion settlement with the Obama administration has been reached over claims the government shorted tribes for decades on contract costs to manage education, law enforcement and other federal services.

Tribes and tribal agencies are expected to submit claims for compensation ranging from $8,000 for some Alaska Native villages to $58 million for the Navajo Nation.

The Colville Business Council will receive $13.3 million in the settlement, according to court documents.

A federal judges approval was filed late Tuesday, Feb. 23, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The process to release payments could take several months.

The end result was there were no objections to the settlement and no objections to the fee request, an attorney for the tribes, Michael Gross, told the Seattle Times. This showed unity among Indian tribes that is absolutely astounding.

All of Washington states federally recognized tribes will receive money, Gross stated.

Some underfunded federal contracts in the case reportedly dated back to 1970.

The case was first filed in 1990 by the Ramah Navajo Chapter, a community of about 4,000. In 2012, it went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which sided with the tribes. The Interior Department announced a proposed settlement in September.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to fully fund the contract support costs for tribes.

The settlement is the latest in a string of major agreements between Interior and tribes that resolve disputes ongoing for years, including one as large as $3.4 billion that resolved claims over royalties owed to generations of individual landowners.

Colville Business Council Chairman Jim Boyd had not returned calls for comment by the Stars print deadline on Tuesday.
H-1B Visa Programme Slammed by Top US Senators

Washington: Top US lawmakers on Friday slammed the popular H-1B visa programme and demanded strict action against companies abusing it to replace Americans with low paid foreign workers, from countries including India.

"The sad reality is that - not only is there not a shortage of exceptionally qualified US workers - but across the country thousands of US workers are being replaced by foreign labour," Senator Jeff Sessions, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, said during a Congressional hearing.

Mr Sessions refuted the claims of many US companies about shortage of skilled workers in the US and thus the need to bring in qualified foreign workers from India.

"The data shows that there is no shortage of highly qualified working American professionals, nor is there a shortage of American STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) college graduates every year," he said.

Senator Patrick Leahy, Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said immigrant visa programmes must be used to complement the US workforce, not displace it.

"We must ensure that current laws are not misused in ways that disadvantage American workers," he said.

Sharing the concerns of Leo Perrero and several others who were fired by Disney, Mr Leahy said that all workers suffer when immigrant visa programmes are misused to depress the wages of American workers and outsource jobs.

"These programmes should be used to help create opportunities in America, not displace them, but the current allocation system does nothing to achieve that result," he said.

Testifying before the Senate Committee, Mr Perrero, the fired Disney IT engineer, with teary eyes recollected the days when he was asked by Disney to train foreign skilled workers to replace him.

Mr Perrero said there are many American IT workers who have been displaced by both H1-B visa holders, who are physically being flown in from foreign countries, as well as the growing use of foreign remote offshore workers.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin has alleged that the top recipients of H-1B visas are foreign outsourcing companies which use loopholes in the law to disqualify qualified American workers and offshore American jobs.

This, he argued, is contrary to the very purpose for which H-1B visas was established.

"We did not intend for foreign outsourcing firms to exploit the program, to bring foreign workers to be trained by talented Americans workers in order to ship ultimately American jobs overseas," he said, adding that abuse of H-1B visa has gone worse in recent years.

However, Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina differed from the views of his colleagues and argued that there is a huge dearth of qualified skilled workers in the US.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer made it clear at the hearing that he was holding out for a comprehensive immigration reform bill, similar to the 2013 bill that was approved by the Senate but not the House.

"It's hard to believe this bill was turned down," he said.

Mr Schumer wanted to make sure that H-1B is not abused to the detriment of American workers.

"I know, I am not supposed to say this, but many Indian companies do not work in the spirit of H-1B. Now I will get a call from the Indian Ambassador, so be it. American jobs comes first to me. They (Indian companies) abuse it," he said.

"I want to increase the number of legitimate H-1B, but go after these abuses," Mr Schumer said. (PTI)
Oops! There was a problem! Sorry, but we can't find what you were looking for right now. The content may have been removed, or is temporarily unavailable.

GreatAndhra.com powered by India Brains Infotech, LLC, its owners, associates and employees are not responsible for any errors, omissions or representations on any of our pages or on any links on any of our pages.



We do not endorse in anyway any advertisers on our web pages, links to personal pages, official pages, or commercial pages.



We have no control of the content of external information. Please verify the veracity of all information on your own before undertaking any reliance.



The linked sites are not under our control and we are not responsible for the contents of any linked site or any link contained in a linked site, or any changes or updates to such sites. We are providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by us of the site.



We hereby expressly disclaim any implied warranties imputed by the laws of any jurisdiction. We consider ourselves and intend to be subject to the jurisdiction only of the courts of the state of California.



Greatandhra.com also contains material in the form of inputs/feedbacks submitted by users and Greatandhra.com accepts no responsibility for the content or accuracy of such content nor does it make any representations by virtue of the contents of Greatandhra.com in respect of the existence or availability of any goods and services advertised in the contributory sections. Greatandhra.com makes no warranty that the site contents are Virus -free or anything else, which has destructive properties and shall have no liability in respect thereof.



Every effort is made to keep the website up and running smoothly. However, GreatAndhra.com takes no responsibility for and will not be liable for the website being temporarily unavailable due to technical issues beyond its control.



If you have any questions or concerns about a published article, please send us email at venkat@greatandhra.com . We will review your request and article will be removed immediatly.




What Is The Solution?

The Jats in Haryana have unleashed an orgy of violence that has drastically affected the stability in the state and created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.

This comes close on the heels of the Kapu agitation at Tuni that resulted in the torching of Ratnachal Express which again was preceded by the Patidar agitation in Gujarat.

Therefore, in a significant judgement, the Supreme Court said on Monday that it can't order the military to shoot at the crowd while dismissing a plea seeking giving free hand to the Army to control unruly mobs during the Jat stir in Haryana.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India T S Thakur said that Army was capable enough to deal with any situation and as and when the situation arises, things will be taken care of.

You want us to issue directions to the Army to shoot at the mob. We can't issue such directions. We can't allow the army to open fire at the mobs. As and when the situation arises things will be taken care of. Army is capable enough to deal with any situation, said the Supreme Court.

It said that whosoever takes the law into their own hands will be prosecuted as per the law and dismissed the petition as withdrawn.

The bench observed that had the petitioner sought compensation to the victims of the violent agitation, it would have thought of considering it. Had you asked for compensation to the victims of the agitation, we would have thought of considering it.

While one cannot fault the wisdom of the judiciary, one cannot help feeling a bit disappointed with the ruling either. If the violent mobs know that the Army are not empowered to fire at them, will they not become further emboldened?

There are reports of dozens of women having been raped at Murthal in Haryana during the violent agitation demanding reservation for Jats. They were apparently forcibly evicted from their cars and taken to the nearby fields.

Innerwear scattered on the highway near Murthal and the account narrated by the truck drivers who vouched for this fact gave a chilling face to reports that women were raped near this popular pit-stop for travelers, just 50 km from Delhi. Similarly, at Tuni, there were women and children in the train.

Where was the security to them from these mobs? Assuming that a police or army force was present at the scene of action, what good will it do if they are under instructions not to fire? Does the damage need to be done before it is further prevented?

We would have considered compensation for the victims of the violent agitation, says the wise judiciary.

What compensation will be adequate enough for a woman whose modesty has been outraged? Especially, when the shameful incident itself could peraps have been prevented through use of firm action by the security forces. And how exactly will the army take care of things as and when the situation arises and that too without the use of guns?

On the other hand, giving a free hand to the army might also run the risk of making them tools in the hands of a vindictive, prejudiced administration pursuing its own social agenda. So, where lies the solution?

By Kiran Sharma
A week after announcing their intent to take ownership of The Villa, Mission Health Services CEO Gary Kelso spoke to the Sweetwater County Commissioners regarding a proposed change in services.

Mission Health seeks to take over ownership of The Villa by expediting its lease with Castle Rock Hospital District. Mission was originally set to take over ownership at the end of the six-year lease, but offered to pay the remaining bond amount the hospital district is paying for renovations made to The Villa. The hospital district and Kelso signed a lease modification last week to allow for more se...
Officers responded to a nuisance property complaint on Evans Street.

Officers responded to a parking complaint on Wind River Drive. The owner of the vehicle was contacted and moved the vehicle.

Officers tagged a vehicle following a parking complaint on Elk Mountain Drive.

Animal control officers responded to a call of a dog at large on Crossbow Drive. The dog was described as a red and white dog with a blue collar. The dog was located and taken to the animal shelter.

Animal control officers received a call of two dogs at large that chased an individual on West 3rd South. Animal control of...
Super Tuesday fever struck in Sweetwater County for the countys GOP.

Several dozen Republican party supporters gathered at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs to choose delegates for the upcoming county convention, which takes place March 12 at WWCCs Green River Center. Those delegates will then vote for a representative to send to the Republican National Convention. In Wyoming, the GOP divide the 23 counties into 12 districts, with Sweetwater and Carbon Counties forming the local district. Sweetwater County will choose the delegate to represent both counties.

This is...
Everyone is creative in their own way. Some people like to paint. Some people like to write. Some people like crafts. Thats the great thing about the library, you can find materials on all of your interests. We have books on painting, writing, crafting and a whole variety of other creative activities.

Not only do we have materials on these activities, we also host events where you can learn something new. You can discover a new hobby, learn a new artistic technique, and make something. We have an event like this coming up this month.

The Sweetwater County Librarys March Mini Worksho...
Readers may wonder why we take such an interest in the local business climate.

Simply put, it doesnt make sense why many businesses seemingly struggle here. Its very bizarre that people living in a city of nearly 13,000 residents feel they have to travel a round trip of at least 30 miles to purchase their necessities. Worse yet, were upset with the general apathy displayed by many residents and elected officials about Green Rivers economic environment, making excuses that the city is nothing more than a bedroom community or saying business has always struggled here....
Bobby and Donna Lewis Cudney of Green River will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on March 3, 2016.

An open house in their honor will take place, Saturday, March 5 at the United Congregational Church, 350 Mansface, Green River, from 4-6 p.m. The family will host the open house; and would like to invite family and friends to join them.

Donna is the daughter of the late John and Mabel McBride Lewis of Green River. Bob is the son of the late William and Thelma Massey Cudney of Green River.

They were married at the United Congregational Church in Green River, March 3, 1956, by the Rev....
A class geared toward fall prevention for Green River seniors will start later this month.

Starting March 14, the Golden Hour Senior Center will begin a 10-week-long class called Better, Balance, Training. This class is open to all seniors and the center is currently looking for class members. GHSC activities coordinator Megan Brown encourages seniors to sign up for the class.

Its better to take the full 10 weeks, but anybodys welcome to show up, Brown said.

The classes are based on Tai Chi, which Brown learned last October at a Tai Chi Teacher Training program the Wyoming Depa...
Inspiring young children to write is something Green River residents want to continue to do.

One way to do this is by bringing well-known authors to the schools. Last Wednesday, students listened to author Roland Smith discuss his books and how he started writing. Smith has written novels, non-fiction books and children's books.

Smith visited with students from Monroe Intermediate School, Lincoln Middle School and fourth graders from various Sweetwater County School District No. 2 schools.

During his presentation, Smith told the students about a gift he received from his father. Smith had w...
GREENSBORO  Most brand-new employees dont have the day Margaret Spellings had.

On Tuesday, as the former U.S. education secretary started her new job as president of North Carolinas university system, hundreds of students at six UNC campuses welcomed Spellings with rallies aimed at making her feel, well, unwelcomed.

At N.C. A&T, about 100 students gathered outside the cafeteria to list their wide-ranging concerns about Spellings, the Republican-dominated state legislature and the Board of Governors that runs the UNC system.

Across town at UNC-Greensboro, more than 150 students rallied in front of the student center, then marched to the UNCG Auditorium, the buildings new name after trustees voted last month to remove the name of segregationist Gov. Charles B. Aycock.

Similar rallies took place Tuesday at UNC-Chapel Hill, Appalachian State, UNC-Charlotte and UNC-Wilmington.

Were just doing a lot of pushback, said Nhawndie Smith, an A&T junior from Hampton, Va., who organized the rally on her campus. Were concerned about her past history and what shes going to do now.

Among the student concerns at A&T: Spellings connections to corporate education enterprises (she served on the boards of a for-profit university and a student-loan collection company), her support of the test-heavy and now repealed No Child Left Behind federal education law, her past comments about an animated PBS character that some have said shows insensitivity toward gays and lesbians, past references to college students as customers and her annual salary of $775,000.

The UNC Board of Governors came in for criticism, too, for what students called a lack of transparency. Students said the board hired Spellings  whose previous job was as director of the presidential library of her mentor, former President George W. Bush  behind closed doors and without asking for public input.

A&T students also expressed fear about the fate of their school and the four other historically black colleges in the UNC system. The Elizabeth City State chancellor quit in December after only a year on the job, and the Fayetteville State chancellor went public last week with his opposition to a proposed bill in Raleigh that might rename his campus and several others.

We think of HBCUs as safe spaces, but now theyre trying to erase those spaces, Smith said. That could eventually become A&T. Thats a very scary thing.

UNCG students expressed similar concerns, said Stephanie McCloud, a junior from Fayetteville who helped put together Tuesdays demonstration there.

I think the bottom line would be valuing our education, our voices, our faculty over the cost of dollars and secrecy, McCloud said.

At UNC-Chapel Hill, 80 protesters stood on the steps of Wilson Library while several hundred students assembled on a nearby quad, the News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

Im just kind of concerned because what about the adjunct professors here and across the UNC system? Morgan McLaughlin, a junior, told the newspaper. What about the workers in our dining halls? What about the workers in our housing? What do they make? Nothing. They dont make $775,000, but they make this system run.

On her first day on the job, Spellings sent an email to all 225,000 students in the UNC system that said shes looking forward to working with and serving you.

Higher education strengthens democratic values, fosters civic engagement, and levels the playing field so that people from all walks of life can reach their own highest potential and serve the greater good, she wrote.

We must build on this legacy by ensuring that North Carolina leads the nation in securing an affordable education for all qualified students.

Spellings got some help from an unlikely source: Tom Ross, who has stayed quiet about his successor and the turmoil surrounding her hiring.

In a blog post on the Higher Education Works website, an independent nonprofit that supports public higher education in North Carolina, Ross wrote that we must all do everything in our power to ensure her success.

It is unfair to blame her for what happened to me or for the process that selected her. Instead, we must all realize she is now the President of our University of North Carolina  the best public university system in America.

In her email to students, Spellings said she plans to visit each UNC system campus in the coming weeks. Her tour starts Thursday at Fayetteville State, where the Board of Governors will meet. She is scheduled to be at A&T on March 24 and at UNCG sometime in April.

Smith said she is looking forward to the presidents visit.

We plan to have a conversation with her if thats an open space to have a dialogue, Smith said. Which I hope. Shes presented it if it is that way.

Contact John Newsom at (336) 373-7312 and follow @JohnNewsomNR on Twitter.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Federal authorities are investigating possible privacy and disability act violations in the way Connecticuts towns and cities require handicapped Americans to vote in referendum elections.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ndidi N. Moses sent a letter dated Feb. 1, to most, if not all, of the first selectmen, mayors and town managers of the states 169 municipalities informing them of the probe.

It advises them a complaint was filed contending violations of federal civil rights laws and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Specifically, the allegation charges that voting by paper ballots, which are then segregated and hand-counted, violates privacy and secrecy requirements that are afforded non-disabled voters.

U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly said her office is acting on a complaint that certain cities and towns in Connecticut may not be in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act during referendum voting.

As a result, she said her office sent letters to all Connecticut municipalities.

Based on the results of the survey, we will determine if further action is necessary, Daly said. That action can range from guidance and training to the opening of individual investigations.

Fred DeCaro III, Greenwichs Republican registrar of voters and chairman of the Fairfield County Registrars of Voters Association for Connecticut, said he received the letter Tuesday.

Based on conversations with fellow registrars, he believes every municipal leader was mailed a copy.

It is a very blanket request, DeCaro said. I have no idea why it was sent to Greenwich.

Thats because DeCaro said Greenwich has not had a referendum vote that was separate from a general election in years.

I suspect some of the smaller towns, particularly those that vote on budgets, have separate referendums, DeCaro said.

However, DeCaro believes the states registrars followed instructions provided in the Office of the Secretary of State: Information Bulletin Issue 65 dated March, 2012.

The passage may clear municipalities of any wrongdoing, he said.

The following question and answer was published in the bulletin: Is a municipality required to use the IVS (Interactive Voter Service) vote-by-phone system for stand alone local referenda that will not be conducted in conjunction with a May or November election in 2011?

The response from Secretary of State Denise Merrills office was: No. The Connecticut Attorney General has stated that the IVS vote-by-phone system need only be used during a primary, election or special election held in a municipality. This includes a primary, election or special election held in a state or municipal year.

A voice message was left with Merrills office Tuesday seeking comment.

The IVS system often involves a phone hooked up to a fax machine at the polling place. It is used to amplify sounds for hearing-impaired voters as well as help visually-impaired voters cast their ballot.

A poll worker calls the system using their identification numbers then hands the phone to the voter. The voter listens to a line by line reading of the ballot in which numbers are applied to each candidate.

The voter then uses the telephone keypad to record a selection. Once completed a ballot is faxed back. Some of these can only be read by hand.

There is an expense with these machines which require an active telephone line, DeCaro said. If a municipality has multiple referenda and elections, its best they keep the line active all year to avoid the suspension costs.

DeCaro said Greenwich has 30,000 active voters but he cant recall a single person using the system.

We have 12 districts and the ballots might contain as many as 50 names, he said. It takes us a full day to sit and listen to the names read off.

And he said it takes a long time for a voter to listen and select candidates.
the real estate

The Only Reason We Got It Was That I Lied

The Only Reason We Got It Was That I Lied
Its happening. Photo: The Cheesecake Factory/Facebook

New York will never be the same. The Cheesecake Factory, also known as the No. 1 restaurant of professional athletes everywhere, is opening its first New York City location this year, and it will be in a mall, of course. Known for its insanely unhealthy food, dozens of cheesecake flavors, and otherwise very lengthy menu, the ordinary suburban chain is landing in Elmhursts Queens Center Mall, which is also home to Shake Shack. It should open, reps say, sometime this winter. The local community board estimates there will be seating for 180 indoors, with additional capacity for 50 in the outdoor patio, which could make it a pretty major nightlife destination next summer. Whether New York Knicks rookie and super fan Kristaps Porzingis will attend the opening has not yet been confirmed.

[Queens Courier via Eater]
Ill have the wood-roasted pheasant, please. Photo: Constance Bannister/Getty Images

Despite their graciousness, or perhaps because of it, Michelin-starred restaurants are used to dealing with a steady stream of unruly customers. Diners are overly entitled, they complain about the food, they drink too much, or they just generally act out of turn. Even still, the staff at chef Patti Jacksons Delaware and Hudson in Brooklyn, which earned its first star after opening in 2014, maintained an impressive degree of composure one recent weekday when a diner zipped through a servers legs and made a beeline to the bathroom. Then again, the diner in question was 2 years old, and she was there as part of a new dining group, Nibble + Squeak, which aims to make high-end restaurants more accessible to children (and the adults who look after them). Think of it like a giant playdate, with smoked mackerel and fine china.

Melissa Elders came up with the idea for Nibble + Squeak when she returned to New York City after ten years living in London. Her daughter, now 15 months, was born there, and when Elders was on maternity leave, she took part in a lunch for moms with babies in a private room at Pollen Street Social, another Michelin-star restaurant. In both New York City and London there are so many activities to do with kids, Elders says. I found that I was rushing between those events and barely managed to feed myself. She also missed being able to try the best restaurants the way she had before her daughter was born. Theyre not usually open for lunch, she points out.

And so Nibble + Squeak was born. It took a few months for Elders to sort out the details for her first event, which she decided to hold at the well-regarded Delaware and Hudson. It is, according to Elders, the perfect place to debut the idea: It has high-caliber food, but its not too fussy and starchy.

The benefit for the restaurant (in addition to showing some goodwill to new parents who want to enjoy a nice meal): Elders guarantees a certain number of diners, who all pay in advance, at a time of day when business is generally slower. The chef handles the food, and the usual dining-room staff takes care of service. Elders, meanwhile, helps childproof the actual restaurant, borrowing additional high chairs, figuring out a spot for strollers to park, and  in the case of Delaware and Hudson  converting a secluded alcove two-top into a makeshift changing station.

If it all sounds a bit like a Portlandia parody, it kind of is. But the fact that Elderss first event sold out is evidence that there are plenty of new parents in New York who want a way to eat great restaurant food without having to pay for a babysitter, or scramble desperately through the meal to keep their kids quiet and seated. They also dont have to deal with the side glances they might get from kid-free diners who dont appreciate toddlers in the dining room. Zeina Muna, who wore her 4-month-old son during the Delaware and Hudson event, agrees: Nibble + Squeak lets you have amazing lunches with friends while removing that stress of dining out with a baby.

But Nibble + Squeaks value proposition also goes a little deeper than that: Elders says shes found that moms and dads discover a special kind of satisfaction in sharing a fine-dining experience with their young children. For some, perhaps, this is a form of weird fun: Theres no lack of amusement in watching kids try the kinds of foods that adults spend decades learning to like. Others hope to, at least in some way, help their wee ones on a road toward lifelong appreciation of thoughtful, ambitious cooking.

At Delaware and Hudson, the group of 26 adults and 22 kids (ranging in age from 5 weeks to 4 years) enjoyed a three-course menu that began with an array of appetizers, including house-smoked mackerel on a buckwheat pancake, lamb meatballs garnished with mint and peas, butternut-squash bisque, and house pickles. The main course offered a choice of beef filet, arctic char with parsnip puree, Amish-style chicken potpie, or farrotto. (The cost was $39 for the adults, which included tip and tax; toddlers ate for free.) Were in a neighborhood with a lot of children, and we like children, says Jackson, who is both chef and owner. She says the menu is a good example of the type of food she usually serves and not a kid-friendly departure. When we first talked about the event, I didnt understand how many babies and toddlers there would be.

There were touches of civility  real silverware and china plates  and the waitstaff was so utterly professional that you wouldve thought they were serving a regular evening clientele, but there was no mistaking this bunch for your typical fine-diners. On the communal table, next to glasses of (mostly) water and (some) wine and beer, were fluorescent sippy cups and teething toys, board books and crayons, homemade pureed sweet potatoes and baby-food pouches. Surrounding the table were babies in carriers, in arms, and on laps. Mothers nursed freely or walked with their infants between courses. There was a constant line for that alcove changing table.

This week, Elders is hosting another Nibble + Squeak event at Ilan Halls Israeli barbecue joint, Esh. The price has gone up a bit, to $48, which Elders says includes a generous tip. Its a lot of people, she concedes, and were a needy group. Shes also lined up future events at Upland and Clocktower, both in Manhattan, as well as a lunch at Daniel Burnss Luksus, the New Nordic tasting room in the back of Greenpoint beer bar Trst.

Jackson, for her part, says shes happy with how the day turned out. The energy in the room was great, she says. It was a really sweet, fun event.

Callie Wright is the author of Love All and runs SkipKid.com.
Ever since September of 2015, Samsung has been rumored to be thinking about 'emulating' Apple once more, this time regarding a leasing program for its devices. This hasn't actually become reality yet, but according to a new report out of South Korea that's going to change very soon.

Samsung hasn't stopped working on its leasing program, and will in fact be launching it on March 11, on the day when the Galaxy S7 (pictured below) and S7 edge go on sale. For starters, those will be the only two devices that you'll be able to grab through the leasing scheme. The biggest caveat, however, is the fact that for the time being Samsung will only offer the leasing option in South Korea. And only through its own physical stores.

The program will require eager customers to sign a two-year monthly installment plan. However, you are able to upgrade your device after just 12 months if you so wish, without having to complete the remaining payments. Since the scheme will be offered directly by Samsung, people who go this route will be able to choose any one of the three Korean carriers for a service agreement.

Right now it's unclear when (or if) Samsung plans to take this leasing program global, but perhaps the Korean release is just a test run, and if everything goes well we might see the same thing offered elsewhere.

Source
On Mar. 1, 2016, the U.S. Appeals Court in New York heard oral arguments on whether the United Nations has immunity from a class action lawsuit charging its soldiers negligently dumped their sewage into Haitis largest river, thereby unleashing the worlds worst cholera epidemic. In October 2010, an outpost of Nepalese blue-helmets, several scientific studies have found, allowed feces from their outhouses to flow into the headwaters of the Artibonite River, which is used for drinking, washing, and irrigation of Haitis rice fields. As a result, over the past five and half years, close to 10,000 Haitians have died from the fecally-transmitted cholera bacteria, and close to 900,000 have been sickened. On Jan. 9, 2015, Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed the claims made by lawyers from the Boston-based Institute for Democracy and Justice in Haiti (IJDH) and the Port-au-Prince-based Office of International Lawyers (BAI) on behalf of Haitian cholera victims and their families in the case known as Georges vs. United Nations. Despite vigorous arguments from the IJDH that its clients and Haitians in general had no other recourse to justice and compensation for the injuries theyve endured, Judge Oetken found that the United Nations, [the UN military occupation force] MINUSTAH, [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon, and [then MINUSTAH chief] Edmond Mulet are absolutely immune from suit in this Court. But a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District has questions about that ruling and agreed to hear oral arguments from both the IJDHs Beatrice Lindstrom, spearheading the appeal, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Blain, who had argued on behalf of the UN in the original Oct. 23, 2014 hearing before Oetken. The UN did not send any other lawyers to defend itself in either the 2015 or 2016 hearings. (They are taking this absolute radical position that they are not subject to any law so they dont even show up to court, said IJDHs executive director Brian Concannon, Jr.) Judges Gerard E. Lynch, Barrington Daniels Parker, Jr., and Jose A. Cabranes peppered Lindstrom and Blain with questions as they presented their arguments: Has the UN given any remedy? Assuming there is a condition precedent to immunity, who has the rights of enforcement? If this was a claim against the U.S. military, instead of Nepalese peacekeepers, would there be immunity ? Since the UN is not present, never entered an appearance, and the U.S. Government is not a party, what would be the procedure if the plaintiff prevails? Is there any precedent in any jurisdiction, international cases too, for a tort claim against the actual UN  not UNESCO  the UN itself? Is this unprecedented? The hearing comes as public support for the plaintiffs continues to grow. In an October 2015 letter, made public last week, the UNs own experts issued a stinging condemnation of the UNs conduct so far. Four UN Special Rapporteurs and a UN Independent Expert wrote that the UNs stonewalling of the cholera case has resulted in the inability of the victims of the cholera outbreak to vindicate their rights and to obtain access to a remedy for the harms suffered to which human rights law entitles them. The UN experts warned that the UNs attempt to hide behind immunity undermines the reputation of the United Nations, calls into question the ethical framework within which its peace-keeping forces operate, and challenges the credibility of the Organization as an entity that respects human rights. They concluded that it is essential that the victims of cholera have access to a transparent, independent and impartial mechanism that can review their claims... in order to ensure adequate reparation, including restitution, compensation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. In support of the appeal, 86 scholars, Haitian-American leaders, human rights experts, and former UN officials submitted six legal briefs in June 2015. In July 2015, 154 Haitian-American leaders and organizations sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Ban Ki-moon demanding UN accountability. On Dec. 10, 2015  Human Rights Day  over 2,000 letters from cholera victims and their families were delivered to the United Nations headquarters in New York.  If the peacekeepers from MINUSTAH did not contaminate our water supply with fecal matter, I never would have been infected with this disease, wrote Gerard St. Fleur in Kreyol from Pierre Rouge, for example. The MINUSTAH peacekeepers do not respect us and treat us worse than animals. For at least these reasons, I am asking for justice and reparation. About 50 people  the press, law students, lawyers for parallel suits and amici briefs  packed the courtroom and the same-capacity overflow room outside. Haitian-American lawyers and cholera justice advocates Emmanuel Coffy from New Jersey and Kertch Conze from Florida also attended the hearing. The crux of this case is whether the UN can invoke the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (CPIUN) while refusing to provide a claims commission or other mechanism to address the cholera victims claims. The IJDH began this legal journey with a petition within the UN grievance system in November 2011. The UN answered 15 months later with a two-page letter saying any claims were not receivable. The question is about access to justice, said Lindstrom during a court-step press conference after the hearing. It is clear we are on the right side of history here. Its just a question of the UN coming around and upholding its obligations that have been in effect since 1946. I think that the United Nations is getting to the end of this absolute immunity, said the BAIs lead lawyer Mario Joseph. We also think this hearing sends a message to the Haitian government, which, up until now, has not helped Haitis poorest people with their demands. The judges kept coming back to the question: where is the Haitian government? What is it doing? Should the judges find for the plaintiffs, Concannon says the case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court by the U.S. government. Asked about this eventuality by the judges at the Mar. 1 hearing, Blain said she didnt know how things would proceed because the U.S. is just an amicus (i.e. legal friend) of the UN. The IJDH intends to appeal to the Supreme Court should they lose. Concannon foresees the appeals process taking months and the Supreme Court process potentially years. This case raises a fairly serious question about the U.S. relationship to the UN, and the UNs relationship with the vulnerable population in countries where it has peace-keeping missions, he said. Overall, Concannon said he was heartened... to see the judges asking very good questions both about the consequences of the UNs ignoring its legal obligations but also bringing it back to the impact on the victims. We think this sent a message. Lindstrom echoed those sentiments. I think the court certainly recognizes that there are extremely troubling consequences that flow from a recognition of immunity in this case, that are different from other cases where UN immunity has been accorded, she said. This is fundamentally a question about victims who have suffered real harm and have been denied any kind of due process whatsoever. That was the message that I think resounded extensively in the court today.






Haiti - Justice : Conclusion of the UN independent expert





Tuesday in a press conference, Gustavo Gallon, the UN Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti, who finished his fifth official mission to Haiti to assess the situation of human rights in the current political context. https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16667-haiti-justice-monitoring-mission-of-gustavo-gallon.html presented a summary of its findings.



The Expert takes into its recommendations five aspects of violation of human rights it considers most urgent. They are illiteracy, prolonged pretrial detention, impunity on human rights abuses of the past, the painful situation of people affected by factors beyond the responsibility of the State (such as displaced by the earthquake, the Haitian people being in or coming from the Dominican Republic, or cholera victims) and absence of elections.



"In a particular political context, I propose that additional efforts be concentrated on five areas, given their urgency, as a practical method that can help to make progress in the very difficult task, but not impossible, to overcome the serious situation of human rights in Haiti," stressed Mr. Gallon.



The expert met with the highest government authorities who have committed to take action, within their short term and provisional, to advance in these areas.



Thus, the President a.i. Privert pledged to make several decisions, particularly with regard to prolonged detention said the independent expert, who visited the prison of Croix des Bouquets "The president is committed to conduct a survey of imprisoned persons to check which of them were imprisoned for a time equal to or greater than the punishment that would theoretically apply to them; have sufficient investigating judges to handle cases; revise the regulation of the judicial system and in particular the draft codes https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-14556-haiti-justice-one-more-step-towards-the-overhaul-of-the-penal-code.html https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-16494-icihaiti-justice-abortion-legalized-in-the-new-penal-code.html , which have been prepared and should be submitted to Parliament, etc ... The decision is clearly as soon as possible to reduce the rate of overcrowding and people deprived of freedom," said M Gallon.



Regarding impunity, the independent expert reiterated the recommendation to create a commission of truth, justice and reparation for the grave violations committed by the Duvalier regimes, military regimes and M Aristide and recalled in particular that criminal cases against consorts of Jean-Claude Duvalier must continue. Mr. Gallon announced that the provisional President has expressed his desire to lay the foundation, within the narrow limits of its provisional mandate for the conformation of a Commission for Truth, justice and reparation whose integration can be achieved by the Government elected after the culmination of the electoral process.



During his visit to Ouanaminthe, the independent expert has called on the Haitian authorities to take the necessary measures to prevent the expulsions from the Dominican Republic as well as to improve the state's ability to guarantee the rights of these individuals on their arrival in Haiti.



Regarding literacy, Expert recalled that "almost half of Haiti's population can neither read nor write, which is a violation in itself that is repeated every day, but especially leading to other violations of basic rights, because in these conditions people have very limited access to other rights such as work, personality development, justice and life in society." He announced that the President and the Prime Minister named, promised to request a review of the literacy campaign which is running, very important but insufficient to strengthen it so that illiteracy is eradicated in the country in a reasonably short time."



Finally he asked to conclude the electoral process "It's a very difficult situation to manage for which I appreciate the willingness shown by the Provisional President to find a just and effective solution in accordance with agreements made and the very short deadlines for completing the political transition," declared Mr. Gallon.



The independent expert will presented his report to the Council of Human Rights 22 March 2016.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Economy : DHL launches new economical service in Haiti





DHL Express, the world's leading international express services provider, Tuesday announced the launch of Express Easy, a new service that brings simple, all-inclusive rates to international shipping. The service, which is being launched in Haiti, gives walk-in customers access to lower prices from the standard DHL Express Worldwide service.



Each box used for shipping DHL Express Easy, sold as a one-piece shipment, comes with a defined maximum weight and a simple rate based on the shipments destination.



"Haitians who regularly receive remittances from relatives living abroad are always looking for the best ways to send gifts to their loved ones as a gesture of appreciation. DHL is excited to be able to bring a service like this to such a globally diverse market," said Jean-Paul Faubert, Country Manager for DHL Express Haiti.



Adding that the logistics services and expertise play a crucial role for SMEs to achieve the expansion of their business internationally. "This new product provides practical, flexible solutions and is intended to support the growth of our SME customers [...] The pricing structure is simple, the product very easy to use."



Express Easy is now available at DHL locations on Boulevard Toussaint Louverture in Delmas, Avenue Marie Jeanne in Port-au-Prince, Delimart Plaza in Diquini, Rue Clerveaux in Petion-Ville and Rue 5A in Cap Haitien.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Russian administration calls Arctic coal mine blasts that killed 36 a "natural disaster"

A new explosion at the Severnaya coal mine in Vorkuta, northern Russia, killed five rescuers and one miner on February 28. This explosion occurred during efforts to rescue workers trapped underground after the first two blasts at the mine three days earlier. Five people were reported injured as a result of the latest explosion.

Stock image

On February 29, the Emergencies Ministry officially confirmed that none of the 26 miners whom the rescuers were trying to save from the February 26 blasts had survived, bringing the total death toll from the three explosions to 36 people. The first two killed four miners outright and trapped the other 26 in an area behind rockfall and where fierce fires were raging.

A spokesperson for JSC Vorkutaugol, operator of the Severnaya coal mine, told TASS the rescuers were operating at a normal safety distance, but the second blast reached them and also killed a hoisting engineer supplying materials to the rescue site.

On February 26, 80 of the 110 miners underground were evacuated from the mine. Russian news sources reported that 550 people and 80 pieces of equipment were involved in the rescue effort. The mines location, above the Arctic Circle, made the operation extremely difficult.

Emergency services had warned of the possibility of another underground blast remains because of the high levels of methane in the mine. All rescue teams and specialists were rapidly evacuated from the mine after the second explosion.

A Vorkutaugol spokesperson told journalists the site of the explosion would be isolated by pumping nitrogen into the mine and production should resume relatively quickly.

Three days of mourning were announced for the victims of the disaster in the Komi Republic, where the mine is situated. Local government officials and the administration of the city of Vorkuta have been ordered to take all necessary measures to assist the families of the victims.



JSC Vorkutaugol is owned by the Severstal steel and industrial group headed by Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov.



According to a report by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on March 1, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on February 29 that preliminary evidence from an investigation showed the disaster was a result of natural causes rather than negligence or fraud.

"At this point, based on the analysis of the data from both Rostekhnadzor (Russia's industrial safety watchdog) and the Investigative Committee, it is clear that there was an abrupt outburst, increase in methane concentration. ... There was no gradual methane concentration increase, sensors did not register anything of the kind, so it was almost impossible to prevent the outburst using sensing devices," he said.

Dvorkovich said the mine operator, Vorkutaugol, acted "according to the rules."

Pechora Alexander Goncharenko, head of Rostekhnadzor's regional branch, said preliminary evidence suggests the incident was "a natural disaster" caused by methane leaks that occur naturally in coal mines.

But RFE/RL quoted trade union members, miners, and relatives of those that died saying they had serious concerns about the levels of methane in the pit and that workers feared something could go wrong.



Methane explosions occur regularly in Russian coal mines. In 2007, an explosion at a mine in Ulyanovskaya in Siberia killed 110 people.





More information...
North Carolina citizens can now easily search court records at the courthouse with the launch of the new Criminal and Infraction Public Records Search (CIPRS). The application delivers a modern, intuitive, and user-friendly experience to access public records.

CIPRS replaces a decades-old green screen system, said Judge Marion Warren, director of the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts. I am pleased to provide the public with a modern interface to this criminal justice information system.

Providing systems such as CIPRS is part of a larger initiative to modernize court technology systems statewide. It was designed with the public in mind and is available to everyone on public access terminals in county courthouses. CIPRS provides the public with a search experience consistent with what theyre used to in other browser-based tools. It provides summary and in-depth case information in easy to read screens and reports. Users can email case reports at no cost.

This new and modern system is getting great use and acceptance by the numerous stakeholders who have used it, said Forsyth County Clerk of Superior Court Susan Frye, who also sponsored the technology development work of this system. Providing information systems that are easy to use helps us to better serve the public.

The system has been implemented in all 100 counties throughout the state as of March 2016. Currently, more than 47 million records are in the system (roughly 42.7 million criminal cases and 4.5 million infraction cases). Other records are added daily as they are processed. Criminal and infraction cases cover infractions, misdemeanors, and felonies. Cases range from minor traffic violations to serious crimes, with details like warrants for arrest, orders for arrest, citations, criminal summonses, and magistrate orders. Use of the legacy system was primarily by professionals in the media and legal fields, with common uses being criminal background checks, checking on the status of court cases, or historical research. With CIPRS user-friendly interface, users and uses of the system will greatly expand and diversify.

More information

CIPRS fact sheet

###

About N.C. Judicial Branch

The Judicial Branch is an equal and distinctively separate branch and core function of government. More than 6,000 Judicial Branch employees statewide administer justice in courthouses in North Carolinas 100 counties. The Judicial Branch budget for FY 2015  2016 is $484.9M, 92% of which is used to pay salaries and the remaining 8% is used for operations. The Judicial Branch receives only 2.23% of the overall State budget. More than 54% of the Judicial Branchs appropriation is equivalent to revenues collected by the courts through imposed fines and fees that are deposited in the State General Fund.

About N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts

The N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC) is the administrative agency for the N.C. Judicial Branch, providing administrative services to help the North Carolina court system operate more efficiently and effectively, taking into account each courthouses diverse needs, caseloads, and available resources.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

LinkedIn

Reddit

Pocket


Puumala points out that the cuts in financial aid for students laid out in the report far exceed the objective of the government programme of generating savings of 70 million euros by the end of the current electoral term.

Tuomo Puumala (Centre), the chairperson of the Parliament's Education and Culture Committee, has doused cold water on a report on the reform of student financial aid published on 1 March .

Roope Uusitalo, a professor of economics of education at the University of Jyvaskyla, calculates in his report that the proposal to slash financial aid for higher education students to 250 euros a month would generate savings of 103 million euros.

If the reform was implemented on 1 August, 2017, the savings would be fully realised as early as in 2018, he writes in his report to the Ministry of Education and Culture.

Puumala stresses in a press release that the cuts in student financial aid should not exceed the limits agreed upon in the coalition negotiations. He points out that the proposal presented by Uusitalo would generate cost savings far exceeding 70 million euros by 2019, even though the longer-term savings target of 150 million euros has not been set for the current electoral term.

Even the all-important objective of balancing public finances does not necessitate cutting so much from students. Other forms of social security were not cut to the same extent. Even if the amount of student loan guaranteed by the state will increase, cutting student financial aid by 87 euros and limiting the maximum eligibility period will have a dramatic impact on the daily lives of students, he states.

The cuts in student financial aid alone  if it is indeed cut by over 80 euros [per month]  would create savings of over 100 million euros, he said in an interview with Uusi Suomi. I'm of the opinion that the cuts laid out in the government programme for the current electoral term are enough.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Martti Kainulainen  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Towne Place developer agrees to drainage work

A developer plans two duplexes on the last remaining vacant lot at Towne Place

Residents of Towne Place were able to extract a promise of drainage improvements from a developer seeking permission to build the last four units in the development on Greenville Highway.

Related Stories



Park Place Developers LLC is seeking a special-use permit to add two duplex dwellings in the last vacant parcel of the 37-unit development on 6.7 acres. Originally approved 13 years ago for 44 units, the development is complete except for the final four units.

Residents have been split on whether they approve of the buildout but many say that the developer has neglected the stormwater system and caused runoff problems. During a neighborhood compatibility meeting last September, residents raised concerns about stormwater runoff pooling in yards and flooding basements and a lack of maintenance of a drainage pond. They also asked whether heavy construction equipment might damage streets.

In December, city engineer Brent Detwiler sent a letter to the property owners agent, an attorney in Lake Worth, Fla., warning him that Park Place Developers was responsible for the maintenance of the stormwater system. A city inspection found numerous deficiencies, he said, and said the developer needed to clear out sediment buildup, remove sediment from filled-up storage basins, stabilize drainage outlets and restore vegetation. City code, Detwiler added, requires the developer to submit an annual inspection report, follow best management practices and maintain the drainage system.

Communications suffered after developer Dan Young died in a car crash, said Larry Winson, who spoke for Park Place and for Jim Ayers, the developer who plans to build the duplexes. I think these notices were being sent to Mr. Youngs agent in Illinois. It never got to the current manager of the project. We are addressing those now.  Well do what needs to be done. Mr. Ayers doesnt want to buy the lots if he cant build on them, Wilson said.

The city Planning Board on Feb. 8 recommended approval of the special-use permit on the condition that the developer fixes the stormwater runoff deficiencies and that the city inspect and OK them before construction starts. The application goes before the City Council on Thursday.
Alison Cleary will appear before the circuit court this month

A young woman has been sent for trial accused of possession of more than 100,000 worth of cocaine for sale or supply at her home.

Alison Cleary (21) had a book of evidence served on her when she appeared before Blanchardstown District Court.

Judge Grainne O'Neill sent her forward to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Ms Cleary, of Bewley Lawns, Lucan, is charged with possession of more than 13,000 worth of cocaine with intent to sell or supply.

The offence is alleged to have happened at her home address on February 4 last year.

She is also charged with a related count of simple possession of the drug.

A state solicitor said the DPP was consenting to the case being sent for trial to the current sittings of the circuit court.

Judge O'Neill gave the defndant the formal notice that she must supply details of any alibi she intends to rely on to the prosecution within 14 days.

She also made an order for copies of the video of the accused's garda interview to be furnished to the defence.

Ms Cleary's solicitor, Simon Fleming, asked Judge O'Neill to grant a legal aid certificate to cover both junior and senior counsel in the circuit court.

Remanded

The state solicitor did not object and said this was a "matter for the court". The judge granted Mr Fleming's application after hearing that the allegation involved drugs with a value "in excess of 100,000".

The defendant was remanded on bail under existing terms, to appear before the circuit court later this month. She did not address the court during the hearing and has not yet indicated how she intends to plead to the charges.
The captain of the Dublin ladies GAA team has described the inequality between the men and women's game as "frustrating".

Sinead Goldrick, who led the Jackies to an All-Ireland final in Croke Park last year, has said travel expenses, food after games and training facilities are issues that need to be addressed in the ladies game.

The GAA star, who is in a relationship with Dublin hurler David Treacy, said her male counterparts are treated better when it comes to free gym membership and petrol expenses.

"As a player, it is frustrating when you see the differences between the men and women's game," Sinead told the Herald.

Treated

"You feel that you are putting the same amount of commitment in, you are taking care of yourself on and off the field. So when you look at it in black and white, we aren't being treated the way we should be.

"The lads deserve everything they get, it's not about us against them - it's just about recognising that we should be able to have food after training, gym membership and also petrol and expenses going out to training.

"I would often travel from Cabinteely out to DCU four or five times per week and don't get any expenses," she added. "We are lucky that we have a training venue in DCU so we are looked after in that way.

"But you are expected as a player to have your own food so if you're working all day and going straight to training that can be difficult sometimes."

Sinead is calling on employers across Ireland to sign up for National Workplace Wellbeing Day on April 8, and take part in the 'Lunchtime Mile'.
Bullet holes can be seen in the windscreen of murdered Vinny Ryans Volkswagen car (Collins)

Ireland's latest gangland murder victim was urged to have a "sit-down meeting" with the arch criminal who is suspected of ordering his fatal shooting but refused to consider the idea, the Herald can reveal.

Vinny Ryan (25) was urged by some of his closest pals and associates to have a meeting with the gangster nicknamed 'Mr Big' in the weeks after he was stabbed in the face in vic-ious attack in Dublin's north inner-city last October.

However, Ryan refused to entertain the idea that he could "make peace" with the gangster he blamed for ordering the murder of his older brother, Alan.

Madness

"It is not the case that Vinny snubbed Mr Big - he hated that man's guts," said a source.

"The situation was that people who really cared about Vinny wanted him to try and reach out for a sit-down to end all the madness that has been going on.

"But it never got anywhere because Vinny didn't want anything to do with that individual and was never going to meet him.

"Who knows if it would have ever come to anything or if the gang boss would have agreed to it."

The meeting was supposed to take place in the weeks after Ryan was subjected to a horrific knife attack on the evening of October 29, which happened in front of his then pregnant 24-year-old partner who was walking with him at Parnell Square North.

There were major concerns at the time that the knife might have severed an artery because of the amount of blood Ryan lost, but they proved unfounded and he was released from the Mater Hospital after two days.

There has been much speculation that the knife attack was ordered by the 'Mr Big' mob, but this has never been proved.

There is no doubt, however, that Ryan and his pals blamed the drugs mob for organising the attack, which is believed to have been carried out by a north inner-city heroin addict.

Gardai believe it is "unlikely" that dissident republican associates of Ryan will be able to hit back quickly in a revenge attack for Monday's murder.

"Vinny's older brother, Alan, was murdered well over three years ago and the IRA faction were not able to do anything significant against the drugs gang in all that time, so it's not likely they'll be able to do anything imminently here either," said a source.

This is despite the revelation last year that thugs linked to Vinny Ryan had a car ready to be used at a moment's notice to kill the Coolock gangster believed to have organised his brother's murder.

Last night, the shadowy 32 County Sovereignty Movement, to which Vinny and Alan Ryan belonged, issued a statement calling for an end to the violence.

Insidious

"Words cannot express the magnitude of the loss Vincent's death must mean to his family, having suffered the tragedy of his brother, Volunteer Alan Ryan's death a few years previously," the group said.

"This violence is insidious and must stop. It is the duty of all republicans to ensure that it does."

Alan Ryan (32) was shot dead as he walked with friends on Grange Lodge Avenue, Clongriff- in, on the afternoon of September 3, 2012.

Gardai now face the prospect of policing Vinny Ryan's funeral after a paramilitary show of force was staged at Alan Ryan's burial in September 2012.

Details of the funeral have not yet been released, but it is expected to be next week.

Vinny Ryan is believed to have been shot dead because of his bitter opposition to the 'Mr Big' drugs mob.

That dispute led to a number of incidents in which he was targeted.

Last October's knife attack came only six months after gardai foiled another suspected attempt on his life.

'Mr Big' was believed to have been on his way to carry out the hit himself when gardai tried to stop him in a car last April in the Donaghmede area.

He was with another known criminal when the pair were spotted in the same area as Ryan by a member of the public.

Gardai recognised 'Mr Big' and went to pull him over. However, he sped off and managed to get away.

Detectives suspect there was a weapon in the car and he may have been on his way to kill Ryan.

A similar incident was reported to gardai in late November, but again no one was injured and there were no arrests.

The 'Mr Big' gang are suspected of being behind a firebomb attack outside Ryan's family home in Donaghmede on the night of April 5, 2014.

It was the second attack at the house that year - thugs tried to break in a few months earlier.

The dispute that led to Ryan's murder this week was not the first time he had been entangled in a feud with a dangerous north Dublin drugs mob.

Ryan came out the better from the last feud, which was with rival gangster Michael 'Micka' Kelly. Ryan was the chief suspect for murdering Kelly, nicknamed 'The Panda', in September 2011 and then driving over his head.

However, gardai could never get enough evidence to charge him with the murder itself. They charged him instead with firearms offences linked to the killing, but he was never convicted.

Doubt

bIn October 2013, Ryan and his close pal Darragh Evans (25) were cleared by the Special Criminal Court of possession of an assault rifle and a handgun at Clonshaugh Walk, Coolock, on September 15, 2011 - the same day on which drugs trafficker Kelly was shot dead.

The non-jury court ruled there was an "insufficient evidential basis" to find Ryan and Evans were guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to the possession of an AKM assault rifle and Webley revolver MkV1 and spent a year in prison on remand.
BRISTOL, Tenn. Author and Pastor Todd Stocker, of Trinity Lutheran Church in Hudson, Wisconsin, once said: Thankfulness creates gratitude which generates contentment that causes peace.

And according to Mark Overton, pastor of Central Christian Church in Bristol, Tennessee, that statement encompasses a large part of the churchs mission. So each year, for the past four years, the congregation has offered thanks to police, fire and rescue workers in the Twin City by serving them a hot meal.

We think our public safety workers are under-appreciated, Overton said. Theres a lot going on in the country and we think its important for them to know that we think they do a really great jobthats why we initially started the Public Safety Appreciation Lunch four years ago.

Major Sean Carrigan, with the Bristol Virginia Police Department, said he has enjoyed the lunch every year.

Times are tense between civilians and the police in most communities, Carrigan said. Its not that way here, we have it good and when a community draws together with a sense of appreciation and fellowship it helps. At this lunch, we get to break bread with one anotherthat strengthens the ties in the community and helps to diffuse any problems that might come up.

Bristol Tennessee Police Chief Blaine Wade said a lot of officers turn out and enjoy the lunch each year.

Anytime that anyone wants to recognize public safety as a wholeand are generous enough to invite uswe feel that its important for us to be herewe need to receive their grace with grace, he said. Its nice for all for us to come in and enjoy a home-cooked mealwe appreciate the meal and gesture.

Those being served werent the only ones enjoying the mealthe volunteers said they couldnt think of anywhere theyd rather be.

Juvenile Judge Randy Kennedy, from Bristol, Tennessee, helped greet the safety employees and said it was a pleasure to serve the men and women who serve the city.

I appreciate what these folks do day in and day out, Kennedy said. I see the Bristol, Tennessee police officers on a regular basis.they are very respectful of our kids and are always on the look-out to see how they can help thema lot of people dont get to see that aspect of what they doI do and its a pleasure to be here today.
Do you realize that behind every light switch there are a few lumps of coal? The same holds true for every electric appliance, your heat and air conditioning and the food you eat.

Coal is one of the most reliable sources of energy we have in our energy portfolio and it doesnt need the wind to blow or the sun to shine to make it work. It is easy to say: Im for clean energy, while avoiding the fact that there is a steep price to pay for it.

Last August, the EPA released its final rule for reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases and Montana was arbitrarily assigned a targeted reduction of 47 percent by 2030, the highest reduction assigned to any state. Furthermore, the state of Montana is required to develop a plan to reach this goal and forward it to the EPA later this year.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently voted 5-4 to halt the new EPA regulations on power plant emisisons. But that won't stop the states of Washington and Oregon from considering legislation that would incentivize the decommissioning of Colstrip 1 and 2.

What does this mean to you and me? There is a very real possibility that Colstrip 1 and 2 will be decommissioned and Montanans will see a significant increase in our power bills to meet the reduction target. The Washington legislature is considering several bills which offer either an incentive or a mechanism to allow utilities to divest themselves of coal-fired generating plants. Their goal is to use only electricity from clean energy sources. Legislation being debated would encourage decommissioning coal fired power plants and the decommissioning costs could be funded through revenue bonds. Essentially Washington State is paying to shut down Colstrip because Puget Sound Energy owns 50 percent of Colstrip 1 and 2 and Talen Energy owns the balance. Talen is motivated to sell their interest and Puget Sound is interested in buying.

If we lose a portion of our source of low-cost power and replace it with clean energy, what is the cost that we will bear as ratepayers in Montana? The Colstrip power plant generates 2,096 megawatts of power and decommissioning units 1 and 2 will reduce the output by one third. Puget Sound Energy estimates shutting down units 1 and 2 has a price-tag of $130 million to $200 million. This does not include dealing with the economic impact on Colstrip, the costs of retraining displaced workforce, or the loss of revenue for the town, county and state coffers.

Businesses make decisions daily on options to improve profits, increase sales, reduce costs or expand markets. Does the plan to decommission a reliable source of power in a market you do not serve fit the definition of a business decision? If the people of Washington or Oregon do not want energy from coal-fired generating plants, source it elsewhere. Colstrip, Montana is a company town and most of the community's residents are financially tied to either the coal mine or the power plant directly or indirectly with the closure of 1 and 2.

Montanas extractive resources are getting attacked from all sides: Washington, D.C., from the east and Washington and Oregon from the west. The drastic initiatives of the attackers are based on misinformed assessments of cost/benefit analyses. And, while Montana is immediately in the crosshairs of the war on coal, those implementing the measures will not escape unscathed, due to decreased economic productivity and increased energy rates.

The United States has an ever increasing appetite for affordable power and a finite supply. Would we be shooting ourselves in the proverbial foot if we start decommissioning coal-fired generation without a suitable replacement for that energy? The likelihood is yes. At some point Colstrip 1 and 2 will reach the end of their productive life. This isnt it.
Yellowstone County's economy should grow by a respectable 3 percent annually through 2019, although the agriculture and energy sectors will face headwinds, state economists said recently in Billings.

Obstacles could emerge to derail that growth, and the biggest X factor is oil, according to Paul Polzin, an economist with the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research.

Despite a collapse in oil prices because of oversupply, production remained relatively steady through last year, and Yellowstone Countys economy persevered through brisk construction and other healthy sectors, he said.

This year, Yellowstone County will continue watching production at wells to the east, Polzin said.

How big is going to be the decline in the Bakken, and how is that going to affect Yellowstone County? Polzin said.

Patrick Barkey, director of the UM Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said the state is near full employment and is finally seeing wage growth, including in the retail sector. This may indicate consumers are looking to spend more after years of holding onto their wallets, he said.

Construction is back around pre-recession levels, and no bubbles  like the inflated housing market that led to the 2008 crash  are on the horizon, he said.

Low oil and coal prices are the states biggest struggle, and Barkey said he expects this environment will last.

The worst of the impact for energy still lies ahead, he said.

Health care remains a bright spot in the Billings economy. In the next decade, hospitals, clinics and other facilities will add 16,000 jobs in Yellowstone County just to meet needs of an aging baby boomer population and other growth, said Bryce Ward, a UM health care economist.

Growth in the sector slowed over the last five years, but Ward said he expects it to return to previous levels.

Montanas agriculture industry survived the recession of 2008-09 in good shape, but grain and cattle prices took a significant downturn last year, creating headwinds for the states agriculture industry, said George Haynes, professor and agricultural policy specialist in extension economics at Montana State University.

Last year, cash receipts for all Montana agriculture products totaled just over $3 billion, a 25 percent drop from the $4 billion in receipts during each of the three previous years.

Montana wheat producers saw prices as high as $7 per bushel in 2014, but prices have sunk to $5 per bushel or lower. Prices are soft because worldwide wheat production has been on the upswing, Haynes said.

These are challenging times for grain producers out there, and there are more challenging times as you look at cattle production, Haynes said.

Cattle prices remained strong through 2014 as ranchers in drought-stricken areas in the U.S. liquidated their herds. But prices began dropping last year after ranchers began rebuilding their herds. Beef imports also factored in the equation.

Pulse crops  peas, beans and lentils  are expected to be a bright spot this year, in part because of a robust export market, he said.

Montanas manufacturing sector has outperformed the national average in the wake of the recession. In 2014, manufacturers frequently complained of worker shortages, but that is seen as less of a problem last year.

Metal fabrication, a specialty thats tied closely to the oil industry, has experienced a slowdown in the Billings area, said economist Todd Morgan. Yellowstone Countys manufacturing sector supports 3,955 jobs with earnings of nearly $319 million.

The keynote speaker was Doug Young, professor emeritus at Montana State University, who walked the group through Montanas convoluted property-tax system.

Residential property taxes were about 1.5 percent of wages statewide in 1995, and they rose to about 2 percent of wages in 2015, according to Young. The biggest reason is the appreciation of residential homes values during that period, which far outpaced other property, he said.

Montanans is also above the national average in how much property taxes comprise state and local taxes, Young said. This shouldnt be a surprise because Montana lacks a state sales tax, he added.
Six school board candidates compete for three seats

There are six candidates for three Washington County Board of Education seats in the Nov. 8 election. Three incumbents face challengers.
LIVINGSTON  The Tap into Montana Craft Beer Week and Brew Fest moves to the Park County Fairgrounds this year on April 9 from 2 to 7 p.m. and other events running April 3-9.

Last years inaugural event featured 12 beer-related events, 15 Montana breweries and more than 350 brewfest attendees. Tap into Montana, now part of Vision Livingston, will offer more events and the brew fest will feature more than 20 Montana breweries, including Livingston favorites Katabatic Brewing and Neptunes Brewery, and several new Montana breweries, like Map Brewing (Bozeman), Great Burn Brewing (Missoula) and Cabinet Mountain Brewing (Libby).

Attendees can sample beers, hear live music from Laney Lou and the Bird Dogs and Tom Catmulls Radio Static, and food from Crazy Mountain Catering (Clyde Park) and Zacs Montana BBQ (Livingston).

VIP tickets are $30 in advance or $35 at the door (limited to 100 tickets) and regular tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. A VIP ticket gets patrons in ahead of the crowd for a chance to sample special release beers and talk with the breweries before everyone else gets there.

VIP hour is from 2 to 3 p.m. and regular brewfest hours are from 3 to 7 p.m. For those coming from out of town, discounted room rates are available at the Yellowstone Pioneer Lodge for $55 a night when you mention Tap into Montana.

Beer-related events will take place throughout Livingston, including beer and cheese pairings at Uncorked, a stein-holding competition at Katabatic, bison rocks and beer at Mustangs, a screening of the cult classic film Strange Brew at Neptunes, and the Beer Mile. For a full lineup of events or tickets, visit tapintomt.com.
During this season of Lent you may be looking for soup recipes you can share for a soup supper or luncheon for your church.

This week I am sharing with you some recipes from a new cookbook I received for a Christmas gift, Flavors of Harvey Cedars, a newly published cookbook compiled as a fundraiser by the Harvey Cedars Activity Committee. It contains recipes from part-time and full-time residents of the community along with interesting pieces of information about the history of the community.

Harvey Cedars, a borough of Long Beach Island, is off the New Jersey coast, and I was fortunate to have visited the island when my older daughter was married there where her husbands family has a long history. In looking through the book, I was excited to see a great variety of recipes that sounded appealing, and showed the varied backgrounds of those that live on the island.

Quick Italian beef and vegetable soup

This hearty beef and vegetable soup is one you can add to your favorites for ease of preparation and flavor. The most time consuming part is slicing the carrots and zucchini. The woman who submitted it for the cookbook said it was a second place winner in the 1995 National Beef Cook-off.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 pound lean ground beef

1 large garlic clove

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans beef broth

1 (14 1/2-ounce) can tomatoes, undrained

1 cup sliced carrots

1 (15-ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1 medium zucchini, cut lengthwise in half and crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices

2 cups spinach leaves, torn and lightly packed

Directions:

Heat a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium heat until hot. Add ground beef and garlic; brown 4-5 minutes, breaking up beef into 3/4-inch crumbles. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir broth, tomatoes, and carrots into beef. Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered 10 minutes. Stir in beans and zucchini; continue to cook 4-5 minutes or until vegetables are crisp tender.

Remove from heat; stir in spinach. If desired top with grated cheese. Serve with hot crusty bread.

Curried squash and apple soup

The flavor combination of the squash, apple and curry, with a touch of cayenne, make this vegetarian soup a taste treat. If a heartier soup was desired, chunks of ham or browned sausage could be added after pureeing.

Ingredients:

1 medium onion, peeled and diced small

1 large winter squash, acorn or butternut, peeled, halved, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 6 cups)

2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 cup unsweetened apple cider

3 cups veggie stock or low-sodium vegetable stock

Pinch cayenne pepper

Salt to taste

Directions:

Place onion in a large saucepan and saute over medium heat for 10 minutes or until onions are browned. Add water 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time to keep onions from sticking.

Add the squash, apple, curry powder, cider, vegetable stock and cayenne pepper. Reduce the heat to medium and cook covered, for about 20 minutes or until squash is tender and soft.

Puree the soup using an immersion blender or in batches in a blender with a tight fitting lid, covered with a towel. If necessary, return the soup to a pot to reheat. Season the soup with salt and pepper.

Chicken corn chowder

This delicious soup recipe is a different version of corn chowder, using noodles instead of the more typical potatoes you see in chowder, and with the addition of cream of chicken soup rather than milk.

Ingredients:

3 chicken breasts or 1 whole chicken

1 onion, chopped

4-5 celery stalks, chopped

Approximately 1/2 package medium cut noodles

2 (16-ounce) cans undrained corn

1 can cream of chicken soup

Salt and pepper

Approximately half of a 16-ounce package of Velveeta cheese

Directions:

Cook chicken in large pot, with enough water to cover, until tender. Remove the chicken from the cooking water, saving liquid, and cut or shred the meat into pieces.

Add the noodles, onions and celery to the broth and cook until the noodles are done. If needed, add additional water. Add the undrained corn, chicken, chicken soup, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until heated through.

Add the cheese which has been shredded or cut into small cubes. Heat and stir until cheese is melted. Be careful to keep soup from scorching.
Southeast Montana Republican Public Service Commissioner Kirk Bushman will has a primary challenger who is accusing him of poor attendance and not cooperating with the commissions other GOP members.

Bushman, who told The Gazette he will file for re-election Wednesday, said his challenger, Republican Tony ODonnell of Billings, is misinformed.

I feel that Tony is being naive and gullible, Bushman said. I dont know where hes getting his information.

The challenge marks only the second time in 24 years that a Republican incumbent has faced a primary opponent in southeast Montana.

ODonnell told The Gazette recently that Bushman was physically absent 40 percent of the time on Public Service Commission voting days.

The PSC regulates Montanas public utilities, and in doing so is supposed to make sure that ratepayers shoulder a fair burden of the utilitys business costs, while at the same time making sure the utilities are reasonably profitable.

The PSC regulates telephone, water, gas and electric utilities.

Bushman said he isnt always physically present for PSC votes, but still participates by telephone. Bushman, a Billings-area resident, said he doesnt think he should move to Helena in order to represent southeast Montana. To run for election, a commissioner must live in the district, he said. He doesnt think that residency should change once elected.

Billings is also 257 miles from Helena by interstate. Bushman said the distance makes commuting daily impractical. The other members of the all-Republican commission live within 100 miles of the office.

This isnt the first time a Public Service Commissioner has been challenged for phone-in attendance. In 2012, then-southwestern Montana Commissioner John Vincent was attacked by challenger Roger Koopman for not attending meetings in person. Vincent, a Democrat, and Koopman, a Republican, both live in the Bozeman area. Koopman said physical attendance by Vincent shouldnt be a burden, given that the PSC paid $94,000 a year.

The race was a bitter battle that Koopman ultimately won.

Bushman's salary is $101,819.

O'Donnell is no stranger to tough political battles. In 2014, he narrowly lost an election to incumbent Democrat Rep. Margie MacDonald in south Billings. In 2008, he lost a primary to Rep. Cary Smith, R-Billings. Smith emerged with a late night, 14-vote lead.

The challenger said he will bring business sense and balance to the PSC.

Bushman is also often in disagreement with his fellow Republican commissioners, ODonnell said. Thats something ODonnell promised to change if he represented southeastern Montana on the PSC.

Bushman said most notably hes been in the minority on whether the PSC should change its requirements for approving wind-power projects. Wind energy companies have accused the PSC of road blocking green power by using rules to prevent NorthWestern Energy from contracting with small wind-power generators.

At issue is a PSC requirement that NorthWestern solicit competitive bids for wind power. But NorthWestern wasnt interested in soliciting bids and argued that federal regulators, not the PSC, had ultimate authority over whether bids were necessary.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had ruled in 2014 that the PSCs bid requirement was an unreasonable obstacle.

The issue boiled over last November, when Greycliff Wind accused the PSC and NorthWestern of allowing the bid rule to block creation of a windfarm between Big Timber and Greycliff. Greycliff developers told the Gazette last year the bidding rule served no purpose, other than to prevent development of wind projects large enough to be profitable. Small projects of a couple windmills require no bid.

The PSC majority agreed to reconsider the bid rule, but Bushman argued that the rule be kept.
Nobel Prize winner, IU grad fondly remembers his time in Bloomington

Philip H. Dybvig said he loves Bloomington and thought it was a great place to be an undergraduate.
About 75 people in Billings on Tuesday stood in support of those displaced in the refugee crisis on Tuesday.

"How can we stand aside and turn away our faces?" said Fitzgerald Clark, who is active with the group Not In Our Town, to those gathered. "How can we say 'no' because we are afraid?"

Not In Our Town Billings partly sponsored the community prayer vigil at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. The gathering was in response to several recent events at which people have urged bans on accepting refugees into the United States.

Day of Action rallies extend far beyond Billings Billings wasnt the only city in Montana that took part in a rally or prayer vigil Tuesday a

Clark spoke not only as an activist but as a naturalized citizen. Born in the Caribbean, he said he arrived in the United States in 1989 and became a citizen nearly a decade later.

As a child, Clark held an idyllic view of America, he said. When he grew older and learned more about the country's history, he found that the ideals remained, but the people don't always follow. Like the country, Clark urged citizens to strive toward a more accepting stance of view.

Like Clark, Yasmin Odowa spoke about coming to the United States 13 years ago. It was a long process, she said, but a worthwhile one. Now out of college and working in Billings, she said that the same country that took in her family years ago should be the same today.

"Let's use our voices to remind one another what we stand for  to be a land of opportunity for all," Odowa said.

The most recent data from United Nations Refugee Agency say that 4.7 million refugees have fled conflicts in Syria. In September, Amnesty International said that 4 million of those are concentrated in just five countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

Anti-refugee protesters descend on Montana capitol HELENA  A group opposed to granting safe haven to refugees rallied Monday at Montana's Capi

European officials have been grappling with the influx of displaced refugees, and countries have reached a range of policies amid the crisis.

Efforts from the White House to screen and accept 10,000 refugees have been met with strong criticism, including concerns that individual terrorists might enter the country disguised as refugees. Last fall, the White House outlined the screening process.

The hourlong service in Billings on Tuesday focused little on the politics of refugee resettlement, but rather on ideals like acceptance. There were hymns and prayers, and some in the crowd shared personal stories.

One woman joked that her ancestors were known horse thieves but were able to come to the United States generations ago. For those in the crowd on Tuesday, that's what the American ideal is.

"This is our legacy. This is what made us great," Clark said. "And this is what will help America continue to be a shining light to the rest of the world."
A recent study by a health care industry group lists both Billings hospitals among the top 100 in the country.

St. Vincent Healthcare and Billings Clinic were each named to the 100 Top Hospitals list, compiled annually by Truven Health Analytics, which provides data analytics and consulting services within the health care industry.

The study, conducted each year since 1993, examined 3,000 acute care, non-government hospitals and their leadership teams on 11 measures that include patient care, operational efficiency and financial stability to assess their performance as an organization.

It then groups them into five categories: major teaching hospitals and teaching hospitals; and large, medium and small community hospitals.

St. Vincent was awarded as a teaching hospital and Dr. Michael Bush, chief medical officer, cited Billings competitive health care environment as a factor in patients in the region receiving strong medical care.

"St. Vincent Healthcare is proud and honored to be selected as a Top 100 Hospital by Truven, which is the most highly regarded hospital ranking program," said Dr. Michael Bush, St. Vincent's chief medical officer, in a written statement. "It takes a great deal of work, effort and process by our associates and medical staff at St. Vincent Healthcare to achieve these high-level results."

Billings Clinic earned the recognition as a large community hospital. It is the fourth time the hospital has been recognized on the list.

Its an honor to be recognized by Truven Health for a fourth time," said Dr. Nicholas Wolter, Billings Clinic CEO. "Being included on this list ... is consistent with our longstanding tradition of putting quality, safety and value first on behalf of our patients. Wed also like to congratulate St. Vincent Healthcare for being recognized."

According to Truven, the most recent results also were the first time in the study's history that it saw a noticeable trend toward lowered expenses per patient at most of the top facilities.

"Hospitals in three out of the five hospital categories actually reduced overall expense year over year, while improving patient outcomes," said Jean Chenoweth, Truven's senior vice president, in a news release. "Some of these hospitals also show a small degradation of operating profit margin. Hopefully this is not an indicator of a developing trend."

Hospitals in three out of five report groups also saw reduced overall reduced expenses in addition to boosting patient outcomes.

The study goes on to say that, based on its results, more than 104,000 additional lives could be saved if all Medicare patients received the same level of care as that provided at the top 100 award recipients.

It could also leave almost 48,400 additional patients complication free, save $2 billion in inpatient costs and decrease the average patient stay by half of a day, the study said.

The Billings hospitals were the only ones in Montana included in the list.
This domain has expired. If you owned this domain, contact your domain registration service provider for further assistance. If you need help identifying your provider, visit https://www.tucowsdomains.com/
Senior IPS officer Alok Kumar Verma took over as the Delhi Police commissioner from BM Bassi on Tuesday. Verma will head the 80,000-strong Delhi Police which is responsible for maintaining law and order in a megapolis of more than 17 million.

Reports say that Verma is no Bassi when it comes to talking to journalists, at least not yet. His first address to the force over wireless was cautious and devoid of flourish: He said ensuring security for senior citizens, women and weaker sections of society would remain his priority areas and he expects the force to focus not only on grievous offences but also on petty crimes. Yawn! Tell us something new, chief.

Read: | Alok Verma assumes charge as new Delhi Police commissioner

It is wishful thinking, but what Verma should have said is this: My main job will be to restore the confidence of the people in the force. In effect: I will undo the damage done by Bassi.

This is the least he could have done after the way the force mishandled the case involving Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar.

Kumar was arrested on February 12 on charges of criminal conspiracy and sedition for allegedly raising anti-national slogans on campus during an event to mark the anniversary of the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.

On Monday, the force got a hammering from the Delhi High Court. Ridiculing the police force, the bench asked whether it knew what sedition actually meant.

Not done with that, it also raised questions over the police investigation into Kumars involvement in the raising of alleged anti-national slogans in JNU, asking why they waited for footage from Zee TV instead of taking action on February 9 when the alleged incident occurred.

Why was the FIR not filed that day itself? What were your men doing? the court asked.

Bassi, in his farewell message, noted that his force did not have strife with anyone.

Read | Delhi Police has done everything right. We have zero regrets: Bassi

We reach out to everyone. If someone thinks that Delhi police wants to confront, then they can stop thinking that way, he added.

But sadly, his actions proved otherwise.

Kanhaiya Kumars bail please is coming up today. The Delhi Police must now pause and think: Its reputation is in tatters. It is being ridiculed inside courts and outside it.

For a start, it must realise that changing its petty behaviour gets precedence over cracking down on petty crime.

The views expressed by the author are personal. The author tweets at @kumkumdasgupta

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
British playwright and filmmaker Peter Brook directed the first and only stage adaptation of the entire epic of The Mahabharata in 1985. The play, however, never came to India.

Thirty years later, the only Indian actor in the original play  Mallika Sarabhai, dancer and Padma Bhushan recipient  says political pressure and racial discrimination prevented it from coming here.

Excerpts from an interview:

How did you come to be associated with le Mahabharata?

I think it was 1984. Newspapers in India were writing about casting calls by a British playwright called Peter Brook. I didnt keenly follow up on it, because I wasnt considering stage acting then.

One day, my friend who worked in the French embassy called me and said that hed suggested my name to Peter, and that Peter wanted to speak with me. They invited me to meet them in Delhi, but I couldnt go: I was recovering from a nasty bout of jaundice and hepatitis, and was too weak to travel.

ALSO READ: Sequel to Peter Brooks Le Mahabharata set for India debut

So, Peter and his team came down to Ahmedabad to meet me. We chatted for about half an hour, and he asked me audition for the role of Draupadi. I literally fell off my chair.

But I didnt jump to take it up. I was pregnant, my dance career was at its peak, and the play would take me away from home for a long time. And I didnt know French. Besides, Id decided early on that I wouldnt take up the part without understanding Peters style of work. So I saw Carmen, Peters opera, in New York, and then gave two rounds of auditions.

You grew up with the Mahabharata, unlike the rest of Brooks international crew. What did you think of his interpretation of the epic?

In India, nobody approaches the Mahabharata [on stage] in its entirety. We look at the smaller stories. Also, Indians tend to get lost in the gods and goddesses aspect. Peter wanted to look at it as the story of the race of men. His mastery lies in his imagery. For instance, Karnas defeat is depicted by a common cartwheel that signified the warriors broken chariot. Indian interpretations are more like Ramleela  crowns, bushy moustaches and drama.

We did have few differences, though; mostly about his lack of focus on the concept of Shakti (female energy). Peter didnt want Draupadi to fulfil her pledge of washing her hair with Dushyasanas blood. He thought it was too gory. I told him that he shouldnt have chosen the script if he didnt want to depict these scenes.

Mallika Sarabhai in Peter Brooks le Mahabharata (Photo: Daniel Cande; Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons)

Were you co-stars as well versed with their characters as you were?

My co starts used to have long chats with me about their characters. I remember calling my mother and asking her to send Iravati Karves Mahabharata interpretation. She would send me photocopies of the book, via post. There were times when my mother would come to visit on sets. When she was there, my costars consulted her about their characters. She spent hours talking to them.

Why didnt le Mahabharata ever come to India?

We faced racial bias. We werent allowed to come to India. There were parties that took offence to African actors playing the Pandavas, who are regarded as demigods in our society. They agreed to screen the film in a limited capacity, but not bring the play. They gave us a ridiculous official reason: the TV serial was on Doordarshan (BR Chopras Mahabharat), and our play would confuse the audience.

What about the plays international reception?

The international audiences were blown away. Women used to come backstage and tell me that my Draupadi inspired them in their walks of life. That had a great impact on me too. In fact, my women-empowerment centric activism is what I inherited from le Mahabharata.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday announced in the state assembly that MLAs development fund will be hiked to Rs 2 crore from Rs 80 lakh at present. The CM made the announcement during his speech on the governors address.

MLAs from the Opposition and the ruling party had been raising demands to raise their development fund substantially. Chouhan said he was increasing the funds despite the state facing financial crises.

Showering praises over Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chouhan said the states growth rate has reached an impressive 80% in the past four years.

Taking a jibe at the way the Opposition had questioned the states qualification to get the Krishi Karman award for four consecutive years, Chouhan said, The Opposition pointed out that the growth rate had come down from 24% to 20%. But they didnt understand a simple arithmetic. An annual growth rate of 20% for the past four years added up to 80%.

During the UPA government, Madhya Pradesh got Rs 6,000 crore as the centres grant, but when Narendra Modi became the prime minister, the state got Rs 41,698 crore from the centre, said the CM, adding that the state government was making a road map to double the income of farmers in the next five years as proposed by the Prime Minister.
Skeptics of the teachers unions in this country relish tossing out the charge that bad teachers thrive under an umbrella of protection provided by education associations. With a cockroach's vitality, the claim withstands explanations of due process rights and the duties of fair representation.

Education, like all human endeavors, never will be perfect. Parents, students, teachers, administrators and community members are tossed together in an effort to give our youth the tools to cope successfully with adulthood. In that imperfect construct, some teachers struggle.

Education unions have long accepted the challenge to balance the rights of our members with the time-honored imperative that the education of our youth must unfold in a democratic and public way. Our schools welcome all students of school age. There are no qualifiers for admission.

Teachers operate under the scrutiny of the public at large, parents, students and administrators. This generation of educators labors under an intensity of observation unseen before.

Union membership brings with it a reasonable expectation that, should problems arise in this fishbowl environment, the teachers association will ensure that the member has assistance in administrative proceedings.

Critics would have you believe that providing support for these individuals is the sole function of teachers unions. It isn't.

Montana educators gather every October to share successful classroom practices. The MEA-MFT sponsors the Educators' Conference. The Montana Professional Teaching Foundation provides scholarships and opportunities for teachers and other educational professionals to add to their skills. The foundation exists through the efforts of the MEA-MFT.

Under the aegis of the National Education Association, Billings teachers participate in a leadership initiative designed to support those educators who want to contribute to the strengthening of educational practices in their schools.

The Billings Education Association has worked with Billings Public Schools to refine teacher evaluation tools. A mentorship collaboration is underway.

The BEA has supported the revitalization of our school buildings by supporting bond issues. New middle schools and the renovation of existing elementary schools resulted from a community effort in which the BEA figured prominently.

In recent years, mill levy passage provided a funding source for new technology in the elementary, middle, and high schools. The BEA put organizational effort into those ventures.

Critics (see Feb. 21 Darrell Ehrlick column) will continue to spray broad accusations at teachers unions. They will do so with a zeal born from a regrettable ignorance. What a waste of public discourse.
Actor Akshay Kumar would rather call himself a stuntman than a superstar and true enough his backside-kicking daredevil stunts have earned him the moniker Khiladi Kumar.

Now, Akshay is championing the cause of stuntmen in the film industry. And the sudden death of international stunt coordinator Scott Cosgrove, with whom Akshay was supposed to work with in his next film, has affected the actor greatly. In fact, the star has penned an open letter campaigning for an award category for stuntpersons.

International stunt coordinator Scott Cosgrove recently passed away. He was supposed to work with Akshay in his next film.

Akki feels that stuntmen who put their lives at risk for the actors and for the film dont even have as much as a category in any award function. There is an award for those who create the background music, but these guys who are breathing thrill in the film are probably the most neglected. They are the real champs.

In support of stuntbuddies: Akshay Kumar pens an open letter

To all the stuntmen and women out there, I just heard another great international stuntman, who has actually worked in my own industry, and was going to come and train with me has sadly passed away. I not only believe you all should be winning Oscars or Indian awards for your incredible work, in my eyes, you should also be acknowledged globally for saving our lives and the credibility of our films. It pains me, because I know the one expert that an actor/actress cant live without, during their shoot, is their stuntbuddy. Hadnt it been for your unbelievable hard work and amazing talent that make our movies look good and help us earn so much, we would be mourning the death of so many actors/actresses.

Instead, the stunt community is quietly mourning the ones theyve lost, be it by accident, injury or fatality on the sets of award-winning films over the years. I know winning an award still isnt enough for what you all painfully go through for these million-dollar projects, but it would be a small start. Sadly, the fraternity is barely even honouring you with that. I just want you to know, coming from a stuntman/actor like myself, I admire, respect, honour and am eternally grateful for everything that you all do. My children still have their father in one piece because there is always someone prepared to take the fall that I may not be able to. To all the stuntmen and women I have ever worked alongside, around the world, you are always in my and my familys prayers. You deserve so much more than just a wage packet, and I hope I live long enough to see a change in that. I know that in my 25-yearlong career nothing much has changed! But it will, and I will try and make sure of that... Till then Thank You and take great care. Good luck with the fight for your rights... RIP to all those who have lost their lives.

Love & Prayers

AK the Actor/AK the stuntman...

Watch: Akshay Kumar doing his own stunts for Rowdy Rathore

The West is yet to be won: Jason Statham espouses stuntmens cause

In the West, Hollywood star Jason Statham has long advocated a category for stuntpersons in Oscars. All of the stunt men  these are the unsung heroes. They really are. Nobody is giving them any credibility. Theyre risking their necks. And then youve got poncy actors pretending like theyre doing (the stunts), Statham was quoted as saying.

Jason Statham has long advocated that there should be a separate award category for stuntpersons in Oscars. (REUTERS/Danny Moloshok)

Bollywood wants stuntpersons awarded too

Many in the Hindi film industry also agree that the least one can do is recognise the brave efforts of the stuntmen. The stuntmen and women are actually one of the strongest artistic contributes of a film which has dangerous action, unsung heroes and heroines who do not get any credit for being the silent backbone of actors. We need to support them to get their due credit and even though the Screen Actors Guild Awards does recognise the work stuntmen and women do with a Best Stunt Ensemble category, the recognition is clearly not as great as it would be at the Oscars. In India too we need to definitely get in a category for our stunt men and women. Because without them our action movies would be seriously depleted. Lets face it, there is only one Jackie Chan to go around, feels actor Celina Jaitly, also a UN Human Rights Equality Champion.

Celina Jaitly is all for an award for stuntpersons. (Prodip Guha, Hindustan Times)

Actor Sonu Sood, who has done many action films and is even working in an international project alongside Jackie Chan, says, Most action films which revolve around stunts have stuntmen doing the real action for us. Since every filmmaker wants to make their film the most entertaining involving death-defying stunts, these fearless people are the ones who risk their lives and make some of the toughest scenes come alive for actors. I feel these unsung heroes should be given their due by giving them equal importance as compared to the other credits of the film.

Sonu Sood is working in Jackie Chans next. (AFP)

Director Aanand Rai says, They really make your impossible idea look real and possible on the floor. As the director I am always thankful to the stuntmen.They are the core members of our fraternity and awarding them is very important and it should be part of our award functions.

Bollywood director Anand L Rai. (HT photo)

While men and women, who are taking the risk for our actors feel that better facilities and insurance etc, should be provided to them, they feel award categories would be at least some sort of recognition.

High expectations, low budget: The life of a stuntperson

Fight director Abbas Ali Moghul, who started his career as a stuntman about 35 years ago, says, I feel insurance cover should be provided to us. Our men and women put themselves to so much risk and god forbid if someone dies, they get a paltry one-time amount of about Rs 4-5lakhs. That may take some time to come around but at least award categories will attract more attention to our people.

Fight director Javed of Javed-Aejaz duo says, Not all the actors are as brave as actor Akshay Kumar to pull off stunts themselves, and thats where me and our boys come in. We are really integral to a film, but there is hardly a decent medical insurance or compensation given. When we started out in 1989, we didnt even have ambulances on the sets, although now there are doctors and fire brigades on the sets if needed, the safety measures need to be better. And yes, award categories will be at least some recognition, its high time our contribution is discussed in the mainstream. Fight director Aejaz Gulab, agrees, We are highly marginalized, starting awards category for us will help us in a big way.

Lack of safety apparatus is appalling

Director Sanjay Gupta, known for making several action flicks says that lack of safety sometimes is a budget constraint. There is no value for life on sets. I dont see safety precautions being taken even in 10% of the movie sets because producers are always busy saving money, says Sanjay.

But Aejaz says that it may not always be the production houses fault. Sometimes we make compromises and it may not be because of the production house. For instance, we had to jump from 15th floor for a scene in Chor Machaaye Shor (2002). We needed 4000 boxes for padding. We could get only 2500 because there was no one who could supply so many boxes, so we had to make do with whatever we had. But sometimes theyd say there is no budget and we work with that. For instance, if there is a scene of a car crash, then they may say car ko cage karne ka budget nahia hai. Tab hum, stuntman ko ache se cover kar dete hain. And if someone becomes a handicap there is no one wholl provide for the family of the victim. We see about two to four injuries on the sets every year, although we havent heard of any death now for a long time in Bollywood.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Even though she left no stone unturned to promote her new film, which is based on the life of late flight attendant Neerja Bhanot, on a recent visit to the Hindustan Times office, along with director Ram Madhvani, it was revealed that Sonam Kapoor, unlike popular perception, is quite an introvert. The duo also discussed cinema, their latest successful film, and their careers in general.

Ram, what is the best thing about Sonam, the actor?

Ram: At the trailer launch, I had to introduce Sonam, so while on the plane (from Goa), I asked my wife, What do I say about Sonam? Then, I realised that I cant define her. The media might be able to define her on the basis of their perception of her, but I cant. And that is despite knowing her really well. But I think it is great when you cant put a person in a box no matter how hard you try, and that person also says, Why are you putting me in a box?

Read: From Neerja to Airlift: Why Bollywood is on a true story roll

Read: Neerja review: Sonam Kapoor is the star of this searing biopic

So, are there any similarities between you two?

Ram: We are both introverts, but we know that we have to step out and speak. We are really shy people. I have now told myself that I am going to learn how to be an extrovert.

Ram, the character in your latest film is that of an everyday girl. So, why did you choose Sonam for it? She hardly has the everyday girl persona.

Ram: You havent seen Sonam in jhalla (casual) clothes at home (laughs) not wanting to get out of bed.

Well, that is definitely not the public persona. People perceive her as this style icon, a fashionista.

Ram: First of all, lets get the value system completely clear. Sonam has the power to say yes, I dont have that power. So, she was the person who said yes. The person that Im very grateful to is Atul Kasbekar (producer). We have worked together for a long time, and it was Saiwyn Qadras, writer of Mary Kom (2014), who approached Atul with the film. He then called me and told me that Sonam was the person they were thinking of for it. And I was very happy with that. What was great was when Sonam and I met, we shared a like-heartedness, which is a much better word than like-mindedness. Somehow, the latter takes away the heart. It makes you feel you are on the same mental wavelength. But Sonam and I are like-hearted. When we have conversations, we understand each other.

Sonam: Speaking of the public or medias persona of me I love wearing beautiful clothes. I think most girls like to.

Ram Madhvani directed Sonam Kapoor in Neerja. (HT)

Sonam, your real persona has a stronger impact than your on-screen presentation.

Sonam: Its so strange because my directors dont seem to think so [But] I cant keep defending myself, its so tiring (laughs).

Are you made to feel guilty for looking good?

Sonam: No, its just that I dont think it is okay to put Ram in a spot, and say, Why did you take her?, when Im sitting right next to him (laughs).

Also, people dont know that youre a voracious reader.

Sonam: This is also true. But that doesnt make for a great story, does it?

Sonam Kapoor was also featured in the recent Coldplay video. (HT)

Your father, Anil Kapoor, was very sure that you will make a mark with Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015) and Neerja.

Sonam: He is my dad, what else is he going to say? Whatever I do is going to be mind-blowing or amazing. Arent dads like that? How can we take him seriously?

But, you know, just like these coming-of-age films, I, too, had to understand what I wanted to do. I had to find myself, and I still havent. Im a work in progress. For girls, especially, there are preconceived notions about how they need to do certain things at a certain time, and you have to conform in many ways. I feel it is very difficult for Indian girls to be happy in their own skin. I remember I had this beautiful encounter with Dhanush (actor) while we were shooting for Raanjhanaa (2013). I was very sad, and I told him that theres this saying, Nothing grows under a banyan tree. Thats when Dhanush said, But if you shine bright, your shadow will grow on earth (sic). My dad is the banyan tree here. I have to be okay with having such an awesome dad, but I also have to work twice as hard.

People came out of the theatre in tears after watching your latest film. Not many movies get such a reaction

Ram: Yes, weve had standing ovations. In fact, some people even lit candles in theatres in San Francisco, USA. We have also read articles about kids planting trees in Neerjas name. It really is something else.

Read: With Rs 4.70 cr opening day, Neerja starts on an impressive note

Read: I remember her as joyful person, complete music freak: Neerjas brother

Sonam, your performance has been critically appreciated. The masses also liked it.

Ram: Weve made a film to remember Neerja; to remember people we tend to forget.

Sonam: We tend to forget our female heroes more. I know I sound very feminist all the time, but we do. And especially in a country like India, we need our female heroes, right?

In terms of the character too, people could relate to Neerja. She was an everyday girl.

Sonam: That was my main reason for doing this film, because she was so ordinary, so beautiful. Every time people asked me why I was doing this, my only answer was that every ordinary person has the capability of being extraordinary, of becoming a hero. And thats the one thing that this film showcases.

Did this movie affect you as a person?

Sonam: We are on earth to do more. Everything I do in life is to help me evolve. The reason I did this film was the story; the other was that I was appalled that I didnt know about this incident. I consider myself quite well-read. And I was like, why dont I know about it? The other thing was to work with the people involved in this project. There was a lot to learn from Ram.

Watch: Sonam Kapoor in Neerja trailer

Sonam, do you give Ram credit for the performance?

Sonam: For sure. In fact, the directors have to be given credit for my performances in all my films.

Ram: A director can only push the actor, but its the actor who has to deliver.

Sonam: With all my directors, I have learnt something. With Ram, theres a certain kind of tonality in the visuals and treatment.

Ram, there were reports that you were making a film called Talisman?

Ram: Yes, we were, but we didnt like the script.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.
Delhi government seriously believes that men listen to their wives more than anyone else. In a bid to encourage actors to give up endorsing pan masala products, Dr SK Arora, additional director (health), Delhi Government, claims to have written to five actors--Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn, Govinda, Arbaaz Khan and Sunny Leone, explaining the harmful effects of the tobacco use. Failing to get a response from the male actors, he decided to post letters to their wives -- Gauri Khan, Kajol, Sunita, Malaika - hoping that the spouses will persuade their husbands to give up the endorsement campaigns.

Read: AAP govt writes to Kajol, Gauri, Stop husbands from endorsing masala

Read: Another shocking celeb divorce: Malaika Arora-Arbaaz Khan to split?

The actors are far from being amused! I dont understand what kind of persuasion this is. Writing to my wife, my brother or father is not the way to go about it. I am endorsing the product, not my wife. If the government has an issue with it, they should write to me. I never received any letter from the government in the first place. If they are saying they sent it, maybe it didnt come to my notice as I have been travelling. Had I known this earlier I would have definitely adhered to their request. When I signed the contract with the brand, I was told that the product only has natural ingredients that are not harmful. I have certain commitments and I have been merely following them, says actor Arbaaz Khan. He adds, There is no harm in following what the government has asked us to do and when it is time for my contract to be renewed, I will keep this in mind. The other actors in question did not respond to our request for comments.

Delhi government seriously believes that men listen to their wives more than anyone else.

Dr SK Arora, however, maintains that the letters were indeed sent out and actor Sunny Leone had even responded. He says, Two months back we had posted letters to six celebrities who have been endorsing pan masala, requesting them to not do so in the larger interest of public health. There is enough scientific evidence to show that even though supari (areca nut) does not contain tobacco, it does cause cancer. We only got a response from Sunny Leone where she said that she did not know that supari causes cancer and that she will not take up fresh contracts for pan masala. Since the other five actors did not respond, we decided to post letters to their wives urging them to ask their husband to not endorse pan masala. Its a humble appeal to them.

Sunnys team confirmed the same and said that they are looking into what can be done about the present contract.

Watch: Sunny Leone in anti-smoking ad 11 minutes

The contents of the mail urged the wives of these actors to persuade their husband to give up endorsement of pan masala products. Since the department could not access the email ids of the actors and their wives, they decided to post letters to their home address. As Dr Arora says, Actors are role models and these companies rope in film stars to endorse their products because the young generation gets attracted. In fact most of the pan masala advertisements are surrogate ads for tobacco products which is not allowed.

He adds, Weve also issued a strict compliance notice to actor Ajay Devgn, under Section 5 of Central Tobacco Act, which has legal value. We believe that the product that he endorses is a surrogate ad for the brands gutkha products.
Actor Preity Zinta got married to her long-time boyfriend Gene Goodenough in a private ceremony in Los Angeles. But with the news of the wedding making its way everyone has been wondering who Gene Goodenough is.

Gene was also said to be a key eye-witness when Preity had lodged a police complaint stating that her ex Ness molested her at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai a couple of years ago. (Ht Photo)

Read: Preity Zintas marriage confirmed, actress enters secret wedding club

Preity and Gene have been friends for a long time. He was also said to be a key eye-witness when Preity had lodged a police complaint stating that her ex Ness molested her at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai a couple of years ago.

Read: Preity Zinta files molestation case against ex-boyfriend Ness Wadia

Gene Goodenough is a resident of Los Angles (LA), USA. He is a senior vice president of finance with a US-based hydroelectric power company called NLine Energy. He has done his MBA from Esade Business and Law School, Spain, which was followed by another masters degree from USC Marshall School of Business, LA.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday blamed commercial banks for the delay in declaring Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) and its promoter Vijay Mallya as defaulters.

The CBI registered a case of cheating and fraud against Kingfisher and its erstwhile management involving allegations of defrauding banks to the tune of Rs 7,000 crore. This case was registered in July 2015, but loans were taken during 2004 to 2012. However, despite our repeated requests, banks did not file a complaint with the CBI. We had to register the case on our own initiative, CBI director Anil Sinha while addressing a conference jointly organised by the Indian Banks Association and the investigating agency.

HT had reported on February 29, 2016 that the RBI was questioning banks for lending Rs 5,253 cr to Kolkata-based REI Agro Ltd after the CBI uncovered fraud.

Sinha cited the example of how the agencys suo moto action against Pearls Agro eventually led to the arrest of the companys chairman.

SBI chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, who was also present on the occasion, didnt comment on the issue.

SBI, along with other banks, had lent close to Rs 7,000 crore to the UB Group, the parent company of KFA. It was only last month that PNB declared the airline and Mallya wilful defaulters, a claim currently being contested by Mallya.

While I fully understand that loan defaults can happen due to business risk and reasons beyond control of banks, borrowers and regulators, yet a significant part of the defaults are wilful and fraudulent, Sinha said. What causes greater concern is that a major part of the NPAs and frauds are in large-value accounts, he said, adding that a large part of such funds moves outside the country to tax havens through unofficial channels.

Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of banks have gone up from Rs 44,957 crore in 2009 to Rs 3 lakh crore in 2015.

The CBI investigated 171 cases of bank frauds involving Rs 20,646 crore of funds in 2015.
After announcing the review of its budgetary proposal to tax provident fund withdrawals, the government may have to do the same in relation to the 1% excise duty imposed on jewellery sales.

Protesting the move, jewellers across India initiated a three-day strike from Wednesday. Industry estimates peg the loss in business at about Rs 5,000 crore as the strike will bring one of the largest export sector of India to a standstill.

The measure was a completely unexpected and uncalled as the gems and jewellery industry has never been under excise duty due to its unorganised and fragmented composition, said GV Shridha, chairman of Gems and Jewellery Trade Federation.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley in his latest Budget proposed a levy of 1% excise on jewellery sales.

The move that has been tried earlier in 2005 and 2012 by the UPA government. But, the BJP, which was then in the Opposition, had sided with the jewellers to protest the levy. The moves had to be withdrawn both the times.

The levy apart from making products costlier will further push away the customers. The sector is already grappling with the impact of the government making PAN number mandatory for all transactions of or above Rs 2 lakh. The industry had organised a one-day strike last month against this measure too, saying since 80% of the country didnt have a PAN card, this would deter gold purchases.

Its very difficult to levy excise on jewellery as the product changes hands often, and there are various inputs that happens frequently, said Praveen Shankar Pandya, chairman of the Gems and Jewellery Export Promotion Council. While the government doesnt want to tax the artisans, the excise burden could also include the retailer, who is essentially a trader.

The strike saw mixed response on Wednesday with most gold jewellery establishments remaining closed in Mumbai and Delhi and in several big cities.
An online petition against the proposed tax on Employee Provident Fund (EPF) withdrawals, started by chartered financial analyst Vaibhav Aggarwal and Gurgaon-based Cians Analytics Financial, has got over 140,000 sign-ups on its first day.

Vaibhavs Change.org petition with #EPFNoTax has been shared widely on Twitter and Facebook, and the number of signatories are growing by a few thousands every hour.

I am disillusioned by the governments decision to tax EPF. It is a draconian move, Aggarwal told HT. It hurts me and many youngsters in this country. Our appeal to the government is, withdraw this tax immediately.

In his budget speech on Monday, finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced the decision to tax withdrawals exceeding 40% of an individuals retirement pot in the EPF, unless the sum is reinvested in a pension product such as an annuity. In the face of rising opposition from the middle-class and markets alike, the government has indicated it is open to amendments to the proposal.

However, even this is unacceptable to 60 million EPF subscribers in India, Aggarwal said.

A similar campaign supporting net neutrality was launched on change.org by Kollam (Kerala)-based Sandeep Pillai in December last year. It was supported by 375,000 people online, and was one of the campaigns that forced the government and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to re-examine the issue.
With the government proposing to tax the interest accrued on 60% of employee provident fund, this is how your investments are impacted:

Employee Provident Fund: Interest accrued on 60% of the corpus will be taxed during withdrawal. But the tax is applicable only on deposits made after April 1, 2016.

Investment: No tax

Withdrawal: Tax on interest earned on 60% of the corpus.

Condition: The tax on the interest is applicable on those earning salaries above Rs 15, 000 per month.

Read: In defence of EPF tax: Govt not afraid of taking on moneybags

National Pension Scheme: 60% of the corpus will be taxed on withdrawal.

Investment: No Tax

Withdrawal : Tax on 60% of the corpus

Condition: Corpus fully taxable till March 31, 2016

Employer managed pension funds: Just like EPF, interest accrued on 60% of the corpus will taxed on withdarwal. On this as well, this tax is applicable from April 1, 2016.

Investment: No tax

Withdrawal: Tax on interest earned on 60% of the corpus.

Condition: The tax on the interest is applicable on those earning salaries above Rs 15, 000 per month.

Superannuation funds managed by employers: 60% of the corpus will be taxed on withdrawal.

Investment: No Tax

Withdrawal : Tax on 60% of the corpus

Condition: Corpus fully taxable till March 31, 2016

Read: #epfnotax: Petition to withdraw EPF tax gets 4,631 signatures on day 1

PPF & NSC: Public Provident Fund and other small savings schemes like the National Savings Certificate remain tax free.

Investment: No tax

Withdrawal: No tax

Condition: Investments of only Rs 1,50,000 can be made per year.

Pension funds offered by LIC and other private companies: These schemes continue to remain tax-free, if designed under section 80C

Investment: No tax

Withdrawal: No tax

Condition: Interest accrued and bonuses, if applicable, are also not taxable

Read: Only EPF interest to attract tax, withdrawals will be exempted

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
JNU students broke into slogans of azaadi (freedom) and lal salam(Red salute) as soon as news of students union president Kanhaiya Kumars six-month conditional bail in a sedition case reached them on Wednesday.

Students and teachers, who were protesting at Parliament Street when the news broke, decided to hold a victory march on the JNU campus.

The march began at Sabarmati Lawns and went up to the administrative block, with the students raising slogans such as Smriti Irani jhooth hai comrade Kanhaiya jeeta hai (Smriti Irani is a liar, comrade Kanhaiya has won).Teachers too joined the celebration.

Without any reason, they kept our leader for 20 days Now all those who called Kanhaiya anti-national should apologise, said V Lenin Kumar, former JNUSU president.

Students continued to rally for fellow students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, and said they would hold a bigger victory march on Thursday. Hope Kanhaiya will be able to be a part of it. We are very happy and will continue with our struggle, said Shehla Rashid Shora, JNUSU vice-president.

Read | Anti-nationalism is like an infection: HC Judge in Kanhaiya bail order

JNU students celebrate at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Wednesday. (Arun Sharma / HT Photo )

Earlier in the day, students and teachers from JNU, Delhi University, Ambedkar University and Jamia Millia Islamia took part in a march to demand the release of Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban. It has come as a great relief to all of us who knew that the charges against Kanhaiya were completely fabricated, said Professor Ayesha Kidwai, a JNU teacher.

Dalit scholar Rohith Vemulas mother and Khalids father also joined the protestors.

Meanwhile, JNU administration welcomed the courts decision and said they hoped normalcy would soon return on the campus.

Read | Forensic test reveals two out of seven videos on JNU were doctored
The Arvind Kejriwal government has asked schools across the national capital to consider banning the sale of food items that are high in fat, sugar and salt in their canteens. They were also asked to sensitise students to their ill-effects on physical and mental health.

The heads of all government and private schools are directed to sensitise students and parents to the ill-effects of food high in fat, sugar and salt through the morning assembly, teacher interactive periods and parent-teacher meetings, said a circular issued by the directorate of education to the schools.

The schools may consider banning the sale of such foods from the school canteen, and ensure that it sells fresh and healthy foods that are low in fat, it added. Some of the healthy food items and beverages suggested in the circular were veg sandwiches, fruits, paneer cutlets, khandvi, poha, lassi, jaljeera and low-fat milk shakes.

The Delhi governments circular said students could be sensitised by maintaining a notice board for creating awareness; organising drawing, painting, slogan writing activities and debates in a class-wise manner with special emphasis on lower classes; and addressing the issue in the morning assembly (at least) once a month.

Read more: Panel recommends banning 12 food items from school canteen

Ensuring healthy eating in Delhi schools has been under consideration for over half a decade now, ever since the Uday Foundation, an NGO, filed a PIL in the Delhi high court in 2010 to seek a complete ban on the sale of junk food in and around school premises.

Subsequently, in March last year, the high court directed the government to restrict the sale of fatty food and sugary beverages in schools, and asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to ensure that wholesome and nutritious food is made available to students.

Five months later, a panel set up by the ministry of women & child development backed the idea of banning the sale of junk of food in these zones. Highlighting the health risks posed by junk food such as burgers, pizzas and samosas, it said in a report: All food items falling in the definition of junk food should be banned in school canteens. Shops and restaurants selling food within 200 metres of a school should not be permitted to sell these food items to children in school uniforms

The panel claimed that besides causing obesity and related issues such as diabetes and hypertension in children, regular consumption of junk food also brings about psychological and behavioural problems such as binge-eating and low self-esteem.
KALISPELL  A statue of Jesus that has spent more than 60 years overlooking a northwestern Montana ski hill is there to stay as an anti-religion group says it will not appeal its case for removal.

In August, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments from a group of atheists and agnostics that allowing the statue on U.S. Forest Service land violates the constitutional separation of church and state. The majority agreed that a privately owned memorial in the middle of a ski resort does not violate the constitution. A U.S. district judge found that the statue's secular and irreverent uses outweighed its religious uses.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation had until this week to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Court of Appeals denied a request to re-hear the case in November, according to the Daily Inter Lake.

"There was no point in bringing this to the Supreme Court with a 5-4 block," Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor said. "It's dead in the water."

The Knights of Columbus placed the statue on U.S. Forest Service land on Big Mountain in the mid-1950s as a memorial to World War II soldiers and it remained in place with few complaints for decades.

The Flathead National Forest decided in 2011 not to renew the 10-year permit for the statue near a run at Whitefish Mountain Resort but reversed the decision due to public outcry.

The foundation sued in 2012.

"It's just an injustice," Gaylor said. "All we wanted the government to do is give the shrine of Jesus back to the Knights of Columbus so it could be displayed on their own property where it belongs."
Sohil Sehran

sohil.sehran@hindustantimes.com

Even though the dargah of 13th century Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya is visited by thousands of devotees every day, not many people know that the complex is home to the graves of celebrated poet Amir Khusro and Mughal princess Jahanara Begum. The ASI-protected Begums grave lies in a state of neglect. Old timers say that there used to be an emerald stone (panna) on the grave, but it went missing 20 years back

The ASI-protected Begums grave sees fewer visitors and lies in a state of neglect. Paan stains, garbage and its filthy surroundings highlight the apathy of the authorities. On its left is the tomb of Amir Khusro while the red building on the right is the Jamaat Khana mosque, the principal mosque of the dargah complex, which is under renovation under a project of Aga Khan Foundation.

There are many graves here and we know so little about them. There are some references that suggest Jahanara Begum used to clean the area of the mausoleum with her tresses and wished she be buried here, said Farid Nizami, Naib Sajjada Nashin (deputy hereditary administrator) of Nizamuddin dargah.

Nizami said that people from nearby areas arent interested in knowing about the graves, while international tourists visit the grave of Jahanara Begum and are inquisitive about her past. As there is no information available, visiting the grave becomes a difficult task, Nizami added.

Jahanara Begum passed away at the age of 67 and was bestowed with the title of Sahibat-ulZamani (mistress of her time) by the emperor Aurangzeb. The marble on the grave has floral patterns, some inscriptions, but it is not decorated like the graves of Mughal era.

Jahanara was only 17 when she lost her mother Arjumand Banu Begum alias Mumtaz Mahal during childbirth. She was left with a vacuum in her life. She took it upon herself to raise her six siblings, besides looking after her grief-stricken father and assisting him in the affairs of the court.

Historical references suggest that Jahanara Begum was a wealthy woman, but Sufism inspired her to serve the poor. Nizamuddin Auliyas humanitarian work also influenced her to dedicate her life to help others, said Islamic scholar, Prof Jawad of Islamic University of Science and Technology.

Old timers from Nizamuddin Basti say that there used to be an emerald stone (panna) on the grave, but it went missing 20 years back. According to historian Sohail Hashmi, the grave has a hollow on its top which was meant to be filled with soil and grass. However, nobody maintained it. He added that Jahanara had written a couplet in Farsi which is inscripted on the grave now. It means, Let grass grow on my grave, only grass is sufficient on a grave of a fakir.
Alok Kumar Verma, the new chief of Delhi police, on Tuesday created a post of chief spokesperson for the force. Special commissioner of police (crime) Taj Hassan was appointed the chief spokesperson (CP).

He said the move was to handle the media in a more disciplined, systematic and professional manner.

The chief spokesperson will address all media queries related to the Delhi police. Following the order, police sources said other senior officers will now be expected not to speak to the media even if the issue concerns them directly.

A senior officer, however, clarified that other CPs, joint CPs, additional CPs and DCPs will not be completely barred from interacting with the media.

Under this new arrangement, officers (DCPs and above) will first have to discuss the issue with the chief spokesperson and seek his approval on the statement before releasing it to the media. They will also have to apprise the chief spokesperson of their comments for media and seek his consent before speaking anything, the officer said.

The officer said the move is to avoid potential embarrassments to the force, caused by an officers unrelated comments to the media without realising the magnitude of the issue.

Some officials said the order was passed in the wake of casual statements made by the former police commissioner on the JNU sedition case. The statements drew sharp criticism from all corners.
A student at Delhis Indian Institute of Mass Communication has been suspended for a week from the hostel for using offensive and unparliamentary language against a faculty member.

In February, the faculty member, who is a course director at the premier journalism institute, had offered to resign after the message on a WhatsApp group was made public.

The ministry has also asked the IIMC to set up an internal mechanism to prevent casteism on the campus; draw up a code of conduct for students as well as employees; set up an SC/ST cell; appoint a dean of students welfare and frame a social media policy. The institute will also have to set up an academic council with outside representation

IIMC had inquired into the incident and has now recommend that the student, Prashant Kanojia, be suspended from the hostel for a week.

Kanojia who had earlier approached the IIMC with a complaint against a colleague for making derogatory references to Dalits , had in a WhatsApp group made improper reference to the faculty member.

The inquiry report has noted that Kanojia had admitted to using expletives against the faculty member and apologised. It has however, recommended a weeks expulsion from the hostel for the use of  indecent, offensive vulgar and unparliamentary language.

Incidentally, the Ministry of information and Broadcasting, which had ordered a probe into Kanojias complaint is yet to make public the findings of its inquiry. The Dalit and tribal students of IIMC have also approached the National Commission for Scheduled Castes, complaining that some of their colleagues in the campus had posted derogatory remarks against the communities on social media.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The public works department (PWD) has demanded Rs 750 crore funds from the finance department in the upcoming budget for installation of CCTV cameras and street lighting.

While the Delhi Cabinet is still to notify the dates for the budget session, sources said the Delhi Assembly is likely to convene from March 22 with the address of lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung. The session is likely to be five or six day long. The budget is likely to be tabled on March 28. The session is likely to end by March 31, an official said.

The Arvind Kejriwal cabinet has directed the PWD to install CCTV cameras across the city and illuminate dark spots  key poll promises of the Aam Aadmi Party to ensure safety of women in Delhi.

We have demanded Rs 600 crore under the planned head for installation of CCTV cameras and Rs 150 crore for installation of street lights, especially at locations which have been identified as dark spots, said a senior Delhi government official.

The planning and finance departments have started the budget consultation meetings with different departments. A review meeting of senior PWD officials was held at Delhi Secretariat on Monday.

Sources said the department in a joint survey with Delhi Police has identified around 40,000 dark spots across the city which would be illuminated in the upcoming financial year.

Sources said while education was the focus area in the first budget of the Arvind Kejriwal government last year, health sector is likely to be the major thrust area in the budget for financial year 2016-17. The sector had received Rs 4,877 crore during the last fiscal, of which Rs 3,138 was under the planned head.

The planned health budget was increased by 45%.

Officials said the health department has set an ambitious target of adding 10,000 beds across the government hospitals under the Delhi government apart from opening 1,000 mohalla clinics and poly clinics by the end of this calendar year.

The department has also decided to open at least five centralised dignostic labs across the city for catering to the patients visiting the mohalla and poly clinics.
Two students of Satyawati College said on Tuesday that they were beaten up after they tried to put up posters about JNUs march to Parliament, by a group of students who said they wont allow anti-national posters in the college.

JNU students will be marching to Parliament on Wednesday against stifling of dissent in various universities and to demand the release of students who have been jailed in connection with raising seditious slogans at an event organised on the campus.

Raj Singh and Dhanpal Singh, who are activists of Left-backed All India Students Association (AISA), of Satyawati College on Tuesday were posting pamphlets related to the JNU event when allegedly a group of 15-20 students stopped them and tore the pamphlets.

They tore the posters and pamphlets saying that they wont allow us to put anti-national posters in college. We were putting up the posters on wall of democracy about tomorrows march. They then beat us up. We went to a room to write a complaint and they came in the room and thrashed us again. We have given a complaint to police, said Dhanpal Singh.

College officials said that a complaint was received from the two students and internal committee will look into the matter. Some students were putting up posters at wall of democracy but another group objected to it. They had an altercation. We have received a complaint and internal inquiry committee will look into it, said Deepak Joshi, administrative officer, Satyawati College.

This attack is a part of series where the state machinery is using colonial laws like sedition to suppress any dissent and its lumpen elements in universities are physically attacking common students who expose the pattern, said Aman, secretary DU AISA.

JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said that they will be holding a solidarity march to Parliament on Wednesday to protest the stifling of dissent in JNU, Hyderabad university and elsewhere through sedition charges.

The protest march which will be joined by academicians and students from various universities across Delhi, will begin from Mandi House area at 2PM.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Delhi high court decision to give interim bail to Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar on Wednesday is a welcome development, but his case raises a range of disturbing issues that need resolution.

In a recent interview, Delhis former top policeman BS Bassi claimed that the force never worked under political pressure. But there are enough signs that the police in the capital are heavily politicised. Their inept handling of Mr Kumars case suggests that they do not operate independently of its political masters. Now that Mr Bassi has retired, will the senior team of the Delhi Police, which was privy to the decisions, stand up and accept that they jumped the gun in the case? If they do, they will mitigate some of the damage they have done themselves

Read | JNU student leader Kanhaiya gets 6 months bail in sedition case

Second, what happens to the lawyers who ganged up to beat up Mr Kumar and journalists at the Patiala House court complex? The lawyers were arrested thanks to immense public pressure but got bail later. The Bar Council of India has set up a panel to look into the matter; hopefully, this does not mean it being put in cold storage. Look at the absurdity of the situation: Mr Kumar was arrested on a serious charge when the facts of the case were weak, but the lawyers were let off with a minor rap when there was enough proof against them.

Third, according to some reports, the videos that showed Mr Kumar raising anti-Indian slogans were doctored. So, what happens now to the media houses that aired these unverified videos? In their court deposition, the police said that they did not have any video but went by what was showed on certain TV channels. Will this attract the attention of the Press Council of India?

Read | Delhi Police badly need an image makeover, post Kanhaiya

Last, but not least, the stand of HRD minister Smriti Irani in this controversy. It is a given that she had to back her partys position, but her performance in Parliament, marked by aggression and melodrama, bordered on hectoring. Reports on the doctored video have alleged that they were sourced from URL address shilpitiwari. Ms Tiwari is a close confidante of the minister and so the public has the right to know about her involvement, if any. Ms Iranis alleged lack of qualifications for the job caused a huge furore when she was made HRD minister. Now there are bound to be more questions as the minister persists in going beyond her mandate of improving the quality of education. Over the past few months her name has cropped up in major controversies: The leadership of the Film and Television Institute of India, the Hyderabad University suicide, the brutish decision to make flying the national flag compulsory in central universities and the JNU protests. The travails of Mr Kumar, who appears to be a victim in the JNU case, threaten to alienate a generation of students.
More than 200 students were caught cheating in the Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) examination in Bhind district on the first day on Tuesday. Students were caught with chit papers and mobile phones inside examination halls.

The district has earned a dubious reputation after more than 1000 cheating cases were reported last year. This year administration earmarked at least 42 centres as highly sensitive and 38 sensitive of the total 92 centres where the Class 10 and 12 board exams are being held. Heavy police deployment was also made at exam centres.

The administration had also launched several awareness campaigns against mass copying in the district. Belying expectations, cheating reports emerged from several centres and 212 students were caught red handed while copying on Tuesday.

Collector Illiyaraja T suspended a centre superintendent Ramendra Singh, an invigilator Kishanpal Singh and a clerk Pradeep Bhatele for allegedly failing to check cheating. The collector also served a show cause notice to sub divisional magistrate BB Agnihotri, who was acting as an observer.

According to sources, cheating was reported at several centres, except from the exam centres in Raun and Lahar blocks. In Hevatpura village, the flying squad caught students with mobile phones inside exam centres, while at a school at Barohi village, a clerk Pradeep Bhatele was suspended for allegedly helping students in mass copying. An FIR was also lodged against him. A centre in Tehangur area was changed in the last hour following irregularities.

Bhinds district education officer SN Tiwari said, This year, we are not going to spare anybody. Strict action will be taken against the authorities if they fail in discharging their duties properly. FIRs will also be lodged against person responsible for mass copying.

Meanwhile, police are gearing up to check cheating in the next exam. SP Navneet Bhasin said, As far as cheating is concerned, it is not possible to stop in a day. We had formed a team of eight people for frisking, but due to the strike of patwaris now only five people are present at each centre. But we are trying our bestToday, we have taken strict action so that nobody could even try to cheat in the next paper.

28 caught in Morena

In Morena, 28 students were caught copying at different centres across the district. In Banmore, an exam centre superintendent was served show cause notice, while a teacher of the same school was served notice for failing to check cheating.

Students get Class 11 paper at Satna centre

Examinees were distributed question paper of Class 11 at an exam centre in Satna district. The papers were changed after students created ruckus inside the examination hall. The test finally began after two hours.
She has witnessed the spectacle of 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets in a day while on her mission to space. Having achieved this feat and still hungry for more, Captain Sunita Williams believes nothing is impossible. At an interactive session on womens empowerment on the theme, Womens Empowerment through STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) Education organised by FICCI Ladies Organisation recently, the NASA astronaut shared some of her lifes valuable lessons. Here are some of them:

1.It is possible to achieve anything if a person is qualified and determined with the will to make the right decisions. A person should aspire to try out new things and explore new opportunities. Confidence, perseverance, persistence and knowledge play a key role in achieving the most challenging feats.

2.Calling herself a girl next door, Captain Williams said there was no dearth of opportunities and one only had to grab and explore them.

3. It is important to be a good student as it opens doors of opportunities.

4. Young girls should be encouraged to pursue STEM education as it provides a whole lot of opportunities across the board. Studying STEM today offers a plethora of areas to learn, explore and understand, she said.

5. Captain Williams recalled that when she had joined the US Naval Academy, there were only 10% women in the school, a number which over the years has increased significantly. Now women occupy 20% seats at the academy. NASA was also looking out for young engineers and was keen on having young and feisty females in its midst.

6. Speaking about her experiences in a male-dominated field, Captain Williams said that she often found herself in a minority but it never deterred her or interfered with her goals. She knew her tasks well and was competent to take on any challenges. She added that every woman brought teamwork to the table and willingly took care of the team.

7. While narrating many memorable incidents from her numerous space explorations, she said that these experiences have taught her to be spiritual and realise that it would be in the interest of the humanity to preserve earth.

Read more: CBSE schools to train girls in self-defence
Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said nobody, howsoever important, would be spared if found guilty in the Aircel-Maxis deal, denying allegations that the government was going slow in the probe.

No one will be spared. We have no holy cows to protect. The government is going to the root of each case thats been mentioned, he told Lok Sabha, in response to a discussion that saw the BJD and AIADMK team up with the BJP to target ex-finance minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti over their alleged involvement in the deal.

Jaitley said the Enforcement Directorate and the I-T department had recovered incriminating documents during raids, which were being scrutinised.

Earlier, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan allowed the discussion by overruling the objections of the Congress and Trinamool Congress. The Trinamools Saugata Roy cited the rule book to argue that debate could not be allowed if it refers to the conduct or character of persons except in their public capacity, or on a subject under adjudication by a court of law.

Parliamentary affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu, however, said Parliament had discussed matters related to Ayodhya and Gujarat several times despite their being sub-judice.

Starting the discussion, the BJDs Bhartruhari Mahtab said the Supreme Court was monitoring the Aircel-Maxis deal as part of the 2G spectrum scam since 2011. The CBIs earlier stand was that the then telecom minister (Dayanidhi Maran of the DMK) had arm-twisted the promoter of Aircel into selling a 74% stake to Malaysian company Maxis. But in April 2012, it was exposed that FIPB clearance to Maxis was a violation by the then finance minister (P Chidambaram) in 2006. The deal was worth more than R4,000 crore, and as the Foreign Investment Promotion Board chairman, the then finance minister only had the power to approve deals worth R600 crore. He ought to have got CCEA clearance but did not take up the matter with the CCEA, said Mahtab.

The money laundering trail in the deal has spread to 14 countries, including the British Virgin Islands, he added.

The AIADMKs TJ Venkatesh also raised allegations against Chidambaram and his son while both he and Mahtab alleged the probe was going slow.

Responding to Congress allegations about match-fixing between the BJD and BJP on the issue, Mahtab countered, Why has no FIR been lodged? Why has no charge sheet been filed? Are the BJP and Congress doing the match-fixing in this case?

The issue reverberated in Rajya Sabha too with AIADMK members shouting slogans against Chidambaram, prompting Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad to say the government had engineered these protests to force the postponement of a calling attention motion brought by opposition parties over allegedly inflammatory speeches by BJP leaders.

Responding to the AIADMKs allegations, Karti had earlier said, One newspaper has made allegations against me, which have been adequately refuted in the past. Myself and my business are fully compliant with all laws and regulations.

When contacted, Chidambaram refused to comment.
Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the students union at Jawaharlal Nehru University whose arrest on sedition charges set off a nationwide political row over free speech, was granted interim bail for six months on Wednesday.

In its order starting with a cult Bollywood song Mere desh ki dharti, the Delhi high court, however, made stinging observations over the alleged anti-national slogans shouted on the campus, saying they cannot be claimed to be protected by (the) fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.

Justice Pratibha Rani approved Kumars bail on a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and asked him to cooperate in investigations into allegations that he delivered a seditious speech to commemorate the hanging of Afzal Guru, a convict in the 2001 attack on Parliament.

Read | Forensic test reveals two out of seven videos on JNU were doctored

Kumar will be released on Thursday as authorities at Tihar jail were yet to receive the court order, the student leaders lawyer said.

The court said a university faculty member would have to become a guarantor for the PhD student who was arrested on February 12.

Along with him, police had also accused two other students -- Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya -- of shouting slogans such as death to the Indian state and calling for the rise of Pakistan. They surrendered last month.

During the period spent by the petitioner in judicial custody, he might have introspected about the events that had taken place. To enable him to remain in the mainstream, at present I am inclined to provide conservative method of treatment, the judge said.

The arrest of the students reignited a debate over free speech in a country where supporters of the ruling BJP government have cast themselves as champions of patriotism and sought to stamp out dissent.

Anti-nationalism is an infection

The judge added she was not inclined to believe that the anti-national slogans shouted at JNU were protected under the fundamental right of freedom of speech, which comes along with fundamental duties that every citizen of the country must respect.

Today I am at a crossroadI consider this (the anti-national attitude) as a kind of infection from which such students are suffering which needs to be controlled/cured before it becomes an epidemic, she said.

At the beginning of her order, the judge referred to the song from the film Upkar, which marked the beginning of actor Manoj Kumars onscreen persona as the patriotic Mr Bharat, and said it symbolised the love for motherland.

Spring season is a time when nature becomes green and flower blooms in all colours. This spring why the colour of peace is eluding the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) situated in the heart of Delhi needs to be answered by its students, faculty members and those managing the affairs of this national university, she said.

Read | Bullet-proof jacket, baton in hand: When Kanhaiya turned cop briefly

As part of bail conditions, the court directed Kumar to furnish an undertaking saying that he will not participate actively or passively in any activity that may be termed as anti-national.

On Monday the court had reserved its order after hearing lengthy arguments from Kumars lawyers and the Delhi Police who vehemently opposed the bail plea. If found guilty, Kumar could be sentenced for life in jail.

The arrest of the students and subsequent events  including Kumars alleged assault by a group of lawyers in Delhis Patiala House court complex  sparked outrage across the nation, pitting the BJP against the Opposition. Universities across India also joined in protests against Kumars arrest.

The controversy also dredged up old concerns about the British-era sedition law, with many calling for it to be struck down.

Also Read

Arrest of JNU students, and the policing side of it: Kiran Bedi writes

The Kanhaiya Kumar case raises many troubling questions

Delhi Police badly need an image makeover, post Kanhaiya
LIVINGSTON  Livingston expressed outrage and concern in a Tuesday night town hall meeting covering a recent spell of suicides and the sometimes unruly social media posts it sparked.

Concerned parents and community members gathered in Park High School and shared their experiences and ideas for growth while school administrators and health care professionals focused the conversation.

Social media has just gotten way out of control, way out of control, said Elliott Gillen. And if theres one thing I can say, I just want it to stop.

Gillens 17-year-old son, Deon Gillen, took his own life on Feb. 14. Another Park High student took his life one week later, sending the town into a race to address the issue. Community Facebook pages including This is REALLY Livingston erupted with shocked comments, speculation and finger-pointing.

Rich Moore, superintendent of Livingston School District said Park High School Principal Lynne Scalia has subsequently been subject of death threats and phone harassment. Livingston also lost two more community members to suicide in the last week, this time adults.

Many at the meeting wrote off the bickering as divisive and counterproductive while the crisis continues. Instead, attendees suggested the community focus on solutions as simple as asking members of other generations how theyre doing or complex as addressing the poverty issues prevalent in the community.

At the school, our job is to attempt to keep more suicides from happening, Scalia said.

But she said the response should be a wide-sweeping community effort and a long-term commitment. She doesnt want just a one shot assembly. That could include community training to identify the signs of suicide and what to do what theyre identified.

We understand this is not just a school situation. This is bigger than us and we need everyones assistance, Scalia said.

Rachel Jergenson, a Livingston psychologist and one of two facilitators at the meeting, advised the room to be blunt and practical. She said to ask their children if they ever had suicidal idealization, how many times and if they actually considered carrying it out or even attempted to.

If they say no I ask why not. I make them verbalize why they did not, Jergenson said.

She said then they can have a discussion about the devastation suicide leaves with the people who love them.
Hours after Pakistan pledged action against the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates, New Delhi made it clear on Wednesday that the resumption of bilateral talks would hinge on Islamabad cracking down on the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.

In the aftermath of a terror attack, if you ask me what do you give priority to  a terrorist attack or a diplomatic dialogue, I think the answer should be obvious, foreign secretary S Jaishankar said during an interactive session at the Raisina Dialogue, a conclave on geo-economics and geo-politics.

Jaishankar was responding to a question on whether talks between the foreign secretaries were linked to action by Pakistan against perpetrators of the January 2 attack on Pathankot airbase that killed seven people. India has blamed Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed for the attack.

Both countries were in touch following the Pathankot attack, primarily at the level of the national security advisers, Jaishankar said. India wants a much more modern relationship with Pakistan but this can happen only if Islamabad has a change in attitude on several issues, of which terrorism is a central one, he added.

A joint statement issued on Tuesday at the conclusion of the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue in Washington said foreign policy chief Sartaj Aziz had affirmed the government of Pakistans resolve to take effective action against United Nations-designated terrorist individuals and entities, including al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and its affiliates.

Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to countering terrorism including by targeting all terrorists without discrimination, the statement said.

The UN Security Council designated the Jamaat-ud-Dawah a front for the LeT after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 166 people. Pakistan has not yet banned the JuD, which has only been placed on the interior ministrys watch list.

Though Pakistan has filed a First Information Report on the Pathankot attack, the document does not name the JeM or its chief Masood Azhar, accused by India of masterminding the attack on the airbase.

Talks between the foreign secretaries were cancelled in the wake of the Pathankot attack and India has been non-committal about rescheduling the parleys. Indian officials have indicated that much will depend on the Pakistani investigation into the attack and steps to prosecute Masood Azhar and other JeM operatives.

Azhar was placed under protective custody and several JeM operatives were detained or arrested. A Pakistani joint investigation team is expected to visit India this month to take forward the probe.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Amid the furore over former undersecretary RVS Manis revelations in the Ishrat Jahan case, Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday told her party MPs that former home minister P Chidambaram has already explained his position, adding that the grand old party has been targeted since it has been in the government.

Chidambaram ji has already explained. We have been targeted since we were in government, Gandhi said at a Congress strategy meeting in New Delhi.

Babu says he was forced to sign affidavit clearing Ishrat Jahan

In a revelation that has the potential to spark a fresh political row and disrupt the functioning of the Parliament, Mani on Tuesday claimed that he did not draft the second affidavit and had been ordered to sign the file in the Ishrat Jahan case.

His claims came days after former home secretary GK Pillai alleged that Chidambaram bypassed him and rewrote the second affidavit submitted to a court in this connection.

Read more: Ishrat case: Congress directed Chidambaram to target Modi, says BJP

Taking a dig at the NDA Government, the Congress on Tuesday asked whether it is trying to subvert a court-monitored investigation and helping the accused in the Ishrat Jahan case.

The fundamental question is why are the highest echelon of the Indian government trying to subvert a court-monitored investigation into a fake encounter case? Do they want to help the accused be let off the hook or are the accused pressurizing them, Congress leader Manish Tewari told ANI.

Read more: GK Pillai equally responsible for Ishrat affidavit change: Chidambaram

Last week, Pillai had said that the affidavit in Ishrat case was changed at the political level.

Chidambaram earlier on Monday said the revised affidavit was absolutely correct, adding he accepts full responsibility for the affidavit as a minister.

Citing intelligence reports, Chidambaram had as the home minister submitted an affidavit in the Gujarat High Court in August 2009, which referred to Ishrats alleged links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

However, a revised affidavit was filed within a month in which all references to Ishrats alleged terror links were missing.
After being in jail for over a fortnight, JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar could be released on Wednesday when verdict on his bail plea is announced post lunch.

Justice Pratibha Rani had on Monday reserved the order after hearing lengthy arguments from Kumars lawyers and the Delhi Police who vehemently opposed the bail plea. Delhi standing counsel, Rahul Mehra, also pleaded with the court to sanction the bail.

Kumar was arrested on February 12 for allegedly raising anti-national slogans on JNU campus during a rally held on February 9 that marked the third anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Gurus hanging. Police allege that Kumar, with other students including Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, shouted out for the death of the Indian state and called for the rise of Pakistan.

On Tuesday, co-accused  Khalid and Bhattacharya  were remanded to judicial custody for 14 days. Kumar, however, distanced himself from them and said he had nothing to do with organising the controversial event.

Kapil Sibal, who is representing Kumar, alleged that police acted hastily, based on a news report by Zee television which appears to have been doctored to show false evidence. Alternate videos showing Kumar chanting slogans against casteism and poverty have since emerged.

In the Monday hearing that lasted three hours, Sibal argued that Kumar had never raised any slogans against the nation. He further said the only credible evidence available was CCTV footage that showed Kumar asking for ID proof of people attending the event.

Police, however, told the court that they had eye-witness testimonies and other documentary evidence of Kumars participation in a rally. They further accused him of not cooperating with them, adding that joint interrogations held by the Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police had produced contradictory statements from the 28-year-old.

Given the ongoing conflict over the evidence, the bench questioned the grounds on which the police charged Kumar for sedition and criminal conspiracy.

If found guilty of the charges, Kumar could be sentenced to jail for life.

Kumars arrest and subsequent events that followed  including his assault at the hands of lawyers in Delhis Patiala House Court complex  sparked an outrage from the nation, pitting the ruling BJP against the Opposition. Universities across India also joined in protests against Kumars arrest.

JNU students are expected to march till the Supreme Court demanding Kumars freedom on Wednesday.

The controversy has also dredged up old concerns about the law of sedition, with many calling for it to be struck down. Political rivals also made a rare stand against the Centre, with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat, sharing a stage.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley hit out at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday for accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not consulting ministers and said the opposition leaders views are shaped by the environment of a political party that evolved into a crowd around a family.

In a Facebook post titled How much does he know  when will he know, the finance minister said India made the right choice between the PM who leads the Government and a PM who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere.

The UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the Prime Minister, he should be reduced to being a figure-head. Given a choice between a hands-on Prime Minister or a nominal head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former, Jaitley wrote on the social media site.

The Finance Minister said if Rahul was is to be believed, then Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Rajnath Singh was unware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, he was unaware of the Budget proposals.

As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know  when will he know, he said.

Jaitley maintained that the Prime Minister should be the natural leader of the party and the Government and it was the case in the NDA. The present Prime Minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally, Jaitley said.

He argued that each minister was responsible for the important decision and they do not by-pass the Prime Minister who is always available for consultation and guidance.
Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of the students union at Jawaharlal Nehru University whose arrest on sedition charges touched off a nationwide political row over free speech, was granted bail for six months on Wednesday.

The Delhi high court approved Kumars bail on a personal bond of Rs 10,000 and asked him to cooperate in investigations into allegations that he had delivered a seditious speech to commemorate the hanging of Afzal Guru, a convict in the 2001 attack on Parliament.

The court said a university faculty member would have to become a guarantor for the PhD student who was arrested on February 12. Along with him, police had also accused two other students -- Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya -- of shouting shouted slogans such as death to the Indian state and calling for the rise of Pakistan. They surrendered to late last month.

The arrest of the students has reignited a debate over free speech in a country where supporters of the ruling BJP government have cast themselves as champions of patriotism and sought to stamp out dissent.

On Tuesday, co-accused  Khalid and Bhattacharya  were remanded to 14-day judicial custody. Kumar, however, distanced himself from the duo and said he had nothing to do with organising the contentious event.

The high court reserved its order on Monday after hearing arguments from both parties. While the Delhi police vehemently opposed the bail plea, defence lawyers and Delhi standing counsel, Rahul Mehra, supported Kumar.

The JNUSU presidents lawyer, Kapil Sibal, said the police acted hastily, based on an allegedly doctored video clip run by Zee News. Alternate videos showing Kumar chanting slogans against casteism and poverty have since emerged.

Read | No video footage to show Kanhaiya raised slogans, say cops

During the Monday hearing, that lasted three hours, Sibal argued that Kumar had never raised any slogans against the nation. He further said the only credible evidence available was CCTV footage that showed the student leader asking people for ID proof at the event in question.

The police, however, informed the court that they had eyewitness testimonies and other documentary evidence of Kumars participation in the rally. They further accused him of not cooperating with them, adding that joint interrogations held by the Intelligence Bureau and the Delhi police had produced contradictory statements from the 28-year-old.

Given the ongoing conflict over the evidence, the bench questioned the grounds on which the police charged Kumar for sedition and criminal conspiracy. If found guilty, however, Kumar could be sentenced to life in prison.

Kumars arrest and subsequent events, including being assaulted by lawyers in Delhis Patiala House Court complex, sparked outrage across the nation, pitting the ruling BJP against the Opposition. Universities across India also joined in protests against Kumars arrest, including a protest rally by student groups in Delhis Mandi House on Wednesday.

The controversy has also dredged up concerns about the sedition law, with many demanding it to be struck down. Political rivals also made a rare, united stand against the Centre, with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat sharing a stage.

Read | Proof against Kanhaiya Kumar: Just TV clips, eyewitness statement

Could Zee TV clips of JNU break Delhi Polices case against Kanhaiya?
Delhi police had to resort to sneaking JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, disguised in riot police gear, out of Patiala House court on February 17 when a mob of lawyers attacked the student leader on his way in to court.

Kumar was dressed in battle fatigues, a bullet-proof jacket and a helmet that made him look like a member of the anti-riot cell to make sure a violent mob of lawyers failed to spot him.

Police decided to use the disguise after at least 200 lawyers assembled near the courtroom and at the exit gates to stop them from escorting Kumar out of the court premises.

An emergency meeting was called at the police headquarters wherein senior officers agreed to the exit plan. Several sets of anti-riot gears were brought to the courtroom. Fifty policemen were dressed in the gear, while Kumar was also fitted with a baton and a police helmet with a visor to cover his face.
Anyone in a black coat cant become a lawyer, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday, making a case for allowing only meritorious people in the overcrowded legal profession.

The top courts observation came barely two weeks after a group of lawyers allegedly assaulted the Jawaharlal Nehru University students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar at the Patiala House Courts during a hearing on a sedition case.

Nobody can be allowed to wear a black coat and carry on with other business, a bench headed by chief justice of India TS Thakur said adding that the legal profession cant be taken for a ride.

Read | SC keen to have test for law graduates before they get licence

The bench is hearing a petition challenging the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) conducted by the Bar Council of India (BCI). Clearing the exam entitles a person to practice law.

The Supreme Court bench referred the matter to a three-judge bench and hinted at appointing an amicus curiae (courts friend) to assist it in the case.

Its time for you (lawyers) to reform your profession. We need to have a strong system wherein everyone in black coat cant become a lawyer, the court said adding that too many lawyers have turned the profession overcrowded.

The system is crying for reforms.

The CJI also found fault with the current system that allows lawyers to practise directly in the top court and said it was necessary for an advocate to start from a trial court before elevation to the apex court.

Read | Bar association silent on Patiala House violence with election in April

Just because you have a degree doesnt mean you become (an) advocate. If you cannot have a half-way doctor, you cannot have a half-way lawyer. Administration of justice is as important as treating a patient, the court said.

The bench argued in favour of law graduates taking an examination before they get a licence from a state bar council.

At present, people are granted license before they sit for the AIBE, introduced in 2010. The BCI says the exam assesses skills at a basic level and is intended to set a minimum benchmark for admission to the legal profession.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Pakistan has vowed to take action against all terrorist groups, including the Lashkar-e-Taeba (LeT), and not let its territory be used by such outfits to destabilise other countries.

The LeT is said to be behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, which killed 164 people and wounding at least 308.

Islamabads commitment to target all terrorists without discrimination was conveyed through a joint statement issued during the ministerial-level US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue meeting between United States secretary of state John Kerry and Pakistani advisor to the prime minister on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz on Tuesday.

The two countries agreed on the need for effective action against all violent extremists, specifically underscoring that no countrys territory should be used to destabilise other nations. Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to countering terrorism, including targeting all terrorists without discrimination, the statement said. Aziz also affirmed Pakistans resolve to take effective action against UN-designated terrorist individuals and entities, including the al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network and the Lashkar-e-Taeba.

The statement voiced the two countries commitment to continue promoting peace, stability and transparency in the region, and eliminate threats posed by violent extremism and terrorism.

Read: US pushes Pakistan to cut down growing nuclear arsenal

The US and Pakistan also pledged to work together to further bolster the capacity of Pakistans judicial and law enforcement authorities for combating terrorism and enforcing the rule of law.

The two sides agreed to further enhance cooperation between their respective counter-terrorism authorities, and stressed on the importance of strengthening Pakistans capabilities to counter the use of improvised explosive devices more effectively.

Kerry and Aziz also touched on the TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) gas pipeline project, appreciating the progress made in that regard. Such regional projects would greatly facilitate regional integration and cooperation, the statement said.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday launched a no-holds-barred attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of going soft on hoarders of black money and making repeated U-turns on his Pakistan policy.

Gandhi said Modi did not consult even his own ministers before deciding on matters of national importance, citing the Naga accord and the impromptu Christmas detour to have tea at Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharifs farmhouse.

Maintaining that the PM could not run the country on his whims through a centralised style of functioning, Gandhi said, The country is not the PM and he is not the country.

Punctuating his 35-minute speech with barbs targeting the PM rather than the government, Gandhi played on the perception that Modi single-handedly decided on important matters. And, he went on to question the PM on all of them  Modis silence on the debate on free speech, especially the attack on journalists and teachers in a Delhi court, the Naga pact, and also the ambitious Make in India campaign that promised to be a job-spinner.

Gandhi first picked on the one-time compliance window for black money holders announced in the budget, describing it as a fair and lovely scheme  a reference to a popular skin-whitening cream.

Read | Jaitley targets Rahul, asks How much does he know - when will he know

Nobody who has black money will be jailed under Modis Fair and Lovely scheme. All those who have black money can make it white under this scheme, he said.

Gandhi did fumble in between but recovered quickly to deliver another punch.

Yes, I do make mistakes. I am not from the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the BJPs ideological mentor), said the Congress leader, who last year came up with the suit-boot ki sarkar jab, accusing the Modi government of being pro-industry and anti-poor.

Modi is slated to respond on Thursday to the discussion on the motion of thanks to the Presidents address to Parliament.

The BJPs front-line ministers were not in the House when a clean-shaven Gandhi dressed in his trademark white kurta spoke. Ruling party MPs who were present did not disturb and, at times, some even seemed to enjoy the speech.

Gandhi used the PMs Christmas stopover in Pakistan to target Modi and the BJPs concept of nationalism. In one move, he personally let Pakistan out of the little cage into which we had put them... When he stopped over in Pakistan without talking to the professionals in our government, the Prime Minister disrespected our flag, he said.

Questioning the BJPs version of nationalism, the Congress leader asked the PM to listen to what the country was trying to tell him. You cannot defend the Indian flag by destroying the relationships between Indians, he said.

The Congress leader accused Modi of not consulting his ministerial colleagues, the army and others on critical issues such as his Pakistan visit or the Naga accord.

I do not think he (Modi) even discussed with external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj his visit to Pakistan and took a detour to Pakistan for having a tea with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Gandhi attacked Modi for seeking credit for what was described as the historic Naga accord and alleged that not only the Northeast chief ministers but even home minister Rajnath Singh was caught unawares.

Nobody had an idea what Modi had signed. Where is Naga accord now? Its gone with the wind. Bye-bye accord, Gandhi said. Rajnath Singh later tweeted that he was in the know.

The Opposition parties, Gandhi said, were not the PMs enemies, urging him to listen to them. we dont hate you. Just give the people the dignity of their word and listen to them, Gandhi said.

Read | JNU row: Sedition case slapped on Rahul, Kejriwal, Yechury

Read | BJP, opposition lock horns in Parliament over JNU row, Vemula suicide
RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has opposed the governments move to tax the provident fund money, calling it disgusting and a gross injustice to workers.

Read more: Jaitley yet to decide on taxing your PF: Everything you need to know

The government move is disgusting and we condemn it strongly. We will try to pursue the government to roll it back, BMS president BN Rai said.

Read more: Jaitleys proposal to tax EPF is wrong, morally and in principle

The government in its budget on Monday made a provision for taxing 60% of the accumulated PF at the time of withdrawal. This, finance minister Arun Jaitley said, will bring parity among various pension plans.

I believe that the tax treatment should be uniform for defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans, he said in his budget speech.

Rai said the government has dealt a blow to the scheme that was relied upon by workers as security in old age. They used the money for building a house, education of their kids or marriage. Now, with government plan to tax the money, workers will lose considerable amount of their own money, he said.

Rai said if the attempts by the BMS fail to pursue the government to roll back the plan, it will consider mobilising other trade unions for a stir. The plan also attracted criticism from other unions. DL Sachdeva of the All India Trade Union Congress said the move was an attempt by the government to favour corporates. In the name of giving it parity, government will tax the PF money and divert it for the corporates, he said.
Billings wasnt the only city in Montana that took part in a rally or prayer vigil Tuesday as part of the Stand Against Violence Fear and Hate Day of Action.

A variety of faiths and organizations in Helena, Missoula, Kalispell and Bozeman also joined together to speak up for refugees and condemn prejudice toward any specific faith or culture. Its part of a broader attempt by the Montana faith community to support refugees and minority religions.

The effort is partially in response to anti-refugee, anti-Muslim activities and sentiment around the state, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network.

So many people were emailing and calling and reaching out and saying we feel like we need to do more, Rivas said in a telephone interview from Helena. After you get enough of those, you think, All right, it's time to do more.

Its time, she said, to let others know that concerned people are coming from a place of compassion, standing up for those who are being targeted.

'This is our legacy': Billings group gathers to support refugee resettlement in America About 75 people in Billings on Tuesday stood in support of those displaced in the refugee crisis on Tuesday.

There are times when you cant be quiet, Rivas said. This is a time not to be silent in our opposition to the hate.

Rivas pointed to anti-refugee, anti-Muslim rallies that have taken place in Missoula and Helena. A Feb. 24 rally in Missoula brought about 100 people together to protest attempts to resurrect a refugee relocation center agency in the city.

Rivas also mentioned a letter written by the Ravalli County Commission opposing the settlement of Syrian refugees in Ravalli County. The commission approved a modified version of the letter after it held a town meeting in Hamilton that drew an estimated 500 people, many who were in favor of the letter.

Then up on the Flathead, there is a group, Act for America, that has a chapter, she said. They have been doing events for over a year, and that group is particularly anti-Muslim.

Rivas was pleased to see Tuesday's rallies drawing strong support from the states faith community.

Thats no surprise to us, and I think thats an important part of the conversation, she said. Religious freedom and the ability to practice the faith of your choosing is foundational to our country.

Julie Cahill, one of the founders of Soft Landing Missoula, the organization that is working toward setting up the refugee relocation center, said Soft Landing was the catalyst for the march and prayer vigil. But 28 groups altogether sponsored the event Tuesday night.

It is being held in a spirit of openness and warmth, Cahill said, to support refugees in every way possible.

Soft Landing Missoula is a group of citizens, business owners, nonprofits and others who have come together with a goal of opening the citys arms and hearts in sustainable ways to refugees, Cahill said. Montana and Wyoming and two of the only states that dont have that infrastructure in place, to help with the relocation process.

Weve seen this uptick of angry and sometimes scary, violent rhetoric toward refugees and immigrants, she said. We want to support them, and we believe thats a really important part of our mission with the refugee relocation center.

Paige Rappleye, a Love Lives Here organizer in Kalispell, an affiliate of the Montana Human Rights Network, said her group was formed nearly 10 years ago to speak out against anti-Semitic groups.

They were showing some Holocaust denial films at our library and we had a rally of 200-plus people who came together to have a peaceful protest, Rappleye said.

The Flathead Valley tends to be conservative, she said, and it draws pro-white groups that want to keep out people of color and of other nationalities. She has also seen a wave of anti-Native American sentiment flow through the area.

My grandmother was raised in Montana, she said. And I like to think were just better than that here. We are not hate-mongers; there are plenty of people not like that here, and I would like to show a better face.

Rappleye called Love Lives Here a kind of watchdog organization that keeps an eye on any kind of hate activity in the area. It also rallied for the passage of a nondiscrimination ordinance in Kalispell.

The group organized a rally for downtown Kalispell that will include clergy, students and others in the community. She asked her two teenage children also to come to the event.

She told them to picture what it would be like to be a youth from a war-torn country who has lost home and family and, after going through a long process, was assigned to come to the U.S.

Getting off a boat would be horrifying, with screaming Americans not wanting you here, she told them. I think as Americans we can do better. Certainly, thats my goal.

Sarah Krumm, who is helping organize a peace vigil in Bozeman, said its important for people who stand on different sides of the refugee issue be able to hold a civil and compassionate conversation about it.

We can talk about disagreements while moving toward being a welcoming community, she said.

Clergy from different faiths planned to gather Tuesday, including those of the Muslim and Jewish religions. And even though Bozeman hasnt seen the same level of protests that other parts of the state have, Krumm said, the ripple reaches far beyond.

Were a small state and when something like that happens a few hours away, it affects us here, she said.

The faith response to the refugee crisis goes beyond Tuesday nights rallies. In December, Montanas two Catholic bishops released a statement regarding the Syrian refugee crisis.

Consistent with our history and mission, the Catholic Church in Montana will seek ways to assist incoming refugees and those who are in desperate need of assistance, the bishops wrote.

On Tuesday, Matt Brower, executive director of the Montana Catholic Conference, said he has had people approach him with questions about refugees entering the U.S. He points out that with the vetting process that helps insure the safety of citizens, it makes sense to respond to the needs of refugees.

It may be, he added, that few if any Syrian refugees will be directed to Montana for resettlement. But if they come, they should be welcomed, he said.

These are people of whatever religious background who are part of the common human family and are equal in dignity, Brower said. They deserve help anyway we can provide it.
The Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday sought the Centres views on its decision to release the seven people convicted of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhis assassination.

In a formal communication, chief secretary K Gnanadesikan wrote to Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi, seeking the Centres views on the release of the seven convicted in the case. The letter comes a week after one of the convicts, Nalini Sriharan, appealed to Jayalalithaa for her release.

Last year, Nalini also filed a writ petition in the Madras high court in this regard.

A state government is required to consult the Centre before exercising its powers under Section 432 of the CrPC to release convicts in a case that was investigated and tried by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

With the official communication, the AIADMK government appears to be willing to release the convicts  a popular demand among political parties in the state.

However, even if the Centre rejects the suggestion and responds with a writ petition, as it did in 2014, Jayalalithaa can claim to have tried her best and blame the Central government, said an analyst.

The Supreme Court had raised legal and constitutional questions after the Centres 2014 writ petition and posted the matter for a three-member bench, but the case is yet to be listed, according to the chief secretary.

Now the Tamil Nadu government has received petitions from the convicts...with requests to release them as they have all spent more than 20 years in prison, said the chief secretary.

The government of Tamil Nadu has decided to remit the sentences of life imprisonment and release the seven persons.

He further clarified that the communication was without prejudice to our right to move the Supreme Court to review its judgment dated December 2, 2015, wherein the Constitution bench had taken the view that the word consultation used in Section 435 of CrPC means concurrence..

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Police are suspecting a financial motive in the Thane mass murder-suicide after having stumbled upon clues that suggest the prime suspect Hasnain Varekar borrowed gold from Subiya Barmal, the lone survivor from the murders of 14 of her family members.

Investigators said Hasnain was probably unemployed and was trying his luck at a new business venture of importing betel nut from Malaysia or Indonesia that required an investment of Rs 35 lakh. Investigations have revealed that he had borrowed gold of 10 to 12 tolas from Subiya and was to start a venture with her in partnership. We are probing the theory of any financial constraint along with several other theories, said Param Bir Singh, commissioner of police, Thane.

Police have also learned that he had acquired loan from a gold loan firm and are investigating further. Shaukat Khan, Hasnains brother in-law, who lost his wife and three children, also stated that he had borrowed huge sums of money from several people for a business and may have suffered losses.

Another aspect that has left police looking for clues is his wife was found lying near the staircase without clothes. There could be many theories behind the wife being found without clothes.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) on Tuesday said Sadhvi Prachi, who is described as a leader of the outfit, is neither a leader, nor a spokesperson or any office bearer.

The VHP again clarifies that Sadhvi Prachi is neither the leader, nor its spokesperson or any office bearer of our organisation, Vishwa Hindu Parishads joint general secretary Surendra Jain said in a statement.

He also clarified that Prachi had been active in politics and had fought elections in the past too.

Sadhvi Prachi has fought election on the symbol of a political party and is active in politics. Those active in politics cant be an office bearer of the VHP, Jain said.

So, Sadhvi Prachi should not be described as VHP leader, the Vishwa Hindu Parishads joint general secretary added.
For the family of student leader Kanhaiya Kumar, Holi came 20 days early as news of the JNUSU presidents interim bail for six months trickled in on Wednesday evening.

Relatives, friends and sympathisers of Kanhaiya thronged his ancestral house, 125 km east of Patna, to smear abeer (coloured powder) on Kanhaiyas parents  Jayshankar Singh (61) and Meena Devi (50).

The parents joy knew no bounds as they watched their son on TV, being escorted out of the Delhi high court amid tight security.

I always had faith in the judiciary. My son is certainly not anti-national. The BJP and the RSS had conspired against him. The doctored video tapes are a testimony to this fact, said Singh, a staunch supporter of the Communist Party of India.

As Devi thanked the Gods, Kanhaiyas brother Prince Kumar (28) said, We knew all along my brother would get a clean chit. It was just a matter of time. He is certainly not anti-national

His elder brother Manikant Kumar (35), the major earning member of the family, was in Delhi to support his brother.

His father, recovering from a paralytic attack and a hip fracture, sat glued to the TV from 8 am for news about his sons bail.

Kanhaiyas mother, an anganwadi sevika (health worker), joined him at 3 pm, after work.

Together, the family sat huddled in a small, poorly lit, thatched room about 10 feet by 12 feet, flipping through channels until the news broke at 7 pm.

Relief writ large on his face, Jayshankar told HT, Never once did I get any complaint about my son since his school daysKanhaiya was always a good boy and his teachers liked him. I had full faith in him that he would have never said anything anti-national.

Outside the house, a painting on the wall by artists and Kanhaiyas friends from Santiniketan near Kolkata said it all  a crocodile trying to gobble up JNU students, with the slogan Save JNU, Save India.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Irked over lack of developmental work, a group of villagers in Kuttewal Khurd village near here attacked the cavalcade of Punjabs public works department (PWD) minister Janmeja Singh Sekhon on Wednesday afternoon.

Though Sekhon escaped unhurt, the agitated villagers broke the windowpanes of the vehicle in which the local deputy superintendent of police was traveling. The pandemonium prevailed when Sekhon was touring villages in his constituency, Maur.

Later on Tuesday, Sekhon also visited Ram Nagar village, where he faced the wrath of some women who complained of not getting social welfare pensions on time.

This was not for the first time that Sekhons cavalcade was targeted as earlier in November last year, farmers in Khokhar village in Bathinda district protested against the minister.
The body of a 40-year-old porter, who was hired by the Indian Army to work at Siachen  the worlds highest battlefield  was recovered after a massive rescue operation, five days after he fell into a deep crevasse in Siachens Northern Glacier at a height of about 19,000 feet.

Thukjay Gyasket, a resident of Ayee village near Sasoma in Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir, had slipped and fallen into a deep narrow crevasse while ferrying stores between forward army posts in Northern Glacier area on February 27.

Read more: Siachen miracle: How Army rescued a hero trapped under 35 ft of snow

The portals mortal remains were located about 200-feet inside the narrow crevasse.

After locating the body, rescue teams moved inside the crevasse and anchored it to the ice wall to prevent it from further slipping down.

The opening and gap of the narrow crevasse was also widened to retrieve the body intact, army sources said.

The mortal remains of this dedicated porter have now been brought down to Hunder near Parthapur and will be handed over to the next of kin after necessary formalities.

Thukjay is survived by his mother, wife and two daughters.

The 76-km glacier in Jammu and Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan. Its ruthless weather has claimed many lives so far.

Last month, 10 soldiers died after they were buried under an avalanche.

Defence minister Manohar Parrkiar told the Parliament on Tuesday that 41 soldiers had lost their lives on the Siachen Glacier since 2013.

The list, however, made no mention of porters who had also been killed.

Read more: Of 1,000 soldiers lost in Siachen, only 220 fell to enemy bullets
Authorities in Los Angeles have filed hate crime charges against a man who brutally assaulted a Sikh bus driver and called him a terrorist and suicide bomber during the attack last November.

Balwinder Jit Singh had sustained serious injuries during the November 6 assault and was taken to a hospital with a disfigured face and infection in his eye that required weeks of recovery.

The Inglewood district attorneys office filed a hate crime charge on Monday against KC Tard, who brutally attacked Singh and had called him terrorist and suicide bomber. Tard also accused Singh of hijacking the bus while he was viciously assaulting him.

Advocacy group the Sikh Coalition said in a statement that the local police had initially failed to take into account the hateful slurs used against Singh, instead classifying the crime as a simple misdemeanour assault.

In January, the Sikh Coalitions legal team intervened and urged the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department to investigate the case as a hate crime.

The Inglewood district attorneys office filed a felony count of Battery on Transit Personnel with a Felony Hate Crime enhancement against Tard.

I was attacked because of my Sikh religious appearance and Im grateful that authorities re-examined my case and finally brought hate crime charges against the assailant, Singh said. Acknowledging hatred when it occurs is the necessary first step for combating the problem.

The rights group said in recent months, as hateful political rhetoric has ramped up, it has witnessed a dramatic increase in hate crimes and backlash directed towards the Sikh community.

Read more: In this fight together: Sikhs join Muslims to combat hate crimes in US

The Sikh turban stands for justice and equality, said the Sikh Coalitions Senior Staff Attorney, Gurjot Kaur. It should be celebrated, not feared, and we will continue to educate law enforcement agencies and Americans alike on the necessary steps required to combat the problem of hate in our country.

The Sikh Coalition was joined in support by nine other civil rights organisations, led by the LA chapter of Asian Americans Advancing Justice who had underscored the importance of charging this case as a hate crime.

The decision by the District Attorneys Office to include a hate crime enhancement charge in Singhs case helps to send a strong message that targeting individuals by race or religion will not be tolerated, said Karin Wang, vice-president of programs and communications for Asian Americans Advancing Justice - LA.

Read more: SGPC writes to Obama, Modi regarding hate crime against Sikhs
Human rights lawyer Harvinder Singh Phoolka, who has been fighting for justice to the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, has come under attack from the most unexpected quarters.

A section of Khalistanis, who have kept the issue of 1984 alive in Canada, have started criticising Phoolka on social media for seeking symbolic justice to the victims of anti-Sikh massacre.

They are also planning to protest against Phoolka at an event being organised to honour him in Surreys Aria Banquet Hall this Saturday.

Phoolkas supporters are worried.

In a TV interview during his visit to Toronto, Phoolka had suggested that since the time for full justice to the victims has already lapsed, at least the symbolic justice be served by punishing a few Congress leaders involved in the crime.

He can be heard saying that if that does not happen, it will reflect very badly on a country that is known as worlds largest democracy.

Phoolkas statement went gone viral on Facebook, inviting some abusive and provocative comments against him.

The Congress and the Akali Dal in Punjab have often accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member of taking support of Khalistanis abroad.

But the lawyer gave a jolt to the secessionists during his last visit to Canada back in 2008. He had resisted attempts to appropriate his struggle by the supporters of Khalistan and had emphasised that he was a proud Indian whose only fight was for justice.

He had also walked out of a Surrey Gurdwara that supports Khalistan.

Talking to HT, Phoolka said his statement on the anti-Sikh riots had been taken out of context
Former national chess champion from Haryana, Anuradha Beniwal, who is now settled in London, has launched crowd-funding for victims of the large-scale violence in Haryana during the recent Jat agitation.

The donations for the noble move of Beniwal have already totalled 1,170 pounds, against a target of 5,000 pounds (about Rs 5 lakh), according to her twitter handle thethinkinbird.

Her twitter account takes one to the crowd-sourcing webpage which reads: Riots leave charred footprints. We sadly have them on the face of Haryana in the name of caste. A state famous for its Olympic medals turned into a war zone, and is now an abandoned mass of burnt down shops, schools, houses, and hearts. With this fund we aim to help ordinary people who have lost their livelihoods in rebuilding their lives and renovating their burnt homes. More importantly, help to restore an ordinarys man dimming faith in the inherent human goodness and global harmony.

She recently touched hearts by her counter moves (read tweets) to many hate mails on the twitter, while making appeals for peace and harmony back home.

Aaj to ye sare bhai block ho ke manege, re mera to katiyi ji nahi, kunsa bhi je jaat paat ki duhai devega, ohe block hovega, ehle bus, she wrote in chaste Haryanvi, meaning that she regretted that many tweeters mentioning castes will have to be blocked by her. Another tweet by her reads: Meri qoum, mahri qoum te ghane (zyada) khatarnaak shabd koy bhi nahi hain aaj ke tem mein (Words like my caste or our caste are the most dangerous words in todays world).

Also read: Burnt your own home! Chess champ-writers video on Jat stir viral

Know Anuradha Beniwal, viral voice of reason in Jat quota stir

Freedom is Meham girl Anuradha Beniwals brand name

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
With the UT administration all set to notify a draft policy to close discotheques and gaming parlours by midnight, discotheque owners and hoteliers have come up with a Facebook page to muster support to put pressure on the authorities to allow them to remain open till 1am.

The page Save Chandigarh nightlife mentions about the policy and seeks views from the city residents.

They said instead curtailing the time of discotheques, the authorities concerned should check lawlessness. The page Save Chandigarh nightlife mentions about the policy and seeks views from city residents.

The facebook page has posts such as: Are we back to the dark ages? Help us reach this message out to Chandigarh city to save Chandigarh Nightlife!! Policy for safety of citizens is always welcome, but is shutting down economy sources a remedy? Rather this move is going to give a boost to the economy of neighbouring cities/states rather than controlling any hooliganism. Where are the measures of controlling the cities borders?

The page has already hit 500 likes since February 28.

Kuldeep Gupta, owner of Tao, said: We start receiving customers around 9.30pm or 10pm and if we close out place at midnight, it wont be value for money. There should be strict enforcement by the police instead of asking the establishments to wind up early.

The policy: Controlling Of Places Of Public Amusement-2016 curtailing the time of discotheques and pubs from 1am to midnight, has been cleared by UT administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki. On February 24, the Punjab and Haryana high court was told by UT counsel JS Toor that the administrator had cleared the policy and would be notified soon.

The decision comes in the wake of the recent incidents of lawlessness at the discotheques and the immediate provocation for coming up with the policy was the firing at a discotheque in sector 8, in June last year. The Punjab and Haryana high court had asked the administration to come up with a policy as in its absence there was no regulation at these places.

Under the amusement cate gory, the administration has listed discotheque, pool game, virtual reality games, game machine parlours and bowling alleys.

These would include places where there is music, singing, dancing (excluding cinema) and facility of eating and consumption of alcohol are provided to the customers or patrons in the prescribed area with the purpose of running a commercial enterprise.

For the strict implementation of the policy administration has also suggested formulation of two committees that is nodal and monitoring committee.

Also Read: Owners to move high court against decision of closing discs at midnight

Chandigarh discs likely to close early, only till midnight

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The wife of the suspect of a Reed Point standoff was also found dead on Saturday as investigators continue to look into ties to a drug crime.

The Park County Coroner's Office said in a release that Margaret Catherine Dunakin, 58, was found dead alongside her husband and suspect, 59-year-old James Scott Dunakin, in their home near Reed Point.

Evidence indicates that James Dunakin died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Margaret Dunakin died from two apparent gunshot wounds to the head, one of them self-inflicted.

Investigators are looking into a possible link between James Dunakin and video footage of someone throwing packages of drugs at area schools last year, according to the Sweet Grass County Sheriff's Office.

According to a release from Sweet Grass County Sheriff Dan Tronrud, packages of drugs were found at Sweet Grass County High School and Big Timber Grade School in September. The packages contained a combination of "prescription and non-prescription drugs," the release said.

Video surveillance from the grade school showed a man matching Dunakin's appearance throw packages on the building's steps at night. Just minutes later, video from the high school showed a vehicle matching Dunakin's enter and exit the parking lot.

The Montana Division of Criminal Investigation, which is handling the case, sought a search warrant for Dunakin's fingerprints. The results of that warrant were not available on Tuesday.

In his release, Tronrud said that Dunakin's motives remain unclear, but the case has not been investigated as part of a "larger-scale" drug network.

The events on Saturday began shortly before 9 a.m., when law enforcement received a report that someone had shot at a house on Dry Hole Trail. Witnesses named Dunakin as the shooter. Later, officers responded to Dunakin's home, where he was barricaded inside.

A standoff lasted through the afternoon. By the evening, law enforcement entered the home and found Dunakin dead.
So much is being debated about police arrests these days in view of the students of an elite university in Delhi having been arrested. Here, based on my experience in policing, I will try to explain when police make an arrest and when they dont. Why do police in one case make an on-the-spot arrest, while in another they may wait, defer, delay or even not make one? Is it because it is to favour anyone? Or be unfair to another? What does the law say? Does it give the police any discretion? Further, who are the police accountable to when they use the power of arrest? Also, when and why do police seek police remand for some people they arrest, while in others they let them out on bail soon after? Also, why are some taken into custody for interrogation while some after arrest are released on bail either by police themselves or the courts.

Why these differences?

The answer to this lies in understanding the law and its processes. To arrest or not to arrest, when and where to arrest, are important discretionary powers the investigating officer exercises. It is a responsibility with full accountability and justiciability before the judiciary. In many democratic and developed countries, false arrests call for heavy penalties and loss of job for erring police officers under the law, which enables civil penalties and damages. In India, it calls for suspensions as well as criminal proceedings leading to prosecutions.

This discourse is against the backdrop of arrest of students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for alleged seditious slogans raised in the university. Since the police arrested them for grave offences, which were non-bailable, and wanted to investigate intensely, they sought police remand and the courts gave it. By now, all arrested students have been sent to judicial custody by the courts and the bail petition of one of them is to be decided soon. On the other hand, the police, while dealing with the same case, did not make any spot arrest of riotous lawyers on the Patiala House court premises even when their hooliganism was captured on camera. Its a different matter that some of the advocates were summoned and later arrested and granted bail. In their case, the police released them on bail as the offences were bailable by police. While in the case of students the bail could be granted only by the courts.

Both happenings are under investigation, so I will desist from drawing any conclusions.

Power with responsibility

Coming back to the power of police to arrest, in my experience, every arrest is a power to be exercised with a great sense of responsibility. Because arrest means restraint on the other persons fundamental right to freedom of movement.

No arrested person can be detained beyond 24 hours by the police without being produced before a magistrate. This ensures protection from illegal detention. Every arrest is a discretionary power to be exercised with total accountability. The police may or may not arrest. In both cases, the officer is answerable to his seniors and to courts.

Here is what the section of law on arrest says, and I quote here only the headline that is meaningful. Section 41 of Criminal Procedure Code says: When police may arrest without warrant. The police may arrest. Its not shall or must arrest. This is where the police officer on the spot gets the discretion by law. Now, the discretion which the officer exercises is scrutinised by the courts when the person arrested is produced before the magistrate. If the court feels the discretion has been abused, the court can even discharge the person and seek an explanation from the police. The police are defended in the court by the state prosecutor, who is not subordinate to the police. He is independent. Therefore, chances are that he will not defend before the court an unjustified arrest. The accused on production is made aware of the grounds of arrest. The accused has a right to defend and is also given legal aid in case he cannot afford a lawyer.

It is this discretion in power of arrest that comes under debate daily as it did in the incidents of both the JNU students and riotous lawyers.

Under court scrutiny

We may or may not agree with the timing or decision of arrests, but this is to make readers aware that justification of all arrests made or not made is scrutinised by courts. These are situational keeping in view several factors. Because it is the duty of the police to ensure law and order and not let it deteriorate. As then Delhi police commissioner BS Bassi said to the media that he did not order the spot arrest of the lawyers at Patiala House court to avoid collateral damage or further aggravation of law and order situation.

The courts, meanwhile, are reportedly issuing contempt notices to erring lawyers too. The Bar Council, too, is examining their conduct under the Advocates Act.

Its a question of our believing or not believing in the judgment of police whenever they make arrests.

Over the years, we have been losing faith in police; we tend to doubt their intentions every time even when they are in keeping with the law or the discretion it gives. There is a thin line between prudence and cowardice.

The real test of such situations is the intention known only to the police officer in charge. But, we judge them and often doubt them, which is what makes the job of policing most challenging in polarised situations.

(The writer is former IPS officer and runs the NGO Navjyoti India Foundation. The views expressed are personal)
Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday said he had done his best for the state in the nine years of the SAD-BJP rule and had left the electoral outcome of his work to fate.

Addressing a press briefing on completing nine years in office here, Sukhbir said he is neither worried nor tense about the changed political scenario following the emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a third force to reckon with in the next assembly elections.

Worrying gets you nothing. If it is in my fate to win, I will despite everything, and if it is fated that I have to go, no one can change that. But I definitely gave it my best shot, he said.

I am driven to fight till the last vote is counted not because I want to create history but because I am convinced that no other party, including the AAP, can take the state forward. While the Congress lacks vision, the AAP will take Punjab back by 10 years. The AAP is driven by negative, regressive people and they believe in fishing in squalor than set forth on an agenda of development, he said.

Pulling out all stops to tom-tom his achievements, Sukhbir gave an hour-long presentation on the state of Punjabs economy, claiming that the state is neither bankrupt nor in the grip of drugs. It is unfortunate that the opposition has in the past nine years hit out not at the SAD as a political party but the states people. They have declared that the people of the state are into drugs and no development has taken place because the state has no money.

Comparing Punjab with other states, Sukhbir said Punjab had topped the development index during these years and is among the top five states in terms of contribution to the GDP. While a large part of the comparison in Sukhbirs presentation was with the Congress rule (2002-2007), he cited figures to show how Punjab had cheaper power than most states, including Delhi, the state ruled by our guest from Delhi referring to Arvind Kejriwal, the AAP convener, who just ended his five-day tour of Punjab.

Saying Kejriwal should be thankful to Punjab Police, Sukhbir said Punjab Police had confiscated huge quantities of narcotics smuggled from across the international border that were to be delivered in other states, including Delhi.

He rued that the central grants and devolution of taxes was discriminatory to Punjab, admitting, however, that the BJP in the Centre was now helping the state.

Sukhbir speak on industry

Ayurveda firm Patanjali has shown a keen interest to set up a food processing unit in Ludhiana; besides, ITC is expanding its operations at the food park in Kapurthala from Rs 1,400 crore to Rs 2,000 crore to become Asias biggest food processing plant.

On debt

Punjab is among the least indebted states; some debt is important for stimulating economy. At Rs 1.12 lakh crore of debt, it had increased by 83% since 2009 in Punjab, while it increased by 167% in Haryana during the same period, and 91% in Gujarat.

On VAT collection

Punjabs VAT collection increased from Rs 5,136 crore to Rs 15,454 during the past nine years.

On road infrastructure

No other state in India has so many four- and six-lane roads criss-crossing as Punjab.

On excise collection

During the Congress rule in the state, the excise collections were Rs 1,429 crore in 2002, which decreased to Rs 1,368 crore by 2007. In contrast, by the end of the first term of the SAD-BJP rule, the excise collections jumped to Rs 2,755 crore and were expected to be Rs 5,100 crore this year.
Cops at the division-7 police station here allegedly beat up a 35-year-old migrant woman and her minor daughter (15) engaged as domestic helps and kept them in custody for five hours after they were accused of theft by their employer.

This despite the fact that the state government has issued orders to not summon women or girls to police stations.

The police detained them after their employer at New Green Model Town locality accused them of stealing gold ornaments.

The victims, Madhu and her daughter Pooja, were injured after they were thrashed by the cops. Madhu has sustained injuries in her wrists and other parts of the body.

The woman said she and her daughter work at six houses in the locality.

On February 28, one of their employers accused them of stealing gold ornaments and a diamond ring after he found them missing in his locker.

I repeatedly told them we have not stolen anything but they (police) pressurised us to confess to the theft, Madhu alleged.

Her husband Mani Ram (40), who works as mason, claimed that the police did not allow him to meet his wife and daughter on Sunday night.

When contacted, division-7 station house officer (SHO) Navdeep Singh said, After their employer suspected them of theft we called them to join probe. We, however, did not beat up the woman or her daughter.
On-the-run sharpshooter Davinder Bambiha, key accused in the murder of sarpanch Ravi Khwajke, is still active on Facebook, blatantly projecting the murder as his achievement.

Cocking a snook at the cops, he has been posting newspaper clippings about the murder and getting Likes.

Davinder is operating his two Facebook pages on a regular basis.

The Ludhiana police have a cyber crime cell, but they are yet to trace him even though he has been using the internet as well as a mobile phone.

When questioned, a police officer said it was possible that someone else was operating Davinders Facebook account.

His last update on FB was on February 27. He has also been using the social networking site to flaunt his weapons, besides posting news stories about him.

Read also: Khwajke sarpanch murder: Culprits hatched plan in jail, say police

Why I killed him: Confession in police custody

Watch video: Assailants fleeing after killing Khwajke
Amid the ongoing politics over the recent violence during the Jat agitation for reservation, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi will visit the riot-hit Rohtak and other districts of Haryana soon.

Gandhi will visit the state within next three days, former state home minister and Congress leader Subhash Batra said on Tuesday.

Batra said the Congress vice-president was concerned over the loss of property in the state during the stir and would meet businessmen and shopkeepers, who lost their source of livelihood.

Confirming Gandhis proposed visit, Haryana former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said Rahul was coming to Rohtak to visit the people who were affected by violence.

BJP QUESTIONS HIS VISIT

Meanwhile, BJP MLA from Rohtak Manish Grover alleged Gandhi was coming to add fuel to the fire. Holding the Congress responsible for the riots, he said, Where was Rahul Gandhi when the state was burning? He should have had come earlier if he had to, but he did not do so because it was all a conspiracy of the Congress to burn the entire state. Grover said that demonstrating for reservation was alright but burning shops and killing people was inhumane.

Several Congress leaders, including Shadi Lal Batra, had earlier claimed that they wanted to visit Rohtak when riots were happening but were ordered by deputy commissioner DK Behera to go back from the outskirts of the town.

Countering their claims, Grover said: DC did not order Congress men to go back, but the public did. Public knows that the Congress was behind these riots and they chose not to accept them in their city.

Meanwhile, local shopkeepers too are not interested to meet Gandhi as they called it another photo opportunity of a politician over their burnt shops.

A showroom owner in Model Town, who requested anonymity, said, Im not interested in opening my burnt showroom to entertain these politicians, no matter how big they are. Had they been concerned, they would have helped us when our shops were burning, but our small town was out of their agenda at that time.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Patanjali Ayurved, an FMCG company co-established by yoga guru Ramdev, will set up a food park at Ludhiana while ITC is coming with a food processing unit in Punjab.

Deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said here on Wednesday, Baba Ramdevs people approached the Punjab government and expressed the desire to set up a food park. Sukhbir was making a presentation on Perspective on development and governance in Punjab for the last nine years.

He said the company (Patanjali) is impressed with the policy on industry in the state and would set up a food park in Ludhiana. He also said that ITC is coming up with a food processing unit in the state. With zero tax policy on food processing units, several giants like Pepsi, Coke are coming into this venture, he claimed.

Patanjali Ayurved Limited was founded as a small pharmacy in Haridwar in 1997 by Ramdev and is currently chaired by his associate Balkrishna.

Patanjali will lay the foundation stone of the food park in April, he said adding that the multi-branding in the food processing industry was benefiting the state in a big manner. Sukhbirs wife and SADs Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal is the food processing minister in the central NDA government.

The overall target through food processing in the state is around Rs 1 lakh crore this year, he said.

Sukhbir, who is also the president of Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) described the SAD-BJP governments nine-year rule as fully satisfactory.

Punjab is slated to go for polls early next year. Rebutting the claims of opposition political parties that Punjab is debt-ridden, he said that we managed to pull the state from bad to progressive phase.

In the last nine years we have made historic achievements in comparison to what earlier governments did for the state, he said.

Hitting out at his political opponents, he said that they brought bad name to the state by false propaganda.
Denying the role of any SAD-BJP worker in the attack on Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal at Ludhiana, deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal said a police team led by DIG-ranked official had been constituted to probe into the entire incident and those involved in the incident will not be spared.

Badal, who was talking to mediapersons during a sangat darshan progamme here at a marriage resort, lambasted Kejriwal by claiming that he was splurging a massive amount of the tax payers money on advertisements eulogising his partys achievements. He has already spent a whopping amount of Rs 553 crore. As compared to this, the total budget of the Punjab government on advertising was a meagre Rs 20 crore, he said.

Badal said the process to recruit 1.13 lakh new employees had commenced. Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal had promised new jobs to the people. We are keeping that promise and the process of actual recruitment had already been initiated. We have held several meetings of various departments following which a plan was chalked out to recruit more than 1 lakh employees. As the successive Congress governments in the state had failed to provide jobs. Not it is the SAD-BJP government that had come to rescue of the jobless youths, he said.

Highlighting the achievements of the alliance government, Sukhbir claimed that the government had fulfilled almost 95% of the pre-poll promises made by the CM.

We had fulfilled 95% of the promises while the rest of 5 % will be fulfilled by the end of this year. A sum of ` 20,000 crore has been earmarked for the construction of four-lane and six-lane roads. By year-end, all major towns of the state would be inter-connected. Punjab is the only state in the country which is giving free power to the agriculture sector. We will continue with it if voted to power, he added.

He announced Rs 150 crore for the sewerage and water supply in Batala besides the creation of the ADC post for the city. The deputy CM also distributed more than Rs 13 crore to 81 villages of Batala assembly for development works.
Even a day after the expiry of courts stay on the order to vacate shopping vends at city bus stand, the owners have still not vacated the shops.

The row over the possession of Shaheed Sukhdev Thapar Bus Terminal had seemed to be escalated when three shops were sealed following a joint operation by a private company (Welspun Private Ltd), state transport officials team (from Chandigarh) and heavy police force on February 10.

At that time those three shops and the remaining managed to take stay order from the court till Tuesday, but the shops are still occupied by them.

Meanwhile, Punjab Roadways top officials have clarified their stand that the final decision on the possession of city bus stand would most likely be taken this Friday.

Punjab Roadways general manager Rashpal Singh Makhu said, We have given them enough time for vacating the shops. If the company failed to vacate shops, the roadways have an alternative to forfeit the security amount deposited by the company with us (state transport). The final decision is expected to come out on coming Friday prior to which the private company, which held the charge of maintaining city bus stand, will submit its report on action taken in the matter. After which, it will become clear whether the new company will assume the charge of city bus stand (shopping vends) or Punjab Roadways.

Earlier on February 10, a huge drama was witnessed when shopping vend owners refused to vacate shops after their contract expired on January 17. A heavy police force was pressed into action accompanied by state transport officials team from Chandigarh and private company Welspun Private Ltd executive members when police personnel vacated and sealed three shops.

Following this, vend owners and their workers raised slogans against the authorities and alleged that their monthly rent (lease) had been increased (doubled). They rued that they were not served a prior notice to vacate shops.

Currently, of the four holdings  parking lot, shopping vends, bus stand fee and advertisement  three are under the direct control of Punjab Roadways.

Surendar Singh Pannu, manager, operations and maintenance (O and M), Welspun Projects Limited, said, We along with our legal team will follow the due process while taking possession of the shopping vends, whose court stay has expired. Some vend owners have the stay till March 17.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Outsiderthats the word rivals in Punjab use most to describe Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, certainly not as a compliment. Being an outsider, however, is one of the activist-turned-politicians positive pitches, one thats largely unstated but hardly unheard in his campaign.

Kehnde koi changa banda hai, Dilli ton manistar. Wekhde haan je eh hi kuch changa kar dave (Some good person he is, I am told, some minister from Delhi. Lets see if he does something good), says Bhajan Kaur at Sur Singh village in Tarn Taran, one of the bereaved mothers of drug addicts gathered to meet him during his five-day visit that concluded on Monday after a violent attack on his car in Ludhiana.

Besides this appeala concerned outsider wanting to make a difference from the insidehe insists he understands Punjab better than the Akalis and Congress. Like a non-judgmental outsider, Kejriwal embraces traditional ways that people seek out of habit, yet talks of good intentions overriding all else, even the nearabsence of a home-grown, grassroots leadership. Candidates do not matter, dont you worry, he tells HT in an interview.

HOARDING TRADITION

The traditional paradigm, however, sticks out in hoardings welcoming, thanking, backing Kejriwal/AAP. These have his photo and of sundry local aspirants in large size; mugshots of centrally-deputed leader Sanjay Singh, comedian-MP Bhagwant Mann and state unit chief Sucha Singh Chhotepur co-exist.

Deepak Bansal, 33, who features on three such boards in Bathinda, is also the head of the AAPs zonal IT cell, using social media to campaign. An MBA, he is the son of a PSU employee who had no interest in politics before the Anna Hazare movement. Unable to enter civil services, he wants to change the system via politics  a quintessential AAPian. He explains the hoardings: People said the AAP needs visibility, of the kind that others had. We had to adopt this method.

MECHANICAL INQUILAAB

Adoption of traditional methods is hard to miss in Kejriwals stops and speeches. Unprompted during an interviewin which he also claims to take Indias politics beyond religion and caste  he urges Dalits to hear and take note of Punajb Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singhs statement seeking quota for the poor among the general category. Reservation can be only 50%. This means Dalits share in quota will have to come down!

He even tries the Panthic card with religious slogans in the Sikh heartland of Punjab; and is aggressive in naming rival politicians as culprits of all thats wrong in Punjab.

Throughout his tour, he meets handpicked victims of three issuesdrug addiction, farm crisis, systemic corruptionyet the mechanical manner reeks of a politics of patronage, lacking spontaneity and spunk.

HOPE ALONE

He advertises his Delhi success, but on Punjabs issues offers oversimplified promises: Will finish the drug problem in two-three months Will give exemplary punishment to the corruptWill turn the economy around in two-three years.

People see hope in us, he says, denying that the AAP is banking on negative sentiment against the Akalis, in particular, and a rotational poll equation, in general. Punjab has always led revolutions, he says, calling the AAP inquilaabi (revolutionary).

He reminds how Punjab gave the AAP its four MPs in 2014 even amidst a Modi-BJP wave. But he is dismissive of the two MPs suspended after a purge that started with ouster of the Yogendra Yadav-Prashant Bhushan group. They (the MPs) have to apologise and say they wont do it again. The MPs hitting back is one thing, dismissal of key questions is another.

THE TICKET

On the CM candidate, he says that doesnt matter much. On finding 117 candidates, he says these questions interest the media more than the janta (public). Pressed, he and other leaders underline the party is still new.

In fact, the Punjab AAP leadership starts with Mann who is never far from controversy, goes to Chhotepur who is seen as a spent force, and ends at HS Phoolka, who oscillates between being miffed and thrilled with the AAP and is conspicuous by his absence at the tour.

The ticket is a discussion at every corner among hangerson. Young landlords in SUVs  wearing the politicians uniform of kurta-pyjama and sleeveless jackets  are a significant part of the caravan.

Des Raj, 50, a painter from Pathankot, is concerned. These people are in every party. A lot of them are joining the AAP for the ticket. We should not succumb... Hun taan fayda ho sakda hai, par baad ch party khatam hojegi (Party may gain now, but will be finished in the long run), he comments on the sidelines of a rally in Batala.

Ask Kejriwal about being a one-man show, and he says, All our candidates will be honest. Thats all the janta wants; isnt it? The momentum of hope and novelty looks hard to sustain. But the sheer panic in rival parties  who protest at his every stop and issue more statements against him than each other while also calling him irrelevant  begets a question: Is it really as simple as Kejriwal thinks it is?

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Despite polices tall claims of 24-hour patrolling across city, burglars struck at a tyre showroom on National Highway-1 near Basti Jodhewal on the intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, and decamped with tyres worth Rs 15 lakh.

Showroom owner Raj Kumar said, I came to know about the incident around 6 am on Wednesday, when a neighbour telephoned me and told that shops shutter was broke opened and the showroom was ransacked.

The escapade of burglars has been captured in the close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed in the showroom.

Kumar said, Burglars struck at the shop around 2 pm and damaged the CCTVs installed outside the showroom. They had even disconnected the power supply to nearby showrooms with an intention to dysfunction the CCTVs. The CCTV footage revealed that burglars remained in the showroom for at least an hour. They loaded all tyres in a truck parked outside the showroom, and took cash from the cash box.

Daresi station house officer (SHO) Dharampal said, Two accused have been captured in the CCTVs installed inside the showroom. The police have been trying to identify them.

Second incident in one year

It is second such incident in the past one year. Showroom owner said around a year ago, burglars had stolen Rs 30,000 from his shop. The incident was captured in CCTVs and he had made a complaint in this context, but no case was registered.
HELENA  Montana is putting more people in prison than it releases  not necessarily because there are more criminals, but largely because the state keeps arresting the same people over and over.

Thats according to a report from the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a national nonprofit organization contracted by state legislators to help figure out how to reduce prison spending and jail crowding.

The report, presented Tuesday to lawmakers and others appointed to Montanas Commission on Sentencing, found a 12 percent increase in arrests between 2009 and 2015, despite an 18 percent decline in property and violent crimes between 2000 and 2014.

It also found American Indians represent a disproportionate share of those totals, accounting for nearly one in five arrests while making up only 7 percent of the states population.

American Indians represented an even greater share, more than one-quarter, of those arrested for parole violations and failure to appear in court  offenses that combined to account for nearly half of the statewide increase in arrests.

None of that should come as a surprise to state officials, said Jim Taylor, legal director at the ACLU of Montana.

Taylor said the Montana Department of Corrections has more than three decades of data illustrating American Indians' lopsided share of Montanas arrest total.

What state leaders dont seem to know is why, or how they plan to change it.

"Theres literally been no interest in drilling down and really seeing whats going on," Taylor told the commission. "We think there needs to be more study done by the state and more training throughtout the system on cultural differences and the effects of historical trauma."

LeAnn Montes, an attorney with the Chippewa Cree tribe, recommended a similar review of causes underlying American Indian arrest totals.

She went on to call for beefed-up sentences to help prosecute repeat offenders, along with licensed prosecutors and public defenders to try tribal cases.

Attorney and commission member Majel Russell said many American Indian offenders simply can't comply with the terms of their probation. She encouraged tweaks to streamline those requirements, including efforts to defray the offender-paid cost of drug tests, mental health evaluations and often lengthy drives some have to make to meet with a parole or probation officer.

Allen Primeau, police chief on the Rocky Boy's Reservation, said he wanted to brainstorm solutions with Utah Rep. Eric Hutchings, who earlier told the commission his state managed to reduce its inmate population by 700 through efforts to distinguish between hardcore, repeat lawbreakers and certain people who are not really criminals, theyve just done criminal things.

Hutchings said Utah reduced hundreds of penalties to misdemeanors and adopted new programs to better address parolees mental health and substance abuse needs, instead of just throwing parole violators back in prison.

He expects those programs' total cost  $14.5 million  will pay for themselves by the end of next year.

Hutchings offered to simply give Montana sentencing and supervision guidelines Utah used to achieve those savings.

Department of Corrections Director Mike Batista said he sort of liked the concept behind other prison diversion efforts recently undertaken in Seattle and Santa Fe, N.M., where police are increasingly tasked with on-the-spot drug interventions, as opposed to arrests.

Sentencing commission members plan to reconvene for meetings in June and September, before passing along final recommendations to state lawmakers in December.
Two women directors in Tamil Nadu are all set to make their next films. Sudha Kongara, who gave Madhavan a come-back opportunity with her Irudhi Suttru, is penning her next script. The title has not been decided.

After giving an excellent chance for Madhavan to play a character far removed from anything he has done so far, Kongara will embark on a movie which would life affirming. She feels that all of us are going through very difficult times and there is so much negativity around us. So my film will be an escapist work, she told the press.

There is another dark Tamil movie in the offing. Actress-director Lakshmy Ramakrishnan is writing the last pages of her script, whose story will unfold against the terribly dark days of the recent floods in Chennai.

Read: Siddharth, Balaji turn heroes in real life for Chennai

The film will not be one of those heroic works where the hero will play a heroic samaritan saving souls in distress and disaster. The yet untitled work will trace the lives of a few ordinary people and their sufferings in a city that was literally under water. The shoot will begin in July.

Dawn of the era of philanthropy: Rajinikanth donates Rs 10 crore

She said that a couple, a driver, two senior citizens, an RJ and a contractor were the major characters in my movie which will show the experiences that they go through. These characters are based on real people.

Her own sister and her husband were stranded and Ramakrishnan could not reach them for over 30 hours. She came across so many such stories that she wanted to document them through a film that doesnt exploit the disaster, stays apolitical and conveys the message of hope and the spirit of Chennai.

Lakshmys previous movie, Nerungi Va Muthamidathe, was also about a crisis, but the film was essentially about a hero and his personal journey through trouble and turmoil.

ott:10:ht-entertainment_listing-desktop
Six suicide attackers targeted the Indian consulate in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring 19 more before they were gunned down by security forces.

The consulate was damaged but all the Indians escaped unharmed. One Afghan employee was injured. The dead included a policeman and two civilians.

The Indian Consulate in Jalalabad has been attacked. All Indians in the mission are safe but one ANP officer was killed during the gunfire, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in New Delhi.

One suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the mission while another blew himself up along with the car which carried the attackers. Four terrorists were killed by the Afghan security men.

Anil Kumar, an official at the Indian embassy in Kabul, said no one breached the consulate building.

The attackers were killed before they could enter the consulate compound, Afghan officials said. Their target was the Indian consulate, but our forces shot and killed them all before they reached their target, said Attahullah Khugyani, a spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province.

The powerful explosions blew out windows in nearby buildings and destroyed eight cars. The attackers hid in a house and exchanged fire with security forces before they were killed. ITBP personnel guarding the consulate also engaged the attackers.

Besides the Indian consulate, several foreign missions are located in the same area.

No group claimed the brazen attack, which coincided with a NATO change-of-command ceremony that saw US Army Gen John Nicholson take charge of international troops in Afghanistan.

The attack highlights the worsening security situation in Afghanistan as Taliban insurgents step up nationwide attacks and Islamic State jihadists make inroads in the volatile east.

Wednesdays attack was reminiscent of a 25-hour siege near the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif in January. The attack coincided with a terrorist assault on the Pathankot airbase in India.

In December, Afghan security forces said they had foiled two attempts to attack the Indian mission in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangrahar province. They also said they had arrested two members of the Islamic State in connection with one of the planned attacks. agencies

Read: Siege near Indian mission in Mazar-i-Sharif ends, all attackers killed

Revenge for Afzal: Messages in blood link Mazar-e-Sharif to Pathankot
The choice before American voters in November now is more likely than not Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump. So say the results of Super Tuesday, the day with the single largest number of state primaries and caucuses is held by both Democratic and Republican Parties. Neither, however, delivered the knockout punch needed to floor their main rivals so the race will continue.

Clinton emerged from Super Tuesday with the most laurel leaves. She won seven out of the 11 states that voted, six of them with margins of 30 percentage points or more. More telling, however, was that Clinton showed that her grip on blacks and Hispanics was unshakeable. In the southern states she also won sizeable number of poor rural whites. This minority loyalty will reduce Bernie Sanderss long-term chances to almost zero.

Read: Clinton wins five Super Tuesday states, Trump in lead with four

Nonetheless, the maverick socialist can be expected to continue to run. One, he won four states this Tuesday  though one of them is his own home state of Vermont. Two, the proportionate system of delegate allotment used by the Democrats means he gets a few delegates even when he loses. Three, his campaign raised $ 42 million in February from small donations averaging $ 30 each indicating his supporters havent given up. Four, a black swan event like an FBI indictment against Clinton over email security violations or Michael Bloombergs entry as an independent candidate could still derail her campaign.

Trump, continuing to show electoral strength far beyond anyones predictions, also blew out his opposition on Tuesday. But the fragmented Republican field means his victories are less decisive.

Trump won seven out of the 10 states which saw Republicans vote (the results from the eleventh, Alaska, are still awaited). But his winning margins were weak. Clinton won an average of 66% of the vote in the primaries she won. Trump won his states with an average of 39% of the vote  less than the percentages Clinton received in primaries she lost.

The obvious reason is that there are simply more candidates still in the Republican fray. Though down from the original 17 there are still five people in the race and even a hopeless candidates like Ben Carson continues to pick up five or six per cent of the vote in each primary.

Read: Super Tuesday: Where US presidential hopefuls stand, and the road ahead

Trump has struggled to get beyond one-third of the vote, leading his two other main rivals Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio to hope that if the race is reduced to two the non-Trump candidate will pick up 60 per cent of the vote. Which is why Cruz ended Super Tuesday by calling on other candidates to drop out so that the focus can be on defeating Trump. Carsons evangelical vote would probably go to Cruz, who shares a similar base. Moderate John Kasichs would be expected to gravitate to Rubio. The real prize for Cruz and Rubio would be each others vote share  if these had merged on Super Tuesday, Trump would have won only three primaries.

Trump, however, has time and momentum on his hands.

Cannibalizing vote share works best if the race narrows quickly or else delegates become committed to specific candidates. Then who those delegates will go to depends in part on the personal whim of the losing candidate and in part on horse-trading.

Trump can also count on the adage nothing succeeds like success to help him. Tracking polls at the national level indicate that his acceptability among Republican voters is rising as he wins more and gets more media attention. He won four of the 10 primaries with 39 per cent of the vote or more.

Everyone will know watch the primaries that will take place in the populous states of the industrial Midwest  Michigan, Ohio and so on  that will take place later in March. These have large numbers of delegates. If Sanders is unable to put up a good fight here, his candidacy will officially be dead. The Republicans will probably see their field narrow down to three and if Trump can pull in 40 per cent of the vote in these states, the Republican candidates may not be decided until all the party delegates meet to vote at the convention in July.
Its not sunk in yet, but thousands of Goans who settled in Britain after acquiring Portuguese passports are likely to be affected by the June 23 referendum, whether the UK votes to stay or leave the European Union.

Using Portugals nationality law, which allows anyone born before December 19, 1961 (the date of Goas liberation from Portugal) and their three generations to acquire Portuguese nationality, thousands have migrated and settled in Britain, mainly in Swindon and London.

As Portuguese nationals, they become EU citizens, which entitles them to live and work in any of the 28 members of the bloc under the freedom of movement principle.

Read | Portuguese colonialism offers Indians backdoor entry into UK

These Goans move to Britain and not to Portugal, which has been in the throes of economic crisis, leading to many young Portuguese migrating for employment. According to an Oxford analysis, the India-born Portuguese citizens accounted for just over 20,000 UK residents in the first quarter of 2015.

Calling it backdoor entry into Britain, groups such as Migration Watch UK have opposed their migration.

Rabi Martins, the Goa-origin councillor in Watford, north London, told Hindustan Times: It is a walk into the unknown. Goans now need to rethink before applying for Portuguese passports, since the EU referendum will adversely affect them. Brexit will make it worse, but even a vote to stay in will make it difficult.

According to the deal recently secured by Prime Minister David Cameron in Brussels, if Britain votes to stay in the EU, there will be several curbs on EU nationals accessing Britains state financial benefits, currently received by thousands of recently migrated Goans.

Read | Goans go British, thanks to Portugal citizenship law

A vote for Brexit is likely to mean EU nationals (including the Goan-Portuguese) will need a work permit, currently required for Indian and other non-EU citizens. It will also mean no access to benefits and public funds until they get permanent residency after five years of stay.

Martins said the thousands of recently migrated Goans find life is not exactly great in Britain: Many highly qualified people end up doing menial work in supermarkets, etc. Its sad but they wont admit it to anyone back home. The impact of Brexit on new and recently-migrated Goans needs to be highlighted.

Armando Gonsalves, chairman of Goa ForGiving Trust, said, It is amazing that Goans are going to Britain via the Portuguese passport rule when there are many opportunities back home. They leave behind priceless properties as they head to Britain with the hope that they will improve their lives.

Read | India-born migrants are among most productive in UK

He added: I believe this is part of a herd mentality, demand remains high. I met many such people in London who were unhappy and disgruntled, but are not ready to return home due to a false sense of pride, since their erstwhile Goan friends would laugh at them.

Portugal was the first Western country to colonise parts of India (Goa, from 1510) and the last to leave (in 1961). The Goan migration to Britain has led to several social problems in their villages of origin, including empty neighbourhoods and low church attendance.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won most of their Super Tuesday contests further securing their claim over their party nominations, but not enough to wrap up the race.

Clinton won six of the 11 Democratic nominating contests, and was leading in the seventh, while her only rival Bernie Sanders picked up two and was leading in remaining two.

On the Republican side, Trump took six of the 11 races and was leading in the seventh, while Ted Cruz won two and Marco Rubio was leading in one. (Alaska, the 11th, was still polling)

With two wins and two leads, and one victory from before Super Tuesday, Sanders is unlikely to leave the race any time soon  and he said in his victory speech he is going the distance.

Among Republicans, Cruz now has three wins and Rubio one, possibly, and that will given them both enough hope to stay in, Rubio expects to do well in his home-state Florida on March 15.

The frontrunners took aim at each other in their respective victory speeches with Clinton promising to break down barriers, in a clear shot at Trumps divisive rhetoric.

Trump hit back at her, and his party rivals, but framed it differently, pitching himself as a unifier, conceding in the same breath that many will have a hard time believing that.

Addressing a news conference, when all others did routine victory speeches, Trump addressed questions about his views on immigration to disconnect from the partys mainstream.

He repeated said he will get along with everyone.

A lot of experts were impressed, including President Barack Obamas former speechwriter Jon Favreau, who tweeted: Hes already sanding off the rough edges, moderating the tone, and focusing on economic populism. Watch out, people.

Clinton won Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Arkansas and Bernie Sanders took Vermont, his home-state, and Oklahoma, and was leading in Colorado and Minnesota.

Trump picked up Georgia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee. And Ted Cruz took his home-state Texas and Oklahoma. Rubio was leading in Minnesota.

With three victories from before Super Tuesday, Clinton has now won nine, which could well put her on her way to writing history as the first woman to win a presidential nomination in the US.

And Trump was poised to make history too with nine wins so far  three and now six  in the words of a political commentator, as the first renegade candidate to win the nomination.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who scored a major victory in a series of Super Tuesday nominating contests, has been criticised by some in his party for being vague on policy specifics and heavy on rhetoric.

Here is a closer look at what Trump has said he would do on trade, taxes, the economy, immigration, healthcare and defense should he become the nominee and win the November 8 election. The policies are drawn from a review of his website, stump speeches, debates and town halls, and televised interviews.

Read: Clinton, Trump score big wins on Super Tuesday

Trade

Trump has complained that China, Japan, Mexico, Vietnam and India are ripping us off by devaluing their currencies and keeping out some US exports.

He would not sign the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact and would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada.

He would designate China a currency manipulator and impose countervailing duties on its exports. He also wants to pursue a World Trade Organization case on Chinese government programs that subsidize exporters.

Trump has said he would put activist investor Carl Icahn in charge of negotiating a better trade relationship with China. Icahn has said he is happy to advise Trump, but would not seek a formal position if Trump were elected.

Trump has said he would slap 35% tariffs on air conditioners made by United Technologies Corps Carrier in Mexico after the company decided to move production there from Indiana, and on Ford Motor Corp vehicles made in Mexico that are sold in the United States.

Taxes

Trump has pledged to cut and simplify taxes. Individuals making less than $25,000 per year and married filers earning less than $50,000 would not pay income tax.

There would be three other brackets, down from seven currently, with a top marginal income tax rate of 25%, and a top rate for long-term capital gains and dividends of 20%.

Charitable giving and mortgage interest deductions would remain unchanged. Other deductions would be trimmed in the highest tax brackets.

He would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax, and the carried interest tax break that allows investment fund managers to treat income as capital gains.

The corporate tax rate would be cut to 15%, down from the current level of 35%.

He would phase in a reasonable cap on deductions for business interest expenses and would cut other corporate loopholes.

Trump would impose a one-time 10% deemed repatriation tax on deferred corporate overseas profits and would end deferral of income from foreign subsidiaries.

The Tax Foundation, an independent policy research group, has said Trumps plan would cost more than $10 trillion over the next decade. His campaign has said the plan is fully paid for.

Read: Super Tuesday: Where US presidential hopefuls stand, and the road ahead

Economy

Trump has pledged to get rid of the $19 trillion deficit by boosting jobs, and cutting government waste, but he has not released a formal policy paper on how he would do this.

He has said he would not cut the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs for senior citizens and low income Americans, nor Social Security retirement benefits.

He would cut the Education Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Immigration

Trump has promised to build a high wall at the southern border to keep out illegal immigrants that he has said would cost $10 billion to $12 billion.

Mexico would pay for the wall or face consequences, his campaign said. Trump would impound remittance payments to Mexico from undocumented workers, and increase visa

and border crossing fees for Mexican workers. Applying tariffs on Mexican goods and cutting foreign aid are also options, his campaign has said on his website.

He would deport the 11 million undocumented people living in America and end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to illegal immigrants.

He has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and would not allow refugees from Syria.

Trump would triple the number of border agents and require all businesses to use the E-Verify database to ensure employees are in the country legally.

He would withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities that decline to help the federal government deport illegal immigrants.

Trumps campaign has also said he would pause new green cards and require employers to hire American workers first.

Read: Super Tuesday: Hillary and Trump see big wins but fight still on

Health care

Trump has said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, and replace it with a system of health savings accounts.

He would still require insurers to provide coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions, a key feature of Obamacare.

He would move to allow insurance companies to sell plans across state lines to spur competition.

Trump has said he could save the government $300 billion by negotiating better prices with drug companies.

Islamic State

Trump has promised to knock out Islamic State quickly and said he is open to working with Russia to do so.

He has said he would bomb the oil that helps finance the insurgent group and stop the back channels of banking used by the group.

He has vowed to bring back the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning and has been banned as torture under US law. He said he also supports other, unspecified techniques a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

He would take out the family members of Islamic State militants and would like to shut down areas of the Internet to try to stop the group from recruiting members.

He wants to build a safe zone for Syrian refugees in Syria. But Gulf states would have to pay for it.

He has said the United States should first deal with Islamic State before addressing President Bashar al-Assads future, saying We have to do one thing at a time.

He has questioned whether the United States should back opposition groups in Syria, saying we have no idea who they are.

Defence

Trump has said he would increase the size and power of the US military to make it so strong, so powerful that nobodys going to mess with us.

He says too much money is wasted buying equipment the military does not want.

He wants Japan, Germany, South Korea and Saudi Arabia to bear more of the cost of military aid provided by the United States. We can no longer defend all of these countries, he said, citing the deficit.

Trump would boost the US military presence in the East and South China seas to discourage Chinese adventurism, according to his website.
US Army Gen John W Mick Nicholson took command on Wednesday of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, inheriting Americas longest war and a vicious Talban-led insurgency.

Nicholson, 58, took over from US Army Gen John F Campbell, who oversaw the end of the international combat mission in 2014 and an escalation in the Talibans war against Kabul.

In a ceremony at the headquarters of the US-NATO Resolute Support mission in Kabul, Nicholson thanked NATO representatives for standing by the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the homeland.

To the enemy, he said: I know you. You have brought only hardship and suffering to the Afghan people.

Nicholson served in Afghanistan three times between 2006 and 2012. Most recently he was commander of NATOs Allied Land Command in Izmir, Turkey.

He takes command of around 13,000 international troops, including 9,800 Americans, in Afghanistan. The Resolute Support mandate is focused on training and assisting Afghan forces as they take on the insurgency largely on their own.

Around 3,000 of the US troops are engaged in counter-terrorism operations against the Taliban, Al Qaeda and -following a recent extension of their mandate by President Barack Obama - the Islamic State group, which has a nascent presence in some volatile regions of Afghanistan.

He takes control of the Afghan theatre as the Taliban are seen extending their reach to previously peaceful areas, notably the northern provinces bordering the Central Asian states, and escalating the war in their southern heartland provinces. In recent months, the insurgents have threatened most districts of Helmand, where much of the poppy crop that produces the worlds heroin supply is grown.

Intra-Taliban fighting in Helmand has been taking place over control of the lucrative smuggling routes for men, arms, drugs and minerals, officials have said.

Nicholson returns to Afghanistan as the government of President Ashraf Ghani hopes to kick-start a peace process aimed at bringing the Taliban leadership into a dialogue aimed at ending the war. The endgame is not expected for many months or even years, though Kabul has said it expects its representatives to have face-to-face talks with Taliban figures in the coming weeks.
At the downtown Little Rock brick oven restaurant and bar, cheers rang out multiple times.

As over a hundred Hillary Clinton supporters gathered for a Super Tuesday results watch party, they cheered when the result of their home state of Arkansas was called in her favour, cheered as her speech was televised, cheered when the result from Texas was announced.

The list of draft beers available included Blonde Bombshell and, for Hillarys campaign staff, friends and fans, it was a fitting drink for this evening.

Ganelle Blake brought along her three small children, Camille, 4, Ari, 6 and Charles, 7, so they could watch the process of the first woman becoming President.

State representative Warwick Sabin said, I think Hillary Clinton will be very happy this evening.

As the Democratic Partys frontrunner for the nomination to contest for President racked up states, he added, For an Arkansan whos supported the Clintons for a long time, this is gratifying to see.

Sheila Bronfman, who has known the Clintons for 40 years, was very pleased but also cautious, as she said, There are a lot of states to go. We dont want to take anything for granted and say this is a done deal.

With Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders not being entirely outclassed, that could be true.

At a hotel miles away, the mood was nowhere near as upbeat at another party, this one organised by the State Republicans, which had largely sided with Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

Watch | Clintons supporters thrilled at her win in Arkansas

<span itemprop="name" content="Watch | Clintons supporters thrilled at her win in Arkansas"></span><span itemprop="description" content="At the downtown Little Rock brick oven restaurant and bar, cheers rang out multiple times. As over a hundred Hillary Clinton supporters gathered there for a Super Tuesday results watch party, they cheered when the result of their home state of Arkansas was called in her favour, cheered as her speech was televised, cheered when the result from Texas was announced."></span><span itemprop="duration" content="87"></span><span itemprop="thumbnail" content="http://cfvod.kaltura.com/p/1679921/sp/167992100/thumbnail/entry_id/0_s61f0pnp/version/100012/acv/182"></span><span itemprop="width" content="640"></span><span itemprop="height" content="362"></span>

Read | Clinton, Trump and their Super Tuesday test

Watching frontrunner Donald Trump win one state after another, Young Republican Laneigh Pfalser echoed the mood as she said, I do not believe Trump is what is best for our country.

But she stressed she would by default support him if he were the nominee, albeit definitely with regret.

Bill Kerr, a retired businessman from Maumelle, a town about 30 km from Little Rock, however, was enjoying the evening. He had volunteered for polling duty for Trump, and was elated.

I love it, just about what I expected, he said, as TV screens showed his candidate sweeping through most of the states, barring the three captured by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Rubio ended up bagging only Minnesota, his first win of the race.

Still carrying his Trump signs and wearing a hat with the campaign slogan Make America Great Again, Kerr said he was very excited since he believed its hard to stop him now from getting the nomination. That Trump carried Arkansas, even if narrowly, was a bonus.

Read | Super Tuesday: Where US presidential hopefuls stand, and the road ahead

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
The Hinduja Group has completed the acquisition and taken possession of the historic Old War Office building opposite Downing Street, from where former prime minister Winston Churchill took key decisions during World War II.

Acquired on Tuesday with Spanish company Obrascon Huarte Lain Desarrollos (OHLD) on a 250-year lease from the ministry of defence, the plan is to convert it into a hotel and luxury residences. The ministry said the sale of the Old War Office was for in excess of 350 million following a competitive marketing process.

The heritage building, completed in 1906, contains around 1,100 rooms across seven floors, linked by more than two miles of corridors.

The two groups will restore the historic fabric of the Old War Office and revitalise a location that has an unparalleled place in Britains social and political history.

Speaking at a ceremony when the buildings key was handed over, Prakash P Hinduja, chairman (Europe) of the Hinduja Group, said: We have a new vision for the Old War Office. We are delighted with the unique opportunity we have been given to become the new custodians of this famous Whitehall building.

He said the two groups will work with ministry of defence, Westminster City Council, Historic England and the Princes Regeneration Trust to restore the building, and convert it into a distinguished hotel and luxury residences.

Sanjiv Chadha of the State Bank of India, the funders of the project, said: With this high profile project and collaboration we have stepped into the London real estate market and we are committed to the successful completion of the project.

Juan-Miguel Villar-Mir, chairman of the Villar-Mir and OHL Group, said: We are proud to be working in partnership with the Hinduja Group on this historic and prestigious project.

OHL Developments recently worked on successfully developing the heritage site at Canalejas in Madrid as a world-class residential, hotel and commercial destination.

The ceremony was attended by Indian High Commissioner Navtej Singh Sarna and former national security adviser M K Narayanan.

Recent high-value London acquisitions by Indians:

The Lodha Group acquired a building owned by the Canadian High Commission in Grosvenor Square for 306 million in November 2013.

In June 2014, Mumbai-based developer Indiabulls bought a building in central Londons Hanover Square for 155 million.

Great Scotland Yard  the iconic building that housed the London Metropolitan police for over 60 years until 1890  was acquired by Indian billionnaire Yusufalli Kader for 110 million, and is to be redeveloped and opened as a luxury hotel in 2017.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON
A woman who admitted trafficking methamphetamine on the Crow Reservation will spend four years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters, of Billings, on Tuesday sentenced Amelia Mae House Seestheground, 47, of Hardin, to the term for her conviction on a conspiracy count.

The judge also dismissed three other counts as part of a plea deal in which Seestheground pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute meth.

Prosecutors said Seestheground was a significant source of meth and that she bought from suppliers and sold to Crow tribal members on the reservation for at least two years.

Last June, Seestheground sold meth three times to confidential informants who bought bindles and baggies of meth as part of the investigation.
The carefully nurtured cult of personality around Xi Jinping is being rapidly strengthened, with a song asking women to marry someone like the Chinese President who is full of heroism and the Communist party exhorting people to conform with the top leader.

Last week, the song calling on women to marry someone like Xi Dada (Uncle Xi) became popular on social media platform Weibo days after another rap song distilling Xis ideologies went viral online.

And on Wednesday, the Communist Party of Chinas (CPC) flagship magazine left no room for doubt about the power wielded by Xi, who is the partys general secretary and head of the worlds largest military.

In an article with the sweeping headline China must conform with Xi, Qiushi Journal, the primary magazine of the CPC Central Committee, gave the call for conforming with the countrys top leader.

The article followed a CPC directive that urged the partys 88 million members to read and study Xis remarks and essays. Xi has been hailed as the core leader in state media and is always portrayed as strong and wise.

The new song, of course, was lighter in vein and apparently not written by the state apparatus but by a relatively lesser known Chinese lyricist.

If you want to marry, marry someone like Xi Dada, a man full of heroism with an unyielding sprit; no matter how the world changes and how many difficulties lie ahead, he will insist and keep moving forward, the song went, making sure everyone knows Xi is the man.

The Qiushi article, according to official news agency Xinhua, called for unifying the thinking of all people with a series of important speeches by Xi amid efforts to realise the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation. The article stresses advancing the Four Comprehensives, the overarching strategy for Chinas long-term development. The phrase was first coined by Xi in 2014.

The earlier rap video attempted to drive home these Four Comprehensives building a moderately prosperous society, deepening reform, advancing the rule of law and strict governing of the CPC.

The magazine article also talked of strengthening the CPC.

To promote the core leadership of the Party, the priority is to conform with the CPC Central Committee, with General Secretary (of the CPC Central Committee) Xi Jinping as well as with the Partys theories, guidelines, principles and policies, the article said.

The combined campaign comes ahead of the two most important political events in China beginning this week  the annual sessions of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference National Committee, the countrys top political advisory body, and of the National Peoples Congress, Chinas upper most legislature.
Debris that washed up in Mozambique has been tentatively identified as a part from the same type of aircraft as the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a US official said Wednesday.

Photos of the debris discovered over the weekend appear to show the fixed leading edge of the right-hand tail section of a Boeing 777, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasnt authorized to speak publicly.

MH-370, which disappeared two years ago with 239 people aboard while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is the only known missing 777. Its disappearance has led to the largest and most expensive search in aviation history.

People who have handled the part, called a horizontal stabilizer, say it appears to be made of fiberglass composite on the outside, with aluminum honeycombing on the inside, the official said. The part is being transported to Malaysia.

Read | MH370 flight lawsuits gain pace as two-year deadline approaches

Mozambiques National Director of Civil Aviation Joao Abreu dismissed the report, saying authorities have found no part of the missing plane. But Malaysian transport minister Liow Tiong Lai tweeted about the discovery.

Based on early reports, high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777, Liow said in a series of tweets.

It is yet to be confirmed & verified. @dca_malaysia working w Australian counterparts to retrieve the debris. Australia has led the multinational search effort, which also includes the Malaysian and Chinese governments.

Radar data show MH-370 turned sharply around as it approached Vietnamese airspace and then flew back across the Malay Peninsula until contact was lost off the coast of Thailand.

Authorities who scrutinized data exchanged between the planes engine and a satellite determined that the jetliner continued on a straight path across the Indian Ocean, leading them to believe that the plane flew on autopilot for hours before running out of fuel and crashing into the water.

Despite an exhaustive search of the ocean west of Australia, where the plane is believed to have crashed, the only confirmed trace of the aircraft has been a wing part known as flaperon that washed ashore last July on the French island of Reunion off the east coast of Africa  about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) from the current search area.

Nothing of the passengers, their luggage or even things designed to float, such as life jackets, has been discovered.

Read | France confirms wing part found on Reunion is from Flight MH370

Authorities have long predicted that any debris from the plane that isnt on the ocean floor would eventually be carried by currents to the east coast of Africa.

With authorities unable to find the plane and its black box flight data and cockpit voice recorders, investigators are no closer than they were two years ago to discovering the cause of MH370s disappearance. There are many theories, including that a rogue pilot deliberately caused the $250 million jet to vanish, but little hard evidence.

With the search tentatively scheduled to wrap up later this year, MH370 may become one of aviations great unsolved mysteries.

In the aftermath of the planes disappearance, the airline industry and aviation authorities around the world pledged to find ways to better track airliners, especially over expanses of ocean where theres no radar coverage.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN aviation-standards agency, has adopted a requirement that all airliners report their positions about every 15 minutes over open ocean. The standard goes into effect in November 2018.

Currently, pilots flying planes over open ocean report their positions about every 30 minutes. In the most remote areas, even that is not possible.

Complicating the search for MH-370, the planes black box data recorder was equipped with an underwater locator beacon whose battery is designed to last only 30 days. ICAO had adopted a new standard before the accident requiring the beacons to last at least 90 days, but the standard doesnt go into effect until 2018.
At a time when the US was scouring the Af-Pak region in its search for Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda chief feared an Iranian dentist could have planted a tracking device in his wifes tooth.

The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli, he wrote in a letter, using the assumed name Abu Abdallah, The New York Times reported.

Please destroy this letter after reading it, said the letter, which was declassified by the US on Tuesday along with 112 pieces of writings and letters that were found in bin Ladens hideout in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad.

Bin Laden was killed when Navy SEALs raided his compound located close to the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad in May 2011.

The documents made public on Tuesday were largely from the last decade of bin Ladens life, and include letters to other al Qaeda leaders and loved ones, drafts of speeches and stray bits of operational minutiae.

A Pakistani soldier stands near a compound in Abbottabad where al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seals in 2011. (AP FIle Photo)

They provide insight into his thinking and his struggle to keep al Qaedas main branch and offshoots in line as US drones killed the groups senior leaders and demoralised its foot soldiers, The Times reported.

Among the documents was an undated will that bin Laden is believed to have written by hand in the late 1990s. In it, he said he had received $12 million from one of his brothers and that he had $29 million in Sudan. If he was killed, he wanted his family to spend all the money that I have left in Sudan on Jihad, he wrote.

A senior intelligence official said the Central Intelligence Agency did not know what became of the money, or if any of it remained at the time of bin Ladens death.

The fear of US efforts to track him and kill him is a theme that surfaces again and again in the documents. In a letter, bin Laden warned a suitcase used to deliver a ransom could contain a tracking device.
Scott Kelly has officially returned to Earth after one year in space. While staying a year in space is a feat in and of itself, what really have scientists excited are the implications for the mission to Mars.

Kelly is scheduled to return to Houston about 24 hours after landing back to Earth in Kazakhstan, at about 11:45 p.m. EST on Wednesday. That's after a mission that's lasted twice as long as a typical mission, or about 340 days.

While many experiments were conducted while Kelly was in space, the main one was to see the effects of space on the human body. This is critically important when it comes to understanding the effects of long-duration spaceflight, such as the eventual mission to Mars.

The science to actually driving the one-year mission occurred a year before Kelly headed to the space station. NASA scientists collected biological samples from Kelly, and also performed assessments to establish baselines. Comparison samples were taken throughout Kelly's stay in space, and will continue for a year or more after his return to Earth.

What really makes this study so interesting, though, is that Scott Kelly has an identical twin brother, former astronaut Mark Kelly. While Scott was in space, Mark participated in parallel twin studies on Earth in order to provide scientists with more bases for comparisons.

NASA is currently pushing to send a human to Mars. However, there are many hazards that humans must face within the depths of space. There's low-level radiation that could have an impact over time. In addition, the weightlessness of space also has an effect on muscles and even eyesight. This means that NASA scientists are eager to conduct studies and figure out a way to counteract these effects during a long-term mission.

The current plan for the mission to Mars involves several stages. Currently, NASA is looking at how space affects the body in order to protect astronaut health. The next stage, though, is deep space. NASA will send a robotic mission to capture and redirect an asteroid to orbit a moon. Astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft will then explore the asteroid in the 2020s and return to Earth with samples. This experience will help NASA test new systems and capabilities for even longer term space missions.

For now, though, Scott Kelly represents an important step when it comes to sending astronauts to the Red Planet.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
In a case of clearing out one owl to save another - native and more endangered - owl, researchers have found some success by eliminating the invasive barred owl in California. The Northern spotted owl, native to the Pacific Northwest, has been declining across its range at a rate of nearly 4 percent per year from 1985 to 2013, according to a study published in December 2015. It was declared endangered in 1990.

As we implied, there is a culprit contributing to this decline: the invasive barred owl, a native of the eastern United States. The larger non-natives are competing with spotted owls for food, space and habitat - and they've been called "bullies" by scientists, who note that in recent years they are pushing the native owl species out of its habitat.

A biologist who contracts with a lumber company is participating in an experiment sanctioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill barred owls in order to protect the endangered owls.

Lowell Diller, that biologist, contracts with Green Diamond Resource Co., a company that manages forest-land in three Northern California counties.

Already, barred owls have been pushing out northern spotted owls in upstate California and are spreading south toward San Francisco.

A few years ago, Diller heard that the California Academy of Sciences' ornithology curator, Jack Dumbacher, had received a permit to gather some barred owl specimens. Diller applied for his own permit.

Beginning in 2009, he designated certain patches of timberland for barred owl removal. In other areas, he left the populations alone. Four years later, he noted that in the areas that lacked barred owls, northern spotted owl numbers are not declining.

Diller's findings will soon be published in the Journal of Wildlife Management and Wildlife Monographs, showing that northern spotted owls bounce back when they don't need to compete for habitat with barred owls.

"It's sort of a no-win situation," Andrea Jones, the National Audubon Society's California director of bird conservation, noted. "We're not advocating for the killing or against the killing."

Jones says that destruction of old-growth habitat has resulted in the two owl species being pitted against each other.

While Diller said in the article that he doesn't enjoy killing the birds, he tries to focus on saving the native species. The northwestern program director of Defenders of Wildlife, Shawn Cantrell, also feels that the invasive removal should be short-term: "When we mess things up, we have an obligation to fix them," he said.

-Follow Catherine on Twitter @TreesWhales

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured an incredible image of a distinctive blue "bubble" floating 30,000 light years away in the Carina constellation. Scientists say the bubble, which formed by interstellar winds about 20,000 years ago, is centered around the Wolf-Rayet (WR) star WR 31a.

"The distinctive blue bubble appearing to encircle WR 31a is a Wolf-Rayet nebula -- an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases," the European Space Agency explained in a statement on NASA's website. "Created when speedy stellar winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen ejected by Wolf-Rayet stars, these nebulae are frequently ring-shaped or spherical."

Wolf-Rayet stars begin their life with a rapid expansion. In their youth, they are some of the biggest and brightest stars in the sky. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars can be about 20 times as massive, five to 30 times as hot, and tens of thousands to millions of times as bright as the sun of our own solar system. Therefore, the bubble is estimated to be expanding outward at a rate of 136,700 miles per hour.

However, compared to the sun, which has been active for billions of years and is only in the middle of its cosmic life, Wolf-Rayet stars have a relatively short life span. Within their first 100,000 years, the stars lose about half of their mass. This is in a "the blink of an eye" in cosmic terms.

"It will, therefore, eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nourish a new generation of stars and planets," the agency added.

This is not the first time such a cosmic bubble has been spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope and some are even visible to the naked eye. For example, the brightest and most massive known star, RMC 136a1, is a WR body in the Tarantula Nebula, about 163,000 light years from Earth.

NASA also recently announced plans to build a sort of "super Hubble." They expect this this new telescope, which is called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), will be about 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. The hope, scientists say, is to unravel the secrets of the universe and learn more about the evolution of the cosmos.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Mean bosses are actually getting a good rap... well, sort of. A new study reveals that consistently rude bosses get higher approval ratings than those who exhibit both nice and rude behaviors.

Researchers found that people with consistently rude or unfair supervisors are significantly less stressed than those managed by more erratic superiors. Surprisingly, consistently rude bosses also result in significantly more satisfied employees.

"Our findings essentially show that employees are better off if their boss is a consistent jerk rather than being a loose cannon who's fair at times and unfair at other times," Fadel Matta, lead author of the study and a researcher at Michigan State University's Broad College of Business, said in a statement. "We found that inconsistent treatment is much more stressful than being treated poorly all the time."

The latest study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, involved both a laboratory experiment and a field study. The laboratory experiment consisted of 160 college students who had their heart rates monitored while performing a stock pricing task. The field study involved employees from 95 employers from a variety of industries.

Participants in the lab experiment were divided into three different groups. One group was always treated fairly, another was always treated unfairly and the last was treated both fairly and unfairly. The latest findings revealed that students who received inconsistent treatment were significantly more stressed than those who received consistently unfair treatment.

"Contrary to the intuitive notion that more fairness is always better, our work shows that being treated consistently unfairly can be better for employees than being treated fairly sometimes and unfairly other times," researchers explained. "Variably fair treatment resulted in greater physiological stress than both consistently fair and consistently unfair treatment."

The second part of the study revealed the same results.

"In a multi-level, experience-sampling field study, we replicated the positive association between justice variability and stress, and we also showed that justice variability exacerbated the positive, daily relationship between general workplace uncertainty and stress," researchers wrote in the study.

While the study revealed that mean bosses were better than their "hot and cold" counterparts, researchers noted that consistently nice superiors always produce the best results.

"Let's not lose sight of the fact that the best outcomes for employees occurred when their supervisors were consistently fair," study co-author Brent Scott, an associate professor of management at Michigan State University, said in a statement. "However, if supervisors are going to be unfair, the results suggest that they would be better off behaving that way all of the time."

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Prenatal vitamins are an important part of care for any mother-to-be, but new research shows that women expecting their babies in the winter may benefit from some vitamin D supplements. The vitamin is important for strong bones.

Researchers found that pregnant women who took vitamin D supplements and who had their babies in the winter had children with greater bone mass when compared to counterparts with babies born at the same time but who did not take the supplements.

"This is an important study which shows that vitamin D supplementation for pregnant women can help increase bone strength in children born in winter months," Stephen Simpson, Director of research and programmes at the charity, Arthritis Research UK, said. "Strong bones in childhood are likely to lead to a reduced risk of osteoporosis and fractures later in life, which are associated with disability and loss of independence. As a charity we are committed to funding research such as this, which can shed light on ways to prevent the development of painful, debilitating conditions like osteoporosis."

During the study, researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, examined over 1,000 pregnant women from Southampton, Oxford and Sheffield in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial on vitamin D supplements in pregnancy. The participants either received 1,000 units (25 microgrammes) of vitamin D each day or a placebo capsule from 14 week's gestation until the arrival of their baby.

Findings showed that over 80 percent of women who had received the supplement showed satisfactory levels of vitamin D when measured late in their pregnancy and when compared to just about 35 percent of those in the placebo group. Researchers did not, at first, either find a difference in bone mass between babies born to mothers who took the supplement and those who received the placebo. However, further analysis showed that particularly among women whose babies were born in the winter, those who took the vitamin D supplements during the study period had babies with a mean bone mass of 63 g compared to about 58 g of those in the control group who received the placebo.

The researchers said they believe that better bone mass starting at birth will likely lead to stronger bones in older age. Furthermore, this could also reduce the risk of broken bones as a child and as an adult.

The study is published today in the journal Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Aficionados of supersonic travel might be in for a great surprise within the next few years, as NASA announced on Monday that it is awarding a $20 million contract to airplane manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin in order to develop a next generation, supersonic commercial aircraft.

The project would be the first in a number of planned "X-planes" under NASA's New Aviation Horizons Initiative, which the organization introduced when it discussed its fiscal year 2017 budget.

If Lockheed Martin does succeed, the commercial world would be able to once more enjoy faster-than-sound travel, more than a decade since the world's most iconic supersonic commercial aircraft, the Concorde, was retired.

The Concorde was a trailblazer, and for 27 years it served as the U.K.'s quintessential commercial airliner, capable of travelling from London to the United States in about 3 hours. However, the aircraft's low fuel efficiency, high maintenance costs, a tragic crash in 2000 and low revenue following the 9/11 attacks ultimately put a stop to the Concorde's operations.

With the NASA-Lockheed Martin deal, however, a newer worthy successor to the Concorde might soon be in the works. Utilizing a technology called Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST), the updated supersonic aircraft would be able to travel in a more efficient, safe and quiet manner.

Contrary to the massive sonic booms that are descriptive of the Concorde when it breaks the sound barrier, the new aircraft being developed by Lockheed Martin would simply create a supersonic "heartbeat," which sounds much like a soft thump. Such a development would possibly make the aircraft a lot more welcome in countries around the world.

After all, during its 27 years of service, Concordes were so loud that countries such as India imposed restrictions on the aircraft when it flew over its airspace. With the upcoming Lockheed Martin supersonic craft, such a thing would be no problem at all.

Charles Bolden, head of NASA, is optimistic about the project.

"It's worth noting that it's been almost 70 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 as part of our predecessor agency's high-speed research. Now we're continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight," he said.

If funding for the project is satisfactory and things go as planned, NASA has stated that a scaled-down version of the commercial airliner would be able to make test flights as early as 2020.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
LANDER, Wyo.  Peabody Energy's senior lenders are recommending America's largest coal company file for bankruptcy, financial filings show.

The mining giant said it has tried assuage creditors by offering a bond exchange to restructure its debts, but has thus far failed to reach a deal. The negotiations were disclosed in a report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

"Peabody expects to have further discussions with holders of its outstanding indebtedness as it continues to explore alternatives," the company wrote.

The negotiations come amid growing uncertainty over Peabody's planned $358 million sale of three mines in Colorado and New Mexico. The prospective buyer, Bowie Resources Partners LLC, missed its early February deadline to secure financing for the deal.

The sale has become a bulwark for Peabody against bankruptcy, analysts said. The Missouri-based company has enough money to fund its operations through 2016 if the deal goes through.

But Peabody only has enough money to fund roughly half its expenses if the sale collapses, said Chiza Vitta, a credit analyst at Standard and Poor's.

"If that falls through, I think they have some serious challenges funding the business through the end of the year," he said.

Peabody had $261 million in cash at the end of 2015, according to financial filings, and recently announced it had drawn down the entirety of a $1.65 billion credit line.

The importance of the Bowie deal was underlined by a second filing Peabody made to the SEC on Monday. In it, the company said a failed mine sale would put the firm in violation of its loan agreements.

It could also prompt an audit of the company's finances, Peabody said. If the audit concluded Peabody may not be able to stay in business that, too, could be a violation of its loan agreements, the company wrote.

Peabody, which operates the North Antelope Rochelle and Rawhide mines outside Gillette, reported a $2 billion loss in 2015.

The losses were the product of tepid demand and weak prices, which decimated the sector and prompted fellow miners like Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources to file for Chapter 11 protection.

Beth Sutton, a Peabody spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company "continues to take a number of steps to improve the business amid the prolonged industry downturn, including pursuing the best alternatives to achieve our financial objectives."

Peabody has $6.3 billion in long-term debt obligations. The company's next debt payments come due in 2018. But a bankruptcy filing would relieve some of the strain on the company's balance sheet by eliminating the need to make interest payments.

It would also favor senior creditors, said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies for Australia and Asia at the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

"Peabodys lenders appear to be pushing for a Chapter 11 filing rather than allowing the company to do selective deals with selective creditors, given the risk that a selective deal may favor one creditor over the general creditor base," he said.

A bankruptcy filing would also raise thorny legal questions given Peabody's operations in the United States and Australia, where bankruptcy laws are more stringent.

Management can be held personally liable for a bankruptcy in some instances under Australian law, Buckley noted. But how those provisions would play out in the case of an American-based company is unclear.

"This is really untested waters," Buckley said.
While the Zika virus continues to spread throughout central and South America, one small town in Brazil has yet to see a single case.

The town of Agua Branca located in Piaui effectively eliminated the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the species of mosquitoes that transmit Zika, dengue, chikungunya and other viruses, in 2013. At the time, the town began a community program to combat the mosquitoes due to the increasing number of dengue fever cases. Before the program started, health officials carried out awareness campaigns to make sure that every one was educated about the initiative.

The initiative used a color-coded system to target mosquito hotspots. Houses that did not have signs of mosquito larvae received a green sticker. Houses that were considered to have the potential to become breeding ground for the mosquito received a yellow sticker. A main factor that contributes to mosquito growth is water accumulation. Lastly, houses with larvae were marked with red stickers.

The use of the stickers allowed health officials to pinpoint which households needed assistance the most. They also encouraged residents living in yellow or red sticker homes to work harder to eliminate their mosquito problem.

"Our objective, beyond combating mosquito hotspots in the city, was to engage and empower residents so that they could be the agents of change in this process, Doris Leal, Agua Brancas health surveillance coordinator, said. With the two teams working together, we have a greater capacity to motivate the work and the people.

Leal credits the joint efforts between the disease control officers and the Family Health Unit officers for being able to reach out to town residents and make them care about the strategy that was being put in place to protect their health.

Since the initiative, the town has only reported seven cases of dengue in 2015. No other mosquito-borne viruses have been reported.

The state governor reportedly wants to replicate the initiative in other towns.

Zika was declared a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) for its potential link to birth defect microcephaly and Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Studies are currently being conducted to see if the virus is responsible for the recent spike in these two conditions.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Facebook's most senior executive in Latin America was jailed in Brazil Tuesday after the company refused to release private user information requested by the government.

The arrest of Diego Dzodan, the social media company's vice president for Latin America, was carried out on the strength of a decree issued by Judge Marcel Montalvao. He was charged with the refusal to surrender information from the WhatsApp messaging app, which Facebook acquired in 2014. The data is reportedly relevant to an ongoing drug-trafficking investigation and law enforcement authorities want access to help solve the case.

"We're disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with [a] case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook," Facebook maintained in a statement. "Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."

A representatives from WhatsApp also echoed the same sentiments, citing that it has cooperated with the Brazilian police to the best of its abilities and that it strongly disagrees with its decision.

A spokesperson for Brazilian police, however, countered that the agency already reached out to the company four months ago to the point that a $12,700 fine was imposed for each day Facebook ignored the order. This accumulated to a total of 1 million reais ($250,000) sum.

Granting that Facebook would be willing to cooperate with authorities, the task of producing WhatsApp user data may be close to impossible since the messaging platform adopted the end-to-end encryption technology, which, according to Christopher Soghoian, technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, keeps the WhatsApp team from monitoring messages sent within the platform's network.

Facebook's brush with Brazilian law enforcement is not the first for the company, as WhatsApp has been suspended from operation after a similar request for information involving a criminal case was denied last year. The issue also figures prominently in the way Internet companies are being threatened by governments around the world today to cooperate in releasing user data, such as Apple's current dispute with the FBI.

Dzodan's arrest, however, is still considered rare. "Because these large global Internet companies have staff in many countries who are vulnerable to legal action including arrest and criminal charges, they generally do comply with legally binding requests from authorities for user data," said Rebecca MacKinnon, an Internet freedom activist.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Cuban officials reported the first case of Zika on Wednesday. The Ministry of Health confirmed that a 28-year-old woman, who arrived on the island on Feb. 21 from Venezuela, tested positive for the virus after a second test on Feb. 28. The woman is still hospitalized in Havana but is in good health, the officials stated.

The Ministry's statement added that the woman's husband had contracted Zika two months ago in their home country while her brother-in-law had the virus two weeks before she left to Cuba to attend a post-graduate class with nearly 40 other students.

The woman, a doctoral student in gastroenterology, had exhibited symptoms of an infection, which included a fever and rash one day after her arrival. She was initially placed under medical quarantine in the Artemisa province, which is right outside of the capital city of Havana.

Although Cuba has yet to see a case of locally transmitted Zika, President Raul Castro announced a plan to increase their efforts in killing populations of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the species of mosquitoes that carry Zika and other viruses, such as dengue and chikungunya. Before the Zika outbreak, the country was already fumigating homes for years to reduce the number of dengue fever cases.

Castro stated that 9,000 soldiers would be responsible for spraying mosquito hotspots throughout the nation. A door-to-door initiative has already begun.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared Zika a public health emergency on Feb. 1 after health officials suggested that an infection could lead to a birth defect called microcephaly. In Brazil where the virus has been widespread, the number of microcephaly cases has skyrocketed.

In addition to Zika's link to microcephaly, another study that examined a previous Zika outbreak in Tahiti found evidence that an infection could be linked to Guillain-Barre syndrome. Due to the potential health risks involved, researchers have been working hard to create a vaccine and better diagnostic tests.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The warm weather phenomenon El Nino may be the root of the transportation and spread of waterborne diseases like cholera, effectively bringing them thousands of miles across the ocean and having grave implications for public health. A study was conducted at the University of Bath that explores the connection between the arrival of dangerous new diseases in Latin American and the timeline of El Nino.

El Nino occurs every three to seven years and results in the unusual warming of surface waters along the tropical west coast of South America. However, in the recent years it has become more severe and many point to climate change as the culprit.

The team collaborated with the National Institute of Health (INS) in order to reveal that illnesses stemming from waterborne bacteria in Latin America are occurring in coordination with where and when El Nino waters are coming into contact with the land.

Using data derived from the whole-genome sequencing of bacterial strains, the team made links between the organisms that are causing illnesses in Asia and those emerging the Latin America.

Over the last 30 years, new genetic waterborne pathogen variants have been making their way into Latin America, all coinciding with the last three significant El Nino events. In particular, the cholera outbreak in Peru in 1990, and the two widespread contaminations of new variants of the Vibrio parahaemolyticus in 1997 and 2010.

"Through our findings we suggest that so-called vibrios - microscopic bacteria commonly found in seawater - can attach to larger organisms such as zooplankton to travel oceans," Jaime Martinez-Urtaza, lead author of the study, said in a press release. "Numerous previous studies have shown how such vibrios bind to and use these larger organisms as a source of energy and through this mechanism, we suggest, they are essentially able to piggyback to travel such enormous diseases, driven by ocean currents."

"The effects of El Nino events and their impacts on local weather, fisheries and the risk of more extreme meteorological events are already well-documented," he concluded. "Now understanding the role the ocean currents are also playing in transporting these disease has huge significance for public health campaigns in those countries."

The findings were published in Nature Microbiology.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Infants born in developing countries are either not getting adequate screening tests for hearing or receiving none at all, an ongoing study is reporting.

In a study out of Ruhr University Bochum, the team of international researchers headed by Dr. Katrin Neumann set out to examine how infants born in less-advanced nations fare when it comes to detecting and treating hearing disorders. The researchers examined the current standards of hearing tests for infants in 151 countries with the aim of creating screening standards that could be used throughout the world.

The researchers found so far that more than 50 percent of the countries studied have some kind of infant hearing test in place. Many of these tests, however, were not up to the standards seen in Western countries. The researchers are still waiting on the data from several countries.

Although the study has yet to be completed, the researchers reported finding one factor that appeared to affect the quality of a country's screening test. The team found that in countries where the government had a larger regulatory role, the screenings tests were relatively better.

The researchers stressed the importance of improving these screening tests so that infants with hearing conditions can get treatment as soon as possible. Neumann stated that ideally, treatment for infants with hearing impairments should begin within the first six-months of life.

"It is incredibly important to detect hearing impairments at an early stage," Neumann, who is the head of the department of phoniatrics and pedaudiology at the St. Elizabeth Hospital in Bochum, Germany, explained. "If a hearing impairment is not recognized and treated during this sensitive phase, the result will always remain deficient - no matter how well we provide for the affected children afterwards."

She added, in the news release, "In specialist circles, hearing impairments are often referred to as the hidden disease, because the disorder attracts only little attention. This is what I wish to change."

Neumann hopes to standardize infant hearing screening tests worldwide with the help of the World Health Organization (WHO).

"The question which disorders attract attention on an international level is to a great extent influenced by the focus of the World Health Organization WHO," she said.

Neumann has been gathering data since 2007.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
With the Chelyabinsk meteor that entered the Earth's atmosphere over Russia back in 2013 and numerous other asteroids and near-Earth objects (NEOs) set to make their way past our planet, many scientists are focusing on planetary defense strategies to ensure its protection in extreme situations. Some of these strategies include kinetic impactors, robotic mining and gravity tractors, although one has garnered the attention as one of the most serious proposals: laser beams.

Project DE-STAR (Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation) aims to use large phased-array lasers in the Earth's orbit for deflecting asteroids, comets and any other NEOs that put the planet in danger. In addition, a smaller, similar system called DE-STARLITE that would travel alongside the aforementioned laser system is also being considered for development.

The ultimate goal of these projects is to create a planetary defense system in the Earth's orbit that is capable of heating hazardous NEOs to the point of vaporization, which would lead to the ejection of vaporized material and thus a reactionary force that would push the object onto a new path.

"Generally speaking, the technology is available today. The main challenge with building a full DE-STAR is the necessary scale to be effective," said Qicheng Zhang, one of the authors of the project.

Zhang and his team believe that if DE-STAR possessed a 330-feet-wide phased laser array, it could combat volatile-laden asteroids 330 feet in diameter and initiate battle with them from around 2 million miles away. However, they also claim that DE-STARLIE is the more practical option in terms of size and investment.

"The bigger the NEO, the longer the time needed. The bigger the laser, the shorter the time needed," Zhang said. "With a very small 20 kW DE-STARLITE, a 300-meter-wide (1,000 foot) asteroid can be deflected in 15 years. Smaller asteroids can be deflected in under a year, after the spacecraft's arrival at the asteroid."

However, DE-STARLITE would not be effective at deflecting NEOs on short notice, which means that the DE-STAR system would be more practical for last-minute defense options.

As improbable as an NEO collision may seem, the most recent mass extinction was caused by an impact from a comet or asteroid approximately 10 kilometers wide. Although these events are rare, when they do occur, the results can be catastrophic.

"In the last roughly 100 years, we've had two significant impacts that we know of," experimental cosmologist Philip Lubin said. "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 2013, which had an estimated yield of about a half-megaton, equivalent to a medium-sized thermonuclear weapon in the U.S. and Russian arsenals."

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Common pesticides used to keep apples, broccoli, corn and other crops insect-free may be causing severe learning and memory deficits in honeybees.

Researchers from the University of Otago collected honeybees from 51 hives across 17 locations in the province of Otago in Southern New Zealand. Low levels of pesticides were detected at three of the 17 sites and in six of the 51 hives they examined. Their findings suggest that even the smallest doses of the pesticide chlorpyrifos can be devastating to the success and survival of honeybees.

To test its effects, researchers fed this potent and mobile pesticide to a number of lab bees and put them through a series of learning performance tests. This revealed chlorpyrifos-fed bees had worse odor-learning abilities and could not remember familiar odors, even though they were fed doses that are considered "safe" to spray on crops. This largely effects a honeybee's ability to find nectar and pollinate flowers.

"For example, the dosed bees were less likely to respond specifically to an odor that was previously rewarded," lead author Elodie Urlacher said in a news release. "As honeybees rely on such memory mechanisms to target flowers, chlorpyrifos exposure may be stunting their effectiveness as nectar foragers and pollinators."

Therefore, researchers suggest enforcing a new threshold of 50 picograms of chlorpyrifos be ingested per bee to avoid lethal impacts. Their findings were recently published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology.

"This amount is thousands of times lower than the lethal dose of pure chlorpyrifos, which is around 100 billionths of a gram. Also, it is in the low range of the levels we measured in bees in the field," Urlacher added. "Our findings raise some challenging questions about regulating this pesticide's use. It's now clear that it is not just the lethal effects on bees that need to be taken into account, but also the serious sub-lethal ones at minute doses."

In addition to remembering familiar odors, some bees rely on what researchers call "search images." The idea is that on each foraging trip, bees retain a mental image of flowers that prove to be a promising source of food. Therefore, a recent study from the University of Cambridge suggests flowers tailor their coloring to attract bees, who, in turn, spread their pollen.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new study conducted by University of Edinburgh researchers suggests that the ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex was an invasive species, contrary to the popular belief that it was a native to North America. The findings point to the origins of the species as Asia, which eventually dispersed into North America when the opportunity arose.

"It's possible that T.rex was an immigrant species from Asia," said study co-researcher Steve Brusatte, who participated in the research, although he admits that the findings aren't a "slam dunk" and that more research is needed to further solidify the findings.

Little is known about the family tree of one of the biggest meat eaters to ever live on land. In order to shed light on its past, the team analyzed 28 different tyrannosaur species and created a family tree in order to pinpoint when and where each species lived.

Although fossil evidence is still lacking, using their tree as a guide, the team believes that the evidence thus far points to tyrannosaur predecessors having lived on the supercontinent Pangaea, which eventually began to break apart approximately 200 million years ago during the Triassic period. This hypothesis explains why tyrannosaur fossils have been found in various locations around the world, from Asia to North America and Europe.

Over time, tyrannosaurs evolved in their respective locations, explaining why those in Asia looked physically different from the ones in North America. However, the team believes that when the seaway between Asia and North America disappeared 67 million years ago, a land bridge connected the two continents and the T. rex likely crossed this route into North America.

Analysis of the T. rex's skeletal features revealed characteristics that point to Asian origins, and supporting this idea is the fact that they are closely related to two Asian tyrannosaurs, Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus.



"Tarbosaurus is the Asian version of T. rex," Brusatte said. "Or, you could say that T. rex is the North American version of Tarbosaurus. They are so similar in terms of their monstrous size, their proportions, their massive jaw muscles and thick teeth and even many minutiae of their skull bones."

The findings were published in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal Scientific Reports.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The J.N. "Ding" Darling National Wildlife Refuge saw a rare visitor this week. Southwest Florida wildlife officials report a great white pelican showed up at the refuge Sunday and is about 4,000 miles outside of its home range.

The refuge, located on Sanibel Island in the Gulf of Mexico, is famous for its migratory bird populations. In fact, it is home to more than 245 species of bird throughout the year. But the arrival of this great white pelican marks what is believed to be the first North American sighting of the bird.

As somewhat of a celebrity in Southwest Florida, the stray pelican immediately made waves in the birding community, including among "Ding'' Darling staff, who quickly made the enormous but elegant bird their Facebook cover photo.

"It's the rarest of the rare," said Refuge Supervisory Ranger Toni Westland in a statement.

Among the top five bird species living at the refuge is the American white pelican, a true Florida snowbird, visiting only from late October through April; the mangrove cuckoo, a rare bird only found in Southern Florida; the reddish egret, a large-winged bird known for its comical habit of dancing as it chases fish of prey; the roseate spoonbill, a native, bright pink bird often mistaken for a flamingo; and yellow-crowned night-herons, who precariously build their nests above alligator habitats to ensure their hatchlings are safe from curious raccoons.

Comparatively, however, the great white pelican is much larger than "Ding" Darling natives. In a video released by the refuge, the pelican tourist can be seen bathing among neighboring pelicans and spoonbills.

Generally, great white pelicans are found in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa. They are characterized by a long bill that has a red stripe running down the center. The great white pelican also has a giant elastic pouch beneath its lower jaw, extending to the base of its throat, which can hold a large volume of fish.

As a social and cooperative bird, the great white pelican fishes in the early morning and spends the rest of the day bathing in shallow water. Great white pelicans typically hunt in groups for large fish, such as carp in Europe and cichlids in Africa. Currently, the pelicans are under no threat in their home range and are listed as "least concern" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Germany's cartel office, the Bundeskartellament, has accused Facebook of breaking data protection rules.

The organization announced it had initiated proceedings against Facebook Inc., USA, the Irish branch of the company and Facebook Germany GmbH. The authority has been suspicious that Facebook's conditions violate data protection requirements.

It is the amount of personal data that has the organization on edge. Facebook uses the data it collects to help advertisers target customers on the social media platform.

"Dominant companies are subject to special obligations. These include the use of adequate terms of service as far as these are relevant to the market. For advertising-financed internet services such as Facebook, user data are hugely important. For this reason it is essential to also examine under the aspect of abuse of market power whether the consumers are sufficiently informed about the type and extent of data collected," President of the Bundeskartellamt, Andreas Mundt said.

The organization has said it will investigate whether Facebook has abused its position of prominence as a social media leader by forcing users to agree to unlawful terms and conditions. The Bundeskartellament said that the agreement users have to sign in order to create a Facebook account may be difficult to understand.

Facebook has been the source of suspicion in Europe and currently faces similar investigations and possible sanctions in five European countries.

Facebook denied any wrongdoing on its part.

"We are confident that we comply with the law and we look forward to working with the Federal Cartel Office to answer their questions," said Tina Kulow, the company's director of corporate communication for Northern, Central, Eastern Europe and Benelux.

Last month, Facebook was fined by a Berlin court for not making it clear how users' intellectual property, like photos and videos, would be used by Facebook.

The social media giant has about 1.6 billion users. The company gets advertising money by gathering data on its users and creating ad posts specific to the user. It reportedly has three million advertisers.

The Bundeskartellamt said it will be working with data protection officers, consumer protection associations, the European Commission and other European Union Member States.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
LANDER, Wyo.  Wheatland officials say the town's water remains safe to drink after a series of samples detected uranium levels in excess of federal safety standards at a settling basin north of town.

That announcement came as letters began arriving in residents' mailboxes Monday, alerting them to tests taken over the course of 2014 and 2015. The reports showed uranium levels of 23 picocuries per liter, higher than the safety standard of 20 picocuries per liter.

Government officials cast the public notification as largely procedural. They said there is little cause for alarm, but noted infants, the elderly and pregnant women could be susceptible to increased risks. Anyone feeling ill was instructed to consult their doctor.

The unsafe levels of uranium were recorded at a holding basin fed by three water wells, said Mayor Joe Fabian. Water from the basin is treated before entering the town's water supply.

Tests taken at the town's water towers, after the water had been treated, did not show dangerous levels of uranium, he said.

"Its not a concern because if you have a water softner, first of all, it can be taken it out," Fabian said. "Its an easy fix. It would take drinking a quite a bit of water for quite a few years for it to be a concern."

Public notification is required when unsafe levels of pollution are recorded in drinking water, he said.

The samples are part of a regular water testing regimen conducted by the town. Wheatland is working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a more aggressive sampling program to identify the source of contamination, Fabian said.

Richard Mylott, a spokesman for the EPA, noted the federal safety standard for uranium is based on lifetime exposure.

The agency's focus is to make sure water districts alert consumers to potential problems and take steps to address long-term risks, Mylott said.

"These levels do not represent an acute health risk," he said.

Pete Delgado, who heads the Wheatland water department, said it is not uncommon to find high levels of uranium in Wyoming drinking water. He noted other towns have had similar problems in the past.

However, the issue is an apparent first for Wheatland. Delgado said he could not recall unsafe levels of uranium in Wheatland's water during his 40 years with the town water department.
In this era of electronic communication, where faceless automated RFPs prevail, the challenge of booking corporate groups has exploded. With the advent of the electronic RFP, the number of actual submissions has increased exponentially, making it incredibly difficult for a single property to standout. This article is specifically addressed to your sales team members. In particular, those individuals who are charged with the daunting task of continually filling in your meetings space for group events.

How do sales team members differentiate your property from competitors? How do they express your property's USP in any sort of targeted manner? And most importantly, how do they improve their conversion rate on business presentations?

Now, more than ever, there is a need to go beyond automation and rekindle one-to-one communications. But it's not like you can just show up at someone's office  the days of traveling salespersons are over. Instead, we are seeing the voice channel emerge as a viable intermediary between being lost in the noise of electronic RFPs and landing a personal meeting with a much-vaunted handshake at the end.

The business habits are a tad different nowadays, however. People hide behind their voicemails, so this should be the expectation over top of getting the person on the line right away. Here is a three-step approach you may want to consider:

1. Preparation

Develop a 75-90 second presentation on your property. This is your 'elevator pitch' and it can't be any longer or else you run into the cognitive drift problem. The appropriate Latin phrase to tape up on the wall is 'Ex hoc momento pendet aeternitas', roughly translating to 'Eternity hangs on this one moment'. In other words, you only have one shot at this, so make it count!

Rehearse your presentation so that it sounds sincere and emotive. Next, use it on one of your team member's voicemail. Then play it back over a speakerphone for other members of the sales team. Listen and accept their constructive criticism. Repeat this process until you are comfortable and the team gives you two thumbs up.

2. Phone Execution

With the appropriate personalization for every execution, follow up every RFP with your short presentation. Even though you are leaving it on voicemail, the odds are that it will get heard by the recipient and quite possibly forwarded to a decision maker. You may not get a phone call back even though you left your return number. That's okay, as the goal here is to get a successful return on your RFP and not necessarily to start a direct conversation or set up a one-on-one meeting.

You should not delegate this to someone who is a junior or who does not have direct sales responsibility. Why? Because once in a while, you hit the jackpot and the recipient actually picks up! I know, it does happen from time to time, and in such instances with a live client on the line you have to be ready to conduct business.

Leaving those trendy Latin business phrases aside for the time being, the ancient Greeks had two words for time that come in handy here: chronos and kairos. The former denotes all of time or at a lengthy period of time while the latter is considered to be only a moment of high importance. Often, a kairos equaled 1/40th of an hour or 90 seconds, which happened to be the shortest period of time that could be measured on a sundial.

So, consider your short speech on the phone to be a kairos  a defining moment that proves your point which is that your property is ideal for that meeting.

3. A Handwritten Note

Your property has welcome cards left in guestrooms. Steal some for your sales department's use. Write a personal thank you (do not computer print!) for the opportunity to present. Add one key fact to make sure the note is personalized and expressive of your USP. Given that you will be 'snail mailing' this, make sure to get it out the door on the same day as you press 'submit' to the automated RFP.

While the electronic RFP has made it very easy for a planner to add an increasing number of properties to their potential venue list, the effects of each individual proposal for being diluted as a result. This three-step plan is but one way for you to continue to differentiate yourself. Give it a try!

Larry Mogelonsky

Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

View source
MIAMI  SINGAPORE -- FIU's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management (CSHTM) and its Institute for Hospitality & Tourism Education & Research (IHTER) released a white paper today titled Driving Future Growth and Profitability: Asia 2020. In the face of adversity from rising operating cost and a weakening global economy, business leaders at the Visionary Leaders Roundtable in Singapore provides the hospitality industry ideas on what can be done to address the challenges to stay relevant, competitive and profitable.

Authored by Simone Champagnie, executive director - development, at Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University (FIU); Nathan Dodge, visiting professor at Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management; and Christine Toguchi, managing director at MacroVision Network Pte Ltd and project consultant for IHTER, the paper explores the insight, ideas and pertinent questions arising from the intellectual exchange that took place at the Visionary Leaders Roundtable at Pan Pacific Singapore last November. Presented by FASTBOOKING, ForwardKeys and Rainmaker, the roundtable brought together industry leaders from around Asia-Pacific who brainstormed ideas for revenue optimization that included, Driving Growth through Better Customer Insight and Analytics, Direct Distribution vs. Third-Party Options, and Optimizing Profits from Total Revenue Management among other relevant topics.

To download the white paper in English, please visit https://ihter.fiu.edu/what-we-do/white-papers/. For more info

About the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management

Florida International University's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management has been distinguished as one of the top hospitality programs in the United States. More than 2,500 undergraduate and graduate students from across the nation and around the world choose FIU for its outstanding reputation, advantageous campus locations, expert faculty, rich curriculum and fast-track career opportunities in the international hotel, foodservice and tourism industries. In August 2006, FIU unveiled the first U.S. school of hospitality and tourism in Tianjin, China. The Marriott Tianjin China Program is FIU's largest international program, with a capacity for up to 1,000 students. For more information about FIU's Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, visit http://hospitality.fiu.edu/.

Jia Zhu

305-919-4136

FIU
It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore).

Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net.

Go back to home
Malmaison, the iconic boutique hotel brand, announces the appointment of Garry Fortune as the new General Manager of Malmaison Liverpool. Fortunes new role will see him responsible for managing the day to day operations of the hotel, driving forward the business as well as overseeing the training and development of this team to continue to deliver the exceptional Malmaison experience. Prior to joining Malmaison, Garry held the position of Operations Director at West Tower Country House, where he was responsible for the day to day operations of the business. In 2014, Garry was appointed as the Head of Jockey Club Venues, where he headed up the group conference and events arm that operated across the Groups 15 racecourses nationwide including Aintree and Haydock Park on Merseyside.
Hilton Worldwide (NYSE: HLT) and Hamad Abdulaziz Almousa Trading Group today announced the signing of a management agreement to open Embassy by Hilton Riyadh King Fahd Road. Also signed is a management agreement to open DoubleTree by Hilton Dhahran  Al Qusur.

"We have been looking for the right opportunity to debut Embassy by Hilton in the region and believe Riyadh makes for a great fit," said Carlos Khneisser, vice president of development, Middle East and North Africa, for Hilton Worldwide. "Our strategy for growth continues to focus on quality projects, underpinned by strong brands and the best management expertise in the industry. With over 20 years of experience in Saudi Arabia, we are now operating or developing 38 properties with more than 85% of our pipeline under construction  remarkable progress that puts us at the forefront of the industry[1]."

Embassy by Hilton Riyadh King Fahd Road will feature 250 guest rooms and be conveniently located on King Fahd Road, in close proximity to the upcoming King Abdullah Financial District. Each of the hotel's 43 square metre rooms will feature a living room, bedroom and bathroom. Light, open and airy, the rooms have been designed with flexibility in mind, including movable partitions, providing openness or privacy as required for business and leisure travellers. In addition, Embassy by Hilton Riyadh King Fahd Road will offer a large multi-function meeting room with two conference rooms and a boardroom. The hotel will feature an all-day dining restaurant and lobby lounge. Other facilities include a spa, indoor pool, prayer room and salon.

Advertisement



Riyadh, traditionally a destination for business travellers, is increasingly popular with families staying for leisure purposes owing to its shopping malls, museums and historical sites. The capital city also expects to see its airport's capacity raised from 14 million to 25 million passengers a year once planned expansions are complete[2], making it a hub for travel to Saudi Arabia.

The newly announced DoubleTree by Hilton Dhahran  Al Qusur will offer travellers easy access to the Dammam industrial area, the downtown Khobar district and the Kingdom of Bahrain which is within driving distance. The hotel will feature 189 guest rooms and offer a business centre, salon and two swimming pools. Guests will be able to choose from a selection of dining outlets including an all-day dining restaurant, speciality restaurant, cafe and lounge.

"We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with Hilton Worldwide; in previous years we have signed agreements to open two hotels in Al Khobar," said Mr Hamad Abdulaziz Almousa, the owner of Hamad Abdulaziz Almousa Trading Group. "Embassy by Hilton is a firm favourite in the United States and with this signing, we look forward to bringing the brand to the Middle East for the first time."

"As part of the agreements reached, we are delighted to announce the debut of Embassy by Hilton in the region," said Bill Duncan, global head, Embassy by Hilton. "Featuring upscale, spacious guest suites, the brand has been adapted for the region with the Middle Eastern traveller in mind and we are confident it will appeal to this market."

Hilton Worldwide currently has 10 hotels operating in Saudi Arabia and is set to more than triple its presence in the country with a further 28 hotels under development, including Conrad Makkah which is set to open in Spring 2016. In December 2015, Hilton Worldwide announced the arrival of Hampton by Hilton to Saudi Arabia, with the first property confirmed for Riyadh.

The previously signed DoubleTree by Hilton Al Khobar  Corniche has been replaced with the signing of a management agreement for Hilton Al Khobar Corniche, a 359 guest room hotel expected to open in 2017.

[1] According to STR data from 31/12/15, Hilton Worldwide leads the industry with the highest number of rooms and hotels under construction in Saudi Arabia

[2] http://www.airport-technology.com/projects/king-khaled/




The Boss danced the night away during a gig in America

We all know Bruce Springsteen is a sweetheart, but now he has taking his gentlemanly reputation to the next level.

At a concert in Minnesota, Bruce beckoned the 91 year-old, Jeannie Heintz, on to the stage for some slow dancing. As 'Dancing In The Dark' echoed around the arena in St. Paul, the Boss laughed and joked with the life-long fan, before giving her a massive hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Advertisement

Apparently, this isn't the first time Jeannie has been on stage with Springsteen. In 2009, at the age of 84, she hoisted herself on stage to meet her idol. Fingers crossed this trend continues for years to come.
Fans can look forward to seeing Axel Boman, Ben UFO, Bicep, Dixon, Eats Everything, Horse Meat Disco, Joy Orbison and Roman Flugel and many more.

Love International, Croatias brand new summer festival, has announced the acts performing at this year's event.

Headliners include Axel Boman, Ben UFO, Bicep, Craig Richards, Dixon, Eats Everything, Gerd Janson, Horse Meat Disco, Hunee, Jackmaster, Job Jobse, Joy Orbison, Midland, Motor City Drum Ensemble, Prosumer and Roman Flugel and many more.

The festival is taking place across eight different amazing nightclubs from Wednesday, 29 June to Wednesday, 6 June. Warm, Sub Club, Tief, Resident Advisor, Just Jack, Horse Meat Disco, Futureboogie and Love International X Electric Elephant, will all be hosting the best dance and house music artists in the world

Advertisement

For more information click here.
Ben Stiller is back with one of his most beloved characters, The hapless model, Derek Zoolander. With input from from the films other actors, the director and star of Zoolander 2 discuss the creation of the much-anticipated sequel...

Blue Steel is back, baby. In the 15 years since we first encountered the razor-sharp cheekbones and world-stopping pout of model Derek Zoolander, director Ben Stiller has been hounded by fans demanding a sequel to the wacky 2001 satire. Hes finally given them what they want, with Zoolander 2 reuniting Stillers moronic Zoolander and Owen Wilsons free-spirited Hansel.

This time around, the dynamic duo are brought together by Interpol to investigate a series of assassinations. Meanwhile, Derek is also trying to become a good father to his son, and avoid the wrath of his nemesis, Mugatu (Will Ferrell). But the cult status of Zoolander and its obsessive fans notwithstanding, Stiller reveals that he was nervous that the sequel might end up disappointing fans.

That potential to fail is always there on a movie, he muses. I feel that every time we go out and make a film, its a crazy endeavour that you just hope comes together. But it was fun to have the challenge of going back into it and figuing out what we wanted to do.

Despite having been asked constantly over the past 15 years about the possible return of Zoolander and co., the actors admit that they werent completely sure that news of the sequel would be met with widespread enthusiasm. Not, of course, that they allowed that to prevent them from turning the announcement into a fabulous spectacle. Stiller and Wilson made a surprise appearance at Paris Fashion week, breaking out their catwalk struts and Magnum pouts at Valentinos show, held in the stunning Jardin des Tuileries.

That was a eureka moment, says Wilson of the Valentino event. Because we were backstage saying, Well, hopefully people are excited to see these characters again!

Advertisement

Stiller shared his co-stars nerves, admitting he wasnt sure how their appearance would be received by an audience of hardcore fashion fans, celebrities and models, who were litle more than toddlers when the original film came out.

Its a high pressure, intense situation! laughs Stiller. We really didnt know what the response would be  it was a surprise and nobody knew. Even the models in the show didnt know, so it was really weird.

Especially in fashion, theres no laugh track when you walk out there, so youre venturing into the unknown, agrees Wilson.

Videos of their catwalk cameo show a divided audience  half of the crowd are screaming with glee, while the other fashionistas stare in bemusement. In the end, however, theres no doubt that, as a publicity stunt, it worked...

One actress who was ecstatic to hear that Zoolander was returning to the screen was Penelope Cruz, who reveals that she had completely bought into the cult of the character, and his belief that, moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.

I didnt know what project Ben was calling me for, she explains. When he told me it was Zoolander I was so happy, because I really wanted to see the sequel. I saw the first one so many times that Id memorised the dialogue  I was one of those people.

The Spanish actress splays an Interpol special agent investigating the deaths of the worlds most beautiful people  among them Demi Lovato, Lenny Kravitz and Justin Bieber. Cruz, whose comic abilities won her a well-deserved Oscar for Vicki Christina Barcelona, enjoyed subverting the usual trope of being the straight woman.

Advertisement

I like that she looks like one thing, says Cruz. She seems much more conventional, like the smart one in the group  but then you find out shes more like them. Its fun.

Cruz confesses that she found it difficult to keep a straight face while working with Stiller, who as the lead actor and director, was often instructing the others  while sporting impossibly high architectural hair spikes, and skintight lame suits! Not to mention a certain, odd expression...

Hes always directing you, wearing the wig and in costume. Hes doing Blue Steel and he doesnt even know! laughs Cruz. And he can be very serious as a director. Hes a very strong director. Hes very sweet to everybody, but he can be serious. But him trying to be serious dressed like that? I was always laughing in his face! Me and everyone else!

Its not just Cruz who teases Stiller. Since first sharing a screen in The Cable Guy, Wilson and Stiller have co-starred in a dozen films over the past 20 years. They share a warm and witty shorthand, with Wilson taking great pleasure in gently mocking his friend. The director, who has recently been trying to break away from mainstream comedies, turning his directorial hand to subtler dramedies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, can become unexpectedly studious about his work  which earns him no end of ribbing from his co-stars.

Indeed, as Stiller soberly analyses Dereks transformation since the original film, referencing his brief stint as a hermit, Wilson laughs uproariously.

Dereks not nuanced! he interjects. He runs the gamut of emotion from A to B!

Nonetheless, Stiller persists with his thesis.

Advertisement

Theres a sweetness to Derek, an innocence, he states. But I think this film was a way to explore some other parts of his personality: him being a father, how hes dealing with ageing.

As for Wilsons Hansel, hes doing what he does best: engaging in wild orgies with a wide variety of genders and species, and working that feathered hair like no-one else. Wilson reveals that there was a certain amount of preparation and method-acting required to revive his bohemian characters spirit. I engaged in orgies, he deadpans, although I never got around to practising yoga.

The actors share a poignant moment when reminiscing about their hero, David Bowie, and his brief but unforgettable cameo in the original comedy. Wilson reveals that since Bowies death in January, his memories of the first film have been tinged with a certain sadness. For him, making a movie with the singer was a career highlight. That day he worked with us in Yonkers, he says, he was such a cool, lovely guy. We felt so lucky that he agreed to be in the movie. He had such a good sense of humour about it.

Zoolander 2 is in cinemas now.
The Donald

Regarding "Say no to Trump" (Page B13, Sunday), I would like to draw an analogy to the 1964 presidential race in which the results of the general election devastated the Republican Party. Many commentators have opined that Trump merely vocalizes what many in the Republican Party have been secretly thinking. In 1964, the Republican Party nominated Barry Goldwater, who was seen at that time as a hard-right candidate for president. Goldwater's positions during the campaign were seen as so extreme that Goldwater's campaign slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" was corrupted into the then-popular joke "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

In his speech to the 1964 Republican Convention accepting the GOP nomination against President Lyndon Johnson, Goldwater said "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation is no virtue." Henry Cabot Lodge, who had been Nixon's vice-presidential nominee in the 1960 election, (which Nixon/Lodge lost), felt wholly out of place among Goldwater's supporters at the 1964 GOP Convention and, while perusing a roster of Goldwater's supporters, said, "What in God's name has happened to the Republican Party? I hardly know any of these people."

At that 1964 convention, Goldwater forced through a resolution denouncing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, resulting in many moderate Republicans walking out in protest. Continuing to display his conservative bona fides, Goldwater denounced Social Security in a speech in Florida to a group of retirees. Johnson's campaign theme included the assertion that Goldwater's extremism might lead us into a nuclear war.

The voters in the general election soundly rejected Republicans up and down the ballot and handed the Democrats one of the largest landslides in history with 61 percent of the vote. Democrats finished the election with control of the Senate with a 35 seat margin and control of the House with a 155 seat margin, the largest majority in the House since 1936.

After the election, Columbia University's Richard Hofstadter, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian, asked regarding Goldwater, "When in our history has anyone with ideas so bizarre, so archaic, so self-confounding, so remote from the basic American consensus ever got so far?"

I submit that the present-day answer to that question is, "Today, Trump has got as far." I agree with the Chronicle that Trump should not be advanced further.

Milton J. Flick, Missouri City
Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print.

Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition.

If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create.
As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content.

When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to.

After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code.

IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS!

OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK

The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those.
DEAR READERS: Not surprisingly, weve been getting lots of letters about the Zika virus. In todays column, Id like to answer the questions that many readers are asking.

Where did Zika virus come from? Zika virus has been present for centuries in Africa. About 50 years ago it spread to Asia. So far as we know, it arrived in the Americas (primarily Brazil) only last year. That means that the vast majority of us in the Western Hemisphere have no immunity against it.

How does it spread? The virus is carried by mosquitoes, primarily one called Aedes aegypti. They pick up the virus when they bite a person who is infected with it. They spread it to other people when they bite those people. It is not clear that it can be spread directly from one person to another, as the influenza virus is spread when someone near you coughs, for example. There are a few cases in which the virus might have been spread by sex, but this appears to be very unusual.

What is the danger from catching this virus? That depends on who you are. Most of us, even those of us in the Americas, dont have any symptoms when we catch it. Some of us get aching joints, red eyes, fever and a rash, but its a mild, flu-like illness that typically lasts less than a week. Infection with the virus also may infrequently cause a nervous system disease in adults called Guillain-Barre.

But if you are a woman who is, might be, or might soon become pregnant, there is reason to worry. There is strong evidence from Brazil that when pregnant women catch the virus, there is a risk that their babies will be born with birth defects. The most serious of these is microcephaly  small heads and brains. (Several other infections also can cause this tragic complication of pregnancy.) Defects of vision and hearing may also occur.

Can I be tested for the virus? Currently, only very specialized laboratories, like those at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, can test accurately for the virus. Also, the tests are not perfectly accurate: They can both under-diagnose and over-diagnose the infection.

Are there treatments for the virus? As of now, there are no treatments, and no vaccines to prevent people from becoming infected. As you might expect, scientists all over the world are working to develop treatments and vaccines.

Has the virus come to the United States and Canada? So far, there have been only a few cases of Zika virus infection among people in the U.S. and Canada, and they all caught the infection in a country south of the U.S. The virus would become a serious threat to the U.S. and Canada only if it was carried by mosquitoes in those countries. So far, that has not happened.

So what should I do to protect myself? In tomorrows column, Ill address that question. Ill also talk about how we can better protect ourselves against other potential epidemics that might strike us.
Chestnut Global Partners Publishes 2016 EAP and Wellness Trends and Analysis Report Chestnut Global Partners' fourth annual report cites five emergent trends and their potential impact on workplace well-being, employee assistance, and benefits in 2016.

Posted by Press Releases on Wednesday, 03-02-2016 5:02 am

Currently 0.0/5 Stars.

1

2

3

4

5 0.0 from 0 votes

Bloomington, IL (PRWEB) March 01, 2016Chestnut Global Partners ( CGP), a provider of culturally-aware employee assistance and wellness programs to companies worldwide, today announced the 2016 Trends Report, which identifies the five top developments that will shape the EAP (Employee Assistance Program) and Wellness industry in 2016. The report is based on utilization patterns among CGP's user base, and a survey of its customers to gain insights and perspectives on the coming year.Top Five Trends:1. Increasing demand for EAPservices due to occupational stress. Users of CGPs EAP services in North America demonstrated higher levels of occupational distress in 2015. The number of EAP cases for occupational stress (job satisfaction, workload, co-worker conflict) was sixth on the list of top presenting concerns, breaking into the top seven for the first time since CGP began publishing information on EAP utilization data.2. More companies are seeking localized EAP services to serve gl...

Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web.

If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator.

Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue

Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue

Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile
Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you.

Send Email
Kaba Workforce Solutions to Exhibit at Alliance 16 in Seattle, WAKaba will demonstrate the integration capabilities of B-COMM, a time clock solution

Posted by Press Releases on Wednesday, 03-02-2016 5:23 am

Currently 0.0/5 Stars.

1

2

3

4

5 0.0 from 0 votes

MIRAMAR, FL (PRWEB) FEBRUARY 29, 2016Kaba Workforce Solutions is proud to announce that they will be exhibiting at the Alliance 16 Conference, Washington State Convention Center, March 6-9, 2016. With over 30 years of time tracking experience, Kaba will offer proven advice to attendees about integrating B-COMM time clocks into Oracle E-Business Suite, Human Capital Management, and PeopleSoft Time and Labor systems.B-COMM is a scalable, enterprise-class application that facilitates data flow from a variety of collection devices into Oracle Time and Labor systems. The B-COMM system is tested and approved through Oracles vigorous Validated Integration process.If you're attending Alliance 16, stop by booth #224 in the exhibition hall, to find out why over 1800 ERP customers have placed their trust in Kaba to safely deliver validated payroll data.About Kaba Workforce Solutions As an Oracle Alliance Partner, Kabas innovative data collection solution results in substantial time ...

Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web.

If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator.

Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue

Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue

Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile
The use of legal highs is on an upward curve in England, Scotland and Wales and the effects are worrying, with 129 deaths in 2014 where new psychoactive substances were implicated. For business, figures show that one third of employers see drug or alcohol use in the workplace as a problem, while half believe that private usage is affecting employees in their jobs. With alcohol-related sickness absences alone costing the UK economy over 1.9 billion a year, the fact that around 80 new legal highs were discovered in the country last year is becoming a growing concern for employers, too. ACAS has recently issued guidelines for employers on how to deal with the problem and new legislation banning the use of legal highs is due for introduction in April 2016. What are Legal Highs? Legal highs are defined as being any stimulant that is not banned by law. They can range from naturally found plants, to commonly consumed substances such as alcohol and coffee, to gases such as nitrous oxide. Over the past few years, concern is rising over a spate of synthetically produced chemicals that imitate the effects of common recreational drugs. As they cannot be legally sold for human consumption, they are often branded as types of incense, salts, or plant food. Ingredients described on the packaging are rarely what is included and these new legal highs have been directly linked to poisoning, emergency hospital admissions (includin...
Bullying is the incessant inappropriate behavior that undermines a persons right to dignity and respect at work. It can be committed by one or more persons and can be aimed equally at individuals or groups, in an attempt to make the victims feel inferior to other people or to gain an aura of faux-superiority. Bullying can take many forms. Examples include verbal bullying, physical bullying or, the now increasingly prominent, cyber bullying. The growth of cyber bullying has had serious ramifications on the wider American workplace. It is predominantly carried out through the medium of the internet on mobile phones or computers, using, but not exclusive to, social networking sites, email and texts. Bullying is perceived as an opaque concept that over sensitive people point to in the face of teasing or workplace banter. However, the realities of bullying in America cannot be understated; the effects are quite simply detrimental, not only to the mental and physical well-being of the everyday American employee but also equally to the productivity of any budding business. Examples of this deplorable practice are social exclusion and isolation, damaging someones reputation by purveying gossip or rumors, intimidation, use of aggressive or obscene language and repeated requests with impossible tasks or targets. In actuality, the effects of these venomous practices are drastic. Bullying stigmatizes the archetypal American employee and l...
Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-02 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/> CONTENTS [01] Greece shows Europe's humanitarian face, PM Tsipras tells Corriere della Sera [02] "Greece cannot be left alone with the problem," says Merkel [03] Marina Abramovic: Athens is culturally important [04] Google supports "Grow Greek Tourism Online" intiative [01] Greece shows Europe's humanitarian face, PM Tsipras tells Corriere della Sera ROME (ANA-MPA/Th. Andreadis)- "Greece and the Greek people show Europe's humanitarian face amid a crisis of humanitarian dimensions," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. "And it managed to do so in a Union that closes its borders, and xenophobia and the intolerant rhetoric of far-right are on the rise," he added. Tsipras underlined that "Greece is the point where Europe will ratify its founding principles and values, such as humanism and solidarity, or it will betray them. I am sure that there can be no united Europe without absolute respect to the common struggles and values, but also to the shared responsibilities and shared commitments. We must face the difficulties together. We will either succeed together or fail together." Asked what prevents the implementation of a coordinated strategy, the Greek prime minister replied: "We claim nothing more than solidarity, a fundamental principle of the EU. We claim the fair allocation of the responsibility among the member states. We must proceed with a decision, which is binding for all and by all, which concerns the obligatory, fair distribution of refugee flows in all EU countries, according to each one's capacity." [02] "Greece cannot be left alone with the problem," says Merkel BERLIN (ANA-MPA/F. Karaviti) - "Greece cannot be left alone with the problem," German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday said in an interview with Volksstimme newspaper. Merkel stressed the need for common European solutions which do not put pressure on one country and stated that nothing is achieved by closing the borders. On the contrary, the economy is set at risk, she said. "Greece was lagging behind as it is the case with other countries," the German Chancellor said, adding that the hotspots were not constructed on time and the reception centres for hosting 50,000 refugees were not ready by 2015 as it was agreed. Merkel also said that the images from the Greek-FYROM borders do not shock the people of Aleppo who are trying to save themselves from the bombs and the murderers of the Islamic State. [03] Marina Abramovic: Athens is culturally important Marina Abramovic gave an exclusive interview to ANA-MPA ahead of the cooperation between the Marina Abramovic Institute (MAI) and the Cultural Organisation NEON. She talked of her project called "As One" based on "Abramovic Method", combined with an extended programme of performance and intangible art. "First of all, I'm very happy to be in Greece, I'm especially looking forward to the collaboration of MAI [Marina Abramovic Institute] with NEON, because NEON and MAI share many similar goals  education is one of them, working in public spaces and the large participation of the public, " she said and added: "Here we are presenting the Abramovic method and also a very large group of Greek artists performing, which was completely new and different to what Greece is used to, because it is based on long-duration experience." Abramovic noted that Athens is very close to her heart. "I come from former Yugoslavia and we have a quite very similar culture. I always say I'm coming to Greece is like I'm coming home, but without the pain that I had in former Yugoslavia. And Athens is really important now culturally. I've been asked very often why we are here in Athens and why we're here in Athens at this moment and I think for the message of the artist and of art it is very important to choose the right time, right place and right public for the work to have a really successful impact. Right now, Athens is the right place, right time and right public to do this project together with NEON. It is not just that it is going to be the future house of Documenta, which is such an important manifestation every five years internationally, but it's also about building some kind of ground, a preparation field, for what will happen in the next few years in Athens. It is going to be a very important place culturally in the world map." She underlined that Greece is going through a difficult time and crisis, but Greece has been going through difficult times for centuries. "I mean, you're one of the greatest civilizations and I'm so impressed by how you deal with difficult times and crises, because somehow you always survive. And right now it's not just Greece; it's the whole world that is in a terrible situation. If Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States we're going to have even worse crises in the world. I think one thing for me is very important: What you do with art and how art can help in different times, because art doesn't really work in nature. Nature is perfect without us or anybody else. Art works in places where there are problems, difficult economic, cultural and social crises. There, art can actually connect people, open the spirits, change the consciousness, can do a lot of things. It cannot always give all the answers and it cannot always change the world, but it can help." "I have a very big and secret project in Greece which I don't want to share because I'm very superstitious like all Greeks. If you talk about a project early it may not happen, but it's a very big project that I want to do in Greece. But right now I'm really concentrating on the present and the NEON and MAI event is opening on the 10th, which is right around the corner and to me my expectation is how the Greek public is going to react to what we're going to present. The only thing that I can say is that we're giving 100 percent of ourselves into this project and it's up to the public how they're going to take it or not. I hope we're going to have a great collaboration, because we're working not just by presenting the work. We're not working with the public in a normal way like you go to the exhibition and the public is just a silent voyeur, where they look at the work and go home. We're actually working with the public. The public is our basic subject and object of this work. So the public has to take a completely active participation and I hope the public is emotional enough. The Greek public has great possibilities to see and experience this work," she concluded. [04] Google supports "Grow Greek Tourism Online" intiative Google announced at a press conference on Wednesday that it supports the initiative "Grow Greek Tourism Online." In cooperation with the Economy, Development and Tourism Ministry and the National Greek Tourism Organisation as well as the Greek Tourism Enterprises Association, Google announced the implementation of a free web education platform for tourism. Through a wide range of topics, the users will have the opportunity to be trained on how they will upgrade their presence on the web. Moreover, the users will be able to select an adapted education plan and receive a certificate by GGTO initiative and IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Europe. All local enterprises, tourism professionals and those who want to develop their potential offered by the web can be informed in detail by the education programmes available in their region via the official website of the initiative -greektourism.withgoogle.com. A group of Online Advisors educated by Google will travel in Greece to discuss with the local tourism businesses. Meanwhile, web searches under the name "Travel to Greece" increased by 19 percent in comparison with 2015 and 72 percent through mobile phones. However, the Greek tourist enterprises do not take advantage of the web's potentials provided that only 8 percent of the hotels and hosting accomodations use the web to accept reservations through their website. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article
Auckland International Airport worker who was fired last month amid reports of unexplained transactions totalling $1.8 million may actually have defrauded the organization out of much more.The indication comes as Employment Court Chief Judge Graeme Colgan issued asset freezing orders against the former employee, who failed to appear at the hearing."There is respectable evidence that investigations have discovered that the amounts at issue are larger than first thought and probably exceed that figure of $1.84m, he said.Judge Colgan limited the woman to a weekly allowance of $500  which can only be increased on application  and ordered her to disclose the full extent of her assets, both in New Zealand and overseas.While the name suppression was upheld, Auckland Airport did previously confirm that the former employee in question was not part of their executive team.The Serious Fraud Office is looking into the matter, and the airport has launched its own civil proceedings.
Crop economist Frayne Olson says prices wont stay low forever.

Even though weve gone through low prices before, Im going to argue this is different from the past, Olson told about 200 attendees of the Farming for the Bottom Line conference Tuesday at the Bismarck State College National Energy Center of Excellence.

Olson was one of several presenters at the conference, put on by BSC, U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Dakota State University Extension and the Area 4 Soil Conservation District Research Farm, offering advice about farming in the current low price environment. His advice: Lock in prices early because rallies wont last long.

Frayne said producers knew $7 corn or $15 soybeans wouldnt last forever but the prices fell further and faster than anyone expected. The reason was bumper crops.

In North Dakotas good years, droughts drove demand up past supply, which, in turn, drove up prices.

Weve refilled the pipeline very quickly, said Olson of three or four years of high production.

The U.S. is predicted to have 1.8 billion bushels of corn stockpiled going into this market year. Those numbers were 1.7 billion bushels in 2015 and 1.2 billion bushels in 2014.

And total use has been flat since 2013-2014. There are competing livestock feeds that sell for less and competing substitutes for corn used in ethanol production, along with a strong dollar making U.S. crops more expensive and less competitive on the world market.

Whats different in the market now compared to low price years in the 1980s is price volatility.

One hiccup and peoples attitudes change, Olson said.

Corn supplies are projected to increase from 12.6 percent to 13.6 percent stocks-to-use ratio, but compared to 60 percent in the 80s and other historical figures, the stockpile isnt that large.

Were rebuilding to levels I would consider normal, Olson said, and the U.S. goes through corn quickly, feeding more than 5 billion bushels in a year to livestock.

Soybeans are also coming off three years of record production, according to Olson, who said stockpiles have gone from 92 million bushels in 2014 to 191 million bushels in 2015 and an expected 450 million for the coming market year.

Weve had some really good production years, Olson said.

The country also is coming off record exports in 2014-2015 and exports for the coming year are expected to decrease 8.3 percent, raising stock-to-use ration from 5 percent to 12 percent. Again Olson argues, we can take these down quickly if a major change in the market were to take place.

For wheat, stockpiles have gone from 590 million bushels in 2014 to 752 million bushels in 2015 and an expected 966 million bushels in 2016.

This is not a production problem, Olson said of wheat, which is even more sensitive to exports and world markets than corn and soybeans.

Exports of U.S. wheat are forecast to decrease again to 775 million bushels. The last time it was lower was 1971-1972. Typically the U.S. is the top exporter of wheat, but, this year, it could be Russia, whose lower value currency makes it more competitive, Olson said.

Stockpiles of wheat are expected to go from a 37 percent stock-to-use ratio to 49 percent. The average is 30 to 35 percent, Olson said.

That can change in a heartbeat, Olson said, pointing to spring 2008 when spring wheat prices jumped to around $22 per bushel.

Olson said spring planting in North Dakota will be the most likely time if prices are to make a rally because that is when information will come in on harvest in other areas. He said, if weather or politics dont shock the system, prices are likely to stay put.

Picking a price point and putting in orders ahead of time will be the only way farmers can react fast enough to a rally, according to Olson.
Warning: The above video contains graphic footage.

Twenty charges of animal cruelty have been laid against a B.C. dairy farm and several employees, two years after a graphic undercover video of alleged abuse was given to the SPCA.

Six employees are each charged with causing distress to an animal, and failing to care for and protect an animal under the Protection of Cruelty to Animals Act, the society said in a media release Tuesday.

Advertisement

Four workers face an additional two charges related to lifting a cow by a chain, as well as kicking and hitting the animal.

Footage of the alleged incidents was collected using secret cameras as part of an undercover operation conducted by the animal-rights activist group Mercy For Animals.

The video, which made headlines across Canada, shows cows being punched, whipped and beaten with rods.

In one instance, one of the animals is hoisted up by a forklift from a chain wrapped around its neck and dragged out of its pen as a worker shouts, "Leave her like that."

Advertisement

Video was 'horrifying'

The farm's owner, Jeff Kooyman, said at the time the video was "horrifying to watch," while the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) called it one of the worst cases of farm-animal cruelty in Canadian history.

Kooyman and four other co-owners have each been charged with causing or permitting animals to be in distress.

The BC SPCA recommended charges in June 2014.

On Tuesday, Crown said the 20-month prosecution delay was "due to a variety of factors," including the number of potential perpetrators and "complexity" in assessing the evidence.

The SPCA said its happy to see action being taken.

We are extremely pleased that in addition to laying charges against the individual employees, Crown has also held the company and its directors accountable for this unacceptable treatment of the animals, said Marcie Moriarty, the society's chief prevention and enforcement officer, in the release.

Those charged under the PCA act face a fine of up to $75,000, two years in jail, and a lifetime ban on owning an animal.

Advertisement

Employees convicted under the Wildlife Act for the first time could face a maximum fine of $100,000 or a up to a year in prison.

With files from The Canadian Press

Also on HuffPost
People are waking up to the environmental dangers posed by single-serve coffee pods.

And Canadians, it appears, are among them.

The German city of Hamburg has banned single-use coffee pods from government buildings in an effort to curb waste, BBC News reported last month.

Advertisement

"These portion packs cause unnecessary resource consumption and waste generation, and often contain polluting aluminum," said a guide accompanying the new policy.

Hamburg is believed to be the first city to ban the pods.

The plastic containers fit in coffee machines that poke holes in the pods, fill them with water and serve coffee in cups placed beneath them.

Keurig manufactures machines that do single-serve coffee using pods. The pods used in its machines are known as "K-Cups." (They are not sold in Germany.)

Advertisement

In 2014, Mother Jones reported that enough of the company's cups were produced the previous year to circle the equator 10.5 times.

News of Hamburg's ban came as Keurig's Canadian sales fell by 23.4 per cent in the past year, Global News reported.

One of the reasons cited for the drop was Canadian concern about waste.

However, Western University marketing professor Niraj Dawar says it's unlikely that jurisdictions in Canada would ban the containers altogether, Yahoo! Finance reported.

But he also said Keurig should be paying attention to consumers who think their products are wasteful.

A statement from Keurig Canada said that the company takes the recyclability of K-Cup pods "very seriously," and it has set a goal for itself to make 100 per cent of its pods recyclable by 2020.

Advertisement

The company has two kinds of pods made with polypropylene plastic, which is recyclable in many communities across Canada.

Its "K-Carafe" pods, which can be used in the Keurig 2.0 machine, can be recycled, and so are its BOLT pods.

UPDATE: March 2 -- This story has been updated after receiving a statement from Keurig Canada.

Also on HuffPost

Wake Up Without Coffee See Gallery
The interim leader of the federal Conservatives has come out in favour of gay marriage as some in her party push for a policy shift on the issue.

Rona Ambrose made her position known during a Twitter town hall event Tuesday, where she was asked in both French and English about marriage equality.

Advertisement

Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose asks a question in the House of Commons on Feb. 18. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP)

With an #AskAmbrose hashtag, the official Opposition leader was able to pick and choose which questions to answer  perhaps adding some significance to her choice to engage on that particular topic.

She confirmed her support for same-sex marriage in both languages.

Advertisement

That position signifies a change for the veteran Tory MP, who was first elected in Edmonton in 2004.

Voted against same-sex marriage a decade ago

Ambrose voted against same-sex marriage legislation introduced by the Liberal government of former prime minister Paul Martin in 2005. The historic bill passed with the support of most Liberals, New Democrats, and Bloc Quebecois MPs, making Canada the third country in the world to recognize gay marriage.

While most Tories voted against legalizing same-sex marriage at the time, a handful broke party ranks, including former MPs Gerald Keddy, James Moore, and Jim Prentice.

Current Liberal agriculture minister Lawrence MacAulay was among those Liberal MPs who voted against the bill.

Advertisement

Voted to revisit issue

Shortly after forming government in 2006, Conservatives reopened the debate with a motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage without affecting civil unions and while respecting existing same-sex marriages.

Ambrose supported the motion, which ultimately failed by a vote of 175-123. Twelve Tory MPs, including then-cabinet ministers Peter MacKay, John Baird, Prentice, and Lawrence Cannon, voted against it.

That vote in December 2006 effectively ended the debate. Harper did not bring in legislation targeting same-sex marriage, even after winning a majority government in 2011.

Tories call for change to policy

But now some grassroots Tories want the party to change its official policy on the issue.

In late January, a group called LGBTory  comprised of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Conservatives  wrote Ambrose to seek her support for their push to change the partys declaration on same-sex marriage at the spring convention.

The policy, last reviewed in 2013, says that Parliament, not the court, should determine the definition of marriage.

Advertisement

"We support legislation defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman," it reads.

The group said the policy infringes on the legal rights of gay people and turns away potential voters.

"The Conservative Party welcomes all conservatives, regardless of sexual orientation."

Ambrose told CBC News in a January statement she would support such a move.

"I've been clear for a long time that the Conservative Party welcomes all conservatives, regardless of sexual orientation," she said. "If you believe in smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets and individual freedom, we want you in our party."

A group of Alberta Tories have also adopted a resolution calling for the two lines about same-sex marriage to be deleted from the partys social policy section.

Tory MP Michelle Rempel told The Canadian Press that she voted in favour of the motion and was optimistic it would be debated at the Conservative policy convention in Vancouver this May.

"It's a very positive thing and something that's been very positively accepted,'' Rempel said.

With files from The Canadian Press

Advertisement

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Neve Campbell's biggest fear? President Donald Trump.

The Ontario-born actress from "House of Cards" and "Scream" is no stranger to dark politics or horror stories, but said she's "terrified" by Trump. And she's moving back to Canada if he wins the election, she told The Huffington Post UK on Tuesday.

Campbell's not the first celebrity to threaten to flee the country if The Donald becomes POTUS. Canada may get a lot more star-studded should Trump's political rise take him all the way to the White House.

Advertisement

Stars from Whoopi Goldberg to Al Sharpton to Rosie O'Donnell have said they'll leave the United States if Trump gets elected.

Raven Symone said her whole family's coming with her to Canada should a Republican become president. And we can hold out for Cher and Jon Stewart, who have both said they wouldn't just leave the U.S. but Planet Earth itself, if Trump takes the Oval Office.

Samuel L. Jackson, too, said he'd move to South Africa "if that motherf***er becomes President."

Trump's sons told Fox News, "those are the greatest endorsements ever." Check out the whole video below.

Advertisement

Also on HuffPost
Spring is quickly approaching and it won't be long before prom season arrives!

If you're looking for a truly unique prom dress that will stand out among the many others, why not consider making your own? In the video above, With Wendy teaches us how to make a gorgeous flowing chiffon gown with a customizable lace-up back that's perfect for your special night.

Advertisement

Wendy says this dress is simple to make, and notes that you can make it in any colour you choose. It's also perfect for weddings or any other formal occasion for that matter. To make it a bit more casual, Wendy suggests simply keeping the dress shorter.

To get started, head over to Wendy's website for additional information about the dress and the materials she used. Then, follow the full video tutorial above. Let us know how your dress turns out, and be sure to check back next Wednesday for more DIY fashion With Wendy.

Wendy Liu is a Toronto-based DIY fashion guru. If you love her amazing DIY tutorials as much as we do, head over to her blog With Wendy or subscribe to her YouTube channel.

Advertisement

Follow Huffington Post Canada Style on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter!

Also on HuffPost
The Liberal government's retooled strategy on the so-called Islamic State is widely acceptable to most Canadians, a new poll suggests.

According to numbers from Abacus Data, released Wednesday, 70 per cent of Canadians accept, support, or strongly support the plan announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his key ministers last month. Less than one-third oppose Canada's changing role in the effort to eradicate ISIS.

Advertisement

The numbers could give a boost to Liberals who have been accused by Conservatives of taking a "shameful" step back by ending airstrikes against the terror group in Iraq and Syria. The revised Grit plan will instead triple the number of military forces training local Kurdish troops on the ground and increase humanitarian aid.

(Photo: Abacus Data)

Unsurprisingly, those who voted Liberal in the fall are the most enthusiastic about the plan with 90 per cent of supporters expressing favour. But 78 per cent of NDP supporters also back the new strategy  posing a potential problem for NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair who vowed to completely end Canada's involvement in the fight against ISIS and has blasted Trudeau's plan as an "enhanced combat mission."

35 per cent of Tory voters back plan

And it seems Conservative voters aren't as bothered by the change as one might imagine, as well. Thirty-five per cent of Tory voters said they supported or accepted the new strategy.

Advertisement

Interim Tory Leader Rona Ambrose has consistently lambasted Trudeau for ending the bombing mission, calling the decision a "betrayal" of Canada's allies, its military history, and the government's obligations to keep Canadians safe.

Conservative MP Kellie Leitch, who is a mulling a run for the party leadership, said last December that Liberals were making Canada look like "cowards" on the world stage.

But when Abacus Data provided respondents with more information about the plan  including details about increasing training and ending the bombing mission  support for the new role jumped by nine percentage points overall.

And, among Tory voters, opposition to the strategy dropped 10 points.

(Photo: Abacus Data)

Though Trudeau has faced accusations of incoherence when it comes to ISIS, Abacus suggested in the poll summary that the numbers point to a "growing measure of confidence" that he has come up with a credible plan. And some of the more pointed jabs against Trudeau, it seems, aren't landing.

Advertisement

The poll was conducted online among 3,824 Canadians between Feb. 19 and 25. Abacus says a random sample of panelists were invited to take the survey from a "larger representative panel of Canadians." The margin of error for a similar survey is 1.6 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
As the latest round of grant applications for conservation projects were received Tuesday, members of the states conservation fund board aim to assess them with a critical eye.

Were going to be careful we dont overcommit, said Jim Melchior, chairman of the Outdoor Heritage Fund Advisory Board.

Anticipated state dollars for the fund this biennium have been reduced by half.

Karlene Fine, executive director of the North Dakota Industrial Commission, said 30 applications totaling $8.5 million in requests were made for North Dakota Outdoor Heritage Fund dollars. She said a few more may come in by mail in the coming days.

A new forecast released last month estimates there to be $13.4 million for the fund, down from last years estimate of $27 million. Outdoor Heritage Fund dollars come from a portion of the states oil and gas gross production tax revenues.

So far this biennium, more than $6.13 million has come into the fund, nearly $800,000 less than what previously has been approved for projects.

Fine said the $4.4 million approved in June 2015, the final grant round of the 2013-15 biennium, are to be funded by dollars from this biennium as they become available. An additional $2.5 million was approved in December for the first grant round of the current biennium.

They will look at them and have to prioritize, Fine said of the board members who are expected to meet the third week of April.

After this grant round is complete, two more for the biennium are scheduled. The deadlines for the remaining grant rounds are Nov. 1 followed by May 1, 2017.

The fund is intended to provide money for conservation projects and to provide public access to outdoor recreation areas.

Information on projects and the fund can be found at the Outdoor Heritage Fund link at www.nd.gov/ndic.
We're thrilled to welcome @mirandakerr as the newest face of #JoeFresh for our Fall 2016 campaign. Follow @JoeFreshSnaps on #Snapchat for live updates from set .

A photo posted by Joe Fresh (@joefresh) on Mar 2, 2016 at 9:29am PST
Support for a national inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women is widespread among Canadians, but skepticism permeates that bureaucracy will snarl hopes for an effective outcome, according to a new poll.

Angus Reid Institute released polling data Wednesday noting 79 per cent of Canadians surveyed are generally supportive and strongly support a national inquiry. But within that segment, 48 per cent say theyre pessimistic it will lead to meaningful action and change.

Advertisement

Breaking the data down across the country, support is highest in central and eastern Canada. That trend tapers somewhat moving west. Those against a national inquiry is highest in Alberta, at 40 per cent.

Overall, the results suggest a bump in public support in the last two years in favour of a national inquiry  but drop one percentage point since last summer.

Seventy-three per cent of Canadians said they were in favour of an inquiry in 2014; 80 per cent in 2015.

Advertisement

Those who said they were pessimistic held a general concern the inquirys recommendations would not be followed, let alone implemented, Angus Reid noted in a release.

The survey was conducted among a representative randomized sample of 1,515 Canadians between Feb. 22-25. The margin of error is 2.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The poll arrives on the day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is scheduled to meet with indigenous leaders in Vancouver to discuss climate change.

The Native Womens Association of Canada (NWAC) did not respond to a request for comment about the survey before publication.

Advertisement

Its time to move forward  out of the darkness and into the light.

Last month, the NWAC made a list of 22 recommendations to guide the inquiry. Among its suggestions included it be led by indigenous women under a human rights framework.

The group also emphasized a need to examine sociological root causes as to why indigenous women are prone to sexualized stereotypes.

The Western patriarchal paradigm paints Indigenous women as vulnerable; unworthy of value or respect. We know better, NWAC president Dawn Lavell-Harvard said in a statement.

Its time to move forward  out of the darkness and into the light.

Addressing Canadas national shame

Developing an inquiry into a sociological phenomenon called a national shame in Canada is a top priority to to Indigenous and Northern Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett, as outlined in the prime ministers mandate letter.

But some high-profile voices have come out to give heed to federal officials charged with the task of building the framework for a national inquiry.

Advertisement

Bernice Catheway, whose daughter Jennifer has been missing since 2008, weeps after receiving a blanket during a healing blanket ceremony at the 2nd National Roundtable on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Winnipeg Feb. 25, 2016.

Former B.C. attorney general Wally Oppal, who led that provinces own inquiry into the systemic failings that allowed serial killer Robert Pickton to prey on women for years, warned the new Liberal government to not duplicate efforts his commission made.

I would think that if you're going to have an inquiry, you don't need to have one of the type that we had, where the police were cross-examined for endless days because one of our tasks was to find out what the police did wrong during the Pickton years, Oppal told CBC News last year.

Oppal was criticized by some Pickton victims families for failing to be inclusive of their voices. The province has also faced backlash for failing to implement the 63 recommendations made in his 2012 report.

Advertisement

Federal officials must talk to communities, he said.

In 2014, the RCMP released a groundbreaking report saying indigenous women are more likely to be victims of violence than any other demographic of Canadian women.

That report noted 1,181 cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women in police records; 164 of which were labeled missing persons cases, the remaining: homicide.

Mounties updated their findings last year, tying a stronger connection between murders with family violence.

At a press conference in Ottawa last month, Bennett commented the actual scope of missing and murdered cases is way bigger the nearly 1,200 cases reported by the RCMP.

The minister addressed reporters after the consultations with families of victims formally wrapped. She added that the pre-inquiry phase exposed her to emotional testimonies, as she expected it would.

Advertisement

I think that if you are truly doing this job well, you need to be able to bear witness to that pain and you need to be able to empathize without losing yourself in the grief, she said.

With files from The Canadian Press

Also on HuffPost:
We are so excited to show you a new product made of #Pinatex created by the designer @taikkabags ! #sustainablefashion #veganfashion #Innovation #fashion #london #taikka #ecofabric #ecofriendly #ecolo #leatheralternative #AnanasAnam #carmenhijosa #greenfashion

A photo posted by Pinatex (@pinatex_official) on Feb 12, 2016 at 9:24am PST
Who would have thought the action of a former member of Stephen Harper's inner circle could draw praise from Rick Mercer?

The CBC comedian tackled the weighty subject of electoral reform on the Rick Mercer Report Tuesday, making special note of something astounding that happened last week.

Advertisement

First, he brought up a group called Every Voter Counts, an organization with the singular goal to advance the calls for a fair voting by ditching the current first-past-the-post system.

... kind of like Darth Vader sitting down with the Ewoks to fight climate change.

Then he folded in the shock of Guy Giorno, Harpers ex-chief of staff, adding his name to those keen on changing the current electoral system for proportional representation.

Just to be clear, Stephen Harper's chief of staff sitting down with the Ed Broadbent people is kind of like Darth Vader sitting down with the Ewoks to fight climate change, Mercer said.

I don't know what this means but I kinda like it. Smart people, political rivals coming together with one goalimprove our democracy, he continued. These are very interesting times indeed.

Advertisement

The previous Conservative government rejected calls to hold a referendum to change Canadas democratic process. Giornos advocacy is a significant departure from his party line. Mercer described the issue as the Green Party's all-time favourite fantasy.

Last year, interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose warned the Liberal government to be very careful with the idea of making significant democratic changes.

In November, Trudeau tapped MP Maryam Monsef as democratic institutions minister charged with handling electoral reform.

Recently, the rookie politician conceded that there are some advantages to the countrys current voting system, but added that a mature democracy, such as Canada, can do better without reopening the Constitution.

Advertisement

Also on HuffPost:
Empty shelves in empty aisles, now the stores are dead and gone ...

Robert Motum doesn't plan on turning the fall of Target Canada into a "Les Miserables"-like musical, but he is making it into an immersive theatre performance that could debut as early as this year.

Motum is the mind behind "Community Target," a play about the workers who were left behind when the company abandoned its northern ambitions in 2015, The Toronto Star reported.

Advertisement

The play, created in concert with Toronto-based Outside the March Theatre Company, would give voice to the estimated 17,600 people who lost their jobs, and who were under a gag order as stores were closing.

"Many of them are really excited to share the stories they weren't able to a year ago," Motum told the newspaper.

Immersive theatre works differently from regular stage works, as audiences partake in the production by having actors perform with and around them.

Advertisement

Motum hopes he can stage the play in one of the vast, empty retail spaces that Target left behind, Maclean's reported.

"I'm thinking of it as a sort of coming together after the storm for the employees, to hear their stories and create a community hall type of environment  a town hall of experience based around these stories," Motum told the magazine.

The creator said he's heard heartbreaking stories after interviewing former employees. He recounted meeting one woman who was three months pregnant, and found out she was being let go when she was only five minutes before arriving at work.

Nevertheless, ex-staffers seemed to have remained loyal to Target and have no regrets about working there.

Advertisement

"There really was this love for the Target brand, a love for the Target culture," Motum said.

"Community Target" is still in development, and Motum hopes to host sneak peek previews in August.

Related on HuffPost:
Lawmakers at the state Capitol debated a bill that would restrict companies from using angel funds for investments in out-of-state companies.

Members of the interim Political Subdivisions Taxation Committee questioned Tuesday the return on investment for the tax incentive program. Some would like to see increased reporting requirements on angel fund investments.

Paul Lucy, economic development and finance division director for the North Dakota Department of Commerce, reported that, from 2011 to 2014, investments totaling $41.3 million have been made by 116 companies through the program.

Sixty-one of the 116 companies identified themselves as North Dakota-based companies. Of the out-of-state companies, 18 have an operating presence in North Dakota.

The angel fund investment tax credit is available to all income taxpayers. A taxpayer can claim 45 percent of the amount to each angel fund each taxable year, capped at $45,000 per year with a lifetime limit of $500,000 in credits.

Rep. Craig Headland, R-Montpelier, said he was concerned angel fund groups are organizing and investing in businesses that would have been invested in anyway.

People are taking advantage of a very generous tax credit, Headland said.

Lucy said requirements include that an angel fund must be organized with the intent of investing in at least three primary-sector non-publicly traded businesses with strong growth potential.

We encourage them not to abuse the program, said Lucy, adding that groups are informed of legislative intent.

Sen. Dwight Cook, R-Mandan, said the Legislature might want to consider requiring the Department of Commerce to provide reports each biennium.

Rep. Mike Nathe, R-Bismarck, agreed. He said he wasnt against investments being made in out-of-state companies as long as we get some benefit, adding that that doesnt appear to be happening currently.

Cook and Nathe agreed to work with North Dakota Legislative Council on amendments to the draft bill outlining reporting requirements for the Department of Commerce.

Chairman Tommy Kenville, chairman of Valley Angel Investment Fund LLC, countered that angel funds are key incentives to investors, some of whom hes spoken to who would otherwise have invested in other states.

Kenville said the angel fund he chairs began in 2006, the first in North Dakota. Currently, about $1.29 million is spread between 12 investments, with a focus on startup businesses. Eight of them have offices, staff or other ties to the state.

To date with the tax credits included, four of our investments have failed, four are alive but on oxygen and four are cash flowing with two having a potential of some type of return down the road, Kenville said.

Twenty of the 28 investors in the group are from North Dakota and did so because of the tax credit, according to Kenville, adding that continuing the tax credit would spur further entrepreneurship in the state.
Josh McCulloch via Getty Images Cranes and towering skyscrapers shape the Vancouver Skyline, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

I've been thinking for some time about what it is that makes conversations about growth, urban planning and development proposals so hard in Vancouver. But It's not just a Vancouver problem.

Recently in Calgary, Mayor Nenshi cancelled future public meetings for a new transit project because a "community group" was spreading misinformation to residents of the community, leading to serious conflict at public open houses. Clearly, this is a case of a few bad apples spoiling the whole bunch.

Advertisement

As Nenshi pointed out in the Calgary Herald, We need to hear from citizens about what's important to them. But the actions of a few citizens have made it impossible to do that in a traditional face-to-face common."

For new developments being proposed in both Vancouver and Calgary, information is typically put forward by the developer and the city to communities. But now, we're seeing community groups releasing their own information to residents. The motive is to try to increase opposition to the project.

In a city struggling to keep up with its own growth and many other factors contributing to housing affordability, we need to be able to have open, factual discussions.

I believe this is a dangerous trend as people are signing petitions and providing feedback at public open houses based on inaccurate information that is not prepared by professionals, industry experts or city staff.

Advertisement

Below is a comparison of images -- the top one is from this project website, depicting architectural renderings of a proposal. On the bottom are three images used at various points by NIMBY residents to "illustrate" how bad the proposal would be for the neighbourhood while asking people to sign a petition against the project.

The No Towers group claims to have 3,500 signatures on their petition. I wonder how many people are aware of the details of the actual proposal?

So, what is this evil developer actually proposing?

The development, if approved, would be 12-storeys tall. It would be located across the street from an existing 13-storey apartment building. The project is a partnership between Boffo Properties and the Kettle Society, and combines non-profit space for the Kettle and 30 below-market supportive housing units with approximately 200 homes and retail space. The new development will provide a new facility for the Kettle to continue to offer housing, employment, advocacy and mental health services to those in need of help in the community.

While this is just one local example, the trend of community groups trying to hijack new developments with misinformation is a serious cause for concern. It makes community consultation much harder, creates an "us v. them" mentality and clouds the actual facts at hand.

Advertisement

Self-interested groups posing as community representatives are creating roadblocks while hypocritically criticizing the effectiveness and motives of the actual community consultation conducted by the city and the developer.

In a city struggling to keep up with its own growth and many other factors contributing to housing affordability, we need to be able to have open, factual discussions about new developments so that we can work together to create a truly livable city for everyone.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST
Stuart Dee via Getty Images Canadian flag with maple leaf replaced by marijuana leaf.

The Canadian cannabis community has launched a formal "Parliamentary e-petition" which outlines an eight-point path for legalization. Main points include an immediate end to cannabis arrests, including personal cultivation within legalization, and allowing Canadian farmers to harvest cannabis resin.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has sponsored the petition, and we received over 6,000 signatures in our first week online. People can keep signing up until June 9, 2016.

Advertisement

Right now our petition has the 4th most signatures. We'd like to get 50,000 signatures in total. This would give us more support than any other online petition, and keep the pressure on the Trudeau government to act quickly, stop arrests, and get going on legalization.

Check out the details below, then please click here to sign the petition!

The Parliament Petition has eight key points, four of which can happen right away, and four that could take a year or so to put into place.

The first four points, which should happen right away, are:

1. Repeal the prohibition on possession and personal cultivation of cannabis.

This the most important first step and could be done very quickly. We are calling for the Liberal government to immediately stop all arrests for personal possession and for growing cannabis for personal use. There is no need to keep busting people with a bag of cannabis or a few plants when legalization is just around the corner.

2. Repeal Section 462.2 of the Criminal Code, which bans literature and harm reduction devices like waterpipes and vaporizers.

Advertisement

Unbelievably, bongs and waterpipes are still banned in Canada, and stores still get raided by police for selling these items. (See here, here and here for example.) Books which promote the use of cannabis are also still banned. It makes sense to repeal these silly laws right away.

3. Permit patients or their designated grower to provide medical cannabis as recommended by a physician.

This third point is related to the recent court decision which has reaffirmed the right of patients to meet their own medical needs by growing their own cannabis as recommended by a physician. We don't want the government to appeal this decision, and instead to act quickly to ensure that patients can keep growing their own cannabis as needed.

4. End police raids against community medical cannabis dispensaries, and enable their municipal regulation, as per the position of the Union of BC Municipalities.

There are hundreds of community medical cannabis dispensaries opening in cities and towns across Canada. Generally they are operating openly without problems, but in some areas the RCMP has been threatening them or launching raids. Many cities are licensing these dispensaries, but the federal laws are unclear.

Advertisement

The Union of BC Municipalities has asked the federal government to confirm the power of cities to license and regulate dispensaries, and we support that move happening right away.

The next four points are things which we want the Liberals to put into place within one year.

5. Completely end the prohibition of cannabis, by removing it entirely from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

To truly end cannabis prohibition, cannabis needs to be removed entirely from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. Laws and regulations around cannabis should be similar to the laws around alcohol, tobacco, food products and herbal medicines.

6. Allow farmers to harvest and sell the cannabinoid-rich resin from their plants, as per the recent resolution of the Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance.

Canadian farmers already grow large amounts of cannabis, mainly to produce seeds for food products. These farmers also produce large amount of CBD-rich resin which they are forced to destroy.

Advertisement

7. For those convicted for a cannabis offence under the CDSA, on a case-by-case basis: Grant a full pardon and amnesty for past offences, expunge criminal records and release all prisoners currently serving time.

Ending cannabis prohibition must also make right the mistakes of the past. When we legalize cannabis we must not forget those who are still in jail now for cannabis, or the many Canadians with cannabis criminal records. We want a quick and easy process for Canadians to apply to have their cannabis criminal records expunged.

8. Permit Provinces, Territories and First Nations to decide how they want to tax, regulate and distribute cannabis as needed.

This final point is that we don't want to see a restrictive federal program in place for cannabis. Like alcohol and tobacco, legal cannabis falls mainly under provincial jurisdiction. We want to see the provinces, municipalities and first nations being responsible for regulating the sale of cannabis.

Advertisement

This will also open up the possibility of different systems, enabling different regions to experiment with different models as we figure out the best model for legal cannabis.

For more information, visit http://legalizepetition.ca
Andrew Harnik/AP Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump shields his eyes as he listens to a question as he speaks on Super Tuesday primary election night at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

I'm not a psychologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I have read enough pop psychology and watched enough episodes of Oprah and Dr. Phil to know that there has to be an easy explanation for the political phenomenon that is Donald Trump. One explanation that comes to mind is the Kubler-Ross model that describes the five stages of grief.

Back in June of last year, when The Donald announced his candidacy, the common reaction among the commentariat and the Republican cognoscenti was denial. Few believed his announcement was real and those who did acknowledge it insisted that his campaign wouldn't last long.

Advertisement

As the months passed, party insiders and conservative pundits entered stage two: anger. How could this happen? Why was he actually leading in the polls? Who was Trump to turn everything upside down and deny traditional Republicans their rightful chance at the presidency? And how could he be so cruel as to make Jeb Bush cry?

It's not entirely clear whose death is being accepted. If it's the demise of the Republican Party, that may be a good thing. If it's the end of America, then it's probably not.

Then came the bargaining stage. Maybe if we just adapt and refine our policy positions a bit, thought some, Trump will go away and someone like Bush or Rubio or Christie will come to the fore. If we promise to bomb ISIS more or be tougher on illegal immigration or temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country, Trump will withdraw from the race and all will be well again.

In December, depression -- the fourth stage -- took hold as Republican insiders recognized the mathematical possibility of Trump actually winning the nomination. Instead of waning, he was actually gaining in poll after poll. Conservative commentators grew sullen and silent as they mourned the passing of their early erroneous predictions.

Advertisement

With the advent of the new year came the final stage -- acceptance. Party insiders and media types alike finally started rationalizing their positions and accepting the inevitability of Trump being the Republican presidential nominee.

What was initially deemed impossible, unthinkable and unacceptable is now considered likely and maybe even OK.

You can see it in the words of some party faithful who now say Trump's positions make sense and really aren't that bad. You can see it in someone like CNN's Erin Burnett who apparently drank the Kool-Aid before praising Sarah Palin's generally incomprehensible Trump endorsement speech. You can see it in those who now say that at least Trump is not Ted Cruz.

Or as former McCain-Palin adviser Nicolle Wallace observes, you can see it among members of the Republican establishment who now say that Trump "would refine and recalibrate his proclamations in a general election or as president."

The Kubler-Ross model presupposes that acceptance is a good thing. Accepting your own death or the death of a loved one is a healthy and liberating step. In the case of Mr. Trump, however, it's not entirely clear whose death is being accepted. If it's the demise of the Republican Party, that may be a good thing.

Advertisement

If it's the end of America, then it's probably not.

Next week we'll examine how the psychological concept called the Stockholm syndrome (or capture bonding) may help to explain why many Americans empathize with the man who has kidnapped their hearts and brains.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
ASSOCIATED PRESS A woman looks at the closed doors of a money-transfer service in Nairobi, Kenya Wednesday, April 8, 2015. The Kenya government said Wednesday that it was freezing the accounts of a list of companies and individuals identified because of suspicious transactions, with the list including some money-transfer services dealing in remittances to Somalia. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

By Liam Swiss

On the cusp of the first budget of the second Trudeau-era, Canadians still await a clear indication of how the new Liberal government will engage on foreign aid and development. There have been encouraging signs: more aid to the refugee crisis; more aid to climate change adaptation; a relaxing of the adversarial approach to civil society. Still, what stamp the Liberals will place on Canadian aid and its role in our foreign policy remains a matter for speculation.

Advocates have argued for more aid, better aid, and moving beyond aid. Certainly, all such aims have their merits, but one area in the 'beyond aid' context that has received less attention is the matter of remittances.

Advertisement

Unlike many forms of aid or investment, remittances have the potential to rapidly affect the lives of those who receive them.

What is a remittance? Simply put, the process of sending money internationally from Canada to a friend or family member in a foreign country. Globally, the flows of remittances have grown substantially in recent years. Even with a projected slowdown in 2015, the World Bank recently predicted total remittances to 'developing countries' would exceed $435 Billion USD. To put it in context, official development assistance/foreign aid in 2014 was estimated at just over $135 Billion USD globally.

The growing gap between remittances and official aid is a telling indicator of why so many in the international development community are increasingly interested in the potential of remittances as an alternate form of financing for development. Unlike many forms of aid or investment, remittances have the potential to rapidly affect the lives of those who receive them. Surveys in several African countries show, for example, that remittances are used for everything from everyday essentials like food and shelter to starting a businesses or education fees.

Remittances certainly are not guaranteed to end up in the pockets of the poorest. Unlike aid, there is no set of conditions on remittances that require them to be spent on combatting poverty or 'development'; but emerging evidence from across the Global South suggests that remittances can play a key role in doing so. By linking communities and families in their home countries to the resources generated by migrants globally, a key foreign source of income is introduced into society.

Advertisement

In Canada, remittances to low- and middle-income countries have grown significantly over the past decade. Estimates from the World Bank suggest that remittance outflows from migrants to Canada topped $5.6 Billion USD in 2013 (see Fig. 1), and that total remittances from Canada to low- and middle-income countries exceeded that amount significantly (see Fig. 2).

With the extent of remittances likely to grow further, Canada needs to explore ways in which our support for development globally might build on these resources. As a private flow of funds, governments have limited opportunities to leverage remittances use for development finance.

Still, as others have argued (here & here), there are ways Canada could take innovative steps to both facilitate and amplify the effects of remittances in low- and middle-income countries.

Advertisement

First, Canada can do more to make its Budget 2015 promise to facilitate access lower-cost means through which to send remittances abroad a reality. World Bank research and databases show that the costs of sending remittances vary widely, with the highest costs of sending remittance often experienced when remitting to sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.

The costs of sending money to the highest volume remittance countries from Canada also vary widely, with 2015 estimates suggesting rates higher than eight per cent for China and Vietnam or around five per cent for the Philippines. Considering the scale of remittances to these countries, these costs amount to hundreds of millions of dollars taken from the hard-earned Canadians and other immigrants.

The new Canadian government should continue efforts to reduce the cost of remittances to reduce this burden, and in a sense, increase the amount available to remit. Whether through regulating sending costs or implementing tax credits to offset fees for remittance to low- and middle-income countries, Canada should do more to facilitate remittances, wherever their destination.

Second, Canada should look to amplify the remittances its residents already send abroad to low- and middle-income countries. This would serve to increase: (1) incentives to remit, and (2) the level of remittance flows. Some form of matching remittances to eligible low- and middle-income countries would go a ways to achieving this amplification.

Many remittance receiving countries have tried to incentivize and channel remittances in this way, most notably a program in Mexico where the government matched remittances on a 3 to 1 basis, providing $3 for investment in local infrastructure for every dollar remitted. International organizations have also experimented with matching on the recipient side to encourage the use of remittances for development. Indeed, a recent study shows that remittance matching holds promise as a means to channel resources towards education.

Advertisement

Immigrants and diaspora groups in Canada make a central contribution to the Canadian economy and society.

To amplify remittances, Canada could fund low- and middle-income countries to establish remittance matching programs; and even target those programs to specifically leverage remittances from Canada. Such a program could be managed through Canada's foreign aid program with little difficulty. Likewise, the Canadian government could implement personal incentives through tax credits or matching grants to increase remittances by private individual remitters. Such programs could increase remittances from Canada to families and communities in receiving countries looking to expand development financing.

Central to increased support for remittances is a willingness by Canadians and our government to relax the conditions and expectations we sometimes place on our limited foreign aid funds. Increasingly, evidence from around the globe suggests that cash transfers with little or no conditions are put to good use by individuals and businesses in developing economies.

Do not get me wrong, we should not replace aid with increased support for remittances. Instead, Canada should look to supplement and diversify its support for development globally by allocating new resources to support remittances. Beyond government interventions, there is potentially a role here for community groups, associations, and NGOs in Canada to mobilize attention to the importance of remittances to development and to further expand the base of remittance funds sent from Canada in the future.

Immigrants and diaspora groups in Canada make a central contribution to the Canadian economy and society. As the level of remittances shows, in many cases, they also continue to contribute to the economic and social development of their home communities and countries. As a means of expanding Canada's support for development beyond aid, the government should look to work with Canadians and migrants alike to facilitate and amplify this increasingly important source of development finance.

Advertisement

(For more data on Canadian remittance flows click here)

Liam Swiss (@liamswiss) is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Memorial University. He researches and teaches about foreign aid, gender and development.

The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of CCIC or its members.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
NICHOLAS KAMM via Getty Images Canadian Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau arrives to give a press conference in Ottawa on October 20, 2015 after winning the general elections. AFP PHOTO/NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

So much carbon; so little time. It is true globally and it is true for Canada.

From Canada's early entry as a climate action leader -- hosting the world's first international scientific climate conference in 1988 -- until today, most governments have played for time. Stalling tactics and procrastination, two steps forward and one step back, have typified climate strategies. True, most countries in the European Union have met and exceeded their Kyoto targets. But Kyoto targets were understood at the time, back in 1997, to be only a down payment on future action. And shamefully for the last 10 years, Canada has provided cover for other countries to do less, knowing that its aggressive sabotage would excuse its own shrinking ambitions.

That can change on March 3, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sits down with the First Ministers to talk about climate change.

Advertisement

We have no time left for procrastination.

But meanwhile, scientific evidence is mounting that the rapidly accelerating threat of climate destabilization exceeds terrorism as a threat to global security. That global understanding -- that failure to act to limit global average temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degree Celsius above what it was prior to the Industrial Revolution could spell the end of human civilization -- drove 195 governments to negotiate a binding legal treaty in December 2015 at the Paris climate talks.

When I asked a leading IPCC scientist how much safer 1.5 degrees Celsius was than 2 degrees Celsius, he replied that if we wanted a reasonable probability of avoiding seven- to eight-metre sea level rise, we should avoid going above 1.5 Celsius. That order of sea-level rise will occur if we lose the Greenland ice sheet. Similarly, loss of the Western Antarctic ice sheet would result in a seven- to eight-metre sea level rise.

We have no time left for procrastination. The Paris Agreement does not include binding targets and instead adopts a global goal of avoiding more than 1.5 Celsius warming while definitely holding temperature to no more than 2 Celsius. At the time of the Paris negotiations, the aggregate of all national targets -- if achieved -- would take the planet's average temperature to somewhere between 2.7 and 3.5 C. The Paris Agreement sets up a system for repeatedly ratcheting up national goals against a backdrop of frequent global stock-taking. In other words, our only enforcement mechanism is peer pressure.

For the Trudeau administration, the clock is ticking loudly. Canada has still not replaced the weak target of the previous government. The Liberal platform promised a national plan, based on provincial consultations, within 90 days of the Paris talks, which is March 12.

Advertisement

Trudeau and Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna deserve huge credit for progressive negotiating positions in Paris. And it is noteworthy that since 1988, there have only been two First Ministers' Meetings dedicated to climate -- both since Trudeau took office. The first was the week before the Paris talks; the second is March 3. What can we expect?

The First Ministers must set aside narrow self-interest to endorse a new and more ambitious target for Canada. Other countries will feel the pressure from Canada's increased target. Peer pressure will feed ambition. The global market will respond by increasingly betting on renewables and the future economy.

Federal leadership is needed. Provinces refusing to do more should meet generous willingness from other governments to take up their slack. Canada will be expected to sign the Paris Agreement at a high-level signing ceremony on April 22, Earth Day. We must not show up with the weakest G7 target, the one left behind by the Conservatives. Time is running out for climate action and for Liberal promises.

This article first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on Feb. 29.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

After some rather minor tinkering with one part of the CETA free trade deal with Europe, our new Liberal government is now saying the deal could be signed, ratified and in force by 2017.

Not so fast.

There is still much to be concerned with here. But we can still fix what's wrong, and not just with CETA. The announcement Monday proves that.

Advertisement

By announcing changes Monday to what we had been told was a done deal, Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland has acknowledge that a trade agreement can, in fact, be modified in the face of massive public opposition and mobilization.

When the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, was announced in October 2013 by the former Harper government, its investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS) soon became a political hot potato for the governments of Europe. Their citizens said the ability of corporations to sue government for hurting their profits would damage their democracies and prevent governments from passing the laws their people want.

That set off a round of talks to review the ISDS provision, resulting in the deal we saw announced this past week. During the process, government officials tied themselves in knots trying to convince the public that this was all part of a standard legal scrub of the CETA trade text, when in fact it amounted to backroom re-negotiation.

The notion that a "signed deal" isn't really a "done deal" casts a negative light on the credibility of trade negotiations, most of which are conducted in secret.

Advertisement

None of the ISDS reforms really change much in the deal. Corporations can still sue governments over public policy decisions they don't like. Worse, none of the changes announced touch on many other concerns with the deal itself -- including the right of governments to direct procurement purchases toward Canadian companies (to ensure government spending helps Canadians as much as possible), threats to supply management and phantom advances in auto exports.

Increasingly, the public is becoming uneasy with the power trade deals give to corporations to decide the kinds of policies their countries can pursue.

In auto, CETA contains provisions that Canada can export more cars to Europe. Which sounds good, except we already have a large auto trade deficit with Europe of more than $5.3 billion -- they sell $5.6 billion worth of cars into Canada, while we export only $269 million. That's because the cars Europe makes are attractive to Canadians -- luxury brands such as BMW, Mercedes and Audi -- while Canada makes great vehicles that are not geared to the European market.

CETA won't change that.

The real lesson from Monday's announcement, in fact, is that public opposition and political mobilization can change things. The idea that trade deals should give more rights to privileged private investors is actually on more unstable ground than free trade advocates like to admit.

Increasingly, the public is becoming uneasy with the power trade deals give to corporations to decide the kinds of policies their countries can pursue. In Europe, with CETA, the Europeans found themselves in the midst of a major political backlash thanks to ISDS. Because of that, after a little more than two years, the deal was tweaked.

Advertisement

That's good. That shows that with enough political and public opposition, we can fix what's wrong with a deal.

And not just with CETA. There are similar ISDS concerns with Canada's deal with China, and with the Trans Pacific Partnership, which Freeland signed recently and intends to bring before Parliament for ratification.

Again, let's not rush into anything. In light of the changes announced Monday, we need to question why Canada would agree to a strong investor state dispute system in one deal, the TPP, but not in another deal, CETA. And, how can Freeland say there's no more room to negotiate in TPP, when we just renegotiated a done deal in CETA?

On Monday, Freeland proved that we can, in fact, fix a problematic trade deal. All that's needed is sufficient public and political opposition, and a mobilized effort to push for changes.

Like CETA, opposition is growing to the TPP, a trade deal that threatens 20,000 good jobs in the auto sector alone. The deal has virtually no support among any of the main contenders to become the next U.S. president, a reflection of the unease with the deal among the American electorate.

Advertisement

That looks like an opportunity. If we can change CETA, we can change the TPP.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
Daisy Gilardini via Getty Images Sockeye salmon also known as red salmon, migrating upstream to go spawn (Oncorthynchus nerka)Adams River, British Columbia, Canada

The salmon farming industry has long been banned in Alaska, where it's believed to be a threat to the state's healthy wild salmon populations.

But that's not the case in Canada, where Norwegian-owned aquaculture multinationals have done a terrific job of winning over the federal government.

Advertisement

These controversial corporate citizens are largely to blame for the gradual dying out of Canada's most famed fish. So says the Canadian scientist, TV personality, and leading environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki.

During the Harper administration, Suzuki bluntly referred to the federal government as "corporate cheerleaders" for the aquaculture industry in a conversation with this article's author. And nothing has really changed since the swearing-in of Canada's new Liberal government.

It's hard to argue that Dr. Suzuki is wrong, especially since Canada's federal government and its B.C. provincial counterpart actively promote salmon farming. They even go so far as to use Canadian taxpayers' dollars to subsidize the business operations of Norwegian-owned fish farms in B.C.

This unholy alliance may help explain why it's still legal for salmon farms to unintentionally become ambush sites for juvenile salmon migrating out to the open ocean.

Advertisement

By way of explanation many open-net pens are located directly within the narrow aquatic pathways used by these wild salmon. This exposes passing wild salmon to devastating lethal threats -- ones they've historically never encountered before.

First, these unnecessarily close encounters can infect wild salmon with exotic diseases that overwhelm their immune systems, leading to a slow death.

By the federal government's own estimates, a diseased salmon farm containing one million fish can shed as many as 650 billion viral particles an hour. And these deadly pathogens become biological booby traps for wild salmon.

Second, these defenceless fish can also be exposed to hoards of blood-sucking, flesh-eating sea lice (see the image above) as they pass by fish farms. Such hazards have been linked by scientists to the unnatural deaths of millions of wild salmon each year.

Advertisement

Even B.C.'s aquaculture industry has grudgingly conceded that sea lice from salmon farms can be harmful to wild populations.

But this multibillion-dollar industry continues to downplay this problem, as well as the ugly implications of contagious disease outbreaks at its 130 or so floating farms.

In fact, there's absolutely nothing to worry about, according to Canada's federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It, too, refuses to acknowledge that infestations of sea lice originating from open-net pens play any significant role in the demise of wild salmon.

In spite of this, some of Canada's most iconic salmon runs have been decimated in recent years while Canadian politicians look the other way. In fact, as few as 15 per cent of the predicted numbers of salmon returned to their spawning grounds in 2009. And some subsequent years have been nearly as dismal.

As recently as 2015, there was even a ban on commercial and recreational fishing on Vancouver's Fraser River due to alarming low salmon numbers.

Advertisement

Such realities attest to the fact that this river's once-prolific sockeye numbers have for the past two decades experienced a sustained decline.

Canada's federal government and the B.C. provincial government have largely ignored the inquiry's 75 recommendations for change.

Notably, the beginning of this precipitous downward trend coincided with an ominous development: It was the introduction in the early 90s of large-scale salmon farming to the migratory coastal routes used by wild Fraser River salmon. So says internationally-acclaimed salmon biologist Alexandra Morton.

The gradual disappearance of so many sockeye from the Fraser River eventually led to a three-year federal government judicial inquiry. Known as the Cohen Commission, this $25 million investigation involved several months of hearings in 2011, involving testimony from 179 salmon experts and stakeholders. It subsequently involved the assessment of three million pages of evidence.

A final 1,000-page report was published in late 2012 by Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, the head of the inquiry. It conceded that salmon farms may indeed be playing a role in the wild species' crisis. And it asked for a freeze on any new salmon farming operations along the migratory routes of wild salmon until 2020.

Advertisement

Commissioner Cohen's chilling reasoning for his request for a moratorium on increasing the salmon farming industry's footprint in an ecologically sensitive waterway was explained as follows:

"I therefore conclude that the potential harm posed by salmon farms to Fraser River sockeye salmon is serious or irreversible."

Cohen also joined Dr. Suzuki in questioning the loyalties of the federal government.

Cohen concluded, "As long as [the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada] has a mandate to promote salmon farming, there is a risk that it will act in a manner that favours the interests of the salmon farming industry over the health of wild fish stocks."

As of early 2016, Canada's federal government and the B.C. provincial government have largely ignored the inquiry's 75 recommendations for change.

Will our new government choose to act on Cohen's findings? Will Justin Trudeau's commitment to greater environmental stewardship lead to more protection for our wild salmon? Only time will tell.

Advertisement

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
yelo34 via Getty Images Queen's Park or General Legislature of Ontario

Last week, the Ontario Liberals unveiled the province's budget for 2016. By now, we have all heard the headline regarding free post-secondary tuition for low income families -- a budget line the Ontario Association of Food Banks fully supports.

With education, comes opportunity. This budget line comes at an essential time as post-secondary students are one of the fastest growing users of food banks in this province. There is not a college or university campus in Ontario without a food bank, and the struggle to make ends meet doesn't end on graduation day.

Advertisement

Young people are leaving college and university with enormous amounts of debt, and entering an ever changing job market, which unfortunately is abundant with precarious, part-time jobs that start at minimum wage. In Ontario alone, there are 1.7 million jobs that are considered insecure. Working for minimum wage with no benefits and an unpredictable work schedule makes it incredibly difficult to pay down student debt, and cover the basic costs of living.

As the job market continues to contort and contract through the shifting of jobs, wages, and stability -- there is a growing voice, a growing question -- how do we make sure people across this province have the means to eat, to live, to thrive?

Hidden inside Budget 2016 is a very short paragraph that could potentially have a very big impact on Ontarians.

Social services are stretched so thin already, that we simply cannot continue at this pace. Food banks are struggling to fill shelves and freezers as the cost of food rises dramatically, and the Canadian dollar remains weak.

Advertisement

How can we ensure that Ontarians are able to meet their most basic needs?

Hidden inside Budget 2016 is a very short paragraph that could potentially have a very big impact on Ontarians. On page 132, Chapter I: Building Prosperity and Creating Jobs, there is a promise to start evaluating the possibility of a Basic Income Pilot:

"The pilot project will test a growing view at home and abroad that a basic income could build on the success of minimum wage policies and increases in child benefits by providing more consistent and predictable support in the context of today's dynamic labour market. The pilot would also test whether a basic income would provide a more efficient way of delivering income support, strengthen the attachment to the labour force, and achieve savings in other areas, such as health care and housing supports."

In the 1970s, this concept of a guaranteed basic income was tested in a small town in Manitoba.

Between 1974 and 1979 in the rural, farm town of Dauphin, social assistance was replaced with monthly payments that ensured all residents, whether working or not, received at minimum a livable wage. Critics argued that this would incentivize residents to stop working and rely solely on the government's dime.

While there was a slight reduction in the town's workforce, it was focused on two demographics: young mothers and high school students. Women stayed home longer to take care of newborns before returning to work, and teens were able to focus on studies instead of finding jobs to help support their families. But for the most part -- people continued to work.

The fears and stress of wondering how to make each dollar stretch dissolved.

Over these five years, doctor and hospital visits declined, high school graduation rates increased, and mental health and well-being of the citizens improved as people felt secure and stable knowing their most basic needs could be met.

Advertisement

The Dauphin experiment ended with a change in government. Few remember it, and no one seems to talk about how this small town, if only for a few years, ended poverty.

The Government of Ontario has made a big promise here. By putting in writing the plan for a Basic Income Pilot, they are making the commitment to this province to at least try, and we all must hold them accountable to their promise.

A guaranteed or basic income has the potential to even out the playing field. If every family has the means to put a roof over their heads and food on the table -- think about what the future holds.

A poverty-free Ontario is possible. If the most basic needs can be met for all of our citizens, think of the costs saved on our over-burdened health care system. Think of the improvement in the overall quality of life. Think of the potential. Think of the what ifs.

It's time to end poverty, and the implementation of a guaranteed basic income could be the first step in creating a truly fair Ontario.

Advertisement

Erin Fotheringham is the Senior Coordinator of Operations and Government Relations at the Ontario Association of Food Banks

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

ALSO ON HUFFPOST:
daboost via Getty Images Mixed Palestine and Israel flag, three dimensional render, illustration

Being brought up in the mainstream Jewish community, I went through nine years of Jewish day school, five years of Jewish sleep-away camp and countless hours of Israel advocacy training.

I know first-hand the pressures that exist to conform to groupthink around Israel and its centrality to conventional Jewish life in Canada.

Advertisement

It started from the time I was a toddler, when I was instructed to put coins into a donation box to "redeem and reclaim the Land of Israel." It continued through elementary school and junior high school, with textbooks about the Arab-Israeli conflict that failed to mention the word "Palestine" or contain any reference to Palestinians.

I was taught that the Jews are the singularly most oppressed people throughout history. Jews are the eternal victims, and there was no escaping this.

By the time I entered university, I was psychologically primed to fear that around every corner stood an anti-Semite. I had been socialized to regard criticisms of Israel -- which challenged what I was brought up to believe -- as personal attacks on my identity.

It took years of grappling emotionally with the undeniable facts I was confronted with about Israel's transgressions to eventually lead me to where I am today. This transformation (which is not uncommon amongst Jews of my generation) was only able to happen -- however reluctantly -- because of my willingness to wrestle with my beliefs.

Advertisement

I understood this to be a core part of my identity, following in a rich tradition of Jewish thinkers who pursued truth as an ethical obligation and stubbornly debated with those holding differing views.

I eagerly reached out to my rabbi at the time, excited to engage him in the age-old Jewish ritual of constructive debate. Instead, there was a total unwillingness to discuss these urgent moral issues in the open. I contacted other rabbis in the community and, not surprisingly, their reactions were almost identical.

Rather than debate these issues or merely discuss them openly, the Canadian Jewish establishment has preferred to bully Canadian individuals and organizations into silence.

It may come as little surprise that the marginalization of dissident Jewish voices pervades the entirety of organized Jewish life in Canada. From Jewish community newspapers and community centres, to the organizations purporting to speak on behalf of Canadian Jews, engaging in reasoned debate on the issue of Israel and Zionism simply cannot happen.

There is no organization more hallowed in mainstream Jewish communities around the world than the Jewish National Fund (JNF). European Jews founded the JNF in 1901 with the goal of establishing a Jewish state in historic Palestine. Despite successfully achieving its mission in 1948, rather than disbanding -- as esteemed Israeli scholar Gershon Gorenberg and the Haaretz Editorial Team believe should have happened -- the JNF was re-purposed.

Advertisement

The fledgling Israeli state regarded the JNF as a useful vehicle in the ensuing process of expropriating the lands of exiled Palestinians. The JNF quickly re-branded itself as an organization tasked with planting trees and with "making the desert bloom." Its fundraising branches abroad -- including in Canada -- obtained charitable status, and the Israeli organization became a significant source of donations to the Zionist cause.

What the JNF fails to disclose to its unsuspecting donors is that most of the forests and parks it established as part of its "reclamation" efforts cover over the ruins of depopulated and demolished Palestinian villages -- 89 villages to be exact.

The JNF refuses to acknowledge the historical presence of these villages, which its projects have erased from both space and consciousness. It continues to "reclaim" land at the expense of the native inhabitants.

Its branch in Canada, known as Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF Canada), funded the flagship project "Canada Park," which covers over the village sites of Deir Ayyub, Yalu and Imwas, and lands belonging to Beit Nuba.

The latter three villages are located entirely within the West Bank, which is considered Occupied Palestinian Territory under international law and official Canadian policy.

Advertisement

The truth about Canada Park and the JNF has been hidden from mainstream Jewish community discussions. Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) has been barred from renting space at Jewish Community Centres across the country due, in part, to our opposition to the JNF's practices.

We have offered to engage JNF Canada in a public discussion or debate on two recent occasions. When the Global Justice Committee of the First Unitarian Congregation in Ottawa decided to screen the film Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund, it invited both JNF Ottawa and IJV to participate on a panel. IJV agreed, while JNF Ottawa's executive director declined.

In an email to a Unitarian congregant, the director noted: "As you may or may not know, the Independent Jewish Voices is not a Jewish organization, but rather is funded by anti-Semitic groups as a means to create divisions within our very small community."

A few years earlier, in his column (p.25) in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, JNF Ottawa's former President referred to "a soup" of Palestinian human rights organizations -- including IJV -- as "Jew-hating."

Of course, baseless and defamatory allegations such as these -- coupled with manipulation of the term "anti-Semitism" to discredit those who seek to expose the truth about Israel's behaviour -- are desperate and unethical tactics.

Advertisement

Despite such attacks, IJV once again reached out to JNF Ottawa, this time to engage in a debate with a Palestinian from Imwas who will be touring Canada for IJV. Not surprisingly, we received no response.

Last summer, it appeared that a breakthrough had occurred when Canadian Jewish News (CJN) columnist Mira Sucharov quoted me in her column challenging the JNF.

The JNF was immediately given space to respond and predictably diverted attention from the facts. Former Israeli ambassador to Canada Alan Baker had a response to Sucharov's piece published as well, which focused exclusively on Canada Park even though Sucharov's piece had made no mention of Canada Park.

IJV contacted the CJN's editor asking for a response to Baker's piece to be published as a guest column -- preferably by Palestinian-Canadian Ismail Zayid from the village of Beit Nuba.

The CJN never bothered correcting the record for its readers: that the premise for Baker's piece was erroneous. Nor did the CJN publish a brief letter to the editor by IJV Toronto chapter representative Sheryl Nestel, offering a different perspective on the issue, which made mention of the plight of the dispossessed Palestinians.

Advertisement

This is in line with the CJN's editorial policy, openly reaffirmed by editor Yoni Goldstein in the September 2014 issue: "From time to time, members of IJV's leadership team have requested editorial space in the CJN to explain their point of view. We have ultimately declined, because even though we promote inclusion as a virtue, there are limits to how inclusive we're willing to be. Abetting BDS and rejecting Israel's future as a Jewish state crosses the line."

IJV supports BDS as a tactic of last resort to put pressure on Israel's regime of apartheid, since Western governments refuse to pressure Israel to comply with international law. We also see this tactic as reflective of Jewish traditions of social justice and standing in solidarity with the oppressed.

Rather than debate these issues or merely discuss them openly, the Canadian Jewish establishment has preferred to bully Canadian individuals and organizations into silence by repeatedly utilizing the term "anti-Semitism" to quell legitimate criticism of Israel.

The recent anti-BDS motion in the House of Commons, championed by the Israel lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), is a prime example.

IJV has offered to publicly discuss or debate the issue of BDS with CIJA, who have refused to respond to our numerous overtures. Even the Canadian International Council (CIC) got the silent treatment from CIJA after asking CEO Shimon Fogel to participate in a public session on the issue.

Advertisement

As my last commentary on HuffPost Canada argued, Israel's future as a Jewish state requires the denial of equal rights to the over 20 per cent of the population that isn't Jewish.

With a viable and contiguous Palestinian state now off the table, millions of Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation without basic rights, under what is effectively one state of institutionally enforced Jewish supremacy.

The longer we delay discussion on these crucial moral issues in the Jewish community and in wider Canadian society, the more difficult it will be for us to extricate ourselves from Israel's ongoing project of colonization.

Dealing with the facts will be uncomfortable, but the alternative spells deepening militarization and ultra-nationalism for Jewish-Israeli society, and perpetual discrimination, insecurity and dispossession for Palestinians.

Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook

MORE ON HUFFPOST:
Allison Pearson The Washington Post via Getty Images

Novelist Allison Pearson today claimed EU membership may lead to UK women being scared to smile in the street for fear of provoking sexual assaults from migrants.

Speaking at a Voices for Britain event in Westminster, the author of the bestselling 'I Don't Know How She Does It' argued the New Years Eve sex assaults in Cologne were a warning of what Europe may have let themselves in for. 

Advertisement

Ms Pearson, who writes a column for The Telegraph, also claimed the rate of migration to the UK had help cause a maternity crisis as foreign-born women tend to have larger families.

Referring to the mass sexual assaults in Germany on News Year Eve, Ms Pearson said: The cloud of official denial over the horrifying events of New Years Eve finally lifted to reveal 821 offences against women, ranging from sexual assault to gang rape, all committed by up to 1,000 men of Arab or North African appearance.

Mass sexual attacks, unprecedented in modern Europe in history, make me ask What does it mean for a liberal Western society, which values the rights of women and gay people to admit hundreds of thousands of young men from countries that dont share those values'.

The code of conduct  this is marvelous  issued to women in Cologne to protect themselves against attacks said to be careful about smiling in the street lest it be taken for a sign of sexual availability.

Advertisement

That made me shudder, I dont want my daughter and her friends to grow up in a world where smiling in the street means that youre up for it. It was a warning of what Europe may have let themselves in for.

Allison Pearson

More than 1,000 men were reported to have carried out the assaults on New Years Eve across Germany, with three allegations of rape in Cologne and two allegations in Hamburg.

Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers called the attacks "a completely new dimension of crime", while the citys Mayor, Henriette Reker, described the events as "monstrous".

Of the 58 arrested in connection with the attacks, 25 were Algerian, 21 were Moroccan, three were Tunisian, three were German, two were Syrian and one was Iraqi.

Advertisement

Just three of the 58 suspects were refugees, local public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer confirmed.

The European Commission refused to link the crimes to the ongoing refugee crisis sweeping into Europe, with Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans telling the cabinet: These were a matter of public order and were not related to the refugee crisis  according to minutes of the meeting.
A state audit says the North Dakota Health Department stored thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses at incorrect temperatures or without temperature data over the past two years  and that some of the vaccine was administered to patients. The health department disputed the audit released Tuesday. Tim Wiedrich, who heads the agencys virus response, says no non-viable vaccines were given to patients. The state analysis said nearly 2,000 Moderna doses were stored at incorrect temperatures and were administered to patients. The audit also found nearly 13,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccines were issued from storage with missing temperature data. Neither the Health Department nor the auditor's office is recommending revaccination.
Prime Minister David Cameron makes a statement announcing the date of the EU referendum outside 10 Downing Street in London after a Cabinet meeting to discuss his newly-secured reform deal. Lauren Hurley/PA Wire

The Tory war over Europe has exploded dramatically once more after a Cabinet minister attacked a Government study of Brexit as a dodgy dossier.

The official document, which is due to be published on Wednesday, warns that "Britain would be weaker, less safe and worse off outside the EU.

Advertisement

It claims that all the alternatives to EU membership - such as those currently used by Norway, Switzerland and Canada - would harm the UKs trade, jobs and security.

Iain Duncan Smith

But in his bitterest attack yet on David Camerons tactics, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith lambasted the claims by the 'Remain' in the UK campaign.

With the EU referendum due to take place on June 23, he compared the document to Tony Blairs infamous dodgy dossier claiming Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Advertisement

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted today that the assessment was a "hard-headed analysis of the facts of what life would look like outside the EU.

The study of the various options, which the Government is required to produce under its own Referendum Act, finds that in every case "huge numbers of British companies with supply chains in Europe would suffer.

Philip Hammond

A Norway-style deal with Brussels would fail to stop immigration, a Swiss deal would mean no control over EU rules and a Canada-style trade plan would take years to complete and inflict damage on the City of London, the document concludes.

It also warns finds the option that would offer the cleanest break with the European Union - reverting to World Trade Organisation rules - would lead to huge new tariffs on UK exports to the EU, leading to rises in food prices for shoppers.

Advertisement

Mr Duncan Smith, who was backed by former Chancellor Norman Lamont and former welfare minister Esther McVey today, was vitriolic about the latest Government attempt to influence voters.

"This dodgy dossier wont fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU, he said.

"The truth is, we wont copy any other countrys deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms - and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. Thats the safer choice."

Mr Hammond said: "Hard-headed analysis shows that every alternative to remaining in a reformed EU would leave Britain weaker, less safe and worse off.

"Working people would pay the price with fewer jobs and rising prices. Our special status gives us the best of both worlds: in the parts of Europe that work for us, but outside those that do not.

Advertisement

It is for them to spell out a credible picture of life outside the EU, Mr Hammond told Radio 4s Today programme this morning. That is completely missing. They are offering us nothing, he said, adding the Government was analysing the evidence of whether EU arrangements with non-members countries worked for Britain.

Our conclusion is they wouldnt, he said.

Questioned why David Cameron had said before his deal the UK could survive outside Europe, Mr Hammond said: No-one is saying we would be in some terrible situation, but the Leave campaign has to explain how they would deal with these trade-offs.

It is not credible to say you would have continued access to the single market without having to accept free movement of labour, without having to accept EU regulations, and without having to contribute to the EU budget.
Britain First's lack of real-world popularity has been laid bare during a mosque protest in which only around five supporters showed up.

Deputy leader Jayda Fransen, a flimsy cross and a handful of burly, silent men staged the hapless demonstration outside the East London Mosque in a drizzly Tower Hamlets.

Fransen was unfazed by the lack of support as she declared "it's good to see so many people have turned up" while looking around at a mostly empty pavement.

Advertisement

She continued: "I'm out here doing God's work peacefully. I'm saying to you 'turn away from the false prophet and embrace the saviour Jesus Christ."

The 'protest'

Turning to a policeman on the scene Fransen said: "Is it in your job description to mock a Christian who is preaching in the street?"

Advertisement

Despite claiming to represent "traditional British Christian values", in January Britain First was denounced by every major Christian denomination in the UK.

Representatives of 14 churches and Christian groups variously described the political party as "extremist", "self-serving" and "blasphemous" and condemned its actions as "hi-jacking the name of Jesus Christ to justify hatred and spread fear".
Warning: This article contains images and details which some may find distressing

Migrants living in the Calais 'Jungle' are sewing their lips shut in protest of the treatment they have received from French authorities.

At least five men held a silent demonstration on Wednesday as bulldozers cleared the makeshift homes for a third consecutive day.

Migrants hold up banners in the Calais Jungle as riot police standby pic.twitter.com/iO2iiRH9US  Tom Pugh (@Tom_PughPA) March 2, 2016

Advertisement

Near to the protest, a fight broke out between a knife-wielding man and another migrant in front of a crowd.

The scuffle ended when the suspected victim ran into the crowds, away from the man holding a small kitchen knife around five inches long.

A migrant was pictured holding a knife

Migrants and refugees who have fled war, poverty and persecution looked on as bulldozers dismantled shacks and piled belongings into containers.

Advertisement

The men who were protesting held banners that asked where their freedom and human rights had gone.

One banner read: "I left my country and I came here to find my human rights but unfortunately I have found NONE."

Another read: "Where is your democracy? Where is our freedom?"

Article continues below pictures:

Calais migrants sew their mouths shut See gallery

French CRS riot officers armed with tear gas, batons and riot shields stood by as the protest was held peacefully.

Elsewhere, a shack went up in flames as clearance continued at the camp, which is home to around 4,000 migrants and refugees, many of whom are intent on reaching Britain.

One migrant, a 22-year-old man from Darfur, Sudan, who declined to be named, said the French authorities have treated them like "animals".

He said: "One of the reasons to go to England is because you can see what life is like for us in France. We have been in this camp living like this for six months.

Advertisement

"We have been treated like animals. We know that we are not above the law but what they are doing is very aggressive."

In an effort to halt the slow tear-down, some people sat on top of the flimsy homes as banks of CRS officers watched the crowds in the camp's southern area.

Local government official Vincent Berton said France was focused on finding a better solution for the migrants and refugees, particularly the children.

He said the operation to clear the Jungle's southern section would last three weeks. And the overall aim was to halve the population size of the sprawling site to around 2,000.

He told the Press Association: "We are trying not to shift the problem. We are very focused. We are trying for a better solution especially for the children."

Advertisement

French authorities want to relocate people from the rat-infested site to heated containers nearby or to centres around France where they can apply for asylum. State authorities have said up to 1,000 people will be affected.

But aid workers say the figure is likely to be much higher. Help Refugees said its own analysis revealed there were 3,455 people living in the affected area.

Save The Children said nearly 400 unaccompanied children who have fled war, poverty and persecution live at the site.

Doctors of the World, a medical charity that has been working in Calais since 2003, said safe and legal routes should be established for people seeking sanctuary in the UK.

Its executive director, Leigh Daynes, said: "The French government has not kept its promise to manage safely and gradually a reduction in the camp population.

Advertisement

"Dawn police raids, followed by tear gas and water cannons, are shameful methods to use against those already traumatised by war."

Calais has lived with migrants in its midst for years, but the current camp on the city's edge sprang up around a day centre opened last April by the state - and has grown explosively.

The estimated 4,000 people now camped at the Jungle are significantly fewer than the 6,000 that were there in December.

Repeated bids to cross the Channel to Britain have been made by migrants, prompting an Anglo-French operation to bolster security around the ports, including the erection of razor-topped fences.

Advertisement

Some have criticised the decision to send in demolition teams, including Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron, who said razing the camp was not the solution.

But British hauliers welcomed last week's court judgment.

The Freight Transport Association (FTA) said mass disruption caused by migrants cost the UK freight industry an estimated 750,000 a day last year.

FTA officials said a solution needed to be found to protect the 89 billion of UK trade which passes through cross-Channel ports annually.
Chris Christie spoke at Donald Trump's Super Tuesday victory speech - and it looked like the governor of New Jersey was being held hostage.

Christie, whose own bid for the presidency failed to catch fire, surprised almost everyone with his decision to endorse Trump - a man he had previously trashed.

The reaction to the move was strong, with six New Jersey newspapers having called on Christie to resign as governor. And to many looking at his eyes as he listened to Trump speak, it appeared as if he realised he may have made a mistake.
A ten-year-old girl was so moved by the sounds of refugee children screaming as they were tear gassed by police that she wrote a stern letter to David Cameron, calling on him to shelter more in Britain.

Neve Beach, who lives with her mother in Nutley, East Sussex, told the Prime Minister in an angry note that "no-one deserves to be put in metal containers or to be tear gassed - no matter where they come from".

Advertisement

After listening to a radio report on children being targeted with tear gas by police in the Calais 'Jungle' and Macedonia, the girl went "straight up to her room", her mother said, to brief Cameron on what she'd learnt on human rights at school.

The young girl's letter to David Cameron

"In my school we have been learning about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and number one is everyone is born free. But the refugees are not free!" she wrote.

Neve also posed the PM a question after learning that Britain would commit to taking 4,000 refugees a year until 2020.

Advertisement

She asked: "Why are you not letting the refugees into the UK?"

The girl's mother, Danni, who helps pack and deliver vital donations to refugees in northern French port towns including Calais and Dunkirk, told HuffPost UK she was incredibly proud of her daughter for being spurred into writing the note.

"When the news came on in the car, you could just hear the sound of these refugee children screaming.

Migrants run from riot police firing tear gas

"My girls [Neve, 10, and her sister Blythe, 8] were in floods of tears.

"Neve asked me 'why is this happening' and I just couldn't give her an answer.

"When we got home she went straight up to her room to write the letter. I'm really proud of her."

A post on Facebook with a picture of the letter garnered significant support for Neve's words.

"Love this... Need more children like this for a brighter future," one commenter said.
Hearing your name called over an intercom when waiting for a flight is normally a cause for alarm (and a sign that you're about to miss your plane).

But one unsuspecting man was in for a very pleasant surprise when he was singled out for a mention during a pilot's pre-flight announcements.

Advertisement

Eric Sadiwynk, 32, was preparing to settle in for his flight home to Pennsylvania after a trip to Las Vegas with his wife Lisa, 27, when the pilot went off script and started to read from a note that had just been handed to him.

"We'd like to do something special for our lucky winners who won big here in Las Vegas Nevada," the pilot read. "We'd like to draw your attention to seat 29E where you'll find Eric who is travelling with his wife Lisa.

"Well Eric although you didn't strike it rich here in Las Vegas, you did hit the jackpot congratulations you're about to be a dad!"

Advertisement

Lisa and Eric Sadiwnyk

Upon hearing the news Mr Sadiwnyk begins to tear up and the emotional moment was captured by his wife who had covertly been filming the announcement on 13 January 2016.

"There aren't enough 'Thank Yous' for the crew of American Airlines Flight 607 service from Las Vegas to Philadelphia," Ms Sadiwnyk wrote when sharing the video on Facebook.

"You all helped me to pull this off seamlessly!"

Here's a MUST WATCH! A few weeks ago, my husband Eric Sadiwnyk got quite the surprise on our returning flight from Las Vegas. There aren't enough Thank You's for the crew of American Airlines Flight 607 (1/13/16) with service from Las Vegas to Philadelphia. You all helped me to pull this off seamlessly! I'm hoping if this video makes it around the internet a bit, I may be able to find the crew and Thank them again! I'll also be sending a copy to American Airlines Customer Relations. I love you Eric Sadiwnyk! Posted by Lisa Sadiwnyk on Friday, 26 February 2016

Ms Sadiwnyk had learned she was pregnant while the couple were staying in Las Vegas and had kept the news to herself for three days, before roping in the flight crew's help for her unique pregnancy announcement.

"I don't get a lot of opportunity to surprise my husband, and it's such a happy surprise," she told Today. "I just thought it would be fun to really catch him off guard and surprise him with great news."

Advertisement
French parents have been warned by legal experts that they should stop posting pictures of their children to Facebook or it could land them in jail years down the line.

Advertisement

According to The Telegraph Eric Delcroix, an expert on internet law and ethics revealed that due to France's strict privacy laws children could actually take their parents to court for breaching their privacy or endangering their security online.

According to French privacy laws parents could face a fine of up to 45,000 (35,000) or in severe cases even find themselves being sentenced to a year in prison for breaking both those laws.

Delcroix argued that parents can actually be as irresponsible on the social network as their children saying, Children at certain stages do not wish to be photographed or still less for those photos to be made public,

As a result parents should now seriously consider the pictures they place online of their children knowing that in the future those images will still be available to the general public.

Jay Parikh, vice-president of Facebook said that the company was considering placing a feature on the site which would warn parents before they share a picture of their children with anyone that wasn't their family.

Parikh said: If I was putting online a photo of my kids playing in the park, and I accidentally shared it with everyone, the system could say: Hey, wait a minute, this is a picture of your children. Usually you only send them to members of your family. Are you sure you want to do this?

France isn't the only country to highlight the risks associated with Facebook 'overshare'. The German police have also issued several warnings on their official Facebook page asking that parents think carefully before uploading pictures of their children.

Advertisement

According to Hagen Police pictures could be stolen or altered by paedophiles.

In response to the increase in government warnings the NSPCC released a statement saying:
Iain Duncan Smith has condemned Labour for dragging him to the House of Commons to face claims young people will have to work until they drop before retiring.

The Work and Pensions Secretary accused the Opposition of utter idiocy and worrying and scaring people after he was forced to answer questions over a review of the state pension age announced on Tuesday.

Advertisement

The Tory Cabinet minister said the prospect of increasing the threshold was always known about and Labour only called him to the Commons as a couple of newspapers wrote a few articles. However, he did not rule out the state pension age accelerating.

Labour insists ministers have failed to ease fears, and point to a tweet from Pensions Minister, Ros Altmann, which states the "state pension age isn't a retirement age" as evidence people on modest incomes "could have to work until they drop".

State Pension Age isn't a retirement age! State Pension to give a Base income but you want private savings or earnings on top  Ros Altmann (@rosaltmann) March 2, 2016

Advertisement

Iain Duncan Smith: To start worrying and scaring people, without foundation and reality, is nothing short of appalling."

The Department for Work and Pensions yesterday revealed in a five paragraph written ministerial statement to Parliament that former CBI director general John Cridland will lead a review to help ensure the state pension remains sustainable for generations to come.

With people living longer, retirement age has been gradually shifted from the decades-old 60 for women and 65 for many against fears it will be unaffordable.

Downing Streets daily briefing with journalists on Tuesday failed to mention the announcement among 20 statements, and Labour accused the Government of smuggling out an announcement affecting millions of people - a claim flatly denied by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Bit more context from @paulwaugh as to why pension age hike was "smuggled" out. Full story: https://t.co/ewHhec13a8pic.twitter.com/IkPPpH5YWu  Graeme Demianyk (@GraemeDemianyk) March 2, 2016

Advertisement

As it stands, the state pension age for men and women will rise to 66 by 2020, to 67 as early as 2026, 68 in the mid-2030s, and then 69 in the late-2040s.

But newspapers and websites spoke to a series of financial experts who warned the state pensions age is certain to increase into the 70s. Ex-Pensions Minister Steve Webb even said young people face working until they are 81 before they can afford to retire.

Labour was today granted an Urgent Question (UQ) on the review by Commons Speaker John Bercow, which requires ministers to face a grilling from MPs.

But Mr Duncan Smith made clear his contempt for Labours justification, suggesting the Opposition was "scaremongering" since all MPs were aware of legislation from 2013 that meant there would be a review every five years.

Advertisement

And he hit out at a tweet by Labours Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith, which tore into Ms Altman, for being inflammatory.

Pensions Minister scraps retirement for all but the rich and those lucky enough to have a good private pension!!! https://t.co/E4tPbDYRHY  Owen Smith (@OwenSmith_MP) March 2, 2016

State Pension Age isn't a retirement age! State Pension to give a Base income but you want private savings or earnings on top  Ros Altmann (@rosaltmann) March 2, 2016

The Labour Tweet the minster said was 'inflammatory', and what Owen Smith was responding to

To start worrying and scaring people, without foundation and reality, is nothing short of appalling, Mr Duncan Smith told MPs.

The only limit on the review is that the timetable up to April 2028 will not be affected, meaning anyone in their mid-50s and younger could be affected.

Advertisement

Mr Duncan Smith said: This was always known about, this review. For those who complain suddenly that they hadnt noticed about, this statement was down yesterday.

I dont recall they did a single thing to raise it to anyones attention until a couple of newspapers wrote a few articles, then they suddenly put in a UQ.

And he quoted former Labour Shadow Pensions Minister, Gregg MccLymont, who said we do not oppose this Bill when legislation committing the Government to a regular independent review was passed by Parliament.

Labour's Owen Smith: "Youll only be able to retire if youre rich enough or youve got a fat private pension, otherwise you will have to keep working."

Advertisement

But Labour argues the review will could link the link between life expectancy and the pension age, undermining the previous consensus.

Labours Mr Smith claimed people traveling to work would have been shocked to learn of the review as it signalled going further and faster than the people of Britain were expecting.

He said: Youll only be able to retire if youre rich enough or youve got a fat private pension, otherwise you will have to keep working - working until you drop as one pensions professor warned this morning.

Mr Smith went on to ask what the new pension age would be: Is it 75, 76, 77, is it 80 as his former colleague, the pensions minister, warned today?

But Mr Duncan Smith said the rather pathetic response was a reflection that Labour didnt think the question would be granted. Hes been scribbling away massively only hearing he was granted it. Because it was utter idiocy, he said.

Advertisement
Security expert John McAfee has claimed that anyone with the knowledge could hack into the iPhone in just 'half an hour', slamming claims by the FBI that it's impossible without Apple's help.

Everyone's favourite security expert McAfee appeared on live TV to give his opinion on the FBI vs. Apple case in which Apple is refusing to unlock an iPhone.

Advertisement

According to McAffee it's actually worryingly easy to break into a locked iPhone using nothing more than a software and hardware engineer who both have an understanding of how computers work.

McAfee said "I'll probably lose admission to the world hackers' community" for revealing the information but then goes on to explain step-by-step how a person would hack into an iPhone.

McAfee's Guide On How To Hack An iPhone: You need a hardware engineer and a software engineer.

The hardware engineer takes the phone apart and it copies the instruction set, which is the iOS and applications [sic] and your memory.

Then you run a piece, a program called a disassembler which takes all the ones and zeroes and gives you readable instructions.

Then, the coder sits down and he reads through, and what he's looking for is the first access to the keypad, because that's the first thing you're doing when you input your pad.

When you see that, then you read the instruction for where in memory this secret code is stored.

It takes 'A half an hour'.

Advertisement

McAfee went on to call the entire process 'trivial' and bemoaned the FBI saying they 'clearly didn't understand' how to unlock the iPhone.

In response to McAfee's astonishing claims several technology sites and experts have taken to Twitter to pan the expert's claims saying that 'he doesn't know how iPhones work'.

John McAfee better prepare to eat a shoe because he doesnt know how iPhones work https://t.co/9SmvI5Dc6i by @drpizza  Ars Technica (@arstechnica) March 1, 2016

Holy shit McAfee is completely bonkers lol https://t.co/YSu58WtiTI  Haiku Oezu (@Haiku_Oezu) March 2, 2016

Advertisement

John McAfee's comments were made after Tim Cook published a letter explaining why Apple had refused to help the FBI unlock an iPhone that was being held as evidence.

Apple's CEO claimed that to give the FBI access it would create a 'backdoor' which would allow anyone access to every iPhone.

Tim Cook has published an open letter on Apple's website defying the government request.

This would allow the FBI to access the phone belonging to one of the shooters responsible for the San Bernardino attack that took place last year.

In the letter penned 'A message to our customers', Cook explains the specifics of the request that has been made and declares that the US Government have "asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create."

Advertisement

The iPhone has a number of 'self-destruct' mechanisms built in which mean that if an incorrect passcode is entered more than ten times the key which encrypts the entire phone is destroyed.
Studio Cut Out of a Piglet Standing Digital Vision. via Getty Images

A PR agency has had to issue a grovelling apology after sending a press release about pork pies to the Jewish Chronicle.

An email was sent from KR Public Relations to publications included the Jewish newspaper for British Pie Week, plugging one particular manufacturer that sells pork pies.

Advertisement

The editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, and other members of its staff pointed out the gaffe.

Pork - the final frontier pic.twitter.com/JNjSr0OfKx  Stephen Pollard (@stephenpollard) March 2, 2016

Not sure this was the best press release to send to my @JewishChron account. pic.twitter.com/F3VrBpTBk9  Josh Jackman (@josh_jackman) March 2, 2016

When the mistake was realised, an apology was sent to multiple news outlets.

The statement read: "Apologies for the earlier press release that you may have received regarding British Pie Week.

Advertisement

"While that press release was due to be issued, the compilation of the press list was a training exercise and unfortunatley, on this occasion, led to a few people being left on the list that the press release was not intended for. (sic)

"We can only apologise moving forward and please be rest assured that this will not happen again."
A nanny from Uzbekistan accused of decapitating a four-year-old girl in Moscow has claimed "Allah ordered" her to kill the child, as prosecutors told a court on Wednesday that she did not act alone.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a mother of three sons, replied "yes" when asked if she accepted her guilt for the murder, which she is expected to be formally charged over later this week.

Advertisement

The motive for the slaying is not known, but when a reporter asked Bobokulova outside court why she killed the child, she replied "Allah ordered".

Russian media have taken to calling Bobokulova the "bloody nanny".

The 38-year-old was allegedly caught on CCTV lifting Nastya Meshcheryakova's head aloft outside a metro station. Before killing the child, Bobokulova is accused of setting her parent's apartment on fire. Firefighters discovered the child's remains while extinguishing the blaze.

Her court appearance comes a day after a police source revealed the babysitter had kept her schizophrenia a secret and was "kicked on to the streets" after a divorce. She had been registered at a psychiatric clinic in Uzbekistan and in recent months her condition was said to have deteriorated, according to Russian media reports.

Advertisement

Before a Moscow court approved Bobokulova's arrest for two months, prosecutors told the court they believe there are individuals who "incited" her to carry out the killing, who are still at large.

According to reports, Bobokulova's boyfriend may have been with her in the apartment when Meshcheryakova was killed, some time between 8am and 8.40am. One theory being investigated is that Bobokulova had been radicalised. Police are now searching for the unknown man.

An investigator told the court: "The accomplices of the suspect, or we better say the instigators, are currently at large."

A relative of Meshcheryakova has told Russian media that Bobokulova - known as Gulya to the family - had married a man during a trip to Uzbekistan around 18 months ago. The relationship had changed her, she claimed, saying that Bobokulova starting wearing a hijab and began praying in her room.

However, it was reported by LifeNews on Tuesday that Bobokulova had been married for 12 years, but had divorced "not long ago" in Uzbekistan.

Advertisement

Bobokulova was caught on CCTV holding Meshcheryakova's severed head aloft outside a metro station

Speaking in broken Russian from the court, the MailOnline says Bobokulova said: "Allah is sending a second prophet to give news of peace". She was also said to have complained that she was "hungry", had not been fed, and would "die in a week".

Earlier, Bobokulova said, "Hi to everyone," as she waved at the crowd of journalists in the courtroom.

Investigator Olga Lapteva told the court that Bobokulova was suspected of committing an "extremely serious crime" and should face "a mandatory prison sentence of considerably more than three years".

Bobokulova was Meshcheryakova's nanny, and the child's parents are a middle-class couple, seemingly without government connections or influence, the Associated Press reported.

Advertisement

The nanny's religion was not known but she wore a head covering and some witnesses said she shouted "Allahu akbar!" while waving Meshcheryakova's bloody head. In videos posted on Russian news websites, she was heard shouting "I am a terrorist!" in Russian.

None of the main Russian television channels reported on the grisly scene. But Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman denied that the news was withheld at the request of the Kremlin or out of concerns that the killing could stoke ethnic tensions in a country with many Muslim citizens and migrant workers.
If you've got big dreams you still want to achieve, the latest discovery about the universe should come as good news.

Scientists have suggested that the universe will not be ending for another 2.8 billion years at least, a lot sooner than we originally thought.

Advertisement

Diego Saez-Gomez from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, came to this conclusion after observing data on galaxies, supernovae and something known as baryon acoustic oscillations, which is used to measure dark energy, New Scientist reports.

The Milky Way

Dark energy is the mysterious stuff that is thought to affect the universe's expansion.

Originally, some physicists believed that this process, dubbed the Big Rip, could happen in 20 to 22 billion years.

Advertisement

However, the new figure of 2.8 billion years is still plenty of time and Saez-Gomez assured New Scientist that "were safe.

He also explained that the "rip" could never come and while this may sound like the best scenario, it's not.

The Big Freeze and the Big Crunch are two other theories that describe equally terrifying fates.

In case of the Big Freeze, the universe is predicted to cool as it expands, eventually becoming uninhabitable.
When Vine star Jen Nubian told a barista in Starbucks her name was Beyonce, the woman behind the counter was having none of it.

The cheeky barista made Nubian's coffee as requested, but wrote the words "U Wish" on the side of the cup.

Last week, Nubian posted a video of herself holding the cup, saying: "I told a girl at Starbucks my name was Beyonce just to be funny, and this is what she gave me."

Advertisement

The funny clip has since been liked more than 34,000 times on Vine.

Click on image to launch slideshow
Mark Serwotka, left, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), speaks at a press conference on the opening day of the TUC Congress in Brighton. Rick Findler/PA Wire

Two of Britains leading left-wing trade union bosses have been allowed to rejoin the Labour party, HuffPost UK can reveal.

Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), and Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) were cleared for membership by the partys Compliance Unit on Tuesday.

Advertisement

Mr Serwotka, whose union has been at the forefront of strikes against the Tory governments cuts, was expelled by Labour more than 25 years ago.

He was also barred from using his GMB union ballot in the leadership contest last summer on the grounds that he didnt share the aims and values of the Labour party.

Mark Serwotka, with John McDonnell

Mr Serwotka applied recently to re-join and was told that the party would have to look carefully into his case, given his previous expulsion.

Advertisement

Both Mr Wrack and Mr Serwotka have long been supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, helping to mobilise union support in the leadership election that resulted in a landslide for the Labour leader in 2015.

Writing exclusively for HuffPost, Mr Serwotka revealed that he had decided to rejoin Labour in order to support Mr Corbyns vision for the party and for Britain.

Jeremy is the first Labour leader in a generation who unequivocally supports the unions and his opposition to the trade union bill has been crucial, he said.

PCS members protesting

One of Mr Corbyn's first acts as leader was to join a PCS protest at staffing changes and sackings at the National Gallery.

Advertisement

In his blogpost, Mr Serwotka added that Mr Corbyns leadership in opposing Trident, exposing the injustices of capitalism and taking on corporate media barons all needed the backing of as many people as possible.

Yes, I have been a severe critic of Labour in the past and I was denied a vote in the leadership election because of it, he said.

I did say if you judged a government by how it treated its staff, New Labour was the worst civil servants had known.

But he stressed that he now had positive reasons to join, in a bid to gather like-minded supporters to rally around the leader.

I have joined to support Jeremy in transforming the party. And I want as many people as possible to join Labour, and to get involved in the fight against cuts where they live.

Advertisement

This is our chance to build a social movement and form a government that can offer hope to the millions of people that deserve so much better than these contemptible Tories.

Mr Serwotka was instrumental in the creation of the Respect Party, although sources close to him insist he never joined the party. He has never been a member of the Socialist Workers Party, although he has been close to some of its members, the source added.

The PCS chief appeared alongside Mr Corbyn at the CND anti-Trident rally in Trafalgar Square last weekend, and was joined by Mr McDonnell for a protest at HMRC staff cuts in Parliament this week.

Matt Wrack, FBU leader

Mr Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor were the founder members of the PCS Union Parliamentary group of MPs.

Advertisement

Mr Wracks FBU re-affiliated to the Labour Party soon after Mr Corbyns victory. He too is a former Labour party member but has come under fire from Labour MPs for his links to former members of Militant.

However, firefighters are part of the coalition of trade unionists who want to ensure that Mr Corbyn drives through the radical agenda which got him elected by nearly 60% of party members.

The FBU, which elected Mr Wrack as its leader in 2005, disaffiliated from Labour in 2004 in protest at Tony Blair's policies. It reaffiliated in November 2015 to support Mr Corbyn's anti-austerity campaigns.

Both the FBU and the PCS have led industrial action against the Lib-Con Coalition's pensions plans and wider job cuts in the public sector.

Only this week, Labour MPs bitterly criticised Mr McDonnell's suggestion that the Compliance Unit should be scrapped as it was blocking legitimate possible party members.

Advertisement
CNBC EVENTS -- Pictured: Joseph Stiglitz, ecomonist and Professor at Columbia University, speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, 'The Future of Impact', hosted by former President Bill Clinton, at the Sheraton Times Square in New York City, on September 28, 2015 -- (Photo by: Adam Jeffery/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images) CNBC via Getty Images

Britain could be better off outside the European Union if the proposed free trade deal with the United States is signed, a senior Labour economic adviser has suggested.

Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist recruited by shadow chancellor John McDonnell to advise the party, said if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) EU-US deal is similar to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal between the US and pacific countries then "no democracy" should support it.

Advertisement

Stiglitz supports UK's membership of the EU as is, however asked by The Huffington Post UK on Wednesday whether the passing of TTIP would change his mind, he said: "I actually think that the strictures imposed by TTIP, if it were like TPP, would be sufficiently adverse to the functioning of government it would probably affect my views.

"It would make me think certainly over again about whether membership of the EU was a good idea."

Stiglitz warned it would mean almost every time the UK passed a regulation to limit the health impact of toxins such as asbestos or to tackle climate change "you would be sued" by corporations.

"There's nothing to stop you, in TTIP, from passing regulations. You can keep the regulations. You would just have to keep writing a cheque to [cigarette firm] Phillip Morris every year for the profits they lost from what they would have been if they had been able to kill people in the way they had in the past," he said. "Every year you would have to write them another billion dollar cheque."

European and US officials hope to conclude TTIP by the end of the year, amid widespread opposition across the continent including from within the European Parliament.

Advertisement

David Cameron has defended the trade deal, arguing "the opportunities for Britain of trading more with the United States of America are clear".

Stiglitz was speaking following a speech at Birkbeck University in London alongside McDonnell, as part of the shadow chancellor's 'New Economics' seminar tour.

The American signed up to be part of a panel of economic advisers for Labour along with several other leading economists including Thomas Piketty and Danny Blanchflower.

He told the audience in central-London the "danger" of TTIP, the precise details of which remain under-wraps, was it might end up "looking like TPP".

Advertisement

"We know what TPP looks like and no democracy should ever support anything that looks like TPP. Those are strong words but it's really true," he said.

He said it would mean "any government that passes a regulation that has an adverse effect on the profits of a company can be sued" by that company.

Stiglitz said the lawyers who drafted TPP designed it to be so strict that if governments passed regulations "trying to prevent polonium in baby cereal" companies would sue. "This is not a joke," he added.
Hundreds of unaccompanied children are at risk of "completely disappearing" from the reach of aid workers when the Calais migrant camp is destroyed, according groups trying to support them while their homes are knocked down and set ablaze.

There are between 300 and 400 unaccompanied children in the makeshift camp known as 'The Jungle' - meaning one out of every 13 people there is a child without a guardian, according to estimates.

Advertisement

Amid the chaos as French authorities clear the camp, children have been tear gassed, driven out of their homes and hit by stones thrown at riot police by Jungle residents. Many have been living in tents alone and undocumented.

There is a "large contingent" of 15 and 16-year-olds, but some are as young as 12, according to Ginny Howells of Save the Children, who is working on the charity's emergency response in Calais and Dunkirk.

There are thought to be between 300-400 children in 'The Jungle' with no parent or guardian

Advertisement

Some residents have set fire to tents in anger as authorities dismantle shelters

Its really chaotic at the moment," she told The Huffington Post UK. "Theres fires breaking out every day and they are really worried. Theres the physical stress around the tear-gassing, but also getting caught up in the rocks being thrown. And also they are trying to jump onto trains every night.

"I had an Eritrean boy with bandages on his hands and feet a few days ago, just because hed got injured with the crossing. Then theres the mental impact of all of this upheaval and confusion, and being surrounded by this stress day-in-day out and we can really see that effect."

Even estimating the number of minors is difficult because of the unstable situation as tents are torn down, but Help Refugees estimates that there are 423 children out of the 5,497 total residents in the Calais camp.

Some of the children left from their home country alone, others have been separated from their families on the way to the French port.

Advertisement

The nearest official centre offering help to children who are alone is 45km from the camp

Most of them arent completely unaccompanied: some are with an older distant relative, or someone else they know from their village, but they are still seriously vulnerable, Howells said.

Theyve kind of formed community groups within the camp but it is still very worrying. They are incredibly at risk because they dont have that parental figure or guardian looking after them. For someone whos 12, thats terrifying.

Many don't want to go into the French care services, and have no confidence in the country's government and police, she said, adding: I think children need to regain faith in the French system. At the moment they are seeing tear gassing and riot police, which doesnt really make you want to trust the systems that are in place.

Advertisement

Children are 'anxious and confused' according to aid workers

Many could 'disappear' after the camp is destroyed

The bulldozing of the camp means that many children could be pushed out of the reach of volunteers and charities and go "off radar", she says, ending up in an even worse situation.

They are really confused and anxious. Our biggest fear is that this whole kind of upheaval will push them into different camps along the coast, and effectively they will go off radar, because the options that are being put forward for them as alternative accommodation, they arent willing or dont have enough information to takes those up."

"Our big fear is that theyll go into camps into Dunkirk, which are in worse condition, or just disappear completely and well lose contact with them.

The official provision for unaccompanied children is at a centre run by NGO France Terre-dAsile, but this is 45km away from the camp.

Advertisement

If children reach it, they can stay for five days and then be taken into the French child protection system, joining 1,600 others who were taken into care in 2015.

They can then be assisted to apply for asylum in the country, many don't want to do this, or don't understand the complex asylum system, Howells claims.

Children dont understand that process, its quite convoluted," she told HuffPost UK. "And the majority of them dont want to stay in France, that's why they are in Calais. They want to reach their family in the UK or to reach community groups in the UK. Also sometimes they are travelling with a small community, so this would separate them.

The refugee crisis was today called a "traffickers paradise" by Thorbjrn Jagland, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, who says children without parents are in danger of violence, abuse, and exploitation.

On Monday, some children were treated after riot police fired tear gas at the crowds, and others who travelled alone from Syria and Eritrea have claimed they have been treated harshly and even hit by French police.

Advertisement

Two aid agencies working in the camp even took the local authority to court last year to demand improvements in the conditions for children.

A boy stands in The Jungle

Howells of Save the Children says more information is needed to explain children's options to them, with transparent details on processes like family reunification with relatives in the UK.

She believes that information needs to come from a co-ordinated effort from French authorities, NGOs and British volunteers: It needs to be in the right languages and also child-friendly. Asylum processes and systems are confusing at the best of times, if youre a 12-year old boy, you need it explained to you properly.

Advertisement

A young camp resident has his hair cut

Calais officials say the camp houses 3,700 people, but the French government's long-term aim is to have no more than 2,000 migrants living in Calais, says its chief, Fabienne Buccio.

At the start of the winter, aid groups reported a surge in the numbers of unaccompanied refugee children living in tents, with no support from the French state.

But other residents do look out for children in the camp, Howells claims, and community networks have formed, while volunteers "make sure theyre getting food, make sure theyve got shoes, that sort of thing.

While speaking to HuffPost UK, she was arranging emergency phone credit to help children keep in contact with relatives and volunteers, sometimes using an emergency translation phone line set up over the weekend.

Britain's politicians are also concerned. Tory MP David Burrowes said this week that he had spoken to children and parents in Calais: "They do not feel safe here because of particularly the way they are now being treated. The government has a responsibility as well as other European neighbours to treat people safely, particularly children. There are children here who have been gassed today. There are those that have had to receive treatment."

Advertisement

Children may lost contact with those who can help, charities fear

Last year, an estimated 300,000 children arrived in Europe, many of whom were unaccompanied according to the Council of Europe. One in three of the migrants and asylum seekers crossing between Greece and Turkey is a child.

Since last September, an average of two children a day have drowned while trying to cross the Mediterranean.

According to Europol, at least 10,000 children have disappeared since the beginning of the crisis. In many countries, asylum-seeking children disappear within just a few days of being placed in reception centres.

The refugee crisis is a traffickers paradise," said Council of Europe secretary Jagland. "Thousands of children are escaping war only to vanish into the underbelly of European societies. It is difficult to imagine a greater moral imperative than keeping these boys and girls safe, he said today.

Advertisement

He said in a statement: "Children should not be placed in immigration detention centres, apart from in exceptional circumstances and for the shortest period of time. State authorities should pay special attention to the safety of girls who face multiple risks."

The Council of Europe is calling for age assessment in the camp to be improved, saying that if the age of a child is uncertain, they should be given the protections of a minor.
The US Military has officially confirmed that it has begun systematic cyber attacks against the so-called/self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) in Mosul.

Advertisement

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and General Joseph F. Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, answer questions.

This is significant for several reasons, the biggest being that while the US almost certainly engages in cyber attacks against its enemies it almost never admits to it.

While officially not affiliated in any way, this revelation now means that ISIS is under cyber attack from both the US Military and the hacking collective known as Anonymous.

Anonymous was quick off the mark to set its sights on ISIS after the Paris attacks, threatening to taken down their websites, communication infrastructure and social media presence.

It's not clear what form the US Military's attacks will take but Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford confirmed that the plan was to encircle the last major stronghold with a substantial air and cyber attack that would cut the city off from the outside world.

Although believed to be involved in several cyber attacks the Pentagon very rarely admits to any attacks of that nature.
When I woke up on the morning of 2 March 2011, I turned on the radio and switched on my computer, to check my emails and hear the news. The headlines brought me the news that I had long feared I would one day hear, but hoped and prayed I never would - the assassination of my close friend, Shahbaz Bhatti. I was shocked, deeply saddened but not surprised.

For five years, from 2004-2009, I had the great privilege of working very closely with Shahbaz Bhatti. It was while he was a grassroots activist, before he was elected to Parliament and before he was appointed Minister, though I continued to keep in close contact with him even after he entered the government, and my colleagues in Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) continued to work with him when he was Minister. Shahbaz, along with his mentor, national hero Group Captain (Rtd) Cecil Chaudhry, was CSW's closest partner in Pakistan. I spoke to him every week by phone, sometimes several times a week. I travelled with him. I knew the threats he faced, as an activist and then even more so as Federal Minister for Minorities Affairs.

I have many memories of Shahbaz between 2004 and 2009, when he was placed on Pakistan's ''exit control list'', prohibiting him from leaving the country, and when he was being arrested or threatened with arrest. I remember speaking to him by phone almost daily during certain crisis points, and being constantly impressed by his calmness and courage. Of course, at times he was fearful, and with very good reason. But the mark of courage is not an absence of fear, but a matter of how one handles fear. Shahbaz never allowed fear to paralyse or overcome him.

On one occasion we missed a bomb in Islamabad by five minutes.

On another occasion, Shahbaz took me to meet a seven-year-old girl who had been raped and tortured because she came from a Christian family. Shahbaz was helping her and her family, because no one else would.

In 2007, a Christian community in Charsadda, in the North-West Frontier Province, received an ultimatum from extremists: convert to Islam or face the consequences. The night the deadline expired, I phoned Shahbaz to ask for an update. To my surprise, he told me he was in Charsadda. The community were terrified, he said, and they expected an attack at any moment, so he had gone to be with them. That was typical of Shahbaz. But he also told me that the community had been praying. They felt alone, they felt that the rest of the world didn't know, or didn't care. "Thank God you have called," he said. "The fact that you have telephoned means I can tell them that someone does know, does care, is praying for them and is speaking for them."

In October 2009, Shahbaz came to London to address the annual conference of Christian Solidarity Worldwide. As usual, his first request was for prayer. He summed up his life's vocation in these words: "I live for religious freedom, and I am ready to die for this cause. We have a commitment to bring a change in the lives of people. We will bring a change in the life of those who are living in darkness, we will bring a change in the lives of those who don't have a hope, and we will bring a smile on the faces of those living under severe harassment and victimisation ..."

He continued: "This is the key objective of my life - to live for those who are voiceless, who are suffering. We need to change the plight of those who are living in the darkness of persecution, victimisation, and that is the commitment we made, to bring justice for those who are denied justice."

Shahbaz challenged head-on the "forces of intolerance", promising that, in unity with others, "we will not allow you to capture our country". He called on his audience to join with him in this struggle: "Let's pledge that we will work together to promote harmony and tolerance. We will bridge the gaps among different faiths. We will strengthen this world with the message of peace and tolerance."

At the heart of Shahbaz's work, particularly as minister, was an effort to reform, or repeal, Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws which have been so widely misused with such disastrous consequences for many.

But it was this campaign that in the end cost Shahbaz his own life. Four months before his murder, he recorded an interview with the BBC, for broadcast in the event of his death. He said: "These Taliban threaten me. But I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of the Cross and I am following the Cross. I am ready to die for a cause. I am living for my community and suffering people, and I will die to defend their rights."

Those words should stand as his epitaph. Shahbaz Bhatti was for me, as he was for millions of Pakistanis and many other people around the world, a hero. He was a man of extraordinary courage, faith and personal commitment, but also of immense humility and humour. There are calls for his beatification, and I hope that in time these calls will be heard, for this man of great virtue, faith and courage, this modern-day martyr, would be a symbol of hope for all those persecuted for their faith. In my own personal faith and my journey into the Catholic Church, Shahbaz inspired me immensely too, and I have told his story in my book, From Burma to Rome: A Journey into the Catholic Church, which I have also dedicated to him. In the dedication, I have said that I believe he is now "smiling from heaven".

Let us all, in our own ways, continue to work to ensure that the values for which Shahbaz lived, and died, did not die with him but live on, in all of us, and that those values - freedom of religion or belief for all; peace, harmony and respect between people of different faiths; justice and equality for all - triumph over the voices of intolerance, hatred, conflict, terror and injustice, in Pakistan and beyond. In the meantime, let us always remember Shahbaz Bhatti, a man I was privileged to call not just my hero, not just my colleague, but my friend and brother.
Last Thursday more than 200 individuals gathered to hear a series of speakers talk about the great work they had done tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia within their communities. This might not sound too unusual for a Stonewall event, and it would not have been were it not for the fact that the speakers - and most of the audience, were made up of people from faith groups.

Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Catholic, Church of England and minority Christian groups were all in attendance, all with stories of what they had done to tackle homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia within their own communities, and toward the end of the evening a panel made up of LGBT faith leaders answered questions from the audience. It was a fantastic night, challenging in itself the idea that LGBT people and faith are somehow mutually exclusive.

In 2012 Stonewall commissioned YouGov to conduct a piece of research called 'Living Together' and found that while 61 per cent of people felt that faith attitudes were responsible for homophobia in the UK, people of faith were actually no more likely to be homophobic than anyone else.

Advertisement

It is important that faith groups are not labelled as inherently homophobic, biphobic or transphobic - these labels fit better on individuals than they do vast swathes of the world's population. There are individuals (both LGBT people and allies) in every faith who are working hard to make their communities more inclusive of LGBT people. Many of them are not supporting LGBT inclusion in spite of their faith - but because of it. While these groups and individuals won't get as much press as those who blame the weather on gay people, they are making crucial differences to improve people's lives every day.

We have a network of more than 1200 schools across the country, as part of our School Champions programme, that have made a commitment to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and approximately a third of those are faith schools. People are sometimes surprised when I say that some faith schools are examples of the best schools we engage with. The more engagement we do with faith groups the more I am convinced that it is not faith itself which makes a person homophobic, but the lens through which they choose to view that faith.

Justifiably many LGBT people I meet have criticisms of religion and faith. Some have directly suffered as a result of religion, and others simply don't want to engage with groups that have historically rejected them. But where does this leave the many LGBT people for whom faith is an important part of their lives? All too often LGBT people of faith report being unable to be themselves within their faith group and also with LGBT friends, who they fear will reject them because of their faith.
I will never forget how shocked I felt when, having volunteered in my children's school to run art activity groups, several eight year olds declared loudly 'I'm no good at art, Miss!'. I thought: 'Who told you that? You are too young to feel like this!'. The sad thing was that they were all very keen to join in, attracted by the display of bright collage materials, paints and crayons, but the feeling of 'being no good at art' definitely held them back, making them hesitate. Not long ago, they would have all crowded around the table, confident in their ability to make messy and exuberant artworks full of stories and meaning: the fact that these would end up looking soggy and messy did not lessen their enthusiasm and enjoyment. However, by the age of eight, many felt that to make art, one had to be "good at it" - which meant being able to reproduce objects, people, houses, etc., as realistically as possible (so not much room for imagination and interpretation there!). The message was that being no good at art, it was no longer their business to do any, however much they may have enjoyed it - what a loss!

Advertisement

This message certainly has lasting power: as an art therapist, encouraging and supporting people with mental health problems to discover their creative potential through visual art has been at the heart of my practice. Although aesthetic judgment is not part of art therapy, like the children described above, many clients declare initially: 'I am no good at art!'. My research on art therapy for work-related stress also met the same response from professionals who volunteered to participate in art therapy groups.

However, I found repeatedly one striking common theme between children, art therapy clients and professionals: given 'permission to play' with art materials without fear of being judged, many reconnect with a deep enjoyment of art-making. The children who had thought of themselves as 'no good at art' became enthusiastic and regular participants in the art groups. Evidence increasingly shows a link between arts participation, resilience and improved social skills in children - it was certainly the case here but this does not stop at childhood: it works in the same way for people of all ages. Many clients introduced to art through art therapy decided to make it part of their own lives, and own it as a positive part of their identity. Some joined community art groups and built important social networks as a result. Some professional staff visited art galleries for the first time in their lives and joined art classes, having found that art-based approaches really did help to keep stress in check.

Creativity is an important factor in maintaining health and wellbeing and visual art is but a part of it - however, I feel it is time to actively challenge the belief that art is only for the chosen, gifted few. I know that art has helped save lives: within art therapy, it has enabled children and adults to make sense of thoughts and feelings when words were not enough. As an activity, it has given meaning and direction to many children and young people who did not engage academically.

Advertisement

The current popularity of adult colouring books is, I feel, a testimony to the real depth of interest in art and creativity - although not 'art therapy' as we would define it (in the UK, art therapy is a state regulated profession) , people have described finding the colouring activity soothing and good for stress-relief. I also think that colouring books have enabled people to re-connect safely with art-making: facing a blank page can be a more intimidating prospect than being creative with ready-made patterns. Importantly, no one needs to be an expert to enjoy colouring - the same should apply to all forms of art-making. Art is for everyone and I do hope that somehow, children describing themselves as 'no good at art' will become a thing of the past.
The spectacle of the Republican Partys Trumpian meltdown has inspired a mix of glee and fear among liberals  glee over their rivals self-immolation, and fear that what arises from the destruction will be worse.

What it hasnt inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.

Such a recognition wouldnt require letting the Republican Party off the hook. The Trump uprising is first and foremost a Republican and conservative problem: There would be no Trumpism if George W. Bushs presidency hadnt cratered, no Trumpism if the party hadnt alternated between stoking and ignoring working-class grievances, no Trump as front-runner if the party leadership and his rivals had committed fully to stopping him before now.

But Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Barack Obama didnt give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isnt an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends  with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.

First, the reality TV element in Trumps campaign is a kind of fun-house-mirror version of the celebrity-saturated Obama effort in 2008. Presidential politics has long had an escalating celebrity component, a cultish side thats grown ever-more-conspicuous with time. But the first Obama campaign raised the bar. The quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric, the Great Man iconography and pillared sets, the Oprah endorsement and Will.i.am music video and the Hollywood stars pledging allegiance  it was presidential politics as one part Aaron Sorkin-scripted liturgy, one part prestige movies Oscar campaign.

And it worked. But because it worked, now we have the nearly-inevitable next step: presidential politics as a season of Survivor or, well, The Apprentice, with the same celebrity factor as Obamas 08 run, but with his campaigns high-middlebrow pretensions stripped away.

Hes also proving, in his bullying, overpromising style, that voters are increasingly habituated to the idea of an ever more imperial presidency  which is also a trend that Obamas choices have accelerated. Having once campaigned against his predecessors power grabs, the current president has expanded executive authority along almost every dimension: launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate U.S. citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress.

In the process, hes cut the legs from under principled liberal critiques of executive power, and weakened the American lefts role as a bulwark against Caesarism. Which makes it altogether fitting  if deeply unfortunate  that his reward is the rise of a right-wing Caesarist whose authoritarian style and outrageous promises make George W. Bush look like Cato the Younger.

And that Caesarist, crucially, is rallying a constituency that once swung between the parties, but that the Obama White House has spent the last eight years slowly writing off. Trumps strongest supporters arent archconservatives; theyre white working-class voters, especially in the Rust Belt and coal country, who traditionally leaned Democratic and still favor a strong welfare state.

These voters had been drifting away from the Democratic Party since the 1970s, but Obama has made moves that effectively slam the door on them: His energy policies, his immigration gambits, his gun control push, his shift to offense on same-sex marriage and abortion. It was possible to be a culturally conservative skeptic of mass immigration in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton. Not so anymore.

Of course this process has been a two-way street, as bigotry inclined some of these voters against Obama from the start, or encouraged them to think the worst of him eventually. And political coalitions shift all the time: Theres nothing inherently wrong with the Obama White Houses decision that a more ethnically diverse and thoroughgoingly liberal coalition held more promise than continued efforts to keep Reagan Democrats in the fold.
This year marks 100 years of distinguished service for an RAF Squadron very close to my heart - 47 Squadron, which, while based at RAF Lyneham, I had the pleasure of commanding.

Almost from the very beginnings of the Squadron's proud service it has operated in far flung corners of the world, often unsupported, and frequently as the sole representatives of the Royal Air Force and our Nation.

Formed in Yorkshire on 1 March 1916 as a Home Defence Squadron it was equipped with BE2s, BE12s and FK3s. But after just six short months the Squadron was transferred to Greece to work with Allied Forces fighting the Bulgarians in Northern Greece.

Advertisement

The Squadron has received seven battle honours with the right to emblazon and a wealth of individual operational awards over the years. But what is sometimes forgotten is their humanitarian work, which amount to several different missions. During the Berlin airlift, the Squadron flew more than 3,000 sorties in the seven months it was assigned to the operation, mainly transporting coal to the beleaguered city and more recently they were involved with the aid drops to help thousands of people fleeing Islamist militants in Iraq.

47 Squadron of today very much prides itself on its ability to get the job done 'Sans Peur' or 'Without fear' enabling the wider collective effort to achieve its often strategically important objectives. Through innovation and adaptation it overcomes environmental and operational factors and I was struck with the similarity between the circumstances of today and those of yesteryear when 47 Squadron pilots, whilst attacking enemy aircraft over Hudova during the First World War, urged their aircraft (restricted to 100 knots) to a previously untried and untested speed of 120 knots. The Squadron armourers and engineers had also 'jury rigged' a second Lewis gun to fire obliquely from the front of the aircraft!

This spirit of innovation and indeed courage, pressing boundaries, doing all within their gift, and sometimes recognising but challenging rules and regulations is as present today as it was in the beginning.

But we are not so proud as to turn down help when we need it and it is here that I have to salute the RAF Benevolent Fund for their compassion and support during what were some of the bleakest days on the Squadron in recent years.

Advertisement

On 30 January 2005 I received notification that one of my aircraft, flying alone in Iraq, had been shot down and all 10 crew on board were killed. Many things went through my mind as the then Squadron Commander but first and foremost was the loss the families of my fallen crew would have to endure for -the rest of their lives.

I knew I would be around for only six months or so as the Squadron boss but thankfully I knew that the RAF Benevolent Fund would be around for as long as they were needed. And they have been! When we go on operations it is a real comfort to know that we have the Fund at our backs, ready to step in as they did on that fateful day in 2005, and that they will stand by us no matter the cost or time involved.
Way back in 1984 when I was a little girl with no idea what my future held, the law took a wrong turn. A turn I was oblivious to, but one that would one day engulf my entire life for over eight and a half years.

On a hot summer night in 1991 I gave birth to my first child, a healthy baby boy with the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. Less than a year later I did the same again. I was the luckiest woman in the world; they were my pride and joy, always full of fun and sometimes a little bit naughty. I don't recall a month, a week or even a day that I was unhappy, although I am certain there must have been moments.

Everything changed in 2007 again on a hot summers night when both my 15 year old boys were charged with the murder of Garry Newlove. None of us knew Mr Newlove, his wife or his three daughters, but all of us were overwhelmed with grief that a 47 year old man had died so unnecessarily in his bare feet just 500 yards from his home. I am no detective but it was clear in the initial police interviews that my boys not only played no part in his attack, but they had not even witnessed it.

Advertisement

The press reported it as a savage gang attack, yet the Police Forensic Pathologist on oath, said the victims injuries were not consistent with a beating, that Mr Newlove had died because of a single unique injury. For all of us the trial process was about finding the truth, giving that truth to the jury so they could reach the correct verdict and satisfying the bereaved family that justice had been done.

The jury came back after 10 agonising days of deliberations and out of the five teenage defendants they found three of them guilty of joint enterprise murder and acquitted two. One of those found guilty was my eldest son, Jordan Cunliffe, by now he was age 16, but still my baby. The terrified pitch of the scream that came from his broken heart will be a sound I will never forget. The sight of his beautiful brown eyes as they blindly tried to search his brother out will be a vision I will carry until my dying day. How could the British justice system that claims to be the finest in the world, do this to a vulnerable child, a child who was proven in court not to have murdered anyone, yet still found him guilty of murder? It was because the law took a wrong turn in 1984, when I was a little girl and long before he was born.

The months turned in to years, the agony into frustration, but never bitterness. I knew the law was wrong, I knew my boy was innocent, so I set out on a mission to prove just that. With a strong feeling that he could not possibly be the only one that this dreadful thing had happened to I sought out others. I was lucky enough to meet like-minded women who felt just as I did. Beautiful, courageous women who trusted my judgement and supported me through my darkest days. And believe me those days were very dark, so dark and filled with madness I refuse to step too close even when just recalling them.

Advertisement

Jordan was considered registered blind on the night of the incident. He suffers from acute kerataconus and corneal scaring in both eyes. No matter how hard Jordan tried then or how he tries now he will never be able to explain what happened that night as his failing eyes saw nothing. On conviction the Judge in his wisdom placed a gagging order on anyone broadcasting his disability, all of which added further to my extreme misery. How could I explain his case to people if the most important aspect of who he was could never be told? There were so many things during the trial and afterwards that have gone wrong for Jordan. The use of the possibility of foresight that death or serious injury may occur during a spontaneous act of violence that lasted between 3 and 10 seconds on a blind child was just one them. How can anyone logically foresee what may unfold if they cannot see what is happening in the first place?

I am now overjoyed that the Supreme Court made the right decision on Thursday 18th February 2016, when they came to the conclusion that the controversial legal doctrine of joint enterprise had taken a wrong turn and since then been misinterpreted for over three decades. It was vindication for all I have been saying for over 8 years. I wish I was the kind of woman that could say the agony of losing Jordan was worth it if it means what happened to him will never happen quite so easily ever again, but I would be a liar. Until Jordan Cunliffe is acquitted he must remain in prison and continue serving a life sentence for a murder he never committed. And as his mother I will continue to fight for the freedom and respect that he deserves.

Information regarding Joint Enterprise can be found on the JENGbA Campaigners website http://www.jointenterprise.co/
In the suburbs of Dunkirk in Northern France, there is a neighbourhood where worlds collide. On one side of the road, there is a pristine suburban housing estate. On the other, thousands of refugees exist in filthy, freezing circumstances in the refugee camp of Grande Synthe.

Conditions are miserable. When it rains, the muddy ground turns into a swamp. People young and old shelter in flimsy tents that offer little protection from the wind or biting cold.

Little children are dressed in donated ski suits to keep them warm. With no school to go to, they play with anything that can be fashioned into a toy. Others amuse themselves by perilously hanging off the backs of vehicles passing through the camp.

Advertisement

This is no place for children to be growing up.

Despite being less notorious than its sister camps in Calais, dozens of people have volunteered there to offer food and medicine - but the one thing they cannot offer them is hope.

The Red Cross is supporting refugees fleeing conflict right along the migratory route: from Syria, to the border countries, and throughout Europe. Last month I visited Lesbos in Greece, to meet the red cross volunteers who are providing support to the thousands of refugees arriving by boat, many of whom are desperate to be reunited with their family when they land.

In Grande Synthe I met the people who have nearly - but not quite - reached the end of their traumatic journey. I was shocked by the conditions that people are living in, which are some of the worst I've seen anywhere. They need our support, just as those in Syria and its neighbours need our support.

Advertisement

There are around 100 families with young children stuck in cold, wet and muddy tents only 50 miles from our own shores. These are people with family in the UK - brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles who could offer them a home from home in a safe place. Many speak English and could make a valuable contribution to our country.

Take for example Ali, who until last year had been living together in Mosul, in Iraq with his wife, their seven-year-old twin sons and two-year-old daughter. Emotional but resilient, he wanted to get to the UK because he has a brother here.

Being together with our families is one of the most basic human instincts we have. This need for togetherness is no different for the thousands of people living at Grande Synthe, and its forcing people like Ali and his young children to embark on perilous journeys run by smugglers.

I am clear that we cannot ignore these people in crisis. That is why last week the British Red Cross, together with our international partners and more than 30 European Red Cross Societies convened a conference in London and agreed ways in which we can strengthen family reunion right along the migratory route.

In the UK, refugees have a legal right to bring their close family members over to join them. This is one of the few, established safe and legal routes for refugees to reach a place of safety. But the narrow criteria stops this being a reality for families like Ali's, whose UK connection is not a spouse.

Advertisement

Our solution is simple.

We believe our government should proactively examine asylum claims for vulnerable families in Grand Synthe with young children and a UK connection. By working closely with the French Government, we can accept asylum transfers through discretionary clauses in a mechanism known as the Dublin regulation.

Based on our current assessment, this would mean the UK examining asylum claims for fewer than 100 families from Grande Synthe. This is a modest ask that would provide a safe, secure and cost effective way of giving hope to young children and their families, who at the moment can see no future.

Most of us in this county are fortunate enough for our families not to be caught up in this crisis. We must not turn away from these people and their hopes and dreams to be with the people they love, just like us.
The majority of the world's mothers take it for granted that, when the time comes to deliver their babies, getting to a safe place for delivery won't be a major problem. Unfortunately however that's not the case in Africa. It may not be too hard in cities, but in rural areas most households don't have access to transport, and the journey may be difficult, particularly in mountainous areas or in poor weather conditions.

Ethiopia has become the first African country to have a national network of ambulances - about one for every 50,000 people - and they provide a free service for all women needing to get to a health facility for delivery, as well as covering other health emergencies. These have to be 4x4 vehicles to cope with Ethiopia's tough terrain. Setting up this service has been a key policy development for Ethiopia's Minister of Health, Dr. Kesetebirhan Admasu. He believes that helping women to get to facilities is a key part of an effective, modern health service. It might even be considered as a basic human right. However good health facilities might be, if people can't get there no health impact is possible. Providing transport can both increase the proportion of deliveries happening in facilities, and avert bad outcomes for women with complications.

Advertisement

The risk of a woman dying in connection with a pregnancy is more than a hundred-fold higher in many African countries than in typical European countries. Many factors contribute to this, but not being able to access care promptly is one major concern. A new study has evaluated the effect of the ambulance programme in Ethiopia. As the ambulances were deployed, and started to be used effectively in many Districts, maternal death rates fell - to half the previous levels. While that means there's still room for improvement, it's making a major impact on the problem of maternal deaths.

Of course ambulances are no use on their own - major developments in road infrastructure and in mobile phone networks over recent years in Ethiopia have contributed to the possibility of ambulances being able to operate effectively, and be called when needed. Similarly a robust legislative framework had to be put into place to make sure that the new ambulances are used appropriately and effectively.

On average the ambulances in the study travelled about 7,000 km per woman's life saved - surely a very worthwhile investment, considering the devastating consequences on a family of losing their mother. The evaluation suggests that a substantial proportion of the 180,000 or so pregnancy-related deaths in Africa each year could be prevented by an annual expenditure of around one billion US dollars. Wouldn't that be a worthwhile investment in the future of African children and their families?

Advertisement
A United Nations report cataloging the war crimes committed by the Syrian regime and other combatants was issued last week at the same time as the latest announcement of a deal calling for a cessation of hostilities in Syria, which has now tenuously come into effect. These two news items contrast the tragic disconnect between what is being said about the immense suffering of the Syrian people and the reality of how the international community responds to this horror.

While we have the trappings of a functioning international system with the United Nations at its core, the resolution of major conflicts occurs largely outside this system and is driven by differing constellations of nations often with diametrically opposed interests. Central to the resolution of any major conflict is the willingness of the United States to engage. In this chaotic system, the protection of civilians has generally remained on the periphery and the provision of aid open to compromise.

Indeed, despite the rhetoric, the protection of civilians appears far removed from the tenuous agreement on Syria stitched together over the past weeks by the 17 members of the International Syria Support Group. Instead it is a cynical deal struck by the play makers to this conflict which rewards Russia's pro-Syrian government bombing campaign, reinvigorates a decaying and discredited regime and provides a face-saving measure for the United States to walk away from an engagement in Syria that has never moved beyond tepid. If this wasn't enough, lurking in the background, sinister agreements and double dealings are struck by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and others. With this much baggage, it is hard to see this deal being anything but short lived. Even if the expected happens and the conflict roars on, the deal, by explicitly linking humanitarian assistance with the political elements of an agreement, taints and potentially restricts further the aid going into Syria.

Advertisement

With such a calamity in Syria comes some agonising questions for the international community which continues pretending it has an effective system of crisis management and protection of civilians. While various instruments exist on paper and are enshrined in the mandates of international organisations or UN resolutions, they are by and large meaningless if not resoundingly backed by the United States nor actively resisted by another Security Council member. While the UN has always proved to be unwieldy, with Syria it has simply been found to be unworkable. The stalemate experienced in the Security Council has in turn negatively impacted the response of those agencies aiming for protection of human rights, the effective provision of humanitarian aid, protection of refugees and those negotiating a political settlement.

Advertisement

Syrian Children Fleeing the Crisis Image Roger Hearn

Various UN bodies continue to build an illusion of a working machinery in Syria. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic has since the beginning of the conflict provided graphic documentation of almost industrial scale torture largely perpetuated by the regime. Numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions demand humanitarian access to thousands caught up in sieges. The UN Special Envoy continues shuttling to reignite the peace talks. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees outlines the protection that should be afforded to refugees seeking asylum. All requests denied or ignored while the real deals regarding Syria's future are being made elsewhere. The various principles of protection and intervention are so compromised that any notion of a responsibility to protect (the concept endorsed by the United Nations) is meaningless -- unless one is happy with a definition that says occasional responsibility to partially protect.

Even the multi-billion dollar humanitarian response to the crisis has been compromised by the ability of the Syrian regime to control the lion's share of the response by bullying the various UN agencies all trying to maintain their foothold in Damascus. Agencies working from Damascus have been forced to work through the regime or its proxy the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the distribution of food aid and other essential services which have been overwhelmingly directed at regimes supported areas. Aid has always been a negotiating chip used largely by the regime in this conflict and with the latest deal, the politicised role of aid takes centre stage throwing any hint of independence and impartiality out the window.

As the Director of the UN Agency working with Palestinian refugees in Damascus at the start of Syria's crisis followed by three years leading Save the Children's regional Syria response, I have seen firsthand the results of global political failure and the compromised humanitarian response. It is time to say enough.
There are many adjectives to describe sex - exhilarating, messy, awkward and pleasurable being a few choice words. For some, it's the accumulation of a flirtatious exchange and for a significant percentage of the world which is far too high, an unwelcome and uninvited weapon of assault.

Lady Gaga's performance of her Oscar-nominated song Til it Happens to You at the 88th Academy Awards put the subject of sexual assault front-of-center of a global stage. You couldn't shy away from its powerful message or turn a blind eye to the survivors of egregious sexual abuse who joined her on stage. Their arms were imprinted with the words ''not my fault' in bold letters as a reminder that this violent crime should not be a taboo subject to discuss in the open.

Advertisement

Clearly this is not the first or last time music has been used as a vehicle to educate the masses on the epidemic of rape. I've recently been reading about an initiative called Love Matters; a project that uses social media and music to inspire social change in India, China, the Arab World, Latin America and Africa on sexual education among young teenagers and children.

The Institute of Development Studies researched Kenyan's sexual attitudes and experiences to get a real grasp on the sexual well-being of young people from around the world. They found that 12 and 13 year-old children had already begun engaging in sexual activities and more worryingly, these children were mistaking a violent sexual experience (which they knew was, or post-identified as, rape) as a typical standard of intimacy.

These discoveries led to the genesis of the Love Matters Music Awards , the first initiative of its kind in the country which allows children and teenagers to produce songs on themes related to sexuality to help instigate important conversations and at the same time, provide an outlet to survivors of sexual assault.

The songs being created by the young cover everything, from how to deal with rape as a society, to loving yourself enough to know when you should engage in sexual activity with another person.

Advertisement

Joshua Omari, a 19 year-old student, born and raised in the western highlands of Kenya was recently named the Judges' Choice with his song "Dot.Com". For Omari, getting involved in the project was a life-changing decision. After hearing his classmates open up about being taken advantage of and even being hurt physically and emotionally by the people who ought to have been protecting them, he tried to make sense of it all through music.

"My conscience couldn't let me rest", he said, "Armed with these personal confessions, as well as so much new information, how could it? Our parents aren't talking to us about this stuff and neither are our teachers. I wanted to stand up and tell some of these untold stories."

Dot.com became Omari's lament for his generation:

"Sexual violence and rape - just to mention but a few - are the order of the day", he continues, "I passionately believe we can't just close our eyes and ears and assume they are not happening."

Creating socially conscious music which address issues that plague younger Millennials across the hemispheres is much needed; the Oscar performance proved that. We need to give a voice to those who feel stifled and unheard through a medium that touches everyone.

Advertisement
Abstract

Without any scientific validation, to test the comparative efficacy of Tinder versus Grindr whilst lolloping across middle America.

Introduction

Sitting in a rustic restaurant in a ranch where all the other patrons are dressed in militia-chic camouflage, and a sticker plastered above the door proclaims "Impeach Bill. Jail Hilary", you get a sense that this might not be the usual US package holiday. Last time I went on a nice weekend break to New York - or took in some Floridian sun - I don't recall any nearby signs proclaiming, "Eat Beef. The West Wasn't Won on Salad".

But I'm done with identikit holidays. The interchangeable hotels where the biggest thrill comes from that initial inspection of the bathroom to see what calibre of miniature show gel you've landed.

Advertisement

After months cooped up writing a book, I needed to drink-in different sceneries and experiences. To see the open road and eat in vitamin-free diners. I needed to drive across America; to scratch that itch that we all bang on about after a few pints and scenically-arousing episodes of Fargo/Breaking Bad/last series of Mad Men. And why not spice that drive up with a little competition?

Method

Driving across America with a spurious mission needs four things.

A route. A companion. A hypothesis. A car.

Route: for a fortnight's holiday, driving across the whole width of America is do-able but daft, assuming you want to get out of the car at some stage. Lop a third of the 3,000 miles off - which handily leaves the distance from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

Companion: you reach an age where, with most of your mates nestled in domesticity and a world-away from being able to hit the road, you're grateful to have resolutely single gay friends who can go motel-hopping on a whim. Thelma had Louise, and I had my old friend Jimmy.

Which gave our trip a hypothesis to empirically explore across the test tube of mid-America: can Tinder even get close to Grindr?

Advertisement

A duel that would take place in the crucible of a tank-like Cadillac CTS sedan that left no bodily crevice unheated.

Results

Before jet-lag even had a chance to unpack, it was evident this was a flawed experiment. Tinder is no match for Grindr - it is an unfair competition. It is to pitch a non-league minnow against a Champions League winner.

Whilst Tinder elicited intermittent and ultimately futile reactions such as "how long are you in town for?", "it's a shame you aren't here longer", and "I don't want to meet someone who is just passing through", Grindr was met by a barrage of instant cock/ass/torso shots and immediate invitations to meet for instant intercourse - replete with menus of what acts of gratification would be on string-fee demand.

Red state, blue state, swing state - it was a whitewash. Tinder was routed. The experiment abandoned - and more sensible, life-affirming conclusions could be drawn about what was an epic adventure which started in New Orleans, passed through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, southern California and ended up in LA. That winged its route as we went - dictated only by trying to avoid the main I-routes where possible.

Conclusions

-The HBO show Treme is spot on. Post-Katrina New Orleans is in the midst of an existential wrestle with its soul. The devastated lower ninth ward has seen only a third or so of its residents return; houses sit surrounded by vacant plots like teeth in barren, rotten gums. Yet, nearby, post-Hurricane gentrification has swept hipsters into town - and sees modest houses going for half a million-plus dollars. True to the show, the Treme Brass Band will blow the socks of even the most devout jazz non-believer.

Advertisement

-Texas has spectacular scenery. Look beyond the deliciously stereotype-affirming roadside Redneck Snack Hut and the gas station cafe where the tattooed fella in dungarees tells you that life is about "guns and beer"; the drive from Louisiana into Texas is a breath-taking meander through stunning forests and soulful lakes.

-Austin is a super-hip, liberal enclave that's also fighting off the existential threat of developers - whose Jenga-like constructions threaten to out-price the musicians and artists from town. It's also home to a stark homeless problem; in the freezing holiday season, there was almost a post-apocalyptic air to the streets - where the only movement on pavements was scores of shuffling homeless people pushing trolleys.

-If the heart of Shoreditch were to be transplanted to the deserts of western Texas, it would beat in Marfa - a tiny city where residents and art galleries are about as numerous, and art deco abounds. On the way out of town, there's a fake Prada shop installation - though the giant migrant-spotting blimp is more jaw-dropping. Speaking of which...

-Good luck with the wall, Donald. Driving from Marfa to El Paso - skirting alongside the Mexican border, through tiny towns that are all but Mexican in nationality - is to reinforce the scale and beyond-words lunacy of building a border wall.

-New Mexican scenery tops Texas. Some of the cities en route - like El Paso and Phoenix in Arizona - might not be that much to write home about, but the visuals take on new dimensions as you head west. Through the cacti-populated landscapes, lunar-style white sands (close to where the first A-bomb was tested), ski resort-style Alpine passes and deep ruddy canyons. Americans can almost be forgiven for not bothering to leave their shores. And then you hit the Joshua Tree in California - landscapes of biblical proportion that even make you want to listen to U2.

Advertisement

-The best food was found in the most unprepossessing of places. The tortilla soup to die for from a rusty food van in Marfa; the plantain salad in a cafe run by an ex-Marine in the back of the Mobil garage in 29 Palms.

-No matter how ropey some of the motels you end up in - like the one whose main selling point was that its remote controls are wipe-down - the sheer thrill of gulping down raw unfiltered culture, ever-changing landscapes and following whatever path you like the look up makes you forget even the poshest of miniature shampoos. Or the death of right swipes.
In recent years, February, usually one of the s-l-o-w-e-s-t months of the year, has surprisingly become a time that I eagerly look forward to. This shift in attitude can be attributed to one thing, the Glasgow Film Festival. Now in its 12th year, the festival spans 12 days in February and showcases some of the most exciting new films, hidden gems and old classics to an eager cinemagoing public. This year there were 308 separate events and screenings and 174 films, which makes it one of the largest programmes the festival has fielded and people responded by turning out in record numbers, with over 42,000 tickets sold.

The festival has set the bar high with opening night films, with The Grand Budapest Hotel and Noah Baumbach's While We're Young kicking off proceedings at the last two iterations, and the high standard was maintained with the UK premiere of the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar! Highlights of the opening week included Ben Wheatley's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's High-Rise, which appears to be one of the most divisive films in recent memory, with the number of people who love it almost matched by those who hate it, which in my book makes it a must-see.

Advertisement

The Palme d'Or winning Dheepan screened as part of the CineMasters strand, ahead of its UK release later this month and Lucile Hadzihalilovic's atmospheric Evolution called to mind peak-David Cronenberg, and made me feel queasy in a similar way to the Canadian master's best work. People wondering what all the fuss is about with Jeremy Saulnier's brutal, wince-inducing Green Room got to see it almost three months ahead of release, and Jean Marc Vallee's (Dallas Buyers Club, Wild) Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal screened well ahead of its late-April release.

Disney's witty and sharp Zootropolis was the big family offering and gave a sneak peak into what's likely to be a big draw this Easter. It's not just new films either, one of the greatest of all sci-fi films, Aliens, got the IMAX treatment and Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Silence Of The Lambs were both screened at the beautiful Kelvingrove Museum.

The closing weekend is dominated by Frightfest, but for those who don't have the constitution for the best in genre-horror, there's still plenty to look out for. Suburra is a slick, violent crime drama for anyone who's a fan of television's Gomorrah, One Floor Below is an understated Romanian drama (some might say too understated), with a magnetic lead performance from Teodor Corban and Marguerite is the French version of the Florence Foster Jenkins story. It's a sumptuous, classy comedy-drama and gives the British version, starring Meryl Streep, a high benchmark to aim for when it's released in May.

After the success of its introduction last year, the festival brought back the audience award and the winning film was my highlight of the festival. Mustang is a Turkish drama about a group of free-spirited orphan sisters, who incur the wrath of their overbearing Uncle, and defy the efforts of the village in which they live to indoctrinate them into a strictly patriarchal society. It's beautiful, energising and vital and is set to be one of the highlights of 2016 when it's released by Curzon Artificial Eye in April.

Advertisement

This year's closing night film was the UK premiere of Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's inspired animation, Anomalisa. Recalling little else I've ever seen before, except perhaps, Kaufman's earlier work, David Thewlis voices Michael, a married customer service mentor who falls for another woman while staying at a hotel for a conference. It's ingenious, disquieting and frequently laugh-out-loud funny.

It capped a festival that continues to go from strength to strength. It may lack the glamour of other European festivals, but you'll struggle to find a more welcoming one. The general atmosphere of fun and enthusiasm for film that pervades everything the festival does is infectious and the witty film introductions from co-director Allison Gardner are almost worth the price of admission alone. If February is a month that fills you with dread, next year take a trip up to Glasgow.
The Donald is now the official front-runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Yes I know. So let's suppose that we are to wake up to a nightmare Room 101 scenario on the morning of January 20th 2017 to find that the Donald is being inaugurated as the most powerful man in the world.

It's terrifying to think that a narcissist (based on his tendency to emblazon his name on everything he owns from real estate and his plane to hooded tops) would have his hand on the button. Narcissists need a regular narcissistic supply. If they are not the centre of attention or they are snubbed ie their supply is cut off then they tend to go ballistic. Now, in a normal situation, this is usually no biggie. But when you have your hand on the nuclear button then going ballistic would literally mean the end of the world.

For example, the Donald talks about obliterating ISIS, which energises his base no end. What would this translate into in realpolitik terms? Well, let's suppose that there is a second 9/11 then internment camps for American Muslims plus a nuclear attack on Syria and Iraq would certainly be on the cards. Of course, the list of potential nuclear targets would be longer. So we can safely assume that Iran, North Korea and France would also be on it. In fact, anyone who has ever got in between the Donald and his egomania.

Advertisement

Of course, he wouldn't be the first narcissist to become President. The political world is full of sociopaths - men and women prepared to do the bidding of their lizard overlords for personal gain without a thought for their fellow citizens. Likewise, the corporate and financial universe. Which is why Trump's business background would be ideal preparation for the job of President - an irony missed on his fans, who believe that his business background is an asset. In fact, Trump's vehicle of the American version of The Apprentice tells you all you need to know about his value system and those, who aspire to it. A world of atomised, hyper-individualised beings with zero emotional substrate prepared to deep fat fry their grandmother's liver and climb over the bodies of other contestants in order to win.

As for the assumption that the President has immense executive power, well one look at the Obama presidency tells you all you need to know about that theory. Although I for one do not subscribe to the notion that Obama is weak. He's just not liberal. As Tariq Ali points out in The Obama Syndrome, the man is an arch neoliberal. Hence why he's made it so far. He's just selling a great brand of being black, hip, cool and looking like he cares. Domestic policy has encompassed failure to punish Wall Street for the financial crisis or even impose policies that might force them to cough up for their mass corruption. Obamacare was only given the green light, unlike the Clinton healthcare reforms of the 90s, because it basically meant more money for the insurance industry. All the while, he has pulled off a fantastic performance in rebranding USA PLC after the global PR disaster of the Bush presidency and provided us with some soaring rhetoric along the way. And we have not even got to his foreign policy.

Advertisement

The charge sheet attacking the Obama administration from Trump, the fanatical Fox News and their acolytes is laughably absurd. They contend that Obama's foreign policy has weakened the US empire. The reality has been to extend the Bush White House national security doctrine, escalate the use of extrajudicial killing through drones, clampdown on civil liberties, allow the CIA to escape unscathed from the torture disclosures and failure to close Guantanomo.

The reality of modern day imperial USA is that the power is bottom up and not top down. In other words, power is diffused throughout a nexus of corporate, finance and military-industrial sectors. For example, defence policy-making filters up from the Pentagon, defence firms, intelligence agencies, hi-tech companies and thinktanks. And this is before we even get to the paralysis of Congress in which the days of cross-partisan politics, in the interests of the people, are long over.

So the Donald would quickly find that his powers are curtailed. George W Bush commented that his biggest surprise was finding how little authority he had. The Obama administration was enraged to find that, on coming to power, they were given two options for Afghanistan - either a small or a large surge. They went for the former with an escalation of 30,000 troops.

The Donald would thus find that the NSA and the CIA are dictating national security and foreign policy and his friends on Wall Street are doing the same for domestic policy. And anyone, who thinks they can take on that lot should be reminded of the old Bill Hicks joke about how the first thing every new president is shown is the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination from a never before seen angle, which looks suspiciously like it's off the grassy knoll!
Supplied

A New Zealand man who kept his daughter as a sex slave for 23 years is set to be released from prison despite a finding from the NZ Parole Board that he remains an undue risk to community safety.

Ronald Van der Plaat, 82, was sentenced to 14 years in prison in 2000 for the horrific abuse that he subjected his daughter to between the ages of nine and 32, including putting her head in a padlocked box while he raped her.

Advertisement

The sentencing judge described Van der Plaats offending as at the very upper level of seriousness in terms of cases of sustained abuse to come before the court, and that it was not ordinary sexual abuse but was bizarre in the extreme and can only be described as depraved.

Van der Plaat was previously released on parole in 2010, but was jailed again in 2012 after committing further offences, including making an intimate visual recording according to a parole hearing in February.

By law, he must be released on his statutory release date of 11 May 2016, however the parole board has declined a request for his release before this date, noting that the most recent psychological assessment of Van der Plaat found that he had a medium-high risk of reoffending.

The psychological report says that the most likely target for Mr Van der Plaat will be vulnerable solo mothers, most likely non-European immigrants, and that he will groom their trust through offering financial, material, practical and emotional support, the board said.

Advertisement

Future victims are likely to be their female children with Mr Van der Plaat assuming some form of caregiver role.

It was also noted that he has continually denied committing the offences, meaning that he had not been eligible to participate in any intensive offence-focussed rehabilitation.

Van der Plaats daughter, Tanjas Darke, waived her right to anonymity and gave an interview to New Zealands New Idea magazine in 2010 ahead of his parole release, which lasted only two years.

He made attempts to find me many times in the past, and Ive had to move in a hurry on several occasions, she said.

Its better to safeguard my whereabouts. I never inform anyone where Im going or what Im doing. I just go and arrive.

Advertisement

Prior to his arrest, Van der Plaat was considered an intelligent, educated and polite man, working as a Lifeline counsellor and a master in Pacific Island artefacts, appearing several times on NZ television.

Its only when he is around someone all the time, where the possibility for control is in place, that issue can arise, Darke said.

Is he going to cruise by a school and drag a kid off the road? I dont think that would happen. Hes a sexual deviant in a different light.
Our love was made for movie screens.

Spent the leap day of 2016 with my girls after a spontaneous decision to go to JB just two nights before. Initially, we had plans to cycle and prepare for my Laos trip, but the stayover at Miao's over the weekend had us change our plans since we've been wanting to head there together for a while now.



Honestly I never really knew what's so fun about heading to JB for a day trip because it doesn't seem like there's anything much to do, but I suppose it beats staying in Singapore LOL. Trisha and I let Miaolin do most of the leading since she's more familiar with the place.

We went on a Monday, so there was a night market towards the late afternoon and I thought that that made the whole trip pretty fun!!







We started our day trip with some Kwayteow soup @ 101 toman for lunch, located at Taman Sentosa. Love the soup there and it only opens in the day before the seafood restaurant takes over in the evening.

Thereafter, we shopped a little before doing our nails!! I'm typically not one to paint my nails often because mine always chips off in two to three days and I'll be too lazy to like reapply them... But yesterday was quite my princess moment? Hahaha.

When it was about five, we made our way to the night market located outside KSL (they have it every Monday and Tuesday if I remember it right) to basically binge eat our entire evening away. There were really too many good stuff around to eat, like their penang laksa or aiyu bing or pancake. The three of us have always been fans of street food, so we really had our fills.



I guess the only thing that turns me off about traveling to JB is the exhausting journey back to Singapore via public transport. But I don't mind enduring the jam-packed buses and overcrowded custom every now and then if it's with the right company, cause it's definitely time and money well spent. :)

So we've finally went to JB by ourselves after talking about it since we were in primary school! Funny how our twelve year-old selves once thought that going to Malaysia without our parents was one of the most badass thing to do. HAHAHA.





Other than this trip, I've just been meeting some people to catch up and what not. I practically have all the time in the world now that poly is over. That is, until I officially start work in late March. I'm also considering taking up a new language and a sport. Hmm.



Well, I'm gonna leave those thoughts for later after Laos, in which I'll be flying off on Sunday. I'm finally traveling again, and the thought of being in another country where the unknown and so much adventure await me is more than exhilarating.



I could definitely use this timely liberty.
Plume Creative via Getty Images Luxury Beauty

Imagine walking into a supermarket and not being able to buy the basics: milk, bananas, bread. Now think about not being able to buy a coffee before work or enjoy a glass wine?

It may sound dramatic, but the supply of some of our most loved foods will likely be challenged by global warming.

Advertisement

Professor Lesley Hughes told The Huffington Post Australia our favourite foods may cost more and be farmed in different regions as production shifts due to climate change.

"I think what will happen is a rise in production costs and areas will become unsuitable for farming," Hughes said. "But I think saying foods will become extinct is too generalist."

The Macquarie University professor, who also sits on the Climate Council, said a lot of people do care about global warming and are seeing the impact.

"The most recent polls for Australians concerned about global warming was well over 70 percent. But thinking and doing something are very different matters.

Advertisement

"We know 2015 was the world's hottest year ever and Australian farmers and the rest of the world are feeling the impact of rising temperatures and lower rainfall," Hughes said.

So, which of our favourite and staple foods could be affected by global warming and why?

Chocolate

A worldwide shortage of cocoa is predicted in the next four years, according to Professor David Guest from the University of Sydney.

A CSIRO report released in August found, Australians eat the equivalent of 32kg of chocolate per person, per year.

A study looking at tropical agriculture found climate change would have a significant impact on cocoa-growing regions in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, where 70 percent of the world's cocoa is farmed.

"The implications are that the suitability within the current cocoa-growing areas will decrease seriously by 2050," the report read.

Advertisement

Wine

The impact of higher temperatures is threatening some of Australias favourite wine varieties, including sauvignon blanc and riesling. And this is on Australian soil.

Plant physiologist and agricultural scientist Snow Barlow said grapes are ripening an average of one day earlier per year due to warmer weather in many wine-growing areas across the country.

This year, record yields were reported and some varieties were harvested up to a month earlier than usual, due to warm and dry conditions.

If the trend continues our local industry could see between a 25 and 73 percent decrease of suitable land used for grape growing by 2050.

Advertisement

Coffee

Sorry coffee-drinkers.

Rising temperatures and a rise in consumption could see the very real potential for a coffee shortage said Andrea Illy, chief of Italian roaster Illycafe.

The future of one of the world's favourite beans -- the arabica bean -- is threatened. The area suitable for growing the bean is predicted to shrink by 65-100 percent by 2080.

Meanwhile, in Central America, 'coffee rust' a fungus worsened by high temperatures, is ruining crops and farming communities.

Advertisement

Beer

Yes. We might actually run out of beer.

New Zealand climate scientist Jim Salinger told the ABC that global warming is expected to cause a decline in the production of beers key ingredient -- malting barley.

In Europe last year, a leading Belgian brewer was forced to temporarily halt production due to an abnormally warm winter.

Fish and seafood

Australians love their seafood. On average, Australians consume 25kg of seafood every year.

Global warming could be changing fish behaviours, as warmer temperatures force fish away from the equator.

Add to that pollution-induced ocean acidification, which could bring an end to our easy and relatively cheap access to seafood.

Advertisement

A study published in journal Nature found 90 percent of the overflow of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is taken up by the ocean. When CO2 dissolves in the water it causes ocean acidification. Highly acidic water leaves oysters, crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans greater difficulty in forming shells.
Andrew Meares / Fairfax Media

CANBERRA -- Indigenous leader and "father of reconciliation" Pat Dodson has been tapped to become a federal senator, after Western Australian senator Joe Bullock announced his resignation on Tuesday.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten announced on Wednesday that he would endorse Dodson to fill the position left by Bullock, who resigned in disagreement over Labor's support for same sex marriage. Bullock is expected to leave the parliament next week.

Advertisement

Dodson, from Broome, is a Yawuru man and a leader in Indigenous affairs, having previously chaired of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. Known as the "father of reconciliation" for his work in championing indigenous advancement, Dodson said he was formerly a Labor party member in the 1980s but had not had any formal political affiliation since then.

A crowd of senior Labor MPs, with indigenous senator Nova Peris seated in the front row, gave raucous cheers as Shorten told a packed media conference of his push for Dodson to sit in the senate.

Dodson said Shorten's phone call came as a surprise.

"It took me a little while to adjust to the idea," Dodson said in Canberra.

Shorten was glowing in his praise for the indigenous leader.

"Pat Dodsons CV speak s for itself. He is a person of unmatched intelligence, integrity and achievement. Hes nationally recognised and rightly admired as the father of reconciliation," he told the press conference.

The announcement was a surprise after a surprise, with Bullock resigning just two years into his six-year senate term. Reports emerged soon after Bullock's resignation announcement that former senator Louise Pratt, who was effectively dumped in favour of Bullock at the last election after she was demoted from the top place on Labor's senate voting card.

Advertisement

Shorten said Pratt was "an excellent senator" but "on this occasion though, I'll support Pat Dodson".
Were not saying that Bernie Sanders campaign is kaput, but Sanders' people might want to reach out to some PUMAs for grief counseling tips. The famously low-energy Ben Carson dropped out of the presidential race, telling his supporters, ..................hello. And with only four Republican candidates left, the participants in tomorrow night's debate will be advised to limit their suplex slams to three at the very most. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016:





Our hot take on last night's Trump presser.

WHITE HOUSE VETTING APPELLATE COURT JUDGE FOR SCOTUS - Short of being a DREAMer, she's basically a demographic and political goldmine. Julie Hirschfeld Davis: "The White House is vetting Jane L. Kelly, a career public defender turned federal appellate judge, as a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, as President Obama closes in on a decision that could reshape the court for decades and create an election-year showdown with Republicans. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been conducting background interviews on Judge Kelly, 51, according to a person with knowledge of the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House is closely guarding details about Mr. Obamas search to fill the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia...In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Mr. Grassley effusively praised Judge Kelly, who has spent her career in Iowa and is well regarded in legal circles there. He quoted from a letter from retired Judge David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee, who called her a 'forthright woman of high integrity and honest character' and a person of 'exceptionally keen intellect' before voting to confirm her for the appeals court post." [NYT]

Advertisement

CHUCK GRASSLEY MAD - Michael McAuliff: "On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who has vigorously backed [Mitch] McConnell's position that voters should have a say, declared that it is Democrats who are playing politics by calling for such hearings and a Senate vote. 'Why would the other side come to the floor to express outrage about not having a hearing?' Grassley said. 'It's because they want to make this as political as possible.' 'That's why the president wants to push forward with a nominee that won't get confirmed,' he added. 'That's why the other side is clamoring for a hearing on a nominee everyone knows won't get confirmed. And making the court even more political is absolutely the last thing that the Supreme Court needs.'" Well, this is politics, after all. [HuffPost]

Need some sanctuary, eh? "The number of Google searches for 'how can I move to Canada' increased dramatically on Super Tuesday, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump scored big wins in the race to the White House. Simon Rogers, a data editor at Google, reported the observation on Twitter Tuesday night." [CBC]

CARSON DROPS OUT - Nothing says "get excited about my future" quite like a 4:45pm statement on a Friday. Haley Miller: 'Retired neurosurgeon and bestselling author Ben Carson said in a statement Wednesday he does "not see a political path forward' for his campaign after his poor showing on Super Tuesday. Carson announced he won't attend the Fox News GOP debate on Thursday in Detroit, and said he would further discuss his political plans at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on Friday. 'Even though I will not be in my hometown of Detroit on Thursday, I remain deeply committed to my home nation, America,' Carson's statement said." [HuffPost]

Advertisement

Where Carson's supporters go now, from our writeup of his election party last night: "Conventional wisdom has dictated that Carson's supporters would flock to Ted Cruz, whose Christian conservative platform most closely mirrors Carson. However, polling suggests Carson's supporters are much more fractured, and generally appalled by the idea of a Trump nomination. But nearly all of Carson's supporters on Tuesday said they were drawn to Carson's upbeat message of unity, and as such were put off by Ted Cruz surrogates suggesting Carson was dropping out the day of the Iowa caucuses and also put off by Marco Rubio's recent squabbles with Donald Trump'It's not winsome,' said Janet Osborne, an elderly Carson supporter from Frederick, Maryland, of Rubio and Trump's highly publicized imbroglio." [HuffPost]

Carson is sitting on cash like a 90s music video extra: "Ben Carson has been crushed in 15 straight primary contests and his own advisers see no path to the Republican presidential nomination. Yet his campaign revealed Wednesday morning that his fundraising spiked as his losing streak grew. Carson raised $5 million last month, up from $3.8 million in January and $2.5 million in December, when he still had a flicker of a chance to revive his sputtering candidacy." [Politico]

Oh well: "Longtime Ben Carson confidant Armstrong Williams on Wednesday shut down rumors that Dr. Carson will drop out of the presidential race and run for the open U.S Senate seat in Florida. 'Youre hearing something we dont know about, thats why we call them rumors,' Williams told The Daily Caller." [Daily Caller's Alex Pfeiffer]

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

Advertisement

DAY TWO OF MAYA ANGELOU CONTROVERSY - In rising to speak against a bill naming a post office after Maya Angelou yesterday, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) suggested on the House floor that people ought to investigate the late author by looking at articles in the American Thinker or American Spectator. HuffPost Hill has conducted such an investigation and can report the following: the Specator piece calls Angelou overrated and the Thinker piece is basically just a ripoff of the Spectator piece, with one added detail: the author once flew on the same plane as Angelou and he thought the flight attendants were too nice to her. Lawmakers queried by Mike DeBonis pointed to Angelou's apparent communist sympathies.

SENATE DOING HEROIN LEGISLATION - A vote on final passage is possible tomorrow. Laura Barron-Lopez: "Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked $600 million in emergency funding intended to improve the monitoring of prescription drugs and help law enforcement combat heroin abuse. In a 48-47 procedural vote, Republicans prevented the amendment from being attached to a larger bill aimed at fighting the heroin and opioid epidemic sweeping the U.S. The legislation, called the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, would establish an interagency task force to create best practices for prescribing opioids, and shift federal officials toward prevention-driven drug policy and away from punishment. The amendment, authored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), also set aside $300 million for state programs focused on prevention, treatment and recovery, and for improving treatment for pregnant and postpartum women dealing with heroin or opioid addiction.While the underlying bill is bipartisan and the product of three years of work between senators in both parties, Shaheens measure was seen as the one 'controversial' amendment. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) called it 'duplicative.'" [HuffPost]

Barron-Lopez also reports that Lisa Murkowski is optimistic about getting holds lifted before the next recess on the stalled energy bill and the Flint-inspired legislation to help states with water infrastructure.

SANDERS IS PROBABLY FINISHED [sanders voice]THE BOTTOM 25 PERCENT OF THE TOP 35 PERCENT OF THE UPPER QUARTILE OF MY SUPPORTERS IS NOT ENOUGH[/sanders voice]. Nate Cohn: "Mrs. Clinton is on track to win nearly 80 percent of the vote in Alabama, more than 70 percent in Georgia, and more than 60 percent in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. Mr. Sanders cannot make up for routs in the South with slight wins in the North. He needs landslides to counter landslides; he doesnt have them. There are three times as many nonblack voters as black voters in the Democratic primary electorate. To cancel her strength, Mr. Sanders would need to win nonblack voters by about 20 percentage points, since Mrs. Clinton leads by more than 60 points among black voters." [NYT]

Advertisement

Meanwhile, a look ahead at a possible Clinton Treasury Department: "Larry Fink, BlackRocks CEO, has assembled a veritable shadow government full of former Treasury Department officials at his company. Fink has made clear his desire to become Treasury Secretary someday. The Obama Administration had him on the short list to replace Timothy Geithner. When that didnt materialize, he pulled several members of prior Treasury Departments into high-level positions at the firm, which may improve the prospects of realizing his dream in a future Clinton Administration. And his priorities appear to be so in sync with Clintons that its not entirely clear who shares whose agenda. Clinton, for her part, has refused to rule out a Treasury Secretary drawn from Wall Street." [Intercept's David Dayen]

@adrian_gray:

% of Delegates following Super Tuesday

2008 McCain 59 Rom 22 Huck 17

2012 Romney 55 Paul 15 Sant 14 Newt 12

2016 Trump 46 Cruz 32 Rubio 16





Hello, friend: Mitt Romney will deliver an anti-Trump speech in Utah tomorrow.

SUPREME COURT DOES ABORTION - Cristian Farias and Laura Bassett: "The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard 85 minutes of oral arguments in a major abortion rights case that could forever define whether Roe v. Wade is good law, or merely dead letter without practical effect. At the heart of the hearing was the court's own 'undue burden' standard, a constitutional test developed in 1992 to measure whether abortion regulations place substantial obstacles on women seeking the procedure. Without the vote of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month, the decision for Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt could be split 4 to 4. Should this happen, a Texas law called HB 2 will continue curtailing access to legal abortions for women in the state and a national precedent on reproductive rights won't be set. HB 2 requires abortion clinics in the state to undergo costly upgrades so they resemble mini-hospitals, and mandates that doctors working in the clinics obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals." [HuffPost]

TRUMP THREATENS PAUL RYAN - Cleary Trump is threatened by Ryan's youth, vigor and generous number of active hair follicles. "Fresh off a string of resounding victories in Republican primary elections on Tuesday, Donald Trump had menacing words for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Ryan earlier in the day condemned Trump for equivocating on whether he disavows support from the white supremacists who happen to love his campaign. 'Paul Ryan, I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him,' Trump said. 'And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price. Okay?' Trump did not elaborate on why or how Ryan would pay a big price if the two can't get along. Trump uttered the vague threat in response to a reporter asking how he'd get along with Congress while its GOP leaders are condemning his campaign." [HuffPost]

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here's a dog and crow.

DELANEY DOWNER - Tom Vilsack is not impressed by Maine Gov. Paul LePage. Under the Republican governor, food stamp enrollment has dropped sharply among adults who don't have jobs or children, and Vilsack, secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, thinks LePage has simply kicked people off benefits without trying to help them. "I think he's looking for a shortcut, he's looking for a way of making it easy on the state," Vilsack told The Huffington Post. "I'm happy when we reduce the rolls theright way: I'm happy when someone gets a job." Though food stamps are out of the national spotlight -- there's no present-day Newt Gingrich lambasting President Barack Obama as "The Food Stamp President" -- policy battles around food assistance have been raging across the country. States are in the process of ending Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for a million people, with conservative think tanks hailing the caseload decline in places like Maine and Kansas." [HuffPost]

COMFORT FOOD

- A very, very boring remake of "Jurassic Park."

- Why we never domesticated zebras.

- Ted Cruz Bad Lip Reading.

TWITTERAMA

@elisefoley: The worst thing about twitter is getting more RTs for silly nonsense than for actual stories and being reminded that everything is pointless



@ChloeAngyal: Or as we shall now call it, Resting Christie Face.



@aedwardslevy: 2016: THE RE-MITTANCE
In light of "Super Tuesday," the most important date thus far of the 2016 primary elections, we drove to the Texas Christian University campus today in Fort Worth, Texas, to get millennial students' perspectives on the imminent elections. We arrived on campus eager to hear who students voted for.

However, after stationing ourselves in the center of campus, we initially received just one response to our question "Hey, have you voted?" That answer was no. Most of the students we ended up talking to hadn't voted, but they were either planning on voting, or didn't vote not due to a lack of interest, but due to difficulties in voter registration.

Gradually, however, we discovered several trends. First, we found that the millenials at TCU did not follow the general trends we are seeing in the mainstream media. Not one student was a Trump or Cruz supporter. Additionally, many said that although Bernie Sanders has ideas that sound great, realistically, he won't be able to implement them. The second trend we found was students not voting because they viewed registration either as a hassle, or confusing.

Advertisement

Defying National Trends

While we often hear about Sanders' sweeping success across college campuses, TCU students seemed more apprehensive in trusting his promises. Hayden Guy, a 19-year-old student who is registered as independent, said he has closely followed the election, but hasn't yet decided whether he will vote for a Democrat or Republican. He said that Sanders is "easy to get behind" for college students.

"He has some crazy ideas," Guy said. "I do think a lot of it has to do with the bold statement about legalizing marijuana and free college and things like that. I think that whether it's realistic or not, it definitely appeals to kids and it's kind of like a fairytale."

Guy defied yet another trend, saying if there was one candidate who he wouldn't vote for, it would be Texas Senator Ted Cruz , a top three Republican contender. Instead, he favored Ohio Governor John Kasich the most out of the Republican candidates, who some predict will drop-out after Super Tuesday.

"(Kasich) is not necessarily as entertaining as other candidates but the things he has said, I've connected with and I think he has his head on his shoulders."

Advertisement

Catherine Tharp, 19, also an independent, said she is examining both sides and deciding who the best leader of the country will be. Tharp said that she won't vote for Sanders because his economic policies are "unreasonable," and that she is "absolutely not going to vote for trump."

Yet another college student who defied national trends was 21-year-old Nick Warren. He was also the only millennial we talked to who had already voted.

"I voted for Marco Rubio because while I'm Republican, I'm not as crazy or super far right as some might believe," he said. "I don't really line up with Trump or Cruz on a lot of issues. I thought Rubio was less 'crazy conservative,' if that makes sense."



Warren added that he views Trump as an embarrassment and disagrees with his policies toward Mexican immigrants, Muslims and Trump's degrading remarks to women.

"My dad is a small business owner who relies on Hispanic labor and not all of them are rapists thieves or terrible people," he said. "My dad was also in the military and fought three tours and if he's okay with (Muslim people), then I am too."

Warren, a finance major, said he doesn't believe Sanders policies will line up with what he would actually be able to accomplish.

Advertisement

Unawareness, Inconvenience Causing Low-turnout

Among the students we talked to who did not vote there was one common thread: unawareness and inconvenience surrounding registration.

Briton Munoz, 22, did not vote in the 2008 election despite being old enough, because he didn't know how. This year, that wasn't the case.

"This was the first time that I registered, because TCU has a little booth set up with people who were helping you, helping the students come and register," Munoz said.



Munoz won't be missing out this year, but many other TCU students had registration woes.

Tharp, despite being a native Texan, did not vote, because she was registered in a different county.

Twenty-year-old Ayanna Turner ran into the same problem because she wasn't registered in Fort Worth either.

Advertisement

As busy college students, the prospect of registering to vote and making the concerted effort to vote--in a primary election which they may not view as important--can seem like a nuisance.

Guy compared it to one of the college students' worst enemies.

"I think that's almost like homework, you have to go out of your way to do it," he said.



Not all of the students we talked to felt negatively about the effort it takes to vote. Warren was passionate about the student vote and what students "lose out on" when they don't participate in elections.

"While they're not wasting their time in voting they're wasting their own time in the sense that they don't have the opportunity to make the decision on what they actually believe," Warren said.

All of the students we talked with agreed that millennials don't vote as consistently as other age groups.

However, Munoz didn't stop there. The TCU senior had solutions to the problem.

"Although everyone is really energized and excited to vote, the millennials really need that push," Munoz continued, "They need to, number one know the information regarding where they can register; where they can vote, and also they need to know the standings of the politicians."

Advertisement
"We must get proximate and close to the things we are passionate about changing," urges Bryan Stevenson, a profoundly compelling and effective advocate for justice who has been described as America's Nelson Mandela.

In his quest to right injustice, he urges us to "get close to the things that matter, get close to the places where there is inequality and suffering, get close to the spaces where people feel oppressed, burdened, and abused," said Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). "See what it does to your capacity to make a difference, see what it does to you."

While most of us do not devote ourselves to causes in the way that Stevenson does, there is much for us to learn in how we live our lives and through service to our communities as volunteers and nonprofit board members. Getting proximate to things that matter is an opportunity to enrich ourselves and our families, bear witness and take action, and improve the well-being of others and the world in which we live.

Advertisement

Through our businesses, we can also solve social, economic, and environmental challenges by understanding the issues on the ground. We see that a business leader like Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever, visits with smallholder farmers in their fields to gain insight about how to help them and their families in a way that improves their community and benefit his company and the world as well. By fostering sustainable farming, economic development and opportunity, and food security, all for the betterment of humankind, Paul Polman can grow his company's value.
Amsale Bride Wangui and Groom Jaimie celebrating their nuptials at The Garrison in the Hudson Valley

With weddings becoming more culturally diverse, it's up to couples to pass along a little tradition from their individual families to create traditions of their own all without compromising style. Culture plays a large part in today's wedding, and many brides may find it to be difficult to pay homage to their culture, especially if their significant other comes from a different background.

Whether choosing a white wedding gown for the ceremony and culturally significant attire for the reception or incorporating a ritual that respects both cultures, couples have endless possibilities to show respect for their culture and each other. These personalized moments are a thoughtful way to connect your families and guests.

Advertisement

I had the opportunity to sit down with one of my brides, Wangui Muigai, to discuss her nuptials and how she was able to seamlessly blend her Kenyan Jewish wedding on August 17, 2014 at The Garrison in the Hudson Valley.

Amsale Aberra: What is your cultural background?

Wangui: Kenyan. Both of my parents are Gikuyu, which is a Kenyan tribe.

Jaime: Jewish. His mother's family moved from Russia to Philadelphia in the early 1900s. His father's father was Protestant and his family was from Sicily, and Jaime's mother is Jewish and her family was from Alsace. His father grew up Jewish in an interfaith home.

AA: What fashion elements of your culture did you include in your wedding attire, and how did you modernize them?

WM: In July, the month before our American ceremony, we traveled to Kenya with both of our families and held a pre-wedding celebration in Nairobi. For that event, I wore a long cream dress and cream shoes with a Kenyan beaded necklace, and Jaime wore a suit, although we both changed into more traditional Kenyan clothes for some dancing during the celebration.

Advertisement

For the New York ceremony, we kept our outfits traditional American and classic in a way that reflected our personal styles. I wore a beautifully fitted Amsale dress and floral veil, with pearl earrings. Jaime wore a tuxedo from Indochino, and a kippah that a friend of his brought him from Israel (it's hard to find a small, knit version in the US).

AA: Were there any traditions or symbols that you incorporated into your ceremony or receptions to make it culturally significant? If so, what were they?

WM: Jaime held a traditional groom's tisch (Yiddish for table) - as guests arrived there was food and drinks and Jaime was around greeting guests and singing with them.

Our wedding venue already had a beautiful pergola that we used for the chuppah (traditional Jewish wedding canopy), and we had white cloth made in Kenya that we draped in the pergola to create the chuppah canopy.

AA: Were there any similar rituals or traditions between both cultures that were incorporated into the wedding?

Advertisement

WM: The Gikuyu and Jewish marriage ceremonials are deeply communal. Even beyond the uniting of two families, the wedding represents an event for the entire community. For the ceremony, in both of our cultures, there are traditions of having important elders speak during the ceremony. My eldest uncle, Sam, gave one blessing over the first cup of wine. In both the Kenyan and Jewish traditions, the first stage of the marriage is a betrothal that is sanctified over wine - in Gikuyu, this is called njohi ya ngurario, and in Hebrew, it is called erusin. The Gikuyu tradition is to use a ceremonial drinking horn and to offer blessings - called kurathimithia - for the couple. So we included Gikuyu and a Hebrew blessing over this first cup of wine, and drank it from a traditional Gikuyu drinking horn we brought back from Kenya.



Jaimie drinking wine from the ceremonial Gikuyu drinking horn

Jaime's eldest cousin Janet made a blessing over the second cup of wine. In the Jewish tradition, the final stage of marriage is also sanctified over a cup of wine. These final blessings are at the heart of the Jewish ceremony and speak to the joy and jubilation that a marriage brings both to the bride and to the groom, as well as to their extended families and communities. They reference the "cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem" and we added the "lands of the Gikuyu and the surroundings of Mount Kenya" into the blessing to encompass both of our culture's' central holy sites in the final wedding blessing.

We also wanted to continue to incorporate both of our cultures in the reception as well. We were so lucky that two of our best friends since childhood are now in a band together. My friend, Rachel Brown is the bandleader, and Jaime's friend Marcus Miller plays saxophone. They were able to adapt traditional Jewish wedding songs, and we kicked off the dinner portion of the evening with circle dancing - and of course, we were both lifted up on chairs - and then surprised both of our mothers by also lifting them up on chairs. Then after dinner, the dancing continued with our amazing DJ - DJ OP! - who incorporated Kenyan music into evening.

AA: If you could pick one moment, what was your favorite part of your wedding?
Alana DeJoseph, Director

A Towering Task: A Peace Corps Documentary

The Peace Corps is more relevant today than it ever was, but it's not the same Peace Corps of the 60s. There is a fascinating story that has never been told. Please consider supporting this campaign today.

Ann Paisley Chandler: What inspired you to start A Towering Task?

Alana DeJoseph: One in every 1,450 Americans is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. As Americans we care about how we show up in the world, and I think lately people are frustrated rather than proud about our interactions with the rest of the world. The foreign aid budget is less than 1% of the entire US budget, and of that 1%, the Peace Corps' budget is about 1%. The Peace Corps has had incredible ripple effects in the last 55-years since its founding, and in the popular media we hear very little about it. As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are natural born storytellers, and so since my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali (1992-1994), I have dreamt about telling a Peace Corps story. Little did I know that I would get the opportunity to tell the Peace Corps story. There are fabulous documentaries about individual volunteer experiences that provide incredible insight into places around the world many of us have never heard of. However, what has been missing is a big picture program about the Peace Corps' past, present, and future.

Advertisement

I had just had the opportunity to work on such a landmark documentary about the U.S. Forest Service (The Greatest Good) and on another about conservationist Aldo Leopold (Green Fire), when some of our film team members who are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers basically told me to stop talking about the need for the Peace Corps documentary and get producing. The more research I did, the clearer it became how really important and urgent this documentary is at this time, not just to capture the early voices, but to bring the Peace Corps back into the public discourse. As an American, I feel very proud that we have the Peace Corps, but until I started working on this program I knew so little about an agency I had been a part of for two years. And I think this is true for most of us in this country. I was inspired by volunteering myself, but I have been compelled by the need for this program.

APC: Tell us about the documentary -- its purposes, goals, vision.

AD: This year the Peace Corps is celebrating its 55th birthday. Over 220,000 volunteers have connected with communities around the globe. But when we (very rarely) hear about the Peace Corps in the news, it is about tragic incidents, murders, deaths, agency mismanagement. These stories are important and help bring light to problems that need fixing. However, we are missing the context. With so little information on the Peace Corps (and most of it focused on the 60s or individual volunteers) reaching the general public, these news articles become attention grabbing exposes rather than empowering and truly informing media.

Advertisement

The purpose of A Towering Task is to provide that context. We will tell the story through powerful interviews with host country nationals, Peace Corps Volunteers and staff, and scholars and journalists who put the story of the Peace Corps into context. Voices from all over the world will share not only the work and impact, but also the complications and challenges of half a century of peace building and diplomacy. By thoughtfully telling the story of the Peace Corps' past and present, and then taking a look at its future, we want to equip the American public to redefine what it means for America to join the world community - not as a wager of war, but as a peacemaker and problem solver.

APC: What is the fundraising goal, and how is it set?

AD: Fundraising for documentaries is always a challenge, especially when it is a documentary of this scope. But with a country that holds this agency dear (even if at this point it might not be terribly aware of its history or what it does) and a community of volunteers and staff who have been transformed by their experiences, there is a real opportunity to galvanize America into putting a stake in the ground for peace. Nudging the national discourse in the direction of community, peace, and understanding is something we all can gain from. For that reason, we have decided to embark on a one million dollar crowdfunding campaign to benefit both the documentary production and the National Peace Corps Association, whose mission is to champion lifelong commitment to Peace Corps ideals. If we were just to think of the returned volunteer community of 220,000, the math is simple: If one in five returned volunteers gives $25, we will have exceeded our goal. But I believe there is an even bigger community: America. We as Americans need to care about what our government does in the world. But to care we need to understand. And that understanding comes from learning about the past and present, so we can ask the important questions regarding our future. So, to tell the Peace Corps story is in all of our interests and I am hoping that as Americans we will want to support documentaries like this.

APC: Can you speak on partnerships?

AD: Initially, we were planning a crowdfunding campaign just for the documentary. However, our team member, Meg Garlinghouse (founder of LinkedIn for Good), suggested partnering with the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA). It made perfect sense: the Peace Corps community (volunteers, staff, returned volunteers, family, friends, and the peacemakers of this world) has yet to come together as a true community. But it has so much potential. I know as volunteers and returned volunteers we tend to be fiercely loyal to the countries in which we served; however, the connection to the Peace Corps itself isn't always as close. This is a very diverse community with lots of strong opinions, which to me really is the beauty of it, but bringing everybody together is difficult. The one thing most of us agree on, though, is that there should continue to be a strong Peace Corps that America takes a stake in.

The National Peace Corps Association is the logical container for this newly ignited community. The momentum created by our crowdfunding campaign will not only produce this landmark documentary, but will empower all of us to continue to come together for the important, urgent matters: the conversation around peace, the relationship the US has with the rest of the world, the narrative about (former Peace Corps) countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, global matters such as climate change, social justice, and resource shortages. When A Towering Task is broadcast and the American public feels a renewed ownership in the agency, NPCA will be a logical place to find a community that can empower the conversation.

APC: What do you find the most rewarding aspect of working on a global level?

AD: The Peace Corps' stories often get told from an exclusively American perspective. And the irony is that in many host countries the Peace Corps is better understood than it is back here at home. Interviewing host country scholars, community members, and Peace Corps country staff is bringing to light nuances about this story that really help in getting the full picture. For example, when the Peace Corps was first founded, the idea of a "reverse Peace Corps" was front and center. Host countries would send their volunteers to join our communities for two years, just as we were sending our Peace Corps volunteers all over the world. Thinking of the Peace Corps as an exchange rather than helping, makes the whole concept less paternalistic. And I would argue that the Peace Corps has worked very hard over the decades to reinforce this notion of an exchange. It is truly rewarding to look at our efforts both from within, and from the perspective of the world.

The story of the Peace Corps has so much passion, so much vision, and the potential to serve as a prism through which to view our society as a whole over the last six decades.
Image: Vladimir Lenin. Stock Photo. FreeImages.com/Paal Gladso

The Soviet Union was established to create the workers' paradise that Communist theorists envisioned.

The idea was that workers would own the means of production, make the production decisions and share the production rewards.

It never worked that way. In practice, the state owned the means of production, made the production decisions and took a huge cut off the top before giving workers the crumbs.

Advertisement

An irony of the Soviet system was that if workers tried to organize, as they did in capitalist countries, they would be ruthlessly suppressed.

Some Soviet citizens hoped that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 would lead to the workers rights they had never enjoyed.

A quarter of a century of independence has dashed those hopes.

With just a few exceptions, workers in the region have learned they still have no power.

Management's reaction to a downturn in the economy is often to lay off workers, cut their pay or not pay them at all for a year or more.

The culprits include managers of both businesses and taxpayer-funded endeavors, such as schools.

A case in point is AvtoVAZ in Russia's auto-making hub of Togliatti.

The global drop in the price of oil and Western economic sanctions against Russia have led to sales of the company's Lada cars plunging. It lost $1 billion in 2015.

Advertisement

To save cash, AvtoVAZ has slashed many workers' pay and not paid others for months.

Because Russia has workers rights on paper only, workers are scared to complain, fearing they will be fired. Better dwindling pay than none at all.

Workers in some places in Russia have braved retribution by protesting pay cuts and delays, but in only a few cases have these efforts generated results.

Demonstrations this year have failed to help workers reverse layoffs and pay cuts at the Uralvagonzavod train-car-making factory in Nizhny Tagil, for example.

Doctors' protests in 2014 over a reorganization of Russia's healthcare system that led to 10,000 physicians being laid off, demoted or having their pay cut also failed to gain traction.

Kazakhstan is the poster child of the former Soviet Union's lack of workers rights because it used deadly force to suppress an oil-workers protest in late 2011.

Advertisement

News coverage of what has come to be known as the Zhanaozen Massacre generated international headlines, embarrassing the country, which has long trumpeted its internal stability to try to woo international investors.

Workers at the Ozenmunaigas oil field were striking for higher pay, better working conditions and hazard pay they had been promised but never received.

The stand-off with management turned violent on December 16 and 17, 2011, when police fired into the demonstrators, killing 14 and injuring dozens. Many believe the death toll to be much higher than the official figure of 14.

To assuage a national outcry over the deaths and injuries, the government gave the workers the pay increases they had wanted and fired public officials who had let the situation get out of hand.

Petroleum and mining have long been Kazakhstan's economic mainstays, and workers like the ones in Zhanaozen have often complained about layoffs, low pay and poor working conditions.

Advertisement

Most of the protests have achieved little, however.

Workers in Armenia, one of the former Soviet Union's poorest countries, have also resorted to protests to dramatize their displeasure with pay arrears and layoffs.

More than 1,000 workers at the Nairit rubber company in the capital of Yerevan demonstrated in front of the president's residence in December of 2014 to demand immediate payment of 18 months of back pay. The money failed to materialize, however.

Earlier in 2014, many workers protested a government decision to have employers withhold more of their pay for Armenia's old-age pension system. The demonstrators included railway and subway workers, utility employees and even opera and ballet artists.

But the withholdings they protested stuck.

Another poor former Soviet country, Kyrgyzstan, has also seen its share of worker unrest. As has been the case elsewhere, the labor actions have failed to achieve much.

Authorities cracked down hard on demonstrators at the Centerra Gold Mine in the Issyk Kul region in June of 2013. Striking miners and supporters demanded that the Canadian-owned operation do more to help the poverty-stricken region around it, including adding jobs. Police responded with force to the protests, making many arrests.

Advertisement

Eighteen months before, in January of 2011, Kyrgyzstan teachers walked off the job to demand a tripling of their pay, which ranged from $30 a month for a novice to $60 for an experienced teacher -- less than a third of the country's average wage. The government responded with a 30 percent raise, saying it lacked the money to meet the teachers' demands.

As these examples show, workers have little leverage to obtain better pay and working conditions from either private-sector or public-sector employers in the former Soviet Union.

It's an irony that in the land that was supposed to be a workers' paradise, most workers are just scraping by -- and some aren't even doing that.
At first I thought Donald J. Trump would be the GOP weather vane.

Trump would settle into the Republican field with a campaign shifting with the news cycle, always heading for the juiciest of the conservative red meat: immigration, terrorism, taxes, guns, Iran, and maybe even a little birtherism for old time's sake.

After a rambling July announcement at Trump Tower, expectations for his campaign were GOP middleweight, pulling in support while taking shots at Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Trump running a self-indulgent campaign that was more sideshow than serious.

But we underestimated Trump. Fell into the trap that Trump's level of braggadocio, bluster, arrogance or any other word to describe his aggressive, in your face, unapologetic style would be a downfall to a presidential campaign. A trap that Fox News and the Republican establishment failed to see or avoid. Not realizing that Trump has tapped into the mindset of the Republican base.

Advertisement

Many conservative voters wanted a tough guy president, one who spoke off the cuff, wasn't interested in pleasing the elites in Washington, and angry. Put another way, somebody who would be everything that Obama isn't.

Offering a rebranding of America with an explosion of machismo, the gumption to tell it like it is, and a kick ass first figure things out later style of leadership, Trump waltzed into the race as just that person. Angry, simplistic, and promising to make everything great, he's batted back all challengers thus far. Stealing the best real estate from Ted Cruz.

Everything that the establishment GOP candidates of Jeb Bush and Macro Rubio lacked in energy and zeal, Trump has in abundance. Trump is all for creating a big spectacle. His brand is grandeur. The juxtaposition between Trump and Bush made the infamous "!" all the more peculiar. (How can you exclaim such a whimper?)

As the antithesis of the establishment, Trump could fully unleash another selling point to angry, conservative voters: his inner bully.

Advertisement

Bullies like Trump see two kinds of people in the world: other bullies and victims in need of defending. Bullies inhabit a world that places a premium on respect, loyalty, strength, and power. Machismo is the motto in their zero-sum game.

Trump sees America in need of a bully. In need of somebody who will make 'others' bend to his will or be crushed. And Trump promises to crush them, but crush them in such a way, with such bravado that all will be impressed with him and in fact, they will see him as merciful because they know that he has such power and that Trump actually restrained himself in such a way, that really they will see him as being rather peaceful, even when he didn't have to be peaceful. Even the 'others' will love him.

And now, he is the presumptive Republican nominee. Proving that Trump is no political weather vane. He is the weather.

We all underestimated the ability of the man who made "You're fired" the catchphrase of reality televisions early years to hold, control, and refuse to relinquish the news cycle. No journalist goes home without a shocking quote, no cable show (bar certain ones on Fox News) is without an "exclusive" interview. The focus stays on him.

The walking epitome of America's cable news culture, Trump focuses little on policy, ideals, and specifics because his campaign is based only on persona and brand. Realizing that the only thing that could hurt his ratings or poll numbers was to be like the other candidates: boring, wonky, or reasonable. Never stop attacking. Never get pinned down on any issue.

Advertisement

Despite Trump's xenophobia, Islamophobia, and nativism, the candidate acts utterly impervious to criticism, rebuke, or shame. The Trump machine marches on from "Super Tuesday." Marches on from the weak, yet repeated 'disavowing' of former KKK grand wizard David Duke.

For all those in the GOP who hoped Trump would fizzle out, the time to batten down the hatches was last month. Will Trump eventually dissipate into the atmosphere in a scattering of clouds, leaving the establishment thankful as clear skies and normal order returns? Doesn't seem likely.
Donald Trump has run a campaign on "Making America Great Again," a campaign which begs the question "what makes America great," and "what does it mean to be an American?" Sometimes Americans lose sight of this, and it is useful to see why others admire America.

U2's Bono recently exclaimed that, "America is not just a country, it's an idea." That is what makes us unique as a nation, as Teddy Roosevelt explained, we are not bound by a common "birthplace, or creed, or line of descent" but rather "Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of idealism, of character."

Advertisement

Speaking to Congress, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, addressed this American idealism stating that "[w]hat made America great was her ability to transform her own dream into hope for all mankind." This is embodied in the promise of the Statue of Liberty's invocation to "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," which is a continuation of President Washington's pledge that

[t]he bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.

These rights and privileges are spelled out in our Constitution. The Constitution imposes no test to hold our highest office other than that he or she be a natural born citizen at least 35 years old (and a resident for at least 14 years) and swear to "faithfully execute the Office of President... and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

It is ironic that Donald Trump questioned whether President Obama met the "natural born citizen" test, when I cannot see how Trump can meet the second test and honestly take the oath of office.

Advertisement

Trump has proposed deporting natural born American children of undocumented immigrants; barring Muslim's from entering the country; creating an internet "kill switch" to block jihadists from the internet; requiring that Muslims be registered and has spoken favorably of the Japanese internment camps in World War II. In doing so, Trump shows little concern that the Constitution prohibits each of these proposals.

As Justice Murphy said of the internment camps, such discrimination

in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.

The constitutionally clueless Trump, goes way beyond "utterly revolting". He has called for murdering the families of terror suspects and bringing back "waterboarding" and "far worse" torture, which are expressly prohibited by both U.S. and international law.

More recently, as my friend Marc Randazza points out, Trump declared war on the First Amendment by wanting to change libel laws to make it easier to sue and intimidate the press. In doing so, Trump is seeking to weaken our most cherished liberty - our right to speak freely. What is great or even American about that? Remember, Trump is running for President of the United States, not Sultan of Fifth Avenue.

Trump likes to mock protesters as they are ejected from their rallies, but they are by far the greater Americans for they have the courage to stand up and speak out in defense of liberty that Trump cowardly abandons.

Advertisement

Trump wants to take Ronald Reagan's "shining city upon a hill" that serves as a beacon for those seeking freedom and turn it into a rogue state, a Judeo-Christian version of Saudi Arabia or an American version of apartheid. America under Trump will not be a symbol of hope, but an international pariah. World leaders already are denouncing him, including UK Prime Minister David Cameron who called his statements "divisive, stupid and wrong" - and he is being kind.

Abraham Lincoln, whose party's nomination Trump now seeks, seemed to predict the Donald when he warned that, "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
As journalists and lawyers chase down leads on whom the White House is vetting for the upcoming nomination of a Supreme Court justice, interest groups, lobbyists, and political organizations prepare to elevate their issues and causes in the vetting and confirmation processes. But, with the focus on election-year politics and the prospect of an ideological shift on the Court, few have said much about what experiences and values a prospective nominee should bring to the table. The President may be the exception. President Obama has been silent on whether his nominee must hold certain views on the contentions issues upon which a new justice may need to decide -- abortion restrictions, affirmative action policies, voting rights issues, gun regulations, unions, executive action on immigration -- but has discussed some of the qualities he seeks in a nominee. Writing for SCOTUSblog, the President made clear that he will nominate someone "eminently qualified," who brings "a commitment to impartial justice," and, critically, whose "experience that suggests he or she ... grasps the way [the law] affects the daily reality of people's lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly changing times."

With respect to this last quality, an important question is whether the nominee understands the lived experiences of individuals entangled in the criminal justice system as well as their families. While the national rhetoric on mass incarceration seems to be moving towards recognition of its reality and the need to address it, many root causes evade detection and discussion. Pushing for police accountability is a necessary step, but there is a relative silence about perhaps the most powerful player in the criminal justice system: the prosecutor. And, the prosecutor is one of the players the Supreme Court and the judiciary generally can help to meaningfully regulate. It is past due that society engages in this conversation.

Advertisement

If you are surprised to hear that the Supreme Court has the power to proscribe prosecutorial prerogatives, well, that is understandable. After all, the Court has done very little in recent years to acknowledge the role prosecutors play in tilting the criminal justice system towards punitive outcomes and even less to hold them accountable.

Take, for example, the Supreme Court's 2011 decision in Connick v. Thompson. In that case, the Court threw out a $14 million award that a jury provided to John Thompson, a man who spent 18 years in prison (14 of them on death row) for crimes he did not commit. Mr. Thompson faced a possible execution because New Orleans prosecutors never disclosed several vital pieces of evidence, including a blood test that demonstrated he was innocent of an attempted armed robbery -- evidence that blew apart the State's strategy and theory in the murder case. (That's right: Mr. Thompson was not wrongfully convicted once, but twice.) After a court threw out his attempted armed robbery conviction and a jury acquitted him on the murder charge at a re-trial, Mr. Thompson filed a lawsuit, seeking some remuneration for the years of his life and the future opportunities that a corrupt prosecution stole from him. A jury found that the district attorney's office had failed to sufficiently train its employees to observe the constitutional duty to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant under Brady v. Maryland. A five-member majority of the U.S. Supreme Court (that included now-deceased Justice Scalia) overturned the jury's verdict, depriving Thompson of every dime.

When it was decided, Connick v. Thompson appropriately garnered a great deal of attention. Dahlia Lithwick referred to it as the "meanest" decision ever. And, Scott Lemieux discussed how the opinion "reflects poorly on the American criminal justice system." These and other commentators have made two key points, and have made them well: first, both the Supreme Court and the Orleans District Attorney's office mischaracterized the facts, straining to depict the cause of Mr. Thompson's wrongful conviction as the work of a single rogue prosecutor who committed "a single" Brady violation; second, the decision all but forecloses the possibility of anyone ever winning a civil suit against a prosecutor. One cannot hold a district attorney liable in an official capacity because Connick v. Thompson sets an impossibly high bar for proving that an office failed to adequately train its lawyers. Moreover, careless and crooked prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity in their individual capacities.

Advertisement

Shortly after Thompson, the Court did hold a prosecutor's office -- actually the same Orleans Parish District Attorney's office -- accountable for constitutional violations in Smith v. Cain. In that criminal case, the Court overturned Juan Smith's murder convictions because the prosecution unconstitutionally withheld from defense lawyers evidence that the State's key witness could not actually describe the alleged perpetrators. That turned out to be an "easy case" for the Court, and was largely seen as a narrow corrective measure to ensure the New Orleans office that the Court let off the hook in Thompson still received some kind of message that its unconstitutional conduct could be identified and redressed. In Lyle Denniston's words, "In some sense, the grant had the appearance of a new attempt to impose some firmer obligations on the New Orleans prosecutors to obey the Brady mandate." But, the Court framed the opinion as a straightforward application of the existing caselaw; in other words, it broke no new ground and merely restated the due process principles that have long existed but long failed to reign in the sort of prosecutorial excesses and misconduct on display in Smith.

The image of an invincible prosecutor emerged again in 2015 in Davis v. Ayala, when the Supreme Court reversed a Ninth Circuit decision which had granted a criminal defendant a new trial where the prosecutor had (arguably) intentionally discriminated against prospective Hispanic and African-American jurors when it used peremptory challenges to strike all seven of them during jury selection. Rather than give the defense attorneys a chance to respond to the prosecutor's purported reasons for excluding these jurors, the trial judge heard only from the prosecutors outside the presence of Mr. Ayala's lawyers. With no adversarial input, the trial court decided the State's reasons for striking all of the Hispanic and African-American jurors were not discriminatory. The Supreme Court reinstated the trial court's ruling, overturning the Ninth Circuit's decision to hold the prosecution responsible. The Supreme Court's opinion turned on complex questions of federal law governing the circumstances in which federal courts can grant relief to prisoners convicted in state court, but one significant consequence is that prosecutorial decision-making was further immunized from adversarial testing and judicial scrutiny. Importantly, the Supreme Court has limited resources, and it chose to expend energy on a case in which its ruling will be interpreted on-the-ground as endorsing the prosecutor's decision to exclude racial minorities from the jury.

Recently, several respected judges have stepped forward to bring light to our nation's "epidemic" of prosecutorial misconduct. One prominent former prosecutor recently wrote that "[t]he epidemic is devastating the lives of innocent people and breaking families; it is devouring our tax dollars; and it has destroyed the public's faith in our justice system." Yet, over the past decade, the Supreme Court has issued almost no rulings actually holding prosecutors accountable for their improprieties. Given what we see in the typical cases -- cases like Thompson and Ayala -- how can we ensure that prosecutors do not go too far in the future?

There are five primary means to keep prosecutors from overstepping the bounds of propriety and fairness: (1) criminal courts can overturn convictions obtained as a result of prosecutorial misconduct and dismiss unwarranted charges; (2) juries in civil courts can hold district attorney offices liable for prosecutorial misconduct; (3) professional associations and disciplinary counsel can fine, suspend, or disbar prosecutors who violate ethical canons; (4) district attorney offices can meaningfully train their assistants and punish those who engage in misconduct; and (5) the Department of Justice can initiate proceedings against prosecutors who violate federal civil rights legislation.

Option 1 is not promising. Courts are reluctant to reverse convictions, especially in jurisdictions where the judges themselves are elected officials. The Thompson majority demolished option 2. And, as anyone who with experience in the criminal justice system can tell you, options 3, 4, and 5 are almost never utilized. Disciplinary actions against prosecutors are extremely rare, if not non-existent in most jurisdictions. Though some offices provide sufficient training, the conduct that put John Thompson behind bars is all too common when district attorneys are under intense pressure to secure convictions to succeed in competitive elections. Finally, the Department of Justice has hardly ever enforced certain laws that impose fines on prosecutors for their civil rights violations.

But, the Supreme Court has the power and influence to bring all five of these options to life. If it begins to infuse meaning into the due process and equal protection doctrines meant to protect criminal defendants from prosecutorial misconduct and overreaching, lower courts will follow its lead (and option 1 will become viable again). If the Court revisits its tight-fisted jurisprudence on prosecutorial civil liability, juries can speak into the system and hold offices accountable again. And, if the Supreme Court puts meaningful prosecutorial accountability on its agenda, bar associations and district attorneys and perhaps even the DOJ might acknowledge incentives to play a broader role in regulating how the most powerful players in the criminal justice system administer that power.

The Supreme Court has for too long advanced and entrenched an ideal of the "invincible prosecutor." The nomination of a new justice provides the president with an opportunity to do more than look for someone with stellar credentials. If he truly values someone's experiences and ability to see how the Court's opinions affect people's daily lives, President Obama should nominate someone who will, among other things, take prosecutorial accountability seriously.

Advertisement
One of the great mysteries of the current election is why so many low-income people support Donald Trump. One explanation is that people suffering from low wages and limited opportunities want to blame someone beside themselves or the economic system for their socio-economic status. Trump helps them act out this displacement and projection by using Mexicans and foreign workers as the cause for their problems. This is the traditional model of scapegoating that is inherent to many forms of prejudice and discrimination. Like the Nazi use of anti-Semitism, the idea is that if the Jews would be eliminated, then the obstacle to economic progress and national unity would be removed. As Slavoj Zizek has stressed, this fantasy structure is centered on the idea that there are no problems with our economic system; rather, some external element blocks our access to success.

Trump not only feeds racism and prejudice by demonizing illegal immigrants and Mexicans, but he also helps to feed nationalistic desires by arguing that Muslims have to be banned from coming to the U.S. because they are the internal-external enemy threatening to destroy our country. Once again, through displacement and projection, the foreign other is blamed for our own sense of insecurity, and this focus on the other also allows us to ignore our own homegrown terrorists and right-wing extremists.

Advertisement

Trump's message also feeds into people's narcissism by arguing that he can make America great again. This slogan contains several different elements: it claims that we were once great, that we can be great again and he can deliver the lost greatness. The fantasy here is that at one time we had no problems, and we can be led to get rid of our current problems and return to a state of idealized greatness. In this cultural fantasy, the follower identifies with the idealized leader who will give full access to limitless freedom and enjoyment.

Freud's work on group psychology adds a fourth aspect to this psychological political structure. In comparing hypnosis to blind love and blind devotion, Freud argued that the followers of the political leader regress back to the relationship between the all-powerful father and the helpless child. In this regression, the individual loses his or her ability to test reality and follow moral principles, and the leader becomes the moral conscience of the group.

Psychoanalysis, then, helps us to understand how Trump's popularity is derived from multiple unconscious sources, and the result is the idealization of a man who idealizes himself. It is also important to stress that Trump can appear to get away with anything because his followers have suspended their disbelief and critical faculties. Moreover, people identify with the great man who has everything because the followers want to attain this same level of power and freedom.

What is so remarkable is that even the people identified as Evangelical Christians support Trump, and here we see how Christianity has always been used as a cover by Republicans to hide their real motivations, which are power, money, and total freedom. The fact that Trump shows no understanding or involvement with religious principles should disqualify him in the eyes of fundamentalist Christians, and yet he is getting people to vote for him because he speaks to their underlying anger and hatred of people who are not like them.

Advertisement

Of course Trump's first move into politics occurred in 2008 when he claimed that President Obama was not really an American. Here we see how at the heart of his political popularity is a nationalistic hatred for people of color, Muslims and immigrants. Perhaps this explains why white Christians can support him: he represents a direct attack on liberals, immigrants, people of color, and non-Christians.

Ultimately it is hard to imagine more than 35% of the voters supporting him in a general election, and so it is very unlikely that he will become president. However, the incredible service that he has performed is to expose the underlying hatred and irrationality dominating the Republic party. His campaign helps to break apart the fragile coalition of free market capitalists, Christian fundamentalists, racist nationalists, and anti-government libertarians. These four sectors of the conservative coalition have been united by a shared hatred of liberals, and now Trump is disbanding the group by exposing all of the internal contradictions. In other words, like a good psychoanalysis, the unconscious emotions supporting the conscious decisions are being brought to the surface.

Trump also exposes how the Republican party is the party of the financial elites who try to seduce the other classes into supporting the rich by pretending that the real enemies are the liberal media, professors, and politicians. People are drawn to Trump's trumped up authenticity because they feel that his hate speech represents freedom from the oppressive forces of liberal political correctness. These followers would also like to speak their minds and feel free to attack every social group that is not like them. In a sense, they are voting for the right to hate other people in an open and unchallenged way.

This backlash against feminism, civil rights, worker's rights, and gay rights represents the real culture war, which has found its spokesman in a Reality TV persona who pretends to be real. Like the desire for unlimited hate speech, the seduction of reality-based media is that it pretends to be immediate and unscripted, just like a Trump campaign speech. Since in a media-saturated culture, people are tired of scripted shows and fake actors, they want someone who pretends to be authentic and real.

The power, then, of Bernie Sanders' campaign is that it opposes all that Trump represents: Sanders is really authentic, refuses hate speech, takes on the financial class, and does not talk about religion or nationalism. Sanders tells his followers that they will have to lead, and he refuses the dominating leadership that Trump aspires to attain. These differences help to explain why we should all want Trump and Sanders to gain their respective nominations. The problem is that many people will support Hillary Clinton because they are so afraid of electing a Republican like Trump that they will buy into her false rhetoric and ignore her long record of being an establishment elite. Let's hope the voters come to their senses and stop voting for who the media tells them will be the most likely winner. The choice in this election should be clear if people vote with their minds and not their fears, hatred, and prejudic
The story of Super Tuesday was not Donald Trump's dominance; that was expected. Nor was the story Hillary Clinton's wins in the South. They too were expected.

The story was Bernie Sanders, who managed to win four states to Clinton's seven, taking home victories in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Colorado as well as his home state of Vermont, where he won in landslide fashion: 86-percent to Clinton's 14-percent.

In Massachusetts, Sanders and Clinton virtually tied, as they did last month in Iowa.

Sanders is now the only presidential candidate besides Clinton and Trump to have won five states this election season. He may not be the Democratic frontrunner, but he's a close second, much closer to a nomination than either Rubio or Cruz.

Advertisement

Nevertheless, MSNBC covered Tuesday's results with a clear Clinton-bias, showing graphics of Clinton blowing away Sanders with the boost of her super delegates.

Google also included the totally-unofficial-super-delegates in its delegate graphic.

If you notice, in the image above, Sanders and Clinton have nearly the same amount of pledged delegates, which are represented by the lighter blue. But in the darker blue category, where super delegates are concerned, Clinton has the clear advantage.

The problem is, MSNBC and Google are including the super delegates (who haven't even voted yet) in their delegate count, making Clinton look like a shoo-in.

This is an easy way to conceal the viability of a Sanders' nomination. Factoring in the super delegates gives Clinton a whopping 1,034 to 408 delegate lead over Sanders. Without super delegates, however, Clinton's lead deteriorates significantly:

Advertisement

Clinton: 596

Sanders: 399

Including super delegates at this point is not only misleading, but downright dishonest because super delegates won't vote until the Democratic National Convention. As they did for Obama in 2008, super delegates can and will transfer their support to Sanders if the Senator continues to win in primaries and caucuses. To portray Clinton as the clear favorite this early on is a clear fallacy.

The reality is, the only delegates that are absolutely certain at this point in time are the pledged delegates, the ones that candidates win fair and square.
A member of the audience cheers as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga., Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

I woke up Wednesday morning to a slew of confused Facebook statuses and tweets. Most of them read something like this:

"So disappointed in my country right now. How could we let a blatant racist get so far in this election?"

Advertisement

Because this country is racist. I know it seems crazy, but your Facebook friend from high school isn't the only one in the country who still calls black people monkeys and assumes all Hispanics are here illegally.

Before I get called un-American, or a hater or whatever else Trump supporters will put in the comments let me say that I love this country. I've grown up very fortunate and privileged to live in America and for that I am thankful. Truly. But growing up black I was taught a lot earlier than my beige complexioned friends that this country wasn't built to protect people like me.

That is how Trump is winning in the polls.

People aren't voting for him as a joke, they actually believe in this man. I'm just trying to figure out how it is such a shock to those who don't want to see him elected.



"The sudden concern people have because of Trump's approval confuses me. To me, his success is obvious."



America was not built to protect the people that Trump denounces. That's why when three black Muslims were murdered, execution style, in Fort Wayne, Indiana last week the police said there was "no reason to believe this is any type of hate crime or focus because of their religion or nationality."

It's also why George Zimmerman has six mugshots (and counting because let's be honest, he's not done yet) but is free to live and Trayvon Martin is dead. And it's definitely why mostly white men still have the power to decide what a woman does and doesn't do with her body.

America may technically be a melting pot, but it was founded by white men, who considered people of color three-fifths of a person. Although we've come a long way since then, we do still refer to a Constitution that may be a tad bit out of touch.

With all that's happened in this country to the very people that Trump disrespects, his success at the polls shouldn't be a surprise. He's not speaking to those of us that believe in equality and justice for all. He knows his audience hates all things that might even be considered politically correct. That's why he pretends to not be familiar with the KKK. It's why he keeps talking about a wall that Mexico definitely is not going to pay for, and it's why he's winning.

The sudden concern people have because of Trump's approval confuses me. To me, his success is obvious. This country has been having a constant conversation about race for almost two years now. More than we have before. Trump comes in and ignores all of that. He speaks to the people who don't believe that black and brown lives matter and for the people who think their unemployment is due to someone from Mexico coming to America and "stealing" opportunities from them.

Advertisement

Just because slavery is abolished and we have a black president doesn't mean as a country we are absolved from our racist past (or our current racist tendencies). It's ingrained in our culture. It's called systemic racism.

I hate to be the one to break this to you all, but this country is filled with bigots and some of them have power, one of them is running for the highest elected position in the country. I can't promise you that voting for someone else is going to ensure he doesn't win, nor can I say whether or not someone else would do a better job, but I encourage everyone to educate themselves. Not just on the issues of this election and where the candidates stand, but on our nation's history, systemic racism and how it manifests. A lack of education and understanding is what's allowing this man to win states overwhelmingly.
A standard gun and unmarked bullets, made by Cavim and issued to police officers, are arranged for a photograph in Caracas, Venezuela, on Thursday, March 12, 2015. The Venezuelan military's failure to comply with bullet coding laws is fueling the world's second-highest murder rate and enriching black market speculators, according to lawmakers, police officers and activists. Photographer: Meridith Kohut/Bloomberg via Getty Images

It's hard to describe. There's no listing in the DSM 5 (that's the big red book shrinks use to diagnose mental, emotional, and psychological conditions). There is a listing in the Handbook of Clinical Sexuality for Mental Health Professionals. It's called hoplophilia.

Briefly, hoplophilia means people can be attracted to guns on a sexual level. Sort of like you can't be a real man or a real woman without that piece of hardware riding on your hip, in your pocket, your purse or bra holster. But while that may be true, I think there's something more even more unhinged about what the NRA is doing.

Advertisement

Here's one example. NRA Board Member, and one time NRA president, Marion Hammer is suing the Southwest Florida Water Management District for violating the Second Amendment. What?

It seems that lead from bullets fired at a shooting range is seeping into the water supply and contaminating it. This is called "lead mobility."

The Florida environmental folks want to put the brakes on lead mobility and protect the water. Hammer sees protecting citizens from that kind of lead poisoning is, as she puts it, "back door gun control." I see it as shades of Flint, Mich.

Even the NRA's buddies at the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (oddly enough located in Newtown, Conn.) warn about this and offer solutions in their publication, Lead Mobility.

Advertisement

Let's travel from Florida to Iowa. Here are just a few of the head scratchers from the brain trust of the Hawkeye's state legislature:

HF 2042 would allow kids 14 and under to handle guns. That's a really, really, bad idea. In just the first two months of this year 75 kids -- all under 11 -- have been shot or killed. Even in Iowa, home of this legislative brilliance, on January 3, a toddler shot himself. And that was just because of an unsecured gun. Imagine all the little John and Jane Waynettes if they got their hands on guns intentionally.

"That's my ball."

"No -- it's my ball."

"I want my ball back!"

"No!" Bang. Bang. Bang.

HB 2043 would legalized the purchase and use of wait for it, wait for it, SILENCERS! SUPPRESSORS! You know those black tubes you see on the end of guns in the movies to muffle the gunshot? The bill is offered under the guise of protecting the hearing of shooters. Of course that will have no effect of law enforcement personnel tracking the sound of a shot if they have to. Knock, knock -- you can always buy earplugs. Maybe even with the NRA logo on them. Oh -- but that won't look cool. See my earlier mention of hoplophilia -- guns as a sexual fetish. How big is your silencer? Oooh, that's sexy!

HF2057 would allow drunks or others under the influence of something to wander around with a loaded weapon. The old law would invalidate the permit of anyone found carrying a gun while intoxicated. The new one says that's fine and dandy.

Two more things before we leave Iowa. When it comes to blind people, the Hawkeye State nickname is dangerously appropriate. In Iowa, if you're blind you cannot drive a car. But if you're blind you can own and carry a gun. And use it. And you can get your "training" from an online course. Visionary. Truly visionary.

Advertisement

And of course Iowa's US Senator Jodi Ernst has a few choice words about guns: "I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family, whether it's from an intruder or from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important." So I guess when Barack Obama shows up at her door to grab her guns, she'll shoot him.

Slow clap for Iowa legislators and the NRA.

Now let's head over to the state of Washington. Specifically, the town of Endicott. According to The New York Times, Erik Zettergren was mentally unstable and a two-time convicted felon. Wisely, he was not allowed to possess firearms. Until he was.

The NRA has been pushing hard to loosen laws regarding who can own a gun.

Which brings us back to our friend Erik Zettergren. Despite his felony convictions, the hard work of the NRA paid off and a judge had no choice but to restore Erik's right to have guns. He wasted in no time is arming himself.

Fast forward a mere two months. Erik, his girlfriend and some others came home from a party. He was drunk. He then found his girlfriend in a compromising position with another guy. Badda bing, a Glock-17 appeared in his hand and badda boom, Erik shot the other guy. But wait -- there's more. Then at gunpoint, he forced his girlfriend to help him dispose of the body. Yes, he's back in jail. But it's clear to me the NRA helped kill the other guy.

And there's a disturbingly long list of Washington State felons who have traveled a similar path to Erik's. Over the last two decades or so thousands of felons and domestic abusers have gotten their guns back. In 2010 alone 430 convicted felons and violent domestic abusers have gotten their guns back. All but 30 have gone on to commit murder, child rape and other atrocities. What does that say about how many are wandering around today fully armed?

Advertisement

And here's a really disturbing fact: fourteen states, no matter how serious your crime or unstable you may be, insure almost automatic return of gun ownership rights.

Which is how -- and this is not a Coen Brothers movie -- Marcus Schumacher, in Fargo, ND, a convicted felon who had served time for negligent homicide, shot a cop to death.

Again, how many sons, daughters, husbands, wives mothers, fathers, and other loved ones have to be sacrificed at the NRA's Altar of the Second Amendment before it becomes too many for them. The NRA spent more than $28 million over the last couple of election cycles to insure their agenda gets passed.
Co-Author Nsedu Obot-Witherspoon, MPH, Executive Director, Children's Environmental Health Network

It seems like school children trying to learn in Detroit and Flint, MI can't catch a break, nor can they in Hoosick Falls, NY, and hundreds of other communities. We read daily about polluted drinking water; then, about schools with black mold, failing heating systems, roaches and rats where children, by law, must spend their days. And behave. And take tests.

We also know that it's unfair to single out schools in Detroit, a city that has come to represent the post-industrial collapse of manufacturing centers. Detroit simply is not the only city with mushrooms growing out of damp school building walls. In New York, the state education department cut staff responsible for addressing school facilities by half and has failed to improve school design standards. California and other states have suspended or slashed school construction funds. We also hear from parents and teachers about these conditions. For example - Healthy Schools Network was contacted by a parent whose son was healthy in elementary school, but became ill when he moved up to middle school. The parent learned there was a high carbon-monoxide level. But nothing was ever done. "Now that he has moved up, he is healthy again," the parent says. "But there are still kids sick at the middle school."

Advertisement



Fungus growing in a Detroit public school.

Ideally, child care and PK-12 school facilities are providing safe, healthy, nurturing, and academically challenging environments for all children. But too often, that is not the case. Lack of regulation and enforcement are big problems, so is no money for maintenance and repairs, but the really big one is no help for kids in harm's way. "Why is it," a New York parent asked Healthy Schools Network, "that teachers can get help from [state-funded] occupational health clinics but children....have no help from public agencies?"

Why indeed: where is public health?

In fact, many officials have a hard time understanding that children's risks and exposures at school and child care facilities are public health issues that require public health solutions. Meeting in November in Washington, D.C., at a national workshop on children's environmental health in schools and child care, convened by Healthy Schools, professionals from across the country agreed that government agency and NGO leaders need to plan for a range of preventive measures to keep children healthier and safer.

In fact, federal regulatory agencies lack the authority to respond to child or parent complaints. For example, the US Department of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for setting and enforcing federal workplace safety regulations for adults, has no responsibility for child-protective regulations. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is responsible for research, onsite health hazard evaluations, and guidance to protect employees from hazards in their workplaces. But it lacks the statutory authority to assist children and parents enduring the identical exposures and potentially more devastating effects.

A Tennessee parent told the workshop how it took years to get her child's school to stop spraying hospital-grade disinfectants around children eating lunch. Instead of addressing the misuse of a toxic product, the parent was banned from entering the school. An Oklahoma parent outlined her daughters' long-term illnesses due to exposures to dusts and fumes from an uncontrolled school renovation, then listed all the agencies which had declined to help.

Advertisement

The US Environmental Protection Agency provides volumes of voluntary guidance but, with budget cuts, has almost no funds to move guidance on indoor air quality, integrated pest management, building design, and siting. But in many districts, the "culture of local control" translates into opposing oversight, with the resulting increases in environmental health risks.

The workshop report, Environmental Health at School: Ignored Too Long, features a new call for Environmental Health action. Recommendations include demonstration programs, establishing a National Healthy Children, Healthy Schools Commission, beefing up access laws, and developing tools and mechanisms for identifying and protecting at-risk children. And the report calls for creating training, education, and guidance programs for parents/guardians, teachers and principals, health care providers, and public health professionals. This report also expands on recommendations highlighted in the Blueprint for Protecting Children's Environmental Health: An Urgent Call to Action, a resource for the field of child health protection, developed by the Children's Environmental Health Network.

It takes money to fix crumbling schools and some reforms cost money upfront. But in the long run, preventing illness saves money. No one profits when schoolhouses collapse; no one profits when children are disabled by avoidable exposures; and no one profits if a child can't think because the air and surfaces are thick with molds, or when the dilapidated gym is closed and the drinking water contaminated by lead. Respecting children and respecting the importance of education means maintaining clean, dry, quiet educational facilities with healthful indoor air.
Who said this, and where:

"We can't leave it to free markets to develop renewable energy. This is a case where the free market fails to do what's right for the world and for society. So government must play a big role. If we leave it to the free market, we will be doing a disservice to our children and grandchildren."

A)Climate activist Bill McKibben, at a fossil fuel divestment rally

B)Former Sierra Club president Carl Pope, in a debate with an oil company executive

C)Marios Muftakis, chief economist at U.K.-based Standard Chartered Bank, at the 2016 World Future Energy Summit (WFES) in Abu Dhabi

The answer is C, and that speaks volumes about the accelerated global shift toward a low-carbon, clean-energy economy. At the WFES, a mid-January gathering of some 30,000 global economists, ministers of energy, investors, and energy companies spoke in a remarkably consistent voice about the need - but more importantly the compelling financial case  for aggressive deployment of renewable energy in both the industrialized and developing world. And of the need for governments to set the right policies to make it happen.

Advertisement

On the surface, Abu Dhabi, the capital of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, would seem an unlikely venue for the first major global clean energy conference after the landmark climate agreement signed one month earlier at COP21 in Paris. But it was actually the perfect place to view the latest signs of a tipping point in the transition from fossil fuels to renewable power. Invited as part of an international delegation of journalists, I was struck by the aggressive efforts across dozens of nations to ramp up renewables, including many MENA (Middle East/North Africa) countries, like the host, whose economies depend heavily on oil and gas.

Yes, nations like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait signed the Paris accord, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, along with nearly 200 other countries. But speeches, and even historic climate agreements, are one thing; policy and deployment action, and the investment to pay for it, is often quite another. On this score, actions announced or discussed at WFES (part of Abu Dhabi's annual Sustainability Week) proved worthy as well. Among them were:

A commitment by the region's largest bank, the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD), of $10 billion over 10 years to finance sustainability activities, mainly large wholesale energy projects over $100 million

Morocco recently upping its national renewable energy target to 50% by 2030. It's also home to the world's largest solar thermal generation plant, Noor 1, which went online in early February. The plant, at 160 MW capacity now, is targeted to be the world's largest at 580 MW by 2018. Morocco will also host this year's United Nations climate meeting, COP22, in Marrakech in November.

The biggest kahuna of oil in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, is starting to push into clean energy generation. Among other efforts, its huge utility Saudi Electric is seeking offers to develop two 50-MW solar plants and one 50-MW wind farm. "If they get the model correct, I can see Saudi Arabia expanding significantly into renewables," said Mohammed Atif, area manager of energy for the Middle East and Africa for global energy and risk management consultancy DNV GL. "I have very high hopes."

Advertisement

Everything energy-related in the Middle East, of course, is occurring against the backdrop of plummeting oil prices. They were struggling to reach $30 a barrel during the WFES, a drop of some 70% since mid-2014. It makes a compelling case for oil-producing nations both to diversify their economies, and to reduce the government subsidies that have traditionally kept retail gasoline prices artificially low for their citizens when crude oil prices soared.

Indeed, one of the most memorable things I heard in Abu Dhabi came not from a conference speaker, but a newspaper headline in the local tabloid 7 Days: "UAE readies itself for last barrel of oil." Overly dramatic to be sure, but it led an article on a UAE government ministers' retreat to discuss, in light of falling prices, how to reduce the 30% chunk of the nation's economy that's dependent on oil. The nation's "last barrel of oil" is obviously many decades away, but as one Arab oil minister famously said back in the 1970s, "The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones." Even in the Middle East, we are clearly in a transition to a new way of powering our economies in a way that is cleaner, better, and ultimately cheaper.

Abu Dhabi is also home to the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), the organization of 145 member nations founded in 2009 to promote clean energy worldwide. A recent IRENA study, for example, projects that increasing renewables' share of generation to 36% by 2030 would increase global GDP by 1.1% ($1.3 trillion) and create 24 million jobs. "It is unprecedented in any energy sector to have seen such a rapid change in such a short time," said Adnan Z. Amin, the affable Kenyan who chairs IRENA, about the rapid scale-up of renewable generation worldwide in this decade. "For most of the solutions we need right now to fulfill the [emissions-reduction] pledges made in Paris, the technology is already mature. There is a real sense that we're participating in a transformative agenda."

IRENA's LEED Platinum headquarters building was the site of an evening panel discussion, hosted by the Financial Times, featuring UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and other luminaries. Kyung-Ah Park, head of the environmental markets group at Goldman Sachs, talked about fossil-fuel subsidies as market distortions, but also brought this welcome news: "Global institutional investors, with combined assets of $100 trillion, are telling us they now see renewable energy as a mainstream investment." Goldman Sachs, which plans to invest $150 billion in clean energy by 2025, is one of 34 companies on Clean Edge's inaugural Corporate Clean Energy Leaders list released on March 1.

Advertisement

Another key element of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week is the Zayed Future Energy Prize, an annual series of awards totaling $4 million to global clean energy pioneers among corporations, NGOs, and high schools across the globe. The prize was founded in 2008 to honor the legacy of the late sustainability-minded UAE president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. This year's winners ranged from Chinese battery and electric vehicle giant BYD to high schools with inspiring clean-energy projects in Colombia, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, and Somaliland.

The small-medium enterprise winner was an interesting outfit called Off-Grid Electric, based in San Francisco but doing its work in Tanzania and recently, Rwanda. Backed by heavy-hitter venture money from the likes of SolarCity, DBL Partners, and Paul Allen's investment firm Vulcan Capital, Off-Grid brings the micro-payment model common in the developing world to solar power. Off-Grid employs about 1,000 Tanzanians selling solar as a service; customers pay in small increments for the amount of solar power they use. The company's efforts are helping solar replace dangerous, unhealthy, and polluting kerosene as the region's dominant energy source.

"The prize money will help us grow our salesforce into the thousands," said Off-Grid co-founder and CEO Xavier Helgesen. "We hope to cover the whole country of 40 million people."
Computer simulations are big business, and getting bigger. Researchers use computers to model nearly everything, from the climate or the economy to traffic flows in cities. Increasingly, simulations are even used to investigate human culture and other societal processes, such as the ways that languages split off from one another. But people who model human societies often overlook religion. So how do you model religion using computers? As I explained in my first blog post, my postdoctoral project uses computer simulation techniques to better understand religion. Let me explain.



Image source: Fotolia

First, we're not dealing with what philosophers call "first-order" problems, like whether God exists or why bad things happen to good people. Instead, we're studying the cultural, cognitive and ritual processes that undergird religion and culture. However, we are asking some pretty foundational questions about humanity. For instance, why do humans participate in ritual? Why does every recorded society have supernatural beliefs? Why do some religions (like Islam) spread and attract converts for thousands of years, while others (like most new religious movements) die out?

Our team, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, is using two different types of computer models to investigate these issues: agent-based and systems dynamic models. Agent-based models use "agents," or simulated persons, which interact with each other according to set rules. The results of these interactions tell the modelers -- that is, the researchers -- important things about social and cognitive processes.

Advertisement

The most famous agent-based model is probably "Sugarscape," created by simulation experts Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell. In the Sugarscape model, agents move around on a virtual landscape, interacting and gathering resources from their surroundings. The landscape is made up of cells, like squares on a checkerboard or a grid. At each timestep -- an arbitrary unit of time that can correspond with minutes, days, or even years -- agents move from one cell to another, scooping up resources. From just a few very basic rules dictating how agents could move and interact with one another, Epstein and Axtell found they could generate extremely complex social dynamics, from tribal warfare to international trade to gradated social hierarchies.

For studying religion, our Modeling Religion Project is using agent-based models similar to the Sugarscape program, but with rules for the agents' behavior taken from empirical and anthropological studies of religion. For instance, we know that religions often generate what cognitive anthropologist Scott Atran calls "sacred values" -- nonnegotiable commitments that can't be exchanged for any monetary value. Both Israeli Jews and Palestinians consider Jerusalem a sacred city. When peace negotiators offer monetary compensation in exchange for giving up claims to this sacred place, both sides often grow more committed instead. Sacred values don't abide by the normal rules of economics -- the adage "everyone has his price" literally doesn't apply. By programming such a rule into an agent-based simulation, we might learn more about how sacred values fuel both religious conflict and ethnic identity.

Systems dynamics models are different. Instead of simulating individual persons in landscapes, systems dynamics models represent abstract flows and feedback loops. This probably explains precisely nothing, so let me give an example to make things clearer. Systems dynamic models were originally developed to help managers and directors understand the flow of materials, supply, and demand in organizations. If you're the director of XYZ Thingamabob Corporation, you need to know how the yearly cycle in demand for thingamabobs affects hiring. Your team designs a systems dynamic simulation that shows how fluctuations in demand affect production hiring and layoffs. Using that model, you retool your hiring strategy to cut down on layoffs (and training expenses). As a result, profits increase. You get a big bonus from the Board of Directors. You retire to Aruba. See why modeling is important?

Advertisement

Systems dynamics models operate in terms of "stocks" and "flows." In the above example, the "stock" is the number of workers and the "flow" is the change in this number, either through hiring or layoffs. In a model of the economy, the stock might be capital and the flow might be investment and depreciation. So how could this apply to religion? Well, the diagram below is a beta version of a model I'm working on with team leader Saikou Diallo, which simulates the growth or shrinkage of religious groups. Using what's called "club-goods" theory, we predict that religions that impose higher costs on members will retain more members. In turn, these costs will affect people's level of personal satisfaction and well-being -- too many demands, and people will get turned off and leave the group. But too few demands, and people won't be satisfied either.



Image Source: Saikou Diallo

In Saikou's words, this model "describes the relationship between religious practice as observed through ritual participation and the size of a religious community. Our goal is to capture the main influencers and sources of change that might affect the flow of people into and out of religious groups."
Tobermory is a small community situated at the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula, a 4-hour drive north of Toronto. With its perfect combination of gorgeous natural areas, variety of outdoor adventure activities, and quaint small town charm, it can make for a wonderful escape from the city.

I saw and experienced so many firsts on my visits to Tobermory -- first time seeing a shipwreck, first time seeing the Milky Way, and first time camping. It was my then-81-year-old grandma's first time camping as well! This is perhaps my favourite place in Ontario.

Here are 10 things you must do when you visit.

1. Go on a hike

The Bruce Trail is a stunning trail running along the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. It begins in the Niagara Peninsula and stretches hundreds of kilometres north, ending in Tobermory. The Tobermory region is reputed as having the most gorgeous views of the entire trail. You might even come across thousand-year-old cedar trees along your hike!

Advertisement

2. Explore the stunning geological formations

The Tobermory area is most notably known for the Grotto and its "flowerpot" rock formations.

The Grotto is a large cave that has been carved out over thousands of years by the waves of Georgian Bay. It's an incredible sight and even has an underwater tunnel that is absolutely breathtaking when illuminated by sunlight. I have yet to set foot or swim inside the actual grotto though -- perhaps next time!

The spectacular "flowerpot" rock pillars can be found by taking a boat cruise to Flowerpot Island, followed by a short hike once there. You can also explore impressive caves on the island by following other trails. Enjoy a picnic lunch or to go for a swim while here.

3. Check out the incredible underwater sights

Tobermory is known as the "fresh water scuba diving capital of the world". Scuba dive or snorkel in the surrounding waters, Fathom Five National Marine Park, to discover submerged forests, canyons, underwater waterfalls, and shipwrecks. This area is home to over 20 shipwrecks to explore -- some of which sank more than 100 years ago. The shipwrecks can also be viewed with a couple of boat cruise companies, such as Blue Heron Boat Tours and Bruce Anchor Cruises. You can observe the shipwrecks through the glass bottoms of these vessels or over the sides of the boat.

4. Enjoy the beautiful clear, turquoise water

The crystal clear waters off the coast of Tobermory is an amazing sight. While it can be a bit cool even in the middle of summer, it certainly makes for a very refreshing swim! The shoreline is quite fascinating as well as it's all very rocky.

Advertisement

5. Discover wildlife

Surrounded by large areas of uninterrupted forest, Tobermory is a great habitat for wildlife including black bears, coyotes, otters, turtles, and herons. I even managed to snap a quick photo of a hawk flying directly above me!

6. Wander through the array of unique shops

Back in town, there are a variety of shops to stroll through. Tobermory offers an assortment of handcrafted, Canadian-made trinkets, nautical antiques and models, outdoor gear, as well as many snack shops. Try ice cream from Peninsula Supply Ice Cream Parlour, candies, fudges, and brittles from The Sweet Shop, or the Canadian BeaverTail pastry from BeaverTails. The BeaverTail is a delicious sweet treat similar to other fried dough pastries. I fell in love with the Coco Vanil' flavour when I tried it in Tobermory.

7. Eat fresh local whitefish

I've eaten dinner at Shipwreck Lee's, a fun, pirate-themed restaurant, multiple times. The all-you-can-eat fish and chips made from fresh local whitefish from Georgian Bay is amazing. Each time, the servers were very friendly and nice. One time, we even had a family photo taken by one of the servers in front of "our" restaurant. (Our last name is Lee.)

8. Relax in cozy waterfront cottages

I've spent one night in Tobermory at Wireless Bay Cottages. We didn't book in advance so there were no "official" cottages left. However, the owners were kind enough to let us stay in the place above their office. The view from the second-story balcony was absolutely beautiful. The place had 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and a full kitchen -- plenty of space for the five of us. We cooked up a pretty nice breakfast in the kitchen the next morning too.

9. Go camping

A short 10 km drive south of Tobermory, you can camp at the Cyprus Lake Campground located in Bruce Peninsula National Park. The drive-in campsites are perfect for first-time campers. This place was essentially my introduction to camping -- as well as my then-81-year-old grandma's! We were extremely bad campers though... We didn't start our own fire. We ate solely pre-packaged foods. I didn't even sleep in the tent the whole night and slept in the car for a couple hours. Still, I really enjoyed the experience and had an amazing time.

Advertisement

10. Gaze at the Milky Way

With almost no light pollution at the campground, this is the perfect spot to gaze at the Milky Way with the naked eye -- as well as thousands of other stars! Seeing that unmistakable band across the night sky for the first time was just incredible. I'd also never before seen so many points of light in the sky before... so many stars -- everything was simply magnificent.

Are you packing your bags for Tobermory yet? The beauty and serenity awaits!

If you've been to Tobermory, what do you love most about it?

This post was originally published on my travel blog, Every Footstep an Adventure.
If you've come to Vegas looking for cheap buffets and 99 cent shrimp cocktails, let's hope you remembered to bring your time machine. These days, unless you're an avid gambler, cheap and free aren't so much a thing in Sin City. What's a thing, instead: $50 lunches. $100 dinners. Astronomically priced cups of morning coffee you wouldn't serve to your worst houseguest.

This isn't to say that Vegas is entirely a rip-off -- far from it. If you can get yourself on a schedule, there are some terrific happy hours, from Mandalay Bay all the way up to the Stratosphere. There are even a few hotels still offering guests a fairly decent free breakfast. To boot, nearly every fast food chain you can think of is hiding out somewhere either on or near the Strip. Hungry for more? Here are 12 of the best affordable bites for less than $12.

$2.10 Tacos al pastor at Tacos El Gordo

When this Tijuana transplant adjacent to Encore locked its doors for good in 2014, late nights on the Strip suffered a huge setback -- where would the all-hours crowd get cheap tacos and piles of French fries topped with sizzling carne asada, along with pretty much every fixin' behind the counter? A year or so later, the answer is right back here, where it all started. Those fries are rather hilarious, but the tacos, comprised of beauteous marinated pork shaved right off the rotating trompa and topped with avocado crema are perhaps the ultimate cheap eat on the Strip.

3049 Las Vegas Blvd. S

Advertisement

$10.00 Shrimp roll at Luke's Lobster, Fashion Show Mall

This East Coast smash hit recently landed in the forecourt of the Strip's most normal shopping center, just across the street from Treasure Island, Wynn and Palazzo. The signature item isn't close to a cheap eat at $18, but the $10 rolls filled with plump, quality shrimp are a very decent buy; so is the creamy New England clam chowder for $9.

3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$5.50 Slices at Five50 Pizza Bar, Aria

Of all the expensive pies on the Strip, the ones you'll get at Shawn McClain's casual spot buried inside Aria, land of the overpriced everything, are perhaps some of the best, marrying the super-fashionable artisanal style with good, old-fashioned New York folditude. Best of all, you don't need to sit down to try them -- there's a takeout counter at the front. Sure ,the price of a slice may make you lose your appetite, but that's totally fine, buzz off, line's too long anyway.

3730 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$9.00 Spicy miso ramen at Ramen-Ya Katana, Bally's Grand Bazaar

Tucked into the ugly new flea market-that-never-goes-away now squatting in Bally's front yard, this San Francisco import serves up one of the meanest, cheapest bowls of ramen you'll find anywhere near the Strip. It's a tiny spot, most ramen junkies will have had better, and the wait at peak times can be a mess, but what more can you ask for at just $9, right across the street from the dancing fountains of Lake Como? Not too much.

3635 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$4.95 Tomato basil soup at Nordstrom Marketplace Cafe, Fashion Show Mall

Need a break from the mayhem? Slip away to this civilized but casual lunchroom, tucked away in the back of the Fashion Show for a spot of lunch -- you can go whole hog for less than $20, but the soup's a killer deal if you just need a bite and a moment to unwind.

3200 Las Vegas Blvd. S

Advertisement

$11.95 Pastrami burger at The Peppermill

The Peppermill is the kind of coffee shop that used to be in all of the casinos, until the coffee shops turned into expensive restaurants serving thinly-disguised coffee shop food. The food comes on plates that are almost the size of your table, there's a terrific cocktail menu, if you can finish one of their nacho plates all by yourself, you should probably seek medical attention. Their burgers are a good deal -- get the half-pounder topped with salty smoked meat and swiss cheese and block out some time for a nap immediately following.

2985 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$4.50 Royal Pudding at Paris Baguette, Grand Canal Shoppes

Been to a Korean-French bakery yet? This popular South Korean chain is currently taking parts of the United States by storm and the fever has hit The Venetian. From affordable salads and sandwiches, fresh squeezed juices to colorful macarons and all manner of beautiful pastry, this is a terrific stop for budget eaters. Save room (and money) for the Royal Pudding, a milky, multi-layered treat in your choice of flavors.

3377 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$6.69 Smoke Shack at Shake Shack, The Park @ New York, New York

For those who never stop being on a budget, the arrival of this NYC (and, these days, many other cities) better-than-fast-food staple has been a dream come true -- even when you splurge, it's easy to get out the door here for less than $15. If you've never tried it, order the Smoke Shack, a burger topped with bacon, spicy red peppers, cheese and Shack sauce. It's kind of the best.

3790 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$8.99 Sandra Dee Combo at Pin-Up Pizza, Planet Hollywood

A gargantuan slice of your choosing, a fresh-baked garlic knot and a soda, served up by, how shall we say this, an enthusiastic and distinctively-dressed group of young ladies? You get it. Anyway - a great deal, convenient to a bunch of hotels where deals are hard to find.

3667 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$9.00 Ancient grain bowl at Canyon Ranch, Cafe Venetian

Spa cuisine on the Strip? You bet -- and it's pretty good, too. One of the most reasonably priced places is also one of the healthiest. Buried way back by the Canyon Ranch Spa, you can grab one of these healthy, choose-your-own-adventure bowls to go. Tip: They close at 2:00pm.

3355 Las Vegas Blvd. S

Advertisement

$9.85 Lunch special at Yard House, The Linq

So it's not the most unusual pick -- you probably have, by now, a Yard House back where you live. But for a sit-down lunch with a beer under $15, this is a great trick to have up your sleeve, particularly when traveling with a group of budget-minded buds. Offered from 11-5 every day, get your choice of a half sandwich (turkey melt, grilled pastrami, roast beef dip or turkey club) or pizza with a soup or salad -- choices include the kale Caesar, clam chowder, French onion soup and more. It's a deal even Grandma will love.

3545 Las Vegas Blvd. S

$4.25 Cupcake from the ATM at Sprinkles, The Linq

Tasty, fresh-made Red Velvet cupcakes topped with perfect cream cheese frosting, out of a machine at 4:00 in the morning? Depending on what you've been drinking, that sounds either like the best idea anyone has ever had on the planet -- or the worst. We trust you'll make the correct decision.

3545 Las Vegas Blvd. S
Educating for Going Global



The International Business Council (IBC) of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce recently hosted a panel of educators who have much to teach us about globalization. IBC speakers often represent the international businesses that have flocked to this small Southern city. This month's speakers spoke of how higher education is at the heart of our growing local-global connection. Their new initiatives, and in some cases, still emerging programs, aim to simultaneously bring greater numbers of international students to local campuses while globalizing Chattanooga's students through study abroad.

The event's facilitator was Dr. Robert Dooley, Dean of the Business College at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Dooley shared how globalization is changing Chattanooga area and introduced the panelists. Dr. Robert Denn is Dean of the Honors Program and Director of the Global Scholars at Chattanooga State Community College. Takeo Suzuki is the first Executive Director of the UTC Office of International Programs, which will is being expanded into a global studies center.

The Global Mindset



Denn talked about efforts to globalize the often insular students of Bledsoe County where many high school students have never gone beyond the county boundaries. In 2014, the expected number of students in the first cohort group of the Honors Program was twenty-five. The class was double that in size at sixty-two students. In the fall of 2016, two hundred students are expected to enroll. "A truly educated student has a global perspective. It's especially challenging to give students in rural areas an understanding of the wider world, but future employees of international companies must have a global mindset."

Advertisement

Today, holistic approaches and inter-disciplinary learning are key to globalizing students. Denn's Honors Program develops global awareness both in the classroom and through study abroad. Relationships with faculty help overcome the fear factor so that students and their families are willing to participate. The audience asked how students without the finances to study abroad will be able to afford. Given the life-long impact of the experience, it was suggested that corporations and foundations invest in scholarships and internships that help students to travel and immerse themselves in diverse cultures.

Mingling for Impact

Suzuki noted that while one million international students come to the US every year, only a third of that number of American students study abroad. Therefore, as the president of the IBC pointed out, a vital piece of globalization can be ongoing contact with Chattanooga's international students. Thirty-one countries are represented on campus. However, 60% of international students don't make American friends while studying in the US. He suggested that we focus on mingling local and international students, a process that would yield better results by giving the internationals cultural awareness training.

The Economic Argument

As for the economic impact of international students, the Association of International Educators estimates that $288,538,640 was spent in 2015 by international students in Tennessee. The 151 students currently on the UTC campus add 5.4 million dollars to Chattanooga's economy. In five years, Suzuki expects to increase the total of international students per year at UTC to 1,500, adding millions of dollars to the local economy.

In this competitive environment, neighboring Georgia has twice as many international students as Tennessee. Five cities in Tennessee have greater numbers than Chattanooga. Suzuki extolled the beauty of Chattanooga, the kindness of its people, its globalization, and growing economy. Yet, citing his own experience when relocating, Suzuki explained, "None of my contacts around the US knew anything about Chattanooga."

Advertisement

Let Students do the Marketing
MATHURA, INDIA - MAY 25: Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing to thousands of supporters who gathered to listen to him in extreme hot weather at Jan Kalyan Sabha on May 25, 2015 in Mathura, India. (Photo by Ramesh Pathania/Mint via Getty Images)

NEW DELHI -- Here are the telltale signs of a government in serious trouble: when it sniffs a conspiracy in every criticism aimed at it; when it deploys state power in a ham-handed manner to curb dissent; when it looks the other way as its supporters abuse, intimidate, injure and even murder its ideological and political foes; when it seeks shelter behind a veil of high-decibel nationalism; when it dons the mantle of victimhood; and, not least, when it attracts ridicule more than rage.

The trouble is all the more disconcerting when the government in question seems to be invincible. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his avowedly Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party commands a majority of its own in the Lower House of Parliament. Together with its partners in the National Democratic Alliance, the majority is even more impressive. India had not seen such an intrinsically stable government in four decades.

Advertisement

Since it was voted to power, the BJP has registered a staggering increase in its membership. By the end of last December, it had outstripped the membership of China's Communist Party. Equally impressive is the growth of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP's fount of ideological inspiration. It boasts of more than five million active members who, during elections, campaign for the party's candidates. In opinion polls, Modi has consistently figured far ahead of his political rivals.

Not everyone though was carried away by Modi's governance. That something was amiss in it was evident in the very first days and weeks of his tenure. One pointer related to his style of functioning. Nothing would move in any ministry without a nod from the Prime Minister's office. Such a concentration of power had not been witnessed since the heyday of Indira Gandhi's authoritarian rule in early 1970s and 1980s.

The other sign was more ominous. That Modi was beholden to the RSS for ensuring his spectacular triumph in the general election became obvious. He gave it a free hand to advance its agenda of "cultural nationalism" -- a barely disguised synonym for turning India into a Hindu nation. The RSS began to take control of educational institutions and cultural bodies. History textbooks were re-written to suit its ideology. Individuals with desultory professional credentials were named to head universities, research bodies and various cultural institutes. Modi chose to look the other way.

How long can the prime minister run with the hare of development and hunt with the hound of discord?

He was also conspicuously silent when members of his ideological fraternity hounded Muslims, leftists and liberals on one pretext or the other. These ranged from a ban on eating beef -- and in one case, Madhya Pradesh, even eggs -- to assaults on young people having fun in bars and on dance floors. Indeed, anything that smacked of "Western" culture and ideas, such as free speech and tolerance of diversity, invited the wrath of this fraternity.

Not content to denounce Modi's critics as anti-nationals, its cadres, sympathizers and even its leading lights often roughed them up and, in one horrendous instance, even lynched a poor Muslim on the suspicion that he had beef in his refrigerator. But Modi, who never misses an opportunity to tweet on every conceivable issue, chose to remain quiet. He was unmoved when India's finest thinkers, writers and artists returned the awards they had received from the government and from government-sponsored institutions.

The question that surged to the fore was: how long can the prime minister run with the hare of development and hunt with the hound of discord? The answer was not long in the coming. The BJP was routed in the assembly elections in Delhi and in the populous state of Bihar. It fared poorly in several by-elections and elections to local bodies, including in his own state of Gujarat.

None of this, however, tarnished Modi's image more than his government's thoroughly inept handling of students first at the University of Hyderabad in the wake of the suicide of a young Dalit (low-caste) scholar, Rohith Vemula, and then at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, where the students union leader, Kanhaiya Kumar, was slapped with the charge of sedition on the ground that he chanted slogans calling for the implosion of India and glorifying a Kashmiri militant who was hanged after he was found guilty of conniving in an attempt to blow up the Indian Parliament.

The matter is now in court but already evidence has come to light that the conduct of the government and the police commissioner was not quite in tune with due process. That, however, has not prevented the Modi government and the supporters of Hindu supremacy to play the nationalist card to the hilt both inside Parliament and in the streets. Indeed, to add to the government's woes, men sporting lawyers' robes manhandled Kanhaiya and media persons inside the premises of a court even as policemen remained mute spectators of this outrage.

Advertisement

RSS volunteers stand in formation at a rally in Pune, some 135 kms from Mumbai, on Jan. 3. Over 150,000 RSS volunteers are attending a day-long congregation, 'Shivashakti Sangam,' the largest in recent years. (INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

Students and their teachers in campuses across India continue to stage protests against what they perceive to be a vicious onslaught on their autonomy. And even those sections of the media that tilted towards Modi -- and had indeed amplified the "anti-national" chorus -- have begun to entertain second thoughts about the government's commitment to safeguard the basic right to freedom of expression.

Modi, however, has not uttered a word of regret, let alone of remorse, about these developments. On the other hand, he has gone on the offensive against his critics in a manner that leaves one breathless. The strongman of India believes that his tormentors are determined to oust him for two reasons: one, that his government is leaving nothing to chance to expose corruption in their ranks; and two, that they have been unable to digest the fact that a mere tea-vendor has become the country's prime minister.

On the first count, Modi has done precious little to bring the corrupt to heel. His personal integrity is doubtless impeccable. But that cannot detract attention from his failure to deliver on the promise he made to the electorate -- that he would bring back to India money illegally stashed abroad.

On the second count, his stand is even less tenable. Except for one foolish remark made by an otherwise bright and articulate member of the Congress party, no one has spoken about his modest social background. The charge that he is a victim of class or caste prejudice is poppycock. It is nothing but a sign of creeping nervousness.

Advertisement

Two issues will now test his mettle. One is the growing clamor of land-owning and politically powerful peasant castes in several states -- Jats in Harayana, Patidars (or Patels) in Gujarat, Gujjars in Rajasthan, Marathas in Maharashtra, Kapus in Andhra Pradesh, Ahoms in Assam -- to be given a "backward caste" status. That would enable them to benefit from quotas in educational institutions and government jobs. The quotas only apply to castes that have historically suffered from social discrimination and to those who have been identified as socially and economically backward classes.

He needs to learn that Indians can worship an idol and demolish an idol with equal zeal.

The fragmentation of land holdings make the peasant castes economically unviable and only a few of the landholders have been able to succeed in trade and business. While the difficulties they face are acute enough, it is not possible under the law -- which pegs "reservations" at 50 percent -- to accommodate their demand for "backward caste" status. But the Modi government, aware of their electoral clout, has agreed to accept it in the full knowledge that the Supreme Court will strike it down. The conundrum, that has led to destruction of property and the loss of 19 lives in Harayana, poses an intractable problem for the prime minister.

The economy is the second test. The Modi government lacks a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. With their smaller numbers, the opposition parties have not allowed the passage of bills that would have eased acquisition of land for investors, more flexible labor laws and fewer bureaucratic hurdles to start businesses. Modi can reach out to the opposition provided he can place his Hindu nationalism on the back burner.

But can he do that? He is damned if he does, and he is damned even more if he doesn't. Indians who voted for him in such large numbers -- for his promises of speedy economic growth, a corruption-free government and a stable polity -- are a dispirited lot today. Modi's only shard of luck is that no alternative to him has emerged just yet.

But the ground is clearly slipping from beneath his feet. Like the Bourbons of France, he seems neither to learn anything nor forget anything. He needs to learn that Indians can worship an idol and demolish an idol with equal zeal. He needs to forget that he can ride roughshod over what is at the core of India's democracy -- respect for the country's exuberant diversity upheld in its Constitution -- in the name of Teflon nationalism. To persist with this delusion is to embark on a path leading to certain perdition.

Advertisement

Earlier on WorldPost:
U.S. military vehicles stage at the site of a suicide attack that targeted a convoy of American troops in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Aghanistan, Friday, April 10, 2015. An Afghan official says the bomb killed and wounded several civilians. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack. (AP Photo)

Afghanistan is a bust. The Taliban is expanding its control. The number of "security incidents" was up a fifth in the last months of 2015 over the previous year. Popular confidence is at its lowest level in a decade. More than $100 billion in "aid" has been largely squandered. U.S. military officers now speak of a "goal line" defense of Kabul.

One begins to imagine a final evacuation like that from Saigon, via helicopter atop the U.S. embassy. Afghanistan is not yet there, but Washington's expensive dream of remaking Central Asia almost certainly is dead.

Advertisement

The decline has come with extraordinary speed. I visited Afghanistan in both 2010 and 2011, the latter trip sponsored by NATO. Allied military officers and PR officials presented an optimistic case, that if only the money continued to flow the Afghan government could take over its defense. That is not proving to be the case.

Many Afghans fear their fate. There is little public confidence in a free and prosperous future. The young and well-educated, who have the greatest stake in a more efficient and better governed state, are leaving. The majority of emigrants "are under the age of 30. This is really scary, we have very limited qualified, specialist people," said Ahmed Siar Khoreishi, CEO of Ghazanfar Bank: "The brains are leaving."

While the deadly geopolitical game is not yet over, it is hard to see how the current regime can survive without Washington's continued combat support. Although the Obama administration appears committed to maintaining today's small military presence--and sacrificing brave men's lives--in order to put off the inevitable collapse until the next president is inaugurated, America will be coming home. And with it will go any hope for a liberal, democratic, unified Afghanistan allied with the U.S.

The nation-building mission always was quixotic. Even before Afghanistan the U.S. had an awful record of trying to turn impoverished, war-torn Third World states into respectable members of the "international community." Most of Afghanistan's people don't want foreign rule. Nor do they want control by Kabul. This conflict-ridden land was no candidate for immersion in Western values. For instance, the phenomenon of "bacha bazi," or dancing boys, horrified American personnel, but the New York Times reported how the latter were ordered to ignore what amounted to Afghan security personnel raping children.

Advertisement

Indeed, the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction shows how far this Central Asian land was and remains from developed status. And how ineffective U.S. aid programs have been in transforming it.

Post-Taliban Afghanistan started out poor, heavily reliant on poppy production. While it enjoyed some boom years in the flood of Western cash from foreign militaries, contractors, and aid workers, the benefits were concentrated in the well-connected. And this financial tsunami has receded. The reduced foreign presence has sharply cut the amount of cash flowing through Afghan hands. Moreover, domestic capital routinely flees for safer harbors elsewhere, especially in the Middle East. The money isn't likely to return, certainly not without an unexpected security improvement.

The foreign money also inflamed the problem of corruption. When I visited popular cynicism of the government was high, with discussions of officials suspected of secreting their ill-gotten gains abroad. People called large, garishly painted homes "poppy palaces." The well-connected gobbled up foreign contracts. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute explained: "The significant amount of aid and vast international military spending post-2001 has re-ingrained a culture of aid-rentierism: the Afghan elite competes internally for political rents from the international community."

Tougher times have not increased honesty. Indeed, the advance of the Taliban has made it more difficult for Kabul officials to oversee spending elsewhere. In its latest quarterly report, SIGAR noted that a recent Afghan task force "reportedly found that millions of dollars were being embezzled while Afghanistan pays for numerous nonexistent 'ghost' schools, 'ghost' teachers, and 'ghost' students."

Even worse, the same practice apparently afflicts the security forces. There are multiple reports of official yet nonexistent police and army personnel. SIGAR cited an Associated Press investigation: "In that report, a provincial council member estimated 40% of the security forces in Helmand do not exist, while a former provincial deputy police chief said the actual number was 'nowhere near' the 31,000 police on the registers, and an Afghan official estimated the total ANDSF number at around 120,000--less than half the reported 322,638." That helps explain the Afghan government's difficulty in repelling Taliban advances.

Advertisement

Security never has been good during the conflict. Today it is worse than ever.

Explained SIGAR: "in this reporting period, Afghanistan proved even more dangerous than it was a year ago. The Taliban now controls more territory than at any time since 2001. Vicious and repeated attacks in Kabul this quarter shook confidence in the national-unity government. A year after the Coalition handed responsibility for Afghan security to the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), American and British forces were compelled on several occasions to support ANDSF troops in combat against the Taliban."

There is no reason to expect the situation to improve.

Yet the failure of U.S. aid programs reaches well beyond insecurity. Government-to-government assistance has an atrocious record around the world. It should surprise no one that despite pouring $113.1 billion into Afghanistan, Washington has surprisingly few sustainable, long-term benefits to show for it. About $8.4 billion in reconstruction funding remains in the pipeline, and little more should be expected from it.

Citing just a few of its earlier audits, SIGAR reported on Afghan government agencies suffering from "divergent approaches and a lack of overall strategy, poor coordination and limited information sharing," unable to "handle contract research, awards, and management," and lacking "required documentation for contracts, task orders, and payments." SIGAR discovered a well-built development project in which the private sector had no interest; an initiative for "quick delivery" grants ground to a halt with nothing being done for months. U.S.-funded "power and water systems [were] inoperable for lack of fuel" while an industrial park had minimal occupancy. Yet despite constant and manifold failures, SIGAR found "only one instance out of 127 [USAID] contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements where prescribed multi-tier monitoring was being used."

Its latest audits yielded little better results. Internal controls remain a problem. The inspector general conducted five financial audits which "identified nearly $1.8 million in questioned costs as a result of internal-control deficiencies and noncompliance issues."

Advertisement

USAID devoted $488 million to develop Afghanistan's oil, gas, and minerals industries. SIGAR found "limited progress overall, and challenges prevent further investment and growth." U.S. agencies followed "divergent approaches," Afghan ministries weren't committed to reforms, "many mining operations are still controlled by political elites, warlords, military personnel, and the police," transportation networks are inadequate, the central government delayed work, and several projects showed no results while others failed to meet "key performance indicators."

Tens of millions of dollars went for training and equipping an Afghan National Engineer Brigade, which was ineffective. The NEB was hampered by "army staff on leave for holidays, political events, low literacy levels, and security concerns." The brigade "lacked initiative" and "was not capable of carrying out its mission."

Some $2.3 billion in USAID money went for stability programs, yet the agency "appears to be largely indifferent" to a critical outside evaluation of the results. Indeed, USAID made claims contradicted by program evaluations. For instance, "villages receiving USAID stability projects scored lower on stability--an aggregate measure of whether the projects strengthened perception of good governance and effective service delivery--than similar villages that receive no such assistance. And some villages reportedly under Taliban control that received USAID stability projects subsequently showed greater pro-Taliban support." Overall, said SIGAR, "villages that received USAID assistance showed a marked decrease in their stability scores relative to the overall decrease in stability scores for both villages that did and those that did not receive USAID assistance." Here, at least, American "aid" apparently proved to be a hindrance.

Despite a consistently bad record, the official line remains positive. On one of my visits a Marine Corps officer warned me that "everyone is selling something." But the practical results often are dismal. While I received glowing reviews of the police training program from my NATO handlers, one of the contractor-instructors privately lamented the difficulty in teaching students of such limited education and different culture. He collected his paycheck, but had no confidence when confronting a real rather than ghost policemen.

Advertisement

The U.S. has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than 14 years. That is longer than the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and Korean War combined. It is time to turn the conflict over to the Afghans and let them determine their future.

Americans may not like the result, but attempting to establish a liberal Western outpost in Central Asia never made sense. The U.S. has no security need to do so, and the task can't be done at reasonable cost in lives and money.
A good action/thriller movie keeps you tense, engaged and excited. A great action/thriller does all that and you still feel anxious long after you've left the theater. This sequel to the $161M-grossing Olympus Has Fallen, about a Secret Service agent who guards the president, is good but not great.



(Photo courtesy of Gramercy Pictures)

Gerard Butler and Angela Basset co-star in London Has Fallen.

Creighton Rothenberter and Katrin Benedikt wrote the first Olympus. This project has added two more writers to the team, Christian Gudegast (Man Apart, Immortals) and Chad St. John, to flesh out the storyline. In the beginning, it's political, suspenseful and intriguing. Then the script drifts into a mindless, straight-out action film with lots of gunfire, blasts and fistfights.

Director Babak Najafi (Banshee for Cinemax) keeps the pacing crisp for one hour and 45 minutes. No time to get bored, and he's pretty good at coordinating the action scenes. None are particularly original or over the top (like the opening sequence of the James Bond movie Spectre), but they are engrossing.

Advertisement

Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul, The Dark Knight Rises), a sociopathic international arms dealer, throws his daughter a lavish wedding on a rooftop in Lahore, Pakistan. A U.S. drone bombs the event. All assume Barkawi and his evil son (Waleed F. Zuaiter, from the film Omar) are dead.

Two years later the British Prime Minster dies suddenly, and world leaders attend his funeral. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) is accompanied by Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Basset) and Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler).

Before anyone can step into St. Paul's Cathedral and sit in a pew, visiting dignitaries are killed, London landmarks are blown up and the POTUS, Jacobs and Banning barely escape a hail of bullets. London, under siege, gets locked down. Back home, Vice President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman) and his staff (Melissa Leo, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley) work feverishly with officials in the U.K. to find out who is behind the massacre and save the president.

Long before heads of state are picked off like sitting ducks, the camerawork (Ed Wild) is doing grandiose panoramic shots of London and the musical score (Trevor Morris, Olympus Has Fallen) is blaring like a broken speaker in a mall. By the time the real action starts, it's too late for the music to crescendo, it's already loud and melodramatic. The soundtrack becomes less of a sore point once the action sequences kick in, which are well-paced and decently edited (Michael J. Duthie, Paul Martin Smith). Your eyes are stuck to the screen, for a lot of shallow reasons. There is no depth.

Advertisement

Eckhart is about as accessible and watchable as a young Robert Redford. He doesn't have the intensity of a Christian Bale, but he has a strong screen presence. Freeman as Trumbull, the man in charge, doesn't build on the deep-voice and authoritative persona audiences expect from him. His characterization of the VP borders on the cliche. Aboutboul and Zuaiter are fine within the confines of their roles.

Angela Bassett suffers from the Leonardo DiCaprio syndrome. She is far more talented than most of the films she is cast in. You hope one day a project will come her way that is worthy of her skills and visible enough for her to win a long overdue Academy Award. When Jacobs tells Banister, "Make those fu----- pay," you don't doubt her sincerity.

Gerard Butler is the new John Wayne. He shoots, kills and chokes multitudes of assailants, barely getting nicked in the process. There isn't much reality connected to what he's doing and the role he plays is never more than two-dimensional: loving husband, super-human Secret Service man. Nonetheless, he's fun to watch.



It should be noted that this film seems a bit heavy on evil Pakistanis and light on normal ones. It is the duty of the screenwriters, director and producers to make a movie that reflects the good and bad in every culture. That doesn't happen in this film.

For a bullet-a-minute action/thriller, London Has Fallen is good. Never great.
Entangled with intrigue and a bewildering sense of darkness, the compelling, and legendary, British post punk, faction, "The Membranes", will be touring the U.S. come early fall of 2016, with a spectacular that promises to devour their audiences with cosmic energy and an effervescent vitality comparable to the force of a Super Nova.

The group's front man and lead vocalist, the handsomely sinister looking, mysteriously audacious, prophetic master, John Robb, will be dauntlessly executing his compilation of a life time, with his release Dark Matter/Dark Energy. The album, partially inspired by a conversation with "CERN " scientist, Joe Incandela, depicts the life and death of the universe, infused with the emotional and impassioned, spirit of the unworldly prodigy behind the musical creation.

Besides being the architect behind the music, John Robb is also the "boss" and originator of Louder Than War, one of the leading, innovative and popular music and pop-culture magazines, as well as the author of Punk Rock: An Oral History, The Stone Roses: And The Resurrection of British Pop, just to name a few. He can also quite frequently be seen on British TV.

Advertisement

Recently in a sold out, extremely unique and experimental gig, The Membranes performed their Dark Matter/Dark Energy an explanation of the universe, featuring a 20 piece, Estonian choir behind them. The hauntingly enchanting concert received supernatural raves from press and critics alike. The exclusiveness of this showcase proved to become a revolutionary phenomenon in the music industry.

After a brief and successful tour of the U.S. last fall, The Membranes will again conquer our national, empowered by their captivating noise, accompanied by a choir of angelic sounds backing their compositions. There will also be oral presentations via leading scientists, all exhibited in a radical, and epic festival type fashion. There is a thin line between science and science fiction, and much to discover in between, especially when it involves something as vast as the universe.
I recently wrote on SearchEngineLand that after many years of stability, Google's share of the search market dipped a few percentage points, according to the October Comscore's report on desktop search market rankings (Note, the Google search market share number has remained at the current level since the October decline). Like many digital marketers, I don't completely trust the Comscore rankings since I have always seen a different breakdown of search engine traffic in my own logs. To understand if Google's market share truly decreased or if this was just a Comscore blip, I ran a survey on SurveyMonkey Audience.

In my survey, I asked people to share their primary desktop search engine, and here are the results:

I ran this same survey one year ago, and according to my survey, Google had 80% of the market. Based on the most recent results, it would seem to be that Google is actually losing market share-- and it's not just Comscore's reporting methodology. While a decline in market share for the first time in many years might not seem like it bodes well for Google and its shareholders, I actually think this is the best thing ever for Google and the whole Internet.

Keeping Google honest

Generally, Google runs a search engine that for the most part does what users need as evidenced by their market share. However, they make constant search improvements to bring Google closer to their ultimate goal of achieving Larry Page's vision of a "perfect search engine," which he described as "something that understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want."

Advertisement

Background of Google enhancements

While Google claims to make thousands of tweaks to their core website ranking algorithm every year, they only make a small amount of updates that fundamentally transform the Google search results. Some of the really big updates merit blog posts on the Google webmaster blog and receive official names (Kind of like hurricanes.)

Panda

In 2011, the Panda algorithm targeted low quality content that plagued the Google search result pages. This update was massive, and according to Google, it impacted more than 10% of all queries. Like every piece of Google's search algorithm, they never detailed exactly what it looked for, but many people did notice that it did a pretty good job of removing the kinds of results that seemed artificial.

Penguin

In 2012, Google released the Penguin algorithm, which was aimed at neutralizing websites that took advantage of artificial links to increase their websites' rankings. Links pointing to a website have always been an important part of how Google determines a website's ranking; and it was one of the key features that Google differentiated themselves from competitors and directories during the late 1990's. Rather than earn links naturally, webmasters skirted the process by using a variety of means including exchanges of cash to acquire links. Again, Google never detailed exactly how this algorithm works, but it is meant to determine whether links have been earned "naturally" or "unnaturally" (as defined by Google of course).

Mobile friendliness, Hummingbird and Rank Brain

In addition, there have been a series of recent updates aimed at improving search results on mobile. One update specifically demoted websites on mobile search that were deemed not "mobile friendly". Others like "Hummingbird" improved search, so people can get results faster, sometimes without even clicking a website result.

Advertisement

Most recently, Google launched an algorithm update they dubbed "Rank Brain". Rank Brain uses artificial intelligence to interpret never before seen queries and serve up the best results for the searcher based on what Google thinks they are seeking.



Competition as a motivation

Constant improvements of their search engine, with the occasional rewrite of their core algorithms, is expensive, and the exercise isn't just one of altruism. Without the pressure of competitors biting at their heels, they might be less motivated to create the perfect search engine.

International markets are a perfect test of a more competitor-free environment, and notably even some of their big algorithm updates take a bit of time to migrate out of the US. In Singapore, where I am currently living and working, Google has almost complete dominance. As an English-speaking country with near total penetration of the Internet, Google's search results should be as "perfect" as they are in the US, but they are not.

Singapore as an example

I was recently searching on Google.com.sg for a baby bassinet for my newborn. The first result is for the US based Toysrus.com website which does not even allow for shipping to Singapore. Imagine if this were to happen in the US, where the results for a Canadian or Mexican website that does not offer shipping to the US showeed up in US results. Users would scamper off to Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo faster than a blink of an eye.

Here's another troubling result. I searched for "recommended immunizations" on Google.com.sg, and Google's entire first page is all US based results. Immunization recommendations are a local search, and each country will have differing schedules and recommendations. Public health experts would be up in arms if another country's results showed up on a Google search for this important query in the US.

Advertisement

On this example, I am being a bit unfair since in Singapore they use UK spelling and immunization is actually spelled as "immunisation." Even searching with the UK spelling still puts the US results higher than the Singapore results. Aside from the obvious problem of not having a top result for a Singapore website, this difference in spelling is the exact kind of thing that Rank Brain supposedly catches, and it does in the US. (see below)

These are just two very light examples in the differences in the way Google search is vastly better within the US than it is overseas. (For further research, try Googling in any language and in a non-US Google, and you are bound to see lower quality results and websites).

Why is the drop in US market share a good thing?

If Google were to deploy all of their vast search algorithm improvements at the same scale outside of the US that they do in the US, the quality of the non-US search results would be greatly improved. There wouldn't be websites with top rankings that use linking tactics that have been blacklisted by Google, websites that are able to rank by stuffing keywords, and pages built purely on scraping other people's content. But, to make these improvements would be expensive, and since nearly all non-US Internet users use Google, why should they bother?
Part One

NORMAN, Okla. - Oklahoma may be the reddest state in the nation, but Democratic voters around the University of Oklahoma were glad to get a say in Super Tuesday's Sooner state primary election.



Many student voters, like OU senior Rhea Kickham, said they voted in the Democratic primary because the party's candidates were the only ones addressing the right issues.

"For each candidate, I was mostly focused on the platform," Kickham said. "Especially stands on environmental issues and inequalities."

Kickham said she voted as a Democrat because she heard actual issues being discussed in the Democratic debates, and did not hear that in the Republican ones.

Advertisement

The reason 33-year-old OU employee Mikayla Wormley voted in the Democratic primary was simple; the Bern.

"Honestly, I'm looking at campaign finance reform and everything that stems from it," Wormley said.

Freshman Haley Rhymer and senior Allison Stroud also registered to vote in Oklahoma's Democratic primary.

Stroud chose between the two remaining Democratic candidates, Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, mainly by comparing the candidates' foreign policy experience. Rhymer made her choice based on the issues of education and the social justice system.

The Democrats' handle on issues pulled in some Independent student voters as well.

Freshman Avery Brant said she is usually an independent voter, but registered as a Democrat in Oklahoma. Brant said the party affiliation allowed her Super Tuesday vote to count more. She added that she believed the Democrats had a better handle on facts and issues than the Republicans.

Advertisement
The time has come for the campaign press to finally pack away its Hillary Clinton doomsday script.

Since the new year, much of the Clinton campaign coverage has revolved around trying to detail her weaknesses, stitching together scenarios where she would fail, and just generally bemoaning what an awful campaign she was supposedly running: She's too loud! And "everything" is going wrong.

In fact, the primary season has unfolded in the way level-headed observers suggested it might: Iowa was close, Sanders enjoyed a clear advantage in New Hampshire, and then Clinton started accumulating victories. But instead of telling that sober story, the press opted for a far more tantalizing tale -- a Clinton collapse! A 2008 repeat! Even when Clinton did win, the press often stressed how her victories weren't really victories. (Politico claimed Clinton was "stung" by her narrow Iowa win.)

The narrative has been tightly knit: Voters don't really like her.

"In reality, nobody is that excited about Hillary Clinton, and young voters, women and men -- the foot soldiers of any Democratic Party movement -- aren't coming around," BuzzFeed reported. Days later, Clinton won women voters in South Carolina by nearly 50 points.

Advertisement

Keep in mind, Clinton's win-loss primary record today doesn't look that much different from Donald Trump's. Yet his coverage is delivered in the glow of a celebrity; of a candidate who's enjoying an astounding run of unmatched victories. Instead, the tone and tenor of Clinton's coverage this year often mirrored that of Jeb Bush's -- the guy who ran a historically futile campaign and dropped out without winning a state.

By all indications the Democratic primary contest will march on, and Clinton remains a ways away from securing the delegates needed to officially secure the nomination. But in the wake of Super Tuesday and Clinton's widespread primary success, this seems like a good time for the press to reassess its coverage; to maybe reset how it sees the campaign, and specifically adjust the at-times comically doomsday coverage it continued to heap on the Democratic frontrunner.

Request to the media: Please take your thumb off the scale. In fact, please take both thumbs off the scale.

Trust me, critics of the Clinton coverage aren't looking for the Democratic frontrunner to get a free pass. Close observers of the Clintons over the years know that's just never going to happen. They just want a fair shot. They'd like the press to go back to its job of simply reporting and analyzing what's happening on the campaign trail and to get out of the narrative-building business. Stop with the hyperventilating that every Clinton campaign speed bump seems to produce, and stop trying to force-feed voters a story that's not actually happening.

Advertisement

The cyclical waves of she's-doomed coverage have become as tiresome as they are predictable:

*During Clinton's summer of 2014 book tour, which the press announced was a complete "disaster."

*During March of 2015 when the Clinton email story broke.

*During the Clinton Foundation witch hunt in May of last year.

*During renewed email fever last September when the Washington Post averaged more than two Clinton email updates every day of the month.

On and on this production has run.

But was it really that bad this winter? Consider that this was an actual headline from a February Washington Post column, "Clinton email scandal: Why It Might Be Time For Democrats To Draft Joe Biden."

Yep. Democrats might need to replace Clinton.

On the eve of the Nevada vote, Vanity Fair insisted Clinton allies were "panicking," and that anything short of a "blowout" win would be "disastrous" for her campaign. Indeed, when Clinton won by five points, Vanity Fair announced she had lost "her narrative."

Author Gail Sheehy, writing a piece for The New York Times, claimed Baby Boomer women weren't supporting Clinton's campaign, when in fact Baby Boomer women are among Clinton's most ardent supporters.

And reporting from South Carolina, the Post stressed that Bill Clinton was causing all kinds of "headaches" for the campaign by being caught "on the wrong side of the headlines." Critiquing his campaign persona, the Post insisted "he seems to lose it," pointing to his "apparent vitriol." Hillary Clinton's subsequent 47-point victory in South Carolina raised doubts about the paper's claim that Bill Clinton was hurting the campaign.

Advertisement

Meanwhile, Post columnist Kathleen Parker, leaning heaving on the she's-doomed narrative, painted an extraordinarily negative picture of Clinton's chances of winning in the Palmetto state. Parker claimed Clinton was entering "troubled water" in South Carolina and "particularly among African Americans."

Fact: Clinton won 86 percent of the South Carolina Africa-American vote. As a pundit, it's hard to be more wrong than Parker was.

Can you imagine scribes typing up articles and columns this winter about how Bernie Sanders was having trouble attracting young voters and arguing that if he couldn't tap into the enthusiasm of millennials his campaign was doomed. Of course not, because that would have made no sense. Yet that didn't stop people from writing about how Clinton was struggling with women and black voters, even though the premises were so easily debunked.

Those are the Clinton Rules: Anything goes. There's no penalty for being wrong about the Clintons, which of course only encourages people to be as illogical as they want when chronicling her campaign.

But now as the contours of the looming general election race come into view, it's time now for an honest media reassessment.

Advertisement
When thinking of Catholic Sisters, the term "corporate stances" doesn't immediately come to mind. Prayer, spirituality, and ministry all exemplify the Dominican Sisters' charism, but so, too, does justice. As a unified group, the Dominican Sisters care deeply about justice and their relationship to the poor and marginalized in our world.

"If we really answer the call of the Gospel, it's to stand with the poor and the marginalized," Sister Mary Feigen, Justice Representative for the Dominican Sisters of Hope explains. "I believe that we are called to take a stance for what we see as injustice in our world."



Dominican Sister of Hope Mary Feigen

The sisters have spent decades working within a variety of justice issues, but their mission doesn't end there. Every two years, a group of sisters known as the International Dominican Justice Promoters releases calls to action and encourage each congregation around the world to focus on the most current pressing justice issues. Calls range from food justice to fair immigration rights to the abolition of the death penalty.

Advertisement

Sister Didi Madden, the Justice Promoter for the Dominican Sisters in Committed Collaboration (the Dominican Sisters of Hope, Blauvelt, Caldwell, Sparkill, and Amityville), encourages each congregation to take action on a local level.

After becoming aware of certain injustices in society, sisters then pray about the issue and look to Catholic faith tradition (i.e. encyclicals and teachings of the Church) to inform themselves about the issue. They research it formally and analyze the issue in society today.

Oftentimes, the result is the group taking a corporate stance. Stances are arrived at via a vote, and the process is long.

"Every congregation engages in this process over a period before it comes to a vote," Sister Didi explains. "We see what needs to be said, where society is lacking, where faith fills in from there we determine actions. We do a lot of studying and praying and looking at different elements: the reality, the faith tradition, the analysis, the action."

Advertisement

The stance is written by the Justice Committee before it goes to vote.

In 2011, the Dominican Sisters in Committed Collaboration took their first corporate stance, which called for immigration reform.

Together, the congregations found that our present immigration law is badly broken and in need of reform. The current immigration law ignores the human situation of separated families and the oppressive living conditions that force people to migrate.

Therefore, the sisters call for "a compassionate and comprehensive" immigration law that:

Provides the processes for undocumented persons to achieve permanent residency and citizenship without leaving the United States,

Creates legal avenues for migration,

Assures family unity for immigrant families,

Provides guaranteed human rights and labor protections for undocumented workers - and all workers,

Addresses the root-causes of migration by protecting the human rights of workers internationally.

The stance is not just a heady ideal. Members of these congregations have a long history of working and advocating with immigrants. As a result, they commit themselves to publishing the corporate stance in the media, educating themselves by staying informed of developments in immigration legislation, continuing to advocate and educate for immigration reform, and contacting local and federal legislators to support the issue of a just reform of immigration laws.

Sister Pat Jelly was the Justice Representative for the Dominican Sisters of Hope when the corporate stance passed in 2011. She also has a history of working with First Friends NJ and NY, a group that provides advocacy for detained immigrations and asylum seekers.

Advertisement

When asked about immigration, Sister Pat immediately recounts a story of a young man she met whose father was killed in South America. The killers were now after him and his family; he had come to the United States to seek refuge. When Sister Pat met the man and heard his story, she saw first-hand how broken the immigration system is.



Dominican Sister of Hope Pat Jelly

"When you hear stories like that and you see children risking everything, you realize we've got to do something," Sister Pat says.

"I am very much in favor of reforming the immigration laws so that there would be a systematic way for people to enter the United States," Sister Pat elaborates. "Now, that does not mean that we should try to accept as many as possible! We have to be careful. But, when people are being killed every day and want to enter the United States for safety, we have a responsibility to open up our borders to the extent possible."

Sister Mary agrees that the corporate stance on immigration isn't about opening the border indiscriminately.

"The stance is largely for people who are already here," Sister Mary clarifies. "There should be avenues set up where they can achieve permanent residency."

Advertisement

Since 2011, the Dominican Sisters in Committed Collaboration have taken six more corporate stances. They now hold seven in total: against nuclear weapons, human trafficking, the death penalty, the Iraq War, genetically engineered crops, climate change, and for immigration reform.

As with the immigration stance, each stance includes not only the group's analysis, but also systemic steps that they feel will lead to the realization of justice.

"We work toward getting legislation passed," Sister Didi says. "We offer educational opportunities, we engage in activism like letters and phone calls to people in congress, we seek overarching systemic change."

In addition to providing clear action steps, the stances give 1200 sisters common ground from which they can approach the issues and their corresponding ministries.

"Corporate stances amplify our unified voice," Sister Didi explains.

The concept of corporate stances might not seem inherently religious, and, for Catholic Sisters, it's tempting to think of the notion as new. In truth, the concept of preaching Truth is as old as the Dominican Order itself (800 years, to be exact). The sisters see corporate stances as harkening back to Saint Dominic.

Advertisement

"I believe that, as Dominicans, one of our calls is to be seekers of the truth," Sister Mary says. "A corporate stance is a strong way that we pronounce our truth. With it, we hope to lead others to reflect upon this same truth that we have found."

As Saint Dominic taught, truth is often arrived upon through conversation. Just as Saint Dominic was known to study hard, inform himself, and then debate with Cathars publicly and compassionately, the Dominican Sisters hope to spark intelligent conversations about justice issues that are crucial to our world.

"Our hope is that our civic discourse is meaningful, and that we really take the time to look at many different facets and keep an open mind that is continually informed and analytical," Sister Didi explains.

No doubt, "an open mind that is continually informed and analytical" stands in direct contradiction to the way social discourse happens in our country today. Whereas name-calling, dismissing, and slander are often part of public debate, the sisters want to encourage people --vowed religious and the general public alike-- to engage in thoughtful conversation rather than "knee-jerk" reactions.

"We're not telling people what they should be doing," Sister Didi emphasizes. "We're trying to engage people in conversation so that the best decision for this time can be made."

Advertisement
People often complain about the "highlight reel" of social media: the Photoshopped, Instagram-filtered perfect life-view depicting a constant stream of gorgeous landscapes and backdrops, once-in-a-lifetime adventures and of course, the perfect outfit.

As a social media professional, it's easy for me to recognize the carefully crafted shots and understand the effort it takes to capture moments like these, even for models traveling on yachts in the Mediterranean Sea. And as someone who has chosen to live my life out loud, I also understand what's not being captured, like the long-lines, the rude customer service experience or the broken toenail from one too many glasses of wine the night before. As curators of content, we don't post things people don't want to consume. And as I recommend to my clients, while it's important to always put your best self forward but also, and this is key -- be honest, authentic and transparent about the not-so-good-stuff. When these things are all done well, in concert, social media is a beautiful work of art, a digital impressionist vision of reality.

Advertisement

The thing is -- the most beautiful pieces of art have range. They reflect the highs and the lows. And over the last week and a half, I have come to realize, as a whole, we aren't doing such a good job with the lows. The highs we have down. We know how to take beautiful pictures of our Blue Apron meals and align the horizon for epic sunsets. We know how to celebrate our birthdays and #humblebrag our latest achievements. But when the dark times come, we stay silent. And those who don't stay silent are considered "downers", unworthy of our newsfeeds. And the consequences of our lack of knowing how to share when we are in our darkest places is worth acknowledging. I have recently come to believe that it's setting us up for isolation and limiting our abilities to connect when it matters most. It's weakening our empathy skills and it's causing us to become less "human", the imperfect creatures that we are and need to be.

As someone who was early to embrace social media and who has committed to living out loud, I was surprised to only recently make this personal discovery. In the face of a traumatic event, I witnessed my silence on social media, my inability to find the right words. Because I believe, if I am going to share my magical fairytale wedding at a castle, and the perfect home in the cutest little town you ever did see, and perfectly shot and edited photos of myself, it's equally important to share the reality of the imperfect moments. The dark times. The times when I am not fired up, ready to "kill it" and crash through any obstacles in my way like a 21st century female warrior. Or else, where is the contrast? How can you see the light? How can I?

Advertisement

It's interesting because when my biological father died, I posted a photo of him and RIP. I think we know a bit more what to do with death than with our own personal dark moments. And as a community, we know how to respond to death. I found it difficult to post but rewarding emotionally to receive the outpouring of condolences. An example of when social media is at it's best.

But in this moment, I struggle. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to start so I'll just jump in from the beginning...

Last Thursday, I was awoken out of my sleep with excruciating, writhing, intolerable pain in my abdomen. I was burning up and shivering and laid on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. I drew a bath, I got in, I got out, I laid back on the floor. I cried out. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw i had lost all color. Something was wrong, something was very wrong.

At this point, almost nobody knew that I was seven weeks and four days pregnant. When you are newly pregnant, you keep it a secret until the twelve week mark -- just in case. The rate of miscarriage is high during that first trimester and higher when you are over 35. At seven weeks, your baby is the size of a blueberry, a tiny little fragile thing that you spend 24 hours a day protecting. You stop drinking alcohol and coffee, you take vitamins and work to get more nutrients like protein and iodine. Logically, you know there's a chance the pregnancy might not come to term but that doesn't stop you from planning and falling in love with the child growing in your womb. We knew our due date. We cancelled our plans to travel to Europe in the fall. Over dinner earlier that evening, we picked out our favorite girl names. I was so sure it was a girl.

So, when the severe cramping started, I prayed that it would be anything other than something that would cause me to lose her. I thought maybe it was appendicitis. But I knew for sure we had to go to the ER.

It took only a glance at me and to find out I was pregnant for the hospital to go into "triage". Don't worry, they told me, they needed to assume the worst case scenario and work backwards to make sure they didn't miss anything. I didn't need them to tell me that an ectopic pregnancy rupturing a fallopian tube would be the worst case scenario, I knew that. I knew that would mean the baby can not be saved. That my life would be in danger from internal bleeding. That I would have to go into emergency surgery and all that would entail.

After blood tests, an IV, doses of Dilaudid every 15 minutes, a pelvic exam and two ultrasounds later, the ER doctor came in solemnly and told me he was sorry. He would give me a few minutes with my husband and then they needed to rush me to another hospital where a surgical team was being called in to perform my surgery.

I don't think I will ever forget that moment when I looked from the doctor to my husband, Alex. It was like a dagger went through our hearts, worse than the death of a friend or family member, deeper. I called my mom and awoke her out of bed to tell her the news. We all sobbed. We had been so excited. I was 39 and had heard so many women face difficulties getting pregnant. We had been trying for a few months and had just moved into a house with a perfect room for a baby, it even has a little fairy stained glass skylight. Everything seemed so perfect. And it was all just flashing past, slipping through our fingers and we were helpless.

As we dealt with our initial devastation, the doctor came back in. We would have to hurry now. We had to focus on me. The situation was "emergent" and quickly, the ambulance had arrived and I was transported, dosed with more Dilaudid, writhing in pain that one lady described in an online forum as "worse than a c-section and labor combined", and devastated and disappointed. I kept telling myself, I would be fine. I could get through this. I would get through this, lots of women do.

Advertisement

The surgery went well.

I awoke once either during the operation or right after and was met with alarming voices telling me to lay down, that I was at the hospital, that I was okay. I guess, they gave me more drugs. The next time I woke up, I was in the maternal recovery room, my husband beside me.

He said the doctor said they had tried to save my tube but there was just too much bleeding. I had lost a lot of blood but they were able to keep my ovary, a very important organ for hormones. I was thankful for that. I went back to sleep and then every time I would wake up, I would open my eyes and see posters of babies and have to re-remember, oh, yea, I had surgery, we lost the baby.

After I could drink and eat a cracker and applesauce, I could go home. The nurse wheeled me out in a wheelchair. Every little bump and dip, reminding me I had just had abdominal surgery and my tube had been removed. I felt like I had been hit by a truck.

Every day since then, I have diligently managed my pain, at the time of writing this, I'm still taking Oxycodone every four hours and ibuprofen between. I can walk mostly upright although I still haven't been outside or been able to take a shower. The three keyhole incisions are healing well. My abdomen is sore and fragile but the pain medication minimizes the suffering. The bruising and swelling is severe and shocking but the least of my concerns. It's my heart and my husband's heart that is the slowest to heal. When it's just the two of us in our little cocoon, we can sit quietly and be comforted with our togetherness. But then, every phone call from the outside world, every door bell ring with a flower delivery, every alert and notification from a pregnancy app and we are confronted with reality. I tried to work, I got upset about something innocuous and it sent me to bed for the entire day.

We feel like we are shells of ourselves with these raw insides and nobody but people who have gone through this exact experience seem to understand. It's like because people know there's a high percentage of losing a pregnancy in the first 12 weeks that it means if you do lose one, it's no big deal. We have gotten a casual "rest up!" and "feel better!" like this major emergency surgery was similar to having a tooth pulled or a broken bone.

But I wonder, is this because we have become a society where we only know how to celebrate the highlight reel? Have we removed from public view the most emotionally painful times in our lives for fear it isn't what people want to consume and so have lost our ability to connect with the pain of others? These are the questions I have been asking myself as I move from the bed to the couch to the bed, sitting with my pain, alone with my husband.

It's been hard. It's been sad. And although, we have had some friends reach out and express their support through this, some other people have left us a little surprised. When I try to understand some of the frivolous comments or complete lack of understanding, I have had to push myself to move from my own hurt feelings into deeper reflection. And it just makes me wonder, as a society living in a digital world, if we don't share beyond the highlight reel, are we missing not just the full art of life, but also and most importantly, are we losing out on the depths of our humanity?
ESSEX JUNCTION, VT - MARCH 01: Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks to supporters as his wife Jane O'Meara Sanders looks on after winning the Vermont primary on Super Tuesday on March 1, 2016 in Essex Junction, Vermont. Thirteen states and one territory are participating in today's Super Tuesday: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming and American Samoa. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

According to Real Clear Politics, Bernie Sanders beats Donald Trump by 8 points in an average of various national polls.

According to Real Clear Politics, Hillary Clinton barely defeats Donald Trump, the same man who donated to her Senate campaigns and foundation, by a whopping 3 points.

Advertisement

Remember, Clinton doesn't keep polling leads and 3 points is within the margin of error for many of these polls.

On November 8, 2016, the country will vote based on trustworthiness, which is why both parties have revolted against establishment candidates.

Bernie Sanders doesn't have an ongoing FBI investigation and has positive favorability ratings.

Hillary Clinton does have an ongoing FBI investigation, 67% of all Americans distrust her, and Obama's intelligence official and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Michael Flynn believes Clinton should "drop out" of the race.

Worried yet?

All the scoffing at Sanders being popular among white voters will help immeasurably in a general election, since minorities almost always vote Democrat in a general election, and Trump's only hope to win is white voters in states like Colorado and Oklahoma. In terms of voting demographics, white voters in a general election still matter.

Advertisement

Hillary Clinton repels a great many white voters, primarily independents, because of her Iraq "mistake," neoconservative foreign policy, flip flopping, endless controversy, and nationwide issues regarding trustworthiness.

74% of Independents distrust Hillary Clinton and this matters primarily because 43% of the electorate is comprised of political independents.



Bernie Sanders won Colorado and Oklahoma. White voters, especially white males, won't vote for Clinton. This goes for white males among both Democrats and Republicans. If you don't believe me, just read a Wall Street Journal piece titled Hillary Clinton's White-Voter Problem May Change Election Math.

Clinton is also underperforming among women nationally, as stated in a Daily Beast piece titled Why Are Women Ditching Hillary?

Bernie Sanders won Colorado, in addition to Vermont, Oklahoma, Minnesota and might have won Massachusetts, had it not been for Bill Clinton possibly violating election rules by appearing at a polling station in Massachusetts. Boston.com writes that "Hillary Clinton's campaign has been 'reminded' not to solicit votes near polling sites after President Bill Clinton ventured into a polling location in Boston on Tuesday, the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office said."

It's interesting to note that according to Boston.com, "Massachusetts election rules forbid the solicitation of a vote for or against a candidate, party, or position within 150 feet of a polling place." In Orwellian doublespeak the magnitude of which would make even Bill Clinton proud, there's a debate over whether or not President Clinton was actually "campaigning" by appearing at the polling location.

Advertisement

Yes, 67% of Americans distrust Hillary Clinton and 58% of Americans have an unfavorable view of her for a reason.

Name a winning presidential candidate people didn't trust and didn't like.

Colorado is a swing state with 9 electoral votes and went to Bush in 2000. Interestingly, so did Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas; all the states Clinton won on Super Tuesday and all the states Bush won in 2000. The South votes Republican, so it's amusing to see Hillary supporters championing her ability to win the presidency, alongside this reality.

Also, Colorado has more electoral votes than most of the states Clinton won on Tuesday. Combined with Clinton's "virtual tie" in Iowa, swing states don't look good for Clinton in a general election. In addition, CNN wrote last summer that Clinton's honesty and trustworthy problem extends to swing states and two Quinnipiac polls bolster this claim as well.

And yes, billionaire hotel tycoon turned national buffoon will win Nevada, so don't count on a close victory there either.

In light of these facts, there's an amazing phenomenon taking place that I've never witnessed; something counterintuitive and ironic. I've never seen so many self-described liberals and progressives cheering with enthusiasm over the victory of a woman who voted for Iraq, opposed gay marriage up until 2013, accepted money from prison lobbyists and almost every other interest harming core constituencies, and is currently linked to an ongoing FBI investigation.

Advertisement

I highlight Hillary Clinton's prison lobbyist ties in this YouTube segment.

As for pragmatism and getting things done, it's bizarre that 100 FBI agents investigating the close associates, personal server, and email practices of Hillary Clinton equates to a productive White House, as well as the blessings of certain Democrats and media pundits.

Every day, I'm proven right about my thoughts on the "Bernie Bro" myth, as more people attack me on Twitter, ignorant to the irony that they agree with Bernie Sanders on virtually every issue, but prefer the person linked to an email scandal because of pragmatism.

For a fun read about pragmatism and progressives getting things done, check out Hilary Clinton's Coming Legal Crisis from University of Chicago professor Charles Lipson.

Professor Lipson writes "Beside these national-security matters, the emails reveal obvious conflict-of-interest issues pertaining to the significant overlap between Clinton's official duties and her family foundation's operations."

Does this mean Hillary Clinton will be able to work alongside Republicans and get things done, when the FBI and Justice Department, in addition to a salivating GOP, eventually decide that the 31,830 emails she deleted jeopardized national security?

Advertisement

Would this have made sense in the 80's or 90's? Could Barack Obama have won in 2008 with an ongoing FBI investigation?

Some Democrats are running joyously towards a cliff, and very few people have the courage to warn them of the impending disaster. Yes, H. A. Goodman and a few others still remember a day when 67% of Americans distrusting a candidate was a bad thing. Others, however, believe that Hillary Clinton has experience, yet conveniently ignore this experience has resulted in poor decision making and ongoing controversy.

On Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton won states that Donald Trump will win on November 8, 2016. Texas, Alabama, and the entire South vote Republican in presidential elections. As for the GOP and racism, Trump isn't the first Republican to be endorsed by Klan members, or take time repudiating the endorsement. This state of affairs is exemplified by a 1984 Los Angeles Times piece titled Reagan Spurs Klan Support:

When the Klan endorsement was first reported last month, neither the White House nor the President's re- election campaign committee would comment on it. In his letter to Mr. Abram, the President said: ''While in China, I have been distressed to learn that some individuals back home have questioned whether my views on the Ku Klux Klan have somehow changed since 1980. Nothing could be further from the truth.''

When the KKK goes to the voting booth, they're voting Republican, not Democrat. This dynamic never started with Donald Trump. Remember this history when the "party unity" folks tell you that if Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, only she can stop a racist Trump.

Advertisement

The reality is that Hillary Clinton has taken more money from prison lobbyists than Trump, used a racist 3 a. m. ad against Barack Obama, spread a photo of Obama in African dress hoping to raise questions about his birth certificate, and called black youth "super predators." Also, let's not forget Hillary Clinton's "abysmal" racial justice record.

So yes, Clinton is less racist than Trump.

As for my views on Donald Trump, I called him a clown and buffoon on CNN, during my interview with Victor Blackwell on New Day. However, I'm not brainwashed and I remember as far back as... 2008. Hillary Clinton utilized a more covert form of racism against Barack Obama, and I explain her campaign tactics in a Huffington Post piece titled Donald Trump Utilizes Racism, but Hillary Clinton Used Similar Tactics Against Obama in 2008.

You'll hear the coronation talk and inevitability myth from everyone but me and a few others. Remember, though, that Bernie Sanders does better against Donald Trump. Be careful what you wish for, because Donald Trump could be president if Clinton is nominated.


My Sister -- a Minneapolis-based apparel company-- is trying to combat human trafficking, one t-shirt sale at a time. Six percent of their proceeds directly fund work being done through two nonprofits: MN Girls Are Not For Sale, and Maiti Nepal.

I asked company co-founder, Mandy Multerer, how it all began, and what she hopes the future will hold.

Your first anniversary is approaching! Congratulations on your success so far. How did you start the business?

Advertisement

We started with focus groups of girls and women all over the country to find out what they know about trafficking, and what might inspire them to get involved. That early feedback really helped build our brand, and make it what it is.

Which is what?

We're an empowering and hopeful company with a strong support base.

To date, we're proud to say that we've raised over $33,000 for our non-profit partners.



Can you tell us a bit about your background?

My background is in design, marketing and photography.

I've always been a creative person, so when I had an opportunity to combine those skills in the fashion world with an empowering message, for a good cause, it was an ideal fit.

And your partners?

My business partner grew the socially responsible chocolate company, Endangered Species Chocolate, raising millions to protect endangered species around the world, and provide fair trade employment in those communities for local farmers.

Advertisement

His determination to help children become strong, thriving adults, drove him to use a similar business model for fighting sex trafficking and providing a better future for children and women trapped in that life.



How did you 'decide' on trafficking?

Trafficking has been a serious issue for too many years. And one that doesn't get enough attention. It impacts over four million children and women a year, with the FBI estimating that over 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today. They range in age from nine to 19, with an average age of 11. Trafficking will keep growing exponentially if we don't start taking action against it.

Has the work been challenging?

From a market perspective, educating and inspiring people to want to make a change has been a challenge. Trafficking is a misunderstood and overwhelming issue and can seem daunting to tackle.

In what sense is it misunderstood?

Most people think of trafficking as abductions or kidnappings, like in the movie 'Taken.' That does happen but, in reality, it represents a small percentage of the way that people get trapped into a life of sex trafficking. Overseas, it is very common for traffickers to approach young women in poor or small villages with the promise of a great job in another country. The women agree to take the job and often get trafficked into brothels.

And here?

Domestically, it often happens where pimps and traffickers target vulnerable teens and women. They condition them, sometimes referred to as "boyfriending," into entering the life.



One of our employees found herself trapped in this cycle. She was not kidnapped or abducted, but she was a vulnerable teen. After a tumultuous upbringing by mentally ill parents, someone introduced her to the life and she saw it as her only opportunity. Once she entered that world, it seemed impossible to get out.

Advertisement

That's why My Sister is committed to giving survivors a chance through employment. We hope to continue this commitment as we grow our staff.

Someday, we hope to have a survivor lead My Sister as our CEO, so she can use her voice to inspire others.
PALM BEACH, FL - MARCH 01: Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump speaks to the media at his Mar-A-Lago Club on Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016 in Palm Beach, Florida. Trump held a press conference, flanked by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, after the polls closed in a dozen states nationwide. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

We all have our biases. We wouldn't be adult human beings without them. We all come from somewhere, from particular families and particular backgrounds. I grew up in the projects outside Boston. My mother was part Armenian. I was raised and educated by people who identified as Armenians, and who viewed the world through that lens. Armenia's war with Azerbaijan for Nagorno-Karabakh was a war for "our territory"; the Turks perpetrated a genocide against "our people." Even then I knew that these were decidedly partial views, but they were the views I grew up surrounded by.

I began my career as a political scientist more than 25 years ago. For the longest time, I would avoid writing about Armenia entirely, because I worried that my biases would somehow seep into my analysis. I was equally worried that if I did write about Armenia, I'd end up overcompensating for my biases by being unfairly critical and negative, which would have been just as bad. I spent years writing about everything related to the USSR except for Armenia. But to be a credible Soviet specialist, I had to cover every part of the Soviet Union, not just those parts I felt comfortable with.

Advertisement

So I began writing carefully about Armenia, always aware of the biases I brought to the table and constantly putting them in rigorous comparative context. In time, I figured out how to identify what my biases were and how to set them aside for my analytical work.

Why do I bring up bias now? Over the last 12 months, there have been two issues that I've felt personally drawn to, that I want to use my platform to say something about rather than just giving people data points and forecasts. That's been tough for someone who always strives for objectivity and whose entire professional career has been built on that foundation. I've taken a stand on these issues, and I'm not apologetic about it, but I think I need to explain to people where I'm coming from.

Syrian Refugees

I spent much of the past year writing about the refugees fleeing Syria's civil war. I've focused on their sheer numbers, I've analyzed why Americans don't seem to care about the issue, I've dissected why Europeans aren't responding effectively. And yet, as someone whose family came from Aleppo (Syrian Armenians), the fact that the U.S. would do virtually nothing for these people is shameful. To date, the U.S. has taken in less than 3,000 Syrian refugees -- Germany took in more than 1 million in 2015 alone.

I look at this issue not just as a political scientist, but as an American who firmly believes that my country has been made better by immigration. But it's more than that -- while I'm known primarily as a political scientist, I hope I'm also known as an adult human being. This is something I think Americans are just getting wrong, and given that it's an election year, the issue has become so politicized that to say we could do anything for these refugees invites an extraordinary amount of vitriol. This leads me to my second point.

Advertisement

Donald Trump

I've been strongly opposed to Donald Trump since day one. Some people on social media accuse me of shilling for Democrats, which is ridiculous; I'm an Independent, and I've voted for both Democrats and Republicans. As it happens, I have pretty strong views on Hillary Clinton too: I think she was a pretty good Secretary of State, but a pretty bad presidential candidate. As someone who grew up in the projects (bias alert!), I don't like people who feel entitled to things, that act like the presidency is owed to them -- and that's a feeling I've gotten both from Clinton and from Jeb Bush.

For the record, I see people running on both sides that could be credible as president: Donald Trump is not one of them, though Bernie Sanders' proposals on taxes are just as non-credible as Trump's policy promise to build a wall. But Trump is trying to build his popularity with a cheap play to our worst impulses, to the basest parts of our human nature. That's unfortunate and dangerous.

My views on Donald Trump, like my views on refugees, go beyond my role as political scientist; I'm reacting as an American, one who sees that what my country stands for is being undermined by someone smart enough to know better, a man with a lot of cash and media power.

***

In terms of analysis, once we recognize our biases, we do our best to work above them. We deal with the issue of bias at Eurasia Group all the time, because smart people tend to have strong opinions about things. But the company isn't worth anything to anyone if we're not willing to set them aside to help our clients understand what's happening, why it's happening, and what's likely to happen next. We have to be two things at once: human beings and analysts. I made my peace with that seeming contradiction a long time ago -- even if some issues are more challenging to deal with than others.

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, global research professor at New York University and foreign affairs columnist at TIME. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Advertisement
Looking the photo after photo of babies affected by the Zika virus is almost unbearable. Hearing about the children in Michigan who have lead poisoning from drinking from the local water supply is heartbreaking. For most, it is hard to imagine what life will be like for these families. Many people may assume that the children will be "fine."

In part, this is because stories of children with special needs are usually inspirational. These stories usually begin with parents being presented with the worse-case scenario, the possibility of a child with a disability. Yet, they nearly always end happily even though the happy ending varies: the child never had a problem afterall; the mother sought out just the right therapy to help her child exceeded all expectations; the family learned the "true" meaning of love and hope as a result of their child's disability and their child is able to live an almost-normal life.

Almost unheard of are stories that do not have happy endings, stories of children whose disability turned out to be more severe than expected; children who do not respond to recommended therapies; families who struggle caring for a child with significant needs. As the mother of a child with a disability I know first-hand that not all stories involving children with disabilities end happily and that these stories are perhaps more common that the "feel good" stories of disability that are so commonly published.

Advertisement

I fear that the stories of children born with microcelephy as a result of the Zika virus and the children in Michigan who are dealing with lead poisoning will not end happily either.

What might the lives of these families look like? There will of course some better times, but the reality of what these families will face will also be difficult.

Progress may be slow or even non-existent. Children with disabilities often face significant struggles. The struggles each child will face will be different but may include struggles to communicate, eat, toilet, keep up with peers, read, or learn basic math. Despite the best of efforts to help them, progress may still be extremely slow or may not occur at all. Parents will share in their child's frustrations and cry along with them.

The need to advocate is never-ending. Having a child with a disability means constantly having to advocate. When a child has a disability it is often necessary to advocate on a daily basis. It may be necessary to advocate for medical care, funding for recommended therapies, appropriate education, and even for accessible seats at the movie theater or on a bus.

Advertisement
President Barack Obama speaks as he honors the 2015-2016 College Football Playoff National Champion Alabama Crimson Tide during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, Wednesday, March 2, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

The Obama administration this week made new pledges and commitments to protect "human rights and fundamental freedoms" to the United Nations in advance of the U.S. re-election to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Yet while the U.S. has used its first six years of HRC membership to advance human rights overseas, its participation has had little direct bearing on human rights at home. Lack of accountability for torture and cooperation with U.N. human rights experts are just two examples of such double standards.

When he took office, President Obama promised to disavow many of the disastrous Bush administration policies, including by closing Guantanamo and ending the use of torture. Obama also promised to reassert U.S. global leadership on human rights by joining the HRC later that year.

Advertisement

While the president issued an executive order on his second day in office ending the CIA's secret detention and torture program, he declined to support any meaningful measures of accountability for crimes that had taken place. His policy of "looking forward rather than backward," as well as his administration's continuing fight against transparency and any attempts to reveal the whole truth about Bush administration torture policies, will undoubtedly stain his human rights legacy.

That's why it was surprising when the U.S. government released the following statement earlier this week:

"The United States is committed to upholding our international obligations to prevent torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The United States supports the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Committee Against Torture, and in 2015, the United States was proud to become a participant in the Group of Friends of the Convention Against Torture Initiative."

This kind of rhetoric is emblematic of the Obama administration's hypocrisy and cherry-picking when it comes to U.S. international legal obligations. The U.S. is obligated under the Convention Against Torture not only to prevent torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It is also obligated to hold accountable those who ordered or perpetrated acts of torture and to provide legal redress to victims. On these fronts, our government's record has been abysmal. Yesterday Human Rights Watch and the ACLU submitted a response to the U.S. one year follow-up report to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, which details the United States' failure to meet its legal obligations to fully investigate acts of torture during the Bush administration.

Advertisement

When it comes to torture, the gap between rhetoric and action isn't limited to the Bush administration's record. While it is encouraging to see the U.S. expressing support for the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, consider the ways the U.S. has directly prevented this critically important institution from effectively doing its job.

The current special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, is about to end his six-year term. Since the early days of his mandate, he has repeatedly asked to visit U.S. prisons and detention facilities in order to examine the widespread use of solitary confinement, which often causes mental and physical suffering and can amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment -- even torture. However, the U.S. has consistently stonewalled his requests and has so far failed to provide him with the minimum standards of access required by U.N. protocol for such visits. It is very likely that Mr. Mendez won't be able to carry out his visit before the end of his term, which is exactly what the U.S. likely intended in delaying and dragging out the process. It's simply outrageous that the United States won't provide basic access to its domestic detention facilities, especially given that the U.S. is perhaps the only Western democracy that doesn't have a permanent and independent monitoring system of all detention facilities.

American leadership on the world stage suffers when the country presents such a stark double standard on human rights and denies independent human rights monitors access to U.S. facilities abroad, like Guantanamo, and here in the United States.

This coming November, the U.S. will be on the ballot for a new three-year-term membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council. The Obama administration has another opportunity to demonstrate to the world that U.S. commitment to the universal prohibition against torture is serious and long-lasting. By upholding U.S. human rights obligations through action in addition to rhetoric, the Obama administration can send a strong message to future presidents that there will be consequences for breaking the law and more effectively press other governments to end torture abroad.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally during a campaign event on Super Tuesday in Miami on March 1, 2016. / AFP / RHONA WISE (Photo credit should read RHONA WISE/AFP/Getty Images)

On Donald Drumpf vs. Queen Clinton

It's hard to believe that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. It's a long way till November. Donald Trump winning the Republican nomination has some upside. It is undoubtedly going to be a nasty race, but this country could use a long, thoughtful look at our problems with race, gender, and economic inequality.

The problem is none of us are willing to listen to the other side. There isn't going to be friendly debate. It's going to be polarizing and vitriolic. This election year, the Pope and the KKK are involved. A Woman and a Socialist represent the Democrats. A fanatic xenophobe is the clear front-runner for the Republicans. We are a nation divided.

Advertisement

This year we decide if we're going to let our country regress back to its hateful ways. Citizens from both sides of the fence have all decided this is the time to put our foot down, to stand strong for our beliefs, to live up to our morals. Team Drumpf vs. The Queen of the Clintons... Idiocracy turned out to be a prophecy.

It's hard to imagine an America with Donald Drumpf as its president. The list of why he shouldn't be is long. Bilking students at this failed for-profit "business school", his call for a ban on all Muslims from entering the United States, his negative generalization of Mexicans crossing the border, and most of all, just his overall demeanor. Barking at reporters, shouting at protestors, and inciting hate across the country.

He's running on hate. He's running on his business acumen, which is debatable considering his many failed businesses and bankruptcies. Who sells steaks at Sharper Image? I mean really? Who? There is only one man who has done that, and it's Donald Drumpf.

On the Democratic Race and Why I like Socialism

The Democratic Race is by no means over. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Socialist, still has something to celebrate about. There are movements going on in this country. United States citizens are fighting for the country they want to live in. And we are split right down the middle. I'm consumed by it. I feel an urge to do the right thing, and there are people everywhere trying to manipulate my emotions and sway me toward their cause.

Advertisement

I think it would be great if everyone in the country was more economically stable. I spent six months traveling through every state west of the Mississippi. I slept in dozens of Walmart parking lots along the way. People sleeping in their cars, covering their windows with makeshift curtains made of old sweatshirts, coats and blankets. From San Diego to Seattle, Minneapolis to Denver and countless cities in between, all of them are crawling with homeless people.

They live in tents under the overpass, they live along bike paths, and they live on your front stoop or back in the alley. They live on the street. Many of them are suffering from severe mental illness, physical disabilities, and as Trump would say, some of them I assume are good people. Don't pretend you don't know. This isn't breaking news, this is the status quo, and this is considered normal. Something isn't working.

To my mind, there is no middle class anymore. Most of us are lower middle class now. People who had their 401k retirement plan decimated, people who are disabled and barely make enough to put food on the table, people who can't find work. To use another Trumpism: There are millions and millions and millions of them. And very, very, very few of us are very, very, very rich. It doesn't seem right. I don't like it.

An appeal to my fellow voters and the people vying for my vote. Pitch Me.

I am a voter. So who should I pick based on what I've seen? What is Donald Trump going to do for the many homeless on our streets? What are any of them going to do about it? I guarantee you, no matter who I vote for, I'll still be able to walk down 16th Street Mall in Denver and talk to homeless people all day long. I'll still be able to go to that Walmart in San Diego with a homeless encampment in the back corner of the lot, and they'll still be there. Americans living like refugees in their own country.

I am drawn to the idea of Democratic Socialism for this reason. I want someone to convince me who I can vote for that will change the problems this country has that I have seen with my own eyes. Who gets your vote, and why? I'm a vote, pitch me. Pretend I'm Switzerland, completely neutral. I'd love to hear what you think.
South Korea's delegation to the UN lead by Ambassador Oh Joon (R) talkS before a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on sanctions against North Korea March 2, 2016 at the United Nations in New York. / AFP / Don EMMERT (Photo credit should read DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images)

The new sanctions against North Korea, just adopted by United Nations Security Council, are a critical part of efforts to contain that nation's nuclear weapons program. But they are not enough.

The successful effort that rolled back and contained Iran's nuclear program offers a key lesson. "Sanctions," said Amb. Ryan Crocker, "played an instrumental role in bringing Iran to the negotiating table, but economic pressure is only effective if it is part of a larger strategy. Without negotiations, sanctions do little to slow Iran's nuclear program." He wrote that two years ago during the debate over the Iran Deal. He was right. It was the negotiations, not the sanctions, that ultimately stopped Iran's program.

Advertisement

This principle applies today to North Korea.

The scope of these sanctions goes far beyond past efforts. With China's backing, North Korea will now face a complete weapons embargo. Countries will be required to thoroughly inspect every piece of cargo entering or leaving the country. There is a new, comprehensive ban on luxury goods, and several dozen high-ranking individuals and organizations have been blacklisted. The UN banned the supply of jet fuel as well as critical materials that have supported North Korea's development of nuclear weapons.

"Irrespective of whether they change their calculus tomorrow, it's going to be a lot harder for them to access the technology, the know-how and the money they've used to fuel their nuclear program," said US Ambassador Samantha Power, "This is really going to dramatically increase the isolation of the regime, and increase the cost of maintaining this program."

But sanctions alone have never compelled a nation to abandon a nuclear program. They are only effective if coupled with negotiations. With this larger stick, the United States, its regional partners, China and Russia could entice North Korea to engage in new talks without preconditions. And, now that the threat of deploying US anti-missile weapons in South Korea have had the desired outcome of convincing China to take tougher measures, these deployment plans can be slow-rolled, thus increasing the incentive for China to cooperate.

It's difficult, it is time-consuming, and there is no guarantee of success. But as the Iran deal proves: sanctions, plus global cooperation, plus negotiations can yield a solution to even the most difficult national security challenges.
Like a professional magician who turns on his fellows and gives away the tricks of his craft, Donald Trump has exposed the folly of what used to pass as modern conservatism. Trump's choice after his victories on "Super Tuesday" to stage, not a bombastic victory speech, but a news conference (with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie by his side) was a media coup. Once again the Trump campaign displays its show-business chops and political shrewdness.

Trump fielded questions in a format akin to a presidential press conference. Trump even got Socratic with one of the questioners querying him where he got his information. Corporate media have naturally failed to pick up where Trump is correct. On the U.S.'s $400 billion trade imbalance and the exodus abroad of U.S.-based corporations pursuing cheap labor and tax havens, Trump is talking about something both party establishments never mention.

But on just about everything else he's horrifyingly wrong. Trump is a mixed bag of nationalist and elitist policy prescriptions free of details but laden with patriot bunting. Yet he is not alone. None of the GOP candidates have said anything sensible about the tax code, Obama's legacy, immigration, or the Iran nuclear deal, (which just helped weaken the hardliners in the Iranian elections).

Advertisement

Trump understands reality television. When he compares Marco Rubio to Don Rickles "except Rickles has a lot more talent," that is reality TV speaking, which sounds fresh in the context of the canned political speech to which we've grown accustomed. It's kind of amazing to see Trump attack President Obama for not "working with" the Republicans in Congress after seven years of unprecedented obstructionism.

When Trump says: "we're like a Third World country" while decrying the decrepitude of our infrastructure he's pointing to the failures of decades of Reaganomics and neo-liberalism, which both party establishments have embraced.

A lot of the anger we're seeing from voters who are drawn to Trump has its roots in the 2008 Great Recession where our political leaders gave about $800 billion to the biggest banks that brought the economy down and asked for nothing in return. They didn't even enforce the anti-fraud laws to put any of the bankers in jail. The episode drove home the fact that Washington doesn't really represent the interests of the American people.

Ted Cruz is running for vice president now. Trump will need to burnish his god-cred with the evangelical wing of the party and Cruz can help him do it. At this point, given the shattered state of the GOP, both Trump and Cruz are running for the opportunity to lose in November.

Advertisement

For decades Republican intellectuals like David Brooks, Steve Moore, Peggy Noonan, William Kristol, Karl Rove, and the National Review have play-acted as if their lust for tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulating corporations, and beating up on labor unions and the poor were all part of a coherent ideology expressing the highest "conservative" ideals.

But for years these polite society pundits have used their rhetorical skills to gloss over their party's racist dog whistles, warmongering, xenophobia, and general meanness. With the rise of Trump the Republican intelligentsia finds itself in an ideological nosedive.

After Obama's election the GOP establishment was surprisingly tolerant of the rise of birthersim, as well as the racism directed at the nation's first African American president and the Koch brothers backing of the Tea Party "patriots." They willfully ignored their party's unprecedented obstructionism on Capitol Hill, the disastrous effects on democracy of Citizens United, and the egregious Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts.

Donald Trump's entire presidential campaign has been like a dance of the veils where he removes layer after layer each exposing one of the Republican Party's dirty secrets. Even gifted intellectuals like Brooks or Kristol, who always get a free pass no matter how terribly wrong they are, cannot work their magic this time around when it comes to masking the inconvenient truths about their party that have surfaced with Donald Trump's candidacy.

The startling implications of Trump's popularity among Republicans is that through his actions, demeanor, and over-the-top campaign promises he is laying bare something right-wing intellectuals have been trying to hide.

Advertisement

The George W. Bush years revealed that "conservatives" didn't care much about budget deficits or the national debt until they could use them for partisan gain. The Republican consensus to block President Obama from filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court also demonstrates that they don't care much about the U.S. Constitution if it clashes with their partisan interests. The Republicans are having a more difficult time these days convincing the people that only through trickle down economics and austerity can America prosper.

All of these contradictions existed before Trump came along.

With their precious careers at stake and Trump looking more and more like the Republican nominee, prominent right-wing intellectuals must either fall in line behind Trump like they did for Sarah Palin in 2008, or start a mass exodus toward the Democrats this November.
For those familiar with the ticking time bomb scenario, the sidestepping of human rights or civil liberties often work best when rushed. There's someone with information about an imminent terrorist attack so we have to torture the details out of them, goes the thinking. Law enforcement officials have harnessed that type of urgency in the federal government's highly visible battle over smartphone access with tech giant Apple, who this week won a legal victory in court. But as federal authorities continue to try to coax the company into compliance, local police are angling for their stake in the battle, which will affect their ability to surveil the population and even predict crime.

Fresh off of a fiery press conference alongside New York Senator Chuck Schumer, where they railed against the White House for cuts to a special anti-terrorism grant, NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton took time from his schedule to co-author an op-ed in The New York Times that invoked the deaths of 14 shooting victims in California last year. Bratton and longtime media personality John Miller, now heading the NYPD's counterterrorism efforts, argued that law enforcement needs access to Americans' phones to "stop the next terrorist attack." It was Bratton who suggested the assailants in last year's terrorist attacks in Paris used encryption technology on their phones to escape surveillance, although that has yet to be proven.

While it may seem strange to have a multinational corporation ostensibly defending Americans against improper searches from the government, stranger yet is that police, smack dab at the heart of a national conversation on civil rights and black lives, want to be at the forefront of a debate on civil liberties.

Advertisement



The NYPD announces CompStat 2.0, which maps crime across the city

Bratton, ever outspoken, has chosen to carve out a significant role in this fight using his platform as head of the country's largest police force. A master of the revolving door between the business world and government, Bratton, who has sat on the board for numerous companies (including Motorola, which offers encryption technology), has been a close ally and admirer of corporate America. Forced to bash Apple now, Bratton has looked to the business world to help shape what he sees as the future for police: predictive policing.

In a 2008 Oxford University paper alluding to the next stage for CompStat, the police management system he famously implemented in the 1990s, Bratton marveled at a private sector that had much to teach police departments. The next level in CompStat was centered around police departments' "collaborative efforts with our academic and business communities in order to continually improve our ability to forecast crime", he wrote.

Last week Bratton unveiled CompStat 2.0, a new interactive crime map made available to the public. More data. More technology. A modern strategy for the modern world, it would appear. But this type of crime-mapping prowess, added to the NYPD's already formidable intelligence gathering capacity, like its powerful Domain Awareness System, is a sign that predictive policing is already upon us. Not only will mobile fingerprinting allow cops to more easily collect our data, but predictive algorithms will made available through new department-issued smartphones.

Bratton already boasts that he can track New Yorkers through their phones and GPS systems but the ominous and Orwellian implications that having police predict where crimes will happen demands an unreasonable amount of trust in the police and their methods -- and has rarely been discussed or explained to the public.

Advertisement



Mayor de Blasio, Cy Vance and Bratton announce smartphones and tablets for every NYPD officer

When Bratton, Schumer and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance demand a steady stream anti-terror funds, it comes from the same big brother mentality that wants unfettered access to our phones and is yearning to predict crime. And this is a group effort, to be sure: Vance has provided the funding for the tablets and smartphones that will be issued to every cop and police vehicle, 41,ooo in total, in part to ensure that police prediction flows from police plaza down to every beat cop. Ironically, the money comes in the form of asset forfeiture funds obtained from a French bank penalized for doing business with the Iranian government -- a direct result of White House sanctions and foreign policy that Senator Schumer quibbled about with the Obama administration.
Donald Trump, president and chief executive of Trump Organization Inc. and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, waves while exiting the stage after speaking during a Super Tuesday night event in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., on Monday, March 1, 2016. Trump is poised to collect enough delegates in 11 Super Tuesday contests nationwide tonight to give him a firmer grip on the party's presidential nomination that would be difficult for rivals to break. Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As the UK debates whether to leave the EU, across the pond Americans are debating whether to leave America if Donald Trump is elected president. A September 2015 analysis of Twitter found 200,000 tweets expressing intent to leave a Trump-led America. Among those tweets, 11,000 voiced a preference for resettling in the UK. A few months on, the full number of Americans who now share that sentiment is no doubt in the millions.

A January 2016 poll found that a majority--54%--of young Americans, aged 18 to 35, would feel like leaving America if Trump became the president. Among young black Americans the figure was 73%. Even a third of Republicans feel the same way.

Advertisement

Amidst all the talk of a Brexit from Europe, is Britain ready for a potential Amerexit to Britain? At this point in the campaign, most Americans who threaten to leave still do so half jokingly. "I will move to [country X] if [candidate Y] wins" is a perennial trope in American politics. But now it's getting more serious.

Trump is a racial and religious demagogue unlike anything the US has seen in decades. He has pledged to deport millions of Mexicans and keep them out with a giant wall, called for a complete ban on Muslim visitors, and said nasty things about just about everyone else. And somehow he has a huge, enthusiastic following. Trump has won now the majority of Republican state primary contests, giving the billionaire real estate mogul a commanding lead in the number of state delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination. I still think it's highly unlikely he could ever win the general election, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both have their political vulnerabilities. Another major terrorist attack in the United States or another Western country would almost certainly propel Trump's appeal in a general election. After all, Trump claimed that "Clinton created ISIS with Obama" and he has promised to "bomb the s--- out of 'em." A reality TV star with policy views totally detached from reality, Trump is currently creating a terrifying new reality. Even if he doesn't win the White House, much damage has already been done. Responsible candidates preach a message of unity and working together to promote the common good. Not so with Trump. He both reflects and exacerbates the deep social divisions in contemporary America. His campaign preys upon prejudices. A CBS News poll found that 75% of South Carolina Republican voters supported Trump's proposed ban on Muslims. For nearly a year Trump has dominated and polluted American public discourse with his vulgarity, demagoguery, and conspiracy theories. His rise has left many Americans feeling depressed about the state of their republic.

The ironies are as rich as Donald Trump. His promise to "Make America Great Again" leaves millions of voters deeply fearful of the future. His vociferously anti-immigrant platform spurs thoughts of emigration from America. For Britons to appreciate just how scary Trump is, imagine a candidate who combines the wealth and flair of Lord Sugar, the politics of Nigel Farage, the brash insensitivity of Katie Hopkins, and of course the hair of Boris Johnson. Many Brits would want to leave Britain if a Mr Sufarhopson ever rose to power.

Advertisement
The Cuba-U.S. commercial rapprochement reached its punto de caramelo (the tipping point where heated sugar and water alchemize into candy) during the week of February 15-19, 2016. Last week saw the visit of a high level Cuban delegation to Washington (received by an equally high level delegation of US counterparts), the signing in Havana of an accord renewing commercial flights between the two nations, and the announcement by President Obama that he intends to visit Havana in March 2016.

Once the renewal of diplomatic relations had been cemented by the re-opening of their respective embassies, the vast majority of the commentary on the advancing U.S.-Cuba relationship turned towards the commercial opportunities available for both sides. A topic that has shone for its near total absence, however, has been the corporate responsibility (CR) imperatives of US companies once on the ground in Cuba. It is as if the priority assigned to establishing commercial relations completely overrides the social and environmental necessities of the Cuban people, not to mention the Cuban government's pledge to build a "prosperous and sustainable socialism." It is also surprising when one factors in the preoccupations within the United States over the deleterious effects of increasing inequality, as well as the looming dangers of climate change.

Advertisement

At a practical level, this omission is the understandable result of the time consuming difficulty of disentangling the 57-year-old labyrinth of measures, acts and laws that are collective known as 'the US embargo.' Negotiators will first have to arrive at an accessible playing field, before the commercial partners can even think about modeling the 'ideal' bilateral business relationship between an environmentally and socially proactive socialist state-run system and a capitalist trickle-down and laissez-faire private sector-led system.

A look at some of the idiosyncrasies of the Cuban enterprise system can also shed light on the reasons why CR is not part of the conversation at this point in time. In a socialist system, state enterprises have an implicit responsibility to serve the well being of society by fulfilling social objectives. Explicit corporate responsibility strategies such as those practiced in capitalist countries are not considered necessary because CR is already "baked into" existing operations and long-term objectives of the socialist state enterprise system. Moreover, social welfare, education and environmental policy are considered the exclusive bailiwick of the state, and corporate proposals and attempts to engage in these areas are seen as encroachments by the private sector on the sovereign territory of the state. As a result, the foreign-owned sector tends to operate within well-guarded silos. This distrust over attempts at protagonismo (self-important and misguided agency) by foreign companies is understandable when seen in the context of the dominance of U.S. commercial interests of pre-Revolutionary Cuba. The end result is that, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, Cuban state officials fundamentally end up agreeing with Milton Friedman assertion's that "the business of business is business."

Some American companies might welcome the release from the often-impossible demands placed on them by the advocates of corporate citizenship; but before they celebrate this freedom, they should realize that the Cuban state's M.O. when it comes to 'business externalities' is to develop ever more stringent regulations and to increasingly micro-manage the commercial relationships.

Advertisement

Though at this point there is resistance on both sides to address the topic of the social and environmental responsibility of U.S. companies, once operating in Cuba, at some point, the commercial partners will have to come together to co-develop a plausible answer to the question: How can Cuba achieve an optimum outcome in terms of business competitiveness, economic well-being, and the preservation of long-held social values, while also building Cuban sustainability? Hopefully, the answer to this question will provide the basic building blocks for the co-construction of a business case for a sustainable Cuba.



The case for a sustainable Cuba has existed on the Cuban side since the 1990s as a result of the 'Accidental Eden' brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, as well as by the adoption of proactive sustainability measures inspired by the 1992 Rio Conference. However, a business case to back this sustainability effort has not yet been needed because the Cuban state has managed to address environmental externalities successfully. In a post-embargo scenario, the rate of economic growth and the sheer heterogeneity of the business sector will necessitate the attraction of the right kind of sustainability-oriented partners and financing sources. These future partners will, indeed, require a business case.

Two sectors reveal strong business cases for a sustainable Cuba: sustainable tourism and organic agricultural exports. If Cuba is to remain competitive over the long term in the 'sun and sand' market, it must safeguard its magnificent culture and its comparatively pristine environment. This will take proactive planning and the right kinds of business partners and niche market targeting. Another promising sector is organic food production, the paragon of Cuba's extraordinary adaptive capacity following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The opening of the U.S. market to Cuban organic food products would bring a bonanza to this sector and much welcome development opportunities for the poorer food producing eastern regions of the island. The business case for sustainable tourism and for organic agriculture exports is as attractive to the Cuban partners (as a substantial source of foreign currency) as it is for foreign commercial (high-margin, high-demand niche markets).

The renewable energy sector also offers many sustainability-oriented opportunities. Cuba lacks sufficient major operational oil or gas reserves and its hydroelectric energy generating potential is low. Oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, though promising, has yet to show results and the preferentially priced Venezuelan oil-for-doctors program, essential to Cuba's economic growth, has come under dire threat in 2016. These threats are behind the Cuban government's objective of generating 20% of their energy output with renewable resources in the near future. This sector will provide foreign partners with a clear business case, while for the Cuban government, renewable energy is more of an issue of national security than a clear-cut business imperative.

Advertisement

Two additional sectors will have to operate with a great deal of attention to sustainability matters: coastal zone development (tourism, ports, waste management, fishing, urban development, etc.) and mining. Being a climate change 'hot spot' and highly susceptible to coastal erosion due to rising sea levels and warming waters (leading to the death of protective coral reefs and an increase in major hurricane activity) makes responsible development of the coastal zones of the island imperative. Nickel has been one of Cuba's major foreign currency generating exports. The siege mentality that the U.S. embargo created not only for the Cuban state, but also for foreign companies operating on the island, made it necessary to conduct business in opaque and secretive manners. However, once the embargo is lifted there will be calls for greater transparency and requirements that public foreign companies publish audited financial statements along with social and environmental balances. Fairly soon, what happens in Moa -- where Canadian mining giant Sherritt has been mining nickel for decades -- will no longer stay in Moa. Cuba's mining industry's operational practices, though improving, will for the first time come under the careful (and vociferous) scrutiny of global anti-mining activists.

Sustainability-oriented business partners are already starting to operate in Cuba, especially in the renewable energy, tourism and agriculture sectors. A recently announced large sustainability-oriented joint venture in the consumer goods sector stands to revolutionize the way business models have been traditionally conceptualized in Cuba. One of the first European ventures authorized to operate in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) is that between Dutch Unilever N.V. and Cuban Intersuchel S.A. According to Unilever, the 35 million dollars plus joint venture will not only contribute to the development of the country and to the well-being of the population, but it will endeavor to protect the environment. The venture will be managed according to the Sustainable Living Plan, Unilever's business model which is based on the use of sustainably sourced materials, a commitment to consumers' well-being, improving working conditions and opportunities as well as promoting diversity and equal opportunity.

Surely many factors affected the decisions made by the Cuban government and by Unilever executives. However, what is undeniable is that this kind of partnership will provide a major stepping-stone in the development of the business case for a sustainable Cuba. Hopefully, many others will follow.

Advertisement
Koh Rong is a beautiful island in Cambodia, just off the coast of Sihanoukville. Unlike other popular places in SE Asia - Bali, Lombok, Koh Samui, Boracay and the likes, Koh Rong offers everything you seek in a beach paradise - Just less commercial and more breathtaking.

I first heard about Koh Rong during my maiden visit to Boracay in Philippines. A backpacker casually mentioned I should go there if I want to enjoy a destination which is not yet ruined by tourists. That's when I made it a point to visit this Island. Of course, like all other places you hear about during random dorm room talks, it slipped off my mind.

After 2 months, I found an awesome deal for cheap flights within SE Asia. At that time, I was in Indonesia and decided it was the perfect opportunity to explore a bit more - That's how Cambodia ..and finally Koh Rong, happened.

Advertisement



Image Credit - WanderWithJo

Needless to say, I absolutely fell in love with this place.

1.Peaceful - It is a small Island with not too many people. Of course, tourists have started flocking in lately and it is not as isolated or tranquil as it used to be few years ago. It is very much on the "tourist radar" now. Still, you will find it much more serene and there are several "isolated spots" left to explore and enjoy an amazing sun set at.

2.Bioluminescent Planktons - Well for me, this was surely the highlight of my trip. You can literally go into the water anytime after sun down and experience bioluminescence. Simply go for a swim at night yourself or get onboard a night boat trip. As soon as you start swimming in pitch dark, you see these planktons glowing on your skin - like tiny neon blue stars all around you - it is absolutely magical.

3.Cost Effective - One of the cheapest Islands I have ever been to. As a backpacker, you can literally survive on $5 a day. How? Well, few guest houses/dorms are 100% free - Yeah you heard it right, you don't have to pay a single penny. You can stay there and just pay for food & drinks (starting from $1).

4.Digital Detox - The Island has no connectivity (Sometimes minimal) - so, you are kind of forced to stay off your smart phones and make real life conversations. If this does not sound like something you might want to do, then you need to cross this off your list. Personally, I loved going off the radar for few days. Since starting my travel blog, I have literally not taken a single break - Koh Rong comes in as a pleasant surprise to force you to enjoy nature and life - like it's meant to be.

Advertisement



Image Credit - WanderWithJo

5.Keeps you fit - There are no vehicles on this island - isn't that great? I am so tired of living in the most polluted city of the world (Delhi). So, coming to a secluded, off-beat, beautiful and pollution-free spot was just ideal for me. Not only does it keep your lungs healthy, but also adds to your overall physical fitness. Since there are no means of transport, you walk everywhere. It's not a huge island by any means but you must walk around to explore new spots, waterfalls and other hideouts in the vicinity. The only way to get in or out of the island, are the daily boats to /fro Sihanoukville. That's the closest your get to real civilization. This gives you a chance at tranquillity and real rural life .
No one likes highway tolls, but imagine driving down miles of rural Georgia road, only to be confronted with a gate. You'd probably wonder if it's worth paying the $5 to visit a place like Jekyll Island.

I did.

Now add three screaming kids in the back of your SUV to the picture, and you know why I wanted to make a U-turn and head home.

But I'm glad I didn't.

Jekyll Island, a private enclave south of Savannah, Ga., is one of just four barrier islands accessible by car. It has a rich, if somewhat obscure history, abundant wildlife and a lively cultural scene. All things considered, the $5 toll is a real bargain.

Advertisement

Rogue publishers and secret meetings

The Jekyll Island Club, once considered the richest, most exclusive, and inaccessible private club in the world, opened in 1888. Let's just say if you had to ask, you probably didn't qualify for membership. I hope that helped J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Vincent Astor and William K. Vanderbilt sleep better at night, knowing that the riffraff was across the causeway.

You can still see their mansions here, carefully restored to their former perfection.

Theodore Vail, AT&T's president, made the first transcontinental phone call from Jekyll Island a century ago.

But that isn't what put this place on the map. No, that was the secret Jekyll Island "duck hunt" of 1910, at which the attendees created the framework of the Federal Reserve. You can visit the meeting room in the Jekyll Island Club Hotel where it all happened, which hasn't changed much since then.

We heard another interesting story about Joseph Pulitzer, one of the power brokers who owned a winter cottage on this island. Without getting too political, he was the lone Democrat amongst the Republican elites of Jekyll, including the Rockefellers and the Morgans.

Advertisement

Apparently Pulitzer was a major thorn in their side. His populist views were so unpopular that his newspapers were banned from the club. So there.

Save the turtles

The Georgia Sea Turtle Center, an advanced animal hospital and education center, is our family's favorite stop in the historic district. Despite the name, it accepts a variety of animals that have been injured or need rehabilitation. Visitors learn about habitat and the enormous odds each turtle faces in surviving. They may also have the opportunity to witness maintenance procedures and surgeries on animal patients.

You probably won't have a chance to handle the animals, but for the truly adventurous, they have a behind-the-scenes program. There, you can work side-by-side with an educational staff member and visit food preparation areas, animal holding areas, the treatment room, radiology and the surgical suite.

"What do you need the honey for?," my daughter asked when we toured the turtle ER.

"Turtle meat goes better with honey," my better half, Christopher, joked.

Actually, it's medical honey, and it's applied to cracked and broken shells. It's just one of many therapies used to rehab these reptiles.

Some hatchlings were warming below ultraviolet lights, and a three-legged turtle swam in circles on his back.

Advertisement

If you really want to get your hands dirty, you'll need to book a ticket near feeding time. Word of warning, though: Food preparation isn't for the faint of heart. You'll be expected to cut and clean some squid.

Georgia culture

The one site we really didn't expect to find on this trip was Georgia's first brewery, which dates all the way back to 1742. It was built and operated by Major William Horton, aide to James Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia.

Horton built his brewery not far from his home on Jekyll Island, probably a safe place considering his soldiers bunkered down on neighboring St. Simon's Island. That's one way to control rations. Too bad the brewery isn't still operational.

The home and neighboring brewery still stand -- mostly -- despite years of hurricanes, flooding and neglect, thanks to preservation funds raised through tolls. We attended an evening event there, and it was magical.

All about the beaches

When you're ready to hit the beach and relax, head over to the ocean side of the island. It's hard to miss. Take the second exit on the circle, and you're in the more modern side near the convention center.

Advertisement

The shops here cater mostly to tourists, but this being Jekyll Island, the quality and assortment of goods is impressive. Our favorite, Jekyll Market, had authentic tower cheesecake delivered directly from New York. It was impossible to choose just one variety. If you'd rather grab something local, they also offer a variety of Georgia-produced items, as well as some of the best native Gullah spice mixes that can be used for everything from seasoning grits to boiling prawns.

When the wind started to kick up, the kids begged us to take out the kite. The best stretch of sand is just past the Westin Jekyll Island. Sea oats form dunes that give the impression that you're on a private beach (because, well, you kinda are). Only the sounds of seabirds and surf interrupt your sun worshipping. Or kite flying.

The whole island is surprisingly pristine and undeveloped, especially on the ocean side. Its pockets of populated areas have a small town, welcoming feel.

That's likely because Jekyll Island was initially a state park. But in 1950, the costs of operation were too great and the Jekyll Island Authority was created. Since then, all development and preservation have been funded through this organization, which sets the $5 toll.
"I don't think there's a child out there who doesn't want to learn and be the best they can be."

Those are the words of Barbara Preuss, a veteran educator with more than 30 years of experience.

That is to say, she is no bright-eyed novice about to be confronted by reality. She is confronted by plenty of reality, every day. And yet she retains her belief that even the kids who act out and misbehave still want to learn and still need to learn.

She retains this belief because she has seen it again and again, in all the schools where she has worked.

Preuss is principal of the elementary grades of the Charles Drew Charter School in Atlanta, Georgia, a school I've written about before, and the former assistant principal of Centennial Place Elementary, which I've also written about. Both schools enroll mostly African American students from low-income homes, and during her time, both were toward the top of the state in terms of achievement -- Drew still is.

Advertisement

Last year, Preuss attended a small gathering in New Orleans of leaders from Dispelling the Myth schools. That is, they were all leaders of high-performing schools with large populations of children of color or children from low-income homes that had been recognized by The Education Trust with its Dispelling the Myth Award. If you ask me, the Dispelling the Myth leaders are some of the most accomplished educators in the country.

There, Ed Trust took advantage of the fact that they were all in the same place to ask them whether they thought it fair to expect schools to help all students to meet or exceed state standards.

The result is a new video that begins with Preuss' statement above and includes those of several other Dispelling the Myth leaders, including Jennie Black. Black was the long-time assistant principal of Ware Elementary School in Kansas and became principal of another school in the same district where most of the children come from low-income families.

"If you can overcome a crisis in your life, if you can overcome poverty, if you can overcome crime, if you can overcome any obstacle in your life, you become a stronger person," Black said. "Teaching and learning can change a society."

Advertisement

Again. There's no naivete there. Those are the words of someone who has seen the power of education in the lives of children living difficult lives.

In the background of the video are scenes from Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School in New Orleans, and seated in her office is Mary Haynes-Smith, who has led the school since the early days after Hurricane Katrina to become one of the top-performing schools in Louisiana.

"I think it's fair to say -- more than fair -- for all schools to help all kids -- especially those kids who come from poverty. Those kids need it more than anybody," Smith says in the video.

The educators in the video represent, in many ways, some of the best of America. These are educators who have worked under some very difficult conditions and have found ways to be successful. None of them, by the way, would claim success. They are never satisfied with the way their schools are performing and always see something more that can be done.

But if all schools were performing at the level of their schools, we as a nation would be feeling much better about the prospects of the next generation.

Advertisement
In light of Secretary Hillary Clinton's attacks on Bernie Sanders' proposal for tuition-free public colleges and universities -- as well as her widely repeated (and I think intentional) mistake of leaving out "public" when she discusses his plan -- one would think that Sanders has concocted a tragic hoax designed to seduce the young and naive. Time and again, Clinton returns to the point that a tuition-free entitlement would apply to the children of the fabulously wealthy in just the same way as it would to the abject poor, a criticism she casts as an objection to funding Donald Trump's progeny through college, though she could easily substitute her own last name to make the same point. Her derision echoes that of her surrogates, chief among them the mainstream press, who remind Americans of the sobering truth that there is "no such thing as a free lunch." As a matter of fact, as I write this blog post, longtime Clinton ally Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe just appeared on my public television station to scorn Sanders as an untenable candidate appealing only to the ignorant or willfully deluded, and "free college tuition" was the first item enumerated to support his belief.

Yet Senator Bernie Sanders is not proposing something new, but a return to something old, and the Clinton campaign's response, including Clinton's specific attempts to provoke disgust for subsidizing the wealthy, also have historical roots that trace back to the Republican backlash against the New Deal.

Advertisement

What's Free?

Let's first address the question of "free." When California Governor Ronald Reagan launched his steady and ultimately successful campaign to dramatically scale back the state's support for its public higher education system in 1967, he chided educators that there was "no such thing as a free education."

Nobody ever thought that there was, and perhaps the absurdity of so describing tax revenues spent on supporting the state's flourishing education system lulled Reagan's antagonists into complacency as they dismissed the new governor's gambit. Though the state charged "fees" for incidental expenses and students spent money on room and board, the legislature in California appropriated money for state schools and the University of California system (community colleges were paid for by local taxes) in amounts that enabled the schools to remain "tuition-free" for those enrolled. When they graduated and earned salaries in the state of California, alumni of public colleges and universities joined other taxpayers in paying "tuition" on an annual basis via their tax contribution. The schools were never free; the fact that students paid no tuition while attending them simply represented a calculation on the part of the state that it would gain much more in the long term, fiscally and otherwise, if it opened the doors of higher education to its residents. The history of Silicon Valley alone would seem to bear this wisdom out.

In spite of the impressive achievements tuition-free public higher education and other programs like it, Secretary Clinton and the Democrats affiliated with her campaign continue to subvert the political conversation by characterizing tax revenues spent on ordinary Americans as "free," denigrating these programs as some sort of hand-out -- and rendering other kinds of spending, and costs, invisible. It does so in two ways: first, by focusing fiscal concern exclusively on domestic social services and investments, other kinds of revenue spending escape scrutiny -- even when they cost more. Former Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner griped about the $800 billion bill for Obama's stimulus package, but no establishment politician denounces the $1.7 trillion spent on the war in Iraq that has accomplished only chaos. In the United States, we have money for some things, but not others. No one can have the "free lunch" of public higher education, but apparently the cost of war is so reasonable, and the cause so just, that it's indiscreet to make those costs (and others like it) visible, let alone hold decision-makers accountable for its tragic failures.

Advertisement

The second kind of "cloaking" performed by those who deride tax revenues spent on ordinary Americans as "free" is harder to detect, but even more damaging. Narrowing the analytical focus to the point of purchase (or consumer transaction) is one of the most successful tactics adopted by Republicans interested in framing policy debates on terms favorable to them. Just as an example: the cost of a Big Mac might sound attractive to a McDonald's customer, but once agricultural subsidies, food stamps for employees living on depressed wages, and the healthcare costs incurred by people who eat a lot of them are factored into the equation, that's not a cheap meal. Shielding costs (and consequences) incurred well before or well after the point of transaction enables Republicans to present many of their policy options as more efficient when, in fact, non-public service provision (like charter schools) and social policy (like 401k retirement plans) have accumulated unimpressive track records. They cost taxpayers more and do less. Like a contractor who secures a job with a low bid and then overruns the estimate and does shoddy work, private social policy sounds good at a particular moment in the process, but it has not held up well when the account comes due.

Subsidizing the Rich

Let's not leave this subject before inspecting Secretary Clinton's claim that the tuition charged at public universities should be means-tested -- meaning, only if your parents' income falls below a certain level should you be eligible for public support. In the world of social policy, these programs are distinct from social insurance or other policy entitlements, where eligibility is determined by some criteria other than income level. For example, if you paid into certain programs (like Medicare or Social Security), you are eligible to receive a corresponding level of benefits; or if you graduate in the top 10% of your class, you may be eligible to attend an elite public university in your state, regardless of your family's wealth or lack of it.

Students well versed in the history of social policy will recognize Clinton's line of attack well; it comes from the Republican backlash against New Deal social policy programs, especially Social Security. As President Franklin Roosevelt's Committee on Economic Security mulled the question of whether to make government pensions for senior citizens means-tested or social insurance, the election season popularity of a grassroots movement in favor of the latter helped them to decide, and the 1935 Social Security Act, including old-age pensions paid for by a new payroll tax, was born. But Social Security years took many years to come to fruition. The program had to pass constitutional muster before the Supreme Court (like Obamacare); just as important, large groups of workers excluded from the original bill were gradually added during the war and throughout the postwar period.

Advertisement

All the while, throughout these many years, the Republican Party platform and a variety of Republicans called for paring Social Security down to a means-tested benefit -- that is, to giving government old-age pensions to only the very poor. They did the same thing during the Medicare debate. In fact, the "fundamental difference," according to political scientist John P. Bradley, "to the initial establishment of old-age benefits, disability benefits, and health benefits was that the Republicans sought to limit the benefits to the persons needing them."

Social Security proponents developed an aphorism to describe and repel these repeated attacks: "a program for the poor," they would recite patiently, "is a poor program." They understood that in the American political system, under disproportionate influence from powerful special interests, poor people alone would never have sufficient political recourse to challenge cuts in programs intended only for their benefit. To place a program on a means-tested basis is to place it on the path to extinction.

History has rewarded the insight and resilience of Social Security's earliest defenders, who insisted on the legitimacy of directing tax revenues to bolster the security and prospects of ordinary Americans; these programs endure to this day because of it. In fact we had a name for people like them; we called them Democrats.

I recently returned to Ken Galbraith's classic, The Affluent Society, and was reminded by him that the sacred truths of "conventional wisdom" are not so much overturned by intellectuals as they are discredited by discomfiting realities; that is, the things once accepted as sacred no longer seem to apply. And I wonder if this doesn't account for so many things, including Hillary Clinton's failure to connect with voters, especially young ones. The uneven and grossly unjust allocation of the costs of higher education driving young people into debt -- just like the unimpressive returns from privatized social policy -- is simply unsustainable. Perhaps young people have been drawn to Sanders' campaign in such high numbers not because they are overly simplistic, but because the failures of the kludge-y world of social policy are most apparent, and most consequential, in their lives.

Advertisement

If so, then the contempt shown for Sanders by establishment figures also seems predictable by Galbraith's reckoning. In the long run, truths can serve to organize a consensus, Galbraith tells us, but he also warns us that in the short-run, when challenged, "acceptability" or "conventional wisdom" mobilizes, and often prevails. This sets up well one moment when Secretary Clinton mocked Bernie Sanders' plan for tuition-free public higher education by noting that it would rely upon governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker, a Republican who has implemented deep cuts in his state's stellar public university system, to reverse course and spend more. That is exactly what Sanders' plan would do, and that is exactly what is necessary to save public higher education in this country.

The Senator is articulating a truth; Hillary Clinton is reciting what is acceptable. What's astonishing is not the suggestion that the government direct tax revenue to a public purpose, or that politicians should organize a consensus around doing so, but that such ideas are characterized as outlandish, when, until recently, they have been an organizing principle of American politics and the Democratic Party.
We're enjoying afternoon coffee, Jill to my left and our new friend Christina to my right. The top of the Duomo out the large picture windows looks so close I feel I could almost reach out and touch it.

Jill and I have known each other for over 15 years, and she just flew in to join me for a couple weeks during my two-month stay in Florence. Christina Mifsud is a friend Jill knows through Internet connections, and this is their first time to meet in person.

Christina has kept us captivated for the last few hours with stories of Florence, new and old. Born and raised in a small coastal town in California, she's now lived in Italy for over 20 years. She smoothly recounted the history of the Mercato Centrale in detail, how it was built and which vendors were on each floor -- meat and cheese on the first, fruits, vegetables and flowers on the second. The current controversy over the contemporary food court with its American flair and food trays. She has a delicate cultural understanding of the city.

Advertisement

As we left the Mercato and strolled past the Basilica di San Lorenzo, Christina quietly slipped out her official Tour Guide license while excitedly describing the works by Brunelleschi, Donatello and Michelangelo housed inside it's nondescript walls. The enthusiasm increased as we reached the Duomo and she started pointing out small details in the architecture that tell larger stories of style, culture and change.

Christina is one of the most learned tour guides in Florence. Coupled with her gregarious warmth, her infectious love for all things Italian Renaissance art, and her commitment to life long learning, she's a powerhouse of knowledge. She has become so sought after that almost all her business is referral: "Our friends just came back from Florence and insisted we HAD to book a tour with you on our trip."

All this came from a choice. She decided she wanted to live, and work, in Italy. She had no idea how it would unfold, but knew that was what she wanted. She was a college student at the time, working on her Master's thesis. She's now in her mid-40s and has provided Private Tours to such notables as Senator Edward Kennedy, Tom Brokaw and Arlen Specter.

She didn't know any of this would happen when she made the decision. And yet, the power was in the decision, because without that decision, none of this would have happened. With that one choice, everything else became possible and a life she couldn't have imagined became hers.

Advertisement

I realize as we're having our coffee, that all three of us are women with choices.

Christina has a successful career built on her passion and her choice to pursue it.

I'm in Italy for two months because I decided it sounded like fun and made the choice, the decision, to go. I'm now considering traveling for the next year or two. The first decision, Italy, has lead to the next thoughts about continued travel. One choice leads to the next choice, leads to the next.

Jill is laying the groundwork for her next career move. Sifting through ideas, considering options, chasing passions. Whatever choice she makes will move her closer to the next.

What's that one choice you've been putting off that could have the power to create a new beginning for you? Maybe now's the time.

Kimberly Montgomery is the creator of the Choices Notebook and blogger at FiftyJewels.com, where she encourages people to use their powers for good. Hop on over there to grab your FREE copy of the Choices Notebook Mini Kit.

Follow Kimberly Montgomery on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FiftyJewels

Earlier on Huff/Post50:
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, listens as Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton answers a question during a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by MSNBC at the University of New Hampshire Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016, in Durham, N.H. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

America's Only Elected Female Socialist on Women and the Presidential Race

Last Fall, I brought a proposal for 12 weeks paid parental leave to vote in the Seattle City Council. As a female city councilmember and socialist, I see the question of women's rights vs. corporate interests come to the floor on a regular basis.

As has been so often the case, the two other women on the council (both Democrats) voted against this progressive proposal, while the two other members of the council's left wing (both men) voted with me.

Advertisement

During the fight for the $15 minimum wage in Seattle, these same female councilmembers also voted for sub-minimum wages (mostly affecting majority-female occupations) known as "tip credit", and further for almost every corporate loophole in the ordinance.

Do these women not consider themselves feminists? I think they do, though I won't speak for them.

Perhaps more importantly, do elected officials like them deserve the support of feminists?

For women and the left, this question has moved to the center of the presidential election.

Young Women and Hillary

Throughout the Democratic Primary, Hillary Clinton and her supporters have sought to portray her ascendance to the presidency as the next logical step toward gender equality in America. And for most of that time, her nomination as the first female Democratic nominee was assumed to be straightforward and assured.

Yet instead of the expected coronation, Hillary Clinton has had a real fight on her hands from the self-proclaimed socialist from Vermont, and that turn of events has perhaps been most clearly reflected in young women's enthusiastic support for Sanders.

The Democratic Party establishment has been dumbfounded at young women rejecting Hillary, and have made various ham-fisted efforts to turn back the tide.

Advertisement



"Why are establishment feminist icons on the defensive with young women?"



Debbie Wasserman-Shulz, the Democratic National Committee chair, helped kick things off by suggesting young women were "complacent" about women's rights in not supporting Hillary, followed by a social media backlash. But the firestorm hit in February with Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright's widely discussed comments. Steinem's remarks about young women supporting Bernie because "that's where the boys are" particularly hit a nerve, as young women who had long looked up to Steinem were stunned to hear what sounded, more than a little, like a demeaning sexist put down.

Feminism and Identity

Why are establishment feminist icons on the defensive with young women?

At the heart of the matter is the deep divide between the substance of women's rights and the identity question of gender in this race. And the sticky problem facing Clinton defenders is the undeniable fact that Sanders' platform and record are far more pro-woman.

In looking at Sanders' commitment to women's issues, from an unwavering commitment to reproductive rights, to the $15 minimum wage, to single-payer healthcare, or a dozen other issues -- it's clear ordinary women stand to gain greatly from what Bernie is campaigning for.

Hillary's own political history reveals the hollowness of her expressed oneness with ordinary women. She helped champion Bill Clinton's gutting of welfare funding in the 1990s, which plunged hundreds of thousands of women (particularly black women), into a deadly spiral of intergenerational poverty.



Clinton's position on abortion has long been that it ought to be "safe, legal and rare." Safe and legal, yes, but her addition of "rare" is a frightening backtracking on the hard-fought battle for reproductive rights, and only serves as bait to encourage right-wing attacks. As recently as September last year, Clinton made overtures to anti-choice Republicans, saying, "if there's a way to structure some kind of constitutional restriction [on abortion] that takes into account the life of the mother and her health, then I'm open to that."



"If the question is one of policy and not of identity, can there be any doubt that Bernie Sanders is the real feminist in this race?"



As Secretary of State, Clinton was stunningly silent on the widespread abuse of women's rights in U.S. supported regimes like Saudi Arabia, and put U.S. corporate interests squarely ahead of questions of women's and human rights. Bloomberg Businessweek noted approvingly that "Clinton turned the State Department into a machine for promoting U.S. business," and sought "to install herself as the government's highest-ranking business lobbyist."

As has been noted by many, one of Hillary Clinton's legacies as Senator and Secretary of State is as a foreign policy hawk. This is revealed not only in her support for the war in Iraq, but also the bombing of Libya, and her disastrous role in the bloodbath in Syria. And war, of course, has a particularly brutal and devastating impact on women.

Her support for NAFTA and later TPP (which of course she's done an election-campaign backflip on), again underlines her willingness to sell out working people, not least of all working women who have been deeply affected by corporate trade deals.

Sanders, in contrast, has been a consistent advocate of reproductive rights, and a leading opponent of Clinton's welfare "reform," NAFTA, and TPP.

Advertisement

If the question is one of policy and not of identity, can there be any doubt that Bernie Sanders is the real feminist in this race?

Women and the White House

Of course, it is entirely understandable that electing a first woman president would be seen as a progressive event in American history. And we do need more women in elected office generally.

But which women? Obviously we do not need more Sarah Palins or Margaret Thatchers in office. We also don't need more Nancy Pelosis or Hillary Clintons.

At the moment, under the domination of these two corporate parties, genuine people who are fighting for the interests of the 99%, and who are not bought-and-sold by corporate interests, are extremely rare anywhere in elected office. And while I don't agree with Bernie about everything, he is one of them.

Which Side Are You On?

Perhaps young women have been most offended by the implicit assumption that they should set aside their own political views, and along with them the interests of the vast majority of women, in an act of "solidarity" with ruling class women like Hillary.

Advertisement

Instead, they are demanding someone who will fight for their rights. They are correctly angry at the corporate domination of politics, at inequality, and at the failure of the Democratic Party establishment (not least of all the Clinton Administration) to even effectively defend women's past gains.

Under such "leadership," women have had to keep fighting the same battles that their mothers and grandmothers did, and losing ground.

Bernie's campaign is the opposite -- it has served as a lightning rod against the domination of the establishment's anti-worker and anti-woman politics over our lives and our bodies.



"Feminism, solidarity and socialism are interconnected and inseparable."



As oppressed people we face the question of how and with whom to build the solidarity necessary to win progressive change. The solidarity we need is with the 99 percent, not with ruling class women against the rest of us.

It is our task to build that solidarity -- to fight for the needs of women, of people of color, of immigrants, of labor, of the LGBTQ community -- of all working people. That means building a #Movement4Bernie now, and most importantly using this campaign to build a new independent force that can continue the fight after the presidential election. We will need to build our own political party -- a party of the 99 percent.

Advertisement

If we do not build or own independent strength, we will continue to see the right-wing advance. As the Tea Party developed in the void prior to the Occupy Movement, Donald Trump and the like will continue to gain ground in the emptiness of corporate Democratic Party politics.

I believe that raising socialist ideas is one of the most important things Bernie has done with his campaign.

The struggle for socialism is the fight of all oppressed people for economic, racial and gender equality. For a sustainable world, in which the economy and political system are run by and for the 99 percent.
The day of reckoning is upon us. After winning three straight primaries and the majority of Super Tuesday states, the possibility that Donald Trump will be the GOP nominee now seems more likely than anyone ever imagined. Will prominent Republicans, like lemmings off the cliff, support Trump if he is the nominee, or will they put the interests of their party and more importantly, the country first?

On this front, history will not look kindly on Chris Christie. The wandering Governor's endorsement of the Donald was blatantly self-serving. Standing behind Trump Tuesday night, he looked like a man desperate for attention -- any attention. Apparently he's so allergic to doing his job in New Jersey, multiple NJ papers have called on him to resign. More importantly though, Christie's endorsement has highlighted a dire issue facing the Republican Party. Republicans must now ask themselves if they will sacrifice the future of the party, their majority in the Senate, the White House, and their credibility to support a party nominee no matter who it is -- or will they take a stand?

Chris Christie isn't the only one who has made a deal with the devil. A few days ago, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions endorsed him. But more surprisingly, John Huntsman, former Ambassador to China and Presidential Candidate, indicated in an interview that he would support Trump if he were the nominee. The reasoning: "I'm a Republican, and I tend to gravitate to whoever is the nominee," he said. Huntsman's comments are depressing. Generally seen as a (relative) moderate, as a former Ambassador, one would hope Huntsman understands the devastating effect a Trump nomination would have on our standing around the world. Trump is a so xenophobic, racist, sexist and vindictive, even his success to date erodes our standing around the world. A party nomination would do irreparable harm. But for Huntsman apparently party loyalty matters more.

Advertisement

No matter your political affiliation, we can all agree that an effective and inclusive Republican party is good for our democracy. We need a meaningful, thoughtful competition of ideas and while some on the left paint the entire party with the Trump/ Cruz brush, it's simply untrue. There are many thoughtful, inclusive Republicans who believe in fiscal responsibility, smaller government and a strong defense yet actively reject the scorched earth, extremist views and tactics of those on the far right. Sadly, those voices have been drowned out in the current chaos.

Some prominent, respected Republicans, most importantly Speaker Paul Ryan, have rightly denounced Trump's most hateful rhetoric as out of step with party principles. But they will be forced, very soon, to go further and decide if they will support him if he is the party nominee. No one has more at stake, and more to loose than Ryan. Should the nominee be Trump, it would mean embracing the basest, most extreme, most self-destructive elements in the party. For leaders like Ryan who are trying to remake the GOP as inclusive, forward looking and effective, the prospect of Cruz isn't much better. If he and other partly leaders opt to line up behind an extreme nominee, just because they claim to represent the GOP, they are likely to loose the White House, the majority and party legitimacy for many, many years to come. It would be a Faustian bargain of the first order. Let's hope their better, smarter angels prevail.

Advertisement
The 2016 presidential election has been interesting and shocking to say the least with many twists, turns and surprises. I am a psychotherapist and my interests lie in studying the psychology of people -- why do they do the things they do? What motivates people? How can this translate to creating a better world for future generations?

After the New Hampshire primaries, it was clear that trust and distrust were fueling the fervor behind the voters. Exit polls showed that 34 percent of Bernie Sanders voters found honesty and trust most important and 26 percent felt someone who "cares about people like me" was of highest priority, totaling 60 percent of voters who care more about empathy and trust than anything else.

As for Donald Trump, the same exit polls showed that supporters cared most about someone who "tells it like it is" and someone who is a political outsider. Half of these voters felt betrayed by the politicians of the Republican party. It's clear that someone who is perceived to "tell it like it is" feels trustworthy. What you see is what you get. People often like to see transparency (even if it's blunt) over dishonesty. It also seems clear that distrust in the establishment candidates has gravitated people towards Trump just because he is different.

Advertisement

After Super Tuesday, exit polls for Republicans (who overwhelmingly seem to favor Trump) showed that they were angry with many voters saying they felt betrayed by their party and they were mostly looking for an outsider candidate. Betrayal is an erosion of trust and a powerful motivator for the decisions people will make in this election.

On the Democrat side post Super Tuesday, Hillary Clinton is still facing challenges with voters and the trust they place in her. Voters still feel, largely across the board that Sanders is a more trustworthy candidate and for many voters, that holds a lot of weight.

What's clear is regardless of what your stance may be on a particular issue or the political party one identifies with, the commonality here is people want someone who they trust in power. Trust is so important because first and foremost it is a survival mechanism. Trusting the right people and distrust of those who might hurt us is essential to our survival.

Bruce Schnier, the author of Liars and Outliers says that given that there are inevitably always going to be people who are not trustworthy, society keeps damage to a minimum by using societal pressures: "morals and reputation are two, laws are another, and security systems are a fourth. Basically, it's all coercion. We coerce people into behaving in a trustworthy manner because society will fall apart if they don't."

Advertisement

John Gottman, a top researcher and relationship expert discusses in a highly informative presentation how trust is vital in how communities work. Furthermore, he cites research that states that low-trust areas in the United States are those that have "greater economic disparities between the very rich and the very poor--and the greater the discrepancy between the very rich and the very poor in a country, the more it predicts economic decline in that country. In low-trust regions few people vote, parents and schools are less active. There's less philanthropy in low-trust regions, greater crime of all kinds, lower longevity, worse health, lower academic achievement in schools."

Voters of Trump and Sanders also seem drawn to what Schnier refers to as "defectors." Defectors are often thought as untrustworthy but there are those that are good for society and who are the real change makers. I often hear arguments that Sanders and Trump are not electable in a general election because they are too radical. However, that may be part of the appeal to voters who embrace the defectors that are the change makers: "When society is in the wrong, it's defectors who are in the vanguard for change. So it was defectors who helped escaped slaves in the antebellum American South. It's defectors who are agitating to overthrow repressive regimes in the Middle East. And it's defectors who are fueling the Occupy Wall Street movement. Without defectors, society stagnates."

It is also important to mention the effect of empathy on the brain. Some research shows that empathy towards strangers triggers oxytocin release (a hormone that projects to brain areas that are associated with emotions and social behaviors). OT is also associated with attachment and bonding in mammals and recent studies in humans have revealed that OT promotes prosocial behaviors, including trust, reciprocity, and generosity measured using monetary transfers to strangers.

If voters are feeling that their candidate is empathetic, it not only evokes trust but inspires their generosity. It's no wonder that the Sanders voters feel so drawn to him and it may be part of the reason that he has raised millions of dollars from millions of Americans.



As the country progresses further into the primaries we will continue to hear that defectors and outsiders cannot win a general election but the power of trust should not be discounted and may be the determining factor of our next president. Regardless of the outcome of the primaries, this primary season has been a shake up and if the status quo stays, so will the distrust and the anger.


Conleth Hill as Macbeth, Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's classic tale

Photos by Kevin Berne

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow may give director Daniel Sullivan and his colleagues the time they need to reinforce the strengths and repair the weaknesses of their Macbeth at Berkeley Rep. At the moment, though, their efforts have shaped only a technical triumph that sorely lacks performances worthy of their backdrop.

Highly anticipated because of the involvement of Sullivan, perhaps the country's most respected interpreter of Shakespeare, along with stars Conleth Hill in the title role and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, the production offers an abundance of sound and fury but too little interpersonal passion. In case you're unfamiliar with the stars, McDormand's many accolades include a Tony, an Oscar and an Emmy; Hill holds an Olivier award for work in London, several Tony nominations on Broadway and current attention on HBO's Game of Thrones.



The play opens on an appropriately eerie note as the three witches writhe around a huge tree, disemboweling a captive while intoning their grim omens amid lightning, thunder and fog.

Unfortunately the tone quickly goes flat with the entry of Macbeth and Banquo (Christopher Innvar) a few minutes later, when they stumble upon the witches and hear the prophecies that propel the drama. The warriors look less like survivors of a horrendous battle than well-armed gents strolling through the woods; their puzzled responses to the witches give us Shakespeare's words, with little visceral expression through performance.

Advertisement

The dearth of connections between speakers and their words is distressingly common throughout the drama, affecting major characters and lesser figures alike. And the lack of a palpable bond between Macbeth and his wife is especially troublesome.

From her first moments, McDormand's Lady Macbeth is a mentally fragile figure, bristling with intensity and ambition but lacking the authority that lets her command Macbeth or the courtly grace that would engage and comfort guests to their castle. That deficiency is especially conspicuous during the feast that is disrupted by Banquo's bloody ghost. Even before the apparition appears, prompting Macbeth's descent into hysteria, McDormand projects an aura of edgy discomfort.

Still, she contributes some of the play's most arresting scenes as well, especially in visual suggestions that Lady Macbeth might have experienced motherhood but lost the child or children. Such hints surface in both the soliloquy that follows her receipt of Macbeth's letter about the witches and in an excruciating sleepwalking scene. In both occasions McDormand's extended arms tell agonized stories that bring added poignancy to Shakespeare's verse.

Double duty for James Carpenter: as the ill-fated Duncan and as the castle's addled porter

Similarly, Hill injects a few compelling moments but rarely projects the strength and ferocity of the warrior whose valor has placed him on the path to the crown, and then to disaster. Some of his problems stem from the breakneck pacing of the final scenes, however. As events speed toward their climax his frenetic responses leave Macbeth incapable of dealing coolly with his allies and servants, and especially with the doctor who has been observing his despondent queen.

Advertisement

The cryptic news of her death comes in rushed and frightened terms, delivered by a servant who enters and leaves in seconds. And Macbeth's reaction, voiced in the speech that ends with the famed declaration that life "is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," seems far too thoughtful and poetic for a man in Macbeth's agitated state.

Among the production's positive notes are fine performances in some minor roles, most notably by Berkeley veteran James Carpenter in three guises: as the ill-fated king, Duncan; as the boozy porter who welcomes visitors to the castle; and as the compassionate doctor who has no tools to help the overwrought queen.

Technically, the show is a tour-de-force for video designer Alexander V. Nichols, whose black-and-white projections run from the natural (clouds that seem unusually threatening, forests that can seem spooky or natural, as needed) to the supernatural (apparitions drawn from Macbeth's bloody rise and reign). Dan Moses Schreier contributed eerie music and turbulent sound effects and Pat Collins did the lighting, both consistently providing expert support to the varied moods.
Shocking little boy hand covering mouth isolated gray background, studio shot. Image taken with Hasselblad H5D 50C camera system and developed from camera RAW.

I love how I act so surprised when a bad word comes out of my son's mouth. I mean, really? Did I ever expect him to never to say a bad word?

I always intended on being the perfect mother and when I got pregnant I vowed to never swear or let my children around anybody that swears. But of course I was hormonal, sleep deprived and didn't know what I was talking about. When I had my son, I wasn't ready to let go of my Eminem CD. But I would only listen to it when alone. Listening to Eminem while driving the the grocery store alone is now the equivalent to an all-nighter on South Beach. It's a good time.

Advertisement

I'll never forget the first time my son dropped the F-bomb. Shocked, I asked him where he had heard that terrible word from. "Who told you that word?" I said with a tone. I knew I had said in front of him maybe once or twice, but I was hoping that my husband also said it and that he was the one to blame. Then there came a time when my husband said a bad word and I was elated at the fact that it wasn't my fault. Because if the Christian school that my son went to mentioned anything I could blame it on him. In fact, I went so far as to warn them. I had to give them a "heads up." I wouldn't want them to think it came from me, you see.

Because it all boils down to what kind of mother I am. One would think that I didn't want him to swear for moral reasons and for the most part that is true. But who doesn't like to throw out a good F-bomb once in a while? You might say you don't do it, but I know you want to. It's a release.

The truth is, it's not lady-like. And that makes me want to do it even more. I'm a rebel and always have been! It feels good to be unlady like. But it's not pretty. In fact, it's ugly. I've never wanted to say that word in the middle of yoga. Or while singing nursery rhymes to the children.

Whenever I have used the word, it's usually not a pretty setting. During the holidays, it is a tradition to get together with my son's best friend and take a picture every year of them by the Christmas tree. That's a beautiful setting. Then we take them for ice cream. This past year we took the pictures and they played and we all had a great time as we always do. But this area of town is a little "snooty" and my tolerance level for the "snooty" gets lower when we go there. As we passed a new mother, holding her newborn, I had to stop and talk to her. Motherhood is so amazing and I wanted to let her know. I told her that we were there to take our yearly traditional pictures and how the kids were infants when we started. Funny thing. She didn't ask. I sort of held her hostage while she was enjoying a moment with her baby. As we walked away, I felt the holiday spirit though. Until we walked up to the curb where the cars were passing. The boys were running and we were telling them to slow down and stop at the curb. At 4 years old they know this but as mothers we are always apprehensive. We all stood at the curb waiting for someone to let us walk across. As a luxury car drove by and didn't stop, the older woman driving it put her hand up to us as if to say, "stay back, the queen is coming through." At least that's what I heard coming from her.

Advertisement

Now I was annoyed at the audacity and said to my friend, "ugh, I am so sick of these Boca Bitches!" As soon as it came out of my mouth, I prayed that my son didn't hear what I had just said."Mommy, what's a Boca B**ch?" he said.

My friend and I just looked at each other. How do I get out of this?

Then there was the time we spent the holidays with my parents and my son blurted out in the backseat of the car "that car is going too fast! I hope that bastard gets a ticket!"

Now all of a sudden everyone was a "bastard." I knew immediately where it came from. That is one of my father's favorite words. And really, it didn't make me mad. It made me smile. There's not much one can do in a situation like that. You can't take it back. You can only explain that that they have a potty mouth and that we don't use those words. But I do use those words and that's a lie.

Once they've heard the bad word it's all over. I download songs sometimes for my dad because we share great taste in music. Sometimes I accidentally download the explicit version rather than the regular version. Now I really didn't think that Demi Lovato's latest hit about a teenage summer fling would also have an explicit version so I carelessly downloaded it as soon as I saw it. I've listened to it many times in front of my son. I thought all this time my son never heard the F-bomb but today he laid it all out very simply. He said, "mommy that song has a bad word." Of course I knew it but I pretended to be oblivious and shocked. I asked him what he said so he could repeat it (like I didn't hear it the first time).

Advertisement

He said, "mommy that song has a bad word," and he proceeded to say the F bomb. "We can't listen to that song anymore because she says a bad word. You need to take it out and put in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," he said.

How did he get so wise?

I shamefully took the C.D. out and searched for my nursery rhyme's C.D. that played English children singing nursery rhymes. That was a slap of reality in my face. My British mother would be so proud. But my Greek father would yell profanities at the ridiculousness of the situation.

This was a great lesson for me not only to see for myself what I have taught my son even though I didn't practice what I preached. He knew that we shouldn't be listening to it and because of that I am proud as a mother of a curious 4 year old. I'm not proud of ignoring what I knew was right for my own selfish needs. Should I have intervened when my husband made their father/son song "Shut Up And Dance With Me" their theme song in the car? Was it hard to explain that he can sing the song but not repeat the words to others? Hell, yeah!

Of course I never let him listen to Eminem or Limp Bizkit. Okay, maybe for two seconds of it. I might not be mother of the year but I'm not crazy.
"First rule of maintaining a healthy marriage while parenting an infant is nothing thats said between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. can be held against you."
LAS VEGAS, NV - APRIL 28: Chairman and President of the Trump Organization Donald Trump yells 'you're fired' after speaking to several GOP women's group at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino April 28, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Trump has been testing the waters with stops across the nation in recent weeks and has created media waves by questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

Now that we know Donald Trump is okay with quoting the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, it's probably time to reconsider that old chestnut about those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. When Trump took Gawker's bait and retweeted a line attributed to Mussolini - that it's better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep - many Americans were stunned that the leading Republican presidential candidate would pass along a quote from a Fascist dictator. Let alone a dictator whose foolish poses on old newsreels make us laugh. Really, we wonder, who could have taken seriously such a ridiculous man?

But frighteningly, a majority of Americans supported Mussolini for most of his dictatorship. Isolated by an ocean, they fell for his rhetoric.

Advertisement

After the "March on Rome" in October of 1922, in which hundreds of Mussolini's followers demanded a Fascist government and the weak King Victor Emmanuel III relented, America was quick to brand Mussolini a winner. Politicians, journalists, and businessmen believed that Mussolini's new political program, with its brutal intolerance of strikes taking place throughout the country, would restore order and stem the tide of the growing Bolshevist threat.

Americans lapped up Mussolini's rhetoric about restoring the greatness of the Roman Empire. Even the name of his party -- the fasces, a bundle of wheat bound to an ax -- symbolized Roman authority. Finally someone would impose structure on an undisciplined nation and make the trains run on time. Or in Trump parlance, he would Make Italy Great Again.

America's nativist prejudices played into this adoration. Elite Americans had always admired the beauty and artistic achievements of northern Italy, even if they found the people less diligent and hardworking than Anglo-Saxon stock. Their condescending fondness of northern Italy mixed with a growing fear about America's direction due to the mass immigration of poor illiterate southern Italians. Now the moment emerged in which they believed Mussolini could mold an Italy that combined its artistic achievements with their own more rigorous standards of work. It would take a dictator, so this thinking went, to accomplish such a herculean task.

The magazine of Middle America, the Saturday Evening Post, praised Mussolini and serialized his autobiography in 1928. The humorist Will Rogers, after interviewing Mussolini for the Saturday Evening Post, affectionately explained, "Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government; that is, if you have the right Dictator."

Advertisement

The Chicago Tribune similarly praised his authoritarian regime. New York Times correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick worked herself up to a high pitch of adulation:

"It is easy enough for Americans to comprehend the Fascisti. Direct action is intelligible in any language. A nation that thrilled to the Vigilantes and the Rough Riders rises to Mussolini and his Black Shirt army....Women understand the old-fashioned, masterful sort of government which he re-establishes. They rally to the old-fashioned hierarchies, of religion, authority, obedience which he restores."

The most nefarious aspects of Mussolini's regime were still years away, but each of these journalists turned their backs on the loss of Italy's free press, its wrathful nationalism, the extreme violence of the Blackshirts who beat their opponents to death (or at a minimum beat and force-fed large doses of castor oil to any who showed disobedience), the weekly militaristic rallies for schoolchildren to prepare them for a perpetual state of war, and the placing of faith in a man who radically and opportunistically changed his political positions.

Mussolini had once been a fervent socialist and atheist journalist who denounced capitalists like John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan in his articles about America. The young Mussolini wrote about striking millworkers in Massachusetts, sympathizing with the workers and condemning the "crimes of capitalism." Once in power, however, he abandoned these positions, brutally suppressing strikes and embracing and winning the support of American capitalists and the Vatican. Eventually, the head of J. P. Morgan would become one of his most influential backers.

Only when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, his first step in restoring Italy to the greatness of the Roman Empire, did Americans take a second look. When Ethiopia's leader, Haile Selassie, pleaded for the world's help, America was shocked to learn about the Italian dictator's dive-bombing raids and use of mustard gas on the Ethiopian people.

Advertisement

Yet, conservative publications like Henry Luce's Time magazine still had plenty of kind words for the dictator, seeing him as the antithesis of the stereotype of the Italian in America:

Mussolini is a spellbinder . . . [He] is more controlled, more disposed to reticence, less expansive than the average Italian . . . He gives the impression that confidence will be well placed in him, and power turned to good uses . . . It is this un-Italian steadiness which marks him off from the rest.

Mussolini's racial laws of 1938, which stripped Jews of their citizenship and prohibited them from public jobs, skilled professions, and schools, forced Americans to finally comprehend the horrors of the regime they had lauded.
Corporate totalitarianism means total control by corporate interests. If they want a war, they get a war. If they want GMOs, they get GMOs. If they want fracking, they get fracking. If they want big banks to control our monetary policy, big banks control our monetary policy. If they want a tax break, they get a tax break. If they want the TPP, they get the TPP. If they want to deregulate to the point of complete irresponsibility to our children and to the earth, they deregulate as much as they care to. And if they see a way to profit from the vulnerability of the old, the disadvantaged, the poor, the young, or the sick, then they are given the right to do so.

Through their control of politicians, political parties and corporate media, they do everything necessary to make sure that political candidates who resist them get nowhere near the levers of power. It is not by accident that they have created Trump, protected Clinton, and sidelined Sanders.

Advertisement

To those who say there is no political revolution, I say that if it's true then that's very sad -- because there should be. What's happening in the United States today is a corporate coup of the U.S. government, and anyone who isn't grieving that must not be looking.

At what point do you think this expression of collective ego, this newest formation of an ancient aristocratic idea, is going to wake up and say, "Okay, you can have your country back"? They will never say this. In the words of Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

And if we do not wake up soon, the window will close on our capacity to say to them, "Actually, we thought about it, and we prefer that our government be of the people, by the people and for the people, after all."

No person or party leadership whose politics seek to compromise with the new totalitarianism will do anything more than soften the edges of this controlling force, improve its PR, and take some of the extreme sting out of the pain it causes. Still, in that case, the pain will only get worse. And ultimately one of the greatest experiments in human possibility will have slipped through our fingers -- for the simple reason than that we allowed it to. Because they put us to sleep. Because they numbed our outrage. Because they sedated our conscience.

Advertisement
MADRID, SPAIN - 2016/02/18: Taxi drivers protesting against liberalization of their sector and against services like uber and cabify in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Marcos del Mazo/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The Spanish elections in December provided proof, if anyone needed it, that the fight over the economic and social future of Europe is far from over.

For the first time in three decades, each of two major parties that had ruled Spain since its incomplete transition to democracy was unable to form a governing coalition. The incumbent right-wing Popular Party (PP)--with roots in Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship--remained the largest party in the parliament but saw its representation shrink by a third. The center-left Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), which had lost its majority to the PP in 2011 due to its support for austerity, fared even worse. Their defecting voters went mostly to Podemos, a new left party, less than two years old, which grew out of the mass protests against austerity. Podemos surprised pollsters and most of the media by winning 20.7 percent of the vote, just 1.3 points behind the PSOE. The PP won 28.7 percent, and a new party called Ciudadanos (Citizens), which some have called "the Podemos of the right," got 13.9 percent.

Advertisement

The political upheaval that broke up the two-party system in Spain is part of an ongoing process that has toppled more than 20 European governments since the world recession of 2009. GDP for the 19 countries of the eurozone is estimated to have grown by 1.5 percent in 2015; some may have thought that such feeble economic recovery and the capitulation of the Greek government to European demands last July marked the beginning of a solution to Europe's economic malaise. This would still leave a host of other problems, both real and exaggerated: the migration crisis, terrorism, the UK's proposed referendum on EU membership. But, the economic problem is at the core of most of the others, and it can make them considerably more difficult to resolve. The influx of even a million immigrants into a European population of more than 503 million would not be as politically volatile if the region were not also facing long-term mass unemployment and economic insecurity.

The economic problem faces two major obstacles to its resolution: first, the loss of national economic sovereignty and democracy, which would allow, and in some cases force, governments to change course in the face of long-term economic failure, and second, the false narratives through which the European economy is generally presented to the public, and thereby widely misunderstood.

Advertisement
From my blog Soy/Somos, a series that celebrates the multiple identities of Latinos in the USA.You can read the introductory post here: Soy/Somos: We Are Many.

Milly looks wired. She has been a social worker now for twenty-five years and has just begun working with detectives on crisis intervention, a recent promotion. She's doing me un favorcito. Parsing her time after work and before her son and her husband and dinner and all the rest.

We've been friends for a short time, though Milly's younger than me. She has a sturdy build--compared to my bird-boned frame. An expressive face, almond eyes, and golden skin. A mescolanza of Spanish and other European ancestors, and, she tells me, "some African too." Milly laughs. We are sitting at the local Panera's. It's four o'clock and she has just finished work with the County.

Advertisement

"I was one of seven children. Grew up in Cali in the Cordillera Occidental in the West of Colombia. Came to this country when I was twenty-two. I knew just a little bit of school English. My sister who married an American was the first. Then she sent for my mother and dad, and then my mother sponsored me.

That was a huge move. You were on the way to university at the time. Can you tell me how it happened?

"My parents were of modest means but abiertos al progreso. It was not unheard of to leave home to better yourself. We did think that all Americanos were on drugs. And that worried me. We got this from the movies. In the United States my father got work building roads. He was a laborer with a government job, which meant he got a pension. Papi was the breadwinner. Our mother was ruler of the household.

"My mother said to me, 'All we can leave you is an education.' She was my inspiration. 'Even if we don't have enough money, we can leave you with that.' This was painted in my brain from young.

Advertisement

"In my work today I see so many cases where the family structure is broken. You only need one caring person to be an example. When I was young I felt like a millionaire. I had family."

*

"When I came to the US I enrolled at the local community college and made myself a fool. I couldn't sleep at night with anxiety before presenting work in class. I was given a C+ out of compassion. For the two-year Associate's degree, it took me four and a half years while working at a printing shop cutting business cards.

"After that I got my bachelor's degree, and with a good GPA I got into a graduate program and completed my degree in social work. In the meantime, I was developing connections by working at a hospital where I could get medical benefits. I applied for the job six times before someone took pity."

Milly mentions that she walked around at all times with a bilingual dictionary in her hands. It wasn't pity, I don't think. Someone recognized the young woman's determination.



"In our Hispanic culture we have a moral obligation--once you start working--to contribute. I made $150 a week and contributed $100 to my parents' rent."

Advertisement

Your mother gave you strength, and I suspect that you had a strong will of your own. Were there differences in your Colombian culture that caused you problems here? You and I have spoken a little about this and that what is expected of women above all is to be supportive of family. The value of self actualization so prevalent in American culture today is not so true of Hispanic culture, especially as regards women.

"That is true, but it's also true of almost any immigrant culture. And, yes, it's a challenge to figure out where you belong."

But then, you've gone where your own heart has taken you. Tell me a little about your work.

"Well, I've worked with developmentally disabled persons. Mental retardation. Autism. Physical disabilities like cerebral palsy. For example, I was responsible for a child with cerebral palsy, and I advocated for her with doctors and hospitals. Eventually she did pass away, and I helped her mother find ways to pay for the simple funeral that she couldn't afford.

"I've worked as a clinician with the homeless, and then the clinics closed. I've worked with prisoners in prisons, and, when released, connecting them with services they need and following through. It is never a one-shot deal. You need to follow-up so bad things don't happen again. I worked with a parole officer, and I learned a lot. Que les puedo dar, Marlena, si no un rayo de esperanza?" Millie's face softens.
Lady Gaga performs at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

As an Oscar voter for more than 25 years, I'm a member of the Public Relations branch, which means I have promoted films for studios both large and small. I love the DVD screeners that magically arrive "for your consideration" by mail starting in November -- and I look forward to nominations and final ballots each winter.

But almost five years ago, I stepped away from all the donuts you can eat on a movie set -- and signed on to a new adventure at Futures Without Violence, a national health and social justice nonprofit working to end violence against women and children.

Advertisement

As Director of Communications, I often wonder what it is that I can write or say that will disrupt the violence that women and children are exposed to in every corner of the world? How can we improve the culture of a college campus so that rape and sexual assault will not be tolerated? How can we work with lawmakers to advocate for policies that protect battered women?

Based on Sunday night's Academy Awards, consider this option: Make a movie. Take the issue of violence against women and children -- one that has historically been in the shadows -- and put it front and center. Engage. Discuss. Suggest solutions. On Sunday night, I was pleased to see four different projects use the powerful medium of film to take a courageous stand on the issue of violence against women and children.

Spotlight, Winner of Best Picture of the Year, is an expose of a sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Boston. Hours before the Oscars, actor Mark Ruffalo participated in a protest. "I'm here to stand with the survivors and the victims," he said.

Vice President Joe Biden introduced Lady Gaga's anthem "Till it Happens to You," from the groundbreaking documentary, The Hunting Ground, but it was particularly powerful to see her surrounded by victims and survivors of college sexual assault on stage.



Brie Larson won Best Actress as a young mother in Room who is held captive and assaulted for years before finding a way to freedom for herself and her young son. And she hugged every college sexual assault victim as they exited the stage after Lady Gaga's performance.

Advertisement

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won Best Documentary Short for her film about honor killings in Pakistan, Girl In The River: The Price Of Forgiveness. The young female director has met with the Pakistani Prime Minster and is hopeful that Pakistan will pass a law that makes honor killings a crime against the state.

I'm so pleased to see these films elevating the issue of gender-based violence. It's a topic that can't be silenced and and I hope we see more moments like these in the future.

___________________
"When I learned about one of the Environmental Protection Agency's coal ash waste risk assessments stating that living near a wet coal ash pond was significantly more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, my heart just dropped. It is incomprehensible that in 2016 corporate companies are still allowed to expose the public, especially our children, to such health risks."

That's an excerpt from testimony by Dulce Ortiz, who lives in Waukegan, Illinois, a loving, tight-knit community on the shores of Lake Michigan that is home to an aging coal plant and other industrial sites. Dulce was recently invited to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is holding hearings as part of its investigation into how the Environmental Protection Agency has handled environmental justice discrimination claims filed under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act. Dulce spoke at a hearing in Washington, D.C. that focused on coal ash, the toxic waste left produced when coal is burned in power plants, which includes dangerous substances like mercury, arsenic, and cadmium.

Like many coal plants, NRG's coal plant in Waukegan dumped its coal ash on site for decades, right next to Lake Michigan. . The NRG coal ash ponds in Waukegan, and each of its coal ash ponds in Illinois, continue to contribute to on-going groundwater contamination. In December 2014, the EPA finally put the first-ever federal standards for coal ash disposal in place. Unfortunately, while the standards aren't strong enough to protect Dulce's community, they are still under attack in Congress.

Here's how Dulce describes the problem:

Advertisement

"The contents of the final U.S. EPA coal ash rule were disappointing. Coal ash is a hazardous waste and should be regulated as such. Vulnerable communities like Waukegan suffer the most when protections aren't strong enough. The final rule leaves enforcement largely up to citizens. Many of the residents in my community are immigrants, work multiple low-paying jobs, and often lack a college education. Looking through technical documents on NRG's coal ash website, which is difficult to find, is not something most of the people in my community have the time, expertise, or even awareness to do. This is the definition of environmental injustice."

Inadequate as these protections may be, they do require all owners and operators of landfills and coal ash ponds to monitor groundwater to ensure that leaks are immediately detected and that contamination is addressed at once. Also, every state has the same level of protection for drinking water under the rule, including stringent groundwater monitoring and cleanup requirements when contamination by coal ash occurs. And the EPA requires public posting of data on groundwater monitoring data, cleanup plans, inspections, structural stability assessments and dust control plans.

So as communities like Waukegan work to navigate these inadequate new protections, Congress is busily trying to strike them down. The House already passed a bill last summer called H.R.1734 - Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act of 2015. The bill from Congressman David McKinley of West Virginia rolls back most of the protections found in the new rule. The week, the Senate will start to consider S. 244 - the "Improving Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act of 2016" introduced by senators John Hoeven (R-ND) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), which threatens health, safety, and the environment while relieving owners of coal-fired power plants of their responsibility to safely dispose of the toxic coal ash they generate. Both bills greatly increase the potential for harm to communities by removing critical and long-awaited safeguards established by the new coal ash rule.

Advertisement

Meanwhile, community leaders like Dulce will keep fighting for their families and communities. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' State Advisory Committee will hold additional civil rights hearings on coal ash and environmental justice in Illinois later this month and community leaders will be there, seeking justice.

I'll leave Dulce with the final word, to describe what's at stake, and what's possible:
young beautiful friends tourist couple visiting Spain in holidays exchange students and taking selfie stick picture together in town happy on sunny day in travel and vacation concept

Tablet sales are down and have been steadily declining for the last few years. While this has implications for tech companies and investors, it also has a solid benefit for travelers: fewer tourists using their tablets as cameras.



The tablet-as-camera phenomenon has been the bane of travelers, concertgoers, and conference attendees for a while now, and it seems the tide is finally turning in our favor. The tablet-camera annoyingly blocks the view of anyone standing behind the holder, and has the added effect of making the iPad shutterbug look like a tremendous dork.



Advertisement

Unfortunately, while we may have turned the corner on tablets, we're still waging an uphill struggle against selfie sticks. Not only is this obnoxious scourge distracting, destructive, arguably deadly, and antisocial - but it's spreading. They've long since infiltrated the Americas, invading U.S. landmarks from Times Square to the Golden Gate.



Additionally, the time-honored practice of asking a fellow wanderer or friendly local whether they'd mind taking your photo is ending - replaced by hordes of zombie tourists entranced by the devices attached to these wicked wands. We must cease this madness, we must break this spell.



But we do have allies in this fight. High profile institutions like New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, London's National Gallery, Washington's Smithsonian, Disney theme parks, the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, and the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca have all banned these "shame shafts."



Let us hereby declare that we will stop using mobile devices as a primary means of picture taking while traveling. Let us resolve that, if we already have enough money to travel abroad and own a smartphone, it's probably not too great an expense to also buy an actual camera. This includes simple point-and-shoot models, which are far more powerful and versatile than the thingy built into the corner of your phone. We can do better than that.



Advertisement

Future generations must learn that great moments are not best preserved by a plastic rectangle at the end of a metal pole. They should learn that true cameras are indispensable tools for capturing an image the way you see it in your mind: perfectly framed, perfectly focused, and perfectly lit. And if they want a picture of themselves, they should feel at ease and confident enough to ask someone nearby to do it for them. This is how you break down cultural barriers and make new friends. Because while this is undoubtedly cute...


Imagine waking up after a full night of sleep, wrapped in your partner's arms. He wakes up slowly, and he smiles in your direction once he opens his eyes. You smile back. You kiss each other. There's a moment of pause as you look into each other's eyes, smiling back at one another.

Between the both of you, it's going to be an amazing day full of laughter, joy, passion and energy.

You love yourself. He loves you. You love him.

We all have the desire to love and receive love. As human beings, we're wired to be with other people. All we want is to share our joy with another human being who we are attracted to socially, physically, and spiritually. We desire intimacy with our closest relationships, especially our partners.

Somewhere along the line, we realized that we express our love different than the majority of the population. We felt different and alone. We wanted things to be different, but we felt stuck and didn't know how to change.

Advertisement

When we see joyful partnerships, straight and gay, we crave what they have: security, safety, love, and connection. We want to wake up in the same bed next to a partner day after day. Eat meals. Go to the movies together. Travel to Italy, Spain, and Greece for three months over a summer break. Share laughs, tears, hardships and victories together. We want to be close and in love.

When we experience homophobia, this dream appears far from reality. People say "the gays are going to die and go to hell," and then we feel like we don't belong. When some gay kids come out to their parents, they are kicked out of the house and forced to figure things out on their own. These experiences made us fearful and afraid. We may have hid it for 20, 40, or 60 years. Maybe our entire lives. We conceal our true identity.

I denied my sexual orientation until I was 18 years old.

One day during my freshman year of college, I walked into ballet class early to warm up. I didn't sleep well the previous night. I was tired and depressed. I put on a smile because I knew that's what was expected of me. I wanted to be a performer and I wanted to be on Broadway, so I stuffed away my true feelings of fear and loneliness.

While I was stretching, I peered over at another male dancer in the studio. In that moment, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought: I'm gay and there's nothing I can do about it. Fuck.. I hadn't told anyone at this point.

Advertisement

Ten minutes into class, I told my dance professor I felt under the weather. I ran out of the class and back to my dorm room where I burst into tears. I knew I was living a lie and it was the worst feeling in the world. It was heavy, dark and frightening.

I asked myself three questions:

If I come out, what would become of me? If I come out, how will people treat me? If I come out, will I ever fall in love?

I asked these questions seven years ago.

Now I'm an out gay man. I love myself, I love men, and I'm no longer afraid to tell people who I am, what I want, and why I want it. I declare my truth each and every single day and it's the BEST affirmation in the world. I'm courageous and confident in myself.

What did I do?

I learned to love myself. I learned positive psychology, mindfulness, self-care, and self-love. I learned that life is wasted when we feel bad for ourselves. I woke up and realized that life is not worth living if I'm going to live by other people's standards. I decide to live by my own standards and follow my heart. I make this choice every single day. With consistency and discipline.

Guess what?

You can do the same. You can live from a place of confidence and courage. You can be bold and express yourself to other people without any shame and fear.

Advertisement

Power plants do not have energy, they generate it. When it comes to confidence and courage, we can generate it if we don't have it. When we do this, we declare who we are with self-love and pride.

All you have to do is decide. So what's your choice?
Over the last five years, many new non-profits (and for-profits with consciences) have formed to answer the 75-85% unemployment rate endured by adults on the autism spectrum. Furthermore, these fledgling autism organizations--addressing only our employment issues--are not "trees falling in the forest" that make no noise: This new breed of micro-charity is getting the positive media attention it deserves.

But realistically...can they cause a dent to that 75-85% number? Is it fair to instill such optimism in roughly 2.5 million of out-of-work spectrumites,* and their families...if the greater truth states that these orgs will not be able to enact anywhere near the kind of improvement they might be unwillingly promising?

***

For starters, this column should not read as criticism of those orgs. The Non-Pareil Institute, UltraTesting, Specialisterne USA, (my old stomping grounds of) ASTEP, Aspiritech, and many others were founded, and are run by people who are trying to create entities that first and foremost benefit others. Secondly, they are not directly trying to create a false "we'll save the world" expectancy that others may have for them--and that this article hopes to address. Largely responsible for this empty hype is both a desperate autism community, and the overly-optimistic media portrayals these orgs have enjoyed.

Advertisement

The issues that plague our autism employment universe--or more pointedly, our warped expectations for them--are numerous, and larger than we want them to be; but to start with six...

1. Larger corporations are not the long-term answer we think they are. Yet four of the five above-mentioned organizations are almost entirely focused on convincing large businesses to give our spectrum folks a chance at employment--three of them are even entrenched in only one vocational option (software testing).

Only two of these orgs have probably had any dealings with small businesses, and yet almost all of the reputable labor forecasts predict that universal job growth will not come from Fortune 1000 companies at all. Prognosticators generally agree that over the course of the next ten years it will be small business growth that promises salvation, not large business. And if you're looking for a particular field to grow by leaps and bounds, look to Health Care.

Furthermore, while there are many spectrum individuals for whom the uniformity of corporate life is a perfect fit, no one wants to admit that corporate culture is often directly incompatible with what makes autism...autism. What we refer to as "professionalism" is a composite of behavioral standards. So if autism is defined and diagnosed by noticeable behavioral differences, than this presents a relationship with Corporate America as doomed to fail for the majority of our folks. If a 30-minute job interview will be tough, maybe we should reconsider whether a 30-year career at that company is realistic.

Advertisement

Overall culture change (slightly a la Silicon Valley), an unlikely wager, is our only chance for turning larger corporations into a source for hope. And yet the early sign is that this is not on corporate America's radar. Despite the overwhelming evidence that more diverse companies outperform their competitors, most Fortune 500 companies' Diversity & Inclusion strategies are stuck on gender and race (though some were dragged kicking and screaming to accommodate the LGBTQ community). Disabilities, especially non-apparent disabilities, have yet to have their day in corporate court. Until this changes, we will always be doing 90% of the assimilating needed to make the relationship work.

2. Until the neurotypicals get their own unemployment numbers down, don't expect them to be so generous with us. We made progress by turning the summer 2014 unemployment number of 6.0% into the current 4.9%; but no statistics lie like employment statistics lie, and we as spectrum folk are not the only ones in dire unemployment straits.

For starters, unemployment statistics do not take into account those whose joblessness has caused them to stop looking for work. Mostly "long-term unemployed" (i.e. have been out of work for 27 weeks or more), these unfortunates are joined by another category of worker that the U.S. Department of Labor does not include in their tallies--the employable disabled who have given up on the job search and filed for disability. Add all these people to the sums and the unemployment rate is no 4.9%.

Lastly, when job statistics improve, presumably through job creation, no one takes much of a look at what those new jobs pay. More often than not, no one is going to be able to come close to supporting a family on the salaries that most of these new jobs contain. Furthermore, most do not provide heath insurance and many are not even full-time positions.

One could go on and on in citing factors herein: the global economy, the loss of job protections/unions, technologies that replace humans, colleges that do not change with the tide in preparing us for the new marketplace...etc.

Advertisement

3. Those in the middle of the spectrum are often caught in educational inclusion programs for their schooling, and there is much that they could be doing in those teenage years to better prepare them for life outside of school. Instead of being forced to perform and be tested at an academic level that is equal to their peers (often a very unfair expectation enacted under the guise of equality--when in reality it's just a cost-cutting maneuver), these folks could be spending their last two years of school training to be plumbers, electricians, welders...etc. In today's economic climate, spectrumites who study those skilled trades might outearn most of their college-educated, neurotypical peers (Last fall, Temple Grandin and I wrote an article on this very notion).

4. We need to internally resolve our love/mostlyhate relationship with "sheltered workshops." For those not in the know, sheltered workshops are jobs that our more challenged brothers and sisters engage in, that legally pays them subminimum wages. These often unpopular but sometimes "that's all there is" programs are usually organized by residential facilities or state-funded service agencies, wherein individuals work limited hours at tasks that won't endanger their self-esteem, yet can still be thought of as productive to a hiring company (stuffing envelopes, tying ribbons...etc.). Too often advocates on our (spectrum) side cry for the elimination of such workshops when there are no employment alternatives in the particular region (as in my new state of Wisconsin). Therefore, when we are successful in shutting a workshop down we would sentence these folks to, admittedly, being more out into the community, but also back to watching TV all day on their parents' or housing agencies' couches. The problem with sheltered workshops is generally not in their design, but that they are too often illegally implemented.

A large portion of any vocational programs' success rates--non-profit, or government funded--should be measured by their ability to recruit local businesses to hire our folks. Historically, sheltered workshops have been a too-easy way out of the hard work that such recruitment demands. But if there's nothing else around....

5. The programs and services currently in play through state agencies are pitiful when compared--in both design and implementation--to the work of the aforementioned non-profits. We need a United States Department of Labor to shift funding into these organizations, and away from disillusioned agencies that consistently violate health and safety protocols. Granted, when examined, these orgs that I herald are helping a miniscule portion of our population (numbers that I would do the orgs a disservice to research and report) when compared to the true need. But what could they do if, like most non-profits, they didn't need to focus 60% of their efforts on fundraising just to stay afloat, and could instead grow?

Advertisement

6. Approaches to unemployment must change. For most unemployed folks, the climate is vastly different than when they first entered the workforce. The sad fantasy/assumption that they can obtain something close to the same job, and at the same salary, as existed in the job they lost...is simply akin to a gambling addict staying at the slot machine to get his/her money back. Career changes, going back to school, developing new (sometimes self-taught) vocations, and entrepreneurship...are nowhere near as much on our "unemployment radar" as they need to be. The rut of only sending resumes to total strangers must end.

* Think of a 1 in 68 prevalence number in a nation of 318.9 million, then take the working ages between 18-69 and then enact the 75-85% unemployment number...

If, as Bernie Sanders tells us, the richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the poorest 3 billion, than in the grand scheme of things we are only beginning to get others to want to change, not to mention change. It seems that everyone--except the businesses in power--is saying that the time is now to solve the autism employment crisis.

***

Finally, my apologies for the long absence. The end of a two-book writing period (wherein I missed not one, but three deadlines) has passed. Not only am I "back"--whatever that means--but the first of the two new books (which correlates to #6 above), Unemployed on the Autism Spectrum, is now out. Many thanks to the bevy of love-filled testimonials/advance reviews I got, and that were written by folks that truly matter.

_________________
In a recent town hall in South Carolina hosted by CNN, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders was asked about his core beliefs, specifically about religion. Anyone with passing knowledge about Senator Sanders knows his Jewish heritage. He identifies as a secular Jew rather than a religious adherent.

As hard as it may be, try for a moment to put aside the fact that Sanders is a politician and a serious candidate for president. His response to the question about his core beliefs about religion are pertinent for our society and our communities.

Sanders' core belief is "togetherness." He quickly narrows down that the major religions of the world -- Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism -- adhere love and care for self and other. While this may sound rudimentary or pluralistic, Sanders is not incorrect. When I teach courses on world religions, I often ask my students at the end of the semester what similarities they find between the different religions. The answer to which students always arrive is love.

Advertisement

We have allowed religious dialogue, whether it be inter-religious or intra-religious, to split and fracture communities rather than foster a community of love and equality. Our culture thrives on polarizing dialogue between left and right, conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat. Yet when it comes down to what we all believe, religious or irreligious, we love one another.
In the recent mass shooting that took place in San Bernardino, California, where one of the killers was the mother of a 6 month old baby, it really left me wondering how we perceive killers who are also mothers in our society.

Are killer-mothers held to a different standard by society? Did the fact that a mother could be involved in a mass killing make it all the more horrific? And if so, why?

In the wild, animal mothers kill all the time, but that's primarily for food or in defense of their babies. In the human world, mothers kill as well, but not for reasons that are as clear cut.

Advertisement

Some mothers kill their own children, such as in the case of Andrea Yates, or Casey Anthony. The reasons for this are still unfathomable to many of us.

The Casey Anthony case was dubbed, "The social media trial of the century" because she was pretty much convicted in the court of public opinion via social media sites and television talk shows, regardless of the actual trial.

Much of the talk had to do with the fact that Casey Anthony was a mother. How could a mother do something so brutal - especially to her own child? And even more excruciating for us to understand was - why?

Is there a difference between mothers who kill their own children, and mothers who kill random, innocent people? Per CNN, the mother involved in the San Bernardino shooting, Tashfeen Malik, was petite in stature, timid, and an unlikely killer by all outside appearances.

Advertisement

To imagine that this woman had given birth to and cared for a baby 6 months before she shot multiple innocent people seems unbelievable. But, if Tashfeen Malik had any murderous inclinations before she got pregnant, can we then assume that the act of having a child does not actually change a woman in the way we all like to imagine it does?

There's a popular belief that becoming a mother changes a woman, and that an ordinary woman can be transformed into a selfless nurturer after having a child.

There is no doubt now that Tashfeen Malik is a killer, but the fact that she left her child with a grandmother while she went out and murdered people is another noteworthy detail. She obviously thought ahead to the point of giving her child to someone she knew would take care of it.

Therein lies the proof of premeditation for Tashfeen's intentions on that horrible day. But, she chose to spare her child. She also chose to leave her child motherless, as well as completely destroying the many families of the people she killed that day.

The conclusion I come to here is that, in fact, motherhood does not change all women. According to reports, this mass killing spree plan was in the works for quite some time, so it's obvious that being pregnant, giving birth, and holding a child in her arms did nothing to sway this particular killer.

Advertisement

This leads to the obvious question, which is why would you bring a child into the world, knowing at some point you were going to commit murder and probably die yourself?

Did Tashfeen Malik love her child? Did she love herself? What happens to her child now, growing up in the shadow of two murderous parents who left their only child behind?

Some will say the child is no doubt better off without these two as parents. I doubt many people think this is the child's fault in any way. Along with all the shooting victims, their families, and friends, Tashfeen's child has also been victimized.

Of course the father in this tragic situation is just as responsible for abandoning his child as the mother is, but in our society, the way in which we define motherhood doesn't leave room for mothers who kill or abandon their children. It's beyond our collective comprehension.

I post a lot about motherhood. And although I don't believe motherhood necessarily changes a woman's mentality, I know it's capable of changing her physically and emotionally.

Advertisement

I realize I may never get answers to all of my questions here.

What I do know for sure is that we can see this as an example that people are never quite what they seem, and the state of being a mother doesn't necessarily make a woman more kind, compassionate, or less selfish.

As a mother, and as a human being, I will hold on to my compassion and children a little tighter from now on.

By Michelle Zunter (Boklage)

Originally a Vancouver Island native, Michelle now resides in California. Besides writing and blogging, Michelle is a mom, stepmom, and wife.

Michelle's writing and blogs discuss a wide variety of topics including domestic abuse, adultery, relationships, parenting, step-parenting, beauty & health.

Catch more of Michelle at The Pondering Nook website and Facebook page, as well as her many featured articles at HubPages.
Wearing expensive suits, carrying the latest gadgets or vacationing in Monte Carlo won't make you the most sought after person in room. Even my friend James Bond would agree--if we could ever stop playing phone tag--that it's not his impeccable Tom Ford suits but an inner je ne sais quoi that makes others swoon with admiration.

Maybe James Bond isn't your icon of cool. From Atlanta's hip-hop culture to Australia's surfing culture what's considered cool is both varied and beautifully individualized. Whether you live in Soho or Tokyo, the key to cracking the code on coolness is to realize that true coolness comes from knowing yourself.

How can you tap into the source of your inner awesomeness and discover your best self?

Be Authentic

When my dear friend Dr. Suess and I were vacationing in Katroo, he shared something that will always stay with me, "Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!"

Advertisement

Authenticity arises from knowing yourself. The journey to self-knowledge begins with the question: Who am I? Sit by yourself and ask yourself this question. Keep asking yourself this question and allow all the labels and identifications that come up--profession, gender, race, religion, nationality, personality traits and the roles we play--to fall away. Let the question lead you to silence.

It's hard to exude authenticity when your sense of self comes from other's opinions and labels about you. Questions such as Who am I? and What is my purpose on this planet? are tools for introspection. Once glimpses of clarity dawn, our presences radiates with transparency, integrity and purpose.

Be Confident but Humble

There are voluminous tomes...okay, thousands of blogs...about increasing your confidence. But even a 10-year-old can spot someone feigning confidence or bravado. True confidence comes from a space of contentment. It comes from a trust that you'll always get what you need when you need it.

Before departing this world, Ernest Hemingway shared this tidbit of insight with me, "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self." Confident people are sometimes arrogant, while humble people sometimes lack self-assurance. Confidence combined with humility is a rare and wondrous quality.

Advertisement

Be Happy for Others

When you find your happiness in the joy of others, your happiness never diminishes. When you play a game with your kid, you're happy whether you've won or they've won. What if we extended this attitude to our friends? You'll be the first person people call to share good news, because they know you'll share their enthusiasm. Research on altruism indicates that giving of yourself not only increases happiness but is an instinctive human trait.



Be Inclusive

As Mark Twain mused on our last riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness." No one likes to feel excluded, yet we sometimes forget this when we interact with others. When you include everyone in your circle, your network of friends becomes unlimited. Make everyone feel part of you, and you'll be the most popular person everywhere you go.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has magnified the ancient Indian principle of vasudhaiva kutumbakam or one world family to truly global proportions. On March 11-13, 2016, his Art of Living Foundation is hosting the World Cultural Festival in New Delhi. The celebration features 35,973 artistes showcasing music and dance from around the world on a seven-acre stage. An audience of 3.5 million people is expected to attend the event.

Sri Sri believes, "The knowledge of the oneness that we share with the world can bring people out of their narrow mindsets. A bigger vision of life can kindle human values, enabling one to see diversity in oneness and unity in diversity."

Be Meditative

It's hard to project awesomeness, when the vibe you're actually sending out is stressed and agitated. Research on meditative breathing techniques suggests that it not only alleviates everyday stress but also post-traumatic stress and stress-related medical illnesses. Aside from relieving stress, meditation also improves your perception so you don't sweat the small stuff.

Advertisement

While iconic locations such as Ocho Rios and Lake Picchola may be on your bucket list, your daily meditation is a vacation you can take everyday. Then you'll find that every day is a vacation and celebration.
Donald Trump has broken the mold in many ways with his presidential campaign, with plenty of room for argument about whether that is a good or bad development. (In fact, the style of argument is one of the political molds he has broken... arguably.) However, it appears that his claim of breaking the political chains through self-funding his campaign does not hold up to scrutiny.

A study of his Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings shows that a significant amount of Trump's campaign funds originates from donors, contrary to his claims. Trump has made repeated assertions that his campaign is self-funded, similar to his quote at a Las Vegas rally in October that "I'm self-funding my own campaign" and "I don't think I get enough credit for self-funding."

His self-funding line was repeated as recently as in the scrappy and contentious GOP presidential debate held in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 13 (ironically held at the Peace Center). FactCheck.org disputes Trump's claims, pointing out that his 2015 year-end filing in January shows $19.4 million in campaign income, with $12.6 million of that coming in via candidate loans. Thus, approximately one-third of his campaign funds have arrived via donations. The year-end filing shows $1.6 million in itemized individual contributions and another $4.9 million in unitemized ones.

Advertisement

It is also important to remember that as the bulk of Trump's campaign contribution is in loans instead of donations, he can potentially get that back. There is no rule that says his spending has to come specifically from either donations or his own funds. As of the end of 2015, the campaign had spent $12.4 million, meaning that a bit over half of the expenses to date could be covered by contributions from donors.

98% of those disbursements were for operating expenses, while the remainder was covered by individual refunds (for example, refunding individual or in-kind donations that surpass legal limits), or transfers to authorized committees (generally to state committees to cover ballot access fees in their states). Those transfers for ballot fees were slightly over $173,000 as of the end of 2015.

The most recent FEC filing covering January spending continues that trend. Contributions through January 31 outside of loans total almost $7.75 million, with $1.87 million in itemized and $5.63 million in unitemized donations. The campaign raked in close to $1 million in January alone, and with the Republican field finally starting to narrow (five as of this writing thanks to Jeb Bush's departure from the race), it's entirely possible that an even greater percentage of available donations will come Trump's way.

Spending ramped up dramatically over January to almost $11.5 million, almost doubling the total to date and pushing expenditures up to $24 million. As we head into the all-important Super Tuesday primaries on March 1, expect Trump's spending to increase even more. The self-funded component of his campaign will likely take on a greater percentage of his campaign expenses, but it is still misleading to call his campaign completely self-funded.

Advertisement

As the winner of nearly all of the Republican Presidential battles so far, there is no doubt Trump is winning in a way few people have envisioned. But according to his last filing, the billionaire has contributed only $250,318 to his campaign. Does that sound "Huuuuuge" to you? Unless Trump intends to refund all donations and pay all his campaign expenses out of loans (a scenario beyond unlikely), his campaign does indeed depend on donor support.

This article was provided by our partners at moneytips.com
TEHRAN, IRAN - FEBRUARY 26: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei casts the first ballot in key elections for Parliament and the Assembly of Experts in Tehran, Iran, on February 26, 2016. Mr. Khamenei called on Iranians to vote en masse to 'ruin the hopes of the enemies.' The vote is essentially a referendum on the agenda of centrist President Hassan Rouhani, whose allies are trying to ease the grip of hardliners over many levers of government. (Photo by Scott Peterson/Getty Images)

Two important nationwide elections were held in Iran on Feb. 26. One was for the Majlis, or parliament, while the second was for the Assembly of Experts, a constitutional body that appoints the supreme leader and can, at least theoretically, fire him. To be sure, the elections were neither democratic nor fair. Thousands of candidates were disqualified from running by the Guardian Council, another constitutional body that vets all candidates for elections. The elections are also not fair because the hard-liners, who control many important national organs, use the nation's resources for their own campaign and propaganda.

The Majlis has 290 seats, five of which are reserved for religious minorities such as Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians. Given that the vast majority of their candidates for the Majlis were disqualified by the Guardian Council, with the excuse that they supported the 2009-2011 Green Movement, the reformists put together a coalition with the supporters of President Hassan Rouhani and moderate conservatives. A similar coalition was formed for the Assembly of Experts' elections that included supporters of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has allied himself with the moderates and reformists, and called on the people to vote in order to block hard-line candidates. The list became known as the "Rafsanjani list."

Advertisement

The results have been a resounding defeat for the hard-liners. The greater Tehran district, the political heart of the nation, elects 30 representatives to the Majlis, and according to the final results by the Interior Ministry, all the top 30 vote-getters that have been elected belong to the list supported by the reformist-moderate coalition.

The results have been a resounding defeat for the hard-liners.

About a month before the elections, Iranian investigative journalist and human rights advocate Akbar Ganji published an article in which he suggested that people should try to block the election to the assembly of three powerful and reactionary ayatollahs who have always opposed democratic and fair elections. He proposed the acronym "JYM" for the trio, namely, Ahmad Jannati, secretary-general of the Guardian Council, Mohammad Yazdi, former judiciary chief and current chairman of the assembly, and Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, the ultra-conservative cleric who is often considered as the spiritual leader of the vigilante groups that attack peaceful gatherings of the opposition. Ganji's proposal quickly gathered steam. His original article, followed by several more, were widely circulated, taken up by the reformists and moderates in Iran and played an important role in organizing people to reject the hard-liner candidates. I also published two articles in which I strongly supported Ganji's suggestion and explained why it will have a positive effect on the elections. Several other Iranian exiles did the same.

The Tehran province elects 16 representatives to the assembly. The coalition of the reformists and moderates, together with Rafsanjani, announced a list of 16 candidates that it supported in which the JYM triangle was absent. Results of the elections indicate that 15 of 16 candidates of the Rafsanjani list have defeated their rivals, with Rafsanjani and Rouhani receiving some of the highest numbers of votes. The only exception to the list is apparently Jannati, who is 16th in the list of top vote-getters. Many credible sources within Iran have reported that Jannati has also been defeated, but the Interior Ministry has not published the true results. There were, it seems, behind-the-scenes maneuverings to manipulate the vote so Jannati can be "elected." Since the votes were counted by the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by President Rouhani, this seemed unlikely, but apparently it was forced to include him as the last person elected from Tehran province.

Advertisement

The call to reject the JYM triangles had deeply angered the hard-liners and Khamenei. He was forced to publicly defend the trio. Many hard-liners also claimed that rejection of the trio had been instigated by the BBC, and dubbed the Rafsanjani list the "British list" that would be voted for only by the supporters and agents of the British government.

Thus, accepting the defeat of the trio will be deeply embarrassing for the hard-liners because the people have seemingly voted for the list of candidates that was supported by Rafsanjani and the reformist-moderate coalition -- a list that had also been declared by the hard-liners as one the BBC, a media entity of a foreign power, was in favor of.

President Hassan Rouhani waves to media after casting his vote for parliamentary and Experts Assembly elections in Tehran, Iran. (Iranian Presidency Office via AP, File)

What This Means for Iran's Future

The results will have important implications for Iran and the Middle East, as well as Iran's relations with the West. Domestically, the election of a moderate-reformist Majlis will give the Rouhani administration a freer hand to implement its program and try to open up the political space. Since August 2013, when the Rouhani administration took office, the Majlis hard-liners have repeatedly questioned his cabinet, summoning many of its members to the parliament for interrogation, impeached one minister and tried to impeach several others. A moderate Majlis will strengthen Rouhani's position regarding the release from house arrest of the leaders of the Green Movement, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard and former Speaker of the Majlis Mehdi Karroubi.

Advertisement

Rouhani also wants to expand commercial relations with the European Union and create a political and social atmosphere in Iran that is conducive to foreign investments in the country, as well as attracting foreign tourists to Iran that can generate billions of dollars in income for the nation. The hard-liners have opposed this, and have used the Majlis to block Rouhani's attempts.

In the Middle East, and particularly the war in Syria, the Rouhani administration is pursuing a more moderate policy. Specifically, Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have been trying to de-escalate the rising tension with Saudi Arabia. They took a moderate stance in the Vienna conference on peace in Syria, and have apparently convinced Khamenei to withdraw some of Iran's military forces from Syria, as acknowledged last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. This is in contrast to the harsh rhetoric uttered by the hard-liners against Saudi Arabia, and in particular by the high command of the Revolutionary Guards. Zarif has declared Iran's readiness to negotiate with Saudi Arabia, and it is clear that the war in Syria will not end unless the cessation of hostilities is supported by both Iran and Russia.

The results will have important implications for Iran and the Middle East, as well as Iran's relations with the West.

Likewise, Rouhani and Zarif want to improve relations with the United States. Zarif and Kerry have developed close working relations whose usefulness was recently demonstrated when 10 U.S. sailors were captured by the IRGC navy in the Persian Gulf, after they had strayed into Iran's territorial waters. After a few phone conversations between Kerry and Zarif, the sailors were released less than 24 hours after their arrest. Thus, a more moderate Majlis will be supportive of Rouhani's efforts in the foreign policy arena as well.

Advertisement

In the same manner, the election of a more moderate Assembly of Experts will have positive effects. It is widely believed that the next elected Assembly of Experts will elect Khamenei's successor. Khamenei is 76 years old. Persistent and years-old rumors about his health became more credible when he underwent prostate surgery in 2014. They became even more convincing when in a speech to the IRGC officer corps in September of 2015 Khamenei said, "Iran's enemies are waiting for a time when the nation and system fall asleep, for example in 10 years when I may not be here, to realize their objectives." Thus, the question of Khamenei's successor grows more relevant each year.

Election of a more moderate assembly will influence the selection of the next supreme leader and can possibly block the rise to power of some extremist potential successors, such as Mojtaba Khamenei, the judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani or Tehran Friday prayer imam Ahmad Khatami. A clear path for hope in the future has been opened up by these elections. The hard-liners that have isolated Iran and repressed its people are on the wane.

Also on WorldPost:


Photo courtesy of Pixabay

If you own a car and fill it up with gasoline on a semi-regular basis, you've probably noticed you're saving money at the gas pump. Oil prices have been plummeting for most of the year, hitting a low of less than $30 a barrel in early February. Cheap oil means cheap gas, and cheap gas means more money in your pocket. However, what are the repercussions of saving money on a tank of gas, and how long will this trend last?

After growing up in Texas, gas prices in California have always seemed obscenely high to me, since taxes on the commodity hike up the cost in the Golden State. I yearned for the lower prices I got back home, and when I came back to Texas for Christmas I sent my West Coast friends endless, obnoxious pictures of the gloriously cheap price per gallon advertised in glowing neon lettering by Chevron, Shell and Exxon. You could fill your tank for less than $2 a gallon in some places, but economic analysts warn us that while gas prices have been low for an extremely long time, it's not all fun and games, and it won't be this way forever.



Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

According to the Economist, high crude oil prices in the early 2000s made it easier for oil companies to invest in more complex drilling methods, such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. As supply increased over the last several years a surplus developed, resulting in lower prices and much higher levels of inventory crude oil, as reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA. In response, drillers have cut costs and increased productivity despite lower prices, while offshore drilling also increased, according to EIA data.

Advertisement

In the agency's most recent report, experts predicted the market would begin rebalancing in 2017, with an estimated 4.1 billion barrels a day being added to global oil supply by 2021. However, external factors have made it harder for officials to make concrete predictions about the industry.

Uncertainty about the economic status of foreign countries has contributed to the glut. In January, the United States lifted economic sanctions on Iran, changing trade relations between the countries and allowing Iran to increase production and exports. This change further increased the already overflowing supply. Economists also forecast lower growth and therefore lower demand for crude oil as a result of devalued emerging market currencies.

Earlier this month OPEC countries met to discuss further action. Instead of agreeing to slash output to raise prices, the countries, wary of having the bigger market share, have increased production. Certain countries, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, have struggled to come to an agreement regarding the target output.

Oil plays a major role in foreign policy decision-making. Crude oil export countries will face economic struggles as a result of these low oil prices, and economic tension historically leads to conflict in already unstable regions such as the Middle East and South America.

Advertisement

Low prices will also ultimately lead to less money spent on new production by companies. While the IEA expects demand to inch its way forward, it will grow, ultimately surpassing the eventually stagnating supply. We want oil prices to increase. Oil drives a major portion of the economy, and while low gas prices mean consumers are theoretically spending their income elsewhere, many are saving it.

Gasoline borders on being an inelastic resource. People need gas to fuel their cars to get where they are going, and they are going to buy it at the market price regardless of their financial situation. However, many of the commodities people would spend their savings at the pump on are luxuries, meaning that should I decide I don't need another pair of shoes I can choose to forgo them (unlike the tank of gas, which I would be stranded if I went without). Economists estimate that many people are saving the money they are not spending on gasoline, instead of injecting it back into the economy.

In the organization's report, IEA Executive Director Faith Birol said, "It is easy for consumers to be lulled into complacency by ample stocks and low prices today, but they should heed the writing on the wall: the historic investment cuts we are seeing raise the odds of unpleasant oil-security surprises in the not-too-distant-future."
EDITOR'S NOTE - Her reign in Hawai'i ended when U.S. Marines landed in Honolulu, the capital of the sovereign Kingdom of Hawai'i, in 1893. A small group of businessmen forced her abdication from the throne and later imprisoned her in a bedroom suite room in her former home, Iolani Palace. The new rulers of Hawai'i pushed to end the use of the Hawaiian language and extinguish native culture. But Queen Lili'uokalani's legacy of forgiveness and love remains strong and her spirit of 'aloha' survives.





Queen Lili'uokalani

Sep 2, 1838 - Nov 11, 1917

By JULIA FLYNN SILER

On November 11th, 1917, the last queen of Hawai'i lay dying in her four-poster bed. From the partly cracked window of her ground-floor bedroom, she could hear the sound of school children playing outside the rectory of St. Andrew's Cathedral in downtown Honolulu. The sweet-sour scent of a tamarind tree outside her window floated into her room, as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

As Queen Lili'uokalani slipped away at the age of 79 from complications of a stroke, it seemed as if the way of life she had been born into was dying, as well.

Advertisement

In the twenty-four years since the 1893 coup that deposed her from the throne, Hawai'i's new government, the Republic of Hawai'i, had decreed that English, rather than Hawaiian, be taught in all schools.

It dismantled Hawaiian-language newspapers and actively discouraged most other forms of native Hawaiian expression, including hula.

Scourged by illness and poverty, the Native Hawaiian population by the time of Queen Lili'uokalani's death in 1917 had fallen to less than a tenth of what it was when Captain Cook first reached the islands, from an estimated 400,000 people in 1778 to perhaps 25,000. With Lili'uokalani's passing, it seemed as if native Hawaii might disappear soon, as well.



For photos and videos of the queen, go here. To create a tribute to someone you care about on OurPaths, go here.



The queen was born in 1838 -- three generations after Captain Cook's arrival in the Hawaiian islands. Like the children of other chiefs, she was enrolled at a young age in a boarding school in Honolulu run by Christian missionaries, where she learned to speak and write in English.

Advertisement

Lili'uokalani became queen in 1891, after the death of her brother, King David Kalakaua. She inherited a kingdom burdened with heavy debts and soon came under pressure from Western businessmen, many of whom had strong ties to the Kingdom's burgeoning sugar industry. They pushed for Hawaii to become part of the U.S. through annexation.



Marines from USS Boston came ashore to usurp the queen in 1893. State Archives of Hawaii photo

With the support of U.S. marines, a small group of businessmen forced Lili'uokalani's abdication from the throne in January of 1893. The government they formed, headed up by Sanford Ballard Dole, later imprisoned the former queen and tried her in a military court for allegedly knowing of a treason plot. Although she was found guilty, Dole soon pardoned her.

Lili'uokalani retired to Washington Place, a stately home in Honululu, and lived there until her death in 1917. The long and mournful funeral cortege that passed through the streets of Honolulu bearing the body of Hawai'i's last queen seemed to represent the end of Native Hawaiian culture in the islands.

But what, in fact, happened would surprised those who predicted the demise of the rich traditions of Hawai'i. The following decades saw a rebirth of Hawaiian culture in the islands, led by musicians, hula dancers, and composers, some of whom rediscovered and performed the songs of Hawaii's last queen.



Room where the queen was imprisoned. State Archives of Hawaii photo

Even more significant to those who witnessed the struggles of the Hawaiian people, resources flowed back to some of the most vulnerable Native Hawaiians through what is now sometimes called the Ali'i trusts. These are the trusts that were set up by Queen Lili'uokalani and other members of the Hawaiian chiefly class, or the Ali'i, to benefit future generations of Hawaiians.

Advertisement

The Queen's decision to create such an entity was far-sighted. On December 2, 1909, eight years before her death, Lili'uokalani executed a Deed of Trust that established the legal and financial foundation of an institution dedicated to the welfare of orphaned Hawaiian children. She amended it two years later to include destitute children. It states:



"All the property of the Trust Estate, both principal and income...shall be used by the Trustees for the benefit of orphan and other destitute children in the Hawaiian Islands, the preference give to Hawaiian children of pure or part-aboriginal blood."

Queen Lili'uokalani, who never had any biological children of her own but felt deep aloha for the many keiki, or children, in her life, in her old age endured years of a bitter legal dispute with members of her extended family over her estate to establish the trust.

Yet she ultimately prevailed in the courts.

Her gift to future generations flowered over the years. When Queen Lili'uokalani passed away on that November day in 1917, her net assets comprised mostly of ancestral lands totaled about $200,000, or the equivalent of about $5 million today. Today, through the stewardship of its trustees, the total assets of the Queen Lili'uokalani Trust have grown to more than $530 million.



Daughters of Hawaii hula contest honoring the queen

With the income from these holdings, about 10,000 orphaned and destitute children a year directly benefit from the Trust. It indirectly serves more than 76,000 more. Her legacy continues today, with the completion of new projects, such as its children's center on the impoverished Wai'anae Coast of O'ahu as well as plans for its West Hawai'i lands, improvements in its Kona Industrial Park, and construction of the Keahoul Interpretive Center, also in Kona on the island of Hawai'i, which will provide a new home for local artifacts.

Advertisement

The Queen's decision to set up a trust that would provide for her people long after she was gone is important background to her book, Hawai'i's Story. Although historical forces overtook her during the time of the overthrow in 1893, she continued to seek a way to shape the future of Hawai'i. In that, she succeeded.
By Sara Ruthnum

I saw my first magic show when I was 6 years old at a friend's birthday party. While I was easily fooled at that age, I remember not being impressed by the magicians 'tricks.' Now, twenty-something years later, the only moment of magic I witness is when a new episode of Scandal is uploaded to Netflix. So when I came across Shin Lim, an internet 'sleight of hand artist' (aka magician) with 17.5 Million video views, I wanted to find out how someone practicing an art form I thought was dead, could engage and entertain the easily distracted modern audience. By melding new media, music, and sleight of hand card tricks, Lim, a self taught playing-card fiend, returns simplicity to the spectacle of magic. And if I'm honest, something about his authenticity makes even skeptical 6-year-old me believe in the wonder of magic - at least for a few minutes.

Advertisement

Shin Lim, a stage name derived from his birth name that roughly translates to "seeking excellence," is the reigning world FISM Close Up Card Champion and is on top of the magic game. A self proclaimed, "Sleight of Hand Artist" Lim admits that he is actually not a magician, or a wizard, and has no intention of lying to the audience. He performs carefully choreographed routines rather than pretending to defy the laws of physics. With speed, finesse, and "how'd he do that" mystery, Shin Lim's tricks enchant not only physical audiences, but digital too.

Lim's journey to the top is one that would not have been possible in the days of David Copperfield. Lim is nearly completely self-taught, which is actually pretty rare in the magic community, because his family did not have the means to support his passion for magic. When he was young, all Lim used to learn the fundamental were YouTube tutorials and a deck of playing cards. What sets him apart from many YouTube waters is instead of watching viral cat fails, Lim used the video platform as a pseudo mentor. "YouTube is a wonderful source for self learning. Even though there are many badly made tutorials online, there are good ones too. Having many options to pick from is what gave me the freedom to develop my own opinion," said Lim.

It was Lim's brother that initially peaked his interest in sleight of hand magic by showing him a simple card trick called, "Slip Force." Puzzled by the trick, Lim was simply told to, "go to YouTube and just figure it out." Simple words that sparked his passion. Discovering the trove of tutorials on the internet, some good and some really not so good, Lim dedicated countless hours to practicing sleight of hand card tricks. And although a less traditional method of learning the craft, it was the one that propelled him to mega-success at such a young age. Lim had (and still has) the power to pull from a community of guides, all over the world. "When you have many choices, you can choose, test [and] then decide. With a mentor, you tend to have only one view. With many 'virtual' mentors available on YouTube, one can choose and combine the various techniques and styles presented. YouTube expands our worldview," Lim said.

Advertisement

It's because of YouTube that Lim was able to find himself as a performer much quicker than his peers. He didn't have to wait for a few scheduled hours a week to be taught the fundamental skills of magic, but could tap into the information whenever he wanted. Proof that the internet is not just a distraction machine, Lim serves as a reminder that we don't have to waste hours online taking quizzes about which emoji most represents our personality, but that we can actually learn something. Who would have thought?

Shin Lim now uses YouTube as a platform to showcase his performances to the world. Lim explains, "some videos of my actual live performances are "proof" to disbelieving observers that my 'moves' are not 'photoshopped' performances."

One of Lim's most popular videos on his channel is his recent tribute to Paris after the attacks this past November, "Pray for Paris." Magic isn't the first art form that I would think of as a tribute to the people affected, but, the proof is in the numbers and with 1.17 Million views and over 7,000 likes, the tribute obviously touched people, allowing viewers to feel some magic in a time of tragedy.

Lim explained that magic still has the power to be relevant, "as long as it's presented correctly." Like dancers or actors on a stage, sleight of hand magic uses a simple deck of playing cards as a prop to create art. Really it's the combination of technology and magic allows Lim to be as successful as he is as a modern magician. He suggests that, "technology and knowledge [are] tools. To the ignorant, it is either magic or witchcraft."

Advertisement
What if there was an easy-to-implement government policy that would hardly affect ordinary people but would make it substantially more difficult for criminals  from drug dealers to terrorists to human traffickers  to carry out their illicit trade? What if the policy simply required inaction from several Western governments, for them to stop doing what theyve been doing? Does that sound like a crime-fighting policy Christians should support?

The proposal is rather simple: Eliminate high denomination, high value currency notes, such as the $100 bill (U.S.), the 50 note (UK), the 500 note (EU), and the CHF1,000 note (Switzerland).

Such notes are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities, given the anonymity and lack of transaction record they offer, and the relative ease with which they can be transported and moved, says Peter Sands, a senior fellow at Harvards Kennedy School of Government:



By eliminating high denomination, high value notes we would make life harder for those pursuing tax evasion, financial crime, terrorist finance and corruption. Without being able to use high denomination notes, those engaged in illicit activities  the bad guys of our title  would face higher costs and greater risks of detection. Eliminating high denomination notes would disrupt their business models.

Sands points out that high denomination notes play a limited role in the legitimate economy but are essential for criminal markets. Eliminating such currency wouldnt put an end to crime, necessarily, but it would make life more difficult for criminals. Without high denomination notes theyd be forced to conduct business using money that is heavier and bulkier (gold), more traceable (offshore bank accounts), less widely accepted or have higher transaction costs (Bitcoin).

Such currency notes are particularly attractive to criminals because they are easier to transfer in large quantities. As Sand explains:

To get a sense of why this might matter to criminals, tax evaders or terrorists, consider what it would take to transport US$1m in cash. In US$20 bills, US$1m in cash weighs roughly 110lbs and would fill 4 normal briefcases. One courier could not do this. In US$100 bills, the same amount would weigh roughly 22lbs and take only one briefcase. A single person could certainly do this, but it would not be that discrete. In 500 notes, US$1m equivalent weighs about 5lbs and would fit in a small bag. It should be no surprise that in the underworld the 500 note is known as a Bin Laden

The need for easily transportable cash is especially important for human traffickers:

In human trafficking the revenues from prostitution or cheap labor are often in cash. Where they are not in cash, such as illegal cyber-porn paid for with credit cards, the revenues will typically be converted into cash as part of the money-laundering process. The numbers can be large: estimates for profits from sexual or labor exploitation range from US$100,000-160,000 per adult per year and from sale of children of 20,000 per child. In both cases, the money is often moved across borders in cash and stored in cash. Moreover, in both arenas, cash-intensive businesses are used to co-mingle cash and thus disguise sources.

There is already precedent for eliminating high denomination currency. In 1969, the Federal Reserve and the Department of the Treasury announced that banknotes in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 would be discontinued due to lack of use (although they were issued until 1969, they were last printed in 1945). In 2000, Canada eliminated its $1,000 note and Singapore stopped using the $10,000 note in 2014.

Would supporting an end to the printing of high denomination notes be an obvious way for Christians to love our neighbor? Or are there reasons for keeping the $100 that would override any of the crime-hampering benefits?

What do you think? Should we kill the $100 bill?


Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders only won four states during Super Tuesday, but his supporters are standing by his side despite his poor performance.

The Vermont senator took Vermont, Oklahoma, Colorado and Minnesota during Super Tuesday, increasing to five the number of states Sanders has won.

Sanders' opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, won seven of the 11 states Tuesday night, and is leading in number of delegates.

Advertisement

However, despite being down in delegate numbers, Sanders' supporters have the utmost faith Sanders will bounce back.

Caleb Farris, history and political science junior and Oklahoma Students for Sanders General Organizer, said he was not surprised by Clinton's southern state sweep.

"The southern vote is very loyal to the (Democratic National Committee) and the DNC largely supports Hillary Clinton, even though they are supposed to be neutral," Farris said.

"The Clintons are notorious for getting support in the south," Farris said.

Farris said no Sanders supporter he knows expected him to do well during Super Tuesday.

"The states that he is competing for, are loyal to status quo democratic policies, rather than the farther left attitudes that Bernie carries," Farris said. "The next votes coming up are really important to Sanders. If he doesn't pull out on top there, then he's gonna be in a lot of trouble."

Advertisement

Environmental engineering senior Patrick Searcey said the next 19 states are Sanders' best chance at coming out on top.

"If he can take California, and take the states he is leading in now...he will win," Searcey said.

Searcey said considering where Sanders was when he first started, where he is now is an accomplishment.

"Considering where we were a month ago, even six months ago...he's done incredibly well." Searcey said.

When Sanders first announced his campaign on April 30, 2015, he was polling at 5.6 percent, according to Real Clear Politics. Today, he is polling at 40 percent, only 9 points down from Clinton.

Zak Houara, theatrical lighting design senior and co-chair of Oklahoma Students for Sanders, said he is also incredibly impressed by how far Sanders has come.

Advertisement

"The political establishment predicted that he would be gone in a couple months and he is not gonna quit this fight until he is in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention and Sanders and Hillary will fight it out there," Houara said.

"So the fact that he has come out of literally "started from the bottom now he's here" is amazing," Houara said.

Houara said he has no plans to give up on Sanders, because Sanders is in it for the long haul.
Yesterday, millions of American voters cast presidential primary ballots on Super Tuesday. In a political season that has confounded political pundits whose judgment has been consistently flawed, Donald Trump, as was expected, had a big night, pushing ever closer to the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump has steadfastly defied the expectations of so-called conventional wisdom in which a presidential candidate is cool, calm, and knowledgeable -- a person who knows how to carry himself or herself with a good measure of dignity. Again and again, Donald Trump has challenged our "conventional" presidential expectations. Even as powerful members of his own party, like Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, repudiate him, Mr. Trump's support has ironically grown stronger and stronger.

What's going on in America?

Can we explain this strange and troubling turn of political events?

There are a variety political explanations. Pundits have discussed any number of reasons for the success of Mr. Trump -- repercussions of income inequality, a sense of hopelessness, the celebration of ignorance and the denigration of science, the perception that the political system, in the words of Senator Bernie Sanders, is "rigged," the public reappearance of bigotry in the name of "Making America Great Again."

As an anthropologist, I see the rise of Trump from a cultural vantage. He is the embodiment of celebrity culture -- a world filled with glitz, fantasy and illusion. It is culture in which shallow perception is more valuable than deep insight. If you watch Donald Trump perform his shtick, you hear pretty much the same thing. Mr. Trump comes on stage, recites his poll numbers, insults his opponents, invites famous supporters to the stage to sing his praises, and then talks, without giving concrete factual examples, about how bad things are and how he's the man to make things better.

Advertisement

Each event is a tightly controlled theatrical production that is designed to reinforce the myth of Mr. Trump's fearless strength, his invincibility and his inevitability -- a real strong man. When he moves to the debate format, which is a bit less controlled, he continues to talk about our broken system and how everyone is incompetent -- including his opponents who are low energy, little people of no consequence. At no point does his talk focus upon a program for action, the complexities of policy or the intractability of social, political and economic problems at home and abroad. As he stated last night at his victory event, which was staged to look like a presidential press conference, the solutions to our problems are simple because he knows how to negotiate, he knows how to bring jobs back to America, he knows how to deal with China, he knows how to get the wealthy Gulf States to contribute their fair share to the Syrian migrant crisis. No one is going to mess with him -- or us.

In his paired down tell it like it is language, Mr. Trump is convincingly entertaining. He is not yet the president, but is trying to play one on television. Although he seems ignorant of the social, political and cultural complexities of world, not to forget the U.S. constitution, it doesn't matter, for he is operating in a fantasy world in which facts don't matter, in which "competent" people -- actors all -- can quickly solve difficult problems. In the fantasy world of television problems are easy to solve. On television or on social media, it's easy to build a wall across the US-Mexico border and get Mexico to pay for it. In the vicarious mythic worlds of television, Facebook and Twitter, it's easy for Mr. Trump, who has disparaged Muslims, women, gays, the physically challenged and Hispanics, to claim -- with conviction -- that he will win their support. In this mythic world, it is easy for Mr. Trump, who insults his opponents -- even opponents of his own party -- to say that he will be a unifying force.

Advertisement

In the real world Mr. Trump's willful ignorance, his undignified behavior and his Islamophobia is both senseless and dangerous. In the mythic culture of celebrity, as Mr. Trump seems to well understand, black becomes white and lies become truth. It is a world in which there is no space for critical reflection or for intellectual nuance. Mr. Trump brilliantly understands the culture of celebrity as a world of illusion in which he can carefully develop his mythic image. In this world he is the strong man, the "truth-teller," the man who will unite a divided nation.

All of this symbolic manipulation works quite well in the culture of celebrity. It works well enough to convince millions of angry Americans to believe in the myth of Donald Trump. Despite substantial evidence to the contrary Mr. Trump's supporters believe his mantra: things are horrible and we need a strong leader -- Donald Trump -- to fix a broken system. In this illusory world, you don't really need to know that much about politics or the world or the US Constitution. In the mythical context of illusion, if you have the right attitude and a high degree of self-confidence, as does Mr. Trump, you can solve any problem.
In this photo made on Saturday, June 20, 2015, a man walks past graffiti titled "0 Euro" by street Artist Achilles in Athens. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Can a government that adopted austerity policies win an election? Over the past year, this question has been asked in many languages and in many countries. And the answer seems to be, for the time being, a unanimous no.

After Greece, Portugal and Spain, it was Ireland's turn to take the test. It was its chance to submit an exception to the rule. Ireland was the exemplary student in the Troika classroom; it executed the recipe willingly and without complaint. It diminished public spending dramatically, taxed citizens, and cut pensions. But when compared with Greece, it did so with a smaller economical and social cost, and achieved greater success.

Advertisement

Before its three-year memorandum had run out, Ireland was the fastest developing economy in Europe. In the eyes of Mr. Schauble, this was proof that the austerity recipe is effective, and that those who failed to execute the recipe have failed.

And yet, the governmental coalition failed to get re-elected in last Friday's elections. Prime minister Enda Kenny's center-right party Fine Gael landed first place, of course, but lost 27 seats, while its coalition partner, the Labour party, was harshly punished. It won only six out of the 37 seats it had in the previous parliament.

If austerity is not rewarded electorally, even when it is "successful," it makes sense for it to be disparaged more violently when it is not successful-- such as in the case of Greece.

Ireland thus repeats a pattern that appeared in the Portuguese and Spanish elections. The governments which implemented austerity programs in exchange for the market's trust cannot also earn the electoral body's trust. The prosperous macro-numbers are slow to translate to micro-prosperity in the poorer households. And that anger is recorded by the elections.

Advertisement

In all three countries, the voters put the governing parties in first place, but kept them from having the majority they need to continue to govern. "Vote for stability," "Let's keep the recovery going," were the slogans of the government bloc in the Irish elections. But the voters were not convinced. Because they didn't have an alternative, they elected a parliament without a clear majority.

Likewise, in Portugal, a fragile government was formed out of the second most prominent party (Socialists), with the help of the parties in third and fourth place, the communists and the Portuguese SYRIZA, respectively. Meanwhile in Spain, a government has yet to emerge.

If austerity is not rewarded electorally, even when it is "successful," it makes sense for it to be disparaged more violently when it is not successful-- such as in the case of Greece.

Greece is an exception to the rule. It is only in Greece that a new party, an "antisystemic" one, managed to convince the people that it really is an alternative solution, and it has therefore received the support to govern.

The elections in Portugal, Spain and Ireland offer after-the-fact lessons to Greek political powers.

That however is not the only feature that's unique to Greece. Greece --and this is the most glaring exception to the rule-- was the only country to open its electoral cycle before completing the cycle of its memorandum, before coming out of the spiral of recession, and before regaining its sovereignty and access to the markets.

From that perspective, the elections in Portugal, Spain and Ireland offer after-the-fact lessons to Greek political powers.

Since governments that implement austerity measures lose elections anyway, it was needlessly harmful for the country to bring about Samaras's panicked reformulation after the European elections of 2014. Appointments were set up with the Troika in Paris, and the elections were accelerated in a polarized environment. It would have been better if they had come to terms with the inevitable. They could have chosen to leave a posthumous legacy; when they were faced with the (impossible) reelection, they could have sincerely sought a consensual presidential election, with or without the collaboration of SYRIZA, in exchange for elections immediately after the end of the evaluation.

And since SYRIZA would have won the elections regardless of when they took place, rushing the elections was a mistake on SYRIZA's part. As a result, SYRIZA prematurely and unnecessarily spent political capital in the six-month period described by Nikos Voutsis as a one of "flirting with political delusions." The country paid for it as well; the recession reverted and the the era of the memorandum was extended indefinitely.

If only I knew then what I know now...
We are living in strange times. We have vocal, angry extremists of one sort or another running for president and attracting fervent support from large segments of the population. The rise of angry politicians has always been a sign of economic woe. American prosperity springs from the middle, economically and politically -- and as the middle class finds itself losing ground, the moderate and sensible political voices have a harder time cutting through the clamor.

All of this points to the way our economy has languished for more than a decade -- much longer, if you see through statistical ups and downs of the past four decades. To regain our political bearings, on both right and left, we need to address the economic unrest that is finding a release valve in the noise of this political season. Robert Reich, the author of Saving Capitalism and former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, offered some good thoughts recently about the economy on NPR's Making Sen$e.

He said America's most productive majority has become the "anxious class." They worry that their paychecks will never be enough; they fear that their jobs will go away; and they know that they aren't getting ahead. In short, he says capitalism has to save itself by recognizing what's happening to that formerly silent majority (who are now seeking a voice in candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.) All of this anger and fear devolves into finger pointing. Those who lean right point to government as the enemy. Those on the left point to Wall Street. Reich traces this divide back to former Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, who called on business to fight regulation and taxation. In short order, lobbyists appeared who were happy to do just that, and it's been us-against-them ever since.

Advertisement

We need CEOs to begin thinking the way Henry Ford did in the first decades of the 20th century. He lifted wages -- in fact he chose to double them overnight -- hoping to inspire a movement across the private sector. He knew that workers needed more money to simply keep him in business: if they could afford to drive the cars they built, the system would work. It was no more complicated than that.

That kind of thinking cuts through all the politics, and makes the work of the lobbyists beside the point. If employers simply realized that their workers are the source of all the value they produce -- and also realized that human workers are infinitely more valuable than technological end-runs around the need for human labor (a tough choice these days) -- our economy and our political scene would be entirely different. Free enterprise capitalism would start to work again for the benefit of most Americans.

The reality of the 21st century is that a creatively devoted workforce is the driver of a company's future. People at all levels of every company now need to be obsessed with the satisfaction of every individual customer. And they also need to be alert to how a company can improve the delivery of that satisfaction at every level. To eek every last penny of profit from an enterprise by paying people as little as possible is ultimately self-destructive. People lose heart, they lose interest, and then they lose the will to look for real-time solutions that will improve what a company does for the people it serves. And they also won't have money to spend at the end of the week, or month, or year -- which is the kind of spending needed to grow the economy and generate new jobs.

Advertisement

Government can be the partner of business, not the enemy, but the private sector doesn't need to wait for help. It can bring about an economic revival all on its own. All it takes is for those who run companies to recognize the ultimate source of all value in the whole economic cycle: a happy, well-paid middle class worker. That's where our turnaround begins.

Some economists and politicians point to major tax hikes as the answer. Thomas Piketty suggested a dramatic wealth tax: he identified our economic quandary, but I disagree that taxes are the answer. History is replete with examples of the failures of a political redistribution of wealth: through revolution or higher taxes.

The real solution can be found in the way our system worked only half a century ago. That golden era of free market capitalism, from the end of WWII through the early '70s, created the most affluent and productive middle class in human history. Business needs to treat its employees the way the were treated then: and watch their creative devotion begin to grow the business from the bottom up.
One account has been written, in this case by George Steiner who wrote a book in 1981 called "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H," in which Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler (A.H.) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War two. The fact that Adolf Eichmann a senior Nazi officer did get away from Berlin has been proven since he was extradited from Argentina to Israel where he was hanged in 1962. The fact that some senior Nazis were able to escape from Berlin is proven by the history of Adolf Eichmann who was clearly able to escape and travel to South America. This would have involved a German transport aircraft to travel from Spain to South America. The popular accounts in Britain involve Paraguay as a destination for ex-Nazis.

This is the basis behind George Steiner's novel "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.". Steven Spielberg has also contributed to this quasi fantasy world. Spielberg has effectively used the "pen is mightier than the sword" adage in his films starring Harrison Ford as "Indiana Jones" where he pursued the Nazi government between 1931 and 1938. They were trying to seize the "Ark of the Covenant" which Hitler believed would make his army invincible. This is a more humorous side of Spielberg's work where Harrison Ford (a Jewish Actor) and his partners explored the world of Hitler's attempts to seize the Ark of the Covenant. Steven Spielberg (also Jewish) was essentially humorously putting across the Nazi government attempts to rewrite history. Spielberg then moved on to another notable work: "Schindlers list" - an epic film of over three hours in duration.

This was his finest work from a Jewish perspective. The film about Schindlers list was possibly his most epic work. There is a myth about Nazis escaping to South America, although they had every reason to try and escape only one managed to do so for sure and he was caught and executed by the Israeli government. Escaping from Nazi Germany to South America was extremely difficult to do. The Luftwaffe air force had very few transport aircraft in 1945 - those that were there - the Ju-52 Junker planes could have been used in the parachute invasion of Crete to the south of Greece in Operation Mercury in 1941. It is a fantasy of the British public that the Nazis went to South America because it was very difficult to do. There may have been some aircraft still available using old Ju-52 Junkers which could be used. In the case of Adolf Eichmann they clearly were. A number of people that were in the British armed forces during the Second World War could have read stories printed by the middle brow press such as the Daily Express and the Daily Mail featuring stories regarding escaped Nazis. There is a myth that Martin Bormann also escaped to South America. These people had a strong motive to escape; their country had been over run by the allied forces and the Soviet Union. Bormann didn't escape - he probably committed suicide in Berlin although the body was not verified until 1972.
The devastating image of Republican front-runner Donald Trump bobbing and weaving on national television when asked simply whether he would repudiate the support of David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan was far from erased by his later disavowals.

It is presumably the reason House Speaker Paul Ryan felt obliged to insist on Tuesday that the Republican Party "does not prey on people's prejudices" and that its nominee "must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry."

Ryan's claim of course ignores the long history of Republican Party power-building by inflaming racial bias and anti-gay bigotry. And it cannot hide the fact that Republican front-runner Donald Trump is electrifying and energizing the white supremacist movement. White nationalists have done robocalls promoting Trump's candidacy in Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Minnesota.

Advertisement

As Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has said, "You can't help who admires you, but when white supremacists start endorsing you for president, you ought to start asking why."

Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric is clearly one big reason. Trump's announcement speech, in which he denounced Mexican immigrants, thrilled white nationalists. Less than two weeks after his launch, the neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer endorsed him. Celebrating his victories on Super Tuesday, which were applauded as a "total blowout" by the Daily Stormer, Trump reiterated his insistence that he would build a massive wall on the southern border and force Mexico to pay for it.

Of course, his extremism isn't limited to anti-Latino rhetoric. Trump ardently promoted birtherism when he was flirting with a 2012 challenge to Barack Obama. And this time around, his pledge to create a "deportation force" to forcibly remove millions of undocumented people and his call for a ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S. have been fervently embraced by the racialist right.

Trump has supported white nationalists by giving them a national platform and fundraising opportunities. He has repeatedly re-tweeted praise for him from white nationalists, giving them a chance to be known by his more than six million Twitter followers. "It's amazing how many people I've met who have said, 'I just discovered these ideas six months ago,'" white nationalist Richard Spencer told Vice in December. "Trump has unquestionably brought people to our ideas."

Advertisement

Indeed, Trump's campaign has become "a great outreach tool" for the KKK and "a fundraising engine for White Nationalist media."

It should be no surprise that white nationalists are energized and empowered by Trump. Last summer the New Yorker reported that today's white nationalist activists are inspired "by their dread of a time when non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the largest demographic group in America." Spencer says Trump reflects "an unconscious vision that white people have -- that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us."

John Derbyshire, whose racially charged writing got him booted from National Review in 2012, recently slammed Marco Rubio for saying that the Republican Party is the party of diversity.

There goes another ten thousand votes, Marco. Everyone in this country who can say the word "diversity" without rolling his eyes, is already going to vote Democrat. The rest of us are up to here with diversity, and want a candidate who's as sick of the diversity rackets as we are. That would be Donald Trump.

Trump's derisive dismissal of "political correctness" has given people permission to openly trumpet views they may once have kept to themselves--and gives them a place to gather together. David Duke has encouraged listeners of his radio show to volunteer for Trump's campaign, telling them, "you're gonna meet people who are going to have the same kind of mindset that you have."

Advertisement

That may be true. In December the Washington Post's Max Ehrenfreund looked at social science on race and politics. "There's a good deal of evidence that white resentment of minorities is linked to support for Republican candidates, their policies and conservative ideology in America," said Robb Willer, a political psychologist at Stanford University.

Eric Knowles, a political psychologist at New York University, has found that "membership in the tea party increased respondents' perceptions of white identity over time," Ehrenfreund wrote. "Other researchers have found that its members tend to be more racist and xenophobic, after accounting for their belief in limited government and other conservative principles."

That may help explain, but not excuse, the cowardice demonstrated by so many Republicans who have declined to condemn Trump and pledged to support him if he becomes the nominee, not to mention those like Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Jeff Sessions who have enthusiastically endorsed him. Republican officials helped create the conditions for Trump's rise by promoting the angriest voices in right-wing media when they thought it was to their political benefit. They would do well to think beyond the prospects for 2016 to the long-term impact on America of the forces Trump and his supporters are unleashing.
Every so often a food trend comes along that seems so crazy it just might be awesome. Right now, that buzzy ingredient is Spam. Yep, renowned chefs are incorporating the Hawaiian staple into fancy tasting menus alongside snootier foods. Since we're all about getting in on a trend while it's hot, we've compiled 12 mouthwatering ways to cook with the canned meat (which, for your information, is 90 percent pork shoulder and 10 percent ham).

Spam Mac and Cheese

Two words: treat yourself. Get the recipe.

Hot Hawaiian Burgers

When in doubt, add Sriracha. Get the recipe.

Sweet and Spicy Brussels Sprouts with Spam

When you'd normally use bacon, use Spam. Simple as that. Get the recipe.

Spicy Caramelized Spam Scallion Pasta

A Hawaiian-Italian mash-up we should all get behind. Get the recipe.

Advertisement

Hawaiian Street Corn with Spam & Pineapple

Is it summer yet? Get the recipe.

Scalloped Potatoes, Spam and Cheese

Cheesy comfort food at its finest. Get the recipe.

Spam Filled Fried Doughnuts

If you're gonna go there, you might as well go there. Get the recipe.

The Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich

Based on a sammie from the popular L.A. eatery Eggslut.

Kimchi Fried Rice

Just the right amount of spice. Get the recipe.

Hawaiian Pizza Spam Meatballs

Because regular meatballs are way less exciting. Get the recipe.

Roasted Red Potatoes with Spam and Asparagus

Go ahead, eat straight out of the skillet. Get the recipe.

Hot and Spicy Breakfast Ramen

Seriously, you can work this stuff into any meal. Get the recipe.



Related:

Also on HuffPost:
A few years ago I boarded an El Al airplane at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel headed back to the United States. I had a lot running through my mind. Earlier that morning I watched as two female colleagues of mine were arrested at the Western Wall for the odd crime of praying while wearing tefillin (phylacteries). While those two women rabbis were being detained at the police station in the Old City of Jerusalem I sat in a conference room with a dozen other colleagues listening to the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky explain how he hoped to solve the issue of religious and gender discrimination at the Western Wall plaza.

As I settled into my seat on the plane and readied myself for the long flight home, I was tapped on my shoulder by a Haredi Orthodox man and asked if I'd give up my seat so he could sit there and not be forced to sit next to a woman. On any other day I likely would have explained to this man that I had already spent time and energy procuring my bulkhead seat with extra leg room (I'm tall) and was already situated in my assigned seat so I would not be able to acquiesce to his request. On this particular day, however, my denial was based on principle. His religious views would not trump my right to my assigned seat. The man then asked the woman next to me to give up her seat so he could sit next to me and avoid violating his religious convictions of sitting next to a woman for a prolonged period of time. My seatmate simply looked at him and said, "Absolutely not!"

Advertisement

The practice of seat switching on airplanes to accommodate the Haredi men who won't sit next to the opposite sex has gotten out of hand. After my mother's flight landed in Israel a couple of weeks ago, I called her to check in. When I inquired about her flight she lamented that it was very late taking off from Newark because of a frustrating game of "musical chairs" in which the flight attendants had to orchestrate the seat switching fiasco so families who wanted to sit together were still able to do so after the Haredi men refused to sit in their assigned seats.

Unfortunately, it's not just about the Haredi men causing turmoil on airplanes over sitting next to women. There has also been unrest in the friendly skies when it comes to what some ultra-Orthodox Jews consider immodest movies. Last week a passenger from Beit Shemesh reportedly damaged two viewing screens and attacked the cabin crew during his rampage on an El Al flight. He was angered that the airline was showing a movie that he felt was indecent based on his religious views.

Perhaps this problem has finally reached a boiling point. Renee Rabinowitz, an 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, is the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing El Al Airlines of discrimination. She was seated in her aisle seat in business class this past December and watched as the flight attendant moved the ultra-Orthodox male passenger assigned to the seat next to her into first class. Ms. Rabinowitz said she felt minimized. El Al has succumbed to the pressure by an extremist religious group and is now acting in a discriminatory way.

I'm always very appreciative when accommodations are made for my own religious needs. If I'm at an event and request a kosher meal, for example, I'm always grateful if they are able to oblige. However, I would never want or expect someone else's meal to be compromised in order that my request is granted. That is the difference. If a movie is playing on an airplane's communal monitor that is against someone's religious or moral convictions, they should put on headphones and close their eyes. If they know they can't sit next to members of the opposite sex, they should find two members of the same sex and purchase the seats together. Or if they are traveling alone and feel so strongly about this issue of modesty, they should purchase an extra seat to ensure they're comfortable.

Advertisement
Photo credit: Pixabay

On a hot, dry day in northern New Mexico I was trying my best to keep the burro from pushing me off the side of the mountain. Tired and thirsty, I reached the top of the mountain and the world opened up. Time stood still as I felt one with everything. Has something like that ever happened to you? It has to many, whether at a multi-colored sunset, quiet brook side, or all-engrossing concert. What is it? For me, it's the ecological nature of God.*

Have you ever noticed how everything about nature ultimately revolves around systems? We have the water cycle, nitrogen cycle, food chains, wolf/elk/cottonwood/riparian zone interrelations...the list goes on and on. If we take animals out of their usual habitats, they behave differently. Transplanted plants often die because the new soil lacks the proper micro-organisms for their survival. We all depend upon scores of others for our well-being. We live and die in the midst of webs of relationships they form and sustain us.

We often say that one can tell something about an artist by her works. In some way she incarnates part of herself in what she creates. In the same way the overwhelming importance of relationships in creation would seem to imply something about the nature or personality of God.

Advertisement

Christians in particular like to say God is Love. But what is love? One way of looking at it is to say that it consists of totally giving oneself to another without reservation. This then implies wholeheartedly responding to and receiving from the other without holding back. So, love consists of total openness and receptivity to someone else. If I knew someone like this, I would say that he is a Mad Lover. So, I guess that must describe God.

God passionately loves her creation. But if God depends upon us to express her love, then God must be pretty weak. I'm not sure most of us are interested in a co-dependent God. So, if God is love, which is perfect relating, then God's relating must happen in-house. Because God can't depend on us and still be God, God must perfectly relate within himself. So, God must in some way be at least a duo.

However, this, too, has its problems. It's hard, at least for humans, to distinguish between things unless they can compare. If the only thing around me were trees - no streams, plants, animals, houses, or anything else at all - I would be hard-pressed to know what trees are because I'd have no means of comparison. I'd wouldn't be able to say, "Hey, trees are things that aren't shrubs" if there were no shrubs. Also, with just one other "person" to relate to, it's easy for partners to lose perspective on each other and themselves. They can get lost in each other. That's one reason why children can enrich a marriage greatly. They give the duo something else to focus on.

So, God must include at least three relators, or "persons." That's what Christian tradition has settled on.

Advertisement

God, then, is a community, a system, of "persons" who give and respond so wholeheartedly with one another that become like a tightly knit jazz trio or dance group. They act as a unit, with one person or another taking the lead at any time and the others responding. Given that they are so into relationships it's in their nature to create more. So, this community reaches out, creating and sustaining us, whether plant, animal or mineral. And, funny thing, these creatures relate to each other, strongly influencing each other and, in many ways, making them what they are. They reflect the community of their Maker. And, because this community is a Mad Lover, it wants the same intimacy with us that they have with each other. This happened so much that they delegated one of them to become part of creation, a human being. When that happened, they swept creation up into their whirling, joyous dance of love.

So, what happens when all becomes one on top of a mountain or we unexpectedly experience an "opening up" at a multi-colored sunset? We experience God's invitation to dance - we "see" the ecological face of God. The Spirit that pulses through all of creation gives us a glimpse of what the cosmos really is- a dynamic set of relationships infused and charged with the Spirit of God. Then we can agree with William Blake when he says,

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.
Super Tuesday is a time for reflection on the successes and failures of each of the presidential campaigns. In a week that saw Hillary Clinton exceed all expectations in South Carolina and Donald J. Trump improbably weather an anemic denouncement of the KKK, it is clear that what these candidates represent symbolically, and their use of visual rhetoric, can be just as powerful and indelible as the things they say.

As a scholar specializing in the Roman Empire, it is difficult to watch the current election cycle and not detect certain resonances with leaders from antiquity -- specifically, the Roman emperors. This observation is not exclusive to one side of the aisle, although I must admit upfront that I have seen more pertinent examples from the Republican candidates (in particular, Trump) than the Democrats. Nonetheless, I offer the following as a reference guide for any presidential candidate on how to best emulate someone deserving of unquestioned and unmitigated power. In vaguely chronological order...

1.Create Drama

The Emperor Domitian (51-96 CE) built himself a summer villa called Castel Gandolfo in the Alban hills of Italy. If you had an audience with Domitian, you found yourself walking down a 300-meter long hallway, at the end of which was the Emperor, standing on a high staircase. The intention was to wow and to intimidate: Imagine listening to the sound of your feet echoing down this hallway as the supreme leader of the Empire, up on his perch, peers down at you.

Advertisement

Trump created a similar effect with his Trump Tower escalator when he announced his candidacy. Descending down from above, standing almost perfectly still, he created a scene that communicated wealth, power, and authority. Online people described this event as his "Grand Entrance." It was also parodied mercilessly (including by The Simpsons) for its grandiosity. But it is directly from the Roman Emperor Playbook where the word "tacky" does not apply. Well played, Trump.

2.Stage a Photo Op With an Eagle

One of the Flavian emperors, Titus (79-81 CE), depicted himself in the crown of the triumphal Arch of Titus riding up to the heavens on the wings of an eagle. This is referred to as his "apotheosis" -- Titus was depicting himself becoming a god.

While for different symbolic reasons, Trump also staged a photoshoot with an eagle. His results were less than deifying.

3. Pump Up Your Credentials

Trump famously declared after the Nevada GOP caucus that he and those who supported him were "winning, winning, winning the country" and that soon the "country is going to start winning, winning, winning." Similarly, the Roman emperors were not shy about heralding their "winning" far and wide. They erected monuments inscribed with their names and accomplishments (if you have ever been to Rome, think of the multiple triumphal columns, arches, statues, and buildings). Sound like any of our candidates? Overall, the idea was to promote how intimidating and successful the emperors were as leaders.

Advertisement

The reign of the emperor Augustus (27 BCE- 14 CE), for example, is a case study in how to execute effective PR. Augustus' reign was described as the Pax Romana ("The Roman Peace") and he approved and/or supervised a number of buildings projects to back up that claim. His entire Augustan funerary complex, for example, was aimed at communicating not only what an awesome military mind he was (he defeated Antony and Cleopatra and had obelisks imported to Rome to prove it), but to extoll his many virtues as the "first among equals." Incorporated into his complex was an altar to peace (the Ara Pacis) featuring bucolic images, idealized religious practices, and imperial processions aimed at celebrating his reign as divinely sanctioned. He also supervised the composition of something called the Res Gestae (the "things accomplished"), which was more or less his imperial resume. It listed, among other things, all of the jobs that he had held, the awards he had won, the money he had donated, and the buildings he constructed. Again, sound like any of our candidates?

4.Build a Wall

Image Source: english-heritage.org.uk

The emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) built a massive wall in Roman Britannia for reasons that remain somewhat fuzzy. Was it to keep out the so-called barbarians? Was it another demonstration of Rome's ability to communicate power through stone? We may never know for sure, but what we can say is that it was a symbolic shift in Rome's "foreign policy" to so forcefully delineate its borders.

For the record, Hadrian's Wall was abandoned shortly after his reign was over. And it's debatable whether it ever did much to secure the border it marked.

Advertisement

5.Align Yourself with "Greatness"

Image Source: nationalgeographic.com

In ancient Rome, it was common to align yourself with proven leaders from the past. Augustus claimed he had descended from the hero and founder of Rome, Aeneas, and his mother, Venus. And he made sure to boast these connections in his imperial imagery (see the cute little cupid riding a dolphin in his Prima Porta statue above).

The World War II Italian National Fascist Party dictator, Benito Mussolini, imagined himself a "New Augustus." He built a network of roadways to foreground ancient Roman ruins, like the buildings in the Imperial Fora and the Colosseum. He resurrected Augustus' Ara Pacis. And along the Via dei Fori Imperiali, he installed maps of the territories controlled by the Roman Empire, and added to these a map of the territory he himself had conquered.

Given Mussolini's alliance with Nazi Germany and Hitler, his military exploits, his associations with brutal intimidation tactics and rape, he is a surprising forbearer for any potential presidential candidate to claim. Yet, over the weekend, Trump re-Tweeted a Mussolini quote:

No doubt a rhetorical Twitter battle between Trump and Mussolini would be a thing to behold. Alas, history has deprived us of that experience.

But, thanks to the Internet, we have an idea of what a debate between the two might have looked like...

Advertisement

6.Alienate Your Opponents

The Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, among others, tell us that Roman emperors and the Roman Senate routinely expelled certain ethnic groups from the city. In the early first century CE, for example, evidence suggests ethnic Judeans (Jews) and ethnic Egyptians may have been driven from Rome for practicing certain religious activities considered outside of the mainstream.

Compare this with some of the rhetoric against Muslims in this campaign and promises to prevent members of this particular religious group from entering the United States. Purely symbolic at this stage, it is a proposal characteristic of emperors and empires.

7.Shoot Something

Image Source: theodore-roosevelt.com

There is a long tradition of politics and hunting. Teddy Roosevelt famously shot and stuffed anything that moved. In more recent memory, from John Kerry to Bill Clinton to George Bush, almost every single one of our presidential candidates have staged a hunting photo op and/or touted their guns on social media. And then, of course, in 2006 Vice President Dick Cheney, accidentally shot his friend, attorney Harry Whittington, in the face with birdshot.

Image Source: bluffton.edu

Turning to Rome, the emperor Commodus (177-192 CE) staged public hunts in the amphitheater, standing in a protected, elevated box and knocking off ostriches, bears, and lions with spears and arrows. Although arguably a symptom of his egomaniacal mental illness, he also liked to depict himself as the god Hercules, wearing a lion skin on his head. Paging Vladimir Putin?

Image Source: artofmanliness.com

The purpose of these displays is to emphasize the political leader's masculinity. They are performances that communicate strength and virility.

Advertisement

We have seen echoes of this strategy throughout the campaign to date. There was Jeb Bush's gun. Recall Trump claimed he could shoot someone and not lose voters.

This week, we also saw a back and forth between Trump and Marco Rubio that centered on claims to masculinity. Trump repeatedly referred to Rubio as "Little Marco Rubio." Rubio retorted by suggesting, as New York Magazine put it, "... Donald Trump Has Smaller Than Average Genitals." Shades of Drunk History.

8.Never Change

Image Source: sharpmagazine.com

We do not like our public figures to change or to make bold style choices. When Al Gore grew his "Just-Lost-the-Election" beard it was front-page news. And it did not go unnoticed when, after leaving their respective television shows, Jon Stewart and David Letterman grew what The New Yorker dubbed "The Achievement Beard." During the recent Wisconsin debate between Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Clinton, Twitter was on fire with comments about Clinton's bold chartreuse jacket.

Roman emperors depicted themselves as larger than life, as gods, as orators, as Greek heroes, but never as truly subject to time. Consistency was key. When the emperor Augustus died, for example, he was 75 years old. Yet his statues very rarely depict him as older than middle-aged. Evidence of wrinkles, hair loss, changes in facial hair, or weight gain was rare in imperial depictions. There were, of course, exceptions (e.g., Marcus Aurelius and Vespasian are depicted as older men on occasion). But imperial statues were so precise, you could slightly alter Caligula's straight hairline into the more tousled look of Augustus and it would immediately change the identification of the figure.

(Images from author's files)

With the possible exception of Sanders, our candidates are also meticulously coiffed and groomed. Any rupture in the expected pattern garners comment. Remember the kerfuffle over Barack Obama's tan suit?

Advertisement
In this Nov. 13, 2015, file photo Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses the Sunshine Summit in Orlando, Fla. The Republican outsiders have been getting a pass on their limited grasp of foreign policy in the presidential race. That may be ending. Republicans favored Trump even after he acknowledged not knowing the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah. And they didnat fret over Ben Carsonas mistaken belief that the Chinese are involved in the Syrian conflict. Yet Fridayas terrorist attacks in Paris have sparked an urgent focus on national security that will test the appeal of the outsiders like nothing theyave faced so far. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

This piece was updated after publication at the request of the author.

The answer to our Chinese problem, according to Trump, is a trade war. "The only power that we have with China is massive trade," Trump says, so we should tax China. "I would tax China on products coming in. Let me tell you what the tax should be... the tax should be 45 percent." The solution to our trade problems with China, he thinks, is to build a tariff wall. Build a wall and make them pay.

Trump thinks that Mexico will pay for the Mexican wall, and he thinks that China will pay for a Chinese tariff wall. But he is wrong. The American people would pay for the wall with higher consumer prices and reduced American exports.

Advertisement

First, how would such a tariff increase impact American consumers? A 45 percent tariff on Chinese products would be an indirect tax on American consumers. On average, the United States imposes a 3.5 percent tariff on foreign products. Over 20 percent of all United States imports come from China, with a total value of over $500 billion. At 3.5 percent, the tariff on $500 billion worth of Chinese imports is $17.5 billion. At 45 percent, the tariff would be $225 billion. That's an increase of over 1,186 percent. In other words, assuming Chinese imports continued at their current rate, Donald Trump's proposed tariff wall with China would reflect an indirect tax on American consumers of over $200 billion. A tax increase of over $200 billion would be one of the largest in American history, greater than the combined tax increases imposed by Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Carter.

To be more concrete, as detailed here, the United States imports from China over $135 billion worth of electronic equipment, over $100 billion worth of machinery, over $30 billion worth of furniture, over $25 billion worth of toys, and over $18 billion worth of footwear. All of us routinely purchase Chinese products, and we each would face a dramatic price increase as the 45 percent tariff is passed on to consumers.

Second, how would the tariff increase impact American exporters? Trump's tariff wall is undoubtedly illegal under the WTO rules. The rules were designed to make sure that countries keep their trade promises. Donald Trump's proposal is a blatant breach of our promise to keep tariffs low. All of our tariff rates are "bound," meaning we have committed by treaty not to increase beyond the bound rate. Every imported product has a bound tariff rate, and under GATT Article II, any tariff above that ceiling violates the WTO rules.

Advertisement

Trump's proposed tariff wall would break United States' promise to maintain its current tariff rates. China would have the right to bring an action before the WTO to challenge the 45 percent tariff increase. Just as the United States would undoubtedly win if China tried to do something similar to us, China would undoubtedly win if it challenged the Trump tariff wall. The WTO would demand that the United States keep its tariff promises, and authorize China to raise tariffs on United States' products coming into China equal to the harm the United States caused to China.

In other words, if China suffers over $200 billion worth of harm from increased tariffs on Chinese products, the WTO would authorize China to increase tariffs on U.S. products by the same amount. Over 7 percent of all United States exports go to China, with total U.S. exports to China exceeding $120 billion.

So if China is hit with over $200 billion worth of tariff increases, China would be authorized to impose over $200 billion worth of tariff increases on $120 billion worth of American exports. Our major exports to China include soybeans ($15 billion), civilian aircraft ($8.4 billion), passenger vehicles ($5.2 billion), copper ($3 billion), corn ($1.3 billion), and coal ($1.2 billion). American workers with jobs in these industries would be severely injured by these WTO-authorized Chinese countermeasures. All those American auto workers, and corn and soybean farmers, and coal miners who support Trump would see their Chinese export market shrink. A tariff increase this dramatic could effectively close the Chinese market to American exports. And it would be completely proper for China to do this to compensate it for our illegal behavior.

In short, the great Chinese tariff wall that Donald Trump proposes to build would severely injure American consumers, making the price of all Chinese products dramatically higher. It also would severely injure American workers, as U.S. exports to the Chinese market would sharply contract. The economic harm that his tariff wall would have on the average American is shocking. Yet his supporters remain blissfully unaware that the United States would not win if it enters a trade war with China.
Co-authored by Cyrus Jabbari, USC student and researcher

Super Tuesday was greeted with the unexpected outcomes of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in their respective party's primaries.

While the ostentatious circus peanut promises to "Make America Great Again" and the retirement home Mr. Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man promises voters "A Future to Believe In," both of their campaigns are rooted in misguided economic populism, in regards to free trade.

Both candidates lambast "disastrous" trade deals negotiated by "stupid politicians," scapegoating NAFTA for the dearth of American manufacturing jobs and stagnating middle-class wages. They also shift this blame to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Advertisement

The Debate

The TPP is the largest regional trade accord in history, including the U.S., Canada, Peru, Chile, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam. These 12 Pacific-rim countries with varying economies carry an annual GDP of nearly $28 trillion, representing about 40 percent of global GDP and one-third of world trade.

The trade ministers of each participating country agreed to this deal in October, but this remains a contentious issue in Congress.

Supporters assert the pact will be a boon for all countries involved. The New York Times reports the deal will reduce tariffs and quota, promote the exchange of data between member countries and impose environmental, labor and intellectual property standards to developing countries, allowing the U.S. the opportunity to be a global leader in 21st global economic development.

Furthermore, the exclusion of China from this agreement allows the U.S. to set the parameters of trade and economic development to an increasingly important region, especially as China increases its military presence in the South China Sea. The deal is structured to allow China, and other non-participating nations to subsequently join.

Advertisement

The World Bank estimates, "Annual income gains generated by the TPP by 2030 will be $131 billion for the United States and $492 billion for the world." It will also boost exports by $357 million in the same period.

Meanwhile, detractors label the pact as a giveaway to big business, exacerbating further exportation of manufacturing jobs to low-wage nations.

Opponents also point to free trade with China and its damage to the American economy. China is a unique case because of its unprecedented size and rapid pace entering the global economy. TPP won't be as radical, because it merely enhances trade with existing, developed trading partners.

Populism Misconceptions

Sanders and Trump have generated populist enthusiasm by turning previous trade deals, specifically NAFTA, into electoral punching bags for America's economic woes. While previous trade deals have partly contributed to job loss and income inequality, these trends have existed in America since the dawn of "Reaganomics."

The Economic Policy Institute attributes CEOs taking larger pay cuts, the failure to increase the minimum wage, declining union density, the erosion of collective bargaining, the worsening of labor practices (in regards to providing employees paid sick, maternity and paternity leave and paid vacation), increased costs of healthcare, and financial deregulation as contributors to wage stagnation and income inequality in the U.S.

Advertisement

Council of Foreign Relations contributor Edward Alden writes:

"Evidence should produce some soul-searching about the causes of this country's declining competitiveness. The list is discouragingly long: crumbling infrastructure, inadequate educational performance, stifling regulation, and a cumbersome tax system... With the rapid growth of middle classes abroad, trade should be an opportunity for the United States to sell into growing markets, increasing opportunities and wages for many Americans here at home."

Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen stated:

Had NAFTA not been signed, "the jobs would probably have gone to China or somewhere else; most jobs have relocated to China. The U.S. had a trade deficit with Mexico of $54 billion [in 2013], but with China, it was [a deficit of] $318 billion, so the [U.S.] deficit is five times bigger with China than with Mexico. In other words, you would calculate, maybe for every job we have lost in the U.S. to Mexico, five [jobs] were lost to China."

In addition to devastating right-wing economic policies in the name of conservative demigod Ronald Reagan, the rapid development of technology is also partly responsible for job loss and decreasing wages in the U.S.

Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT economics professor, illustrates the blessing and burden technology has placed on our economy:

"It's the great paradox of our era. Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren't keeping up."

The White House has also predicted that automation will threaten many menial labor jobs in the U.S. as well.

Essentially, poor domestic economic policy, globalization and advancements in technology have all played a role in America's plodding economy. Condemning trade deals as the sole culprit of poor job prospects is equivalent to examining our economic history through the perspective and scope of a toilet paper tube.

America stands to gain from free trade, allowing us to specialize in areas where we have a competitive advantage, such as primary goods, advanced manufacturing and services, while shipping obsolete labor-intensive manufacturing jobs to low-income countries, allowing them to develop into stronger economies.

This, in turn, gives America access to more diverse selection of, and less expensive, goods while increased prosperity of other countries will open up new markets for U.S. products, therefore, boosting demand and producing more jobs in the long run.

Arun M. Kumar, Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, notes the benefits for small and medium-sized businesses.

Advertisement

"The Agreement provides for more efficient and transparent customs procedures, advance rulings on how a product will be treated to prevent surprises at the border, and provisions that enable expedited shipping and reduced paperwork... Large companies have the resources to clear bureaucratic hurdles, but small ones do not have that luxury."

However, the unfortunate reality is low-wage workers will lose out to a certain extent. They will benefit from Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) programs that have helped displaced workers in the manufacturing and textile industries in the past, and now service industries. Best case scenario for these workers: the government subsidizes these industries - but these require Congressional approval.

It's more likely the U.S. government will place these workers on TAA and focus on industries that modernize and streamline our economy, giving the U.S. a comparative trade advantage in specialized sectors and create new jobs. This is essentially the long-term goal of free trade agreements.

An Imperfect Partnership

The TPP isn't without its flaws either. Voters shouldn't be angered at the prospect of liberalized trade, but should be concerned about the potential environmental impacts caused by Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) and intellectual property provisions.

Democratic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren summarizes how the ISDS can undermine American sovereignty:

Advertisement

"ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws -- and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers -- without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here's how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn't be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions -- and even billions -- of dollars in damages."

Also, current intellectual property and patent laws in the U.S. defend big pharmaceutical companies' sales revenues of medicine by preventing the production of a generic version of a certain drug for 12 years after its initial market release.

As a result, low-income individuals in industrialized countries and many in less developed economies will have significantly limited access to affordable medicine.

The Big Picture

The world is becoming increasingly globalized and technology is rendering low-skill labor industries obsolete. The timing of previous free trade deals came during seismic shifts in trade and production. There are many factors contributing to job loss in America, but our economy, much like the rest of the world, is experiencing growing pains as it adapts to a constantly changing international market.

The godfather of free market capitalism, Adam Smith, wrote in his influential book "The Wealth of Nations":

Advertisement

"Individuals and countries should specialize in producing things in which they have a comparative advantage and then trade with other countries that specialize in something else. This trade is mutually beneficial."

But the Donald doesn't share this sentiment:

"I'm sick of always reading about outsourcing. Why aren't we talking about 'onshoring'? We need to bring manufacturing jobs back home where they belong. Onshoring, or 'repatriation,' is a way for us to take back the jobs China is stealing. We know that China's wages are increasing. Also, China lacks certain natural resources that we have in abundance. If we exploit those two key facts, we can begin making the case to companies that they should bring their manufacturing facilities home to America."

Despite this statement coming from a man who manufactures his ties in China and once employed undocumented Polish workers, it appears Mr. Trump has a zero-sum view of economics -- the U.S. only gains if everyone else loses.

He only wants to pursue free trade if it results in a net surplus for America, which is impossible for the world's largest economy.

The economic developments of the past century immediately dispel this notion. Countries that opened themselves up to trade (the U.S. and Singapore) thrived, while countries that insulated themselves (Argentina, India and China until recently) stagnated.

Advertisement

FeeltheBern.org states Bernie's stance on trade:

"The top priority of any trade deal should be to help American workers. Unfortunately, as Bernie has warned year after year, American trade policy over the last 30 years has done just the opposite. Multinational corporations - who have helped to write most of these trade deals - have benefited greatly while millions of American jobs have been shipped overseas."

While Sanders's intentions are more noble and rational, as he favors free trade that prioritizes the interests of American workers, his perspective is shortsighted. The emergence of China, technology, deeper globalization with low-wage countries, disastrous domestic economic policies and the lack of investment to modernize the American economy have all factored into the decline of the middle class and a plodding economy.

American workers have a right to be frustrated with the current state of the economy; they have been left behind in the corporate race to the bottom. Economic populism is appealing, as it paints a clear picture of a recession culprit, but that image gets muddled once other global and domestic dynamics are considered.

Sanders and Trump are trying to allure disillusioned workers with campaign promises to preserve some short-term jobs, but free trade will benefit America in the long run while the rest of the world continues to advance.

Unfortunately, there are adverse short-term effects, most notably displaced workers winding up in lower paying jobs. Rather than oppose free trade, we should be pushing the government to make smart investments in growing sectors in the economy in which the U.S. can gain competitive advantages (like renewable energy and information technology) and job training, so workers can adapt, learn new skills and find a way to be competitive in the job market.

Advertisement

Keeping these labor jobs decelerates the modernization of the American economy and reduces incentives to gain the most valuable skills on the global market. Even if this transition is generational, free trade has panned out in the past, leaving workers and consumers wealthier.

If we turn our backs to free trade, it services current workers at the expense of future workers and the long-term development of both the American and global economy.

Is the TPP perfect? No. We should be pushing our politicians to revise the Investor-State Dispute Settlements and intellectual property provisions to be more favorable to consumers.

Is free trade bad? No. It's been costly because of a dysfunctional federal government unable to adapt to the demands of the modern global economy, and a major political party committed to solving 21st century problems with 1980s solutions, in hopes to preserve a romanticized past.

If the U.S. wants to maintain its status as a global hegemon, dictate the guidelines for international trade and economic development, and modernize its economy, free trade is an essential part of this process, and we the people need to push our politicians to seriously address our lingering structural economic flaws.


Patrons enjoy dinner and drinks at The Mule in the Plaza District.

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla.--As the millennial generation left work for dinner and drinks, a mix of political views emerged during the Super Tuesday 2016 presidential primary in the Plaza District.

Paul Bronson, 22, identifies as an independent, but because he cannot vote as an independent in Oklahoma he is a registered republican. He hasn't voted yet, but plans on doing so later this evening.

"I wish there was a chance for independents to vote in the primary," Bronson said, noting that he wishes there was a candidate more in the middle of two extremes. He also said that his faith plays a role in which candidate he will vote for.

Advertisement

Shiloh Barrett, 22, is not voting in the primaries because she is registered in Texas and living in Oklahoma. She said she would possibly register to vote in the general election, but feels that her vote simply will not count.

"[I'd vote] if I knew my vote actually counted rather than the Electoral College having the final say in the vote, not the majority of the population," Barrett said.

Brandilyn Long, 25, also is not voting in the Oklahoma primaries. She is registered to vote, but plans on voting in her home state of Florida.

Brooke Sergas, 23, voted for Bernie Sanders today and said that she agrees with almost all of his policies except for his foreign policy. In her eyes, no candidate has a foreign policy that she can agree with.

Advertisement

"I went out to vote today because I think the primaries are a good precursor to the general election," Sergas said.

Gracie Barry, 24, was once a registered republican, but said that she switched to the Democratic Party three years ago as she studies more about social justice. Today she voted for Hillary Clinton.

"I love Hillary as a candidate," Barry said. "Women's rights are super important to me. I really think it's time a woman is president of this country."

Barry's friend Kyla Humphrey, 25, voted today for candidate Marco Rubio. She said that most of her family is republican and that she felt pressure from her family to vote a certain way. Humphrey said she doesn't necessarily feel like there is even a candidate she can support.

"I didn't know [who I was voting for] until I literally walked up today," Humphrey said. "I feel like my vote didn't even matter, honestly. I just wrote somebody down."
Students and supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., cheer and hold up signs, including one of Sanders, during a campaign rally at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., Sunday, Feb. 28, 2016. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Bernie Sanders has a 100 percent rating from the NAACP. He endorsed the presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson in both 1984 and 1988. He marched with Dr. Martin Luther King. He was a member of both the Congress on Racial Equality and the anti-racist Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. He led Chicago's first-ever mass protest against housing segregation.

His campaign has been joined by a long roster of African-American intellectuals and cultural icons, from Michelle Alexander, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Cornel West to Spike Lee, Killer Mike, Danny Glover, and Harry Belafonte. He opposed Clinton's disastrous welfare "reform" bill in the 1990s. He's opposed the death penalty his entire political career. He's consistently voted to limit the power of law enforcement, including a vote against the Patriot Act at a time when few had the political courage to gainsay President Bush on homeland security issues.

Advertisement

He opposed the Iraq War in part because he believes wars are often fought by the poor on behalf of the rich. He heard #BlackLivesMatter before Hillary Clinton did, and has consistently showed more respect to young black protesters than has Clinton. He's led the fight to restore the Voting Rights Act, which conservatives have gutted in order to suppress the African-American vote.

He's called for an end to for-profit prisons and the War on Drugs. His economic and healthcare plans are significantly more targeted than Clinton's when it comes to addressing poverty and lack of affordable healthcare in majority-minority urban communities.

And yet, to hear Hillary Clinton supporters tell it, the only way for Sanders to prove he cares a lick about African-Americans is to drop out of the presidential race right now and passionately endorse his rival.

Sanders supporters, sometimes eloquently and respectfully and sometimes in a churlish and condescending manner, have tried to make the case for Bernie Sanders as a candidate for all constituencies within the Democratic Party -- to no avail. When they list his accomplishments and values, they've been derided for demanding a quid pro quo from African-American voters, as though listing one's accomplishments and values in fora where voters congregate is some dastardly plot rather than the very business of a presidential candidate.

Advertisement

They've faced every possible permutation of the correlation-is-not-causation fallacy, too, with many very smart people -- some Clinton supporters, some merely freelancers looking for clicks -- arguing that because largely white folks are voting for Bernie Sanders, his campaign must have intended to appeal only to these voters.

Even Sanders' unwillingness to discuss his Judaism and his upbringing in the 1940s as a non-white American -- Jews didn't become "white" until the 1960s, by decree of the very Anglos who'd marginalized and abused them for decades -- has somehow been taken as a sign of the Senator's callousness toward non-white voters. How? Well, surely he has some secret Semitic plot to disclose his Jewishness at an opportune time of his choosing, the better to parlay his "otherness" into cold, hard votes? (Yes, I have actually heard this argument from Clinton supporters).

In other words, Sanders is in a catch-22. That doesn't mean he deserves anyone's sympathy on this score; I'm simply observing a fact. Sanders is losing the African-American and Latino votes in a landslide, and all the normal things one would expect a politician to do in a situation like that -- for instance, point to a half-century spent as an ardent supporter of civil rights and civil liberties -- have somehow been deemed out-of-bounds for Bernie and (it appears) only Bernie. Why? It doesn't matter. It's so.

So what should the Sanders campaign do now? Here's a five-point plan:

1. A media blitz

Sanders campaign officials and surrogates need to be getting on the national media, and hard, for avidly reporting Sanders' difficulties with non-white voters and reporting not at all his record on civil rights. The fact that the media spent far more time covering Clinton's bogus claims about photos and videos from Sanders' arrest in the early 1960s -- an arrest for protesting housing segregation in Chicago -- than it has covering Sanders' actual voting record is as much on the Sanders campaign as the media.

It has been loath to tell Bernie's story, for reasons that baffle Sanders supporters. This has to stop -- and reporters who chase clicks by casting aspersions against Sanders and his campaign must be publicly called to the mat for doing so.

Advertisement

2. A new narrative

Sanders is nothing if not on-message and consistent in his values -- these are two of his best traits. But another trait that Sanders is known for, this being such a degree of humility that he's unwilling to discuss his own life, has to be seen for the weakness it is. Bernie has a moving personal story to tell in relation to the Civil Rights movement and his own experiences during that time-period, and he has to start telling it.

3. A frank conversation about the Clinton record

It is not a smear to discuss publicly Clinton's mixed record with respect to legislation with a disparate racial impact. Sanders has to spend a good deal of time in majority-minority communities contrasting his record with Clinton's. He needn't say -- nor would he -- that Clinton's heart has been in the wrong place, merely that her judgment has been poor and her priorities ill-conceived.

4. Push back on Clinton's Obama narrative

Anyone who knows politics knows that Clinton has been far less supportive of President Obama than people believe (and yes, trying to wrest the presidency from the strongest African-American presidential candidate in U.S. history is a part of that narrative) and Sanders far more supportive. If Clinton is going to plagiarize Bernie's stump speech every night and after each and every primary -- which she is -- he should co-opt her line about wanting to build on President Obama's accomplishments. Because that's exactly what all his proposed plans would do.

The Clinton campaign's claim that pushing for the health care system President Obama himself prefers would require Sanders to first dismantle and then abandon Obamacare is preposterous -- and an insult to voters' intelligence. Sanders should start from there and engage Clinton's false narratives head-on.

5. Start spending a ton of money

Bernie raised $42 million in February alone, and surely it's not all going to attempts to win the Maine, Nebraska, and Kansas caucuses, all of which will feature largely white electorates. Sanders should be on the airwaves in urban markets around the country, not just in states he expects to win but also in states he expects to lose. The narrative that Bernie can only win white votes is self-perpetuating, and has to be stopped at the source -- even if the source is a state like Arizona, which he almost certainly can't win outright.

Advertisement

More important than all of this, the Sanders campaign must start listening to those who have criticized the campaign for (for instance) not putting forward the full diversity of its campaign staff or campaign volunteers in media appearances and GOTV efforts. And there are other errors -- of expression, of emphasis, and of exertion -- that must be heard and redressed because they are real, significant, and true.

As Sanders pivots to create a truly inclusive campaign, I would encourage Clinton supporters, Republicans, and neutral observers to consider the possibility that Sanders supporters are apoplectic about their favored candidate's struggle with non-white voters not because they take those votes for granted, or think Sanders deserves non-white support automatically, or think all non-Sanders voters are stupid, ill-informed, or ill-intended.

Rather, it's that Sanders supporters are trying to figure out how to talk about the candidate's lackluster performance among voters of color in the context of no one -- in the media, in the Sanders campaign, in the homes of unbiased political observers everyone -- having figured out how to do it either.

Certainly, it's a quandary we've never seen before for a candidate with a 100% rating from the NAACP.

In other words, Sanders supporters, given the facts in the first paragraph of this essay, have every right to be frustrated that their candidate's record and values have been unfairly maligned and consistently misreported; however, the very fact that the record can and should speak volumes if it's given half the chance is a sign that Sanders can and must do better in speaking to non-white voters going forward.

Advertisement

While Sanders supporters are not wrong to look forward to primaries in which Sanders is expected to do well, they should be gravely concerned about exit polls showing that, in the states the Senator has lost, he has lost non-white voters in a landslide. And they should be concerned about this first and foremost because their candidate has much more to say to these voters than he is currently revealing -- and his revolution is a revolution in name only until it welcomes to its ranks the full spectrum of the American electorate.
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network with a mission is to connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. LinkedIn is pretty awesome if you are navigating your way through corporate America. But, what if you are not?

What if you are looking for work at the local Dunkin Donuts or a major retailer? Or what if you are one of the 67% of people over 18 who do not have a traditional college degree, and have instead opted for a career path outside of cubicles and conference calls? If you are a convenience store manager, barista, construction worker, cashier, pharmacy technician, personal care attendant, shipping and receiving clerk, housekeeper, truck driver, mechanic, welder, or maintenance manager, where do you network with others so you can be more successful? As it turns out, there's a place dedicated to making your life easier, a place where you can find the perfect job while advocating for others who are looking, too. That place is Jobcase.

I recently talked with the inspiring entrepreneur who has carved out a niche for the millions of Americans looking for the jobs that you just won't find on LinkedIn or Glassdoor. He's managed to find a way to aggregate jobs from around the country on one site, while also building a complex linguistic algorithm which matches job seekers with the best possible advocates to help them get the job they want, and one that also best suits their skills. If you are an employer, you can post your jobs for no cost. If you are looking for a job, you may also build your profile for free. There are no paywalls, no complex hoops to jump through, and no BS -- this is a simple site to match job seekers, employee seekers, and advocates. The founder is Fred Goff, the company is Jobcase, and here are his five simple lessons for building a company that matters.

Advertisement

Pivot: John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans," and in fact, Goff is the first to admit that Jobcase is a company that was born by accident when he stumbled upon a massive hole in the networking-for-jobs industry. Fred is a first generation college graduate in his family. Upon graduating from Carnegie Mellon he went on to become an emerging market trader and then became a proprietary funds manager at Bank of Boston. It was during these years that he noticed that while his strength was in business and banking, he lacked a clear understanding of technology, and so he took a sabbatical and attended MIT to absorb everything he could on the matter. Upon finishing MIT he went on to become the CIO of a large energy company in Oklahoma, and eventually returned to Boston in 2004 and founded Percipio Capital Management, a fund which converted to cash three short weeks before the Lehman Collapse of 2008. Percipio Capital Management eventually pivoted to Percipio Asset Management, and then to Percipio Media which was formed to leverage their technology and their team in the digital media space. It was while running his media company when Fred noticed a gap in the industry. He became intimately familiar with sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor, and soon found that these sites were serving only a small minority. In fact, nobody was serving the silent majority of people who are not seeking a job in corporate America. Goff says that the secret to building a company that matters is that you need to be able to recognize the big opportunity when you are working on a project. Sometimes that opportunity requires you to totally re-organize your business in a different direction. Goff says that if you are open to opportunity and willing to keep pivoting, you can build a company that fills a real need. He says that while he could still be running a media company, it would have been one of thousands of media companies trying to make a name for itself. Instead, his media company led him to a greater opportunity. So he pivoted and has built an empire that is serving a community that is underserved. The company reorganized to focus on the social media mission and on technology, putting other activities into a subsidiary entity. Goff says that LinkedIn and Glassdoor are great, but neither of these sites is serving their customer, and with 50 million people actively on Jobcase, less than 20% overlap with LinkedIn. For Goff, an opportunity presented itself, he saw it, and he chose to pivot.

Celebrate What Matters: Goff says that if you want to build a company that matters, you need to celebrate what matters when it comes to people. He says that on Jobcase, community members have the opportunity to build resumes. However, he's quick to point out that rarely is it the resume that gets one hired. He says that what gets people hired is their personal DNA, the stuff that makes them uniquely awesome. Jobcase has figured out a way to find the best in people. First, Jobcase celebrates volunteerism. Goff says that where a person volunteers in their free time says more about that person than the fact that they worked at Dunkin Donuts for three years. Therefore, the Jobcase platform highlights the volunteer work of its members on their profile page. Secondly, Jobcase helps its members collect praise. Community members can ask the people they know for praise. There are four types of praises - friends and family, former boss, co-workers, and customer. Jobcase separates the identities of those who leave praise so that the employer can quickly determine the relationship to the employee. What the community members appreciate most about collecting praises in one place is that once it's given, it lives forever on the Jobcase platform, so they aren't trying to track down a boss three years later to get a recommendation. Jobcase has built a platform that's much more than just a list of past jobs and experiences, it's a site that celebrates the human being behind the profile, make it easier for employers to hire based on character, competence, and capacity to give back.

Advertisement

No Subscriptions/No Paywalls: What's unique about Jobcase is that it's a free site for both the employer and the job seekers. Fred was clear that they are not just trying to collect resumes so that they can put it behind a paywall to sell it back to employers. Employers can freely scroll through a list of local candidates and pull a resume in two clicks. Jobcase has removed all the possible friction, making it easy for employers and job seekers to find one another. Furthermore, Jobcase has developed linguistic algorithms to search their 50 million members to find the ones relevant to one another. For example, Fred shared the story of one woman who had applied multiple times at Walmart for a job. Apparently there's a kiosk where you fill out an application. She posted to Jobcase asking if anyone else had experience successfully getting a job at Walmart, and as it turns out, one of the other Jobcase members saw the post and responded, offering this woman the exact blueprint to get the job. Fred says that the coolest part of the Jobcase platform is that they are connecting advocates, people who have experience getting a particular job and who are willing to help others achieve their job goals.

People Not Data: It was after his sabbatical at MIT and while he was on the first pivot of Jobcase when Fred attended a jobs conference which focused on jobs data. He listened to the speakers and was angry about the dismissive way in which human beings were being discussed as commodity labor. All he could think about during the event was, "These are people you are talking about, not data." He says that the way in which people were referred to as data at that conference bothered him for years. That's why the human touch of the Jobcase site is so important to him. He says that by giving both job seekers and employers a voice, they can communicate human to human, not data to data. As well, by highlighting the volunteer work and the praises on each profile, it's abundantly clear there's a human being behind the resume.

Suburban Barbecue Stigma: Last but not least, Fred is on a mission to change what he calls the Suburban Barbecue Stigma. First of all, he pointed out that there are more people in the US who do not have college degrees than do. Secondly, he says that while college is a great option for many, it's not for everyone, and for many kids, it's not the best option. He says that college comes with a massive price tag. As well, there are many kids who just don't learn well in a classroom setting. Fred says that he's afraid that too many kids end up going to college just because of the Suburban Barbecue Stigma. In other words, every high school graduate and the parents of every high school graduate, attend barbecues every July. "So what's Johnny doing now that he's done with high school?" Fred says that sometimes there's an unfortunate stigma attached to kids who choose not to attend college. He says it's unfortunate only because there are millions of really good artisan and trade jobs out there that don't require college degrees, and if only there were no stigma, there'd be more good people to take those jobs and less twenty-year olds struggling from massive student loan debt.
China plans to launch its second space laboratory into outer space during the third quarter of 2016, Xinhua reported this week, part of its larger strategy to create a manned space station around 2022. The latest lab, Tiangong-2, is slated to link up with a supply ship, Tianzhou-1, that will be launched next year, individuals from the Chinese space program said.

The first space laboratory, Tiangong-1, launched in 2011, and this newly launched piece, are two out of three major contributing parts for the Chinese space station. The third component is a core module.

Beijing is rapidly advancing toward its objective by launching two astronauts into space later this year on the Shenzhou 11 spacecraft. This mission, while certainly compelling, is only one out of 20 space launches for China this year.

Advertisement

The most exciting Chinese mission might not occur for another two years. The NASA-equivalent China National Space Administration (CNSA) aims to land a robot on the far side of the moon by 2018 - a feat no space program in the world has ever done.

China's "Space Dream"

The Chinese space program, much like the U.S. program during the famed golden years of the 1960s and 1970s, has spurred national pride. In 2003, China's first astronaut, Yang Liwei, traveled into space. In the decade leading up to 2013, Beijing launched ten astronauts and six spacecraft into space.

"The mission's crew members carry a space dream of the Chinese nation, and represent the lofty aspirations of the Chinese people to explore space," state-run media quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping saying in 2013.

China welcomes private firms in space exploration

Advertisement

"Most of our space equipment is developed and produced by State-owned institutes in accordance with missions set by the government," Wang Pengji, a senior space scientist at the China Academy of Space Technology, told Xinhua. "Opening the industry to the private sector will introduce competition and new ideas," he added.The Future of Chinese Space Exploration

The Chinese space program, which at one point lagged well behind its American and Russian counterparts, might be a prime positon in the coming years to overtake these prestigious space programs.
Hillary Clinton titled her 2004 memoir "Living History," and today, that's what we're all doing. The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has coincided with a schedule of arguments before the Supreme Court that will have an enduring impact on women's access to reproductive health care. The first of these cases, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, is being argued today.

The U.S Supreme Court has ruled in two major cases having to do with abortion care. Roe v. Wade, of course, was the landmark 1973 decision that established a woman's constitutional right to abortion, and in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey affirmed Roe and held that states could not impose restrictive laws on abortion that placed an "undue burden" on women. The Court held that a law is invalid if its "purpose or effect is to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability."

Anti-abortion extremists in Texas--among other places--didn't like the sound of that.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents medical caregivers in their efforts to ensure women's access to safe and legal abortion care explains,

Advertisement

In an attempt to sneak around the Constitution and four decades of Supreme Court precedent, anti-choice politicians in Texas passed a law known as H.B.2 in 2013. Under the pretext of protecting women's health and safety, HB2 buries clinics under medically unnecessary regulations so burdensome as to make it vastly more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain safe and legal abortion care.

H.B.2, also known as the Texas clinic shutdown case, was the legislation that State Senator Wendy Davis filibustered so memorably, and if the Supreme Court allows it to fully take effect, Texas would go from having 42 clinics providing safe and legal abortion to just 10.

Two of the requirements that anti-choice legislators in Texas concocted to restrict access to abortion are:

doctors who provide abortion services must obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals no farther than 30 miles away from the clinic; and

every health care facility offering abortion care must meet building specifications to essentially become mini-hospitals (also known as ambulatory surgical centers, or ASCs).

Neither of these requirements promotes women's health; they are intended to force the closure of abortion clinics, effectively nullifying, if not exactly overturning, Roe v Wade. After all, if abortion providers can be eliminated by bogus regulations, a woman's fundamental right to terminate her pregnancy is meaningless.

Whole Woman's Health follows an appeals court ruling that upheld the Texas clinic shutdown law. Justice Anthony Kennedy is widely considered the swing vote here. In the absence of Justice Scalia, should Kennedy side with his three conservative colleagues, the resulting 4-4 tie would allow the appeals court ruling to stand. But that wouldn't necessarily be the end of the matter.

According to the New York Times,

But a tie vote would not be a binding precedent, leaving uncertainty for other states and highlighting more than ever the importance of the next Supreme Court appointment. If the four anti-abortion votes were secure and the post was filled by another conservative, the court would quickly have opportunities to reach a binding decision next year, as states like Alabama, Mississippi and Wisconsin press to remove blocks on their admitting-privilege laws.

You can read veteran Supreme Court watcher Lyle Denniston's preview of this case on his SCOTUSblog here.

Advertisement

We should all be watching what happens in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, but this isn't the only historic case involving women's health that will be heard by an 8 member Court. Zubik v. Burwell follows last year's Burwell v. Hobby Lobby decision that allowed some corporations to claim a religious exemption to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that all insurance policies include contraception in their preventive care coverage. I'll have more to say about that in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I invite you to take a look at Jon Oliver's a great segment about the clinic shutdown law (word to the wise: it's not G-rated), which it includes a look at one of the building specifications--the width of their hallways. You can see the hallway issue discussed a little more than four minutes into this clip, but the whole segment is worth watching.
Since its inception in 1990, the H-1B guestworker program that allows employers to bring in high-skilled foreign workers on six-year visas has been steeped in controversy.

The program has been the subject of dozens of congressional hearings, including one just last week in which I participated, frequent op-eds from pundits and technology moguls, exposes and legislative changes. Critics accuse it of depressing wages and outsourcing American jobs, while advocates call it an essential source of the best and brightest talent.

But this year marks the first time it has risen up to the stage of a presidential campaign. The leading candidates in both parties have staked clear and competing positions about how to change the program, either greatly expanding it (Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton) or tightening the eligibility criteria and requiring the recruitment of American workers first (Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders).

Advertisement

But what exactly is the H-1B visa and how does it work? And how would different reforms and changes improve the program?

Since there is much mythology about the program, let's take a step back and look at what it is intended to achieve to dispel the myths and the confusion.

I have been exploring issues surrounding high-skill immigration and offshoring for more than 15 years and believe a better understanding of the program will help us assess the candidates' positions. And my view is that the program is being widely abused by companies and needs to be reformed to ensure it is meeting its intent while providing adequate protection to American and foreign workers alike.









Exasperated accountant via www.shutterstock.com





Advertisement

What's so 'special' about it?

The program has its roots in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act as a way to bring in foreign workers "to perform temporary service of an exceptional nature requiring such merit and ability."

The 1990 Immigration Act formally created the H-1B visa and made two significant changes to the original program: 1) allowing "dual-intent" so that H-1B workers could pursue permanent residency and 2) setting an annual cap of 65,000 people.

The statutory cap has changed multiple times over the years, rising as high as 195,000 at the peak of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s and settling at 85,000 since 2005. In 2000, Congress made certain employers such as universities and research institutions exempt from the cap, meaning in reality about 120,000 new H-1B workers are approved each year.

The "dual intent" provision made the H-1B an important conduit for skilled workers to permanently immigrate, while the program's intent remained to fill skills gaps in the labor market and provide a way to bring in workers in occupations for which Americans were hard to find.

'Best and brightest'

The main problem with the H-1B currently is that it's focused on "specialty occupations," but there really isn't anything special about most of the H-1B workers being hired. Rather than filling specialized skills gaps in the U.S. labor market, most H-1B workers have no more than ordinary skills, ones that are abundantly available from the available American talent pool.

Advertisement

While industry advocates such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg and the lobbying groups they support argue that H-1Bs help the U.S. lure the "best and brightest" from abroad, the reality is that the educational threshold for an H-1B is only a bachelor's degree. And in fact, the majority of technology industry H-1Bs hold no more than that.

In practice, the program can - and is - used to fill any occupation that typically requires a simple undergraduate degree, such as journalism, accounting and marketing.

H-1B workers can be brought in even in occupations where there's an abundance of American workers, such as the legal and sales professions. Employers need not show that there are shortages of U.S. workers, do not need to seek local hires first and can even replace Americans with H-1Bs.

Further, the intent is that H-1Bs be paid market wages, but the reality is that the "prevailing wage" rules for H-1Bs are flimsy and it's extraordinarily easy to pay an H-1B worker much less than an American worker.

Advertisement









Reuters





Replacing American jobs

Those advocating for reform of the program, like myself, have argued that it has mostly been used to replace, and substitute, Americans with cheaper labor, which as I've shown is extraordinarily easy and profitable.

And that's why, in a campaign season that has highlighted immigration and middle-class pain in the U.S., the H-1B has received such unusual prominence.

Should there be any doubt that employers have a self-interest in finding the cheapest workers available, one need only to look at the wage-fixing scandal in which the CEOs of the two most valuable and profitable firms in the world - Apple and Google - conspired to keep their workers from getting fair wages.

Last year, Southern California Edison, the state's largest utility, replaced 400 American IT professionals with H-1B workers from India and then required those getting fired to train their replacements.

Advertisement

Why did Edison do it? The reason was simple: the H-1B workers were cheaper. The cost savings were US$40,000 to $50,000 per worker, or 40 percent to 50 percent less than an American. The Department of Labor recently completed its investigation of Edison and its contractors and found no violation of H-1B rules. In other words, the department affirmed that it is legal to pay H-1B workers substantially less than Americans and to even replace Americans with H-1Bs.

If a company like Disney, which received great scrutiny in a series of front-page New York Times articles, will exploit the H-1B program while under the spotlight, what company wouldn't?

Another criticism of the H-1B program is that it upends the normal employer-employee power relationship. Since it's intended as a nonimmigrant guestworker visa - most H-1Bs are not sponsored for permanent residence - it invites abuse and exploitation. These conditions - lower wages, offshoring of the jobs and an imbalance in the employer-employee relationship - lead to depressed wages and working conditions for all American workers in these fields.

Advertisement









Reuters





The candidates and the H-1B

So where do the presidential candidates stand?

Republican frontrunner Trump is targeting the wage issue directly, calling for an increase in the minimum salaries paid to H-1B workers in order to prevent the program from being used for cheaper labor. He would also require that employers recruit American workers before they could hire someone under an H-1B visa.

These are both steps in the right direction, though details remain lacking. It's worth noting that Trump has been attacked by his rivals for hiring large numbers of H-2B unskilled seasonal guestworkers for his resorts.

Senator Rubio is an original cosponsor of the so-called I-Squared Act, which would more than triple the number of H-1Bs issued.

When the topic arose in one of the first Republican debates, he claimed the act would also help curb the program's abuses by requiring employees to seek Americans first and higher wages for H-1Bs - which both The New York Times and I have refuted.

Like Trump, Senator Cruz has expressed concern about the program. He has proposed an even bolder reform plan that involves a 180-day moratorium to investigate program abuse, lifting minimum wage and educational requirements and making it harder to use the program if a company is laying off Americans. That's a significant reversal from his earlier position on the H-1B. During the 2013 debate, he introduced a failed amendment to the immigration reform bill that would have increased the H-1B cap five-fold, with no additional protections.

Advertisement

On the Democratic side, the H-1B visa - like immigration generally - hasn't been as hot a topic, though the two contenders are on opposite sides of the issue.

Former Secretary of State Clinton has long advocated increasing the H-1B visa cap, yet has been silent about whether she would clean up any abuse. Senator Sanders, on the other hand, has advocated reform of the program and has cosponsored bipartisan legislation in prior Congresses crafted by long-time reform advocates Senators Charles Grassley and Dick Durbin.

These bills would raise minimum-wage levels, give American workers a first and legitimate shot at jobs before they are offered to H-1Bs, prevent a Disney-like replacement of American workers and institute random audits to ensure compliance (the current compliance system relies solely on whistle-blowers).

Where reform begins

As someone who has researched this program for more than 15 years, and advocated for its reform, I'm glad to see that the issue is finally getting some recognition at the highest levels of politics.

Advertisement

To me and many others, the solutions are obvious, and variations of them are already available to lawmakers in three recent bills introduced in the Senate. The majority of H-1B workers are being hired because they are cheaper than Americans. We believe that the solution is to raise wages - and raise them substantially - and ensure that American workers have a first and legitimate opportunity for these jobs.

The H-1B program is an important program that serves as a bridge to permanent immigration for talented foreign workers. It should be used to recruit truly specialized workers from abroad when the labor conditions are tight and a qualified American can't be found. But no American worker should ever be displaced by an H-1B worker - that was never the program's intent - and this practice should be ended.





Ron Hira, Associate Professor of Political Science, Howard University
Despite progress in recent decades, women remain underrepresented (or not represented at all) in many aspects of political and civic life.

In the United States, the current Congress is about 20 percent female; there has not (yet) been a female president (out of 44 in total); and the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, was appointed only in 1981. And, in many non-Western societies, the underrepresentation of women in public life is even starker.

Advertisement

This raises an obvious question: how does including and expanding female participation in these civic institutions affect society?

As we describe in more detail below, this seemingly simple question turns out to be a stubbornly difficult one to answer well. We contribute to this discussion by looking back to the time when women first became eligible to serve on juries for criminal trials in England in 1921.

While women also began serving on juries in the U.S. at about the same time, our focus on English juries is motivated by the availability of high-quality archival court records in the National Archives, which allowed us to identify the number of women sitting on the jury for each criminal trial in London almost 100 years ago.









Reuters





An important question

How the inclusion of more women in the courts, parliamentary bodies and other positions of power fundamentally change decisions and outcomes is perhaps particularly salient to three ongoing debates: the possibility that a woman will be a U.S. political party's presidential nominee for the first time, who should be appointed as the next Supreme Court justice and the role of women in the military.

Advertisement

Hillary Clinton is currently the favorite to win the Democratic Party's nomination battle. How would being a woman affect what kind of president she would be?

With the recent death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the current court has three female justices, five men and one vacant seat. How might having another woman on the court influence its deliberations and findings?

Though all combat posts in the U.S. military have now been made available to females, and the U.S. is even considering requiring females to register for the draft, the command structure of the military is still male-dominated. This has long been viewed as a major factor in the extraordinarily low rate of successful prosecutions of sexual assaults.

The Department of Defense estimates that approximately 5,000 of 25,000 incidents of sexual assaults were reported in 2013 and, of these, only 375 were successfully prosecuted. How would the ascension of more women to higher military ranks affect such statistics?

A difficult question

How the inclusion of women affects outcomes in any aspect of civic and political life is a stubbornly difficult question to answer well.

Advertisement

The main challenge is that the selection of individuals for most positions - elected officials or political appointments - is far from random. This makes it difficult to separate the causal effect of female officials from the circumstances that lead to their appointments.

For example, the majority of female members of the U.S. Congress represent progressive/liberal districts. It is difficult to disentangle the influence of their gender on a vote from that of the political ideology of the constituency that they were chosen to represent.

Women join English juries for first time

In our recent NBER working paper, coauthored with RAND economist Shamena Anwar, we turned to the history books to help shed some light on these difficult modern-day questions. Specifically, we studied the impact of adding females into the English jury pool - the group of people from whom the final jurors are selected - on criminal court outcomes.

Women became eligible to serve on English juries with the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919. Our basic analysis compares cases before and after the jury reform - when females were excluded and then included from the jury pool, and by definition the seated jury.

We use an original data set of more than 3,000 criminal cases from archival hand-written court records of the First and Second Courts of the Old Bailey - the London criminal court - from 1918 to 1926, including the names of all individuals seated on the jury.

Advertisement

Impact of the 'great experiment'

The question of whether female representation on juries affects verdicts has been raised by the popular press both today and at the time of the "great experiment" - the term used by newspapers during the period to characterize the new eligibility of female jurors.

For instance, a six-person jury consisting of all women decided George Zimmerman was not guilty in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in 2014. Many major media outlets in the country included a headline concerning the extreme gender composition of the jury upon jury selection, and again upon the verdict.

Our analysis yields a number of key findings.

Though the "great experiment" did not have a significant impact on the likelihood of conviction when bundling all cases together, we found that female representation in the jury pool significantly increased conviction rates for sex offense cases by 16 percentage points and decreased those for property and violent crimes.

The magnitude of these effects is substantial, especially in light of the fact that males continued to constitute a large majority (more than 80 percent) of jurors post-reform. That is, in the years immediately after the reform, most post-reform juries had just one or two seated females.

In addition, prior to the reform, the conviction rate differential between male and female victim violent crime cases was essentially zero - a conviction was just as likely when the victim was a man as a woman. After the reform, this conviction differential increased to 20 percentage points, such that a conviction became far more likely when the victim was a woman.

Advertisement

'Sensitive' cases

A comparison of pre- and post-reform conviction rates encompasses many potential mechanisms for how the reform affected outcomes, the most obvious of which is that eligibility leads directly to female representation on juries, thereby affecting deliberations and decisions.

But the reform may also indirectly affect verdicts even in cases in which females are not seated on the jury. This could occur, for instance, if the judge makes comments to the entire jury pool about whether the nature of the case is "sensitive" for female ears.

Our paper provides additional evidence that the direct effect of serving female jurors is an important channel. In particular, when analyzing directly the impact of seated female jurors for the subset of cases in which the jury was carried over from a previous trial, we found that adding females to the seated jury sharply increased conviction rates for violent crime cases against women.









Reuters





Why women jurors change outcomes

So why did adding female jurors lead to more convictions when the victim was a woman?

One potential explanation is that all else equal (that is, holding the case characteristics and quality of evidence constant), all-male juries prior to the reform did not deem the alleged violence against women to be illegal in a subset of cases (e.g., domestic violence). Throughout the 1800s and early 1900s in the U.S., domestic violence was not treated as a criminal act and was generally considered a private matter.

Advertisement

An alternative explanation is that female jurors are not impartial, perhaps because they overly sympathize with the female victim. It is important to keep in mind, however, that men continued to make up the vast majority of jurors in each trial after the reform.

Of course, these findings could also be generated by mechanisms that are more benign in nature. For instance, female jurors may simply be better at assessing the testimony of a female victim than a male victim.

Regardless of the exact mechanism, the results of our study suggest that increasing the number of females in the upper echelons of the military would impact the treatment of sexual assaults and harassment in the military and, more generally, that the greater inclusion of women in political and civic life might significantly affect the policy decisions that are made every day.




By Kim Zayhowski

In February of 2016, President Obama released his 2017 budget proposal, which included a $10 million boost to expand Medicaid for home and community-based services to ensure that seniors and those with disabilities have care in settings that are right for them. The budget also includes an $80 million expansion to early intervention programs and preschool services for children with disabilities. While disability advocates may be happy with these budget changes, Obama's proposal has been criticized for excluding revisions that impact school-aged children with disabilities. Furthermore, Representative Tom Reed of New York has proposed the School Attendance Improves Lives (SAIL) Act, which could jeopardize income benefits for children with disabilities. This act needs to be addressed.

Income benefits to those who have disabilities are always on the chopping block. Many try to put those who receive benefits in a bad light, making it seem as though the benefits are undeserved. Currently, there are many proposed bills that threaten Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. In May 2014 Representative Reed introduced the SAIL Act (H.R. 2511), which proposes cutting SSI benefits for 16 and 17 year old recipients not attending school. This act is built on misleading information, and puts people who depend on SSI benefits in jeopardy.

SSI is a federal cash assistance program through which low-income people with severe disabilities can receive money. Many people, although qualified, are unable to receive benefits due to the intensive application process and long waitlists.

Advertisement

Proponents of the SAIL Act claim that "30 percent of all child SSI recipients had dropped out of school. By comparison, the dropout rate among all youth ages 16 to 24 in the general population is 10 percent." These supporters suggest that many older children receiving SSI are not enrolled in school, and that this act will improve attendance, thereby increasing graduation rates and employment. This bill is proposed on the false premise that people are abusing the SSI system.

Not only are SSI recipients already monitored for school attendance, but the proponents' statistics exclude children in home schools, sheltered workshops, vocational schools, and adult educational programs. In fact, research by the Lurie Institute has shown that about 95.4% of 16-18 year old SSI recipients are enrolled in an educational program or have received a high school diploma or GED, compared to 95.5% of non-recipients. This means that enrollment for this population is high and not statistically different than other teenagers.

Congressman Reed is proposing an act that will make it harder for children who are currently and historically underserved by the United States to keep SSI benefits. The numbers upon which the SAIL Act relies are deceiving.

It is time for our nation to start serving individuals with disabilities, not creating more barriers for them. Many qualified people with disabilities have fought to receive SSI and rely on it to go about their everyday lives.

Advertisement

It is imperative that we not enact a bill that, if implemented, could unjustly take away SSI from those who need it. Take action now and write to your federal representative, urging them to vote no on this act.
What would happen when these populisms collide at the first Francis-Trump summit? asks Kishore Jayabalan in this weeks Acton Commentary. We may shudder at the thought, but if Catholicism and strident nationalism are indeed so opposed, we may be left waiting for another St. Augustine to resolve the tensions between the City of God and the City of Man.

Augustine wrestled with the question of whether Christians can be good citizens and turned his attention to the vices of pagan Rome rather than trying to detail how Christians ought to practice politics. The example of the recently-deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would seem to follow suit. A traditionalist in belief and practice, he rejected any sort of Catholic interpretation of the law and went so far as to deny the importance of natural law for judges. For Scalia, there was no contradiction between the US Constitution and Catholic morality, even in cases such as the death penalty, which he addressed in a First Things essay, Gods Justice and Ours. If he thought the Catholic Church demanded the abolition of capital punishment, he would have to recuse himself from such cases or resign in protest, but he would not pervert the law to fit his moral preferences.

The full text of the essay can be found here. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
My interview with Peter G. Kalivas and Barbarella Fokos will help you see dance differently.





Choreographer Peter G. Kalivas (R., foreground) instructs one of his dance company's performers (PHOTO: David Fokos)

Film, dance, choreography, and a hint of international arts diplomacy join together in a lilting and intimate film from The Artist Odyssey, or "TAO." The film, titled Peter G. Kalivas: Body as Phenomenon, is directed by David Fokos.

The new documentary's subject, Peter Kalivas and one of the film's producers, filmmaker, Barbarella Fokos, recently granted me an interview and revealed an ethos both artists share. Rather than adhering to prescribed ways of making great art while creating works within their respective forms, Fokos, who in addition to co-producing the 15-minute film also gets an editing credit, and Kalivas both ditch the templates and formulae that too frequently make dance, and even documentary film, either predictable or remote.

Advertisement

Not to confuse the act of ditching templates with the cliche of "breaking all the rules," the folks at The Artist Odyssey--and one senses that it's no coincidence the arts network's name forms the acronym "TAO," as in Tao I Ching, the higher-self spiritual path--are subtle rule-breakers--if rule-breakers at all.

As this gem of a short film demonstrates, to say Barbarella Fokos and her husband, David Fokos along with The Artist Odyssey cofounder, Chris Fessenden (who is also Body as Phenomenon's executive producer) cherish the arts is to say hurricanes are partial water.

Likewise, to say the film's subject, choreographer Kalivas is one of the most innovative names in dance and choreography today is to say Oprah likes a little chat now and then.

My conversation with Fokos and Kalivas took place via conference call. The latter was performing in the Caribbean at the time. Fokos joined the call from her home studio in San Diego.

Advertisement

HuffPo: Peter G. Kalivas-Body as Phenomenon is your first film under the umbrella of a new arts network called, The Artist Odyssey, correct?

Barbarella Fokos: No, this is the third film, our third release at the network, which your readers can see at theartistodyssey.com

But you have a long history of producing, directing and appearing in arts and other genres of documentary film, yes?

BF: Yes.

What were the first two titles?

BF: Honoring Life: Trinh Mai, Mario Torero: Artivist, and Frank Lee Drennen: More Love are the titles of our the other films produced with The Artist Odyssey. Peter is the first choreographer-dancer we've featured.

There are so many different media involved in the arts. Did you know that dance and choreography would be among the first art forms you wanted to feature after The Artist Odyssey launched?

BF: Yes, certainly! What's that noise? [a loud noise interrupts the conference call] It sounds like someone's at a drive-thru.

Peter Kalivas: [laughing] Who me?

No, no it doesn't. It sounds like a merry-go-round.

PK: Yeah, yeah. Well, you know what it is? I'm literally working on a cruise ship this week and next week, singing. And I'm literally off the ship now near a bunch of parties in the area. So, it's a little challenging.

Advertisement

I'm not drinking either. I promise.

BF: [laughs]

I think we're going to need you to download a breathalyzer app.

BF and PK: [laughing]

PK: Welcome to my big, fat, crazy Greek life.

BF: To go back to your question, yes; we always knew we wanted to cover dance because it's a major art form, dance and choreography, performing arts. It would be egregious to overlook something so wonderful.

PK: Dance is so underrepresented in arts reporting.

Expand on that a little.

PK: Well, I've been in the field for about 30 years, and it's shocking that dance still feels almost like a niche market. That's the mission of my organization. We're working so hard to see if we can come up with inventive strategies that let more people of all different economic brackets, all different cultural points of view engage and have and opportunity to meet our dance company and to experience our dance company. It's really important that we don't make our [dance-performance] products too expensive.

It's also important that we don't make our performances inaccessible because they're put off by the theater spaces. I'm really aware of that stuff; I'm really hypersensitive to other people's sensitivities about how we're received and about how people want to experience their art. It should be multicultural. It should show diverse points of view. It should speak to the people. That's the whole point of it. If my organization doesn't work that way, then it has no value.

Dance overall--even in commercials--whether it's seeing actors selling products, music selling products, dance is used in the same way, but much more superficially. I'm going to get a little testy here, but it's so easy to objectify dance than to really look at it and see what it trying to be on its own.

Do you mean that we see dance as almost ambient--like it's in the background?

PK: That's exactly right. Dance is always framing and supporting and serving something else, something that's presented as bigger than us. It's not that dance is minor, it's just put in a minor position.

Advertisement

Do you aim to put dance in the foreground?

I do. It stands on its own. It's got its own voice, it's own purpose, it's own aesthetic. That's why I'm not a fan of the way dance is presented today. It's always in the background. You even go to Cirque de Soleil and other companies and organizations and you may not even realize that people are even dancing, they're so far in the background.

Barbarella, is that why you approached Peter Kalivas for TAO's first film on dance?

BF: To Peter's point, as a documenter of the arts, I wholeheartedly agree; dance is its own art form, it's own medium and is right up there with visual arts or music. It's not just a sub-genre under the larger category of performing arts.



L-R: The Artist Odyssey co-founders, Barbarella Fokos, David Fokos and Chris Fessenden (PHOTO: J Grant Brittain)

Is that why you chose Peter's dance company as the vehicle to assert that idea, that dance is a major, front-and-center art form?

Yes, and specifically Peter as a choreographer. Choreography is an art. A choreographer is an artist. He's someone trying to use a specific medium to communicate something. Peter as a choreographer is using the medium of dance to communicate his artistic message.

Based on that, I'm tempted to use a metaphor like Peter Kavalis is to dance as painter is to painting. But would I be falling into the trap of subordinating dance to another art form?

PK: Yeah, I know what you're saying.

Advertisement

BF: But analogies can help people see things. It's a fair analogy. I writer uses a pen; a choreographer uses a body to create. That's why I loved interviewing Peter in the film and that's why we chose to call the film Body as Phenomenon. When I asked him in the film, "what does dance communicate that other forms of art do not?" That's what he answered, "body as phenomenon."

So for your purposes as a filmmaker, Barbarella, you succeeded absolutely in your mission presenting the choreographer as the artist and dance as the medium. Going to Peter's mission, though, to present dance: Is there any danger that this film over-represents the choreographer and again puts dance in the background?

PK: No, not at all. You know the film's been circulating at a remarkable pace, actually since it was released. I've had an amazing response from the public from people who have seen it. They're discovering it and the largest impression they're getting is what I would call "the reveal."

They're seeing this immense amount of frenetic energy and work that goes into creating the work and creating dance. They're hearing me and others talk about dance in a very thoughtful way, with concern that good choices are being made on behalf of the form and on behalf of the audience. That is all wrapped together in the film. It doesn't get separated out. They see how committed the dancers and everyone is to the mission.

They also see that the film and the messages are very fast-moving and it doesn't stop. I think Barbarella accomplished something that needed to happen for dance with this film. It's profound.

...

Barbarella, do you want to weigh in on that?

BF: In terms of separating out or diminishing dance from choreography, that would be like interviewing a conductor and saying that that somehow diminished the symphony.

Advertisement

I'd really like to know more about how the film reveals the unusual way Peter selects music for PGK Dance Project dance company's performances.

BF: Choreography and music go hand-in-hand because most often we see dancers moving to music. I found it exciting and different that Peter doesn't choose the music first--that he has the idea that sometimes he does; sometimes he doesn't. How that made an impact on the film is we just did our best to illustrate his process. It was all about showcasing Peter's process. Because his process is finding music after he's choreographed the dance. There is one piece where he was inspired by a sandstorm and the music came to him; so we just did our best to illustrate that. That did influence my decision to highlight the other section of the film which is then sound of dance. We wanted to be sure to include that

That's so interesting. There is a scene in the film where the sort of pitter-patter of feet dancing on the stage is so prominent and there is no music.

BF: If you noticed that, you probably also noticed that we left the screen black [the way the stage was dark during the performance] because we wanted the viewer who wasn't there to experience that live to have that same sort of physical and audible reaction. That was there because we wanted the viewer to hear the sound of dance itself.

We could have done a whole other film just about that and other stories rather than Body as Phenomenon. There were so many stories like that in interviewing Peter, though, which we didn't get to in the film. We could only do a few. The decisions of which stories to tell were all directed by getting to know Peter's process.

Peter, do you have anything to add regarding how you choose music for dance?

PK: I hope this doesn't come off in a weird way, but I'm equally [to dance and choreography] trained as a musician. I studied piano and voice as well as flute and violin as a kid. But I was really serious especially at piano and voice. I sing professionally, which is why I'm in St. Thomas this week. So I actually trust my skill set, and I really have lot of faith that I can make the right choice when I need to make the right choice. If I let things come to me, it feels more organic. As Barbarella says, I'm working on the time and notice things all the time--inspirations and sights--I write them down. It's a constant process. I have books and books and journals and journals of music I have yet to use. It all comes back and returns to me in its own way and its own time.

Advertisement

How much time added time, I mean time as a resource, rather than pausing to research music before creating a new dance piece--how much added time does that give you in your process as a choreographer?

PK: I can't imagine taking a sabbatical to do that part of the work as research. And yet, I have friends who do work like that, who live for that moment. I don't need that kind time away in my version of process. Just the other day, when I was making dance, I saw something in my head as I was driving to the studio. It wasn't until I was in front of the dancers that I began to make the movement. I made the movement in about two minutes and it was done. It just poured out.

Peter, your cultural-exchange work with the State Department is highlighted in the film. I'm wondering if, Barbarella, you were surprised to learn about the work Peter does with the State Department.

BF: That's one of those examples where that could have been an entire other film. What I would have done if we could have is get that whole story. But that's a whole other film. The inclusion of that part, however, was a sense of place. But what we did with this film was focused on a handful of dances and pieces. I was personally impressed with that aspect of Peter's story and had to include it at least in passing...We'd like to follow up on that and work with Peter again.

Well, it looks like I have scoop. There might be another film, this one about your adventures in Kazakhstan. How long, Peter, have you been working with the State Department and taking American dance to other countries and is it an ongoing relationship?

Our relationship with the State Department is going strong. In fact, I'm going to Belize next fall and Latvia for the very first time with several of my dancers. We'll be there the second and third week of July. We're going to be doing a tour of four cities. It's basically a roving, site-specific dance festival. We're going with specific pieces and doing them in alternative places like a warehouse, castles, a cave and different kinds of places. We're doing full concerts in those places; and we're developing original works in each of those cities with local dancers. We're going to process with locals for three days and we're going to premier what we're doing together in those shows.

It's cultural exchange and really getting in there and having a deeper relationship with different countries. There's not that much exchange if you just do a master class in another country. This is real cultural exchange. We already speak the same dance language, now we can say, "why is this or that interesting to you in your culture?"

It's very validating when you meet dancers in places like Belize where the economic situation is very different, yet they still feel the need to move their bodies and self-instruct. All of those efforts are extremely important. That's why I like talking about culture around dance. Not to get completely away from the esoteric and aesthetic because I know people appreciate seeing this dancer doing this movement and that dance. Some people just need to dance.

Will there be video of these performances abroad?

PK: Yes. In fact, I think the State Department requires that there be video of these performances. I always do a pictorial of like a hundred photos in an album for the department of all of the dances. These State Department trips are amazing to me. I've done master classes and rehearsals abroad in basements and garages, out in the back of someone's house. It doesn't matter where it happens. It matters that it happens.

Barbarella, is that good news to you that there is going to be footage that might make it into a follow-up film?

It definitely would. Any film we ever do we want as much footage as possible. For example, Peter has a long history with famous dancers in Europe and elsewhere, with Alvin Ailey. We went through some of that footage for this film when we were editing. For anything we mention, we want visuals. It's film; it's all about visuals. In the end, for this film, we decided the best visuals we had for the best story we could tell was all about being inside the mind of the choreographer, from the studio, to rehearsal, to on-stage live performance.

And your mission, Barbarella, at The Artist Odyssey is very specific. Can you tell us how this film fits that mission?

The mission at The Artist Odyssey is to document the artist. We basically capture the story. My mission personally, is to understand the whys and the hows. What is their message. Peter fit right in line with that because we got to peek behind the scenes. People go to dance performances. They go to see dance as art. What they don't get to see is the process that goes on behind the dance, behind the process of creating it. That's what we're doing in this film.

Advertisement
Years ago, back when I was single, I was lamenting to some friends about the state of my love life when one of them asked what, exactly, I was looking for. I rattled off a fairly extensive list of all the traits -- physical and otherwise -- that I was attracted to (tall, funny, big nose, glasses, maybe a swimmer's body, dimples, etc., etc.), and she said, "Oh! I know the perfect guy for you!" Long story short, she set me up on a blind date with this guy who didn't wear glasses, wasn't particularly tall, didn't have dimples, wasn't a swimmer, and had an average-sized nose. In short, he wasn't really my type. And you know what? My friend was right. He WAS perfect for me. We've been together ten years this May, married for seven, and have two pretty great kids.

As a relationship advice columnist, one of the best pieces of dating advice I can pass along to those of you who are looking for a serious/longterm/committed relationship, is to date someone who isn't your type. Date several people who aren't your type! Start making a habit of dating against your type. Instead of swiping left, go out for coffee with him (or her). HE may not be the perfect guy for you, but a cool thing happens when you break the pattern of dating the same type of person -- you begin breaking the pattern of having the same type of relationship (and if you're single and wanting a longterm relationship, this is probably a good thing, assuming none of your relationships have worked thus far). Dating against type is the equivalent of stepping outside your comfort zone. And that's exactly where exciting things can happen.

Advertisement

But people continue staying in their comfort zone, afraid of straying from the same type of person they've always dated, and my theory is that the type of person they tell themselves they're attracted to helps to tell a narrative or sell an image they're trying to project to the world. For example, a woman who believes she was an unattractive child and then grew up to be pretty might seek out only the hottest guys to help sell her Ugly Duckling narrative. In her mind, having a hot boyfriend will affirm for her -- and, very importantly, for everyone else - that she is, indeed, attractive now. Someone who grew up socially awkward and not very popular might seek the super cool, bad-boy kind of guy because he affirms for her that she's no longer awkward if she can land a guy like that.

Essentially, these relationships are much less about connecting, and much more about compensating for a long-held insecurity. Dating against type can help shift that focus. (But, of course, doing work on yourself -- going to therapy, fostering friendships, building a career and social network -- are also essential in breaking the pattern of seeking affirmation through dating). If you're someone who dates the same type over and over and has the same kind of relationship over and over (usually with your being "ghosted" or rejected or somehow disappointed), think about why you keep perpetuating the same pattern. Is there an image you hope to project through your potential partners? Is there a narrative about yourself that you're desperate to sell? Or do you simply really, really like tall guys with dimples? These questions are worth exploring, and if they feel uncomfortable at all, that's a good thing. Exciting things happen outside your comfort zone.

But don't take my word for it! Here are some examples readers of my relationship advice column who have dated against type and found happiness in doing so:

Advertisement

"I like short guys, my husband's tall. I like nerds, he's a sweet ole country boy. I was a widow and married more than once, he had never even been engaged. I have four boys, he has no kids. I am eight years older than him. I'm an introvert, he's a social butterfly. He's an animal lover, I never was, but now we have six pets! I'm a homebody, he can't stand sitting still. He's goal-oriented and I'm a free-spirit. Our religious, political, and personal views are opposite. He likes country music, I like punk/pop...but we have both learned from one another, our personalities are similar, and our differences make us stronger. We're a good team." -- T.

"The guy I'm currently dating is the opposite of my 'type' in many ways, the most notable being that I'm an athiest who always actively avoided dating religious guys while he is a practicing Catholic. We met by chance last fall and became friends, then started dating around the end of last month and quickly fell in love. To say it's working out would be an understatement because I'm pretty sure he's the one." -- A.

"I honestly never in a million years would've thought I'd marry the man I did. In high school, he was the really smart guy and I was the popular one. I made fun of him, I teased him, and I probably annoyed the hell out of him, but I also wanted to know more about him. He ended up moving away, then moving back a little while before his father passed away. Because I knew his sister, I went to the funeral. We met up and things kind of just clicked. He melted my heart and I kept wondering how stupid was I to have passed him up during our school years. We've been together for almost five years, are married, and have a beautiful seven-month-old son. They've been the best of my life." -- C.

"My husband wasn't my type at all but he's caring, compassionate, loving and makes me laugh. I can be myself around him and he accepts me for me. We've been together for three years -- yesterday was our two-year wedding anniversary." -- A.

In college I dated a series of lanky stoner poets who were easy to find in my adopted home of the English department at a small, liberal arts college. Many intense philosophical conversations ensued, some regarding whether we were in a relationship with a "small R" or "capital R," along with the obligatory idealizations of socialism. Years later, I met a man from rural Iowa who was barrel-chested, passionate about super bikes, and chewed tobacco, and I married him one year and three months later. We don't have a lot of intense philosophical conversations, but we also don't talk about whether to capitalize the "R" in our relationship status. He is stable, funny, kind in unimaginable ways, treats me better than I deserve, and most importantly I feel like I am home when I am with him regardless of where we go. -- K.

Advertisement

And, there you go. Exciting things happen outside your comfort zone, even/especially outside your dating comfort zone. So step outside of it. Swipe right. Go out with that person who isn't your type and see if maybe you've been wrong about your "type" all along.
Women watch as US President Barack Obama speaks at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, in Windsor Mill, Maryland on February 3, 2016.Obama offered an impassioned rebuttal of 'inexcusable' Republican election rhetoric against Muslims Wednesday, on his first trip to an American mosque since becoming president seven years ago. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Given the recent rhetoric spewing from the political pandemonium sometimes referred to as the United States Presidential Election, as well a spike in hate crimes and alarming attacks on our communities, it feels increasingly difficult and dangerous to be a Muslim in this country.

Intolerance is on the rise, and any shred of logic once remaining in so much ignorant discourse has dissolved. Frankly speaking, it's impossible to diagnose "where exactly so much has gone so wrong," but it's beyond certain that we've hit a point past which Muslim simply cannot endure so much Islamophobia alone.

Advertisement

"Ally" is a delicate term, and further, one quite hard to indefinitely define. While the role of an ally can specifically differ in regards to different groups or movements, there are some foundational principles that perpetually apply, perhaps even facilitate, throughout one's fluid evolution as an ally.

As this search for "where exactly so much went so wrong," grows more fuzzy and frightening-and thus more futile-perhaps it is best to call upon those who wish to stand with Muslim-Americans by considering allyship via the most basic of building blocks: the ABCs.

How To Be A Muslim Ally: A-Z

I never thought I'd have to imagine, let alone write, such a list-and while this is by no means serves as an absolute set of rules and regulations, I hope it at least inaugurates more clarifying conversations for those who want to help.

1. Share Articles

Here's a hint: not Fox news.

Social media has consolidated the sharing of an entire story, report, or event into a few thumb taps-if even that many. Use these, and use them well. Your own absorption of these pieces is, yes, critical, but don't curb the impact of powerful writing at yourself. Consume, but also assume-responsibility, that is. Reach beyond your radius. Chances are your approval or recommendation of a piece will encourage people who may otherwise retain previously narrow or uninformed ideas.

Advertisement

2. Call Bullshit

Call it and kill it. Don't stand for it. This applies especially to halting hate-talk by people within your own racial sphere and realm of privilege. Read: white allies, shut shit DOWN. Please. There is so much utter intolerance spewing from so many kinds of people on so many kinds of platforms. Your objection and denouncement could hold a very serious hand in halting much of this hate.

3. Know Culture vs. Religion

There's a difference. Also culture vs. cultural baggage - the latter specifically is an issue in the Muslim community, especially given the natural, but staggering percentage of immigrants in a population - and it often can be traced as the source of problems like discrimination against women.

Please don't conflate culture and and religion: it's a blurry line that many Muslims even have a hard time discerning, but just be mindful of it. Even if you're not exactly sure how to define it, just know it's there and acknowledge it if someone references it, especially in regards to something you are doing (whether right) or trying to correct (if wrong).

4. Don't Try to Rescue Us

We're not here to be saved from this evil spawn of a religion people like to imagine in their heads. That's not the reality. Honestly, I'm just trying to save myself from bigots and Islamophobes. I don't see any purpose, positivity, or productivity in your white or Western saving. Please get over it.

5. Educate (Yourself and Others)

Learn some facts and spread the word. Trustworthy, straight facts can also help debunk a decent chunk of whatever all this "Islam" stuff is. Not all Muslims are Arabs! Not all Arabs are Muslims! There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and around 12 million in America - about less than 1% of the US population, actually. There are five pillars, like fasting and praying. Not all women cover. Not all men have beards. Muslims compose a significant amount of leaders and luminaries in American advancements and history! Wow, facts!

Advertisement

But seriously, educate yourself, and others, too. It's highly fatiguing for Muslims to be constantly interrogated or defensive of their identity; allies can really help by facilitating such conversations. Muslims have bigger systems to be fighting than dumb trolls on the internet, or even in real life. That is a crucial item with which allies can help.

6. Feel Your Privilege

This applies to many allies, but specifically white allie. Feel your identity. Feel your privilege. Understand what your privilege entails and what that shared privilege with others has enabled. White privilege has catalyzed a disproportionate about of unhealthy mindsets - think, white supremacy - and a lot of the hate, crimes, and hate crimes that have precipitated as a result.

As many posts over the Internet have begun to so precisely point out: Donald Trump is a white people problem. He is a consequence of white supremacy, and - given that every other race is held accountable for even the unthinkable actions of its bizarrest few - others of his race bear responsibility to own up and mediate this problem. I have to feel my race everyday. Feel yours, and feel and unpack the privilege that accompanies it.

7. Graduate of Facebook University of Religious Studies, PhD.

Believe it or not, this title doesn't exist! Yes, social media is highly influential in spreading the word, and yes you should not shy away from the bountiful useful information out there. But watching an attempt-to-bust-stereotypes playlist of "NowThis" or "Buzzfeed" videos on Facebook does not translate into a doctorate in Islamic Studies - which, I cannot stress enough, is not needed to participate in these discussions. However, unequally unnecessary is a self-righteous attitude predicated on five random three-minute clips of "Muh-zlums."

8. Human-to-Human Interaction Is Important

So again, I'm not here to slam social media as a platform - in fact, it is beyond powerful. I use it, and I believe it helps those who undergo struggles voice themselves in the first person, aka something a minority member is rarely afforded. That being said, discourse with a real Muslim who is *gasp!* an actual human might just be unparalleled. Such interactions can even be held through social media - as well as books and meetings. Following prominent, powerful voices in the Muslim community is a great place to begin: Wajahat Ali, Reza Aslan, Tahera Ahmad, Nabeeja Syed. Everyone may have slightly different views, again, because humans are unique *wow!* - but these people comprise a solid, stellar group of minds and hearts.

Advertisement

9. Impact Matters More than Intent

A huge ingredient in being an ally comes with understanding that the impact of your words trumps (ha.) the intent. But don't let this possibility dissuade or discourage you. A simple apology and edit of your future words and ways will likely be enough if something you say is not perceived in the way you intended.

Registering that, as an ally, there are things you must learn, unlearn, and tackle, and comprehend that these realizations will only help you progress in supporting Muslims around you. When you slip up, own up to your actions and incorporate the lessons going forward. No one is going to rag on you for trying to grow as an ally.

10. Look Past the Jokes

Sometimes the most immediate reaction to coping with racial slurs or Trump rhetoric comes in the form of humor - and fairly so, since some of these ideas are simply that ridiculous. But there must come a point of assuming responsibility past a snarky retweet or "LOLOLOL" - apply these reactions to call things out. I don't get to go home at the end of the day and tuck these jokes to bed for the night. I have no choice but to let them fester in my brain and pick at who I am as I try to doze off and take a break from what has begun to feel like an unraveling reality of my world.

11. Keep An Eye Out -- Be Safe

Especially in public, and yes, even (especially?!) with people you may not know. If you see people being harassed, say something. Do something. Exercise kindness to hijabi women - and stand up for them when people act inappropriately. Touch base with your Muslim peers, colleagues, neighbors, relatives, bosses, employees, doctors. Let them know you are there, because chances are a lot of them have encountered hate. Don't interrogate them to a point of discomfort, but let them know you support them. Ask them if and/or how you can help.

12. Listen

I wish "L" came first in the alphabet, but alas, so be it. You are here to speak UP, not OVER - but before you even know what to say, you need to absorb what actual Muslims are trying to get at. There's a bad track record of Muslims voices being hushed and silenced - ESPECIALLY women's. Just listen. It is the foundation of allyship, and you cannot adhere to any of the other letters without this basis. Enough said.

Advertisement

You are here to speak UP, not OVER. tweet.

13. Learn From Your Mistakes

You're going to make them. Apologize, be accountable, apply the lessons to revise your future attitude and actions, and move on. Don't get mad at yourself or even (especially!!!) at a Muslim for pointing it out. It's part of it.

14. Discern News from Nonsense

The media manipulates news into nonsense. It is both impossible and despotic for me to concretely classify which publications or sources are trustworthy and fair - but I just urge you to remember who is writing what you read. Allowing people the authority to speak FOR themselves, as opposed to relying on some outside source to frame it sensationally, highlights both a good strategy and a good reminder: social media, despite its ability to facilitate some not-so-positives (read: trolls), is so critical in situations like these. It ultimately allows everyone a voice, even the historically disenfranchised - so, please exercise logical discernment in honoring which of these are "good" to make the most of this platform.

15. Your Opinions Matter

Your opinion likely influences that of others, so help spread the word beyond the web. Write to your local paper, contact your local government official to encourage support of Muslims around you, and educate kids in community. Facilitate understanding. Breed compassion. Teach love, not hate. Never underestimate the power of an op-ed. Never underestimate the power your opinions can have on strangers, representatives, and children.

16. Embrace Plurality

Muslims are working on this whole solidarity thing - trust me. But that doesn't mean that all of us are going to agree on all issues. The crucial principle still stands - Muslims are a minority bound by self-affiliation to an identity, but that by no means equates all of our views, backgrounds, or opinions.

The monolith myth is dangerous, reducing, and frankly, false. Respect varying values and allow others to exercise and celebrate plurality. There isn't the extremist on one end, the token American-Muslim in the gray middle, and the non-Muslim on the other side. Smash the gray-zone rhetoric and realize Islam is more like a rainbow that you can't just put on an x-axis in relation to ISIS.

Advertisement

17. Ask Questions About the Qur'an

But what about the Qur'an, you ask? Doesn't it serve as some infallible resource of answers? Well, yes and no. The thing is that the Qur'an was revealed during seventh-century Arabia, in quite nuanced and loaded Arabic, further layered with and framed by cultural references specific to the time.

Human interpretation is a highlighted component in Islam, but where exactly people begin drawing lines, translating certain phrases, and applying understood meanings simply leaves a substantial vacuum for questions, debate, and differences.

It's important to note that historically, Qur'anic interpretation was left solely up to certain spheres of educated men in specific societies. Today, developments have shown a gradual shift in allowing people beyond old Arab men in long beards and flowy white robes to read and regard verses from themselves.

Of course, some people think that violates tradition, while others only see it as fair and believe that a diverse lens is integral in how we approach our religion. That's just the beginning of what produces so much of the range and plurality in beliefs and thoughts.

Phew, okay, that was a lot, but see just asking a *Question,* even on something as loaded at the Qur'an can go such a long way.

Advertisement

18. Muslims Are Religiously Diverse

Plurality has been mentioned, but let's emphasize some key points again. People exercise their faith differently does not license your evaluation of who is the "right" Muslim to whom you should listen. Hijab (head covering) isn't a correlating indicator of piety and religious knowledge, nor is it an emblem of extremism or oppression. Some Muslims might not align with your cookie cutter image of one, but that doesn't disqualify their opinions or thoughts altogether. Or at all, really.

19. Sympathize, Don't Empathize

Your support is key, but in your sympathy, please don't pretend to be exercising empathy. It's really simple: if you're not Muslim, you don't know how it feels to be Muslim. Sass aside, acting like you completely get the issues at hand may illustrate you as trivializing or narcissistic, and thus alienate you in different ways. Just avoid it. It's hard to be any minority, yes, but some challenges remain unique to certain groups. Understand Muslims own a decent chunk of these localized issues. There are so many ways to show sympathy without fabricating your version of empathy into the equation.

20. Take Time to Say Sorry!

Being a Muslim right now, frankly, is stressful. I try to keep a lot of this to myself - not because I consider my feelings unwelcomed or even illegitimate - but mostly because to constantly talk about this all the damn time is exhausting.

Along the lines of "mistakes," there may definitely be times when you, as an ally, upset or further fatigue a Muslim. Just please, apologize. Sorry JBiebs, but it's NEVER too late to say sorry. A lot of Muslims are dealing with having to outwardly discuss their faith in new spheres and personally unchartered territory, along with the aforementioned internalized struggles - so any support, kindness, and patience would be highly appreciated. A lot of that entails "Sorry" when you perhaps say or do something that sets someone off kilter - be it a family, friend, or stranger.

21. Unlearn Stereotypes

There's a solid chance you yourself currently hold some misconceptions about Islam and Muslims-THAT'S OKAY. Be willing to learn, unlearn, and grow from the knowledge you encounter. Don't back away just because you feel unequipped or unqualified - if you're willing to put in the effort and evolve from the new things you discover, Muslims will embrace you. Trust me - we have way bigger problems than someone making a mistake, owning up to it, and moving on along with us.

Advertisement

22. VERB

"Ally" is not a cute noun or hip label - it is a status predicated on deliberate action. ~A Verb~ So work through this alphabet and do all that you can: attend rallies, makes yourself a known ally and supporter, contact your government officials and reps, teach the children in your life, do your research, write and speak to your community.

23. Understand What's Within

Back toward the genre of plurality and religious differences, despite all this chaos outside, Muslims are still dealing with inter-community issues. It's impossible to tackle every detail of every problem at once, but please remain mindful that there exists a decent amount of work to tackle within.

I'll be the first to say that right now is NOT the time to quit addressing women's issues, like leadership, representation, and assault, just because of the external attacks we face; nor is my criticism of gender dynamics within the layers of my religious sphere give you license to tarnish my community. Like any other, we're not perfect, and we are combatting issues on several different territories at the moment. Your support, not retort, is appreciated.

24. Use the Term "Xenophobia"

When you call people out for xenophobia, don't shy away from this lexicon. This term reflects both accuracy in the situation, as well as gravity in reminding people how intolerant and ludicrous this racism is.

25. Yesterday Is Not Today (#logic)

Muslims don't get to take a break from being Muslim, so please don't take a break from being an ally. It's simply not fair to pat yourself on the back from that one time you spoke up the other day and reclassify yourself as #ally4life-it doesn't work like that. Not only must "ally" be a verb, but it must be a consistent, continuous one.

Advertisement

26. Uphold a Zero Tolerance Policy

We've gotten to a scary point where "but it's just a joke" or "it'll blow over" don't hold much meaning anymore. "Fear" as a word doesn't seem to cut it at this point.

This morning in class, for the first time, my mind simply could not focus and began mentally narrating what a 2016 Trump America would look like for me - or better yet, that it wouldn't look like much. Don't tolerate any more of this hate. Don't make me think through the end of the story - otherwise the story might end me.
The India Today Group via Getty Images INDIA - FEBRUARY 03: Karthi Chidambaram, Succesful Politician, Businessman and son of P Chidambaram, Union Cabinet Minister of finance in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India (for Youth Special Chennai) (Karti Chidambaram) (Photo by Hk Rajashekar/The India Today Group/Getty Images)

NEW DELHI -- There was uproar in the Parliament today after AIADMK members stalled proceedings in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, demanding action against former finance minister P. Chidambaram and his son Karti. The ruckus in Parliament resulted in several forced adjournments through the day.

Karti Chidambaram has been at the eye of the Aircel-Maxis controversy ever since the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted raids in December 2015 in Chennai at the premises of firms allegedly connected to him.

Advertisement

The ED raids found that Karti, who owns Advantage Strategic Consulting, which was allegedly involved in the Aircel-Maxis deal for financial transactions with telecom beneficiaries, has built an empire for himself across the world, funnelling money into real estate and business investments in India and abroad. Karti later said neither he nor his family were shareholders in any of the firms.

On Tuesday, AIADMK members trooped near the chairman's podium soon after the Rajya Sabha met at 11 am, raising slogans and demanding action.

Slogans like "arrest Chidambaram and his son", and "Take action against Chidambaram" echoed in the house as the chairman and deputy chairman tried to conduct the proceedings amid the protest.

Following the first uproar, minutes into the day's proceedings, Deputy Chairman P.J. Kurien adjourned the house for 10 minutes. When the house reassembled, Kurien announced that a notice by AIADMK has been rejected as it was not in order. While the AIADMK members kept raising slogans, a few zero hour mentions were read out by members.

Advertisement

Kurien also told the protesting members that it was not in his hands to take action.

"This is an issue the chair has nothing to do with. If you want action against a private individual you can approach the government. Why do you trouble me?" Kurien said.

However, as the din continued, the house was adjourned till 12 noon.

It was a similar scene in Lok Sabha, where AIADMK members raised slogans like We want action, Aircel-Maxis why delay, why delay and NDA sarkar take action.

The AIADMK members were displaying copies of an English daily which has claimed that Karti has invested in real estate across the world, as per investigations by the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax authorities during searches at his premises.

Amid uproar, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan continued with the Question Hour for some time but adjourned the House for nearly ten minutes. Soon after the House was adjourned, AIADMK members were seen distributing copies of the newspaper to BJP members.

The members continued to create ruckus at question hour and Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari tried to get a few questions answered even as AIADMK members raised slogans.

Advertisement

The furious chairman then said: "Chair gets this impression that some honourable members are in the business of promoting specific newspaper this is very improper." The house was then adjourned for 15 minutes.

As soon as Lok Sabha reassembled, AIADMK members again trooped into the Well continuing to raise slogans. Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said if they give proper notice, the issue could be discussed in the House and the government was open to a debate.

At one point of time, Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge stood up to raise some issue, apparently relating to Privilege notice against HRD Minister Smriti Irani over the Rohith Vemula suicide issue, but he was shouted down by the AIADMK members.

Gandhi was seen asking AIADMK members against raising slogans near Kharge. Some Left members were also seen standing on their seats seeking Speakers intervention.

Amid the din, the House was adjourned till 12 noon.

With protests continuing the house was then adjourned till 2 pm but protests continued even after the House met after lunch hour.

Advertisement

(with agency inputs)

Contact HuffPost India

Also See On HuffPost:
Dynamic Graphics via Getty Images Cadaver with toe tag

LONDON -- In a major goof-up, the body of a mystery man has been mistakenly flown from India to the UK, believing it was that of a 54-year-old Indian-origin British hotelier who was allegedly murdered last May during a visit to the country.

The body was today handed over to UK social services.

Indian authorities had sent the body believing it was that of Ranjit Singh Power, allegedly murdered during a visit to Punjab 10 months ago.

Officials thought the corpse, one of five pulled from a river in Punjab, was the missing hotelier but dental records and DNA testing proved the body was not his.

"It remains unascertained. I can't be clear how he died. He was one of five males pulled from a river in Punjab. I have to give it an open conclusion. Sadly, that's as far as I can take this. No-one is coming forward," said Zafar Siddique, coroner for the Black Country region of West Midlands.

"In future, if family do come forward, we have the DNA. This will have to be referred to social services."

The body cannot be repatriated back to India and a funeral will be conducted by social services, although the DNA would be retained in case of further inquiries.

Advertisement

A post-mortem examination estimated the dead man's age as 50 plus, but was not able to ascertain the cause of death.

Power had been last seen at Amritsar airport on May 8, 2015, before his UK-based family launched a search for him.

Indian taxi driver Sukhdev Singh has been charged with his murder and is awaiting trial after police said he has confessed to the killing and divers found a body in a canal in Ropar District.

"Dental records confirm it is not Mr Power and DNA confirms that the body is not related to the family," Detective Constable Zahid Ahmed, from West Midlands Police, told the inquest this week.

Power's UK-based family, including his partner Angela Bir, have stressed that her family is "focussed upon justice" and are working with police in Punjab to help in any way they can.

Advertisement

They have since launched The Ranjit Singh Power Foundation Trust to support orphans and children with cancer in his memory.

They had feared he may have been kidnapped after he uncharacteristically failed to stay in contact with them and did not catch his return flight from Amritsar on May 14.

Initially offering 10,000 pounds for information leading to their father's return, they had later raised it to 25,000 pounds.

Advertisement

Contact HuffPost India

Also On HuffPost:
ASSOCIATED PRESS India's Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram waits for arrival of Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe before their meeting at Abe's official residence in Tokyo Monday, April 1, 2013. Chidambaram arrived in Japan Monday for a three-day visit. (AP Photo/Issei Kato, Pool)

NEW DELHI -- In the past week, two bureaucrats, who served in the Home Ministry, have made revelations which suggest that the Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance government played fast and loose in dealing with terrorists to score political points.

On June, 15, 2004, Ishrat Jahan was shot dead by the Gujarat Police, which said that the 19-year-old woman and three of her male aides--Javed Sheikh, Zeeshan Johar and Amjad Ali Rana--were operatives of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a terrorist organization based in Pakistan. While Jahan was a resident of Mumbra near Mumbai, Sheikh, born Pranesh Kumar Pillai, hailed from Kerala. Johar and Rana were Pakistani citizens.

Advertisement

A huge political battle broke out subsequently with the Bharatiya Janata Party, whose government was in power at the time in the state, claiming these four persons had terror links and they were killed in a shootout with the police, and the Central Bureau of Investigation saying the killings were staged.

The political tussle between BJP and the Congress Party over Ishrat Jahan's killing has remained alive since then, with the Congress using the case to allege that the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are not beyond resorting to extra judicial encounter killings, and the BJP arguing that the Congress' line in the case is an example of its minority appeasement and its low priority for national security.

The case is now back in the news in a big way.

It all began last week when former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told Times Now in an interview that his boss, the then home minister P. Chidambaram, altered a court document which described Ishrat Jahan and her aides as LeT operatives.

Chidambaram removed all references to Jahan's alleged terrorist links to the LeT in a revised affidavit which was submitted by the Home Ministry to the Supreme Court in 2009, Pillai alleged.

Advertisement

"One affidavit said these people were LeT operatives and in the other affidavit that aspect was deleted. I really wont know why it was deleted," he told Times Now. "It was done at a political level."

The original affidavit submitted by the UPA government, based on information provided by the Intelligence Bureau, said that these four persons were part of an LeT sleeper cell in India.

Backing Pillai's claim, former Home Ministry under secretary RVS Mani, who is now serving in the Textiles Ministry, has said that the revised affidavit was not drafted by the officials in the Home Ministry, but at the political level, and he was forced by the Central Bureau of Investigation to sign the second affidavit.

In an even more shocking claim, Mani said that he was tortured by Special Investigation Team (SIT) chief Satish Verma, an officer of the Indian Police Service in Gujarat, to implicate state officials of the Intelligence Bureau in the fake encounter case.

"Satish Verma was head of the unit of SIT and he was helped by two three cronies who were all engineering evidences," Mani told Times Now. "On 21st June, 2013, yes, Satish Verma burnt me with his cigarettes."

Advertisement

On 21st June, 2013, yes, Satish Verma burnt me with his cigarettes

Mani had raised some of these allegations in the past as well, and had also claimed that he was told by the CBI-SIT team that the Parliament attack of 2001 and the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai were orchestrated by the government to strengthen anti-terror legislation.

"During the course of recording of the statement, there were differences between the facts in my knowledge and the framing of the same by the IG, SIT, Satish Chandra Verma," he said in a complaint against the IPS officer, The Indian Express reported in 2013.

Revelations by Pillai and Mani are serious, and suggest that Chidambaram altered the affidavit on Jahan to fit his party's stand against the BJP and Modi.

There was a consistent campaign against Mr Modi that he needs to be framed, Amit Shah needs to be framed by hook or by crook. And the entire government machinery was abused. BJP demands that the Government of India investigate this. We are demanding that a fair inquiry be done on the entire flip-flop on the Ishrat Jahan case, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a press conference.

Last month, David Coleman Headley, who planned the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, told a Mumbai court that Jahan was an operative of the LeT. He had said it earlier in 2011 as well, to American interrogators.

Advertisement

While the Shiv Sena is calling for Chidambaram to be charged with sedition, the Supreme Court will hear a Public Interest Litigation seeking contempt action against the former Home Minister for perjury.

Responding to allegations against him, Chidambaram said that the second affidavit was "absolutely correct," and Pillai was "equally responsible" for it.

I am saying so. I say it that as minister, when it was brought to my notice that the first affidavit was ambiguous, it had been filed without my approval and it was being misinterpreted, it was my duty to correct the first affidavit. So, we filed a supplementary affidavit after consulting the Home Secretary, the Director of Intelligence Bureau and other officers. That second affidavit clarified what the real intention was," Chidambaram said at a media briefing on Monday.

"Which part of the second affidavit is wrong? It is an absolutely correct affidavit and I, as a minister, accept responsibility for this affidavit and it is disappointing that the home secretary, who was equally responsible, wants to distance himself from that today," he said.

It is disappointing that the home secretary, who was equally responsible, wants to distance himself from that today.

Pillai's allegation comes at a time when the BJP and Congress Party are locked in a political battle over free speech, dissent, nationalism, and discrimination in universities, which was sparked by the death of a Dalit student at the University of Hyderabad, and the arrest of students from the Jawharlal Nehru University in a case of sedition.

The Congress Party is standing behind Chidambaram.

"Chidambaram ji has already explained. We have been targeted since we were in government," Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi said today.

BJP leader Nitin Gadkari said what Congress Party did in the Ishrat Jahan case was "anti national."

On Wednesday, Congress Party leaders including Digvijaya Singh attacked Pillai and Mani.

"These are the people who get wisdom after retirement. Do you know that Pillai now works with Gautam Adani," he told reporters.

Mani is still working with the Indian government as the deputy secretary of the Textiles Ministry.

On Monday, senior leader Abhishek Singhvi said that the Congress Party was opposed to extra judicial killings irrespective of guilt.

"Congress has never supported or opposed the guilt issue of Ishrat Jahan if established in a court of law or any procedure known to law. If IB had intellignce inputs, Ishrat Jahan would have been prosecuted. Entire Congress stand was that irrespective of guilt, a guilty person cannot be assassinated or liquidated without due process of law which is what happened in Modi's autocratic rule in Gujarat," he said.

Advertisement

Vrinda Grover, the lawyer of Ishrat Jahan's mother, has argued that the only question is whether her killing was staged.

Twelve years after her death, Jahan is back on the national centre-stage.

These are the people who get wisdom after retirement. Do you know that Pillai now works with Gautam Adani.

Also on HuffPost:
Joe Athialy/Flickr

Back in 2013, NDTV CEO Vikram Chandra tweeted:

"Was Ishrat a terrorist? And does it matter whether she was or wasnt? Should it affect our approach to a fake encounter?"

Now with the latest accusations hurled by senior bureaucrats alleging a cover-up and affidavit-fixing at the highest levels, the Ishrat Jahan case is back to haunt the Congress High Command. There could be a probe as to who changed the affidavit and why. As there should.

Advertisement

But chances are, in the upcoming political game of gotcha, whether the encounter was fake or not will play second fiddle to whether Ishrat Jahan was an L-e-T operative or not and whether then Home Minister P Chidambaram changed the affidavit or not. Those are very important questions but it does not mean the original question about fake encounters is an unimportant one.

But when patriotism and national security come into the picture, we quickly lose track of the principle at stake, as we have seen at JNU.

Do you even know what sedition is, the Delhi High Court has apparently asked the Delhi Police as it heard the bail application of Kanhaiya Kumar.

That is exactly the right question to ask in the case. Do anti-India slogans, however repugnant, amount to sedition?

Advertisement

Supporters hold candles in front of a banner bearing the portrait of Ishrat Jahan during a protest in Ahmedabad.

There is obviously also a freedom of expression debate here. Should a university have to tolerate such slogans within its campus? Should such slogans be allowed at all anywhere? But since the government chose to unleash the sedition Brahmastra, its the sedition question that trumps the other questions.

Unfortunately as the debate heats up, and charges fly back and forth, the principle at the heart of it all is long lost. Sometimes on both sides. Kumars supporters want to establish that no video exists of him shouting these slogans. They want to make the case that Kumar only went there to defuse a confrontation, that the sloganeers were outsiders. Thats an understandable and a perfectly logical line of defence. It basically says the police got the wrong guy, that the student union president is their scapegoat.

Whether Kumar raised those slogans or not, is raising slogans about Indias barbaadi ipso facto an act of sedition?

But it leaves untouched the bigger question. Whether Kumar raised those slogans or not, is raising slogans about Indias barbaadi ipso facto an act of sedition? And when a question like that is not addressed, it remains like a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode on another person in another situation.

Instead of the larger sedition question we end up debating what slogans Kumar shouted or did not shout. How many of the seven videos were tampered with or not. How many of the 17 eye-witnesses belong to the ABVP. The statement against Kumar carefully says there was gathering of about 15 to 20 students who were raising anti-national slogans. Kumar was also present there.

That does not mean Kanhaiya raised those slogans. Or it could mean Kanhaiya shouted some of the slogans but not the other. We could argue about whether Kanhaiya objected to such slogans or not. But then is not objecting to anti-India slogans also sedition? This is a slippery slope indeed.

Umar Khalid.

Meanwhile a professor who taught fellow-student Umar Khalid has written her own tribute to him that has been widely shared on social media. Its a response to the many ominous stories floated about him  Jaish-e-Mohammed sympathizer, Kashmiri, traitor who had just returned from Pakistan. She says Khalid was one of the brightest she has ever taught. He got an A for his M. Phil dissertation on the Hos of Singhbhum.

Advertisement

Thats obviously a way to counter the trial by media and deemed necessary by those who care about him because others are eager to build a different profile of him based on dodgy Internet rumours. But whether Umar Khalid is a bright student or a dull one should be irrelevant to the principle behind this case. The right to raise a slogan and not be charged with sedition should apply to all irrespective of their grades.

All of that makes for high drama with heavy doses of patriotic breast-beating (and even the spectacle of competing privilege motions) but keeps shifting the goalposts ever further away from the principle at issue.

That is what we can lose sight of as the debate wanders into a confusing thicket of Mahisasura festivals, soldiers in Siachen and Smriti Iranis head. All of that makes for high drama with heavy doses of patriotic breast-beating (and even the spectacle of competing privilege motions) but keeps shifting the goalposts ever further away from the principle at issue. A politician belonging to the ruling party might be caught kicking someone on camera, lawyers claiming allegiance to the ruling party might beat up journalists and Kumar but the Opposition targets the minister for reading "blasphemous" texts about Goddess Durga in Parliament!

But then politicians tend to have an uneasy self-serving relationship with principles anyway. Trinamool MP Sugata Bose won a lot of applause for his passionate defence of the right to dissent. It was not the students but the black-coated stormtroopers associated with the ruling party defiled and desecrated the image of mother India, he said in the Lok Sabha. However, as Rudrangshu Mukherjee rightly points out in an op-ed, Bose too stands on shaky ground when it comes to the principle at stake here.

Advertisement

Not a very long time ago a posse of policemen aided by Trinamul Congress cadre entered the Jadavpur University campus at the dead of night to break up a students sit-in; students, including girls, were beaten up. (The TMC member of parliament who spoke so eloquently and admirably in the Lok Sabha the other day to condemn police action in Jawaharlal Nehru University and about the Janus-faced character of nationalism conveniently erased this police action in Jadavpur University perhaps because the university in his own constituency.)

It is human nature to focus on the personality rather than the underlying principle.

It is human nature to focus on the personality rather than the underlying principle. That is why in a rape case we gravitate towards what the victim was wearing, was she at a night club, did she have a drink. What was a mother of two doing in a nightclub that late a minister infamously asked in the Suzette Jordan rape case in Kolkata. As if any of it makes rape more excusable. We can relate to concrete things  people, slogans, festivals, books. The principle is annoyingly abstract. That is why even something as horrendous as the Dadri lynching quickly became about whether it was indeed beef or mutton. A forensic lab tested the meat samples to determine that. But the question should never have been about beef or mutton. The basic principle that was butchered in Dadri was no one deserved to die because of the meat stored in his refrigerator.

But as politicians trade heated charges, with ever increasing fervour, often wrapped in colours of the national flag, it is far easier for it to become all about the principals involved rather than the principle at stake.

Also see on HuffPost:
CHANDAN KHANNA via Getty Images Indian student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar (C) is escorted by police into Patiala Court for a hearing in New Delhi on February 17, 2016. Student union leader Kanhaiya Kumar had been arrested for allegedly shouting anti-India slogans at a rally called to protest against a Kashmiri separatist's execution three years ago -- a charge he denies. His arrest has reignited a row over freedom of expression in India, where some rights campaigners say the Hindu nationalist government is using the British-era sedition law to clamp down on dissent. AFP PHOTO / CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP / Chandan Khanna (Photo credit should read CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images)

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted an interim bail for six months to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar who was arrested on February 12 on charges of sedition.

Kumar, accused of raising anti-national slogans on the JNU campus during an event organised on February 9 to protest the 2013 hanging of parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, was granted bail on a surety of Rs 10,000.

Advertisement

Kumars lawyer had argued that the students union leader never raised any anti-India slogans while the Delhi Police held that it had enough evidence to prove that Kumar and other students shouted anti-national slogans holding Afzal Gurus posters.

The police had also claimed that Kumar was "not cooperating" in the probe and said that he even gave "contradictory" statements.

Kumar had also distanced himself from Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, the two other accused arrested in the case.

Countering the allegations, defence lawyers had stated that there were some outsiders with covered faces who raised anti-India slogans and Kumar was seen in a CCTV footage asking them for their identity cards.

Advertisement

Earlier in the week, the Delhi Police had found itself in an embarrassing situation when the court asked if they knew the meaning of sedition. Further, the court had also asked the police if they had any tangible evidence against Kumar other than the video footage sourced from television channels.

A day ago, forensic analysis conducted by a private lab had revealed that the two videos in which Kumar was heard shouting anti-national slogans were doctored.

In its report submitted to the Delhi government, Hyderabad-based Truth Labs stated that two out of the seven videos of Kumar that were submitted for examination were tampered.

Discrepancies in the lip-syncing were found and the audio and video streams are from different streams, merged from different sources with an intention to make these recordings appear as true events, the report had said.

Meanwhile, the CPI (M) has demanded a high-level probe into the doctored videos.

Advertisement

Contact HuffPost India

Also See On HuffPost:
Fuse via Getty Images Woman with Eyeglasses Behind File Cabinet

Editor's note: This article has been updated with a response from NASA GISS.

A few days back, many media outlets reported that an Indian girl--resident of a Kolkata suburb--has bagged the prestigious Goddard Internship Programme offered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

"When 18-year-old Sataparna Mukherjee appeared in her school leaving exam on Monday, she was slightly tenser than she had been before," one report said. "After being one of five to be selected by the prestigious Goddard Internship Programme of Nasa (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), she is starting to feel the pressure. Regardless of her performance in the ISC exams, she will be going this August to Oxford University and complete her graduation, post-graduation and doctoral thesis as Nasa faculty. All her expenses, including food and lodging, will be covered by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)."

Advertisement

The teenager herself claimed that her theory on black holes and time travel that she had posted on a social networking site had impressed some scientists who asked her to apply. She said she would now proceed to Oxford to study astrobiology and English literature alongside.

Amazingly, all these claims about NASA and Oxford and astrobiology and black holes and time machines were taken seriously by numerous media outlets.

A Facebook post, by Ayoti Patra, had pointed out that only US citizens are eligible for the GIP internship.

Patra points out that, apart from that, while being interviewed by a Bengali news channel, Mukherjee's scientific theory sounded unrealistic and not compelling enough to be considered by any institution of science, let alone NASA.

Advertisement

The NASA website mentions that though they offer several internships at the Godard Space Flight Centre, they are only open to US nationals.

When we got in touch with Sataparna Mukherjee and her father Pradip Mukherjee, they insisted that she has received the scholarship.

Pradip Mukherjee, a headmaster in a government-funded school in North 24-Parganas of West Bengal, told us that they were first told about NASA's interest in their daughter's theory 11 months back. "They wanted her to start on her course right away, but they said they cannot provide her with accommodation. I am a primary school teacher, there is no way, we could have paid the Rs10-12 lakh that was needed back then. So, my daughter refused the offer. She was also in the eleventh standard back then."

The duo insist that a few months later, 'they' got back in touch with Sataparna and asked her to join the programme after the completion of her school leaving examination. "They said, she can come after her ISC."

She told HuffPost India that she had posted a two-line theory on a Facebook group called 'Astrophysics'. Following which, a 'scientist' got in touch with her, asking her to write into a website for scholarships. Asked which website she was talking about, Sataparna said, "The London centre of NASA. At least, when I was opening the website that was what was showing." The internet has no record of a NASA centre in London.

Advertisement

Several reports, which published her claims unquestioningly, said she was going to study at the London Astrobiology Centre. There is no such institution.

Sataparna says she verified the authenticity of the website at the Chennai British Council office. Asked why she didn't go to the Kolkata British council, Sataparna said she had no clue where it was. "I showed them the letter and the website from my phone. They said it is authentic."

Her father attests to the fact that they had gone to Chennai for a test. The test, she says, was ELAT (English Literature Admissions Test, a standardized test that is part of the admissions process at Oxford). She says she topped ELAT and by virtue of it, gained admission at the University of Oxford (needless to say, it doesn't work like that). When we enquired how she plans to straddle a course in astrophysics in the 'London Centre of NASA' and an English course in Oxford, she said 'they' have assured it's possible.

She further says that after she wrote to the 'London Centre website' with a brief outline of her theory, they asked her to join immediately. And later revised the offer to accommodate her at a later date than the one proposed initially. "I will be doing my BSc and MSc there," she said. She added that the ESA (European Space Agency) will be funding her research too.

She couldn't give us the name of the scientist who nudged her to write to NASA or the ones at Oxford who gave her admission. "I had a Skype chat with Oxford. For scholarships. There were some board members," she said.

Advertisement

When we enquired if she can forward us a copy of the email she had received from the concerned authorities, she said she was bound by an agreement to not reveal the full details of the research proposal. Perhaps she can forward us the email without the attachment? She is not permitted to do so, she said.

Sataparna's father seems to be under the impression that his daughter is headed to London on 17 August. In fact, he says that the concerned people have even sent her tickets to fly to London. "We are just applying for the Visa now," says Pradip Mukherjee.

Sataparna, who is taking her ISC examinations at the moment, also added that she has always wanted to study literature and read and was glad that NASA was allowing her to pursue the same. Good on you, NASA.

The theory that she says has landed her this offer, has to do with "some sort of a time machine". On further probing, she explains, "It is about a device which works faster than the speed of light. You have to overcome the speed of light to turn back time. This machine will do that."

Initially, she had told other media outlets, which again had reported her story without basic verification, that she is working on theory of black holes.

Advertisement

According to her, the NASA, Oxford and the ESA have gotten together to fund her courses in astrobiology and English and she will work on a time machine. Of course.

We are awaiting a response from NASA. But we are not holding our breath. We only hope that she is not a victim of an elaborate internet fraud herself.

We wrote to GISS for information on the internship Sataparna claims to have landed. Michael Cabbage, Associate Chief for Communications, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, clarified that they neither have any record of a student by that name nor do they have a facility in London. "We have no record of any student named Sataparna Mukherjee being granted an internship, scholarship or any form of academic or financial assistance from our institute. Furthermore, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies has no facilities in London and all of our internships are awarded to students who live within 50 miles of our location in New York City. The application deadline for our 2016 students closed March 1. We have not made any selections yet," Cabbage told us over email.

Also on HuffPost:
Huffpost India

Around 50 leaders of the Congress party from Uttar Pradesh met at the All India Congress Committee headquarters in Delhi today. It was a usual meeting to chalk out the battleplan for the UP state assembly elections, to be held exactly twelve months from now. Rahul Gandhi was present, but the extra-ordinary thing about the meeting was the presence of someone who is not a member of the Congress party: campaign strategist Prashant Kishor.

The AICC had recently announced its approval of Kishor helping Captain Amarinder Singh for the Punjab assembly elections, to be held around the same time as Uttar Pradesh. The mandate for Punjab meant Kishor working mostly with the Captain. UP, however, implies working with Rahul Gandhi.

Advertisement

Rahul Gandhi seems to have involved Kishor at a pan-India level, without waiting for the Punjab results.

"It is a foregone conclusion that if Prashant pulls off Punjab, he will work closely with us till 2019," says a highly placed source in the Congress party. But now, Rahul Gandhi seems to have involved Kishor at a pan-India level, without waiting for the Punjab results.

Therein lies a tale: quietly, Kishor has become a de facto advisor to Rahul Gandhi. It is not just one or two states, Kishor is now likely to be designing the Congress campaign strategy in every state election until 2019, except the ones to be held in April-May. This is why Kishor is not moving in with Amarinder Singh the way he did with Modi for 2014 or Nitish Kumar for 2015. Kishor will be working mostly out of Delhi, having already been given the keys to the Congress party's "war room" at 15 Gurudwara Rakab Ganj Road in central Delhi.

Advertisement

Every state election until 2019, whether the Congress wins or loses them, will be used by Kishor and his team to give the Congress party a fresh new look, that of a resurgent party. Since Brand Gandhi is at an all time low, the strategy won't be to do a presidential style campaign as Kishor did with Narendra Modi or Nitish Kumar. Instead, the Congress party will be made to look better in the ground, automatically raising the stature of the Gandhis.

Prashant Kishor's team denied rumours that Priyanka Gandhi could be fielded as the chief ministerial candidate in Uttar Pradesh. However, it is expected that the Congress will introduce some "disruption" in Uttar Pradesh to become relevant again.

Making the Congress party look like a relevant player in UP will in itself be an achievement, but the party along with Kishor's team will be gunning for a majority.

In Bihar, the Congress party was irrelevant despite a consistent vote-share of 8% plus. Making the Congress party look like a relevant player in UP will in itself be an achievement, but the party along with Kishor's team will be gunning for a majority.

Uttar Pradesh is the route to India, and home turf of the Gandhis. An apparent revival of the Congress in UP, stopping the Aam Aadmi Party's rise in Punjab and then, in winter 2017, making the BJP struggle to retain Gujarat  all of this is now part of Kishor's ambitious plan to defeat Narendra Modi in 2019.

Advertisement

Key to doing so will be rebranding Rahul Gandhi. The Congress vice president who gets mocked as "pappu" by opponents, will have to come across as a seasoned leader and not just as someone who's been trying to change the system.

Contact HuffPost India

Also see on HuffPost:
Your humble writer takes no pleasure in reminding readers that he told them so, but a post from last December now seems prescient. The post began:

In the wake of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, or COP21), so-called religious shareholder activists are intent on ruining investments, crashing the economy and doubling down on their efforts to promote energy poverty throughout the world.

At that time, focus was on the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and the Church Investors Group, but now comes other groups of religious shareholder activists, As You Sow and Boston Common Asset Management (with a little help from their fellow religious friends at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Trillium Asset Management, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and Walden Asset Management), intent on making hay off COP21 pronouncements by spreading misinformation on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in the groups latest report, Disclosing the Facts: Transparency and Risk in Hydraulic Fracturing. Hoo boy.

Suffice it to say the reports disclaimer is longer and far more detailed than those featured in pharmaceutical advertisements:

The information in this report has been prepared from sources and data the authors believe to be reliable, but we assume no liability for and make no guarantee as to its adequacy, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness. Boston Common Asset Management, LLC may have invested in and may in the future invest in some of the companies mentioned in this report. The information in this report is not designed to be investment advice regarding any security, company, or industry and should not be relied upon to make investment decisions. We cannot and do not comment on the suitability or profitability of any particular investment. All investments involve risk, including the risk of losing principal. No information herein is intended as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as a sponsorship of any company, security, or fund. Opinions expressed and facts stated herein are subject to change without notice.

Just so. In fact the authors  Richard Liroff, Investor Environmental Health Network; Danielle Fugere, As You Sow; and Steven Helm, Boston Common Asset Management  acknowledge significant increases in reporting and transparency with a concomitant reduction of environmental stressors across the fracking industry. Yet, the authors are pretty insistent on their recommendations for fracking companies, which includes:

1. Companies should disclose their leak detection and repair programs for methane emissions, providing information on program scope (percentage of facilities/assets covered), technologies deployed, frequency of inspection, and results. 2. Companies should develop systems to track community concerns and corporate responses and provide such information to senior management, corporate boards of directors, investors, and other stakeholders. 3. Companies not using diesel or BTEX chemicals in their fracturing fluids should disclose this, and companies not relying on their own toxicity scoring systems should draw on those of their principal chemical suppliers to report progress in reducing toxicity of fracturing fluids. 7. Companies should link executive compensation to corporate performance on health, safety, and environmental indicators, and should incorporate metrics beyond the injury and spill data which are most commonly relied on in such linked compensation systems. Additional metrics might include, for example, measures to reduce companies environmental impact, such as implementation of leak detection and repair programs and progress towards greenhouse gas reduction goals. 8. Government agencies and the oil and gas industry should work together to develop more systematic research and data on the human health effects (including worker health) of hydraulic fracturing operations. This might follow the model of the U.S. government and the automobile industry agreeing on creation of the Health Effects Institute to produce credible, broadly accepted research on the health effects of air pollution.

Pardon me, but how is any of this really anywhere near the house on the highway leading to the city with the parking lot next to the ballpark in which investors typically operate? The quick answer is the AYS cars transmission is in reverse, traveling at warp speed away from rather than toward that ballpark.

I bring up warp speed because the foundation headed by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberrys son is also acknowledged in the report. Perhaps AYS and its cohorts perceive humanitys on the brink of discovering the dilithium crystals that will power Earths matter/anti-matter drives in the post-fossil fuel future they desire.

In fact, returning to the ballpark referenced above, AYS is attempting to cover all the bases in its efforts to hobble the energy industry. Not only do AYS recommendations  if accepted  present negative repercussions to industry earnings and shareholder dividends, but the group actively promotes fossil-fuel divestment. Who didnt see that slow-pitch coming?

However one pokes fun at AYSs initiative, none of it is actually cute, nor is it even remotely funny. Their anti-fossil fuel crusade harms not only the companies in which they invest or advocate divestment but as well fellow shareholders and those saving hundreds of dollars in fuel costs rendered by fracking. A March 2015 report from The Brookings Institution found:

The recent shale gas boom (fracking) in the United States has been beneficial to the economy, dropping natural gas prices 47 percent compared to what the price would have been prior to the fracking revolution in 2013, and has improved the economic well-being of consumers $74 billion per year. The authors estimate residential consumer gas bills have dropped $13 billion per year from 2007-2013 thanks to the fracking revolution, amounting to $200 per year for gas-consuming households. In the first estimates of the economic welfare and distributional impacts of the U.S. shale boom, Catherine Hausman of the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and Ryan Kellogg of the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) find that the expansion of the natural gas supply has reduced gas prices by $3.45 per 1000 cubic feet, and that the wholesale price reduction has been fully passed on to retail natural gas prices.

At this point it becomes necessary to take AYS at its word  at least the disclaimer in its report: [W]e assume no liability for and make no guarantee as to its adequacy, accuracy, timeliness, or completeness.
Eros Now/YouTube

The rickshaw-puller who was caught having sex with deceased Aligarh Muslim University professor Shrinivas Ramachandra Siras is now scared for his life after the release of Hansal Mehta's Aligarh, according to a report by The Hindu.

The movie, which shows his character in bed with Siras (played by Manoj Bajpayee) during a love scene, has brought him unwelcome attention, he says. This, despite the unofficial ban on the film in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, by the city's mayor, some members of AMU's students action committee, and a fringe group; Aligarh had managed a few screenings in certain venues before it was pulled down.

Advertisement

"This is not something welcome. I have not watched the movie but those who did, told me that my actual name has been used in the movie. They have also disclosed the name of the place where I stay in Aligarh," he told The Hindu, in whose report he has been called Sarfaraz.

Apurva Asrani, the film's writer-editor, told HuffPost India that he didn't know how to react to this development as he wasn't aware of how much of it is fact and how much is hearsay.

However, the rickshaw-puller has been quoted by his real name in several news reports over the past six years, especially around the time Siras was found dead in his apartment. In 2010, several mainstream news outlets had reported that he had attempted suicide through self-immolation. A Times Of India report on the same said that although there were allegations of a witch-hunt against him by the local police, SP (City) Man Singh Chauhan had told the media that the rickshaw-puller had taken the extreme step because he was under financial strain.

Apurva Asrani, the film's writer-editor, told HuffPost India that he didn't know how to react to this development as he wasn't aware of how much of it is fact and how much is hearsay. "We did speak to him during the scripting of the film and he shared his experiences with us quite readily," he said. "In fact, he'd been quite forthcoming and told us that he felt that there was finally some justice happening for Prof. Siras. At one point, he'd also asked us for money, but we couldn't do that because it isn't that kind of film. The film is about Siras and what happened to him, not their relationship."

Advertisement

To further complicate matters, some websites (none that can be counted as reputed, mainstream publications) have reported that this person has filed a case against Mehta for misrepresentation, claiming that he is not homosexual and that Prof. Siras had forced him to have sex. Calls and texts to Mehta went unanswered, while Asrani said he had "no idea" about this.

Also see on HuffPost:
ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE - In this June 14, 2011 file photo, former chief minister of Tamil Nadu state Jayaram Jayalalitha addresses a press conference in New Delhi, India. An appeals court in southern India acquitted powerful regional politician Jayalalitha of corruption charges Monday, clearing the way for her to return to public office. Jayalalitha was forced last year to step down as the highest elected official in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, after a Bangalore court in September convicted her of possessing wealth disproportionate to her income and sentenced her to four years in prison. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das, File)

The Rs251 phone might have been a non-starter, but now the Tamil Nadu government has launched a similarly 'too-good-to-be-true' plan in broadband access. Hopefully this won't turn out to be a disappointing mess like the Rs251 phone.

Tamil Nadu's state-owned cable TV and internet service provider Arasu Corporation has launched a fibre-based broadband service starting at Rs299 per month for a line with 2Mbps speed and a 2GB data limit. It will offer a range of plans, including a 40GB data pack at 4Mbps speed for Rs899. The Jayalalithaa government is calling it "internet for all" in the poll-bound state notorious for election-time freebies.

Advertisement

Cheif Minister Jayalalitha announced the internet service over a video conference. The charges for the router, modem and installation have to be borne by the customer. The bandwidth for the broadband will be provided by Vodafone. Last year, Arasu cable had acquired the ISP license from the telecom ministry.

A report from The New Indian Express suggests that Arasu Cable had been testing this service for 1,100 providers already. And with the current infrastructure, they would be able to provide the internet service to 15,000 more houses immediately. Arasu is targeting to reach the number of 50,000 customers in next three months. It is clear that the announcement has been made ahead of the elections, but the roll out and infrastructure scale-up to reach every part of the state will take time.

Arasu Cable has a wide footprint in the state due to the popularity of its cable TV services.

Jayalalitha also announced a startup warehouse in Chennai built at an expense of 3.53 crores. She also said a cloud and web hosting service for students and entrepreneurs will be built at a cost of 10.41 crores at the state-owned data centre. Phase 2 of the data centre will also be underway with the budget of 40 crores.

Advertisement

This is not the first digital initiative taken by the Tamil Nadu government. They have distributed 31.76 lakh laptops to the students at a cost of 6,456. CM had also announced Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) services for all households last year.

The Government of India is also trying to make internet accessible to everyone under the digital India initiative. They are working with Google to set up Internet balloons under 'Project Loon'. Recently Finance Minister Arun Jaitley also announced digital literacy schemes in the union budget. Notably, Facebook's ambitious project Free Basics was shut down after TRAI banned all the differentially priced tariff plans.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - FEBRUARY 29: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley arrives at Parliament House ahead of release of the General Budget on February 29, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Presenting his third Union Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced a slew of schemes, and income tax exemptions for small tax-payer and the small investors. Aiming to double farmersa income by 2022, the minister also announced an allocation of nearly Rs. 36,000 crore for the farm sector while raising the agri-credit target to Rs. 9 lakh crore for the next fiscal. Growth of Indian Economy accelerated to 7.6% in 2015-16. (Photo by Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

The minister of finance, Arun Jaitley, did not make any changes in the tax slabs in the budget for 2016-2017 which was presented yesterday.

The basic exemption limit continued to be at Rs 2.5 lakh and other tax slabs also continued to remain the same. This is typically one section of the budget which excites the salaried middle class. But Jaitley had nothing to offer on this front.

Advertisement

Interestingly, when Jaitley was in the opposition he had demanded that the income tax ceiling be increased to Rs 5 lakh, from the Rs 2 lakh level that had prevailed, at that point of time. As he had said in April 2014 Direct Tax should be reduced. If the Income-Tax limit is raised from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, 3 crore people will save Rs 24 crore which will lead to a small impact of 1 to 1.5 percent of National Tax Fund.

On February 29, 2016, Jaitley presented his third budget as the finance minister. Nevertheless, even now the income tax limit is at Rs 2.5 lakh, half of the Rs 5 lakh limit that Jaitley had demanded when he was in opposition.

The question is why? The simple answer ispoliticians in opposition behave very differently from those in power. But there is a better answer than this.

Take a look at the following chart reproduced from the Economic Survey for 2015-2016, which was released on February 26, 2016.

Advertisement

What does this tell us? It shows us very clearly that the income tax exemption limit has risen at a much faster rate in India than the per capita income.

As the Economic Survey points out: We can calculate in some sense the missing taxpayers in Indianot those who are evading taxes altogether or under-reporting taxes but those who have legitimately gone under the tax radar due to generous government policy.

And who are these missing taxpayers? These are those taxpayers who got left out because the income tax threshold has been raised from the level of Rs 1.5 lakh in 2008-2009. As the Economic Survey points out: If the threshold had been maintained at Rs. 1,50,000 (the threshold limit in 2008-2009).we find that there would have been an additional 1.65 crore units incorporated within the taxation system (In 2012-2013 and an addition of about 39.5 percent) and tax revenues would have been about Rs 31,500 crores greater. The tax to GDP ratio of the country would have gone up by 0.32% if the income tax exemption limit had not been raised.

The amount now, will be more than Rs 31,500 crore. And this is quite a lot of money for a government which is likely to see its expenses go up in 2016-2017, after the recommendations of the seventh pay commission increasing the salaries of central government employees and pensions of retired central government employees, are accepted.

Advertisement

What this also tells us is that Jaitleys calculation of increasing the exemption limit to Rs 5 lakh, costing only Rs 24 crore, was basically wrong. When the tax-exemption limit went from Rs 1.5 lakh in 2008-2009 to Rs 2 lakh in 2012-2013, it cost the government Rs 31,500 crore. Increasing the limit to Rs 5 lakh would cost considerably more.

In fact, there is a lesson or two India can learn from China on this front, the Economic Survey points out: Chinese success in bringing more citizens into the individual income tax net owes to setting a reasonable threshold for paying taxes and not changing it unduly. In contrast, in India, exemption thresholds for income taxes have been consistently raised.

This has led to a situation where as many Indians are not paying income tax, as could have, if the exemption limit had not been raised at a much greater rate than the per-capita income.

Of course, Jaitley did not know all this when he was in the opposition. But now he is in the government and has access to the best possible economic brains in the country, as well as data, on which he can base his decisions on. Clearly his demand to increase the income tax exemption limit to Rs 5 lakh, when he was in the opposition, was just based on a whim and not any numbers.

Advertisement

Contact HuffPost India

Also See On HuffPost:
Mercutio Southall Jr. being escorted out of Donald Trump rally in Birmingham. (Joe Songer/jsonger@al.com)

ComebackTown is published by David Sher to begin a discussion on a better Birmingham.

David Sher is co-CEO of AmSher Compassionate Collections and past Chairman of Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, ONB, and CAP.

Let's turn Birmingham around. Click here to sign up for our newsletter. There's power in numbers. (Opt out at any time)

Last week Blake Scott Ball, a doctoral student in history at UA, wrote a scathing piece attacking Mountain Brook for AL.com titled A brief history of Mountain Brook picking on Birmingham.

He talked about Mountain Brook's history of "establishing segregation laws" and "moving children out of Birmingham school systems."

Then there was the national news story in November when Mercutio Southall Jr. was attacked at the Donald Trump rally at the BJCC and complained, "Birmingham is 75 percent black, so why did he (Trump) choose to come here? He could have gone to Mountain Brook..."

Why is Mountain Brook such a lightning rod?

I've published well over 200 blogs and when the headline includes the words "Mountain Brook" I have to brace myself for the reaction.

Mountain Brook points fingers at Birmingham

What folks in Mt. Brook and Vestavia are losing

Mt. Brook mini-crime spree

Did Mt. Brook blow up Birmingham?

Is it jealousy or some kind of attitude by Mountain Brook residents?

When I publish a piece about Mountain Brook I always disclose that I grew up and raised my children in Mountain Brook and am currently living in Vestavia Hills.

I cringe when I make the disclosure because I know some folks will instantly judge me. Commenters have labeled me "elitist" or "snobby."

It's clear some people think residents of Mountain Brook are rich and pretentious, but I have the greatest respect and admiration for my Mountain Brook friends. Many are heavily involved in our broader community --volunteering, serving on boards and leadership positions of nonprofits, and donating to charities.

This is as it should be because people with money should be generous with their time and resources.

But why the huge divide? Why does the income and racial chasm seem to be greater in Birmingham than other Southern cities?

We in Birmingham have divided ourselves into 35-plus municipalities defined by race and income.

Birmingham is perceived as black and poor; Mountain Brook as white and rich.

Nashville, our neighbor to the north, is one great county-city. It is neither perceived as black/white or rich/poor. Folks in Nashville share a common mission and vision while we concentrate on our differences and bicker among ourselves.

When I talk about regional governance, some people tell me that will never happen in Birmingham because the folks in Mountain Brook are happy with their isolated life in the suburbs.

The folks in Mountain Brook may not realize it, but they are not getting what they want.

Many citizens of Mountain Brook are attorneys, doctors, accountants, and business owners. The growth of their businesses and practices are limited by the stagnation of metropolitan Birmingham.

We in Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills, as other parents in our Birmingham region, are losing our children and grandchildren to more progressive cities.

I have a Vestavia Hills friend who is currently participating in a monthly area-wide forum looking for solutions for our Birmingham region.

She was surprised and disappointed by the resentment shown to her and the other over the mountain participants. This has dented her enthusiasm for working towards a better Birmingham.

So is the problem the people of Mountain Brook or the perception of the people of Mountain Brook?

What do you think?
Hutchinson's Orscheln Farm store has become a Bomgaars location

The Hutchinson store was one of 73 the FTC said Tractor Supply could not own due to anti-trust concerns. Transition to new store could take 15 months.
 NPR Obfuscates and then Goes Silent on Possible Ethics Violation | Main | Hamas Cooperates with ISIS-Sinai 

March 02, 2016

North Korean Leaders are Devoted to Freedom, Palestinian Official Says



The Palestinian Authority (PA) ambassador to North Korea has offered effusive words of praise for the brutal dictatorship that rules the country.

Elder of Ziyon, an American blogger who researches and writes about antisemitism and the Arab-Israeli conflict, reports that Ambassador Ismail Ahmed Mohamed Hasan hosted a reception at the PA embassy in Pyongyang, North Korea.

The occasion for the PA-provided festivities? To celebrate the birth anniversary of Kim Jong Il, the deceased previous dictator and father of current leader Kim Jong-Un. Elder of Ziyon reports that in a speech, Hasan toasted the deceased North Korean leader as a state leader possessed of brilliant idea and creative caliber. He devoted himself to the freedom of the country and its peoples happiness and the victory of the oppressed peoples struggle.?

North Korea, is one of the worlds most repressive countries. According to The Wall Street Journal, it operates a system of city-sized gulags that are thought to hold as many as 80,000-120,000 people (North Korea Plans Report on Human Rights,? Aug. 11, 2014). A 2014 report by the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner found that the regime is guilty of committing arbitrary detention, torture, executions? of its own people, in addition to starving them in mass famines. Free thought and dissent are punishable by torture or death and a personality cult surrounds the North Korean leader. Potential rivals, including Kim Jong-Uns uncle, have been murdered. The commission found that DPRK officials misused international aid by imposing conditions? on delivery of food aid that was not based on humanitarian conditions.



The chair of the commission, Michael Kirby, remarked: The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.? The report concluded that institutions and officials involved are not held accountable. Impunity reigns.?

The PA also rules in a repressive, undemocratic fashion, if not as pervasively as North Korea. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is currently in the eleventh year of a single elected four-year term. He has refused to hold new elections.

As CAMERA has noted (Palestinian Children Wear Suicide Belts to Celebrate Fatahs Anniversary,? Jan. 12, 2016), the PA has imprisoned Palestinian Arabs for Facebook posts critical of Abbas and the PA. Possible Abbas rivals, like his former Gaza security chief Mohammad Dahlan, have been forced into exile in Abu Dhabi. Abbas predecessor and the first head of the PA, Yasser Arafat, purportedly murdered critics and potential rivals like Abu Iyad, who disagreed with Arafats supporting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the first Persian Gulf War.



Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh recently has written about PA use of international aid to construct a police state in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) (U.S., Europe Fund Torture by Palestinian Authority,? Gatestone Institute, Feb. 26, 2016). Toameh notes a recent report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor that documents 179 cases of torture in PA prisons and 1,274 cases of arbitrary detention. He adds that among those arrested were 35 Palestinian journalists and civil rights activists, and 476 students and academics.? The PA security forces, funded by the United States, the European Union and others are responsible for these detentions and for the torture that purportedly frequently accompanies it.

Perhaps when the PA ambassador praised North Korean leadership as devoted to freedom? he was applying the term as the Palestinian Authority seems to understand it.









Posted by SD at March 2, 2016 04:00 PM

Guidelines for posting

This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material.

Post a comment
SECURA Insurance announced March 1 that it had named four individuals to serve as Vice Presidents."These people exhibit the best about our company," said SECURA president and CEO Dave Gross. "They have the strong leadership, vision, values, dedication, hard work, and expertise to back it all up."Tony Brecunier was promoted to Vice President of Workers Compensation Claims. He joined the company back in 1999 and has since served in various management positions. He helped improve customer service to SECURAs Spanish-speaking customers and implement the Nurse Hotline while as Director of Workers' Compensation Claims. As vice president, Brecunier will lead the Claims predictive modeling efforts and assume responsibility for Subrogation. He has several insurance designations. Currently, he is pursuing a degree at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.Jennifer Haas was named Vice President of Research & Development and Training. She had joined SECURA in 2006, first as a training manager then a product development manager for Commercial Lines. Haas was then promoted in 2008 to director of Research & Development. She also holds several insurance designations and has undergone training in leadership and management. Haas earned her B.A. from Marian College and her MBA from University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.Sandra Hupfer was appointed Vice President of Casualty Claims. Hupfer joined SECURA in 2009 as a claims attorney. She was then promoted to Manager of Litigation in 2011. Later, she was named Director of Casualty Claims in 2014.Previously, she was an attorney and shareholder at Stellpflug Law. She earned her bachelors degree in music from University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and her Juris Doctor degree from University of Wisconsin law school. Hupfer is a member of the State Bar of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Defense Counsel.Jeff Kargus is SECURAs new Vice President-Controller. He has served as Controller since he joined the company in 2003. Before serving SECURA, he was Vice President at Thrivent Financial. Kargus earned his BBA in accounting and MBA from University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He is also a member of the American Institute of CPAs, the Wisconsin Institute of CPAs, and the Financial Executives Institute. He is also a part of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh MBA Advisory Board and Fox Valley Lutheran High School Finance Committee.
Williamstown voters voted yes in overwhelming numbers to the Mount Greylock Regional School project.

Mount Greylock School Project Wins Decisive Victory in Williamstown



Mount Greylock school officials eagerly await results on Tuesday.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved taking on more than $20 million in debt to rebuild and renovate Mount Greylock Regional School.



The finally tally was a decisive 2,226 to 351, with some 84 percent of voters choosing to approve excluding the debt from Proposition 2 1/2 restrictions.

"I was hoping for a resounding yes and we got resounding yes," said Mount Greylock School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Greene, who was awaiting results with other school officials at Williamstown Elementary School on Tuesday night.

The entire project to renovate and add on to the 50-year-old school is pegged at $64.8 million. After state reimbursement, the district's share of that debt would end up between $31.5 million and $35.3 million. Two-thirds of that district share would be paid by the district's larger town, Williamstown.



Next up for a vote is the other member town, Lanesborough, where the project has been hotly debated over the past year. The Mount Greylock School Committee had urged town officials to schedule the debt exclusion vote for same day to take advantage of the expected turnout for the presidential primary.



Lanesborough rejected that idea, holding an informative session at last week's special town meeting and scheduling a ballot vote for March 15.



A "no" vote in either town would either kill the project or precipitate a revote. But School Committee and School Building Committee members note that a revote would be on the same project, which already has been vetted by Massachusetts School Building Authority.

Superintendent Douglas Dias said, "the community heard the message and reaffirmed the value of education."



Turnout in Williamstown was high, with more than 56 percent of registered voters casting ballots by 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Some 210 absentee ballots had also been cast.



"It's been very busy," said Town Clerk Mary Kennedy, who declined to speculate which vote was driving the turnout. "I think it's a little of both."
A lone supporter stands with a Bernie Sanders sign in Pittsfield. A lone Hillary Clinton sign in Williamstown, which the former secretary of state won on Tuesday. Dick Dassatti in North Adams takes advantage of the election to get voters to sign his charter review petition. A line at the polling location in Williamstown Elementary School. Toting up results at the Pittsfield town clerk's office. PreviousNext

Berkshires Goes for Sanders, Trump

NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  With the majority of precincts reporting in late Tuesday night, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were expected to post victories in their respective primaries in Massachusetts.



Trump, a New York billionaire developer, was far and away the winner in the Republican primary, with some 80 percent of precincts reporting he had scored nearly 49 percent of the vote.



But the biggest vote-getters by far in this very blue corner of a blue state were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who were polling at about 50 percent and 48 percent, respectively, late Tuesday.



Both did well in the Berkshires, with the Vermont U.S. senator seemingly able to cash in on both his message and the Northern Berkshires proximity to Vermont; Clinton won big here in 2008 over Barack Obama with the exception of Williamstown.



That story was different on Tuesday as Clinton outpolled her competitor in the Village Beautiful by a narrow 1,121 to 1,074, with longgone candidate Martin O'Malley grabbing four votes.



And Pittsfield handed Clinton a victory of 4,204 to 3,956, as did Lenox with 735 votes to Sanders' 640.



North Adams, however, saw Sanders poll 1,334 to Clinton's 953, and Clarksburg, on the Vermont border, also went Sanders by 140 to 125.



Sanders campaigned heavily in Western Massachusetts, appearing in the Springfield area three times since last October. He won throughout the Berkshires and Western and Central Massachusetts with fewer than a dozen towns and cities reporting in late Tuesday for Clinton.



But Clinton also took Springfield, where she appeared on Monday and gave a shoutout to Pittsfield about her visit there some 20 years ago to mark the beginning of the Colonial Theatre renovations. She also swept up Boston and most of its environs, giving her a boost of some 22,000 votes over Sanders by late Tuesday evening.



Trump's victory was far more decisive, taking nearly 49 percent of the state's Republican primary votes with his closest competitors, Marco Rubio and John Kasich, polling about 18 percent each. Ted Cruz was just below 10 percent.



Not suprisingly, Trump was victorious in the Berkshires as well, with only Alford and Mount Washington both falling in the Kasich column. Kasich, in fact, rose to second or third in a number of communities.



For more in-depth results, see the Boston Globe's primary maps.
Four More Shots Please S3 Review: This Old Wine In New Bottle Doesn't Get You Drunk As Easily Anymore
We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
JACKSON COUNTY, Mississippi -- A woman reported missing from Slidell, La., was found in Jackson County Wednesday.

According to Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, investigators responded to a call from East Belle Fontaine Beach from a resident who, having seen reports regarding the missing woman the night before, spotted her vehicle -- a 2007 Chevrolet Avalanche -- in the area.

While investigating that report, officers received another call regarding a second citizen who advised of seeing the vehicle in the Pine Grove Trailer Park off Pine Grove Road.

Investigators responded to that area and located the missing woman, Paulette Loisel, 44, and the vehicle. Officers observed Loisel appeared disoriented and Acadian Ambulance was dispatched to the scene and transported Loisel for medical treatment. The Slidell Police Department arrived on the scene and took possession of the vehicle.

No foul play is suspected.

Loisel is the owner of PJ's coffee shop in Mandeville, La. She was reported missing by her niece, who told police Loisel was last seen leaving the business at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday.
Mazza Vineyards

A lug of frozen Mazza Vineyards' Vidal grapes, taken off the vines in early January. The winery is located in North East, near Lake Erie.

(Facebook)

And the winner of 2016 Wine Excellence XIV . . . is Bob Mazza's 2013 Vidal ice wine. That a white wine won the annual competition that's sponsored by the Pennsylvania Wine Society wasn't that surprising, since only three of the 10 finalists were red.

But the idea of an ice wine winning one of the state's three major competitions (the Farm Show and Pennsylvania Wine Association contests are the other two) is certainly evidence of how unpredictable it has gotten (the three wines that won before this year were Moscato, Lemberger and Merlot) and reflects the diversity of what state wineries grow and/or bottle.

Dave Williams, handling publicity for the wine society and the contest, wrote this of what's officially called Ice Wine of Vidal on Mazza's website:

The winner was Mazza Vineyard with their 2013 Vidal Ice WIne and the award was received by Bob Mazza, partner of Mazza Vineyards. Bob cited historial references pertaining to Pennsylvania wine industry over nearly 30 years and the challenges and milestones that have been achieved. Regarding the wine, he simply said it speaks for itself. However, the tasting notes would indicate "an authentic ice wine with a gorgeous complex of apricot, peach and botrytis aromas in the nose that carry through on the palate. Fantastic balance between the beautiful fruit and lively acidity. This wine cries for Creme Brule!"

Of the 88 wines that were entered by 17 wineries, 39 were white and 47 were red. There were two roses. It's open to Pennsylvania wineries and wines made from Pennsylvania fruit, and for years included only vinifera and Chambourcin. Last year, the contest was opened a bit wider to include wines made from Vidal and Traminette.

Here is a list of the finalists, in the order they were tasted:

Nissley Vineyards & Winery (Lancaster County), CrossWinds Winery (Dauphin County), Penns Woods Winery (Chester/Delaware County), Waltz Vineyards & Winery Waltz Vineyards & Winery, 2014 Stiegel Rose Vynecrest Vineyards & Winery (Lehigh County), Chaddsford Winery (Chester/Delaware County) Armstrong Valley Vineyard & Winery (Dauphin County) Armstrong Valley Vineyard & Winery, 2014 Moscato Mazza Vineyards (Erie County),

Ice wine is made by a handful of Pa. wineries, a few taking the grapes off their own vines and others bringing in the juice from outside the area, such as New York. It's an intensely sweet concoction in which the grapes are left to freeze on the vines and remain hanging on the vines and then harvested and crushed to produce a super-concentrated sugary juice. Generally, the wine is sold in a .375 ml or smaller bottle and sold from around $40 and up. Around the state, you're more likely to find it in the northern tier wineries such as Mazza's, which is among a number that sit along Lake Erie.

The runner-up in the competition, Williams said, was the 2014 Waltz Vineyards & Winery Stiegel Rose. This is what serious rose can be, he wrote. Tasting notes: "Complex aromas of strawberry and orange blossom. Medium body, well balanced acidity. Excellent food wine showing the potential of dry Rose in Pa."

READ MORE

Scott Zoccolillo, the guest speaker, talked mostly about the "Judgement" promotion he staged in summer 2014 when he was working at Nectar restaurant in the Philly suburbs. He used a panel of judges in a blind tasting that matched Pennsylvania Chardonnays and Cabernet Sauvignons against those from California. Williams noted in his press release that Pennsylvania wine fared remarkably well and that Zoccolillo's comments "more than validated the merits and quality of Pennsylvania wines."

Wine Excellence XIV originally was scheduled originally for Jan. 24, but nobody was going to make that date in the aftermatch of a 30-inch blizzard that had wrapped up the previous evening. The event was rescheduled for this past Sunday at the Harrisburg Hilton.

Here's a list of the second 10, which also were opened for the attendees:
Imperial Valley News Center

Food and Agricultures Leading Experts to Speak at Upcoming Two-Day Summit

Chicago, Illinois - Food Tank, in partnership with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will hold a two-day summit, Wednesday, November 16, 2016 and Thursday, November 17, 2016 from 9AM-5PM. The Summit will take place in the Gleacher Center at University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

The event will bring together more than 70+ expert speakers who are among the top leaders across all sectors of the food industry, including business, government, and elected officials; nonprofit groups; farmers organizations; unions; funders; chefs; and more. Each panel will be moderated by an expert journalist or food advocate.

Researchers, farmers, chefs, policy makers, government officials, and students will come together for interactive panels on topics that include nutrient density, investing in the food movement, chefs leading the food movement, farmers innovating agriculture in the midwest, and food justice among other topics. The entire two-day event will be live streamed on www.FoodTank.com.

This event will sell out. Confirmed speakers include (in alphabetical order  many more to be announced soon):

Gene Baur, President and Co-Founder, Farm Sanctuary

Rick Bayless, Chef and Founder, Frontera Grill and Frontera Farmer Foundation

Cara Cummings, Executive Director, The Land Connection

Ariane Daguin, Founder and CEO, DArtagnan

Bill Daley, Food Writer and Columnist, Chicago Tribune

Monica Eng, Producer, WBEZ Chicago Public Media

Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Iowa State University; President of the Board, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture

Karen Lehman, Director, Fresh Taste

Becky Liscum, Founder and Publisher, Edible Chicago

David MacLennan, Chairman and CEO, Cargill

Juliette Majot, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP)

Angela Mason, Associate Vice President, Urban Agriculture/Windy City Harvest, Chicago Botanic Garden

Jeanne Nolan, Founder, The Organic Gardener

Denise OBrien, Founder, Women Food and Agriculture Network (WFAN)

Jonathan Pereira, Executive Director, Plant Chicago

Harry Rhodes, Executive Director, Growing Home

Natalie Shmulik, Food Incubator Consultant, The Hatchery

Jim Slama, Founder and President, FamilyFarmed.org

Sponsors include; Niman Ranch; Organic Valley; and Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition. More to be announced soon.

Last years first annual Food Tank Summit in partnership with the George Washington University brought together 400 in-person attendees (completely sold out) from more than 25 states and waiting list of more than 1,500 people. There were an additional 15,520 livestream participants from more than 125 countries. 70+ expert speakers in food and agriculture presented and 11 top food journalists were stage as panel moderators from major media outlets including National Public Radio, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Voice of America, Politico, and more. This year, Food Tank is quadrupling our reach by hosting additional summits in Washington, D.C., Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Sacramento, CA.

WHO: 70 expert speakers who are among the top leaders across all sectors of the food industry

WHAT: Two-Day Summit hosted by Food Tank, Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and University of Chicago Booth School of Business

WHEN: Wednesday, November 16, 2016 and Thursday, November 17, 2016 from 9AM-5PM. For more information: http://foodtanksummit.com/chicago

WHERE: Gleacher Center 450 N Cityfront Plaza Dr, Chicago, IL 60611

About Food Tank

Food Tank is focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. We spotlight environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity, and poverty. Food Tank also creates networks of people, organizations, and content that push for food system change.

About University of Chicago Booth School of Business

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is the second-oldest school in the U.S.and second to none when it comes to influencing business education and business practices. The deans and professional staff strive to provide the best business education experience in the world with the expert advice and assistance of many devoted alumni and students.

About Chicago Council on Global Affairs

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs is an independent, nonpartisan organization that provides insight  and influences the public discourse  on critical global issues. We convene leading global voices and conduct independent research to bring clarity and offer solutions to challenges and opportunities across the globe. The Council is committed to engaging the public and raising global awareness of issues that transcend borders and transform how people, business and governments engage the world.
Imperial Valley News Center

DOE Announces $80 Million in Funding to Increase SuperTruck Efficiency

Indianapolis, Indiana - Building on the notable successes of the SuperTruck initiative, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Reuben Sarkar today announced SuperTruck II, an $80 million funding opportunity, subject to congressional appropriations, for research, development and demonstration of long-haul tractor-trailer truck technology. Sarkar made the announcement at the GreenTruck Summit in Indianapolis.

Sarkar also announced more than $12 million in selections for three new cost-shared projects focused on the research, development, and demonstration of plug-in electric powertrain technologies for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles.

Improving the efficiency of commercial trucks is critical to reducing our petroleum consumption, strengthening our clean energy economy, and further reducing our contributions to climate change, Deputy Assistant Secretary Sarkar said. This new funding will not only accelerate innovation but also foster rapid market adoption of new energy efficient vehicle technologies.

The Department of Energy launched its SuperTruck initiative in 2010. Vehicles developed under SuperTruck I are Class 8 combination trucks  commonly known as 18-wheelers  that dramatically increase tractor-trailer fuel, engine and drivetrain efficiency through the use of advanced technologies. As the backbone of domestic freight transportation, 18-wheelers haul 70 percent of all freight tonnage.

SuperTruck II projects will research, develop, and demonstrate technologies to improve heavy-truck freight efficiency by more than 100 percent, relative to a manufacturers best-in-class 2009 truck, with an emphasis on technology cost-effectiveness and performance.

Achieving Class 8 truck efficiency increases will require an integrated systems approach to ensure that the various components of the vehicle work together. SuperTruck II projects will utilize a wide variety of truck and trailer technology approaches to achieve performance targets, such as improvements in engine efficiency, drivetrain efficiency, aerodynamic drag, tire rolling resistance, and vehicle weight.

The recipients of the funding for plug-in electric powertrain technologies for medium and heavy-duty vehicles announced today are: Robert Bosch LLC (Farmington Hills, MI) will receive $5 million to develop and demonstrate a medium-duty plug in hybrid vehicle powertrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50 percent.

Cummins Corporate Research and Technology (Columbus, IN) will receive $4.5 million to develop and demonstrate a Class 6 plug in hybrid delivery truck that reduces fuel consumption by 50 percent.

McLaren Performance Technologies (Livonia, MI) will receive $2.6 million to develop a Class 6 delivery truck with a scalable, innovative, lightweight, low-cost, and commercially-viable plug-in electric drive system that improves fuel economy by 100 percent.

For more information and application requirements, please visit the EERE Exchange website or Grants.gov.
Governor Brown Signs Health Care Special Session Legislation

Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced that he has signed the following bipartisan managed care organization (MCO) financing legislation passed by both houses of the Legislature yesterday:

AB 133 by the Committee on Budget  Budget Act of 2015.

ABX2 1 by Assemblymember Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond)  Developmental services: Medi-Cal: funding.

SBX2 2 by Senator Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina)  Medi-Cal: managed care organization tax.

The legislation will result in a net tax cut, maintain more than $1 billion in critical federal funds, reduce debt by more than $400 million and direct approximately $300 million in new funding to help those with developmental disabilities.

Since 2005, the states MCO financing structure has generated revenue from Medi-Cal managed care plans. This revenue has been matched by the federal government and used to pay for the Medi-Cal program, including increasing payments to Medi-Cal providers. However, in 2014, the federal government released guidance indicating that this structure would be impermissible under federal Medicaid regulations starting in 2016-17  a shift that would result in the loss of more than $1 billion in federal funding.

To prevent the loss of federal funds and the resulting cuts to health care services in California, Governor Brown called a special session and the Administration has been working closely with the Legislature and other stakeholders on a solution.

The legislative package signed today meets the federal governments new rules, thereby maintaining federal funds critical to funding health care services. The package also includes a $300 million increase in state funds to boost services for people with developmental disabilities and provides more than $400 million in debt relief by prefunding retiree health benefits and repaying transportation-related loans.

The legislation restructures the taxes assessed on the health insurance industry and is projected to reduce overall tax liability for the industry. In addition to being approved by more than two-thirds of the Legislature, this bipartisan legislation was supported by dozens of organizations including the California Association of Health Plans, California Chamber of Commerce, California Association of Health Facilities, Local Health Plans of California, California Hospital Association, Health Access California, Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Lanterman Coalition, including the Arc of California and the Association of Regional Center Agencies.
Imperial County Supervisors Ratify Release of RFP for Upcoming Pesticide Disposal Event

El Centro, California - Today, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors ratified a Request for Proposal (RFP) that was released on February 24, 2016 by the Imperial County Agricultural Commissioners Office for the competitive selection of a licensed contractor to collect and dispose of outdated or unused pesticide products at a future pesticide disposal event. Proposals are due March 9, 2016.

It is of high importance that we obtain a licensed contractor who will collect, transport, and dispose of the pesticides in a legal and secure manner for the safety of Imperial County residents and the environment, said Chairman Jack Terrazas. I encourage local growers and farmers to take advantage of the upcoming collection event, especially since there is no cost to the participant to dispose of the pesticides.

The Imperial County Agricultural Pesticide Disposal Project (PDP) will assist local farmers and growers with proper disposal of unwanted and outdated pesticides. This will be a one to two day pesticide collection event. Only those identified participants who have registered their unwanted pesticides in advance of the collection event will be able to dispose of their materials. Late participants must be approved by both the vendor and the county. In addition, this pesticide collection event is not available for disposal of triple-rinsed empty pesticide containers or disposal of household hazardous waste. A date is not currently set for the event, however the event must be held by May 31, 2016.

Imperial County Agricultural Commissioner Connie Valenzuela stated, Disposal of pesticides can be very difficult and expensive, so what often happens is that these pesticides remain in storage for long periods. Eventually, containers can break down, resulting in increased hazards. I want to thank the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation for offering us this rare opportunity that will not only benefit our local growers, but also reduce pesticide exposure and risks to local people and the environment.

The Imperial County Agricultural Commissioners Office is the local agency responsible for administering the pesticide use enforcement program under the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.

For more information about the RFP, please visit the Imperial County Purchasing Departments Website. The RFP will be available for review. Proposals are due by March 9, 2016.
Imperial County Supervisors Approve NoCCA Funding Request

El Centro, California - Today, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors approved to donate $12,000 to the North County Coalition for the Arts (NoCCA) to provide a required match for a grant NoCCA received from the California Arts Council. The combined funds from the grant and county donation will be used to provide staff support and supplies to ensure Imperial County Arts Councils stability.

It is an impressive achievement that NoCCA was successful in their grant application, stated District 4 Supervisor Ryan Kelley. The Board created the Imperial County Arts Council so that the Valley would have an opportunity to tap into resources that would assist the promotion of additional arts programs in Imperial Valley. It is important to enhance the artistic culture of Imperial Valley and support it through efforts such as this donation.

NoCCA recently received a grant award of just over $21,000 from the California Arts Council to support the recently created Imperial County Arts Council; however the grant requires a mandatory $12,000 match from a public or private source in order to receive the full award. NoCCA is a corporation based in the City of Brawley who provides opportunities for members of the community to produce and participate in performing and visual arts programs in order to encourage and stimulate awareness, educate, enlighten, and inspire our youth throughout Imperial County.

The Imperial County Arts Council was created on June 1, 2015 through a resolution of the Imperial County Board of Supervisors who appointed three individuals to serve as commissioners of the Council under the administration of NoCCA. The Imperial County Arts Council was developed to promote awareness of the arts as a vital part of Imperial Countys culture by expanding the opportunity and accessibility of experiencing art in public places, to create a more visually pleasant environment and to apply for grants to support the arts.
Time to rethink mandatory password changes

Washington, DC - Data security is a process that evolves over time as new threats emerge and new countermeasures are developed. The FTCs longstanding advice to companies has been to conduct risk assessments, taking into account factors such as the sensitivity of information they collect and the availability of low-cost measures to mitigate risks.

The FTC has also advised companies to keep abreast of security research and advice affecting their sector, as that advice may change. What was reasonable in 2006 may not be reasonable in 2016. This blog post provides a case study of why keeping up with security advice is important. It explores some age-old security advice that research suggests may not be providing as much protection as people previously thought.

When people hear that I conduct research on making passwords more usable and secure (link is external), everyone has a story to tell and questions to ask. People complain about having so many passwords to remember and having to change them all so frequently. Often, they tell me their passwords (please, dont!) and ask me how strong they are. But my favorite question about passwords is: How often should people change their passwords? My answer usually surprises the audience: Not as often as you might think.

I go on to explain that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that users who are required to change their passwords frequently select weaker passwords to begin with, and then change them in predictable ways that attackers can guess easily. Unless there is reason to believe a password has been compromised or shared, requiring regular password changes may actually do more harm than good in some cases. (And even if a password has been compromised, changing the password may be ineffective, especially if other steps arent taken to correct security problems.)

Mandated password changes are a long-standing security practice designed to periodically lock out unauthorized users who have learned users passwords. While some experts began questioning this practice (link is external) at least a decade ago, it was only in the past few years that published research provided evidence that this practice may be less beneficial than previously thought, and sometimes even counterproductive. Lets take a look at two excellent peer-reviewed papers that address this issue.

What actually happens when users are required to change their passwords?

In The Security of Modern Password Expiration: An Algorithmic Framework and Empirical Analysis (link is external), researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill present the results of a 2009-2010 study of password histories from defunct accounts at their university.

The UNC researchers obtained the passwords to over 10,000 defunct accounts belonging to former university students, faculty, and staff. Users were required to change the password for these accounts every 3 months. For each account, the researchers were given a sequence of 4 to 15 of the users previous passwords  their total data set contained 51,141 passwords. The passwords themselves were scrambled using a mathematical function called a hash. In most password systems, passwords are stored in hashed form to protect them against attackers. When a user types in a password, the system runs it through the same mathematical function to produce a hashed version of the password they just typed. If it matches the hashed password that was previously stored for the user, then the user is able to log in.

The UNC researchers used password cracking tools to attempt to crack as many hashed passwords as they could in an offline attack. Offline attackers are not limited to a small number of guesses before being locked out. Attackers first gain access to a system and steal the hashed password file. They take that file to another computer and make as many guesses as they can. Rather than guessing every possible password in alphabetical order, cracking tools use sophisticated approaches to guess the highest probability passwords first (link is external), then hash each guess and check to see whether it matches one of the hashed passwords. The UNC researchers password cracking system ran for several months and eventually cracked about 60% of the passwords. For 7,752 accounts, the researchers were able to crack at least one password that was not the last password the user created for that account. The researchers used the passwords for this set of accounts to conduct the rest of their study.

The researchers then developed password cracking approaches that formulated guesses based on the previous password selected by a user. They observed that users tended to create passwords that followed predictable patterns, called transformations, such as incrementing a number, changing a letter to similar-looking symbol (for example changing an S to a $), adding or deleting a special character (for example, going from three exclamation points at the end of a password to two), or switching the order of digits or special characters (for example moving the numbers to the beginning instead of the end). While not mentioned in this paper, I have heard from many users that they include the month (and sometimes year) of the password change in their passwords as an easy way to remember frequently changed passwords.

The researchers performed an experiment in which they used a subset of the passwords to train their cracking algorithm to apply the most likely transformations and then use it to crack the remaining passwords. The paper includes a lot of technical detail about what they did, but the bottom line results are striking. The UNC researchers found that for 17% of the accounts they studied, knowing a users previous password allowed them to guess their next password in fewer than 5 guesses. An attacker who knows the previous password and has access to the hashed password file (generally because they stole it) and can carry out an offline attack can guess the current password for 41% of accounts within 3 seconds per account (on a typical 2009 research computer). These results suggest that after a mandated password change, attackers who have previously learned a users password may be able to guess the users new password fairly easily.

The researchers also found that users who started with the weakest passwords were most susceptible to having their subsequent passwords guessed by applying transformations. In addition, they found that if they could crack a password using certain kinds of transformations once, they had a high probability of being able to crack additional passwords from the same account using a similar transformation. That is, once an attacker discovers that a user is applying a transformation to change their password, that attacker has a good chance of being able to crack the users password every time they change it.

Measuring the impact of password expiration policies

More recently, researchers at Carleton University wrote a paper in which they developed a quantitative measure of the impact of password expiration policies (link is external).

The Carleton researchers assume that an attacker will systematically attempt to guess every possible password until they guess the users password. Depending on the system policies and the attackers situation, this may happen quickly or very slowly. Attackers who know that users must create new passwords periodically will start the process over again if they dont guess a users password after exhausting all guesses. Today, attackers who have access to the hashed password file can perform offline attacks and guess large numbers of passwords. The Carleton researchers demonstrate mathematically that frequent password changes only hamper such attackers a little bit, probably not enough to offset the inconvenience to users. (On the other hand, without inconveniencing users, system administrators can use slow hash (link is external) functions, e.g. bcrypt (link is external), to make it significantly harder for attackers to guess large numbers of passwords.)

The Carleton researchers also point out that an attacker who already knows a users password is unlikely to be thwarted by a password change. As the UNC researchers demonstrated, once an attacker knows a password, they are often able to guess the users next password fairly easily. In addition, an attacker who has gained access to a users account once may be able to install a key logger or other malware that will allow them to continue to access the system, even if the user changes their password.

There is also evidence from interview and survey studies (link is external) to suggest that users who know they will have to change their password do not choose strong passwords to begin with and are more likely to write their passwords down. In a study I worked on with colleagues and students at Carnegie Mellon University (link is external), we found that CMU students, faculty and staff who reported annoyance with the CMU password policy ended up choosing weaker passwords than those who did not report annoyance. I can relate to this: I am not inclined to put in much effort to come up with a strong password when I am suddenly prompted to change my password while trying to log in so I can get my work done. While we dont yet have a controlled study demonstrating the impact of password expiration policies on user behavior, there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that these policies may be counterproductive.

When should passwords be changed?

So, should you ever change your password? Well, sometimes. If you have reason to believe your password has been stolen, you should change it, and make sure you change it on all of your accounts where you use the same or a similar password. If you shared your password with a friend, change it. If you saw someone looking over your shoulder as you were typing your password, change it. If you think you might have just given your password to a phishing website, change it. If your current password is weak, change it. If it will make you feel better or if you just feel like its time for a change, then by all means go ahead and change your password.

Regardless of why you are changing your password, choose a new password unrelated to the old one and dont reuse a password from another account. Under some circumstances there may be other steps you should take as well to make sure your system or account has not been compromised in a way that will render your password change ineffective.

Should organizations mandate regular password changes? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) explained in a 2009 publication on enterprise password management that while password expiration mechanisms are beneficial for reducing the impact of some password compromises, they are ineffective for others and often a source of frustration to users. They went on to encourage organizations to balance security and usability needs, outlining some factors to consider. NIST emphasized that other aspects of password policies may have greater benefits than mandatory expiration, including requirements for password length and complexity, as well as use of slow hash functions with well-chosen salt (a technique to make sure that if two users have the same password they wont look the same when hashed).

So, depending on your particular situation, there may be some good reasons to require your users to change their passwords. However, it is important to assess the risks and benefits for your organization, as well as alternative ways of increasing security. Research suggests frequent mandatory expiration inconveniences and annoys users without as much security benefit as previously thought, and may even cause some users to behave less securely. Encouraging users to make the effort to create a strong password that they will be able to use for a long time may be a better approach for many organizations, especially when combined with slow hash functions, well-chosen salt, limiting login attempts, and password length and complexity requirements. And the best choice  particularly if your enterprise maintains sensitive data  may be to implement multi-factor authentication.

Organizations should weigh the costs and benefits of mandatory password expiration and consider making other changes to their password policies rather than forcing all users to keep changing their passwords.

The authors views are his or her own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Commission or any Commissioner.
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/UN-to-vote-on-North-Korea-sanctions-Wed.-draft-revised-to-ease-fuel-ban



NEW YORK (Kyodo) -- The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on Wednesday morning to adopt a new sanctions resolution against North Korea, the U.S. mission said on Tuesday.

The vote on the U.S.-drafted document was expected Tuesday after the U.S. had made a request to council chair Angola to take action. Russia invoked a 24-hour review procedure to go over the document's proposals, the U.S. mission said.

The draft resolution, meanwhile, underwent a few changes from the initial version presented last week by the United States. It now includes an exception to the export ban on aviation fuel and a Russia-based North Korean official of an arms exporting body has been removed from the document's blacklist.

The new resolution is in response to North Korea's latest nuclear test in January and its rocket launch the following month using ballistic missile technology, both of which are banned for the country under past resolutions.

In addition to tightening existing financial sanctions against North Korea, the resolution requires inspection of all cargo in transit to or from the country, among other measures.

On the aviation fuel ban, the final version says it does not apply to the sale or supply of fuel to civilian passenger aircraft outside North Korea for flights to the country and return service.

Removed from the list of individuals subject to a travel ban and asset freeze is a representative in Russia of Korea Mining Development Trading Corp. (KOMID), an entity known for exporting weapons from North Korea. A total of 16 individuals are blacklisted in the revised draft, rather than the 17 that were proposed in an earlier version.

These changes surfaced after Russia had said it needed time to go through the draft last week, while all 14 of the other council members were ready for its adoption, diplomats said.

Regarding the draft, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters Tuesday that they had a few "issues to take care of" and discussed them with the U.S. delegation. "I think they accommodated some of our concerns," he said.

On the KOMID official, the envoy said, "He is not even in Russia and that is the problem."
Death of Two Locally- Employed Staff of the U.S. Mission in Pakistan

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "Earlier today, I learned that two locally employed staff with the U.S. Mission in Pakistan were brutally murdered in an attack against a Government of Pakistan Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) convoy in Ambar tehsil, Mohmand Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.

"On behalf of the Department of State, I extend my heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of these brave individuals. I know nothing we say can adequately assuage their grief, but they should know we are thinking of them and share their profound sense of loss.

"This senseless attack is a compelling reminder of the risk taken every day by our diplomats and the local staff around the world who make diplomacy possible. It also is a testimony to the courage and commitment shown by both Americans and Pakistanis who struggle to combat the scourge of terrorism and build a more stable, secure, and prosperous future for Pakistan. We have offered our assistance to the government of the region in investigating the incident and bringing the perpetrators to justice.

"The Department of State holds in the highest regard all our host country colleagues who serve in our missions around the world. These men and women choose a life of service to improve the lives of their families and citizens and are essential to helping implement our goal of promoting shared prosperity and values. They are our friends, our teachers, and our guardians, and we are profoundly grateful for the sacrifices they make every day."
On the Occasion of Bulgaria's National Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "On behalf of President Obama and the citizens of the United States, I congratulate the people of Bulgaria on your National Day.

"The friendship between the United States and Bulgaria is rooted in our shared commitment to democratic governance, security, human rights, and the rule of law. Both countries underscored that during my visit to Sofia last year.

"Together, we have worked on counter-terrorism, energy security, and education. As NATO Allies, we have deepened our defense relationship through joint and multilateral training exercises, hosted by Bulgarias government. In the year ahead, we have pledged to increase our trade and investment ties, strengthen our law enforcement cooperation, promote tourism and increase people-to-people exchanges.

"All told, our partnership makes each of our countries stronger, our communities safer, and our economies more prosperous. The United States is proud to have a close friend in Bulgaria, and we look forward to further enhancing our relationship in the future."
In a ballot held in December, Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) staff voted in favour of a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) proposal to help resolve the long-running pension scheme funding deficit issue.

The dispute between the IBTS and the Department of Health is over the failure to remit staff pension-related deductions under the FEMPI Act, estimated at approximately 10 million.

A proposal regarding changes in pension arrangements was put forward by the WRC at a conciliation conference attended by all parties.

The proposal  which is understood to be acceptable to the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform, and Health  required employees to sign up to revised pension arrangements, which might see the Government contribute part of the outstanding money.

Between 2011 and April 2014, the IBTS made additional contributions of 9.3 million to the pension scheme. Notwithstanding the additional contributions, at the end of 2013 the pension fund deficit was estimated at 42 million.

By the end of last year, this had increased to 92 million.

To prevent the pension uncertainty becoming worse, the IBTS changed the scheme for new entrants after May 1, 2009. However, a spokesperson for the IBTS said there were further steps in this process involving the Trustees of the Scheme and the two Government Departments that had not yet been concluded.

Meanwhile, the IBTS is exercised with the issue of succession planning, with up to six senior posts likely to become vacant in the next three-to-five years, two of which are in the Medical Department with both vacancies advertised.

However, Dr Joan ORiordans post as Consultant Haematologist with the IBTS has not yet been advertised/filled, a spokesperson confirmed.

A proposal to establish an academic post for the Medical and Scientific Directors Dr William Murphys post shared with St Jamess Hospital and Trinity College Dublin was also still under discussion.

lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie
New medical staff at the Childrens Hospital Group are linked with a supervisor for training purposes and deficits in competencies are addressed first by training and education and if necessary, by performance management, said Eilish Hardiman, Paediatrics CEO.

The recruitment process in the childrens hospitals involves vetting of candidates previous work experience, including the most recent employer  as opposed to relying on old references, the Childrens Hospital Group said.

The HSE has been in contact with hospital groups after professional misconduct findings against a doctor who worked at three HSE hospitals.

The HSE has enquired whether proper vetting steps were followed.

Hospitals must apply appropriate sanctions in cases where references are not obtained or checked prior to doctors commencing employment, the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group said.

Seventy per cent of NCHDs are recruited either by training bodies for placement in HSE and HSE-funded hospitals, or centrally by the HSE National Recruitment Service.

A further 10 per cent of NCHDs are recruited by HSE-funded agencies such as voluntary hospitals to work in service.

The remaining 15 per cent of NCHDs are employed in service posts in HSE hospitals.

The HSE requires hospitals to enforce contractual provisions requiring employees to declare whether they are, or have been, the subject of any investigation by a medical registration or licensing body or authority in any jurisdiction with regard to their medical practice or conduct as a practitioner.

In the case of HSE hospitals, in addition to reference checks, occupational health clearance, Garda/police clearance and other validation of medical registration and related documentation, NCHDs must be employed under NCHD Contract 2010, which obliges them to sign a declaration.

Thus, the NCHD confirms they have not been suspended from registration nor had registration or licence cancelled or revoked by any medical registration or licensing body or authority in any jurisdiction in the previous 10 years.

The doctor must state they are not the subject of any current suspension or any restrictions on practise.

In addition, the doctor must confirm that they are not aware of any criminal investigation related to them by the police in any jurisdiction.

NCHDs must agree the appointment is subject to the receipt of appropriate registration with the Irish Medical Council (IMC), satisfactory references, Garda/police clearance and occupational health clearance.

The NCHD must agree to apply to the IMCs ethical and professional conduct guidance to work situations.

gary.culliton@imt.ie
Watch: This Video Of Woman Failing At Archery, Hitting Arrow On Head Is Hilarious
Maybe you were afraid to be spotted with a fresh face, or perhaps you visit the gym after a day at the office, when your powder still clings to you. Of course, youve always known its not exactly good for your skin to sweat excessively while covered in chemicals. Still, theres something risky about being spotted before a workout without a stitch of makeup on. Its especially difficult in New York, when most boutique classes are packed with models. The Observer spoke to dermatologists, facialists, fitness gurus and makeup specialists to find out if concealer and classes can ever mix.

Dr. Neal Schultz, the New York-based dermatologist who created BeautyRx by Dr. Schultz, advises against makeup. Makeup impedes the egress of the sweat, causing blockages and breakouts. When you wipe off the sweat, you drive the makeup into the open pores, Dr. Schultz said. The most important time to clean your face is before you work out, because when you perspire, you tend to wipe your skin, which means you rub in not only your makeup but also the grime, dirt and oils that were there.

Dr. Cascya Charlot, the owner of Purely Natural Medical Spa recommends powder and tinted moisturizers, instead of foundation. If you truly cant give up makeup, add regular facials to your regimen. Dermatologist Patricia Wexler warned: The oil and particles can clog pores, which open with excessive perspiration, causing inflammatory papules and pustules. She suggested removing makeup completely before working out with portable towelettes. For those who are prone to acne, even as adults, Dr. Wexler said, Use a salicylic acid cleanser prior to or post work out to prevent a bacterial flare. If youre doing yoga, wipe equipment down or bring a clean towel for your mat.

Alexandra Perez Bonetti, the founder of boutique fitness studio bari, told Observer, Clogged pores and sweat are a breeding ground for bacteria and breakouts. She recommended taking off makeup before class to prevent clogging your pores with a mix of sweat, dirt, oils and dead skin cells, adding, It sounds gross because it is. Ms. Bonetti swears by the BeautyRx Exercise Kit, with cleansing pads to remove makeup before class and glycolic pads to remove dirt after.

Greenpoint resident Sarah Neufeld leads an incredibly busy life; she founded Modo Yoga Studio and is Arcade Fires violinist. Ms. Neufeld believes hot yoga is best practiced without makeup, comparing it to a sauna or spa. We sweat so much, and its such a detoxifying and cleansing process, so theres not much point in wearing makeup. It also tends to get in the eyes which can be uncomfortable, she told Observer. For those who arent willing to part ways with their beauty routine, she suggests using a clean practice towel on the mat to protect skin from impurities. Dianna Ruth, Milk Makeups Product Developer, shared, Working out in makeup creates a cocktail of mess on your skin. The only exception is wearing face oil to hot yoga, which Ms. Ruth describes as a fabulous skin treatment. A lash stain will stay on during class, but face makeup should be avoided.

Principal Olay Scientist Dr. Frauke Neuser also believes its possible to work out with some makeup on, unless you have very sensitive skin, an allergy to any of the ingredients or you are using the wrong makeup for your skin type. Dr. Neuser recommends a tinted moisturizer or CC cream. Post-workout, she advises that its best to avoid alcohol-based toners and avoid applying heavy makeup, since the pores are open. Wait a few minutes and apply a light lotion, serum or non-oily moisturizer instead, rather than a heavy cream, Dr. Neuser told us.

Rochelle Rae is the creator of Rae Cosmetics, a line specifically made for sweating. Ms. Rae understands how hard it is for most women to part with their beauty routines. Working out and going to the gym is so much more than just exercise. We meet friends, boyfriends and potential friends there. We may go directly after work, or to happy hour after the gym, she said. I want to look good while working out and hanging out, so going with no makeup is not an option for me. Ms. Rae created her cosmetics line to avoid makeup that smears and prevents skin from breathing, leaving women who love a full face, even while sweating, an option other than a fresh face.

junior bridesmaid dresses | yellow bridesmaid dresses
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Georgia OKeeffe will be the subject of a major Tate Modern retrospective set to challenge gendered and outdated readings that her flower paintings depict vaginas.

Set to open in July, the exhibition will be UKs largest yet of the US artist. More than 100 artworks will be displayed, many of which have largely stayed in America since her death in 1986. Among them will be her 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1, bought for $44.4 million in 2014 and currently the most expensive artwork sold at auction by a female artist.

Readings of OKeeffes work as studies of female genitalia are not questioned as much as they should be, especially considering her hugely celebrated status as the mother of American modernism.

Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1 by Georgia O'Keeffe (AP)

OKeeffe spent six decades strongly denying any sexual slant to her oil paintings, which largely consist of beautifully detailed, colourful flowers. She began moving away from abstract art in the Twenties in a bid to deter male critics from Freudian interpretations, but leading feminist artists began to see her work similarly in the Seventies, hailing her as the master of female iconography and empowerment. Again, OKeeffe rejected such readings and turned down requests to collaborate on feminist projects.

Finally, the upcoming show will offer multiple readings of her prolific repertoire in line with her wishes. Aches Borchardt-Hume, director of exhibitions at the Tate Modern, bemoans how OKeeffe has been very much reduced to one particularly body of work, which tends to be read in one particularly way.

Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Show all 7 1 /7 Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Oriental Poppies Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings From the Faraway, Nearby Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Black Mesa Landscape Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Abstraction White Rose Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings New York Street with Moon Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Jimson Weed Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings Blue and Green Music

Many of the white male artists across the 20th century have the privilege of being read on multiple levels while others, be they women or artists from other parts of the world, tend to be reduced to one conservative reading, he told the Guardian. Its high time that galleries and museums challenge this.

Curator Tanya Barson hopes the exhibition will steer art lovers away from the cliched, gendered and outdated theories about OKeeffes paintings that were first suggested by Alfred Stieglitz, her promotional photographer turned husband, in 1919.

The retrospective will also draw attention to OKeeffes early charcoals, New Mexican landscapes and river paintings.

OKeeffe said in 1922: It is only by selection, by elimination and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things. Yet nearly a century later, the real meaning of her paintings is still not understood.

The Georgia OKeeffe exhibition opens at Tate Modern on 6 July and runs until 30 October. Adults pay 19 with concessions costing 17. Under 12s go free.
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Our image of him comes from the self-portraits he produced. There is the Vincent wearing a straw hat, ready to paint the sunflowers of Arles. And the Vincent staring at a mirror, his ear bandaged, consumed by madness.

What has proved elusive to generations of art historians has been the real image of Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch master who, it had been assumed, was probably too poor or too consumed by his work to have much interest in being photographed.

Now, however, a leading authority on Van Gogh claims to have identified the first adult photograph of the notoriously camera-shy artist.

Italian art historian Antonio De Robertis says that, among a group of 34 men  including French artists Gauguin and Vuillard  posing for the photo in Pariss Academie Julian close to the end of the 19th century, there is present one person who is, in all probability, Vincent Van Gogh.

The image, which is currently in the possession of the National Institute of Art History in Paris, appears to show the bearded post-Impressionist painter, standing near another Dutchman, his friend Andries Bonger, the brother-in-law of Van Goghs brother Theo.

On rare occasions, other photos have emerged that have been claimed as images of the Dutch genius. But Mr De Robertis, one of the leading experts on the artist, said this one appeared to be the most convincing. We have found what is the only photo in existence of Van Gogh as an adult, Mr De Robertis told an Italian art magazine. Until now, we have only seen photos of him at 13-years-old and then one when he was 19.

 Van Gogh paintings have lost their original colours

Van Gogh, a prolific painter of self-portraits who was too poor to pay models to pose for him, died penniless and destitute in 1890 after shooting himself. Mr De Robertis said his belief that the bearded man in the photograph was Van Gogh is based on the similarity between the figure situated slightly to the right and the back of the group, and his self-portraits.

Mr De Robertis told Adnkronos news agency the presence of Van Goghs friend Andries Bonger supported his thesis. You notice the tendency of characters to be arranged by nationality... the Australians are all close to each other, as are the Dutch, he said. Van Goghs contemporary Edouard Vuillard can be spotted at the back of the group, and the other leading French painter Pierre Bonnard is close by the Dutchman.

Edmond Benard, who took the picture, was known to be working in Paris between 1880 and 1890. But Mr De Robertis and his research associate Alan Zamboni have narrowed down the time frame to the first two weeks of February 1888. In this period, Vuillard and Bonnard would have just enrolled in the Academie Julian, and Gauguin and Van Gogh (who did not study there) were known to have been visiting Paris, where the latter, 35 at the time, was thought to have been inspired by the colour and light of Impressionist art.

The mystery remains why the group of 34 men, some unknown to each other and not all of them artists, were posing together in the photo.

Van Goghs life ended in July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise in northern France, where he had been painting wheat fields. He died in the arms of his brother, Theo, two days after shooting himself in the abdomen.

Although Van Gogh was largely unknown during his lifetime, his work, with its striking colour, vibrancy and emotiveness, is now considered a seminal influence on 20th-century art.
Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Secret Cinema enters new territory with its next event: the frights and delights of the horror genre.

The next film to receive the company's unique brand of interactive cinema is Danny Boyle's 2002 British cult classic, 28 Days Later. The horror which revamped the zombie genre for a whole new century, leading to the craze now so widely-fuelled by the likes of The Walking Dead.

Set in post-apocalyptic London, the film sent Cillian Murphy's Jim to navigate the city's now deserted streets; as he wakes from a coma to find an epidemic virus has resulted in total societal collapse.

Expect plenty of abandoned buildings and hordes of the undead; as Secret Cinema launches its first nationwide event, hosting shows both in London and another, yet to be revealed city.

"Secret Cinema never fails to amaze with their experiences, and its exciting to see them tackle their first ever horror. London prepare," said Andrew Macdonald, who produced the original 28 Days Later.



The event also has support from both director Danny Boyle and its screenwriter Alex Garland; whose directorial debut Ex Machina picked up the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

"Secret Cinema is excited to step into the world of horror with Danny Boyles 28 Days Later, a true British horror classic - we look forward to creating a suitably frightening and exhilarating experience," stated Fabien Riggall, Founder and Creative Director of Secret Cinema.

"Secret Cinemas expansion over the last nine years has been remarkable, weve now created experiences in New York and Berlin, as well as the many in London. But this will be a turning point for us as we embark upon our very first UK nationwide production."

The event will form part of its Secret Cinema Presents series, which (obviously) breaks away from the company's usual practice of not revealing its selected film beforehand; the 28 Days Later shows following in the footsteps of last year's wildly successful Star Wars events.

Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up

Their current "Tell No One" production runs until March, with both the title of the film and the location of its screening kept secret to the public.

The 28 Days Later event will run from 14 April 2016 to 29 May 2016. Tickets will be available to purchase here, on sale from 1pm on Thursday, 3 March.
Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

One of the many, many upsets of the remastered Star Wars films was that Han Solo no longer shot first.

In the first film, later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the loveable rogue enters into discussion with Greedo. Things heat up quickly and the two exchange gun fire, with the green Alien ending up dead on the table.

The catch, though, was that in the original version Solo appeared to shoot first, making him a cold-blooded killer, yet in the remaster Greedo shot first, meaning that Harrison Fords character only shot to save his own life.

Whether #HanShotFirst has been argued tirelessly between fans, with many believing George Lucas should have never changed the firefight as it affects our perception of Solo too drastically.

Now, thanks to Chewbacca himself - Peter Mayhew - we have seen the original script, titled The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, and it confirms Solo shot first.

Thanks Chewy! Meanwhile, in other Star Wars news, Daisy Ridley said that working with Mark Hamill on Episode VIII was super cool. She also revealed that she is entering the music business, having recorded vocals for Barbra Streisand.
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Back in 1960, a 24-year-old Tony Warren was growing decidedly fed up of adapting the Biggles stories for telly.

In desperation, he begged Granada Television producer Harry Elton to be relieved from the task, claiming to know nothing about the world the books were set in. In response, Elton asked what Warren did know about that he thought could make a good series. His answers were simple: showbiz and the north of England.

Warren was given just 24 hours to produce an idea that would take Britain by storm and, if successful, he could stop spending time with the fictional pilot he hated so much.

The young scriptwriter turned to a draft he had previously submitted to the BBC under the name Our Street and reworked it into Florizel Street, set in the fictional suburb of Weatherfield in Greater Manchester.

Warrens interest in the north stemmed from a childhood spent with his grandmother in her inner Salford neighbourhood. Drawing on these memories, he imagined a backstreet similar to those he grew up on with the script eventually becoming the first episode of Coronation Street.

Warren wrote the following pitch for his bosses: A fascinating freemasonry, a volume of unwritten rules. These are the driving forces behind life in the working class street in the north of England. The purpose of Florizel Street is to examine a community of this nature, and to entertain.

Granada eventually agreed to produce a 12-part series with the option of a 13th episode showing the street being bulldozed, should it flop with viewers.

The show was renamed Coronation Street after tea lady Agnes commented that Florizel sounded like detergent. It was given the 7pm slot on Wednesday and Friday evenings, replacing Warrens much-loathed Biggles.

Set designer Denis Parkin visited Salford to gain inspiration and Coronation Street ended up being based on Archie Street in the Ordsall district, while Eric Spear penned the theme music that is still used today and was paid just 6.

Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up

Coronation Street began with a cast of just 21, with Warren reportedly visiting local graveyards to copy the names on the headstones for his characters. Key characters included student Ken Barlow, played by longest-serving cast member William Roache, glamourous Elsie Tanner, shy Minnie Caldwell, bus driver Harry Hewitt, shopkeeper Leonardo Swindley, Rovers landlady and landlord Annie and Jack Walker and postman Frank Barlow.

It didnt take long for the new series to capture the nations heart. Its northern English dialect was rare for television at the time and viewers found they could relate to the ordinary people whose lives the show followed.

The press, however, did not take so kindly to Coronation Street, with the Daily Mirror deciding it was doomed from the outset with its dreary signature tune and grim scenes of a row of terraced houses and smoking chimneys.

How wrong they were.
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Making a Murderer inspired hundreds upon thousands of armchair detectives, all of whom are searching for answers in the Teresa Halbach case.

However, none were physically there with defendant Steven Avery throughout the trial, unlike his lawyers - Dean Strang and Jerry Buting - both of whom appeared throughout the 10-part docudrama.

Avery was found guilty of Halbachs murder in 2007, with his nephew Brendan Dassey charged with being party to third-degree intentional homicide.

In the last episode of Making a Murderer, both Strang and Buting discuss the pairs guilt, along with the corruption and failure of the American justice system.

Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions Show all 5 1 /5 Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 1985: Steven Avery is falsely convicted of raping a Penny Beernsten She was jogging along the shore of Lake Michigan when she was threatened with a knife and attacked. Ms Beernsten identified Avery as her rapist from a line-up that did not include the actual attacker. AFP/Getty Images Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2003: Conviction overturned Avery's 32-year prison sentence was overturned after DNA testing by the Wisconsin Innocence Project proved his innocence and found a hair from Gregory Allen. He was convicted of the rape and Avery was released. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2004: Avery files federal lawsuit against Manitowoc County police A Wisconsin Department of Justice investigation found police had committed no criminal offences or ethics violations, sparking a lawsuit from Avery seeking $36 million compensation. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 2005: Avery is arrested for Teresa Halbach's murder His Avery Auto Salvage business was the freelance photographer's last appointment of 31 October. She was reported missing four days later and police later found her car, bones, teeth and belongings at the site. Avery pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to life in prison in 2007. Timeline: Steven Avery's convictions 201: Netflix releases Making a Murderer The 10-episode documentary came after Avery's conviction was upheld in a 2011 appeal.

Now, the two defence attorneys are set to take their discussion on the road, going on a national tour of America this spring/summer.

Called A Conversation of Justice, they will talk about the TV series and the questions it raises, both on the Halbach case and the justice system as a whole.

 Making A Murderer- Where are they now?

Averys case has been progressing rapidly since Making a Murderers release, with a new defence lawyer - Kathleen Zellner - attempting to find new DNA evidence to prove her client is not guilty.

Meanwhile, prosecutor Ken Kratz has been enjoying his time in the media spotlight, lashing out at the filmmakers for making him seem like a 'villain' and reporting evidence not shown in the series.
Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Independent Climate email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The Middle East has just experienced its worst drought in more than 900 years, a Nasa report has found.

Scientists said that a 15-year dry spell in the eastern Mediterranean, which ended in 2012 and is thought to be partly to blame for the Syria civil war, is likely to be the driest the region has ever seen.

Experts say the situation has increased existing tensions in the region caused by already scarce water resources.

The study found the drought was 98 per cent likely to be drier than the last 500 years and 89 per cent likely to be drier than any other time in the last 900 years.

The study examined variations in climate change in the region over the last 1,000 years.

Researchers analysed the thickness of tree rings in countries across the Mediterranean. Using a record known as the Old World Drought Atlas, tree rings were analysed in northern Africa, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

These records were then compared with records in Spain, southern France and Italy.

This map shows the varying effects of climate change across the world, and the confidence with which they can be attributed to humans (Pic: Gerrit Hansen, Potsdam Institute) (Gerrit Hansen, Potsdam Institute)

Trees with thicker rings indicated the years when rain was plentiful, whereas thinner rings showed dry years.

This enabled the report to reconstruct patterns of drought geographically and through time over the past millennium.

Knowing what weather patterns are natural is crucial for scientists to accurately understand how much climate change.

"The magnitude and significance of human climate change requires us to really understand the full range of natural climate variability," said Ben Cook, lead author and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

"If we look at recent events and we start to see anomalies that are outside this range of natural variability, then we can say with some confidence that it looks like this particular event or this series of events had some kind of human caused climate change contribution."

Climate change protests around the world Show all 25 1 /25 Climate change protests around the world Climate change protests around the world People rally to promote climate protection in Rome, Italy Climate change protests around the world Hundreds of demonstrators gather in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world People hold hands to form a human chain during a gathering called by ecologist organisations in Marseille, southern France, to protest against global warming a day ahead of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP21) held in Paris Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators clash with French riot police during protests on Place de la Republique, ahead of the COP21 World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, France Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators clash with French riot police during a protest on Place de la Republique ahead of the COP21 World Climate Change Conference 2015 in Paris, France Climate change protests around the world A group of people perform during a rally to promote climate protection in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Climate change protests around the world A protester sits next to his sign that reads 'Monsanto the Devil Incorporated ' as he joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Environmentalists dance during a protest near the Place de la Republique after the cancellation of a planned climate march following shootings in the French capital, ahead of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21), in Paris, France Reuters Climate change protests around the world People protest next to characters dressed as wild animals during a march against climate change near the Monument to the Revolution, in Mexico City AP Climate change protests around the world Protesters carries a banner while they take part in a protest about climate change at New York City Hall steps in lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People take part in a protest about climate change around New York City Hall at lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People rally to promote climate protection in Piazza Castello, Turin, Italy Climate change protests around the world A woman holds a globe during a protest for the global climate day in Lugano, Switzerland Climate change protests around the world Yemenis hold banners as they participate in the Global March for Climate in the old city of Sanaia, Yemen Climate change protests around the world Protesters dressed as Santa Claus take part in a protest about climate change at New York City Hall steps in lower Manhattan, New York Reuters Climate change protests around the world People gather at the Legislative Palace in Montevideo, during the Global Climate March to demand action on climate change telling world leaders on the eve of a crunch UN summit that there is "no planet B". From Sydney to London, humid Rio to chilly New York, at least 683,000 hit the streets in 2,300 events across 175 countries at the weekend, co-organiser and campaign group Avaaz said, calling it the largest number of people to protest over climate change all at once Getty Images Climate change protests around the world Climate change protests around the world Demonstrators participate in the Global March for Climate in Athens, Greece Climate change protests around the world A man wearing a Bernie Sanders mask leads hundreds of demonstrators who marched near City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Patricia Hauser joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California Climate change protests around the world A woman holds a poster of a sick Earth as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Hundreds of demonstrators march around City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world A demonstrator holds cut-out of US Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world George Patten holds a sign that reads 'No Fracking Ever!' as he joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA Climate change protests around the world Gabrielle Sosa wears 'Rising Sea Levels' sign as she joined hundreds of demonstrators who gathered in front of City Hall in Los Angeles, California EPA

One such anomaly is the 1998  2012 drought in the Levant, which stands out as about 50 per cent drier than the driest period in the past 500 years, and 10 to 20 per cent drier than the worst drought of the past 900 years, according to NASAs review of the report.

The two major weather patterns which influence dry weather in the region are the North Atlantic Oscillation and the East Atlantic Pattern. These are circulating airflow systems which illustrate how wind and weather is influenced by the ocean conditions.

When rainstorms are diverted from the Mediterranean from time to time it results in drier conditions, sometime leading to drought.

Dr Dann Mitchell, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University said the drought exacerbated existing tensions caused by already scarce water resources.

"Droughts often result in refugees moving from one area to another. Terrorist activity, a lot of it concentrates around the river Jordan etcetera where they know they can control a lot by controlling the water. Its those sort of things that get exacerbated when we get these extreme events.

Isis, he added, has already made efforts to seize and maintain dams.

Water is their most valuable resource by a long way. They know the value of control of water," he added.

Some outside observers believe the evidence presented means the eastern Mediterranean could already be feeling the effects of man-made climate change.

"The Mediterranean is one of the areas that is unanimously projected [in climate models] as going to dry in the future [due to man-made climate change]," said Yochanan Kushnir, a climate scientist at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

"This paper shows that the behaviour during this recent drought period is different than what we see in the rest of the record.


+

Peter Liang Trial/ Perter Liang Court Recordgoogle201631//

Shaun LanduaShaun Landua)PChttp://www.wsj.com/articles/former-partner-testifies-in-nypd-officer-peter-liangs-trial-1454464583?mod=rss_newyork_main



I fired.()I'm fired.()I fired.GurleyButlerGurley9115Butler911Gurley

YouTubeGlock19

  201624Bronx



1. CPR

2. 

3. 

4. 

5. 244

6. 2

6. CPR911244

7. 9112012911

8. 8GurleyGurleyGurleyGurleyGurleyGurleyCPRGurley......Gurley24?CPRGurley

20162015FebruaryJanuary



http://ifightlikeagirl615.blogspot.ca/

  

What's Going On In That Courtroom?

For the past week, the family of Akai Gurley has sat in a Brooklyn Courtroom as the Prosecution makes their case against Peter Liang, a rookie police officer, who shot and killed unarmed Akai in November of 2014.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Court was cancelled on Monday

Court was cancelled on Monday because Juror 10, the only black person on the jury, called in sick. He advised the judge that he had woken up that morning with a swollen knee and was being treated at a local emergency room. The court was unable to confirm that with the hospital, and over the next 30 minutes, the juror also became unreachable by phone. The judge offered attorneys the option of having the juror dismissed and having an alternate seated. Both the State and the Defense objected to the juror's removal. The judge cancelled the morning and afternoon court sessions, but stated, "If the juror is still unavailable tomorrow, I may have to make the substitution."

Even though court did not convene that day, there was no lack of drama in the courtroom. One particular court officer, who will be forthwith identified as Lt. Jenn, continued the pattern of bullying that has become associated with her due to her actions in the courtroom. It should be noted here that the lieutenant does not have properly displayed identification. She has removed her nameplate from her uniform, although she is required by law to wear it. She is identified by her first name, which is written on her radio, and her rank, which is visible on her sleeve.

The first incident involved Assemblyman Charles Barron, a black man, who has been a source of support for one of the key witnesses in the State's case. Melissa Butler, who was with Akai on the day that he was murdered, was scheduled to testify on Monday and Assemblyman Barron was in the courtroom to support her that morning. As the Assemblyman attempted to take his seat on the front row, Lt. Jenn began to yell at him and tell him that he was not permitted to sit there. The Assemblyman stood his ground, stating, "I have every right to be here!" He was permitted to remain in his seat.

The second incident involved myself and several other activists who have been attending the trial as a show of solidarity for the Gurley family. In this incident, Lt. Jenn approached the middle section of the gallery, located directly behind the State's table, and began shouting. She demanded that we move to the far right section of the courtroom behind the Defense table. This occurred just prior to the jury being seated and after the judge had stepped down from the bench to attend to the matter of the sick juror. There was not a legitimate reason for the move as there were open seats on the State's side of the courtroom. I personally felt that it was an attempt by Lt. Jenn to sway the perception of the jury by making it appear that Peter Liang had more supporters on his side than he actually did.

During this same time period, a supporter on Peter Liang's side of the courtroom brought out a newspaper with a visible headline about the court proceeding. Lt. Jenn's reaction in this incident was very different. She calmly walked up him, leaned against the end of the bench where he was sitting, smiled, and quietly said, "You know that you can't do that here."

Seating has become a major point of contention in the courtroom. The press takes up a full one third of the courtroom. The Patrolman's Benevolence Association, who originally had two representatives in the court, now sends as many as twenty people to court each day. This takes up the majority of seating behind the Defense table. Announcements are often made that, if you get up from your seat during court breaks, you surrender your seat. This is not true, however, for the Patrolman's Benevolence Association. Their seats are reserved and they always get them back. As the court empties for noon recess and at the end of each court day, the gallery - including the family of Akai Gurley - is instructed to remain seated as members of the PBA file out of the courtroom. Only after they have been escorted out are the rest of us allowed to depart. Further, despite a strict ban on electronic devices, members of the PBA are allowed to keep their phones. The rest of us, including the family of Akai Gurley, must wait in line to surrender our phones to a court officer prior to court convening and stand in line to reclaim them once court is in recess.

If you didn't know better, you might think that Peter Liang was the victim in this trial instead of the accused.

This special treatment is not surprising. It is a part of a larger systematic injustice in our country known as "The Thin Blue Line." Police officers often circle the wagons to protect each other and cover up corruption. And, on the rare occasion that said corruption is uncovered and a police officer is indicted, the system protects them with specialized treatment that is not afforded to other people standing trial for manslaughter. The message is incredibly clear: Here is a special person deserving of your respect. And with sentiment like that, who can expect a fair trial?

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

The State Continues To Present Its Case Against Peter Liang

Tuesday morning noted the return of Juror 10. Court carried on without mention of his absence or return. The State continued to call witnesses.

Melissa Butler

On the day that he was shot, Akai Gurley was visiting Melissa Butler at the housing project where she lived. Melissa testified first and told the court about the last hours that she and Akai spent together.

Melissa Butler is tiny (5'1" and 99 lbs.) and somewhat soft-spoken. Her voice, for most of her testimony, was flat and matter-of-fact.

Melissa testified, under direct examination, that Akai arrived around 8:00 p.m. and took the elevator up to her seventh floor apartment. Melissa met Akai at the door and they spent the next three hours, "joking around and watching TV." Melissa also said that she braided Akai's hair during this time, something that she had a habit of doing every three weeks or so.

Akai decided to leave around 11:00 p.m. He had an appointment to get his license at the Department of Motor Vehicles the following morning. Melissa walked Akai to the elevator and pushed the button, but the elevator did not arrive. She said, "We decided to take the stairs."

Question: Was the stairwell normally lit?

Answer: Yes.

Question: But it was not lit that day?

Answer: Yes

Melissa recounted entering into total darkness and hearing the door to the stairwell open from the floor above. "I heard it bang against the wall," she said. Then a gunshot rang out. After the shot was fired, Melissa and Akai ran from the seventh floor to the fifth floor. Akai then collapsed on the landing.

Question: What did you see?

Answer: He was bleeding from his chest. There was a puddle of blood behind him.

Question: Did you see anything else?

Answer: Yes. Urine.

Question: Whose urine?

Answer: Akai's.

Melissa stated that she ran down one more half flight of stairs and knocked on the fourth floor door of a woman that worked for housing. She informed the neighbor that her boyfriend had been shot and asked her to call 911 before returning to Akai. Melissa said that she knelt down in a puddle of blood and urine and leaned over Akai. She said that she told him, "Stay with me. I'm getting you help." Melissa testified that the neighbor, still on the phone with 911, was calling instructions up to her. Although she was not trained in CPR, Melissa attempted to render emergency aid to Akai in the form of chest compressions and rescue breathing. Officers Liang and Landau did not try to assist her.

Question: Did anyone help you as you performed compressions?

Answer: No.

Question: Did anyone help you...?

*Question trails off as Melissa starts to sob*

Question: How long did you do that for?

Answer: About five minutes.

The State then played the 911 call as Melissa remained on the stand.

On cross-examination, Peter Liang's defense attorney questioned Melissa's use of Stairwell A, as opposed to Stairwell B. Melissa stated that she always used Stairwell A, as it was closest to the elevator, and that she never considered taking Stairwell B. The attorney also questioned how long Melissa performed CPR. She cited an earlier statement in which Melissa had estimated the time that she performed CPR to be about three minutes.

Question: Were you wearing a watch that night?

Answer: No.

Question: Did you have a cellphone with the time on it?

Answer: No.

Question: Would it then be fair to say that the time is an estimate?

Answer: Yes.

The implication, of course, is that Akai died from Melissa's negligence. This line of thinking completely disregards Liang's responsibility in shooting Akai and his duty to render aid to Akai - a duty that he neglected, as evidenced by the 911 call. After a brief redirect, in which the Prosecutor highlighted that neither officer helped Melissa attend to Akai, the State called its next witness.

Detective Pino

Badge Number 2715

Command: The Police Academy

Detective Pino testified that CPR and First Aid training is taught to all recruits and that students receive an extended version of the American Heart Association's Basic Life Support training. To put this in context, this is the same course that I was taught in nursing school, however, my course was the required five hours and Officers Liang and Landau, as well as every other NYPD officer, actually receives seven hours of instruction. Recruits must pass a practical, where they perform CPR on an infant and a child and an adult, as well as pass a written test with a score of 84% or higher. In order to graduate from the academy, recruits must be certified.

Additionally, all recruits receive an additional seven hours of First Aid training. According to Detective Pino, the Regional EMS Council has created a First Aid manual specifically for New York City's care providers. After the seven hours of lecture-based instruction is complete, students must take a written test (comprised of 50 questions) and pass with a score of 70% or higher. Again, in order to graduate from the academy, recruits must be certified.

Detective Pino talked more about what is covered in those lectures. He stated that recruits have:

1.Specific training on how to handle trauma emergencies.

2.Specific training on penetrating trauma.

3.Specific training on gunshot wounds.

4.Specific training on gunshot wounds to the chest.

Detective Pino then testified about certain protocols that are listed in the Patrol Guide. He said, "When we respond to a scene, we are supposed to render 'reasonable aid.'" He then read the statue from the Patrol Guide. It states: "Render reasonable aid to a sick or injured person. Notify an ambulance. Do not leave the person." The detective expounded on this last bit by telling the court that recruits are trained "to stay with them."

Detective Pino also led us through the process for assessing a sick or injured person, as outlined by the Patrol Guide. There is a three-step process that includes assessing the area and assessing the individual, first by physical contact and then by verbal questioning.

On cross-examination, the defense asked about how closely police guidelines should be followed.

Question: Is the term "reasonable aid" ever defined precisely in any Patrol Guide?

Answer: Not precisely, no.

Question: Isn't discretion built into this procedures?

Answer: We train them on what steps to take.

The defense then asks about the CPR and First Aid training that recruits receive..

Question: Isn't it true that instructors were feeding answers to the tests to the recruits?

Answer: I don't know that, ma'am.

The defense asked if it was possible that recruits could possibly memorize all of the information provided during the training. She noted that the practical and written test are given on the same day as the instruction, at the end of the classroom training. The detective replied, "They (recruits) get the book the third or fourth week of class and are tested between the eighth and tenth weeks of class. We don't just spring this on them."

(Side note: As the detective read from the Patrol Guide, he was reading along too fast for the court reporter to follow. The judge interjected with, "Do you talk that fast when you train?" This is absolutely unacceptable as it lends credence to the defense's position that Liang may not have understood his training.)

The State had just two questions on re-direct, spring-boarding from a defense comment that perhaps it would be better for an officer not to act if he felt ill-equipped or believed that he would violate the "do no harm" pledge.

Question: Do no harm. If a police officer does harm to another person, does he have a responsibility to mitigate that damage?

Answer: As police officers, we have to render some sort of aid.

Question: What if an untrained person was already rendering aid?

Answer: I would push that person out of the way and do it myself.

Detective Agusto

Badge number 5712

Command: Firearms and Tactics

The State called Detective Agusto, a firearms instructor, who outlined the firearms training that recruits receive while at the academy. The detective stated that there are 13 total days of instruction in this area, including eight days of Basics and five days of Practicals. The detective explained the curriculum for each section. Basics involves:

1.An introduction to the firearm.

2.Instruction on how to use the weapon.

3.Safety with regards to handling the weapon.

Following this training, students take a written test and must score 80% or better to pass. During practical training, students engage a pistol qualification course in which they fire 50 shots (from 25, 15 and 7 yards out) and they must score 35/50 in order to pass. The students also undergo tactical training including a stress inoculation excercise, simulations, and live fire courses.

The detective is provided with a copy of the written material that is distributed to all recruits and asked to turn his attention to Chapter 2: Firearms Safety. The detective explains that this portion of the curriculum is designed to teach the "proficient and prudent use of firearms." It outlines the many rules for the safe handling of firearms "none more important that the use of good judgement.

The detective then talked about the Glock 19, Peter Liang's weapon, one of three handguns used by the NYPD. Agusto stated that this weapon is the most often selected by law enforcement officers because of it's safety precautions against misfiring and it's reliability. The detective had brought a training weapon, a Glock with the firing pin removed, which is the weapon used by recruits in training, for demonstrative purposes. The defense objected to its use, so the detective moved through the remainder of his testimony using the actual weapon that Peter Liang used to kill Akai as his visual aid. When asked what was required in order to fire this particular weapon, the detective explained:

1.The weapon must be loaded.

2.The muzzle must be pointed at something or someone.

3.The finger must be on the trigger.

4.The trigger must be pulled with sufficient force to engage the firing pin.

He testified that, due to an internal trigger safety, the pad of the finger must be fully centered on the trigger, and pressure applied, in order to fire the weapon. He then demonstrated by placing his two pointer fingers on either side of the trigger guard, and saying, "I can pull with two fingers on either side of the trigger, and no matter how hard I pull, the gun will not go off." He continued, "In most cases of accidental fire, trigger failure was not the cause." After a short instruction on how to properly hold the weapon (with your finger alongside the barrel and never on the trigger) and sight the weapon, the detective concluded his testimony.

In a strange turn of events, the jury was then allowed to hold and fire the actual weapon that was used to kill Akai. I can only assume that this was suggested to not only reinforce Agusto's testimony about accidental fire, but also to reiterate the testimony of the NYPD ballistics expert who examined the gun after the shooting. In earlier testimony (given Thursday, January, 28, 2016) he stated that Peter Liang's weapon required 11.5 pounds of pressure in order to fire. This is due to a special trigger modification, known as the NY 2, which requires more force to be applied to the trigger in order to fire the weapon. The manufacturer's specification for the Glock 19 is 5.5 pounds of pressure. This means that Liang's gun required more than twice the force of an average Glock in order to fire. The ballistics examiner said that Liang's gun met the department requirements for a trigger pull between 9 and 12 pounds of pressure.

Officer Shaun Landau

Peter Liang's partner, Shaun Landau, was offered immunity in exchange for his testimony against Liang. Officer Landau had previously testified at the grand jury hearing. At that time, the Prosecution went on record as saying, "We could not have secured an indictment without Officer Landau's testimony."

The State called Officer Landau to the stand during the afternoon session of court. He both refuted his earlier grand jury testimony and denied that he had accepted an immunity agreement from the State. You can read a full and comprehensive report regarding Officer Landau's testimony here.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

The State Rests

Officer Shaun Landau

Continuation of Cross-Examination

The defense began today's questioning by asking Landau about prior statements that he made, specifically his December 2014 statement at the District Attorney's Office and his February 2015 grand jury testimony.

The defense then offered video playback of the moment that officers Liang and Landau entered the the Pink Houses on November 20, 2014. The video shows the time to be 11:11. Liang and Landau then summoned the elevator, which took about a minute, and exited on the eighth floor at 11:13pm.

Officer Landau was asked about their movements. He stated that he and Liang passed Stairwell B, which was brightly lit, without checking it. He contends that they moved straight to Stairwell A. He states that it was dark and that he shined his flashlight through the glass pane on the door, but still was unable to see anything. It was at this point that Officer Liang removed his gun from the holster.

Q: With regards to an officer taking a firearm out of its holster, it's up to each officer's discretion, correct?

A: Yes.

Landau went on to say that he had seen Liang remove his gun before and that he, himself, had also drawn his weapon. Landau told what happened next.

Q: Liang went through the door first?

A: Yes.

Q: He pushed off the door with his right shoulder?

A: Yes.

Q: He had trouble getting through the door that night, isn't that correct?

A: I don't recall that.

Q: His finger was outside the trigger, isn't that right?

A: I didn't see.

The defense pointed to previous administrative statements in which Landau stated that "something" brought Liang's attention to the left as he entered the stairwell. At this point, the judge interjected to ask some questions of his own.

Q: Where were you when the gun went off?

A: Hallway.

Q: Where was officer Liang when the gun went off?

A: Stairway.

Q: The stairwell door was opened or closed?

A: Open.

Very little time was spent on the actual moment that the gun discharged. Landau stated that he heard the shot and that his ears began to ring. The pair retreated to the eighth floor hallway where Liang holstered his gun and flashlight. Landau recounted asking Liang, "What the fuck happened," to which he recalls Liang replying, "It just went off. I'm fired."

Q: Could he have said, "I fired," or "I just fired?"

A: No. He said, "I'm fired."

Landau then stated that he had been trained to "call in" via cellphone, versus over the radio, and that his Sargent had provided his cell phone number specifically for this purpose. Over State's objection, he said, "This is just how it's done now." Landau also claimed that Liang tried to call their Sargent. He hit dial. Landau says that he then took the phone from his partner's hand, hung it up, and put it in his own pocket.

Q: So, in effect, you prevented him from making the call.

A: Yes.

At this point, both Liang and Landau are standing in the eighth floor hallway, and according to testimony, neither cop knows that Akai has been shot. Landau says that became concerned that the bullet may have gone through the wall and into a neighboring apartment. He returned to the stairwell to inspect the wall. He said it was at this time that he heard someone in the stairwell below. He and Liang started down the staircase. Four minutes had elapsed since Liang fired his gun.

Q: As soon as you discover that Akai has been shot, Officer Liang immediately radioed, "There's been an accidental discharge. Someone is shot." Is that correct?

A: I didn't hear that immediately.

But when the transcript of a previous statement was read aloud, Landau reversed his testimony.

Q: So, as soon as you got downstairs, Officer Liang called it in?

A: Yes.

Landau then led the jury through the next several minutes. He stated that when Liang was calling for help that he was not transmitting the address. Landau said he didn't know the address, either. He denied that either he or his partner stepped over Akai's body. He said that Liang did appear to kneel down beside Akai. When the Lt. arrived, he took Liang's gun and removed him to the hallway.

Q: You never gave any CPR?

A: Yes.

Q: Because you didn't know how to do it?

A: Yes.

Q: Because you don't know what to do in that moment?

A: Yes.

Q: You're not a healthcare professional, correct?

A: Yes.

When asked about his CPR and First Aid exams, Landau said that instructors gave recruits both the questions that would be on the test, and the answers to those questions. Landau said that he does not recall being taught the fundamentals of CPR - Circulation, Airway, Breathing. He was also asked if he recalls being taught what to do when someone has a penetrating chest wound. He said he does not.

Q: How much time would you say that you had [to practice] on the mannequins?

A: Not that much time - maybe a few minutes.

Landau indicated that his partner wasn't afraid to work in the projects. He said he never heard Liang say anything negative about working in the projects or about the residents who lived there.

The prosecutor's first question on re-direct was sharp and to the point.

Q: Did Officer Peter Liang shoot Akai Gurley that night?

A: Yes.

Q: Is there any doubt in your mind that what he said to you is, "I'm going to be fired."

A: No.

Over numerous objections by the defense, and several admonitions by the judge, the State's attorney also challenged Landau's assertion that he didn't feel qualified to perform CPR. He did, after all, have training. Landau was asked, "Did you feel less qualified than the young woman that was there?" Landau answered in the affirmative. The prosecutor ended with the following questions:

Q: Did you see a threat?

A: No.

Q: Did you sense a threat?

A: No.

Q: Did you take your gun out of your holster?

A: No.

The defense's re-cross was five questions, in its entirety.

Q: You didn't see him shoot Akai?

A: No.

Q: You didn't witness it?

A: No.

Q: You didn't perceive a threat?

A: Yes.

Q: You weren't the one walking into darkness?

A: Yes.

Q: You were standing in the hallway in the light?

A: Yes.

Frankly, both of these lines of questioning seem counterproductive for her client. Asking whether or not Landau saw Liang shoot Akai is obtuse. We know beyond all medical and scientific doubt that the bullet that killed Akai was discharged from Liang's duty weapon. And, to ask whether or not Landau perceived a threat indicates to me that her client DID perceive a threat and acted intentionally and accordingly. The defense team, in general, is not doing their client a lot of favors.

Dr. Floriana Persechiano

Medical Examiner, City of New York

Dr. Persechiano is a forensic pathologist who works at the Medical Examiner's Office, which is independent of the police department, and under the umbrella of the Department of Health. She has performed over 3,000 autopsies, and on November 21, 2014, she performed an autopsy on Akai Gurley.

She explained Akai's injuries:

1.Bullet entered in the front left chest.

2.It dissected muscle.

3.It knicked his 4th rib on the left.

4.It broke his sternum.

5.It entered his chest cavity.

6.It punctured his pericardium (the fluid-filled sack around the heart).

7.It punctured his heart.

8.It punctured his diaphragm.

9.The bullet was ultimately found in his liver.

The State asked:

Q: Is this the injury that caused Akai Gurley's death?

A: Yes.

The medical examiner showed photos of Akai that were taken at the time of autopsy as well as her diagram of his injuries. She also showed a photo of the bullet that was removed from Akai's body. She noted that the hollow point bullet had lateral shearing, extending from the tip to the base. This defect was consistent with the bullet hitting a hard surface prior to entering Akai's body, she said.

The medical examiner also told the jury that she visited the crime scene. She explained that she had done this in order to investigate her hypothesis that the bullet had first ricocheted and then hit Akai. She stated that she started her walk-through on the eighth floor landing, where she noted a ballistic impression on the cinder block wall, and continued walking downward in the stairwell. She exited on the sixth floor.

During cross examination she stared that CPR would not have saved Akai. She described his primary injury as a through-and-through gunshot wound to the heart. In his final moments, Akai would have been bleeding into the area surrounding his heart, and eventually, his heart would have stopped.

Q: How long could a person live with an injury like that?

A: My opinion? Minutes.

The State Rests

The prosecution called just one witness after lunch and then they rested their case. The defense then made a motion to dismiss all charges against Peter Liang. The judge denied their motion. The defense calls their first witness tomorrow morning.

Officer Peter Liang is expected to testify on Monday. The judge expects to hear closing arguments and charge the jury on Tuesday morning. They would then retire to deliberate.

Friday February 5, 2016 (Part 1)

The Defense Presents Gun Expert

The defense team of Peter Liang, a rookie NYPD officer, began to present their case today. Liang faces six counts in the November 2014 shooting death of unarmed Akai Gurley.

Yesterday in New York City, two NYPD officers were shot, and a civilian killed, in a housing development in the Bronx. The defense has long contended that Officer Liang was right to be concerned about his safety, and to have his gun at the ready, as he patrolled the housing development in Brooklyn where he ultimately shot and killed Akai. Prior to the jury being seated this morning, counsel for both the state and the defense expressed concerns about the media coverage regarding last night's shooting.

The State asked that the defense not be allowed to ask questions that reference the Bronx shooting, but the defense argued that the shooting was "very similar." The judge agreed with the State and testimony regarding the Bronx shooting was not allowed. The State then asked that the judge give an instruction to the jury not to read anything about the Bronx case. The jury has already been instructed against reading news reports specific to Liang's trial or about Akai's murder. The judge ultimately ruled that he would give his standard instruction to the jury and would caution them that even articles that may appear to be about another topic may contain information, references, or parallels to the shooting of Akai. He will not, however, specifically offer any reference to the Bronx shooting. The defense then asks to have the jury sequestered and the judge declines. He notes that he will only consider this as an option if another incident should arise. And with that, the defense called their first witness.

Robert LaMonica

Gun Expert

Robert LaMonica is a former police officer who rose to the rank of Sargent before retiring in 2012. During his time with the NYPD, LaMonica worked in the Forensic Investigation Division (Firearms Analysis Section). He testified that he still consults with the Bronx Criminal Court on firearms cases. LaMonica examined Liang's gun and testified about his findings specifically related to the trigger pull of the weapon.

Q: Are you familiar with the Glock 19?

A: Yes, I am.

Q: Do you know whether or not the Glock comes with a 5.5 trigger pull from the manufacturer?

A: A 5.5 pound trigger pull.

Q: Has the NYPD ever used a Glock without a trigger pull modification?

A: No, not to my knowledge.

LaMonica was asked about the origin and evolution of the modified trigger, often called the New York Trigger. He stated that the NYPD made a specific request to Glock to modify the trigger pull on the Glock, making it more difficult to fire. He stated that the first version of the trigger modification (NY1) was white in color, made exclusively of plastic, and had a trigger pull of 8-10 pounds. The second version was black in color and was comprised of plastic with a thin lining of metal on the inside. It offered a trigger pull of 10-12 pounds. The third version, olive drab in color, was completely redesigned and reshaped. It also offered a trigger pull of 10-12 pounds. The last modification, the one currently being used by NYPD officers, is known as NY2 and is bright orange in color. It was constructed of a harder plastic and fitted with a stiffer spring. According to LaMonica, it has a trigger pull of 12 pounds. LaMonica stated, "The permeations [sic] were made to prevent accidental discharge."

In this section of his testimony, LaMonica referenced a report that had been prepared from an outside agency. The State objected to the mention of this report because the report had not been entered into evidence. The defense then moved to submit the report into evidence. The prosecutor argued that this document should not be allowed as evidence in this case because it was not indicative of NYPD rules and regulations. The judge, after reviewing the exhibit, sustained the objection and the report was not allowed into evidence. LaMonica was instructed to testify on his "opinion" of the trigger pull instead of referencing the report.

LaMonica then told the jury that he had visited the scene of the shooting. He stated that he had visibly inspected the staircase and compared documents and diagrams. He noted a "defect" in the wall that had since been painted over. He offered his opinion regarding his findings.

Q: What ammunition does the NYPD use?

A: 124 grain jacket hollow point bullet manufactured by Spear.

Q: And what is the reason for using a hollow point?

A: The reason for using a hollow point bullet in an urban setting is - there's two reasons - the first is to reduce the risk of the bullet penetrating a solid surface like a wall and to minimize richochet.

LaMonica had asked if he had ever seen a bullet such as this ricochet. He stated that he had. He then added that he had never seen a death that resulted from a hollow point bullet that had ricocheted.

Q: Based on your review of the scene, documents, and diagrams, did you render an opinion?

A: That the bullet ricocheted off the wall and struck the victim.

LaMonica then discussed the trigger pull test that he performed on Liang's duty weapon. He was asked questions regarding the trigger pull test that had been performed by NYPD's forensics lab in which the examiner used a manual weighting system. LaMonica said that newer technology for trigger pull tests, a digital method, has existed since 2012. He used the digital test in his examination and tested the trigger in three different areas, he said. He found the following:

The tip of the trigger required a trigger pull of 10.3 pounds to fire.

The middle of the trigger required a trigger pull of 11.5 pounds to fire.

The back of the trigger required a trigger pull of "12 pounds plus" to fire.

He said that in order to find the actual trigger pull of the weapon the examiner should take an average of all three readings. His finding was that the trigger pull of Liang's weapon was 11.5 pounds. This is the same finding as the State's expert.

The defense then asked a series that he has posed to every single witness thus far:

1.Are you familiar with a "startle response"?

2.Are you familiar with "loss of balance response"?

3.Are you familiar with "sympathetic response?"

Liang's attorneys ended their direct examination by asking LaMonica to once again look at the schematics. They were two separate sketches of the stairwell where Akai was shot. They showed the relative positions of Akai and Liang at the time of the shooting. LaMonica described Akai as "standing at the bottom of the stairs" in the first sketch and the attorney questioned, "standing?" The defense's purpose for this line of questioning only became evident when he produced the second sketch and asked, "Does this give you a better view of the scene? Does it look like Akai may have been walking up the stairs?" LaMonica answered in the affirmative. The point of this was, of course, to discredit Melissa Butler's testimony that she and Akai were walking down the stairs on their way out of the building that night because the elevator didn't arrive when summoned. This was also an effort to criminalize Akai and make it seem as if he moved towards the officer. The attempt fell flat, in my opinion.

The defense had one final question about the schematic:

Q: Do you know whether Officer Liang is left-handed or right-handed?

A: I do know that Officer Liang is left-handed.

The schematic shows a right-handed shooter. The prosecutor opened his cross-examination by pointing out that the schematics are not evidence of what happened. Rather, they are an approximation of the actions and events around the time of the shooting.

The prosecutor's next line of questioning involved the internal trigger safety on the Glock. The NYPD uses three types of guns as duty weapons. The other two options, Smith & Wesson and Sig Sauer, do not have a safety on the trigger. In regards to the Glock,

Q: In order for the gun to fire, even with a startle response, the shooter's finger would have to be on the trigger and press the safety.

A: Yes.

Q: In order for the gun to fire, even with a loss of balance response, the shooter's finger would have to be on the trigger and press the safety?

A: Yes.

Q: In order for the gun to fire, even with a sympathetic response, the shooter's finger would have to be on the trigger and press the safety?

A: Yes.

He then asked about LaMonica's time as a Sargent.

Q: Did you use cell phones as a Sargent [instead of calling in by radio]?

A: From time to time. (Clarifies that officers were not permitted to carry cell phones during the time that he was a Sargent.)

Q: If an officer fired his or her gun in service, would you expect that officer to radio you immediately?

A: Yes.

Q: Immediately? Right away? Is there discretion?

A: As soon as it is safe to do so.

The State revisited LaMonica's explanation about the etymology and evolution of the trigger modification on the Glock. The prosecutor reminded the witness that he had testified that the first version of the installation had a range of 8-10 pounds per inch, the second a range of 10-12 pounds per inch, the third a range of 10-12 pounds per inch, and yet no range had been provided for the fourth and final modification, NY2, which was being used by Peter Liang on the day that he shot Akai. State's witnesses previously testified that the acceptable trigger pull range on the NY2 is 9-12 pounds per inch, but the defense has contended that the proper measurement is 12 pounds per inch with no deviation. The prosecutor wondered why all three previous models of the New York trigger had an "acceptable range," but the defense is claiming that there is no "acceptable range" for the device on Liang's gun.

The State's final questions revolved around the digital trigger pull test that LaMonica administered. The prosecutor was present with the witness when he conducted the tests. He noted the presence of a vice in the lab. He was questioned on what that vice would typically be used for. LaMonica stated that the vice is often used to hold a gun while administering a trigger pull test. He noted that it can sometimes to be difficult to hold both the weapon and operate the trigger pull apparatus. The prosecutor asked if the vice is also used to stabilize the weapon during testing and the witness answered in the affirmative, but he admitted that he had not used the vice when conducting tests on Liang's gun.

On redirect, the defense also asked about the vice:

Q: You testified that you never used a vice. Why?

A: Officer Liang didn't have a vice when he fired the weapon.

LaMonica then talked a bit about the trigger safety that is found on the Glock 19. He used Liang's weapon to demonstrate for the jury how one would disengage the internal safety. He described it as a passive safety, meaning that the safety lever is part of the actual trigger mechanism, not an external safety located outside of the trigger guard. This corresponds with State witnesses who offered similar explanations and demonstrations earlier in the week.

On recross, the State had just two questions:

Q:You could put your finger on the side of the trigger and not engage the trigger safety?

A: The gun would not fire with your finger on the side of the trigger.

Q: Your finger has to be on the trigger itself in order to disengage that safety?

A: That's correct, sir.

Friday, February 5, 2016 (Part 2):

The defense called Daniel Reefer, a licensed private investigator, to the stand. He was hired by the defense to monitor the traffic in and out of Stairwell A at the Pink House, specifically between the 7th and 8th floors, where Akai was shot. Reefer testified that he went to the location twice. His first visit was on January 20, 2016, and he returned the following day. He spent approximately one hour observing the stairwell each time. The defense played the beginning of a video, time-stamped 2/21/16 at 10:36pm, and informed the court that the video lasted a total of 24 minutes. In the video, the private investigator was standing where Peter Liang would have been standing when he shot Akai. The camera was pointed to the seventh floor landing where Akai would have been walking.

Q: Did you observe any pedestrian traffic in the stairwell?

A: Absolutely no one.

Reefer is a former police officer for the NYPD. He testified that he was appointed to the NYPD after working as a patrol officer in the housing sector. His command was PH4. He stated that his supervisor in that command taught him to have his weapon out, especially when monitoring the rooftop or stairwells of buildings.

Cross-Examination:

Q: You're telling us about your training 25 years ago?

A: Yes, I was.

Q: You were hired by the defendant to go on two separate dates to go to 2724 Linden Blvd?

A: That's correct.

The prosecutor then asked Reefer about his movements in the building. He stated that when he arrived he took the elevator up to the eighth floor and entered the stairwell. He stayed on the eighth floor landing the entire time that he was in the building and took the elevator down when he was finished with his work.

Q: Did you travel between the second and third floors?

A: No.

Q: Did you travel between the fourth and fifth floors?

A: No.

Q: Did you travel between the fifth and sixth floors?

A: No.

Q: Did you observe any illegal activity?

A: No.

Q: Did anyone bother you while you were in the building?

A: No.

Q: Did anyone ambush you?

A: No.

The prosecutor points out that Reefer did not monitor other floors, Stairwell B, or any other portion of the building. He also did not observe any other buildings in the Pink Houses. His investigation lasted a total of two hours and was conducted just a couple of days before the trail began.

Q: Why did you only record for 24 minutes of the time?

A: My battery died. I didn't charge it the night before.

Q: Even though you were going to do surveillance the following day?

A: That's correct.

The witness mentioned earlier in his testimony that he was conducting the surveillance two years after Akai was killed. (In truth, only a little over a year had elapsed.) The prosecutor asked him about the timing of his surveillance in relation to the timing of Akai's death and gave his own theory as to the lack of activity on the evenings that Reefer was in the stairwell.

Q: Did it cross your mind that people in that building may have changed their behavior because your client shot Akai Gurley through the heart in that very location?

The witness was not allowed to answer.

David Moskowitz

David Moskowitz is retired NYPD Captain. He was appointed the NYPD from Housing in 1995 and was assigned to Public Service Area 2, where Peter Liang worked at the time of the shooting, from 1985 to 1991.

Moskowitz testified that he was taught to do vertical patrols on his very first day on the job. He says that he was instructed to have his weapon out of the holster in stairwells, landings, and rooftops. He testified that he subsequently trained new police officers after being promoted. "I taught them the same thing that I was taught many years ago," he said. He also commented, "Stairwells are inherently dangerous places." He then tried to testify about an incident that occurred in 1985 while he was on patrol. The prosecutor objected and the judge replied, "Sustained...if you were going to tell us about a specific case, don't."

On cross-examination, the prosecutor specifically asks about the radio calls from the night that Liang shot Akai. He noted that officers use a "specific language" when transmitting over the radio. He also mentioned that calls are recorded. He provided a transcript of the radio call to Moskowitz. The following are direct quotes from the transcript, time-stamped between 11:16 and 11:19 P.M. (The shot was fired at 11:14 P.M. per Officer Landau's testimony.)

1.Dispatch is trying to raise the unit on the scene.

2.Trying to find the unit.

3.Trying to communicate with the unit, if they're there.

The prosecutor asked the witness about the language "raise the unit," and he answered that that meant that the dispatcher was trying to find the unit. This, of course, corresponds with District Attorney Ken Thompson's earlier statement that, following the shooting, Officers Landau and Liang were "unaccounted for."

On re-direct, the defense attorney asked Moskowitz about his experience with radio communication in the Pink Houses. The witness stated that it can be "very difficult." He continued, "Sometimes you can be pressing the button and calling for assistance and no one hears."

Moskowitz was only on the stand for ten minutes.

The defense had no additional witnesses to call on that day. Court will reconvene tomorrow morning, Monday February 8, 2016, and the defense will present the remainder of their witnesses. Officer Peter Liang is expected to testify. The judge has scheduled closing arguments for Tuesday morning. Once summations have concluded, he will offer his instructions to the jury and send them into deliberations.

Peter Liang Testifies About the Day That He Shot Akai Gurley

"The defense calls Police Officer Peter Liang."

NYPD officer Peter Liang is standing trial in Brooklyn for shooting and killing unarmed Akai Gurley in 2014.

After listening to extensive testimony about Liang's academic achievements dating all the way back to grade school, we learned about his work history. He testified that he graduated college in the midst of a tough economy and worked odd jobs, including working for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), prior to being accepted into the police academy. He graduated from the academy with an "A" average - 93%.

Q: During your police academy training, were you trained in CPR?

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: I didn't really get enough time with them. There were two to three hundred people in the class. During our test they gave us the answers.

A: Sort of.

He continued, "I never even had a chance to touch the dummy."

The defense asked if Liang was able to choose where he would be stationed after leaving the academy. He explained that the NYPD has recruits fill out a "Dream Sheet" that lists their top three choices.

Q: Where did you ask to go?

A: Brooklyn North, Brooklyn South, Manhattan Transit.

Q: Why did you chose those commands?

A: Those are busier areas. I wanted to be proactive as a police officer.

Q: Where you assigned?

A: PSA2, Public Service Area 2.

Liang is asked about the kind of duties that he was asked to perform as an officer.

Q: Were there different kinds of patrol or was it all the same thing?

A: There were a lot of different things. I patrolled housing developments by doing verticals, directeds, and other [inaudible].

Liang expanded on those duties under further questioning. Directeds, he told us, is standing in front of a building or in a lobby for a period of time to show a police presence to deter crime. He stated that vertical patrols (also referred to as floor checks) entail taking the elevator up to the roof, looking for any signs of criminality, and working one's way down. He also said that one of his duties was to monitor his radio. "Jobs that come over the radio, you go to where the call is and you handle it."

Q: How long were you with them?

A: From January until the incident.

Q: Can you estimate the number of floor checks you did during that time?

A: A few hundred. Close to a thousand.

The defense attorney then asked Liang about taking his gun out of the holster. Liang said, "It really just depends on if I feel I need to take my weapon out." He went on to say that fearing for himself or his partner are reasons that he would take his gun out. He talked about the prevalence of drugs, rape, and other violent crime in the area.

Q: And what were your hours?

A: 6 P.M. to 2 A.M.

Q: What was your assignment that day?

A: I was assigned to the Pink Houses.

Q: Was this regular hours or overtime?

A: Ordered overtime. (Goes on to explain that the shift was mandatory.)

Q: What was the reason for the overtime?

A: The shootings and robberies that were happening in the Pink Houses.

His attorney requested, "Tell the jury how the evening unfolded for you."

Liang stated that he and Landau had a shift meeting there at the Pink Houses and then they patrolled some of the buildings for awhile. According to Liang, around 9pm, Landau called the Sargent and asked if they could take a meal break. The Sargent drive them to and from dinner. Liang recalled "arriving back to post about 10:00 P.M."

Q: What do you do next?

A: More directeds building to building. And after that we decided to do some floor checks.

Liang then recounts that he and Landau went to a building and saw two guys playing cards and smoking in the hallway. Liang checked their ID, admonished them for smoking in a non-smoking building, issued a warning, and sent them on their way. (This hardly sounds like the terrifying criminal element that the defense has been referencing this whole trial.)

Q: What did you do after that?

A: Went to the building known 2724 Linden Blvd.

Q: How did you get in the building that night?

A: I went in the back door. The lock was broken at the time.

Liang testified that he and Landau took the elevator to the eighth floor. He recalled that his weapon was holstered. Stairwell B was lit. He said that when he arrived at Stairwell A, he looked into the window in the door. "It was pitch black," he told the jury. He says that it was at this point that he took his gun and flashlight out of the holster.

Q: When you removed your weapon from the holster where was your trigger finger?

A: It was on the side of the weapon along the frame.

Q: How do you know?

A: I've done hundreds of verticals. That's how I've always done it.

Liang added, "Whenever we feel unsafe, it's our discretion for when to remove our firearms."

Q: Where was the gun pointed?

A: It was pointed downward.

The defense attorney said, "Tell us now what happened next." Liang replied, "I tried to open the door with my right hand. I turned with my right hand. It wouldn't turn at first." Liang is left-handed and was holding his duty weapon in his left hand and his flashlight in his right hand. He continued, "I heard something on my left side. It startled me. [The gun] just went off. My whole body tensed up."

Liang then told the jury about the next minutes. He said that he holstered his weapon and used his flashlight to look down the stairwell, but that he didn't see anyone. (This is contradictory to Landau's testimony that Liang immediately came back into the hallway following the shot and that he holstered his weapon and flashlight in the hallway.) Liang says that he returned to the hallway with his ringing and that he began to pace back and forth in the hall. Liang recalls that he and his partner were arguing over who should call in the shooting. Liang testified that he said, "I'm fired. You call it in for me." He says that Landau said, "You should call it in," and handed Liang his cellphone. Liang testified that his partner then changed his mind, took his cell phone back, and put it in his pocket.

Q: Why did you want to call in by phone instead of by radio?

A: Didn't want to alert everyone. I just wanted to deal with my Sargent.

Q: After Shaun Landau put his phone back in his pocket, then what?

A: I went back into the stairwell to look for the shot. Heard someone crying. I ran down the stairs and found Akai.

He testified that he said, "Oh my God, I can't believe I hit someone."

Q: What did you do next?

A: I put out over the radio: Male shot! Send a bus!

Q: Can you estimate how much time you spent with Shaun Landau on the eighth floor before you returned to the stairwell?

A: 35-40 seconds at most. *Starts to cry*

Q: You told us that when you saw Akai and Melissa, you said, "I can't believe I hit someone." What did you do?

A: Put over the radio, "PH 1 Post. Male shot. Call a bus." But, I didn't know the address. I asked Miss Butler the address several times and she told me, and I asked Miss Lopez many times and she told me, but I was just panicking so much that I couldn't process it in my head. I leaned down to assess him. He looked like he was seriously injured. His eyes were rolled back (begins to cry) and he was just lying there very still.

Q: Did you make any effort to perform CPR?

A: I thought the best way to get emergency help for him was to put it over the radio.

Q: How long between your last transmission [on the radio] and other help arrived?

A: Once I was able to get the address over, I saw the Lieutenant there in 20-30 seconds.

Liang says that he told his Lieutenant that he accidentally shot Akai and that his weapon was taken.

Q: Have you worked for the police department since this incident?

A: Yes. Two months later.

Q: What kind of work are you doing?

A: Administrative.

Q: And what's your official job description?

A: Modified. (Liang is on modified duty, also referred to as desk duty, after having been stripped of his gun and shield pending the outcome of an investigation.)

Q: During the time that you were on patrol, did you ever intentionally put your finger on the trigger, other than at the [shooting] range?

A: No. There's no reason to to put my finger on the trigger unless I intend to shoot.

The defense had no further questions. The judge ask Liang if he needed a brief recess before continuing. He said that he did and was led to a room in the back. He was gone for a whole of 60 seconds. When he returned, the prosecutor rose for cross-examination.

Q: You were trained at the police academy?

A: Briefly.

Q: How many instructors did you have?

A: Ten? Fifteen?

Q: While you were at the academy you took tests?

A: Yes.

Q: Other than the CPR test can you think of any other test that the police department gave you the answers for?

A: *Sits silently for a moment, stutters* No, I think that's the only one.

The attorney the directed Liang's attention to the firearms training manual that was previously entered into evidence. When he asks Liang if it looks familiar, Liang tells him, "Somewhat. We didn't really touch the book. They had PowerPoint slides." The State clarifies, "But you studied?" Liang answers in the affirmative. He also says yes when the attorney asks if the manual contains instruction about:

1.Using a gun

2.Cleaning a gun

3.Handling a gun

4.General info about guns

The State then asked about the threat recognition drills that police academy recruits undergo. We learned that the drills are held at a house in the Bronx. Inside the home, they come across various simulations of people. Recruits must identify the simulation that poses a threat to them and fire upon that person while also holding fire on the simulations that do not pose a danger. Each recruit gets one pass, according to Liang.

Q: [The image] could be a child?

A: Yes.

Q: It could be an older person?

A: Yes.

Q: Someone who had no weapon?

A: Someone without a weapon could still hurt you.

Q: Someone who has no intention of harming you?

A: Yes. It could be anyone.

As he continued his cross-examination the defense read several quotes from the manual:

Firearms are made dangerous and deadly by those who handle them carelessly.

Rarely will a discharge be accidental. Accidents don't happen.

Because drawing a weapon is provocative, it should only be drawn when expecting to use deadly force.

The judge interjected. He looked towards the defense table and asked, "Is there an objection to this line of questioning?" At that point the defense, of course, raised and objection. The judge sustained the objection. The prosecutor continued on with his questions.

Q: On November 20, were you responding to a violent crime in progress?

A: No.

Q: Were you searching for a fleeing suspect?

A: No.

Q: Violent Offender?

A: No.

Q: "Respect for human life requires firearms should be used as a last resort." Do you remember being taught that in the academy?

A: Yes.

Q: Were you taught to treat every round fired as a concise decision to use deadly force?

A: Yes.

Q: You were taught to check all equipment before going on patrol?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you inspect your equipment before going out on November 20th?

A: Yes.

Q: You didn't replace your flashlight, did you?

A: No.

Q: Your radio?

A: No.

Q: You were taught if assistance is needed, relay immediately. Weren't you taught that at the police academy?

A: Yes.

Q: In regards to specific training that you received regarding stairways, "Officer should consider not drawing weapon when climbing and running." Do you remember being taught that at the police academy?

A: Yes.

Q: You testified that you were startled?

A: Correct.

Q: You knew that was a person?

A: No. I didn't know.

Q: What was it that startled you?

A: It was a quick sound.

Q: The police academy trained you on reflexes responses, yes? On reflexes?

A: Yes.

Q: When were you supposed to call your superior?

A: Many different things. When we make arrests. For permission to go on meal. I guess any unusual occurrence.

Q: And firing your weapon in an 8th floor stairwell is an unusual occurrence, is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: You didn't call in right away?

A: Yes. Officer Shaun Landau took the phone.

Q: Was Shaun Landau's phone the only phone that you had to contact your superior?

A: No.

The State then asks Liang to repeat his movements once he and Landau arrived on the 8th floor. He mentions the dark window that looked into the stairwell.

Q: What were you looking for when you looked through it?

A: I was just looking in there.

Q: You were concerned that someone might be on the other side, right?

A: Yes.

Q: Because it was dark?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you listen at the door before you went in?

A: I just went in.

Q: Tell us as best you can what startled you.

A: A quick sound.

Q: What did you do then?

A: It just happened so fast.

Liang is asked to describe the sound. He says that he can't describe the sound. But he recalls turning towards the sound. He said, "And [the gun] just went off."

Q: That shot went down?

A: Yes.

Q: Towards the left?

A: Yes.

Q: Towards the sound?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you think that sound had been made by a person?

A: Anything is possible. That's why I shined my light down.

Liang told the court that he didn't hear anything after the shot, including footsteps, and that he also didn't see anything. He said that he retreated into the hallway. He once again recounted his conversation with Shaun Landau. He said that Landau asked him, What the fuck happened," to which he replied, "I don't know. It just went off." He remembers Landau asking him, "What are you going to do?" He says that he told him, "I don't know. You call it in for me." He said that he and Landau went back and forth saying, "You call it in," before Landau handed him a cell phone. Liang repeats that he dialed the phone and that Landau took the phone, hung it up, and put it back in his pocket.

Liang testified that he went back into the stairwell with his flashlight out, but that he did not have his gun out. He says that he was looking for the bullet casing. He says that it is at this time that he heard someone crying from below and began to run down the stairs towards the sound. He believed it to be woman's voice.

Liang's testimony here differs from that of Landau in two ways. While Landau said that Liang immediately retreated into the hallway and holstered both his gun and weapon while in the hallway, Liang contends that he holstered his gun in the stairwell and the "shined his light down" towards the sound. Liang said that he was was the one who went back into the stairwell and he reported hearing the crying that we now know was coming from Melissa Butler as she attended to the fallen Akai. Landau also said that he was the first to re-enter the stairwell and that he went into the stairwell because he thought that the bullet may have traveled into an apartment. He reports hearing crying and starting down the stairs to investigate.

Q: So you go to the fifth floor?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you see?

A: I saw Mr. Gurley laying down there. I saw his girlfriend next to him.

Q: What was his pulse?

A: I don't know.

Q: Was he breathing?

A: I don't know.

Q: You didn't check his pulse?

A: No.

Q: Did you check to see whether he was breathing?

A: No.

Liang testified that Ms. Lopez, the fourth floor tenant who called 911, was "screaming" CPR instructions to Melissa Butler. Liang says that he knew that Ms. Lopez was on the phone with 911.

Q: It was after Ms. Lopez called that the police came, right?

A: And also because of my call.

Q: But by the time that you got down the stairs Ms. Lopez was already on the phone with 911, right?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you have gloves that night?

A: Yes, I had winter gloves.

Q: But did you have latex gloves?

A: No.

Q: But you had gloves of some sort?

A: Yes.

Q: You said that you didn't perform CPR because you were waiting for professional help?

A: Yes.

Q: Between you and Ms. Butler, who do you think was in a better position to help?

A: I don't know what she does for a living. I can't tell.

Q: There was nothing stopping you from helping Melissa Butler?

A: Yes there was.

Q: What was stopping you?

A: Trying to get the address and put it out over the radio.

Q: Did you ask Shaun Landau to help Melissa Butler?

A: No.

The defense then began their redirect.

Q: In your experience, is there any difference in response in a civilian call to 911 and a police officer call to 911?

A: If there one call - if there's more than one call, police will come faster. If a police officer calls, they will come even faster.

Q: In your experience, did you notice a difference between stairways in daytime and in nighttime.

A: At nighttime [traffic is] almost non-existent. When you push the elevator button it will come almost immediately so there's really no reason to take the stairs.

Q: Was your discharge intentional or unintentional?

A: It was UNintentional.

Q: When you looked down to observe Mr. Gurley, did you believe that he was dead or alive?

A: He looked seriously injured so I thought he was likely...

Q: Likely?

A: Likely to die.

Q: Did you step over Mr. Gurley's body?

A: There was ample space to walk around.

Q: Just to be clear, you never walked across Mr. Gurley?

A: [Inaudible] walked around from the fifth to the fourth floor.

His defense attorney then asked him some questions about the speed with which police officers come.

Q: After you fired the shot you went back to the stairway to look for the bullet?

A: Right.

Q: Because you don't know where it went?

A: Right.

Q: It could have gone through the wall?

A: Right.

Q: It could have hit someone?

A: Correct.

Liang was again asked why he didn't call out over the radio. He stated that he didn't think that it was necessary to call other officers to help look for the bullet. He said he thought that he could handle it on his own.

Liang spent less than two hours on the stand. The State informed the court that it does not intend to put on rebuttal witnesses. The defense rests their case. The judge dismissed the jury. The judge then heard motions from both sides.

Motions

The defense moved to dismiss the entire case against Peter Liang, on their belief that the State has not met the burden of proof, but specifically the three "reckless" counts, which includes the manslaughter charge. In relation to the two official misconduct charges, the defense argues that the charges assume the defendant was required to perform CPR. They say that it also assumes that he would benefit from denying someone else "reasonable aid" and they assert that he did indeed call an ambulance, which was reasonable to him.

The State answers that the motion to dismiss was ruled on following the People resting on Thursday. They say that nothing new developed during the time that has elapsed since to change the People's position on the validity of the charges imposed.

The judge rules that he will reserve his decision. He said that he would give all counts to the jury. He will render his decision only after a verdict has been returned. A gasp went up in the audience and, "He can't do that," escaped from my mouth before I realized that I had said it aloud. The general sentiment of the supporters for Akai Gurley's family felt as if the judge was telling the defense, "If we don't like the verdict, I'll just set it aside."

Motions are then made regarding the judges instruction to the jury, following a sidebar, both sides went on the record and gave us a general idea of their requests. The judge states that he is going to give the jury the standard CJI charge as relates to official misconduct. The State asks the court to do more. They cite civil case law that they claim would explain exactly when a police officer is required by law to render aid. The defense team asks that the judge not allow for additional instructions to the jury. They ask that the judge adhere to policies provided by NYPD procedures regarding the responsibility to render "reasonable aid," and they assert that "reasonable aid" does not mean medical care.

The State says that there is clearly established case law. They also point out that Liang created the danger to the life of the victim. Liang therefore had an obligation to provide aid, the State says. The defense asks to see the case law and the State is unable to produce it. "I don't have it with me," the attorney says, but it is clearly outlined in documentation that had already been provided to the court. The defense then says that they were not made aware of this particular case law at the charging conference to which the judge replies, "That's not an issue."

The judge says that he will look to see if a trial jury was ever instructed using the case law that the State is referencing. And, if so, he wants to know whether or not the verdict that jury reached was upheld by a higher court. The people respond that most of the case law references that they are presenting relate to civil law. Liang faces criminal charges.

The defense team then had a request of their own regarding jury instructions. They feel that the current jury instruction on the Criminal Negligence charge is insufficient. They cite People V. Cabrerra (2008) in which the language reads, "Morally blameworthy conduct is the result of criminal neglect." The State opposes the addition. The judge rules: "CJI is sufficient. To add anything to its language is unnecessary."

Tuesday, January 9, 2016

Closing Arguments and Jury Charge

The Defense's Summation:

The defense told the jury, "Do not to check your common sense at the door." He urged them to imagine how intimating a stairwell in the dark in a public housing project might feel. This ridiculous imagery, which criminalizes blackness, does nothing more than propagate the irrational fear that police officers use to justify murdering unarmed black and brown people over and over again. By his own testimony, the most dangerous thing that Liang and Landau came across on the night that they shot Akai was two neighbors visiting with each other, playing a friendly game of cards. Is this an image of the terror that existed in the minds of these police officers as they worked in the projects? Despite the fact that people like these older men - and children - live in this building, Liang was patrolling inside the building that night with his weapon drawn. Egregious!

"Having your gun out," his defense said during closing arguments, "the way officer Liang did, was not a gross deviation from the training." Yes, that's true. Having your gun out, in and of itself, is not a crime. However, according to testimony at trial, there are many pieces of his training that Liang did violate. For instance, "Do not climb or run with your weapon out of the holster. This can lead to accidental discharge." And, "do not have your finger on the trigger unless you are ready to fire."

The defense alleged inconsistencies in the testimony of almost every witness. They seemed to have missed the fact that their own client did not give an account consistent to his partner, even though they were patrolling together that night and even though Liang was in the courtroom on the day that Landau testified.

The most low-down part of the defense's closing came when he told the jury, "Yes, Akai Gurley was innocent, but don't feel sorry for him." The attorney turned his attention to Akai's three-year-old daughter. He reminded the court that her mother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in which she would be a beneficiary. He insinuated that there was something to gain from a guilty verdict in spite of all that Akai's daughter has lost. How cowardly do you have to be to go after a child?

The State's Summation

The prosecution asserted in their closing argument that Liang was a cop that was too reckless to hold a gun. The prosecutor told the jury, "Peter Liang faced no threat. It was Akai Gurley who was in danger." Akai was in danger from the very person who took an oath and swore to serve and protect him. If this is what Liang's "protection" looks like, I think I'll take my chances apart from him.

The prosecutor later said, "PeterLiang heard a noise and instead of pointing his flashlight, he pointed his gun and pulled the trigger." He told the jury, "An innocent man is dead because he heard a sound, a sound he said he couldn't describe." I don't know about you, but I do not buy for one moment that Liang was deep in the throes of panic that he could remember every detail except for the two that are most relevant: What did you hear that made you fire your gun, and what did you do once you realized that you had shot someone?

Throughout the trial, the prosecutor did not disagree with defense stance that the bullet that killed Akai was accidental. But in his closing argument, he said that Liang fired at him. Many consider this to be a misnomer, and this is one of the statements that was mentioned in a motion that the defense made the following day. However, as a person who was present for most of the testimony, I don't find this to be an inconsistent statement at all. The State established, during their cross-examination of Liang, that he was taught in the academy to "treat every round fired as a concious decision to use deadly force." Further, the prosecution's theory of the crime may or may not have been further illuminated by the fact that Liang testified that he heard a sound down and to the left and discharged a bullet that traveled down and to the left.

The State told the jury, "Don't believe that Peter Liang didn't know someone was there! The only thing that could have startled him was Akai Gurley." This is a valid point. By Liang's own testimony, he initially drew his weapon because he thought that someone may be in the stairwell. To then be "startled" by sound in the stairwell, to the point that you "accidentally" discharge your weapon - well, those two things don't seem congruent. Either Liang thought that there was a person in the stairwell or he was caught off guard by the possibility that there may have been someone in the stairwell. Both things cannot be true.

The prosecution defended the actions of Melissa Butler, Akai's girlfriend, who tried to revive him. A Times reporter (insert eyeroll here at her tactics throughout trial) publically stated, "But I don't recall anyone impugning her." In that case, the reporter clearly was not paying attention to the cross-examination of Melissa Butler or to the defense's closing. During questioning, the defense tried to show that Melissa was inconsistent in the amount of time that she performed CPR. Melissa had once stated "3 minutes" but then estimated "5 minutes" at trial. This is not a gross disparity. Further, the insinuation, also during questioning, that Melissa had not done enough to help him was simply offensive. Melissa wasn't trained in CPR, and whether she tried to offer aid to Akai for 1 minute or 1 hour doesn't matter. This was simply an attempt, on the part of his attorney, to deflect blame from Liang. After all, he was trained in CPR, and by his own admission, did not even attempt to perform it in an effort to save Akai's life.

The one piece of the prosecutor's statement that I didn't particularly abide with was this: "Peter Liang is not the same as the officers who bravely patrol our city." With all due respect, I would staunchly disagree. I think Peter Liang is exactly the sort of police officer that we currently have patrolling our city. With a recorded 1,204 people killed by law enforcement in the United States this past year, the death of Akai Gurley does not stand as an isolated incident. Akai's murder is part of a systematic injustice and an epidemic of violence that is perpetrated on communities of color. The fact that Liang and Landau were patrolling the Pink Houses at all that night is an indictment on blackness. The NYPD does not do vertical patrols in the wealthy, predominately white, Upper West Side apartment buildings that I work in everyday. That is an excercise that is reserved for black and brown lower income communities. It is both racist and classist. And, when an officer kills a civillian, they will simply say what they have been saying since the beginning of time, "I feared for my life." Frankly, PO Liang, I don't doubt that you feared for your life. But my question is, what made you fear? What was it about an unarmed black man who was simply taking the stairs after visiting a legal tenant in that building that made you so scared that you had to take his life? What was there to fear other than his blackness and the racist presumptions about "dangerous black men"?

Jury Charge:

Prior to charging the jury, the judge reversed or amended his decision from the day before. When ruling on the defense's motion to dismiss, the judge stated that he would give all counts to the jury and would only render a decision on whether or not to dismiss any of the "reckless" charges after the jury returned a verdict. But the judge announced here that he was no longer intending to present all counts to the jury. One of the two counts of "official misconduct" (a misdemeanor) was dropped. The judge stated that the State had not met their burden of proof. This charge was related to Liang's duty to perform CPR once he discovered that Akai was wounded. The judge ruled that while he may have had a moral obligation, he had no such legal duty, and as such, it would be unconstitutional to charge him with this count.

That meant that the jury heard instructions on five charges. The judge used a PowerPoint presentation to give his instructions for each charge remaining. Liang is charged with Second Degree Manslaughter, Second-Degree Assault, Second-Degree Reckless Endangerment, Criminally Negligent Homicide and Official Misconduct.

The judge began charging the jury at 2:45 P.M. His instructions took close to an hour. The jury retired to deliberate and were able to deliberate about one hour before being dismissed for the day. They did send out one note to the court during that time, with a request for exhibits, and you can find the content of that request here.

Jury Watch

The jury received the case at approximately 3:45 P.M. The deliberated for about an hour. A note was sent from the jury room during that time, and at 4:45 P.M., the request was put on the record. The jury asked for the following:

 The PowerPoint presentation that the judge used during his jury instructions.

 The complete list of witnesses.

 Miscellaneous evidence from both parties, but particularly a report referenced by the defense.

 A copy of the Patrol Guide.

The judge informed the jury that he could not send the PowerPoint presentation back to them. They would have to come back into open court to review it. He refused to supply the witness lists. Those are not a matter of the public record, according to the judge. The report that the jury requested was never entered into evidence and cannot be provided. The Patrol Guide and other exhibits were sent back to the jury room.

Wednesday, Feb 10, 2016

The jury went straight into deliberations this morning without making an appearance in the courtroom. Around 11 A.M. those of us waiting at the courthouse were informed that court was coming back in to session. After a mad scramble to turn in our phones and an incident involving a Liang supporter being nasty to Akai's auntie, we entered the courtroom at 11:20.

By 11:25 all parties were present. We waited more than 90 minutes for the judge to make an appearance. It was after 1:00 P.M. when he finally took the bench. The judge stated that two notes had been sent out from the jury room this morning. But first he would hear a motion from the defense.

Peter Liang's defense stood up and moved for a mistrial. This is the third time that the defense has asked the judge to declare a mistrial. This time, the defense claimed prosecutorial misconduct, stemming from the State's closing argument. The defense said that they had researched the law on the matter and were asking for all charges to be dropped based on "inflammatory and inappropriate comments" made by the State. The claimed that the following statements were unfairly prejudicial to their client:

* The prosecutor yesterday accused Akai of crimes for which he has not been charged.

* The prosecutor said that Lianf deliberately pointed the gun.

* The prosecutor said that Liang intended to shoot his gun.

* The prosecutor said that Liang was attempting a cover up.

* The prosecutor offered a transacted reading of Liang's testimony.

The judge denied the defense's motion for a mistrial. He said the following:

* The [defense] argument about the People accusing him of intentional crimes falls way short.

* In order to prove that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the People have to show that the defendant knew of a risk and disregarded that risk, therefore the People's assertion that Liang should have known there were people when he unholstered his weapon was not improper.

* The reading of the transcript was not inaccurate. The people only read up to a certain point and then stopped. They are allowed to do that.

* The argument that the People told the jury that Liang committed an intentional crime, that he was hiding the bullet, etc., this is part of rebutting the defense testimony. It is not impossible that he was looking for a bullet or bullet casing.

The judge found nothing that would require that he declare a mistrial. The jury was allowed back into the courtroom and the testimony that they requested the day prior was read back to them, namely the testimony of Liang, Landau, and Melissa Butler that recounted the moments leading up to the shooting.

The jury asked for:

 Two foam boards used as visual aids during the trial.

 The transcript of the 911 call.

The "division radio" transcript. (Police Radio).

Officer Liang's testimony from the moment that Landau asked him, "what happened," until he reached Akai on the 5th floor landing.

Officer Landau's testimony from the moment that he asked Liang what happened until he reached Akai on the 5th floor landing.

 Melissa Butler's testimony from the time she and Akai approached the stairwell until Akai collapsed on the 5th floor landing.

The visual displays and written documents were sent back to the jury. All parties reviewed the requested testimony and those pages were read aloud to the jury.

Later that afternoon, the jury requested more evidence:

* They once again requested a review of the jury instructions

* They asked to handle the gun again.

* They asked to hear the 911 call again.

* They asked to hear the audio of the radio dispatch.

Court ended at approximately 5:30. The judge reminded the jury that if they did not reach a verdict the following day that court would be in recess until Tuesday.

Thursday, Feb 11, 2016

(7:17 P.M.) NYPD officer Peter Liang has been found GULITY on Second Degree Manslaughter and Official Misconduct. See the reading of the verdict here:

(6:00 P.M.) The judge has told the jury that if they think they are close to a verdict tonight they can continue to deliberate. The jury has returned to deliberations.

(5:23 P.M.) The judge received another note from the jurors. It read: "We would like to hear the charges once again and the definitions of the charges." Now more deliberating.

(4:05 P.M.) The jury has requested evidence that was submitted by the prosecution. They want to see the NYPD Firearms and Tactics guide. They also want more notepads. They are still deliberating. (The latest they can meet today is 6:30 P.M. If no verdict is reached deliberations will continue next Tuesday after the holiday weekend.)

(3:30 P.M.) The judge has reversed his own ruling. He earlier ruled that no cameras would be allowed in the courtroom during the publishing of the verdict. There are more than 100 vultures...er, I mean reporters, currently at the courthouse awaiting the jury's decision. Deliberations still ongoing.

(2:30 P.M.) After lunch the jury requested a white board. There were no requests for evidence. Deliberations continue.

(1:31 P.M.) The jury once again went directly to deliberations today. If the jury has asked questions or requested further evidence, it has not yet been published in open court. Court stands in recess until 2:15 P.M.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A Facebook vice president has been arrested in Brazil for his alleged refusal to hand over user data to the authorities.

Diego Dzodan, Facebook's boss in Latin America, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly failing to comply with a court order demanding that he give the authorities user data from WhatsApp, the messaging service owned by Facebook.

The police claimed the private information was needed for an investigation into organised crime and drug trafficking.

According to the court which ordered his arrest, WhatsApp had denied three requests previous requests for information.

As The Guardian reports, the company was initially issued a fine of 9,000, to be paid every day they did not reveal the data. That fine was later upped to 180,000 a day, and later Dzodan's arrest was ordered.

Facebook called the arrest an extreme and disproportionate".

10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Show all 10 1 /10 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Around 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, with the site estimating in September last year that users had so far put up more than 250 billion images. Thats 4,000 photos uploaded every second and around 4 per cent of all photos ever taken, according to a study by Nokia. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Facebooks logo is blue because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colour blind. Blue is the richest color for me. I can see all of blue," said Zuckerberg in an interview with the New Yorker. The colour is so popular that Facebooks campus store even sells nail polish in the exact shade named social butterfly blue. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Zuckerberg's famously low-key wardrobe (either a grey t-shirt or a hoodie) is so that the CEO saves time deciding what to wear each day. However, Zuckerberg is known to dress up when the occasion demands it. For a 2011 event with Barack Obama he showed up in a suit, with the president introducing himself by saying: Im Barack Obama and Im the guy who got Mark to wear a jacket and tie. REUTERS/Brian Snyder 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook In July 2006 Zuckerberg turned down a $1 billion offer for the site from Yahoo. He was 22 years old at the time and owned 25 per cent of the company. Zuckerberg reportedly turned it down by saying I don't know what I could do with the money. I'd just start another social networking site. I kind of like the one I already have. He definitely made the right choice: Facebook is now valued at $135 billion. 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook A YouGov poll claimed that three-quarter of UK Facebook users' photos showed someone drinking or inebriated. However, the poll did ask users to estimate the number of boozy snaps themselves, and like all things on Facebook, there might have been an element of exaggeration involved. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Facebook operates a bounty hunter program  for bugs. Like many other big technology companies Facebook offers cash rewards to security researchers who point out flaws in the sites code. The minimum payout is $500 and the largest prize to date has been $33,500. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook More than a third of divorce filings in 2011 referenced Facebook, said a survey from UK-based legal firm Divorce Online. The exact figures may be an estimate, but with just under 8 trillion Facebook messages sent in 2013 its certain that a substantial body of evidence is to be found on the social network. 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Zuckerberg isnt much of a Twitter fan. Despite having nearly three hundred thousand followers on the service hes only tweeted 19 times - once in 2012 and the rest in 2009. Although Facebook dwarfs twitter in terms of active users (1 billion compared with 200 million by some accounts) the micro-blogging site handles breaking news better. Facebook has introduced trending topics and hashtags to counter this. 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook Following the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 Iceland decided to rewrite their constitution using Facebook to solicit suggestions from citizens. Unfortunately, despite this forward thinking approach, the document was killed by politicians in mid-2013 for various (mostly technical) reasons. 10 facts you didnt know about Facebook You can browse Facebook upside down. Facebook currently supports more than 70 different languages  including English (Pirate) and English (Upside Down). Check the bottom of the column on the right of your newsfeed and click your current language to change!

It claimed that since WhatsApp operates independently from its parent company, Dzodan, as a Facebook employee, should not be held responsible.

It also said that because messages sent through WhatsApp are encrypted, the company doesn't even have access to the information the authorities are asking for.

Facebook and WhatsApp have faced challenges in Brazil before. Late last year, WhatsApp was shut down in the country for 48 hours, again over the company's alleged non-compliance with a court order.

Brazil was hailed as a model for net neutrality in 2014, after passing into law an 'Internet Bill of Rights' guaranteeing users online privacy and freedom of expression.

However, the country's congress has recently been making moves to crack down on internet freedom, discussing laws that would require citizens to provide their personal information to access certain websites.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Apple is adding new features to its iPhone to help people know if theyre being spied on.

Phones running the as yet unreleased version of iOS, 9.3, will receive an alert if their employers are spying on them, according to a post by Reddit user MaGNeTiX.

The latest beta shows a small message on phones that are being managed under Apples Device Enrollment Program, which allows companies to deploy and manage a large number of phones and keep them secured.

This iPhone is managed by your organisation, a message on the handsets lock screen reads. The about page offers more information about the tracking, making clear that companys IT departments can monitor and locate devices that are being managed using the software.

The feature doesnt appear to offer any way to know whether a handset is being watched at any particular moment, and no way of altering those settings, which must be done by the devices owner. But it helps remind users that their personal information might not be secure if their handsets are owned by their employer.

 Apple appeals court decision on unlocking an iPhone

The company is engaged in a number of battles over privacy  most prominently with the FBI in the US, where it is fighting in court over whether it can be compelled to unlock a phone. The new update doesnt seem to be linked to any of those discussions but comes at a time of increased scrutiny of Apples security policies.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

The FBI case revolves around an iPhone that was owned by the government and given to one of the San Bernardino shooters as an employee. But the government did not install any such software, despite having paid for it, according to previous reports.

The feature was discovered in a beta version of Apple's iOS software, which means that Apple could remove it before the full version is released to the public.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A group of Isis hackers falsely boasted they had hacked Google - but instead targeted a website with a similar name.

A group calling itself the "Cyber Caliphate Army" vowed on messaging app Telegram they would attack Google on Monday, Vocativ.com reported.

"We promised to hack Google," the group declared.

"Keep the promise inshallah [God willing], expect us today."

However, a few hours later, they had instead defaced the website www.addgoogleonline.com, which is reportedly registered by someone named Gandani K. from India.

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

After it was hacked, the website played an Isis song in French and displaced the group's logo along with a sign saying "Hacked By: CCA".

The group also allegedly published a list of 35 British websites it had targeted, saying the attacks were revenge for the killing of British-born Isis hacker Junaid Hussain.

Hussain was killed by a US airstrike last year.

Among the sites targeted were those of a salon, an instructor who offers Japanese dance classes and businesses selling bedroom furniture and laminate flooring.

 Russia and Syria are 'weaponising migration'

The hackers said the attacks were "a message to David Cameron".

The attacks follow pro-Isis hackers' threats that they would target the founders of Facebook and Twitter for shutting down their social media accounts.

Last year, Isis hackers successfully accessed the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, posting personal details of senior officers.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Kanye West tweeted out a picture apparently showing him browsing The Pirate Bay, for which he has been roundly mocked. But one of his other tabs contained perhaps a far more worrying page.

MacKeeper, which could be seen in the fifth tab along on Kanye Wests computer, is a piece of software that is marketed through various pushy advertising techniques and has attracted vast amounts of complaints for not actually working.

Mr West appears to have come into contact with MacKeeper through a pop-under on The Pirate Bay website. That is one of the most popular ways of coming across the company and its app, which is advertised by opening up new tabs under the current one which are showed when the user gets round to shutting the page that theyre on.

The company also sends little pop-ups that mimic the official alerts sent by Macs. Please consider cleaning your Mac from junk, the message reads, and clicking OK prompts people to leave to the MacKeeper software page.

The companys other big advertising technique is having user reviews posted around the internet that help it appear to be receiving love from users. But many of those reviews appear to have come affiliate sites, which make money by encouraging people to buy the software.

The company has said that its advertising techniques lead to satisfied customers.

Recommended Read more Kanye West posts screengrab on Twitter with some interesting tabs open

Some have suggested that the software itself is not as good as claimed, and slows down computers and causes issues for users. But the company says that much of that criticism comes from people annoyed with its advertising techniques, rather than the apps themselves.

The company told blog Cult of Mac that some people take their hatred for advertising to a level where they dedicate hours of their lives to making MacKeeper a Forum Punching Bag.

In a perfect world there would be no advertisements on radio, TV, billboards or the internet, but this is not a reality. As long as there are ads, there will be people who hate them.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

The company told The Independent that it had been working to ensure that ads were not problematic. It launched a new Anti Scare Ads Initiative to allow users to report problem ads, and its compliance department will look to have them taken down.

Removing the software can be a difficult process. The software makes itself very hard to delete  and even once that has successfully been done, it installs itself in various parts of the operating system so that it manages to cling on.

The best way to remove the software if it is sticking around is to search for the word MacKeeper, or its developer Kromtech, and remove everything that comes up.

MacKeeper was contacted to comment on this article, but had not responded at the time of publication.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Now that the dust has settled on Mobile World Congress and the initial hype has died down, Samsung fans can begin anxiously waiting for the release of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, the company's new flagship smartphones.

In an impressive and slightly surreal unveiling event - in which Mark Zuckerberg made a surprise appearance - the devices' specs were revealed to the world.

Fortunately for fans, it won't be long until they can get their hands on the S7.

Pre-orders and release date

The S7 and S7 Edge became available to pre-order immediately after the event on 21 February. You can put your name down for one on Samsung's website, or pre-order it from the mobile networks.

It currently comes in either black or gold, but more colours may be released during its lifetime.

Those who pre-order should get their phones on 8 March, according to Samsung. It'll go on sale in shops a few days later on 11 March.

Pre-ordering customers will also get a free Gear VR headset with the device, according to Samsung. However, since the S7 and S7 Edge seem to be breaking pre-order records around the world, the company might not be able to keep up with demand.

Price

If you're paying all at once, the S7 costs 569 on Samsung's website, and the S7 Edge costs 639.

It's also available to pre-order from a few different mobile networks, each offering the usual range of deals and contracts.

Mobile networks

In the UK, Vodafone, 3, EE, Carphone Warehouse, Virgin Mobile, O2 and GiffGaff will be offering contracts on the S7 and S7 Edge.

Recommended Read more Seven reasons why you should get the Samsung Galaxy S7

There's the usual array of offers from the mobile networks, each offering different monthly tariffs with different data allowances and upfront costs.

It can also pay to check out third-party retailers like MobilePhonesDirect, who often sell phones and major network contracts for much lower prices than you'd find on the high street. For example, on Mobiles.co.uk, you can get an S7 with 11GB of monthly data and unlimited calls and texts for 36 a month via Vodafone, with a 100 handset cost.

It pays to shop around when you're getting a new phone, so check out all the major networks and the lesser-known sites before ordering.
Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

My grandmother once told me this little story that stuck with me. One afternoon at a doctors appointment, her doctor moved her large purse to another chair and remarked how heavy it was. You must be very rich, he said to her. I am, she said affirmatively.

My grandparents lived modestly, still in the narrow two-bedroom rowhouse where shed raised her family since her husband returned from World War II. They didnt travel, eat lavish meals or shop at the finest department stores. Neither had careers that followed their passions. (She would have been an amazing teacher, he an exquisite artist.) Yet, she genuinely considered herself rich because she had a husband, children and grandchildren whom she adored.

My grandmother knew what Harvard researchers have since confirmed: Relationships are the key to a happy life.

Recommended Read more These two minute daily habits will make you happier immediately

Robert Waldinger, a Harvard psychiatrist, took over the more than 75-year-long Grant Study in 2003, becoming the fourth person to run it. He recently gave a TedTalk on it that has been viewed more than 6.5 million times since November 2015.

Waldinger felt it was important to do it. The federal government had spent millions on the study for decades, but everyday taxpayers didnt really know what was discovered.

And theres certainly an appetite for knowing what makes a good life.

Famous people remember their happiest moments Show all 6 1 /6 Famous people remember their happiest moments Famous people remember their happiest moments 652602.bin COURTESY OF RANULPH FIENNES Famous people remember their happiest moments 652603.bin Diana Athill Famous people remember their happiest moments 652604.bin COURTESY OF KATHARINE HAMNETT Famous people remember their happiest moments 652605.bin COURTESY OF NIAMH CUSACK Famous people remember their happiest moments 652606.bin COURTESY OF BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH Famous people remember their happiest moments 652607.bin COURTESY OF MARCUS DU SAUTOY

The longest study of human development, the ongoing Grant Study is a decades-long project that began following the lives of Harvard University men selected in 1938  among them President John F. Kennedy and former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee  and tracked every aspect of their lives. In the 1970s, that study teamed with a similar one that had been following a group of young men from inner-city Boston tenements since the 1940s. That has allowed them to contrast social status and upbringings, but otherwise everyone in the study is a white male.

Periodically the mens physical and emotional well-being are assessed. Recently that has included genetic testing. Many conclusions have been gleaned from monitoring these lives from young adult through old age, but to Waldinger theres one clear takeaway: The happiest and healthiest participants in both groups were the ones who maintained close, intimate relationships.

Waldinger, an Iowan who went to Harvard for undergrad and never left, has known the answer for years. Hes studied relationships his whole career and brought that perspective with him to the study. His first grant proposal as director was to invite the wives of the men  those still alive then in their 80s  to examine the impact of marriages on physical health.

Those satisfied in their relationships were happier and healthier. It was that simple.

People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely, Waldinger said in his TedTalk. And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old.

Waldinger wants people to realise that the commercial projection of a good life  wealth, fame, career success  wont bring them health or happiness. Its the work they put into maintaining connections with other human beings that will.

Quality and intimacy, as well as stability and consistency also matter. Casual relationships, like the ones forged on social media wont do; neither will contentious ones like an abusive marriage or an unreliable friend.

Most of the men in the late 1930s believed career achievement equated a good life. But Waldinger says its just as important to work harder on relationships. And for personal happiness, more so.

Since doing the TedTalk, Waldinger has received hundreds of emails. Hes started a blog to continue the conversation about what makes a good life.

He said messages range from, I always knew it was true, but look around and people act like its not what is important, to What if you are totally alone and have no one in your life?

To the latter he recommends they seek out ways to connect with other people, perhaps by volunteering to help people who are lonely, like the elderly.

Its useful to know its a choice worth making, he said.

His research has inspired him to make his own changes. In his field, there is a lot of pressure to continue researching and publishing. But hes realised that its his role as teacher  the connection between mentor and student  that is more satisfying, so hes invested more time in that.

It has also spurred him to consciously reach out more to friends who are sick or struggling, even if it feels uncomfortable, because he knows how much that connection will mean to them.

What wed really like is a quick fix, something we can get thatll make our lives good and keep them that way, Waldinger said in his TedTalk. Relationships are messy and theyre complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, its not sexy or glamorous. Its also lifelong. It never ends.

So, go take that longer lunch break with your co-worker. Call a friend for a long overdue catch up. Its good for your health.

Copyright: Washington Post
Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Identical twins are one of the most mysterious miracles in nature. From the moment their one zygote splits into two, they embark on parallel lives; the same and yet completely different.

US astronaut, and identical twin, Scott Kelly touched down on Earth yesterday morning after almost a year in space. Scott  and his fellow cosmonaut, Russian-born Mikhail Kornienko  spent 340 days aboard the International Space Station. The extended tour, which was twice the length of a normal stay, was part of a project to study the effects of space on the human body. To that end, for the past year, scientists have been performing tests on spaceman Scott and his Earthbound identical twin Mark, to compare the differences.

Twins have long been a source of scientific enquiry. Not only do they make interesting subjects in themselves, but they also allow researchers to test varying environments on one twin, while keeping the other as an identical constant. But twins are not carbon copies.

Nasa unveils space tourism posters Show all 6 1 /6 Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters It is particularly fitting that the Nasa commission went to Don and Ryan Clark, who have been running Invisible Creature since 2006, undertaking projects for the likes of Nike and Target Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus Nasa Nasa unveils space tourism posters Nasa space tourism posters If global travel is for daydreamers, going beyond the atmosphere is for true space cadets Nasa

An identical twin myself, I'm aware of the subtle differences between monozygotic siblings; distinctions which perhaps might be too delicate for the naked, non-twin eye. Lydia and I look similar, but we're not the same. Our eyes might be the same shade of blue, but mine are wider in shape. Her feet are slightly bigger; my face is longer. And then  of course  there's the fact that I've cut a blunt fringe into my bleached blonde hair and pierced my ear cartilage six times; she favours a more natural look. Our differences extend beyond physical appearance, too. She's extremely organised; I'm less so. She's more patient, while I have a quick temper. When our dad died (probably our biggest life event so far), she didn't want to talk about it, whereas I confided in anyone and everyone. In short, we are two completely different people.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lydia and I have always been fascinated by twin studies. I'm not sure either of us would want to go into space, but we've talked about the next best thing: signing up to TwinsUK, the biggest adult twin registry in the UK. The register comprises 12,000 twins who are used to study the genetic and environmental causes of different traits and diseases.

According to Tim Spector, Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College London and director of the Twins UK Registry, twins are a "unique natural experiment", which allow scientists to study nature versus nurture.

"There's no other way of getting this information," he says. "Identical twins can have the same DNA and the same genes but in one twin a gene might be switched off."

This small variance, Professor Spector says, could manifest itself either physically or mentally in a person, and he explains why even identical twins differ. As a result of their twin research, scientists have discovered a range of genetic conditions previously thought to be environmental, including varicose veins and acne. At the same time, diseases which were originally thought to be caused entirely by genetics have surprised scientists. One such disease is cancer. "Back pain is three times more genetic than breast cancer," says Professor Spector.

Chloe Hamilton and her twin sister Lydia, right

The space study, however, might not be as revealing as previously hoped. Professor Spector says he has mixed views on it. "Any serious twin researcher knows that it's a silly design. The actual experiment itself isn't very useful because one twin stayed on Earth. They should have put both twins in space."

Professor Spector says that the Nasa researchers would get more accurate results if they compared statistics taken from astronaut Scott Kelly last year, when he was still on Earth, with statistics taken from him post-space expedition. "And then you look at the before and after," he says.

 NASA releases mesmerising footage of suns surface

Because, as any twin will tell you, we're not exact replicas. Our very similar bodies and minds still react differently to different things, and that includes spending 340 days in space.

Twin to twin, though, I have to applaud the Kelly brothers. Lydia and I rarely spend longer than a week apart. She's away at the moment, actually, and we're both so out of sorts that we've come down with identical, stress-related colds. I don't know how they managed a year.
Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Cuba reported its first case of Zika on Wednesday, diagnosed in a 28-year-old Venezuelan doctor whose husband and brother-in-law previously contracted the virus in their home country.

The World Health Organization declared the Zika outbreak, suspected of causing thousands of birth defects in Brazil, an international health emergency on Feb. 1, although much about the virus remains unknown.

The patient arrived in Cuba on Feb. 21 to take a post-graduate course in medicine along with 37 others.

She reported a fever a day later and was diagnosed with Zika on Monday. She was recovering well in hospital, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Her husband was diagnosed with Zika two months ago and her brother two weeks before she traveled, the statement said.

Zika is carried by mosquitoes, which transmit the virus to humans, though the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said on Feb. 23 it was investigating possible cases of sexual transmission.

The outbreak has spread to many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and the WHO estimates Zika could eventually affect as many as four million people in the region.

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 Cuban government, which has fumigated neighborhoods and homes for decades to contain dengue  also a mosquito-borne virus and a close cousin of Zika  put doctors on alert for the virus weeks ago and ramped up mosquito eradication efforts.

The WHO is investigating a strongly suspected relationship between Zika and microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size. There is no vaccine or treatment for the virus and some 80 percent of people infected show no symptoms.

Reuters
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The president of the Confederation of British Industry, an organisation representing employers of one-third of the UK's private sector workforce, has hit back at claims that the pro-EU lobby is scaremongering when it warns of the difficulties Britain would face if it leaves the EU.

Paul Drechsler, CBI president, said that businesses must take responsibility for informing people on whether or not the UK should remain part of the EU on June 23.

People say the facts are just scaremongering, but these are the facts: we will negotiate better trade deals from within the EU. If we leave Europe, Article 50 says 27 countries, excluding the UK, will decide what the deal is. Were not even in the room, Drechsler told the Independent.

Drechsler also said it is indisputable that the UK would face a long period of uncertainty if it leaves, because it would have to negotiate the terms of its relationship with the EU as well as many other trading relationships around the world. He said that estimates vary for how long it would take to complete all 50 deals.

It could take 10 years, maybe more. Its sure as hell a long time, because youve got to resource them. History says trade deals take a long time to do, he said.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled  leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

Dominic Raab, parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Justice, told the BBC on Wednesday that the pro-EU lobbys scaremongering stories were hurting their campaign.

I think there has been far too much scaremongering. Its like Halloween come early, you have a scare story each week, its like there are ghoulish prospects outside the European Union, he said.

Drechsler said that he believes the CBI's 140 trade associations and 190,000 businesses are largely in favour of the EU. A 2013 report found that eight out of 10 CBI members want the UK to stay in the EU.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The super-rich continue to invest in classic cars and jewellery even as their wealth keeps shrinking.

The number of Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs), those whose net assets are over $30 million excluding their main property, has shrank by 3 per cent, down for the first time in seven years, according to data provided by New World Wealth for the Knight Frank Wealth Report.

There are now 187,500 super rich individuals globally, down from 193,100 in 2014.

Analysts said the downward shift reflects the slower economic growth and the more volatile financial climate market.

But these factors have not prevented the wealthy individuals from spending on luxury items.

(Knight Frank)

The value of the overall Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index (KFLII) rose by 7 per cent during 2015.

Classic cars, with a rise of 17 per cent, were the top performer in the index, which tracks the price growth of 10 luxury investments sectors.

Wine and luxury watches both increased by 5 per cent, while jewellery saw a rise of 4 per cent.

The super wealthy are still in pursuit of the worlds most desirable objects. A Hong Kong businessman paid the top price ever achieved for a piece of jewellery  the Blue Moon diamond  in 2015.

www.statista.com (Statista)

A string of other auctions throughout the year kept luxury investments in the spotlight.

Although no classic car managed to beat the record set by Bonhams in 2014 when it auctioned a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Berlinetta for $38 million, eight of the 25 cars ever to have sold for over $10 millon at auction went under the hammer in 2015, said Andrew Shirley, editor of the Wealth Report.

Even furniture, which has performed poorly over the last decade, secured a new high for a living maker when a Marc Newson Lockheed Lounge sofa was sold in April for 2.4 million by Phillips, he added.

The art index rose by 4 per cent as last year saw more records breaking in the modern art world.

Picassos Women of Algiers notched up a new record for a painting sold at auction after making over $179 million, while Reclining Nude by Modigliani was not far behind, going under the hammer for $170 million to a buyer from Shanghai.

Other global luxury spending trends include the continued growth in sales of super-yachts, with a 40 per increase in sales.

The worlds 1,810 billionaires have lost a total of $570 billion in a year, according to Forbes magazines annual list of the richest people in the world for 2016.

Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Show all 10 1 /10 Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Bill Gates - $75 bn The creator of Microsoft is worth $78 billion. He has topped the list for 17 out of the past 22 years - though his net worth shrank by $4.2bn (3bn) to $75bn (53.7bn). Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Amancio Ortega - $67 bn The Spanish business who set up the Zara chain of high-street shops is worth $67 billion. REUTERS/ AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Warren Buffet - $60.8 bn Warren buffet is the world's most successful investor. Forbes rates him as being worth $60.8 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Carlos Slim Helu - $50 bn Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecom magnate, is this years biggest loser with a fortune of $50 billion, down from $77.1 billion last year. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Jeff Bezos - $45.2 bn Amazons Jeff Bezos moved up to the fifth from the fifteenth spot last year; his net worth increased to $45.2 billion. Getty Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Mark Zuckerberg - $44.6 bn The biggest gainer on the 2016 list is Mark Zuckerberg , whose fortune is up $11.2 billion for a total net worth of $44.6 billion. He is the sixth richest in the world. Getty Images Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Larry Ellison - $43.6 bn The American entrepreneur has a fortune of $43.6 billion Bloomberg Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Michael Bloomberg - $40 bn Michael Bloomberg, whose media and financial empire has created a personal fortune of $40 bn, is said to be willing to spend up to $1bn on a presidential campaign AP Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Charles Koch and David Koch - $39.6 bn Charles Koch, along with brother David Koch of Koch Industries are joint sixth and are valued at $39.6 billion. Forbes top 10 richest billionaires in the world Liliane Bettencourt - $36.1 bn Liliane Bettencourt is the heir to the LOreal empire Getty Images

The combined wealth of this years billionaires was $6.48 trillion, down from $7.05 trillion last year.

The number of billionaires has fallen from a record 1,825 last to 1,810 in 2015.

Only Bill Gates, who has topped the list for the last 22 years with a fortune now worth $75 billion, and Warren Buffet, the third richest man of the planet with $60.8 billion, managed to hold on to their places in the top 20.



These are the 10 collectable assets in which the super wealthy keep investing:



- Cars

- Coins

- Watches

- Wine

- Art

- Jewellery

- Stamps

- Chinese ceramics

- Coloured diamonds

- Furniture
Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A young British woman has become one of the first cancer patients to be injected with a new vaccine designed to stimulate the immune system so that it destroys tumours wherever they have spread in the body.

Kelly Potter, 35, was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer in July 2015 and was among the first to be enrolled on a cancer vaccine trial that will run over the next two years involving up to 30 volunteers.

Medical researchers have designed the vaccine to encourage the immune system to react against a part of the cancer cell that allows it to continuously replicate without ever dying.

At the same time, the patients on the trial will be prescribed a chemotherapy drug that should, at low doses, lift the brakes on the immune system so that it is no longer prevented from attacking the bodys own cancer cells, scientists said.

Ms Kelly, who lives in Beckenham, Kent, was diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer and was eligible for the trial at Guys Hospital in London because the disease has unfortunately spread to other sites in her body.

Although I had excellent treatment at Guys where the cancer was stabilised, it had already spread to spots on my liver and lungs. So when I was told that I may be eligible for this trial, I was delighted, Ms Potter said.

 Woman has 16kg tumour removed

To be part of this trial has changed my life for the better. Its been a very positive experience and really interesting. I feel honoured to be involved. You get the best treatment anyway at Guys but its fantastic to be part of something that could be ground breaking, she said.

Ms Potter was injected with the vaccine on 9 February and has another seven visits to the hospital to complete the treatment. Doctors have warned her that she may experience flu-like symptoms, although none has appeared to far, she said.

My hope for the future is to beat the cancer for as long as I can, and if I cant, I have come to terms with that. I would like to go on and inspire others with cancer, she said.

13 ways to help prevent cancer Show all 13 1 /13 13 ways to help prevent cancer 13 ways to help prevent cancer Stopping smoking. This notoriously difficult habit to break sees tar build-up in the lungs and DNA alteration and causes 15,558 cancer deaths a year 13 ways to help prevent cancer Avoiding the sun, and the melanoma that comes with overexposure to harmful UV rays, could help conscientious shade-lovers dodge being one of the 7,220 people who die from it 13 ways to help prevent cancer A diet that is low in red meat can help to prevent bowel cancer, according to the research - with 30 grams a day recommended for men, and 25 a day recommended for women 13 ways to help prevent cancer Foods high in fibre, meanwhile, can further make for healthier bowels. Processed foods in developed countries appear to be causing higher rates of colon cancer than diets in continents such as Africa, which have high bean and pulse intakes 13 ways to help prevent cancer Two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables a day were given as the magic number for good diet in the research. Overall, diet causes only slightly fewer cancer deaths than sun exposure in Australia, at 7,000 a year 13 ways to help prevent cancer Obesity and being overweight, linked to poor diet and lack of exercise, causes 3,917 deaths by cancer a year on its own Getty 13 ways to help prevent cancer Dying of a cancer caused by infection also comes in highly, linked to 3,421 cancer deaths a year. Infections such as human papilloma virus - which can cause cervical cancer in women - and hepatitis - can be prevented by vaccinations and having regular check-ups 13 ways to help prevent cancer Cutting back on drinks could reduce the risk of cancers caused by alcohol - such as liver cancer, bowel cancer, breast cancer and mouth cancer - that are leading to 3,208 deaths a year 2014 Getty Images 13 ways to help prevent cancer Sitting around and not getting the heart pumping - less than one hour's exercise a day - is directly leading to about 1,800 people having lower immune functions and higher hormone levels, among other factors, that cause cancers 2011 Getty Images 13 ways to help prevent cancer Hormone replacement therapy, which is used to relieve symptoms of the menopause in women, caused 539 deaths from (mainly breast) cancer in Australia last year. It did, however, prevent 52 cases of colorectal cancers 2003 Getty Images 13 ways to help prevent cancer Insufficient breastfeeding, bizarrely, makes the top 10. Breastfeeding for 12 months could prevent 235 cancer cases a year, said the research AFP/Getty Images 13 ways to help prevent cancer Oral contraceptives, like the Pill, caused about 105 breast cancers and 52 cervical cancers - but it also prevented about 1,440 ovarian and uterine (womb) cases of cancer last year 2006 Getty Images 13 ways to help prevent cancer Taking aspirin also prevented 232 cases in the Queensland research of colorectal and oesophagal cancers - but as it can also cause strokes, is not yet recommended as a formal treatment against the risk of cancer

The vaccine contains a small fragment of protein from an enzyme called human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), which allows cancer cells to divide continuously. It is hoped that by injecting this antigen into the bloodstream, it will stimulate the immune system to make antibodies that attack cancer cells but leave normal, healthy cell untouched, scientists said.

We know that the immune system in patients with advanced cancer is suppressed, so its unable to recognise and kill cancer cells, said Professor Hardev Pandah, principal investigator on the trial from the University of Surrey in Guildford.

In this trial we are investigating a form of immunotherapy designed to activate the bodys immune system by administration of a vaccine based on fragments to a key cancer protein, Professor Pandah said.

James Spicer, the chief investigator on the trial at Guys and St Thomas Biomedical Research Centre in London, said that low doses of a chemotherapy drug will be given to the patients alongside the vaccine in order to stimulate an effective immune response against tumour cells.

The unique feature of this study is the use of additional agents to boost the vaccination response. It is hoped this will abolish the inhibitory effect of regulatory immune cells present in the patients circulation, which are believed to have limited the effectiveness of previous cancer vaccine approaches, Dr Spicer said.

There are very few solid tumours that shouldnt be susceptible to this sort of treatment. This is a phase one trial, but we are pretty confident that it will be safe  but whether or not it will be effective, we will have to wait and see, he said.
Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A massive volcanic eruption many thousands of times bigger than anything seen on Earth, or indeed anywhere else in the Solar System, changed the face of Mars forever at a time when life on our own planet had just begun, a study has found.

The Red Planet we see today through our telescopes and binoculars has tilted on its axis by up to 25 degrees from its original position about three billion years ago, according to a detailed study of the dry Martian valleys created by ancient volcanic activity.

Recommended Read more Scientists believe they may have found evidence that life once existed

Scientists have calculated that the creation of the Tharsis dome, which at 5,000km in diameter is the biggest volcanic outcrop in the Solar System, shifted the centre of gravity of the entire planet so that its surface became twisted like the flesh of an apricot around its stone, the researchers said.

The Martian poles also shifted by between 20 and 25 degrees, which might explain why Nasas Phoenix lander of 2008 detected water ice at a location that was once a polar ice cap, said Sylvain Bouley of the Universite Pari-Sud, and the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.

 Tim Peake: Night time timelapse

When the Tharsis dome formed it became so big that the planet was no longer stable. Tharsis had to shift to the equator to regain stability. It was a long process taking between 10 and 20 million years  anything shorter and wed see tectonic faults, which we dont, Dr Bouley said.

The Tharsis volcanic region is much bigger than anything seen on Earth. Dr Bouley estimated that it must be about 10,000 times the size of the giant volcanoes on Hawaii, a size that allowed a dramatic and permanent change in the Martian landscape.

Mars was a very different planet to the one we are able to see today. We need to understand how its landscape has changed over time if we are to get the best out of future missions to the planet, Dr Bouley said.

The study was based on interpreting the original positions of the valley networks on Mars, which now have an unusual distribution but were once aligned in parallel to the Martian equator before they were twisted by the changing landscape.
Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent Nadine White Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter The Race Report Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

The Race Report email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Scotland Yard has been ordered to reopen an investigation into allegations that its officers used a secret Facebook group to air racist views about ethnic minorities, after the police watchdog ruled that its original investigation was inadequate.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said the Metropolitan Polices investigation into the racism claims  which concluded without any officers being formally disciplined or charged  was not appropriate given the serious nature of the allegations.

The claims centre around comments made about Gypsies and Travellers on an invitation-only Facebook group called Ive Met the Met. Many of the groups 3,000 participants are understood to be serving or retired police officers.

Transcripts seen by The Independent and later investigated by Scotland Yard showed the groups members discussing their hatred of f***ing pikeys and low-life Gypsies. Both Travellers and Gypsies are officially recognised as ethnic minorities, making discrimination against them illegal.

In January, the Mets investigation concluded without any officers being formally disciplined. The Traveller Movement charity, which lodged the original complaint with the force, decided to appeal against the outcome through the IPCC after claiming that the Mets five-month investigation was shambolic and disrespectful and amounted to a whitewash.

The watchdog has now ordered the Met to reopen its investigation after discovering that the officer in charge failed to contact any of the police staff who took part in the allegedly racist discussion. He was also unable to establish whether any serving officers had liked the comments, because he was not given full access to the Facebook group, the IPCC said.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty 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

Considering the nature of the allegations and the potential for this complaint to discredit the police force, further inquiries need to be undertaken before this investigation is considered to be complete. Clearly some of the comments made on the group are offensive and of a racist nature, the watchdog said in a letter to the charity.

Recommended Read more This social experiment tells you a lot about racist abuse online

The IPCC also said the serving officers involved in the group should have opposed the allegedly racist comments or reported what was going on, as their code of ethics states they should be proactive in stopping discrimination.

A spokesman for the Traveller Movement said it was concerned that the comments reflected an unhealthy canteen culture within the Met which suggested it routinely discriminates against the Gypsy and Traveller communities. We look forward to the re-investigation of our complaint. We hope that this time they actually contact and interview the serving police officers concerned, he said.

A Met spokeswoman said: We will now reopen this investigation to undertake further inquiries to address these points. It would be inappropriate to comment further until our investigation has been concluded.

Serving and retired Met officers have been accused of posting racist comments about Gypsies and Travellers

Excerpts: The Facebook group posts

The Policing Diversity book reliably informed us we should remove your footwear when entering a Travellers caravan. Reply: Ha ha ha, thats only so they can nick them easier.

If you dont live in a caravan, claim dole, have four aliases, convictions for theft of scrap metal, and are an artisan driveway landscaper then sorry chap, youre not a proper Pikey no matter how many teas youve had from a baked bean can.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Two former senior Metropolitan Police officers linked to alleged undercover surveillance of Stephen Lawrences family cannot be questioned on the case because they have retired, a watchdog has admitted.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found that Commander Richard Walton and Detective Inspector Robert (Bob) Lambert have a case to answer" for discreditable conduct but can face no misconduct proceedings as they are no longer serving officers.

The probe started following a damning report by barrister Mark Ellison QC into the Lawrence murder case, which found that undercover officers had gathered information on the murdered teenagers parents as anger grew over their own failed investigation.

 Former Met Police chief investigated over Stephen Lawrence enquiry - London Live

It was more than 18 years before two of his killers - Gary Dobson and David Norris - were brought to justice and jailed for life.

The Ellison Report revealed a 1998 meeting between the spy, codenamed N81, and Mr Walton as he drafted Scotland Yards response to the Macpherson Inquiry into failings in its original investigation.

The IPCC alleged that Mr Walton, then an acting Detective Inspector, had met the undercover officer and obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the inquiry and public confidence.

N81, part of the Mets controversial Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), was well-placed in one of the groups that associated itself with, and tried to build relations with, both the Lawrence family and other groups in the years after Stephens racist murder, the Ellison Report said.

Although N81 was adamant that there was no specific instruction to infiltrate the Lawrence family campaign, his deployment at a time when relatives were making public accusations of police failures and corruption should have raised concern, the review found.

The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence Show all 7 1 /7 The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-1-REUT.jpg Neville Lawrence addressing the media last week Reuters The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-2-PA.jpg The now iconic family handout photo of Stephen PA The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-3-BBC.jpg Doreen Lawrence on Panorama last week BBC The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-4-GETTY.jpg Doreen Lawrence speaking to the press outside the Old Bailey last week Getty Images The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-5-ALDEN.jpg Tributes lay at the site of the murder in Eltham, south east London Jason Alden The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-6-ANDREW.jpg Neville and Doreen Lawrence, pictured here in 1997, never gave up the fight to bring the killers of their son Buurman Andrew The life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence SU-50-Lawrence-7-BBC.jpg Stephen Lawrence was buried in rural Jamaica, near his great-grandmother, because his mother Doreen worried that a grave in Britain could be desecrated BBC

It has previously been claimed that N81 told Mr Walton that Stephen's parents had separated, although the IPCC found no evidence of this.

Mr Lambert, former Commander Colin Black and two other ex-officers were identified as potentially playing a part in arranging the meeting in August 1998.

The IPCC found that Mr Lambert, who left Special Branch in 2007, would have had a case to answer for misconduct, but that Mr Black and the other two officers would not.

The investigation found no evidence that N81 passed information about the Lawrence family or their campaign to Mr Walton at the meeting, and the MPS submissions to the Inquiry were not altered, the IPCC concluded.

However, if the fact of the meeting had become public at the time of the Inquiry, this might well have caused very serious public concern.

Mr Lambert was found to have a case to answer for misconduct for his part in arranging the meeting while Mr Waltons case involved his attendance at the meeting.

Mr Walton was temporarily moved from his job leading the force's counter-terrorism command in 2014 and retired on 20 January this year, while the other investigated officers have also left their posts.

Robert Lambert, then in the Muslim Contact Unit Metropolitan Police in London speaks during an anti terror Conference in Copenhagen, 26 April 2007. (AFP/Getty Images)

It means that IPCC cannot make recommendations that disciplinary meetings and interviews are undertaken, nor can the allegations be proven.

All had been served with notices saying they were being investigated over allegations amounting to possible gross misconduct.

Sarah Green, deputy chair of the IPCC, said: During the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, the honesty and integrity of the Metropolitan Police was rightly under intense public scrutiny. The forces reputation may have suffered immense damage had the meeting become public knowledge at the time.

The IPCC found that Robert Lambert and Richard Walton both had a case to answer for discreditable conduct in that their actions could have brought the force into disrepute. As neither of the men are now serving police officers, it is not possible for misconduct proceedings to take place to determine whether or not the case would be proven.

In January, lawyers for Stephen's father, Neville Lawrence, made an unsuccessful attempt to stop Mr Walton retiring so that he could face misconduct claims.

Baroness Lawrence, his mother, told the Daily Mail at the time: I find it upsetting to think that Commander Walton might be able to retire without being held to account.

With the exception of one detective, nobody has been looked into for corruption or wrongdoing and no one has been charged in relation to anything that has happened in Stephen's case.

We're coming up to 23 years since Stephen's murder and all the failings of the original investigation are still hanging around for my family.

The IPCC investigation is the latest in a long series of probes into the Stephen Lawrence murder case following the 18-year-olds killing by a racist gang in south-east London on 22 April 1993.

Doreen Lawrence, centre, with son Stuart and solicitor Imran Khan after meeting Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe in 2013 (Getty)

The circumstances of the murder and the subsequent police investigation were reviewed by the Macpherson Inquiry, which reported in 1999, and in 2012 the Home Secretary established The Ellison Review specifically to look at undercover policing.

Following its exposure of the meeting between Mr Walton and N81, the MPS referred the conduct of officers involved to the IPCC in April 2014.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said the force responded to the IPCC to say it disagreed that Mr Lambert and Mr Waltons conduct could have amounted to misconduct.

Whilst there is little doubt the meeting on August 14th 1998 took place, there is little or no evidence to suggest that either of the former officer's intentions in attending or arranging the meeting was in anyway improper or that any of the information passed to, the then, Acting Inspector Walton was used, or could have been used, to supplement the Met's submissions to the Macpherson Inquiry or indeed that any information relating specifically to the Lawrences or their campaign was exchanged, he added.

We believe that if the evidence points towards the meeting being legitimate or there is insufficient evidence that it was not legitimate then there could be no finding of misconduct, gross or otherwise, for either officer.



Additional reporting by PA
Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Material used to make nuclear weapons has been flown in British airspace 23 times in the past five years, the Government has admiteed.

The flights were transporting Defence Nuclear Materials between the UK and US, the minister for the Armed Forces, Penny Mordaunt, said.

However, despite the potential hazard posed if a plane had crashed, the precise nature of the materials is being kept secret.

The revelations come as a result of a question asked by Brendan O'Hara, the SNP MP for Argyll and Bute. He wanted to know if nuclear weapons materials had ever been flown into Scottish airspace.

Ms Mordaunt said: In the last five years, 23 flights carrying Defence Nuclear Materials (DNM) were undertaken. All flights were between the UK and the United States on fixed wing aircraft under the control of UK Armed Forces.

No such flights passed over Scotland, or involved the use of helicopters.

She declined to elaborate further on the materials for security reasons: I am withholding details of the physical state, mass and radiological quantity of DNM transported as disclosure would or would be likely to prejudice national security.

The transport of DNM is carried out to the highest standard in accordance with stringent safety regulations. In over 50 years of transporting DNM in the UK, there has never been an incident that has posed any radiation hazard to the public or to the environment.

Mr OHara said in response: This answer is alarming and highlights a practice most of the public are unaware of.

The MoD need to outline what risk and safety assessments they made about these flights and precisely when and what areas of UK airspace were used, the Guardian reported.

 Jeremy Corbyn recalls Hiroshima 'horror' at Trident rally

I fear the MoD does not have a great track record on transparency when it comes to nuclear issues  and this answer clearly begs more questions.

The general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Kate Hudson told the Independent:

The minister is presumably referring to the transportation of material relating to nuclear warhead production  a reminder of one of the ways Trident isnt an independent nuclear weapons system.

But her answer raises a number of important questions. Why are there so many journeys? Why are such large quantities?"

She added: "Its not answers to these questions that pose a threat to our security, but the fact that these materials of being transported in the first place. Trident makes us a target, and no matter how stringent the safety regulations, we will not deal with this threat by spending up to as much as 183 billion on replacing Trident.

Other critics have voiced fears that an accident involving an aircraft carrying nuclear materials could contaminate large areas of land and have raised doubts that transporting the materials is in line with civil regulations for the international movement of nuclear material.

Training exercises run by the Ministry of Defence codenamed Astral Bend took place in 2011 and 2012 which dealt with scenarios in which planes carrying nuclear materials crashed in mainland Britain.

The training exercises revealed numerous shortcomings in the emergency response, which would have led to avoidable deaths, according to the Guardian.

However, the emergency services have said that their hazardous materials response has since improved.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A claim that Britains membership of the EU is worth 3,000 to every UK family has been branded blatantly misleading and a scandalous abuse of data.

In a bruising session in front of the Commons Treasury Committee, Lord Rose, the chairman of the main in campaign, was savaged by the committees chairman, Andrew Tyrie, over the groups continued use of the claim.

Mr Tyrie, who has yet to come out for either side in the referendum debate, urged the former Marks & Spencer executive to remove the claim, telling him that to continue using it would be intellectually dishonest.

Recommended Read more Dissenting ministers regain access to statistics supporting Brexit

During the session, Lord Rose appeared unable to answer Mr Tyries questions about when the five studies from which the number was derived were published and whether they related directly to the UK. He was also forced to admit that he had not read all the documents himself.

But he insisted he stood by the figure, which he said was produced by the CBI as a central estimate drawn from the results of the five studies.

Mr Tyrie said that the most recent of the studies was 10 years old and the oldest dated back to 2002, while two of them looked at the EU as a whole, rather than focusing specifically on the UK, and one said the costs of membership outweighed benefits.

He told Lord Rose: You are leading the campaign with this number; this isnt some recondite number in a footnote. This is one of the most important components of the case you want to put for continued membership of the EU by the UK.

Dont you think it is incumbent on you to make absolutely sure that number is robust? Yet you have come before the committee and you didnt even know that one of the five studies in question concluded that there were net disbenefits.

 Hammond on Brexit danger

But Lord Rose accused the committee chairman of impugning [his] integrity.

He said: Mr Tyrie, you have made it quite clear that you think the information I have laid out is absolute rubbish and you are obviously entitled to our own opinion. I stand by what I have said.

You are perfectly entitled to call my credibility into doubt, but what you are effectively saying is that the CBI  which is a much-respected organisation in the UK representing business  is putting out propaganda which is untrue. Frankly, I find that incredible.

Britain Stronger in Europe chief executive Will Straw stepped in to try to calm the row, saying the CBI had used a very standard economic practice of reviewing existing research into the economic impact of EU membership.

With this statistic and all the others we have used, we have made every effort to make sure we have used the most accurate information, said Mr Straw.

We have satisfied ourselves that it is accurate. We will continue to use it.

Boris Johnsons brother Jo  who is the Universities Minister and supporting the Remain campaign  will warn on 3 March that science and technology firms could suffer in a decade of uncertainty following a British exit.

In a speech at Cambridge University, the minister will acknowledge that the UK could survive outside the EU  but its status as a science superpower would be put at risk. We need to be building academic partnerships with our close neighbours, not turning our backs on them, he will say.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

David Cameron has been accused of publishing a dodgy dossier to support the case for staying in the European Union.

The Government study, released on Wednesday warns of a serious impact on British business were the UK to leave the EU  but has faced criticism from some Tory eurosceptics.

The research examines different options for the UK outside the EU and argues that Britain would be weaker, less safe and worse off outside the EU.

British businesses with supply chains in European countries would particularly suffer, the report says.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, criticised the reports approach  arguing that it was misleading.

This dodgy dossier wont fool anyone, and is proof that Remain are in denial about the risks of remaining in a crisis-ridden EU, the Brexit-supporting minister said.

The truth is, we wont copy any other countrys deal. We will have a settlement on our own terms - and one that will return control of our borders, and money to Britain. Thats the safer choice.

The tension between top Tories follows suggestions by Mr Duncan Smith that Mr Cameron had a "low opinion of the British people" because of his support for remaining in the EU.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond defended the report, however  arguing that Britain had a special status in the EU.

Iain Duncan Smith has criticised his party leader over Brexit in recent weeks (Crown copyright)

Hard-headed analysis shows that every alternative to remaining in a reformed EU would leave Britain weaker, less safe and worse off, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme.

Working people would pay the price with fewer jobs and rising prices. The report concludes that Britain is stronger, safer and better off in a reformed European Union.

Our special status gives us the best of both worlds: in the parts of Europe that work for us, but outside those that do not.

What has the EU ever done for us? Show all 7 1 /7 What has the EU ever done for us? What has the EU ever done for us? 1. It gives you freedom to live, work and retire anywhere in Europe As a member of the EU, UK citizens benefit from freedom of movement across the continent. Considered one of the so-called four pillars of the European Union, this freedom allows all EU citizens to live, work and travel in other member states. What has the EU ever done for us? 2. It sustains millions of jobs A report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, released in October 2015, suggested 3.1 million British jobs were linked to the UKs exports to the EU. What has the EU ever done for us? 3. Your holiday is much easier - and safer Freedom to travel is one of the most exercised benefits of EU membership, with Britons having made 31 million visits to the EU in 2014 alone. But a lot of the benefits of being an EU citizen are either taken for granted or go unnoticed. What has the EU ever done for us? 4. It means you're less likely to get ripped off Consumer protection is a key benefit of the EUs single market, and ensures members of the British public receive equal consumer rights when shopping anywhere in Europe. What has the EU ever done for us? 5. It offers greater protection from terrorists, paedophiles, people traffickers and cyber-crime Another example of a lesser-known advantage of EU membership is the benefit of cross-country coordination and cooperation in the fight against crime. What has the EU ever done for us? 6. Our businesses depend on it According to 71% of all members of the Confederation of British Influence (CBI), and 67 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the EU has had an overall positive impact on their business. What has the EU ever done for us? 7. We have greater influence Robin Niblett, Director of think-tank Chatham House, stated in a report published last year: For a mid-sized country like the UK, which will never again be economically dominant either globally or regionally, and whose diplomatic and military resources are declining in relative terms, being a major player in a strong regional institution can offer a critical lever for international influence.

The latest publication comes a day after the Boris Johnsons chief economist published a report that appeared to contradict the Mayors view in favour of Brexit.

That study warned of an economic shock of Britain left the EU  depressing economic activity  and higher risks in the long-term for the Capital from Brexit.

Mr Johnson had however written in a newspaper column the day earlier that there were greater risks to staying in  and admonished the Chancellor George Osborne for citing economic shocks.

The head of the civil service Jeremy Heywood yesterday told the Public Administration Committee in the House of Commons that it was common sense for civil servants to take the Governments position of supporting EU membership.

His statement follows a row about whether Brexit-supporting ministers would be given access to documents relating to the EU referendum.

The EU referendum will be held on 23 June this year.
Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A young Conservative activist thought to have killed himself may have suffered inhuman and degrading treatment at the hands of party members, an inquest into his death has been told.

Elliott Johnson was found dead near railway tracks in Bedfordshire last year, after having raised allegations of bullying in a Conservative youth organisation.

Heather Williams QC, representing Mr Johnsons parents, said authorities were obliged under human rights law to investigate allegations that might amount to inhuman or degrading treatment.

It's a situation where if these allegations of bullying and intimidation were made good in evidence at an inquest, it could well be a situation where the coroner's obligation to investigate is activated, she told the inquest.

The family believe his death was directly linked to a series of events that occurred in the last few weeks of his life and particularly bullying he experience by Mark Clarke and those associated with him.

Mr Johnson left a note, found after his death, in which he said he was bullied by Mark Clarke, a now former Tory activist who organised activist mobilisation for the Tory party during the 2015 election.

Mr Clarke, a former Conservative parliamentary candidate who has now been expelled from the Conservative party, denies the allegations against him.

Mark Clarke (front left) and Elliot Johnson (back right) on the stage at the Conservative Party conference in 2014 (PA)

The note released by Mr Johnsons parents last month reads:

These past few weeks have been the worst of my life. I find myself on the work scrapheap. My choice is end it now or wait till the death of my career when the money runs out.

I have also been involved in a huge political issue. I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker. Now all my political bridges are burnt.

Mr Walker says that he and Mr Johnson were close and denies any mistreatment of Mr Johnson.

A tape sent to police last year details a 90-minute conversation in a pub where Mr Clarke threatens to ruin Mr Johnsons career by exposing a Twitter gaffe at an election count.

In the same tape, Mr Walker, a friend of Mr Clarke, compares Mr Johnson to a Nazi collaborator for complaining about Mr Clarke.

Mr Johnsons parents have asked for the inquest to cover the general culture of bullying in the Conservative party.

Bedfordshire's senior coroner Tom Osborne said he will announce on Friday the scope of the full inquest into the death.
Sign up to our free Brexit and beyond email for the latest headlines on what Brexit is meaning for the UK Sign up to our Brexit email for the latest insight Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Brexit and beyond email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Brexit-supporting ministers will be allowed to access Government statistics that could support their argument for leaving the EU, the countrys top civil servant has said, in an apparent climb-down in the row over Whitehalls role in the EU referendum debate.

Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service, told MPs that he would be very relaxed by ministers obtaining factual information from their departments, and that controversial guidelines issued last week restricting access to some civil service documents only applied to prepared arguments and speech material.

The guidance had been branded an unconstitutional act by the employment minister Priti Patel.

Recommended Read more Mandelson breaks silence to warn of punishing Brexit cost

But in a combative appearance before the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 1 March, Sir Jeremy said he was really struggling to understand concerns around the guidance which he described as common sense.

While admitting that there had been teething issues and misunderstanding of the rules, he said that no ministers had yet requested any information that would be denied them under the guidance.

The only material we wont be prepared to supply them withis material required to make the case against the Government, he said, adding: If a minister asks to see facts, we would be very relaxed about thatIf were talking about pure facts, we wouldnt expect to withhold those from ministers.

 Boris blames bike deaths on EU

Responding to criticisms of civil services support of the Governments position that Britain should remain in the EU, he said it was a statement of common sense that if the Government has a position, that is the position the civil service will support.

Leave campaigners have claimed that the civil services stance compromises its constitutional impartiality, but Sir Jeremy responded, maintaining that civil servants job under the constitution is to support the Government of the day.

Sir Jeremy said it was common sense the Civil Service should support the Government (PA)

Bernard Jenkin, the Eurosceptic chair of the committee, said that Sir Jeremys insistence that only draft speeches and briefings would be withheld contradicted his guidance to Whitehall departments, and called on the previous guidance to be re-issued.

The cabinet secretary used this opportunity to say what has not been made clear before, he said following the hearing.

It was made clear to us that whatever understandings existed before our meeting, it is now not the intention that any facts, information or papers relating to the referendum should be not withheld from dissenting ministers.

The Government later published an official analysis that warns that all alternatives to remaining in the EU, would leave Britain weaker.

According to the analysis, the most direct course for a post-EU Britain would be to revert to World Trade Organisation rules, but this would leave the country facing new export tariffs that would hit British business.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty 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

On 1 March the Chancellor George Osborne confirmed that the Treasury would prepare a comprehensive analysis of the long-term economic costs and benefits of EU membership and the risks associated with an exit.

He told MPs that the public wanted a serious, sober and principled assessment from the Government setting out the facts but the heavyweight reports will be seized on by the Leave campaign as further evidence that the Government is deployng the full weight of the Whitehall administrative machine to makes it case for Britain remaining in the EU.

The Chancellor said that leaving the EU would be a long costly and messy divorce that would hurt jobs, livelihoods and living standards.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The deepest mystery in aviation history has taken another twist. As the relatives of those lost aboard flight MH370 prepare to mark two years since their loved ones disappeared, a piece of wreckage washed ashore on a sandbank off the coast of Mozambique is thought to be from the missing plane.

A US official told CNN that the debris found in the Indian Ocean is probably a piece of horizontal stabiliser skin from a Boeing 777. If that proves correct, it is highly likely that the source is the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

MH370 disappeared on 8 March 2014 while on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board. The last contact with the plane took place at 1.19am, when the captain acknowledged air-traffic control with the words Good Night Malaysian three-seven-zero.

It took the airline a further six hours to tell the world that one of its planes was missing. No distress messages were sent.

The location of the latest find, on an Indian Ocean shore, is consistent with the only confirmed wreckage from the plane, discovered on Reunion Island last July.

Malaysia Airlines said that until the latest find had been identified, it was too speculative to comment.

Speculation on the fate of the plane has been rife ever since the disappearance was announced. An air-sea rescue operation was launched in the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand; several days later, the home of the captain, Zaharie Shah, was searched by police. The theory that he was responsible for diverting the plane is one of many explanations for the loss that have filled the vacuum of uncertainty.

 MH370: A timeline

A week after the disappearance, the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, made a shock revelation. A British company, Inmarsat, had demonstrated that the jet had remained aloft for at least seven hours after the last words from the flight deck.

Equipment on board the plane had responded automatically to a series of satellite handshakes. Analysis of these signals - the length of brief text messages - allowed investigators to construct an arc showing the range of possibilities for its last-known position before it was presumed to have run out of fuel and crashed.

MH370 debris - in pictures Show all 7 1 /7 MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French police officers carry a piece of debris from a plane in Saint-Andre, Reunion Island. AP MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Police carry a piece of debris from an unidentified aircraft found in the coastal area of Saint-Andre de la Reunion, in the east of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion AFP PHOTO / YANNICK PITOUYANNICK PITOU/AFP/Getty Images MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris The plane part is being taken to France for further investigation Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Johnny Begue, a member of a local shore cleaning association, in Saint-Andre, French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, holds the remain of a suitcase found the day before on the same site Getty Images MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Searches continued on Friday for other possible MH370 debris along beaches on the island of Reunion AP

It was deduced to be flying along one of two corridors: north-west across southern China towards the Caspian Sea, or south across the Indian Ocean to an area west of Australia.

The search area was soon narrowed down to the southern corridor, and specifically a patch of sea west of Perth in Western Australia.

In September 2014, an Australian-led operation began a comprehensive search of the sea bed to identify anomalies that could be larger elements of the 777, such as engines and landing gear.

At the time, Martin Dolan, the bureaus Chief Commissioner, told me: We have determined a sequence of higher-probability search zones that we plan to cover progressively over the course of up to a year. We expect to find the aircraft in the course of that search, but there is no complete guarantee of success.

Apart from a couple of old shipwrecks, the search operation has found nothing of interest. With the cost of the operation already in the tens of millions of pounds, it may be abandoned when the current phase ends in July. The latest find, if it is confirmed, will do nothing to help the relatives of those lost find closure.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Investigators searching for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 are studying photographs of debris that has washed up in Mozambique.

An object that could be from a Boeing 777 was found on a sandbank off the eastern African country days ahead of the second anniversary of the jet's disappearance in March 2014.

The flight disappeared on 8 March with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Photographs of the debris have now been seen by investigators in Malaysia, Australia and the US, and say there is a good chance it comes from a Boeing 777, according to NBC News.

It has also been found in the same part of the southern Indian Ocean where the only other confirmed piece of debris from the flight, a flaperon, was found on Reunion Island in July 2015.

 MH370: A timeline

"NO STEP" is written on the object, which makes it likely it is from wing-like parts of the plane attached to the tail, which are called horizontal stabilisers.

MH370 debris - in pictures Show all 7 1 /7 MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French police officers carry a piece of debris from a plane in Saint-Andre, Reunion Island. AP MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Police carry a piece of debris from an unidentified aircraft found in the coastal area of Saint-Andre de la Reunion, in the east of the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion AFP PHOTO / YANNICK PITOUYANNICK PITOU/AFP/Getty Images MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris The plane part is being taken to France for further investigation Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris French gendarmes and police inspect a large piece of plane debris which was found on the beach in Saint-Andre, on the French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion Reuters MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Johnny Begue, a member of a local shore cleaning association, in Saint-Andre, French Indian Ocean island of La Reunion, holds the remain of a suitcase found the day before on the same site Getty Images MH370 debris - in pictures MH370 debris Searches continued on Friday for other possible MH370 debris along beaches on the island of Reunion AP

Until now, about three-quarters of the 46,000-square-mile search zone for the Malayasia Airlines Flight has been scoured without success by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

Several false alarms have occurred during the course of the investigation, including a six-foot-long metal item in the eastern state of Terengganu, and a sonar search which turned up a 19th century shipwreck.

The sonar image of the shipwreck that was mistaken for the lost MH370 flight (EPA)

The ATSB has said it knows of the discovery and will be conducting a thorough examination of the object, according to NBC News.

Until now, it had been conducting its searches on the assumption that the aircraft crashed when its fuel ran out after cruising on autopilot as a ghost flight with the pilots incapacitated or dead.

Last month, it was claimed investigators are preparing to revive theories that the plane may have been brought down deliberately.

The disappearance cost Malaysia Airlines a quarterly net loss of 83 million over two years as passengers shunned the company.

Relatives of the passengers on the missing jetliner, meanwhile, were further angered and saddened after the event by a perceived lack of information from Malaysian officials over the situation, with many refusing to accept the explanation that the plane simply crashed.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A law to ban bestiality has been opposed by US farmers on the grounds they could be unfairly arrested.

Farmers in New Hampshire have said a proposed law to ban the sexual abuse of animals in the state could see them unprotected should they need to touch or intervene with an animal for medical reasons.

Robert Johnson, a lobbyist for the New Hampshire Farm Bureau, said the new bill was not necessary.

"Just because the word 'bestiality' is not used in our statutes does not mean it's not covered," he said, according to the Concord Monitor.

Bestiality is still legal in Texas, Hawaii, Kentucky, Virginia, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Vermont, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming and the District of Columbia - as well as New Hampshire - according to the Alabama Watchdog.

The law is being put forward by Katherine Rogers, a Democrat representative in Concord, who is looking to ban the sexual abuse of animals. Perpetrators could also be registered.

She said prosecutors needed the law as a "tool" to ensure the practice went punished.

"It's unfortunately something that's needed, and New Hampshire shouldn't be one of the few states that doesn't have it," said Ms Rogers.

The most controversial animal killings Show all 6 1 /6 The most controversial animal killings The most controversial animal killings Cincinnati Zoo worker shots and kills Harambe, the 17-year-old gorilla Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla was shot and killed by a Cincinnati Zoo worker after a three-year-old boy climbed into a gorilla enclosure and was grabbed and dragged by Harambe. The incident was recorded on video and received broad international coverage and commentary, including controversy over the choice to kill Harambe. A number of primatologists and conservationists wrote later that the zoo had no other choice under the circumstances, and that it highlighted the danger of zoo animals in close proximity to humans and the need for better standards of care Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden The most controversial animal killings Walt Palmer (left), from Minnesota, who killed Cecil, the Zimbabwean lion (pictured here with another lion shot in Africa) Walter James Palmer has been named by Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force as the shooter of Cecil, a 13-year-old prized lion. He is now wanted by Zimbabwe officials on poaching charges. The lion was protected and the subject of a decade long study by the Wildlife Unit of Oxford University in the UK. He was outfitted with a GPS collar and was killed in Hwange National Park. The Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority and the Safari Operators Association said that two men were charged with poaching in connection to Mr Palmer The most controversial animal killings Kendall Jones hunting images Kendall Jones, a 19-year-old Texas Tech university student, has provoked worldwide fury after posting pictures of herself smiling next to animals she hunted, including a lion, rhinoceros, antelope, leopard, elephant, zebra and hippopotamus The most controversial animal killings Rebecca Francis hunting images Rebecca Francis, a huntress who has killed dozens of wild animals has been sent death wishes by furious social media users after a picture showing her lying down next to a dead giraffe was circulated. Rebecca Francis has a website and Facebook page dedicated to the animals she has killed in hunts across Africa and America. Francis, a prolific hunter who has also co-hosted the television show Eye of the Hunter, regularly posts pictures of herself posing next to dead bears, giraffes, buffaloes and zebras, among other animals. She uses a bow and arrow to kill her prey The most controversial animal killings The slaughter of Marius, an 18-month-old healthy giraffe in Copenhagen Zoo Copenhagen Zoo made the controversial decision to euthanise a healthy giraffe named Marius, which was later dissected and fed to lions as visitors watched. The slaughter sparked a furious backlash from social media users and zoo staff have received death threats by phone and email. Soon after the incident, Copenhagen Zoo faced an international outcry once again after four healthy lions were put down The most controversial animal killings Swiss Dahlholzli zoo kills healthy brown bear cub A Switzerland zoo faced heavy criticism from animal rights groups, after keepers put down a healthy brown bear cub to spare it from being bullied by its dominant male father. The 360 kg male bear Misha had already killed one of his 11-week old cubs in public and was bullying the second, staff at the zoo said, because he was jealous of the attention the cubs were receiving from their mother, Masha. Both adult brown bears had been donated to Berns Dahlholzli zoo in 2009. Campaigners condemned staff there for not separating the cubs, who are being referred to as Baby Bear Two and Baby Bear Three, and their mother from Misha after their birth in January Facebook

Her words were echoed by Jeremy Hoffman, a Virginia police detective, who said farmers are not likely to be affected by the law.

"I don't believe that's in the spirit of the intent of the bill, and I can't foresee any reasonable prosecutor attempting to use this bill in that fashion," he told the Concord Monitor.

Yet the farming community at large in the east coast state mostly joined the commissioner of agriculture, Lorraine Merrill, in criticising the bipartisan bill.

Bestiality was first brought to the attention of the New Hampshire public when video clips were found of a man having sex with dogs in 2014.

He said he had been engaged in bestiality since the age of 13, was convicted of two felony counts of animal cruelty and sentenced to one year in jail, according to Sentinel Source.

Bestiality, defined as performing sex acts on an animal, is illegal in Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in Europe. In the UK, penetration between an animal and a human is prohibited under the 2003 Sexual Offences Act.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

After Jeb Bush limped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination late last month, his former mentee, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, was supposed to be the candidate who could unite the Republican Party.

The GOPs great Cuban hope, Mr. Rubio was meant to be the one who would curb the tremendous momentum of Donald Trump and pinch support from Ted Cruz.

Then came the first Tuesday in March and it wasnt so super for Mr. Rubio.

That the baby-faced Florida senator won just one state on Super Tuesday at the time of publication wasnt a surprise. He wasnt expected to win many. All he needed to do was give nervous conservative donors a strong showing, a vote of confidence that he could be their man.

He didnt do it, despite picking up steam in the past week. He was successful in trading a few barbs with Mr. Trump at a recent debate and moving past previous blunders. But on Super Tuesday, Mr. Trump connected on several haymakers  and Mr. Cruz landed two big punches as well  that all but crushed Mr. Rubios chances at a Republican nomination.

For his part, Mr. Rubio tried to push through the poor results on Tuesday and instill belief in his supporters.

For the first time in a long time, young Americans believe the American Dream is dead, he said on Super Tuesday. We are going to send the message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist.

Minnesota was the only state Mr. Rubio won on Tuesday, and his next best results were to be second-place finishes in Virginia and Arkansas.

The men he was supposed to foil, Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz, won five states and two states, respectively. Mr. Trump had previously won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, while Mr. Cruz had previously won Iowa.

No other Republican candidates have claimed any states.

In pictures: US Elections 2016 Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: US Elections 2016 In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters after rival candidate Hillary Clinton was projected as the winner in the Nevada Democratic caucuses Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes photos with workers at her campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, second from left, prays before lunch with supporters at Drake Diner in Des Moines, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Governor. Martin O'Malley, speaks during a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks, as his wife Jane OMeara Sanders looks on, at a campaign event at Iowa State University Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks at a campaign event at Fireside Pub and Steak House in Manchester, Iowa. Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum visiting supporters at a house party in West Des Moines, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican candidate Ted Cruz campaigns at Greene County Community Centre in Jefferson, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Senator Rand Paul speaks during a Caucus rally at his Des Moines headquarters in Iowa Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican candidate Jeb Bush speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa AFP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin introducing the arrival of Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 A portrait of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders at his campaign headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Campaign badges on sale ahead of a Trump rally at the Ramada Waterloo Hotel and Convention Centre in Waterloo, Iowa Getty

In his Super Tuesday victory speech, Mr. Trump poked fun at Mr. Rubio, saying the Florida senator didnt have a good night, even though he worked very hard and spent a lot of money.

Still, it doesnt appear that Mr. Rubio will be stepping out of the race for the Republican nomination, at least until the Florida primary on March 15. A tired looking Mr. Rubio said on CNN Tuesday night that he would not suspend his campaign until they went though all 50 states.

Follow @PaytonGuion on Twitter.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist who sparked controversy by backing Donald Trump, has made the startling admission that he would like to serve as the tycoons secretary of state if he becomes president.

Mr Duke, a white nationalist and former grand wizard, last week urged listeners to his radio show to vote for Mr Trump and said to do otherwise would be treason

Voting for these people, voting against Donald Trump at this point is really treason to your heritage, Mr Duke said, referring to Mr Trumps rivals.

(Getty Images)

Im not saying I endorse everything about Trump, in fact I havent formally endorsed him. But I do support his candidacy, and I support voting for him as a strategic action. I hope he does everything we hope he will do.

Mr Trump then found himself at a storm of criticism when he seemingly failed to disavow Mr Dukes endorsement when he was questioned by CNN. Eventually, he told one US broadcaster that he had spent the weekend disavowing David Duke.

On Wednesday, Mr Duke, 65, who once served a member of the Louisiana state legislature and for several years led the Louisiana-based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said that while he did not agree with everything Mr Trump said, he believed he was the only candidate who would keep America out of foreign wars. He said he believed his support may have been a factor in Mr Trump seeing his numbers soar ahead of Super Tuesday, and of his successful night in which he won seven states.

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

Mr Duke, whose writing and radio broadcasts often include long attacks on Israel and Zionist business organisations, claimed that he had never been a white supremacist but that he sought to defend European American values.

Its no different to black people and Jewish people who defend their values, he said.

Mr Duke said that as a member of the KKK he had sought to modernise the organisation and stressed non-violence. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, who monitors extremist groups in the US, describes Mr Duke the most recognisable figure of the American radical right, a neo-Nazi, longtime Klan leader and now international spokesman for Holocaust denial.

Its website adds: In his various incarnations, Duke has been a neo-Nazi, a major Klan leader, a slick far-right politician and - most recently - a professional lecturer and author traveling the world to warn of a global Jewish conspiracy.

Speaking from Louisiana, Mr Duke told The Independent that he would happy to serve in Mr Trumps cabinet if he were elected and Mr Trump were to ask him.

Id like to be Secretary of State, traveling around the world and reaching out to all the other countries, he said.

Mr Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to questions about Mr Duke's suggestion.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Super Tuesday is history, and three things about the race to become Americas next President are now clear.

Barring indictment over her private email server, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Barring that semi-mythical creature, an open convention, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. Third, his hostile takeover of the party is generating a split that threatens its very existence.

On the biggest single night of the primary season, Ms Clinton and Mr Trump each carried seven states. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders vows to carry on, but his populist challenge to the former First Lady is fading, and he faces nigh impossible delegate arithmetic.

As for the real-estate billionaire, a fractured opposition merely plays into his hands. Ted Cruz, fresh from winning three states on 2 March, is now his most plausible rival  but Marco Rubio and John Kasich refuse to drop out, though also-ran Ben Carson last night indicated he would end his campaign. For Mr Trump, it is a case of divide and rule.

Indeed, his fight now is less against his individual opponents than the Republican Party establishment, that amalgam of party elders and Congressional grandees, governors, big donors and old-school conservative media such as The Wall Street Journal. Had any of his rivals swept 10 of the first 15 states to vote, from Alabama and Georgia in the media such as The Wall Street Journal. Had any of his rivals swept 10 of the first 15 states to vote, from Alabama and Georgia in the Deep South to venerable and Yankee Massachusetts, that would have been that. Republicans would this morning be joyfully closing ranks around the victor and excoriating Ms Clinton. Not so, however, in this season of Donald Trump.

Super Tuesday: the winners

Despite a few defectors, most notably New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, most of the establishment cannot stand him  nor Mr Cruz for that matter. As Lindsey Graham, respected Republican senator and former candidate put it, Mr Trump and Mr Cruz offer a choice of being poisoned or being shot.

The next fortnight offers his foes a final chance of thwarting Mr Trump. Over the next nine days, there will be Republican primaries and caucuses in 10 states. The real crunch comes however on 15 March when Illinois, Ohio, Florida and North Carolina hold their primaries.

Two of them, Florida and Ohio, home states and last redoubts of Mr Rubio and Mr Kasich respectively, are winner take all. At this point it will be clear whether the property mogul can be denied an overall majority of delegates at the Cleveland convention in July. If Mr Trump wins either, let alone both, it is over. And so to Trump versus Clinton, pitting the ultimate outsider against the ultimate insider, a man who has never held elective office against the best qualified presidential candidate in a generation.

 Trump Celebrates Sweeping Super Tuesday Success

On paper  and this is precisely the fear of the shellshocked Republican elite  it should be no contest. Mr Trump will go down to a defeat to rival that of Barry Goldwater in 1964, when an earlier party split sealed the ascendency of conservatives over a moderate and East Coast Republican establishment, embodied by Nelson Rockefeller. Such a disaster, it is argued, would in turn cost Republicans their current control of the Senate, and seriously dent their massive majority in the House of Representatives. President Hillary Clinton would be free to construct a liberal majority on the Supreme Court, the ever more influential third branch of government, that would last a generation.

Not so fast. A match-up with Mr Trump would be no sure thing, despite polls that mostly show Ms Clinton a clear winner. For one thing, in a politically polarised country election landslides such as 1964, or Ronald Reagans routs of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale in the 1980s, do not happen any more.

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton take aim at Donald Trump in Miami, Florida, on Super Tuesday (Reuters)

True, Mr Trumps negative ratings exceed even those of the battle-scarred former Secretary of State and First Lady, untrusted, polls suggest, by 55 per cent of the population. Such is the downside of Clintonism. But it will be a dirty fight  as a former top Obama adviser put it, less a case of hope and change than hate and castrate. As the Republican campaign thus far as shown, when it comes to down and dirty, Donald Trump is without peer.

And on one point, that establishment turncoat Chris Christie is right. Mr Trump is not so much a party as a movement. Every excess, it seems, only bolsters his popularity, and draws more followers. Super Tuesday proved this. Turnout in the Republican primaries broke records. People who never voted before are now doing so. And many of these voters are blue-collar Democrats, as angry at the failure of Americas political system to tackle the countrys problems as their Republican counterparts. Mr Trump may be alienating the establishment  but that establishment has now lost control of the base.

 Donald Trump: What are his actual policies?

For all his railings, he is no conservative. In the past Trump has, among other things, supported a single-payer healthcare system, expressed support for abortion rights, and taken a relatively neutral line in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

In the Trump phenomenon there are shades of the Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. For every Republican who would vote Hillary rather than stomach Mr Trump, there is probably a Democratic voter ready to move in the opposite direction. It will not be easy for Ms Clinton. But the biggest loser on Super Tuesday may not have been Mr Sanders, Mr Rubio or Mr Kasich, but the Republican party itself.

There have been rifts in the past  the Goldwater schism of the 1960s, and half a century earlier Teddy Roosevelts breakaway third-party campaign  but this time feels different. Never has the gulf between a party elite and that partys grass roots been greater. And for its predicament the Republican establishment has only itself to blame. With its relentless obstructionism and refusal to compromise, it bears the main responsibility for the shambles in Washington that fuels Mr Trumps ascent.

Having sown the wind, it is now reaping the whirlwind. Like an old, out-of-touch corporate board desperately trying to come to grips with a hostile takeover, they must now cope with Donald Trump.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Senator Ted Cruz has clung to his home state of Texas and claimed an unexpected win in neighbouring Oklahoma at tonights Republican primary contest. Texas was the largest of the Super Tuesday trophies, with 155 delegates up for grabs, but even Mr Cruzs projected 10-point triumph there will likely do little to halt the march of Donald Trump, who had already chalked up easy victories in at least half-a-dozen other states early in the night.

A win in the Lone Star state was considered crucial to keep the arch-conservative in a primary race increasingly dominated by Mr Trump and the party establishments last, best hope for an upset, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. His added success in Oklahoma, where a recent poll had put Mr Trump more than 10 points ahead, will augment Mr Cruzs case for being the sole remaining GOP candidate capable of overcoming the belligerent billionaire.

Ted Cruz speaks at a campaign rally in Dallas, Texas (Reuters)

Speaking to supporters in Stafford, Texas, Mr Cruz appealed both to his rivals in the race and to the voters in upcoming primary states. So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trumps path to the nomination remains more likely  and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation, he said. Our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump... For the candidates who have to yet won a state, who have not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together [and] uniting.

Compared to the previous expectations of the Cruz campaign, it was nonetheless a disappointing evening. Before Mr Trump began his irresistible rise to the role of Republican front-runner, the Texas Senator had hoped to capture multiple Southern states with the help of the evangelical Christian voters who make up his natural base.

Mr Cruz even went so far as to describe the South as a firewall of support that would power his insurgent presidential bid towards the GOP nomination.

 Protesters Crash Ted Cruz's Hometown Rally in Houston

But the likes of Georgia, Alabama, Virginia and Tennessee instead fell, by comfortable margins, to the pugnacious New York property magnate, whom Mr Cruz described in his speech as profane and vulgar, adding: America shouldnt have a President whose words would make you embarrassed if your children repeated them.

Mr Cruz benefited from a grassroots army of approximately 27,000 volunteers in Texas, and had earned the endorsements of both the states Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Mr Abbotts predecessor, Rick Perry. On Sunday, however, he lost a key ally when Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, an immigration hard-liner and one of his rare friends in the US Senate, lent his support to Mr Trump.

In pictures: US Elections 2016 Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: US Elections 2016 In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks to supporters after rival candidate Hillary Clinton was projected as the winner in the Nevada Democratic caucuses Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton takes photos with workers at her campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, second from left, prays before lunch with supporters at Drake Diner in Des Moines, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Maryland Governor. Martin O'Malley, speaks during a campaign stop in Waterloo, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks, as his wife Jane OMeara Sanders looks on, at a campaign event at Iowa State University Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson speaks at a campaign event at Fireside Pub and Steak House in Manchester, Iowa. Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum visiting supporters at a house party in West Des Moines, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican candidate Ted Cruz campaigns at Greene County Community Centre in Jefferson, Iowa AP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Senator Rand Paul speaks during a Caucus rally at his Des Moines headquarters in Iowa Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Republican candidate Jeb Bush speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa AFP In pictures: US Elections 2016 Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin introducing the arrival of Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa Reuters In pictures: US Elections 2016 A portrait of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders at his campaign headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa Getty In pictures: US Elections 2016 Campaign badges on sale ahead of a Trump rally at the Ramada Waterloo Hotel and Convention Centre in Waterloo, Iowa Getty

Going into Super Tuesday, Mr Cruz was already the sole Republican to have bested Mr Trump in a primary race, winning the early state of Iowa. The Texas Senator has hammered the front-runner for his failure to release his tax returns, for hiring undocumented immigrants to build Trump Tower in New York, and over allegations that Mr Trump rolled back his anti-immigration rhetoric in a taped, off-the-record conversation with the New York Times editorial board.

Mr Cruz has also pointed out that Mr Rubio trails Mr Trump in his home state of Florida, which is set to vote on 15 March, in a bid to persuade his fellow Senator to withdraw from the contest. But the Texas Senators efforts to draw attention away from his rivals have proved futile in recent days, as Mr Trump and Mr Rubio exchanged schoolyard taunts on the stump.

The Cruz campaign, once considered ultra-disciplined, has also suffered from multiple accusations of dirty tricks. Last week, in the lead-up to the Nevada caucuses, Mr Cruz sacked his communications director, Rick Tyler, after Mr Tyler tweeted a video that wrongly purported to show Mr Rubio making a joke at the expense of the Bible. Mr Cruz touted Mr Tylers exit as evidence that his was the only major campaign acting honourably in the rough-and-tumble race to the nomination. Whether the voters believed him is another matter.
Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Why are we asking this now?

On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump took a large stride nearer towards the Republican nomination when he won seven of the eleven states where Republicans were voting. Senator Ted Cruz one three states, and Marco Rubio just one. For those within the Republican establishment who who hate and despite Mr Trump - and there are plenty - there has been the sudden realisation that the real estate mogul may be poised to seize the partys nomination.

What is the evidence of an anti-Trump rebellion?

There has been an unprecedented move within the Republican establishment to halt Trump, that has ranged from the most-esteemed conservative magazine devoting an entire edition to him and his unsuitability to party elder Mitt Romney urging trailing candidates to drop out of the race so that people can rally around a single candidate. Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, wrote an open letter to Mr Trumps supporters explaining why he could not support the real estate mogul should he become the partys nominee. If Donald Trump ends up as the nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option, he said. Senator Marco Rubio helped promote the hash tag #NeverTrump. The Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have voiced their concern about Mr Trump, especially after he refused to disavow a former KKK leader.

(Getty Images)

Why dont they like Mr Trump?

Ideological Republicans do not believe Mr Trump is a genuine conservative, but more a populist showman. They say his views on such central issues as abortion, trade, healthcare and immigration are simply not in line with genuine conservative principles. Many feel Mr Trump has damaged the partys image by his aggressive and sometimes coarse campaign language. Many in Congress fear that Mr Trump will damage their chances of reelection come November. There are also plenty of people who are concerned that Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised the Republican establishment and donors of Washington.

Why is it so hard to a viable alternative to Mr Trump?

The Republican establishment had for more than a year assumed the former Florida Jeb Bush would become the candidate. But in a political cycle when it become clear the public was angry and keen for an anti-establishment figure, he failed to gain traction, despite raising more than $150m.

After his third placed showing in Iowa, Marco Rubio became the establishments best chance. But then he choked during debate in New Hampshire, came in a dismal fifth. On Tuesday night, Mr Rubio scrambled to win Minnesota, his only real success on an otherwise disappointing night. He continued to claim to donors that they need to get behind his campaign, which he hoped to continue at least until March 15 when his home state of Florida votes. Ohio Governor John Kasich, who has come second in Vermont and New Hampshire, has also vowed to continue his campaign until his state votes on the same day. In the meantime, the opposition against Mr Trump remains divided.

(Getty Images)

What about Ted Cruz?

The Texas senator won three states on Tuesday - his home turf of Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, - taking his total tally to four. The hardline, evangelical conservative has presented himself as the only person who can beat Mr Trump, and thus make it to the White House. The trouble for the Republican establishment with Mr Trump is two-fold: firstly there are concerns that his base of appeal is too narrow to win in a general election, and secondly Mr Cruz may be more hated in Washington than Mr Trump. The Tea Party favourite is famous for his attacks on the Republican leadership and those whom he accuses of making deals in Washington. He has presented himself as someone who would not bend - something that is usually required in the Congresss two party system. In 2013, he famously was behind a government shutdown as he led opposition to Barack Obamas healthcare programme.

What about a brokered convention?

Some of the remaining candidates keep talking about a brokered covention, which is held when no candidate has a majority of delegates by the time the summer gathering to formally nominate a candidate is held. In truth there has not been a brokered convention for decades, though there was almost one in 1976. In one of the other worlds of politics, the West Wing, Congressional Matt Santos was chosen to be the Democrats nominee after a brokered convention.

How likely is it that Mr Trump is going to be stopped?

The problem for the haters of Mr Trump is that the more they do to stop him, the more it helps him. He and his supporters like nothing more than an opportunity to claim that big Washington money is out to stop him. For those who dont like the idea of Nominee Trump, it may be all too late.
Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

The US Supreme Court appears closely divided on its ruling as to whether upholding more stringent restrictions should be placed on abortion clinics in Texas, one of the most important legal cases on abortion since 1973's Roe V Wade.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is likely to have the final say in the case, has given little indication how he would rule, as reported by Reuters.

After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who was certain to vote against the clinics, leaving a seat open at the Supreme Court, the court could now end up as a split vote of 4-4.

A split vote would allow a lower court ruling that affirmed the Texas law, but no nationwide precedent would be set on whether other states would follow and enact similar measures.

However, if Justice Kennedy were to side with the four liberal judges, the law could be struck down.

Texas clinicians are contending that a law passed in 2013 by Republicans fails to protect womens health by placing strong demands on clinics and doctors. The rules require that abortion clinics be equipped to the same standards as walk-in surgical centers and that clinic doctors have admitting privileges, meaning they can freely walk in to a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the clinic if needed.

The restrictions would close 75 per cent of Texas clinics and disproportionately affect poor women, clinic staff have argued.

Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of a group of clinics in Texas, Whole Womans Health - the lead plaintiff in the case - told The Huffington Post that the new rules mean that women have to walk into an operating theatre just to be given two pills and a glass of water.

One objective of the opposition is to make abortion seem more scary, complex and complicated than it actually is, she said.

Amy Hagstrom Miller raises a hand to pro-choice protestors outside the courthouse (AP)

The regulatory attack on the provider makes it difficult to stay open, but it also paints us as careless rather than caring, as unsafe and in need of constant oversight instead of as the compassionate medical professionals that we are, she added.

The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today and a ruling is due by the end of June. Over 110 women in the professions, including actress Amy Brenneman, have submitted written personal testimonies of how access to an abortion meant they could secure their futures and their careers, allowing some of them to cherish motherhood at the right time for them.

Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the courthouse on 2 March, just months before the new President is selected for the White House on 8 November.

If you support life, let me hear you scream, South Carolina anti-abortion Republican Senator Tim Scott said to screams and applause from the crowd.

Pro-life Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan also addressed the crowds (AP)

The landmark 1973 case of Roe v. Wade found that a woman had a constitutional right to privacy, protecting her decision to end a pregnancy, and only a compelling state interest could justify regulating abortion.

That ruling was affirmed in 1992 and that any regulation must not impose an undue burden on women seeking an abortion.

In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to maintain a nationwide law that prohibited late-term abortions.

Jess McIntosh, Vice President of Communications for EMILY's List and former spokesperson for Senator Al Franken, said at a feminist event at New Yorks historic Cooper Hall on Tuesday evening that the anti-abortion protestors represented a backlash to progress.

But I remain optimistic, she said.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

China has announced plans to fire around 1.8 million workers.

In an apparent bid to restructure the worlds second largest economy, President Xi Jinpings reforms to the coal and steel industries would see around 15 per cent of the current workforce at risk of losing their jobs.

No timeframe has been given as the plans were announced by Yin Weimin, Chinas minister for human resources and social security.

It is the first time the country has made changes to its workforce as a result of the slowed economic growth and oversubscribed industries.

Mr Weimin said in a news conference 1.3 million workers in the coal sector could lose their jobs, plus 500,000 from the steel sector.

This involves the resettlement of a total of 1.8 million workers. This task will be very difficult, but we are still very confident, Mr Yin said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

According to officials, the central government will allocate 10 billion yuan (11 bn) over the period of two years to relocate workers who will be laid off.

The services sector has created more jobs to help re-employ those laid off from the coal and steel sectors.

China's economy only grew by 6.9 per cent in 2015, making it the countries weakest year in 25 years, and it is expected to decline further this year.

The economy faces relatively big downward pressures and some firms face difficulties in production and operation, which would lead to insufficient employment, Yin said, adding that increasing graduates this year would also add pressure in the job market.

The coal and steel sectors in China currently employ about 12 million workers.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Fears are growing that violence will escalate between police and refugees in Calais amid reports that some of the Jungle camps inhabitants have armed themselves with guns and tear gas.

The second day of the camps clearance saw police and local officials make swift progress with the demolition of makeshift homes in the southern part of the camp.

Despite clashes on Monday, the day passed peacefully, marked by a sense of dejection if not defeat, among inhabitants of the Jungle.

Recommended Read more Calais Jungle clearance sparks clashes between police and refugees

But it is believed that some refugees in the camp have acquired tear gas while others have acquired guns  a firearm was recently discharged in the camp.

Volunteer groups and community leaders united to condemn any form of violence while expressing frustration at the lack of information being provided by authorities.

Josie Naughton, 31, a co-founder of the charity Help Refugees, said the lack of clarity discouraged refugees from moving to reception centres across the country.

 France starts to dismantle Calais 'Jungle' refugee camp

It has been very hard to get information, she said. And a lack of information creates fear and confusion. If the authorities had each day said they would clear this area and register people for buses then a lot more people would go for that.

Buses departed the camp on Monday and Friday of last week bound for other French cities, including Montpellier, Marseilles and Rennes, where refugees are being offered accommodation in reception centres. It is thought that on Friday 15 refugees left on board the buses.

French police warned that they were prepared to use force if refugees refused to move either to accommodation within the camp in modified shipping containers or to reception centres.

Refugees and volunteers complained that violence from the police would only exacerbate the situation.

Its difficult to think there is a coherent plan when four days ago they said that there would be a soft eviction and then they come in with force, said Joe Robertson, co-founder of the Good Chance organisation based within the camp. The refugees werent expecting what happened yesterday and these are people who are already suspicious of authorities.

Staring into a small camp fire, a 32-year-old Sudanese man who gave his name as Muhammad said he had no reason to trust the authorities. The prefecture told us it would only be voluntary but yesterday they were carrying people from their shelters. How can we believe them about the shipping containers and the buses?

I lived in Darfur and travelled for a year and have stayed here now for six months. Im not giving up until I get to England.

French police prepare to remove a woman, who threatened to cut her wrists, and a man from the top of a hut as they clear the Jungle camp in Calais (Getty)

The day began with a moment of drama when a woman climbed on top of a shelter and said she would slit her wrists. She was quickly pulled to the ground by police along with the man she was with. Her condition afterwards was unknown.

Officers formed a cordon to keep refugees and volunteers away from the clearance area. Behind them, officials in day-glo workwear demolished structures by hand while tractors cleared debris into skips. It is thought the clearance will take a number of days if not weeks. Many of the refugees will simply relocate within the camp.

Other refugees could be seen leaving the Jungle with their possessions, their destination unknown. Many will probably head to the settlements emerging around crossing points such as Dunkirk.

It may be the end of the Jungle, said Mr Robertson. But it will be the beginning of many more Jungles along the coast.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

French parents could face heavy fines or even a prison sentence for breaching the privacy of their children by publishing intimate pictures of them on social media.

Lawyers and police in France have warned parents that their grown-up children could sue them for putting their security or privacy at risk for photos posted to Facebook and elsewhere when they were younger, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Aside from the risk of paedophiles getting hold of them, the embarassment which could be caused to children is being seen as a legitimate reason for them to later take their parents to court.

And under France's strict privacy laws, this could result in a 35,000 fine or up to a year in jail.

Eric Delcroix, an internet law and ethics law, said the behaviour of parents online was often little better than that of their offspring.

"In a few years, children could easily take their parents to court for publishing photos of them when they are younger," he said.

French police have warned parents not to post children and baby photos beyond family members (imageBROKER / Alamy Stock Photo)

The French Gendarmerie followed the example of German police - which ran a campaign about children's privacy - by placing a warning to parents on its Facebook page.

"Posting photos of your children on Facebook is not without danger... Protect your children!," it said.

Parents have previously been forced to take down naked pictures of babies or young children from social media networks.

Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks Show all 16 1 /16 Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239983.bin Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239893.bin Getty Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239984.bin Ethan Miller/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239987.bin Dave Hogan/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239994.bin Sean Gallup/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239982.bin Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239986.bin Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239997.bin Simone Joyner/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 240016.bin Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239995.bin REUTERS/Ethan Miller Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 240019.bin Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239990.bin Fergus McDonald/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239989.bin LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239981.bin Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239985.bin Kevin Winter/Getty Images Facebook 'Kick a Ginger' day sparks attacks 239988.bin Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Jay Parikh, who is a vice president of Facebook, said the social media giant might develop a notification system to warn parents against putting up pictures of their children online that have no privacy settings on them.

"If I was putting online a photo of my kids playing in the park, and I accidentally shared it with everyone, the system could say: 'Hey, wait a minute, this is a picture of your children'," he said, according to the Daily Telegraph.

"'Usually you only send them to members of your family. Are you sure you want to do this?'"

French police have also warned parents about chain posts which encourage parents to post pictures of their children and getting other friends to do the same.

There have been incidents in the past where children's pictures from Facebook are found on paedophilic websites later.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A nanny who is accused of murdering and decapitating a child has said Allah ordered her to do it.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, from Uzbekistan, was seen outside a Moscow subway station on Monday carrying the four-year-old girls head.

Bobokulova, who was the victims nanny, appeared at a Moscow court on Wednesday. Asked by reporters outside about why she murdered the child, the mother-of-three replied: Allah ordered. She also said that she had repented for her actions and that she agreed with her arrest.

Inside the court, the 38-year-old reportedly waved and said: I am Allahs messenger. Hello everyone.

When asked if she accepted her guilt, she answered yes, the BBC reported.

But prosecutors told the court that they believed Bobokulova, a mother-of-three, was not acting on her own and that there were individuals who incited her to carry out the attack. No other individuals have been identified in connection with the crime.

The court approved her detention for two months while the investigation continues. Investigators suspect her of murder but it is not known whether they suspect her of offences related to terror.

Earlier this week, officials said the suspect appeared to be mentally unstable.

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Show all 10 1 /10 Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchehra Bobokulova smiles as she sits in a cage at the Presnensky district court in Moscow Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, is escorted inside a court building in Moscow Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars The hijab-wearing nanny was spotted walking the streets of Moscow brandishing the head of Nastya Meshcheryakova, before she was detained by police AFP Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars The woman has admitted: 'Allah ordered me to kill' Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars It is believed that Gyulchehra Bobokulova has recently become radicalised Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars A police source revealed that the babysitter was registered as schizophrenic Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchehra Bobokulova from Uzbekistan was arrested on 29 February 2016 near the Oktyabrskoye Pole underground station where she had appeared dressed in black and carrying a severed child's head and shouting Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchekhra Bobokulova attends a court hearing in Moscow Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchehra Bobokulova is escorted by police Gyulchekhra Bobokulova behind bars Gyulchehra Bobokulova holds papers and yawns sitting in a cage during a court hearing at the Presnensky district court in Moscow

Bobokulova, who had been wearing a hijab, was seen walking to the station carrying the child's head on CCTV. According to some witnesses, she shouted Allahu akbar.

In a video posted on Russian news websites, she was heard shouting: I am a terrorist. I am your death.

Bobokulova also set fire to the familys flat.

Additional reporting by agencies
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

A 700m (542m) emergency aid package to help Greece and other countries to cope with the influx of refugees from Syria and Iraq has been unveiled by the European Commission.

The announcement came as tensions continued to rise, with the European Councils president, Donald Tusk, warning that the refugee crisis was testing the EU to the limits.

The EU aid will pay for basic necessities such as food, shelter, clean water and healthcare until the end of 2018, with 300m available this year. Although all EU member states can ask for a share of the fund, it is expected to be channelled to Greece, where most refugees are landing by boat, as well as the Balkan countries through which they travel on their way to western Europe.

The United Nations refugee agency said more than 27,000 refugees were in need of permanent shelter in Greece, and 2,000 a day were arriving there from Turkey.

The EUs humanitarian aid commissioner, Christos Stylianides, admitted that the money was only a partial response to the crisis, which has seen more than one million refugees stream into Europe in the past year.

Recommended Read more Refugees break through Macedonia fence with home made battering ram

There are no magical solutions, he said, adding that he anticipated further waves of migration. In the future, the EU may be faced with other kinds of disasters. The funding will take a large chunk out of the EU aid budget of 1.3bn a year. Officials said that although the aid was normally used for emergencies outside Europe, it could be used internally if member states found that their own response capacities were overwhelmed.

More and more EU countries have re-imposed border controls to stop refugees passing through. Mr Tusk admitted that the pressure was piling up, especially in the EUs border-free Schengen zone.

It is a crisis that is testing our union to the limits, he said, after meeting the Croatian Prime Minister, Tihomir Oreskovic, in Zagreb. We have to avoid an illusion that, instead of the full respect for Schengen rules, there might be another, easy and convenient European solution.

Mr Tusk, who also visited Slovenia and Macedonia, will pass by Athens on Thursday before heading to Ankara to meet Turkeys Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. He will hold talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul on Friday, as he lays the groundwork for a special EU summit on refugees in Brussels on Monday,

With migrant numbers expected to rise in the warmer spring and summer months, Austria and other central European nations are already closing their southern borders, effectively ringfencing Greece. EU officials have voiced concerns that the newly built frontiers and temporary border checks could eventually become permanent.

It is hoped that Mondays talks will produce an effective EU migration strategy. Mr Davutoglu will also attend the summit, which aims to firm up Novembers 3bn deal with Turkey to tackle people smugglers and improve conditions for the two million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkish camps.

There were auspicious signs when Turkeys foreign ministry announced re-admission agreements with 14 countries, meaning it will take back asylum-seekers whose claims have been rejected.

The EC confirmed that 308 north African migrants would be sent from Greece to Turkey as it stepped up efforts to return those with invalid claims.

Meanwhile, the investment bank Morgan Stanley said the EU could see 28bn wiped off the value of its economies  0.2 per cent of GDP  if the Schengen system of open borders collapsed.

Analysts said that would lead to a 5 per cent surge in the cost of cross-border travel, and a 20 per cent fall in trade flows between countries.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Spains political crisis has deepened as the countrys parliament refused to endorse the Socialist opposition leader, Pedro Sanchez, as the new Prime Minister.

More than two months after an inconclusive general election, Mr Sanchez fell well short of the majority he needs to form a government.

He won 130 votes, with 219 against and one abstention as the conservative Partido Popular (PP) was joined by the left-wing Podemos and regional parties to block his accession. Only one other party, the centrist Ciudadanos, was willing to back Mr Sanchez.

It means that MPs will vote again on Friday night, at which point abstentions will not count against him.

Recommended Read more Socialists attempt to end Spanish impasse by pact with centrist party

Failure to secure the premiership will trigger a two-month countdown to the calling of new elections. During the first day of the investiture debate on Tuesday, Mr Sanchez called on Spains progressive parties to come together and deny the centre-right government of the PP the chance to continue.

Why dont we unite to form a government for change? Why dont we get together and pass as many reforms as possible to solve the most urgent problems of Spaniards? he asked. Why dont we vote together in favour of all issues in which we are in agreement?

The problem for each political leader is that none can muster the support needed to command parliament after Decembers general election. The four biggest parties each fell well short of the 179 seats needed for a majority. The PP, which has remained in caretaker charge, emerged as the biggest party, with 123 seats, 33 more than the Socialists. The leftist Podemos took 69 seats, with Mr Sanchezs prospective coalition partner, Ciudadanos, winning 40.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Sanchez accepted the nomination for prime minister last month from King Felipe after the PP Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, turned it down. Mr Sanchez has been unable to persuade the Podemos leader, Pablo Iglesias, to join him. Mr Iglesias has promised the Catalan region a referendum on independence  anathema for many in Spain  and wants economic and social reforms to be deeper than Mr Sanchez is prepared to stomach.

Both want to see an end to the PP, which has been tainted by corruption scandals. Among many, the party is also considered toxic thanks to a raft of economic policies designed to fix Spains once disastrous public finances.

Mr Rajoy had hoped that he could persuade the Socialists and Ciudadanos to join him in a coalition to keep Podemos out. But the Prime Minister and Mr Sanchez are known to hold each other in contempt

Opinion polls suggest that a fresh election  likely to be held in June  would result in the parties holding a similar number of seats as now.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Two Israeli soldiers strayed into a volatile West Bank refugee camp because of faulty use of their satellite navigation app, forcing officials to launch a massive military operation to rescue them.

At least one Palestinian was killed and 17 others wounded during clashes in the Qalandiya refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, after the rescue, Palestinian media reports said. Ten members of the Israeli security forces were also wounded.

Recommended Read more Israel plans to expel families of Palestinian assailants to Gaza Strip

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said that the two soldiers, from a non-combat unit, were on their way back to base Monday night from an administrative mission at the time of the incident. They were using an Israeli satellite navigation app, but had switched off a function that warns against entry to Palestinian areas considered dangerous for Israelis, he said.

They therefore drove into the camp, a densely packed cluster of drab grey homes in narrow alleys that is home to 13,000 people. It has been a major flashpoint during the five-month wave of violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The soldiers soon found themselves faced with a crowd throwing rocks and tried to turn their vehicle around but found their way blocked, Mr Lerner said. Members of the crowd through Molitov cocktails, causing the vehicle to catch fire, he said. The soldiers fled the vehicle, going in different directions.

One soldier took refuge in a yard and called his commander. He was extricated after around 20 minutes, Mr Lerner said. The second soldier had left his phone in the vehicle and was unable to make contact with troops.

When there was no contact, the army suspected he had been abducted and invoked a rare and controversial procedure known as the Hannibal Directive. Used on one occasion with devastating results on Palestinians during the 2014 Gaza war, the procedure allows for the use of massive firepower even at the risk of killing the abducted soldier. It raises situational awareness of forces so that everyone understands there has been an abduction and it diverts the military capabilities and resources to deal with it, Mr Lerner said. As part of the directive helicopters and drones were brought in and, according to Israeli media reports, elite rescue forces were moved to the camp.

In the meantime, the soldier was making his way by foot across the length of the camp, Lt Col Lerner said. He used his gun to fire warning shots, he added. About a half hour after the procedure was declared, the soldier arrived in the Kochav Yaacov settlement. Troops found him and the Hannibal Directive was cancelled.

Recommended Read more Israel to lower jail age after wave of attacks perpetrated by youths

Palestinian media reports say the army then brought in a bulldozer to extricate the soldiers burnt vehicle. Armed Palestinians exchanged fire with troops, reports said. Iyad Sajdiya, a university student whom the army said was armed, was felled by a bullet to the head.

Thousands turned out for mosque prayers before his burial amid calls for revenge, the Maan news agency reported. He is not the first martyr and he wont be the last, his father Omar Sajdiya said. Eleven residents of Qalandiya camp have died since the violence started in October, some of them during Israeli army raids to demolish family homes of Palestinian assailants.

For Israelis, the incident brought back memories of the early days of the second intifada uprising in October 2000, when two reserve soldiers mistakenly entered Ramallah and were killed and mutilated by rioters.
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Ayse Magi inspected the damage done to her modest home in the town of Cizre, tears in her eyes. Two mortar shells had punctured the ceiling of the bathroom and hallway, and the result was clear: There is no way we can live here, she said.

The mother-of-five was among many residents who were displaced by weeks of operations conducted by Turkeys security forces against militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which wants autonomy for the countrys Kurds.

Recommended Read more Turkey launches air strikes on Kurdish positions after Ankara bombing

Ms Magi chose to remain within the city despite a gruelling 24-hour curfew that had been imposed on 14 December. Now, the Turkish military has eased that curfew  although it will still hold between 7.30pm and 5am  allowing a first wave of residents who had left Cizre to return. Many reached the town at dawn, their vehicles loaded with personal belongings and children. Police carefully inspected their documents as well as the contents of their cars and bags. Many of the returnees also found their homes obliterated.

The town near the borders of Syria and Iraq, with a population of more than 100,000, has been the worst hit of a handful of mainly southeastern Kurdish districts that have seen operations by Turkeys government against the PKK.

The level of damage seen in some neighbourhoods evoked the early days of the war in Syria, with buildings gutted by shelling or partially collapsed. Shell casings littered the battle-scared streets of the Sur neighbourhood, where residents made a grisly discovery: the corpse of an unidentifiable male, on of a number of bodies reportedly found during the day.

Those who did this are not human, said resident Serif Ozem. What took place here is a second Kobani in a country that is supposed to be a democracy.

A woman inspects her belongings in her ruined home in Cizre. Turkish authorities have scaled down a 24-hour curfew imposed on the mainly Kurdish town (Getty_ (Getty Images)

Kobani is a predominantly Kurdish town in northern Syria that suffered a brutal siege at the hands of Isis.

Several shops and homes in the Sur area of Cizre had their walls blasted open. Windows were shattered and doors unhinged, the smell of gunpowder still clinging to the breeze.

Turkish military-imposed curfews remain in the historic district of the main Kurdish city of Diyarbakir  which is also called Sur  and in Idil, a district in Sirnak province, where Turkish forces are continuing operations against Kurdish militants.

The army says more than 600 Kurdish rebels were killed in Cizre. Human rights groups claim that 92 civilians were killed in the town during the military operation. Ozturk Turkdogan, who heads the Ankara-based Human Rights Association, said an additional 171 bodies have been retrieved from three basements in Cizre since Turkey declared the battle over on 11 February.

Govenor Ali Ihsan Su of Sirnak province warned returning Cizre residents to be careful about possible undetected explosive devices in their homes. Three large booms were heard in the morning, which police said were controlled explosions to clear booby traps. Police said the curfew in Cizre could not be lifted immediately after the military operations ended last month because troops had to clear leftover explosives.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Blaming the militants for the destruction of the town, the governor said 708 barricades were dismantled, 264 trenches filled in and 1,409 improvised explosive devices disposed of. In addition, security forces seized large numbers of automatic weapons, other firearms and hand grenades.

They destroyed houses by placing explosives from the kitchens to the bedrooms. They attacked callously and mercilessly, without distinguishing between military, police, women, men, old or young, Mr Su said.

Shoe shop owner Nesim Cavusoglu, who stayed during the curfew, despaired over the destroyed facade of his business.

 Syrian refugees open businesses in Turkey

This is all that is left, he said, gesturing at the rubble and a handful of shoe boxes.

Police said the curfew could not be lifted immediately after the military operations ended because troops had to clear leftover explosives.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has promised to reconstruct Cizre and other districts ruined by the fighting.

Recommended Read more The Kurdish teenagers dying in clashes with Turkish security forces

The PKK, considered a terror group by Turkey and its allies, has been waging an insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then. A fragile, two-year-old peace process with the rebels broke down in July. Nurettin Guler, a 55-year old who stayed in Cizre amid the worst fighting, was pessimistic about the next phase.

They say the operations have ended, but we just dont know, he said. If peace isnt achieved... its not over.

AP
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

An inspiring note has been gathering attention online after a school teacher wrote to tell her students tests will not define who they become and that they are already smart and enough.

The letter surfaced on Instagram and Facebook after US mum Abby Martin said her nine-year-old son, Rylan, brought the letter home from Pleasant Crossing Elementary School in the town of Whiteland, Indiana.

The young students at the school have been gearing up for tests known as the ISTEP and IREAD. Designed by the Indiana Department of Education, the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus (ISTEP) is taken by pupils from grades three through to eight and is designed to assess students basic reading, writing, and maths skills.

Although the assessment may not seem hugely important to many - as with most - it would no doubt have been playing on the students minds, hence why their teacher was moved to write the touching letter.

The note begins: I know how hard you have worked, but there is something very important you must know.

The...tests do not assess all of what makes you special and unique. The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you like I do, and certainly not the way your families do.

It continues: The scores you will get from these tests will tell you something, but they will not tell you everything. These tests do not define you. There are many ways of being smart. You are smart!

The letter concludes: These tests do not define you. There are many ways of being smart. YOU are smart! YOU are enough! You are the light that brightens my day and the reason I am happy to come to work each day. So, in the midst of all these tests, remember that there is no way to test all of the amazing and awesome things that make you, YOU.

Writing about her sons reaction online, Martin said: Rylan got in the car today and told me he was embarrassed because he cried at school. I asked him what upset him, and he told me he cried because he was happy about a letter his teacher gave his class before they take ISTEP.

Needless to say, when I read it, I cried too. We need, not just more teachers like her, but also more people like her in this world.

Speaking with local newspaper, the Indystar, Martin said the letter echoed only what she had already been trying to tell her son. She added: What she was able to articulate was exactly what I had been trying to say to him; Youre special, and youre so much more than a bunch of bubbles on a piece of paper.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

The teacher at the school asked local media to conceal her identity as she alone wasn't responsible for it, reports the Indystar.

As it turns out, there was another similar letter issued to three schools across the state, too, in the run up to the ISTEP.

That one told pupils: We want you to know how wonderful you are! So, take a deep breath and keep working to do your personal best each and every day! You are amazing!
Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Zingy "sauv blanc", rich flat-white coffee  even New Zealand's citrusy hops now flavour British craft beers. Kiwis have been making much more impact on our tastes than simply supplying lamb and butter. It's a country that has quietly developed a vibrant gourmet culture based on celebration of an enviable array of produce. Farmers' markets heave with free-range meat, fresh seafood and abundant fruit and veg, all proving the Land of Plenty moniker is no cliche. Pride in local ingredients means menus change as you travel, so to taste New Zealand you really need to get around.

Hop to it

The sun-kissed fields surrounding the South Island harbour town of Nelson are home to New Zealand's hop growers, so head here to sample the nation's fast-growing craft-beer scene. Nelson celebrates its brewing scene with bands and food at the annual MarchFest (marchfest.com; 19 March; NZ$40/19, accompanied under-18s free), but if you can't make the event, there are plenty of local breweries to explore year-round.

On the Nelson Beer Trail (craftbrewingcapital.co.nz), the Mussel Inn (00 64 3 525 9241; musselinn.co.nz) is a lively pub and microbrewery, with such quirky concoctions as Captain Cooker Manuka Beer, based on Captain James Cook's pioneering NZ ale. Sprig and Fern (00 64 3 544 8675; sprigandfern.co.nz), meanwhile, has won awards for its crisp Harvest Pilsner and Wai-iti Lager.

Waiheke Island (Alamy)

Shell out

A 40-minute ferry ride from Auckland, Waiheke Island is a bohemian idyll that provides a microcosm of New Zealand cuisine. As well as fine wines, fresh seafood is a must. The Cape Cod-inspired Oyster Inn (00 64 9 372 2222; theoysterinn.co.nz) is the toast of the resort of Oneroa for its gourmet fish and chips and eponymous bivalves.

Pop into Te Matuku Bay Oysters (00 64 9 372 8600; tematukubayoysters.co.nz) for a selection straight from the farm, along with the pick of other local produce such as olive oil, aioli and hummus. Last October, Te Matuku hosted Waiheke's inaugural Oyster Festival  watch out for 2016's follow-up.

Raise a glass

The best way to understand a country's winemaking is to view its viniculture in action, and New Zealand's growers are among the most welcoming  even at Hawke's Bay, the nation's oldest grape-growing region, with venerable fields of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and savoury syrah. A wine tour ensures you won't miss the pick of local wineries.

Bay Tours (00 64 6 845 2736; baytours.co.nz; from NZ$85/40) offers excursions, with a choice of half-day and full-day outings with experienced guides who know their terroir. To follow your own path, On Yer Bike (00 64 6 650 4627; onyerbikehb.co.nz; NZ$50/24) rents out cycles, provides maps and will even collect your purchases.

Capital connection

New Zealand's compact capital is packed with exceptional restaurants, cafes and producers, with many leading names willing to share their secrets. Set back from Wellington's favourite surfing beach in the suburb of Lyall Bay, Crave Cooking School (cravecookingschool.co.nz; lessons from NZ$55/26) hosts classes led by specialist guest chefs. With Asian influences so key to Kiwi cuisine, an evening could be spent learning how to re-create bold Vietnamese flavours with tutor Amber Sturtz or master the mysteries of ravioli with Italian chef Roberto Giorgioni.

Meat feast

If you were to judge by Instagram, you might believe the South Island adventure resort of Queenstown to be all about the revered takeaway joint Fergburger (00 64 3 441 1232; fergburger.com), where adrenalin junkies queue for up to half an hour to sample its delectable patties. For a classier carnivorous experience, head to Saffron (00 64 3 442 0131; saffronrestaurant.co.nz) in nearby Arrowtown, where chef-patron Peter Gawron rings seasonal changes with this cooler region's hero foodstuffs, among them wild boar and duck.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Super Tuesday is seen as a landmark in the US presidential election calendar, not just because so many states hold their primaries then, but because these particular states fill in some of the most glaring cultural gaps left between those that vote early. They include many in the south, the vast expanse of Texas, and states, such as Minnesota and Colorado, that could be described as alternative or maverick.

So, while only a fraction of the convention delegate seats have actually been decided  and there are still some giants, including California and New York State, to come  the outlines of the eventual contest can emerge with striking clarity. And this is what seems to have happened this year.

For the Republicans, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio might still have a chance (though each would have a better prospect if the other could bring himself to withdraw), but Donald Trump looks ever harder to beat. For the Democrats, Bernie Sanders is still winning votes and states against the odds, but Hillary Clintons support held up across the south and looks set to carry her through.

Nor is this just how the numbers seem to stack up. It is manifestly what the two leading presidential aspirants themselves sense. You had only to listen fleetingly to Clinton and, still more, to Trump after their latest victories to detect that they were adopting a new tone in the expectation of a new audience. Within a few hours, their talk had gone from appealing to the outer reaches of their respective parties back to seeking the mainstream of American politics. The language of division was morphing into the language of consolidation and unification.

Recommended Read more Cameron managed to get away with a tragic performance at PMQs

Both of them, of course, could be wrong  as could all of us pundits. It is hard to see Clinton losing the nomination now, other than by some extraordinary misfortune. But if Trumps opponents were soon reduced to one, it would be just possible to envisage a new stage of the primary campaign in which party luminaries ganged up to stop Trump. This, however, looks less likely now that one-time rival and moderate Republican Chris Christie has so enthusiastically joined the Trump camp (a long-shot bid to becoming running mate, perhaps?).

Other permutations to skew the calculations could be Trump deciding to run as an independent, if Rubio or Cruz were to snatch the Republican nomination from him  or a third candidate. Michael Bloomberg still hovers on the sidelines, but the longer he gives the appearance of dithering, the more there are questions about his suitability to be President.

But let us for a few moments suppose  even this early, and with all due caveats  that the race proper pits Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. What sort of a contest might this be? How would Americans decide?

While Trump probably cares little who his chief opponent might be, the bluff billionaire businessman is probably not the adversary Clinton would have chosen. She could take on any one of the other Republican candidates  from early favourite Jeb Bush to Marco Rubio  on familiar political ground; she could argue on the issues, and win. As she has shown in the Democratic debates, she has a wealth of experience to draw on, not to mention pots of Wall Street money.

Beating Trump, though, is a whole other matter. Anyone more different from Clinton  the serious young lawyer, former First Lady, Senator for New York and Secretary of State  is hard to imagine. But, against Trump, those differences will not necessarily work to her advantage.

His strengths  down-home appeal, life experience and real-world commercial success (this is the US)  all underline that which Clinton lacks. They also serve as a reminder of why her campaign for the Democratic candidacy eight years ago ultimately failed. Barack Obama had what it took to inspire voters; she, for all her formidable achievements, did not.

If it is Clinton versus Trump, then the choice will be stark. It may be that charisma  or its baser form, populism  will, for once, not carry the day. But it would be simplistic and dangerous for the Clinton campaign to cast the choice as one between substance and dependability on the one hand, and irresponsible extremist bluster on the other.

Trumps remarks about Muslims and Mexicans were xenophobic and reprehensible. They cannot be excused as mere playing to a certain gallery, even if that is what they were. But if, as it appears, he knows all about tacking towards the centre after the nomination is won, then he may be able to do what had seemed impossible: unite the split, post-Tea Party Republican Party, and bring some discontented Democrats on board.

Trump has demonstrated that he can switch register, practically overnight, from outrageous to gracious, even reasonable. He has his own success story to tell that many Americans will find attractive. He can get things done, real things. And he has already shown  his spat with Pope Francis being a prime example  that moral criticism may not stick. And if he has personal baggage  well, so does Clinton, too.

The nominations will not be fixed until the party conventions in July. But even at this early stage it is worth noting that the US of the European mind tends to be a more generous, less rugged, and more outward-looking place than much of it is. When Trump speaks of building a wall with Mexico, he promises a reality that partially exists; there is an 18ft-high metal fence for a third of the length of the border. And when he condemns the Iraq War, proposes talks with Vladimir Putin or ridicules Obamas ability to handle Congress, he undermines Clintons positions in ways that voters across the spectrum will understand.

From this side of the Atlantic, it might look as though a Clinton-Trump duel offers a choice between common sense and crude demagogy. But that is not at all how it could look, come the autumn, in America.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

Another to add to my collection of Genuine Shop Names. There are several Argee Bhajees around the country, but here is one in Bournemouth, via Jamie Pullman.

 Boris Johnson's decision to oppose Britain's membership of the EU has boosted his chances of succeeding David Cameron as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party, according to a YouGov poll of 1,005 Tory party members for The Times (pay wall), showing the change in support since Johnson's declaration for Brexit:

Boris Johnson 43% +5

George Osborne 22% +2

Theresa May 19% -2

Sajid Javid 7% -4

Update, now that I have seen the tables: In fact, in a Johnson-Osborne run-off, Boris's lead has shrunk by 1 point (from 19 to 18 points). I should reprise my standard line on reporting Scottish polls that so amuses SNP supporters and say: "Boris slumps to 18-point lead." Also notable is the small but significant shift (because YouGov reinterviewed the same respondents) towards Remain, support for which is now 31%, up 3, from Leave, 59%, down 2.

One of the reasons David Cameron and Osborne were keen to have the EU referendum so early, I suspect, was to maximise the time between it and the leadership election, in the hope that party members, who will make the final choice between two candidates, will have forgotten about it. This seems unlikely.

 The Chancellor made fun yesterday of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell's invitation to Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek former finance minister, and Paul Mason, the author of Postcapitalism and former Channel 4 News journalist, to speak on Labour's new economics lecture tour: Presumably they chose those two because Chairman Mao was dead and Mickey Mouse was busy.

In my article for The Independent today, I tell the true story behind Labour's star signings.

 David Aaronovitch meets a young Corbyn supporter:

Well I think young people are disillusioned with the old party spin and general way of doing things. Hes put important issues back on the map.

How old are you  21? David retorts. When were you illusioned? You havent been around long enough. You have the same opinion of Labour politics as Bart Simpson has about geometry.

Out of surprise I choke on my beef pate. In between coughs I wince: Well, he speaks his mind.

Sharply Aaronovitch replies: Well his minds stupid! Hes never solved a problem in his life.

 It looks as if it will be Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump, then. This interview with David Plouffe, Barack Obama's campaign manager, before Super Tuesday, is worth reading or listening to.

If you end up with a Trump-Clinton match-up, that will be one for the ages. It will be one for the ages, and, you know, my strong suspicion is Hillary Clinton will be our next President, our first woman President.

Thanks to Ian Leslie.

 An addition to my tautological place names (a Top 10 in my book, Listellany: Sahara Desert means Desert Desert and so on), and as a footnote to Monday's class with Sir Kevin Tebbit: East Timor means East East.

 And finally, thanks to Moose Allain for this:

"I've got a pair of very tight rubber gloves to give away, if anybody wants to take them off my hands."

 Sign up here to receive a daily "Catch-Up Service" email (9am Sunday to Friday) with links to new posts by John Rentoul.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

As the Knessets Speaker Yuli Edelstein fulfilled his invitation from his British counterpart John Bercow in Westminster yesterday, it may have crossed his mind that the parliament he presides over has embarked on a process which would be inconceivable in the House of Commons.

This week a Bill which would change an Israeli Basic Law to allow a three-quarters majority of Knesset members to dismiss an MP for various acts including incitement to racism and negating Israels status as a Jewish and democratic state  cleared its first hurdle.

The Suspension Bill, appalling Israeli liberals and criticised by the countrys President Reuven Rivlin, is widely seen as opening up the possibility of expelling Arab MPs on ideological grounds, or for statements which simply outrage a majority of their Jewish colleagues.

The London visit by Edelstein  who, like Rivlin, is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud party  provoked protests because he is a West Bank Israeli settler. To be fair, last month he too denounced the Bill. But then he changed his mind.

By then, of course, Netanyahu had thrown his full weight behind passage of the legislation, which he had earlier initiated during the fierce row over the meeting of three Arab MPs in the Balad faction with families of Palestinians killed after stabbing Israelis, in a recent wave of attacks. The meeting was to discuss the families demand for the bodies of their loved ones to be returned to them for burial.

Recommended Read more Cameron managed to get away with a tragic performance at PMQs

In fact the Bill, if passed, will undermine Israels just claim to be a full democracy in a region dominated by autocracies  the cornerstone of the claim is the Knesset presence of MPs representing most of the 20 per cent of Israeli citizens who are Arab.

As the former minister and Knesset member Rabbi Michael Melchior put it, in a devastating Haaretz critique, since Second World War there has been no precedent in the entire democratic world of such ousting of MPs even for statements of support for bitter enemies, including of delusional British MPs who supported Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War.

Indeed, it is easy to imagine a large majority of MPs, with many Labour ones leading the way, being tempted to expel, say, George Galloway for some of his statements, often more provocative than those of Arab Knesset members. Except parliamentary privilege  broadly hitherto operative in Israel, too  makes that unthinkable.

To preserve their presence in Israels proportional electoral system, a single Joint Arab list was created last year, of which Ayman Odeh is the leader. Declaring that we are elected by our people and not by the right wing, Odeh (a member of Hadash, a party which includes a Jewish MP) warned that if the Balad Knesset members were expelled, he too might resign.

The 41-year-old Odeh, recently and warmly profiled in the New Yorker magazine, has already emerged as one of the rising  and saner  figures in Israeli politics. At a recent talk at the Jerusalem Press Club, which he conducted in Hebrew, he impressed not only by the measured way he defended his Balad colleagues, or expressed anxiety over whether the governments much needed multi-billion dollar fund for developing Arab communities (which he helped to design) would actually bear fruit, but in his many cross-cultural references. After listing his favourite Palestinian poets, for example, he more surprisingly quoted Hebrew lines from another poet he admires, the great Zionist and socialist Shaul Tchernichovsky.

For Odeh and its many Jewish critics, the Suspension Bill threatens to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Israeli voters. But it could also be used to intimidate MPs, perhaps eventually in left-wing Zionist parties like Meretz too, from criticising an unprecedentedly right-wing government too harshly, and possibly provoking a future Arab boycott of elections. That could lead Arab citizens to turn to more dangerous means of expressing their already deep frustration.

The Bill may not get a Knesset majority this time. But Netanyahus promotion of it is another stark sign to Israels Arab citizens  like his pre-election warning last year that they were running to the polling stations in droves. And it reminds us of his belief that a full share in Israels democracy is not a right, but a privilege which can be denied, further eroding the promise by Israels founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence that it would ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

After the chaos of last weeks PMQs, it was up to Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron to show that British politics can be above mum jokes. So a high bar indeed, but one that was just about scraped over by each man, despite their best efforts.

In the middle of a slow week, no-one had any idea what Corbyns focus might be, including Corbyn himself. He started by pressing Cameron on the Governments broken promises on tax-free childcare that they had promised three years ago, and looked like he was getting somewhere, before suddenly turning his focus to the crisis in teacher recruitment.

To start with, Corbyn grilled Cameron on two points: the Government had missed their target for tax-free childcare, and a third of working parents werent going to receive the 30 free hours of it that they had promised for three to four year olds.

Cameron surprised everyone by responding that the Tories were actually doing a stand-up job, and that everything was good with childcare, contrary to Corbyns "stats". He then tried to push his point home by quoting a new report on childcare by the National Audit Offices (NAO), which says the Government has successfully implemented the entitlement to free childcare for 3- and 4-year-olds, with almost universal take-up of hours offered to parents.

This sounds good, although there were some bits of the report that Cameron failed to mention, like how the Government has actually cut childcare funding in real terms by 4.5 per cent, or how disadvantaged children are less likely to receive anything. Why Corbyn didn't nail the PM down on these points was sadly predictable. But maybe it was because he wasn't able to, as soon enough Cameron had already launched into his favourite part of PMQs  joke time. After his attempt to poke fun at Corbyns suit last week backfired spectacularly, he was careful to keep his cool.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty 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

Changing the topic of conversation with all the subtlety of a third Greek bailout, the PM took aim at Labours appointment of Yanis Varoufakis, describing him as the Greek finance minister who left his economy in ruins, before going on to say That is Labours policy in two words: Acropolis Now!

Its probably worth pointing out that the Greek financial crisis began in 2009, six years before Varoufakis briefly took office, and that Acropolis now is a really awful pun. Although this misses the point. All Cameron wanted to do was mock Corbyn in a way that people, especially headline writers, would remember  and it worked. That said, its a shame that such blatant diversion tactics can be so effective at PMQs, especially as Jeremy Corbyn was trying to hold him to account on an issue that affects almost every family in the UK.

Cameron then decided to go even further down the rabbit hole of his comms strategy. He claimed that the Labour leader was doing him a real solid by bringing some of the serious shortfalls of his childcare plan to light. I am delighted he is helping me to promote Government policy!, he scoffed.

Its hard not to be inspired by such an approach. Next time I arrange to babysit a child for free and turn up three years late, then refuse to do it because I cant actually afford freebies, I now know how I can spin it when they complain. Im delighted that youre helping me promote my babysitting scheme by pointing out these major issues! Ill say, before telling them all about my sound plan for working families and leaving.

Corbyn should know by now that when Cameron starts pulling stunts like this its because hes running out of answers, and that if he forced the PM to repeat the same bluster several times then he could expose him like he did in the tax credits debate.

But the Labour leader decided to suddenly turn his attention to the teacher shortage half-way through his questioning, letting Cameron off the hook. This gave him the chance to boast that, among many other supposed achievements, over 13,000 teachers had been recruited since 2010. But as the shortage suggests, this either isnt enough, or is being outstripped by the numbers of teachers leaving.

The session ended with a now common sight  Cameron championing his achievements after managing to spin his way out of a half-dug hole, while Labour sits opposite, cross-armed and in near silence.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

As the old saying goes, in heaven the food is Italian, the beer is German and the police are British. The rule of law in this country is upheld on the principle that the police are not our masters but our servants. We dont have military police and you rarely see armed officers on our streets. Maybe crime would be lower if we had tougher law enforcement, but thats besides the point - its just not how we do things here.

Yet Theresa May, the Home Secretary, wants to give police powers that even that most autocratic and unfree countries do not have. She is turning local bobbies into snoopers, inspectors into hackers, and in doing so she is eroding what little privacy we have from the prying eyes of an increasingly powerful government.

The Investigatory Powers Bill, unveiled yesterday, is an affront to Parliament. After three inquiries, in which MPs said the measures went too far and the powers it contained were sprawling, May told her officials to go even further. Parliaments Intelligence and Security Committee - the only security-checked committee with access to the most sensitive workings of our intelligence agencies - told May to place privacy at the heart of the Bill. Her Home Office officials simply added the word "privacy" to a chapter heading. To treat Parliament with such contempt is beneath one of the great offices of state.

The powers in the Bill are unnecessary. It will give the police the power to read your web histories, even if you are entirely innocent of any crime. It will let the police hack your phone. In fact, the hacking provisions are so broad that it will give the intelligence agencies and the police the power to force your ISP to hack your personal devices, from the camera and microphone on your smartphone or smart TV, to your laptop or desktop. It isn't even clear whether the judicial warrants allowing such hacking will be signed off for individuals, or whether judges will be asked to sign off on broader warrants enabling the hacking of, say, a group of people the state doesnt like. Parliament has said the lack of detail around these provisions is of deep concern.

Three years after Edward Snowden bravely revealed illegal spying by GCHQ, the Bill tries to prevent anyone from blowing the whistle again. It will be illegal to tell anyone you have been served with a surveillance warrant, and if you are a journalist it will be illegal for someone to leak to you that theyve been served with a such a warrant. There is no public interest defence for whistleblowers.

There are even worse measures: the legislation will enable the request filter, a highly advanced search function that will allow the police to ascertain every individual who has attended a protest or anyone who visits the website of any particular political group. Combined with further extensions of data retention, with the storage of every citizens web browsing history for 12 months, it creates the enormous potential for unjustifiable snooping in the private lives of entire innocent citizens.

Its hard to understand the magnitude of what this means for your private life.

Imagine if after visiting a local library and a pub, the police asked you to record every person you spoke to, the names of the books you read, anyone you sat near, and the route you took there and back from your home. All of this will be recorded, by default, by the British state if the bill passes.

No other democracy does this; not Germany, not Italy, not the USA. Britain will have built surveillance capabilities that no other nations, except countries such as China and Russia, have.

These bulk powers divide Parliament. The government is asking Labour, the official opposition, to unite with it to push these powers through, and yet have given the opposition no serious evidence for why they need such wide-ranging powers. Bulk collection of our data is so controversial that two senior MPs, David Davis and Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, took the government to court to fight for our rights, to prove that collecting every citizens data is illegal.

Labour is making the right noises. But neither Kier Starmer MP, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, nor Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham have ruled out voting for mass surveillance powers. It would be highly damaging to the party if Labour voted with Conservative Ministers (many Conservative backbenchers arent convinced) to usher in the most sweeping surveillance laws seen in any democracy in the Western world.

The Dont Spy On Us coalition of legal experts, law enforcement and the intelligence agencies all agree on one thing: we do need new legislation. The main piece of legislation overseeing surveillance is 16 years old and pre-dates Facebook, let alone newer tools such as Whatsapp or Telegram.

Yet it mustnt be rushed. Leading experts, including a cross-party group of parliamentarians, former senior police officers and intelligence experts, have written an open letter to May urging her not to rush this legislation through Parliament. The Home Secretary should reconsider: it isnt too late to get the timetable for this important legislation right and give Parliament the time to amend the Bill.

We need to maintain trust in the police and intelligence agencies in an uncertain world. Giving them powers only a few autocratic states have will do nothing to keep us safe.
Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }}

It could have been a BBC drama called Our Street. But Tony Warrens determination to introduce the authentic voice of working-class life to the nations living rooms produced Coronation Street, the worlds longest-running television soap.

Screenwriter Warren, who died aged 79 following a short illness, pitched the idea of a kitchen sink drama to Granada Television after an executive at the Manchester-based broadcaster encouraged the former child actor to write a story about the world out there.

Warren dusted down a script originally offered to the BBC in 1957. Renamed Florizel Street, it would be set on a terraced street of back-to-back houses in Salford and feature characters inspired by the dominating, matriarchal woman of Warrens Lancashire upbringing.

Warrens script, with its unvarnished language and frequently unsympathetic characters, shocked Granada bosses. However the writer, just 24 when he first sketched his vision for the fictional town of Weatherfield, persuaded the company to go ahead with the drama.

Launched in December, 1960 and now called Coronation Street, the show became an instant hit with viewers, fascinated by larger-than-life characters like Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner. Half the nation sat down to watch Corrie at its peak. Warren wrote episodes up to the 70s and remained a consultant on the series until his death.

Warren, who was openly gay during the shows early years, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, saw his battles over the birth of Coronation Street turned into a 2010 BBC drama.

Notable deaths in 2016 Show all 42 1 /42 Notable deaths in 2016 Notable deaths in 2016 Debbie Reynolds was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian. She died on December 28 in Los Angeles Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Actress Carrie Fisher died on December 27 aged 60 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Comedian and Actor Ricky Harris died on December 26 aged 54 Rex Notable deaths in 2016 British singer George Michael died on 25 December aged 53 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Rick Parfitt OBE was an English musician, best known for being a singer, songwriter and rhythm guitarist in the rock band Status Quo. He died on December 24 in Marbella, Spain Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Lord Jenkin of Roding died at the age of 90 on the 21 December PA wire Notable deaths in 2016 Rabbi Lionel Blue died on the 19 December Rex Notable deaths in 2016 Zsa Zsa Gabor died on December 18 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Leonard Cohen died on 7 November Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Grand secretary of the Orange Order Drew Nelson died on 10 October aged 60 after a short illness PA Notable deaths in 2016 Aaron Pryor, the relentless junior welterweight died Sunday, Oct. 9, at the age of 60 at his home in Cincinnati after a long battle with heart disease AP Notable deaths in 2016 Polish Director Andrzej Wajda died on October 9, aged 90 Reuters Notable deaths in 2016 Stylianos Pattakos has died following a stroke on 8th October. He was 103 years old. AP Notable deaths in 2016 Dickie Jeeps, was an English rugby union player who played for Northampton. He represented and captained both the England national rugby union team and the British Lions in the 1950s and 1960s. He died on 8th October. He was 84 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Duke of Westminster Billionaire landowner the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor has died on 9 August, aged 64 Rex Features Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Knudsen Sir Roger Moores stepdaughter Christina Knudsen has died from cancer on 25 July at teh age of 47 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Caroline Aherne The actress Caroline Aherne has died from cancer on 2 July at the age of 52 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Christina Grimmie Christina Grimmie, 22, who was an American singer and songwriter, known for her participation in the NBC singing competition The Voice, was signing autographs at a concert venue in Orlando on 10 June when an assailant shot her. Grimmie was transported to a local hospital where she died from her wounds on 11 June Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Kimbo Slice Former UFC and Bellator MMA fighter Kimbo Slice died after being admitted to hospital in Florida on 6 June, aged 42 Getty Notable deaths in 2016 Muhammad Ali The three-time former heavyweight world champion died after being admitted to hospital with a respiratory illness on 3 June, aged 74 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Sally Brampton Brampton who was the launch editor of the UK edition of Elle magazine has died on 10 May, aged 60 Grant Triplow/REX/Shutterstock Notable deaths in 2016 Billy Paul The soul singer Billy Paul, who was best known for his single Me and Mrs Jones, has died on 24 April, aged 81 Noel Vasquez/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Prince Prince, the legendary musician, has been found dead at his Paisley Park recording studio on 21 April. He was 57 Notable deaths in 2016 Chyna WWE icon Joan Laurer dies aged 45 after being found at California home on 20 April Notable deaths in 2016 Victoria Wood The five-time Bafta-winning actress and comedian Victoria Wood has died on 20 April at her London home after a short illness with cancer. She was 62 Notable deaths in 2016 David Gest The entertainer and former husband of Liza Minnelli, David Gest has been found dead on 12 April in the Four Seasons hotel in Canary Warf, London. He was 62-years-old PA Notable deaths in 2016 Denise Robertson Denise Robertson, an agony aunt on This Morning for over 30 years, has died on 1 April, aged 83 Notable deaths in 2016 Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Hadid, the prominent architect best known for designs such as the London Olympic Aquatic Centre and the Guangzhou Opera House, has died of a heart attack on 31 March, aged 65 2010 AFP Notable deaths in 2016 Ronnie Corbett British entertainer Ronnie Corbett has passed away on 31 March at the age of 85 2014 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Imre Kertesz Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor Imre Kertesz, who won the 2002 Nobel Literature Prize, has died on 31 March, at the age of 86 REUTERS Notable deaths in 2016 Rob Ford Rob Ford, the former controversial mayor of Toronto, has died following a battle with a rare form of cancer. The 46-year-old passed away at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on 22 March Notable deaths in 2016 Joey Feek Joey (left) passed away in March after a two-year cancer illness. She was part of country music duo, Joey + Rory, with her husband Rory (right) Jason Merritt/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Umberto Eco Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco died 19 February 2016 aged 84 EPA Notable deaths in 2016 Harper Lee Harper Lee, the American novelist known for writing 'To Kill a Mockingbird', died February 19, 2016 aged 89 2005 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Vanity Vanity, pictured performing in 1983, died aged 57 REX Features Notable deaths in 2016 Dave Mirra The BMX legend's body found inside truck with gunshot wound after apparent suicide aged 41 Notable deaths in 2016 Harry Harpham The former miner became Sheffield Labour MP in May after many years as a local councillor. He died after succumbing to cancer, at the age of 61. Notable deaths in 2016 Dale Griffin The Mott the Hoople drummer died on January 17, aged 67 REX Notable deaths in 2016 Rene Angelil Celine Dion's husband and manager Rene Angelil has lost his battle with cancer on 14 January, aged 73 2011 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Alan Rickman Legendary actor Alan Rickman has died on 14 January at the age of 69 after battle with pancreatic cancer. He is largely regarded as one of the most beloved British actors of our generation with roles in Love Actually, Die Hard, Michael Collins, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and an illustrious stage career 2015 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2016 Maurice White The Earth, Wind & Fire founder died aged 74. The nine-piece band sold more than 90 million albums worldwide and won six Grammy awards Notable deaths in 2016 Lawrence Phillips Former NFL star found dead in prison cell on 13 January in suspected suicide, aged 40 AFP/Getty Images

Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate, who became a close friend of Warren, led the tributes. She said: Manchester has lost its dearest son and so many of us a beloved friend. And the millions who have loved Coronation Street for over half a century have lost their Dickens.

Bill Roache, who first appeared as Ken Barlow in the December 9, 1960 opening episode, said: I loved Tony's energy. He was the father of Coronation Street and he gave us all so much. He will be so desperately missed because of who he was and what he did. We owe him so much.

Julie Goodyear, who played bar lady Bet Lynch, recalled how Warren had asked her to accompany him when he was awarded his MBE at Buckingham Palace. She said: I felt so very proud of him and all that he had achieved in creating Coronation Street - and of course the work this gave to so many others on both sides of the camera, and also in so many other countries around the world.

The immense pleasure that Coronation Street has given to all its viewers since Tony created it in 1960 really is amazing and it still does. It lives on and on.
Pallbearers carry the coffin of actor Frank Kelly at his funeral at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Blackrock, Dublin

Actor Frank Kelly, best known for his role as Father Jack in the hit comedy Father Ted, was remembered at his funeral as a loving family man as well as a comic legend.

Hundreds of mourners, including stars of the stage and screen, turned out to say a final goodbye to the veteran performer at a moving, sometimes funny, service at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Dublin's Blackrock.

Irish President Michael D Higgins, Father Ted co-creators Graham Linehan and Arthur Matthews as well as Ardal O'Hanlon, who played the hapless Fr Dougal in the TV series, were among those paying their respects.

In an emotional tribute, the actor's son Emmet joked: "When he gets to heaven, when they chose to let Father Jack through the duty free at pearly gates, they'll have no choice - It will be the first time anyone ever told St Peter to feck off."

Kelly's simple wooden coffin, adorned with bouquets of white lilies, was placed before the altar with a black and white photograph of the actor placed on top throughout the Mass.

Having spent 60 years in theatre and on television, Kelly, who died on Sunday aged 77, is mostly widely remembered for his feisty parody of the drunken priest Fr Jack.

Despite his role in lampooning the Catholic Church, chief celebrant Father Bill Fortune said the late actor was in fact a devoted church-goer with a deep faith.

He pointed to the exact seat Kelly took "Sunday after Sunday" and which was "probably contoured to his person".

Paraphrasing Napoleon, the parish priest said his friend and parishioner had "2 o'clock in the morning courage", not a hot-headed but a cool courage, as he battled Parkinson's disease, cancer and a failing heart over the past decade.

A number of poignant gifts were brought to the altar including the Irish Times crossword, which he undertook every day, and a picture of his beloved 40 Foot, a swimming hole in Dublin Bay where he plunged into daily.

Video of the Day

A picture of the family pet Lucky "who is already missing him" was placed next to them.

Along with 17 flowers, representing each of his grandchildren, a copy of his recently published autobiography The Next Gig was also brought to the altar.

"Dad's next gig is in the best theatre hall," remarked Emmet.

Father Fortune told the packed congregation Kelly was many things - a son, a sibling, a friend, a husband, a father, a grandfather, actor, writer and parishioner.

"But none of those could encapsulate or define him," he added.

"He was much more than that."

Such was his renown, "Father Jack" was trending on Twitter ahead of Donald Trump and Leonardo DiCaprio for a short while after his death, quipped Emmet.

"That's pretty cool," he added.

After the service, Father Ted co-writer Matthews described Kelly as a legend.

"He was naturally very funny, he was great, he had a great life," he said.

"He packed a lot in. He'll be missed, he was a legendary figure in Irish comedy."

He is survived by his wife Bairbre, children Aideen, Fiona, Jayne, Ruth, Emmet, Stephen and Rachel, and his grandchildren.
Investors have started the month of March in buoyant mood with risk appetite returning yesterday.

The main global equity market indices posted strong gains with the Euro Stoxx up 1.7% and Wall Streets S&P 500 up 2.4%. An encouraging set of US economic figures help soothe investors concerns. However, the bigger picture, as far as global manufacturing activity is concerned, is one of stagnation. According to the JPMorgans Global Manufacturing PMI, produced by Markit, manufacturing growth slowed from 50.9 in January to no change (50.0) for February. This represented the weakest reading since November 2012. The wider global manufacturing slowdown is feeding through into the UK. The pace of manufacturing growth eased from 52.9 in January to a disappointing 50.8 for February. This was the weakest reading since April 2013.

Concerns over China continue to rumble on in the background. This morning Moody's downgraded its outlook on Chinese government debt to "negative" from "stable", citing uncertainty over authorities' capacity to implement economic reforms, rising government debt and falling reserves. It is likely that the slowdown in China will eventually trigger a currency devaluation. With the Chinese authorities burning through its foreign exchange reserves this could happen within the next 6 months. Moodys has warned that it may downgrade Chinas sovereign rating from Aa3, its fourth highest rating.

Yesterdays incoming US economic data was largely better than expected. The ISM manufacturing PMI posted its fifth successive reading below the 50 expansion threshold. However, the 49.5 print was the best reading in the five-month series and better than analysts had expected. This suggests the recent decline in manufacturing activity is stabilising. Meanwhile there was even better news for the US construction industry. Construction spending hit an 8-year high in January. Despite this improving economic data, an influential Fed policymaker, speaking yesterday, sees downside risks to the US economic outlook. The New York Federal Reserve President, William Dudley suggested that the recent turmoil in the markets may force the Fed to tighten monetary policy even more slowly.

Looking to the day ahead, following on from the UKs disappointing manufacturing PMI yesterday we have the equivalent survey for the construction industry today. Analysts expect the healthy rate of expansion in January (55.0) to have continued last month (55.5). In the Eurozone there are no releases of note, although ECB Executive Board Member Benoit Coeure will be speaking at an event in Frankfurt. In the US, the Feds Beige Book of economic conditions and the ADP private sector employment report are the two key releases of the day. The ADP report is expected to reveal a net gain of 190k jobs in February, down from the 205k figure in January.

On the currency markets EUR/USD is currently trading at $1.086, down slightly from yesterdays open. EUR/GBP has been trading within a relatively narrow range over the last 24 hours and is currently changing hands at 77.9p. Meanwhile GBP/USD remains below $1.40 at $1.393.

Sponsored by:
Dublin Institute of Technology is seeking between 15m and 20m for its catering college and related property beside O'Connell Street.

The college, which is set to be moved to the new campus at Grangegorman, will vacate its long-standing base at 21 Cathal Brugha Street at the corner of Marlborough Street.

The property, which will be marketed by agent WK Nowlan, has about 10,000 sq m of space, and can be converted to offices or apartments. The shortage of office space in central Dublin may make this property an attractive one to investors.

The building is yards from O'Connell Street and so will benefit greatly from the extension of the Luas up towards Parnall Square.

That extension is seen as key to making the O'Connell Street area attractive as a work destination to office workers based on the southside of the city.

This is the latest big ticket property in the O'Connell Street area to go up for sale in recent days. The Gresham Hotel, which backs on to the property, formally went on the market last week with a price tag of 80m.

That is expected to be bought by an international investor given the size of the business, although there is expected to be some domestic interest in as well. Among the likely bidders are Irish hotel giant Dalata, as well as former Gresham Hotel chief executive Patrick Coyle.

Perhaps a better guide to the potential sale price of 21 Cathal Brugha Street is Telephone House, a 1970s office block almost opposite the property.

That block, which has a total net floor area of 7,504.1 sq m, is on the market through Knight Frank guiding 11.5m.

The Dublin office market posted a total return of 28pc in 2015, according to a report from BNP Paribas Real Estate and MSCI.

While that number was driven mainly by the docklands as well as Dublin 2, all parts of the city posted double-digit growth.

BNP Paribas Real Estate Ireland head of research Joan Henry is forecasting office rents to increase by 5pc this year 3pc in 2017 as the market stil waits for badly needed new supply.
Kildevin house is a fully restored Georgian-style mansion on 88ac near Streete in Co Westmeath. The land is in a mixture of grazing and forestry and the entire comes to market with a guide price of 950,000.

Located in its own townland of Ballykildevin the property is 2km from Streete, 25km from Mullingar, 27km from Longford and just over an hour from Dublin.

While technically built in the early Victorian era it has all the feel of a Georgian pile.

The place is steeped in history and was once home to Meredith Merry Johnston who played rugby for Ireland between 1877 and 1884 and captained the team to its first international rugby win.

Meredith's wife Edith Mary Jane Wise was a first cousin of William B Yeats and according to Celia Lamb of selling agents Ganley Walters there is reason to believe that the great poet himself visited the house on more than one occasion.

Prior to this the occupants of Kildevin were more notorious than salubrious. The Sproule family built the house in 1833 and one Robert Sproule was known as "an authoritarian figure of much local notoriety' who emigrated to Australian 'under duress' in 1847. No one knows what happened him in the then penal colony but his death notice was found in Adelaide as recently as 2013.

From 1916 the place changed hands a few times and when bought by its current owners in 1998 it was in a state of considerable disrepair.

Sensitivity

The new owners undertook a huge project to bring the place back to its former glory. According to Ms Lamb it was restored with great sensitivity and an attention to detail that ensured the integrity of the house.

The residence is approached through a tree lined avenue passing through its own parkland and leading to a broad gravel forecourt. A three-bay, two-storey, over basement structure the building has a projecting, three story semi circular bow to the centre and front of the facade.

The house proper is entered via a flight of stone steps with balustrade parapets on either side. A unique oval hall leads to the main reception rooms that include a drawing room, morning room and study. There is also an office, dining room, seven bedrooms, four bathrooms and a cellar. The kitchen is located on the lower ground floor with a sitting room and three of the bedrooms, a bathroom and a jail cell. No need for a doghouse!

Four of the bedrooms are located upstairs along with two bathrooms. The original features of the house are still intact with cornices, ornate plasterwork and sash windows.

There is an extensive cut-stone courtyard to the rear of the residence where the roofs of the buildings have been restored but much work needs to be done internally. Some of the original stables are intact complete with mangers and cobbled floors.

The lands are all in one block and surround the house. Extending to 88ac a portion of 25ac is in grass while the rest is in forestry and parkland. The forestry was planted in 2002 and its 70,000 trees include beech, red oak, oak, sycamore and ash and the plantation is subject to premiums for the next six years.
We have been through a very stress-ful time on the farm.

It started a few days before Christmas. I got a phonecall to say we had been selected for a Bord Bia Quality Assurance scheme spot audit and was told it had to be completed within 48 hours. It was done on December 23.

The run-up to Christmas is traditionally a busy time on most farms. Other businesses close over the holiday period but animals still have to be looked after so farmers would stockpile feed and be generally trying to get jobs done to be able to keep work to a minimum over the Christmas.

At the end of the inspection, we were informed that we were going to be suspended from the Bord Bia scheme.

I was shocked. We have had numerous inspections by various regulatory bodies over a long number of years, without penalty, so this came out of the blue.

The key issue was our veterinary book. We had a lot of information in it, but the way it was written up was deemed to be unsatisfactory as was the level of detail.

I hold my hands up and realise, looking at it now, that at some stage the requirements in relation to keeping the veterinary book had become stricter and I hadn't kept fully up to speed with them.

But my big issue is with what happened after the spot audit.

Given that QAS membership is an integral part of the beef price structure and considering our sales of cattle were on-going, I obviously felt we needed to get back into the scheme as quickly as possible. So I contacted someone I know in Bord Bia who explained the process to me, as follows.

The inspector's report goes before an audit committee and it is the audit committee who decides whether you are in or out. So he suggested that if we could re-organise the records in the manner required and get them on the desk of the relevant person in the audit committee before their next meeting, on January 7, our position might be looked on favourably.

On this advice we decided that not alone would we totally upgrade our records but we would put them on our farm computer package. We worked at it throughout Christmas spending many hours on the computer and on January 4 we posted 69 pages of veterinary records plus animal prescriptions to Bord Bia.

I don't know whether this information was taken into account or not by the audit committee but, on January 7, we were suspended from the QAS with immediate effect. We subsequently got a letter from Bord Bia advising us of our suspension.

This letter also advises "if you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact Bord Bia" but does not give any contact details.

The reasons why we were deemed to be non-compliant were listed on the back of the letter.

But by the time that the audit committee met all the information which they required from us was in their possession.

As I write this, I am looking back through the correspondence from previous inspections and they all look pretty much the same. It is only when I scrutinised the small print on the back that I realised the letter from our previous inspection before this one, in August 2015, did indicate - under the 'Areas for Improvement' heading - that our veterinary records were not up to scratch.

If it had been made clear to us that this was a major issue, then we would, of course, have taken immediate action to rectify it. If the letter from last August was a warning then it should have been clearly flagged as such.

I then spoke on the phone to someone in the relevant section in Bord Bia and I have to say that I was shocked by his attitude. He had no interest in the fact that we had furnished our updated records. As far as he was concerned, I was non-compliant, it was their scheme and I could apply to be re-audited after six months. I explained that the loss of the QA payment was surely enough and that excluding us for six months was a double penalty.

We decided to write a letter to the head of the relevant section, asking for an early re-audit. This took place on January 28 and we have since been re-certified.

Ireland is a small country and lots of people heard of our suspension. The one thing I noticed from the large number of farmers who contacted us is the serious level of dissatisfaction that beef farmers have with Bord Bia.

Pressure

A couple points kept coming up. One is the feeling among farmers that Bord Bia is too close to the industry.

Also, it's all very fine to announce the opening of new markets but where is the follow-up in terms of actual beef sales to, for example, the US and China? The Minister has told us the US is a 100m market, but less that 13m worth of Irish beef was exported there last year.

As for the QAS itself, I strongly believe that, not only do we need Quality Assurance but we need one that's better than the scheme in any other country. However, it needs to be a scheme that farmers will buy into and, to do so, has to have a core of common sense. Instead, there is a view out there the current scheme is overly pedantic.

One example is the requirement that the Health and Safety statement be readily accessible in the yard. Where?

If you put it in the workshop, that's locked. Put it in the veterinary cupboard and that's locked too. Anywhere else in the yard it will get damp. Surely the farm office is the best place for it?

This is one of the things we were pulled up on even though there are four warning signs in the yard with two specifically referencing the health and safety statement.

One gives a contact number and informs the visitor to call that number or call to the house to view the statement before entering the farm.

Bord Bia and the QAS need to go back to the drawing board if they are to regain farmers' confidence.

Robin Talbot farms in partnership with his mother Pam and wife Ann in Ballacolla, Co Laois.

BORD BIA RESPOND...

As noted in Robin's article, Bord Bia's Beef and Lamb Quality Assurance Scheme (BLQAS) is critical to enabling the industry's continued access to premium markets around the world. Critical to its success in turn is that it be operated to recognised international standards and accredited accordingly. Such accreditation dictates that the scheme be set out and operated in a highly prescriptive manner, a manner that some may unfortunately perceive as 'pedantic'. There is no alternative.

Approximately 37,000 audits are conducted each year and the high standards of beef farming in Ireland are reflected in the high compliance rate, whereby approximately 93pc of beef farmers pass the audit. The small minority found not to be in full compliance typically arises because of issues around poor administration and animal remedy record keeping, irrespective of what might otherwise be regarded as exceptional animal husbandry and production standards. Notwithstanding the requirements of the Bord Bia scheme, these records are also required by law.

During a Bord Bia audit, poor record keeping is noted as an 'Area For Improvement' (AFI). Where this issue is not addressed despite written warnings and successive audits, then, and only then, is a spot audit triggered.

Albeit described as a 'spot audit', farmers are contacted by phone 48 hours ahead of the audit taking place.

The current rules of the BLQAS require that when a non-compliance against one or more requirement of the standard is found on the day of the audit, the auditee cannot be considered for certification without adequately addressing the issue and undergoing a full re-audit. Submission of any material after the audit may not be considered in the certification process but may help the case for a re-audit being undertaken within the six months normally prescribed after the withdrawal of certification.

Bord Bia would be remiss in its duty to all compliant farmers and to Irish consumers if the rules of the scheme are not operated to the highest standards or compromised or undermined in any way.

The BLQAS is developed and approved by a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) made up of all relevant stakeholder groups. A revision to the current scheme is at an advanced stage and includes consideration to a 'close-out' model. This model, as successfully operated in the Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme would provide beef farmers a period of time, while retaining certification, to provide evidence to show that they have addressed the issue.
Trade barriers and import duties in Europe's fertiliser industry are costing farmers nearly 1billion, an IFA-commissioned report has concluded.

The report from the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) states that "with the protection of the fertiliser sector the European Union protects local fertiliser firms to the detriment of other producers, ie farmers and food sector companies."

The IFPRI report asks "whether the application of anti-dumping and customs duties on some non-EU origin fertilisers has put EU grain producers at a significant competitive disadvantage as their main competitors (in the Ukraine and Russia) have access to cheaper fertiliser."

The report also finds that 'price fixing and cartels might be operating in the highly-concentrated markets such as Western Europe and calls for the need to further examine pricing behaviour and potential market power exertion in the industry'.

An IFA delegation led by national chairman Jer Bergin met the EU Commissioner Phil Hogan yesterday to present the report to him and to discuss the income crisis in the sector.

Tariffs

"Fertiliser is the second biggest expenditure for Irish farmers with an annual spend of over 500m and the Commission must take action as family farm incomes are on the floor," said Jer Bergin.

It is clear from the data collected that Europe's market is not functioning as the duties and tariffs protect European manufacturers at the expense of farm families."

IFA Inputs Project Team Leader James McCarthy, who spearheaded the campaign for the abolition of the duties and tariffs, said: "The ongoing concentration of Europe's fertiliser manufacturing industry has seen farmgate fertiliser prices increase at an unjustified rate relative to other input costs.

"The industry historically blamed the disparity on rising energy costs. However, the steep fall in energy prices over the last two years has not been reflected in retail fertiliser prices to the primary producer."

Figures from the CSO have shown that fertiliser prices here rose at twice the rate of other farm input prices from 2005 to 2014.
Lemken and Templetouhy Farm Machinery (TFM) have joined forces again this year to launch the 2016 Lemken Plough Operator of the Year award at Kildalton College. This year the students will get to experience two different cutting edge technology ploughs from the Lemken range, a EurOpal 8 Hydrix and the new generation Juwel 7 MVT plough.

Over the course of the spring ploughing season the students will be receiving expert advice from Lemken and TFM specialists on the theory and practical side of ploughing.

According to Diarmuid Claridge, Ireland sales manager for Lemken, a large emphasis will be placed on the importance of correct plough settings to gain maximum benefit in terms of weed control, soil structure, fuel usage and reduced metal wear.

"Precise plough adjustment is a key factor in both metal wear and fuel usage," said Mr Claridge.

"With the Lemken Optiquick system, it allows for easy and efficient adjustment of the front furrow width and tractor/plough pull line, independently of each other. Both time and money are saved as a result."

At the end of the spring ploughing season the students will each have the chance to test their skills and put what they have learnt into action in front of a team of judges.

The judges are clear in their criteria that the winner will be someone who stands out from the rest in terms of safety, correct maintenance, correct plough settings, and overall ability to perform satisfactory ploughing.

Tips

As the students are set to learn, good ploughing can only be achieved if the plough is set up properly from the start.

The following tips might be helpful for initial plough set up, and are based around a five furrow reversible Lemken plough.
The latest ranking for grass-seed varieties has been released by Teagasc, with diploid Abermagic topping the Pasture Profit Index (PPI).

Its 210/ha/yr rating is 5pc higher than the next nearest variety, the tetraploid Abergain, on a rating of 199. Both are from the Aberystwyth breeding programme in Wales, which also provides the fourth highest variety, AberPlentiful, another tetraploid. All are available from Germinal Seeds.

Third ranked Nifty is a diploid with a PPI of 190/ha/yr. It is sold by Seedtech.

Launched in 2014, the PPI was designed to be an 'EBI for grass' by a team led by Teagasc Moorepark's Michael O'Donovan.

It captures the key performance measures of different grass varieties, based on independent data that originates from the Department of Agriculture trials.

The grasses are assessed under grazing conditions, along with their growth, quality and persistence scores on 84 farms around the country.

The Irish index is still the only of its kind in the world, with New Zealand's Forage Value Index only taking into account forage drymatter output. In fact, the Irish index looks set to be expanded further, according to Mr O'Donovan.

"We're looking more closely at the graze-out qualities of varieties. The feedback from farm level is that the tetraploids graze out better. We used to be worried about the persistency of tetraploids, but we are beginning to realise that ground cover may not be the best measure of persistency.

"Instead, we think it is more about the number of tillers that survive, and generally, whatever you have after 11 months will determine the make-up of your sward from that point on," he said.

In addition, Mr O'Donovan is looking at starting trial plots to develop a similar index for clover, and to increase the number of grass-seed varieties being trialled at farm level to 25.
The Wild Atlantic Way and Skellig Michael, above, which is in the new Star Wars movie, feature heavily in a new guide from Discover Ireland. The Western seaboard is an enormous draw, said Irish Hotels Federation president Stephen McNally. Photo: Valerie O'Sullivan

Keem Bay, Achill Island: Five blue-flag beaches would be an impressive tally anywhere, let alone on a single island. But thats Achill for you. Keem Bay is a Signature Discovery Point on the Wild Atlantic Way, and for good reason... its breathtaking beauty inspired visiting artists like Paul Henry, Graham Greene and Nobel laureate Heinrich Boll, and continues to wow visitors today.

RETAINING the 9pc VAT rate is essential if the tourism sector is to remain competitive, the newly-elected president of the Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) said yesterday.

Joe Dolan claimed the reduction in VAT was the "single biggest job creation strategy since the foundation of the State".

"Our competitiveness, of which VAT is a significant part, is the difference between some hotels staying open that otherwise would have closed, and raising it would be hugely counter productive.

"It's just on a par with our counterparts in Europe and if we can retain our VAT, we can retain our momentum and sustainable growth," he argued.

"Outside of the Dublin, the reduced rate of VAT has actually kept some properties open and people in jobs."

Mr Dolan, who owns the Bush Hotel in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, will be seen as a champion for the small, family-owned hotel.

In 2014, he dramatically halted the auction of the farm of a neighbour at his hotel, which was being sold against the farmer's wishes.

He said at the time it was a small rural community where people shared each other's pain and happiness and that same community had rallied around his family in their time of tragedy.

Mr Dolan's son Andrew (20) died on New Year's Day 2012 after an unprovoked assault.

At its annual conference in the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney, the IHF also called for a capital budget of 300m for tourism-specific projects over the next five years.

"If we want a solid, sustainable tourism we have to invest directly ourselves. When you invest in marketing tourism there is a return for every euro spent of 34 to the Irish economy and into creating Irish jobs," Mr Dolan added.

"An unprecedented 33,000 jobs were created in the last five years. And in the next five years, creating the same growth alone, we can be confident in creating 40,000 more."

But he rejected criticism these jobs were traditionally low paid. "Hospitality is a low-paid sector but low pay is better than no pay, employment is better than no employment, and emigration is a lot less attractive than being at home," he said.

"We have one of the highest minimum wage rates in Europe and the OECD countries, apart from Luxembourg, so let's keep some perspective here." The IHF has also called for the restoration of funding for Failte Ireland and Tourism Ireland.

"Product differentiation, innovation and investment are key to maintaining Ireland's competitive positioning in the international marketplace. This requires continuous investment in product renewal to ensure that our tourism offering keeps pace with changing tastes and global competition.

"Unfortunately, this an area we risk losing significant ground on as a result of cut-backs in funding over the last five years," he added.

Mr Dolan cites a reduction in funding for tourism marketing as another major concern for the industry. Since 2008, Tourism Ireland's annual funding allocation for overseas marketing has fallen dramatically and now stands at an estimated 36m compared to 62m in 2008.

He says the knock-on effect has been a significant drop in Ireland's "share of voice" across key tourism markets and a damaging loss of brand awareness.

He says this is happening at a time when Ireland should be planning ahead and investing in tourism promotion.

Over 400 delegates at the annual conference also heard that soaring insurance premiums were having a detrimental impact on cost competitiveness.

Research carried out by the federation reveals that 71pc of hoteliers have seen an increase of over 20pc on average in premiums over the past year.

Chief executive Tim Fenn warned this was putting enormous cost pressures on hoteliers, resulting in serious risks to cost competitiveness.

Insurance costs within the sector have now reached 36m a year, equivalent to over 640 per bedroom, with costs expected to increase further this year.

Mr Fenn called on the Government to establish an industry taskforce to tackle the issue including a remit to combat fraud and excessive claims.

"Any further increases would seriously jeopardise the viability of many hundreds of hotel businesses," Mr Fenn said.

The research shows that three-quarters of hoteliers (75pc) report being concerned about the overall cost of insurance for their business with 69pc concerned about the legal costs associated with defending claims.

Over half of hoteliers or 53pc say they are concerned about the level of excess required by their insurance provider.
A US vulture fund has reiterated denials that it paid for or sought advice from a former Nama adviser when it was buying the agency's Northern Ireland loan portfolio.

Cerberus said it never employed controversial ex-Nama adviser Frank Cushnahan in connection with the 1.6bn Project Eagle deal.

A spokesman pointed to statements previously issued in which the firm stated: "No improper or illegal fees were paid by us or on our behalf."

The denial came after a BBC 'Spotlight' programme broadcast a secret recording of Mr Cushnahan admitting he was in line for a fee from the 1.6bn deal.

The sale has been subject to investigations by the UK's National Crime Agency and a parliamentary inquiry in Stormont, since revelations last summer that Stg7m linked to the deal was found in an Isle of Man bank account.

The recording contradicts previous denials by Mr Cushnahan that he was due to receive money.

In a conversation with property developer John Miskelly and accountant David Gray, Mr Cushnahan said he and Ian Coulter, a former partner of Belfast law firm Tughans, did all the work on the deal but his role was kept secret over concerns expressed by Nama.

Mr Cushnahan said Mr Coulter moved Stg6m into a holding account so that he, Mr Cushnahan, could be paid a fixer's fee. But the money was returned to Tughans and Mr Coulter resigned from his role at the law firm.

Mr Coulter has insisted there was no wrongdoing.

Mr Cushnahan's solicitor, Joe Rice, told the Irish Independent it was unlikely his client would be making a statement about the recording.

Mr Cushnahan, a former banker and leading official in the office of the North's First Minister, was on the Nama northern advisory committee from 2010 until 2013. Nama later became aware that Pimco, a bidder for the Project Eagle portfolio, had been asked for a Stg5m fee for Mr Cushnahan. Pimco subsequently withdrew from the process and the loan portfolio was sold to Cerberus.
CityJet, an Irish European regional airline, has opened a new customer contact centre in Swords, Dublin, creating 18 new jobs.

The new facility replaces CityJet's previously-outsourced facility, which had been located in Mauritius.



The centre will open for 12 hours a day from 7am to 7pm dealing with enquiries about its European scheduled routes, which include Dublin, Cork, London City Airport, Paris Orly, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Nantes and Florence



The airline's chief commercial officer, Cathal O'Connell, expressed his delight at the opening of the new centre.



We are delighted to create additional jobs at our Swords campus. Relocating the call centre to Dublin and bringing it in house ensures our customers are dealt with by dedicated CityJet staff and enjoy our unrivalled service and attention to detail," Mr O'Connell said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron arrives at the EU council headquarters for the second day of a European Union leaders summit addressing the talks about the so-called Brexit and the migrants crisis in Brussels, Belgium REUTERS/Yves Herman

Britain floated revised legislation on Tuesday that would grant authorities wide-ranging surveillance powers including the right to see which websites people visit, saying the modified bill addressed concerns about threats to privacy.

Last November, Prime Minister David Cameron's government unveiled a draft of the law that would give police and spies snooping tools they say are vital to protecting the public from criminals, pedophiles and terrorism.

But the measures met scepticism from lawmakers, global technology firms and privacy groups, reflecting a debate raging in the West over how state authorities can operate effectively in the digital age without overly intruding into people's lives or risking the security of data.

On Tuesday, the Conservative government put forward a tweaked version that it said was clearer and provided stronger privacy safeguards.

"The bill ensures that the security and intelligence agencies and law enforcement continue to have the powers they need to keep us safe - and no more," Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May said in a foreword.

Earlier this month a committee of lawmakers set up to scrutinize the draft bill said the government needed to make significant changes, describing parts as flawed, while the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said it was rushed and did not do enough to protect privacy.

Last year's draft bill was itself a watered-down version of plans dubbed a "snoopers' charter" by critics who prevented it reaching parliament.

The revised proposal seeks to spell out existing powers, update outdated legislation and grant additional capabilities.

Its measures include forcing tech firms to store details of every website people visit for a year, and outlines the ability of spies to collect bulk data and for the authorities to hack into individuals' computers and smartphones.

The British bill needs to be passed into law before the end of the year when existing surveillance legislation expires.

Critics remained unimpressed.

"The bill published today continues to adhere to the structure and the underlying rationale that underpinned the draft ... bill, despite the criticism and lengthy list of recommendations from three parliamentary committees," said Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International.

One of the most contentious issues has revolved around whether tech firms would have to hand over data they held even if was encrypted. May said companies would only be asked to produce data protected by encryption where it was "practicable".

That might address the concerns of global tech giants such as Apple, which is engaged with a showdown the FBI over its refusal to unlock an iPhone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife went on a shooting rampage in December that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.

Apple says unlocking the phone would weaken the security of hundreds of millions of Apple devices.
In the hours after Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump swept the primaries in seven states on Super Tuesday, the number of Google searches for "how to move to Canada" jumped more than 10 times.

The surge in Americans trying to find out how to emigrate to Canada was first pointed out by Simon Rogers, data editor at Google, on Twitter.

At its peak, around midnight, the search query "how can I move to Canada" spiked by more than 1000pc according to Google Trends.

The peak is most closely correlated with Trump's victories, as seen in the graph below. At 1:00am GMT, Trump was declared the winner in Alabama, Massachusetts and Tennessee, having already won Georgia. Check out the time at which the graph shows its highest spike.

While analysts were already aware of Trumps popularity among less-educated workers, his landslide win in Massachusetts with 49pc of the vote was particularly surprising, since the state has the most educated population in the U.S, according to some indicators.

Perhaps this is why the greatest volume of "how to move to Canada" searches came from Massachusetts.

With seven wins on Super Tuesday, Mr Trump showed himself to be a dominant front-runner not in one or two states, but nationwide.

At his victory speech from Florida, he said: "I'm going to get along very well with the world. You're going to be very proud of me as president."

Recently, a Canadian man has created a web campaign to get Americans to move to Cape Breton, an Atlantic Canadian island with a sparse population and an emigration problem. Apparently, the website saw 800,000 visits since launch, and thousands of serious inquiries about how to emigrate. Even the island's national tourism site saw the benefits, receiving 300,000 visitors which is more than they got all through 2015.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
The iPhone SE, or iPhone 5se, depending on who you believe, is expected to be launched before the end of March.

This would make it the first iPhone released outside of Apple's established September launch cycle.

While details remain hazy, here are the main features we want to see in a new, potentially cheaper iPhone.

1. A smaller screen

It's worth remembering that the larger iPhone dimensions, introduced with the 6 and 6 Plus in September 2014, are still not everyone's cup of tea. The iPhone 5s is the only 4-inch model left in Apple's current line up after the retirement of the 5c, and with the 6 and 6s sized at 4.7-inches and the 6 Plus and 6s Plus measuring 5.5-inches, there is a considerably large customer base who will want the newer features of the more recent handsets without buying a phablet.

2. Apple Pay and Touch ID

Once you've become accustomed to unlocking your iPhone via the home button's fingerprint sensor and Touch ID technology, reverting to tapping in your passcode seems cumbersome. Likewise, making a new phone without a near-field communication (NFC) chip to facilitate payments over Apple Pay would seem pretty backward at this stage.

3. Better battery life

Apple is likely to be reserving long-awaited waterproofing until the iPhone 7 in September, but a better battery life in the SE should be not only desirable, but achievable. The Low Power mode introduced in iOS 9 went some way to making amends, but rumours suggest the iPhone SE will feature a 1,624 mAh battery - larger and more powerful than the iPhone 5s' 1,440 mAh battery, but not as beefy as the 6s' 1,715 mAh.

4. A pressure-sensitive screen

A pressure-sensitive display is actually looking pretty unlikely, after new images posted on French rumours site nowhereelse.fr, which has a long history of accurate leaks, purport to show the new phone free from the components required for 3D touch, Apple's pressure-sensitive display technology present in the Apple Watch and iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.

While this would be a shame, it is still possible Live Photo support will be built into the new handset.

5. A low(er) price tag

Although we're never going to see an Apple product described as cheap, the iPhone SE is the perfect opportunity for Apple to create a more affordable entry-level model. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told MacRumours the iPhone SE will cost between $400 - $500 in the US, equating to between 300 and 400 in the UK.

An iPhone 5s with 16GB of storage is currently retailing for 379 on Apple's website, close to two and-a-half years after its release. A more affordable iPhone, particularly one with the ability to make mobile payments, would be a key addition to Apple's arsenal in its push into developing nations such as China and India.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Chinese companies are giving major concessions, including offering to pay record break-up fees and accept minority stakes in US mergers and acquisition deals, in an attempt to assuage concerns of potential overseas partners about regulatory snags scuttling the deals.

The unprecedented concessions come as China pursues deals abroad to offset slowing economic growth at home and a weakening currency.

They also come as US scrutiny of Chinese-initiated M&A remains high, making its partners uneasy and forcing several deals to be abandoned.

"These are unusual behaviours and just show that the Chinese want to get the deals done," said one Hong Kong-based technology banker, who declined to be identified because the person was not authorised to speak to the media.

The stakes for China are particularly high in the technology sector as Beijing seeks to become a global semiconductor powerhouse, relying mainly on offshore M&As to achieve its goal.

The biggest concerns are about the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency panel that scrutinises deals for national security concerns.

CFIUS, which comprises 16 US government departments or agencies, does not publish its decisions or its reasoning for them.

Reflecting CFIUS worries, China's HNA agreed to a pay hefty $400m to to shareholders in a reverse termination fees it its $6bn purchase of electronics distributor Ingram Micro was blocked.

This was the first time any material break-up fee was introduced in a US deal covering CFIUS, bankers familiar with the matter said.

The usual break-up fee is about 1.5pc of a deal's value, but HNA agreed to pay 6.6pc.

And China Resources Microelectronics and Hua Capital agreed to pay a total of $200m in termination fees, or 8pc of the deal value, if a bid to buy Fairchild Semiconductor International fell down.

The previous largest CFIUS-related termination fee was $30m when commodity trader Glencore offered $6.2bn to buy Viterra in 2012.

China's goal to become a global semiconductor powerhouse has meant prized US tech assets are a focus of its overseas deals.

The value of China's announced outbound M&A into the United States has already hit a record $23bn this year, more than double that of the whole of 2015, according to Thomson Reuters data.

But in a sober reminder of the US regulatory hurdles, deals worth $10bn involving US targets have been pulled just this year alone.

That includes China's Unisplendour Corp's $3.78bn investment in US hard-disk maker Western Digital Corp.

And, for a third straight year in 2014, China was the country whose planned US acquisitions and investments were the most scrutinized by regulators in the United States for security implications, according to a report by CFIUS.

To mitigate the extra scrutiny, Chinese companies are seeking joint ventures as opposed to an outright purchase, bankers said.

"People are definitely talking about doing more non-control deals," said James Lidbury, a partner with law firm Ropes & Gray.

Another way to minimise scrutiny is to aim for mid-sized deals and focus on less sensitive sectors, M&A bankers said.

(Reuters)
The world is so awash with oil that BP chief executive Bob Dudley said last month people will be filling up their "swimming pools" with it this year

The queue of ships waiting outside Europe's biggest port and oil-trading hub of Rotterdam has grown to the longest in seven years as a global supply glut fills storage capacity.

As many as 50 oil tankers, twice as many as normal, are waiting outside Rotterdam because storage sites are almost full, the port's spokesman said yesterday.

"This is a clear sign of the oversupply filling up storage to the brim," Gerrit Zambo, an oil trader at Bayerische Landesbank in Munich, said.

"People are preferring to store oil rather than cut production. These are bearish signs."

The world is so awash with oil that BP chief executive Bob Dudley said last month people will be filling up their "swimming pools" with it this year. Traders buying up cheap oil, storing it and hoping to sell later. As onshore storage fills up, companies could start stockpiling at sea in a repeat of a strategy last seen in 2008 and 2009.

Crude oil in storage tanks in Rotterdam stood at 51.3m barrels on February 19, the highest for the time of year in data starting in 2013, according to Genscape, which monitors inventories. Royal Vopak, the world's largest oil-storage company, last week reported a fourth-quarter occupancy rate of 96pc at its 11 terminals compared with 85pc a year earlier.

The situation is mirrored in the biggest US storage hub at Cushing, Oklahoma, and elsewhere. "In China, given high oil imports, there are too many ships and the infrastructure seems not be able to handle that."

As storage tanks keep filling up, oil prices for immediate delivery will probably fall, deepening the market crisis. (Bloomberg)
HOLLYWOOD, CA - AUGUST 11: Actor/writer Sylvester Stallone (L) and actor Frank Stallone attend the premiere of Lionsgate Films' "The Expendables 3" at TCL Chinese Theatre on August 11, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Like his brothers iconic film boxer Rocky Balboa, Frank Stallone clearly doesnt pull his punches. The 65-year-old actor-musician, in light of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor going to Bridge of Spies' Mark Rylance instead of his older sibling for his steely work in Creed, has directed a torrent of abuse at the Academy on Twitter.

The Academy should be ashamed of themselves, Frank Stallone wrote. "Its as clear as the nose on your face that Sly won. Mark who? Its total Hollywood bulls.

He added: If I was Mark? I would have been embarrassed and Mark Rylance couldnt even comb his hair for Christ sake this is the 3rd time Slys gotten ripped off. These tweets have since been deleted.

Fifty-six-year-old Rylance, who is regarded as one of the finest stage actors, had already won a Bafta for his glassy portayal of a Russian spy in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies.

Expand Close Sly Stallone and Mark Rylance. PIC: Sly Stallone Instagram. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Sly Stallone and Mark Rylance. PIC: Sly Stallone Instagram.

However, Sylvester Stallone, 69, was considered the clear favourite going into the 88th Academy Awards, having won rave reviews for Creed, in which he reprises the role of boxer-turned-trainer Rocky Balboa for a sixth time.

Asked whether he was aware that Stallone was tipped to take home a gold statuette, Rylance told the BBC: "I'd heard the same thing. And Sylvester has had a long career as an actor. Doing thrillers and dramas and things like that which have given people an enormous amount of pleasure. So I was seeing absolutely every reason why he should be celebrated for this incredible Rocky character that he made, back when I was a teenager."

On Monday night, Frank Stallone tweeted an apology to Rylance. I will always defend what right but I was wrong to put down Mark Rylance and I apologise," he wrote. "He is a fine actor but I thought Sly deserved it.

However, he not only continued to retweet fans who agreed with his original stance, but wrote the following: Thanks to my fans for supporting Im done responding to idiots. If you dont stick up for your family then who are you as a person. He then added, Now Im having a Meltdown? When you stick up for your beliefs and family from nasty tweets. Its called fighting back. No PC here.

I will always defend what right but I was wrong to put down Mark Rylance and I apologize. He is a fine actor but I thought Sly deserved it  Frank Stallone (@Stallone) February 29, 2016

Today, Stallone has been more contrite although he managed to call Mark 'Michael': "Not enough words on Twitter to apologize to Michael Rylance," he wrote. "I'm an artist as well an we should cherish art not criticize it."

Sylvester Stallone, meanwhile, used Instagram to address his brothers tirade. Im very happy and please understand my brother is so emotional because he is just very protective and only wants the best for me," he wrote. "Life is good!

Thanks to my fans for supporting I'm done responding to idiots. If you don't stick up for your family then who are you as a person. Word  Frank Stallone (@Stallone) March 1, 2016

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Poised to embark on a UK and Ireland tour to promote his second solo album, Shane Filan is riding the crest of a second wave of success.

The 36-year-old star and father of three has risen from the shadow of bankruptcy and the break-up of Westlife to rebuild his life, and career.

Having spoken at length about the difficulties he and his family faced during those dark times, he says his focus in life has shifted back to his wife Gillian, his three children, and music.

"I talked about that stuff a lot, I was honest about it all, just talked about what I was asked about. But its a lot more about the music now which is great," he says.

"Life is moving forward. Ive definitely talked it out and I think the way to move on is to stop talking about it to a certain degree. You have to do that to move on yourself really."

Shane reveals he's in a part of his life where he's very happy and "in a very good place."

Expand Close Irish pop stars (L-R) Mark Feehily, Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Bryan McFadden, Kian Egan of the pop group "Westlife" and Irish music producer Louis Walsh (middle) attend the "Unbreakable" album launch at the Zuma Restaurant on November 11, 2002 in London. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Irish pop stars (L-R) Mark Feehily, Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Bryan McFadden, Kian Egan of the pop group "Westlife" and Irish music producer Louis Walsh (middle) attend the "Unbreakable" album launch at the Zuma Restaurant on November 11, 2002 in London. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images)

He's philosophical about the past.

"Ive had some amazing stuff happen in my life and some other things happen too and I got through it all, good and bad, and lived to tell the tale," he says.

"Im very proud of what Ive achieved and if some of that stuff didnt happen I wouldnt be here doing this interview, talking about my second solo album."

Shane's new album, Right Here, shot to number one in the Irish charts on its release in October and he's set to play three Irish dates in Belfast, Cork and Dublin on March 15, 18, and 19 as part of his UK and Ireland tour which kicks off March 3.

"You cant change the past, you can only change the future. Im glad Im singing and playing the Olympia and Im looking forward to exciting stuff thats happening now," he says.

The Sligo native believes that "success is happiness" rather than album sales or money.

Video of the Day

"If youre successful in a job you have to be happy. If youre not happy in the job whats the point?" he says.

"Right now I feel I have a level of success Im very happy with and Im proud Ive achieved it myself, from scratch to a certain degree."

Given he'll hit Cork and Dublin on Paddy's weekend, when Ireland tackle Scotland in the rugby, he's hoping to get some down time to celebrate.

"Ill celebrate, definitely," he says. "Im off on the Saturday night in Dublin so Ill go for a few pints. Hopefully well be winning the rugby. Ive a full day to recover, so a few pints will do the business.

"I wont be going too mad. You lose your voice. Going to the pub for a few pints or whatever is fine, going to a nightclub is the worst thing you can do on tour  to wake up and not have a voice because you didnt realise you were shouting and roaring all night!"

We won't be seeing him in his old haunt Lillies Bordello, so?

"You never know, but probably not!" he laughs.
Drivers at Dublin Bus have threatened to ballot for industrial action if management continue to discipline workers who are opposing a ban on listening to the radio while driving.

The company recently banned its drivers from tuning into radio stations while driving as part of a new "zero tolerance" policy.

The National Bus and Railworkers' Union (NBRU) has already written to management to inform them it has advised its members not to use the Port Tunnel from next Tuesday for health and safety reasons.

The union argued that the radio ban meant that, in an emergency situation, its members would be unable to tune into FM radio stations to hear safety instructions "as per the safety and user guide" for the tunnel.

However, the situation is on the verge of escalating after union officials warned that industrial action would "kick in" if Dublin Bus continues to sanction drivers who defied the radio ban.

"A number of our members have already been notified that they have been 'booked' or recorded as being entered into the disciplinary process as a result of their actions in opposing this hair-brained policy," said NBRU general secretary Dermot O'Leary.

"Our members and their representatives will not be cooperating on these disciplinary cases. Any mandated industrial action would kick in if Dublin Bus would decide to apply sanctions on our members," he added.

"Whilst it will be for the Dublin Bus branch of our union to ultimately decide on the type of industrial action which they would undertake should Dublin Bus up the ante, our members are determined that they will not be forced to stop buses and discommode a supportive travelling public as a result of this ludicrous ban on transistor radios," said Mr O'Leary.

The new policy prevents drivers from using any electronic devices, including radios and mobile phones, while driving.

It is understood that up to 90pc of drivers use radios, but sources said even greater numbers brought them in to work earlier this week "as an act of defiance".

Drivers have already refused to cooperate with central control after the ban began on Monday.

Their refusal to connect with the control room could weaken management's control of the service.

For instance, drivers could not be instructed to take alternative routes if there was an accident ahead. The control centre would also be unaware if drivers took their breaks late.

In addition, it could not instruct drivers to travel straight to a terminus without picking up passengers to make up for time lost over a delay.
Councillor John ODonnell from Donegal filmed in a meeting with an undercover reporter for the RTE Investigates  Standards in Public Office programme.

A COUNCILLOR at the centre of corruption allegations has been ordered by a judge today to re-start payments to a woman who won a compensation order against him.

Cllr John ODonnell, who featured in an RTE Investigates programme in December, appeared for the second time in a month at Letterkenny District Civil Court today over outstanding payments of 33,000.

The court heard he had spent hundreds of euro in recent months on clothes and trips to top Dublin restaurants.

Cllr O'Donnell had failed pay off a personal injury claim to Petra Kucklick, of Rooskey, Creeslough, Co Donegal, which was ruled upon in 2008.

It relates to an incident in 2000 in which Cllr O'Donnell had run over Ms Kucklick's foot with his car.

Cllr ODonnell stopped paying a 200-per-week compensation order in 2009.

Today Cllr ODonnell was recalled to the witness box by Judge Paul Kelly who warned ODonnells solicitor Kevin McElhinney that his client was in danger of going to jail for failing to comply with the compensation order.

The independent councillor and former Independent Fianna Fail supporter was cross-examined by counsel for Ms Kucklick Laura OReilly over what she alleged was an extravagant lifestyle.

She said updated bank statements showed he spent 960 at Watsons Menswear in Letterkenny in December just days before the RTE expose.

He had also spent hundreds of euro on meals at Cafe en Seine in December and Peploes in January where the bill was 350.

He had also spent hundreds of euro at hotels and bars in Donegal over the same period, she alleged.

However Cllr ODonnell said the menswear bill included presents for family and that the food bills had involved him paying bills and a number of friends paying him cash.

He also said some of the money which appeared to be spent in local premises involved cash back because the ATM in Kilmacrennan has been broken for years.

He also denied owning a Porche and two BMWs which he appeared to claim ownership of in his Facebook postings.

As a result of the case today, said the politician, he had been left with no option but to apply for bankruptcy.

He claimed banks to which he owed millions of euro had been willing to consider a Personal Insolvency Plan (PIP) but claimed Ms Kucklick had driven him to bankruptcy.

The politician said the case against him was intended to blacken my good name in the media again.

Judge Paul Kelly said he was satisfied that while ODonnell did have more money in the past I am not permitted under the law to punish him retrospectively.

He said he believed Cllr ODonnell was able to pay 100 per week and varied the payment order.

If that isnt met I will take an entirely different view of the matter, said the judge.
Dublin Coroners Court heard that drivers routinely climbed onto loading bays to enter the warehouse because pedestrian access doors were locked

A driver who fell off a loading bay at an Aer Lingus warehouse lay there for almost 30 minutes before he was found.

John Murray from St Patrick's Close, Skerries, Co Dublin, fell off a one-metre high loading bay on November 10, 2014.

Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) worker Anthony Lynch saw a body lying on the ground as he drove into warehouse area and called emergency services.

But Mr Murray had suffered fatal head injuries and died. The married father of two worked for DB Shenker Ireland.

Dublin Coroner's Court heard that drivers routinely climbed onto loading bays to enter the warehouse because pedestrian access doors were locked.

Ken Bradshaw, head of cargo operations at Aer Lingus, said he had never seen a driver gain access to the warehouse by climbing onto the loading bay.

The jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure and recommended that DAA CCTV cameras be monitored.

The Murray family, through their solicitor Dermot McNamara, welcomed the verdict.

"In this case, the failure to ensure drivers used a safe pedestrian option, ultimately cost Mr Murray his life and left a family with a devastating loss," Mr McNamara said.
A father of three who threatened an acquaintance with a crossbow has been jailed for this, mugging a woman and stealing a handbag from an elderly lady.

John Stokes (25) of Beachside, Riverchapel, Gorey had only been released from a five year jail term when he came to Mary Kate McDonagh's friend's home armed with two carving knives.

He terrified the woman but she managed to get Stokes out of the house. He returned, this time armed with a bow and arrow. Stokes pushed the metal arrow through the letterbox and although he held onto it he told Ms McDonagh he would 'stick you to the wall'.

The woman was terrified and believed she would be killed if Stokes let the arrow go. He left a short time later.

Stokes pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to production of a crossbow while threatening to kill Ms McDonagh at Pearse House, Pearse Street, Dublin on December 28, 2014.

He also pleaded to robbing a handbag at Clyde Court, Ballsbridge on January 24, 2015 and to stealing a handbag a Baggot Street Lower on February 19, 2015.

Stokes has 48 previous convictions mostly for road traffic offences but which include theft, robbery, false imprisonment, burglary and possession of knives.

Detective Garda Anthony Gilleran told Noel Devitt BL, prosecuting that after he was arrested for the offence Stokes said his life was under threat and he was in fear of being shot. He was using cocaine and tablets, the court heard.

A victim impact report before the court said that Ms McDonagh and Stokes have since 'made their peace'.

Judge Melanie Greally sentenced Stokes to five and half years in prison with the final 18 months suspended on condition that he engage with the Probation Service for two years upon his release.

She said each offence was serious in its own right and each had 'nasty elements'.

The judge accepted that Stokes had abused alcohol and drugs, had a difficult childhood, had little education and very little structure in his life.

She said it was no surprise that he relapsed very quickly back into criminality as there was no post release supervision order in place when he got out of jail in December 2014.

Judge Greally acknowledged that Stokes has since tried to 'arrest the tide of criminality', engaged in a local community project and removed himself from the company of his negative peers.

David Staunton BL, defending said Stokes was a member of the travelling community and one of 12 children. He had a difficult upbringing and left school at an early age.

He said Stokes was a father of three young children and asked the judge to accept he was capable of 'demonstrating some reform'. A probation report before the court concluded that Stokes was at a moderate risk of re-offending.

Garda Patrick O'Brien said Stokes knocked Deirdre Walsh to the ground and robbed her mobile phone and handbag off her. CCTV captured the assault and the attacker making off in a car with three alloy wheels.

Gardai spotted the car a few days later and arrested the driver, who was Stokes. In interview he made admissions and told garda that 'it wouldn't have happened if it were not for the drugs'.

Ms Walsh said in her statement that 'the memory of the incident will have an enduring effect on me'. On February 19, 2015 an elderly couple Patricia and Clive Carroll were walking at midnight on their way home from a night at the Gaiety theatre when Ms Carroll felt someone tugging at her handbag. She turned to see Stokes running off to a waiting getaway car.

Gda Lee Gavin said he spotted Stokes and another man sitting in the vehicle later that evening. The men were riffling through a handbag and as soon as they saw gardai the other man drove off.

Following a short chase Stokes was arrested. The handbag and its contents were returned to Ms Carroll.

Wexford People
Convicted child killer Robert Howard, as a long-delayed inquest into the death of murdered schoolgirl Arlene Arkinson will finally start on Monday, nine years after it was ordered

Missing teenager Arlene Arkinson was "hysterical" at the mention of self-confessed child killer Robert Howard - but police were not alerted, a witness has told an inquest.

Howard allegedly told neighbour Bernadette Timoney that he had served six years in prison for murdering a six-year-old girl.

But, despite her concerns, Mrs Timoney never told the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). It took her 19 years to tell detectives.

She said: "I did not want to get involved with it."

Read More

Fifteen-year-old Arlene, from Castlederg, Co Tyrone, vanished after a night out at a disco across the Irish border in Co Donegal on August 13 1994.

The teenager rushed into Mrs Timoney's house one night saying she was pregnant and crying at the mention of Howard.

Mrs Timoney formed the view that Howard had done something to her.

She said: "She was crying, quite hysterical."

Read More

But she never went to police, even after Arlene disappeared.

It was only when police talked to her that she volunteered the information.

"I just kept it to myself," she added.

Read More

Howard was never convicted of murdering a six-year-old child.

Arlene was last seen with Howard - who was acquitted of her murder in 2005 by a jury which was unaware of his conviction for killing a south London teenager several years earlier.

He remained the prime suspect in the Arkinson case until his death in prison last year, aged 71.

Mrs Timoney warned her own daughter, Sharon, not to associate with Howard.

Read More

She said: "Bob Howard was an evil looking person."

She claimed Howard confessed to murder when they were at a Castlederg caravan site where he lived.

He said he could not live at home in Portlaoise in the Republic and had spent some time in a hostel. He was living in a caravan in Castlederg.
Police and firefighters inspecting the damage caused by a bomb in Omagh, Co Tyrone, in 1998. Photo: PA Wire

Relatives bereaved in the Omagh bomb attack have questioned whether they will ever get justice after the prosecution of a man accused of the murders collapsed.

The case against bricklayer Seamus Daly, who was charged with murdering 29 people in the 1998 Real IRA outrage, was dropped yesterday.

Daly (45) had been on remand in prison since being charged with a range of terror offences in April 2014.

Seven years ago, Daly was one of four men successfully sued for bombing the Co Tyrone town when he was found liable for the attack in a landmark civil case taken by bereaved families.

Disappointed

But no-one has ever been convicted of the murders in a criminal court.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed, attended yesterday's hearing in Ballymena Magistrates' Court.

"Here we are again after 18 years. Extremely disappointed," he said.

"We've been let down by the police service, by the PPS (Public Prosecution Service), by the criminal justice system. And this is probably, or was probably, the last chance for justice."

Daly, from Co Armagh, has always denied involvement in the bombing which inflicted the greatest loss of life in the history of the Troubles.

The dead came from both sides of the Border, England and Spain. One of the victims was pregnant with twins.

The dramatic decision by the PPS came before Daly's case had even reached the floor of the Crown Court.

A pre-trial hearing began in Omagh Magistrates' Court last week to establish whether the evidence in the case was sufficient to warrant such a trial. But that decision was taken out of District Judge Peter King's hands, as the PPS withdrew the charges before the hearing had reached a conclusion.

The decision came after inconsistencies emerged in the evidence of a key prosecution witness, Kilkenny builder Denis O'Connor. His evidence had been subject to reporting restrictions until the charges were dropped.

Mr Gallagher said he agreed, regrettably, with the PPS decision.

"This was a difficult case and hinged on the testimony of one individual and that one individual did not seem to be up to meeting the test needed to put someone behind bars," he said.

"For that reason I agree with the decision, regrettably, that happened today."

As well as the 29 murder counts, Daly, from Kilnasaggart Road, Jonesborough, Co Armagh, had faced charges of causing the August 1998 explosion and possession of a bomb with intent to endanger life or property. He was further charged with conspiring to cause an explosion and having explosives with intent in connection with a separate bomb plot in Lisburn in April of the same year.

All charges have now been dropped.

Family and friends who had been campaigning for Daly's release said he had been "interned" for 23 months.

A statement from the Release Seamus Daly group said: "The case against Seamus Daly has been flawed from the beginning. The British Government along with the prosecution proceeded against Seamus with no tangible evidence."

Daly's solicitor, Peter Corrigan, said his client had been held in custody for a considerable period of time for offences which he vehemently denied.
Coming out. The words conjure up this image of a ballroom filled with people as someone slowly walks down the steps in a sequenced gown or tux waving. As they get to the last step they stop at the microphone to tell the crowd that they are gay.

But its actually not that glamorous.

In many cases coming out means that someone is individually telling friends and family members they are gay, and the words dont always easily come out. Although watching television and seeing reality television shows may give you the impression that coming out is easy to do these days, it is not.

LGBTQ youth still face homelessness and risky behavior at a higher rate than their heterosexual peers. Slowly schools are coming to the aid of these students, but in many towns around the country, LGBTQ students do not feel safe, and they are not fully engaged at school if they do not feel safe.

But what about teachers in the LGBTQ community?

Sometimes those teachers are the only ones in their small school community who are gay, and they arent sure how to negotiate their way through school...much like the LGBTQ students who are in school with them. Lets face it, many of us remember the teachers who were gay...or considered gay...when we were growing up. Those teachers were the topic of negative conversation among students. That issue has not completely changed...yet.

It seems strange, right? How can LGBTQ adults not feel safe in school?

Without a supportive school leader, it is very possible teachers who are gay will not talk about their personal lives in the same way their heterosexual peers do because they are concerned about student and parent complaints. There have even been times when gay teachers are told not to share information about their personal lives.

A Teacher Comes Out

Recently I read, Patty Smiths guest commentary, You Come Out Because You Cant Not, which you can read/watch here in its entirety . Pattys story was featured in Kevin Jennings new book One Teacher In Ten In the New Millennium. Jennings is known for many things like his involvement with the US Department of Education, but to most of us he is best known for starting the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN ).

How much strength that must have taken to start GLSEN when so many others had opposing opinions.

I loved Pattys story. Personally, I always value when I hear or read coming out stories. Many people wouldnt understand what it takes to come out to your family, and others have no idea what its like to be openly gay in front of students and parents. And believe me, whether gay people tell their story or not, it all comes out for one reason or another. Lets face it, people talk...

But one comment in response to Pattys blog might give you an idea what its like to always be concerned about coming out. Ebasco commented,

I do not see how this is relevant to students any more than your support of a particular political candidate or membership in a religious organization. These positions, by their very nature, disenfranchise the students who come from homes which have opposing views. In the end, it is their classroom, not yours. I do not see how advocacy based on the teacher's disposition fulfills the "desire to create a safe space for all students." ALL is the operable word here. I suggest a review the article and comments from some time ago about political positions in the classroom://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2015/08/how_should_teachers_address_po.html"

Political candidates and membership to a religious organization is a choice. Being gay is not. Gay people have heard the choice argument before.

Its no surprise, but I disagree with most of his comment. Dont get me wrong, this is not about Ebasco, but what his comments represent, because he is far from the only one who believes this way. Lets start with the parts I agree with in what he wrote. I agree with his comment that in the end, it is their classroom. He is absolutely right. The classroom is for the students, and although I think there are teachers who believe the classroom belongs to the adult, I do believe that Patty would agree with the fact that the classroom is for the students.

Classrooms are about learning. And learning has many different contexts. There is learning that happens in books or online through the use of tablets and smartphones, and then there is learning that happens through conversations. Im not talking about scripted conversations but I do mean real conversations that take place in those down times that teachers and students seldomly see.

You see, being that classrooms are about the students, there are many straight and gay students who enter into those classrooms. Unfortunately, for those gay students, there is very little literature or modeling that takes place. Which is sad, because gay students are often the ones who lack the images and role models they need unlike their straight peers.

Coming Out

We can thank Ellen Degeneres, Melissa Etheridge, and television shows like Will and Grace and Modern Family for paving a path and making it a bit easier for gays and lesbians, but in many cases those who came out did not live in situations that mirrored television where everything was ok by the ending.

Coming out can be extremely difficult for people. Although society has become more open, and there are more gay characters on television and in the news than ever before, coming out requires a great deal of introspection and people figuring out who they are, and what friends they are willing to lose because those friends will discriminate toward gays and lesbians. And much to the comment made by Ebasco many people in the LGBTQ community merely want to live their lives.

And although many adults in the LGBTQ community have struggled with coming out, imagine how difficult it is for students who may lack the status or support that those adults have? They need stories of hope in order to move forward with their lives.

Its funny though, because when heterosexual people talk about their children and spouses, it does not seem to attract negative criticism, and yet, when a teacher like Patty Smith wants to talk about her partner, there seems to be a great deal of criticism that comes with it. Why cant we have it both ways? All students will benefit, regardless of whether they agree or not.

Awareness and dialogue matter, and it can be approached in a way that does not disenfranchise any of them.

Sadly, until I did my doctoral research (Dignity for All ) on how well LGBTQ students are safeguarded by administrators, I had no idea how bad it really was. In my dissertation I used the research of GLSEN , which showed that over 85% of LGBTQ students were bullied and harassed each year. Many school administrators did nothing to change their school climates to be more inclusive for LGBTQ students.

In their 2013 National School Climate Survey , GLSEN found that,

55.5% of LGBT students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, and 37.8% because of their gender expression. 64.5% heard other homophobic remarks (e.g., "dyke" or "faggot") frequently or often. 51.4% of students reported hearing homophobic remarks from their teachers or other school staff, and 55.5% of students reported hearing negative remarks about gender expression from teachers or other school staff. 74.1% of LGBT students were verbally harassed (e.g., called names or threatened) in the past year because of their sexual orientation and 55.2% because of their gender expression."

What was that about each classroom being for the students?

We need role models, much like teachers like Patty Smith because there are too many naysayers who are quick to jump to the comment that there is no place for LGBTQ conversations in the classroom. All students need role models, and there is no time better than now to have these conversations about being out. And I for one would like to thank Patty and Kevin Jennings for keeping the conversation going.

Connect with Peter DeWitt on Twitter.
The European Court of Human Rights has made an order temporarily preventing Ireland from deporting him. Stock Picture

A son of the man authorities believe to be the "foremost organiser and facilitator" of Isil fighters in Ireland has been detained twice in the past year by a foreign intelligence service.

The son was released by Jordanian intelligence last weekend but remains under scrutiny, the High Court has heard.

Details of the detention of the son emerged as lawyers for his father began judicial review proceedings contesting an order to deport him to Jordan.

It also emerged that an associate of the man had been killed fighting in Syria. It was not disclosed what group the associate was fighting for.

The man's legal team is seeking to have the decision to deport him set aside.

Asylum

It is also seeking an order compelling the Minister for Justice to accept his application for asylum as well as a declaration he is entitled to apply for refugee status without needing the minister's consent.

Due to a court order, the man at the centre of the case cannot be identified.

However, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said the man's country of origin could be reported.

The man was accompanied in court by Khalid Kelly, a Dublin-born Muslim convert who was arrested by gardai in 2011 for making threats against the life of US President Barack Obama.

London-based human rights barrister Danny Friedman QC, who is representing the man along with Michael Lynn SC, said that prior to the decision to deport the man, sufficient weight was not given to medical evidence showing he had been tortured in his home country over his political beliefs between 1991 and 1996.

He also claimed the potential consequences for the man, if he was to be returned to Jordan, had "not been engaged with" by the State.

These include the potential for further torture as a result of the allegations he supported Isil's cause.

A previous court hearing was told gardai suspected that he was a "recruiter" of Islamic terrorists who "makes travel arrangements" for others to fight abroad in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was described as "a senior operative of Isil" and its "foremost organiser and facilitator within the State".

The man denies the allegations.

Mr Lynn told the court the man had arrived in Ireland in 2000 with his wife and family and applied for asylum.

A child was subsequently born to the couple here and he applied for residency on the basis of the child's birth.

The court heard he withdrew an application for asylum after the child's birth and was granted residency the following year.

He sought to have his residency renewed in January of last year, but this was refused and a deportation order was issued last November.

Since then the matter has been the subject of proceedings in the High Court and the Court of Appeals.

The European Court of Human Rights has made an order temporarily preventing Ireland from deporting him.

The State has agreed not to deport the man until his legal challenges are concluded.

Mr Lynn said his client had made a renewed application for asylum in Ireland, but the Justice Minister and the Refugee Applications Commissioner had refused to deal with it.

"We are entitled to have our claim processed. That is why we are applying for declaratory relief to that effect," he said.

Mr Friedman argued the deportation order was defective because it did not "take account of relevant factors".

He said "uncontested medical evidence" was "not fully scrutinised" and "unreasonably rejected".

Mr Friedman added that the consequences for the man on his return to Jordan "have not been engaged with".
A SON of a man, whose deportation from Ireland is sought because of alleged involvement with Islamic terrorists, was detained and held without charge for almost three months in Jordan, the High Court heard.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, denies the State's claims he has consulted with senior violent extremist leaders outside Ireland, made travel arrangements for and is involved in recruiting members for Isil or that he represents a threat to national security.

He has brought proceedings challenging the Minister for Justice and Equality decision to deport him to Jordan.

On the second day of the hearing, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys was told the man fears that he will be tortured if deported to Jordan.

This fear has been heightened as a result of his son's recent detention by the Jordanian authorities, it is claimed.

In documents to the court, the man says that last November one of his sons disappeared after he was due to travel to Turkey to study. The Red Cross were contacted about the disappearance and it made inquiries.

The man and his family were told his son was being detained at the General Detention Centre in Jordan, where his father says he had previously been held and tortured. No reasons were given to the Red Cross why the son was detained.

The man's son was released in recent days.

The court also heard a close relative of the man, who was killed fighting the Assad regime in Syria, had prior to his death been arrested and interrogated by the Jordanian authorities on account of being related to the man.

These arrests and detentions heightened the man's fears he may be subjected to torture.

The man had been living in Ireland since 2000, on the basis he has an Irish citizen child.

Last year the authorities decided not to renew his residency permit because child had not been residing in the State.

The man was then informed the State wants to deport him back to Jordan.

He claims he was tortured over a period of several years in Jordan due to his political activities prior to his arrival in Ireland. He claims the treatment he received in Jordan has resulted in health problems which he currently suffers from.

Following the state's decision not to renew his residency, he applied for asylum. The Minister for Justice and Equality has refused to make a decision on on his application for asylum, the court heard.

He claims this is unlawful.

He seeks an order compelling the Minister to accept his application for asylum and is challenging the Minister's deportation decision.

The Minister opposes the application.
Shauna Kavanagh and Bernard Scully, students at Borris Vocational School, Co Carlow, as Grace Gifford and Joseph Plunkett for their 1916 film 'Til Death Do Us Part'.

It started with the art teacher, but turned into a lesson that seamlessly crossed the curriculum to take in aspects of subjects as varied as history, English, Irish, music, physics, IT, engineering and maths.

That is what happened when Deirdre Mooney, art teacher at the 500-pupil Borris Vocational School, Co Carlow combined her passion for art and history and planned a project for her Transition Year pupils to commemorate the Easter Rising.

"I had an idea I could make a film, possibly to encourage the children to ask questions and record their parents and grandparents about their heritage, their experiences of growing up, of being Irish in an Ireland that today is changing so quickly," she says.

Ms Mooney believes it is important for children to be encouraged to ask themselves questions such as: How did we arrive at this point? What sacrifices have been made? Were the people from long ago like us?

She says children nowadays are bombarded with visual stimulation , but a project such as this encourages them to be reflective.

"It is all very well looking at something on a film but to put themselves physically in the shoes of that person, to get an idea of what it was like to make decisions that would have an impact on their future and the future of Ireland, is very important," she says.

It had the desired effect. As the project progressed, she was particularly struck by a comment made by one student: "This could have been me."

Ms Mooney also believes in the role of education in connecting students with their local environment: "I am passionate about art. The children in the school come from a community where there is great creativity: film, sculptural artists, painters. artisans and we should embrace it."

For the film, Til Death Do Us Part, they decided to focus on a tragic, human story of 1916 - the marriage of one of the Proclamation signatories, Joseph Plunkett, and Grace Gifford in Kilmainham Gaol, hours before he was executed.

"The story of Plunkett and Gifford became the students' story as they took ownership of the project and researched aspects of the political climate in 1916, as well as the attire, hair styles and social decorum of the period," she says.

The entire school took on supporting roles.

Music teacher and uileann piper Ciaran Somers' rendering of The Banks of the Barrow served as poignant mood music through the film while school secretary Caroline Hanafin helped to organise location shoots.

History teacher Melissa Kavanagh helped with research and 1916 resources, while principal John O'Sullivan and deputy principal Olivia Kennedy made it all run smoothly by rescheduling the normal timetable.

Outside professional support came from Kilkenny Young Filmmakers, who helped the students with aspects of creative and technical production

Then, says Ms Mooney, the "magic happened". Infectious enthusiasm spread well beyond the school to the wider community, and support came pouring in.

The St Vincent de Paul in nearby Thomastown helped with props and costumes. Thomastown parish priest Fr Daniel Bollard and Ann Sheehy, one of the parish team, offered the use of churches, so when the production team took some artistic licence for the setting of the marriage ceremony, it meant they could use the beautiful, 225-year old Mong Chapel.

Meanwhile, the local scouts gave up their premises, an historic old school building, for the Kilmainham Gaol and the GPO scenes.

Some great authenticity was added to the production thanks to 1,000 funding secured by Transition Year coordinator Jacqueline Sheil, which allowed for the hire of military costumes, including an Irish Volunteers' coat.

That sponsorship came from the Five Nations Network project, a forum-sharing practice in education for citizenship and values in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The film was selected to represent Ireland at the annual conference of the Five Nations Network.

Making the film delivered a rich learning experience for the students, allowing opportunities for all to play to their strengths, whether visual, verbal or the more hands-on, kinesthetic learning style.

Students took turns on the technical aspects of filming, such as sound, lighting and editing, and stepped up into leadership roles such as film director, art director and make-up director. The physics lesson came cloaked in observing the distinctions between the colour spectrum of light and the colour spectrum of an artist.

Ms Mooney says it also provided an opportunity for students to work as a team: "They learned how to share ideas, express themselves and to listen."

Hours, days, weeks of work was distilled into a mini-movie less than five minutes long, which, according to Ms Mooney, also instilled an appreciation in students of the time and effort that goes into quality film production.

Til Death Do Us Part is in the can, but the learning goes on. On Proclamation Day, March 15, as part of the school's commemorations, the plan is for the film to be screened on the ceiling in a darkened room, when students will be asked to lie down to view it, as a mark of respect to those who sacrificed their life for Irish freedom.

"Lying on their backs in a darkened room, with no external stimulus, will encourage them to be thinking actively about why they are there," she says.

Ms Mooney believes it is the "human story, the development of empathy, the story of what it was like to be a citizen of Ireland in 1916, anxious about political unrest, losing loved ones, human sacrifice and the belief in a better tomorrow that will remain with the students long after the popcorn is eaten."

The film is one of a range of 1916-related projects in which the school is involved, including the choir's participation in A Nation's Voice, on Easter Sunday at Collins Barracks, Dublin, when more than 1,100 voices from 31 choirs from all over the country will join the RTE National Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Brophy in an open-air performance.
The subjects that a student selects for the Leaving Certificate can have a big influence on performance in the exam. While some are essential for entry to particular third-level courses, others are never required. Here are pointers to help any student to make good choices.

What do you like?

Every subject at Leaving Cert is challenging. Most schools offer five class periods a week for each subject and, in addition, students should be doing two-to-three hours further study in each subject in their own time. Students who study what they enjoy are likely to perform better in those subjects. This will result in higher grades, higher CAO points and, therefore, more options. Students are likely to pursue third-level courses that are related to subjects they enjoyed at school, so, by choosing subjects they enjoy, students are likely to be choosing what they may need as well.

What are you good at?

One way students can maximise their results is by playing to their strengths. Firstly, consider Junior Certificate results if they are available. It is important not only to look at the subjects in which they achieved the highest grades, but also why students performed best in these. Perhaps the subject was taught by a favourite teacher; perhaps a large project component helped.

Many students may also have participated in some aptitude testing and, if so, it is important to consider these results and discuss them with someone who is able to interpret them, such as a guidance counsellor. Other testing is available on careersportal.ie.

Finally, students should consider their hobbies and interests, subjects they have taken in TY and speak to their families and friends.

What do you need?

There are a number of subjects that a student may require for entry to third level, however often these requirements are less complex than originally thought. Students should spend about 80pc of their time considering what they like and what they are good at, and 20pc of their time considering what they need. If students have ideas about what they would like to study after school they should research the entry requirements for these courses thoroughly in a variety of different institutions.

If students are still not clear on what they would like to study at third level, they should research the requirements for a number of different areas and consider common themes. This can be done on qualifax.ie, where students can enter key words that result in a list of relevant courses and their descriptions. Students should pay particular attention when considering their choices in the areas of languages, sciences and technical subjects.

Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin

Question: We moved back to Ireland three years ago and we opted for our daughter, who is in 6th class, to do Irish. She is struggling. Is it too late for an exemption? What impact will it have if she does not have Leaving Cert Irish for entry into UCC, Trinity, NUIG?

Answer: Students may apply for an exemption from studying Irish for a number of reasons, including being born outside of the state, being educated outside the state for more than three years and returning after 11 years of age, and as a result of a learning difficulty. In order to put the exemption in place you should write to the school principal outlining the reasons you are requesting the exemption. Decisions must be made in line with the guidelines issued by the Department of Education, but it is the school that decides if a child meets the criteria.

If your daughter receives an exemption for Irish she will be exempt from the requirement to present Irish for matriculation to all colleges who require it, including University College Cork and NUI Galway. Trinity requires students to present with English and another language and she can apply to be exempted from this requirement also.

Important dates

Today

Open Day  Griffith College Dublin

Teagasc Open Day  Mountbellew Agricultural College

Information Sessions  Roslyn Park/National Learning Network

Tomorrow

Agri Careers  RDS

Media, Film & Photography Open Evening St. Kevins College Crumlin

March 4

Teagasc Spring Open Day  Kildalton Agricultural College

March 5

CAO late application facility opens

Mature Students Admissions Pathway (MSAP) test  Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway

March 8

Interviews  Colaiste Ide CFE

Open Evening  Dublin Business School

Medicine/Dentistry Entrance Exams for Lithuanian Uni of Health Sciences  Dublin International Foundation College

Open Day  Galway Technical Institute

March 9

Enrolment Day  Ballsbridge CFE

Open Evening  Bray Institute of FE

Open Day  Kerry CFE

Interview & Information Day  Marino CFE
Recent research has revealed some very disturbing concerns regarding the position of principals and deputy principals. Principals experience nearly twice the level of threats of actual physical violence than other population groups. In addition, they experience more than three times the frequency of bullying at work than the general population. Their average working week is approximately 50 hours and the majority work up to 30 hours a week during school holidays. The sheer quantity of work coupled with the lack of time to concentrate on teaching and learning are further stressors.

Recent research has revealed some very disturbing concerns regarding the position of principals and deputy principals. Principals experience nearly twice the level of threats of actual physical violence than other population groups. In addition, they experience more than three times the frequency of bullying at work than the general population. Their average working week is approximately 50 hours and the majority work up to 30 hours a week during school holidays. The sheer quantity of work coupled with the lack of time to concentrate on teaching and learning are further stressors.

Previous research identified that the workload of the principal is a cause for concern in that the demands of the job far exceed the capacity of most people.

The embargo on recruitment and promotion, introduced in 2009, reduced the number of assistant principals and stopped the appointment of special duties teachers, and greatly added to the principals' workload. While there has been some alleviation, the majority of schools still have only a fraction of the number of post holders which they previously held.

As a result, long-term educational planning takes a back seat to the 'urgent' demands of the moment so that principals are distracted from their core function of leading quality instruction, teaching and learning.

There are those who would argue that the present Post of Responsibility structure of assistant principals and special duties teachers, introduced in 1998, established a middle management system in schools. The rationale behind their introduction was excellent. Unfortunately, the implementation of the agreement never lived up to expectations and the systemic review promised has never taken place, with the result that it is no longer fit for purpose.

There are solutions. The second-level school management bodies, the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools (ACCS), the Joint Managerial Body (JMB) and the Education and Training Boards of Ireland (ETBI), have jointly proposed to the Department of Education and Skills (DES) the establishment of a flexible leadership team structure based on individual school needs.

The very detailed proposal aims to provide a model framework for the management of schools and will provide opportunities for post holders to assume responsibility and accountability for significant leadership and management functions in the school. It will support a path that accommodates a teacher's career development.

ACCS acknowledges the DES' understanding of the current difficulties. The Minister for Education and Skills granted an enhancement at deputy principal level for second level schools of up to 500 students in Budget 2016. ACCS acknowledges this as a first step and hopes that this enhancement can be granted to larger schools in the next Budget.

However, a key concern in our proposal is the context in which a school operates. We argue that schools need flexibility and fluidity in deciding on a middle management structure, rather than a 'one size fits all' model. What is important is that the leadership team has the capacity to meet the needs of the school and improve student outcomes.

Our proposal recognises the significant influence that teacher leadership has on student achievement.

Accordingly, it advocates that our schools become 'learning communities' where a model of shared leadership creates an environment where students and teachers can learn to their potential and where team structures and processes enact and enhance collaboration.

ACCS believes that this proposal provides an opportunity for the teaching unions to become collaborators in the change process and urges them to get involved in the development of a fit-for-purpose leadership team structure for our second level schools

Eileen Salmon is general secretary of the Association of Community and Comprehennsive Schools (ACCS)
Brid Smith (left) is congratulated by Catherine Ardagh after she took the final seat. Photo: Damien Eagers

Brid Smith was elected with 7,879 votes as the four-day count for the final seat in Dublin South-Central came to an end yesterday evening.

The AAA-PBP candidate had a 35-vote lead on Fianna Fail's Catherine Ardagh, before Ardagh called a total recount on Sunday.

Following the recount and adjournment on approximately 170 disputed votes, the final figures remained the same as after the distribution of Joan Collins' surplus, with Smith deemed elected.

Both candidates and their legal teams met with the returning officer, who explained the rationale behind the decisions made regarding disputed votes, prior to the announcement.

Smith said: "I wouldn't have enough days left in my life to thank the amount of people from Dublin South-Central and across the country who have been on Facebook, on Twitter, on my phone, ringing me, my family and friends who came to the count centre to support us when we had to supervise the recount. I was so overwhelmed and still am."

She was also thankful for the support to "ensure that People Before Profit won this seat on behalf of the working class of Dublin South-Central and kept Fianna Fail out".

She added: "I don't mean any harm to Catherine Ardagh in saying that but it is important that this remains a very strong left-wing constituency and I'm delighted with the result."

Smith took the fourth seat in the constituency which returned sitting TDs Aengus O Snodaigh (Sinn Fein), Joan Collins (Independent) and Catherine Byrne (Fine Gael).

Smith, a councillor in the Ballyfermot-Drimnagh area and member of Unite trade union, also called for the Labour Party to be taken out of the trade union movement.
Deputy James Bannon (centre) continues the tense wait at the Longford-Westmeath count in Keenagh, Co Longford. Photo: Mark Condren

With the possible decommissioning of AK47 in the offing, the big gun himself had to arrive. Alan Kelly walked in the door of the Longford Westmeath count centre at 6.15pm, there to lend support to Willie Penrose - Labour's last man standing.

The magic 'number seven' is needed to grant the party the magic, life-giving elixir of speaking rights. Facing the very real threat of silence, Kelly was tense and on edge.

"Ah hopefully, yeah," he said, when asked if Penrose was going to make it. "I want to see how it's going on," he added, making his way to the pen where the votes of Penrose and Fine Gael rival James Bannon, his fellow party member Peter Burke and Sinn Fein's Paul Hogan were being carefully recounted.

The real big guns were at the top of the room - with senior counsel and election guru Joe Revington drafted in by Penrose, and Kevin O'Higgins, with the same status, for Bannon. At 2am yesterday morning, it was said unofficially that just two lone votes stood between the two men in this most ferocious of battlegrounds - and neighbours of less than four miles apart.

So both had 'lawyered up' - for the first time in Longford since 1964, when local Republican icon Sean McEoin - "the Blacksmith of Ballinalee" and Justice Minister - lost his seat by a mere 12 votes.

Penrose himself had not been seen all day but his younger brother, Johnny - his doppelganger - was sitting amid great tension by the sidelines while Willie's daughter, Aisling, was acting as her father's eyes and ears.

It was like a funeral, with everyone sitting on chairs along the walls, keeping their conversations low.

One of Penrose's neighbours was jiggling his feet in great agitation and had a crate of buns and a homemade cake by his feet, along with a cannister of coffee. Demolished boxes of Roses sat on each count table, because on day four of this count everybody was living on their reserves - and chocolate.

"They're calling Willie Lazarus because he'd given up on Saturday - he hadn't a chance but by the third day he rose," quipped a friend of the Labour TD, who has consistently topped the poll since 1992.

Ringside, James Bannon was shell-shocked and ashen, unslept for the last five nights by his own admission.

He was sucking, appropriately enough, on a green bookies' pen.

"It's tight," he said, awakening as though from a daze, his eyes on the steady progress of the count staff.

"I don't want to do anything to speculate." Kelly shook his hand - not just party rivals but colleagues.

Later, Bannon darkly said questions would have to be asked within Fine Gael about how Longford had lost a third of the vote to Mullingar, as he had helplessly watched a crucial portion of 'his' vote go to Peter Burke.

At around 7pm last night, the lights of the Keenagh community centre suddenly dimmed.

There was a bit of a flap.

"And no guards around," said one man crossly, as the barristers pored over the ballot papers.

In fact there was a garda down the back of the room, hanging over the railings like everyone else.

With no sign of the finish line in sight, the legal battle of Keenagh stretched into the night.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny presents a bowl of shamrocks to US President Barack Obama on St Patricks Day last year. Photo: Reuters

Taoiseach Enda Kenny will travel to Washington DC for St Patrick's Day, even if a new government isn't formed by then, it has been confirmed.

However, a government spokesman said that while Mr Kenny would travel to the US capital, the number of ministers going abroad as part of the annual promotion of Irish business and culture would be "curtailed".

He said ministers who lost their seats would not travel but could not say how many other Cabinet members would go abroad.

The spokesman confirmed that Mr Kenny's visit would include the customary meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House, despite the uncertainty over the formation of a government

Tanaiste Joan Burton is expected to travel, but the destination has yet to be confirmed.

Questions have been raised in previous years about the costs of the trips to such far-flung destinations as Australia and China, but ministers argue that the benefits of promoting Ireland abroad means the expenditure is justified.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said he believed Mr Kenny should still travel but that there was a "question mark" over whether other ministers should go abroad.

Mr Adams said there was "an option for them not to go around the world".

"In the past we've been represented very well by ambassadors and consulates... Yes certainly the Taoiseach [should go] but a question mark over the rest of them," he said.

Diaspora

Mr Adams is travelling to the United States himself. "We always do that and the diaspora expects that," he said, but added that it would not be at the taxpayer's expense.

Fianna Fail's Eamon O Cuiv said he did not have a problem with ministers travelling.

"The Irish Constitution provides that there's always a government and all governments have to act to the benefit of the country," he said.

"Personally I have no difficulty with people going and representing our country and if we fail to elect a government, they are the government."

He said that despite "popular myths" about the trips, they were a "unique opportunity - that no other country of our size gets - to present Ireland on the world stage".

Mr O Cuiv added that it was important to for the country to be represented abroad in the year of the 1916 centenary and that sending ministers "opens doors".
Micheal Martin and Enda Kenny now face the prospect of forming a coalition

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has indicated Fine Gael's willingness to budge on water charges.

Speaking on RTE's 'Primetime', Mr Coveney said Fine Gael would "certainly be willing to talk about water" in a clear move to woo Fianna Fail support for a joint administration.

Expand Close Simon Coveney Photo: Arthur Carron Photography / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Simon Coveney Photo: Arthur Carron Photography

"We need to take on board, within reasons, what they are looking for," he added.

Earlier today, Taoiseach Enda Kenny performed a humiliating u-turn on his pre-election pledge ruling out doing business with Fianna Fail.

And Fine Gael descended into a state of farce this evening after the party was forced to backtrack on a statement from Mr Kenny which said he is open to entering Government with every party and independent TD in the Dail.

Following a dramatic day which saw the blame game within Fine Gael intensify, Mr Kenny released a statement which opened the door to every party, including Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein.

Despite the disappointing outcome of the election, which did not return the outgoing Fine Gael  Labour Government, Fine Gael will be the largest group in the new Dail and we are determined to play our part in providing the Irish people with a Government committed to working on their behalf, Mr Kenny said.

We will engage fully and inclusively with other parties, groups and independent deputies to ensure that such a Government is established, he added.

The statement represented an extraordinary departure from the position adopted throughout the campaign.

Mr Kenny and all other senior Fine Gael figures insisted they would not form a coalition that involved either Fianna Fail or Sinn Fein.

But the statement, released just after 7pm, represents a total u-turn by Mr Kenny, whose own position within Fine Gael is being seriously questioned.

However, just hours after the statement was released, a spokesman for the Taoiseach claimed the statement does not include Sinn Fein.

Therefore, its believed the remarks by the Taoiseach represent a clear signal to Micheal Martin to do business.

In a blow to Mr Kenny, senior Fianna Fail sources labelled his statement as desperate.

Sinn Fein also insisted it would not do business with Fine Gael
The Department of Agriculture has been forced into an embarrassing climb down after pursuing a farmer for the repayment of a 25,000 forestry grant when the trees were destroyed by flooding.

An investigation by the Ombudsman raised serious questions over why officials sought the grant back from the farmer.

The department maintained the man knew his land in Co Kerry was prone to flooding when he made the application for the grant.

It also maintained that the man was partially responsible for damage to the forest.

But the department agreed to drop the repayment demand after an investigation by the Ombudsman found the flooding was a natural disaster that was outside the mans control.

Ombudsman Peter Tyndall said: Where people apply for and receive grants in good faith, they should not be reclaimed.

This is particularly so in this case where the farmer lost his crop through no fault of his own and was hit with the double blow of a bill from the department. I'm glad we were able to put things right.

In a case summary report published today, the Ombudsman said it acted after receiving a complaint from the farmer, whose identity has not been revealed.

The farmer received 25,000 from the department through the Afforestation Grant and Premium Scheme to cover the cost of establishing a forest.

Department officials inspected the mans land and approved his grant in 2004. But the forest was destroyed by severe flooding in 2009.

According to the Ombudsmans report, when the farmer realised the extent of the damage he contacted the department in 2010 looking for advice.

The department stopped his payment and did not make a decision about how it was proceeding for nearly three years.

In January 2013 the department demanded repayment of the grant of over 25,000, in full, within one month.

The Ombudsman found that the farmers land was surrounded by canals which form part of a local drainage network.

Kerry County Council was responsible for maintaining the drains feeding this network.

But the local authority stopped draining the canals around 2009 because of damage caused by floods.

It said that it could not maintain the local drainage network each year because of budget restrictions.

The Ombudsman found that the drains on the farmers land were satisfactory but could not work properly because the local drainage network was not being maintained.

The report said department demanded repayment because the farmer had removed trees from the land and the farmer had not said in his original application that his land was subject to flooding.

The department also believed the farmer was aware of the risk of flooding and that it was his responsibility to comply with the conditions of the scheme.

Officials felt it unreasonable for the man to rely on the actions the local authority to comply with his obligations.

The farmer appealed the departments decision and provided evidence that the flood destroyed the trees and caused damage to his land.

The local authority confirmed that the severe rainfall, high tides and excessive amounts of material in the drainage channel had prevented proper drainage, which was outside the mans control.

Subsequently a department official confirmed that the trees had been removed as a result of the flooding.

The Ombudsman discovered that the South Western Regional Fisheries Board had written to the department in May 2004 advising it that part of the site may be subject to flooding.

This was before the department approved the grant in August 2004.

The farmer told the Ombudsman that he had no knowledge of the boards report.

A forestry inspector from the department had visited the mans land in May 2013 and said that it was a case of force majeure, an event that could not be reasonably anticipated.

However, this was overturned by the department in December 2013.

The Ombudsman found the department was trying to hold the farmer responsible for something about which he was unaware and over which he had no control.

He asked the department to review the mans case, after which it decided not to proceed with efforts to recover the 25,000.
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have restricted which restrooms and locker rooms transgender students could use in the states public schools, saying it would take decision making authority away from local officials.

H.B. 1008 would have gone into effect at midnight if Daugaard, a Republican, didnt act first. The bill would have created the first state-level restrictions for transgender students by r equiring them to use restrooms and locker rooms that match their biological sex , defined as the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a persons chromosomes and anatomy as identified at birth, even if that sex doesnt match the gender they identify with.

House Bill 1008 does not address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota, Daugaard wrote in a veto statement. As policymakers in South Dakota, we often recite that the best government is the government closest to the people. Local school districts can, and have, made necessary restroom and locker room accommodations that serve the best interests of all students, regardless of biological sex or gender identity.

Supporters of the measure said it would have provided clarity for school districts about a complicated legal issue. Some lawmakers also argued that it is a concern for parents when children with different anatomy use the same facilities.

But opponents, including advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students, argued that the bill would stigmatize vulnerable students and potentially put schools at odds with the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights, which has said schools are obligated, under Title IX, to honor transgender students gender identity. School administrators nationwide have been struggling with legal uncertainty about how to accommodate transgender students.

The bill, one of several proposals related to gender identity that South Dakota lawmakers have will consider in the current legislative session, would have required schools to provide reasonable accommodations if a student with parental consent asserts that the students gender is different from the students biological sex. Those accommodations may include a single-occupancy restroom, a unisex restroom, or the controlled use of a restroom, locker room, or shower room that is designated for use by faculty.

But federal officials have said that such accommodations are inadequate and stigmatize transgender students.

The federal interpretation of Title IX as it is applied to transgender students is the subject of a pending case in a U.S. appeals court. The ruling in that case may provide further clarity for schools, school law experts have said.

If and when these rare situations arise, I believe local school officials are best positioned to address them, Daugaards veto statement said. Instead of encouraging local solutions, this bill broadly regulates in a manner that invites conflict and litigation, diverting energy and resources from the education of the children of this state.

Preserving local control is particularly important because this bill would place every school district in the difficult position of following state law while knowing it openly invites federal litigation, the statement continued. Although there have been promises by an outside entity to provide legal defense to a school district, this provision is not memorialized in the bill. Nor would such defense eliminate the need for school or state legal counsel, nor avoid expenses relating to expert witnesses, depositions and travel, or other defense costs. Nor does the commitment extend to coverage over settlement or damage expenses. This law will create a certain liability for school districts and the state in an area where no such liability exists today.

Related reading:

Follow @evieblad on Twitter or subscribe to Rules for Engagement to get blog posts delivered directly to your inbox.
Tributes have been paid to a schoolboy who died suddenly from an asthma attack.

Staff and pupils at St Patrick's College in north Belfast offered their condolences on the sudden death of Jack Whyte, who was a student at the school on the Antrim Road.

News of his tragic death yesterday morning was announced in an online statement from Jack's school.

Headteacher Paula Stewart said: "It was with much shock and disbelief that we learned this morning that Jack Whyte, a student in our school, had died suddenly from an asthma attack.

"Jack was such a popular student and everyone at St Patrick's College is devastated and very saddened by this news.

"Jack was a bright, outgoing student, kind and caring. He was a pleasure to teach. A 'star' in our eyes. He was involved in many aspects of college life - drama, music and the student council - and he always had a smile for everyone he met.

"He will be greatly missed and remembered fondly by everyone who knew him. It will take us some time as a school community to come to terms with this. Our thoughts and prayers are with Jack's family and friends at this very sad time in their lives. Rest in peace Jack."

A keen gaelic player who enjoyed drama productions, earning him the nickname 'Broadway', friends said Jack was "always smiling" and a "gentle soul."

Pupils at the school are being offered counselling and support.
Lydia Di Perrio from Massachusetts, but living in Swords in Dublin, casts her vote for the US Presidential Primary elections, operated by Democrats Abroad in the Arlington Hotel, Dublin. Photo: Caroline Quinn

Hundreds of Americans living in Ireland yesterday queued at the Arlington Hotel in Dublin to cast their vote in the US Presidential Primary elections.

As 12 US states headed to the polls on Super Tuesday, Democratic voters on this side of the Atlantic also had their say in who should be in the race to take over from Barack Obama at the White House next January.

Just like back home, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were battling it out to get their name on the ballot paper at the polling station hosted by Democrats Abroad, the official branch of the Democratic Party for US citizens living outside the US.

Democrats Abroad chairperson TJ Mulloy told the Irish Independent: "Turnout's been fantastic and our registrations are through the roof.

"Everyone thought Hillary Clinton was the inevitable candidate, but [Sanders] is driving the conversation to a place where a lot of people prefer.

"I think online voting is driving interest.

"It's a real race again - it's like 2008. We thought that would be once in a generation. Who could have thought eight years later there'd be another really tight race?"

He added: "Bernie Sanders' supporters are really passionate, and the Clinton people are reacting to that. Meanwhile, everyone's scared of Trump."

The organisation is set to operate an additional poll at Monroe's Tavern in Galway on Saturday. And those US citizens unable to attend in person can cast ballots by email or post before March 8.
TAOISEACH Enda Kenny has said that people should pay their water bills despite uncertainty surrounding the future of Irish Water after the formation of a government.

He said it would be a "historic" mistake to get rid of a single national utility responsible for water.

Fianna Fail has indicated the scrapping of water charges will be a red-line issue if it is to support a minority Fine Gael government headed by Mr Kenny.

But it could be months before any such deal is agreed, and the uncertainty is now expected to result in a massive drop-off in the number of households paying their bills.

Meanwhile, Brendan Howlin said this evening that if charges are to be abolished, it would be "unconscionable" for people who have paid the charges not to receive a refund.

"One thing that is crystal clear to me is that it cannot be that people who are law abiding are penalised."

"It would be unconscionable if charges are to be abolished, and there seems to be a majority of deputies in the new Dail who want that, that there would not be a full refund to everybody who have paid water charges to date. Anything else would be an idnication that to be law-abiding is to be penalised."

Asked about the issue today, Mr Kenny said people "should pay their bills".

On The News at One today, Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney also echoed the Taoiseach's remarks.

"We believe it was the right thing to do to set up a single utility company. It was the right thing to do to set up a fair charging system to contribute towards a big investment to fixing our water problems. That is still our view.

"We stand over a fair charging system," he said today.

Read More

"Let me be clear, we are not proposing to do away with water billls. We are not proposing to do away with Irish Water. People should pay their water bills and I will be paying it. We are likely to continue to have a fair charging system for water and a single utility company for that. We are committed to that."

He said that the Fine Gael parliamentary party is meeting tomorrow and they will set out the parameters in which "we can negotiate".

"It is my view that it would be a huge mistake to start reversing what has been a very difficult process setting a single utility which is now starting to work with an investment for 5.5bn for the six years.

"It is my view that if Fine Gael continues to be in Government there will be a single utility company and charging system."

Last night Mr Coveney appeared on RTE's Prime Time last night and said Fine Gael would "certainly be willing to talk about water" in an apparent bid to woo Fianna Fail.

"We need to take on board, within reason, what they are looking for," Mr Coveney added.

Mr Kenny was asked this afternoon if Irish Water is dead and if he agreed with Mr Coveney's remarks.

"Simon Coveney was correct in what he said in that Fine Gael as the largest party in this Dail want to move on to put in place a process to form a government and part of that is we'll be prepared to listen to all groups and like-minded parties who have views about how that should happen.

"I want to say in respect of Irish Water that I think it would be a seriously costly and seriously historic mistake to move away from having a single national utility to provide water and clean water for the country, and for the future.

He said he there should be a system where the public pays for water that is "fair and affordable".

He was speaking after it emerged that families who have paid their water bills will get no refund, even if the charges are abolished as part of a deal to keep Fine Gael in power.

Fianna Fail has indicated the scrapping of water charges will be a red-line issue if it is to support a minority government headed by Enda Kenny.

But it could be months before any such deal is agreed, and the uncertainty is now expected to result in a massive drop-off in the number of households paying their bills.

Read More

However, an EU report warns that if charges are abolished, Irish Water will not come off the State's balance sheet - and this will therefore reduce the money available for spending increases and tax cuts in future Budgets.

Fianna Fail's environment spokesman Barry Cowen confirmed to the Irish Independent that while an ending to charging was an "imperative" for his party, the party would not seek to give refunds.

Read More

"We can't change the law retrospectively, as much as we'd wish. We were not in government so we couldn't stop this fiasco, as much as we tried," he said.

Asked about the likelihood that there would be widespread boycotting of charges until the situation is resolved, Mr Cowen said: "The Government has created this mess and has to bring it to a conclusion, or somebody else will."

Read More

Last night, outgoing Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney indicated Fine Gael's willingness to move on water charges.

Speaking on RTE's 'Prime Time' in a clear bid to woo Fianna Fail, Mr Coveney said Fine Gael would "certainly be willing to talk about water".

"We need to take on board, within reason, what they are looking for," he added.

Read More

Fine Gael sources admitted Irish Water was "an unmitigated disaster" and that "no effort was made to sell it properly".

A number of TDs accepted that something would have to change, but warned they had invested too much political capital to scrap Irish Water completely. The company has completed three billing cycles and is in the process of issuing a new round of invoices.

Read More

Dermott Jewell of the Consumers' Association of Ireland said there would be a "very, very sharp" decline in payment rates as a result of the political upheaval. "At the very least, people will hang back rather than put more money into a bottomless pit," he said.

He added that in the event charges are dropped, those who had paid to date "should not be seen as another fallout from this unusual situation".

Abolished

Former Labour Party minister Pat Rabbitte yesterday told Independent.ie's 'Frontbench' podcast that "some day, what happened at Cabinet on that issue will come out, no doubt".

Read More

"It is remarkable that if there are two people living in a house and they get a water bill for 160 and they get a grant from the Department of Social Protection for 100, that after all we have suffered in the last eight years, that 60 on water is the cause of contention. But it was the straw that broke the camel's back," he said.

Former Fine Gael justice minister Nora Owen said her party would struggle to justify dropping charges without also giving a refund.

She said most Fine Gael voters were likely to have paid their charges - but would be annoyed if they were abolished without a refund "because the bloody neighbour down the road with two cars was boasting that they were not going to pay it".

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan said nobody was looking to maintain the status quo in relation to Irish Water.

His party wants to change the utility from being a commercial semi-state into a national authority.

The European Commission Post-Programme Surveillance Report Ireland for autumn 2015, which was released yesterday, said it was important to ensure funding for Irish Water's capital plan beyond 2016 "in order to address critical weaknesses in water infrastructure".

Meanwhile, Brendan Howlin said this evening that a Fianna Fail/ Fine Gael coalition would be the only stable option for the next Government.

"I think objectively the only stable government for the country for the next five years would be that coalition because anything else would be a minority that would be inherently unstable and the country needs a stable government. Whether even the grand coalition of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael would last five years because bluntly the longer that that particular coalition existed the less reason there would be for two distinct parties. And I think there would be an incentive for both parties to have a pretext to end that and redefine themselves separately."

"So I think we are in very troubled times. As we have seen from Spain we need a government there is a consequence of having a protracted period of no government. I am a member of a caretaker government right now but in terms of making new policy decisions we must await the decision of the new Dail and the election of a new government to do that and the longer we wait the more harm we will do to a very fragile recovery. We need to ensure the investments into Ireland that people are now deciding upon continue, that the job creation programmes continue and we can only do that with the assurance of a stable government."
Irish Water will spend up to 60m mapping the ageing sewerage system - amid fears that parts are in danger of collapse.

The utility will conduct detailed surveys in an attempt to obtain an accurate picture of the state of the network, and identify areas most in need of investment.

The move comes as political parties begin exploring coalition options, and as Fianna Fail and the other main groups commit to abolishing charges and scrapping the utility.

However, even if Irish Water is abolished, billions of euro will still need to be invested in upgrading the water network which has suffered from decades of under-investment.

The company has previously said as much as two-thirds of the sewer system could be in need of repair.

A survey across 13 urban areas will take up to two years to complete and will cost 30m. A second tranche of surveys, which are expected to cost a similar amount, will follow after.

Much of the existing network was built from the 1850s by the Victorians, and is incapable of meeting modern needs.

Some of it is in very poor condition, sections have collapsed, and parts are overloaded due to population growth over more than 100 years.

Irish Water said it was also unclear as to the extent of the network. It believes there is an overall sewerage system of some 25,000km, but local authorities have mapped only around 12,500km to date.

Upgrades

Only a small proportion of the total, around 15pc - or 3,750km - has been accurately assessed to the extent that it allows engineers to plan upgrades and capital works.

"For most of the large agglomerations (built-up areas) in the country, the network was built at the turn of the last century. Some of it is in quite good shape, but some of it is not," asset programme manager Sean Laffey said.

"Around 98pc of the population is served by 50pc of the network. The first tranche involves drainage plans for 13 areas to cover 830,000 people. Once we have those done, we will start on sections which are either in very poor condition or in danger of collapse, or areas of the network which are grossly overloaded."

Drainage area plans will then be completed following the surveys, which will include mapping of manholes, assessments of the height and condition of sewers and the amount of water flowing through which will help determine if they are overloaded.

In addition, CCTV will be used to see if some systems are blocked and need to be washed out.

"All of that condition information will go into a large database to inform future works," Mr Laffey added. "At the same time, we will produce a hydraulic model to monitor flows on dry days and wet days to gauge capacity."

After assessment, modelling will be used to determine the upgrades or replacement works required. If emergency works were required during the condition surveys, they will be carried out.

Historically, combined sewer systems were constructed in urban areas where storm water is added to the sewers. However, this can result in severe flooding during heavy rainfall, and overflows to rivers and streams as they cannot cope with the deluge. It is likely that some of these combined sewers will be replaced.

The first systems to be assessed will be in Ballincollig, Cork City and Midleton in Cork, and Sutton and Shanganagh in Dublin. Others include Bray, Monaghan, Dundalk, Galway, Lower Liffey Valley (Celbridge, Kilcock, Leixlip, Maynooth), Tullamore and Roscrea and Thurles in Tipperary. After these, work on another 16 area plans will be carried out.
After her wife Elsie was tragically killed in a car accident, Australian woman Lara Ryan has written a heartfelt plea for marriage equality.

In Ireland, we're still basking in the feel-good glow of the last year's Marriage Equality Referendum, which made us the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote.

However, in Australia the situation is very different - the government does not recognise same-sex marriages despite numerous attempts by some of its citizens to push for marriage equality nationwide.

Same-sex couple, Lara and Elsie Ryan, had been together for a decade and considered themselves married, albeit not in the eyes of the law. They celebrated their union with a "wedding" ceremony which was attended by over 100 of their closest friends and family.

Their four-year-old daughter Ivy would proudly inform people that she had "two mums".

So three weeks ago, when Lara found herself in the painful situation of filling in a death certificate for her partner, the heartache was intensified when she had to cross out the box for "husband" on Elsie's death certificate.

Expand Close Elsie Ryan with Ivy and baby Skylar. Photo: Lara Ryan Facebook. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Elsie Ryan with Ivy and baby Skylar. Photo: Lara Ryan Facebook.

Elsie had been knocked down on February 8 as she returned home from dropping Ivy off to school, just three weeks after she had given birth to the couple's second daughter Skylar.

The shock of the accident was compounded by the initial confusion Lara encountered surrounding their relationship.

She says she has spent the weeks since Elise's death ringing lawyers, government agencies and their insurance company, explaining the nature of their relationship.

"For anyone - whether you're gay, straight, a son, a daughter, a sister, a partner - it's a very trying thing to tell the same story over and over again and go through forms and red tape and not fitting into particular boxes," Lara said when speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Expand Close Elsie Ryan and daughter Ivy. Photo: Lara Ryan Facebook. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Elsie Ryan and daughter Ivy. Photo: Lara Ryan Facebook.

"I just remember crying to my mum and saying 'If I had a proper marriage certificate, this would not be so hard. It would just be accepted.'

"If I had a husband, I would just say 'My husband has passed away,' and people would get that.

"If marriage was available, I would have chosen to be married," Lara said.

"My parents have a beautiful marriage, my partner's parents had a beautiful marriage. They were very proud of their families, and we would have done the same thing ourselves if we had had the option. She was not my de facto. She was my wife."

Lara said the pair had "never been political" and didn't really think too much about their official marital status in the past.

In her grief and frustration, the Sydney woman penned a heartfelt plea on Facebook, called This Is Why, which calls for marriage equality and highlights the full burden of its injustice on families.

Expand Close Lara Ryan's Facebook post #thisiswhy calls for marriage equality in Australia. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Lara Ryan's Facebook post #thisiswhy calls for marriage equality in Australia.

The post reads: Because having lost my partner in a horrible pedestrian accident this month I had to ask policemen if I was allowed to write Spouse on incident reports. I had to cross out boxes for husband on the death certificate and boxes for father on our new babys birth certificate (both on the same day). I had to yell out in a busy, crazy emergency room She is my wife, I know its not legal but she is my wife!



Because we were never political, we just did our thing, did our life our way and tried to live by example to shift peoples hearts rather than pushing agendas. BUT the amount of freaking paper work I am having to do to secure mine and my childrens future welfare is just ridiculous when all it would take is one marriage certificate.

And most of all because I love her, and she has been my every day for ten years, She is the mother of our two girls, she is the future I dreamed of and she is my safe place to land.



Because love is love and we should celebrate it and encourage it always.

The world is harsh enough. Feel free to share widely - #thisiswhy
Pictured launching the 10 Leap Family Card was Anne Graham, CEO of the National Transport Authority with Megan Cronin age 7 and Darragh McCormick age 7. Picture Jason Clarke.

The new Leap Family Card. 50,000 of the 1916 commemorative cards are available.

A new Leap Family Card, priced at 10, offers 24 hours of travel in Dublin for a family of up to six people.

The promotional card has been issued by the National Transport Authority (NTA) to commemorate the 1916 centenary, it said.

Costing 10, the card offers a family of two adults and up to four children (aged 18 or under) 24-hours unlimited travel in and around the Greater Dublin Area on Dublin Bus, Luas, Bus Eireann, DART and commuter rail services.

With Luas fares alone costing from 1.90 per adult and 1 per child per journey, the savings could be substantial over the course of a day.

Expand Close The new Leap Family Card. 50,000 of the 1916 commemorative cards are available. / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp The new Leap Family Card. 50,000 of the 1916 commemorative cards are available.

The special 10 fare is also 4 cheaper than the Dublin Bus one-day Family rambler (14), and 10 cheaper than the Irish Rail equivalent (20).

50,000 limited edition cards are being issued in the one-off offer, according to Anne Graham, CEO of the National Transport Authority.

"When they're gone, they're gone," she said.

A maximum of two cards are available per order. They can be ordered online here and are valid to December 31, 2016.

"We hope that more families will chose to use public transport when theyre out and about together, enjoying historic commemorative sites all over Dublin, from the GPO to Kilmainham Gaol to Glasnevin Cemetery," Graham added.

The NTA will assess take-up and usage of the cards, with a view to developing a more permanent family product in the future.
Gardai are bracing them for a show of force by masked dissident Republicans at the funeral of slain Real IRA gangster Vinny Ryan.

For a third time in as many weeks, heavily-armed police will be deployed to watch over the burial of a gangland murder victim.

The purpose of the operation will be two-fold: prevent a further attack on the dissident criminals in attendance, and keep an eye on the dregs of the Republican movement who turn up to pay their respects.

In 2012, the Real IRA were handed an invaluable propaganda opportunity when a north Dublin drug gang murdered Alan Ryan in broad daylight.

The mobsters milked the event for all that it was worth by staging a sinister paramilitary pageant that brought back dark memories of a time everyone hoped had long gone.

With tricolours fluttering and a pipe band playing, men and women wearing the traditional garb of the Provos - dark glasses, black berets, balaclavas and paramilitary uniforms - marched out of step alongside the coffin. Others were dressed in white shirts, black ties, dark glasses and berets, the funeral dress worn by the IRA at the burial of their comrades.

The terrorist pageant was clearly intended to intimidate their enemies - and of course the decent people unfortunate enough to live in the same neighbourhoods.

Now the same vile display can be expected for the funeral of Alan Ryan's younger sibling.

The cold-blooded murder of the 25-year-old terrorist is a reminder from the drug gangs that they are, to use the immortal sinister words of Gerry Adams, not gone away you know.

The murders of Vinny and Alan Ryan were in revenge for an ongoing feud in which the Ryans and their associates were responsible for the murder of at least four members of a crime cartel.

That means the death toll in this six-year feud is double that of the Kinahan and Hutch clans.

And everyone fears that the killing is far from over.
It's only now that Irish Water is beginning to ascertain the extent of the problems in the network. The utility has a relatively good handle on what's happening in the drinking and wastewater treatment plants - although the picture is far from entirely clear. But the latest tranche of studies is aimed at discovering just what is happening beneath our feet.

It simply doesn't know what parts of the sewerage network need investment, because local authorities were never in a position to carry out the necessary studies. Not until that work is complete, and thousands of kilometres of sewers are mapped, can it develop long-term investment plans and commit funding to fix the problems.

Under the old system, each council was largely concerned with what was happening within its borders. For the most part, the needs of the county took precedence over the needs of the country.

Even if Irish Water is abolished in the morning, this national picture will have to be at the forefront when spending the billions of euro needed to update our creaking system.

All the parties in a position to form a government, bar Fine Gael, have committed to abolishing water charges. Unless there is a seismic change in positions, this seems inevitable. But that means money will have to be found from somewhere to fund the necessary works.

Irish Water plans spending 5.5bn out to 2021 upgrading the network. It will finance the works through borrowings, government funding and water charges. If domestic water charges are abolished, that 270m loss in revenue will have to be found somewhere. Government must provide it, or the investment plans suffer.

The European Commission's 'Post-Programme Surveillance Report for Ireland' published yesterday - essentially a review of how we are doing after the bailout - also makes an important point.

As Irish Water failed the so-called Market Corporation Test because it could not be proved to be independent of government, any borrowings it has go onto the national debt. Under tough European Commission budget rules, that limits the amount the government can spend on other things such as schools, hospitals or housing.

The commission also says it is important to ensure funding for Irish Water's capital plan beyond 2016 "in order to address critical weaknesses in water infrastructure".

"The constraints that inadequate water supply and wastewater treatment facilities impose on growth, competitiveness, housing development and the environment are becoming increasingly visible," it says.

That's something that all the parties should focus on before deciding to axe a key source of funding.
Kansas DUI Law Ruled Unconstitutional

The Kansas Supreme Court has overturned a law making it a criminal offense to refuse a blood alcohol test during a DUI investigation. The law had made it either a misdemeanor or a felony to refuse to submit to warrantless breath or blood tests.

Many states have penalties for refusing sobriety tests, but the court in this case determined that criminal convictions based on refusals violate drivers' Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

No Warrant, No Search

The key part of the Kansas Supreme Court ruling is that the tests requested were not the result of court-ordered warrants. Absent a warrant, prosecutors could not charge a person with a crime because he or she refused to submit to an alcohol test. If law enforcement does have a warrant, criminal penalties can be imposed for lack of cooperation. Therefore the ruling will likely be limited to roadside and field sobriety tests.

And the ruling may not last long. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear arguments in three cases regarding whether states can criminalize a driver's refusal to take an alcohol test. Kansas wasn't the only state to make refusing blood alcohol tests a crime, and whether those other laws will stand remains to be seen.

No Consent, No Search

You may have heard of implied consent laws, which allow states to revoke a person's driver's license if they refuse a breath or blood test. Under those statutes, drivers are presumed to have consented to chemical tests during DUI investigations as a condition of obtaining a license. But the Kansas Supreme Court found that drivers have a right to rescind that consent, and they can't be charged with a new criminal offense for exercising that right: "Once a suspect withdraws consent, whether it be express consent or implied (under the statute), a search based on that consent cannot proceed."

So while you might still be arrested or otherwise penalized for refusing an alcohol test, at in Kansas and at least for now, that refusal can be a crime in and of itself. If you've been charged with a crime for refusing a blood or breath test, or with any other drunk driving offense, you should contact an experienced criminal defense attorney as soon as possible.

Related Resources:
James Reilly reckons the Government will be "remembered for turning the country around". Speaking from the count centre on Sunday after losing his seat in the Dublin Fingal constituency, the former Health Minister used a medical metaphor to assess Fine Gael and Labour's time in government: "The operation was a success, but the patient is still in a lot of pain."

Reilly went on to explain the reason for his party's and his own drubbing in the election - that Fine Gael did not get its message across and failed to make an emotional connection with the people.

What Reilly does not realise is that the party did not fail to get its message across, quite simply, it had the wrong message. The Government's regressive fiscal, economic and social policies failed individuals and communities who bore the brunt of the crisis.

As the election's most high-profile casualty, Reilly admitted his "time in Health would not have been exactly helpful". But "the country had no money, and hard decisions had to be made", some of which were "repugnant".

Reilly's time in Health was tough. But much of the difficulty was his and his Government's own creation. His early days in Health were mired by his political interference in the selection of primary care centres, including one in his own constituency.

Fine Gael adopted the flawed flagship health policy of universal health insurance in the run-up to the 2011 election. Reilly was its number one sponsor as Fine Gael health spokesman between 2007 and 2011 and then as Health Minister from 2011 to 2014.

Inexplicably, Fine Gael entered government without a detailed plan as to exactly how universal health insurance was to be realised. Its proposal was based on the Dutch model of compulsory insurance delivered through competing private health insurance companies, which even by 2011 was proving to be overly expensive in Holland.

Fine Gael promised those with existing health insurance coverage would not have to pay more, yet in the first few years of government, health insurance costs rocketed.

It took three-and-a-half years to publish a White Paper on Universal Health Insurance. And it was only when Reilly was replaced by Leo Varadkar as Health Minister, and the eventual publication of ESRI costings of the health insurance model last autumn, did Varadkar finally admit the proposal was neither feasible nor affordable.

Other key health promises were also broken. Soon after taking up the Health ministry, Reilly promised there would never again be 569 people on trolleys. Yet, high trolley numbers persist. This week, there were 544 people on trolleys.

Prior to the 2011 election, Reilly pledged not to shut the emergency department in Roscommon Hospital; nevertheless, it was closed by July 2011.

Similarly, promises on reducing waiting lists were broken. There were some improvements in waiting times in 2012 and 2013, but these were not sustainable. There are now more people waiting too long for outpatient appointments and hospital treatments than when Fine Gael took up office, with the exception of outpatient appointments over one year.

In opposition, Reilly lambasted the government for introducing prescription charges for medical card holders. Yet under his stewardship, those same charges increased five-fold.

And it was cuts to the numbers of people with discretionary medical cards where the Government parties inflicted most damage on themselves. Here, Reilly's inexperience and lack of political nous meant he was shafted by his Cabinet colleagues, especially the Labour ones (Howlin, Burton and Quinn) as education and social welfare got money in the first three Budgets that should have gone to health.

On Sunday, Reilly spoke about the irony of this - that while he and Fine Gael have suffered in the election as a result of their own poor Budget choices - ultimately the Labour Party suffered more, evident in its loss of 31 seats.

This anger, expressed by the people with the Government parties, was palpable in the 2014 local and European elections, yet the Government blustered on, ignoring the reality for most Irish citizens.

There are lessons to be learnt from Reilly's very public demise - from poll-topping, right-hand man to the Taoiseach, deputy leader of the largest party, who was given the senior Ministry in Health which he so desperately wanted in 2011, only to be demoted to the Department of Children in summer 2014 and barely featured in the 2016 General Election campaign.

Last Sunday, Reilly lost the last seat in his constituency to first-time Sinn Fein candidate Louise O'Reilly.

Poignantly, Sinn Fein's health policy is to deliver what Reilly and Fine Gael promised in 2011 but spectacularly failed to realise - a universal, single-tiered health service where access is based solely on medical need, not ability to pay.

James Reilly and his Coalition colleagues were punished by the electorate for years of austerity which hit hardest on those who could least afford it and for their failure to deliver on key promises, including those in health.

Now is the time for accountable government, which respects, listens to and delivers for the savvy electorate.

A government that realises promises that actually turn the country around.
B(L-R) Scotty T, Stephanie Davis and Jeremy McConnell at the final of Celebrity Big Brother at Elstree Studios on February 5, 2016 in Borehamwood, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

Big Brother star Marc O'Neill graduates from Maynooth University with a 1st Class Honours Degree in Organic Chemistry & Molecular Biology and poses with fellow graduates, Maynooth, Co. Kildare

Reality star Marc O'Neill has slammed pal Jeremy McConnell's relationship with Stephanie Davis as "f***ing creepy."

The Biochemistry graduate, who featured on TV3's Tallafornia and Big Brother, has known Jeremy, a former Mr Ireland contestant, for years on the Dublin social scene. But he had some choice words for his burgeoning romance with former Hollyoaks actress Stephanie, whom he met in the Celebrity Big Brother house.

"That's not Jeremy, that's him acting like a f***ing f*nny. If it was me, I'd turn my phone off and never see her again. It's the only way," he told New Magazine.

McConnell recently purchased a commitment ring for his new girlfriend - another thing Marc took issue with: "I was nearly sick when I saw it. What an idiot. Is he f***ing twelve? Is he the Jonas Brothers now?

Expand Close B(L-R) Scotty T, Stephanie Davis and Jeremy McConnell at the final of Celebrity Big Brother at Elstree Studios on February 5, 2016 in Borehamwood, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images) / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp B(L-R) Scotty T, Stephanie Davis and Jeremy McConnell at the final of Celebrity Big Brother at Elstree Studios on February 5, 2016 in Borehamwood, England. (Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

He also hit out at their close relationship, saying that Stephanie "knows his bowel movements better then he does" and encouraged them to get some space from each other.

Although they've been glued at the hip since first meeting at the CBB house in January, their relationship hasn't been without its ups and downs.

They've reportedly split twice, only to reunite immediately and audio footage of the former Over the Rainbow contestant lashing out at her new beau after the CBB final went viral as he said he wanted to go out with friends, but she said she had "given everything up" for him.

They later appeared together on the cover of Hello! magazine, proclaiming their love for one another.

Expand Close Jeremy McConnell and Stephanie Davis in the Celebrity Big Brother house on Friday / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Jeremy McConnell and Stephanie Davis in the Celebrity Big Brother house on Friday
A combination photo shows Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) in Palm Beach, Florida and Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (R) in Miami

Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton took big steps toward securing their parties' presidential nominations on Tuesday with a series of state-by-state victories, but their rivals vowed to keep on fighting.

On Super Tuesday, the 2016 campaign's biggest day of nominating contests, Trump, 69, and Clinton, 68, proved themselves the undisputed front-runners.

Now they are under pressure to show they can unify voters in their respective parties and avoid a potentially disastrous split in their ranks that could hurt them in the Nov. 8 election.

U.S. networks projected Trump won seven states with victories stretching into the deep South and as far north as Massachusetts, adding to a sense of momentum he had built last month by winning three of the first four contests.

Read More

Clinton's victories in seven states were just as impressive but in many ways predictable, propelled by African-American voters in southern states like Arkansas, where she and former President Bill Clinton began their political careers.

Trump's rivals Ted Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, and Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida, emphasized their determination to remain in the race.

Read More

Cruz, 45, won his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, bolstering his argument he had the best chance to stop the brash billionaire. Rubio, favorite of the Republican establishment, was projected the winner in Minnesota, his first victory.

Clinton's rival Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont, also won his home state along with Colorado, Minnesota and Oklahoma and vowed to pursue the battle for the nomination in the 35 states yet to vote. He lost to Clinton in Massachusetts, a fifth state he had hoped to win.

Super Tuesday was the biggest single day of state-by-state contests to select party nominees for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

TRUMP WAVES OFF REPUBLICAN CRITICISM

At a news conference in a chandeliered ballroom at his seaside Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump, who has never held public office, dismissed furious criticism aimed at him by establishment Republicans.

Faced with a party in turmoil over his ideas to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, deport 11 million illegal immigrants and bar Muslims from entering the country, Trump declared he had expanded the party by drawing in disaffected blue-collar Democrats who like his tough-on-trade rhetoric.

"I am a unifier," he said. "I would love to see the Republican Party and everybody get together and unify and when we unify, there's nobody that's going to beat us."

The rivals of both Trump and Clinton aim to knock them off their pedestals in contests ahead in Michigan, Florida and Illinois.

Trump waved off criticism from the country's top two elected Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, over his delayed disavowal of an endorsement by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.

"I've disavowed," Trump said. "I'm going to get along with Congress, okay? Paul Ryan, I don't know him well, but I'm sure I'm going to get along great with him. And if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, okay?" Trump said in remarks that could further inflame party tensions.

Clinton, who still faces a well-funded Sanders despite having taken control of the Democratic race, was eager to assail Trump as a way of getting Democratic voters used to the idea of her as the nominee.

"The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower," Clinton told supporters in Miami. "Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work."

'DONALD TRUMPS OF THE WORLD'

Sanders thanked cheering supporters in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and assailed the Republican front-runner.

"We are not going to let the Donald Trumps of the world divide us," said Sanders, 74, adding that he expected to pile up "hundreds" of convention delegates in voting on Tuesday.

For Rubio, 44, it was a day of reckoning. His losses piled up after a week in which he labeled Trump a "con artist" and exchanged schoolyard taunts with him over, for example, who wet their pants under pressure at a debate last week.

Suddenly, the contest on March 15 in Florida, his home state, loomed over him as a must-win state.

"Florida, I know you're ready," Rubio said. "The pundits say we're underdogs, I'll accept that. We've all been underdogs."

Rubio's plight was such that Senator Lindsey Graham, an establishment South Carolina Republican, told CBS News that Republican voters might need to rally around Cruz, who has been one of the most disliked public figures in Washington.

"I can't believe I would say yes, but yes," Graham said when asked about the idea of supporting Cruz as a way of stopping Trump.

Cruz told supporters at his victory party in Texas that Trump was a "Washington dealmaker, profane and vulgar, who has a lifelong pattern of using government power for personal gain."

The networks had yet to project a winner for Republicans in Alaska.
Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks about the results of Super Tuesday primary and caucus voting during a news conference in Palm Beach, Florida. Reuters/Scott Audette

Film star Richard Gere has said it is "mind boggling" that American citizens are voting for Donald Trump.

Billionaire businessman Trump achieved a decisive victory on Super Tuesday in the US, coming closer to winning the presidential nomination for the Republican Party.

He won seven states in the biggest day in the primary campaign, building his lead in the delegate count that will determine the party's official nominee at the national convention in the summer.

Speaking at a VIP screening of his film Time Out Of Mind at Curzon Mayfair, Gere said: "You can't ignore him. This is a guy who may well be the Republican nominee.

"As a person I don't think he's that interesting.

"What is interesting is, why would so many people be willing to support him, knowing that he represents all these horrible things? That's mind-boggling."

Trump has sparked outrage with many of his policies, which include building a wall in an attempt to halt illegal immigration from Mexico, and a short-term ban on Muslim immigrants.

He has also pledged in a campaign advertisement to "bomb the hell out of ISIS".

But despite initial derision when Trump announced his candidacy, the Republican has struck a chord with his party's voters.

The American actor added: "I don't blame him for that, I blame us.

"We have something inside of us that is alm
Republican U.S. presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz reacts to the Super Tuesday primary and caucus voting results at a campaign rally in Houston

Ted Cruz called for some of his Republican rivals to drop out of the race for the White House after he won Oklahoma and his home state of Texas.

Though he did not mention Marco Rubio or John Kasich by name, he made it clear that he felt they should quit so Republicans could consolidate around him as a viable alternative to Donald Trump.

He asked them "prayerfully consider" the future of their campaigns, warning that as long as the Republican field remained divided, Mr Trump would have a path to nomination, which he declared "a total disaster" for his party.

Former candidate Lindsey Graham said the only way to stop Mr Trump from becoming the party's nominee and winning the general election may be to rally behind Mr Cruz.

The South Carolina senator said: "Ted Cruz is not my favourite by any means. But we may be in a position where rallying around Ted Cruz is the only way to stop Donald Trump and I'm not so sure that would work."

He called both Mr Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton "crazy" and said the Republican party is bound to lose to Mrs Clinton if an alternative to Mr Trump is not found.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson told a crowded banquet hall at a hotel in Baltimore that he is not giving up, despite trailing behind all the other Republican candidates on Super Tuesday.

He took to the stage at the Grand Hotel and called the political system "rotten to the core".

Mr Carson said: "They have weaved such a complex web."

He did not mention any of his opponents by name, but told his supporters: "Our nation is in horrible trouble. Why sit there and talk about each other and tear each other down when we have such important issues to deal with?"
A supporter of Donald Trump gets close for a selfie during a rally at Radford University, in Virginia. Photo: PA/Steve Helber

Gang violence and poverty have for years pushed Mexicans and Central Americans north to the United States, but recently a new driver has emerged: the anti-immigrant tone of leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

From the slums of Central America to close-knit migrant communities in US cities, Trump's rise to the front of the Republican pack has not gone unnoticed and is partly behind a spike in the numbers of migrants trying to enter the US, including children travelling without guardians.

Interviews with migrants, people smugglers and officials show many migrants are trying to cross now instead of facing tighter policing and new policies to halt illegal immigration if Trump or another Republican wins the November 8 election.

"If Trump wins, we're all screwed and all Latinos are screwed," Isaias Franco, a 46-year-old from El Salvador who was deported from the US late last year and is now trying to get back, said at a migrant shelter in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data shows 150,304 migrants were detained trying to cross the US-Mexico border between October and February, up 24pc from the same period last year.

Similar data for "unaccompanied" child migrants - those travelling without a guardian - is not yet available, but between October and January, 20,455 kids were apprehended on the southwest border, up more than 100pc from a year ago.

Like other migrants, Franco is aware of the US presidential race and Trump's vow, matched by fellow Republican candidate Ted Cruz, to deport all the illegal immigrants in the US, estimated at more than 11 million.

"You watch the news . . . There's a lot of fear among Latinos," Franco said.

Blanca Rivera, who manages the Ciudad Juarez migrant shelter, said she had noticed a recent surge in the numbers of migrants and also blamed the inflammatory rhetoric.

"They think they need to take advantage while they can," she said.

Trump has built a strong lead in the race for the Republican nomination, in part by taking a tough stance on immigration.

He says Mexico is "killing" the US with cheap labour and has sent "criminals" and "rapists" across the border. He is also promising to build a huge border wall and proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country.

Although Trump has been the most outspoken candidate, his main rivals also say the government must stop the flow of illegal migrants into the country, mainly from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Trump, Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio all say they would overturn President Barack Obama's executive orders that shield some illegal immigrants from deportation.

In 2014, tens of thousands of child migrants travelling without family members overwhelmed the southern US border, sparking a political crisis. The flow then fell in most of 2015 but has surged again recently.

Brenda Barrios, a 30-year-old Guatemalan based in Silver Spring, Maryland, crossed illegally into the US in 2003 with her parents and two sisters.

Her parents were later deported back to Guatemala, and they think it is too dangerous to return but Brenda is encouraging them to come before the end of the year in case Trump wins.

"He's one of the reasons why people are crossing the border. They think he looks like a dictator," she said. "It's very dangerous for them to cross. But it will be worse if Trump is president . . . Life will be very difficult for us. He doesn't want us here."

Still, Barrios and other migrants said the US, even under an administration seeking to halt illegal immigration, would be better than the poverty and violence of their home countries.

Since 2014, the murder rate in El Salvador has risen dramatically amid an escalation of gang violence and a regional drought has forced thousands of people, particularly from Guatemala, to head north.

There are signs that human smugglers, or 'coyotes', are using the anti-immigrant rhetoric to peddle the idea now is the time to go.

Victoria Cordova and her 11-year-old daughter, Genesis, were deported back to Honduras in 2014, after hiking through Mexico and being detained trying to cross into Texas.

She said 'coyotes' in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa - who charge about $7,000 per person - have been telling people now is the time to leave.

"People here were saying that in June of this year they were going to give new entry permits."

Ruben Garcia, the director of the Annunciation House migrant shelter in El Paso said the next US president, whoever it is, would face the same challenge of migration flows.

"People are going to continue to flee because it's just really hard for people to survive right now," he said.
In all likelihood, the US is about to elect a female president - a political first of dramatic, historic proportions. But no one is celebrating.

Yesterday's 'Super Tuesday' - when a third of Democrat delegates (who select their presidential candidate) were up for grabs, was always likely to see Hillary Rodham Clinton shaking off the Left-wing terrier that is Bernie Sanders and once again become her party's nominee presumptive.

If she goes on to secure that nomination, she will be on the threshold of the White House. For while a lot has been written and said about Donald Trump, almost every poll sees Clinton trumping Trump in a one-to-one showdown. Such is his toxicity on the national stage that increasingly desperate Republican grandees have even discussed how they can stop him. They probably can't.

Yesterday's results could go a long way to ushering into office the next President Clinton.

That would mark a huge turnaround after a shaky few months, blighted in no small part by the gender politics that were expected to help her. In New Hampshire, where she lost by 22 points, women proved decisive in her defeat. Some 55pc plumped for Sanders, including 82pc of under-30s; this despite the entreaties of the feminist Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to vote for Clinton specifically because she is a woman.

Such appeals proved counterproductive. Many expressed irritation at being urged to vote for a candidate on the grounds of her gender. And so the alarmed Clinton camp came up with a rescue plan which involved not referring at all to her status as the first person without a Y-chromosome to be favourite for the White House.

Appeal

As the contest has moved south into states with high unemployment and large black populations, her pitch has been that the party cannot afford to elect a socialist candidate like Sanders who has limited appeal to the wider electorate. It worked in South Carolina last week, and, if the polls are correct, looks likely to deliver again when all the votes are tallied.

And then will anyone cheer the fact that after 240 years and 44 male commanders-in-chief, it could finally - finally - be the turn of a woman? Unlikely.

Instead, there will probably just be weary relief that the Democrats have a candidate capable of bringing the Trump juggernaut to a halt.

The contrast could not be more stark with eight years ago, when a young senator from Chicago, Barack Obama, was seeking to become the first black president. Under his 'Yes We Can!' banner, an extraordinary coalition emerged in support of a candidate whose inspiration was not just the colour of his skin but the hope he represented for a fairer future.

Black Americans make up around 16pc of the American population. Women are just under 51pc. Yet Obama's victory has come to be seen as of greater historic importance than Clinton's would be now. The prospect of a first female president should be thrilling. Instead the reaction to her is tepid.

This collective shrug could, of course, be seen as a positive thing, a triumphant sign that in a post-feminist age voters don't really care about gender politics. But that's just not true. Men and women in America don't have equal life chances. Gender is still crucial to voters. And not just within the confines of the US. Across the planet, only 12 out of 206 recognised sovereign states are led by women; so a female leader of the free world would be huge, both symbolically and, potentially, practically. Why, then, does the response to the growing likelihood that a woman will occupy the Oval Office in 10 months' time feel so muted?

It's the candidate, stupid. Hillary Clinton has more baggage than a jumbo jet, from her priapic husband Bill to her decades at the heart of the American political machine in an era when outsiders are in vogue. ( Daily Telegraph London)

Rosa Prince

Endnote goes in here xx
A mushroom dating back 440 million years is the oldest fossil of a land-dwelling organism ever found, say scientists.

The fungus and others like it paved the way for more complex plants and later animals making the leap from the oceans to the land by kick-starting the process of soil formation.

The early pioneer, known as Tortotubus, has a structure similar to that found in some modern fungi and was probably able to store and transport nutrients through the process of decomposition.

Dr Martin Smith, who carried out a study of the fungus while working at Cambridge University, said: "During the period when this organism existed, life was almost entirely restricted to the oceans: nothing more complex than simple mossy and lichen-like plants had yet evolved on the land.

"But before there could be flowering plants or trees, or the animals that depend on them, the processes of rot and soil formation needed to be established."

Dr Smith, now at the University of Durham, analysed a number of tiny microfossils from Sweden and Scotland, each shorter than the width of a human hair.

He was able to show that what were once thought to represent parts two different organisms actually belonged to one, at different stages of growth.

Fungi play a vital role in the nitrogen cycle, the process by which nitrates in the soil are taken up by plant roots and passed along the food chain into animals.

Tortotubus had a cord-like structure, similar to that of some modern fungi, allowing it to spread out and colonise surfaces.

In modern fungi such a structure is associated with decomposition.

"What we see in this fossil is complex fungal 'behaviour' in some of the earliest terrestrial ecosystems, contributing to soil formation and kick-starting the process of rotting on land," said Dr Smith.

What is less clear is what existed 440 million years ago for Tortotubus to decompose. It is likely there were bacteria or algae on land during this period, according to the scientists whose findings are reported in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.

The pattern of growth of Tortutubus resembled that of mushroom-forming fungi, although there is no other evidence of mushrooms so long ago.

"This fossil provides a hint that mushroom-forming fungi may have colonised the land before the first animals left the oceans," Dr Smith added.
Transgender Bathroom Laws in Public Schools: A National Overview

South Dakota this week narrowly escaped becoming the first state in the nation to pass a law forcing transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their birth sex. The bill would have forced students use facilities associated with the gender they do not identify with, making them prisoners of their biology.

The governor of South Dakota, Republican Dennis Daugaard, this week vetoed the bill, saying it "does not address any pressing issue" and that the decision was best left to local school officials, according to Fox News. The veto may indeed have saved South Dakota some headaches, particularly as other states head in the opposite direction.

Nationwide Survey

The South Dakota bill dictating bathroom use in schools for transgender students would have been a first in the country. Governor Daugaard initially expressed support for the bill but after he heard from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, who say it is discriminatory and will prompt legal action, he vetoed.

Daugaard noted that signing the bill could create costly liability issues for schools and the state. Although it's unclear whether he was influenced by this, Daugaard was also contacted by former Olympian and reality TV star Caitlin Jenner, who is now a transgender rights activist.

Daugaard's decision to veto the bill seems wise in light of California's 2013 law to allow transgender students to participate in activities and use facilities according to their gender identity, not their biological gender. Similarly in Colorado in 2013, the Colorado Rights Division ruled that school districts could not discriminate against transgender students by dictating bathroom use.

Local School Districts

Although states have mostly stayed silent on the issue for now, local school districts have been formulating approaches to handling transgender student issues. New York City schools for example have quite extensive guidance on how to support transgender students from the NYC Department of Education.

The NYC school district explains how to keep records that are clear from an administrative perspective and also reflect the student's own gender identification. Most notably in light of the South Dakota decision not to pass a bill forcing transgender students to use biological gender bathrooms, the NYC school authorities write, "A transgender student should not be required to use a locker room or restroom that conflicts with the student's gender identity."

Experiencing Discrimination?

If you or someone you know is experiencing discrimination in school or at any other institution, talk to a lawyer. Many attorneys consult for free or a minimal fee and will be happy to discuss your case.

Related Resources:
Online searches for "How to move to Canada" surged in the hours following Donald Trump's gains in the Super Tuesday primaries, said Google.

The search engine's data editor Simon Rogers highlighted the trend, tweeting that searches had "spiked" 350% in four hours on Tuesday, peaking at 1,150% above the average and settling at around 500% above on Wednesday.

Four of the five US hotspots for the search term were in states where Mr Trump had won a majority: Tennessee, Massachusetts, Georgia and Virginia.

The Canadian government website also encountered technical difficulties on Tuesday night, which some have suggested was prompted by a surge in traffic from Americans considering fleeing north of the border.

An error message on the site at 5.06am GMT (12:06 a.m. ET) read: "You may experience delays while using the website. We are working to resolve this issue. Thank you for your patience."

Last year, digital analytics firm Luminoso found 4% of 4.5m Donald Trump-related tweets mentioned leaving the US.

The majority of people (75,000) wanted to move to Mexico but Canada was second choice, with 25,000 people claiming they would relocate there.

Meanwhile, an island in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia is hoping for a boost from disillusioned US voters.

A site called Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins (CBIDTW), created by DJ Rob Calabrese, offers to welcome Americans leaving their country because of Mr Trump.

The site went viral, linking to Destination Cape Breton, the island's tourist site and getting 300,000 visits in more than a week: two-thirds from Americans with the top three questions being immigration, employment and housing.
Donald Trump speaks after his Super Tuesday wins In Palm Beach, Florida (AP)

Hillary Clinton takes selfies with supporters after speaking at a campaign rally in Norfolk, Virginia (AP)

Democrat Hillary Clinton won at least six states and Donald Trump at least five in Super Tuesday elections, the biggest day of the primary campaign.

But Ted Cruz ended Mr Trump's winning streak with victories in his home state of Texas and neighbouring Oklahoma.

Democrat Bernie Sanders also won his home state of Vermont and Oklahoma.

Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump were pressing for sweeping victories that could distance them from their party rivals and move them closer to a November presidential election showdown.

Nominating contests were being held in 12 of the 50 US states.

Mr Trump won in Virginia, Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee and Georgia. Mr Cruz is the only candidate to have beaten him, in the lead-off Iowa caucuses, as well as the two wins on Super Tuesday.

Mr Cruz, a firebrand conservative senator, has been vying with Marco Rubio to emerge as the main alternative to Mr Trump.

Mr Cruz saw the Southern states that voted on Tuesday as his opportunity to stake his claim to the nomination, given their large evangelical Christian populations.

Mr Trump has won over many evangelicals, but Mr Cruz's campaign may be boosted by his victory in Texas, the biggest prize up for grabs on Super Tuesday.

Mr Rubio, a Florida senator who has become the favourite of much of the Republican establishment, has yet to win a primary, despite competing hard in Virginia.

He is putting hopes on his home state primary on March 15.

Mrs Clinton, the former secretary of state and senator, won in Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.

The wins reflected her strength in the South, where black voters are an important part of the Democratic base and overwhelmingly supporter her.

Voting was still going on in other contests or the races were too close to call.
A new bride accused of stabbing her solicitor husband through the heart has told a court that she "loved him" and denied killing him.

Mother-of-four Sharon Edwards, 42, accepts that she was holding the knife at the time the wound was inflicted upon David Edwards on the afternoon of their two-month wedding anniversary, but said she did not push the blade into his chest.

A jury at Manchester Crown Court heard evidence from Edwards as the defence began their case in the two-week trial.

Edwards, who sobbed throughout her evidence, said her husband, whom she married in Las Vegas on June 28 2015, was "jealous" and would call her names.

Mr Edwards was found dead in their bed in Chorley, Lancashire, on August 23 2015, hours after they returned home from a holiday in Majorca.

He had suffered a 3in (8cm) stab wound to the chest in the second of two knife attacks at their home in as many days.

The Crown say that Edwards, who "perhaps quite liked the idea of being Mrs Edwards, a solicitor's wife", had regularly beaten her husband and he would often turn up to work with scratch marks and bruises.

She admitting slapping her husband across the face on one occasion and was subsequently arrested but later released.

After being told that he was being made redundant, the court heard that arguments between the couple had ensued.

Edwards said her husband would regularly fall over when in drink and after his firm, Stanley H Cross and Co in which he was a partner, merged with Kevills Solicitors, he began to drink more.

Edwards accepts that she was holding the knife at the time of the incident, but claims that he walked into it.

Barrister David Fish QC asked her: "Did you push that knife into him deliberately?"

She replied: "No, I didn't."

Mr Fish continued: "Did you push it in intentionally?"

Edwards said: "No, I didn't."

"Did you at any time during that incident on Sunday afternoon intend to kill him?" Mr Fish asked.

She sobbed: "No, I didn't. I love him."

Mr Fish asked: "Did you intend to cause him really serious harm?"

Edwards said: "No, I didn't."

The court was told that Edwards first met her husband-to-be on her 27th birthday when the solicitor was representing her former partner, John Pritchard, in court after he was accused of assaulting her.

During the trial in May 2000, Mr Edwards cross-examined Edwards.

Mr Pritchard was subsequently cleared and Edwards told the court that Mr Edwards had done "a very good job".

Their paths crossed again in 2011 when she contacted him regarding a neighbour dispute.

She told the court that, in May 2014, Mr Edwards sent her a Facebook friend request and, after exchanging messages for around a month, they met on June 28 - a year before they married.

Edwards told the court the relationship had been "very intense, very passionate, very loving", and after two weeks he had telephoned her to declare his love for her, which she said she found "a bit strange".

The court heard that the couple would drink every other day but, as the relationship developed, their drinking increased and by October 2 2014, it was "out of control".

Edwards said she remembered the date because it was the day her husband had met the partner of his new firm, Kevills Solicitors, with which his company was merging.

The court heard that he had previously "loved his job" but Edwards told the court he "didn't like" the partner of the new firm.

She said that after meeting the woman and returning home, he went to the off-licence for wine before returning a second time for more.

She said he was "extremely drunk" and was to fall down the stairs, breaking his collarbone and three ribs and leaving his arm in a sling.

Edwards said she did not remember arguing with her partner before February but things were to go "downhill" after the changing situation at work, adding that he felt his former legal partner had "sold up the river".

She said: "He was always busy, it was horrific. He told me he couldn't cope, he couldn't manage.

"He hated it, he absolutely hated it. He couldn't adjust to not being a partner, he just couldn't adjust to having to get permission for everything. He didn't get on with them. It was terrible."

She said her husband had even cried when he came home from work on occasions and when stressed he would call her a "whore", "slut", and say "16", referring to her teenage pregnancy.

She added: "He would say 'Turkey' quite a lot. I had been to Turkey four years previously, David had seen some photographs, I went with my mum and two daughters. The photo was with another lady and her son. He thought I had a fling with a man."

The court has previously heard that a mobile police patrol had witnessed Edwards shouting and screaming during the early hours of August 23 in which she was overheard saying 'I'm gonna f****** kill ya'."

The trial continues.
A Russian police officer stands at the site where a woman suspected of murdering a young child was detained, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2016. Russian investigators said on Monday they had arrested a nanny and charged her with murdering a young child in her care after local media broadcast footage of a woman brandishing a severed head near a busy Moscow metro station. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev

Russian police officers secure an area near to a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station. The Investigative Committee released a statement saying a woman was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing a child aged 3 or 4 in an apartment near the metro station in northwestern Moscow and then setting the apartment on fire

Police and the Investigative Committee cars secure an area abound a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station

A police detain a woman, suspected of murdering a young child, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2016, in this still image taken from video

A police officer (R) prepares to detain a woman, suspected of murdering a young child, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2016, in this still image taken from video

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova - a mum of three - showed officers the Moscow flat where she reportedly strangled Nastya Meshcheryakova, before beheading her with a kitchen knife

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova - a mum of three - showed officers the Moscow flat where she reportedly strangled Nastya Meshcheryakova, before beheading her with a kitchen knife

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova - a mum of three - showed officers the Moscow flat where she reportedly strangled Nastya Meshcheryakova, before beheading her with a kitchen knife

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, sits inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2016. Russian police wrestled to the ground a woman in a hijab brandishing the severed head of a child outside a Moscow metro station on February 29, 2016 and charged her with murder, in an incident that stirred fears of an Islamist terrorist attack

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, sits inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2016. Russian police wrestled to the ground a woman in a hijab brandishing the severed head of a child outside a Moscow metro station on February 29, 2016 and charged her with murder, in an incident that stirred fears of an Islamist terrorist attack

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, yawns inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2016. Russian police wrestled to the ground a woman in a hijab brandishing the severed head of a child outside a Moscow metro station on February 29, 2016 and charged her with murder, in an incident that stirred fears of an Islamist terrorist attack

Gyulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, looks on inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2016. Russian police wrestled to the ground a woman in a hijab brandishing the severed head of a child outside a Moscow metro station on February 29, 2016 and charged her with murder, in an incident that stirred fears of an Islamist terrorist attack

Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a nanny suspected of murdering a child in her care, looks on inside a defendants' cage as she attends a court hearing in Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

A nanny who murdered a four-year-old child in Moscow was encouraged to commit the crime by instigators who are still at large, investigators have said.

Police on Monday wrestled to the ground Gulchekhra Bobokulova, a 38-year-old divorced mother of three from the Muslim-majority ex-Soviet state of Uzbekistan, after she wandered around a Moscow street holding the infant's severed head in the air and shouting Islamist slogans.

Eyewitnesses said at the time they believed she was carrying out a terrorist act, but since her detention, Russian investigators have raised the possibility she might be suffering from mental illness.

Investigators said she had been working as a nanny for a Moscow family and that she had murdered and beheaded one of the children in her care before setting fire to the family flat and fleeing.

Expand Close Russian police officers secure an area near to a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station. The Investigative Committee released a statement saying a woman was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing a child aged 3 or 4 in an apartment near the metro station in northwestern Moscow and then setting the apartment on fire / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Russian police officers secure an area near to a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station. The Investigative Committee released a statement saying a woman was arrested Monday on suspicion of killing a child aged 3 or 4 in an apartment near the metro station in northwestern Moscow and then setting the apartment on fire

While she has made no attempt to deny the crime, investigators told a judge on Wednesday morning that they believed Ms Bobokulova did not act on her own initiative.

Expand Close A police officer (R) prepares to detain a woman, suspected of murdering a young child, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2016, in this still image taken from video / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp A police officer (R) prepares to detain a woman, suspected of murdering a young child, near Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2016, in this still image taken from video

Read More

State television channels did not report the incident, a move that drew accusations of censorship from some opposition activists but which the Kremlin endorsed, saying it would have been wrong to broadcast such "horrific images".

Bobokulova told reporters on her way into the courtroom on Wednesday that Allah had ordered her to do what she did but that she had repented and agreed with her arrest.

Expand Close Police and the Investigative Committee cars secure an area abound a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Police and the Investigative Committee cars secure an area abound a subway station in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016. Russian news agencies report that police have arrested a woman who was waving the severed head of a small child outside a Moscow subway station

Read More

Sat in the metal cage reserved for defendants in Russian courts, Bobokulova waved and said:

"I am Allah's messenger. Hello everyone."

Her head was uncovered and she appeared relaxed, occasionally yawning, in contrast to Monday when she had been dressed in black and wearing a hijab.

MILITANT ISLAMIST THREAT

Government officials have issued frequent warnings about the danger that Islamic State militants pose to Russia, especially in the light of Russia's military intervention in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

Investigators have opened a criminal case against Bobokulova, saying they formally suspect her of murder. They have not mentioned suspecting her of any terrorism-related offence.

The court agreed to detain her for two months while the investigation continued after hearing that she presented an "exceptional risk to public safety".

Investigators have said she will undergo psychiatric testing.

An investigator said that to date no one else had been identified who was involved in the crime. The judge spoke of possible accomplices still being at large and hiding from the police, without giving details.

Some rights activists have warned of a possible backlash in Russia against migrant workers from Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan who have in the past been targeted for beatings by far-right groups.

A Communist Party website campaigning for tighter migration rules displayed a picture on Wednesday of a black-clad woman wearing a burka holding a severed head inside a red circle with a line through it to indicate such individuals should be banned.
A woman brings flowers to commemorate the recently murdered child outside a residential building, where the child together with family members lived, in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Reuters

A man places a toy among flowers as people come to commemorate recently murdered child near the Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Reuters

A woman places baby food among flowers and as people come to commemorate recently a murdered child near the Oktyabrskoye Pole metro station in Moscow, Russia. Photo: Reuters

A Moscow nanny has been taken through a police reconstruction at the scene where she beheaded a four-year-old girl with a kitchen knife "because her husband had taken a second wife".

The Russian capital was left in shock after Gyulcherkhra Bobokulova, a citizen of Uzbekistan, was found pacing around a western Moscow suburb carrying the head of a child and claiming to be a terrorist on Monday morning.

Hundreds of Muscovites have since laid flowers at the metro station where the woman was arrested carrying the head of the child, as speculation swirled that the Kremlin had ordered a news blackout out for fear of an anti-immigrant backlash.

Police appeared to rule out terrorism as a motive, saying Mrs Bobokulova was "clearly insane". However, officials have struggled to establish a motive for the crime, with reports variously blaming unspecified narcotics or the shock caused by a cheating husband.

Ms Bobokulova reportedly told police she was driven to "manic psychosis" after she discovered her husband had been cheating on her.

"About a month ago she returned to Uzbekistan to get a new passport. When she got home she learnt that her husband had taken a new family. He offered to make her his second wife," a police source told tabloid LifeNews.

Police have launched a search for the husband, who has not been named.

Ms Bobokulova, 38, is believed to have strangled and then beheaded Nastya M, a four-year old girl she had looked after for 18 months.

She then set fire to the apartment of the family she was working for before roaming the street with the child's head.

Nastya's parents, who have not been named, said they had employed Ms Bobokulova for 18 months and had considered her an excellent nanny who got on well with their daughter.

Police said Mrs Bobokulova was lucid and cooperative during interrogation.
Pakistani seminary students gathering in front of the final hiding place of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, in 2011

Details have been released from the will of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden left more than 25 million in his will so that his followers could carry on his grand jihadist schemes against the West, newly declassified documents show.

In a series of missives that reveals anxieties about both his personal security and his long term legacy , the late al-Qaeda leader said he had around 26m in personal wealth to be used "on jihad, for the sake of Allah."

Expand Close Pakistani seminary students gathering in front of the final hiding place of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, in 2011 / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Pakistani seminary students gathering in front of the final hiding place of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, in 2011

His last will and testament is part of a file released by US officials from a cache of documents seized during the raid that killed bin Laden at his secret compound in Pakistan five years ago.

The file also shows the al-Qaeda leader's increasingly anxious state of mind as the world's intelligence agencies closed in on him.

In one missive, he frets over a visit by one of his many wives to a dentist in neighbouring Iran, fearing that a tracking chip could have been hidden in one of her fillings.

And in others, he warns comrades to be wary of tracking devices planted in ransom payments to al-Qaeda kidnappers and on unwitting journalists who came to interview al-Qaeda's high command.

The will was released on Tuesday as part of a batch of more than 100 declassified documents taken during the May 2011 raid on bin Ladens hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.

At the time, his organisation was in its worst shape since 9-11, with its leadership being hammered by US drone strikes Afghanistan and Pakistan, and its Iraq operation all but quelled by the US troop surge in Baghdad.

Ideologically, al-Qaeda was also struggling to find a response to the Arab Spring protests that were already toppling regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

Yet the documents show that bin Laden, despite being an effective prisoner in his own home, still saw himself as a terrorist mastermind, urging new and grandiose attacks on a West that he thought was close to collapse.

"We need to extend and develop our operations in America and not keep it limited to blowing up airplanes," says a letter, apparently written by bin Laden, to Nasir al-Wuhayshi, head of al Qaeda's Yemen branch, which masterminded the failed "Underpants Bombing" in December 2010.

In another letter, addressed to "The Islamic Community in General," bin Laden writes: "Here we are in the tenth year of the war, and America and its allies are still chasing a mirage, lost at sea without a beach."

"They thought that the war would be easy and that they would accomplish their objectives in a few days or a few weeks, and they did not prepare for it financially, and there is no popular support that would enable it to carry on a war for a decade or more."

One senior US intelligence official told the Reuters news agency that the documents showed that bin Laden "was still sort of thinking in very kind of grand schemes, and still ... trying to reclaim that 9/11 'victory'. But he was "somewhat out of touch with the (actual) capabilities of his organisation."

In one communique, written under the pseudonym Abu Abdallah, he expresses alarm over his wife's visit to a dentist while in Iran, worrying that a tracking chip could have been implanted with her dental filling.

"The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli," he wrote, showing an unexpected knowledge of a particularly thin type of spaghetti.

The letter ended with the instruction: "Please destroy this letter after reading it."

In a May 11, 2010 letter to his then second-in-command, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, he urges caution over the group arranging access for al Jazeera journalist Ahmad Zaidan, asserting that the United States could be tracking his movements through devices implanted in his equipment, or by satellite.

"You must keep in mind the possibility, however, slight, that journalists can be under surveillance that neither we nor they can perceive, either on the ground or via satellite," he wrote.

In another document, bin Laden issues instructions to an al-Qaeda cell holding an Afghan hostage to beware tracking technology attached to the ransom cash.

"It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it," he advises.

He also says the kidnap negotiators should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar "except on a cloudy overcast day" - an apparent reference to it being harder for drones to track them in poor visibility.

Another missive in bin Laden's possession acknowledges that al Qaeda executed four would-be volunteers on suspicion of spying, only to discover they were probably innocent.

"I did not mention this to justify what has happened," wrotes the letter's unidentified author, adding, "we are in an intelligence battle and humans are humans and no one is infallible."

Even as al Qaeda came under growing pressure, bin Laden and his aides planned a media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the documents show. They plotted diplomatic strategy and opined on climate change and the U.S. financial collapse.

In a undated letter "To the American people," the al Qaeda chief chides Obama for failing to end the war in Afghanistan; and accurately predicts that the U.S. president's plan for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would fail.

One hand-written note, believed to have been written in the late 1990s, laid out how he wanted to distribute about $29 million to followers in Sudan, where he lived as a guest of the then-Islamic fundamentalist government until Washington pressured Khartoum to kick him and his followers out.

One percent of the 26 million, bin Laden wrote, should go to Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, a senior al Qaeda militant who used the nom de guerre Abu Hafs al Mauritani.

Another one percent of the sum should be given to a second associate, Engineer Abu Ibrahim al-Iraqi Sa'ad, for helping set up bin Laden's first company in Sudan, Wadi al-Aqiq Co., the document said.

Bin Laden also urged his close relatives to use the rest of the funds to support holy war, and asked that his father take care of his wife and children in the event he died first.

In a letter dated August 15, 2008, he asked that his father took care of his wife and children in the event that he died first. In one whistful paragraph, he also asks his father for forgiveness "if I have done what you did not like."

In February 2011, bin Laden also hailed the uprising in Libya against Colonel Gaddafi, who had long taken a firm line with jihadists in order to curry favour with the West.

In flamboyant and jubilant language, he says: "Praise God, who made al-Qa'ida a great vexation upon him, squatting on his chest, enraging and embittering him, and who made al-Qa'ida a torment and exemplary punishment upon him, this truly vile hallucinating individual who troubles us in front of the world!"

As it turned out, bin Laden would not live to see Gaddafi's demise. The Libyan leader was killed by rebel militiamen in October that year - some five months after bin Laden's body had been given a burial at sea in the Indian Ocean.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
By Nikie Mayo of the Independent Mail

Amara, the dog who was shot, blinded and left for dead in Townville, will be a catalyst for change in Anderson County, council members promised Tuesday night.

The case of the 2-year-old boxer has sparked a public outcry in the days since she was picked up as a stray on Mystic Cove Road on Jan. 28. That outcry intensified after the revelation that Amara's owner was responsible for shooting her and would not face any charges for it.

"We are going to change our ordinances to make it wrong to shoot your dog," Councilman Tom Allen said Tuesday night.

Allen addressed more than 60 people who attended the council meeting in honor of Amara and in support of Boxer Butts and Other Mutts, the western North Carolina rescue that is caring for her.

Allen, who has been the council's leader on creating animal-welfare regulations for the last two years, said it is obvious there is more work to do.

"I understand the love that people have for their animals," he said. "If I ever killed anybody, it would probably be because they hurt my dog."

Amara was first picked up by an animal-control officer and taken to Anderson County's animal shelter, Pets Are Worth Saving. Because she was swollen in the face and at least 20 pounds underweight, she was transferred to the rescue in the North Carolina mountains. It was an X-ray sought by rescue founder Heidi Wagner that revealed Amara had been shot in the head.

Wagner addressed the Anderson County Council on Tuesday, saying Amara is the latest in a series of mistreated dogs she has picked up from this county. Wagner said that in Amara's case, the Anderson County Sheriff's Office didn't do its job. Instead, she said, the Sheriff's Office conducted a "one-sided investigation" that let the dog's owner get away with cruelty.

"Amara has panic attacks and can't sleep through the night," Wagner said. "But I bet the guy that shot her is sleeping soundly at night - because he got away with it."

Sheriff John Skipper did not attend Tuesday's meeting, but has previously spoken with the Independent Mail about Amara's case.

Skipper said the dog's owner told investigators that she became increasingly aggressive after her puppies were born this winter. The owner told investigators that he tried to give her away, and that when the boxer bit his pregnant wife, "that was the last straw," Skipper said in a Feb. 10 interview. The owner took Amara to a wooded area away from his home and shot her, then left her, believing she was dead, the sheriff said.

Reached after Tuesday's meeting, Skipper said his investigators had conducted an extensive investigation into Amara's case, interviewing multiple people before bringing their findings to Magistrate Mary Frances Cole. Skipper said Wagner has refused to meet with his investigators to go over Amara's case file.

"Anyone that has a dog they think is aggressive, we ask them to call us and we will come and pick it up," Skipper said late Tuesday night. "I wish that is what this owner had done. But the reality is he didn't, and South Carolina law doesn't require him to do so."

The owner's name has not been disclosed by the Sheriff's Office because he was not charged.

Skipper said South Carolina statutes recognize a dog as property and that there is "no statute that says you cannot euthanize your own dog."

"We took the case to a magistrate and said: 'What law can we apply here to bring a charge?' Skipper said. "And she said: 'There is none.'"

Wagner and dozens of others at the council meeting said they won't rest until they see changes in the laws that they believe failed Amara.

She also publicly endorsed Chad McBride and Jeremy Pickens, both of whom are challenging Skipper for the sheriff's post. McBride and Pickens both were in attendance for Wagner's remarks at the council meeting.

"I think Amara is proof," she said, "that change cannot come soon enough."

Changing the county's ordinances, if it happens, will take weeks or months. Several council members pledged their support for making shooting your dog illegal in Anderson County.

"This is one of the most heartbreaking things we've heard lately," Councilwoman Cindy Wilson said. "I hope there will never be another Amara."

Follow Nikie Mayo on Twitter @NikieMayo
SHARE Trey Chavez Brown

By Independent Mail

An Anderson man has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to murder in the 2006 death of his father-in-law.

Trey Chavez Brown, 41, pleaded guilty to charges of murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime before Circuit Judge Scott Sprouse at the Abbeville County Courthouse Monday afternoon, the day his jury trial was to begin.

The sentencing range on murder is 30 years to life in prison. Brown's plea was entered into without any negotiations about the sentencing, according to a statement released Tuesday by Eighth Judicial Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo.

Sprouse sentenced to Brown to 30 years in prison on the murder charge and five years in prison on the other charge. The terms are to be served consecutively.

In 2006, Brown went to the Abbeville County home of 45-year-old James Keith Kennedy, Brown's father-in-law, in search of his estranged wife. Brown shot Kennedy multiple times, but Kennedy was able to make it to a neighbor's house, where he told a neighbor it was Brown who shot him before collapsing. Kennedy died while being taken to a helicopter so he could be flown to a hospital with a trauma unit.

Brown called 911 about an hour after the shooting and turned himself in at the Aiken County Sheriff's Office about 12 hours after the shooting took place.

Brown was ruled by a circuit court judge in 2009 as "not competent to stand trial" for diagnosed mental illness, halting the trial. Brown was subsequently committed to a secure facility within the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.

The Mental Health Department later issued an order for Brown's discharge into the community in 2013, stating that Brown no longer needed inpatient care. Stumbo immediately made the decision to reindict the murder charge, and his staff began preparing the case again for trial.
SHARE

By Independent Mail

A 66-year-old Seneca man died Tuesday of injuries he suffered in a wreck that happened near Paw's Diner in Seneca.

Oconee County Coroner Karl Addis said Wednesday morning that the man's name is Tommy Edwards Roach, according to a report by Independent Mail coverage partner WSPA News Channel 7.

Addis said Roach was leaving the diner on Clemson Boulevard with his family when the wreck happened shortly after 2 p.m.

Lance Cpl. Bill Rhyne of the South Carolina Highway Patrol said the man who was killed pulled out in front of another vehicle.

The driver of that vehicle, 34-year-old Nexsi Castillo of Newry, hit Roach's vehicle in the driver's side door.

Castillo and Roach were taken to Oconee Memorial Hospital. Roach's family was also taken to the hospital for injuries. Roach died in the hospital's emergency department. No information was available on the conditions of others involved in the wreck.

The wreck remains under investigation.
Elections in Anderson County: How to vote early and what to know

elections
February 13-18, 2016 marked Indias inaugural Make In India week held in Mumbai. Following Prime Minister Modis launch of the Make In India campaign in September 2014, the Indian government has consistently pursued its vision to invigorate the countrys manufacturing sector, which accounted for only 17 percent of Indias gross domestic product in 2015.

Each year, 12 million young Indian citizens enter the workforce. Most of them however, are low-skilled workers, which the Indian job market does not have the capacity to fill.

With these demographic challenges in mind, Modis government instituted Make In India in an attempt to shift focus to the manufacturing sector and create jobs for low-skilled workers. The Make In India week showcases the governments acknowledgement that major contributions from foreign investors are critical to the success of the endeavor.

Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant noted that the main aim of the event is to attract more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the country. Indeed, 17 Indian states and 60 countries were in attendance.

Make In India represents important opportunities for foreign investors. There are 25 target sectors in which to invest, including chemicals, media, construction, food processing, pharmaceuticals, energy, tourism, and wellness.

Recent policy changes have also made it easier to invest directly in Indian companies. FDI (which is defined as investment by a non-resident entity or a person in the capital of an Indian company) is perhaps the easiest way to take advantage of the Make In India campaign. Individuals and companies can also invest by incorporating a company in India, forming a sole proprietorship, or establishing a branch office within the country.

If choosing the FDI route, companies and individuals can invest through the purchase of equity shares, convertible debentures, or through investments in limited liability partnerships. But each of these investment vehicles has limitations and requirements, such as pre-approval by the central Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Hoping to attract more investment, the government has eased FDI requirements in 26 sectors.

India offers two routes for FDI: the automatic route  which does not require pre-approval by the government  and the government approval route. By allowing more investment under the automatic route, the government has made it easier to invest through FDI.

However, even in sectors where FDI is allowed through the automatic route, if FDI exceeds certain limits, automatic approval can convert to the government approval route or companies can be required to meet other thresholds, such as sourcing a significant percentage of their raw materials from Indian-based small and medium sized businesses. In fact, most sectors have additional strings attached beyond the automatic route arrangement. Further, the automatic route may not be available under some investment vehicles.

For more information on Indias Foreign Direct Investment guidelines, see Consolidated FDI Policy Circular of 2017.

Significantly, India has also raised FDI caps in more than a dozen sectors including defense, banking, insurance, medical, pensions, and construction. While there are still sectors in which foreign direct investment is not allowed at all, an increase in the FDI caps has opened several sectors that were closed previously. Although caps still exist in many sectors, they have been raised by 25 to 50 percent in most cases, making FDI both possible and more attractive.

Additionally, the government is offering incentives to encourage investment in Make In India. Among the incentives are:

Additional depreciation allowance of 15 percent to manufacturing companies that invest more than 1 billion rupees (US$14.6 million) in plant and machinery;

Incentives for businesses located in special economic zones, national investment and manufacturing zones, and special export oriented units;

Duty drawback and duty exemption/remission schemes;

Area-based incentives for northeastern areas as well as Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand states; and,

Sector-specific incentives.

The Indian governments Make In India program has certainly opened up the countrys long stagnating domestic manufacturing sector to foreign investment. While more improvements are gradually being made, these changes represent important opportunities for foreign investors willing to put in the time and attention necessary into finding the right sector and the right investment vehicle in India.
For the first time in the history of Telugu cinema, a song will be shot in the South American country Bolivia. The song will feature Allu Arjun and Rakul Preet Singh. Ganesh Acharya will choreograph the song.

It is learnt that the song will be shot in breathtaking locations in this country that is known for several exotic locations. A team was drafted to make a recee for locations. Boyapati Srinu is particular about shooting the song in the most visually pleasing way. The song will be shot for a total five days.

The team will shoot the song starting from March 6.

It's known that the makers have decided to release the film on April 22.
Actor Suriya is presently busy shooting for 'S3' the third installment of his blockbuster 'Singam' series directed by Hari.

Harr's script for this film spans across various locations. The shooting began in Vishakapatnam where the first schedule was shot for almost one month. Then the unit has shot a few sequences in Karaikudi and Tirunelveli cities in Tamil Nadu.

For the next schedule, the 'S3' team will be flying to Malaysia very soon. Some chasing and action scenes will be shot with Suriya. Not just this. Hari has also planned to can a duet song with Suriya and Anushka in Malaysia. For this Anushka will be joining the 'S3' unit in Malaysia and she has reportedly given seven days for shooting this song.

'S3' stars Suriya, Anushka and Shruthi Haasan in lead roles. The supporting cast includes Soori, Krish, Robot Shankar, Radhika Sarathkumar, Radharavi and many others.
Whats been DHFLs strategic vision in its focus on the affordable housing segment?

What is the strategy for growing AUM? Which are the segments that will lead to this growth?

How do you manage the risk of granting loans to developers under your project loan segment?

Whats your take on the governments clarion call of Housing for all by 2022?

Given the growing competition from banks and other HFCs in the home loan and LAP space, are you witnessing downward pressure on yields?

How do you perceive the growing stagnation in property prices in many parts of India?

What are the targeted NIMs for the foreseeable future? What would be the key levers for maintaining NIMs at the desired level?

Given the imminent socio-economic transformation of India in the near future, what growth triggers do you foresee?

On the flip side, what are the challenges?

Your message to shareholders?

one of Indias leading housing finance company was established by Late Rajesh Kumar Wadhawan. On April 11, 1984, DHFL was established to enable access to affordable housing finance to the lower and middle income groups in semi-urban and rural parts of India. DHFL is the second housing finance Company to be established in the country, however, with a unique mission, which is today benchmark as a model of financial inclusion in the Indian financial services sector.a premier company providing affordable housing finance access to the lower and middle income groups in semi-urban and rural India through its network of 359 offices spread across India, Dubai, UAE and London and by virtue of home loan syndication tie-ups with leading public and private sector banks.An MSc. from Mumbai University, and a MBA (Finance) from Graduate School of Business, Mississippi State University, USA, Mehta has held leadership positions in diverse financial spheres including credit appraisal, operations and service quality. He spoke on a host of macro and micro issues in this exclusive conversation with Anil Mascarenhas of IIFL. Heres a Q & A snapshot:At DHFL, we are committed to the vision laid down by our founder Chairman Late Shri Rajesh Kumar Wadhawan: to enable every Indian to own a home. Over the last 31 years, we have been providing affordable housing finance to the low and middle income (LMI) customers. Metro suburbs are our primary market even today despite our pan India presence. We have expanded in a big way in tier II and III towns through a hub & spoke operating model to simplify financial access for our customers through a range of home loan products, insurance services and unique fixed deposit schemes tailored to suit their needs.DHFL registered a 25.31% growth in its Assets under Management (AUM) year-on-year to Rs 65,962 crore up from Rs 52,637 crore as on December 31, 2014. We expect the business to grow at 18-20 per cent in the next two to three years contributing to AUM. We have diversified into the SME lending segment last year as part of the strategy to grow our AUM and further leverage the SME customer base to grow our home loan business. Our SME lending business currently stands at Rs 1,200 crore contributing 2% to the AUM. We intend to growth this vertical at 25-30% growth year-on-year to increase. We have a customer base of 1,200 small manufacturing companies, which are into fabrication, printing, auto spare part making and plastic moulding businesses. We also serve small hospitals by providing finance for their equipment requirements and expect high growth from tier 2 and tier 3 towns.As an integral part of our mission of affordable home finance, we also provide loans to developers of affordable housing projects in tier 2 and tier 3 towns and periphery of metros. The risk is well managed as we are the sole lender in every project with the entire land and building taken as collateral. In addition, project cash flows are guaranteed through an escrow account. This also helps in generating retail home loan business.The Housing for All by 2022 is an important policy agenda as it seeks to create an enabling and supportive environment for expanding credit flow and increasing home ownership. This will help create an ecosystem of opportunities for every potential home buyer. We are at the forefront in catering to the financial needs of the under-banked masses in the semi-urban areas through our strong linkages with these segments. We look forward to collaborate and work with all stake holders including the Government of India towards achieving the Housing for All by 2022 objective.DHFL was established with a profound sense of responsibility and optimism towards enabling home ownership and a better lifestyle to the currently under-served LMI segment of the country. Today, we have mastered the art of knowing how to measure, manage and allocate risk particularly for the LMI segment. This enables us to visualise the needs of this segment and create value for customers. Our proven business model of delivering value to customers through wide network presence, product innovations combined with affordable rates and world-class service deliverance is further helping us to bring about consistent top and bottom line growth.Our deep insights into the target market continue to register steady demand despite the real estate slowdown. Our pan India distribution network, product innovation, efficient systems and transparent processes have helped us consolidate our leadership position in the market. Project loan contribution to the overall portfolio of the company currently stands at 8%. We focus on smaller projects with good quality builders. Our project loan portfolio is comprised of residential housing projects in tier II and III towns.We look at maintaining our NIMs in 2.8%-3% range. We anticipate customer needs and come up with the right product mix that creates value for customers and protects our NIMs in the same breath. Our continued focus on optimising costs by improving efficiencies as well as reducing cost of funds through a diversified investor base also helps us manage our NIMs.Housing finance sector has a strong growth potential in the coming decade, as it thrives upon tremendous growth opportunities linked with the countrys development cycle and socio-economic transformation. The sector is likely to get a boost with the rise in population which will have a direct bearing on housing needs. This would be further complemented by rising working population, change in age mix, growing nuclear families, ceaseless urbanisation and increase in finance penetration. Governmental initiatives like Housing for All by 2022, 100 smart cities and Make in India will boost growth in key sectors including housing finance. Tax sops to individual borrowers for home loan interest and principal payments, housing loans up to Rs 50 lakh now included under affordable housing and home loans up to Rs 28 lakh in urban and 25 lakh in other centres placed under Priority /sector Lending are the key positives for the sector.A different set of regulations for housing finance companies, despite their commendable contribution towards financial inclusion, remains a key challenge as it hinders the ability to effectively meet the credit requirement of unorganised sector and the LMI category. The sector also needs a strong regulatory framework to help mitigate risks, improve disclosures and strengthen governance standards. The sector also merits affordable finance to meet the fund requirements to support low cost housing. Positive measures like the proposal to allow Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to deploy 15% of funds towards HFCs supporting low cost housing will ease sourcing of long term bulk finance at lower rates. There is also a need to create an institutional framework to leverage technology and scale up cost-effective delivery of housing finance to Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) and Low Income Groups (LIG). On the demand side, stakeholders are still grappling with poor availability and reliability of land records and regional disparities in laws and regulations at the state level.We would like to thank them for their continued faith in our innovative and customer-focussed offerings, on both assets and liabilities side, in the housing finance space. 2015 had been a year of many achievements; and, we are well positioned for a break out year in 2016. DHFL has all the ingredients required for sustainable long-term success and value creation. These include top-notch institutional investors, visionary management team and DHFL Board, competent advisory board, unflinching focus on LMI segment and under-served strata, consistently growing contribution towards governments financial inclusion mission, diversified liability mix, diminishing cost of funding, healthy asset quality and conducive business environment. This supply/demand imbalance will be to the benefit of our shareholders in the long-term. We are striving to deliver the very best to all our shareholders in 2016 and continue to live up to their trust and confidence by providing them with opportunities for long term wealth creation.
Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait (ABK), a leading retail bank in Kuwait, has selected Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, to drive its technology transformation. The bank will deploy the complete suite of Finacle solutions including Core Banking, Trade Finance, Wealth Management, CRM, e-banking, Payments, Treasury, Alerts, SMS Banking, Liquidity Management, Retail, and Corporate Loan Origination. With Infosys Finacle, ABK will be able to achieve high operational efficiencies, accelerate growth and manage scale-ups easily, while delivering a digital age banking experience to its customers.With Finacle, ABK will move from a collection of product processors to an integrated system, which will provide a robust customer service and reporting platform. Finacle solutions are offered as a well-integrated suite, with enterprise capability architecture that will enable the bank to provide 24/7 services. The agile technology platform will allow the bank to integrate other existing and planned systems easily, across geographies. With the in-built product factory capability from Finacle, ABK will be able to create and launch products easily, with swift go-to-market. The banks customers.Michael Reh, Executive Vice President and CEO (designate), EdgeVerve said, In a world that is being irrevocably digitized, banks will need to fundamentally transform themselves to adopt a technology-led, client-centric model. With this transformation program, ABK joins a select group of banks in the Middle East, enabled with a proven, industry-leading technology platform to deliver superior value to its customers and drive innovation. Building on our partnership with ABK, Finacle is well poised to extend similar partnerships with banks across Kuwait and the Middle East to help them achieve a digital transformation for accelerating growth and profitability.Abdulla Alsumait, Deputy Chief General Manager, ABK said, At ABK, we are committed to creating a simpler banking model for our customers; one that specifically offers convenience, security and speed. This comes as part of our Simple Banking strategy, and we are excited to partner with Infosys, who are one of the leaders in core banking systems, globally. We look forward to this partnership and working together to achieve our goal of transforming the technology landscape in ABK and to enhance our service offerings to our customers, in every way.
Infosys, a global leader in consulting, technology and next-generation services, today announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft Corp., a global leader in platform and productivity offerings, to deploy advanced analytics solutions to support healthcare organizations in their digital transformation.The healthcare industry is undergoing a paradigm shift largely due to consumerization and increasing costs. With the advent of advanced analytics and cloud technologies, it is now possible to process, store and analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured datasets at a lower cost, which can yield tremendous benefits to various healthcare processes. Today, these processes are managed by custom solutions or through CRM platforms like Microsoft Dynamics. Infosys has developed healthcare analytics solutions to augment the current processes and make them more efficient using Microsoft Cortana Analytics Suite.Infosys analytics healthcare solutions will enable healthcare professionals to unlock the potential of a wide range of datasets. Insights generated from this will help track population health trends, advance clinical effectiveness and enhance patient satisfaction. They will also help providers improve operational effectiveness and financial and administrative performance. These solutions use the common healthcare reference architecture that is built on Microsoft technology.Through the use of different Microsoft analytics offerings such as Cortana Analytics Suite and SQL Server 2016, organizations will have a compelling and economical alternative to niche analytical products, without having to change their current enterprise storage solution. These solutions will give enterprises the ability to integrate databases and publish layers with enterprise-grade security.One of the solutions focuses on making the actuarial planning process efficient. This helps payers to forecast the utilization and cost of care for better actuarial planning. Another solution focuses on supporting healthcare contact center processes implemented in Microsoft Dynamics to provide live decision support to contact agents. This reduces costs, increases the return on investment for existing tools and brings healthcare providers closer to a fully realized cloud infrastructure.This relationship will provide managed care organizations with the tools to improve clinical and operational effectiveness at a reasonable cost. It will also provide health-care call centers with contextualized customer support and self-service options to both consumers and healthcare workers, said Manish Tandon, Executive Vice President, Global Head, Healthcare, Insurance and Life Sciences.Cortana Analytics is a fully managed Big Data and advanced analytics suite that enables customers to transform data into intelligent action, said Joseph Sirosh, corporate vice president of the Data Group, Microsoft. The technology we have today at Microsoft, and the deep collaboration with Infosys, will enable novel healthcare solutions that make smarter decisions, improve customer service, and uncover new possibilities to transform patient care faster than ever before.
The Japanese government on Tuesday sold benchmark bonds with a negative yield for the first time ever.

Japan sold 2.2 trillion yen (US$19.5 billion) of the debt at an average yield of minus 0.024 per cent.

The sale drew bids for 3.2 times the amount of the securities on offer - the first increase in demand since an auction in December.

The benchmark Japanese 10-year bond yield dropped as low as minus 0.075 per cent after the auction, matching a record low.

Tuesday's auction came after three years of aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan (BOJ), which has sent interest rates sharply lower in a bid to breathe some life into the Japanese economy.

Japanese government bonds of as long as five years in maturity sold at an average yield below zero for the first time last month, after the BOJ announced negative interest rates on Jan. 29.
Days after Flipkart announced the shutdown of its hyperlocal grocery service Nearby, Ola is reportedly shutting down Ola Store. Ola started beta testing of its app Ola store for grocery and daily needs in June 2015. The app, which is operational in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Gurgaon, had tied up with retail chains such as PNP Retail, Topintown, and Namdharis Fresh, among others. It started with more than 12000 products under 13 product categories. Ola Shares Android app has over 250 grocery stores providing over 16,000 products in 13 categories and the iOS version notes that it has over 60 stores. (INC42)Gympik Health Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a fitness discovery portal that aggregates gyms and trainers, on Tuesday said it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Round Glass Partners to expand into new markets.The firm, started in 2013, had earlier raised funding from Delhi-based health-tech incubator, Healthstart, and a group of angel investors led by Rohan Ajila. It currently aggregates about 10,000 fitness centres and 6,000 trainers from 20 cities and offers fitness centres a software programme to track performance and fitness schedules. It also offers users insights on calories burnt and daily health tips. (LIVEMINT)Skedool.it, a B2B smart assistant startup powered by Artificial Intelligence, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding round from a group of prominent Silicon Valley and Indian technology investors. The round was led by Kludein LLC and a investor group including Phanindra Sama, Narayan Ramachandran (former country head of Morgan Stanley, India) and Pranav Pai, investing on behalf of Mohandas Pai among others.The startup was launched in March 2015 by IIT Madras alumnis in a bid to automate repetitive everyday tasks for business executives, sales and recruiting professionals. (INC42)BigBasket, India's largest online grocer, is set to launch its marketplace business, which will deliver orders placed with hyperlocal speciality stores such as bakeries and meat shops in less than an hour. For this business, BigBasket will handle logistics only for stores within a 6-km radius. The company will launch this service in Bengaluru with about 400 stores and expand to other cities over the next few months. BigBasket's average order size is Rs 1,500 and it expects a gross merchandise value of $300 million (Rs 2,000 crore) for the financial year ending March. (ET)Bitcoin remittance company Abra is one of five startups working with blockchain technology to be accepted into the latest financial technology program operated by California startup incubator Plug and Play. Abra, BlockNotary, BlockSeer, Skuchain and Token are the blockchain startups set to take part in the program, among a total of 23 participants. The incubator draws support from a number of firms involved with blockchain-services orconsortia devoted to exploring applications of the technology, including BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, MUFG, Santander, Sumitomo, TD Bank, USAA and US Bank. (CD)EquityZen, a 500 Startups company plans to enable Indian investors to invest in US-based tech firms, eyeing further opportunities in the country by 2016-end. According to the company,deal volumes can be as small as $20,000 to over $1 million and Indian investors could get access to companies like Uber, Dropbox, Lyft amongst others. Investors are charged a small one-time sales fee of 5% for all single-company opportunities on the platform.For investments over $500,000, the fee goes down. An ambassador programme byEquityZen will enable accredited investors to purchase equity, connecting them with existing shareholders of tech companies who are interested in selling. (ET)KerjaDulu, an Indonesian social recruitment portal for job seekers and employers, today announced a strategic investment from local media conglomerate MNC Group. The startup said its post-investment valuation is at $5 million, but did not disclose other terms of the deal.Following the investment, MNC plans to intensify its own use of the portal for recruitment purposes and use its media channels to help market KerjaDulu. The site now has somewhere in between 500,000 and 1,000,000 registered users. (BS)Cab aggregator Ola has started a new low-cost service that seeks to match rival Uber's lowest-cost service, UberGo. Called Ola Micro, the service is being launched in seven cities in India at a per kilometer rate that is Re 1 less than rival Uber's UberGo service. However, UberGo has a lower base fare than Ola Micro. What this means is that for a two to four kilometer ride, UberGo would be slightly less expensive than Ola Micro, while for rides above four kilometers, it will be the other way around. (TOI)Catalyzer Start-up Accelerator has joined hands with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Global Start-up Workshop to hold a start-up meet in Hyderabad from March 21 to 23. Scheduled to be held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), the workshop is expected to be attended by 350 students and fledgling entrepreneurs from over 30 countries. Catalyzer Start-up Accelerator has won the bid to hold the event. MIT GSW 2016 brings one mentor for every 10 attendees. It provides hands on training to start-ups, besides giving them access to competitions and win cash prizes for Global Business Plan and Global Elevator Pitch competitions. (HBL)
For long, the economists have been worried about Indias low tax-to-GDP ratio. This budget was no different and the government had a tough task in front of it to balance the ratio and also to revive the economy. Slowly and steadily, the government is working towards reduction of corporate taxes. In this process, its also phasing out certain deductions.But what is worrying most people is that the share of corporate taxes as a contributor to gross tax revenues is falling. In last 7 years, the share of corporate taxes has fallen by a fourth and now stands at multi-year low of 30%. It is not that corporate profits are falling in absolute terms. Rather its the contribution to taxes from other sources that are rising at a faster rate. As for the corporate taxes, they have only risen by very small amount in last few years. Many economists feel that this is a worrying trend as its points towards inefficiency of government when it comes to corporate tax collection.Now the government has set itself a target of Rs 4.93 lac crores for corporate tax collection in next year. This is an increase of 10% over previous years target, which government failed to achieve. So with the economy still not looking to turnaround and grow faster, it seems that government is betting on more aggressive collection of taxes and not on increase in taxes due to increase in profits.Unfortunately, the biggest impact of taxes is on smaller businesses as they are paying higher taxes on their profits compared to big businesses. So not only are these companies suffering the most from the economic downturn (in terms of falling revenues), but also paying more than their fair share of taxes. It will be interesting to see whether the government is able to achieve its aggressive corporate tax target for this year or not.
Frank Smith, Jr. emerged from a Mississippi jail and learned that he was wanted  by Uncle Sam.

The 20-year-old civil rights worker had been locked up for three weeks in Greenwood for helping blacks register to vote.

After I was released from jail, I called my mother at home in Georgia to tell her I was okay, said Smith, 73, of Washington, D.C. She told me I had a draft notice to go to Vietnam.

It was 1963. Draft board officials asked if hed had any scrapes with the law. Smith said he had three federal cases pending, thanks to his civil-rights work.

They told me they didnt want me in the Army, Smith recalled. I said, Thank you very much! and I went back to Mississippi.

Nevertheless, Smith has always appreciated service members  especially those who shielded rights that they were denied.

Thirty years after he left the South, Smith helped establish the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum on Washingtons V Street, NW. It honors the wars 209,000 black fighters. More than 200,000 people visit it annually. Construction will soon begin on a $4-million expansion.

The museum hosts programs and events on the Civil Rights Movement, including last years service for Julian Bond. He, like Smith, was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Smith said the museum links Civil War heroes with those who stood up after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus. They were the first civil rights activists, he said of the soldiers.

From 1962 to 1968, Smith battled on Mississippis front lines. He was threatened, beaten and saw friends die.

You had to be able to function in an environment of terror and not be paralyzed, said Courtland Cox, 75, of Northwest Washington, who worked with Smith in Mississippi.

Born in 1942 on a Newman, Georgia, peach plantation, Smiths father farmed and drove a truck. His mother, Flora, now 96, reared their eight children.

Smith excelled as a student and debater. He was 12 in 1955 when he learned about the racist murder of Emmett Till, 14, in Money, Mississippi. Smith related to the martyred Chicago youth.

Growing up in Georgia at that time, for a black boy, was a frightening experience, Smith said. Learning how to act around white people was a survival skill.

At 16, he entered Morehouse College. He became president of the Atlanta Student Movement and helped establish SNCC.

Smith journeyed to Holly Springs, Mississippi, to register voters in 1962. He lived at Rust College and worked with its NAACP chapter.

Sundays were our big days, said Leslie Burl McLemore, 75, a close friend. We  traveled to churches to talk to people about registering to vote so they could be first-class citizens.

Two years later, Smith, Bond, activists Fannie Lou Hamer, Lawrence Guyot, and others, formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

Their demand to be seated in place of Mississippis all-white delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention was blocked. However, related negotiations with the White House hastened passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which revolutionized Mississippi, Smith said.

White people didnt stop lynching and beating people because they got religion. They did it because African-Americans with voting rights established that they could pick and choose who was in office and get elected themselves, he said.

Smith then helped launch a Head Start program, created jobs through a cleaning and sanitation-supplies service and erected a tent city for sharecroppers who were evicted from their homes on a plantation after a 1965 wage strike. He lived among the workers for a year while he raised $40,000 to build homes and a community center.

In 1967, he tutored children who integrated public schools near Greenwood.

I drove them to school in my Volkswagen bus, he said. They were singing freedom songs, then jumped out and ran into the school. I told my wife, We can go now. 

Smith headed to Washington, D.C. in 1968. He worked in public-policy research and served on the school board. Smith was elected to the D.C. Council in 1982 and served for 16 years.

His ward included U Street, which remained ravaged decades after riots erupted following Dr. Martin Luther Kings 1968 assassination.

Smith became fascinated with black Civil War soldiers in Mississippi after working with a descendant of one. In 1999, he became founding director of the museum.

Married with three children and nine grandchildren, Smith stays in touch with Mississippi.

One of the students he drove to school in 1967 recently retired as a teacher. Another is a Memphis police lieutenant. She recently brought a group of children to the museum.

You never know how you will impact the life of another, Smith said. She had been one of the children all those years ago. Here she was, and she brought young people with her. It was a great moment.
After watching the first look of Rahul Dholakias Raees, our instant reaction was WOW. And, why not? Watching SRK transform into a complete badass is something every SRK fan has always been fond of. Apart from King Khan, the film boasts of a stellar cast that includes Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Pakistani heartthrob Mahira Khan.

SRKs vintage Maafia look as a Pathaan made us swoon, isn't it? However, not many know that the film is heavily inspired by Gujarat's crime lord, Abdul Latif.

Who is this Abdul Latif, you ask? Well, Better known as Dawood Ibrahim's associate, Latif rose from being a bootlegger in Popatiyawad of Dariapur area to be an underworld don. Also, the only official D-Company man from Gujarat who had both police and political patronage.

Here are 8 facts about Gujrat's most Ruthless Maafiya, who was shot dead in November 1997 by the police in Ahmedabad while allegedly trying to escape.

1. Abdul belonged to a humble middle-class background and his childhood was spent in waiting on the tables in gambling dens & later his teenage was spent in serving liquor.

2. He became a small-time bootlegger and later became popular for monopolising the illegal liquor business in Gujarat.

3. In 1985, he joined hands with Alamzeb, a member of Mumbai's 'Pathan Gang', to counter his rival, Pappu Khan. Taking Dawood Ibrahim's help, he killed Alamzeblater and this helped him establish himself as the kingpin of the Gujarat underworld.

4. Latif had more than 97 pending court cases against him. 10 of them involving murder and a number of them relating to bootlegging.

5. In 1986, Latif was elected from five municipal wards in Ahmedabad, even though he was in jail at the time of the polls.

6. He was a pro at liquidating rivals in the underworld. To establish a firm foot and stay on the top, he resorted to some of the cruelest ways possible. For example, the famous Radhika Gymkhana multiple murders of August 1992.

7. He was one of the prime suspects in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.

8. Raees is not the first film which has drawn inspiration from Abdul Latifs real life. 14 years after the don was killed in an encounter, Director Sharique Minhaj announced a film called Encounter Latif in 2011. The film was released on 1st August, 2014.

Google Search

More legal troubles for the cast and crew of Raees!

After minor protests and attacks in Gujrat against the film, the film has landed into troubled waters once again. Just because the film has drawn inspiration from Abdul Latif's character and life, his son Mustak Ahmed Abdul Latif Shaikh has sent a legal notice to the team because he's not sure how his father would be portrayed on the big screen.

Sources claim that, nine crew members of the team that includes Shah Rukh Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, producer Ritesh Sidhwani and director Rahul Dholakia have landed in legal trouble because of this.The legal notice advises the team "from screening, promoting, releasing, publicising, advertising and exploiting the Hindi film titled Raees."

The notice also claimed that Latif was a famous businessman with deep roots in society.
Breakups are among the worst things to happen to human kind. They make you weak, insecure and make you question everything around you. Some people move on earlier, while others take a long time. Some cry and feel better, and some simply disconnect. So how do the dynamics really work?

Well, lets let science answer that. Read on as we tell you the science behind breakups.

1. Most people suffer from an identity crisis

According to a research published in Personality and Psychology Bulletin, the more committed a person is in a relationship, the higher the chances of them changing after a break up. You may feel like an entirely different person yourself.

2. Loss of appetite is absolutely normal after a split

Experts note that stressful thoughts increase our bodys cortisol levels, that diverts the blood away from your digestive track, leaving you with GI troubles, and giving you a nauseous feeling at the thought of food.

3. Moving on after a break up is similar to ending an addiction

#movingon ... A photo posted by Nooey (@no0ey) on Mar 1, 2016 at 7:58pm PST

Science has proved that love is a drug. Just the way you have a hard time detoxing or giving up on smoking, youll have issues getting over the ex. Research published on helenfisher.com confirmed falling in love is synonymous to a drug habit - its hard to break from it. Quitting is never easy, and now you know!

4. Thinking about your ex all the time may actually help you get over them

#inlovewithhim#4:27am#germany#goodnight#gutenacht#boanoite#quotes#goodmorning#bomdia#quote#me#thinkingaboutyou#mylife#inlove#iloveyou#life#love#you# A photo posted by Maria Reitz 69 (@mariareitz69) on Mar 1, 2016 at 7:29pm PST

A study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that those who repeatedly talk about their ex end up finding their individuality sooner.

5. Fights over money can end your relationship

According to a study in Family and Relations Journal, arguments about money, debt, income or net worth reflect deeper issues in your relationship. In fact, fighting over finances is a top reason for divorce.

6. Men break up over sexual infidelity

#truth#form#infidelity#form#hiding#loyal#love#never#cheat A photo posted by @my_quotesworld on Feb 29, 2016 at 7:44pm PST

We arent surprised, are we? Guys are programmed in a way that theyll dump you if you cheat on them, said a study conducted by Saint Louis University. It further elaborated that sexual infidelity posses a direct threat to the genetic fitness of a male.

7. W omen mostly give up on a relationship over emotional cheating

Unlike guys, women are biologically different. Women arent okay with cheating. But for them, physical infidelity can be less damaging than emotional infidelity as it may entail that hes leaving his family for another woman.

8. Participating in breakup studies helps people get over a break up

My Fuckin' Homework  #ResearchStudies A photo posted by Joanne de Guzman (@ann3yeong) on May 11, 2015 at 9:52pm PDT

A paper published in the Social Psychology and Personality Science journal said that when participants are trying to study relationship dissolution, they get a better understanding of human relationships as a result of which they move on faster.

9. Men have a tougher time coping up with a breakup than women

Research conducted in Binghamton University claimed that women emotionally break after a split, but men suffer in the long term. Basically after the loss sinks in.

10. Heartache is similar to physical pain

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam suggested in a study that breakups actually affect the parasympathetic nervous system, which involves sexual arousal, digestion, and regulation of internal organs (like the heart). Participants revealed that after facing rejection, their heart rates slowed for a while. It was even worse when the rejection came out of nowhere, and it also happened if the participant feared the possibility.

11. Excessive social media is unhealthy for your relationship

This fact certainly doesnt amuse us. Excessive use of Facebook can seriously damage your relationship. Emotional and physical cheating, breakups, and divorce all stem from social media, according to a study published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.
Chief minister Shivraj Singh's convoy passed by nonchalantly as a 22-year-old student lay by the roadside writhing in pain after being hit by a bus in front of the in-session Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday morning.

indiasamvad

The police in the heavily secured area merely lifted the youth from the middle of the road and dumped him on the pavement to allow the CM's cavalcade to pass by.

For 45 minutes Vikas Prasad Soniya twisted and turned in trauma as passers-by and the police looked on. He later died in the hospital. Vikas had suffered head injuries after being hit by the speeding bus and lay in a pool of blood.

pradesh18

When the ambulance finally arrived and took him to JP Hospital, it was the beginning of another horror story. He lay in the corridor of JP Hospital for more than 20 minutes with no medical attention coming his way. Ambulance service record shows he was brought to the hospital at 11.45 am and it was not until 12.06 pm (as per OPD registry time) that doctors attended to him. They referred Vikas to Narmada Trauma Centre, where he died two hours later.

His father, Gookul Prasad Soniya, watched helplessly as Vikas died. "My son lay unattended for more than 20 minutes. Doctors failed to clear blood entering my son's throat as the machine was defunct," he said.
Her clothes were ripped. She was beaten. Spat on. Molested. Dragged by her hair

All in broad daylight

dualdflipflop flickr | representational purpose only

On a busy Kalina, Santa Cruz road, an unnamed girl was attacked, and yet onlookers ignored her. So did the local police, who were reluctant to file an FIR. Instead, they registered a non-cognisable offence (NC) which didn't even mention molestation. The Mumbai based Manipur girl lives in Kalina, and was attacked in the evening

He hit me, then kicked me in the abdomen. When I tried to resist, he molested me and tore my clothes. He began to hit me again, and I fell down

Then he grabbed my hair and dragged me by it on the street for a few metres, She told Mid-Day. "I was shouting for help, so that someone would come forward and stop the man who was beating me mercilessly, but no one came forward." And it is nothing but racism.

Because of our North-East facial features, people believe that we are from China or Nepal. Because of this discrimination, no one came to my sisters rescue, she said.

At the local Vakola police station, Sub-Inspector Sanjay Pawar, assured her that action would be taken. The complaint was written in Marathi, and only later did she realise that it wasn't even an FIR. "Later, I figured out that he hadnt even mentioned the entire crime in detail in the complaint, she added." Instead, the complaint cited Sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 504 (intentional insult) of the IPC. Later, the girl and her sister found from the police that her attacker had fled to Bangalore.
A small village in Jagraon has set an example of communal harmony, a Sikh majority village, with a lone Muslim family, has helped renovate an over century old mosque.

indianexpress

The mosque in Malla village of Jagraon, around 45 kms from the city, was inaugurated on Monday by theShahi Imaam, Punjab, as villagers organised a special lunch.

Naib Shahi Imaam, Punjab, Muhammad Usmaan Ludhianvi said, "The Malla village mosque was closed in 1947 after it's run-down building collapsed. About six months ago, we approached the villagers, seeking their help to renovate it. Even as the village has just one Muslim family, the response had been overwhelming."

Like the day when the renovation work had started, the Sikh villagers, on Monday, too organised langar (community kitchen).

"Besides the fund contribution, the villagers actively participated in the construction work too. Such examples of communal harmony are not uncommon in Punjab," Naib Shahi Imaam added as he inaugurated the mosque by offering prayers.

The village sarpanch, Gurmail Singh, said, "Punjab has always been the epitome of communal harmony. Punjabis respect all religions and for them, humanity comes first."

The sole Muslim family is all praise for their contribution. "Our Sikh brothers have always stood by us. And today, they helped rebuild our place of worship. We cannot thank them enough," said Iqbal Hussain.

Malla village has a population of around 5,000, of which 90% are Sikhs and 9% Hindus.

Jogi Verma, a Hindu who lives near the mosque, said, "We are proud of the fact that our village represents unity in diversity." He added that renovation of mosque by all community members is a tight slap on those who try to divide people on religious lines for petty political benefits.
One Palestinian man was killed and 10 others were severely wounded after a gunfire broke out in a Palestinian refugee in West Bank on Monday.

AFP

The incident reportedly happened after two IDF soldiers on a tank entered the camp by mistake. They were pelted with stones and bricks by those living in the camp. This resulted in the two soldiers opening fire and causing the fatalities.

AFP/ Representational Image

Turns out, the culprit to be blamed for the entire fiasco was a navigation app.

The two men, on an "administrative task" were travelling a road they thought was within the Israeli border and was using the Israeli navigation app 'Waze'.

Waze

Waze navigation app, after being acquired by Google in 2013, incorporated a highlighting function that should have alerted the soldiers to their dangerous position, as well as refuse to provide directions through known dangerous routes, before they came under fire.

But Waze does not distinguish among the different areas of the West Banks political map once the safe mode is disabled, making it potentially perilous for Israelis and Palestinians who rely on it inside the territory.

Israeli authorities said the use of Waze by the Israeli soldiers was being investigated. But the navigation app has reportedly denied its involvement in the incident.

Waze told AFP in a statement that the soldiers must have veered off the route suggested by the application.
It was a hero's sendoff, not a farewell you'd expect to be bestowed upon a murderer. Tens of thousands of supporters chanted and threw rose petals on Tuesday at an ambulance bearing the body of Pakistani Islamist Mumtaz Qadri, executed for killing a liberal governor, as schools closed and police guarded flash points.

AP

Crowds flooded into a park in the garrison city of Rawalpindi for funeral prayers for Mumtaz Qadri, chanting slogans such as "Qadri, your blood will bring revolution".

Main junctions and sensitive buildings in Rawalpindi and the nearby capital Islamabad were guarded by thousands of police and paramilitary rangers, while schools were shut. Security forces kept a careful distance from the crowd at Liaqat Bagh park, and some of the supporters dispersed after the prayers.

But hundreds continued to march behind the flower-strewn ambulance as it inched its way through a sea of supporters towards the burial site.

Qadri, a police bodyguard to Salman Taseer, shot the liberal Punjab governor 28 times at an Islamabad market in 2011.

Reuters

He said he was angry at the politician's calls to reform the blasphemy law.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in the Islamic republic, and Qadri, who was hanged early Monday, was hailed as a hero by many conservatives eager to drown out calls to soften the legislation.

Critics say the law, which carries the death penalty, is largely misused, with hundreds languishing in jails under false charges.

But those who lynch alleged blasphemers largely escape punishment.

reuters

Earlier, a few hundred Qadri supporters carrying sticks were seen among the crowd in Rawalpindi as they shouted slogans including: "The punishment for a blasphemer is beheading!"

Analyst Amir Rana said Qadri's execution marked a key moment for Pakistan in its fight against religious extremism lasting more than a decade. "I think it is a very critical moment in the political history of Pakistan. It is the first time the political government has made such a decision (to carry out the execution)," Rana said.

"The resolve is on the rule of law and they will not allow space for extremism in Pakistan."

But Rana said the move might backfire by making Qadri a martyr.

Several supporters took turns to denounce and threaten the government before the funeral.

"The chief justice, the army chief and the president should fear the day when every single individual of the country will become Mumtaz Qadri and grab them on the streets of the country," said Khadim Hussain.

Mourners travelled from distant cities, including Karachi and Lahore as well as Pakistani-held Kashmir, while small demonstrations were held in cities such as Peshawar. The media maintained a near-blackout on the news for the second day running, a move that analysts said has helped limit fallout from the execution.

A United Nations official said Tuesday all its staff had been sent home from various workplaces in the capital due to security fears, including from the tightly guarded diplomatic enclave.

Many schools and universities remained closed for the day after shutting early Monday.

Thousands had protested across Pakistan on Monday after authorities announced the hanging had taken place early that morning.

But with security stepped up across the country of some 200 million, most dispersed peacefully. Pakistan has never officially executed anyone for blasphemy. But anyone convicted, or even just accused, of insulting Islam risks a violent and bloody death at the hands of vigilantes. Taseer had been vocal in his support of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who has been on death row since 2010 after being found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammed. Her case has been championed by the Pope.

catholicireland

On Tuesday some Qadri supporters attending funeral prayers chanted: "Death to Asia Bibi!".
Follow us on sc asks celebrity couple karisma sunjay to settle peacefully

New Delhi: The divorce of actress Karisma Kapoor with businessman husband Sunjay Kapur is getting messier with each passing day. The latest twist came when the actress filed an FIR alleging harassment from her in-laws.

Amidst all this noise, the Supreme Court of India has asked both the parties to ettle their differences amicably, suggest media reports. The bench said it would help do so at a personal hearing on 8 March.

Sunjay Kapur has filed a plea in SC seeking transfer of his case form Mumbai to Delhi. He has alleged that gangster Ravi Pujari has allegedly warned Kapur against entering Mumbai.

The bench has asked both the celebrities to settle the dispute in the precincts of the court.

Karisma's counsels Mahesh Jethmalani and Sandeep Kapoor said that Sunjay had violated some clauses of the couple's agreement before the mutual consent divorce petition was filed in Mumbai.

As a reply Sanjay Kapur's lawyer said that his client was willing to pay both Rs 10 lakh per month per child and even make over the Rs 14 crore on the maturity of the bonds, but Karisma must ensure that Sunjay would have access to the children.

Let us see what result comes out from the hearing on 8th March.

Latest Bollywood News
Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country
Follow us on shah rukh s father in law passes away. here are the pics of funeral

New Delhi: Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and his family are dealing with a huge loss as his father in law has passed away.

Gauri's father Colonel Ramesh Chibber left for his heavenly abode yesterday.

While SRK and his family are in a state of complete shock with the sudden demise of his FIL, the actor immediately left for Delhi for the funeral.

As per the media reports Colonel Ramesh Chibber was admitted at the city hospital where he passed away at 8:55 pm.

Gauri, who is said to be very close to her father, is reportedly devastated by his sudden demise.

The funeral is being held in the national Capital and SRK is being with his family during this unfortunate time.

Currently, King Khan is shooting for his forthcoming movie Raees', but has put the shooting on hold because of this fateful incident in order to cope up with the loss.

Rest in peace Colonel Ramesh Chibber.

Latest Bollywood News
Follow us on revealed priyanka chopra looks stunning in baywatch see pics

Los Angeles: Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra has begun shooting for her debut Hollywood film Baywatch in Miami.

The 33-year-old actress, who made her international debut last year with thriller TV series Quantico, took to Twitter to share a picture of a beach bucket filled with Baywatch goodies.

Everything you need on a beach... And day 1 on set! Amazing! Everyone is so great! Yay team #Baywatch, she captioned the picture.

Priyanka made a stunning Oscar debut yesterday, where she also presented the best editing award to Mad Max: Fury Road. She attended the awards after party wearing a silver gown and immediately left for the airport to catch a flight to Miami.

And now pics from the sets of Baywatch' are doing the rounds on social media unveiling the first look of the diva in her first Hollywood movie.

Dressed in white breezy dress and gold accessories, Priyanka looks stunning in her new look.

Baywatch revolves around the leader of an elite group of lifeguards (Dwayne Johnson), who is forced to team up with a young, hotshot former Olympian (Zac Efron) to save their beloved bay.

Priyanka plays villainous Victoria Deeds. The film is scheduled to release on May 19, 2017.

Latest Hollywood News
Follow us on cbi investigated 171 financial fraud cases worth rs 20 000 crore in 2015

Mumbai: The CBI on Wednesday said it investigated 171 bank fraud cases involving funds of over Rs 20,000 crore and ponzi schemes to the tune of Rs 1.20 lakh crore last year.

"We have investigated 171 cases of bank frauds in 2015 involving funds of Rs 20,646 crore. In addition, we are also investigating ponzi schemes involving funds of over Rs 1.20 trillion," CBI Director Anil Sinha said here.

On the ponzi scam involving Chandigarh-based PACL Group, Sinha said the regulator should have taken suo moto steps to investigate illegal collective investment scheme of PACL Group. The PACL Group has collected over Rs 51,000 crore in deposits in violation of Sebi norms from nearly 5.5 crore investors spread across almost all states.

Without naming Sebi, Sinha said the regulator "needed the Supreme Court to step into order investigations and later order return of money to the depositors under its supervision," Sinha said here.

"Should not the regulator have suo moto stepped in proactively to protect the rights of 5.5 crore ordinary depositors?" he wondered.

While the PACL case is being probed by CBI as well for a long time, it was Sebi that passed an order in August 2014 asking the group to wind down their all illicit schemes and refund over Rs 49,000 crore to investors in the biggest ever such case.

Prior to that, the then Sebi chairman G N Bajpai way back in 2002 had himself passed an order declaring the schemes of PACL Group as unauthorised collective investment schemes.

Sinha was addressing the seventh CBI conclave on combating financial crimes. The conclave is being organised in association with bankers lobby IBA.

Speaking on the alarming rise in non-performing assets of banks, Sinha said the bad loans of public sector lenders have increased from Rs 44,957 crore in 2009 to Rs 3 lakh crore in 2015, while their gross NPAs more than doubled to 4.36% in 2015 from 2% in 2009.

"The crisis in the banking and financial system runs deep and there is a growing sense of anguish among the public that while banks are strict on retail borrowers, big borrowers and large fraudsters are able to not only evade the law but enjoy the fruits of their crime," the CBI director said.

Noting that things are seriously wrong, Sinha said, "While I fully understand that loan defaults can happen due to business risks and reasons beyond control of banks, borrowers and regulators, yet a significant part of the defaults are willful and fraudulent."

Sinha specifically cited the example of Vijay Mallya and his once-rocking Kingfisher Airlines and blasted bankers for not filing a complaint with CBI even after four years since he stopped repayment. He said his agency has suo moto registered a case to probe the KFA fraud.

According to Sinha, time has come to "rethink and re-devise" strategies so that on one hand banks and financial institutions work fearlessly to power the economy towards growth but at the same time, fix the fraudsters and public officials who collude with such cheats.

"The legislative and regulatory gaps in the states and the Centre allowing ponzi schemes to prosper and cheat millions of the gullible investors need our attention too," Sinha said.

Sinha further noted that such schemes are exploiting the absence of banking in remote areas and targeting the lowest economic group of the society. The poor, particularly women, are a major target of ponzi schemes.

Latest India News
Follow us on 12 militants killed in army operation in pakistan

Islamabad: At least 12 militants were killed and six others injured on Monday when Pakistani army launched an aerial and ground offensives in the country's northwest tribal region of North Waziristan.

The forces, backed by jet fighters from Pakistan Air Force, pounded three militants' hideouts, killing seven militants in Shawal area of the North Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal area along Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Xinhua cited local Urdu Channel Samaa News as saying.

In the ground operation, the troops gunned down five militants and injured six others in the Shawal area.

Identities of the killed militants have not been revealed yet, but North Waziristan Agency is believed to be a hotbed of outlawed group Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan activity.

This is the third major operation against the militants in the area over the last three days. The recent offensives are continuation of the military operation in North Waziristan Agency.

Aiming at the eradication of local and foreign militants from the volatile North Waziristan agency, the armed offensive called "Zarb-e-Azb" (sharp strike) was launched on June 15, 2014.

The army's media wing Inter-Services Public Relations said in an earlier statement that about 3,500 militants have been killed in the operation so far and most of the North Waziristan area has been cleared of the militants.

Latest World News
Follow us on terror attack on indian consulate in jalalabad fierce encounter on

Kabul: Explosions and gunfire echoed near the Indian consulate in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, an area that is also home to other foreign diplomatic missions.

The blast, believed to be a suicide attack, occurred around noon (local time). "We cannot provide details on casualties. There is fear of possible casualties, both civilian and security personnel," a police official said.

Government troops cordoned off the area shortly after the blast, keeping people away from the site fearing a second blast. Several warning shots were also fired by the security force personnel.

Unofficial sources said the Indian Consulate office may have been the target of the attack in the city. The nature of the blast might have been group attack or complex assault, involving several attackers, the official said.

The Iranian and the Pakistani consulate buildings are also located at the same place.

No militant group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack and it was not immediately known if there were any casualties.

With IANS Inputs

Latest World News
Follow us on indo pak talks to resume after probe team s pathankot visit

Washington: Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz today said that the India-Pakistan Foreign Secretary-level talks could be rescheduled soon after Islamabad's probe team visits Pathankot town to investigate the January 2 airbase attack.

After a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Aziz said that it was unfortunate that the Pathankot attack disrupted the resumption of secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan.

He said a Pakistani team will visit India in the next few days' to investigate the terror attack at Pathankot airbase that left seven security personnel dead.

All six terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan, were killed in the attack which derailed the India-Pakistan Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue' that started following Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart Nawaz Sharif's meeting in Paris.

Since the attack, Pakistan had taken a number of important steps' to facilitate resumption of the talks, Dawn online quoted Aziz as saying.

"Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Narendra Modi immediately after the attack and assured him of Pakistan's support in the investigation. The two national security advisers are maintaining frequent contacts," he said.

"A case has been registered and the special investigation team (SIT) is likely to visit India in the next few days. We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," Aziz said during the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue he co-chaired with Kerry.

Aziz said the government's decision to reach out to India after the Pathankot attack was an important part of a strategy to improve ties with all neighbouring countries.

"We believe that the resolution of all outstanding issues -- including the Kashmir dispute -- is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India," said the adviser.

He added that Pakistan also had "proposed a mechanism to address our respective concerns on terrorism".

Soon after the Pathankot attack, Pakistan set up a six-member probe team to follow up on the leads India had provided.

On Saturday, a court in Punjab province of Pakistan granted remand of six suspects, arrested for their alleged involvement in the attack, in police custody for further investigation.

Aziz said the Indian participation in the Heart of Asia Conference in Islamabad last December and the announcement to start the "Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue" were positive developments that augured well for peace and stability in South Asia.

"Prime Minister Modi's visit to Islamabad was welcomed by most in Pakistan. Here, I would like to express our gratitude to you and President Barack Obama for your consistent support to the revival of Pakistan-India dialogue," Aziz said in his remarks.

He said the Pakistani government was committed to acting against all terrorist groups without any distinction.

With IANS Inputs

Latest World News
Follow us on india top security concern for pakistan terrorism second sartaj aziz

Washington: Pakistan has ruled out America's desire that Islamabad should reduce or cap its fast expanding nuclear weapons arsenal, believed to be the fastest growing in the world, and put the onus for it on India.

"I think (Pakistan's top) security concern is strategic and conventional imbalance with India," Pakistan PM's Advisor on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said.

"If India does (caps its nuclear weapons program) we would think about it," he added.

Describing terrorism as Pakistan's second top security concern, he said, Terrorism is something our own domestic (concern). It is overflow of terrorism from Afghanistan that becomes the second within our borders, which hopefully we would be able to control it in the next few years."

Citing the example of the US and Russia which are working to further reduce their nuclear arsenals, Secretary of State John Kerry had asked Pakistan yesterday to understand this reality and review its nuclear policy.

"I think, it is important for Pakistan to really process that reality and put that front and center in its policy," he said in an apparent reference to the reports that Pakistan has the fastest growing stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world.

The nuclear and non-proliferation issue is among the six topics that was discussed during the sixth US-Pak Strategic Dialogue co-chaired by Kerry and Aziz here yesterday.

"Our nuclear program is a deterrence. It is India which is expanding its nuclear arsenal at a much faster rate than we are. The concept of deterrence is a dynamic one. Deterrence has to be effective and our deterrence is India centric. If India would not have started its nuclear program, we would have never done this," Aziz said.

"India is developing its nuclear stock. Its ability after the (civil nuclear) agreement with the United States to divert more stocks to it, more fissile materials to nuclear weapons has increased much more," Aziz claimed.

Aziz said the visiting Pakistani delegation had a very good interaction with the US. "They (US) broadly accept out need of an effective nuclear deterrence. I do not think; we have any major issues in this. We keep discussing these things," he said.

"If India were to accept this importance of resolving disputes, improving relations, both of us would not need this. But unfortunately that is not happening. And so we have no option but to have what we call minimum effective deterrence."

When referred to Kerry's remarks in this regard in which he cited the example of US and Russia wherein they reduced the number of nuclear weapon stock piles from 50,00 to now just 1500, Aziz pointed out that they improved their relationship.

"When dialogue (between India and Pakistan) begins, we have a frank discussion on some of these things. Our ceasefire line or Line of Control we want to keep (it) quite, and an agreement to make sure that there is no firing or other thing. That's why the importance of having a regular dialogue between the two countries so that things do not flare up," he said.

"You can't define like that," he said when asked how he would quantify minimum effective nuclear deterrence as Pakistan is estimated to have more than 100-120 nuclear weapons, according to some experts.

"It is a dynamic concept. If you (India) keep expanding every month, every six month, obviously you can't define at this particular point of time," Aziz said.

With PTI Inputs

Latest World News
Follow us on isis suicide bombers hit iraqi military compound killing 8

Baghdad: Four suicide bombers disguised as soldiers struck an Iraqi military headquarters in the western town of Haditha on Tuesday, killing eight army officers, including a local commander, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

Local councilman Khalid Salman said one of the bombers attacked the gate of the compound and the others struck after soldiers gathered to help the victims. He said eight soldiers were wounded in the attack.

ISIS claimed the assault in online statements issued on jihadi websites, saying it was carried out by two Syrian suicide bombers. The AP could not confirm the authenticity of the statements, but they resembled previous announcements issued by the group.

Haditha is some 240 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Baghdad, near a key dam on the Euphrates. ISIS has attacked the town on a number of occasions, but has never been able to seize it.

Iraqi forces, primarily Shiite militias, meanwhile launched a new push to retake a sprawling desert area outside the central city of Samarra, home to one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, officials said.

They hope to cut ISIS supply lines and tighten the noose around the IS-held northern city of Mosul  Iraq's second largest  according to a statement by the Joint Operations Command. The statement said Iraqi warplanes were supporting the mission. It did not say if the U.S.-led international coalition was involved.

Shiite lawmaker Ahmed al-Asadi, a spokesman for the paramilitary forces, said the offensive "is in retaliation for the blood of our martyrs and to annihilate the terrorist gangs that have wreaked havoc."

Sabah Al-Numan, the spokesman for national counter-terrorism forces, told The Associated Press that two vehicles loaded with militants were bombed on Tuesday, and that the security forces struck a would-be suicide car bomber before he reached his target.

Iraqi forces have advanced against ISIS in recent months, driving the extremists from the western city of Ramadi and pushing them back on other fronts. But progress has been slow, and IS has launched counterattacks, often involving multiple suicide bombers.

Massive bombings claimed by ISIS over the last two days in Baghdad and the northeastern town of Muqdadiyah killed at least 110 people. On Tuesday, separate attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 13 people and wounded 31 others, according to police and health officials.

In one attack, militants broke into a soldier's home south of Baghdad, killing his wife and two children, aged seven and five years old, a police officer said. The solider was critically wounded, he added.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

Visiting Baghdad on Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would begin training Iraqi officers in Jordan.

"Iraqi officers will receive training in key priority fields, including countering Improvised Explosive Devices, military medicine and civil-military planning," Stoltenberg said in a statement.

The U.S.-led coalition against IS has trained more than 18,000 Iraqi troops since December 2014. Iraqi officials have called for an increase in the pace of training efforts ahead of a planned Mosul offensive thatIraq's prime minister has promised will begin this year. Coalition officials say it is too early to set a timeline for the operation.

ISIS still controls large areas of northern and western Iraq that it seized in the summer of 2014, part of a self-declared Islamic caliphate that extends into neighboring Syria.

Latest World News
Follow us on nawaz sharif narendra modi may meet in washington later this month sartaj aziz

Washington: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may meet his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi in Washington later this month on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit, a top aide to Pakistan Premier said on Tuesday.

"There are chances of meeting between the two (prime ministers)," Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to Sharif, told PTI.

"There are possibilities, when they are here (in Washington DC). They would interact with each other. Whether there would be a structured meeting I do not know. Depends on...Chances are there (for a meeting)," Aziz said.

The top Pakistani diplomat is in Washington to attend the sixth US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday.

Aziz said Sharif would be travelling to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit at the invitation of US President Barack Obama.

Modi too has been invited to the Summit on 31 March and 1 April.

No official announcement has been made yet.

Responding to a question on the status of India-Pak relationship after Modi came to power in May 2014, Aziz said in the first year the situation was "not good".

"But the last two months are better," Aziz said.

Ahead of the Modi-Sharif meeting, Aziz said there is likelihood of a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries.

The timing of which has not been decided yet, he noted.

"We do not know (when foreign secretaries would meet). He (Indian Foreign Secretary) has to come to Islamabad first. We are hoping that now," Aziz said after the breakfast meeting with Defence Writers Group in Washington.

Latest World News
Follow us on osama s fourth wife had tracking device in her teeth claim declassified documents

Washington: Almost six years after the death of the world's most wanted terrorist and the founder of al-Qaeda Osama Bin Laden, documents declassified have revealed that his fourth wife had a tracking chip in her tooth. The revelation comes as part of a set of documents declassified by the US Intelligence agencies.

According to the documents, Laden wrote in a letter in worrying words to his wife living in Iran and warned her to remove tracking device from her teeth before she visited him in case Iranian inserted a tracking device. The size of the chip was almost equal to the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli, read the revealed documents.

The documents also contain a collection of Osama's letters, books and video games found in his compound offering new insights into the thinking of the world's most wanted man.

In a letter written in 2010, he wrote, "Here we are in the tenth year of the war, and America and its allies are still chasing a mirage, lost at sea without a beach."

"America appears to be hanging on by a thin thread," he wrote. "We need to be patient a bit longer. With patience, there is victory!"

The terrorist who had a $27 million bounty on his head also wrote to his father in 2008. "If I am to be killed pray for me a lot and give continuous charities in my name, as I will be in great need for support to reach the permanent home," he said.

The documents declassified from his hideout indicates that Osama was single minded. His focus was to kill and fight with American people and their representatives.

Bin Laden's letter recovered from his hideout in his own hand-writing reveal a network run like a business with an online job application asking for spying qualities following questions like:

- Any hobbies or pastimes?

- Do you know any workers or experts in Chemistry, communications or any other fields?

- Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?

- Who should be contact in case you become a martyr?

The letter ended with this instruction: "Please destroy this letter after reading it."

Latest World News
Angus Young and Brian Johnson said it best, "I'm on a "Highway to Hell", which is exactly what Rob Lowe's younger brother Chad Lowe is on in this film, titled 'Highway to Hell'. This is a small, low-budget B-Movie from 1992 with a ton of fun cameos of actors, before they were really famous. Not only that, the guy who wrote 'L.A. Confidential' and 'Mystic River' (Brian Helgeland) penned the screenplay, and the guy who directed that gem of a film 'Drop Dead Fred' (Ate de Jong), sat in the director's chair for this one.

The cast and crew are as bizarre as the story, which follows a demon cop from hell, kidnapping girls, and sending them to hell, to be Satan's slaves, servants, and brides. You had me at demon cop. For being a low-budget film, 'Highway to Hell' manages to keep an ultra-fast pace, some excellent practical makeup effects, and wild and zany characters that make this film highly entertaining, despite it's over-the-top acting and silly script.

Two young lovers Charlie (Chad Lowe) and Rachel (Kristy Swanson) are desperate to get married and head to Las Vegas to seal the deal. They take the back roads in order to stay off their parent's radar in fear that they will stop their wedding. Low and behold though, they get pulled over by Sgt. Bedlam (C.J. Graham), who is the demon cop from hell, who kidnaps Rachel, leaving Charlie to get to hell and save her. He comes across a ton of tortured souls from hell as well as some insane demons and motorcycle gang members.

There is even Hitler (Gilbert Gottfried) and Genghis Khan (Ben Stiller) making appearances. Charlie enlists the help of some weirdos at gas stations and other locales on his journey, where the film becomes a car chase sequence straight to hell, leaving the title of the film, the literal story. You can't ask for more here. The entire set design and look of the film, feels like a Tim Burton movie, and is actually looks good, considering the cheap budget. Ate de Jong also never gives you a chance to breathe here, which is a good thing, because if this movie slowed down to a crawl, it wouldn't be as fun or as silly as it is now.

There really aren't any scares here, but the comedy is high and you'll find yourself laughing as much as you'll roll your eyes. 'Highway to Hell' as all the inner-working and structure to be one of the great cult midnight movies. I'm just surprised it hasn't reached the level of cult status like other films have had in the past. 'Highway to Hell' is so insane on almost every level, that it just simply works, making it also a brilliant film with a very young cast and crew for the time it was made.





The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'Highway to Hell' comes with a 25GB Blu-ray Disc that is Region A locked from Kino-Lorber. It is housed in a hard, blue plastic case with reversible cover art. There are no inserts here.
Follow us on osama wanted to launch jihad against pakistan new documents

Washington: Slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had called for launching jihad against Pakistan and wanted to manipulate the tension between India and Pakistan to achieve this objective, according to newly declassified files seized from his hideout in Pakistan.

In a 42-page booklet originally in Arabic recovered from the Abbottabad compound of bin Laden during the raid by US commandoes in which he was killed, the al-Qaeda leader gives a detailed blueprint on how and where to launch the jihad against Pakistan and establish Islamic rule over the country.

In the booklet, which was released by the Office of Director of National Intelligence today, bin Laden alleged that India was planning to attack Pakistan as part of the larger American game plan to divide Pakistan.

And then he sets his eyes on the entire of South Asia arguing that it is the British colonial rulers who divided the region, which in fact is one country.

"India plans to attack Pakistan," is one of the chapters of the booklet 'Jihad in Pakistan'.

In the booklet, bin Laden wrote, "India has embarked on many important initiatives, except that it is preparing for a decisive grand battle. Among those initiatives are India's bid to purchase 134 fighter aircraft from all over the world, this will be the largest military deal in the history of the whole world."

"India's military training with Britain on the highest fighting fronts, in the mountainous Siachen region on the Pakistani border. America's grand steps in nuclear cooperation with India, through the purchase of an Indian nuclear reactor on Indian soil. India's convening the largest "Strategic War Games" in Hyderabad region.

The booklet referred to India's launch of an Israeli satellite to spy on Pakistan and its alleged announcement of increasing its force size by a million, compared to its current 1,300,000 million soldier force.

"These giant steps predict an incoming storm. India has focused its attention on Pakistan's internal situation. Military analysts interpreted these steps through their statements that India will attack Pakistan, sooner or later," the booklet said.

Laying out his plan of action to wage a successful jihad against Pakistan, bin Laden proposed four-prong action plan.

"We have to launch raids against the Pakistani army that is deployed on the Indian border, because these are vast desert battlefields areas and it will be easy to target them. By these operations, we will realise that these border armies will not come to the rescue of armies that are present in Sarhad and Baluchistan; on the contrary, they will focus their efforts on strengthening their positions in their areas, as they are sensitive areas from the point of view of Pakistan's war with India," he wrote.

Therefore, every attack in these areas will constitute "an anchoring nail" in the foot of the army, impeding it from movement to these areas, he argued.

Then bin Laden called for weakening "law and order"

through the waging of attacks against selected targets in Punjab, in a manner that the army will be compelled to intervene and control the situation.

"This will be another important success for us because Punjab army units will be compelled to remain there and will be unable to free themselves and devote energies to Sarhad region," he wrote.

"If we could achieve those two objectives, we will accelerate the departure of a large number of army in Punjab and Sindh. After that, we will have to focus on suffocating the army and isolating its eastern part from the western one. There are special passes that were used through the centuries, from Punjab and Sindh to Sarhad and Baluchistan, like Mianuwali Walih, and Khaddar and others," he wrote.

"If we can make these passes - which the government has shown no interest in maintaining - difficult for the army to pass, and close them operationally, we will be isolating the two corps located in Sarhad and Baluchistan region from the remaining corps in the Eastern part."

"After that, if we begin to pressure the remaining army in the western part by intensifying our Jihad and military call, we trust in God almighty, that this army which surrendered to India in Bengal when it was 90,000 thousand, will crumble in front of the Mujahidin for the sake of God in a much quicker manner; especially if they realise that they are besieged from all sides, and their link with Punjab and Sindh is severed," bin Laden wrote.

In the booklet, the al Qaeda leader appears to refuse to accept the partition of the sub-continent in 1947.

"Pakistan is not just Pakistan, but it is the Indian sub-continent," he wrote.

"The other important point is that the British divided Pakistan and India in the same weird manner that they divided Pakistan and Afghanistan," he wrote.

"Also, from the historical aspect, it is a given that a subcontinent is one contiguous region, and whatever happens on the western side (ie current Pakistan) echoes spontaneously in the eastern one (ie current India), and this echo does not stop except at the Bay of Bengal waves," the booklet said.

"Therefore, Mujahid leadership must consider in their minds the subcontinent as a whole before planning any future programme; otherwise we will harm ourselves by any planning that is based on incomplete analysis," he wrote.

Latest World News
Follow us on pathankot attack may make masood azhar available to india says pak

Islamabad: Pakistan can make Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack, available to Indian investigating agencies, but it will first investigate the case, Pak NSA Sartaz Aziz said.

Aziz also described as "outdated" Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's remarks that non-state actors operate in Pakistan with support of the establishment and said he needs to update this narrative.

"First of all, we have to investigate ourselves and (find out) what it is... if he (Masood) does something (wrong) we would move against (him)," Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister, told Defense Writers Group at a breakfast meeting on Tuesday.

Mr Aziz was responding to a question if Pakistan would make Azhar Masood available for interrogation if he is found guilty of the Pathankot terrorist attack.

He was asked the question twice during an hour-long meeting with reporters over a breakfast.

"Is he (Masood) going to be shared with India for interrogation?" he was asked by a journalist.

"I think, (Pakistan's) response to (terrorist attack in) Pathankot has been very positive and prompt. Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) immediately called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and said we are ready to co-operate," he said.

"So whatever intelligence came from there (India), national security advisor, immediate action was taken to take under protective custody some of their leaders as well as sealed their facilities, set up a joint investigation team.

The first information report which is a legal requirement for our investigations to begin has been filed," he said.

Pakistan last week set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, a week after it lodged an FIR over the assault without naming Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood who India has accused of having masterminded the strike.

"I am hoping that the investigation team would now go (to India) in the next few days. Then you would be able to trace the phone calls, who all...The phone call (from India) came to one or two numbers but then their links and the identities of the four people who were killed in the attack are also got to be established yet, as we haven't got the right photographs or finger prints of those," Mr Aziz said.

"So once the process goes and considering the time that has elapsed, very good progress is being made and I hope that this would demonstrate to India that we are co-operating in this exercise and they would share the evidence that we require and whatever prosecution would require would take place," Mr Aziz said in response to a question.

Referring to Mr Parrikar's remarks on non-state actors, Mr Aziz said, "I think; it is out of date. This is the old narrative which India has been following. The situation (in Pakistan) is now very different."

The terror attack on Pathankot Airbase on January 2 was carried out by Pakistan's "non-state actors" who operate with support of the Pakistani establishment, Mr Parrikar had said.

In response, Mr Aziz said, "Initially there were sympathies for certain groups, but after the December 2014 (army) school attack and the policy that there is no good and bad terrorist and we are going to move against all of them (things have changed)."

"But obviously you can't move against all of them. (We would move against them) gradually and sequentially. So to that extent, I think the policy direction is very clear. And on the whole there was support for these groups within the local community, for example funding because many of them had a lot of welfare activities and under the cover of that they would raise funds. Now it is being monitored. You can't collect fund without any accounting," he said.

"So I think, the suspicion (of Parrikar) refers to the old previous ones when the Afghan related...you do not forget that the Mujahideen of Afghanistan were trained, funded and armed jointly by the US and Pakistan. Then it was a different kind of operation. At that time they were not terrorists. They were called holy warriors. Once 9/11 happened they all became terrorist," he said.

"Our policy of not supporting them is very significant. Because we realised that supporting them is bad for all our security. That's why our relationship with Afghanistan started improving. The same is true with others. So I think, one has to update this narrative," Mr Aziz said while responding to the question on the statement made by Mr Parrikar.

(PTI)

Latest World News
Follow us on terror groups stealing pakistan s sovereignty us

Washington: Warning Pakistan that anti-Afghanistan and anti-India terror groups were "stealing" its sovereignty and undermining its efforts to improve relations with its neighbours, US has welcomed Pakistan's commitment not to differentiate between terrorist groups.



"Groups like the Haqqani Network and Lashkar-e-Taiba (that) seek to undermine Pakistan's efforts to foster strong, positive relations with its neighbours," Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday.



"In the end, a group like the Haqqani group or Lashkar-e-Taeba or Jaish-e-Mohammad - all of these groups are literally stealing the sovereignty of a nation," he said at the inaugural session of the US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue here.



"And they're stealing the future of a nation. And it is important for us to stand up to them," Kerry said.



While Haqqani Network is active in Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba is held responsible for the November 2008 Mumbai terror attack and Jaish-e-Mohammad is blamed for the attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in January.



Kerry also commended Pakistan's commitment not to differentiate between terrorist groups including those targeting India, as Pakistan assured that it had reached out to India as part of its policy of a peaceful neighbourhood.



"We commend Pakistan for its whole-of-government approach to implement the National Action Plan and eliminate the ability of militant groups to recruit, to finance, and to incite violence.



"And we welcome Pakistan's commitment not to differentiate between terrorist groups in the implementation of this strategy," he said.



Pakistan Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz said: "As an all-important part of our policy of peaceful neighbourhood, we have reached out to India.



"We believe the resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Kashmir dispute, is possible through resumption of full-scale and uninterrupted dialogue with India."



Pakistan "would also propose a mechanism to address our respective concern on terrorism", he said.



He described the Indian participation in the Heart of Asia conference in Islamabad last December and announcement to start the comprehensive dialogue as "positive developments that augur well for peace and stability in South Asia".



Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Islamabad in December was welcomed by most in Pakistan, Aziz noted.



He expressed Pakistan's gratitude to Kerry and President Barack Obama "for your consistent support to the revival of the Pakistan-India dialogue".



"It is unfortunate that the agreement on resuming the dialogue process was disrupted by the attack on Pathankot airbase on 2nd January," he said.



Pakistan has taken some very important steps in the aftermath of this incident, he said. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had called Modi immediately after this attack and assured of Pakistan's support in the investigation.



Since then, national security advisors are maintaining frequent contacts, Aziz said. A case has been registered, and the special investigation team is likely to visit India in the next few days.



"We, therefore, hope that the foreign secretary-level talks will be scheduled very soon," Aziz said.

Latest World News
Follow us on two us consulate employees killed in pakistan blast

Islamabad: At least two local employees of the US consulate were killed when their vehicle was hit by a bomb in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of Mohmand Agency on Tuesday, officials with the US consulate said.

The officials said that the victims, who were on drug eradication mission, were employees of the US consulate in the provincial capital Peshawar of the country's North West Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The employees were working for a USAID-funded poppy-eradication project in Ambar town of Mohmand Agency, a tribal area along Pakistan-Afghanistan border, when their vehicle was targeted by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), Xinhua reported.

Three men were also injured in the blast, but it has not been revealed whether they were the consulate employees or the soldiers who were guarding them on the mission.

The injured people were shifted to a nearby hospital.

Jamatul Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Latest World News
Follow us on bjp mp sparks controversy calls islam ticking time bomb of terror

Mangaluru: BJP MP Anant Kumar Hegde has sparked a controversy over his reported remarks allegedly belittling Islam and Muslims at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada district.

At a press meet in Sirsi, Karnataka, Sunday, Hegde had allegedly equated Islam to a ticking time bomb of terror that needed to be eradicated. He also allegedly accused the media of helping terrorists by airing views of arrested JNU student Umar Khalid's father, a former member of the banned SIMI,the Indian Express reported

The Dakshina Kannada district unit of youth Congress filed a police complaint against the Uttara Kannada MP for making "blasphemous and insulting remarks" against Islam and Muslims, at a press conference yesterday.

Youth Congress district vice president Luqman Bantwal said in the complaint that the sentiments of Muslim community had been hurt by the comments made by the MP.

Dakshina Kannada Kazi Twaka Ahmed Musliyar also urged the state government to take action against Hegde for his "anti- Islam rhetoric" at the press meet.

Meanwhile, state Health Minister U T Khader requested Home Minister G Parameshwara to take suo motu action against Hegde for his "shocking and irresponsible" statement against Islam.
Follow us on ishrat jahan case nothing new in bjp s allgeations against chidambaram says sonia

New Delhi: Amid raging controversy over former Union minister P. Chidmabaram's role in Ishrat Jahaan case, Congress president Sonia Gandhi today said Chidambaram has already explained himself on the issue and we stand by him.

When asked whether the congress is being targeted, Gandhi said "What is nnew in it we were also targeted when were in government."

Gandhi made the comments after she chaired a strategy meet with the senior leaders of the party on Wednesday ahead of another turbulent Parliament session as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gave a breach-of-privilege notice in the Lok Sabha against the Congress`s chief whip Jyotiraditya Scindia and

BJP MP Om Birla has also given a notice in Lok Sabha on Ishrat Jahan case.

According to sources, the Congress has decided to go all guns blazing against BJP on the Ishrat Jahaan case

Sources also said that Congress will ask if Modi government will rely on ex-bureacrat RVS Mani's testimony as he is the same officer who had alleged that parliament attack was planned by Vajpayee government and 26/11 Mumbai attack was a brainchild of UPA government.

In fresh revelations, the former senior bureaucrat R V S Mani, who served as Under Secretary (Internal Security) in the Union Home ministry, has claimed that he was hounded, harassed and forced to sign on an affidavit that claimed that there was no proof that Ishrat Jahan and the four other people, who were killed in an alleged fake encounter, were terrorists. This affidavit, Mani claimed in an interview to Times Now, was not written by him and neither was he aware of its contents.

He has claimed that he was used as a rubber stamp by the government. His comments echo the claims of former Home Secretary G K Pillai who said last week that ex-Home Minister Chidambaram had changed the affidavit which clearly described Ishrat and her slain aides as LeT operatives.

Meanwhile, AIADMK members continued to shout slogans and gave an adjournment motion in Lok Sabha on P.Chidambaram's son Karthi's role in Aircel Maxis deal and his alleged huge overseas assets.

Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that govt was ready for discussion on Karti Chidambaram issue. AIADMK should give notice, adds Naqvi in Rajya Sabha.
It's a tough day when you sit down to watch a movie you've never seen but were excited to get behind because of the names involved and the film just turns out to be a dud. When you've got a solid cast with a decent director and a screenplay co-written by one of your favorite authors, it's a tad depressing when the film fails to light up any sparks. Alas, that is the case with 1987's 'The Rosary Murders' starring the always reliable Donald Sutherland and the late Charles Durning, Directed and co-written by Fred Walton and written by the late great Elmore Leonard. It's a movie that strains to generate suspense and fills each scene with characters who rarely come to life.

Life at the Holy Redeemer Church in Detroit, Michigan is a pretty routine affair. The fathers and sisters do what they can to care for their flock through the tumultuous day-to-day affairs of life and even in death. For Father Robert Koesler (Donald Sutherland), his life keeps to this routine. In all of his years of working with the church and helping his parishioners, nothing too out of the ordinary or earth-shattering ever happened - that is until a priest was murdered as he recovered in a hospital. As startling as this was, it is the murder of his friend Sister Ann Vania (Kathleen Tolan) in her dormitory room that shakes Father Koesler's very soul. Ann was a dear friend who had just confided in him that she was leaving the Sisterhood for the love of a man and had asked Father Koesler to give her away at the wedding. When another priest is murdered, a pattern in the killings emerges, each victim has a set of rosaries that doesn't belong to them in their hands.

As the Detroit police are convinced that they have a serial killer on their hands, the lead officer in charge of the investigation Lieutenant Koznicki (Josef Sommer) brings Father Koesler into the investigation. As the pair try to figure out the intricacies of the case, Detroit Free Press reporter Pat Lennon (Belinda Bauer) is pulling together her own details of the case working to find the missing pieces of a lethal jigsaw puzzle. When the killer comes forward to Father Koesler during a private confession. With his loyalty to the church called into question by his superior Father Nabors (Charles Durning), Father Koesler must do what is right not only by god but by the laws of man to ensure that no one else is murdered.

'The Rosary Murders' has all of the right elements in place for a perfect who done it murder mystery thriller that would make Agatha Christie proud. So, where does it all go so wrong? The cast lead by Donald Sutherland, Charles Durning, Josef Sommer, and Belinda Bauer are well-cast and play their parts with an inquisitive vigor necessary for the story. The screenplay by Elmore Leonard and Fred Walton is sharp filled with strong character beats and some snappy dialogue. But somewhere in the recipe for great filmmaking these ingredients just failed to congeal into something edible.

Part of what brings this movie down is the pacing, it can be dog slow in some places. Conversations, while well written, feel like there are too many beats between responses to feel genuine, almost as if the actors are quickly reading their lines off screen. Granted not every scene is like this, but enough of them are that the flow of the film starts to feel off. Another thing that fouls up the film is that it starts out so fast with the death of a priest and then the murder of a nun, the rest of the film feels like we're watching a protracted third act. There isn't a natural build to the excitement in a way that leads to a satisfying and interesting payoff. While it's interesting material to see a priest with a crisis of faith and confidence, it doesn't make for an exciting murder mystery when one of the principal investigators knows who the murderer is long before the rest of the audience does. 'The Rosary Murders' boils down to a movie with a lot of potential that just underwhelms in the final stretch. It's an okay movie, but not the thriller I was hoping for.

The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats

'The Rosary Murders' arrives on Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber and their Studio Classics line. Pressed onto a Region A locked BD25 disc, the disc is housed in a standard Blu-ray case and features reversible cover artwork. The disc opens directly to the main menu featuring standard navigation options.
In Yemen, a Humanitarian Pause is Urgently Needed



By Cesar Chelala



March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - As war continues to rage uninterrupted in Yemen, a humanitarian pause is badly needed as the country spirals down to chaos, leaving the majority of the population in urgent need of medical care. Restrictions on access to medical supplies and care are key impediments in improving the situation of people in need. A five day humanitarian pause would allow supplies and care to reach those people and relieve their dire health situation. At the same time, attacks on health facilities continue. Last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) supported hospital in Saada province in northern Yemen. MSF believes that as a consequence 200.000 people were left without medical care. That attack, that violated International Humanitarian Law, was the second one on an MSF-run facility in a month. Since the beginning of Saudi Arabias attacks on Yemen, conducted with U.S. support, more than 5,700 have died (almost half of them civilians) -including hundreds of women and children- and 28.753 injuries have been reported. Several health workers have also been killed and 47 health facilities in 11 governorates have been damaged or closed as a result of the continuous violence. Health care services in all public hospitals have been reduced, especially operating theaters and intensive care units. At the same time, disrupted immunization activities have increased the risks for measles and poliomyelitis, even though Yemen is presently free of polio. The breakdown of the water supply and sanitation systems has facilitated the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, as well acute diarrheal diseases, particularly affecting children. Also, because of limited communication possibilities, the early warning alert system for diseases has been seriously affected. The country has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. According to UNICEF, 1.3 million Yemeni children younger than five years now suffer from acute malnutrition, compared to 850.000 before the war started. 320.000 are severely malnourished, twice the amount before the crisis. The little cash people have is to pay for food and gas at greatly increased prices- leaving no money to afford health care. The Lancet reports that approximately a quarter of the countrys health care facilities are no longer functional. To make matters worse, as Ronald Kremer, from MSF says, "People do not dare to go to hospitals because they are afraid that they are targeted and, even if they want to go they may not have the means even where public transport does exist, it is very expensive because of the fuel problems." Fuel problems have increased the problems in obtaining clean water. Lack of a proper water supply and the dire sanitation and hygiene situation has led to outbreaks of dengue and malaria. Because many Yemenis store water in open containers, that becomes an ideal breeding ground for disease-transmitting mosquitoes. So far, there are more than 2.5 million people who have become internally displaced persons (IDPs). To compound an already difficult situation, disrupted immunization campaigns have led to increasing number of children affected with measles and rubella, particularly among IDPs living in overcrowded conditions As a result of the conflict, many hospitals, laboratories, health warehouses and administrative offices have closed. Primary care facilities have minimum access to medicines, supplies and equipment. Fuel shortage has affected the proper operations of ambulances. In this situation, a humanitarian pause is urgently needed. A five day pause, as proposed by the World Health Organization, would allow humanitarian organizations to respond to some of the most life-threatening needs of the people, particularly women and children caught in the middle of the conflict. An MSF doctor taking care of a badly hurt child in Syria realized that the child was desperately trying to tell him something. When he asked his translator what the child was saying, the translator responded, Dont they realize that we are children? A similar question could be asked in Yemen today. Dr. Cesar Chelala is an international public health consultant and a winner of several journalism awards.
NASA reports that astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko have returned to Earth Tuesday night, after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. The space travelers touched down in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time).

From the NASA news release:

Joining their return trip aboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft was Sergey Volkov, also of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who arrived on the station Sept. 4, 2015. The crew touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan.

"Scott Kelly's one-year mission aboard the International Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America's Journey to Mars," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Scott has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space, and in so doing, helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars."

During the record-setting One-Year mission, the station crew conducted almost 400 investigations to advance NASA's mission and benefit all of humanity. Kelly and Kornienko specifically participated in a number of studies to inform NASA's Journey to Mars, including research into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly's identical twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated in parallel twin studies on Earth to help scientists compare the effects of space on the body and mind down to the cellular level.
Some Real Costs of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Nearly Half a Million Jobs Lost in the US Alone



By Jomo Kwame Sundaram



March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " NC " - The Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP) Agreement, recently agreed to by twelve Pacifc Rim countries led by the United States,1 promises to ease many restrictions on cross-border transactions and harmonize regulations. Proponents of the agreement have claimed significant economic benefits, citing modest overall net GDP gains, ranging from half of one percent in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam after fifteen years. Their claims, however, rely on many unjustified assumptions, including full employment in every country and no resulting impacts on working peoples incomes, with more than 90 percent of overall growth gains due to non-trade measures with varying impacts. A recent GDAE Working Paper finds that with more realistic methodological assumptions, critics of the TPP indeed have reason to be concerned. Using the trade projections for the most optimistic growth forecasts, we find that the TPP is more likely to lead to net employment losses in many countries (771,000 jobs lost overall, with 448,000 in the United States alone) and higher inequality in all country groupings. Declining worker purchasing power would weaken aggregate demand, slowing economic growth. The United States (-0.5 percent) and Japan (-0.1 percent) are projected to suffer small net income losses, not gains, from the TPP. This GDAE Policy Brief is intended to help clarify the differences with other modeling studies and to present our findings in a less technical manner. Flaws in TPP Economic Projections Optimistic claims about the TPPs economic impacts are largely based on economic modeling projections published by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.2 Its researchers used a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to project net GDP gains for all countries involved. These figures have been widely cited in many countries to justify TPP approval and ratification. Updated estimates, released in early 2016 and incorporated into the World Banks latest report on the global economy,3 now stress income gains for the United States of $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of GDP, and a 9.1 percent increase in exports by 2030. 4 The projections methodology assumes away critical economic problems and boosts economic growth estimates with unfounded assumptions. The assumption of full employment is particularly problematic. Workers will inevitably be displaced due to the TPP, but CGE modelers assume that all dismissed workers will be promptly rehired elsewhere in the national economy as if part of labor churning. The full-employment assumption thus inflates projected GDP gains by assuming away job losses and adjustment costs. The modelers also dismiss increases in inequality by assuming no changes to wage and profit shares of national income. Again, this is not supported by empirical evidence, as past trade agreements have tended to reduce labors share. Finally, foreign direct investment (FDI) is assumed to increase dramatically, which contributes a significant boost to economic growth in the Peterson Institute projections, accounting for more than 25 percent of projected U.S. economic gains in the recent update. This assumes that: 1) income to capital owners will be invested; and 2) this will result in broad-based growth. Neither is supported by the evidence. A U.S. Department of Agriculture study,5 which did not assume such FDI-related investment gains, found zero growth for the United States and very modest growth elsewhere at best. The methodology of the Peterson study is flawed; consequently, growth and income gains are overstated, and the costs to working people, consumers and governments are understated, ignored or even presented as benefits. Job losses and declining or stagnant labor incomes are excluded from consideration, even though they lower economic growth by reducing aggregate demand. Some economists have pointed out6 additional misleading findings in the most recent Peterson Institute update:  U.S. income gains of 0.5 percent from TPP in 2030  This is raised from the institutes previous 0.4 percent, mainly by extending the implementation period from ten to fifteen years. In any case, added growth of 0.5 percent is very small, about 0.03 percent per year over fifteen years.  Exports rise by 9.1 percent, but so do imports, because the model assumes fixed trade balances. This excludes, by assumption, the problems associated with rising trade deficits, which have been common after previous trade agreements.  All displaced workers are absorbed immediately and costlessly in other sectors  again, by assumption. The paper does acknowledge that manufacturing employment will increase more slowly because of the TPP, and that some 53,700 more U.S. jobs per year will be displaced annually. But they view this as a small addition to normal labor market churn. More Realistic Economic Projections We employed the UN Global Policy Model (GPM) to generate more realistic projections of likely TPP impacts. Unlike most CGE models, the GPM incorporates more realistic assumptions about economic adjustment and income distribution, assessing the TPP impact on each of them as well as on economic growth over a ten-year period. Importantly, it does not assume large unexplained FDI surges or investment, growth and income gains due to nontrade measures. The modeling results are summarized in the table. To facilitate comparison, we used the Peterson Institutes projected estimates of the TPPs impact on exports, applying the macroeconomic model to assess the efects of projected TPP trade increases.7 The GPM analyzes macroeconomic sectors  primary commodities, energy, manufacturing and services  but does not contain data on single markets (such as car parts or poultry). The main fndings include:  The TPP will generate net GDP losses in the USA and Japan. Ten years after the treaty comes into force, US GDP is projected to be 0.54 percent lower than it would be without the TPP. Similarly, the TPP is projected to reduce Japans growth by 0.12 percent.  For other TPP countries, economic gains will be negligible  less than one percent over ten years for developed countries, and less than three percent over the decade for developing countries. Chile and Perus combined gain of 2.84 percent comes to only about a quarter of one percent per year.  The TPP is projected to lead to employment losses overall, with a total of 771,000 jobs lost. The United States will be hardest hit, losing 448,000 jobs.  The TPP will also likely lead to higher inequality due to declining labor shares of national incomes. In the United States, labor shares are projected to fall by 1.31 percent over ten years, continuing an ongoing multi-decade downward trend. Conclusions In sum, the TPP will increase pressures on labor incomes, weakening domestic demand in all participating countries, in turn leading to lower employment and higher inequality. Even though countries with lower labor costs may gain greater market shares and small GDP increases, employment is still likely to fall and inequality to increase. In fact, most goods trade among TPP countries has already been liberalized by earlier agreements. Instead of promoting growth and employment, the TPP is mainly about imposing new rules favored by large multinational corporations. The TPP greatly strengthens investor and intellectual property rights (IPRs), while weakening national regulation, e.g. over financial services. The TPP will strengthen IPRs for big pharmaceutical, information technology, media, and other firms, e.g. by allowing pharmaceutical companies longer monopolies on patented medicines, keeping cheaper generics of the market, and blocking the development and availability of similar new medicines. The TPP would also strengthen foreign investor rights at the expense of local businesses and the public interest. The TPPs investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system will oblige governments to compensate foreign investors for losses of expected profits in binding private arbitration. These pro-investor measures impose significant costs, especially on developing countries. They will exert a chilling efect on important government responsibilities to promote national development and protect the public interest. Our modeling suggests that TPP skeptics, concerned about the agreements impacts on growth, labor incomes, employment and inequality, have good reason to doubt optimistic projections. Our results show negative impacts in all these areas, particularly in the United States. Legislatures in TPP countries should carefully consider these findings and their implications before approving the agreement. Jomo Kwame Sundaram, an Assistant Secretary General working on Economic Development in the United Nations system during 2005-15, and was awarded the 2007 Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. Originally published as a Global Development and Environment Institute Policy Brief Endnotes 1 The participating countries  Canada, United States, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Australia and New Zealand  have finalized and signed the text of the agreement, but the treaty must be ratified in all of them before it can come into force. 2 Peter Petri, Michael Plummer and Fan Zhai (2012). The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Asia-Pacific Integration: A Quantitative Assessment. Policy Analyses in International Economics 98, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC. The Peterson Institute study has also been criticized by others, e.g. http://www.sustainabilitynz.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EconomicGainsandCostsfromtheTPP_2014.pdf. 3 See Global Economic Prospects, Spillovers Amid Weak Recovery, January 2016, The World Bank Group, Washington, DC. 4 Peter Petri and Michael Plummer, The Economic Efects of the Trans-Pacifc Partnership: New Estimates, January 2016, Working Paper 16-2, Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC. 5 See http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1692509/err176.pdf 6 See, for example, Dean Baker, Peterson Institute Study Shows TPP Will Lead to $357 Billion Increase in Annual Imports, January 26, 2016. 7 A robust debate over such modeling followed the release of the GDAE paper, with a critique from Robert Lawrence for the Peterson Institute (Studies of TPP: Which is Credible?) and two responses from GDAE: Are the Peterson Institute Studies Reliable Guides to Likely TPP Effects? and Modeling TPP: A response to Robert Z. Lawrence. GDAE clarifed that the GPM is fully documented in the UNCTAD publication, The UN Global Policy Model: Technical Description.
Sanders Must Offer Tulsi Gabbard The VP Slot. Now!

By Moon Of Alabama

March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - Tulsi Gabbard, a U.S. Congress representative from Hawaii, stepped down as a vice chair of the Democrat National Committee to endorse Bernie Sanders. In the video below the fold she explains her reasoning. It is Clinton's militarism in foreign policies that makes her take the other side.

Described as "libertarian-leaning progressive" the woman is smart, pretty and speaks well. She is also a former officer in the U.S. military with combat experience and an interest in foreign policy.

Politically her endorsement is manna from heaven for Sanders.

Sanders should IMMEDIATELY offer her the Vice-President slot. Her task in the campaign is to stand in on all foreign policy issues. Sanders then can continue to focus on inequality in the United States.

Hillary Clinton would have no chance to beat that team. Unlike the neoconned Clinton, a Sanders/Gabbard ticket can attract young voters which will be needed to beat Trump. If Clinton runs against Trump the large and growing "anything but Clinton" crowd would likely let her loose.
Supreme Leader Trump and the Wall Street Mullahs By Finian Cunningham March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " American Herald Tribune " - Shocking as it may seem, Irans recent elections compare favorably against the super-rich, warmongering auction that passes for American democracy. If reality-TV supremo Donald Trump ever makes it into the White House, he says that torture of terror suspects and shoot-to-kill of their family members will be turbo-charged under his command. The capricious demagoguery of this guy is truly sinister. And all the other gung-ho contenders are hardly any different. Trumps brazen disregard for international law and gung-ho militarism has even alarmed former CIA director Michael Hayden. Thats saying something when even a shady organization like the CIA is disconcerted by Trump. But the fact is that Trump is only able to take a run at becoming US president because of his supposed vast individual wealth. His fortune was made from the kind of wheeler-dealer property capitalism that has bankrupted millions of American families and made Wall Street banks and financiers obscenely rich. All other Republican presidential contenders are dependent on big business sponsorship. So either way, whether independently rich Trump or the other corporate clones, the electoral choice has been ring-fenced by billion-dollar elite interests determining how ordinary Americans exercise their democratic right. Meanwhile, Wall Street darling Hillary Clinton appears to be pushing Democrat rival Bernie Sander to the sidelines. Clinton has made hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years from giving paid speeches on behalf of such clients as Goldman Sachs. Sanders campaign is reportedly free from corporate super PACs, relying instead on cash donations from rank-and-file citizens. Nevertheless, the unusual nature of the Vermont Senator being untainted by the excesses of corporate capitalism in his run for the US presidency reinforces the point that American democracy is largely an auction run by and for the rich and powerful. The United States is for all intents and purposes a plutocracy, run by the money-mullahs of finance capitalism. The irony is that it is common among Western politicians and media pundits to disparage the Islamic Republic of Iran as being a country dominated by mullahs. The irony is that much of the contempt leveled at Iran is more fitting to the de facto plutocracy that exists in the US. Iran just completed elections for its parliament and an Assembly of Experts. It was the tenth such parliamentary elections since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Nearly 5,000 candidates were vying for the 290-seat parliament. The Assembly of Experts consists of 88 elected seats. It is the assembly that will decide who is the next Supreme Leader of Iran after the current Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, who is 76 and is said to be in declining health. Note that because the Assembly of Experts has been elected in the first place, the electorate will have had an important say on who is Irans next Supreme Leader. It is true that Iranian leaders often excoriate the US as the Great Satan and in the past have called for death to America and Israel. The latter injunction is accurately understood to be a rhetorical condemnation of Americas imperialistic wars in the Middle East and of illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Neither Khamenei nor his predecessor have publicly endorsed torture as state policy, as Donald Trump and George W Bush before him have. Nor have Iranian leaders arrogated the right to assassinate people around the globe with aerial drones and Special Forces, as US President Obama has. It is true that the nearly 5,000 Iranian parliamentary candidates were vetted by an unelected Guardian Council. The council was said to be in favor of religiously and politically conservative candidates. Out of this very extensive shortlist, the Iranian elections this past week were conducted in a free and fair manner, where one-person votes were tallied from the some 55 million Iranian electorate (60% turnout). As it turns out, the election results show big gains for candidates considered to be reformists and moderates who are allied with the current President Hassan Rouhani. He was elected in separate presidential elections in 2013. Rouhanis policy of engaging diplomatically with the West  achieving the P5+1 nuclear deal last year and the lifting of harsh economic sanctions off Iran  appears to have borne fruit electorally with the Iranian people. He now has a parliament supportive of his foreign policy of engagement, as well as embarking on more social and economic reforms domestically. Iran is not a Western liberal democracy. All candidates must swear allegiance to the Islamic Republic. Also, according to Iranian sources, the notion contrived in the West that the reformers are somehow pro-West is baseless. President Rouhani and his allies may be more willing to dialogue with Western powers, but at the same time they are still staunch opponents of Washingtons interference in the region. However, what seems indisputable is that Iran has a thriving, functioning democracy, where people can cast their votes to control the governance of their country. The same cannot be said of Americas plutocracy where supreme leaders are chosen by the money-mullahs on Wall Street to exercise absolute power. Would-be supreme leader Trump might say now and again that hes for the little people. In office, like all the other Wall Street vetted puppets, Trump will be told what countries to violate and invade to keep American capital safe, including killing people en masse in some new phony war. And guess what? Trump, like all the other politician-puppets, will do as he is told. Thats how American plutocracy works. Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. For over 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
Is Sisi Plotting With Israel To Have Dahlan Replace Abbas?



By Alan Hart



March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " -I t's not too much of a secret that Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a Trump-like megalomaniac and a tyrant with few equals, is happy to do dirty work for Israel. And it may now be that he is seeking to prepare the ground for Mohammed Dahlan, almost certainly an American and Israeli intelligence asset (not a fulltime agent) to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). After the signing of the Oslo Accord in Washington D.C. in 1993, Dahlan was chosen by the Americans to head the (Palestinian) Preventive Security Force (PSF) in Gaza. Armed, funded and trained by the Americans it became a Fatah force of 20,000 which made Dahlan one of the most powerful Palestinian leaders. His forces were regularly accused of torturing Hamas detainees throughout the 1990's and during this period the Gaza Strip was nicknamed "Dahlanistan" because of the man's power. As the head of the PSF Dahlan had regular dealings with CIA and Israeli intelligence officials. President George "Dubya" Bush himself had at least three meetings with Dahlan and after the first one he publicly praised Dahlan as "a good, solid leader." In private the president went further describing Dahlan as "our guy.". The time was coming when he would prove that he was. In 2007 Dahlan said "Yes" to an American request to prepare his forces for an all-out attack on Hamas to destroy it by force. So far as American (and many European) policy makers were concerned Hamas had to be destroyed because of its victory in the 2006 elections for the second Palestinian Legislative Council. Hamas won 74 of the 132 seats, 29 more than the ruling Fatah, and its leader, Ismail Haniya, went on to form a government. There was, of course, no way the Bush administration was going to allow it to survive. Unfortunately for Dahlan and his American masters Hamas got wind of the plan to eliminate it and launched an Israeli-like pre-emptive strike which drove the PSF forces and their leader out of the Gaza Strip. After this development a refreshingly honest analysis was delivered by David Wurmser who had served as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser. He said he believed that Hamas had had no intention of taking over the Gaza Strip until Fatah forced its hand. "It looks to me," he declared, "that what happened wasn't a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre pre-empted before it could happen." He went on: "The Bush administration engaged in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship (the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas) with victory." Wurmser also said that he was especially galled by the Bush administration's hypocrisy. "There is a stunning disconnect between the president's call for Middle East democracy and this policy. It directly contradicts it." Dahlan's humiliating defeat in the Gaza Strip did not diminish the Bush administration's support for him. In October 2007 it reportedly subjected Abbas to heavy pressure in an effort to persuade him to appoint Dahlan as his deputy. Fatah officials were quoted as saying that the US and some EU countries would like to see Dahlan succeed Abbas as head of the PA. Abbas was only one of very many Palestinians who believed, as I do, that it was Dahlan who delivered and placed for Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, the poison (polonium-210 or whatever) that killed Yasser Arafat. Driven by this belief and fear that he might well be Dahlan's next victim Abbas gave the order for him to be expelled from Fatah. That was in June 2011. Three months later Dahlan's house was raided by Palestinian police and his private armed guards were arrested. Subsequently Dahlan was banished from what is left of Palestine and took up residence in Dubai. (He and his wife Jaleela and their four children have Serbian citizenship and Dahlan himself also has Montenegrin citizenship). Today and assisted by the fact that a majority of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians are sick and tired of the impotence and corruption of the PA, Dahlan is seeking to make a comeback. And his chief promoter is Egypt's President Sisi. Last November at a meeting in Cairo he presented Abbas with a "road map" for cleaning up the Palestinian political arena. Sisi's main demand - his price for a continuing relationship with the PA - was reconciliation between Abbas and Dahlan. All the indications are that Sisi wants Dahlan to be Abbas's successor. Two related questions seem to me to be in order. The first is - Why, really, does Sisi want Dahlan to be the next president of the PA? The short answer is - Because that's what Israel's leaders want. The second question is - Why, really, do Israel's leaders want Dahlan to be Abbas's successor? The short answer is that they hope and perhaps even believe that he would be prepared to use force to compel the Palestinians to accept crumbs from Zionism's table - isolated Bantustans on 30-40 percent of the West Bank which they could call a state. My speculation is that even if Sisi-led Arab plotting and bribery did result in Dahlan replacing Abbas as president of the PA, he would almost certainly be assassinated if he tried to impose Zionism's surrender terms on the Palestinians. Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor
New York Times on Clinton and Libya: Portrait of a War Criminal By Bill Van Auken March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " WSWS " - A two-part series entitled The Libya Gamble published in the Sunday and Monday editions of the New York Times is a damning indictment of Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The piece, written by Times national security correspondent Scott Shane and investigative reporter Jo Becker, details the leading role played by Clinton in fomenting a war of aggression that killed tens if not hundreds of thousands. The fact that it is not intended as an exposure of these imperialist atrocities makes it all the more incriminating. The Times has endorsed Clintons presidential campaign, describing her as one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history and as a president who would use American military power effectively. The paper has helped promote the political propaganda touting her as a feminist icon and a candidate deserving the support of African-Americans. No one would suspect that Ms. Clintons criminal record makes her the political equivalent of a black widow spider. Even the Libya piece suggests that her pivotal role in instigating the US-NATO war of 2011 casts a favorable light on what kind of president she might be. It describes her as a diligent student and unrelenting inquisitor, absorbing fat briefing books, inviting dissenting views from subordinates, studying foreign counterparts to learn how to win them over. She was a pragmatist, willing to improvise... Taken for granted in this account is that all of this diligence, pragmatism and improvisation was in furtherance of a criminal war of aggression that laid waste to an entire society. Today, as the article notes, Clinton deflects questions about the war with bromides about the Libyans having participated in two electionswhich have produced what are now three competing governments, none of which can claim to rule any significant part of the country enmeshed in a bloody civil war. It is too soon to tell how things will evolve in Libya, she adds, five years after the war and under conditions in which Washington is once again deploying special operations troops on the ground and bombing the country from the air. The article acknowledges that Clinton had fought within the Obama administration against dropping support for Hosni Mubarak under conditions in which the masses of Egypt had risen up in a revolutionary struggle against the US-backed dictator. Yet somehow in Libya, the article argues, Clinton had a new opportunity to support the historic change that had just swept out the leaders of its neighbors Egypt and Tunisia. And Libya seemed a tantalizingly easy casewith just six million people, no sectarian divide and plenty of oil. Here the phrases tantalizingly easy and plenty of oil were the operative ones in Clintons real calculations. A regime change operation was mounted against the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi not to further the revolutionary upheavals that were dubbed the Arab spring, but rather to contain them by imposing a US-controlled puppet state in the country separating Egypt and Tunisia, and asserting unfettered Western control over Africas largest oil reserves in the bargain. The article establishes that Clinton pressed for a secret program that supplied arms to rebel militias, composed largely of Islamist groups, some with direct ties to Al Qaeda. Within the administration, the Times reports, she pressed for direct US military intervention on the grounds that the British and French governments would go ahead without the US and Washington would be left behind and be less capable of shaping the scramble for control of Libya and its oil wealth. The pretext, that Libyan government forces were on the verge of a genocidal massacre of protesters in the eastern city of Benghazi, was subsequently refuted by international human rights groups, and the total number killed in armed clashes before the US and NATO began their bombing of Libya amounted to barely 350. At the outset of this bombing campaign, the article recounts, numerous attempts were made by Libyan officials, UN functionaries, other African governments and the African Union to negotiate a ceasefire and a political settlement, all of which were rejected by Washington. Charles Kubic, a retired rear admiral who received a proposal from a top Libyan military officer for a 72-hour ceasefire, was told by the US military command to immediately cut off the discussion based on orders that had come from outside the Pentagon. The question that stays with me is, why didnt you spend 72 hours giving peace a chance? he told the Times. The obvious answer was that those who had promoted the Libyan intervention, with Clinton in the lead, were determined to have their war for regime change fought to a bloody conclusion. That came in October 2011 with the vicious lynch-mob murder of Gaddafi by the US-backed Islamist rebels. After watching a video on an aides BlackBerry of the Libyan leader being beaten and sodomized with a bayonet before he was killed, Clinton exclaimed Wow! She then infamously turned to her television interviewer, exclaimed We came, we saw, he died! and cackled in delight. Murdered alongside Gaddafi was his son Mutassim, who just two years earlier had been warmly welcomed to the State Department with smiles and handshakes by the same Hillary Clinton. As the article makes clear, these bloody crimes were viewed by Clinton and her supporters as grist for her 2016 presidential campaign. Her top aide at the State Department issued a memo stating that the record demonstrated Clintons leadership/ownership/stewardship of this countrys Libya policy from start to finish. The memos language put her at the center of everything, the article states: HRC announces ... HRC directs ... HRC travels ... HRC engages, it read. In the aftermath of the catastrophe in Libya, the article credits Clinton with pushing for an aggressive American program to arm and train Syrian rebels trying to topple President Bashar al-Assad. It fails, however, to spell out the concrete connection between these two imperialist interventions. Arms seized from Libyan government stockpiles were funneled, along with Libyan Islamist fighters, into Syria, under the supervision of the CIA, which established a secret station in Benghazi along with another in southern Turkey. After rivalries and recriminations between the agency and the Islamists erupted in the September 11, 2012 attack on the US facilities in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador and three security personnel, Clinton came under Republican fire, not for waging an illegal war, assassinating a foreign leader or arming Al Qaeda, but for an alleged cover-up of the Benghazi incident. Similarly, a continuing investigation has been mounted over Clintons use of a non-secure private email server which handled material deemed secret, but little attention has been paid to the content of these emails, which again implicate Clinton in the bloody crimes carried out in Libya, Syria and beyond. Summed up in Clintons role in the Libyan events is the arrogance and recklessness of a US foreign policy that is inseparable from militarism and aggression. In Clintons shameless attempt to exploit events that killed tens of thousands and turned millions into refugees to further her grubby political ambitions, one finds a consummate expression of the degraded character of the American ruling elite and its political system as a whole, and of the Democratic Party in particular. In a just world, or at least one in which the principles upon which the Nuremberg war crimes trials of the surviving leaders of the Third Reich continued to be observed, Hillary Clinton would not be running for US president but, at best, be spending the rest of her life in a prison cell. Copyright  1998-2016 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved
The Lion and the Sheep Why they hate Trump By Justin Raimondo March 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Antiwar " - On June 14, 1918, a nineteen year old Italian soldier by the name of Bernardo Vicario was ordered by his commander, Carl Rigoli, to carry out a curious task. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Italian forces would soon be hit with a furious bombardment that would mean the death of most of them. Rigoli clearly knew this, which is why he told young Bernardo to write an inscription on the ruined wall of a home in the village of Fagare, where they were holed up: Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep. Rigoli perished in the battle: Bernardo lived to tell the tale. And almost a hundred years later, a researcher looking for ways to smear GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump stumbled across a reference to it and attributed it to Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator. A reporter for Gawker, the notorious gossip site thats been sued for libel more times than I care to discover, had set up a parody Twitter account named Il Duce, and the reporter, one Ashley Feinberg, tweeted the not-said-by-Mussolini quote at Trump, who promptly retweeted it. Shortly afterward, Trump was confronted by reporter Chuck Todd, who wanted to know why he was retweeting something said by Mussolini. Trump wouldnt back down: Its a great quote, he said, quite correctly. That refusal, and the content of the quote itself, underscores and explains why he is winning and why the hysterical smear campaign directed at him and his campaign is failing big-time. But why  why do they hate him with such ferocity? The accusations of racism and the way he speaks without regard for upper class niceties doesnt explain the intensity of the hatred coming from the journalistic wolf pack and the Washington crowd. After all, shortly after Trump raised the issue of whether we should allow Muslims into the United States, the House of Representatives passed a bill  supported by libertarians like Rand Paul as well as mainline Republicans and Democrats  making it all but impossible for immigrants from Muslim countries to resettle here. It also requires all foreigners who have visited Iraq, Syria or Iran, or who hold dual citizenship from those countries, to apply for a visa before visiting here Yet we heard very little about that. So where is all this vitriol coming from? David Stockman, former chief of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, nails it: To be sure, there is much that is ugly, superficial and stupid about Donald Trumps campaign platform, if you can call it that, or loose cannon oratory to be more exact. More on that below, but at the heart of his appeal are two propositions which strike terror in the hearts of the Imperial Citys GOP operatives. To wit, he is loudly self-funding his own campaign and bombastically insisting that America is getting a bad deal everywhere in the world. The first of these propositions explicitly tells the legions of K-Street lobbies to take a hike, thereby posing a mortal threat to the fund raising rackets which are the GOPs lifeblood. And while the bad deal abroad is superficially about NAFTA and our $500 billion trade deficit with China, it is really an attack on the American Imperium. The American people are sick and tired of the Lindsey Graham/John McCain/George Bush/neocon wars of intervention and occupation; and they resent the massive fiscal burdens of our outmoded but still far-flung alliances, forward bases and apparatus of security assistance and economic aid. They especially have no patience for the continued huge cost of our commitments to cold war relics like NATO, the stationing of troops in South Korea and the defense treaty with the incorrigible Japanese, who still blatantly rig their trade rules against American exports. In short, The Donald is tapping a nationalist/isolationist impulse that runs deep among a weary and economically precarious main street public. He is clever enough to articulate it in the bombast of what sounds like a crude trade protectionism. Yet if Pat Buchanan were to re-write his speech, it would be more erudite and explicit about the folly of the American Imperium, but the message would be the same. All this was on display during the Houston GOP debate, and yet its significance was lost amid all the histrionics. To begin with, look at this exchange between former AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, and Trump: BLITZER: You said this about the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians  Im quoting you now: Let me be sort of a neutral guy. I dont want to say whose fault it is, I dont think it helps. TRUMP: Right. BLITZER: Heres the question. How do you remain neutral when the U.S. considers Israel to be Americas closest ally in the Middle East? TRUMP: Well, first of all, I dont think they do under President Obama because I think hes treated Israel horribly, all right? I think hes treated Israel horribly. I was the grand marshall down 5th Avenue a number of years ago for the Israeli Day Parade, I have very close ties to Israel. Ive received the Tree of Life Award and many of the greatest awards given by Israel. As president, however, theres nothing that I would rather do to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors generally. And I think it serves no purpose to say that you have a good guy and a bad guy. Now, I may not be successful in doing it. Its probably the toughest negotiation anywhere in the world of any kind. OK? But it doesnt help if I start saying, I am very pro-Israel, very pro, more than anybody on this stage. But it doesnt do any good to start demeaning the neighbors, because I would love to do something with regard to negotiating peace, finally, for Israel and for their neighbors. And I cant do that as well  as a negotiator, I cannot do that as well if Im taking  sides. That is nothing short of remarkable, especially if one recalls the Mitt Romney-Barack Obama debate in which both competed with the other in proclaiming their absolute fealty to Israel and their refusal to even recognize that there are two sides to the issue. Marco Rubio was outraged by this unprecedented display of common sense, and launched into one of his robo-responses, repeating word-for-word some editorial hed probably read in Commentary or the Weekly Standard. And in the course of it he said something remarkably stupid: The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald. Now one assumes he meant the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isnt about a real estate deal, but the reality is thats precisely what it is  a real estate deal gone bad. Its all about land. And it will take fair-minded negotiating and  yes  deal-making to solve that festering problem. Rubio cannot acknowledge this because his donors wont let him. As a creature of Imperial Washington  where Israel is always right and the Palestinians are always wrong  Rubio cant allow himself to say or even think that. Another example of why Trump has roused the ire of the political class: in refuting Rubios misleading accusation that he did not change his position in August 2011 and come out publicly against the Libyan intervention and starting another war in Syria  both of which he has denounced in no uncertain terms  Trump said this: If these politicians went to the beach and didnt do a thing, and we had Saddam Hussein and if we had Gadhafi in charge, instead of having terrorism all over the place, wed be  at least they killed terrorists, all right? And Im not saying they were good because they were bad, they were really bad, but we dont know what were getting. You look at Libya right now, ISIS, as we speak, is taking over their oil. As we speak, its a total mess. We would have been better off if the politicians took a day off instead of going into war. I bolded the above because it succinctly sums up not only the Trumpian foreign policy but also Trumps critique of the past twenty years. And to make things even scarier for the War Party, he wants us to pull back from policing the world to attend to business that must be attended to: We can no longer defend all of these countries, Japan, Germany, South Korea. You order televisions, you order almost anything, youre getting it from these countries. Whether its a Mercedes-Benz, or whether its an air conditioning unit. Theyre coming out of these countries. They are making a fortune. Saudi Arabia, we are defending Saudi Arabia. Before Before the oil went down, now theyre making less, but theyre making plenty. They were making $1 billion dollars a day. We defend all of these countries for peanuts. You talk about budgets. We have to start getting reimbursed for taking care of the military services for all of these countries. Trump has called for pulling US troops out of Europe, where theyve been sitting since the end of World War II: these countries are rich, he argues, and have to start defending themselves. He also questions what they have to be afraid of in Putins Russia, declaring he could get along with the Russian leader, with the implicit assumption being they could too. Indeed, Trump challenges every major new American incursion into regions where it doesnt belong: Syria, where he wonders why were subsidizing rebels and we dont know who they are; Ukraine, which he disdains as simply a backwater where we have no interests; and Libya, where he points to the chaos caused by Hillarys war and where were getting ready to revisit. Trump represents a deadly challenge to the high command of the War Party  the neoconservatives who lied us into war in Iraq  and were called out for it by him. These people are the main driving force that is ideologically committed to maintaining Washingtons imperial pretensions even as we plunge further into bankruptcy. They are behind the vicious smear campaign that equates Trump with Mussolini, Hitler, David Duke, and the Devil himself. They see that they are losing control of the GOP  their pathway to power  and they are reacting like the cornered rats they are. If Trump gets the Republican nomination the neocons are through as a viable political force on the Right. Thats why National Review devoted a whole issue of their magazine to the theme Against Trump. Thats why the neocons allies in the media are going after him hammer and tongs. Thats why neocons like Robert Kagan are openly declaring they will support Hillary Clinton, while others  including the formerly libertarian network of organizations funded by Charles and David Koch  are financing a Stop Trump campaign. There is even talk of the (impractical) idea of running a third party candidate in order to take votes away from Trump. The rats are converging, squealing up a storm of abuse, and resorting to the most obvious smear tactics in order to keep their bread-and-butter on the table. Yet this, too, will backfire, just as all the other attempts to stop Trump have flopped  because people have had enough. They are beyond angry  indeed, theyre happy! Overjoyed by the sight of the political class on the run  and determined to make them run even faster. I hear Trump wears a bullet-proof vest, and has done so for years. If I were him Id guard my head  and watch my back. This is not to say I personally give one iota of political support to Trump  and Antiwar.com doesnt endorse candidates for any office, period. David Stockmans piece, linked above, describes some of the pitfalls of Trumpismo, which I fully endorse. Yet that is not my purpose here. My job is to analyze current events: instead of reiterating what everyone else is saying, albeit in different words, my purpose is to get behind the headlines and go beyond the groupthink so that my readers can not only understand what is happening in the world  but also develop some insight into how to go about changing it. If Trump secures the nomination, the way is paved for transforming the GOP from the party of perpetual war to the party that honors the long-forgotten isolationist Sen. Robert A. Taft, who used to be celebrated as "Mr. Republican." And if Trump actually wins the White House, the military-industrial complex is finished, along with the globalists who dominate foreign policy circles in Washington. While Trump is no libertarian, the effect of this sea-change in the foreign policy realm will be to objectively cut the dominance of federal power in our lives, first of all by saving us from bankruptcy and freeing up resources for the private sector, and secondly by reducing the blowback that has empowered terrorists. Dont be fooled: GOP bigwigs arent afraid Trump will lose to Hillary. Theyre afraid hell win. Trump, for all his crudity and contradictions, represents a populist uprising against the Empire and those who profit from our imperialist foreign policy. Thats why the political class hates him  and has vowed to destroy him. I started out telling you the story of the lion and the sheep, and I end with the good news that the sheep  inspired by the lion  are finally turning on the sheepherders. Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].
An 18-year-old boy, Innocent Ogah, was on Tuesday badly injured after a mast belonging to CitiBank collapsed and fell on buildings at the Ereko area of Lagos .

The incident, which happened at about 9:04am, also destroyed other properties.

Confirming the incident to newsmen, the General Manager, Lagos State Emergency Management Agency, LASEMA, Mr. Michael Akindele, said investigation by the agency revealed that the said mast on the CitiBank building at 20 Ereko Street was not properly maintained before it fell, following a windstorm in the morning.

He said the agency received an alert through the emergency Control Room.

Akindele said, There was no loss of life recorded.

However, an 18-year-old boy identified as Innocent Ogah sustained a terrible head injury and he has been moved to General Hospital, he confirmed.

Meanwhile, Akindele advised organisations to always carry out proper maintenance of masts erected by them.

The state government would continue to carry out the monitoring and surveillance to sanction non-compliant companies in effort to avert incidents of this nature, he assured.

Source: Dailypost
President Muhammadu Buharis efforts to pull the country out of the mess entrenched by past administrations in the country is being sabotaged by angry elites, the Senate Leader Ali Ndume, has said.

Speaking on the economic downturn in the country, Ndume (APC, Borno South) said the elites are angry with the anti-graft campaign of the Buhari administration.

He also said the elites should be blamed for the hardship Nigerians are currently facing especially as its concerns the rising prices of food commodities.

According to the Senate leader, the elites are deliberately sabotaging the Buharis administration in order to make the All Progressives Congress (APC) government look bad in the eyes of Nigerians.

He claimed that these group of people benefitted immensely from the Peoples Democratic Party-led federal government in the last 16 years.

If not for the saboteurs, Nigerians would have been reaping the dividend of electing President Buhari. Otherwise, what has the fall of naira to do with the price of millet, tomatoes and other locally produced commodities? It is understandable that the price of imported rice is affected, he said.

Ndume, however, appealed to Nigerians to be patient, saying, the APC government is working hard to turn around things positively.

We are working hard on the 2016 budget and in it, the president has included things that would enhance the living conditions of the citizenry. We will pass the budget this month, he said.
Victor Moses was detained in the town of Alkaleri in northeastern Bauchi state when he went to a mosque and claimed he wanted to convert to Islam, said Brigadier-General Abraham Dusu. Dusu, who commands the Bauchi artillery brigade, said Moses confessed to conducting surveillance for Boko Haram from a shop near the St Theresa Roman Catholic Church in Madalla, near Abuja.

At least 44 worshippers were killed when a bomb ripped through St Theresas on December 25, 2011 in what was Boko Harams deadliest attack on Christian places of worship. The Islamist group later claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attack, which was one of several over the festive period. Kabiru Sokoto, the mastermind of the bombing, was arrested and later sentenced to life in jail.

Dusu told Nigerias highest-ranking army officer, chief of army staff General Tukur Buratai, during a visit to Bauchi on Monday that Moses was from the central state of Benue. He aroused suspicion among locals in Bauchi, who in turn alerted the military. Our troops on duty arrested Victor Moses after receiving a report from people in the area that the suspect had been loitering around the mosque claiming he was a Christian and wanted to convert to Islam, Dusu said as he paraded Moses before Buratai. But he was not from the area, they suspected him and reported to our men.

Boko Haram, which wants to create a hardline Islamic state in northeast Nigeria, has attacked Christian churches as well as government buildings in its nearly seven-year insurgency. It has also hit schools, markets, bus stations and mosques in an apparently indiscriminate targeting of civilians of all faiths that has left at least 17,000 dead since 2009.

Source:Vanguard
President Muhammadu Buhari has said that Nigeria would continue to support the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to realise the noble objectives of regional integration.

President Buhari pointed out that the support would also aid peaceful co-existence that inspired the creation of ECOWAS in May 28, 1975.

Receiving the outgoing President of the ECOWAS Commission, Ambassador Kadre Ouedraogo, at the State House on Tuesday, the President said that the pursuit of the laudable goals of the regional economic bloc, would always remain a top priority for Nigeria.

Nigeria, by its size and resources, has no alternative than to back ECOWAS to the hilt. We are part of ECOWAS. Indeed, we are at the very heart of it, so we will continue to play our role, the President stated.

President Buhari further pointed out that the gains recorded so far in collectively providing peace in the sub-region and curtailing health challenges, were major achievements of ECOWAS that must be sustained.

Now, we have to get more reliable intelligence and support from the international community and utilise the gains for the development of our countries, he said.

The President commended the outgoing President of the ECOWAS Commission for his diligence and visionary leadership, while wishing him the best in his future engagements.
Author and former CIA officer Barry Eisler spoke at the Association of Former Intelligence Officers opposite ex-CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden on Monday. In front of about a hundred former CIA, FBI, and NSA operatives, Eisler talked about bulk surveillance, whistleblowing, and why intelligence professionals need to take especially great care not to let propaganda pervert their intelligence.

Eisler's new novel, "God's Eye View," inspired by the Snowden revelations, is available now on Amazon.

"The whole thing was fun and a little surreal, and if I got a few people to look at these issues in a different light, I'm glad," says Barry.

You can read an adaptation of his remarks in this Boing Boing post.

"Unfortunately, the event format was such that no real debate with Hayden was possible. Frustrating, because, for example, at one point during Q&A Hayden opined that Iran is the world's greatest purveyor of terrorism."

"If I could have responded, I would have wondered aloud, as I like to do from time to time, how I'd explain an assertion like that to a Martian."

Martian: We on Mars are confused by your General Hayden's comment. He is speaking of Iran, is that correct? A country with the GDP of Finland?

Me: Uh, yes.

Martian: But didn't your Martin Luther King say almost sixty years ago that the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is America?

Me: He did say that, yes. In 1967, during the Vietnam war.

Martian: And hasn't America had innumerable additional wars since then?

Me: It has, yes.

Martian: But then America's wars must not be terrorism.

Me: Right.

Martian: That is fortunate, for our understanding on Mars is that America spends more on its military than the next eight nations on earth combinedfive of which are American allies.

Me: Yes, we do have a large military.

Martian: Do you not maintain over 800 military basesmore than any other nation

in your planet's history?

Me: Yes, that's true.

Martian: Watching from Mars, we have always associated overseas military bases with what you on earth call "empire."

Me: Americans don't want an empire.

Martian: Why then do you maintain so many overseas military bases, as empires do?

Me: We just want to keep the peace.

Martian: We have a joke on Marswe like to say, "Iran must want war, otherwise why would they have moved their country so close to America's military bases?" You see, we find this funny because of course a country cannot be moved, and in fact it is the military bases that have been created all around Iran, not Iran that has moved its country close to the military bases.

Me: Right, I get it.

Martian: And do you not also accuse Iran of "meddling" in Iraq, a country you bombed, invaded, and occupied with a quarter million troops, a country that is on the other side of the Earth from you but adjacent to Iran, a country that your last four presidents in a row have bombed?

Me: Yes, you do see that word used in magazines like The Economist. They mean Iran is funding Iraqi politicians and infiltrating Iraq with spies.

Martian: So this "meddling" it is worse than invading?

Me: Look, we're just trying to promote stability.

Martian: On Earth, war makes things more stable?

Me: It'scomplicated. But really, America is a peace-loving culture.

Martian: But you have more wars than anyone. On Mars, this does not seem peaceful.

Me: Okay, but it's not terrorism. Terrorism is when, you know, you terrorize people.

Martian: But did you not, alone among the peoples of your planet, use atomic weapons against your fellow humans, when you bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Me: Only to end the war.

Martian: Did you not kill at least 600,000 civilians in your war in Vietnam?

Me: We did.

Martian: Did you not kill at least 100,000 civilians in your latest war in Iraq, and turn four million people in that war into refugees?

Me: We did.

Martian: And did not your former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declare that a half million Iraqi children starved to death because of American sanctions was "worth it"?

Me: She did say that, though she took it back afterward.

Martian: And is it not the case that

Me: Okay, look, I get it. America does more war and violence than anyone else. But it's not about terrorizing people, okay?

Martian: But are not the people you kill terrorized? And what about the parents of dead children, the children of dead parents, and the burned, blinded, brain-damaged, crippled, maimed, and mutilated by your weapons? Our understanding of humans is that you are terrorized by such things.

Me: I guess so. But it's not like we're trying

to terrorize.

Martian: But did you not call your own tactics in your second war in Iraq "Shock and Awe"?

Me: Well, yeah. We were trying to, you know, shock and awe them.

Martian: Perhaps the problem is our imperfect renderings of Earth languages. In Martian, we cannot distinguish between terrorizing with bombs, and shocking and awing with them.

Me: Look, I see where you're trying to go with this, okay? But we're not like ISIS and other terrorist groups. I mean, you know what ISIS does? ISIS burns people alive. That's terrorism.

Martian: But in your war in Vietnam, did you not use an incendiary weapon called Napalm, a kind of jelly gasoline that sticks to human bodies and causes horrific burning?

Me: I guess, but that was a long time ago.

Martian: But do you not currently deploy what your

refer to as thermobaric weapons?

Me: I don't know that word.

Martian: It is derived from two Greek words meaning "heat" and "pressure." In English, it refers to a type of explosive that produces an exceptionally hot and powerful blast. The lucky victims are obliterated. The less lucky suffer terrible agonies before they die.

Me: Well, I'm sure that isn't our intent.

Martian: But you have named one such weapon the "Hellfire" missile. Does this not mean you are well aware that the missile burns

your fellow humans with fire? Was it not in fact designed to do so?

Me: I guess it just comes down to that terrorists want to kill innocent people. But America doesn't. When we kill innocent people, we call it "collateral damage." Do you know that phrase?

Martian: We do, but our translators have struggled with it. For a long time, we failed to understand why a people who are ordinarily so plain-spoken would devise such a vague phrase. Then we realized, you Americans find such a phrase preferable to something like, "the burning to death of innocent human beings, the blowing into tiny scraps of meat and bone ordinary people just trying to live their lives, the ripping asunder of the limbs of children, the blinding and mutilation of baby humans"

Me: Right, I get it. But, yes, it's not like

we want those things to happen. When we do them, they're tragic accidents.

That's the difference.

Martian: This is interesting. You mean terrorists want to kill innocents, while you Americans are mere willing to kill innocents.

Me: Something like that, I think. Yes.

Martian: Perhaps we Martians are simply dense. It seems that terrorists have goals for which they will kill. Is that not also true for your country?

Me: Yes, but again, the terrorists want

to kill innocent people.

Martian: It is difficult for we Martians to understand the difference. Presumably these people you call terrorists simply want to achieve certain geopolitical goals that they believe require killing innocent people. Presumably if they believed they had another way to achieve these goals, they would not feel the need to kill innocent people.

Me: I don't understand.

Martian: I mean, perhaps terrorists are killing people pragmatically. In other words, for terrorists, killing people is a means, not an end.

Me: So what?

Martian: I am trying how to understand how it is different for you, given that you are the "good guys," to use your Earth phrase. Do you not also, in all your wars, kill people as a means?

Me: But we don't want to.

Martian: In such circumstances, it is sometimes difficult for we Martians to distinguish between the concept of "want" and the concept of "willing." For in the service of the geopolitical goals you seek to achieve through the means of violence, is it not an empirical and historical fact that inevitably you will kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, inflict the most horrific injuries on hundreds of thousands more, and turn millions of people into stateless refugees, with all the terrorizing that such events necessarily entail?

Me: I guess.

Martian: But this is not terrorism.

Me: No. Not when we do it.

Martian: I confess I am more perplexed now than when we started. I do not understand how the nation that commits the most violence and causes the most terror can claim other nations are the most terroristic. We Martians will have to study this question more closely.

Barry Eisler's new novel, "God's Eye View," inspired by the Snowden revelations, is available now on Amazon.
A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has ordered the Federal Government to disclose the total amount of money recovered from stolen public assets since 1999 by past and present governments till date, as well as details of the spending of such funds.

The court noted that successive governments, since the return of democracy in 1999, breached the fundamental principles of transparency and accountability for failing to disclose details of spending of recovered stolen public funds, including on a dedicated website.

The court subsequently ordered the government of President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that his government and that of the governments of former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru YarAdua, and President Goodluck Jonathan account fully for all recovered loot.

Trial judge, Justice Mohammed Idris, in his judgment in a Freedom of Information suit by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, on Friday, also ordered the Federal Government to disclose information on the total amount of recovered stolen public assets by each government; the amount of recovered stolen public assets spent by each government as well as the objects of such spending and the projects on which such funds were spent. The judge dismissed all objections raised by the Federal Government and upheld SERAPs arguments.
The number of refugees flowing into Europe has soared in the first two months of the year amid tighter borders and ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, prompting warnings from agencies and rights groups of a looming humanitarian crisis. On Tuesday, the UNHCR said that 131,724 people made the journey across the Mediterranean during January and February, with 122,637 refugees landing in Greece. This is approaching the total for the first half of 2015, [when] 147,209 [arrived], said UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards.

At least 418 refugees died on their way to Europe in the first two months of the year, compared with 428 in the same period last year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. IOM estimated that of the 321 who died on the Eastern Mediterranean route, which ends in Greece, 77 were children  an average exceeding one child death per day.

Many predicted the number of refugees would rise to a new record in 2016. In 2015, more than one million refugees fled to Europe by sea. The IOM said: With ten months [of 2016] left, it now appears likely that last years total will be surpassed, possibly before the end of the summer.

Last Wednesday, in a bid to stem the flow, Austria and nine Balkan states agreed to grant entry only to those in proved need of protection  a move which sharply reduced the intake and effectively excluded refugees from Afghanistan, a country where civilian casualties reached a record 11,000 in 2015.

Aljazeera.
Dozens of Iraqi soldiers and a general have been killed in separate suicide bombing attacks in Baghdad and Fallujah. Two consecutive suicide bombers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group killed at least 25 Iraqi soldiers and Popular Mobilisation Force fighters when they targeted their convoy in the village of Jumailah in northern Fallujah, military sources told Al Jazeera.

Tuesdays bombings came a day after four ISIL suicide bombers infiltrated an army headquarters west of Baghdad, detonating their explosives and killing an Iraqi general and five soldiers, according to police and army officials.

Late on Monday night, those bombers struck a regimental headquarters in the Haditha area of Anbar province, killing Staff Brigadier General Ali Aboud, Lieutenant Colonel Farhan Ibrahim and four others, the sources said. Suicide bombings and other attacks against Iraqi forces and other groups have become increasingly common in Iraq in recent months.

Earlier on Monday, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral in Miqdadiyah, a town northeast of Baghdad in the province of Diyala, killing at least 38 people and injuring scores more. Later on Monday, at least eight security-force personnel were killed in attacks targeting a checkpoint in the western Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, police sources said.
The Kano State Government has distanced itself from the abduction, forced marriage and conversion to Islam of a teenage girl, Ese Oruru, since Aug. 2015.

Miss Oruru was taken from her native Bayelsa to Kano by Yunusa Yellow, a man who lived in Bayelsa and was her food vendor mothers regular customer.

A statement signed by the state Commissioner for Information, Youths and Sports, Muhammed Garba, condemned the episode, and decried security agencies poor handling of the matter.

It added that although the state government was not aware of the incident, the directive of Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi, for the release of the girl should have been acted on.

It, therefore, ordered that the abductor be brought to book since the Constitution and Islamic teaching abhor abduction and forced marriage.

The statement further condemned any statement by anyone or group, linking the government with the matter in the social media, adding that the act was meant to tarnish the image of the state.

It stressed that the abductor was responsible for his action and should solely take responsibility for it, noting that the state has cordial relation with Bayelsa indigenes and the state.

The government enjoined indigenes of Kano state living in other parts of the country to live peacefully with their host communities and respect their ways of life.

(NAN)
Three students of the Babington Macauley Junior Seminary (BMJS), in Ikoro area of Lagos State have been abducted from theschool by gunmen.

LEADERSHIP investigation revealed that the criminals broke the perimetre fence at the back of the school and abducted the three girls around 8pm, on Monday.

The hoodlums reportedly stormed the school premises located at Agunfoye-Lugbusi village, Ikorodu in a commando style and swiftly escaped from the scene after the abduction.

It was gathered that the abduction of the victims has created fears in the students in the school as some were said to have packed their belongings and fled.

The abduction had also created worry in the Lagos State police command as even the police commissioner, Fatai Owoseni and a team of crack detectives were at the school premises till about 4am yesterday.

A police detective told LEADERSHIP at the scene that Owoseni has vowed to rescue the victims and ensure that the perpetrators did not go unpunished.

Eagle-eyed detectives were still at the scene when the correspondent visited, while some were said to be combing the bush and asking questions from residents.

Police police public relations officer, SP Dolapo Badmos while confirming the incident, said that efforts were on to track the abductors and rescue the girls.

Dolapo said police are working towards that and the hoodlums will be arrested and will not go unpunished.

Yes, three female students were taken away by some criminals on Monday night but investigations are on to track them. We cannot give you more information.

Source:Leadership
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in Lagos State, Jimi Agbaje, says the last general election turned him into a debtor.

ABUJAPolice authorities in Abuja yesterday night said Ese Oruru, freed Monday, will now be officially handed over to her mother, Mrs. Oruru, today.

Daily Times

The House of Representatives, on Tuesday, urged the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Muhammad Bello to stop further action on the planned closure of 556 private schools operating illegally in the capital territory.

Guardian

Former Super Eagles strongman, Emmanuel Emenike, has ruled out the possibility of returning to the squad.

Daily Trust

President Muhammadu Buhari says his administration will not privatise healthcare institutions in order not to exclude the poor and the vulnerable from accessing healthcare services.

National Mirror
Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State has declared support for President Muhammadu Buhari over his stance on the N5,000 monthly stipend campaign promise to unemployed graduates.

While Buhari said he had different priority as far as the monthly stipend was concerned, the Presidency on Monday night insisted that the N5,000 promised for the vulnerable and poor Nigerians, still stands.

The presidents comment, which was made in faraway Saudi Arabia when he addressed the Nigerian community in that country, has received mixed feelings with Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State condemning the All Progressives Congress-led federal government for going back on most of the campaign promises it made to Nigerians.

But speaking with State House correspondents on Tuesday shortly after he met with Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Okorocha, who doubles as Chairman of the Progressives Governors Forum, said that the promise will be implemented one way or the other.

He said: Well you see to be honest with you it is a great idea, but there are many ways to give that support, sometimes it could be in cash which has its own challenges. Handling of that is also in itself a wonderful and great idea.

Take for instance, in Imo State now I have introduced what is called empowerment, they buy motor cycles and give people N5,000 or N 10,000, for me that is not my style. My style is to declare free education, from primary, secondary to university; nobody pays one Naira in Imo state.

The very poor people who have to ensure a lot of social inconveniences to pay school fees are no longer dong that, what has happened is that he has saved that money to produce further wealth, so if you keep money through that system, it creates more impact than physical cash.

Physical cash sometimes creates more problems, so it is great idea, we have to do it one way or the other as time comes.

The governor also supported President Buharis anti-corruption campaign, stressing that any money stolen out of the treasury will always have adverse effect on development of infrastructure in the country.
The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), yesterday, released the text of the Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis address to thousands of IPOB members who gathered last Sunday at the Vatican City for the weekly Angelus, saying the Pope has cautioned their oppressors, the Nigerian government and its military and their agents to repent and stop killing Biafra agitators or face the wrath of God that will be catastrophic.

IPOB quoted the Pontiff to have said that it is never too late to convert an oppressor to change from his evil activities, including murderous activities, but it is urgent, it is now, let them begin today to change from their oppression and killing of innocent people through all sorts of violent means, including the jack boot of the military.

According to the pro Biafra group, the Pope spoke on invincible patience, explaining how Gods unyielding concern for sinners should provoke patience in us, asking if we have thought of Gods patience.

Have you thought of His unyielding concern for sinners, how this should provoke patience among people, including governments, instead of killing people on slightest provocation or no provocation at all, let alone people who are protesting against unfair treatments or for something they feel is their right?

IPOB said the Pope told them that God does not permit tragedies to punish sins but rather, that Jesus uses warnings that sinners will perish if they do not repent, adding that if the oppressors of peaceful agitators like the Biafra agitators in Nigeria fail to repent, the wrath of God will be catastrophic against them.

Read the Popes address here.
The Senate on Tuesday approved President Muhammadu Buharis request for the extension of the implementation of the N114 billion FCT capital budget to March 31.

The Senate acceded to the presidents request and gave the bill an accelerated hearing as it was considered for second reading, third reading and passed.

The Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, directed the conference committee of the Senate to harmonise its figures with the House of Representatives.

Earlier, while presenting the bill for second reading, the Leader of the Senate, Ali Ndume, noted that the 2015 FCT budget was approved on May 28, 2015, allowing only seven months for its implementation.

He said that in order to meet the obligations of the FCT and as requested by the president, the Senate should give accelerated passage to the request for extension.

He said that in view of the seven months period, the FCT budget implementation only stood at 40 per cent, hence the need for the extension.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Buhari on Feb. 23 requested the Senate to extend the implementation of the budget to March 31.

(NAN)
Israeli forces have shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers during an alleged stabbing in the occupied West Bank, as tit-for-tat violence and months of escalated tensions continue. The two were fatally shot while infiltrating Eli, a Jewish-only settlement in the central West Bank, and allegedly wounding a settler in a stabbing incident, the Israeli army said in a statement.

Two assailants infiltrated the community of Eli, south of Nablus. They attacked a man outside his home, the army said in a statement. Forces arrived  [and] shot the attackers resulting in their death. According to a report by the Palestinian Maan News Agency, the boys, both 17, were Labeeb Azzam and Muhammad Zaghlawan from the nearby village of Qaryot. In recent months, Palestinian protests against Israels occupation have intensified. Rights groups have accused Israeli forces of responding harshly to demonstrations.

Since October 1, Israeli forces or settlers have killed 186 Palestinians, including unarmed demonstrators, bystanders and attackers. Meanwhile, Palestinian attackers have killed at least 28 Israelis, mostly in stabbing attacks.

Wednesdays incident came just a day after Israeli troops shot dead 22-year-old Eyad Omar Sajadiya, a Palestinian resident of the West Banks Qalandiya refugee camp, during clashes sparked by an incursion into the camp. Another ten were injured during the clashes. Upwards of half-a-million Israelis live in more than 150 Jewish-only settlements across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, according to the Israeli rights group BTselem.
An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more.

But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be  and shouldnt be  bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre.

Have an interest in what youre writing about

Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show.

If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words  within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating.

Include fascinating details

Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to.

Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting

When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read.

Borrow some creative writing techniques

Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting.

consider your own opinion

Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others.

Cut the waffle

Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem.

Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose.

employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing

Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them.

You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect.

Avoid repetitive phrasing

Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable.

Use some figurative language

Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know.

As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts  mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy.

Employ rhetorical questions

Anticipate the questions your reader might ask.

One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration.

Proofread

Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them.
Yesterday, Microsoft re-re-released three patches -- KB 2952664, KB 2976978 and KB 2977759 -- all of which offer "compatibility" updates for those of you hell-bent on upgrading from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 via Windows Update.

We also received two new patches -- KB 3138612 and KB 3138615 -- that update Windows Update by replacing their tired, old counterparts.

KB 2952664, our old "compatibility update" for upgrading Win7 to Win10, is back. The KB article says it's now up to revision 18. I wrote about this patch less than a month ago and have been writing about it since it first appeared in April 2014. Back in October 2014, Microsoft MVP dvk01, posting on the Microsoft Answers forum said:

This is the sort of update that should be offered ONLY when you intend to update as part of the pre check by Microsoft when you do a compatibility check on a new OS to see if it will be suitable.

I concurred at the time, and I concur now, 18 months later. If you're running Windows 7 and headed to Windows 10 sometime soon, then by all means, install the patch. If not, fuhgeddaboutit.

KB 2976978 performs the same service for Windows 8 and 8.1. I wrote about this patch, too, a month ago. It's just as useless now as it was then. The KB article pegs it at version 21, and it pains me to see so many bits needlessly slaughtered in such a futile cause.

KB 2977759 does the same, except it's for Windows 7 systems that don't have Service Pack 1 installed. Apparently there's going to be push (indeed, one may already be under way) to get original Win7 systems, without SP1, upgraded to Windows 10. The KB article says it's only at revision 17.

In the new-lipstick-same-pig category, we have two optional patches with completely new KB numbers.

KB 3138612, version 1.0, is a new version of Windows Update, destined for Win7 and Server 2008 R2. Microsoft doesn't exactly describe what's new, but it does say that this version of Windows Update supersedes last month's KB 3135445. I talked about KB 3135445 last month, and noted:

KB 3135445 is a new patch -- at least, a new patch number -- that's supposed to help exorcise the monsters in the Windows 7 update program. Unfortunately, being an update to Windows Update, it contains many of the same files that were in KB 2990214, and it may well be tarred by the same brush that I mentioned back in April 2015.

So this new 3138612 supersedes last month's KB 3135445, which in turn has many of the same files that were in KB 2990214. Back in April 2015, Windows product manager Joseph Conway posted a description of the re-release of KB 2990214 saying:

These WU [Windows Update] clients are used as part of the Windows 10 upgrade scenarios which will go live at release but are still used for down-level operating systems as the "regular" Windows Update client. This update is applicable to your systems even if you're not planning to migrate to Windows 10, so don't think you can skip it.

That post has been pulled from TechNet (at least, I can't find it), but you can read more of what he posted in my excerpt from April 2015.

Finally, the new KB 3138615, version 1.0 -- a new version of Windows Update for Win 8.1 and Server 2012 R2 -- supersedes last month's KB 3135449, which I also talked about last month. Just like the Win7 Windows Update update, there's no avowed connection to the previous patch, KB 3044374, but many of the same files were replaced.

A month ago, I summed up the Windows Update updates by saying:

I'm left with the impression that Microsoft wants to break with its sordid history with Windows Update patches and offer these two new patches to fix the long-standing Windows Update lethargy problems. If you feel Windows Update is running fast enough, I don't see any big reason to install either of them. But if Windows Update is running at a crawl, it would behoove you to get caught up.

And that observation stands again -- although it looks like Microsoft's performed yet another KB number pirouette, no doubt distancing itself twice-removed from the old, much-maligned versions of Windows Update.

Bottom line: Unless Windows Update is horribly slow, I don't see any reason at all to install any of these optional updates.
Triple Digit Hog Rally Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Lean hogs extended their rally into the weekend with another $0.20 to $2.10 gains in the front months. December was up the most on Friday, but is still a $1.40 discount to Feb. Through the week, December... HEZ22 : 89.125s (+2.41%) HEJ23 : 93.850s (+0.78%) KMZ22 : 98.000s (+1.16%)

Cotton Limits the Weeks Pullback with Friday Strength Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Cotton futures traded in a wide 413 point range from +253 to -160 (Dec). At the close the front months were 32 to 173 points in the black. December closed the week at a net 402 point loss, having spent... CTZ22 : 79.13s (+2.24%) CTH23 : 78.55s (+1.67%) CTK23 : 78.15s (+1.44%)

Wheats Closed Mixed on Friday Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT CBT SRW futures ended the last trade day of the week with 1 to 1 1/2 cent gains. For the December contract that meant a net 9 cent loss for the week. KC futures pulled back by 1/2 a cent to 2 cents on... ZWZ22 : 850-6s (+0.18%) ZWH23 : 869-4s (+0.17%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.8533 (+0.24%) KEZ22 : 948-2s (-0.16%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.0581 (-0.16%) MWZ22 : 961-4s (-0.10%)

Nov Beans Held under $14 Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT The Friday session ended with soybean futures 3 1/4 to 4 cents higher with November options having expired. Nov soybeans spent the week in a 41 1/2 cent trading range and ended 11 3/4 cents higher from... ZSX22 : 1395-4s (+0.29%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.5026 (+0.29%) ZSF23 : 1404-4s (+0.32%) ZSH23 : 1411-6s (+0.28%)

New Contract High for Dec Cattle Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Cattle added another 62 to 75 cents to the upside on Friday, with December printing a new life of contract high of $152.50. Dec gained a net $4.65 for the week. The weeks cash trade picked up on Thursday... LEV22 : 150.475s (+0.47%) LEZ22 : 152.425s (+0.49%) LEG23 : 155.525s (+0.44%) GFV22 : 175.275s (-0.17%) GFX22 : 178.350s (+0.45%)

Fractionally Mixed Friday Close in Corn Barchart - Fri Oct 21, 4:40PM CDT Corn futures firmed up on Friday for a fractionally UNCH close to the week. From Friday to Friday December futures traded in an 18 1/4 cent range, and went home 5 1/2 cents lower. The board has a 6 1/4... ZCZ22 : 684-2s (unch) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.7335 (-0.09%) ZCH23 : 690-4s (unch) ZCK23 : 689-6s (unch)
These are interesting times in K-12 philanthropy. Even as big reform funders like Walton and Broad double down on charters, lots of other approaches to boosting student outcomes are gaining traction among ed funders.

Were watching all this very carefully, looking at which ideas are attracting the biggest piles of chips. Education nonprofits and school districts should also pay attention, because the sooner you see which way things are going, the sooner you can grab your place in line with key funders  that is, assuming your work is aligned with their priorities.

One fast growing thread of funding weve written a lot about lately are the new investments being made in learning. Newer ed funders like Mark Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, George Lucas, and the Sandler Foundation are keenly focused on the challenge of how to help students learn in better ways  ways that are tailored to who they are, and as importantly, that teach the creativity and critical problem solving skills theyll need to succeed the 21st century labor market.

Related:

Another trend were watching is the growing number of funders backing efforts that connect young people early to the worlds of work and careers. A few ideas inform this push. One is that too many young people, especially low-income kids of color, never get starts in the work world in empowering ways. The sooner kids make that connection, the better chance theyll have in life. Second, employers complain ceaselessly about the huge mismatch between what students are learning at all school levels through college, and the skills they actually need to succeed on the job. Closing this skills mismatch strikes many funders as an easy way to expand opportunity. Third, the ability of a young person to access the world of work is where the rubber hits the road with social inequality, a topic of rising concern to funders. If you have relatives who are connected to work and career, its a lot easier to find a way in. If not, this world can seem very mysterious, with lots of closed doors.

Weve written about the growing number of funders who are keen to expand school-to-career pathways for disadvantaged young people. Some have an eye on ensuring the transition to work after college. Some are focusing earlier, at the K-12 level. Together, they are pulling various levers, including underwriting paid internships for low-income students, connecting young people with career mentors, and  a very popular strategy  backing partnerships that get schools and employers in a given region on the same page about educating tomorrows workforce. Corporate funders worried about STEM skills are all over this last approach, as we often report.

Related:

But before you conclude that a new philanthropic plot is afoot to turn Americas schools into a factory for obedient workers with a fresh push for tracking just around the corner, consider this: Some of the same funders worried about the school-to-career transition are tackling the learning issues that increasingly preoccupy other funders. In many kinds of careers, you dont get very far by simply taking orders. You need critical problem skills and creativity more than ever to succeed, especially given how fast the economy and technology is changing.

The Barr Foundation is a good example of a funder putting these points together. It just unveiled a new direction for its education work, with the goal to connect all students to success in and beyond high school.

I previewed this new direction for Barr in an earlier article, noting that the foundations president, Jim Canales, had been deeply involved in such work at the Irvine Foundation. Irvines Linked Learning program aims not just to prepare students to graduate from high school ready for college, but also to acquire the skills needed to thrive in the workplace.

What does it mean, in practice, to prepare students both for college and for work?

Well, as Barr sees it, this means broadening the definition of student success to include competencies as well as mastery of academic subjects. It also means backing the development of new high school models and programs that are flexible and conducive to innovation, and that move away from an outdated, one-size-fits-all approach to secondary education.

That all sounds cool, right? Barr is another funder that wants our schools to reinvent themselvesrather than teaching to the test until the bell sounds, they should be educating kids who can think for themselves and thrive in the real world.

This is the same stuff were hearing from Lucas, Zuckerberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, the Nellie Mae Foundation (which Barr will be working with), and many other funders.

Can we now call this a major movement? Looks like it.

Related:
StoreLocal Corp., a co-operative of private self-storage operators in Canada and the United States, has added three new founding members over the last month, bringing a total of 53 additional facilities into the co-op. The company this week signed Idaho-based Keylock Storage, which operates seven facilities in three states. This change comes on the heels of agreements with Lindsey Self Storage Group and Storage Rentals of America. The recent additions bring StoreLocals total membership to more than 700 facilities, according to a company press release.

Based in Boise, Idaho, Keylock opened its first facility in 2003 and has locations in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Its properties are owned by Keylock Storage Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bitterroot Holdings LLC. Keylock is StoreLocals first member in the Pacific Northwest, according to the release.

Keylock CEO Ron Osborne said he was motivated to join the co-op to leverage its collective power, likening it to his companys previous experience with a national employee-benefits association. It was very, very helpful, and we were able to interact with firms like us around the country, he said, adding that he believes the co-op puts smaller operators on a more even playing field with self-storage real estate investment trusts (REITs).

StoreLocals mission since the beginning has been to provide independent, privately owned store operators the same benefits and scale as the larger, publicly owned conglomerates, Lance Watkins, CEO of StoreLocal, said in a previous statement.

In addition to expanding StoreLocals presence in the Northwest, Watkins believes Keylock will help the co-op expand its offerings to members. "They'll be a great founder in being able to mentor us with an employee-benefit program that will help us all offer benefits to our employees across the co-op," he said.

Keylock joined about a week after the co-op signed Lindsey Self Storage Group, which operates eight facilities in North and South Carolina. Based in Durham, N.C., the storage operator was co-founded by brothers John and Alan Lindsey in 2012.

The Lindseys were a great find because theyre the voice of the future of self-storage, Watkins said. Theyre young, energetic, entrepreneurial and on the East Coast, so were really excited to have them join our group.

John Lindsey, president, cited the number of quality operators that make up StoreLocals membership as a motivating factor for joining. The group of leaders that are associated with StoreLocal, you look at them and theyre some really big names in the industry, people whove really made a difference not only at the national association level, but as far as introducing new practices and standards to the industry at large. And when you get a group of powerful people like that together, theyre only bound to do good things, he said.

Similar to Osborne, Lindsey also acknowledged the challenges smaller self-storage operators face when competing with the REITs. Its tough for us to combat them as far as prices and cost of marketing and advertising is concerned, he said. The co-op provides an outlet for small- to medium-size operators like myself to step into the same arena and really continue to hold our own as we grow throughout the years.

The Lindsey brothers, who are in their early and mid-20s, said they believe the co-op will help them achieve success. I plan on being in the business for the rest of my life, Lindsey said. Hopefully thats 60, 70 years, but I see this as a really, really good jumping point. This is a group thats going to continue to grow and blossom through the years, and even if we take on different platforms or shift directions a little bit, weve got the right people on the bus and that can combat any change we see come our way.

StoreLocal also recently signed Storage Rentals of America, which operates 38 self-storage facilities in four states, as a founding member. Watkins believes Storage Rentals will be a strategic partner because of CEO Benjamin Macfarlands knowledge of commercial real estate and experience in scaling a storage operation.

"Were excited to bring Ben Macfarland on board, because hes not new to real estate, Watkins said. Hes backed by an ultra-high-net-worth family office and has a very heavy appetite to acquire a lot of real estate in the Southeast United States. Hes a good fit for the co-op and StorageFront because were able to leverage some of the experience we have in the industry with an operation that is growing very rapidly.

Every prospective StoreLocal founder is subject to an approval process by the board of directors, and the co-ops bylaws limit founder membership to 30 companies. There are now 21 members. The co-op leverages the combined strength of its membership for services such as customer acquisition, financing, marketing and technology.
U.K. self-storage operator Big Yellow Group PLC sponsored an event last month to help raise money to fund a surgery for four-year-old Orla Brash, who has cerebral palsy. The Dinner Dance & Auction on Feb. 6 at the Crowne Plaza Marlow Hotel in Buckinghamshire, England, raised 20,000 for the charity Orlas Own Steps. More than 150 people attended the event, which included an auction, dinner and raffle. Music was provided by two bands, The Polka Dots and Riser.

Brash was born five weeks premature and began exhibiting signs of stiff limbs at 11 months old. She was diagnosed with developing Spastic Diplegic Cerebral Palsy when she was two, according to the website JustGiving.com. The Brash Family hopes to raise 85,000 to cover the costs of a six-hour operation that will help the child improve her mobility and range of motion. To date, Orlas Own Steps has raised 52,700.

Cerebral palsy is a group of neurological disorders that appear in early childhood and permanently affect body movement and muscle coordination. The signs and symptoms of the disorder vary among its victims.

Big Yellow Group operates 84 locations in the United Kingdom under the Big Yellow Self Storage and Armadillo Self Storage brand names, with most concentrated in Greater London. Its total portfolio comprises 5.1 million square feet.
Looking at the world through the eyes of the Web
America ignores history at its peril, warns J. Bradford DeLong. A professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, DeLong believes the U.S. government has always played a vital role in encouraging growth and supporting entrepreneurial innovation. But in an increasingly ideological environment, lawmakers give regulation short shrift, he fears  with dangerous consequences like excessive financialization and the 2008 market meltdown.

In his latest book, Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy, co-authored with Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of city and regional planning at Berkeley and co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy, DeLong argues that things can be different. He invokes the legacy of founding father Alexander Hamilton  who served as first secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, founded the Bank of New York and spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Mint  to show that pragmatic regulation delivers economic benefits.

DeLong, 55, who has taught at Berkeley since 1993, is no stranger to government. As deputy assistant Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, he worked on the 1993 federal budget, the North American Free Trade Agreement and an unsuccessful effort to reform health care.

Institutional Investor: Why have new mechanisms for economic growth been elusive?

DeLong: Well, its genuinely hard to think of good ways of organizing large groups of people to coordinate what they do. Markets are a unique sweet spot for a particular set of commodities produced under a particular set of conditions that more or less approximated those that Adam Smith faced. Today its very different, and the problem of what economic theorists call mechanism design is a very difficult one. Look at the trouble were having simply trying to arrive at a functioning system, let alone an optimal system, for health insurance.

How do you see governments role in encouraging what you describe as equitable economic growth?

From the 18th century through to the 21st century, the economy became less Smithian in the sense that it was built less on the production of simple, easily classified goods produced under competitive conditions at constant returns to scale by small producers. Over time the economies of scale became more and more important. Intellectual property, as well as nonrivalry in production, became more and more important. Things like location and where we get our utility became more important as well.

All of these things move us away from a Smithian world in which the only mechanism you need to make the economy run efficiently, effectively and equitably is a publicly available competitive price for anything and for everything. In Adam Smiths world, thats enough to guide the economy to a good equilibrium.

Now things are very different, and we need new and different mechanisms, and we dont really understand what they should be. But they do inevitably involve a bigger role for the government than simply the night watchmans place of enforcing property rights and enforcing contracts.

How have behavioral economists shed light on the shortcomings of the current system?

The place where behavioral economics is most visible right now is that were paying 7 percent of GDP for financial services when we really ought to be paying 2.5 percent of GDP for financial services. The financial system we had in the 1950s seems to have functioned just as well, and yet were spending three times as large a share of GDP now as we did then, largely because were incredibly lousy shoppers for financial services.

Similarly, in health insurance were incredibly lousy shoppers for private sector health insurance and for figuring out what we really want and how we really want to pay for it. Weve also evolved a system that is sufficiently complex. One way to view the business models of many health providers is that they send us random bills and see if we pay them. And if we dont pay, then we negotiate.

I was taking my mother-in-law to CVS last Sunday, and CVS suddenly demands a $52 copay for something shes always gotten for free. She balks, and in the end they figure out that she doesnt owe them $52 but theyd have been very happy to collect it, and then they never would have refunded it.

This is what George Akerlof and Robert Shiller call phishing for phools. Increasingly, in a complicated world, figuring out how to be a good shopper who understands your interest in the market youre transacting in becomes very important. Youre up against lots of people who dont have terribly good motives and whose business model might, in fact, be based off of not being terribly good. There are right now, for people in their 50s, relatively notorious cases about how the gastroenterologist doing a colonoscopy is in a health insurance network, but the anesthesiologist is out-of-network. For relatively large expenditures and where its not easy to effectively comparison shop or even to understand the contract ones signing, it shouldnt be surprising that the market doesnt do terribly well.

What is the key to protecting people from these financial manipulations?

Repeated purchases and a large-scale community of consumers who communicate with each other about whats good and what isnt. This is important, but it requires a dense social network, and it also requires a lot of repeated purchasing behavior. The large things  like a 40-year investment in a pension or health insurance, home ownership, automobiles  matter. People have always feared having to buy a car because they sense theyre going to be taken one way or another, and they often are. These are difficult problems.

Figuring out how to present the information people need to know in a way thats transparent and understandable is one of the principal problems of mechanism design that economists face and one of the things that government has to do to structure the market.

Your new book starts with Alexander Hamilton and continues to explore how the U.S. government can influence economic growth. Why Hamilton, and why now?

The big point of the book is that America has always had a very activist government. Were a country that has in its Constitution not only a general power to regulate long-distance commerce but also what was for the time a kind of advanced frontier commitment to an industrial policy of patents and copyrights. This was something very forward-looking, on the grounds that you want inventions and innovations to be highly rewarded. Ever since then the American economy, when it has worked, has worked because it has been regulated by the government in a pragmatic manner.

For the people who are asking what would work today to increase wealth, what support does the market need to function well, what do we need to do to make the distribution of wealth that the market produces equitable, how do we get economic growth as fast as possible, the answer is that its whenever people have held to ideologies that things have tended to go horribly wrong, and not exclusively in any one political direction. Although I must say that the financial deregulatory effort that I was a supporter of in the 1990s has certainly had the most horrible consequences, far more horrible than our worst nightmares, in terms of what it brought on in 2008.

The years from 1980 to today have been a total bonanza for people like me, in the top 1 percent, and even more so for the top 0.1 percent and the 0.01 percent. So even if you thought that American politics was too concerned with redistribution in 1980, you pretty much have to think that we dont have a progressive enough tax system now. Given that the market has taken an enormous leap toward inequality, a set of politicians who are more focused on trying to put the governments thumb on the scale to create less inequality is certainly something thats called for.

So, the book is mostly a plea for pragmatism.

Why do extremes sell instead of pragmatism? Why do ideologies seem to reign supreme?

People want a simpler world than there is. I dont think that extremes used to sell. I was brought up in a world where people would try to think about what would be good and then Lloyd Bentsen and John Danforth from the Finance Committee would draft a bill and then call for coalition partners from either the left or the right, and play the left and the right off against each other to assemble a legislative majority. That world could still be out there. Why it collapsed into our current political circus is unclear. We could get it back tomorrow if we were smart enough to do so.
After the recent death of conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court has an even ideological split: four judges whose voting record has tracked liberal and four conservatives. With the Republican-dominated Senate loath to approve a nominee from President Barack Obama  especially in an election year  a full roster of nine justices may have to wait.

In the meantime, frequent swing voter  though he rejects the label  Anthony Kennedy could tip the balance in rulings. The possibility of a 53 liberal vote makes this court a sort of jump ball, says Brian Netter, co-leader of the Supreme Court and appellate group at law firm Mayer Brown in Washington.

And already, hes delivered the written opinion in a case that set precedent in application of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) On Tuesday, the court voted 62 in Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., in which the court held that ERISA takes precedence over state health care databases  the one in question in this case being Vermonts  on health care costs and distribution. More broadly though, while this case specifically dealt with a very narrow state law, the Gobeille ruling could apply to management of other state-level benefit plans such as defined-benefit and defined-contribution pension plans.

Specifically, if these laws are challenged, depending on exactly how they are written, they may be found to be preempted by ERISA, too, says Allison Klausner, principal, Knowledge Resource Center and director of government relations at Buck Consultants in New York, a human resource consulting firm part of Xerox Corp.

The ideology portion of Kennedys Segal-Cover score, a rough measurement using newspaper editorials on SCOTUS nominees, clocks in at 0.365, with 0 being the most conservative and 1 the most liberal. Liberal legend Ruth Bader Ginsburgs score is 0.68. George W. Bush appointee and Chief Justice John Roberts measured 0.12 in the lead-up to his confirmation. And the late Scalia? 0.0. If Scalia had been around, he would have likely voted for ERISA preemption.

Appointed by former president Ronald Reagan, Kennedy, 79, has supported abortion rights and same-sex marriage; his June 2015 opinion on the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case has become a popular reading choice at wedding ceremonies. He has also favored the Clean Air Act, though in 2009 he wrote the majority opinion ruling in favor of a mining company that wanted to extract gold using a pollution-heavy method.

When it comes to corporations and union law, though, Kennedys voting record on such issues has tended to track conservative. He wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the landmark 2010 decision that paved the way for super PACs, political action committees that can raise unlimited sums. In the 2003 case Nevada Dept of Human Resources v. Hibbs, Kennedy, along with Scalia and Clarence Thomas, dissented in a decision that applied the federal Family and Medical Leave Act over state rules. That same term Kennedy wrote a partial dissent in Norfolk & Western Railway Co. v. Ayers, in which he argued that railroad workers who had contracted asbestos poisoning on the job should not be entitled to monetary compensation for pain and suffering.

Kennedys line of questioning during Gobeille, as well as in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, paralleled that of the more conservative faction of the court, according to SCOTUSblog, though it was perhaps less strident. Friedrichs concerns the validity under the First Amendment of requiring that nonunion member teachers pay union dues for collective bargaining benefits. The ruling could determine public unions collective bargaining powers, which may mean a less cohesive voice when it comes to pension negotiations. Should the court vote 4-4 on that case  or any case, for that matter  the lower courts ruling, which favored the California teachers union, would hold. But the Supreme Court could ask that pending cases be reheard before a full nine justices.

In the meantime, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to stay out of a state pension-level matter. On Monday, the court declined to hear an appeal from three unions representing New Jersey state troopers over federal contract protections on state pension payments. This leaves in tact a ruling from the New Jersey state supreme court handed down this past June ruling that Governor Chris Christie did not have to make scheduled payments into the state pension system, which has more than $80 billion in unfunded liabilities.

Get more on regulation.

Follow Anne Szustek on Twitter at @the59thStBridge.
Cyclists given access to insurance products and services and other benefits
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is calling for more federal spending to help homeowners pay for lead paint removal.

The Journal News says the New York senator made the announcement Monday after visiting an older home in Yonkers, New York. He said it was an example of a property that benefited from a federal program that helps eligible homeowners decrease lead-paint contamination.

Schumer called on lawmakers to increase the $110 million budget for the Lead Hazard Control and Health Home grant program to $230 million. He says hes also introduced a bill that would create a $4,000 tax credit to assist homeowners in paying for lead paint removal.

Lead was commonly used in house paint until 1978 when it was banned.

Lead poisoning in children can affect brain development and cause behavioral problems.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New York
Highfields Capital Management LP, the largest shareholder in Delta Lloyd NV, will vote against the Dutch insurers plan to raise 650 million euros ($706 million) in a rights offer it called unnecessary.

Their actions are so detrimental to shareholders, and their executive and supervisory boards so unresponsive to our private concerns, that we are compelled to publicly voice our opposition to this rights issue, point out the flaws in managements approach, and protect the value of our investment, the Boston-based investment firm, which manages about $12 billion, said in a presentation on Tuesday. Shareholders will vote on the capital increase on March 16.

Were well aware of Highfields position, Martijn Donders, a spokesman for Delta Lloyd, said by phone. We look forward in full confidence to the rights offer vote in two weeks. He declined to comment on any specific issues raised by Highfields.

Delta Lloyd, the worst-performing stock on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in the past 12 months, plans to raise the money to bolster capital. The share price has fallen more than 60 percent from August after a first-half loss fueled speculation that the insurer would require a capital increase.

The insurer, whose shareholders include money manager David Einhorn, fell as much as 3.3 percent on Wednesday and was down 0.8 percent at 6.13 euros on 9:45 a.m.

Raises Stake

Highfields, run by Jon Jacobson, began raising its stake in the insurer in August and now owns more than 9 percent of Delta Lloyd, according to the presentation. The shares could be worth about 15 euros if there is no rights issue and Highfields is correct on capital growth projections for the insurer, the stockholder said in a presentation.

We believe strongly in the longterm value of this business, Highfields said. Management is putting forth a series of false crises and assumptions to justify this capital raise.

Delta Lloyds leadership is ignoring deferred tax assets and other items in some of its assumptions on capital, according to the presentation. The insurer is not dependent on its credit rating and net debt is as healthy as it has ever been post-IPO in 2009, Highfields said.

Highfields makes a few valid points, Joost van Beek, an analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers, said by phone. But Delta Lloyd is facing a couple of dark clouds externally, such as the possible further lowering of the ultimate forward rate, the development of interest rates as well as investment returns, which justify why they want to do the rights offer.

Under Pressure

Delta Lloyd has been under pressure to reassure investors as the European Union introduced stricter capital requirements for insurers in January under rules known as Solvency II.

The rights offer will raise the insurers solvency ratio from 140 percent to as much as 180 percent with management targeting the top end of the range, Delta Lloyd said Feb. 24. A ratio that high is unnecessary, hurts shareholders and management should instead target a number toward the bottom of the range, Highfields said.

Management is also not aligned with shareholders economically, according to the presentation. Delta Lloyd Chief Executive Officer Hans van der Noordaa, who became CEO in January 2015, does not own a single share in the insurer, Highfields says.

Proxy advisory firms ISS and Glass Lewis & Co. advised their clients on Tuesday to vote in favor of Delta Lloyds rights offer.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Carriers
Hormel Foods Corporation owes hundreds of workers at its Beloit canning plant back wages for the time they spent putting on and taking off required clothing and equipment, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled.

The high court ruled in a 4-2 decision that state Department of Workforce Development rules mandate that an employee must be paid for all time spent in physical and mental exertion controlled or required by the employer. Minnesota-based Hormels requirements that employees wear the protective gear are a crucial part of the workers principal activity, meaning they should be compensated for the time they spent donning and doffing the gear.

The ruling upholds a 2014 decision from Rock County Circuit Judge Michael Fitzpatrick awarding 330 workers a total of $195,000 in back wages.

Cleanliness and food safety are intrinsic elements of preparing and canning food at the Hormel canning facility, Justice Shirley Abrahamson wrote for the majority. The clothing and equipment is integral and indispensable to the performance of the employees job function  of preparing canned food.

Hormel attorney Thomas Krukowski didnt immediately respond to an email morning seeking comment.

According to court documents, Hormel has adopted work rules to meet federal cleanliness, quality and safety standards. The rules require employees to wear company-provided hard hats, hearing and eye protection, hair nets and sanitary shoes at all times. The equipment and clothing cant be worn outside the plant.

Both the workers union and Hormel stipulated that the median time for putting on the gear and taking it off is 5.7 minutes per day, which works out to about 24 hours per year.

Employees had to be dressed, checked in and at their workstations at their assigned start times to be considered on time. The workers start getting paid at the start of their shift, not at the time of checking in. They also had to check out at the end of the day and had to change out of their gear after checking out.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Wisconsin
Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) has entered into an agreement with the National Air Transportation Association (NATA) through which it has established a new aviation workers compensation department. AGCS will serve as the underwriter for this broker-driven program offering workers compensation coverage for the aviation segment.

AGCS new department will be led by Charles Couch, based in Atlanta; Shane Maloney joins as senior aviation workers compensation underwriter and Robin E. Couch as executive general aviation underwriter.

AGCS offers a broad aviation appetite, including a wide range of risks such as global airlines, airports and manufacturers, as well as charter managers, corporate and personally operated aircraft, suppliers and service providers.

Couch has more than 15 years of insurance experience, including over a decade in workers compensation. Most recently, he was vice president, underwriting and head of distribution for Aviation at QBE North America. Prior to this, he held workers compensation and underwriting roles with Phoenix Aviation Managers, Inc. and The St. Paul Companies.

Maloney and Couch also join AGCS from QBE North America where they held senior underwriting positions. Previously, Maloney was with Risk Evaluation Bureau, Inc. for more than a decade; Couch gained his aviation experience with Phoenix Aviation Managers, Inc. and The U.S. Marine Corps.

Topics Workers' Compensation Underwriting Aviation New Markets Allianz
U.S. hospitals are stepping up their bid to stop Anthem Inc.s takeover of rival health insurer Cigna Corp., saying the deal will increase the dominance of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and potentially raise premiums for consumers.

The enhanced bargaining power of the Blue Cross plans will undermine competition and should compel the Justice Department to stop the deal, the American Hospital Association wrote in a letter to the departments antitrust chief Bill Baer.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is an association of independent insurers operating across the country. Anthem operates health insurance plans under the brand in 14 states.

The acquisition threatens to both reinforce existing barriers to entry and raise new ones, further entrench dominant Blue plans, and exacerbate conditions conducive to abuse of market or monopoly power, according to the letter, which was dated Monday.

The hospital groups missive adds a new set of criticisms to prospective mergers that have the potential to remake the U.S. health-care industry. Anthems $48 billion deal for Cigna, together with Aetna Inc.s planned takeover of Humana Inc., would consolidate the countrys five biggest health insurers into three.

By bulking up, insurers would gain more power to negotiate prices with hospitals and doctors, which has fueled warnings from the hospital association and the American Medical Association that the deals could lead to less choice and higher costs for consumers.

Consumer Choice

Baer, whose antitrust division of the Justice Department is investigating both mergers, has cautioned that consumer choice is a bigger priority than health companies desire to add market share and gain leverage over providers like hospitals.

Matthew Asensio, a Cigna spokesman, referred comments to Anthem.

Anthem is working with the Justice Department and is confident that the U.S. will review the proposed merger based on fact, Anthem said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News.

Together, Anthem and Cigna, which have limited overlap in a highly competitive industry, will be in a better position to improve consumer choice and quality, Anthem said in the statement. Additionally, we will deliver for consumers by operating more efficiently to reduce our own costs, while enhancing our ability to manage the cost drivers that negatively impact affordability for consumers.

Americas Health Insurance Plans, which represents the health-insurance industry, said the hospital associations letter fails to reflect the level of competition in the market.

It is well established that decades of hospital consolidation have created many markets in which hospitals can set their prices at supra-competitive levels, it said. Its a bit hypocritical for them to then claim that they are harmed because they wont offer reasonable prices to new entrants into markets.

Bargaining Leverage

Blue Cross plans insure one-third of all Americans and would gain an additional 14.7 million people from the deal, an increase of 14 percent, according to the hospital association. Blue Cross plans have been the target of antitrust scrutiny in the past. In 2010, the Justice Department sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, saying terms of its agreements with hospitals prevented other insurers from entering the market and likely raised costs for consumers.

While Anthem would acquire Cigna members around the country and potentially increase its bargaining leverage with hospitals, the deal would also strengthen Blue Cross plans in states where Anthem doesnt operate, according to the AHA. Thats because under Blue Cross rules, a Blue Cross plan in a state where Cigna also offers coverage would be able to count Cigna members as its own when negotiating with providers, enhancing its leverage in negotiating with providers, according to the hospital association.

Outside of the 14 states where Anthem operates as a Blue Cross or Blue Shield licensee, the Blues will continue to compete just as they did prior to the acquisition, Anthem said in its statement. Cigna products will not become Anthem BCBS products in states where we do not have a Blue license, it said.

With higher membership numbers for the sake of negotiations with providers, the Blue Cross plans would gain market power and have less incentive to pass savings to consumers, according to the AHA. Rival insurers in those states could also find it harder to negotiate the same levels of discounts from providers as larger Blue Cross plans, harming their ability to compete, the group wrote. It cited a Justice Department study that found that insurers need a large number of enrollees to negotiate discounts and compete with rivals.

We expect that the acquisition would increase the Blue plans incentive and ability to pressure providers to raise their competitors costs, which would probably lead to higher premiums, the association wrote.

-With assistance from Zachary Tracer.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Carriers USA
The House Financial Services Committee this morning approved a proposal intended to encourage more private insurers to write flood insurance.

The committee approved the Flood Insurance Market Parity and Modernization Act (H.R. 2901), which seeks to clarify that private insurance is to be treated the same as federal flood insurance in cases where homeowners with federally-backed mortgages are required to buy the coverage.

The measure was sponsored by Reps. Dennis Ross (R-Fla) and Patrick Murphy (D-Fla).

Supporters believe the bill will foster more competition in the flood insurance market, providing an alternative for 5 million property owners who rely on the U.S. governments National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is $23 billion in debt.

Supporters include the insurance industry, state insurance commissioners, as well as taxpayer and environmental groups including Taxpayers for Common Sense and SmarterSafer.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has sponsored a similar measure (S.1679) in the Senate.

The current mandatory purchase requirement does not require that the insurance coverage be provided under the NFIP, however, mortgage lenders have said they are uncertain that private flood coverage satisfies current regulations and have mostly only accepted NFIP policies. Thus the bulk of the business is written with NFIP.

The legislation would define as acceptable a policy issued by a private insurance company that is licensed, admitted, or otherwise approved in the state in which the insured property is located. A policy issued by a non-admitted insurer would also qualify.

Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller last month testified in favor of the bill on behalf of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) before the House Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.

Miller said that encouraging additional carriers into the market will provide consumers with additional flood insurance products.

One of the obstacles that weve seen is that many lenders are reluctant to issue mortgages for homes with private flood insurance because they are not sure the coverage meets the requirements of the federal government, the commissioner testified. H.R. 2901 would remove that obstacle by requiring lenders to accept private flood insurance if it meets certain coverage criteria and is subject to supervision by state insurance regulators.

She said that Pennsylvania is already seeing examples of private carriers offering comparable coverage at a lower cost than the NFIP.

We have heard stories of consumers getting substantial savings from private flood insurance as opposed to the NFIP product, said Miller. In one particular case, a consumers annual premium under NFIP was $7,500, but a private plan offered similar coverage for $1,415. In another instance, the federal NFIP premium was $6,000, while private insurance was just $900.

Insurance agents have also backed the Ross-Murphy legislation. According to the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America (Big I), because mortgage lenders are unsure whether private market alternatives satisfy the mandatory purchase requirement, they are either requiring the private policy to look nearly identical to an NFIP policy or, in many cases, simply not accepting private policies.

The Big I has expressed concern that federal banking regulators could end up determining what is considered an acceptable private insurance policy. The group has told lawmakers that said agents support the Ross-Murphy legislation as a way to let state insurance regulators determine acceptable flood insurance policies instead of federal banking regulators or the lenders themselves.

Five federal banking and credit union regulatory agencies have signed off on a joint rule that modifies regulations for loans secured by properties located in special flood hazard areas. However the agencies have not yet addressed issues surrounding private flood insurance.

According to the environmental and taxpayer collation, SmarterSafer.org, if private insurers can offer flood coverage, consumers for the first time would be able to price shop among various policies, and could potentially choose different coverage including higher coverage limits, varying deductibles, and greater insurance protection.

In addition to lower rates, private insurers are likely to introduce new methods of calculating risks and promote mitigation, according to SmarterSafer.org.

To the extent that private insurance carriers currently provide flood coverage, they generally limit their offerings to commercial flood policies and excess homeowners flood coverage above the maximum $350,000 of building and contents coverage provided by the NFIP.

According to various experts and studies, the major obstacle to private sector flood insurance has not been regulation per se but rather the inability of private carriers to compete with the subsidized premiums offered by the NFIP, prices that have contributed to the NFIP amassing a $23 billion deficit.

Related:

Topics Carriers Legislation Agencies Flood Market
LevelFirst, the service-based wholesale broker and MGA binding facility owned by IIAT Services Co., has appointed Heath McCasland as vice president.

McCasland will assume the responsibility of brokering new business opportunities within the wholesale brokerage and MGA business units.

McCasland has more than 20 years of experience in commercial insurance marketing, underwriting and brokerage.

Most recently, McCasland was vice president, broker/producer at USG Insurance Services where he served for more than 10 years.

Source: LevelFirst

Topics Agencies Texas
Not too long ago there was a list going around the internet to determine if you are an introvert. I didn't really need to take it to kn...
South Carolina and two counties hardest hit by last falls catastrophic flooding will share $157 million from the federal government, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Monday.

HUD Secretary Julian Castro said the state will receive nearly $97 million of the disaster recovery aid. Richland County will receive $23.5 million. The city of Columbia, the states capital, will get nearly $20 million, and Lexington County will receive $16 million.

After disaster strikes, the most important task is getting folks back to a safe home quickly, so they can return to their daily lives, Castro said in a news release. We uphold our commitment to helping these communities recover stronger and be better prepared for future disasters.

The money wont be seen for months. Local officials arent even sure how they can spend it.

HUD will post its rules for the money in the weeks ahead. The state and local governments must then submit their plans and go through an approval process, said HUD spokesman Joseph Phillips.

Were extremely thankful, said Columbia city manager Teresa Wilson. Part of the citys award may pay for water and sewer projects, she said.

Dams that burst amid historic rainfall of up to 2 feet over several days contributed to the flooding in early October.

Breaches in the Columbia Canal left much of the city without clean water for more than a week.

The awards mean South Carolina will receive most of the $300 million Congress set aside in the federal budget, approved in December, as aid for 2015 flooding disasters. According to HUD, communities in South Carolina and Texas were determined to have the highest need for the aid.

Gov. Nikki Haley had asked the states congressional delegation for $140 million to help repair poor residents homes.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Flood South Carolina
Hawaii lawmakers are considering a bill to ban employers from accessing employees personal social media accounts.

So far, more than 20 states have banned employers from snooping in employees personal accounts. About a dozen others are considering similar bills this year.

If passed, the proposed law would ban Hawaii employers from requiring or requesting employees and job applicants to disclose information about personal social media accounts. It would also prevent employers requiring employees to add them to their contact lists, for instance, as a friend on Facebook.

However, the bill would allow employers to access accounts when investigating workplace problems such as harassment or discrimination.

Some employers say access is necessary to protect businesses proprietary information or trade secrets, while advocates say its an invasion of personal privacy.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Legislation
An Albuquerque Republican says she is hopeful Lyft will return to New Mexico after state lawmakers passed a bill regulating similar ride-booking companies.

Rep. Monica Youngblood says officials with the San Francisco-based company have signaled they would restart service in the state again but no final decision has been made.

Last year, Lyft suspended operations in New Mexico after state regulators passed new requirements the company called onerous. But state regulators said at the time they had no choice because state law had been outdated and it didnt cover ride-booking companies that used mobile apps.

Lyft spokeswoman Chelsea Wilson says Lyft was encouraged by the new bill and urged Gov. Susana Martinez to sign it. But she did not say if Lyft would return to New Mexico soon.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Mexico New Mexico
Juliane Kokott was also in the Global Tax 50 2012

Juliane Kokott returns to the Global Tax 50 after a two-year absence.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general (AG) is recognised again for her activity in the tax sphere through her ECJ role, the importance of European Union (EU) case law in taxation, and the important decisions that the Court will need to deliver regarding the European Commission's use of state aid challenges, which is sure to be one of the most important trends in European tax in the next five years.

In April, Kokott gave her Opinion in Finanzamt Linz v Bundesfinanzgericht, Aussenstelle Linz, a case which shed some light on the interaction between tax treaties and state aid rules. She emphasised in the case that state aid only occurs when measures favour "certain undertakings, or the production of certain goods".

This interpretation would appear to limit the scope of state aid's application, and could perhaps fly in the face of the EC's wide use of state aid challenges to level the tax playing field in cases involving companies such as Apple, Fiat, McDonalds and Starbucks in countries including Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

According to the ECJ's website, the German national presided over 13 tax cases in 2015 and even more in 2014, making her one of the most prolific ECJ AGs when it comes to tax.

It's not just the numbers which define Kokott's contribution, however. One of the most eagerly-anticipated tax decisions this year was Skatteverket v David Hedqvist, the case on the applicability of VAT on bitcoin trading. Cryptocurrency bitcoin was featured in last year's Global Tax 50, due to its ambiguous status as not-quite-currency, not-quite-commodity.

However, Kokott's Opinion on the case  which was followed by the Court  effectively legitimised bitcoin as a currency  much to the dismay of EU member states such as Germany and Poland, which had opposed bitcoin trading services becoming VAT exempt.

Kokott has also been unafraid to go against the status quo, repeatedly using her Opinions to challenge the so-called 'M&S exemption' on cross-border relief, which she feels should be repealed. The 2005 case law was unsuccessfully challenged by the UK in 2014, but Kokott  presiding over the case  sympathised, saying that the exemption should be abandoned, due to the fact that it conflicts with other case law.

Mother-of-six Kokott was the judge in the Manninen case on double taxation of profits on bonds, and also famously helped put former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on trial after he altered Italian accounting laws for his own benefit.
Join ITR and TMF Groups tax experts at 2pm CET (1pm GMT) on November 15 as they discuss how finance leaders are increasingly faced with doing more with less, and how CFOs should adapt.
Un ottobre da sogno per Antonio Conte: lex ct della Nazionale italiana, attualmente alla guida del Chelsea, nelle ultime quattro gare di Premier League ha collezionato solo successi, conditi da 11 reti segnate e addirittura nessuna incassata. Numeri da record che non sono certo passati inosservati alla Federazione inglese, la quale ha conferito al tecnico leccese lambito premio di Manager del mese.

Unavventura oltremanica iniziata in sordina, quella di Conte, pur a fronte di tre vittorie nelle prime tre gare di campionato. A far vacillare, anche se solo per un momento, le certezze del patron del club londinese, Roman Abramovich, i risultati conseguiti tra la 4a e la 6a giornata, coincisi con un pareggio sul campo dello Swansea City e, soprattutto, con le due pesanti sconfitte subite dal Liverpool, sul terreno casalingo di Stamford Bridge, e dallArsenal. In particolare, la debacle interna coi Reds, aveva irritato non poco il numero uno russo, poiche occorsa proprio nel giorno della sua 250esima partita da presidente della societa.

Come detto, solo un momento. Dopo lincontro dellEmirates, il tecnico salentino cambia modulo, adottando un piu equilibrato 3-4-3 e inserendo elementi di corsa come lo spagnolo Pedro. Una svolta totale perche, di li in poi, il Chelsea inanellera solo e soltanto vittorie: 2 gol allHull City e al Southampton in trasferta, 3 ai campioni dInghilterra del Leicester e 4 allo United in casa, con un meraviglioso numero zero nella casella delle reti subite. Un fantastico poker, ottenuto tra l1 e il 29 ottobre. Un cambio di marcia sbalorditivo, confermato dal 5 a 0 rifilato ai toffees dellEverton nel primo match di novembre, e una scalata che, man mano, ha portato i blues al secondo posto in classifica, a soli 2 punti dal Liverpool capolista.

E allora, non poteva mancare il riconoscimento di migliore allenatore del mese, ottenuto surclassando tecnici del calibro di Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool), Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) e Mark Hughes (Southampton). Tanta, ovviamente, la soddisfazione: E un grande onore e voglio condividerlo con i giocatori e con la societa  ha dichiarato Conte sul sito ufficiale della Premier League -. E la prima volta che lavoro in un altro Paese, con una cultura diversa, e portare la propria filosofia non e facile, ma ora sono contento di questa scelta.

A completare la festa, la premiazione del fantasista belga, Eden Hazard, come miglior giocatore di ottobre. Due risultati importanti per il club, ottimo incentivo per la rincorsa al trono dei campioni, occupato dal Leicester di Ranieri. Il prossimo appuntamento per l11 di Conte sara al Riverside Stadium, tana del Middlesborough neopromosso. Il tempo di festeggiare e gia finito.
Investors can invest in gold through exchange-traded funds (ETFs), buying stock in gold miners and associated companies, and buying a physical product. These investors have as many reasons for investing in the metal as they do methods to make those investments.

Some argue that gold is a barbaric relic that no longer holds the monetary qualities of the past. In a modern economic environment, paper currency is the money of choice. They contend that gold's only benefit is the fact that it is a material that is used in jewelry. On the other end of the spectrum are those that assert gold is an asset with various intrinsic qualities that make it unique and necessary for investors to hold in their portfolios.

Key Takeaways Goldbugs have often encouraged investors to own the precious metal as part of a diversified long term investment portfolio.

Gold is seen as a hedge against inflation and a store of value through thick and through thin.

Holding gold, however, comes with unique costs and risks, and the data show that historically gold has disappointed on several of its purported virtues.

1:47 Investing In Gold

A Brief History of Gold

In order to fully understand the purpose of gold, one must look back to the start of the gold market. Gold's history in society began well before even the ancient Egyptians, who started forming jewelry and religious artifacts. Yet, it wasn't until around 560 B.C. that gold started to act as a currency. At that time, merchants wanted to create a standardized and easily transferable form of money that would simplify trade. The creation of a gold coin stamped with a seal seemed to be the answer, as gold jewelry was already widely accepted and recognized throughout various corners of the earth.

Following the advent of gold as money, its importance continued to grow throughout Europe and the U.K., with relics from the Greek and Roman empires prominently displayed in museums around the world, and Great Britain developing its own metals-based currency in 775. The British pound (symbolizing a pound of sterling silver), shillings, and pence were all based on the amount of gold (or silver) that it represented. Eventually, gold symbolized wealth throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

The U.S. Bimetallic Standard

The U.S. government continued on with this gold tradition by establishing a bimetallic standard in 1792. The bimetallic standard simply stated that every monetary unit in the U.S. had to be backed by either gold or silver. For example, one U.S. dollar was the equivalent of 24.75 grains of gold. In other words, the coins that were used as money simply represented the gold (or silver) that was presently deposited at the bank.

But this gold standard did not last forever. During the 1900s, there were several key events that eventually led to the transition of gold out of the monetary system. In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created and started issuing promissory notes (the present-day version of our paper money) that could be redeemed in gold on demand. The Gold Reserve Act of 1934 gave the U.S. government title to all the gold coins in circulation and put an end to the minting of any new gold coins. In short, this act began establishing the idea that gold or gold coins were no longer necessary in serving as money. The U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1971 when its currency ceased to be backed by gold.

Gold in the Modern Economy

Even though gold no longer backs the U.S. dollar (or other worldwide currencies for that matter), it still carries importance in today's society. It is still important to the global economy. To validate this point, there is no need to look further than the balance sheets of central banks and other financial organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund. Presently, these organizations are responsible for holding almost one-fifth of the world's supply of above-ground gold. In addition, several central banks have added to their present gold reserves, reflecting concerns about the long-term global economy.

Gold Preserves Wealth

The reasons for gold's importance in the modern economy center on the fact that it has successfully preserved wealth throughout thousands of generations. The same, however, cannot be said about paper-denominated currencies. To put things into perspective, consider the following example:

In the early 1970s, one ounce of gold equaled $35. Let's say that at that time, you had a choice of either holding an ounce of gold or simply keeping the $35. They would both buy you the same things, like a brand new business suit or a fancy bicycle. However, if you had an ounce of gold today and converted it for today's prices, it would still be enough to buy a brand new suit, but the same cannot be said for the $35. In short, you would have lost a substantial amount of your wealth if you decided to hold the $35 as opposed to the one ounce of gold because the value of gold has increased, while the value of a dollar has been eroded by inflation.

Gold As a Hedge Against the Dollar

The idea that gold preserves wealth is even more important in an economic environment where investors are faced with a declining U.S. dollar and rising inflation. Historically, gold has served as a hedge against both of these scenarios. With rising inflation, gold typically appreciates. When investors realize that their money is losing value, they will start positioning their investments in a hard asset that has traditionally maintained its value. The 1970s present a prime example of rising gold prices in the midst of rising inflation.

The reason gold benefits from a declining U.S. dollar is because gold is priced in U.S. dollars globally. There are two reasons for this relationship. First, investors who are looking at buying gold (i.e., central banks) must sell their U.S. dollars to make this transaction. This ultimately drives the U.S. dollar lower as global investors seek to diversify out of the dollar. The second reason has to do with the fact that a weakening dollar makes gold cheaper for investors who hold other currencies. This results in greater demand from investors who hold currencies that have appreciated relative to the U.S. dollar.

Gold as a Safe Haven

Whether it is the tensions in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or elsewhere, it is becoming increasingly obvious that political and economic uncertainty is another reality of our modern economic environment. For this reason, investors typically look at gold as a safe haven during times of political and economic uncertainty. History is full of collapsing empires, political coups, and the collapse of currencies. During such times, investors who held gold were able to successfully protect their wealth and, in some cases, even use the commodity to escape from all of the turmoil. Consequently, whenever there are news events that hint at some type of global economic uncertainty, investors will often buy gold as a safe haven.

Gold as a Diversifying Investment

In general, gold is seen as a diversifying investment. It is clear that gold has historically served as an investment that can add a diversifying component to your portfolio, regardless of whether you are worried about inflation, a declining U.S. dollar, or even protecting your wealth. If your focus is simply diversification, gold is not correlated to stocks, bonds, and real estate.

Gold as a Dividend-Paying Asset

Gold stocks are typically more appealing to growth investors than to income investors. Gold stocks generally rise and fall with the price of gold, but there are well-managed mining companies that are profitable even when the price of gold is down. Increases in the price of gold are often magnified in gold-stock prices. A relatively small increase in the price of gold can lead to significant gains in the best gold stocks and owners of gold stocks typically obtain a much higher return on investment (ROI) than owners of physical gold.

Even those investors focused primarily on growth rather than steady income can benefit from choosing gold stocks that demonstrate historically strong dividend performance. Stocks that pay dividends tend to show higher gains when the sector is rising and fare better  on average, nearly twice as well  than non-dividend-paying stocks when the overall sector is in a downturn.

The Gold Mining Sector

The mining sector, which includes companies that extract gold, can experience high volatility. When evaluating the dividend performance of gold stocks, consider the company's performance over time in regard to dividends. Factors such as the company's history of paying dividends and the sustainability of its dividend payout ratio are two key elements to examine in the company's balance sheet and other financial statements.

A company's ability to sustain healthy dividend payouts is greatly enhanced if it has consistently low debt levels and strong cash flows, and the historical trend of the company's performance shows steadily improving debt and cash flow figures. Since any company goes through growth and expansion cycles when it takes on more debt and has a lower cash on hand balance, it's imperative to analyze its long-term figures rather than a shorter financial picture timeframe.

Different Ways of Owning Gold

One of the main differences between investing in gold several hundred years ago and today is that there are many more investment options, such as:

Gold Futures

Gold Coins

Gold Companies

Gold ETFs

Gold Mutual Funds

Gold Bullion

Gold Jewelry

A Bad Time to Invest in Gold?

In order to ascertain the investment merits of gold, let's check its performance against that of the S&P 500 for the past year (as of March 2022). Gold has outperformed compared to the S&P 500 over this period, with the S&P index generating about 10.4% in total returns compared to gold, which returned 18.9% over the same period.

That said, the period of time that we look at is incredibly important. Looking at longer or shorter timeframes will variously see gold or the broader market outperform, sometimes by a wide margin.

The point here is that gold is not always a good investment. The best time to invest in almost any asset is when there is negative sentiment and the asset is inexpensive, providing substantial upside potential when it returns to favor, as indicated above.

The Bottom Line

There are both advantages and disadvantages to every investment. If you are opposed to holding physical gold, buying shares in a gold mining company may be a safer alternative. If you believe gold could be a safe bet against inflation, investing in coins, bullion, or jewelry are paths that you can take to gold-based prosperity. Lastly, if your primary interest is in using leverage to profit from rising gold prices, the futures market might be your answer, but note that there is a fair amount of risk associated with any leverage-based holdings.
What Is Augmented Reality (AR)?

Augmented reality (AR) is an enhanced version of the real physical world that is achieved through the use of digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli and delivered via technology. It is a growing trend among companies involved in mobile computing and business applications in particular.

Amid the rise of data collection and analysis, one of augmented realitys primary goals is to highlight specific features of the physical world, increase understanding of those features, and derive smart and accessible insight that can be applied to real-world applications. Such big data can help inform companies decision making and gain insight into consumer spending habits, among others.

Key Takeaways Augmented reality (AR) involves overlaying visual, auditory, or other sensory information onto the real world to enhance ones experience.

Retailers and other companies can use augmented reality to promote products or services, launch novel marketing campaigns, and collect unique user data.

Unlike virtual reality, which creates its own cyber environment, augmented reality adds to the existing world as it is.

Understanding Augmented Reality

Augmented reality continues to develop and become more pervasive among a wide range of applications. Since its conception, marketers and technology firms have had to battle the perception that augmented reality is little more than a marketing tool. However, there is evidence that consumers are beginning to derive tangible benefits from this technology and expect it as part of their purchasing process.

Some experts have long speculated that wearable devices could be a breakthrough for augmented reality. Smartphones and tablets show a tiny portion of the users landscape, but smart eyewear, for example, may provide a more complete link between real and virtual realms if it develops enough to become mainstream.

Examples of Augmented Reality

Some early adopters in the retail sector have developed AR technologies designed to enhance the consumer shopping experience. Augmented reality has been incorporated into store catalog apps, which allows consumers to visualize what different products would look like in different environments. For example, when buying furniture, shoppers point the camera to the appropriate room and the product will appear in the foreground.

Augmented realitys benefits can also extend to the healthcare sector, where it can play a much bigger role. AR apps enable users to see highly detailed, 3D images of different body systems when they hover their mobile device over a target image. This use of AR has become a powerful learning tool for training medical professionals.

Augmented Reality vs. Virtual Reality

Augmented reality and virtual reality are often confused, so lets clarify. Augmented reality uses the existing real-world environment and puts virtual informationor even a virtual worldon top of it to enhance the experience. For example, think of Pokemon Go, where users are searching in their real-life neighborhoods for animated characters that pop up on their phone or tablet. In the NFL, broadcasters use AR technology to better analyze plays.

In contrast, virtual reality immerses users into an entirely different environment, typically a virtual one created and rendered by computers. For example, virtual reality users may be immersed in an animated scene or a digital environment. Virtual reality can also be used to photograph an actual local location and embed it in a VR app. Through a virtual reality headset, someone can walk around Italy as if they were actually there.


Could all those retirees in Florida and Arizona have it wrong? For decades, older Americans have migrated south once they left the workforce, settling in states where they can enjoy year-round sunshine. But according to a report from the Center for the Future of Aging of the Milken Institutea think tank that focuses on economic and public policy issuesputting too much emphasis on the weather and even favorable tax laws doesn't necessarily lead to happier living for seniors. Authors Sindhu Kubendran and Liana Soll stated in the report:

"These factors are only part of the complex infrastructure and social context that affect health, productivity, and purpose as people age."

The institute created its own ranking of the best cities for successful aging, taking into account a unique set of factors, such as safety, access to healthcare, financial security, and mobility. The team separated the list into two categories: one for large metropolitan areas, and one for smaller cities.

Key Takeaways For decades, older Americans have migrated south once they left the workforce, settling in states where they can enjoy year-round sunshine.

Putting too much emphasis on the weather and even favorable tax laws doesn't necessarily lead to happier living for seniors.

The Center for the Future of Aging at the Milken Institute ranks many cities in its list of the best cities for successful aging, including Madison, Winsconsin, Durham, North Carolina, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Des Moines, Iowa.



Top 5 Large Metros

Here are the five cities that ranked highest in the large metropolitan area category. Two of them are in Utah, starting with the number-one choice.

1. Provo-Orem, Utah

Topping the Milken list of best large cities for successful aging: the twin cities of Provo and Orem, Utah. Like Madison and Durham-Chapel Hill (cities 2 and 3), the presence of a major institute of higher educationin this case, Brigham Young Universitymakes it an ideal spot for lifelong learners. Its also a place that boasts a higher-than-average rate of volunteerism among older adults, proof that residents are willing to give back to their community.

And because theyre situated near five national parks in a state known for its natural beauty, the two cities also make it easy to lead an active lifestyle. Like Salt Lake City, residents in Provo and Orem have low rates of diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimers.

2. Madison, Wisconson

The runner-up among larger cities is Madison, the state capital and home of the University of Wisconsin. Despite its chillier winter temperatures, Madison residents do a lot of walking, thanks to its pedestrian-friendly layout and reputation for safety.

The city ranked particularly high in healthcare measures, with access to a large supply of primary care and physical therapy providers. Many of the local hospitals offer geriatric, Alzheimers, and rehab units, making it easier to get the specialized care that some older individuals need.

3. Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Coming in at third is another pair of college towns, Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which host Duke University and the University of North Carolina, respectively. Part of the states booming Research Triangle, the cities offer low unemployment among older inhabitants and what Kubendran and Soll call a culture of volunteerism.

The area ranked highest among bigger metro regions for healthcare, in large part because of its top-tier hospitals and access to geriatric and Alzheimers services. It also enjoys a large number of primary care providers, making it simpler for residents to get basic medical services.

4. Salt Lake City, Utah

Surrounded by the majestic Great Salt Lake and the snow-capped Wasatch mountain range, Salt Lake City is the perfect home for seniors who enjoy the outdoors. It's no wonder, then, that it has one of the healthier adult populations in the country.

But thats not all the town has to offer. It also has numerous cultural attractions and a high employment rate among those 65 and older. The latter contributes to a low incidence of poverty among older adults and low-income inequality.

5. Des Moines-West Des Moines, Iowa

Even among the large metros in Milkens ranking, cities that ranked highest tend to offer livability and a low cost of living. Those attributes are certainly true of Des Moines and West Des Moines, a pair of unassuming Midwestern cities in central Iowa.

According to the Milken study, the area hosts a strong business communitythanks to multiple insurance companies located thereand a relatively low cost for long-term care. Perhaps more surprising is its flourishing cultural scene, which provides plenty to keep the local retirees engaged.

Top 5 Small Metros

Here are the five cities that ranked highest in the small metropolitan area category. Iowa shows up again, with two of the five cities on this list, making it the state with the most attractive options for retirees in the top ten.

1. Iowa City, Iowa

Despite their chillier winters, Midwestern towns dominate the list of best small metros. At the top of the list is Iowa City, where residents are in close proximity to the University of Iowa. Home to the ground-breaking Writers Workshop, the university has long been a hub for artists and storytellers. Its a distinction that led UNESCO to label the town a City of Literature.

A love of reading seems to spill over into the general population; residents are unusually active library users. Also working in the towns favor is a strong public transportation system and the availability of specialty care providers like orthopedic surgeons and hospices.

2. Manhattan, Kansas

With access to a major Army base, Fort Riley, and a prominent learning center, Kansas State University, residents of this Midwestern town benefit from a stable economic environment and specialized medical care. One stand-out feature is its abundance of healthcare facilities for older adults, including rehab centers and Alzheimers units.

Its also a pedestrian-friendly city with an ample supply of libraries and civic groups to keep retirees busy. In addition, Manhattan has a high rate of volunteerism, proving that its residents feel connected to their community.

3. Ames, Iowa

One of the keys to staying young is keeping active, physically and cognitively. Ames, Iowa, a town of just over 66,000 residents, excels in both categories.

Despite its rather frigid winter weather, locals can take advantage of the citys unusually high number of indoor fitness centers. And with its eclectic cultural scene, it offers older adults a pretty good mental workout, too.

4. Columbia, Missouri

Like a number of high-ranking cities, Columbia is an example of how college towns can be great places not just for younger adults, but for those getting up in years. The researchers note that the University of Missouris presence helps contribute to a well-educated populace and a solid economic climate.

Other factors working in Columbias favor: affordable senior living facilities and a large number of home healthcare providers.

5. Sioux Falls, South Dakota

In the fifth spot is Sioux Falls, S.D., even though the average high temperature in January is just 26 F.

What the city has going for it is access to high-quality healthcare services and a robust local economy. It ranks near the top when it comes to income and small business growth. Whats more, Sioux Falls spends generously on its older population, helping residents maintain their independence into advanced age.

The Bottom Line

The Milken Institute study provides a fresh perspective on the qualities adults should seek in the city where theyll spend their later years. It suggests metro areas dont have to have great year-round weather to be an attractive destination in retirement. Having a university, on the other hand, definitely helps.
The telecommunication sector is made up of companies that make communication possible on a global scale, whether it is through the phone or the Internet, through airwaves or cables, through wires or wirelessly. These companies created the infrastructure that allows data in words, voice, audio, or video to be sent anywhere in the world. The largest companies in the sector are telephone (both wired and wireless) operators, satellite companies, cable companies, and Internet service providers.

Not long ago, the telecommunications sector consisted of a club of big national and regional operators. Since the early 2000s, the industry has been swept up in rapid deregulation and innovation. In many countries around the world, government monopolies are now privatized and they face a plethora of new competitors. Traditional markets have been turned upside down, as the growth in mobile services outpaces the fixed-line and the Internet starts to replace voice as the staple business.

Key Takeaways The telecommunications sector consists of companies that transmit data in words, voice, audio, or video across the globe.

Telecom equipment, telecom services, and wireless communication are the three basic sub-sectors of telecommunications.

Telecom has become increasingly focused on video, text, and data, as opposed to voice.

Telecommunications companies can appeal to both growth- and income-oriented investors.

Although individual stocks can be quite volatile, the telecom sector overall has exhibited stable long-term growth, as telecommunications has become an increasingly important basic industry, impervious to business cycles.

1:48 Watch Now: What Is the Telecommunications Sector?

Evolution of the Telecommunications Sector

The telecommunications industry began in the 1830s, with the invention of the telegraph, the first mechanical communications device. It shortened communication from days to hoursmuch as modern mobile technology has shortened the time span of sending large amounts of data from hours to seconds. The industry broadened with each new invention: the telephone, radio, television, computer, mobile device. These technological advances changed how people live and do business.

At one time, telecommunications required physical wires connecting homes and businesses. In contemporary society, technology has gone mobile. Now, wireless digital technology is becoming the primary form of communication.

The sector's structure has also changed from a few large players to a more decentralized system with decreased regulation and barriers to entry. Major public corporations act as the service providers, while smaller companies sell and service the equipment, such as routers, switches, and infrastructure, which enable this communication.

How Telecommunications Companies Make Money

Plain old telephone calls continue to be the industry's biggest revenue generator, but thanks to advances in network technology, this is changing. Telecom is growing less about voice and increasingly about video, text, and data. High-speed Internet access, which delivers computer-based data applications such as broadband information services and interactive entertainment, is rapidly making its way into homes and businesses around the world. The main broadband telecom technology, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), has ushered in a new era. The fastest growth comes from services delivered over mobile networks.

Of all the customer markets, residential and small business markets are arguably the toughest. With literally hundreds of players in the market, competitors rely heavily on price to slog it out for households' monthly checks; success rests largely on brand name strength and heavy investment in efficient billing systems.

The corporate market, on the other hand, remains the industry's favorite. Big corporate customers, who are concerned mostly about the quality and reliability of their telephone calls and data delivery, are less price-sensitive than residential customers. Large multinationals, for instance, spend heavily on telecom infrastructure to support far-flung operations. They are also happy to pay for premium services like high-security private networks and video conferencing.

Telecom operators also make money by providing network connectivity to other telecom companies that need it, and by wholesaling circuits to heavy network users like Internet service providers and large corporations. Interconnected and wholesale markets favor those players with far-reaching networks.

Key Telecommunications Industry Segments

The telecommunications sector consists of three basic sub-sectors: telecom equipment (the largest), telecom services (next largest), and wireless communication.

The major segments within these sub-sectors include the following:

Wireless communications

Communications equipment

Processing systems and products

Long-distance carriers

Domestic telecom services

Foreign telecom services

Diversified communication services

Wireless communications is a very fast-growing sector within telecommunications; more and more communications and computing methods shift to mobile devices and cloud-based technology. This piece of the industry is the anticipated keystone for the continued global expansion of the telecommunications sector.

Looking forward, the sector's biggest challenge is to keep up with people's demand for speedier data connectivity, higher resolution, quicker video streaming, and ample multimedia applications. Meeting people's needs for faster and better connections as they consume and create content requires significant capital expenditures. Companies that can meet these needs thrive.

Investing in Telecommunications

Telecommunications companies are a rarity among equities: Their shares have, at times, exhibited characteristics of both income and growth stocks. For growth investors, the small companies offering wireless services provide the best opportunities for share price appreciation. In contrast, larger companies dealing with equipment and services tend to be havens for conservative, income-focused investors.

Value investors also can find good pickings in the telecommunications sector. The need for telecommunications services, an integral part of the global economy, persists regardless of changes in the business cycle.

However, while the demand is constant, individual suppliers can rise and fall. For several years, a company may enjoy its regulatory privileges (like other utilities, telecom firms often are protected from competition by government mandate), and produce reliable, generous dividend yields (generated by high monthly revenue from its stable customer base). Then, suddenly, technological advances or mergers and acquisitions create uncertainty and leave room for lossand recovery, with fresh growth.

If a firm hits a slump because of shifts in the industry (like the growing importance of wireless devices), value investors might snap it up, provided its fundamentals remain strong and it proves adept at adapting to change. The telecommunications sector's record in paying and regularly raising dividends makes the waiting period for share prices to improve more enjoyable.

However, all of the three major telecom sectors present some risk to investors. Investors with heavy exposure to telecom can expect stronger-than-average gains during bull markets. But, when a recession or bear market hits, losses from this sector can be severe.

Evaluating Telecommunications Companies

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that size matters in telecom. It is an expensive business; contenders need to be large enough and produce sufficient cash flow to absorb the costs of expanding networks and services that become obsolete seemingly overnight. Transmission systems need to be replaced as frequently as every two years.

Big companies that own extensive networksespecially local networks that stretch directly into customers' homes and businessesare less reliant on interconnecting with other companies to get calls and data to their final destinations. By contrast, smaller players must pay for interconnection more often in order to finish the job. For little operators hoping to grow big one day, the financial challenges of keeping up with rapid technological change and depreciation of equipment can be monumental.

Earnings can be a tricky issue when analyzing telecom companies. Many companies have little or no earnings to speak of. To gauge a company's value, telecom industry analysts might turn to the price-to-sales ratio (stock price divided by sales). They also look at average revenue per user (ARPU), which offers a useful measure of growth performance, and the churn rate, the rate at which customers leave (presumably for a competitor).

The Telecommunications Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, was passed to stimulate competition in the U.S. telecom sector.

Big Players in Telecommunications

Current industry leaders worldwide can change from year to year. Determining which are the largest depends on whether one looks in terms of total sales numbers or in terms of market capitalization value as well. As of January 2021, the top five telecom companies ranked by market capitalization are as follows:

AT&T (T) is one of the oldest companies in the telephone business and has a market value estimated at approximately $209 billion.   Verizon (VZ), which provides wireless and wireline services in addition to broadband and information services, has a current market capitalization value of approximately $236 billion.   Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp (NTTYY) is a Japan-based holding company that provides telecommunication services and has a market capitalization of $96.8 billion.   Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGY) is a Germany-based provider of telecommunications and information technology services. The company has a market capitalization of $87.4 billion.   T-Mobile US Inc. (TMUS) is a major U.S. wireless carrier offering various data plans as well as consumer and business telecommunications services. The company has a market capitalization of $159.7 billion.  

Telecommunications ETFs

Several exchange-traded funds (ETFs) serve as alternatives to directly investing in individual telecom firms. Telecom ETFs have varying focuses on geography or industry specialization. Some of the most popular include:

The Vanguard Communication Services ETF (VOX) is entirely composed of U.S. stocks, ranging from small, regional telecom firms to the big three, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.  

(VOX) is entirely composed of U.S. stocks, ranging from small, regional telecom firms to the big three, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile.  The iShares U.S. Telecommunications ETF (IYZ), similar in holdings to Vanguard's Telecommunication Services ETF, also tracks the largest telecom service companies in the U.S.T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizonalong with a handful of smaller regional service providers.  

(IYZ), similar in holdings to Vanguard's Telecommunication Services ETF, also tracks the largest telecom service companies in the U.S.T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizonalong with a handful of smaller regional service providers.  The iShares Global Comm Services ETF (IXP) is more focused internationally, with more than 30% of its holdings in companies headquartered outside the U.S. Notable stocks include some of the top telecom companies: Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, and SoftBank Corp.  

Other popular telecom ETFs include the Fidelity MSCI Communication Services Index (FCOM) and the SPDR S&P Telecom ETF (XTL). 

Telecommunications Sector Outlook

Analysts foresee that product innovation and an increase in mergers and acquisitions will only facilitate the continued growth and success of the telecommunications industry. There are many opportunities for investors, and an increase in investors will only serve to benefit the sector further.

The stability of the sector's growth, even during periods of recession, means that it is considered to be a solid defensive investment while maintaining its appeal to growth investors. Even during uncertain and volatile economic times, the steady demand for voice and data services, along with extensive subscription plans, assures a stable source of revenues for major telecom firms.

Telecommunications has become an increasingly important basic industry, which bodes well for its future prospects and continued growth. The continuing advances in high-speed mobile services and Internet connectivity between devices keep driving innovation and competition within the sector. Much of the industry focus is on providing faster data services, especially in the area of high-resolution video. Essentially, the driving forces are toward quicker and clearer services, increased connectivity, and multi-application usage.

Emerging market economies continue to be a boon for the industry, with the growth rate of the cell phone industry in countries such as China and India pushing the abilities of hardware producers to keep up with the level of demand.

In the U.S., analysts are paying close attention to issues surrounding net neutrality as the demand for data and video services continue to increase well into the future. There is still a strong demand for wireless spectrum rights, not to mention an increasing trend toward consolidation through mergers and acquisitions.

The Bottom Line

Telecommunication companies, like other forms of utilities, often operate with stable customer bases that are protected from competition by government mandate. These pseudo-monopolies allow for consistent dividends. However, the dynamic nature of communications has led to mobile and Internet-based phone systems, undermining the demand for traditional landlines. When this happens, telecommunication companies either suffer or adapt, incorporate the new technology and grow rapidly as consumers buy the latest equipment.
Vancouver - March 2, 2016 (Investorideas.com Newswire) SilverCrest Metals Inc. (TSXV: $SIL.V) ("SilverCrest" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has started rehabilitation of several historic silver-gold mines at its Las Chispas Project ("Las Chispas") located in Sonora, Mexico . Las Chispas is in a prolific mining area which includes current precious metal producers Santa Elena Mine (operated by First Majestic Silver Corp.) and Mercedes Mine (operated by Yamana Gold Inc.). The Company is currently exploring the Las Chispas area to assess the potential for new economic discoveries. All amounts are in Canadian dollars. Please refer to the Company's website at www.silvercrestmetals.com for further information.

N. Eric Fier , CPG, P.Eng, President & CEO stated, "Las Chispas is a very exciting brownfields exploration story. The project area consists of a district size target with multiple historic surface and underground mines that reportedly produced an estimated 100 million ounces of silver and 200 thousand ounces of gold between 1880 and 1930. Reported average production grades from limited public information were approximately 15 grams per tonne (gpt) gold and 1,700 grams per tonne (gpt) silver over widths of 1 to 5 metres. Our initial underground channel sampling of exposed mineralization has shown grades up to 15.1 gpt Au and 1,340 gpt Ag over 1.3 metres. To our knowledge, all mineralized zones in the district, which include multiple epithermal veins, have not been previously drilled. The underground rehabilitation program will help further assess the potential for near surface deposits and deeper extensions of mineralization. A majority of the underground workings have been inaccessible for over 80 years, and historic records suggest several previously developed areas were not mined due to closure around 1930. The Company is well financed with over $6.5 million and the 2016 exploration expenditures are expected to be in the range of $1 to $1.2 million ."

In 2016, the Company plans on accessing and evaluating most of the estimated six kilometres of historic workings at Las Chispas. Currently, about two kilometres of these workings are easily accessible with good ground conditions. Initial rehabilitation will take several months to complete and will consist of cleaning and securing all underground areas, removing historic backfill and stockpiling for possible future processing, building a ladder system to access multiple levels, detailed mapping and sampling of accessed workings, and implementation of overall safety protocols. Estimated cost of this initial program is $150,000 to $200,000 .

In conjunction with underground rehabilitation, a surface drilling program of approximately 3,000 metres is planned to begin in March 2016 , followed by a 2,000 metre underground drilling program later in the year. This initial drilling will test; 1) near surface targets, 2) underground lateral extensions of previously mined areas, and 3) deeper extensional targets of potential mineralization below the historical workings. Estimated all-in cost for this initial drilling is $1 million .

Initial sampling (134 samples) by the Company of current accessible underground mineralization suggests high grade potential (uncut, undiluted), with the most significant results to date including:

Initial sampling is selective with widths of samples limited to current underground openings (average 1.5 metres) and not by potential actual widths of zones. Historically, some mineralized zones were over 5 metres wide. Underground exposure of the Las Chispas Vein shows an area with multiple veins and stockwork up to 7 metres wide. Detailed continuous channel sampling of this area is underway to determine average continuous grades over wider intervals.

All assays where completed by ALS Chemex in Hermosillo, Mexico and North Vancouver, BC .

Las Chispas consists of multiple mineralized zones containing epithermal quartz veins, quartz and calcite stockwork, and breccias associated with rhyolitic to andesitic dikes in Tertiary volcanic tuffs. Defined mineralized zones are based on available historical data and current accessible workings;

Las Chispas Vein: estimated 1.5 kilometres long, 300 metre depth and 1.5 metres wide, Guillermo (William) Tell Vein : estimated 1 kilometre long, 200 metre depth and 1.5 metres wide, Varela 1 & 2 Veins: each estimated at 200 to 300 metres long, 200 metre projected depth and 1.5 metres wide, and Babicanora Vein: estimated 1 kilometre long, 200 metre projected depth and 2 to 3 metres wide.

Except for the Babicanora Vein, all other veins listed above are parallel and near vertical within a 500 metre wide Northwest-Southeast trend. Several mineralized zones noted in historic data and currently exposed on surface or underground were not previously mined and are targeted for exploration.

Huasabas Project Update

As previously planned, drilling was completed at the Company's 100% owned Huasabas property located in Sonora, Mexico . Approximately 1,091 metres of drilling was completed in 5 core holes. Drill results indicate the presence of a large epithermal system with up to 225 metres of drill intercepted breccias, stockwork veining and banded veins in Tertiary volcanics. Geochemical assay results show that the near surface mineralization is close to the top of the epithermal system with strong Au-Ag-Ba-Sb-As-Hg anomalies. Drill results for the first 5 holes showed multiple intercepts from 5 to 10 metres wide grading 0.1 to 0.3 gpt Au and 5 to 15 gpt Ag. Having established the presence of a large epithermal system, the Company's next steps will be to test the system's extensions to determine the presence of potential economic mineralization. Given the results and the minimal holding cost for the project, the Company's current plan is to maintain the property for future work and currently focus on its Las Chispas Project.

The Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects for this news release is N. Eric Fier , CPG, P.Eng, and President and CEO for SilverCrest, who has reviewed and approved its contents.

ABOUT SILVERCREST METALS INC.

SilverCrest is a Canadian precious metals exploration company headquartered in Vancouver, BC , that is focused on new discoveries, value-added acquisitions and targeting production in Mexico's historic precious metal districts. The Company is led by a proven management team in all aspects of the precious metal mining sector, including the pioneering of a responsible "phased approach" business model taking projects through discovery, finance, on time and on budget construction, and production with subsequent increased value to shareholders.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. Such forwardlooking statements concern the exploration, rehabilitation and drilling plans of the Las Chispas Project. Such forwardlooking statements or information are based on a number of assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the conditions in general economic and financial markets; availability of skilled labour; timing and amount of expenditures related to rehabilitation and drilling programs; and effects of regulation by governmental agencies. The actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of risk factors including: the timing and content of work programs; results of exploration activities; the interpretation of drilling results and other geological data; receipt, maintenance and security of permits and mineral property titles; environmental and other regulatory risks; project cost overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses; and general market and industry conditions. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statements were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements included in this news release if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as otherwise required by applicable law.

N. Eric Fier , CPG, P.Eng

President & CEO

SilverCrest Metals Inc.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE SilverCrest Metals Inc.

Contact:

SilverCrest Metals Inc.

Fred Cooper, Investor Relations

Telephone: +1 (604) 694-1730

Fax: +1 (604) 694-1761

Toll Free: 1-866-691-1730 (Canada & USA)

Email: info@silvercrestmetals.com

Website: www.silvercrestmetals.com

570 Granville Street, Suite 501, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 3P1

Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investment involves risk and possible loss of investment. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Contact each company directly regarding content and press release questions. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. More disclaimer info: http://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp. Disclosure: Investorideas.com is compensated by SilverCrest Metals Inc for annual news publishing effective January 2016.

Additional info regarding BC Residents and global Investors: Effective September 15 2008 - all BC investors should review all OTC and Pink sheet listed companies for adherence in new disclosure filings and filing appropriate documents with Sedar. Read for more info: http://www.bcsc.bc.ca/release.aspx?id=6894. Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country.
Top News - Investor Idea

Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines

BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase.

Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea

Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen Automotive (NASDAQ: $MULN) Taps Former GM Executive John Schwegman as Chief Commercial Officer for Next Phase of EV Growth

BREA, Calif. - October 21, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today the hiring of John Schwegman as its Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) for Mullen's line of commercial vehicles.

Top EV Stock News - Investor Idea

EV Stocks Driving Higher: (NASDAQ: $MULN) (NASDAQ: $TSLA) (NYSE: $NIO) (NYSE: $F)

Vancouver, Delta, BC - October 20, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Investorideas.com, a leading investor news resource covering EV and automotive stocks releases a special report featuring Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), covering the continued growth of the EV market as government policy and infrastructure plans sync up with consumer and investor interest in the EV space.

Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea

Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses

NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore.

Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas:

Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by

Investorideas.com Newswire:

Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire
The Irish whiskey from The Pogues, whose Celtic take on punk took rock by storm in the 1980s, is now available to band fans and finer whiskey lovers alike in the United States, after rolling out in the United Kingdom last fall.

The full bodied, yet smooth-finishing blend, is produced by West Cork Distillers, one of only two remaining independently owned and operated distilleries in Ireland. Having sampled their share of brown spirits over the years, the band, known for Fairytale in New York and other hits, was deeply involved in the creation of The Pogues Irish whiskey from start to finish.

Shane MacGowan legendary frontman of the band said Its been brilliant working with the team at West Cork Distillers in creating a whiskey that we all think reflects our spirit and energy, and that we all enjoy the taste of.

Its wonderful to add a product bearing our name to the ranks of great Irish whiskeys, and we think it will stand the test of time.

The Pogues Irish Whiskey is distilled using ingredients indigenous to Ireland, including locally grown grain and spring water from the idyllic River Ilen. Its carefully crafted in small batches in handmade copper stills at West Corks distillery in Skiberdeen, the cultural home of Irish whiskey. Notably, West Cork is Irelands only whiskey producer to still malt its own barley, enabling exceptional precision and control over flavor profile.

The Pogues Irish Whiskey represents the ideal blending of tradition and quality from our friends at West Cork, and the rich Irish heritage and culture of the band, said Justin Shaw, VP of Brand & Market Strategy at MS Walker. We cant wait for American aficionados of the band and whiskey, new and old, to enjoy their first taste.

The Pogues Irish whiskey is a unique blend of 50% ten-year single malt Irish whiskey aged in sherry casks and 50% 5-7 year Irish grain whiskey aged in bourbon oak casks. The resulting liquid has an aroma of malts and cracked nuts, with a sweet taste and a smooth, intense flavor.

For more information visit www.thepoguesirishwhiskey.com.

Fittingly, heres The Pogues with Streams Of Whiskey:
Fox News host, Bill OReilly lost custody of his two teenage children amidst a court battle with his ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy.

Nassau County Supreme Court made the initial ruling in 2015 and OReilly (67) had appealed but the decision was upheld last year. Maureen McPhilmy (50) now has full custody of the teenager, Madeleine (17) and her 13-year-old brother, Spencer.

The New York Appeals court decision, a 1,400-page document, states:

"Viewing the totality of the circumstances, there is a sound and substantial basis for the Supreme Court's determination that it is in the best interests of the children for the mother to be awarded primary residential custody."

The ruling also suggests that the court was influenced by the childrens choice, indicating they didn't want to live with OReilly.

It reads: Particularly relevant in this case are the clearly stated preferences of the children, especially considering their age and maturity, and the quality of the home environment provided by the mother."

Bill OReilly loses custody battle with ex-wife, has to be more fair and balanced with kids https://t.co/eSMPQpoGrS pic.twitter.com/FyXgZATniE  New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 29, 2016

The Fox pundit will maintain visitation rights and share legal custody of the children. The cases ruling, listed as Anonymous 2011-1 v Anonymous 2011-2, states the record supports the court's finding that if either parent were awarded sole decision-making authority, there would be a danger that it would be used to exclude the other parent from meaningful participation in the children's lives.

In 2015 the O'Reilly and McPhilmy's daughter, Madeleine, told a court-appointed forensic examiner that she saw her father dragging McPhilmy down a staircase by her neck at the couples home in Manhasset, New York.

OReilly released a statement denying the accusations. It read: All allegations against me in these circumstances are 100 percent false. I am going to respect the court-mandated confidentiality put in place to protect my children and will not comment any further.

Gawker published the transcripts from the court case in May 2015 which stated: M. [Madeleine] reportedhaving seeing an incident where I believe she said her dad was choking her mom or had his hands around her neck and dragged her down some stairs.

Read more: Its time for Bill OReilly to renounce his Irish heritage (VIDEO)

OReilly and McPhilmy separated in April 2010. Since their separation, McPhilmy has married a Nassau County Police detective named Jeffrey Gross. According to the Daily Mail, when OReilly learned of their relationship he had an internal affairs investigation launched into Gross.

OReilly had previously raised money for the department. He told the church that McPhilmy was receiving communion even though he was divorced and remarried and that she had been telling their children that her second marriage was valid in the eyes of God. She was allegedly reprimanded by her Long Island parish in writing.

Bill O'Reilly and Maureen McPhilmy divorced in September 2011.

As part of the couples agreement, they hired a child therapist to arbitrate any potential custodial disputes. In the court papers from January 2013, McPhilmy claimed that OReilly had hired the children's therapist as a full-time employee to perform virtually all of his parental duties.

*Originally published in March 2016.
Irish American astronaut Scott Kelly is back from a year in outer space.

The 52-year-old, who just celebrated his birthday in orbit on February 21, has been on board the International Space Station for 340 days. He now holds the record for the most cumulative days in space by an American astronaut  over 500.

Last night, Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergei Volkovhurtled came back into the Earths atmosphere in the Soyuz TMA-18M capsule, finally reaching terra firma in Kazakhstan.

Kornienko was also in space for 340 days. The two men are part of a study analyzing the impacts of long-term space travel in microgravity on the human body, in preparation for an eventual mission to Mars. Their venture marks the fourth-longest space trip in human history.

Kelly is an especially important part of the study because when he zoomed into orbit last year, he left an exact genetic copy of himself on Earth: his twin and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly.

Mark, who is six minutes older than his brother and is married to former Congressman Gabrielle Giffords, has been to space four times, as a shuttle pilot and commander. He ended his last mission in 2011.

The Irish American twins, who are both former United States Navy captains and were raised in West Orange, NJ trace their Irish heritage through their father, Richard Kelly, a retired police captain. In a 2006 interview with IrishCentrals sister publication, Irish America magazine, it was revealed that the brothers were determined to go into space at an early age.

Their father said that when the boys were eight they told their Irish grandmother in Orange, NJ that they would be going up in space someday.

Their mother, also a retired police officer, said she was not surprised.

"I really do believe there is a genetic predisposition for certain things," she told the magazine.

Throughout the next year, NASA will be studying the Kelly twins to determine what impact Scotts year in space had on his health. This data will help NASA strategize for an eventual mission to Mars, during which astronauts would be in space for two to three years.

As the above video from "The Verge" explains, Living for months in microgravity can alter many of the body's systems, since humans evolved on Earth. Astronauts who have stayed in space for long periods have problems with their circulation and eyesight. Thats in addition to losses in bone and muscle tissue. Kelly has collected fluid samples and undergone rigorous medical testing to document these changes over the course of his trip.

In addition to participating in this ground-breaking study and helping to run the International Space Station, during his mission Kelly took hundreds of photos, documenting his days in space and his view of the Earth.

"I have taken a lot of pictures because I've been up here for a long time. . . I've definitely taken some good ones and some memorable ones, he acknowledged in his last press conference on board the ISS.

His social media accounts have amassed close to one million followers during his latest expedition.

However beautiful they are, Kelly was quick to emphasize, the photos were not the most important part of the mission for him. "The thing I like most about flying in space is not the view," he added. "The thing I like about it is doing something I feel very, very strongly about."

Welcome home, Commander Kelly!
With the predicted stalemate now a reality, it's going to take weeks to sort out the aftermath of the Irish election.

The outgoing Fine Gael-Labour coalition government has lost a bunch of seats and no longer has a majority. But the opposition is so fractured it cannot offer a coherent alternative administration.

As this column is being written, recounts are still underway in some constituencies to determine the last few seats, but it is clear that we have a hung Dail.

Fine Gael is still the largest party, but not by much. Labour has been decimated. Fianna Fail has performed the biggest comeback since Lazarus and is once again a main political player, receiving 24.3 percent of the national vote just behind Fine Gael on 25.5 percent. But unless Fianna Fail can get the support of Sinn Fein, Labour and a dozen others, it can't form a government.

The outcome of the election is a disaster for Fine Gael and for Taoiseach Enda Kenny who has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with an unconvincing campaign. Kenny is a dead man walking as the young guns in Fine Gael assess the damage he has done to the party.

Enda Kenny said it was a bruising election and he has been talking to those who lost their seats #rtenews #GE16 pic.twitter.com/tYoqQhL0jj  Martina Fitzgerald (@MartinaFitzg) March 2, 2016

But the election outcome actually poses the biggest conundrum for Fianna Fail, as their leader Micheal Martin tries to figure out what to do next.

The obvious solution -- the one most people are demanding -- is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail finally bite the Civil War bullet and form a coalition together. Both are center right parties, and the policy differences between them are negligible and could easily be sorted out.

Read more Irish politics stories here

But this would be a high risk move for Fianna Fail, tempting though it would be to get close to half the seats in cabinet.

Their problem is that this would leave Sinn Fein as the main opposition party in the Dail, perfectly positioned to snipe at the new government and steal Fianna Fail's traditional support base along with its constitutional republican clothes. It also runs the risk of Fianna Fail, as the smaller government party, being subsumed into Fine Gael over time. Would anyone be able to tell them apart after five years in government together?

There is also the difficulty that during the campaign Fianna Fail repeatedly promised voters a change of government to achieve "fairness" in how the economy is being run. Going into a Fine Gael-led government as the junior coalition partner hardly constitutes such a change, although if Kenny is replaced as taoiseach by someone else in Fine Gael the optics might not be too bad.

But it's a difficult decision for Martin. A safer strategy from Fianna Fail's point of view might be to stay in opposition but to support a minority Fine Gael led government "for the sake of the country."

This would allow Fianna Fail to present themselves as a responsible party putting the national interest first. It would also allow them to bring the government down on an issue and at a time of Fianna Fail's choosing, perhaps on a difficult measure in the budget later this year. In the election that would follow Fianna Fail would appeal for a bigger vote to allow them to lead a new "fair" government.

That may sound cynical, but don't believe any of the high-minded stuff you are reading about politicians here putting the country first. They will put party first, as usual.

Sinn Fein could be a key player in what happens, although their share of the national vote at just under 14 percent is far lower than they were expecting and is only four percent up on their vote in the 2011 election. If they were to reverse their position and offer to support Fianna Fail (they come from the same republican gene pool after all), then an alternative coalition including a lot of independents and smaller parties just might be possible. But that is highly unlikely, even though the prospect of being in government on both sides of the border in this centenary year must be tempting for them.

It is, as we said, going to take weeks to sort this out. For now, as the speculation continues, it is worth taking a moment to consider what went wrong for Kenny.

The first thing is that Kenny himself was part of the problem, a poor communicator with little leadership ability. The landslide Fine Gael got in 2011 had nothing to do with him, apart from the fact that he happened to be leader at the time. The country was so angry with Fianna Fail after the crash and the humiliation of the bailout they would have voted for Fine Gael led by a turkey.

In government Fine Gael did little more than follow the four year plan to rebalance the budget laid down by the previous Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan and stick to the austerity limits set by the Troika. Just as they had punished Fianna Fail for imposing cutbacks on them, the voters in turn have now punished Fine Gael for doing the same.

None of this should be a surprise. Voters in each of the other countries in Europe -- Greece, Spain and Portugal -- who have been bailed out and forced into an austerity program have also dumped their governments. The idea that Irish people would be more accepting of the spending cuts and tax hikes that had to be implemented was an illusion.

Despite the bailout being more successful here and the Irish economy now being back on track, voters here were just waiting to take their revenge on the administration that had inflicted more pain on them.

Added to that was the fact that most voters have yet to feel much uplift from the economic recovery. There were minor cuts in income taxes this year, but these have been cancelled out by new taxes and charges.

The feel-good factor has been missing, and there was also a widespread perception among voters that the necessary cutbacks have not been implemented fairly, with better off people escaping much of the pain. This became the centerpiece of the Fianna Fail campaign and even though it has little validity, it resonated strongly with voters.

At the end of the day it comes back to the simple fact that many voters are not interested in macroeconomic statistics about unemployment coming down, the national debt being stabilized and the budget being rebalanced. If they as individuals don't feel better off they are going to react negatively.

Read more Irish politics stories here

Even those who now have jobs -- unemployment is down from 15 percent after the crash to eight percent now -- are less than grateful because they are struggling to pay things like the new property tax and water charges.

Among the less well-off parts of Irish society, the sense of entitlement and the resentment at any failure to provide services is as strong as ever, stoked up by Sinn Fein and the left wing independents and groups.

This perceived lack of fairness and failure to provide services became a dominant theme during the election campaign, even though the very high welfare payments here were protected during the austerity cutbacks and our spending on health services, for example, is one of the highest in Europe.

Despite this the media commentary throughout the campaign -- and particularly on RTE -- was relentlessly negative, with government ministers excoriated every day over the homeless problem and overcrowding in hospital A&E departments.

Of course, no one should be homeless, but after the crash and the collapse of the construction industry catch-up problems in the housing market were inevitable. The fact that 800 families are in emergency accommodation in Dublin -- mostly in hotel rooms paid for by the state -- is not satisfactory, but the government has been trying to deal with the situation.

This narrative about homeless families living in hotel rooms and sick people left on trolleys in A&E for hours because hospitals are overcrowded was repeated endlessly on TV and radio during the campaign. In the context of a country emerging from a crash with a population of millions, the numbers involved were not that significant but this was ignored in the media. Any attempt by government ministers to place these issues in the context of the economic recovery was dismissed with barely concealed contempt by media interviewers and presenters.

At one point in the campaign Kenny became so frustrated with this that he made the widely reported remark about us being a nation of whingers. Of course to minimize the damage he had to apologize, but there is a good deal of truth in his observation.

The fact is that we are making progress and there was -- and is -- no painless way out of the economic mess Ireland got itself into. Dumping the government as the voters have just done will not change that.

And the next government, whoever it may be, will face the same challenge.
A Scottish Council has unanimously rejected a motion to fly the Irish flag over three separate council buildings in the central Scottish region on April 24 to mark the 1916 centenary.

The motion was proposed in January of this year by the Irish republican group Cairde na hEireann and was given the go-ahead by by North Lanarkshires public affairs committee in February.

We want to celebrate our Irishness on the day of the Easter Rising, said Cairde na hEireanns national organizer Franny McAdam at the time.

However, the North Lanarkshire Council threw out the proposal last week (Feb. 25) at their first full meeting since the motion was passed.

Read more about the 1916 centenary here

Discussing the controversial issue with The Irish Post, Dr Joe Bradley, an academic at the University of Stirling with a background in modern history and political science, said: In certain circumstances, for some people flying the Irish flag can be seen as a respectful gesture to those of Irish descent for their contribution to building modern Scotland and as a critical event in their ethnic background history.

Beyond this community though most others in wider society will not celebrate the Easter Uprising. After all, few within Britain have much knowledge about the event.

Furthermore, the rebellion was against perceived British imperialism in Ireland, he added.

In context, the way the flag issue has developed on this occasion is unsurprising.

Keith Russell, manager of Malones Irish Pub in Glasgow, called the debate over the flag pathetic.

Everybody wants to celebrate it in their own way and should be able to, he said.

Im from Belfast so Ive seen the patheticness of flag issues and protests so its not something that interests me.

The Scottish Saltire or the Union Jack may be flown over public buildings on certain days, but flying any other flag requires permission, according to current protocol.

After the motion was passed, local Labour Party councillors, who make up the majority of the 79 seat North Lanarkshire council, met privately and decided to vote against flying the Irish flag. Labours fellow councillors sided with the main party for a no vote against the proposal, making it unanimous.

Read more: How Irish America alone understood the true impact of the 1916 Rising
It got all kinds of awkward on RTE Ones Today Show earlier when Amy Winehouses dad, Mitch Winehouse, appeared to discuss about the Oscar win for Amy - a documentary about her life.

A film that Mitch has been very vocal about disliking.

The well-known London taxi driver was interviewed by co-hosts Daithi OSe and Maura Derrane via video link, and for his first Irish interview ever, it didnt go too well.

Firstly, Maura asked Mitch what was it he specifically didn't like about the film and why he didnt approve of the way his daughter was portrayed.

Mitch then asked the duo whether they had seen the film and after they admitted they had only seen extracts, he replied: Well its difficult for me to explain then.

Dont worry, it gets worse.

Daithi then went on to question Mitch on why he had previously given the film-makers his seal of approval before Maura jumped in and asked: Why did you decide to get involved in the documentary and give all this intimate footage if you were worried?

Ive just explained, we were told we were in safe hands with the Senna people, thats why we did it, he replied referring to the 2015 documentary

But why did you do it all? Maura asked again before it all got a little ugly.

Are you going to let me speak? You keep talking across me, Mitch barked back.

The film you say we gave to them, we didnt give that to them. Thats on public record, all that stuff, all what you call intimate film, is on public record. Its on the internet,

He then abruptly reminded them that they hadn't asked him about the Amy Foundation - a charity set up to prevent drug and alcohol misuse among young people - before signing off with watch the film.

Ouch.
Homes which have paid their water bills may not be entitled to a refund even if Irish Water is abolished under a new Government.

Fianna Fail's Environment spokesperson Barry Cowen said that while the party would seek to end water charges they could not change the law retrospectively as much as they would like to.

With uncertainty over the future of Irish Water it is expected there be even more widespread boycotting of bills until a decision is made.

Homeowners that had previously paid their bills will be reluctant to continue making payments if the system is to be scrapped in the near future.

Fianna Fail has insisted the water charges will be a red line issue when it comes to a coalition of support for a minority Fine Gael Government.

Last night Fine Gael Minister Simon Coveney said they would be "willing to talk about water."

"We need to take on board within reason, what they are looking for," he said.

Dermot Jewell of the Consumers' Association of Ireland said there would likely be a "very, very sharp" fall in payment rates given to political uncertainty.

"At the very least, people will hang back rather than put more money into a bottomless pit," he said.

First appeared in March 2 print edition of the Evening Echo.

Update 2.30pm: SIPTU is demanding to know why the claim that the abolition of Irish Water would cost 7bn was not public knowledge before the General Election.

In the letter to Ervia, Irish Water's parent company, SIPTU called on the company to guarantee the existing terms and conditions of Irish Water workers.

They say staff at the utility are tired of having their livelihoods ignored.

SIPTU's Adrian Kane said there is little consideration for the staff.

We are also concerned in relation to the effect that this is having on our members in Irish Water, he said.

Theres loose talk in relation to scrapping Irish Water etc., with scarce, little regard for the ordinary men and women who work in the organisation and whose livelihoods we are attempting to protect.
Frank Kelly has been remembered as loving, courageous and committed at his funeral.

President Higgins, Father Ted creator Graham Linehan and broadcaster Gay Byrne are among the hundreds of mourners to gather at the Church of the Guardian Angels in Blackrock in Dublin.
A nanny accused of killing and then decapitating a four-year old girl was not acting on her own, Russian prosecutors have said.

The 38-year old woman, from Uzbekistan, was spotted brandishing the child's head outside a subway station in Moscow on Monday morning.
The US Standard & Poors 500 Index rebounded from its third consecutive monthly decline, while European equities headed for a fourth day of gains for the first time since October.

While February marked a fourth consecutive monthly slide for global stocks, signs that financial tension in China and a slump in commodities are abating has seen shares recover more than 5% since February 11.

Data suggesting American consumers can still power the worlds largest economy and hints from central banks in Asia and Europe more stimulus is at the ready underpinned the revival.

Bets the US Federal Reserve will hold off on additional interest-rate hikes also got a boost.

A rebound in oil prices in the final two weeks of February also helped stabilise equity markets.

China and upcoming central banks meetings are in focus and investors believe there should be more supportive measures, said Christoph Riniker, the Zurich-based head of strategy research at Julius Baer.

Theres also some better prices in crude oil and more risk-on related factors driving equity markets upwards again at least on the shorter term, he said.

Shares in the London Stock Exchange Group jumped 8.4% yesterday after Intercontinental Exchange confirmed its considering a counter bid for the company, which is planning to merge with Deutsche Boerse.

Swiss Life Holding rose 4.3% after its proposed dividend beat analyst estimates.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index gained for a third day, climbing 1.4%.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland shares traded in Hong Kong increased 1.9%, and the Shanghai Composite Index advanced 1.7%, the most in a week.

Data from China showed a manufacturing purchasing managers index contracted more than estimated in February.

The nations parliament will gather on Saturday for an annual meeting, where plans for the next five years will be out lined.

Chinas currency, the yuan, rose for the first time in eight days in Shanghai after the Chinese central bank raised its reference rate by 0.1%.

With a stronger fixing, theyre trying to ensure a stable yuan even as they ease policy through the reserve-requirement-ratio channel, said Khoon Goh, at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.
Its technology enables disease-fighting miracle molecules to be turned into medicines that can be mass-produced in pharmaceutical plants.

According to APCs CEO and co-founder, Dr Mark Barrett, this dramatically speeds up the release of new medicines.

We can reduce the development timelines from five years to one year, and, in some cases, to just several months, he said, adding that his company is working on medicines for HIV, cancer, respiratory disorders, and other life-threatening conditions.

The four-year-old process-research company now lists eight of the worlds top 10 pharmaceutical companies as customers, as well as five of the top 10 biotech companies.

It employs 62 and has a research team that includes 50 PhDs. APC is seeking 32 more staff.

This year, it opened a new, 6,000 sq metre laboratory in Cherrywood Business Park, and announced plans to recruit 100 staff over the next two years to grow its revenues to 50m by 2020.

APC was set up in the teeth of recession, in 2011, when Dr Barrett and Prof Brian Glennon, from the UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, discovered ways to accelerate the development of medicines.

They began offering these to Irish-based companies.

Following a recommendation, Dr Barrett and Prof Glennon flew to the US to meet the parent company of an Irish-based client. They signed a significant agreement with a global leader in the pharmaceutical sector and began hiring.

The strategy was to provide not just the process, but also to back it up with a world-class team of highly qualified research personnel, says Dr Barrett, explaining that APC had identified an opportunity to provide process-research and process-innovation services to the pharmaceutical industry.

We have developed a market which did not exist before  in the past, pharmaceutical companies would try to internalise all of these activities themselves, but we developed approaches and technologies that helped them accelerate this process, he says, explaining that APC is the only company in the world with the technology to provide this service.

APC is self-funded. Since 2012, it has been achieving annual growth of over 120%.

Its single-largest market is the US, which accounts for 50% of turnover, while Europe accounts for 30%, and Ireland 20%.

This year, APC should maintain its growth rate, but Dr Barrett expects this to have escalated by 2018.

Future plans will involve setting up a sales-and-marketing office in Singapore, which the company sees as a gateway to the Asian market.
Just how he will arrange his diary, having scheduled the vote on the first day of the regular midsummer EU summit, is not yet clear; from then on, the process of Brexit will only get messier, as Europes fractious leaders haggle their way through an unprecedented break-up that could take years to complete.

Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union lets a state quit and sets a deadline to negotiate terms within two years.

If by mid-2018, Britain has not agreed issues like trade terms or the status of foreign residents, its membership will simply end  unless it and all 27 other EU states agree an extension.

Mr Camerons government said this week, however, that rewriting British laws post-Brexit and renegotiating relations in trade and other fields could take a decade, with an EU divided over other crises and smarting from Britains rejection.

No one has a clear idea how events will unfold once voting ends at 10 pm on Thursday, June 23. Instant exit polls will deliver a verdict to Brussels just as EU leaders are finishing dinner at the halfway point of their two-day meeting.

Once Britain gives notice it is quitting, it will be excluded from EU discussions on how to handle that process.

Some supporters of a Brexit vote suggested formal notification of Britains plan to quit could be delayed to give EU leaders time to offer better terms than Mr Camerons deal, possibly to a new British premier if he is forced out.

The most recent departure, when Greenland quit the EEC membership it shared with Denmark until 1985, was however tortuous .

Although no member state has voted to leave in the 60 years of the Union and its earlier incarnations, territories such as Algeria have emerged into independence.

But the most recent departure, when Greenland quit the EEC membership it shared with Denmark until 1985, was so tortuous, even though the trade links were tiny, the 2009 Lisbon Treaty redrawing EU law set the first rules for withdrawal.
Living Gospel Equality Now: Loving in the Heart of God: Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests
A new video game helped Europes biggest toymaker gain market share in all its regions.

Net income rose to 9.2bn kroner (1.23bn) in 2015, from 7bn kroner a year earlier, the Denmark-based company said.

Profit grew faster than sales, which expanded 25%, to 35.8bn kroner.

Lego said sales grew by a double-digit percentage rate in all its regions, including the US, and faster than the toy industrys expansion, which was mostly in the mid-single digit range.

Lego continues to outpace the two largest US toy-makers, who may be considering a merger.

Mattel said last month that full-year sales fell 5%, to $5.7bn (5.2bn), while Hasbro said that 2015 sales grew 4%, to $4.45bn.

Legos growth was fuelled by new products, such as Lego Dimension, which combines traditional brick-building with console game-playing.

Earlier this year, Lego said it would invest 100m in its factory in Hungary, to double the size of its facilities there and avoid shortages that have plagued the Christmas period in recent years.

Lego has become the worlds largest toy-maker by sales, overtaking US Barbie-maker, Mattel, thanks partly to toys linked to movies.

But Lego ran short of bricks before Christmas last year. The company is also building a factory in Jiaxing, in China.
In that period the entire economy has to get on with life and work that helps pay bills and creates opportunities for those who work and want to work.

It might be no harm to focus on tangible issues that need to be addressed in political discussions.

This is especially true for Munster and Cork where economic momentum has commenced over the last two years.

That is evidenced by high-profile job announcements from global corporations like Apple and Tyco, and boots on the ground by construction companies like the Cleary and OCallaghan businesses.

It is very tempting to be dragged into a spectator sport around politics and ridicule or laugh at the unfolding drama that has commenced.

However, each and every one of those new TDs have to bear the collective responsibility to signal what type of environment they are offering for employers contemplating expansion in Ireland.

This week we should assume that a broad number of companies are considering Ireland as a base from which to do business.

That group ranges from highly sophisticated international companies to small enterprises run by local entrepreneurs.

What are the messages being sent to them about how welcoming Ireland now is for incremental investments that can sustain economic growth, boost job creation and, in so doing, swell the size of tax revenues for use by the political system?

Here are a few ideas about what I imagine leaders with control over investment need to hear.

Firstly, Ireland wants to continue attracting globally mobile investment that can deliver thousands of incremental jobs across a broad group of sectors including IT, pharmaceuticals, agri-food, and services.

To attract this type of investment, which will benchmark Ireland against competing locations, some clear flags have to be flown; (1) the 12.5% corporate tax rate is a long term cornerstone of policy; (2) personal tax rates at all income levels will at least match those of competing locations; (3) the need for urgent actions to address affordable housing is recognised, and; (4) infrastructural investment to underpin economic growth is hard-wired in to the political classes.

This menu of items may seem bland but contain the need for deep rooted and radical thinking.

Moves to ignite a wave of affordable housing is probably the one piece of the jigsaw that seems a no-brainer for enlightened politicians in my mind presently.

Ireland is blessed with a demography made up of a large young family-forming cohort that is simply not in existence in much larger economies that are struggling with an aging population.

That younger profile creates future employees and generations of economically important groups as they grow up through the education and employment layers of Irish society.

Building the houses to accommodate these people is, itself, an economic stimulant that creates jobs within the domestic economy.

We have ample quantities of land on which such houses can be built.

Despite these huge advantages we seem to be locked in a morass of red tape, poor tax structures and absolute house prices that dont work for young employees and families.

Solving the housing dilemma is a real job for a real leader.

That leader should bring together, without fanfare, a tight group of relevant experts who understand the difference between dust gathering reports and a time lined action list.

That review should move us from the weird and unsatisfactory status of underbuilding to a programme of fast tracked construction of a swathe of homes that are safe and priced at rates that give young families in decent jobs the prospect of working in Cork while financing their homes with a reasonable percentage of their take-home pay.

That formula is missing at present but holds the prospect of unlocking further economic advances if delivered by pragmatists rather than publicists.

Joe Gill is director of corporate broking with Goodbody Stockbrokers. His views are personal.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
Figures provided by the Irish Greyhound Board (Bord na gCon) also show 33 sanctions were imposed on owners and trainers last year  including a disqualification and exclusion order applied to one man following the deaths of 11 greyhounds on a ferry in 2014.

The figures from the IGB show a total of 5,331 samples were taken from dogs at tracks around the country last year, with more than 1,000 taken at Shelbourne Park. Youghal in Co Cork had the lowest number of samples taken, at 118.

Of the 58 positive samples, 15 were at Shelbourne Park, with Waterford the location of the next highest figure, at nine. The latter track, where 226 samples were taken, had the highest percentage of positive tests of any track, albeit 3.4%.

Tracks with no positive samples included Dundalk, Galway, Kilkenny, Mullingar, and Newbridge.

As for welfare and kennel inspections, 569 checks were carried out last year, including 80 in October.

Of the 33 penalties handed down last year, 27 were under Section 10 of the Welfare of Greyhounds Act, relating mainly to notification of sale or transfer of greyhounds.

Three welfare notices were served by Bord na gCon welfare officers and there were more serious charges in three other cases.

In June a successful prosecution was brought in Nenagh District Court against an individual who had failed to comply with a welfare notice issued the previous November, resulting in a fine of 2,500 and another 1,500 in expenses.

In October a disqualification order and exclusion order was imposed on Manuel Portillo Lopez following an investigation into the deaths of 11 greyhounds on board the Oscar Wilde Ferry the previous October. Last December, disqualification and exclusion orders were imposed on a Paul Nolan, linked to the June prosecution.

The Greyhound Rescue Association of Ireland (GRAI) welcomed the news of the orders but said: GRAI are concerned over the lack of information regarding the length of the imposed orders. GRAI are further concerned the orders do not go as far as banning the aforementioned from keeping greyhounds  they are disqualified/excluded from tracks; sales; coursing meetings; Irish Stud Book registrations.

The GRAI also queried whether licences in Ireland would be revoked for those found guilty of doping offences in the UK but who had continued to race those same dogs at events here.

www.igb.ie
The ex-employees appealed a decision of the Government not to make payments for work on a contract basis, rather than a full-time, staff basis. They have yet to be paid under the terms of the pension settlement negotiated between the Government and Unite trade union, by which the first payments were made to 1,200 former Crystal staff last year.

We had 28 days to appeal, if we werent happy, said one of the workers, Brendan Drummey. Theres a group of about 80 or 100 who took up the option to appeal. Some people took what was on offer. The appeal started in September and people who didnt appeal got their money last year. The remainder of us have been kind of thrown on the scrap heap.
According to the 2015 annual review by the States immigration service, the numbers deported include more than a doubling of the failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants going from 111 in 2014 to 251 last year.

In total, the numbers of foreign nationals deported or removed by the service from the State last year increased by 1,430, from 2,360 in 2014 to 3,790 in 2015.

The largest proportion of those deported or refused entry were from Brazil accounting for 9.6% followed by Albania (9.2%), Nigeria (7.5%), South Africa (7.4%) and Pakistan (6%). 59 Syrians fleeing their war-torn country were refused entry by immigration officials up to December 11 last year.

In total, 3,451 foreign nationals were refused entry and returned to the place they had come from. In addition, 251 failed asylum-seekers and illegal migrants were deported from the State, with 69 EU nationals returned to their countries of origin on foot of an EU removal order, and 19 asylum-seekers transferred to the EU member state in which they first applied for asylum.

The report also records that there was a 127% increase in the numbers seeking asylum here last year going from 1,448 in 2014 to 3,276. The top three countries of application in 2015 were Pakistan, Bangladesh and Albania.

CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, Sue Conlan said: We are increasingly concerned about the number of people refused entry to the state, some of whom are nationals of countries where they are likely to be at risk of persecution or serious harm.

There appears to be a real risk that we are not allowing people the right to claim asylum, contrary to our international obligations. Given the past failures of our asylum system, including lengthy delays, we would be concerned that people are being deported when a better response would be to play safe and grant leave to remain, not returning them to possible harm.

The review also reveals that 115,700 entry visa applications for both short and long stays were received in 2015. an increase of 14% on 2014 and a cumulative increase of 39% since 2011.

The report also reveals that the top five nationalities applying for visas last year were India (18%), China (12%), Russia (10%), Pakistan (7%) and Nigeria (5%).

13,570 citizenship certificates were issued in 2015 and the top five nationalities awarded citizenship were India (1,611), Nigeria (1,364), Philippines (1,167), Poland (1,161), and Romania (903).

The report states: Since the implementation of the far-reaching reforms to the citizenship process in 2011, decisions have been made in over 100,000 applications and the processing time for the vast majority of standard applications has been reduced from 31 months to less than 6 months, despite a significant increase in valid application volumes in the intervening period.
The drugs minister lost his seat in Dublin Bay North after a prolonged count in the RDS. The loss means the Labour Party are now facing the wider implication of losing speaking rights in the Dail.

Their only hope of achieving the minimum quota of seven elected members to retain funding and speaking time rests with Willie Penrose in Longford-Westmeath, where a recount was ongoing last night.

It feels very raw now and its pretty personally difficult to put my thoughts together as to what happens next for myself, I got involved in politics for certain agendas and certain principals,said a teary Mr O Riordain after the returning officer put an end to his time in national politics.

It hasnt been my day today; it hasnt been the Labour Partys election so we will see what happens next.

As he spoke, a celebratory chorus of Oro, se do bheatha bhaile rang out from Denise Mitchells supporters.

Mr O Riordain was eliminated on the 15th count and in doing so became the 26th Labour member to lose their seat in what has been a devastating election for the party.

Speaking after the result, Mr O Riordain said he was immensely proud of his team of supporters but that the tide was out for his party.

People made a very clear decision that they didnt want this government returned, he said.

I dont know what decision they have made in terms of what government they want. Normally in elections people make two decisions: They say I dont want this government, I want a different one.

I dont think its clear from the election as to what is going to happen next.

We took on challenges that were not popular  things like drug reform, Traveller rights, working to try and change the direct provision system. I wouldnt spend any less time on those things if I did again.

Mr O Riordain said: Today is the first day of the comeback. Ireland needs the Labour Party and our value system. I absolutely believe we will recover from this and we will have better days again.

Labour deputy leader Alan Kelly had arrived at the count centre shortly before the results were announced in the morning, but left before the announcement was made.

Independents Tommy Broughan and Finian McGrath, and Sinn Feins Denise Mitchell took the final three seats in the constituency of death.

Richard Bruton (FG) had topped the poll in the five-seat constituency while Sean Haughey (FF) came in second.

Meanwhile, in the Longford-Westmeath constituency there were just four votes between Mr Penrose and Fine Gaels James Bannon as the ballots were recounted.

It was the only constituency still carrying out a count.

Outgoing Fine Gael TD James Bannon had requested a full recount after the initial count put just two votes between him and Mr Penrose.

Fine Gaels Peter Burke and Sinn Feins Paul Hogan are also battling it out for the remaining two seats.

Earlier in the day, Brid Smith of the Anti Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit group was elected to the final seat in Dublin South Central.

Her win means the AAA-PBP now have the same number of elected TDs as the Labour Party.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
This blog contains student opinions and postings about the concepts discussed during their study of biology in this college level course.
Mr Justice Kevin Cross was told Peter ODoherty lost the hearing in his right ear after the accident when he was seven and visiting Malahide, Dublin, with his family.

The boy was climbing on a climbing frame when he fell, landing on his head and fractured his skull.

Peter ODoherty, The Park, Luttrell Hall, Dunboyne, Co Meath had through his father Ronan ODoherty sued Fingal County Council as a result of the accident at the playground at Malahide Castle, Co Dublin, on March 24, 2008.

He claimed he landed on his head on what was alleged at the time was a hard surface made up of concrete and pebbles. He further claimed there was a failure to provide an impact absorbing surface such as woodchip or spongy material at the time and that the council had allegedly allowed the climbing frame to be used in an area where the surface consisted of stones and a hard surface area.

The claims were denied by Fingal County Council.

Senior counsel for the ODohertys, David Nolan SC, told the court that the boy had fallen on the right side of his head and had fractured his skull. Peter lost consciousness and was brought to hospital.

He spent five days in hospital and had problems with his balance. On audiological testing, he was found to have a profound hearing loss on the right-hand side. Counsel said that, as a result of the fracture, the boy was deaf in his right ear but there was no cognitive deficit.

He said Peter is 15 years old and studying well in school for his Junior Cert.

As a result of his deafness in the right ear, the boy will not be able to consider a career in the army or garda or become a pilot, counsel said.

He said the family was satisfied with the offer.

Approving the settlement, Mr Justice Cross said he was delighted the fall had not impacted more on Peter and he wished him well for the future.
A senior Government spokesperson has said cabinet still has confidence in Taoiseach Enda Kenny, amid mounting pressure for the Fine Gael leader to actively address the partys post-election crisis.

The claim was made at a post-cabinet briefing as Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin made informal phone calls to Social Democrats and Greens leaders Catherine Murphy and Eamon Ryan, both of which have said they are open to discussing plans to reform the Dail.

Speaking to reporters last night, a senior Government spokesperson said yesterdays 30-minute cabinet meeting  which one minister said was devastating, there are corpses everywhere  did not involve any discussion over Mr Kennys leadership.

He said despite the coalitions disastrous election results ministers have confidence in Mr Kenny, but later clarified this is because I didnt hear anything to the contrary so Ill assume it.

The meeting also resulted in confirmation ministers who lost their seats after Fridays vote  including Communications Minister Alex White andChildrens Minister James Reilly  will not travel on St Patricks Day ministerial trips.

The travel arrangements will be significantly curtailed due to the reality that it is almost certain no new government will be formed by March 17.

However, it is unclear yet whether Mr Kenny will attend the annual visit to the White House.

While a senior Government spokesperson said the office of the Taoiseach has received an invitation, he did not clarify whether this correspondence pre-dated the election.

It is believed that while Mr Kenny will travel to Washington DC, he may not attend an event at the White House itself due to the ongoing political impasse.

Although the matter was not raised at cabinet yesterday, it is understood Labour ministers strongly believe the onus is on the opposition to form a government  a position which is not as clear among Fine Gael members keen to retain power.

The cross-party meeting took place after two private Labour and Fine Gael ministerial meetings to discuss the situation facing both parties, and before Mr Kenny released a statement last night saying he would be open to discussing the matter with other parties.

Fine Gael ministers are privately downbeat about the options available, with one minister describing cabinet as devastating, there are corpses everywhere.

Senior party sources agree its pre-election manifesto proposals will have to be replaced by a new programme, which will be influenced by the partys first new parliamentary meeting of its 51 TDs tomorrow, say sources.

This would take place in anticipation of any negotiations or a second election, which party figures maintain is a live possibility.

Meanwhile, a number of Fianna Fail TDs  who will hold a post-election parliamentary party meeting tomorrow  have told the Irish Examiner they believe a Fine Gael minority government backed by their party in opposition could get through two budgets before a likely early 2018 election.

One TD said it would be seen as churlish to bring down such a deal after one budget, while another said any deal with Fine Gael has to include regional investment, budget input and moves to make the Dail more relevant to decisions.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
Martin McDonagh, of 1 Inchera Close, Mahon, was charged with stealing dogs from the premises on June 24 and again on July 2, 2014, and yesterday he pleaded guilty those crimes at Cork District Court.

Inspector John Deasy said that at 11.15pm on June 24, 2014, there was a break-in to the CSPCA premises at Mahon Link Road in Cork.

The dogs home was entered by Mr McDonagh and another male. Three female lurcher dogs were taken. They opened the pens and took the three dogs. They were never recovered, Insp Deasy said.

Judge Olann Kelleher asked if there was a value on the dogs. Insp Deasy said there was no value on the dogs as they were strays.

On July 2, 2014, two more dogs were taken. One of them  a fox terrier  was found nearby. The other dog, whose breed was not established, was not recovered.

There was damage to seven locks and the cost of the damage came to a total of 210.

Shane Collins-Daly, defence solicitor, said the accused had no rational explanation for why he went out on the two nights and stole dogs from the CSPCA.

McDonagh pleaded guilty to causing criminal damage and entering the premises to commit theft.

He also admitted damaging the lock on a container at The Marina in Cork on May 6, 2015.

Inspector Deasy said the accused had previous convictions including five for theft, two for burglary, and three for trespassing, as well as numerous public order offences.

Mr Collins-Daly said last year the accused got five months in jail for other offences and had not been in trouble since he got out.

The judge imposed a sentence of four months.
The woman, who asked not to be named, sent a letter to The Neil Prendeville Show on Corks Red FM in which she said she had hit rock bottom.

She said she stole two packs of corned beef and a block of cheese from her local shop in a desperate bid to fill lunch boxes.
The space rock, named 2013 TX68, is expected to make its nearest approach to Earth next Tuesday.

But the precise timing of its visit and trajectory will not be known until after the event.

The asteroid could shoot past the Earth inside the ring of communications and GPS satellites located in fixed positions 36,000km above the equator, say experts.

At the other limit of its predicted path range it could remain as far out as 40 times the distance to the moon.

US scientist Sean Marshall, from Cornell University in New York, who studies near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as comets and asteroids said: Should this asteroid come closer than the geostationary satellites, it would be a rare occurrence - that only happens about once per decade for large asteroids.

What we know for sure is that it will not collide with Earth this month, so do not panic.

He added: The large uncertainty in TX68s orbit makes it difficult to plan observations in advance, but hopefully it will be seen by some of the automated asteroid survey telescopes.

However, it is possible that TX68 will be so far from Earth that it will be too faint to be seen.

If TX68 is detected this month however, that would greatly reduce the uncertainty in its orbit and allow astronomers to calculate its future trajectory much more accurately.
Grassroots members of the party will have a significant role to play in any potential coalition as they are required to vote on whether to accept or reject a deal.

It appears there is no appetite, at local level, to go in to power with Fine Gael.

Most grassroots supporters would prefer to stay in opposition for another term to build the profile of some newly elected TDs.

If forced to enter a government coalition, members would favour Sinn Fein as they believe they share similar ideological values, but there would have to be a change of leadership to make this a possibility.

Longford Comhairle Dail Ceantair PRO Denise OFlaherty pointed out that the Civil War mentality still exists among members who would never accept a deal with Fine Gael.

A lot of the older members would go back to the days of Dev, she said.

People would still call [Fine Gael] the Blueshirts and they would still be the enemy.

Some of the older members would prefer Sinn Fein. If there was a change of leader they would go for Sinn Fein.

If party leader Micheal Martin manages to hammer out a deal, it would have to be put to the grassroots members to vote on. This would be done through a special ard fheis where members would be asked to approve or reject any draft programme for government.

Tommy Hannon, the chairman of Ballinasloe Comhairle Ceantair, said members favour more time in opposition.

He said any motion to go into government with Fine Gael would be strongly defeated by members.

There is also a fear of Fianna Fail losing their identity if they went into government with Fine Gael, he said.

Mr Hannon said members would be more willing to do business with Sinn Fein. I think they would have to come out clean in public before any coalition and Fianna Fail would have to be very happy that they have distanced themselves from any criminality, he said.

Talking to people at the count, since then and even prior to the election, we had favoured another term in opposition at this time.

The party has been very effective in rebuilding itself. It has a lot of talent and new blood who would do very well in opposition.

The party needs time to rebuild over a couple of years and needs time to breathe and grow.

Willy Kavanagh, chairman of Enniscorthy Comhairle Ceantair, agreed there would be no appetite for a coalition but members may consider supporting a minority Fine Gael government. The members in Wexford canvassed on the basis that we would not go into coalition with Fine Gael and we will stand by that, he said.

I am a publican here in Wexford and speaking with customers in the pub  some of them would be Fianna Fail, some are not  they all are saying maybe Fianna Fail should support a minority government. I dont see any other way.

I would prefer to be in opposition for the next five years to build our party.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
The warning has been issued by the Freight Transport Association of Ireland (FTAI) following two recent incidents where migrant stowaways managed to get into Ireland.

Last Saturday nine Kurdish stowaways were discovered on an Irish truck returning from Cherbourg, and on Monday gardai found a further four Afghans in a container which had also arrived from the same French port.

French riot police are braced for further clashes with refugees as the demolition of parts of the Calais migrant camp known as the Jungle resumes.

The French authorities want to relocate people from the squalid, rat-infested site to heated containers nearby or other centres around France.

FTAI general manager Neil McDonnell said in recent weeks it had been informed that migrants were attempting to access Ireland and Britain through smaller ports such as Dunkirk, Cherbourg and Roscoff where security wasnt as tight as in Calais. He said that many of his members had tried to avoid the Calais area in the past because of the risk posed by migrants.

He said that instead of using the Rosslare-Fishguard and Dover-Calais crossings from mainland Europe they were using the Rosslare-Cherbourg route.

This is costing his members an extra 700 on a return trip, but its not as bad as being faced with a 2,573 fine from the British Border Force for every migrant found in their vehicles.

As early as last October Mr McDonnell said one of his members reported 18 migrants hiding in a trailer he was supposed to pick up in Rosslare.

He said there had been a number of confrontations reported by members who had rocks pelted at their windscreens and who had been personally attacked as well by migrants.

However, he said more attacks were being carried out on drivers from Northern Ireland, many of whom were still crossing into Britain and using the Dover-Calais sea route.

There are a lot of very desperate people [migrants] who will try anything to get onboard lorries or containers, Mr McDonnell said.

They [the French authorities] are dismantling the jungle and carrying out further security measures around Calais. The likely short to medium term implications are that the number of migrants attempting to access Ireland from the other ports will increase.

He said that FTAI is working closely with the Irish and British authorities and its members to ensure every precaution is taken to minimise the possibility of unwittingly transporting migrants into either country.

Mr McDonnell said FTAI is delighted to have Andy Coram of the UK Border Force addressing its Transport Manager Conference at the Johnstown House Hotel and Spa in Enfield, Co Kildare, on March 9.
Clara O Gormain, a 12-year-old from Salthill, Co Galway, can claim to be the Popes penpal after writing to him in Irish and asking: An airionn tu mar Phapa gur tu athair ag an domhain iomlan?  does he feel like a father to everyone?

She also sent a picture that she had drawn.

Naturally enough, the Pope replied: Every priest likes to feel that he is a father, concluding his response with: Yes Clara, I like being a dad.

The novel exchange means the young student from the Jesuit Scoil Iognaid in Galway is the sole Irish contributor to the book, entitled Dear Pope Francis: The Pope Answers Letters From Children Around the Word.

It was launched yesterday at Saint Patricks Primary School in Armagh, with Archbishop Eamon Martin in attendance.

The book includes 259 letters sent from 26 countries on six continents, and written in 14 languages  including Irish.

In an interview with the Jesuits, Clara said: In school we didnt actually know what it was for; the teacher just passed around a page and everyone wrote down a question.

I didnt know what it was for until four months ago maybe, when my Dad told me it was being sent with the letters from Europe.

Clare O Gormain (with the hairband and white cardigan), standing to the right of Pope Francis.

She felt amazed when she discovered her contribution was going to make it into the book, and she subsequently travelled to Rome to meet the Pope alongside the other contributors.

Clara said the group spent an hour with him and he answered each question he had been asked.

He is very nice and has a very good sense of humour because, when the translator misheard him and said he was 100, the Pope laughed because he thought it was funny.

There are some poignant moments in the book, such as a question from a boy in Australia called Luca, who asked: Dear Pope Francis, My Mum is in heaven. Will she grow angel wings?

The Popes reply included the words: Your Mum is in Heaven, beautiful, splendid, and full of light. She hasnt grown angel wings. She is still your Mum, the person you know, but more radiant than ever.

Elsewhere, Mohammed from Syria asked: Dear Pope Francis, Will the world be again as it was in the past?

Other questions included when you were a child, did you like dancing? and another asked why the Pope needed that tall hat.

At yesterdays launch, Archbishop Martin congratulated Clara, one of three children who lives with her brothers and her parents in Salthill, on her contribution.

The two teachers who coordinated the project at Claras school were Noirin Nic Grianna and Caoimhe Ni Fhrighil. The book is published by Messenger Publications.

Archbishop Martin said at the launch: While this is being offered as a childrens book, I think it appeals to the child in all of us.

Pope Francis never comes across as a know-it-all. That is evident again in this book where it is clear that he is searching, like all of us, the archbishop added.

www.messenger.ie
The current outbreak of the zika virus and last years ebola crisis have highlighted the importance of vaccines.

The immune system protects the body from pathogens  the bad guys  usually in the form of bacteria and viruses that can cause infections.

Vaccines are like pathogen imposters; they mimic the bad guys in order to provoke a response from the immune system.

One of the key components in a vaccine is an adjuvant that enhances the bodys immune response to a vaccine.

Adjuvants have been around for almost a century but it is only recently that scientists are beginning to fully understand how they work.

Scientists are now looking for new and improved adjuvant to develop effective vaccines for TB, malaria, HIV, and some cancers.

Immunologists at Trinity College Dublin have uncovered the mechanism by which a promising vaccine adjuvant, chitosan, induces an immune response.

The teams discovery, which has been published in the journal Immunity, could lead to the better and more effective vaccines.

Prof Ed Lavelle and Dr Elizabeth Carroll, of Trinitys School of Biochemistry and Immunology, were surprised that a substance from shellfish activated a DNA-sensing pathway.

Prof Lavelle, lead project researcher, said what they found was that the shrimp-derived molecule chitosan, was very good at driving a cellular immune response.

Surprisingly this polymer that we get from shellfish actually activates this DNA sensing pathway, which is a very novel discovery that we think has potential in helping us to design better and more effective vaccines that induce this type of immune response.

We can build on this very exciting discovery to try and make better vaccines for conditions like malaria, TB, and cancer, he said.

Prof Lavelle said they had been working on the project for about eight years. It has been funded by Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council.

Asked how close the project team was to using the vaccine adjuvant, Prof Lavelle said it was some way off but they now had a pathway to target.

The project team is collaborating with a company in Sweden and is currently working on different forms of chitosan to see which is best at driving the immune response.
Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE] pointed out Irish Water and the Environmental Protection Agency had already admitted high levels of trihalomethanes is piped to homes of 10% of the population.

In some cases the level of the toxin is up to three times the figure considered safe by the World Health Organisation.

FIE, making a call for more public information, said it was not happy with Irish Waters response to the issue, after the utility said it was developing a national plan for trihalomethanes.

Trihalomethanes are compounds that occur when organic materials in water react with chlorine which is added as a disinfectant for drinking water.

Irish Water, the EPA, and the Health and Safety Authority have tried to convince the public that it would be dangerous and irresponsible to stop chlorinating to avoid the risk of the disinfectant by-product created, the more than 60 chemicals classed as THMs, trihalomethanes, FIE said in a statement.

FIE said that Ireland was criticised by Europe in 2002 for the levels of contamination of drinking water.

Ireland chose to disinfect its water by the use of chlorine, in spite of the commission warning them privately that chlorine was not really suitable for Ireland because two of the biggest threats biologically and chemically to Irish water are not addressed by chlorine  cryptosporidium and THMs, the group said.

Consumers should not be fooled by authorities who say that dangerous disinfectant by products like THMs are inevitable if our water supplies are to be protected.

Irish Water customers are paying the price now for the refusal of the Irish State to listen to good advice in 2002, instead taking the cheap and easy way out, the group said.
Articulate and highly educated, she is poised to become a significant figure within Fianna Fail and is likely to quickly rise through the ranks.

Her election in the Mayo constituency was perhaps one of the most significant blows to Fine Gael as she ousted Michelle Mulherin  the second of Enda Kennys running partners.

Being in the Taoiseachs constituency did not phase Ms Chambers, a lawyer. She was confident she could edge out a victory along with fellow Fianna Fail candidate Dara Calleary.

The 29-year-old barrister from Ballyheane associated herself with the Women for Election in Mayo group, speaking at a public meeting it hosted last May. She also campaigned on creating more jobs in the West as well as a better health service.

Although she said that there is no politics in my house, Ms Chambers still managed to become the first chairwoman of her local cumman at the age of 22.

She joked she had to ask her parents which side of the political divide they rested after attending local Fianna Fail branch meetings.

Her entrance to political life was unconventional, coming when a friend in the reserve Defence Forces  of which Ms Chambers is a member  suggested it to her. She was asked to run in the 2011 election but at a time when even party stalwarts were being decimated in the polls she didnt expect to gain a seat. This time around she felt different.

During the election campaign Ms Chambers told the Irish Examiner: The feeling in Mayo is that we have been left behind in this recovery.

We hear all this talk about emigration out of the country, what about the migration to the East?

Her points and predictions were correct: This feeling was echoed at the ballot boxes in her own constituency and across the country.

Ms Chambers has set her sights on making an immediate impact within the parliamentary party. She strongly signalled she is not the backbench type. I would love the justice portfolio  that would be a huge passion of mine, she said.

Obviously, I have a huge passion for the law and the justice system. But similarly I have 14 years service in the Defence Forces and I would have keen interest in defence policy, but I am also interes-ted in health and education.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
Barrister Caroline Williams told the court the incident happened in October 2012 as Anthony McDonagh was blindfolded for the purpose of an activity at Carlington Adventure Centre, Tholsel St, Carlingford, Co Louth.

Ms Williams said Anthony collided with a tree while he was playing and suffered two black eyes and a laceration to his nose, which was deviated.
Michael Collins, who won a seat in Cork South West in last weeks election, said he is to meet with other Independent TDs from rural areas tomorrow to discuss the possibility of forming a group.

Its time to get rural issues at the government table, because they havent been there for a number of years and rural Ireland has suffered as a result, said Mr Collins.

He stressed that he is not seeking to join or form a political party, but is open-minded about the prospects of a rural grouping.

I am quite willing to sit down as a group with a view to achieving a common goal, which is the greater good of rural Ireland.

There is no doubt that they had a recovery in Dublin, but even a sprinkle of that here in rural Ireland would be quite helpful, particularly when it comes to our roads, said Mr Collins.

How are we to bring jobs and employment to West Cork when we dont have the environment or infrastructure to host them?

We have no broadband provision and poor mobile-phone coverage. There are parts of some third world countries with better conditions.

Mr Collins said he did not want to preempt the discussions to take place, adding that he would be open to either a group formed for speaking time, or a bloc that would negotiate support for a potential government.

I will speak with anybody and everybody as long as the needs of West Cork are on the table. Call that parish pump politics all you like  as far as I am concerned the needs of West Cork must be on the table, he said.

Mr Collins also lamented the cut in LEADER funding in Cork, and said that rural development funding was greater in Dublin than it is in rural Cork.

We were let down badly by this government, said Mr Collins.

Where is rural in Dublin City?

Mr Collins took 6,765 votes in last weekends election, the second-highest first-preference in Cork South West, and took the second of three seats on the fifth count.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
There were tears and hugs as those who failed to retain their seats began moving boxes, files, and personal mementos out of their offices yesterday.

Although no official deadline is put on when unelected TDs must vacate their offices, the Houses of the Oireachtas have already begun contacting those who have lost their seats so they can reassign their desks to those entering the Dail for the first time.

And it is not just the individuals themselves who have suffered, the outgoing government parties are set to lose around 3m in state funding as a result of dropping so many seats.

Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail, who have increased their numbers in the Dail, will receive increased funding.

But those who have lost their seats will receive a termination lump sum and payments which equate to around 15,000 for a TD and more for a minister. On top of the lump sum, they are also entitled to maximum of 12 monthly termination payments, the value of which depends on the length of time served in Leinster House. These payments are separate to the Houses of the Oireachtas Members pension.

It was an emotional day yesterday as a number of ministers who failed to retain their seats returned to Leinster House. Labours Kathleen Lynch was hugged by the Dail canteen staff.

The junior minister at the Department of Health said she would now have time to go on a long holiday with her husband. Its not as bad when you can see it coming, said the former Cork North Central TD.

Another failed Labour candidate and junior minister, Kevin Humphreys, said: Ill have to stay around Leinster House for the next couple of weeks while they form a government. Thats the hardest part. We are all shattered, he said.

It was an honour to serve the people of Dublin Bay South for the last 5 years, and thank you to all those who voted for me last week  Kevin Humphreys (@KHumphreysDBS) March 1, 2016

Meanwhile, junior minister for rural affairs Ann Phelan, who was knocked out of the race in Carlow-Kilkenny, removed a number of items from her office including a pair of wellingtons.

Lucinda Creighton, whose Renua party failed to get a single candidate elected, was also wandering around the corridors of Leinster House yesterday with a colleague who helped take items from her office.

A spokeswoman for the Houses of the Oireachtas said there is no official date for former TDs to leave their offices, but they have been contacting members to sort this out. We have to accommodate new TDs, she said. All in all the process may take up to two weeks but it may take days for others to leave their offices.

We would be aware of the sensitivity of a member losing their seat and we would try to accommodate them. This week would be a very busy week with members who have lost their seat coming in to clear out their offices and new members coming in.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
The Flowing Hair Coin will arrive in Dublin amongst heavy security to go on show in the RDS on March 12 and 13.

The 1794 Flowing Hair Silver Dollar is considered to be the first dollar coin ever to be struck by the US mint, and is the most expensive coin in the world after it sold for over $10m (9.2m) at auction in 2013 to a private buyer  US businessman Bruce Morelan.
Dierks Bentley loves to see the whites of an audiences eyes. Which is why the Nashville megastar gets a particular kick out of performing in Ireland. He appreciates the passion and the intimacy that comes with playing smaller venues packed with enthusiastic crowds.

In America, we do lots of big arenas, he says We might perform to 20,000 people a night. Dont get me wrong. I love being up there. I worked hard to make it to this point in my career. At the same time, I get the biggest thrill out of playing the smaller rooms, where people are crammed real close. Theres a real joy and excitement.

Unless youre a country diehard, its possible youve never heard of Bentley. Back home, though, the 40- year-old is a bona fide icon. Hes had 13 number one singles in the US country charts while his most recent LP, Riser, debuted at number six on the Billboard 200. Hes Nashville royalty, widely regarded as spiritual successor to his idol Garth Brooks. When he walks down the street in Tennessee, fans descend seeking selfies and autographs.

The last record had a lot of critical acclaim, he nods, voice low and modest. We had three big hits off it the States. Also the song Riser itself received a very powerful response. Now, it wasnt actually a big hit. But it seemed to mean a lot to people. It definitely touched a chord.

This surprised him. The track is stripped down and brimming with pain. Bentley wrote it after his father had passed away. His dad had been with him from the start of his career. To lose him just as he was fulfilling his potential was an enormous blow. He sat down with his guitar, numb with grief, and let his pain take him where it would. To his shock, he ended up with a song.

I wasnt even really trying to come up with a coherent piece of music, says Bentley. I was thinking about my dad and about why I am the way I am. About the role my dad played in my life. I remember standing outside my house looking at his truck  the truck we drove across the country together in, in 1994. I still use that truck today even though I could afford a new one. Thats how The Riser came about. It was just something I needed to express. It didnt occur to me that others would respond to it in the way they did.

Country rock is an insular genre with its success largely confined to the US. Break-out artists such as Shania Twain or the Dixie Chicks remain very much the exception. But recently there have been signs of outreach, with events such as next weekends Country To Country festival at Dublins 3Arena testament to its rising popularity.

Ive always been very clear about wanting to play Ireland, says Bentley. The first time I came was 2004 and we did small clubs. It wasnt until the last tour that we actually started making money from [overseas touring]. Of course, that wasnt why we do it. Its not all about the bottom line  its about building your audience and sharing your stories with people. To think that I would end up one day playing in Dublin, Ireland, is amazing to me.

He headlined Country To Country in 2014 (alongside Dixie Chicks, Brad Paisley, and others) and was struck by the response. The gig came close to selling out and the enthusiasm on the night was palpable. We went to Dublin and performed to something like 17,000 people. It was amazing. I felt a true connection. At the same time, there were a lot of artists on that bill. I wanted to come back and see what the reaction would be like with just us on the ticket. Im eager to find out where we stand with our Irish country fans.

Bentley was born in Phoenix, Arizona, the son of a bank manager and a stay-at-home mother. He grew up adoring country music. Garth Brooks was a personal hero. His friends in Phoenix didnt always understand the appeal. Still, Bentley was smitten and was soon writing country songs of his own. Even as a kid, he knew this would be his life.

It was this passion for country that led him to attend college in Nashville, after which he worked at a local TV station, where he would compile footage of old country concerts. All the while he was toiling on songs and, in 2003, released an eponymous debut album.

It proved a modest success, as did the 2005 follow-up, Modern Day Drifter. He arrived in earnest when he was named best new artist at the prestigious CMA Awards in Nashville. He got to perform at the iconic Grand Ole Opry and quickly built a reputation as a newcomer to watch.

His visit to Dublins Olympia Theatre next month will come ahead of the release of eagerly-anticipated ninth album, Black. The record has been a work in progress for the past 18 months. However, Bentley thinks he can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

Its done and dusted pretty much, he nods. Of course, it wont truly be finished until the record label pulls it out of my hand. I feel really good about it. I feel like I can stand behind it.

As with its predecessor, the record is highly personal. Bentley is a storyteller. Yet much of what he sings about it springs directly from personal experience.

Its the tenth anniversary of my marriage. Im examining my relationship, trying to look back on it from an honest perspective. To reflect on the good but also the bad. I always attempt to be truthful.

That, he believes, is country musics raison detre  to articulate the joy but also the pain of the human condition. Its our job as country songwriters. You write about the good times  and about the bad times too.

Dierks Bentley plays the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on April 21.
Deep within the darkened chasms of a Dublin hotel a gathering of bloodthirsty horror fans and self-respecting goths descend on the decidedly gruesome Screamvention horror convention, unaware of their grisly fate.

Within this cursed crypt, the revered stars of celluloid await; here, the living dead of film abound and all manner of video nasties prevail. Freddy Krueger, Predator, Chucky from Childs Play, Pinhead from Hellraiser and more greet steadfast horror fans as they arrive to meet their untimely doom.

Venturing around this cursed place, the sense of foreboding is palpable; apart from parading ghouls drenched in blood, ghastly horror icons discuss blood-lust films with fans, creatures sell exclusive horror merchandise, Q & A panels face despicable inquisitions and Nosferatus nymphs perform live (or dead) on stage.

This, the first Screamvention convention, is an exclusively Irish event and the brainchild of Alex Vincent (Andy in Childs Play 1 & 2 and Curse of Chucky) and The Crypt Radio Show. Run by OBrien Event Management in conjunction with The Emerald Gore Society, the event was set up due to the popularity of similar conventions in America, the UK and Europe.

Incorporating showings of short horror movies and depraved feature-length films, the convention also plays host to The Devils Cabaret, holds competitions, including producing and directing ones own Mini Screamvention Film, and hosts horrendous live music and performances that would send a shiver down Bela Lugosis spine.

Fresh from his conversation with Ari Lehman  Jason from Friday the 13th  I speak to Shane Doyle from Newbridge, Co. Kildare, who explains what compels him here:

I came here to meet the icons of horror movies, some of my favourites as a kid growing up. When the event was announced, I decided I had to go and meet my heroes. The genre is bigger today than it was say 20 years ago, and its now a bigger and better genre than any other in Hollywood.

Hellraiser is my favourite movie. Pinhead is different than any other horror character  whereas other characters use weapons, Pinhead uses his mind to control and kill people and for me thats where the movie stands out.

As I wander through this wretched place, I chance upon the actor Nicholas Vince, who, while at Mountview Theatre Academy in London met Clive Barker and was cast as the character The Chatterer Cenobite in the Hellraiser movies. Vince, stoic and detached, proffers his own thoughts on the event: With conventions like this, its the opportunity to meet like-minded people, people who are passionate about horror. These events offer the chance to meet people you watched as a kid, and for the actor, they offer the opportunity to speak to people whose lives have been affected by the work that youve done.

Whats changed in the genre over the last few years is that technology has become available to a lot more people. People are making movies on their iPhones  as long as youve got a good story, you can do that. In terms of why people are so captured by horror, I think the whole literature is around whats in the dark and whats after death. I think thats a fascination for a lot of people.

Next to Vince, a truly iconic actor sits, signing autographs and offering macabre photo opportunities. Alex Vincent, Andy in the Childs Play movies, offers his own views on this cursed genre.

I think the best modern horror films were the likes of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Childs Play, Candyman... Their franchises have been successful for 30 years now. I think people like to be scared because it gives such a visceral reaction  its an emotion that sticks with you and you remember your whole life. A really good scare sticks with you and you remember that intense physical reaction that you had. I think people like to be scared in the same way that people like to laugh.

Wandering around like so many lost souls, brushing shoulders with various Predators and a rather fetching female Chucky, I find a treasure trove of merchandise from the Alien, Dracula, Predator, Hellraiser movies and more. Suitably sullen, the retail ghouls look as bored and vacant as the undead undoubtedly should, and no less frightening for it. In the background, a teenage witch screeches twisted songs of blood, lust and gore on stage to a captivated crowd of bedevilled mortals.

By chance I meet the aquaintance of a girl named Raven, whom, suitably attired in black, with raven hair and death-like pallid skin, tells me of a celebration called Women in Horror Month.

Basically Women in Horror Month is a celebration of women in horror who are lead actresses in horror movies; until relatively recently, women in horror movies have been just running around in forests, falling over, being weak and fragile. We wanted to celebrate strong lead actresses and show they can be the lead characters. For example, weve got Barbie Wilde here, one of the Cenobites from Hellraiser, and actress, director, screenwriter and producer Jessica Cameron. Actresses in horror movies dont have to be the helpless females and we wanted to show that.

As I stumble out into the oppressive glaring sunlight, consumed with thoughts of zombies, death and decay, a peculiar feeling overcomes me; no longer the man who entered naive into this lair of decadence and gore, I remain utterly changed, forsaken, crazed and seeking blood...
IN 1987, when there was no likely governmental arrangement apparent, the outgoing taoiseach Garret FitzGerald announced that Fine Gael would not attempt to bring down a minority Fianna Fail government led by Charles Haughey, if it introduced the necessary corrective measures for the economy. Alan Dukes then pursued that policy after he was elected leader of Fine Gael.

This approach became known as the Tallaght Strategy. The new government turned out to be very effective and popular over the next couple of years.

Haughey never appeared politically so secure in the leadership of his party, or in the high office he occupies, Stephen Collins noted in The Sunday Press at the beginning of 1989: His governments dazzling performance on the economy has seen five-year targets achieved in just two with the national debt finally stabilised.

In late 1988, Fine Gael offered to negotiate a formal economic accord with the government to provide backing on agreed legislation. This offer of co-operation was unprecedented between the two parties, but Haughey showed no interest.

Instead, he called a general election in 1989. He gave two reasons  the danger that the government would be defeated on the health budget, and the need for more political stability with Ireland about to take over the presidency of the European Community at the beginning of 1990.

Neither of the reasons was convincing. A factor that may well have weighed heavily on Haughey was the impending scandal over Iraq not meeting beef payments for which the Irish government had provided insurance coverage.

Many suspected he called the election to shake off the opposition shackles that were forcing him to pursue responsible policies. It seemed like a desperate gamble for an overall majority.

The general election was seen as unnecessary, and Fianna Fail duly lost four seats, while Fine Gael gained five. If Fine Gael were to persist in supporting the government Alan Dukes now insisted on a coalition with Fianna Fail in which the cabinet seats would be shared equally and the office of Taoiseach would rotate between the leaders.

A rotating leadership arrangement had worked in Israel when the two major parties came to together in a unity government that was formed after an inconclusive general election in 1982. Simon Peres became prime minister for two years and he was followed Yitzhak Shimir two years later.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1989 election, Haughey was under intense internal political pressure for having called an unnecessary general election. He might well have agreed to such a pact with Fine Gael in order to retain power for another two years, but the Progressive Democrats (PDs) had the number of seats that Fianna Fail needed to form a majority government.

The PDs had no difficulty parking their hostility towards Haughey, once they saw the chance of power. They propped him up in a coalition that the late Albert Reynolds called a temporary little arrangement.

The Labour Party enjoyed a spectacular performance in the next general election in 1992 under the leadership of Dick Spring. The so-called Spring Tide swept the party to what was then its record total of 33 seats.

Early in the campaign, Spring had announced that he would be looking for an agreement to rotate the office of Taoiseach, as the Labour Partys price for going into government with any other party. This certainly caught the medias attention.

Having backed Fine Gael in government on five different occasions, Labour supporters believed it was not unreasonable to ask Fine Gael for a share of the top spot, especially when the polls indicated that Spring was by far the most popular of all the party leaders. During the final week of the election campaign, he enjoyed a favourable rating of 67%, compared to Fine Gaels John Bruton with 31%, and Taoiseach Albert Reynolds with only 25%.

As it turned out, however, Fine Gael and Labour did not have enough votes to form a coalition government on their own. They needed the support of the PDs with their six seats, but the PDs were almost toxic in the eyes of many Labour deputies. In the circumstances, the Labour Party preferred to coalesce with Fianna Fail.

Some people initially dismissed that idea as unthinkable and unprecedented, but Fianna Fail had once offered to back the Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson for the top job in 1927. This was just days after Eamon de Valera led Fianna Fail into the Dail for the first time.

De Valera agreed to what was being called the Triple Alliance for the lifetime of that Dail. Fianna Fail would back a minority government led by Labour with the support of the National League Party, which was the remnants of the old Irish Parliamentary Party of pre-independence days. In return, the government would abolish the detested Treaty-oath. Cumann na nGaedheal believed that Johnson had the necessary votes to win on August 16, 1927, but one of the National League members  John Jinks of Sligo  walked out of Leinster House just before the vote. As a result the no confidence motion in WT Cosgraves government ended in a tie, and the Speaker rescued the government by opposing the motion.

The fifth Dail then adjourned for the summer recess, and never met again. It was the shortest Dail in history. During the recess Cosgrave called a general election and proceeded to win enough seats to form a stable government.

Labour repaid Fianna Fail by backing de Valeras successful bid to form a minority government in 1932. As a result nobody should really have been surprised that Labour could revert to supporting Fianna Fail in 1992, in view of the way the numbers stacked up.

Political opportunity and political necessity have been powerful influences for changing political attitudes. Surely Fianna Fail owes it to the country and to Fine Gael by following the example of the Tallaght Strategy and backing a Fine Gael minority government in the national interest.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
When the 158 TDs in the 32nd Dail meet next week, it will still likely be the case that there is no overall majority support in the chamber for a taoiseach. As with the overall election result, the balance of power hangs in the air and this will be reflected in a vote for the taoiseach, one of the first acts of a new parliament.

With a hung Dail looming, there are questions over how the house will give majority support to a TD to be leader of the country. So what happens next if that support is not there?

What follows could be intense, drawn out negotiations between political parties, factions of TDs and negotiation teams, more than likely in discreet venues away from Leinster House.

If the Dail fails to nominate a taoiseach, there is no deadline by which another vote must be tried again. The Dail can be adjourned until another day. President Michael D Higgins though could play an important part if Enda Kenny fails to get the numbers and is then required to resign. He can then choose whether to seek a dissolution of the Dail or not. Interestingly, there is precedent here where the Dail has failed to nominate a taoiseach in the past.

If a taoiseach loses the support of a majority in the Dail, he must resign, in which case other members of the Government are also deemed to have resigned. The taoiseach is not obliged to seek a dissolution at this point and an alternative taoiseach may be elected without a general election (as occurred in 1994 when John Bruton replaced Albert Reynolds).

If a taoiseach advises the President to dissolve the Dail having lost the support of a majority, the President is given absolute discretion to refuse the dissolution. The purpose of this is to prevent an unnecessary election by allowing the opportunity for an alternative taoiseach to be elected (and perhaps impose some pressure on the parties to take this option). However, if the President does not perceive that the opportunity exists to avoid an election, he would, in practice, grant the dissolution.

However, if the President does not perceive that the opportunity exists to avoid an election, he would, in practice, grant the dissolution. The power has never been exercised, even though occasions have arisen where it might have been suitable.

University College Corks Conor OMahony explains: If there is deadlock on the election of a Taoiseach after the Dail re-convenes, Enda Kenny may seek a dissolution. However, since Mr Kenny would be deemed to have lost the support of a majority in the Dail, President Higgins would be free to refuse the dissolution, so as to encourage the parties to exhaust all avenues for breaking the deadlock before proceeding to another election.

A second election in such a short period of time is undesirable in many ways, and the President has the possibility of affording the parties every opportunity of avoiding it.

On the other hand, if he sees no realistic way of avoiding it, he may feel it better to proceed to grant the dissolution. The Constitution grants him absolute discretion to make this decision as a neutral arbiter.

In 1992, outgoing taoiseach Albert Reynolds, John Bruton, and Dick Spring were all proposed in turn as taoiseach. But none were nominated. On December 15, Albert Reynolds announced that he was resigning as taoiseach and that the President had accepted his resignation. Nonetheless, there was no dissolution of the Dail. Instead, Dail business continued in an inter regnum period up until January 12, 1993, when a taoiseach was finally proposed by the house and appointed.

Similarly, in 1989, the Dail defeated all motions proposing individuals as taoiseach. This led to the outgoing taoiseach, Charles Haughey, proceeding to Aras an Uachtarain and formally resigning from the post. But, again, the Dail was not dissolved and Mr Haughey went on to be nominated taoiseach on another day.

The role of the President in these matters will only apply once the vote takes place, as is expected on March 10, and if the Taoiseach lost it and then sought a dissolution of the Dail.

In summary, if Enda Kenny no longer enjoys the support of the Dail, he will resign from office. He then can decide whether or not to seek the dissolution of the Dail, which the President then has the discretion to accept or reject.

A rejection would allow parties and party leaders time and space to discuss avenues to form a Government.

In having this discretion, President Higgins in a sense can help create the conditions whereby a Government could be cobbled together in some shape or fashion in the following weeks.

It is important to note of course that a presidents power to dissolve a Dail has never been exercised, even though occasions have arisen where it might have been suitable, including in 1989 when Charles Haughey sought an election rather than, at the time, go into coalition with the PDs.

Long drawn out negotiations between political parties are par for the course in hung parliaments in Europe at the moment. You can expect that advisers in the major parties are taking note of what has happened in Spain as well as Belgium among places.

Spain is still awaiting a government more than three months after it held its election.

Belgium had to wait 589 days in 2010-2011 for a government to be formed.

Ultimately, Mr Kenny will go to the Park whether he can form a coalition, a minority-government or if there is no government. With no new government, he could then continue with a caretaker administration or seek the dissolution of the Dail.

If the latter option is decided, the President will decide the next move.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
FINE GAEL is between the cross-hairs of a more acute dilemma than its loss of seats last Friday indicates. Its hold on government is uncertain, though it does have a real chance of being returned to office in the 32nd Dail. This would be an historic milestone for the party and an achievement under any circumstances for Enda Kenny. However, under the circumstances likely to pertain it may be tarnished silver rather than glistening gold.

The irony for Kenny is that his gravest weakness is the narrow social base of his party. He should understand the irony better than any. The schoolmaster son of a schoolmaster, who has never been fully accepted by the large farmers and professional grandees who make up the mass of its officer corp. Social and intellectual derision hindered his rise as a young man under Garrett FitzGerald. It tugged at his sleeve even after his election as leader in 2002.

Good to have men like Enda Kenny or Gay Mitchell swell the ranks but it never sat easily that one of them would wear the crown. It was only the brutal dismissal of the pretensions of his deriders that allowed Kenny uncontested power within the party after the putsch of 2010 and in government after 2011. The problem for Fine Gael now is that both the underlying fundamentals of its refined genetic makeup and its insecure, controlling political personality under Kenny have combined as weakness, rather than strength.

The key strength of Fine Gael was always in contrast to Fianna Fail. It had a better social class of people and the higher standards that are innate to breeding. It was in the natural order of things that they would appoint their friends to state boards and to judicial office. In fairness, who else would you appoint?

The charge of cronyism was mudslinging by guttersnipes, out of sorts because their ill-bred, uneducated snouts had at last been removed from the trough. The fact that historically Fine Gael was invariably in government with Labour gave a wider moral hinterland to its inbred advantage.

Nothing provides better mutual reassurance than moral superiority and snobbery. The appeal was always deeply reassuring to itself, during long years in opposition. That there are more of them, underlined not their mass appeal but the moral abyss they drew from.

In government, however, majorities are essential. Labour long ceased to mix its rarefied brand of social democracy with working-class people. Their shared project with Fine Gael was communicated as a series of lectures for the betterment of the lower orders. Now the peasants have revolted.

Labour in terms of the realpolitik of government is no more. Fine Gael is left alone, eerily isolated. Before 2011, it had not won office after an election since 1982. It did so on both occasions under two conditions, which no longer pertain.

Firstly antipathy to Fianna Fail was so strong as to temporarily swell its own support base. Secondly, Labour presented itself with sufficient numbers of seats to make up a majority. Neither of those conditions applied last Friday.

Now its continuance in government is dependent on the assent of Fianna Fail. Best for Fine Gael, they lure them into government but imperative for Fianna Fail they do not succumb.

My view is that the country can have good government, based on limited number of principles, for a period of time with Fine Gael in office, Fianna Fail in opposition with a permanently enhanced legislature, as its legacy.

The challenge for Fine Gael, or at least Enda Kenny, is survival in government. His continuance in office is essential for his political survival. Paradoxically, it is also essential for Fine Gaels continuance at the cabinet table. Fianna Fail may, under conditions yet to be arrived at, assent to Kennys election as Taoiseach. It will not under any circumstances facilitate now, or subsequently, Fine Gaels changing its leader, while holding on to office.

The idea that Fine Gael might arrive at circumstances where it continues in office now, under Kenny, and changes leader subsequently is nonsense on a scale of delusion similar to the notion of a grand coalition. The Soldiers of Destiny may by historic standards be depleted but, they are not deluded. Enda Kenny is their preferred leader of Fine Gael, again.

The model for the occasional election of Fine Gael to government is broken. Its challenge in government would be to widen its base; a rare achievement in office. Its other problem is the insecure, controlling character of Fine Gael under Enda Kenny.

The roots lie in Fine Gaels long exile in opposition, the circumstances of Kennys leadership, its only begrudging acceptance by many of his colleagues, and the heave against him in 2010. His riposte in power, first within his party and in government after 2011 was an enclosed rather than open, a top down and if not exactly authoritarian, a certainly authoritative style of leadership. In political terms, power was more authoritatively centralised and enforced in the Taoiseachs office than at any time since Charles Haugheys tenure.

Unlike Kenny, Haughey sat atop a still-rooted, mass movement. Kenny never did and that base, always limited, is depleted now. It is also a style, wholly unsuited to these changed circumstances whereby not only government resonate with a wider swath of society, but likely negotiate issue by issue with an empowered legislature to survive. The cultural changes required immediately from Enda Kenny are enormous.

The Taoiseach is the longest-serving Dail deputy. It is a story of survival and in much of his term as taoiseach, a story of achievement. But his leadership has been largely enacted in a citadel, with the drawbridge up and only a praetorian guard admitted to his counsels.

THE failed election campaign is an outcome of that lack of openness, and insistence on control. Politics, especially when it is successful is big and messy. The base is only ever a start. If you cant move beyond it, it ends up being the reservation you are confined to. They may be leafy suburbs and large farms but for most of its history, Fine Gael was confined to the reservation.

There are two milestones for Enda Kenny to face now. One is to get re-appointed as taoiseach within weeks. Next year he will equal and surpass the 15-year term of General Richard Mulcahy as leader of Fine Gael to become that partys longest-serving leader. Unlike Kenny, Mulcahy had long ceded leadership in government to John A Costello.

These details wont concern us, however. What matters is if Enda Kenny and Fine Gael can realign its style in government to cope with a fast-moving and unprecedentedly open set of circumstances. Alternatively it must by design or by ineptitude face another election immediately.

Its prospects under either circumstance are not good.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
There is the grand coalition and there is the minority government. Both options bring the prospect of major change, but whether such change will be substantially positive is still up for grabs.

The grand coalition is the option that dare not speak its name in either of the two big parties. Fianna Fail, in particular, would have problems keeping everybody on board if Micheal Martin opted to bite the bullet and accept it as the inevitable trajectory for his party.

An ard fheis would be required to give authority to such a decision. Inevitably, some would rebel against it and either head off into the sunset, or put a call into their local Sinn Fein constituency office. Once more in the great tradition of Irish politics and culture, a new dawn would be marked by The Split.

Martin would also have a problem relaying to those who voted for the party last week that he was now breaking Promise Number One  under no circumstances would the party be governing with the oul enemy.

If there is a will, and if all the barriers could be surmounted, the establishment of a grand coalition, would, after 80 years, finally realign Irish politics along ideological lines.

Over the last 30 years, the dominance of the two big parties has been in decline, although last weeks poll did see their combined vote dip below 50% for the first time. A coming together would be a positive development certainly in opening up the possibility of injecting greater substance in political debate.

The marriage would be of the shotgun variety. Both parties would tread warily.

Fianna Fails biggest concern is that it would be leaving behind fertile ground for Sinn Fein to claim as its own, as the party takes the mantle of the main opposition force.

Sinn Fein would reap major political capital over the course of a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition.

Sinn Fein would also reap major political capital over the course of five years of a Fine Gael/Fianna Fail government. For it would be inevitable that such an administration, with a relatively solid majority, would be a magnet for petty scandals involving cronyism, minor corruption and feather bedding.

The chances of a grand coalition reforming Irish politics are virtually zero. If the outgoing coalition were arrogant  as claimed by many  then an incoming grand coalition would eventually make Conor McGregor look like Little Bo Peep. This would be manna for the Shinners, but of questionable value to the rest of the country. It may, however, be the price for an ideological alignment.

As of now, the grand coalition is being pushed up the long finger by both parties, but what is the alternative?

A minority Fine Gael government, short a majority by at least 25 seats, would be a novelty. Some claim that the absence of strong government would lead to instability, or even, as Fine Gaels election campaign had it, chaos.

There is another view that suggests it might herald a new form of politics. On Monday, Micheal Martin was quick out of the blocks to look gallantly towards a potentially new way of doing business. He issued a statement as if he was a born again reformer who hadnt spent 14 years at the cabinet table.

The failure to implement any meaningful political reform remains one of the biggest broken promises of the outgoing government, he said. More seriously than this is the fact that a failure to implement real reform carries with it a risk we will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past.

The statements represent a signpost down the road towards a Dail that finally takes its place as a forum to which the executive of the day is answerable. This would certainly herald the kind of representative politics that has been absent for decades.

There would be greater scrutiny of legislation, and in the area of budgets, the whole process would be transformed by ensuring real consultation prior to formulating specific plans.

Shane Ross noted the positive aspects in such a scenario. This is a very welcome result, he told RTE Radio on Monday. Were going to see the Dail for the first time in many years actually deciding legislation. Were going to see people who are in minorities having their voice counted.

A minority government would thus be forced to deal with the Oireachtas as a partner in government, rather than an irritating rubber stamp. Not only would the executive be forced to dismount its high horse, but many elements of the opposition would be forced to descend from the high ground of righteous indignation down to the lowlands where change is actually affected through legislation.

For decades various parties have promised at elections that should they be granted access to the levers of power they would transmogrify into paragons of openness, transparency and accountability. By and large, the promise was entirely false. But what if the government of the day was forced by circumstance to follow through on that promise?

On the downside, there would be precious little ideological alignment, but it remains to be seen whether or not that would be a bad thing.

The people, in their wisdom, have spoken. They have not, as some claim, effected a revolutionary change in politics. All they have really done is pass judgment on the outgoing coalition. In doing so, they have reconfigured the numbers in the Dail to a point where something completely new is inevitable.

Well just have to wait some weeks before finding out what exactly that is.

For more election news, analysis and general banter join us HERE
Another sobering reality was the discovery of nine Kurdish refugees in a refrigerated container offloaded from a ferry in Rosslare last Saturday. Gardai tracked the container to New Ross and may have averted a disaster. The message is that even though we are at the very end of the Europes exodus routes we will have to put, sooner or later, a realistic response to the crisis in place. As that crisis escalates it is hard to describe Irish proposals to home a few thousand migrants over several years as adequate. Despite our shameful housing crisis and well-founded fears around assimilation more ambitious targets would better reflect the ambitions for a more caring society articulated at the ballot boxes last week.

As those unfortunate refugees were discovered German chancellor Anglea Merkel was preparing for an hour-long television grilling during which she steadfastly defended her open-door policy. Dr Merkel, whose 10 years at the head of German politics comes to an end this year, admitted that the stakes had never been higher for Europe or for her party. Germany accepted more than a million asylum seekers last year and it is expected that another million will reach that country this year. She stressed how very difficult it is to find common ground because many in the EU have yet to realise just what the continent faces: a new age of globalised flight where Islamic State violence and a Syrian civil war can wash millions of people from our TV screens onto our doorsteps.
Australian Cardinal George Pell was a priest in the 1970s in the town of Ballarat where he advised Bishop Ronald Mulkearns about the placement of priests within the diocese.

Pell, now the popes top financial adviser, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he had no idea that priest Gerald Ridsdale was repeatedly transferred by the bishop for more than a decade because of paedophile accusations.

Pell rejected an accusation made by the lead counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness, that his answers were designed to remove his own responsibility for Ridsdales crimes.

My answers were designed to answer your questions accurately and completely, Pell told the Sydney inquiry via videolink from a Rome hotel.

Asked if he accepted any responsibility of Ridsdales repeated transfers within the Ballarat diocese, Pell replied: No, I dont.

The royal commission  which is Australias highest form of investigation  is investigating how Pell dealt with abuse allegations as a priest, educator and adviser to Mulkearns, as well as how the Melbourne archdiocese responded to allegations of abuse, including when Pell served as a Melbourne auxiliary bishop.

It was the second day of evidence for the 74-year-old cleric, who because of ill health could not travel to Australia to give evidence in person at the inquiry into decades of child abuse.

On Monday, Pell dubbed Mulkearns handling of Ridsdale a catastrophe for the church.

He said Mulkearns was a prime candidate for the Vaticans proposed tribunal for negligent bishops, although there is no indication the elderly Mulkearns would stand trial by the time the tribunal is operational.

Commission chairman Peter McClellan asked Pell whether it was surprising that he hadnt heard rumours about the scandal.

Not necessarily, given the work I was doing, Pell said. I wasnt working full-time in the diocese.

Furness said that as an adviser to the bishop  one of a group of Ballarat priests known as the College of Consultors  Pell should have questioned why Ridsdale was frequently transferred.

I was happy to take the bishops word that it was appropriate for him to be shifted, Pell said.

Euphemistic language was used by Bishop Mulkearns, so some of us were kept in the dark, he said.

Pell accompanied Ridsdale to court in 1993 when he faced his first child-molesting charges. He was convicted in 1993, 2006 and 2013 with sexually abusing more than 50 children.
Sharon Edwards, 42, was witnessed by a police officer grabbing David Edwards shirt and saying, Im gonna fucking kill ya, during the early hours of August 23 2015, shortly after they returned home from a Spanish holiday.

Edwards is accused of murdering the 51-year-old defence solicitor at their home in Chorley, Lancashire, using a kitchen knife on their two-month wedding anniversary.

She denies the charge.

Jurors were shown police body cam footage of the couple outside the Duke of York pub before being escorted home worse for wear in a police vehicle.

During the journey, the violent defendant, who was said to regularly beat her husband, was heard telling him, I swear David, when I wake up tomorrow I dont know what mood Im going to be in.

Later that day he was pronounced dead, having sustained a 3in (8cm) long and 0.8in (2cm) wide knife stab wound to the chest in the second of two knife attacks at their home in as many days.

A black handled kitchen knife stained with blood was found at their home.

A mobile police patrol witnessed Edwards shouting and screaming during the early hours of August 23 and had stopped to intervene.

The officer can be heard on the footage telling a colleague: She was swinging off his shirt, (saying) Im gonna fucking kill ya.

Edwards can be heard rambling in the back of the police car after the officer offered to give the couple a lift home, boasting it was a free lift home but asking they be dropped off away from the house because it was a posh area.

Still wearing a summer maxi dress having arrived at Manchester Airport from Majorca earlier in the evening, she was asked by police constable Michelle Davies What was the argument about? Edwards replied Shit, adding Im tired, I want to go home.

Minutes later she said to her new husband: You fucking idiot. Come on, free lift home, move, come on David.

The court was previously told that, following a year-long romance, the couple had married in Las Vegas. Edwards was said to have perhaps quite liked the idea of being Mrs Edwards, a solicitors wife, but following confirmation that he was to be made redundant, arguments ensued.

The trial continues.
The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greeces northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said as the EU prepared to offer more financial aid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said clashes at Greeces border with Macedonia  when migrants battered down a gate and were tear-gassed  simply underlined the urgency with which the EU needed to act on the crisis.

But Austria  which last month limited the number of migrants it lets through to 3,200 a day  stuck to its position that it did not want to become an overcrowded waiting room for thousands wanting to make it further north.

Croatia, which is also on what is now the well-trodden migrants route northwards from Greece, said it might deploy its armed forces to help police control flows.

But near Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border itself, a tent city mushroomed, prompting some despair among those trapped there.

Macedonian police put us here, the Greeks dont want us back, said Yase Qued, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for better planning and accommodation for at least 24,000 it said were stuck in Greece, including 8,500 at Idomeni.

Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis, UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

Migrants have become stranded in Greece since Austria and other countries along the Balkans migration corridor imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross.

Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.

The burgeoning crisis adds to last years chaos when more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU, many fleeing the war in Syria and walking from Turkey northwards.

Some 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would float a plan today to offer emergency financial aid for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc.

The difficulty of reaching agreement on an issue which goes to the heart of public fears for security and safety in many countries was underlined by Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, who honed in on comments from German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere that suggested he thought Austria might wave through too many migrants.

What is not acceptable is to say that they should definitely come and then the interior minister says he is against waving people through (to Germany), Faymann said.
Police chief inspector Dominador Plaza said the grey decomposing remains of the man resembled a mummy.

His body was discovered near the radio in the cabin of a white yacht by fishermen off the south- eastern province of Surigao del Sur.

There were no visible signs of foul play, like a gunshot or stabbing wound, Insp Plaza said.

Initially, it looks to us that he died of natural causes, maybe a heart attack, he said by phone.

And death appears to have come suddenly because he was still sitting by the table when he passed away.

Insp Plaza said initial estimates show the man had been dead in the hot enclosed cabin for at least several days, but that authorities were awaiting an autopsy report due this week for a more accurate finding.

The 40ft-long sailboats mast was broken, maybe in a storm, police said.

Documents found in the yacht showed that it was apparently owned by a German adventurer identified as 59-year-old Manfred Fritz Bajorat, Insp Plaza said, adding that investigators still have to determine whether he was the dead man.

It is believed Mr Bajorats body may have effectively been mummified by the ocean winds, hot temperatures, and the salty sea air.

His last reported sighting was in 2009, but a friend told Germanys Bild newspaper that he last heard of him a year ago on social media for his birthday.

Mayor Felixberto Urbiztondo of Surigao del Surs coastal town of Barobo, where fishermen towed the damaged yacht and the body was brought, said a daughter of Mr Bajorat called to say her family was planning to travel to the Philippines to help investigators confirm whether the man was her father.

If the man was Mr Bajorat, Mr Urbiztondo said the mans family plans to have him cremated before bringing him back home.

The German Embassy in Manila refused to comment and referred questions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin.

It emerged a letter from Mr Bajorat to his late wife, Claudia, was also found.

Thirty years weve been together on the same path.

"Then the power of the demons was stronger than the will to live. Youre gone. May your soul find its peace. Your Manfred, it read.

His wife is believed to have died in 2010 from cancer but they had split up in 2008.

It is understood Mr Bajorat had been sailing around the world for much of the last 20 years.
Police arrested Gyulchekhra Bobokulova  a mother-of-three  after she was seen waving the severed head of the small child outside a subway station.

The woman was witnessed holding the severed head and shouting I am a terrorist in Russian, although most of what she says is incomprehensible.

In some of the videos the woman is tackled by men who appear to be police.

Conflicting reports have emerged about what led to the murder.

Some say the woman had just discovered her husband in Uzbekistan had started a new family while she was away working in Russia, minding the child who had learning difficulties.

Others say the 38-year-old discovered that her boyfriend had actually been married and offered to make her his second wife.

Escorted by heavily armed police, Bobokulova showed officers the Moscow flat where she strangled Nastya Meshcheryakova, before cutting off her head with a kitchen knife.

The little girls remains were left in her cot and the apartment was then set on fire.

Investigators said they were trying to determine the suspects prime motive. She appeared to have waited until the parents and an older child had left the apartment before killing the younger child.

The nanny reportedly told police that she was haunted by voices on the day of the murder.

In shocking scenes, the Burkha-clad woman was seen walking the streets of Moscow brandishing the head of the dead girl for an hour before she was detained by police.

The macabre episode was caught on camera by passers-by, with footage showing the unnamed woman in a black hijab wandering around in the street holding an infants severed head high in the air.

One reporter said she had heard the woman screaming Allahu Akbar (God is Great).

I was on my way to the metro station from home, Polina Nikolskaya, the reporter, told Reuters.

She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar. I saw that she had a bloodied head in her arms, but I thought it was not real.

People in the crowd said it was real.
The will was released in a batch of more than 100 documents seized in a May 2011 raid that killed bin Laden at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

The al-Qaeda leader planned to divide his fortune among his relatives, but wanted most of it spent to conduct the work of the Islamic extremist terror network behind the September 11 attacks.

The threat of sudden death was on his mind years before the fatal raid in Pakistan.

If I am to be killed, he wrote in a 2008 letter to his father, pray for me a lot and give continuous charities in my name, as I will be in great need for support to reach the permanent home.

The letters were included in a batch of documents released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

They address a range of topics, including fractures between al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq, which eventually splintered off into what is now known as the Islamic State; and bin Ladens concerns about his organisations public image and his desire to depict it as a united network.

The letters show he was increasingly worried about spies in their midst, drones in the air and secret tracking devices.

In one document, bin Laden issues instructions to al-Qaeda members holding an Afghan hostage to be wary of possible tracking technology attached to the ransom payment.

It is important to get rid of the suitcase in which the funds are delivered, due to the possibility of it having a tracking chip in it, bin Laden states in a letter to an aide identified only as Shaykh Mahmud.

In an reference to armed US drones patrolling the skies, bin Laden says his negotiators should not leave their rented house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar except on a cloudy day.
The scenario sounds like science fiction, but it could actually happen in the near future, Professor Tim Bliss believes.

In 1973, Prof Bliss, working with and a Norwegian colleague, laid down the first detailed description of a brain process called long-term potentiation (LTP), now known to underpin learning and memory.

He and two other British scientists working in the same field are this years winners of the coveted Brain Prize, regarded as the Nobel prize for neuroscience.

Prof Bliss, 75, from the Francis Crick Institute in London, said it was only a matter of time before memory was fully understood and mastered.

He said: Could we instil memories which we didnt actually have? When we talk about this we sometimes call it the Marilyn Monroe experiment... 

He explained he was alive during Monroes heyday.

Speculating about the future benefits brain research might bring, he said: I could have met her. Maybe I did.

"Maybe I could go along to the synapse surgeon and say Please instil in me a memory of the night I spent with Marilyn and he would say, sure, give me your cheque book.

"In theory thats possible. In practice, of course, we cant do it now, but Im not saying that could never happen.

Fellow prize winner Professor Graham Collingridge, 61, from the University of Bristol, pointed out while many memories were good, it would be helpful to remove those that are bad.

The classic example would be post traumatic stress disorder and another example would be chronic pain, which is a form of memory, he said.

The third member of the group, Professor Richard Morris, 67, of the University of Edinburgh, looked at how understanding memory could help fight Alzheimers.

All three scientists had carried out research involving LTP, the life-long process by which synaptic connections in the hippocampus brain region are strengthened by experiences.

RELATED VIDEO
Burma Destroy Our Poppy Fields, But Give Us Substitute Crops: Militiaman Detained by Anti-Opium Group

The Irrawaddy speaks with a militia member detained by anti-opium group Pat Jasan in Kachin State after he followed orders to attack them.

Over twenty Kachin anti-opium campaigners, members of the vigilante group Pat Jasan, were injured after being attacked en route to destroy poppy fields in Kachin States Waingmaw Township on February 25.

After guns, small hand grenades and stones were used in an assault on two of their convoys, Pat Jasan reported that they were able to detain 19 of the attackers.

The Irrawaddys Nang Lwin Hnin Pwint spoke with one of detainees from a group calling itself the Peoples Militia. His name has been withheld for security reasons.

Did the higher-ups in your militia group give any particular instructions regarding the recent attack on Pat Jasan?

U Lagwin Baw Lwan [a director with the militia group in the region] told the militia members and villagers not to attack Pat Jasan if the Burma Army came with them, but to attack them with any weapons available if they came alone.

If so, had you been making preparations for Pat Jasans arrival?

We had been keeping an eye out around main streets for about two weeks.

Your superiors told you not to attack if military troops were with them. Why?

Militia leaders said that Pat Jasan would come. They told us to shoot Pat Jasan when they came. They did not ask us to shoot police. They only asked us to shoot Pat Jasan, because the government has said that they would properly compensate [poppy growers] if Burma Army soldiers came and destroyed the poppy fields.

Were there any more instructions?

U Baw Lwan gave militia members bullets and grenades30 bullets and six grenades for each village. There are militias in every village. One person from each household [in each village] has to serve in the militia group. Militia leaders said that it is to protect our region.

What has Zakhung Ting Ying, an influential patron of local militia, said about the poppy fields?

U Zakhung said the Burma Army and the militias will jointly destroy poppy fields, and will provide rations [as compensation] for owners of poppy fields.

What do you, as a militia member and a local, think of the activities of Pat Jasan?

I think Pat Jasan are bad. They are bad because they are breaking our plates. [Editors Note: this is a phrase which translates to destroying our livelihoods.]

Who grows poppies in the area? Have you ever been responsible for any poppy cultivation?

Villagers as well as militia and Chinese people grow poppies. I am not responsible for any poppy fields. There are around 200 to 300 acres of poppies in our area, and they are largely grown by locals. [The climate and soil] are not good enough to grow rice there, so locals can only grow poppies. Locals are lamenting that they will be left to starve if poppy fields are destroyed.

So, you dont want poppy fields to be destroyed?

No, I dont want our poppy fields to be destroyed.

Do poppy growers have to pay tax or give money to militias and the military so that they are able to grow poppies in the region?

We dont have to give money to militias and Burmese soldiers. We sell poppies to China. Chinese men come and buy them. If poppy fields have to be destroyed, we would accept it if they are destroyed by Burmese soldiers and militias.

If thats true, then why dont you accept Pat Jasan as the ones to destroy poppy fields?

Pat Jasan dont give us rations [as compensation]. Burma Army soldiers and militias said they would give us rationsthey give a household a bag of rice for destroyed poppy fields. Some poppy growers are saying that they would destroy their poppy fields if Pat Jasan would give them substitute crops.

Who are the owners of poppy fields? Who grow poppies in Kachin States Special Region 1? Do all militias grow poppies there?

Everyone grows poppies all overmilitia leaders as well as the border guard force (BGF) grow poppies there.

Then can the plan of the Burma Army and militias to jointly destroy poppy fields be successful?

They can be destroyed if they are destroyed jointly by the Burma Army. It is true that they recently destroyed poppy fields, but only three or four acres of poppy fields were destroyed then.

You said Chinese men come and buy poppies. Arent there checkpoints on the route? How do they get into the region?

They take an illegal route. There are checkpoints, both of militias and the BGF, on the [legal] route. And there are also Burma soldiers. But buyers can go through that route[the authorities] know that they are coming and to buy poppies, but they can go.

So all of you grow poppies? Do your acquaintances also grow poppies?

Yes, they do. All of the villagers there grow poppies. Rice paddies are not good to grow.

How much does a household produce per year? How much do they earn?

A household [of poppy growers] produces four or five viss of opium [around 18 pounds], and they earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan (US$760-915).

Do the Chinese also grow poppies? It has been said that they cultivate them with machines and on a commercial scale.

It is not true. Poppies are largely grown by locals, each of whom grows on a small scale. It is true that Chinese people grow poppies, but they are the Chinese who live in our region. Chinese men from other side [China] only come and buy poppies now, though they did grow them in the past. It has been almost three years since they last grew poppies. It is true that poppies are grown with machines now; it is largely mechanized.

Please tell me about the machine.

It is much like a tractor.

What kind of salary does a militia member get?

We are only paid 150 yuan (just over US$20) per month.

Will the problem repeat itself if Pat Jasan comes back?

The problem will only get bigger. All of the locals in the region have unanimously agreed to keep an eye on Pat Jasan. If they come, villagers will gather around and defend [their land]. We are local militias and are therefore responsible for stopping them from destroying our poppy fields.

If Pat Jasan would provide rations, we would accept the destruction of our poppy fields. If Pat Jasan wants to destroy poppy fields, their leaders might need to have serious negotiations with the people. It would be better if they destroyed poppy fields with the approval of locals.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

We grow poppies not to make profit, but to make a living. We grow poppies on a small scale, because the rice paddy is not good [to grow]. We hope that we will no longer grow poppies if we are given substitute crops. Locals would stop growing poppies if they were given rations like rice before they finally get substitute crops.

Translated by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma Ethnic Civilians Demand End to Army Abuses in Shan State

Villagers hold a Yangon press conference to call for the demining of northern Shan State, a release of detained villagers and an immediate stop to war.

RANGOON  At a Rangoon press conference on Tuesday, ethnic activists and villagers called for the demining of northern Shan State, a release of detained villagers and an immediate stop to war in the region.

As clashes began earlier this year between the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Burma Army, ethnic civilians in particular have suffered displacement and a destruction of their property, most recently in the townships of Kutkai, Kyaukme and Namkham.

Kutkai Townships Maran Ja Taung, an ethnic Kachin mother of four, shared with Rangoon media representatives the story of losing her husband to a landmine on Feb. 13.

She recalled that she and Naw Mai, 41, were collecting vegetables in the jungle near their old village when he stepped on a landmine and lost both of his legs.

Although he initially survived the blast, the difficulty of traveling on the hilly, rural road barred them from being able to reach a hospital that could provide lifesaving medical care. After being refused at a local hospital, they headed to the Shan State-China border town of Muse.

My husband was crying for his life and told me to help him. He died on the way, Maran Ja Taung said.

The death of her spouse was Maran Ja Taungs most recent tragedy; her home was one of 12 houses burned on Jan. 16, during an exchange of gunfire between the TNLA and government troops near her residence in Ho Pon village. Days earlier, Burma Army Brigade No. 11 and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) had also clashed there.

I am the most unlucky person, as I not only had to flee during the fighting, I lost both my house and my husband, she cried. Please stop the fighting, as it has threatened our lives. We have to be afraid of every armed group active in the area.

Maran Ja Taung added, I want to also ask the upcoming government to help us, to work on the unearthing mines and to free us from the warzone.

Ho Pon villagers sent letters of complaint to the commanders in chief of the Burma Army, the KIA and the TNLA on Feb. 22, but have received no response, said I Z Aung, a member of the Shan State-based Kachin Ethnic Network.

Other abuses were documented in Hseni, some 25 km south of Kutkai town, where four locals from Pang Hat village are still missing after the Burma Army allegedly abducted them on Jan. 11.

Zau Hka, a Pang Hat resident said that in total, 46 men were initially detained by soldiers of Brigade No. 11, but the elderly and men with ties to a local militia were released on the same day. Thirteen men were still missing until last Friday, Feb. 26, when nine were released.

Dau Yang is the wife one of the four men who remain unaccounted for.

I dont know how to keep on in our lives while he is missing. I would like to ask for your help to support for the return of my husband and others, said the mother of three young children.

Locals have sought help from civil society and community-based groups that work in the conflict areas.

One group they did not contact for assistance was the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC). Locals recalled the case of Ja Seng Ing, an ethnic Kachin schoolgirl allegedly killed by the Burma Army in Kachin State 2012. When her father attempted to seek justice on her behalf through the MNHRC, they rejected the case; he was later jailed on defamation charges for six months.

Jaw Gun, of the Kachin Peace Network, said that both government troops and the ethnic armed groups must obey the text of Burmas so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), signed by eight out of Burmas more than 20 armed organizations in 2015. He pointed out that even if groups are not signatories, they all participated in the drafting of the NCA.

They are breaching Section 9 of NCA: protecting the civilians, he said, The Burma Army in particular must explain to us about these abductions, as they are an NCA signatory, which obliges them to respect the agreement.
Books Karen Connelly: The Need for Language Is Central to Alleviating Injustice

The author of The Lizard Cage talks inspiration for her novel and discusses how language can bring about justice in the Burmese context and beyond.

Canadian author Karen Connelly was the talk of local literary circles last month with the launch of a Burmese-language translation of The Lizard Cage. The novel tells the story of a Burmese student leader who was jailed for more than 20 years and held in solitary confinement in Rangoons notorious Insein Prison, a fictional tale that mirrors the experiences of dozens if not hundreds of Burmese prisoners of conscience under decades of repressive military rule.

Originally written in English, the book won Britains Orange Broadband Prize for New Writers in 2007. Although it first hit bookstores internationally in 2005, it took 11 years for the Canadian writer to see the book translated into Burmese, due largely to literary censorship in the country, which eased dramatically in 2012. The Irrawaddy sat down with Connelly to discuss her inspiration for the book and how language can be a powerful catalyst for justice in the Burmese context and beyond.

What was your impression of Burma when you first came here 20 years ago?

I think anybody who came to Burma 20 years ago was struck by how gracious and lovely people were. Thats one of the things that moved me mosthow generous the people were. Even then, I was collecting stories about politics and the experiences of ordinary citizens under dictatorship. People were courageous and generous with their stories, despite their fear. During times when the political situation was more tumultuous, people were not so willing to talk. Obviously, I understood that.

After all these years, what is your impression now?

I think people are largely the same. Its been such a long time under dictatorship and a long time waiting. Now, its a period of transition. But the hospitality and generosity of the people are the same. The city [Rangoon] is a young, developing Asian city, so its kind of crazysort of like the Rangoon that I knew 20 years ago is buried underneath cars, new building facades, noise and lots of pollution. But those things are just the surface. Underneath, people still feel the same to me.

Why exactly did you think you needed to write The Lizard Cage?

I first became interested in Burma because I worked for many years at PEN Canada [country chapter of PEN International, a global writers advocacy organization]. One of our honorary members who we advocated for was Ma Thida. She was like me: She was a young writer, interested in social justice issues. But she was in prison and I was free. Her case was striking to me because I could relate to her.

I was ready to go back to Thailand, where I lived as a teenager. I knew I would be close to Burma. Even on my first short visit, I was struck by how many peoples stories were of imprisonment or confinement. No matter who I talked to, there was fear of imprisonment or there was actual imprisonment in peoples lives. If they hadnt been to prison, somebody in their family or a friend had gone to prison in 1974, 1988 or 1996. Prison storiesstories of confinement and separation from familyare powerful.

I met a few dissidents on the Thai-Burma border before I came to Burma. It was clear they had exiled themselves to continue their politics and avoid reimprisonment. They left families behind. I was struck by the importance of family in Burmese culture and how everybody talked about that separation as part of the punishment. Thats one of the things I wanted to explore in this novel.

You met many people with interesting stories along the Thai-Burma border as well as inside the country. But The Lizard Cage is mostly based on the fictional character Teza and his struggles in prison. Why?

I was always interested in what it means to be confinedseparated from other peopleand how people maintain their humanity in those extreme situations. Ever since I was quite young, I was interested in the situations of political prisoners, especially young men and women who went to prison because of their writing. My work with PEN Canada had been about freedom of expression, an eternal fight against censorship. I was interested in how people use language to free themselves.

There is a deep theme in the book about language. The little boy Nyi Lay cant read. He understands that the inability to read is a kind of confinement. You are trapped when you cant read. I wanted to explore the power of language over political prisoners or any person who has ever been relatively powerless.

In situations of abuse or violence, the need for language, and the importance of being able to express that injustice, is central to alleviating that injustice. People tell stories in order to feel the possibility of justice. Language holds the promise of justice. As soon as you start to speak the truth, the structure of power starts to become compromised. You weaken that structure somehow. Words are very powerful things.

Over the past few years, there have been many books written about Burma by foreigners. How is your book different from others?

I havent read them all. My book is probably better [laughs].

In my opinion, I can never write another book like it. It took me 10 years to write because I was so worried about getting it wrong. Every time I wrote a little bit, I sent it to a Burmese friend or someone else to read it. Obviously, there are many good books on Burma. My book is different because it is a strange mixture of so many stories told to me by Burmese people, plus so much of my own heart.
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2016 (11:25 am) - Score 1,650

UK ISP AB Internet appears to have completed the deployment of its 847,650 state aid supported and 50Mbps capable hybrid fixed line and line-of-sight wireless broadband network in the rural south Wales (UK) county of Monmouthshire.

The project was one of seven Market Test Pilots (MTP) to proceed as part of the Broadband Delivery UK programmes 10 million Innovation Fund, which was only last month hailed by the Government as a success (here). All of the pilots are required to have deployed their networks by March 2016 and AB Internet appears to be one of the last to do so.

The picture above gives a rough idea of local network coverage, although oddly they display this as an inconspicuously difficult to distinguish shade of sandy yellow.

Bob Greenland, Monmouthshire Councillor, said: Were delighted to bring a superfast broadband service to Monmouthshires hard to reach rural areas. This landmark initiative makes the county better connected and more resilient in the digital age as a great place to live, work and play and more competitive in the Cardiff Capital Region. The initiative also helps the authority to make a reality of its iCounty vision to become one of the most inspiring spaces for digital advancement, an iCounty characterized by a growing digital economy, a smarter public service and a more networked society.

The council claims that AB Internets wireless service is available to communities across Monmouthshire, although the pilot is officially only setup to cater for a total of 1,600 premises and it anticipates that around 288 of those could take the service within its initial deployment period. The total cost per premises passed (intervention area) is about 397.59.

Mind you AB Internet could really do with improving their website because at present they do a poor job of showing what packages are available. But after a bit of digging we were finally able to uncover the relevant Essential Broadband packages, which all feature a 12 month contract and claim to have no monthly usage caps or maximum monthly data allowances.

Essential Broadband 2Mb. 14.99/month inc vat.

Our entry level broadband service for light users. 2Mb download and 2Mb upload speeds and includes a free WiFi router Essential Broadband 4Mb. 19.99/month inc vat.

Our most popular broadband services. 4Mb download and 4Mb upload speed and includes a free WiFi router Essential Broadband 10Mb. 29.99/month inc vat.

Particularly good for large families with average demand. 10Mb download and 10Mb upload speeds and includes a free WiFi router Essential Broadband 25Mb. 34.99/month inc vat.

Intended for frequent and high usage broadband users. 25Mb download and 10Mb upload speeds and includes a free WiFi router Essential Broadband 50Mb. 39.99/month inc vat.

Designed for the most demanding of broadband users. 50Mb download and 10Mb upload speeds and includes a free WiFi router

However, confusingly, there is a Fair Usage Policy (FUP) that says it will impact those downloading in excess of 100GB per month and uploading in excess of 50GB per month. The detail clarifies that generally, only users who indulge in frequent Peer-to-Peer file sharing, or stream video for extended periods, will be affected by this policy.

P2P is fair enough, but video streaming too? Its only the single most popular online activity. Furthermore its unclear if their P2P limits also affect Microsoft Windows updates, STEAM, XBox Live, World of Warcraft etc. (they also use P2P technology).

Customers who go over the limit on AB Internets package may notice that your connection speed is reduced, or throttled (no information is given about how strict the throttle is). According to the ISP this policy is better because other [ISPs] restrict users to less than 40GB per month (at which point the user pays more), even though most of the major fixed line broadband services today are unlimited (capped packages tend to be optional).

However if youre stuck on a sub-2Mbps BT line then AB Internets service will be most welcome indeed, restrictive or not.
Eleven Gadget Gifts for Travelers

People are not yet comfortable with the idea of the self-driving, or autonomous, vehicle, according to results of a new AAA survey.

The AAA found that only 20 percent of those surveyed said that they trust a vehicle to drive itself. Thats the most dramatic result. The survey also asked the opinion of people who own vehicles with some autonomous features. This group is 75 percent more likely to trust such functionality than those without experience, according to The Detroit News.

In general, the survey showed that people want safety features such as assistance with parking and staying within a designated lane. The reasons are safety, convenience and stress reduction. Among those who dont, the reasons are that the respondent trusts his or her own driving more, that the technology is unproven, and resistance to the added expense.

In other autonomous vehicle news, one of Googles self-driving cars had an accident on February 14 on El Camino Real in Mountain View, California, which Computerworld says is a busy thoroughfare often used by Google to do autonomous vehicle research. The minor accident involved the autonomously driven Lexus SUV and a municipal bus.

This, apparently, wasnt the first mishap that Googles autonomous vehicles have had, but its the first in which the company acknowledged that its technology was at fault. Google is trying to figure out what went wrong so that it is not repeated:

Google said it has reviewed this incident, as well as thousands of variations on it, in a driving simulator and made refinements to its AV software.

We should all note that it seems that there is no clear line between autonomous and semiautonomous vehicles. The Motley Fools Daniel Sparks took a test drive of a Tesla Model S after downloaded function upgrades added autopilot features to the original autonomous features. The new capabilities included automated steering and lane changes.

Sparks goal was to travel from Monument to Colorado City, Colorado, without grabbing control of the vehicle. The results were good:

In a 61-mile drive, which passed through several cities, including the 27-mile-long stretch of Colorado Springs, I didnt have to steer or use the pedals a single time. I even changed lanes when I normally would have  though by a tap of the blinker each time instead of by turning the wheel.

Autonomous driving is coming. Indeed, it is largely here. And, despite a minor accident in Mountain View, it sounds like a pretty good thing.

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.
Windows has, by virtue of its 90% market share of desktop operating systems, has been the prime virus and malware target. Windows 10 set out to stop that.

It included a competent, free, consumer standard, Windows Defender that has more than 300 million end-points feeding back threat information. It sets the baseline for other antivirus and malware companies to offer even richer feature sets like anti-spam, identity protection, safe searching, and system tuning.

But enterprise needs more. Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (WDATP) uses a cloud backend component to detect threats, offer information to enterprise users to help them investigate, and offer recommendations about how to respond. Added to enterprise security features such as credential guard, device guard, Windows Hello (biometric authentication), and enterprise level data protection helps secure traditional desktop end-points.

Cyber security is my biggest concern and securing all end-points in my organization is my current priority. WDATP is unique in that it can see exactly whats going on across every end-point, which other solutions are failing to address. Greg Petersen, Senior Director, IT Security, Avanade.

WDATP has a number of standard features.

Detects Advanced Attacks provides key information on who, what, and why the attack happened. Sophisticated threat intelligence powered by a combination of the worlds largest array of Windows behavioural sensors, cloud-based security analytics, threat intelligence, and by tapping into Microsofts intelligent security graph enables attack detection. A team of experts at Microsoft and expert security partners are constantly analysing data.

Response Recommendations. The services security operations data provides an easy way to investigate alerts, explore the entire network for signs of attacks, examine attacker actions on specific devices, and get detailed file footprints from across the organization to recommend responses.

It examines the state of machines and their activities over the last six months to maximize historical investigation capabilities and provides information on a simple attack timeline. Simplified investigation tools replace the need to explore raw logs by exposing process, file, URL and network connection events for a specific machine or across the enterprise.

Complements Microsoft Advanced Threat Detection Solutions. Because it is being built into Windows 10, it will be kept continuously up-to-date, lowering costs, with no deployment effort needed. Powered by a cloud backend, no on premise server infrastructure or ongoing maintenance is required. It complements email protection services from Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection and Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics.

Deploying Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection gave us incredible awareness about several critical security vulnerabilities in our network, which weve already taken immediate action to address, along with updating our security policies. Henrik Pedersen, IT Manager, TDC Hosting, Denmark.

Comment

Why is Microsoft doing this? In part, it is precisely because it has 90% of the desktop operating system market that it (a) needs to and (b) can utilise the cloud for detection and analytics.

It is not to annoy Symantec, Intel Security, Check Point, AVG, Kaspersky and the many others that have similar but different security systems. In fact, at last years Intel Security (McAfee) Conference it was revealed that it was not uncommon for enterprise to use up to 80 different security products. While that may seem ridiculous, it shows that there is room for specialist products  not just end-point protection. Many enterprise users would argue that ATPs should never make it to an end-point or the system has failed.

But there is also another reason, and that is that enterprise to Microsoft is where the business really is. Enterprise still needs real computing power, and that is where Windows 10 running on x86 devices cannot be substituted.

To support that it needs a device agnostic cloud and apps like Office 365 and all the other functions like scalability that cloud brings. That brings us to the c-word.

Nadella thinks the cloud opportunity for Microsoft is incredibly big. It allows it to broaden the market it can address. Microsoft now supports Linux in Azure and Linux workloads make up 20 percent of the use of Azure. "This is an opportunity we didn't have previously," he said.

Similarly, with a service like its Enterprise Mobility solution, Microsoft also can address a bigger market. While the company has long had Active Directory and System Centre to help IT admins manage devices and users, with the growth of mobile and SaaS, "EMS is bigger than anything we had in the client-server era," he said.

He argued that while Microsoft is one of two leaders in the cloud space, Microsoft has an advantage over its competitors because the company offers SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and hybrid cloud at scale. "We are growing in each of these areas," he said.

The company doesn't try to compete individually on each of those cloud segments. Instead, it wants to show customers how they can benefit by using all of those services based on a single backend architecture at Microsoft. Office 365 users who want to extend data from those apps into custom apps may choose Azure as a natural platform to build those apps, he said.

In days gone by it was a standing joke that cheap, consumer printers were invented to create a market for far more profitable ink. It is becoming obvious that every relatively low-cost computing device (IoT, smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, desktops and more) are creating a market for the more profitable cloud.
Insight into serious threats  those associated with unusual privileged account activity  must be a high priority.

CyberArk, , a leader in cyber-attack prevention, used the RSA conference in San Francisco to announce new real-time threat detection and containment capabilities to help organisations secure against cyber-attacks targeting Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure. Compromising Active Directory empowers attackers to take control of the business.

The new CyberArk Privileged Threat Analytics v3.0 features targeted analytics and the ability to analyse network traffic to better detect indications of an attack early in the lifecycle, including credential theft, lateral movement and privilege escalation.

These features enable incident response teams to visualise the threat and shut down in-progress attacks  including Kerberos authentication attacks like Golden Ticket, which can lead to a complete network takeover and massive business disruption. CyberArk Privileged Threat Analytics is integrated within the CyberArk Privileged Account Security Solution to deliver a robust Active Directory security offering.

Active Directory infrastructure includes domain controllers, domain administrator accounts, critical servers and workstations. According to Forrester Research, Microsofts Active Directory has evolved into the most widely used enterprise repository for digital identities. Active Directorys growing importance also means its a tempting target for hackers who attack Active Directory infrastructure to elevate privileges and pilfer data.1 Based on what CyberArk has seen in the field, it can take an attacker who has hijacked a privileged credential-less than 12 minutes from initial infiltration to being able to take over a domain controller, which hosts the services that constitute Active Directory.

"A Kerberos ticket attack can shut down critical business services. It would ultimately mean the loss of trust in all network-connected digital assets. The only remediation would be to re-build the entire network trust model and associated infrastructure, said Darren Argyle, group chief information security officer (CISO) managing director, Markit.

It is no longer enough to simply detect an attack. The CyberArk Privileged Account Security Solution goes beyond threat detection to also deliver proactive protection and containment, which are critical to limiting attacker movement, and decreasing damage from an attack. CyberArk Privileged Threat Analytics improves incident response with two key new features:



to detect and alert on the most critical attacks. Kerberos Attack Detection: An additional data feed collects and analyzes network traffic to identify indicators of an in-progress Kerberos attack . The solution now collects a targeted set of data from multiple sources including the CyberArk Digital Vault, SIEM solutions, and network taps/switches. Then, the analytics engine applies a complex combination of new statistical and deterministic algorithms, enabling organisations to analyse the right data  that associated with privileged account compromise detect and alert on the most critical attacks.



Automated Threat Containment: After identifying a potential attack, CyberArk Privileged Threat Analytics can help organisations automatically respond and contain the attack. CyberArk offers a single platform for proactive protection and threat detection that enables a suspected stolen credential to be invalidated to disrupt an in-progress attack  without disrupting business  and block the attacker from continuing.

There are several ways an attacker can exploit Kerberos authentication. Some of the most common Kerberos attacks include PAC manipulation, Overpass-the-Hash and Golden Ticket. A critical step that enables attackers to execute the most threatening Kerberos attacks is hijacking domain administrator credentials. Proactively protecting administrative credentials and preventing attackers from ever reaching these credentials in the first place is essential to every enterprise security strategy. CyberArk Privileged Threat Analytics enables organisations to identify previously undetectable attacks; limit an attackers window of opportunity; improve the efficiency of security teams and receive quick time to value.

Most enterprises are vulnerable to Kerberos attacks and are at risk of complete network takeover, which can happen at an alarming speed. We have witnessed post-breach forensic research in which attackers took control of the network in just 12 minutes, said Roy Adar, senior vice president, product management, CyberArk. Taking over Active Directory and leveraging Kerberos attacks such as Golden Ticket is a critical point in an attack enabling attackers to move laterally and operate undetected within the network for months or even years.
As part of the deal, the two companies say they will also work together in a joint cyber partnership to further develop their common vision of creating next-generation security services.



Mark Hughes, CEO of BT Security, said the new solutions will bring together key elements of both companies technology platforms and address current shortcomings of traditional point security products by avoiding the operational silos that widen the gap between detection and response  they are designed to simplify management and support, close many of the expertise gaps in the market and improve speed of response.



At BT, we are determined to stay ahead of the security game. We are collaborating with Intel to bring together BTs security intelligence with Intels advanced security tools in real time.





We believe that our combined proposition will be an industry first in terms of the scope and ambition. Intels cutting-edge security technology and our knowhow in service design and delivery can help make our customers safer.Hughes said that in the face of an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, organisations need continuous innovation to help them protect their critical data and applications wherever they choose to host them: on their premises, in the cloud or a hybrid of both.He said BT and Intel Security are focused on integrated, open security systems with cloud-first technology designed to empower organisations to resolve threats faster and with fewer resources.Raj Samani, EMEA chief technology officer, Intel Security, said: Our goal is to enable businesses around the globe to more aggressively and effectively defend against data security incidents and targeted attacks.Together with BT, we plan to close the gaps between detection and remediation by creating and managing a security ecosystem designed to enable real-time communication, intelligence exchange and response across security tools.
The cloud-based solution which integrates Samsung commercial large format display (LFD) panels with built-in WiFi - commonly known as System on a Chip or SoC - is powered by Signagelive for content distribution.



Implemented to reduce Vodafones dependency on, and the cost of printed point-of-sale material for promotional activities, the solution was also designed to move Vodafone to digital content delivery in store.



Fujifilm Australia Technology Manager Craig Rumsey explained says Fujifilm Australia 100% designed and now supports Vodafone Australias digital signage networks as a complete end to end solution.





The initial installation was into one hundred stores in only twelve weeks. We have now installed a nationwide network of more than 900 displays with many more screens still to be installed.Rumsey explained that by using Signagelive for content distribution the content is played through the Samsung LFD panels, and not requiring an external media player.All thats required in store is an Internet connection. Each panel is an end point and licences to the Fujifilm solution and support are sold per panel. Once the panel is installed it connects to the Signagelive server via Vodafones 4G network and the content, previously uploaded by Vodafone, is immediately downloaded to the panel. The screens automatically check for new playlists and different playlists can be scheduled to run at any time.Rumsey said Vodafone now has the complete freedom and flexibility of a centralised facility to run its countrywide digital signage network as all content is managed at Vodafone HQ with the in-house team able to log in via a simple web portal.Content can be created, scheduled and managed on a local, regional or national basis, even down to tagging individual panels depending on requirements. This way Vodafone can run different messages on different panels based on their location in the store and tailor campaigns in a far more effective and targeted way than ever before. The system also allows campaigns to be run based on individual events such as sporting matches or seasons. The control over priorities and content is at Vodafones fingertips in realtime.
IQ CEO Brian Peters says Forrest has been promoted to the position and charged with the management of the design, formalisation and implementation of the customer advocacy and assurance programs that will ensure interaction between IQ Group and its clients will deliver services in a way that is relevant to each clients needs, for their individual businesses.



At IQ, Forrest has spent the last three years as a Principal Consultant and has had 20-plus years in superannuation administration and consulting with industry leaders such SunSuper, Equip, Suncorp and AAS.



Peter said Forrest has accumulated unparalleled management and operational expertise - in public and private sector enterprises and defined benefit fund environments  as well as extensive strategy and IT management experience.





Core to IQ Groups customer-centric approach is its considerable investment in and commitment to our Customer Advocacy and Assurance team. By promoting Katherine into this strategically important role, we are able to leverage her proven capacity to build the productive relationships and share the valuable expertise on which IQ Group continues to build its success.
Defence workers announced they have voted down a wage offer from the Department of Defence that threatened workplace conditions that strips relevant workers of key rights.

Not only do the works say the wage offer threatened workplace conditions, but that the offer also failed to deliver a fair pay rise and threatened the nations ability to meet the future workforce challenges in defence.

Professionals Australia said the Agreement would have stripped the engineering, science and technical workforce of key rights and conditions and damaged the defence industrys ability to attract and retain a highly skilled workforce  a priority identified in last weeks Defence White Paper.

David Smith, ACT Director of Professionals Australia said: The recently released Defence White Paper made it clear that the skills and expertise of our defence workforce are vital to ensuring Australias defence capability.

More below, please read on.

Last week, the Defence White Paper stated that Defence wants to become an employer of choice:

As Defence adopts new and more complex capabilities, the demands on the integrated workforce will increase. New technologies will require new skills and will rely even more than now on the diverse range of skills of the integrated workforce.

-Chapter 6, p 146

This agreement would have compromised our ability to meet this workforce challenge, by undermining workplace conditions and seeing wages flat-line.

A week after the launch of the Defence White Paper this is a massive vote of no confidence in this Governments approach to agreement making from working people and their families across Defence. The Prime Minister and Minister for Defence need to show leadership by junking the current bargaining framework and committing to fair and reasonable negotiations with this critical workforce.

The most important resource for defence is our skilled workers. It is vital these professionals are recognised and rewarded for the key role they play in developing Australias defence capabilities and maintaining our national security.

We have negotiated in good faith for more than 18 months, during which time workers have not received a pay rise and there has been no provision for back pay. Without back pay, the departments offer of a 6 per cent pay rise over three years is a much lower figure.

On top of this, the department is trying to remove existing rights from the agreement, making workplace conditions subject to policies controlled and implemented entirely by management.

This would open the door to the erosion of key workplace conditions and make it impossible for workers to seek resolution of disputes over performance management from the Fair Work Commission.

By stripping rights and conditions from workers, the department will be sending a strong message to those considering a career in the industry that their skills and expertise will not be adequately rewarded.

"If we want to lead and innovate in this industry we must make sure attract and retain a strong, highly-skilled workforce. Cutting workers conditions is not the way to do this.

The department needs to come back to the negotiating table with an offer that properly recognises and rewards defence workers, and secures our defence capabilities, concluded Mr Smith.
In Amaysims year there are now the equivalent of 13 months, all of which have the same number of days as a non-leap year February.

Telcos. Ive previously referred to them as one of the few organisations on the planet sneaky enough to figure out how to add an extra month, or rather, an extra billing period, to a 365 day period.

If you take 28 days and multiply that by 13, you get 364. Which isnt even an entire year, let alone a leap year. It's unlikely Amaysim hoped it would slip by unnoticed, because it was very noticeable as soon as you read the 28 day line, as you can see in iTWire colleague Peter Dinham's earlier coverage of the Amaysim plan changes article.

Amaysim is the company that invented and popularised an extremely and amazingly simple concept $40 per month for unlimited calls, texts and MMS in Australia, coupled with 4GB of data over a 30 day period.

It was so amazingly simple via a pre-paid SIM that the company even drew its name from this concept - Amaysim.

Since that time, the pre-paid industry in Australia has flourished even more than it had before Amaysims arrival, with Amaysim's plan proving a powerful catalyst for a new level of pre-paid competitiveness.

Amaysims $40 per month plan has been copied, altered, tweaked and bettered, not only by Amaysim itself, but its many and varied competitors.

Amaysim has fought competitors back by offering cheaper plans, slightly more expensive plans but with more data and included calls to various countries. Then Amaysim tweaked pricing again, offering plans without the international calls for those who didnt need them, back at a sub $40 price for unlimited calls.

Amaysim also has unlimited national calling plans with 1Gb and 2GB of data, now 1.5GB and 3GB respectively, as well as more expensive plans offering up to 9GB of data per billing period.

But therein lies the rub. By adding a 13th billing period to the mix, at the cost of reducing each billing period from 30 days to 28 days, we see where Amaysim gets the money to pay for the added inclusions.

Amaysim couches this in terms of making it easy to compare with other players that are also playing the 28 day game.

Not everyone is doing that, of course - Boost Mobile Australia is still a 30 day billing period player, with deals of up to 11Gb of data per month, as is Kogan Mobile, which has some very special post-introductory pricing to tempt customers with.

Kogan Mobile even offers deals that let you pay yearly up-front, locking you in to a plan for an entire year, which both immunises you from price changes while locking you in so you wont easily switch.

The reason why Amaysim has had to do this is clear - competitive pressure to avoid too much customer churn away from Amaysim, and to encourage more customer churn to Amaysim.

Amaysim has chopped and changed its prices several times over the past year as it seeks to find price points that arent easily undercut, and which presumably are stickier.

Thats because the pre-paid game is a double edge sword. Easy to port into, especially with cheap Androids or out-of-contract higher-end phones (like iPhones and Androids) that have been handed down as their original owners likely go on a new (lock-in) contract to get the latest and greatest.

Theyre easy to port into, but if you own your phone outright, theyre easy to port out of as well.

Although I have my Mum on Amaysim at the moment (in an account in my name), and I too was once an Amaysim customer for my own phone number, I switched to Boost when it moved over to Telstra due to Telstras superior voice coverage (which includes Voice HD) and its superior 3G and 4G data coverage.

However on a trip last week to Singapore, attended as a guest of CA Technologies, I ported over to Vodafones month-to-month SIM so I could use my number and my data allocation in Singapore like I was at home.

This worked perfectly for voice calls - but it was terrible for data, as Vodafone roamed on M1s 3G network in Singapore, which was deadly slow. A tourist SIM from Singtel (the Optus parent company and dominant telco in Singapore) was lightning fast in comparison.

Ill be porting back to Boost later this month once Ive used up the double-digit gigabyte allocation I purchased from Vodafone for the trip (which I really wasnt able to use in Singapore, a country that truly offers NBN-speeds to customers today).

On the other hand, my Vodafone porting experience when I travelled to Beijing mid-last year, as a guest of Lenovo, was excellent for both voice and data, showing you really need to do your research before you travel on which telcos youll roam to if you elect to use international roaming because you can get it at a cheap price (as with Vodafones $5 per day roaming deal).

More below, please read on!

Had I taken up one of Telstras very tempting offers over the past few months, which were on a 12 month contract, I wouldnt have had the freedom to port to a cheaper voice and data provider.

So, with the ease of porting to a service comes the ease of porting from a service, and its clear that Amaysim continues tweaking its plans in the quest to find the most inclusions at various price points for the money, which has clearly, and somewhat sadly, necessitated the move to a 28-day billing cycle, whether you wanted such a cycle or not.

With the bonus inclusions comes the reality of a slight price increase, at least at face value, although the addition of unlimited calls to ten top international countries, such as the US, UK, China, Singapore, Hong Kong and others would be very tempting to the right customers.

I suspect Amaysim will end up doing just fine out of the changes, with minimal churn from the service, and customers joining to get the benefits, although in a world of social media, there are sure to be some complaints once people who will have missed the news of the changes start finding out over the next coulpe of months.

Its just a shame the pioneer of 30 day unlimited calling plans has had to switch over to the 28 day period.

I guess, like the famous movies, well just have to see what happens 28 days later, and then 28 weeks later after that.

Until then, may your signal be strong, may your calls be clear, may data be quickly downloadable, may your payment cycles be pure and your months be massively many.
This latest sales pitch by amaysim means that, starting from 31 March, its unlimited mobile plans will all include extra data inclusions of between 2GB and 500MB for the same renewal price.



All unlimited plans will also provide unlimited standard international calls from Australia to amaysims 10 most called countries including China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, NZ, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, UK and USA.



amaysim Chief Commercial Officer, Andrew Balint explained what the added value for amaysim customers is and how the plans stack up against its competitors.





The telco market is flooded with promotions and one-off offers which are anything but simple. At amaysim, what you see is what you get and what were offering is really compelling. It is the next step on our mission to make mobile plans amazingly simple.Were pleased to not only be able to help remove the worries that come with choosing a mobile plan but to also give Aussies who are already with amaysim more of what they want for the same renewal price.Its also worth noting that unlike our competitors the revised plans will be available to all of our existing customers, not just the new ones.Balint said that from 31 March, the revised plans will be available to all and our existing customers will be automatically moved onto the new plans when their plan next renews.From this date new customers will also be able to purchase the new plans. The additional inclusions come just a few months after amaysim bumped up the data and international inclusions of its hassle-free unlimited plans.Heres amaysims new plan offerings: Unlimited 5GB and unlimited 5GB Plus plans will each come with a whopping 2GB more data, making them unlimited 7GB and unlimited 7GB Plus respectively 8GB and unlimited 2GB will both come with a handy 1GB of extra data, making them unlimited 8GB and unlimited 3GB Unlimited 1GB will come with a cheeky 500MB of bonus data, making it  you guessed it  unlimited 1.5GB.
Apps Genie Limited has developed an app called NC - Twitter Widget for Notification Centre app for iOS 8.0+ devices. It is available for purchase from the Apple App Store.

The app is designed for Twitter users ranging from power users to everyday folk, with its key strength being it isn't really an app at all. Instead, NC lives within your iPhone or iPad notification centre. This means you can effortlessly view tweets, mentions and messages all from within any app or game by just swiping down from the top of your iOS screen.

In fact, you don't even have to unlock your device because you can set notification centre messages to appear in your lock screen. You can action a tweet - favourite it, retweet it, reply to it - whatever you wish to do - in the default Twitter app directly from the NC widget in the notification centre.

NC is a fast and efficient app assisting you to manage your Twitter feed 24/7. It provides functionality not available in the default Twitter app and leverages your iPhone or iPad notifications in a clever way to boost your productivity and minimise disruptions to whatever else you are working on.
Dr. Umamaheswar Duvvuri has used a snake-like robot to perform more than a half dozen throat surgeries over the past month. Simply put, the robot is more accurate than Duvvuri could hope to be.

The Flex Robotic System is so easy to use, Duvvuri said even medical students can learn to use it with proficiency within three tries.

Duvvuri, director of head and neck surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), said the Flex Robotic System surgical robot he's been using has sub-millimeter accuracy; it can "snake" its way to any place in the body and it causes less damage to soft tissue.

Medrobotics A depiction of how the Flex System surgical robot can be used to operate on the throat of a patient.

As far back as 2008, studies showed that patients undergoing minimally invasive heart-bypass surgery using a robot had a shorter hospital stay, faster recovery, fewer complications and a better chance that the bypassed vessels would remain open.

Last year, a Florida hospital proved robots could enable surgeons to remotely operate on patients. The Florida Hospital Nicholson Center in Celebration successfully tested lagtime created by the Internet for a simulated robotic surgery in Ft. Worth, Texas, more than 1,200 miles away from the surgeon at the virtual controls. Being able to perform remote surgeries would allow specialists to attend to any patient, anywhere in the world.

The Nicholson Center's simulator mimics procedures performed by a da Vinci robotic surgical system, the most common robotic equipment in use today; it's involved in hundreds of thousands of surgeries every year worldwide.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the da Vinci Surgical System from Intuitive Surgical in Sunnyvale, Calif. in 2000. Since that time, the da Vinci has been adopted by hospitals in the United States and Europe to treat a range of conditions. The system's console gives the surgeon a high-definition, magnified 3-D view of the surgical site.

Robots can also be used to deliver high doses of radiation with sub-millimeter accuracy anywhere in the body. The Accuray CyberKnife Robotic Radiosurgery System is one such system developed in 1990 by a professor of neurosurgery and radiation oncology at Stanford University. Approved by the FDA in 2001, the CyberKnife system can treat tumors anywhere in the body and has been used on 40,000 patients worldwide, according to the company.

Accuray The CyberKnife system can treat tumors in any location of the body with sub-millimeter accuracy; it has been used on 40,000 patients worldwide.

While still needing skilled medical personnel to oversee them, surgical robots are increasingly showing up tableside in operating rooms, and they may some day allow people with only basic medical knowledge to perform operations outside of a hospital setting.

By 2020, surgical robotics sales are expected to almost double to $6.4 billion, according to a recent report by Allied Market Research. That would represent a 10.2% annual growth rate between 2014 and 2020.

In 2014, the gynecological application segment accounted for 28% of the surgical robotic systems market share; it is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the next four years.

Creative Commons Lic. A robotically assisted surgical system that can be used by physicians for prostatectomies, cardiac valve repair and gynecologic surgical procedures.

The increasing need for automation in healthcare and growing demand for minimally invasive surgeries are driving the surgical robotic systems and procedures market, according to Allied. In addition, a rise in cases of colorectal cancer, neurological disorders and gynecological diseases, among others, would boost the adoption of robotic surgical systems well adapted for minimally invasive procedures.

"Surgical robotic systems offer less post-surgical complications and reduce labor cost," the study said. "Due to this, large-scale hospitals based in developed and developing economies are now favoring automated surgical/hospital services, which ultimately drives the market growth."

Roto-Rooter to the rescue

The Flex System is the first robot-assisted flexible endoscopic platform of its kind and the first to receive FDA approval with the word "robot" in its name, according Howie Choset, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Robotics Institute, where it was invented.

The Flex System lets surgeons operate through non-linear winding paths, and through a single-site access into the body. The endoscope maneuverability comes from numerous mechanical links with concentric mechanisms. Each mechanism can be placed into a rigid or a limp state. By employing "follow-the-leader" movement with alternating rigid or limp states, the endoscope can be directed into any shape through the relative orientations of its linkages.

Medrobotics The Medrobotics Flex Arm robotic surgical system. From left to right: the cart for transport; the base with the transoral instrument and the control console.

The Flex Arm robot is so easy to use, even a non-surgeon can learn it in 20 minutes, according Choset. As a result, the Flex System could some day allow military medics in the field to perform minimally invasive surgery on wounded soldiers, Choset said.

CMU has conducted studies with medical residents where the students used the Flex Arm system once a day for five days. "While everyone started off at different levels of skill, they pretty much came to same benchmark within three tries," Duvvuri said.

"What this told us is that anyone can learn to use this and it takes about three tries to learn how to use it in a surgically meaningful way," he added.

Once the Flex Arm robot maneuvers its way to a site within the body, surgeons can then deploy articulating instruments three millimeters in diameter, which further extends their reach to perform procedures.

Medrobotics The Flex Arm robot maneuvers its way to a site within the body, and then surgeons can deploy from a stable platform articulating instruments three-millimeter in diameter, which further extends their reach to perform procedures.

"We've used it to tackle patients with tumors on the back of the tongue or oral pharynx region," Duvvuri said. "The typical [endoscopic] devices tend to be straight stick linear devices. When have to operate on the back of tongue, because it's curved, they tend to be more limited in what they can do."

Duvvuri also recognizes that surgical robots have their limitations. For example, a 5-in. tumor wouldn't be a good candidate for robotic surgery as it would require a much larger hole in a patient's body to be removed.

"I see these robots as tools," Choset said. "As those tools get better and better, you don't need as much specialization to do a task. Some procedures today [such as colonoscopies] we might call routine procedures and they are being done by non-surgeons, so surgeons are freed up to do more complicated tasks.

"I also do see robots being able to provide more feedback and visualization so physicians can make more informed decisions," Choset added.

While Choset doesn't see robots making medical decisions, he does expect them to improve accuracy during minimally invasive operations, damage less tissue and reduce the possibility of infection. As a result, they also hold the promise of decreasing costs from patient readmissions.

For example, heart bypass surgery traditionally requires that a patient's chest be opened by way of a one-foot long incision. A da Vinci robotic surgical system can perform the same operation by using three or four one centimeter incisions in the chest. Smaller incisions mean less tissue damage and a faster recovery.

Since the Affordable Care Act of 2010 created both the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program and a new pay-for-performance system based on quality of care -- not the number of procedures -- robots could end up paying for themselves.

Snehal Chougule, a marketing executive with market research firm Allied Research, said a hospital that spends from $1 million to $2 million on a da Vinci robotic system, not including a $150,000 maintenance contract, could recoup its costs within two years.

"Hospitals consider many factors while offering robotic surgery, such as patient benefit, hospital competition and hospital costs. The trend toward robotic surgery also brings up such issues as overall healthcare spending, the comparative effectiveness of treatment options and the pace of technology adoption. Thus, it is worth to invest in surgical robots, despite of its high cost and comparative scant research," said Chougule said.

For example, Chougule said, one hospital with around 300 beds bought a surgical robotic system for $1.8 million and then used it to perform 650 surgeries last year. The number of surgeries is likely to reach 750 patients this year, as more prospective patients learn the technology exists.

While the particular hospital was last in its market to buy a surgical robot, it became a leader by performing twice as many robotic surgeries as other area hospitals and boasted the second-highest volume in the state, Chougule said.

"Many physicians say capturing the market share can be the biggest advantage of investing in the robot. So, if some hospitals can market this and can be first in their area to do so, then it will be easy to get money back in couple of years because they are getting patients and recognition for being advanced hospitals as well," he said.

As robot-assisted surgery achieves greater adoption, UPMC's Duvvuri sees the next step as semi-autonomous or robotic-guided surgery. For example, a CT scan could provide a robotic system with an overview of a patient's vasculature.

"So perhaps you overlay that image on a tumor and a robot guides the surgeon to stay away from no fly zones," Duvvuri said. "So while I see a greater role for robotics, I don't know that they will ever replace human surgeons."
The greatest challenge for new or inexperienced users isnt finding data in GA; its extracting meaningful, actionable insights, according to Derek Gleason, an SEO analyst with Workshop Digital . Those actionable insights arent superficial metrics like total traffic but are for more segmented and targeted audiences, like organic users who navigate to a subset of service pages, he says. Of course, a first-time user wont know where to look, which is why the best opportunity for success is before you log in  finding out which metrics will mean the most to your business.

But GA can be a daunting challenge for many users, because of its massive amount of data, says Garrett Mehrguth, CEO of Directive Consulting . It becomes one of those things where you can spend hours in it, but after doing it a couple of times and not getting any great takeaways, you usually stop completely.

Google Analytics (GA) is a free online service designed to help marketers and webmasters better understand their sites visitors  where they come from, what they do on the sites, which pages they linger on, content that causes them to leave, and much more.

Heres a quick getting started guide to GAs main features, its most useful views and valuable tools.

Google Analytics Dashboards

Dashboards provide simple snapshots of your sites analytics, and theyre a good place for new GA users to get started with the service.

After you spend a little time familiarizing yourself with GA, the next step is to create a custom dashboard. (The option can be found by tapping the Reporting tab, then Dashboards > New Dashboard.) You can build a Blank Canvas dashboard, a Starter Dashboard, or import a user-generated dashboard from Googles gallery. For example, Googles GA team created a dashboard template called, New Google Analytics User Starter Bundle, and it includes a variety of dashboards, custom reports, and segments to kick-start your analytics gathering.

[Related: 10 things that keep CMOs up at night ]

Once a GA user has a basic understanding of the audience segments they want to see on a regular basis, its worth the time to create a custom dashboard that will display these metrics on one screen, says Gleason. Rather than navigating through a series of GA screens, which can be especially challenging for a new user to remember, you can have one screen that shows, for example, the distribution of visitors by gender, top landing pages, and mobile conversion rate. These dashboard reports can be emailed to you automatically, saving you the time from logging into GA, or you can forward the updates to your boss.

Google Analytics Shortcuts

Shortcuts give you quick access to your most frequently viewed GA reports. After you set up GA they way you want it, shortcuts make it easy to get to the information you care about the most, says Nick Loui, CMO of Vixlet.

To create a new shortcut, start on the Reporting tab, go to the view you want to save as a shortcut, (such as Real-Time > Traffic Sources) and then tap the Create Shortcut link on the top right. Next, you can enter a name for the shortcut and click OK to save it.

Google Analytics Intelligence Events

Intelligence Events provide at-a-glance views of a variety of website metric events, including increases and decreases in bounce rate, sessions, page views, and average session durations. You can use automatic, or default, alerts or create custom notifications.

Custom alerts automatically notify you, via email or text message, when pre-specified metrics increase or decrease. For example, you can set a GA alert to ping you when page views increase by more than 100 compared to the previous day.

Alerts are a great way to quickly monitor traffic spikes, especially after you issue a press release or publish something that goes viral, according to Natalie Zfat, a social media professional.

To create custom alerts from the Reporting tab, go to Intelligence Events and navigate to Overview, Daily, Weekly, or Monthly Events. Beneath the bar graph, in the Custom Alerts field, click Create a Custom Alert. Next, you name the alert and select the desired alert conditions, then click Save Alert.

Google Analytics Real-Time metrics

The Real-Time feature displays the number of users active on your site at a given time, along with the sites page views per minute or per second, traffic sources (or how users found your site), and more.

Real-Time is a fun tool because it lets you watch whats happening in real-time on your site, says Chris Hood, CTO of Jewel Toned. This tool, probably more than anything in GA, will give people the warm-fuzzies that their site is being looked at.

To access Real-Time metrics, go to Reporting > Real-Time, and then select Overview, Locations, Traffic Sources, or Other Report.

Google Analytics Audience tool

Audience provides a wealth of demographic information on your site visitors.The demographics includeage, gender, location, language, technology (browser and OS, as well as the network and ISP, such as Time Warner), and more. This demographic data can help you tailor your content to your audiences interests, according to Caitlin Boroden, a digital marketing strategist with DragonSearch.

[Related: 6 things marketers need to know about beacons]

You can get started by visiting the Reporting > Audience > Overview view for at-a-glance perspectives by the hour, day, week, or month. The tool provides an easy snapshot of your visitors and what they do on your site, says Nenad Cuk, an SEO specialist with Davinci Virtual.

Google Analytics Acquisition

GAs Acquisition feature gives you insights into where your site acquires traffic. It is essential because it allows you to look at all your channels at once and properly adjust advertising spend and efforts according to which channels are driving the most conversions, such as leads, sales, and calls, says Directive Consultings Mehrguth. I recommend looking at this and adjusting efforts on an ongoing basis.

Acquisition reports are the most valuable, as they detail which source or medium is helping you generate the most traffic, says Jerry Lee, founder of StoryLeather.com. For example, you can see conversion rates from your pay-per-click (PPC) ads to determine how much in sales you generate from PPC. This allows you to focus on where you need to spend your ad dollars, he adds.

Additionally, Acquisition may help you see that the majority of your traffic is coming from social media, but the traffic has high bounce and low conversion rates, according to Kendra Ross, a marketing director with Wriber. In comparison, you may see lower traffic numbers but higher conversions coming from the referrals, or sites that link or refer to yours. Its another way to help you focus your marketing efforts, Ross says.

To get started with Acquisition reports, go to Reporting > Acquisition and select Overview, Active Users, Cohort Analysis (a beta feature that lets you analyze data related to site visitors that have something in common, such as demographics, geographic location, and such), or Users Flow.
Today

A clear sky. Low near 65F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tonight

A clear sky. Low near 65F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Tomorrow

Sunny skies with gusty winds developing later in the day. High 87F. WSW winds at 5 to 10 mph, increasing to 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
What is a Jew? Israeli museum attempts an answer

JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli...

When anti-Semitism rears its head, we must be ready to fight it

Anti-Semitism is a force that is persistent as well as pernicious. When it occurs, it must be fought both by being confronted in real time...
Ed Sheeran may be on top of the world after winning the Grammys, but new reports are surfacing that he's like every normal guy that likes to be teased by an energetic woman like Ariana Grande. The female pop star likes to embarrass Sheeran with her wit and daring humor.

"I can be known to have quite an inappropriate sense of humor," shared Ariana Grande during an interview. She specifically likes to pick on her red-haired British friend because he easily blushes after hearing her very daring jokes which makes him a gullible target.

Ed Sheeran described Grande having a foul mouth during last year's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Both artists were enslisted to perform during the underwear fashion show, showcasing their top hits.

Grande explained that Sheeran is British which makes him a polite man. "It's easy to make him blush," said the pop star. She went on to explain that she wants to prove people wrong at times by catching them off guard with her inappropriate jokes during opportuned moments.

While she's busy making Sheeran fluster with her humor, the 22-year-old celebrity would love to collaborate with British stars like Adele and Jesse J. She told Look that she also would love to work with the award-winning Ed Sheeran. "Ed is obviously a legend. The Brits know how to do it - just more proper and washed down with a nice cup of tea," Grande says.

Fans wonder what kind of collab song these two can cook up, but how long do you think it would take the two to collaborate on a song if Grande's knack for making Sheeran blush gets in the way?
The beauty of streaming Netflix movies comes from the fact that you get to binge watch all the episodes in one sitting and not having to catch up to the scheduled time slot every night. However, your freedom to watch these shows and movies may be over soon as Netflix movies are soon expiring on March 2016. Get them before they're no longer available for streaming!

As always, Netflix adds multiple titles to its vast collection of streaming movies and television series every month . Sometimes, consumers neglect the fact that companies like Netflix rotate the older titles out. Following the "first in, first out" rule, Netflix is getting ready to ship the best movies (currently streaming online) off to the ether on March 1.

So before you watch and schedule the new and upcoming shows on the streaming service, make sure to catch the outgoing ones before it's too late.

Slate has collected all the best movies that viewers need to watch before they are removed from Netflix. The site encouraged "Good Watch" followers to stream "Side Effects" and Waste Land."

But for those who want a family oriented experience, these lovable and all-time favorite movies are expiring: "Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet the Wolfman," "Atlantis: The Lost Empire," "Jumanji" and "Dr. Dolittle 3."

Speaking of all-time favorites, maybe taking a trip down memory lane can be your thing? "American Pie," "American Wedding," "Hackers" and "Men in Black II" are being removed from Netflix as well.

Still not interested with these shows? Maybe "Gone in 60 Seconds," "Indecent Proposal," "Not Another Teen Movie" and a whole bunch of TED Talks might be your thing to cure your boredom?
In the continuing drama between Apple Inc. and the FBI, the two have appeared in congress on Tuesday. A congressional panel has been created to hear the two warring factions in relation to the court order that is forcing the tech company to provide the spy agency data from an iPhone that was used by a San Bernardino shooter.

The tech giant filed a motion on Thursday to vacate the court order saying that its CEO, Tim Cook, is ready to take the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.

Bruce Sewell, the company's legal counsel will argue in congress, that the creation of a tool that will unlock the phone would compromise the security of Apple devices running to hundreds of millions in numbers around the world.

"Hackers and cyber criminals could use this to wreak havoc on our privacy and personal safety," said Sewell in his legal remarks.

James Comey, FBI Director was at the other end of the table facing off with Apple general counsel Sewell in congress on Tuesday. Another government official, Cyrus Vance, Jr., the District Attorney of New York, has ttestified on behalf of the government.

The Apple iPhone in question belongs to Syed Farook, an alleged San Bernardino shooter. There is information inside it that the Department of Justice would like to get its hands on.

The agency has sought the help of Apple to develop software that will bypass its security feature that could wipe out the data if the wrong password is used ten times, but the tech giant consistently refused to help.

"This is not a case about one isolated iPhone," argued the tech giant in a 65-page court filing last week.

If a "back door" access is made on the iPhone in question, it will make all of Apple's customers' "most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance," Apple insisted.
On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down a request by unions to compel the state of New Jersey to pay its full share of the annual public pension contribution. The unions were represented by public employees including state troopers and school teachers.

The highest court of the land refused to listen to the union's appeal and left in place a ruling that permitted the administration of Governor Chris Christie, Republican, to only pay partial contributions to public funds.

"We're heartened by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision today," said Joelle Farrell, spokeswoman for Christie, who stated that all parties should return to the negotiating table to arrive at a solution "that is fair for all taxpayers."

The justices of the top court have no comments in the rejection of the union's appeal. Its order came nearly three weeks after Christie ended his bid for the presidential nomination of the Republican Party.

Last year, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled that the state is required to pay the pensions of its retirees. However, it turned down a ruling by the lower court that would compel the state to raise billions of dollars to pay the guaranteed pension benefits.

The pension fund of the state has accumulated almost $75 billion in unfunded liabilities due to the underpayment of previous governors both Republican and Democratic. Past administrations in New Jersey have short-changed the state's public pensions and left them poorly funded.

"At least we tried to hold the governor to his word, which means nothing. Anyone that believes anything he says is a fool," said Christopher Burgos, the lead defendant in the case and also the president of the State Troopers Fraternal Association.

"The highest court in the land has allowed lies and deceit to prevail in this case, and once again, workers suffer at the hands of selfish union busting politics by the rich and powerful," he added.
About 30 black students from Valdosta State University were escorted out from the campus speech last Monday,though they weren't causing a disturbance,

The African-American students were standing silently in the bleachers during the Donald Trump rally. According to Tahjila Davis, a student at Valdosta State in her facebook post said she and other students had only wanted to attend the event at the university's physical education complex to see what Trump had to say.

"After we got our tickets, waited in line, went through security and walked to get our seats, Trumps secret service came up to us and asked us to leave," Davis said in the post. "Again, a group of all black students who WERE NOT there to protest, but to sit in the rally like every else, got KICKED OUT FOR NO REASON."

Other groups of students said they had intended to sit in silent protest at the rally, many wearing all black, according to USA Today

But the racial aspect of Monday's ejection is heightened by history and context. Valdosta State University only began to allow black students to attend in 1963; nine years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate public educational institutions for black and white students were unconstitutional.

"I think we got kicked out because we're a group of black people," one of the students said. "It shows you how racist our own school is that we can't even go to our own school complex."

Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied that the campaign knew the students were removed; however Valdosta Police Chief Brian Childress appeared to confirm that Trump's team had the students ejected.

Childress added the students were removed after causing a "disturbance."

"They were not removed because of signs, because of their belief, or because of race," he said, repeating that "Trump staff" had been involved in the students' ejection. "They were removed because they were loud and disruptive and dropping the F bomb."
Email

Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday.
API Healthcare engineers Paul Hutchison (left) and Adam Laatsch show Lisa LaBau, who oversees the companys business unit, a featured project at the firms office in Hartford. API was acquired by GE Healthcare in 2014. Credit: Rick Wood

By of the

API Healthcare, a software company based in Hartford, is working to make full use of the benefits that come from being part of one of the world's largest companies.

Its sale to GE Healthcare in 2014 has allowed API's engineers to draw on GE Healthcare's expertise in cloud computing, mobile technology and security, said Lisa LaBau, the business unit's general manager.

"You now have other counterparts you can reach out to," LaBau said.

That has enabled API to complete projects faster than when it was a stand-alone company.

API's main business is software for tracking hours, scheduling employees and handling other tasks at hospitals and other health care settings.

The business, which has about 1,600 customers throughout the country, employs about 270 people in Hartford and 436 companywide.

API was founded by Luis Garcia in 1982 as Automatic Peripherals Inc. and initially developed a system to replace time clocks. It was bought by Francisco Partners, a private equity firm, in 2008.

GE Healthcare and API had a plan and set goals when the sale closed, LaBau said, and the integration has gone well.

"It's not always perfect, but I feel good about where we are at," said LaBau, who was chief operating officer before the sale.

GE Healthcare has learned from past acquisitions, first looking at how API operated.

"We took the time," LaBau said. "It wasn't rushed."

One change since the sale is being part of GE Healthcare has given API better access to potential customers.

"It definitely opened doors that we couldn't open before," LaBau said.

API's main products include software for scheduling hospital staff  a stunningly complicated chore that goes well beyond the commonplace complexities of holidays, vacations and sick days.

Hospitals must be staffed around the clock every day of the year. The number of patients and their acuity varies daily and even hourly. And only some nurses have the training to work in certain departments. Critical-care nurses, for example, staff intensive-care units and emergency departments.

At the same time, hospitals want to limit overtime and excess staffing.

Hospital Sisters Health System's hospitals began using API's software for scheduling in October, said Kimberly Franzen, who oversees supplemental staffing for the health system's four hospitals, including HSHS St. Mary's Hospital Medical Center in Green Bay and HSHS St. Nicholas Hospital in Sheboygan, in eastern Wisconsin.

Staffing previously was done on Excel spreadsheet  "and a lot of paper," Franzen said.

API's software put everything in a central location that's online and that can be accessed through a smartphone.

The transition was not effortless.

The implementation, which began in April, included tutorials, reference sheet, open lab and one-on-one training, Franzen said.

The software eventually will be implemented in Hospital Sisters Health System's 13 hospitals.

The health system initially will use the software for scheduling nurses  it employs 1,400 full-time and part-time nurses in eastern Wisconsin  but eventually could use it for other departments, such as radiology or housekeeping.

The software enables the health system to link its staffing to the census, or number of patients, of specific units as patients are admitted and discharged throughout the day.

"That download comes every four hours," Franzen said.

The software also enables nurses to do self-scheduling, putting in their preferred schedule. Preference is given on a rotating basis. And nurses can be contacted automatically by phone, email or text when an open shift needs to be filled.

That largely was done verbally, Franzen said.

Hospital Sisters Health System, which used an API product for the badge readers that replaced time clocks long ago, looked at competing products before deciding on API's scheduling software, Franzen said.

API's largest competitor is Kronos Inc., a private company based in the Boston area that employs more than 4,700 people, has more than 25,000 customers worldwide and generates revenue of more than $1 billion a year.

A planned sale of API to Kronos in 2011 fell through partly because of potential antitrust concerns with federal regulators.

API also faces competition from new companies such as Shifthound, based in San Diego, that contends its software is easier to install and use than that of established competitors.

For its part, API notes that its cloud-based staffing and schedule software  software accessed through the Internet  has received the top ranking in the staff and nurse scheduling category for two consecutive years by KLAS, a widely respected research firm that tracks the performance of health care vendors.

API's software was highly rated before its sale to GE Healthcare. But LaBau said that becoming part of GE Healthcare has enabled API to make its products even stronger.

The sale to GE Healthcare also has given its employees more opportunities. About 20 people from GE Healthcare have moved to API.

"I love having new people coming into the organization," LaBau said. "When you take a look at any software company, it's all about the people.

The sale to GE Healthcare also could help the company expand internationally.

That, though, could be some years away.

"We will look at that opportunity when it makes sense," LaBau said.
The Burns Harbor and Integrity Great Lakes ships are getting ready to sail after a mild winter, which means the Great Lakes shipping season is about to get underway  putting boats and crews to work earlier than usual. Two of the largest lake freighters  Stewart J. Cort (not pictured) and Burns Harbor (background dwarfing the Integrity)  are docked at the Port of Milwaukee for winter maintenance. Credit: Rick Wood

By of the

With some help from a mild winter, the Great Lakes shipping season is about to get underway  putting boats and crews to work earlier than usual.

Currently, two of the largest lake freighters  Stewart J. Cort and Burns Harbor  are docked at the Port of Milwaukee for winter maintenance and repairs.

The ships will probably leave Milwaukee in the next couple of weeks, according to port officials.

"This winter has been incredibly mild, so the ice cover on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior is pretty open," said Port Director Paul Vornholt.

Winter is the only time of year you can get a close-up look at 1,000-foot ships in Milwaukee because, other than being docked here for maintenance and repairs, the biggest ships on the Great Lakes don't stop at the port on Jones Island during their regular sailing season.

If one of the big ships were stood on its end, it would be taller than the U.S. Bank building.

The winter work could involve almost anything, from replacing a ship's galley stove to rebuilding engines that cost millions of dollars.

On average, about $500,000 worth of work is done on each vessel over the winter. Local contractors and out-of-state specialty firms dig into the massive 16-cylinder engines that power the ships and run nearly continuously in the sailing season.

The winter docking area generates revenue for the City of Milwaukee and area businesses, including slip fees and money spent on repairs.

"I jokingly refer to it as the Port of Milwaukee's 'bed and breakfast' for ships," Vornholt said.

Everything has to be finished before the sailing season starts, usually about March 25, because delays could cost a ship's owners thousands of dollars an hour in lost time.

The winter repairs have their own challenges, including the weather. It's not work for the careless, either, as decks get icy and heavy machinery is repaired under difficult conditions.

"It's like anything else. You have good days and bad days, but the summers are great," said Jerry Achenbach, superintendent of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, a Traverse City, Mich., college that trains ship officers.

Fifteen American companies operate 56 U.S.-flag vessels on the Great Lakes. The business ebbs and flows with the economy, but last year the ships moved 87.2 million tons of cargo, down about 3% from the year before.

Each ship has a crew of about 25 people. While the overall employment number isn't huge, job openings are expected in the near future.

"One thing for sure is we have an aging population, so there are opportunities for a young person to start in our industry," said Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers' Association, based in Rocky River, Ohio.

Great Lakes Maritime Academy graduates can expect a salary of about $65,000 a year, or more if they work an extended sailing season, according to Achenbach.

"If you don't want to be a ship's officer, and are interested in working on the deck of a ship, probably your best bet would be to contact any of the maritime labor unions that have apprentice programs," he said.

Some people work on the Great Lakes freighters for a while and then move on to other careers that are less susceptible to layoffs and don't keep them from home for months at a time.

That was the case for Tim Nixon, a Milwaukee attorney, who in his first career spent 11 years on a variety of freighters.

Being away from home for extended periods, working seven days a week, is a lifestyle choice, according to Nixon.

You have to like the routine and being constantly on the move.

"You also need relationships that thrive on long absences ... it's almost a military sort of thing," Nixon said.

A 1979 graduate of the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, Nixon sailed on the lakes in the 1980s when the economy was in troubled waters. He enjoyed the work, as a ship's officer, but was laid off multiple times.

Nixon finished his bachelor's degree and then decided to quit sailing and go to law school. Now, like many other people, he "chases the ships" with a camera.

"I go up to the Soo Locks (Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.) several times a year," Nixon said.
SHARE

By ,

U.S. hospitals are stepping up their bid to stop Anthem Inc.'s takeover of rival health insurer Cigna Corp., saying the deal will increase the dominance of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans and potentially raise premiums for consumers.

The enhanced bargaining power of the Blue Cross plans will undermine competition and should compel the Justice Department to stop the deal, the American Hospital Association wrote in a letter to the department's antitrust chief Bill Baer.

Blue Cross Blue Shield is an association of independent insurers operating across the country. Anthem operates health insurance plans under the brand in 14 states.

"The acquisition threatens to both reinforce existing barriers to entry and raise new ones, further entrench dominant Blue plans, and exacerbate conditions conducive to abuse of market or monopoly power," according to the letter, which was dated Monday.

The hospital group's missive adds a new set of criticisms to prospective mergers that have the potential to remake the U.S. health-care industry. Anthem's $48 billion deal for Cigna, together with Aetna Inc.'s planned takeover of Humana Inc., would consolidate the country's five biggest health insurers into three.

By bulking up, insurers would gain more power to negotiate prices with hospitals and doctors, which has fueled warnings from the hospital association and the American Medical Association that the deals could lead to less choice and higher costs for consumers.

Baer, whose antitrust division of the Justice Department is investigating both mergers, has cautioned that consumer choice is a bigger priority than health companies' desire to add market share and gain leverage over providers like hospitals.

Matthew Asensio, a Cigna spokesman, referred comments to Anthem.

Anthem is working with the Justice Department and is confident that the U.S. will review the proposed merger based on fact, Anthem said in a statement provided to Bloomberg News.

"Together, Anthem and Cigna, which have limited overlap in a highly competitive industry, will be in a better position to improve consumer choice and quality," Anthem said in the statement. "Additionally, we will deliver for consumers by operating more efficiently to reduce our own costs, while enhancing our ability to manage the cost drivers that negatively impact affordability for consumers."

America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents the health-insurance industry, said the hospital association's letter fails to reflect the level of competition in the market.

"It is well established that decades of hospital consolidation have created many markets in which hospitals can set their prices at supra-competitive levels," it said. "It's a bit hypocritical for them to then claim that they are harmed because they won't offer reasonable prices to new entrants into markets."

Blue Cross plans insure one-third of all Americans and would gain an additional 14.7 million people from the deal, an increase of 14 percent, according to the hospital association. Blue Cross plans have been the target of antitrust scrutiny in the past. In 2010, the Justice Department sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, saying terms of its agreements with hospitals prevented other insurers from entering the market and likely raised costs for consumers.

While Anthem would acquire Cigna members around the country and potentially increase its bargaining leverage with hospitals, the deal would also strengthen Blue Cross plans in states where Anthem doesn't operate, according to the AHA. That's because under Blue Cross rules, a Blue Cross plan in a state where Cigna also offers coverage would be able to count Cigna members as its own when negotiating with providers, enhancing its leverage in negotiating with providers, according to the hospital association.

Outside of the 14 states where Anthem operates as a Blue Cross or Blue Shield licensee, "the Blues will continue to compete just as they did prior to the acquisition," Anthem said in its statement. "Cigna products will not become Anthem BCBS products in states where we do not have a Blue license," it said.

With higher membership numbers for the sake of negotiations with providers, the Blue Cross plans would gain market power and have less incentive to pass savings to consumers, according to the AHA. Rival insurers in those states could also find it harder to negotiate the same levels of discounts from providers as larger Blue Cross plans, harming their ability to compete, the group wrote. It cited a Justice Department study that found that insurers need a large number of enrollees to negotiate discounts and compete with rivals.

"We expect that the acquisition would increase the Blue plans' incentive and ability to pressure providers to raise their competitors' costs," which would probably lead to higher premiums, the association wrote.
SHARE Bryan Stevenson speaks on the inequalities in the justice system. Brad Barket

By of the

The Netflix series "Making a Murderer" recently stirred many Americans to question how fair the criminal justice system is. In 2015, at least 149 Americans previously convicted of crimes, including 58 people convicted of homicide, were exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, compiled by the University of Michigan Law School. Those exonerated had served an average of more than 14 years in prison; five had been sentenced to death.

For several decades now, attorney Bryan Stevenson has addressed and tried to redress inequalities in the justice system. The Equal Justice Initiative, the nonprofit he founded, works to eliminate racial and class bias in justice and represents inmates on death and people it believes have been wrongly convicted.

Stevenson will speak about "American Injustice: Mercy, Humanity and Making a Difference" at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Milwaukee Area Technical College's Cooley Auditorium, 1015 N. 6th St. His talk will be followed by a panel discussion and book signing.

MATC requires registration for this free event, which is nearly at capacity. Visit tinyurl.com/bryan-stevenson-event to see if seats are still available.

Stevenson's memoir "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" (Spiegel & Grau) describes his work, going back to the late 1980s, when he represented Walter McMillian, a black man sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman in Monroeville, Ala.  the hometown of Harper Lee. After Stevenson's work proved that witnesses had lied and that critical evidence had been suppressed, McMillian's conviction was overturned and he was released.

"One out of three black men between the ages of 18 and 30 is in jail, in prison, on probation or parole," Stevenson says in "We Need to Talk About an Injustice" (2012), his widely viewed TED Talk. "We have a system of justice in this country that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent."

Stevenson and the EJI also advocate on behalf of children. Before the Supreme Court's Roper vs. Simmons ruling in 2005 banned the practice, 365 children had been legally executed in the United States. Today the EJI advocates against life without parole sentences for children 17 years and younger.

Last month Google.org announced a $1 million grant to EJI for its public education programs, including Stevenson's work to create civil rights memorials at lynching sites.
SHARE In this photo, published on Aug. 21, 1962, Carol Fetzer, a clerk typist at Milwaukees City Hall, presents a $28 walnut wastebasket purchased for city offices  and a source of dispute at City Hall that summer. Also shown: a $24 letter tray and a $24 desk blotter. The wastebasket would cost about $220 in 2016 dollars, while the blotter and letter tray would each cost about $189. Milwaukee Sentinel photo

By of the

The fight got pretty intense, considering it was over a wastebasket.

And a davenport. And a letter tray. And a few ashtrays.

The Milwaukee Journal reported on the front page of its Sunday edition on Aug. 19, 1962, that top city officials were feuding over the cost of new furnishings at City Hall, which was in the midst of remodeling.

George C. Ashton, superintendent of the city's Bureau of Bridges and Buildings, tried to return two items  a $28 wastebasket (about $220 in 2016 dollars) and a $24 (about $189) letter tray, both made of high-quality walnut, bought for the office of the city purchasing agent.

"Our budget for remodeling the city hall is tight enough without frittering money away on extravagant wastebaskets," Ashton said. "These two items will go back if I have to carry them back personally."

Ashton's frugality had already riled up one powerful City Hall opponent. Harry C. Brockel, the port director for the City of Milwaukee, told the Journal that Ashton and the city budget supervisor, Edwin C. Whitney, had canceled an order Brockel had made for a $15 ($118 in 2016 cash) ashtray, a $25 ($197) wastebasket and a $10.50 (nearly $83) pair of bookends, all for his office on City Hall's sixth floor.

Brockel  who by 1962 had been port director for 20 years, was considered one of the leading experts on the Great Lakes and was one of the forces behind the development of the St. Lawrence Seaway  was not happy.

"I don't think a federal case should be made out of a $20 wastebasket," Brockel told the Journal. "This is completely picayune. A man running a multimillion-dollar enterprise ought to have enough judgment to select an ashtray and a wastebasket."

Brockel  who also had been denied a davenport, end tables and new lamps for his office  said he had written letters of protest about the furniture to several city officials, including Mayor Henry Maier and Ald. Martin E. Schreiber, president of the Common Council.

"I am sure that private enterprise never would quibble over the prices of ashtrays or wastebaskets that go in executive suites," he told the Journal. "Here I am running a plant worth $30 million, where a single conference sometimes results in several million dollars of business. And yet I am told that I am not to have $500 worth of furniture that would facilitate this type of an operation."

Brockel said he had been embarrassed for years about the state of the harbor commission's offices on the seventh floor of City Hall.

"We've put up with this dirty pigsty long enough," he said. "And I simply will not tolerate penny-pinching when we finally get some decent office space."

Brockel's complaints didn't sway Ashton, who was surprised that his office had signed off on the $28 wastebasket  or, as the assistant who showed it to him described it, "the world's fanciest wastebasket."

"I don't know how I ever approved this requisition," Ashton said.

According to Ashton, the city's aldermen were getting $1.40 ($11) plastic wastebaskets, $3.65 ($29) letter trays and 40-cent ($3.15) ashtrays. (Smoking was still legal, and ever-present, in government offices in 1962).

Some City Hall workers on the receiving end were shocked by it, too. Deputy City Attorney Harry G. Slater told the Journal he was startled that a letter tray purchased for his office had cost $29.75 (more than $234 today).

"I am simply amazed to find out that that letter tray cost that much," said Slater, who reporter John W. Kole noted had "gained some fame in the city government for low expense accounts on the many trips he takes on city business."

"If I had know that, I would not have accepted it. It seems to me that $3 to $4 would have been enough."

Ashton told the Milwaukee Sentinel in a story published Aug. 21, 1962, that he was delaying requests he had deemed too extravagant on about a dozen items for City Hall offices, including an $850 custom-built bulletin board  a hard-to-believe $6,700 in 2016 dollars.

Despite Brockel's complaints, Ashton ended up receiving some important backing from Schreiber, who sought to add Ashton to the Common Council's furniture committee  the body that made purchasing decisions for City Hall.

"We need a man like him to screen these purchase requests for luxury furniture," Schreiber told the Journal in an Aug. 21, 1962 story. "I believe such requests are unwarranted."

It's not clear whether Brockel got back any of the nice furniture he was seeking. He served as the city's port director for another six years when, in a surprise move, he retired and joined the Center for Great Lakes Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He died of a heart attack at age 73 in 1981.

Ashton had other run-ins with city officials, including a debate with aldermen about the cost of replacing floor tile at City Hall a few months after the furniture fracas. He ended his 22-year tenure as superintendent in 1971, when he hit mandatory retirement age. He died of pneumonia in 1982 at age 80.

ABOUT THIS FEATURE

The Journal Sentinel's photo archives are testament to the idea that the past is never even past. If you dig deeply enough, you can find images from Milwaukee and Wisconsin's recent history that echo today.

Each Wednesday, Our Back Pages will dip into those archives, sharing photos and stories from the past that connect, reflect and sometimes contradict the Milwaukee we know today  or at least give us something to smile about.

Special thanks and kudos go to senior multimedia designer Bill Schulz for finding many of the gems in the Journal Sentinel photo archives.
SHARE Timothy Alan King Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office

By of the

A 52-year-old man was charged Wednesday with stabbing a Walgreens manager who had kicked him out of the store for being loud and disruptive.

Timothy Alan King of Milwaukee faces one count of first degree reckless injury with a dangerous weapon.

According to the criminal complaint, King entered the Walgreens near S. 26th St. and W. National Ave. on Feb. 21. After causing an unspecified disturbance, he was told to leave the store by the manager, who followed King out the door.

Once outside, the employee said, King lunged at him then walked away. The victim returned to the store and noticed blood on his shirt and realized he'd been stabbed.

He was taken to Froedtert Hospital for emergency surgery to treat a one inch stab wound that punctured his heart.

Surveillance video from the store showed the attack. King admitted to detectives he had been at the store and used a profanity toward the manager, who King said told him he followed King outside to "kick his ass."
SHARE

By of the

A 44-year-old Waukesha man died after he intentionally drove-off the road and crashed his car into a large cement pillar following a high-speed police chase, according to reports released Tuesday.

Neil J. Rhode, 44, crashed about 11:50 a.m. Monday in the 6000 block of W. Loomis Road in Greendale after a six-minute pursuit involving 11 squad cars, the Milwaukee County medical examiner's office reported.

According to the medical examiner reports:

City of Brookfield police first notified other law enforcement agencies of Rhode shortly after 10 a.m. when he was involved in a domestic violence incident about 15 minutes earlier and had stabbed himself in the arm and thigh.

Rhode then tried to rob a bank at the corner of Blue Mound and Calhoun roads by jumping over the counter. He fled without any money.

He drove to Southridge Mall where he unsuccessfully tried to carjack two vehicles about 10:30 a.m. and then went to a gas station on the corner of S. 27th St. and W. College Ave. where he tried to steal an item. He fled and drove past an Oak Creek police squad on W. Drexel Ave.

The Oak Creek officer started to chase Rhode on W. Drexel Ave. near S. 35th St. Officers from Oak Creek, Franklin, Greendale and Greenfield participated in the chase.

The nearest squad cars were a few hundred yards behind Rhode when he intentionally crashed near a picnic area. The chase reached speeds of 60 to 70 mph.
SHARE

By of the

University of Wisconsin regents should review whether faculty tenure is appropriate or necessary on all UW campuses and within the UW Extension, a new report says.

"The Trouble with Tenure" report from the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute makes several recommendations for new faculty tenure policy, including more specific metrics and greater transparency in tenure decisions and post-tenure reviews. It also suggests chancellors be required to justify how awarding tenure would be beneficial to the mission of the department and university whenever a faculty member is considered for it.

At the UW System's 11 comprehensive campuses, where research isn't integral to their mission, students may be adequately served by instructional staff working under contract, the report argues.

The report, which critics called a thinly researched political attack, is timed to an upcoming regents vote March 10 on a new tenure policy. The policy is needed because existing tenure policy was shifted from state statute to the Board of Regents by the state Legislature.

New language in state statutes gave broader flexibility to chancellors than what a special task force and the regents' Education Committee recommend the full Board of Regents approve next week.

Language added to statutes would permit faculty layoffs when programs are curtailed, modified, redirected or discontinued. The regents are voting on a proposed policy that narrows the language to allow layoffs only in the case of financial emergency or program discontinuation.

The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute recommends the regents take full advantage of flexibility granted by the Legislature, and give chancellors broader layoff latitude to "shrink or redefine programs that are still useful but are evolving or becoming less popular or necessary."

"You won't find a defense of the status quo in these pages," Mike Nichols, the institute's president, wrote in the report's introduction. "Wisconsin can't afford that. Nor will you find a full-throated argument that tenure should be abolished outright... The truth is that tenure can be valuable when used for the right reasons, in the right places."

The WPRI report consists of two white papers on tenure entitled, "How the Regents can make professors accountable to taxpayers and students," and "What do the UW instructors without it  the ones who do much of the teaching  think?"

The institute is a think tank financially supported by the conservative Bradley Foundation.

It's "a thinly veiled power grab to further politicize public higher ed in Wisconsin," said Rachel Ida Buff, an associate professor of history at UW-Milwaukee and president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Former UW-Stout Chancellor Charles Sorensen contributed to the report, along with several anonymous sources within the UW System. The report also refers to a controversial tenure survey done last year by a University of Chicago professor, and a new online survey sent to about 3,000 members of the instructional staff within the UW System.

Of the roughly 450 who responded to the instructional staff survey, a majority said they believe tenure is a good indication of research quality. A smaller percentage  30%  said they felt it was a good indication of the quality of instruction or impact on the community, business or economy.

"The regents should look at where tenure has the most value," Nichols said. "Professors have said, and instructional staff agree, that tenure has much more value with folks who are doing a lot of research. It's less valuable as a measure of instructional ability or impact on community."

Not surprisingly, faculty members took issue with that. Especially those at comprehensive campuses, such as UW-Eau Claire, where research isn't integral to their mission but students are encouraged to do research with faculty as undergraduates. Individual programs at comprehensive campuses often require research activity for accreditation.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm argues for locally based and smaller sized homes and staffing for juveniles during a community brainstorming panel on juvenile corrections in Milwaukee in the wake of the problems at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake schools. Chisholm and other local leaders participated in the panel discussion to a packed crowd of several hundred at St. Matthew CME church in Milwaukee on Saturday. Credit: Rick Wood

SHARE

Jon Litscher took over Monday as secretary of the state Department of Corrections, and we trust he will do more than just shuffle the deck chairs on this Titanic disaster. The allegations of abuse at the state's facilities for juvenile offenders require not only the fullest investigation but a thorough house cleaning of all those who may be responsible, from the top on down.

Litscher said Monday he was making changes to the top leadership at the Department of Corrections, but that's not unusual when a new secretary takes over a department. He is keeping two top aides of former Secretary Ed Wall, but putting them in diminished positions. Wall was transferred to another job and then was placed on paid leave  at an annual salary of $108,000  while the investigation of the youth prison continues.

State and federal authorities are investigating allegations of sexual assault, child neglect, prisoner abuse and other crimes at Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake School for Girls, which share a campus 30 miles north of Wausau. The probes have now expanded to include a federal grand jury.

Among the things Litscher should address immediately  and the investigation should explore  is why there was an apparent massive failure to communicate incidents of assaults of teens at the facilities to parents, county officials and even law enforcement.

The Journal Sentinel reported Monday that "in repeated cases stretching back at least four years, state officials now admit they don't know whether anyone bothered telling parents and local officials about assaults on teenagers at a troubled prison  a systemic failure that Gov. Scott Walker's administration initially blamed on front-line staff alone."

How does the administration allow that to happen? Where was the appropriate oversight? Where is the accountability for such abject failure?

Local leaders in Milwaukee on Saturday aptly characterized the youth prison a "train wreck," and demanded better from the state. They're right.

"It is the state's responsibility, and it has failed you," state Rep. Mandela Barnes (D-Milwaukee) said.

Those leaders also agreed on something else. Putting kids who have committed crimes in a single, large facility doesn't work. What's needed are more options on a local level.

The county has started work on a plan to get juvenile offenders out of Lincoln Hills and bring them closer to home in facilities that will provide better programs and a more humane setting. But for that to happen, the state has to pitch in to provide Milwaukee County with the resources it would need to create local programs and build local facilities for young offenders.

"There's simply not enough options and resources here in Milwaukee County," said Milwaukee County District Attorney Chisholm said.

An op-ed on this page Tuesday from the Annie E. Casey Foundation made the same argument: The foundation has documented systemic and recurring maltreatment in these facilities in 30 states since 2000. "All the evidence points to a simple conclusion: these large, conventional juvenile facilities  or, plainly stated, youth prisons  are inherently prone to abuse. It's long past time to close these ineffective, inhumane, wasteful factories of failure once and for all," wrote Patrick McCarthy, CEO and president of the foundation.

So while Litscher tries to right the sinking ship upstate, the Walker administration and Republican legislative leaders  who for the most part have been quiet as mice on Lincoln Hills  need to start working on fundamental reform of a broken system.
SHARE

By of the

Young people will have a chance to share their experiences involving the Milwaukee Police Department with the U.S. Department of Justice during a listening session Friday.

"We felt it was very important to give the youth a chance to voice their concerns," said Nate Hamilton, a co-founder of the Coalition for Justice, which organized the event.

The session, scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Wisconsin Black Historical Society, comes a month after more than 700 people packed the Milwaukee Public Library's Centennial Hall for a session conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

The COPS Office is leading a two-year federal review of the Milwaukee Police Department known as a "collaborative reform initiative." Milwaukee is the ninth department nationwide to be granted the voluntary review, which will examine policies, training and practices.

A representative from the COPS Office and a consultant assisting in the federal review are confirmed to attend, Mary Brandenberger, a COPS Office spokeswoman, said in an email.

The scope of the review is still to be determined, she said.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and local organizations serving youth are promoting the listening session.

"We can teach young people what to do all day but if they feel that that's not good enough because an officer can do whatever it is that they want to do, that's a problem," said Sharlen Moore, director of Urban Underground, a youth leadership organization.

Although parents are encouraged to attend they won't be speaking, Hamilton said.

"This will be strictly youth," he said. "We encourage them to be bold, and we expect them to tell stories whether good or bad when it comes to police involvement."

Hamilton's brother, Dontre Hamilton, was shot and killed in 2014 by a Milwaukee police officer in Red Arrow Park. The officer was fired but did not face state or federal criminal charges.

Hamilton co-founded the coalition after his brother's death and the group continues to call for a full "pattern-and-practice" investigation of the department and a consent decree for its formal monitoring through the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

The collaborative reform initiative through the COPS Office is a voluntary process and was requested by Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn.

Federal authorities will do an initial assessment over eight to 10 months before making recommendations in a public report. Then they will spend 18 months following up, offering assistance and reporting to the public what recommendations have been implemented.

If you go

 What: Youth listening session about police interactions.

 When: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday.

 Where: Wisconsin Black Historical Society, 2620 W. Center St.
SHARE

By of the

Regional and Milwaukee County transportation officials will attempt to place bus rapid transit service between downtown Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Regional Medical Center in Wauwatosa on a fast track to completion in 2019.

To do so, the county and the two cities must agree on a route in time to meet a September deadline for applying for federal transit grants to help pay costs of building the service with an exclusive lane and separate stations with boarding platforms, officials said Wednesday.

Milwaukee County Transportation Director Brian Dranzik said he has been meeting with Milwaukee and Wauwatosa officials to discuss use of streets for the service. A possible route could encompass sections of more than one street and include Wisconsin Ave. as well as Blue Mound Road or others.

Rapid transit buses, unlike Freeway Flyers or express routes, would travel on a separate, dedicated lane on streets.

The cities would need to agree to give up a traffic lane or a parking lane on a street for the bus rapid transit service, Dranzik said Wednesday at a meeting of the County Board's transportation committee.

The next step in his ambitious schedule is a public meeting on the proposal to be scheduled in April, Dranzik said. That would be followed by June meetings with officials from the two cities to select locally preferred routes for the federal grant request.

The 2019 completion date is key since the county at that time could seek state grant funds to help pay costs of building or operating the transit service as an option for commuters during reconstruction of I-94, said Ken Yunker, executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission.

State transportation officials are planning to add one lane in each direction on I-94 between 16th and 70th streets and the earliest that construction would start is 2019, Yunker said.

In June, Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele proposed bus rapid transit service along an east-west corridor between the region's two largest job centers.

The east-west corridor would serve major employers along the route, such as Marquette University and MillerCoors, Abele said at the time.

The planning commission's 2006 regional transportation plan recommended bus rapid transit service in the east-west corridor.

Supervisor James Schmitt said he spoke with Wauwatosa officials about the proposal.

"They are extremely supportive of this," he said at Wednesday's committee meeting.

Supervisor Patricia Jursik recommended a second route for bus rapid transit once the east-west corridor is in place.

"I want to see you get a route south to the airport as soon as possible," Jursik said Wednesday.

In addition to running on exclusive lanes, bus rapid transit service generally is equipped with technology to gain green light priority at traffic signals and stations are spaced up to one mile apart to help speed up travel times, SEWRPC principal transportation planner Kevin Muhs said Wednesday.

A downtown Milwaukee to Regional Medical Center route would be similar to the 7-mile-long HealthLine established in Cleveland, according to a March 2015 report by the Public Policy Forum.

The Cleveland route connects its downtown with University Circle, where several regional health care hospitals, clinics and universities are located. Cost of the HealthLine was nearly $28 million a mile.

Cleveland's bus rapid transit, or BRT, opened in 2008 and it has cut travel time 34% compared with regular bus routes, and increased ridership 60%, Muhs said.

Cleveland officials estimate there has been $5.8 billion in new development along the HealthLine route since 2008, according to Muhs.

In December, a study by a team of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students concluded the east-west corridor could be competitive with vehicle drive time on freeways and boost the potential for land redevelopment along the corridor.

The students in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning estimated it would cost $45.9 million to $47.7 million to build a 6.4-mile starter line for BRT in the center median of Wisconsin Ave.

Regional planners will estimate a cost of the Milwaukee County BRT service after a route is selected and preliminary designs of stations are done, Yunker said. Projected costs of the service will differ greatly depending on whether the service is given a dedicated lane in the center of streets or operates along curb lanes, he said.
Ricardo Diaz (standing) executive director of United Community Center, where President Barack Obama will visit Thursday, stops in for a visit Wednesday at the senior citizens center at the UCC. Seated are Alvaro Villegas (from left), Gladys Sandoval and Maria Segura. Credit: Michael Sears

By of the

Thursday will be like most any other day at the United Community Center on Milwaukee's near south side.

There will be 1,250 kids in classes at the Bruce-Guadalupe Community School and 200 seniors on the agency's sprawling campus, either eating meals or arriving for daily care.

Boxers will show up for training in the afternoon and dozens more people will use the fitness center. And a book fair will get underway at 3 p.m.

One more visitor plans to drop by, too. That would be President Barack Obama, who will travel to the United Community Center to praise how Milwaukee signed up thousands of people under the Affordable Care Act.

"This is the leader of the free world," said Ricardo Diaz, UCC executive director. "And to be able to say, he's coming to your neighborhood, regardless of your politics, these are important moments."

Diaz said he gets emotional about the impact of the visit on the center and the community.

"We have a mantra here: We don't make excuses," he said.

UCC was picked as a spot for the presidential visit because of a role it played in helping provide information to the city's residents on the Affordable Care Act. In February, Milwaukee won the White House's Healthy Communities Challenge, a contest among 20 cities to sign up people to health plans.

About 38,000 people in the Milwaukee area were newly enrolled in a health plan on the federal marketplace. In all, about 89,000 people in the Milwaukee area selected a 2016 marketplace plan, the White House said.

"Put all the political drama aside, I think that's a really good thing that working people can get health coverage," Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said.

Barrett said for UCC, the presidential visit will be a huge honor. George W. Bush visited UCC while running for his first presidential term.

"I've oftentimes said I wish I had a dozen UCC's in this city; that's how good it is," Barrett said.

Founded more than 40 years ago as a teen center called The Spot, the UCC has grown into a multiservice nonprofit organization that employs 250 people and operates on an annual budget of $21 million.

On Wednesday, there was an air of expectancy across the UCC campus. Dinorah Marquez, director of the renowned Latino Arts Strings Program, said 12 children were selected to play two traditional songs during the presidential visit.

"That he chose our agency is very important," she said. "This is an affirmation of our community and agency."

For Diaz, Obama's visit is a milestone for the organization he has guided in two stints. He ran UCC from 1984 to 1988 and returned in 2003.

It also marks another remarkable point in his personal journey that has taken him from Cuba, to New Jersey, Puerto Rico and Carroll University in Waukesha.

Diaz, 64, was part of Operation Peter Pan, an exodus of unaccompanied Cuban minors to the United States in the early 1960s. He lived with relatives in New Jersey, where he was eventually reunited with his parents and sister. They then moved to Puerto Rico.

In 1970, Shirley Hilger, who directed admissions at Carroll, came to Puerto Rico and recruited Diaz and two others to attend the school.

"We didn't have much conversation about winter or the weather," Diaz said. "The rest is history."

Diaz has a long career in community and public service. He worked for the City of Milwaukee under Mayor John Norquist, serving as commissioner of city development and executive director of the Milwaukee Housing Authority.

The UCC is the organization that is closest to his heart. Diaz's two tours here bookended the 14-year tenure of his one-time mentor, Walter Sava, who turned UCC into one of the prime Latino agencies in the city.

Diaz spearheaded expansion that includes a Latino Geriatric Center to serve those with Alzheimer's disease, a senior living complex and a renovation of the school.

Milwaukee, he said, is one of the most livable cities for Hispanics in the country. For just one moment, Diaz said, he and others will be awfully proud to show off a small slice of the city to the president.

"I always say, 'If Hispanics were a stock, go out and buy it,'" Diaz said. "Short term, long term, it's an incredible investment."

Presidential coverage

Go to JSOnline.com for coverage of President Barack Obama's visit.
SHARE

By of the

Three former employees have been charged with abuse of a resident at a Cedarburg assisted living center.

The women, all certified nursing assistants, are also charged with theft from the resident, and one of the women is charged with stealing cash from two other residents at McKinley Place.

The women were caught after one resident's friends became suspicious of her care and put hidden video cameras in her apartment, which later provided evidence of the thefts to Cedarburg police.

Joan J. Walton-Wentz, 60, of Germantown faces three felony counts of theft with special facts, and one of intentionally abusing a patient-no harm, which is a misdemeanor.

Lafaysha N. Drew, 30, and Lugenia C. Taylor, 29, both of Milwaukee, each face one felony theft charge and one charge of abusing a patient-no harm.

All are scheduled for initial court appearances April 12.

According to the criminal complaint:

Two women who had the powers of attorney for health care and for finances for their friend moved her into McKinley Place in November. They quickly noticed what they considered substandard care, such as improper timing and dosage of medications and infrequent bedding changes and offers of assistance in showering.

They also noticed several gift cards missing from the friend's apartment, and set up two video cameras disguised as clocks that captured Walton-Wentz going through the resident's purse on different occasions and removing cash.

It also showed Drew looking through cabinets and taking and eating food from the resident's refrigerator, and taking three $25 Target gift cards. It showed Taylor finding a $25 Pick 'N Save gift card, folding it into a piece of paper and putting it in her pocket.

The women took their complaint to police in late January. On Feb. 1, officers interviewed Walton-Wentz at the facility. She at first denied any knowledge of any thefts, but when told there was video, she confessed to taking cash from two other residents before admitting to taking money from where the cameras were located.

Drew denied any theft even after being shown the video.

The facility's administrator fired Drew and Walton-Wentz after the interviews.

Taylor, who arrived at McKinley later in the day for her shift, suddenly disappeared, leaving her car behind. When police reached her by phone the next day, she said she wasn't feeling well and went home. She never showed up to talk with Cedarburg police.
SHARE

By

Among the many remarkable things about the defeat of the proposed overhaul of the Wisconsin Public Records Law over the July 4 weekend last summer was the way the media, open government groups, advocacy organizations on the left and right and the public coalesced to point out how ill-conceived the idea was.

The reaction to this sneak attack on open government was immediate, overwhelming and decisive. No other issue in state government in recent years has generated such a uniform  and effective  response. Gov. Scott Walker and the legislative leaders backed down within 48 hours.

Lawmakers seemed chastened, but advocates of open government must remain vigilant. In fact, the efforts to restrict the public's access to information have not stopped.

It's not a stretch to suggest that open government in Wisconsin is threatened; some might say it's under attack. That's because the attempt to gut the records law is just one of several examples from the past year suggesting lawmakers' disregard for the public's right to know.

In response, the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council and the Madison chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists are joining with open government advocates from both sides of the political aisle and media groups to bring what we're calling the Open Government Traveling Show to communities across the state.

For three days in mid-March, during the nationwide celebration of open government known as Sunshine Week, we'll be offering a 90-minute tutorial and presentation on the state's open records law in eight Wisconsin cities. The goal is to help Wisconsin residents understand how the law can be used and why it is important.

In addition to WFOIC, SPJ-Madison and lawyer April Barker of Schott, Bublitz and Engel S.C., the conservative groups the MacIver Institute for Public Policy, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and the liberal groups the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and the Center for Media and Democracy will take part in the Open Government Traveling Show. Despite their differences on many policy issues, these groups agree on the importance of open government.

And in fact, representatives of the MacIver Institute and WILL, along with Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel, were among the most influential voices last year opposing the records changes at the Capitol.

Also supporting the Traveling Show is the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

From March 15 to 17, the tour will visit eight cities: La Crosse, Eau Claire, Wausau, Green Bay, Appleton, Sheboygan, Waukesha and Janesville. If it's successful, we'll consider another tour in the future.

Wisconsin's open records law is a vital component of our representative democracy. It should be strengthened, not weakened. And we must fight to protect it.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (www.wisfoic.org), a nonprofit group dedicated to open government. Council member Mark Pitsch is an assistant city editor at the Wisconsin State Journal and president of the Madison chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton dominated Super Tuesday. Credit: Associated Press / Getty Images

By of the

The barriers between Donald Trump and his party's presidential nomination are collapsing like dominoes in the wake of a Super Tuesday romp over his ever-struggling GOP rivals.

On the single biggest day of the primary season, the two party front-runners, Republican Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, dominated the voting, giving each one an opportunity to amass insurmountable delegate leads in the coming weeks.

Trump's victories came in Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Alabama, Arkansas and Vermont.

His only primary losses came in Oklahoma and Texas, which was a home-state win for Sen. Ted Cruz. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the man often hailed as the GOP's best hope to win back the White House, was shut out of the big primaries Tuesday but won the Minnesota caucus.

Trump's triumph was geographically and demographically broad, and it was fueled by the twin hallmarks of the 2016 Trump voter: anger with their party and hunger for an outsider.

Clinton's victories came in Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia, boosted by overwhelming support in Southern states from African-American voters.

Bernie Sanders won Colorado, Vermont, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Never before have the likely outlines of the fall race seemed so palpable. It's a matchup, if it materializes, that could blur some ideological lines. But it would offer more than its share of animosity, featuring the two presidential candidates with the highest negative ratings in the polls and seemingly the greatest political baggage.

Clinton alluded to Trump in her victory speech when she said: "The stakes in this election have never been higher, and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower."

Trump ridiculed Clinton's economic message, saying: "She's been there for so long. If she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years."

While most of Trump's victories Tuesday were individually predictable, they collectively provided the biggest jolt yet to the Republican Party's central nervous system. Many donors, insiders and movement conservatives remain unreconciled to Trump's politics and rhetoric and/or panicked about his electability in the fall.

By any conventional measure, Trump is running away with the GOP contest by winning a remarkably diverse array of states and a politically eclectic mix of voters. What remains to be seen is whether a seemingly tardy stop-Trump movement within the party has much life in it, or any real clout at this late stage and in this unmistakably anti-establishment climate.

The two most plausible scenarios in the wake of Super Tuesday are that Trump drives his competitors into the ground and wins the nomination outright, or that his remaining rivals stick it out, combine to deny him an outright majority of delegates and make a contested convention possible.

But even in that second scenario, Trump would be the favorite to win an open convention as long as he goes into Cleveland with the most wins and the most delegates. At that point, any effort to deny him the nomination might spark a grass-roots backlash inside the party.

Of Trump's top remaining rivals, Cruz has won four contests this year but will be playing in the weeks ahead on less favorable turf than the Southern and socially conservative states that have predominated so far. And Rubio had little to show Tuesday for the dramatically harsh and personal turn in his rhetoric toward Trump. He appeared to be falling not only far behind Trump in the delegate race, but also behind Cruz. He now faces a do-or-die contest March 15 in his home state of Florida, where polls show him trailing.

"He decided to become Don Rickles, but Don Rickles has a lot more talent," Trump said Tuesday, unable to resist belittling Rubio after his string of defeats. "Marco has not won ...You've got to be able to win some."

Even as Trump piled up the victories Tuesday, signs of discord and dismay over his candidacy continued to surface among the party's elected leaders.

House Speaker Paul Ryan of Janesville, who has done his best to stay out of the race, chastised Trump for equivocating about white supremacists and failing to forcefully repudiate former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry," Ryan told reporters, without referring to Trump by name.

"I hope this is the last time I need to speak out on this race," said Ryan, who earlier in the race criticized Trump's call to ban the entry of Muslims into the U.S.

Asked by reporters several times Tuesday night about Ryan's comments, Trump denied that he had failed to disavow white supremacists. He said he didn't know Ryan, but expected to get along well with him. And "if I don't, he's going to have to pay a big price, OK!" Trump said of the speaker.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans continued to send signals that some of them might run away from Trump in the fall if he wins the nomination. U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said Tuesday he would leave the GOP if Trump were the nominee, and an anti-Trump Super PAC promised a major push in the next few weeks to derail the front-runner.

But exit polls once more suggested that Trump in his surge toward the nomination has tapped into a broad well of anger toward the party among GOP voters, as large shares of Republicans expressed their hunger for an outsider, and those voters backed Trump by lopsided margins.
By of the

Madison State prisons have to curb the use of "jammed overtime" that is forced on guards and take other steps to start restoring the trust of the public, the new head of the Department of Corrections said Wednesday.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing, Jon Litscher told senators that his agency must address staffing shortages in the state's maximum security institutions and in a troubled prison for youth in northern Wisconsin. Other steps to rebuild public confidence should include outreach to the communities that send offenders into the corrections system, Litscher said.

Afterward, he declined to take reporters' questions.

Though Litscher stopped short of calling for more corrections officers, it was the first time that Gov. Scott Walker's administration had talked directly about the common practice of requiring staff at some state prisons to work 16 hour shifts on consecutive days.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has reported that staffing levels and forced overtime are among the host of problems facing Lincoln Hills School for Boys 30 miles north of Wausau, which is under state and federal investigation.

Litscher, who started in his job Monday, said he was deeply concerned about Lincoln Hills, including the staffing levels there.

"We're going to have to look at how we can target resources" to prisons in need of them, Litscher told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety.

The new corrections secretary, who served in the role previously under then-Govs. Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum, told lawmakers he wanted to reform the prison system and believed Walker did, too. Walker appointed Litscher last month to replace former secretary Ed Wall amid the scandal over Lincoln Hills.

The Department of Corrections has already declined requests for interviews with both Litscher and Wall. Litscher said he wanted to do future interviews but did not say when.

Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee), a vocal critic of Lincoln Hills, said that the prison is "creating trauma" for its juvenile inmates more than treating it. Litscher will have to take action to win back trust for his agency, she said.

"Some of those (problems) are not yours. But they're yours now," Taylor said.

"I accept that, senator," Litscher answered.
SHARE

By of the

Madison People buying and selling a home will have less time to file lawsuits against real estate agents, under a bill signed by Gov. Scott Walker Wednesday at a meeting of the Wisconsin Realtors Association.

That's just one provision in AB 456, a broader bill rewriting regulations for that industry.

Until now, people have had six years to file claims over brokerage services. Under the legislation signed by Walker at the Monona Terrace, they will have to file their complaints within two years.
6 dead in fire at Hartland apartment complex

Hartland Police Chief Torin Misko said the fire took place at a four-family apartment building on Mansfield Court in the village.
SHARE

By of the

Two of four voter training sessions for people with disabilities will be held Wednesday in West Allis and Grafton, according to the Wisconsin Board for People With Developmental Disabilities.

The sessions will be held at 1 p.m. at the Family Enrichment Center, 885 Badger Circle in Grafton, and from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the main conference room of Disability Rights Wisconsin, 6737 West Washington St. in West Allis, according to a news release from the organization.

The other sessions will be held from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday in Sage Hall of the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Blvd. in Oshkosh, and from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. March 9 in the commons area of Viroqua High School, 100 Blackhawk Drive in Viroqua, according to the release.

Information that will be provided at the sessions includes requirements for voting in Wisconsin, how to ensure polling places are accessible to all and what individuals with disabilities and their families need to know about the voting process, according to the release.

More information on the training sessions is available by contacting John Shaw at john1.shaw@wisconsin.gov or (608) 266-7707.
By of the

Three guards were investigated for antagonizing an inmate with a mental illness at the state-run Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility last summer, the Department of Corrections has confirmed.

The investigation began Feb. 6 when officials received a copy of a recording the officers made of themselves harassing the inmate via the intercom system. It was concluded on Monday and "appropriate actions were taken," according to a memo from Superintendent Ronald K. Malone obtained by the Journal Sentinel.

A reporter's email to Malone last week was forwarded to Jeffrey Grothman, then a corrections department spokesman, who did not provide additional details about the nature of those actions or whether they included discipline.

On the recording, which was provided to the Journal Sentinel by a confidential source, the inmate becomes more and more agitated as the jailers threaten to withhold his medication.

"I don't care what the doctor says," one of guards says. "I will personally take the meds and throw them on the ground before you will get (expletive)."

Another later chimes in: "Hey guess what...I'm taking away your (expletive) meds and I'm gonna suck them all down myself."

The inmate responds by shouting, cursing and threatening the guards, who cackle and insult his mother.

The recording comes to light as federal officials investigate allegations of second-degree sexual assault, abuse of prisoners, and intimidation of victims and witnesses at another state-run correctional facility, the Lincoln Hills School for Boys north of Wausau. While the incident at the secure detention facility could be characterized as less serious because it does not include physical abuse, experts say it makes a troubling statement about treatment of the mentally ill within Wisconsin's prison system.

"It's pouring gasoline on the fire of someone who's got a serious psychiatric disorder," said Kenneth Robbins, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who reviewed the recording at the Journal Sentinel's request. "Not only is that a horrible ethical position, but it's a horrible decision with regard to the safety of society."

Of the approximately 22,600 people in the custody of the corrections department, about 34% of males and 79% of females have a mental health condition, according to a department report. It is unclear how many of those prisoners have spent time in the Secure Detention Facility, a holding site for people who have violated probation or parole that has the capacity for about 1,000 inmates at any given time.

The Journal Sentinel is not naming the inmate whose voice can be heard on the recording because neither he nor his family could be reached. The news organization could not confirm the man's mental health diagnosis, but on the recording, the guards reference an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Grothman, who said the man was no longer in custody, declined to provide the names of the correctional officers.

Some of the statements on the recording indicate at least one of them had engaged in similar behavior previously.

'Got him going again'

"Got him going again," a guard says at one point on the 41/2-minute recording.

Brenda Wesley, director of education and outreach for the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Greater Milwaukee, said she was "appalled" by the recording, especially in light of the fact that she and the chief psychologist at the secure detention facility have worked together to provide training for guards on how to be more empathetic toward prisoners with mental health disorders.

Wesley worked with the psychologist to develop the training curriculum about five years ago.

"It's terrible. Why do we feel that it's OK to make fun of people when they are hallucinating, hearing voices or in a psychotic state?" asked Wesley, whose son lives with a chronic and severe mental health disorder. "It's very disheartening that we still have a culture we need to penetrate and not allow such behavior."

Grothman did not answer questions about the content of the training or how often it occurs. He would not authorize the psychologist to speak with a reporter.

Steve Moffic, a Milwaukee psychiatrist who worked part time in a Wisconsin prison from 2008 to 2012, said he has witnessed far more disturbing behavior by correctional officers.

"Hearing the kind of stuff we heard is horrible, but it's not necessarily the worst," he said. "It shouldn't happen, but it wasn't anywhere as bad as what sometimes happens."

Moffic said he couldn't tell from the recording whether the guards were trying to amuse themselves, to taunt the inmate or to goad him into breaking the rules.

"That's sometimes what guards like to do if they don't like the inmate, is to precipitate behavior that could get him in trouble," Moffic said.

"What could be worrisome with this kind of interaction is whether the guard would know the traumatic trigger for any given prisoner," Moffic said. "If they play upon past trauma, they could really rile up the inmate and trigger violent behavior problems or even dissociation."

During the years Moffic spent working at Kettle Moraine Correctional Institution, guards felt the psychologists and psychiatrists were "too soft" and that training guards on how to better interact with mentally ill inmates would compromise security, he said.

"It seems obvious that guards should get more mental health training," he said.

Correctional officers, whose primary job of ensuring safety is already difficult, need ongoing training not only on how best to help mentally ill inmates behave properly, but also on how to manage their own emotions, Robbins said.

"We know from a number of studies that correctional officers become angry, they become cynical, and over time they start generalizing their view of the more dangerous inmates to include everyone, and they distance themselves," he said.

"That atmosphere, just like all workplace atmospheres, is contagious, and the more they become infected with this anger and cynicism, correctional officers run the risk of mistreating prisoners."

Such behavior does not bode well for the future, according to Robbins.

"What we want is for people to leave the prison with their self-respect and with their psychiatric illnesses under reasonable control, (to feel) that they've been managed fairly and that when they leave, they don't leave angry and bitter," he said. "If that's how they leave, with psychiatric symptoms and with anger and bitterness, it is inevitable that they are going to ... commit another crime, and that puts everyone at risk."

Audio online

To hear the recording, go to jsonline.com/watchdog
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Lindsey Graham has been posing as the voice of reason in the Republican Party for the past few weeks, warning Tuesday that if Donald Trump gets the Republican nomination and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic standard-bearer, then crazy loses to dishonest in the publics eye. There isnt any real evidence that Hillary Clinton is personally dishonest in the way that Graham is charging. Shes just a politician.

But of course there is a lot of evidence that Donald Trump is unbalanced.

The problem is, Graham and many other members of the Republican Establishment are blind to the ways in which the Trump stances they call crazy are mostly simply explicit statements of what they say with dog-whistles. Or they employ the same rhetorical tricks but apply them to what Graham thinks are the wrong targets.

Graham complains that Trumps speaks in a bigoted way about Latinos, who he says are the fastest-growing part of the electorate. He is frustrated that Trump is chasing away a key demographic.

But Graham himself has called Middle Easterners all crazy and characterized Iranians as all liars. He made the latter slur in order to argue that diplomacy could not succeed in dealing with Iran. But the Iranians did concrete in their planned heavy water reactor and met every other obligation of the JCPOA agreement with the UN Security Council.

After the Dylann Roof shooting at Emanuel ME Church in Charleston, Graham opposed removing the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds, on the grounds that it represented who we are. But 66% of SC African-Americans wanted it gone, and SC is the state with the largest proportion of African-Americans in the country (if they were actually enfranchised Graham wouldnt be senator).

Whats the difference between championing the flag of a slave-holding breakaway state and equivocating over whether to condemn the KKK?

For Trump to make blanket statements insulting a whole ethnic group is just standard operating procedure in the GOP. It so happens that he targeted not only Muslims (as Graham himself did) but also Latinos (whom Graham thinks his white elite needs as lesser clients to outvote African-Americans and white union workers).

But if you can casually smear a whole ethnic group of any sort, then what stops another party member from doing it to the groups you think you need?

Trump isnt acting differently from Graham in principle, only in denigrating a different ethnicity.

It is Prejudice 101 that it is always illegitimate to issue a blanket condemnation of a large group of people based on ascriptive identities like ethnicity or religion. You can condemn some individual on the basis of an acquired identity, e.g. bank robber. If a person decides to rob a bank, you can castigate that person as dishonest and a thief. But you cant assume that his mother or brother is dishonest. And you sure as hell cant assume that, if he is a Methodist, all Methodists are bank robbers.

I mean, this is the basic ethics taught in kindergarten. Trump is still an ethical babe in arms, not having reached the level of kindergarten in his morality. But in this regard, if we are speaking of the principle of the thing, Graham and many in his party just arent any different. Most of them speak in this prejudiced way, or use dog whistles to imply it.

Graham admitted that he could be persuaded to support Ted Cruz. If thats not crazy I dont know what is.

Just last November, after the Russians had intervened in Syria, Lindsey Graham called for putting 20,000 US troops on the ground in that country.

On this issue, Donald Trump, who is generally certifiable, is actually much less crazy than Graham.

Graham complains that Trump condemns George W. Bush for attacking Iraq. Graham himself said in 2002, Iraq is a self-defense issue, and we need to aggressively engage Saddam Hussein. We dont need the blessings of the world to defend ourselves. A regime change is the only alternative in Iraq.

Iraq had not attacked the US in 2002, and as a ramshackle, sanctions-ridden poor third world country, was not in a position to attack the US. So how was a nuclear power of 300 mn. people just falling on a defenseless little country of 25 million an act of self-defense? Blowing off the disapproval of the rest of the world is a form of American exceptionalism. It is a way of saying that the US treaty obligations under the UN charter, which forbids aggressive war, are a dead letter. Because Murcans.

So when Trump says he would kill the families of terrorists or would go well beyond waterboarding in implementing torture, he is using the same logic as Graham used to promote the disastrous and illegal Iraq War. Graham opposes torture and waterboarding, but he doesnt oppose the my country right or wrong form of argument that Trump has adopted.

Graham pressed the case for a war on Iran with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter last summer.

Iran is three times more populous than Iraq and is a much bigger country. If the US could not succeed in Iraq, a US war on Iran would be three times as bad. It is hard to see how the US economy could survive a $9 trillion war.

So Graham himself just talks bigotry or insanity. All Middle Easterners are crazy. All Iranians are liars. Poor weak countries half a world away are menacing us such that we have to militarily occupy them. War with Iran is another cake walk.

That Graham looks at Trump and sees someone speaking in a completely different diction from himself, or hears the crazy in Trumps pronouncements but not in his known, just underlines how hard it is for us to estimate our own failings.

As Robert Burns put it,

O wad some Power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An foolish notion:

What airs in dress an gait wad leae us,

An evn devotion!



Related video:

CBS News: Lindsey Graham: Republicans are handing election to Hillary Clinton
Reddit Email 0 Shares

Miguel Vatter | (The Conversation) |  

Everyone wants to die for Allah. We all want to live the best life in the hereafter and we want to make it to the top of the seven levels of Jannah  heaven.

So thinks a young anonymous Islamic State supporter who was friends with the Australian Muslim teenager who murdered a police worker in Sydney before he was shot dead. Perhaps this kind of mantra also resonated in the minds of the Islamic State (IS) killers who carried out the 2015 massacres in Paris.

Many politicians and public intellectuals have called these murderers nihilists. This betrays a typically secularist way of thinking about religion. It assumes that eternal life does not exist and that the aspiration to an eternal life is nonsensical, such that killing in the name of a paradisiacal life must mean killing for the sake of nothing.

Anthropologist Clive Kessler recently put forward another typical Weberian reading of political Islam where the prophet is a religious leader whose message is later politicised by other forces.

But what if this is not the case? Everything changes if you underscore that the prophet is a constitution-giver, not a founder of a religion. In a political context, this perspective allows us to interpret prophetic religions democratically and philosophically, rather than theologically and juridically.

The question then becomes: what kind of public discourse is appropriate to counter the jihadists chosen path? How does one address the desire for eternal life that seems to motivate their willingness to sacrifice human life?

Should one respond that the true teachings of all religions preach love of the neighbour or love of the stranger, rather than the jihadist hatred of the enemy, as the straightest road to salvation? Although this is, for the most part, correct, it fails to tackle the underlying issues of radicalisation and fundamentalism.

These religious teachings do not reconcile love of the neighbour with the political life of citizens. Instead, they teach that to exercise charity means to become a good citizen of another sublime kingdom, whose representatives on this earth are churches and priests or mosques and imams. In practice, this has always had the effect of politically dividing citizens and setting them against each other.

Can secular societies respond in other ways?

What if one were to take a different starting point? After all, the belief that eternal life exists is shared by the founders of the republican political thought that forms the basis of Western democracies.

It may be worthwhile to revisit another approach that the tradition of republicanism advocated: civil religion.

The Anzac spirit can be understood as a manifestation of civil religion. For many Australians, calling into question the sacrifice made by the young men and women in arms is to utter an impiety. Yet the Anzac is not part of any spiritual religion. Interestingly, the spirit of the Anzacs is not something that any political party or leader can appropriate for themselves alone without desecrating it.

Another example of civil religion is the faith billions on our planet share in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the international democratic charter. Our adherence to universal human rights has become something like a global civil faith.

The struggles for basic rights have their prophetic troops such as Medecins Sans Frontieres and Amnesty International, along with individuals like Edward Snowden and the Chinese citizen who stood alone in front of a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square, as many have done in other public squares since.

Even before the emergence of liberalism, political thinkers like Machiavelli, Spinoza, Rousseau and Jefferson understood the need for a civil religion where love of thy neighbour and charity were embodied in republican institutions so that tolerance would effectively become the new religion of the citizen.

Reinterpreting prophets in republican terms

But how can this be possible? How can prophets like Moses, Jesus or Muhammad be given a republican interpretation? And, conversely, how can the political virtues of Greek and Roman republics be harnessed towards the egalitarian and cosmopolitan ends voiced by true prophets?

Machiavellis solution was a new interpretation of the figure of the prophet. The prophets role was not to found a new church or empire, but to bring to his people a constitution that guarantees that power shall remain in the hands of the people, not their spiritual or worldly representatives. Hence, a civil religion is a philosophical idea of religion that allows us to interpret prophetic religions in a way that is supportive of republican constitutions.

The first person to have this idea may have been Al-Farabi, a 10th-century Muslim philosopher. His fundamental thought was that the prophet was both a legislator and a philosopher, rather than a theologian or a political leader.

Prophets are legislators because they give their people a political constitution that brings them worldly happiness. Such constitutions are meant to bind the wills of the people and stand higher than any king, prince, priest or imam.

But the prophet is also a philosopher: legislation must be rational, oriented by the idea of the public good. As a product of a philosopher-legislator, the constitution will be based on political principles that are hypothetical in that they must be verified experimentally by the democratic life of peoples that they make possible.

Lastly, for Al-Farabi the true prophet is also a poetic genius. He must be able to communicate the wisdom of a free and equal political life in a way that is accessible to all future individuals regardless of their social or economic condition.

A religion of worldly happiness

At this point, some advocates of the liberal solution to the problem of religion will say: why cant the state just be neutral with respect to the pursuit of salvation and happiness and leave it at that?

Certainly, governments must be neutral towards how individuals pursue their private happiness and salvation, but this is not the whole story.

Constitutional governments depend upon the expectation that citizens will achieve public happiness by following their laws. Hence, a constitutional government cannot remain neutral with respect to whether and how its citizens attain public happiness. If the government gives up on its responsibilities in assuring the public happiness of citizens, their energies will be drained by the private pursuit of happiness, which in turn will lead to their disempowerment and eventual unfreedom.

Contemporary social science, for instance, has shown that unless inequality is kept within reasonable limits in a society, the freedom of all citizens  not just the poor  will begin to erode and ultimately vanish. The measure of inequality is a measure of public happiness, not a private one.

A similar argument can be made for adopting immigration policies that embody the spirit of cosmopolitan constitutionalism. For if one disrespects the natural rights of stateless peoples, one is cementing the dangerous illusion that the rights of citizens depend exclusively on obedience to their government.

According to the perspective of civil religion, the goal of governments should be the worldly public happiness of their people. This means that any politics or policy that demands sacrifice in this world to be compensated in some beyond is illegitimate.

While the idea of worldly happiness transcends the human order of things into the natural world, it never leaves our human existence in our human universe. The reality is that we are a part of nature; nature is not a part of us. Hence the God mentioned in the civil religion of the Declaration of Independence is called Natures God.

This means that modern natural science, which is the way we can come to know Natures God, has an important role to play in a republican civil religion. The civil-religious function of natural science is to uphold and defend the belief in the eternity of nature.

What does this belief have to do with the pursuit of public happiness and eternal life? Well, recent advances in the scientific study of the universe have suggested that nature, rather than being created out of nothing in a single event, is characterised by a rhythm of expanding and contracting parallel universes.

This civil religion of Natures God offers a scientifically and politically sound alternative to counter the interpretations of eternal life that spiritual religions offer.

If these scientific theories are correct, then one thing seems to follow: everything that did not happen to you in this world, everything that you regretted doing or omitting to do, everything that has led you to place your faith in another world, paradise or beyond, has happened to you not once, but countless times.

In a parallel existence, in some other version of this universe, which may or may not be this very life that you are now living, you have always been happy, you have always made it to the top  in fact, you are eternally there.

The idea of eternal recurrence may very well contain the deepest meaning of worldly happiness: if nature contains an infinite number of variations of you, the life you are living is neither the only one you shall ever live, nor is it a life for which you need to seek redemption by sacrificing your life or that of others.

Miguel Vatter, Professor of Politics, UNSW Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative with the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

National Geographic: Inside the Kurdish Ground War on ISIS | Explorer
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Rita Khoury | (Maan News Agency) |  

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv last month after a fatal shooting during which two Israelis were killed and eight others injured, he reassured his people that all steps were being taken with every means available to find and prosecute the shooter.

The Israeli prime minister went on to accuse Arab Knesset members of incitement in mosques, education systems and on social media networks, and called on the members to condemn the attack.

In an ironic twist, Netanyahu even went as far as to say he could not accept two countries inside Israel, a lawful country for the majority of its citizens and a country inside a country for part of the citizens where no law is being enforced.

It cannot be said that one is an Israeli in their rights, but a Palestinian in their obligations, he said. Whoever wants to be an Israeli must be so until the end, in rights as well as in obligations, and the first obligations is to obey the laws of the country.

I cannot touch upon Netanyahus manner of solidarity with his people, his arrival at the crime scene and his speech there, since it scored positive points for the leader in front of his people, voters and supporters.

I also cannot criticize the prime minister for going into details regarding the steps Israeli law enforcement took in the search for the suspected shooter.

He explained to his people exactly how state funds were being used to catch the suspects, without the need for public pressure, campaigns or hashtags to push justice forward, as is often required for Palestinian civilians, who are mostly left to suffer with their leadership in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

He could have withheld his demand from Arab Knesset members for their loyalty and condemnation of murder, since the leader of the Arab Joint List Ayman Odeh has been repeatedly and incredibly clear on this issue.

I suggest he read from the leader of the Arab Joint Lists page, where the leader states the group is fundamentally and morally against murder of innocents in any case.

Perhaps most importantly, the prime minister could have withheld his call for Arab citizens of Israel to feel and act Israeli in their rights and obligations.

I do agree, since I consider myself to be Palestinian in my rights and obligations, as there is no need to deny my ancestry for me to declare and prove my loyalty to the country of Israel.

My recognition of and pride in my roots does not pose a threat to homeland security, nor does it count as an attack against it  it is just a reality.

As for my rights and obligations, I believe I fulfill all my obligations to this country up to my personal moral limits. I am docile to its laws and I do not pose a threat to its security.

But being a country that has occupied the land of our grandfathers, Israel is obligated to us  and therefore the rights of all citizens must be equal.

The time has come for Netanyahu to understand that an Arab in Israel self-identifying as a Palestinian does not make them an enemy of the state.

This country has been populated by Palestinians, including our grandparents, who were displaced by the creation of Israel  their houses tore down and taken over.

We are the children and grandchildren of those Palestinians, so we wont shy away from our origins and have no need to hide them. But there is no need to prove to Netanyahu that I am a good Arab, I am so because Im a human who has been raised with principles and morals, and find no need to suck up to Israels government and its people in order to climb up positions and demand my most basic rights.

I am a human who believes in my abilities, who takes my own rights, without waiting for someone to hand them out.

Let me, just this once as an Arab in this country, be the one to remind the Israeli government and its ministers that this is supposed to be a lawful country, as apparently they are the ones who need to be reminded of the laws of the country. And let me showcase to them some of the ironies concerning how the country deals with Jews and Arabs.

Israeli forces can subdue a Jew when he commits an attack. We all remember the terrorist who stabbed and killed a Jewish girl at a Gay Pride parade, and yet not one bullet was fired and the terrorist was subdued and prosecuted legally.

Meanwhile its enough for an Arab to put a hand in his pocket or pull up his trousers at a checkpoint for him to become a painful news article.

Theyll say here that there have been a lot of documented stabbing attempts, and Ill tell them that they are right, but I have a small question: for all the Palestinians that were shot and killed by Israel, wasnt there any possibility for them to be subdued and prosecuted ?.

Regarding the policy of house demolitions, the Israeli government deals with Jews by the fundamental law whereby property must be maintained: it prohibits any damage to the property of any man, and not a single Jews house has been torn down because they killed an Arab.

However, when it comes to dealing with an Arab Israeli, emergency regulations apply and their houses are torn down, knowing all too well that this is contrary to international laws. The Fourth Geneva Convention says you shall not punish any protected person for an offense he did not personally commit.

Collective punishment and all measures of intimidation and terror are prohibited. Pillaging is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Where is the law when I watch a report on the news filming a Jewish woman in Jerusalem who says shes armed with two knives in her car and shows them proudly to the camera? What if an Arab said or did that, wouldnt that be reason enough to execute him? How do you expect me as an Arab to feel after watching this report?

In summary, in many cases the countrys laws are enforced for Jews only while we Arabs suffer under emergency protocols.

I wish for the Israeli government to remember that this country is a lawful country for Arabs as well.

In regards to army enlistment, I thank Netanyahu for his concern towards our integration into the country.

I personally have always missed this experience and have envied Arabs in neighboring countries for their loyalty and excitement to serve their nation, and especially the Syrians.

But the situation here is different and I refuse to be enlisted in Israels army, so let me quote the leader of the Arab Joint List whose support Netanyahu requested in saying, I am fundamentally and morally against murder of innocents in any case.

I think Netanyahu is smart enough to understand what I mean by that.

Rita Khoury is an Information Systems Engineer in the Galilee with a license in journalism.

The views expressed in this article are the authors and do not necessarily reflect Maan News Agencys editorial policy.

Via Maan News Agency |  



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Middle East Monitor:  Palestinian member of Knesset speaks out against Israels crackdown on Arab citizens
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Massimo DAlema and Tariq Ramadan | ( EurActiv.com ) |  

To escape from extremism and xenophobia, Europe needs to carve a European Islam, not an Islam composed of communities influenced by their countries of origin . . .

Europe is in a paradoxical situation. The tragic challenges that shook Europe in 2015 should have encouraged it to pursue greater political unity and to initiate a debate on Islam. However, the fight against Islamic terrorism and the admission of refugees are creating feelings of fear and insecurity, which are pushing people in the opposite direction

Paris Mosque, h/t Wikipedia

On the one hand, in Europe, xenophobia and racism fuel the idea that the European Union should shut itself in and become a fortress cut off from the rest of the world. On the other hand, there are the migration flows. They cannot be stopped, but must be controlled using the maximum foresight required to avoid serious social, cultural and religious consequences. That is the future of Europe.

More and more, Europe is becoming a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multicultural, multilingual society. But if Europe is not capable of building a sustainable cohabitation space, it calls into question the very existence of the European Union project, and going beyond that, the source of our nations wealth: the cultural heritage upon which our values are based.

That is why, when refugees leave their country, with its war and bombings, there is first of all a moral duty, a duty of dignity that reminds us of our citizenship, which is not just there for our own protection. Unfortunately, it was the photo of a dead child on a beach in Turkey that really caused significant numbers of Europeans to begin to collectively grasp the scope of the refugees plight. Unfortunately, that momentum was lost. Commission officials are still unable to compensate for the European Councils lack of political vision, although there appears to have been some progress, with the idea that the so-called Dublin regulation  the EU law that determines that the management of refugees is a national issue  belongs to a past century.

Security, yes, but what about beyond that?

It isnt that we are not concerned about the security of our fellow citizens. An effective strategy must be developed for peace in Syria, for stability in Libya and to stamp out the fascism of Islamic State, but looking beyond that, what is the political strategy? The forces deployed since the attacks on November the 13th and the state of emergency are the means, but what is the end?

It isnt that we are not concerned about the security of our fellow citizens, but we must not forget that education and social diversity are sustainable and essential elements for establishing peace and for living together.

We must not forget that the European Union was created so that nations that were fighting each other could live and grow old together in peace. We regret the lack of European response from Brussels and European vision from our political leaders, but we also have reason to ask ourselves: does European awareness currently exist among the citizens of the twenty-eight member states?

Islamophobia in Europe

At the same time, we must discuss an issue that has never been addressed. What is Islam in Europe? Where do these lunatics, who are not refugees, but European citizens, come from? Why are Jews, Christians, Muslims and atheists incapable of living together peacefully  and, on the other hand, how can Islamophobia be dealt with?

Recently, at a conference in which we both participated, one of the audience members, a veil-wearing Belgian Muslim woman of Moroccan origin, spoke of the pressure she felt at having to defend herself with regard to what is happening with Islamic State, because for her, those people are not Muslims.

It would be too simple to say that they have nothing to do with Islam. It would be a little like venturing to suggest that Stalinism was not communism. From a strictly Islamic and religious point of view, they are Muslims, although their behaviour is obviously not consistent with the principles of Islam. However, they oblige us morally and intellectually to take a stand on what they do. They force Muslims to distance themselves from their rhetoric, which condemns everyone but themselves to hell.A religious response is needed, but not just a religious response. Although it is of course easier to recruit from the margins of society, with high levels of poverty and unemployment, studies show that the terrorists involved in New York, London, Madrid, Beirut and Paris had very often fallen into extremist violence after a religious commitment of just a few weeks, and this was true regardless of their academic background or social class. There is therefore a real problem in regard to education, manipulation, internet indoctrination, drug use and political exploitation of religious matters.

The case for a European Islam

Our Muslim fellow citizens are at the front line in the fight against violent extremism, because they are its primary victims. However, we must all fight this political, cultural and social battle together. Paradoxically, Muslim extremists and European Islamophobes share the same idea that Islam equals violence. This perception is not only false, but also dangerous.

To escape from this unfounded ideology, we need a European Islam, an Islam of European citizens and not an Islam composed of communities influenced by their countries of origin. We need an Islam inspired by minds that are open to change and the challenges of the modern era, rejecting a literal reading of the Quran and in tune with the new historical context. That kind of Islam would make an important contribution to European culture in the 21st century and beyond. It would also be a powerful antidote to the religious fanaticism that exists in all religions and, at the same time, constitute a response to the rigid, ultra-conservative Islam, occasionally proclaimed by some terrorist groups.

If Muslims share responsibility for the emergence of this European Islam, the EU Member States and their institutions will have to recognise that Islam is a European religion and that its contribution is necessary and important.

Massimo DAlema is President of European progressive think tank, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. Tariq Ramadan is President of the European Muslim Network

DISCLAIMER: All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of EurActiv.com PLC.

Via EurActiv.com
Reddit Email 0 Shares

By Amira Al Hussaini | ( Global Voices ) |  

Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Twitter user to 10 years in prison in addition to 2,000 lashes for publishing 600 tweets which spread atheism on the micro-blogging site.

According to Saudi daily Al Watan the Twitter user, whose name was not disclosed, was sentenced by a court in Medina which found him guilty of denying the existence of God and holy scriptures, accusing prophets of lying and also ridiculing the Holy Quran. He was also fined 20,000 Riyals (5,300 US dollars). The man was arrested after the Information Crimes Prevention Unit at the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice or Saudi Arabia's religious police started monitoring his Twitter account.



Blogging is bad for your back .. in Saudi Arabia. Image used as part of an Amnesty International campaign to draw attention to the plight of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia in 2014 for setting up a liberal website.

The newspaper adds that the man, aged 28, confessed his atheist beliefs in court and refused all attempts to make him repent, citing his right to freedom of speech. He added that he was previously a Muslim, and has now renounced all religions after communicating with websites which spread atheism on the Internet.

The court, added the newspaper, proved the accusations against the man based on his confessions and the testimony of four men who said they found the Twitter account on the man's mobile phone, and it was proved that the service operating the phone was under his name.

The sentence was met by a muted response online, with many just exchanging links to news stories without much commentary on it.

Abdulrahman, from Egypt, warns Saudi Twitter users:

       ..

   

    

   #   (@3abrhman) February 28, 2016

This is Saudi Arabia. A 28-year-old Saudi man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, 2,000 lashes and a 20,000 Riyal fine for atheism on Twitter. Users of social media in Saudi Arabia should be careful. You are being watched, persecuted and threatened. A simple tweet could threaten your life. What a society of ignorance and backwardness!

According to a 2001 Saudi law, anything contravening a fundamental principle or legislation, or infringing the sanctity of Islam and its benevolent Shariah, or breaching public decency is punishable by law. In 2014, the conservative kingdom, issued drastic laws which, according to Human Rights Watch, criminalises virtually all dissident thought or expression as terrorism. Article 1 of the law describes as terrorism those:

Calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.

In May 2014, a criminal court in Jeddah sentenced blogger Raif Badawi to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. Badawi was prosecuted for developing Saudi Arabian Liberals, an online forum he launched in 2008 debating the role of religion in the country.

The then 32-year-old was also ordered to pay a one million riyals fine (approximately US$266,600). Despite an international campaign calling for his release, Badawi is still in prison today. In January 2015, he was flogged 50 out of the scheduled 1,000 lashes. His second flogging has been postponed due to Badawi's poor health.

Amira Al Hussaini was an editor of an English language daily in Bahrain. Journalist. Columnist. Blogger. Educated and raised in Bahrain. Currently living in Ontario, Canada. Interests include writing, the arts and human rights.

Via ( Globalvoices.org
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - March 1, 2016) - Dundee Precious Metals Inc. (TSX:DPM) ("DPM" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Polymetal International Plc (LSE:POLY)(MOEX:POLY)(ADR:AUCOY) ("Polymetal") for the sale of its interest in the Kapan mine located in Armenia through the disposition of all of the issued and outstanding shares of Dundee Precious Metals Kapan CJSC ("DPMK") (the "Proposed Transaction").

"We are pleased to announce the sale of Kapan to Polymetal," stated Rick Howes, President and CEO. "The proceeds from the sale will serve to strengthen our balance sheet and reduce future capital requirements, which can be utilized to support the future growth of our business, and allows us to focus on our remaining core assets. We would also like to thank the community of Kapan and our employees for their support since we acquired the asset in 2006 and will do our utmost to ensure a smooth transition to the new owner," added Mr. Howes.

"Polymetal believes that the acquisition of the Kapan mine will result in the development of a profitable regional processing hub with sizable production which will provide a strong operating platform to pursue further opportunities in Armenia," said Vitaly Nesis, Group CEO of Polymetal.

Under the Proposed Transaction, DPM, or a subsidiary thereof, will receive consideration consisting of (i) US$10 million in cash from the buyer (subject to a working capital adjustment following closing), (ii) US$15 million in Polymetal ordinary shares, and (iii) a 2% net smelter royalty on future production from the Kapan property capped at US$25 million. DPM will continue to maintain a presence in Armenia through joint venture arrangements in respect of certain exploration assets in the central part of the country. The number of ordinary shares of Polymetal to be issued in the Proposed Transaction will be determined based on the average market price for such shares on the London Stock Exchange for the five trading days ending two trading days prior to closing of the Proposed Transaction.

The definitive agreement is subject to various representations, warranties, covenants and indemnities as are expected for a transaction of this nature. The Proposed Transaction is also subject to, among other conditions, (i) the Company obtaining its lenders' consent, release and discharge in respect of their security interest over the shares of DPMK under the Company's senior secured credit facilities, and (ii) the parties obtaining all regulatory approvals, including the approval of the State Commission for the Protection of Economic Competition of the Republic of Armenia to transfer the DPMK shares. Closing of the Proposed Transaction is expected to occur in the second quarter of 2016, but in any event, must occur prior to June 30, 2016.

About Dundee Precious Metals

Dundee Precious Metals Inc. is a Canadian-based, international gold mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development, mining and processing of precious metals. The Company's principal operating assets include the Chelopech operation, which produces a copper concentrate containing gold and silver, located east of Sofia, Bulgaria; the Kapan operation, which produces a copper concentrate and a zinc concentrate, both containing gold and silver, located in southern Armenia; and the Tsumeb smelter, a concentrate processing facility located in Namibia. DPM also holds interests in a number of developing gold properties located in Bulgaria, Serbia, and northern Canada, including the Krumovgrad project and interests held through its 50.1% owned subsidiary, Avala Resources Ltd., and its 12.0% interest in Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward looking statements" that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Forward looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the timing and potential benefits of the Proposed Transaction, future price of gold, copper, zinc and silver, the estimation of mineral reserves and resources, the realization of such mineral estimates, the timing and amount of estimated future production and output, life of mine, costs of production, capital expenditures, costs and timing of the development of new deposits, success of exploration activities, success of permitting activities, permitting time lines, currency fluctuations, requirements for additional capital, government regulation of mining operations, environmental risks, reclamation expenses, the potential or anticipated outcome of title disputes or claims and timing and possible outcome of pending litigation. Often, but not always, forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words 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 that state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any other future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward looking statements.

Such factors include, among others: uncertainties with respect to obtaining all required approvals for the Proposed Transaction; the actual results of current exploration activities; actual results of current reclamation activities; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of gold, copper, zinc and silver; possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, uncertainties inherent with conducting business in foreign jurisdictions where corruption, civil unrest, political instability and uncertainties with the rule of law may impact the Company's activities; fluctuations in metal prices; unanticipated title disputes; claims or litigation; limitation on insurance coverage; as well as those risk factors discussed or referred to in the Company's continuous disclosure documents filed from time to time with the securities regulatory authorities in all provinces and territories of Canada and available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that forward looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Unless required by securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward looking statements.
The main improvements in braking systems in recent years have come from electronic controls  ABS, to ESC to brake-by-wire. Continuing just-autos series of interviews with tier one suppliers, Matthew Beecham spoke to Felix Bietenbeck, Head of Business Unit Vehicle Dynamics and Dr. Soren Kirchner, Head of Segment Electronic Parking Brakes, both part of Continentals Chassis & Safety Division about trends in the electronic braking system market.

The automatic emergency braking (AEB) market has taken off over the last few years. Did that surprise you? How do you see its roll out in BRIC countries?

Felix Bietenbeck: In my opinion remarkable improvements in safety have been achieved in recent decades. This has been made possible by the introduction of mandatory equipment levels for new vehicles, including technologies such as ABS [anti-lock braking system], ESC [electronic stability control] and AEB. ESC is widely considered to be the most important car safety development since the seat belt. In the European Union, where ESC became mandatory for passenger cars from 2011 (since 2013 for all vehicles), it is now mandatory in Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and will soon also be in Argentina.

Since November 2013 the Emergency Brake Assist is in the EU for all new types of heavy trucks and buses required. From November 2015 on it is required for all new heavy trucks and buses. For passenger cars this legal obligation is not within sight. Also in the BRIC countries there is no obligation of AEB in sight.

Continental partners the global campaign Stop the Crash which is an information campaign to highlight the importance of ESC, Autonomous Emergency Braking and Motorcycle ABS, as well as correct tyre pressures and tread depth. It was officially launched in Brazil in November 2015. The aim of this awareness campaign is to bring safety technologies in countries such as the BRIC.

There is a lot of attention these days on collision avoidance / mitigation. In terms of the braking system landscape, how can it be further developed?

Felix Bietenbeck: To avoid or mitigate collisions, brake assist systems become more and more important. Brake assist systems ensure maximum vehicle deceleration in emergencies, even when little force is exerted on the pedal. Brake assistants are important helpers in emergencies in which the driver reacts quickly, but does not brake strong enough, leading to longer stopping distances. The brake assist detects panic situations based on the speed at which the pedal is pressed and activates the booster or the EBS [electronic braking system] hydraulic unit. This means that even when little force is exerted on the pedal, the vehicle achieves maximum deceleration.

The safety of occupants and other road users can be significantly increased with automated braking, which acts even before the driver is realising a crucial situation. These systems make use of environment and contact sensors in the vehicle, like cameras and radar sensors. Especially the forward-looking situation detection makes early and automated brake intervention possible to avoid a crash or reduce the severity of accidents. Functions such as the post-crash braking the automated braking of the vehicle after an accident is a further contribution to increased safety. This system uses the airbag activation as trigger for an automated brake until standstill.

Continental has developed the MK C1 electronic brake system, which is more dynamic, lighter and more compact than conventional brake systems. It delivers up to 50% more brake power for an overall faster actuation reaction and overall shorter stopping distances. Driver assistance systems require a brake system that reacts faster than existing servo-power brake systems with vacuum brake boosters. Whereas new, highly efficient diesel, gasoline and hybrid electric powertrains deliver little to no vacuum for the brake booster. The MK C1 does not need a vacuum and allows 100 percent regenerative braking and utilises power-on-demand, therefore consuming less energy.

Could you tell us a little more about the unique features of this system compared to a conventional hydraulic system?

Felix Bietenbeck: With the MK C1, the brake actuation feature (master cylinder), the brake booster and the electronic brake system (ABS, ESC) are combined into one compact, weight-saving braking module. It can build up brake pressure significantly faster than conventional hydraulic systems, thereby realising increased pressure dynamics for new advanced driver assistance systems, in order to prevent accidents and protect pedestrians. In addition, the system realises recuperative braking without any additional measures, while providing a high level of convenience for the driver.

The MK C1 has different unique features such as a reduction of the number of individual components in the braking system caused by a high level of integration. Furthermore it is ideal for the realisation of functions for assisted and automated driving.

In what ways will the fully-autonomous car change the braking system?

Felix Bietenbeck: The highly automated driving allows the driver to temporarily get rid of the driving task. This gives new tasks to the involved components. Continental offers brake extension as a solution for highly automated driving. This includes a redundant brake function for automated driving. Technically it combines the MK C1 as the primary brake system and in addition a secondary electronic brake system. This architecture is scalable and can be further adapted in the context of future trends of partially and highly automated driving.

Self-driving cars depend on making the equipment smart with the help of software. How do you see your in-house electronics expertise adapting and / or forming more technology partnerships?

Felix Bietenbeck: We are well positioned with our business unit Advanced Driver Assistance Systems by core components for automated driving, such as surround view and other sensors. To achieve automated driving, a completely new form of cross-border cooperation is needed; we do not need to reinvent in already existing solutions by the partners. We can draw on expertise and examples already in practical use and adapt them to our needs. This saves R&D effort and helps that our jointly developed solutions are affordable for our customers.

Could you bring us up-to-date with your electronic braking business in India, specifically electric parking brake (EPB)?

The remainder of this interview is available on just-autos QUBE Global light vehicle electronic braking market- forecasts to 2030
West Palm Beach, 03/01/2016 /SubmitPressRelease123/

Did Malachi A. Love-Robinson Break the Law? Criminal defense attorney Andrew D. Stine Explains

One can own and operate a medical practice without being a licensed doctor in the State of Florida, according to West Palm Beach criminal defense attorney Andrew D. Stine.

Big Difference in Florida Law Between Owning a Medical Practice and Practicing Medicine

West Palm Beach (Press Release)  Under Florida law, there are virtually no restrictions to owning a medical practice, while there are many requirements before you can practice medicine in the state, according to West Palm Beach criminal defense attorney Andrew Stine. Stine represents Malachi A. Love-Robinson, who faces charges in Palm Beach County including practicing medicine without a license.

Anyone can own a medical clinic or doctors office in the state of Florida, Stine says in a Google+ Hangout, You dont need to meet special educational requirements. You do not need to have a medical license, meaning you dont have to be a medical doctor or a doctor of osteopathy.

Stine says, if someone whos not a medical doctor owns such a practice, the medical professionals cannot share fees with the owner. That would create a conflict of interest between the owners, the doctors and the care of the patient, which must be paramount. But one can purchase a doctors office, buy equipment and hire a licensed doctor to practice medicine in the clinic.

You must be a licensed medical doctor to practice medicine in the State of Florida, Stine says. You must have graduated from medical school, completed an internship and passed all educational and state certification requirements. Stine says, once those requirements are met, the person can legally prescribe medications and tests as well as treat patients.

However thats completely different from owning a location of a medical practice and you do not need to be an MD, Stine emphasized. Love-Robinson is facing grand theft charges and allegations he practiced medicine without a license at the New Birth New Life Medical Center & Urgent Care, LLC, office located in West Palm Beach.

If you or a loved one has been arrested in Florida for any state or federal crime, West Palm Beach defense attorney Andrew Stine can help protect your rights with his knowledge, experience and passion to protect people from unwarranted criminal charges. Contact his office today.

Media Contact

Call 561.880.4300

Andrew D. Stine is a highly qualified and dedicated West Palm Beach criminal defense lawyer

Newsroom powered by Online Press Release Distribution  SubmitMyPressRelease.com

Like Us on Facebook

It's only fair to share... Pinterest Linkedin email Print
The page you requested is currently unavailable. Pages on this site are constantly being revised, updated, and occasionally removed. You may have followed an outdated link or have outdated pages in your browser cache.
"Cheese in the Trap" may be over, but the off-screen drama continues with its cast and production team.

According to an article published by the Korean outlet, Asian Econ, several key actors will be absent from an upcoming cast vacation to Thailand.

Leading man Park Hae Jin, Nam Joo Hyuk, and Lee Sung Kyung will not be attending the 5-days, 3-nights trip to Phuket, due to scheduling conflicts.

Representatives for Park Hae Jin issued a brief statement, prior to the announcement of the trip.

"[The production] did not contact [Park] in connection with the incentive vacation," said a spokesperson for Park, in a quote published by Asian Econ.

The swift response from his camp is notable because the 32-year-old actor recently expressed his frustration at the divergence of the series from the webtoon written by Soonkki and post-production editing which removed several of his scenes.

While Park will be absent from the trip, his co-stars Kim Go Eun and Seo Kang Joon will be present.

Audiences have alleged that Seo received preferential treatment over Park which culminated in the deletion of scenes depicting Park's character Yoo Jung and the addition of a piano cantabile plot starring Seo.

On March 2 at 2 p.m., Seo departed for Phuket, along with Kim Go Eun and the production team. Star News reported that the entourage attempted to quietly pass through while discouraging reporters from speaking with the actors who were in attendance.

"I was aware of the controversy and [told] the actors to avoid the reporters that were gathered at the airport," said an official for the production, in a quote published by Star News.

Another source provided positive words about the trip to Thailand while acknowledging the scandal surrounding their journey.

"The incentive [trip] atmosphere is very good," said the unnamed source.

"Cheese in the Trap' garnered solid ratings for a cable drama but the series received widespread criticism from audiences and critics, after diverging from the central plot of the popular webtoon.

The tvN romantic comedy completed its 16-episode run on March 1 with an open-ended finale.
Few states can claim the expertise in drought analysis or climate science that Nebraska enjoys, and those advantages continue to grow. For that, Nebraskans can thank the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and wider NU system, along with independent, data-driven researchers and state leaders who put science ahead of politics.

In December, UNL celebrated the 20th anniversary of hosting the National Drought Mitigation Center. Last month, UNL announced it had separated out a new state climate office from its six-state High Plains Regional Climate Center.

These investments help distinguish our agricultural and agribusiness state. They help farmers, ranchers, implement dealers, seed sellers, bankers and businesses plan better for lasting changes in the weather.

You dont need to tell Nebraskans that the state is home to some of the nations most extreme weather. Wild swings in temperature, precipitation and storms are the norm. You also dont need to tell farmers and ranchers that climate trends dont look like they once did.

Even Nebraskas city dwellers understand that agriculture is responsible for more than a quarter of the gross state product. They get that water management, for ag and people, is a challenge.

Thats why the University of Nebraska hosts the internationally respected Water for Food Institute. Its why the university system wisely identified water, weather, climate and agriculture as a key academic niche. UNLs research on long-term weather trends and on climate is widely respected. University officials are right when theyve said there is much to learn about the climate without delving into the politics of climate change.

The UNL drought center has an international reputation for cutting-edge analysis and innovation. This focus is vital. During 2012s severe drought, parts of our country that produce 70 percent to 75 percent of U.S. corn and soybeans and 67 percent of cattle suffered major damage, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

UNL will boost understanding by increasing the number of weather stations gathering data, quadrupling staffing for analyzing Nebraska weather trends and improving its online presence so data is easier to obtain and understand.

These investments should help Nebraskans better adjust to long-term weather trends. A farmer might be able to plant different crops. A rancher might manage herds differently.

Omaha World-Herald
It would appear that the states piggy bank, the cash reserve fund, is under assault again. The governor and several lawmakers are circling the bank, hammers in hand, with the intent of borrowing $150 million to start a new piggy bank called the Transportation Infrastructure Bank.

As explained in LB960 to adopt the Transportation Innovation Act, the bank would provide funds for the Nebraska Department of Roads to complete the Nebraska expressway system and allow that agency to implement and utilize alternative contracting methods for the construction of state transportation projects

The cash reserve fund was created in 1983 to provide a source of funds for temporary transfers to the state general fund when balances are not sufficient to process expenditure transactions. Longtime Appropriations Committee Chairman, the late Sen. Jerome Warner of Waverly, called it the rainy day fund.

Just as Joseph warned Potiphar (in the Biblical account in Genesis) to set aside grain in the prosperous years to prepare for the lean years ahead, Warner successfully made the case to lawmakers who were all too familiar with the early 80s farm crisis. He fought subsequent attempts to drain the fund and led the Appropriations Committee to make a conscious decision to keep the cash reserve fund balance at 16 percent of general fund expenditures.

Warner, who was also very supportive of roads projects, instilled in his colleagues the understanding that the cash reserve fund should be used to provide protection against forecasting errors by the states Economic Forecasting Advisory Board and to provide for supplemental funds during a recessionary period, of which there have been a few in the years since it passed into law.

True, there have been several instances in which money was moved to and from the cash reserve fund to accomplish policy initiatives or to finance one-time new capital construction projects. As tweaked over the years, the law now provides that actual general fund revenues in excess of the certified forecast at the end of the fiscal year are to be transferred to the cash reserve fund.

Additionally, the cash reserve fund receives federal funds received by the state for undesignated general government purposes.

The Government Finance Officers Association recommends that states maintain a savings balance that would cover two months worth of general fund expenses. Only five states have more than 100 days of operating costs in reserve  Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska and West Virginia.

The Platte Institute, an economic development think tank founded by Gov. Pete Ricketts in 2007, says while it is vital that cash reserves be maintained, overstocked reserves come at a price, too. Every dollar that sits in the state cash reserve fund is a dollar that cannot be used to help create a job, feed a family, or grow a business.

The Transportation Infrastructure Bank is a good idea. The legislation calls for: an accelerated State Highway Capital Improvement Program, including the designated expressway system; creation of a voluntary county bridge match assistance program on a pilot-test basis; and establishment of an Economic Opportunity Program to assist in the financing of transportation improvements that attract and support new business development and business expansion.

J.L. Schmidt is the statehouse correspondent for the Nebraska Press Association.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons Wednesday February 24, 2016 in Ottawa. Opposition parties say they deserve a seat at the table as the Liberals put together a watchdog committee on national security and intelligence. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
Pump prices likely on the rise in coming months Gas prices are likely to go back up following the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, starting in November....

Spindle Items .. ETERNAL HAPPINESS  All of us are chasing happiness. None of us wants to be miserable, angry, frightened , depressed or the like. If...

Out of the Past 25 Years AgoOct. 22, 1997 Zoning laws in the Town of Tonawanda received much needed updating Monday as Councilman Raymond Sinclair presented amendments in underground...

Family fun for everyone Halloween is every kids dream holiday, with costumes and candy, tricks and treats. Some of my favorite memories with my family have centered around Halloween,...
139 Shares Share

As standardized exam scores increasingly define success for students, teachers and schools, parents worry about the dangers of teaching to the test  and of their children being judged by tests with low or unknown validity. We want our children to perform well on tests, of course, yet only if they measure something that students, patients, and teachers believe really matter. We also want the education system to inspire students develop into well-rounded people, not just skilled exam-takers.

In health care there is a similar danger of focusing on improving our test scores at the expense of real improvement in patient safety  and in this case, the exams have serious flaws. The federal government uses a composite measure of patient safety to help determine whether hospitals are penalized under two programs. One of those programs, the Hospital-Acquired Conditions Program, reduced Medicare reimbursements by 1 percent for 721 hospitals for their rates of preventable harms, such as serious blood clots, pressure ulcers, and accidental punctures and lacerations.

Serves them right, you might think. These hospitals are unnecessarily harming patients. That might be true if the test of their patient safety performance was scientifically sound. However, these programs have a serious methodological flaw: Many of their component measures are not based on reviews of the clinical record, but are rather derived from billing information, which produces a high rate of false positives. Indeed, for some of these measures, more than half of the incidents identified as preventable harm turn out to be false, once we review the clinical documentation. There can be many reasons for this. For instance, a patient may have had a pressure ulcer before admission that was not documented. Or a clot in a small vein might be mistakenly coded as a more serious clot known as a deep vein thrombosis.

Another reason for some hospitals to appear worse than others is that they actually look harder for preventable harm. For example, researchers found that publicly reported rates of blood clots were mainly a function of how aggressively hospitals screened patients for them. In other words, a hospital might look better if it did not screen patients, and yet that hospital might be sending patients home with undiagnosed and potentially fatal blood clots.

Despite these flaws, hospitals have no choice but to pay attention to their performance on these measures, or they risk losing a lot of revenue. In Maryland, hospitals have up to 9 percent of revenue at risk in pay for quality, when the average hospital margin is under 3 percent. This is big money to be at stake for suspect measures.

Hospitals with deep enough resources will devote them to improving their scores. For example, our hospital committed multiple full-time employees, plus the time of physicians, nurses and administrators, to raise our performance on these measures. This is highly technical work that frequently involves getting physicians to more thoroughly document their cases, so that medical billing staff can code more accurately. And we succeeded, reducing the frequency of these preventable harms by 40 percent, at least according to these measures. Yet what we improved was mostly coding, not caring. Well over 80 percent of the improvement was in how we document and code. In fewer than 20 percent of the cases did we identify a clinical improvement opportunity.

Hospitals and health care professionals want and need to do better, and yet focusing our efforts on measures whose validity is unknown or poor is not how we should spend our efforts. The public deserves real strides in preventing patient harm. Without valid measures, we will have difficulty engaging clinicians and hospitals in improvement work, providing financial incentives for truly high-quality care, or helping patients to use performance data to make choices about where to receive care.

Peter Pronovost is an anesthesiologist and director, Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality. He blogs at Voices for Safer Care, where this article originally appeared. He can be reached on Twitter @peterpronovost.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
In next week's Kilkenny People, and running for four weeks in all, a stunning look back at Kilkenny during 1916 - the days before the Rising in Kilkenny, the local reaction and the aftermath which inspired the birth of our nation.

As Ireland celebrates an historic centenary, the Kilkenny People can look back on its leading role, in particular after the Rising, as the voice of nationalism.

That strong voice, in particular that of the paper's first editor ET Keane, helped spread Ireland's cause throughout the world, and stir the local populace to ultimately take action during the War of Independence.

This newspaper was censored during Easter Week, and up to 100 troops threateningly gathered outside its offices - then on James Street - on the Thursday of the Rising.

The four special supplements are a must for all our readers and those interested in local history.

Also for schools and colleges who are studying the 1916 Rising, Kilkenny's role and that of individuals from the city was quite telling and these pages record those events.

One of the signatories of the proclamation, Thomas MacDonagh, taught at St Kieran's College and joined the Gaelic League in Kilkenny. The supplements will be printed in broadsheet format and will be positioned in the middle of the newspaper, from next week, for four weeks.

We do hope that you enjoy your collection and gain further insight in to the lives of local Kilkenny people during one of the most tumoultous times in the history of Ireland.

Issue one begins with events leading up to 1916, and looks back on a Royal visit just twelve years previous!
Of the strategic metals, gallium is seen by many as the one with the most promising short to medium term growth potential.

To learn more about the metals future, we spoke with Yanqing Lin, Sales Director and Assistant General Manager of Beijing JiYa, one of the worlds largest gallium producers.

Gallium is used in wireless communication, light emitting diodes (LED), high performance magnets, modern solar cells and many more electronic products. A typical smartphone, for instance, will use gallium arsenide in its microprocessor(s), gallium oxide on its screen and gallium in magnets used for vibrate motors and speakers.

As with several other strategic metals, it does not occur in nature and can therefore not be mined. Instead, it is obtained as a by-product of bauxite (aluminum) and zinc production.

On the history of Beijing JiYa, Lin explained that the company was established in 1999 and has since become one of Chinas  and therefore the worlds  largest producers of gallium. The companys rapid growth (capacity: 63t/y) is the result not only of an improved production method but also of investments in other producers such as Zhaofeng Gallium (35t/y), and Shanxi Jia Hua Galaxy, a joint venture processing 55t/y of high purity Ga.

We estimate that Chinas total production of gallium amounted to 370 metric tons in 2015, said Lin. Other sources state 440t but we believe this is too high. China consumed 180t of this volume while the worldwide consumption of new gallium was about 380t. At least an additional 180t is estimated to be recycled meaning the worlds total consumption of the metal is currently around 550t.

Few other countries, the United States and Japan among them, produce gallium but the above numbers would underline Chinas crucial role in this market. If this is the case, why did the prices (see historical charts in our strategic metals section) fall to such low levels? Lin: As a result of Chinas ecomomic growth in the past decade, new alumina plants were established at a high rate around 2006. Almost at the same time our technology was copied by many other companies. The price for both alumina and gallium then fell below the production cost of US$ 140  160/ kg.

Today, Chinas economic growth is slowing down. Most aluminum plants are facing great losses, some of them began to reduce their output in Q4 of 2015. As a result, more than 50% of all gallium factories in China have been closed, or are closing. At the same time, demand for gallium in electronics, solar technology and, more recently, as a liquid metal in thermometers replacing mercury will continue to increase worldwide in 2016. This is why I am optimistic about the gallium market.

By Bodo Albrecht,

www.bodoalbrecht.com

Follow me on Twitter @BodoAlbrecht
SHARE

By Chris Henry, chenry@kitsapsun.com

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND  Bainbridge Island School District is using bottled water at Ordway Elementary School after the district found elevated levels of lead in the water.

The district this year began voluntary water testing that will be required of all schools in 2017, under state law. All elementary schools, Sakai Intermediate School, Commodore Options and two buildings at Bainbridge High School have been tested. Still to be tested are Woodward Middle School, the rest of the high school and district support facilities.

The district Monday notified Ordway parents it had implemented the bottled water precaution after recent test results showed elevated lead levels in roughly 34 percent of fixtures ranging from 20 parts per billion to 384 parts per billion. The single highest reading was taken from a faucet in an art room sink, according to the state Department of Health.

Under state regulations, a level of 20 parts per billion or higher requires schools to do further testing and take appropriate action.

The lead levels in Ordway water samples are nowhere near the levels of lead in the Flint, Michigan, supply where water quality poses serious health risks, said Mike Means, acting director of the Health Department's Office of Drinking Water.

The Bainbridge district is working with the Health Department, Kitsap Public Health District and the city, which supplies water to schools, to assess the risk to students and correct the problem. The city's water supply is not suspected at this time as a source of the contamination, according to Keith Grellner, the health district's director of environmental health.

The school district has taken the fixtures in question offline and will replace them with lead-free fixtures. Until then bottled water will be used at Ordway for drinking and cooking. Faucets can be used for hand-washing and other tasks but will have "don't drink the water" signs.

"The health implications of the water test results are unclear at this point in our investigation," Superintendent Faith Chapel said in a letter to Ordway parents. "Additional sampling and analysis is needed and is underway."

The district and health officials encourage parents concerned about their child's exposure to lead to have them evaluated by a primary care provider.

"I am extremely concerned," said Livia Hernandez, an Ordway parent who has chosen to have her 6-year-old daughter's blood tested for lead levels.

"Lead is a toxic chemical, and it's toxic at any level," said Lauren Jenks, director of the office of Environmental and Public Health Sciences for state Department of Health.

Health officials say extra concern is warranted for children younger than 6 because their developing brains and nervous systems are more sensitive to the damaging effects of lead, which can include developmental and behavior problems.

That said, eliminating all sources of lead exposure is virtually impossible, Jenks said. The most common sources are dust from lead-based paint in homes built before 1978, soil and workplaces or hobbies that use lead, according to health officials.

Symptoms of lead poisoning can include abdominal cramps, headaches, memory loss, numbness and tingling of hands and feet, anemia and high blood pressure. Typically symptoms are absent except with high concentrations of lead in the blood.

Factors to consider in deciding whether to have a child tested include how much time the child spends at school, the amount of water consumed from fixtures and the potential of exposure from other sources, according to Health Department.

Jenks praised the district for being testing its water before the new regulation takes effect. Districts are not now required to test their schools' water, except schools on wells, which are treated as a small public water system.

The district began its water testing over winter break and found elevated lead levels in 13 fixtures including nine at Ordway, two at Commodore and two in the high school 100 and 600 buildings.

Testing is done after the water has sat undisturbed for at least six hours, the district said in its letter to parents.

The district flushed systems and replaced some fixtures. When retesting showed one fixture at Ordway still at elevated levels, the district retested all fixtures in the school. Testing results from a regional lab were delivered to the district Monday, leading to the advisory.

The district is especially concerned about inconsistent test results, since 21 of the 23 Ordway fixtures that recently showed elevated levels had passed the initial screening, Chapel said.

The district will hire a company with expertise in water-quality testing and mechanical systems to conduct additional tests and recommend mitigation measures.

The Health Department has information for parents through its childhood lead poisoning prevention program, www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/lead, and at 800-909-9898.
SHARE

By Denise Frey, executive director, YWCA Kitsap County

The mass shooting that recently occurred in Belfair took 5 lives, including the gunman's, and now our community is trying to come to grips with the horror of such a crime happening here. The case is still unfolding as I write this and yet one thing is already very clear. This was a domestic violence mass shooting.

Domestic violence has sometimes been termed "domestic terrorism" and this case certainly points to that. While the terror in domestic violence typically involves only the victim and those close to her, in the case of mass shootings it not only terrorizes those victims but their communities as well.

Mass shootings have become all too common in the United States and they often involve domestic violence. In one study of January 2009 through July 2015, 133 mass shootings were identified using FBI data. The FBI considers mass shootings to be those that result in 4 or more deaths. In at least 76 of the mass shootings studied (57 percent), the shooter killed a current or former spouse or intimate partner or other family member, and in at least 21 incidents the shooter had a prior domestic violence charge.

Another recent case in our region also was a case of domestic violence multiple homicide, according to investigators. Less than a year ago, 29-year-old Heather Kelso and 2-year-old Kaden Lum were shot to death at their home near Bremerton. Heather had just been granted a domestic violence protective order when she and Kaden, her roommate's son, were killed. Heather's ex-boyfriend was charged with the crimes and is awaiting trial.

Why is it important to label these killings as domestic violence? It's important because we need to do something about it. It's important because in order to do something we have to understand why it happens.

Those of us who work with domestic violence understand that the motive for domestic violence and for these shootings is power and control. In the case of Heather Kelso, her alleged perpetrator had just been served with a protective order, which took away his ability to exert power and control over her. In the Belfair case, we know that Lana Carlson was planning to start an independent catering business with her son, Tory, while her husband's business was failing. The power balance in these relationships was shifting and these men were evidently willing to kill in order to take the power and control back.

And then there are the guns. Having access to firearms increases the homicide rate in domestic violence cases by 500 percent. No matter where you stand on gun rights, that is an unacceptable statistic. Right now the Supreme Court is hearing a case that may result in the rejection of a state's right to order the forfeiture of firearms in misdemeanor domestic violence convictions.

This is a law that the state of Washington passed in order to reduce the number of domestic violence homicides. Most recently the state of Washington enacted further legislation that required the forfeiture of firearms in domestic violence protective orders. We don't know what impact the Supreme Court decision will have on these laws but we do know that domestic violence homicides will rise if domestic violence offenders have access to guns.

What should we do? For now we should allow ourselves to grieve. Then we need to start calling these killings what they are ... domestic violence. We must challenge ourselves to look for the answers to important questions that will help prevent these tragedies in the future. Why? Because we owe it to Lana Carlson, her two sons, Quinn and Tory, their neighbor Donna Reed and to Heather Kelso and Kaden Lum.

Denise Frey is the executive director of the YWCA of Kitsap County.
Al Jazeera report:

A nanny beheaded a young girl in her care and brandished her severed head at a metro station in Moscow before being arrested at the scene.

The veiled woman, dressed in all black, shouted on Monday that she was a terrorist, but police said they suspect she is mentally unsound.

According to preliminary information, the childs nanny  a native of one of the Central Asian countries, born in 1977  waited until the parents left the apartment with their elder child and  guided by unknown motives  killed the little one, set the apartment on fire and left the scene, the police investigative committee said in a statement. 

Polina Nikolskaya, a reporter at the RBC daily newspaper, saw the women on the street.

She was standing near the metro entrance and caught my attention because she was screaming Allahu Akbar, she told the Reuters news agency.
Stuff reports:

Award-winning investigative journalists Paula Penfold, Eugene Bingham and Toby Longbottom have joined Fairfax Media.

They add to the existing line-up of Fairfax investigative and special projects journalists around the country and their appointments reflect a focus on increased investment in high quality journalism, Fairfax executive editor Sinead Boucher said.

Paula, Toby and Eugene are an exceptionally talented team who have created some of the most compelling journalism in New Zealand.

Their flair for hard-hitting investigative journalism and innovative storytelling will be a real asset to our audiences and I am thrilled they have chosen to join forces with us.

They are the team behind the three-year investigation into the Teina Pora miscarriage of justice case that exposed faults in key evidence in the case and was credited with helping him get released from prison and having his convictions quashed.
DaVett Jones has an investment and financial services office in East Knoxville.

SHARE

DaVett Jones, an experienced independent investment representative, has opened the doors of financial advice and investment options to working-class East Tennesseans through her franchise of P3 Financial Services Inc. in East Knoxville. The goals of P3 are to help working class earners "plan, protect, (and) prosper" their finances through educational workshops and access to a financial planner and affordable investments.

Jones has 13 years of financial management experience, most of which she gained under the tutelage of Ali Swofford, a seasoned professional in Knoxville-area financial services. When Jones obtained her securities license in 2013, she was the youngest registered African American in Knoxville to do so at that time. After joining P3 in 2013, she earned the corporation's PGA Fast Start Reward for outstanding production in the first 100 days.

"Most people do not have the funds to benefit from the expertise of a financial planner," she explained. "These are doors that have not been open to us, the average worker. So how are we supposed to get (to financial stability) from here?"

Jones, who is working to bridge the gap of education and access keeping many working class Americans from building wealth, said she shows her clients how to reach their financial goals.

"If you can make a commitment to save as little as $50 a month for the long-term, I can design an investment strategy that can protect your assets and put you on the path of managing future financial obligations - such as college tuition, buying a car, a home, growing a family or building retirement income - where most financial planners require an account minimum of $10,000 or more to start a plan," she said.

She begins with a confidential, one-on-one introductory interview to get a grasp of the client's financial status and goals, then proceeds with a budget analysis, and review of available and existing assets. "Most people have money they don't know about, and it is my job to find it," said Jones.

She said she uses additional financial management tools to redirect resources, if needed, to help clients in reaching their financial goals, whether it's their first car or retirement income.

"You are never too young or too old to start investing," said Jones, who proudly points to a 16-year-old client who is making modest monthly contributions towards the purchase of a home with paychecks from an after-school and summer job.

Jones, whose office is at 2928 E. Magnolia Ave., Suite 204, also conducts financial seminars that include Cash Flow and Debt Management, Family and Legacy Planning, Wealth Building 101, Investment Strategies, Private Reserve Strategies, College Funding, and Charitable Giving and Estate Planning. She also is available for speaking engagements throughout East Tennessee.

Jones points out that people are living longer with minimal to nonexistent retirement accounts or life insurance benefits.

The P3 portfolio includes mutual funds; fixed and variable rate annuities; life, disability, and long-term care insurance; and unit investment trusts. Securities are offered through H.D. Vest Investment Services SM. P3 is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corp., is not an independent investment advisory firm and is governed with oversight by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

For more information, visit the website at www.p3financialgroup.com. To schedule an appointment or a group seminar, contact Jones by email at davett@p3financialgroup.com or by calling 865-325-2631.
SHARE special to the news sentinel Shan Gibson, then Sutton, playing cowgirl as a 15-year-old. Shan Gibson, then Shan Sutton, back row, second from left, at school in Lebanon, Va., about 1942, where grades 1-5 were taught in one room. Photo provided special to the news sentinel Shan, her husband, John, second from right, and family celebrating the Gibsons 50th anniversary in June 2005. Shan Gibson in the Carter Senior Center, which she helped plan and now uses at least four times a week.

By Rebecca Williams, Special to the News Sentinel

Shan Gibson, 81, is a regular at the Carter Senior Center. At least four times each week, she comes to exercise, sew, play bingo or share a potluck lunch with friends.

"I was on the steering committee that planned this building, and I have used it so much. I don't know what I would have done, especially after my husband died. I've been involved in so much over here," she said.

Gibson was born Edith Ann Sutton on Sept. 6, 1934, the middle child of Luther and Frances Sutton. They lived on a 700-acre farm west of Lebanon, Va. "My real name was Edith Ann, until I had a nephew who couldn't say Edith Ann. It came out 'Shan.' So I cut it short at 19."

"My grandmother's house was wired to batteries, but our house did not have electricity. I studied at the dining room table by the oil lamp. We called it an Aladdin lamp. The bathroom was outdoors at first, then indoors. My dad built on an extra bedroom and bathroom.

"My dad raised all kinds of animals," she said. "He raised cattle and pigs, but he loved the sheep and had about 100 of them. They would have baby lambs in January and February. If a mother had twins, I usually ended up with a pet lamb on a bottle. I hated to go out and feed those lambs! At times we would have snow 12-14 inches, and it would stay long enough to freeze on top. I remember putting on red boots, walking on top of snow and the crust would give way and my boots would be full of snow."

Her childhood was largely spent during the Great Depression and World War II, and, like many girls, she learned to sew, cook and can homegrown food.

"I don't remember the Depression, because living on a farm, we had everything we needed. I remember rationing during World War II. Mother made our bread and rolls. She even made cottage cheese! You can't buy it that good in the store. My mother was a great seamstress and made all of our clothes. She was a quilter, too.

"I grew up going to a small Methodist church. It had a potbellied stove, and my dad had a key to the church. It was his job to go up and build a fire on Sunday morning so the building would get warm. Then we stayed at the church till we closed the doors.

"We used to stay around to see if anybody would ask the preacher home to eat. If they didn't, we did. My dad would write a check every Sunday morning even when money wasn't very fluid. I'd say, 'Dad, why do you write a check every Sunday?' He's say, 'When you're older you'll understand.'"

Gibson went to school in a one-room schoolhouse through fifth grade, and in 1952, she graduated from the 11th grade (they didn't have a twelfth grade) at Lebanon High School in 1952. She went to Carson-Newman College in Tennessee to become a teacher.

It was there she met John Gibson, a veteran of the Korean War, whose cousin, Pat, also attended Carson-Newman. At the time, he was dating another girl, but he gave Pat and Shan a ride one day.

"I was not too impressed, but, two weeks later, he asked me for a date. That other girl, they were not serious. I did not take John away from anybody!" she said with a laugh.

John and Shan Gibson married June 4, 1955, and lived in an apartment over the garage of his parents' house. Most of his siblings lived nearby.

"I was from a family of three children, and John was from a family of 11. So that was quite a difference. It took me a while to get used to 11 siblings," she said. John Gibson worked 27 years at Knoxville Utility Board and then became a contractor. Shan Gibson graduated from Carson-Newman in 1956 with a degree in education.

Except for a few years when their daughter, Paula, and son, Greg, were born, she taught elementary school in East Knox County. She taught 23 years at Sunnyview Primary School and also at Skaggston, Dora Kennedy and Chilhowie Elementary schools. She mostly taught third through fifth grades, and specialized in reading. She retired in 1987.

In retirement, Shan and John Gibson took up square dancing and traveled around the United States. John Gibson died in 2008.

Throughout the years, Shan has taken dozens of in-depth Bible study courses, and taught Sunday School to youth and adults.

"I've been a member of Lyons Creek Baptist Church for 60 years. I'm just about one of the oldest members. I taught the juniors (youth) for 30 years. I finally talked the minister into letting me come to a class in my age group," she said with a laugh. Now she teaches a women's class.

In 1985, Gibson began writing poetry, inspired by her mother, who did the same. "My sister found all of her poems stuck in Bibles and dictionaries and compiled them, so I began writing too. I've written poems through the years about all my grandchildren and special events in their lives. I've written poems for funerals. Usually my poems will tell a story or have a religious theme," she said.

"If I'm inspired, I can write one in 20 minutes. If not, I throw away a lot of paper," she said.

"I tell my grandchildren, Adam, Anna Beth and Abigail, 'I've done a lot for you kids, I've helped send you to college and other things, but I want you to remember me as someone who loved the Lord dearly.' I was saved when I was 9, and I've kind of been working for the Lord ever since."
Kristine Johnson and Emily Baird stop at the junction of Chestnut Top Trail and Schoolhouse Gap Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

SHARE Morgan Simmons looks out into a section of hardwoods forest off of Chestnut Top Trail. photos by CAITIE MCMEKIN/go knoxville Emily Baird, Kristine Johnson, and Morgan Simmons hike the beginning of Chestnut Top Trail in the west end of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Townsend. Remnants of a prior snowfall remain on a hemlock along Chestnut Top Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Kristine Johnson finds her location on a map in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Related Photos Photos: Chestnut Top and Schoolhouse Gap trails

By Morgan Simmons of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Several factors make the Chestnut Top Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park an excellent winter hike. The trail's high point is a relatively low  at least for the Smokies  2,286 above sea level, and even if the park closes the Little River Road because of snow, the Chestnut Top trailhead remains accessible across from the parking lot at the Townsend Wye.

This month's hike combines the Chestnut Top Trail with the Schoolhouse Gap Trail for a total distance of 5.3 miles. It's a point-to-point hike that requires a shuttle. The good news is that it's only 3.5 miles between the two shuttle points  the Chestnut Top trailhead at the Townsend entrance to the park, and the Schoolhouse Gap trailhead on Laurel Creek Road.

Starting at the Chestnut Top trailhead, the trail begins a steady climb that lasts a little less than one mile. At this point the trail overlooks Highway 73 and the Little River downstream from the Townsend Wye, where Laurel Creek meets the Little River.

As the trail gains elevation, you'll be able to see the Foothills Parkway to the north. The view includes a pier-supported bridge that spans a ravine on the steep mountain slope  part of the 1.6-mile section of the parkway between Walland and Wears Valley known as the "Missing Link."

After a little less than a mile the Chestnut Top Trail takes sharp left to the southwest and levels out along the main ridgeline. Here you'll notice an abundance of Virginia pines that thrive in the park's lower elevations where the soil is dry and the trees receive plenty of sunlight. When we hiked the Chestnut Top/Schoolhouse Gap trails we were joined by Kristine Johnson, supervisory forester for the Smokies, who identified black gum and sourwood trees alongside the trail as hardwood species that do well on dry, south-facing ridges, too.

The Chestnut Ridge Trail hugs the park's northern border. Even though the trail never reaches the high country, it offers very nice views, especially in the winter and early spring before the leaves come out. Looking south into the park, you can see Thunderhead Mountain along the Tennessee-North Carolina line, as well as Defeat Ridge and Cold Spring Knob. Looking north, the views encompass Tuskaleechee Cove and the town of Townsend just across the park boundary.

There was about 2 inches of snow on the ground when we hiked these trails in mid-February. We saw tracks of mice, deer and rabbit, and the snow-capped mountains in the distance made for a gorgeous backdrop. In early spring the Chestnut Top Trail will decorated with various wildflowers such as trailing arbutus, hepatica and toothwort that bloom before the leaves come out in order to store energy from the sun.

At 4.3 miles the Chestnut Top Trail reaches the Schoolhouse Gap/Scott Mountain trail junction. The Scott Mountain Trail has been closed since the summer of 2012 after a line of fast-moving thunderstorms  what meteorologists refer to as a "derecho"  slammed into the western side of the Smokies from the northeast, toppling trees and killing two people.

To complete the hike, continue on the Schoolhouse Gap Trail at the trail marker. From here it's 2 miles to Laurel Creek Road where the shuttle vehicle is parked. The Schoolhouse Gap Trail actually is an old road; the rest of the walking is gently downhill, and as easy as it gets.

After 0.9 miles you'll reach a turnstile on the right marking the trail to White Oak Sinks. In 2014 the park closed this unofficial trail (a popular spring wildflower hike) to protect bat colonies from white-nose syndrome, a deadly fungus that has spread to the park's caves.

At the start of our hike the rhododendron leaves were curled tight against the morning cold. By the they time we reached our shuttle vehicle in the afternoon, most of the snow had melted, and the rhododendron had unfurled. A lovely creek joins the Schoolhouse Gap Trail as it approaches the trailhead on Laurel Creek Road  a fitting end to one of the most enjoyable day hikes on the Tennessee side of the Smokies.

Directions: From Townsend, continue south on Highway 73 to the park entrance at the Wye. The Chestnut Top trailhead is directly across from the parking lot. To reach the Schoolhouse Gap trailhead at the opposite end of the hike, bear right onto Laurel Creek Road at the Wye and proceed 3.5 miles to the trailhead parking on the right.
Scott Curran, left, on the fuel and energy research staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, talks to students during their tour Wednesday. Students, left to right, are Camiah Wilson, Tierra Gwinn, Chris Hunter, and Briauna Grimes from Vine Middle Magnet and Austin-East High. They also engaged in speed-mentoring sessions with staff as part of the national My Brothers Keeper initiative. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE Lakeisha Walker, center, with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory talks with students during a speed-mentoring session at the lab Wednesday. The program was part of the national My Brothers Keeper initiative. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Lydia X. McCoy of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE - Camiah Wilson didn't know what to expect from her visit to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory on Wednesday.

"It was pretty interesting," said the Austin-East Performing Arts & Sciences Magnet High School freshman. "I'm not really a science person, but now from coming here, I want to get into science more."

About 40 students from Austin-East visited the lab as part of the My Brother's Keeper National Lab Day.

The day is part of a national effort by the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy to reach students who do not traditionally have the opportunity to visit federal labs and to engage them in science, technology, engineering and math-related activities and learning that may spark a lifelong passion in those fields.

The program was done in conjunction with Knoxville's Save Our Sons initiative, a local My Brother's Keeper affiliate, that works with community partners to address persistent opportunity gaps and eliminate violence.

Jackie Clay, the initiative's programs manager, said the goal of the day was to set the stage of possibilities for students.

"We wanted to provide an opportunity for the kids to learn about careers that they've maybe never considered; to talk to people that they may not have gotten the opportunity to speak with about possibilities," she said. "We hope today a kid will hear something from a professional that sparks an interest, a passion in them and they say, 'I could do that.' "

Clay said she was contacted by ORNL about hosting one of the days, and she hopes to make it an annual event.

"This is a wonderful opportunity for boys and young men of color all across the United States," she said. "We do have some girls here, so it's really an opportunity for young people."

Johney Green, division director of the energy and transportation science division, was one of several ORNL employees who spoke with students.

"We were all high school students or middle school students at one time," he said. "Having role models is important. It helps you to believe and know that something can be done."

Sophomore Chris Hunter said his takeaway was that he can be successful at whatever he puts his mind to.

"Anything that you want to do or that you think of, you can make it happen if you work hard," he said. "We've got to keep working like these guys are."
The main portal at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

SHARE

By Frank Munger of the Knoxville News Sentinel

OAK RIDGE - Consolidated Nuclear Security, the government's managing contractor at the Y-12 and Pantex nuclear weapons plants, is hiring hundreds of workers to meet "mission needs" at the two facilities in Tennessee and Texas.

Morgan Smith, who assumed the positions of president and CEO at the first of February, recently issued a 90-day plan to address priorities and goals. He said CNS plans to hire more than 300 people in the next three months.

That's part of an overall goal of hiring more than 1,100 new employees in Fiscal 2016.

In a separate message, CNS noted that it was "actively recruiting" for more than 900 new job openings. That apparently means that the contractor has already hired a couple of hundred people since Oct. 1, 2015 - the beginning of FY 2016.

The breakdown of new jobs by site is not yet available, but the hiring surge is reportedly greater at Pantex so far. Employment is on the rise, however, at both sites.

In his 90-day plan, Smith said the contractor's goal is to hire and keep "the right people with the right skills" through a "revitalized hiring and retention process."

Details of the mission needs that are driving the hiring by the National Nuclear Security Administration's contractor are not available, but plans to accelerate the dismantlement of old nuclear weapons is at least part of the picture.

Pantex is responsible for the initial disassembly of warheads after they are retired from the nuclear arsenal, and Y-12 later dismantles parts and recycles materials from the components that were originally manufactured in Oak Ridge - notably the second-stage warhead parts made with highly enriched uranium.

Besides the dismantlement program, Y-12 and Pantex are engaged in refurbishment activities to extend the life of deployed weapon systems.

In message to employees, Smith said a key item to be addressed by the plants is a 16 percent increase in "weapons deliverables" from Fiscal Year 2015 to FY 2016.

"This is a significant step increase that will only be accomplished with focused and flawless work execution day in and day out," he said.

As part 90-day plan, the CNS leadership team listed nine things the contractor needs to accomplish by mid-May.

No. 1 on the list is to significantly reduce injuries and improve security performance.

"Dramatically reduce the number of people being hurt and commit ourselves to safety: each day, each person, each other," the plan states. "Take individual responsibility for information security and site security."

The plan emphasizes the need to provide more leadership development for employees.
Former Knox County Sheriff and Trump supporter, Tim Hutchinson, during a Trump party at Calhoun's on the River in Knoxville on Tuesday, March 1, 2016. (Shawn Millsaps/Special to News Sentinel)

By Georgiana Vines of the Knoxville News Sentinel

Former Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison was the center of attention again Tuesday night at a party put together at the last minute at Calhoun's on the River for poll workers and volunteers for Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

About three dozen people attended early in the evening, with Bruce Williams, manager of Trump's campaign headquarters on Emory Road, estimating 40-50 people could show up once all the polls closed.

The crowd cheered and waved signs when Fox News projected Trump winning Tennessee and three other states. Mostly supporters sat quietly eating appetizers and sipping drinks, awaiting the returns.

Hutchison sat at the head of a table checking returns on his laptop near a podium. He said he didn't plan to make a speech but wanted to thank the workers for helping out.

"They're dedicated. This is solely for the workers," he said.

He acknowledged the crowd was not the usual Republicans in Knox County, most of whom likely attended the official GOP election night event at the Crowne Plaza downtown.

"It's a different group. It is a mixture of Independents, Republicans and Democrats," Hutchison said.

Hutchison said he has devoted a lot of time helping Trump win Tennessee. He said this is his first campaign activity since being term-limited in 2007 and then being defeated in subsequent elections for Knox County mayor in 2010 and state representative in 2012.

He was listed as a 2nd Congressional District delegate for Trump on Tuesday's ballot but had no idea when he would learn whether he would make it to the Republican National Convention.

"Nor do I give a damn," he said.

He agreed to be a delegate because he was asked to, he said.

Fran Horton and Vicki St. John sat together and discussed why they thought Trump should win. St. John said she had given money to another candidate, Dr. Ben Carson, and reluctantly admitted she voted for him in early voting.

"I realized he wasn't going to win," she said, so she ended up going to Trump headquarters to help out.

Horton said she arrived at supporting Trump by making a list of 17 points she wanted a presidential candidate to have. Those points included whether the candidate was a natural-born citizen, was in business, took "soft" money and was a good Christian, she said.

"I arrived at Trump because I did an analysis," she said.

About that time, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton appeared on TV after winning six Southern states.

"She makes me sick every time she speaks," said Sam Costadina, originally from New York.

He said he used to wallpaper rooms in a building Trump owned in New York.

"He'll talk to everybody. He's compassionate," Costadina said.

Larry Bronstein said he's one of the Independents that Hutchison mentioned.

"I don't like any Republican except Trump," he said. "I have no use for establishment Republicans."

"Or the media," added his wife, Della.

The pair support overturning the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators. They prefer allowing the state Legislature and governor to appoint senators.

"Senators need to be responsive to the state Legislature. They stray off from the residents," Bronstein said.

In the front of the room sat Beada Corum, a 92-year-old Corryton resident who earlier got media attention for registering to vote for the first time so she could vote for Trump.

"She's so excited about Trump winning in Tennessee," said Theresa Corum, her daughter.

Related coverage:

No surprises: Trump, Clinton take Tennessee

Whitehead edges Weaver in Knox property assessor race

Knox law director Armstong beats back challenger Rowell

Hugh Nystrom defeats incumbent Jeff Ownby in 4th District

Incumbent Brad Anders wins 6th District commission race

Horn, Pelot to face off for 5th District school board seat

Gill defeats Staples in Democratic primary for Knox commission, 1st District

Kildare to face Carringer for Knox County Commission 2nd District seat

Knox County 'Super Tuesday' primary results

Election Commission posts early voting results too soon

Photos: Election night in Knox County

Ashe, Hutchison tops in Knox County delegate results
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves as he steps on stage to speak at a rally Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By Michael Collins of the Knoxville News Sentinel

WASHINGTON  Donald Trump scored a decisive victory in Tennessee's Republican presidential primary Tuesday night, helping to reinforce his status as the GOP front-runner for the White House, while Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won the state's Democratic voters in her bid to become the nation's first female president.

Incomplete returns late Tuesday showed Trump capturing 39 percent of the vote. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas was a distant second with 25 percent, followed by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida with 21 percent. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was fourth with 8 percent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich trailed just behind him with 5 percent.

"This has been an amazing win," Trump said in a victory speech to supporters in Palm Beach, Fla.

On the Democratic side, Clinton walloped U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, 66 percent to 33 percent.

In a victory speech at her campaign offices in Miami, the former secretary of state said her victory in Tennessee and other Super Tuesday states shows that "all across our country, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together."

The campaign now moves on to Louisiana, Michigan and other states, she said, and "we're going to work for every vote."

In Tennessee, voters braved unusually long lines and, at times, heavy rain to cast their votes in what appeared likely to be a record turnout for a presidential primary in the Volunteer State.

Tennesseans  especially young and first-time voters  cheerfully posted photos of themselves and friends with "I Voted" stickers on social media and bragged about standing for up to two hours in lines made long by the heavy turnout.

Tennessee was one of a dozen states making their picks for president on Super Tuesday, and half of them were in the South, resulting in what some had dubbed the "SEC primary."

Fifty-eight delegates on the Republican side will be awarded as a result of Tennessee's election returns, but they will be distributed on a proportional basis, and party officials said it would probably be today before it's known how they will be divided up.

Tennessee Democrats will award 67 delegates.

After Tuesday's results, Gov. Bill Haslam, who endorsed Rubio, issued a statement saying he was encouraged that hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans had exercised their right to vote. "Now this process will play out in other states across the country," he said.

Tennessee Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini took to Twitter to congratulate Clinton on her victory. Clinton "did a fantastic job and put in the sweat equity that it takes to win the sate, and she was rewarded," Mancini said.


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves as he steps on stage to speak at a rally Tuesday, March 1, 2016, in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

By Richard Locker, locker@knoxnews.com

Tenn. GOP officials congratulate Trump, voters

NASHVILLE - Tennessee Republicans spent Tuesday night congratulating either Donald Trump for winning the state's presidential primary or voters statewide for what might be a record presidential primary turnout.

Gov. Bill Haslam, who endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio last week, issued a noncommittal statement just as Trump was declared the Tennessee primary winner: "The greatest thing about our democratic process is citizens have the right to choose their leaders, and I am encouraged by the hundreds of thousands of Tennesseans who didn't take that right for granted, engaged in the process and headed to the polls today and during early voting."

Haslam earlier declared endorsements don't matter as much as they used to but then appeared in a Rubio campaign TV ad aired in the state and stood with Rubio at a Knoxville airport rally Monday. But Rubio was running third in Tennessee behind Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and he was not faring well in other Super Tuesday states.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, was less reserved. He didn't endorse in the primary but made it clear before and again in a statement Tuesday night he likes Trump: "I commend Donald Trump on a tremendous victory here in Tennessee and across the SEC primary states. Trump's campaign has electrified Republican and independent voters alike. But more than that, the Trump campaign is giving voice to frustrated and alienated Americans who had all but abandoned the political process.

"Trump is bringing important issues to the forefront and new voters to the party. If Donald Trump continues on this path to the nomination, I will support him wholeheartedly, he will defeat Hillary Clinton and we will make America great again."

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who also didn't endorse in the primary, noted the anti-establishment current at the polls.

"I think what you are seeing in this election is the anger and dissatisfaction voters have on both sides of the aisle with the fact that Republicans and Democrats have not stepped up to deal with the critical fiscal, economic and security issues facing our country."

U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Knoxville, said he was "pleased by the record turnout that we have had in the Republican primaries all over the country, usually double or triple what it was four or eight years ago. I think 2016 is shaping up to be a big Republican year in Tennessee and throughout the nation."

On the Democratic side, state Democratic Party Chair Mary Mancini congratulated Clinton on winning the Tennessee primary.

Clinton "did a fantastic job and put in the sweat equity that it takes to win the state, and she was rewarded," Mancini said. "Sen. (Bernie) Sanders should also be proud of his campaign. He has excited a new generation of voters and has brought them to the Democratic Party."
University of Tennessee officials make the case for diversity and inclusion efforts on UT campuses to House Education Committee members during a hearing in Nashville on Wednesday, March 2, 2016. Presenting at right are, from left, UT Chattanooga Chancellor Steven Angle, UT President Joe DiPietro and UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek. (RICHARD LOCKER/NEWS SENTINEL)

By Richard Locker, locker@knoxnews.com and MJ Slaby mj.slaby@knoxnews.com

NASHVILLE - Top University of Tennessee's administrators told state lawmakers Wednesday that diversity and inclusion efforts are essential to help prepare students to live and work in a diverse society, and cited incidents at UT Knoxville that they said underscore a need for those efforts.

UT and Tennessee Board of Regents officials fielded questions from lawmakers about diversity efforts and spending in a rare 2-hour joint hearing by the two House education committees. Most of the focus was on UT Knoxville, where a pair of web postings last year about gender-neutral pronouns and inclusive holiday parties by the campus's Office of Diversity and Inclusion sparked controversy among conservatives and some Republican legislators.

UT responded by placing the diversity office's website under the control of the campus's vice chancellor for communications.

UT President Joe DiPietro said some of the system's four primary campuses "have had the difficult task of addressing very offensive and threatening behaviors that have demonstrated everything from a serious lack of racial or cultural sensitivity to open hatred, blatant disrespect and prejudices against certain groups.

"In recent years, we have had incidents in which fraternity members have paraded to party locations in 'black face,' bananas thrown at a group of prospective black students, cotton balls strewn across the lawn of our black cultural center, racial and homophobic slurs written across campus walls and doors at residence halls," DiPietro told lawmakers. "These types of incidents may seem like a joke or minor acts of insensitivity but they have no place at the University of Tennessee."

The hearing was requested to address a range of questions about diversity and inclusiveness activities and funding. DiPietro and UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek spent most of the 1-hour UT portion of the hearing responding to those questions.

DiPietro acknowledged what he called "the very legitimate diversity-related issues that have brought us to this discussion today" and said he values the concerns of lawmakers and others. "In spite of our good-faith efforts to bring clarity around these issues, it saddens me to think that some individuals still have the impression that diversity efforts at UT are limited to a few select areas such as gender issues and holiday practices."

Rep. Roger Kane, R-Knoxville, asked why there was nothing about Christian or Jewish groups or career development on the front page of the office of diversity website. The UT leaders said there are over 500 student organizations on campus, including several religious groups and a career center.

"While we have sought to foster diversity and inclusion at UT, we have never done so at the expense of the majority," DiPietro said.

He and Cheek also stressed the importance of diversity as it relates to preparing students for a global workforce. Cheek spoke about civility and the campus's aim to be "welcoming to all and hostile to none." The "goal is to prepare students for life."

Saying he "was one of the few conservatives" on the faculty of another college, Rep. Jim Coley, R-Bartlett, asked if UT's faculty is politically diverse, particularly in the humanities. DiPietro said he believes faculty across the UT system is diverse and Cheek said he believes the humanities faculty at UTK is "very diverse."

Rep. Roumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, asked whether diversity is a factor in accreditation and rankings. DiPietro and Cheek said some but not all accreditation agencies include diversity components in their processes, including UT's primary accreditation organization, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Cheek said he knows of no major college ranking that includes diversity as a metric.

In response to a question by Rep. Debra Moody, R-Covington, Cheek said student organizations "have complete freedom about who to invite" to speak on campus. And UT instituted a process after controversies two and three years ago about the student-led "Sex Week" that allows students to opt out of having a share of their activity fees funding some activities and speakers.

Rep. Eddie Smith, R-Knoxville, asked whether the diversity office has a role in drafting syllabi for professors across the Knoxville campus, as he said one email he received suggested. Cheek said the office has no approval authority over syllabi.

A set of written questions from lawmakers submitted to UT beforehand included one asking whether "the controversial recommendations made by the diversity office are appropriate, considering the views of taxpayers that provide your funding?"

UT's response said while diversity and inclusion "are important to our campus, the two recent web postings were unfortunate. There has to be more sensitivity to both internal and external audiences in the future."

After the hearing, DiPietro said he believes it accomplished "an exchange of information and we probably need to continue to have this kind of dialogue in order for people to have a better understanding about why diversity and inclusion is important at all of our campuses."

Kane said he believes there's a need for continued hearings. "I think we're just beginning to scratch the surface of this issue. I realize it went on for over two hours but the more testimony we had, the more unraveling that developed. It's not about any of the issues that people typically want to focus on. To me, it's, are we being good stewards of state money."
Frank Cagle

Gasp! Would you believe that a lobbyist inserted a provision for a special interest group in the fine print of a popular bill expected to pass the state Legislature? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that this sort of thing could occur. This is especially true given that the Legislature is now made up of a supermajority of free-enterprise Republican capitalists.

I'm reassured, though, because once House members became aware of it, they stopped it. At least for now.

For years on end there was an asinine state law that you could only own one liquor store. It was one of many asinine liquor laws on the books. It was widely ignored, with family members fronting second, third and fourth stores. But it was the law nevertheless. When the wine-in-grocery-stores bill passed, part of the compromise with liquor store owners was to strike down that provision, so you could own more than one liquor store.

Only in the world of liquor regulation could such a provision have survived. Imagine if McDonald's could have only one location. The Haslams restricted to one truck stop. Regal could own only one movie theater.

Consumers have been promised that wine in the grocery stores will begin July 1 of this year. But in order to start selling wine on the due date, groceries need time to stock the shelves, work out the kinks in introducing a new product and set up sources of supply.

There was a bill up in the Legislature last week to allow the grocery stores to begin stocking shelves and getting ready in time for the great unveiling. It would have passed by a wide margin. But that little special interest provision that I mentioned earlier? It brings back a restriction on liquor store ownership. The bill would prohibit the ownership of more than two stores. Ah, someone is trying to screw the liquor store owners again? Not hardly.

You see, chain wine stores have noticed that Tennessee is now an open market and they are moving to open stores across the state. They are moving into the Nashville suburbs at present. Liquor store owners now realize that they will face market share competition for sales. A two-store limit would likely discourage chains from coming into the state. Suddenly protectionism isn't a bad thing.

But our regulation-reducing conservative Republican lawmakers tried to strip the provision out of the wine bill. The sponsor is state Rep. Curry Todd, R-Memphis, who carries all the liquor bills, and thus has a symbiotic relationship with the liquor lobby. He pulled the popular housekeeping bill rather than take the provision out. So free-trade House members found another bill that could be amended to do the same thing, and will likely pass it this week, without the liquor store restriction.

The deal that led to passage of wine in groceries also prevented grocery store chains, buying in bulk, to offer consumers discounts. It's called price fixing in every industry besides liquor. Since the liquor store owners broke the original deal with the amendment, the deal is off. That should free House members to allow grocery stores that buy in bulk to sell wine at a cheaper price, rather than an artificial fixed price.

How about a break for consumers?
SHARE

A criminal investigation into a Campbell County judge should determine if one of her controversial actions crosses the threshold into official misconduct.

The Tennessee District Attorney General's Conference confirmed last week that a special prosecutor would be named to investigate General Sessions Judge Amanda Sammons' handling of a child neglect case. Sammons, a former prosecutor elected to the bench in 2014, has made a string of questionable decisions, some of which have been reversed by other jurists.

The investigation, requested by 8th Judicial District Attorney General Jared Effler, will center on whether Sammons improperly changed a charge against mother Krista Leigh Smith of LaFollette, Tennessee.

Smith's legal entanglement began on Jan. 22, when Caryville Assistant Police Chief Joseph Hopson stopped her car on U.S. Highway 25W because her children were not belted in. He charged Smith with child neglect, a class E felony. 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.

Records indicate she changed the charge without the knowledge of police, prosecutors or the judicial magistrate who authorized the original warrant.

At a hearing last Thursday, Sammons defend her actions and refused a request by Smith's attorney, Kristie Anderson, to recuse herself.

Sammons denied she told corrections officer Tonya Severson to change the charge. Instead, she said she set the $250,000 bond in confusion with another unspecified case.

"I never told anyone to change any charges," Sammons said.

Anderson immediately filed an appeal in Campbell County Criminal Court.

The criminal investigation is aimed at determining whether Sammons' actions in Smith's case amount to official misconduct.

Sammons sometimes shows a disregard for judicial procedure, a trait uncommon, to say the least, in a judge.

She has forced defendants to pay for court-appointed attorneys whose services they did not use and ordered children into Department of Children's Services custody without a request by the agency for action. She also has ordered court staff to keep the public from entering her courtroom once proceedings have begun.

Criminal Court Judge Shayne Sexton recently struck down Sammons' ruling that poor defendants whose families hire attorneys still must pay a fee for taxpayer-funded legal services, and Circuit Court Judge John McAfee has overturned dozens of her decisions in juvenile matters, over which she also presides.

Sammons has insisted she, not Sexton, is correct and filed court action challenging McAfee's authority to overturn her Juvenile Court cases.

Launching a criminal investigation of a sitting judge is a drastic measure, one that Effler and the District Attorney General's Conference would not enter into lightly. In this case it seems warranted. The people of Campbell County need to have faith that their judges follow the law.
SHARE

I write in response to the immense amount of negative publicity that has been hitting the University of Tennessee regarding a hostile and indifferent environment for victims of sexual abuse. As an alumnus of UT, I went through a range of emotions, and just as soon as I felt I knew how I felt on the issue, another bomb would fall the next day and the day after that. It felt like, in light of too many media reports of sexual assault on college campuses across the nation, that our university was being given too much bad publicity.

One thought keeps surfacing in the midst of this horrible time for our university: There is only one way to go from here, and that is up.

Regardless of the truth, regardless of the end of this legal process, there is one thing that I think I can be fairly certain of for the UT culture regarding sexual assaults and the way they are handled. I believe that we will be more progressive, with better policies and training in place, than any of UT's peers. The crucible that we are currently experiencing at its hottest phase is going to produce a stronger UT.

In my own life, without an exception, the hardest and most painful lessons made me stronger. I have no doubt this is true for my beloved school, where learning is the point. I do think the media have made us a pariah. I do think this could have happened at any other comparable university. But it has happened. Now we have to deal with it.

I would urge the athletes to harness this negative energy and take it out on every opponent in every contest during the next season.

Paul Motheral, Paris, Tenn.
By Choi Sung-jin



Korea's stock market celebrates its 60th birthday Thursday.



The Korea Exchange (KRX), which started as the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) with 12 listed companies on March 3, 1956, has had numerous ups and downs over the past 60 years.



In the 1980s, the Korea Stock Price Index, or KOSPI, exceeded 1,000 points thanks to rapid economic growth and capital market expansion. But in the late 1990s, it suffered great damage as Korea experienced a severe currency crisis. In 2008, it had another rough time, swept by the global financial crisis.



After many twists and turns, the domestic stock market has grown to be the 13th-largest in the world in aggregate market value. The number of listed companies and average value of share turnover have also expanded beyond comparison with the early days.



According to the KRX, its aggregate market value was 1,207.46 trillion won ($977.7 billion) as of Jan. 31. Compared with the capitalization of 15 billion won in 1965, that represents an expansion of 82,895 times. The average daily trading value has also rocketed to 4.77 trillion won, 150,000 times larger than the 31 million won in 1965. The number of listed enterprises has jumped 45 times over the past 50 years, from 17 to 769.



What has changed is not only its size but its composition. Foreign investment has drastically increased. In 1992, the share of foreign investment was 4.9 percent of the total, but the portion surged to 31.9 percent last year.



In 1995, Korea Electric Power Corp. was the company with the highest market value, followed by Samsung Electronics, Pohang Iron and Steel, Korea Mobile Telecom and Daewoo Heavy Industries. Now, Samsung Electronics tops the list, chased by state utility KEPCO, Hyundai Motor, Samsung C&T, Hyundai Mobis and SK Hynix.



The bourse began to grow in earnest upon the turn of the 1980s. The KOSPI, which remained at 118.27 in 1983 when authorities changed the composite price index to reflect shares' market capitalization, jumped nearly 10 times in just six years to reach 1,003.31 in 1989. In 1996, the stock index futures market opened and, reflecting the rising investment in technology shares, the KOSDAQ market opened later in the year, followed by the stock index options market in 1997.



The biggest crisis came in 1997, when an unprecedented financial crisis hit the nation. The KOSPI, which had maintained the 700-point level before Korea went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to request bailout funds, plunged to 200 in June 1998. It was in the 2000s that the bourse regained its vigor, riding on the IT industry boom and simultaneous recovery of exports and domestic consumption. The KOSPI broke the 2,000-point landmark in 2007, fell below the threshold in 2008 and has since hovered between 1,800 and 2,000.



More recently, the stock market has evolved through opening new markets and making overseas advances. It established KRX in 2009 by integrating stock, bond and futures markets. In 2010, it took the first step toward overseas expansion by acquiring a 45- percent stake in Cambodia's exchange, and took up a 49-percent equity share when Laos opened its stock market.



In 2012, an e-commerce oil market opened within the KRX, followed by that of the Korea New Exchange (KONEX) market for promising but yet-to-be listed firms, in 2013. Since 2014, it has also opened a gold market, an extrude trade note (ETN) market and a carbon emission reduction market.



But the KRX's plan to grow through expansion into overseas capital markets recently hit a snag. Initially, the KRX planned to transform itself into a holding company and be listed on the stock market, with the aim of advancing to capital markets in emerging countries through exchanging equity with foreign bourses.



From a revised bill that passed the National Assembly recently, however, the provision on KRX's conversion into a holding company was omitted, making it difficult for its listing plan to get off the ground.



"The growth of the stock market is stagnating again because of the exit of foreign investors and the global economic slump," a KRX official said. "For the domestic capital market to grow one notch higher, its conversion into a holding company and going public are essential."




Hyundai Motor Vice President Chung Eui-sun, second from right, poses with environmentalist David De Rothschild, right, during the Ioniq launch event at the 86th Geneva International Motor Show held in the Geneva Palexpo, Switzerland, Tuesday (KST). / Courtesy of Hyundai Motor



By Jhoo Dong-chan



Hyundai Motor unveiled three models of its eco-friendly Ioniq line at the 86th Geneva International Motor Show held in the Geneva Palexpo, Switzerland, Tuesday (KST). The company offers hybrid, plug-in hybrid and battery-only electric vehicle (EV) models.



The hybrid, which was launched in January in Korea, and the plug-in both mount the company's Kappa 1.6-liter four-cylinder direct-injection engine that produces 105 horsepower with a maximum torque of 15 kgf-m. A six-speed double-clutch transmission is also used in both vehicles.



Although sharing the same 1.6-liter engine and dual-clutch gearbox, the two versions differ in their electric motors and battery packs.



The hybrid model uses a permanent-magnet synchronous AC motor that produces 43.5 horsepower with a maximum torque of 17.3 kgf-m. The motor is powered by a lithium-ion-polymer battery pack rated at 1.56 kWh, located under the rear seats.



The plug-in, in the meantime, emphasizes electric performance with a bigger motor and battery pack, capable of 61 horsepower with an 8.9 kWh lithium-ion battery pack.



"The plug-in version will have a 40-kilometer all-electric range, good enough for commuting purposes," a Hyundai Motor official said.



The first full-electric car since Hyundai Motor's BlueOn, the Ioniq EV utilizes a 28 kWh lithium-ion-polymer battery powering the whole internal-combustion motor that outputs 120 horsepower with a maximum torque of 30 kgf-m. An official said the 100-kWh fast charger can recharge the battery to 80 percent of its maximum capacity in just 24 minutes, but it also will be possible to charge it from a household socket.



The vehicle mounts a single-speed reducer transmission added to the driveline to get a top speed of 165 km/h and has a maximum range of 169 kilometers on a single charge.



"I can't wait to see how the market responds to our three environment-friendly Ioniq," Hyundai Motor Vice President Chung Eui-sun was quoted as saying at the motor show.



"Our Project IONIQ is above the innovation in auto technology, which will introduce a new form of lifestyle in the future. I believe such efforts will set us free beyond the limitations of current mobility technologies."



For the company's Ioniq launching show, world-famous adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild, 38, hosted the event. He is the third child of British billionaire financier Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, and a member of the Rothschild family whose businesses holdings encompass anything from financial services and real estate to mining and energy.
Simon Fisher, co-founder of Ocula

By Kwon Mee-yoo

Art connoisseurs who frequently search the Internet looking for information on contemporary artists or galleries representing them may be familiar with the pupil-like icon, Ocula, a website providing up-to-date news and in-depth information.

Simon Fisher, co-founder and director of the online art platform, visited Korea to give a lecture on the online art platform as a part of the Global Art Market Project organized by the Arts Council of Korea (ARKO) last week.

Fisher comes from a family gallery business, but instead of continuing it he eyed the Internet. The Fisher family business began in 1870 after his ancestors immigrated to New Zealand from England and introduced British artists.

"I was always interested in the form of communication and the relations between gallery and collector, curator and museum. It is a bit closed off and exclusive and it is not easy to access if one does not know about the art market very well," Fisher said. "However, the Internet is an unintimidating place and I launched a website in the mid-90s, making the gallery and the art market more accessible."

The name Ocula comes from the Latin word for the eye, as Fisher wanted to open up a world that was previously exclusive with the help of technology.

"In dealing, we thought traveling customers and busy dealers needed a quicker response and more engagement. You can access and navigate art information more easily on Ocula," he explained.

The main foundation of the site is "relationship," sticking to the traditional backbone of the art market. "Galleries need relationships to survive. We provide information on what exhibition is going on now and what is worth seeing. We liaise between the seller and buyer, creating connectivity for collectors, curators and galleries," Fisher said.

However, Ocula does not sell art. Instead, it connects galleries and artists with collectors, curators and museums. What sets Ocula apart from numerous websites that provide exhibition information is that it provides a curated environment.

"When collectors and museum curators visit, they don't see all of the exhibits, but a selection of focused, serious ones," Fisher said. "We understand the art market. We are not technology people coming to the art market, but art people trying to bring a bigger audience to galleries. Curation, seriousness and quality over quantity are our principles."

Starting in a modest, private environment in New Zealand, Ocula has expanded to cover international galleries and has a growing audience in Korea as well. Currently Ocula has partnerships with a handful of Korean galleries, including Kukje Gallery, PKM Gallery, One and J. Gallery and Gallery Baton.

Fisher also emphasized that Ocula offers a unique Asia Pacific perspective, not coming from London or New York.

"We have partner galleries across the globe, but are strongly focused on the Asia Pacific region. Interest in this market is on the rise among European and North American galleries as well," he said.

At the same time, Fisher is expanding the role of Ocula as an educator and facilitator. The first publication of the Ocula magazine, which compiles the highlights of Ocula Conversations, in-depth features and interviews of contemporary artists provided by Ocula online, is being released in time for Art Basel Hong Kong, slated for March 24 to 26.

"We supplement our site with interviews of artists, curators, gallerists and museum directors and the magazine makes people more aware of what is going on in the market. We didn't think we would go into the publishing business; but by doing so we can share this wealth of information," he said.

The Global Art Market Project consists of five symposiums and three publications as a part of the organization's effort to promote Korean art overseas. Along with Fisher, Tim Etchells, founder of contemporary art fairs such as Art HK, Art 13 London and Sydney Contemporary are working for survival strategies for art fairs.
By Lee Kyung-min



Conservative parents and education authorities in Seoul are clashing over the latter's push to require secondary schools to buy a pro-Japanese collaborators' directory.



A group of conservative parents said Wednesday that it has filed a complaint with the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office against Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon and Seoul City Council Education Committee Chairman Kim Moon-su, claiming the two abused their authority.



The group said that the city council violated the law by allocating a budget against the central government's policy recommendation. It referred to the directory as "ideologically skewed" with controversial content.



"The law bans defining former high-profile public officials during the Japanese occupation as pro-Japanese collaborators including judges, prosecutors and commissioned military officers," the group leader surnamed Cho said in a press release.



"We cannot tolerate the move by the city council and the SMOE to attempt to mislead the students in the name of pursuing historical justice," he added.



The move follows Kim's remark last month that school principals that defer or reject the purchase would be questioned before the council's standing committee for disobeying the city council's decision.



On Feb. 4, SMOE allocated some 175 million won ($141,000) to 583 out of Seoul's 697 secondary schools with a request that they submit a report after purchasing the directory by Feb. 26.



Two weeks later, the group filed a suit with the Seoul Administrative Court seeking to nullify the SMOE's order.



As of Wednesday, more than 95 percent of the schools, or 668, had purchased the directory, with 19 undecided and the remaining 10 refusing.



The three-book directory, published in 2009 by the Center for Historical Truth and Justice, includes a list of 4,389 alleged pro-Japanese figures during the Japanese occupation (1910-45) that it claims praised or supported Japanese imperialism on the Korean Peninsula or committed treasonous activities against their own people.



Earlier, the Ministry of Education asked the SMOE to submit a report on whether it went through the proper consultation process with each school before giving orders for the purchase.



The ministry criticized the SMOE for wasting its budget, saying that subsidizing and pressing schools to buy such controversial material infringes upon each school's right to choose their own educational material.




By Jun Ji-hye

Rep. Lee Jong-kul, floor leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, weeps while giving the last filibuster speech at the National Assembly, Wednesday. / Yonhap

Rep. Lee Jong-kul, floor leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK), delivered an emotion-laden speech as the 39th and the last speaker of a filibuster session that ended Wednesday after a nine-day run.

Lee wept while apologizing for the party's decision to end the filibuster, which began on Feb. 23 with the set objective of blocking a government-backed anti-terrorism bill.

Lee's speech continued 12 hours and 31 minutes, setting a new record for the longest filibuster speech in Korea _ the previous record was held by Rep. Jung Cheong-rae, who delivered a speech for 11 hours and 39 minutes as the 17th speaker.

Lee vowed to continue the speech until the ruling Saenuri Party accepts the opposition party's demand to change details of the anti-terrorism bill.

The party's decision was made on Tuesday night based on Lee's proposal. Lee claimed that the indefinite duration of the parliamentary tactic, if prolonged, could delay the passage of other bills, including one on redrawing electoral districts for the April 13 general election.

"We've committed a grave sin. We are really sorry to the people. Please forgive us," he said, apologizing for the decision.

Throughout the filibuster session, the opposition lawmakers called for the rewriting of the anti-terrorism bill, but the ruling party rejected their demand, saying discussions are over. The National Assembly, controlled by the ruling party with a majority of seats, is expected to pass the bill soon.

Rep. Lee's apology was apparently intended for the public and members of the party who supported the filibuster, out of concerns that the bill, if passed, will give the National Intelligence Service (NIS) greater power, which could be abused and used to monitor civilians and opposition lawmakers.

After reciting the names of 38 lawmakers, who had stood at the podium, one by one, Lee gave special thanks to Rep. Eun Soo-mi who delivered a filibuster speech for 10 hours and 18 minutes as the third speaker on Feb. 24. "I cannot say Eun's name without tears," he said.

Lee also expressed his gratitude to Rep. Kang Gi-jung who stood at the podium as the ninth speaker on Feb. 26 even after he knew that he was excluded from being nominated as a candidate in the general election.

"Lawmakers who participated in the filibuster left a lot of memorable quotes that made the public laugh and cry," he said. "Such quotes recalled facts that those in authority tried to delete and distort.

"I believed that the lawmakers' passion helped the public know about what we are doing at the National Assembly," Lee said.

He said that MPK lawmakers showed dedication during the filibuster.

Lee also criticized Assembly Speaker Chung Ui-hwa who prompted the filibuster session by exercising his authority to put the anti-terrorism bill to a vote. Chung said at the time that an early passage of the bill is necessary because national security is in an "emergency state" in the face of North Korean provocations.

The opposition side claimed that current situations do not fulfill the necessary conditions of the emergency state.

"As far as I know, Chung has so far followed the rules neutrally and rationally. It is doubtful how and why he damaged such trust," Lee said, while Chung was sitting behind him.



Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye
Police said Wednesday they will conduct the first nationwide drills to test response against potential cyberattacks from North Korea amid growing alarms over Pyongyang's cyberwarfare targeting key infrastructure in the country.



As part of the training, which will begin at 2:00 p.m. Thursday involving the National Police Agency (NPA) and 16 regional police agencies, authorities will examine readiness to counter North Korea-orchestrated hacks into flight control systems at 15 airports in South Korea.



During the simulation, which will take place nationwide for the first time, the police will lay out an emergency response plan and dispatch anti-terrorism unit agents to sites under attack to collect evidence and minimize the fallout. The exercise will also examine law enforcement's ability to track down Internet protocol data of suspected terrorists and apprehend them.



"The police will carry out various counter-cyberterror measures as threats of such attacks (from the North) have been on a rise," said a police official involved in the simulation training, asking not to be named. The official added that the police will strive to cooperate with related state agencies to enhance countermeasure capability.



The scheduled exercise comes as an anti-terrorism bill has been pending at the National Assembly that the ruling Saenuri Party and the Park Geun-hye government say is essential to better protect the lives of the South Koreans.













The bill is expected to be passed through the parliament later Wednesday after weeks of partisan wrangling.



North Korea previously launched a cyberattack against South Korea in July 2009, two months after its second nuclear test. It also hacked South Korean media organizations in March 2013, a month after its third nuclear test. (Yonhap)
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon filed a lawsuit against seven people who were convicted last month of spreading false draft-dodging rumors about his son, Park's legal representatives said Wednesday.



Park filed the suit against Yang Seung-oh, a renowned radiologist, and six others with the Seoul Central District Court, seeking a maximum of 100 million won in compensation, a group comprised of Park's lawyers and supporters said in a press conference held in Seoul.



The legal action came a few weeks after the same court ordered Yang and the others to pay fines, ranging from 7 million won to 15 million won, for attempting to prevent Park from winning the 2014 local election by spreading false rumors that Park's son Ju-sin evaded mandatory military service.



The mayor's legal representatives also accused a local online newspaper for reporting false facts without confirming their authenticity and said they would file a separate suit if the company does not delete the related reports by next Friday.



"We are planning to take further actions against former lawmaker Kang Yong-seok who constantly casts doubts on Park's son," the group said.



In South Korea, all able-bodied men must serve in the military for about two years since the country technically remains at war with North Korea after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)




Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Hilary Clinton each won 7 out of 11 states races, triumphing over their opponent candidates and getting closer to their parties' nominations.



From the Republican side Trump won in Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Georgia. While his counterparts Cruz won Texas and Oklahoma and Rubio won Minnesota as his first victory.



For the Democrats Clinton won in Massachusetts, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia. While her counterpart Bernie Sanders won Oklahoma, Minnesota and Colorado.



Trump has surprised Republicans by emerging victorious over his opponents, winning three of the four contests in Super Tuesday.



Trump has rallied voters angered at Washington, worried about terrorism, immigration and a volatile economy.



Pledging to "make America great again," he has soared to the top using brief words and often crude remarks.



Trump set his eye on the general matchup between him and Clinton, claiming that she is part of the political establishment currently failing America.



''She's been there for so long, if she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years.'' Said Trump



Clinton on the other hand successfully seizing black voters from the south, showed her confidence by also targeting Trump at a victory rally in Miami.



''It's clear tonight that the stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower,'' said Clinton.








Korean students attending a U.S. medical doctor (USMD) program practice checking the blood pressure of a mock patient at Southern Utah University in the Unites States, February.

/ Courtesy of Southern Utah University



Southern Utah University offers USMD program to int'l pupils







Rita Osborn, director of the Utah Center of Rural Health at Southern Utah University

By Chung Hyun-chae



A director at Southern Utah University (SUU) has recommended that Korean students take advantage of a pre-med program to help realize their dreams of becoming medical professionals in the United States.



"Although it is very difficult for international students to matriculate to a U.S. medical school, they can work toward a medical degree through our program," Rita Osborn, director of the Utah Center of Rural Health at Southern Utah University (SUU), told The Korea Times.



SUU has teamed up with New Tokyo Medical College (NTMC) to provide a U.S. medical doctor (USMD) program after signing an agreement on the program two years ago.



The program is designed to allow international students to enter a medical school and become doctors in the U.S. after graduation.



"The U.S. has a shortage of healthcare providers that we definitely need students coming in through that pipeline program," Osborn said.



She came to Korea on Sunday to attend a ceremony to welcome and congratulate students accepted to the USMD program.



Today, eight Korean students selected for the USMD program will join a one-year course on the Korea Times Education Abroad Program, a Seoul-based private education business, before starting their courses at SUU next year.



They will take intensive pre-med courses and then move on to the NTMC, which is located on the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia, for medical courses and clerkship training.



Another 10 students who were chosen last year are now attending SUU.



In the U.S. students go though four years of undergraduate pre-med and attend medical school to become doctors, whereas in Korea students can take part in a six-year undergraduate medical program without enrolling in graduate courses.



International students including Korean students who wish to become doctors in the U.S. can enter medical schools that are credited by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG). The NTMC is one of those schools.



The ECFMG acts as the registration and score-reporting agency for the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), a test that physicians with an M.D. must pass to practice medicine in the U.S.



"The U.S. medical schools now place as much value on how to communicate well with patients and how to integrate and work with other healthcare professionals when evaluating medical school applicants, not just their grades," Osborn said.



The Utah Center of Rural Health manages the university's pre-med students, including USMD program students, providing various programs for them to develop their competitiveness.



"Our services include free one-to-one tutoring service, seminars with many distinguished guests from health-related fields, leadership training, volunteer community service opportunities, professional mentoring, mock interviews and overseas cultural immersion experiences," said the director.



Osborn stressed that the center grooms the students early in the process.



"Oftentimes pre-med students at large universities go to an advising office maybe at the end of their junior year or when they are ready to apply, whereas we help them start the activities like research and job shadowing in their freshman year," she said.



"Then in their junior year they can spend time more on their studies. For example, as the chemistry classes become more rigorous they can spend more time on those harder classes."



Launched in 1998, the center has been sending 95 to 98 percent of its students to medical schools.



On average, 47 percent of pre-med students get accepted to medical schools in the U.S., almost double the national average.



One of the benefits of the program Osborn believes is that although the NTMC is an international medical school, students are able to do their clerkship training in U.S. hospitals in their third and fourth years, which gives them a competitive edge over those from other international medical schools.



"When people look for students for residents' positions they look at their clerkship experience whether they did it in the U.S. or not," Osborn said.



For more information, visit http://www.usmd.ac.
By Kyung Moon Hwang



This year marks the 97th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919, an occasion celebrated in both Koreas, though to different degrees, as a testament to the yearning for freedom from Japanese colonial rule.



In South Korea every year solemn observances and colorfully-staged, dramatic re-enactments around the country simulate the nationwide eruption of demonstrations back in 1919.



As it turned out, March 1 might have been the last such moment of great unity, as there would not be another event bringing together Koreans from all across the peninsula for a single cause. For various reasons Koreans under colonial rule did not, or could not, organize another concerted action for independence, and as we know the liberation of 1945 was immediately followed by Korea's permanent division.



March 1 did not result immediately in Korea's independence, but when viewed over the longer term, its historical significance was wide-ranging and monumental, especially in facilitating Koreans' central role in forging their own modern history.



First, March 1 showed the outcome of several decades of schooling and civic discourse concerning enlightenment and social reform, which heightened the sense of national unity as well as the thirst for independence.



Throughout the modern world, often it took a common threat or domination by an external force to spark or intensify a sense of national identity, and Korea was no different. It came too late to prevent colonization, but March 1 showed that Koreans had developed a strong collective consciousness and will.



Inspired by the March 1 movement, this resolve was demonstrated within a month after the uprising, as independence activists gathered in Shanghai in April of 1919 to form the first government in exile, which significantly took the form of a republic, not a monarchy. Alas, this unity among the participants did not last long, as soon the independence movement split into disparate groups following competing ideologies and scattered in various locales, from China to Manchuria and even the United States.



These independent independence movements, however, would eventually cultivate the major political leaders, from Kim Il-sung to Kim Ku and Syngman Rhee, who would take command over Korea's future course by the middle of the 20th century.



None of them played a decisive role in bringing about liberation, but their efforts in organizing anti-Japanese resistance efforts from their far-flung bases outside the peninsula were enough to endow them with the stamp of nationalist legitimacy.



In this sense, they were all the children of March 1, and in fact the South Korean state, led by Rhee upon its founding in 1948, explicitly pointed to March 1 and the Shanghai Provisional Government of 1919 as the foundational basis of its existence.

And every ruling system in both Koreas thereafter would celebrate the spirit of March 1 as an exemplary demonstration of patriotic fervor that laid the groundwork for independence.



There was another way that March 1 had a major historical impact, however, beyond sparking the independence movements and the spirit of resistance. The demonstrations, which began with the reading of the March 1 Declaration of Independence as people gathered in Seoul to attend the funeral of the former Korean monarch, Gojong, induced a severely violent response from the authorities, but eventually, also a major turn in colonial rule.



The March 1 movement represented the explosion of discontent over the first decade of Japanese rule, which had been dominated by concerns over security (stamping out armed and other resistance) and therefore imposed all kinds of restrictions on Koreans' lives. Still, the Japanese rulers were shocked by the scale and scope of the unrest once it began, and this contributed to the terrible violence that met the demonstrators.



But the lessons from both the protests and their botched suppression fell on receptive ears amid a liberalizing political atmosphere back in Japan. What resulted was a new colonial administration installed in the fall of 1919, which declared the overarching policy of "cultural rule" that valued "harmony of Japan and Korea" as the centerpiece of colonial administration.



This did not mean, of course, that Korea would be granted independence, but it did lead to reforms that, taken together, probably had the effect of actually strengthening Japanese rule. The period of "cultural rule" maintained the larger mechanisms of authoritarian control, such as censorship and restrictions on political activity by organizations such as the communist party, and the regime continued to rely on ethnic discrimination and segregation to maintain the colonial system.



But Koreans were now able to participate much more freely in publishing, religion, business, and other social realms, and what resulted was an explosion in associational activity, as people joined organizations dedicated to all kinds of cultural, intellectual, and economic endeavors. In the countryside, life continued largely as before, but the rapidly growing urban areas displayed the transformation of Korean society into a noticeably different, modern way of life.



"Cultural rule," the direct product of March 1, continued into the 1930s until it was overwhelmed by the total mobilization for Japan's pursuit of the Pacific War, the excesses of which would forever mark how Koreans remembered the colonial period as a whole.



In the end, one can debate whether the reforms of the 1920s signaled a "successful" outcome of March 1. But the major changes that followed the uprising represented another example of Koreans directly shaping their modern existence, and for that, March 1 should indeed be celebrated.



Kyung Moon Hwang is professor in the Departments of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea  An Episodic Narrative" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). The Korean translation was published as , "   " (21 , 2011).
North Korea said Tuesday that it will boycott the U.N. Human Rights Council session and will not be bound by any resolutions that singles out the country for censure.



North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong claimed that the council meeting has been politically contaminated and members are applying double standards.



He said in a speech in Geneva that because Pyongyang possesses a powerful nuclear and military deterrent, the United States and others had no other choice but to make an issue out of the country's human rights record.



Ri said the DPRK will respond resolutely to any person or country that uses human rights as a political tool.



The DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.



The official then pointed out that on average 13,000 people die each year in the United States because of that country's lax gun control rules, while countless number of refugees drowned or suffocated while trying to enter Europe. He added that Japan murdered millions during World War II.



He said that evidence against the DPRK's human rights abuses came from some defectors and argued these people were either bought with money or kidnapped.

The minister said that money used to purchase these people came from the United States, Japan and South Korea.



The official, meanwhile, did not mention ongoing efforts by the United Nations Security Council to pass a new resolution condemning its fourth nuclear weapons test and the launching of a long-range rocket. (Yonhap)




North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has inspected a machinery factory, known as a key plant used in the manufacturing of parts related to missile development, the North's state media said Wednesday.



The North's leader visited the Thaesong Machine Factory where he stressed the need to modernize its production for the development of the country's machine-building industry, the Korean Central News Agency report said. It did not reveal the timing of Kim's inspection.



Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council is set to vote on a fresh resolution for tougher sanctions against North Korea over its latest nuclear and long-range rocket launch.



"(The leader's visit) is aimed to lay a new springboard for the development of the country's machine-building industry through modernization of the factory," the KCNA said in an English dispatch.



The inspection of the factory, known as the main outpost for missile development, indicates the North's determination to keep expanding its nuclear and missile programs, analysts said.



North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, followed by the North's long-range rocket launch earlier this month, a move that outside experts view as a cover for a ballistic missile test. (Yonhap)




By Yi Whan-woo

The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) has blacklisted four senior North Korean officials in charge of nuclear and ballistic missile programs as the council is set to pass a new resolution on sanctions against the isolated state.

The four officials include Ri Man-gon, who oversees development of military technologies as a director at the ruling Workers' Party, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wednesday.

They will theoretically be barred from travelling to any member state of the U.N.

The three others are Yu Chol-u, director of the National Aerospace Development Administration (NADA), Hyon Kwang-il, a senior official at NADA, and Choe Chun-sik, who headed North Korea's long-range missile program in 2013.

"A Worker's Party director is equivalent to a ministerial-level official in other countries," said An Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies. "I'd say the UNSC targeted the right man to punish North Korea for pursuing military ambitions."

He said Ri was among nuclear scientists and officials who appeared in a photo with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un released in January to commemorate Pyongyang's latest nuclear test.

Ri and the three other targeted officials were among 17 individuals and 12 entities  all from North Korea  that were included in an original text of a bill drafted by the United States and China and circulated to the UNSC last week.

The proposed bill is aimed at toughening sanctions against North Korea in response to its nuclear test, Jan. 6, and satellite launch, Feb. 7.

Russia, a veto-wielding UNSC member, asked for the removal of one official from the text as a precondition to putting the draft resolution to a vote, citing its business relationship with him, according to diplomatic sources.

It also opposed banning the supply of aviation fuel to North Korea in a package of measures included in the resolution, according to Japan's NHK.
Top NK diplomat vows to boycott UNHRC session



By Yi Whan-woo

South Korea is stepping up efforts to address North Korea's abysmal human rights record in context of worldwide opinion, in conjunction with a new U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution on sanctions against Pyongyang in response to its nuclear and missile tests.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se delivered a keynote speech at the 31st session of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) session in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the purpose of Yun's UNHRC visit is to raise global awareness of Pyongyang's state-perpetrated crimes against humanity, including forced labor of tens of thousands North Korean workers abroad.

It is believed that Pyongyang has been pocketing their wages to prop up its cash-strapped regime and carry out development of weapons of mass destruction.

UP to 220,000 people are also thought to be detained, tortured and executed at political prison camps in North Korea while others outside the camps are starved to death.

Yun's speech came after North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su-yong said Tuesday that his country will boycott the UNHRC session and will not be bound by any U.N. sanctions. Ri was also participating at the annual session aimed at discussing ways to improve international human rights conditions.

Speaking before the UNHRC council, Ri claimed that the United States and its allies are deliberately bringing up issues on North Korean human rights as an alternative way to exert pressure on the Kim regime. He pointed out that Pyongyang has continued to develop nuclear and ballistic missile technology despite a set of four UNSC sanctions imposed between 2006 and 2013.

Citing fire arm-related accidents in the U.S. and Japanese military's atrocities during World War II, Ri instead held the two countries accountable for violations of human rights.

The Ministry of Unification, which handles inter-Korean affairs, refuted Ri's statements, saying "human rights are universal values."

"It's time for North Korea to join the South and members of international community to objectively assess its human rights conditions and take concrete measures for improvement," unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said.

The UNSC took a vote, Thursday, on a draft resolution aimed at toughening sanctions against North Korea for conducting its latest nuclear test and a recent long-range rocket launch.
By Choe Chong-dae

The Republic of Azerbaijan, located in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia with access to the Caspian Sea, is a dynamically developing country with an abundance of natural resources, in particular its rich deep-water oil reserves.

My interest in this country dates back to an official visit by Korea's then-President Roh Moo-hyun in 2006 and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's reciprocal visit to Korea in 2007.

It is noteworthy that Korean archeological teams from Seoul National, Chungbuk National, Kyungpook National and Hanshin universities undertook joint excavations with a group of archeologists from the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Gabala, from 2009 to 2011. The archeological excavations took place primarily at the site of the ancient city of Gabala, located in the territories of Selbir and Gala, which was the ancient capital of Caucasian Albania for eight centuries.

Approximately 1,500 priceless artifacts were discovered during the excavation, shedding light on entirely new chapters in the history of Gabala.

Remarkably, the excavated artifacts, such as glassware, ornaments, beads and pottery, were very similar to antiquities unearthed in Gyeongju from the Silla Dynasty (57 BC to 935 AD).

This indicates that ancient Azerbaijan engaged in cultural contact with the Unified Silla Kingdom via the ancient Silk Road. When the Silk Road Gyeongju Cultural Festival was held in Gyeongju in August 2015, a sister city partnership between Gyeongju and Gabala was established which aimed to rebuild and foster the historic cultural relations between the two countries, originally linked by the ancient Silk Road.

The two countries share many similarities in terms of history, culture, traditions and, in particular language as both tongues are members of the Altaic language family. Additionally, Azerbaijani suffered similar birth pangs to Korea when the country gained independence.

Specifically, a great number of Azerbaijanis were sacrificed during the Soviet troops' violent two-day crackdown on independence demonstrations, later known as the "Black January" massacre, which took place in Baku, Azerbaijan on January 19 and 20, 1990.

During these days, hundreds of Azerbaijani civilians were crushed or injured by Soviet troops, on a direct order from the USSR which was trying to maintain control of Azerbaijan. About 26,000 Soviet troops entered Baku and committed atrocities against the innocent people of Azerbaijan who were struggling to establish the ideals of freedom and sovereignty in order to preserve the nation's territorial integrity. Some 133 civilians of Azerbaijan lost their lives and 800 were wounded at that time. This atrocity evoked a deep sense of anger and indignation in progressive forces all over the world, which contributed to the prompt collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Black January was a potent display of cultural pride and heroism on the part of the Azerbaijani people, qualities evident in this culture since time immemorial. On this occasion, its aim was to resist cruel attacks on the freedom and independence of their nation, paving the way for the national liberation of Azerbaijan.

While attending a commemoration ceremony in Seoul on the 26th anniversary of Black January, held on Jan 20 and hosted by the Embassy of Azerbaijan, I felt as if I were present at a ceremony commemorating the March 1 Independence Movement of 1919, which sought a restoration of Korean sovereignty from Japanese occupation (1910-1945). Although their historical circumstances differ, the two events and their memorial celebrations were remarkable similar.

In view of the longstanding ties between Korea and Azerbaijan, my fervent wish is that the two countries' relationship will be increasingly strengthened so that both countries can continue to contribute to peace throughout the world through vibrant cultural exchanges.

Choe Chong-dae is a guest columnist of The Korea Times. He is president of Dae-kwang International Co., and a director of the Korean-Swedish Association. He can be reached at dkic98@chol.com.
By Choi Sung-jin



Two weeks ago, President Park Geun-hye delivered a special speech at the National Assembly, calling for unity to cope with North Korea's nuclear and missile provocations.

Toward the end of her address, President Park asked lawmakers to also pass two bills pertaining to the economy  one for labor reform and the other for helping to speed up corporate restructuring. "Numerous jobless youngsters are shedding tears because of this legislative gridlock," she said.

It was a little awkward for the chief executive to thrust economic legislation into this urgent discussion of national security issues. Yet it was not entirely incomprehensible given the dire economic reality facing the nation. The problem is the two bills would not revive the moribund economy but hasten its entry into a coma.

Few deny that the nation's economy is now in a state of overall crisis. Exports have lost vigor while domestic consumption shows no signs of recovery. The economic growth rate fell into the 2 percent-range and household and corporate debt is snowballing. Willingly or not, President Park's hard-line tactic against the North, especially her virtual termination of the inter-Korean factory park in the North Korean border city of Gaeseong, has only added political risks to economic ones.

I will not blame the President for failing to keep her election pledge of "4-7-4" potential growth rate of 4 percent, employment rate of 70 percent and per capita income of $40,000  as not many people thought it attainable in the first place. The slump in exports is also due in large part to overseas factors. But Park cannot be free from responsibility for sagging consumption, rising youth unemployment, rocketing housing costs and rapidly increasing debt. Nothing shows the reasons clearer for such failures than her adherence to the two bills.

First, what President Park and her administration refer to as a labor reform bill is, according to its contents, a labor-killing bill that will further aggravate the already shaky job security. Among other things, the legislation, if approved in the parliament, would make it easier for employers to fire "underachieving" workers.

However, even without such a law, most Korean workers live in constant fear of dismissal under the pretext of corporate restructuring. The peak wage system, which was intended to reduce the wages of aged workers and make it easier for firms to hire young employees with the money saved, has already proven, here and abroad, in theory and practice, to have produced no such results.

The bill is based on shortsighted, business-oriented viewpoints that regard workers and their wages as merely costs, not drivers of economic growth with their labor and consumption. Young college graduates do not want it to be a zero-sum within families in which young employees take away their parents' jobs. The government should give them decent jobs through job sharing and reducing the nationnotoriously long work hours. President Park should in this regard learn from her Japanese counterpart, who called in business representatives and urged them to raise wages for workers.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe knows what threw his country into "two lost decades"  a business-only policy and undue, wasteful investments in white-elephant projects. He also knows what creates economic growth in this low-growth era and what makes a virtuous circle of higher wages that lead to brisk consumption and growth. The two successive conservative administrations in Korea will soon lose a decade if they follow the example of Abe's predecessors.

The same can be said about the other bill titled "special law to boost corporate vigor," or "one-shot law," thus called because it allows corporate restructuring in one fell swoop. The law, allegedly aimed at facilitating business realignment for companies suffering from supply gluts, lets the government play the role of the market in determining the companies' entry into and exit out of certain businesses, while providing benefits for these enterprises, mainly family-controlled conglomerates, thus prolonging the life of marginal manufacturers that can only resort to lower prices to survive.

I acknowledge the government-led economic growth as well as the chaebol's contribution to national development over the past five decades or so. And the conglomerates will, and should, remain important economic players, especially in these uncertain economic times. Until when, however, should Korea rely on them for more than half of its economic growth?

President Park stresses the importance of the "creative economy." But creativity or innovation does not go very well with these gigantic corporate behemoths which are bent on making easy money through, for instance, running duty-free stores. Smaller, nimbler and more enterprising businesses and startups are finding it hard to get enough sunlight in the shadows of the chaebol. After all, the very idea of a creative economy itself sounded awkward coming from a leader who wants her people to hold uniform views of history and barely tolerate any views different from hers.

The government-pushing, chaebol-pulling growth pattern has outlived its efficacy. Even in the United States, the origin of the market-is-everything neo-liberalism economy, a septuagenarian "democratic socialist,"Bernie Sanders, has earned enthusiastic support from young voters. Regardless of his electability, had there been someone like Sanders here, he or she would have been the target of conservatives, labeled as a follower of North Korea or a "Commie."

President Park is following her father-cum-mentor, former President Park Chung-hee. But the senior Park's days and his development formula are long gone. Only when the President seeks a better balance between large and small businesses and between employers and employees, can she wipe the young people's tears away. The government and the ruling party may think that in the upcoming parliamentary polls, people will focus on national security, not the economy or welfare promises that the President has made but not kept.

Yet nothing changes the minds of voters as much as the economy does. It's still the economy, stupid, and will always be so.

Choi Sung-jin is The Korea Times senior writer. He is reachable at choisj@ktimes.com.
By Na Jeong-ju

Political desk editor

Is China changing its stance on North Korea?

The question is tricky, although the U.N. Security Council passed a new resolution on sanctions against North Korea drafted by the United States and China.

China said it will "strictly" implement the sanctions and join efforts to limit the progress of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

This is viewed as suggesting a major departure from its unwavering support for its reclusive ally amid growing international pressure on Beijing to play an active role in resolving the crisis brewing on the Korean Peninsula.

What troubles China is the worsening international sentiment toward North Korea following the latter's latest missile and nuclear tests. The cold reality confronting Pyongyang now is that it has lost international trust in the course of developing its nuclear capability.

North Korea has merely thrown in strong verbiage along with the threat of an all-out war. Its reaction will by no means help Pyongyang get out of the predicament. Instead, it can only come at the heavy price of further isolation from the rest of the world.

But the strategic importance of North Korea to China will not change, even after the resolution. China may be attempting to reshape its relations with North Korea, but will keep it as a security linchpin and take advantage of the Kim Jong-un regime amid growing rivalry with the U.S.

The U.N. resolution could be a diplomatic triumph for Seoul and Washington because China joined the international community in sanctioning the North. Before that, China had reiterated its stance of maintaining regional peace and stability, without taking any action against the North's provocations.

The attitude change reflects a sense of urgency among Chinese officials over what is happening on the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea and the U.S. have strengthened their defense alliance to counter the belligerent North Korea. They have held more joint drills, redeployed fighter jets and warships and updated reconnaissance systems.

In a speech after the North's latest missile test, President Park Geun-hye warned that the Kim Jong-un regime will eventually collapse if it continues to pursue nuclear weapons.

Park said it is time to seek fundamental solutions to change the North because it has become clear that the past ways of coping with the country have proved ineffective in curbing its nuclear ambitions.

Rather than only depending on international sanctions, Park said she will use "every trick in the book" to tackle the issue.

Despite this, China is unlikely to turn its back on North Korea. Although it drafted the U.N. resolution jointly with the U.S., it refused to take its own economic measures that could deal a fatal blow to North Korea. Its supply of oil to the North was not subject to U.N. sanctions this time.

As a veto-wielding UNSC member, Beijing will likely remain cautious about acting with Washington to push Pyongyang harder.

What makes China more reluctant is the possibility of a sudden regime change in North Korea, and South Korea's tough handling of North Korea.

Before China agreed to the draft U.N. resolution, South Korea and the U.S. pushed China by pledging to set up a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery for the U.S. Forces Korea, which China claimed would be a grave security risk for the Chinese people. South Korea shut down the Gaeseong Industrial Complex  the last remaining symbol of the inter-Korean rapprochement era  in line with international efforts to cut off the flow of hard currency to the North Korean regime.

In this regard, it is interesting to see that China is raising the idea of a peace treaty to replace an armistice agreement signed after the 1950-53 Korean War  a proposal that has long been presented by North Korea  in a bid to reduce regional tensions.

Beijing will eventually act in the best interests of Pyongyang, as long as it matters for its national interests.

Of course, a deal between the U.S. and China on the peace treaty will gravely affect South Korea's national interests.

So, let's see how China will play ball.
By Carl Bildt

STOCKHOLM  In 1963, French President Charles de Gaulle stunned the United Kingdom by rejecting its application to join the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union. The logic behind de Gaulle's famous "non" was simple: Britain was not sufficiently European.

"England in effect is insular, she is maritime, she is linked through her exchanges, her markets, her supply lines to the most diverse and often the most distant countries," explained de Gaulle. "It is possible that one day England might manage to transform herself sufficiently to become part of the European community. In this caseFrance would raise no obstacle."

De Gaulle's veto held for as long as he lived; it was not until 1973, under his successor Georges Pompidou, that France lifted its objections to British membership. In the more than 40 years since, the U.K. has played a major role in shaping the course of European integration, while transforming itself from a "sick man of Europe" into one of the world's most competitive economies.

Few today remember that it was U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, despite her vocal euroskepticism, who restarted Europe's integration process after a decade in which it had stagnated. Thatcher's ally, Arthur Cockfield, EU commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, led the push for a truly integrated market for goods, services, people, and capital  an effort that ultimately led to the creation of the EU Single Market in 1992. Thatcher even broke the old Gaullist dictum that each EU member must hold a national veto on all decisions, paving the way for majority voting.

Likewise, few European politicians have argued more eloquently for a truly common European foreign and security policy than former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair . For him, preserving peace was certainly important, but making Europe a global player was the priority.

So it is ironic that a significant swath of the British electorate seems to share de Gaulle's verdict on their country's affinity to Europe. On June 23, in a decision of momentous importance for all of Europe, U.K. voters will decide in a referendum whether to exit the EU. If they choose to leave, they risk not only unraveling their own economic successes , but also destroying the very underpinnings of a unified Europe.

A British exit  or Brexit  would cause severe damage to the entire continent. In the 1970s and 1980s, the magnetic promise of integration helped stabilize democracy in Greece, Spain, and Portugal. In the 1990s, when 10 countries and 100 million citizens broke from the Soviet empire and joined the West, the promise of EU accession eased, encouraged, and to some extent guided the transition. The soft power of an integrated Europe inspired democratic reform for decades in Turkey; and only two years ago, the promise of Europe inspired democratic change in Ukraine. Although both cases reveal the limits to the EU's soft power, it remains the key to overcoming the legacies of strife in the Balkans.

If the U.K. leaves, that power will quickly wane. Other, grimmer models will become more powerful. The demons of history have yet to be definitively banished in Europe. And a Europe that begins to fracture would not only be weaker; its vulnerability to the destabilizing forces already gathering within its borders would make it more dangerous as well.

Only by acting together can European countries secure the continent's stability and, to some extent, that of its adjacent neighborhood. Without the U.K. as a central part of its structure of peace, Europe may simply lack the necessary mass and begin to spin apart.

At a minimum, Brexit would throw the EU into years of uncertainty. Negotiating a complicated divorce and a new relationship with Britain could consume the EU's political oxygen (especially if, as is quite possible, the U.K. itself breaks up , with Scotland rejoining Europe). This would distract Europe from other serious challenges such as Russian aggression, instability in the Middle East, and its own moribund economy.

For the United States, Brexit would be a betrayal of a key element of foreign policy championed by every American president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin would certainly rejoice. And nationalist forces across Europe would suddenly feel that the future is theirs.

Advocates of Brexit are remarkably reluctant to explain with any precision their plans for their country's future. Their vision seems almost entirely defined by what it opposes. A key question is whether a post-European U.K. could remain part of Thatcher's creation, the single market, especially as it is extended to the digital domain and augmented with free-trade treaties around the world. Leaving the single market would cause grave uncertainty for the British economy, especially its financial sector. Even the U.S. has said that it would be unwilling to negotiate a separate free-trade deal with the U.K.

Remaining in the single market, however, comes at a cost  one that British voters may not support. The U.K. would have to adopt the sort of satellite status that Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein now have, accepting and implementing decisions that it takes no part in shaping. If that democratic deficit is unacceptable to the U.K., it will be left alone, out in the economic cold.

To be sure, de Gaulle was not mistaken when he pointed out that Britain's political culture was different from France's. But the same is true of Sweden's, Poland's, or Austria's. The European project is not about denying diversity or trying to force everyone into the same mold. Indeed, Europe's diversity is in many ways its greatest strength.

Much rides on British voters' decision in June. A U.K. that cuts itself adrift would be at risk of tragedy. A fractured EU would unleash untold dangers. And a world without a strong, unified Europe would be poorer and less safe.

Carl Bildt was Sweden's foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and prime minister from 1991 to 1994, when Sweden joined the EU. Copyright belongs to Project Syndicate.
NK leader should learn from Iran example



If North Korea collapses, it would be because of its leadership's failure to adapt to a changing environment, not because of a series of sanctions imposed by the international community, culminating in the forthcoming United Nations package.



Left to its own devices, the North would complete its slow journey to doom pretty swiftly, ironically vindicating those who foresaw the early death of the nation built around the cult in the 1980s. It is a miracle for this tin-pot dictatorship, now in its third generation, to have survived this far, but the miracle will not last and time has already caught up with it.



However, although the chance is remote, the North's young dictator, Kim Jong-un, may try to follow a new path for a change by undoing what his father and grandfather did  by introducing a system change. The alternative is a regime change, possibly similar to the tragic finale that befell Nicolae Ceausescu, who faced a firing squad, with his body pictured carelessly thrown under a tarpaulin during the 1989 Romanian Revolution.



Or Kim may follow the path of Iran, which recently cut a deal with the West, freezing its nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions that dated back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled Shah Pahlavi and saw the ransacking of the U.S. embassy in Teheran.



Since the advent of the theocracy in Iran, the two pariahs have been close, supporting each other on their nuclear and missile programs. Interestingly, it was rumored that a senior Iranian delegation was present during the North's third nuclear test in 2013. Also, some reports had it that Teheran's missile testing was helped by the North. The two were also named in the axis of evil with Iraq by U.S. President George W. Bush. It was the pinnacle of their "blood ties" that goes even to before the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.



Now, the fates of the two could not be further apart. Iran accepted the proposal by the P5+1 (five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany) and the European Union, preserving its body politic and being welcomed back into the world community. To employ a biblical analogy, Iran has become a land of milk and honey again, with foreign leaders and investors rushing back. Now, reformist President Hassan Rouhani is gaining greater control through recent parliamentary elections.



In contrast, the North is about to see its main mineral exports cut off and cash flows dwindle to a trickle. Kim has China to thank for sparing fuel supplies for civilian use from the sanctions and God for their coming at the end of winter. Kim has now gained bragging rights for his nuclear weapons and missiles that are still years from perfection.



Would he try to maintain his reign of terror in hope of keeping its undernourished population on their toes and preventing the military from becoming disloyal? From inside, he may not see his kingdom severely straining itself on every seam but, seen from outside, bursting open appears a matter of time.



The North does not have what Iran has  oil or a modern political infrastructure like a real parliament elected through a popular vote. But that should be the least of excuses for doing nothing and waiting for Damocles' sword to fall. The North has its own suite of strengths  well-educated manpower and a willing hand of support from the outside. So it is time for the North to use them, emulate Iran and get its own deal for survival.




China is likely to tighten its enforcement of U.N. sanctions against North Korea as the North's nuclear test and rocket launch this year appear to change a calculus of the Chinese Communist Party on how to solve the North Korean problem, according to a Chinese scholar on Monday.



Last week's agreement by the United States and China on a draft U.N. resolution, which includes a ban on the supply of aviation fuel to North Korea, was evidence of the shift in Beijing's stance towards its only treaty ally Pyongyang, said Li Kaisheng, research fellow at the Institute of International Relations of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.



Li made the remarks during an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV on Sunday.



The United Nations is weighing over the draft resolution to punish North Korea for its Jan. 6 nuclear test and Feb. 7 launch of a long-range rocket, both of which violated previous U.N. resolutions.



Winning China's cooperation is key to ensure the effectiveness of U.N. sanctions against North Korea because China accounts for nearly 90 percent of the North's foreign trade.



Still, China is unlikely to put crippling sanctions on North Korea because a sudden collapse of the regime could spark a refugee crisis at its border and lead to a pro-U.S., democratic Korea on its doorstep, analysts say. (Yonhap)




Miss Korea 2015, Lee Min-ji, poses with a local child during the opening ceremony of the Nepal Gunji Korea Franchise Association and Um Hong Gil Human School in Bardiya, Nepal on Feb. 23.

/ Courtesy of the Um Hong Gil Human Foundation



By Kim Hyo-jin



Miss Korea 2015, Lee Min-ji, participated in voluntary activities in Nepal last month, according to a philanthropic foundation.



Lee, 25, reportedly volunteered to help bring medical aid for locals and engaged in charity work for children in Bardiya, a western border district of Nepal, the Um Hong Gil Human Foundation said.



She accompanied a group of foundation officials and 40 other volunteers to the district Feb. 22-29 to commemorate the opening of a school there.



The school, named the Nepal Gunji Korea Franchise Association and Um Hong Gil Human School, was built as part of the Human School Project, aimed at building 16 schools in Nepal.



Um, a renowned South Korean mountaineer who has climbed 16 Himalayan peaks, started the project in 2008 to help children deprived of education opportunities because they live in remote mountainous areas of Nepal. The Nepal Gunji School is the 11th and three more are under construction, the foundation official said.



Lee, inspired by the foundation's work, joined the opening ceremony of the school on Feb. 23 and volunteered to help villagers for three days following the event.



She helped distribute medical supplies and provided assistance to South Korean doctors and officials at the public health center where they treated over 300 locals who knocked on the door for medical aid.



"Lee's participation was critical as we had only one nurse accompanying the group," said the official of the foundation Hong Ok-sun.



"I will work continuously with the foundation to expand educational opportunities for children living in remote areas," Lee said, mentioning the experience was inspiring.



The business sector also joined hands with the foundation on the philanthropic project. The Korea Franchise Association and provided financial aid to build the school that has 11 classrooms and various facilities and the outdoor apparel brand Millet donated school uniforms and bags for about 200 students.



Winning the title of Miss Korea in 2015, Lee majored in vocal arts at Sungshin Women's University.
KT SAT CEO Shin Kyu-sik, second from left, with DDISH TV CEO Bold Ganbat, second from right, after signing the transponder lease agreement at KT SAT headquarters in southern Seoul, Wednesday. / Courtesy of KT SAT



By Lee Min-hyung

KT SAT has signed a transponder lease agreement with Mongolian satellite TV operator DDISH TV.

Under the deal, KT's satellite-based network service affiliate will lease four transponders to offer direct-to-home (DTH) services for the Mongolian company starting next year.

The exclusive contract allows KT SAT to secure a long, stable revenue source, strengthening its foothold in the global satellite-based TV market.

Last year, the company clinched a three-year transponder contract with Pakistan-based satellite business Paksat. But KT SAT said the latest deal is meaningful, because the contract will not expire until the end of the satellites' 17-year lifespan.

DDISH TV will start using KT SAT's KOREASAT-5A satellites from 2017. Expectations are the company will offer more than 90 high-definition channels. DDISH TV is Mongolia's largest satellite broadcasting company, with some 320,000 subscribers since it started the business in 2008.

"The contract came as a result of successful collaboration between KT SAT and our satellite broadcasting provider affiliate, KT Skylife," the company said, Wednesday. "Both companies are expected to strengthen competitiveness in the satellite broadcasting sector, seeking next-generation growth areas."

Meanwhile, KT SAT plans to launch the KOREASAT-5G and KOREASAT-7 satellites at the end of this year, in a move to expand its coverage into nearby countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan.
In an industry where mainstream pop is usually in the forefront, Monday's Korean Music Awards noted a shift in what sort of artists are really leading the pack.

On Feb. 29, K-hip-hop was in the spotlight at the 13th annual Korean Music Awards at the Guro Arts Valley Theater in Seoul.

The South Korean equivalent of the Grammys or the Brits, the KMAs celebrate all genres in the Korean music industry. From jazz to pop, ballads to hip-hop, the night brought together many of the country's brightest talents.

Unlike other music awards shows that consist of fan voting systems, KMA winners are chosen by a panel of music critics, producers, and music reporters, according the Korea Herald.

However, despite the wide variety of music being celebrated, hip-hop dominated the winning list.

Former Supreme Team member rapper E Sens took home the award for Album of the Year with The Anecdote, Deepflow with the award for Artist of the Year, and Big Bang with Song of the Year for their hit "Bae Bae." E Sens and Deepflow also respectively won Best Album and Best Song awards in the Hip-Hop category.

Check out the list of winners below compiled by Reddit:


The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary

Read more
PRESS RELEASE

Puerto Rican Legislator: Cease Debt Payments and Reject a Wall Street-Run Financial Control Board

March 1, 2016 (EIRNS)In proposals made to Puerto Ricos legislature, legislator Manuel Natal Albelo of the governing Popular Democratic Party (PPD), called yesterday for ceasing payment of the islands government debt, until a full auditing can be carried out to determine the debts legitimacy, the Spanish news service EFE reported. Rep. Natal also denounced the proposal to impose a Wall Street-controlled financial control board on the island, now under discussion in Washington.

Natal issued his call on the same day that Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla warned in his State of the State address that the islands $72 bn. debt is "unpayable," and that unless the U.S. Congress acts before May to authorize restructuring, Puerto Rico will fail to make debt payments due in May. "There is no money for those payments," he said.

Natal was blunt:

"Whether or not the U.S. government admits it, Puerto Ricos debt must be restructured, and cannot continue to be paid in its current state. There is no other alternative but to force through, by legislative means, a cessation in the payment of government debt which hasnt been audited."

Nor can Puerto Rico continue to wait for the U.S. Congress to act, he underscored, while bondholders receive their payments but citizens suffer from slashing of essential services.

Puerto Rico is in a "fiscal emergency," Natal warned. He proposed that the Commission for Comprehensive Auditing of Public Credit be adequately funded so it can audit the entirety of the debt, and then

"proceed to restructure that which the Commission deems was issued legally and legitimately."

Rep. Natal also introduced a resolution calling on the legislature to reject the imposition from Washington of any financial control board "whose only purpose would be to protect the financial interests of the bondholders" and undermine Puerto Rican democracy.

"It would be contrary to the nature of a Wall Street-run control board to act on behalf of the interests of the Puerto Rican people,"

he stated, and warned of the role of vulture funds who are "buying influence" in Congress to ensure that any control board set up will defend their interests.
PRESS RELEASE

Syria Ceasefire Holding, Despite Saudi Objections

March 1, 2016 (EIRNS)The U.S.-Russian truce in Syria is holding through its fourth day, despite Saudi-inspired complaints and Turkish shelling across the border.

"The ceasefire regime between government troops and opposition forces in Syria is being respected in general," Lt. Gen. Sergei Kuralenko, the chief of the truce coordination center, told reporters during a press tour at the Russian airbase in Latakia, yesterday. "Officers at the Russian center on Syrian reconciliation registered only seven ceasefire violations in the past 24 hours," Kuralenko stressed.

Both US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon spoke similarly yesterday. During his press conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Kerry indicated that the US was looking into reports of ceasefire violations, but warned against using them to say that the truce was failing. Kerry said that while there were reports of violations, the vast majority in Syria had seen a decrease in violence. "So we call on all the parties not to be looking for a way to get out from under the responsibility of the cessation of hostilities, but rather to help the process to hold itself accountable," Kerry added.

"By and large the cessation of hostilities is holding, even though we have experienced some incidents," Ban Ki Moon told reporters in Geneva after meeting with his special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura.

"But the task force and all other members of this ISSG [International Syria Support Group] are now trying to make sure that this does not spread any further and this cessation of hostilities can continue,"

he said. Even the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was largely holding, with casualties greatly reduced from the time before the agreement took effect.

While just about everybody else is finding that the truce is holding, despite occasional violence, the Saudi-sponsored High Negotiations Committee is claiming that its not. Asaad al-Zoubi, head of the HNC delegation to the peace talks, said the truce had collapsed before it started, reports Todays Zaman.

"We are not facing a violation of the truce ... we are facing a complete nullification," he said, and "we have alternatives to protect our people" if the international community cannot. HNC spokesman Salim al-Muslat said, the truce was a step in the right direction, but a mechanism was needed to stop violationsby the HNCs definitions, violations come from Russia and the Syrian governmentand encourage negotiations.

"There has to be a power that really stops what Russia and what the regime is doing," Muslat said in a television interview with Reuters in Riyadh. "Today there [were] about 10 Russian air strikes, about 16 air strikes done by the regime."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov refuted such claims. "We investigate such reports. I have to tell you that as of today, there is no truth to these reports," Ryabkov told reporters.

"We believe that instead of using unsuitable means to try and blame Russia for the fragility of the current ceasefire, the US-led anti-IS coalition should urge some of its subordinates to be more careful at this time,"

he added.
PRESS RELEASE

In Washington, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier Quotes FDR, Calls for Open Borders, Mideast Marshall Plan

March 1, 2016 (EIRNS)German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking today at George Washington University, quoted Franklin Roosevelt and called for open borders. The worst thing we could do is seal ourselves off, Steinmeier said, referring to the refugee crisis in Europe as well as to the immigration debate here in the U.S.

He began by addressing the refugee crisis in Europe. He quoted from Roosevelts famous Inaugural Address that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, but then referred to what followed where Roosevelt said that fear paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

We need to engage and address the roots of this problem, Steinmeier said.

The proponents of fear do the opposite. But we cant flee from the problem. The world is too interconnected, he said. And building walls is a bad idea, no matter who pays for them,

he said, with a clear dig at Donald Trump.

He underlined the importance of Russia. Part of this leadership will be our dialogue with Russia, Steinmeier said.

We cant be without Russia. We need to engage Russia. We need to remember the lessons of our fathers and grandfathers [who were posted to the borders of the Soviet Union during the Cold War]. 

Regarding the Syrian ceasefire, Steinmeier said,

Every hour that the ceasefire holds is important for the world as well as for the people who are directly affected by it. We must give protection to the refugees fleeing this war. It is not only a humanitarian duty, but it is also written into the EU statutes and the Geneva treaties. The U.S. has always been known as a country that has given refuge to those fleeing war and oppression. We will succeed in this if we attack the root causes of this migration,

The first question came from EIRs representative, who asked him if he didnt agree that we needed a new Marshall Plan for the Middle East, which could build initially upon the important initiative by President Xi Jinping to extend the Belt and Road Initiative to the Middle East, and thereby eliminate the root problem of lack of development in the region.

Steinmeier gave a rather lengthy, but somewhat cautious, reply to the question. He noted that the conditions in devastated Europe after World War II were much different than in the Middle East today. In Europe there was a qualified labor force which could immediately be put to work. In Europe there was already an industrial development that could be built upon. This was not the case generally in the Middle East. While there was some capacity in Iraq of that nature, it was not the case elsewhere. And even in Iraq, much of its territory was still under ISIS control. Many people had already left in the migration to Europe. While economic assistance was needed, particularly food and lodging, there was still a military situation in much of the region.
Davan Maharaj, editor of the Los Angeles Times, has been named publisher as well, part of a sweeping reorganization by the newspapers parent company, Tribune Publishing Co.

Editors at eight other Tribune papers will assume similar dual roles as editor-publishers, and many of the publishers to whom they once reported are leaving the company.

The shake-up, announced Wednesday, comes less than a month after Michael W. Ferro Jr., a Chicago tech entrepreneur, became the companys largest shareholder and chairman.

Advertisement

Maharaj, 53, has been Times editor since December 2011, a job in which he oversees the largest news operation in the western United States. As the 16th publisher in the newspapers 134-year history, he will now also take command of its business operations.

In addition, Maharaj will oversee LA.com, a new content vertical intended to celebrate Los Angeles, capitalize on its global allure and draw readership to The Times.

Timothy E. Ryan, publisher of The Times for the last six months, will move into a new position as the parent companys president of publishing. In that role, he will oversee operations at newspapers other than The Times.

He and Maharaj will report to Tribune Publishings new chief executive, Justin Dearborn.

By eliminating a layer of publishers, the company will reduce costs, an urgent priority for many legacy media properties. A Tribune news release offered an additional rationale for the change, saying editors are in the unique position of understanding their local communities as they make business decisions.

As part of the companys intensifying digital push, Malcolm CasSelle, a tech entrepreneur, will become president of new ventures, leading efforts to develop new digital products and revenue.

Several senior Tribune Publishing executives brought in by Jack Griffin, who was recently removed as CEO, are following him out the door. They include Denise Warren, a former New York Times executive who led Tribune Publishings digital strategy.

In an email to L.A. Times employees Wednesday morning, Maharaj said he was honored to take on added responsibilities as publisher, a role he said will not diminish in the slightest my commitment to the integrity and independence of our news product.

Quite the opposite, he added. I am keenly aware that our business success depends on readers confidence in our journalism, in their faith that what we report is impartial, accurate and intended above all to serve their needs.

Maharaj described Los Angeles as a remarkable crossroads of culture and creativity that has long captured the worlds imagination. He said that Ferro and Dearborn had challenged The Times to position itself as a global brand.

As publisher, I will lead our efforts  on both the editorial and business sides  to make The Times the primary destination for readers and advertisers everywhere who are interested in Los Angeles, California and the West, Maharaj told the staff.

The LA.com Web channel is intended to advance that goal by drawing in new readers interested in trends in film, food, music and art emanating from Los Angeles. The site will feature articles, photos and video from The Times as well as other sources. Maharaj described it as a place to savor and celebrate all things L.A.

Maharaj, a native of Trinidad with a political science degree from the University of Tennessee and a masters degree from Yale Law School, began at The Times as a summer intern in 1989.

As a reporter, he worked in Orange County and Los Angeles and went abroad for The Times as a foreign correspondent, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He served as assistant foreign editor and later as business editor before becoming managing editor in May 2008 and The Times 15th editor three years later.

During his tenure, The Times has redesigned its website, retrained and redeployed staff members and hired journalists with expertise in social media, video and interactive graphics  all with a view to expanding the audience for latimes.com and deepening readers loyalty to the site.

Last year, The Times won its 42nd and 43rd Pulitzer Prizes, as well as other national journalism awards.

The editorial staff  cut from 1,200 to about 500 over more than a decade  was reduced by dozens more in a buyout in late 2015. The paper has filled some of those vacancies this year, with an emphasis on hiring more women and minorities.

Among the Tribune editors who will take on publishers responsibilities is Jeff Light of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Along with The Times and the San Diego paper, editors will become publishers at seven other Tribune Publishing properties: the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, the Orlando Sentinel, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., and the Daily Press in Virginia.

Alan D. Mutter, a media analyst who teaches media economics at UC Berkeley, said the merging of editor and publisher roles seemed to reflect Ferros experience in the tech world, where the people who know most about a product take responsibility for marketing it.

Still, he said, most newspaper editors are not trained in sales, marketing and other aspects of business. Hes asking them to get up to speed on all this stuff as fast as possible, at a time when the business continues to deteriorate, Mutter said.

Although there is ample precedent for combining the editor and publisher roles, the arrangement represents an affront to the traditions of maintaining a rigid separation, or firewall, between editorial and business decisions, Mutter said. He portrayed it, however, as a question of survival.

The walls a lot more Swiss-cheesy today, now that the business is in extremis, he said. As far as Im concerned, this is an emergency situation, and that means all hands on deck. And that means editors worrying about money.

He added: Those of us who care about journalism have to worry not just about the firewall, but about the walls that are holding up the temple of journalism, because theyre extremely rickety.

Tribune Publishing has been a stand-alone company since 2014, when it was spun off from parent Tribune Co., which retained its broadcast properties and was renamed Tribune Media.

In September, under then-CEO Griffin, Tribune Publishing ousted Los Angeles Times publisher Austin Beutner amid disagreements about the papers direction. Succeeding Beutner was Ryan, who had run the companys Baltimore Sun Media Group.

The company struggled during Griffins tenure, its stock price dropping sharply. In early February, Ferro  a Chicago tech entrepreneur, philanthropist and lead investor in the company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times  made a $44.4-million investment in Tribune Publishing through his firm Merrick Media.

That gave him a 16.6% stake in the company and made him the largest shareholder, supplanting Los Angeles investment firm Oaktree Capital Management.

One of Ferros first moves was to replace Griffin with Dearborn, who had worked closely with Ferro in previous business ventures.

To avoid a perceived conflict of interest, Ferro will donate his stake in the Sun-Times, a longtime rival of the Chicago Tribune, to a charitable trust, the company said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, Tribune Publishing released its fourth-quarter earnings for 2015, showing a loss of $77,000  less than 1 cent on a per-share basis  and a $2.8-million loss for the year.

After accounting for one-time costs, including last falls buyouts, adjusted earnings for 2015 were $49.7 million, down 26% from the comparable figure for 2014.

The companys stock has declined 58% since Tribune Publishing was spun off. On Wednesday, the share price rose 8% to close at $9.19.

christopher.goffard@latimes.com

Times staff writer James Rufus Koren contributed to this report.
For years, San Pedros faux New England fishing village Ports O Call has been down on its luck.

The collection of Old English, New England and Spanish styled buildings that opened in the 1960s have long showed their age. Shops sat empty. And while packed on weekends, the village was decidedly sleepy during the work week.

-------------

FOR THE RECORD

An earlier version of this article said construction on the San Pedro Public Market was expected to begin in early 2018. It is slated to start in 2017.

Advertisement

------------

But now, Ports O Call Village is set to get a $100-million makeover.

City officials and developers unveiled plans on Wednesday for turning the aging property into a hip destination with restaurants, an amphitheater and marketplace. The long-awaited redevelopment is seen as a key step in transforming San Pedros once industrial waterfront into a regional destination that includes dining, music and tourist attractions  set to the backdrop of the nations busiest port.

The new Ports O Call, to be renamed the San Pedro Public Market, is set to open in 2020. The current fishing village will be demolished and replaced with 16 acres of restaurants, fresh markets, retail shops, and small offices.

The project will be fronted by a waterfront promenade that will stretch more than half a mile and San Pedros waterfront Red Car, which closed in September, will start running again through the project. Visitors also will be able to visit an amphitheater for live entrainment.

We have the opportunity to do something special along the water front, just as its been done in a lot of other cities, said Wayne Ratkovich, president of L.A.-based Ratkovich Co., which has partnered with Jerico Development on the project.

The project will be privately financed by the developers, while the Port of Los Angeles is paying to upgrade the infrastructure in the area.

Other cities that have redeveloped their waterfront include San Francisco, which demolished the bay side Embarcadero Freeway in the early 1990s and a decade later turned the Ferry Building into a bustling food hall. Baltimore has also had success in redeveloping its Inner Harbor.

Los Angeles has been late to the game. But its port-adjacent waterfront is changing.

The port opened a $32-million promenade and small harbor inlet in 2014 designed to host festivals and movie nights. A $125-million revamp of the Cabrillo Way Marina wrapped up in 2011, and the battleship Iowa opened to visitors a year later. In 2012, a marketplace known as Crafted opened, and a brewery debuted this year.

In all, the port plans to have invested $1 billion by 2026 in sprucing up the waterfront from Wilmington to San Pedro, which has been rebranded the L.A. Waterfront.

One challenge Los Angeles faces, however, is the location of San Pedro, which is farther removed from most of Los Angeles than waterfronts in other cities, said Larry Kosmont, an L.A.-area urban development consultant. San Pedro is a bit off the beaten path and that adds a dimension of uncertainty.

Ports O Call opened in 1962, in a former mooring area for boats on the west bank of the main channel at Los Angeles Harbor. The collection of shops, fish stalls and restaurants prospered.

But it started to decline in the 1980s, in part because the nearby Marineland amusement park shuttered. Thousands still come on the weekend to chow down on seafood from the villages San Pedro Fish Market and sing karaoke in English and Spanish.

But the village has largely fallen on hard times, and 20% of its square-footage now sits empty.

During the week its sleepy, said Elise Swanson, president of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce. The space just needs a fresh look.

Previous plans, including a proposal from Dallas developer Trammell Crow, went nowhere. Part of the delay, Kosmont said, was that the city in past decades often didnt focus on San Pedro, even though many locals clamored to redevelop the port-owned property.

The city didnt seem to have a vision for San Pedro, he said.

But that changed in recent years, he said. And now the port and city say they are moving forward. Construction is expected to begin in 2017.

Ratkovich said he plans to sign a long-term lease for the 30-acre Ports O Call property in two to three months. He will build the San Pedro Public Market first but hold off on the remaining roughly 15 acres, which includes a sprawling parking lot.

We are focused right now on the San Pedro Public Market as we have designed it, he said. If were successful with that, the rest of the plan can be built over time.

Ratkovich said he wants to create a marketplace on par with the Ferry Building in San Francisco and Pike Place Market in Seattle.

While the entire Ports O Call is set to be demolished, the popular San Pedro Fish Market is expected to remain open throughout construction and eventually move into a new space in the redeveloped property.

Councilman Joe Buscaino, who represents San Pedro, said the upcoming project will help the San Pedro waterfront rival those in other cities. Gone are the days of talking about it, he said of a new Ports O Call. This is happening.

andrew.khouri@latimes.com
Computer hackers constantly take aim at the Defense Department, and theyve been successful a few times at defacing websites and reaching into networks where they dont belong.

But now, the military hopes to fend off malicious hackers by enticing some experts to report problems in exchange for cash.

The Hack the Pentagon bug bounty program launching in April will be the first government-sponsored hacking initiative of its kind.

Advertisement

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The idea is borrowed from Snapchat, Google, Microsoft and countless other tech companies that operate similar programs. The firms reward hackers with a bounty, including cash and other prizes, when they report vulnerabilities in their services and tools.

Details of the Pentagons program, which will be coordinated by an outside company, are still being finalized. Getting all the legalities in place to authorize the program has been no simple task, a department spokesman said.

But the Pentagon teased the offering as part of Defense Secretary Ashton Carters visit to Silicon Valley this week, including a stop at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Carter didnt give specifics when asked on television about potential payment amounts, telling CNBC only that the recognition computer programmers will get from saying that they hacked the Pentagon will be a major draw.

The initial program is just a test and covers bugs only on public military websites, but the goal is eventually to expand coverage to identify vulnerabilities in apps and networks, the Pentagon said. Reward-seekers must submit to background checks.

Chat with me on Twitter @peard33.

ALSO

Gamers cash in as fans pay out

Pentagon wages cyberwar against Islamic State

Hollywood hospital pays $17,000 in bitcoin to hackers; FBI investigating
When you win a Pulitzer Prize for music, you hear about it just like everyone else  in the news perhaps, or from other people who read about it before you do.

You dont know anything, said composer Julia Wolfe, who won the coveted award last year for her choral piece Anthracite Fields, an unconventional exploration into the history of coal mining in rural Pennsylvania.

Wolfe recalled that she was at home in her Tribeca loft, working with colleagues from the Bang on a Can ensemble, when a call came in from Washington, D.C. I didnt take it. I didnt know who it was, she recounted.

Advertisement

See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >>

Later that day, she learned about the win from a colleague, and much celebrating ensued. And that missed call? That was NPR, she said. I was glad I didnt pick up. I wouldve said, Huh? 

Anthracite Fields will have its West Coast premiere on Sunday, performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and members of the Bang on a Can All-Stars at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Divided into five chapters, the hourlong choral work creates a highly abstract and fragmented portrayal of the Coal Region, the area of northeast Pennsylvania where anthracite coal mining was the dominant industry around the turn of the 20th century.

I didnt grow up around miners. But the sensibility of the region wasnt so different from the small town where I did grow up, so it felt familiar.  Composer Julia Wolfe

Wolfe grew up in the area but wasnt familiar with the history of coal mining when she began the project.

I didnt grow up around miners. But the sensibility of the region wasnt so different from the small town where I did grow up, so it felt familiar, she said during a recent stop in L.A.

The composer spent about a year researching the subject, including interviewing experts at the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton. One subject that fascinated her was the breaker boys  primarily children who were employed to manually separate debris from the coal.

It seemed abusive, she said, but sometimes the families wanted them to work. They wanted income. Everything counted. And sometimes the boys were proud they were getting wages.

Wolfe has largely avoided inserting sociopolitical messages about labor laws or the environment into the piece.

The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, pictured, and Bang on a Can All-Stars performed Anthracite Fields at Avery Fisher Hall Lincoln Center in May 2014. They were conducted by Julian Wachner. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

Its not didactic, said Grant Gershon, artistic director of the L.A. Master Chorale. She doesnt hit you over the head. It doesnt come from a belligerent environmentalist viewpoint.

In some sections, chorus members invoke a long list of names of coal miners that Wolfe collected during her research. In the pieces last movement, they incant a list of modern-day appliances and other conveniences that rely on fossil fuels.

I wanted people who listen to it to put the pieces together themselves. Its not a manifesto, the composer said.

The musical style of Anthracite Fields ranges widely, with ominous drone tones giving way to more lighthearted sounds and folk passages, with occasional intrusions of rock music-inspired flights of fancy.

Wolfe also makes use of an unconventional instrument: a bicycle wheel spinning while mounted on a cymbal stand. The spokes all have different pitches, she said.

I wanted people who listen to it to put the pieces together themselves. Its not a manifesto.  Grant Gershon, artistic director of the L.A. Master Chorale

Anthracite Fields will be a multimedia presentation, including historic photo montages depicting the coal industry.

Wolfe, 57, is one of the founders of Bang on a Can, the New York group known worldwide for its innovative performances and embrace of new music. She is married to fellow co-founder Michael Gordon, with whom she has two teenage children.

Growing up, Wolfe was expected to follow in the footsteps of her father, a physician.

I was supposed to be a doctor, she said. When she chose to pursue music, her parents werent disappointed, but they were definitely confused.

For much of her career, she has focused on composing for string quartets and string ensembles. But she has frequently branched out into other genres. Steel Hammer, her folk-inspired vocal and instrumental take on the John Henry ballad, was performed in October as part of UCLAs Center for the Art of Performance programming at Royce Hall.

Wolfe said she divides her time between composing and teaching music at New York University, where she recently received tenure.

One of her upcoming projects will tackle another historic labor issue  women working in factories in New York. She said her walk to work often takes her past the site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed more than 100 garment workers, most of them women.

Anthracite Fields was very guy heavy, she said. So I thought, wait a minute, women worked too.

-----------------------

Anthracite Fields

Who: Los Angeles Master Chorale and Bang on a Can All-Stars

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Tickets: $29-$129

Info: (213) 972-7282, www.lamc.org
Friday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Daniil Trifonov exhibited the promise of a spectacular and probing new era of Russian pianism in his Los Angeles recital. Three days later, across the street at the Monday Evening Concerts series, Alexei Lubimov offered some very useful context of what Russian pianism might  must?  stand for.

Lubimov is the most Russian of pianists, except when he is challenging Russian music orthodoxy from all sides and getting away with it. Monday night in the Colburn Schools Zipper Concert Hall, he paid tribute to Maria Veniaminovna Yudina, who was one of the 20th centurys most Russian of pianists, except when she was busy breaking every rule in the Soviet book and getting away with it.

Although neither Yudina (1899-1970) nor Lubimov (born 1944) could be called a celebrity  Lubimovs audience was maybe a 20th the size of Trifonovs, and Yudina has been hardly heard of outside Russia  both are pianists who have had a profound and lasting influence on their culture, musically and politically. Theirs has been the radical approach of not so much antagonizing as simply carrying on, seemingly (on the surface, anyway) oblivious to antagonism.

Advertisement

Yudinas recordings reveal a Russian pianist with a big, old-school, rounded and ringing sound. A deep musical thinker  someone once said that to her the ocean was only knee-deep  she sought the spiritual core in the weightiest works of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms. She was supposedly Stalins favorite pianist, and legend has it that a disc of her playing a Mozart piano concerto was on the dictators record player when he was found dead.

Yet she was the rare Jewish dissident artist who could insult Stalin to his face and somehow stay out of Siberia. After Stalin, she championed the still forbidden Western modern music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. In the 1960s as the unlikely grande dame of Russian pianists, she made contact with the avant-garde likes of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen and championed young Soviet rebels such as Alfred Schnittke.

Lubimov revered Yudina in his student days and has followed in her footsteps. In the 1970s, he broke the news to the Moscow underground of what was happening in the U.S. with John Cage and with the Minimalists, and that proved a major influence on the post-Shostakovich generation. When the authorities clamped down on him, he subversively turned to harmless early music and period keyboards, in the process unearthing long-forgotten wild music, some from Russias past. This too proved a revelation to composers looking for a way out of the approved patriotic musical strictures.

Thats a lot of legacy to get into a concert program, and it wasnt easy to make sense of the mishmash Lubimov came up with, some of which was repetitive of his previous two Monday Evening Concerts programs in recent years. Ever the sly pianist, he got away with it.

One of Lubimovs survival skills clearly has been the chameleon nature of his playing. He began with Schuberts Four Impromptus, D. 899, and he followed that with Valentin Silvestrovs Post Scriptum. The pianist didnt tell us what to read into any of this, other than the fact that Schuberts late essays in wondrous lyricism were favorites of Yudina. Her recording of them is an exercise in generating awe.

However, 25 years ago, just as the Soviet Union was coming apart, Lubimov recorded these impromptus on a fortepiano from Schuberts day, bringing out all kinds of surprising tonal effects on a closely miked old instrument, representing Schubert as a revelatory new-music radical not otherworldly dreamer, an overthrower of history. Around that same time, Silvestrov wrote a piece for violin and piano that dawdles on a mawkish melody that crumbles like a plaster statue of Stalin. This might be heard as the Ukrainian composers giddy postscript to Soviet Kiev. (Still a revolutionary, the vocally anti-Putin Silvestrov participated in the 2014 Maidan demonstrations that led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovich.)

Monday, Lubimov played the Schubert on a modern Steinway grand grandly and loudly  the sound-insulating curtains were removed  as though calling Yudina back from the dead. For Post Scriptum, the pianist was joined by violinist Movses Pogossian, who played with an uncannily eerie tone splendidly gauged for shocking irony.

After intermission, Lubimov preceded three short piano works by reading poems by Boris Pasternak, as Yudina sometimes would during her samizdat-themed recitals in the 1950s. Lubimovs pieces were: Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovskys 1976 Musique Triste, Parfois Tragique (Sad Music, Sometimes Tragic), a hallucinatory deconstruction of the fourth Schubert impromptu that came about after Lubimov turned the Azerbaijan composer onto Terry Rileys In C; C.P.E. Bachs late 18th century hallucinatory Fantasia in C, H. 284; and Galina Ustvolskayas relentlessly hammering, aggressively loud 1988 Piano Sonata No. 6.

By this point, Lubimov sought restoring order in Haydns 45th and last piano trio, with cellist Clive Greensmith joining Lubimov and Pogossian. How this relates to Yudina or anything else wasnt obvious. But Haydns trio are marvelous, overlooked inventions, full of the unexpected. The performance remained true to the high ideals that characterized every aspect of Yudinas chaotic, incautious life in which music always came first. In other words, it was a terrific performance.

mark.swed@latimes.com
Eva Amurri Martino had to fire her daughter's nanny early in February. Then on Tuesday, her husband, Kyle Martino, had to fire the new nanny. Now she's revealing why that went down and, in her own words, it's a "CRAZY (and salacious)" story.

Kyle told Eva about the second firing while she was on her way back from a one-day business trip in New York, the actress and mom wrote Monday on her blog, Happily Eva After.

" 'Don't panic,' he told me, 'But I had to fire the Nanny this morning. Let me tell you the whole story before you freak out.' And tell me, he did  while my stomach dropped out of my body and my hairs stood up on the back of my neck."

Nanny No. 1 had been let go after an uncomfortable confrontation that Eva  Susan Sarandon's daughter  didn't go into detail about on her blog.

"The gist is that I caught her being untruthful with me in a major way," she wrote. "When I asked her some further questions and gave her the opportunity to come clean, she became defensive, insulting, and derogatory. It was absolutely shocking, and what I now realize was a viscerally defensive reaction to having been discovered in this lie."

She characterized it as "a major break up  of a relationship that I had been in for just under a year and a half. It was completely unexpected and deeply emotional, and it brought up many feelings for everyone in our family."

The firing of Nanny No. 2 seems to have kicked it up a notch, however.

"The Nanny usually arrived at 9am (and stayed until 6pm). She knew that I was arriving home on Tuesday but didn't know what time," the mother of one wrote. " An hour before she was supposed to arrive for the day, Kyle got a text message from her show up on his cell phone," Eva wrote. "It said:

"'OMG. Girl, did I mention to you how hot and sex my Boss is. I would love to ... his brains out ha haah. Too bad he seems not to like thick Latin women with lots to hold on to LOL.'"

Kyle was freaked out enough that he took their daughter to breakfast while he figured out how to handle it, his wife wrote. Then on the way home, he saw the nanny  who'd shown up for work and let herself in with her key while they were out  peeking out from the master bedroom. Having decided that the text was no mistake, he raced out to work for the day.

"He also realized in that moment that he was going to record his entire confrontation with her," Eva said. "Because he knew that clearly this chick was crazy  and who knows what she would try to make up or twist after the fact."

A transcript of that conversation follows in the post, rendered as if it were a script. Key elements: She doesn't fall over herself with embarrassment when he calls her out on the inappropriate text. He writes her a check to pay her for the day's work, then he fires her.

Amurri's lady radar was working at full strength by this point.

"Clearly, that text was not a mistake. If it had been a mistake, she would have been humiliated, so frantic to make it right (I've been there with mistaken texts, I know). That text was sent out as a missive to test the proverbial waters with my husband and give her an opportunity later, when alone, to bring up a sexy dialogue with him," she wrote, praising her husband for how he handled the situation and flipping out a bit (OK, a lot) about the idea of this woman positioning herself to do the nasty with Mr. Martino.

Insult to injury: They were now without child care again, and Daddy was headed to the East Coast for 10 days.

To give themselves ample time to hire a new full-time nanny, Eva said, they all packed up, and she and her daughter tagged along for the ride.

"So here we are: in Westchester," she wrote. "Together. Strangely, this bizarre Nanny experience brought us even closer (emotionally and geographically) than we would have been otherwise."

Of course, Amurri Martino's online audience had some opinions, including one person who thought she should look after her child instead of hiring someone to do it. So, it was public smackdown time.

What's that thing they say? You can't get between two people unless the space between them is there already? Ms. Eva Amurri Martino seems to have that locked down.

Follow Christie D'Zurilla on Twitter @theCDZ and Google+. Follow the Ministry of Gossip on Twitter @LATcelebs.

ALSO

Jennifer Garner on her divorce: I had to explain the meaning of 'scandal' to the kids

Ben Affleck dating the nanny? 'Complete garbage, full of lies,' says rep who threatens legal action

Eva Amurri Martino, Kyle Martino welcome a baby; Susan Sarandon happy
A once-secret trove of songwriting diaries, letters and other documents belonging to Bob Dylan, one of the most notoriously private figures in pop music history, has been acquired by a consortium of institutions in Oklahoma, where the new Bob Dylan Archive will reside near that of his musical idol and mentor, Woody Guthrie.

The bounty of material that Dylan has amassed over his nearly 60-year career contains more than 6,000 items, according to the New York Times, constituting an archive that is deeper and more vast than even most Dylan experts could imagine, promising untold insight into the songwriters work.

The material was purchased for a price believed to be in the $15-million to $20-million range by Oklahoma oil and banking billionaire George Kaisers Family Foundation, and the University of Tulsa.

Advertisement

Dylan issued a statement saying he is honored that his papers are to be included with the works of Woody Guthrie and especially alongside all the valuable artifacts from the Native American nations, referring to the collection of Native American art that is also part of the collection of those institutions, along with a rare copy of the Declaration of Independence.

At the heart of the archive is the collection of Dylans extensive notebooks in which he first drafted and then meticulously refined many of his songs.

The New York Times report notes that dozens of rewrites track the evolution of even minor songs like Dignity, which went through more than 40 pages of changes but was still cut from the 1989 album Oh Mercy.

But along with the written material are many reels of tape recordings, contracts and film footage documenting various concert performances.

Plans call for a gallery that will make some of the material accessible to the public, but most of the archive, which is to be housed at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, where Guthries archive is held, will be restricted to serious scholars and for people who have a record of being Dylanologists, University of Tulsa President Steadman Upham told the New York Times.

Dylan aficionados have known that the singer and songwriter often repeatedly reworked lyrics in his songs through manuscripts that have come to light. Dylan and his record label, Columbia Records, have tapped into those materials in recent years for a series of Bootleg archival releases that have replicated some of the working drafts, production notes and other emphemra of his recorded legacy.

But even those most familiar with his creative process have expressed surprise over the voluminous repository that he kept to himself over the decades.

Its going to start anew the way people study Dylan, Princeton historian and Dylan biographer Sean Wilentz told the New York Times.

Follow @RandyLewis2 on Twitter. For more on Classic Rock, join us on Facebook.

MORE:

Bob Dylan: NYC 1961-1964' features photographs of the young folk bard

Neil Young and cast revisit his 1982 film Human Highway at screening and Q&A

The Rolling Stones announce their first-ever concert in Havana
Who is Esperanza Spalding? That was the question that rattled around Google after she dared to beat out Justin Bieber in 2011 as the surprise winner of the Grammy Award for new artist.

She was, at that point at least, a 26-year-old jazz bassist, vocalist and composer with a number of vibrant releases as a bandleader and sideman under her belt, including a long stint backing saxophonist Joe Lovano. That moment at the Grammys  which, of course, featured precious little time for audiences to hear her as a performer  led to appearances at the Oscars, the Nobel Prize ceremony and the White House as her status as the next great hope for jazz seemed all but cast.

To everyone but her, it seems.

Now 31 and one of the most recognizable figures in music, Spalding could have released pleasantly effervescent vocal-jazz albums for decades. But 2012s R&B-leaning Radio Music Society along with some unfettered sets with one of the true celestial explorers jazz in Wayne Shorter hinted that Spalding had more adventurous destinations in mind.

Advertisement

Enter Emilys D+Evolution, Spaldings fifth album and something of a reinvention of any idea we might have had about Spaldings place on the musical map.

Pronounced d plus evolution and suffused with Stevie Wonder funk and zigzagging prog-rock, the album is an artistic statement album with a capital A, complete with an alter ego and theatrical flourishes that hint toward something of a funk-rock opera about death, spirituality and personal identity. Not the sort of stuff that typically comes with a two-drink minimum.

The shift is underscored with Spaldings appearance as well. Gone is her familiar cloud of hair, and in its place are long braids and brightly colored glasses  the better, presumably, to give life to Emily, Spaldings middle name and what she calls the spirit of the record. Not so coincidentally for an album that features performance art and new personas, Emily also features some production from David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, who turns up on half of the albums tracks.

Unlike some of Spaldings earlier work, the album might not be the immediate charmer that was her Grammy breakthrough Chamber Music Society, but the more time spent with Emily reveals it as her most fascinating recording yet.

Full of crunchy guitars from Matthew Stevens  heard on similarly genre-blind releases from Spaldings generational contemporaries in jazz Christian Scott and Ben Williams  and vocals that recall Joni Mitchells jazz-tilted explorations, the album surges past decades-old models of jazz-rock fusion and finds something more idiosyncratic, and a lot richer.

The slow-burning single, Unconditional Love, may be the records most approachable moment with its slowly ascending chorus, but the more far afield Spalding ventures, the more magnetic the record becomes. Opening track Good Lava sets the tone with Stevens guitar drive, and Rest in Pleasure, a track Spalding produced, finds her breathy vocals layered atop each other to frame a wistful, romantic melody.

Spaldings multitracked voice often acts as her own Greek chorus, near-chanting to start the dark churn of Earth to Heaven and Ebony and Ivy, which argues for the essential value of the natural world book ended by a breathless spoken-word section that gives way to an near-operatic chorus.

Noble Nobles directly invokes Mitchell with its bright acoustic guitar and Spaldings percolating bass, and the thick-grooved Funk the Fear at first threatens to pay too-direct tribute to Prince and P-Funk, but its tangled structure and stutter-stop shifts keep the song planted firmly in Spaldings own turf.

Does closing the record with a defiant cover of Veruca Salts bratty I Want It Now from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory underscore Spaldings creative goals too boldly? Maybe, but if that means hearing more surprises in just who she is, its hard to complain.
With "Downton Abbey" coming to an end on Sunday after six extremely entertaining, occasionally absurd and frequently very moving seasons, we decided to take a look back at the many, many characters, both human and otherwise, who've gone gently into that good night since the series began with the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic in 1912. Cue the Sarah McLachlan, bust out the Kleenex and take a trip down memory lane with us.

Titanic departs Southampton, England, on April 2, 1912. (Associated Press) (Associated Press file photo)

James Crawley

Who: Lord Grantham's paternal cousin, closest male relative and heir to Downton Abbey

When: April 15, 1912

How: The sinking of the Titanic

Tragedy factor: Low. So what if he drowned in the icy waters of the North Atlantic? It's not like we knew the guy.

Lifeboats carry survivors of the real-life sinking of the the Titanic. (N.Y. Herald Syndicate) (N.Y. Herald Syndicate)

Patrick Crawley

Who: James' son, Mary's fiance and the next in line to inherit the estate.

When: April 15, 1912

How: The sinking of the Titanic

Tragedy factor: Also low. If he'd lived, Matthew Crawley never would have inherited Downton, or fallen in love with Mary! Sorry Patrick! (And, unlike Lady Edith, we're going to assume that guy who showed up in Season 2 with the scarred face claiming to be Patrick was an impostor because, come on.)

Kemal Pamuk

Who: A dashing Turkish diplomat and friend of Evelyn Napier

When: Spring 1913

How: A heart attackwhile in bed with Lady Mary

Tragedy factor: Moderate. He and Mary shared some serious chemistry, and the fallout from his death would have a ripple effect on the plot for several seasons to come

Pharaoh

Who: Lord Grantham's first beloved Labrador retriever

When: Sometime between 1914 and 1916

How: Unknown

Tragedy factor: Negligible. No one even noticed.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

Who: Okay, so he wasn't a character on the show, exactly, but he was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and his death triggered World War I, and certainly affected everyone on Downton Abbey

When: June 28, 1914

How: Shot by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb

Tragedy factor: Vast. A whole lot of people died during the war. (See below.)

Archibald "Archie" Philpotts

Who: Mrs. Patmore's nephew

When: Circa 1917

How: Shot for cowardice after deserting his post in the war

Tragedy factor: Minor. We never meet Archie and only learn about his fate many years after it's happened. But Mrs. Patmore sure was upset about it.

William Mason

Who: Sweet-natured second footman at Downton Abbey

When: July 26, 1918

How: Lung injuries sustained in France after throwing himself in front of Matthew

Tragedy factor: High. Knowing that he faced certain death, William proposed to Daisy, Downton's scullery maid and the object of his long-unrequited affection, so that she could receive his pension. Daisy accepted even though she wasn't in love, and the two exchanged vows a few hours before he passed away peacefully in his sleep. Sorry, gotta go, these onions I'm chopping are making me tear up!

Lavinia Swire

Who: Matthew's impossibly selfless but super-boring fiance

When: April 1919

How: Spanish flu

Tragedy factor: Lower than it should be, given the dramatic circumstances: Days before her wedding, Lavinia walks in on Mary and Matthew mid-makeout. Awkward! She then comes down with the flu and quickly succumbs, but not before telling Matthew that he and Mary truly belong together. Would have been much sadder if the saintly Lavinia had been a fully-realized human rather than a plot device invented to keep Mary and Matthew apart.

Vera Bates

Who: Evil first wife of Downton's valet, John Bates

When: November 1918

How: In an elaborate plot to frame her estranged husband for murder, Vera committed suicide by consuming a homemade pie baked with rat poison (as you do).

Tragedy factor: Moderate. Vera was a genuinely terrible person and all, but her death triggered years of legal woes for the chronically unlucky Bates and his second wife, Anna -- and frustration for viewers.

Maj. Charles Bryant

Who: Posh soldier who convalesced at Downton Abbey and impregnated housemaid Ethel

When: Late 1918

How: Killed in battle shortly before the armistice

Tragedy factor: Moderate. Maj. Bryant was a cad, but after he died, Ethel turned to prostitution to support her son.

Reggie Swire

Who: A wealthy London solicitor and father of Lavinia, Matthew's doomed fiance

When: Late December 1919

How: Unspecified illness

Tragedy factor: So low as to be almost negative. In one of "Downton Abbey's" most ludicrous subplots, Swire bequeathed his fortune to Matthew, the guy who broke his daughter's heart while she was dying of the flu. But hey, his money saved the family from ruin! Win-win!

Sybil Branson, nee Crawley

Who: Kind-hearted, politically active youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Grantham and wife of Thomas Branson, former chauffeur at Downton Abbey

When: Spring 1920

How: Complications from childbirth

Tragedy factor: Extreme. We're talking "Steel Magnolias" levels of sad, so heartbreaking that it made the usually cold and cunning Thomas weep like a baby. The tragedy was compounded by the sense it might have been avoidable: Dr. Clarkson correctly diagnosed her preeclampsia but was ignored by Lord Grantham and the fancy London doctor he'd hired (though it's later revealed nothing could have saved her).

Matthew Crawley

Who: Lady Mary's husband and the heir to Downton Abbey (duh!)

When: September 1921

How: Car accident

Tragedy factor: So off-the-charts heartbreaking, bordering on sadistic, that some of us still haven't recovered. Matthew managed to survive the war and miraculously recover from a spinal cord injury only to be killed in a car accident on his way home from the hospital just hours after meeting his newborn son, George, for the first time. Did we mention that the episode aired on Christmas Day in the U.K.?

Alex Green

Who: Lord Gillingham's valet

When: August 1922

How: Pushed into traffic in Piccadilly Circus -- but not by Anna

Tragedy factor: Low. The guy who brutally raped Anna got what was coming to him, even if -- sigh -- his death created yet another round of legal worries for the Bateses.

Michael Gregson

Who: Editor of the society magazine The Sketch and Lady Edith's boyfriend/baby-daddy

When: November 1923

How: Killed by a gang of Nazi thugs during the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, where he'd gone to establish German citizenship so that he could divorce his insane wife and marry Edith (long story, OK?)

Tragedy factor: High. Gregson died before Edith could tell him she was pregnant. She gave birth in secret and gave her daughter, Marigold, up for adoption -- only to change her mind and bring her to Downton.

Isis

Who: Lord Grantham's second beloved Labrador retriever

When: Mid-1924

How: Cancer

Tragedy factor: Medium-High. Grantham seriously loved that dog, despite the unfortunate modern connotations of her name.

Charlie Rogers

Who: Henry Talbot's racing buddy

When: July 1925

How: Car crash during race at Brooklands

Tragedy factor: Minimal. The only reason the character existed was to die and make Mary freak out about Henry. Mission accomplished.

Peter Pelham, the Sixth Marquess of Hexham

Who: Bertie's "delicate," "lyrical" cousin and the owner of Brancaster Castle

When: August 1925

How: Malaria, contracted while in Tangiers

Tragedy factor: Minimal. Bertie was sad, but with one mosquito bite, he's gone from a modest estate agent to a super rich aristocrat! To quote Lord Grantham, "Golly gumdrops, what a turn-up!"

Follow @MeredithBlake on Twitter.

MORE:

'Downton Abbey' series finale recap: Shiny, happy people

'Downton Abbey's' Julian Fellowes balanced resolution and change in final season

'Downton Abbey' recap: And the award for world's worst sister goes to ... Lady Mary!

The Times' original review of 'Downton Abbey' found 'plenty of sex and secrets, romance and treachery to go 'round'

DIY 'Downton Abbey' tour: Free map to 70 filming locations in Britain
Pajama dressing is poised to be springs biggest trend, and it may have the power to dethrone athleisure as the most easy-to-wear style. While its technically more casual than the ubiquitous activewear trend, fashion labels, including Valentino, Dolce & Gabbana and Givenchy, are offering an elevated and ethereal take on this relaxed look.

Think silky, boudoir-inspired blouses instead of jersey performance tanks, and smoking slippers over statement sneakers.

And a perk worth daydreaming about? Pajama pants are a lot more forgiving than leggings, says Salvador Perez, the Los Angeles-based costume designer for the Hulu show The Mindy Project. Pajama pants dont care if you had a burger for lunch. Leggings will judge you, harshly.

Advertisement

The style is ideal for Angelenos who thrive in the hyper-casual fashion scene but have places to go and paparazzi to be photographed by. The Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard was the February venue for Dolce & Gabbana to celebrate its new Pyjama Party capsule collection ($1,595 each for tops and bottoms).

Jessica Alba, Joan Smalls, Nicole Richie and Naomi Campbell showed up in literal eveningwear to honor the Italian fashion houses long history with the theme, which began with pajamas on the runway in spring / summer 1995. Assuring the trend will continue through the year, the label showed several mens pajama-themed looks during its mens fall / winter 2016 show.

There are things that become trends in a second, and they disappear just as fast, Stefano Gabbana says. Others take longer to be understood and made ones own. Adds Domenico Dolce, By continuing to show pajamas again and again in the various collections, people get used to them. And now its what everyone wants.

Though it has been about 100 years since Coco Chanel made pajamas a fashion statement, the look is as fresh as ever thanks to well-accomplished interpretations on the theme. On the spring / summer 2016 ready-to-wear runway, Givenchy tailored sensual lace, sheers and silks to elegant proportions, while Alexander McQueen showed what appears to be the worlds most sumptuous comforter-turned-coat during the labels fall 2016 ready-to-wear show in London in February. Valentinos silk printed pajamas have stayed in the picture since their debut last fall thanks to an unlikely and unreal fashion icon: Owen Wilsons character Hansel from Zoolander 2.

Also notable for its pajama-inspired selections is Brock Collection, a New York-established label known for its feminine ease. Brock Collection designers Laura Vassar and Kristopher Brock recently relocated to Newport Beach, and their fall 2016 pieces include a flattering and luxe mink coat ($16,990) cut like a terry cloth robe. We wanted to make a fur that was a little more wearable on a daily basis, Brock says.

Another piece worth a look is the romantic, Old Hollywood-inspired crushed velvet gown-like robe ($5,290). It can be worn on its own as an evening piece, says Vassar. Or over jeans, open at the bottom.

The trend also has made its way into the new crop of high-end, direct-to-consumer brands. San Francisco-based Cuyana offers blanket-like alpaca capes ($195), while M. Gemi recently reissued its sold-out hit smoking slipper, the Stellato ($228). And AYR offers the quite literally named Robe Dress ($425) in silk jersey.

The theme also has popped up at fast-fashion stores with Old Navy selling lace-accented tops and dresses ($35) and H&M offering kimonos for women ($40) and paisley-printed satin shirts for men ($50).

And how do you put the trend into practice without looking like you overslept and forgot to get dressed? Perez, who also serves as the president of the Costume Designers Guild, cautions that its all in the fabric. If its a print, its going to look like pajamas, he says. If its a solid silk or satin, it can just look like a fabulous pantsuit. One particular look he champions is a black silk pajama set  sleeves rolled up, please  with stilettos.

As for why we dont see men in loungewear on The Mindy Project, where star Mindy Kaling herself has worn pajama-inspired looks for years? Although pajama pants are very comfortable for men, says Perez, due to an issue of anatomy, they need a little more structure in their garments.

image@latimes.com
Two inescapable beer trends are the continued dominance of the IPA style and the increasing popularity of canned craft brews. The hopped-up and bitter IPAs are the biggest thing to happen in craft beer since home brewing, and the so-called West Coast variations on the hoppy and strong pale ale theme are the most popular of the lot.

These purposely unbalanced brews pair intense aromas with simple malt flavors and a near total lack of sweetness. The dry and bitter finish helps heighten the impact of the hops aroma and bitterness.

Here are three new beers that combine the two trends to deliver big hop-forward aromas in a convenient package.

Advertisement

Firestone Walker Luponic Distortion

The latest hoppy tonic from the brewers in Paso Robles, Luponic Distortion (the name refers to lupulin, the pungent resin that gives hops bitter and aromatic qualities) is perhaps the superlative brewerys most ambitious hop-fueled project to date.

The beer is actually an evolving product that will feature new and experimental hop varieties with each release, while keeping the light and dry base beer the same.

This is an IPA thats all about the aroma, with citrus and tropical fruit scents layered with delicate floral notes and a deeper pungency. Theres little malt character to speak of, and fermentation flavors are equally understated. The clean and crisp finish underscores all those hops, and an alcohol content lower than most IPAs further accentuates the punchy hop aroma.

Luponic Distortion will get a new release with a new blend of hop varieties about every 90 days, and the initial 001 release may already be in the running for the best new brew of 2016. When an adventurous concept is married to a flawless execution by one of Californias most technically excellent breweries, you end up with cans of some really special stuff.

Anchor Brewing Go West! IPA

San Franciscos Anchor Brewery created what many consider to be the first American IPA when it introduced its Liberty Ale in 1975, but in 40 years since, theyve only dabbled in craft beers most popular style.

Their newest entry into the very crowded field is Go West! IPA, and the brew represents a major transition for the veteran brewery. Brewmaster Mark Carpenter -- who first started brewing for Anchor in 1971 -- is stepping down from his position (though hell remain brewmaster emeritus) and Go West! is the first brew to be developed by new brewmaster Scott Ungermann.

------------

For the Record

March 3, 5:53 p.m.: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that the new brewmaster at Anchor Brewery is Brian Ungermann. His name is Scott.

------------

The beer is pale golden and even lighter in body, but the hop character is robust and complex. Ungermann developed some specialized brewing equipment specifically for the new IPA, and a blend of hop varieties such as Citra, Equinox, and Eureka! are used in the new dry hopping tank to provide an intensity of aroma. Lemongrass, passion fruit and kiwi spring out of the glass, and each sip finishes with a brisk bitterness.

Its middle-of-the-pack strength (6.7% alcohol) balances drinkability with the depth of flavor. Anchor Brewing has introduced a long list of new beers over the past couple of years, but Go West! is one of the more impressive recent examples.

Samuel Adams Rebel Cascade IPA

After years of resisting the IPA trend, the Boston Beer Co. finally introduced its Rebel series of IPAs in 2013. The brewery is best known for its Samuel Adams Boston Lager called Rebel IPA, a West Coast-style IPA.

Though theres a whole family of Rebel-branded brews, the brewery has also introduced a kind of throwback IPA called Rebel Cascade IPA. This canned brew prominently features the classic flavors of the American Cascade hop whose distinctive grapefruit and pine-needle aromas defined the early craft beers.

Rebel Cascade IPA uses more assertive malts than is typical for the modern West Coast IPA style, and coupled with the very distinctive hop character (made famous by the ubiquitous Sierra Nevada Pale Ale), this brew has an interesting retro vibe.

ALSO



Doughnuts, beer and stuff-on-toast, at a new restaurant in downtown L.A.

Get your Korean banchan fix at the Foodshop, a new restaurant in Koreatown

Food and wine events: Israeli festival, Bon Appetits Vegas Uncorkd, the Chardonnay symposium
Im Davan Maharaj, editor of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today.

TOP STORIES

Super Tuesday Scrum

Advertisement

It isnt over till its over, but both parties front-runners moved closer to becoming presidential nominees as the dust settled on Super Tuesday. In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton was projected to win at least seven states, including the biggest; Bernie Sanders was projected to win four, one of them his home state. On the Republican side, Donald Trump rolled up big victories in the Northeast and across the South; Ted Cruz won his home state of Texas, next-door neighbor Oklahoma and Alaska; and Marco Rubio took Minnesota. Check out full coverage here; relive the night with our live blog; and find more insight in our Essential Politics newsletter.

More About Super Tuesday

-- Detailed state-by-state results

-- Were keeping score of how many delegates each candidate has.

-- Trump may have won the night, but Chris Christie won the Twitter meme game.

LAPD Is Asking Questions After Shootings

A new LAPD report shows that 14 of the 38 people shot by L.A. police last year had documented signs of mental illness. Most of those 38 were Latino, and 21% were African American in a city that is about 9% black. Were more than willing to look ourselves in the mirror and say, Whats occurring and how can we do better? said Chief Charlie Beck. Heres more from the 300-page report.

Why the Drought Hasnt Been All Bad

Call it the February Fizzle. Instead of El Ninos deluge, we got hot and dry weather. The snowpack dropped back to only 83% of average. The drought abides. But amid those negatives, Californias water chief sees some positives: the lessons learned, gratitude for every drop weve got so far, and the hope of a March Miracle. Read on to see what she told Pete King about our water future.

Around and Around the World in 340 Days

Youve probably seen his photos. Or maybe you saw him answer questions in space. After 340 days in the sky, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly touched the ground again Tuesday night, along with his fellow year in space crew member Mikhail Kornienko of Russia. In a sense, Kellys journey will continue, as he and his earthbound twin Mark Kelly are studied to determine the effects of long-term stays in space.

The Most Closely Watched Republican in D.C.

Charles E. Grassley of Iowa leads the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is tasked with vetting potential Supreme Court justices. As has been well documented, Republican leaders have vowed to block any consideration of a nominee from President Obama. But the administration and Senate Democrats are hoping Grassley will see it otherwise. After an hourlong sit-down at the White House, the verdict: unmoved. Will that change any time soon?

CALIFORNIA

-- Southern Californias air quality board is moving to replace its top executive.

-- San Francisco sheriffs deputies were charged with participating in a fight club involving jail inmates.

-- The L.A. County Fair Assn. is not planning to host raves this year. At a rave last summer, 49 people were taken to emergency rooms; two of them died.

-- Why are so many sea lion pups starving? Scientists find the answer off the Central California coast.

-- A glass slide 1,000 feet above the streets of downtown L.A. is coming in June. Look out below. Or dont.

NATION-WORLD

-- The fight between Apple and the FBI moved to Capitol Hill.

-- The Supreme Court considers abortion laws: Can a state regulate clinics out of business?

-- Oklahoma officials take new steps to try to reduce fracking-linked earthquakes.

-- Developers plan a one-stop medical facility in Tijuana thats convenient to Americans.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- Advocates behind #OscarsSoWhite talk about their plans to keep fighting for change.

-- In Memoriam: Remembering everyone who died on Downton Abbey.

-- TV review: In The Real ONeals, the family that goes cray-cray together stays together.

-- Chinas box office tops $1 billion in February, outpacing the U.S. for the second year running.

-- #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain: John Oliver takes on the Donald Trump mystique.

-- Theater review: In Aubergine, Julia Cho turns choked-off emotions into a tale of sustenance.

BUSINESS

-- A California Supreme Court decision will allow some former homeowners to sue for wrongful foreclosure.

-- Olympus paid doctors with wine, trips and balloon rides; now its paying $623.2 million to settle charges related to violations of anti-kickback laws.

-- Sacramento-based Aerojet gets a big boost in its race to develop a U.S.-built rocket engine.

SPORTS

-- Chuck the Condor, the Clippers new mascot, is here. And pretty much everyone hates him.

-- Conor McGregor continues to move up in the UFC world.

-- USC basketball has been perfect this season when this DJ plays.

-- Tired of it being cool and OK to bash Asians. Was Jeremy Lins criticism of Chris Rock on point?

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- Actor Mark Ruffalo took Leonardo DiCaprio and other Hollywood types on a tour of L.A.'s oil fields. (GOOD Magazine)

-- Catching up with the archetypal postwar suburb of Levittown, Pa. (CityLab)

-- Ahead of the Olympics for Shakespearean scholarship, the Bards grave is scanned. (BBC)

ONLY IN L.A.

Ever wonder about that name on a sign you drive by every day? Reader Carrie Yutzy asked us about one she passes on West Adams Boulevard that reads, Cecil Fergerson. Living Cultural Treasure of Los Angeles. No. 3. Proclaimed by Mayor Richard J. Riordan. Read on to see how ""the Ferg, as artist John Outterbridge called him, went from janitor to museum curator.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.
Many low-income students and children of undocumented parents are having a harder time finishing their financial aid applications this year. Thats because of a new system thats meant to protect sensitive financial information but in practice keeps out already-disadvantaged populations.

Californians must submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by midnight Wednesday to be eligible for the biggest pot of state college funds, the Cal Grant. Officials are asking students to submit even an incomplete FAFSA immediately, so that they make the deadline but can fill in more information later.

The change has plunged college counselors across the state  and country  into overdrive as they spend more time handling digital paperwork.

Advertisement

Follow the Times education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>

The new security system requires parents and students to create an FSA ID. It feels so impenetrable that it has led some advocates, such as Kim Cook, director of the National College Access Network, to wonder whether it went slightly overboard.

To create an FSA ID, one must have an email address  but counselors say that the parents of low-income students are less likely to have one.

You also need to have a Social Security number, which edges out students whose parents are undocumented immigrants. And password recovery is also tricky  when you create a password, you have to answer three personal challenge questions, create your own question and answer it, and enter a significant date thats not your birthday.

In other words, its a lot for a high school student to remember.

Any hindrance in applying for financial aid can keep them from getting to college, because it would be nearly impossible for many to afford it.

Across the country, borrowers who graduated in 2014 had an average student debt of $28,950, compared to $21,382 in California. Compared to other states, California is relatively generous in its financial aid offerings: for students who demonstrate financial need and have a GPA of 3.0 or higher, the Cal Grant pays for different types of schooling, including nearly a full ride at University of California schools; for different GPAs, there are different awards. But that means little if eligible students cant get the cash.

The reason why low-income kids dont go to college is a fear that they cant pay for college, said Marie Groark, director of Get Schooled, an organization that runs a texting hotline that helps students get to college. Because of barriers like this, if they cant get their FAFSAs done, kids cannot go to college because they cannot pay for college.

Its possible to file for financial aid without creating an ID, by mailing in an application, but that takes longer. Since students have to mail the signature page it takes longer for the students FAFSA to be processed, said Carlos Benitez, a counselor at Gertz-Ressler High School in Los Angeles. Signature pages have been taking longer to process. Its also possible to mail in an application for a student whose parent who doesnt have a Social Security number.

Get Schooled surveyed its members in 34 states and found that of the 220 students who responded, 22% of students across the country and 21% of those in California said they had some issues with FSA ID.

I am just so confused about FSA ID, one student texted. I could set not up a FSA ID, I got so many error messages so I had to mail it, said another one.

Lynda McGee, a counselor at Downtown Magnets High School in Los Angeles, which has a high population of poor students, has processed 200 FAFSAs so far. This year is tough, she said. It often says the Social doesnt match, we cant even get the ID, she said. For students like mine, without the Cal Grant, they probably would not be attending a UC.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Counselors in different places told the College Access Network that it has taken almost double the time to complete a FAFSA as it has in previous years, Cook said. Any extra hoop that we ask a student to go through is telling us that its hurting  FAFSA completion, Cook said. She asserts that on balance, the new ID is a good thing, because students are submitting IRS data online, but added that it should become more user-friendly.

And its a potential barrier not only for high school seniors, but for adults who need to renew their applications or are eligible for a different kind of financial aid. This year, Sophia Faruqi, a student at Solano Community College in Fairfield, became eligible to receive the more generous Cal Grant as opposed to federal grants. But when applying, she got locked out for a day.

She ultimately succeeded, but the process was stressful. I was like, oh my God, how am I going to pay for that? she said.

To help solve the problem, schools across California have held Cash for College events to get the word out. In Fresno, 1,200 people came to a similar event, according to Ruben Castillo, the administrator of migrant education for the Fresno County Office of education. At Gertz-Ressler High School in Los Angeles, parents and students were given homework two weeks in advance: create an FSA ID.

Castillo and others worry that the glitch is causing fewer students to complete financial aid applications, but its hard to be certain. State officials said they thought based on available information, seniors were on track to complete FAFSAs at the rate they expected. But according to an analysis from Troy Miller, associate director for research and policy at the Florida College Access Network, FAFSA completions for Californias 12th-graders are down 10.9% between Feb. 19 of 2015 and 2016.

That drop, though, could be caused by several factors: the size of the senior class, the number of seniors graduating or going to college, or problems with the form itself. Miller observed similar trends across several states.

The federal government, Miller said, is mining their data for an answer.

As of Thursday, about 28 million users created an FSA ID since its launch, said Dorie Nolt, a U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman.

Cybersecurity has changed significantly since 1998, so it was critical that we updated the security measures, she said in a statement. As with any new online log-in system, we know there will be users who have difficulty, and we encourage them to call 1-800-4-FED-AID (1-800-433-3243) or visit StudentAid.gov/fsaid for assistance.

I am very concerned that the number of kids who are not accessing the application is because they dont know how to maneuver and manipulate the system, Castillo said. For a lot of these kids, this is the only way they can attend higher education. They get left out. Castillo is working with a nonprofit to sponsor legislation that would make the creation of an FSA ID number a graduation requirement.

A spokesperson from the Los Angeles Unified School District, though, said its director of academic and counseling services reported that the district had not received calls about the ID.

Lupita Cortez Alcala, executive director of the California Student Aid Commission, hopes that all students will at least submit a FAFSA before the deadline, even if not all their information is filled in  they can then complete their application. She added that CSAC, the states financial aid agency, has customer service representatives available from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m.

As the moments before the midnight deadline tick away, school counselors reflect on the significance behind the glitches. Certain populations with wealthier student bodies, theyve got kids working with private counselors and they get it done. Or they have parents who are very savvy, McGee said. A lot of my kids depend on me.

McGee noticed that wealthier kids just know theyre going to college. They dont question that its coming to them. Sometimes, when youre dealing with first-generation kids, they tend to wonder if they deserve it, she said. Its hard to teach entitlement.

You can reach Joy Resmovits on Twitter @Joy_Resmovits and by email at joy.resmovits@LATimes.com.

ALSO

New L.A. schools chief Michelle King calls for making peace with charters

Thanks to Nikes Phil Knight, Stanford is planning an ambitious graduate scholars program

Why only 19% of Cal State freshmen graduate on time -- and what lawmakers aim to do about it
Southern Californias air quality board is moving to replace its top executive a month after Republicans gained a majority on the panel with new appointees who have vowed to make pollution regulations less burdensome for businesses.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District gave notice in an agenda item posted Tuesday that its governing board will hold a closed-door session to evaluate the performance of longtime Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein and consider his resignation, dismissal or other personnel actions.

NEWSLETTER: Get essential California headlines delivered daily >>

Advertisement

The appointment of an acting director to replace Wallerstein might also be considered at the session, which will take place at the air boards monthly meeting Friday in Diamond Bar.

The potential departure of Wallerstein, who has worked for more than three decades at the nations most powerful regional smog-fighting agency, comes after a campaign to shift its governing board toward regulation that is friendlier to industry.

The 13-member panel consists of elected officials and other appointees from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The board is charged with adopting pollution control regulations to protect the health of 17 million people in a region with the dirtiest air in the country.

In November, elected officials from cities in Orange County unseated Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, a Democrat and clean-energy advocate, and replaced him with Dwight Robinson, a Republican councilman from Lake Forest who has been outspoken about the effects of air pollution regulations on businesses.

In a letter in support of Robinsons appointment to the air board last year, Orange County Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker touted the councilmans strong, pro-business policies and his belief that governments at all levels need to reduce regulations so businesses can thrive.

Robinsons appointment gave Republicans a seven-member majority on the board, starting in February.

Wallerstein has been executive director since 1997. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment.

Although it is unclear who placed the item regarding Wallerstein on the boards agenda, the name of William A. Burke, a Democrat who has long chaired the air board, appears next to an item in which severance and other personnel action on the executive director would be reported publicly.

Burke did not return a call seeking comment.

Larry McCallon, the Republican mayor of Highland in San Bernardino County who was sworn in to the air quality board last month, said in an interview Tuesday that the air quality district must do more to address the economic burden of pollution regulations on area businesses.

I believe that having jobs are just as important for a persons health, for a familys health, as having clean air, McCallon said. He said he has not worked directly with Wallerstein long enough to form an opinion about his leadership.

McCallon downplayed the significance of the boards new Republican majority. As an example, he pointed to the boards controversial decision in December to reject tough new pollution control measures proposed by agency staff, noting that the 7-5 vote crossed party lines.

Four Democrats and three Republicans on the board voted to adopt a two-page alternative plan by the Western States Petroleum Assn. and other business groups that is expected to delay the installation of costly emissions controls at oil refineries and other major pollution sources and slow progress toward clean air.

Wallerstein and other staff members had warned board members before their vote that the industry-backed measures were not supported by the agencys analysis and was not legally defensible.

A month later, the California Air Resources Board took the unusual step of criticizing the air quality district boards decision. The state board said the weaker plan to cut smog-forming pollutants from oil refineries, power plants, factories and other major sources may violate the law and will harm peoples health across the region.

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

The staff-proposed emissions rules were intensely opposed by the oil industry, which argued they would force refineries and other facilities to spend billions to upgrade pollution controls. Residents from the regions most-polluted communities had urged the board to adopt stronger regulations to help ease asthma and other smog-related health problems.

Environmentalists on Tuesday called the move to replace Wallerstein an alarming signal that the air board may be shifting further from its mandate to protect residents health. They said the action may have come in response to a defense of stronger emissions-cutting rules by Wallerstein and his staff.

Dr. Wallerstein is one of the most knowledgeable and respected air quality officials in the nation, and his removal would be a big step backward in the struggle for clean air and public health, said V. John White, a former lobbyist for the air district and the Sierra Club who now is executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies in Sacramento.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti issued a statement in support of Wallerstein, saying, I will do everything possible to ensure that AQMD continues to have bold and strong leadership so that Los Angeles remains on a path towards healthier air.

The action also comes as the air district is preparing a sweeping new air quality plan that will guide the regions efforts to reduce emissions to meet federal health standards for ozone and fine particulate matter.

California Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), who appoints one air board member, said the move to replace Wallerstein is the latest in a line of anti-clean air actions instigated by the polluters lobby.

He praised the districts leadership in cleaning the air and vowed to take all appropriate action to remedy the situation.

For more air quality and environment news, follow me @tonybarboza

tony.barboza@latimes.com

ALSO

Californias snowpack falls below average, sparking new drought fears

Dog park and other tenants fight to remain on VA land in West L.A.

Drought hasnt been all badweve learned some things too, California water chief says
A Los Angeles City Council committee approved plans Tuesday to increase water and power rates, moving Department of Water and Power customers one step closer to higher bills this spring.

With three members present, the Energy and Environment Committee cleared the way for the full council to consider the DWPs rate proposals at its Wednesday meeting.

If approved, rates will increase 4.7% for water and 3.86% for power each year for five years, the citys ratepayer advocate said.

Advertisement

The DWP estimates that customers who use typical amounts of water and electricity will see a 3% average annual increase to their monthly bills. At the end of five years, those customers would pay about $21 more on their monthly bills than they do now, the utility says.

The water case  has some very good policy, committee Chairman Felipe Fuentes said, citing the move from two to four rate tiers to create an incentive for conservation. On the electric side of things, Im nervous.

We only have the ability to affirm or deny, he continued. So I dont know what to do but support both of those cases.

DWP officials have been campaigning for the $330-million water rate hike and a $720-million power rate increase for the last several months. They say the revenue is necessary to replace aging water mains and develop more local water supplies. On the power side, officials estimate that about 80% of new revenue would go toward meeting clean energy and climate change mandates.

In 2014, a massive pipe rupture near UCLA flooded the campus and surrounding streets, underscoring the need to replace aging water lines. Meanwhile, the city faces mandates related to renewable energy, once-through ocean water cooling and coal-fired power.

DWP officials warned Tuesday that failing to meet those requirements could result in massive fines and a downgraded credit rating, which could force the agency to demand a larger rate increase down the road and lay off recently hired customer service representatives.

This is always going to be a balancing act, DWP General Manager Marcie Edwards said. We did our best work in trying to find the sweet spot.

For the most part, DWP watchdogs, environmental advocacy groups and business owners have supported the water rate increase. A years-long drought has put a fine point on the need for urban areas to diversify their water supply.

Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >>

But some have raised concerns about the proposed power rate increase, questioning the annual transfer of 8% of power revenue to L.A.'s general fund.

Ratepayers have filed lawsuits arguing that the transfer payments to City Hall violate Proposition 26, a 2010 state ballot measure that prohibits government agencies from charging more for certain services than they cost to provide.

The DWP also collects a controversial utility users tax of between 10% and 12.5% on behalf of the city. That tax also goes into the citys general fund, but it is not factored into the departments rate calculation and is not part of the proposal, a DWP spokesman said.

We do not oppose the proposed rate increase, said Nicholas Hariton, an attorney representing the San Fernando Valley Business Political Action Committee. What we do oppose is the massive windfall  that the citys general fund will receive.

This is an additional burden placed squarely on the backs of the ratepayers that will neither improve the aging infrastructure nor meet the alternative energy goals.

Fuentes also raised what he called real concerns about the legality of the rate increases because of the way officials calculated the cost of providing service.

In approving the rate hikes, he made several recommendations to Edwards and the board of commissioners that oversees the DWP. Fuentes asked that the board consider moving up a deadline for an interim rate review and called on the utility to create a plan to improve productivity.

Ref Rodriguez, a Los Angeles Unified School District board member, was one of several district representatives who protested the higher rates. He said that once the hikes were fully implemented, they would cost the district an additional $22.4 million per year, equivalent to the cost of about 211 classroom teachers.

The school district cant just say, Hey, state, give us more money, Rodriguez said. Weve got to do with what we have.

Ratepayer Advocate Fred Pickel said the water and power plans are reasonable. The utilitys board of commissioners approved the water rate increase in December and the power rate hike the next month. Mayor Eric Garcetti has already issued statements relaying his support for the proposals.

DWP officials have said they hope to have the new rates in effect by April 1.

For more on the California drought and water, follow me on Twitter @ByMattStevens

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

ALSO

Driver charged with murder in alleged street-racing crash on 5 Freeway that killed 3

Indio high school students asked to stop wearing anti-gay symbols for now

After suspected drug overdose deaths, Fairplex has no plans to host raves in 2016
After months of discussions, meetings and revisions, the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to the first increase in water and power base rates in years.

With a 12-2 vote, the council gave its go-ahead to the Department of Water and Powers proposal to boost water rates 4.7% and power rates 3.86% each year for five years.

The DWP estimates that customers who use typical amounts of water and electricity will see a more modest 3% average annual increase to their monthly bills. At the end of five years, those customers would pay about $21 more per month than they do now, the utility says.

Advertisement

Utility officials have said they hope to implement the increase by April 1.

This rate case  gets the department what it needs until we make a decision about what it is that we want, said Councilman Felipe Fuentes, who chairs the councils Energy and Environment Committee. We have to make sure that the department has the ability to function.

Because the vote was not unanimous, the proposal must return to the council in the coming weeks for a procedural second reading.

Council President Pro Tem Mitch Englander and Councilman Gil Cedillo cast the dissenting votes.

I cannot support a rate increase that essentially allows the city to delay governance, transparency and customer service reform, Englander, who is running for a seat on the County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement.

Cedillo said in a statement that Angelenos are already burdened enough by high housing costs.

It is important we have infrastructure replacements and energy efficiency goals, but as the councilman who represents some of the poorest areas of the city, I could not vote for another increase while in the midst of an affordable-housing crisis, Cedillo said.

DWP officials have been campaigning for the $330-million water rate hike and a $720-million power rate increase for the last several months, even as they have been in discussions about governance reform after a series of scandals. They say the revenue is necessary to repair aging infrastructure and meet energy-related mandates.

It was the first increase to base rates since a power hike in 2012, DWP said. There have been no base rate increases to water since 2009.

Department General Manager Marcie Edwards said some had urged her to push for bigger hikes. But she and other officials said the rate proposals took into account how much work DWP can realistically accomplish and how much money the utility can spend.

Edwards also acknowledged that the utility has become massively bureaucratized.

On Wednesday, various members of the council harped on that theme, saying DWP needed reform to rebuild customer trust after a billing scandal and an audit that found cavalier spending of more than $40 million of ratepayer money by two utility-affiliated nonprofits. They mostly agreed to separate the rate discussion from talks about governance, however.

Councilman Paul Krekorian brandished an aged piece of pipe from the dais Wednesday that he said gave way seven years ago in a water main explosion on Coldwater Canyon Avenue.

Thats the pipe that destroyed our constituents homes and businesses, Krekorian said. Anybody who thinks that this utility will continue to function  without investing heavily in its power and water infrastructure, right now, is living in a fantasy world.

For more on the California drought and water, follow me on Twitter @ByMattStevens.

MORE ON THE DWP

Editorial: Proposed DWP rate hike isnt high enough

DWP defends security practices after leadership shake-up

Names, addresses of DWP customers who received turf rebates are released
A longtime In-N-Out Burger employee found dead in the restaurants parking lot in La Mirada did not die from gunshots as authorities originally believed, the Los Angeles County Coroner said Wednesday.

Josefina Alcocer, 49, died from multiple blunt force injuries Friday morning, a coroners official said.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Advertisement

Just before 5 a.m., sheriffs deputies responded to a call of an unresponsive woman near the In-N-Out restaurant in the 14300 block of Firestone Boulevard, said Deputy Guillermina Saldana, spokeswoman of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department.

First-responders found Alcocer dead from a fatal blow to the head, sheriffs Lt. Steve Jauch said. She already had started her shift and was wearing her In-N-Out Burger uniform when she was killed, he said.

In hopes of tracking leads in the case, authorities publicized Alcocers work history. She had been with In-N-Out for 20 years, and her husband worked at one of the restaurants in Orange County.

In-N-Out owner and President Lynsi Snyder expressed sadness over Alcocers death last week.

The entire In-N-Out family grieves today over this senseless tragedy as we send our thoughts and prayers to the Alcocer family, Snyder said in a statement. Josefina had been a part of our In-N-Out family since 1996, and she was one of our original associates at our La Mirada restaurant.

We are devastated and will miss her. So many things going on in the world today. We will remain strong and stand in love for Josefina. God bless and comfort all who are mourning a loved one at this time.

I just cant get over it, Alma Uribe, a friend, told KNBC. Its kind of hard because she was like my daughter. I cant even imagine who would do something like that to her because she was a very giving person.

Alcocer is the first person to be killed in La Mirada in the past 12 months, according to the Los Angeles Times Homicide Report.

La Mirada is about 17 miles southeast of downtown L.A.

Times staff writer Veronica Rocha contributed to this report.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

ALSO

3 arrested, including a police officer, after Huntington Beach stabbing

After suspected drug overdose deaths, Fairplex has no plans to host raves in 2016

O.C. kidnapping and chase suspect arrested in Cerritos after daylong manhunt
Recently hired school L.A. schools Supt. Michelle King on Tuesday called for traditional public schools and chartersgroups often at oddsto work together, pledging to set up a conference where they could share ideas.

At a town hall event in Pacoima, before an audience of 700, King demonstrated a growing comfort in her new role as well as skill in framing responses that would appeal to those assembled.

Although it was not Kings first public event, the question-and-answer forum at Pacoima Middle School was an early showcase of her direct message to parents. A low-income neighborhood, Pacoima includes some popular charter schools as well as some traditional schools that have struggled for years with low academic achievement.

Advertisement

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The tension between charters, which are run outside of the districts control, and traditional schools, was underscored over the summer, when the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation circulated a draft proposal to pull half of district students into charters.

Months later, a district-appointed task force concluded that the rapid growth of charters had the potential to drive the district into bankruptcy.

All of the students are L.A. Unified School District students, King said. When it comes to delivering a strong education, this is something we need to do together. I cant do this alone.

Charters are independently managed and exempt from some rules that govern traditional campuses. Most are non-union.

King also addressed concerns over state rules that require L.A. Unified to provide available classroom space to charters.

Sharing space is appropriate because they are all public schools, King said. We have to get to working together to serve all kids. It doesnt help to have battles over property.

From the beginning of her new role as superintendent seven weeks ago, King has said that she will take a collaborative approach to leadership.



Follow the Times education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >>

Tuesdays crowd was a mixture of parents from charters and traditional schools. About half the parents asked their questions in Spanish. Several were challenging.

And King could not make everyone happy.

A man asserted that the district never fired teachers, but instead sent them to schools in low-income communities.

We dont want to fire folks, period, King said. The preferred process, she said, is to provide educators with assistance and guidance. When that fails, we do take teachers and other employees to the Board of Education and they are dismissed. This happens, she added, at every board meeting.

Several parents said they liked Kings message about collaboration.

That shes hearing us out speaks to her character, said Gwendolyn Posey, whose daughter attends a nearby charter run by Fenton Charter Public Schools.

At the end, we should be more focused on making the kids have a good outcome in life, said Maria Jimenez, who has two children in traditional schools. This should not be a competition. It affects kids and parents.

Shes hearing us out and taking the time to do that, said Elisa Venzor, a parent at Pacoima Charter Elementary. She adopted a wait-and-see position regarding charter cooperation.

It sounds good -- if they can make this happen, she said.

The superintendent also noted that her top short-term priority is getting as many students as possible to graduate from the class of 2016.

The district appears on track for a record graduation rate, but observers have questioned the rigor of make-up classes.

King said that events like the Pacoima forum are important because the districts strategic plan should not be hers alone but should result from input across the nations second-largest school system.

Its still not clear how King will respond when voices answer back in cacophony or in conflict.

L.A. teachers union President Alex Caputo-Pearl on Tuesday said that teachers in all types of schools are already collaborating in some areas.

But his union has protested against locating charters at traditional schools.

The state charter schools association, meanwhile, is suing the district, saying that charters arent receiving their fair share of either space at existing schools or money to build new ones.

As far as academic collaboration, charter leaders look forward to setting up events that could draw in all kinds of schools, according to the association. But it added that the district has, so far, made no concrete moves in that direction.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

howard.blume@latimes.com

Twitter: @howardblume

Editors note: Education Matters receives funding from a number of foundations, including one or more mentioned in this article. The California Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Los Angeles administer grants from the Baxter Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the California Endowment and the Wasserman Foundation. Under terms of the grants, The Times retains complete control over editorial content.

MORE FROM EDUCATION

The next frontier for school safety: The cafeteria

Indio high school students asked to stop wearing anti-gay symbols for now

L.A. County is shutting down troubled centers for foster kids with nowhere else to go
Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old debt collector, conceded that Donald Trump may have gone overboard just a little bit when he attacked President George W. Bush, saying he lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and failed to stop the Sept. 11 attacks.

But that did not stop Bowers, of Fountain Inn, S.C., from putting on a cap with Trumps Make America Great Again slogan and walking through an icy cold parking lot so he could crowd into a raucous Trump rally Monday night.

Hes not a polished politician, Bowers said, neatly summing up both Trumps appeal and liability.

Advertisement

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

Early evidence suggests that Trump, as he has many times before, is maintaining his wide lead here despite criticism of his crude rhetoric, the latest example of which came in his attacks on Bush in Saturdays debate and ever since. Though South Carolina has long prided itself on Southern manners and propriety, it is changing rapidly as outsiders increasingly move here. And Trump Nation may be immune to, and in some cases, even more than forgiving of his brash behavior.

I hope he drops an F-bomb, one fan said to another on the way into the rally.

1 / 9 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a town hall in Beaufort, S.C. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 9 Donald Trump supporters in Beaufort, S.C., sing the national anthem before his arrival. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 9 Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz at a rally on the aircraft carrier Yorktown in Mount Pleasant, S.C. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 9 Ted Cruz supporters listen to the candidate. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 9 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio campaigns in South Carolina. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 9 Marco Rubio addresses supporters. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 9 Ted Cruz at his Mount Pleasant, S.C., rally. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 9 Donald Trump in Beaufort, S.C. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 9 A prayer before Donald Trumps arrival in Beaufort, S.C. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

One poll taken since the debate by Public Policy Polling, which works mostly for Democrats, shows Trump leading South Carolinas Republican primary field by 17 percentage points, about the same lead he had going into the debate. His core support from about one in three Republicans remains steady here, in line with earlier national polling.

During past controversies, Trumps supporters have stuck with him, believing his unvarnished criticism of immigrants, Muslims, women and Sen. John McCains war record shows he is willing to take on establishment interests and unwilling to bend to what he calls political correctness. Sometimes they agree with his comments, particularly on building a wall along the Southwestern border and barring Muslims from entering the country, according to polls. Sometimes they disagree but are more concerned with upending the political system.

Were voting with our middle finger, said John Baldwin, a used-car dealer from Greenville.

Baldwin and his wife were passing out stickers and signs calling Trumps supporters the silent majority, a phrase that dates to President Nixon and is used by Trump to assert that he is giving voice to beliefs that others are afraid to say out loud.

SIGN UP for the free Essential Politics newsletter >>

The question for Trump has always been whether he can build support beyond his loyal core, a task for him that will grow more important if he becomes the GOP nominee. A national poll taken this month by Quinnipiac University showed 59% of voters held an unfavorable view of Trump, compared with 34% who view him favorably. Other polls have shown similar results.

I used to be a Trump supporter  up until Saturday night, said Herb Riggs, a retired builder in Florence, who attended a town hall with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Monday, and is now considering him, along with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He looked like a schoolyard bully.

Betty Carter also didnt like the way Trump went after former President Bush. But shes still sticking with him.

He needs to know where he is: Hes in Bush country, she said waiting in a long line to see him Tuesday afternoon at Riverview Park in North Augusta, where she moved more than 15 years ago to care for her grandkids. I didnt like it, but Im still voting for him.

Marsha Daigle, a retired federal employee at Trumps rally Monday in Greenville, said she did not like the bickering in the debate either and worries that it will make it more difficult for Trump to broaden his support.

It rubs a lot of people the wrong way, she said.

Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton for imitating a barking dog. Clinton suggested a dog trained to bark when he heard a lie should follow Republican candidates.

She and her 38-year-old son, Brent Gay, who said he had never voted, said their own support for Trump remains solid because they believe he will halt illegal immigration and help Americans get more jobs.

Like several people interviewed at Trumps Monday night rally, Daigle was not originally from South Carolina, having lived in California and several other states before retiring in Spartanburg. Demographic data show an increasing number of residents have moved from out of state, perhaps loosening the traditional boundaries of Southern politeness.

In 2000, 64% of the population was state-born, according to census data, but by 2013, the number of resident born in the Palmetto State had fallen to 58%.

GOP strategist Kevin Madden, a former Mitt Romney spokesman, said he believes Trump may yet suffer in Saturdays South Carolina primary, noting that attitudes here often shift in the final days of the campaign.

These are views that are outside the mainstream of Republican thought, Madden said. His views in that debate were more associate with Code Pink and the liberal left and that might give people pause, rather than reinforce what they liked about some of his debate performances.

Monday nights rally was typical of Trumps performances, which feel like arena rock concerts as much as political events. Thousands packed into the TD Convention Center. Many stood along the sides of the cavernous convention hall when the seats ran out. Others were sent to an overflow room or turned away. Giant screens lit up Trumps face; spotlights vacillated in front of the stage; Van Halen music blared.

Didnt you love this last debate? Trump said to cheers. They came at me from every angle.

Trump, as he often does, riffed from topic to topic. He mocked Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for his debate performance and claimed the audience was stacked with his special-interest supporters.

He repeated his criticism of President George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq, but did not mention Bush, who is popular among the states Republicans, by name during that portion of the speech.

We shouldnt have gone into Iraq. That was a big mistake because it destabilized the whole Middle East, Trump said. Some people say Oh, dont say that.

Everything you see right now is an offshoot of that decision, he added, before launching into criticism of President Obamas handling of the withdrawal from Iraq.

Later, he returned to the topic, even offering praise for Saddam Hussein, as a bad guy who nonetheless kept Iraq from disintegrating into sectarian violence and spawning terrorist groups attacking the West.

Human rights groups have estimated that Hussein, who was hanged in 2006, killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Saddam Hussein killed terrorists, Trump said. He didnt do it politically correct. He found a terrorist, they were gone within five seconds, OK. With us, we find a terrorist, its going to be 25 years and a trial.

The crowd laughed, hollered and waved signs.

Bierman reported from Greenville and Mascaro from Columbia and North Augusta, S.C.

noah.bierman@latimes.com

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com

Follow @noahbierman and @LisaMascaro on Twitter.

MORE POLITICS NEWS

Why evangelicals are splintering and what it means for the GOP

In Nevada, Sanders volunteers campaign with rag-tag enthusiasm

Why Kamala Harris is unlikely to be a Supreme Court nominee
The three female Supreme Court justices led an attack Wednesday on a Texas law that would shut down about three-fourths of the states abortion clinics, clashing with their conservative colleagues over what could be the courts most important abortion case in decades.

Though supporters of the law say the states strict medical regulations were intended to promote health and safety, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that they would hurt women. Texas lawmakers, she said, were only targeting abortion.

Her comments came during an intense hourlong debate over whether state legislatures, including those controlled by antiabortion lawmakers, should have a largely free hand to regulate doctors and clinics that perform abortions.

Advertisement

It is the most significant abortion case since 1992, when the justices, including Anthony M. Kennedy, who is still on the court, upheld the landmark Roe vs. Wade ruling, but declared that states may regulate abortion as long as they do not put an undue burden on women seeking to end a pregnancy.

It has been unclear ever since exactly what that means. Since 2010, Republican-led states have adopted increasingly stringent abortion regulations. Now, the justices are pressed to decide whether the Texas law amounts to an undue burden for more than 1 million women who live at least 150 miles from a licensed abortion clinic.

Kennedy and several of his colleagues, however, sounded hesitant about issuing a broad abortion ruling. At one point, he suggested the court might want to send the case back to a trial judge in Texas to provide more evidence on the potential impact of the two disputed provisions.

One would require all doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and a second would require clinics to meet the standards of an outpatient surgical center.

Eight states besides Texas have laws requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, including Louisiana and Mississippi. The court has pending appeals from both states on whether those laws can go into effect. And five states besides Texas require abortion clinics to meet the standards of an ambulatory surgical center. Most of those laws are in effect.

The three women on the court took a lead role and said it was obvious to them that the Texas lawmakers had singled out abortion clinics for unduly strict regulations.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that one provision requires women to visit an outpatient surgical center even when they are simply taking a pill to induce a medical abortion. Many women would have to travel hundreds of miles to get there, Ginsburg said.

I cant imagine what is the benefit of having a woman take those pills in an ambulatory surgical center when there is no surgery involved, she said.

Texas Solicitor Gen. Scott Keller said that there may be complications, even with a medical abortion. No, not with taking a pill, Ginsburg responded. Its not going to occur on the spot. The complication generally arises after the woman is back at home, she said.

Justices Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said Texas does not similarly regulate other medical procedures that are more risky, including dental surgery and colonoscopies. Doctors can perform those procedures safely in a doctors office, without the need for a fully equipped surgical center, they said.

We know that liposuction is 30 times more dangerous [than an early-stage abortion], yet doesnt have the same kind of requirements in Texas, Kagan said.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who, like his female colleagues, is a Democratic appointee, also said he could not see a reasonable basis for upholding the restrictions.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., appointees of former President George W. Bush, defended the Texas law. They questioned whether abortion rights advocates had shown that the new regulations had indeed shut down many clinics and would leave women with limited options.

Since there would be well-equipped abortion facilities in the states major metropolitan areas, Roberts said, it was not clear the law posed a substantial obstacle for women who seek an abortion.

Stephanie Toti, a lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, took the issue with the chief justice when he said the law furthered the states interest in health and safety. The law actually undermines the interest in health, she said, by causing an increase in later abortions and self-induced abortions.

In a tense exchange, Sotomayor elaborated on Totis argument, even after the chief justice said her time had expired.

Thank you, counsel, Roberts said, signaling Toti to sit down.

Im sorry, Sotomayor interrupted, continuing with her questions. Is there any other condition that by taking pills [is] required to be done in a hospital?

A few minutes later, Roberts thanked Toti again and turned to U.S. Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr., the Obama administrations top courtroom lawyer.

In a brief but forceful presentation, Verrilli argued that allowing the disputed law to go into effect would mean the right to abortion only exists in theory, not in fact in Texas.

Before this law took effect, there were approximately 65,000 to 70,000 abortions a year in Texas, he said. Fewer than 10 clinics would remain open if the law took full effect, down from 40 several years ago, and the remaining 10 performed about 14,000 [abortions] a year.

Kennedy interjected: About 20%. Yes, Verrilli said.

Kennedy asked one question that hinted he may lean in favor of the challengers. He said the laws restrictions have led to an increase in surgical abortions and a drop in the number of medically induced abortions. That may not be medically wise, he told Keller, a former law clerk for Kennedy.

The justices will meet Friday to vote on the Texas case. There are at least four possibilities, given the recent death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. If Kennedy votes with the four liberal justices, they could decide that the Texas law is unconstitutional.

If Kennedy votes with the three remaining conservatives, the court would be evenly divided and unable to issue an opinion. The tie vote would have the effect of affirming the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the Texas law.

A third possibility would be to send the case back to Texas for further hearings. Its also possible the justices will hold on to the Texas case until next summer or longer, awaiting confirmation of a new justice to fill the ninth seat.

The court is not expected to announce a decision until June.

Also this week, the justices will probably decide on whether to allow Louisiana to enforce a similar law that is expected to close all but one abortion clinic there. Abortion rights advocates filed an emergency appeal asking the high court to put the Louisiana law on hold.

On Twitter: @DavidGSavage

ALSO

California high court opens door to wrongful foreclosure suits

Oklahoma takes action on fracking-related earthquakes  but too late, critics say

South Dakota governor vetoes transgender bathroom bill, saying it invites conflict and litigation
They feel them in the little city of Cushing, where a web of pipelines and giant oil storage tanks makes the area a crucial international hub  and vulnerable. They feel them in the time-capsule town of Guthrie, where plaster is cracking in storefronts built in the 19th century. And they feel them in rural Fairview, where cows get loud when pastures move beneath them.

This last one, I thought the building was coming down, said Jason Levings, 29, speaking outside the Fairview feed store where he works and which, he was grateful to note, was still standing. It was intense.

More than five years after Oklahoma first saw a startling spike in earthquakes linked to the disposal of huge volumes of wastewater created by hydraulic fracturing for oil, the state continues to shake at an unprecedented rate and the number of strong quakes is increasing. In 2009, there were 20 quakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher, according to the United States Geological Survey. Last year, there were 890. In 2009, no quake measured 4.0 or greater. Last year, 30 did.

Advertisement

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Yet even as many anxious Oklahomans now track seismic data on their smartphones and struggle to sleep through the long, rumbling nights, there has been one notable location where people rarely seemed rattled. That is here, in the state capital, where the oil industry holds so much sway that for decades drill rigs have extracted crude from directly beneath the Capitol building.

As one Democratic state lawmaker, Cory Williams, put it in an interview: They own the place.

Now, however, after quakes have shaken the homes of some top elected officials  and those of the worried constituents who vote for them  the state is taking new steps to address the problem, even as critics say it is too little, too late.

Last month, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, asked oil producers operating in the northwest part of the state to reduce the amount of wastewater they are disposing of deep underground by 40%.

Scientists say natural faults in the area are being stirred by billions of gallons of water injected deep into the ground after it is used for hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. Water and chemicals are used to break oil and gas free from rock formations. A large amount of the water returns to the surface and, under federal law, must be disposed of in a way that does not affect freshwater supplies.

Also last month, the speaker of the Oklahoma state House, Jeff Hickman, a Republican who represents Fairview, sponsored a bill that clarifies that the commission has the power to take enforcement actions  not just to politely ask the industry to change.

And late in January, Gov. Mary Fallin, a Republican who only last summer acknowledged the connection between quakes and oil production, announced that she would direct $1.4 million in emergency funds to the commission and to the Oklahoma Geological Survey to hire new staffers and improve technology and monitoring equipment. (Critics note that, days after making the announcement, the governor did not mention earthquakes in her annual State of the State speech.)

All of it comes as quakes increasingly have been felt in more urban areas, leading to fear, frustration and larger crowds at town hall meetings.

Last week, more than 500 people attended a public meeting on earthquakes at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, with some participants having to watch from an overflow room. The environmental activist Erin Brockovich spoke, as did a Sierra Club official and a lawyer who is building a class-action lawsuit against the oil industry for personal property damage.

The Sierra Club is also suing energy companies on grounds that they are endangering public health and the environment.

Write your story, Little-Rock, Ark.-based lawyer Scott Poynter wrote in a letter to people attending the meeting. Describe the events that you and your family have experienced with the earthquakes. This case will take years, and you will need the story to refresh your memory. Also, it will help me keep everyones problems straight.

Richard Morrissette, a term-limited Democratic state lawmaker not previously known for being active on the issue, announced to the crowd that he planned to run for one of the three commission seats in the fall election. Among his promises: to fight for the repeal of a bill the Republican-controlled Legislature passed last year to prevent local governments from ordering moratoriums on wastewater injection wells.

The Legislature took away your rights, said Morrissette, whose district is on the south side of Oklahoma City.

That prompted cheers from a crowd that grew raucous at times. Edmond, where the meeting was held, is one of the wealthiest areas of the state, and many of its residents have become more vocal as quakes have crept closer and grown stronger.

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

On Feb. 13, a quake northwest of Fairview, about two hours away, registered a magnitude of 5.1, making it the third-strongest quake in the states recorded history. The strongest was in 2011. The second-strongest was in 1952; and scientists now say it, too, may have been induced by nearby oil production.

Whats changed is the earthquakes have come back, and theyve come back to an area where the people know how to make noise, said Matt Skinner, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. They have the money. They have the power.

Skinner said he was weary of hearing that the commission is in the pocket of the industry, that it is ignoring science and that it should simply order a moratorium to stop all disposal wells. The first and second are not true and the third would not stand up in court, he said, because of the challenge of directly linking specific disposal actions to specific quakes.

We have broad correlations but we dont have specific correlations, he said.

Skinner emphasized that he and other staff members have suffered damage at their houses from quakes. He said the recent reductions, which critics note depend on voluntary compliance by the industry, have shown the potential to work  but that it may take time.

Theres going to be a time when we have to go back and say, What did we miss? Why did we miss this? he said. But right now, weve got a fire on our hands and weve got to put it out.

Williams, who represents Stillwater, said state officials are overstating the limitations they face and understating their authority. He says the state can order a moratorium, and he wants it to create financial incentives for companies to find safer ways to dispose of wastewater.

Were taking some action, he said of recent moves by the commission and the governor. But we are taking it three years too late. We have gotten better, but thats not saying much.

william.yardley@latimes.com

ALSO

California high court opens door to wrongful foreclosure suits

GOP legislators voting for taxes? Its not likely to happen again anytime soon

Aerojet gets a big boost in race to develop rocket engine
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Tuesday vetoed a proposed law that would have been the first in the country to require transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match the gender listed on their birth certificates.

The veto represents an important victory for LGBT rights activists who have seen their push for stronger civil rights protections countered over the last year by conservative lawmakers who have introduced legislation in various states to place limits on transgender bathroom use.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Advertisement

South Dakota became an early testing ground last month after the Republican-dominated Legislature passed a bill that said if students were born boys, they were required by law to use boys bathrooms and locker rooms at school. The same applied to girls.

Daugaard, under pressure from such celebrity LGBT activists as Caitlyn Jenner, cited a core tenet of conservative philosophy  preserving local control  in siding with transgender advocates.

As policymakers in South Dakota, we often recite that the best government is the government closest to the people, Daugaard wrote in his veto notice Tuesday. Local school districts can, and have, made necessary restroom and locker room accommodations that serve the best interests of all students, regardless of biological sex or gender identity.

Daugaards decision was hailed by transgender advocacy groups Tuesday.

Today, the voices of fairness and equality prevailed, and these students rights and dignity prevailed against overwhelming odds and vicious opponents in the state Legislature, Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement.

Over the last year, conservatives have made bathrooms the fiercest point of resistance as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates have pushed to expand housing, employment and public-accommodation protections for transgender Americans across the country.

But discussion about those wide-ranging protections has been eclipsed by passionate fights over bathroom bills, as conservative opponents argue that transgender people would make them uncomfortable in restrooms; alternatively, they claim that predators would rape children in bathrooms not limited to single, defined sexes.

This narrowed discussion has frustrated transgender advocates who say transgender women are being inaccurately painted as pedophiles, when in fact they are people in need of protection.

In reality, all people, including people who are transgender, are concerned about privacy and safety in public restrooms, LGBT advocacy group GLAAD said in a recent media guide titled Debunking the Bathroom Bill Myth.

Unfortunately, multiple studies show that transgender people often report experiencing denial of access to facilities, verbal harassment, and physical assault when attempting to use public restrooms, the GLAAD guide said.

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

Republican Rep. Fred Deutsch sponsored the bill in South Dakota to limit bathroom and locker room use, saying, Its only a matter of time before a transgender student says, I want to shower with the opposite sex, and we start a firestorm, the Argus Leader reported.

American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota opposed the bill, but the House voted 58 to 10 in approval. On Feb. 16, the Senate also approved it, 20 to 15.

The governor expressed sympathy after meeting with three transgender people on Feb. 23, telling the Argus Leader, It helped me see things through their eyes a little better and see more of their perspective.

In Daugaards veto Tuesday, he wrote that the bill passed by the Legislature does not address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota. He said the bill broadly regulates in a manner that invites conflict and litigation.

Deutsch, in a statement given to local media, urged fellow lawmakers not to try to override the governors veto, hinting that perhaps outside pressure had grown too great.

The bill was intended to be a practical solution to our evolving social values on gender issues, Deutsch wrote. Unfortunately emotions on both sides of this issue have dominated the news coverage and the recent debate. ... Further focus on this issue will detract from the other significant accomplishments of the Legislature this session.

Follow @MattDPearce for national news

ALSO

Fatal police shooting opens old wounds in Montgomery, Ala.

Homicides soar in Chicago, marking the deadliest start to a year since 1997

Supreme Court to decide on abortion laws: Can a state regulate clinics out of business?
Hillary Clintons sprawling network of operatives and opposition researchers were all set to go with an exhaustively investigated playbook to use in the general election  against Jeb Bush. They also had one for Scott Walker. And Marco Rubio.

But Donald Trump?

Clintons team had bet they wouldnt need to pull that one from the shelf. Now, putting a Trump playbook together is proving vexing. After Trump and Clintons sweeping triumphs on Super Tuesday, the prospect of a matchup against the impulsive billionaire prone to angry outbursts, outrageous statements and questionable alliances no longer seems too good to be true.

I say to people, Be careful what you wish for, said David Brock, a longtime Clinton confidant who helps run a coalition of super PACs focused on getting her elected president. This is very complicated. There is not a typical playbook you can run.

Advertisement

Trump is willing to tread into territory other politicians will not  and he has been rewarded for it. He is unpredictable. He is tapping into an unprecedented anger in the electorate that Clinton is still figuring out how to navigate. He is impervious to the usual laws of political gravity and has a remarkable ability to fling away attacks.

He has mastered social media like no other candidate, he throws off rivals with deft putdowns that draw in voters the way they once did viewers to his reality TV program, and his knack for showmanship affords him an uncanny ability to change the subject when it suits him.

He will be able to run away from his incendiary primary positions better than any candidate in history, Dan Pfeiffer, President Obamas former communications director, wrote in an email. You can see him saying: I said that to win the primary; now its the general election and my goal is to win so that I can make America great again. He would actually embrace the do or say anything to win caricature that all politicians fear like death.

The goal of the Clinton machine, her advisors say, is to keep voters from getting distracted by his antics. For every disenchanted Democrat or independent whom Trump draws in the Rust Belt, Clinton is aiming to bring on two new suburban female voters appalled by his remarks about women or Latino voters unsettled by his plans for a giant wall to keep out Mexicans.

Armies of researchers are building massive dossiers on Trumps boorish comments, his personal disputes, his companys use of immigrant labor. There are the bankruptcies, the bewildering refusal to repudiate former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and the leaders in Trumps own party who have been lining up to admonish him.

The strategy has already been taking shape on the campaign trail, with Clinton herself questioning Trumps temperament, asking voters to envision him calling the shots in sensitive diplomatic negotiations or in the White House situation room during the operation that took out Osama bin Laden. Mobilization efforts are underway to tap Trumps anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim tirades to re-energize the diverse coalition of voters that propelled Obamas victories.

Yet the volume of available material is not quelling anxieties.

We have been saying he is going to self-destruct since last September, and he hasnt done that despite his best efforts, said Ed Rendell, a former chair of the Democratic National Committee. He is just a difficult person to run against.

TRAIL GUIDE: All the latest news on the 2016 presidential campaign >>

Such uneasiness motivated two longtime Clinton confidants, pollster Stan Greenberg and strategist James Carville, to take a deep dive into the zeitgeist fueling Trumps rise. The poll findings they released last week suggested the Republican electorate has unprecedented anger with the opposition party, with nearly 90% feeling its policies are so misguided that they threaten the nations well-being. Distaste for Clinton runs even deeper than it does for Obama, the poll found.

But it also revealed deep anxieties about Trump, with one in five Republican voters saying they would not be able to bring themselves to cast a ballot for him in a general election. The poll also made clear Trumps weaknesses: There was considerable worry even among Republicans about Trump having control of the nations nuclear weapons, about his attitude toward women and about his perceived egomania.

The Clinton machine is girding to exploit all that.

The attacks will be lobbed at Trump by all manner of surrogates, likely including Bill Clinton, who Trump has already announced can expect to have his own baggage with women and personal finances dragged back into public view.

EMILYs list, the powerful super PAC focused on electing women, is taking aim at all the things Trump has said or done that might repulse women voters. They see many targets.

It is important to make sure every voter in this country knows who Donald Trump is and what he has said, not just on the campaign trail, but in his life, said Stephanie Schriock, president of the group. You cannot walk away from two decades of misogyny on top of racist and outrageous language. Those are about character.

Priorities USA, the pro-Clinton super PAC that has already amassed a $92-million war chest, assured donors Wednesday that it is prepared for battle. Guy Cecil, the groups co-chairman and chief strategist, wrote in email to them that Trump would have been taken down by now but for the political malpractice by GOP super PACS that failed to take him on. Priorities will not make the same mistake, Cecil wrote.

His business record, temperament and penchant for sexism and racism are out of step with most Americans and we will be prepared to take that fight to him, Cecil wrote.

Democrats, though, are less concerned about their ability to amass material than finding new ways to deploy it. Trump has proved masterful at changing the narrative when it starts to turn against him, often by shooting off a few tweets.

We are going to have to step up our game to be competitive with what he has been able to do on social media, which has been impressive, Brock said.

Democrats watched closely as Trump navigated around incidents over the last couple of weeks that might have crippled another candidate. His comments about David Duke didnt keep him from crushing the Super Tuesday election, nor did the spotlight on his use of immigrant labor to build Trump Tower, nor did the release of tapes of his crude interviews with Howard Stern over the years.

Yet Pfeiffer says such issues could be Trumps undoing if Democrats are smart, creative and disciplined in how they use them.

His goal is to get under your skin, Pfeiffer said. Stick to your line of attack and do not chase him down every rabbit hole.

Times staff writer Chris Megerian contributed to this report from Charleston, S.C.

Twitter: @evanhalper

MORE ON CAMPAIGN 2016

President Trump? Whos with him and whos against

Donald Trump starts adjusting to new role of GOP standard-bearer

Voters prove Donald Trumps dominance and other takeaways from Super Tuesday
John McCain wont weigh in on Donald Trump: Im running for reelection

The overriding reaction among Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill to Donald Trumps near-lock on the GOP presidential nomination is fear, coupled with confusion about how Trumps ascendancy might scramble party politics at the state and local level.

Even the normally loquacious Sen. John McCain refused to take a side Wednesday in the battle over Trumps imprint on the party.

Im running for reelection, McCain said. Thats where Im coming down.

Other lawmakers insisted that their voices no longer mattered much, given the countrys mood and the particular anger Republican voters have toward the Washington establishment.

Im not sure you transfer very much support when you endorse somebody else, said Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican. Clearly, this is a year where people who are in office are likely not to be as helpful to a political candidate as they might have been before.

Blunt said he would support the GOP nominee and that it was too early to tell whether Trump would be a drag on the rest of the party.

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who was first elected to the House during the tea party wave of 2010, pushed back at the notion that Republican leaders needed to stand against the Trump tide, even if his policies are at odds with long-held party principles.

Is Trump a departure from what we have seen in the Republican Party for the last several decades? Yes, he said. But people get to decide where the party goes. There is no person that owns the party.

Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who endorsed his colleague Marco Rubio in early November, showed frustration that his colleagues have been so reticent.

They should have been taking sides a long time ago, he said. Pick a candidate and make it known. The fact is simply this: There seems to be a lot of people running for president that are running for honorable mention, and we really dont get a mulligan on who our nominee is.

Democrats were eager to observe the damage from the sideline. Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday morning about the Frankenstein candidate the Republicans have created in Trump.

Theyre trapped, he said later in a brief interview. I dont think theres much to be done.
Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. Many people have said it  politicians of both parties, economists, pundits, business leaders  but millions of GOP primary voters dont seem to be listening. Much of the Republican base has taken leave of its senses, a flight blamed alternately on inchoate anger, disgust with inside-the-Beltway candidates and misplaced affection for a plain-speaking cartoon character who often seems to utter whatever nonsense comes into his head. Regardless of the reason for his popularity, the bombastic billionaire continued his soon-to-be unstoppable march toward the nomination Tuesday, racking up resounding victories in primaries across the American South and in the Northeast.

What do you think? Discuss this editorial on our Facebook page >>

The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government, interacting with the machinery of state only as a supplicant. He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world, and a temperament utterly unsuited to the job. He is a racist and a bully, a demagogue. He has proposed killing the families of terrorists, a violation of international law so blatant that a former CIA director predicted that U.S. troops would refuse to carry out such an order.

Advertisement

He mocked a disabled person at a campaign rally. He has vowed to reinstate waterboarding and forms of torture that are much worse. He intends to seize and deport 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. He would bar all Muslims from entering the country until further notice. He would open up our libel laws so that news organizations are punished for writing critical hit pieces. He wants to build a wall along the entire Mexican border, on the fantastical premise that he could force the Mexican government to pay for it. He has threatened to start trade wars with two of the countrys biggest trading partners, Mexico and China, by slapping on the kind of protectionist tariffs that U.S. leaders have been trying for decades to eliminate worldwide.

Often enough he says nothing at all, promising to replace Obamacare, for instance, with something great or assuring listeners vaguely that a winner such as himself  someone who never tires of telling the world hes rich, successful and famous  will make it all work out one way or another.

It isnt easy to tell how much of Trumps performance is merely shtick and how much is real. In the aftermath of his victories Tuesday, Trump struck a less adversarial tone and talked about how he was becoming diplomatic. Yet at the same time, he said this of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), one of several GOP leaders who suggested Trump hadnt disavowed an endorsement by former KKK leader David Duke forcefully enough: Paul Ryan, I dont know him well, but Im sure Im going to get along great with him. And if I dont, hes going to have to pay a big price, OK? Thats about as diplomatic a message as a dead fish wrapped in newspaper.

We hope we wont have to learn who the real Donald J. Trump might be. Not that we find much to like about his Republican opponents, with whom we disagree sharply on issues that include climate change, environmental protection, healthcare and reproductive rights. In fact, on issues where its possible to discern where Trump stands, his views are more moderate at times than those of his principal GOP rivals. And in their zeal to slow Trumps momentum, some have begun sinking to the Donalds level as a campaigner, slinging personal insults (at times vulgar ones) instead of focusing on the problems with his record and his campaign. Nevertheless, those candidates are more rational, knowledgeable, understandable and predictable  all of which are necessary (albeit not sufficient) qualities in the Oval Office. Trumps blustery temperament and authoritarian notion of the presidency are unique in the field and uniquely disqualifying.

Subscribe to the Essential Politics newsletter>>

Trumps popularity may simply be the product of a toxic brew of a polarized two-party system and nihilistic tactics on the campaign trail and Capitol Hill (such as shutting down the government and threatening to default on U.S. debts) that, either by design or in effect, have convinced many Americans that their government is irreparably broken and corrupt. But Trump isnt the answer  hes just a cynical manipulator playing on the very real frustrations of voters tired of a government that takes big, difficult problems and makes them intractable. Those voters still have time to choose a better standard-bearer.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

MORE FROM OPINION

Why conservatives need to get behind #NeverTrump

How Mexican immigrants ended separate but equal in California

Post-Scalia Supreme Court to rule on the most important abortion case in two decades
They found the sergeants severed head on a bridge. His name was Baltazar Olayzola Diaz, and he had served with the Soyapango municipal police force. Baltazars beheading, the national police chief said, was staged by ruthless maras, or gangs, who were negotiating for better prison conditions. He was the 49th police officer assassinated in 2015, and one of 17 people killed that day.

Its official. El Salvador is the worlds most violent country and its capital, San Salvador, is the worlds most homicidal city. Salvadoran cities have seen more blood spilled than most conflict zones. They are also hemorrhaging people, many of whom are fleeing to Mexico and the United States.

According to new figures produced by the Institute of Legal Medicine in El Salvador, there were 6,656 killings in the country last year. That translates into a national homicide rate of almost 116 per 100,000, more than 17 times the global average. Compare El Salvadors totals with the 516 slayings reported in 2014 in Canada, a country with almost six times the population.

Advertisement

The circumstances of these killings are disturbingly familiar. More often than not, illegal drugs are involved. The United States government believes that most of the cocaine smuggled from Colombia transits through Central America and Mexico before its snorted by Americans.

With so much drug money at stake, violent disputes over shipping routes and retail outlets are routine. The collateral effects of these drug wars mean that innocent civilians get caught up in the crossfire.

But El Salvadors war is hyper-concentrated among specific people and places. More than 48% of all homicide victims in 2015 were Salvadoran males between 15 and 29 years old. More than half of the countrys homicides occurred in just four areas: San Salvador, La Libertad, Soyapango and Usulutan. The countrys cities are increasingly uninhabitable.

The recent bloodletting can be traced to the dissolution of a unpopular gang truce between rival factions in 2014. Although the cease-fire temporarily halved the homicide rate, it failed to reduce other criminal activities such as extortion. As a result, the government doubled down on supermano dura (iron-fist) policies designed to crush the maras. An aggressive police offensive has since been linked to dozens of massacres and disappearances of gang members.

Complicating matters, El Salvadors main gangs  the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and the Barrio 18  are coming apart at the seams. Not only are they at war with the police and with one another, but each is also waging a civil war within its own ranks. With the gangs purging and punishing traitors and snitches, the bloodletting shows little sign of abating, and its spreading to neighboring Honduras and Guatemala. In a bid to keep these countries from spinning out of control, the U.S. Congress recently approved $750 million to fight back against the organized crime, gangs and corruption stalking Central America.

Ultimately, the only way to reliably reduce homicide in El Salvador -- or anywhere in Latin America -- is to end the war on drugs.

This isnt El Salvadors first humanitarian crisis, but it may be the most acute. According to the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission, roughly 75,000 people were slaughtered from 1981 to 1989, during the civil war. Thats the equivalent of 113 conflict deaths per 100,000 people, which means El Salvador today is more violent than during the worst years of one of Latin Americas most vicious conflicts.

Getting El Salvadors homicide problem under control requires more than better trained police and improved prison conditions, though both are urgently needed. It also demands preventive measures that curb family disruption and protect the most vulnerable members of society. The countrys elite need to avoid the temptation to impose stiffer penalties and throw more people in jail. If they want to reduce crime, they should improve the lives and opportunities of working families and unsupervised youth.

International donors could work with the Salvadoran authorities to make a serious investment in its hardest-hit cities and most vulnerable populations.

FUNDASAL, one foundation in the capital, offers credit to households headed by women, refurbishes community centers and upgrades slum areas in cooperation with local authorities and residents. It seems to be making a difference; families benefiting from targeted cash transfers report lower levels of victimization. Another recently launched program, El Salvador Seguro, is devoted to strengthening the rule of law, rehabilitating young offenders and protecting victims in 50 municipalities.

But these are incremental, small-scale solutions. Ultimately, the only way to reliably reduce homicide in El Salvador  or anywhere in Latin America  is to end the war on drugs. Although supported by the countrys conservative elite, the prohibitionist model is generating more harm than benefit. Without legal regulation, control and enforcement, violent gangs will continue to dominate the illicit drug trade. More enlightened drug policies from El Salvador to the U.S. could make the difference between life and death.

Robert Muggah is the research director of the Igarape Institute and the SecDev Foundation. He is also an adviser to the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

MORE FROM OPINION

Why conservatives need to get behind #NeverTrump

How Mexican immigrants ended separate but equal in California

Post-Scalia Supreme Court to rule on the most important abortion case in two decades
In the coverage of the 2016 election cycle, youll hear this time and again: Latinos  immigrants and their families  are playing an important role in electing the next U.S. president. They are the largest minority group in the nation, and they are poised to make a major impact on American democracy.

It wont be the first time. Seventy years ago, Mexican immigrants moved American civil rights forward, away from racial segregation toward integration and equality. It happened eight years before the Supreme Court began to dismantle segregation by handing down its decision in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.

The decision was the first by a federal court asserting that separate but equal was unconstitutional.

Advertisement

In 1943, five Mexican American families took four school districts in Orange County to court, challenging the separate but equal education their American-born children were getting in Mexican schools. They knew their kids were treated as second-class citizens: taught by underpaid teachers, forced to use books and desks discarded by Anglo students, relegated to shoddy school buildings where the classrooms had so little light that reading was almost impossible.

The lack of resources, however, wasnt what the plaintiffs in the case, Mendez et al vs. Westminster et al, complained about to the courts. Instead, they mounted a frontal attack on segregated schools, even though to many other enemies of segregation, the time wasnt right. Thurgood Marshall, founder of the NAACPs Legal Defense Fund, was convinced that federal courts werent ready to strike down segregation. Instead of asking them to do so, the NAACP had adopted a tactic of bringing case after case designed to force Southern states to make separate schools truly equal. The goal was to make separate but equal so expensive that the states would give it up.

But in California, the Mexican American families and their attorney David Marcus told the courts that equal facilities would not satisfy them. It was segregation itself that was unconstitutional, they said. Separating Mexican American children from their Anglo peers did them great and irreparable harm, by making them feel so inferior that their ability to learn was affected. The Constitutions 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment under the law. Segregation violated that mandate.

The Orange County school systems replied that they were treating the Mexican American children equally by providing an education particularly suitable for them. At trial, they produced experts who testified that the children could not speak English, though no one had given them language tests. The childrens hands and faces, said the school districts witnesses, were generally dirty, they lacked proper clothing and cleanliness of body and mind, they had no manners, and they were retarded in their ability to learn.

Federal District Court Judge Paul J. McCormick, who presided over the case, rejected the schools case. Segregating children because they were Mexican American, he held in February 1946, violated the Constitution by suggesting inferiority among the children where none exists. It was exactly the same assertion that the NAACP would later adopt in its argument in Brown vs. Board, telling the courts that forcing minority children into separate schools sent the message that they were not as good as others. Low expectations led to low levels of learning.

A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality, McCormick wrote. Public schools must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage. In other words, separate but equal was not equal.

The decision was the first by a federal court asserting that separate but equal was unconstitutional. Opponents of segregation including the American Jewish Congress, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Japanese-American Citizens League rushed into the case when the Orange County school districts appealed McCormicks decision. So did the NAACP; the brief it filed in Mendez became its practice brief for Brown vs. Board.

In Sacramento, Gov. Earl Warren read about the case and decided the time had come to end all segregated education in the state. A California statute specifically permitted segregation of Asian American and Native American children, and Warren and state legislators mounted a successful effort to repeal the law.

Warren was named chief justice of the United States in 1953. When he wrote the Supreme Courts unanimous decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, his reasoning paralleled McCormicks in Mendez vs. Westminster.

In 1947, when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld McCormicks decision, Westminster and the other school districts in Orange County quickly began to integrate their classrooms, and so did other school districts in California and all over the Southwest. Federally mandated school integration had come to the United States, and it was Mexican immigrants who made it happen.

Philippa Strum, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is also professor emerita at the City University of New York and author of Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican-American Rights.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook

MORE OP-EDS:

Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson on his mayoral run  25 years after the Rodney King beating

Its official: San Salvador is the murder capital of the world

Government backdoor access to a single iPhone would undo years of progress in online security
On a March night 25 years ago, the helicopter and sirens woke up a Los Angeles plumber named George Holliday. The footage he recorded on his Sony Handycam over the next nine minutes  of Rodney King being beaten by LAPD officers  is perhaps second only to the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination in its impact on public life. Today, a video camera rests in every hip-pocket smart phone, and myriad videos of cops versus black men and women have altered politics and culture. The Black Lives Matter activist and former teacher DeRay Mckesson is a child of that early viral video and the ripples it created.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW ON THE PATT MORRISON ASKS PODCAST>>

You were not quite six years old when Rodney King was beaten and the world saw the video. Do you remember seeing it?

I remember seeing it briefly. I more so remember the conversations about Rodney King and the conversations about policing, though at that time, I and many of the people that I grew up with saw this as an isolated event that only happened that one time and it led to unrest there, but I never thought that it could be close to me.

What was your experience of the police growing up where you did?

My father tried to make sure that we werent out much when we were younger. But I remember when I was 10, there was a drug bust right in front of my house as I was outside in the yard. And Ill never forget it because there was a guy on a bike and then these five or six undercover officers come chasing him down and they jump on him and they arrest him. And that was I think the first time I had ever seen the police arrest people.

And then when I was an adult here in Baltimore, I was pulled over for a traffic stop and an officer approached my door with his gun drawn. That was like in 2009, and then I still thought that these were isolated events, that this wasnt happening, and now I know that not to be true.

In the years, the decades since Rodney King, weve seen technology bring more and more of these incidents and these discussions to public attention. Its really profoundly altered policing and the perception of policing.

Advertisement

Technology has completely changed the way we think about the public sphere. Its also flattened the way that we communicate with each other, that newsmakers are people in homes and in the communities, not just the people in the TV studios any more. And thats really powerful.

We have known these things have been happening in our communities for a long time; we just have not been able to talk to each other about it, and technology -- Twitter specifically, Facebook specifically -- have allowed us to talk to each other about the world we live in in ways that we could not before.

We have had, over the course of the last 50 years, the nature of the movement of African-American empowerment through Martin Luther King. Weve seen a different kind in the Black Panther Party. With Black Lives Matter, where do you see that kind of movement and its related movements going? And where do you see them taking the country?

Im mindful that we did not discover injustice last August, and we did not invent resistance. We exist in a legacy of struggle. I think that what comes next in the movement is that theres a coalition-building to truly build entrances to the movement for people who might not have shared goals but have shared outcomes. You think with the gun control lobby, we dont have the same goals, but we all want to live in the same world where theres not mass shootings. You think with the climate change people, the environmentalists dont have the same goals; we all want to live in a same world where its not dirty water like it is in Flint. And then I do think that youll see people running for office, to be on school boards, be on commissions, and working to change the system from within.

When you say August, youre referring to the Ferguson [Missouri] shooting in August of 2014 that really revived a lot of this interest, attention and activism.

Yes, Im specifically talking about the death of Mike Brown, which I think changed the way that so many people of my generation understood their own power and their ability to push systems and structures to be better.

With the election of President Obama, whos now finishing his second term, we heard so much about a post-racial America. What is that, and is that even a possibility?

We know its not true, and we know that race continues to function in this American way that we have to talk about so that we can mitigate its harm, that racism is real, that the impact of racism continues to be present. We see it in housing discrimination and policing and education, and because President Obama is president does not mean that race went away. It does mean that there are some places where there is more access than there was before. Again, access itself is not an indication of the end of racism; it is an indication that there has been progress made.

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

The idea of white privilege is something that Black Lives Matter people often mention. At the same time, working-class white males are becoming a minority in this country.

Yes, its not a matter of numbers; its a matter of the impact of power. So white privilege is the benefits that result from whiteness being seen as standard, as the normative, regardless of gender and income. You think about redlining in communities, you think about how Band-Aids that are skin-tone look like a color that is not the color of my skin, you think about the books that you read where the characters are assumed white  so many things culturally, and also structurally: how people were systemically denied access to housing loans, how groups of people who not taught to read in enslavement itself. Theres a legacy from that, with white being seen as the standard. I think that we can get to a place where we appreciate peoples culture without having it be normative in the sense of being good or bad.

BEYONCE MUSIC AUDIO AND A FEW SECONDS OF THE SNL SKIT

There was a skit on Saturday Night Live where white people who liked Beyonces music were astonished to hear her singing about being black. Beyonce is a black woman but also a rich and famous woman. Is class becoming a bigger determinant than race?

No, race has been and will continue to be until we address it head-on as an issue in America. I think what Beyonce did so powerfully in the video was highlight the complexity of blackness in all of its forms, and also reflect some of the social issues of the day, with regard to police violence, with regard to community safety, and highlighting the importance of culture itself.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been in a lot of places; the hashtag was and still is immensely popular. Where has it been effective, and where has it not?

The thing about hashtags is that theyre the paper clips of the internet. And what the hashtag has done is that its brought people into a conversation, to help people find a conversation that is happening about race and policing and race and injustice and race and identity in ways that there was just not public space for before. I think thats really powerful.

In terms of where its not effective, theres some people who dismiss the idea of racism and its reality, and also just dont want to talk about this stuff. I think that is really hard because until we talk about it, well never be able to actually undo racism.

Is it divisive? Because politicians have been asked, do black lives matter? The response is, all lives matter. And for some people, that hasnt gone down very well.

The hashtag itself is not divisive. And the all-lives-matter statement has been one of the most often used distractions in the movement. If I went to a breast cancer rally, it wouldnt be okay for someone to say, Oh well, you know, colon cancer matters. People with breast cancer arent saying that colon cancer doesnt matter; theyre saying that theyre specifically focused on one issue right now, and that is what the movement is saying: were focused on one issue, in the movement space, and thats really important. It doesnt make any other issue less important.

You must have faith in the mechanics of governance, if not in the people who occupy it now, because youre running for mayor of Baltimore. You think the system can work even if it doesnt now?

Yes; I think that protest in and of itself is an inherently political act. People push the system because they know the bearing that it has on peoples lives.

Youre also one of the people behind the website We the Protesters, which is about protest, about how to protest, and almost a map, a guidebook for bringing issues to public attention.



Yes. We the Protesters and Campaign Zero, which is about policy platforms, what we wanted to do with We the Protesters way back when we made it was to create a space where people could find the chance in the videos and the posters, if they wanted, to create these types of spaces. And then, what we do with Campaign Zero is help people to see exactly from a policy standpoint how the world can change to be in honor of people as opposed to against their lives.

At any point do you see an end for the need for this kind of protest, when principal demands are met, when there are people like you and your protest colleagues in positions of authority?

We shouldnt have to protest. That should not be part of how people have to go do the world. I think that part of what it means to be a democracy, though, is that people should and can and must challenge their government to live up to its commitments and to do right by people. So I think that the movement started around issues of police violence and accountability. Im sure that in a few years, there are other issues that people are going to organize and mobilize around. I think that is what keeps the government honest, if it is honest at all.

Your famous blue Patagonia vest has its own Twitter account and recently posted that it smells of struggle, tear gas and liberation. Whats with the vest?

You know, its cold -- thats what is with the vest. It makes me feel safe. Its completely irrational. I think about Baltimore, I had a death threat at the movie theatre and they evacuated the movie theatre. I wasnt nervous at all. The vest just makes me feel safe. Its not bulletproof, its a regular Patagonia vest, but I love it.

Its original? You dont have a backup?

Just the one vest to rule them all  just one vest.

I hadnt taken you for a Lord of the Rings man.

Im happy that you got the reference. Some people, they completely miss it, but I appreciate that you got it.

Would you have any books you would recommend to people who are listening to or reading this to understand what youre about, and where you think the country should be paying attention?

Michelle Alexanders The New Jim Crow is important for people. D. Watkins The Beast Side is a very different book from Michelles and also really important. And then Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson is a powerful read.

Now to bring the conversation back to where it began, to Rodney King, the beating on video 25 years ago. The year after that, in the riots that ensued, Rodney King came out and said, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? That wasnt a rhetorical question. Can we?

You know, we all have to be willing to show up at the table. And the we is not just the public. The we is the police, the we is the mayors office, the we is the governors office, the we are gun manufacturers. So yes, we can. We need to be thoughtful, though, about who the we is and making sure everybody comes to the table and offers what they can do to make the world a place that works for people.

DeRay Mckesson, who is active in Black Lives Matter and other movements, including the website We the Protesters, now a candidate for mayor of Baltimore  thank you so much.

Thank you.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
To the editor: If the stakes werent so high, I might find the battle of the brainless versus the robot mildly entertaining. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suggests that Donald Trump may have wet his pants during the most recent Republican presidential debate, and Trump fires back that Rubio was putting on makeup with a trowel. (Its Marco Rubios turn to take Trump down, Opinion, Feb. 28

Rubio and his people now realize that the only way to stop Trump is to get down into the gutter with him. Both candidates are throwing red meat to their respective supporters, but very few minds will be changed by this senseless and demeaning behavior.

Hillary Clinton is sharpening her claws, probably recording every Trump trashing and Rubio ridicule to use against whomever she faces in the general election.

Advertisement

Henry A. Lowenstein, New York

..

To the editor: It doesnt make any difference whether Rubio, Trump or Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) becomes the nominee. Any Republican will lose, because the more the party makes Hispanics, Muslims, blacks and gays feel like second-class citizens, and the more they oppose womens right to choose, the more determined these groups will become in their efforts against it.

Republicans apparently did not learn from the 2012 election that their future depends on trying to include all groups of Americans in their party, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Right-wing extremism will only make the party irrelevant.

Phyllis Landis, Oceanside

..

To the editor: While it might seem that Rubios decision to resort to personal attacks on Trump is a savvy strategy adjustment, he is missing the biggest opportunity. Its the area in between policies and personality that is the key to getting the race turned around.

Rubio should challenge Trump on his knowledge of the issues, not on his record in business.

The senator would be wise during a debate to ask Trump to outline the differences between Shiites and Sunnis, for example. I doubt Trump could even fake his way through an answer. He would have to resort again to yelling.

Hopefully, the voting public will begin to see through the facade in time to avoid the critical error of believing Trump can be a winning nominee for the party in the general election, or anything remotely close to an effective president in the off chance that he could actually defeat Clinton.

Bob Cunningham, Riverside

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Late in the evening on Super Tuesday, the Republicans former House majority leader, Tom DeLay, appeared on MSNBC and told Chris Matthews that party leaders would deny Donald Trump the partys nomination if he arrives at the national convention in Cleveland lacking a delegate majority.

This was on a night when Trumps victories in seven primaries set him up to dominate in the winner-take-all states coming down the pike later in March. An incredulous Matthews asked DeLay if the Republican establishment would really be bold enough to reject the man with the most delegates and anoint someone else as the GOP standard-bearer. DeLay grinned like a shark and said it was a plain matter of math. If Trump does not win a majority of delegates on his own, DeLay said, then that would mean a majority of Republicans had voted against him.

It may be simple math, but the simple reality is that such a scenario would blow the Republican Party apart. The Trump people would bolt, their candidate would probably try to run as an independent if he could still get on enough state ballots and the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, could take a three-month vacation in the Hamptons until she glided to victory on election day.

Advertisement

After Tuesdays results, there is almost no mathematical possibility of either Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz besting Trump in the delegate count, short of Trump coming out as a gay Muslim (and, even then, his uncritical admirers might still stick with him). That leaves the anti-Trump forces one desperate hope: a convention coup. It appears most institutional Republican leaders, big money donors and movement conservatives would burn their house down rather than turn their party over to Trump.

The most notable dissenter from this tactic among establishment leaders is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. After his own feisty candidacy went dead in the water, he shocked everyone by defecting to Trump. A former finance official in Christies presidential campaign, Meg Whitman, quickly spoke up to say what was surely on the minds of many Republican leaders. She called Christies move an astonishing display of political opportunism. Past New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman joined in the criticism, telling the Newark Star-Ledger, I am ashamed that Christie would endorse anyone who has employed the kind of hate-mongering and racism that Trump has.

Nevertheless, Christie has not shied from being Trumps new best buddy. On Tuesday night, Trump ran his victory rally like a presidential press conference on a stage at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida festooned to look like a flag-cluttered corner of the White House. And there, just behind Trumps right shoulder, Christie stood like a faux vice president.

Christie looked decidedly uncomfortable in the second-banana role. Maybe he was recalling the times he had characterized Trump as a carnival barker unfit for the presidency. Maybe he was wondering why it had taken Trump three days to disavow endorsements from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and other white supremacists. Maybe he was stewing about the six New Jersey newspapers that had just called for him to resign as governor.

Or maybe he was just stunned by having ended up in such a humiliating situation. This was not at all the outcome he had hoped for in this presidential campaign. Clearly, that is a sentiment shared by the entire shattered, impotent Republican establishment.
Although he won in Minnesota, Marco Rubios failure to win anywhere else on Super Tuesday raises fresh questions about the Florida senators strategy to secure the Republican presidential nomination.

Rubios broad losses were not a surprise in the conservative South.

But his rationale for staying in the race was undermined when rival Ted Cruz picked up his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma, giving Cruz a total of three states to Rubios one.

Advertisement

Thats given Cruz a strong case to argue that he, rather than Rubio, is best positioned to take on front-runner Donald Trump.

Rubio will push for a victory on March 15 in Florida, his home state. But his prospects there have dimmed as polls show Trump widening his lead among Republican voters.

Were going to be in this race as long as it takes, Rubio said on television late Tuesday, as votes were still being counted in Minnesota.

Team Rubio warned of the long war on Trump ahead in a fundraising note as results rolled in Tuesday.

This is going to be a long campaign, and we are NOT going to hand our party over to a dangerous con artist, the message said.

Rubio argues that he can still amass delegates and that he will do better on politically friendlier terrain in the states ahead than Cruz, who had staked his strategy on sweeping the conservative and religious South.

Two weeks from tonight, right here in Florida, we are going to send a message loud and clear, Rubio said in Miami. We are going to send a message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan, and the presidency of the United States, will never be held by a con artist.

But the optics of a campaign that has only won one state could be damaging.

A super PAC announced late Tuesday it was intensifying efforts to stop Trump, which could benefit Rubio. The Florida senator is still preferred by many in Washington over Cruz, who has alienated much of the GOP establishment.

The super PAC, funded in part by the wealthy Ricketts family and staffed by a former top aide to Jeb Bush, plans daily attacks on Trumps record and business dealings in an effort to stop the businessman from collecting enough delegates to lock up the nomination.

Trump, speaking at his resort hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., dismissed Rubios bad night.

He hasnt won anything, Trump said.

And Cruz suggested at his election event in Texas that those who have yet to win a state should prayerfully consider coming together, unifying.

In other words, he called on Rubio and two other GOP candidates -- Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Ben Carson -- to drop out so he could go head-to-head against Trump.

After months of delivering an optimistic message, Rubio shifted tactics and began to take Trump on directly last week with his own slashing insults and jibes.

Rubio spent the last few days trash-talking, criticizing the billionaires spray tan, short fingers and business ethics. Its unclear whether the attempt to match Trumps coarse campaign style helped Rubio, however.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

For the latest from Congress and 2016 campaign follow @LisaMascaro

For more, go to www.latimes.com/politics

ALSO:

Trump racks up primary wins

Full Super Tuesday results

Delegate tracker

Live coverage from the campaign trail
On a night when Donald Trump leaped ahead of Republican rivals and won seven states, it was fitting that he dispensed with tradition and did not throw a victory party.

Instead, Trump summoned the media to a news conference in the regal setting of his Mar-a-Lago estate, a private social club in Palm Beach, Fla. It was a scene befitting a head of state, and that was the point.

As the reality of Trumps likely capture of the Republican presidential nomination sets in, his top imperative is to expand his base of support by convincing millions of Americans to set aside any qualms they might have about his crude and, to many, offensive behavior.

It doesnt come naturally.

Im going to get along great with Congress, OK? Trump assured his audience  less the reporters in his clubs ornate ballroom than television viewers nationwide. Paul Ryan, I dont know him well, but Im sure Im going to get along great with him. And if I dont, hes going to have to pay a big price, OK?

Trumps remarks came a few hours after Ryan, the speaker of the House, joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in condemning the New York business tycoon for hesitating in renouncing the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

It was an extraordinary rebuke by the top Republicans in Congress of a man on the cusp of becoming their partys presumptive White House nominee. It reflected rising alarm within the GOP establishment that a Trump candidacy could yield a top-to-bottom rout for Republicans in November.

Trump sought to turn that hostility to his advantage on Tuesday night, all but flaunting his rift with party leaders and the donors who bankroll their campaigns. He said he expected lobbyists and special interests to spend as much as $25 million to help Florida Sen. Marco Rubio defeat him in the March 15 Florida primary so they can have their little senator do exactly as they want.

As far as Im concerned, its fine  and if he wins, theyll have total control, Trump said.

Trump also defied party orthodoxy by restating his view that Planned Parenthood has done good work for millions of women, even as he called for defunding the group as long as it performs abortions.

That might not be a perfect conservative view, he said, but I am a truth-teller and I will tell the truth.

Trump tried to blunt the criticism over his failure, during a CNN interview on Sunday, to immediately disavow the support of Duke or the KKK, noting that he had done so both before and after the TV appearance. How many times are you supposed to disavow? he asked.

Advertisement

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

Trump did make an effort to calm the fears of Republicans. A surge in turnout in the Republican contests held so far, he argued, shows that he sparks voter enthusiasm, drawing Democrats and independents to the GOP.

Look, I am a unifier, he said. I know people are going to find that a little bit hard to believe. But believe me, I am a unifier.

With rising chatter about the potential for one of his opponents to snatch the nomination from him at a contested party convention next summer, Trump said: What I really have is a great number of people. I have millions and millions of people.

Were a democracy, he added. I think its awfully hard to say thats not the person we want to lead the party.

As for his brash manner, Trump used a back-and-forth with a CNN correspondent to try to smooth relations with the media, whose representatives he often dismisses as sleazebags. He mentioned hed been watching election coverage on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

See? Trump asked, spreading his arms wide. Im becoming diplomatic.

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

Twitter: @finneganLAT

MORE SUPER TUESDAY COVERAGE

Analysis: Clinton wins by easing Democratic split; Trump wins by exploiting GOP divisions

This wasnt the way Chris Christie wanted to make headlines on Super Tuesday

Marco Rubio wins his first state, but his Super Tuesday struggles raise concerns
Im Christina Bellantoni, todays Essential Politics host.

Everyone had a little something to smile about on Super Tuesday.

Donald Trumps victories and march toward the nomination was the nights biggest headline. Hillary Clinton notched dramatic wins, and Sen. Bernie Sanders captured four states with a pledge to soldier on.

Sen. Ted Cruz banked a Texas-sized win in his home state and was on track to win more votes than Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio combined in the Lone Star State. But he also earned some legitimacy by winning neighboring Oklahoma as well as Alaska.

Advertisement

Rubio captured voters in the suburbs of large cities, and managed his first win in Minnesotas caucuses. He was leading Cruz by nearly 10,000 votes and Trump by almost 20,000 with most of the precincts reporting.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich framed a close contest in Vermont as a harbinger of good things to come from Midwestern contests and when his home state votes March 15. And retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson earned three delegates in Virginia.

Find results from each contest here and check out our delegate tracker as the race continues.

As Noah Bierman wrote in our takeaways from the night, Its not over, but its getting there.

One thing is clear  Trump will have a long-lasting effect on the presidential race, whether or not he is the Republican nominee.

Watch Trumps election night press conference, during which he proclaimed, I am a unifier and signaled he does indeed intend to moderate if he makes it to the general election.

In a round of television interviews Tuesday night, Rubio pounded Trump repeatedly as a con artist. Cruz painted the frontrunner as a liberal.

Seema Mehta has the details of a new super PAC that intends to hold nothing back in going after Trump in the races to come.

(By the way, this probably wasnt the way Chris Christie envisioned hed be making headlines on Super Tuesday.)

We followed that and every moment last night so you didnt have to. See the speeches and more.

Our team will continue to track the aftermath on Trail Guide.

CLINTON TAKES A WIDE LEAD

Clinton is well on the way toward unifying her party, Cathleen Decker writes in her analysis of how Super Tuesday shifted the race. The former secretary of State has regained a firm hand after scares in Iowa and New Hampshire and effectively blunted the internal Democratic war driven by its voters move to the left during President Barack Obamas tenure. Her success is driven by the increasing diversity of her party, which allowed Latinos to push her to victory in Texas and black voters to buttress her across the South.

Clinton defeated Sanders by margins of between 29% and 59% in Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas. Her narrowest win was in Massachusetts  50.4% to 48.5%.

Sanders captured his home state of Vermont with 86.1% of the vote and earned victories in Colorado, Oklahoma and in the Minnesota caucuses.

The results in Oklahoma show what a difference eight years makes. Sanders bested Clinton 51.9% to 41.5%. But in 2008, Clinton resoundingly defeated then-Sen. Obama in a higher turnout contest. Obama won the area around Oklahoma City and nothing else. Tuesday, Clinton won that same region and one other county, earning roughly 140,000 votes. (She won more than 228,000 votes in 2008.)

Overall, Clinton had more than 1,000 delegates late Tuesday night, compared with 371 for Sanders.

EXAMINING THE FINANCES OF STATE LEADERS

Patrick McGreevy dug into financial disclosures for Gov. Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, detailing their investments and gifts.

Brown last year accepted $22,000 in gifts, including dinners and travel expenses, most of it covering his costs to attend the climate change summit in Paris. And Newsom disclosed investments of more than $1 million in both Napa Valley winery businesses Airelle Wines and Villa Encinal Partners.

WHAT IT MEANS THAT CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS VOTED FOR A TAX INCREASE

Brown signed the long-debated new tax on health insurance plans on Tuesday, and its a proposal that marked a rare moment in the state Capitol: Republicans voting for a new tax. As Sacramento bureau chief John Myers writes, the politics of taxes for GOP lawmakers remains tricky, as no issue hits harder when it comes to the partys base voters.

TODAYS ESSENTIALS

 Southern Californias air quality board is moving to replace its top executive a month after Republicans gained a majority on the panel with new appointees who have vowed to make pollution regulations less burdensome for businesses.

 Jonah Goldberg argues on our op-ed page that conservatives need to get behind #NeverTrump.

 Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined the L.A. Times for an event about transportation.

LOGISTICS

Miss yesterdays newsletter? Here you go. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics?

Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com.
Since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump last week, the two have campaigned around the country together.

On Tuesday night, Christie introduced Trump at a victory party in Palm Beach, Fla., after the billionaire businessman had put at least five more states into his victory column.

SIGN UP for our free Essential Politics newsletter >>

For the next half-hour or so, while Trump conducted a free-wheeling news conference, Christie stood just behind him, staring at the side of Trump's head with a mournful look that led to several jokes on Twitter.

But Christie, who dropped out of the race last month after coming in sixth in New Hampshire, faces more serious problems back home.

In a joint editorial, six New Jersey newspapers called on Christie -- who is serving his second term -- to resign.

"Were disgusted with his endorsement of Donald Trump after he spent months on the campaign trail trashing him," the editorial reads.

"And were fed up with his continuing travel out of state on New Jerseys dime, stumping for Trump."

In New Hampshire, the Union-Leader newspaper, which had endorsed Christie's presidential bid, wrote an editorial saying it had been "wrong" to support Christie.

Follow @kurtisalee on Twitter for political news.

ALSO:

Trump racks up primary wins

Full Super Tuesday results

Delegate tracker

Live coverage from the campaign trail
The simplest messages in politics are usually the most powerful, with a politician on the wrong side of that simplicity scrambling to explain the unexplainable.

For California Republicans, the messages dont come any simpler, or potentially devastating on election day, than no new taxes.

From the viewpoint of conservative Republicans, its hard to find a bigger sin, said Dave Cogdill, who represented part of the Central Valley for 12 years in the Legislature.

Advertisement

Join the conversation on Facebook >>

Cogdill knows well the lethal nature of the anti-tax message. Seven years ago last month, during late-night negotiations over a $41-billion budget deficit, the veteran Republicans colleagues ousted him as GOP leader in the state Senate.

I lost my job that night, Cogdill said.

Cogdill had helped Democrats and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger craft a multibillion-dollar tax increase to close the gap in the state budget, an action that outraged activists and radio talk show hosts alike. It also was the last tax increase of its kind at the state Capitol for the better part of a decade.

That streak ended with Mondays vote in the Legislature on a new $1.1-billion tax on health insurance plans. While Republicans had cast healthcare tax votes since 2009, those were for extensions of an existing levy on only a few health plans. The new tax signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday broadly applies to all managed care plans and thus has the potential to affect millions of Californians.

And like previous tax hike discussions, most legislative Republicans again recoiled at the thought of casting a vote in support. The proposals final language was the product of intense negotiations, but it languished for three weeks as GOP lawmakers mulled its political implications.

See the most-read stories this hour >>

The first sign of movement came when the California Chamber of Commerce announced its support for the tax Feb. 11. A week later, the influential Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.  keeper of the anti-tax flame  announced it would remain neutral on the proposal.

When they take a neutral position or a support position, weve got to take that seriously, said Assemblyman Brian Jones (R-Santee), one of the most conservative members of the Assembly GOP caucus. They dont control our votes, but we do listen to their opinion.

One Democratic legislator was seen exclaiming Wow! as Jones spoke in favor of the bill during Mondays floor debate. In all, 11 Republicans in the Assembly and two in the Senate voted for the healthcare tax.

Even then, some argued that it was a vote for tax reform or went so far as to call it an actual tax cut, pointing to the net positive fiscal effect on some of Californias largest insurers. None of that, though, took the sting out of the resulting news coverage for those Republicans who insist the partys core principles are linked to opposing taxes, not supporting them.

Ive talked to a lot of donors and activists who are disillusioned about what happened, said Jon Fleischman, a former member of the California Republican Party leadership who runs a well-known conservative website. What youve now done is muddy the message of Republicans. Theres now an asterisk after the word taxes.

Fleischman spent several weeks writing columns urging Republican legislators to reject the healthcare tax, and argues that helping Democrats pass new taxes wont stop the bleeding in the GOPs size of the California electorate. New registation data last week showed less than 28% of the states voters are Republicans, a drop of three percentage points from 2012.

If you dont have a definition, Fleischman said, you cant build a base.

Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) rejected any suggestion that Mondays bipartisan tax vote sends the wrong message about his partys core values. We believe that taxes should be as low as possible, he said in an interview immediately after the vote. The debate is, whats the way to properly fund government?

That mirrors the message of Republican lawmakers who voted for the 2009 state budget tax hike. None of them ever regained their political footing, and those who didnt voluntarily leave office were defeated in 2010.

Assemblyman Matthew Harper (R-Huntington Beach) opposed the new healthcare tax, but he didnt rise to criticize his colleagues during Mondays debate, and even complimented their efforts to secure more money for developmental disability programs as part of the overall package.

Harper said Republicans simply dont have enough campaign cash to fairly fight the political perception that they may be going back on their anti-tax promises. Forgive some Republicans if theyre a little bit more sensitive when the media narrative gets a little ahead of itself, and people are very sensitive to the language thats being used.

Public polling suggests the fear is well-founded. In a December survey by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, adults were generally split over whether they prefer more services and higher taxes or lower taxes and fewer services. But there was little ambivalence among Republicans. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans surveyed said theyd rather have low taxes and fewer services  a 25-point gap compared to indepdendent voters and a 35-point gap with Democrats.

It is such a powerful issue, said Matt Klink, a Los Angeles-based Republican political strategist. For Republican orthodoxy, theres a reflex reaction to oppose all tax increases.

But the unsettled political debate is whether current voters will reward or punish GOP politicians who eschew a firm tax pledge. Klink believes that the pressure to toe the line is even more intense now that the GOP base has receded down to its most die-hard ranks.

The anti-tax message is at the core of what makes a Republican in California, he said. Before you know it, the partys going to meet in a phone booth because so few people adhere to what those principles are.

Still, no one expects another tax approval like the one for health programs anytime soon. Capitol staffers point out that since voters approved a 2010 ballot measure requiring supermajority votes on hiking fees as well as taxes, there is little room to maneuver. And legislators have made little to no progress on the governors call for new revenue to help fund transportation programs. Opposition to new levies on drivers is deep and wide among Sacramentos Republican ranks.

Im not even going to have a conversation about that, Mayes said.

john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast.

Times staff writer Melanie Mason conributed to this report.

ALSO:

Everything you need to know about the healthcare tax the Legislature just passed

Heres what the Assembly GOP wants in negotiations for healthcare-plans tax

Revamping the tax on healthcare plans proves tougher than Gov. Brown thought

Live updates from Sacramento
After nearly a year on the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth on Tuesday night, completing, along with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, the longest continuous stay in space.

Kelly, Kornienko and his fellow cosmonaut Sergey Volkov touched down in Kazakhstan at 10:26 a.m. Wednesday (8:26 p.m. Tuesday Pacific time). The Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft that ferried them back from the space station landed southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, NASA said.

Advertisement

Kelly will fly to NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston, where, after a brief rest, hell be examined by a bevy of scientists itching to examine him and gather samples.

But Kelly wont be alone. Hell be joined by his identical twin, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. The pair have been participating in what might be the most far-out twin study ever conducted.

This unique study is absolutely essential if were ever going to send people to Mars, said John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and President Obamas senior science advisor. Holdren said he planned to meet Kelly on the tarmac upon his return to Houston on Wednesday.

While Scott Kelly has orbited the planet for 340 days, his brother Mark has remained on Earth. Because their genetics are practically identical, the brothers are offering scientists an unprecedented opportunity to understand the many different effects that space travel can have on the human body.

Studies of the astronauts will allow NASA to see the physical and psychological effects of extended stays in space, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), a former astronaut who spent six days in orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1986, said in a statement.

As we prepare to go all the way to Mars in the decade of the 2030s, theres going to be a lot that were going to have to learn, Nelson said.

While the idea is nothing new  every astronaut that spends time on the space station is basically a willing human test subject  this stay was unprecedented in length, as well as for the parallel Twins Study that used Mark Kelly essentially as a control subject.

The Twins Study consists of 10 different experiments from several different research institutions, together examining how life in space affects human health.

When you go up in space theres no gravity, so all this fluid shifts upward towards the head and it causes a number of issues for astronauts, said Brinda Rana, a molecular geneticist at UC San Diego who is involved in two of the 10 research projects.

The most harmless of microgravitys effects also seems to be the most visible, she added  astronauts faces look puffy in space.

But there are many more concerning health issues related to this fluid shift in the body, she said, including the raising of intracranial pressure, visual impairment, and inflammation potentially linked to cardiovascular disease, among others.

Several of the studies have ordered up samples from both 52-year-old brothers, including blood, urine, feces, cheek cells and spit. One of the studies looks at how the immune system responds to flu vaccines given at different points in time. Other research examines the telomeres that sit at the end of strands of DNA, in search of signs of aging and stress. There is even a psychological study that examines a strange phenomenon known as space fog  a lack of alertness reported by multiple astronauts.

The research doesnt end with Kellys return from orbit: The scientists will continue to monitor both brothers to tease out any long-term effects of a year in orbit.

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.
The bright lights of big cities may be contributing to our national sleep deficit, says new research released Tuesday.

Over eight years, Stanford neurologist Dr. Maurice Ohayon and his team interviewed 15,863 people from cities large and small about their sleep patterns. Then they used data from the Defense Departments Meteorological Satellite Program to plot the level of nighttime light the interviewees were routinely exposed to.

Compared with people living where crickets chirped and stars could be seen in the night sky, those living and sleeping in more intensely lighted locales were 6% more likely to get fewer than six hours of sleep per night.

Advertisement

They were more likely to complain of daytime drowsiness and to complain of poor sleep quality (29% vs. 16%). And they were more likely to wake up in the middle of night confused (19% vs. 13%).

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

People who slept in areas with high light exposure got, on average, 10 fewer minutes of sleep per night compared to those who slept in low-light locales  402 minutes compared with 412.

Those living in urban areas with 500,000 people or more were exposed to nighttime lights that were three to six times more intense than were those living in small towns or rural areas.

Ohayon, who will present his findings next month to the American Academy of Neurologys annual meeting in Vancouver, suggested that our 24/7 society might demand nighttime lighting. But if further research confirms that its cutting into the quality and quantity of sleep we get, we may need blackout shades and sleep blinders to ensure we get our shut-eye.

The new research comes against the backdrop of growing concern over the impact of shift work and pervasive electronic and digital devices on Americans sleep patterns. Both erratic work hours and late-night electronics use are linked to less sleep and poorer sleep in American workers.

Inadequate slumber is, in turn, linked to obesity, metabolic disturbance and poorer overall health. Researchers are keen to illuminate the complex relationship between sleep, light and health, and to glean whether more darkness might bring better health.

Follow me on Twitter @LATMelissaHealy and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

MORE FROM SCIENCE

Pink Viagra: Cant get no satisfaction

A tale of two astronauts: Scott and Mark Kelly begin new phase of NASA Twins Study

Why are so many sea lion pups starving? Scientists find the answer off the Central California coast
The Burbank Cultural Arts Commission is planning to initiate a second round of its utility box beautification program, which last year selected and paid seven artists to each paint an original mural on pad-mounted electric equipment boxes throughout the city.

That was one of several goals that Peggy Flynn, the boards chairwoman, outlined for the City Council last week. Those plans also include seeking funding from the city and local sponsors; developing an arts-related smartphone app; organizing quarterly convenings to foster discussion and collaboration between business and arts groups; and creating a signature Burbank arts event.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in the 818 >>

Flynn said the arts have an economic impact in the city, and the commission seeks to grow that impact by ensuring Burbank residents and visitors know whats happening and are engaged in the local arts scene, rather than going elsewhere for those activities.

We need to focus on how is Burbank reaching its 100,000-plus residents to make sure theyre aware and patronizing the arts that are within our community, Flynn said.

Last year, Flynn said, the group looked at creation of a cultural arts map for visitors and locals, but members found we really should be focusing on developing a mobile app that the board hopes will expand the profile of arts in Burbank and improve communication to the public.

Jess Talamantes, vice mayor and City Council liaison to the commission, said he plans to propose dedicated funding for the commission, which is made up of eight members appointed by the council.

All of that takes money if you really want to reach out to the community and further out, Talamantes said.

Flynn said she promised the investment will bring returns to the city.

Board member Cindy Pease said the city should look to Santa Monica and Culver City as role models for developing its arts scene and relationships between local businesses and the arts.

The arts ... reflect the health and well-being of the community, Pease said.

Growing the communitys arts scene can also help the City Council achieve some of its goals and priorities, Flynn said, such as funding the refurbishment of the Starlight Bowl, which was expected to cost more than $17 million over 10 years, according to city budget documents last May.

At the time, Starlight Bowl renovation was discussed as one of several unfunded capital projects the city would need to find about $5 million a year to fund. In August, funding and moving forward with the project was identified as one of the councils top priorities.

One arts event that Flynn cited to illustrate how arts activities can help the council achieve its goals was the Creative Talent Network Animation Expo, an animation industry education, networking and recruitment event held each year at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport, which in 2009 drew 2,800 participants. It has grown 10% each year since, Flynn said.

In 2014, she said, the event drew more than 6,100 attendees, more than half from outside Burbank and about 10% from outside the United States. Those attendees shopped and dined in Burbank, she said, while staying in more than eight local hotels.

However, the event, which Flynn said is outgrowing its venue, also highlights some of the areas where the city may face some challenges and opportunities. She said one challenge is how the council can help keep such events in the city, and an opportunity for the Cultural Arts Commission is finding ways to further engage attendees in the local arts scene.

Mayor Bob Frutos said the utility box program is just a small start for the board. He said he took copious notes about their goals and plans to hold them accountable.

--

Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland
The half dozen people who boarded bus No. 4024 at around 10:20 a.m. Tuesday in North Hollywood were treated to a new bus smell and a new bus route, which was advertised on a wrapper ad on the outside of the vehicle: the 501.

Also called the NoHo to Pasadena Express, service on the route started this week and will operate seven days a week at high frequency, connecting the San Fernando Valley and the San Gabriel Valley during a $1.2-million, 180-day trial run, after which it will be evaluated and could be modified or discontinued.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in the 818 >>

In October, Metro approved the trial run of the express route, which will link the North Hollywood Red and Orange Line station to the Memorial Park and Del Mar Gold Line stations in Pasadena, stopping along the way in Burbank and Glendale, where passengers will be able to transfer to the BurbankBus or Glendale Beeline.

With numerous connections at both ends and along the route, its been touted as the missing link in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authoritys transit network. It is oft-requested by riders and transit activists, according to a recent post on the Metro blog called The Source.

County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, a Metro board member, called it the next step in a regional approach to multimodal transportation.

Service runs weekdays from 5:30 a.m. until 9 p.m. and weekends from 6:30 am until 9 p.m.  every 15 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes during off-peak times and weekends  and travels mostly on the carpool lanes on the Ventura (134) Freeway.

It exits the freeway to make two Burbank stops, one at Hollywood Way and Olive Avenue, near Warner Bros., and another at Alameda Avenue and Buena Vista Street, near Providence St. Joseph Medical Center and Walt Disney Studios.

The route also includes stops in Glendale at Goode Avenue and Brand Boulevard (westbound) and Sanchez Drive and Brand (eastbound).

Travel time is roughly 50 minutes end-to-end during peak traffic times, according to a Metro statement. The line is expected to carry at least 1,750 riders daily.

Regular fare is $2.50. Passengers transferring from other Metro bus or train lines will have to pay an additional 75 cents; passengers can transfer to other Metro buses or trains for free with a TAP card.

In addition to connecting to Red, Orange and Gold lines, riders of the 501 can transfer to a BurbankBus at Buena Vista and Alameda for trips to downtown Burbank, as well as, during peak hours, Glendale Beeline buses near Goode Avenue for trips to the Glendale Galleria or Americana at Brand.

Passengers can transfer to a BurbankBus that travels to the Bob Hope Airport every 15 or 20 minutes from a neighboring bay at North Hollywood for $1 or free with EZ Pass.

Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian, who is on the Metro board of directors and pushed for the service, said in a statement this week that the route, if successful, could provide the justification we need to consider even greater transit investments in this corridor.

He encouraged cross-valley commuters to try the route and see how it can make their transit experience better than ever before, he said.

By design, this express bus was created specifically to solve the problem that vexes our multimodal transit riders, Najarian said. It connects bus, light-rail, commuter-rail and airport travelers via Bob Hope Airport.

--

Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com

Twitter: @chadgarland

--

ALSO:

Horses escape stables, run free in Burbank neighborhood before theyre corralled

Dispute about Burbank homes fence raises concerns

Fighter jets on training mission make a pit stop at Bob Hope Airport
Two weeks after Manny Pacquaio publicly compared homosexual people to animals -- and a little more than a month before the boxers bout with Timothy Bradley -- HBO released a statement regarding his controversial comments.

It does not approve of them.

But, the network said, it will nonetheless produce and distribute Pacquiao-Bradley III, which the Filipino superstar has said will be his last match before retirement.

Next month Manny Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley Jr. are scheduled to meet in a Pay-Per-View bout. We have an obligation to both fighters and, therefore, will proceed to produce and distribute that event, HBO stated.

Advertisement

However, we felt it important to leave no uncertainty about our position on Mr. Pacquiaos recent comments toward the LGBTQ community. We consider them insensitive, offensive and deplorable. HBO has been a proud home to many LGBTQ stories and couldnt approach this event without clearly voicing our opinion.

Pacquiao was one of several candidates for the Philippine Senate who were asked their views on same-sex marriage during an interview broadcast by the Filipino television network TV5 last month.

Its common sense. Will you see any animals where male is to male and female is to female? Pacquiao answered.

The animals are better. They know how to distinguish male from female. If we approve [of] male on male, female on female, then man is worse than animals.

Pacquiao apologized for the comparison but has continued to stand by his views about homosexuality. Nike ended its business partnership with Pacquiao that week, calling his comments abhorrent.
The new Luigis Rollickin Roadsters debuting Monday at Disney California Adventure turns a rush hour traffic jam involving a fleet of 1950s-era vehicles into a choreographed dance routine of near-miss twists and turns.

The backstory for the new ride themed to the Italian tire shop owner from the Disney/Pixar Cars movies involves 20 of Luigis automotive cousins visiting from Carsoli, Italy. While in Radiator Springs for race day, the cousins celebrate with dance moves inspired by Italian folk dances.

This ride is all about surprise, said Kevin Rafferty, the Walt Disney Imagineering creative director for the new attraction. You never know where youre going to go.

Advertisement

The new ride replaces the beleaguered Luigis Flying Tires levitating bumper cars ride that closed last year after a little more than two years of service in the Cars Land section of the Anaheim theme park.

The colorful cast of kinetic car characters in the new Luigis ride is a vast improvement over the barely levitating grey tires of the old Luigis ride.

I test drove Luigis Rollickin Roadsters on Tuesday and found the adorably cute cars to be as much fun to watch as they were to ride.

I rode Rollickin Roadsters four times  in cars named Nicollo, Lucia, Sergio and Carmela  and do-si-doed with Elisabetta in the center of dance floor during my final trip.

Every car weaved, spun and jerked along a predetermined path that felt as random as a bowl full of spaghetti.

I had so much fun I wanted to ride on Rollickin Roadsters all day long and wished when I was done I could drive one of the little cars home to my garage.

The new ride is a jaw-dropping breakthrough for Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for conceiving and creating new Disney attractions, Rafferty said.

The vehicles employ a next-generation trackless system similar to the Ratatouille dark ride at Disneyland Paris, Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland and Aquatopia at Tokyo DisneySea in Japan.

Save for the new ride system, little has changed about the area behind Luigis Casa Della Tires, located at the main intersection of Radiator Springs. Hub caps are still nailed to the fence, Italian bunting still hangs on the walls and pennant flags still fly overhead. Subtle changes in the ride queue include Carsoli travel posters. In the showroom, a new line of Danza dancing tires, like music to your gears, has been introduced.



Dancing to five upbeat Italian songs, the new Rollickin Roadsters travel along 18 individual paths with each car switching paths on every run, ensuring that each ride is unique. Some paths will take riders to the middle of the dance floor, where other cars will dance around them.

Moving forward, backward and sideways, the anthropomorphic cars twist, turn, spin and zigzag without colliding. At times, the cars roam freely about the dance floor in a chaotic blur of near misses that look like they might lead to minor fender benders or more serious t-bone accidents. At other times, the synchronized vehicles move in a car-eographed line dance or square dance.

Inspired by rear-engine micro cars like the Fiat Jolly and Autobianchi Bianchina, the Luigi family cars are manufactured by the fictional Frizzante car company  Italian for fizzy or racy.

Each of the chrome-trimmed Frizzante model cars have a slightly different look. Some have two-tone paint jobs, others pin stripes, a few have luggage racks. All of them sport tailfin tail lights, white-wall tires, beige bench seats, convertible ragtops and black Italian license plates (but no steering wheels). The 10 female cars have demure smiles on their front fenders and eyes in the windshields while the 10 male cars boast mustaches on their grills and toothy grins.

Rafferty said the new ride was inspired by the parties and dances thrown by his Italian mother in their Southern California backyard. One of the car horns was engineered to sound like his grandfather Vitos laugh.

This is like a little piece of my family, said Rafferty, a 38-year veteran of Imagineering. I like to ride Vito because of all the memories it brings back.

All of the gelato-colored cars are named after Raffertys Italian relatives: The red cars are Salvatore, Vito, Tony and Lucia. The blue ones are Lorenzo, Giovanni, Pasquale, Elisabetta, Niccolo and Francesca. The green ones are Carlo, Sophia, Carmela and Isabella. The girls waiting to ride Rollickin Roadsters may rush for the pink cars: Rosa and Gina. There are also two yellow cars (Angelo and Carina) and two orange ones (Sergio and Carlotta).

Toward the end of each 90-second ride the roadsters snap into a synchronized Rockettes-inspired routine before turning in unison to face the next round of riders waiting in line.

The new ride has the flexibility to add music and dance steps to freshen the attraction, with plans already in place to introduce new songs for the winter holiday season.

MORE

32 best new theme park additions of 2016

8 unanswered questions about Disneylands Star Wars Land

Disneyland 2055: What the future may hold for the original Disney park

Hey, Harry Potter fans, heres an exclusive sneak peek at Universals Wizarding World

Everything you need to know about Shanghai Disneyland

21 creepiest abandoned amusement parks

> Sign-up for our weekly In the Loop theme park newsletter

> Follow the Los Angeles Times Funland theme park blog on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram
A new commander took charge of the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan on Wednesday as a deadly suicide bombing illustrated the challenges he confronts in a conflict now in its 15th year.

Gen. John W. Mick Nicholson took over from Gen. John F. Campbell during a ceremony at NATO coalition headquarters in Kabul at a moment when insurgents control more territory in Afghanistan than at any time since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Nicholson, 58, praised Afghan and international forces for continuing the fight against antigovernment militants, who now include not only the Taliban but also fighters claiming allegiance to Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State.

Advertisement

See the most-read stories this hour >>

I believe that all who have fought bravely within the Afghan security forces and the coalition are heroes, Nicholson said.

But the real heroes of this conflict are the Afghan people  those Afghan leaders here in the capital who take on the tough job of creating and running a government, and those in the villages and towns of Afghanistan whose lives have indeed been improved in the years since 2001, but who also have had to face the uncertainty and losses involved in this conflict.

Civilian casualties rose in 2015 to their highest levels in recent years, according to United Nations statistics, as insurgents stretched the Afghan security forces and brought violence into areas once considered safe.

On Wednesday, a suicide attack in the eastern city of Jalalabad left at least three people dead and 19 injured.

Officials said a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the gates of the Indian consulate, which is located next to several other foreign diplomatic missions. Then four gunmen began a half-hour battle with Afghan security forces, who ultimately killed the attackers, officials said.

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

At least two civilians and a police officer were killed. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Campbell oversaw the drawdown of coalition forces and the transition to an advisory role in support of Afghan forces in December 2014, only to see U.S. special operations forces and warplanes drawn back into the conflict after Taliban insurgents waged major offensives in the north and south in recent months.

Nicholson, who begins his fourth tour in Afghanistan, leads a force of 13,000 international troops from more than 40 countries, including 9,800 Americans.

Addressing his comments to insurgents, Nicholson said: I know you. You have brought only hardship and suffering to the Afghan people.

But he also is left to deal with the repercussions of two deadly incidents that involved international forces.

Last fall, U.S. forces bombed a hospital run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders in the northern city of Kunduz, leaving 42 people dead and more than 30 injured.

More recently, international forces were implicated in a raid on a hospital run by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, an aid agency, in the eastern province of Maidan Wardak. The aid group said that Afghan and international troops entered its hospital last month, forced two patients and a 15-year-old relative out of the hospital and shot all three dead.

NATO officials said they were aware of the allegations and had begun an investigation.

Latifi is a special correspondent.

ALSO

Refugees buying one-way tickets home after finding Germany intolerable

What can President Hassan Rouhanis pro-reform coalition achieve in Iran?

Controversial student activists turn Indias universities into ideological battlegrounds
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff faces huge challenges as she tries to govern the worlds fifth-most populous country during a period of serious economic turmoil. But at the moment, she has a more pressing problem.

Rousseff, who was narrowly reelected in 2014, is facing impeachment proceedings in Brazils Congress and could have her reelection annulled. She hasnt been convicted of anything and could very well stay in office, but this political battle is likely to cast a shadow on democracy in Latin Americas largest country for months.

What is she facing impeachment for?

Advertisement

Allegations of violating fiscal responsibility laws. Late last year, lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha accepted a petition to open proceedings against her on charges that she used money from state-run banks to plug holes in the budget.

Whats the impeachment process in Brazil?

Brazil has a bicameral legislature, much like the United States, with a Senate and Chamber of Deputies. The chamber, the lower house, will analyze the arguments against her and then vote. If two-thirds agree to impeach, the process moves to the Senate.

If the Senate then votes in favor of impeachment, Rousseff would be suspended from office while the upper house decides whether she is guilty of the crimes with which she is charged. If she is found guilty, she would be permanently removed from office.

However, some aspects of the process remain murky. Over the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will finalize some crucial rules, such as how the members of a special impeachment commission are chosen, and how much relative power the Senate has in the process.

Are the impeachment proceedings related to the billion-dollar corruption scandal at the state oil company, Petrobras, which has led to the arrests of high-ranking political and business figures?

Legally, they have nothing to do with that far-reaching investigation, known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, which has uncovered a multibillion-dollar corruption scheme involving major construction companies.

But politically, the scandal has been crucial to eroding support for Rousseff to the levels that made impeachment a possibility in the first place, said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.

Opposition politicians were looking for anything they could find to bring her down, he said. Popular discontent is pretty bad.

Soon after her reelection, Rousseff embarked on a series of painful budget cuts as it became clear just how bad the economy had become, partially as a result of the implosion at Petrobras, one of the countrys most important companies.

As federal investigators made more arrests, the scandal edged ever closer to Rousseff as officials from her party were put behind bars. Rousseff formerly served as president of the board of directors at Petrobras, but she has not been directly implicated in the scandal. After months of recession and as more corruption was exposed, the number of survey respondents that rate her government as good or excellent dropped into the single digits and is now at 10%.

Will she be removed?

Many Brazil analysts think she is more likely to survive than lose this battle, but there are a number of ways the odds could change in favor of the impeachers.

Broadly speaking, the longer that the proceedings take, the more likely it is that the economy will worsen and diminish her support even further, said Joao Augusto de Castro Neves, Latin America director at the Eurasia Group in Washington.

The balance of powers is still favorable to the government, as the bar to impeach is higher than the bar for her to stay, he said. The risk is that this could drag on and on.... If you have a vote later than currently is expected, later than April or May, this exacerbates the risks for her.

Rousseff could also be removed, and new elections called, if electoral authorities rule that her 2014 campaign received illegal financing. The arrest last week of former Workers Party Treasurer Joao Santana, who worked on both of her campaigns, led analysts to believe the risks of this outcome are increasing.

Rousseff was first elected in 2010 after being handpicked by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former metalworker who left office as one of the worlds most popular leaders.

Right, wheres Lula?

Lula is still a powerful force in the ruling Workers Party and is active in the press defending Rousseff and his partys legacy. But hes also made headlines for the wrong reason recently as the news media have reported that properties linked to the former president are being investigated for their relation to construction companies involved in the Lava Jato investigation.

Theres little indication of wrongdoing yet and Lula has said hes recently been the victim of blows below the belt, but in the last few years, Brazilian politics has already taken a lot of unexpected twists.

Will this be resolved before the Rio Olympics in August?

Rousseff sure hopes so, but its not guaranteed. Meantime, she has her hands full, with the challenges of the Zika virus, preparations for the Olympics and what may be the worst recession in Brazilian history.

Bevins is a special correspondent.
Wearing a white sweater and a blue blazer, her eyes framed by round spectacles, Eun Soo-mi looked more like a librarian than a political saboteur as she approached the podium in South Koreas parliament at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

With the quiet resolve of an endurance athlete, the 52-year-old member of the Minjoo Party embarked upon her mission: to speak for 10 hours as part of opposition lawmakers effort to block a vote on controversial anti-terrorism legislation with a filibuster  a highly unusual move that South Korea hasnt seen in more than 45 years.

Lawmakers from the Saenuri Party, a conservative party that holds a majority in the chamber, repeatedly interrupted her, yelling for her to step aside and let the bill go to a vote. Saenuri Policy Chief Kim Jung-hoon accused her of turning South Koreas parliament into an international laughingstock.

Advertisement

NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>

But Eun just kept going with her rambling monologue, mostly reading academic papers about anti-terrorism legislation. When interrupted, she simply made deadpan requests to her noisy opponents, flatly saying, Please apologize.

The decision by opposition lawmakers to resort to a rare filibuster  the first since 1969  underscores the deep divide over the legislation.

The bill is ostensibly a response to recent provocations by North Korea, including a nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. Saenuri lawmakers and President Park Geun-hye have described the current situation as an emergency and argue that it is necessary to grant the National Intelligence Service, the countrys main spy agency, greater power to investigate people or organizations.

Saenuri holds 152 of 300 seats in parliament. If the measure were put to a plenary vote, it would almost certainly pass.

The legislation was first introduced after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. and has been languishing in parliament since then. Given North Koreas latest antics, the ruling party contends that now is the time to step up security measures.

But the opposition claims that the agencys powers should be curtailed, not expanded. Under parliamentary rules, there is no mandatory end to debate -- as long as someone keeps talking, the ruling party has no power to stop them. And thats just what the opposition plans to do for the next two weeks.

For the filibuster to succeed, the lawmakers will have to keep up the chatter until March 11, when the parliamentary session is scheduled to end.

South Korean intelligence agencies have for years faced allegations of meddling in politics and overstepping their authority to snoop on the public.

In 2014, the former director of the National Intelligence Service was sentenced to three years in prison for leading a campaign that saw thousands of comments posted on online message boards ahead of the 2012 presidential election. The messages praised ruling party candidate (and now President) Park Geun-hye, while disparaging her liberal opponent, Moon Jae-in, as a North Korea-loving stooge.

A 2014 report by the International Crisis Group called on South Korea to rein in the NIS. Efforts are needed to reform the Souths intelligence capacities, principally by depoliticizing its agencies and ensuring adequate legislative and judicial oversight, the group said.

The filibuster began Tuesday evening, led off by five hours and 23 minutes of remarks by the Minjoo Partys Kim Gwang-jin. Eun followed Kim with 10 hours and 18 minutes at the podium, setting the record for longest ever address in South Korean parliament. But she fell short of the mark set by Strom Thurmond, who carried out the longest ever filibuster by a U.S. senator, speaking nonstop for over 24 hours in an effort to filibuster the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Euns only display of emotion was when she choked up talking about South Korean democracy icon and former President Kim Dae-jung, who as a young lawmaker in 1964 gave a speech in parliament that lasted more than five hours in an effort to block parliamentary approval of a fellow legislators arrest.

See more of our top stories on Facebook >>

South Korean politicians dont always resolve their differences so peacefully. In the past, lawmakers have gotten into fistfights, thrown furniture and barricaded doors to prevent the passing of legislation.

In 2011, an opposition lawmaker tossed a tear gas canister at the main podium in a last-ditch effort to prevent the signing of a free trade agreement with the United States. Parliament was evacuated, but the bill passed anyway.

The ongoing filibuster attempt is a rare cooperative act by South Koreas political opposition. In recent years, the main liberal party, now the Minjoo Party, has changed its name, and had many high-profile members defect amid infighting and electoral defeats.

Their suddenly united front may have something to do with having a common enemy.

Resisting the expansion of the NISs discretionary powers is certainly something opposition lawmakers can rally behind, for now at least, said Steven Denney, a Graduate Fellow at the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto and specialist on South Korean politics.

Borowiec is a special correspondent.

MORE FROM WORLD

Chinese social media platform plays a role in U.S. rallies for NYPD officer

I knew Beijings bad air was killing me slowly. But is it making me fat too?

North Korea will collapse if it pursues nuclear weapons, South Korean president says
For decades, U.S. patients have crossed into Tijuana for lower-cost medical care, from plastic surgery to dental procedures to stem-cell treatments. Developers of a planned high-rise now say they hope to capture a share of that market, offering a wide range of services in one facility, just yards from a San Diego border crossing.

The owners of New City Medical Plaza envision a 26-story tower with doctors offices, a medical lab, a surgery center and an adjacent 140-room hotel. The idea is to provide a single location easily accessed by U.S. patients. They plan to be up and running within three years.

The facility would be part of a complex of high-rises near the San Ysidro Port of Entry, buildings visible to drivers on Interstate 5 heading into Tijuana. New City has three residential towers, with two more planned, said Isaac Abadi, the Panamanian-born chief executive of New City.

Advertisement

With about 30% of the space sold in the medical tower, were starting to move ground already, Abadi said.

The New City project comes as medical tourism has been on the rise in Baja California after years of decline. We see an enormous potential, if we are able to promote it through a well-structured program, said Ives Lelevier, Baja Californias undersecretary of tourism.

Lelevier said the medical specialties with the greatest potential are bariatric surgery, plastic surgery, ophthalmology and dentistry. Although lower costs are a major factor, the region is also a draw for U.S. Latinos who travel to Mexico for treatment because they feel a cultural affinity, he said.

About 1 million people annually cross into Baja California for health services, with 85% of the clientele from Southern California, he said. We believe that we can bring people from areas that are farther away, something that in the medium term can turn into a greater revenue generator for the state.

Farther south, Lelevier said, a different group of investors is proposing a similar project off the Pacific Ocean, near the Metropolitan Convention Center, at the boundary of Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. The group is still looking for financing and not yet prepared to go public, he said.

Developers of New City say their aim would be to offer high-quality care in a single facility. They would minimize risk by establishing a medical committee that would screen physicians practicing there. For their surgery center, they aim to be the first in Tijuana to gain accreditation from Joint Commission International, a nonprofit that reviews medical facilities to ensure high standards of quality and patient safety.

The estimated cost for the New City Medical Plaza would be more than $50 million. Funding for construction would come from the equity in the existing New City residential towers, as well as from down payments of purchasers in the medical office tower, Abadi said.

Prices in the medical tower start at $160,000 for a 700-square-foot unit. To reserve a unit, purchasers are required to pay 30% of its cost.

At least two clients are planning on purchasing entire floors, he said.

A lot of our patients come from the U.S. We think its going to be very convenient for our patients to have a place to stay, to have all the medical testing that we could use available here, said Elias Bemaras, general director at ProgenCell, a company that offers stem-cell treatments.

Also planning to move is Certus Laboratorio Clinico, a Tijuana lab with a significant number of U.S. patients who cross over for testing and medical care. Owner Maria Eugenia Acevedo said she and the developers are working out the final details for the space.

Dibble writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com
"I almost feel obliged to apologize for some of what my political colleagues said," so goes Joe Biden in his speech during his latest visit to Mexico, per CNN.



Biden led the delegation from Washington in the capital of the South American country to discuss ways on how to improve the countries' relation in terms of trade, economy and the fight against drugs. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was also in attendance during Biden's speech.

"It's a heated campaign season and I just want you to know, Mr. President, that the most heated rhetoric you've heard from competitors for the nomination for president is not who we are as the American people," Biden said.

The vice president also assured the people of Mexico that not all Americans share the same sentiments. He added, "It is not the view that is the view of the majority of the American people. It's the exact opposite. It's the opposite view."

Meanwhile, in another meeting between the United States delegation and Mexico's high-ranking government officials, Biden described the GOP speech against Mexico and Mexican immigrants as something that is "dangerous," "damaging" and "incredibly ill-advised," per AFP via Yahoo! News.

Biden also expressed optimism that these xenophobic views held against non-Americans can be overcome and be bygones as was before.

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump drew the ire of the Mexican people and sympathizers after being vocal about his strong stand when it comes to immigration, particularly on those coming from the other side of the southern borders.

The billionaire and presidential aspirant said that Mexico is where rapists crossing the border are coming from. He also added that he would implore the Mexican government to build a huge wall across the border at their own expense so as to prevent illegal migrants from getting into the U.S. soil.

Naturally, Trump's words did not sit well with a lot of people, not the least of whom is the pontiff himself. Pope Francis said that those who build walls instead of bridges cannot be considered Christian.

President Pena Nieto responded by saying that such mindset is that of a troglodyte that can lead to one's isolation. "There are those who have the vision to close themselves off... build walls, but this only means isolating oneself and ending up alone," he said.

Two former presidents of Mexico, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, also fired back at Trump and said that they won't be paying for the wall.
Ted Cruz became the first Latino, regardless of political party affiliation, to win a Texas presidential primary.

Cruz Cruises to Victory

Among the 13 states hosting either primary or caucus contests, Texas, hosting primaries, held the most delegates of the night with 155 delegates. Texas, however, is not a "winner take all" state, therefore the winner won't leave the Lone Star State with all 155 delegates, but he will have comfortable gains.

Prior to Tuesday's vote, Cruz did lead polling data in diverse margins of victory ranging from one percent as seen in an ARG poll to 15 percent in a Monmouth University poll. Once precinct returns were finalized, Cruz won Texas by double digits.

According to the Texas Secretary of State office, as of 12:34 a.m. local time and 71.98 percent of the precincts reporting, Cruz won the Lone Star State's Republican presidential primary with 43.89 percent. Cruz's victory saw a boost from early voting, which accounted for 493,660 votes for his approximate total vote of 1.1 million votes. With the win, Cruz becomes the first Latino, as the son of a Cuban father, to win a Texas presidential primary.

Fun fact for the @texasdemocrats: @tedcruz is the first Hispanic #POTUS candidate ever to win a Texas Presidential Primary. #txlege  Texas GOP (@TexasGOP) March 2, 2016

"I'd like to congratulate our Senator Ted Cruz for winning the biggest prize on Super Tuesday," said Texas GOP Chairman Tom Mechler. "Tonight's record-breaking turnout is another sign that Texas Republicans are poised to win big in 2016 and we look forward to defeating the Democrats up and down the ballot in November."

The Texas Democratic Party acknowledged Cruz's win but using the percentage win against him.

Manny Garcia, deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said, "It seems almost 60% of Republicans agree with all Texas Democrats and even President George W. Bush: we just don't like Ted Cruz. Texas Republicans' own Cuban-American, Canadian-born U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has let Texas families down time and again. Like most of the Republican Party, Cruz has been obsessed with fringe issues and the politics of fear, meanwhile Texas families are desperate for real solutions."

With the win, Cruz wins most of the 155 delegates, although final delegate counts will vary.

Rival Donald Trump placed second with 27.09 percent of the vote. Marco Rubio placed third with 17.14 percent of the vote. Trump, however, will win delegates since he ranked second and received more than 20 percent of the vote. Rubio may not have won second place, overall, but may win a few delegates if it's found the placed second in specific districts; otherwise, Rubio will not win delegates for also not going over 20 percent throughout the state.

A Republican presidential candidate requires 1,237 delegates to clinch the party's presidential nomination. While votes from other Super Tuesday states are still being counted overnight, Trump currently leads, based on RealClearPolitics' projections, with 274 delegates, ahead 149 delegates for Cruz and 82 delegates for Rubio. The aforementioned delegates numbers are expected to change come Monday morning.

Clinton Conquers Democratic Party Votes

On the other side of the aisle, Clinton easily won Texas with 65.35 percent of the vote, with 83.22 percent of the precincts reporting as of 1:10 a.m. local time. Similar to Cruz, Clinton saw early gains in early voting with 411,092 votes cast to boost the more than 853,000 overall votes with Tuesday's ballots.

Bernie Sanders received 32.95 percent, or 430,041 votes.

Clinton's Texas win was expected based on several surveys, which saw the former secretary of state with victory margins ranging from 20 percent in an ARG poll to 42 percent in an Emerson poll.

Nationally, the delegate count for the Democratic Party is a bit more complex. A Democratic presidential candidate requires 2,382 delegates to clinch the nomination, and, based on projections, Clinton leads with 1,000 delegates to 371 delegates for Sanders. But Clinton's delegate is largely due to the "superdelegates," who are specific delegates who have already pledged to support her. Without the superdelegates, RealClearPolitics estimates Clinton with 543 delegates to Sanders' 349 delegates.

Specifically in Texas, home to a large Latino population and 222 delegates up for grabs, not counting superdelegates. According to the Texas Democratic Party, 29 super delegates are allocated for the Lone Star state, which brings its total to 251, the most of any Super Tuesday state.

The Latino Vote

Texas is home to 10.4 million Latinos, based on 2014 data. According to the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) Education Fund, as of October 2015, nearly one of every four Texan registered voter is Latino. NALEO noted more than 3.24 million Latinos are registered voters, which represents 23 percent of the total registered voter population in the state.

Based on exit poll data of 1,969 participating respondents, via CNN, Cruz was the preferred choice. Of the 1,969 respondents, however, only 10 percent were Latino, and 35 percent favored Cruz, ahead of 27 percent for Rubio and 26 percent for Trump.

With Democrats, 1,481 Democratic voters participated in CNN's exit poll, but only 32 percent were Latino. Of the Latino exit poll respondents, 71 percent favored Clinton, while 29 percent went for Sanders.

The specific vote count for Cruz and Clinton are unclear.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Colorado, where 1 in 10 registered voter is Latino, overwhelmingly favored Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Super Tuesday.

Winning Colorado

After the Colorado Democratic Party caucus' votes were counted on March 1, Sanders received 71,627 votes, which was enough for 59.3 percent of the total vote. Clinton was double digits behind the Vermont senator, receiving, 49,102 votes, or 40.7 percent.

Of the 64 counties in Colorado, Sanders won all but 12 counties. Douglas County appeared to be among the closest of results, winning 49.68 percent to 49.58, just five votes making the difference for the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist. In Denver, Sanders comfortably won with 54.36 percent of the vote to 44.97 for Clinton. Percentage-wise, Sanders hit a peak in San Miguel County, where he received 78.33 percent to Clinton's 21.19 percent -- although the actual vote count was lower compared to Denver with 420 total voters.

Overall, the Colorado Democratic Party celebrated the caucus turnout with more than 120,000 participating. According to Rick Palacio, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, turnout surpassed 2008's caucus attendance.

Thank you to the more than 120,000 Coloradans who came to #CODemCaucus! Proud of the amazing turnout to make CO voices heard. #copolitics  Colorado Dems (@coloradodems) March 2, 2016

In a message to supporters, Sanders, who also won Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont on Tuesday, said the addition of the Colorado win shows the political revolution has begun.

"Ten months ago, when our campaign started, not many people thought we would get this far or do this well. Not many people outside of Vermont even knew who I was. That was then. Tonight, voters in Colorado, Oklahoma and Minnesota have joined the people of Vermont in showing America that a political revolution is spreading across our country, that people want to take on the billionaire class and make our government work for all Americans and not just the top 1 percent," Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders is determined to keep campaigning and will travel to Maine and Michigan on Wednesday.

"Our campaign is just getting started. We're going all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and beyond. ... I look forward to a contest this fall between democracy and demagoguery, between ordinary Americans and the oligarchs. I look forward to the chance for our people-powered campaign to show Donald Trump that the United States of America belongs to all of us and not just billionaire bullies," added Sanders.

In Colorado, 66 delegates were available plus an additional 12 superdelegates. Sanders will not win all of Colorado's delegates but will get most compared to Clinton. The Vermont senator, however, is still short in the overall delegate count compared to the former New York senator. Nationally, RealClearPolitics projects Clinton has 1,000 delegates to 371 delegates for Sanders. Clinton's lead is boosted through superdelegates, accounting for 712 delegates. In the end, a Democratic presidential candidate requires 2,382 delegates to clinch the party's nomination.

According to CNN, Colorado's Republican caucus will take place on April 9.

Power of the Latino Vote

While there were no entrance or exit polling data collected at the Colorado caucus, the Latino vote has been expected to play a role in the current election season.

Latinos, representing 21 percent of Colorado's population, account for over 360,000 of the state's registered voters. According to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund, one in every 10 Coloradans are Latino, based on December 2015 data. Colorado's Latino voters is expected to increase come Election Day this November with more than 277,500 expected to cast their vote. The Election Day projection is an increase of 7.1 percent in regards to turnout but 5.6 percent decrease in the Latino share of the vote from 2012.

Latino voter turnout has been influential in presidential elections, increasing by 101 percent between 1996 and 2012 -- growing from 129,000 to 259,000.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told the Ecuadorian Broadcasting Association that Donald Trump winning the presidency is good for Latin America. However, Correa pointed out that it will be bad for the United States if Trump becomes president, as reported by teleSURtv.

"Since Latin America is quite independent from the U.S., I think we may even see an increase in the progressive trend here. That would be a major positive of a Trump victory," Correa said.

He added that a Trump regime will be just like George W. Bush's government that will lead to a great divide between powerful nations. During the Bush era, many progressive thinkers and groups emerged in Latin American countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Progressivism in Ecuador

According to Study.com, progressivism refers to "the belief that government or people acting on its behalf can be used to address social problems, inequalities, or inequities facing the nation." In a report by Open Democracy, the increase in the number of leftist and progressive leaders in Latin America since 1998 was called a "pink tide."

Before being elected as president of Ecuador in 2007, Correa served as Finance Minister under then-president Alfredo Palacio. The 52-year-old leader was able to win due to his sheer charisma and arrogance despite not belonging to any political party system, per Venezuelanalysis.

Instead, he created his own "citizen's movement" called Alianza Pais. Correa was also very good during his debates by neutralizing the arguments made by his opponents, which impressed Ecuadorians.

A report by Bloomberg noted that Correa will be Ecuador's president until 2017 after its congress amended the country's constitution. The amendment disallows Correa to run for the presidency in the 2017 election while allowing consecutive terms to its future presidents.

Democratic President is Good for the US

Although it is noted in the teleSURtv report that Correa said Trump will be good for progressives in Latin America, he mentioned that a Democratic U.S. president is good for overall "world security." He praised both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton while calling Trump "clumsy."

The Ecuadorian president said that despite Sanders' age of 74, the presidential candidate is supported by young people because of his anti-establishment politics. "He is iconoclastic. He is against Wall Street, against the big transnationals. He is saying what people want to hear," Correa said.

Correa also said that he has a high regard for Clinton but sees her as part of the establishment.
Nonprofit organization Teach For America is looking to increase its diversity by recruiting more minorities as teachers. During its recent 25th anniversary celebration on Feb. 6 in Washington D.C., Senior Managing Director Patricia Leon-Guerrero revealed the organization's demand for more Latino teachers, as reported by NBC News.

"There is a need for more Latino teachers. Within our public schools today, 25 percent of all students identify as being Latino, and nationally 7.8 percent of all teachers identify as Latino," Guerrero said.

TFA also formed a partnership with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity in September 2015 to help in the recruitment of African-American men, per NewsOne.

"We saw that in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The desire to lead is one of the values of the African-American community, so the message to lead by teaching resonates," Dr. Michael L. Lomax of the United Negro College Fund said.

According to an Education Week report in 2014, the total number of African-American, Asian and Latino schoolchildren will be more than the majority of White Americans in public schools.

Minority Teachers for Minority Students

In a report by Real Clear Education, a study from 2009 showed that minority students perform better academically under the tutelage of minority teachers. Students who were assigned to teachers of the same ethnicity got higher test scores compared to those with teachers who are of different ethnicity.

Education Next explains that students look up to their teachers as their role models. The comfort of having a teacher who they can have racial interactions with allows easier learning inside the classroom.

Impact on Latino Community

One of the TFA corps members, 25-year-old Colombian-born Natasha Borja Chavarro, told NBC News that she wanted to help Latino children just like how her first teachers helped her. She started to work for TFA in 2014, teaching math to more than 100 kids in the past two years.

"I figured it was the perfect opportunity for me to do the same with other students, help them get into college, to get a degree and the education that they deserved," Chavarro said.

The 25-year-old also added that she's not only teaching math to her students but helping them be proud of being Hispanic. She teaches them how to use their bilingual skills to become more vocal inside the classroom.

As a matter of fact, Chavarro decided to recruit her younger sister to join TFA. She is very happy that her sister has the same passion for teaching just like her.

TFA will be accepting new applicants until March 4.
Donald Trump is very open about his stand against illegal immigrants. The billionaire businessman who joined the race for the White House is determined to keep the United States for Americans and legal immigrants.

Trump to Build Wall Between the U.S. and Mexico

During his campaign, the businessman-turned politician revealed that he has no intentions of keeping the undocumented immigrants in the country. Trump wants to reverse President Barack Obama's executive actions that protect illegal immigrants, AZCentral reported.

Trump believes that there should be a new set of standard to allow immigrants in the country. He has no issues with them unless they come illegally. As to the building of the wall, Trump demands that the Mexican government pays for it.

The politician admitted that he has a soft spot for the Mexicans because thousands work for him. However, this seemed to contradict some of his statements.

The Washington Post reported that the politician called Mexicans rapists and killers. He even accused them of bringing drugs and crime to the country. In his recent rally in Virginia, he requested to take a woman protester out while shouting "Are you from Mexico?" at her, Latin Post reported.

Trump's Wall Threats the Mexicans

Per Reuters, based on interviews with migrants, smugglers and officials, many are attempting to cross the borders at this time because they think that if Trump or another Republican wins the election, the policies will be more difficult and tighter.

"If Trump wins, we're all screwed and all Latinos are screwed," said Isaias Franco, a 46-year-old resident of El Salvador. Franco was deported last year and he is trying his luck to return to the land of freedom.

At the time about 150, 304 migrants who attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border were detained from October to February. The figure is 24 percent higher from the previous year. Franco insisted that the progress of Republicans is a great threat to Latinos.

Meanwhile, Hope Hicks, Trump's spokeswoman, felt that the migrants have already felt how tough and determined the GOP front-runner is in building the wall and stopping illegal immigration.

Blanca Rivera, manager of Ciudad Juarez migrant shelter, noticed the rise of migrants and believes that they are taking advantage while they can.

Trump's Immigration Policies

Frank Sharry, the executive director of immigration advocate America's Voice also feels that Trump's immigration Policies are a threat to the immigrants, per AZCentral.

"Trump proposes to round up 11 million hardworking immigrants, a population the size of the state of Ohio," Sharry said. "He promises to rescind protections for (the children of the undocumented) and deport them. He wants to redefine the constitutional definition of U.S. citizenship as codified by the 14th Amendment...In sum, Trump comes down firmly on the far right fringes of the debate."
The Republican candidates are aiming at each other. Just recently, Marco Rubio called Donald Trump a con man while the latter called the former "little Rubio." This time, it looks like Ted Cruz is also joining the wagon.

Cruz vs. Rubio and Trump

In a rally in Oklahoma, Cruz opened about the Second Amendment, which is a dear topic to many. He attacked two of the other Republican candidates, Trump and Rubio, for their support in banning firearms, Texas Tribune reported.

The politician from Texas stressed that he will "not compromise the Second Amendment right" for people to own arms. "You know, it's worth noting my two leading competitors have both previously supported banning firearms," he said.

"Donald Trump supported Bill Clinton's nationwide ban on many of the most popular firearms in America, and Marco Rubio, when he was on the city council in West Miami, voted to ban firearms in public parks."

Cruz noted that there is no chance that he would ever support gun banning.

Rubio on Gun Ban

Breitbart reported that Rubio supported the campaign to ban guns in the county and municipal parks. He also agreed that the same thing should be practiced in recreational areas and facilities. His vote was obtained in the minutes of the "Regular Commission Meeting" that was held on March 3, 1999.

However, Mario Hammer, NRA lobbyist, was not impressed with Rubio's dedication to their bill that seeks to allow employees to bringing guns to their workplace, Tampa Bay reported.

"He was a big disappointment to us when he was the speaker," Hammer said of Rubio. "He talked the talk, but he didn't walk the walk."

Trump on Gun Ban

Cruz's attack on Trump concerning the gun ban rooted from the book "The America We Deserve," which was published in 2000. In the said book, Trump claimed that Republicans support the NRA line and they also refuse to limit restrictions.

However, he personally believes that there should be instances when a gun should be banned. "I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons, and I also support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun."

Rubio and Trump's Reaction on Cruz's Allegations

Rubio's spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas believes that Cruz is just desperate and insists that the senator from Florida is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. She also added that whatever Cruz says won't matter.

Meanwhile, Trump's spokesperson also insisted that the Republican front-runner supports the Second Amendment.
Two military officers have been sentenced to prison for sexually enslaving Guatemalan women in the '80s.

On Feb. 26, Friday, a court in Guatemala convicted a retired army officer and a former paramilitary for the sexual slavery of 15 Mayan Q'eqchi' women during the country's civil war period, the Guardian reported.

Lieutenant Colonel Esteelmer Reyes Giron will be jailed for 120 years for crimes against humanity and for the murder of 20-year-old Dominga Cuc Co and her two daughters, the news outlet wrote. Giron is the former commander of the Sepur Zarco base, according to Reuters.

Former military commissioner Heriberto Valdez Asij was sentenced to 240 years for his crimes against humanity and for having a hand in the forced disappearance of seven of the victims' husbands, the Guardian further reported.

The defendants both denied their crimes, with their lawyers saying that the two will appeal, Reuters noted.

"(It) is the first time a national court has recognized and established state troops were responsible for subjecting women, the majority indigenous women in this case, to sexual slavery and exploitation and that sexual violence was used as a weapon of war," said Guatemala lawyer Paula Barrios, who is involved in the case's proceedings, as quoted by the news outlet.

Barrios told Reuters "this ruling sets a very important example and precedent for criminal proceedings and convictions involving sexual violence in conflict that's not only relevant for Guatemala but other countries like Colombia in armed conflict."

Testament

The Guatemalan court heard recorded and live testimony from the 11 surviving Mayan victims, whose ages now range in the seventies and eighties, Reuters reported. According to the women, they were raped at the base and forced to clean, cook and wash for the soldiers. One was even gang raped by soldiers near a river where she did her laundry. Her young son witnessed the whole ordeal.

About 250,000 people were killed and 45,000 have disappeared during Guatemala's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, Reuters noted. Soldiers killed and captured more than a dozen men in Sepur Zarco village. Plenty of these victims, who campaigned for land rights, were accused by the army of colluding with rebels. These men's wives were the ones forced into sexual slavery.

Compensation

The women will be given compensation for their harrowing six-year experience as sexual slaves, the Guardian wrote. Their lawyers will "seek roughly $3 million in damages, access to health care, a school and land titles during a hearing on reparations" scheduled on March 2, Reuters added.
Brazilian law enforcers arrested Facebook's Latin America regional vice-president after WhatsApp failed to comply with a court order demanding information from the social media company's subsidiary.

The social media company's senior executive Diego Dzodan is being questioned by Sao Paulo police after he was arrested at the Garulhos airport early on Tuesday per an order from a judge in Sergipe in northeastern Brazil.

According to The Guardian, the arrest was related to WhatsApp's failure to provide information demanded by the country's judiciary regarding an alleged drug trafficking ring.

Apparently, the company had been repeatedly demanded to relinquish messages linked to the suspected drug syndicate necessary for the probe.

After three failed attempts at the request, the Brazilian court decided to order the arrest of the executive and charge Facebook 50,000 reais (almost $13,000), plus a fine of 1 million reais (about $250,000) for every single day that the company does not comply.

"In the face of repeated non-compliance, the judge Marcel Maia ordered the arrest of a representative of the company in Brazil, Mr Diego Dzodan for obstructing the police investigation," a court spokesman explained to the outlet.

According to BBC News, the social media giant clarified that they have always been available to aid the investigations in any way they can.

"Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have," the company said in a statement.

However, the company claims that they do not possess the information Brazilian authorities keep pressing them for, deeming the arrest of the Argentine senior official as "extreme and disproportionate" in a statement.

"We are disappointed that law enforcement took this extreme step. WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have," a spokesperson for WhatsApp told The Guardian.

According to Reuters, detention of social media company officials is "extremely rare" since they have consistently complied with court orders.

However, Atty. Marcia Hoffmann, an Internet law expert, believes that WhatsApp's case is different since governments other than the U.S. gained leverage over it after the Facebook acquisition.

"WhatsApp is a company that was started very focused on U.S. laws. Now that it's owned by a company with people and resources in other countries, there is more leverage for those governments to put pressure in new and in different ways. Arresting executives is one of them," she explained.

According to The Guardian, privacy and the use of information stored over the Internet have remained a subject of debate in Brazil.
Many are expecting Latino voters to make a mark in the upcoming 2016 Presidential Elections, but will they really be able to do it in the face of voting hindrances?

Some states -- four in particular -- appear to be presenting some kind of obstacle course for those deemed "voters of color" on Super Tusday.

The United States of America saw a massive exodus of immigrants from Latin America last year where the nation saw a record-breaking increase from 2014 to 2015, comprising 740,000 more Mexicans and 449,000 immigrants from other countries in the region, per a report from the Center of Immigration Studies.

Despite this, the power of Hispanic vote remained an untapped force over the years, which has been repeatedly attributed to the voters' lack of initiative.

However, a recent report from City Lab revealed that this might not be the major reason why Latino voter turnouts are low.

According to the outlet, Alabama, Texas, Georgia, and Virginia are about to send Hispanic voters into chaos when then try to cast their votes on Super Tuesday.

Among the forecasted obstacles include the recent legislative changes on voter IDs, laws which strip those convicted of any felony the right to suffrage and racial gerrymandering.

These issues have a significant effect on how the 2016 Presidential Race is going to turn out, considering that a voter mapping shows how the Latino power of suffrage in the South is getting stronger, per NBC News.

While the southern states hold the lowest Hispanic population eligible to vote, it houses a huge number of youngsters who will soon turn 18 and gain the right to choose the next president of the United States.

"Not long after population growth, electoral growth will follow. We won't see the Latino footprint on Tuesday or in the next electoral cycle but in the coming decades the South and Super Tuesday will be an important Latino stronghold," the report stated.

With all the noise some presidential candidates are making, Latinos have gained the inclination to vote if only to prevent the United States to be run by people who appear to plan on leaving Hispanics behind.

"That guy [Trump] does not respect us. This is one of our motives for going to fight, because we want to make sure he's not elected. I tell people in my community to please vote, because we're scared. Not just of Trump but Rubio and Cruz, who have the same platform," Peruvian national Nelly Samaniego told Think Progress.

But in the face of such difficulties, a voter -- no matter how determined he or she is to use power to change the government -- may lose the same resolution to vote they had just gained.
Mexico has a plan on how to address the anti-Mexican tirade currently seen in the U.S. presidential campaign trail.

Francisco Guzman, an official from President Enrique Pena Nieto's administration, said on Tuesday that the Mexican government plans to detail the benefits of a good relationship between the United States and Mexico, the Associated Press reported (via ABC News). Mexico will do this by sharing information to the chosen Democratic and Republican nominees' campaigns about how Mexico is "an opportunity" to the United States and "not a threat."

According to Guzman, Mexico's consulates in the United States will hold meetings with organizations and public opinion heads. They will discuss Mexicans' contributions to the American economy, the news outlet further reported.

Guzman swore that Mexico will not launch into a harsh confrontation against the candidates.

"We could win the front page of all the newspapers here or in other places with a swear word and the next day that would not be good for anyone," he said, as quoted by the AP. "What the government will do is deploy a greater effort to counteract the misinformation about the bilateral relationship, about the contributions of Mexican immigrants to the United States, but in a very neutral way. It is not to go against one candidate."

Mexican Politicians Fire Back

Last week, two former Mexican presidents, Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon, criticized Donald Trump's proposal of building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. The GOP frontrunner has been making anti-immigrant remarks since he launched his presidential campaign.

Fox said that Mexico is not going to pay for Trump's wall, Fusion reported. He also insisted that a Trump presidency would not benefit Latinos in the United States.

Calderon stressed that closing the borders would be a huge trade loss for the U.S., calling Trump's wall "completely useless" and "stupid," according to CNBC.

VP Biden Apologizes

In his visit to Mexico City in February, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden offered an apology for his political colleagues' statements against Mexican immigrants. He insisted that the Republican nominees' views do not represent the American people, calling the GOP candidates' remarks "disturbing" and "incredibly ill-advised," CNN reported.

Pena Nieto said that closing the borders would just isolate the United States.

"This is to be alone. It may look in one way like you're closing passage to a place, but seen another way it is isolation," Mexico's president said, as quoted in a separate report from the AP (via ABC News).

U.S. Internal Secretary Sally Jewell recently said the economies of the United States and Mexico are "inextricably linked," the AP added.
In the upcoming elections, the Latino electorate is more important than ever.

Over 13.1 million Latino voters are projected to cast their votes in November. The number is approximately two million higher than the 11.2 million Latino voters back in the 2012 elections, according to a report from NBC News. This means that the group could be a decisive vote in the presidential race, especially as their ballots could still be up in the air.

"Early primary results have shown that the Latino vote is still very much up for grabs, even within the nation's major political parties," Arturo Vargas of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund said.

The significance of the Latinos in the elections is increasingly apparent, but how do the candidates get the advantage in the growing electorate?

Latinos and Immigration

In a separate report from NBC News, Matt Barreto, a professor from the University of California Los Angeles professor and co-founder of Latino Decisions, said that the massive jump in the expected Latino turnout isn't just because of the population increase but also of the high emotions brewing in the community this year. For the most part, these emotions stem from the debate on issues that are personal to the demographic, most notably immigration.

"Immigration is a mobilizing issue," Barreto explained. "When people think that their personal welfare is at stake, they are more likely to participate. In the Latino community, there are few issues that can evoke emotion more than immigration."

The numbers agree with Barreto. A study by the Pew Research Center revealed that about 36 percent of all Latino voters would not vote for a candidate with opposing views on immigration policy. This includes 25 percent of Latino Republicans and four out of 10 Latino Democrats.

Education

However, immigration is not the only important issue among the Hispanic community in the upcoming elections. J.R. Gonzales of the Texas Association of Mexican American Chambers of Commerce told TWC News that there are other issues concerning the voting block such as education.

Gonzales revealed that there has been a significant boost in Hispanics completing a post-secondary education and earning a college degree. He added, "We're still going for that and we need more of it. Education is very important."

Healthcare

Healthcare is also a very significant issue that the community is looking to address. Gonzales pointed out that some of the biggest factors in the Hispanic mortality rates are heart attacks, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.

"As we look at Latinos, many of who don't have insurance, many may not have the training or education to understand the problems of such diseases and how to prevent them, healthcare becomes important," he said.
The Jurassic World has been uncovered and it's in Argentina. It might be a while before the world could see dinosaurs roaming in a deserted island, but according to a report from AFP, palaeontologists revealed to the Ameghiniana online journal that they have found a major Jurassic-era fossil site in Patagonia.

It has been four years after the team discovered the massive 23,000-square-mile site located in Patagonia, Southern Argentina. The site is a treasure trove of valuable fossils that are hundreds of millions of years old.

The team was able to unearth "a wide range of micro and macro organisms" on the site, according to Ignacio Escapa from the Egidio Feruglio Paleontology Museum.

In the AFP report, geologist Juan Garcia Massini of the Regional Center for Scientific Research and Technology Transfer stressed the value of the relics that was uncovered in Argentinia along the Deseado Massif mountain range.

"No other place in the world contains the same amount and diversity of Jurassic fossils," Massini said.

Estimated to be between 140 and 160 million years old, the fossils were found very near the top of the ground due to the erosion that wore down the land over the years. Massini, who headed the group of researchers in the Patagonia site, revealed that it was preserved almost instantly, some even in less than a day.

"You can see the landscape as it appeared in the Jurassic -- how thermal waters, lakes and streams as well as plants and other parts of the ecosystem were distributed," he explained. "You can see how fungi, cyanobacteria and worms moved when they were alive."

The preservation of the fossils on the site was so complete that every rock is a potentially important door to a brand new discovery. According to a report from Agencia CTyS via Inverse, the site had intact remains of early nematodes and insects and more are quite possibly in store for the palaeontologists, who are only beginning to scratch the surface of the Patagonia site.

Massini also told Agencia CTyS that the ground-breaking Patagonia location will be a very important range to be studied by scientists for decades. It is reminiscent of the Rhynie Chert site in Scotland, which has been studied since 1910. Both boasted similar circumstances with an impressive collection of well-preserved fossils.

In fact, Massini revealed that the Patagonia site could yield even better preserved fossils because of the slow erosion of the land.
"Super Tuesday," a date when nearly a dozen states host presidential primaries or caucuses, finally concluded and it was a good evening for several Republican candidates. Republican Party front-runner Donald Trump further cemented his lead against Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson on Tuesday night.

Georgia

In Georgia, Trump won with 38.8 percent while Rubio and Cruz battled for second place. Georgia, with 76 delegates up for grabs, saw Rubio narrowly defeat Cruz with 24.5 percent to 23.6 percent. Georgia is not a "winner take all" state, therefore the 76 delegates will be split proportionally based on agreed guidelines.

Vermont

As Georgia polls closed at 7 p.m., so did Vermont. Trump won Vermont, but he encountered a very close battle against Kasich. Trump received 32.7 percent of the vote, but Kasich was behind with 30.4 percent. Rubio placed third with 19.3 percent, while Cruz went into single-digit territory with 9.7 percent, ahead of Carson's 4.2 percent. Based on projections, Trump and Kasich will each split Vermont's 16 delegates -- each receiving eight delegates. Rubio, Cruz and Carson will not receive delegates from Vermont.

Virginia

Trump's winning streak continued in Virginia. The real estate mogul narrowly defeated Rubio -- 34.7 percent vs. 31.9 percent. Cruz was a distant third place with 16.9 percent. In regards to delegates, 49 delegates were available -- 17 went for Trump, 16 for Rubio, 8 for Cruz, 5 for Kasich and 3 for Carson.

Alabama

In Alabama, among the four states with polls closing at 8 p.m. EST, Trump easily won with 43.4 percent. Cruz surpassed Rubio for second place, 21.1 percent vs. 18.7 percent. Trump secured most of the 50 available delegates, specifically 36 delegates, while Cruz won 13 delegates. Rubio didn't leave empty handed, as he won one delegate.

Massachusetts

Most of Massachusetts' 42 delegates went to Trump, who won the state's primary with 49 percent. Kasich performed well with 18.1 percent, narrowly ahead of Rubio's 17.9 percent. Cruz was in single digits with 9.6 percent. With Trump receiving 22 delegates, Kasich and Rubio each received 8 delegates, while Cruz won 4 delegates. Carson was the only GOP candidate not to win delegates in Massachusetts.

Oklahoma

Trump's winning streak was broken when Cruz won Oklahoma with 34.3 percent of the vote, winning 15 delegates. Trump placed second with 28.3 percent, winning 13 delegates. Rubio did well, winning 12 delegates and receiving 26 percent of the vote, but still finished third place. Carson and Kasich were in single digits and did not win delegates.

Tennessee

Tennessee gave Trump another win. With 58 delegates at stake, Trump won 31 delegates as a result of scoring 38.9 percent of the vote. Cruz and Rubio battled for second place, but it was the Texas senator who outperformed the Florida senator. Cruz won 14 delegates with 24.7 percent of the vote and Rubio won 10 delegates with 21.2 percent of the vote. Carson and Kasich did not win delegates.

Arkansas

It was a close contest in Arkansas between Cruz and Trump, but the Texas senator lost to the New York businessman. Trump received 32.7 percent, enough for 15 of the state's 40 delegates. Cruz won 12 delegates for winning 30.5 percent of the vote. Rubio placed third with 25 percent, or 8 delegates. Carson and Kasich did not win delegates.

Minnesota

In Minnesota, hosting a caucus, Rubio scored his first victory of the 2016 presidential contest. Rubio won Minnesota with 36.8 percent, comfortably ahead of Cruz's 28.9 percent, while Trump placed third with 21.2 percent. Carson and Kasich received 7.2 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively.

Texas

In Texas, Cruz easily won his home state with 43.7 percent, ahead of Trump's 26.8 percent and Rubio's 17.8 percent. With 155 delegates available in Texas, Cruz won 84 delegates, while Trump scored 33 delegates. Rubio received two delegates. Kasich and Carson did not win delegates.

Alaska

Finally in Alaska, where former Gov. Sarah Palin had endorsed Trump for president, actually favored Cruz. The Texas senator won with 36.4 percent in the caucus state, narrowly ahead of Trump's 33.5 percent. Rubio was third with 15.1 percent. Despite the win, Cruz and Trump tied in the delegate count, each will receive 10 delegates. Rubio won four delegates while Carson and Kasich did not win delegates.

Post-Super Tuesday Plans

Rubio is looking ahead for the March 15 primaries, specifically Florida's election where it's a "winner take all" primary.

"Florida, I know you're ready. The pundits say we're underdogs, I'll accept that. We've all been underdogs. This is a community of underdogs. This is a state of underdogs. This is a country of underdogs. But we will win. And when we do, we will do what needs to be done. And our children will be the freest and most prosperous Americans that have ever lived. And the American Dream will change more lives than ever before. And we are going to leave for our children what Americans always leave their children: the single greatest nation in the history of all mankind," said Rubio on Tuesday night from Miami.

Cruz called on unity among his fellow GOP candidates to defeat Trump. Speaking from Texas, Cruz said, "So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation."

Cruz later added that candidates who have not won a state to consider "coming together" with his presidential campaign.

According to RealClearPolitics, Trump has 281 delegates, Cruz has 162 delegates and Rubio has 87 delegates. Kasich has 25 delegates and Carson has eight delegates. A Republican presidential candidate must need 1,237 delegates to win the GOP's nomination.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
The battle between top consoles Xbox and PlayStation is constantly heating up, but Microsoft's head honcho Phil Spencer is not getting caught up in the competition. In fact, Spencer recently spoke up and dismissed the ongoing rivalry.

"We should all applaud when a team does something special," Spencer pointed out on Twitter. "Those who hope for team to fail due to platform aren't real gamers."

@wrath93 We should all applaud when a team does something special. Those who hope for team to fail due to platform aren't real gamers.  Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 1, 2016

It was a response to another Twitter fan who told him to "wave the white flag already" after the executive named the various games on Xbox he was looking forward to including "Uncharted 4: The Thief's End," "The Division" and "Quantum Break."

The social media savvy head of Xbox is well-versed in discussing the heated rivalry between the different consoles, often saying that it's not an issue that the team often places much importance in. During an interview with Game Spot last year, Spencer spoke up against the debate that pitted the consoles against each other and called it "distasteful."

"The one thing that I probably find a little distasteful in the discourse around games is the divisiveness that people try to build between platforms," Spencer said at the time. "It becomes more about what piece of plastic I own than what games I'm playing. It becomes more about somebody else failing than the things I love succeeding. I don't think that's a good place for our industry."

Spencer added, "My job isn't really to keep you from buying something else. My job is to make you proud of what we offer, and to give you an enjoyable experience with the product we have."

Despite the rivalry brewing among outspoken fans, the Xbox team is focused on their own innovations. A report from The Guardian revealed that Microsoft is working on combining its PC and Xbox One platforms to create a single gaming ecosystem for all the Universal Windows Applications.

This has been the vision of the company for quite some time. Early in 2015, the Xbox app was brought back to the Windows 10 PC for cross-platform play and shared contacts. Later in November, the Xbox One system got an update that made it compatible with Windows 10. This year, Satya Nadella announced during the dotNet Conference in Madrid that the Xbox One platform will be getting Universal Window Applications, although it was not elaborated how.

Are you excited about the exciting direction of the Xbox group?
How would you like traveling by air at a rate as fast as the speed of sound? If the recent initiative from the United States government comes to fruition, jet setters could soon be riding the future of the aviation industry.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is now in the process of developing a suitable substitute in place of the defunct Concorde passenger jet, according to CNBC. The space agency is commissioning Lockheed Martin, a tech company that specializes in aerospace, to come up with a new design for Quiet Supersonic Technology or Quesst, per The Guardian.

CNBC notes that NASA awarded the contract amounting to $20 million to Lockheed Martin for the preliminary design of a quieter supersonic jet, to get its "X-Planes" project underway as part of the New Aviation Horizons initiative. If everything goes according to plan, NASA intends to launch the flight test for the new jet in 2020.

The Concorde jet was taken out from its active flight service back in 2003 because it was deemed as impractical in terms of costs and the loud noise output from its supersonic activity. The partnership between NASA and Lockheed Martin hopes to develop a high-speed passenger jet that produces a soft thump supersonic "heartbeat" as opposed to the loud supersonic boom, notes The Guardian.

"NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter -- all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

"It's worth noting that it's been almost 70 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 as part of our predecessor agency's high speed research," Bolden explained during an event in Arlington, Virginia where NASA announced the project. "Now we're continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight."

This initiative from NASA is a welcome development for the future of travel, particularly in air flight. If the project prove to be successful, this would significantly cut the travel time and possibly offer more affordable flight fares.

The Concorde had its limitations because of its prohibitive loud boom sound. It was banned in the United States for months in its earlier flights and was reduced to flying at less than the speed of sound later on to avoid the supersonic noise, BT.com reported.
Hillary Clinton won most of the Democratic Party's "Super Tuesday" states but Bernie Sanders also made his presence known in winning four primaries and caucuses.

Georgia

Clinton comfortably won Georgia with 71.2 percent to Sanders' 28.3 percent. Of the 117 delegates, which includes superdelegates, Clinton won 74 delegates and Sanders won 28 delegates.

Virginia

Clinton would go on to win Virginia with 64.3 percent, ahead of Sanders' 35.2 percent. With 109 delegates in Virginia, Clinton secured 61 delegates and 34 delegates went for Sanders.

Vermont

Clinton's winning streak was short lived as Sanders easily won his home state of Vermont. Sanders received 86.2 percent, while Clinton accounted for 13.6 percent of the vote. Of the 26 delegates, Sanders was 10 delegates, but the remaining -- 10 superdelegates -- are not determined.

Massachusetts

Sanders also proved to be a strong competitor against Clinton in Massachusetts, where the winner was determined by nearly two percent. Clinton still won, with 50.3 percent, but Sanders was near with 48.5 percent. It's unclear who is the true winner since CNN projects each Democratic delegate will receive 44 delegates.

Alabama

Back in the South, Clinton cruised through Alabama with 77.8 percent, while Sanders received 19.2 percent. While Clinton will receive most of the delegates, 44 delegates, Sanders still gained 9 delegates.

Tennessee

In Tennessee, Clinton won with 66.1 percent, securing 38 delegates, and Sanders received 32.4 percent, securing 21 delegates.

Oklahoma

In Oklahoma, Sanders defeated Clinton. The Vermont senator attracted 51.9 percent of the vote, winning 20 delegates. Clinton gained 16 delegates after winning 41.5 percent of the vote.

Texas

In Texas, Clinton comfortable won the Lone Star State with 65.2 percent, defeating Sanders' 33.2 percent. With the Texas win, Clinton won 136 delegates, but Sanders also gained a sizeable amount with 64 delegates.

Arkansas

Clinton's final Super Tuesday win occurred in Arkansas, where she received 66.3 percent of the vote and 22 delegates. Sanders received 29.7 percent, which was enough to win 10 delegates.

Minnesota

In Minnesota, the tides turned in Sanders' favor. Sanders won the state's caucus with 61.7 percent, securing 46 delegates. Clinton was double-digits behind with 38.3 percent, but still won 29 delegates.

Colorado

Finally in Colorado, Sanders secured another caucus victory. Sanders received 71,627 votes, which was enough for 59.3 percent of the total vote. Clinton was double digits behind the Vermont senator, receiving, 49,102 votes, or 40.7 percent.

In Colorado, 66 delegates were available plus an additional 12 superdelegates. Sanders will not win all of Colorado's delegates but will get most compared to Clinton. Nationally, RealClearPolitics' projection has Clinton with 1,000 delegates to 371 delegates for Sanders. Clinton's lead is boosted through superdelegates, accounting for 712 delegates. In the end, a Democratic presidential candidate requires 2,382 delegates to clinch the party's nomination.

Must Read: Super Tuesday GOP Results: Trump Wins Most States, But Cruz and Rubio Still Gain Delegates

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Despite accusations hurled at him for his alleged involvement in a high-level corruption scandal, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's former president, is contemplating a possible return to office in the 2018 elections.

Lula da Silva said that he would be willing to make himself available for the candidacy if a need for it arises. He also downplayed the age factor and assured his supporters that despite reaching 72 years in the upcoming election, he still has "the desire of a 30-year-old to be president of the republic."

Brazil's head of state between 2003 and 2011 made this pronouncement during an event staged for the governing Workers' Party's 36th anniversary, to which he was also a part of, The Guardian reported.

Apart from his old age, another major obstacle Lula da Silva has to overcome on his way to the country's highest office is the corruption charges he is facing.

Brazilian authorities have just started a probe regarding the former president's link to the corruption scandal at the state-run Petrobras oil company, where other high-profile politicians and businessmen have also been implicated.

The investigators are looking into possible bribery and rigging charges, wherein companies are believed to have paid huge sums of money in order to obtain contracts for various projects from Petrobras. In the end, the costs of these projects have reportedly been inflated for the benefit of these businessmen.

Meanwhile, Lula da Silva was accused of reaping benefits during his term as president, The Wall Street Journal reported. The authorities are now looking into his connection with construction companies involved in the corruption scandal. These companies allegedly made some renovations on two real estate properties owned by Lula da Silva.

The former Brazilian leader has already denied the allegations. His spokesperson said that Lula da Silva has "always acted within the law before, during and after his two terms as president." The spokesperson also said that Lula da Silva does not own the properties in question.

This corruption issue has already taken a toll on his potential bid for the presidency as early as now. According to a survey among 2,000 respondents from different states in the country conducted by the MDA polling firm, seven out of 10 Brazilians believe that Lula da Silva has something to do with the corruption scandal.
An independent federal civil rights agency has called on Congress to support legislation providing undocumented immigrant children the legal right to due process.

Letter to Congress: Support the "Fair Day" Act

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR), an independent and bipartisan federal agency tasked with advising Congress and the president on civil rights issues, released a letter addressed to both legislative bodies of Congress to support the "Fair Day in Court for Kids Act."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., first introduced the bill in early February. It would mandate the federal government to appoint counsel to unaccompanied immigrant children and other vulnerable individuals, such as victims of abuse, torture and violence. During a Senate floor address on Feb. 11, Reid said the bill addressed the "life-and-death consequences of deportation" affecting Central America and Mexico. He added the U.S. must ensure asylum-seeking children and women are not put in harm's way, meaning they should have the right to a lawyer.

"The humanitarian crisis at our doorstep demands that we, as Americans, affirm our fundamental values of protection and due process," said Reid. The USCCR letter also acknowledged that violence has become "commonplace" in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as a result of gangs, beatings, rape and murder going unpunished.

Last September, the civil rights agency published a report titled "With Liberty and Justice for All: The State of Civil Rights at Immigration Detention Facilities," which included recommendations for provisions now included in Reid's bill.

The USCCR recommendations included:

- Access to qualified counsel for immigrant detainees of all ages, including children

- Government-provided counsel for indigent detainees

- National implementation of Legal Orientation Programs in detention facilities

"We are pleased that this bill proposed by Sen. Harry Reid addresses our recommendation on provision of counsel for Central American refugee children seeking asylum," said USCCR Chairman Martin R. Castro. "Without counsel, we will see more children deported and killed in their home countries upon arrival, as has been recently reported in the media."

The USCCR commissioners agreed that the children need legal counsel, and a guardian or social worker would not be able to provide the same assistance to fully present asylum cases.

"Fair Day in Court for Kids Act" Support in Congress

Reid's Senate bill has so far received partisan co-sponsorship support from Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

"Our immigration policies must be consistent with our historical commitment to provide protection and due process to those fleeing violence and persecution," said Sanders in a statement announcing his support of S. 2540 on Feb. 13. "We must stand up for the rights of the powerless and extend proper legal protection to children and other vulnerable immigrants. We will not tolerate calls to send back unaccompanied children and victims of crime and domestic violence to the countries they have fled."

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, 54 Democrats introduced a complementary bill, also titled "Fair Day in Court for Kids Act." H.R. 4646 would will also require the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to submit reports to Congress on the number of immigrants -- identified in the "Fair Day in Court for Kids Act" -- who were given counsel representation and received legal representation.

__

For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com.
Brazil's arrest of a Facebook executive, however brief, casts a dark shadow on the debate between privacy and security.

The spotlight has recently shone on Apple and the company's tussle with U.S. law enforcement over encryption and user privacy. But in Latin America, the stakes over that same debate were just raised.

On Tuesday, Facebook Latin America VP Diego Dzodan was taken into custody in Brazil over what the government said was "repeated non-compliance with court orders" regarding the popular chat app WhatsApp, according to a CNet translation of the original police statement.

The executive was released just a day later on Wednesday, after a judge overturned the order, calling it "unlawful coercion," according to AFP. Judge Ruy Pinheiro said of the Facebook executive's detainment, "It seems to me that the extreme measure of imprisonment was hurried."

Brazil vs. WhatsApp

The Brazilian government has repeatedly requested access to communications over the social messaging app WhatsApp, which Facebook owns, to assist with criminal investigations. The Brazilian government insists traffickers have used WhatsApp, which provides encryption to users, to evade law enforcement.

"The investigation was required to produce evidence to be used in an organized crime and drug trafficking investigation," said Brazilian federal police in a statement about the arrest. As Latin Post reported, the police requested the information from WhatsApp three times before a Brazilian court ordered fines against the company, followed by the federal police's action to detain the Facebook executive.

Over the past few months, WhatsApp -- and Facebook by extension -- has refused to comply with repeated orders to expose communications within the network, in part because the company insists there are no technical means to decrypt the messages.

The back and forth between WhatsApp and the Brazilian government previously led to a temporary ban on the service in the country in December, which sparked outrage from Brazilians. The ban was overturned about 12 hours later.

In response to Dzodan's arrest, Facebook stated that it was "disappointed with the extreme and disproportionate measure of having a Facebook executive escorted to a police station in connection with a case involving WhatsApp, which operates separately from Facebook," adding, "Facebook has always been and will be available to address any questions Brazilian authorities may have."

Fight Between Tech and Governments

On U.S. soil, Facebook has expressed support for Apple in its fight against the FBI's order for the company to provide a backdoor to the iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooters. Facebook is expected to file an amicus brief in court this week in support of Apple, flanked by other tech giants like Google, Twitter and Microsoft.

While the U.S. government hasn't taken to measures as extreme as those in Brazil, the fight in South America over encryption, privacy and government spying power echoes the row between Apple and the FBI. The incident casts a pall over the American proceedings, showing that the privacy debate isn't limited to one country. It also indicates how far other governments may go to exercise their power to compel compliance in investigations.

But as Bloomberg noted, the two cases are intertwined in messier, contradictory ways as well. WhatsApp's failure to comply with requests for user data violated Brazilian law and led to Dzodan's arrest, but at the same time, complying with those requests would violate U.S. wiretapping law.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition is now pressing the presidential candidates on their plans to resolve issues of technology and media that affect Latinos.

The group is challenging the candidates to respond to measures in the 2016 Hispanic Public Policy Agenda, aimed at changing media, communications and technology policy. Goals include closing the digital divide, modernizing Federal Communications Commission programs and expanding the agency's purview. The group joined 40 other leading Latino advocacy organizations backing the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda's blueprint for public policy affecting Latinos.

The 2016 Hispanic Public Policy Agenda (HPPA) was released last week by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), an advocacy group comprised of 40 Latino organizations across the country. The omnibus document outlines policy issues facing Latinos in education, civil rights, immigration, economic security and improvement, health, and government accountability. The document is intended to advance the Latino community through a comprehensive blueprint of policy solutions.

As part of that alliance, the National Hispanic Media Coalition highlighted particular plans in the agenda that would impact Latino communities by improving broadband Internet access for people of color, modernizing the FCC's Lifeline program and making sure diversity remains important in media.

"This agenda, with broad support from the Latino community, confirms that closing the digital divide is of critical importance of people of color," wrote President and CEO of the NHMC Alex Nogales in a statement released to Latin Post.

"We need members of Congress, FCC commissioners and 2016 presidential contenders to realize that open and affordable access to communications is an urgent need," he continued. "Latino voters across the country will be pressuring politicians to articulate concrete next steps for opening opportunities for communities of color to be heard online and on the airwaves."

Closing the Digital Divide

The digital divide -- the disparity in access and affordability of the Internet and the devices used to access it -- still particularly affects rural areas, underserved communities, Latinos and other communities of color.

The HPPA includes several recommendations on measures the FCC and other government agencies can take to close the digital divide for all Americans and Latinos, in particular. The agenda outlines the following:

Support ongoing modernization of the Lifeline Program at the FCC to extend the phone service subsidy to cover broadband services. Continually evolve to meet the needs of low-income consumers.

Fund English and Spanish language digital literacy campaigns and ensure that Latino outreach related to these campaigns is culturally relevant.

Promote competition in the broadband and mobile phone markets to lower prices and improve service.

Support the building of high-speed Internet infrastructure to improve connectivity in rural and underserved areas, schools, libraries and community centers.

Support the FCC's E-Rate Program, which subsidizes broadband access in schools and libraries.

Continue to convene the Broadband Opportunity Council, comprised of 25 Executive Branch agencies and departments, to explore further, cross-agency action to improve broadband deployment, adoption and competition.

Promoting Diversity in Media

The NHMC also pays attention to media and its lack of diversity -- be it cable news talking heads, film and television writers or media owners. The advocacy organization pointed out measures in the HPPA that address diversity issues and hate speech, and it provided recommendations for economic policy measures to help minority media owners:

Encourage a comprehensive FCC inquiry into the extent and effects of hate speech in media and/or an update to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) 1993 report to Congress, "The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes."

Undertake efforts to discontinue the use of inflammatory language about Latinos and immigrants by the media in order to help prevent the fueling of hate speech and intolerance.

Support FCC policies to expand and promote media ownership diversity.

Oppose broadcast consolidation as a race-neutral way to open doors for diverse owners to enter the media marketplace, including but not limited to unreasonable covert consolidation, such as through Joint Sales Agreements and other vehicles, designed to circumvent FCC ownership limits.

Ensure that the FCC is collecting thorough data on diversity of media ownership and employment. Require that the FCC provide this data to the public in a transparent and easily searchable format that organizes the numbers by race and ethnicity.

Support congressional action to reinstate the "minority tax certificate," which increased ownership diversity substantially before it was abandoned in the late 1990s.

Diversity and the digital divide are two giant issues, but the NHLA's huge policy agenda addresses several other major challenges. Check out Latin Post's previous coverage to see the other issues the 40-part Latino coalition is challenging the presidential candidates to respond to, from Puerto Rico's financial crisis to education to immigration reform.
Days before the disgraced comedian Bill Cosby face preliminary hearing on criminal charges brought by Andrea Constand, the Pennsylvania Superior Court postponed his trial on March 8. The Superior Court of Pennsylvania has ordered a halt on the trial until it decides on Cosby's appeal to dismiss the sexual assault case that happened more than 10 years ago.

Last month, Cosby's lawyers filed a motion on the ruling of Common Pleas Court Judge Steven O'Neill that rejected the 78-year-old actor claims that he was granted immunity from the prosecution. However, his appeal was dismissed by the prosecutors. Cosby insisted that former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor made a promise not to indict him in exchange of a 2005 civil deposition, according to Reuters. Cosby admitted to giving an anti-allergy drug to Constand before he had sexual encounter with the victim. The actor argued that it was consensual.

"Upon consideration of the Appellant's 'Emergency Petition For A Writ Of Prohibition Ancillary To Appellate Jurisdiction' and the Commonwealth's answer, the trial court proceedings shall be temporarily stayed pending disposition of the Commonwealth's motion to quash appeal," ordered the Keystone State Superior Court in the filing as reported by Deadline.

Cosby's attorneys also argued that Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele would be removed from the case allegedly due to his intention to use Cosby's case during his campaign, PEOPLE claims. On Feb. 29, D.A. Steele filed his response through a court document saying the higher court should dismiss Cosby's appeal until his trial is finished. However, the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that Cosby's trial will be on hold until they will decide whether the defense lawyers' appeal of a decision moving the case to trial can be terminated.

Cosby was indicted on Dec. 30 and was discharged on a $1 million bail. During the time, the husband of Camille didn't enter a plea. In return, Cosby sued Constand, her mother, and her lawyers and the main company of the National Enquirer in the federal court alleging them of a breach of contract. The former popular comedian insisted that he wanted his money back after a civil case settlement in 2006 with Constand's camp.

Cosby has been charged by about 50 women who claimed that he drugged and sexually abused them. The Pennsylvania sexual assault case is the only criminal case he's facing in court.
South Dakota Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard vetoed the bill that asked transgender students to use the restrooms in public schools according to their gender at birth. If the bill was not vetoed and was signed by Daugaard, South Dakota would have been the first United States state to impose such law.

In a report by Yahoo News, the bill has been returned to the legislature. It would need a two-thirds vote in both chambers for it to be passed. The state house has approved the bill last January.

The proposed bill will be requiring transgender students to use not only restrooms but also locker rooms in public schools, which corresponds to their gender when they were born and not the gender they identify with currently.

The reason behind Daugaard vetoing the bill is because the bill "broadly regulates in a manner that invites conflict and litigation" which he says will only be diverting the energy and resources from the education of the children of South Dakota. The bill will also be requiring public schools, if it will be passed, accommodations for transgender students such as single-occupancy restroom, a unisex restroom, or the controlled use of a restroom, locker room or shower room.

According to KPBS, opponents of the proposed law called on Daugaard to veto the bill. These include American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign, both of which support the LGBTQ community.

Daugaard initially said that the bill could provide accommodations for both sides. It is unclear what influenced his decision to veto the bill but reports say that the governor met with transgender students and their parents. Daugaard noted that after having meetings with them, he saw "things through their eyes." The law, if passed, would impact around 1, 360 youth in South Dakota, who are identified as transgenders.

Similar bills have been proposed in other states such as Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, CNN reported. South Dakota is the only state from all of the aforementioned who's bill has gotten as close as it being a law.

The veto of Daugaard comes a month after a U.S. appeals court heard arguments over a high school in Virginia wherein a transgender male student wanted to use the boy's bathroom. Also, last week, lawmakers in Charlotte, North Carolina have voted to allow transgender people to use public bathrooms in line with their gender identity.
A couple of Nigerian communities filed a damage action holding Royal Dutch Shell responsible over multiple oil spills in the Niger Delta.

Ogale and Bille community had renewed wave of attacks on the energy industry that threatens to disrupt production in Africa's top crude exporter and whose increasing sophistication is raising concern among diplomats and security experts.

According to Leigh Day, an environmental law firm which represents the two communities stated that, "the 40,000-strong Ogale community in Rivers State, believe that successive spills since 1989 have meant they do not have clean drinking water, farmland or rivers."

Whereas, the Bille community claimed Shell should be liable for "failing to protect their pipelines from damage caused by third parties."

Reported by BBC, Daniel Leader, a partner at Leigh Day, said "It is scandalous that four years after the UNEP Report, Shell is yet to clean up its oil in either Ogale or Bille. Our client's patience has now run out and we intend to force Shell to act since it is clear they have no intention of doing so on their own."

Shell alleged that it already paid 55 million to the Bodo community in an out-of-court settlement in January 2015 for oil spills that occurred in 2008 and 2009.

Moreso, it claimed that the volume of oil spilled in the region was 4,000 barrels, but evidence proved that the actual volume was closer to 500,000 barrels. Court documents from this case, including emails from employees, demonstrate Shell's negligence of oil spills in the region.

Amnesty International said in November 2015 report that an investigation showed Shell had failed to clear four oil-spill sites in the Niger delta, months after President Muhammadu Buhari said he's accelerating a clean-up of the area.

Amnesty International's UK Economic Affairs Program Director Peter Frankental said, "Shell has an appalling record of obfuscation and misinformation with regard to its dealings in the Niger Delta. Our briefing reveals just how irresponsible Shell has been in its operations in the region."

He also said that it is disgraceful that Shell has to be dragged to the courts to address the issues. He feared that money and the health, livelihoods and emotional anguish of the affected communities could have been spared had Shell simply accepted responsibility and cleaned up the oil spills quickly and thoroughly.

Environmental Management Association of Nigeria (EMAN) said that oil spillage and other related issues would cease if the Federal Government were to ensure that oil exploration facilities used by oil companies were properly audited.

Oil spillage has been going on for a long time now and the issue of environmental audit is lacking because the relevant government institution is not putting pressure on those companies causing the spillage.

It will be the second suit in five years, as the mainly-fishing and farming communities of Bille and Ogale want compensation for damage to their region and for the oil giant to clean up their land.

Leigh Day handled a similar case in 2015 that Shell agreed to pay 55 million pounds ($77 million) to recompense more than 15,000 residents of the Nigerian Bodo community for oil spills in 2008.
A proposed 626-space parking garage in South Bethlehem will cost more than $1 million annually, although its users are only expected to be willing to walk 300 feet from their parking spots.

City residents have been pressing for information for months on the $17.7 million garage, asking to see copies of the parking demand and feasibility study prepared by Desman Design Management.

The Bethlehem Parking Authority released the study to lehighvalleylive.com last week in response to a Right-to-Know request, a day after the authority board voted to raise parking garage rates and signed off on the study.

The analysis actually found there's currently a surplus of parking in South Bethlehem.

Parking won't become a major headache unless developer Dennis Benner goes forward with two planned projects.

While Benner has yet to break ground on either project, the parking authority is taking steps to build the garage at New Street and Graham Place. It raised rates to help pay for it and has city approval to tear down homes at the proposed site.

After reviewing the parking study, some residents are staunchly opposed to a garage they say makes zero financial sense. They argue city taxpayers and visitors should not be subsidizing the dreams of one developer.

This is a big, big white elephant money loser, resident and Lehigh professor Al Wurth told Bethlehem City Council on Tuesday night. To build this thing is going to cost you $1 million a year. "

The New Street garage will cost about $1.16 million in annual debt payments and about $165,000 to operate and maintain in the first year. It's projected to generate almost $255,000 in revenue in the first year.

Repairs needed

Those costs don't include the millions of dollars of repairs the Walnut and North street parking garages need. The authority will borrow another $7 million in 2019 for that work, according to the study's financial projections.

"There are several other projects in the city of Bethlehem that need extensive work," said Councilman Bryan Callahan, liaison to the parking authority.

Parking authority Executive Director Kevin Livingston has said the parking rate increases were necessary to help fund the New Street project and the repairs.

Barring further development, the authority can operate in the black without raising rates until 2029, officials said. But then rate increases will be needed.

Council President J. William Reynolds said he disagreed with many of the residents who spoke Tuesday night, but their concerns highlight the need for giving a comprehensive parking plan to the public. It's a discussion he said he's been pressing the city administration to have with the public.

Mayor Bob Donchez and city Director of Community and Economic Development Director Alicia Miller Karner didn't attend Tuesday's meeting.

But on Wednesday Donchez defended the need for the parking garage.

"We are not just looking at the Benner project. We are looking at future projects," he said. "That has been kind of lost in this discussion"

Lehigh University has plans to develop a building at Fourth and Adams Street, the Banana Factory is considering a major expansion and an office building is under consideration on Third Street, Donchez said. All of these projects will need parking.

The study looked at the existing parking demand of South Bethlehem -- from the Lehigh River to Packer Avenue and Webster Street to Montclair Avenue -- and projected the impact of Benner's projects.

It rules out many existing parking options, such as the Riverport Garage, because the study says the new office building's visitors won't be willing to walk more than 300 feet.

Benner's proposed Third and New streets building will have retail and restaurants on the first floor. St. Luke's University Health Network and Lehigh University will occupy office space on the other five floors. It will generate a weekday demand of 300 parking spaces and 70 spots on Saturdays, according to the parking study.

Pedestrian walkways will connect the building to the garage. Construction on the building is expected to wrap up in the spring of 2017.

Benner also has plans for a 13-story building on West Fourth Street, which the study projects will create a demand of 380 spaces on weekdays and 530 spaces on Saturdays.

That assumes that 72 percent of the 335 Lehigh students living in the building will park in the garage.

Only 27 percent of Lehigh undergraduate and graduate students have university parking permits, according to the university. Freshman are not allowed to have cars on campus.

Critics slam plan

Fountain Hill resident Peter Crownfield asked council if it was embarrassed by the absurdity of the proposal.

"You're talking about losing $1 million a year to benefit one developer," Crownfield said.

The study shows a surplus of parking in South Bethlehem currently.

At 1 p.m. on a weekday, 53 percent of the area's 502 on-street metered spaces were filled, while only 33 percent of the 392 off-street spaces were in use.

The study claims that will all change if Benner's projects are built.

"For this type of development and factoring in the car-centered culture in this area of the country, we assume that 300 feet is the maximum walking distance that the average person would consider reasonable in order to reach this destination," the study stated.

According to Crownfield, it makes no sense that Lehigh students won't walk more than 300 feet to an apartment if they'll walk six blocks to class.

This small walking radius eliminates the majority of South Bethlehem's parking options, leaving only 144 on-street and off-street spaces. At peak times only 40 of those spots will be open, the study says.

If the Benner projects are built, the neighborhood would need 700 more parking spaces to meet the parking demand, according to the study.

Resident Kim Carrell-Smith said it's clear to her the spike in parking needs is all based on an unapproved "developer's dream" project on Fourth Street. Spending all that money on an enormous "concrete elephant" is appalling, she said.

The study is meant to project South Bethlehem's future parking needs and it did that, Callahan said. St. Luke's and Lehigh never would have signed a lease for the Benner building without parking, he said.

"People don't want to park blocks away from their employment," Callahan said.

The mayor said he was very involved in getting St. Luke's and Lehigh to sign leases for the project.

"Without a garage, there's be no commitment from those two to move into Third and New streets," Donchez said.

Lehigh University South Side Initiative Chairwoman Breena Holland questioned the planning assumptions used to determine how far users would walk, noting the 300-feet figure references certain types of retail. The garage will be largely used by office workers and they can be expected to walk up to 1,500 feet, she said.

"It is pretty obvious we don't need this parking garage," Holland said. "The study is not demonstrating it."

Desman was tasked with determining whether the authority can generate enough money through parking fees and tickets to cover its operating, debt and capital costs.

The authority will operate with a surplus until 2029 if there's no parking demand growth in the study's area. If there is more development, the authority will need to raise parking rates and the city may have to guarantee the authority's debts and operating expenses.

The garage's capital cost per space is $150 a month, or $1,850 a year, city resident Wurth said. And the projected net operating revenue is less than $100,000.

"This is extremely expensive parking," he said.

The garage will be funded by $2.1 million in state grant funding and a 30-year bond.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A nearly $2 million renovation to Nancy Run Fire Co.'s firehouse and social hall continued to take shape Tuesday, with the installation of trusses for a new roof.

The renovation is geared toward better living quarters for firefighters, in the hopes of taking on fire science students from an area college or university to help augment volunteers, said Tom Kocsis, a firefighter and chairman of the Bethlehem Township fire company's planning committee.

Planned since 2011, construction began in September and is expected to end in May, said Mike Goffredo, project manager for the general contractor, Serfass Construction Co.

The A-frame roof being installed Tuesday will cover a 2,000-square-foot addition and replace the existing flat roof on the 3564 Easton Ave. facility, he said.

The addition will house Nancy Run's offices, next door to the social hall that is getting new restrooms that are accessible to people with disabilities.

Downstairs, where the truck bays are located, the firehouse is getting a new day room with television and kitchen.

Separate bunk rooms are being built out for men and women, with their own shower and bathroom facilities accessible by private doors from the sleeping quarters.

A newly configured radio room looks into the garage bay, next to expanded laundry facilities.

Nancy Run moved into the firehouse in 1960 and '61. Bernie Roecker, a volunteer since 1955 and Nancy Run's fire marshall, recalled Tuesday starting out in a barn that housed the fire equipment where Speedway is at Easton Avenue and Santee Road.

The building will be 100 percent protected by sprinklers, and also got new plumbing as part of the renovation.

Marc Mullen, chairman of the fire company's house committee, said he hopes to resume social hall rentals in July or August at the latest, after they were suspended last May for construction. The social hall now houses temporary offices for the fire company, and Mullen said he continues to receive four or five calls a day about renting the space for weddings and parties.

The fire company continues to look for contributions to offset the cost of the project, which put the organization into substantial debt, Kocsis said.

"We were pretty much debt-free, but it was time to remodel," he said.

His hope is the new living quarters allows the fire company to partner with area students who could live there for free in exchange for running on calls.

He's like to see the fire company station a full complement there 24/7, with four firefighters on an engine and two on the tower.

Entirely volunteer, Nancy Run has three engines, the tower or aerial truck, a utility truck and special operations truck designed for filling air tanks and providing comfort at emergencies. The latter is used throughout Northampton County and beyond.

The fire company has about 35 active volunteers, and is always looking for more volunteers to help out in any way they can.

Nancy Run ran about 900 calls in 2015, and is one of two fire companies serving the municipality, along with Bethlehem Township Volunteer Fire Co.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Three members of New Life Church were cited Wednesday for walking into traffic and stopping cars to solicit donations, according to Easton police.

The group has irritated some drivers, who call them aggressive and unrelenting in their pursuit of funds. They have long been known to wave buckets in front of motorists and ask for cash.

The church members have refused to identify themselves to reporters in the past. Police Lt. Matthew Lohenitz identified the three members cited Wednesday as Shawn Livingston, a woman, and Williams Brown and Leslie Hamilton, both men. All three are from Tampa, Florida, and told police they are affiliated with New Life Church of Tampa, Florida.

Lohenitz said they walked in and out of traffic, stopped cars and walked up and down the double yellow lines about 2 p.m. Wednesday at Third and Bushkill streets in Easton.

State law allows them to solicit from cars, but they need to stay on the sidewalk, according to the vehicle code. Each citation carries a $5 fine.

They were warned they will continue to be cited if they break the rules, Lohenitz said. They told police they are staying at a hotel in or near Clinton, New Jersey.

When confronted on the street in the past, the church members have refused to answer questions about their church or who will benefit from their collections. They say they're collecting for homeless children, but won't say specifically which children benefit from their fundraising.

They don't have to register with the state to collect donations because they are a religious organization.

The group was seen violating the vehicle code in November in Easton and in February in Palmer Township. Palmer Township Police Chief Larry Palmer said they've been collecting in the area for years.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Ownership of a Lehigh Valley landmark came down to a bidding war between the two partners.

In the end Frank Bounoutas bought Jimmy's Hot Dogs for $330,000. He outlasted his longtime partner, John Apostolopoulos, to get sole control of the Lehigh Valley mainstay in the 25th Street Shopping Center in Palmer Township.

Attorney Ron Shipman conducted the sale as the court-appointed receiver to resolve a 9-year-old dispute between Bounoutas and Apostolopoulos.

Frank Bounoutas, left, won a bidding war on March 2, 2016, to claim sole ownership of Jimmy's Hot Dogs in Palmer Township. With him are his attorney, Robert Freedberg, his wife, Polyxenia Bounoutos, and his son, Alex Bounoutos. They are seen at the auction at the law office of Ronald Shipman.

The business closed Wednesday. Frank Bounoutas' wife, Polyxenia Bounoutas, said the family would reopen the business as soon as possible once she restocks supplies.

"We're grateful we got the business," she said. "We love our customers. We can't wait to see them again."

Seven people signed up to bid, including the partners. Two bidders dropped out when the price reached $100,000 and three didn't even bother to bid. Once Bounoutas bid $100,000, he and Apostolopoulos traded bids in increments of roughly $5,000 to $10,000 until Apostolopoulos dropped out.

"It's a shame that John will no longer be serving the public," said James Apostolopoulos, his son. "He regrets that but he's thankful and appreciative for everything (his customers) have done for him."

An appraisal put the business at $80,000, according to court documents.

James Apostolopoulos said the family didn't have a set maximum bid when the auction started. Asked whether he could have bid more, he answered, "We could have."

"It's a tough thing," he said. "You don't want to put yourself in a position where it's not going to be feasible in the long run because he is 88 years old."

Bounoutas is 76.

James Apostolopoulos has worked at Jimmy's since it opened in 1991. He isn't sure what he'll do next or whether his family will open its own hot dog stand.

The sale includes the name, Jimmy's Hot Dogs; all equipment and the $2,108-a-month lease for the 720-square-foot shop under agreement through May 2017.

Attorney Donald Souders, who represents the Bounoutas family, said he doesn't think the price or anything else will change at Jimmy's.

"Our clients will continue to deliver the region's best hot dogs at a customer-friendly price," he said.

Bounoutas and Apostolopoulos formed their partnership April 18, 1991, about the time they opened in Palmer Township, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. Both previously worked at the original Jim's Doggie Stand in Union Square, Phillipsburg, where Jimmy Makris had opened in 1910 after starting out with a pushcart in Easton in 1908.

Makris is John Apostolopoulos' uncle, according to James Apostolopoulos.

Each partner blames the other's family for the falling out.

Counsel for John Apostolopoulos cited disagreements between Bounoutas' wife, John Apostolopoulos, and Apostolopoulos' wife, as a reason the business fell apart.

A court filing by the Apostolopoulos attorney says the partners had an "oral understanding" that James Apostolopoulos would take over ownership of his father's half of the business upon his death. Frank Bounoutas said in court papers that had never been agreed upon.

Bounoutas in court filings said John Apostolopoulos' daughter-in-law, Heather Apostolopoulos, would yell and curse at, threaten and make derogatory comments toward Bounoutas in the presence of customers. He wanted her banned from the business.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.


Parolee ditches gun, suspected meth in Easton chase, police say

Sharif Gray, 24, of the 300 block of South 10th Street in Easton, is taken by Easton Emergency Squad for treatment after his arrest March 1, 2016, during an investigation in the area of South 10th and Washington streets in the city. Gray suffered undisclosed medical complaints after being taken into custody, police said. (Tim Wynkoop | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Here's how Pennsylvania probation and parole authorities describe an Easton man who was arrested Tuesday afternoon after allegedly tossing a handgun and methamphetamine as he eluded police:

"Violent tendencies. Armed and dangerous. Known to abuse drugs."

Easton police, in court papers, call Sharif Gray, 24, of the 300 block of South 10th Street, a gang member, and point to charges related to a 2012 shooting.

But he's also a man, court papers show, who has negotiated guilty plea deals to lesser charges that had him back on the street by in 2014.

In July 2009, using the name Sharif Johnson, he was charged by Easton police with two counts of possession with intent to deliver drugs, one count of possession of a controlled substance and one count of resisting arrest. In November of that year, he pleaded guilty to resisting arrest and the other charges were withdrawn. He was given 6 to 12 months in jail, court papers say.

In April 2012, as Sharif Gray, he was charged with firing shots into a home at 1026 Ferry St. in the city. He faced four counts discharging a firearm into an occupied structure, four counts of recklessly endangering another person and one count of a felon not to possess a firearm.

He fired six shots from a .38 Special Smith & Wesson handgun, police said at the time. A witness saw him dump something in nearby bushes and that's where police found the gun, authorities said.

The West Ward shooting hit a nerve in the city.

"If you commit a crime in the city of Easton, my only advice is that you do not rest your head easy at night because we will be coming for you," new police Chief Carl Scalzo warned at the time.

Mayor Sal Panto Jr. was equally demonstrative in the news conference.

"Whatever it takes," said Panto. "These are not times that you worry about budgets or anything like that. You worry about the safety of the people."

But when the case got to Northampton County Court, Gray pleaded guilty in November 2012 to the firearms violation and all the other charges were withdrawn, court papers say. He was sentenced to 18 months to 3 years in state prison, including time already served. He also received two years of probation.

He was released in May 2014, court papers say.

Gray was arrested in December 2014 in Lehigh County on two trespassing charges, court papers say. But the felony count of criminal trespass was dropped when he pleaded guilty in district court to a misdemeanor count of defiant trespass. While on probation, he was sentenced to eight days of time served, court records show.

It's not clear from court records if his probation was violated at that point.

He was held for a time in Berks County jail, but was released in June 2015, online records show. The state Board of Probation and Parole reported in July of that year that Gray had "absconded," the same records show.

A warrant for his arrest on a parole violation related to the 2012 shooting was issued Tuesday, court papers say.

Police were "very aware" Gray's driver's license was suspended, so when an officer doing "mobile surveillance of street level drug trafficking" saw Gray driving a maroon Cadillac at 3:10 p.m. Tuesday, police followed him south on 10th Street, east on Butler Street, west on Walnut Street and west on Washington Street, where he was pulled over, court papers say. He ran off, but was tracked down within a few minutes and arrested, court papers say.

He tossed a stolen Bersa .380 semiautomatic handgun, a cellphone and a plastic bag containing 30 grams of methamphetamine, court papers say. Pennsylvania State Police at Swiftwater in the Poconos confirmed the weapon was stolen, court papers say.

Gray was arraigned before on-call District Judge John Capobianco on charges of a former convict in possession of a handgun, receiving stolen property, possession of a controlled substance, flight to avoid apprehension and driving with a suspended license, as well as the parole warrant, court papers say.

Bail was set at $80,000 with no 10 percent and Gray was sent to Northampton County Prison, court papers say. He remained jailed on Wednesday morning, online records show.

A preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled 9 a.m. March 17 in Judge Judge Richard Yetter III's Wilson Borough court.

A search warrant was received for the Cadillac, police said. The search will likely happen Wednesday and police will employ forfeiture action to take the car, Lt. Matthew Gerould said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The Easton codes department has tacked on 10 more citations for the owner and contractor working on a Downtown building where a large section of wall collapsed.

A large two-story section of wall at 323 Northampton St. collapsed about 10:30 p.m. Feb. 24 during a storm.

Citations filed on Monday say Luan of Kosova, LLC, the building owner, and Bushkill Township-based Bee Green Homes failed to provide the required protection of the adjoining property to conform with the international building code, resulting in damage to public property.

The same citations were filed against the owner and contractor on Wednesday, but these were filed for each day after the wall fell Feb. 24 up until Monday. So the owner and contractor now face a total of six citations each.

They put the neighboring structures at risk of damage and structural failure, the citations say.

The facade was ripped off in October when workers started gutting the building. The owner filed a sketch plan with the city to open a restaurant there.

Easton Mayor Sal Panto Jr. said Monday the building facade and a section going back 50 feet will have to come down due to the wall collapse.

District Judge Antonia Grifo has the discretion to levy up to a $1,000 fine for each infraction.

Luan of Kosova has an address in Pittstown, New Jersey, according to the citation. The company has no listed phone number at that address. The company was registered with the Pennsylvania Department of State at 243 Northampton St., Easton, the same address as the River Grille restaurant.

A message left at the River Grille wasn't immediately returned. The principal owner of the company is Faruk Gjevulaj, according to state records.

A message left with Bee Green Homes wasn't returned.

Chief Codes Administrator Stephen Nowroski said demolition of 323 Northampton St. should take about a week as long as the weather cooperates.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
Both occupants of a car that crashed Tuesday night while eastbound on Route 22 West in Easton escaped injury, Pennsylvania State Police report.

A crash on Route 22 West on the Easton side of the Easton-Phillipsburg (Route 22) Toll Bridge ties up traffic the evening of March 1, 2016, in this image from a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation traffic camera. Both occupants of the car involved in the crash escaped injury, and the driver faces a traffic citation, according to Pennsylvania State Police. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

The crash occurred about 6:20 p.m. as 45-year-old Chad E. Laffoon was driving a 1999 Chevrolet Corvette from Bushkill Street onto Route 22 East toward the Easton-Phillipsburg (Route 22) Toll Bridge, state police at Belfast said.

Laffoon lost control in the right lane of Route 22 East and crashed into a concrete barrier before coming to rest in the right lane of Route 22 West on the toll bridge, Trooper Nathan Branosky reports.

The Easton Emergency Squad responded, but neither Laffoon nor his passenger, 41-year-old Nathan B. Karczynski, of Washington in Warren County, was injured, police said.

Laffoon faces a traffic citation, according to police.

Easton police and Easton Auto Body also assisted.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had said both lanes of Route 22 West were closed until about 7:15 p.m. because of the crash, but police said one lane remained open in both directions on the toll bridge during the investigation.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waves to attendees during a campaign stop.

(John Minchillo | Associated Press))

Even though their nominations are looking more likely with primary successes on Super Tuesday, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are still pursuing the magic numbers of delegates needed to lock up spots on the presidential tickets.

Clinton's early coronation seems more probable at this point, given a commanding lead over Bernie Sanders and the number of superdelegates in the Democrats' primary calculations.

On the GOP side, most of the talk after Super Tuesday is whether Trump's nomination will remake (or fracture) the party -- and whether a last-minute strategy by party insiders can derail him. That's a long shot, given the early stacking of primaries that discourages a deliberative, state-by-state approach. Still, some Republican leaders believe a coordinated anti-Trump effort by Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (even the promise of a joint ticket between them) could reverse things. Other ideas: Drawing financial support from Jeb Bush's treasury, appealing to John Kasich and Ben Carson to drop out, the creation of a superPAC for "anyone but Trump," etc. The anti-Trump crowd's best hope may be a brokered convention, if Trump fails to capture the delegates needed for nomination. That would free up delegates, after a failed first-round ballot, to vote for any candidate.

All of this speculation, however, ignores the fact that Trump is hugely popular among Republican voters largely because of the insider wheeling-and-dealing and big-money tactics exemplified by party leaders' effort to bury him.

Is Trump unstoppable? Have a say in our informal poll, and feel free to explain your reasoning or make a prediction. It looks like Pennsylvania's April 26 primary might not be a huge factor in either party's nominations. New Jersey voters have to wait until June 7 (along with California) to weigh in on the presidential race. Will it be over by then?
A SERIAL offender who stole hundreds of euro worth of savings from an elderly woman has appealed the imposition of a nine month prison sentence.

Mother-of-one, Adrianna Williams, aged 34, who has an address at Elm Green Close, Castletroy pleaded guilty to a charge of burglary relating to an incident at the home of the pensioner on May 12, last.

Limerick District Court was told Williams, who has more than 60 previous convictions, called to the home of the 87-year-old pretending to be a charity collector at around 7pm.

Judge Marian OLeary was told the defendant entered the house off the Ennis Road as the front door was unlocked and took a purse, containing 600 in cash, which had been left on the kitchen table.

The injured party told gardai she had saved the money, which was not recovered, to pay for heating oil and house repairs.

Williams, who has previously suffered from addiction problems, also admitted stealing a handbag from a house at Ballinacurra Road on July 27, last - shortly after she called to the house claiming she was fundraising for a different charity.

In addition, Williams pleaded guilty to a number of other theft and fraud charges including possession of a number of different photocopied sponsorship cards which she intended using for her own personal gain.

Imposing sentence, Judge OLeary said the theft of the cash from the 87-year-old was a particularly nasty and mean offence and one which she considered to be an aggravating factor.

The judge noted Williams pleaded guilty and had made admissions in relation to the offences when questioned by gardai.

She imposed a nine month prison sentence in relation to the burglary while a separate nine month sentence, was suspended for two years on condition the defendant does not reoffend.

Williams was released on bail, pending the outcome of an appeal against the severity of the sentence.
SHANNON Airport is seeking to establish itself as a gateway to top equine breeding destinations, with the arrival of a batch of valuable cargo.

Six thoroughbred mares were delivered to a leading Irish stud in the south of the country this week, in what was also the first scheduled transportation of horses into Shannon with Turkish Airlines, which operates three weekly cargo services from Istanbul to Shannon and on to Chicago, Atlanta and New York.

The horses that arrived this week were the first in many years to arrive in Shannon on a regular scheduled cargo flight.

The delicate cargo arrived in the prime of health, having been looked after by expert handlers during the four hour flight.

The Turkish cargo service was launched last year and now runs three times weekly.

Patrick Edmond, MD of the International Aviation Services Centre and Shannon Group strategy director, said the airport intends to capitalise on the rich equine tradition in its catchment area.

There is a huge tradition of breeding across this region, not least in counties like Limerick, Tipperary and Clare. Some of the finest studs in the world are here, and Shannon is the gateway to this area, he said.

The equine sector is huge business for Ireland. It not alone brings in some of the worlds top horses but also some of the worlds top business people. Shannons catchment includes a number of the worlds leading studs and our staff has a proud history of handling these precious thoroughbreds.

We hope to increase this business in future and the recent Turkish Cargo flight with these thoroughbred animals was an opportunity again to show what we can do. Horses are often transported through Shannon on special charter flights, but this scheduled flight opens up an attractive and cost-effective new option for owners.

It demonstrates that this Turkish Cargo service is a huge boost not only for exporters but also, based on the arrival of these horses, for highly valuable imports as well.

The Shannon Group, he added, has identified a major opportunity for the development of an air-freight hub at the airport, with large volumes of Irish air cargo exports currently being trucked to UK airports due to a lack of suitable direct flights from Ireland.

The airport had previously confirmed that plans to implement a 20m international cargo hub had been axed.

The plan, signed off by the Dublin Airport Authority in 2012 with Lynx to establish the hub, will not go ahead, company secretary Mary Considine confirmed late last year.

The plan had roots in 2009, when the DAA began exploring its potential. It was later mooted in several quarters that Shannon could become a cargo hub if commercial flight numbers continued to fall. However, in recent years  and particularly since gaining independence in 2013  the airport has rebounded strongly.

Ms Considine, in a letter to Clare County Council in December, said the Lynx project was conceived prior to the economic downturn and the business plan was materially affected by the subsequent downturn in economic activity.

Ultimately, it was not possible to identify a path forward with Lynx which satisfied both commercial requirements and the parties disengaged amicably, she wrote.

However, Ms Considine said Shannon had continued to actively pursue opportunities to develop its freight business.
IT was back to the cabinet table yesterday for Finance Minister Michael Noonan and Education Minister Jan OSullivan following their election in Limerick City.

The pair, who took the third and fourth seats respectively in Limerick City, were at Government Buildings in a bid to discuss the options for the next administration.

With the election showing no outright winner, Fine Gael and Labour are expected to remain on in a caretaker role to conduct the essential business of the state.

Speaking to the Limerick Leader, Ms OSullivan  who constitutionally retains her ministry until she is replaced  refused to rule out the possibility of the handful of remaining Labour TDs being part of the next government.

But she feels it is more likely to be a minority Fine Gael administration, supported by Fianna Fail.

It depends on what programme is put forward. But the idea of us wanting cabinet seats is the furthest thing from our minds now, she said.

I think the most obvious thing now is a Fine Gael probably minority government with the support of Fianna Fail. I think that is the only thing which is workable.

Ms OSullivan does not believe a coalition supported by a whole pile of disparate independents is going to work.

Maybe the future will prove me wrong on that. But I know from my own experience when you are in government, you have to do things. You have to make decisions, you have to bring legislation, she said.

As for the future of the Labour party, which has seen its Dail seats decimated in the election, she added: We believe we should take our time, we need to talk to people who have lost their seats. We need to have a good hard look to our members, and talk to people in our constituencies.
ORGANISERS of Sightsavers junior painters of the year awards said pupils of Caherline National School accomplished something unheard of in any other county.

The boys and girls claimed six prizes  three Munster regional winners and three judges special commendation awards.

Competition was at an all-time high with thousands of children from over 200 primary schools across the country entering the annual art competition.

The theme of Imagine 2030 was certainly embraced by the children in Caherline.

Michael McCarthy, principal, said they had two regional winners in 2014 and 2015  Lily Chambers and Mark Hourigan - and two judges special commendation awards in 2014 and 2015  Maeve Howard and Klaudia Pawlowska.

But you can imagine our delight when we realised we had six awards in total this year. Our junior painter awards regional Munster winners in 2016 are Aran OMeara, senior infants, for his painting called In 2030, Dinosaurs will come out to play again; Alex Allen, first class, for his entry Animal All-Ireland Final 2030 and Julianna-Mae Ward, third class, for A happy future in sight.

The three judges special commendations were Dylan Creamer, first class, for his painting Field of dreams; Amy Quinn, senior Infants, for Giraffes, as tall as the sky, as the sea!; Keelin Power, third class, for African animal school, said Mr McCarthy.

He said children worked hard to create their paintings under the theme of what they think they will see in 2030.

It allowed their imaginations to shine through, said Mr McCarthy.

Pupils, their families and teachers are invited to the awards ceremony in Dublin on Thursday, April 7.

Sightsavers works with local partners in 30 countries in the developing world to eliminate avoidable blindness through straightforward and cost-effective measures.

Teresa Murray, of SIghtsavers, visited the school this month to present pupils with their awards and explained the work that they do.

Mr McCarthy said he was particularly happy that the pupils were made aware of the issue of sight loss in developing countries.

Teresa pointed out that 80% of all blindness can be cured if funding is available.

I feel it is important that the children are made aware of how fortunate we are and that we can help those that are living in poorer conditions, said Mr McCarthy.
THE sun shone on the Boherbuoy Band as the group opened its newly refurbished bandhall in Limerick city.

There was a festive atmosphere in Lord Edward Street as the president of the oldest brass band in the city, Patrick Phelan, and its vice-president, Declan Hickey, cut the ribbon at their new-look bandhall, which has been made possible thanks to 100,000 funding from JP McManus, Limerick City and County Council and other sources.

As part of the refurbishment, the roof was replaced, while new heating and sanitary systems were put in place. Problems with dampness has also been eliminated.

The upshot, band PRO Mary Phelan said, is the group  founded 165 years ago  will be able to practice in warmth and comfort in the winter  while in the summer, the hall will benefit from more natural light.

Joining band members at the opening were Education Minister Jan OSullivan, Cllr James Collins of the Metropolitan District, which has allocated 10,000 in funding to the project, Helen ODonnell, Limerick Tidy Towns and the metropolitan mayor Jerry ODea.

There was a festive atmosphere at the opening, with bands travelling down to Limerick from Ennis, Tipperary and Dublin. Many bands from neighbouring parishes were also in attendance, including the St Marys Fife and Drum band.

Mary said the publics support means so much.

It is normally so hard to get support from anywhere. It is the people of Limerick who have been looking after us for the last number of years, so it was great to get funding from JP McManus, and the GMA fund to put this together. We could not have done it without them  we would still be waiting. Its a new home for life, please God. Nice and warm, she smiled.

Ms OSullivan attended the opening, before heading off to witness her election at the UL Arena.

She said: It was lovely to see the age spread, with the older members of the band. They have a strong family tradition there with the Phelans.

But they have also brought on younger members and given them the opportunity to learn instruments. That is one of the most positive things about the Boherbuoy Band  they have a tremendous history.

She pointed out her political mentor, the late Jim Kemmy, also enjoyed a long association with the band, and helped out in a previous renovation effort.
NUNS based in Italy will visit Limerick city this weekend to inform people about their order and vocation  including a local woman who joined the order at 20.

The Sisters Adorers of the Royal Heart Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest were founded as the female branch of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, which is now based at the former Jesuit Church at the Crescent in Limerick city.

The female community began in Austria in 2001 and three years later, the community moved to Gricigliano, Italy. There are now 28 nuns  15 professed, who wear a black veil, and 13 novices, who wear a white veil.

Eight of them will visit Limerick this weekend, and lead the church in Gregorian chant over the weekend.

While still a young order, the nuns plan to open new houses of faith in order to bring God to the world in the future.

Local woman Miss Murphy, originally from Mallow, and now known as Sr Anne-Marie of Immaculate Conception, came to know the Institute in 2006, having attended the first Mass of the Institute in Ireland in Limerick, aged 20. It was afterwards, as the Canon spoke of his priestly work, that her interest and love for the Institute began.

She asked immediately if there were sisters, to which the Canon happily responded that there were.

Subsequently, she received further information on the life of the Sisters through Canon Wulfran Lebocq, who is based in Limerick, and she faithfully attended the Masses in Limerick, now celebrated every Sunday. She has taken the veil and is now a professed sister.

The order said that more young people are choosing to join religious orders, because of a society where the relations between society and religion are completely broken down. These young minds have a thirst for and search for the absolute.

In Limerick this weekend, the Sisters will get the opportunity to tell the people of Limerick about their vocation, lifestyle and apostolate.

They will hold masses this Friday at 7pm, followed by the Stations of the Cross and blessing; at noon on Saturday, and on the same day from 4.30 to 5.30pm there will be a meet and greet with the Sisters, and a presentation about their community life followed by 6pm Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

On Sunday, March 6, there will be mass at 10.30am, and mass of Saint Thomas Aquinas at 7pm on Monday, March 7.
A MAN who is accused of fraudulently selling tickets for an Ed Sheeran concert at a number of hotels in Limerick city has been refused bail.

Pat Hayes, aged 32, who has addresses at Elton Court, Meelick, County Clare and at Foch Avenue in Toronto, Canada, faces a total of 11 charges relating to offences which are alleged to have happened on a number of dates last year.

He is also accused of attempting to apply for a passport last month  in breach of previous bail conditions.

The defendant was granted bail when he first appeared before Limerick District Court in January after he was charged with nine offences.

It is alleged Mr Hayes, who was employed by Viagogo at the time, printed off the concert tickets and advertised them for sale on the internet on dates between April 1, and July 29, 2015.

On one date last July, it is alleged the defendant was observed on CCTV at a city hotel selling the tickets to a number of women.

The alleged injured parties, who were subsequently refused access to the concerts, are at a combined loss of more than 2,000.

Despite a garda objection, the defendant was granted bail in January subject to certain conditions, including the surrendering of his passport.

An independent surety was requested and Mr Hayes wife, who lives in Canada, was approved.

Last week the defendant was charged with a further two fraud offences, relating to separate incidents.

One is alleged to have happened at another hotel in the city on April 3, 2015 while the second is alleged to have happened at a location in Nenagh.

He is also charged under the provisions of the Passport Act with providing false and misleading information to officials at the passport office in Cork on February 2, last  namely that he had lost his passport when in fact it had been surrendered to gardai.

Gardai objected to bail expressing strong fears that Mr Hayes would not appear in court if he was released.

Judge Marian OLeary refused bail and, yesterday, the defendant was remanded in continuing custody until March 8, next for DPPs directions.
We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.
Find not too frequent updates from the Livesay family here
Two newly described species of tiny kangaroos that lived between 18 million and 23 million years ago scurried rather than hopped, a new study finds. But although these pint-size kangas were short on bounce, they outperformed their fanged kangaroo relatives, which lived alongside them and eventually went extinct, researchers say.

In a recent study, researchers described a new kangaroo genus, Cookeroo, and two new species: Cookeroo bulwidarri, dated to about 23 million years ago,and Cookeroo hortusensis, which lived between 18 million and 20 million years ago.

Both species were found at the Riversleigh World Heritage area in northwestern Queensland, Australia, a location recognized as one of the richest fossil deposits in the world, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Center. [See Photos of Kangaroos, Wallabies & Other Cute Marsupials]

According to Kaylene Butler, the study's lead author, the new genus occupies a position near the base of the kangaroo family tree that includes all modern kangaroos and wallabies, their close relatives. Butler, a paleontologist at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science in an email that the team figured out where to place Cookeroo by comparing 119 different features representing 69 kangaroo species.

"Cookeroo is distinguished as a genus by the combination of a number of features on the skull and teeth"  points of comparison that were also used to distinguish between the two new species, Butler said.

The newfound minikangaroos are "the size of very small wallabies," with bodies that probably measured about 17 to 20 inches (42 to 52 centimeters) long, Butler said. The landscape at the time was very different from the arid outback it is today, Butler said. C. bulwidarri and C. hortusensis likely inhabited a dense forest, moving through it on all fours and sharing it with a diverse collection of animals: marsupial moles, feather-tailed possums, ancient koalas and crocodiles.

Skull of Balbaroo fangaroo, a member of the fanged kangaroos that may have been in direct competition with Cookeroo hortusensis. (Image credit: Anna Gillespie)

Cookeroo also lived alongside other species of small kangaroos that were part of the ancestral group for kangas alive today, as well as a related group of fanged kangaroos, Butler told Live Science.The fanged kangaroos were also plant eaters, and they probably competed with the ancestors of modern kangaroos over their habitat's vegetation. "However, the fanged kangaroos went extinct, while the ancestors of modern kangaroos continued to diversify and thrive," Butler said.

The direct competition between the two groups may have contributed to the fanged kangaroos' extinction, Butler suggested in a statement, though it is not certain what features provided Cookeroo with the advantage.

"The fossil record for kangaroos is quite rich," Butler said. "We have giant kangaroos from the Pleistocene [2.6 million to 11,700 years ago] and Pliocene [5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago], as well as other sites similar in age to Riversleigh where we see our tiny ancestors of modern kangaroos as well as the fanged kangaroos."

However, there is still much to learn about kangaroo evolution, and new fossil finds help to bring this ancient lineage more clearly into focus, Butler said.

"Hopefully, further study of these new species will help us understand just what is so special about the ancestors of modern kangaroos  why did they survive when, at the same time, the fanged kangaroos went extinct."

The findings were published online Feb. 17 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Ricardo Villafranca, 48, was called by the Lord on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2016.

Left to cherish his memory is his wife, Norma Villafranca; parents, Matias C. and Maria M. Villafranca; children, Priscilla M. Villafranca, Ricardo Villafranca Jr., Delilah M. Villafranca, Nathan J. Villafranca, Yaritza C. Barajas and Pedro Barajas III; siblings, Joe (Irma) M. Villafranca, Javier J. Villafranca, Sandra (Nicolas) V. Lopez, and Maricela Villafranca; nieces, nephews, other relatives and friends.

The family will be receiving guests Thursday, March 3, 2016, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., at Gamez & Sons Funeral and Cremation Services, 1029 Bob Bullock Loop, where a rosary will be recited at 7 p.m.

Funeral services will be Friday, March 4, 2016, at Christ the King Catholic Church, where a funeral mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m.

Interment will follow immediately at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

Pallbearers are Ricardo Villafranca Jr., Nathan J. Villafranca, Pedro Barajas, Victor Moreno, Nicolas Lopez Jr., Joe Villafranca, Matias C. Villafranca, and Jesus Obregon Jr.

Funeral services are under the arrangements of Gamez & Sons Funeral and Cremation Services, 1029 Bob Bullock Loop, Laredo, TX 78043.

For more information, please call (956) 701-3459.

You may sign the guest book, buy flowers, or leave condolences to the family online at www.gamezandsons.com.
To the editor:

The Obama administration is handing over $750 million to the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), which is comprised of governments from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Of this, $250 million is going to El Salvador, which is my focus in this letter.

Why does our government continue to give a communist country money to stem illegal immigration?

When will our current administration realize that the money the U.S. gives to a corrupt administration puts the U.S. more in debt?

It even makes me wonder if this administration wants to funnel money to communist governments.

After all, it seems that Obama, with his impending trip to Cuba, wants ties with the Castro regime, which continues to repress and jail dissenters.

It would be laughable, if it wasnt tragic, that the Obama administration is asking the government of El Salvador to stem illegal immigration.

It will never happen.

Why? El Salvador continues to enrich government officials to the extent that they are legislating to borrow money from the retirement funds of hardworking Salvadorians.

Do you think this communist administration will ever repay the workers?

El Salvador offers a free college education.

However, this has become a complete disaster, where the students dont even have desks or chairs. They sit and write on the floor.

I understand that Bernie Sanders has made free college education a part of his political platform.

The reason it has worked in El Salvador is that the students do with what they are given. No demands on technology or faculty.

So, if this were possible here in the U.S., I would agree that free college would work under these conditions.

Nothing is going to work to stop illegal immigration.

People in need come using the most inventive, daring and dangerous ways.

Even if Trump were to build a wall, tunnels can be dug underneath.

What will work? Accountability! The State Department, through the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, must enforce that taxpayer money is spent for the reason it was donated.

They must hold this government accountable under perjury of law and criminal prosecution if these funds are used to preserve corruption within the communist administration in El Salvador.

Sincerely,

Marcia O. Jovel
Local News, Crime, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 02 2016

Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that a Coram man was sentenced today to 18 years to life in prison for strangling his 71-year old uncle in 2014.

Mineola, NY - March 2nd, 2016 - Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that a Coram man was sentenced today to 18 years to life in prison for strangling his 71-year old uncle in 2014.



Jonathan Roman, 44, pleaded guilty on December 11 to one count of Murder in the 2nd Degree and was sentenced today by Acting Supreme Court Justice David Sullivan.



Defendant Jonathan Roman savagely murdered his uncle and hid the body for more than week while relatives desperately searched for the 71-year old victim, DA Singas said. John Frankowskis life was tragically cut short by his nephews heinous act and our thoughts and prayers are with his family.



DA Singas said that the defendant went to the New Hyde Park home of his uncle, 71-year old John Frankowski, on Feb. 27, 2014 and an argument ensued.



Roman then beat and strangled the victim at the home and later transported the body to Coram, where Roman buried his uncles remains in a wooded area behind his house. Frankowski was last seen alive on Feb. 27, 2014 and reported missing by relatives on March 1, 2014.



Nassau County Police Department officers, with the assistance of Suffolk County Police Department K9 units, discovered the missing mans body on March 7, 2014.



Roman was then arrested by the NCPD Homicide Squad and arraigned in Nassau County on March 8, 2014.



Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh, Chief of DA Singas Major Offense Bureau, is prosecuting the case. Roman is represented by Alan Schwartz, Esq.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Health & Wellness, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 02 2016

To help combat the heroin epidemic, Nassau County Exec. Mangano and Legislators Richard Nicolello and Ellen Birnbaum will partner with the Manhasset CASA to host a free Overdose Prevention Seminar.

Manhasset, NY - March 2nd, 2016 - To help save lives and combat the heroin epidemic, Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and County Legislators Richard Nicolello and Ellen Birnbaum will partner with the Manhasset Coalition Against Substance Abuse to host a free Overdose Prevention Seminar on Wednesday, March 9, 2016 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Manhasset Library, located at 30 Onderdonk Avenue.



Residents will learn how to administer Narcan - the lifesaving antidote that can reverse the fatal effects of an Opiate overdose  and, learn the warning signs of drug addiction, treatment options, personal stories of recovery, and more.



Through education, awareness enforcement and treatment, my administration and the Heroin Prevention Task Force are diligently combatting heroin and opioid abuse throughout Nassau, said County Executive Mangano. These free Overdose Prevention Seminars continue to help save lives and keep families whole.



At least 199 Nassau residents died from heroin and prescription painkillers in 2015. Narcan has been used by paramedics and emergency room doctors for decades, to save lives. A 2006 State law allows citizens to administer Narcan in an attempt to save a life, without fear of liability.



Nassau County has already provided Narcan training for nearly 6,000 people since 2012. At least two dozen trainees have used that knowledge - and the Narcan kit they were given - to revive someone overdosing on Heroin or painkillers, and save their lives.



Narcan is administered through a nasal spray, and is provided at no charge to trainees over the age of 18.



Social Worker and Certified Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor attendees will be eligible to receive free Continuing Education Units (CEU) for the two hour workshop  which is provided by the Nassau County Department of Human Services.



All residents are welcome to attend. Seating is limited. To RSVP, please email elaikin@nassaucountyny.gov. For dates and locations of other Overdose Prevention Seminars, click here.
Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 02 2016

Nassau County Exec Mangano today reminded residents that any road issues such as potholes, which are common in the colder months, should be reported.

Nassau County, NY - March 2nd, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano today reminded residents that any road issues such as potholes, which are common in the colder months, should be reported to the Nassau County Department of Highways at 516-571-6900 or through the Nassau Now mobile application.



Under a plan announced last year, Nassau County reports pothole complaints in real-time to cities, towns and villages so that their highway crews can also be dispatched to address road conditions with urgency.



Mother nature takes its toll on all roadways during the winter months, said County Executive Mangano. My administration has an aggressive program to fill potholes throughout Nassau in order to maintain the highest level of safety for vehicles and pedestrians on County roads.



Pothole repairs on Nassau County roadways are made within 24 hours of being reported by residents. In addition, County employees patrol County roadways to locate and address any issues caused by the winter weather.



Potholes form as asphalt road surfaces crack under the heat of the day. These cracks allow snow and rain water to seep into the underlying dirt and gravel. This water freezes and expands, and as a result dirt and gravel is pushed out leaving a hole when the water eventually melts.



While winter has resulted in thousands of potholes throughout the region, additional potholes are expected to open as the weather warms.



To report a pothole issue, please call 516-571-6900 or download and use the Nassau Now mobile application on your smartphone or mobile device.



The app will enable a photograph to be taken of the area and sent to the Highway Department with the GPS location.
School & Education, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 02 2016

Agreement Removes Barriers Impacting Unaccompanied Minors And Other Undocumented Youth Seeking To Enroll In The District.

Westbury, NY - March 2nd, 2016 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced an agreement with the Westbury Union Free School District to ensure educational access for students regardless of their immigration status, and to prevent the diversion of immigrant students into non-degree bearing programs.



Among other things, the district agreed to retain an ombudsman who will provide new internal oversight over enrollment and academic placement policies within the district, to retain an independent monitor to ensure that the district enrolls and places students in compliance with the law, and to offer compensatory educational services to students who experienced enrollment delays or academic diversion in the three years between 2012 and 2015.

Education is the bedrock of our American democracy, and every child in our country  no matter where they were born  deserves the chance to attend school and seek a diploma, said Attorney General Schneiderman.

I am pleased that the Westbury District has agreed to come into compliance with the law and that it will also provide additional services to any student who was, until now, unable to enroll in their local school or attend a degree-bearing high school program. We will continue to work tirelessly with school districts across New York State to ensure that every child is treated equally and has full access to the tools needed to become productive members of society.

In October 2014, the Attorney General and the New York State Education Department (SED) launched a joint review of enrollment policies and procedures of school districts in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Rockland Counties, including the district  counties that had experienced a significant influx of unaccompanied minors from Central and South America  in order to determine whether those districts were impermissibly discriminating against students or prospective students on the basis of immigration status.

Following the joint review with SED, in September 2015 the Attorney General opened a formal investigation into the district. The investigation found that, beginning in the summer of 2012 and continuing through the fall of 2015, the district denied or delayed the enrollment of numerous students who sought to enroll, many of whom are unaccompanied minors originating from Central and South America, and many of whom who were not U.S. citizens at the time they sought to enroll.

These delays in enrollment lasted as long as six months and were achieved through a variety of methods, including written inquiries in the districts enrollment materials concerning the citizenship and immigration status of prospective students, e.g., requests for Social Security Numbers and express questions about their citizenship or national origin. These enrollment delays were also caused by district requirements for proof of residency and age that exceeded requirements set forth in state law, as well as oral inquiries by district employees concerning the national origin of prospective students at the time they sought to register.

The investigation also found that the district had an unwritten policy of excluding English language learners over the age of sixteen - many of whom were recently arrived immigrants  from the districts only public high school, and diverting these students into non-degree bearing alternative education programs.



The Attorney General identified nearly two dozen students who were told that they could not enroll in the districts only high school because they were too old, but could instead enroll in high-school equivalency or English as a Second Language (ESL) classes with limited academic offerings. The investigation found that students diverted into these programs remained in them  without regular evaluation by the district  between one and three years.

The Attorney Generals investigation confirmed that the districts policies and actions were inconsistent with federal and state law, including the U.S. Supreme Courts holding in Plyler v. Doe  which held that the U.S. Constitution guarantees equal protection for undocumented children  and was likely to, or could potentially, chill or discourage undocumented students from enrolling in the districts.

The agreement entered into between the Attorney General and the district requires the district to do the following:

Modify district enrollment and academic placement materials;



Develop new enrollment and academic placement procedures governing the activity of district personnel responsible for enrollment and placement;



Develop training materials addressing permissible and impermissible inquiries in the enrollment process, and legal requirements concerning academic placement and the entitlement to a public education until a student turns 21, as well as annual training for relevant district personnel;



Hire or designate a new enrollment ombudsman responsible for enrollment and academic placement throughout the district;



Retain an independent monitor to assure compliance with applicable law and the agreement;



Provide compensatory educational services to students who were delayed or denied enrollment or diverted into non-degree bearing programs between 2012 and 2015; and



Maintain records of district denials of student enrollment and student decisions to enroll in alternative education programs, and regularly report to the Attorney General concerning such denials and decisions, until March 2018.

Westbury Union Free School District joins 21 other school districts across New York State that have entered into agreements with the Attorney Generals Civil Rights Bureau to ensure that all students are able to enroll in public school regardless of immigration status.

Javier H. Valdes, Co-Executive Director of Make the Road New York, said Many of the unaccompanied minors in New York are children who have suffered trauma, either in their home countries or en route to the U.S. We must ensure that these young people receive the care they need and are able to attend school here in New York. The members of Make the Road New York thank the Attorney General for standing with these courageous young people and taking such important steps to eradicate the significant barriers they face in this country.

"As recently arrived Central American children started settling on Long Island, we started to see them be deliberately shut out of basic educational opportunitiesbeing able to enroll in local schools, or accessing academic materials that would help them graduate on time, said Steven Choi, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

We commend Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for making sure school districts across New York are complying with state and federal laws that ensure recently arrived immigrant children are given the rightful opportunities to be their best selves in the country they now call home. The Coalition will continue to work with the Attorney General's office to ensure educational access is provided for all students regardless of their immigration status or national origin."



"Catholic Charities has long been committed to helping New York State welcome all immigrants, be they families seeking to reunify, refugees, day workers, or children. Our mission is rooted in the respect for the inherent dignity of each person and in striving to create a just and compassionate society.

We are heartened by the many efforts that have been made to bring about greater inclusion of vulnerable children into our schools and applaud this agreement; it is a first step towards giving them a more lasting welcome and an opportunity to make contributions that will be and have been a lasting part of our history," said C. Mario Russell, Director of Immigrant and Refugee Services, Catholic Charities.

This matter is being handled by Assistant Attorneys General Justin Deabler and Ajay Saini of the Civil Rights Bureau, with the assistance of bureau support staff. The Bureau is part of the Division of Social Justice, which is led by Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice Alvin Bragg.
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
Nasir al Wuhayshi, the emir of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who later became al Qaedas general manager, detailed the groups strengths in Yemens provinces prior its spring 2011 offensive that saw much of the south fall under its control.

Wuhayshi, who was killed by the US in a drone strike in June 2015, outlined AQAPs position in an undated letter that was addressed to an unnamed brother. The letter, which was seized from Osama bin Ladens compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was one of more than 100 released on March 1 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The letter appears to have been written sometime in early or mid-2010, while Yemen was experiencing political upheaval and President Abdullah Salih was under pressure to step down. In the letter, Wuhayshi responded to questions from Abu Uthman, and notes that The political conflict is deteriorating and the situation of the country is about to fall apart. He advocated that AQAP take action lest it fail to capitalize on the political chaos.

Our fear is that, if it falls apart without us having a presence on all levels, we will face competition from the various factions in Yemen, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Communists, especially in the South the Iran-backed Houthis in the north, The Southern Movement (Hirak), and the Revolution Council led by Tariq al Fadhli, Wuhayshi noted.

Our situation, thanks to Allah, is improving for the mujahidin, and as I have mentioned in my previous letters, if you ever wanted Sanaa [the capital of Yemen], today is the day! Wuhayshi wrote.

Wuhayshi then went on to outline the regions in Yemen where AQAP is centralized. First on his list was Abyan, which is considered one of the largest area in which we have supporters, presence, and many members, and we have more influence than the Hirak southern secessionist forces.

The next two most important provinces for AQAP are Shabwa and Marib, which is the largest area and has tribal influence; we are taking advantage of the ruggedness of its land and the influence of its members.

Then its Al Jawf, and Sadah in Wadi Abu Jbarah, and Arhab [in] Sanaa, which is considered the largest area in which we hold power, he continued. We have supporters and sympathizers in Lahij, Ad Dali, Aden, Hadramawt, Sanaa, and Al Hudaydah and others.

Wuhayshi then noted the importance of the tribes and their leaders, and said they have pledged allegiance and they are with us even if they are only a few. However, some of them are afraid and prefer to be neutral.

AQAP goes on the offensive

Other documents released from bin Ladens cache from Abbottabad show there was an ongoing discussion between Wuhayshi and al Qaedas central leadership over the merits and pitfalls of taking control of territory in Yemen.

Bin Laden responded to Wuhayshis letter where he said if you ever wanted Sanaa [the capital of Yemen], today is the day, and said it was too soon for AQAP to attempt to overthrow the government. The lengthy letter is undated, but was likely written in the spring of 2010.

In another letter, likely written by bin Laden in May 2010 that is addressed to his general manager, Atiyah Abd al Rahman, the al Qaeda emir advocated that AQAP avoid attacking the Yemeni military and police and suggested it only attack US interests in the country. Atiyah responds in July 2010, and told bin Laden that war in Yemen is imminent and that it is time to prepare a military strategy with Wuhayshi. In a letter dated Aug. 7, 2010, bin Laden told Atiyah he is awaiting the details from Wuhayshi in order to discuss the matter on a wider scale to make the most suitable decision. On Aug. 27, 2010, bin Laden told Atiyah he is awaiting input for Yemeni strategy from Wuhayshi, Anwar al Awlaki, and Said al Shihri.

While the conclusion of this discussion was not disclosed in the recently released filed, AQAP went on the offensive in southern Yemen beginning in April 2011. And based on Wuhayshis prior assessment, AQAP targeted many of the areas he said were vulnerable.

By the summer of 2011, AQAP controlled most if not all of Shabwa and Abyan, two of the three provinces he identified as jihadists bastions. AQAP also seized territory in Marib, Lahj, Baydah, and Hadramout. Until the Yemeni government and military regrouped in the spring of 2012, AQAP controlled and administered a large portion of southern Yemen.

While AQAP lost the ground it held in southern Yemen after one year, Wuhayshi said the sacrifice was worth it. In two letters, written in May 2012 and August 2012 to Abdelmalek Droukdel, the emir of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Wuhayshi advised AQIM be patient in seizing territory in Mali and to slowly implement sharia, or Islamic law. He also detailed AQAPs losses, and concluded it was worth the effort.

The control of these areas during one year cost us 500 martyrs, 700 wounded, 10 cases of hand or leg amputation and nearly $20 million, he said. AQAPs position now is far better despite its losses, as the year of governing large areas gave it a rare opportunity for guerrilla warfare and liquidations [assassinations]. Additionally, most of the battle costs, if not all, were paid from through the spoils of war as well as by taking hostages. [See LWJ report, Wuhayshi imparted lessons of AQAP operations in Yemen to AQIM.]

Wuhayshi appears to have been correct. AQAP regrouped after losing ground in southern Yemen in 2012, and capitalized on the next round of Yemeni political turmoil. In 2015, AQAP took advantage of the Houthi takeover of the capital of Sanaa and large areas in western, central, and southern Yemen. Today, AQAP again controls large areas of southern Yemen, primarily in Abyan, Shabwa, Hadramout, and Lahj. [See LWJ report, Al Qaeda seizes more territory in southern Yemen.]

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.

Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.
JW Marriott Chicago Launches New Fit Meetings Program

March 1, 2016

Meetings' guests can now go right from their seats, even in a General Session, into a workout while experiencing meetings enhancements, such as meditation and posture exercises, at the landmark, luxury hotel, as well as private wellness classes, like a scenic run/walk in downtown Chicago to an educational healthy eating class. Meetings are no longer just typical facts and figures presentations at JW Marriott Chicago with these new wellness components.



In keeping with the JW Marriott brand's commitment to offering enriching guest experiences that help guests maintain balance while traveling, the new program includes three breakout meeting enhancements for groups of up to 200 guests as well as three longer-format fitness classes led by the spa's Nike-certified personal trainers.



At JW Marriott Chicago, we pride ourselves in always creating new and innovative offerings for our meeting planners and guests, says Director of Sales & Marketing Steve Conklin. Well-being is one of the JW Marriott brand's three core passion points and with Fit Meetings', we're able to further explore JW Marriott Chicago's dedication in bringing a complete wellness experience to our meetings and events guests.



Spa at JW Chicago's Fit Meetings' offerings include:



Meeting Enhancement for Well-Being:



MEDITATION

Prepare the body and mind with intention, greater focus, creativity and better relationships with a brief guided meditation session.



POSTURE-PERFECT

Good posture is good health. Pilates-based strength training movements, focusing on the core and back muscles, create an aligned and strong posture. In this 15-minute session, guests will learn to incorporate these exercises into their everyday routine.



ENERGIZER BREAK

Attendees will stay engaged and energized with this yoga-based stretch session suitable for all fitness levels.



Private Wellness Classes:



TAKE THE SCENIC ROUTE

Guests can start their morning off on the right foot. All fitness levels are welcome to come and join JW Marriott Chicago's fitness team on a scenic run for an up close view of Chicago's picturesque skyline, miles of sandy beaches and some of the finest downtown architecture in the world. Not a runner? Meeting planners can opt for a group walk instead! Available for groups of up to 30 guests.



FITNESS ORIENTATION

Whether guests are new to the world of fitness or would like to learn more, JW Marriott Chicago's Nike affiliated fitness team can assist guests in finding the perfect class and get acquainted with Spa at JW Chicago's cardio and strength equipment.



FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Healthy eating plays a crucial part in health and can improve total well-being. Guests can enjoy an educational session on the benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle and pave the way to a better and healthier life.



JW Marriott Chicago offers 44,000 square feet of event space (8,000 square foot Grand Ballroom and 6,000 square foot Burnham ballroom w/original domed ceiling) with over 36 meeting break-out rooms, including five boardrooms. Wireless high-speed Internet and videoconferencing capabilities available in all meeting rooms.



To learn more about Spa at JW Chicago's fitness and wellness meetings offerings call (312) 660-8250.
Marie Claire newsletter Celebrity news, beauty, fashion advice, and fascinating features, delivered straight to your inbox! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Thank you for signing up to . You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions (opens in new tab) and Privacy Policy (opens in new tab) and are aged 16 or over.

Erm, left swipe?

David Cameron is on Tinder (opens in new tab). Seriously. The Prime Minister is actually on Tinder.

OK. Slow down. Panic not. This isn't another chapter to the Ashley Madison saga, instead, this is David Camerons way of getting down with the kids and trying to engage Tinders 5 million plus users to vote in the EU referendum.

With the deadline to register to vote less than a month away (June 7), David Cameron has enlisted the help of the dating app giant to create an advert that resembles an actual profile on Tinder. So you know, if you come across his profile and he swipes right for you, you could get some Tinder time in with the PM. Or his press office. Either works for us.

Is this the worst Tinder date ever? (opens in new tab)

According to The Telegraph, young people are less likely to vote than the general population, but are more likely to be pro-EU, which explains why David Cameron has targeted websites including Facebook, Twitter, Google and BuzzFeed and invited these social bigwigs to Downing Street last Friday to discuss new ways to get young people voting.

Everything you need to know about Brexit (opens in new tab)

Registering to vote is easy  just click here (opens in new tab) to sign up.

The vote on whether or not we stay in the European Union will take place on June 23, and if youre still unclear on what you're actually voting for, or whether to even bother registering, remember David Cameron is on Tinder and hes ready to mingle. Kind of.
Late last night, SUNY Maritime College alumnus Scott Kelly, 87, felt Earths gravity for the first time in nearly a year.



The astronaut safely landed in Kazakhstan after plummeting hundreds of miles to Earth from the International Space Station with Russian astronaut Mikhail Kornienko. The two have spent more than 11 months on the International Space Station to determine the effect of extended amounts of time in space on the human body.



All of us at SUNY Maritime are thrilled to have Scott back on Earth, and congratulate him for the work he has done for science and for space exploration, said Rear Adm. Michael A. Alfultis, president of SUNY Maritime. Since his first days on campus, Scott has wanted to be an astronaut and we are proud that he has achieved that dream in such an important way.



NASA has been studying Kelly and his identical twin, retired astronaut Mark Kelly, throughout the 340-day mission, to determine the effects of a long-term stay in orbit on a persons immune system, mental health and body systems. A standard stay in the station is six months.



Scotts safe return to Earth is a proud moment for all of SUNY as we mark another fantastic accomplishment by one of our alumni, said SUNY Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher. Congratulations to Scott and his brother, Mark, on this successful completion of the first phase of their research to better understand the human bodys immune system.



Scott Kelly will stay in Houston for rehabilitation and more tests as his body readjusts to the Earths gravity.



He will return to his alma mater to be given special recognition at the annual Admirals Scholarship Dinner on May 3.



Kelly has been a NASA astronaut since 1996. He has been into space four times. He spent half of his 11-month mission as the space stations commander.



After Kelly graduated from SUNY Maritime, he earned a masters degree in aviation systems from the University of Tennessee. He was designated a naval aviator in 1989 and worked as a fighter pilot and, later, a test pilot. He has logged more than 8,000 hours in more than 40 different aircraft and spacecraft and has more than 250 aircraft carrier landings.
Scorpio Tankers Inc. (NYSE: STNG) announced agreements to time charter-in three ice class 1A Handymax product tankers.



The Company has entered into time charter-in agreements with an unrelated third party on three ice class 1A Handymax product tankers. Each agreement is for three years at $15,600 per day, and the Company has two consecutive one year options to extend the agreements at $16,500 per day and $17,500 per day, respectively.



The time charters are expected to commence before the end of March 2016. In addition, the Company has the option to time charter-in up to four additional ice class 1A Handymax product tankers under the same terms.



The Company has contracted for 12 newbuilding product tankers (eight MR and four LR2 tankers). The four LR2s are expected to be delivered in 2016 (one per quarter), and the eight MRs are expected to be delivered throughout 2017. The Company has also reached an agreement to sell five of its 2014 built MR product tankers.
A World Food Programme (WFP) ship carrying humanitarian aid offloaded its cargo in Yemen on Wednesday, the United Nations said, after it was diverted to Saudi Arabia last month because it was carrying communications equipment.



Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition in a war against Iran-allied Houthi rebels and army forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh in an effort to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power.



The Mainport Cedar, which the United Nations said was carrying a cargo of humanitarian relief supplies bound for the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida, was diverted by the coalition to the Saudi port of Jizan on Feb. 11.



"The World Food Programme confirms that the Mainport Cedar has offloaded its cargo at Yemen's Hodeida port today," said U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq.



"The vessel was carrying interagency cargo that includes canned tuna and medical supplies. It had also been carrying information technology equipment that was left behind in Jizan to complete paperwork to allow it into Aden for the U.N. humanitarian hub," Haq said.



Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, the Saudi-led coalition's spokesman, said in February that the communications equipment was similar to that used by the Houthis and had not been declared by the WFP.



Yemen relies almost solely on imports, but the conflict has slowed shipments to a trickle after Saudi Arabia imposed a naval blockade to stop weapons being imported.



United Nations aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the U.N. Security Council earlier this month that a U.N. verification and inspection mechanism for shipments had now been launched in a bid to boost commercial imports. O'Brien is due to address the council again on Yemen on Thursday.



More than 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians, in Yemen since Saudi-led forces began military operations in March last year after the Houthis advanced on Hadi's temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden.



(Reporting by Michelle Nichols, editing by G Crosse)
Italian shipbuilding group Fincantieri and Chinese shipyard specialized in ship repair and refitting activities Huarun Dadong Dockyard (HRDD) have signed in Shanghai an exclusive cooperation agreement in the field of ship repair and conversions aimed at serving the cruise ships based in China.

The deal includes the development of technical skills, project management and logistics procedures. In particular, Fincantieri, through its Ship Repair and Conversion business unit, will provide, as a worldwide reference operator of the cruise sector, its technical expertise, which, combined with the shipyard facilities of HRDD, will support the emerging Chinese cruise sector and the main foreign cruise companies which will operate on the local market. HRDD has facilities near the new Cruise Terminal of Shanghai. The shipyard which avails of five drydocks, has a rich experience on a broad range of ship types and skilled resources.

Fincantieri had started an internationalization and rooting strategy in this market with the agreements made in 2014 in the cruise sector for the local market, and subsequently established a branch office in China, headquartered in Shanghai, the Fincantieri (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd.

The Chinese Ministry of Transport (MOT) projects China to be the second largest global cruise market after the U.S. in the next several years based on economic growth, increased spending power of Chinese consumers and internal demand in this sector. China could see 4.5 million cruise passengers by 2020, according to the MOT, and exceed 10 million within 20 years. This expansion could require more than 100 passenger ships. The potential collaborations as the ones between Fincantieri and HRDD aim at supporting the MOTs expansion policies in the cruise sector and the increase of the entire tourism in China, estimated in a double-digit growth each year from 2014.

Between 2013 and 2015 the number of ships deployed in Asia was increased by 10 percent, reaching 52 units of 26 brands, with an offer of 1,065 cruises. Besides placing latest-generation ships, specifically built for the customers of that area, the main cruise operators, active in this segment, are also pursuing a dedicated brand creation policy and alliances with other local operators.
Insights: Edward E. Belk - Chief, Operations and Regulatory Division Directorate of Civil Works, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Edward E. Belk, Jr. currently serves as the Chief of Operations and Regulatory Division for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He also provides leadership and oversight for activities and programs within the Corps Lakes and Rivers and North Atlantic Regional Integration Teams. Selected by the Secretary of the Army into the Senior Executive Service in May 2012, Mr. Belk provides national oversight of the development, resourcing and delivery of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) programs for the Civil Works infrastructure portfolio and for Corps operational programs such as hydroelectric power, public recreation, environmental restoration, wildlife management and the regulatory oversight of waterways and wetlands. Previous to this, Belk served as Director of Programs for the Mississippi Valley Division (MVD) and Mississippi River Commission (MRC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi. He was the principal advisor to the Commander, MVD, and President, MRC, for the development, defense and execution of the Civil Works Program across the twelve states served by the Mississippi Valley Division. He provided leadership and supervision for the Programs Directorate with regional staff oversight for programs, planning, operations, real estate and project management activities in the Divisions six subordinate District commands located in St. Paul, Rock Island, St. Louis, Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans. Belk has extensive experience in the development and delivery of large, complex water resource solutions (including navigation, flood risk management, coastal restoration and ecosystem restoration sectors) across the full spectrum of program life cycle (planning, design, real estate acquisition, environmental compliance, construction and operation/maintenance). Along the way, he has shown himself to be adept at developing and strengthening strategic relationships at the local, regional and national levels. These relationships enable mission execution and program delivery. Notably, Belk has also completed two tours in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he served as the senior U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civilian in the seven Provinces of northern Iraq and senior advisor to the Commander, Gulf Region North District, with headquarters initially in Mosul and later in Tikrit. Belk holds Master of Science in Engineering Management and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, both from Christian Brothers University. Additionally, he is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Mississippi. A recipient of many significant awards during his tenure at USACE, there is arguably no other individual within the USACE with more knowledge and experience in the effort to properly maintain, upgrade and improve our inland waterways. Listen in this month as Edward Belk weighs in on the USACE mission, its goals, successes and the many challenges that still loom ahead.





Tell us a little about USACE: How many individuals are under your umbrella  civilian and uniformed?

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) employees about 37,000 dedicated civilians and Soldiers that deliver engineering services to customers in more than 90 countries.

What is your primary mission? Where are you headquartered?

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., USACE provides vital public engineering services in peace and war to strengthen our Nations security, energize the economy and reduce risks from disasters. Additionally, USACE has nine division or regional offices; 43 district offices; six main engineering, research and development, finance and technical centers; the 249th Engineer Battalion; and the 412th and 416th Theater Engineer Commands. USACE primary Civil Works missions are Navigation, Flood Risk Management and Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration, but we also have important Hydropower, Emergency Management, Environmental Stewardship, Recreation, Water Supply and Regulatory missions.

What is the primary source for your mariners - military, merchant marine or a healthy mix of both?

USACE primary navigation responsibilities include planning and constructing new navigation channels and locks and dams, and dredging to maintain channel depths at U.S. harbors and on inland waterways. We operate and maintain 12,000 miles of inland and intracoastal waterways and navigable channels, including 192 commercial lock and dam sites, and we are responsible for ports and waterways in 41 states. In partnership with local port authorities, USACE personnel oversee dredging and construction projects at hundreds of ports and harbors at an average annual cost of more than $1 billion. USACE dredges more than 250 million cubic yards of material each year to keep the nations waterways navigable. Much of this dredged material is reused for environmental restoration projects including the creation of wetlands.

Tell us about the USACE fleet? How many vessels do you operate and how many of those are dedicated dredges?

USACE owns and operates approximately 2,900 vessels, ranging from skiffs to tugs barges, to self-propelled oceangoing hopper dredges. Of these, there are eleven dredges consisting of a mix of hopper, dustpan, sidecasting, special purpose and cutterhead dredges (Yaquina, Essayons, Wheeler, McFarland, Murden, Merritt, Goetz, Hurley, Jadwin, Potter and Currituck).

What percentage of your funding goes toward projects that are primarily (if not totally) accomplished by the Corps internally and what percentage do you sub out to others?

Public Law 95-269 (1978) requires the Secretary of the Army to have dredging and related work done by contract if the Secretary determines private industry has the capability to do such work and it can be done at a reasonable price and in a timely manner. To carry out emergency and national defense work the Secretary shall retain only the minimum federally owned fleet. Accordingly, the majority of dredging projects accomplished by USACE are performed by private industry dredges. The rule of thumb is that about 85 percent of the dredging is performed by contracts, the other 15 percent by USACE-owned dredges. For FY14 - the latest year we have finalized data  it was 91 percent of expenditures for dredging was by contract, the other 9 percent was by USACE-owned dredges. While most of our lock operations and some maintenance is performed with in-house forces, a significant portion of our coastal and inland navigation work on structures is performed by contract.

One issue today facing some waterways is that USACE funding is (primarily) based on tonnage numbers alone. Some of the smaller waterways  AIWA for example, directly parallel to I-95 and potentially a valuable shortsea shipping corridor, say that they cant get the tonnage if they dont have the maintenance dredging to maintain draft. What can be done to change that metric?

There are many factors that are evaluated when funding projects including project conditions, commercial marine traffic, subsistence harbors, harbors of refuge, commercial fishing, public transportation (passenger ferries), energy generation and consumption and use by other Federal or state agencies.

Tell our readers what the biggest priority for USACE going forward in 2016?

From a Navigation perspective, it is critical to keep the Federal navigation channels, waterways and locks open to provide for the safe and reliable movement of commercial vessels, as well as meeting commercial navigation demands in the future. This, of course, needs to be performed in an environmentally acceptable, cost effective and efficient manner.

Whats the most significant challenge to the USACE in 2016  is that aligned with your biggest priority? And, looking five years down the road, will those challenges remain the same?

The most significant challenge is the asset management of aging infrastructure including locks, dams and navigation channels due to the age of the facilities for prior funding limitations.





I understand that the Corps is trying to improve its data collection at lock sites. This is important to industry, but why is it also important to the Corps?

In order to most efficiently maintain USACE locks and dams, it is important that there is relevant, accurate data to help guide investments in our existing lock infrastructure and determine the need for infrastructure improvements. It is also important to have timely data to understand and determine the impacts of lock and channel performance on commerce, and allows USACE to better-understand where the system may experience navigation closures and delays, which affect the overall inland waterways system reliability.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and its Maritime Administration predict that freight will increase significantly on all modes ahead, but often the Corps tonnage numbers can be two to three years behind, making it hard to calculate future freight needs and logistics. What can be done to square those numbers?

The data are assembled from many sources, but mostly from the Department of Commerce and other Federal Agencies. There is a lot of data and since many critical decisions are based on the data, it is essential that the data is carefully evaluated and verified as well as involve trend analysis. Extensive data from projects experiencing rapid growth or decline is reported to USACE staff regularly.

Based on the record FY 16 funding levels, it appears that the Corps can fund all four of the top priority projects (Olmsted, Lower Mon, Kentucky and Chickamauga) at full, efficient levels, but this is up to the Corps to decide. Just what will be the plan for this year?

The FY 2016 Workplan and FY2017 Presidents Budget are under development and information will not be available until they are released by the President on February 9, 2016. (Editors Note: MarineNews was headed to the printer at that time).

The Waterways Council, Inc. (WCI) and its members and stakeholders pushed and prodded until the U.S. Senate passed a 9-cent increase to the barge diesel fuel user fee. Effective April 1, 2015, the 9-cent-increase should add around $40 million annually to the IWTF, augmented by another $40 million in matching funds. How much of a help is this for the mission in the coming years?

The additional funding from the $0.09 per gallon diesel fuel tax increase to a total of $0.29 per gallon is estimated to generate an additional $35 million per year. This would enable construction and major rehabilitation of justified inland waterways projects to proceed at a faster rate and be completed sooner, the reduction in the Inland Waterways Trust Fund share of the Olmsted Locks and Dam project as authorized in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act, 2014 and could also enable other projects to move at a faster pace to improve the Inland Waterways System.

The WCI applauded the final agreement for an FY 2016 Omnibus Appropriations bill that funds the Corps of Engineers Civil Works program under the Energy & Water Development Appropriations bill. FY 16 funding for the Corps Civil Works mission is $5.99 billion, and Inland Waterways Trust Fund (IWTF)-supported projects should receive record level funding of $405.2 million for priority navigation projects in FY 16. Looking further at federal funding, on the Navigation Ecosystem Sustainability Program (NESP), Statement of Manager language makes clear that the next appropriate step is to complete PED (Pre-Construction Engineering and Design) and requires monthly briefings for the committees on any economic update or re-analysis that is done for the project. The authority of the Corps will be the deciding factor on where the funding will be allocated. How will that process move forward?

USACE provided $50,000 in the FY 2015 Workplan to determine how to proceed with updating project costs and economics, and completing a decision document. A decision on allocating additional funding for the project will be made upon completion of the decision document.
The tradition of shipbuilding in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania to be continued  with new focus on cruise ships

An investor has been found in Malaysias Genting Group to enable the continued existence of the three shipyards in Wismar, Rostock and Stralsund. The takeover contract was signed in Hamburg on Tuesday this week. In the weeks following the conclusion of the applicable checks by the authorities, the takeover will become final and business operations will be transferred to the Genting Group. At the start of the year Genting, a major cooperation with worldwide operations, acquired all the shares in Bremerhavens Lloyd Werft. The result is a group consisting of four shipyards in Northern Germany.

Nordic Yards said it has been analyzing the cruise ship market since early 2014. The company has been concentrating on this segment in response to stagnating or even falling developments in the fields of offshore wind, offshore oil and gas and on the Russian market. Strategies were revised at an early stage in order to align the company with future market developments. Interest on the part of Genting in Nordic Yards arose as a result of these activities.

The Genting conglomerate, which owns the world's third-largest shipping company, will represent a strong strategic investor. The shipping lines Star Cruises, Dream Cruises, Crystal Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line are all part of the Genting Group. Direct access to the cruise ship market, acquisition of the former Nordic locations in Wismar, Rostock and Stralsund and the know-how of the workforce will provide Genting Group with the ideal preconditions for the fast-growing cruise market.

The requirement that the entire workforce should be kept on was fulfilled: For me it went without saying that every member of the workforce should be kept on and their know-how and experience retained, so that the contribution made by the maritime industry can be safeguarded for the region in the long-term, said Dr. Herbert Aly, Managing Director of Nordic Yards. The transfer of the Nordic Yards workforce will be implemented in several phases, which are connected with progress on the DolWin gamma platform. Nordic Yards will meet its contractual obligations towards GE, Dr. Aly added.

Currently 1,400 workers are employed at the three locations of Wismar, Warnemunde and Stralsund. In addition, over the past six years 50 percent of the companies supplying the shipyard group have been based in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which in turn has generated employment for several thousand people.

Since Vitaly Yusufov took over the shipbuilding company with its long traditions in the year 2009, more than 1,400 jobs have been created at three locations. In that time three offshore converter platforms have been built and delivered to Siemens, while a fourth for the GE group is currently under construction. Further vessels which have been built include an Arctic tanker, an offshore maintenance vessel and two icebreaking rescue ships. With 500 new jobs in the last four years Nordic Yards has been one of the fastest organically growing companies in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
The Marine Corps wants to be more innovative. Yes, the organization that has a rich history of innovation is trying to strengthen its culture of innovation across the force and not just on the battlefield or in a crisis. Marine Corps leaders recognize that in order to meet the challenges of future operating environments and face enemies that dont follow the traditional rules of warfare the Corps must find a way to harness the untapped cognitive and creative abilities of its Marines, Sailors, and civilians.

Nearly 200 innovative and disruptive thinkers from the private sector, across the Department of Defense and academia came together at the Marine Corps Force Development 25 Innovation Symposium to help the Corps jump start the change.

The symposium brought inventors, authors, historians, academicians, and leaders to share their knowledge, experiences, and advice on growing a greater culture of innovation.

Dean Kamen, a noted and prolific inventor talked about the challenges he faced creating new and innovative technologies and about the difficulties in affecting change.

As a sobering reminder of how difficult innovation is, he outlined some Rude Reminders he learned the hard way. Among them is the idea that Great technology alone rarely constitutes innovation. This sentiment was reinforced by the symposium co-lead.

If were going to become more innovative and if were going to innovate for whats next, the discussions that we have are typically not technology focused, said Capt. Chris Wood, the co-lead for 3D printing for Deputy Commandant, Installations and Logistics. They are focused on having the right culture so that people are more comfortable with change.

To remove barriers to open discussion and collaboration participants attended in civilian attire and were encouraged to leave their rank at the door so that they could work more easily with each other and on the same level.

The importance of this innovation cultural change across the service is that it is not limited to a specific unit or paygrade.

When you show people that change doesnt have to happen at the higher levels or even necessarily in the commandants office, but happens between a couple folks, it doesnt matter what rank they are as long as they are willing to step out of the box, said Wood. That to me is a big impact on the Marine Corps.

One of the invited keynote speakers, Petty Officer First Class Richard Walsh, is an example of this. As an avionics technician AT1 Walsh developed an innovative software program that has greatly improved readiness of F/A-18s at Naval Air Station Oceana. Walsh is also a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell.

In addition to harnessing the cognitive and creative abilities from across the force, the symposium was also designed to get participants to approach the challenges from unique perspectives.

Were trying to get people to think beyond the box and beyond the constraints that our system has today, said Cmdr. Donald Brant Brockett, the unmanned systems military director at Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division.

Events like this demonstrate how Marines who are not usually in positions of power can provide insight and a fresh perspective, according to Wood. The symposium also demonstrated how change and innovation depend on the inventiveness of both individuals and units.

Eighteen-year-olds understand the implications of technology and whats needed for the future to a much deeper and richer extent than the current generation of people that are making the decisions, said Wood. That requires that the people that make the decisions be directly engaging with the people that know what decisions need to be made for the future force.

The Warfighting Lab is not stopping with this symposium. Follow-on workshops, additional symposiums, and a collaborative portal are being developed and planned even now. The initial gathering at the Force Development 25 Innovation Symposium is intended to be the genesis of a much larger and active network of innovative and disruptive thinkers across the force.

Briefings, videos and the results from the symposium can be found at https://community.apan.org/wg/mc2025/symposium/
Forged in the wake of World War II, the U.S.-Japan security alliance has served as one of the Asia-Pacific Region's most important military relationships and as an anchor of U.S. engagement in the Pacific. Revised in 1960, the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security grants the United States the rights to military bases in the Japanese archipelago in exchange for a U.S. pledge to defend Japan in the event of an attack.



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. Clay C. Tipton, commanding officer, 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Credible, ready maritime forces help to preserve peace and prevent conflict.



Exercise Iron Fist 2016 started Jan. 22, and concluded with a closing ceremony March 1, 2016. Throughout the last five weeks, the Marines of 11th MEU worked alongside the soldiers of the Western Army Infantry Regiment, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, to complete an aggressive training schedule. From Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton to Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, and from San Clemente to the USS Somerset (LPD 25), the Marines, sailors and soldiers trained across the elements of the Marine Air Ground Task Force and successfully conducted combined amphibious operations.



Five weeks is a long time to sustain an exercise of this magnitude, said Brig. Gen David Coffman, deputy commanding general, I Marine Expeditionary Force. But all of [the participants] hard work and dedication has, no doubt, increased the war-fighting capabilities of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit and the Western Army Infantry Regiment.



Iron Fist is the largest, bilateral amphibious training exercise conducted by I Marine Expeditionary Force and is designed to improve U.S. Marine Corps and JGSDFs ability to plan, communicate and conduct combined amphibious operations at the platoon, company and battalion levels.



The training focused on advanced marksmanship, amphibious reconnaissance, fire and maneuver assaults, staff planning, logistical support and medical knowledge sharing, fire support operations, including mortars, artillery, and close-air support and amphibious landing operations.



It is important to know who is on your left and on your right when in fight. If youve trained with a unit and know what they are made of  it can embolden your forces, said Coffman. Having camaraderie and respect for one another is fundamental for success on the battlefield; bilateral training and working side-by-side is extremely important to building this cohesion.



The growing camaraderie and teamwork over the last 11 iterations of Exercise Iron Fist, reflects in the increasing combined operational capabilities between the Japanese and U.S. forces.



Exercises like Iron Fist and last years Dawn Blitz provide key opportunities to further enhance the Japan Self-Defense Force and U.S. Marine Corps capability and proficiency to respond to crises with a combined effort, said Coffman. Make no mistake, the U.S. and Japan alliance is strong here in Southern California today. May our countries continue to nurture this relationship over the coming years, learning from each other and sharing in a common commitment to maintaining stability in the Asia-Pacific region.





More Media
Marines with base operations welcomed Japan Air Self Defense Force Staff Sgt. Shinya Nishida to their unit through the professional military exchange program February 17-26 on Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, Japan.



The professional military exchange program allows members of the JASDF, like Nishida, an opportunity to work with Marines, experience occupational procedures, culture and day-to-day life with the Corps.



Nishida worked as a basic flight planning dispatcher with Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, MCAS Futenma, Marine Corps Installations Pacific-Marine Corps Base Camp Butler, Japan. He was responsible for processing flight plans, distributing reports for flights and relaying information to pilots.



The (flight planning) tasks between JASDF and the Marine Corps are fundamentally different, said Nishida. In the JASDF, I keep track of incoming and outgoing aircraft and reformat flight plans from (MCAS) Futenma and Kadena (airbase) into Japanese (flight plans). With the Marine Corps, I enter flight plans, check flight conditions and have other responsibilities that are new to me.



Nishida has been fully integrated into life in the Marine Corps, according to Staff Sgt. Jorge M. Guinta, flight planning chief and staff non-commissioned officer in charge of base operations, H&HS, MCAS Futenma. He experienced physical training with Marines, ate at the messhall, lived in a barracks room, participated in field day formation and learned the basic responsibilities of a flight plan dispatcher.



Nishida received training the week prior (to his on-the-job experience) to learn and practice the responsibilities and procedures of the morning shift and night shift, said Guinta, a Cranston, RI. native. He adjusted to the new tasks very well, and retained the training he received to accurately complete his responsibilities.



After Nishidas exposure to the Marine Corps, the JASDF will return the favor by taking in a Marine in March to experience day-to-day routines of the JASDF.



Were one team, one fight and (the JASDF) are allies of ours, said Guinta. Were on the same team together, so just working together to build cohesion and bonding with them strengthens both of our services as a whole.



The professional military exchange program benefits JASDF and Marines by providing first-hand insight to the daily routines and responsibilities of each service, according to Nishida. The experience and knowledge gained through the program establishes better understanding and communication.



Communication on profound levels is key to better our friendship, said Nishida. Hand gestures do not replace words and words do not guarantee communication between two nations. True communications are built upon assimilation to cultures and languages of the other. This exchange program provides that opportunity.




NATO allies and partner nations gathered assets and personnel to present to distinguished visitors during Exercise Cold Response 16, March 1, 2016.



Distinguished Visitor Day provided high-ranking personnel from all 13 participating countries an overview of the scope, intent and capabilities achieved through integration of NATO allies and partners nations.

DV day included an exercise overview, tours of Norwegian naval vessels and a fly-over featuring a U.S. Air Force B-52 escorted by two Norwegian F-16 fighters. A static display of troops, vehicles and weapons representing participants provided a close-up view and subject matter experts to answer questions about capabilities and how they will be integrated during Cold Response.



The display provides each nation with the ability to demonstrate the interoperability between our nations gear and see the similarities and differences of how they operate on the battlefield together, said Capt. Matthew Heath, company commander of the U.S Armys Destined Company, 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade.



Sharing information among NATO allies and partners enables and reinforces collective defense capabilities.

I think whats most important is that we show we are reliable partners to all our NATO comrades, said Maj. Laurens Reinders, commanding officer of the Dutch Armys 43rd Brigade Reconnaissance Squadron. We have to work together to make a stronger bond.



More than 15,000 troops will work together, learn from each other and sustain and strengthen partnerships, operational capabilities, and coordination during the cold-weather training.



Anytime we do something outside the box, it strains some of our systems, said Heath. When we do an exercise like this, we become more efficient and become more comfortable with our allies.



The exercise will provide the countries time to identify challenges and overcome them by capitalizing on combined strengths and cooperation.



My desired end state of Cold Response is to better understand how to work with each other and continue to do that in the future, said Reinders.





More Media
Energy Foreign Ownership Translates into Higher Electric Bills

What exactly is a public utility? If you listen to the government officials in New York State, a foreign company is just dandy and will qualify from the Public Service Commission as a provider of electricity. While this may be old news, the continued adverse fallout from foreign ownership can no longer be flittered away. The latest approval of rate increases goes as an example of how the entire political favoritism system operates. The Buffalo N.Y. News reports, Youre likely to see higher electric bills soon.

That proposed rate increase, averaging slightly more than 2 percent annually over three years, would add $5.19 to the average bill of a residential customer using 600 kilowatt hours of electricity, boosting it to $85.75 from $80.56 today, said Clay Ellis, a NYSEG spokesman.

Remember the citizen reaction when, Iberdrola bought Energy East for $4.5 billion? If you forgot, the public rate payers put up a vigorous opposition that gained traction with the administrative judge at the public hearings. However, you can always count on the big nose of greedy politicians to place their thumb on the scales.

Chuckie Schumer escorted Iberdrola in the back door here in New York State when he lobbied for the Sale of Energy East (NYSEG & RG&E here in WNY) TO Iberdrola back in 2007

So explain why a sitting U.S. Senator has standing to compel state officials into approving a foreign corporation from an acquisition that the public was so vehemently against?

Once the Spanish company got in the door, more acquisitions occurred. Iberdrola Buys U.S. Power and Gas Distributor UIL.

Iberdrola said the deal would help implement its growth plans in the U.S. through 2016, seeking to increase the companys local footprint and a stronger focus on regulated businesses with stable cash flows.

Iberdrola U.S.A. also has the second-largest wind power generation portfolio in the U.S.

Here is the real rub and the hidden motivation for giving favorable treatment to a foreign company. The miserable failure of industrial wind electric generation is so well established that most politicians are now reluctant to even mention the pie in the sky benefits from this extremely expensive and unreliable method of generation.

Examine the argument by Mary Kay Barton in Wind Power Destruction in New York State: Clean Power Plan Problem, for a well thought out outline why wind power has been a total bust for the all the money spent on pushing it down the throats of beleaguered residents. Only the pockets of crooked officials are lined as Iberdrola runs away with cash while bleeding necessary maintenance dry.

Add to this litany of real world objections, the ruthless record documented in the article, Iberdrola competition fine manipulate the price of electricity.

The National Commission on Competition and Markets (CNMC) has imposed a fine of 25 million euros to Iberdrola Generacion by manipulating the price of electricity, which is considered a very serious behavior.

Specifically, Iberdrola sanction relates to the actions carried out by increasing the price on the c Hydraulic entrales de Duero, Tagus and Sil, between 30 November 2013 and 23 December 2013.

Article 60th) 54/119 15 of the Act determines the electricity sector as a very serious offense any tampering aimed to alter the price of electricity or measuring the quantities delivered.

Im shocked, SHOCKED  Iberdrola penalized for fixing the price of electricity? Tell me this could not happen.

Over a year ago the report in the Democrat and Chronicle by Steven Orr, Electricity costs soar indicates:

Residential customers served by Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. and New York State Electric and Gas Corp., both owned by Iberdrola SA, are not as bad off as others. Their average residential electric rates so far this month are 8 percent and 10 percent higher than January's, respectively. They've risen 15 percent and 16 percent since December, according to information on the companies' websites.

But customers of National Grid were warned several weeks ago that their electric costs could go up as much as 27 percent in the latest bills. The company reached a deal with New York state regulators that will allow it to spread those extra costs out over a number of months.

National Grid, the two Iberdrola companies and other investor-owned utilities in New York buy electricity and gas in the marketplace and pass it on to customers with no markup. The utilities make their money on delivery charges.

Now National Grid is a UK company and Iberdrola a Spanish outfit, it is a convenience for these foreign companies to just provide delivery services and let the cost of electricity be a separate charge. The grid is limited in its capacity. Companies from Spain and the UK have long experience with industrial wind generation. Both know well, without massive government subsidies, the industry would never exist. Wind turbines only run on electricity, when the breezes stop blowing.

The True costs of wind electricity, concludes:

We can only approximate the true cost of wind, and how much the reality differs from official EIA (and industry) claims. Wind resources have often been presented in a far more favorable light than they deserve. Looking at the costs presented here they are far higher than can be justified. It has been hoped that subsidies would make wind self-sustaining in short order, but wind appears no closer to economic viability today than years ago.

When a foreign company with vast wind experience buys companies within the United States, they know wind turbines are a loser. Hey, so what, they say. They make their money on distribution services, which is determined by adding charges on base price of the electric. This lack of concern for the actual cost of the wind generated power inevitably raises the cost of electricity to the end users. The system is structured to pass on these excessive costs to the consumer.

Welcome to the PUBLIC UTILITY culture brought to you by your corrupt elected officials and their obedient public service administration. At least if the electric user is to suffer under the hands of a greedy utility, cant New York State regulate a domestic company?

James Hall

Source: http://www.batr.org/corporatocracy/030216.html

Discuss or comment about this essay on the BATR Forum

http://www.batr.org

"Many seek to become a Syndicated Columnist, while the few strive to be a Vindicated Publisher"



 2016 Copyright BATR - All Rights Reserved



Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Fantasy Ceasefire in Syria

Ive explained many times. Syria is Obamas war. Theres nothing civil about it. Scoundrel media regurgitated state-sponsored propaganda falsely claims otherwise.



Endless war rages, US policymakers committed to replace its sovereign independence with US-controlled puppet governance - one of historys greatest crimes toward this end of no consequence.

Ceasefire buys time for US-supported terrorists to regroup, rearm and add new fighters to their ranks.



Sergey Lavrov warned about foreign-backed terrorists having chemical warfare agents. He discretely left unexplained how US special forces and CIA operatives have been training them in their use throughout years of conflict - saying only foreign specialists helped them master the production of these agents.



Perhaps the next shoe to drop is their more widespread use by US-supported terrorists, Assad wrongfully blamed like earlier, an added pretext for endless war for regime change.



Lavrov blasted Turkeys support for ISIS and other terrorist groups, saying as long as its border remains porous, Erdogan continues providing arms on the phony pretext of supplying humanitarian aid.



Turkish journalists reporting this were accused of espionage and treason. On February 26, the nations Constitutional Court (its highest legal body for constitutional review, serving also as its Supreme Court) ordered Cumhuriyets Can Dunbar and Erdem Gul released, lawlessly incarcerated since last November for doing their job - exposing Erdogans arms-running operation, supplying ISIS and other terrorists in Syria.



Both men are out of prison but not free, still accused of espionage and treason. Erdogan vowed to ignore the court order, saying he has no respect for it, intending to railroad them back behind bars - or maybe assassinate them to eliminate their voices altogether.



Lavrov minced no words, saying (i)nflicting a decisive defeat on the Islamic State (ISIS), Jabhat al-Nusra, and similar groups is an inviolable condition for (supporting) the rights of long-suffering people of Syria, Iraq, (the entire) Middle East, North Africa and elsewhere.



Negotiating with US and other countries backing them is a waste of time. Smashing them decisively is the only way to preserve Syrian sovereignty.

By Stephen Lendman

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

His new book as editor and contributor is titled Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

He lives in Chicago and can be reached in Chicago at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.



Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday through Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national topics. All programs are archived for easy listening.

 2016 Copyright Stephen Lendman - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Fast Track 2016 amazed Robert Scott and David Watson.

The annual trade show, organized by the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce, opened Tuesday at the former Sears department store building at the Village of Martinsville (formerly Liberty Fair Mall). It was the first time that Scott and Watson ever attended the show.

"I just never thought about coming, to be honest," Scott said. "I didnt know what it was all about."

Now that he is Martinsvilles emergency management coordinator, Scott had to attend to help out at the citys exhibit. Along with telling people about city services, he renewed acquaintances, got to know people who he had never met and learned about the 127 local businesses, organizations and other entities that participated.

"I didnt realize that Martinsville-Henry County had so much to offer the community," he said.

"People put a lot of effort in setting it (the trade show) up," said Watson, who runs a new local business, Gotcha Covered Linen and Party Rentals. "Its a lot bigger than I thought it would be."

Fast Track 2016 will be open to the public from 4-7 p.m. today. Admission is $2, or those attending can donate two nonperishable food items. All food collected will be donated to Grace Network for distribution to the needy.

Tuesday was VIP Night, open only to invited guests as a time intended for local business people to network.

Chamber President Amanda Witt estimated that about 3,500 people attended.

There is a lot to see and do at Fast Track. For example, visitors can pick up promotional freebies at many booths and enter contests for prizes, and animal lovers can make new friends.

Goats, rabbits and a sugar glider are on display at Infinity Acres Ranchs exhibit. The glider, a small Australian marsupial not much bigger than a chipmunk, attached itself quickly to Jessica Hales arm.

"Theyre adorable," Hale said.

Her husband, Derick, said she probably would like to have one as a pet.

Infinity Acres owner Laura Steere said baby sugar gliders likely will be available this spring.

Those attending VIP Night liked this years new location.

"Its a good setup in a good venue," said Paul Ashbrook, owner of Ashbrook Audiology. The wide aisles in the former retail space are "nice and easy for people to walk through," he said.

"Its good to see an old building repurposed for a good use," said Autumn Morris, the New College Institutes marketing and communications manager.

Monica Hatchett, coordinator of family and community engagement for the Henry County Public Schools, said the new location "feels much more open" than previous locations, including an old factory.

"The fact that its so accessible makes it nice," said Mervyn King, a retired doctor. "Theres no elevator. Its all on one floor."

A lack of nearby parking has been a problem at many trade shows in the past, but not this year. Ample parking is available at the shopping center, especially in the rear near the former Sears building and the Belk store.

Being able to park your vehicle nearby makes it safer for visitors as they leave the trade show, Hatchett added.

She and Tommy Hudgins, head of school at the private Carlisle School, recommend that everyone who lives in the area visit the trade show.

"Theres a lot of things to learn about the community" by coming to Fast Track, Hatchett said. She mentioned, for instance, that a lot of people do not realize that the county schools nutrition program not also serves meals to students, but also does catering for the public.

People who attended VIP Night realize that now, as the schools nutrition program served turkey meatballs as part of The Taste of Martinsville-Henry County, in which restaurants and caterers serve samples of their treats.

Hudgins has visited Fast Track for the past three years. He noted that other small communities where he has lived over the years did not have an event like the trade show.

"This event really is Martinsville-Henry County on display," he said. "I cant think of anything better to showcase the community."
Mystified Outer Banks tourists witnessed a bizarre act of nature Friday, Oct. 14, as fish began flinging themselves onto the beach at Ocracoke Island. Multiple videos shared on social media show the ocean appeared to boil with fish as they tumbled over each other in the surf. The so-called bluefish blitz concluded with thousands of dying fish piled on the sand, flopping up and down as ...
Democrat Hillary Clinton won Virginia big. Republican Donald Trump won Virginia bigger.

Pre-primary polls had augured victory for both, but turnout Tuesday spoke to the depth of their respective wins, spotlighting an enthusiasm among Republican voters that dwarfed that of Democrats and affixed swing-state credibility to Trump. This represents a stunning reversal from recent Virginia presidential primaries, when Republican participation plummeted and spoke to the party's narrow base. The Trump triumph also suggests the state retains its battleground status and will be hard-fought in November.

Republican participation edged past 1 million votes, besting the 985,000-vote turnout in the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama primary in Virginia in 2008. More than 775,000 votes were cast Tuesday in the Democratic primary.

Among the five remaining Republican candidates, Trump was pulling nearly 35 percent of the vote, thwarting Marco Rubio, at about 32 percent, and blunting the Florida senator's desperate push in a deep-purple state to emerge as the GOP's Establishment alternative following the implosion of Jeb Bush and the uneven performance of John Kasich.

Trump was strong in the Republican bulwarks of the rural west and south, where he reached out to religious and cultural conservatives by emphasizing, among other things, gun rights and reviving American manufacturing. But he also carried eastern Virginia cities, including Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, both of which have large numbers of military voters likely attracted by Trump's promise of improved health care for veterans. Hanover County, just north of Richmond, fell to Trump.

Rubio won vote-rich Fairfax County, outside of Washington, and the Richmond suburbs of Chesterfield and Henrico counties - all fast-growing jurisdictions with large numbers of affluent, well-educated voters and where Democrats have swept in recent years or have been increasingly competitive.

Trump's victory in Virginia may be viewed beyond its borders as evidence of the once-improbable: that he can appeal to voters in what is a must-win state for both parties. Plus, his strong finish is a repudiation of the Republican elective and business class, many of whose members preferred more conventional candidates. They must now decide whether to fall in with Trump as the likelihood of his nomination increases.

Trump won with only a smattering of support from Republican leaders. The few who publicly backed him, including former U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-5th, and Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors, were largely drawn by Trump's hard line against illegal immigration - a founding theme of his candidacy.

Rubio relied on the support of George Allen, the former governor and U.S. senator, as well as more moderate Republicans in the U.S. House delegation, Scott Rigell and Barbara Comstock, and party leaders in the House of Delegates, M. Kirkland Cox, likely the next House speaker, and GOP caucus chairman Tim Hugo.

In the countdown hours to the primary, Rigell, who is retiring, tore into Trump on Rubio's behalf in a blistering email depicting the real estate billionaire and former reality-show star as symbol of intolerance who would drive off such important emerging voters as Asians and Hispanics.

Clinton's victory, hastened by the votes of African-Americans and older women, was a dramatic contrast with 2008, when she was largely confined to the southwestern corner of Virginia. This year, against Bernie Sanders, who was strongest with young voters and committed liberals, Clinton amassed fairly uniform support across the state.

Her candidacy was the latest test of Gov. Terry McAuliffe's pulling power. A member of the Clinton privy council. McAuliffe is eager for a win of consequence, having been elected by plurality in 2013 and failing to restore a Democratic majority to the Virginia Senate last year. A Clinton nomination, while seemingly inevitable, is no substitute for McAuliffe's preferred prize: a third consecutive Democratic presidential victory in Virginia.

Obama snapped a four-decade Republican win streak in 2008 and repeated in 2012, in part, because of the early and enthusiastic support of Timothy Kaine, the governor-turned-senator. Obama even considered Kaine for the vice presidency before picking Joe Biden. But Kaine may yet be selected for vice president - this time, by Clinton.

Kaine, a Midwest-born, Spanish-speaking Roman Catholic who has emerged as a powerful voice in the Senate over how and when America goes to war, has been appearing in the early primary and caucus states for Clinton, giving her - and the Democratic grassroots - a chanced to size him up.
For Marxists elections provide a valuable way of ascertaining certain tendencies in society. It is true that they are not the only way of judging the mood of the masses  nor even the best barometer of the real state of the class struggle. At best they are a snapshot of a certain mood at a given time. But having made these necessary reservations and qualifications, one has to take these indicators seriously, as Marx and Lenin certainly did.

In the last few days we have witnessed at least three elections, all of which bear witness to highly significant processes that are now moving with great speed. These processes are not confined to one or two countries. If that were the case, they might be dismissed as mere accidents, events with no particular significance. But when the same  or very similar  processes repeat themselves in many countries, they can no longer be dismissed as accidents. They are the manifestations of the same phenomenon.

Iran

Let us start with a cursory examination of the results of the elections in Iran. We publish a more detailed analysis elsewhere. But here we can say that, something fundamental is changing.

Last Friday millions of Iranians voted to elect the 290-seat parliament as well as members of the Assembly of Experts, the 88-member assembly that appoints Iran's Supreme Leader. Turnout was more than 60 percent. Voting was extended three times on Friday as crowds reportedly flocked to polling stations. This in itself was a sign of political ferment. But the final result was little short of an earthquake.

As usual, the regime interfered blatantly in the selection of candidates, ruthlessly eliminating those perceived as being too liberal. Of 12,000 people who registered as candidates, only half were allowed to stand, including just 200 moderates. Yet despite all these measures, allies of President Hassan Rouhani have won a landslide victory in Tehran.

The pro-Rouhani List of Hope has taken every one of the 30 parliamentary seats in the capital. Gholamali Haddad-Adel, a leading figure of the most reactionary faction was pushed into 31st place. This represents, not a defeat but a humiliating rout for the conservatives. Lyse Doucet, the BBC News international correspondent, referred to it as this stunning election result.

As regular as clockwork, at every major turning point in Iranian politics Akbar, the figure of Hashemi Rafsanjani reappears to intrigue, balancing between the different factions with the skill of an experienced acrobat. This crafty opportunist, a former President, acts like a political weathercock, pointing in whatever direction the wind is blowing. His actions provide us with a fairly accurate idea as to the direction politics in Iran are moving.

Nowadays Rafsanjani is presenting himself in the guise of a moderate conservative. With one foot in the regime, he tests the water with the other one. The moderate faction, led by himself and and Rouhani amongst others, now has most votes for the Assembly of Experts, which is composed of mostly elder and senior clerics.

Lyse Doucet earnestly hopes that this result will make a difference in Iran's engagement with the wider world. She is faithfully expressing the wishes of the bankers and capitalists of the USA and Europe, whose mouths are already watering at the prospect of highly profitable contracts, trade and investment.

Irans dialogue with the West already began with negotiations on the nuclear deal. Obama was anxious to secure Irans help in the war against ISIS in Syria, where the combination of Iranian troops on the ground and Russian airpower has dramatically changed the balance of forces.

Rouhani said on Saturday: "The competition is over. It's time to open a new chapter in Iran's economic development based on domestic abilities and international opportunities. The people showed their power once again and gave more credibility and strength to their elected government."

But despite their sweeping victory in the capital, things are not yet so clear cut. The Reformists did less well in constituencies outside Teheran and the more backward rural areas where the mullahs still maintain their influence among the more backward and conservative peasants. And the Revolutionary Guards and their Supreme Leader continue to exercise a grip on the state.

There are limits to what the bourgeois reformers can achieve against a powerful and entrenched regime. Rouhani himself has his roots in the same regime and will only challenge it so far. Real change in Iran will only come as the result of a powerful revolutionary movement from below. The conditions for this are now being prepared.

The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is 76 and is known to be in poor health. His departure from the scene will be the signal for a ferocious struggle for power, splits in the regime and a sharp political crisis. But in reality any accident can provoke a new social upheaval. The slow pace of reform, which will meet with the stubborn resistance of the mullahs at every step, will sooner or later coalesce with the discontent of the masses at the slow pace of improvement in living standards and employment.

With sanctions lifted and Western investors beginning to return to Iran, the masses are hoping for an improvement in daily life. But these hopes will be far greater than what the Iranian bourgeoisie can fulfil. Reformers and Moderates are making promises they cannot keep. They say that greater foreign investment will create jobs for young people. But when the time comes for these promissory notes to be cashed, they will be exposed as fraudulent.

Having arrived at a compromise with Washington, the regime will no longer be able to blame the Americans and foreign sanctions for all the problems of the Iranian people. After an inevitable period of wait-and-see, the stage will be set for new explosions that will transform the whole region.

Ireland

The Irish general election was yet another political earthquake. It resembles in many ways the referendum and electoral overturn in Scotland and the December elections in Spain. The old established parties suffered a humiliating defeat that has transformed the Irish political landscape, probably forever.

The public dissatisfaction with traditional politicians finds its reflection in the growth of support for anti-austerity and independent candidates. The burning desire for change was already shown on the referendum on equal marriage that dealt a shattering blow to the dictatorship of the Roman Catholic Church over the legal and spiritual life of the Irish nation. That was another earthquake. The tremors are now spreading rapidly to the arena of politics and are shaking the political establishment to its foundations.

The coalition government of Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party, headed by Enda Kenny, has carried out a programme of deep cuts, slavishly obeying the dictates of Brussels and Berlin. This is supposed to have been a great success, and so it was  for the bankers and capitalists and the EU bureaucrats who represent their interests. The Republic of Ireland has had the fastest growing economy in the eurozone for the last two years. But for the great majority of Irish working people, it was an unmitigated disaster.

The results of these elections were a massive vote of no confidence in the government and its austerity policies. Fine Gael suffered defeat. Its deputy leader, and children and youth affairs minister, James Reilly lost his seat in Dublin Fingal. The partys former justice minister Alan Shatter also lost his seat.

The other bourgeois party, Fianna Fail, recovered partially from the collapse at the 2011 election, when people blamed them for the Republic of Ireland's economic crisis. Then many people looked hopefully to Labour for an alternative. But these hopes were cruelly dashed when the Labour leaders jumped with indecent haste into bed with Fine Gael. Still, the result of Fianna Fail was its second worst ever.

The most devastating defeat was suffered by the Irish Labour Party, which suffered a well-deserved kick in the teeth as a result of its participation in the coalition government. Its vote collapse from nearly 20% down to 6.6%.

Fine Gael had hoped to continue with the current coalition but the Labour Party's vote collapsed. Alex White, the Labour Party's communications minister lost his seat, while Alan Kelly, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, only avoided losing his by the skin of his teeth.

At a count centre in Dublin, Labour campaigners looked shell-shocked. But it was hardly a surprise. The Labour leaders have been punished by the people for years of painful austerity. As in other countries, the right wing Labour leaders showed themselves eager to take on themselves full responsibility for managing the crisis of capitalism. Now we see the consequences of this.

The leaders of Fine Gael now find themselves in an awkward position. The partys vote has collapsed (from 36 to 25%) yet it is still the biggest party. That leaves its leader, Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Enda Kenny, with the responsibility of trying to form a government but without the power to do so. As a result the Republic of Ireland now has no government. This follows very similar pattern to that we saw in Spain after the December general election.

The Irish ruling class requires a stable government in order to continue with its policy of cuts and austerity. From its point of view the best chance for this would involve Fianna Fail and Fine Gael working together. The problem is that this scenario would ultimately lead to the shattering of both parties. And since the Irish bourgeoisie has always based itself on these two parties, both of which stand firmly for capitalism, the ground is being prepared for a radical re-alignment of Irish politics.

For almost a century, since the end of the country's bitter civil war, two bourgeois parties, Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, have dominated Irish politics. In 1982 they jointly held 84% of the vote. But that epoch is now drawing to a close. The old parties are increasingly seen as part of the country's establishment, while Labour has disgraced itself by the class collaboration policies of its leaders. People can see no real difference between the existing parties, and they are not mistaken, for barring the usual clique rivalries, there is none.

Fianna Fail received slightly less votes than Fine Gael. But its leaders would consider the idea of serving as a junior partner of that party far from appetising, especially after what happened to the Labour Party. Moreover, there is the little problem of who takes what ministry (that is to say who gets his or her snout into the juicier parts of the pig trough). For any negotiation on such an important question, being in second place is a severe disadvantage.

Moreover, an alliance between those parties would make Sinn Fein the main opposition party. That is another reason why both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail would think twice or three times about the prospect of a so-called "grand coalition". The leaders of these parties will therefore not be in any hurry to join a coalition.

The complete bankruptcy of the Irish Labour leaders is shown by the comments of Labour Party deputy leader Alan Kelly, who said Fianna Fail and Fine Gael should "cop themselves on now" and form a government: "All of this pretending that there are massive issues between them is rubbish. They need to come together, work together and put a government in place for the good of the people."

In what way two capitalist parties can ever represent the good of the people" is a mystery the solution to which can only be known to Mr. Kelly. As a result of the sell-out of of the Irish Labour Party it is undoubtedly the case that Sinn Fein has carved out a role for itself on the left of Irish politics. It did well in these elections, as did independents and smaller parties on the left.

Sinn Feins president, Gerry Adams has declared that his party would "not prop up either a Fine Gael or a Fianna Fail government". Instead, he insisted "Sinn Fein wants to lead the next government". That remains to be seen, but it is clear that the party has just increased its vote by four percentage points and will return with a greatly strengthened Dail (Irish parliament) team. In opposition its support will grow, especially if Fine Gael and Fianna Fail finally reach some kind of deal.

Although a grand coalition cannot be ruled out, the most likely outcome of the Irish situation is a return to the polls. But what would that solve? The question remains: can a coalition be formed? Over two months after the December election in Spain, no government has yet been formed. If no government is formed, new elections will have to be called. But that will certainly mean a growth in the vote for Podemos. One thing is sure: the next Irish parliament will be a divided one, with a definite split between left and right. This is a faithful reflection of the growing polarization between the classes and further social and political upheaval.

Super Tuesday

On the other side of the Atlantic also things are moving fast in the USA. Only one year ago, hardly anybody knew the name of Bernie Sanders, while there was nobody who did not know Hillary Clinton. Then she enjoyed a 52-point lead over Sanders, with 55 percent of support to his 3 percent. In Fox News' last poll, conducted shortly before Iowa, she still led by 12. But the gap was narrowing. Later Fox News announced that Sanders had a 3-point lead.

On February 18 The Washington Post wrote: This poll is pretty remarkable in that every demographic has shifted in Sanders's favor, with him increasing his support and Clinton losing hers. In every single one. Where Clinton used to lead big, now the two are often tied. Where they were basically tied, Sanders has surged forward.

Subsequently, Sanders suffered a setback in South Carolina. That was expected. Then o n March 1 (Super Tuesday) the fate of a bout 880 Democratic delegates was decided, the largest number on any single day during the primary. In the end Clinton won in seven of the 11 states holding Democratic events. Sanders won Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota and his home state of Vermont, and lost Massachusetts by a very slim margin.

The media immediately concluded that the race for the nomination was all over. But that is a premature deduction. Bernie Sanders said he intends to fight to the Democratic convention in July. A series of setbacks in the Primaries could make it nearly impossible for Sanders to win the nomination. But it is still not entirely ruled out. Southern states, where the Clintons were sure to win, have already voted. The outcome in other big states, including California and New York State, is still far from clear.

It is true that Sanders faces an implacable obstacle in the form of the Democrat Party machine. But many things can happen before the Democratic convention in July. It is also true that the media exercises a big influence. But the Sanders campaign has struck a chord that will resonate among many people and it is spread by Internet and an army of volunteers who have raised huge amounts of money to keep his campaign moving on.

Most important of all is a deep-seated desire for change. Clinton represents the status quo, while Sanders offers a change. Clinton is the creature of Wall Street, while Sanders attacks Wall Street and Big Business. Every time he attacks Wall Street and big business and calls for a $15 minimum wage, his support grows. This has been noticed by the serious representatives of the ruling class. The Financial Times comments: All the talk is of students reeling under unpayable debts and of parents having to work at two or three low-paid jobs to make ends meet, When Sanders speaks of political revolution it strikes a note that resonates everywhere, especially amongst the youth and the low-paid.

To the degree that Sanders message becomes well known, his support will grow, while that of Hillary Clinton cannot be taken for granted. Even though South Carolina was a difficult state for Sanders to win, he struck a chord with younger people, including many young African-Americans. Once again he addressed big meetings, drawing enthusiastic applause for his radical-sounding policies. Many people hate Wall Street and warm to Sanders attacks on inequality.

This is why he keeps attracting large crowds. In Texas 10,000 people turned out in Austin to hear him, and a further 8,000 in Dallas. People do not want the status quo. In a distorted, reactionary way, that is also reflected in the person of Trump. That explains the seeming paradox that many of Trumps supporters are also very open to Sanders message. In Trumps celebration rally in New Hampshire, while there were angry shouts and cat-calls when Clinton appeared on the giant TV screen, when Sanders appeared there was a respectful silence.

There are many ways in which the Democratic Party establishment can block him. But the real significance of this challenge cannot be expressed in the arithmetic of delegates. It is something that goes far beyond the presidential nomination. Sanders says: "What this campaign is about -- is not just electing a president, it's about transforming America ..." And whatever the final outcome of this contest, politics in the USA will never be the same again.

Molecular process

It was Trotsky, that great revolutionary dialectician, who coined the phrase the molecular process of socialist revolution. Long before it erupts to the surface as an explosive phenomenon, revolution matures slowly and silently beneath the surface. It is strikingly similar to the processes that are taking place all the time in a sea of molten rock beneath the earths crust. Unimaginable temperatures and pressures are building up and seeking an outlet.

These subterranean forces can be held in check for a long time by the layer of solid rock that has been left over from past explosions that have been long forgotten. But sooner or later these forces will find a weak spot in the crust, a fault line, and explode in the most violent cataclysms known to humankind. In society such events are known as revolutions.

However, in the same way that men and women cannot see the build-up of explosive forces that are accumulating under their feet, so they have only a very dim awareness of the slow of anger that has been gradually accumulation in the entrails of society. The inhabitants of Naples and San Francisco go about their daily business as they always have done, unconcerned about the dangers of living on the edge of catastrophe of which they have been told many times but which seems to be a very remote prospect.

The international parallels are strikingly obvious, as left wing broadcaster Paul Mason has pointed out: What does it mean? he asks.  Quite simply that the radical progressive sentiment thats swept Greece, Spain, Scotland and the British Labour movement has now hit America. (My emphasis)

It is true that these processes do not take place everywhere at the same time, with the same speed or with the same intensity. Different conditions in different countries will shape the consciousness of the masses, which will manifest itself in different ways. But it is the task of science to eliminate all accidental, secondary features and look beyond the superficial differences to lay bare the general laws that lie beneath the surface.

Everywhere people are beginning to draw the same conclusions. From Teheran to Vermont, from Athens to Madrid, from Dublin to Lisbon, from Glasgow to London the accumulated anger of the masses is seeking a political expression. How, when and where they find it will be different in each case. But one thing is absolutely certain: at a given moment it will force its way to the surface and sweep everything before it.

Despite many differences, we are entitled to compare these three elections, taking place in three continents and draw the conclusion: the tectonic plates are moving, not only beneath the earths surface but in the depths of society. Sooner or later, explosions will follow.

London, 2nd March 2016
zootopia.jpeg

A scene from the animated film "Zootopia."

(Walt Disney Studios)

FAMILY FOCUS

"Hail Caesar" (PG)

"Kung Fu Panda 3" (PG)

"Zootopia" (PG)

THE 5TH WAVE - TWO STARS - (PG-13) Based on Rick Yancey's 2013 novel, "The 5th Wave" stars Chloe Grace Moretz as a high school student whose world is upended after aliens invade and decimate society. (112 min.)



45 YEARS - FOUR STARS - (R) A bit of news arrives days prior to the 45th wedding celebration of Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay), and drives a wedge between them. Marriage can be precarious, an emotional balancing act requiring significant concentration, and Rampling and Courtenay show how four-and-a-half decades of tandem functionality can be upended by doubt, shame, a false sense of certainty and an inability to determine whether a relationship can withstand truth, or the withholding of truth out of love. (95 min.)

THE BOY AND THE BEAST - THREE STARS - (PG-13) The animated story of Kyuta, a young orphan living on the streets of Shibuya, who stumbles into a fantastic world of beasts. (119 min.)

BROOKLYN - FOUR STARS - (PG-13) Soaring, swooning and gently nostalgic, "Brooklyn" takes melodrama to a new level of reassuring simplicity and emotional transparency. The exquisite adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel about a young Irish woman immigrating to the United States in the early 1950s dispenses with trendy flourishes and sniffy commentary to deliver the kind of movie that Hollywood rarely makes anymore: a sincere, unabashedly tender coming-of-age tale that, for all its deep feeling and wrenching twists and turns, never gives in to sentimentality or maudlin theatrics. (111 min.)

THE CHOICE - TWO STARS - (PG-13) Nicholas Sparks' novels wouldn't continue to be best-sellers and be adapted into movies if some audiences didn't like their romances with a hearty helping of cheese. The 11th big-screen adaptation of one of his books, "The Choice," is like fondue. The story is about Travis (Benjamin Walker), a Southern charmer who lives on the North Carolina coast with his dog and his boat and his easy-breezy lifestyle. He never worried about having a girlfriend until he meets Gabby (Teresa Palmer), a medical student who moves in next door. He's transfixed, even though she's irritated by his loud music and carefree attitude -- and tells him so. (108 min.)

DEADPOOL - ONE AND A HALF STARS - (R) Nothing is sacred to either "Deadpool" or this character (played with "I'm so naughty" abandon by Ryan Reynolds), which pokes fun at superhero movie culture, Hollywood itself, Reynolds, director Tim Miller, love and human decency -- and that's just in the opening credits. On the page, it sounds like a lot of fun, and it starts out strong with a cheeky, self-awareness, but that wears thin very quickly. (108 min.)

EDDIE THE EAGLE - THREE STARS - (PG-13) Based on the rousing real-life story of Eddie Edwards, who proved all the naysayers wrong to become an Olympic competitor, representing Great Britain in the 1988 Winter Olympics as a ski jumper. The movie traces his improbable journey, against the wishes of his working-class father and England's stuffy Olympic committee, which thwarts his every attempt to qualify for their team. (105 min.)

THE FINEST HOURS - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (PG-13) In a freezing 50 mph blizzard in 1952, two oil tankers broke up off the coast of Massachusetts. All that stood between dozens of sailors and wintry death were a couple of Coast Guard rescue boat. "The Finest Hours" is the story of one of those tankers, the Pendleton, and the Coast Guard boat - a wooden 36-footer, with a lost compass and a crew of four - that came for it. (129 min.)

GODS OF EGYPT - ONE STAR - (PG-13) "Gods of Egypt" is noisy to the eye and ear, an utter mess of story and aesthetic, no subtext and all hypertext, and is bad in a most memorable way. It also features transformers of a sort - Egyptian deities that change from human form to robotic animal-men (127 min.)

HAIL CAESAR - THREE STARS - (PG) A studio executive must find the leading man of his latest film after the star has been kidnapped from the set by a group of communist screenwriters who call themselves "The Future." (106 min.)

JOY - THREE AND A HALF STARS - (PG-13) Jennifer Lawrence as young woman who founds a business dynasty in this offering from director David O. Russell's. Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper co-star (120 min.)

KUNG FU PANDA 3 - THREE STARS - (PG) The "Kung Fu Panda" series has been smarter than many animated films of its ilk. One of the franchise's visual motifs through three movies now is the yin and yang, and it's apt, considering how it balances ideas about character, individuality and growth with cute animals, slapstick and dumpling jokes (95 min.)

LONDON HAS FALLEN - TWO STARS - (R) A blood-soaked action sequel about a resourceful Secret Service agent who must save the president of the United States from terrorists when, while attending a foreign funeral, he walks right into an elaborate trap.(99 min.)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES - TWO STARS - (PG-13) The novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," a mash-up of Jane Austen and the living dead genre, was a runaway best-seller when it was published in April 2009 This long-delayed movie adaptation, whichwent through numerous script and cast changes, now resembles something of a reanimated corpse itself. The film is lumbering, lifeless and charmless. (108 min.)

THE REVENANT - THREE AND A HALF STARS - (R) Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's frontier survival saga "The Revenant," filmed in the Canadian Rockies, seeks to join the ranks of Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" and Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now": movies that take some of their primal madness from their raw, remote natural landscapes. The result is some of the most ravishing filmmaking of the year, or any year. (156 min.)

RIDE ALONG 2 - TWO AND A HALF STARS (PG-13) With the same brand of silliness and a bit more creativity than the original, "Ride Along 2"doesn't pretend to be anything more than what it is: a sequel designed to offer a second helping of exactly what worked the first time around. (101 min.)

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS - THREE STARS - (PG-13) "The Force Awakens" is a movie made by someone who loves "Star Wars" deeply. Someone who can see more clearly than even its creator what made it so special to so many people. Director J.J. Abrams has taken everything that we adore about that first film, delicately mixed up a few elements, and churned out a reverent homage that's a heck of a lot of fun to watch. (135 min.)

TRIPLE 9 - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (R) This tale of gangsters and crooked cops in Atlanta has got a murderer's row of acting talent -- Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, and Woody Harrelson among them -- an alluringly dark premise, and bombastic bursts of greatness. But ultimately, director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition," ''The Road") fails to meld the storytelling with the film's ambitious scope, the way Michael Mann so proficiently did 21 years ago with his modern classic "Heat." (115 min.)

WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (PG-13) Tina Fey plays real-life journalist Kim Barker in a big screen adaptation of Barker's memoir "The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan," which details her years as a reporter in those countries in 2002. (111 min.)

THE WITCH - TWO AND A HALF STARS - (R) An effective, atmospheric horror story from writer-director Robert Eggers'set in 1630s Puritan New England. (92 min.)

ZOOTOPIA - FOUR STARS - (PG)

Disney's animated cop buddy movie set in the metropolis of Zootopia. Fung gags mixed with social commentary and an underlying message of tolerance. (100 min.)
Karen Allen

Karen Allen

(AP file photo)

Actress Karen Allen ("Raiders of the Lost Ark." "Scrooged") is looking to cast local actors for a film she will directing in the Berkshires.

The production is looking to cast an 11- to 12-year old boy for a leading role, as well as several male adult roles, for a short film based on Carson McCullers' short story, "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud."

Already cast in the film are Jeff DeMunn ("The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile") and James McMenamin ("Orange is the New Black").

"A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud" marks Allen's film directorial debut and is based on one of her favorite short stories.

"I came across this story when I was in my early 20's. As a young actor I was drawn to Carson McCullers as a playwright and novelist at first, and then began to read everything she'd written that I could get my hands on," the Monterey resident said in a statement. "'A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud' always loomed large for me among her many short stories. It is a quiet, subtle, mysterious story. It sneaks up on you and has stayed indelibly etched in my imagination all these years."

She added, "I intend to stay very close and true to the story Carson McCullers wrote and to illuminate in the film the characters she has so beautifully drawn in the pages of this story. And the Berkshires is the perfect place to make this happen."

The 64-year-old actress is owner of Karen Allen Fiber Arts in Great Barrington and teaches acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock. She has appeared on stage in productions for the Berkshire Theater Group and Williamstown Theater Festival

The open casting call for "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" will be held on Friday, March 11, and Saturday, March 12, with callbacks on Sunday, March 13.

All auditions will take place at Berkshire Theater Group's Unicorn Theater at 6 East St. in Stockbridge.

Producers stress that appointments are necessary to audition.

To schedule an audition, please email a picture (adult actors should also include a resume if you have one) to Diane

Pearlman at diane.pearlman@gmail.com or call (413) 528-4223.

Those interested in auditioning are urged to read the story prior to the

casting session.

It is available online at atreearockacloudthefilm.com/about.html
MCAS pencil.JPG

The state of Massachusetts is launching its MCAS 2.0 version of standardized testing.

(Don Treeger / The Republican file)

By ROBERT BARDWELL

Special to The Republican

It's March, and that means it's time for the annual dose of standardized testing that our elementary and secondary students will take as part of the yearly accountability testing requirement.

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) was mandated as part of the state Education Reform Act of 1993. The first version of the tests were given in 2008, and, since 2003, passing high-school MCAS tests have been required to earn a high school diploma (in addition to meeting local requirements).

In 2015, the Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test was made available, and about 54 percent of Massachusetts school districts opted to begin that assessment system in grades 3 through 8. In November, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted in favor of a MCAS 2.0 which supposedly will take the best of both tests (the rigor and content of the MCAS combined with the technology integration and higher level questioning of the PARCC).

Elementary students will see the first pilots of MCAS 2.0 in 2017, while high school students will continue to take the current MCAS tests until at least 2019 if not longer.

Regular readers of this column will recall there have been many months devoted to the topic of standardized testing . The question now is just how the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, the brand-new law that President Barack Obama signed in December to replace the No Child Left Behind Act which had regulated K-12 education since enacted in 2002, will change annual testing requirements if at all.

One of the key differences between the two laws has to do with testing. Both require annual testing (every child from third- to eighth-grade in math and English language arts each year and once in high school and science three times). No Child Left Behind went further to punish schools that failed to meet yearly improvement goals set forth by the state. Many felt that such a negative focus on testing forced teachers to "teach to the test," narrow the curriculum and eliminate creativity and subjects not tested.

Schools will still have to test at least 95 percent of their students, but states will now determine what happens if schools do not meet the participation requirement or benchmark goals. Automatic failure will no longer be the rule.

Don't expect MCAS 2.0 or PARCC to change overnight. Even though Every Student Succeeds has been signed into law, some aspects of the new law will be implemented over time as states and districts figure out exactly how they are going to proceed.

Testing is one such piece. Testing changes are expected to be in place for the 2017-2018 school year. This also coincides with the expected release of MCAS 2.0 here in Massachusetts.

One thing if for certain: there will be fewer tests and less testing time moving forward. It is estimated that the average student takes eight standardized tests annually in kindergarten through 12th grade. The hope is that there will be fewer, but higher quality tests which will give teachers more time in their classes teaching their content rather than focused on testing.

Remember that not all accountability measures are bad. While it is nice to give teachers flexibility in the curriculum and the ability to teach what they want, there is a possible danger in that some teachers will not stick to the prescribed curriculum.

We can certainly debate whether a curriculum such as the Common Core State Standards or the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks are valid and appropriate, but currently they are the law. Accountability testing (such as PARCC or MCAS) while dreaded by most, does hold educators responsible to ensure that all students have access to the same curriculum regardless if they are from Longmeadow or Lowell. There are far too many instances where, depending upon the ZIP code in which you live, determines the curriculum content and rigor that a student receives.

A great deal remains to be seen as how this will all play out, especially in Massachusetts as it begins to launch the MCAS 2.0. It might just help our students and educators to know that changes are in the air and that there hopefully will be fewer but better tests in the days and years ahead.

Robert Bardwell is school counselor and director of guidance and student support services at Monson High School. You can learn more about him and his work online at bobbardwell.com.
BOSTON - A dispensary offering marijuana for recreational or medical use cannot be sited within a half-mile of an existing dispensary in Boston under a buffer zone proposal approved by the City Council on Wednesday.

The effort to curtail dispensaries now heads to the desk of Mayor Marty Walsh, whose administration had previously expressed support for a one-mile buffer zone. A spokeswoman told MassLive.com they are reviewing the half-mile proposal.

Municipalities are allowed to set their own buffer zones for medical marijuana dispensaries, a set-up approved by Massachusetts voters in 2012. Under a program administered by the state Department of Public Health, just six dispensaries have opened since then in Brookline, Salem, Ayer, Northampton, Brockton, and Lowell.

A ballot initiative legalizing marijuana for recreational use is on track for the statewide ballot in November, and it includes a provision allowing medical marijuana dispensaries to switch over to recreational use.

A medical marijuana dispensary, operated by Patriot Care, is slated to open at 21 Milk Street in downtown Boston later this year.

The City Council voted 10-3 on Wednesday to approve the half-mile buffer zone, drawing dismay from medical marijuana advocates who warned that recreational pot shops could crowd out medical marijuana dispensaries.

City Councilor At-Large Michael Flaherty, a proponent of the measure, said he wants dispensaries "evenly and fairly distributed" in the city instead of clustering in one area.

"What I don't want to have the coffee shop, the bistro, the dry cleaners -- I don't want all of those to be converted to pot shops," Flaherty said.

But other councilors urged their colleagues to slow down, noting the marijuana legalization effort, known as the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, has yet to make it to the ballot.

"I think we have time," said Councilor Mark Ciommo, who represents Boston's Allston and Brighton neighborhoods. "I think we can still lead by waiting for the actual ballot initiative to pass to know what the parameters are. "

Ciommo, District City Councilor Andrea Campbell and City Councilor At-Large Ayanna Pressley voted against the half-mile buffer zone.

Nichole Snow, executive director of the Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance, said city officials should not be lumping in medical marijuana facilities with recreational marijuana facilities.

If they are treated the same by the city, that could lead to recreational facilities bumping out medical facilities, which serve patients rather than recreational users, Snow said after the vote. The two types of facilities serve different populations, Snow added.

"I don't think the buffer zone is the answer," she said.
SPRINGFIELD  A former Western Massachusetts resident has been sentenced to prison for fleecing friends and associates in a $600,000 scheme that turned out to be 100 percent bogus, according to federal authorities.



U.S. District Judge Mark G. Mastroianni sentenced 73-year-old Jeffrey Eldred Gallagher, formerly of Agawam and currently of Bradenton Beach, Florida, to three years in prison for an illegal investment scheme he ran from from around 2008 to 2012.

In December 2015, Gallagher pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, two counts of tax evasion, and three counts of engaging in a monetary transaction. His sentencing was put off until February.

The sentence handed down Tuesday by Mastroianni in U.S. District Court in Springfield was reminiscent of Gallagher's 1989 conviction on fraud charges for illegal and unauthorized options trading as a stockbroker. For that federal crime, Gallagher lost his stockbroker's license and was sentenced to 15 months in prison for defrauding clients and a former employer.



In Gallagher's latest scheme, he persuaded friends and associates to pay him money to invest on their behalf, making promises that their investments would yield returns of 10 to 15 percent, according to prosecutors. In classic Ponzi scheme fashion, Gallagher commingled investor funds with his own personal money, paying some investors with funds given to him by other investors.

When investors asked Gallagher for the return of their investments, he provided numerous phony excuses about why he couldn't immediately repay them  including claiming that his mother had died. In reality, though, Gallagher's mother is still alive, according to prosecutors. In a similar effort to stall for time, authorities said, Gallagher wrote investors more than 40 bad checks totaling almost $1.8 million.

All told, nearly two dozen investors lost a total of $617,475.

Gallagher also used nearly $250,000 of investors' money for personal benefit in 2009 and 2010, failing to report any of this income on his federal income tax returns for those years, prosecutors said.



Mastroianni characterized Gallagher's actions as "very serious" crimes that involved the "betrayal of friendships and a breach of trust among friends."



The case was prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz's office and investigated by the Boston offices of the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service.
crowd of tibetans.jpg

Tibetan-American families gathered at Northampton City Hall in this file photo. Amherst is marking March 10 as Tibet Day.

(Republican file)

AMHERST - The Select Board at the request of three from the Tibetan community has issued a proclamation naming March 10 as Tibet day.

Also the town will raise the Tibetan Flag and fly it from March 10 to March 17 to "help cultivate awareness for all citizens of Amherst," according to the proclamation.

March 10 marks the 57th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising against the occupation of their country and the day also honors the more than one million Tibetans who have died in their struggle for the independence of Tibet, according to the proclamation.

"We, the Select Board of the Town of Amherst... recognize the local Tibetan community's plea for justice" on this day and the board will continue to proclaim each March 10, as Tibet Day.

Temporary Town Manager Peter I. Hechenbleikner said the board last issued such a Tibet Day proclamation in 2012.

According to the letter requesting the proclamation, "the situation in occupied Tibet has reached a breaking point."

Since February of 2009, 143 Tibetans "have lit themselves on fire to protest China's continued oppressive and counter-productive policies in Tibet involving extra-judicial killings, torture and imprisonment and crackdowns on even mild expressions of religious identiy and culture."

In Northampton, members of the community will fast in solidarity with those who have given up their lives for the cause of freedom, according to the proclamation.

UMass Students For a Free Tibet will hold a vigil outside the Student Union from 2 to 3 p.m. March 10 to draw attention to the deteriorating situation in Tibet as well.
Native Americans recognized on Columbus Day

In this file photo, a flyer on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque calls for students to join a protest against Columbus Day. But there's a twist that signals a growing trend with the celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day in at least nine U.S. cities last year. Amherst Town Meeting in May will be asked to adopt the day as well.

(AP file/Russell Contreras)

AMHERST - A group of residents here is hoping Town Meeting will adopt an Indigenous People's Day resolution so the town will celebrate Native Americans here instead of Christopher Columbus.

The meeting is being asked to go on record to state that the second Monday of October henceforth be commemorated as Indigenous Peoples' Day in Amherst, "in recognition of the indigenous people of America's position as native to these lands, and the suffering they faced following European consequent of their lands."

Voters submitted the petition in time for the Monday filing deadline. It was one of 12 petitions submitted.

The resolution states that Columbus' first voyage to "the Americas also initiated the transatlantic slave trade, journal entries from Columbus show his desire to enslave the native population of the Caribbean, and be imprisoned and transported many people of differing races and ethnicities to this end."

The resolution further states that his second voyage and his "governship of the Caribbean instituted systemic policies of slavery and extermination of native populations. "

According to the resolution the meeting recommends that the day "be observed with the appropriate exercise in the schools and otherwise, to the end that the culture history and diversity of Native Americas be celebrated and perpetuated."

The Washington Post that at least nine cities celebrated Indigenous People's Day instead of Columbus last October.

Schools in Bridgeport, Connecticut also stopped honoring Columbus last year as well. Smith College Campus School students as the Northampton Council last year to make a change as well but it was not acted on.

On Tuesday, Fox 13 in Salt Lake City reported that the Utah State Senate defeated a bill that would have renamed Columbus Day as "Indigenous People's Day."

Town Meeting begins May 2 but it's unclear when this petition article will be considered as the warrant has not yet been set.
SPRINGFIELD  A Mass of Christian Burial will be held for Ashley Marie Guindon, the Virginia police officer killed in the line of duty, at Sacred Heart Church in Springfield on Monday at 11 a.m.

Guindon, a 28-year-old city native who lived in Agawam before her family moved to New Hampshire, was fatally shot while responding to a domestic disturbance call in Woodbridge, Virginia, on Feb. 27  one day after she was sworn in as a Prince William County police officer.

She and two other officers were shot by 32-year-old Ronald Hamilton, an Army staff sergeant who also killed his wife, police said. Hamilton is facing murder and other charges in connection with the shootings.

He and his wife, 29-year-old Crystal Hamilton, had been arguing all day Saturday, but things escalated after she called 911, police said. Hamilton first fatally shot his wife, then fired on Guindon and her fellow officers, 31-year-old Jesse Hempen and 33-year-old David McKeown. Both men survived the shooting with serious injuries, police said.

Guindon began working as an intern in the Prince William County Police Department's Special Victims Unit in 2011. She graduated with honors from the police academy in June 2015. After taking a short leave of absence, she returned to the department and was sworn in as an officer on Feb. 26. The next night, Guindon was killed on her first tour of duty.

After Monday's funeral Mass at Sacred Heart, Guindon will be buried with police honors at Saint Thomas the Apostle Cemetery, 420 Kings Highway, in West Springfield. She will be buried next to her father, David Guindon, a war veteran who died in 2004.

Guindon was the only child of David and Sharon Nowak Guindon. Ashley's uncle, Tom Guindon, is a detective with the West Springfield Police Department.

Click HERE to view the full obituary.
Google just shut down its Compare tool that let you get price quotes about car insurance or mortgages. But fear not  there are still a bunch of other random, often hidden, but really useful Google products that you probably didnt know about that you can still enjoy.

With more than 60,000 employees, Google has the resources to build nifty services to supplement its search engine and other big businesses. From secret timers to font libraries, here are some of the other cool, lesser-known things that Google has on tap:

Jillian DOnfro

Full Story: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-products-you-didnt-know-existed-2016-2?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds
Will Hammerquist was getting tired of being the guy who couldnt hold his peace during weddings at the historic Polebridge Mercantile http://polebridgemerc.com/ .

"Theyd be about to say the vows, and Id have to yell Wait  let me turn off the generator, " Hammerquist said with a laugh. "It would be making all this noise and stink when people were trying to have a beautiful ceremony."

ROB CHANEY [email protected]

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/polebridge-gets-day-in-the-sun-with-new-solar-electricity/article_690f44a3-e2b7-545b-8c93-711e0ef1a5b1.html
Main Street Montana http://mainstreetmontanaproject.com/ has been the most encouraging experience that I have been part of in government. The first year, we were in a process of gathering information. We heard from every single county by surveying. We went to about eight different listening sessions across the state and we said, "Okay whats working, whats not working?" That was super helpful, and then phase two was going, "All right, weve got to take a deeper dive, and weve got to identify industries and then let these people come to the table." It truly is a private-sector-driven situation.

Were in phase three of the Main Street Montana Project and that phase, to me, has been the most exciting because it is 13 key industry networksthe 13 different industries across the state that are driving our economyand the platform has been to bring these private business owners and CEOs together and say, "Okay what is it that you need to improve or grow or enhance your industry?" Weve found lots of commonalities between the industries. Weve found there are areas for government to get out of the way. Weve found that we can help prop up by just gathering the stakeholders.

Traci Rosenbaum, [email protected]

Full Story: http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/03/01/oleary-excited-main-street-montana-project/81156072/

***

State of Montana Consolidated Plan  A Plan to Help Meet the Needs of Montanas Communities and Residents  Webinar on 3/25 http://www.matr.net/article-70530.html
There is one vacancy in the following location: Bozeman, MT.

USDAs Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) helps Americas farmers and ranchers conserve the Nations soil, water, air and other natural resources. We need people who want to apply their education and experience to make sure we all enjoy the benefits of productive soil, clean water, clean air, and abundant wildlife that come from a healthy environment. "Helping People Help the Land" http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/

The primary purpose of the position is to serve as the State Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Coordinator, responsible for geospatial data and analysis, resource assessment, and technical support for the use and application of GIS for Montana NRCS programs and activities.

Full Opportunity Information: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/431215300

Wed appreciate it if youd mention that you found this opportunity on MATR.net Thank you
The new name is inspired by the year The Economist was founded. 1843 plans to increase its global coverage by going beyond Europe to include America and Asia. For example, the launch issue will feature Sophie Roberts visiting the only hotel in Antarctica.

1843 will include profiles of headline-makers from The Economist, a fashion shoot in every issue and in-depth travel narratives. The magazine will also have sections devoted to tech, food and drink, art, design, and body and mind.

Nick Blunden, global managing director of client strategy for The Economist Group, explained the thinking behind the decision to relaunch the magazine as a global publication targeting well-educated, affluent readers around the world.

Although the print magazine Intelligent Life had only been in Europe, when we looked at the digital side of it, on the Web site, most of the traffic was coming from outside, from North America and Asia The opportunity seemed to be a truly global one," he says. "Thats what The Economist Group does really well, creating content that is relevant all around the world.

advertisement advertisement

The launch issue hits newsstands March 9 with an April/May cover, and will have 120 pages, including a profile of French politician Marine Le Pen. Like Intelligent Life, 1843 will publish six issues a year.

On the advertising side, Blunden noted that over 30 big luxury advertisers signed up for the launch issue, spanning product categories including watches, jewelry, fashion, automobiles, and the like, adding: From an advertising perspective, the launch issue of 1843 is four times bigger than the last issue of Intelligent Life.

Many clients are drawn specifically by the magazines global scope, according to Blunden. Luxury advertisers are really thinking in terms of global campaigns. Luxury is a truly global phenomenon, not just in Europe but now in North America, South America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa, he adds.

There will be apps for all devices and a redesigned Web site with new content posted daily. The site will go live -- without a paywall -- on March 7, the same day all social accounts and the app will switch from Intelligent Life to 1843.

Because there is no paywall, 1843 will rely more heavily on advertising for revenue. All display ads on 1843 will be in-stream formats that can be customized, breaking away from the model on Intelligent Lifes current site, according to reports.

Brand partners will have more commercial opportunities to create content in partnership with the editorial team, particularly video content.

Unlikewill be bundled in thepremium subscriber package, which includes the digital and print editions of the title, as well as the annual outlook report. The premium bundle has 460,000 subscribers.

The magazine will also be sold on newsstands in the U.K., Europe, North America and parts of Asia.
by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 1, 2016

Charter's plan to acquire Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in a deal valued at $89 billion is drawing more scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

Today, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) warned regulators that increased consolidation in the broadband market "creates a risk that investment and innovation in broadband will stagnate, leading to higher prices and fewer choices for consumers."

He added that the merger could "erect further barriers to broadband competition, including from wireless and fiber."

The Senate minority leader also warned that "barriers to broadband competition and reduced consumer choice in online video inextricably are linked."

Reid's letter comes just several days after five other senators, including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), also expressed concerns about the deal.

A recent report in The Wall Street Journal suggests that the FCC is considering whether to impose merger conditions that would reduce the risk of Charter thwarting online video distributors. The Journal also reported that regulators are examining whether cable companies have discouraged the growth of over-the-top video by pressuring broadcasters to withhold programs from the Web.

advertisement advertisement

For its part, Charter has promised to follow some of the net neutrality rules for at least three years as a merger condition, even if the regulations don't hold up in court. The company also promised that it won't cap broadband data, or charge customers based on their data consumption, for at least three years. In addition, Charter said it won't charge content companies like Netflix extra fees to interconnect directly with Charter's servers.

Netflix has said it supports the acquisition, but other online video distributors, including HBO and Dish, have expressed concerns. Dish says the deal would leave Charter in a position to undermine Sling TV, while HBO says Charter could hinder the stand-alone streaming service HBO Now.

A Charter spokesperson responded today with the company's main talking points: It will "add tens of thousands of American jobs, expand broadband access to millions of underserved homes, preserve an open internet and offer fast unlimited broadband at a better value without additional modem fees" after the merger.

For all of his concerns, Reid isn't asking regulators to reject the merger outright.

Instead, he says officials should review whether merger conditions aimed at "mitigating anticompetitive outcomes" can be enforced.

Reid also rightly points out that a more competitive broadband market is the only real way to guard against the possibility that cable companies will hinder online video. After all, when cable companies control the only available high-speed broadband pipes, they have every incentive to discourage people from dropping pricey pay-tv subscriptions in favor of watching online video.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, March 1, 2016

A judge has granted preliminary approval to a deal calling for software developer Carrier IQ and several mobile phone manufacturers to pay $9 million to settle a class-action privacy lawsuit.

"The settlement agreement is fair, reasonable, adequate, and in the best interests of the settlement class," U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco wrote in an order issued Tuesday. He added that the deal "substantially fulfills the purposes and objectives of the class action and provides beneficial relief to the settlement class."

Chen is expected to decide later this year whether to grant the deal final approval.

If ultimately approved, the settlement will resolve a lengthy legal battle over whether Carrier IQ's software violated smartphone users' privacy. The company shuttered last year, but some of its assets were acquired by AT&T; the telecom carrier also hired some of Carrier IQ's employees.

Allegations of a privacy breach first surfaced in November 2011, when a researcher posted a video that appeared to show keystroke logging. The report led to numerous lawsuits against Carrier IQ as well as Motorola, Pantech, Samsung, LG Electronics, HTC, and Huawai. The cases were consolidated in front of Chen in 2012.

advertisement advertisement

Carrier IQ acknowledged that its software sometimes logs the contents of messages, but said the data isn't readable. The company also said its software was intended to help mobile carriers to discover the source of network problems, like dropped calls.

The class-action settlement provides for consumers to receive a portion of the $9 million fund, contingent on how many of the estimated 79 million class members submit claims. If so many people submit claims that the payout would be less than $4 per person, no class members will receive any money. Instead, the fund will go to three outside organizations -- the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.

The deal also calls for the attorneys who brought the case to receive around $2.25 million.
by Wayne Friedman , March 1, 2016

Looking to jump into the over-the-top (OTT) service industry -- as well as keep pace with Dish Networks Sling TV -- AT&T says its satellite TV pay service, DirecTV, will be launching three different branded streaming TV services via a wired or wireless internet connection.

With DirecTV Now, consumers can simply sign up for the service, download an app and begin watching --- with no annual contracts. Like Dishs Sling TV, DirecTV Now will offer on-demand and live programming from many networks. Consumers can add multiple network group options.

DirecTV Mobile is where consumers can watch premium video as well as made-for-digital content -- no matter what wireless provider they use -- on a number of mobile devices.

DirecTV Preview is a free service with content coming from AT&Ts Audience Network, as well as other networks and content including Otter Media, a venture of AT&T and The Chernin Group.

AT&T says the new services will work with virtually any device  smartphone, tablet, smart TV, streaming media hardware or PC. The company didnt reveal specific pricing, but noted that the new branded DirecTV streaming TV platforms will be affordable.

advertisement advertisement

A slew of new OTT services have been launched as cheaper alternative to expensive traditional pay TV packages -- from cable, satellite and telco providers -- that can run $80 to $125 a month on average.

Dish Networks Sling TV -- launched almost a year ago -- can cost consumers as low as $20 a month. Sling TV is estimated to have around 523,000 subscribers, according to the MoffettNathanson Research.
by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, March 2, 2016

Weve heard a lot about how presidential campaigns are benefiting from real-time marketing tactics and the use of audience targeting. But any type of content creator, from big publishers to individual bloggers, can do this with a new platform called Live Vote.

Live Vote, currently in beta, is a global analytics platform that gathers real-time consumer sentiment -- actionable data that can increase engagement, boost the shelf life of content and extend content syndication, according to Eder Holguin, CEO, Live Vote.

Wire service UPI and AOL are currently testing the platform. Live Vote is also in discussions with a political news site, says Holguin.

How it works: UPI can log into the platform, create an event around editorial content and customize the types of questions and the data it wants to collect. Live Vote enables UPI to take all the information and create a script or code to embed into its content management system. We create a simple frame that embeds on top of the content, Holguin says.

advertisement advertisement

One event that ran in February posed the question: "Is Hillary Clinton ready to be president?"

Emojis appeared on-screen to represent the total number of votes cast and to capture overall sentiment, which was considered "very positive" for Clinton, Holguin says. The total broke down into those who "strongly agree" (28% of total votes); "agree" (41% of total votes); were "neutral" (10%); "disagree" (8%) and "strongly disagree" (13%) with the question. There were 925,987 total votes: 75% from women, 20% from men, and 5% "other." Age breakdown was as follows: 18 to 24 (18%); 25 to 34 (35%); 35 to 44 (16%); 45 to 54 (18%); 55 to 64 (8%) and 65 + (5%).

The real-time feature enables the data to get really granular, showing voting at particular junctures during a speech or debate.

Live Vote focused another event on an article about presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders that posed a question about Sanders desire to break up big banks: Reasonable or Radical? That question received 10,000 live votes; final results were not available yet.

The headline page of each poll question presents the option to add a live vote. When readers vote, they can see the current poll results. The real-time data is naturally a draw to presidential campaigns, as candidates are eager to curry public favor, generate buzz and react to attacks.

Notably, Live Vote has multiple applications. Beyond publishers, the company could work with market research companies on customized surveys or movie studios that want to know how people are reacting to movie trailers and certain parts of the trailers in real time.

This type of tool isnt actually for real-time marketing, its actually about real-time analytics. As far as I can tell, all marketers and publishers are looking for this type of actionable data.
by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, March 2, 2016

House Speaker Paul Ryans (R-Wis.) admonishing of Trump -- this party does not prey on peoples prejudices -- did not do much to stem the Trump tide on Super Tuesday.

Businessman Donald Trump remains the Republican front-runner and has a significant delegate lead with 316 to Sen. Ted Cruzs 226. Sen. Marco Rubio had a poor night, now a distant third with 106 delegates.

Trump won the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia. Marco Rubio has little to be thrilled about after last night; his only win was in Minnesota.

Rubios key opponent going forward, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, bolstered his win in Iowa with wins in Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, as well as picking up strong delegate counts in Arkansas and Minnesota. Rubio hoped to win the moderate state of Virginia, but he fell second behind Trump.

As astutely pointed out by Chris Hayes on MSNBC yesterday, Marco Rubios establishment appeal in the pundit and political class does not represent a natural constituency in the Republican base. Or at least not one the size of Ted Cruzs religious conservative demographic.

advertisement advertisement

What we are experiencing is the Balkanization of the Republican party, as leaders try to keep it intact in the face of what we can now call a populist revolution.

Both Cruz and Rubio attacked Trump in their Tuesday night speeches, accentuating the fractures that are appearing throughout the GOP.

Tellingly, The New Hampshire Union Leader apologized for their endorsement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who recently championed Donald Trump. Christie introduced the GOP front-runner in West Palm Beach, Florida, last night without enthusiasm, sporting a expression that cycled from unease to alarm. The internet didnt skip a beat to start on the Chris Christie memes.

Trumps Tuesday night venue looked like the scene of a celebritys press conference, with a row of American flags and colorful lighting in the background. Rachel Maddow, a bit bluntly, described it as a Tinkerbell version of a presidential press conference.

Questions were taken, but mostly skirted as expected. Trump made veiled threats to GOP leaders in Congress and proffered incendiary comments about Hillary Clinton, whom he called a criminal.

Donald Trump holds a strong grip on the Republican nomination. With his extravagant press conference, harsh language toward GOP leaders and seven-state pickup, we can call Trump the prohibitive Republican nominee. Nevertheless, Ted Cruz remains a formidable opponent, while Marco Rubio needs to win big in Florida on March 15 to keep his campaign alive.

As Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said last night, the Republican party has cracked.
by Erik Sass @eriksass1, March 2, 2016

Just a week after the former CEO was pushed out, Tribune revealed a major shakeup in the organizational structure for its newspapers, combining the roles of editor-in-chief and publisher at newspapers, including the flagship Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, among others.

At the Chicago Tribune, Bruce Dold -- who took over as editor in chief from Gerould Kern last month -- is assuming the role of publisher, replacing Tony Hunter, who was promoted to Tribunes president of national revenue and strategic initiatives.

At the LAT, Editor in Chief Davan Maharaj is adding the publisher title, replacing Tim Ryan, who has been named president of publishing across Tribune. At the San Diego U-T, Editor in Chief Jeff Light assumed the publisher role, also previously held by Ryan.

advertisement advertisement

At the Baltimore Sun, Editor Trif Alatzas has been elevated to the new dual executive role, replacing Richard Daniels in the publisher spot. At the South Florida Sun Sentinel, editor Howard Saltz is also taking over as publisher, filling the spot left vacant by former CEO and Howard Greenberg, who retired in December.

In addition, Malcolm CasSelle was named president of new ventures, with a focus on technology and digital expansion. Denise Warren, a former New York Times Co. executive who joined Tribune in May as president of digital and boss of its East Coast newspapers, is leaving the company. On the digital side, the LAT is acquiring LA.com and launching a new Web site focused on the city.

The changes were announced by CEO Justin Dearborn, who stated: By giving our newsroom leaders dual responsibilities, we are ensuring our local brands remain vital to the communities they serve with our journalists and creators producing premium, compelling content across all mediums.

Dearborn replaced former CEO Jack Griffin last week. The appointment was a surprise move engineered by Michael Ferro, a technology investor whod been brought on by Griffin as a partner just a month before. Ferro, who previously owned a majority stake in Chicago Tribune rival the Chicago Sun-Times, invested $44 million in Tribune in February, making him the companys largest individual shareholder, which earned him a position as non-executive chairman.

In addition to the organizational changes, Tribune announced that Ferro has donated his stake in Wrapports, the company which publishes the Chicago Sun-Times, to a charitable trust.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 2, 2016

Blippar has raised another $54 million to further build out its augmented reality visual search engine. The company closed a Series D funding round led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the investment fund of the government of Malaysia, as well as investments from existing investors.

The goal is building out a visual catalog of every object in the world, using image recognition technology and machine learning that allows someone to point a mobile phone camera at an object to perform a search query that returns a variety of information. Some that overlays on top of the original image.

The funding will support the company's search for engineering talent that can help create one-of-a-kind campaigns for brand and their agency partners, according to Ambarish Mitra, Blippar co-founder and CEO. In March 2015, he told Search Marketing Daily some of those brands included Coca-Cola, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, PepsiCo, and Nestle.

advertisement advertisement

The technology allows brands to build out campaigns where consumers can point a smartphone camera at an item such as a KitKat bar and the search query returns coupons or the calorie count and the ingredients. It may allow the user to download a song from Spotify.

Today about 60 engineers in San Francisco and Mountain View offices, along with more than 300 employees in 14 global offices, support clients.

The company has seen user adoption rise in the past year -- climbing to more than 65 million users -- and partnerships with some of the biggest and most exciting media owners and brands. The company's technology has moved more toward supporting real-time content. Partnerships now include Conde Nast, Time Inc., Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Heinz, Universal Pictures, Disney and Jaguar.

The company also plans to use the funding to build out its business in the education sector by encouraging students to get more information about virtual objects and monuments, for example, especially in countries with poor language skills and a lack of resources.
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 2, 2016

President Barack Obama next week becomes the first president to attend and keynote the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. He will call on the tech-savvy audience to get more involved in politics and fight climate change.

The move comes during a turbulent time in U.S. history amid a heated election year and controversy surrounding a Supreme Court Justice nomination.

At the conference, Texas Tribune Editor-in-Chief Evan Smith will sit down with the President for a conversation about civic engagement. A SXSW organizer said the president's appearance is open to all Interactive, Gold, and Platinum registrants, but made no mention as to whether the event will require prescreening of registrants to attend the session.

advertisement advertisement

First Lady Michelle Obama will also attend to discuss her Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to help girls around the world who don't have access to formal schooling. She will deliver the opening keynote at SXSW Music on the following Wednesday. This marks the first time in the 30-year history of SXSW that a sitting President and the First Lady have participated in the event.

"I cant imagine a better way to celebrate our event's 30th year than to welcome both the President and First Lady to SXSW, SXSW co-founder Roland Swenson said in a statement.
Medical News Today regularly covers innovative work from laboratories, hospitals and universities across the world. When putting together a short list of the top medical innovations of the last century, who better to ask than the innovators themselves? Share on Pinterest Over the centuries, medical sciences speed of advance has been breakneck. Scientific endeavor is rooted in innovation. Without the underlying current of swarming technological advances, medicine would stagnate. Of course, any list of top medical inventions is bound to come up short; the incremental ratcheting of treatments, diagnostics and equipment have formed a wealth of worthy candidates that could never be fully listed. In order to appreciate how far we have come, it is worth glancing briefly back into the misty realms of prehistory. One of the earliest innovative medical procedures that we know of was trepanning. This procedure involved drilling or scraping a hole into the skull, possibly to oust evil spirits or to reduce pressure on the brain. At one point in time, this practice was surprisingly widespread, with evidence of its usage cropping up in Europe, Azerbaijan, China, Siberia, North and South America. In fact, of the thousands of neolithic skulls that archaeologists have unearthed over the years, 5-10% bear the distinctive marks of trepanning. At the time, this proto-surgery was probably considered a useful and thoroughly modern technique. Thankfully, other procedures have since removed trepanning from common use. Moving forward in time, another regular addition to such lists is the advent of anesthesia. Anyone who has gone under the surgeons knife owes a great debt to those innovators who first saw a use for Joseph Priestleys different sorts of air. Although not a medical professional, Humphrey Davy was the first to discover the anesthetic properties of nitrous oxide, and it was he who coined the term laughing gas. However, anesthetics were not commonly used until decades after Davys death in 1829. Further forward still, Alexander Flemings serendipitous discovery of penicillin in 1928 often makes it onto lists of the most historic medical innovations. Flemings work signaled the birth of modern antibiotics and, over the years, has spared millions of patients from amputations and death by infection. The list goes on, almost endlessly. For the purposes of this article, we contacted scientists and medical professionals whose work we have covered over recent months. We simply asked them what medical innovation (past, present or future) fascinates them the most, and why they rate it so highly. Here are the results, in no particular order:

1) Advanced gene editing Dr. Garry Laverty and his team at the School of Pharmacy, Queens University in Belfast, Ireland, recently created a peptide gel that shows promise in the fight against so-called superbug infections. The innovation that he finds most fascinating is a gene editing technique known as CRISPR (clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats). Before this new technology saw the light of day, engineering a mutation into a gene was incredibly laborious. Genetic modifications that would have previously taken a great deal of time and money can now be carried out swiftly and cheaply. CRISPRs influence cannot be overstated; an article in Nature says that CRISPR is causing a major upheaval in biomedical research. Dr. Laverty told MNT: This technique has only come to the forefront of research in the past few years and has the potential to significantly advance gene therapy as it is much faster than conventional methods. The technology is derived from a mechanism that bacteria use to fight off viral infection and works in conjunction with an enzyme called Cas9. Cas9 uses a guide RNA molecule to home in on its target DNA. It then edits the DNA to disrupt genes or insert desired sequences. Each run might cost as little as $30, compared with the many thousands of dollars that previous techniques would set laboratories back. Dr. Laverty holds high hopes for CRISPRs future applications; he hopes that it might eventually allow us to eradicate genetic disease by eliminating harmful DNA sequences. [] It has the potential to allow any human genome to be edited by insertion of a tailored genetic sequence or has the ability to destroy harmful segments. It certainly seems to be a genuine game-changer in molecular genetics. Dr. Laverty goes on: With further research, it could treat all kinds of established genetic-based disease, including HIV, cancers and infectious diseases. [] In future, CRISPR could be utilized to allow our cells to become powerhouses for drugs themselves.

2) Point-of-care sequencing Share on Pinterest Point-of-care sequencers could be life-savers on a global scale. Our next respondent carries on the genetic theme. Ephraim L. Tsalik, assistant professor of medicine at Duke Medicine in Durham, NC, is involved in designing tests that can distinguish between virus-based and bacterial-based illnesses. Tsaliks chosen medical innovation is point-of-care sequencing. This refers to hand-held devices that can sample tissues and read the DNA in real-time, skipping the necessity of lab-based, time-consuming tests. These types of devices will eventually find a multitude of uses, from the doctors office to the jungles of Borneo. Point-of-care sequencers will allow unimagined detail to be gleaned from patients within moments. The species of bacteria or virus that are causing an infection can easily be derived, removing the chance of unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions. For diseases such as AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), the viral load can be ascertained there and then and treatment adjusted accordingly. As Tsalik told MNT: The ability to make these measurements in a manner suitable for patient care will be a tremendous asset as we strive for personalized and precision medicine.



3) Cardiac pacemaker Dr. Thomas Oxley, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, is currently working on a bionic brain implant that helps paralyzed patients control a robotic exoskeleton with the power of thought. His chosen medical innovation is the cardiac pacemaker. Share on Pinterest The first pacemaker recipient outlived its inventor and the surgeon who installed it. In short, the cardiac pacemaker is a medical device that uses electrical stimulation to regulate the rhythm of the beating heart. These devices are used in cases where the bodys natural pacemaker is too slow, or when there is a blockage in the hearts electrical conduction system. Dr. Oxley describes the cardiac pacemaker as the archetypal medical device and ahead of its time. The first implantable version was designed and installed by Rune Elmqvist and surgeon Ake Senning in 1958 at the Karolinska Institutet in Solna, Sweden. Arne Larsson was the worlds first implantable pacemaker patient; he went on to receive 26 different pacemakers throughout his lifetime. Larsson died in 2001 aged 86, outliving both the inventor and the surgeon.

4) Diagnostic nanosensors Dr. Thomas J. Webster, of Northeastern University in Boston, MA, is currently working on a number of innovations; one of his projects involves the fascinating future possibilities of synthetic immune cells. Dr. Websters chosen medical innovation is the implanted nanosensor  a minute implant that can be inserted into a patient and remain there. It will eventually be able to make diagnoses from within the patients cells. The sensors, constructed of carbon nanotubes, could work as early warning systems for potential illnesses. Also, eventually, they will be capable of treating issues as they arise, before the patient is even aware that there is an internal problem. By picking up the tell-tale chemical signals of a variety of diseases, it will raise the alarm before symptoms arrive. Many illnesses do not present symptoms until the disease is well underway  pancreatic cancer, for instance. The quicker a problem is signaled, the greater chance the patient has of surviving the affront. Dr. Webster is particularly impressed by technology that makes big jumps in health. He goes on to say that too often today, we see small jumps in medicine when we really need revolutionary ideas. Some of Dr. Websters work has focused on how nanotechnology can help in the fight against impenetrable biofilms created by bacterial infections that are resilient to many drugs. He told MNT: Weve been able to develop these nanoparticles that can actually penetrate those biofilms and then kill the biofilm, regenerating healthy tissue in the process. The nanoscale is difficult to visualize. The diameter of a single-walled carbon nanotube is 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. This minute size allows the nanoparticle to penetrate on a cellular level; it also makes it incredibly difficult to work with and control, hence the furious research within the discipline of nanotechnology. The future of nanotechnology will, no doubt, be an impressive place.
Researchers have created a versatile device that measures two important properties of red blood cells that are relevant for sickle cell and other diseases: deformation and adhesion.

Share on Pinterest By assessing the extent of stiffness and stickiness of a patients red blood cells, the microfluidic device could offer a way to monitor progression of sickle cell disease.

Image credit: Grace Gongaware, Cleveland Institute of Art

The team, from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, OH, describes the innovative device  a microfluidic platform with a computer algorithm that does the math  in a paper published in the journal Technology.

Sickle cell disease is a group of inherited red blood cell disorders. People with the disease have abnormal hemoglobin  the protein that carries oxygen  in their red blood cells. The abnormal hemoglobin is called sickle hemoglobin.

Red blood cells containing normal hemoglobin are flexible and shaped like a doughnut with a thin flat area in the middle instead of a hole. This allows them to squeeze round bends in blood vessels and through smaller ones to deliver vital oxygen to tissues and organs.

However, sickle hemoglobin has a tendency to form stiff rods inside the red blood cell  changing it into the crescent or sickle shape that gives the disease its name.

Red blood cells containing sickle hemoglobin are less flexible than normal red blood cells and also tend to be stickier. These two features increase the risk that they will cause a blockage in a blood vessel and impede the delivery of oxygen to nearby tissues and organs.

When such a blockage occurs, it causes a sudden and severe attack of pain  called a pain crisis  that is typical of sickle cell disease. Pain crises occur without warning and often require hospitalization for effective treatment.

In extreme cases, the blockage of blood vessels in sickle cell disease can lead to widespread organ damage and early death.

Currently, the only way to cure sickle cell disease is with a stem cell transplant. But unfortunately, most patients are either too old for a transplant or do not have a relative with a good enough genetic match to receive transplantable stem cells from.

Effective treatments exist and these can reduce symptoms and prolong life. Early diagnosis and regular monitoring to prevent complications also helps.
Researchers have discovered the first gene responsible for gray hair in humans, opening the door to strategies that may be able to prevent or reverse hair graying. Share on Pinterest Researchers have uncovered the first gene associated with hair graying. Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study reveals how a variant in the gene interferon regulatory factor 4 (IRF4) plays a role in the graying of human hair. Hair graying is a process typically associated with aging. It is believed to occur when melanin  the pigment that gives hair, skin and eyes their color  is no longer produced. For their study, co-lead author Dr. Kaustubh Adhikari, of the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology at University College London (UCL), UK, and colleagues set out to determine whether IRF4  already known to play a role in hair, eye and skin color  is associated with hair graying. The researchers also wanted to find out whether certain genes are responsible for the density and shape of human hair, such as whether it is straight or curly.

IRF4 gene variant correlated with hair graying in study subjects To reach their findings, the team analyzed the DNA of 6,357 individuals  of whom 55% were female  from five Latin American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Participants were a combination of European, Native American and African ancestry. The researchers assessed all participants for their hair shape, color, balding and graying, and men were analyzed for beard, eyebrow and monobrow thickness. By analyzing the hair traits of participants and comparing it with their genomes, the team was able to pinpoint genes that are associated with particular hair characteristics. For the first time, the team linked a variant in the IRF4 gene to hair graying, finding that the presence of this gene variant correlated with hair graying among participants, particularly those of European ancestry. It was already known that the IRF4 gene helps regulate the production and storage of melanin, influencing the color of skin, eyes and hair, but it had never before been linked to hair graying. The researchers say understanding what role this gene plays in hair graying could pave the way for strategies to combat gray hair. Co-lead study author Prof. Andres Ruiz-Linares, of the Department of Biosciences at UCL, says: We have found the first genetic association to hair graying, which could provide a good model to understand aspects of the biology of human aging. Understanding the mechanism of the IRF4 graying association could also be relevant for developing ways to delay hair graying.
Chronic psychosocial and emotional stress has well-documented negative effects upon the human immune system, measurably increasing the risk of disease. Much less is known about the health effects of acute but transitory episodes of stress, such as jumping out of an airplane. Do these panic-inducing moments also raise the risk of stress-related conditions and disorders, such as cardiovascular disease, sleep dysfunction, impaired wound healing, depression and obesity?

A team of researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, Stony Brook University in New York and elsewhere addressed that question by asking study participants to literally jump out of a plane, taking blood samples before and after to measure key immune response indicators.

Their findings are published in the March 4 issue of Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

"In our everyday lives, acute stress is manageable and does not cause physiological damage," said study co-author Brinda Rana, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "However, for those who experience it frequently, it can be a risk for chronic diseases and disorders, such as cardiovascular and immune modulated inflammation. And since the health of the immune system is crucial to protection against pathogens and other diseases, it's important to understand the impact of stressful life events on the ability of our immune system to properly do its job."

The study involved 39 individuals (24 males, 15 females) who had independently contacted a New York-area skydiving school to schedule a first-time tandem sky dive in which the student skydiver was connected by harness to an instructor who guided the student through the jump, freefall and landing.

All of the participants were healthy adults with no history of cardiac or mental illness. They were divided into two groups: 13 would have their RNA expression profiles measured to understand molecular signatures associated with stress, and 26 would be studied by flow cytometry to access changes in immune cell composition in blood.

Blood sampling was precisely scheduled by the lab of co-author Lilianne R. Mujica-Parodi, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stony Brook University. Participants provided a baseline blood sample at 9:15 a.m. within one week prior to or one day after the sky dive. On the day of the skydive, all participants awoke at 6:30 a.m. and arrived at Stony Brook University Hospital at 7:30 a.m. where "pre-boarding" samples were collected at 9:15 a.m., one hour before take-off.

The actual jump occurred at 10:30 a.m., when the airplane reached an altitude of 11,550 feet. Skydivers landed five minutes later, with post-landing samples taken at 10:45 a.m. and again at 11:30 a.m. back at the hospital.

"Our tandem skydive instructor is also a phlebotomist," said Mujica-Parodi. "He carried the blood draw supplies with him on the jump and was poised to draw blood as soon as the skydivers hit the ground."

In addition, saliva samples were collected every 15 minutes from 9:15 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on both the day of the sky dive and the baseline hospital day.

Previous research has shown that acute, short-term stress provokes a mixed bag of immune responses, some beneficial, some not. For example, numbers of natural killer cells, which are part of the innate immune response, increase, but skin healing capacity is reduced. The novelty of the study, said Rana, is leveraging advanced computational and molecular tools to assess large-scale immune system responses, to more finely detail the effects of acute, short-term stress.

"Our study is the first to probe the rapid transcriptomic (messenger RNA) changes in white blood cells that occur before and after an acute psychological stressor," said Rana. "We identified specific genes and pathways involved in both the innate and the adaptive immune response that were dysregulated in response to the acute stress of the sky dive, and which returned rapidly to natural baseline levels one hour after the jump."

Interestingly, the researchers noted that modules of coordinately expressed genes responding to stress were different between male and female skydivers, which they say may help explain gender differences observed in development of stress related cardiovascular and autoimmune disorders, as well as conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (which is twice as common in women).

Nadejda Beliakova-Bethell, PhD, first co-author of the study and an assistant project scientist at UC San Diego, with background in infectious diseases, said while the research was exploratory, it laid the foundation for future, more detailed experiments to elucidate the contribution of stressful life events and exposure to pathogens to the functioning of the immune system.

"The immune response to stress is similar to the response to pathogens," said Beliakova-Bethell. "An instance of an acute stress or infection activates the immune system, while chronic stress or infection results in the exhaustion of the immune system, making it less effective at responding to new stressful events or new pathogens. The effects on the transcriptome of white blood cells, observed in this study, were very transient, returning to baseline levels within one hour after landing, but with repeated acute or chronic stress, these transcriptomic changes would be expected to be more permanent, and may be similar, at least in part, to the effects of chronic viral infection.

"Future studies could make an important contribution to identifying gene targets for developing therapeutic strategies that would help people to cope with the prolonged effects of a stressor or to fight new infections. This would be specifically important for the elderly, who would have accumulated effects of stressors and infections throughout their lifetimes."

Co-authors include Michael S. Breen and Christopher H. Woelk, University of Southampton, UK; Joshua M. Carlson, Northern Michigan University; and Wayne Y. Ensign, Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego.
Although genomic testing can be useful for clinical diagnosis, most patients have no obvious genomic changes despite a strong indication of a genetic condition. In a paper published in the March issue of Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Case Studies, researchers from the US, Turkey, and the Netherlands describe a rare new syndrome likely arising from the dual contribution of two genomic abnormalities previously individually associated with clinical pathologies.

Two male siblings with similar phenotypic features, namely neurocognitive, craniofacial, and gonadal malformations, did not conform to previously described syndromes. To aid diagnosis, researchers performed whole exome sequencing and cytogenetic testing on the patients and their parents. Initially, the researchers homed in on a coding mutation shared by both patients on the X Chromosome and inherited from their mother. However, testing in zebrafish did not reveal any developmental defects similar to those seen in the patients.

The researchers next looked for large-scale changes in the patients' genomes. Both patients have a terminal duplication of Chromosome 16q and a terminal deletion of Chromosome 5p, encompassing 114 and 50 genes, respectively. The breakpoints of the lesions do not disrupt any transcripts, but previous reports of syndromes with molecular breakpoints overlapping a single chromosomal abnormality are associated with some of the same clinical features as the patients in this study.

The researchers suggest that both genomic regions contribute to the complex clinical presentation of the patients, likely as a result of changes to gene copy numbers. "We anticipate that the unbiased dissection of large copy number variants similar in size to those identified in this study will become possible with the increased throughput of genome editing technologies in model organisms," the researchers write.
A recent study1, reported in the March issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, found evidence that genetic influence on cerebral glucose metabolism played a major role in the bilateral parietal lobes and the left temporal lobe of the human brain, while environmental influences after birth dominated in other regions.

Twins have long been the subject of studies in the quest to determine the influences of nature vs. nurture. An earlier study2, published in the journal "Nature Genetics" in May 2015, examined more than half a century of research collected on 14.5 million pairs of twins and concluded that the nature versus nurture debate is a draw; both have nearly identical influences on a person's traits and diseases. But we still didn't know specifically how nature and environment can affect our brains.

Now, researchers at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan have begun to focus in on just that. In their study of 40 monozygotic (identical) and 18 dizygotic (fraternal) twin pairs, ages 30 or older, they used positron emission tomography (PET) scans with the radiopharmaceutical 2-deoxy-2-F-18-fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) targeting regional cerebral glucose metabolism. Eighteen control pairs matched genetically unrelated individuals of the same age and gender as the twins in the study.

Jun Hatazawa, MD, PhD, corresponding author of the study, explains, "Glucose is an essential fuel for brain energy metabolism as well as oxygen. Functional activation of neurons is normally associated with increases in the local cerebral glucose utilization and blood flow."

They evaluated the F-18 FDG uptake in each cerebral lobe for the identical and fraternal twins as well as the controls. By comparing differences, they could estimate the genetic and environmental contributions.

Hatazawa notes that previous studies have revealed strong genetic influence on the volume of frontal gray matter, whereas this study shows that frontal glucose metabolism is preferentially influenced by environmental factors. Knowing which areas of the brain are more influenced by the environment will help with understanding particular neurological and psychiatric disorders.

He states, "The frontal lobes of monozygotic twins are anatomically identical, but they are metabolically and functionally different under environmental influences. This twin-imaging research can be applied to amyloid imaging in Alzheimer's disease and neurotransmitter-receptor imaging in psychiatric disorders where genetic, epigenetic and environmental influences remain unknown. In future twin studies, we may be able to identify specific environmental risk factors."

Authors of the article "Genetic and Environmental Influences on Regional Brain Uptake of 2-deoxy-2-18F-fluoro-D-glucose: a PET Study in Monozygotic and Dizygotic Twins" include Shinichiro Watanabe, Hiroki Kato, Eku Shimosegawa, and Jun Hatazawa of Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine.
The chair of ophthalmology at the University of Michigan examined a recent report investigating the value of vision screening for older adults with no symptoms.

Paul Lee's editorial, published online in JAMA, explains the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report, also published in JAMA.

The USPSTF work states that current evidence doesn't allow for assessment of clear recommendation supporting the use of visual acuity in screening those 65 and older who have no symptoms and are not already under eye care.

Lee's editorial highlights the strengths of the task force's methods while acknowledging some difficulties in carrying out the recommendations of the task force and the possible implications of ongoing change in the care delivery system.

Strengths mentioned in the editorial include:

The specific description of the population studied - Individuals aged 65 and older who have not sought care for evaluation of vision problems and who do not have any known symptoms or visual impairments.

A clear assessment of both the value of treating diseases the screening should detect, like cataracts, while also explicitly reviewing the harms associated with false positives or screening errors.

Difficulties of the USPSTF process, according to Lee, include:

The high degree of rigor makes it challenging to complete the randomized clinical trials with the specific population.

The time required to conduct appropriate studies might not be able to keep up with changes in current health delivery approaches.

Disclosure: Lee receives support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology/American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Advertisement

Although there were phenotypic changes in the germ cells of the itchy male mice, fertility assays suggested that male reproduction remained functional. Itchy females, however, produced fewer offspring when bred to either itchy or wild type male mice. This led Richburg and colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin to evaluate the physiologic role of ITCH in the female reproductive system.Their findings reported in the February 2016 issue ofreveal several alterations in reproductive function in itchy female mice when compared to wild type female mice. Itchy females had both fewer implantations and tended to have fewer corpora lutea. Additionally, the itchy females remained in estrus longer, resulting in extended estrous cycles.The loss of ITCH within the ovary was confirmed, yet alterations in the expression of prototypical ITCH targets in the ovaries were not indicated. These results suggest the existence of an ovary-specific ITCH substrate or non-degradation dependent signaling pathway responsible for these phenotypic alterations.Alternatively, because ITCH works in the immune system to polarize T-cells towards an autoimmune type 2 activation state, these results may be indicative of immune interactions within the female reproductive system. The results of this work illustrate the functional participation of E3 ubiquitin ligases, specifically ITCH, in physiologic female reproduction.The lead author further reflects, "The female reproductive tract has long been recognized as a specialized immune environment, from macrophages that aid in luteal progression to T-cell tolerance in the uterus during fetal implantation. The results reported in this manuscript suggest that the Itchy mice could provide a useful model to evaluate the repercussions of preferential T-cell differentiation towards the type 2 phenotype on ovulation, estrus, and implantation."Dr. Steven R. Goodman, Editor-in-Chief ofsaid, "The results of this study indicate that female itchy mice have altered reproduction. Future studies are required to determine the mechanism by which altered ubiquitination leads to this physiological effect."Source: Eurekalert
Advertisement

Researchers at the Melbourne's Monash University conducted a study on mice with cancer. They examined whether stress can influence cancer spread to other parts of the body.They found that high levels of stress triggers the production of adrenaline by the activation of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) that causes large amount of fluids to enter into the lymphatic system. The entry of fluids causes the lymphatic system to expand, resulting in high fluid inflow and outflow.The researchers describe this mechanism as "lymphatic highway" which influences the cancer cells to spread through the body. Adrenaline not only increases the number of lymphatic vessels draining from the tumor but also increase the flow in existing vessels."We found that chronic stress activates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS)  better known as the 'fight-or-flight' response  to profoundly impact lymphatic function and the spread of cancer cells. These findings demonstrate an instrumental role for stress and suggest that blocking the effects of stress to prevent cancer spread through lymphatic routes may provide a way to improve outcomes for patients with cancer," said Dr. Caroline Le, one of the study's lead researchers.Once researchers found that stress induces the production of adrenaline, they went on to see whether blocking the adrenaline production through a commonly used blood pressure drug can prevent cancer metastasis.The drug propanol was used on stressed mice with breast cancer. They found that the drug stopped their stress hormones from remodeling the lymph vessels inside the tumor, and reduced the risk of cancer spreading through the lymphatic system.Reference: Caroline P. Le, Erica K. Sloan et al. Chronic stress in mice remodels lymph vasculature to promote tumor cell dissemination, Nature Communications 2016, doi:10.1038/ncomms10634.Source: Medindia


Please complete this form and we'll send you a personalised information that is requested

You may use this for your own reference or forward it to your friends.

Please use the information prudently. If you are not a medical doctor please remember to consult your healthcare provider as this information is not a substitute for professional advice.
The following report is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.

On February 24, 2016, a letter from an Islamic State (ISIS) fighter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi was posted on social media. In it, the fighter strongly protests the close ties and cooperation between ISIS's Sinai province and Hamas, particularly Hamas's military wing.

This letter is the first confirmation of ties between the two organizations that comes from ISIS itself, and a unique firsthand account of the nature of these ties. It appears that the document was not meant for circulation outside ISIS, and to have been leaked by Al-Qaeda supporters.[1]

The letter is by ISIS fighter Abu 'Abdallah Al-Muhajir, who presents himself as a Gazan who joined ISIS in Syria. He writes that he decided to appeal to Al-Baghdadi in order to fulfill his duty as a Muslim to give loyal advice to the leader of the Muslims. His letter is based on his own personal knowledge from his time in Gaza, as well as on information provided to him by other fighters who came to Syria from the Gaza Strip.

With regard to the ties between Hamas and ISIS's Sinai Province, Abu 'Abdallah explains the areas in which the groups collaborate: ISIS fighters in Sinai are smuggling weapons into Gaza for Hamas; Hamas is producing weapons and explosive devices for ISIS Sinai; Hamas is providing logistical assistance to ISIS Sinai, including communications systems and hospitalization for its wounded fighters in Gaza; and ISIS Sinai officials are visiting Gaza and dining at the homes of Hamas government and military wing officials.

Abu 'Abdallah says that he considers these Hamas-ISIS Sinai ties a violation of the principle of loyalty to the Muslims and rejection of non-Muslims (Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa), stating ISIS considers Hamas a movement that has betrayed Islam and that as such there is no justification, even on the pretext of tactical, operational, and logistical necessity, for maintaining ties with it.



ISIS Sinai province displaying weapons training. Source: Telegram.me/HaiAlaElJehad5, February 6, 2016.

Noting that what motivated him to take the unusual step of writing directly to Al-Baghdadi was the rising rage and frustration among ISIS supporters in Gaza who feel abandoned by the ISIS leadership and by ISIS Sinai, Abu 'Abdallah expresses harsh criticism of ISIS Sinai for its warm relationship with Hamas. Hamas, he says, is persecuting and torturing ISIS loyalists, and adds that the disconnect between ISIS supporters in Gaza and ISIS Sinai itself is so great that the Gaza jihadis are now questioning the sincerity of ISIS Sinai's loyalty to ISIS itself and are hesitant to join with it.

Abu 'Abdallah's letter caused a stir among ISIS supporters, particularly in Gaza, both because of its content and because such a direct appeal to ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi had been posted online. A group of pro-ISIS media activists in Gaza, Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya, which publishes and disseminates pro-ISIS materials on social media. responded to the letter's publication; however, it denied neither Abu 'Abdallah's claims in the letter, nor the details he gave about the Hamas-ISIS Sinai relationship. It was merely enraged because he mentioned the group his the letter.

Following are excerpts from the letter:

Abu 'Abdallah: If ISIS Sinai Maintains Its Ties With Hamas "We Will All Regret The Disaster That Will Befall Us In Sinai"

Abu 'Abdallah begins his letter by explaining that what ISIS Sinai is doing in its ties with Hamas is serious and could lead to disaster: "A complaint by a soldier in the [Islamic] State to the Caliph of the Muslims, against the actions of the brothers in Sinai Province. An urgent letter from Abu 'Abdallah Al-Muhajir to our commander and Caliph of the Muslims Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, may Allah protect him.

"The Prophet said: 'The religion is sincere advice'... which is why I seek Allah's aid in writing and disseminating this urgent and highly important letter, which has in it serious matters that must be addressed, and ended, by Sheikh Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State leaders. For by Allah, if these things continue and persist, we will all regret the disaster [that will befall] us in the beloved land of Sinai, which is the most important and powerful [Islamic] State province outside Iraq and Syria.

"This is a letter from your son Abu 'Abdallah Al-Muhajir, and in it are matters that I have experienced during my presence on Gaza soil, as well as matters about which the brothers [in Gaza] wrote to me after I joined [the fight] in Syria, and matters that I learned from brothers who emigrated to Syria and Iraq before I did. I recoiled from writing [the letter], and consulted with my immigrant brothers, and we agreed to publicize what we know, while the brothers in Gaza advised me to say these things secretly and not write publicly for fear of the response of the brothers in Sinai province. But matters have reached a point where it is no longer possible to remain silent, and providing advice in secret would not have helped. Silence in the face of what is happening would have made us the devils of silence, and silence is betrayal of Allah, His messenger, and the Caliph of the Muslims.

"Oh, Caliph of the Muslims, I wish to speak to you about an issue related to the foundations of the religion and the tenets of the faith - Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa [loyalty to Muslims and rejection of non-Muslims], for which the blood of thousands of Islamic State jihad fighters has been spilled. For the sake of this principle, we are hostile towards the entire world, we are withstanding a war waged against us by the whole world, and even by some who claim to be jihad fighters.

"[But] even after all these great sacrifices, some brothers come along and destroy [the principle of] Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa, on weak pretexts and for reasons unbecoming of any jihad fighter who belongs to this mighty state.

"I speak to you today about the suspect and illegitimate ties between Sinai province and Hamas, which are hidden from no one. What I will write about now is based on two main things:

"1. After a period of being in Syria, I have learned that the Islamic State considers Hamas, with all its branches and wings, to be an apostate movement, and that it treats it as an apostate cult, including [the 'Izz Al-Din] Al-Qassam [Brigades, Hamas's military wing]. This is known to all the brothers here in Syria and Iraq.

"2. The second thing is the internal memos coming from the [Islamic] State leadership ruling that many factions in Syria are apostates, including for collaborating with apostates and for transferring weapons to them or maintaining a relationship with them."



ISIS Sinai province fighters undergoing military training. Source: Telegram.me/HaiAlaElJehad5, February 6, 2016.

"Sinai Province Is Smuggling Weapons For Hamas In Gaza"

Abu 'Abdallah then explains the ties between ISIS Sinai and Hamas, and tells why he thinks they are a violation of the tenets of loyalty:

"Allow me, Caliph of Muslims, to inform you of some aspects of the suspect ties between Sinai province and Hamas:

"1. Sinai province is smuggling weapons for Hamas in Gaza, because of the province's fighters' expert knowledge of the [smuggling] routes from Libya, Sudan, and Egypt.

"2. Sinai province depends very much on Hamas and Al-Qassam for weapons and for explosives and ammunition. There are direct and continuous supply routes from Hamas to Sinai province. The Al-Qassam factories operate assembly lines for manufacturing explosive devices and bombs for the Sinai province, but do not stamp the Al-Qassam logo on them, as they usually do.

"3. Sinai province leaders are regularly visiting the Gaza Strip, and holding cordial meetings with Hamas and Al-Qassam leaders, even [Hamas] government [representatives]. Animals are slaughtered for them, feasts are held, and they are embraced in Gaza.

"4. Hamas and Al-Qassam are accepting all wounded Sinai province [fighters], and they are treated in Gaza Strip hospitals under Al-Qassam's direct protection.

"5. Hamas is providing wireless communication hubs for Sinai province, because of the difficulty of operating them in Sinai and because they are vulnerable to swift destruction by the Egyptian army.

"[Hypothetically,] if we disregard the religious dimension, and Al-Walaa Wal-Baraa, we would be able to say that Sinai province benefits greatly from these ties, and that the province is being clever and devious in order to attain power and ammo from Hamas, for fighting the infidel [Egyptian President] Al-Sisi. However, in truth, and viewing things on a shari'a level, the province is committing several religious transgressions... among them:

"1. Violating the principle of loyalty to jihad fighters in Gaza and Islamic State supporters [there], and abandoning them and handing them over to their apostate enemy (Hamas)...

"2. Violating the principle of rejecting Hamas, which has replaced the laws of Allah and rules Gaza with laws of unbelief, and of [rejecting] the Al-Qassam Brigades, [which is] this government's violent aggressive force. I was shocked when I discovered here in Syria that the Islamic State treats the Hamas government and movement, and the Al-Qassam Brigades, as apostates. Where, then, does Sinai province stand on this?

"3. Strengthening the apostates and making it easier for weapons to reach them by smuggling weapons to Hamas via Sinai province land, even using the province's men and vehicles. One of the brothers told me, by means of his brother who is in the [Gaza] Strip, that Israel bombed one of these convoys, killing province jihad fighters as they were transporting weapons to Hamas.

"4. Maintaining friendly ties with the leadership of Hamas and Al-Qassam, which the [Islamic] State considers apostates. [These ties include] exchanging visits with them, welcoming them, and treating them in a manner displeasing to Allah...

"5. Relying on Hamas and Al-Qassam - which the [Islamic] State consider apostates - for its supply of ammunition and weapons. This is no different than taking weapons from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, or Qatar in order to fight [Syrian President] Bashar Al-Assad, as the apostate factions do here in Syria, or as Hamas does when it takes money from Iran. [This action by Hamas] is a crime for which we have condemned Hamas for decades, and have ruled that it is apostate, for this and other reasons.

"Sinai Province Is A Pawn Of Hamas"

"Oh, Sheikh Abu Bakr, Sinai province thinks its actions are wise and that it is making a laughingstock of Hamas. But what the province leadership does not know, or what it is ignoring, is that Hamas is giving them these weapons so that they will use them against [Egyptian President] Al-Sisi, in an attempt to end his regime and in preparation for restoring the democratic rule of the Muslim Brotherhood.[2] [Sinai province] is a pawn of Hamas, which is being exploited as part of its Ikhwani [Muslim Brotherhood] plan. Were this not the case, Hamas would not have fought against Islamic State supporters in Gaza, and against anything related to the Islamic State.

"Oh sheikh of ours: Hamas is clever and is giving Sinai province everything it wants, so that it [Hamas] can gain a foothold in [Sinai], and so that it will have 'stock' in the province, and so that it will be able to protect itself against anything the province might do against it. They [Hamas' leaders] are clever, oh sheikh - they give table scraps to the province, so that they can divide the men of tawhid [Islamic monotheism - nickname for Salafi-jihadis] and deal with them as they please, since no one supports them. Hamas knows that no one but Sinai province can help the Salafis in Gaza, and has therefore taken possession of it, and has thus kept it away from the crimes being carried out in Gaza against the supporters of the Islamic State.

"Oh, sheikh of ours and Caliph of the Muslims: If anyone tries to describe this situation to you in a way that contradicts this, then [know] that I am a loyal advisor. The relationship between Sinai province and Hamas has crossed all limits, and has reached the point where the province is asking Hamas to manufacture the uniforms for its soldiers. Hamas manufactures the military uniforms for Sinai province - the uniforms we see, and over which we rejoice, in videos are from Hamas, oh our Sheikh Abu Bakr. I swear to the Lord of the Ka'ba that it would have been better for the Sinai province soldiers to wear ragged, torn, and patched uniforms than to ask Hamas to manufacture their uniforms for them.



ISIS military trainer training Sinai province recruits

"In accordance with the close relationship between the sides, we find that for the sake of worldly honor which Hamas gives it, the Sinai province has sold its religion. This is embodied by Sinai province's disregard of the cruel war that Hamas is waging against the supporters of the Islamic State. Sinai province does not even [dare] threaten, or warn Hamas, over its ongoing abuse of Islamic State supporters...

"The Hearts Of Islamic State Supporters In Gaza Are Filled With Rage And Shock At The Actions Of Sinai Province"

"Back when I visited the brothers in Rafah, they told me that Hamas men call Sinai province 'the Raed Al-'Atar Province' - named after the Al-Qassam Brigades commander who oversaw the weapons and ammo shipments to the province.[3] One of the immigrant brothers [i.e. fighters from Gaza who came to Syria] told me, on behalf of brothers in Gaza, that one senior official in the apostate Hamas internal security [apparatus] would torture and ridicule Salafi jihad fighters, saying, 'Our relations, in Hamas, with Sinai province are stronger and better than yours with Sinai province."

"This is true and very real. Hamas and Sinai province are maintaining warm relations and direct lines of communication around the clock.. I know that Sinai province has severed ties with all the Salafi jihad fighters in the Gaza Strip, and is attempting to cut anything connecting it to them, so as not to sour the relations with Hamas and ruin the relationship between them. You must know, oh sheikh of ours, that Sinai province refrains from announcing the deaths of brothers that came to it from Gaza. They only announce their deaths much later, and claim that they were killed in other regions, not Sinai, so as not to embarrass Hamas, which is worried by this possibility.

"You must know that the jihad fighters 'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Nouri[4] and 'Arafat Al-Sa'idi[5] were killed in Sinai, but it was announced that they had died in Syria, which is not true. Additionally, one of the immigrant brothers in Sinai who came to Syria informed us of the death of a man named 'Abd Al-Ilah Qashta, several months ago, but Sinai province has not yet announced his death, nor will it. The announcement of his death will be made by another province, because he was an Al-Qassam commander.[6]

"Some say that there is an agreement that the province will not accept anyone from Al-Qassam into its ranks, and that if one such man is killed, they will not announce his death. A few days ago, the death of Muflih Abu 'Adhira was announced by [ISIS] Tripoli province [in Libya], even though he died in Sinai.[7]

All those mentioned above are jihad fighters from Gaza who immigrated to Sinai.



Poster of Muflih Abu 'Adhira released by ISIS's Tripoli province

"One of the brothers who recently came from Gaza to Syria said that the hearts of Islamic State supporters in Gaza are filled with rage and shock at the actions of Sinai province. For example, how can they accept that one of the province leaders is in the lap of Hamas luxury in Gaza, doing as he pleases and travelling to the homes of Hamas and Al-Qassam leaders, and enjoying their food at lavish banquets, while a few hundred meters away, Islamic State supporters are tortured in Hamas prisons, and their faces spat in, and are humiliated in in the worst way because of their loyalty and support for the Islamic State - of which Sinai is one of its most important provinces.

"I should mention here that Sinai province appointed a cleric to solve the problem of Salafi groups in the Gaza Strip. We were surprised when the cleric came to us and announced that the judge appointed by Sinai province had dismantled our organization, Majlis Shura Al-Mujahideen, which was the largest Salafi organization in the Gaza Strip.[8] He said to everyone: 'Do not establish organizations [separately from the Islamic State] - go swear fealty to Sinai province.' Some time later I asked the brothers [i.e. other Salafis in the Gaza Strip] what had happened [i.e., did the Sinai province accept their oath of fealty and bring them into its ranks]. They told me that the province was not responding to them. That is how things stayed until the end of my time in Gaza. There is no strength or ability other than Allah's! Is this [a path that befits] the religion, oh our Sheikh Abu Bakr? [How can] the province dismantle the jihad groups who were operating for the sake of Allah's religion [in Gaza] and then prevent them from joining it? ..."

"One Last Thing For Sheikh Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: Do Not Forget The Supporters Of The Islamic State In Gaza"

"One last thing for Sheikh Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi: Do not forget the supporters of the Islamic State in Gaza. Do not forget them, oh sheikh, for they were the first to support the [Islamic] state. They established [the pro-ISIS media activist group] Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya at a time when it was difficult to support the [Islamic] State, and it was under onslaught from all sides. The brothers we left behind in Gaza are a responsibility placed in your hands, oh Sheikh Abu Bakr; they are orphans at the tables of misers. Other than Allah, they have no supporters but the Islamic State.

"How can it be that while all [other ISIS] provinces conduct media campaigns [and release] videos to call jihad fighters in the Islamic Maghreb [North Africa], Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen to swear fealty to the Islamic State,[9] the letters, cries, and calls for help by the men of tawhid in Gaza are ignored?[10] Oh Sheikh Abu Bakr, you are the Caliph of [all] the Muslims, both the weak and the strong - so how can there be such discrimination among Muslims? [How is it] that the strong are addressed and called on to swear fealty [to ISIS], while the oath of fealty by the oppressed [Salafi-jihadis in Gaza] is rejected?

"Oh sheikh, the Islamic State supporters in Gaza are not organized. They have no plan; they have no lack purpose, unity, or coordination. This is all because the Islamic State ignores them, and Sinai province abandoned them, and will not even contact with them. At the same time, even Al-Qaeda supporters have organized their ranks and launched military preparations, by Allah! ...

"Why do the Islamic State leaders here in Syria not notice that Salafi jihad fighters travel from Gaza to Syria and Iraq instead of going to Sinai province? [One] reason is that the province refuses as a matter of principle to accept them; only someone who crosses the border [from Gaza] and arrives without the knowledge of Sinai province and then forces himself on them can join it. The second reason is that many of the Islamic State's supporters in Gaza are unconvinced [of the benefit] of immigrating to Sinai province, and are unconvinced that it is a province that truly belongs to the Islamic State. This is because of the relationship that everyone can see exists between the province and Hamas, and [the province's] renunciation of the supporters of the [Islamic] State in Gaza. It has gotten to the point where many question Sinai province's [loyalty] to the [ISIS] path and the sincerity of its affiliation to the caliphate state.

"This [letter] was an expression of some of what we have kept secret for years, when we were in Gaza and since then, when Allah allowed us to immigrate to the beloved Syria. We disregarded many of the deeds of the brothers in Sinai province. But enough is enough, and the time has come to expose and to disclose [what we know].

"Allah help you, our beloved sheikh, caliph of us and of all the Muslims, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. We pray to Allah for an end to what is happening [i.e. that the Hamas-Sinai province ties will be terminated], for our brothers in the Gaza Strip to be rescued from their situation, and for our caliphate and our state to receive support with regard to the actions of the brothers in Sinai [i.e. that ISIS will be spared the bad consequences that are bound to occur due to the Sinai province's ties with Hamas]..."

Pro-ISIS Media Group Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya: Letter Of Complaint Based On Rumors

The members of the pro-ISIS media group Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiya, which Abu 'Abdallah had mentioned in his letter, published a furious response to the letter, claiming that he was stirring things up based on unsubstantiated rumors. However, it denied none of his claims, not even those related to the Hamas-Sinai province relationship. It was merely outraged that he had mentioned it.

In its response, the group stated:[11]

1. "Any Islamic State soldier should address any complaint to the relevant bodies and committees, without resorting to the internet!"

2. "The Caliph does not accept letters and complaints from his soldiers via the Internet!"

3. "We have no connection, large or small, to this matter..."

4. "The letter expresses a situation of destructive emptiness that afflicts some of the grey men [Al-Ramadiyyun] who envy the successes and achievements of the Sinai province. They are frustrated because their achievements lag behind the Sinai province's, and for that reason they have begun to criticize it and incite against it." Al-Ramadiyun is a nickname for the members of the Dughmush clan, who established their own powerful militia called Jaish Al-Islam and presented it as a group affiliated with global jihad. The members of Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisiyya are apparently referring here to tensions between the Dughmush clan and Salafi-jihadis in Gaza.

5." All arrests and difficulties that faced by supporters of the Caliphate in Gaza are a duty that they met willingly and freely, for worship of Allah and for the sacred caliphate enterprise. These supporters did not bear this as a favor to the Caliphate"

6. "We call upon supporters of the Caliphate in Gaza to continue focusing on supporting the Caliphate as they have been doing, and not to deal with rumors".

7. "We are continuing on the path of supporting the Caliphate, and Sinai province in particular..."



Al-Nusra Al-Maqdisisiyya's clarification notice.

Endnotes:
On February 15, 2016, the Russian weekly magazine The New Times published an interview with political analyst Sergey Karaganov, dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow's National Research University Higher School of Economics, about Russia's foreign policy and the current situation in the Middle East. The political analyst presents four reasons why Russia decided to launch a military operation in Syria, and also addresses the tension between Russia and Turkey.

The following are excerpts from the interview:[1]

'[The Situation] Would Explode If The Sunnis Or The Shiites Would Win In Syria First. It's Better Not To Let Anyone Win'



Sergey Karaganov (Image: Newtimes.ru, February 15, 2016)

Q: "It is widely held that the military campaign in Syria is an attempt by the Russian government to divert the attention of the West from [Russia's activities in] Ukraine and to avoid [international] isolation by focusing on Russia's involvement in the fight against terrorism. Do you agree with this view?"

A: "Let's begin with the fact that Russia and its military have been preparing for an intervention like the one in Syria for quite a few years. The operation itself has been well-prepared. Hence, if there are those who say it was a complete surprise to them, they must be either idiots or liars. The country transports military experts, combat machinery and equipment; repairs air fields and access routes; builds accommodation for military personnel... why, just to spend some money? We started work on the base in Latakia [Syria] almost a year before our first planes arrived there. As for our intervention in Syria, there are several reasons for it.

"First: we figured out a long time ago that the Middle East would undergo a series of disasters. Most of the countries in the region, with the exception of Iran, which is ancient, and Israel with its unique identity, will fall apart over the next 20-30 years. The question we should ask ourselves is how the Middle East will fall apart. Will it happen without us, or will we try to tighten one screw or loosen another, taking into account the tens of thousands of potential terrorists there, and that it would be better if they killed each other or if we killed them rather than that they continue to multiply and maybe even reach our borders.

"Second: Russia realized that some kind of balance had to be maintained in the region, to prevent an even louder explosion. And the situation would definitely explode if the Sunnis or the Shiites would win in Syria first, then subsequently in other Middle East areas. It's better not to let anyone win.

"Third: of course, there is some 'posturing' here as well. We do want to be a great power. You might call it yet another 'national half-baked idea' we inherited from Peter[2] and Catherine the Great[3] .

"And fourth: I agree that [Russian involvement in] Syria diverts everyone's attention from Ukraine and thus moves our relations with the West to another level. This goal was achieved completely."

'We Don't Want Another Ottoman Empire, Or Persian Empire, Or Any Caliphate'

Q: "[This goal of diverting everyone's attention was achieved] completely? Is the implementation of the Minsk agreements[4] already well on the way?"

A: "The Minsk agreements will be implemented when all the parties involved - including the Americans and the Europeans - decide that it's time to implement them... So coming back to Syria, despite clear military and diplomatic successes, this war can't be won. We must be prepared to leave Syria at any moment. And the people must be prepared in advance for this scenario. Also, it's important not to become entangled in another conflict on the way. That is why I am deeply concerned about our conflict with Turkey, which, of course, stabbed us in the back. Why did Turkey decide to down our plane? Part of the answer lies in the peculiarities of the political culture of this region. Many of our preconceptions about it are wrong, including the idea of being true to one's word. But our reaction was largely emotional, not rational. As a result, there is a risk of a 'second Crimean war'[5] [i.e. a conflict with Turkey]."

Q: "What do we actually want from Turkey?"

A: "It's easier to say what we don't want. Ever since we started to play in this area, it has been quite clear that we don't want another Ottoman Empire, or Persian Empire, or any caliphate."

Q: "So, we are going to clip the wings of both Iran and Turkey?"

A: "That's what you say. I have said what I have said... You see, Turkey today is morally very much like Russia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (By the way, for the same reason they have great literature now, and all our great literature is gone.) They have suddenly decided that they will restore the Ottoman power - they talked about it 5-10 years ago, it was a wide-spread fad. And that is why they supported the Arab Spring four years ago."

Endnotes:
On 25 February, she moderated a spirited discussion on a popular Malayalam TV news show on whether celebrating Mahishasur Jayanti could be considered an act of treason.

Since then, Sindhu Sooryakumar, chief coordinating editor of Asianet News TV, says she has received over 2,000 abusive calls on her mobile, allegedly from activists and sympathisers of various pro-Hindutva groups, accusing her of calling Durga a "sex worker" during the show.

A video of the show, shows that those two words were read out by V V Rajesh, BJP state secretary, while quoting from pamphlets that he claimed were distributed on the JNU campus and later produced in Parliament by HRD Minister Smriti Irani.

On 29 February, Kerala Police arrested five people based on a complaint filed by the journalist. G Sparjan Kumar, Commissioner of Police, Thiruvananthapuram city, told The Indian Express: "All of those arrested are connected to BJP, RSS and Hindu groups, including Sri Rama Sena."

One of the five, from Thiruvananthapuram, told police that he got Sooryakumar's number from a WhatsApp group called Sanga Dhwani, where a member shared her personal number and asked others to call and abuse her "for a Facebook post on Durga". Three others, who were arrested from Kannur, are members of Sri Rama Sena, the pro-Hindutva group involved in the Mangalore pub attack of 2009 and several other cases of moral policing.

"I have been getting a call every minute. The main allegation is that I abused Durga, calling her a sex worker," Sooryakumar. "Most of the abusers called me a prostitute and abused me. Some seemed always abusive while others didn't even know what the charge was. I got a call this morning from someone asking whether I was Durga. Another person called me sometime ago, saying I had posted something against Durga on Facebook, and that he wanted to abuse me for that," she said.

Sooryakumar added that BJP's Rajesh assured her that he would assist in any investigation. "He said that he has clarified the situation to many of the party's cadre who had called him. However, his party's leadership still hasn't disowned the rumour being spread in their circles," she said. Sooryakumar added that BJP-RSS leaders of the state have also remained silent. "All they have done is issue a general statement about freedom of the press," she said.

On 29 February, BJP's Kerala chief Kummanam Rajasekharan evaded questions on the issue. "The BJP is a party that supports freedom of the press," he told reporters. Later, in a Facebook post on his official account, Rajasekharan wrote that his party "has nothing to do with this issue". Police chief Kumar said investigators were tracing the Facebook user who first posted the rumour about Sooryakumar using derogatory words to describe Durga.

He added that they were also tracing the WhatsApp groups that circulated the personal number of the journalist. Sooryakumar said that routine operations of Asianet News Studio have also been affected with the channel's numbers being inundated with "hundreds of calls" from those who could not reach her directly. The state's journalists' union, meanwhile, organised a protest and a march to the Kerala Secretariat on Monday, seeking action against the culprits.
Rich kids flashing rich kids stuff on Instagram is nothing new. In fact, the showing off has now boiled down to who can actually show off more. After the rich kids of London set Instagram on fire, Russian kids took some offense and flooded IG with their multi-million dollar splurges. You know, Russias always been too competitive!

The Rich Russian Kids IG handle is the home of lavish expenditure being put on ridiculous and unapologetic display.

           ,     ???? - by @bosslife1984 #RRK #RichRussianKids #rollsroyce #wraith #mercedes #amggts #florida A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 13, 2016 at 6:16am PST

     ??????? - by @alexander_dgr8 #RRK #RichRussianKids #audi #r8 #armanddebrignac #domperignon #villa #la A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 15, 2016 at 12:05am PST

Yup, they most certainly have inherited the riches from their parents but what the hell, they dont care!

Spending weekend the right way??? - by @ogo_marusya      ?? #RRK #RichRussianKids #ferrari #ff #cotedazur A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 27, 2016 at 1:47am PST

If you got it, you flaunt it like a Russian!

      3? ???? - by @queen_ann #RRK #RichRussianKids #bugatti #veyron #supersport #monaco A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 9, 2016 at 11:02am PST

Yup, they got private yachts..

   ????? - by @rufatil #RRK #RichRussianKids #yacht #jetski #champagne A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Jan 23, 2016 at 1:13am PST

Private planes..

   -       ? - by @torijusttori #RRK #RichRussianKids #jetlife #milehigh #abudhabi A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Jan 22, 2016 at 2:48am PST

Private holiday homes .

   ?????? - by @galinagenis #RRK #RichRussianKids #pool #buddha #villa #ibiza A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Jan 18, 2016 at 12:53am PST

And, of course, a jacuzzi looking over Moscow city because, why not!

  ,    ????? - by @juliettteee #RRK #RichRussianKids #warsaw #jacuzzi #topfloor A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Jan 17, 2016 at 4:46am PST

Since every rich kid is now posting pictures of his new super car, Russian Rich Kids had to do something different. So, they are posting pictures of the multi-million dollar cars they crashed, probably on a wild night out. Of course, just because they are rich!

      ??? - by @mark_leontyev #RRK #RichRussianKids #rollsroyce #wraith #destroy A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Jan 31, 2016 at 3:38am PST

Lol, just posing with the Mercedes I just crashed!

  ??? - by @kate_petrovaa #RRK #RichRussianKids #mercedes #gl63 #crush A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 1, 2016 at 5:05am PST

But never mind because #DadTooRich!

     ??? - by @chanel730 #RRK #RichRussianKids #bmw #7er #moetchandon #flores A photo posted by ?? Rich Russian Kids (@richrussiankids) on Feb 3, 2016 at 6:10am PST

And, of course, lifes a party anyway!
Iran can supply gas to Georgia in swap scheme

The supply of Iranian gas to Georgia - on which discussions are currently being conducted - is hardly possible, said Gela Vasadze, a Georgian political analyst and chief editor of the Black Sea Press agency.In fact, there will be no supply of any Iranian gas. Formally and financially [if the agreement on such supply is reached] it will be Iranian gas, but it will actually be Russian, said Vasadze.The expert stated that Russia supplies gas to Armenia through Georgia via the existent infrastructure, which the Georgian authorities formerly refused to sell to Gazprom.Armenias gas transport system, through which Iranian gas theoretically may be transported through Armenia to Georgia, is owned by Gazprom, added Vasadze.It is illogical to physically supply Iranian gas, said the expert, adding that Why should Gazprom have to supply gas through Georgian territory to Armenia, and gas from Iran through Armenia to Georgia?Vasadze said that if such a scheme is applied, Iranian gas will be supplied to Armenia, while the Russian gas which was earlier supplied to Armenia will remain in Georgia.Regarding the transportation of Iranian gas via Azerbaijan, the expert claimed that this also makes no sense, as Azerbaijan itself can supply Georgia's gas. In addition, this would involve transporting the gas over a greater distance than by simply importing the gas from Azerbaijan, and consequently transportation costs will be higher, according to Vasadze.He said that the best option for Georgia is to completely meet the countrys needs by buying supplies from Azerbaijan.Azerbaijan is our strategic partner, which helped us a lot at the time when Georgia was in an energy blockade, the expert said. The current Georgian authorities talk about diversification, but they cannot state a single argument in favor of purchasing Russian or Iranian gas and refusing from supplies from Azerbaijan.Vasadze said that the idea of using Iranian gas supplies is a workaround to avoid offending Russia, which wants to participate in Georgia's energy supply and at the same time avoid substantial resistance in the Georgian society, which is against Gazproms reintroduction into the Georgian energy market.Currently, Azerbaijan is the main supplier of gas to Georgia.Russian gas is supplied to Georgia only in the form of payment for its transit to Armenia. The country obtains 10 percent of the total supply volume.Earlier, Alireza Kamali, the Director General of the National Iranian Gas Export Company (NIGEC), said that Tehran and Tbilisi are negotiating for the supply of 200 mcm of Iranian gas to Georgia. Later, Georgian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Energy Kakha Kaladze said that Iran will be able to supply its gas to Georgia via Azerbaijan or Armenia.
We need the law on our side

Mariaam Bhatti: Tales of a Domestic Worker

Many domestic workers experiences, both in the past and today, are proof enough that while countries can have laws to protect them, that is useless to those who dont understand them, or if their implementation is non-existent.

That came to mind while reading an article about a couple in the US state of Texas who are accused of not paying their domestic worker, who cared for their home and five children for two years. Whats more, the couple are being charged with forced labour, withholding documents, visa fraud and conspiracy to harbour an illegal immigrant. I find the latter charge quite interesting, but Ill let it be a topic for another day.

Another part of the article I found interesting was the quote from a spokesperson on domestic workers right who noted that the issue was a national problem and that the state of Massachusetts has as many domestic workers as Boston has finance professionals.

That made me consider: who says domestic workers are not professionals? What is a profession? Who decides what a profession is? What constitutes a profession?

This reminded me of a friend who is such a powerful young woman in our group, the Domestic Workers Action Group (DWAG). I once asked her what she thought of professionalisation of domestic work, and if she thought doing that could ease the problem of low pay and lack of respect of labour laws by some employers. She went on to lecture me, in a nice way, that employers dont simply pick us up from the streets  they want to assure themselves that we are professionals, yet they still expect to pay very little, to give no contracts and therefore make work in the sector lacking in security. And she was right. I always tell her she is my mentor although shes 10 years younger than me.

But back to the issue of the exploited domestic worker from Texas. I always find it interesting to note from in my experience in Ireland that, even in situations with a couple heading the house, its usually one person who is the employer. In the case of the woman in Texas and a few others I have read about in the UK mainly, there have been a good number of couples either arrested or tried and convicted for exploiting their domestic workers, but I know many people in Ireland who worked for couples, yet their case would usually be against only one of the couple.

What of the other half of the couple? Surely they would know what was going on in any case of exploitation, should it be proven under the law. What are the consequences for them for doing nothing to stop it? For lying for their partner in court to save their skin, or their family name, which my former employer claimed I was trying to tarnish? Arent such people accessories to the crime?

I understand that there havent been any forced labour convictions in cases of domestic workers that the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) has submitted since 2008. Why? Are all these peoples experiences and owed wages invalid? Is there not enough evidence in any of them? Is there a problem with our systems of prosecution or evidence collection? Would I blame those who have experienced this for despairing and feeling let down by authorities? And worse, would I expect people to stop exploiting others when there is no legal consequence for doing so?

Mariaam Bhatti is a member of the Domestic Workers Action Group and Force Labour Action Group of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland
Britains voters must focus on the big picture, not on Camerons deals

Michael McGowan

Britains pending referendum on membership of the EU is the result of party pressure within Prime Minister David Camerons Conservative Party, as well as the rise of the populist United Kingdom Independence Party, or Ukip, which won a number of seats in European elections in 2014 and garnered a significant vote share  but only one seat  in last years parliamentary polls.

There is no current or sudden change taking place within the EU that is threatening the UKs membership, despite Camerons travels around the capitals of Europe. The big challenges facing the EU today are those that face everyone: the war in Syria, migration, terrorism, youth unemployment and climate change. And yet some of our political leaders in Europe are pandering to pressure resulting from the increasing support for groups with extreme nationalist, populist and anti-foreign prejudices that have developed across the EU in recent years.

The UK and Ireland both joined the EU in 1973, with Ireland adopting a positive approach to Europe in sharp contrast to the half-hearted and often negative attitude of the UK. I have to say, all major political parties in Britain could have shown more leadership in promoting European and international co-operation over the last 40 years.

With its directly elected parliament of 28 countries, the EU is one of the greatest political achievements of the modern age. In terms of peace and prosperity and the economic benefits of being a member of the largest economy in the world, this big picture of the EU must surely be what British voters need to focus on when they go the polls in the referendum.

Lets look at what weve achieved via this union. The creation of the single market is one of the great successes of the European Commission presidency of French trade unionist Jacques Delors. The opportunities for young people to move across the EU to enhance their education and training is now taken for granted but was not the case when I was at school, when links with the rest of Europe were largely based in educational exchanges.

And all this progress has been made against a background of centuries of violence and war in Europe, two world wars with mass cemeteries and concentration camps, the Holocaust with the genocide of the Jewish population and indiscriminate slaughter of trade unionists, socialists, the disabled, homosexuals and others.

It is time for Britain to come to terms with the reality that it is no longer the head of the British Empire, nor does it have a monopoly on democracy and human rights. A touch of modesty on the part of the UK on these issues would be welcome.

Britain too often appears to claim the high moral ground, claiming to be the centre of civilisation and democracy compared with the rest of Europe and beyond, but the rest of the world does not always feel these claims match the reality. Britain is a very conservative country with a hereditary monarchy, a non-elected House of Lords, and influential private schools which are confusingly and bashfully called public schools. One of these, the famous Eton, amazingly includes Prime Minister David Cameron, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Princes William and Harry among its former pupils.

Such entitlement should be a relic of the past. Britain needs to join the modern age. The country has the experience and resources  including the English language, which has replaced French as the EUs premier tongue  to have a big influence in Europe. The key issue at the heart of the referendum is not about Camerons frantic negotiations and deals but the reality that Britain has the capacity to play a leading role within the EU and on behalf of Europe on the world stage.

Michael McGowan is a former MEP and president of the Development Committee of the European Parliament
I didnt expect the Irish would be nice and loving people

The Integration Question with Princess Pamela Toyin

I just wanted to experience a different culture. That was the bold step taken by Emma Diaz when she emigrated to Ireland in 2008. Exploring a different environment, as well as learning about other peoples cultures, the American former immigration lawyer says she believes the experience gave her the potential to provide the migrants she works with now a mirror image of their own experience.

American culture certainly differs from others in many obvious ways, but exploring an alternative culture was a necessity for a change for Diaz. Aside from appreciating the beautiful green countryside, she describes Ireland as a friendly country with a multicultural people and history that provides her with endless fascination.

Immigrants often contrast their own culture to that of their hosts, but Diaz is of the school of thought that believes when people become more aware of their cultural differences with others and try to explore their similarities, this helps shape their communication more effectively. She feels she is now part of the fabric of Irish society because the Irish are very open and hospitable.

Retiring from legal practice in her early 40s, Diaz was by no means tired of work, and was determined to venture into any viable business that caught her fancy. At the time she relocated to Ireland, she was unsure of what the future held for her. I didnt expect [the Irish] would be nice and loving people, she admits.

Yet Diaz remained open to learning about people from other cultures, because she believed interacting with those of a different background to herself would bring enlightenment. And rather than be challenged by the change in her economic or social status, Diaz says Ireland energised her to take on the challenge of improving her community through charitable work.

After eight years here, she considers Ireland her home and has no plans to return to the US. Having worked there for over 20 years as an immigration lawyer, Diaz says her role now is to impart her knowledge and expertise to those who need it in Irish society. Her role today involves educating and helping people within different communities who need legal assistance, and her services range from consultations to immigration advice, available free of charge to individuals and families in need.

Looking through the integration lens, which serves a common good in strengthening minority communitiess position in Irish society, Diaz shares the perspective that migrants like her  who find the fundamentals of the culture easier to adapt to  are integrating well because the Irish system permits it. But that same lens also highlights the things that stain the fabric of society in Ireland  the city streets littered with dog mess, or the threat of drug addicts wandering the streets.

Diaz also believes immigration clearance needs a major overhaul in Ireland, as the last decade has witnessed repeated criticism on the States failure to pass extensive immigration reform legislation. Against the prevalent assumptions that integration has been handled well in Ireland and that racism is not a major problem, there are immigrants like Diaz who would rather not speak about the issue but believe that even if racism is not elaborately demonstrated, it is still mildly displayed.

As long as prejudice and stereotypes persist in separating migrant groups that might well be beneficial allies, Diaz says she longs for real contact with other arrivals like herself, no matter how long theyve been here.

- If youre an immigrant anywhere in the world and have a story to share, whether on our own behalf or on behalf of someone else, please email echoesmediainternational@gmail.com.

Princess Pamela Toyin is a journalist and author with over 25 years experience in various roles, including as an executive PA to company directors, as a public relations executive, reporter, editor and publisher, research consultant and workshop facilitator.
Are you committed to integration in Ireland?

Derry O'Sullivan

What is my qualification for writing this? Well, I was an immigrant in England for 10 years. I experienced what its like to live in a foreign culture (yes, England is quite different to Ireland) and had to work at integrating  which, by the dictionary definition, means mixing with and joining a society and often changing to suit their way of life, habits, and customs.

Im assuming that you wish to integrate. If you are not committed to integrating, Ill tell you straight  you should not be here. You will only become frustrated. If you work at integrating, your efforts will be richly rewarded. If you expect Ireland to change to suit you, then you are not committed to integration. You are the one who needs to do the changing. Here are some suggestions to help integrate:

Mix: Its possible to live very separate lives from the host community, especially as ethnic and religious groups grow in size. When I first moved to England, I checked out the Irish cultural centre in the city I was in. However, I subsequently made a conscious decision not to frequent that place but to mix with English people. This really paid off and I have made several wonderful lifelong friendships.

Move outside your comfort zone. Get involved in activities where you can meet the wider community outside of your circle. It could be sports, recreation, cultural or even religious activities. Baptist churches, for example, offer a friendly welcome to all who pass through the doors irrespective of their background or religion.

By the way, this is a great way of improving your English. We have seen several people really improve their English through regular attendance. Baptists talk to people! Work hard at becoming fluent in English. That will only happen by getting outside of your own language group.

Dont live in your former country: Its possible today to follow internet news from almost any country. While thats understandable, make an effort to listen to the Irish news and find out whats happening here. Im amazed on how little some actually know about what is going in their adopted country.

Dont live in the past: We have enough Irish people doing just that, and it only stirs up conflict and hatred that serves to divide. There is also the blame game that I often hear: this is blaming the west for problems back home. We Irish did this for years, blaming Britain for our woes, till we finally grew up and realised that instead of blaming Britains past colonial involvement, it was up to us to use our independence to solve our own problems.

Dont expect to change Ireland: Dont come with the expectation of changing this country to make it like your homeland. This is an open society where everything can be examined and questioned. This is healthy and is the key to our progress. With all of its faults, this openness is infinitely preferable to a society where only one viewpoint is allowed. All around the world such societies are in a state of collapse and do not even meet the basic needs of their citizens.

Dont cry hate speech when others simply express honest criticism. This only shuts down discussion. As a Christian Im sometimes distressed by the distorted things that are said about my beliefs, but Im confident that my beliefs can stand critical scrutiny.

So please commit yourself to integration and expect to contribute to the improvement of our country.

Derry OSullivan is pastor of Blanchardstown Baptist Church
Harkin brings IS survivor to Brussels

By Staff Reporter

Independent MEP Marian Harkin welcomed Nadia Murad Taha to the European Parliament in Brussels on 23 February to commend her bravery and determination in the continued fight against the so-called Islamic State (IS) terror group.

Taha, a 21-year-old Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement, spoke at an event chaired by Harkin on the persecution of the Yazidi people and other religious minorities at the hands of her captors.

She recounted a horrific ordeal that included the systematic rape and brutalisation of girls as young as six, the terror and the fear of the Yazidi women, her own failed escape attempt, her inhumane punishment, and finally her successful escape and journey to Germany where she now lives.

Taha appeared before the UN Security Council in December last and since then she has met with political leaders in the US and Europe to raise awareness about the mass enslavement, forced displacement and extermination of the Yazidi and other religious minorities.

On foot of her work, she has been nominated by the Iraqi government and others for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize.

Harkin thanked Taha for her testimony, and also reiterated her support for the campaign to have the persecution of the Yazidi people, Christians and other religious minorities recognised as an ongoing genocide.

The European Parliament has voted in support of this proposal and we are calling on all EU governments and the United Nations to recognise as genocide these crimes against humanity perpetrated by IS, said the MEP for the North West constituency.

I am writing to President [Michael D] Higgins requesting him to meet Nadia so that we can raise awareness in Ireland.

Harkin added that this far it is only Germany who has provided shelter for approximately 1,000 Yazidi women and girls who have managed to flee or escape their enslavement.

Irish people need to know the reality of the situation for these persecuted minorities and then perhaps we may find a way to help.
Reviewing the International Protection Bill 2015: Part 3

Waheed Mudah

Following interview by an authorised officer, a report of the examination and determination of a given application for international protection shall be prepared by the officer, setting out whether the applicant should be granted refugee or subsidiary protection declaration or be given neither.

A novel introduction in the International Protection bill is that an applicant can request from authorised officer a time frame within which their application shall be determined, failing determination within six months of the application. This undoubtedly will ensure that applications are dealt with in a timely manner, unlike the current system where some applications could take years before recommendations at first instance are made.

Where the determination of the authorised officer at first instance is positive, the notification to the applicant contains the statement of fact of a successful application. On the other hand, if the recommendation is negative for both refugee status and subsidiary protection, the officer is obliged to provide copy of their report, containing detail statements of reasons and documentation relied on in arriving at the negative recommendation, together with a notice of the applicants right to appeal the negative recommendation, to the International Protection Tribunal (currently the Refugee Appeal Tribunal). There is 15 days grace from when the notification of determination is sent to the applicant and the filing of the notice of appeal to the tribunal.

Part 6 of the International Protection Bill deals with the provisions governing the assessment of appeal of negative decisions as regards either form of international protection. Appeals must be in writing and brought within 15 days of notification of the negative recommendation. The next step is an oral hearing with the applicant and a representative of the Minister for Justice present.

An appeal may be determined based on paper submissions where the report of the authorised officer includes, amongst others, that the application lacks minimal facts to ground international protection; there are gross inconsistencies in the facts presented by applicant; there has been a failure to make an application within practicable reasonable time of their arrival in the State; or the applicants country is a designated safe country.

It should be noted that an applicant refused oral hearing of an appeal is not precluded from challenging that aspect of the recommendation by way of judicial review on sufficient and compelling grounds. Applicants can withdraw their appeal on notice and similarly an appeal could be deemed withdrawn where the applicant refuses to co-operate with the process without justifiable reasons communicated to the tribunal.

The tribunal may set aside or affirm the recommendation of the authorised officer on appeal and declare that the applicant be given refugee protection or subsidiary protection as the case may be. The decision of the tribunal shall then be communicated to the applicant.

Part 7 of the bill provides for the notification by the minister of the outcome of an application in writing. Where an application is unsuccessful, the bill allows the applicant the option of returning to their country of origin voluntarily, in which case a deportation order will not be issued. Where applicants wish to continue to remain following refusal of their application, there is still the opportunity to request leave to remain on humanitarian grounds taking into account the applicants personal and family circumstances since being in the state. Leave to remain on humanitarian grounds gives the applicant the right to remain in Ireland at the discretion of the minister. Where such an application is refused, the minister then issues a deportation order. The bill retains all existing rights and entitlements enjoyed by successful refugees and those granted subsidiary protection to remain under the extant laws with regard to rights to work, family reunification, travel documents and so on. On enactment and operational all the current asylum applications automatically transfers into the care of the Minister for Justice and Equality and the new International Protection Tribunal.

Among some notable amendments to existing legislation in the new bill is the amendment to section 5 of the Immigration Act 1999, which empowers gardai to enter a dwelling without warrant on reasonable suspicion that a person who has not complied with the provision of deportation order resides at the address. Also, the bill allows the extension of the current maximum eight weeks in which anyone may detained for immigration matters if there are fresh grounds for extension of the detention. The new bill also empowers the detention of such persons in a prescribed place for the purpose of their deportation. This prescribed place could be airport, sea port or a vehicle, but detention in such places shall not exceed 12 hours.

The new bill, when passed into law and implemented rigorously, will undoubtedly reduce the costs and time of dealing with applications for international protection in the State. It will be a concise reference point for service users and providers alike, and translation of the act into major languages will give applicants better understanding of the laws that govern their residence in Ireland while in the process of seeking international protection here.

Waheed Mudah is a solicitor with Kevin Tunney Solicitors
Illegality and inhumanity

Ronit Lentin

Mohammad Al-Qeeq, a 33-year old Palestinian journalist who had been on hunger strike since November 2015 against being held in administrative detention, has just ended his protest after 93 days.

Al-Qeeq was detained last November without charge, trial or evidence. In mid February he refused Israels offer to temporarily suspend his administrative detention, with the sentence to be resumed when his health improved, because the offer included neither his release nor a guarantee that he would receive medical treatment in a Palestinian hospital once freed.

In fact, the Israeli Supreme Court, in what was publicised as an attempt to reach a compromise, rejected his request to be transferred to a Ramallah hospital. Having watched a short video showing him screaming with pain, I find the court decision not only heartless and enraging, but ultimately unfathomable.

Al-Qeeq was one of 584 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in 2015 in administrative detention, akin to what was known as internment in Ireland. According to the Israeli human rights organisation BTselem, Israels use of administrative detention blatantly violates the restrictions of international law. Israel carries it out in a highly classified manner that denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defence.

Administrative detention has no time limit, and over the years Israel has placed thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention for prolonged periods, without trial, without an opportunity to see any evidence against them, without even knowing the charges against them, if they even exist. In this way, BTselem adds, the Israeli military judicial system ignores the right to freedom and due process, the right of defendants to state their case, and the presumption of innocence, all of which are protections clearly enshrined in both Israeli and international law.

Administrative detention is just one technology of state criminality  loosely defined as activities or failures to act that break a states own laws or public international law  employed by Israel in its war against the Palestinians.

Israeli state criminality escalated hugely since October 2015  with an increased use of violence, administrative detention, torture, the detention of minors, house and village demolitions  culminating in the widespread use of extrajudicial spontaneous executions of Palestinians caught in or suspected of terror acts.

While Israel would defend its treatment of the states Palestinian citizens by citing as legal a series of 50 laws that discriminate against such people in all areas of life  including their rights to political participation, access to land, freedom of association, education and state budget resources; punitive measure instigated by the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, against its elected Arab members  such defence is impossible in relation to its blatant infringement of international law.

While it has ratified the main human rights conventions, Israel is not party to most optional protocols, nor has it accepted the jurisdiction of any committees, which means these committees cannot act on complaints or claims against Israeli state crimes, which are alleged to include the widespread use of torture.

Even when it does ratify international conventions, Israel makes reservations, rendering itself immune from almost any action against it. In consequence, Israels use of measures such as administrative detention without trial, detention of minors, torture, house and village demolitions and population transfers goes without any international censure.

Towards the final stages of his hunger strike, Al-Qeeq was in extreme danger, with a high risk of heart failure and bleeding in his brain, which was why the ethics committee of the Israeli hospital whose care he was under decided he would be treated against his will if it meant saving his life.

It was enraging that his condition went largely unreported by the worlds media, hiding his condition like the conditions of other administrative detainees  many of them minors  from international view.

Although the Israeli authorities have refused to transfer him to a Ramallah hospital, there is a good chance now that he would be helped to regain his health and, like other opponents of administrative detention, I am delighted he has decided to end his strike.

Ronit Lentin is a retired associate professor of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears regularly in Metro Eireann
A General Election like none before

Michael McGowan

The 500-plus candidates who contested the 158 seats in the 32nd Dail did not manage to raise the temperature of the campaign hoped for in the centenary year of 1916 Easter Rising. While some raised the historical significance of the General Election one hundred years after the revolution that forged this republic, but it was austerity that dominated the election debates, and concentrated the minds of voters  though theres been little mention of austerity as a political choice, which is becoming a big issue in several EU countries.

However, Irelands historic centenary was a hot topic among regulars at the famous Wynns Hotel, just along the road from the Abbey Theatre, who expressed great pride in the historic role that the Dublin institution had played in Irish politics.

It was at a meeting in Wynns Hotel, which was established in 1845, that it was decided to launch the Irish Volunteers on 11 November 1913. The hotel was destroyed in the turmoil of 1916 but rebuilt 1926, a phoenix from the ashes.

The 2016 General Election was dominated by events and focused on issues different from anything I have come across before since my first experience of an Irish election in 1969, when I reported for the BBC on the campaign of Conor Cruise OBrien, the Labour candidate for what was then Dublin North.

Crime and security rose to the top of the agenda early in the campaign, following the Dublin gangland murders of David Byrne and Eddie Hutch and subsequent threats to journalists involved in recent coverage of the capitals criminal underworld  threats that were widely condemned across the political spectrum as well as by Seamus Dooley, the Irish secretary of the National Union of Journalists, who described them as shocking.

Meanwhile, the presence of Sinn Fein in the elections and their Leinster House ambitions was a factor the larger parties had to recognise, as have Unionists in the North.

Criticism and respect

Recently I was pleased to take the number 46A bus from OConnell Street to the North Circular Road to call at the constituency office of the long serving Labour TD Joe Costello. His office was crammed and buzzing with enthusiastic canvassers, and on the doorsteps it was clear that the former Minister for Development was personally well known by his constituents.

I also joined Ruairi Quinn, the former leader of the Irish Labour Party, canvassing south of the river. I first met Ruairi, who has decided to retire from Leinster House, in Strasbourg when he was Minister of Finance during an Irish presidency of the EU, and also joined him in Berlin at an EU finance summit in Berlin where he was a keynote speaker.

I heard much criticism of politicians in general during the campaign, particularly those of the party these men represent, but I was also struck by the almost universal respect for Irelands President Michael D Higgins, a former president of the Labour Party, who is clearly hugely popular among the people of Ireland. As much as the political landscape has had a seismic shift in recent years, there are still some people who can unite this country.

Michael McGowan is a former MEP and president of the Development Committee of the European Parliament
My time in Ireland is flying by

Meghan Nosal

I have been studying in Ireland over a month now and am still stuck in my honeymoon phase. Even the weather cannot change how happy I am to be immersing myself in this new culture.

My mornings in busy New York City consisted of falling asleep in my cab, trying to tune out the drivers ethnic music. I love the busy mornings in Dublin, sitting in traffic with a chatty taxi driver gabbing on about his travels to America and his home life in the country.

The drivers in Ireland do not compare to those back home. Most cab drivers in the States are immigrants and there is little conversation aside from telling them where to drop you off. A taxi ride in Dublin, however, is often filled with laughs and stories and amusement at my tourist questions.

Perhaps my biggest adjustment coming here has been trying to understand the Irish grading system. In America its not uncommon to receive a mark higher than 85 and most students aim for a 4.0 grade point average, or straight As. Professors in Ireland, though, are explicitly clear that students should not expect anything higher than a 70, and even that is too much in most cases.

Trying to convince myself that a 70 is the new norm has been an adjustment for myself as well as my parents who still expect A grades despite the system not working that way.

The classroom experience has been intimate and independent. My lectures are full of interaction with teachers interested in student feedback and stories. Teachers want to ensure their students understand the topics and can relate to them.

Unlike in the States, there is no busy work. My few assignments have all had a purpose and expectations for presentations are much higher. French, German, Austrian, and Irish students interact to create a synergetic class population  a refreshing difference from my old classes exclusively filled with overly caffeinated Americans. Group projects are full of cultural differences and finding a compromise on how to work together.

My illusion of Ireland was cracked slightly by my experience registering with the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB). It was similar to going to the Department of Motor Vehicles in the States, only employees here were much friendlier and the lighting in the office less gloomy.

My time at the GNIB lasted two hours but I am told that is very lucky. Some in my group were there almost five hours, others for many more. It was also not easy handing over 300 for a piece of paper that gives me a time limit in this country.

My four short months in Ireland are flying by, but I am looking forward to continuing my cultural experiences and grand times abroad.

Meghan Nosal is a student at Marist College in New York state and an intern with Metro Eireann
Ive always seen Ireland as my heart

The Integration Question with Princess Pamela Toyin

One look at the bearded Mia Manan Hameed will instinctively send the messages of migrant or Muslim to many peoples minds, for better or worse.

The latter has certainly been the experience of Hameed, born in Ireland to Pakistani parents, who recalls an elderly man accosting him on the street, bleating: You Muslim Pakis should get out and go back to your country, youre terrorists!

Thats all too common, people tarring all Muslims as extremists. Hameed, 39, puts it down to that one old man lacking knowledge; he knows not all native white Irish carry the same hatred. And thats because he is himself a native, born and bred in this country.

Discrimination against Muslims, often fuelled by stereotypes and damaging opinions, has not in any way discouraged Hameed from integrating in Ireland, whether at school, his rugby club, or his workplace. Indeed, he believes hes been an influencer on others attitudes: he once organised a demonstration against Google and YouTube for allowing the streaming of a hateful video against Islam, attracting around 1,000 protesters.

I certainly think as a Sufi-practicing Muslim, I see a lot of Irish are much more interested in the true Islam and not in the political Islam, he says, though doesnt shirk from adding that the Irish should be thankful to Muslims, as the label terrorist was transferred from the IRA to Islam.

Racism in Ireland, for Hameed, comes not so much from individuals on the street as it does from the Government, whom he jokes are the biggest racist bunch of all.

I would love to see the Government of Ireland have diverse members in the Dail, and welcome more migrants, will only be of benefit. I think the Government prevents migrants as they have forgotten their own Irish ancestry of being the minorities in England, the USA and Australia. I say it again that the Government needs to get colourful as this will only help.

Hameeds father, born in Amritsar, Punjab in 1947, migrated to Pakistan before arriving in Belfast with his own parents in 1957. Hameeds mother and father married in Navan in 1970 and after several years founded the first Halal restaurant in Dublin city centre. Then they started what is now the family business, which Hameed grew up to be a part of. We were one of the very first cash-and-carry shops importing African fresh vegetable, fish and rice, he says with pride.

Madina Desi Curry BBQ is another part of the familys food chain. Hameed says it is the best curry house in Ireland, serving halal curries and other dishes with fresh aromatic spices.

Hameed now manages the Noor Madina Asian Food Co, a part of the family business that deals in ethnic African food, and a cash-and-carry based in the Smithfield fruit and vegetable market. Despite the struggles of the dwindling Irish economy, and local consumers being more conservative with their spending, he says the business has pulled through the harder times.

People still have to eat and consumers always need value, so it is business owners duty to give value deals, he says. The margin gets tightened and the bills and cost of products always increase, so we just need to focus on the consumer and keep feeding them with value.

Hameed sees himself as innovative in what he does. I have made silly mistakes but when I fall, I get up and crawl and walk and if I fall again I dont give up. Thats my profession.

And its not the only one hes pursued, either. Mias first job was selling strawberries on the side of the road near a regional hospital; later he spent evenings working as a kitchen porter, then as a petrol station pump attendant. In the 1990s he even trained himself in fashion design and set up a studio.

But as far as living in Ireland goes, Hameeds view is that Ireland is the greatest country to be in, from the beautiful scenery to the wonderful people. And in the latter number he includes the up-and-coming new Irish who are helping different cultures to come together as one.

There are children that are half-Irish, half-Nigerian, and this is great for the upcoming generation, he says, adding that he has his feet in both of his own cultures.

I do visit Pakistan as my parents live at least nine months a year there. Maybe one day Ill have a home in Pakistan as well, but Ireland for me is the Emerald Isle and certainly home. My seven daughters were born in blessed Drogheda and Ive always seen Ireland as my heart.

- If youre an immigrant anywhere in the world and have a story to share, whether on our own behalf or on behalf of someone else, please email echoesmediainternational@gmail.com.

Princess Pamela Toyin is a journalist and author with over 25 years experience in various roles, including as an executive PA to company directors, as a public relations executive, reporter, editor and publisher, research consultant and workshop facilitator.
Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas met at the Foreign Ministry today with the Ambassadors of Myanmar and Oman (parallel accreditation from Italy), M. Naung and M. Baomar, who today presented their credentials to the President of the Republic. The talks, which took place in an excellent atmosphere, focused on issues of common interest, with emphasis on the further expansion and strengthening of bilateral cooperation.



Mr. Mardas referred to actions for enhancing the currently low volume of trade with the two countries, through mobilizing chambers of commerce and the business community, with particular emphasis on goods and services of joint interest. He also highlighted the need to expand cooperation with the two countries in sectors such as shipping and tourism.



The two Ambassadors underscored their countries desire to deepen bilateral trade cooperation and extend this cooperation into various sectors in the economic and political spheres, stating their willingness to visit Athens whenever circumstances require it.
Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas today met with the Indian Ambassador to Greece, M. Manimekalai.

During the talks, which took place in an excellent atmosphere, emphasis was put on the upcoming meeting of the Greece-India Joint Interministerial Committee, which is to be convened in New Delhi in November 2016. Mr. Mardas and Ms. Manimekalai stressed the need to develop the volume of bilateral trade, expressing the conviction that the bilateral meeting in November will impart fresh impetus to economic and trade cooperation between the two countries.

Asked about aspects of the migration and refugee issue and the first assessment of the programme for stabilization of the Greek economy, Mr. Mardas had the opportunity to brief Ambassador Manimekalai on Greeces positions.
The Lansing State Journal reports that 43-year-old Cari Ann Wright of Onondaga Township was charged Monday with murder, first-degree child abuse and torture in connection with her daughter's death. She was ordered to be held without bond in the Ingham County Jail.

Ingham County Sheriff's Detective Charles Buckland testified at the hearing that medical examiners determined that Hannah Warner died in November 2015 from "neglect caused my malnutrition." He said the girl weighed only 43 pounds and her death was ruled a homicide.

An attorney who stood in court with Wright at her arraignment declined to comment and said a court-appointed attorney will handle her defense.
BAD AXE  Heres a look at business county planners look to take care of tonight. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in room 305 at the county building.

Plans for another wind project

Huron County is the states unofficial wind energy capital  and another project is in the works.

DTE Energy is eyeing more than 20,000 acres across four townships for the newest spread.

The utility sent a letter dated Feb. 24 to the county requesting a wind energy overlay district, which, if approved by county planners, would deem areas suitable for construction of a wind project. Planners are set to review DTEs request tonight. Read more on project plans here: http://bit.ly/1Qoc7hZ.

Turbines create a definite hazard

At least two aircraft organizations say wind turbines will endanger pilots.

An agenda item includes a Feb. 1 letter from the Michigan Private Airstrip Owners Association regarding the 30-turbine Apple Blossom Wind Project.

Stephen Zelle, president of the Michigan Private Airstrip Owners Association, says a turbine the developer plans to build creates a definite hazard to any aircraft landing on or taking off from the Riverside Airport north of Campbell Road and west of Caseville Road.

In addition, the Scheurer Healthcare heliport would be affected by (the turbine), Zelles letter states.

The problem, according to Zelle, is red lights are required to mark turbines, but they do not indicate the higher turning blades, creating hazards for aircraft both at the private airstrip and helicopters approaching the hospitals helipad.

Another aircraft organization says it has concerns for the same turbine.

In a Jan. 6 letter to the county, Great Lakes Regional Manager Bryan Budds of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a Maryland-based nonprofit that advocates for general aviation, said the increasing number of wind turbines threatens the ability for a McKinley Township landowner to safely operate a private airstrip. (Story: http://bit.ly/1Q7FEf4.)

A Geronimo representative told county planners: Its a little bit late in the process for us to do anything. Because the airstrip isnt registered and is not for public use, planners say their hands are tied in terms of local regulation.

In order to build a turbine, developers must obtain a determination of no hazard to air navigation from the FAA and a tall structure permit from the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). Geronimo says it has these approvals.

$9 million natural gas

project moving forward

Consumers Energy plans to build a natural gas compressor near Sebewaing and Bay Port roads. According to plans submitted to the county, it would be built on a 3-acre site the utility purchased from a farmer. A 7-foot fence would surround a nearly 1,900-square-foot building housing the compressor. A nearly 500-square-foot auxiliary building also is planned.

The compressor will bolster the utilitys natural gas system and help ensure a reliable natural gas supply to customers in Huron and Tuscola, particularly in the fall during grain drying season, according to Consumers Energy spokeswoman Debra Dodd.

Planners approved the project in January (http://bit.ly/1TT4geW). The utility is asking planners to release land enrolled in the states PA 116 program, through which farmers contract to keep their land in farming and not develop it, to move forward with the project.

A master plan for Huron County

Spicer Group, the firm officials chose to update Hurons 1993 master plan and hazard mitigation plan, is scheduled to present tonight.

A master plan models land use, zoning, economic development, public transportation and human services for a county or municipality. Officials say the hazard mitigation plan is important for when disaster strikes, that Hurons has been expired for a year, and the county needs to update it every five years to get federal funding if a flood or other severe weather hits the area.

Contracting with Spicer will cost at least $23,500 to update the master plan and $12,500 for the hazard mitigation plan.
OLIVER TOWNSHIP  The 25 gallons of greases, oil and coolant that spilled onto a farm field after a wind turbine collapsed wont pose health threats, a Department of Environmental Quality official says.

Last week, a nearly 400-foot, 485,000-pound turbine fell at a farm near Berne and Gagetown roads in Section 6, the northwest corner of Oliver Township (http://bit.ly/1LZRfjJ). Its part of Exelon Wind Generations 32-turbine Harvest Wind 1 Farm, the first utility-scale wind project built in Michigan, which began operation in 2008.

It gouged out a nice, big hole, about eight feet wide and three or four feet across, Robin Oeming, a DEQ senior environmental quality analyst, said Tuesday.

The fluids should be out of the ground already.

Oeming says DEQ got a call from Exelon Wind Generation on Thursday, Feb. 25, after the turbine fell. The leaked oils are pretty thick, he said, but the spill is contained.

Its not going anywhere, he said. It cant get at the (frozen) soil; theres too much debris.

According to Oeming, the nearest surface water body is a ditch a couple hundred yards away.

I dont see any imminent drinking water or environmental health threat from this, he said.

In his 30 years with the agency, Oeming said hes not aware of the DEQ responding to an incident involving a wind turbine.

It was also a first for the wind developer.

Chicago-headquartered Exelon has 47 wind projects across the country in 10 states. The company has not had an incident like this happen, Communications Manager Kristen Otterness said last week. There were no injuries to employees or the public, Otterness said.

According to Exelon, the $1.5 million turbine that fell held about 400 gallons of oil.

Exelon also contacted Huron County 911/Emergency Services. Director Randy Miller says from what he gathered, there was no way the oil could get into the watershed.

Like any other engineering disaster, its going to take three months, maybe longer, to get the detailed information they need, Miller said.

Exelon says it is still investigating the cause of the fall.

This specific turbine model is designed to withstand Arctic weather conditions, and has successfully withstood hurricanes, Otterness said in an email. We believe this is an isolated, turbine-specific event and not a larger fleetwide issue.

A decision hasnt been made yet on if the turbine will be replaced.

The company expects a fact-finding portion of the investigation to be completed in about a week, she said.

We dont have an estimated time for when the full investigation will be complete, she said. We know this is important to the community and will share information as it becomes available. We are communicating with township officials. We know its important to communicate with our stakeholders when events like this occur.

Otterness says safety is Exelons top priority and the company will have security on site around the clock for the next couple weeks.

After the turbine fell, Otterness says Exelon stopped all others in the Harvest 1 project to perform external visual inspections of all the turbines. Turbines were powered on after the inspections.

Hours after the fall, Oliver Township Supervisor Larry Krohn described a nearby residents account of the situation.

He just heard a noise and it sounded like a tree cracking or something and a little rumble of thunder when it hit the ground, Krohn said.

Last weeks fall marks the second incident in less than a week in which a wind turbine has failed.

Crews are still investigating how a 160-foot, 7-ton wind turbine blade broke in eastern Huron County on Feb. 19, leaving it dangling like a shoelace and torqued around the structure (http://bit.ly/1Lg43TJ). According to DTE, the turbine automatically shut down after the incident. The utility expects an extended outage for the turbine during repairs and while extensive top to bottom inspections of the entire turbine are conducted.

Like any other engineering disaster, its going to take three months, maybe longer, to get the detailed information they need, Miller said.

Exelon says it is still investigating the cause of the fall.

This specific turbine model is designed to withstand Arctic weather conditions, and has successfully withstood hurricanes, Otterness said in an email. We believe this is an isolated, turbine-specific event and not a larger fleetwide issue.

A decision hasnt been made yet on if the turbine will be replaced.

The company expects a fact-finding portion of the investigation to be completed in about a week, she said.

We dont have an estimated time for when the full investigation will be complete, she said. We know this is important to the community and will share information as it becomes available. We are communicating with township officials. We know its important to communicate with our stakeholders when events like this occur.

Otterness says safety is Exelons top priority and the company will have security on site around the clock for the next couple weeks.

After the turbine fell, Otterness says Exelon stopped all others in the Harvest 1 project to perform external visual inspections of all the turbines. Turbines were powered on after the inspections.

Hours after the fall, Oliver Township Supervisor Larry Krohn described a nearby residents account of the situation.

He just heard a noise and it sounded like a tree cracking or something and a little rumble of thunder when it hit the ground, Krohn said.

Last weeks fall marks the second incident in less than a week in which a wind turbine has failed.

Crews are still investigating how a 160-foot, 7-ton wind turbine blade broke in eastern Huron County on Feb. 19, leaving it dangling like a shoelace and torqued around the structure (http://bit.ly/1Lg43TJ). According to DTE, the turbine automatically shut down after the incident. The utility expects an extended outage for the turbine during repairs and while extensive top to bottom inspections of the entire turbine are conducted.
Andrews has been on the witness stand for two days, often giving tearful testimony about the fear and suffering she has gone through as a result of the stalking and the videos.

She has filed a $75 million lawsuit against her stalker and the owner and operator of the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt. The hotel is a franchise.

Jurors will have to determine whether the companies share some of the blame after stalker Michael David Barrett altered a peephole in her hotel room in September 2008 to shoot the secret video footage. They also will have to determine how much Andrews suffered emotionally as a result.

A defense attorney for the companies told Andrews that they both agreed she was a victim of a crime. But during cross-examination, attorney Marc Dedman asked her about her career success since she discovered in July 2009 that someone put the secretly-shot videos of her online.

Andrews acknowledged that she has moved on to Fox Sports, making more money than she did at ESPN and is now hosting the show "Dancing with the Stars."

Dedman noted that, in addition, Andrews has endorsed Reebok, Degree antiperspirant, Florida orange juice and a slew of other companies, as well as appeared in a commercial for Victoria Secret  one where she was fully clothed  and worked the red carpet and hosted the CMT Awards.

"You have done very well in your career since 2009?" Dedman asked.

"Yes," Andrews replied.

Andrews said she has thrown herself into her career just to feel normal but remains anxious and depressed. She also said it ripped her apart when some in the media thought the nude videos were part of a publicity stunt before Barrett was arrested.

Barrett was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison after he admitted to stalking Andrews in three different cities, altering hotel room peepholes and shooting nude videos of her in Nashville and Columbus, Ohio.

Barrett testified Monday, in videotaped deposition, that he removed the hotel door peepholes and altered them so he could pull them out easily to place his cellphone up to the empty hole and shoot videos.

Andrews said to this day she remains on guard every time she stays in a hotel during her extensive business travels.

When she checks in, she immediately asks to change rooms in the hotel, she said. She said she refuses to let anyone inside the room, and sweeps it for cameras and "booby traps."

She said she is taunted daily about the videos, which are still online. She also testified that she fears that she will have children who will one day come home and say that other kids have seen the nude images.

Jurors must decide how Barrett came to be placed next to her room in the hotel. She maintains that the hotel honored a request of his to be put in an adjacent or conjoining room but never told her about it. The defense maintains that Barrett schemed his way into getting into the room.
Almost 100 people mostly from Haiti who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for...
WASHINGTON  Though a great and many challenges tried his determination, Charles Charlie Bolden, the 12th and current Administrator of NASA, rose among the few and proud to become one of the most successful Marines in modern history.

Since seventh grade, Bolden aspired to attend the U.S. Naval Academy.

I saw a program on television called Men of Annapolis in seventh grade and I fell in love with the uniform watching the movie, said Bolden. After watching the movie, I decided I wanted to go to the U.S. Naval Academy.

Bolden grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, knowing very little about the Marine Corps or the military despite his father and uncles serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. Bolden would routinely see Marines from Parris Island, South Carolina in his hometown.

The Marines were crazy, really rambunctious in the city park, said Bolden. I decided there was one thing I would never do and that was be a Marine.

After being accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy and starting school, Bolden believed he made a mistake. The surrounding community of Annapolis, Maryland was still segregated at the time and the academy had very few black people and no women.

There were a lot of reasons to be very uncomfortable, said Bolden. I called my mom and dad every weekend and said, I made a mistake and I want to come home. My dad would tell me to stay one more week, and he did that for 52 weeks.

Bolden persevered through his first year, which seemed like a long boot camp to him. His parents taught him that anything was possible if he just set his mind to it.

I think the thing that saved me were two Midshipmen who were juniors in my company, said Bolden. They paid me a visit one day and said, You know youre not going to graduate. I asked, What makes you think that? They said, We are going to make it so hard on you and run you out. I said Okay, good luck with that.

Right at that moment I determined, I dont give a crap what this place is like. Im not going home. Who knows what would have happened if that particular incident had not come up.

During his four years at the Naval Academy, Bolden evaluated what service he wanted to join upon graduating. He remembered his company officer during his first year at the academy, who was a Marine.

He was an infantry officer, a Vietnam veteran and had impressed me, said Bolden. He was like my dad, firm but fair. I decided I wanted to be like him.

Bolden graduated the Academy in 1968 with a degree in electrical science and was commissioned as a Marine Corps 2nd lieutenant. Three days after graduating, Bolden married his wife, Alexis Jackie Walker, whom he had grown up with in South Carolina since they were three years old.

She was at my graduation and commissioning, said Bolden. When we got married we made several promises to each other. We agreed we would stay around [in the Marine Corps] as long as we were having fun.

Bolden attended The Basic School at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, in November with the goal of serving his five-year commitment to the Marines then go back to school to earn a masters degree in electrical science.

About half way through The Basic School, I started having second thoughts about being an infantry officer, said Bolden. It was freezing cold with snow and ice on the ground. I volunteered for every fire watch during our three-day war, so I wouldnt have to sleep. I was convinced if I fell asleep laid out on the ground I would die. It was so cold.

After graduating The Basic School, Bolden told his wife he would like to do something else instead of being an infantry officer.

My wife said, Why dont we go to Pensacola [and become a pilot], said Bolden. I had told myself coming out of high school was that I would never fly air planes because that was inherently dangerous, but as usual my wife was right.

I had an aviation option out of the academy, so I went to Pensacola. The very first time I got in an airplane and lifted off I fell in love with it.

One of Boldens instructors at flight school was a Marine test pilot. After talking often about the job and duties of a test pilot and earning his Naval Aviator Insignia in 1970, Bolden started to apply for test pilot school. Bolden applied over and over for test pilot school while he and Jackie started a family.

Our son was born when we were at my first duty station at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, North Carolina and right after his first birthday I went to Vietnam and lived in Thailand for a year, said Bolden. Back then we communicated by letter. There werent many phone calls. There were weeks between communication, but I was able to get my wife and son moved to [South Carolina] so my parents and her mom were able to look after them.

While in Thailand, Bolden flew more than 100 combat missions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. After his tour, Bolden returned to the U.S. and moved his family near Los Angeles where he worked on recruiting duty.

There were lots of activities and things to do in the area, it was a great environment for our son, said Bolden. Our daughter was born and after about six years I was accepted to the Navys test pilot school. We picked up the family and moved to Patuxent River, Maryland.

Bolden completed his test pilot training in 1979 and applied for the space program.

When I finally decided to apply for the space program, something else I never dreamed of, I was selected, said Bolden.

Bolden spent 14 years in Houston, Texas as a NASA astronaut. He flew on the space shuttle four times and served as a commander for two missions and a pilot for two missions.

Every time I flew there was no question that I was a Marine, said Bolden. Traditionally astronauts wear a blue and gold name tape. We insisted on a scarlet and gold name tape, a Marine Corps name tape, that we wore with our Naval Aviator Insignia of gold. That started a fad, and the Army and Air Force guys wanted name tapes for their service.

We felt it was very important to emphasize the service that we represented. Anytime I went anywhere if it was possible I would wear my uniform so people would know that I was a Marine, and the Marine Corps was making a contribution to the space program.

While in Houston, Bolden worked at the Johnson Space Center, which provided a lot of stability for his family. After completing his service with NASA, Bolden returned to the Naval Academy where he served as the Deputy Commandant of Midshipmen, then in 1997 served as the deputy commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force. During this time, Bolden also served as the commanding general of I MEF Forward in support of Operation Desert Thunder in Kuwait in 1998.

After being promoted to his final rank of major general later in 1998, Bolden assumed duties as the deputy commander of U.S. Forces Japan. He continued his career at 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing Miramar, California.

Among my proudest accomplishments was serving successfully as the commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in Miramar, California, and putting a program into place called Putting Marines First, said Bolden. The program really focused on making sure our Marines knew we cared about them and were fit physically, mentally and spiritually. The Marines were the most important assets that we had.

Bolden relied heavily on the chaplain and medical officer of the aircraft wing to ensure the success of the program. Then he challenged the officers and staff noncommissioned officers of the wing to ensure they embraced the program and facilitate the success of Marines of all ranks.

I think that program was my proudest accomplishment in my 34 years in the Marine Corps, said Bolden.

Reflecting on his Marine career, Bolden said there was never a single incident he experienced due to race while he was in uniform.

I didnt experience any overt racism when I was in uniform, said Bolden. When I went out in the community that was a different thing because then nobody knew who you were. The Marine Corps has done a pretty good job over time, we have always focused on diversity and inclusion.
The U.S. Army has announced that about 1,000 soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, will deploy to Afghanistan this spring.

The service in a press release on Wednesday said the deployment of troops from 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, is part of a regular rotation of forces in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel.

Maj. Gen. John Thomson, the division commander, said in the release, "The troopers of the regiment are well-trained, well-equipped, and most importantly well-led. They are absolutely ready for this important mission."

The soldiers are expected to switch out with a number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and aren't likely to change the overall American military presence in the country of about 9,800 service members.

Lt. Col. Sunset Belinsky, a spokeswoman for the division, said the regiment will probably deploy in May or June. Soldiers are currently returning from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and will take a week or two of family leave before heading overseas, she said.

Belinsky said at least some of the soldiers may join colleagues from the 10th Mountain Division in the southern part of the country, but added that planners were still "looking at the mission closely, so it may not be exactly there."

The Defense Department announced in February that about 500 soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 87th Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, New York, would be sent to Helmand Province to shore up an Afghan Army Corps battered by the Taliban.

In recent weeks, American F-16 fighter jets have "significantly increased pressure and the number of strikes" in eastern Nangarhar province bordering Pakistan, where fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, were believed to number 1,000-3,000, according to Army Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, chief spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama last year adjusted plans for U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan.

Rather than reduce the military footprint in the country to a nominal embassy presence in Kabul by the end of 2016, Obama said the U.S. will maintain 5,500 troops and a small number of bases, including at Bagram and Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the south into 2017 to continue the mission of training and providing support to Afghan security forces, according to the Pentagon.

Note: This story has been updated with a more accurate number of deploying troops in the first paragraph and with quotes from an Army spokeswoman beginning in the fifth paragraph.

-- Richard Sisk contributed to this report.

-- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BrendanMcGarry.
The old Army adage, "Hurry up and wait," applies once again to a decorated Green Beret who protected an Afghan boy from a child molester only to see his actions jeopardize his military career.

A decision from the military on the fate of Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland was due Tuesday, but now has been put off for a third time, until at least May 1. Martland, an 11-year Special Forces veteran, was stationed in Afghanistan in 2011 when he confronted a local police commander who allegedly had raped a 12-year-old boy.

"Charles did the right thing in Afghanistan by standing up to a child rapist and corrupt commander, and now it's the Army's turn to do the right thing and reverse the decision to expel him from the service," Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, whose office has been assisting Martland, told FoxNews.com earlier this month. "Permitting Charles to continue serving is in the best interest of the Army and the nation."

Martland is not being discharged specifically for the incident, but having it on his record put him on the chopping block amid ongoing military cuts.

A spokesman for Hunter noted that Vice President Biden appeared with Lady Gaga at the Academy Awards Sunday and spoke out about sexual abuse, urging the crowd to "intervene in situations where consent cannot or has not been given."

Supporters mounted an online petition backing Martland and, separately, 93 members of Congress have called for an investigation into the military's silence in the face of rampant sexual abuse of children in Afghanistan.

The 2011 incident occurred at the remote outpost where Martland was stationed. The boy and his mother showed up at camp, and the boy showed the Green Berets where his hands had been tied. A medic took him to a back room for an examination with an interpreter, who told them the boy had been raped by a man identified as Afghani Police commander Abdul Rahman.

Rahman allegedly beat the boy's mother for reporting the crime after learning that they went to the Army outpost. This led Martland and team leader Daniel Quinn to confront Rahman.

According to reports of the incident, Rahman confessed to the crime and laughed it off. When Martland and Quinn roughed him up, Rahman reported them.

One year ago, the Army conducted a "Qualitative Management Program" review board and called for Martland -- among thousands of other soldiers with prior disciplinary issues -- to be "involuntary discharged" by Nov. 1, 2015.

Martland appealed the decision and a final ruling on his discharge has been delayed until now. With the deadline rapidly approaching, other legal advocates have come to his aid, and even garnered more than 300,000 signatures in a petition calling for the decision to be overturned.
"Xenuria is our other endorsement this year, though it comes with a number of caveats. First of all, Xenuria doesn't really belong on the CSM. This endorsement isn't meant to suggest Xenuria would make a good CSM member. He wouldn't. In fact, you should probably leave Xenuria off your ballot.



"All that having been said, a vote for Xenuria sends a word of caution to CCP. It reminds them that they shouldn't take the CSM for granted, and that whatever issues they may have in dealing with the CSM candidates who do get elected, things could be worse."

"Let's not sugar coat this. This is the year of the CONDI. Like the year of the dog except instead of eating our own shit we make CCP eat it. Our ballot is very specifically picked to not only support our allies but to give a nice big fuck you to CCP. They went after Sion. CSM Reps were replaced. They ignore blatant leaking from other CSM members. CCP is fucking up. When CCP fucks up it is up to us to hurt them because we love them.



"We remain hopeful that they can take steps to foster open communication again. That being said, we must prepare for the worst and communicate our feeling in an appropriate manner. Sending the most villainous of us (Aryth) along with one of the most hated people in EVE (Xenuria) should do the trick.



"Yes, there are meta within meta reasons for Xenuria. Just trust in us to have some complicated evil plan and a backup plan. There is pretty much no way this doesn't play in our favor in some way. Think of him as the Trump vote. Because fuck you that's why."

A year ago, if you had asked the EVE community at large to identify the most universally reviled character in the galaxy, you would probably find's name at the top of the list.For those who are unfamiliar with Xenuria's checkered history, he first made a name for himself with his crusade against the Goons/CFC in general andin particular. A gadfly of EVE fan events from year to year, he was accused by some of "ruining Fanfest". This sentiment was felt passionately enough by some Goons that, in a notorious incident, Xenuria's name was scratched off of the EVE monument in Iceland.Nor were the Goons alone in feeling unenthusiastic about Xenuria's presence in EVE. A few years ago, Xenuria was disqualified from running for the CSM whenreportedly accused Xenuria of being affiliated with a group of hackers who DDoS'ed the EVE servers. Former head of security(i.e., former Goon CEO) also leveled some accusations against Xenuria.Nor did Xenuria endear himself to rank-and-file CCP employees when he accused the art team of lying during a Q&A session at Fanfest. The subject? Something about the graphical quality of characters' shoes.This is not meant to be an exhaustive account of Xenuria's dealings with the EVE community. It would take too much time and effort to fully catalog the various feuds and accusations of wrongdoing associated with the controversial CSM candidate. As EveNews24 reported back in 2014 Year after year after year, Xenuria ran for CSM. Though he always appeared on the ballot (when CCP allowed it), he never came anywhere close to victory. He was a laughingstock, a perennial joke candidate. But then something interesting happened. In February 2015, during the CSM10 campaign, Xenuria managed to secure a high-profile endorsement for the first time. From the MinerBumping post Xenuria went on to lose his campaign for CSM10, just as he'd lost all of the CSM races before. And yet, almost from the moment he received the MinerBumping endorsement, Xenuria's luck began to change--as if the Fates had given his life in EVE another roll of the dice.Behind the scenes, invisible gears began to turn. Curious things occurred. Was it the "MinerBumping bump"? What precisely was the mechanism by which this process worked, no one can say. Whatever it was, by June, Xenuria was publishing articles on TheMittani.com , to the amazement and confusion of onlookers everywhere.Things only got weirder. In August, Xenuria was invited onto an episode of The Meta Show by his mortal enemy, The Mittani himself. Viewers were baffled.Inexplicably, Xenuria was allowed to joinitself, and in a widely-circulated killmail , EVE bore witness as, to the astonishment of everyone, Xenuria and The Mittani flew in the same fleets.Meanwhile, CSM10 suffered as the institution of the CSM itself completely disintegrated. Tweets and lengthy articles were written on the subject. Which brings us to the CSM11 campaign.The Imperium released its official ballot . In a move that would've been inconceivable a year ago and only marginally more comprehensible today, the mighty nullsec coalition put Xenuria in its third slot. The Imperium's press release explained the decision with faint echoes of the previous year's MinerBumping endorsement:Incredibly, the Imperium endorsement all but ensures that Xenuria will be granted his fondest wish, a spot on the CSM.You can cast your CSM ballot today. Why vote for Xenuria? Because sometimes things just happen.
Myanmar's banks could soon be loading aircraft with tens of millions of dollars and sending them out of the country.





They are considering clubbing together to ship large amounts of US dollars to their offshore bank accounts as the result of a new Central Bank policy toward physical notes.

The Central Bank recently stopped accepting physical dollar deposits from commercial banks, said several bankers at private lenders, who were not aware of why the Central Bank had adopted this policy.

U Win Thaw, director general of the Central Banks Foreign Exchange Management Department, however, said that the Central Bank always explains new policies at meetings to which all banks are invited.

The recent decision against accepting physical dollars was no exception, he added, suggesting that some officials who attended that meeting may not have explained the issue to their staff.

U Win Thaw could not say when the meeting had taken place. Bankers said that the policy was introduced in the last few weeks.

Banks also cannot spend their extra dollars on trade. They are now only allowed to provide export-import funding through overseas electronic Nostro accounts, not through physical cash, said officials at private banks.





Although this makes Myanmars banking system more modern, it leaves some commercial banks in a difficult position. Some have large amounts of physical currency they now have difficulty using, said Asia Green Development Banks deputy managing director U Soe Thein.

In the past the bank accepted notes, he said. Now it doesnt and so if you have piled up [foreign] currency you have to manage it somehow.

He said some banks were thinking about a currency shipment by plane  transferring the money to accounts held with offshore banks. These offshore bank accounts are typically with Singaporean lenders, bankers said.

Bankers at other lenders confirmed that currency shipments were being discussed, and U Win Thaw also suggested that this was an option for banks with lots of foreign currency.

The Central Bank is aware of the issue and plans to help the banks, but the process of shipping currency is not straightforward, said an AYA Bank official.

U Win Thaw did not respond by press time to additional questions about how exactly the Central Bank could help.

Dollar notes are not particularly heavy. Not including packaging, a shipment of US$10 million made up of $100 bills would weight just shy of 220 pounds (100 kilograms), according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank Services website.

But the attendant costs of transport mean unless Myanmars banks have enough dollars, the cost of shipping does not make sense. It has to be a large amount, said AGDs U Soe Thein. It costs a lot to ship money this way.

For banks with large amounts of physical dollars the economics of a currency shipment may make sense, he said. An option for smaller banks, or those with fewer US dollars to ship, one option would be to club together.

The thinking is they can share the burden of the cost, he said. But its more complicated that way, to sort out what currency is owned by whom.

The AYA Bank official said there were discussions about working together to share the cost of shipping currency. But he could not comment on the amounts that his bank or other private lenders would need to move.

Cost is not the only issue in shipping dollars, he added. There are also serious compliance issues in moving large amounts of money that way.

When asked about the motivation behind the new Central Bank policy, U Win Thaw said that in most countries it is not common for central banks to accept physical dollars on deposit, adding that it is time-consuming to manage and facilitate.

But he did not comment further on the motivation behind the policy or its timing.

Rahul Bajoria, a regional economist at Barclays Capital in Singapore, agreed that the Central Banks earlier policy of accepting physical dollars on deposit was rare across Asian countries.

Firstly, central bank currency operations across most countries are typically done in local currencies, not US dollars. Secondly, any kind of liquidity management operation  including commercial bank deposit facilities  would be done electronically, Mr Bajoria said.

Myanmars move away from physical dollar deposits comes just a few months after the Central Bank introduced an electronic real-time settlement system, making the once-manual process of clearing and settling payments almost entirely electronic.
Despite boasting a new democratically elected government that enjoys enormous popular support, Myanmar looks unlikely to shed the US sanctions that have restricted the country for decades, according to experts familiar with the sanctions program.





Various individuals and organisations  international and domestic  have called for the US to lift sanctions against Myanmar, following the National League for Democracys victory in last Novembers elections and an apparently smooth transition to a new administration underway.

Five major business associations sent a joint letter to the US administration earlier this month, which said that the benchmark of free and fair elections had been met, and that it was incumbent upon the United States to continue to advance the normalisation process.

Myanmar is sanctioned under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which provides a legal framework for the US Treasury to blacklist certain individuals or companies. The joint letter asked that the IEEPA is allowed to lapse when it falls due for renewal in May.

But one US lawyer familiar with the sanctions program holds out little hope that 2016 will see an end to the sanctions program, pointing to recent comments from several US administration officials as signalling maintenance of the status quo.

Scot Marciel, the new US ambassador to Myanmar, said at his confirmation hearing in November 2015 that the US would need to engage with the new government to encourage progress on a range of issues, including ending ethnic fighting and human trafficking, increasing respect for human rights, and promoting broad-based economic development.

He was also quoted in his response to the Senates questions as saying he would not recommend any dramatic change to the sanctions program.

The outlook is also complicated by timing. The NLD will take power shortly before the annual Thingyan water festival, which heralds almost two weeks of national holiday.





Then youre almost into the heart of the US campaign season, and so Congress for all intents and purposes will be home for summer and campaigning into autumn, said Peter Kucik, a sanctions expert at Inle Advisory Group and former senior sanctions adviser at the US Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Thats not to say that the US administration will stop operating, but you lose Congress so that the legislature isnt able to focus on the issue. That will be the period when the new NLD government is up and running, he added.

The US administration was once concerned that Myanmars democratic elections would not be allowed to take place. Now that the elections are over, the administration will want to see that the NLD is allowed to govern without interference, said Mr Kucik.

Until members of Congress and the US administration see that the NLD administration is up and running and able to govern, there will be fear in the back of some peoples minds, he said.

The NLD formally takes power in April and the IEEPA is due for renewal shortly afterward, in May, leaving little time for the administration to become comfortable.

A spokesperson for the US embassy in Yangon said it did not anticipate any dramatic change in the near term to the US administrations sanctions policy. The US will wait to see how the political transition proceeds, and is looking for progress on a wide range of issues affecting Myanmars political transition, the spokesperson said.

President Barack Obama has the power to lift the trade and financial sanctions enforced by OFAC. But even if he was willing to do this, it would require political capital that he may not be willing to spend, said Eric Rose, lead director at Herzfeld Rubin Mayer & Rose Law Firm in Yangon.

A US presidential election scheduled for November of this year, and the recent death of Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia, requiring Mr Obama to nominate a replacement, means the US president has more pressing problems, he said.

I dont think that in his last year, with all the problems he is having, he is willing to invest political capital into what is arguably one of his greatest foreign policy successes.

There are politicians in both the Republic and Democratic parties eager to see sanctions relaxed and others that have argued for additional sanctions to be imposed.

Californian Congressman Ed Royce, in a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Hearing last October, said he was concerned that only one individual had been added to the Specially Designated Nationals [SDN] list for violations of human rights since violence erupted in 2012, and that he hopes to add other names. At least 140,000 Rohingya and other Muslims in Myanmar have been displaced by violence in the previous five years, he said.

Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a visit to Nay Pyi Taw on January 18 also raised concerns about discrimination and violence against ethnic and religious minorities, including the Rohingya population, who are officially called Bengalis in Myanmar.

However, even if sanctions are not lifted in their entirety, progress towards easing the program can still be made. This was demonstrated last year, a month after Myanmars elections, when the US treasury department issued a six-month general licence, allowing trade to pass freely through Yangons blacklisted Asia World Port Terminal and other key infrastructure hubs with an SDN connection.

A spokesperson for OFAC could not comment on whether the six-month general licence was likely to be renewed, but sanctions lawyers are confident that it will be extended either for a set period of time or indefinitely before it expires in June.

I would be floored if there wasnt an extension, Mr Kucik said.

Progress is also possible on the SDN list  one of the biggest barriers to US trade with Myanmar. However, the general licence does not solve the difficulty US firms have in determining exactly who they are dealing with, said Kaveh Miremadi, an OFAC economic sanctions attorney at Price Benowitz in Washington.

SDNs have become adept at operating through shell companies, and the due diligence required to evaluate potential business partners is onerous, he said, adding that the average US company lacks the resources to fully vet who they are dealing with. For example, even soft drink giant Coca-Cola failed to uncover that a director at its local partner had links to jade mining.

Myanmars SDN list contains 38 individuals and 77 entities, but removing either an individual or an entity from the list has proved difficult.

Last year, U Win Aung became the first and only person to be removed from the SDN list. His two companies, Dagon International and Dagon Timber, were also removed. Mr Kucik estimated there were some 10 other individuals actively engaged in trying to remove themselves from the SDN list.

But I dont think the US is doing enough to effectuate its existing policies, he said. People are left two years into the process and they dont know whether it will take another year.

Clearer statements and better information on the de-listing process would encourage SDNs to engage. Efforts to shorten the process would also help, Mr Kucik said.

There remains a ban on investment with the military, and an import ban on rubies and jadeite. Most of the other economic sanctions have been removed. A better functioning de-listing process would allow the US to use the SDN list as a tool to chip away at the remaining sanctions.

Then if the SDN list goes, the material sanctions are gone, Mr Kucik said.
Myanmar's first pedestrian underpass will open in Yangon within the next six months, according to developer Shwe Taung.





The subway will be built in Kamaryut township beneath Pyay Road, linking Yangon University to Shwe Taungs Junction Square shopping centre.

It was designed by Singaporean firm Surbana Jurong, which announced its involvement in the project last week.

Once complete, the underpass will be donated to Yangon City Development Committee, according to a Shwe Taung spokesperson.

The new tunnel will allow pedestrians to safely cut beneath heavy traffic on one of Yangons busiest roads, in an area near to several university buildings and a major junction at Hledan.

The underpass will be 30 metres long, 3m wide and 3m high. The company has not disclosed how much it will cost to build.

Officials said they will do their best not to disturb traffic while the project is being built. Any work above ground will be carried out at night, allowing cars to drive along Pyay Road unobstructed during the day.

A pedestrian bridge will also be built at the same location, said an official from YCDCs engineering department.





Translation by Khine Thazin Han
After a thumping win at the November 8 election so thorough it outstripped even her own partys expectations, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi left a large question mark lingering over the office of the presidency. The same cannot be said of who will effectively rule the country.





Constitutionally barred from assuming the presidency herself, the National League for Democracy leader said in a televised interview one month before the election that should her party win the backing of the people, she will lead the country. Flush with a landslide victory just days after the polls closed, she asserted her position even more clearly, pledging that she would not only rule above the president but also make all decisions regardless of who corporeally occupied the office.

Yet perhaps due to hubris after the extent of her election victory became apparent  netting over 80 percent of the seats available  Daw Aung San Suu Kyis plan shifted in an attempt to secure more direct control. Senior party officials rumoured to be in line for the proxy post dashed the idea of an imposter occupying the office. She must be president, said NLD patron U Tin Oo.

Despite a strong campaign to amend or suspend the relevant constitutional clause and establish the 70-year-old democracy icon at the helm of the county, in recent weeks it has become clear that negotiations with the military hit an impasse.

With nationalists portending a coup if the NLD challenges to take constitutional reform to the parliamentary, senior NLD leaders admitted they are relenting to the least-bad option for now, and taking up the puppet strings.

Far from a remedy to the NLDs presidential quandary, the proxy arrangement is riddled with its own practical pitfalls and political vulnerabilities. Analysts fear that dividing the centre of power into two camps  the proxy president and the puppet master  could cripple the NLDs administration from its outset.

A proxy president is not the best option, said U Soe Myint Aung, a founder of Yangons Tagaung Institute of Political Studies.





Already known for an officious ruling style and reluctance to delegate authority, Daw Aung San Suu Kyis behind-the-scenes governance would be predicated on having a fully obedient frontman. Alternatively, the party leader would have to relinquish absolute authority, which seems unlikely given her imperious tendencies.

[Daw Aung San Suu Kyis] activities in recent months show that she is someone who likes to micro-manage things, ranging from garbage collection and inspection of the living quarters of her MPs to being the authoritative party spokesperson. So I suspect that she would not want to let go of any institutional decision-making, U Soe Myint Aung said.

Unless the president acts purely as a figurehead, issues of even moderate import are likely to prove problematic for aides, diplomats and officials. The most fundamental: Who should they address, The Lady or her proxy? With the president under constant pressure to make choices, having to defer each decision through such top-down leadership could create an administrative backlog.

Myanmar bureaucracy is very much centralised and so is the NLD, said U Chit Win, a Myanmar commentator and PhD candidate at the Australian National University. She needs to just set policy guidelines and let the president manage at his/her discretion. But I doubt that would happen in the early days.

While the party has suggested the proxy arrangement should only be temporary, giving them more time to lobby the military about planned constitutional revisions, an immediate power-sharing problem arises. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not be guaranteed a spot on the nebulous National Defence and Security Council, an opaque organ dominated by the military, but technically headed by the president.

Read more: Daw Suu will be president sooner or later: NLD

The NDSC remains a pretty unknown entity. The 2008 constitution created it, but does not provide extensive details on its responsibilities and authority, said Mary Callahan, a Myanmar expert at the University of Washington, Seattle.

On paper, it appears to be a body that brings the executive and legislative branches of government into consultation with the leadership of the military on issues that are either definitively security-related  responses to acts of aggression  or in the grey area of politics that might threaten one of the three national causes, she said. Most likely over the last five years, the latter category included deliberations on matters such as amnesties, natural and human-made disasters, and states of emergency.

No one is even sure how often the shadowy council convened during the outgoing governments term. According to the constitution, the NDSC retains the power to sever diplomatic ties, instigate military action, appoint the commander-in-chief and exercise sovereign power.

The council has 11 members, five of whom are serving military officers. A sixth is the vice president nominated by the military. The president, another vice president, Speakers of the upper and lower houses, and the foreign minister round out the body.

U Chit Win said the composition of the NDSC suggested that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi needs to be appointed as a foreign minister.

But assuming the foreign minister role could make everyone including herself awkward especially at the ASEAN Summit, he added.

The foreign minister role would also regularly require her to travel abroad, thus removing her from overseeing parliamentary decisions in Naw Pyi Taw and increasing the likelihood of schisms growing within the NLD.

The greatest obstacle in making things work will be Daw Aung San Suu Kyis vanity and pride  it would be galling for her to see all the protocol privileges going to her proxy, lowly as that person may be, said U Khin Zaw Win, a political commentator and director of the Tampadipa Institute.

If she overdoes her string-pulling role, Myanmar will not only become a laughing stock but the entire office of the presidency will become riddled with inefficiency and security risks.

While the NLD leader has side-stepped the legality of the proxy plan, the whole arrangement is constitutionally dubious. The charter clearly states that the president takes precedence over all other persons.

All the things she is threatening to do are contradictory to what she has been mouthing about the rule of law, said U Khin Zaw Win.

If the proxy is too obviously a puppet, the administration is vulnerable to impeachment, referral to the constitutional tribunal, or even a declaration of a state of emergency. While the NLD has the seats needed to shoot down impeachment, and will appoint tribunal members, those scenarios would still likely have a destabilising effect, inflaming tensions with the military.

The scenario is not unthinkable given the constitutional rigidity evidenced by some factions within the military, as well as the precedent across the border.

In Thailand, Yingluck Shinawatra was largely seen as serving as a proxy ruler for her exiled brother starting in 2011. The arrangement lasted less than three years before the military-led assembly voted for an impeachment, and the Constitutional Court ordered her to step down for an alleged abuse of power. The military then suspended the constitution and installed a state of emergency.

NLD spokesperson U Win Htein has previously suggested the NLD leader could function more like Sonia Gandhi, who ran India through reluctant politician Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

But the regime became one of the most divisive and reviled in the countrys history, slammed for its impotence as the economy slumped and corruption reigned. The proxy arrangement was blamed for instigating dysfunctional governance, and though the prime minister was considered wholly subservient to Ms Gandhi, not even able to pick his own cabinet, quickly emerged.

The history of those years shows the difficulty, perhaps even danger, of operating with two centres of power, said Teresita Schaffer, a fellow at the Brookings Institutes India Project and former US ambassador to Sri Lanka. Even with Manmohan Singhs character and desires wanting to make things work, the two centres of power wound up being competitive. Others were constantly calculating which of the two leaders was more sympathetic to them, how to get to Sonia Gandhi and get around Manmohan Singh, and so on.

While Myanmar has its own political personalities, loyalties and challenges to contend with, a ruling party succumbing to infighting, loss of popular support and rival factions is hardly unimaginable, especially given the recent trajectory of the Union Solidarity and Development Party. History abounds with examples of fledgling democracies where impossible expectations pinned on a unifying figurehead have led to untenable administrations, and analysts warn that the more unorthodox route of removing the leader one step further and splicing authority with a proxy could lead to paralysis. Even the NLD has acknowledged the arrangement is sub-ideal.

The power behind the throne model is full of surprises, and in a crisis leaves everyone unsure where the real authority lies, Ms Shaffer said.
In what many have hailed as a new dawn in terms of respect for human rights in Myanmar with the coming to power of a National League for Democracy government, some activists are questioning how much, and how soon, anything is going to change.





The focus is being directed squarely at the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC). Hailed as a step toward transparency and accountability when President U Thein Sein set it up in 2011, it quickly attracted criticism for its apparent failure to take on issues perceived as difficult or sensitive.

In particular, the commission seemed deeply reluctant to do anything that might incur the displeasure of the military authorities.

Its chair is U Win Mra, who served as Myanmars ambassador to the United Nations from 1994 to 2001, where he regularly fronted for the then-regime in the face of criticism from the international community. One of his most visible tasks was to defend his government for its treatment of Myanmars most famous prisoner of conscience, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The question many human rights activists are asking, as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to lead the next government, is what they are going to do about the MNHRC.

The question arises because the existing commissioners insist that U Thein Sein appointed them for a five-year term that expires only in 2019.

Asked about his partys plans for the commission, NLD spokesperson U Win Htein said, I dont know. I dont care about them.

Others are less dismissive. One former commissioner said U Win Mra refused to take any case that might embarrass the old regime. He struggles to move on from defending the flag to defending human rights, he said.





Many feel the commission made a promising start in 2011. But following the enactment of the MNHRC law in 2014, its most vocal members  four of them from ethnic minority groups  were replaced and the number of commissioners was reduced from 15 to 11. Members are paid directly from the Presidents Office and have the status of deputy minister, enjoying all the benefits that come with the position, according to a former member.

The law says commissioners should be selected by a board comprising Pyidaungsu Hluttaw MPs, the Bar Council, the Myanmar Womens Affairs Federation  a government-organised non-governmental organisation (GONGO)  and registered NGOs. The chief justice, the minister for home affairs and the minister for social welfare, relief and resettlement also sit on the board.

However, such was the secrecy surrounding the appointment of commissioners in 2014 that many believed the president tapped them directly, without reference to the board. At the time, civil society groups, members of parliament and even a member of the presidents inner circle claimed to have no idea who was on the selection board when contacted by The Myanmar Times.

Some argue that could serve as grounds for the incoming NLD government to replace the current members with candidates selected in accordance with the law.

Such a wholesale house-clearing would certainly find favour with many activists.

I think [the commission] needs to be reformed. People dont trust the current members, said U Bo Kyi, joint secretary and co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

The independence of the MNHRC has been questioned as the body was repeatedly criticised for lacking autonomy and refusing to handle some cases. Recently, the commission garnered more positive remarks when it released a statement critical of the governments handling of squatter evictions, accusing authorities of making promises for aid it then failed to keep and of creating a new breed of roadside squatters. The bodys exposure of poor prison management and support for activists arrested during education protests at Letpadan in March 2015 has also been welcomed by human rights advocates.

The former commissioner dismissed this apparent show of independence as a mere tactic on the part of current members to retain their positions under the new government.

The commission still largely avoids the issue of the impunity of the military, as a Burma Partnership report of 2014 pointed out. It is clear that the MNHRC will not investigate or become involved in the affairs of the Burma Army despite evidence that its actions constitute war crimes, such as using rape as a weapon of war, said the report, called All the Presidents Men.

Former and current members of the commission, which received thousands of complaints about human rights abuses, said they had dealt with many cases but that the Presidents Office often took no subsequent action on their findings.

We were set up to fend off Western pressure. [The Presidents Office] ignored almost everything we sent them, said a former commissioner.

Presidential spokesperson U Ye Htut said he could not comment without knowing exactly which cases the commissioners were referring to, as he was not personally involved in the handling of the complaints. However, he said it was possible that they were forwarded to specific ministries and then got stuck at the ministerial or director-general level. The president paid the utmost attention to the complaints, he said.

Current members of the MNHRC also denied that the Presidents Office or other parts of the government applied any pressure on them to avoid certain issues, although they did acknowledge the need to navigate carefully and avoid angering the military while investigating abuses.

Willingness to investigate government bodies for wrongdoing may increase under an NLD government, but it is questionable whether the authorities, including the military, will allow access to conduct thorough investigations.

Rights commission member Daw Than Nwe admitted she was a little worried about the question of access, even under an NLD government. In the presidents [U Thein Seins] time the ministries cooperated, she said. We hope it will be the same under the new government.
Shan State locals are demanding the government clear landmines from conflict areas surrounding villages in the north of the state.





The Kachin Ethnic Network of Shan State made the request in Yangon yesterday during a press conference. They also demanded armed groups stop detaining civilians.

In Kutkai township, the Tatmadaw has been engaged in clashes with the Taang National Liberation Army and the Kachin Independence Army, they said. Villagers from Hopone said they have suffered a heavy toll due to the fighting.

I have had to face the tragedy of landmines  I saw my husbands foot blown off in an explosion, said Ma Ja Htaung, a mother of four. It was a terrible hell. We live in the mountains so its hard to reach the township. I had no idea how I could take him to the hospital. We sent a boy to Tar Moe Nye to fetch help, but the hospital there didnt come to assist us, so we had to get to Muse. My husband died on the way there.

According to locals, residents of Hopone village fled after clashes erupted on January 11 and 12. Over 300 people from 43 households abandoned the village and sought refuge in Tar Moe Nye sub-township.

An armed group burned down 12 of the houses. When locals returned they discovered that landmines had been laid only after Ma Ja Htaungs husband Ko Naw Mai, 41, was fatally injured.

I am the most unlucky one in the village. My home was burned and my husband was killed by a landmine, she said. I dont know what to do with four children to raise on my own. No one dares to continue to live in Hopone. I would like to ask the government to clear the landmines if they care about citizens lives.

I would like to ask the new government to bring peace and security for us. We are so afraid of every armed group. We are living in fear and know we are not safe.





In neighbouring Theini townships Pang Haz village  the headquarters of the Kaung Khar militia  locals said Tatmadaw soldiers came to the village on January 11 and gathered all the villagers in a church. The women and children were released in the evening, but an additional 46 men, young and old, from Man Lin village were detained.

The following day, Kaung Khar militia members came to negotiate and some people, including the elderly, were released. More than six weeks later, at least four people are thought to still be detained. No reason has been given for holding them, according to the villagers.

My husband is still detained there, said the wife of Ko Naung Latt, one of the men. I cant contact him. I dont know why he is being detained or what his health and security situation is like.

The Kachin Ethnic Network said a letter was sent nearly 10 days ago requesting the military and armed ethnic groups clear the landmines. No response has been received, the groups said, adding that the network would try to conduct a landmine education campaign if the clearance request continues to go unheeded.

Maran Jaw Gun, a peace activist, said residents dont know who to seek help from.

Who is responsible for ending the grievances of conflict-afflicted people? he said.
An overhaul of the nearly 40-year-old kindergarten curriculum has generated controversy, with the Ministry of Education accepting advice from education experts that young children should initially learn only 25 of the 33 consonants in the Myanmar alphabet.





The difficult letters will be initially omitted as part of a focus on making the classroom a happy place, in which critical thinking and creativity are prioritised over rote learning. The Ministry of Education insists the change aligns with its focus on child-centred learning and it is not considering a rethink, despite the apparent backlash.

We have heard many people argue against omitting the eight consonants in the kindergarten curriculum. We dont want to fight about it. These eight consonants will be taught later, a senior ministry official said.

The eight consonants  Ga Gyi, Za Myin Zwe, Ta Talin Jade, Hta Win Be, Da Yin Gauk, Da Yin Hmote, Na Gyi and La Gyi  will now be taught the next year, in first standard, also called Grade 2. Experts decided to omit the consonants because they are difficult for young students to learn.

The new curriculum will teach children to be happy. The main focus will be on reciting poems and pronouncing the words. Writing will be included, but we will add other activities to ensure a better balance, said an education consultant who worked on the Comprehensive Education Sector Review.

But Daw Khin Mar Htwe, a primary schoolteacher, said she couldnt see the point in delaying the teaching of the consonants. They say that they dont want children to have to memorise everything. But anyway, when they get to Grade 2, they will have to memorise these eight consonants. Why dont they just learn them in kindergarten with the rest? she said.

Much of the opposition is less practical and more focused on concerns about loss of culture.

We also object to these words being excluded, said U Vimala, a Buddhist monk. They are Pali words, and if they dont remain in usage, Pali literature could disappear. If you are truly Myanmar, you should know how to read and write at least these [Pali-derived] words taught at school, even if you dont know the Pali language.





But many education experts have backed the decision. U Soe Win Oo, chair of the Myanmar Private Teachers Federation, gave cautious support.

The children will be taught according to the international system, mainly focusing on making children more cheerful  We should make changes if they are really needed, he said.

The 15-chapter book, replacing the current one stemming from 1968, contains sections on topics such as myself, our family, our school, our ward or village, trees, weather, transportation, markets, festivals, insects and mammals, and houses.

Some parents were positive about the new curriculum, saying their children could wait until their second year of formal schooling to learn the more difficult parts of the alphabet.

There is no doubt that these words are difficult for kindergarten children, said U Tun Tun Aung, the father of a kindergarten child. If they cant write them in kindergarten, there is no cause for concern. Children of that age should be taught understanding of art to boost their thinking and creative abilities.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
A Mandalay judge will next week decide whether to formally charge 2007 protest leader U Gambira under the immigration act, it was revealed at a hearing yesterday. The former political prisoner will face anywhere from six months to five years in prison if found guilty of entering the country illegally, as immigration officials allege.







U Gambira, also known as Nyi Nyi Lwin, was arrested on January 19 on immigration charges which his supporters say are politically motivated. His lawyer, U Robert San Aung, has said there is a lack of evidence in the case against the former monk.

Nine witnesses called by the prosecution  from the Myanmar Police Force, the hotel where he was arrested and the quarter administration  were heard during the trials. Witnesses from the defence will be heard if the judge decides to charge U Gambira at the next hearing, on March 10.

Marie Siochana, the former monks wife, came back to Myanmar last weekend and attended court yesterday. She asked to testify but was not allowed, according to her Facebook page.

I want this case to finish quickly, but my wife wants to testify, U Gambira said.

A bail application based on U Gambiras ill mental health  he says he suffers from acute post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) stemming from his earlier imprisonment  was yesterday rejected. Also refused was an appeal for an examination paper bearing U Gambiras signature, submitted as evidence by the immigration officer who investigated his case, to be excluded from the trial.

Speaking to the media after yesterdays hearing, U Gambira said that bail was denied because his physical appearance did not indicate any illness, an argument brought last week by the persecution. They are not acting according to the law. My problem is a mental problem, U Gambira said.

U Gambira, who resides in Thailand, entered Myanmar with Ms Siochana at the Thai border crossing of Mae Sai-Tachileik on January 16. Police allege that he did not enter the country legally, and have charged him under section 13(a) of the colonial-era Burma Immigration (Emergency Provisions) Act of 1947.
The death of 17 protesters against British colonial rule was marked in a solemn ceremony in Mandalay yesterday. Participants gathered to honour those who had fallen in a crucial uprising against foreign occupation.





The 77th anniversary of the death of Mandalays 17 Martyrs during what is known as the Revolution of 1300 was held at their mausoleum in Thakywelgone, Tamawaddi quarter, Chan Mya Tharsi township. The uprising was named after the Myanmar calendar year equivalent to 1939, when the rising took place.

We hold this ceremony because young people have forgotten the martyrs. We will do this every year. We also meet to honour them. It is good to remember them as young people, said U Min Htet Nyein Chan, one of the participants.

The ceremony started at 7am, with participants marching from U Pwar Pagoda to Martyr Hill before laying memorial wreaths at 9am and offering food to 13 monks. Civil society organisations, writers and members of the public showed their respect by bowing to the martyrs.

One participant was Daw Nyo Nyo Than, the granddaughter of Bo Ba Htay, one of the 17 martyrs.

I participated last year. I think young people have come to know more the martyrs because of the efforts of civil society organisations, she said.

The uprising began as a strike against low wages that gathered support across the country despite violent repression by authorities. Its bloodiest day came as police opened fire on marchers in Mandalay, killing 17 unarmed protesters on 26th Street.





Translation by San Lay
Parliament confirmed yesterday that the presidential nomination deadline will be brought forward one week to March 10, in a move widely seen as a concession from the National League for Democracy that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not be Myanmars next president.





The party appeared to enter damage-control mode, with National League for Democracy spokesperson U Win Htein insisting that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would still be president sooner or later.

The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw had initially set March 17 as the deadline for the Pyithu Hluttaw, the Amyotha Hluttaw and the military to each put forward presidential nominees. The date was significantly later than previously anticipated  just two weeks before the next government takes office  and was seen as an attempt to buy more time for negotiations with the military aimed at making Daw Aung San Suu Kyi president.

Sources within the NLD said events in recent weeks have made clear that the military is unwilling to consider amendment or suspension of section 59(f), which bars Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency. A lengthy, third meeting with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on February 17 was tense and ended without any major agreement.

As The Myanmar Times reported on February 26, the party will instead revert to its original plan of nominating a proxy president. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will take another position within the government, most likely foreign minister, which would give her a seat on the National Defence and Security Council, though it would also require her to step down from party activities.

But U Win Htein yesterday told reporters that changing the presidential nomination date does not rule out the possibility of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi taking up the office.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi must be president sooner or later, he said [This issue] is not related to whether the date is changed or not. Think for yourself, read the constitution and the by-laws. It will happen. [We] are working to make it happen.





How soon a power-sharing agreement could be reached with the military to enable the NLD leader to hold the top office is another question, however.

Political analyst U Yan Myo Thein said he does not see a way that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could become the presidential nominee this month.

Analysis: The problems with "outsourcing" a proxy presidency

Parliament will take a short break from March 2 to 6. The break is believed in part to be aimed at defusing tensions that erupted last week between the NLD, the government and the military over a spate of controversial privatisations and tenders.

In an effort to avoid further confrontation with the military prior to the handover, Pyithu Hluttaw Speaker U Win Myint has instructed MPs from the NLD and allied ethnic parties to stay away from sensitive issues that could deviate from the peaceful transfer of power.

Parliament will resume on March 7, when it will start meeting for presidential nominations.

How can they amend or suspend article 59(f) within three days? said U Yan Myo Thein. It is clear that it is impossible for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to become president right now.

Regarding U Win Hteins promise that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be president, U Yan Myo Thein said he understood sooner or later to mean it could take two, three or even another five years.

He added that despite enduring junta rule for decades, the public must show further patience and wait until the military agrees to constitutional reform. Over the weekend, nationalists suggested that pushing through amendments without the backing of the defence services could prompt a coup.

In an interview with The Washington Post shortly after the election, Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said he was willing to work with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi but that transferring power to civilian control must be gradual, allowing for a mature and stable situation political situation in our country.

U Yan Myo Thein said that accelerating the presidential nomination date would allow a lengthier period for negotiating the make-up of the cabinet.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyis NLD won about 80 percent of the parliamentary seats up for grabs in the November 8, 2015, election. The exact date of the transition is unclear. The outgoing government has agreed to a handover ceremony on March 30, but state media yesterday referred to the new government taking office on April 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

There is no country in the world which takes so long to transfer power, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said during a meeting with ethnic parliamentarians yesterday. We are on the top of the list for lengthy handovers. No other country takes five months.
Drunk? Lazy? Unruly? Not very good at passing tests? National League for Democracy MPs may rule the roost in the marble halls of parliament, but if any of them step out of line they are apt to face discipline.





The word came down from none other than NLD chair Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who laid down the law in no uncertain terms in a one-hour meeting with her MPs yesterday.

Party spokesperson U Win Htein told reporters afterward that a complaints department had now been set up within the party. Anyone can file a complaint about an NLD MP for not doing their work properly, getting drunk or acting unruly, he said.

Central executive committee member U Myo Nyunt has been put in charge of the complaints department.

U Win Htein said that in the event of a complaint, the party would take action under its rules or, if the case was sufficiently serious, under the law. However, he said, the party would prefer to settle complaints in what he called a spirit of comradeship.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi also told her MPs to work hard. She must have said that 10 times, said U Win Htein.

He added that the party chair warned MPs who failed the test set by the NLD that they could face consequences. MPs from Yangon and Mandalay were the worst, and some even scored zero, he said.

She told the MPs who failed to try harder next time. She just likes pushing her people to be smarter, said U Win Htein.





When asked if the date for the nomination of the president and vice presidents had been brought forward from March 17 to March 10 because the NLD accepted that it was impossible to amend the constitution to allow Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to become president, he said, No.

Translation by Thiri Min Htun
The global trade in babies born through commercial surrogacy is slowly being shut down. India, Nepal, Thailand and Mexico have introduced measures that would limit or ban foreigners from hiring locals as surrogate mothers. Cambodia and Malaysia look likely to follow suit.





In an industry in which the conventional wisdom has long dismissed efforts to buck the market, this is a surprising  and welcome  development. Uncritical proponents of biotechnology tend to celebrate the fact that technological breakthroughs have outpaced government regulations, arguing that this has allowed science to progress unfettered. But the determination of countries that have historically been centres of commercial surrogacy to stop the practice underscores the naivete of that position.

It is no coincidence that the countries cracking down on cross-border surrogacy are those in which the practice takes place. The argument that all parties  surrogate mothers, babies and commissioning parents  benefit from the transaction has not withstood scrutiny.

Consider India, where the surrogacy industry is valued at US$400 million per year; until recently, some 3000 fertility clinics were operating in the country. And yet, as worries have mounted that commercial surrogacy leads to human trafficking and the exploitation of women, Indias authorities have concluded that the ethical concerns outweigh the economic benefits.

India has yet to finalise its anti-surrogacy legislation. But the way the debate has evolved since the first bill was proposed in 2008 illustrates the rapid change in how the practice is viewed. The earliest drafts of the legislation actually encouraged commercial surrogacy, mandating that mothers employed as surrogates surrender their babies. Given that under common law the woman who bears a child is legally its mother, this provision would have been radically pro-surrogacy.

Since then, however, the focus of the discussion has shifted, as unsavoury  and sometimes bizarre  aspects of the trade have come to light. For example, in one case, Germany  where surrogacy is illegal  refused to accept twin children of a German father born to an Indian surrogate, while India demurred at giving the father an exit visa so that he could remove the children.

In October 2015, Indias Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, under pressure from the countrys Supreme Court, declared that international commercial surrogacy was unconstitutional. The Council for Medical Research sent out a notification to all clinics, instructing them not to entertain foreign couples  including non-resident Indian citizens and people of Indian origin. The next month, the Department of Health Research banned the importation of embryos to be implanted into surrogate mothers, making the procedure nearly impossible.





To be sure, India is not the only country involved in cross-border surrogacy. Indeed, Indian regulations limiting surrogacy services to heterosexual couples who have been married for at least two years had already caused some of the trade to relocate, most notably to Thailand.

But there, too, attitudes have been shifting, especially after an Australian couple refused to take responsibility for a baby born through surrogacy who was diagnosed with Down syndrome. The couple did take the boys twin sister, however, making it clear that what they had paid for was not the service provided by the mother, but the children themselves  or rather, just the one who met their requirements. As a result, it has become harder to deny that cross-border surrogacy is akin to selling babies.

In August 2015, Thailand restricted surrogacy to couples in which at least one partner holds Thai nationality. Offences under the law are punishable by up to 10 years in prison  for the surrogate and commissioning parents alike. As in India, surrogacy touched a deep nerve in Thailand, where some see it as neo-colonialist exploitation, with babies as the raw commodities being extracted for the benefit of Westerners. This law aims to stop Thai womens wombs from becoming the worlds womb, was how a member of Thailands National Legislative Assembly put it.

By November 2015, about a dozen Indian and Thai clinics had shifted operations to Phnom Penh. That development might seem to support the argument that the trade can never be stamped out  only relocated. But, so far, the number of clinics that have set up shop in Cambodia is small. And some reports indicate that Cambodias interior ministry intends to treat commercial surrogacy as human trafficking, with a potential prison sentence.

Nepal, too, has declared a moratorium on surrogacy, after some in the country denounced the practice as exploitative. In April 2015, after an earthquake struck Kathmandu, Israel evacuated 26 babies born through surrogacy, but left their mothers  most of whom had crossed over from India  stranded in a disaster zone.

Malaysia also seems on track to ban the practice. And in Mexico, the state of Tabasco, the only jurisdiction in the country where surrogacy is legal, has restricted it to Mexican heterosexual married couples in which the wife is infertile. During the legislative debate, Deputy Veronica Perez Rojas denounced surrogacy as a new form of exploitation of women and trafficking.

There is the risk, of course, that the ongoing international clampdown will drive commercial surrogacy underground. But that risk only underscores the need for clear and strict legislation. Even if some would-be parents are willing to break the law, the vast majority will be deterred by the penalties.

The pro-surrogacy camp emphasises the benefits of the practice, which include increased reproductive choice and the accommodation of sexual pluralism. But while these may be genuine and important considerations, they cannot be placed above the need to prevent the exploitation of some of the worlds most vulnerable women.

 Project Syndicate

Donna Dickenson, emeritus professor of medical ethics and humanities at the University of London, is the author of the book Me Medicine vs We Medicine.
Nokias Threat Intelligence Lab Released research results today showing that, for the first time, smartphones are the victims of a majority of malware attacks in the mobile space. Until now, desktop computers and laptops running Windows software had sat at the top of that list, but the growing sophistication of malware targeted at mobile devices has vaulted the smartphone to the top of the list.

Whereas Windows personal computers used to be the most common targets of malware, the increased reliance on other operating systems and popularity of mobile devices has caused hackers to turn their attention elsewhere, to the point that this report found an infection rate of less than half a percent on personal computers running Windows.

On the other hand, malware attacks on mobile devices have begun to skyrocket. Phones running the Android system remain as the most targeted as of this report. However, one interesting development is that Apples iOS, highly touted for its safety and security, has begun to make a significant showing on the malware list. In fact, six percent of the total infections in October of 2015 were iPhone based. It is suspected that hackers were suddenly able to make this headway with iOS because of an Apple software development kit that was compromised.

Kevin McNamee, head of the Nokia Threat Intelligence Lab, said: "Security is a very real concern for any device with an IP address, be it Android, iPhone or even a Windows PC connected to the mobile network. In addition to phishing and adware, which can allow hackers to siphon off information about a smartphone user, there is also the spread of ransomware, which can encrypt data within a smartphone and then lock it, essentially holding the phone hostage until the hacker is paid. McNamee notes We also saw a rise in a variety of ransomware apps that try to extort money by claiming to have encrypted the phone's data.

Clearly, as hackers are turning their malicious efforts to the smartphone cybersecurity around mobile devices must be beefed up as well.

Edited by Maurice Nagle
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Many people I know, would put aside their Akon and R-kelly tapes and listen to Jon Germain in their stead. However very few of these people are Ghanaian; they are citizens of the west, who would love to hear the new sound of R'n'B. A sound that fuses the Charlie Wilson type of rhythm and blues, with other experimental sounds.

I dare say that in Africa, Jon Germain can easily be defined as the leader of this sound, blazing a trail that fuses the silky voiced stories, told in true R'n'B pattern and mashed with other sounds like rock and Hip-hop. This style has been brought to life in many songs from both his debut and sophomore albums. With songs like Quiver, Monday, Breathless, Can't explain and more.

Jon Germain's most recent attempt at making good music, breaks the bar. Being a writer with a thirst for both good music and exclusives, I make it a point to periodically check on the Channel O Awards nominee. A month ago, I finally heard what my ears have been itching for- Jon Germain has new music and I had to hear it first.

Taking a road-trip with him to Aburi (where he had a private concert), gave me the chance to hear, "Threesome". The track features VGMA artiste of the year nominee, E.L and Millitant Mindz Record boss, Dee Moneey. It's verses weigh the male tendency to love one woman and want to be in another's bed. Jon and the two others find a way to make the song sound less explicit than it should.

E.L brings a soft approach to his delivery, prancing his ability to be a lady's man. His verse solidifies his diversity. Making it easy to understand why he has the highest nominations at this year's VGMA's.. Dee Moneey, shows his growth as well. Bringing in his bi-lingual abiliies.

Dee Moneey hit all the high notes on this. Scoring points with lyrics, flow and timing and displaying his impressive grip of the GA language. Jon Germain weaved this track like a true song-writer. Tasteful lyrics, neatly arranged on a fine piece of instrumental, with a message that'd make many smirk. The man, who admits he used to be a rapper, took the last verse (in Hip-Hop, the last verse is reserved for the strongest performer), attempting to break the norm again. He ends the song in a manner that makes you itch to hear it again.

" I told my producer I wanna do something I have never done before record and create a song from scratch. Usually when I go to the studio I have already written the song. This song came after we started creating the beat. Its something most men can relate to. ', Jon Germain said, when describing the song and it's creative process.
Washington, DC, Feb, 29, GNA - The White House has shelved the petition on its website calling for the US government to end its sanctions against Sudan, which petitioners had said were 'oppressing the poor and innocent'.

When the deadline of February 15 ended, the petition had recorded 117,150 signatures - thus meeting the threshold of 100,000.

But a statement on the White House website said: 'This petition has been archived because it did not meet the signature requirements.'

Nothing more was said, but there had been earlier discrepancies regarding the signatures.

By February 10 the site recorded 93,752, only to come up with a figure of just over 75,000 signatures three days before the February 15 deadline.

The petition, which was first posted on January 16, read: 'The poor and helpless in Sudan are bearing the brunt of the economic sanctions imposed on the country by the United States 23 years ago.

'The intended goal of the sanctions might have been to weaken the oppressive government of Sudan, but they are producing exactly the opposite result.

'They are weakening and impoverishing the people of Sudan and strengthening the grip of the regime on the country.

'We plead with president Obama to do the right and humane thing by ordering an immediate end to the Sudan sanctions.'

The petitioners were emboldened by an opinion piece published on January 14 on the website of the US magazine, Foreign Policy, which highlighted the dire plight of ordinary Sudanese people in the face of crippling US sanctions against their country.

The petitioners' argument is that the unintended consequence of US sanctions on the living standards of ordinary Sudanese has been exceptionally severe.

They note that in key sectors such as finance, transportation, agriculture, health, and information technology there has been serious 'damage to the lives and opportunities of ordinary people in Sudan to free themselves from poverty, wreaked by the US sanctions regime - including the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) listing'.

Their argument goes: 'Even though it sees them as unjustified, arbitrary, and unfair, the government of Sudan has a moral obligation to never give up actively trying to get US economic sanctions removed.

'Sanctions invariably tend to have a direct proportional relationship with the bottom of the pyramid.

'They hurt the poor hardest. Sudan has been no exception to this rule.'

We the People on the White House website is an initiative to give greater access to citizens to petition the US president to take action on issues close to their hearts.

When it was launched in September 2011, the threshold for signatures that would warrant a response from the administration was just 5,000.

But as the website began receiving strange requests, such as secession by some states from the Union, the signature threshold was gradually ramped up until it reached the current 100,000.

The Atlantic Monthly, in an article on its website reported that the administration of President Barack Obama had come in for criticism 'for selective answering and long response times'. The publication quoted a 2011 argument by J.H. Snider, a former fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Centre for Ethics at Harvard University: "We the People will likely have a short shelf life for the same reason so many political initiatives have short shelf lives: because the interests of the public and elected officials are misaligned.

"The public is inclined to ask politicians to take controversial stands that politicians have no rational self-interest in taking."

GNA
Accra, March 1, GNA - Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo- Addo, the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for Election 2016, has faulted the ruling government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for creating economic hardships for Ghanaians.

He blasted the NDC and its leader President John Mahama for incompetent governance and mismanagement of the economy, which he said has plunged the nation into crisis.

Speaking in Accra, at a press conference, in reaction to President Mahama's State of the Nation Address delivered to Parliament last Thursday, Nana Akufo-Addo repeatedly said, 'I believe the only conclusion to draw is that ours is a nation in crisis.

'Ghana is a nation in crisis.'

The press conference was also attended by NPP's Vice Presidential Candidate Dr Mahamud Bawumia, former President John Kufuor, spouses of the flag bearer and his deputy, some NPP Members of Parliament and the Party hierarchy.

Nana Akufo-Addo also accused the Mahama administration of systematically "plundering the public purse," thereby turning Ghana into a 'country devastated economic landscape."

'Ghana is where it is today because of reckless borrowing by incompetent government because of an introduction of amateur and systematic plundering of the public purse,' he said.

He said the President presented a different picture from what was really on the ground.

Nana Akufo Addo said: 'It is obvious the President did not want to tell us the true State of the Ghanaian Economy. This is the good-news-story-telling President,' Nana Akufo-Addo said, adding that he was left in 'shock when President Mahama delivered the address.

The NPP Flagbearer said he expected the President to touch on the difficulties and hardship Ghanaians were experiencing, but the Address offered no hope and "bore very little resemblance to the reality of today's Ghana".

He said: 'When the President of the Republic rose before Parliament in engulfment of his constitutional obligation to deliver his message on the state of the nation last Thursday, I watched on television in the hope that he will capture the difficulties that face our people daily.

'I waited to hear him admit that we are in crisis and I expected him to offer a glimmer of hope and ask all of us Ghanaians to help resolve the crisis in which we find ourselvesUnfortunately millions of Ghanaians including my humble self, waited in vain. President Mahama painted the picture that bore very little resemblance to the reality that is today's Ghana.'

'Mr. President are you living in the same Ghana as the rest of us? I was forced to draw the conclusion that the President has chosen to tell us a tale of two 'Ghanas' during his three-hour forty minutes speech.

'There is the Ghana inhabited by the President, his family, friends and a select small group, then there is a real Ghana inhabited by the remaining 27 million of us. '

On the power crisis, Nana Akufo Addo said the power crisis 'dumsor' created financial loss of more than three billion dollars, and loss of jobs.

"Coca-Cola, Mantrac, Cadbury, Novotel, Golden Tulip and several others have been forced by the cost of dumsor to lay off workers,' he said, and flayed President Mahama for taking credit for the relative power supply to homes and factories, saying "How can you expect credit for resolving a problem you caused? And at a high cost?"

He assured the nation that the time has come to build a new, globally competitive economy with the NPP under his leadership and the policy offered by his Administration to introduce and improve upon existing skills training to drive a new industrialised economy.

He announced that the NPP would pass a Fiscal Responsibility Act to enforce this, and enhance transparency by working to passing into law the long overdue Right to Information Bill.

GNA
Accra, March 1, GNA - The Ghana Co-operative Susu Collectors Association (GCSCA) has requested from the Bank of Ghana the mandate to be able to sanction non-complaint members.

Mr Edmund Benjamin-Addy, Head of Monitoring and Supervision, GCSCA speaking at the Association/BUSAC Advocacy Action stakeholders' workshop, said the Association wanted the mandate to caution their members before any action was taken.

The advocacy action seeks to attain comprehensive self-regulated Susu business environment in the country. It also seeks to ensure sanity in the operation of Susu schemes and security of clients' savings.

According to Mr Benjamin-Addy, a considerable number of its members did not comply with the documentation and reporting practices prescribed by the Bank of Ghana under the self-regulation scheme.

'Nearly half of the operators are not conforming to the documentation and reporting requirement of the regulator,' he added.

He said the Bank of Ghana delayed in sanctioning illegal operators, hence the Association's request to be given the mandate to effect arrest and prosecute illegal operators, if need be.

He said there was the need for intensive public education on the activities of the Association to broaden the understanding of the self-regulation and supervision function and framework.

Mr Stephen Nortey, Representative, Bank of Ghana, said the BOG wanted a safe financial system for the development of the country.

He said although the mandate to arrest and prosecute rested on national security, the BOG was looking for certain structures in the Association before such mandate could be given to it.

Mr Nortey, therefore, called on the Board of GCSCA to strengthen its structures to be transparent and accountable to its clients to help grow the financial industry.

He assured the Association of the Bank's commitment to eliminating bad nuts from the industry.

GNA
01.03.2016 LISTEN

Accra, March 1, GNA - Mr Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa, Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Tertiary, said the National Accreditation Board and the National Council for Tertiary Education had drawn-up new guidelines for the accreditation of new universities to meet standards.

He explained that for a new university to be approved for accreditation, 'it must more or less show that it is going to give priority to science and technology in line with Government's determination to implement and enforce the 60:40 policy guidelines'.

Mr Ablakwa said this during the Nineth Congregation of the first batch of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) graduates of the Accra Institute of Technology (AIT) at the weekend which also saw the graduation of 240 Bachelor degree holders

He said the policy guidelines were to give priority to science, mathematics and engineering programmes in the tertiary institutions.

Professor Clement Dzidonu, AIT President, enumerated the achievements of the university over the past seven years, saying: 'The achievements mark not only an AIT history, but also a history in the annals of private university education in this country.

'AIT becomes the first private university in Ghana to successfully offer, run and graduate students on an internationally benchmarked PhD degree programme.

'This is no small achievement if put within the context of the fact that the PhD per capita of Ghana is just 2.72 per million population; given the fact that over 250 PhD students are now enrolled at AIT, the university has become one of the leading postgraduate research institutions on the continent.

'AIT will be graduating more PhDs in Business Administration, Engineering, and Information Technology before the close of the year'.

Prof. Dzidonu said for AIT the future was technology and that even all the humanities programmes offered by the university, majority had technology components.

He gave examples in the area of the Business Administration programmes with combined options like: Marketing and Information Technology; Human Resource and Information Technology, and Entrepreneurship and Information Technology among others.

He said about 75 per cent of the graduating class on the Bachelor's degree programme offered in affiliation with the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology were engineers and information technologists.

Professor Francis K. Allotey, the Chairman of the AIT Board of Trustees, announced the election of two eminent internationally distinguished academics to the Board.

One is Professor Goolam Mohamedbhai who is the Former Vice Chancellor of University of Mauritius; former Secretary General of the Association of African Universities (AAU); former President of the International Association of Universities (IAU) and the former Chairman of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

The other is Professor Anuwar Ali, the former Vice Chancellor of the National University of Malaysia; former President and Vice Chancellor of the Open University of Malaysia and member of the Higher Education Council of Malaysia.

'With this new members, the AIT Board of Trustees now boasts of five former vice chancellors of world-class universities; there is no doubt that AIT has the most high-powered and academically distinguished University Board on the African continent,' Prof Allotey said.

GNA
The University of Ghana (UG) Alumni Association, has begun the construction of the mothers wing of the University of Ghana Hospital.

The GHE400,000 extension project will house mothers whose children are on admission at the Hospital.

Tullow Oil Ghana Limited has provided the Association with GHE100,000.00 to start the project, while PW Ghana Limited is providing cement and iron rods.

The 18-bed facility consists of five rooms, with VIP room for single men whose children are on admission in the Hospital.

Professor Ernest Aryeetey, the Vice Chancellor of UG, who performed the ground breaking for the project in Accra on Monday, lauded the alumni for coming out with such an initiative.

He said the facility would help alleviate the predicament of mothers whose children were on admission in the Hospital.

Paa Kwesi Yankey, the Chairman of the UG Alumni Association, said mothers whose children happen to be on admission in the Hospital were required to stay around, but unfortunately, there was no specific space for them.

He said the Alumni Association therefore, deemed it fit to provide such a facility to lessen their stress and provide some level of comfort for them.

He further assured that the project would be completed by the end of June to enable Prof Aryeetey commission it, before leaving office as the Vice Chancellor.

Dr Christian K. Amenuveve, the Director of the UG Hospital, expressed his gratitude to the Alumini for coming to the aid of the Hospital.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Former President John Agyekum Kufuor says the government must put in place tough measures to deal with the problem of nomadic herdsmen in parts of the country.

He says the herdsmen must be arrested and their cattle confiscated if they breach that law.

Mr. Kufuors comment comes at a time that Agogo indigenes in the Ashanti Region are in arms with nomadic herdsmen.

The indigenes have complained about the destruction of their farms by cattle reared by the nomadic herdsmen.

The problem has been long dragging. Perhaps what needs to happen hasnt been undertaken. We have always been scratching the surface. Policy on livestock must be put in place, Mr. Kufour said.

The ex-president said Ghana must adopt the ranch system like U.S. where ranch owners are made to acquire the land on which they raise their livestock.

This, Kufuor explained, will prevent nomadic herdsmen from entering Ghanas territories to go into people lands and destroy them.

The ex-NPP flag bearer lamented how some of the nomadic herdsmen lately carry dangerous weapons like AK47 and so on to treat the natives like they are nothing.

Mr. Kufour believes It is long overdue that the law is passed such that if people want to raise livestock, they must be made to acquire the land.

According to Kufour, implementation of such a law should be regulated starting with the local government areas where concessions are made and given out to people who want to raise livestock.

If a cattle rearer fails to abide by the law, the state must confiscate the animals or arrest the owners and deal with them according to the law, said ex-President Kufour.

He further suggested that from the local government level such laws can be moved to the national level where is it decentralized.

President Kufour said with decentralization the local authorities are helped by the central authority to make and enforce the laws.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim | Email: [email protected]
02.03.2016 LISTEN

To set aside the verdict pronounced in favour of the alleged destooled Kumawu sub-chiefs now famously and popularly called The Big Four.

It is on record that the masquerading Kumawuhene Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah had allegedly destooled Kumawu Akwamuhene Nana Kwasi Bafo, Kumawu Aduanahene Nana Sarfo Agyekum, Kumawu Akyempemhene Nana Okyere Krapa and Kumawu Sumankwaahene Nana Okyere Darko Fordwuor for not attending his bogus swearing in as the Kumawuhene-elect.

A true form copy of the letter written at his behest by the Kumawu Traditional Council to the Ashanti Regional Police Commander DCOP Nathan Kofi Boakye stating his reasons for destooling them, and subsequently soliciting his intervention to arrest them should they ever publicly conduct themselves as sub-chiefs, was published on Modernghana under the following web link: https://www.modernghana.com/news/589565/1/kumawuhene-sends-a-manipulative-letter-to-police-c.html

On what valid grounds has Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah petitioned the Chief Justice Mrs Theodora Georgina Wood against the truthful and legally sound judgment declared by the Mampong High Court judge in favour of the above mentioned plaintiffs, and as partially explained in a video posted on YouTube under the title, Court reinstates Kumawu sub-chiefs and under the web link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDds3Yn-pAk?

From my investigations conducted into the petition, he has asked the Chief Justice to set aside the verdict because he perceives the judge to have been biased, and unfair, in his ruling, to the defendants of whom Asantehene, Asanteman Council and he, are principal members.

In order not to wastefully spend my time and that of the reading public, let me start asking him pertinent questions.

Does Dr Yaw Sarfo see himself as an eligible Kumawu Omanhene?

Did he take his swearing-in oath before, or in the presence of, Kumawu Kontrihene and Akwamuhene; and did both principal sub-chiefs on the other hand swear the oath of allegiance to him? If answered in the affirmative, when and how? If the answer is in the negative, why?

Is it not captured on video that has since found its way onto the YouTube portal that instances of bribery, extortion and corruption meant to influence the Kumawu kingmakers to accept him as the Kumawuhene-elect did occur? Watch the video titled, Asantehene involves in corruption using the web link hereby indicated to ascertain whether or not the cited infractions did take place.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac8wZIPlVu8

Are the established and acknowledged instances of bribery, extortions, and corruptions as captured on video camera not in breach of the Ghana Criminal Code 1960 (Act 29) and The Warrington Notes Section 13? Are such breaches without specified punishment? Refer to the details of the consequences of such breaches by reading a publication on Ghanaweb via the underlying web linkhttp://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/RE-Asantehene-is-the-Overlord-of-Asanteman-338032

Had the sub-chiefs he purportedly destooled not been served a court injunction issued to prevent them from participating in any acts leading to the swearing in of Dr Yaw Sarfo as the Kumawuhene-elect until an inventory and other related matters pending before the courts and the Ashanti Regional House of Chiefs Judicial Committee have been determined by competent judges?

Additionally, were some of the purported destooled sub-chiefs not indisposed at the time of Dr Yaw Sarfo swearing his oath as the Kumawuhene-elect hence their double whammy (restraining injunction and sickness) inability to attend? When the late Kumawu Kontrihene, Nana Peprah Koduah II, claimed he was ill hence could not attend Dr Yaw Sarfos swearing in, Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II could not believe him. Asantehene arranged to bundle him from his hospital bed in Kumasi to Manhyia to sit for Dr Yaw Sarfo to swear the oath of allegiance to him as the Kumawuhene-elect. Asantehenes attempts were only to be thwarted by the medical Doctor caring for Kontrihene at the hospital. The person they never believed was sick passed away shortly afterwards. See his funeral in a video posted on YouTube via this link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeuihclmwEI

Was Dr Yaw Sarfo himself not under the same or subject to, the injunction seeking to prevent him from being sworn in as Kumawuhene-elect until the inventory issue and other related matters had been settled by Court and the mentioned Judicial Committee?

Does the office of Asantehene or any Asantehene have the traditional right, whether absolute or not, to impose anyone on Kumawu as their paramount chief (Omanhene)? If they have, when in the history of Asanteman or Kumawu, dating from the inception and formation (about 300 years ago) and reformation (about 80 years ago and in 1935) of the Ashanti Confederacy, did any such instance occur? If Asantehene has no treaty or conventional right to do so, why is Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II attempting to do the contrary, thus, needlessly autocratically involving himself in the Kumawu stool affairs as the giant possessing the do or break powers to determine the fate of not only the stool but also, the people of Kumawuman?

Why must a competent Court judge recognise the abuse of power, both conventional and Constitutional, by Asantehene in the instance of his arbitrary exercise of power over Kumawu with regard to its stool dispute brought before him and the Asanteman Council for adjudication? Did he not connive with his elders through coercion to impose Dr Yaw Sarfo on the Kumawu kingmakers and by extension Kumawu, as Kumawuhene-elect? Confirm this by watching the above cited video on Asantehene involves in corruption

When somehow challenged, did Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II not allege without shame and fear that he is above the laws of the land, so his wishes and decisions will always prevail, regardless? See his bold declaration in a video posted on YouTube via the web link underneath. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyOnlURv7Ys

Is Ghana not a democracy than a total monarchy? Are people not supposed to be treated almost equally, accorded the same human rights and be subject to the same laws, prosecuted and punished when they infringe the laws as may be enshrined in the nations Constitution and Acts of Parliament?

With all these clearly established breaches of law and trust, on what grounds do Kumawuhene Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah and his agents and assigns credibly legally petition the Chief Justice to overturn the ruling by the Mampong Regional High Court judge? Are the petitioners not making a mockery of themselves, the process and the Chief Justice?

Finally, how can the Chief Justice give a favourable response to him in the very midst of the public anger at the revealed cancerous corruption within the Ghana judiciary by the countrys ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas?

Unless the Chief Justice is herself corrupt or wants to be corrupt or be supportive of corruption, there is no way that she will grant the injunctive-reliefs sought by Kumawuhene Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah (Dr Yaw Sarfo) in his petition to her? The Chief Justice is very much aware that the whirlwind of the revealed infestation of judicial corruption in Ghana has not yet settled, so she will not do anything that will escalate the publics anger towards the judiciary of which she is the Head.

Over to you the reading public, please let your views be heard on this issue for we have the collective obligation and interest to fight judicial corruption and the practice of selective justice prevalent in Ghana.

We should not allow a few inherently corrupt individuals like Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Kumawuhemaa Nana Abenaa Serwaah Amponsah and Kumawuhene Barimah Sarfo Tweneboah Koduah to always twist, or seek to twist, the laws of the land, to suit their caprices and insatiable greed.

Why should we sit on the fence while they paint the few honest and fair judges black with the evil intention of bringing them down simply to achieve their selfish and diabolical agenda?

Why is the Son of Kumawu/Asiampa so concerned with the Kumawu chieftaincy dispute to ensure that only justice and the truth do prevail? His answer to any would-be inquirer lies in a statement once made by the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. He said and I quote, Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph".

Rockson Adofo
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Teachers in Chemu Senior High School in Tema are up in arms against the Headmistress of the institution, Ms Felicia Assimeng-Kore over what they described as negligence of duty leading to the suspension of the salaries of over a hundred teaching and non-teaching staff.

The educational institution was thrown into a state of pandemonium on Monday February 29 when the teachers got wind of the fact that their salaries for February had not been paid while that of other public sector workers across the country had been paid by the Controller and Accountant Generals Department (CAGD).

Teachers were seen in the morning in groups discussing the issue trying to figure out what may have caused the problem for the suspension of their salaries.

The development has affected morale of the teachers as some of them spent a greater portion of the school hours strategizing how they were going to survive under the present harsh economic conditions as well as perform roles expected of them.

Ms Assimeng-Kore, in sensing danger quickly organized an emergency staff meeting which she took advantage to explain the matter to the teachers and find an amicable way of containing it in order not to disrupt academic work in the school.

Present at the meeting included the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Secretary for the Tema Metropolis as well as the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Database (IPPD) Coordinator for the Tema Metro Education Office.

The Headmistress, try as she did to explain the issue failed to convince the aggrieved teachers who needed nothing but their salaries.

Hell however broke loose when the teachers were told by the GNAT representative that the teachers would get their February salary at the end of March if they worked around the clock to get some documentation forwarded early enough to the CAGD.

Deep throat sources told News Ghana the Headmistress deliberately failed to complete her portion of the validation forms early enough for the CAGD to effect payment.

It was confirmed she did the same thing in the month of January by refusing to complete her portion of the validation form even though the school administrator completed hers.

The angry teachers are therefore calling on the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to transfer the head from the school immediately, else she would collapse the school through her negligence and incompetence.

Some teachers who preferred to speak on anonymity told this reporter that Ms Assimeng-Kore had taken it upon herself to victimize anyone who spoke against her administration.

Chemu used to be a very good school in terms of academics but ever since this woman was made the head, academic standards keeps falling year after year. She is running the school as if it is her private property. I think it is time the GES moved her out of this place, one teacher emphasized.

Another one said, I am appealing to President John Dramani Mahama to intervene in this matter because officials in the ministry and GES who are supposed to deal with this woman are shielding her as a result of which she can do anything that she wants. She doesnt have respect for any teacher in this school.

As at the time of filing this report, a letter written by the school addressed to the CAGD signed by the Headmistress and the Metro GES Director for Education was being sent to Accra to see if anything could be done for the salaries to be paid.

It would be recalled that Chemu Senior High School was engulfed in payroll fraud as well as other allegations last year in which Ms Assimeng-Kore was heavily fingered.

The Ministry of Education, GES and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) took the matter but were yet to come up with the full facts. Enditem.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

ROME  The heads of the African Union (AU) and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today hailed the inaugural Africa Day of School Feeding, marking AU recognition of school meals as the worlds most widely used safety net with a vital role in education.

School meals provide critical social support, encouraging more regular attendance at school and contributing to childrens protection in emergencies. They are also a key long-term investment in millions of peoples futures, in local economies, and in reducing hunger across the globe.

School meals programmes are a vital way to not only increase class enrolment but to also sustain attendance, improve school performance, and to grow local economies, said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin. Further, when it comes to encouraging girls access to school, adding just one year of school meals is proven to increase absolute enrolment by nearly 30 percent, Cousin added.

In Africa, more than 10 million children benefited from WFP school meals programmes in 41 countries in 2014. More than half the children assisted worldwide by WFP with school meals live in Africa.Globally, over 370 million children receive school meals in 131 countries, primarily through government systems.

Children attend school more regularly when they are provided with meals there. They also tend to lead healthier and more productive lives. The first Africa Day of School Feeding focuses on Home-Grown School Meals, where local farmers produce food that is then purchased for use in school meals, maximizing the benefits for students, farmers and local communities.

School feeding programmes are not new to Africa, in fact, some among us (became) who we are today because of school meals, said H.E Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini, Chairperson of the African Union Commission.

It has to be noted that the link with local (food) production is a new approach which is actually a safety net that may be used in accessing food and stimulating local markets. It helps households to invest in productive activities and participate in human development, particularly in the form of financial assistance.

The leaders applauded the January decision by the African Union Heads of State and Government to introduce an Africa Day of School Feeding and adopt Home-Grown School Feeding as a continental strategy enhancing the retention and performance of students and bringing economic benefits to farmers and local communities.

Such programmes equate to an income transfer to students families and economically benefit communities, leading to higher incomes for students as educated and productive adults. Investments in school meals produce remarkable benefits and, according to an analysis conducted by WFP, every dollar spent on a school meals programme can result in a return worth as much as US$3 to US$9.

WFP, the worlds largest humanitarian supporter of school meals, partners with other agencies and governments in 41 African nations on school meals programmes, providing technical and operational support to governments that guide the individual projects and tailor these to their unique needs.

This includes securing primary school childrens access to a balanced, nutritious meal, promoting opportunities to diversify the food basket with local products, and reinforcing skills and good habits in nutrition, health and hygiene.

In Ghana, WFP provides onsite school meals to 48,000 children and take home food rations to 30,000 girls in northern Ghana.

About WFP

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience. Each year, WFP assists some 80 million people in around 80 countries.

The African Union represents 54 countries under the motto: Towards a peaceful, prosperous and integrated Africa.

Follow us on Twitter @wfp_media add your local Twitter handle, if relevant; @unicefxxxxx
The unprecedented achievements of President Mahama have made NDC party so attractive in the UK leading to the opening of more branches. On Saturday 27th February, NDC UK and Ireland Chapter inaugurated two more branches in Hull and Sheffield, this has brought the total number of branches in the UK to nine. This event took place in Sheffield.

In attendance to grace the occasion were Hon. Victor Smith, Ghana High Commissioner to the UK, National Vice Chairman of the NDC Hon. Ofosu Amofo and Hon. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, Minister of State at the presidency.

In his opening address the Chairman of the NDC UK and Ireland Chapter, Mr. Kofi Kwakye congratulated all the Chapter and branch executives for their contribution in the formation of these two branches. He challenged the newly elected executives to bring more members in and take their roles serious.

Hon. Ofosu Ampofo who swore the newly elected executives into office suggested that gender balance should be a priority in future leadership roles.

According to Hon. Ampofo, the only party that can build a better Ghana is the NDC party. He encouraged NDC members to contact family members back home to vote massively for the NDC.

On the achievements of the NDC government, he stated that the unprecedented infrastructural developments will not only benefit our generation but also future generations. Hon. Ampofo advised members to remain united and be proud of our new electoral system which is one of the best in Africa.

The Ghana High Commissioner to the UK, His Excellency Victor Smith, who was the Guest Speaker congratulated Hon. Ofosu Ampofo and Hon. Elvis Ankrah for honouring the invitation to this memorable inauguration ceremony. He also congratulated the Chapter executives for their hard work.

His Excellency Victor Smith in his address also stated that since the NPP has no campaign message for the 2016 elections, they have resorted to unnecessary distractions. He stressed that these distractions will not work since the achievements of the government are magnificent for Ghanaians to see and appreciate. According to His Excellency, the NPP keep changing their message when NDC exposes them with facts and figures. He concluded that there are over half a million Ghanaians in the UK so members should preach the achievements of the government to our countrymen and women in the UK to win more members to the NDC.

Hon. Elvis Ankrah applauded the exemplary leadership skills of President Mahama for taking bold and tough decisions which are in the interest of our country. He also enumerated some of the outstanding projects President Mahama and his team have completed in Ghana.

According to Hon. Ankrah, with the numerous corrupt practices in the last NPP government still hanging around their neck and bad leadership in the current NPP, Ghanaians are not prepared to hand over power to the NPP. He was therefore confident of victory in November 7th elections. Hon. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah also elaborated on several developmental projects which have been completed throughout the length and breadth of the country.

Representatives from all the branches; Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Luton, Birmingham Manchester, London North and London South delivered their solidarity messages and welcomed Sheffield and Hull branches to the NDC fraternity in the UK.

There were also solidarity messages from members to a highly charged crowd full of joy in party panaphenaria .

In his acceptance speech the Chairman of Sheffield branch Mr Francis Acquah expressed his profound gratitude to all members for making the inauguration a great success. Mr Alexis Yirkpiere, the newly elected Chairman of Hull also thanked members and promised to work hard for the party.

Michael Frempong

PRO NDC UK & Ireland Chapter
02.03.2016 LISTEN

There are legions of Kperisis in the country where the much-touted Better Ghana Agenda has yet to make a desirable dent. Kperisi, of course, refers to that basic  or elementary  school in the Wa municipality, in the Upper-West Region, where several hundred pupils had reportedly been taking lessons while sitting on the bare floor for at least a year now, even as Messrs. John Dramani Mahama and Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur, president and vice-president, respectively, took their electioneering campaign roadshow around the country bragging about the fiber optic wiring up of nearly every public school in synch with the global cybernetic wave.

What makes the situation even more outrageous is that barely a week ago, President Mahama told a packed chamber of Ghanas Parliament that of the 200 Senior High Schools that he promised to add to the existing national public stock, in a bid to creating more opportunities for highly qualified but woefully underprivileged Junior High School graduates, 123 were already under construction and nearing completion. Well, as of this writing, we had been apprised by an expert observer on the ground that in reality funding had been made available, through the release of a $156 million World Bank grant, for only 23 Senior High Schools (See SONA 2016: Six Key Issues in Education the President Got Completely Wrong  VIAM Africa Modernghana.com 3/1/16).

What this obviously means is that President Mahama literally lied through his teeth when he asserted in his most recent State-of-the-Nation Address (SONA) that 123 out of the promised 200 Senior High Schools were under construction. This is interesting because at the Kperisi Basic School, the government has been running a furniture deficit of some 500 desks and chairs for quite a number of years now; and it had to take the timely intervention of Alhaji-Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice-Presidential Candidate of the countrys main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), who ordered that many pieces of furniture to be made for the school, to bring smiles onto the innocent faces of the Kperisi pupils who have literally been rolling in the dirt.

The problem was solved a la the proverbial Road to Kukurantumi, when the principal, or headmistress, of the school, Ms. Rosina Die  some versions of the news report had her last name spelt Diedong  made a passionate public appeal for assistance. This bold and courageous act is alleged to have riled up the NDC-dominated membership of the Kperisi District Assembly which demanded an unqualified apology from Headmistress Die or Diedong. The basis of this apology demand is not clear to yours truly, since the Kperisi assembly members cannot pretend to have been unaware of the plight of these pupils who may well be their relatives, to varying degrees, as well.

In other words, these Kperisi local politicians could not candidly claim to have been deliberately embarrassed by Headmistress Die/Diedong. They had simply been exposed in broad daylight for their abject and gross incompetence. And they know poll-wise that their days are numbered, thus their crassly impudent attempt to scapegoat Ms. Die/Diedong. And as if she has not been mentally and emotionally Gitmoed enough, now we hear that some thuggish NDC-sponsored urchins in the Kperisi community are threatening the life of Auntie Rosina. And here, a strong signal must be sent to these cynical and unconscionable rascals that if any harm comes to Auntie Rosina, these NDC Abongo Boys would rue the very dates of their births.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
A Kumasi Circuit Court has sentenced a 41 year old farmer, Kofi Antwi, alias Ratty to ten years imprisonment in hard labour for possessing Indian Hemp.

Kofi Antwi who pleaded guilty to the charge was arrested with dried leaves suspected to be Indian Hemp concealed in a black polythene bag while travelling on the Obuasi-Kumasi road.

Prosecutor, Chief Inspector, Comfort Baffour Kyei told the court presided over by Mrs Afua Adu- Amankwaah the convict, on September 21, 2015 was arrested by the Highway Patrol Unit on the Obuasi-Kumasi highways.

A search on a Sanyong Mini Bus led to the discovery of the dried leaves. Antwi claimed ownership of the item.

According to prosecution, a forensic examination confirmed the substance as Indian Hemp, weighing 128.24 grams.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

PUSAG CONGRATULATES CENTRAL UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AND APPEALS TO GOVERNMENT TO DO MORE TO BETTER THE LOT OF PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN THE COUNTRY

The National Executive Council of the Private University Student Association of Ghana, the Alumni Association and indeed the entire PUSAG fraternity is very much pleased with the final approval and decision of the National Accreditation Board (NAB) and the Government of Ghana to award Central University College, a full-fledged University status, otherwise known as charter.

Even as we applaud government and the National Accreditation Board (NAB) for this historic feat, which had been long overdue, we wish to plead with government to also consider the genuine plight of other Private Universities in the country, that are deserving of charter or autonomy status but have been denied same for ages.

Central University has been one of our strong constituents since the establishment of PUSAG. We are quick to point out that it has supported our cause through thick and thin. Central University is in fact, one of our founding member institutions and a major contributor to our success stories this far.

PUSAG is happy to observe that our age-long struggle with government for the grant of charter to deserving Private Universities is now yielding some dividends. We salute the legendary efforts of former administration including the Panlogo Logodam led PUSAG Administration and that of Mohammed Adams Supkaru, which laid the foundation for this milestone feat with unbridled and incessant pressure on government to listen to the cry of Private Universities especially in the grant of charter status.

For example, Valley View University which is amongst the 3 autonomous private universities and others yet to be charted brought a new breathe into our educational system in the country. Our Universities keep experiencing massive expansion and is able to churn out quality products, many of whom are now the captains of our industry, whose contributions towards the socio-economic development of Ghana cannot be exaggerated.

Generally, private universities in the country, except those with charter status, are mentored and supervised by autonomous Universities including the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and University of Cape Coast. The affiliation to these Universities put a chain of slavery around the neck of these private universities, making it almost impossible for them to effectively expand. This affiliation comes with huge and burdensome financial commitments to the institutions they are affiliated to; a development, which explains why Private University Education in the country is outrageously expensive because the owners and managers of these institutions have to at least, break-even.

Today, we share in the joy of Central University and want to use this opportunity to congratulate the management of the Institution and the entire student populace. PUSAG also wishes to express its profound gratitude to the Government of Ghana for granting one of our constituents, a deserving autonomy status. However, we wish to once again postulate that, there exists a good number of Private Universities which have met all the criteria and need to be awarded with a charter status.

We are also hopeful that government would soon grant these institutions audience as soon as possible so that Private Universities in the country can continue to grow and thus, complement government's efforts in the provision of affordable quality tertiary education in the country and beyond.

Thank you.

... SIGNED....

Francis Kwabena Asante

Media Relations Director, PUSAG

Richard Odame

National President, PUSAG

(024 394 4302)
Charles Antwi

02.03.2016 LISTEN

On four failed attempts to murder the president, Mr. Charles Antwi was arrested on the 26th of July, 2015 at the Ringway Assemblies of GOD where the first gentleman of the republic worships. How pathetic, he was never spotted in the three previous visits as he had on two occasions a fully loaded gun.

After the arrest he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for wrongful handling of weapon, this decision was reversed as he was alleged to be a mentally unstable person suffering from systematized delusional disorder, and did not receive proper treatment; be it pharmaceutical, social, rehabilitative or whichever treatment, he was alleged not to have fully recovered.

A big question to asked, why should a partially treated patient be discharged from the health facility; maybe he was discharged against doctor's advice. If so, was there any tracking measures put in place to ensure he recovers fully.

In his residence, he was killed on the 9th of February, 2016 in cold blood; Mr. J. B. Danquah Adu, a member of parliament for the Abuakwa North constituency, may his soul rest in peace. Few days after his death, it was in the news that the suspected killer had confessed to killing the late MP with the aid of two accomplices, the news then changed; he went to steal then in a clash, he stabbed the man to death. In less than a month, after confessing to the murder, the legal team of the killer seeks for mental examination, to prove that their client is mentally unstable.

In less than a week of the murdering of the Abukwa North MP, Mrs. Babara Asher Ayisi nearly suffered a similar fate of the late MP on the 13th of February, 2016 in her residence where another young man entered her premises with the intention of murdering her. After the incident, it was reported the young man was mentally unstable. Just in five days another man suspected to be mentally unstable single handed ended the lives of six family members in their home whiles taking supper.

It is hovering in the media that Ghana is on a time bomb which can explode anytime. What may cause it to explode, the security experts maybe in the right seat to answer it. From the sequence of occurrence, the men involved in the attempt of murdering or murdering of the president and the MPs are thirty three years, twenty two years and nineteen years old, all in the prime of their age, full of energy and power to execute whatever they plan to do. Questions may be asked, is something wrong with the country that the future (young generation) of the country are suffering from mental instability or the legal minds are trying to play around with the Mental Health Act, 2012 ( Act 846).

If these men have had their way to top ranked persons in the country and some achieved their mission and others close as possible to their vision, can one question the kind of security the security force is providing the citizens of the country.

Life is worth living, there is no tomorrow if you fail to live today, there is hope ones there is life. But if life is being taking under the veil of mental instability, then hope might linger in hopes to hope on a little while. With a humble request, the security department of the nation in conjunction with the health sector ( mental health service) should help prevent some of these things before they happen in the future since they have been mandated by the Mental Health Act, 2012. There is hope, so live on the dreams till you make them a reality.

GHANA will live.

GHANA must live.

Long live GHANA.

[email protected]
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Nigeria is considered the economic powerhouse in the West African region. As it is also popular known, Nigeria is one of the Africa's fastest growing economies and it boosts the largest population. After the change over of the presidency in May 2015, from H.E. President Goodluck Jonathan to the newly elected leader H.E. President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria is ready to take practical steps to continue bolstering economic and strategic ties with Russia.

Interestingly, Russia and Nigeria's two-way trade was a modest $350 million recorded in 2013. Authorities in both countries have acknowledged that trade transaction should be many times larger, given that Russia is the biggest market in the former Soviet Union and Nigeria the biggest market in Africa.

Now, new hopes in Moscow and Abuja are that the countries' annual commercial ties have to increase rapidly to billions of dollars during the next few years. Russia plans to help Nigeria explore for oil and gas. Furthermore, Russia has expressed deep interest in Nigeria, helping it build nuclear power plants, petroleum pipelines, railways and infrastructure.

In this interview, Mr. Ibrahim Usman Gafai, Charge d'Affairs at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Moscow, talks assertively about the current Nigeria and Russia economic relations, ways to improve trade, trade preferential agreements and key foreign policy priorities as well as his country's readiness to take leadership roles in regional affairs. Additionally, he shares high hopes and optimism for the future.

Nigeria and Russia Economic relations: Relations between Nigeria and Russia can be traced back to the former Union of the Soviet of Social Republics (USSR) era when diplomatic relations between the two countries were established. Since then, economic relations between both countries have steadily developed with a number of leading Russian companies establishing their presence in Nigeria.

Russian investment in Nigeria covers such areas as energy, iron and steel, and hydro carbon. Over the years, we have witnessed the establishment of Russia-Nigeria Business Council (RNBC) which oversees economic activities between between the two countries. So far, the two countries have held three meetings of the Joint Commission, the last being in 2009. The Joint Commission is the platform for the two countries to sit down and draw up agreements and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on how to conduct businesses and investment in each others country.

How to improve trade relations between Nigeria and Russia: Trade volume between Nigeria and Russia has been comparatively low and highly skewed in favor of Russia. There is an attempt to balance the current trend through boosting economic relations between the two friendly nations.

One of the strategies is to encourage trade promotion through solo exhibitions of good made in each other's country. Nigeria businesses are encouraged to carry out such solo exhibitions in Russian cities such as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar and Kuzbas regions.

On the other hand, Russian businesses are also encouraged to participate in various annual trade fairs organized by different Chambers of Commerce in Nigeria. In addition, we will continue to call on the two countries to create an investment forum to showcase their potentialities in each other's territory. The major challenge facing investors from both sides of the divide is dearth of information on each other's business environment. This has, over the years, created a condition of uncertainty and misgivings among prospective investors.

Trade Preferential Agreement between the two countries: The Russian Federation has continued to extend preferences in trade not only to Nigeria but also to Africa as a whole. However, as earlier mentioned, this opportunity has not been exploited due to dearth of information. There is therefore the need to create a mechanism for the dissemination of information that will enhance business interaction between Russia and Nigeria, and indeed, between Russia and Africa.

Russia and Nigeria collaboration on iron and steel development and energy: Russian companies have continued to maintain some level of presence in the iron and steel sector in Nigeria. Russian companies had played key roles in the development of iron and steel in Nigeria right from the construction of Ajaokuta steel rolling company. Other Russian companies currently engaged in Nigeria included RUSAL which is involved in aluminium smelting.

In the power sector, Nigeria and Russia had in June 2012 signed an agreement on the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear power plants in Nigeria. The implementation of this agreement has reached an advance stage following the establishment of a Joint Coordinating Committee (JCC), which has met severally to ensure timely and uninterrupted implementation of the agreement.

Other economic sectors attractive to foreign investors: The first impressive thing about Nigeria is its population. With a population of over 160 million people, Nigeria therefore constitutes the largest market in Africa. To compliment this, Nigeria is currently the largest economy in Africa. Other economic sectors that may attract foreign investors include, among others, power, agriculture, solid minerals, oil and gas, infrastructural development and iron and steel industry.

The Nigerian government has set up the Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC) which is seized with the responsibility of initiating measures that will enhance the investment climate for both Nigerians and non-Nigerians (foreign) investors.

Opinion on key foreign policy priorities of the new government: The 2015 general election in Nigeria has recorded tremendous success for the development of democracy in Nigeria in particular and for Africa in general. The newly elected President Muhammadu Buhari has assured the international community that Nigeria will continue to be responsible and key player in the comity of nations. His Excellency President Buhari has further made it clear that Nigeria is ready to take up regional and African leadership role whenever the need arise or called upon to do so.

Do you think there will be some policy changes toward Russia: Political relations between Nigeria and Russia have remained cordial since the establishment of diplomatic relations in the 1960s. The two countries have always supported one another in different international fora. Russia is currently supporting Nigeria in its fight against insurgency in the northeastern part on Nigeria. Nigeria is highly appreciative of this support.
The Ghana Culture Forum (GCF) in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts and a number of partners will celebrate Ghanaian culture and arts on March 14, a day set aside as Ghana Culture Day at the National Theatre.

According to the Co-Convener of the Ghana Culture Forum Prof Esi Sutherland  Addy, the day is set aside to highlight Ghanas rich cultural heritage and creative industries. The theme for the day is Ghana Culture on the Move: The Economic Impact of the Arts and Culture on National Development

Programmes lined up for the day include an interactive forum on the Forty Year National Development Plan  The Place of Arts and Culture with the main presenter being Dr. Nii Moi Thompson, Director-General, National Development Planning Commission of Ghana.

There will also be an emporium dubbed a Courtyard of Cultural Interaction and Expressions. This will feature a culinary exhibition, visual arts exhibition, film screening and presentations and an exhibition of musical CDs, Ghanaian music and movie videos. Other features of the emporium include an exhibition on Ghanaian cultural heritage, exhibition on the use of indigenous science and technology.

Members of the Performing Arts domains will also thrill patrons at the Ghana Culture Day celebrations with musical performances, drama, spoken word, readings and storytelling. The day will be climaxed with a Tribute to Fallen Heroes in arts and culture featuring performances by various groups and artistes.

Participating institutions and groups include the National Commission on Culture, National Theatre of Ghana, National Drama Company, National Dance Company, National Symphony Orchestra, Actors Guild of Ghana, Noyam Institute for Arts, Musicians Union of Ghana, Concert Party Union, Professional Musicians Association of Ghana, Ehalakasa, Ghana Association of Phonographic Industries (GAPI), Ghana Association of Visual Artists, Foundation for Female Photojournalists (FFP), Aid to Artisans Ghana, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Womens Arts Institute Africa (Ghana), Ghana Academy of Film and Television Arts, Film Producers Association of Ghana, National Film and Television Institute, Ghana Association of Audio and Audio-Visual Distributors, Audio Visual Rights Society of Ghana, Ghana Association of Writers, Ghana Book Publishers Association, Bureau of Ghana Languages, Migrating Culture, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, Ghana Dance Association, Women in Performing Arts, Actresses Association of Ghana, Cook Art Ghana among others.

The Ghana Culture Forum is a membership-based civil society consultative and advocacy network of cultural practitioners, activists and organisations. It is united around a common vision of affirming the cultural foundations of development and enhancing the profile, value and impact of the cultural sector. A key aspect of its work is advocacy on the development of the creative industries in Ghana.

It was established in 2012 and this years celebration of Ghana Culture Day is the fourth edition of the Culture Day.
On Tuesday 23 February 2016, the British Embassy in Luanda signed a Chevening partnership with BP offering up to eight jointly funded scholarships for Angolan scholars to study Masters Degrees in the UK over the next two academic years. The official signing was witnessed by the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Jeffrey Mountevans and the Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Angola, Baroness Northover.

Chevening is the UK Government's global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organisations. The programme makes awards to outstanding scholars with leadership potential from around the world to study fully funded postgraduate courses at UK universities.

BP has been in Angola for more than 25 years. In the 1990s BP acquired interests in four deep-water blocks offshore Angola. In 2011 BP acquired interests in five new deep and ultra-deep water blocks in the Kwanza and Benguela basins, making Angola one of the most important assets in BP's exploration and production portfolio.

The British Ambassador to Angola, John Dennis, expressed his excitement about the joint Chevening-BP scholarship: I am delighted to see BP come onboard to support the British Government's illustrious Chevening Scholarship in Angola. BPs contribution will help to strenghten the healthy ties between the UK and Angola even further and will provide greater access to UK Education for future decision-makers and opinion-formers from Angola.

Paulo Pizarro, Vice President for Communications and External Relations representing BP said '' It is a great honour and satisfaction that on behalf of BP I will be signing this agreement with the Foreign Office. This will contribute to the growth and professional development of future leaders in Angola and this is more important than ever now that we are supporting this to build capability to boost domestic production and sustain economic growth in Angola''
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Mar.1, GNA - An Accra Magistrate Court has turned down the plea of Daniel Asiedu, the alleged killer of Mr Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, the Member of Parliament for Abuakwa North, to refer him to the Psychiatric Hospital.

The Court, however, ordered the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) not to keep Aseidu in a solitary confinement and treat him equally among cells inmates.

Asiedu, who has been charged with murder,is said to have killed the MP in cold blood at his residence in Shiashie, near East Legon on February 8.

His plea has been reserved.

The Court's order came after his counsel, Mr Augustines Obuor complained about how his client was treated at BNI custody.

According Mr Obuor, he has problem with the way his client was being discriminated against at the BNI.

Defence counsel contended that Asiedu, now 20 years, has been kept in what he described as a 'condemned cell', adding that Aseidu was being secluded although his plea has not been taken.

Counsel argued that his client was being kept in a boxlike cell and he only comes out when he wants to use the wash room, adding that he is not allowed to talk to anyone.

Mr Obour said his client has also not been told why he was being confined at the BNI cells.

On Asiedu's mental status, Mr Obuor noted that all was not well with him adding, 'after having a short conference with the accused he ought to be sent to the Psychiatric Hospital for examination.'

'When I asked him where he comes from, Asiedu told me he comes from Ghana,' Defence Counsel told the Court.

'From today he should not be kept alone. His rights should not be violated. He should be allowed to talk to people at the cells,'' counsel added.

Superintendent Francis Bah, the prosecutor, told the Court that it was the first time he was hearing of defence counsel concerns and he would investigate his concerns and ensure that the right thing was done.

Mr Baah said there was no 'condemned cells' at the BNI, saying such cells only existed at the Nsawam Medium Security Prisons.

Prosecution prayed the Court to grant them time as the Police was undertaking further investigations as well as make some follow ups.

The Court remanded Aseidu into lawful custody to reappear on March 14.

Earlier, the Court in its bid to ascertain whether or not to refer Asiedu to the Psychiatric Hospital, asked him the following questions:

Court: Which part of Ghana do you come from?

Aseidu: My ancestors are from Larteh.

Court: Where is your father?

Asiedu: My father comes from Larteh. I have never set my eyes on my mother. I was brought up by my grandmother who resides at Madina Social Welfare.

Court: Do you know your siblings?

Asiedu: Yes I do. My sister is 16 years and the rest are six and five years old.

The Court after this, noted that Asiedu's conversation has been coherent.

Superintendent Francis Baah said the deceased, J.B. Danquah-Adu, lived with his family in a one storey building at Shiashie, while Asiedu, a school dropout, lived with his girlfriend at Agbogloshie in Accra.

On February 8, this year, at about 1140 hrs, the deceased went to his house with his driver Samuel Berko Sarkodie, he said.

The driver after dropping the deceased handed over the car keys to him (the deceased) and left for his residence at Kasoa.

At about 0100 hrs, however, Asiedu armed himself with a catapult, sharp cutlass and a cutter, and on the blind side of the MP's security man, entered his residence.

Asiedu picked up a ladder and entered the top floor of the house, where the deceased was sleeping, whilst the security man at post was also fast asleep.

Asiedu on entering the deceased's room, searched the place and in the process the deceased woke up from his sleep and held Asiedu.

The Prosecution said Asiedu stabbed the deceased above his breast on his left side, so the deceased then held the knife of Asiedu and shouted for help.

Superintendent Baah said the deceased, subsequently, sustained deep cuts in his hands and became unconscious.

While the deceased was bleeding profusely, Asiedu stabbed him again below the breast on his right side and neck and left him (the deceased) to his fate.

Aseidu then took away two iphones and a tablet of the deceased, and managed to descend from the top to the back of the house and climbed one of the polytanks in the house, and skipped the electric fence of the house into an adjoining house and escaped.

The Prosecution said the security man in the house heard the shouts of the deceased for help and he alerted other security men in the area for assistance no one came to their aid.

Superintendent Baah said some neighbours, however, got in touch with the Police emergency number but when the Police arrived, the MP had passed on, so they conveyed the body of the MP to the Police Hospital, where it is awaiting autopsy.

The prosecutor said investigations led to the arrest of the accused who confessed to the crime.

The Exhibits retrieved from the accused, among other things, have been forwarded to the Police Forensic Laboratory for analysis.

Superintendent Baah said the accused also sustained injuries on his left finger and the last finger on his right hand.

GNA
Health Minister, Alex Segbefia, has lauded a UNICEF campaign to increase malaria awareness and encourage the use of bed nets.

The Behaviour Change Communication Campaign (BCC) is used in malaria control efforts to encourage diagnostic testing of fevers by both individuals and health service providers for improved treatment and surveillance of the disease.

BCC is also critical for the success of the Test, Treat and Track (T3) initiative and a vital tool for building trust in test results, particularly when patients receive malaria-negative test results and are unsure of what to do next.

Speaking at the launch of the campaign, Alex Segbefia, said BCC is also necessary for informing and mobilizing communities to work with IRS spray teams, to follow instructions during and after spraying and to promote ANC attendace and IPTp [intermittent preventive therapy] uptake.

Deputy Director General of Ghana Health Service, Gloria Quansah Asare, urged corporate institutions, civil society groups and the media to support the UNICEF campaign.

Ghana Health Service will continue to work with stakeholders and partners to carry out advocacy for increased mobilization of domestic and external funding and provide guidance regarding appropriate malaria control policies and BCC interventions, she said.

In 2015, 10.1 million cases of OPD malaria were recorded, an increase of 20.2% over 2014 figures.

Malaria deaths however declined by 3.0% in 2015.
President John Dramani Mahama

02.03.2016 LISTEN

Forgive me if this short write up of mine to commemorate the 59th birthday of Ghana is a bit harsh. I write this piece with all the pain I can gather.

Yes, all the problems weve been seeing today in the Northern Region, Upper West Region and Upper East Regions are caused by our sons and daughters who we send down to Accra to serve with the President and the Speaker of Parliament.

Those serving as Municipal and District Chief Executives also have a role to play when the topic of our underdevelopment comes up.

We have been taken for granted for too long a time, this the time to arise and ask for what truly deems us! This wasnt the way Dr. Nkrumah planned for us at allwhat crime have we committed to deserve this dejection from no one but our own who are to serve in the government and come back and help.

Young pupils of Kperisi Basic school in my own Upper West Region had no tables and chairs, they resorted to lying on the cold cement to write and listen to the Teacher! My brothers and sisters, is this not wickedness?

One of our own, Dr. Bawumiah of the New Patriotic Party visits them and promise 500 dual desks, in a twinkle of an eye the Regional Minister, Alhaji Amidu Sulemana and his people who we thought were dead until Dr. Bawumiah visited rushed to give the school some desks!

Dr. Mahamadu Bawumiah thought he was about doing us a favour, the Regional Minister and his people thought they needed a standing ovation for sending the desks after the national uproarjokers of our time, you want us to applaud you for what you are paid to do.

The Upper East, Uper West and Northern Region are still suffering from the acute water shortage. School going kids have to wake up at 3am to go water huntingand what the Minister in charge could tell us was to pray for rains.

Libya was able to produce water even in their desert, what do our politicians take us for?

Somewhere last year, some Senior High Schools in the three regions abundant with food were asked to go home because their feeding grants were not coming in. All the tubers, cereals and fibers come from the three Northern regions so what happened.

Our sons and daughters who served in the NPP did us no good, with no proper Agricultural policies and employment the NDC comes and its doing same.

Mr. Haruna Iddrisu is the Employment and Labour, but we still have our sisters who are dreaming day and night to come down South and do menial jobs like Kayayei, chop bar attendants and other dehumanizing jobs!

If this article was on a paper, you wouldve seen my tears on it! Some of these young girls are later converted to sex machines, drug addicts and what not. The only crime they have committed is to have an uncle as Employment Minister, who cant create avenues to absorb unemployed youths

This employment thing didnt start now, Dr. Nkrumah did his best to make the three regions a heaven on earth but thanks to our NDC and NPP brothers, we are now scared of staying here.

The people of the Upper East were blessed with a Tomato processing factory in the Dr. Nkrumah government, it boosted Tomato farming, engaged a lot of locals, directly and indirectly. The once boisterous Tomato factory is now a white elephant, rendering thousands of people jobless, Tomatoes go bad always because we cant preserve any more.

Our only crime is, our own brothers and sisters who are in government takes us for fools, hey only visit us when they need our thumbs.

My brothers and sisters reading me, please take off the partisan spectacles for once and lets stand up to them and say loudly ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! For once lets show the Northern politician, our votes are not for sale.

They never dream of making the North, a heaven on earth as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah did for us but only work for their selfish interests!

Why should all the weird news be coming from the three Northern regions? Child Marriages, Poor school buildings, poor roads, acute water shortages you name it.

My heart bleeds when I see some strong and able young men fighting and killing themselves for these heartless politicians!

We are naturally strong for work not to fight ourselves for a politician who will be stacked here in Accra and only visit when its voting period.

The good people of Upper East are BEGGING Mr. Albert Abongo, the new Regional Minister to repair their roads! Why should we beg them to do what they are paid to do.

THIS IS THE TIME TO TAKE BACK OUR PRIDE

Long live Northern Regionlong live Upper East Regionlong live Upper West Regionlong live Ghana
02.03.2016 LISTEN

London, March 2nd 2016. For the first time, the BBCs international news services are to use chat apps to bring their hard hitting storytelling to even more people around the globe.

As BBC World News marks 25 years of TV news broadcasting, the channels international current affairs programme Our World will use Viber to tell the story of a kidnapping that took place in Mexico, publishing posts via a BBC public channel within the app. It will be delivered to Viber users across a week, replicating the timeline of the original events as told by the victims. This will then be tied in with the television broadcast of the half hour documentary Our World: Kidnapped in Mexico.

For their audiences on the continent and beyond, BBC Africa will be using WhatsApp to tell the story of young people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) who are using new online ways to get their voices heard and bring change to their country. Across five days clips will be shared from its documentary Young, Angry and Connected.

The innovative pilot projects, which are set to start from this weekend, mark a significant step forward for the BBCs use of instant messaging platforms. The broadcaster has been experimenting with chat apps in countries where mobile use outstrips desktop and to reach those people who would not necessarily access its journalism via traditional means.

They were trialled as a way of gathering and sharing content during the 2014 Indian Elections and then again during the Ebola crisis, which saw thousands of people across West Africa signed up to receive the latest news and lifesaving information. But the use of the platforms to share content from its documentaries breaks new ground, helping to extend the life and reach of TV programmes.

Trushar Barot, BBCs Mobile & Apps Editor, explained:

There are now more users of chat apps globally than there are people on social media. Thats why BBC World Service is focussed on experimenting and developing long term strategies for these platforms. Using them is second nature to hundreds of millions of people around the world. These are the next generation of digital audiences we want to reach out to. Two years ago, we were the first news organisation to develop news accounts in chat apps, but we know we have to continue to innovate on them. Working with the likes of Viber to trial projects like this enables us learn quickly and deliver the types of digital content our audiences are going to increasingly expect.

Our World: Kidnapped in Mexico on Viber  from 6th March

For the first time a linear TV documentary about a real life kidnapping case is being broken down and retold for users of a public channel on Viber. Users following the channel at www.viber.com/bbcstories will be able to follow the story of a kidnap victim and his wife told in text, images and animations, as if it were happening in real time. The posts will run across a week, around the broadcast of correspondent Vladimir Hernandezs TV documentary on Friday, March 11th.

Jo Mathys, of the BBCs Impact team, who developed the chat apps project said:

What I find exciting about this project is the ability to tell a story as if in real time, and the sense of immediacy that chat app platforms provide. Its as if the characters are talking directly to the audience. Its a very different way of story-telling. Theres potential to tell a wide range of current affairs stories using this format.

The full documentary Our World: Kidnapped in Mexico will be broadcast on BBC World News on Friday March 11th at 2030 GMT with repeats on Saturday March 12th at 1130, 1630 & 2230 GMT and on Sunday March 13th at 0330 & 1730 GMT.

See here for examples of the animations to be used: https://myshare.box.com/s/8sizmm5zrhc15as893zdjqz4eugjb9ic

Young, Angry and Connected on WhatsApp- from the 7th March

BBC Africas first ever WhatsApp series Young, Angry and Connected will bring the story of young Africans using social media and their mobiles to get their voices heard, to an audience in a unique way. The series will launch on Monday, March 7th and run until Friday, March 11th. A daily clip of around 2-3 minutes will be delivered to those who subscribe to the WhatsApp service number (+44 7734778817) and will be available in French and English. Once the number is added, users can write SIGN UP for English and SOUSCRIRE to receive editions in French. The documentary will then be available in full on BBC.com/Africa and www.bbcafrique.com at the end of the week.

WhatsApp is hugely popular in Africa, and a widely used app for people to communicate, including those involved in the story of Young, Angry and Connected. Many of those featured in the programme depend on WhatsApp to communicate to their peers across the country.

Vladimir Hernandez, Correspondent and Assistant Editor for World Service said: The rising youth groups in Africa are mobile-first and bringing their story to a wider audience on a chat app is the perfect new way of telling their story.

A short preview trailer for Young, Angry and Connected is available to watch here:https://myshare.box.com/youngconnected.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

A Ghanaian pastor based in the UK, Pastor Brian Amoateng has called on Ghanaians to learn to support their own and push them up when they are doing well.

He noted that the lack of encouragement and support in appreciating our own Ghanaians who are excelling in various fields is one of the reasons why Ghana appears to be at a halt. In a video posted on social media, Pastor Amoateng who seemed anguish at the journalists who allegedly mocked Abraham Attahs speech at the Spirits Awards noted that the pull him down syndrome (PHD) in Ghana is too much.

Is English our first language? Why cant we celebrate our own. Pull him down spirit. Lots of us in Ghana have this syndrome. Lets stop and stand by our own. Lets pull him up.

On the issue of Abraham Attah been mocked over his accent, the man of God quizzed whether English is our first language as a nation. He further called on the journalists involved in the act to render an aplogy to Abraham Attah.

Pastor Brian is a global preacher based in the United Kingdom and also pastors at the London Prayer Centre
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Some science, mathematics and ICT teachers from four schools within Ablekuma Circuit schools in Accra who benefitted from the project

Airtel Ghana has teamed up with the Exploratory, an initiative of the Africa Women Advocacy Project and Novan Education, to empower science, mathematics and ICT teachers from the Ablekuma Circuit Schools in Accra as part of its Evolve with STEM CSR initiative.

Overall, 20 teachers from four schools in the Ablekuma Circuit Schools were taken through a two-day intensive capacity building workshop covering new approaches to teaching Science, Mathematics and ICT.

They were also exposed to experiential learning modules and best practices in running science clubs in their schools.

Touching on the workshop, Richard Ahiagble, Head of Corporate Communications at Airtel, indicated this was a strategic step taken by company to first empower teachers who will in turn empower pupils in their schools.

.

Airtel's Evolve with STEM initiative, launched in December last year and spearheaded by the Managing Director of the Company and reigning CIMG Marketing Woman of the year, Lucy Quist has so far impacted more than 500 pupils from the Mataheko Cluster of Schools.

Josephine Marie Godwyll, Project Manager of The Exploratory explained that the main focus of the workshop was to equip these very hardworking teachers with practical skills in the area of science, mathematics and ICT that will enable them make their classrooms and Science Clubs activities more experimental and hands-on in line with global best practice. The Exploratory and Novan Education are proud to be associated with the Evolve with STEM initiative.

Evolve with STEM is under the auspices of the CIMG and supported by the Exploratory, an initiative of the African Women Advocacy Project and other organizations.

The initiative, since its launch, has been endorsed by key stakeholders, including the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation.

Airtel Ghana is renowned for its contribution to education in Ghana, having received several awards in CSR, including Best CSR Company for Education at the Ghana CSR Excellence Awards 2015.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

An accident involving a military vehicle and a KIA Rhino pick-up Sunday night at Firestone near Madina, Accra, resulted in the death of one person, with three others injured as another accident claimed one life in Cape Coast, Central Region.

The first victim has been identified as Sarah Peprah, an occupant of the military vehicle.

Her body has since been deposited at the Police Hospital in Accra for autopsy whilst investigations continue.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Emmanuel Adu Buahen, the Madina Divisional Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service, who confirmed the accident to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said the two vehicles  the military pick-up and the KIA Rhino pickup numbered GX 2156-14  were both heading towards Madina.

On reaching Firestone, the KIA Rhino, which was moving at top speed, hit the side of the military vehicle and somersaulted, falling onto the pavement.

He said the Madina MTTD police took the victims to the hospital around 11:55 pm where Miss Sarah Peprah was pronounced dead, while the other three occupants were treated and discharged.

DSP Adu Boahen said the accident docket would be referred to the Attorney Generals office for advice.



Cape Coast Accident

.

One person died and four others got injured when the vehicle they were travelling on ran into a bus, near the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) office in Cape Coast, at dawn on Monday.

The deceased, identified as Emmanuel Jackson, was said to be driving a Toyota Corolla saloon car from Kingsway to Nkanfoa, both suburbs of Cape Coast, at about 1220 hours.

Chief Superintendent of Police Felix Kwasi Cosmos, the Regional MTTD Commander, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the Emmanuel Jackson, on reaching the ECG office area at Tantri, suddenly ran into a parked Nissan Urvan bus.

He said the driver, with his four passengers, was rushed to the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital, but he (driver) was pronounced dead on arrival.

Supt. Cosmos said the injured persons were on admission at the hospital.

GNA


02.03.2016 LISTEN

The Volta Regional Chairman of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Peter Amewu, has exposed President John Dramani Mahama who had claimed in his (Mahama's) State of the Nation Address that roads in the Hohoe municipality in the Volta Region had almost been completed.

According to Mr. Amewu, who was a former MCE for Hohoe, it was rather the NPP government that constructed most of the road networks in the municipality and insisted that the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) should not reap where it had not sown.

Mr. Amewu took to Facebook to defend his party's flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who had held a news conference on Monday to give Ghanaians what the NPP called the 'True State of the Nation.

Nana Akufo-Addo at the news conference, had said the Hohoe Township Roads were constructed under the Kufuor regime and confirmed that he had calls from residents of Hohoe that the roads were done under the President Kufuor administration.

The residents of Hohoe have said their town roads were done during the Kufuor administration he insisted adding, This is disrespectful to the people of Ghana and to our Republican institutions for the president to exhibit such a cavalier attitude to facts in a formal address to the nation.

.

The NDC, since Nana Akufo-Addo's news conference, has been lambasting him for daring to question the president's address, but Mr. Amewu said yesterday that the NDC could not continue to run Ghana on the platform of propaganda.

Writing on the topic, Akufo-Addo was right about Hohoe town roads, the NPP regional chairman said, The 46-kilometer road from Pepesu to Nkwanta was funded by EU Fund under President Kufuor. The NPP had secured funding for the construction of the road before President Kufuor left office.

He added, The Golokwati-Hohoe road was constructed under NPP double seal (awarded to Rollider). All Hohoe town roads were constructed by the NPP. These include: Post Office to Electricity (awarded to GOHES Ltd); the District Assembly to the Electricity (awarded to GOHES Ltd); the Post Office Square to the Stadium (awarded to GOHES Ltd); the market to the hospital (awarded to GOHES Ltd); Zongo Junction to Barclays (awarded to GOHES Ltd); and Post Office Square to St Francis College (awarded to GOHES Ltd), In all, about 7.2km of the town's roads was constructed under the NPP with chipping spray.

He added, Under Mahama/NDC, the 300-metre hospital road in Hohoe is currently under construction at very slow pace. This includes the construction of the side drains. This section of the town's road was awarded under the NDC.

Work on the other road network in Hohoe, involving the construction of drains at Kpeme, Bla and Abanse, has been abandoned over a year ago with the contractor having vacated the site.

By William Yaw Owusu


02.03.2016 LISTEN

The 33-year-old man arrested for allegedly making a statement that President John Dramani Mahama would swoon during this year's Independence Day parade, has been dragged before an Accra circuit court.

Kwame Gyebi was alleged to have made that comment at a drinking bar at Dzorwulu, in Accra, and was reported to the police by witnesses.

Before the court presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, the plea of the accused was not taken.

The persecution has in the interim charged Kwame for offensive conduct and threat of death.

The trial judge has remanded the accused into police custody until March 14, 2016.

However, Kwame's brother who spoke on an Accra-based radio station, has said that the accused was suffering from a mental disease occasioned by typhoid which he had some time back.

Kwame was arrested by the police and later handed over to the officials of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) upon a tip-off. He is reportedly receiving treatment at the Valley View Hospital, Dzorwulu.

The accused, who lives with his elder brother at Dzorwulu, according to the brother, has his medical records at the hospital.

.

The supposed mentally challenged man reportedly referred to the president as John when making the comment.

It is unclear what it is about President Mahama that every supposed mad man wants him dead.

It will be recalled that on July 26, 2015 36-year-old man, Charles Antwi was arrested during Sunday church service at the Ringway Estate Gospel Centre of the Assemblies of God Church in Accra with a gun allegedly targeting the president  who worships with his family at that church  to kill him.

It took a curious observer to cause the arrest of Charles as President Mahama was not in church that day.

Charles was later convicted and sentenced to a 10-year imprisonment term by an Accra circuit court presided over by Francis Obiri, after he had in open court confessed to wanting to kill the president, before he was freed by the Human Rights Division of the Accra high court.

He was later examined and found not to be mentally sound and was receiving treatment at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]


02.03.2016 LISTEN

The strike embarked upon by traders has intensified as more shops in Accra were closed yesterday, leaving customers stranded.

The strike, which began on Monday, February 29, 2016 and expected to end today, is to protest against high government taxes, which they claim are collapsing their businesses.

When BUSINESS GUIDE visited Abossey Okai where vehicle spare parts are sold, all the shops were closed, unlike Monday when the strike began.

The traders were seen engaging in conversations in front of their locked shops while others were playing some local games.



Traders/Customers Complain

Some stranded customers who were not aware of the traders' strike until they got to the market, complained bitterly about the high taxes which had resulted in the strike action.

Some spare parts dealers who spoke to BUSINESS GUIDE said, We want to tell government that we are not happy with the taxes. We are not happy to close our shops but it has become necessary because we cant bear the high taxes again.

According to them, business has gone bad because the customers find it difficult to buy spare parts because of the high prices.

Most of the time we have to reduce the prices so we can sell some parts to get money to take care of our family. Reducing the prices too affects our business badly, one of them explained.

Nana Yaw, a spare parts dealer said, Most of our goods have been left at the port because we dont have money to clear them, stating that the taxes are too much and that the government must do something about them.



Accra Business District



This reporter visited the Accra Central Business District  Kantamanto anf Makola  but the story was not different as many shops were locked, resulting in free flow of traffic.

.

The daily hassle that one has to go through when going to the Central Business District either to buy or sell was not there. People were seen moving freely, uninterrupted by vehicles, pedestrians and hawkers.

The strike also affected the business of head porters (kayayei) and truck pushers as there were no goods for them to carry.

An angry and hungry truck pusher could not hide his frustration when speaking to BUSINESS GUIDE. He said the strike had affected him and his colleagues badly because there were no goods to carry to get money.

We are unable to feed our family because there is no money. The shops have been closed so there are no goods to carry.

We want government to listen to the traders' concerns and address them so that business can go on well for all of us. If the traders are not there we the truck pushers too will not get goods to carry, the aggrieved man indicated.



GUTA Laments

George Ofori, President of the Ghana Union of Traders (GUTA), has said that the strike was necessary due to government's failure to address their concerns.

After almost a month that we lamented the various taxes, fees and other policies that are collapsing our businesses, it is regrettable to say that the government has failed to heed our call, he bemoaned.



Next Action

Mr George Ofori said the leadership of the joint Private Business Consultative Forum would meet again tomorrow, Thursday, March 3, 2016, to evaluate the situation and decide on the next line of action.

The directive to traders to embark on the three-day strike was from the joint Private Business Consultative Forum, comprising GUTA, Food and Beverages Importers' Association of Ghana (FBIAG), Ghana Auto Mobile Dealers' Association (GADA), Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) Customs Brokers' Association of Ghana (CUBAG) and Importers and Exporters' Association of Ghana.

By Cephas Larbi

[email protected]


02.03.2016 LISTEN

Last Monday evening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey landed in Accra for a two-day official visit, reciprocating a similar one by his Ghanaian counterpart earlier.

One of the features of the visit is a joint sod-cutting activity for the construction of the new terminal at the Kotoka International Airport  a project being undertaken by a Turkish company.

Such high-profile visits are important diplomatic activities which go a long way in cementing the bond of friendship between nations and indirectly enhancing world peace.

Many important landmark investment breakthroughs have often come through such interactions across the world. The decision of the Turkish President to have over a dozen businessmen join his entourage for the trip is definitely to enable the two parties to explore business opportunities.

The growing importance of Turkey in international politics cannot be overlooked; it is against this backdrop that such visits should be viewed for their strategic worth.

The world continues to be globalised by the day hence, the need for such visits to be undertaken by the political leaderships of the two countries on bilateral basis: bountiful dividends from international trade abound in such visits if they are managed properly and sincerely. The cancellation or reduction of business-inhibiting tariffs has often been occasioned by visits of this caliber.

International trade is underpinned by the successful interfacing between political leaderships of various countries. The visit of President Erdogan is therefore an opportunity which should be seized by the local business community with a view to establishing individual linkages between them and their Turkish counterparts.

Being a country spanning Europe and Asia, Turkey offers a variety of business opportunities, the almost daily direct flight to Istanbul offering an added impetus waiting to be exploited.

.

There are already many Turkish businesses in Ghana, their contributions towards the development of the country certainly documented by the Trade Ministry and the Ghana Investment Centre.

The Turkish Development Cooperation (TUDEC), an organization which encourages Turkish businesses with the necessary information and support to pitch camp in Ghana, cannot be overlooked.

TUDEC has sponsored many trips to Turkey for Ghanaians from both government and private sector visits which have enlightened beneficiaries about developments and opportunities in that country. The Galaxy International Schools, Turkish owned educational establishments, continue to contribute towards the development of world-class education in the country.

Many Ghanaians have benefitted and continue to do so, from Turkish government scholarships both at undergraduate and graduate levels over the years.

Mention was made recently about a Ghanaian student studying Physics at the Masters level in the Turkish language in a Turkish tertiary institution.

There are medical doctors who were trained in Turkey, others still undertaking their courses in the many Turkish institutions of higher learning.

Three Turkish non-governmental organizations are building the National Mosque at Kanda in Accra, gratis, after the project suffered a near stalling for lack of funds.

The unrivalled Islamic architecture represented by the new mosque is a special addition to the skyline of Accra  a piece of Istanbul in Ghana we can say. The credit goes to Turkey whose mastery of Islamic architecture is world acclaimed.

We wish President Erdogan a fruitful visit, one that would benefit both countries.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

An Accra Central District Court has dismissed an application to refer Daniel Asiedu, the 19- year-old man accused of murdering Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North in the Eastern Region, for psychiatric examination.

The magistrate said his demeanor did not depict someone who was mentally challenged as all the questions posed to the accused were answered.

According to Augustine Obuor, lawyer for Asiedu who made his first appearance in the case yesterday, his client ought to be referred to the mental hospital after a short conference with him in court.

Although he insisted that he was unable to tell the court the reason for his request, he was certain that he had a very good reason for his client, nicknamed Sexy Don Don, to see a psychiatrist.

The late Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu

Seclusion

Mr Obuor said he also had a problem with the manner the prosecution had discriminated against his client at the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) cells.

The lawyer stated that Sexy Don Don was not allowed to walk about and exercise like the other inmates did while in the custody of the security agency.

While stressing that his client was being kept in a 'condemned cell,' Obuor said he (Sexy Don Don) was innocent until proven guilty, especially when his plea had not been taken in the court.

In the view of Lawyer Obuor, the action by the persecution was tantamount to pre-colonial punishment, adding that his client must be taken to a normal cell where he could interact with other human beings.



Asiedu Speaks

Daniel Asiedu said he was kept in a box-like confinement at the BNI cells and that he was only allowed out when he was visiting the washroom or going to wash down.

He said three days before his first appearance in court, he complained about his situation but nothing had been done about it so far.

Sexy Don Don who broke down in court for the first time claimed he had not been told the reasons he was being kept alone.

Superintendent Francis Baah, who said he was hearing the plight of the accused for the first time, said he was going to act on the complaint.

However, he said 'condemned cell' was at the Nsawam Prisons not at the BNI.



Judge's Interrogation

Stephen Owusu, the trial judge, after interrogating Asiedu, was emphatic that he (Asiedu) was of sound mind.

For instance, the judge asked him where he hailed from, to which he initially said Ghana but upon further explanation, he said he hailed from Larteh in the Eastern Region, according to what his (Asiedu's) father told him.

The judge in his quest to establish the sanity or otherwise of the accused, further asked in Twi if Asiedu knew his mother, to which he answered in the negative, explaining that he had never known his mother but rather was raised by his grandmother at Madina Social Welfare in Accra.

.

Asked about his age, he said he turned 20 on Valentine Day  February 14, 2016  and also had other siblings.

For this reason Mr Owusu told counsel that the accused person could not be mad because the conversation so far has been coherent.

He said the court would decline the request to have the accused referred to the psychiatric hospital for now.

The judge, nonetheless, stated that the accused was not supposed to be kept in a solitary confinement while in the custody of the BNI.

He said Asiedu must be given his full rights which must not be infringed upon.

Sitting continues on March 14, 2016.



Charges

Daniel Asiedu has been charged with murder contrary to Section 46 of Act 29/60.

According to the prosecution led by Supt Francis Baah, Sexy Don Don on February 9, this year, at about 1am at Shiashie, a suburb of Accra, intentionally and unlawfully caused the death of the MP. The accused was brought to court with clean shave against his earlier bushy-looking hair.

According to the police fact sheets, the accused had said he stabbed the late MP three times.

Daniel claimed that he entered the home armed with a knife, a catapult and a cutter.

The accused had earlier told the police that he was contracted to kill the MP for a prize of GH2,000, part of which he used to by shoes.

He said that he was at Zongo Junction at Madina on February 8, 2016 where he deals in second-hand mobile phones when he was approached by two of his friends, a certain Avenger and Junior Agogo.

The two friends, he said, told him that they had a job for him to execute at a fee of GH2,000 but even though he was not told the nature of the assignment, he claimed he knew it was about stealing.



Security Man

Upon reaching Shiashie, he said, they alighted at a house with flowers planted in front of it. One of the friends then called the security man and told him that they had come, he alleged.

On their way to Shiashie, Asiedu recalled overhearing one of the friends talking to someone on the mobile phone but he could not tell whom he was speaking to.

When the security man was alerted about their arrival, he allegedly proceeded to open the gate and when they entered, he (security man) went to the back of the house and brought along a ladder which he placed against the wall.

One of the friends, he said, climbed first, followed by another and after waiting for sometime he (Asiedu) followed them to the top via the ladder and gained access to the bedroom of the late MP through the window.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]


02.03.2016 LISTEN

Ghana's oil discovery has been compromised over the last six years by the government's recklessness and incompetence such that interest payments on the debt stock in 2015 amounted to six times Ghana's oil revenue for that year.

According to Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, NPP's presidential candidate, who disclosed this at a recent press conference in Accra, interest payment of GH10.5 billion earmarked for this year would be five times what was allocated to certain six key ministries combined, while in 2015, the GH9.6 billion allocated to interest payment on the debt stock was about 3.4 times the entire allocations to the six key ministries.

To put the interest payments on the debt in context, Nana Addo said the entire allocations in the 2016 budget to critical ministries such as the Ministries of Roads and Highways, Trade and Industry, Food and Agriculture, Water Resources, Works and Housing, Youth and Sports, and Transport, amounted to a total of GH2.1 billion.

Last year, interest payments amounted to more than GH9.6 billion. That figure was more than the total debt stock of GH9.5 billion in 2008 at the end of President Kufuor's term. I recall in 2008, candidate Mahama lampooning the Kufuor government for excessive borrowing.

Agriculture

He said agriculture and industry, which should be the key drivers of the economy, were doing very badly. Last year, agriculture as a sector grew by only 0.04 percent. This was because crops generally recorded negative growth of -1.7% and cocoa declined in growth from 4.3% in 2014 to 3.0% in 2015.

So much then for the claim by the president to have made cocoa farming attractive! Cocoa farmers will tell you that all the gains they made in the Kufuor years have been systematically eroded in the Mahama era.

.

He said industry suffered one of the most heartbreaking setbacks in Ghana's history in 2015. Manufacturing, which has the potential to create lots of jobs, recorded a negative growth of -2 percent, while mining, which provides gold our 2nd highest foreign exchange earner, recorded a further negative growth of -3.8 percent.

Mr President, when you cite the example of a $7 million gold refinery opening in Ghana as evidence that you are doing something about the economy, please be reminded that the true state of mining is that our mining industry is in crisis, and mining companies are closing down. The industry recorded a -3.8 percent growth.

In services, he said government could not achieve its own projected target of 4.9 percent growth in 2015. Hotels and tourism, which provide jobs and incomes for tens of thousands of people, only managed -4.8 percent and -6.3 percent growth respectively.

Comparing tenures

Under the leadership of President Kufuor (2001- 2009), he said Ghana made significant strides. Without the benefit of oil revenues, economic growth increased from 3.7 percent in 2000 to 8.4 percent in 2008. In the process, the size of Ghana's economy increased from some $5.1 billion to $28.5 billion, a five-fold increase which led to more jobs, higher levels of income and improvement in standards of living.

Even in the face of a global economic and financial crisis in 2007/8, with oil prices reaching a record high of $147 per barrel, economic growth in 2008 rose to 8.4 percent. Ghana was transformed during the period of the NPP's tenure (2001-2009) from a low income HIPC economy to a lower middle income economy.

By Samuel Boadi


02.03.2016 LISTEN

Eighteen teachers from nine basic schools in the Amansie Central district in the Ashanti region have been fingered in a fake self-teacher upgrading scandal that Chronicle investigations have revealed.

Schools whose staff have been confirmed as having engaged in the fraudulent upgrading include Asikasu, Kobro, Begroase, Patase, Sabe, Suhyenso, Ekutuase, Dukwase and Amamom. The identities of the teachers involved have been concealed for obvious reasons. They are said to have added various figures to their original salaries through illegal means, between June 2013 and August 2015.

The 18 teachers succeeded in duping the state to the tune of GH90, 762.16 within the period under review. Further investigations revealed that a female teacher who upgraded herself from Superintendent One to Principal Superintendent is said to be the highest offender on the list. She withdrew GH11, 375.99 in excess to her official salary within the same period.

The District Chief Executive, Emmanuel Dede Appiah, who confirmed the news to The Chronicle, said all the teachers involved have admitted to the crime before both the District Education Disciplinary Committee and the Committee of Enquiries which investigated the alleged fraud.

He explained that the teachers forged various documents, including promotional letters and certificates to facilitate their self-upgrading process to various levels in the Ghana Education Service (GES) structure.

The DCE disclosed that the District Education Oversight Committee (DEOC) upon a tip off conducted underground investigations on the suspected teachers leading to the exposure.

He said an embargo has already been placed on their salaries until full refunds are made after which authorities will decide their fate in the service. He said the culprits are being closely monitored by the security agencies. Dede Appiah hinted further that district wide investigations are being conducted since authorities suspect more teachers could be involved in the scandal.

From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi
02.03.2016 LISTEN

The Prevention of crime must be everyones number one business. There are more churches than schools in Ghana. Amazingly, the number of people going to church on Sundays and similar large numbers flocking in and around the mosques are enough indications that Ghanaians should be the first gate keepers in heaven.

Doesnt logic dictates that religious people should be less prone to crimes? Yet the level of integrity among Ghanaians is very disappointing, if not at its lowest ebb since independence. We have used our religiosity to camouflage our flaws and iniquities.

The more developing were the more we commit crimes against our fellow people, nation and even companies or the businesses we work for.

Recently, the Ghanaian newspapers and airwaves have been busy discussing disturbing social phenomena which they call crime wave. Judging from the reports of the press, crime has increased in the country in an alarming manner during the last ten years and there is no end in sight.

Jails and prisons are filled to the capacity; the criminal court dockets are overburdened. Rare indeed are the newspapers and news reports not demanding more effective policing, more stringent laws, and more drastic penalties for the detection and punishment of crime. But, nothing is stopping the growth of crime because we put more effort on detection and punishment instead of prevention.

Are prisons our answer to the crime wave?

Before I take you through the pain of talking about the importance of crime prevention, Id like to introduce you to the definition of crime prevention:

Crime prevention has been described as any organized activity aimed at keeping unlawful behavior from occurring originally or keeping such behavior to a minimum and thus avoiding police or court intervention; or any organized activity aimed at deterring unlawful behavior.

Why the need for a national crime prevention outfit in Ghana?

For many years the field of medicine has been trying to prevent diseases. One might ask why a similar effort has not been applied to crime.

The answer is, there is a great emotionalism associated with crime, and that has hamper our ability to make unbiased decisions and conduct unbiased research to find out the real causes and how to prevent them.But, the time has come for us to deal with it head-on and find permanent solutions to crime before its committed.

However, we shouldnt forget that crime is not merely a physical problem with one direct cause as are many illnesses. Crime involves complex emotional, physiologic, social, and environmental variables and, therefore, prevention is not simply a matter of developing a vaccine or an antidote to crime.

Since crime is a social problem, the police are unable to contain the crime problem within a socially tolerable level by themselves. Therefore alternatives to arrest, conviction, punishment, and rehabilitation of criminals must be sought.

There is a need to recognize that the causes of crime lay within such variables as societal structures ,socioeconomic conditions, schools, corrections, treatment programs, lack of self-disciplines, methods of child-rearing, and the very home environment that parents provide for their children.

Therefore, the field of crime prevention by its nature transcends the bounds of any one discipline. Its doesnt fall totally within the bounds of criminal justice system. Even architecture can play a vital role in crime prevention through the design of safer building, using more crime-resistant locks, windows and materials. Therefore the importance of crime prevention measures in the incorporation of building and home designs must be realized by all crime prevention professionals and criminal justice practitioners.

There are other crime prevention disciplines as well that we need to put into the equation otherwise, we will continue to see reactive approach to crime rather than the proactive approach of prevention. Any approach to dealing with crime other than prevention is self-defeating.

The National Crime Prevention Institute (NACPI), Im proposing will ultimately bring all the elements of crime prevention disciplines under one umbrella in order to set up a better and more effective criminal justice system in the country that can prevent crime instead of fighting crime.

Crime prevention as a field of study and inquiry should not be limited to the most obvious crimes, such as burglary, robbery, and rape, but it should also include the study of other ways through which individuals are criminally victimized. These include such nonviolent crimes as deceptive advertising, medical quackery, confidence games, corruption in government (yes corruption in government), restraint of trade, and other efforts by professional associations to stifle competition and thereby criminally set artificial prices.

In short, the main principles of the crime prevention institute are meant to include circumstances in which the individual is victimized by another individual, group, organization, business, or government, both violently and nonviolently.

Am I crazy? Nope! Im not smoking anything. Its just that Im ahead of my time sometimes. Plus Im a 20- year law enforcement veteran of the United States of America and I thought my experience there could be used in this country for the benefit of Ghana. But, I forget that Im in Ghana and no one cares to change the system, as long as were enjoying the gravy train ride.

Now, I see why this proposal will never see the light of the day in a million years. This will most likely end up in the waste basket at the flag staff House or immediately be deleted from the inbox of an MPs email .Hes more worried about his re-election prospect than setting up a better system that will force him to live up to the peoples expectations.

Who wants to be bothered with crime prevention tools when we have our private security guards and the old system has created a big hole through which we can dupe the government and individuals?

But, it should be remembered that crime has an effect on everyone and therefore it cant be controlled without the active support of individual private citizens, schools, businesses and labor unions. Massive community efforts will be required, and law enforcements role in these efforts should be to lead, encourage, and assist, but not to take sole responsibility.

Until we meet here again, stay tuned, be blessed informed and educated about issues.

Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi (Voice of reason)

*The author is a social commentator and the founder of Adu-Gyamfi foundation for the disadvantaged Youth of Asuom, in the kwaerbibirm district.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

AN ULTRA-MODERN renovated experience centre belonging to internet services provider, Busy has been officially opened along the Ring Road, a suburb of Accra.

The office complex, commissioned yesterday, has been the main base from which Busy, formerly known as Busy Internet, has operated for the past fourteen years, providing information communication technology (ICT) services to Ghanaians.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Busy, Praveen Sadalage delivering a welcome remarks at the opening of the renovated building said, through the years, Busy has from the building served as a networking base and a hub for quality internet connectivity where friends and business partners meet to share business ideas, develop business plans, connect to the world and grow their businesses.

He said Busy has evolved from an internet service provider, providing quality internet services to Ghanaians not only in Accra, but Kumasi, Takoradi and Tamale.

He stated that Busy recently opened another service centre in Tema.

Aside the centre in Tema and the one in Accra, according to him, we have extensive retail network across Accra and Tema aimed at reaching all consumers within the region closer to their homes and offices; with thirteen point-of-sale outlets spread across Accra Mall and Westhills Mall within the region.

.

He said In the sales centre, our highly trained customer service personnel are available to address all customers' needs. These teams are part of our 24/7 contact centre which you can see next doorthis means that customers are able to contact us on the phone or through our service centre to get excellent service.

Mr. Sadalage reiterated that Busy had entered into the 4G mobile data domain with the aim to drive further technological transformation for consumers and businesses.

President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), James Asare-Adjei in an address commended Busy for continually playing a vibrant role in the promotion of ICT in Ghana.

He was happy that Busy has been committed to teaching the younger generation of Ghana the benefits of using ICT.

BY Melvin Tarlue


President John Mahama

02.03.2016 LISTEN

Coalition of the SADA Zone Civil Society Organizations in Tamale in the Northern Region have accused the president, John Dramani Mahama of starving the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority(SADA) of the needed resources to function.

Addressing the media on budgetary allocation and general financing of the SADA development programme, the regional coordinator of the Civil Society Organizations, Mr. Basharu Alhassan Daballi said since the president took over governance and management of the economy, no budgetary allocation have been made to the authority to help fast track its activities.

Speaking to DAILY GUIDE Mr. Daballi said, Starving SADA of resources is not only retrogressive and a betrayal of the trust of Ghanaians, but a threat to our democratic governance and practice.

He said failure to fund SADA is a failure to bridge the development gap between the savannah zone and the rest of the country.

He therefore called on government to ensure that GH100 million is allocated and disbursed to the authority in the 2016 supplementary budget statement and economic policies of the government that was being prepared to be presented to parliament.

It is important to remind Ghanaians of the annual budget allocation of SADA and introducing levies on all non-petroleum imports to fund SADA are legal requirements under section 18 of the SADA Act of 2010, Act 805, therefore government has been engaging in illegalities over the years by failing to do what is expected of it under the law.

.

Mr. Daballi appealed to members of parliament not to give approval to the 2016 supplementary budget statement if all the legitimate demands are not considered in the statement.

He however lauded the steps and processes being taken by the new SADA board to retrieve funds allegedly misappropriated by the former board members.

FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale


02.03.2016 LISTEN

The Cyber Crime Unit of the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has apprehended two paddies who have allegedly created a facebook page using the name of Dr Stephen Opuni, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Cocobod, to defraud victims seeking employment at the Cocobod.

The two suspects, identified as Latif Apolala aka Davido, 30 years old and Christina Obeng aka Borga, 29, were apprehended at Achimota Mile 7 while in the process of collecting an amount of GH3,500 from one of their victims, according to the police.

So far, over 200 victims were said to have contacted the suspects for employment but the police were yet to uncover the number of persons who had been defrauded.

Briefing the media, COP Prosper Kwame Agblor, Director General in-charge of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), said on Friday, February 26, 2016, police received information from an informant that he had seen a facebook profile of Dr Stephen K Opuni, which he suspected to be fraudulent.

The information indicated that the suspected fraudster had impersonated Dr Opuni and was in the process of defrauding unsuspecting people under the pretext of helping them secure a job at Ghana Cocoa Board.

The police immediately contacted Dr Opuni who also confirmed the report and stated that he had never had a facebook account.

The informant, who is a witness in the case, said he engaged the supposed fraudster in a conversation and he assured him (informant) of securing him a job at Cocobod which would attract a fee of GH4,000.

The witness narrated that the fraudster charged GH4,000 for degree holders while HND holders pay an amount of GH3,500.

.

After bargaining and agreeing to an amount of GH3,500, the fraudster directed the informant to meet his messenger at Achimota Mile 7 to deliver his application letter, curriculum vitae (CV) and the agreed amount to facilitate the employment.

Suspect Latif Apolala appeared with intent to collect the money and the application letter and when he was about collecting the money from the informant, he was immediately apprehended.

Upon interrogation, Latif told the police that suspect Christian Obeng, being the man allegedly using Dr Opuni's name to defraud the victims, only sent him to collect something from someone.

Christian Obeng was apprehended at Kasoa where he was said to be hiding.

In his caution statement, Christian Obeng admitted having created the facebook account in the name of Stephen K. Opuni and with an email address: ( [email protected] ) to facilitate his plans.

The two have provisionally been charged for conspiracy to commit crime to wit, defrauding by false pretences.

( [email protected] )

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey


Greenstreet (2nd left) flanked by Edmund Delle and Hajia Hamdatu

02.03.2016 LISTEN



The flagbearer of the Convention People's Party (CPP), Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, has accused President John Mahama and his government of doing little to create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth in the country.

According to the CPP flagbearer, job creation is the yardstick to determine how well a country's economy is doing.

But in Ghana, statistics show that there is no real job creation taking place in the country. There are no real opportunities for jobs for our graduates and the youth, he added.

He pointed out that over the years, the NDC and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) had created an economy that was not based on creating or adding value to the local resources and products.

The two political parties only paid lip service to placing value on our manufacturing industries. They just wanted power to rule for their own self-enrichment, he added.

Addressing a press conference in Takoradi yesterday, Mr Greenstreet mentioned that the CPP believed that developing countries would not be able to succeed unless those states became the drivers of the economy and gave support to the private sector.

He mentioned that in countries like Malaysia, China and South Korea, the states were the drivers of the economy and supported the private sector to develop those countries.

If Ghana fails to create employment, it will remain as it is. But the new CPP government will offer entirely new policies that would improve the economy and make the private sector thrive, he stressed.

CPP Property

The CPP flagbearer was not enthused about the fact that President Mahama and his NDC government had failed to honour their promise to hand over offices and other properties belonging to the CPP but which were taken over by government.

He indicated that in his 2015 State of the Nation Address, President Mahama told Ghanaians that with respect to the properties of the CPP taken over by government, he had referred the matter to the Attorney General's office for advice.

.

So we wished that at the current State of the National Address, the President would have found time to let us know as a party what is the current with respect to our properties, especially in the Western Region where the building housing the Regional Education Office is a property of the CPP, he opined.

He stated, Maybe it was an oversight on the part of the president, but we in the CPP are not happy with this oversight and we implore the president to let us know when the CPP can get its properties back.

Mr Greenstreet revealed that under the regime of former President Kufuor, some properties belonging to the CPP were retrieved for the party and other individual members during the Reconciliation Exercise.

However, most of our properties have not been retrieved or compensation paid to the CPP and this is making things difficult for the party, he added.

He revealed that the CPP would soon respond to President Mahama's 2016 State of the National Address on topic-by-topic basis.

For his part, Edmund Delle, National Chairman of the CPP indicated that 2016 was the time the party should wrest power from the NDC.

Ghana is at a crossroads. The economy of the country is suffering and the only way to solve the country's myriad problems is for the people to give political power back to the CPP, he asserted.

He explained that it was only the CPP that had succeeded in improving the economy of this country.

From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi


02.03.2016 LISTEN

Friends of the Nation (FoN), a socio-environmental research and advocacy non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in Takoradi in the Western Region, has challenged the government to enact laws on fisheries, especially illegal fishing activities, which infraction should attract stiff punishment to deter others from engaging in same.

It has been argued that those who violate fisheries laws and regulations do not only harm the resources and put the economy at risk, but are also unfair to the majority of resource users who comply.

Programmes Manager of FoN, Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah, yesterday told the media during a briefing themed Effective Fisheries Enforcement, the Voices of the Fishers and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), in Accra, that the laws should have no respect for whoever got involved in any illegal engagement.

Those who abide by the laws deserve to know that others would be held to the same standards, and that the standards will be consistent nationwide, he noted. Experience had made him appreciate the fact that businessmen in the industry, other than the artisanal, regularly violated the laws on fishing, but always found their ways out when caught, simply because they had the support of some men at the helm of affairs.

For the achievement of effective results, selective enforcement should be avoided if possible, because communities' perception of biases is amplified, as they see themselves as victims, but not perpetrators or breakers of the law, he explained.

Key challenges confronting the fishing sector, for which punitive measures would have to be put in place to cure, Mr. Yamoah noted, included declining marine fisheries resources as a result of weak governance which had targeted over-capacity, conflicts and widespread illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, adding that concerns have been raised over weak enforcement of fisheries laws and low compliance by fishers.

He also made mention of widespread use of unsustainable and harmful fishing methods, contributing to over-fishing and degradation of the critical coastal fisheries habitats.

It is against this background that Friends of the Nation (FoN), in collaboration with the Ghana National Canoe Fishermen's Council, W/R, and with the support of the BUSAC Fund, is engaging stakeholdersto discuss key recommendations to addressing the challenges in fisheries governance in Ghana, he remarked.

And, as part of the recommendations, the Civil Society Organisation suggested that deterrence, which is one of the two strategies to ensure compliance, would suffice. Considering the Ghanaian situation, it would be appropriate to apply deterrence (measured enforcement of the law), and, to a large extent, employ the principle of voluntary compliance to reduce the high cost of enforcement, Mr. Yamoah indicated.

Deterrence, as a technique, is expected to embrace conducting regular inspections of fishing vessels at landing sites and increasing at-sea patrols. It will also involve the application of proactive measures to decentralise the enforcement process by promoting collaborative fisheries management systems and the avoidance of selective enforcement.

By Pascal Kafu Abotsi

([email protected])
An Accra based NGO, Modern Women of Wisdom on Saturday, 27th of February donated items worth thousands of cedis to the female inmates of Nsawam prisons.

The organization believes that it is one of their duties as children of God, to visit prisoners and welcome them back into the society once they finish serving their sentences.

Again, the organization felt the 1 cedi, 80 pesewas given to prisoners as feeding fee daily is woefully inadequate so they decided to donate these items to support the government. The all female organization believes , prisoners are human beings too.

Their stories are everyday human stories. Actually, some prisoners believe that they were wrongfully convicted and given ridiculous sentences.

The group strongly believes that the society must not be judgemental towards prisoners instead, society must support them economically and spiritually.

The group was accompanied by Rev. Fr. Charles Macharia an Associate Priest at Our Lady of Assumption Parish, located at Tantra Hills in Accra.

Speaking to the inmates, the respected man of God advised the inmates not to be too hard on themselves.

He asked them to follow the steps of Christ whilst in Prison as Christ himself is with them in Prison (Matthew 25:31).

"In meeting the needs of the hungry, sick, and imprisoned, we minister directly to Jesus, who considers the poor, sick, and the imprisoned to be his brothers," Father Macharia emphaiszed.

Modern Women of Wisdom did not forget Little Harry, an eight month-old baby who was in prison with his mother.They donated items like baby clothing, diapers, baby wipes etc to the innocent baby.

According to the President of the organization, Nana Ama Asantewaa Kwarkoh, Modern women of Wisdom aspires to be the face of expressing love towards the needy in society.
The 2016 campaign manager of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Peter Mac Manu, has defended presidential candidate Nana Akufo-Addos decision to beg for votes ahead of the crucial elections this year.

The three-time flagbearer who has been campaigning vigorously prior to the polls is asking Ghanaians to consider and vote for him in the November 7 elections.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo repeated his appeal while addressing some party supporters at Atimpoku in the Eastern Region last week.

Akufo-Addo said, Support me. Have confidence in me. This is my third attempt, and I am appealing to you to try me also, and, I can assure you that, with Gods guidance, I will not disappoint you.

The move by Nana Addo has been met with mixed reaction, with some questioning the approach.

Mr. Mac Manu, however, tells Joy News' Kwakye Afreh-Nuamah that the party is convinced the appeal will yield positive results.

He said there was nothing wrong with the approach.

It is in all humility that you give respect to the voters. Thats all there is to it. If it is bad to give respect to the voters then so be it," Manu said.

He added, For us we are giving respect to the voters because they have the power and if somebody has the power or something in their hands and you want them to give it to you, you go and make an appeal in a respectful manner. We cannot force the people to give their votes to Nana, we can only beg them.

Mr. Manu further said that if there is nothing wrong with the NDC saying E dey bi keke to win votes then, the presidential candidates' request should not be questioned.

Some people will say E dey bi keke to attract voters, we will say you have the votes, you have the power so in all humility we are pleading with you to give us the votes, Mr. Manu said.
02.03.2016 LISTEN

A woman who had a son with Bolivian President Evo Morales says she will present her child to the media at a convenient time to prove he is alive.

Mr Morales, 56, says he had a two-year relationship with Gabriela Zapata, now 28, from 2005.

He has acknowledged that Ms Zapata gave birth to his son in 2007 but alleges she told him the child died shortly after being born.

Ms Zapatas aunt said on Saturday that the boy was alive and in Bolivia. TV bombshell

News of the relationship between Ms Zapata and Mr Morales first emerged on 3 February as part of a journalists investigation into alleged influence peddling.

Speaking on Bolivian television, journalist Carlos Valverde disclosed that a Chinese engineering firm, CAMC, had been given lucrative state contracts.

Gabriela Zapata until recently was a senior manager at the Chinese firm.

.

Mr Valverde also broke the news of the previously undisclosed relationship between Ms Zapata and Mr Morales.

He said the two had had a child together.

Two days later, Mr Morales spoke in public for the first time about the relationship.

I met Gabriela Zapata Montano in 2005. It is true that she was my partner, he said.

In 2007 we had a child, but unfortunately, he died. We had some problems and then we grew distant, he added. Investigation

Prosecutors opened an investigation into the allegations of influence peddling and on Friday ordered the arrest of Ms Zapata.

-bbc


The University of Nottingham is pleased to be co-hosting a reception with UK Trade and Investment in Lagos this Thursday 3rd March 2016 to celebrate the engagement and relationships of the University of Nottingham in Nigeria. The event will bring together former and future students, University academic staff and institutional academic partners, as well as other stakeholders with an interest in Higher Education.

Ranked in the top 1% of universities globally and described by The Sunday Times University Guide as one of the first to embrace a truly international approach to higher education, The University of Nottingham has a diverse community creating an inspiring place to study and work, with over 43,000 students from more than 150 countries, award-winning campuses in the United Kingdom, China and Malaysia and strong links with universities around the world. Nigerian students form the largest group of African students on campus with over 200 Nigerian students currently studying at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The University of Nottingham Nigerian Students Society was recently awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by the Nigeria High Commission in recognition of their commitment to the welfare and development of Nigerian students.

In the 2015/16 academic year, over thirty of the incoming postgraduate Nigerian students were awarded prestigious merit based awards such as the Chevening Scholarship (funded by the British Government) and the Commonwealth Shared Scholarship, as well as the University's own internally awarded Developing Solutions Masters scholarships and the Vice-Chancellors Awards for Research Excellence (international). Emma Tayou Regional Manager  West Africa, University of Nottingham says over 1000 Nigerian nationals have graduated from the University of Nottingham, including individuals who have gone on to occupy a range of senior academic, private and public sector positions.

The University of Nottingham continues to develop links with Nigerian institutions in the areas of research and teaching. The University of Nottingham has five faculties and a wide range of departments offering over 360 undergraduate courses and over 380 postgraduate taught courses, with research opportunities across a constantly evolving range of disciplines. Our innovative teaching is informed by the latest research and delivered by leading academics and cross-faculty research groups.

Members of the public can meet with staff from the West Africa Liaison office of the University of Nottingham at the British Council Education UK Exhibitions which will be held in Abuja on 2nd March (at the Transcorp Hilton) and in Lagos on the 4th and 5th March 2016 (at the Intercontinental Hotel).
Kigali (AFP) - Rwandan prosecution lawyers called for 22-year jail sentences Wednesday against two senior military figures on trial for inciting rebellion against the central African nation's strongman, President Paul Kagame.

Both men, once close to Kagame's inner circle, former presidential guard chief and serving colonel, Tom Byabagamba, and retired brigadier-general Frank Rusagara, were arrested in August 2014.

They were charged with inciting rebellion by "spreading rumours" and "tarnishing the image of the country and government". They deny all charges.

"They should be punished with 22 years in jail," military lawyer Faustin Nzakamwita said.

According to military prosecutors, the pair had attempted to turn military officials against the government, while Rusagara had been relaying "propaganda" from the dissident Rwanda National Congress (RNC), an exiled opposition group that includes several former top members of Kagame's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).

The prosecutor said Rusagara had been heard saying Rwanda "is a police state and a banana republic", and that he had described Kagame as a "dictator".

For his part Byabagamba had allegedly said that the FDLR, a Hutu extremist group based in Democratic Republic of Congo that includes former 'genocidaires', was no longer a major threat to the country.

Critics of Kagame, however, say the trials expose the workings of a paranoid state that is increasingly nervous over the activities of the RNC.

A co-founder of the RNC, Rwanda's former intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya, once a comrade-in-arms of Kagame's, was murdered on New Year's Eve 2013 in Johannesburg.

Prosecutors have also called for a six year sentence for Rusagara's driver, Francois Kabayiza.

The trial continues.
Google organized a Hangout session on getting started with AdSense for bloggers and website publishers in Africa. The event which streamed live last Tuesday sought to explain to the digital publishing community the immense opportunities for using Googles AdSense. The Hangout session aired concurrently in Accra, Lagos, Johannesburg and Nairobi. The digital publishing community in the selected countries gathered at designated centers to interact and watch the session.

In Ghana, the watch party gathered at Impact Hub Accra and Ispace for the 60 minute Hangout session which streamed live amid light refreshment. The event was purposed to accelerate digital publishing businesses in Africa by helping publishers understand how Googles AdSense works. Patrons were exposed to how to set up AdSense, and other techniques for attracting and increasing unique visitors to blogs and websites.

Interacting with patrons after the event, it was apparent that the hour long session was very impactful. Justice , a blogger indicated that the session has offered him the necessary information to begin making money from his new blog.

Naomi, who represented Ashleyandgrey, a tourism website (underdevelopment) also, stated that the hangout session served as a useful reminder of some of what she already knew about AdSense. It also gave me a lot of choice on how to attract clients, she added.

Getting started with AdSense for publishers in Africa comes at a time that the African continent is ripe with bloggers and website publishers seeking to profit from their passion. Internet access is also expanding speedily on the continent and the connection quality continues to improve as some countries 24 countries already have access to 4G-LTE services.

The hangout session was also privately available to interested publishers who registered for the event. A recorded version of the session is also available for viewing on YouTube .
International World Wildlife Day falls on Thursday 3 March this year. This is an increasingly important date in the calendar of the world's wildlife, as populations grow and environmental pressures increase. Why should 3 March matter to Zambia?

About 33% of Zambia's landmass is designated as either a National Park or a Game Management Area. That is a third of the country dedicated to the conservation and protection of valuable and iconic species and the protection of the ecosystem.

However, Zambia has not harnessed this resource to the same extent as other countries such as Kenya or Tanzania. The tourism sector's contribution to Zambia's GDP in 2014 was only 2% and growth was 3.5%. The tourism sector can help Zambia's economic diversification. Zambia has 20 National Parks 34 Game Management Areas, over 10 spectacular waterfalls and about 40% of the water resources in the Southern African region. These resources need to be harnessed to contribute to the sustainable economic development of the country.

Apart from the Victoria Falls, the bulk of Zambia's tourism is dependent on wildlife. Without wildlife, the tourism sector's contribution to GDP would significantly decline. Wildlife conservation can attract tourists that bring in much needed foreign exchange and generate employment and government revenue, ultimately reducing poverty.

Tourism is one of the strongest drivers of world trade and prosperity and Zambia could have a bigger piece of the pie. National Development Plans have identified tourism as a major sector with potential for diversification and development. Turning these plans into reality would benefit Zambia's citizens as well as its wildlife. Investment promotion in the tourism sector should take centre stage in Zambia's investment promotion efforts.

It is commendable that the Government of Zambia has recently set up a Public Private Partnership (PPP) Unit under Cabinet office to promote Public Private Partnerships. We believe PPPs are one of the avenues that governments could be exploring to ensure sustainable wildlife conservation and tourism. Through PPPs, communities and governments can work together to contribute financing, management expertise, technology and other resources. This will retain the economic and social benefits of tourism while mitigating any undesirable impacts on the natural, historic, cultural or social environments.

Wildlife conservation is also important for the energy sector. Protection of the catchment areas is necessary to ensure adequate water resources for a country that is more than 90% dependant on hydro power. A reduction in energy due to low water levels affects all sectors of the economy, including mining, which accounts for over 70% of Zambia's foreign exchange earnings.

I commend the Zambian government for the strides it has made in protecting its wildlife. The Government has revised the policy for National Parks and Wildlife and passed the Wildlife Act. The Act provides for the establishment of a Directorate of National Parks and Wildlife under the Ministry of Tourism and Arts to ensure increased resources, action and commitment to the fight against wildlife crimes, as the fight to protect wildlife against poaching and trafficking continues.

It is in Zambia's interest to enforce all the provisions of the new Wildlife Act that will among other things reduce demand for illegal wildlife products, promote tourism and support the development of sustainable livelihoods for communities affected by the illegal trade.

Conservation of wildlife calls for dedicated and easily accessible resources. No government can protect endangered and iconic species without resources. The provision for the establishment of Conservation Fund in the new Wildlife Act is an important step in this regard. We hope that the Zambian government will implement an autonomous conservation fund shortly. An easily accessible resource for the National Parks and Wildlife Authority is necessary to support conservation efforts.

It is also important to support and work with local communities. Wildlife conservation without involvement of the communities is unsustainable. While some of this work is already being done by NGOs such as Game Rangers International, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Kasanka Trust and several cooperating partners, Government help to ensure local communities have alternative and sustainable livelihoods is needed to underpin this work.

I hope Zambia will continue its efforts to protect its native wildlife from extinction. Political will is fundamental to this cause, as is local ownership and engagement. I urge everyone to take an active role to conserve wildlife, and to recognize its importance to tourism, and to the economy, in Zambia.
Accra, March 1, GNA - The capital base of BEIGE Capital Savings and Loans has climbed to GH 120 million, exceeding the Bank of Ghana's (BoG) GH 15 million minimum capital requirement for savings and loans companies to operate.

The Deputy Managing Director (MD) of BEIGE Capital, Mr Charles Odonkor, ascribed the company's outstanding performance to its highly motivated staff and the commitment to the Central Bank's rules and regulations to protect interest of depositors and investors.

Mr Odonkor made these known to the Ghana News Agency on the side-lines of the opening of the Company's new branch, at the Spintex Road - opposite the Baatsonaa Total Fuel Station.

The Spintex Branch further expands the 62 branches of BEIGE Capital, which has been officially recognised the leading and fastest growing Savings and Loans Company.

The company, he said, was progressing towards achieving its mission of covering the 10 regions by the end of 2016 and becoming a world-class bank of Ghanaian origin.

'We intend to expand our frontiers in banking; we intend to capture over 80 per cent of the economically active population who are involved in the informal sector,' Mr Odonkor said.

'At the Spintex Branch, we seek to bring to our clients a more customer-friendly approach to business and win many more customers for the bank,' he said.

He explained: 'The concept of banking is changing, but in spite of the seemingly challenging time, the banking industry continues to be a hotbed of positive developments too, inspiring it to introduce what officials called interesting and innovative products.

'We at BEIGE Capital are committed to providing the best possible service in electronic banking to give our customers a non-stop service point at all times.'

The company unveiled a state-of the-art technology centre last year, and it is working to roll-out more e-banking services seeking to transform Ghana's banking industry.

Rapid urbanisation and technological advancement, he noted, presented huge potential in electronic banking, while the influx of financial firms into Ghana reflects the positive investment returns available.

The BEIGE Capital Board Chairman, Mr Kofi Otutu Adu Labi, said the indigenous company was committed to meeting customers' needs and upholding the integrity of the BoG.

'BEIGE Capital is a home-grown institution with great ambitions to make a difference in the financial landscape, we are well capitalized, strong and robust,' he said.

GNA
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Mampong (Ash), March 2, GNA - The Executive Director of Cocoa Health and Extension Division (CHED) of Cocobod, Dr. Francis Baah, has called for farmers not to corrupt the cocoa inputs distribution programme through influence peddling.

All must accept to follow due process to bring about fairness and transparency and to ensure that the free supply of the chemicals and fertilizers under the cocoa disease and pest control programme (CODAPEC) achieved the intended goal of boosting crop yield.

He warned that those who sidestepped clearly laid down procedures risked losing out, and encouraged everybody to register with its district offices across the nation.

Dr. Baah was speaking at separate ceremonies to inaugurate district taskforces for the CODAPEC programme at Konongo, Mampong and Offinso.

The taskforce is made up of representatives from the Division, Quality Control Unit, Assemblies, the Police Service, Bureau of National Investigation (BNI), National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and farmers.

He stated that the programme was meant to increase the national cocoa production level and therefore everything would be done to make sure that no farmer, was denied his or her fair share of the inputs.

He gave the assurance that adequate chemicals and fertilizers had been procured to cater for all farmers, registered for the programme.

Mr. James Kofi Kutuatsi, Deputy Chief Executive, Operations, said the inclusion of the police and the BNI in the taskforce was to prevent thievery and diversion of the inputs.

He cautioned staff of the Cocobod not to engage in acts that could undermine the programme, adding that anybody caught in any shady deal would not be protected.

The dismissal of about 12 employees in the Ashanti Region, last year, should send a powerful message to all.

Mrs. Faustine Asamany, the Regional Manager of the CHED, asked the taskforce to see to it that the inputs distribution was smooth distribution and free from malpractices.

GNA
Accra, March 2, GNA - The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left Accra last night at the end of a two-day official visit to the country.

The visit was to strengthen bilateral relations and enhance economic cooperation between the two countries.

While in Ghana, President Erdogan addressed the country's parliament, attended a luncheon which was held in his honour by President John Dramani Mahama, and also joined President Mahama to cut the sod for the commencement of work on the new terminal three building at the Kotoka International Airport.

The President of Turkey also held talks with President Mahama on some vital sectors of the economy, including agriculture and transportation.

Ghana and Turkey signed two agreements and two Memoranda of Understanding (MOU).

The bilateral agreements include; promotion and protection of investments and bilateral agreement on communications, while the Memoranda of Understanding include; Sports, Energy and Natural Resources.

The two leaders also addressed more than 150 business people, towards the mutual benefit of the two countries.

The visit was a follow up to a 2013 visit to Ankara and Istanbul by President Mahama.

President Erdogan was seen off at the Kotoka International Airport by President Mahama and a large number of state dignitaries.

GNA
Agona Nsaba, (C/R), March 2, GNA - The Adontenhene of the Agona Nsaba Traditional Area, Nana Kofi Agyekum II, has kicked against the regulated cultivation and use of marijuana, which are being recommended by certain individuals.

He said should cannabis be cultivated as a cash crop to be exported for forex, it would kill the efforts being made by the Government to increase cocoa farming.

Nana Agyekum, who is also the Agona Swedru District Chief Farmer, made this known to the media at Agona Nsaba, in reaction to the suggestion made by the former United Nation (UN) Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, for the regulated legalization and use of wee.

In an essay last month, Mr Annan said the initial trends showed that where cannabis had been legalised, there had been no explosion in drug use or drug-related crime.

The size of the black market, he said, had been reduced and thousands of young people had been spared criminal records.

Mr Annan, who explained that a regulated market should not be mistaken for a free market, urged governments to acknowledge that drugs were infinitely more dangerous if they were left solely in the hands of criminals who had no concerns about health and safety.

He declared:'Drugs are dangerous, but current narcotics policies are an even bigger threat because punishment is given a greater priority than health and human rights. It's time for regulations that put lives and safety first'.

But Nana Agyekum said despite the fact that marijuana contained medicinal properties, using narcotic drugs openly was also against the common national culture.

The District Chief Farmer stated that it would also endanger the health of the youth.

Nana Agyekum said psychiatric doctors managing various mental hospitals had been complaining about the meager funds being given to them by the Government.

'The cost benefits analysis would not help the country to develop economically as expected,' he opined.

He said the legalisation would also bring in drug barons both locally and foreign to invest in the trade and that could jeopardise the country's socio-economic advancement.

Nana Agyekum said successive governments had been trying to resource farmers to plant more cocoa and noted that although the former Ghanaian UN Secretary General's suggestion may be with good intentions, Ghanaians should not accept it because it would spell doom for the nation.

He appealed to the Paramount Chiefs of the Traditional Councils, Regional and National House of Chiefs to help lead the crusade against the legalisation of India Hemp.

Nana Agyekum, therefore, appealed to President John Dramani Mahama not to entertain or accept the suggestion despite its economic and medicinal benefits that could be derived.

The Agona Nsaba Adontenhene also appealed to Nana Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, to help other chiefs to crusade against the legalisation of the plant because of its negative repercussions.

GNA
Accra, March 2, GNA - The Turkish, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has urged the Comity of Nations, especially in the United Nations (UN) and its Security Council, to uphold the principles that bind them to check terrorism and promote world peace.

Describing terrorism as: 'The plague of the modern age', President Erdogan invited Ghana to join in the push for reforms at the UN Security Council to protect vulnerable nations from undue oppression.

Addressing the Parliament as part of a two-day official visit to the Ghana, President Erdogan condemned state-sponsored terrorism and bloody attacks in some parts of the world, with the mass killing of people and attendant refugee problems.

President Erdogan questioned the provisions that made it right for five permanent members to control other members who formed a larger component of the UN.

According to the President, the permanent seat members did not back their words with effective actions to address terrorism and other acts that threatened world peace.

He lauded Ghana's democratic pluses with the assurance to work to deepen the bilateral cooperation to the benefit of the two nations.

Ankara, he said, was working to open more embassies across the nations of Africa.

He recapped the trade, bilateral and investment ties between Accra and Ankara and underlined mutual partnerships for more opportunities in both countries and elsewhere.

Turkey, a Middle-East country located between South Eastern Europe and South Western Asia, has more than 79 million people consisting mainly of Turks; with Kurds being in the minority.

The population is predominantly of the Muslims faith, and the country operates a largely-free market economy driven by its industry, service and agricultural sectors.

Ghana is Turkey's third largest trade partner in Sub-Saharan Africa (after the Republic of South Africa and Nigeria), the Ministry's report has said.

The bilateral trade volume, which amounted to 175 million USD in 2009, reached 290 million USD in 2010.

Turkey opened its Embassy in Accra in February 2010, following the commitment on both sides to deepen bilateral links.

The Ghana-Turkey Parliamentary Friendship Association was formed in March 2011.

President Erdogan began his African tour in La Cote d'Ivoire on Sunday, travelling to Ghana and then to Nigeria before wrapping up the trip in Guinea on Thursday.

GNA
Accra, March 2, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama has congratulated the Board and Management of the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) for successfully raising funds for the construction of the new Terminal Three building at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).

'I congratulate the Board and Management of GACL, for raising all the needed funding for this project on their own balance sheet, without recourse to the central government purse,' the President said.

President Mahama said this in Accra, when he and the visiting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, performed a sod cutting ceremony to mark the commencement of work on the new Terminal Three building.

He urged all other state owned companies, oranisations and institutions to emulate the example of the GACL, because that greatly enhanced national development and growth.

Touching on the ceremony, President Mahama said the aviation industry continued to employ many people and also generated a great measure of wealth.

'The sector continues to grow and government is committed to providing the necessary support to improve the sector,' said the President.

President Mahama noted, that an air transport action group report revealed that globally, the aviation industry supported 58 million jobs, and 2.4 trillion dollars in economic activities annually, adding that it was estimated to move about 35 percent of world trade by value.

The International Air Traffic Association estimates there would be over 6.5 billion air passengers by 2032 to generate about 103 million jobs and 5.8 trillion in economic activity, President Mahama said, adding that a strong aviation sector no doubt would boost Ghana's economic potential and make it more viable and efficient in global competition.

'Growth in this sector would generate more jobs and have far reaching economic gains for the country,' he said.

The government's rehabilitation of aviation infrastructure in the country was thus timely and focused on the future, President Mahama said, adding that the government also aimed towards building one aerodrome in every region of Ghana, to open up the country economically and also facilitate medical and emergency evacuation services.

'This ceremony forms part of the series of infrastructural projects lined up to enhance aviation services. The ultra-modern terminal three facility to be constructed, would consist of a five level facility expanding to 45,000 square meters with the capacity to process 1,250 passengers per-hour,' said President Mahama.

The President added that, it would have a large retail and commercial area, six modern bridges, three business lounges, and the terminal would have the capacity to handle five million passengers a year.

He said the project was expected to be completed by the end of July 2017, adding, 'with the completion of terminal three, KIA would be the most attractive destination in West Africa.'

President Mahama said Accra was already a preferred hub for many airlines, and the government planned to set up a new national airline under a public private partnership arrangement to support the policy objective of making the Kotoka International Airport as an aviation hub.

'It is my expectation therefore that terminal three would play a pivotal role to support the operations of this new airline. There is increasing interest in other airlines to extend their operations to KIA, and as I spoke with president Erdogan today, Turkish Airways is already flying a daily flight from Ankara to Accra.

'They intend to double this to 14 flights a week from Turkey to Ghana, and this would enhance business relations between the two countries,' President Mahama said.

President Edorgan expressed the hope that 'this ground breaking ceremony would yield great benefits for Ghana'.

He said 'we are proud that a Turkish company is building this new terminal. The KIA would be able to connect to the world in a different way, once this building is completed.'

President Erdogan said his visit had afforded the two countries the opportunity to forge ahead in a mutually beneficial partnership.

'We addressed over 150 business people and decided to collaborate in a number of areas including agriculture, transportation, and anti-terrorism,' he said.

President Edorgan, who was in the country for a two day official visit, has since departed.

GNA
Kumasi, March 02, GNA - The National House of Chiefs (NHC) has asked the government to provide state institutions with adequate resources to perform.

It described as troubling the poor funding, which was making it difficult for public institutions and agencies to deliver on their mandate.

The chiefs said things needed to change to help these institutions to live up to expectation and add pace to the nation's socio-economic and political development.

This was contained in a communique issued by the House after a day's meeting it held with the National Population Council (NPC) in Kumasi.

The meeting discussed ways to improve sexual and reproductive health of the country's adolescents.

The House drew attention to the need to make youth development an urgent priority, saying, more resources must be invested in their education and training.

This, it noted, was the way to assure the society of responsible young men and women, ready to contribute meaningfully to its advancement.

The chiefs pledged continued cooperation and support towards the implementation of government's policies and programmes to enhance growth.

They underlined the need for stronger engagement of key stakeholders - traditional and religious leaders, academia and civil society organizations to keep the country on the path of progress.

GNA
Accra, March 2, GNA - Mr Joseph Frempong-Manso, Deputy Chief Manager, Bank of Ghana (BOG), has said regional offices would be established across the country to monitor the activities and build capacities of Microfinance Institutions.

He said BOG would also educate such financial intuitions and the public on what they need to know about their affairs.

'Some do not have the license from BOG to operate and tend to collaborate with others to work; this is not helping the industry so the establishment of BOG regional offices,' Mr Frempong-Manso said in Accra on Tuesday at the first Ghana Association of Saving and Loans Companies (GHASALC) stakeholders meeting.

'We are going to [provide] sensitization programmes to the public and players in the financial sector to enlighten them on banking and its policies,' he said.

Speaking on the theme: 'Including savings and Loans Companies among other Microfinance Institutions in the Operational Guidelines: Effects on Client Perception and Operational Performance of Savings and Loans', Mr Kofi Ampofo Agyapong, President of GHASALC, said though Savings and Loans Companies constitute a key segment of Ghana's financial sector, there were a number of challenges affecting the image, operations and sustainability of its members.

He said the main actors in the Savings and Loans arena were of the view that the lumping of Savings and Loans Companies together with other Microfinance providers was affecting the image and fortunes of their businesses given reported cases of unethical practices by some of the Microfinance providers.

'This has always created problems for all sector players but most especially to the Saving and Loans Companies due to some similarities in service provision perceived by clients of both sector categories and the public,' Mr Ampofo Agyapong said.

He said to address the concern, GHASALC commissioned a study to identify the underlying factors that was causing such misconception by the public especially when such issues were left unaddressed, would affect the profitability and further sustainability of GHASALC members.

Addressing participants from the financial sector, who comprised of heads of banking firms, Ministry of Finance and other financial services department of the BOG, among others, Mr Ernest Senyo Dzandu, Executive Director, CDC Consult Limited, enumerated some concerns undermining the operations of Microfinance Institutions.

He said some of the concerns include: unethical practices, misuse of savings of depositors, clients lack of confidence in Microfinance Institutions; clients rating business transactions with savings and loans as very high; undifferentiated operations between Saving and Loans Companies and Microfinance Institutions.

Mr Dzandu said the potential effect could not be overemphasized and called on GHASALC and other stakeholders to sensitize clients, carve a distinct image for Savings and Loans subsectors, educate staff thoroughly on right policies, client financial education, strengthening of supervision, continuous engagement with regulators and Microfinance Institutions as well as continuous engagement with clients as the way forward.

Some participants who spoke to the Ghana News Agency lauded GHASALC for the dialogue with regulators and other stakeholders in its quest to address the challenges in the industry.

GHASALC has been in existence since September 5, 2008 and it objectives among others seeks to provide advocacy to its members of which 24 of them are operating in Ghana.

GNA
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Ave-Dakpa (V/R), Mar. 2, GNA - Mr James Gunu, Akatsi-North District Chief Executive (DCE), has expressed worry that remedial classes could become a parallel system to the main line school system.

He said while there always will be the need for some form of remedial classes, it should not overrun the educational system.

Mr Gunu was addressing the Ave Senior High School (AVESCO) maiden Student Representative Council (SRC) durbar at Ave-Dakpa.

He said currently in the minds of many young people, remedial classes is a continuation of the Senior High School.

Mr Gunu said many teachers outside their mainline jobs have become staff of remedial class outfits, using clever marketing strategies to make money out of student failures.

He said many students even before they sat for their exams begin searching for remedial class opportunities and this 'is psychologically killing the zeal for hard work among students'.

'Though the intention for the classes may be good, the manner they are mushrooming should be a matter of concern', he said.

The DCE suggested for a start, some form of accreditation and regulation of the fees charged be made, expressing fears that the 'Remedial Revolution' may soon descend from WASSCE level to the BECE level.

He asked the AVESCO students to scale up academic work to justify the investment made in them.

Mr Prosper Addo, the Headmaster of Ave Senior High School, said the school will attain full boarding status this year and will also commence science programmes.

GNA
Koforidua (E/R), Mar. 2, GNA - Mrs Anorkplim Nukunu-Woanyah, Project Officer of Youth Bridge Foundation (YBF), a Non-Governmental Organization, has cautioned the youth to desist from fomenting trouble as country prepares for November's elections.

She said the age of criminal responsibility in Ghana is 12 years and children can be imprisoned for serious offences per the Juvenile Justice Act 653.

Mrs Nukunu-Woanyah said this when she addressed students of Trinity Presbyterian Junior High School (JHS) at Adweso, Seventh Day Adventist JHS at Asokore and Effiduase Methodist JHS at separate functions within the New Juaben Municipality.

The programme forms part of a sensitization and awareness creation programme on the rights and responsibilities of the youth.

The theme for the programme was: "Promoting Child Rights and Responsibilities: Our collective call to action'and it is being funded by Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).

She said as part of efforts to continuously educate the children, they have developed relevant information on children's rights and responsibilities, which one can receive on mobile phone platforms through a text with the short code "Text YBF to 1900" to all networks .

Madam Gertrude Nsiah, Community Participation Coordinator (CPC) at the New Juaben Municipal Education Office, advised children below 18 years not to allow themselves to be influenced by anyone to register and come in conflict with the law.

She said the wrong things copied from social media and other media platforms has contributed to indiscipline among children and advised parents not to lose their responsibility, but have ample time for their children.

GNA
Accra, March 2, GNA - The FPSO Professor John Evans Atta Mills, a Floating Production Storage Offloading vessel, which will produce and store oil from Ghana's Tweneboa-Ntomme-Enyenra (TEN) offshore oil fields, arrived in Ghanaian waters on Wednesday March 2, 2016.

The vessel, which was constructed in Singapore and named by Her Excellency the First Lady, Dr. Nana Lordina Mahama, in September 2015, is expected to start producing oil from the TEN fields by July/August 2016.

A statement from Tullow Oil said the FPSO began its voyage from Singapore to Ghana on 23rd January 2016 with almost zero 'carry over', meaning only 2,000 man hours of work remained to be completed during the voyage.

This was a very significant industry achievement. The FPSO would move directly to the installation phase when it arrived on station, the statement said.

This would be followed by the hook-up of subsea facilities via flowlines, risers and control umbilicals, much of which had already been pre-installed.

In addition, six wells have already been completed, and the completion of the remaining wells was on schedule. The integrated facilities would undergo final commissioning and testing during the second quarter of this year before first oil.

The development of the TEN fields was being led by Tullow Oil along its partners the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), Kosmos Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation and PetroSA (the TEN Partners).

Tullow Ghana Ltd Managing Director, Charles Darku, commented: 'We are extremely pleased and proud that Ghana's second FPSO has arrived safely here on our shores. It is a source of pride to note that many of the component parts of both the FPSO and the subsea infrastructure were built and supplied by Ghanaian companies.

'Tullow and its partners remain at the forefront of unlocking Ghana's oil resources for the mutual benefit of the nation and shared prosperity. We can look forward to first oil from the TEN fields by July/August this year'.

The FPSO Professor John Evans Atta Mills was constructed by MODEC and will be operated by MODEC Ghana Ltd on behalf of the TEN Partners.

GNA
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Accra, Mar. 2, GNA - Mr Prosper Bani, Minister of the Interior has tasked agencies and institutions under the Ministry to adopt preventive strategies towards addressing operational concerns within the sector.

He said by using preventive measures rather than recovery, the nation will be able to avoid some of the havoc caused especially during the rainy seasons where lives and properties are lost and destroyed.

Mr Bani, who said this during a handing over ceremony in the Ministry, added that we may have challenges but it all depends on how we prepare for those challenges.

He said the Ministry has been mandated to ensure internal security, as well as the maintenance of law and order in the country in collaboration with its Agencies.

Mr Bani said the successes attained in the socio-economic sphere of the nation and the realization of Government's plans and programmes under the National Medium Term Development Plan and Millennium, Development Goals (MDG's) could be attributed to the relatively safe and secure environment.

Agencies under the ministry includes; the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Prison Service, Ghana National Fire Service, NARCOTIC Control Board, National Disaster Management Organisation, Ghana Refugee Board, Commission on Small Arms, Ghana Peace Council, Gaming Commission, and Migration Unit.

Mr Bani, who takes over from Mr Mark Woyongo, commended his predecessor for the successes attained during his tenure and pledged to build on the foundation laid.

He said there are challenges on conflict, over-crowding, logistics for the Police, capacity building on issues bordering the Agencies under the Ministry.

Mr Mark Woyongo commended all the Agencies under the Ministry for their collaboration during his tenure despite the financial challenges of the period.

He said under his authority eleven bills have been sent to Parliament one of which is the Immigration Service Bill which has just been passed by Parliament.

Mr Woyongo said the Immigration Service Bill would enhance security operations of the Immigration officials especially at the country's borders.

He said with the passage of the Bill it is important that Immigration officials are empowered to carry arms and ammunitions and this is very important because they are our front liners.

Mr Woyongo said some draft bills have been sent to the Attorney General's Department on non-custodial laws which will be fined tuned and submitted to cabinet.

He said that bill is to help decongest the countries prisons so that people who are sent to prison due to minor offences will be released and made to do community work.

He said an independent Police Complains Commission will help address public concerns and urged the Inspector General of Police to take keen interest in it.

He also praised the coming into force of the Justice for All programme noting that through this initiative, a High Court has been established at the Nsawam Medium Prison which looks into remand cases.

The former Interior Minister said the Efiase project has yielded encouraging results and appealed to Ghanaians to contribute to the project.

GNA
02.03.2016 LISTEN

Akatsi (V/R), Mar. 2, GNA - The Akatsi Police has intercepted a truck, moving toward Aflao, with a consignment of cocoa beans stuffed in 30 gallons covered by other gallons containing palm oil.

Kodjo Xenyo, 36, driver in charge of the Rhino Truck, the only occupant, is assisting the police with investigations.

Mr Dennis Fiakpui, District Police Commander, said the truck, travelling from Kade in the Eastern Region, pulled up the Hikpo barrier on the Accra-Aflao Highway at about 1730 hrs, with what was thought to be a consignment of palm oil.

He said upon closer examination, the officers found the drums underneath were stuffed with the beans, for which Xenyo could not provide a waybill, leading to his arrest.

Mr Fiakpui said the police turned down a GH 1500 enticement from the driver and the goods and the vehicle had been impounded while investigations continues.

GNA
Accra, Mar. 2, GNA - Friends of the Nation (FoN), a socio-environmental research and advocacy non-governmental organisation, has called on the government to enforce the laws on the use of harmful fishing methods.

It said weak governance of the fisheries sector has led to declining marine fishery resources, conflicts and widespread illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Addressing a press conference in Accra on the theme: "Effective Fisheries Enforcement, The Voice of Fishers and Civil Society Organisations," Mr Kyei Kwadwo Yamoah, Programmes Manager FoN, said the wide spread use of unsustainable and harmful fishing methods is contributing to degradation of critical coastal fishery habitats.

He said those who violated fisheries laws and regulations did not only harm the resources and put the economy at risk; but it is also unfair to those who comply to the laws.

Mr Yamoah said addressing the peculiar situation in Ghana's fisheries governance system requires the application of two main cardinal strategies; voluntary compliance and deterrence.

He said the voluntary compliance includes efforts to secure the active support of resource users and their willingness to comply with the necessary legal and regulatory framework as well as management of fisheries resources on sustainable basis through intensive sensitization and education.

He said it would be appropriate to apply deterrence (measured enforcement of the law) to address all forms of infractions.

Mr Yamoah said some key elements of deterrence include: conducting regular inspections of fishing vessels at landing sites and increasing sea patrols.

He said there was the need to also apply proactive measures to decentralize the enforcement process by promoting collaborative Fisheries Management (Co-mgt) systems where fishing communities and local stakeholders will be involved in enforcing law.

Mrs Emelia Abaka- Edu, National Vice Chairman of the National Fish Processor and Traders Association, called for the non-politicisation of the fishery industry to enhance growth.

In Ghana, the fisheries industry contributes significantly towards the social, cultural and economic development of the country.

The sector supports the nation's economic development objectives relating to food security, employment, poverty reduction and foreign exchange earnings.

Friends of the Nation (FoN), is a socio-environmental research and advocacy NGO based in Sekondi in the Western Region and established in 1993. Its mission is to catalyse increased action on sustainable natural resource management and healthy environment through knowledge transfer, training, research, networking and advocacy. GNA
The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has launched a radio monitoring programme to kick against 'hate speech' ahead of the general elections.

Progragramme Manager for the organization, Abigail Larbi-Odei told Myjoyonline.com the exercise is focused on the use of abusive language on radio before, during and after the election.

She says about influential 70 radio stations have been selected across the country for the monitoring exercise which starts from April to the election month, November.

Reports will be issued every two weeks and political party communicators who will use abusive languages will be cited, She said.

Larbi-Odei added that radio station who will allow the use of unacceptable language on their airwaves will be cited in the report as well.

The report will be sent to the National Media Commission (NMC) and a final report will be put out, she indicated.

According to Larbi-Odei, the Foundation is not mandated to punish offenders that is why they will forward their report to the NMC for further action.

Below is the full list of radio stations to be monitored for the exercise:

Greater Accra Region (20):

Joy FM, Citi FM, Peace FM, Adom FM, Okay FM, Starr FM, Montie FM, Neat FM, Kasapa, Hot FM, Radio Gold, Oman FM, Accra FM, Class FM, Maraba FM, Top FM, Happy FM, Atinka FM, Rainbow Radio, Asempa Fm.

2. Ashanti Region (10):

Angel FM, Nhyira FM, Fox FM, Dess FM, Bekwai, Hello FM, Kessben, Ash FM, Capital Radio, Luv FM, Ultimate FM.

3. Brong Ahafo Region (7):

Space FM, Classic FM, Wenchi Royal, Tain FM, Nananom FM, Adass FM, Winners FM.

4. Northern Region (6):

Diamond FM, North Star, Might FM, Radio Justice, Zaa Radio, Eagle FM.

5. Western Region (5):

Skyy Power FM, Vision FM, Trickie FM, Pure FM, De Beat FM.

6. Eastern region (5):

Obuoba FM, Thank You FM, Rite FM, Bridge FM, EMAK FM.

7. Volta Region (5):

Lorlonyo FM, Kekeli Radio, Jubilee Radio, Beyond FM, Denu FM.

8. Central region (4):

Yes FM, Ahomka FM, Spark FM, Arise FM.

9. Upper East Region (4):

Word FM, Radio A1, Quality FM, Source FM.

10. Upper West Region (4):

Radio Progress, Radford FM, Radio FREED, Radio Von.

Credit: Media Foundation for West Africa

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com| Akosua Asiedua Akuffo| [email protected]
Abraham Attah

02.03.2016 LISTEN

Agu, a lead character in Netflix's "Beasts of No Nation" film, is currently enjoying rare global prominence as a 15 year old Ghanaian boy. Abraham Attah has been well described in some articles as, "The 15 year old, who was assisting his mother by selling on the street with no acting background, shot to fame after getting a role in 'Beasts of No Nation'..." Yours truly as the self-acclaimed King of Ghanaian Teenagers, has kept slobbering over Abraham Attah, a great mentor.

Interestingly, Agu has fulfilled my prophesy on Twitter some time ago in mid-2015, where I prayed for Ghana and Africa to have another "Justin Bieber" (metaphor intended). And Abraham Attah is now living my clear-cut dream to the max.

If you have never watched "Beasts of No Nation," then you are free to remain sceptical about the worldwide praises showered on Agu, for his formidable role in that movie. He recently presented an award at the 88th Annual Academy Awards, hosted by Chris Rock, which took place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. He has also won a couple of international awards, winning the latest one at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Abraham Attah, who wore a pair of black velvet Toms with a crisp black tuxedo on the red carpet at the Oscar's in Los Angeles, secured a social contract with "Toms" to donote 10k Toms shoes to needy children in Ghana. No wonder ghanacelebrities.com editor, stated that, "...[Abraham Attah] has been to places that his generation to come may only dream of."

Unfortunately, two naughty journalists, namely Jay Foley and Lexis Bill, mocked Abraham Attah for a misrelated construction in his speech at the Oscar's. I need not react to their sheer absurdity because I may end up denting their hard-earned reputation. However, Agu is still trending on popular social media platforms in Ghana like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

A chunk of social media enthusiasts in Ghana are commending him for reaching dizzy heights in the film industry. And our own president, John Dramani Mahama, had this to say on his official Twitter account, "Congrats [Abraham Attah]. Such a positive positioning of the Ghana Brand. We can do with many more Abraham Attah's. 'Beasts of No Nation'." Abraham Attah, Africa's foremost child celebrity, got catapulted to global fame for his atypical talent though he was a street vendor with little education and zero movie experience.

That is why I personally want to lead the charge for the development of talents in Ghana. You have minimal idea of my huge struggles as a purely refined talent in the writing fraternity. Ghanaian households and the society at large suppress budding talents, all in the name of sacrosanct schooling. There are very few institutions in Ghana which groom pure talents for enterprising initiatives.

We have gleefully overlooked the glaring fact that, "When we have adequately developed our talents, skills and potentials and resources to solve other people's problems, we can then place a price tag on them. That is the beginning of wealth creation" (Asare-Bediako and Asare-Bediako, 2007). Gosh, why should Ghanaian parents kill the talented spirit of their child just to pursue their preferred profession?

Moreover, I have always insisted that we can solve 80% of youth unemployment if our system empowers our youths to discover, develop and utilise their talents, gifts, skills or potentials. After all, Ghanaian creative arts can become a billion dollar sector if it is advanced by leaps and bounds.

Yes, Nigeria's National Bureau of Statistics revealed that Nollywood alone was worth $3.3 billion in 2014. Analysts have even predicted that the estimated value of Nigeria's music industry would reach a staggering $1 billion in subsequent years. And in 2013, Hollywood, creative industries and other related areas added $504 billion to US GDP. I believe that Ghanaian creative arts can follow suit if this sector becomes a topmost national priority. Indeed, the story of Agu is a case for talent development in Ghana.

Source: sirarticle.blogspot.com
A leaked letter purported to have been authored by the Electoral Commission (EC) says National Democratic Congress (NDC) parliamentary candidate for Klottey Korle constituency Zanetor Rawlings is not a registered voter.

The revelation was contained in a letter addressed to Thaddeus Sory, Sory @ Law and cited by Adomonline.com.

We write to instruct you to conduct the above suit on our behalf. We have received letters from Lawyers of the Plaintiff in the matter requesting information on the status of Dr. Zanetor Agyemang Rawlings as a registered voter as a well as a subpoena duces Tecum served on the commission in respect thereof.

Our records confirm that she is not on the commissions register as a registered voter, the letter signed by EC boss, Charlotte Osei read in part.

Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle, Nii Armah Ashittey, and another aspirant Nii Johnson Coleman have filed a joint suit at an Accra High Court against the Electoral Commission and Dr Zanetor Agyeman Rawlings.

The two are challenging the latters legitimacy to contest for a parliamentary seat under the 1992 constitution.

The court is set to hear the case Wednesday.

The two both contested the NDC constituency primaries and lost to Dr Zanetor on November 21, 2015. But they are of the view that her election was unlawful since she is not a registered voter.

It would be recalled, during the NDCs primary on November 21, Dr Rawlings could not cast her ballot because her name was not found in the voters register.

It was then alleged that she not a registered Ghanaian voter.

And a letter written by the EC to the Klottey Korle NDC, which was read on Asempa FMs Ekosii Sen on Wednesday states that indeed it has no record to prove that the daughter of the former first family is not a register voter.

The letter was written by the EC on 26th February, 2016 and addressed to Thaddeus Sory, Sory @ Law.
Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's parliament on Wednesday dismissed a deputy after he held talks with Israel's envoy to Cairo during a dinner at his home, the assembly said.

Tawfiq Okasha hosted Israeli ambassador Haim Koren last week, sparking outrage in parliament where one lawmaker hit him with a shoe -- an insult in the Arab world.

Okasha talked about the meeting in an interview in the Al-Masry Al-Youm daily, saying the two agreed Israel "has a key role in the issue of the dam" being built by Ethiopia on the Blue Nile.

The parliament's official website said 465 deputies -- or more than two-thirds of its members -- voted to deprive Tewfiq of his seat on Wednesday.

"The penalty is not over his meeting with the ambassador of a foreign country, but because of the issues discussed during this meeting, in relation to Egypt's national security," it said.

The issue of the Ethiopian dam is seen in Cairo as a matter of national security.

"He has failed in his duties by inviting a foreign state to interfere to solve the issue of the dam," deputy Khaled Youssef told AFP.

In a video posted on Facebook, the Israeli ambassador sought to explain the significance of the talks.

"We have to accept differing opinions, to consolidate ties between the two peoples; economic, cultural and social," said Koren.

Although Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, their ties have been formally cold over Israel's policies towards the Palestinians.

Egypt's political elite remains hostile to any normalisation of ties with Israel.

Relations between the two further soured after the June 2012 election of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi as Egyptian president.

The Israeli embassy described the February 24 meeting between Okasha and Koren as "successful", saying "the two parties agreed on staying in touch and pursuing cooperation".
It was heavy shower of praises on the president as the Minister of Science and Technology and Innovation moved the motion on the floor of Parliament for the debate on the state of nation address.

Mahama Ayariga described president John Mahama as peerless, touting his credentials as a man who moved Ghana from darkness to light in one year.

"Mr Speaker, it is a tale of moving us from disaster to better Ghana. Within a year the president John Dramani Mahama moved us out of the cataclysmic situation.

"By the fastest mobilization of the highest amount of megawatts of electricity injected into our economy.

"This is no mean achievement," Ayariga said, even the building of the Akosombo Dam could surpass the speed with which Mahama restored electricity to Ghana, he added.

Ghana has since 2012 suffered a crippling power crisis which saw the country enjoy only six hours of electricity and 18 hours of darkness in a day at some point.

The darkness led to deaths, a collapse of businesses, loss of jobs, a slowdown in the economy.

After several broken promises by the president and his appointees for nearly four years the situation was finally brought under control in January 2016.

President John Mahama in his state of the nation address officially announced the end of the power crisis while still highlighting some of the achievements his government has chalked in the last three years.

The opposition New Patriotic Party has been quick to berate the president accusing him of insincerity and propaganda.

In a counter state of the nation address, Nana Akufo-Addo the biggest opposition party's flagbearer said the president cannot claim to have taken responsibility for the crisis when all he did at the time was to blame his predecessors.

But Mahama Ayariga is in no mood to accept any criticism. He applauded the president's track record, describing him as "no size".
you are here:
Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) have been performing great this year. At least that was until their disappointing 1H FY16 profits release.

Wesfarmers [ASX:WES] have been performing great this year. At least that was until their disappointing 1H FY16 profits release. Before their results were announced WES shares were up 5.4% for the year. Since then, however, shares are down 10.9% from their high. It was their resource business that hurt them the most.

But theyre definitely doing better than their bitter rivals Woolworths [ASX:WOW]. Its not that WOWs shares have dropped more than WES; both are down around 6% for the year. However, WOWs financial decision is much direr.

WOW lost close to $1 billion, according to the 1H results released just days ago. However, share prices rallied on the news of a strategic turnaround and CEO change. Theres no doubt that the retail industry, and in particular the supermarket sector, is highly competitive.

Not only are margins tight, but both retailing giants have to compete with each other as well as low priced German supermarket, Aldi. Foodland CEO, Con Sciacca, believes other supermarket chains have an advantage over the larger national chains.

He coined the term blast zone which is the catchment area within a 10 minute drive of any new Aldi store. Foodland believes they have an advantage over WOW and WES in preventing new Aldi store from opening.

For example, Foodland can cut prices and offer hard special promotions in specific stores. Its something that the big two retailers just cant do. Yet this isnt even the biggest problem for WES and WOW. It is the online retailers that have gotten people nervous.

WES managing director, Richard Goyder, says Amazon will eat our breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Goyder believes the Australian retail industry needs to become more innovative. Tech companies, like Amazon, are pushing into Australia. This is more worrying to Goyder than domestic competition.

Weve got big competition online and through a physical presence  we are in a disruptive, disrupted world, Goyder said. Excessive regulation is whats hindering Australia retailers. While WES and WOW heavily rely on customers walking in the doors, online retailers are open 24/7 all year round.

An example of strict regulation is Sunday trading hours. In Perth some larger retailers can only trade for six hours of the day. Yet Sunday has now become the businesses day of the week in many cities.

Of course, WES already has an online store. It reached online sales of $968 million in 1H FY16. Obviously, in times were people almost live on the internet, more retailers need to get with the program. And Goyder understands this. He believes all retailers need to have an online and social media presence.

Yet he is urging the government to help encourage Australian companies to become globally competitive.

What we need is sound economic management that encourages investment and innovation so businesses can employ more people, take calculated risks and create value for all stakeholders, Goyder said.

The Federal governments innovation package, it seems, was not enough for Goyder. Whether more help is given to Aussie retailers remains unknown. But the invasion of online global leaders could push Australias two biggest retailers to try new means of creating sales.

Harje Ronngard,

Junior Analyst, Money Morning

PS: Aussie retailer might be doing it tough now, but they could be close to the bottom. Woolworths is already down 36.69% since March last year. A turnaround might not too far off. Woolworths is just one blue chip beaten down by the market. But there are many more out there.

Money Mornings publisher Kris Sayce says theres five beaten down blue chips that remain buys. In Kris report, Five Beaten-Down Aussie Blue Chips to Buy Today, hell give you actionable advice on how to sell dividend payers. Kris will also reveal the common denominator that makes these five beaten down blue chips a buy.

To get your free report, click here.
March 02, 2016

Kerry's "Plan B" - Attack Syria From Lebanon - With Saudi and Turkish Help

We yesterday described what looks like a Turkish-Saudi plan to raise a Salafi-Sunni militia in north Lebanon to then attack nearby Syrian regions held by the Syrian government. Such a new front of the conflict in Syria would necessarily involve fighting in Lebanon as the Lebanese Shia Hizbollah movement is actively supporting the Syrian government. The plot would destabilize Lebanon, probably throwing it back into the brutal times of the Lebanese civil war.

There was no confirmation of such a plot yesterday, just several signs for it like the ship with weapons from Turkey that was caught by the Greek coastguard on its way to north Lebanon.

The existence of such a plan was confirmed today. We still can no say for sure that the plot is part of a U.S. "Plan B" to achieve a violent "regime change" in Syria, but we know that the U.S. is informed about the plan.

In his Washington Post column today the unofficial CIA spokesperson David Ignatius writes about the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman:

The young Saudi has sometimes been more bold than wise, as in his war in Yemen, his decision to break diplomatic relations with Iran and his new effort to destabilize a Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon.

Syria is not mentioned in that part of the Ignatius column but any capable Sunni militia in Lebanon, created from Salafist groups in Tripoli and Syrian Sunni refugees in Lebanese camps, would extend itself into Syria and become a threat to the government held western Syria.

Ignatius, as surely also the U.S. government, was informed by the Saudis themselves. The above quoted paragraph continues:

But his role as a change agent is unmistakable. He wants to transition Saudi Arabia very quickly, said Adel al-Toraifi, the Saudi information minister, whos just 36 himself, in a visit to Washington last week.

My hunch is that this plan is too bold to have grown solely in the minds of the Turkish and Saudi regimes. The U.S. is likely not only informed about it but deeply involved. The possibility of such a plan to counter the recent Syrian and Russian successes on the battlefield was first mentioned in a piece published in early February by the Washington Institute, a think tank founded and funded by the Israel lobby.

Last week Secretary of State Kerry mentioned a "Plan B" should the recent cessation of hostilities in Syria fail:

US Secretary of State John Kerry provoked widespread speculation when he referred in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee last week to significant discussions within US President Barack Obama's administration about a Plan B in Syria. The speculation was further stoked by a senior official who told CBS News that options under consideration included "'military-like' measures that would make it harder for the regime and its allies to continue their assault on civilians and US-backed rebels.

A violent Salafi militia from Lebanon storming into Syria would certainly be a "'military-like' measures that would make it harder for the regime and its allies".

The author of the last linked text, Gareth Porter, dismissed the chance of a real "Plan B" but had not yet included the Lebanon plot scenario in his considerations. He continued:

Kerry suggested that the US was still a player in the Syrian contest for power. Regarding Chairman Bob Corkers comment that the Russians had been accomplishing their ends in Syria, he argued that the Russians and the Syrian government could take control of Aleppo, but that holding territory has always been difficult. Kerry claimed that the Russians could not prevent the opposition from getting the weapons needed to continue the war, as long as the US and its allies were supporting them. He offered no explanation for that claim.

The Turkish-Saudi weapon smuggling into Lebanon is an explanation for the claim Kerry made. Syria and Russia are in the process of closing off the Syrian-Turkish border. If the Saudis can build a weapon pipeline into north Lebanon it will become quite difficult for Syria and its allies to hold the Syrian territory near the Lebanese border.

In a speech yesterday Hizbullah chief Nasrallah discussed the general Saudi threat to Lebanon at length but did not mention the Sunni militia plot:

"Saudi which treats Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain like that, treats Lebanon the same way," Sayyed Nasrallah concluded, addressing the Saudis: "Your problem is with us, it is not with the country or with the Lebanese..."

Nasrallah is right, but the Saudis will not care when the Lebanese people or their country get hurt due to some nefarious scheme to attack Syria and Hizbullah. Nor will the United States.

There are obvious signs for a plan to use Saudi controlled Sunni militia from Lebanon against the Syrian government and its supporters. The U.S. is, in my view, very likely involved in this plot. But we still do not know if this plan will ever be implemented. The recent Saudi threat to send its army into Syria turned out to be a pure (dis-)information campaign to unsettle the Syrian government's side. The recent revelations about the plot in Lebanon and the "Plan B" may also be pure deception and illusionary to gain some leverage for the coming negotiations.

But the ship the Greek coastguard caught was real and such a plan would have a good chance to create lots of troubles for Syria and its supporters. My advice to the Syrian government and its allies is to prepare now to eventually counter it.

Posted by b on March 2, 2016 at 10:09 UTC | Permalink

Comments
ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA  Imagination has no age limit. Dr. Seuss would agree, and so does Katie Kath, a childrens book illustrator who provided artwork for the 50th anniversary edition of Come Over to My House, an out-of-print Seuss book originally published in 1966. March 2 marks Read Across America Day, which honors Seusss birthday.

The Winston-Salem, North Carolina, artist was commissioned to illustrate the special anniversary edition, which releases in hardback on Sept. 6. Kaths new artwork re-imagines the books young narrator and gives Come Over to My House a modernized feel for 21st-century readers.

Kath, who works primarily in watercolor and ink, said she relishes these challenges because they allow her creative freedom in her everyday work.

I think that the field of childrens book illustration is such a creative career. Its the most creative career you could have  you get to draw pictures of fun things, said Kath.

Raised in Morganton, North Carolina, Kath earned her B.F.A. in art  with a focus on illustration  at Winthrop and her M.F.A. at the Savannah College of Art and Design. During her time at SCAD, she won a prestigious Student Illustrator Scholarship from the Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators. She has provided illustrations for a number of childrens books, including Kelly Joness Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Chicken Farmer; Arthur Levines What a Beautiful Morning; Linda Urbans Weekends with Max and His Dad; April W. Waylands More Than Enough; and more.

Theodor Seuss Geisel, known internationally by his pen name of Dr. Seuss, was a popular American writer and illustrator. A cartoonist, animator and book publisher, he is best known for classics like Horton Hears a Who!(1955); The Cat in the Hat (1957); How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1957); and Green Eggs and Ham, among others.

Visit Kaths website, www.ktkath.com, to learn more about her work.
Stacia Lynn Greene Harvey, 42, of Granite Falls, will serve at least five years in prison after pleading guilty as charged to larceny by employee and admitting her status as a habitual felon during Catawba County Superior Court on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

The Honorable Michael D. Duncan, Superior Court Judge from Wilkes County, sentenced Harvey to an active prison term of 5 to 7 years in custody of the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections. He also ordered that she pay back $28,421.36 in restitution to her former employer, Discount Cars, Inc. of Hickory.

Harvey took more than $53,000 from Discount Cars, Inc., during the period of Jan. 1, 2014, to July 1, 2014. Owners of the business eventually discovered that money had been taken from the accounts receivable.

They provided video surveillance to investigators with Hickory Police Department that showed Harvey taking cash. Further investigation revealed that she posted cash payments made by customers as credit card payments, though those customers told investigators they had paid with cash when interviewed. Harvey also used another employees code to gain access to accounts.

She initially denied any wrongdoing but later confessed that she had taken cash deposits and used them for her own personal benefit. The amount taken tallied $53,421.36. Discount Cars was reimbursed $25,000 from insurance. Judge Duncan ordered that Harvey repay the remainder.

Harveys habitual felon status admission stemmed from previous felony convictions in Rockingham County (January 2008 and February 2009) and Catawba County (December 2011). Those convictions were for obtaining property by false pretense and obtaining controlled substances by fraud.
Redlining Case Settled; Bank M&A Trends - What Works and What Doesn't

March... St. Patrick's Day, the religious holiday to honor St. Patrick who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. Fortunately there are plenty of Irish people here in America: 33 million (over 10% of U.S. residents) American residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number was more than seven times the population of Ireland itself (4.6 million). The average age of those who claimed Irish ancestry is 40 years old. Massachusetts seems to heavily green, 21.5% of their residents claimed Irish ancestry. It seems Irish Americans have more educational drive than other groups; 35.6% of people of Irish ancestry, 25 or older, who had a bachelor's degree or higher. In addition, 93.7 percent of Irish-Americans in this age group had at least a high school diploma. (For the nation as a whole, the corresponding rates were 30.1 percent and 86.9 percent, respectively.) $62,141 is the median income for households headed by an Irish-American, higher than the median household income of $53,657 for all households.

Legal affairs and settlements are a fact of life for many lenders - with many wondering how much of the money actually filters down to the consumer. For example, Morgan Stanley will pay $3.2B to settle claims from the DOJ and NY State AG related to its role in the housing market meltdown during the credit crisis. The group had previously collected $16.7B from Bank of America, $13.0B from JPMorgan and $7.0B from Citigroup and another settlement is pending with Goldman for $5.0B.

The most recent interesting settlement was in America's Heartland: the First Federal Bank of Kansas City agreed to pony up $2.8 million to settle a redlining case. The bank was accused by HUD of redlining several neighborhoods where the majority of the residents are African-American, thereby limiting residential mortgage lending to persons based upon their race, which is a violation of the Fair Housing Act - something to keep in mind as many lenders are buying other lenders in various areas to even out their product mix.

While I'm yapping about banks, in 2006, the four biggest banks (J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup) collectively had $5.2 trillion in assets, 44% of all US bank assets. Today, those same four banks hold $8 trillion in assets or 51% of all assets. Moreover, only Wells Fargo is valued above book! No one can argue that the large banks are growing and the smaller ones are vanishing. (As a quick aside, looking at all industries McKinsey reports M&A activity worldwide surged to a new high of over $4.5 trillion in 2015, a 37% increase over 2014. Of note, deals valued at more than $10 billion surged 130% YOY. But Thomson Reuters reports worldwide M&A activity is down 23% this year vs. last year, due to investor concerns over falling oil prices, softening growth in China and the risk of a potential spillover to the financial sector.)

Last month the CEO of BB&T said the bank may abstain from doing bank acquisitions, citing depressed stock prices in the industry as one key factor. Specifically, he stated that he doesn't "particularly like using our currency at these low prices" and that "the industry has been overly beaten down" so they may buy back more of their own stock for now.

The FDIC reports that for 2015, about 71% of mergers occurred in the same state (intrastate), while 29% were across state lines (interstate). This compares to 76% and 24% respectively for 2014. For good news, the latest FDIC data shows the number of problem institutions declined to only 183 nationwide as of the end of 2015. This is down 79% from the peak of 2010 and now represents about 3% of total institutions (vs. 12% at the peak).

There are plenty of mergers and acquisitions in the works at any given time involving banks and lenders, all of them being influenced by a variety of factors. Pricing is one of the biggest factors because everything else comes off of that one: no one wants to overpay and no one wants to sell out for too low a price. For depository banks this is even trickier given changes to the accounting rules banks must adhere to. I am no accountant but as I understand it purchase accounting requires the bank's books be marked to market, so even loans that are current and carry little risk can be poorly structured or open to future issues and be marked down.

Proper due diligence is critical. No buyer wants to close a deal, only to find out that there are issues with loans, exposures it did not know about or other problems. One of the most critical elements here is the due diligence required to ensure cultures of both companies work, so look before you leap. Top concerns of parties involved in mergers include failure to effectively integrate, economic uncertainty, a changing regulatory and legislative environment, inaccurate target valuation, insufficient due diligence process, and improper target identification.

Given the heightened regulatory environment within the banking industry in particular, regulatory issues are also a major reason many M&A deals are either stalled or abandoned. Since regulators look closely at whether an acquirer has adequate management, capital and other factors in place to adequately comply with regulations following a merger or acquisition, it is important to consider this issue before any merger discussions begin. And think about the overall stability of merged entities.

(While we're on regulation, a couple weeks ago federal banking agencies increased the number of banks and savings associations eligible for an 18-month examination cycle as opposed to a 12-month cycle. The result of this change will decrease the compliance costs for smaller institutions. Well-capitalized and well-managed banks and savings associations with less than $1 billion in total assets could now be included in the 18-month examination cycle. The number of institutions that can qualify for the new examination time-frame ranges from 617 to 5,000.)

The mergers and acquisitions announced in the depository banking world continues unabated. Just in the last week or two we learned that in Virginia the Bank of Hampton Roads ($2.1B) will acquire Xenith Bank ($1.0B) for about $107.2mm in stock and adopt the Xenith Bankshares name after deal completion. In Minnesota Peoples State Bank of Plainview ($199mm) will acquire Altura State Bank ($48mm). Alabama's First State Bank of DeKalb County ($99mm) will acquire First Bank of the South ($84mm). In Wisconsin Citizens Community Federal ($582mm) will acquire Community Bank of Northern Wisconsin ($153mm) for about $17mm in cash or roughly 1.02x tangible book. Out in Arizona Mohave State Bank ($325mm) will acquire Country Bank ($206mm) for about $29.6mm in cash (50%) and stock (50%). Lakeland Bank ($4.3B, NJ) will acquire Harmony Bank ($295mm, NJ) for about $32mm in stock.

Advia Credit Union ($1.2B, MI) will acquire Mid America Bank ($84mm, WI). Lapeer County Bank & Trust Co. ($324mm, MI) will acquire CSB Bank ($245mm, MI) for about $20mm in stock or roughly 0.91x tangible book value. In Kansas Elk State Bank ($51mm) will acquire Baileyville

State Bank ($43mm). BankWest, Inc. ($915mm, SD) will acquire First State Bank ($113mm, SD). In Nebraska Sandhills State Bank ($165mm) will acquire Bank of Keystone ($68mm). In the "Show Me" state, North American Savings Bank, F.S.B. ($1.6B) will acquire B&L Bank ($119mm) for about $15.8mm in cash. Midland States Bank ($2.9B, IL) will acquire $400mm in wealth management assets from Sterling National Bank ($11.9B, NY). In the home of the Naval Academy Kopernik Bank ($69mm) and Liberty Bank of Maryland ($38mm) will merge together for no monetary exchange, as they combine their mutual thrifts to form a larger entity. At the other end of the asset scale BB&T ($209.9B, NC) will acquire commercial insurance brokerage firm Swett & Crawford (GA) for about $500mm in cash.

And to wrap up this M&A topic, a bank director survey found that 55% of selling banks sold because shareholders wanted liquidity and 27% did so due to regulatory costs.

Volatility picked up Tuesday when fixed-income securities took big losses, moving rates higher, as a perfect storm of better-than-expected economic data in the U.S. and technically-based selling swept away buying interest in government debt. January Construction Spending and February ISM Manufacturing reports both beat analyst's expectations although the manufacturing sector remains in contraction. (This is the fifth straight month the ISM Index has been below 50.0, indicating that the manufacturing sector is contracting.) The strength in January was driven by public construction spending, which increased 4.5% on the back of a 4.6% jump in nonresidential spending. February auto sales also produced positive surprises.

Today we'll be chewing on the MBA's mortgage application index and the February ADP Employment Change. Later in the day we have the March Fed Beige Book. We closed the 10-year at 1.83%, and it is too early to know where the market is.



Jobs and Announcements

In job news MGIC is looking for an experienced mortgage risk expert to a highly productive team developing state-of-the-art mortgage risk models. "We have an opening for a Quantitative Risk Modeling Manager on our Risk Management team. The ideal candidate will have a PhD and experience performing and leading quantitative analysis and statistical/econometric modeling of mortgage risk. If you are up for the challenge and this is something you'd like to consider, send your resume to Nancy Vang-Lee, Talent Acquisition Partner.

And LendingHome is "reimagining the mortgage process from the ground up based on technology as a simple, fast, transparent marketplace for borrowers and investors. We're building the best way to get a mortgage and the best way to invest in them. We are looking for a Senior Manager of Loan Origination who is based in Northern California. The Director is responsible for hiring, managing and mentoring all MLOs and is also responsible to work with product and design teams to help them build our LOS the right way from the borrower's perspective. If you are interested in reinventing one of the largest financial markets in the world, would find it fun to work with borrowers all over the country, think technology can streamline a very complex business, can handle ongoing technology advancements, appreciate great consumer experiences, have a thirst for simplicity in the face of complexity, and aren't afraid to roll up your sleeves and learn something new, we'd love to talk to you."

And the CalyxSoftware Professional Services team is expanding and seeking an energetic and knowledgeable individual to work with banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions as a consultant in regards to their internal processes regarding residential mortgage lending and Calyx solutions. The ideal candidate will have a thorough understanding of the mortgage banking processes needed to go from a loan creation to a loan sale, solid proficiency in Point software and familiarity with PointCentral or Point Data Server software. This position is based in the Dallas office and requires travel up to 50% of the time, at company expense. If you are interested in a career at Calyx submit your resume to Marketing Manager Jenny Harlowe.
The former head of Fannie Mae is headed to court.



A federal judge has ruled that former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd will have to face a civil trial on charges by the SEC that he misled investors about subprime mortgages during the run-up to the housing meltdown, according to an ABC News report.



Defense attorney John Keker had called for dismissal of the charges in January, saying there was no evidence that Mudd understated the level of subprime mortgages held by Fannie Mae. But U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty ruled this week that a jury might conclude Mudd acted with intent or recklessness, ABC News reported.



The same evidence that would support a finding that Mudd acted recklessly would necessarily support a finding that he acted negligently, Crotty said.



Crotty ruled that the SEC had produced evidence that Mudd either knew or should have known that Fannie Mae disclosures he reviewed  and his own public statements  were false and misleading, ABC News reported.



Mudd was in charge of Fannie Mae in 2007 when the housing collapse began. The agency was taken into government conservatorship in 2008 to save it from collapse.


As the market continues to improve, home prices continue to rise.



Prices are up both year-over-year and month-over-month, according to CoreLogic.



Home sales were up 6.9% year-over-year in January and 1.3% from December to January, according to the analytics firms housing price index.



Heading into the spring buying season, home prices continue to rise across much of the country, Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, said. With rates staying low for now and continued solid job and income growth, the spring buying season is shaping up to be a good one.



Housing prices are expected to see further increases, according to CoreLogic which is forecasting a 5.5% year-over-year increase from January 2016 to January 2017.



While the national market continues to steadily improve, the contours of the home price recovery are shifting, Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, said. The northwest and Rocky Mountain states have experienced greater appreciation and account for four of the top five states for home price growth.



The states that experienced the highest year-over-year price growth from January 2015-January 2016 are; Washington (+11.6%), Colorado (+10.9%), Oregon (+10%), Florida (+9.1%), and Idaho (+8.4%).



The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables, the firm said in a release. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.
DALLAS (AP)  Exxon is interested in acquisitions while oil prices are low, but CEO Rex Tillerson says sellers have unrealistic price expectations.

Tillerson said Wednesday that Exxon Mobil Corp. is in financial position to pursue acquisitions or change its spending plans depending on what happens to the oil market.

Earlier this week Exxon raised $12 billion from a bond sale, increasing speculation that it could seek to scoop up competitors.

Tillerson said Exxon hasn't made any deals yet because potential sellers are acting like homeowners who think their house is worth more than it is.

Those other companies, he said, have burdened themselves with debt during the oil slump, making them less attractive takeover targets.

"Some of the value has been destroyed and the expectation (of sale price) hasn't changed," he said at Exxon's annual meeting with investors in New York.

Asked about oil prices, Tillerson said they could still fall. U.S. benchmark crude has rallied since late January and gained 23 cents to $34.64 a barrel in New York on Wednesday afternoon, but it is still nearly 70 percent below its price in June 2014.

"We're still overproducing, oversupplying a market that doesn't need it, doesn't want it," and the global economy is too weak to boost demand much, he said.

U.S. production has boomed in recent years. Tillerson said that helped create the glut but wasn't the only cause. He said it was "hard to predict" when supply and demand might balance again.

Exxon, which is based in Irving, Texas, reaffirmed that it will cut capital spending 25 percent this year; other oil companies are doing the same to cope with lower prices.

Exxon shares rose 70 cents to $81.98 in afternoon trading. The stock has gained 5 percent in 2016 after falling 16 percent in 2015.
Support groups this week

-- New Beginnings cancer support group, 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Texas Oncology - Allison Cancer Center, 400 Rosalind Redfern Grover Parkway, Suite 100, 218-8714, fatima@giftsofhopemidland.org.

-- Midland Parkinson Support Group, 6:30 p.m. Monday, HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, 699-6640.

 Midland Chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), 7 p.m. Tuesday, First Presbyterian Church (Koinonoa Room); Judith Craig, 683-3648.

-- Parent Quest, for parents of special needs children, meets 6-8 p.m. Tuesday at First Christian Church. For more information, contact Malissa Roach, SHARE program coordinator, at 349-1069.

-- The Knot Adoption Support Group, 11:30 a.m. March 9, First Presbyterian Church; Kathy Hagler, Kathy@WTIE.net

-- Caregiver support, noon March 9, HospiceMidland 911 W. Texas Ave., 682-2855.

* * *

Weekly support groups

-- TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursdays, Christian Church of Midland, 2609 Neely Ave. 694-8643.

-- Overeaters Anonymous; 7-8 p.m. Tuesdays and 3-4 p.m. Sundays; B&J Plaza, 206 N. Midkiff Road, Suite 1-D; 553-1031.

 survivors of sexual abuse; interactive Bible study to help deal with the consequences of sexual abuse meets Tuesdays. Child care available; House of Hope, 570-5935.

* * *

Alcoholics Anonymous  hotline 580-7868.

 Serenity Group, 8 p.m. daily, 3101 N. A St., Building C; 685-3100.

 710 Group, 7 a.m., noon and 8 p.m. Wednesdays, 710 Ohio Ave.; 682-8162.

 Alpha Omega, 8 p.m Tuesdays and 11 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 311 S. Pecos St.

--12-Step Group of Alcoholics Anonymous, 7:30 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 10 a.m. Saturdays; 206 N. Midkiff Road; 697-0272.

Narcotics Anonymous  hotline 582-2926.

 Laundry Group, 8 p.m. daily and noon Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 104 N. Marshall St.

 Xodus Group, 5:30 p.m. Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, 7 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 206 N. Midkiff Road.

-- CODA Group, 12-step program for relationships, 7 p.m. Thursdays, 206 N. Midkiff Road; 697-0272.

-- La Hacienda Alumni, support group for former patients, 7 p.m. Thursdays, 206 N. Midkiff Road; 697-0272.

***

Weigh to Success Support Group Meeting, 6-7 p.m. Thursday, Midland Memorial Hospital-West Campus, 4214 Andrews Highway. Contact Sundae Adkins at 638-8081 or sundae.adkins@midland-memorial.com.

Cardiovascular Nursing (CVRN) Prep Course & Board Certification Opportunity, 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Midland Memorial Hospital - Conference Room A. Contact Jenny Delk-Fikes at 221-1191 or jenny.delk-fikes@midland-memorial.com.

Breastfeeding Class, 6-8 p.m. March 10, MMH. Contact Casey Weems at 221-3283 or childbirtheducation@midland-memorial.com

***

Casa receives $5,000 grant

Casa de Amigos has received a $5,000 grant from Superior HealthPlan, a health care company, for its after-school program, emergency food pantry, health and wellness and social services.

For information, call 682-9701.

MH payment options

Midland Memorial Hospital recognizes that our community is facing challenging financial times. Resources are tight and families are having to make important decisions about what to spend money on now and what has to wait.

Realizing health care can be expensive and the increasing deductibles make it hard to manage, the hospital has adjusted its payment procedures. We want to make sure you receive the care you need, when you need it. To find out about the new options now offered to better accommodate your payment needs, call 221-4705.

Source: Midland Memorial Hospital

***

How sick are you?

Midland Memorial Hospital offers a a nurse triage program 68-NURSE.

The program is designed to help people determine whether their health situation warrants a trip to the emergency room. Midland residents can call the line by dialing 686-8773.

The program is free and available 24 hours a day-365 days a year. Local nurses are available to help you determine the best place to receive care for your situation. 68-NURSE can help you save time and money by directing you to the most appropriate healthcare option, whether its a neighborhood clinic, urgent care center, emergency room  or just staying home.

* * *

Contact your Hospital District representative

MIDLAND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

400 Rosalind Redfern Grover Parkway, Midland, TX 79701

Phone: 221-1111

Website: www.midland-memorial.com

President Russell Meyers 221-1584

President Russell Meyers 221-1584

Directors -- District 1: Dwain Tomlin, District 2: Dorothea Logan, District 3: Tommy Lent, District 4: Cressinda Hyatt, District 5: Alison King, District 6: Joe Kiowski, District 7: Jeffrey Beard
Gerald Herbert

In the Democratic primary for president, Hillary Clintons performance in Midland was remarkably similar to her performance across the state.

In Midland, with all 16 vote centers reporting at press time, the former secretary of state had collected 63 percent of the vote. The Texas Secretary of States Office reported Clinton had 66.50 percent of the vote with 41 percent of precincts reporting. In both cases, Clinton had basically doubled the votes received by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas is a newcomer to Super Tuesday, and the rest of the U.S. is keeping close tabs on its debut.

No state has more delegates at stake Tuesday than Texas, and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz needs a big haul on his home turf after middling finishes in South Carolina and Nevada. Texas is the top prize of 12 states holding primaries Tuesday and isn't winner-take-all, putting pressure on Cruz to win decisively and deny Donald Trump and Marco Rubio as many of the 155 delegates as possible.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton is the favorite over Bernie Sanders, but how she performs with Hispanic and black voters will be watched.

Texas joined Super Tuesday after years of being an afterthought on the primary calendar, frustrating state leaders who craved an early say in the presidential race before the nominees were effectively settled.

Beyond the presidential contest, the primary ballot also includes races for:

____

CONGRESS

House Ways and Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, who was elevated to the powerful post last fall, faces three conservative challengers in arguably the biggest fight of his 10-term career. Former state legislator Steve Toth is among his opponents, and with Republican voters railing against establishment candidates this election year, Brady may be thrown into a May runoff to defend his suburban Houston district.

Another longtime congressional fixture form Houston, Democrat Gene Green, also is facing a potentially stiff primary challenge from former Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia. The district is about 60 percent Hispanic, but top national Hispanic groups have backed Green.

The opening of a South Texas seat is also renewing the potential for the state to send its first Hispanic woman to Congress. Dolly Elizondo has the backing of former gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis and U.S. Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, the New York Democrat, in a crowded race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Reuben Hinojosa. A runoff appears likely for the district that runs from San Antonio to the border.

A second round of primary voting also seems likely in the West Texas district where U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer is retiring and hasn't endorsed any of the nine Republican candidates running to replace him.

___

LEGISLATURE

Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, who is on the verge of a record-tying fifth session as Texas speaker, is again the main target of conservative activists who accuse him of being cozy with Democrats and derailing get-tough immigration proposals.

Megadonors including Alice Walton, heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune, have written big checks to businessman Jeff Judson in a brash campaign against Straus. His attacks against the speaker included claims that because Straus is Jewish, he doesn't connect with Christian conservative voters. The even-tempered Straus has seldom fired back but has been forced to spend money to defend his record and his San Antonio district.

Straus, a friend of the Bush family whose supporters include Texas' elite donor class, has kept his powerful post in recent years despite the Legislature pushing farther to the right. His political durability this cycle will be a test in an election year where anti-incumbent anger has been strong among Republican primary voters elsewhere.

___

OTHER RACES

No major statewide offices are on the ballot in 2016. Gov. Greg Abbott, who endorsed his former protege Cruz for president, has not endorsed any legislative candidates but is backing Republican Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman for re-election. Both parties are also picking nominees for a new Texas railroad commissioner to oversee the state's oil and gas industry.

___

FROM THE POLLING SITES

Election monitors in Houston reported repeated cases of confusion Tuesday over where voters are supposed to cast a ballot. There were instances in Harris County where Republicans traveled to a Democratic polling site attempting to vote, and vice versa.

Hector DeLeon, spokesman for the Harris County Clerk's Office, said the confusion is nothing out of the ordinary. He said people generally are aware of their polling site for a general election, but don't realize they may have a different site for a primary election.

Houston voters, meanwhile, spoke Tuesday of a variety of reasons why they settled on a candidate.

Dormetra Henry, 50, a clerical worker from Houston, said that for her, it was a toss-up between Cruz and Trump but that in the end, it was her faith that helped her decide to vote for Cruz.

"We're deeply religious and I believe Ted Cruz, he has a heart for the Lord. I believe that he is a Christian," said Henry.

Ursula Adams, 50, an events manager, said she hopes her vote for Hillary Clinton will help make history.

"In my opinion, I felt it was important to have a female candidate. It's well past due for a female president," she said.

Shondra Boring, 45, an actor, said her concerns about the polarization of politics in America prompted her to vote for Rubio because she believes he will be more willing to work with members of both parties.

"When people aren't willing to at least talk and listen to one another, even if they don't agree, even if they cancel each other out, we have a problem," said Boring.

Elsewhere, campaigning in Beaumont took a violent turn when someone in an SUV yelled a racial slur before a shot was fired and broke a window at the campaign headquarters of a black candidate for Jefferson County sheriff.

Police say a 19-year-old Vidor man was being held Tuesday facing a deadly conduct charge.

Nobody was hurt Monday night when someone opened fire at the campaign office of Democrat Zena Stephens.

___
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Ted Cruz defended his home turf, Hillary Clinton dominated and powerful members of Congress and the Legislature swatted back challengers.

Texas primary voters stuck with familiar faces over stadium-packing and angry outsiders Tuesday, thwarting a wave of anti-establishment resentment that has upended the 2016 presidential race and already sent packing three previous White House contenders with Texas ties.

But not Cruz. His campaign now rolls Wednesday to Kansas, which caucuses Saturday, after victories in Texas and Oklahoma delivered a crucial momentum swing and amplified his insistence that he is the GOP's last hope of stopping Donald Trump. Marco Rubio had a disappointing Super Tuesday, only winning the Minnesota caucuses, but vowed to stay in the race.

Also not going anywhere are two of the most powerful lawmakers in Texas: U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, the new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Texas House Speaker Joe Straus. Both toppled conservative insurgents who accused them of being too entrenched and out of touch.

Cruz asked that his rivals "prayerfully consider" whether to keep going without mentioning Rubio or Ohio Gov. John Kasich by name.

"Head to head, our campaign beats Donald Trump resoundingly," said Cruz, firing up supporters at a victory party outside his hometown of Houston. "But for that to happen, we must come together."

Cruz picked up at least 52 delegates on Super Tuesday but still lags well behind Trump. Cruz ended the night with more than 42 percent of the vote in Texas  a solid victory in the crown jewel of Super Tuesday, but not resounding enough to horde all 155 of the state's delegates to himself.

Exit polls showed that white evangelicals and hardline conservatives helped Cruz fight off a Trump upset in his backyard. Republican primary voters were also roughly split on whether they wanted a candidate with political experience or a nominee form outside the establishment.

Kevin Stone, 53, said the country doesn't need a politician after voting for Trump at a Baptist church in Lubbock.

"There's an air about him, I don't agree with everything he does, but we need a leader, someone who has authority that can walk into any government," Stone said.

Voters craving new blood had many in Washington closely watching suburban Houston, where Brady was in the political fight of his 10-term congressional career. Months after taking the powerful tax panel previously helmed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Brady drew a challenge from three outsiders who sought to tap into Trump's outsider message.

Some observers likened the race to the 2014 defeat by former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, but Brady proved his durability by winning outright and avoiding a runoff.

Winning more handily was Straus, who remains poised to run for a record-tying fifth session as House speaker after beating businessman Jeff Judson, whose supporters included Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. Judson appeared to question whether Straus, who is Jewish, could connect with Christian voters and blamed him for the failure of get-tough immigration proposals.

"Voters showed that angry rhetoric and dishonest ads are no match for a well-organized campaign that looks to a brighter future," Straus said.

Clinton, who won the Texas primary in 2008 over President Barack Obama, continued steamrolling to the Democratic nomination by beating Bernie Sanders by a roughly 2-to-1 margin behind overwhelming support from blacks and Hispanics.
Tim Fischer

The Texas Department of Transportation announced Wednesday that a project to add passing lanes to 8.8 miles of State Highway 349 has started in Upton County.

The project will also rehabilitate the road.
It appears Laura Nodolf will be Midland Countys next district attorney.

Nodolf collected 60.15 percent of the vote on a long Tuesday evening to defeat Will Lundy in the Republican primary for the 142nd Judicial District.

Both members of the District Attorneys Office competed to replace Teresa Clingman, who announced last year she would not seek re-election.

There will not be a Democrat to challenge Nodolf, a first assistant district attorney.

Im just really proud of the campaign we ran and the volunteers that helped me with this, Nodolf said. The citizens in Midland County came out, and I believe they elected the right person to be the next district attorney.

Nodolf, like all the Midland County candidates, had to wait a little bit longer to see the results. Last votes were cast well past 9 p.m. in three locations around the county. Polls were scheduled to close at 7 p.m., but those in line still are given the opportunity to vote, meaning some people stood in line at least two hours to cast their ballot.

It made it more fulfilling, Nodolf said of the wait. Midland voters were interested in the races that were before them all the way down to the local level. They cared to get out and wait hours in line to cast their vote and that says a lot about the community.

The 37-year-old graduate of the Texas Tech School of Law has been with the Midland County District Attorneys Office since 2003. The last four years she has been one of the first assistant district attorneys for the 441st District Court, and since 2009 she has been the courts trial team chief, according to a press release.

Lundy, 59, has practiced mostly criminal law as felony prosecutor for the past 29 years. His experience included working in Midland, Ector and Taylor counties.

Both of us ran a good campaigns and clean campaigns, Lundy said. The voters selected Laura, and I congratulate her heartily.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  The University of Texas System announced science-based guidelines Tuesday to help police for all 14 campuses better respond to sexual assault victims.

UT System officials said in a statement that the 170-page report detailing the guidelines is a "victim-centered blueprint" to assist the system's 600-person police force in engaging with and understanding victims, as well as reporting allegations.

The document was developed by UT System police and the Institute on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault at the flagship UT campus in Austin. The system is among the nation's largest, with more than 217,000 students.

"Having the opportunity to rely directly on the scientific and academic community to inform police practices is a rare and powerful foundation for action," said Michael Heidingsfield, UT System police director. "We must publicly acknowledge our moral obligation to understand sexual assault for the life-altering and destructive experience it is, and be champions of those victimized."

The blueprint teaches police to better understand the magnitude and controversies surrounding the problem of campus sexual assault and the role of officers in responding, UT System officials said. The manual also provides police with science-based information on dealing with trauma, domestic violence and intimate partner violence, and the role that drugs and alcohol can play.

The UT System last August began a $1.7 million comprehensive campus sexual assault study to better assist students and staff on the issue of sexual violence. The study is expected to last several years, system officials said.

Last September, system officials launched an effort known as the UT System Bystander Intervention Initiative to teach college students strategies to deter sexual assaults, suicides and other issues that could affect them.

___

Online:

https://www.utsystem.edu/
EULESS, Texas (AP)  The family of the man who they say fatally shot a Texas police officer described the 22-year-old as a drug addict who was released from jail the same day the shooting occurred.

Jorge Antonio Gonzalez told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (http://bit.ly/1oPzdH1 ) on Wednesday that his son, Jorge Brian Gonzalez, was high on methamphetamine when he was jailed Monday for stealing money.

He said his son was released Tuesday and then hours later engaged in a firefight with officers at a park in the Dallas suburb of Euless. Officer David Hofer, 29, was struck before other officers shot and killed the gunman. Hofer died Tuesday during surgery.

Authorities have not confirmed the identity of the shooter. A news conference is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.

The elder Gonzalez told the newspaper that Hofer had been called to the family's apartment before and knew his son. He was remorseful over the actions of his son but also questioned why he was released from jail if still under the influence of meth.

"It's their fault," Gonzalez said. "Why would they let him out when he was on that stuff?"

Tarrant County court records show the younger Gonzalez had a lengthy criminal record that included charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and threatening family members.

Many people remembered Hofer on Wednesday by leaving flowers, stuffed animals and other items in front of the Euless police station, with some saying a quiet prayer before leaving.

Hofer had moved from New York City to the Dallas area in 2014 because he wanted to be somewhere safer, his mother has said.

A 2008 graduate of New York University, Hofer served in the New York Police Department for five years before coming to Euless, Police Chief Mike Brown said.

The New York Post reported Hofer, the son of European immigrants, formerly worked in the 9th Precinct on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"He was wonderful child, a wonderful police officer," his mother, Sofija Hofer, told the newspaper. "He was working this very difficult precinct, so he had a lot of traumatic experiences ... He decided to go to a safer place."

Brown said Hofer was one of the officers who responded to a report of shots fired around 3 p.m. Tuesday near J.A. Carr Park, which is in a residential area near an elementary school.

"Officers encountered a suspect with an unknown weapon," Brown said. "The suspect immediately fired upon officers, striking one of them. Officers returned fire, striking the suspect."

Two nearby schools were placed on lockdown until the situation was resolved.

Hofer's fiancee was out of town on Tuesday and needed to be called home and given the news, the Post reported.

Sofija Hofer said her son wanted to write a book about his experience with the NYPD.

"I thought he might be a scientist, like his father, but he always wanted to be a policeman, ever since he was a little boy," she said.

David Hofer is the second officer to die in the line of duty in Euless, a suburb of more than 53,000 residents west of Dallas and east of Fort Worth. The other officer was Michael Williamson, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1982, according to the city website.
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP)  No charges will be filed after an incident at Texas A&M University in which black high school students touring campus reported being subjected to racial slurs and taunts, the university said Wednesday.

University police said in a statement that the department had investigated the Feb. 9 incident, but did not charge anyone. They did not immediately release the results of their investigation to the public.

Students from a southwest Dallas high school said a Texas A&M student approached them and asked them to look at her Confederate flag earrings. Other white students reportedly shouted "Go back where you came from" and used a slur.

One student has left the university since the incident, Texas A&M President Michael K. Young told The Associated Press Wednesday. But Young declined to say whether the student was expelled or if any others were disciplined, citing a federal law on student privacy.

No video has emerged of the incident, which has hamstrung efforts to identify who was involved and what was said. But several witnesses confirmed hearing a racial slur, Young said.

About 90 miles outside of Houston, Texas A&M is one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the state. Its student body is just 3.4 percent African-American, and black student leaders have described hearing insensitive comments on campus and in online forums.

The university has announced several programs in response to the incident. All incoming students will now attend mandatory seminars on diversity, and student group leaders will be required to undergo training on "conducting effective dialogues and meaningful conflict resolution," Young said in a letter to students.

University students also organized a campaign to send thousands of handwritten apology notes to the high school whose students had been touring campus.

Young said he hoped to reach everyone on campus, particularly students who might not want to discuss diversity or racial insensitivity on their own.

But, he added: "there's no magic bullet. There's nothing I can put in the water that everybody has to drink, and all of a sudden everybody's going to understand."
ABILENE, Texas (AP) -  Investigators say a single-engine airplane has crashed in West Texas and both people on board were killed.

Taylor County Sheriff Ricky Bishop says there were no survivors in Tuesday morning's fiery accident at Elmdale Airpark in Abilene.
Tuesday night was, as expected, a big night for Donald J. Trump. The billionaire developer/reality TV star dominated Super Tuesday.

The collective jaws being picked off the floor are those belonging to conservative Republicans. Their plan was foiled by Trumps ability to reach a voter that by their estimation was not going to stop the GOP from sending forward a more conservative candidate to be crowned at its summer convention.

A Super Tuesday was assembled that was supposed to keep Republicans from nominating another John McCain or Mitt Romney. The southern states were expected to step up and flex their conservative muscle. Conservatives had been hopeful because in their view the partys voters kept nominating moderates, and therefore, conservatives have stayed home in November.

Some conservatives, such as U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, have said conservatives staying home cost Mitt Romney the election in 2012. We arent sure if we buy that, but if the far right wants to be held responsible for a second Obama term, then so be it.

So the schedule was reconfigured, even pushing Texas up in the pecking order. We were told 2016 was going to be different. And so far it has been. Instead of picking a conservative, moderate or even member of the so-called Republican establishment, we have Trump.

How did this happen again? How did Republicans with all the momentum on their side and everything in their favor end up being on the verge of selecting the 2016 version of Jesse Ventura to be its standard bearer? There likely will be books written about the subject.

So what now?

Cruz, who arguably stood to benefit from the reconfigured primary schedule more than anyone, is out. Its hard to see him winning more moderate states in the Northeast, Midwest and West.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubios hopes will be dashed once he loses Florida to Trump. A poll on Friday had Trump leading by 20 points in the Sunshine State.

Will John Kasich be the last hope for the non-Trump Republicans? Should Rubio and Cruz immediately call on their supporters to back the popular governor of Ohio, the state so crucial to general election success? After all, he can claim leading the last Congress that balanced the budget, and he would play well in these less-conservative states still on the primary schedule. A Kasich nomination is a long shot, sure, but its not like non-Trump Republicans have other options.

Which brings us back to Trump, his likely nomination and the what many Republicans will be asking themselves between now and November. Can they support a virtually lifelong Democrat, a former longtime supporter of abortion rights (even partial-birth) and a man many have called of questionable judgment when it comes to foreign policy, handling Americas diverse population and nominating Supreme Court justices?

We will find out, because many Republicans will again have to pick the lesser of two evils.
It is sad we have people preying on business in our community to make a quick buck in the name of disability advocacy.

That is how some see the lawsuits facing nearly 30 Midland businesses by two local plaintiffs and their Florida-based lawyers. The reason for the lawsuits are alleged and very real violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

These drive-by suits  as they were called in an op-ed by the Midland Chamber of Commerce  leave us with a bad feeling. As a lawyer representing businesses around Midland stated, it is as if (the plaintiffs) got in a van and drove around looking for parking problems, and they look for parking problems because you can do that without getting out of the car. ...

You would expect a lawyer to send (a) demand letter, but they dont. And the reason they dont is because they dont want the problem fixed before they can file a lawsuit because only when they file a lawsuit do they have the leverage to enter into a settlement to get some money.

As the lawyers representing local businesses stated, if violations exist, those problems should be fixed. This is not in dispute, which brings us to the bigger problem. There are people involved in local businesses without being clear about what it means to be in business.

Some believe businesses face too many government regulations. But if you are going to be responsible for running a business, you owe it to yourself and the community to know all the rules, ordinances and laws. While we hope there isnt a penny made on these drive-by lawsuits, they have raised the issue that there are businesses not compliant with the Americans with Disability Act, and that is not acceptable.

There may be business owners who dont think they should have to spend money to meet the laws requirements. That person is welcome to his or her opinion, but that isnt an excuse for not following the law.

We appreciate efforts being made to educate local businesses on the ADA. The Chamber of Commerce is offering informational meetings on Wednesday. We hope businessmen and women attend and find out what improvements they may need to make.

Because if a person goes into business, it is up to him or her to be aware of rules and regulations. It is not the responsibility of government or people driving around to educate anyone.



Informational meeting about Americans with Disabilities Act requirements

When: Wednesday

Time: 11 a.m. or 3 p.m.

Location: Junior League of Midland, 902 W. Dengar

Speaker: R.W. Gregonis, registered accessibility specialist

Participation is free; registration is required www.MidlandTXChamber.com

More information: Visit ada.gov for specific compliance regulations.
New reports suggest Kris Jenner wants to capitalize Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's rumored marital troubles by making the drama a plotline in season 12 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians to boost its ratings.

The parents of North West and Saint West are said to be going through a rough patch, and momager Jenner not only plans to include the strife on the family's reality show, but allegedly encouraged Kim to leave the marriage because West's strange behavior threatened the family brand, as previously reported by Music Times.

"Kris is in complete panic mode about Kim and Kanye," a source revealed to Radar Online, adding that even if she was concerned about West's current behavior, she doesn't want Kim to go through a third divorce.

Kardashian is said to want West to seek therapy to can control his anger and change his behavior. But Jenner wants Kardashian to undergo therapy, too. "Kris told Kim that she wants her to go to marriage counseling with Kanye and to film it for 'KUWTK,'" the source added.

But it appears that West doesn't agree with Jenner's plans. "Kanye doesn't want to do counseling," a source said, according to Inquisitr. "He is convinced that he is doing nothing wrong. He is telling Kim that he is a genius and to stick by him and not worry about the criticism. But Kim is worried. She has no idea what he is going to do next."

Reports added that Jenner wants the couple to appear on the show to deny the divorce rumors which will also include a footage of their counseling that she wants to air on TV.

"Kim is the biggest moneymaker for Kris, and she is smart. She is savvy. She knows that her drama with Kanye could translate into big ratings for the show," the source said, referring to the family matriarch. The source added that Jenner will do everything to persuade the couple to play out their marriage trouble on camera.

Season 12 of Keeping Up With The Kardashians will air this spring on the E! Network but there's no premiere date yet.

XX DIVORCE? HAHAHA XX A photo posted by Kanye West (@kanyewestworld) on Feb 26, 2016 at 12:11pm PST

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Freddie Gibbs has teamed up with Zeds Dead on a track titled "Back Home." The collaboration is the first taste of the Canadian bass duo's debut full-length album and marks the inaugural release on their record label, Deadbeats.

The track harks back to Zeds Dead's hip-hop roots rather than the dubstep for which they became famous. Albeit as bass-driven as ever, the production style is considerably more minimalistic than much of the duo's discography.

In lieu of the usual bass drops, Gibbs' verses are at the center of the grime-influenced song. Stream "Back Home" via the Toronto bass production outfit's Soundcloud below.



"Back Home" follows the duo's remix of Omar LinX's "Red Light Green Light" which dropped last month simultaneously with the launch of their "Catching Zs" mix series.

The Gary, Indiana, rapper's collaboration with Zeds Dead isn't the first time he has teamed up with Canadian electronic producers. As Thump points out, he worked with Kaytranada, Boi-1da and Frank Dukes on his most recent album, Shadow of a Doubt, which dropped last November.

Gibbs' feature on "Back Home" follows "Cocaine Parties in L.A.," the MC's remix of Kanye West's "No More Parties In L.A." So far 2016 has also seen the artist share several new freestyles and drop a music video for Shadow of a Doubt track "Freddie Gordy."

Additionally, Gibbs recently announced his extensive Shadow of a Doubt Tour, which kicks off March 20 in California and stops in most major U.S. cities before ending in mid-May in Texas. Tacoma-based trio ILLFIGHTYOU and Atlanta rapper Archibald SLIM will be joining the tour for select dates.

Zeds Dead also have a few tour dates coming up including a stop at Mysteryland USA in June. As Pitchfork reports, DC and Hooks announced they will be curating parties this month at SXSW featuring Just Blaze and in Miami featuring Destructo; both events will feature additional artists to be announced at a later date.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Earlier this week via a Twitter post, The Rolling Stones announced a free concert in Cuba that the legendary rock 'n' roll band is organizing, taking place on March 25, 2016, at the Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana. The Stones will (fittingly) be the first British band to perform an open air concert in Cuba. Once again, The Rolling Stones are making rock n' roll history!

"We have performed in many special places during our long career but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too," the iconic rock n' roll group said in a press release, according to UPROXX.

The Associated Press got the chance to speak with Cuban fans of the band, and it sounds like the excitement over the announcement is already spreading. Plus, the publication explains that The Rolling Stones will be "the most famous act to play Cuba since its 1959 revolution."

"It's part of a dream to see the greatest icons of music who couldn't come before for various reasons, above all Cuba's isolation," Cuban music critic Joaquin Borges Triana told AP. "The Rolling Stones are going to magically unite generations of Cubans, from people in their 60s to their children and grandchildren."

This concert announcement falls during the Stones' America Latina Ole Tour, including stops in Santiago, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio De Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Porto Alegre, Lima, Bogota and Mexico City. The current tour will wrap up just about two weeks prior to the Cuba concert.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Iggy Azalea declared she still hates Azealia Banks in her new Elle Canada interview, and you could not expect for the "212" rapper to take that statement lying down. So, she followed up with something "petty": a new song "Used to Be Alone," which uses the exact same sample as an old Azalea track.

Banks, the queen of using other people's names for the sake of publicity, accused Azalea of doing the same to regain relevancy on Twitter. She then claimed she was going to do something incredibly petty, which is presumably releasing a new song that samples "Astronomia" by Tony Iga, the same song Azalea used for her 2012 Ignorant Art mixtape track "My World."

Matter of fact. . Let me just kill this bitch.  AZEALIABANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) March 1, 2016

No one is talking about u so u choose to mention me.... Wrong move hoe.  AZEALIABANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) March 2, 2016

Mentioning me is the only thing that will get you attention. Because ur music and nose job are trash  AZEALIABANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) March 2, 2016

I'm about to take my pettiness to a whole new level.  AZEALIABANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) March 2, 2016

Like, I'm about to do something SO fucking petty. You're gonna be gagging all year  AZEALIABANKS (@AZEALIABANKS) March 2, 2016

The resulting track, "Used to Being Alone," is not lyrically a diss track aimed at Azalea - instead it focuses on a failed relationship that Banks lived through. Instead, the diss seems to be that Banks used the same sample as Azalea, presumably, better than she did.

"Used to Being Alone" will appear on Banks' upcoming Slay-Z mixtape, which is due for release later this month.

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
One of the UK's most significant music festivals, Reading & Leeds has completed its 2016 lineup. It likes to unveil the headlines and bits of the billing in pieces to mainly tease the media and fans, but now the complete lineup is out so fans have a full picture of who will perform on both fields of grass over the three days. The festival just announced new headliners Fall Out Boy & Biffy Clyro, who will join previously announced headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foals and Disclosure.

Spanning three days, it manages to have five listed headliners, though one could argue many of its second line artists are headliners in their own right. Among those in that category are Skrillex & Diplo as Jack U making a rare UK festival appearance, CHVRCHES, Imagine Dragons, HAIM, The 1975 and A$AP Rocky.

The lineup is broken down into where the certain artists will perform on which day. Since they are booked for both Reading and Leeds, there has to be coordination to make sure there is no overlap.

Reading on Friday, Aug. 26 and Leeds Saturday, Aug. 27 will have Foals, CHVRCHES, Oliver Heldens, Fetty Wap, Twenty One Pilots, Nothing But Thieves, The Internet, The Neighborhood and more.

Reading on Saturday and Leeds on Sunday will be headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers with support by Jack Garratt, Slaves, Sigma, Travi$ Scott, Disciples, Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Duke Dumont, Imagine Dragons and more.

The Sunday Reading and Friday Leeds lineups will have Fall Out Boy, Savages, The Wombats, G-Eazy, Cage The Elephant, Biffy Clyro, Jauz, Five Finger Death Punch, The Vaccines, A$AP Rocky and plenty others.

Reading & Leeds Festival will take place over Bank Holiday weekend from August 26-28.

Camping, full weekend and single day tickets are on sale now. Check out the complete lineup below.

(Photo : via Reading & Leeds)





 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Last month, Chicago rapper Rhymefest spoke out about his former writing partner Kanye Wests recent behavior. He tweeted to fans about Wests state of mind and spirt, insinuating that the Ultralight Beam rhymer may need a mental evaluation. French Montana, who has worked with West more recently, discussed Rhymefests criticism with Larry King.

During an appearance on Larry King Now, Montana asserted that he had recently spoken with West and said the rapper doesn't appear to have any problems. He even referred to West as a genius.

"I just spoke to him yesterday," Montana said. "He don't sound like he have problems. I just feel like Kanye West is a genius and all the moves he do is calculated. Everything he says makes headlines. There's a method to his madness."

In one of his tweets, Rhymefest wrote, my brother needs help, in the form of counseling. Spiritual & mental. He should step away from the public & yesmen & heal.

After being asked by another fan if he would get back in the studio with West, he shot back with, nah his mind and spirit isn't right.

Elsewhere during the sit-down, King pressed hard for clarification of Wests controversial Famous lyric where he referred to Taylor Swift as a b*tch.

When asked what approach he felt West taking when making that reference to Swift, King called Montana out for skirting the issue.

"Sometimes," the Wave Gods rapper said when asked if he uses the word b*tch." "Sometimes it can be a compliment. It depends on my tone when I say it...I don't know how he said it. I would have to see it."

This episode of Larry King Now debuts March 14 on Ora TV.

Check out what French Montana had to say about Kanye West below:

 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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
Please enable JavaScript to experience the functionality of this website.

- MWEB
Sarkodie should have been bigger than ...
Forest Service Firefighters View Photos

Sacramento, CA  The fifth round of controversial Fire Prevention Fee bills went out Tuesday in California for the fiscal year 2015-16.

More than 700,000 rural residents will find the bill in their mailboxes for the fifth year. State Board of Equalization Vice Chair George Runner has been very vocal in his opposition to the fee claiming it instead a tax. Runner concludes, Californians who live in rural areas already pay taxes to fund essential fire services. Its a shame this unfair and illegal tax continues to extract dollars from hardworking people. The Legislature and Governor should repeal it. A recent myMotherlode.com poll found citizens in the Mother Lode agree and support a class action lawsuit. As previously reported, the lawsuit garnered class action status in January.

The bills, nearly 10,000 a day, go out by county in alphabetical order starting with Alameda County. The final delivery is on June 13 in Yuba County. Runner reminds property owners that they must file a Petition for Redetermination within 30 days of the billing date to be eligible for a refund if the class action suit is successful.
A Flagler County business owner is seeking justice after one of her former employees is accused of stealing company credit cards and racking up over $40,000 in purchases.



The woman was arrested and bonded out less than a week ago, but the owner said the suspect doesn't deserve to be out of jail.



April, $500, $100 and $200, she did it so small that I never would notice, said Nancy Morea.

Business has been steady for 13 years at Environmental Land Services as trucks come in to recycle and drop off loads. Owner Nancy Morea has her hands full with work.

We've giving our life to this. We don't have a lot personally. Everything is in the company, so working night and day, to do this means she took away what I'm working hard for, said Morea.

Morea said Clara Ann Smith, 40, worked for her and her husband as an administrative assistant until she was fired in February 2015.

Quick King $132.37. What she spent when she was arrested, said Morea.

Morea says a surveillance picture was taken of who she said appears to be Smith using her companys credit card.

According to a Flagler County Sheriff's Office report, a deputy said the store clerk told him ELS company credit card had been used several times for purchases more than $100 at the gas station.

Morea said Smith charged more than $40,000.

Kohls $613 on the 23rd, and CVS, Walgreens $374.82, said Morea.

I feel violated. She used to enter all my bills so she knew where I went so she made it very hard for me to find it. I trusted her, yes, said Morea.

She said they trusted her as an employee for nearly 11 years.

To see that people will take advantage of you like this is heartbreaking, said Connie Policastro.

Morea said she has no idea of how Smith allegedly stole the cards. But deputies said they had enough proof to book her in jail and now the small business hopes Smith will have to pay the price.

It's 459 counts for $40,000 and I want them added. Make sure she gets hers and she knows I want to actually make her an example so other people do not do this, said Morea.

News 13 has made several calls to Smith, but received an automated response which stated this caller is not accepting calls. Deputies said they are investigating and Smith could be facing more charges.
The Florida Board of Governors has given a green light to University of Central Florida's downtown campus at the Creative Village project.

The 68-acre campus, on the site of the former Amway Arena, is a joint venture that includes University of Central Florida and Valencia College.

The vote was not unanimous -- two governors opposed the project.

"Im not convinced [there's] sufficient academic demand for a downtown campus, said board member Dean Colson.



Creative Village is a long-awaited project to create a hub for technology, digital media and creative companies just west of downtown Orlando, the in the area that used to be the Amway Arena, which was imploded in 2012.

The original downtown UCF project had a $135 million pricetag. Officials worked to get the project down to $60 million.

The scaled-down version of the project has no residence hall, but it still has a main academic building.

UCF already has its Center for Emerging Media in the Creative Village area. Last year Gov. Scott rejected funding for the downtown campus.

Since then UCF has collected $16 million from private donations. The school already had $20 million in university funds available for the project.

The Board of Governor's approval should help in convincing Scott to fund the final $20 million.

While we didnt have a unanimous vote in favor, it was clear we had an overwhelmingly positive response, said UCF president Dr. John Hitt.



The UCF campus will be the cornerstone for Creative Village.

PREVIOUS STORIES


A man who Orlando police say stole items and traded them for crack cocaine is under arrest.

The Orlando Police Department says in December, a downtown bike unit caught a man stealing a bicycle off the back of a car parked in a downtown driveway.



Police said the man told them he would trade the bikes he stole with Edward Washington, 42, for crack cocaine.



Detectives said they then had the man work as an informant which led them to Washington.



Investigators said they believe that in the last year Washington accepted more than 30 stolen bikes and other items from the informant to presumably sell on the street. In each case, Washington traded a $20 - $30 rock of crack cocaine for the stolen goods, detectives said.



On Tuesday, the OPD Drug Enforcement Division had the informant take two bicycles to Washington in exchange for crack, and with the help of OPD SWAT, a search warrant was executed at Washington's home. At the home police said they found several stolen bikes and power tools.

Washington was arrested on charges of sale and delivery of cocaine and dealing in stolen property.



Police say this arrest should serve as a reminder to people to lock up their cars, garages and homes, and to make a note of all serial numbers to their valuables.

Orlando police said they found several stolen bikes and power tools at Edward Washington's home. (Orlando Police Department)
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had big nights on Super Tuesday, but their opponents also have some wins to crow about, and it looks like the big election day will change little in the election landscape.

Clinton and Trump each won seven states on Super Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton Alabama Arkansas Georgia Massachusetts Tennessee Texas Virginia



Donald Trump Alabama Arkansas Georgia Massachusetts Tennessee Vermont Virginia



Republicans hit Trump hard, but pick up few states

On the Republican side, Trump's opponents, Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio, each won states:

Ted Cruz Oklahoma Texas Alaska

Marco Rubio Minnesota



Cruz used his wins to show that he can be a viable conservative alternative to Trump.

"So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely, and that would be a disaster for Republicans," Cruz told supporters Tuesday at a Texas venue called the Redneck Country Club.

Rubio, meanwhile, saw his first win in the Election 2016 season as proof that his effort to hammer Trump's reputation is making a difference.

"Five days ago, we began to explain to the American people that Donald Trump is a con artist," Rubio said at a rally in Miami. "In just five days, we have seen the impact it is having all across the country."

Trump hit back at Rubio's attack from his Mar-a-Largo Club in Palm Beach.

"I have to tell you ... and he was very, very nasty," Trump said. "I've never heard a person get up and speak on an evening like this and be so nasty. But, he's got a right to be nasty. He hasn't won anything and he's not going to win much."

John Kasich, Ohio's governor, won no states Tuesday, though he did pick up delegates in Vermont and Virginia.

Kasich said he will stay in the race despite not winning a single state so far. He is pinning his hopes on the big battleground state of Ohio, his home state, which holds its primary March 15.

Dr. Ben Carson lamented the rotten political system with his supporters at an event in Baltimore. However, Carson vowed to stay in the race.

Clinton wins big, but Sanders gains strength

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders picked up four states Super Tuesday and gave Clinton a run for her money in others.

Bernie Sanders Oklahoma Vermont Colorado Minnesota



Sanders' wins show his liberal populist message can resonate. However, he had trouble in the South, and he had trouble with minority voters. He still was strong among younger voters.



Sanders is looking for big wins in Maine and Michigan  especially in Michigan where he is spending a lot of money on advertising. He is heading to both states Wednesday. The Maine caucus is Sunday and the Michigan primary is Tuesday, March 8.

Sanders, for his part, focused on his signature issues when he addressed supporters in Vermont on Tuesday night: health care, prison reform and the campaign finance system.

"In America, we are going to end a corrupt campaign finance system," Sanders said. "We are not going to allow billionaires and Super PACs destroy our American democracy."

Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned in Miami Tuesday night, celebrating her big win with South Florida supporters. She laid in a few barbs at the Republican candidates' expense.

"America never stopped being great," Clinton said to cheers of "USA!" "We have to make America whole, we have to fill in  fill in what's been hollowed out."

Clinton's support stayed strong in the South on Super Tuesday, where she swept the states up for election. She also did well with minorities. Two-thirds of her supporters were women.

Among Clinton's wins were states with large delegate bodies: Texas has 222 delegates, Georgia has 102 delegates, Virginia has 95 delegates and Massachusetts has 91 delegates.

Clinton will not get all of those, but she will get a considerable piece of the delegate pie. That means Sanders still has a long way to go.

Moving forward in March

March 15 will be a big day for both parties, and it may impact the elections in a big way going forward.

Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio are all states with large delegate counts, at least on the Democratic side.

On the Republican side, Kasich and Rubio are both counting on big support from both states in order to stay in the race past March.

Democrats Florida: 214 delegates Illinois: 156 delegates

Missouri: 71 delegates

North Carolina: 107 delegates

Ohio: 143 delegates





Republicans Florida: 99 delegates

Illinois: 69 delegates

Missouri: 52 delegates

North Carolina: 72 delegates

Ohio: 66 delegates



Trump and Rubio both vowed to fight hard in Florida, which is a winner-take-all state in terms of winning delegates. Trump will be in Orlando on Saturday.

Meanwhile, early voting in Florida has already begun, and thousands of mail-in ballots have gone out to voters who requested them.

Before the candidates can get to March 15, though, there are primaries or caucuses on Saturday, Sunday and Tuesday, March 8.

RELATED: See the Election 2016 calendar

See the Election 2016 calendar Florida presidential primary coverage March 15 starting at 5 p.m. All presidential results plus your local races Central Florida local election results on News 13



Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
For the past 14 weeks, many media outlets throughout the Ports-to-Plains region have published this series of articles on a weekly basis. From safety to economics and trade to funding, the Ports-to-Plains Alliance is committed to providing ongoing information about the progress of the development and impacts along the corridor.

In just the past week, staff spent a full day in Washington, D.C. holding meetings with Congressional staff, staff from Federal Highway Administration, staff from U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and staff from the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and National Association of Development Associations (NADO). At each meeting Ports-to-Plains Alliance focused on the importance of rural corridors like Ports-to-Plains which not only connect urban economies, but provide the resources needed to drive those economies across North America.
Wynn Palace in Macau will change the fortunes of Wynn Resorts. Image source: Wynn Resorts.

CEO Steve Wynn doesn't give a lot of interviews, so when he talks, investors should listen. After Wynn Resorts reported fourth-quarter results, he gave some candid answers about the state of Wynn Resorts, upcoming projects, and even his own recent stock purchases. Below are the highlights from the call. (All transcript quotes are from Steve Wynn, via Seeking Alpha.)

Macau is improving

I think probably what is interesting is to say that January in Macau, if I can anticipate some of the questions, was our best month in a long time. Happy to say so.

Since Macau's gaming market entered its free fall in mid-2014, there have been questions about where the bottom is. Over the past six months or so, gaming revenue has stabilized and there's been hope that we've hit bottom. Wynn saying that January was great ahead of the opening of Wynn Palace is exactly what Wynn Resorts needs.

Wynn Palace is due in June

We are working with our contractor to get them to catch up so that we will have an opening in June. They believe they will make the June 25 date, which was the contract date of our relationship with our builder, and it is possible they could be late, but hopefully they won't be.

At one time, there was some hope Wynn Palace would open early in January, but construction delays prevented that from happening. As it stands today, construction contractors will meet the original construction deadline of June 25.

This is a key resort for Wynn Resorts' long-term plans because it's the company's first foray into the Cotai region of Macau. This could quickly become Wynn's best-performing resort and getting it up and running in 2016 will be a big step forward for investors.

The next expansion is also under way

We're going to start work in Boston, hard construction. We are doing remediation at the moment. We've come to happy terms with our neighbors in Boston. And that was a relief. And now we are going to proceed with constructing this wonderful destination resort in Boston metropolitan area in Everett, and benefit I hope people throughout the region, and have a very exciting hotel to boot.

Everett, Mass., very near downtown Boston, is Wynn Resorts' next expansion project and it's been a contentious battle to get the building approved. Boston's mayor fought the projects and so did competitors who didn't win the gaming bid. Now, court battles appear to be over and Wynn Everett will soon enter full construction.

The move to Boston is a gamble for Wynn and comes with a hefty $1.7 billion price tag. The city is a new gaming market and we don't quite know how residents will respond or if visitors will want to gamble at the resort. But Steve Wynn thinks it's another wise bet and it'll be completed sometime in late 2018.

Wynn Las Vegas is getting another facelift

Well, currently, we've got a project that is going to start in the spring right here in Las Vegas. We sold our Ferrari dealership to the Rolls-Royce dealer in town, Roger Penske and I. And reclaiming that valuable space we are moving poker over to Encore. And starting at the casino corner where the ticket counter is now for the showrooms, we are going to have retail and a new retail mall that goes through where Ferrari was and a two-story building with a beautiful glass roof, an atrium kind of structure, that has 75,000 feet of rentable space. And we expect that we will pick up somewhere between $20 million and $25 million in extra income and probably $0.30 worth of new payroll.

The Ferrari dealership was once a draw for customers to Wynn Las Vegas, but Wynn thinks he can make more money on the space with more retail space. This will open up about 300 feet of space on the Las Vegas Strip, which was largely unused by the dealership. Watch for the potential financial improvement in late 2016 because this could be a big financial benefit for very little risk from Wynn.

On stock purchases

My view is that I like Wynn Resorts especially because I think that management is great. But I like the stock, I like the stock a lot, and I bought it on what I thought was an extreme weakness in price. That's my own personal opinion. I don't give investment advice, nor do I have any -- there is no inside information in this company. We tell you everything including I just reported the first week and a half of February.

Wynn has been a big buyer of his own company's stock recently, adding more than 10% to his personal position in the company. That can often be seen as a bullish sign for a stock because insiders -- and in this case, the founder -- know more about what's going on in a business than anyone else.

I think this was an opportunistic buy ahead of the opening of Wynn Palace later this year. When that property opens it will add significant revenue and earnings to the company and should boost the stock price. At the very least, investors should be happy that Steve Wynn is very bullish on his company long-term.

A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity

The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, just click here.

The article 5 Things Wynn Resorts' Management Wants You to Know originally appeared on Fool.com.

Copyright  1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Apple's iPads. Image credit: Apple.

Apple is reportedly bringing out a long-overdue update to its 9.7-inch iPad family in just under a month, according to numerous reports. Apple's iPad sales have plunged over the last couple of years, with the decline being blamed largely on long iPad/tablet upgrade cycles as well as cannibalization of tablets by large smartphones.

Let's take a look at everything we know so far about this next generation iPad, which 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman says will be branded "iPad Pro" rather than "iPad Air."

Everything we loved about the big iPad Pro

The iPad Pro brought some interesting technical innovations. The A9X chip inside smashed tablet performance records, with truly excellent CPU and graphics performance. The display also featured some neat tricks, such as a variable display refresh rate and support for the company's unique take on the stylus known as the Apple Pencil.

The device also has quite a nice four-speaker system, something that I missed quite a bit once I returned my iPad Pro and went back to using my iPad Air 2.

According to Gurman, the new 9.7-inch iPad will be getting the same blazing-fast A9X chip, support for the Apple Pencil, and even sport the same "smart connector" that allows users to hook up peripherals such as Apple's Smart Keyboard.

Frankly, I would have been shocked if Apple didn't include support for these add-ons as I'm sure Apple is quite keen to move as many of these high-priced accessories as possible.

Even better than the larger iPad Pro in this key way

Per Gurman, the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro will actually be better than the 12.9-inch variant in one key way: the camera. Previous leaks pointed to Apple including a flash on the upcoming 9.7-inch iPad Pro (the 12.9-inch model doesn't have this), but it seems that Apple is going a step further.

The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is expected to feature the same 12-megapixel camera sensor that's found on the iPhone 6s/6s Plus. This sensor didn't exactly bring massive image quality improvements over the 8-megapixel sensor found in the iPhone 6/6 Plus, but images are higher resolution and therefore sharper.

A better display, too

The display on the iPad Air 2 has been long overdue for an update. According to Raymond Soneira with DisplayMate, the display found on the Air 2 is inferior to both the one found on the iPad mini 4 as well as the one found on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

That, apparently, is about to change.

Per Gurman, the new iPad Pro is expected to come with an "updated display" with enhancements to both brightness as well as the anti-glare coating that first made its debut with the iPad Air 2.

Indeed, in Soneira's article discussing the different iPad displays, the display expert says that next generation displays will need to further lower display reflectance, as well as implement some other new features, in order to boost image quality.

A second generation anti-reflective coating seems just the sort of thing that Soneira is looking for, and I look forward to seeing how this new iPad Pro does in real-world tests.

This is the iPad we've been looking for, but it might not be enough to rekindle growth

When the large iPad Pro came out, I gave it a shot but was ultimately unhappy with just how gargantuan the device is. In my mind, the 9.7-inch iPad is the perfect tablet size and the improvements that Apple is apparently bringing to the table sound quite compelling.

Whether it'll be enough to help iPad sales out of their funk or not remains to be seen, however. Apple failed to return iPad to year-over-year growth with the introductions of the iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4, and iPad Pro, so it's hard to imagine that the 9.7-inch iPad Pro will be much more successful at stimulating sales growth.

3 companies poised to explode when cable dies

Cable is dying. And there are 3 stocks that are poised to explode when this faltering $2.2 trillion industry finally bites the dust. Just like newspaper publishers, telephone utilities, stockbrokers, record companies, bookstores, travel agencies, and big box retailers did when the Internet swept away their business models. And when cable falters, you don't want to miss out on these 3 companies that are positioned to benefit. Click here for their names. Hint: They're not the ones you'd think!

The article Apple Inc.'s 9.7-inch iPad Pro -- Here's What You Need to Know originally appeared on Fool.com.

Copyright  1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

The San Antonio International Airport is giving its more than 2 million passengers some of Americas top-rated customer service, according to a recent study of surveyed travelers.

The Airports Council International (ACI,) a conglomerate of worldwide airports, asked travelers about their experience to rank the best places to fly out of in 2015. The San Antonio International Airport tied with Austins Bergstorm International Airport, the Sacramento International Airport, the Detroit Metropolitan Aiport and Torontos Billy Bishop Airport in third place.

RELATED: San Antonio's La Gloria up for nations best airport dining

Indianapolis airport took the top nod.

More than 555,000 surveys were conducted throughout the study of more than 300 airports spanning 80 countries, asking passengers to assess their experiences based on access, check-in processes, facilities and offerings for dining and retail.

Customer experience is a priority to us here at SAT, a critical component to success in todays competitive market its our goal to keep raising the bar, SAT Aviation Director Tom Jones said in a news release. The ASQ survey is a tool we use to see how we are doing against other airports in Texas and around the world. This award reinforces that our efforts continue to be successful.

RELATED: Frontier returning to local airport with flight to Philadelphia

Yelp.com, a place where customers air their unfiltered takes on businesses and institutions, proved the surveys to be true with a large amount of positive reviews.

San Antonio Airport is a pretty easy airport to fly out of because its not that crowded, Crystal W., out of New York City noted. I usually just walk right up to check-in and am through the security line in less than 10 minutes. My kind of airport!

Public Information Officer Evelynn Bailey echoed Jones sentiments in a phone interview Tuesday, but said SAT is looking towards improvements that will hopefully earn a higher rank in upcoming years.

RELATED: Hottest hotels in Texas in 2015

She said customer experience from online to checking in and actually flying out is being reviewed.

You never go into it thinking youre going to win an award, so we know were doing something right, she said. But, we know theres room for improvement.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MaddySkye
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

In a letter Tuesday, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath notified Edgewood Independent School District the agency would appoint a board of managers, a conservator and a superintendent to help oversee the beleaguered district.

The TEA will also lower Edgewoods 2015-16 accreditation status to accredited-warned.

Morath said state intervention was required because of the systemic breakdown of the (Edgewood boards) ability to govern, its failure to collaborate with district administration and because trustees have been acting individually on behalf of the board.

As the districts new conservator, Morath appointed Sharon Doughty, who retired after more than five years as superintendent of Port Aransas ISD last year, according to media reports. She previously worked as superintendent of Poteet ISD and assistant superintendent of Southside ISD, according to LinkedIn.

Doughty will be introduced at the next meeting of the school board, according to the letter. The district is required to pay her $85 per hour, plus necessary travel expenses.

The Edgewood ISD superintendent job has been vacant since August. Trustees have beenunable to agree on a search firm to replace Jose Cervantes, whose contract they voted to buy out that month, a decision that will ultimately cost the district $600,000.

Members of the board of managers will mostly be community members, Morath wrote, and will be announced in the future along with his superintendent appointment.

Morath also appointed a conservator for South San Antonio ISD less than a month ago.

Edgewood has a March 4 deadline to ask for a formal review of the decisions to appoint a board of managers and to lower its accreditation status, or an informal review of the conservator appointment.
Five suspects from the Hill Country have been charged with stealing 6,000 lambs worth $1 million from a feed lot in Gillespie County over several months in 2010.

Max Hartmann, special ranger for the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, said the theft investigation began in January.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO  Mayor Ivy Taylor on Wednesday made a pitch to the San Antonio Police Officers Association in hopes of restarting contract negotiations by offering a three-year evergreen clause, among other things.

The police union currently has a 10-year evergreen clause, which keeps nearly all aspects of its contract in force while another one is being negotiated.

But even as Taylor was outlining the citys offer, SAPOA President Mike Helle was rejecting it.

We are 220 vacancies right now and climbing, he said. These city leaders are playing with the safety of the community. They need to quit screwing around and drop the lawsuit so we can get back to the table. Thats absurd. We would never agree to those terms.

Late last year, the city lost its lawsuits against the police and fire unions over the evergreen clause when its attorneys argued that it violated the Texas Constitution and public policy. But a district judge disagreed, and the city vowed to appeal.

In addition to the evergreen clause, the city offered to delay filings in its appeal and sought five negotiation dates in March.

Taylor, speaking directly to Helles response, said he should cool off and consider the offer.

Stop trying to muddle and confuse the issues and get back to the table, Taylor said. Be a leader and work with us to develop a deal that provides the benefits that your officers deserve and what the community deserves. Thats what this is about.

Filings in the citys court appeal over the evergreen clause are due next week, but the deal staked out by the mayor includes filing for an extension on that case if the union will agree to return to the negotiating table.

The city and SAPOA have negotiated on and off for more than two years over a new contract, but talks broke down over the evergreen clause.

SAPOA and the fire union have pledged not to negotiate until the city drops its lawsuits.

For more on this story, visit www.expressnews.com or read the Thursday edition of the San Antonio Express-News.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

AUSTIN  Incumbent Jose Menendez cruised to victory Tuesday in the Democratic rematch for a state Senate seat, defeating challenger Trey Martinez Fischer and ending an extended series of vitriolic campaigns between the two veteran San Antonio lawmakers.

Early returns show Democratic primary voters in Senate District 26 delivered a body blow to Martinez Fischer, a boisterous and leading voice for the minority party in the state House.

Menendez, a first-term senator, has now thumped Martinez Fischer in races in consecutive years for the seat vacated by Leticia Van de Putte. This loss, however, knocks Martinez Fischer out of the Legislature, casting a huge question mark on the future of a political career fueled with the ambition of one day running for statewide office.

Meanwhile, incumbent Democrat Carlos Uresti easily won his primary contest in Senate District 19, handily defeating Helen Madla, the widow of former lawmaker Frank Madla.

But the main attraction in Tuesdays Bexar County Democratic contests centered on Menendez and Martinez Fischer, one of the most bitter, competitive and expensive primary races around the state.

In front of jubilant supporters, including Van de Putte, Menendez celebrated the win by calling it a humbling experience. Earlier Tuesday, he sounded a confident tone as vote totals trickling in put him comfortably ahead, a lead he would increase throughout the night.

Ive never been nervous, not once, Menendez said. I have a work product that I can show before the voters and ask them to evaluate me not based on my personalities, not based on my words but based on my actual work.

More Information State Senator District 26 Trey Martinez-Fischer 41% Jose Menendez 58% *Results as of deadline See More Collapse

Martinez Fischer did not give a concession speech before leaving his watch party.

Once friends and close allies, the two served in the Texas House since 2001. Both jumped at the chance to replace Van de Putte when she announced her run for mayor in late 2014, spawning a nearly nonstop string of campaigns putting the two at odds.

In an abbreviated slugfest last year, the duo clashed bitterly as Menendez eventually throttled Martinez Fischer in a special election.

But while Menendez ascended to Legislatures elite 31-member upper chamber, Martinez Fischer returned to his position in the state House because the two were vying for an open seat.

The stakes were upped considerably this go-round as the election marked a winner-take-all contest, with the loser being cast out of the Legislature.

Another difference: turnout.

Last year, fewer than 20,000 voters cast ballots in the district that covers a large chunk of the West Side. Martinez Fischer charged that GOP voters in the special election helped tilt the balance in favor of Menendez

More than 41,000 people voted this time, with a little more than half the precincts yet to report totals as of late Tuesday. Higher turnout was supposed to benefit Martinez Fischer, who largely banked his strategy to challenge an incumbent on the notion that a Democratic primary in a presidential year would play to his advantage.

Walter Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said Martinez Fischer made a strategic gamble by jumping into the race based on the idea he could beat an incumbent in a race in which only Democrats voted  and it didnt pay off.

Menendez being the more moderate benefited from the smaller, more conservative electorate last time, said Wilson, who lives in Senate District 26. The fact is primaries tend to attract a very different electorate than special elections, and Martinez Fischer anticipated the electorate this time would be more liberal and more activist.

Cast as the underdog a year ago, Menendez entered this election with a big advantage: the power of incumbency. The Austin institutions that backed Martinez Fischer in the past campaign largely fled to support Menendez, who drew the bulk of campaign checks from lobbyists and endorsements from major groups.

Martinez Fischer consistently rejected the narrative that he was running against an entrenched incumbent. But his supporters said Tuesday they were aware the race would present an uphill climb.

We knew coming in he was a big underdog, said Felix Yruegas, 77, an Army veteran who supported Martinez Fischer.

For his part, Uresti, first elected to the state Senate in 2006, waged a much lower-profile campaign compared to the Menendez-Martinez Fischer shootout. About 200 people gathered at a VFW post on the South Side to celebrate Urestis victory, where he said he plans to focus on fixing roads and building infrastructure in the Eagle Ford and Permian basins.

Staff Writer Katherine Blunt contributed to this report.




This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Javier Salazar and Andy Lopez appeared headed for a runoff in a Democratic primary race to decide who will face Sheriff Susan Pamerleau in the general election.

Salazar and Lopez drew more votes than Charles Chazz Cervantes and Matt Ninan. But neither had a majority and they will move on to a May 24 runoff.

In another Bexar County contest, Precinct 3 Commissioner Kevin Wolff turned away challenges by Mike Koerner and Pamela Lill in the Republican primary. Wolff, the lone Republican on the five-member Bexar County Commissioners Court, was first elected commissioner in 2008 and re-elected without opposition in 2012.

Wolff, who faces a Democratic challenger, Brandon J. Johnson, in November, said voters in the GOP primary sent a statement that they want rational leadership, with a focus on fiscal conservatism, small government and keeping our noses out of your damn business.

It needs to be a new day for our party, Wolff said. We need to coalesce behind that rationalism.

Koerner, a Navy veteran and legislative aide, had criticized Wolff as having liberal views on immigration, economic development, health care, transportation and other issues.

In the sheriffs race, challengers have criticized Pamerleaus leadership as responsible for low morale and manpower, with outdated technology and promotions policies. Salazar, a 23-year veteran with the San Antonio Police Department, has said the sheriffs office, with nearly 2,000 workers, suffers from a toxic environment, with bad conduct resulting in the arrest of 14 deputies in the past year.

Lopez has emphasized his 30 years of law enforcement experience, adopting as his campaign slogan a declaration that I have seen it all  twice! He has said deputies are being overworked and forced to log overtime.

Precinct 1 Commissioner Sergio Chico Rodriguez had no primary opposition, but will face Republic challenger John V. Garza, a former state legislator, in the general election.

In the constables races, Precinct 1 incumbent Ruben C. Tejeda, a Democrat, was unopposed. Martin Cam Chavez appeared poised to face him in November, leading Jesse Jay Alaniz in the GOP primary.

Challengers Michelle Barrientes Vela and Rudy Garza appeared headed for a runoff for the Precinct 2 constable nomination, leading incumbent Democrat Val Flores and two other challengers. The winner will face Kenneth R. Randy Menn, who defeated Joseph R. Pineda in the GOP primary.

Precinct 3 Constable Mark Stewart Vojvodich, a Republican, led primary challengers Nathan Buchanan and Franz Lamar Rickhoff, and seemed poised to face Edward Ed Coleman, an uncontested Democrat.

Precinct 4 Constable Robert Mike Blount was trailing Democratic challenger Stan Ramos. The winner will face a Republican, Christopher J. Milam.

shuddleston@express-news.net

Twitter: @shuddlestonSA
Matthew Busch / For The San Antonio Express-News

Ronald Cortes, Freelance / For the Express and

Robin Jerstad /For the Express-News

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

SAN ANTONIO  Diana Arevalo avoided a runoff in the House District 116 Democratic primary.

Arevalo won 53 percent of the vote in the crowded primary with all precincts reporting. Martin Golando trailed with 30 percent.

Texas House Speaker Joe Straus declared victory early in his runoff race.

Straus took 60 percent of the vote. He faced a challenge from Tea Party activist Jeff Judson.

RELATED: Early voting leaders for San Antonio-area Texas Senate races

The race to replace Ruth Jones McClendon in the Texas House of Representatives is headed to a runoff, while Tomas Uresti was leading the Democratic Primary in District 118.

Barbary Gervin-Hawkins led McClendon's Dist. 120 with 26 percent of the vote and will face Mario Salas, who won 23 percent, in a Democratic primary runoff.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press declared that state Rep. Ina Minjarez , D-San Antonio, again secured the Democratic nomination.

RELATED: Early voting leaders for Bexar County commissioner, sheriff

Gabe Farias lost the bid to replace his father, Joe, in the District 118 race. Uresti won with 59 percent of the vote. The winner will face John Lujan, who beat both Farias and Uresti in a special election last year.

jbuch@express-news.net

Twitter: @jlbuch
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Vacancies opening for county posts in the San Antonio area attracted multiple candidates in Tuesdays primary, with runoff elections needed to resolve some contests.

In races where incumbents faced challenges, however, they generally appeared to be prevailing in incomplete returns.

The upcoming retirement of Bob Holder, Comal County sheriff since 1997, drew four Republicans vying for their partys nomination. The top vote-getters were on Holders staff, Capt. Mark Reynolds and Chief Deputy Brent Paullus, who appeared headed for a May 24 runoff.

The winner will face Democrat Fred Riter and write-in candidate Donald DJ Seeger in November.

In Kerr County, final results showed William Rector and Harley Belew in first and second place among five Republican contenders. A runoff will be needed to decide who will succeed Pct. 1 Commissioner H.A. Buster Baldwin.

No Democrat filed to run in November. Baldwin has held the post for 20 years and also served one term as the Pct. 4 commissioner before that.

In Kendall County, six Republicans faced off for the Pct. 4 commissioner seat left vacant by the death last November of Royce Steubing. Don Durden led the pack in early returns, followed by Rocky Marshall Jr.

The winner will face Democrat Rebecca Rogers in November to decide who will serve the remainder of Steubings term.

Another high-profile GOP race there pitted Christina Bergmann, a Boerne city council member, against incumbent Pct. 1 Kendall County Commissioner Mike Fincke. Bergmann held a narrow lead after early votes were counted.

In Bandera County, incumbent Pct 1 Commissioner Bob Grimes came in second in a three-way Republican primary to the man he wrested the post from in 2012, Bruce Eliker.

In the same primary, Bandera County Sheriff Dan Butts fended off a challenge from former deputy Scott Sharp. No Democrats are running for sheriff or commissioner there.

In Atascosa County, the retirement of Pct. 3 Commissioner Freddie Ogden drew three Republican and three Democrat candidates. After early voting results, the only box counted at press time, Clint Hindes led the GOP field and Eliseo Perez was tops among Democrats.

The retirement of Guadalupe County Tax Assessor-Collector Tavie Murphy prompted a race to succeed her between Republicans Daryl John and Elizabeth Guerrero. John was leading by less than 1 percent in early returns.

Incumbent Pct. 3 Guadalupe County Commissioner Jim Wolverton also had a narrow early lead over former Schertz councilman George Antuna Jr. in the GOP primary, and incumbent Pct. 1 Commissioner Greg Seidenberger held a more comfortable margin over challenger Wayne Lehman, a local deputy.

No Democrats filed for the tax office post or commissioner seats in November.

zeke@express-news.net
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

A man who died following a brief pursuit that ended in a shootout Saturday with three Wilson County deputies was identified by the Bexar County Medical Examiner.

Fernando Hernandez, 23, was fatally shot after driving a stolen truck off-road at U.S. 181 and Loop 1604 South and shooting at the deputies, Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt said.

Authorities believe Hernandez, who stole the truck from a home off County Road 150 near the Wilson County border, found the gun in the truck and used it to fire at the owners house and deputies.

Tackitt said the owner of the truck often kept a weapon in his vehicle because he travels often.

After Hernandez stole the truck, officials said, he fired one shot out the trucks back window at the home before driving off onto U.S. 181. Moments later, he returned for an unknown reason and fired a few more shots.

When he went northbound onto U.S. 181 the second time, he was driving the wrong way as the three deputies and a Texas Ranger were pursuing him, Tackitt said.

Just before the chase reached Loop 1604, Hernandez drove off road and exited the truck, immediately firing at the pursuing deputies.

The three of them opened fire, critically injuring him, Tackitt said. Airlife transported him to University Hospital where he died 30 minutes after.
The Texas Department of Public safety is now offering $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of a wanted fugitive who has been missing for nearly 10 years.

Israel Aguirre, 34, is wanted on a charge of murder related to an incident in 2002.
A 44-year-old Carthage woman was sentenced Monday to serve a dozen years in prison for being involved in a cattle and ranching equipment theft operation with others, according to a news release from the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

Stacie Laine Soape pleaded guilty to being involved in a Sept. 30, 2014, theft of 12 head of cattle and ranching equipment from a rancher in Harrison County, located about 60 miles southeast of Tyler.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Republican front runner and business mogul Donald Trump ended Super Tuesday with victory in seven states, strengthening his campaign to become the GOP nominee.

But it was Trump's newly found supporter, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who won the stage, even if he may have lost his soul.

Those who tuned into election coverage, specifically Trumps victory speech at his headquarters in Palm Beach, Fla., had their eyes  and cellphone cameras  aimed at Christies wordless screaming face, a term coined by The Washington Post in a ComPost.

RELATED: As Trump dominates Super Tuesday, Cruz hangs on to Texas and Oklahoma

As the billionaire stood at his podium, promising to be a unifier, his foe-turned-friend stood in the shadows either wondering what he had done by throwing his support behind Trump or if he had left the stove on at home.

Soon he must return to the plane onto which Trump humiliatingly sent him before. Soon he must return to the small cupboard under the stairs where he is kept and occasionally thrown small slivers of metaphorical raw meat, The Washington Post quipped. When he asked to be part of Trumps cabinet he never thought to specify presidential cabinet, of course, not a literal cabinet underground where the ventilation is poor and there is no light. It just did not occur to him. Why would it?

RELATED: Voters cast ballots hours after polls close in Bexar County

The Christie conversation carried continued on Twitter, of course, with a slew of hashtaggable memes vowing to #FreeChrisChristie from what many have called a hostage situation, or Trump's campaign.

RELATED: Clinton easily takes Texas

We may have not know exactly what was going on in the mind of Christie, but Twitter had plenty of ideas. Click through the gallery above to check them out.

mmendoza@mysa.com

Twitter: @MadddySkye
If you were an avid fan of astronaut Scott Kelly's Twitter feed, the images are going to be much more grounded from here on out.

The NASA rocket man is returning to Earth after spending a whopping 340 days in space. Still, Kelly's space trip is already NASA's longest recorded spaceflight. Unfortunately, Cold War-era patriots might be sad to learn Kelly's voyage did not beat the already-established record of 438 days Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov.
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate

Tuesday should have been super for Bexar County Republicans.

Local voter turnout in the GOP primary broke all records maintained by the county elections office. The states presidential primary was the first hotly contested Republican race in Texas in 40 years, and Republican favorite son Ted Cruz (the primary winner) spent part of his election eve commanding a full house at Alzafar Shrine Auditorium.

But theres major unrest in the Republican ranks, and it cant be fully explained by the disruptive effect of Donald Trump parachuting into the presidential race and turning it into a grade-school insult match.

RELATED: AP says Texas falls to Cruz and Clinton

To be sure, local party leaders are silently suffering from anxiety attacks as they watch Trump run away with the race. Just as Trumps support base stretches across the GOP spectrum  and even draws from Democratic defectors  the anxiety he creates crosses ideological lines.

At Mondays Cruz rally, the most common sentiment I heard from the hard-core conservative attendees about Trump was a hope that GOP voters will come to their senses. Moderate Republicans say the same thing.

Trumps support has little to do with ideology, and everything to do with a blind faith that he will kick butt, take names  and file libel suits against his detractors. At the same time, GOP resistance to him also transcends ideology.

RELATED: Menendez, Uresti declared victors

Some are appalled by his talk of rounding up and deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants; some are queasy about his plan to prevent non-citizen Muslims from entering the country. And realists roll their eyes at the thought that Trump will fulfill his promise to force Mexico to pay for a 1,000-mile border wall.

But even if Trumps philosophy is too seat-of-the-pants erratic to meld with the tea-party aesthetic, what he shares with the tea-party crowd is a contempt for the nature of legislative give-and-take, and a desire to blow up the system that produces it.

That contempt colored Jeff Judsons nasty campaign against Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, with Judson haranguing Straus for the very qualities  willingness to compromise, commitment to making the legislative process orderly and a refusal to get bogged down in symbolic grandstanding  that make him effective.

In the case of Navy vet Mike Koerners primary challenge to County Commissioner Kevin Wolff, the emptiness of the entire exercise was demonstrated by Koerners obsessive focus on the particulars of Wolffs Naval service in the Gulf of Sidra three decades ago.

RELATED: Straus, Arevalo and Uresti lead house races

To combat Judsons attacks, Straus closely affiliated himself with two of the states preeminent religious liberty crusaders: Cruz and Gov. Greg Abbott. One Straus mailer featured the House speaker pictured with Cruz and Abbott, and bemoaned liberals assaulting our states rights.

Both Judson and Koerner lost badly. But they contributed to the ongoing sense in local Republican circles that dedicated public servants such as Straus and Wolff almost have to apologize for deigning to have a conversation with members of the opposition party.

By contrast, when local Democratic incumbents faced primary challenges, there were no deep questions involved about how the party must define itself.

Theres not much to separate state Sen. Jose Menendez and his challenger, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, on the issues. They just happened to be two ambitious young Democrats who wanted the same seat. In the case of Helen Madlas campaign against state Sen. Carlos Uresti, she struggled to find any justification for running, other than to avenge her late husbands defeat to Uresti 10 years ago.

Pragmatic Republicans who simply want to address core government functions and keep taxes reasonably low  and who get heartburn when the talk turns to social issues or deportation of undocumented immigrants  feel themselves getting squeezed out.

RELATED: Wolff leads commissioner race, sheriff headed for runoff

Even before Tuesdays results came in, there was talk about a local group of politicos launching a Rational Republicans PAC, to protect GOP pragmatists from becoming an endangered species.

On the national level, Trump leaves wreckage everywhere he goes, but always emerges unscathed. With the possible exception of Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, every one of Trumps rivals will leave the presidential race worse for the wear.

So it was a strange night for Republicans. Even as local incumbents celebrated resounding victories, they had to wonder where their party is heading.
Though based at local radio station WOAI his entire career, Robert Bob Guthrie was known to a much wider audience.

Narrating Army training videos as a young soldier, Guthrie was given the moniker of Col. Hardwick, endearing himself to a generation of trainees.

While traveling with his wife decades later, veterans would recognize Guthrie by his voice, asking if he was Col. Hardwick, his wife Joyce Guthrie said.

But Guthrie was probably best known for his years of anchoring the morning news on WOAI.

Bob was called the Voice of San Antonio, Joyce Guthrie said. His voice was deep, authoritative.

Guthrie died Feb. 23, just days before his 83rd birthday.

More Information Robert "Bob" Guthrie Born: Feb. 27, 1934, Chicago, Illinois Died: Feb. 23, 2016, San Antonio Preceded by: Parents Evelyn and Robert M. Guthrie. Survived by: Wife Joyce Richardson Guthrie; step-daughters Kimberly Kleeman Siess, and Karen Kleeman Herring and son-in-law Gary; daughter Sue Munns and son-in-law Tom; nine grandchildren; and four sisters. Services: Memorial at 11 a.m. Monday at Porter Loring North, 2102 N. Loop 1604 East. See More Collapse

Attending college in Illinois when the Korean conflict began, Guthrie quit to join the Army.

He left about six months before he would have graduated, Joyce Guthrie said. He couldnt wait to serve his country.

Guthrie had gone through basic training and was about to be deployed when it was discovered he had pneumonia.

He wanted to go, but  they pulled him off the plane, his wife said.

Sent to San Antonio, Guthrie was doing training videos when a manger from WOAI heard him, longtime friend and colleague Bud Little said. They thought his voice was phenomenal, hired him on the spot.

Working at the radio station on weekends until his discharge from the service, Guthrie remained with WOAI for more than 50 years, gaining a reputation for his unflappable demeanor, no matter what the story.

Bob and I were cut from the same cloth  thought alike when it came to the news, Little said. You dont embellish; he was a firm believer in that.

Although he did some television work early on, Guthrie eventually began working in radio exclusively, covering a variety of events around the state and nation.

Guthrie also loved flying, becoming a pilot in the early 1960s.

When Bob lived in Chicago during World War II, aviation was just taking off, his son-in-law Gary Herring said. It captured his imagination.

Discovering how expensive lessons were, Guthrie made a deal with the instructor to mow the airstrip to defray the cost.

Later flying all over the country, including to the Experimental Aircraft Associations AirVenture fly-in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, every year, Guthrie remained fascinated with aircraft and flight.

He had a very curious mind and a tremendous appetite for learning how things worked, Herring said. He was very cerebral about things.

mheidbrink@express-news.net
It is the great, democratic virtue of presidential campaigns that they subject candidates to every kind of stress, eventually revealing their core, their character. For Donald Trump, the test has been political success. After leading the Republican field for six months, and in some quarters receiving adulation nearly equal to his self-regard, how has Trump responded? Has he been sobered? Has his rhetoric and temperament matured?

No. Decidedly, no. The realistic prospect of executive power has only increased Trumps swagger. He has threatened a GOP donor who opposes him. I hear the (Ricketts) family, he tweeted, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!

Trump has threatened the media, promising to open up our libel laws so he can more easily sue outlets that differ in their view of the truth about him. I think The New York Times is one of the most dishonest media outlets Ive ever seen in my life, he says. They have an agenda that you wouldnt believe. If I become president, oh, do they have problems. Theyre gonna have such problems.

Trump has attempted to smear and intimidate a district judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a lawsuit for fraud against Trump University, with its distinguished faculty of cardboard cutouts and allegedly bankrupt real estate investors. Trump accuses Curiel of hostility against him because Im very, very strong on the border. Another shrill pipe of the ethnic dog whistle.

This is more than the personality disorder talking. Trump roots his intimidation in a worldview  the need for the strong hand. It is the most consistent commitment of Trumpism. As early as 1990, Trump criticized Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev for not having a firm enough hand. He cited Chinas butchers of Tiananmen Square as examples of his conception of power: They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak. Following allegations last year that Vladimir Putin had killed several high-profile journalists, Trump responded, Hes running his country and at least hes a leader, unlike what we have in this country.

And Trumps supporters seem to welcome this aspect of his appeal. According to a Vox analysis of the South Carolina Republican primary vote, the best statistical predictor of Trump support is an inclination toward authoritarianism  a belief in the need for aggressive leaders and policies. So Trump, if he wins the presidency, will feel a mandate for his menace.

There is a moment in the 1957 movie A Face in the Crowd when the TV personality turned power-mad sociopath, Lonesome Rhodes, says, Im not just an entertainer. Im an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force ... a force. Trump is reaching that point of intoxication.

We have seen the lengths to which Trump will go to threaten and intimidate his enemies, armed mainly with social media. It seems reckless beyond reason  reckless with the republic itself  to arm him with the immense power of the executive branch. Consider the threatening quality of the words Trumps military or Trumps FBI or Trumps IRS. The grant of vast influence to a leader of such vindictive temperament is utterly frightening.

In a way, Trump may be excused for his adolescent view of strength  the power of the tantrum, the crude putdown, the dirty trick. Trump has no evident knowledge of American history or conservative ideology. He lives only in the vivid present of his wants and needs. He is squandering an inheritance he does not value, that he does not even understand.

But what excuse can be made for Gov. Chris Christie? His endorsement of Trump was evidently made out of ambition. It is humiliating for the governor of a great state to make himself the subordinate of a cut-rate Mussolini. Christie has shown leadership on entitlement reform and the treatment of Muslims. Now his enduring reputation will be a willingness to swallow any foolishness to serve the cause of Christie.

Trumps conception of leadership is to become large by making others small. In a reality television star, this is a job qualification. In a president, it would raise the prospect of serious damage to our democratic system.

michaelgerson@washpost.com
It is time for a reckoning. After Super Tuesday, more likely past time.

There is no sugar-coating this.

In Donald Trump lie the seeds for the GOPs demise or a reconstruction that will make the party unrecognizable and at least temporarily marginalized. And a Trump presidency would mean national divisions that could take decades to mend and a diminishment of U.S. stature and influence abroad.

Trump had a huge Super Tuesday, though finishing second in Texas, which its junior senator, Ted Cruz, won. Cruz won Oklahoma, too.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton also had a good Tuesday, including in Texas. Bernie Sanders picked up some wins but Clinton leads in the delegate count.

Fortunately, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus survived a challenge from the far right from Jeff Judson.

But Trumps romp in most of the states having primaries or caucuses should cause concern.

There is ample reason to fear a Cruz nomination for different reasons should he somehow become the viable GOP alternative in the weeks ahead. Despised by his Senate colleagues, he, too, relishes the wrecking-ball role.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is the better choice, though he had a dismal Super Tuesday. Perhaps thats because he sank to Trumps level with negative zingers recently. There are, however, glimmers of pragmatism and compassion in his past that are just not evident in Cruz and Trump. Especially Trump, the birther with his share of business failures. A Midas touch? Not really.

Voters  Democrats, Republicans and independents  are frustrated and angry. They want seismic shifts. But the destruction a Trump nomination  or win in November  promises is not the kind they will savor.

Damage to U.S. relations with a valuable ally occurs if a wall at the border becomes the centerpiece of the partys choice for president. And the GOP can never have the big tent it says it wants if its standard-bearer continues to characterize Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. A now sizable and fast-growing portion of the electorate have Mexican and Latin American roots.

Finding allies to fight the Islamic State and terrorism becomes problematic if a U.S. president has maligned Muslims  and endorsed torture and killing terrorists families, a war crime. The Putin-admiring Trump promises to make America great again. But America is great and the usefulness of the big U.S. stick he says is needed internationally  in trade, too  has seen its day.

Americas greatness lies in its plurality, values, ideals, leadership and compassion. Trump simply doesnt understand what greatness means. Texas did its part, slowing the Trump juggernaut. Republicans in other states must step up.
Unlike the Lenovo Tab3 8 and Tab3 7, the Tab3 10 is a reasonably-priced Android tablet that is targeted at business users. The device offers a more impressive behemoth display, more powerful cameras, a faster quad-core processor, ample RAM and a colossal battery.

Where to Buy Lenovo Tablets Jumia.com.ngfrom 30,500.00 Buy Now

Konga.comfrom 23,900.00 Buy Now

Design and Display

The Lenovo Tab3 10 Business is built to be a device that on-the-go professionals can rely on. Its maker says it is designed to meet users expectations for durability.

Lenovo Tab3 10 Business boasts P2i water-repellent coating which protects against splash and dust. The tablet is protected on the front against scratches and scuffs by tough Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

The display itself is a humongous unit measuring 10.1 inches diagonally. The IPS LCD touchscreen boasts an improved resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels for a slightly better pixel density of about 224 ppi.

Power and Performance

In terms of the innards, the Lenovo Tab3 10 also depends on a quad-core MediaTek processor like its lower-end siblings.

But this 64-bit chip delivers faster speeds of up to 1.3 GHz and receives support from 2 GB or 3 GB of RAM for a level of performance that will likely impress some business users.

The tablet boots Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system. With a whopping 7,000mAh battery provided, the Tab3 10 Business will save business users from the stress of looking for where to get a boost while on the go. Battery life of up to 12 hours is promised.

Miscellaneous Specifications

On the camera front, the Lenovo Tab3 10 Business offers a more impressive combo of 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing snapper.

You get ample 32 GB or 64 GB of onboard storage, which you will be able to expand by up to 64 GB using a microSD card.

The slate offers full Android for Work support, allowing business users access to an impressive range of security and encryption options. It lets you separate work information from personal data. You get a variety of on-the-go features as well.

MicroUSB 2.0, Bluetooth, NFC and dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac are among available connectivity options. The Lenovo Tab3 10 Business will also come in Wi-Fi only and LTE models.

Pricing and Availability

Lenovo Tab3 10 Business is not yet available in Nigeria. When available, you can buy it at leading online stores in the country. Lenovo Tab3 10 Business Price in Nigeria is expected to range from N40,000 to N80,000 depending on your location in Nigeria.

Lenovo Tab3 10 Business Specs Here are a few specs of the Lenovo Tab3 10 Business: General Features Platform: Android 6.0 (Marshmallow)

Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) Processor: Quad-core 1.3 GHz

Quad-core 1.3 GHz GPU: 

 Memory: 2GB RAM

2GB RAM Colours: Black

Black Dimension: 

 Weight: 

 SIM Type: Regular-SIM

Regular-SIM SIM Count:  Display Display: 10.0-inch Touchscreen 19201080 pixels (189ppi), multi-touch

10.0-inch Touchscreen 19201080 pixels (189ppi), multi-touch Display Protection: Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Camera Rear Camera: 8 MP Camera, Video

8 MP Camera, Video Rear Camera Features: Geo-tagging

Geo-tagging Front Camera: 5 MP Camera,/li> Storage Built-in Storage: 16GB Storage

16GB Storage Memory Card Support: -MicroSD up to 32 GB

-MicroSD up to 32 GB Bundled Cloud Storage:  Network Support 2G GSM: 900 / 1800MHz

900 / 1800MHz 2G CDMA 1X: No

No 3G WCDMA: 900 / 2100MHz

900 / 2100MHz 3G CDMA EVDO: No

No 4G LTE: No Internet & Connectivity GPRS: Yes

Yes EDGE: Yes

Yes 3G/WCDMA/HSPA: Yes

Yes HSPA+: No

No CDMA EVDO: No

No 4G LTE: No

No WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Hotspot: No

No Bluetooth: Yes, Bluetooth 4.0

Yes, Bluetooth 4.0 HDMI Port: No

No Infrared Blaster: No

No USB Port: Yes, microUSB 2.0, USB Host, USB OTG Messaging SMS/MMS: Yes

Yes Instant Messaging: Yes

Yes Push Emails: Yes

Yes Email Protocol:  Entertainment Music Player: Yes, mp3, WAV, FLAC, eACC+

Yes, mp3, WAV, FLAC, eACC+ Video Player: Yes, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, XviD

Yes, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, XviD FM Radio: No

No Loudspeaker: Yes

Yes 3.5mm Jack: Yes Navigation Navigation: Yes, GPS

Yes, GPS Maps: Yes Sensors & Control Digital Compass: 

 Accelerometer: Yes

Yes Proximity Sensor: Yes

Yes Light Sensor: Yes

Yes Barometer: No

No Pedometer: No

No Gyroscope: No

No Fingerprint Scanner: No

No Iris Scanner: No

No Intelligent Digital Assistant: 

 Motion Sensing / Gesture Control: 

 Voice Control: Yes Other Features Video Streaming: Yes

Yes Traditional Voice Calls: No

No Wireless Charging: No

No Digital TV: No

No Water Resistant: No

No Dust Resistant: No

No Image Editor: Yes

Yes Video Editor: Yes

Yes Document Viewer: Yes

Yes Document Editor: Yes Battery Battery: 7000 mAh Li-Ion Battery (Non-Removable)

7000 mAh Li-Ion Battery (Non-Removable) Use Time: Up to 12 hours

Up to 12 hours Music Playback: 

More on Lenovo
Yves here. There is so much tearing of hair and rending of sackcloth over Trumps Super Tuesday romp that I figured Id give you something a little different.

By Beverly Mann. Originally published at Angry Bear

Paul Krugman has been incessantly complaining about some Sanders supporters who accuse him and other high-profile Sanders critics, especially academics, of conflict of interest. The Sanders supporters allege all manner of self-interested reasons for the Sanders animus, much of it (including Krugmans) expressed with vitriol.

Thorpe, a Clinton administration healthcare official, gets his Sanders-single-payer-critique cred because he worked on the failed Vermont single-payer plan. Just before it was about to begin being implemented last year, the governor, a supporter of the plan, agreed to kill it because it became clear that its costs would significantly exceed former projections.

Weirdly, the failure of the Vermont plan is used, by Thorpe and others, as evidence that single-payer could not be cost-effective nationally. As if the tiny state of Vermont has the same contractual bargaining power, regulatory power, medical training funding power, and any other relevant power as the federal government has.

Thorpe recently made big news with a report that deconstructed the Sanders plan as little more than witchcraft in its cost savings and costs overall and in its costs to this or that entitythe federal government, the states, etc. But in a January 29 article published at Huffington Post, two healthcare economists, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, both with credentials at least as impressive as Thorpes, deconstructed the Thorpe deconstruction as, well, odd in light of certain facts. Including several that Thorpe earlier had used.

Not to worry. Thorpe last week came up with a new headline grabber, this one likely intended to respond to us Sanders supporters who think Sanders would do better in November against Trump than Clinton would. (Or, it now seems likely, courtesy largely of elderly and middle-aged Southern African-Americans, will.) It is an issue that this week has become red hot now that it is likely that Trump will be the Republican nominee. And as of this week we Sanders supporters are no longer alone in thinking that Clinton is not quite the perfect candidate to compete against Trump. According to the NYT, the Clinton campaign itself now shares our concern. Which the Washington Post Wonkblog writer Max Ehrenfreund on February 25 summarized thusly:

Sanders estimates a middle-class family of four would pay an annual premium of $466 under his plan, with no deductible or co-pays. Less affluent households would pay less than that, or nothing at all. But for at least 72 percent of households enrolled in Medicaid  in which someone is working  the costs of Sanderss plan would exceed the benefits, according to an analysis by Kenneth Thorpe, a public-health expert at Emory University. That figure includes 5.7 million households, or 14.5 million people  among them, 4.2 million Hispanic recipients and 2.5 million black recipients. The requirements for eligibility for Medicaid vary widely by state, so that group includes some households living in poverty as well as some that are modestly better off.

How? Well:

The vast majority of low-income Medicaid workers, who are probably predominantly minority, are going to end up paying more in terms of payroll taxes, and arent going to receive really any financial benefits, said Thorpe, a former Clinton administration health official. Many lower-income people are already insured or eligible for insurance under Medicaid, at least in the states that expanded the program under President Obamas healthcare reform. Many Medicaid beneficiaries also work, and those workers wages would likely decline due to the additional 6.2 percent payroll tax the proposal would levy on their employers.

The lengthy blog post is titled Study: Bernie Sanderss health plan is actually kind of a train wreck for the poor.

That, presumably, is because of course Sanders could not, or at least would not, tweak the plan to remove the payroll tax for people qualify for Medicaid under current federal law. Because although the ACA is a very complex and very lengthy statute that took a year of drafting and amending to finalize, Sanders surely has thought of every possible issue and when that one came up he simply said, Too bad.

Sort of like Hillary Clinton, who regularly professes plans to build on Obamacare and move toward universal coverage for all$10,000 deductibles? No prob.but who never hints at what her building plans are, and, curiously, is never asked. Not by the likes of Thorpe or Krugman. And not by the likes of anyone else I know of.

But shes definitely working on a plan for that move-toward-universal-coverage thing, and, as with the release of the transcripts of her highly-compensated speeches to large finance-industry and other big-corporate players, shell give us a hint about how she plans to do that the very minute after the Republican presidential candidates outline their plans to move toward universal healthcare coverage.

Or instead, she could refer us to Thorpe. Since he will again be a healthcare official in the Clinton administration.

____

UPDATE: Reader J.Goodwin and I just exchanged these comments in the Comments thread:

J.Goodwin March 1, 2016 6:08 pm Is there a reason we should anticipate that it would be significantly different than the Health Security Act? I.e. larger federal subsidies and a stronger employer mandate than the ACA? Me March 1, 2016 6:54 pm I think it wouldnt be anything at all, J.Goodwin. I think its outrageous of her to keep saying generically that she wants to build on the ACA without saying what she wants to do, yet criticize Sanders for his plan. And I think its outrageous of the Hillary shillary economists brigadeThorpe, but Krugman too, and probably othersfor not mentioning that she has said nothing at all about what she has in mind, yet keeps saying she has, well, something in mind. Then again, I dont know why Sanders hasnt pointed out that shes taking a page out of the Republican playbook: just keep saying you plan to do something about the uninsured; just dont say what that is.

Added 3/1 at 6:59 p.m.
Whales With a Dam Problem  Pacific Standard (Chuck L)

Norways Radioactive Reindeer Atlantic (furzy)

Scarce snow complicates Alaskan dog sled race CNBC (furzy)

Dogs will fight alongside us in our war against the robots The Verge

Images of Earth From a Year in Space Atlantic (furzy)

In Half Earth, E.O. Wilson Calls for a Grand Retreat New York Times (David L)> In a new book, the renowned biologist argues that it is time for humans to abandon much of the planet to other species.

Chick-fil-A: Ditch your phone, get free ice cream CNBC (furzy)

China?

Euro depression is deliberate EU choice, says former Bank of England chief Telegraph

Refugee Crisis

Syraqistan

NY Times Portrays Islam More Negatively Than Cancer, Major Study Finds Alternet

New bin Laden documents show a suspicious, pressured al Qaeda Reuters

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Imperial Collapse Watch

Supreme Court Trench Warfare

2016

South Dakota genital check bill vetoed after outcry from trangender supporters Guardian

Police State Watch

DOJ indicts ex-CEO of Chesapeake Energy on conspiracy charges CNBC (furzy)

It Just Got Even Harder to Trust Financial Advisers Bloomberg

The U.S. Could Use a New Economic Strategy Bloomberg

Atlanta Fed sees sub-2 percent U.S. growth in first quarter CNBC. As we said in comments, the seasonal adjustment in the concurrent calculation, which are based on rolling averages, were too high, since the previous two Januaries were cold and this one was warm.

Class Warfare

Antidote du jour:

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
By Mathew D. Rose, a freelance journalist in Berlin

The inexorable political decline of Germanys Chancellor Angela Merkel as well as her traditional opponents, the Social Democrats, is gathering pace. Upcoming elections in three German federal states on 13 March have given this process a considerable fillip. Both Ms Merkels Christian Democratic Party and the Social Democrats are expecting some harrowing results.

It seems that each new crisis that Ms Merkel creates is more formidable than its predecessor. Her mishandling of the refugee question  nationally and internationally  is making her conflict with Greece last year appear like a festival of love and unity.

Ms Merkels unilateral decision to accept all refugees from war ravaged nations has galvanised most of the EU and other European nations against Germanys hegemony. Ministers of the EU nations Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia met last week in Vienna with their colleagues from the Balkan countries of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia to discuss closing their borders to refugees, fearing that they too will suffer the fate of Greece and Italy, with tens of thousands of refugees stranded in their countries. These discussions were swiftly put into action, with Greece again bearing the brunt of Ms Merkels calamitous policy.

The refugee conflict is changing the political map of Europe. It has given the Visegrad Group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) a political raison detre. Viktor Orban, once the shunned leader of Hungary due to his authoritarian regime, appears today more of a creditable leader in Europe than Merkel herself. Other EU nations are maybe less vociferous in their criticism of Ms Merkel, but are shunning her refugee policy and even closing their borders  even Scandinavian nations, which until recently was inconceivable. The destruction of the spirit of unity and solidarity in the EU, which Ms Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schauble, have destroyed, has now permeated the policy of EU nations.

Although Ms Merkel tries to appear concerned about the newest developments in the refugee crisis, one has the feeling that the reduction in the flow of refugees arriving in Germany is timely  if not tacitly supported. In two weeks there are three state elections in Germany. One of these is in the state of Baden-Wurttemberg, considered the heartland of Ms Merkels Christian Democratic Union party. In the previous election, four years ago, the Christian Democrats were voted out of government for the first time since the war. This was a result of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, shortly after Ms Merkels government had passed legislation favourable to the nuclear lobby, a principle financier of her party. Although the Christian Democrats made a precipitate U-turn, the debacle was ineluctable. This time round it appears that the Greens could well receive more votes than the Christian Democrats, many of whom are defecting to the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD: neo-liberal, ultra-conservative and racist, including considering shooting entering immigrants at the border). Others Christian Democrats are voting for the Greens, who have simply co-opted most policies of the Christian Democrats, while being less corrupt  still. The situation for the Social-Democrats, who have been the Greens coalition partner, is no less dramatic, being threatened with relegation to fourth place behind the AfD.

In the state of Rheinland-Pfalz Ms Merkel may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Her party that had a lead of up to 13 percent over the Social Democrats is currently scarcely ahead. Good news for the Social Democrats, but in the third state, Sachsen-Anhalt in the former GDR, the party is also struggling not to land in fourth place behind the AfD.

What might save the Christian Democrats are Hungarian President Viktor Orban and his co-renitents, who have blocked the Balkan route used by refugees travelling from Greece to Germany. Ms Merkel has been critical of this policy, but she has not appeared terribly stern. They are providing her with a respite in the flow of refugees. Orban was invited to visit the Christian Socialist Unions (the CSU is the sister party of Ms Merkels CDU in the Christian Union) leader Horst Seehofer in Bavaria in September and Seehofer is on his way to meet with Orban coming Friday. Add to this the cessation of criticism of Orban in German state media, which prior to this portrayed him as equally dangerous for European democracy as Vladimir Putin, are a bellwether of the current political development.

For the Social Democrats under the leadership of Sigmar Gabriel, who seems more concerned with lining up some well remunerated jobs in advance of his retirement from politics, there is a bleak future. Like most social democratic parties in Europe, their motto seems to be fill your pockets while you can. Following the debacles of the social democrats in Spain and their compatriots in the Republic of Ireland, who appear to have gone into a death spin, the German social democrats seem to be following in their footsteps. The party will probably struggle to receive 20 percent of the vote at the next national election in a years time.

Domestically Ms Merkels party and the Social Democrats have tried to save themselves by changing the German laws regarding refugees. Nations that were until recently considered warzones or systematically violating human rights have been declared safe countries of origin, making refugees from these countries economic migrants to facilitate fast track extradition. Benefits for refugees are being slashed, as well not permitting refugees to bring their families to join them in Germany.

The situation became palpably absurd, as Ms Merkel declared that refugees have to integrate themselves in German society or leave, only then to declare that she expects them to depart as soon as the conflicts in their nations have terminated.

Ms Merkels real hope is purchasing the acquiescence of Turkeys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop all refugees at his own border, thus relocating the source of the current political conflict out of Europe and into Turkey. Erdogan, who is fighting a war against the Kurds, would appreciate the billions of Euros on offer, as well as the EU members of NATO turning a blind eye to his pact with ISIS. Let us have no illusions: Erdogan is an anti-democratic and authoritarian, with nor respect for human rights. He is on the threshold of becoming a dictator. He knows he has all the political trumps in his hand in negotiations with Ms Merkel and will exact a commensurate price. This is only the most recent juncture in a political disaster that spiralled out of control months ago.

Add to this the newly created mission of NATO using a fleet of warships to stop the flow of refugees from Turkey to Greece, while negotiations continue with Erdogan. It is cynically claimed that the NATO force is there to arrest those smuggling the refugees. This is absurd. As everyone knows, the smugglers put the refugees in dilapidated boats and send them off on their own. They are not cruise operators. Thus the NATO ships are in effect sending back refugees, many of them women and children, to Turkey. Is this what NATO was created for? Where were the NATO ships, as thousands of refugees were drowning in the Mediterranean?

The whole affair, as with Greece before it, has become a disgrace for Europe. I doubt it would surprise anyone, should negotiations with Turkey fail, and Ms Merkel announced that her government was in talks with ISIS to assist in stemming the refugee threat to European Civilisation.

German leaders are infallible, so there is no way back for Ms Merkel, although there is not much backtracking left to do. The upcoming elections in Germany could well decide her political fate in Germany. The Christian Union would have to scramble to find a new leader for the upcoming national elections in 2017, although that is not really a problem. The party has enough mediocre politicians like Ms Merkel in the wings, just as capable of following the policy dictated by German and international business interests. Germanys domestic political landscape is in flux, as in most of Europe, which makes any predictions concerning the future precarious.

As for Ms Merkel, she will have been a victim of endemic German hubris, not content with being the Mutti of Germany and the iron fist of Europe, but wanting to be a saint as well (and pocket the Nobel Peace Prize). Unfortunately  as always  others have paid and will pay the price: the thousands of refugees who will have died trying to reach the shelter of Europe, as well as those that make it, but will become victims of European racism and greed, and especially of the corrupt European political class. The great hope are the millions of decent Europeans, who know what solidarity is and value the Humanitarianism that was born here.
By Nathan Tankus, a writer in New York City. You can follow him on twitter at @nathantankus

This week I spoke to Michal Rozworski, a Canadian political economy writer and researcher, on the political economy of New York City. I focused on why the simple supply and demand stories people tell about real estate dont work. To summarize one key issue: A textbook supply and demand curve assumes not just one homogenous good, but a good that is unchanged by the process of supplying it. This assumption of course breaks down completely when talking about real estate. When you build a luxury high rise you arent just supplying new apartments. Youre supplying wealthy neighbors, more luxury services (as landlords raise commercial rents to the levels that high end retailers can afford) and a whole range of other things bundled up in what you pay for with your rent.

The second point I focused on here is that real estate developers care not just about their rental income but the value of their building, i.e. capital gains and losses. In a textbook it might make sense to accept the highest price bid you get for every apartment on the market but in reality renting out luxury apartments for cheap has all sorts of negative spillover effects. Wealthy classists (or racists) leave or threaten to leave, people demand lower rents (since the guy in 4-A is getting a much lower rent) and its taken as a bad omen about future rental income which can lower the value of the building and negatively impact your access to credit. In short, what maximizes rental income in the short term can cause capital losses and negatively impact future rental income.

J.W. Mason also spoke to Rozworski about the ongoing controversy over the potential for economic growth in the United States. This is a followup to three pieces he wrote Can Sanders Do It?, Plausibility, and Plausibility, Continued. Naked Capitalism has also covered this topic extensively here, here, here and here.

You can listen to both interviews here.
New way to reduce plant lignin could lead to cheaper biofuels

(Nanowerk News) Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown for the first time that an enzyme can be tweaked to reduce lignin in plants. Their technique could help lower the cost of converting biomass into carbon-neutral fuels to power your car and other sustainably developed bio-products.

Lignin is a polymer thats important to a plants health and structure. But lignin also permeates plant cell walls and surrounds the sugars trapped inside. This poses a major challenge in efforts to use microbes to ferment the sugar into useful chemicals and fuels. Thats because lignin must be chemically broken down in a costly pretreatment step before the sugar is fermented. The less lignin there is in a plant, the cheaper this pretreatment step becomes, which is a major goal of the bioenergy industry.

Now, as reported in the journal Plant & Cell Physiology ("Exploiting The Substrate Promiscuity of Hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA:shikimate Hydroxycinnamoyl Transferase to Reduce Lignin"), Berkeley Lab scientists are taking on this challenge in an entirely new way.

This illustration shows the molecular structure of HCT that was derived at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source. The purple and green areas are two domains of the enzyme, and the multi-colored structures between the two domains are two molecules (p-coumaryl-shikimate and HS-CoA) in the binding site. New research shows this binding site is indiscriminate with the acceptor molecules it recruits, including molecules that inhibit lignin production. (Image: Berkeley Lab)

They focused on an enzyme called HCT that plays a key role synthesizing lignin in plants. Ordinarily, the enzyme binds with a particular molecule as part of the lignin-production process. The scientists explored whether HCT binds with several other molecules that have similar structures to the original molecule, and they found HCT is pretty indiscriminate with what it accepts.

With this in mind, the researchers introduced another molecule to the enzyme that occupies the binding site usually occupied by the lignin-producing molecule. This swap inhibits the enzymes ability to support lignin production.

Initial tests in a model plant show this approach decreases lignin content by 30 percent while upping sugar production. Whats more, the technique promises to be much more tunable than the current way of reducing plant lignin, in which lignin-producing genes are silenced. This decreases lignin everywhere in a plant and throughout its lifespan, resulting in a weakened plant and a lower sugar yield.

Our goal is to tune the process so that lignin is reduced in a plant where we want it reduced, such as in tissues that produce thick cell walls, and when we want it reduced, such as later in a plants development, says Dominique Loque, a plant biologist with the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a DOE Bioenergy Research Center led by Berkeley Lab, which pursues breakthroughs in the production of cellulosic biofuels.

This would result in robust bioenergy crops with more sugar and less lignin, and dramatically cheaper pretreatment costs, Loque said.

Loque conducted the research with Aymerick Eudes and several other JBEI scientists across three divisions: Feedstocks, Fuels Synthesis, and Technology. Many of the scientists are also in Berkeley Labs Biological Systems and Engineering Division.

The scientists started their research knowing that HCT is key to lignin production in plants, and that it is potentially promiscuous, meaning it binds with a variety of molecules. But they didnt know how promiscuous HCT is, and the extent to which HCTs promiscuity is found throughout plant life.

To find out, they isolated HCT enzymes from five plants that represent 450 million years of evolution, from ancient moss to poplar, switchgrass, pine, and a plant called Arabidopsis. They placed the enzymes in yeast and supplied the yeast with a set of new molecules suspected to bind with the enzyme instead of a lignin-producing molecule. In each case, the enzyme yielded a product that isnt an intermediate to lignin.

This means our lignin-reduction strategy is likely applicable to most bioenergy crops, says Eudes.

Next, the scientists analyzed the enzymes molecular structure at the Advanced Light Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility hosted at Berkeley Lab. They used beamlines 8.2.1 and 8.2.2, which are operated by the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology, which is part of the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging Division. Protein crystallography studies of HCT from switchgrass showed one of the new molecules attaching to the enzyme at the site normally occupied by the lignin-producing molecule. In fact, the new molecule has a similar affinity to the binding site as the lignin-producing molecule.

This is proof the enzyme accepts the new substrate, and it shows theres stiff competition between the two molecules, says Eudes.

In a final test of their approach, the scientists genetically modified several Arabidopsis plants so they had 25 times more of one of the new molecules than normal. These plants had 30 percent less lignin than unmodified plants, and a higher concentration of sugars.
Customer service representative Jared Puls talks with a client at the new Best Home Services location in Naples, FL on Monday, February 29, 2016. (Photo by Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News)

SHARE Owners Keegan Hodges, left, and his brother Chadd Hodges at the new Best Home Services location in Naples, FL on Monday, February 29, 2016. (Photo by Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News) Plumber Luis Reyes, left, pulls parts as Inventory Controller Wally Keller keeps a log in the warehouse at the new Best Home Services location in Naples, FL on Monday, February 29, 2016. (Photo by Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News) Fleet of trucks at the new Best Home Services location in Naples, FL on Monday, February 29, 2016. (Photo by Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News)

By John Osborne, Daily News Correspondent

Explosive growth has prompted Best Home Services to relocate from Bonita Springs to a much larger space at 1455 Rail Head Blvd. in Naples.

The plumbing, air conditioning and electrical company moved into its new home in November and celebrated with a ribbon-cutting earlier this month.

Owners Chadd and Keegan Hodges said a brand-new 20,000-square-foot office space with all-new interior elements complements a 2,500-square-foot training facility for the burgeoning company that now boasts 65 service trucks and employs more than 90.

In 2008 the Hodges brothers bought the company from their parents Marilyn and Perry Hodges, who bought the business from the previous owners a dozen years after it was established in 1980.

Chadd Hodges said growth began almost immediately, despite some bumps in the road.

"We started growing the company 20 to 40 percent a year in 2008, and in the last three years we've grown 50 percent year over year," he said of the inspiration behind the recent move into larger accommodations. "We chalk it up to a lot of hard work and God's blessings."

Since the company initially only offered electrical services at the onset of the economic downturn, Hodges said the brothers' takeover featured plenty of challenges.

"We started with 18 employees, and we were down to 13 employees at one point," he recalled. "Our plan was to add air conditioning in 2008, though, and that really helped mitigate the cuts we were feeling in the electrical department during the downturn."

Best Home Services added its plumbing division in 2013.

"We had a rallying cry during the recession," Chadd Hodges said. "We would tell our employees that we are choosing to not participate in this recession. Everyone else can participate if they want, but we'll work hard and choose to grow instead."

For his part, Keegan Hodges said the growth and expansion into new facilities means more to him than cold, hard numbers.

"This business is not about me or my brother," he said. "I see other people in the industry always talking about their growth or the number of employees they have or their annual revenue, but that's not what matters. My brother and I didn't build this business. All the people who work at this company did. That's why you'll never see our last name as the company name."

Steve Nix, a longtime employee and current manager of the company's plumbing division, said that philosophy has permeated the business for a long time.

"When I started here in 2004 we had about 10 to 12 employees and six or seven techs in the field, and now we're getting close to 100 employees," he said. "It's really neat to see someone start with the company and put forth the action and effort to move up in the company, double their income in just a few short years because the opportunity is there since we're so big now."

Not surprisingly, Marilyn Hodges said she was proud of the way her sons have grown the company she and her husband ran for 16 years.

"They've exceeded my expectations," she said. "They're very committed to do all that God wants them to do, and their motto is the same one we taught them: 'Do unto others as you want done to you.' "

Keegan Hodges credited his parents for laying the foundation for success at an early age.

"I started working summers at 13 years old, and by the time I was 17, I had earned my own jobs," he said. "My dad would purposefully put me with the people he thought would teach me the most, so we owe everything this company has become to our parents."

For more information call 239-284-1472 or see www.getbest.com.
Do you remember when you were twenty-something and you knew everything? Back when being "authentic" was of paramount importance?

I do, and the view was nice from that high horse where I could easily call out any poser in a punk bar. And now that I'm far from 20, it's hard not to be annoyed by today's twenty-somethings: the hipsters.

With the preening of civil war-era beards, the banjo music, and eschewing modernity while chained to social media; they're a tough group to liken - no different from any elder assessing the newest crop of "kids." But there is one thing I would like to thank them for and that is the "authenticity" they seek in wine.

It's glorious for wine nerds everywhere that millennial wine drinkers are more adventurous than generations past and that they insist on something different. According to Nielsen data, millennials are drinking more wine than the rest of us did in our 20s, and they're drinking very different wine, actively seeking out obscure or hyper-regional wines. California cabernet is a bore, chardonnay a complete yawn, and don't even try to suggest a pinot grigio (puh-leese!).

Young people today would rather roll the dice on a Txakoli from the Basque region of Spain than the latest iteration of sauvignon blanc. They'll also tell you all about how this crisp, sometimes fizzy white wine is perfect with the grilled fish, cured meats, and tapas dishes so popular in Northern Spain. They might also tell you that the Basque have been making this wine since the 1500s when much of their Celtic-influenced mythology was being appropriated to fit into Roman Christian folklore - and this is pretty much where hipsters loose their audience.

However, thanks to them and their interest in the undiscovered gems of the wine world, the rest of us can find more and more interesting stuff because buyers will now have it on the shelves. Now, the grapes we've never heard of which are steeped in culture and tradition are all the rage thanks to the young bearded ones. Lucky for us, right? But wait, there's more.

The fact that these lesser known wines aren't from wine growing regions whose cache equals more cash per acre (i.e. Napa at 5 million/acre), they often cost a bit less. This works out well for recent college grads and makes it less painful to discover that Teroldego from Italy's Alto Adige region might not be your wine. (It's sort of like Zinfandel with a bit more acidity - great with food)

Of course, identifying "authentic" wine could devolve into hours of philosophical discussion and is one I relish yet have no one willing to take me up on it. Authenticity can be subjective. For some it can mean minimal manipulation or processing by human beings. For others, authenticity could mean a wine based on centuries of tradition and culture. Still others may qualify anything not mass produced as more authentic.

Since the opposite of authentic is fake, in my book all wine is technically authentic, but here are a couple I've tried that have an interesting story or provenance you might want to consider the next time you're entertaining young wine fans - or anyone with a beard.

Charles Joguet Chinon, Franc de Pied-Chinon: This is an appellation in Loire, France known for its cabernet franc. It's single-vineyard and the vineyard is tiny at 1 hectare (2.47 acres). What makes it so great is that it was planted in 1982 with vines that were not grafted onto American rootstock. This is incredibly rare because almost all the vines in Europe make use of American roots and have done so ever since it was discovered that our roots are naturally resistant to phylloxera, a devastating aphid which killed off almost half France's vines in the 1800s. So this is wine made from grapes grown on 100 percent French cabernet franc vines. The vineyard is susceptible to phylloxera, for which there still is no cure, which decimates yield. Plus, Joguet will only release wines in years he deems worthy of bottling so the rareness factor here is great.

Barone Pizzini Nature Franciacorta 2011: Everyone knows Prosecco as Italy's bubbly, but few are acquainted with Franciacorta. Comparing the two is a bit of a disservice to Franciacorta which is truly world-class sparkling wine. No offense to Prosecco, of course, but they are completely different wines, made differently from different grapes.

While Prosecco gets its bubbles in a tank, Franciacorta is made the same way Champagne is, with the secondary bubble-producing fermentation taking place in the bottle. The grapes are chardonnay, pinot noir (nero in Italy), and a bit of pinot bianco; as opposed to mainly glera in Prosecco. According to the Franciacorta wine consortium, sparkling wine was made in the area since the 16th century for local consumption, but it wasn't until a 1960s revival that interest in the area's sparkling wines became a realistic business possibility.

Almost as interesting as the wine; the name Franciacorta has its own, slightly unclear history. First used to describe the area near Brescia in 1277, Frainciacorta is believed by some to be a combination of Francia (France) and Cotre (court) named for the presence of the French King Charles 1 of Naples who stayed there with his troops in the 13th century. Others believe the name is from the time Clunaic monks lived in the area and enjoyed tax-free status: the name being a corruption of the words "francae" meaning taxes, and "curtes" meaning communes.

If you do try a Franciacorta, Barone Pizzini is a tre-bicchieri award winner from the prestigious Italian wine guide called "Gambero Rosso." Bonus: it's organic, so it fits that definition of "authentic" as well.

I welcome comments and questions at juliewriteswine@gmail.com. You can see more of my writing at julieglenn.com, and can connect with me on Facebook and on Twitter @juliewriteswine.
Stovetop roasted broccoli with nutritional yeast gives you both a new way to season and a speedy way to roast broccoli. (AP Photo/Matthew Mead)

Doris Reynolds Let's Talk Food Doris Reynolds is the author of When Peacocks Were Roasted and Mullet was Fried and a four-part DVD, A Walk Down Memory Lane with Doris Reynolds. They are for sale in the lobby of the Naples Daily News. SHARE

Vegetables are the redheaded stepchildren of the culinary family. They are frequently called "sides" and are ignored on dinner plates of the most fastidious gourmets. Restaurant chefs give little attention to vegetables and they are most frequently regarded as garnishes.

As a vegetable lover, I am here to defend vegetables and, surprisingly enough, even the most common vegetables have fascinating histories. For instance, the much-maligned broccoli boasts of playing an important role on worldwide tables.

In Jonny Bowden's book, "The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth," broccoli comes off with four stars and, at one time, it was suggested that broccoli be considered the national vegetable. This effort was sabotaged in 1999 when President George H.W. Bush declared that he hated broccoli and banned it from Air Force One, the White House, at state dinners and at family meals.

However, broccoli survived this onslaught and the emerald veggie continues to rate as the numero uno food in neutralizing carcinogens; the enemies in the battle against cancer. It is a member of the brassica family of cruciferous vegetables; cousins include bok choy, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi and Swiss chard. Even apart from its cancer-fighting ability this vegetable is loaded with nutrients that reduce or prevent macular degeneration, the number-one cause of blindness in older adults.

Broccoli was a big deal at Roman banquets and there are numerous references about it in the writings of Apicius. Broccoli continued to be a favorite in Italy but did not make an appearance in France until 1560. It remains a well-loved vegetable especially when used in creative recipes. Its name comes from the word "brachium," which means strong arm or branch.

Broccoli did not make its appearance in the United States until 1922 when two enterprising Italian brothers who had immigrated to California began growing it. In 1922, they heard that there was a large immigration of Italians in Boston and shipped several crates there. It was an immediate success and was discovered by other gourmets and gourmands.

Most people who eschew the veggies have not been introduced to cooking methods that enhance its flavor. Most dishes are steamed and overcooked with long processing in water. I find that after I wash it thoroughly, drain it, and cut off the woody stalks, it is best sauteed in a bit of olive oil until crispy, but limp, I add a bit of water, butter and a touch of vinegar or lemon juice.

Broccoli's cousin, cauliflower, blends well and I frequently cook them, drain them, add a creamy cheese sauce and bake. I often double the recipe and use the leftovers to create a delicious soup.

STIR FRY CHICKEN WITH BROCCOLI

Serves 4 to 6.

Ingredients

 cup soy sauce

11/2 tablespoons dry sherry

 teaspoon ground ginger

11/2 pounds boneless chicken breasts in 1-inch pieces

1 pound fresh broccoli

7 tablespoon vegetable oil, divided

 cup sliced scallions (green onions)

1 large garlic clove, crushed

11/2 cups cashews

Directions

1 In a small bowl, combine soy sauce, sherry, ginger and chicken. Allow to stand for 10 minutes.

2 Trim florets from broccoli and reserve. Cut tough ends from stalks and discard. Slice stalks diagonally into -inch pieces.

3 Steam florets and stalks 3 to 4 minutes until tender-crisp. Drain and rinse under cold water.

4 Heat 4 tablespoons of oil in wok or large skillet. Add scallions, garlic and cashews. Cook 3 minutes stirring constantly.

5 Transfer mixture to a bowl. Heat remaining oil in wok and add chicken mixture and broccoli. Stir fry for about 6 to 10 minutes or until chicken is opaque.

6 Stir in nut mixture and serve immediately.

ASK DORIS

Q: I would like to try the pork loin recipe for our next gathering at the beach.

Do you have a suggestion for how I could do a last-minute grilling on a beach grill?

Mike Shirk, Bonita Springs

A: The recipe for the marinade appeared in this column on Feb. 3.

I am repeating it for those who might have missed it.

MARINADE FOR 4 to 6 lb. PORK LOIN

Ingredients

 to  cups Dijon mustard

 to 1 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons peanut oil

2/3 cup plus an additional best quality bourbon, divided

2 cups beef stock

Salt and black pepper to taste

Bouquet garni: fresh thyme, parsley, bay leaves and marjoram

1 teaspoon arrowroot

Directions

1 Combine all ingredients except the bourbon and place in a heavy saucepan. Slowly bring to a boil and allow to simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

2 Set aside and allow to cool and add the bourbon.

3 Place the pork loin in a heavy plastic bag and pour the marinade over it and seal.

4 Place in refrigerator overnight, turning frequently.

5 When ready to take to the beach, take the loin out of the bag and slice it into serving pieces.

6 Empty the marinade into a saucepan and bring to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes.

7 When cool, place marinade and pork slices into the plastic bag.

Note: This is the best solution I could think of for cooking the loin on a beach-size grill. Good luck!

Doris Reynolds is the author of "When Peacocks Were Roasted and Mullet was Fried" and a four-part DVD, "A Walk Down Memory Lane with Doris Reynolds." They are available for sale in the lobby of the Naples Daily News. All proceeds from these sales go to the Doris Reynolds-Naples Daily News Scholarship Fund. Contact Doris Reynolds at foodlvr25@aol.com
Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant is set to open March 14, 2016, on the southwest corner of U.S. 41 North and Walkerbilt Road in North Naples. (Tim Aten/Daily News staff)

Tim Aten In The Know SHARE Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant is set to open March 14, 2016, on the southwest corner of U.S. 41 North and Walkerbilt Road in North Naples. (Tim Aten/Daily News staff) Kunjani Craft Coffee & Gallery opened in early February at 780 Seagate Drive, across the street from the entrance to Waterside Shops in Naples. (Courtesy of Kunjani) Big Block Sub Shop reopened in late January under new ownership at 27792 Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs. How Do You Roll? Creative Asian Kitchen closed Feb. 17 after operating only four months in University Plaza near Gulf Coast Town Center. (Tim Aten/Daily News staff)

Big changes on the southwest corner of U.S. 41 North and Walkerbilt Road have been impossible to overlook during the past year. But nearly everything is big about Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant, set to open March 14.

The Illinois-based chain plans to fill more than 200 full-time and part-time jobs for its new upscale, wine-centric restaurant, full-service bar, private barrel-aging room, Napa-style tasting room and retail store in North Naples. The nearly 12,000-square-foot restaurant will have more than 300 seats, including a 3,000-square-foot dining patio near its main entrance off Walkerbilt Road.

"They are going to be blown away right when they walk in the door," said General Manager Ryan Quisenberry, who recently relocated from the Chicago area, where he was a manager for five years at the Illinois-based chain's flagship restaurant in Orland Park, Ill.

"The modern look and feel of the design is the most unique thing about it. As we grow as a company, we've definitely modernized our look of the restaurant," Quisenberry said.

The Naples location will be Cooper Hawk's fifth in Florida and the 22nd in seven states since the company began in late 2005. Other Florida locations include Tampa, Jacksonville and two in Orlando.

It's a perfect fit for Naples because the concept is built around a winery.

"We make all of our wines. Everything within in our walls is a Cooper's Hawk brand label," Quisenberry said.

The Illinois winery handcrafts about 600,000 gallons of wine each year with grapes picked from California, Oregon, Washington and other ideal regions in the country.

"We are selective and buying the very best fruits from areas where seasonal conditions have resulted in the year's most outstanding varietals, giving us the ability to consistently produce-award winning wines," according to the company's website.

The Cooper's Hawk wine catalog currently lists 14 reds, 10 whites, eight fruit wines, six sparkling wines, a blush and two each of sweet reds, sangrias, dessert and mulled wines. Prices per bottle start at $20.99 for a white zinfandel with a taste described as "strawberry jam, raspberry and watermelon emerge with subtle notes of red flowers." A $47.99 Lux Meritage bottle of red on the high end is described as having a "dynamic nose of mixed berries, anise, toast, truffle, dried herbs and vanilla."

The restaurant pairs wines with food by printing red bin numbers next to menu items. For instance, the aforementioned white zinfandel in bin 66 is matched with a burrata, golden beet and arugula bruschetta appetizer, as well as the barbecue ranch chicken chopped salad and the soy ginger salmon and grilled Atlantic salmon entrees. The Meritage in bin 84 is paired with the prime rib and a New York strip steak.

Wine connoisseurs also will be interested in Cooper's Hawk Wine Club, which gives members a bottle of the winemaker's latest vintage each month.

"We have a lot of great perks that go on with the wine club," Quisenberry said. "It's pretty excellent. People are big fans of it."

Club members pay a monthly fee to receive access to exclusive wine club events, discounts on wine, points on purchases, birthday rewards, a newsletter with information on new wines, and other benefits.

"The wine club is just one piece that sets us apart and makes us different. The wine club is just one way how we create community in our business," Quisenberry said.

Wine is a central part of the brand in other ways. A wine retail store in front of the new business includes a tasting room, where patrons can sample different wines before purchasing them. A wine-and-chocolates menu selection pairs chocolates and truffles with a flight of three sweet wines.

That being said, the extensive menu is not an afterthought. A variety of surf and turf entrees are offered for lunch and dinner.

"We have a wide array of dishes," Quisenberry said. "We have a lot of different influences and fusions to our dishes that really make us unique. My personal favorite is short rib risotto. It's definitely my go-to."

Cooper's Hawk favorites include Asian pork belly tostadas, Mexican drunken shrimp, and roasted beets and whipped goat cheese for appetizers; Caesar pesto and Napa chicken chopped salads; crab and lobster bisque soup and gnocchi carbonara pasta; chicken chorizo, cilantro ranch chicken and Mediterranean vegetable sandwiches; soy ginger salmon and Southern grilled shrimp and polenta seafood entrees; and ooey gooey butter cake and chocolate pretzel bread pudding desserts.

Pork and beef options include chops, ribs and steaks. Seafood selections include crabcakes, blackened ahi tuna, fish and chips, and jambalaya. Pasta dishes include rigatoni, spinach and cheese cannelloni with shrimp, and spaghettini with house-made meatballs.

Desserts include chocolate cake with mousse, ganache and vanilla ice cream; cheesecake with fresh strawberries; apple, key lime and banana and toffee pies; and confections such as chocolate truffles, chocolate-covered strawberries and cheesecake lollipops.

The menu also has a variety of burgers and sandwiches, flatbreads, bruschetta, appetizers, signature sides, and many gluten-free options.

The new restaurant and its towering palms have changed the local landscape. It replaces a recognizable structure that was fronted by an A-frame building that stood empty for years on that 2-acre corner lot that also hosted the Breeze Plaza retail center.

The longtime bar and restaurant location at 11905 U.S. 41 N. last was home to Vision Nightclub. Cooper's Hawk brings a new vision and landmark to that highly visible spot.

More local restaurant news

 Kunjani Craft Coffee & Gallery opened in early February on Seagate Drive across the street from the entrance to Waterside Shops in Naples.

The coffee shop and art gallery was launched by Nicola and Stephanie Bunnett with a mission to connect predominantly African artisans with a worldwide audience, according to the new store's website.

"As a mother and daughter team, we have always had a longtime dream of one day opening a business together, a business created through love and built on humanitarian principles. After moving to Naples, Florida, from Zimbabwe in 2007, we have always known that, should our dream come true, we would do our best to impact people's lives in positive ways. It was through these dreams that Kunjani was born," according to a note by the Bunnetts on kunjaninaples.com.

Kunjani, a Zulu and Xhosa word which translates directly to "How is it?," is used more colloquially as a general greeting as in "How is it going?" or "How are you?," the Bunnetts explain.

"For this reason we decided it would be the perfect name for our business, which is directly involved in cultivating human connections," according to the Bunnetts.

Accompanying the indoor gallery, an outdoor seating area is available to enjoy hot coffee, organic tea, cold-brew coffee, organic cold-press juice or all-natural foods. The new shop offers organic coffee from Black Tulip Coffee, which is locally roasted in Naples, as well as from Per'La Specialty Roasters, a Miami-based supplier of international coffees. Different hand-brewing techniques include French press, V60 and Chemex coffeemakers, as well as standard-brewed coffee and espresso drinks.

Kunjani, 780 Seagate Drive, is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. For more information, call 239-300-0196 or go to kunjaninaples.com.

 Big Block Sub Shop in Bonita Springs reopened in late January under new ownership at 27792 Old 41 Road on the corner of Tennessee Street, just north of Bonita Beach Road. The sub shop originally opened in July 2013, but closed the following year.

The newly renovated restaurant has a new kitchen, equipment and menu, which includes cold and oven-baked subs, pizza, pasta, calzones, salads and desserts. Dine-in, carryout, delivery and catering are available.

For more information, call 239-992-1670, or go to bigblocksubs.com.

 How Do You Roll? Creative Asian Kitchen closed Feb. 17 after operating only four months in University Plaza near Gulf Coast Town Center. The franchised, fast-casual restaurant, which specialized in made-to-order Maki sushi rolls, had just opened in October in the newly built retail center anchored by World of Beer.

For the latest in local restaurants coming and going, see Tim Aten's "In the Know" columns archived at naplesnews.com/intheknow, and on Facebook at facebook.com/timaten.intheknow.
SHARE Karin Moe presents Best Feature Documentary to filmmaker Dyanna Taylor for "Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning" at the 2016 Bonita Springs International Film Festival at the Center for the Performing Arts. Patrice Shields/Special to The Banner Film Chairman Tom Falciglia during opening night of the 2016 Bonita Springs International Film Festival at the Center for the Performing Arts. Mia Hayes/Special to The Banner Filmmaker Kathy McCabe of Good Ol' Freda Film and Kelley Kissiah at the 2016 Bonita Springs International Film Festival at the Center for the Performing Arts. Patrice Shields/Special to The Banner

By Patrice Shields, Special to The Banner

The Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs (CFABS) announced the 2016 winners its inaugural Bonita Springs International Film Festival (BIFF) at their awards ceremony on Feb. 16 at the Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs Hinman Auditorium.

Eleven awards for film excellence were presented including the Tom Falciglia Audience Award named honoring longtime CFABS' Films for Film Lovers Chairperson.

The closing awards ceremony was hosted by CFABS Theater Director Craig Price with the Best Feature Film Award presented by CFABS' Board Member and Festival Chair Karin Moe and opening remarks by CFABS' President Susan Bridges.

"What a rich and engaging five days of films, directors, producers right alongside lots of people all sharing the art of film," says Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs' President Susan Bridges. "The discussions after the film were phenomenal  for some  as important as the film itself. People exchanged ideas; the audience shared with the filmmaker their perception of the film and asked questions about the process. It was inspiring to be a part of it; and magical to watch it all unfold  a fusion of energy, mixing of generations and cultures. Will there be a festival next year? Absolutely! Ideas and suggestions for next year were generously shared by attendees, filmmakers, directors and producers. We're already planning for an extraordinary 2017!"

Bonita Springs International Film Festival 2016 Award Winners:

n Tom Falciglia Audience Choice Award

Pride (Director: Matthew Warch)

n Best Feature Film Documentary

Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Lightning (Director: Dyanna Taylor)

n Best Feature Film Narrative Fiction

Tangerines (Director: Zaza Urushadze)

n Best Florida Film Adult

Again (Director: Mitch Glass)

n Best Florida Film Teen

Revolving Child (Director: Francisco Cabrera)

n Best Short Film Animation

Otto (Directors: Marieke Blaauw, Jois Oprins, Job Roggeveen

n Best Short Film Documentary

It's Better in Italian (Director: Jordan Ledy)

n Best Short Film Narrative Fiction

The Grill Man (Director: Fabio Montanari)

n Best Short Film "Cinemaniacs" (Grades 4-6)

Little Attic (Director: Maiia Fazulina)

n Best Short Film "Storytellers" (Grades 7-9)

The Battle (Directors: Joshua Costea, Peter Bundic)

n Best Short Film "Visionaries" (Grades 10-12)

Keep it Clean (Directors Evan Sennett, Matthew Rivera)

The 2016 BIFF opened Feb. 12 with a red carpet ribbon cutting, followed by five days presenting over 70 carefully curated narrative, documentary, animation and short films from around the world, complemented by a wide variety of workshops demonstrations, Q&A sessions with filmmakers, writers, directors and actors. Films were shown at the Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs in both the 200 seat Robert and Karin Moe Auditorium & Film Center and the 400 seat Larry and Beverly Hinman Auditorium.

Information: artcenterbonita.org.
The last public debate between the three Bonita Springs mayoral candidates took place Tuesday, March 1, at the Bonita Springs Chamber of Commerce. Patrick Riley/Staff

SHARE

By Patrick Riley of the Naples Daily News

The last public debate between the three Bonita Springs mayoral candidates raised questions about campaign contributions and money from special interest groups.

For most of Tuesday evening, the mayoral forum hosted by the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, focused on the same issues featured at previous debates: the candidates' vision for restricted land in East Bonita, their strategies to further economic growth and their stance on the city's fiscal management.

But near the end of the hour-and-a-half long forum, the debate shifted to the topic of Political Action Committees, or PACs, and their involvement in the current election. PACs are organizations that privately raise money to influence elections.

First, candidates were asked if they thought the current Bonita Springs campaign finance rules that require campaign spending limits for candidates "are good for democracy."

"Yes," said Councilman Peter Simmons.

His opponent and fellow councilman Stephen McIntosh took a rare shot at him.

McIntosh said he was proud of the city's charter - which states that no candidate may spend more than $2 per registered voter during an election - and he emphasized the importance of capped spending.

Without it, McIntosh argued, special interest groups could come in and circumvent the treasurer's report with "soft money."

There is no limit on how much "soft money" individuals can give to political parties, as long as the money doesn't support a specific candidate and is used for "party building activities" and generic advertising.

"It's being done right now," McIntosh said. "Big Sugar now has money in some of our candidate's pockets. I don't know where that money is going to go, I'm not sure how it's going to be used. But it scares me that we haven't been able to contain it."

McIntosh's allegations stem from a flier sent to Bonita Springs homes on Simmons' behalf.

The flier, which touts Simmons' commitment to fiscal conservatism, comes with a disclaimer that it was paid for by the Committee for Effective Representation, an electioneering communication organization. ECOs are groups whose election-related activities are limited to spending on propaganda, such as direct mail or TV, newspaper and radio ads.

The Committee for Effective Representation received $5,000 from Clewiston-based United States Sugar Corporation in 2013, according to Florida Department of State campaign contribution records. The same year, the committee got another $104,525 from Florida Crystals Corporation, a West Palm Beach-based sugar producer, records show.

A local TV ad depicting Simmons states it was paid for by Florida Citizens for Responsible Government PC, a PAC that raised $27,750 in 2014, according to Florida Department of State campaign contribution records.

Though McIntosh named no candidate in particular, Simmons offered a rebuttal when asked if he had ever accepted PAC money.

"The campaign committee has not accepted a dime of PAC money nor would it," Simmons said. "There are some ads being run and I've done some research. It's not sugar money. That's somebody trying to grandstand and have a political opportunity."

Instead, Simmons said, the Committee for Effective Government is connected to the Associated Industries of Florida, "which is a pro-business, conservative group that funds and supports candidates around the state of Florida."

The Associated Industries of Florida has contributed $250,500 to the Committee for Effective Government since 2012, according to Florida Department of State online records.

Simmons said the Associated Industries of Florida group focuses on free markets and pro-job policies. He compared them to the Chamber of Commerce.

"I don't know who they are exactly," he said. "But I'm proud to have their support."
Laurie Richards blows air through a tube into her freshly made glass ornament as Conrad Williams shapes it at his outdoor studio at Ritz-Carlton Naples Beach Resort. Laura Gates/Citizen Correspondent

SHARE Glass artist Conrad Williams helps a guest make an ornament using a portable, 2000-degree furnace at his poolside studio at the Ritz-Carlton Naples Beach Resort. Laura Gates/Citizen Correspondent Glass artist Conrad Williams expertly crafts a hanging loop onto the top of a newly made glass ornament in his portable studio at Ritz-Carlton Naples Beach Resort. Laura Gates/Citizen Correspondent Glass artist Conrad Williams quickly crafted this miniature horse during a demonstration at his portable studio at Ritz-Carlton Naples Beach Resort. Laura Gates/Citizen Correspondent Guests may make glass bowls like these for $199 through the Glass Blowing Experience with Conrad Williams, poolside at The Ritz-Carlton Naples Beach Resort every Thursday through Saturday through April. Laura Gates/Citizen Correspondent

By Laura Gates, Citizen Correspondent

Every year, Laurie Richards and Lynda Ellinger struggle to surprise their parents with the perfect birthday gifts. They've long given up on purchases, instead turning to memorable experiences.

"For a wonderful set of parents who have everything, we have to find something they've never done before and that will surprise them," explained Richards, who flies in from Michigan every February for the occasion.

This year, the sisters succeeded. As they prepared to depart from their Cape Coral winter home, Bob and Patti Schuitema had many questions for their daughters: "Do we need to dress up or dress down?" "Should we bring jackets?" "Are we going to be on the water?"

To their surprise, their destination was not a day cruise or a dinner theatre. They landed at the Ritz-Carlton Naples. Still, the Schuitemas were not expecting what awaited at this regal beach resort.

As they shuffled past poolside sunbathers, they were stunned to find a portable glass blowing studio operated by Conrad Williams. Trained under famed glass artist Dale Chihuly, Williams' passion is to bring this delicate art form to the public.

"This is a one-of-a-kind studio," Williams said, motioning to his designated poolside space. "We designed and built this studio around making it accessible. We bring the fun to you."

While he works on his own glass creations from his studio near Lowdermilk Park, Williams says his passion lies in teaching.

"The excitement of someone who has never blown glass before is contagious," he asserted. "It brings me back to the excitement I felt the first time I blew glass."

He was 18 and had just graduated from high school when a local glass artist in Worcester, Mass., offered to let him try. Williams was immediately hooked as a hobbyist, but it would take years before glass would emerge as his career path. He interned under Chihuly and Ben Moore in Seattle and eventually opened his own glass studio in Eugene, Oregon, which was ranked by Trip Adviser as the No. 1 thing to do in that city.

After he and his artist wife, Erin Dougherty Williams (a photographer), started a family, they decided to move "home" to Naples, where both grew up. An uncle helped Williams build a drive unit for his furnace to make it portable so he could bring his glass blowing experience to festivals and events throughout Southwest Florida.

His relationship with the Ritz-Carlton began with corporate events, but the resort's guests inevitably would peek in to watch the fascinating process of blowing glass. Now Williams offers glass blowing poolside every Thursday through Saturday, until the end of April.

The experience isn't limited to resort guests. Community members may reserve a time to come and craft a glass ornament ($99) or bowl ($199). The process begins by selecting colored glass chips. Williams first walks each guest through the process before pulling out the wand of burn-you-in-an-instant glass from his 2,000-degree furnace.

"I've done hundreds of lessons, and safety is my No. 1 priority," he said. There is no experience needed, and children as young as six may participate. "I love teaching the younger students because they have no inhibitions."

Once the molten glass is out of the furnace, things move quickly. Williams helps his guests roll the molten glass over their tray of glass chips to pick up the color. Then it's back into the furnace to melt, continually turning for even form. After a short time, Williams pulls out the stick and forcefully bursts a breath into the end to form a "starter bubble" in the glass object.

However, it's up to the novice artist to do the rest of the blowing as Williams shapes the ornament. When it's reached full form, he quickly detaches the ornament from the stick and adds a glass "hook" on top - all in mere minutes. Students have just a few seconds to admire their handiwork before the piece must be placed into a 900-degree "cooler."

"It's all relative," Williams says with a chuckle.

To avoid breakage, the glass cools gradually over a 24-hour period and is available for pickup at The Gallery at the Ritz-Carlton the following day. Ornaments and bowls also may also be shipped for an extra fee.

These frighteningly fragile yet gorgeous glass pieces continue to draw the curiosity and admiration of sunbathers and swimmers at the Ritz-Carlton each weekend. Many abandon the pool to wondrously watch the glass blowing process.

Equally surprising as finding a glass studio poolside is the ability of ordinary people to craft extraordinarily beautiful glassworks - with a little help from Williams' experienced hands.

As Bob Schuitema gazed at his multicolored ornament, he marveled at this unique birthday surprise. His daughters had succeeded. And this new life experience even came with its own keepsake souvenir.

"Didn't even have to wrap the gift," he joked.

- - -

IF YOU GO

What: Glass blowing experience

Who: Create your own glass piece with artist Conrad Williams

Where: The Ritz-Carlton Naples, 280 Vanderbilt Beach Road

When: Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday through April

Cost: $99 to make an ornament; $199 to make a glass bowl

Reservations: Call Williams at (844)850-3839

Info: www.conradwilliamsglass.com
SHARE Dr. Jean-Marc Oppenheim talks about the Arab Spring. He spoke on "Controlling Chaos in the Middle East," part of the Progressive Voices Speak Out lecture series at the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary off Pine Ridge Road. Lance Shearer/Citizen Correspondent Dr. Jean-Marc Oppenheim talks about the Arab Spring. He spoke on "Controlling Chaos in the Middle East," part of the Progressive Voices Speak Out lecture series at the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary off Pine Ridge Road. Lance Shearer/Citizen Correspondent The room was basically standing room only. Dr. Jean-Marc Oppenheim spoke on "Controlling Chaos in the Middle East," part of the Progressive Voices Speak Out lecture series at the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary off Pine Ridge Road. Lance Shearer/Citizen Correspondent Dr. Jean-Marc Oppenheim spoke on "Controlling Chaos in the Middle East," part of the Progressive Voices Speak Out lecture series at the Unitarian Universalist sanctuary off Pine Ridge Road. Lance Shearer/Citizen Correspondent

By Lance Shearer, Citizen Correspondent

The title of the talk was "Controlling Chaos in the Middle East." As the speaker, Dr. Jean-Marc Oppenheim, quickly made clear, there is much more chaos than there is control in the Middle East, and simply getting a handle on what is happening there today, let alone all the players and the historical background, is a tall order.

Oppenheim gave his lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 24, as part of the "Progressive Voices Speak Out" lecture series, held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples. Raised Jewish in Egypt and France, a Fulbright scholar with a doctorate degree from Columbia University, he has written and lectured extensively on the Middle East, including as a fellow at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Columbia and Fordham.

Oppenheim was the first to admit that understanding the chaos in the region, much less controlling it, is a heavy lift. He led off his talk with a letter to the editor in an English newspaper, laying out how many of the parties are fighting each other in one instance, yet allied against a mutual enemy in another area of conflict, a situation that rises time and again. To further clarify - or rather muddy - the waters, he showed a chart of the various countries and groups, labeled the "complete idiot's guide to understanding the Middle East," that resembled a dream catcher, or the maze of laser beams guarding the treasure in adventure movie.

The situation today goes back to the "Arab Spring" in 2011, and before that to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that kicked the hornet's nest and took a region of repressive but relatively stable regimes, and led to increased influence for Al Qaeda and eventually ISIS. Before that, the Middle East was fundamentally destabilized during the colonial era of World War I and before, when European powers cut it up into sovereign states with little regard for the intricate web of tribal, sectarian and ethnic loyalties that still cause conflict today. It was such a random map drawing, for instance, that separated ethnic Kurds across international borders in Iraq, Syria and Turkey, a division that is still causing bloodshed today.

The U.S. further became a target of Islamic extremists when it participated with Arab governments, including Egypt and Syria, in "rendition," turning terrorism suspects to those countries where they were tortured and in some cases "disposed of," as part of our country's "Global War on Terror," said Oppenheim. Interestingly, with all the alliances, enemies and players, Israel barely came up at all. After over an hour of exposition, Oppenheim was asked, "How do we defeat ISIS, or is it undefeatable?" There is no simple or easy answer, he said.

"It will take a coordinated effort, by regional powers and the major powers," who now are working at tangled cross purposes, unfortunately. Syria, he said, "will never be put back together," along with perhaps Yemen and Lebanon. "The Middle East is critical, but we cant' do it ourselves," said Oppenheim.

Dealing with Islamic extremism is a major focus of this year's Progressive Voices lectures. Oppenheim's talk followed another by Jim Kenney, executive director of Common Ground, an adult study center focusing on the world's great religious, philosophical and spiritual traditions, who spoke Feb. 17 on "Islam in Europe: Fears and Realities." He was followed by Dr. James Morrow, who gave a lecture entitled "Foreign Policy and the 2016 Election: ISIS, Russia, China and Europe" on Wednesday, March 2.

On Wednesday, March 9, Rev. Dr. Brent A. Smith will speak, taking as his subject of "The End of Religion is a Beginning." Smith is a graduate of the University of Chicago Divinity School and a professor in the religious studies program at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. This new conversation changes what is meant by the concept of "religion," he says, as well as all concepts that have been related to "religion," like "belief," "dogma/doctrine" and even "secular," "irreligious" and "not religious."

Progressive Voices Speak Out's 2016 winter program concludes on March 16 with "Ethics, Survival and Climate Risk Management," presented by Dr. Jan W. Dash, physicist, managing editor of "Climate Portal," and an official NGO observer at the recent Paris Climate Conference.

All lectures are at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Greater Naples at 6340 Napa Way, just south of Pine Ridge Road, on Wednesday evening, with a $15 suggested donation including complimentary wine and refreshments, with reception at 6:30 p.m. and lecture beginning at 7. For more information, call 239-455-6553.
SHARE

By Patricia Sette, Citizen Contributor

The board of trustees at Mount St. Mary's University has displayed welcome leadership following a controversy there in February involving the school's commitment to Catholic identity and mission, concerns similar to those raised by many faculty of Ave Maria University (AMU) over the past year. At Mount St. Mary's, trustees reacted by taking responsibility, acknowledging problems and talking directly with faculty and students.

What sparked the controversy at Mount St. Mary's was a questionable plan devised by President Simon Newman to dismiss struggling freshmen; what inflamed it further was dismissal of two faculty members in apparent retaliation for disagreeing with that plan. The perceived threat to academic freedom had academics across the country signing a protest petition by the thousands, and Mount St. Mary's leadership found itself in an unwelcome glare of national media attention. On Feb. 29, Newman resigned, saying his continued presence would be "a distraction."

When the controversy first reached the media, the initial reaction of the president of Mount St. Mary's board of trustees was to blame critics, but very quickly, the trustees decided to heed their better angels, the ones saying, "Let's not make a bad situation worse." They pledged that several board members would visit the campus over a two-week period "to listen and learn" from all constituencies.

A different tack was taken by the trustees at AMU a year ago after two faculty members brought concerns about AMU's direction before the academic affairs committee. Whereas trustees at Mount St. Mary's took steps to initiate a process for further dialogue, AMU faculty members say they were forbidden by administration leaders from directly speaking to board members again, apparently with the board's concurrence.

Even the mild suggestion of former emeritus trustee Michael Novak that the board survey the faculty about their concerns would not be entertained. In March 2015, board chairman Michael Timmis ended hopes for the board's closer involvement when he emailed faculty to say the board "is not inclined to involve itself in operational or personnel matters," and attributed that disinclination to the principles of shared governance. Many AMU faculty, all of whom are untenured, feared that further voicing of concerns would result in risk to their careers.

Boards of many universities might benefit strongly by being more inquisitive and more directly informed about the institutions they govern, according to Thomas C. Hibbs, distinguished professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University.

"The sad fact about boards of trustees at many universities is that their members typically have little or no knowledge of how universities work; even fewer exhibit the curiosity to find out," he wrote recently in the magazine "Catholic World Report."

In AMU's case, only a few trustees have any experience in academia and only one currently teaches at the university level.

In addition to inquisitiveness, a commitment to academic freedom underlies all best practices of governance according to Susan Resneck Pierce, an academic who authored the book, "Governance Reconsidered." In an essay for "Inside Higher Ed" published this February, Pierce noted that all governance honors a bedrock principle of maintaining the campus as a place where question and debate take place without fear of retaliation and where faculty are valued precisely for their independent critical thinking skills. Essential then, she says, are policies that ensure fair, not arbitrary, treatment regarding termination.

In the wake of missteps by its president, the board of trustees at Mount St. Mary's clearly recognized they need to hear directly from campus constituencies to learn how the university is behaving in key areas. One can only wonder what the trustees of AMU would learn if they spent two weeks on the AMU campus hearing directly from faculty, staff and students.

- - -

More news and information about Ave Maria can be found in The Ave Herald (www.aveherald.com) which Patricia publishes along with her husband, David Shnaider.
By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

A Collier County judge agreed Tuesday to reduce the bond for a North Naples man arrested in November and charged with possessing thousands of child porn images and videos.

Bernard Jacobs III, 81, was arrested on 100 child porn possession charges and one charge for possession with intent to promote. A judge set his bond by assigning $10,000 per count for a total of $1 million.

Collier Circuit Judge Lauren Brodie reduced the man's bond from $1 million to $300,000.

Jacobs' charges were later reduced in December to 25 counts of possession and one count for possession with intent to promote. But prosecutors filed those charges under a different law, which increases penalties for each charge to $35,000 on the possession charges and $125,000 for intent to distribute.

Brodie reduced the fine for each charge to $10,000 and $50,000 for the 26th count.

On Monday Jacobs' lawyer Jerry Berry argued for a lesser bond saying his client owns less than $1 million in total assets including his home. At 81 years old, Berry added that much of his savings would need to go toward care for the rest of Jacobs' life. A $1 million bond was tantamount to no bond he said, citing case law in which greater crimes had high bonds reduced on similar grounds.

Assistant State Attorney Jennifer Brown argued that because Jacobs has been collecting child pornography his entire life, the bond was fair. A detective who served a warrant at his home said Jacobs bragged about having the largest child pornography collection on the East Coast, and said he had been collecting images since third grade.

An investigator with the Collier County Sheriff's Office testified in court Tuesday as well, saying it was the largest collection he had seen in his 15 years experience. He said it contained more files than all cases he had worked combined.

The same investigator said at least one of the videos depicted Jacobs directing a child relative wearing a bathing suit to pose for the camera in what the investigator described as abuse.

"There's no evidence of contact offenses," Brown said. "We don't know yet what we found."

Should he post bond, Jacobs will have to surrender his passport and all electronic devices with Internet access. He will not be permitted to have contact with anyone under age 18.

An arrest report shows that investigators received an undisclosed tip that Jacobs had child porn at his home. Deputies searched the home in November with permission from Jacobs' wife. When they investigated, deputies found at least 94,000 images and 645 videos of child pornography. Those file totals represent the images and videos found on four out of the 516 devices found in Jacobs' home, prosecutors said.

The hardware devices had more than 50 terabytes of storage space, the arrest report said. In an interview with deputies, Jacobs admitted that he has downloaded the files for many years and "has a problem with his desires to see said items," the arrest report said. Jacobs also denied inappropriately touching any children and "minimized the seriousness of the images and movies," deputies said.

Forensic investigators continue to search the hundreds of devices, according to the bond motion.

If convicted by a jury on all counts, Jacobs faces a minimum guideline sentence of about 28 years in prison and a maximum of life.
<p>Christina Maulsby, left, looks back toward Cherie Landowski, right, after Maulsby answered questions during a post-conviction relief hearing for Landowski at the Collier County Courthouse on Monday, March 2, 2015. Landowski was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2013 for aggravated child abuse toward Maulsby's son, Quentin, in 2010 which has caused him irreparable brain damage. Landowski is wanting withdraw her plea and hope to get a lesser sentence. Scott McIntyre/Staff</p>

SHARE Cherie Landowski answers attorney Carrie Gill's questions during her post-conviction relief hearing at the Collier County Courthouse on Monday, March 2, 2015. Landowski was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2013 for aggravated child abuse toward Maulsby's son, Quentin, in 2010 which has caused him irreparable brain damage. Landowski is wanting withdraw her plea and hope to get a lesser sentence. Scott McIntyre/Staff Cherie Landowski answers attorney Carrie Gill's questions during her post-conviction relief hearing at the Collier County Courthouse on Monday, March 2, 2015. Landowski was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2013 for aggravated child abuse toward Maulsby's son, Quentin, in 2010 which has caused him irreparable brain damage. Landowski is wanting withdraw her plea and hope to get a lesser sentence. Scott McIntyre/Staff Attorney Steve Maresca answers questions during Cherie Landowski's post-conviction relief hearing at the Collier County Courthouse on Monday, March 2, 2015. Landowski was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2013 for aggravated child abuse toward Maulsby's son, Quentin, in 2010 which has caused him irreparable brain damage. Landowski is wanting withdraw her plea and hope to get a lesser sentence. Scott McIntyre/Staff Dr. Zhongxue Hua answers attorney Carrie Gill's questions during a post-conviction relief hearing for Cherie Landowski at the Collier County Courthouse on Monday, March 2, 2015. Landowski was sentenced to ten years in prison in 2013 for aggravated child abuse toward Maulsby's son, Quentin, in 2010 which has caused him irreparable brain damage. Landowski is wanting withdraw her plea and hope to get a lesser sentence. Scott McIntyre/Staff

By Jacob Carpenter of the Naples Daily News

If Cherie Landowski gets her wish  that she should be allowed to withdraw her no contest plea to a child abuse charge  the mother of the child she assaulted has a message.

Bring it on.

Lets do it. Lets go to trial. Because Ill go after her for the full 30 years (in prison), said Christina Maulsby, whose son, Quentin, suffered traumatic brain injuries while under Landowskis care.

In an emotionally charged hearing Monday, Landowskis lawyer argued the 28-year-old should be allowed to withdraw her plea, which resulted in a 10-year prison sentence, because Landowski had an incomplete picture of the causes behind Quentins head injuries. Investigators said Landowski beat the 5-month-old over the head with a bottle so hard that it caused brain bleeding in March 2010. He was later diagnosed in 2012 with autism.

Related stories:

Deputies: North Naples babysitter charged with sending 5 month old to hospital with head injury

Babysitter accused of sending infant to hospital expressed frustration on Facebook page

Attorney for baby sitter accused of hitting 5-month-old says she's not to blame

Infant victim of suspected abuse released from hospital

North Naples baby sitter gets 10 years in prison for hitting infant in 2010

Babysitter in beating case wants to withdraw plea, get sentence reduced

Collier Circuit Judge Lauren Brodie didnt rule on Landowskis motion, and she gave no date for when a written order will be made.

Landowski says she took the plea offer because my understanding was that (prosecutors) were going to say that (Quentins) autism was caused by the head injuries. Prosecutors have refuted that characterization, saying the brain injuries were enough to prove an aggravated child abuse charge.

One month after the plea, Landowski discovered that Quentins younger brother also was diagnosed with autism. That information shows genetics, not abuse, caused Quentins autism, Landowskis lawyer argued.

But even if Landowski gets to withdraw her plea, she runs the risk of more prison time.

During testimony Monday, Assistant State Attorney Steve Maresca, the trial prosecutor handling the case, said there was no way I was ever going to offer anything less than the 10 years.

And in fact, if it went to trial, I would have been asking for a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, Maresca said.

If convicted by a jury, Landowski would face a minimum sentence under Florida guidelines of 5 years or 6  years in prison, depending on how a judge grades the severity of Quentins injuries.

Christina Maulsby said her family members initially wanted to put the case in the past, but they might push for trial should Brodie grant the motion.

To ever say that theres peace in this, I dont know, Christina Maulsby said. But if the judge rules that were going to go to trial, were going to go.

Testimony from Maresca and Landowskis trial lawyer, Landon Miller, showed there was a disconnect between the two attorneys leading up to the plea. That has largely become the basis of Landowskis motion.

Maresca said he planned to focus solely on Quentins head injuries and the resulting health complications, with no plans to introduce Quentins autism at trial.

Miller, however, said his understanding was that Maresca planned to hinge the case on the inflicted injuries causing autism.

Probably 75 to 80 percent of our conversation was the linkage of the injuries, my understanding of the Autism Spectrum Disorder and the condition Quentin was in, Miller said of his pre-plea talks with Landowski.

Three doctors deposed in the case were asked about whether an inflicted head injury can cause autism. All three said they werent aware of any link, and Miller said an expert witness he hired agreed.

Christina Maulsby said Quentins condition improved until just before his second birthday, when his health deteriorated. Now, she said, Quentin cant speak, he suffers from seizures that deprive him of sleep and he needs constant medical care.

Honestly, she said, its hell.
Jimmy Rodgers, on screen, makes his first court appearance at the Lee County Courthouse on Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016. Rodgers is one of two people charged with the murder of Teresa Sievers of Bonita Springs. (Dorothy Edwards/Staff)

By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News

Jimmy Ray Rodgers, 25, waived an arraignment hearing and entered a not guilty plea Tuesday in connection with the murder of Bonita Springs doctor Teresa Sievers.

Lee County Court records show Rodgers, a Missouri man and one of three men accused in the killing of Teresa Sievers, entered the plea the same day the State Attorney's Office released more discovery records relating to his arrest.

A copy of the plea agreement was not immediately available.

Rodgers was arrested in August on charges of second-degree murder.

His alleged accomplice, Curtis Wayne Wright Jr., also of Missouri, pleaded guilty to the same charge. He accepted a plea agreement for 25 years in prison in exchange for providing information to prosecutors.

Mark Sievers, Teresa Sievers husband, was arrested by Lee County Sheriff's deputies on Friday for his suspected role in the crime.

RELATED STORIES:
Mark Sievers listens to proceedings during a custody hearing in a Lee County courtroom on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, in downtown Fort Myers. Sievers' children will remain in the care of non-relatives in Collier County and will only have contact with their father by phone following the hearing Monday with child welfare officials. (David Albers/Staff)

By Ryan Mills, Kristine Gill and Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News

Carrie Kain started taking notes on the plane ride back to Missouri after Dr. Teresa Sievers funeral last July.

Something didnt seem right.

Mark Sievers, Teresas husband and Kains friend for over 30 years, didnt seem emotionally broken by his wifes death.

He spent much of the day before her funeral at the beach. He told her chilling details of the killing. And he didnt seem particularly interested in catching the person who bludgeoned his wife to death inside their Bonita Springs home.

Their mutual friend, Curtis Wayne Wright, also acted strangely, at one point running out of the funeral Mass, not to return.

"Mark is the one that stood out to me," Kain told investigators Aug. 24. "Mark did not act natural in his behavior with anything  other than laughing. That was natural. That wasnt put on."

"But his cry was not his cry. It was fake."

Transcripts of Kains nearly two-hour interview with detectives was part of a massive file of investigative documents released Tuesday by the State Attorneys Office. The file, which included thousands of documents, also contained an autopsy report, GPS tracking data, arrest warrants and several mostly unfruitful interviews with neighbors, co-workers, emergency responders and even a local transient  all part of the Lee County Sheriffs Offices initial probe.

Document: Read the transcript of Carrie Kains interview with detectives

But Kains interview stands out because it foreshadowed the arrests to come.

Three days after Kains interview, sheriffs deputies in Missouri stormed Wrights home and arrested him on a second-degree murder charge. On Friday, eight months after his wife was killed, Lee deputies arrested Mark Sievers at his Bonita home, also on a second-degree murder charge. His arrest came after Wright, 47, pleaded guilty and received a 25-year prison sentence in exchange for providing substantial evidence to prosecutors.

A third suspect, Jimmy Ray Rodgers, 25  believed to be Wrights accomplice in the attack  also faces a second-degree murder charge.

Kain, 46, initially reached out to detectives anonymously through Crime Stoppers. She said she was struggling to sleep and was stressed out after visiting Florida.

When she first arrived in Florida, she said, Mark Sievers, 47, was very matter-of-fact about his wifes killing. At one point Mark Sievers told her about breaking the news to his two young daughters.

"We just told the girls their mommy was murdered," She recalled Mark telling her. "I said Oh, oh, okay. ... and he goes We just told them, you know, theres bad people in this world and bad people do bad things, you know. Im like Thats it?"

She found it odd that Mark Sievers spent much of the day before his wifes funeral at the beach. And after the funeral, he invited people to his home to go swimming.

"Hes forgetting hes in mourning," Kain said. "He wants to go back to the house and celebrate."

Kain also recalled a conversation she had with Mark Sievers that weekend, during which he provided details and commentary about the killing that she found "creepy."

He told her his wife had been bludgeoned 17 times in the head with a hammer. He showed her the pantry where he said the killers were lying in wait. And he told her his wife was attacked from behind.

Kain said she tried to comfort him, telling him that maybe his wife didnt see the attack coming and didnt suffer.

"And then he said, Yeah, but the bad thing about being attacked from behind is she couldnt fight back, and therefore there would be no DNA," Kain told detectives. "He just isnt broken."

Kain was shocked that in the days after his wifes death, Mark Sievers showed little interest in tracking down the killer.

"He said, At some point, we just have to let it go," she recalled. "And Im going, We have no killer arrested."

Kain also told detectives about Wrights odd behavior.

During the funeral, Wright, who has a tech background, fixed a malfunctioning slide projector showing photos of Teresa Sievers. But he later refused to help fix a projector showing videos of Teresa.

"When I look back on it, I think, he didnt want to see her alive," Kain said.

During the service, when they were using incense over the coffin, Wright ran out of the church when the casket got near him.

"So, the story goes he had a full-blown asthma attack from the incense," Kain said.

Detectives also interviewed several neighbors and co-workers as part of the investigation.

Several neighbors said they occasionally heard the Sieverses arguing loudly. Neighbor Kimberly Torres, told detectives that she found Mark Sievers "weird" and "creepy" and that his behavior caused her to change the locks on her doors twice.

"He gives me bad vibes," Torres said. "Hes all the time over here in my yard."

RELATED STORIES:
By Patrick Riley of the Naples Daily News

The last public debate between the three Bonita Springs mayoral candidates raised questions about campaign contributions and money from special interest groups.

For most of Tuesday evening, the mayoral forum hosted by the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, focused on the same issues featured at previous debates: the candidates' vision for restricted land in East Bonita, their strategies to further economic growth and their stance on the city's fiscal management.

But near the end of the hour-and-a-half long forum, the debate shifted to the topic of Political Action Committees, or PACs, and their involvement in the current election. PACs are organizations that privately raise money to influence elections.

First, candidates were asked if they thought the current Bonita Springs campaign finance rules that require campaign spending limits for candidates "are good for democracy."

"Yes," said Councilman Peter Simmons.

His opponent and fellow councilman Stephen McIntosh took a rare shot at him.

McIntosh said he was proud of the city's charter - which states that no candidate may spend more than $2 per registered voter during an election - and he emphasized the importance of capped spending.

Without it, McIntosh argued, special interest groups could come in and circumvent the treasurer's report with "soft money."

There is no limit on how much "soft money" individuals can give to political parties, as long as the money doesn't support a specific candidate and is used for "party building activities" and generic advertising.

"It's being done right now," McIntosh said. "Big Sugar now has money in some of our candidate's pockets. I don't know where that money is going to go, I'm not sure how it's going to be used. But it scares me that we haven't been able to contain it."

McIntosh's allegations stem from a flier sent to Bonita Springs homes on Simmons' behalf.

The flier, which touts Simmons' commitment to fiscal conservatism, comes with a disclaimer that it was paid for by the Committee for Effective Representation, an electioneering communication organization. ECOs are groups whose election-related activities are limited to spending on propaganda, such as direct mail or TV, newspaper and radio ads.

The Committee for Effective Representation received $5,000 from Clewiston-based United States Sugar Corp. in 2013, according to Florida Department of State campaign contribution records. The same year, the committee got another $104,525 from Florida Crystals Corp., a West Palm Beach-based sugar producer, records show.

A local TV ad depicting Simmons states it was paid for by Florida Citizens for Responsible Government PC, a PAC that raised $27,750 in 2014, according to Florida Department of State campaign contribution records.

Though McIntosh named no candidate in particular, Simmons offered a rebuttal when asked if he had ever accepted PAC money.

"The campaign committee has not accepted a dime of PAC money nor would it," Simmons said. "There are some ads being run and I've done some research. It's not sugar money. That's somebody trying to grandstand and have a political opportunity."

Instead, Simmons said, the Committee for Effective Government is connected to the Associated Industries of Florida, "which is a pro-business, conservative group that funds and supports candidates around the state of Florida."

The Associated Industries of Florida has contributed $250,500 to the Committee for Effective Government since 2012, according to Florida Department of State online records.

Simmons said the Associated Industries of Florida group focuses on free markets and pro-job policies. He compared them to the Chamber of Commerce.

"I don't know who they are exactly," he said. "But I'm proud to have their support."
Drug smugglers, pot haulers, or Saltwater Cowboys: three names for nearly 200 Collier County residents arrested in the 1980s on charges related to marijuana and cocaine importation.

But Steve Whitlock and Tim McBride, who federal agents and local law enforcement caught in one of three massive operations from 1983 to 1989, said they have done their time behind bars and now want to publicly show what they accomplished in the decades since.

At a reunion of sorts, organized by McBride at Fred's Diner in North Naples on Saturday night and attended by a dozen friends and family members, the pair sat beside each other and spoke candidly about the days of late-night runs through backwaters, payments so large the bills were weighed instead of counted, and the anxiety that went with smuggling tons of marijuana for years in their 20s.

Both now in their 50s, they said they have rebuilt their lives.

'It's not a celebration of smuggling pot, patting ourselves on the back. It's about who we are now,' said McBride, who wrote an as-yet unpublished book about his smuggling days.

Whitlock worked in construction and McBride in crabbing during their drug-hauling days. After their releases from prison in the early 1990s, Whitlock earned a bachelor's degree from the Ringling College of Art and Design and became a successful marine illustrator based in Sarasota, while McBride stayed in the area to work in construction and raise his two daughters. He also now offers to do speaking engagements about 'the plague of illegal drugs and the violent crime it breeds.'

There are regrets, surely. Pride isn't a term associated with that part of their histories, they said. But Whitlock explained mounting debts at his plastering company in the mid-1980s that reached $60,000 gnawed at him.

'I had my back against the wall financially,' he said, seated at a table with a few other men who were also involved in smuggling, but were not caught.

'We weren't stealing from people. We were importing a product, a commodity at the time,' Whitlock explained.

Operation Everglades in 1983 and 1984, and Operation Peacemaker in 1989, netted scores of area residents, from Chokoloskee to Naples, and more from around the state and southeastern U.S.

McBride and Whitlock were arrested for the same incident -- a runoff of Pine Island in 1987 -- on the charge of conspiracy to import marijuana. That was the last time they saw each other until 2010, when they ran into one another at a fishing store in Fort Myers. They stayed in touch, and are working on plans for a fishing tournament aimed at getting at-risk youth onto the water and out of trouble. It would be a dramatic shift from their first days on a boat together.

Early on, small fishing boats would make runs out to a 'mothership' to offload the tons of marijuana, from Everglades City up to Fort Myers. Whitlock recalled a time when his 26-foot boat was so laden down with bales that he had to lay on top of them to drive.

Tom Smith, a former lieutenant who joined the Collier County Sheriff's Office in 1977, described how drug running was a land, sea and air operation, with low flying planes dropping bushels of marijuana, crabbing and fishing boats hauling in tons off of ships, and U-Haul trucks filled bottom to top stopped on Alligator Alley en route to Miami.

'Through the mid-80s was the heyday of pot smuggling. It totally consumed a lot of the sheriff's assets... it was a dangerous, dangerous time,' said Smith. There were makeshift runways illuminated by upward-pointing flashlights, and off of San Marco Road heading into Goodland, smugglers placed plywood sheets on top of mangrove roots so trucks could meet the boats.

Smith worked a case as a homicide investigator where two hit men from Miami came to Collier County looking to collect money from a drug deal. They carried two MAC 10 pistols with silencers.

'It was a pot deal that went bad, whereby they felt they had been ripped off and they came by to claim their money,' Smith recalled. Two people were killed.

'For anyone to think that the activities going on at that time were mild and had no criminal intent is flippant,' Smith said.

Maureen Sullivan-Hartung, former journalist with the Everglades Echo and author of 'Hidden History of Everglades City & Points Nearby,' who attended Saturday's reunion to research chapters for a second book about the area, had a different take.

'I think it's fabulous that these guys, who have paid their debt to society, can reach out to see each other and catch up and see what changes each have made. These guys have really made a difference.'
FILE -- Aerial photo of the Naples Fort Myers Greyhound Track on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. (David Albers/Staff)

SHARE

By Jeff Schweers, Naples Daily News/Tribune Bureau

TALLAHASSEE  An agreement that would have guaranteed the state $3 billion in gambling revenues from the Seminole Tribe over seven years is all but dead this session and so is companion legislation to expand slot machines and let race tracks operate slots and card rooms without holding live races.

"I think it's fair to say the bill is on life support," Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, who negotiated the gaming compact with fellow Republican Rep. Jose Felix Diaz of Miami, said Tuesday. "I would be very surprised if there is any further consideration this session."

The compact, signed by Gov. Rick Scott in December before the two-month legislative session, would have replaced a 2010 compact that allowed the tribe to operate blackjack tables in exchange for $1 billion in gaming revenue. The part of the compact that allowed blackjack expired in July but the part dealing with slots is good through 2030.

The new compact would continue to grant the tribe its blackjack tables while adding craps and roulette tables at the tribe's seven casinos. In return, the tribe would share $3 billion of its revenue with the state over seven years and allow limited expansion of slot machines to other operators in South Florida.

Scott has maintained that a good contract was negotiated and it's up to the Legislature to ratify it, his press office said Tuesday.

The tribe continues to operate under the old compact, making monthly payments to the state and operating the table games pending the outcome of a federal court case.

The tribe said it was not prepared to make a comment Tuesday.

A day after the House Finance and Tax Committee passed the Seminole compact and sweeping gaming legislation, Sen. Tom Lee, R-Brandon, who chairs the Senate's appropriations committee, announced it was the will of the committee to take the two gaming bills off the agenda.

"We've got a lot of things going on right now and there are a lot of different factions in the Legislature," Lee told a group of reporters after the committee adjourned for the day.

Among the factions, he said, are those who view the legislation as a "wealth redistribution bill" and "the ransom being demanded by the industry to pass the compact," which they see as "untenable because it results in massive, historically large expansion of gambling in Florida."

And then there are those who believe that gaming-related lawsuits - one filed by the Seminole Tribe alleging "bad faith" negotiations with the state and another by the Poarch Creek Indians, who operate a racetrack in Gretna - should play themselves out first.

"And then you have folks that are trying to broker a deal to get something done," Lee said. "And there are not enough people in any one of those groups to pass legislation right now. So we are going to continue to work on it and pass something out."

The legislation could be brought back up if the Appropriations Committee schedules another and final meeting on Thursday, but Lee was uncertain that would happen.

"We are looking at a list of bills that are still lingering in committee to determine whether there are enough left to do another meeting," Lee said.

The companion House bill included adding two new slot licenses - one in Palm Beach County and another in Miami-Dade - as outlined in the new compact. It also was loaded up with additional features like opening slot machine expansion to six counties where voters had approved them and letting race tracks with slots and card rooms phase out live racing, including the track in Bonita Springs.

This is the third of three major initiatives of the governor to hit a major roadblock after his tax-cut package and $250 million in economic incentives were taken off the table.

"In a perfect world, a compact would be probably be better to come out of the Legislature," Lee said. "I know that he has worked hard to get us to a starting point and get us something we can work with, doing our level best. What he brought us and where we are now very different and you can see that."

jschweers@tampatrib.com and (850) 765-0807
SHARE Daniel Peterson Director, Center for Property Rights The James Madison Institute

By Daniel Peterson, Orlando Director, Center for Property Rights, The James Madison Institute

Guest commentary

Did you know your property could be seized by law enforcement officials based on the suspicion you have committed a crime?

In fact, in 2014, law enforcement seized more property than burglars did. Yes, you read that correctly. This is a little-known, but shocking fact from the Institute for Justice of which Floridians should be aware.

The reason? Under the current policy of civil forfeiture, law enforcement officials can stop you, seize your property and assume ownership of it without making a charge or arrest.

Once proven innocent, it is up to the owner of the seized property to pursue having that property returned. This may involve hiring an attorney and going through lengthy, expensive legal proceedings. For this reason, many owners either accept a settlement offer for less than the value of their seized property or simply walk away without claiming their rightfully owned property.

Civil forfeiture was initially used in the U.S. to enforce duties and excise taxes. In the 1980s, law enforcement agencies began to use it to supplement their resources. Vehicles, boats, cash, jewelry and other forms of property have been seized and, in some cases, kept and used by the agency for its operations or to purchase equipment. Other times, it has been sold for profit or given to a favored charity.

It is not difficult to see how corruption could propagate due to the potential profit motive through seizure. In many cases, the seizure of cash was particularly attractive.

Justin Pearson of the Institute for Justice wrote about one well-publicized example of civil asset forfeiture in Volusia County on Florida's central east coast that took place during the 1990s:

"The Volusia County sheriff recognized that drugs entered the county on one side of Interstate 95, with the proceeds returning in the other direction. Rather than attempt to stop the drugs, which the sheriff obviously could not sell or apply to his budget, the sheriff instead focused his resources on trying to intercept the money going back out. The sheriff specifically targeted minorities, and the only evidence required for seizure was the mere fact that the driver had cash in (his) possession.

"Documentation proving the legitimacy of the money was irrelevant, as discovered by Navy reservist Bobby Jones, who provided pay stubs for his $3,989, but watched in horror as his money was seized anyway. More than 75 percent of Volusia County's seizures resulted in zero arrests."

Many states have reformed their civil forfeiture laws to remove potential profit motives. For example, the North Carolina Constitution requires all seized funds to be applied to public schools.

However, a more important question remains: Regardless of where the seized property ends up, is it right to take property based on suspicion and without an arrest being made?

Addressing this concern, several states have banned civil forfeiture or now require a criminal conviction. These kinds of reforms would serve citizens' property rights and build confidence in law enforcement.

A Senate bill dealing with this issue, sponsored by Sen. Jeff Brandes and co-sponsored by incoming Senate President-designate Joe Negron, passed through its final committee stop on Monday. The House counterpart (sponsored by Reps. Larry Metz and Matt Caldwell), which also prohibits seizure without arrest and clarifies what should happen to seized property, passed out of its final committee stop last week. The bills will now be heard on the floor of the House and Senate as early as next week.

Brad Cates, former director (1985-89) of the U.S. Justice Department's Asset Forfeiture Office, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal recognizing that civil asset forfeiture is now "policing for profit."

"During the Reagan administration, I helped establish these programs because I believed they would quickly channel seized criminals' profits into the fight against organized crime and drug cartels. Yet over time, we have created a new bad incentive: policing for profit, out of the reach of the proper legislative budget process. ... Three decades ago I helped create our civil asset forfeiture system; now it is time to end it."

John Adams, one of our nation's Founding Fathers proclaimed, "Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist."

This legislation is an important step in the right direction for protecting Floridians' liberty and their property rights. The time is now to move forward on reform.
Opera Naples, the premier opera company in Naples announces a three-year campaign to raise $4 million for its educational programs, outreach and performances. Campaign ON will provide sustainable funding to allow Opera Naples to complete the next stage of their building expansion, retire short-term debt and expand the quantity and quality of their productions at the Wang Center. During the quiet phase of the campaign, which began in July 2015, Campaign ON has already raised $1.4 million.



Over the course of the next three years were challenging individuals in our community to give back to an arts program that has benefited them in so many ways, stated John Hushon, board chairman of Opera Naples.



Opera Naples is a community treasure- hosting more than 70 performances in the areas of dance, comedy, musical theatre and more, while increasing community outreach and educational opportunities in the arts within Southwest Florida, commented Dennis Hanthorn, general director of Opera Naples.



Founded more than ten years ago, Opera Naples produces opera, concerts, music and dance performances and hosts a world-class chamber orchestra series in its 266-seat theatre. To make a pledge or to learn more about Campaign ON, please contact 239- 963-9050 or contact Dennis Hanthorn, general director, at dhanthorn@operanaples.org.



Established in 2005, Opera Naples strives to enrich the Southwest Florida community by presenting opera performances in a variety of styles including traditional grand opera, American opera, operetta and contemporary works. The non-profit engages internationally renowned performers and directors while nurturing regional-based talent as well. In addition to their artistic performances, Opera Naples offers educational programs such as their Young Artist program, Student Apprentice program and Summer Childrens programs to foster a love of the arts among area youths. To purchase tickets for an upcoming performance or to learn more about Opera Naples, please call 239- 963-9050 or visit operanaples.org.
Sunil Malkani, M.D., Founder and Director of Malkani Retina Center announced the opening of his new North Naples office.

As an accomplished Retina Specialist and Surgeon , Dr. Malkani focuses his vast eye and retina care expertise in the treatment of Macular Degeneration, Diabetic Retinopathy, Retina Detachments and other Vitreoretinal Diseases. Practicing in the SWFL area for over eight years, Dr. Malkani uses state-of-the-art technology to treat and manage retina conditions. We are excited and devoted to serving the Naples community and providing the highest quality of retinal health care in the area. Our new location is conveniently located off of Immokalee Rd. to serve the growing Naples area and will fill an important eye care need in Naples, said Dr. Malkani. I am also pleased to have accomplished Retina Specialist and Surgeon, Katia E. Taba, MD, PhD as part of our MRC team. Dr. Taba joined the practice several months ago with years of experience practicing in the South Florida area. She will focus her expertise in the Naples office treating and caring for a variety of Retinal Diseases, Dr. Malkani added.

In addition to the Naples office, Malkani Retina Center has office locations in Ft. Myers at 9201 Cypress Lake Dr and in Port Charlotte at the Community Eye Center.

Dr. Malkani and the highly trained staff continuously strive to provide exceptional patient care and advanced treatment options. With locations throughout Southwest Florida, MRC welcomes new patients and accepts most insurances. For more information you can visit our website www.mrcmd.com to learn more about your retina eye care or call us toll-free 855-MALKANI.
The Air Force Museum Theatres 2016 Living History Film Series continues on Saturday, March 12 at 4 p.m. celebrating Women in History Month. Filmmakers Kara Martinelli and Adam White bring Womens Air Racing to the big screen with their new documentary film Beyond the Powder: The Legacy of the First Womens Cross-Country Air Race. Dr. Terry Von Thaden, granddaughter of Louise Thaden, winner of the first Womens Cross Country Race, along with Lin Caywood and Susan Beall, 2014 Race Team Members, will join Martinelli after the film to share their personal experiences and insight.

Beyond the Powder is a one hour film documenting the 1929 Women's Air Derby and the women who continue to fly the cross-country race today as the Air Race Classic. The film will highlight the societal and aviation challenges women faced in 1929, exploring the history of the race, while comparing the race as it is flown today. Filming wrapped in 2014, following that year's Air Race Classic, a contemporary race with over 50 teams of women pilots. Beyond the Powder is produced by Hemlock Films and Western Reserve PBS, directed by Kara Martinelli. Narration provided by Law and Order: SVU and NBC's Aquarius actress Michaela McManus.

The first Womens Air Derby in 1929 was flown from Santa Monica to the finish line in Cleveland, kicking off the National Air Races. The eyes of the country watched as these brave women made history flying cross-country, breaking into a competition that was thought to be for men only. They encountered sabotage, death, and all the difficulties of flying at the dawn of aviation.

Today the Powder Puff Derby continues as the Air Race Classic. The modern day racers carry out the legacy of the original racers with their adventurous and rebellious spirit. Showing that they were more than just their make-up, the original Derby contestants have inspired those flying today to truly push beyond the powder.

The theatres March 12 event is the second of eight Living History Film Series events planned for 2016. The Series brings aviation history alive through films and guest speakers. The Living History Film Series is sponsored by Texas Road House and the Boeing Co. Holiday Inn Dayton-Fairborn is the official hotel partner for the series. Tickets are available at the theatre's ticket counter or by emailing theatre@afmuseum.com for $10 per film ($8 for Friends Members). Discounts for school or youth groups are available with advance reservations.

The theatre is operated by the Air Force Museum Foundation, Inc., a Section 501(c)(3) private, non-profit organization that assists the Air Force in the development and expansion of the facilities of the National Museum of the United States Air Force. For more information on the Air Force Museum Foundation, visit www.airforcemuseum.com. The Air Force Museum Foundation is not part of the Department of Defense or any of its components and it has no governmental status.

The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, is the worlds largest military aviation museum. With free admission and parking, the museum features more than 360 aerospace vehicles and missiles and thousands of artifacts amid more than 19 acres of indoor exhibit space. Each year about one million visitors from around the world come to the museum. For more information, visit www.nationalmuseum.af.mil.

NOTE TO PUBLIC: For more information, please contact the Air Force Museum Theatre at (937) 253-4629 or visit www.afmuseum.com or email theatre@afmuseum.com

NOTE TO MEDIA: For more information on the Air Force Museum Theatre, contact Mary Bruggeman, Chief, Attractions Operations, (937) 656-9623, mbruggeman@afumuseum.com
Princeton University study: Public opinion has "near-zero" impact on U.S. law.

"The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."



Nearly every issue we face as a nation is caught in the grip of corruption.

They spend billions influencing America's government. We give them trillions in return.

It's a vicious cycle of legalized corruption.

In return for campaign donations, elected officials pass laws that are good for their mega-donors, and bad for the rest of us.

(NaturalNews) Professors Martin Gilens (Princeton University) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University) looked at more than 20 years worth of data to answer a simple question:(Article republished from Represent.Us .)Their study took data from nearly 2000 public opinion surveys and compared it to the policies that ended up becoming law. In other words, they compared what the public wanted to what the government actually did.What they found was extremely unsettling: The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all.Gilens & Page found that the number of Americans for or against any idea hason the likelihood that Congress will make it law.One thing that does have an influence?. While the opinions of the bottom 90% of income earners in America have a "statistically non-significant impact," economic elites, business interests, and people who can afford lobbyists still carry major influence.From, America is struggling to address our most serious issues. Moneyed interests get what they want, and the rest of us pay the price.In the last 5 years alone, the 200 most politically active companies in the U.S. spentwith lobbying and campaign contributions.Those earning a return of 750 times their investment.As the cost of winning elections explodes, politicians of both political parties become ever more dependent on the tiny slice of the population who can bankroll their campaigns.Just .05% of Americans donate more than $10,000 in any election, so it's perfectly clear who candidates will turn to first, and who they're indebted to when they win.Our elected officials spendfor the next election. When they're not fundraising, they have no choice but to make sure the laws they pass keep their major donors happy  or they won't be able to run in the next election.Read more at Represent.us
Fashion change for old McDonald

McDonald's launches the Big Mac fashion line "I'm Wearin' It"

Money well spent?

(NaturalNews) That McDonald's needs to work on its image is more than clear. Last year, it had to close over 750 restaurants across the United States, Japan and China. Thanks to growing consumer concern for healthy food options, the fast food giant saw its profits plunge, and for the first time in history it had to close more shops than it opened.Things needed to be changed, and if you thought they would look into going the organic direction and improving their food quality, then you couldn't be any further from the truth. They have been hatching some new ideas to get the attention and customers back, but I'm sure they'll only make you laugh.A while ago, they already gave old Ronald McDonald, the fast-food chain's red-haired mascot, a social media makeover to make him hipper and more appealing to the internet crowd. Apparently the clown is rocking it in his new suits, created by theatrical designer Ann Hould-Ward, whose credits include productions ofandAnd if you think that's crazy, wait until you hear about their latest stunt.If changing the mascot's outfit wasn't already a waste of time and money, then making a clothing and lifestyle line that includes thermals, raincoats, rubber boots, wallpaper and sheets sure is.White clothes covered with the famous Big Macs made their debut in Sweden in 2015. It was part of one of their marketing campaigns named " imlovinit 24 ," which was included 24 stunts performed in 24 cities around the world, in 24 hours.Not sure if they are making sales at all, but the profits from the "McFashion" pieces go to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, thereported.So if you've always wanted to "enjoy the Big Mac in the pouring rain" or "take the Big Mac to the gym and the running trail," then now is the time. Check out their shop here Although, I'm sure you'll just click away after having a good laugh with this absurdity.Fast and processed foods are slowly killing people around the globe.Morgan Spurlock, maker of the documentary, went to extremes to prove how unhealthy McDonald's food really is. For 30 days, Spurlock ate only at McDonald's. He showed the public how food is playing an important role in diabetes and obesity-related diseases . In 30 days he gained 25 pounds, became depressed, and developed constant mood swings, heart palpitations and sexual dysfunction, plus his cholesterol levels rose dangerously, as did fatty accumulations in his liver.Yet again, McDonald's fails to see what's important in today's growing market. Health and the origin of food has never been more important than today. While other fast food giants are jumping on the organic, whole-food bandwagon, McDonald's is concentrating on clothing the true Big Mac fans.Only a while ago, McDonald's announced that it would "ask" chicken producers to phase outantibiotics in their chicken products to please the preferences of the changing market. Although they did make an adjustment in their antibiotics policy  antibiotics that are also used in human medicine are no longer allowed  all others still end up in the chicken nuggets or chicken burgers.So if you knew you could improve the quality of your food, would you concentrate on silly things such as ugly Big Mac clothes and accessories or spend those dollars on high-quality, organic food options instead?
Recent study reveals glyphosate residues in 'Roundup Ready' soybeans 'permitted,' yet still toxic to people and animals

Chemical residue in GM soy causes health detriment

2015 Whistleblower Award goes to renowned French scientist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini

(NaturalNews) Some people  in fact, most people  do not even understand what GMO means . To many, all they know about the genetic modification of organisms and food is that somehow science has "advanced" in the agriculture sector. They believe that maybe we need that to help with food shortages, or killing weeds and bugs, so that farms will be able to produce enough food to "feed the world," or something to that effect.The truth is, genetically modified crops grow from seeds that have pesticide genes inserted in them, so that the plant itself grows bug-killer and weed-killer inside of it. Many of these crops are sprayed with the same pesticides of which their genetic makeup is comprised, adding to the overall toxicity for the humans that consume them. Glyphosate , a main component of the most popular herbicides on the planet, has been proven by scientists in laboratories to increase the risk of infertility, and for many animals, to cause an early death.An investigation into the consumption of toxic herbicide-resistant soybeans (feed) called Roundup Ready, were found to increase mortality, reduce growth and fertility in certain life-cycle parts, delay reproduction, and reduce total number of offspring (residue levels at just 40mg/kg). These normally occurring levels of glyphosate have negative biological effects, and the potential health consequences, according to researchers, should be further researched  and that goes for livestock animals and humans.Herbicide tolerant plants contain chemical residues of the toxic and "probably carcinogenic" herbicide ingredient glyphosate. The manufacturers publish their own flawed studies saying it's safe and tested, but just because levels are below "regulatory limits" doesn't mean they are safe for consumption. You see, glyphosate is not the only issue with Roundup . According to top notch scientists who studied long term effects on animals, the glyphosate herbicide formulations are FAR MORE TOXIC than glyphosate alone. This study is based on 30 years of research, and is published in the, by the way. However, the research done by the manufacturers of these toxic herbicides separates the toxins and tests them individually, so that they can deem them safe and meet FDA or EPA regulations . Alternatively, they just pay off the regulatory agencies to raise the "acceptable" limits for human consumption, which compounds the health detriment.The Federation of German Scientists recently honored Professor Seralini, recognizing his profound and intense research demonstrating the toxic effects of Roundup herbicide on rats when administered at a low,, over a long period of time.After the research was published, vicious character attacks came from Biotech shills who invest in chemical agriculture, as well as cancer's multi-billion dollar sick care industry. They even tried to retract the paper, but it was still published in peer review journals, after several tribulations and biotech temper tantrums. Even the UK Science Media Centre tried to attack Seralini and his top notch research, as they led a smear campaign that retracted the first publishing of the findings in a peer review journal. Prof. Seralini and his expert team fought back, countering the scientific arguments raised against their research, and their paper was republished in another journal.Seralini's long-term toxicity study is iconic, precedent-setting and highly informativefor the humans on planet earth who choose NOT to consume known carcinogens, thus preventing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, CNS disorders, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.The carcinogenic potential of Roundup was confirmed in 2015 when the World Health Organization's cancer agency IARC published its verdict that glyphosate herbicides are "probable" human carcinogens.
Atmospheric cold plasma packaging techniques



(NaturalNews) Currently, we live in a top-down agricultural system where usually vast, mostly monoculture farms produce large quantities of fresh produce that may get chopped up, packaged and shipped to far-flung retailers. The prior processes of cleansing those products with chlorine water has proven insufficient and inefficient for sanitizing and extending those foods' shelf lives.So new processes are being explored to decontaminate not only packaged, pre-cut veggies and fruits but also liquids in containers. "Chlorine water works well on hard surfaces. But there can be issues if bacteria get inside organic matter on the produce, making chlorine ineffective," said Kevin Keener, a professor of food science at Purdue University in the USA.Keener is on a sabbatical leave from Purdue and is cooperating with other researchers at Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland to determine the effectiveness of electrically activating gases to produce atmospheric plasma within plastic packaging that houses those sliced and diced veggies and fruits.The next phase of testing will include liquids. This could ultimately lead to eliminating heat processes, or pasteurizing, that also eliminate vital nutrients and enzymes with the microbes. The current phase of testing is with atmospheric cold plasma. Prior testing had determined that applying an electrical field to liquids reduced microbial activity drastically."Results from recent testing of E. coli bacteria in liquid suspensions demonstrated significant bacterial reductions with no heating or visual color change," Keener said. "This suggests that atmospheric cold plasma treatment may achieve a cold pasteurization process for liquid foods to extend shelf-life and improve safety."Of course, the current testing is to improve the efficiency of applying electrical energy for better microbial cleansing with product quality intact to a more practical method of electrically charging the atmospheric gases within the package containing fresh produce.The way it works is electrical voltage is applied to a plastic bag containing the food items. The bag acts as an insulator to prevent the current from flowing through the food items, but the voltage at 50 to 100 watts activates the air inside to produce ozone, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen peroxide and other gases, all of which kill bacteria, stop fungal activity and prevent viral replication.This electrical voltage gas-activating process without current is known as dielectric plasma discharge. The wattage is comparable to the energy needed to light the average filament light bulb. At under a minute of electrical voltage, the cost per item is low while the results are thus far better than older methods employed for sanitizing food that have negative impacts on the food quality and shelf life.Keener and researchers at the Dublin Institute of Technology demonstrated with experiments that bacteria on these surfaces were eliminated with 20 seconds of treatment and 24 hours of exposure to the gases it creates. Keener said the total cost of the process should be comparable to current chemical and heat treatments used to sanitize foods.Their results were published in the. Depending on the type of food, the actual zap period can be a few seconds to a minute or so. "Even in the most resistant bacteria-growing media, 45 seconds of treatment gave us complete elimination of the," Keener said. "Under a microscope, we saw holes forming in the cell walls of the bacteria."The research at the Dublin Institute of Technology is part of an ongoing effort called the SAFE-BAG Project funded by the European Commission in response to growing concerns of rising packaged fresh foods throughout the EU Now they are on the verge of creating prototypes based on the research and data collected from various nations in the European food industry by a coordinating group in Spain. This approach is meant to market fresh-cut products with a sufficient shelf life and less spoilage as well as improve microbiological safety.Whether it gets implemented in the USA remains unknown.
Illegal human experimentation

Corruption and intimidation

(NaturalNews) In reacting to recent news that pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline accidentally dumped 12 gallons of live, concentrated polio virus into a Belgian river, it is important to remember that the company has a long history of safety violations in its vaccine business. In 2012, for example, an Argentinean judge found the company guilty of conducting illegal vaccine trials that led to the deaths of 14 babies.Yet the company was fined only 400,000 pesos, at the time the equivalent of about $93,000. Two doctors involved in the trial were fined another 300,000 pesos each.The company was found guilty of conducting trials on human beings (which is prohibited in Argentina) and of falsifying parental authorizations allowing the company to experiment on babies.The judge handed down the ruling following a report by the National Administration of Medicine, Food and Technology (ANMAT) which concluded that the COMPASS trial conducted between 2007 and 2008 demonstrated "failures in the process of obtaining the necessary consent letters from participants, hence violating the patients' rights; as well the inclusion of patients that did not fully meet the required clinical conditions to be submitted into the program."A total of 15,000 children under the age of one were recruited into the study from poor families attending public hospitals in three separate Argentinean provinces.The scandal was broken by pediatrician Ana Marchese, who learned of the COMPASS study while working at one of the public hospitals involved. She reported the violations to the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals (FESPROSA), which later took the complaints to the government."GSK Argentina set a protocol at the hospital, and recruited several doctors working there," Marchese said. "These doctors took advantage of the many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.""[Drug companies] can't experiment in Europe or the United States, so they come to do it in third-world countries," she said.The COMPASS trial was conducted to test a new pneumococcal vaccine . Similar trials were conducted in Colombia and Panama.Marchese noted that the new vaccine is not significantly different from existing pneumococcal vaccines."There already exist very good vaccines for the same diseases, but we all know how laboratories work, they only care for their own business," she said.Many of the complaints against GSK centered around its treatment of the children involved in the study."Once a picked patient [arrived], [he or she] would automatically disappear to be taken somewhere else in order to be treated by those doctors specially recruited by GSK," Marchese said. "These sorts of practices are not legal and occurred without any type of state control, plus they don't comply with the minimum ethical requirements.""In various particular cases, the doctors who had conducted the trials avoided to answer the many phone calls made by worried parents after witnessing their babies' first reactions to the vaccines," she added."A lot of people wanted to leave the protocol but they were not allowed," said Julieta Ovejero, the great aunt of one of the babies who died. "They forced them to continue under the threat that if they leave they wouldn't get any other vaccines for their children."In 2008, when FESPROSA first broke the story that 12 children had died, local GSK researcher Enrique Smith dismissed the deaths, calling it "a very low figure if we compare it with the deaths produced by the respiratory illnesses that the pneumococcal bacteria causes."In the Santiago del Estero province, the COMPASS trial was approved by the provincial health minister -- who also happened to be Enrique Smith's brother.
(NaturalNews) I just don't get it.Over the more than 20 years I have worked as a business journalist, I've always been motivated by a simple premise: Knowledge is power, and that power belongs with the public. The spread of information that people can use to make decisions  what to buy, what to eat, where to invest, etc.  helps support and promote the principles of freedom and democracy, I believe. (Article by Carey Gillam, republished from USRTK.org .)That's why the fear and loathing emanating from the food industry over the public's right to information about the food they consume is so hard for me to grasp.As we kick off 2016 the leaders of many of the nation's largest and most powerful food companies are doubling down on their commitment to block mandatory labeling of foods made with genetically engineered crops, and they are seeking Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's help to do so. The issue has become urgent for the industry as what would be the nation's first mandatory labeling measure is set to go into effect July 1 in Vermont. The industry has thus far failed to convince a federal court to block the law's implementation, though the fight could go to trial this spring.Citizens in many other states continue to try to pass similar mandatory labeling measures. A GMO label would allow a consumer to know at a glance information that many consider important. Given that knowledge, some people might shy away from GMO-labeled foods; others may not care. Some may seek out GMO-labeled foods if they feel they provide special value or are helping "feed the world," as GMO seed developers such as Monsanto Co. claim. But the public's right to that knowledge  to that decision-making ability  terrifies many in an industry that generates sales of roughly $2.1 trillion annually. The fear is so strong that they have enlisted teams of legal and public relations professionals to help try to convince regulators and federal lawmakers to override Vermont's law and prohibit any future laws like it.The Grocery Manufacturers Association, whose members include PepsiCo., Kellogg Co. and hundreds of other large food companies, leads the charge against GMO labeling , saying it would be too costly to implement and is unnecessary because GMOs are proven safe. The organization says it is "hopeful that compromise will establish a uniform national standard for foods made with genetically engineered crops." The group recently put forth a proposed initiative that would add barcodes to products that consumers could scan with their smartphones to access information . But whether or not the presence of GMO ingredients would ever be required to be included in that information is unclear.Those fighting for mandatory labeling include members of the organic and natural foods industry , but also consumer groups, environmentalists and lots of regular moms and dads who want to know what they are feeding their children. Many of these labeling supporters cite pesticide residues on GMO foods as a concern, and contradictory science on the safety of GMOs. Some opponents say they don't want to buy products that they feel contribute to corporate control of the world's food supply. A barcode won't cut it, many of the leading GMO labeling proponents say. They point to a national survey conducted in November by the Mellman Group that concluded 88 percent of people want a printed GMO label rather than having to use a smartphone app to scan a bar code.Agriculture Secretary Vilsack looks set to sit down with representatives from both sides of the issue in January to try to forge a compromise if one can be found. Both sides say they are willing to meet in the middle. Millions of dollars have been spent lobbying for and against labeling and fighting the issue out in the courts, and both sides are weary of the war. Details of the discussions to be held are being kept confidential, according to some participants, to give the process the greatest chance of success.As the discussions loom, we should not lose sight of the fact that this issue  and many others  come down to the power of information, and the critical nature of who controls that information. Those companies developing and profiting from GMOs have the information they need to patent their creations and track where and how they are used. Farmers planting GMOs are provided a range of information about the seeds, their limitations and their benefits, and can easily choose non-GMO seeds because varieties are labeled and tracked. Systems are in place to allow food manufacturers to know whether or not they are purchasing ingredients made from GMO crops. It seems consumers are the only ones left out of the information pipeline.Indeed, some advocating against GMO labeling argue that consumers aren't smart enough to understand or use GMO labeling information effectively. They argue that consumers are being conned into fearing GMOs. In a Dec. 27 blog posting opposing GMO labeling,GMO supporters Jon Entine and retired University of Illinois professor Bruce Chassy wrote of consumers "who can't define what a GMO is" and said that pro-labeling efforts are driven by "small groups of well-financed professional activists." Chassy and Entine argue that these "activists" use "misinformation and fear-mongering to whip up support for their agenda."Such pro-GMO advocates may hope consumers also are not well informed about their connections to the corporate food industry . Chassy doesn't mention in that blog, for instance, that for years while working as a professor of food safety at the University of Illinois, he collaborated quietly with Monsanto executives on multiple projectsaimed at countering concerns about health and environmental impacts of GMOs. Monsanto has acknowledged that it provided several unrestricted grants to the biotechnology outreach program that Chassy helped lead, but said there was nothing improper about the relationship.That is information some might want to know. But it only became public after the non-profit group U.S. Right to Know obtained emailsbetween Chassy and several other university professors and Monsanto, and shared them with media outlets.Another batch of emailsrecently disclosed shows discussions between Kevin Folta, chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida, and a public relations agency about how to counter a Canadian teenager who developed a website questioning the safety of genetically modified foods. Folta also received grant money from Monsanto.I don't know about you, but this is all information I think is important. Knowing what goes on behind the scenes helps me make decisions about who I trust and what I believe about the food I buy for myself and my family. As a journalist I've been fortunate enough to get behind those scenes a time or two myself: I've toured Monsanto's laboratories, visited Dow AgroSciences' test plots; and spent more time than I can calculate with farmers in their fields. I've also spent countless hours with scientists on both sides of this debate; waded through stacks of legal and regulatory documents; and sat down with government regulators to talk over the myriad issues.The knowledge I have gained leaves me straddling the fence a bit. I see benefits to GMOs, and I see risks. And I know with certainty that I want more information, not less.Whatever one's views are about GMOs, or other aspects of the food industry, the right to information is essential, and not one to be abridged.Read more at USRTK.org [1] HuffingtonPost.com [2] NYTimes.com [3] USRTK.org [4] GlobalNews.ca
Sewage treatment plants unable to cope

Who is really to blame?

The obvious solution

(NaturalNews) We're all familiar with horror stories about juveniles on drugs, but normally it's humans that are involved, not fish. This case, however, involves juvenile chinook salmon who never had the chance to "Just Say No."Disturbing new research has indicated that young salmon found in Puget Sound tested positive for more than 80 different drugs, including cocaine, antidepressants and dozens of other medications used by humans.When researchers tested the water at and near sewage treatment plants in the estuaries of Puget Sound near Seattle, Washington, they discovered high levels of drugs and personal care products  at some of the highest concentrations found anywhere in the nation.The tissues of migratory chinook salmon and local staghorn sculpin also contained these compounds  even in the fish found in estuaries far from the sewage treatment plants where the water was previously considered "pristine."As reported by"The medicine chest of common drugs also included Flonase, Aleve and Tylenol. Paxil, Valium and Zoloft. Tagamet, OxyContin and Darvon. Nicotine and caffeine. Fungicides, antiseptics and anticoagulants. And Cipro and other antibiotics galore."Why are the levels so high? It could be because people here use more of the drugs detected, or it could be related to wastewater-treatment plants' processes, said Jim Meador, an environmental toxicologist at NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle and lead author on a paper published this week in the journal Environmental Pollution."The presence of these drugs in the water appears to be related to the inability of the wastewater plants to fully remove these chemicals during treatment. But high fecal coliform counts in some areas of the Sound suggest that leaky septic tanks may also be contributing to the problem.Some of the drugs found in the fish and the water of Puget Sound are difficult to remove using standard sewage treatment methods:"Treatment plants in King County are effective in removing some drugs in wastewater, but many drugs are recalcitrant and remain. Seizure drugs , for instance, are very hard to remove, and ibuprofen levels are knocked down  but not out  during treatment, said Betsy Cooper, permit administrator for the county's Wastewater Treatment Division."But the blame should not be placed entirely on the treatment plants, according to Cooper. "You have treatment doing its best to remove these, chemically and biologically," she said, "but it's not just the treatment quality, it's also the amount that we use day to day and our assumption that it just goes away."Shamefully, our own drug dependence is now poisoning other species as well. We have become a nation of drugged-out zombies , but that doesn't give us the right to turn fish and other animals into the same.Maybe it's time to start realizing that prescription pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter remedies and illicit drugs are doing us  and our environment  far more harm than good.We've bought into the Big Pharma-created myth that there is a chemical solution to all our problems  physical and mental  when in reality these substances are theof much of our "dis-ease" and general out-of-balance lifestyles.Although Western pharmaceutical medicine arguably has some value, almost everything these drugs are designed to treat can be more effectively dealt with using natural methods which promote healing rather than dependence.And one of the obvious lessons from the situation in Puget Sound is that when you make bad decisions at one level, there will be negative effects on other levels as well. We don't live in a vacuum, and our unhealthy lifestyles have an impact on all living things.We're simultaneously poisoning ourselves and our surroundings. Maybe it's time for another approach ...
What we know about the virus



Zika payday

(NaturalNews) Until 2016, Zika wasn't taken very seriously by American authorities. The relaxed attitude suggested that it was just another mundane disease in third-world countries. This much was clear from the CDC's attitude and lack of recommendations regarding the virus. Soon enough, however, a concerning percentage of pregnant women that contracted the virus gave birth to children suffering from birth malformations. Even though Zika was not fatal, there seemed to be a link between the virus and congenital disorders.A few months later, Zika didn't go away. In fact, it came closer. As of February 17, there were 82 documented cases of Zika infection throughout the U.S. according to official figures. The number of infections went up and so did birth malformations. It didn't take long for representatives of the people to rally themselves and take action, so all of the 46 Democrats in the Senate addressed an letter to the White House demanding an "urgent and aggressive response" against the virus. No less than a week later, the administration proposed a $1.8 billion emergency fund from the Congress to fight off the infection spreading through the United States.Zika appeared around the 1950s in the African country Uganda. The estimated incubation time of the virus is a few days, and symptoms often overlap that of dengue fever: high temperature, rashes, joint and muscle pain, headaches and malaise. While it is treatable, a relatively small percentage of people develop other conditions that are even more concerning . One of them is the GuillainBarre syndrome, a particularly rare neurological disorder that can paralyze an individual for weeks on end.Another serious concern regarding the virus regards pregnant women. After quite a few cases of children being born with microcephaly , authorities have begun to popularize a speculative link between this disorder and Zika. Microcephaly is a condition that prevents the babies' heads from developing to a normal size. From hearing and vision loss to seizures, developmental delay and intellectual disability, microcephaly can trigger a mass reaction that affects the entire life of the newborn to an extreme degree. Knowing the full implications of this microbe became the top priority for everyone.Still, medical researchers have yet to provide any convincing evidence linking Zika and microcephaly. In fact, many health experts have pointed at GMO mosquitoes, larvacide being poured into drinking water in impoverished areas and pregnant women being mandated to receive Tdap vaccines , which contain mercury, formaldehyde, aluminum and antibiotics, among other possibly toxic agents, as other possible causes of microcephaly in the region. The Tdap vaccine, among others, has also been linked to GuillainBarre syndrome, for which Zika virus is now being blamed.President Obama proposed to Congress that a total of $1.8 billion be dedicated to fighting Zika. This massive investment may be nothing more than tilting at windmills, since it's possible to contract the virus and not develop the symptoms whatsoever, silently spreading it to other regions. A large portion of these funds are to be used for preparation, research, vaccines and containment of Zika on American territory, while $335 million will be directed towards the U.S. Agency for International Development. Besides this, Puerto Rico will also receive a $250 million one-year increase in Medicaids funds.Currently, mosquitoes are the likeliest way to contract the virus, as they can carry infected blood and then contaminate healthy individuals through bites. Oddly enough, the recent reports of a spike in Zika cases overlaps with an attempt to genetically modify mosquitoes in order to prevent them from spreading dengue fever and other related conditions. One cannot help but wonder whether the initial spread of the virus was actually triggered by the mutated insects.The White House advises Americans to remain calm, particularly since this outbreak is not as lethal as the Ebola one in 2014. But Obama is requesting $2 billion supposedly to fight it off. That money could be used to solve some of the nations' already pressing matters. Surely, it would be too cruel for Big Pharma to access government funding by triggering a health concern in the first place , right?
Nu Skin Enterprises Inc., the direct seller of skin care and nutritional products, reached an agreement to resolve a putative class-action lawsuit that alleged the company and its executives failed to disclose an unlawful pyramid scheme in China.

The settlement for US$47 million is subject to court approval, and is not expected to result in a net charge to Nu Skins income statement because the company anticipates its insurers will cover the payment, according to a Feb. 26 regulatory filing.

Under the settlement, the defendants have not admitted any wrongdoing, and the parties have agreed to execute mutually agreeable releases," the regulatory filing noted. Federal judge Jill Parrish must grant final court approval to the settlement, which Nu Skin said it anticipated will occur in mid-2006.

Plaintiffs counsel had been seeking to certify the class before the parties reached an agreement.

The lawsuit, filed on Jan. 21, 2014 in Utah federal court against Nu Skin and its senior executives, alleged the company failed to disclose to investors that its Chinese subsidiary was violating multi-level marketing regulations and laws.

That was the same month two Chinese government agencies revealed they were investigating Nu Skin following a Chinese newspaper report that questioned the direct sellers business practices. In the wake of the developments, Nu Skins shares plummeted more than 44 percent in two days of trading, according to the complaint, which alleged violations of federal securities law and cited earlier statements by executives including Nu Skin CEO Truman Hunt touting the business in China.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a class that publicly traded Nu Skins common stock during the period from May 4, 2011 through January 17, 2014. The latter date was the same day a second Chinese agencythe Ministry of Commercesaid it would probe the company, according to the lawsuit.

In March 2014, Provo, Utah-based Nu Skin revealed the Chinese government has fined it US$524,000 (RMB 3.26 million) for selling products that were not registered for the direct-selling channel. The company also said it was fined for making product claims that lacked adequate documentary support, and six employees were fined for unauthorized promotional activities.

The lawsuit is Freedman v. Nu Skin Enterprises et al, 2:14-cv-00033-JNP-BCW, U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, Central Division. Reuters first reported the settlement agreement last week.
The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday passed legislation by a vote of 14 to 6 to preempt state laws requiring labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods.

The legislation, which now heads to the full Senate for consideration, directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish a voluntary labeling standard for foods that are bioengineered.

Simply put, the legislation before us provides an immediate and comprehensive solution to the state-by-state patchwork of labeling laws," said Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, in an opening statement before the vote. It sets national uniformity, based on science, for labeling food or seeds that are genetically engineered."

Roberts said the legislation has received the support of more than 650 farmers, cooperatives, agribusinesses, processors, seed makers, handlers, food and feed manufacturers, lenders and retailers.

Pamela Bailey, president and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), lauded the passage of the bill.

This strong and bipartisan vote is a victory for working families, farmers, and food companies," Bailey said in a statement. This legislation ensures that consumers get consistent information about food and beverage ingredients, prevents a patchwork of confusing and costly state labeling mandates, and provides the same labeling rules to shoppers across the country."

GMA is hoping the House and Senate both vote on and pass the legislation before Vermonts GE labeling law takes effect on July 1, 2016. A similar billthe Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act (HR 1599)was passed last July by the House.

The attempts to preempt state labeling laws are not without controversy. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, characterized the legislation passed by the Senate Agriculture Committee as an insult to the American people, who have overwhelmingly and repeatedly called for mandatory GMO labeling." Connecticut was the first state in the nation to pass a GE labeling law in 2013, although it doesnt take effect unless other states pass similar measures.

This legislation undermines strong state GMO-labeling laws, like Connecticuts, and thwarts efforts to ensure consumers have access to basic, on-package information about what they are feeding their families," Blumenthal said in a statement. Industry claims that such labeling will raise the cost of food are unfoundedas demonstrated by Campbells support for the mandatory labeling of products containing genetically engineered ingredients."
Some of the most vulnerable children in California have been forced into living conditions that threaten their health and safety.

An NBC Bay Area investigation reveals dreadful violations at some of Californias group homes, which are 24-hour child care facilities that house abused and neglected children throughout the state.

California is in the midst of overhauling its child welfare system, but the reform could take years. In the meantime, the Investigative Unit found evidence of 815 violations at Bay Area group homes that posed an "immediate risk" to children and teens over the past five years.

Those violations included physical and sexual abuse of children, drug use among group home staff, and other serious violations such as a lack of food. Lawmakers in California have acknowledged that outcomes for children in group homes are substantially worse compared to outcomes for children placed with relatives or foster families. As a result, the state is now undertaking one of the largest overhauls of the child welfare system in recent history.

The effort, which has been dubbed the "continuum of care reform," aims to eliminate group homes by 2021, which currently house roughly 3,725 children and teens across California. The reform would require counties to do a significantly better job in recruiting foster families and relative caregivers for foster youth.

"When you look at the suicide rates, drug abuse rates, when you look at all the negative outcomes for the foster care population  the lack of the number of kids going into higher education, just the absolute lack of success  thats the danger that the system puts these kids into," said Assemblymember Mark Stone, who authored AB 403, the legislation behind the continuum of care reform effort.

Stone says group homes were originally intended to be short term placements for foster youth, while social workers connected children with foster families or relatives. Counties, however, simply have not been able to recruit enough foster families or relative caregivers, which has transformed group homes into long term placements for many children.

Stone says his legislation would address these shortfalls by increasing resources for the recruitment and retention of foster families and relative caregivers. The group homes that continue to exist after the transition will become short-term facilities, which would aim to place children in longer-term homes within 6 months.

"We want to reduce the amount of suicides, we want to reduce the amount of drug abuse, we want to reduce the amount of failure that kids suffer coming out of the foster care system," Stone said. "And its not because theyre bad kids. Its not because theyre not capable. Its because they havent had a chance."

There are currently 166 group homes across the Bay Area that can house anywhere from four to more than 100 children. To find out what foster kids were enduring at Bay Area group homes, NBC Bay Area obtained hundreds of pages of inspection reports from the Department of Social Services.

The reports contained troubling allegations that government inspectors determined to be true. They include:

Despite the seriousness of these violations, the group homes where these violations occurred all remain open, although some are on probation, meaning their license can be revoked if they dont show improvement in the quality of care provided to children.

NBC Bay Area requested an interview with Department of Social Services director Will Lightborne to discuss whether the state was doing enough to ensure the safety of children housed in group homes, however, the agency said their spokesperson Michael Weston was the only person available.

Weston agreed that group homes are not appropriate long-term placement options, which is why he said the Department of Social Services is supporting and implementing the continuum of care reform.

"These group homes were designed to deal with children who needed therapeutic services," Weston said. "What theyve become for some kids, particularly at the lower level, is a permanent placement option and that is what a lot of the reform is trying to undo."

While Bay Area group homes have been cited 815 times over the past 5 years for putting the health, safety, and personal rights of children at "immediate risk," Weston said the department is doing enough to keep children in group homes safe.

"We have a system for dealing with facilities that are out of compliance and part of that is a progressive discipline process," Weston said. "And where we have facilities where childrens needs arent being met, were being very active. Theres a process that we go through."

Weston said that process includes meeting with group homes to discuss improvements, putting them on probation, or even shutting them down. Inspectors with the departments Community Care Licensing division are required by law to conduct unannounced inspections at every group home at least once every five years. Weston says the department aims to investigate complaints against group homes within 90 days.

Weston, however, said shutting down a problematic group home can be a long process.

"The administrative process does not give the authority to the department to close a facility without doing a lot of legwork," Weston said. "[Theres] a lot of legal work in order to do that. Its a very long process in order to investigate and close a facility from start to finish."

Records provided by the Department of Social Services show 19 group homes in California have had their licenses revoked between 2011 and 2015.

Mariah Corder, 16, spent much of her childhood in group homes after her biological father went to prison for murder. She was removed from her parents home as a toddler. Corder has cycled between multiple group homes and foster homes since then, and says the state should be doing more to protect children and teens.

"The purpose of a high level group home is to help a youth deal with any trauma theyve had before," Corder said. "But I really believe that pretty much all of the group homes I was in gave me more trauma that I had to deal with."

Corder said she experienced physical abuse by staff members, and at one group home, was even given daily doses of psychotropic drugs to unnecessarily subdue her. NBC Bay Area confirmed that once she was transferred to a different group home, the staff there took her completely off the medication, saying she didnt need it.

"I never should have been abused," Corder said. "I never should have had to fight or defend myself in a government home and never should have had to be so behind in school. I never should have had to be in a group home at all really. If there were more foster homes, I wouldnt have."

Corder did spend some time in foster homes as a child, which she says made her realize how poor the conditions were at group home facilities.

"It took a few foster homes in between group homes to realize how different things were and a couple of really good foster homes to explain to me that the stuff that was happening to me wasnt right," she said.

Corder says she supports the continuum of care reform, but does have some reservations about whether counties will be able to recruit enough foster parents and relative caregivers to phase out group homes as long-term placement options for foster youth.

In the meantime, Corder is fighting to change the system alongside other teens at California Youth Connection, a non-profit group thats been advocating for child welfare reform for the past two decades.

"I think just knowing the horrible things that I went through and never wanting any other youth to have to go through that, thats what gets me going every day," Corder said. "[Its what] keeps me motivated to advocate for youth."
The first case of Zika virus in the Bay Area was confirmed Wednesday by Napa County health officials.

In a statement, the Napa County Public Health Division said the California Department of Public Health has confirmed "a pregnant woman who traveled to Central America" contracted the virus, but she "is not showing symptoms of Zika virus infection at this time."

Health officials, who are not identifying the woman, say the virus is not a public health threat.

"There is no active transmission of Zika virus in Napa County, and the two kinds of mosquitos that transmit the virus have not been found here," said Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa County Health Officer. "Anyone who is planning to travel to a country with active Zika virus transmission should consult with their healthcare provider before leaving, especially if they are pregnant or are considering becoming pregnant."

An initiative in Germany is giving newly arrived refugees a chance to take guided tours of Berlin museums in their native languages. The project, called Multaka, or meeting point in Arabic, is intended to help integrate the newcomers and ease the sense of foreigness many feel upon arrival. The tours include stops at Berlins Museum of Islamic Art, which highlights centuries of cross-cultural exchange between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It also introduces refugees to German history, which has given some Syrian refugees a sense of hope. When [they] saw how badly this now-flourishing country was destroyed after World War II it gave them hope for their own country," Zoya Masoud, a Syrian tour guide told NBC News.

This is not the first case of the Zika virus in California. Other cases have been confirmed in Los Angeles, San Diego and Yolo counties.

Napa County health officials say they're working with local healthcare providers to "test for cases of Zika virus among pregnant women who have traveled to countries with Zika virus transmission or who have sexual partner(s) that have traveled to countries with Zika virus."

Officials in Napa County said they expect to confirm more cases as testing for continues. They are advising women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant to avoid traveling to areas where the virus is prevalent and to avoid unprotected sex with anyone who has traveled to areas with Zika.

Nationwide, there are more than 10 reported cases of Zika virus involving pregnant women, but locally, Napa County officials stressed the latest patient is no longer showing symptoms of the virus and health officials say they do not see any evidence that this virus was transmitted locally.

The Zika virus  spread mainly by mosquito bites  is epidemic in Latin America and the Caribbean. The virus causes mild illness or no symptoms in most people. But in Brazil, officials are investigating a possible link to babies born with unusually small heads, a rare birth defect called microcephaly that can signal underlying brain damage.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , there have been no reported mosquito-transmitted cases of Zika in the U.S.

[[370841411, C]]
City leaders are investigating an east San Jose complex after tenants complained about being abused by a property management company.

Residents in the Santee neighborhood met with Mayor Sam Liccardo in February. Since then, he has been joined by councilman Tam Nguyen, code enforcement and police officers, and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley. Housing Department officials are also taking witness statements, recording grievances and inspecting homes.

This is a big step for many residents of the dozens of apartment complexes who are filing complaints with city agencies, as well as Realty World Premier Properties, which adamantly denies mistreating tenants.

Nancy Alvarado, whose family was given an eviction notice, is packing up to move out by the end of the week. She says she's being evicted for complaining about rundown conditions, but the property management team countered that it was upset about extra family members living in the house.

Alvarado says she's scared, but also relieved.

Why am I going to stay over here? she said. It's a mess  If you look at the apartment, its a mess inside. Management doesn't pay attention to that."

Liccardo, however, says the city is not passing any judgment. Officials are only investigating the matter, he said.

"The important thing right now is to be able to get evidence, Liccardo said.

He continued that its imperative to get code enforcement officers inside the apartments to document what's really going on. That way we'd be able to be on a clear position if we need to take legal action."
A decade ago, Michael Hofman and Janet Moyer began hiking up San Francisco's Twin Peaks in search of exercise.

Once there, they found something else.

Litter. A lot of it.

So the married landscape professionals, who have lived in the neighborhood below the hills since 1983, began to pick it up along their tri-weekly route.

"If you live in a place that you love, you want to make sure it always looks good," Hofman said.

The past few years, though, Hofman and Moyer noticed and increase in one particular type of litter that bothered them.

"In the bushes along the road we began finding more and more backpacks and purses," Moyer said.

What they were finding were the leftovers from smash-and-grab car break-ins that were becoming more frequent along the road leading to Christmas Tree Point, a popular tourist spot with expansive views of the city and the bay beyond.

"The scenario is someone smash-and-grabs, drives away, and throws everything but the money out," Hofman said.

Garvin Thomas/NBC Bay Area

Still inside, Hofman and Moyer discovered, were driver's licenses, passports, and even prescription medication. All the things the thieves were not interested in.

"They don't seem to want credit cards," Moyer said.

Just because the items were not valuable to the crooks, doesn't mean they still didn't have value for their owners. Hofman and Moyer decided to do what they could to reunite the owners with their belongings.

Using names and addresses the found, the two began doing their best to track down the owners.

"It takes a little bit of forensic analysis," Hofman said.

Over the years, Hofman and Moyer estimate they have returned belongings to roughly two dozen people, both tourists and locals.

Hofman and Moyer say the reaction they get is often one of surprise followed by gratefulness.

"A lot of them are in tears," Moyer said.

Hofman and Moyer say they hate the thought of someone leaving San Francisco with a bad taste in his/her mouth after being the victim of a crime.

Returning the belongings, like picking up the litter, is simply a way to cast the city the love in a positive light.

"If we can, especially for the tourists, give them the feeling that they're people who care about them then it's just gonna make a much bigger difference."
Lady Gaga was flanked by 50 sex assault survivors during the Oscars, including three young women affiliated with UC Berkeley and Stanford, who were also featured in a documentary about the same subject.

The Daily Cal reported that UC Berkeley junior Thanh Mai Bercher and alumna Sofie Karasek were invited to the Sundays award ceremony by the production crew of The Hunting Ground, the documentary for which Lady Gaga co-wrote and performed the best original song nominee, Til It Happens to You. The Palo Alto Weekly reported that Jackie Lin at Stanford University was also on stage. Lady Gaga is also a survivor of sexual assault.

UC Berkeley is a poignant spot for the fight against sexual assault. Police said that in February alone, three women were assaulted near campus and another assault was reported at a fraternity.

Karasek, who now lives in New York, is the director of education at End Rape on Campus, which is featured in The Hunting Ground. The group helped spark a wave of federal complaints against colleges and universities about how they handled sexual violence cases. Karesek and two others also filed a civil lawsuit against Cal for its alleged mishandling of sex assault cases.

I think we definitely accomplished more than any one award could have last night, Karasek told the Daily Cal. Though it would have been symbolic to win (the Oscar), it was more symbolic that we didnt, because its reflective of how much further we have to go.[[370838671, C]]


Jason Gonzales, a 41-year-old consultant running his first political campaign, was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune Monday in the race for Speaker of the House, Michael Madigans 22nd District House seat.

Madigan and Gonzales will face off in the March 15 Democratic primary.

The endorsement suggests Gonzales may have the necessary resources to topple the Madigan political machine.

"He has resources and money  some from reform-minded donors who support redistricting and term limits, and some from supporters of Gov. Bruce Rauner who are tired of Madigan's iron grip on state government," the endorsement said.

The endorsement also credits Gonzales for being transparent about his criminal history.

In 1991, after dropping out of high school in his teens, Gonzales spent two months in jail for the unlawful use of credit cards. All told, Gonzales was convicted of six crimes between 1991 and 1994.

As a teenager, I went down a bad path; I dropped out of high school and had non-violent run-ins with the law, Gonzales told Ward Room.

Following these run-ins, Gonzales said he re-enrolled in high school and was inspired by a teacher to pursue his academics more seriously.

That moment, while seemingly small, was what fueled me as I moved my life forward and graduated from high school at 21 and eventually graduated from Duke, MIT and Harvard, Gonzales said.

Gonzales was pardoned for his crimes in 2015 by former Governor Pat Quinn.

The Tribune endorsement notes that Gonzales has only lived in the 22nd district since 2013, although his family has been there for much longer. Gonzales claims he will be a more accesible representative to residents of the district than his opponent.

"People want someone accessible and present in the community doing what's right rather than playing power politics in Springfield," Gonzales told the Tribune.

The 22nd District is located on Chicagos Southwest Side and includes Midway International Airport.

Madigan has served as the state representative for the 22nd district since 1971. He has served as Speaker of the House since 1983, with the exception of two years. This is the longest anyone has held that post in the state's history.

The speaker recently ranked 5th in Chicago Magazines Power 50, which ranks the most influential Chicagoans.

During the course of his campaign, Gonzales said he faced some resistance from Madigans political allies, even noting a Madigan aide waited for Gonzales at the Illinois State Board of Elections as he filed to run for the March 15 Democratic Primary ballot.

Gonzales said the aide then filed for two additional candidates, Joe Barboza and Grasiela Rodriguez, to appear on the ballot.

Diluting the ballot is the oldest trick in the book," Gonzales said, "but we dont believe its going to change things very drastically."

As a candidate, Gonzales supports property tax reform including a progressive tax to replace the state's current flat tax.

Gonzales is also a champion of closing the funding gap in public schools and increasing funding for higher education and job training programs. Gonzales also said he is committed to ending the pension crisis.

I will fight to make sure that every person receives every cent that they were promised," Gonzales said, "and that this situation never happens again by preventing lawmakers from having access to the pension funds in the future."

Illinois United for Change has spent over $100,000 supporting Gonzales' campaign, exceeding the amount needed to lift the limit for campaign contributions in the race.

This means Madigan's committee, Friends of Michael J. Madigan, is also free to raise unlimited funds in the lead-up to the election.
Homicides and shootings have doubled in Chicago so far this year compared with the same period in 2015, and police have seized fewer illegal guns -- more possible signals that officers have become less aggressive in the aftermath of a shooting video released last fall, and a controversial form which many officers say amounts to snooping by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante said Tuesday that he was so concerned about officers possibly holding back that he filmed a video for the entire department in which he encouraged them to do their jobs and assured them that a federal probe of the force was not aimed at individuals.

"We are aware that there is a concern among the rank and file about not wanting to be the next YouTube video that goes viral,'' Escalante said in the video before introducing a segment of his own to remind viewers ``why we took this job and swore this oath of office.''

The new crime numbers come almost exactly three months after the city on the orders of a judge released the video of officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots at Laquan McDonald, a black teen killed in 2014. Since that day, Van Dyke has been charged with murder, and Superintendent Garry McCarthy has been fired. The Department of Justice launched a civil rights probe of the police force, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has sought to regain public trust in the department and his own leadership.

The crime figures offer a stark reminder that the nation's third largest-city is nowhere near shedding its reputation as a dangerous hotbed of street violence. In the first two months of the year, authorities recorded 95 homicides, compared with 48 for the same period last year. Thus far, there have been 406 shootings, or more than twice as many as the 180 for the same two-month period in 2015.

Officers on the street are now required to fill out a two page form following every street stop, noting details including the subjects race and the officers name. Officers have bristled at that process, and coupled with the McDonald cases negative publicity, there has been open speculation that officers fearful of attracting negative attention, may be pulling back and becoming more passive.

Quietly, officers say they are not going to take chances that might land them in legal trouble or threaten their jobs and pensions. At St. Sabinas Church on Chicagos south side, Father Michael Pfleger said he found even talk of such a slowdown unacceptable.

I hear about no respect, I hear about nobodys doing anything, he said. And I see numbers going through the ceiling. And that not only frightens me. It angers me!

Suggestions of officers slowing down on the job started with an 80 percent decrease in the number of street stops that the officers have made since the first of the year. Escalante has previously agreed that decrease could have been largely tied to the fact that since the first of the year, officers have been required to fill out the lengthy forms, negotiated in a settlement with the ACLU.

Newer, more streamlined forms went into use Tuesday, and Escalante said he hoped that will help alleviate some of the angst on the street. He pointedly noted that stops are already back up, increasing by 25% over the last two weeks.

The unwillingness to make as many stops as they once did might also explain the steep decline in gun seizures. Normally, the number of illegal guns recovered by police would climb with the number of homicides and shooting incidents, but the opposite has happened. So far this year, the total number of illegal guns seized by the department has fallen from 955 in the first two months of last year to 829 so far this year.



But just as stops have increased, Escalante said some of the crime numbers looked favorable as well. Gun arrests are up by 33% over the last 28 days; murder arrests were up by 5%.

Still, Pfleger argues he sees no sense of urgency on the part of the city, even as the violence has escalated in neighborhoods like his.

Have we really just gotten to the point in Chicago that we are accepting that we are the poster boy of America for homicides and shooting? he asked. Are we alright with that? Because Im not!

For his part, Escalante said he is convinced even officers rankled by the backlash of the McDonald video have gotten on board.

"I believe they are starting to make the effort again,'' he said, ``to try to do what they can to bring this violence down.''
A North Texas police department has identified the 29-year-old officer who was fatally wounded in a shootout with a suspect Tuesday near an elementary school.

Euless Police Chief Mike Brown identified the fallen officer as David S. Hofer, who died during surgery at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center Grapevine. [[370698611,C]]

The shooting happened just before 3 p.m. at J.A. Carr Park in the 500 block of Simmons Drive after several officers responded to a "shots fired" call in the area.

"Upon arrival, officers encountered a suspect with an unknown weapon," Brown said. "The suspect immediately fired upon officers, striking one of them. Officers returned fire, striking the suspect."

Hofer was rushed to Baylor Grapevine, where he was pronounced deceased, Brown announced just after 5 p.m. The second person who was shot was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, where he died. The person's identity has not yet been released.

Additional details surrounding the incident are unknown at this time.

Euless Mayor Linda Martin and Police Chief Mike Brown discuss the shooting that killed Police Officer David S. Hofer and a second man.

Dozens of police cars from multiple North Texas agencies accompanied the officer's hearse back to Euless Tuesday evening, where a makeshift memorial from members of the community includes flowers, balloons, posters and cards.

Hofer lived in Plano and began serving in the Euless Police Department in January 2014 after previously working with the New York Police Department, Brown said. Survivors include his fiance, parents, sister and brother.

"This agency and community will not forget David's servant heart and his dry wit," Brown said.

Hofer graduated from Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn and earned a bachelor's degree from New York University in 2008.

Police departments across North Texas, as well as the New York Police Department, are mourning the death of 29-year-old Euless officer David S. Hofer, who was killed in the line of duty.

The New York Police Department's Ninth Precinct tweeted a message Tuesday saying, "There are no words to describe the heartbreak of the loss of PO David Hofer who was proud #NYPD before going to TX."

Sources tell NBC 5 Hofer worked two different sections of Manhattan with the NYPD for about five years before moving for his new job in Texas.

With great honor we post this picture, which P.O David Hofer posted on his 1St day in Memory of PO Guindon #NYPD pic.twitter.com/kMkBdqyb53  NYPD 9th Precinct (@NYPD9Pct) March 2, 2016

A former NYPD sergeant who worked with Hofer in Midtown Manhattan in one of his early assignments with department described Hofer as a good guy with a big future. Another NYPD officer said some of the folks who knew Hofer well were simply too upset to talk about it right now.

NYPD officials said grief counselors will be at the Ninth Precinct in the East Village in Manhattan Wednesday, where Hofer's death has shaken officers just as it has in North Texas.

Tuesday night one New York group for fallen officers posted a picture of Hofer with the message simply, "RIP brother."

This is the second time a Euless police officer has been killed in the line of duty in the city's history. The other officer who died was Michael Williamson, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1982, according to the city website.

NBC 5's Astrid Martinez, Jeff Smith and Scott Friedman contributed to this report.
Across the South on Super Tuesday, Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump in two states and ran close to him elsewhere.

NBC News exit poll data reveals that GOP voters supporting Cruz want a president who shares their values and those voting for Trump just want change.

About a third of voters on average said they wanted a president who shared their values. And from Cruz's home state of Texaswhere he emerged the victorto states delivering Trump big Super Tuesday victories including Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, the pattern was the same: If Republicans said it was most important that a presidential candidate share their values, they tended to prefer Cruz.

The senator captured these "values voters" by overwhelming 30-point margins or more in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and he bested Trump in this group in every state in the South.
No charges will be filed after an incident at Texas A&M University in which black high school students touring campus reported hearing racial slurs and taunts.

The university said Wednesday that police have concluded their investigation into the Feb. 9 incident. As a result, one student is no longer with the school; however, it is unclear if the student left voluntarily or was expelled.

The law does not permit us to publicly disclose information associated with the Dean of Student Life investigation other than to say that one of the many students interviewed is no longer associated with Texas A&M University, wrote TAMU President Michael Young in a statement released to the school community.

During a college tour, junior students from Uplift Hampton Preparatory said a Texas A&M student approached them and asked them to look at her Confederate flag earrings.

Other white students reportedly shouted, "Go back where you came from" and used a slur.

The incident drew harsh condemnation from Young, TAMU students and state Sen. Royce West, who called for the expulsion of those involved in the incident.

Royce praised the university Wednesday for its investigation and efforts to improve race relations on campus.

According to Young, incoming students will now attend mandatory diversity seminars, one of several changes in response to the incident.

"As we all reflect on the various events on our campus, and those around the country over the past few months, it is impossible to ignore the importance of the principles of inclusion and diversity," Young wrote. "As a leading institution of higher education, we are the vanguard in affecting positive change in the attitudes and actions of future generations. We are called upon to lead our communities and make a difference because the consequences of such acts are intolerable."

In response to the completion of the investigation, Uplift President Yasmin Bhatia thanked the university for its "transparency" in the investigation.

"Moving beyond this incident, we hope the issue of inclusion continues to be a priority for A&M and the other larger higher education institutions in the state, as we unfortunately know this is not an isolated incident on just one campus," wrote Bhatia in a statement.

Uplift plans to host a symposium on April 22nd for its K-12 students to examine inclusion and race issues on college campuses.

"Our country and our future can only be stronger through all students being successful," said Bhatia. "Uplift Education looks forward to being part of a broader solution."

NBC 5's Caroline Connolly contributed to this report.
A warning from police in Enfield.

Many have reached out about a so-called backyard mechanic and his empty promises. Police tonight are telling the Troubleshooters if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I feel upset. Hes doing this to a lot of people in Enfield, and it needs to stop!" Melissa Benvenuto tells NBC Connecticut.

After being fixed improperly, Melissa Benvenuto brought her Nissan Pathfinder to Stateline Auto and Truck in Enfield to be fixed the right way.

We asked the shops owner, Seth Klase, for his independent, experienced opinion. He tells the Troubleshooters, The most blatant thing I saw is the brake level sensor. The master cylinder here is completely empty, no fluid in here at all."

Benvenuto had been hauling her sons around in the SUV, in its current state since the Super Bowl.

Klase added, "Very dangerous." Benvenuto blames Alfred "Freddie" Alzak Junior; a self-employed mechanic.

Benvenuto added, Hes on the Enfield Forum. People raved about him and what a good job he is doing."

Many tell NBC Connecticut they found Alzak on Facebook, and considered his services cheap and convenient. Benvenuto said the first time she used his services, he fixed her heater.

Benvenuto added, Had a good experience and everything went well. So, I asked him about my emissions because I wasn't going to pass. And he said that's because you have an exhaust leak for $200."

Melissa says she got her truck back three days later.

Melissa added, So I get in car, the breaks don't feel right. I realize there's 500 extra miles on my car, so I go to work and Im livid and texting him what the heck, my speedometer doesn't work!"

Klase told the Troubleshooters, There was a lot of cutting and I'm not sure what the exhaust looked like before he started, what he considered to be done was far from it. It is undriveable in my opinion.

Klase estimates repairs at 2-thousand dollars.

Chelsey Estrada says her experience with Alzak started well too.

Chelsey Estrada told NBC Connecticut, He comes out takes a look at my brother's car and diagnosed the problem with the starter. So, I purchased a new one and he replaces the starter."

But, Estrada says when her brother got the car back, it immediately had transmission problems.

They went back to Alzak because, she says he quoted a great price. But the Honda sat in the back of this body shop for about a month, where Alzak was working on the car, on the side. He was also employed at the shop, but was terminated. Estrada eventually had the Honda towed to another mechanic.

Jill Konopka asks Estrada, Did he fix the transmission? Chelsey Estrada responded, "No, he did not. Estrada added, And I kept calling him checking for updates, that's when different stories came out, they sent the wrong transmission, took it out. Waiting for a new one."

Estrada demanded the six hundred dollar payment back. Freddie Alzak Junior returned a third of it.

And after the Troubleshooters started investigating, he returned the remainder.

At least three other customers filed police complaints totaling $1,800.00

Enfield Police chief Carl Sferrazza: "Nothing would make me happier than to get these people the money back for the people that got ripped off, but there are limits by statute and what we can do."

According to judicial records, larceny, burglary, drug and criminal mischief convictions have kept the 34-year-old in and out of jail.

But the police chief says these cases are different.

Chief Sferrazza: "We might have one we're looking at, but like I said the other three have either been withdrawn or we're not able to pursue because it's crossed the line from a criminal case into a civil matter."

What police say they are investigating Alzak for, is if he did any work on customers cars at his home without the proper town zoning permits.

The Troubleshooters spoke with Alfred Alzak, Senior, "I tell him you know Freddie please stop or call people and let them know. Don't leave people hanging, if you did something wrong it should be corrected." Alzak Senior says police have paid a visit as well. All three said same thing, we're not here to arrest Freddie, and were here to tell him to stop doing what he is doing."

When we finally reached Alzak on the phone, we asked him about the problems with Melissa Benvenutos vehicle. All he said about her claims was, Its all false, Alzak, Junior stated.

For the Estrada case, he insists he was still working on it but there was miscommunication with the company supplying the transmission.



As for the other complaints, Alzak Junior, replied, I plan on doing the right thing. I did the best to my ability. All I did was try and help somebody and it grew out of hand. I had someone help me, and he messed up more cars than I could fix."

Alzak Junior insists he wasn't doing anything deliberately. He tells NBC Connecticut, hes sold his tools and is no longer working on cars. He also claims he has been getting death threats, and that someone vandalized his truck. He didnt file a police report. Customers we spoke to deny any involvement.

DMV Officials tell NBC Connecticut, the state does not license auto mechanics.

They advise you ask around about potential mechanics you might work with, if it sounds too good to be true, experts say it probably is.



They say customers should check out job references, professional certifications and graduation from auto trade schools.
Fort Worth-based American Airlines and Dallas-based Southwest Airlines are among the U.S. carriers submitting applications to the Department of Transportation for routes to Cuba.

American has applied for one daily nonstop flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Havana, along with 10 daily flights from Miami and one daily flight from Charlotte, one weekly flight from Los Angeles and one weekly flight from Chicago.

Other proposed routes, all from Miami, are two daily flights each to Santa Clara, Holguin, Varadero; and one daily flight each to Camaguey and Cienfuegos.

Southwest wants to fly to Havana with six daily flights from Fort Lauderdale, two from Tampa and one daily flight from Orlando. It also applied for daily flights from Fort Lauderdale to Varadero and one to Santa Clara.

Government approval for the contested Havana routes is expected to take months. Flights to smaller cities could be approved much sooner.

Once routes are awarded, airlines will still need time to develop schedules and actually sell seats on the flights. And while the U.S. government will set the routes, airlines will also need to apply to Cuba's civil aviation authority for a permit to operate in the country.

All flights operating between the two countries today are charters, but an agreement signed between the two nations last month allows for up to 110 additional flights -- more than five times the current charter operations.

Only 20 of those flights can go to Havana, in addition to the current 10 to 15 charter flights a day. The rest would fly to other Cuban cities.

U.S. tourists still won't legally be allowed to visit Cuba but the start of commercial flights will make it much easier for those who fall into one of the authorized travel categories. Charter flights are expensive, frequently chaotic and lack many of the traditional supports of commercial aviation such as online booking and 24-hour customer service.

Most of the planes proposed by U.S. airlines would carry about 160 passengers.

Nearly 160,000 U.S. leisure travelers flew to Cuba last year, along with hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans visiting family. Tourism is still barred, but the number of legal reasons to go to Cuba -- from organizing professional meetings to distributing information to Cubans -- has grown so large and is so loosely enforced that the distinction from tourism has blurred significantly.

Following Wednesday's route application deadline, airlines and the public have a chance to comment on the flights sought. That process will conclude by March 21.

The airlines won't get all of their requests, but below are the routes the remaining carriers applied to fly:
A handwritten document proclaiming Texas was freeing itself from rule by Mexico is 180 years old Wednesday.

It was March 2, 1836, Texas Independence Day, when historians believe the original and five copies of the declaration were made and signed by 59 men at Washington-on-the-Brazos.

With the creation of the revolutionary document, settlers broke away from Mexico to create the Republic of Texas.

The new republic was led by interim-President David G. Burnet until the election of President Sam Houston later that year.

Only the original document remains.

Texas remained a republic for nine years until being annexed by the United States 1845, making the Lone Star State the 28th state admitted to the Union.

[[287968361,C]]
The family of the man who fatally shot a Euless police officer said the 22-year-old was a drug addict who was released from jail hours before the shooting occurred.

Jorge Antonio Gonzalez told NBC 5 Wednesday that his son, Jorge Brian Gonzalez (who went by the name Michael), was high on methamphetamine when he was jailed Monday for stealing money.

He said his son was released Tuesday and then hours later engaged in a firefight with officers at a J.A. Carr Park in Euless. Officer David Hofer, 29, was struck before other officers shot and killed the gunman. Hofer died Tuesday during surgery.

Gonzalez said that Hofer had been called to the family's apartment before and knew his son. He was remorseful over the actions of his son but also questioned why he was released from jail if still under the influence of meth.

Tarrant County court records show the younger Gonzalez had a lengthy criminal record that included charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and threatening family members.

Michael's family said that he started using drugs after he was sexually assaulted in Arlington when he was a young boy. The abuser was sentenced to life in prison for the abuse, according to court records obtained by NBC 5.

Officer David Hofer

Many people remembered Hofer on Wednesday by leaving flowers, stuffed animals and other items in front of the Euless police station, with some saying a quiet prayer before leaving.

Hofer had moved from New York City to the Dallas area in 2014 because he wanted to be somewhere safer, his mother has said.

A 2008 graduate of New York University, Hofer served in the New York Police Department for five years before coming to Euless, Police Chief Mike Brown said.

Euless Mayor Linda Martin and Police Chief Mike Brown discuss the shooting that killed Police Officer David S. Hofer and a second man.

The New York Post reported Hofer, the son of European immigrants, formerly worked in the 9th Precinct on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"He was wonderful child, a wonderful police officer," his mother, Sofija Hofer, told the newspaper. "He was working this very difficult precinct, so he had a lot of traumatic experiences ... He decided to go to a safer place."

Brown said Hofer was one of the officers who responded to a report of shots fired around 3 p.m. Tuesday near J.A. Carr Park, which is in a residential area near an elementary school.

"Officers encountered a suspect with an unknown weapon," Brown said. "The suspect immediately fired upon officers, striking one of them. Officers returned fire, striking the suspect."

Two nearby schools were placed on lockdown until the situation was resolved.

Hofer's fiance was out of town on Tuesday and needed to be called home and given the news, the Post reported.

Sofija Hofer said her son wanted to write a book about his experience with the NYPD.

"I thought he might be a scientist, like his father, but he always wanted to be a policeman, ever since he was a little boy," she said.

David Hofer is the second officer to die in the line of duty in Euless, a suburb of more than 53,000 residents west of Dallas and east of Fort Worth. The other officer was Michael Williamson, who was killed by a drunken driver in 1982, according to the city website.

NBC 5's Melissa Harrison, Scott Gordon and Holley Ford contributed to this report.


On Wednesday, Kids at a school in Fort Worth rallied in support of other children who battle cancer every day.

"We have a lot of important people coming, (former TCU and pro football player) LaDainian Tomlinson, (TCU mascot) Superfrog, the Texas Rangers mascot," said fourth grader Bella Flores.

The 9-year-old student is leading the pep rally at International Leadership School Keller and the fight against childhood cancer.

"I don't want them to suffer through cancer," said Bella. "We are going gold for them."

Bella picked the national "Go Gold" campaign as her service learning project. Her classmates in the fourth grade liked it, and the 1,500 students at ITL Keller then voted to take it school-wide.

"She was very passionate about it," said Leopoldo Perea, Bella's fourth grade teacher.

The pep rally was just a small part of Bella's plan. Her goal was to get pro football players and baseball players to wear gold, too.

"Isabella Flores came up with the idea of writing letters to NFL and MLB to try to get them to wear something gold during the month of September,' said the teacher.

Bella and 155 other fourth graders went on a letter-writing campaign.

"I told them I'm a fourth grader at this school, and we do a service learning project every year. And I put some reasons why we should go gold in September, because we know children, and we want to do something special for them." she said.

The first responses came last weekend.

"Of course, Saturday I started getting emails and text messages from parents getting all these post cards, and it was absolutely exciting," said Perrea.

"And I looked at the bottom of it and it said from the commissioner of baseball, and I started freaking out," said Bella.

All the students who wrote letters to MLB Commissioner Robert Manfred, Jr. got a postcard saying "Major League Baseball is committed to supporting awareness, research and early detection of different types of cancer including childhood cancers. This September MLB players will wear gold ribbon decals on their uniforms to raise awareness of this important cause."

John Blake, Executive Vice President of Communications at the Texas Rangers, told NBCDFW: "Yes, we are hosting our annual Childhood Cancer Awareness Night / Pediatric cancer Awareness Night on September 2. We had planned it before this school sent in letters as had MLB.that being said, we did receive all of those letters and we are sending an alumni and mascot to their school."

MLB supported the #GoGold campaign in September 2015, too, with clubs taking part in their own way.

"We think its great what the kids are doing," wrote Rich Dalrymple, Senior Vice President of Public Relations and Communications with the Dallas Cowboys in an email to NBC 5. "Our support of childhood cancer extends throughout the entire calendar year, and includes participation with organizations such as the Childrens Medical Center of Dallas, the Childrens Cancer Fund and the Make-A-Wish Foundation."

For Bella, it's confirmation of a huge lesson ITL teaches its students about living a life that puts others before self

"It makes me feel happy, like I'm changing the world," she said.
Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump seized decisive Super Tuesday victories with math and momentum on their side, leaving rivals scrambling for last-chance, long-shot strategies. For the Republican establishment, the search was increasingly dire.

Trump's seven victories in states across the country amounted to a GOP establishment collapse with no clear sign of rapid recovery. While his rivals promised to fight on, the party remained deeply divided over the preferred Trump alternative. Marco Rubio won only liberal Minnesota. Sen. Ted Cruz took his home state of Texas, neighboring Oklahoma and Alaska.

Clinton also won seven of the nearly a dozen states that weighed in Tuesday. Rival Bernie Sanders won his home state of Vermont, as well as Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado.

In his victory speech, Trump sent a chilling warning to the GOP establishment. A moment after Trump professed to have good relationships with his party's elite, he issued a warning to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had declared earlier Tuesday that "this party does not prey on people's prejudices." Trump said that if the two don't get along, Ryan is "going to have to pay a big price."

Clinton, meanwhile, called for "love and kindness"  a contrast to hard-edge Trump  while her rival Bernie Sanders promised to fight on to the convention.

Both victors spoke from Florida, which did not vote on Tuesday, but where the general election is often won or lost.

Both Rubio and Cruz said they would fight on.

"Our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat, and that will beat Donald Trump," Cruz thundered to supporters gathered at the wood-paneled Redneck Country Club in Stafford, Texas.

Still, he'd been counting on more appeal in the Southern states and among evangelical Christian voters. Trump, who dubs his surging campaign the "Trump Train," has derailed those plans.

Rubio and the other Republicans still in the race, John Kasich and Ben Carson, struggled Tuesday to convey optimism even as they vowed to fight on.

Simple math reinforces a bind for the Republicans who reject Trump, as the brash billionaire businessman carried seven states and continues to barrel toward the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination.

Trump won at least 203 delegates Tuesday. Cruz collected at least 144 delegates and Rubio picked up at least 71. Overall, Trump leads with 285 delegates, Cruz has 161, Rubio has 87, Kasich has 25 and Carson has eight. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

Increasingly, leading Republicans talk of a contested convention in July as their best remaining option for stopping Trump, whose divisive rhetoric about immigrants and ethnic and religious groups has some fearing a GOP wipeout in November.

Sanders assured supporters he'd take his fight to "every one" of the remaining contests. With a staggering $42 million raised in February alone, Sanders has the campaign cash to do just that  though Clinton is well on her way to the 2,383 delegates needed on the Democratic side.

Clinton collected wins in seven states, and Trump swept up victories in seven, including Virginia, another important general election battleground.

She is assured of winning at least 457 of the 865 delegates at stake Tuesday. Sanders gains at least 286. When including party leaders, Clinton has at least 1,005 delegates and Sanders has at least 373.

Clinton held on to older voters and strongly prevailed among Hispanics and African-Americans, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research. Trump, a political newcomer, pulled in two-thirds of voters looking to install an outsider in the White House, while GOP voters seeking an experienced candidate were split between Rubio and Cruz, both first-term senators.

Speaking from his gold-flecked Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump asserted that his candidacy is a "movement" and he claimed he would unify the party was by training his fire on Clinton.

He said she should be disqualified from even running for office because she broke from government protocol by using a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Clinton tried to turn Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan on its head, saying the country instead must be made "whole again."

"What we need in America today is more love and kindness," she said. "Instead of building walls, we're going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment."

Trump ridiculed her comments. "She's been there for so long," he said. "If she hasn't straightened it out by now, she's not going to straighten it out in the next four years."

Rubio said his supporters would never rally around Trump. He and Kasich showed little sign of relenting, especially with their home states of Florida and Ohio voting on March 15.

"We are so excited about what lies ahead for our campaign," Rubio said at his Tuesday night rally in Miami, his hometown. "You see, just five days ago we began to unmask the true nature of the front-runner in this race."

He portrayed his attacks on Trump as having an impact already, though that wasn't evident in Super Tuesday's results.

"Two weeks from tonight right here in Florida," Rubio said, "we are going to send a message loud and clear: The party of Lincoln and Reagan will never be held by a con artist."
Imagine driving down the highway and suddenly everything stops, from your power steering to your brakes.

There's now growing concern that scary scenario could play out in thousands of cars, all because of a component that could be under the hood.

Retired teacher Jackie Barnes says her Kia was trouble-free until one recent night, when everything went haywire.

"I was going to a friend's house, and I pulled out into the neighborhood and I thought, 'Wow, I can't see anything, my headlights aren't coming on, and the windows didn't work either,'" she says.

Her wiring harness had been chewed to pieces by rodents. The critter had even dragged a rag into the car's wheel well and made a nest.

Cost to repair the mess was $400, not including the tow charge.

Owners of cars across a spectrum of makes and models say it's happened to them too, and they blame soy.

Many carmakers have switched from petroleum-based wire insulation to a more earth-friendly version derived from soy. It's biodegradable, cheaper, and, apparently, a delicious treat for rodents like mice, rats, rabbits, and squirrels.

"It's the soy wiring that attracts them and the result is the same," says LA-based attorney Michael Braun. Repairs could cost thousands, and are not covered by warranty.

Braun says this could lead to a dangerous scenario for drivers.

"If you're lucky you'll wake up one morning and your car won't start. If you're unlucky, it'll get disabled in the middle of a freeway, in the middle of traffic," he says.

Braun has filed a class-action lawsuit against Honda on behalf of three car owners who blame soy wiring for rodent damage.

While a Honda spokesman, Chris Martin, wouldn't comment on pending litigation, he pointed to "evidence (that shows) how rodents have chewed on wires long before soy-based wiring came to be."

That opinion was echoed by Jim Martin, who teaches automotive science at Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, Texas.

"I've even seen them chew through rubber hoses in vehicles. I've seen vacuum hose damage and these are carbon-based," says Martin

Jackie Barnes said she's taking no chances and squirting her car with rodent-repellant every day and thanking her lucky stars.

"I was very happy that it happened in the driveway, but I'm very concerned for other people. They may be driving down the highway, and they could have a catastrophic failure," she says.

If you want to know if you have soy-derived components in your car, contact your manufacturer.

If you want to protect the wires and hoses under your hood from rodents, Consumer Reports has addressed this issue and offers the following advice:

Install a metal mesh around the wire harness, rubber hoses and openings.

Wrap the wire harness and hoses with a rodent-deterrent tape. You can find it online for about $30. It's electrical tape treated with capsaicin, the ultra spicy ingredient in peppers. Rats don't like it. The tape is manufactured by Honda.

Braun argued the fact that Honda manufactures the tape is an admission that they're aware of the problem. He thinks the company should do more to protect consumers.

Honda insists that rodents nesting in cars is an "age-old problem" and they're simply helping consumers with a solution.
It's official  months after the California State Legislature passed a resolution to rename the iconic Waldo Tunnel on U.S. Highway 101 in Marin after Robin Williams, the sign is finally up.

Assemblyman Marc Levine  who introduced the resolution to rename the rainbow-themed tunnel after the late actor and comedian who lived in Marin County  tweeted out a photo of the new sign, as did Belvedere resident Julie Wainwright, who started the name change petition.

"#RobinWillaims Tunnel is now official. Driving through the rainbow to or from San Francisco to Marin - remember Robin," Wainwright tweeted.

The tunnel is located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Marin County on U.S. Highway 101. Approximately 100,000 motorists use the tunnel daily.

The sign change cost about $3,000 and was erected by Caltrans. The signs were paid for with private donations. Caltrans District 4 tweeted out: "Nanu Nanu! New R Williams Tunnel - US 101 at SF Golden Gate Bridge. First day of service."

Wainwright explained the reason behind the name change through a brief message on Change.org: "To remember and honor the very important citizen and world renowned entertainer, Robin Williams, for the joy he brought to the world and to bring awareness to the silent illness that eventually took his life."

Williams was sober and battling early stages of Parkinson's disease when he committed suicide at his home in Tiburon, his widow Susan Schneider said.

The Waldo Tunnel was named after California politician William Waldo who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1853. The tunnels archways are painted in rainbow colors, which is why people sometimes call it the "rainbow tunnel."

The tunnel is reportedly featured in the Clint Eastwood film Dirty Harry, the Humphrey Bogart film Dark Passage and also plays a part in Williams 1999 film Bicentennial Man.
For children who lack a home or a secure place to live, having their own book and a set of crayons can mean a world of difference.

This week, preschool teacher Sasha Sharpe donated 40 copies of her self-published book, "Counting With Friends Outside," to the Monarch School for Homeless Children in downtown San Diego.

On Tuesday at 4 p.m., Sharpe will present preschool and first grade students at Monarch School with their very own hardcover copies of her book, along with a set of crayons. She will also sit and read with students.

Sharpe says that she created the book because she understands the crucial impact reading skills have on a child's development. As a preschool teacher with over 10 years of experience, she is well aware of how important it is for kids to have access to books.

"Counting With Friends Outside" is an interactive children's book which teaches essential skills such as counting, identifying numbers, colors and words. Sharpe says that its message encourages children to embrace and celebrate cultural differences.

Her goal was to find an organization that specifically serves underprivileged children with limited access to learning resources. Kristen Paruginog, Executive Director of Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence, helped to point Sharpe in the direction of the Monarch School, which serves homeless youth.

The school has served San Diego for more than 25 years. It began as a one-room education center before expanding into a K-12 school.
Eber Varela says he works hard but recently his employer didn't pay him.

I need to pay rent. I need to buy food, said Varela.

When a Bal Harbour restaurant formerly known as Table 10-09 refused to pay him for more than two weeks of work last year, it hurt. The line chef had to turn to family for money.

They helped me to survive but its not easy, said Varela.

After weeks of phone calls and visits to the restaurant his former boss gave him a check but it didnt clear.

The last time he said, I dont care. I dont want to pay, said Varela.

Six construction workers told the NBC 6 Investigators the same thing happened to them. They say contractor Carlos Gonzalez didn't pay them for work done at different job sites.

What bothers me the most is that they played us, said Orlando Rodriguez.

Carlos Gonzalez declined an on-camera interview but in a statement said he is an "honest person" a "businessman with principles."

Soon after getting our call, one of the workers told NBC 6 he received $8,000 from Gonzalez. The four others say they havent been paid.

Varela and the construction workers turned to Miami-Dade Countys Consumer Protection Department.

Theyre among more than 1,800 workers who have filed wage theft complaints in Miami-Dade since 2010. Often an agreement is reached in mediation, but when it's not, employees take their chances in front of a hearing officer.

Chef Alexander Hernandez ended up face to face with his former employer. Hernandez used time clock receipts to convince the county that the owner of the now closed The District restaurant owed him more than $2,000 for three weeks of work.

That was a lot because I have to pay my rent I have a baby, said Hernandez.

The restaurant owner wouldnt talk to us on cameratelling us she had no comment.

The hearing officer ruled in favor of both Alexander Hernandez and Eber Varela.

Their former employers have been ordered to pay them three times the amount they were owed.

Varelas former restaurant told the NBC 6 Investigators they owe him the money and plan to pay him.

Labor attorney Anthony Falzon says he sees these cases all the time.

In South Florida, regrettably, I would say we are ground zero for employers violating the law in terms of overtime pay, in terms of minimum wage violations and just out right refusal to pay the agreed amount, said Falzon.

Nury Vergaras Fort Lauderdale office of the US Department of Labor investigates wage theft complaints.

Its happening more frequently, Vergara said.

Nationwide, the agency has recovered more than a billion dollars in back pay for employees since 2011.

We find the most common violation is non-payment of overtime, said Vergara.

Filing a wage theft complaint with either the county or the US Department of Labor is free and you dont need an attorney. You can be awarded three times what youre owed. Below are helpful links and information for filing a wage theft complaint.

Miami-Dade Consumer Protection Office

601 NW 1st Court, 18th floor

Miami, FL 33136

Telephone: 786-469-2333

Wage theft complaint form for Miami-Dade:

Eligibility requirements to file a wage theft complaint in Miami-Dade:

- the work must have been completed in Miami-Dade within the last 12 months

- the claimed amount must be more than $60

- you must be an employee and not a contractor

Broward Countys Office of Intergovernmental Affairs

Governmental Center, Room 426/427

115 S. Andrews Avenue

Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301

Telephone: (954) 357-6500

Click here for the wage theft complaint form for Broward.

US Department of Labor

1-866-487-9243

Office Locations:

Miami

10300 Southwest 72nd St., Suite 255

Miami, FL 33173

Telephone: (305) 598-6607

Fort Lauderdale

Federal Building, Room 408

299 East Broward Blvd.

Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

Telephone: (954) 356-6896

West Palm Beach

1818 S. Australian Ave. #251

West Palm Beach, FL 33401

Telephone: (561) 640-0474
Brazilian police have released a Facebook executive who was arrested for ignoring a court's demand that the company provide data from its WhatsApp messaging service to help in a drug-trafficking investigation.

Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice president for Latin America, was released Wednesday, a police spokeswoman confirmed to The Associated Press.

Dzodan was arrested at Sao Paulo Guarulhos International Airport Tuesday on a warrant issued by a judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe.

The warrant says Dzodan repeatedly failed to comply with a judicial order to cooperate with an investigation into drug trafficking and organized crime. According to the complaint, the company had ignored requests to surrender user information from the WhatsApp messaging service, an application bought by Facebook in 2014.

When Facebook refused to comply, Brazilian authorities imposed fines, starting with 50,000 reais (about USD 12,500) daily beginning two months ago, and which rose to 1 million reais (USD 250,000) a month ago, Sergipe federal police told Brazil's Istoe.

WhatsApp expressed disappointment with the decision on Tuesday. It said in a statement that it was "unable to provide information we do not have."

The instant messaging service began using end-to-end encryption technology in 2014 that prevents the company from monitoring messages that travel across its network.

"They are using technology to try to take themselves out of the surveillance business," said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The arrest comes amid another security battle as Apple and the U.S. government are embroiled in their own dispute over a refusal to cooperate with the FBI in unlocking an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a mass killing by a couple in San Bernardino, California, last year.

The Associate Press contributed to this story.
Firefighters in Rockland County are sounding the alarm about a life-threatening danger: illegally converted homes and out-of-control construction. The hot zones are in the village of Spring Valley and the neighboring town of Ramapo.



The Spring Valley Fire Department, made up of volunteers, is the busiest in Rockland County. They drill on a regular basis, but say there is no amount of training that can prepare them for escalating, unforeseen dangers.



Ramshackle single-family homes are being scooped up by absentee landlords who turn them into potential fire traps for undocumented workers. The rooms rent for as much as $500 each.



Firefighter Aaron Lerer showed the I-Team one basement where a fire recently erupted. When we got in there it was just a crawl space. And we found smoke, fire, and just the whole basement was set up into illegal rooms, he said.



Firefighter Guilson Aguirre once lived in an illegal home with his parents and several others. Youre looking for somewhere to live, he said. Youre not trying to sleep in the street so you do as much as you can with as little as you can.



Fire Captain Justin Schwartz said the situation is dire. Theyre putting our lives at risk. Theyre putting residents lives at risk. Its a matter not if, but when the body bags start coming out.



First responders are saddled with outdated and expired equipment. Their chief pumper has failed more than once and the radios work only half of the time. The Department has been battling for years to get increased funding through the Village.



Spring Valley and Ramapo are in the middle of a construction boom. Firefighters and inspectors told the I-Team that issue is compounding the danger.



The law here is the wild, wild west,  said Schwartz. He complained that giant homes are getting approval to be built on top of property lines, with no room for emergency equipment to get by. Its weapons of mass construction -- thats what it is,  he said. Its wrong, its immoral.



Vacate orders are often ignored for construction of illegal student dormitories. Single-family homes suddenly become religious schools. Spring Valley Mayor Demeza Delhomme blamed other village officials and said he has no control over zoning and permits.



The danger is so huge, its scary, he said. He added his hands are tied and described the situation as a madness that should be stopped.



Delhomme said he wants federal officials to come in and fix the problem.



Rockland County Executive Ed Day has formed a housing task force to combat slumlords, utilizing health department codes. New York State Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski is calling for a state investigation and an immediate moratorium on temporary certificates of occupancy.


More than three years after Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey, thousands of homeowners are still feeling its effects. According to data obtained and analyzed by the NBC10 Investigators, just more than one out of every three homes has been fully rebuilt in the states largest recovery initiative.

NBC10 Investigative Reporter George Spencer spoke with three residents who -- a full 40 months after Sandy -- are still waiting for their homes to be completed.

Penny Ryan of Little Egg Harbor Township showed Spencer her front door, which sits well above her head but has no stairs. The backyard where her six children played remains a mud pit.

We continue to come back every single day  and its a reminder, every day, that this occurred. And were still living in it. Were still living this devastation, Ryan said.

On Pelican Island, adjacent to Seaside Heights, Sue Kosakowskis retirement dream is also still not rebuilt.

Neither is Lori Tyskas home across the street.

I just feel almost hopeless. Almost hopeless, Tyska told Spencer.

Each of the three women is frustrated by the pace of the recovery, and by public claims seeming to indicate the recovery is complete. At his last presidential debate, Governor Chris Christie exclaimed that the state had recovered.

And when the worst natural disaster in your states history hits you, they expect you to rebuild their state, which is what Ive done, Christie said.

The NBC10 Investigators dug into the data for New Jerseys largest recovery initiative: The Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation, and Mitigation (RREM) Program. The program either reimburses homeowners for repairs or pays contractors directly for the work.

We found 7,774 RREM grant agreements have been signed since the October 2012 storm. Yet, only 2,774 RREM homes have actually been re-built, which is about one out of every three approved projects.

The NBC10 Investigators also confirmed that more than 600 of those projects were just finished in the last quarter of 2015.

Ryan says her case was slowed because RREM was unprepared for the contractor fraud she suffered.

The first crews at Tyskas house didnt correctly repair her foundation. Tyska says RREM wasnt able to quickly find a new contractor to do the follow-up work, which left her home with township code violations in the meantime.

Kosakowski blames her delays on inconsistency in re-building standards between RREM, her insurance, and the township.

The RREM program is intended to help residents re-build, even despite such complications. Yet these homeowners say, inefficient and inadequate communication from RREM has often slowed repairs down further, and has occasionally added new hurdles.

They are not equipped to handle the scope of what Sandy brought to New Jersey, Sue Kosakowski.

After RREM representatives declined our on-camera interview request, we caught up with Governor Christie on the campaign trail in New Hampshire in February.

Christie told Spencer: Im never satisfied until everybody gets back in their home. But going from 365,000 homes destroyed to four or five thousand 

Spencer then asked about the RREM program, but Christie walked onto his campaign bus instead of answering. The governors office never responded to our requests for a more complete interview.

The New Jersey Department of Community Affairs points to other numbers, saying nearly all RREM grant agreements have been signed, and about 6,700 of RREMs 7,700 participants have received a notice to proceed with construction.

However, those numbers dont reflect whether or not construction has begun.

For the many in the still-unfinished group, frustration continues to grow.

Its hard to explain what it does to you, but it actually gets to the fiber of your soul, Kosakowski said.

Kosakowski, Ryan, and Tyska are part of a group called the New Jersey Organizing Project. State officials say theyve 'personally met and frequently communicate' with the group to address concerns.

By May 1, 2016, New Jerseys Housing Recovery Centers will be closed and consolidated into just two offices.

Officials say that will allow them to focus more of their resources on rebuilding and project completion, which they say are now the predominant needs of RREM homeowners.
Delaware's Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a former prep school headmaster sentenced to 50 years in prison on child pornography charges.

In a ruling Wednesday, the court said search warrants obtained by police investigating Christopher Wheeler were unconstitutionally broad.



Wheeler was convicted last year on 25 counts of dealing child porn. He waived his right to a jury trial after a judge denied a defense request to suppress evidence seized by authorities.



Wheeler is former headmaster at Tower Hill School in Wilmington, whose graduates include former DuPont Co. CEO Ellen Kullman, U.S. Sen. Chris Coons and television personality Dr. Oz.



Wheeler's attorney, Tom Foley, argued that authorities improperly used possible witness tampering as an excuse to obtain warrants allowing them to search Wheeler's computers, cellphones and other digital devices.



Wednesday's ruling follows a January court hearing in which the justices expressed serious concerns about the validity of the search warrant that led to Wheeler's arrest in 2013.



"The subject of this prosecution is an unsympathetic figure. And the sexual exploitation of children is a dreadful scourge in our society," Justice Karen Valihura wrote for the court in a 43-page ruling. "... There is always a temptation in criminal cases to let the end justify the means, but as guardians of the Constitution, we must resist that temptation."



Valihura said that because the state and federal constitutions mandate that the trial judge's refusal to suppress evidence must be reversed, Wheeler's convictions cannot stand.



Wheeler was arrested after police, prompted by allegations of sexual abuse for which he was never charged, searched his home and office.



Authorities purportedly were looking for evidence of Wheeler's communications with Pennsylvania brothers who, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State University, contacted Wheeler about their alleged molestation several decades ago.



In reply to a letter from one of the brothers, Wheeler apologized for the pain he had caused, saying, "I did those things."



"I'll wait to hear from you about further appropriate steps towards resolution and restitution," Wheeler added.

Defense attorney Tom Foley argued that nothing in Wheeler's correspondence or meetings with the brothers suggested, and no allegation was ever made, that he had tried to intimidate them or prevent them from reporting the alleged abuse to authorities.

Foley and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed its own brief in the case, also noted that the computer containing child pornography images for which Wheeler was convicted had last been turned on 10 months before the Pennsylvania brothers began communicating with him in July 2013.

In addition to challenging the search warrant, Foley said prosecutors never proved that Wheeler ever downloaded or looked at any images of child pornography, which he said were automatically cached to Wheeler's computer from newsgroups to which he had subscribed.

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Matt Denn said the Delaware Department of Justice had no comment on the ruling. Foley meanwhile sent the following statement:
Police on Wednesday said a shooting Tuesday night in Queen Village that left two young men wounded was in self-defense.

They said the 65-year-old shooter, who has a valid permit to carry, was accosted by the two young men and he eventually shot them when they began to assault him.

The man was with his wife on the 700 block of S. 2nd Street shortly after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday when they walked past a 21-year-old man and a 20-year-old man. The wife told police one of the men asked her husband, "What are you looking at?" to which her husband replied, "What are you looking at?" The wife said both men then punched her husband and threw him to the ground and continued to beat him.

Two other witnesses also told police they heard the commotion, looked out their window and saw the two men beating the 65-year-old. Another witness who was walking by at the time told police the two men were standing over the 65-year-old and repeatedly kicking him.

The 65-year-old man took out a .45 caliber pistol and opened fire striking the 21-year-old in the shoulder and the 20-year-old in the stomach. The two men were taken to Jefferson Hospital where they are both in stable condition.

The 65-year-old suffered bruises to his face, head and chest. He was taken to Methodist Hospital where he was treated and released. The man's wife was not hurt during the incident.

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office is currently reviewing the case. However, police told NBC10 they believe the shooting was done in self-defense.

"In any kind of situation like that, I mean the only appropriate amount of force would be to stop the aggressors," said Philadelphia Police Lieutenant John Stanford. "You can't become the aggressor. This man is very lucky he was able to defend himself and defend his wife because we don't know. We don't know if he didn't have a firearm, we don't know what we may have been talking about at this point in time."

Gilly Aroshas, who owns Gilly Jeans on South Street, told NBC10 he knows the couple, who also own a store in the neighborhood.

"Good for him that he knew how to protect himself," he said. "It could go any other way, the other side and he could get hurt or his wife. It's shocking to hear these kinds of things. You know I've been here for 30 years."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton dominated on Super Tuesday but the day had a few surprises. Sens. Ted Cruz, the Republican from Texas, and Bernie Sanders, Vermont's independent running in the primary as a Democrat, won not only their home states but also Oklahoma, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie showed up again on the campaign trail.

Here's a look at a few notable moments as 12 states went to the polls.

Where's Christie?

Christie is not only out of the presidential race but if six Gannett newspapers in his state have their way, hell be out of a job too.

The newspapers issued a joint editorial Tuesday calling on Christie to resign following his failed presidential campaign and his endorsement of Trump. If he doesnt, New Jersey should start a recall effort, the papers wrote.

"Were fed up with Gov. Chris Christies arrogance," the editorial said. "Were fed up with his opportunism. Were fed up with his hypocrisy."

[NATL] Highlights From the 2016 Campaign Trail

Christie spent part of 261 days out of state last year and later traveled to endorse Trump, the editorial noted.

That was true again on Tuesday, when Christie was in Florida to introduce Trump before a speech.

America wants to be strong and successful again but they know that to do that they need to have a strong, bold, tough, decisive leader back in the Oval Office, Christie said.

Christie, who stood behind Trump as the businessman spoke, has denied that he is jockeying for a job in a Trump administration.

He was notably subdued when joining Trump, which prompted a lot of chatter on Twitter. One of the hashtags that gained prominence was #FreeChrisChristie.

Head-to-Head With Trump?

Cruz wasted no time in urging his Republican rivals to back him so that he could take on Trump head-to-head.

So long as the field remains divided Donald Trumps path to the nomination remains more likely, he said. And that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation.

Ted Cruz urged Republican voters to unite behind him as a candidate to prevent Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination for president.

He said he was the only Republican who had beaten Trump three times  in Iowa, Texas and Oklahoma.

After tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump, he said.

Late in the night, Sen. Marco Rubio got his first win, in Minnesota.

Marco Rubio addressed supporters in Miami, Florida, attacking Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, saying The party of Lincoln and Reagan will never be held by a con artist.

Taking on Trump

Even before Super Tuesday was over, Clinton was looking ahead not only to the next round of primaries but to the general election and her expected rival, Trump.

We know weve got work to do but that work is not to make America great again, she said in a dig at Trumps campaign slogan. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole.

USA, USA, the crowd chanted.

Hillary Clinton addresses supporters in Miami, Florida, calling for restoration of respect and more love and kindness, directly taking on Donald Trump in her speech.

I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness, she said. Because you know what, it works. Instead of building walls, were going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment.

In his speech Tuesday, Trump insisted the country would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, a mainstay of his campaign.

And, he said, "Mexico is going to pay for the wall."

A Lavish Backdrop

Trump has gone his own way in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination and Super Tuesday was no exception.

Trump chose to give a news conference instead of the traditional victory party.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was sweeping through the South on Super Tuesday, with the Republican front-runner claiming victory in the partys primaries in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Massachusetts.

The Associated Press noted that reporters had assembled hours before in what it described as a Versailles-worthy room at his sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, adorned with gold-leaf detailing, columns, and three enormous crystal chandeliers.



An Early Night

Sanders came out early in the evening to give a victory speech in his home state of Vermont, where polls were among the first to close on Super Tuesday.

I am so proud to bring Vermont values all across the country, he told a crowd chanting Feel the Bern and Bernie.

Bernie Sanders thanked supporters in Vermont on Tuesday, March 1, 2016.

By speaking so early, Sanders was able to savor his win despite losses that came later in the evening. He predicted he would win many hundreds of delegates as they were divided proportionately among the candidates.

He did win hundreds of delegates but Clinton won more.
Twelve more victims have been added to the case of a dental assistant accused of sexually assaulting women while they were under sedation, according to the San Diego County District Attorneys office.

Luis Ramos, 36, now faces 31 charges from a total of 13 alleged victims, and a judge ordered he be held on a $1 million bail. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Ramos was initially arrested on Feb. 4 on suspicion of inappropriately touching a 17-year-old girl while she was undergoing a procedure at the Park Boulevard Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Office in University Heights, where he worked.

Prosecutors announced Tuesday they have identified another 12 victims. Ramos is accused of touching their breasts, buttocks and groin between January 2015 and January 2016. One of the victims was in a wheelchair, the DAs office said.

Ramos was charged with multiple counts of felony sexual battery of an institutionalized victim, which means he allegedly had skin-to-skin contact with an intimate part of the victim while she was unconscious due to anesthesia.

Prosecutors also charged him with misdemeanor sexual battery and felony sexual penetration of a person prevented from resisting by an anesthetic substance.

Dental surgeon Dr. Steven Podstreleny, for whom Ramos worked, previously told NBC 7 he is baffled that something like this could allegedly happen at his practice.

He said Ramos was a stellar employee and someone he looked to as a work brother.

Podstreleny released this statement Tuesday on the additional charges against Ramos:

"Dr. Steven Podstreleny remains shocked and deeply troubled by the allegations involving Mr. Ramos and continues to cooperate with the authorities in their investigation. Patient safety has been, and remains, his top priority. As noted in previous statements, the office has employed surveillance cameras to maximize patient safety and well-being. Dr. Podstreleny has provided all available information in this regard to the authorities and hopes the data from these safety measures will be beneficial to the appropriate administration of justice in this matter."

According to Podstreleny, at least one of the assaults was caught on security cameras posted around the office. The surgeon said he had the cameras installed in 2009 to provide an extra layer of protection for patients and as an effort at transparency.

Since Ramos arrest, San Diego police have been combing through more than 500 hours of surveillance video from the offices recovery room where the assaults allegedly took place.


A man accused of burglarizing at least seven San Diego-area homes while they were being fumigated slashed his way through tents covering the houses, the lead detective on the case testified Tuesday.

Suspect Salvador Amador Padilla, 34, is linked to the series of burglaries targeting homes under fumigation. From July 2015 through January 2016, the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) received 19 reports of burglaries at homes undergoing pest extermination. Evidence eventually led police to arrest Padilla on Feb. 9 as the suspect in at least seven of the cases.

At Padillas preliminary hearing Tuesday, SDPD Det. Claudia Shadoan took the stand and talked about some patterns she picked up on as she investigated the burglary series.

In all of the cases, [the suspect] would cut the tent open in the back area of the house  whether it was a window or a back door. There was always a cut in the tent, in the front area of the house, directly in front of the garage door, Shadoan explained.

In some cases, Shadoan said witnesses reported seeing a man driving away in a Jeep Cherokee.

At the time of his arrest last month, Padilla was allegedly caught red-handed breaking into a tented home, police said. When investigators searched Padillas home, they uncovered stolen property linked to multiple victims in the burglary series.

Shadoan said investigators also found a respiratory mask, which they believe the suspect wore to avoid fumes inside the homes he allegedly burglarized. Detectives matched Padillas fingerprints to fingerprints left behind at several of the burglaries.

Tuesdays prelim also included testimony from homeowner Steven Baugh, one of the burglary victims. Baugh said he was first alerted to something suspicious happening at his home via video captured by surveillance cameras he had installed on his property.

Baugh was at work when he checked the footage from his home remotely on his cell phone. He noticed an unknown man, now identified as Padilla, moving around inside his home. At first, Baugh said he thought Padilla was an exterminator preparing to start the fumigation job. Baugh decided to leave work and go home so he could be there to speak to exterminators.

However, when he arrived at his home, Baugh testified that no exterminators appeared to be around. Baugh said he heard movement coming from his tented home, specifically from his bedroom. He called out to see if anyone was inside, but got no answer. Shortly after that, as Baugh stood in the driveway, he realized his home was being burglarized.

The next thing I knew, I see a knife coming in and cut a slit in the tent, Baugh testified.

He immediately called 911 to report the burglary in progress.

Baugh testified that his surveillance cameras captured video of Padilla gathering items from inside his home and placing them by a side door.

Later, when the fumigation tent on Baughs home was lifted and he was allowed to return home, he said he found many things amiss, including drawers that had been tipped over, a television that had been unplugged and placed on his bed and a jewelry box that had been emptied. A rifle that Baugh had stored in the closet of his bedroom was also placed inside a trash can.

Baughs wife, Mercedes, said they had decided to install cameras on their property before the fumigation project because, in her words, we work so hard for the things in our house.

Police said the homes targeted in these burglaries were tented by various fumigation companies. Investigators said that if your home is being fumigated, you should notify your neighbors so they can be on alert for any suspicious activity. Also, police advise homeowners to take valuables with them for the duration of the pest control project.


Officers in the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) documented a 13 percent increase in instances where force was used between 2014 and 2015  with a sharp increase in the number of times an officer pulled a firearm on an individual.



Through the California Public Records Act, NBC 7 obtained data that details 15,995 instances where force was used in 2015.



The data is tracked so police can evaluate how effective their training is and which use of force works in different scenarios.



Its to determine the effectiveness of the force used so that it can be evaluated by our training division, so they can look and see how our training is going and if new training needs to be implemented, said SDPD Sgt. Lisa McKean. Its just a way of us looking at ourselves so we can be the best police department we can be, and so we can serve the public in the best possible way.

Use of a taser went down nearly 20 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Use of carotid restraint, a type of neck restraint, went down nearly 36 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Number of instances when a police officer pointed a firearm at someone went up 55 percent between 2014 and 2015. Pointing a firearm at a person was documented 1,027 times in 2014 and 1,595 times in 2015.

Rev. Shane Harris, president of the National Action Network San Diego chapter, praised SDPD for providing the numbers and reviewing them. He said he would like to see more break-downs in the data by council district and age.



I think that we bring about a conversation with these numbers in mental health, which I think has been left aside in black and brown communities when it comes to policing, Harris said. Seeing the numbers go up, it definitely is a mental health conversation, the use of force from the police department.



The SDPD confirms the volume of mental health-related calls is a concern and may be impacting the numbers. A spokesman also pointed out the department responds to more than a million calls for service every year, which puts the use of force instances into perspective as less than one percent of total calls.



McKean said there is a process for raising concerns about officers actions, but the goal is for subjects to comply with officers verbal commands during any incident.



When the event is happening, the best thing we can do is we want the person to comply with the officers orders, she said. There is a time and its after the event, after weve ensured that the public is safe and that the officers are safe and the situation has been rendered safe. Then there is a time to discuss differences of opinion and discuss our tactics.



Harris said the problem with that idea is there is no transparent process for raising concerns about San Diego police officers, and outcomes of internal investigations into officers' actions are not made public.



The problem is there has not been a strong internal affairs department, Harris said, pointing out the city's citizens review board is not considered independent by many in the public. I think it scares people in society when you dont have a transparent board.



We hope to see these numbers go down and police being held accountable," he added.

DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2730308-2016-0030-2014-2015-Use-of-Force-Data.js", { width: 600, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2730308-2016-0030-2014-2015-Use-of-Force-Data" }); 2016-0030-2014-2015-Use-of-Force-Data (PDF)
Yosemite National Park is set to start showing the new names for some of park's most iconic attractions after no settlement was reached to a bitter legal dispute.

As of Tuesday, the historic Ahwahnee Hotel will become the Majestic Yosemite Hotel and Curry Village campground will be named Half Dome Village. Badger Pass Ski Resort will now be Yosemite Ski and Snowboard Area.



The park service announced last year that it would change the names of Curry Village, the Ahwahnee Hotel, Badger Pass Ski Resort and many other attractions after failing to reach agreement with the company that says it owns the trademarks to those attractions.

Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, who keeps close tabs on the national park system, said in an earlier interview that the move to trademark such high-profile park institutions is likely unprecedented.

"I don't know that this has ever happened before," Trainer told NBC Bay Area in a 2014 interview. "It will be a real travesty if this company is allowed to hijack the name of one of America's most beloved places and hold it for ransom. It won't change the majesty of the Ahwahnee Hotel, but certainly something will be lost."

The trademark issue was first reported by the alternative weekly in Oakland, the East Bay Express, and it appeared to have caught the National Park Service off guard.



The company, Delaware North, has served as the park's concessionaire since 1993, running numerous park operations until losing the contract to Aramark, which is scheduled to take over at midnight. Delaware North and the Park Service have been unable to agree on the value of the trademarks and the Buffalo, New York-based company filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit.



The dispute prompted the Park Service to announce the name changes. Starting at midnight, Park Service employees began placing temporary signs over road signs directing visitors to the attractions while Aramark will be responsible for changing the names of the attractions.



Park Service spokesman Scott Gediman said temporary signs are being used in the hope that a settlement will be reached with Delaware North.



An historic sign welcoming visitors to the park's Ahwahnee Hotel was stolen sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning, Gediman said.



"It's part of the park's historic fabric," Gediman said. "And we are taking this seriously."



The Ahwahnee Hotel is to be renamed the Majestic Yosemite Hotel.



Delaware North spokesman Glen White said Park Service officials turned down the company's offer to let the park continue using the trademark names until the legal dispute was resolved.

In a lengthy email to NBC Bay Area two years ago, Delaware North at Yosemite Director of Marketing Jim Stellmack explained what he called a "complex" issue. He said that the National Park Service required his company to buy the stock from the previous concessionaire, the Yosemite Park and Curry Co., which it turn made Delaware North the owners of those assets, which are both "tangible and intangible."

Stellmack compared the issue to when the National Park Service gave intellectual property rights over to "The Ansel Adams Gallery" in Yosemite, "Verkamp's," a shop previously operated in the Grand Canyon and the logo for the Red Bus Tours in Glacier National Park, which the previous concessionaire would not sell to the successor.

In a follow-up phone interview at the time, Stellmark said the naming rights have been trademarked "all along," since before Delaware North took over the hotel and restaurant operations, and it's likely coming to light now as his company's contract is up for renewal.



Gediman said the Park Service turned down the offer made Friday because that would "acknowledge they own the names.''



Mark Bartholomew, a University at Buffalo law professor who teaches trademark law, says Delaware North may also want to preserve the value of the names at issue. The iconic names will lose value if they are no longer used, he said.



"I think all sides will ultimately come to an agreement after some more posturing,'' Bartholomew said.



Court filing show the Park Service valuing the trademarks at $3.5 million and Delaware North puts their worth at $51 million.
This has become a traumatic election cycle for pillars of the Republican Party.



They're now seeing the Donald Trump Express as a potential runaway to the GOP nomination.



And some San Diegans are wondering if its too late to be stopped.

"If Trump continues on his course of getting more delegates than any other candidate, said Republican political consultant Ryan Clumpner, it is going to fracture the Republican Party in a way that we have not seen in the past hundred years."

Tony Krvaric, chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, offers this carefully worded statement about Trumps suitability as the GOP nominee: "Republican voters are looking for someone with the right temperament and conservative principles to lead our party."

Theres a growing school of thought the Grand Poobahs of the Grand Old Party let Trump gain too much momentum, consoling themselves with the fact that he hadn't garnered votes more than 10 percent of the eligible electorate in any of the four state primaries and caucuses.

Said Santee resident Alara Chilton, in an interview on Super Tuesday: I think the Republican Party is seriously underestimating his ability to connect with voters.



Now the possibility of Trump having a lion's share of delegates this early in the campaign is looming large  as well as the prospect of a contested party nominating convention in Cleveland.

When things are starting to hit the fan, its like Oh, now I want to get serious, said National City resident Kristina Bethea, and they should have gotten serious when he ran for president right from the get-go.

As for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Democratic strategists are said to be enjoying the spectacle of those two rivals being reduced to afterthoughts, setting up the "blue" side of the ledger for a predictable win in November -- assuming Trump's nomination is a foregone conclusion.

Unless Trump quits, theyre kind of  pardon my French  messed up, Fallbrook resident Joy DeMetriou told NBC 7. What they didnt do, they didnt attack Trump as who he is.

Republican leaders also are fretting about Trump's potential "down-ballot" impact on gubernatorial, senatorial, state legislative and local GOP candidates if he's the nominee.

The real concern is that Trump is so disconnected from what Republicans in San Diego look like, said Clumpner. The question will be, will local candidates be able to distance themselves from the national scene sufficiently?


Frustrated by the lack of diversity of Academy Award nominees, D.C.-based journalist April Reign last year was the first to tweet the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, launching a campaign to change the Academy's nomination criteria and transform the film industry to reflect greater diversity.

This year, the hashtag flooded timelines again after the Oscar nominations were announced -- and showed a stunning lack of diversity. It was a theme that Oscar host Chris Rock returned to over and over again on Sunday night's telecast.

Reign spoke with NBC Washington about what inspired her to create the hashtag and how her campaign has developed.

NBC Washington: Tell us about the creation of the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.

[In] January of 2015, I was watching the Oscar nominations in my family room and was disappointed and frustrated in the lack of marginalized communities that were nominated for Oscar awards in that year; not only in the actor and actress categories, but also the filmmakers behind the camera. So I took to Twitter to vent my frustration.

Did it take some time before the hashtag took off?

No, it trended pretty immediately since that was the day that the Academy Awards were announced.

With shows like "Scandal," "How to Get Away With Murder," "Blackish" and "Fresh Off the Boat," why does TV seem to be much more diverse than what's going on in film?

Well, it's a completely different medium, and so there are different considerations with respect to distribution and cost and how the actual shows or films are made.

We also know that there is distinction between the amount of marginalized communities that are working behind the scenes, right? So, for example, ABC just announced that they have their very first African American woman who is going to be the head of ABC, and so that will also create a shift or change and exhibits the difference between film and TV.

What do you think needs to happen for the industry to change?

Well, there's an article published in the Guardian in which I've laid out a 10-point plan. Part of that will include ensuring that the Hollywood executives and the studios are using a much more of a broader perspective in determining who is cast in particular films and who is going to be telling those stories behind the camera, meaning the screenwriters, directors, producers, cinematographers and so on.

Was there any negative pushback to #OscarsSoWhite?

Well, I think that the majority of the negative response that I've gotten is from people who have very little information about what the hashtag is about or the actual statistics of the Academy. But, overwhelmingly, the response has been positive, and so we keep fighting and moving forward, concentrating on the positive energy.

What did you do during Oscar night?

We engaged in counter-programming, so instead of watching the awards show, we live-tweeted the coming-of-age movie "The Wood" via Netflix. And then after that, people also were live-tweeting the movie "Marley" about the musician and activist Bob Marley.

If you've seen the video clips, what did you think of Chris Rock's performance?

Well, I didn't see Chris Rock's performance, so I would only be commenting on what other people saw and their frame of reference. It was my impression, based on some of the comments that I saw, that perhaps Chris Rock could have been more inclusive. But he does not speak for #OscarsSoWhite, and that needs to be made exceedingly clear. He was doing his job as host, and I'm sure it was a difficult one for him.

Do you think you will see change by next year's Oscars? What kind of change?

I think the change is going to be incremental. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs has indicated that the Academy expects to diversify its membership by 2020 and double the number of people of color and women within its ranks. But again, the Academy can only nominate films that are actually made, so the onus must be on Hollywood, not necessarily the Academy as much, to create better films that the Academy can actually nominate.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser says she can no longer support a proposed $6.8 billion merger of Pepco and Exelon.

The Washington Post reports Bowser's administration negotiated for the companies to pay the District $78 million for support for the merger from D.C., Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and federal regulators. That would have cushioned District residents from rate increases for four years.

But District regulators rejected the plan, saying it wasn't in the public interest and would exacerbate an imbalance in which federal taxpayers and businesses subsidize residential rates.

"Unfortunately, the Public Service Commission... gutted the consumer protections that would be necessary to win my support," Bowser told News4's Mark Segraves.

The D.C. Public Service Commission said it would reconsider the deal under new terms that removed any guarantee to hold down residential rates.

News4's Tom Sherwood reports one of the conditions of the commission was to eliminate a three-year freeze on electricity rates for residential customers.

The lawyer who officially represents the rate payers, People's Counsel Sandra Mattavous-Frye, says she won't sign off on the merger unless the rate freeze is restored.

The opposition by Frye could delay and possibly kill the merger, Sherwood reports. The People's Counsel is one of nine groups that must unanimously agree to the merger before it can go into effect.

Pepco and Exelon have about 10 more days to officially inform the Public Service Commission that all parties agree. D.C. officials say negotiations are underway to resolve any differences.
Jesse L. Matthew Jr. pleaded guilty Wednesday in the deaths of two Virginia college students who vanished five years apart.

Matthew, 34, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and abduction with intent to defile in the deaths of 18-year-old Hannah Graham and 20-year-old Morgan Harrington.

The plea agreement carries with it four consecutive life sentences, one for each charge. Matthew has agreed to waived any right to petition for any type of parole, appeal or geriatric release, Commonwealth's Attorney Robert N. Tracci said.

BREAKING: #JesseMatthew plea terms: receives 4 life sentences w/ no geriatric release, no appeal. via @HenryGraff  NBC29 (@NBC29) March 2, 2016

In accepting the plea agreement, the judge dropped the capital murder charge against Matthew in Graham's 2014 death. That charge had carried with it the possibility of the death penalty.

The victims' parents said they fully supported the plea agreement. In a press conference following the hearing, Graham's father, John Graham, said the agreement kept Hannah's friends and family from being retraumatized by a murder trial.

"The overriding priority was that that Matthew will never be able again to inflict his depravity on young women," John Graham said.

"Today's events do not bring Hannah back to us, of course," he said. "We miss her every day and know that others do, too."

John Graham said Hannah loved Charlottesville and had been excited to return for her second year.

"At the time of her death, she was totally immersed in her courses, making plans, and looking forward to Nationals post-season baseball," he said. "We draw considerable pride in all that Hannah achieved in her short life, mercilessly cut short by Jesse Matthew. His evil deprived the world of a great talent, but Hannah's enduring gift to us all is that she enabled this wicked man to be apprehended and convicted. She did change the world, but at a terrible price."

Morgan Harrington's mother, Gil Harrington, said the plea agreement would let their family redirect their energy into healing and recovery.

"Both are areas that we have neglected during our quest for justice for Morgan," she said. "It has been a long, a very long journey to this point, and it has been a hard road...."

She thanked law enforcement, the media and the community for never giving up.

"For six and a half years, you all were determined and resolute to find the top-tier predator that hunted in this community," she said. "...They say it takes a village to raise a child. I know it takes one to bury a child. We are most grateful for the kindness and compassion you have lavished on our family."

Gil Harrington asked community members to continue to participate in their community, know their neighbors and look out for each other.

"Together, we can help save the next girl," she said.

Commonwealth's Attorney Robert N. Tracci said the state can re-indict Matthew with the capital charge should the terms of the plea agreement be violated.

"This agreement serves the interest of justice," Tracci said. "It ensures public safety and offender accountability.... "It serves the interest of justice by providing a joint resolution consistent with the wishes of the Graham and Harrington families that avoids the additional revictimization associated with highly public trials."

The judge also dropped a reckless driving charge against Matthew.

Through his attorney, Matthew said he was sorry and loves his family very much.

Matthew, who was a taxi driver before going to work at the University of Virginia hospital, already is serving three life sentences for the sexual assault and attempted murder of a 26-year-old woman in Fairfax, Virginia.

Matthew would have been tried separately in the killings of Graham, a student at the University of Virginia, and Harrington, a Virginia Tech student who disappeared after attending a concert on the U.Va. campus.

Witness Would Have Testified About Interaction With Woman Believed to Be Harrington

Hannah Elizabeth Graham and Morgan Dana Harrington were both young women in vulnerable straits when they vanished in Charlottesville, five years apart, authorities have said.

Harrington disappeared the night of Oct. 17, 2009, after she stepped out of the John Paul Jones Arena at U.Va. during a Metallica concert and was unable to get back in. She texted a friend shortly before 8:50 p.m. that she would "get a ride."

She was never heard from again. In January 2010, Harrington's remains would be found on Anchorage Farm in southern Albemarle County.

According to a statement of facts released by prosecutors Wednesday, Matthew was a cab driver at the time Harrington vanished. Four witnesses said that on Oct. 17, 2009, they took cab rides to the John Paul Jones Arena in a van that matched the description of Matthew's vehicle at the time. Their driver matched Matthew's description, the statement said.

Had the case gone to trial, one of the witnesses would have testified to seeing someone matching Harrington's description standing within feet of the cab as the witness got out. The witness remembered commenting to the young woman on her Pantera T-shirt.

That T-shirt was found about three weeks later. Police say DNA on the shirt matched DNA from the then-unsolved 2005 Fairfax sex assault. A forensic scientist later determined the same DNA was found on Matthew's belongings, the prosecutors' statement said.

Prosecutors also said a dog hair on the shirt had the same mitochondrial DNA haplotype as Matthew's dog, which occurs in only 13.3 percent of dogs in the U.S.

Investigators who analyzed Matthew's cellphone records say his phone showed "considerable activity" in the Charlottesville area in the hours before and after Harrington's disappearance, but about an hour and a of of "inactivity" at around 9:30 p.m.

The first cellphone activity after that hour and a half pinged a tower "consistent with the general direction" of the farm where Harrington's remains would be found, the prosecutors' statement said.

Women Say Matthew Acted Inappropriately in Bars the Night Graham Disappeared

On the night of Sept. 12, 2014, Graham had dinner and attended off-campus parties with friends, but left by herself. In the early-morning hours of Sept. 13, 2014, she was captured on surveillance video walking unsteadily, and sometimes running, past a service station and a restaurant. She texted a friend that she was lost.

According to the statement of facts in the case, Matthew visited several local bars that night and "began a pattern of physically invasive and inappropriate behavior toward women."

Several women later told investigators that Matthew made them feel uncomfortable and made unwanted advances toward them.

Surveillance video showed Graham crossing Charlottesville's downtown pedestrian mall, then leaving a restaurant with Matthew, his arm wrapped around her.

A witness later told authorities that Matthew "did not look friendly" and that Graham had stopped at Matthew's orange Chrysler Sebring as Matthew unlocked the passenger door. The witness heard Graham say she wasn't getting in the car with him, and that Graham sounded frightened.

Authorities said they were unable to track Matthew's movements via cellphone during that time because the phone was likely in airplane mode.

Graham's disappearance, which came at a time of rising national concern about sexual assaults and other crimes on college campuses, prompted a massive search. Her body was found five weeks later on abandoned property in Albemarle County, about 12 miles from the U.Va. campus and six miles from where Harrington's remains were found.

Had the case gone to trial, a botany expert would have testified that plant material recovered from the chassis of Matthew's vehicle was consistent with the plant life where Graham's remains were found.

Witnesses would have testified that in the days after Graham's disappearance, Matthew acted strangely, saying that he was "not okay," reporting to work late and not acknowledging coworkers. Others would have testified that Matthew had a swollen jaw and rarely left his apartment, prosecutors said.

Previous Accusations; Conviction in 2005 Attempted Murder

After police named Matthew a person of interest in Graham's disappearance, he fled and was later apprehended on a beach in southeast Texas. He was charged with abduction with intent to defile, a felony that empowered police to swab his cheek for a DNA sample. That sample connected Matthew to the 2005 sexual assault in Fairfax, Virginia, according to authorities.

Matthew was charged in that case and went to trial last year. During the trial, the victim testified that she was sure she was going to die during the attack. Her assailant ran off when a bystander approached the wooded area where she had been dragged and assaulted.

Matthew ultimately took an Alford plea in that case. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt, but an acknowledgment that there was enough evidence to convict.

The DNA evidence in the Fairfax attack, in turn, linked Matthew to the Harrington case, authorities have said.

Matthew also had been accused of raping students in 2002 and 2003 at Liberty University and Christopher Newport University, where he had played football.

Those cases were dropped when the women declined to press charges.
The Tidal Basin will be covered with cherry blossoms in just four weeks, the National Park Service revealed Wednesday.

The NPS says peak bloom for the city's famed cherry blossom trees will occur between March 31 and April 3.

Peak bloom is considered to occur when 70 percent of the Yoshino cherry trees along the Tidal Basin are in bloom. The park service says unusually warm or cold temperatures have resulted in peak bloom as early as March 15 and as late as April 18. The average date for blooming is April 4.

Organizers have already announced the dates for this year's National Cherry Blossom Festival. It's scheduled to run for four weeks from March 20 to April 17. The festival is a big boost for city and regional tourism.

Here's a peek at some of the best events:

Saturday, March 26: The official opening ceremony features performances at the Warner Theatre (513 13th St. NW). Tickets are free but are required to attend; see the festival website.

The official features performances at the Warner Theatre (513 13th St. NW). Tickets are free but are required to attend; see the festival website. Saturday, April 2: Oh, go fly a kite! The Blossom Kite Festival , a family-favorite tradition, has competitions and demonstrations. You can bring your own kite, or kids can make their own!

Oh, go fly a kite! The , a family-favorite tradition, has competitions and demonstrations. You can bring your own kite, or kids can make their own! Saturday, April 9: The Southwest Waterfront Fireworks Festival will blast off above the water after a full day of enjoying food vendors, an artists' marketplace and more.

The will blast off above the water after a full day of enjoying food vendors, an artists' marketplace and more. Saturday, April 16: The National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade boasts a 10-block-long lineup of balloons, bands and all things pink. Grandstand tickets are on sale now for $20, but standing room along the route is free.

The boasts a 10-block-long lineup of balloons, bands and all things pink. Grandstand tickets are on sale now for $20, but standing room along the route is free. Saturday, April 16: After the parade, six blocks near Capitol Hill turn into a celebration of Japanese culture with food, performances and more during the Sakura Matsuri Festival . Tickets are $10 and free for children under 12.

After the parade, six blocks near Capitol Hill turn into a celebration of Japanese culture with food, performances and more during the . Tickets are $10 and free for children under 12. Saturday, April 16-Sunday April 17: The Cherry Blast at the Carnegie Library (801 K St. NW) is a celebration of Japanese pop culture, including anime, cosplay, fashion and gaming, plus a Japanese-inspired dance party. You can also indulge in Tokyo street food, sake tastings and sushi workshops. The event runs from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.

To celebrate the National Park Service's 100th birthday, festival officials say they will also hide a special cherry blossom themed gnome in parks this spring. Those who find "Petal the Gnome" will win a festival prize package.

This year marks the 104th anniversary of the gift of the cherry blossom trees from Japan as a symbol of friendship with the United States.
There are a lot of sentences and phrases that can drive you bonkers.

No problem, says the wait staff or sales clerk.

Whatever, say the terminally bored anywhere.

At the end of the day, says the politician or executive summarizing something or another.

But if you ride Metro, or are thinking about riding, there is no phrase more grating  or more commonplace  than the warning: Allow extra time.

We hear it every day, from a host of traffic reporters and other media announcers. Allow extra time.

Your Notebook has one question.

Who the hell has extra time?

Parents scrambling to get children to school dont have extra time. College students who have early classes dont have extra time. Hourly workers who could lose money  or their jobs  dont have extra time to bet on whether

Metro is reliable enough to get them to work on time.

Frustrated riders of Metro are not allowing the troubled transit system extra time.

Bus ridership is down. Metrorail ridership is down.

Your Notebook has said on the WAMU Kojo Nnamdi Politics Hour that we have given up casual riding of Metro. For us, Metro is not a commuter necessity from our Southwest Waterfront stop on the Green Line. But it could be a ride to the National Mall or Silver Spring or Bethesda or H Street NE or any number of other places.

But on weekends, to get to any of those places you must allow for extra time. Your Notebook and so many others have realized that driving, biking or Ubering is faster, easier and cheaper if you factor in extra time.

We hope and believe the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authoritys new general manager Paul Wiedefeld and new board chair Jack Evans understand this frustration. The question is how much extra time commuters and casual riders will give them to fix it.

 The 5 percent solution. Apart from the endless track work and single-tracking that is announced for any number of lines every weekend, the Metro system is struggling with an even more serious threat to its system: the fear of crime.

People know that some thieves stand ready to snatch your cellphone and jump off a rail car just as the doors are closing. People know that you dont leave valuables sitting next to you on an empty seat.

But commuters and casual riders fear random acts of violence, whether by an individual or groups of people acting out on buses and subway cars. In some cases, there is serious violence.

This past week Metro finally and publicly acknowledged this fear. Metro Police Chief Ronald Pavlik announced that 17 officers previously assigned to guarding transfers of farebox receipts would be assigned to patrol duties.

They and other officers will step onto rail cars and step off after observing if there is any cause for concern.

The reassigned officers amount to a 5 percent increase in Metro patrols.

One frequent rider told us that he felt no safer with that 5 percent increase. Why not 50 percent? he asked.

Your Notebook often has wondered why there isnt regularly a recognizable police presence on each of the systems platforms or at the exits and entrances. To cover the entire rail system and bus routes likely would be cost-prohibitive. But insiders at Metro, including Chairman Evans, say Metro must have a system that feels safe.

As Evans told Kojo Nnamdi, the Metro system must be safe, reliable and affordable. Otherwise, what kind of system do we have?

 All aboard. On Saturday, Mayor Muriel Bowser declared, Lets ride, and the citys long-delayed streetcar rolled along H Street NE with its first passengers.

It was a fun grand opening. The Eastern High School band entertained everyone. Past and present transportation officials circulated among the crowd. Parents hoisted children to see the ceremonies and watch the streetcar roll.

For six months this new system will be free. People will get to try out the ride for themselves. Despite no public acknowledgement, there are worries that homeless people may seek to camp out on streetcars during cold, rainy or hot weather. There were also quiet concerns that rowdy teenagers will frolic up and down H Street.

But on Saturday, joyful crowds scampered aboard the system that has cost more than $200 million and as of now doesnt really know where it will go next. Mayor Bowser says it will go east toward Minnesota Avenue NE, but details are still to be worked out.

You might say, as we did at the top of this column, we need to allow extra time before we know the streetcars future.

Tom Sherwood, a Southwest resident, is a political reporter for News 4.


Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won their party's respective presidential primaries Tuesday in Virginia, a swing state likely to play a key role in November's general election.



Clinton easily defeated Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary with overwhelming support from African-Americans, women, and older voters, exit polls show.



Trump narrowly defeated Marco Rubio in a tight Republican race, thanks in large part to strong support from Virginia's evangelical, rural, lower-income and less educated voters, according to the exit polls.

With the win, Clinton and Trump add to a recent string of wins in early primaries, strengthening their positions as front-runners.



Turnout was high across the state, causing long lines in some areas, but state election officials said they were unaware of any major problems. In Arlington County, election officials had to photocopy Republican ballots to meet ``unprecedented'' GOP demand, said Linda Lindberg, the county's director of elections.



As a nod to Virginia's cachet as a diverse state that will help decide the general election, every candidate made at least one stop here in the days before the primary.



Clinton focused heavily on shoring up support from African-American voters. She also relied on high-profile surrogates to stump for her, including her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and her longtime friend Gov. Terry McAuliffe.



"Her husband was pretty good, so I want to give her a chance,'' said Adrian Harris, a 58-year-old Richmond resident. The retired mechanic said he feared a Trump victory in November would send the country into "turmoil.''

"America is strong when we are all strong," Clinton said Tuesday night in Miami, Florida. "We know we have work to do. That work is not to make America great again. America never stopped being great."

Trump, speaking from Palm Beach, Florida, responded.

She wants to make America whole again, and I'm trying to figure that out. Make American Great Again is going to be better than Make American Whole Again."

Rubio, speaking from Miami, vowed to beat Trump.

"We will not let the next president of the U.S. be a con artist. We will not allow the next president of the U.S. to be a socialist like Bernie Sanders. We will not allow the next president of the U.S. to be under FBI investigation like Hillary Clinton," he said.

Who Voted How?

Clinton received strong support from women, blacks, voters who put a premium on experience and older residents to win Virginia's Democratic presidential primary, according to preliminary results of exit polls conducted by Edison Research for the Associated Press and television networks.

[[370665931, C]]

In the Republican primary, front-runner Trump fared well among lower-income and less-educated voters, as well as people who looking for a leader who "tells it like it is" and will be an agent for change, the early data showed. Trump's closest rival in a tight GOP battle, Marco Rubio, was favored by voters who said the most important consideration is choosing a nominee who can win in November.

Democrat Bernie Sanders dominated among voters under 30 and those who said they value honesty, the preliminary data indicated.

The younger the voters in the Democratic primary, the better 74-year-old Sanders fared. Four in 10 voters were under age 45, and nearly 6 in 10 of them voted for the Vermont senator. He ran even stronger among voters under age 25, getting 7 of 10 votes.

Conversely, Clinton was favored by about three-fourths of voters 45 and older. She also won the vote of about 8 in 10 blacks.

Clinton was the favorite among voters who think the ability to win is most important, gaining better than 8 in 10 votes among that group.

More than a third of voters considered the right experience the most important quality, and 9 in 10 of them voted for Clinton.

More than half of the voters who earn less than $50,000 a year voted for Trump, the billionaire real estate mogul. Nobody else got more than about 2 in 10 votes among that group.

Rubio was the leader among the most-educated voters, getting the support of 4 in 10 of those with post-graduate study.

About seven in 10 Republican voters who said it's most important to have a candidate who "tells it like it is" voted for Trump.

Six in 10 voters who said the most important thing is having a candidate who can win in November voted for Rubio.

The exit poll survey was conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research as voters left their polling places at 30 randomly selected sites in Virginia. Preliminary results include interviews with 1,370 Democratic primary voters and 1,407 Republican primary voters. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

What's at Stake?

Republicans voted in 11 states Tuesday, with 595 delegates at stake; 49 of those are in Virginia. Democrats cast ballots in 11 states as well as American Samoa, with 865 delegates up for grabs; 95 of those are in Virginia.

The winners in Virginia are likely to say that their victories show they can do well in the general election, as the Old Dominion has a diverse electorate and is expected to be an important swing state, experts say.

"Virginia is America in miniature," said Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. "A win here means more than a win in a lot of other states."

"Virginia is as good a bellwether as there is for the national electorate, so we wanted her to have a big win tonight," Sen. Tim Kaine said.

Virginia voters told News4 this election was too important to stay home. Voters lined up outside many polling places early Tuesday, before polls had opened.

"It's been a pretty wild election season. It's been entertaining up 'til now, but I'm thinking it's not funny anymore," one voter said.

"A lot is at stake in this country at the moment," another voter said.

What Do We Know About Voter Turnout?

The GOP in Virginia said a record number of voters, more than 1 million, turned out for the Republican ticket.

Higher-than-expected Republican turnout in Arlington County forced election officials to photocopy ballots to meet demand.



Linda Lindberg, the county's director of elections, said several precincts ran short on GOP ballots due to "unprecedented" turnout. Lindberg said 33 percent of Arlington County voters participated in the Democratic primary in 2008, while just 7 percent cast Republican ballots. This year, she expects Republican turnout to be around 15 percent, compared to 25 percent for Democrats.

In Fairfax County, election officials said more than 700,000 people registered to vote -- an increase of nearly 100,000 voters from 2008.

Republican Party of Virginia Chairman John Whitbeck said GOP voters were fired up to get to the polls.

"The evidence is clear that we're looking at a record turnout in Virginia,'' he said.



Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Virginia, said she expected turnout on the Democratic side to be "robust," but wasn't sure whether it would be record setting.

What Were Voters Thinking at the Polls?

Donald Trump was on the mind of many voters in both parties.



Troy Waller, who cast his vote for Trump in Richmond's Church Hill neighborhood, said the country is need of a "shake-up." He said he likes that Trump is an outsider.

"He's got a different way of looking at things, and he's an independent-thinking guy," Walker said. "He's not going to be influenced by anyone else."



But other Republicans said they were casting votes specifically for candidates they thought had the best chance to beat Trump.



Jim Cahill, a retiree who lives in Chesterfield County, said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has the best chance of beating Trump. But Cahill said he voted for Cruz "reluctantly" -- he doesn't think the senator is a "straight-shooter."

"I just don't care for the guy," Cahill said. "I want to stop Trump."



Retiring U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, who represents Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, issued an open letter Tuesday calling on his supporters to vote for "any candidate but Donald Trump."



"Everything I have learned in life about leadership, about business, and about our incredible country tells me to pull every alarm in the house. A con man is among us," Rigell said.



Even some Democrats were voting in the Republican primary with an aim to stop Trump. Virginia holds open primaries, in which registered voters can choose to vote in either primary.



Nicole Freed, a disabled 32-year-old Army veteran who served in Iraq, said she cast her primary ballot for Republican Marco Rubio with the simple aim of knocking Donald Trump off the Republican ballot in November.



"I can't let Trump win," she said.

Other voters said said they didn't like any of the candidates.

"If there was a candidate for 'none of the above,' that's what I would pick," Prince William County voter Gary Miller said.
Virginia's Republican-controlled Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would force schools to notify parents if their children will be assigned to read books with sexually explicit content, a policy that opponents called the first step toward censorship in schools.



The bill passed with a 22-17 vote after a spirited debate during which a supporter read a rape scene from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye before one of his colleagues asked him to stop because the Senate pages were in the chamber.



I think that makes my point, doesn't it? Republican Sen. Tom Garrett replied.



The measure backed by Republican House Speaker William Howell would direct the state Board of Education to develop a policy requiring schools to warn parents if they plan to teach such books and provide an alternative if the parent objects. It's being pushed by a Fairfax County mother who protested the use of Beloved in her son's high school senior class several years ago.



The measure unanimously passed in Virginia's House of Delegates last month. It faces at least one more vote in the lower chamber before going to Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe because of minor changes made in the Senate.

A spokesman for McAuliffe has declined to say whether he supports the bill.



If it's enacted, this would be the first state law in the U.S. forcing schools to notify parents about explicit material, a library expert said.



Democratic Sen. Janet Howell said passing the bill would make Virginia look ridiculous, noting that Morrison has won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. Sen. Adam Ebbin, another Democrat, said Virginia would be taking the first step toward encouraging censorship.



To simplify these literary classics into specific enumerations of sexually explicit content without contextualizing or discussing them in their totality robs the students of thematic richness and historical context for which these works are valued,'' Ebbin said.

Opponents, including Democratic Sen. A. Donald McEachin, also noted that schools already have the power to put these policies in place. About half of Virginia school districts that responded to a state survey in 2013 said they require parents to be notified if their children will be exposed to potentially sensitive or controversial material.



I am distressed that we would remove from local school districts the ability to make the best decision and policy for their districts, McEachin said.

McEachin also noted that students taking advanced literature courses make a conscious decision to tackle advanced topics.

Lets not deprive our students of knowledge, history and context, he said. This bill is a step backwards.

But supporters said they believe all parents should get a say in whether their children are exposed to such graphic content, which they argue can corrupt teen minds. Republican Sen. Bill Carrico compared evil to a lion cub.

It may be playful and harmless in the beginning but you feed that evil and it grows, and if you encourage the feeding of that evil it's going to grow into a lion and it's going to eat you,'' he said.
Scientists may have the first evidence that Zika can cause temporary paralysis, according to a new study of patients who developed the rare condition during an outbreak of the virus in Tahiti two years ago.

Zika is currently spreading with alarming speed across the Americas. The World Health Organization declared the epidemic to be a global emergency several weeks ago based on suspicions it may be behind a surge in disturbing birth defects and in Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological illness that mostly lasts a few weeks.

Before reaching South America last year, the mosquito-spread Zika had triggered outbreaks in the South Pacific on Yap island in Micronesia and in French Polynesia, including its largest island, Tahiti.

Researchers in Tahiti, France and elsewhere went back and analyzed blood samples from all 42 adults diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome from the 2013-14 outbreak; nearly everyone showed signs of a previous Zika infection.

They were compared with patients who did not have the condition and did not have any Zika symptoms but were treated at the same hospital for other illnesses. Tests showed only half of that group of 98 had apparently been infected with the normally mild virus.

The research was published online Monday in the journal Lancet.

"The evidence that links Zika virus with Guillain-Barre syndrome is now substantially more compelling," said Peter Barlow, an infectious diseases expert at Edinburgh Napier University who was not part of the study. But he noted in a statement that more research was needed before reaching the same conclusion about the outbreak in the Americas, where local factors may be playing a role.

Zika is mostly spread by mosquito bites and in most people causes symptoms including fever, muscle pain and a rash. About 80 percent of people who catch the disease don't report any illness.

Guillain-Barre syndrome is typically seen after a viral or bacterial infection so a possible connection to Zika isn't entirely unexpected. It occurs when the body's immune system attacks the nervous system, often for unknown reasons. It can cause muscle weakness and breathing problems; about 5 percent of patients die from the disorder. Of the patients observed in Tahiti, none died and three months after leaving the hospital, about 40 percent could walk unaided.

The study also considered whether Guillain-Barre was the result of people being infected with both Zika and a related tropical disease, dengue, by comparing them with people who had Zika but no neurological symptoms. It found no hint that having dengue upped the risk.

Based on their findings, the scientists estimated that of 100,000 people with Zika, about 24 would develop Guillain-Barre syndrome. In Europe and North America, the average rate of the syndrome after infections like flu and dengue is about one to two people per 100,000.

David Smith of Australia's Curtin University said it was difficult to know exactly how often Zika causes Guillain-Barre syndrome. Smith co-authored an accompanying commentary in the Lancet.

He said in an email that because the Zika virus disappears from the body by the time patients develop neurological complications, there was only indirect evidence  via infection-fighting antibodies  that Zika caused Guillain-Barre syndrome. Zika is thought to be gone from the bloodstream after a week or so. Smith said not all of the Guillain-Barre cases in Tahiti could be blamed on Zika and that the researchers' estimate of the syndrome's incidence was probably inflated.

Still, experts predicted cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome would jump as Zika explodes in the Americas and WHO has warned the disease is likely to spread everywhere in the region except for Canada and Chile.

The study doesn't shed any light on whether Zika is also responsible for the spike in the number of babies born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, or microcephaly.

"That remains a mystery but our suspicions are very strong," said Jimmy Whitworth, a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

"Both Guillain-Barre syndrome and microcephaly are neurological conditions, but I don't think it would be the same mechanism that's causing both," he said. "There may be something slightly different happening with microcephaly."

Since the Zika outbreak in the Americas began last year, it has sparked epidemics in about 40 countries, of which eight have reported cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome possibly connected to Zika.


Twelve states cast votes for presidential nominees on March 1, also known asSuper Tuesday, the biggest single-day delegate haul of the nomination contests. Republicans are voting in 11 states, with 595 delegates at stake. Democrats are casting ballots in 11 states, too, plus American Samoa, with 865 delegates up for grabs.



Here's a look at what some voters had to say as they went to the polls:



Donald Trump:

Tyler Murphy, a 26-year-old Boston resident who works as a project manager for a construction company, voted for Donald Trump on Tuesday even though he thinks the billionaire businessman is "undeniably wrong on a lot of things." For better or worse, he said, the controversial candidate is the "wake-up call" the country needs. "Ultimately, if we have to elect someone who is borderline crazy to get people to understand what's going on, then that's what we have to do," Murphy said.

"I like Trump and we need some change," said Trump merchandise seller Tim Engelskirchen, according to an NBC News video on voting in Southern states.

My feeling is, we need someone who can make definitive decisions and has no ties to the infrastructure in Washington, Ben Alred, a 52-year-old middle school history teacher in Virginia said. Hes definitely someone whos not aligned with any party too deeply.

"He's got a different way of looking at things, and he's an independent thinking guy," Troy Wakller of Virginia said. "He's not going to be influenced by anyone else."

Ted Cruz:

"These were the more hot-button issues with me. He's been pretty consistent with what he was elected here in the state to do," said Owen Worley, a 26-year-old Houston resident who likes that Cruz is focusing on economic issues, like reducing the size of government and controlling the national debt.

Bill Weise, an 86-year-old retired Marine Corps general, voted for Cruz, with seven months of deliberating coming down to the final 10 seconds before he filled in the bubble next to Cruz's name at at a Fairfax County, Virginia, precinct He picked Cruz over Trump, even though Ben Carson was actually his favorite candidate. But he concluded Carson wasn't viable, and picked Cruz because he ultimately decided he "would make better decisions as chief executive than Trump."

John Kasich:

"I wanted to vote for somebody who wasn't Donald Trump so that maybe he wouldn't win Tennessee," said Julia Price, an attorney in Knoxville, who cast her vote for the Ohio governor. "Normally, I'm a Democrat."

Bill Snipes of Oklahoma said he voted for Kasich. Snipes, who is employed in the insurance business, said that of all the GOP hopefuls he felt Kasich was most in line with his political views.

Michael Kernyat of Chesterfield County, Virginia, said he voted for Kasich "even though I think I threw my vote away." The 60-year-old retired computer consultant said Kasich is "the most reasonable person running," but probably has no chance of beating Donald Trump. Kernyat says "nobody is going to stop that freight train."

Twin sisters Vivien and Gillian Gattie, both retired, 72 years old and originally from England, were less than thrilled at their options as they showed up to cast ballots at Boston City Hall. "I'm so appalled at the choices," said Gillian, an independent who voted for President Barack Obama twice, but chose Kasich, as a "protest vote" because she didn't care for any Republican or Democrat this time around. She said she would only vote for Hillary Clinton in November if it came down to a contest between her and Donald Trump.

Vivien, a registered Democrat who also voted for Obama in the last two presidential elections, cast her ballot for Clinton, though reluctantly. "I voted for her because I think she can win," she said. "I can't get excited for Bernie Sanders." Like her sister, Vivien said she has concerns about Clinton. "I really don't care for her much. I don't trust her," Vivien said. "But I think she's qualified  the most qualified of the candidates."

Marco Rubio:

Out of the options, hes the better one, but I wish he had more experience, 54-year-old Nick Bryant of Arlington, Virginia, told the Washington Post. If both parties dig in their heels and stick to their guns, how do we govern? I really like Kasich, I like his calm and even tone, his demeanor. But you have to get ratings now, and he hasnt.

After the first couple of debates I was impressed by Kasichs experience and Trump on the issues, 19-year-old Massachusetts voter Michael Reed told the Washington Post. I know the media hates Trump, and the media likes Rubio. But Rubio doesnt have a track record on anything hes talking about."

John Cook, a retired investment adviser in Houston, said he chose Rubio because Jeb Bush has dropped out of the race. Cook said it's likely too late to stop Trump because he has too much momentum. He said Trump is "narcissistic" but that if he wins the nomination then Cook would likely support him, "but it would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic."

Sandi Garrett, who voted in Dallas, says she wanted to support Ohio Gov. John Kasich but his low poll numbers prompted her to vote for Rubio instead. She backed Rubio because she vehemently opposes Trump.

Nicole Freed of Virginia, crossed over and voted for Rubio. The moderate Democrat said her vote was intended to knock Trump off the ballot in November's general election. Freed is a disabled 32-year-old Army veteran who served in Iraq. She said she doesn't like what she called Trump's broad generalizations about Muslim Americans. She added, "I don't think we can fight the entire Muslim world." In November, she said she'll probably vote for Clinton.

Hillary Clinton:

Its tragic. I would love to see a woman president, but I just dont trust her, Claudia Mackintosh, a 61-year-old real estate agent voting in Norfolk, Virginia, told the Washington Post. My perception is that shes controlled by the corporate donors."

David Taylor said he voted for Clinton because of her background in international matters. Taylor, an attorney, said he believes Clinton has the right kind of experience in international politics that the nation needs.

"I love Bernie, but I'm too old to vote for Bernie," said Ellyn Sonik, 66, who works as a courier for a medical lab and was interviewed outside a suburban Dallas, Texas, polling station. "I feel like he's on the right track, and it's never going to happen. He can't do what he says he's going to do." She said she voted for Hillary. "She thinks the way I do pretty much on social issues and business."

Sara Mosher, a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said she voted for Clinton because the former secretary of state and U.S. senator has "the most knowledge of what it's like to be president." She said Sanders presidency would not be effective, but she wants the Vermont senator to remain in politics because he has an important message.

Karen Lahrman, a 57-year-old paralegal in Dallas, said she voted for Clinton and said it's time for a woman president. She said Clinton is the one with the most experience and "knows what she's doing."

Army veteran, 80-year-old Clarence Wall, was firm in his support of Clinton. He called her a fighter after voting in Virginia.

Karen Williams, a lifelong Democrat from Duluth, Georgia, said she voted for Hillary Clinton. But the 55-year-old voter mostly has her eyes on Donald Trump, whom she wants to stop from gaining the White House. "I can't see him talking to dignitaries from other countries, insulting people," she said. "A lot of countries don't take kindly to insults."

Bernie Sanders:

I will tell you: After a lot of thought, I voted for me for president, said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

"He's targeting the common people," Farrukh Jangda, a 21-year-old senior in computer science at the University of Texas at Dallas, said after voting for Sanders. Jangda said Clinton has been in politics so long that he thought she could be swayed by special interests, such as Wall Street, and he considers Sanders an outsider. Referring to Donald Trump, he said, "I just am afraid that if the people here  a lot of them  aren't taking him seriously how will other countries take our country seriously? That's what scares me." Jangda said he is a Muslim-American and has concerns with how Trump portrays Muslims. "He doesn't have the personality to be president."

Mary Rodriguez said she is a longtime fan of Clinton, but she voted for Sanders. After voting at a heavily Republican precinct in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the 38-year-old insurance agent said much of what Sanders talks about is what she believes in and "what I want for my children."
Major Republican donors aren't the only people fearing a Donald Trump presidency after the GOP frontrunner's dominant performance on Super Tuesday. According to search trends, Americans have been inquiring about packing up for a life in the Great White North.

Google Trends reported a spike in searches for "How to move to Canada" after the real-estate mogul's victory in seven states on Super Tuesday.

Google's data editor Simon Rogers first reported the trend, tweeting the search had spiked more than 350 percent Tuesday night. Queries surged as high as 1,150 percent, according to Mashable's Brian Ries. [[370838901, C]]

Most notably, the majority of the searches Tuesday evening were coming from Massachusetts, where Trump won in a landslide, with 49 percent of the vote.

Canadian lawmakers got in on the action, with Toronto City Councillor Norm Kelly posting a link to a page detailing how to move to Americas friendly northern neighbor. [[370838401, C]]

Tuesday's search interest for "How to move to Canada" was the largest spike since former president George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004.

Trump has proven to be popular with a wide swath of Republican voters, but his controversial comments about banning Muslims and building a wall to stop immigration from Mexico, among other things, have sparked concern among other members of the GOP, as well as Democrats.

Google wasn't the only tech company talking politics Wednesday. Kayak, the flights, hotels and car rental search engine, is planning to give to 10 people $250 toward one-way tickets to Canada.

"Is the election making you want to pack your bags and head to Canada?" the company said in its press release. The giveaway is open to U.S. residents who reteweet Kayak's "#1WaytoCanada" tweets through Friday at 5 p.m. ET.
Two people had to be extricated from a minivan that crashed into a school bus and lodged under it Wednesday in Westborough, Massachusetts.

According to police, two grandparents and a young girl were in the minivan.

Desiree M. White, 80, of Plymouth, who police say was driving, did not survive her injuries. 79-year-old Ronald White and their 11-year-old granddaughter were passengers.

The child only suffered bumps and bruises, and there were no students on the bus at the time.

West Main Street was blocked off to traffic as crews used the Jaws of Life to pull the patients out of the vehicle.

"One was extricated in about 10 minutes, but one was a very technical extrication. We were under the school bus and it took us over 90 minutes to free from the vehicle with the use of hydraulic tools," said Westborough Fire Chief Patrick Purcell.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Authorities have identified the victims killed Tuesday night when a vehicle slammed into a pizza shop in Newton, Massachusetts, as a Boston attorney and the office manager of a law firm.

Gregory Morin, a 32-year-old lawyer who lived in the neighborhood, and 57-year-old Eleanor Miele of Watertown, were killed in the crash. Both were at Sweet Tomatoes when a 55-year-old Newton man crashed into the restaurant.

Relatives of the victims are having a hard time making sense of what happened.

Car Slams Into Newton, Massachusetts, Restaurant

"I can't explain. I'm devastated," said Miele's sister-in-law, Patricia Desmond. "I'm just heartbroken."

Miele's husband of nearly 38 years, George Miele, was too upset to talk on camera, but told necn he lost his best friend.

Co-workers at the law firm where Miele had been office manager for 12 years said she was just picking up a pizza when she was killed, on her way to do volunteer work at her church.

"A warm, kindhearted person who was always going out of her way to help others in need, we're all very devastated by this loss," Miele's co-worker, attorney Robert Joyce, said.

In Morin's neighborhood, shock and sadness has set in.

"When this happens in your neighborhood, by the grace of God, go on," said Nancy McGrath, who lived near him. "I have two kids and they could have been picking up the pizza. It's just being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Morin was a lawyer at Latham & Watkins LLP in Boston. The firm issued a statement Wednesday mourning his death.

"We are deeply saddened by this tragedy," it read. "Greg was a wonderful colleague and friend to many in Boston and throughout our firm. He was a highly-skilled young lawyer and a compassionate person with incredible spirit and singular wit. Our thoughts and prayers are with Greg's family and friends, as well as the other victims."

The driver, 55-year-old Brad Casler, will not be charged, but his license has been revoked.

"I believe he had some type of neurological condition," said Jack Porter, who says he has known Casler for 10 years and taught him in real estate school.

One of the seven victims injured in the crash is 24-year-old Casey Vaughan of Marshfield, a long-time manager at Sweet Tomatoes.

"She initially thought one of the pizza ovens exploded," said Jeff Vaughan. "I do believe she was knocked out unconscious. The pizza oven actually is what fell on top of her. One of her co-workers, had at the last second, pulled her away, thankfully - otherwise, she probably would have been crushed."

He tells necn his daughter suffered a broken leg, second and third degree burns, and had to have staples put in for a large cut to her head.

He added that she had surgery Wednesday and remains in intensive care at Beth Israel.

"She was trying to help the guy next to her while she was trying to get herself out from under the oven and he wouldn't wake up," said Jeff Vaughan.

Vaughan says his daughter is in critical but stable condition. She is expected to make a full recovery, but it may takes months or even a year.

Meanwhile, the family of Eleanor Miele is planning her funeral.
Officials say a Maine prisoner who was being transported from the Androscoggin County Jail to Franklin County escaped and led police on a chase in a stolen SUV.



Franklin County Sheriff Scott Nichols Sr. says 31-year-old Derek Cook of Wilton slipped off a handcuff and fled from a transport van late Tuesday morning. The driver, a deputy, took him back into custody, but Cook got away a second time after a scuffle.



The Sun Journal reports that Cook, still wearing leg irons, broke into a home and forced a woman to hand over keys to an SUV.



Nichols said the chase came to an end when Cook crashed the vehicle in Chesterville. Three different agencies brought a dozen charges against Cook.
Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin is reminding Hillary Clinton's campaign about state election laws after former President Bill Clinton greeted voters inside a Boston polling location.



The ex-president arrived at the Holy Name gymnasium, in the city's West Roxbury neighborhood, around 9:35 a.m. Tuesday.



He spoke with voters outside the gym before heading inside with Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a Hillary Clinton supporter.



A pool report says a woman asked for a photo with the ex-president, who replied, "As long as we're not violating any election laws."



State law says no one may solicit a person's vote within 150 feet of a polling location.



Galvin says Bill Clinton created a traffic jam outside a New Bedford polling location later in the day when he addressed voters on the street.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump ripped into former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney at a pre-debate rally in Portland, Maine, on Thursday.

"He's a choke artist... He choked like I've never seen anyone choke," Trump said of Romney, who held a press conference in Utah earlier in the day in which he blasted Trump's candidacy, calling him "a phony" and "a fraud." Trump criticized Romney for his loss to President Barack Obama in 2012.

"Mitt was a disaster of a candidate. He let us down," Trump said. "That was a race that should have been won."

Donald Trump didnt hold back when it came to criticizing Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor, after Romneys speech Thursday morning.

He also spoke of how Romney "begged" him for his endorsement in 2012. "I could have said, 'Mitt, drop to your knees.'"

Trump said Romney "chickened out," and decided not to run this time because he was afraid to run against him.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker walked away from reporters when they asked for comment on former Gov. Mitt Romneys tirade against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Though most of his remarks focused on Romney, Trump attacked Republican opponent Marco Rubio as well, calling him "a lightweight." He also said he's looking forward to running against Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage joined Trump at the rally. LePage has joked on several occasions that he provided the template for being an outspoken politician.

"Donald Trump is a little bit like I am," LePage said Thursday. "He is not afraid of the political establishment."

About 100 people protested Trump's visit Thursday, holding signs that said "Drump Trump" and "Love always trumps hate." At least four protesters were thrown out of the rally itself, which was held at the Westin Portland Harborview Hotel Ballroom.

Republican candidate Ted Cruz is scheduled to visit the University of Maine in Orono on Friday, and Democratic contender Bernie Sanders held a rally in Portland on Wednesday.

Both Maine's Republican and Democratic caucuses are scheduled to be held this weekend.
Andy Sexton, CEO of the Matthew Project, introduces a series of tributes from the charity to its founder, Peter Farley.

Andy Sexton, CEO of the Matthew Project, introduces a series of tributes from the charity to its founder, Peter Farley.

Cliff look alike at Cromer Church breakfast Cliff Richard tribute performer Will Chandler will be the speaker at a special Mens Breakfast at Cromer Parish Hall next month, and all men are welcome to come along. Read more

Heartsease Lane Methodist church to close As part of a reorganisation of the Norwich Methodist Circuit, Heartsease Lane Methodist Church will be closing towards the end of the year. Read more

Free Julian of Norwich reflection and prayer day The Friends of Julian of Norwich present a free Quiet Half-Day with Robert Fruehwirth, author and former Priest Director of the Julian Centre, on Saturday November 12, 10.30am-2pm. Read more

What it means for us to repent Nigel Fox believes that now is the time for a tide of repentance, and shares his thoughts about what that actually means for our society. Read more

Christmas card shop opens in Norwich church Thousands of Christmas cards from around 30 local Norfolk charities have gone on sale today (October 19) at the Original Norwich Charity Christmas Card Shop inside St Peter Mancroft church in Norwich city centre. Read more

Revelation Christian Resource Centre and Cafe Revelation in Norwich is a Christian resource centre, offering a bookshop, a meeting place and a welcoming refuge for refreshment open to visitors of any faith or none. Read more

Farewell as Yarmouth church leader moves on Captain Marie Burr, the Salvation Army leader in Great Yarmouth, has paid tribute to everyone at the church and charity after she left her post at the end of last month to move to a new role. Read more

Norwich Cathedral chorister in BBC final Norwich Cathedral chorister Alice Platten has her sights set on being crowned BBC Young Chorister of the Year after reaching the final stages of the prestigious nationwide competition. Read more

Norwich to hear pastor, Policeman and tramp tale Essex Baptist Pastor Dave McDowell has been a Policeman, fed orphans in India and lived under a boat as a tramp. He will tell his remarkable story at the October dinner of Norwich FGB on Wednesday October 26. Read more

Pioneer UK leader speaks at Sheringham church Ness Wilson, national leader of the Pioneer network of churches, was the main speaker at a day of teaching and worship held at Lighthouse Community Church in Sheringham on 12 October, to be followed up by Word and Worship sessions at October half term. Read more

Norwich event to give tips on bouncing forwards St Stephens in Norwich will be hosting an evening in October with Patrick Regan OBE, as he explores themes from his book Bouncing Forwards. Read more

Youth for Christ lights a fire in north Breckland North Breckland Youth for Christ will be putting on a mini residential camp this year to coincide with Bonfire Night. Read more

Delia Smith interviewed at Norwich church Top TV cook and well-known writer Delia Smith spoke about her faith at SOUL Churchs weekly Chapel gathering on October 11. Read more

Children's Christian holiday club in Briston A half term childrens holiday bible club is taking place in Briston next week, and there is no charge to take part in the fun. Read more

Ashill church puts on music to touch the soul The Fountain of Life Church in Ashill is hosting an afternoon concert in early November with classical, jazz, opera, ballads and pop classics. Read more

Fakenhams new rector is officially installed Rev Tracy Jessop has been officially installed as Rector for Fakenham during a service at Fakenham Parish Church on Tuesday September 27, fourteen months after their last reverend retired. Read more

Norwich homeless charity holds information evening Homelessness charity St Martins is holding an information evening on Thursday 3rd November at The Forum in Norwich for anyone who would like to know more about the work of the charity and to potentially become a volunteer. Read more
Jesus is the Undercover Boss Jesus is the Undercover Boss

Alison Hill explains what she sees as similarities between Jesus and televisions very popular Undercover Boss programme.

For those who dont know, here is a brief summary of Undercover Boss:



The boss of a large company disguises themselves as one of the staff. They spend a week being trained to do a grass roots job. While they are working they observe the staff and their standard of work.



During this time, many of these bosses are shocked at how well their employees are serving their companies. Some of them go over and above what they would expect of them. There are moving stores being told throughout these programs of the struggles that many of these employees are going through.



There is an emotional ending to most of these stories as the boss reveals who they really are and how they have been impressed, or not, by their employees. Generally their employees are rewarded for all of their hard work and dedication to the job. Many are overwhelmed as they receive large amount of money towards debts, education, health care etc, as well as many other needs they have at the time of filming.



They are often in absolute shock and awe at what they are being told. Their bosses quite often promote those who have impressed them the most or at least give them a massive bonus. This encourages them in a way that goes beyond what most people ever experience.



As Christians, we have an undercover boss, the One who sees all and who knows all. In fact our undercover boss knows even what we are thinking, let alone our actions. For many of us, our reward will be a heavenly one as those acts done in secret will be hidden by God from mans eyes, so that we can receive a much greater reward in heaven.



Our rewards are eternal, they are not momentary ones that in the passing of time fade and are forgotten. We will take ours with us through to eternity. So when you feel that you are not being appreciated for all that you do, just remember that your Father in heaven sees it all and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him and who are obedient to the call on their lives.



Our path is set by our heavenly Father and our goal should be to be obedient to all that we are called to do and to be. Obedience to the Father will always reap its reward, whether or not we see the fruit of our labours in this life.

From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earthhe who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. Psalm 33:13

Nothing in all creation is hidden from Gods sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:13

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. 1 Corinthians 10-11

I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds. Jeremiah 17:10

...and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:18

Alison Hill has been involved in Christian ministry for twenty five years and attends her local church in King's Lynn, Norfolk.

She runs Butterfly Ministries, offering Christian workshops to churches, conferences, small and large gatherings, bringing teaching that encourages growth in all areas of Christian life. She is also an author, now writing her third book.

She believes that Christianity is about walking with God daily and learning about His ways through His Word and hearing His voice.



Visit: www.alisonhill-author.co.uk



The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norwich and Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users.
A 31-year-old Florida man got 10 years behind bars for hacking womens social media accounts including Facebook, stealing pictures and personal information and posting it on pornographic websites.

Specifically Michael Rubens was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cyberstalking, unauthorized access to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft, a $15,000 fine and $1,550 in restitution his crimes, according to acting Northern District of Florida U.S. Attorney Christopher Canova.

+More on Network World: +

According to the Department of Justice, during his guilty plea on Dec. 3, 2015, Rubens admitted that, between January 2012 and January 2015, he publicly humiliated dozens of young women by hacking their online accounts, including e-mail and social media, stealing photographs and other personal information, using the photographs to create pornography and posting the pornographic images on social media websites and on a revenge pornography website that was recently shut down by the FBI.

Rubens engaged in most of the conduct from his residence in Tallahassee and used software to conceal his IP address, the DoJ stated.

Rubens victims included an employee of a local restaurant he frequented, an out-of-town colleague, an acquaintance in his office building, clients of the defendants employer, a former girlfriend and her colleagues, high school classmates and the victims relatives or friends. For one particular woman, Rubens laptop contained 470 files with more than 5,000 references to the victim, the DoJ stated.

Rubens computer searches focused on finding the victims personal identifying information, such as past addresses, family information and other personal data that could be used to answer security questions. As a result of Rubens conduct, the victims became afraid to conduct any online activities and often deleted their social media presence entirely. In some instances, the conduct also damaged the victims personal relationships, the DoJ stated.

This criminal hacked into social media accounts and tormented women with blackmail and harassment, said Special Agent in Charge Susan L. McCormick of Homeland Security Investigations Tampa Field Office. His crimes demonstrate how predators use the Internet to target innocent victims and ruin lives.

The DoJ noted too that Rubens attorney urged leniency in sentencing arguing that, unlike bank robbery or drug dealing, cyberstalking was not something people thought of as a serious crime. U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle for the Northern District of Florida responded, Perhaps its time they learned.

Check out these other hot stories:

IRS warns of nasty W-2 phishing scheme

FTC: Imposter scams, identity theft, and debt collection top consumer grumbles

NASA wants to get supersonic with new passenger jet

Oscar ad finds Carrie Fisher and IBM Watson dealing with humans

AAA: Distracted driving, driver apathy for safety making roads treacherous

IT manager gets 30 months in jail for code-bombing firms intellectual property

Are we in artificial intelligence winter?

IRS warns: 400% flood in phishing and malware this tax year alone
Linux Mint is one of the most popular desktop distributions of Linux in the world, so when the organization suffered a serious security breach late last month, it made waves in the open-source community.

Q: What, exactly, happened?

On Saturday, Feb. 20, somebody noticed that the download link for certain versions of the operating system on Mints official website had been changed. The fiddled-with link now pointed to a malicious website, hosted in Bulgaria.

+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Google CSO peers out from the fishbowl to talk security + RSA president slams crypto backdoors as useful only against petty criminals

Q. So what did this malicious website try to do?

It served up what appeared to be the file that people were trying to download  a disk image for installing Mint. However, it was a hacked copy, which included a backdoor into the installation. Simply put, if you installed Linux Mint using one of these corrupted images, you gave the hackers a direct line into your computer.

Q. Is that a complicated operation?

It sure was. In addition to creating the hacked version of Mint, the attacker had to compromise the website to ensure that the compromised copies could be distributed. So thats a couple different moving parts to worry about. And while the whole thing was going on, the attacker grabbed complete copies of Mints forum data, including personally identifiable information and crackable passwords, selling the information online.

Q. How many installs were affected?

Hard to say exactly, although Level 3 Communications estimates in an analysis of the attack that hundreds of users may have downloaded the corrupted disk image.

Q. Who did it?

Apparently, a hacker going by the handle Peace. Peace gave an interview to ZDNet reporter Zach Whittaker, in which he or she explained that the idea was mainly just to get access to as many computers as possible, possibly for a botnet. Peace first gained access to the site in January, via a security vulnerability in a WordPress plugin.

Q. What did Mint do about it?

To its credit, the Mint team was pretty open about the whole thing, warning users as soon as they were aware of the hack and eventually taking down the site in order to halt the spread of the corrupted disk images.

Q. If I downloaded and installed Mint during the time the site was affected, how do I know if Im vulnerable?

If youve got the .iso file still handy, you can compare the MD5 checksum to the one for legitimate copies listed at the official Mint blog. If not, check to see whether theres a file in the folder /var/lib/man.cy. If the folder is empty, you should be OK. However, if there is a file in there, you probably have the compromised version, and should back up your personal data before wiping the hard drive and reinstalling your operating system.
Councillors may reluctantly support cuts

HUNGERFORDS district councillors have said they may reluctantly vote for budget cuts which could spell the end for their town library.

James Podger and Paul Hewer were speaking to this newspaper following their attendance at a packed public meeting at the Croft Field Activity Centre on Friday.

Meanwhile town mayor Martin Crane expressed his frustration at the apparent inability of their colleagues to provide a proper financial breakdown for the projected closure savings.

Friends of Hungerford Library chairman, town councillor Keith Knight, summarised the threat to the community and opened the meeting to the public.

One speaker, Emma Bins, said: The real villain of the piece here is our Government.

Its unfair to take all the business rates we generate here in West Berkshire and do this to us in return.

We must put more pressure on [local MP] Richard Benyon.

Its shameful and they shouldnt be allowed to get away with it.

And surely West Berkshire councillors could have foregone such large pay rises recently?

Former town councillor and Liberal Democrat candidate for the district council, Denise Gaines, said: Were losing or weve lost our community centre, toilets, buses, library  when do we stop being the poor relation of West Berkshire?

She was admonished by Mr Knight for getting political.

Tina Harrigan-Jones, a former head of English at John OGaunt School who led a successful campaign against district council plans for an all-through superschool for Hungerford, told the meeting: We need to come up with an alternative plan.

Theres a statutory duty for people to have access to books of some kind, especially the elderly, disabled and unemployed.

She stressed that the focus of any future strategy should be on that statutory right and on the finances.

Mike Morecroft said: Its the place that enthused my children to read. This is something that really matters to us.

After the meeting Mrs Gaines said: I think the issue is political.

And I call upon our district councillors to oppose the cuts which would result in the loss of vital services including our library.

Friends of Hungerford Library committee member, Helen Simpson, said afterwards: We expect James Podger and Paul Hewer to support the residents of Hungerford in their bid to save Hungerford Library.

Mr Hewer and Mr Podger (both Con, Hungerford) expressed their sympathy with the groups aims at the meeting.

Afterwards Mr Hewer declined to say whether he would vote, at an executive meeting of West Berkshire Council, for or against the cuts package.

He added: I want to wait until the end of the consultation period. Im still hopeful that a way can be found to save the library despite the cuts.

Mr Podger said: My view is that [portfolio holder] Hilary Cole (Con, Chievely) and [council leader] Roger Croft (Con, Thatcham South and Crookham) have put in a huge amount of work and effort and that the officers Ive had contact with do a good job.

But theyre between a rock and a hard place. I therefore support the decisions theyre making. However Im disappointed with the settlement figure from central Government and feel let down by them.

He added: We have to take collective responsibility. But Hilary [Cole] has intimated to me we will be able to find a third way, through some sort of volunteer service, to keep the library. Im hopeful that will be the case.

However if the funding has to be withdrawn I would support that if its the only thing we can do  but with a heavy heart.

Town mayor Martin Crane said he was continuing to press council chiefs, alongside Mr Hewer and Mr Podger, for a breakdown of the figures used to calculate the estimated savings accrued by closing Hungerford Library.

Meanwhile Hungerford Town Council has scheduled an extraordinary meeting of the full council for Monday, February 29, at 7pm in the Corn Exchange.
One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021
From August to September 2014, a typically slow time for respiratory viruses, a nationwide outbreak of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) left resources constrained for Children's Hospital Colorado (Children's Colorado) and pediatric organizations throughout the nation.

Due to the lack of a widely available test for the virus at the time, only 1,153 EV-D68 infections in 49 states were confirmed, though experts felt the true magnitude and impact of EV-D68 was much larger.

Researchers and operational experts looked at the change in hospital resources utilized during the outbreak periods and compared the data to what would have been expected during a calm respiratory season, which allowed the team to indirectly estimate the impact of the virus. Their findings were published online on January 19, 2016 and will appear in the March issue of JAMA Pediatrics. The methods used and data collected have created a guide for other hospitals to measure and prepare for potential outbreaks.

During the EV-D68 outbreak of 2014, Children's Colorado saw significant increases across all sectors, including respiratory patient volumes, asthma medication use, respiratory equipment use and respiratory therapist demands. Without being able to test more accurately for the virus during the actual outbreak, a cross-hospital team, led by Kevin Messacar, MD, hospital medicine and infectious diseases specialist at Children's Colorado, developed a new, quantifiable way to measure the impact of outbreaks after they occur.

"The enterovirus D68 outbreak affected every aspect of our hospital," said Messacar. "We created an EV-D68 consortium to look at how this outbreak strained resources. Through this study, we demonstrated that the number of confirmed infections grossly underestimates the true burden of this outbreak on children's hospitals."

The study suggest that EV-D68 had a much larger impact on children's hospitals in the United States in 2014 than previously estimated from confirmatory testing on a limited number of samples. The study also illustrates the importance of resource utilization monitoring in future unexpected outbreaks of emerging pathogens.

"It is important to understand the burden of an emerging respiratory virus like enterovirus D68 so that children's hospitals can be prepared if, and when, it returns," said Messacar. "We are fortunate that enterovirus D68 did not return to cause widespread disease in 2015, but if it does return to cause this extent of disease in the future, development of vaccines or therapeutics against this virus will become scientific priorities."

"The heroic efforts of the medical, nursing, and other clinical staff at Children's Hospital Colorado to provide expert care to affected children during this outbreak should be commended," said Messacar.
An international team of researchers lead by the University of Granada has scientifically proven, for the first time, that depression is associated with important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease.

An international team of researchers lead by the University of Granada (UGR) has scientifically proven, for the first time, that depression is more than a mental disorder: it causes important alterations of the oxidative stress, so it should be considered a systemic disease, since it affects the whole organism.

The results of this work, published in the renowned Journal of Clinical Psychiatry magazine (one of the most important magazines in the field of Psychiatry), could explain the significant association that depression has with cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and why people suffering from depression die younger. At the same time, this research may help finding new therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of depression.

The lead author of this work is Sara Jimenez Fernandez, PhD student at the UGR and psychiatrist at the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Unit at Jaen Medical Center (Jaen, Spain). The co-authors are the UGR Psychiatry professors Manuel Gurpegui Fernandez de Legaria and Francisco Diaz Atienza, in collaboration, among others, with Christoph Correll from the Zucker Hillside Hospital (New York, USA).

A study with 3961 people

This research is a meta analysis of 29 previous studies which comprise 3961 people, and it's the first detailed work of its kind about what happens in the organism of people suffering from depression. It studies the imbalance between the individual increase of various oxidative stress parameters (especially malondialdehyde, a biomarker to measure the oxidative deterioration of the cell membrane) and the decrease in antioxidant substances (such as uric acid, zinc, and the superoxide dismutase enzyme).

The researchers have managed to prove that, after receiving the usual treatment against depression, the patients' malondialdehyde levels are significantly reduced, to the point that they are indistinguishable from healthy individuals. At the same time, zinc and uric acid levels increase until reaching normal levels (something that does not occur in the case of the superoxide dismutase enzyme).
insights from industry Giovanni Mancini Head of Global Marketing at E Ink Holdings

What is electronic ink and how does it work?

Electronic ink is basically what the name says. It's made of ink, the same ink particles that you see on a printed paper that comes out of an inkjet printer. We use black and white pigments that we add certain properties to that allow us to move the pigments around.

If you can imagine being able to put pigments down on a sheet of paper, and then every time you wanted new text, or a new image on that paper to move the pigments around, that's essentially what we do.

In terms of the manufacturing process, we take the black and white pigments that have these properties, and we encapsulate them in little micro spheres that are about 50 microns in diameter, about the width of a human hair.

We then laminate, or coat, these capsules with the pigments on a plastic substrate, which we call our flexible plastic laminant. That gives us basically a surface that holds the capsules in the pigments. We then sandwich this in the middle of two plates that allows us to create an electric field.

Generally what we use is semiconductor electronics, called a thin film transistor array, it is very similar in what is used in displays. What the thin film transistor array allows us to do is to control the electric field on a specific array of dots that make up the image.

Now by controlling the field, one way or another, we get to move the white particles up, or the black particles up. When we want a particular dot to be white we move the white dots up, and when we want the black dots to surface we move the black particles up.

How E Ink Works Play

What are the main benefits of using electronic ink for healthcare?

The beauty of electronic ink is that it only uses power when you're changing the image. Once you've created the image you want, you can remove all power from the display, and the image will stay there. The ink particles we're moving actually connect with each other and they will stay there.

The reason that's important is that this gives you a way (because you have an extremely low power solution) to maintain an image. As I'll explain in a second, this is very important for certain medical applications.

The other aspect is that we take the microcapsules, which are malleable, and we coat them with this plastic substrate, so that makes a display flexible. It's not a glass display, like your typical display that you see on your television, or your smart phone, or your tablet. Because it's flexible, it's rugged, and it's very lightweight.

Also because we're using pigments, you see it by how it reflects light - exactly the same way that ink on a piece of paper does.

If you remember those three properties, then that helps you understand why we're focusing on certain applications in healthcare.

In what ways has electronic ink been used in healthcare so far and what further uses do you think it could have?

So far electronic ink has been used in a glucose meter from Abbott Diabetes Care. The UK was the place Abbott first introduced this, almost two years ago. Since this is a standard glucose meter, it's used by diabetics to constantly test their blood sugar level.

The reason why Abbott came to us is that personal use meters have been around for a while, but they tended to use reflective glass displays that are not easily read. One of the side effects of diabetes is it impacts your vision, especially as you get older. Abbott wanted a solution that provided a more effective display, more value for their patients, their customers. They wanted a display that was larger and easier to read.

The display of this size is using significantly less power than a traditional display so it's also very practical, as the patient doesn't have to change the batteries often. The display is also lighter, because in this case there's no glass. The field is actually created by essentially plastic components. I could drop this on the floor, I don't have to worry about glass shattering. It's a much more convenient product for their patients.

Please can you outline E Inks work with medical packaging companies?

We've partnered with a company called Palladio, The Palladio Group, in Italy which is a pharmaceutical packaging company, they do the secondary packaging that the major pharmaceutical companies package their medication in and ship to customers.

The packaging business was totally focused on reducing cost, because packaging was basically viewed as not being very valuable. We believed we could add value to the packaging using our technology by improving patient care.

One very simple module we created has a microprocessor with a temperature sensor in it, so if I cover the microprocessor, you notice that the display changes and it gives me a warning. One of the things the microprocessor is doing, is it's keeping track of the ambient temperature that it's in. This is important because if you're shipping vaccines, vaccines need to stay within a certain temperature range. Now, this gives you a way of tracking whether your vaccines are still viable, whether the handling restrictions have been violated or not.

The other thing this module does is it has a sensor, in this case we've just had a very simple button. Every time that sensor detects something, it registers the event so you know when events happen. You can build on this basic premise further.

For example, remembering to take medication or remembering if you've taken medication is actually a major issue, especially for patients that have certain diseases like dementia or Alzheimer's. In this case, you can register all of the events, and you could share this information with your doctor and you can actually see the exact time you took your medication. So here we are bringing value to the packaging industry and more importantly, improving health care by helping patients maintain the regiment of their therapy.

This can be taken to a higher level, through the use of a blister pack. Every time I push a pill through the blister packs, I'm breaking one of the RFID segments, so I'm changing the signature. In doing that, whatever RFID detector I have knows exactly which pill I popped at which point in time. I also could track if the patient has not taken the medication.

One of the challenges with Alzheimer's is that patients dont remember whether they took their medication or not. This technology gives you a way of A, the patient keeping track of whether they take their medication and B, if they dont take their medication reminding them to do so.

We've been having discussions with pharmaceutical companies about adding intelligence such as if a patient doesn't take their medication when theyre supposed to, you can not only send an alarm to them, saying it's time for you to take the medication, but within a certain amount of time, you can escalate the alarm and contact someone else in the family or a caregiver to call the patient and say "dad, you forgot to take you medication".

The other aspect of it is that pharmaceutical companies have noticed that even patients that take quite important medication for something like cancer or other diseases, that there's as much as a 30% noncompliance with the prescribed therapy for a number of different reasons. It also found that by encouraging the patient to take the medication you can significantly improve compliance.

How do you think the application of electronic ink in hospitals and other healthcare settings will affect healthcare professionals?

There's no direct impact but in hospitals, we believe that by introducing smart packaging it could help it in a few ways. It'll give the health care providers, direct information as to whether the medication is viable and when was the last time the package was handled?

At the same time by providing information on the packaging, we can also provide information about which medication needs to go with which patient. We believe there is an opportunity there to help with the administering of medication within a hospital environment and that's how we believe we can help in a larger sense.

What do you think the future holds for electronic ink in healthcare and how do E Ink plan to contribute?

We are looking at many markets, E Ink is best known for being the display in e-readers and although that continues to be a large part of our business, were looking into many other areas from shelf labels, the price that's on storage shelf to badges, to displays in mobile devices, and health care devices.

In addition to applications in the health care area, the other area were focusing on is in architecture where we've engaged with architects look at building environments that are more interactive or experiential. The architecture around us is very static, walls come in one color and they don't change. We have projects that we've engaged with different architects, where we're able to change environments and show different colors.

The health care application is the one that we're really interested in for a number of reasons. It's difficult to solve this problem using other ways because the other solutions that we've seen are not very effective, they require that patients take pills, put them in special containers and do manual tracking. We believe that we can enable solutions that are actually viable and add value to it and the markets can be quite large, they can be significantly larger than what we've seen in the e-reader business.

From the impact that we can have on people to the potential of the market, we believe it is a very interesting area for us to pursue and we've partnered with Palladio to pursue this in the coming years.

What are the main challenges that will need to be overcome?

There's a series of challenges, one is finding the right people to talk to. There are not a lot of companies in the packaging business that have Palladio's foresight, which will focus on adding value as opposed to reducing cost.

Second is finding the right partner to establish an integrated solution like we had with the glucose meter. The hardware provides the capability, but what you need is really the software integration that takes that data and converts it into information which is what Abbott did with their online software.

We need to partner with someone that could take this and put together an integrated solution that takes the data that's coming off of the blister pack, the RFID detector and everything else.

Where can readers find more information?

About Giovanni Mancini

With more than two decades of experience in the semiconductor and design automation industries, Giovanni Mancini is presently the Head of Global Marketing at E Ink Holdings, the global leader in electronic paper (ePaper). Since joining E Ink in 2010, Giovanni has been instrumental in the launch of a number of ePaper products and the positioning E Ink as a diversified business beyond eReaders.

His 25 years of experience in the electronics industry include leading engineering and marketing teams in Electronic Design Automation, Communications, Signal Processing and Semiconductor products. Giovanni holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering and Master of Electrical Engineering Degree from McGill University in Montreal. Previously, Giovanni has held management positions at Bell-Northern Research, Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics and The MathWorks.
A central catheter maintenance bundle developed to prevent a common healthcare-associated infection had an immediate effect of decreasing rates of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), according to a study in the American Journal of Critical Care (AJCC).

The article, "Use of a Central Catheter Maintenance Bundle in Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals," details the 14 components of the central catheter maintenance bundle and a five-item checklist to monitor compliance.

Patients with chronic critical illnesses are at high risk for healthcare-associated infections, especially when they have a central catheter for an extended period.

In an effort to decrease CLABSI rates, a quality improvement team from Select Medical developed and implemented a central catheter maintenance bundle for patients admitted to 30 long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs), which are specialty hospitals that treat patients who require extended hospitalization for chronic critical illness. LTACH patients typically arrive with a central catheter already in place.

The research team used infection prevention guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the core of the bundle, with mandatory use of alcohol-based central catheter caps and chlorhexidine gluconate dressings.

Ongoing education of clinical staff about the protocol and a checklist to track compliance were also key elements of the initiative. Each hospital identified staff nurses with demonstrated competency in the care of central catheters to monitor implementation of the bundle for the initial six months of the study.

About 65 percent of patients admitted during the study period were admitted with a central catheter. The researchers reviewed the medical records of 6,660 patients discharged during the 14 months prior to the study and 6,559 patients discharged after implementation of the bundle. Patient days and central catheter days before and after the bundle was implemented were comparable.

Following implementation of the central catheter maintenance bundle, the CLABSI standardized infection rate was reduced 29 percent. In addition, a mean reduction of 4.5 CLABSIs per hospital occurred for 14 months after implementation of the bundle.

Study results demonstrate that the bundle, with attention to compliance, resulted in a significant and sustained reduction in the overall mean CLABSI rate in the participating hospitals for 14 months.

"Our results encourage the development and implementation of similar bundles as effective infection reduction strategies in LTACHs," said lead author Antony Grigonis, PhD, Vice President of Quality and Healthcare Analytics at Select Medical. The company, based in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is one of the nation's largest providers of specialized acute and post-acute care.

"Preventing these infections can help reduce complications and the length of stay for other patients," Grigonis said. "This infection reduction could also translate to a savings of approximately $3.7 million annually for the 30 Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals studied."
Nearly 32 million children across the world live with disabling hearing loss. A new World Health Organization (WHO) report, Childhood hearing loss: act now, heres how, suggests that 60% of this can be prevented. It also highlights that if hearing loss is detected early enough, and if children receive the care they need, they can reach their full potential.

A child who struggles to hear may also struggle to learn to speak, underachieve at school and end up socially isolated, says Dr Etienne Krug, Director of the WHO Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention. But this doesnt have to happen. We have a range of tools to help prevent, detect and treat childhood hearing loss.

Majority of childhood hearing loss can be prevented

There are many causes of childhood hearing loss. It is estimated that 40% is attributable to genetic causes; 31% to infections such as measles, mumps, rubella and meningitis; and 17% to complications at birth, including prematurity, low birth weight and neonatal jaundice. In addition, an estimated 4% results from expectant mothers and new-borns unknowingly using medicines that are harmful to hearing.

To prevent childhood hearing loss, immunizing children against diseases and regulating certain medicines and noise levels are vital.

Mitigating the impact of hearing loss

Early identification of those children with hearing loss helps to trigger the needed interventions, such as the provision of hearing devices and other communication therapies.

Genetics & Genomics eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today

Hearing screening programmes for infants, and pre-school and school-based children, alongside hearing care training for health professionals, can dramatically improve the lives of children. Such programmes ensure that those in need of specialized care receive the interventions they need to be able to communicate, receive education and gain employment later in life.

Raising public awareness about ear and hearing care is another key strategy for reducing hearing loss and associated stigma around the use of hearing devices. Strengthening organizations of people with hearing loss and their families can contribute greatly to this effort.

The WHO report includes case studies from Cambodia, Canada, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom, Viet Nam and the United States which showcase the impact that programmes in these and other countries are having on the lives of children across the world. In settings where public health interventions, such as immunization programmes, are functioning optimally, much of childhood hearing loss is avoided. In others, early detection and treatment are key.

WHO collates data and information on hearing loss to demonstrate its prevalence, causes and impact as well as opportunities for prevention and management; assists countries to develop and implement strategies for hearing care that are integrated into the primary health-care system; and provides technical resources and guidance for planning, implementation and human resource development.
Red Hulk, Ronin, and more: 10 Heroes and Villains whose secret identities were hidden from readers

There's a longstanding superhero tradition of hiding the identity of certain characters even from readers
Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters Looking Back Health Jewels Stitch in Time Twelve participating in Distinguished Young Women 2016 March 2, 2016 Twelve of Bonners Ferrys most outstanding junior girls will be given an opportunity to win scholarship money and prizes in this years annual Bonners Ferry Distinguished Young Women Scholarship Program (formerly Junior Miss). Set for April 30 at the Becker Auditorium, get ready for a whirlwind travel adventure as they present Around the World in 80 Days.







Started in 1966, the Bonners Ferry Distinguished Young Women Program has opened the door of opportunity for countless young women in our community. Throughout the years, Bonners Ferry has proven to be one of the best programs in the state and nation. It also has the reputation of giving one of the largest amounts of scholarship and prizes in Idaho, awarding over $15,000.00 last year.



The Distinguished Young Women program focuses entirely on participants inner beauty, strengths, and accomplishments. Participants are given the opportunity to participate in the Be Your Best Self program. The Be Your Best Self program allows Distinguished Young Women participants to reach out and encourage young people nationwide to make a commitment to being their best selves in areas such as: academics, physical fitness, morality, character, and social and civic participation. The five elements of Be Your Best Self are: Be Involved, Be Studious, Be Healthy, Be Responsible, and Be Ambitious. Participants take part in the Young Miss program by mentoring local sixth grade girls, performing community service projects, and participating in educational opportunities highlighting the elements of the program.



Each participant competes in the following categories: Scholastics, Interview, Talent, Fitness, and Self Expression. An Olympic style scoring system is used in all categories of the program, and each participant receives a score of 1 to 10 in each category. Each participant is judged as an individual and not by comparison to other participants. Scholarships are awarded to the winners of each category, as well as to runners-up, and the young lady ultimately awarded the title of Bonners Ferrys Distinguished Young Woman.



The Bonners Ferry Distinguished Young Women program receives its funds and support entirely through the donations of local community members and businesses. Without this support the program would not exist. Throughout the next several weeks, volunteers will be contacting businesses and community members for their support. Donations of any size make a significant impact and allow Bonners Ferrys best to achieve their higher learning goals. If you would like to donate to this years program, please contact Andrakay Pluid at 946-7598.



National sponsors of the Distinguished Young Women program include the City of Mobile, Mobile County, Barbara Barrington Jones Family Foundation, The State of Alabama, Alabama Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils, Alabama Power Foundation, Encore Rehabilitation, Wintzell's Oyster House, Master Boat Builders, Regions Financial Corporation, and Alabama Media Group. For more information about Distinguished Young Women, visit www.DistinguishedYW.org. Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail!
EL DO BLUES

One member of staff told reporters of some of the incidents that have happened in recent weeks.

She said that last week, four gunmen were waiting for a student outside the school who is believed to be selling drugs on the school compound. The staff member said teachers are afraid to go to classrooms because they were being threatened by students.

She recalled one incident where students bent the leg of a teachers steel chair and when she sat down, she fell, injuring her back.

In another incident, the keys to a teachers vehicle was stolen and her tyres punctured because students did not want her in the class. The school official revealed that female students are selling sex to male students.

Im just fed up of it all, she said.

Garcia, along with Minister in the Ministry of Education Dr Lovell Francis, Tunapuna MP Esmond Forde, Antonia De Freitas, first vice president of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA), President of the National Parent Teachers Association (NPTA) Zena Ramatali and other ministry officials yesterday visited the school to meet with teachers and the principal.

GAMBLING DEN Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Garcia shared some of the teachers complaints. We have heard here today from teachers that this school has degenerated into a gambling den. We have been told that students would face teachers and curse them in the worst way...

the most derogatory way.

One teacher lamented the fact that when he tried to correct a student, the student told him that he knows where he lives, that he knows when his wife or his daughter would be home, that he knows exactly what to do to take revenge if that teacher disciplines him and that is not what we want at a school and I have pledged together with my fellow minister and officials at the Ministry of Education that some form of sanity must be returned to the El Dorado East Secondary school and we are going to do everything in our power to ensure that sanity returns to the school, Garcia said.

The Minister disclosed that he has asked the principal to give him the names of the students who are causing problems at the school. As soon as I get that information from the principal, together with the senior officials of the Ministry of Education, we are going to decide what we are going to do. I am not going to tolerate deviant behaviour in any of our schools, Im not going to tolerate that. As Ive been saying all along a school must be a place that is conducive to learning and teaching, he said.

Sources at the school said there were approximately 30 students who have been identified as trouble makers. Last week, 24 students at Chaguanas North Secondary were immediately sent home after they were identified as ring leaders in the delinquency that has plagued the school.

Asked if similar action will be taken on students at El Dorado East Secondary, he said, I need to get the names and their infractions, as much information as possible before we decide what we are going to do. He said since that action was taken at the Chaguanas North Secondary, there has been a lot of improvement at the school.

SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG The minister recalled that El Dorado East Secondary school, whose colours are blue in contrast to the brown of El Dorado West Secondary, was once known as the jewel of the east.

Something has gone wrong and we are going to find out what it is and those who are responsible for what has happened to this school they will have to pay the penalty, he said. National athletes, Darrel Brown and Marc Burns were past students of the school. The school also had several national scholarship winners.

Garcia added that the ministry was going to work on having more security
PM condemns prison officers murder

We are going to be telling you, how much it costs to keep someone incarcerated per day, per month, over time, he stated.

Al-Rawi said this consultation will also deal with, the type of matters that have engaged the courts, how long they have been there, and where we are. Saying this consultation, and what will be revealed will be the first of its kind in TT, Al-Rawi said, There is a great mystery around the management of the prison system.

Its time for the facts to be put out. He added that the Prisons Officers Association and other stakeholders will be invited to participate in the consultation.

Saying the issue of using grabbers and jabbers in prison has been explored, Al-Rawi stated, We have looked at, fast tracked and implemented the installation of the hardlines into the prisons. He explained, this will shut down what we have found in the prison systems, which is cell-phone usage and direct communication from the prisons, included from convicted blocked areas of the prison. The AG reiterated that this is, an apolitical issue.
Get the news faster.

Tap to install our app. Access Newser even faster.

Click here to install our app on your desktop.

X
(Newser)  Americans in Iraq should be poised to leave at any minutebut not because of any terrorist threat. In a security alert, the US Embassy in Baghdad notes more than a million people could be drowned or left homeless if Iraq's largest hydro-electric dam on the Tigris River breaks apart near Mosul. The dambuilt on a soft mineral easily eroded by waterhas been impaired by structural flaws since it was built in 1984 and requires workers grouting around the clock to keep it strong, report the New York Times and Guardian. But when the Islamic State captured the dam for a two-week period in 2014, all work stopped. Few engineers returned when government forces recaptured it and regular maintenance couldn't continue. "It is going from bad to worse, and it is urgent," says a former engineer. "All we can do is hold our hearts."

An Italian company has been awarded a contract to make repairs, but they're expected to take 18 months and engineers say melting snow has pushed the reservoir to maximum capacity. Officials warn a breach could put Mosul under 70 feet of water within hours, reports Reuters. Cities including Tikrit, Samarra, and Baghdad could be flooded with 13 feet in a day. "We have no specific information that indicates when a breach might occur, but out of an abundance of caution, we would like to underscore that prompt evacuation offers the most effective tool to save lives of the hundreds of thousands of people," the US alert reads, advising Americans to keep three miles from the river. Iraq's government has downplayed the threat, noting the chance of a breach is "extremely small." (Read more Iraq stories.)
(Newser)  It's not just this New Hampshire newspaper that's fed up with Chris Christie after he endorsed Donald Trump for president: Six New Jersey papers issued a joint editorial Tuesday calling for Christie to step down as governor of the state, the Hill reports. "What an embarrassment. What an utter disgrace," reads the editorial from the Asbury Park Press, the Cherry Hill Courier-Post, the Morristown Daily Record, and others that are part of Gannett's USA Today Network. The editorial calls Christie out not just for his endorsement of Trump but for his "arrogance," "opportunism," "hypocrisy," "sarcasm," and "his long neglect of the state," which includes quite a bit of travel "on New Jersey's dime" as he campaigned for president and now as he campaigns for Trump.

"For the good of the state, it's time for Christie to do his long-neglected constituents a favor and resign as governor. If he refuses, citizens should initiate a recall effort," says the editorial, which notes that on Monday, Christie actually refused to take any questions other than those having to do with his nomination of a potential state Supreme Court justicean unheard-of restriction for the press corps. And Christie has actually held very few press conferences at all since Bridgegate, making him quite inaccessible to the media. Asked on Monday why he wouldn't take other questions, Christie responded, "Because I don't want to." "Can you imagine any other governor saying that? Or President Barack Obama? Is that what Christie would have told the national press corps if he became president?" wonders the editorial, which calls for Christie to be "forced out." Read it in full here. (Read more Chris Christie stories.)
(Newser)  "She probably never had a clue it was coming," says a fire chief in Oregon, where a 100-foot cedar tree took the lives of a pregnant woman and her unborn child in a freak accident. Kristi Leigh Oliver, 30, was killed when the cedar fell on top of her car near Portland early Tuesday. She was the lone occupant and leaves behind her husband Jeremy and their 3-year-old son, Mikey, reports the Oregonian. A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money to help the family care for their son, who has celiac disease.

Mike Weber, who was on his way to work at the time, was driving behind Oliver and witnessed the accident. "This tree, it just broke off out of nowhere," he tells KOIN. "It looked like it had exploded. But it hit her truck, spun her truck around." Weber says he ran to help but couldn't find a pulse, so he "just held onto her hand and prayed." He adds that the tree had "clearly been dead for years" and that his wife warns him not to drive along that road because of the dead trees. Not long after, family members arrived at the roadblock, where deputies tried to console them. (This freak car accident also involved no other vehicles.)
(Newser)  The size of Donald Trump's hands has been a thing for decades, stretching back to the days when Graydon Carter dubbed him a "short-fingered vulgarian" in Spy magazine. In his November editor's letter for Vanity Fair, Carter wrote that over the years, and as recently as last year, Trump would send him the occasional photo, "generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers." Those photos did little to convince Carter, and now Marco Rubio has apparently taken up the mantle. Politico quotes Rubio as saying the following on Sunday: "[Trump is] like 6-2, which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5-2. Have you seen his hands? You know what they say about men with small handsyou cant trust them."

While in Ohio on Tuesday, Trump swung back, trotting out one of his favorite adjectives in the process: "Actually Im 6-3, not 6-2but he said I had small hands. ... I never heardI never heard that one before. I've always had people say, 'Donald, you have the most beautiful hands.'" In noting Rubio's new tactic, the Washington Post writes he "may be on to something." It reports on recent polling that identified the type of attack that would be most likely to raise serious doubts about Trump among GOP voters. The winner: attacks framing Trump as an "egomaniac and entertainer that cares more about gaining power and fame than helping the country." More policy-minded attacksthink immigration, climate change, big oilwere far less effective. (See previous Trump-Rubio slams, including one about "wet pants," here. And John Oliver's tirade on Trump also addresses his hand size.)
(Newser)  A 21-year-old University of Texas-Austin student is suing the school to keep from being expelled one semester before graduating after being accused of raping a woman, Fox News reports. His lawsuit claims a disciplinary hearing scheduled to decide his fate violates "his Constitutional right to due process." The College Fix explains the unnamed student won't be able to call witnesses or cross-examine the alleged victim during the hearing. The school has already recommended he be expelled. The alleged sexual assault took place last March after the student met two women at a house party and went home with them. He had sex with one of the women that night before having sex with the alleged victim in the morning.

The lawsuit states the student believed the alleged victim was consenting to sex, in part, because she "talked about being in a pornographic movie." But she later texted her friend that she was still unconscious from heavy drinking the night before and didn't remember having sex with the student. The lawsuit points out the alleged victim never filed a police report (she did talk to campus police, and her father later complained to the school) and claims she later told her friend the sex must have been consensual because it sounded "passionate" even though she didn't remember it. The University of Texas-Austin released a report Monday detailing how its officers deal with sexual-assault allegations, according to the Texas Tribune. Trauma victims often omit, exaggerate, or make up information when trying to make sense of what happened to them or to fill gaps in memory, the report states. This does not mean the sexual assault did not occur. (Read more rape stories.)
(Newser)  If you're afraid of heights, stop reading. As of June 25, the city of Los Angeles will boast a most unique attraction: a glass slide that hangs 1,000 feet above it, attached to the side of what has been the West Coast's tallest building since 1990. The US Bank Tower is about to lose that honor to the Wilshire Grand, notes Gizmodo, but it's not planning to lose its place in the spotlight. The US Bank Tower clocks in at 72 stories, and the building's owner intends to install the opening of a 46-foot-long glass slide on the 70th floor. It's the brainchild of Singapore-based OUE Ltd., which bought the building three years ago and is sinking $50 million into a rehab of it.

You can pay $25 to enter the new rooftop complexOUE Skyspace LA will also contain a bar and observation deckand then another $8 to scoot your way down to the 69th floor, reports the Los Angeles Times. The slide will be 4 feet wide and made of 1.25-inch-thick glass. Curbed Los Angeles notes that one rendering of the Skyslide "shows a totally calm person casually moving through the slide with arms overhead like this is merely Splash Mountain and not an $8 near-death experience." CNN notes it joins a number of similarly see-through attractions in the US, such as the ones at the Willis Tower and Grand Canyon. But is Skyslide scarier than this glass tourist attraction? (Read more crazy stories.)
(Newser)  When Bex Baxter started seeing women in her office "bent over double" with painnot from indigestion or appendicitis, but from their monthly menstrual cyclesshe knew she had to act, per the Guardian. So the director of Coexist, based in Bristol, England, has decided to implement a "period policy" that will allow her female employees (all but seven of the 31 who work there) to take time off for menstrual pain. "They feel guilty and ashamed for taking time off and often sit at their desks in silence not wanting to acknowledge it," she says, per the Independent. The specifics of the policy haven't yet been drafted; Baxter and her team intend to do so during a March 15 seminar.

Apparently there are many women suffering like this: The NIH's Medline Plus reports period pain "is the leading cause of lost time from school and work among women in their teens and 20s." The concept of menstrual leave isn't new: Fox News points out that Japan has had it since right after WWII, and other Asian countries, including a Chinese province, have followed suit; Nike was one of the first global companies to have a menstrual leave policy. But a professional living in Shanghai writes for the Global Times that there's often fear on women's part that they'll fall behind at work and risk annoying the boss by taking time off. Baxter refutes the idea that taking time off is unproductive. "The spring section of the cycle, immediately after a period, is a time when women are actually three times as productive as usual." (Read more menstruation stories.)
(Newser)  Now that US special forces are again operating on the ground in Iraq, an inevitable first has occurred: American troops have captured an operative of the Islamic State, reports CNN. Not much is known about the militant, though the New York Times describes him as a "significant" figure for ISIS. US officials are now interrogating the operative, which, as the Times notes, raises a host of thorny issues. He surely won't be the last ISIS member captured, but the US has no interest in holding these captives long term and raising the specter of the abuses that took place years ago at Abu Ghraib.

Instead, American officials plan to turn over the operative and any future prisoners to Iraqi or Kurdish authorities once they're done questioning. The Pentagon has informed the International Committee of the Red Cross of the militant's detention, though it was unclear whether the interrogations were being monitored. US special forces have been on the ground for weeks in Iraq developing intelligence, and CNN says the militant was nabbed in the first batch of missions to spring from that intelligence. (Read more Islamic State stories.)
(Newser)  When you really want a cigarette, a locked door apparently wont stand in your way. Police say a New Mexico man arrived at a 24-hour convenience store in Las Cruces around 3:30am Sunday to buy a pack of cigarettes, per the Las Cruces Sun-News. After pounding on the locked door for a while, 24-year-old Ellis Battista apparently realized the store was closed and broke through the door, causing $800 in damage, police say. Once inside, Battista allegedly grabbed a pack of cigarettes and made sure security cameras caught him leaving $6 in its place. He was charged with breaking and entering, reports the AP. (Read more weird crimes stories.)
(Newser)  The UN Security Council has unanimously approved the toughest sanctions on North Korea in two decades, reports the AP. Wednesday's move reflects growing anger at Pyongyang's latest nuclear test and rocket launch in defiance of a ban on all nuclear-related activity. The big question, of course, is whether the North will shrug off the penalties as it has done previously. The UN and North Korea's traditional ally China spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions, which include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by sea or air, a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang, and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in "illicit activities."

The sanctions also include a ban on the sale of aviation fuel to North Korea, notes CNN, which has a more complete breakdown of the penalties. The sanctions "send an unambiguous and unyielding message to the DPRK regime: The world will not accept your proliferation," says Samantha Power, US ambassador to the United Nations. Russia had blocked the vote for 24 hours before agreeing to the sanctions Wednesday morning. (Read more North Korea stories.)
(Newser)  When Virginia Gray's grandkids went to Horton's Funeral Home last Friday to pay their respects to the DC matriarch, who had died at the age of 83 in mid-February, they were prepared to say their final goodbyes, News4 reports. But although her family recognized the clothing on the body in the casketthey had picked it out specifically and brought it to be placed on Gray for the viewingthey didn't recognize the body that was wearing the outfit. "I saw the body of another female that wasn't my grandmother," grandchild Tawana Murphy tells the station. "My heart dropped. I was in disbelief."

It turns out Gray's body had gone missingand neither the funeral home nor Prince George's Hospital Center, where Gray had passed away before being brought to Horton's, is saying publicly (if they even know) where the body may be, though hospital reps say they're investigating. "Lunacy is what it is," Gray's grandson tells NBC. "It's unspeakable. ... This is straight out of a bad script.  I've never heard of anything like this." A third grandchild simply wants to focus on finding their grandma, saying, "I just want her to have a proper funeral and burial, if it's not too late." Meanwhile, the News4 reporter poses another interesting question: "Who was the woman in Ms. Gray's casketand where's her family?" (Gray's grandson has never heard of anything like thisbut it's happened before.)
(Newser)  A lawyer for drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman said Wednesday his client now wants to be extradited as soon as possible to the United States because guards at a Mexican maximum-security prison won't let him sleep, the AP reports. Lawyer Jose Refugio Rodriguez, who told Radio Formula Wednesday he talked to Guzman Tuesday at the Altiplano prison west of Mexico City, says Guzman told him to negotiate with US authorities. "He has reached the limit," Rodriguez said. "It is an act of desperation. "He said to try to get a negotiation with the American government. We know of agreements with other people for confinement in medium-security prisons ... a much lower sentence." It's unclear what kind of agreements Rodriguez was referring to: Although some Mexican drug suspects have reached some form of plea deals with US authorities in the past, it's not clear any have ever been able to negotiate terms on where they'd be held. The US Embassy in Mexico City said it does not comment on extraditions.

Officials have acknowledged that guards wake Guzman every four hours for a head count. The harsher regimeGuzman also has fewer visits than his last stint in prisonseems to have broken him. "I saw a defeated, humiliated man," Rodriguez said. In February, Rodriguez gave the AP a copy of Guzman's testimony in one of the cases against him. In it, the jailed drug lord accused prison authorities of torturing him "by waking him up, and said, 'I feel like a sleepwalker. ... My head and my ears always hurt and I feel bad all over.'" Guzman also said that previously he had been give an hour and a half every day to talk to his lawyer and an hour in the sun in a prison patio; every nine days, he was allowed a four-hour conjugal visit and a four-hour family visit. Mexico's national security commissioner says Guzman's human rights aren't being violated at the Altiplano prison and pointed out Guzman has escaped twice from Mexican prisons and needs "special security measures." (Read more Joaquin Guzman stories.)
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Snow will taper off and end this evening but skies will remain cloudy late. Low 26F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Snow will taper off and end this evening but skies will remain cloudy late. Low 26F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%.
Washington:

Pakistan today said it may make JeM leader Masood Azhar, the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack, available to Indian investigating agencies for questioning, but it will first investigate the case.

Aziz also described as outdated Defence Minister Manohar Parrikars remarks that non-state actors operate in Pakistan with support of the establishment and said he needs to update this narrative.

First of all, we have to investigate ourselves and (find out) what it is... if he (Masood) does something (wrong) we would move against (him), Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister, told Defense Writers Group at a breakfast meeting today.

Aziz was responding to a question if Pakistan would make Masood available for interrogation if the JeM leader is found guilty of the Pathankot terrorist attack. He was asked the question twice during an hour-long meeting with reporters over a breakfast.

Is he (Masood) going to be shared with India for interrogation? he was asked by a journalist. I think, (Pakistans) response to (terrorist attack in) Pathankot has been very positive and prompt. Prime Minister (Nawaz Sharif) immediately called the Indian Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and said we are ready to co-operate, he said.

So whatever intelligence came from there (India), national security advisor, immediate action was taken to take under protective custody some of their leaders as well as sealed their facilities, set up a joint investigation team. The first information report which is a legal requirement for our investigations to begin has been filed, he said.

Pakistan last week set up a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to probe the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase, a week after it lodged an FIR over the assault without naming Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood who India has accused of having masterminded the strike.

I am hoping that the investigation team would now go (to India) in the next few days. Then you would be able to trace the phone calls, who all...The phone call (from India) came to one or two numbers but then their links and the identities of the four people who were killed in the attack are also got to be established yet, as we havent got the right photographs or finger prints of those, Aziz said.

So once the process goes and considering the time that has elapsed, very good progress is being made and I hope that this would demonstrate to India that we are co-operating in this exercise and they would share the evidence that we require and whatever prosecution would require would take place, Aziz said in response to a question.

Referring to the Parrikars remarks on non-state actors, Aziz said, I think; it is out of date. This is the old narrative which India has been following. The situation (in Pakistan) is now very different.

The terror attack on Pathankot Airbase on January 2 was carried out by Pakistans non-state actors who operate with support of the Pakistani establishment, Parrikar had said.

In response, Aziz said, Initially there were sympathies for certain groups, but after the December 2014 (army) school attack and the policy that there is no good and bad terrorist and we are going to move against all of them (things have changed).

But obviously you cant move against all of them. (We would move against them) gradually and sequentially. So to that extent, I think the policy direction is very clear. And on the whole there was support for these groups within the local community, for example funding because many of them had a lot of welfare activities and under the cover of that they would raise funds. Now it is being monitored. You cant collect fund without any accounting, he said.

So I think, the suspicion (of Parrikar) refers to the old previous ones when the Afghan related...you do not forget that the Mujahedeen of Afghanistan were trained, funded and armed jointly by the US and Pakistan. Then it was a different kind of operation. At that time they were not terrorists. They were called holy warriors. Once 9/11 happened they all became terrorist, he said.

Our policy of not supporting them is very significant. Because we realised that supporting them is bad for all our security. Thats why our relationship with Afghanistan started improving. The same is true with others. So I think, one has to update this narrative, Aziz said while responding to the question on the statement made by Parrikar.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif may meet his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi here later this month on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit, a top aide to Pakistan Premier said today.

There are chances of meeting between the two (prime ministers), Sartaj Aziz, the Foreign Affairs Advisor to Sharif, told PTI. There are possibilities, when they are here (in Washington DC). They would interact with each other. Whether there would be a structured meeting I do not know. Depends on...Chances are there (for a meeting), Aziz said.

The top Pakistani diplomat is in Washington to attend the sixth US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue which he co-chaired with Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday.

Aziz said Sharif would be travelling to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit at the invitation of US President Barack Obama.

Modi too has been invited to the Summit on March 31 and April 1. No official announcement has been made yet. Responding to a question on the status of India-Pak relationship after Modi came to power in May 2014, Aziz said in the first year the situation was not good.

But the last two months are better, Aziz said. Ahead of the Modi-Sharif meeting, Aziz said there is likelihood of a meeting between the foreign secretaries of the two countries.

The timing of which has not been decided yet, he noted. We do not know (when foreign secretaries would meet). He (Indian Foreign Secretary) has to come to Islamabad first. We are hoping that now, Aziz said after the breakfast meeting with Defence Writers Group here.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumars fate will be decided today by the Delhi High Court which is likely to pronounce its order on his bail plea in the sedition case.



Justice Pratibha Rani had yesterday reserved the order after over three hours of hearing on the bail plea of Kanhaiya who is accused of raising anti-India slogans inside JNU campus during an event organised on February 9.



During the hearing, while Kanhaiyas counsel had argued that the student leader had never raised any slogans against the nation, Delhi Police had maintained that there was evidence that he and others were shouting anti-India slogans and were holding Afzal Gurus posters.



Police had claimed that Kanhaiya was not cooperating in the probe and even came out with contradictory statements in joint interrogation by Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Delhi Police.



The defence lawyers including senior advocate Kapil Sibal had countered the allegations saying there were some outsiders with covered faces who raised anti-India slogans and Kanhaiya was seen in CCTV footage asking them for their identity cards.



The bench had also asked tough questions to the police on slapping sedition charge on the accused and asked it to show evidence against him of his active role in raising anti-India slogans.



Kanhaiya had also distanced himself from Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, the two other accused arrested in the case.



During the hearing, the Delhi governments counsel had urged the court to grant bail to Kanhaiya, who is currently in Tihar Jail under judicial custody.



He was arrested on February 12 in the case which was registered under sections 124 A (sedition) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.



According to the police, a group of students had on February 9 held an event in the campus and allegedly shouted slogans against the hanging of Parliament attack convict Guru.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

A video showing Aam Aadmi Party MLA Amanatullah Khan involved in an alleged hate speech against the Narendra Modi government has been surfaced, reports have said.

The legislator from Okhla is seen using derogatory language against the Modi government, following which AAP has defended him saying the comments by its MLA were not a personal attack on the Prime Minister but a justified complaint against the central government.

Khan delivered the speech when he was addressing a gathering during a mushaira at the Red Fort on February 16.

Khan has admitted that he has used such language against the Modi government:



Yes, I have used the word ha. for the central government because it has been denying the poor and the minorities their rights. It has been batting for the industrialists and the haves and depriving the have-nots. The literal meaning of the word ha. is one who takes away what does not belong to him. Is this not what the Modi government is doing by depriving the minorities and the poor?, he was quoted as saying by a national daily.



The MLA, while making the speech, allegedly made an appeal to the members of Muslim community to gherao Union Home Minister Rajnath Singhs house.

If all of you decide to gherao the Home Ministers residenceDelhi has a huge Muslim population. If you start doing that, I can assure you that the government will not dare to touch your children, he is seen saying this in the video.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Stepping up their agitation against arrest of JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and two others in a sedition case, the students will march to Parliament today demanding the release of those jailed in the case.



We are going to hold a solidarity march to Parliament to protest the stifling of dissent in JNU, Hyderabad university and elsewhere through sedition charges, said JNUSU Vice President Shehla Rashid Shora.



The protest march which will be joined by academicians and students from various universities across Delhi, will begin from Mandi House area at 2 PM today.



We want to take up our issues with the PMO, MHRD and the Home Minister. We will also be approaching the NHRC and the Minority Commission to register our concerns at the functioning of the Delhi Police and the continuing threats of physical violence against Kanhaiya, Umar and Anirban, she added.



The students have been agitating on campus ever since Kanhaiya was arrested in a sedition case in connection with an event against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.



Following Kanhaiyas arrest- five students who were being searched by police in the case- Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Ashutosh Kumar, Anant Prakash and Rama Naga- had gone into hiding fearing mob-lynching.



They resurfaced back on campus 10 days later. While Umar and Anirban surrendered before the police, the remaining three refused to do so but maintained that they are open to questioning by police as and when needed.



Our major demands include release of the three students, revoking sedition charges and the varsity suspension order, Shehla said.



The students are also demanding resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani allegeing that she misused powers and peddled lies regarding the row at JNU and Hyderabad University where a dalit scholar -Rohith Vemula- was found hanging in a hostel room.



We want the government to enact a Rohith Act to end caste based discrimination in universities and educational institutions, she added.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Yangon:

Myanmars persecuted Rohingya continue to languish in dreadful conditions with children dying because they are refused healthcare, the UN has warned, adding that the Muslim minority risked being forgotten in the afterglow of recent elections.

The comments were made by a senior UN official following a visit to western Rakhine state, where the Rohingya have been targeted by violent attacks and state-sanctioned discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, earning a reputation as one of the worlds most persecuted peoples.

More than 100,000 Rohingya are languishing in camps in Myanmars west after communal unrest in Rahkine state left villages torched and scores dead in 2012.

They are denied full citizenship and large numbers were disenfranchised in historic November polls that saw the pro-democracy party of Aung San Suu Kyi sail to victory with a massive popular mandate.

John Ging, director of operations at the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), said he was shocked to see the state of the refugee camps during his February visit.

He described a raft of temporary shelters on the verge of collapse, and told familiar stories of families denied medical care on account of their religion.

It was heartbreaking to see so many children in these dreadful conditions, he said in a statement from New York yesterday. One mother told me that her baby, less than a month old, died from lack of oxygen in December after she was denied access to treatment at the nearby township hospital, he added.

In an accompanying statement, UNOCHA stressed that the Rohingya and other groups displaced by violence must not be forgotten as the country advances towards democracy.

Myanmar is going through an impressive democratic transformation, which is unlocking significant economic growth and development. However, not everyone in Myanmar is benefiting in this transition, the agency said, adding that some 100,000 non-Rohingyas are also displaced in separate conflicts between the army and ethnic rebels in Kachin and Shan states.

Though Suu Kyi has said she will protect Muslims in the state, the Nobel laureate has faced international criticism for not taking a stronger stance on the Rohingyas plight, and for failing to field any Muslim candidates in Novembers polls.

Carving out a solution for the Rohingya and addressing strident anti-Muslim rhetoric among Buddhist nationalists across the country will be a key test of her administration.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Kanpur:

Security has been stepped up in the city in view of former Afghan President Hamid Karzais visit to address students of IIT Kanpur.



Karzai will address students and take part in the institutes Techkriti festival tomorrow, Kanpur District Magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma said today.



Karzai will reach Lucknow tomorrow, from where he will travel to the IIT campus by car or helicopter, he said.



Security has been tightened in the city with CRPF personnel called in to supplement local police force, he said, adding that the route that would be taken by the ex-Afghan presidents is being properly inspected.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
London:

A community and arts centre based in Bristol, south-west England, has become the first employer in Britain to introduce so-called period leave for women.

Coexist, which has a largely female workforce, said today that it will offer workers the option of flexible working from home during their monthly menstruation cycle and any time off for the reason would not be classed as sick leave as employees would be allowed to make up for the time lost over the course of the month.

As a manager of staff I have seen women really suffer with their periods and I have found them doubled over in a lot of pain. Despite this, they feel they cannot go home because they do not class themselves as unwell. And this is unfair.

At Coexist we are very understanding. If someone is in pain - no matter what kind - they are encouraged to go home, Bex Baxter, one of the directors at Coexist, told Bristol Post.

Nothing like this has been done in the UK before, we believe, and if it has, it has been very small, she said.

Co-Exist employs 24 people, seven of them men, and the details of the new policy will be worked out as part of a Pioneering Period Policy: Valuing Natural Cycles in the Workplace, seminar at the centre on March 15.

It is based on the work of Alexandra Pope, the founder and creator of womens leadership programme at Red School.

The school is base on a radical new approach to womans health and wellbeing; creativity and leadership; and spiritual life based on the power of our menstruality consciousness.

Baxter believes the scheme will increase productivity and hopes other firms will follow the lead of global sportswear giant Nike and introduce similar policies.

Nike had introduced menstrual leave in 2007 and makes business partners sign a memorandum of understanding to ensure they maintain the companys standards.

Countries like China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan also have similar policies around menstrual leave for female employees.
New Delhi :

Rohtang Pass, the gateway to tribal Lahaul valley, is likely to be opened later this month.

An official said snow clearing operations have started on the Manali-Leh National Highway from Beas Nallah, 32 km from Manali, today.

Commander of 38 BRTF, Col KP Rajendra said this year due to less snowfall Rohtang Pass, situated at 13,050 feet is expected to be opened later this month.

With the opening of the Pass, which normally opens by end May or early June, tribal valleys of Lahaul and Spiti would be reconnected by road with rest of the country.
Lucknow:

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today said police will take action on the basis of evidence against Union Minister Ram Shankar Katheria and BJP MP Babu Lal in connection with the inflammatory speeches in Agra.

Police has all the facts with regard to the alleged speeches. It will take action against all those involved in the case based on the recording and other evidences, he said

A case has been lodged and investigations are on in connection with the inflammatory speech case in Agra, Yadav said here.

Taking a jibe at the BJP, the chief minister said the party leaders issue inflammatory speeches to damage communal amity in an attempt to divert peoples attention from the issues of farmers and youth.

Katheria, who is Minister of State for HRD, and Lal had allegedly made controversial speeches at a condolence meeting held in Agra on Sunday for VHP leader Arun Mahaur, who was killed by some youths from another community on Thursday.

At the meeting, Katheria had said: This conspiracy that is being hatched against the Hindu community, we have to be alert to recognize it and strengthen ourselves. We will have to fight it because if we do not do it now, today we have lost one Arun, tomorrow it could be another Arun...the killers should also go, we have to set such an example.

On JNU row, Akhilesh Yadav said, Nationalism cannot be defined in a word or by adopting a single viewpoint. Nationalism is also taking everyone along.

Yadav exuded confidence of a big win in the coming state Assembly elections and said people have seen the works done by his government.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Mumbai:

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said the state government was contemplating bringing in a legislation over the dance bar issue, asserting that obscenity cannot be permitted at these places.

Fadnavis said this hours after the Supreme Court rejected certain conditions like providing live CCTV footage to police on performances in dance bars and asked the Maharashtra government to grant licences to owners within 10 days after they comply with modified guidelines.

The chief minister also said the state government will approach the apex court with an alternative.

State cannot permit obscenity it has seen in the past in dance bars. We will approach the Supreme Court with an alternative, he said, adding that the Maharashtra government is also contemplating a suitable legislation in the state Legislature over the issue.

Government pleader in the SC has informed that the Supreme Court has accepted all conditions imposed by Maharashtra government on dance bars with a few modifications. But the SC has disallowed the condition of live monitoring through CCTV and has asked to enforce surveillance at the entrance only, Fadnavis said.

However, the apex courts decision to grant licenses to dance bar owners within 10 days was welcomed by Indian Hotel And Restaurant Association (AHAR), while Opposition parties alleged a nexus between the government and bar owners.

We welcome the SCs verdict. We always knew the court will do justice to our demands and we are thankful to the SC that it has enabled bar dancers to feed their children respectfully and have a life of their own, AHAR president Adarsh Shetty told PTI.

More than ourselves, we are happy for the dancers that they can now work and earn for their children and families, he said.

Shetty asserted that dance bar association members want to make the profession transparent, and expressed hope that the girls who resorted to prostitution after being out of profession would now be able to have a dignified life.

There is nothing like prostitution associated with the working of dance bars. When these girls were out of profession, they were forced to resort to prostitution. We hope the government helps the girls come back and live a dignified life in society, he said.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Bengaluru:

Mired in a controversy over a luxury watch gifted to him, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah today handed it over to the Speaker amid uproar in the state Assembly, declaring it a state asset.

As the Assembly was rocked by the controversy for the second consecutive day, an angry Siddaramaiah gave the watch and a letter to Speaker Kagodu Thimappa as BJP and JDS members continued to stage a dharna in the well of the House.

Siddaramaiahs dramatic gesture came when the House reassembled after two adjournments with BJP and JDS persisting with their demand for a discussion on the issue.

The Chief Minister said in the letter to the Speaker, who read it out, that he had paid advance tax for the watch.

I, being the Chief Minister of Karnataka, by following the precedents set by my predecessors in Office, declare that the gifted watch HUBLOT BIG BANG.301-M as government asset..., Siddaramaiah said.

He requested the Speaker to forward the watch to the Chief Secretary to place it in the Cabinet Hall at Vidhana Soudha, the state secretariat, today.

I, being a law abiding citizen, have paid the tax on the said gifted watch as advance tax on this day of 2nd March 2016, the letter said.

He said the pre-owned HUBLOT BIG BANG-301-M wrist watch was presented to him by his Dubai-based NRI friend Dr Girish Chandra Varma in July last at Bengaluru as a personal gift.

Siddaramiah also said Varma has no official dealings with Government of Karnataka or its organisations.

Opposition BJP leader Jagadish Shettar dismissed Siddaramaiahs action as high drama and said he was doing so thinking that the controversy would end.

A high-level probe by a central agency should be conducted, he said.

The Chief Minister is in the eye of a storm over the diamond-studded watch.

As controversy erupted, he declared last week that the watch, claimed to be worth Rs 70 lakh, would be declared as state asset and handed over to the government.

As the Assembly met for the day, BJP members entered the well of the House and demanded that a discussion on the issue be allowed and Speaker should reconsider his decision on not allowing an adjournment motion on the issue.

However, Thimmappa, who yesterday rejected BJPs appeal to allow adjournment motion, stuck to his decision.

Following this, BJP continued its protest, stating that affidavit, documents and receipt relating to the watch had to be made public by Verma, who is said to have gifted it.

As both opposition and treasury benches were involved in war of words, the House was adjourned by the Speaker who called the floor leaders for a meeting.

When the House reassembled, opposition members again entered the well and demanded a discussion.

Amidst sloganeering and protest by opposition, the Speaker even allowed introduction and passage of Karnataka Legislature Salaries, Pension and Allowances (Second Amendment) Bill, 2015, aimed at making provision to provide family pension to family members of the member deceased before December 26, 1978 operative from February 22, 2014.

As the protest continued, the Speaker once gain adjourned the House till afternoon.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday slammed Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi for shaming Narendra Modi government by taking his name in Parliament.

Previously, Rahul Gandhi had said in Lok Sabha: "Arun Jaitley came to me and said that there was no better scheme than MNREGA, I asked him why he doesn't tell that to his boss," said Gandhi.

In an elaborate Facebook post, Jaitley stated, "The more I hear Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know  when will he know.

Read the full post here:

How much does he know  when will he know

The Congress Vice-President, Shri Rahul Gandhi, has claimed that the Prime Minister hardly consults his senior Ministers. If Shri Rahul Gandhi is to be believed, then Smt. Sushma Swaraj is not consulted on the Pakistan policy, Shri Rajnath Singh was unware of the Nagaland accord and, presumably, I am unware of the Budget proposals.

As one evolves from a young to a middle-aged one, we certainly expect a certain level of maturity. The more I hear Shri Rahul Gandhi, the more I start wondering how much does he know  when will he know.

The Prime Minister should be the natural leader of the party and the Government. In the NDA it is so. The UPA was quite different. The Prime Minister is to lead by example. The present Prime Minister not only works hard and involves himself in the functioning of the various departments of the government, but inspires his team to work harder than we would have normally. Each one of us, whether the External Affairs Minister, Home Minister or myself, are responsible for each important decision taken by each of one departments. We do not by-pass the Prime Minister who is always available for consultation and guidance. After hearing Shri Rahul Gandhi, I think India has made the right choice between the Prime Minister who leads the Government and a Prime Minister who is merely implementing decisions taken elsewhere. Shri Rahul Gandhis views are shaped by the environment of a political party which has evolved into a crowd around a family. The UPA model of governance was that if a person outside the family is the Prime Minister, he should be reduced to being a figure-head. Given a choice between a hands-on Prime Minister or a nominal head, I would unhesitatingly choose the former."

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi :

A team of doctors at a hospital here successfully operated on a two-month-old baby girl who suffered multiple heart attacks due to a rare abnormality.

The surgery, performed on baby Aditi on February 22 at Sir H N Reliance Foundation Hospital and Research Centre, lasted nine hours.

She is now fine and doing well, doctors attending on her told reporters here today.

While conducting an echocardiography on the infant, the doctors had found an abnormal artery origin which was turning away majority of blood supply from the heart, and was reversing the blood flow away from the heart as well.

Having been born with this defect, the baby suffered repeated heart attacks, Dr Shivaprakash, Chief Surgeon and Head of Paediatric Heart Centre of the hospital, said.

Medically termed as Anomalous Left Coronary Artery from Pulmonary Artery (ALCAPA), the lesion was caused by an abnormal origin of left coronary artery (the artery that carries blue impure blood to lungs), he said.

In the case of a normal baby, pressures in the lungs normalise seven days after birth... but in Aditis case the lesion diverted the pink (pure) blood, thereby severely reducing the supply of pure blood to the heart. It resulted in frequent and silent heart attacks that damaged the heart muscles, the Chief Surgeon said.

Shreepal Jain, paediatric cardiologist of the hospital, said, such children usually die of heart failure before their first birthday.

According to him, this defect is extremely rareone in 3,00,000 deliveriesand hence is often missed by doctors.

Shivaprakash led the surgical team that operated upon Aditi. The other members were Gananjay Salve, Sandeep Katkade, Vilson and Subhash Sawant.

For the reconstructed heart to function properly, it was supported for 30 minutes post-surgery. The doctors converted the bypass circulation to left heart bypass for these 30 minutes, before the heart gradually took over the full load of circulation.

Aditis condition stabilised after five days. She is likely to be discharged in the next few days. With gradual recovery, she is expected to have normal heart function in the next few months, and should be able to lead a normal life, the doctors added.

We are very happy that the surgery was successful, said her parents, Preeti and Pramod Gilbele.
Kuala Lumpur:

There is a high possibility that aircraft debris reportedly found off the coast of Mozambique came from a Boeing 777, Malaysias transport minister said today, the same aircraft model as missing flight MH370.

Based an early reports, high possibility debris found in Mozambique belongs to a B777, Liow Tiong Lai said on his Twitter feed.

The US television network NBC reported shortly before Liows comments that a piece of debris had been found along the eastern African coast between Mozambique and Madagascar.

NBC cited US, Malaysian and Australian investigators who had seen photos of the object, which the network said could be a horizontal stabiliser from a Boeing 777.

Liow said Malaysia was working with Australiawhich is coordinating an Indian Ocean search for the ill-fated jumbo jetto retrieve the debris for closer study.

He stressed the origin of the item was yet to be confirmed and verified.

I urge everyone to avoid undue speculation as we are not able to conclude that the debris belongs to MH370 at this time, the transport minister said.

The find comes just days before the March 8 two-year anniversary of the planes mysterious 2014 disappearance.

The aircraft diverted for unknown reasons while on a routine overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

Investigators believe the plane rerouted to the southern Indian Ocean, where it crashed. No crash site has been found.

Last July a man on the French-held Indian Ocean island of Reunion found a wing fragment that experts later determined came from MH370, the only confirmed evidence of the planes fate to be found.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.